text:
Topic: Gaza
The Western Enablers of Abbas's Incitement
It was not a quiet holiday weekend in Jerusalem, though all things considered the violence and anti-Semitism against Jews in their eternal home and capital was not as vicious as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas might have hoped. Abbas, Israel's supposed "peace partner" and raving anti-Semite, echoed some of the ugliest moments in the modern history of the land when he explicitly attempted to incite violence against Jews seeking to enter the Temple Mount and resorted to the kind of fear mongering over Jerusalem that has long been a prelude to anti-Jewish rioting.
It was not a quiet holiday weekend in Jerusalem, though all things considered the violence and anti-Semitism against Jews in their eternal home and capital was not as vicious as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas might have hoped. Abbas, Israel's supposed "peace partner" and raving anti-Semite, echoed some of the ugliest moments in the modern history of the land when he explicitly attempted to incite violence against Jews seeking to enter the Temple Mount and resorted to the kind of fear mongering over Jerusalem that has long been a prelude to anti-Jewish rioting.
And yet the revolting persona Abbas has adopted more publicly of late is an indictment of the international community as well. Here is a brief rundown of Abbas's Jew hate over the weekend:
Abbas said it was not enough for Palestinians to say that "settlers" have come to the Temple Mount.
"We should all remain present at the Noble Sanctuary [Temple Mount]," he added.
"We must prevent them from entering the Noble Sanctuary in any way. This is our Al-Aksa and our church. They have no right to enter and desecrate them. We must confront them and defend our holy sites."
Abbas said Palestinians must be united to defend Jerusalem.
"Jerusalem has a special flavor and taste not only in our hearts, but also in the hearts of all Arabs and Muslims and Christians," he said. "Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Palestinian state and without it there will be no state."
What Abbas wants is to enforce by terror and rioting a full-fledged ethnic and religious apartheid against Jews on the Jewish holy site. He won't be the target of "apartheid weeks" the way Israel is on college campuses because most young leftists are ignorant hypocrites, and their defense of "human rights" in the Middle East has always had precisely zero to do with human rights. But Abbas would be a good candidate for such opprobrium, were the Western left to at any point develop a degree of intellectual integrity.
Avigdor Lieberman responded to Abbas:
Later on Saturday, Lieberman said that Abbas had again revealed his true face as a "Holocaust denier who speaks about a Palestinian state free of Jews." The foreign minister added that Abbas was and remains an anti-Semite.
"Behind the suit and the pleasantries aimed at the international community, he is raising the level of incitement against Israel and the Jews and is calling for a religious war," Lieberman said.
That is correct. And it continued: graffiti comparing the Jews to Nazis was painted at the Temple Mount. But the return of Abbas the Pogromist is not happening in a vacuum. The previous weekend, the Gaza reconstruction racket commenced in earnest, with a donor conference pledging billions in new cash for the terrorist-controlled Gaza Strip after Hamas's war against Israel over the summer. The most risible, yet predictable, aspect of the AP's story on that donor conference was this:
Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende, who co-chaired the one-day meeting with Egypt, said pledges of $5.4 billion have been made, but that only half of that money would be "dedicated" to the reconstruction of the coastal strip.
Brende did not say what the other half of the funds would be spent on. Other delegates have spoken of budgetary support, boosting economic activity, emergency relief and other projects.
It's a toss-up as to which part is more ridiculous: the fact that they wouldn't even say where half of the money goes or that they pretended half the cash would go toward reconstruction. In all likelihood, half will be earmarked for rockets and the other half for terror tunnels, though it's always unclear how much money the terrorist funders of Qatar will seek to add to the pot above and beyond their conference pledge.
What does this have to do with Abbas's incitement? Quite a bit, actually. The competition between Hamas and Abbas's Fatah/PA is generally a race to the bottom. Until there is a sea change in the culture of the Palestinian polity, appealing to the Palestinian public's attraction to "resistance" against Israel will always be a key battleground between the two governing factions.
Hamas may have lost its summer war against Israel, but it scored a few key victories. Chief among those victories was the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's temporary flight ban imposed on Israel's Ben-Gurion airport. Ben-Gurion is the country's gateway to the outside world, and banning flights to it isolates Israel physically from the international community (not to mention the global Jewish community). For that ban to have come from the United States was especially dispiriting.
And why was that ban enacted? Because of a Hamas rocket that escaped Israeli missile defense systems and landed about a mile outside of the airport. Hamas showed the Palestinians that all of Abbas's bad-faith negotiating is basically a delaying tactic that enables the further deterioration of Israeli-European relations but amounts to a slow bleed of public opinion. Meanwhile Hamas, the resisters, can shut down the Israeli economy and its contact with the outside world with a few rockets.
Hamas gets results, in other words, though they may come at a high price. Abbas does not spill enough Jewish blood and he does not put enough fear into the hearts of Israeli civilians to compare favorably to the genocidal murderers of Hamas. Therefore, he has to step up his game. If the international community were to do the right thing and isolate Hamas while refusing to fund the next war on Israel, Abbas could plausibly have the space to do something other than incite holy war. But they won't do the right thing, and Abbas predictably resorts to terror and incitement. I hope the humanitarians of Washington and Brussels are proud of themselves.
Which Palestine Do Euros Recognize?
Today the British Parliament voted on a non-binding resolution that recognized Palestine as a state. The 274-12 vote in favor of the symbolic gesture doesn't affect the actual foreign policy of the United Kingdom but, like the announcement by the new Swedish prime minister earlier this month of his intention to also recognize it as a state, it does constitute more momentum for a Palestinian effort to bypass peace negotiations. This says a lot more about the willingness of Europeans to pressure and even demonize Israel than it does about their supposed support for peace. But as long as they're talking about recognition, it's fair to ask which Palestine they are ready to welcome into the family of nations: The weak, corrupt, and undemocratic Palestinian Authority in the West Bank or the terrorist Hamas state in Gaza? Or both?
Today the British Parliament voted on a non-binding resolution that recognized Palestine as a state. The 274-12 vote in favor of the symbolic gesture doesn't affect the actual foreign policy of the United Kingdom but, like the announcement by the new Swedish prime minister earlier this month of his intention to also recognize it as a state, it does constitute more momentum for a Palestinian effort to bypass peace negotiations. This says a lot more about the willingness of Europeans to pressure and even demonize Israel than it does about their supposed support for peace. But as long as they're talking about recognition, it's fair to ask which Palestine they are ready to welcome into the family of nations: The weak, corrupt, and undemocratic Palestinian Authority in the West Bank or the terrorist Hamas state in Gaza? Or both?
The vote in London was something of a farce as Prime Minister David Cameron has made it clear that it will not influence his nation's actions. Pushed by rank-and-file members of the opposition Labor Party it appears to be driven by a desire to embarrass its leader Ed Milliband more than anything else. But the inability of Labor's leaders to quash the vote and in the absence of a strong stand against it by Cameron, who, along with the rest of his government and its supporters, abstained on the measure rather than risk his government by actively opposing it, it's fair to say that the measure reflects public sympathy for the Palestinians.
Yet like the "Free Gaza" demonstrations that rocked European cities this past summer while Hamas rockets rained down on Israeli cities, one has to wonder what exactly those advocating the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state think they are doing?
At its most basic level, recognizing Palestinian statehood seems to be an expression of sympathy for those who bore the brunt of Hamas's decision to launch another war against Israel: the people of Gaza. Pictures of Palestinian civilians who were killed, wounded, or made homeless by Israeli counter-attacks against Hamas missile launches and terror tunnels generated a wave of revulsion against the Jewish state as well as a desire to beat one's chest on behalf of the cause of "Free Palestine."
But which Palestine are we talking about?
Is it the Palestine of the Palestinian Authority that currently rules most of the West Bank, albeit under the security blanket of the Israel Defense Forces? Undoubtedly, that's the Palestine the Swedish prime minister thinks he's backing. That's a Palestine that is supposedly ready to make peace with Israel but which requires the economic and political support of the West in order to survive.
But, in truth, that Palestine is a corrupt kleptocracy run by Mahmoud Abbas, a man currently serving the 10th year of a four-year presidential term. The Fatah-ruled West Bank is a petty tyranny that oppresses and robs Palestinians while raking in billions in economic aid from Europe and the United States. Its leader frequently tells Western and Israeli audiences that he is ready make peace on the basis of a two-state solution, but he also is adamant about being unwilling to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders might be drawn.
But since so much of the anger at Israel is about Gaza, the fact is all too many Europeans seem willing to overlook their usual abhorrence of terrorism and think of Hamas as a legitimate government of the strip, if not as partners with the PA. That Palestine is a brutally repressive Islamist regime that is allied with those seeking to overthrow moderate Arab governments. Like Fatah in the West Bank, it is not interested in bettering the lives of its people. But unlike the PA, which seems mostly interested in profiteering off of foreign aid, Hamas's sole obsession is in replenishing its stores of rockets and ammunition and rebuilding its terror tunnels so as to be ready the next time it feels another round of fighting with Israel will be to its advantage. Hamas, which is more popular in the West Bank than Abbas and his party, is dedicated to ending the "occupation" but by that term they are referring to pre-1967 Israel, not forcing it to remove Jews from the West Bank or Jerusalem.
Nor is there much use pretending the Fatah-Hamas unity agreement is the basis of a pro-peace government. The show put on this week for international donors for the reconstruction of Gaza did nothing to bolster confidence in the ability of the so-called government of technocrats of the PA that is allegedly going to supervise the rebuilding of Gaza. In a sign of the contempt that the Palestinians have for the suckers who continue to shovel money into their coffers, the PA would only promise that half of the $5.4 billion pledged would pay for the rebuilding of Gaza. What happens to the other half? We're told that it will support the PA's budget until 2017. Which means that it will be divided among the PA's factions or indirectly shared with Hamas for its own nefarious purposes. But either way, the Swiss bankers who handle the private accounts of PA leaders should get ready for some heavy-duty deposits.
Were Europe's governments or its pro-Palestinian demonstrators truly interested in peace, they would understand that unilateral recognition of independence is a way for the PA to avoid having to talk with Israel. Whatever they may think of Israel or the Netanyahu government, it has stated its willingness to negotiate a two-state solution. But that outcome can only happen when the Palestinians stop waiting for their foreign friends to hand Israeli concessions—or Israel itself, as Hamas is frank about demanding—to them on a silver platter. If they wanted to support peace, they would tell Abbas to go back to the table with Netanyahu and to be prepared to recognize a Jewish state. They might also encourage him to get rid of Hamas, not become its partner.
Seen in that light talk about recognition of Palestine without first requiring it to make peace with Israel must seen as not merely moral preening at Israel's expense but a political manifestation of the same anti-Semitic invective that was so common during the "Free Gaza" demonstrations.
Roger Cohen, the "Nakba," and the Falsification of History
For the particularly cynical, monomaniacal critics of Israel and global Jewry, there are myriad ways to hijack the humble, introspective liturgy of the High Holidays to produce a sanctimonious ego-boosting tirade in order to make your column deadline with enough time left over to pat yourself on the back afterwards. If you're Roger Cohen of the New York Times, there's the added challenge of making sure to also mangle your history and dishonor the victims of genocide so your readers will get the column they've come to expect from you. And readers, Cohen's post-High Holidays column does not disappoint.
For the particularly cynical, monomaniacal critics of Israel and global Jewry, there are myriad ways to hijack the humble, introspective liturgy of the High Holidays to produce a sanctimonious ego-boosting tirade in order to make your column deadline with enough time left over to pat yourself on the back afterwards. If you're Roger Cohen of the New York Times, there's the added challenge of making sure to also mangle your history and dishonor the victims of genocide so your readers will get the column they've come to expect from you. And readers, Cohen's post-High Holidays column does not disappoint.
