Some of you may recall our celebration of French journalistic standards which permitted “The Invention of the Jewish People,” a sad, ideologically bent book by Shlomo Sand to win the Aujourd’hui Award, “given to the best non-fiction political or historical work from French journalists.”

That version of Sand’s book, published originally in Hebrew, was the French language version. Unfortunately, the English speaking world is now in possession of this ode to hatred of the Jewish people and it is on sale in England and the US. It’s actually ranked in the mid-2000s on Amazon, which means books are selling.

What kind of person is Shlomo Sand? He is the kind of person who compares Israel in an interview to a child born of a rape.

“Most Israeli Jews believe in a historical right. If there is no such right, what justifies our existence here? Arabs also ask me, after writing this book, how can I justify the existence of Israel. I say to them that even the son of a rape has the right to live. It was a kind of rape in 1947 and ’48 and the Palestinian tragedy continues. But you can say the same about the USA and Australia.”

…“I think Israel belongs to the Israelis, not the Jews. We have a language, a culture, a theatre, a literature, our jokes our football and our politics. We are a people but we are not just a Jewish people. I want to change the borders and definition of the state. I want to make it a more civil nation — to separate religion from its existence, to normalise and democratise Israel. I think that Israel has to belong to all its citizens, not just the Jewish ones. People call me radical but from a democratic perspective this is not so radical.”

Therefore, we glean that he’s a scholar working at an Israeli university which affords him the freedom to attack his country and society viciously and then have his ideas travel the world with him so he can call the country subsidizing his salary, the child of a rape.

And you can imagine he has serious support from the anti-Israel crowd, Jewish especially.

In our previous post, we brought in some scholarly attacks that decimate his book, but my favorite new critique of his book is by prolific and popular historian, Simon Schama, definitely not an intellectual slouch.

Schama writes:

Sand’s self-dramatising attack in The Invention of the Jewish People is directed against those who assume, uncritically, that all Jews are descended lineally from the single racial stock of ancient Hebrews – a position no one who has thought for a minute about the history of the Jews would dream of taking.

…

But, he argues, there actually was no mass forced “exile” so there can be no legitimate “return”. This is the take-away headline that makes this book so contentious. It is undoubtedly right to say that a popular version of this idea of the exile survives in most fundamentalist accounts of Jewish history. It may well be the image that many Jewish children still have. But it is a long time since any serious historian argued that following the destruction of the Second Temple, the Romans emptied Judea. But what the Romans did do, following the Jewish revolt of AD66-70 and even more exhaustively after a second rebellion in AD135, was every bit as traumatic: an act of cultural and social annihilation – mass slaughter and widespread enslavement. But there was also the mass extirpation of everything that constituted Jewish religion and culture; the renaming of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, the obliteration of the Temple, the prohibition on rituals and prayers. Sand asserts, correctly, that an unknowable number of Jews remained in what the Romans called Palestina. The multitudes of Jews in Rome had already gone there, not as a response to disaster but because they wanted to and were busy proselytising.

All this is true and has been acknowledged. But Sand appears not to notice that it undercuts his argument about the non-connection of Jews with the land of Palestine rather than supporting it. Put together, the possibility of leading a Jewish religious life outside Palestine, with the continued endurance of Jews in the country itself and you have the makings of that group yearning – the Israel-fixation, which Sand dismisses as imaginary. What the Romans did to the defeated Jews was dispossession, the severity of which was enough to account for the homeland-longing by both the population still there and those abroad. That yearning first appears, not in Zionist history, but in the writings of medieval Jewish teachers, and never goes away.

There are many such twists of historical logic and strategic evasions of modern research in this book. To list them all would try your patience.

…

His assumption that the Jewish state is an oxymoron built on illusions of homogeneity is belied by the country’s striking heterogeneity. How else to explain the acceptance of the Beta Israel Ethiopian Jews or the Bene Israel Indians as Israeli Jews? Certainly that acceptance has never been without obstacles, and egregious discrimination has been shown by those who think they know what “real jews” should look like. Sand is right in believing that a more inclusive and elastic version of entry and exit points into the Jewish experience should encourage a debate in Israel of who is and who is not a “true” Jew. I could hardly agree more, and for precisely the reason that Sand seems not to himself embrace: namely that the legitimacy of Israel both within and without the country depends not on some spurious notion of religious much less racial purity, but on the case made by a community of suffering, not just during the Holocaust but over centuries of expulsions and persecutions. Unlike the Roman deportations, these were not mythical.