Cohen begins by explaining that as he sat in a Reform shul in London over the High Holidays, he couldn't help but notice that the rabbis were not using the pulpit to bash Israel. No matter–he has a pulpit in the New York Times, so he could do it himself. On the topic of Palestinian children killed in Hamas's recent war with Israel in Gaza, Cohen offers this:
However framed, the death of a single child to an Israeli bullet seems to betoken some failure in the longed-for Jewish state, to say nothing of several hundred. The slaughter elsewhere in the Middle East cannot be an alibi for Jews to avoid this self-scrutiny.
One straw man up, one straw man disposed of. And in particularly accusatory fashion as well: as if Israeli self-scrutiny needs Cohen's prodding, and as if any defense of its actions is properly labeled an "alibi," thereby affirming the criminal nature of Israeli self-defense. Cohen then swings again:
Throughout the Diaspora, the millennia of being strangers in strange lands, Jews' restless search in the scriptures for the ethics contained in sacred words formed a transmission belt of Judaism. For as long as the shared humanity of the other is perceived and felt, such questioning is unavoidable. The terrible thing about the Holy Land today is the denial of this humanity to the stranger. When that goes, so does essential self-interrogation. As mingling has died, separation has bred denial and contempt.
This is a classic tactic of the left: whatever the Palestinians are obviously guilty of–in this case, dehumanizing the Jews–the Jews too must be guilty of, because otherwise there would be no moral or intellectual basis for Cohen's worldview, which assumes Israel's guilt.
And it's especially rich of Cohen to throw the "separation" in Israel's face. In fact, Israeli policy is, as we saw this past week, to encourage Jews and Arabs to live side by side in shared peace and prosperity. The view of the left, the Obama administration, and the editorial board of the newspaper that employs Roger Cohen is that ethnic segregation–and in some places, like Givat Hamatos, racial segregation–must be enforced. Cohen's segregationist employers might be a better target for his ire, though that would require a level of intellectual honesty Cohen is not prepared to demonstrate.
Cohen then goes on to speculate that perhaps the rabbis did want to use the pulpit to denigrate Israel but were afraid to incur the wrath of the Jews who keep such rabbis "muzzled," in the words of a colleague of Cohen quoted in the column.
But then Cohen finally gets to the point. After referencing a passage from Stefan Zweig that refers to the Jews as the one and only "community of expulsion," Cohen updates it to make clear the Jews are now the oppressors, the ones who expel:
Two phrases leapt out: "community of expulsion," and "driven out of lands but without a land to go to." The second embodied the necessity of the Jewish state of Israel. But it was inconceivable, at least to me, without awareness of the first. Palestinians have joined the ever-recurring "community of expulsion." The words of Leviticus are worth repeating for any Jew in or concerned by Israel today: Treat the stranger as yourself, for "you were strangers in the land of Egypt."
What Cohen is saying here, implicitly, is that the Palestinian narrative of the "nakba" is correct. But with an especially offensive twist: that the Jews expelled the Palestinians in much the same way the Jews themselves have been expelled from countries for thousands of years.
It should go without saying, but apparently it does not, that for Cohen to sit in a synagogue in Europe and decide that the Palestinians are the victims of what Europe did to the Jews is not run-of-the-mill historical ignorance: it's malicious falsehood and it's repulsive. But it's also nonsensical to equate the pre-Israel Jews "without a land to go to" with the Palestinians in Gaza (or the West Bank, for that matter). In fact, the Palestinians are sitting on land that they govern, and for which Israel has offered recognition of Palestinian statehood and practically begged them to accept it.
The Palestinians are not a people without a land, and they don't have to be a people without a state. But the Palestinians would have to accept their statehood and all the responsibilities that come along with it. They've thus far chosen not to, and no amount of slandering of the Jewish people on the High Holidays is going to change that.
Obama's Hypocrisy on Civilian Casualties
A few weeks ago, the State Department's incoherent spokeswoman Marie Harf all but accused Israel of war crimes. As Tablet noted at the time, Harf said that "the suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians." She said a full investigation and accounting of Israel's actions was warranted (as if Israel doesn't already conduct such investigations). Expect her, then, to be asked about the following:
A few weeks ago, the State Department's incoherent spokeswoman Marie Harf all but accused Israel of war crimes. As Tablet noted at the time, Harf said that "the suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians." She said a full investigation and accounting of Israel's actions was warranted (as if Israel doesn't already conduct such investigations). Expect her, then, to be asked about the following:
The White House has acknowledged for the first time that strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq.
A White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria's Idlib province on the morning of Sept. 23.
The Obama White House appears to have expanded Richard Nixon's famous maxim to international law: when the (American) president does it, it's not illegal. The Obama administration's air war on terror has operated under the standard referred to as "near certainty": that they be all but certain no civilians will be endangered by air strikes. But as the Obama administration continues withdrawing from these battlefields, that gets more difficult to ensure since sources of on-the-ground intelligence dry up.
Such sources weren't there to begin with in Syria, at least not to the extent they were in Iraq and Afghanistan. So it's not as though President Obama suddenly decided he doesn't care about innocent Syrian lives. It's that he's doing his best to prevent civilian casualties within the realm of realistic but effective warfare. The double standard is still glaring, as Jonathan pointed out last week. And it only becomes more so with yesterday's report on the shift in standards. The White House was asked about just how much effort they're putting into their aim after a particularly damaging errant strike:
But at a briefing for members and staffers of the House Foreign Affairs Committee late last week, Syrian rebel commanders described women and children being hauled from the rubble after an errant cruise missile destroyed a home for displaced civilians. Images of badly injured children also appeared on YouTube, helping to fuel anti-U.S. protests in a number of Syrian villages last week.
"They were carrying bodies out of the rubble. … I saw seven or eight ambulances coming out of there," said Abu Abdo Salabman, a political member of one of the Free Syria Army factions, who attended the briefing for Foreign Affairs Committee members and staff. "We believe this was a big mistake."
Yes, a "big mistake" that mere weeks ago the State Department was calling unjustified–tantamount to a war crime, in other words–when committed by Israel. Now, there will be some leeway of course: it's not as though Obama's a Republican, so the laws of war are of minimal concern to the left. Additionally, everyone knows a double standard is applied to Israel, so no one expected Barack Obama to live up to his own words or follow his own administration's sanctimonious pronouncements.
Nonetheless, even some Obama partisans are wondering if the president is simply making it up as he goes along. The Yahoo story that confirmed the removal of the "near certainty" standard quotes Harold Koh, formerly the Obama State Department's top lawyer, trying mightily to figure out where Obama's legal authority is coming from:
"They seem to be creating this grey zone" for the conflict, said Harold Koh, who served as the State Department's top lawyer during President Obama's first term. "If we're not applying the strict rules [to prevent civilian casualties] to Syria and Iraq, then they are of relatively limited value."
The difference, then, between the way the Obama administration and Israel conduct war boils down to: Israel puts the greatest effort it can into avoiding civilian casualties and then follows up with transparent investigations, while Obama basically just hopes for the best. The press should ask him about that.
Indeed, they should do more: will the New York Times shove down its readers' throats a constant stream of enemy propaganda designed to engender sympathy for genocidal terrorists at the expense of the democratic West? To ask the question is to answer it. If Jews or Republicans can't be blamed, what's the point?
More likely, however, is the possibility that the walking disaster that is Marie Harf will be asked about it, since the diplomatic press pool tend not to find her petty sniping and cheerful ignorance intimidating in the least. Does she still think these acts are war crimes, now that her government is the one conducting them? And does she believe she owes Israel an apology? There's no question she does owe Israel that apology, and so does the Obama administration more broadly. But it would be interesting to see if they could summon the necessary integrity to offer it.
Human Shields Aren't Rethinking Hamas
In the aftermath of its disastrous 50-day war against Israel this past summer Hamas saw its popularity skyrocket with huge majorities in both Gaza and the West Bank telling pollsters that the Islamists "won" and that they supported their conduct. A month later, Palestinians have sobered up a bit. But the latest numbers paint a picture of a population that is still not ready for peace or anything that looks like it.
In the aftermath of its disastrous 50-day war against Israel this past summer Hamas saw its popularity skyrocket with huge majorities in both Gaza and the West Bank telling pollsters that the Islamists "won" and that they supported their conduct. A month later, Palestinians have sobered up a bit. But the latest numbers paint a picture of a population that is still not ready for peace or anything that looks like it.
The latest survey taken by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) shows that the number of respondents who think Hamas won has declined from its postwar high of 79 percent to only 69 percent. As with the August findings, backing for Hamas and its methods are higher in the West Bank than in Gaza, where residents were directly affected by the fighting. But though the post-war surge reflects the ebbing of the high emotions engendered by the conflict, no one should mistake any of these numbers as a vote of no confidence in the Islamist terror group or a move in the direction of the supposedly more moderate Palestinian Authority and its leader Mahmoud Abbas. To the contrary, the PSR results reinforce the conclusion that strong majorities of Palestinians support Hamas's terror war even if those who must pay the price for this bloody gesture are less enthusiastic about it than onlookers.
Palestinians continue to support Hamas firing more rockets at Israel if the blockade of Gaza is not lifted with 80 percent overall endorsing this position and 72 percent of Gazans also backing the proposition. Given that the only reason the blockade was imposed on Gaza to begin with was the Hamas coup with which the group seized power in 2007, this position sets up a circular argument. But far more shocking than that is the response to the question posed about whether they support Hamas firing rockets from populated areas.
While Hamas generally denies doing this, it is not exactly a secret that it does it so as to use civilians as human shields against possible Israeli counter-attacks aimed at silencing the rocket launchers. Nor are Palestinians unaware of the fact that this practice deliberately exposes them to death and destruction, a cynical tactic whose purpose is to get as many civilians killed as possible.
Yet the survey showed that a solid majority of Palestinians—57 percent—supported this slaughter. Not surprisingly, only 48 percent in Gaza thought it was a good idea to stake them out as human sacrifices on the altar of Hamas's unending war against the Jewish state. But an impressive 62 percent in the West Bank still endorsed the practice.
Just as ominous are the results to the question about who should lead the Palestinian people. As the Times of Israel reports:
If elections were held today, Hamas's former Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh would still defeat PA President Mahmoud Abbas by a large majority of 55% compared to 38%, a margin which has, however, shrunk since August, when Haniyeh won 61% support and Abbas only 32%. But in Gaza the two leaders are currently neck and neck, with Abbas winning 47% and Haniyeh 50% in a poll with a 3% margin of error.
That neatly sums up the answer to the question as to whether Abbas, who is currently serving the 10th year of a four-year term as president of the PA will allow new elections anytime soon. It also shows why the only thing preventing another Hamas coup, this time on the West Bank in which Abbas would be deposed, is Israeli security.
Though enthusiasm for Hamas is not unanimous, it remains more popular than its Fatah rivals. Why? Because the unchanging dynamic of Palestinian politics is that whichever party spills the most Jewish blood will always have the upper hand. Since its inception a century ago, Palestinian Arab national identity has been inextricably tied to the war on Zionism.
That also explains, for those who haven't been paying attention (a group that includes the Obama administration) why Abbas remains incapable of making peace even if the former Holocaust denier (a fact about his biography that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had the nerve to mention in his address to the United Nations General Assembly) really wanted to do so. The population in both the West Bank and Gaza still are hostile to any agreement that would recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn even if meant removing the threat of war.
So long as Hamas's human shields are ready to vote for more war, any further efforts toward peace are doomed to failure. While President Obama unfairly accused Israelis of not being willing to work for peace, this is a reality that most Israelis have accepted, albeit reluctantly. It's something the administration, as well as those left-wingers eager to save Israel from itself, need to come to terms with.
How Iran Outwits Obama in the Middle East
While Iran's role as a leading sponsor of global terrorism is well known, far less coverage is given to Iranian leaders' strategic acumen. Yet it's clear that a theme has emerged in the Middle East: long engaged in a proxy war against America, Tehran is now, in the age of Obama, simply running circles around Washington.
While Iran's role as a leading sponsor of global terrorism is well known, far less coverage is given to Iranian leaders' strategic acumen. Yet it's clear that a theme has emerged in the Middle East: long engaged in a proxy war against America, Tehran is now, in the age of Obama, simply running circles around Washington.
There are three kinds of Mideast engagements with Iran. In all three, Iran is a step ahead of the Obama administration. The first category is direct military engagement. The United States military is involved in conflict in Iraq and Syria. In both countries, the U.S. has been treated to characterizations that America is more or less acting as Iran's air force: in Iraq, that comparison is made directly; in Syria, it is by acting essentially as Bashar al-Assad's air force–and Assad is an Iranian proxy hanging on to power in large part through Iran's investment.
The second category includes conflicts in which America's allies are up against Iranian proxies. Israel, for example, fought a summer war against Hamas, an Iranian client firing Syrian missiles delivered by Iran. Far from understanding what was taking place, the Obama administration played right into Iran's hands by distancing itself from Sisi's Egypt and not only pressuring Israel to give in to Hamas's terror but even sending Secretary of State John Kerry to Cairo with a ceasefire agreement reflecting the wishes of Hamas's patrons. When Israel objected, President Obama took retribution against Jerusalem, withholding arms transfers while Israel was under fire.
This includes Lebanon as well, where Iranian proxies not only occasionally attack Israel but have a chokehold on a the government. The West has occasionally stepped up in Lebanon, such as when it galvanized outrage at Syria to help force Assad's expulsion from its neighbor. But most of the time, the West has been unwilling or unable to protect Lebanon's sovereignty. And as Jonathan wrote earlier in the week, concern about ISIS terrorism is raising the possibility of legitimizing and mainstreaming Hezbollah.
And then there is the direct American engagement with Iran on its nuclear program. On this, the Iranians saw early on that Obama and Kerry wanted a deal of some sort that would kick the can down the road while enabling the president to claim progress. It's doubtful any such plan was more obviously bush league than begging the Iranians to disconnect some pipe rather than dismantle the program. But the limitless diplomacy, in which deadlines float past with nary a thought, has done its damage as well by giving the Iranians additional leverage–and a powerful bargaining chip–on other issues on which the U.S. would want Iranian cooperation.
Aside from these three, there is evidence of a fourth category in the Middle East: a state like Turkey. Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Putinesque turn away from democracy, human rights, and the West more generally has been conducted publicly, but even here there appears to be malign Iranian influence. Former Naval War College professor John Schindler has a fascinating post discussing the Turkish government's connections to Iranian intelligence. He writes:
The key player in this plot is a shadowy terrorist group termed Tawhid-Salam that goes back to the mid-1990s and has been blamed for several terrorist incidents, including the 2011 bombing of the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, which wounded several people, as well as a thwarted bombing of the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, in early 2012. Tawhid-Salam, which also goes by the revealing name "Jerusalem Army," has long been believed to be a front for Iranian intelligence, particularly its most feared component, the elite Quds (Jerusalem) Force of the Revolutionary Guards Corps (Pasdaran), which handles covert action abroad, including terrorism in many countries. It also is believed to be behind the murders of several anti-Tehran activists in Turkey in the 1990's, using Tawhid-Salam as a cut-out.
Yet nothing has been done to crack down on the group in Turkey. Schindler continues:
This may have something to do with the fact that Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkish intelligence, is apparently on the Pasdaran payroll too, and may have secret ties to Tehran going back almost twenty years. Rumors about Fidan, a member of Erdoğan's inner circle, who has headed the country's powerful National Intelligence Organization (MİT) since 2010, have swirled in counterintelligence services worldwide for years. Israeli intelligence in particular, which once had a close relationship with MİT, has long regarded Fidan as Tehran's man, and has curtailed its intelligence cooperation with Turkey commensurately, believing that all information shared with Fidan was going to Iran.
Privately, U.S. intelligence officials too have worried about Fidan's secret ties, not least because MİT includes Turkey's powerful signals intelligence (SIGINT) service, which has partnered with NATO for decades, including the National Security Agency.
I recommend reading the whole thing, but the Turkish connection serves to fill out the picture of Iranian influence throughout the Middle East. Tehran has continually played Washington, setting fires and then offering to help Obama put them out, for a price. It's a predictable racket, but Obama keeps falling for it.
Abbas's Fake Civil-Rights Struggle
In New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas went to Cooper Union to give a speech comparing his own efforts to those of the American civil-rights movement. Abbas is struggling for relevance at home and for attention abroad at a time when focus has shifted from the conflict in Gaza to the far bloodier and more dangerous one in Syria and Iraq. But the falsehoods and distortions the Palestinian uttered at the school's venerable Great Hall deserve to be debunked if only because so many in the international community that have descended on the city never question them.
In New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas went to Cooper Union to give a speech comparing his own efforts to those of the American civil-rights movement. Abbas is struggling for relevance at home and for attention abroad at a time when focus has shifted from the conflict in Gaza to the far bloodier and more dangerous one in Syria and Iraq. But the falsehoods and distortions the Palestinian uttered at the school's venerable Great Hall deserve to be debunked if only because so many in the international community that have descended on the city never question them.
The attempt to compare the Palestinians to African-Americans during the American civil-rights struggle is not new. This specious thesis has been trotted out before by Palestinians and even endorsed by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It is predicated on the notion that Palestinians are merely struggling for freedom and independence while being repressed by wicked Israelis who covet their land and deprive them of their rights in the same manner as those who enforced Jim Crow laws in the American south prior to the enforcement of federal civil-rights acts. The choice of the venue for Abbas' address underlines that ploy since it has been the site of many memorable speeches by Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglas, and, most memorably, Abraham Lincoln.
That the Palestinians would seek to continue to portray themselves in this manner is understandable since it is a meme designed to generate sympathy and support for efforts to persuade the UN to vote for measures designed to give them a state without first having made peace with Israel. But while this tired act may work at a General Assembly with a built-in majority that will support any attack on the Jewish state, those who have been paying attention to recent events in the Middle East weren't impressed.
The purpose of Abbas's efforts was to split the U.S.-Israel alliance and persuade Americans to support efforts to impose a solution to the conflict on the Israelis. But his calls for Americans to rise up and demand that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "end the occupation" might have been a bit more credible if he had been upfront about both the history of negotiations and the realities of Palestinian politics.
Let's start with the fact that the Palestinians were offered exactly what they say they want in 2000, 2001, and 2008 and said no. The last such time it was Abbas, rather than his predecessor Yasir Arafat, who fled the talks rather than be put in the position of once again turning down independence if it meant recognizing the legitimacy of a Jewish state next door. Since then, Abbas has refused to negotiate seriously with Netanyahu despite the fact that the latter endorsed a two-state solution. Instead of agreeing to keep talking with the Israelis as President Obama asked, Abbas made a deal with Hamas and blew up the talks so as to avoid being put in the delicate position of having to agree to something even his own supporters won't countenance.
But the problem isn't just that the Palestinians keep saying no. It's that the struggle between the two sides was shown again this past summer to have nothing to do with "occupation" or the peaceful efforts of a people to govern themselves.
While Abbas mentioned the latest fighting in Gaza this year, he ignored the fact that it was set off by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers and the subsequent decision by his Hamas rivals to start launching thousands of rockets at Israeli cities. During the course of the 50-day war that followed, Hamas's actions and the discovery of the network of terror tunnels along the border intended to facilitate mass murder and/or kidnapping of Israelis also put the purpose of their efforts — which were cheered by most Palestinians — into focus. When the Islamists talk about "resisting" the "occupation," they are not talking about an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank or parts of Jerusalem (things the Israelis have repeatedly offered) or drawing a border that is more generous to the Palestinians than previous efforts. They are, instead, discussing the fulfillment of their goal of destroying Israel and slaughtering its Jewish population.
After all, Israel withdrew every last soldier, settlement, and settler from Gaza in 2005 and instead of an incubator for peace and development, what followed was the transformation of the strip into a large terror base. Gaza is today for all intents and purposes an independent state in all but name. That it is ruled by Hamas rather than Abbas not only underlines his irrelevance but is the reason why Israelis are today even more wary of empowering the leader of the Palestinians on the West Bank. If Israel were to grant Abbas's wish—with or without his promise that this measure would end the conflict for all time—few doubt that Hamas could overthrow him and install a replica of their Gaza fiefdom in the far more strategically important and larger West Bank.
The basic difference between the civil-rights movement and Palestinian nationalism is that the former laudably sought to gain the rights of blacks without prejudice to those of their white neighbors. The Palestinian drive for self-determination has, unfortunately, always been inextricably linked to the century-long campaign to eradicate the Jewish presence in the land. If Israelis now hesitate to replicate its Gaza experiment in the West Bank it is because Hamas has shown them what happens when withdrawals occur.
Instead of making false analogies about Israel, Abbas should be publicly denouncing the way Hamas used the population of Gaza as human shields and its commitment to terror, not to mention ensuring that the broadcast and print outlets he controls cease fomenting hatred and delegitimization of Israel and Jews.
If Israelis are no longer that interested in Abbas, it's because the Gaza war proved his irrelevance. If he wants to persuade them to take him seriously, he needs to work for peace among his own people, not waste time smearing Israel when not even his foreign cheerleaders are particularly interested in him.
Israel and the Unasked Question on Syria
The unleashing of the campaign of U.S. air strikes on terrorist targets throughout Syria last night may be the beginning of an offensive that will, as President Obama claimed this morning, "take the fight" to ISIS. If so, the bombings must be judged to be a commendable, if belated instance of presidential leadership. But as even the president's cheering section at MSNBC and other liberal strongholds suddenly take on the appearance of being "war lovers," it's fair to wonder about one question that was uppermost on the minds of most of the media this past summer when other terrorists were being pounded from the air: what about the civilian casualties and infrastructure damage?
The unleashing of the campaign of U.S. air strikes on terrorist targets throughout Syria last night may be the beginning of an offensive that will, as President Obama claimed this morning, "take the fight" to ISIS. If so, the bombings must be judged to be a commendable, if belated instance of presidential leadership. But as even the president's cheering section at MSNBC and other liberal strongholds suddenly take on the appearance of being "war lovers," it's fair to wonder about one question that was uppermost on the minds of most of the media this past summer when other terrorists were being pounded from the air: what about the civilian casualties and infrastructure damage?
Accounts of the attacks on ISIS targets as well as those on the Khorasan group speak of strikes on bases, training camps, and checkpoints as well as command-and-control centers in four provinces and having been in the vicinity of several Syrian cities. Many terrorists may have been killed and severe damage done to the ability of both ISIS and the Khorasan group to conduct operations. The first videos of the aftermath of the bombings show members of the groups digging out the rubble and seeking survivors of the attacks. The surrounding area appears to be one of built-up structures. While some of these bases and command-and-control centers may well have been in isolated places, it is likely that many, if not most, were in the vicinity of civilian residences. All of which leads to the question that almost no one, at least in the American media, is asking today: what about civilian casualties or damage to infrastructure facilities that might severely impact the quality of life of those who live in these areas?
If we are being honest, the answer to such queries is clear: we don't know. American forces conduct such operations under rules of engagement that seek to limit if not totally eliminate non-military casualties. But even under the strictest limits, civilians are killed in war. It is also to be hoped that all of the strikes were conducted with perfect accuracy, but that is the sort of thing that generally only happens in movies. In real life, war is conducted in an environment in which a host of factors make perfection as unattainable as it is in every other aspect of life. Which means it is almost certain that at least some Syrian civilians (a population that may include supporters of the terrorists and some who are essentially their hostages) were killed and wounded last night.
If anyone were thinking about that fact today, you wouldn't know it from watching any of the cable news networks. The impact of the strikes on individuals in Syria or any potential damage to civilian infrastructure is of no interest to the commentators or the anchors. Instead, the conversation about the attacks on terror targets focuses solely on how effective the strikes have been, the role of U.S. allies, and whether these actions will be followed up with sufficient ground force actions that will make it possible to truly defeat ISIS or any al-Qaeda affiliates currently running riot in the region. The only criticisms being voiced are those about the president's lack of a specific authorization from Congress for these actions, whether U.S. forces will have to fight on the ground there, or if the attacks have gone far enough.
All this is in stark contrast to the reaction to Israeli attacks on Hamas in Gaza this past summer.
Almost all of the targets struck by the Israelis were similar to those in Syria that were hit by the Americans. Moreover, unlike the case with ISIS and Khorasan, the Israeli efforts were not primarily preemptive in nature. After all, the U.S. is attacking ISIS in part because of its depredations in the region but also because of the very real likelihood that if they are left unmolested, they will eventually turn their barbaric attentions to attacks on the United States. Israel struck back at Hamas because the terror group doesn't merely intend to destroy the State of Israel and slaughter its Jewish population but because it was launching thousands of rockets at Israeli cities and towns and seeking to use terror tunnels to kidnap and kill even more Jews.
But rather than give the Israelis the same benefit of the doubt about their good intentions and efforts to limit collateral damage, the international community denounced the Israeli counter-attacks. News coverage focused almost completely on civilian casualties and the impact of the war on ordinary Palestinians rather than, as is the case today with U.S. efforts, on the military question of how best Hamas might be defeated.
Why aren't we talking about civilian casualties in Syria? There are a number of reasons.
The Western media has more or less ignored the horrific nature of the Syrian Civil War since its inception three years ago. Hundreds of thousands have already died but apparently the media sees little reason to start caring about it now just because Americans are involved.
Another is the lack of Western media on the ground in Syria. That is understandable given what has happened to some of the Western freelance journalists who were kidnapped and beheaded by ISIS. By contrast, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists welcomed Western journalists into Gaza and allowed them to do their jobs in safety provided, of course, that they concentrated their efforts on reinforcing the narrative about the conflict that told only of civilian casualties while largely ignoring the presence of armed fighters and their attacks on Israelis. That the entire Western press corps adhered to these restrictions is a testament to both the ability of Hamas to intimidate journalists and to the fact that many in the press were all too happy to follow these instructions since they were compatible with their own views of the conflict.
Let's concede that the circumstances of these conflicts are not identical. The Israel-Palestinian conflict is more specific and related to the desire of the Arabs to refuse to share the region with a sovereign Jewish state rather than the more amorphous desire of the Syrian and Iraqi Islamists to set up a new caliphate. Hamas is also a bit more media savvy and has more experience in manipulating its message to appeal to Westerners who are willing to be fooled by terrorists.
But the real difference between the ways these two conflicts are covered has a lot more to do with the identity of the foes of the Islamists than to any of those distinctions. Muslims may slaughter Muslims by the hundreds of thousands, as they have done in Syria, without the world paying much notice. But if a fraction of that number are killed by Israeli Jews, even in a war of self-defense, that is considered intolerable by a world that has always judged Jews and their state by a double standard that has never been applied to anyone else, including the United States. Israelis, who have watched as their efforts to defend themselves have been answered by a rising tide of anti-Semitism around the globe, may be forgiven for no longer giving a damn about international opinion.
The media should continue to focus its coverage on Syria on the question of whether the president's actions are effective, not whether some accidents or mistakes by U.S. personnel resulted in civilian losses. But you can bet that the same sources will revert to the same stances they took this past summer when Hamas resumes its fight against Israel, as it will sooner or later. When it does, don't expect any admissions by journalists that they are applying different standards to Israel than they did to U.S. forces. But that is exactly what they will be doing. The term by which such prejudice is usually called is anti-Semitism.
Iron Dome and the Latest Peace Fantasy
Those who want Israel to strike a permanent peace deal with the Palestinians cannot decide if Israel's Iron Dome missile defense is a help or a hindrance. Each time Israel fights a war with Hamas, the occasional column appears claiming that Iron Dome impedes peace because Israelis are, in effect, too safe for their own good. But there is the other side of the coin for the peace camp. And that is the belief that Israel's missile defense will make Israeli military counteroffensives unnecessary and counterproductive.
Those who want Israel to strike a permanent peace deal with the Palestinians cannot decide if Israel's Iron Dome missile defense is a help or a hindrance. Each time Israel fights a war with Hamas, the occasional column appears claiming that Iron Dome impedes peace because Israelis are, in effect, too safe for their own good. But there is the other side of the coin for the peace camp. And that is the belief that Israel's missile defense will make Israeli military counteroffensives unnecessary and counterproductive.
This argument, offered in today's Washington Post by American University associate professor Boaz Atzili, suggests a two-track process: Israelis should negotiate in good faith with the Palestinians while hiding under their desks until peace arrives. Iron Dome, should its accuracy be maintained and eventually improved, would thus give Israelis the cover they need to hold their fire. There are serious flaws here, even under current, realistic best-case scenarios. These flaws become clear when Atzili gets around to scripting out such a defensive posture in practice:
So what might a defensive Israeli campaign look like? In response to a massive launching of rockets from the Gaza Strip, Israel would respond by mobilizing its truly defensive capabilities: People in the targeted area would remain in bomb shelters and fortified rooms, the Iron Dome would target missiles aimed at large population centers, and the IDF would augment its forces to guard the borders and try to intercept Hamas attempts to infiltrate by sea or tunnels. There could be casualties on the Israeli side, but these are likely to be fewer than in the last few rounds of war.
As opposed to these recent bouts of violence, Hamas is likely to face strong international pressure to stop launching rockets, which it would not be able to deflect as retaliation for Israel's action. Internally, as well, Hamas would not enjoy the same support it has received from the residents of Gaza if it cannot portray its action as defensive. In all likelihood, these pressures would result in a much more speedy cessation of the firing from the Gaza Strip. And there would be no pictures of devastation on the Palestinian side. Israel, for once, would appear in the eyes of the world (and not only in its own eyes) as the just side, and would be able to reap the diplomatic rewards.
I'm sorry, have you met Hamas–or the international community?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think everything in that scenario is wrong. Let's take the second part first. What "internal pressure" would Hamas face if Gazans aren't affected by Hamas's actions? It's unclear how or why they would push back on Hamas if the terror group were getting free shots at the Jews next door. The obvious answer is: they wouldn't. There is no evidence to support the assertion that Gazan Palestinians would feel bad about rocketing Israeli population centers and thus pressure their terrorist leaders to take it easy and sue for peace. It does not make any sense, it is not consistent with the history of the conflict, and it would be irresponsible for Israeli officials to put their citizens' lives on the line while they chase this unicorn.
But it's not just the strange faith in Palestinian sympathy toward Israel that makes this plan unfeasible. It's also the expectation that Israel could afford–psychologically or financially–to wait out Hamas's unchallenged rocket barrage. Six civilians were killed in this summer's war, and there's no reason to think the toll wouldn't have been higher during that same time period had Hamas been given free rein and all the time in the world to set up its attacks.
And since the idea that a Hamas rocket offensive would conclude in less time without an Israeli military campaign is absurd, the civilian death toll would no doubt be higher. That would lead to greater calls for a counteroffensive, which the IDF would undertake. The alternative, to abandon civilians to live under terror, would be indefensible. And let's remember that Israel was able to neutralize those tunnels because of the ground incursion. Without that, the tunnels survive the war.
Economically, here are the figures from Ynet on the Gaza war's toll on Israel:
Meanwhile, nearly 3,000 claims for damage have been submitted to the Israel Tax Authority, which has so far paid some $20 million for direct damages and another $21 million for missed work days and other indirect damage. …
Israel's Ministry of Tourism reports that tourism for July dropped by 26 percent from the same period last year. The sector, comprising about 7 percent of the Israeli economy, has lost at least $566 million, according to the figures.
Israel's Manufacturers Association estimated the total economic impact on Israeli manufacturers for the first round of the conflict at about 1.2 billion shekels, with factories in the south accounting for 40 percent of this figure, and facilities in Haifa and the center of the country incurring half the losses.
Morally and economically, Israel cannot abandon its citizens to their enemies. Iron Dome is a major defense breakthrough and it no doubt saves lives. But it still entails Israelis running to bomb shelters when rockets are launched at or near population centers. The country can't live underground, and it can't live in perpetual, paralyzing fear every moment of every day. Iron Dome cannot be Israel's only line of defense.
The Media and Anti-Semitism
This week is unfortunately a bit of a perfect storm of conditions that foster anti-Semitism. The High Holidays are approaching, Israel has just fought a war of self-defense, and new terrorist organizations are gaining a foothold in Western societies. Israel's national Counter-Terrorism Bureau has issued its travel warning for the season, expressing concern over the usual suspects as well as Western Europe. New York hasn't been immune to the spike in anti-Semitic incidents, and last week Police Commissioner Bill Bratton pointed a finger at the media:
This week is unfortunately a bit of a perfect storm of conditions that foster anti-Semitism. The High Holidays are approaching, Israel has just fought a war of self-defense, and new terrorist organizations are gaining a foothold in Western societies. Israel's national Counter-Terrorism Bureau has issued its travel warning for the season, expressing concern over the usual suspects as well as Western Europe. New York hasn't been immune to the spike in anti-Semitic incidents, and last week Police Commissioner Bill Bratton pointed a finger at the media:
"When (the media) cover something, it tends to attract more attention," Bratton told reporters following a security briefing for the Jewish High Holy Days at police headquarters.
"But we have seen this before, that when there's attention paid to an issue, that it brings this about," Bratton continued. "And when there's continued attention — and the issue in Gaza, where it stretched over several weeks — we could see a continuing increase."
Hate crimes are up, according to the city. Bratton tried to downplay recent incidents as "lone wolf" events, though New York State homeland security commissioner Jerome Hauer countered that "Anti-Semitism is rising at a rate we haven't seen in a long, long time, and I think it will continue to grow."
Anyone who followed Western coverage of the war in Gaza won't be too surprised. But Bratton's comments weren't ill-phrased off-the-cuff remarks; they were part of a clear message from the NYPD on the role of the press in the uptick in hate crimes. Deputy Chief Michael Osgood focused a bit more on the correlation:
"On July first, the Gaza Strip becomes a major news story and stays consistent in the media through July and August, every single day, every single morning, front page of the New York Times, front page of the Wall Street Journal," he said.
Around this time, "the group ISIS becomes a major news story and they stay consistent in the news media, [and] that creates what I call an emotional surge."
Since that time, there has been an average of 18 anti-Semitic cases a month.
"A person who would normally not offend, now offends," Osgood said, describing the effect of the news. "He's moved by the emotions."
It's a bit refreshing to hear this from the police. The role of the media in stimulating anti-Semitism, especially when it comes to Israel, is no secret. Sometimes this takes the form of outright falsifying events in Arab-Israeli wars–Pallywood on the part of videographers and fauxtography on the part of photojournalists–which are usually the deadlier brand of propaganda. Witness, most famously, the example of the al-Dura affair.
But it's worth pointing out here that there are very different types of war coverage. As I wrote earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal's coverage was textured, original, investigative, and informative. The "paper of record," the New York Times, offered just the opposite: coverage that essentially followed Hamas's PR strategy. European media had similar coverage with even more violent results: attempted pogroms broke out in Paris and anti-Semitic protests could be found all over Western Europe.
The anti-Semitism is blamed on Israel's actions, which the rioters see through the prism of the media. An excellent example of this vicious cycle is Human Rights Watch's director Ken Roth. Jonathan Foreman wrote about Roth's obsessively anti-Israel Twitter feed for the current issue of COMMENTARY. But even more noxious is the group's role in pushing an anti-Israel narrative that supposedly comes with the credibility of a "human-rights" group.
It goes like this: HRW researchers get quoted by the New York Times accusing Israel of indiscriminate violence and targeting noncombatants–information that is crucial, in the Times's own acknowledgement, in forming "the characterization of the conflict." Then the Times tries to boost HRW's flagging credibility–lest more people notice the group can't be trusted–by crediting HRW as a key source in understanding "the Damage and Destruction in Gaza." Along the way, HRW will be cited in a Times opinion piece on how American support for Israel is unethical.
When Jews the world over suffer at the hands of angry anti-Semites, Ken Roth will come to their aid, blaming Israel in part for violent anti-Semitism in the West. As Jeffrey Goldberg noted, Roth tweeted the following, with a link to an article about it: "Germans rally against anti-Semitism that flared in Europe in response to Israel's conduct in Gaza war. Merkel joins." Goldberg commented: "Roth's framing of this issue is very odd and obtuse." He added that "It is a universal and immutable rule that the targets of prejudice are not the cause of prejudice." Roth defended his comments. On Twitter, he responded that, hey, he was just getting his news from the New York Times.
Gaza Residents: Hamas Kept Us from Fleeing Israeli Attacks
Mudar Zahran, a Palestinian-Jordanian now living in Britain, has collected and published some truly shocking testimony from Gaza residents about Hamas's behavior during this summer's war with Israel. All his interviewees insisted on remaining anonymous, and it's easy to understand why: They accuse Hamas of deliberately creating hundreds of civilian casualties by forcing civilians to stay in places Israel had warned it was going to bomb.
Mudar Zahran, a Palestinian-Jordanian now living in Britain, has collected and published some truly shocking testimony from Gaza residents about Hamas's behavior during this summer's war with Israel. All his interviewees insisted on remaining anonymous, and it's easy to understand why: They accuse Hamas of deliberately creating hundreds of civilian casualties by forcing civilians to stay in places Israel had warned it was going to bomb.
Here, for instance, is the testimony of S., a medical worker:
The Israeli army sends warnings to people [Gazans] to evacuate buildings before an attack. The Israelis either call or send a text message. Sometimes they call several times to make sure everyone has been evacuated. Hamas's strict policy, though, was not to allow us to evacuate. Many people got killed, locked inside their homes by Hamas militants. Hamas's official Al-Quds TV regularly issued warnings to Gazans not to evacuate their homes. Hamas militants would block the exits to the places residents were asked to evacuate. In the Shijaiya area, people received warnings from the Israelis and tried to evacuate the area, but Hamas militants blocked the exits and ordered people to return to their homes. Some of the people had no choice but to run towards the Israelis and ask for protection for their families. Hamas shot some of those people as they were running; the rest were forced to return to their homes and get bombed. This is how the Shijaiya massacre happened. More than 100 people were killed.
And here's K., a graduate student at an Egyptian university who was visiting his family in Gaza this summer: "When people stopped listening to Hamas orders not to evacuate and began leaving their homes anyway, Hamas imposed a curfew: anyone walking out in the street was shot without being asked any questions. That way Hamas made sure people had to stay in their homes even if they were about to get bombed."
And H., who lost his leg in an Israeli bombing: "My father received a text-message from the Israeli army warning him that our area was going to be bombed, and Hamas prevented us from leaving. They said there was a curfew. A curfew, can you believe that?"
T., a former (and evidently disenchanted) Hamas government official, explained the policy's rationale:
Some people say Hamas wants civilians killed in order to gain global sympathy, but I believe this is not the main reason. I think the reason is that if all the people were allowed to evacuate their homes, they all would have ended up in a certain area in Gaza. If that happened, it would have made the rest of Gaza empty of civilians, and the Israelis would have been able to hit Hamas without worrying about civilians in all those empty areas. Hamas wanted civilians all over the place to confuse the Israelis and make their operations more difficult.
Nor is this the only crime of which Zahran's interviewees accused Hamas. For instance, three different people–two aid workers and an imam–said Hamas stole humanitarian aid and either kept it for its own people or sold it to ordinary Gazans for exorbitant prices.
Altogether, Zahran interviewed more than 20 Gazans, all of whom had shocking things to say. That doesn't guarantee that their stories are true. Palestinians frequently fabricate atrocity tales about Israel (see, for instance, the Jenin massacre that wasn't, or the perennial favorite about Israel trying to turn Palestinians into drug addicts), so there's no reason to think anti-Hamas Palestinians aren't equally capable of fabricating atrocity tales about Hamas.
Moreover, the interviewees were clearly terrified of Hamas, so it wouldn't be easy to get them to talk to the international media (which generally relies on either Hamas-approved fixers or local stringers), UN workers (many of whom are openly affiliated with Hamas), or human-rights organizations (which, like the media, generally rely on local investigators). Still, given how many crocodile tears the media, the UN, and human-rights groups have shed over alleged Israeli "war crimes" in Gaza, one would think they could spare some time and effort to investigate alleged Hamas war crimes against its own people.
That they haven't merely confirms, once again, two basic truths: First, these self-proclaimed moral arbiters care very little about human rights unless Israel can be blamed. And second, they're fundamentally lazy: They'll always prefer the easy route of collecting "testimony" against Israel, which Gaza residents can give without fear of consequences, to the hard work of digging for information about the abuses of a terrorist government that tortures and kills anyone who dares speak against it.
The Only Refugees in the World Denied the Right of Resettlement
The news that hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza drowned last week when the boats in which they were trying to reach Europe sank once again highlights the hypocrisy of the world's attitude toward the Palestinians. After all, the "international community" has designated two-thirds of all Gaza residents as bona fide refugees, even though the vast majority of them were born in Gaza and have lived there all their lives. And as bona fide refugees, they shouldn't have had to board rickety smugglers' boats in a desperate attempt to reach Europe; they should have been able to apply to the UN for orderly resettlement right from their refugee camps, just as thousands of other refugees do every year. But they can't, because Palestinians are the only refugees in the world who are denied the basic right of resettlement.
The news that hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza drowned last week when the boats in which they were trying to reach Europe sank once again highlights the hypocrisy of the world's attitude toward the Palestinians. After all, the "international community" has designated two-thirds of all Gaza residents as bona fide refugees, even though the vast majority of them were born in Gaza and have lived there all their lives. And as bona fide refugees, they shouldn't have had to board rickety smugglers' boats in a desperate attempt to reach Europe; they should have been able to apply to the UN for orderly resettlement right from their refugee camps, just as thousands of other refugees do every year. But they can't, because Palestinians are the only refugees in the world who are denied the basic right of resettlement.
Granted, they are also the only "refugees" in the world for whom refugeehood is an inheritable status that can be passed down to one's descendants in perpetuity, generation after generation. Under the definition used by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which deals with all the world's refugees except Palestinians, only a few thousand elderly Gazans who were personally displaced in 1948 would be considered refugees today, rather than the 1.2 million actually on UN rolls. So if the "international community" were to argue that Gazans don't deserve a right to resettlement because they aren't really refugees, that would be perfectly legitimate.
But it doesn't. In fact, not only has the world adopted the unique definition of refugeehood promulgated by the Palestinians' personal refugee agency, UNRWA, but it actively supports this definition by funding UNRWA's ever-expanding budget to keep pace with its ever-expanding number of "refugees." And once having accepted the claim that these born-and-bred Gazans are actually refugees from an Israel they've never seen, the international community is morally obligated to ensure that they enjoy the same rights as all other refugees.
Instead, Palestinians are the only refugees in the world who are denied the right of resettlement. Whereas UNHCR resettles tens of thousands of refugees every year, UNRWA hasn't resettled a single refugee in its 65 years of existence. On the contrary, the schools it runs for Palestinian refugees indoctrinate them from kindergarten on that there is one, and only one, way for them to end their refugee status: by "returning" to the towns or villages in Israel that their ancestors fled–which most of them have never seen, and some of which no longer even exist. In short, since Israel would never voluntarily accept all five million "refugees" on UNRWA's rolls, it's telling them that the only solution to their refugeehood is Israel's destruction.
According to a poll taken in late August, a whopping 43 percent of Gazans would like to emigrate. Many of these would-be emigrants are presumably among the two-thirds of Gazans registered as refugees, meaning they ought to be entitled to resettlement aid. So here's a modest proposal: Western countries, which are UNRWA's main donors, should take a big chunk of the over $1 billion a year they give UNRWA and spend it instead on resettling those Gazans who want to leave. Not only would that help the Gazan refugees themselves, but it would save money in the long run by significantly reducing the number of refugees under UNRWA's care.
Alternatively, they could tell UNRWA they're no longer willing to go along with the fiction that its five million "refugees" are really refugees, and from now on will provide funds only for those refugees who actually meet UNHCR's definition. The remaining money would go to the governments under which most of UNRWA's registered refugees live–primarily Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and Lebanon–to help them provide the services UNRWA now provides.
But to continue defining Palestinians as refugees while denying them the basic right to resettlement is unconscionable. And all those Westerners who claim to be so concerned over Palestinian rights should be the first to protest this hypocritical and discriminatory practice.
Why Scots Leader Compares Israel to ISIS
It might have been assumed that among Scottish nationalists, there would be a certain sympathy for Israel. Perhaps they would see some parallel between Zionism and their own efforts to regain sovereignty after many centuries without it, to revive an almost unspoken language long after most people in Scotland had lost the ability to so much as string together a sentence of Scots Gaelic. But, as a matter of fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Scottish nationalism appears to have aligned itself with a radically anti-Israel impulse, one that enjoys substantial popularity with the wider public. And if there was any doubt about just how extreme that reflexive hostility toward Israel really is, we need only observe Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, comparing Israel to ISIS.
It might have been assumed that among Scottish nationalists, there would be a certain sympathy for Israel. Perhaps they would see some parallel between Zionism and their own efforts to regain sovereignty after many centuries without it, to revive an almost unspoken language long after most people in Scotland had lost the ability to so much as string together a sentence of Scots Gaelic. But, as a matter of fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Scottish nationalism appears to have aligned itself with a radically anti-Israel impulse, one that enjoys substantial popularity with the wider public. And if there was any doubt about just how extreme that reflexive hostility toward Israel really is, we need only observe Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, comparing Israel to ISIS.
During a BBC television interview that took place yesterday, Alex Salmond was discussing the latest ISIS beheading, this time of a British national. Salmond pointed out that British Muslims shouldn't be held responsible for ISIS. Well, leaving aside the fact that many British Muslim families have members off on jihad in Iraq and Syria, Salmond's point stands. But what he went on to say reveals just how second nature negativity toward Israel has become among Scottish nationalists. For, having referred to ISIS's actions as "unspeakable barbarism" for which British Muslim's shouldn't be blamed, the first minister went on to add: "I mean, just like a few weeks ago, the Jewish community of Scotland wasn't responsible for the policies of the State of Israel."
First of all, that will come as news to many in Britain. During the war in Gaza, British Jews experienced a tremendous rise in anti-Semitic attacks, many of which in some way referenced Israel, and Scotland was no exception in this. But the comparison was clear; two evils in the Middle East, and two religious minorities in Britain who are not to be blamed for those evils.
Breathtakingly, some in Britain's Jewish leadership have actually defended Salmond's remarks, arguing that he had not intended any direct comparison between ISIS and the Jewish state. Well, yes, no doubt if questioned Mr. Salmond would not maintain that Israel and ISIS are morally indistinguishable. Yet the casual throwaway categorization was entirely evident. Quite simply Salmond's point was that ISIS's actions are "unspeakable barbarism," and so were Israel's in Gaza. There was no hint that Israel's war might have been justifiable; Salmond's remark makes clear that that's beyond question. But as an enlightened and tolerant man, he simply asks that Scotland's Jews not be held responsible.
Such attitudes are the norm among Scottish nationalists. Salmond's second in command–and prominent face in the campaign for independence–Nicola Sturgeon was recently the headline speaker at Glasgow's "Women for Gaza" rally. Also on the line-up was Yvonne Ridley, a prominent convert to Islam who has often voiced her support for terrorist groups, Hezbollah among them. Ridley recently called for a "Zionist-free Scotland." So with the leading lights of the Scottish nationalist movement sharing a platform with those advocating a Scotland free of "Zionists," one has to wonder just how serious they really are about not extending their antipathy for the Jewish state to Jews in general.
Mercifully, Scotland's devolved government has no authority over foreign policy. Yet during the recent war in Gaza, the nationalists, who dominate the Scottish parliament, released eight separate condemnations of Israel. Salmond's government even called for an arms embargo against Israel as the Jewish state attempted to halt the barrage of rockets and maze of tunnels directed against its civilians. And such sentiments are shared by much of the Scottish public. During the referendum campaign nationalists have reminded Scots that if they left the union they could be free of David Cameron's pro-Israel stance. It was, after all, with considerable public approval that Glasgow city hall recently flew the Palestinian flag as an act of solidarity with Scotland's Palestinian cousins.
And that is how one senses Scottish nationalists view the Palestinians; as Arab cousins. The same attitude is visible in Ireland, and among Welsh nationalists—the founder of the Welsh nationalist party was said to have hated the Jews as much as the English and harbored sympathies for European fascism. But to understand why these parts of the United Kingdom have become particularly hostile to Israel, one should look to Belfast. There the Catholic and Republican neighborhoods fly the Palestinian flag, but the Protestant and Unionists are more likely to be flying the Israeli one. The Celtic parts of Britain, rather bizarrely, seem to have conceived of themselves through the lexicon of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, with the English firmly framed as the Israelis. It's only disappointing that the rest of England doesn't identify accordingly.
On reflection, perhaps it's not surprising Scottish nationalists couldn't identify with Zionism, the national liberation movement of a people persecuted and destitute in the world. Scottish nationalism has in no small part sustained itself on a diet of anti-English rhetoric; they have done well out of the politics of jealousy and resentment. No wonder it's the Palestinians that Salmond feels a certain kinship with.
Israel's Predetermined Guilt and the Irrelevant Left
If you've been around Israeli politics long enough, you pick up on the one thing that bothers leftist "human-rights" groups more than anything: their irrelevance. At times, their frustration boils over into quite humorous attempts to coopt credit for Israel's democratic achievements when in fact, as usual, they've had nothing to do with it. Today's New York Times marks yet another such instance.
If you've been around Israeli politics long enough, you pick up on the one thing that bothers leftist "human-rights" groups more than anything: their irrelevance. At times, their frustration boils over into quite humorous attempts to coopt credit for Israel's democratic achievements when in fact, as usual, they've had nothing to do with it. Today's New York Times marks yet another such instance.
The Times story is on official Israeli investigations into possible wrongdoing on its part during its recent war in Gaza. This is exactly what Israel does after wars, and what it has done for decades. Not only does Israel tend to investigate individual strikes, but it puts the IDF's strategic command under the microscope, and sometimes, as with the 2006 Lebanon war, takes the investigation right up to the Israeli prime minister himself.
Because human-rights groups are thus irrelevant to the process of Israel defending human rights, they seek to convince credulous reporters (or reporters who know better but prefer to keep up the propaganda war against the Israeli government) that when Israel does something right, it's because of them. It may sound laughable to those who know the basics of Israeli life and politics, but these activist groups have a trump card: the New York Times will publish their self-congratulatory blathering.
Today that's precisely what the Times does. It starts out with the headline: "Israel, Facing Criticism, to Investigate Possible Military Misconduct in Gaza." If you didn't know better, you might read that headline and think the beginning and the end of the headline are related. They are not. It's true that Israel is facing criticism. It is also true that Israel will investigate possible military misconduct. It is not true, however, that Israel is investigating possible misconduct because fringe activists are lobbing spitballs at the IDF.
The Times continues down this road, in the process offering an illuminating portrait of just what Israeli human-rights groups do:
Some said the timing of the inquiries appeared to be an attempt by the Israeli government to pre-empt the impact of international investigations into allegations of possible Israeli war crimes committed in Gaza. They also pointed out that the cases, opened by Israel's Military Advocate General Corps, included obvious episodes that had already drawn condemnation.
One prominent Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, refused to participate in the investigations and said history showed that the Israeli military could not possibly conduct a credible prosecution of itself.
"Based on past experience, we can only regretfully say that Israeli law enforcement authorities are unable and unwilling to investigate allegations of breaches of international humanitarian law committed during fighting in Gaza," the organization said in a statement. "Should the existing whitewashing mechanism be replaced with an independent investigative body, we would gladly cooperate with it."
So Israel will investigate without being prompted by B'Tselem. Also, B'Tselem won't get involved in the investigation. What will they be doing? Whatever it is, it has no bearing on justice and truth and morality in war. (This 2011 COMMENTARY essay by Noah Pollak remains the indispensable profile of the group.)
Earlier in the piece, however, the Times delivered a truly telling message:
The announcement, conveyed at a briefing by the Israeli military, came only two weeks after a cease-fire in the conflict, an unusually speedy response. But critics, including human rights advocates in Israel, said it remained to be seen whether the investigations would yield significant criminal indictments and punishments.
Think about that second sentence. It "remained to be seen" if there would be indictments from the investigation that just began. You would be hard-pressed to think of a more superfluous sentence to appear in a major newspaper. But the key is who the Times is supposedly paraphrasing: "critics, including human rights advocates."
That's right: the human-rights groups are upset that Israel isn't considered–or considers itself–guilty until proved innocent. In fact, they don't even care if those under investigation are proved innocent. They want "significant criminal indictments and punishments." Not just punishments: significant punishments.
Punishments for what? Well, nobody knows that yet because Israel–which is far more trustworthy in such investigations than outside organizations like the UN, which the Goldstone affair compellingly demonstrated–hasn't completed its investigation. And "human-rights" groups like B'Tselem don't know either, and won't know, because they refuse to participate in the investigation.
What Israel's critics want is not justice. They want show trials. Israel has long been more than willing to be its own toughest critic and to discipline anyone who earns it, in the military or in its political establishment. But Israel's critics there and in the international community, including so-called human-rights groups, want Israelis punished for defending themselves lawfully and morally. For surviving and thriving in the face of their genocidal enemies.
To Israel's critics in the "human-rights" NGO community, Israel's guilt is simply taken for granted. The irrelevance of those groups is a testament to Israel's collective judgment.
"Occupation" and Anti-Semitism
A Yale University chaplain recently resigned "on his own initiative" over a letter to the New York Times blaming Israel and the Jews for anti-Semitism. Clearly, nothing Israel does or doesn't do justifies attacks on Jewish citizens of other countries, but even if did, Rev. Bruce Shipman's reasoning would have been fallacious. According to Shipman, "the best antidote to anti-Semitism would be for Israel's patrons abroad" to pressure Israel "for final-status resolution to the Palestinian question." Yet based on the evidence, the Israeli policy change most likely to reduce anti-Semitic outbreaks isn't ending its "continuing occupation of the West Bank," but reoccupying evacuated Gaza.
A Yale University chaplain recently resigned "on his own initiative" over a letter to the New York Times blaming Israel and the Jews for anti-Semitism. Clearly, nothing Israel does or doesn't do justifies attacks on Jewish citizens of other countries, but even if did, Rev. Bruce Shipman's reasoning would have been fallacious. According to Shipman, "the best antidote to anti-Semitism would be for Israel's patrons abroad" to pressure Israel "for final-status resolution to the Palestinian question." Yet based on the evidence, the Israeli policy change most likely to reduce anti-Semitic outbreaks isn't ending its "continuing occupation of the West Bank," but reoccupying evacuated Gaza.
After all, every major upsurge in anti-Semitic attacks in recent years has coincided with a war that began when terrorists attacked Israel from territory it had vacated: spring 2002, when Israel reinvaded parts of the West Bank it had left under the Oslo Accords to stop a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings; summer 2006, when Hezbollah sparked a war by launching a deadly cross-border attack from south Lebanon, which Israel had vacated six years earlier; and two ground operations in Gaza, one in winter 2008/09 and one this past July and August, both launched in response to the incessant rocket fire from that territory ever since Israel withdrew every last soldier and settler in 2005. During the intervening years, incidents of anti-Semitism were hundreds or even thousands of percent lower, despite Israel's "continuing occupation of the West Bank."
The latest Gaza war epitomizes this counterintuitive truth. In July, anti-Semitic attacks were up 130 percent in America, 436 percent in Europe, 600 percent in South Africa, and a whopping 1,200 percent in South America compared to July 2013. To cite one typical example, Scotland recorded more anti-Semitic attacks during the first week of August alone than in all of 2013.
In other words, what really spurs anti-Semites to come out of the woodwork isn't "the occupation," but Israeli-caused casualties. And while one might have though withdrawals would decrease such casualties by eliminating day-to-day friction between Palestinians (or Lebanese) and Israeli troops, in reality, the opposite has occurred: Every such withdrawal has resulted in terrorist organizations taking over the vacated territory and using it to launch attacks on Israel, which in turn has produced a sharp rise in casualties, for two reasons.
First, in territory it controls, Israel can prevent terror by routine policing. But once it has quit an area, counterterrorism operations require reinvading–and military operations are obviously far more lethal than police work. Second, in territory it controls, Israel can prevent terrorists from embedding military infrastructure like tunnels and rocket launchers amid a civilian population. But once it evacuates a territory, terrorists are free to do exactly that, and they do. Consequently, any counterterrorism operation becomes far more deadly to the terrorists' own people.
The result, as I explained here last month, is that Palestinian casualties have soared since Israel's 2005 pullout from Gaza. In the current war, for instance, the UN claims 2,131 Palestinians were killed. That's more than the 1,727 fatalities Gaza suffered during the second intifada of 2000-2005. In other words, Gaza just lost more people in 50 days than it did during the bloodiest five years of the period when Israel controlled the territory.
Mark Gardner of CST, which monitors anti-Semitism in Britain, pithily explained the problem last month: During wartime, "The British public is constantly exposed to pictures of wounded or dead Palestinian children, and the effect is apparent." And because such wars have been occurring every two to four years, "the issue is ignited almost continually. The Jewish community gets hit again and again, without reprieve, and the situation is not given a chance to return to relative normalcy."
So if anyone really thinks Israeli policy should be blamed for global anti-Semitism, the data shows there's only one policy change that might actually be effective: reoccupying Gaza. Somehow, I doubt that's what the Bruce Shipmans of the world really want.
Daily Beast Flogs Gaza Atrocity Story Even Human Rights Groups Won't Touch
If there is anything we have learned in the past few decades is that there is a thriving international journalism market for any story that can besmirch Israel's image. Given the appetite of the mainstream media for the deluge of negative pieces alleging Israeli misbehavior during the Gaza war, it is therefore interesting to note that one particular such tale circulated by the Daily Beast has gotten no traction. But that hasn't stopped the website from continuing to promote it despite the threadbare nature of its narrative and the less than sympathetic "victims" of the supposed "war crime."
If there is anything we have learned in the past few decades is that there is a thriving international journalism market for any story that can besmirch Israel's image. Given the appetite of the mainstream media for the deluge of negative pieces alleging Israeli misbehavior during the Gaza war, it is therefore interesting to note that one particular such tale circulated by the Daily Beast has gotten no traction. But that hasn't stopped the website from continuing to promote it despite the threadbare nature of its narrative and the less than sympathetic "victims" of the supposed "war crime."
The story revolves around the claim that during the height of the fighting in the terror tunnels along the Israel-Gaza border, the Israel Defense Forces "executed" five Islamic Jihad terrorists who had supposedly peacefully laid down their arms. This is the tale left-wing Canadian journalist Jesse Rosenfeld has been peddling for the last month but none except his employers at the Daily Beast have been biting on it. This troubles Rosenfeld, who complains bitterly in his latest story about the indifference of the world to the allegations as well as the lack of an official commitment by the IDF to investigate his claims.
But there are a couple of easy explanations for this that have nothing to do with any sympathy for Israel on the part of a media corps that is deeply hostile to the Jewish state or the willingness of groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to circulate biased attacks on the IDF.
The first and most basic problem with Rosenfeld's story is that he has no real proof that any such execution took place.
Islamic Jihad hasn't made any such claim. Though perhaps that can be explained by the fact that although Rosenfeld's narrative tries to make the terrorists in question appear as if they were making a heroic, if futile last stand against the dastardly Israelis, the group isn't likely to embrace any story that ends with fighters that are supposedly eager to embrace death meekly surrendering.
Nor has he a single eyewitness from either side in the fighting or any physical proof of the allegation. The best he can do is to quote at length the claims of a member of Islamic Jihad who says he heard communications with the six on an Islamic Jihad walkie-talkie before they supposedly cried out for mercy when they ran out of ammo and were attacked by Israeli army dogs. He also says he talked to another Islamic Jihadist that Rosenfeld has never met who saw some of the fighting. It's quite a story, but it's hearsay piled upon hearsay. And yet he claims this interview is enough to justify a second story about his allegations of atrocities in the town of Khuzaa.
The only thing he has to go on is the fact that he claims to have seen a pile of bodies of slain Islamic Jihad fighters in a Gaza house that was obviously the scene of vicious fighting. After asking around enough, he finally got a Palestinian to tell him a version of what he wanted to hear, but any credible journalist or a responsible editor would have said that this thin tissue of allegations isn't enough to justify publication let alone a string of stories revolving around the same unsubstantiated allegations.
Another interesting aspect that should be pointed out about this is that virtually all atrocity stories about Israeli behavior tend to involve at least some partial corroboration from soldiers who were unhappy about what they observed. The IDF is a citizen's army and if something truly appalling happened, the odds are that an Israeli can probably be found who protested or was unhappy about it. But Rosenfeld can find no Israelis who remember anything untoward. Indeed, if there is no IDF investigation (something that can be generated by even the thinnest of accusations) it is because he hasn't given the army (or anyone else) any information that could be used to start one.
That Rosenfeld should seek to glorify Islamic Jihadists as heroic fighters who fought until their last bullet after which their Israeli adversaries cruelly killed them is also somewhat fishy. The whole focus of the Palestinian propaganda machine, ably assisted by their allies in the media, has been to portray events in Gaza as a case of a powerful Israeli military slaughtering civilians with impunity. During the course of the fighting, journalists operating in Gaza never photographed or filmed Palestinian fighters or their launch of thousands of rockets from the vicinity of schools, mosques, shelters, and hospitals. But Rosenfeld has decided to try and make the most vicious and extreme Islamist terrorists into martyrs without a shred of credible evidence.
Seen from that perspective, it's little wonder that no one but Rosenfeld has expressed any interest in his scoop. Given the willingness of the international press to publish just about anything negative about Israel, it speaks volumes that Rosenfeld is alone in claiming that this tale is worthy of further investigation. The only question is why the Daily Beast, which has other highly credible foreign news reporters, continues to allow him to circulate an unsubstantiated atrocity story. Rosenfeld's shameless propaganda is a new low point for the media in a summer of journalistic malpractice in Gaza.
"Scholarship and Politics Don't Mix!" Say Those Who Mix Scholarship and Politics
By now, many COMMENTARY readers will have heard of Steven Salaita, about whom I wrote here. Salaita resigned from his position in Virginia Tech's English Department to take a job at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, in its Department of American Indian Studies. But Salaita's job offer was contingent on the approval of UIUC's Board of Trustees, and last month, after being made aware of a series of incendiary anti-Israel statements Salaita had made on Twitter, UIUC Chancellor Phyllis Wise declined to send Salaita's appointment to the Board. The Board has stood behind Wise.
By now, many COMMENTARY readers will have heard of Steven Salaita, about whom I wrote here. Salaita resigned from his position in Virginia Tech's English Department to take a job at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, in its Department of American Indian Studies. But Salaita's job offer was contingent on the approval of UIUC's Board of Trustees, and last month, after being made aware of a series of incendiary anti-Israel statements Salaita had made on Twitter, UIUC Chancellor Phyllis Wise declined to send Salaita's appointment to the Board. The Board has stood behind Wise.
In my previous post, I gave a sample of the tweets in question, so I'll mention just two here: in one, Salaita responds to the kidnapping of the three Israeli boys that ignited the most recent Gaza conflict: "You may be too refined to say it, but I'm not: I wish all the fucking West Bank settlers would go missing." The second mocked young American men who died in the conflict fighting for Israel: "No wonder Israel prefers killing Palestinians from the sky. It turns out American college kids aren't very good at ground combat?"
I don't know whether the university administration should have stepped in so late in the game—Salaita was already scheduled to teach courses in the fall—to refuse to approve Salaita's appointment. Sensible people are worried both about the implications for the academic freedom of conservatives and about the influence of donor money on academic appointments. But whatever the merits of the administration's position, at least one line Salaita's defenders are taking should be, as Liel Leibovitz has shown, viewed with great suspicion.
According to a petition, now signed by over 17,000, Salaita is a "brilliant, ethical, and prolific" professor, blacklisted for "his political views on Israel." He is, says one of his academic defenders, a "world renowned scholar," exercising his " freedom to found new knowledge, which is often only possible by . . . continually retesting norms and assumptions, without fear of reprisals from entrenched interests." According to this complaint, Salaita, chosen by a department using scholarly standards to judge his scholarly work, was ousted by non-scholarly Neanderthals who dislike his politics.
Is Salaita a "world renowned scholar?" Although he has published works with university presses, including Temple University Press and Syracuse University Press, his resume, which also includes work for deeply politicized presses like Zed Books and Pluto Press, is not the stuff of which international scholarly renown is made. But Leibovitz has done more than read Salaita's resume; he has read Salaita's book, Israel's Dead Soul.
In it, he finds the same propagandistic streak that one finds in Salaita's tweets. For example, in a chapter devoted to showing that the Anti-Defamation League should be regarded as a hate group, Salaita says, "it is worth noting that numerous cases of anti-Semitic vandalism in 2007 and 2008 were found to actually have been committed by Jews." Salaita provides four examples of such vandalism and claims that one of the vandals was "trained by the Mossad." In fact, the New York Times, which Salaita cites, says only that the evidently deranged suspect claimed to be trained by the Mossad. Never mind. Salaita implies, not at all subtly, not only that anti-Semitism is exaggerated but also that this exaggeration is the deliberate result of, well, a secretive Jewish—I mean Israeli!—plot.
I don't want to rest my case on Leibovitz's reading of Israeli Dead Souls. But it is disingenuous for Salaita's defenders to make so much of the distinction between scholarship, which Salaita and the department that chose him supposedly practice, and politics, which Salaita's detractors supposedly practice. Leibovitz wonders how it can be that Salaita, who has done little work on Native Americans, was hired by a Department of American Indian Studies in the first place. The answer is that American Indian Studies, or Native American Studies, emerged as part of the movement toward Ethnic Studies in the late 1960s.
This movement explicitly sought to break down the wall between scholarship and politics. This statement from the Critical Ethnic Studies Association sums up the view well: "Ethnic studies scholarship has laid the foundation for analyzing how racism, settler colonialism, immigration, imperialism, and slavery interact in the creation and maintenance of systems of domination, dispossession, criminalization, expropriation, exploitation, and violence that are predicated upon hierarchies of racialized, gendered, sexualized, economized, and nationalized social existence in the United States and beyond."
From this point of view, whether you study the domination of Palestinians by Israelis, the domination of blacks by whites, or the domination of Native Americans by the descendants of Europeans is neither here nor there. What matters is that you are judged capable of making a contribution to the anti-colonialist program. Steven Salaita, who has been best known for his role in the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement, in which the chair of UIUC's American Indian Studies department is also engaged, certainly filled that bill.
Yet Salaita's defenders are shocked, simply shocked, that politics may play a role in academic appointments. I think that the specific character of those tweets, not Salaita's political views, sunk Salaita. Many professors who favor a boycott of Israel have been hired, tenured, and promoted without incident, and anti-Israeli sentiment is far more visible at our colleges and universities than pro-Israel sentiment. But even if the trustees did decide to reject Salaita because they disagreed with his politics, how can Salaita's crowd blame them? They merely would be taking seriously the idea that there is no distinction between politics and scholarship and concluding, properly, that scholars deserve no special deference.
The Ignorance Driving Coverage of Israel and American Policy
I can't quite decide if the headline and framing of this recent dispatch from the Washington Post's Jerusalem bureau chief is further evidence of everything that is wrong about the media's reporting on the conflict or if it's a modest step in the right direction. The headline is: "Here's what really happened in the Gaza war (according to the Israelis)."
I can't quite decide if the headline and framing of this recent dispatch from the Washington Post's Jerusalem bureau chief is further evidence of everything that is wrong about the media's reporting on the conflict or if it's a modest step in the right direction. The headline is: "Here's what really happened in the Gaza war (according to the Israelis)."
The point of the article is that a group of journalists met with an Israeli intelligence official to get Israel's side of the story. On the one hand, I suppose the media can be commended for at least recognizing that there's a side other than that churned out by Hamas flacks. On the other hand, the war is over. Perhaps, I don't know, during the war would have been a good time to figure out that there are two sides to the story? Just a thought. Additionally, isn't the fact that basic information about Hamas fighters and weaponry is considered a major scoop a massive indictment of the press?
Here's another question: should the Jerusalem bureau chief of a major American newspaper show his surprise at finding out information he should have known long before? The tone of the report, then, doesn't help either. For example:
The intelligence chief said it is not important how lethal the rockets were. He said the aim was to instill terror, to force a million Israelis to run into shelters.
So Hamas succeeded, in part.
Of the 4,500 rockets fired by Hamas and allies, 875 fell inside Gaza. Many were lobbed at Israeli soldiers during the ground offensive, but others were duds or misfires that landed short, meaning Hamas dropped explosives on its own people.
It is even possible, the intelligence chief said, that some of that fire was intentional.
Yes, some of the damage to Gaza was inflicted directly by Hamas. If you have the resources of the Washington Post behind you and you need this pointed out to you after the war, you might want to consider it not a revelation but a piece of constructive professional criticism.
What we discovered–or, rather, confirmed yet again–during this latest war was that the Palestinian leadership, and especially Hamas, relies on the ignorance of the Western press. The lack of knowledge about Palestinian politics is crucial to Hamas's strategy and it should be a source of agitation for newspapers providing the resources to cover the conflict and getting this lump of coal in return.
But it's not just ignorance of Palestinian politics; it's ignorance of Israeli politics too–far less justifiable since English is so broadly spoken there and the country allows freedom of the press. And that ignorance is not just on the part of the press; it's also from national governments, including the current occupants of the White House.
This was brought to light again by another excellent piece debunking settlement myths by Elliott Abrams and Uri Sadot, who have returned to this topic again to address the manifold falsities inspired by the recent land designation, which we covered on the blog here and here. Not only were the press and foreign leaders wrong about this particular land, but Abrams and Sadot also point out it's part of a larger misunderstanding about Israel's broader settlement policy under Benjamin Netanyahu.
The prime minister continues to rein in settlement growth. For that, he is denounced by the settler movement for restricting settlements and by Western governments for expanding settlements. Only one of those is right–and it's not the Western governments:
It's a lose-lose situation for Bibi, as nasty attacks from settler leaders coincide with those from prime ministers, foreign ministers, and presidents across the globe. The Israeli prime minister deserves credit, under these circumstances, for sticking to what he has said and appears to believe: Israel must build where it will stay, in Jerusalem and the major blocks, and it is foolish to waste resources in West Bank areas it will someday leave.
At this point, the mindless refrain on settlement construction seems to have assumed a life of its own. But anyone who's serious about addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should ignore the speeches and the rote condemnations, and study the numbers. The vast expansion of Israeli settlements in the future Palestinian state is simply not happening.
Newspapers may have resources, but nobody has the resources of the American government. And yet, the Obama administration's pronouncements on Israeli politics and policy reveal a stunning, all-encompassing ignorance. Even worse, that ignorance is voluntary: it is very easy to get the real story. The president and his Cabinet don't seem to want the real story. It's no wonder their policies toward the conflict are so destructive and their diplomacy so thoughtlessly harmful.
What the Syria Fiasco Means for Iran, Gaza
To say President Obama badly needed a foreign-policy win is an understatement. And there were decent odds he'd eventually get one: as sports fans tend to say about a batter in a terrible slump, "he's due." The plan to remove Syria's chemical weapons was supposed to be that victory. But now administration officials don't seem to even believe it themselves.
To say President Obama badly needed a foreign-policy win is an understatement. And there were decent odds he'd eventually get one: as sports fans tend to say about a batter in a terrible slump, "he's due." The plan to remove Syria's chemical weapons was supposed to be that victory. But now administration officials don't seem to even believe it themselves.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, who rose to prominence accusing lots of American officials of inexcusable inaction while mass slaughter occurred on their watch and then joined the Obama Cabinet where she has practiced inexcusable inaction while mass slaughter occurred on her watch, says Assad may still have chemical weapons. And he has a record of using them. Oh, and the brutal butchers of ISIS may get their hands on them too. So the administration's one success in the Middle East was less "mission accomplished" and more "hey, we gave it a shot."
There is much to be concerned about in this report, but even the minor details are problematic:
Samantha Power spoke to reporters after the Security Council received a briefing from Sigrid Kaag, who heads the international effort to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.
The joint mission of the United Nations and the Organization for the prohibition of Chemical Weapons will end at the end of the month after destroying nearly all of Syria's declared stockpile. But Kaag said the OPCW is still working with Syria to resolve discrepancies in its declaration, which she said range from outdated records to discrepancies on the volume of materials.
Power said the U.S. is concerned not only that President Bashar Assad's regime still has chemical weapons but that any stockpiles left behind could end up in the hands of the Islamic State group, which has seized large swaths of Syria and Iraq.
"Certainly if there are chemical weapons left in Syria, there will be a risk that those weapons fall into ISIL's hands. And we can only imagine what a group like that would do if in possession of such a weapon," Power said, referring to the militant group by one of its known acronyms.
The Easter egg of disaster buried in that excerpt was the following sentence, if you missed it: "The joint mission of the United Nations and the Organization for the prohibition of Chemical Weapons will end at the end of the month after destroying nearly all of Syria's declared stockpile." It's actually quite amazing. The job isn't finished, and they know it's not, but they're ending the crux of the mission anyway because … well they just are.
So what are the lessons from yet another Obama team failure? Firstly, we knew this was a failure even before the mission came to an end, because the list of banned chemicals was not exhaustive and Assad's regime was still using other chemical weapons during this process.
But more importantly, it continues to hammer away at whatever is left of Obama's credibility. Ending the mission to follow through on the chemical-weapons deal before it's done tells us much about why the world would be foolish to trust Obama on any Iran deal. Deadlines get extended, but at some point they don't even do that anymore; the administration just gives up and pivots to trying to contain the damage from their failure.
In Syria, that damage means the possibility that not one but two actors in the conflict will use chemical weapons: the original offender, Assad, and the murderous Islamists of ISIS. In Iran, the damage from such a failure would be orders of magnitude worse, because it would mean nuclear weapons in the hands of a terroristic state actor and possibly murderous Islamist groups as well. It could be Syria, in other words, minus the state failure but plus nukes.
And it's not just Iran, of course. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that in order to preserve a cessation of hostilities emanating from Gaza, the Hamas-run enclave should be demilitarized with Obama's Syria disarmament in mind. As the Jerusalem Post reported during the recent war:
The idea of demilitarizing Gaza has its roots in the Syrian precedent, and the fact that the US and Russia managed to successfully dismantle Syria of the vast majority of its chemical weapons stockpile.
Netanyahu likes that model, and has repeatedly praised US President Barack Obama for it.
Indeed, he has called for the same paradigm to be used with Iran: dismantling their nuclear infrastructure.
That may have once sounded like a recipe for progress. It's now clearly a recipe for disaster. The Obama administration has taken to making promises in lieu of action. The Syrian precedent suggests those promises are, as always, just words.
Egypt, Abbas, Refugees, and Peace
When the Egyptian government reached out to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas recently, one surprising and one predictable thing happened. The tale of this offer and its rejection tells us all we need to know about Palestinian politics and the changing political landscape of the Middle East.
When the Egyptian government reached out to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas recently, one surprising and one predictable thing happened. The tale of this offer and its rejection tells us all we need to know about Palestinian politics and the changing political landscape of the Middle East.
The Palestinian Ma'an News Agency reported today that in a speech given to members of his Fatah Party on Sunday, Abbas said that the Egyptian government had made a startling offer to the PA. The Egyptians told Abbas that they were willing to cede a 618-square mile area of the Sinai adjacent to Gaza for resettlement of the Palestinian refugees, an idea first floated by former Israeli National Security Adviser Giora Eiland.
"They [the Egyptians] are prepared to receive all the refugees, [saying] 'let's end the refugee story'," Abbas was quoted by Ma'an news agency as saying.
The Palestinian leader noted that the idea was first proposed to the Egyptian government in 1956, but was furiously rejected by Palestinian leaders such as PLO militant Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar and poet Muin Bseiso who "understood the danger of this."
"Now this is being proposed once again. A senior leader in Egypt said: 'a refuge must be found for the Palestinians and we have all this open land.' This was said to me personally. But it's illogical for the problem to be solved at Egypt's expense. We won't have it," Abbas said.
The remarkable thing about this is the decision of the Sisi government to embrace such a practical solution to the long, sad tale of the 1948 Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Like the rest of the Arab world, the Egyptians were never interested in resettling the refugees anywhere, let alone on a huge swath of the Sinai next door to Gaza. Not even during the 19 years during which Egypt illegally occupied Gaza and Jordan illegally occupied the West Bank and part of Jerusalem did either nation seek to ameliorate the suffering of the refugees by offering them the full rights of citizenship or a home anywhere but in the State of Israel. The same applies to every other Arab and Muslim country. All stuck by the demand of a "right of return" aimed at destroying the newborn Jewish state which was at that time absorbing an equal number of Jewish refugees that had fled or been thrown out of their homes in the Arab and Muslim world. Israel's enemies purposely kept the Palestinian refugees in order to use them as props in their never-ending war on Israel.
Egypt's offer was, of course, not merely aimed at finally doing the right thing by the refugees. The Hamas stronghold in Gaza is a threat to the Egyptian military government in Cairo because of its alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. They also recognize how toxic the situation in Gaza—where hundreds of thousands of the descendants of the refugees live—and the need to get these people out of a bad situation that is only made worse by their exploitation by the Hamas terrorist government of the strip.
Resettling the refugees could be the first step in neutralizing Hamas as well as in reforming the political culture of the Palestinians to the point where it might be possible for them to start thinking about making peace instead of sticking to demands for a return to Israel. That is something that could only happen after the demands in Hamas's charter are fulfilled: the destruction of the Jewish state and the deportation/genocide of its Jewish population.
But in making this proposal, Egypt, which was the first Arab country to make peace with Israel, wasn't just seeking to deal with the threat from Hamas and its jihadist allies to the Sisi regime. It was making clear that the new unofficial alliance between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan and Israel isn't mere talk. These Arab countries haven't suddenly fallen in love with Zionism. The Jewish state is very unpopular even in Jordan, which has a peace treaty with it and also signed an agreement to import Israeli natural gas this week. But all these moderate Arab governments understand that the real threat to their future comes not from Israel but from Iran and its Islamist allies in the Middle East, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.
PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is nominally in the same boat as these governments since he knows that Hamas's goal is to topple him in the West Bank just as they did in Gaza in 2007. He also has an interest in defusing the Gaza tinderbox and offering some alternative to the "right of return" to a refugee population whose adamant opposition to peace with Israel is one of the primary reasons why the PA has rejected offers of statehood and peace with Israel over the last 15 years.
If Abbas is serious about peace with Israel, as his apologists in the West and in Israel insist he is, this is an offer that he should have jumped at. But he didn't, and from the sound of it, it was not even a close call. Why?
Let's first dismiss the idea that the offer was refused out of solicitude for Egypt as Abbas said. As Egyptians always used to say back in the decades when they were fighting wars against Israel, the Palestinians were always willing to fight Israel to the last Egyptian.
Rather, the refusal reflects Abbas's recognition that although Hamas has followed in the path of his old boss Yasir Arafat and led the Palestinian people to more death and destruction with no hope in sight, it is the Islamists who seem to represent the wishes of the Palestinian people, not the so-called moderates that he leads. Any acceptance of any refugee solution that does not involve "return" to what is now Israel is the political third rail of Palestinian politics. Indeed, the refugees themselves are adamant about their rejection of any solution short of "victory" over Israel.
That is why Abbas, though supposedly in favor of a two-state solution, has rejected it every time the Israelis have offered the PA independence over almost all of the West Bank, Gaza, and even a share of Jerusalem. As much as we are told that in the aftermath of the latest war in Gaza that the time of the moderates is upon us, Palestinian opinion polls indicate that they are still backing Hamas. That means they won't make peace with Israel no matter where its borders are drawn. So long as the refugees remain homeless, when Palestinians speak of Israeli occupation, they are clearly referring to pre-1967 Israel, not the West Bank.
Egypt's offer to the PA is a healthy sign that many in the Arab world are rising above their hatred for Israel and ready to make peace, if not for the sake of the Jews then to help them combat the Islamist terror threat. That is a remarkable thing that should be celebrated. The Palestinian refusal is, however, a very unremarkable confirmation of the fact that they remain unready and unwilling to make peace.