Sand would counter that such a refuge for the victims could have been in China, or on the moon, for all that Palestine had to do with the Jews. But since his book fails to sever the remembered connection between the ancestral land and Jewish experience ever since, it seems a bit much to ask Jews to do their bit for the sorely needed peace of the region by replacing an ethnic mythology with an act of equally arbitrary cultural oblivion.

Be sure to read the entire article in the Financial Times.

Very soon, expect to hear on campuses, in news programs on the radio and occasionally in TV programs that the Jewish people are a myth. This stuff used to be said by the neo-Nazi loonies who inhabit this world, but now we have a Jewish, son of Holocaust survivors, professor from an Israeli university, ideologue whose ideology so blinds him to the basic identity of the Jewish people that he has put this lie into the mainstream.

The problem with his argument is that HE’S the one who is touting the biological issue. It is clear to most Jews that their identity stems from our thousands of years of common heritage and that heritage is directly linked to our past in Judea and Israel. It isn’t material whether my genes are directly connected to those of some Jerusalemite from 2000 years ago – although they might well be – it’s that their ideas, beliefs, practices and lives have filtered down to our time and resonate with our identity. They define who we are, and not because of a couple of 19th Century historians, but precisely because our traditions, our shared histories, our literature and even the enduring hatred we’ve suffered, are a part of every Jew. If a prayer was being said 2000 years ago, and then 1000 years later a Jew who descends from a convert says the same prayer and teaches it to his children, and that prayer is repeated 500 years later and again a thousand years later by Jews, even if they are descended from converts to Judaism, that does not lessen their connection to the place where that prayer, language and culture originated. It does not change the fact that they faced Jerusalem when praying and wished that they could visit it and even live there upon the messiah’s arrival.

Whether Sand approves or not, these ideas that form us exist because our ancestors – and here I may mean biological and I could mean ancestry in terms of ideas, faith and religious practice – lived in Jerusalem and Hebron and Shechem and Judea and Samaria.

If his problem is that Israel, a state defining itself as a Jewish state, exist on disputed land that the Palestinians claim as theirs, then that’s an entirely different issue and question. Trying to use questionable history to address this complex situation is reprehensible.

If Walt & Mearsheimer’s “The Israel Lobby” wins TheMiddle’s “21st Century Protocols of the Elders of Zion” Award, Sand’s “The Invention of the Jewish People” wins the “Temple was Never Here, It Was in Nablus” Upside Down History Prize, which I dedicate to Yasser Arafat.

(photo is from this article about the Beit She’arim site)

While it’s been rewarding to see some of my ideas in publications reporting about the latest Palestinian maneuvers, there have also been some doubters. One of the key criticisms has been of the prediction that the Palestinians are planning to stall for time as they push for an eventual single state from the River to the Sea. How can I predict this, they ask, while the Palestinians appear to be planning to establish a state and are actually threatening to do this with American approval and a visit to the UN Security Council?

My response has been that the threat of declaring a state is a win-win for the Palestinians. It causes fear for Israelis and their leaders and strengthens the Palestinian bargaining position in the event they don’t declare a state. If they end up having to somehow actually go through with a declaration of statehood, then if they do have the blessing of the UNSC and especially if they modify UNSCR 242 and 338, then according to international law, east Jerusalem would become East Jerusalem and the official Palestinian capital. However, I qualified that if this were to happen, the Palestinians would build in some mechanism that allows them to continue to seek the remainder of the land between the River to the Sea. In other words, it’s just another stop-gap in their master plan.

Today I came across the Palestinian National Authority’s two-year plan for statehood. This is the plan the Palestinian PM, Salam Fayyad, put together and has been pitching to Western governments. When this plan was announced, it was received positively across the board. However, as the leaks about potential unilateral statehood declarations began to reach newspapers, the next days brought about criticism from…the office of Mahmoud Abbas. Well, within hours of this criticism, Fayyad’s office issued a denial that it had been negotiating some sort of end-run around the Israelis and potential unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state.

If that isn’t enough evidence, then the plan itself contains the missing proof. I’ve highlighted the key elements of this section:

The majority of the Palestinian people are refugees and displaced persons living in the Palestinian territory and abroad. Most refugees live under oppressive and harsh conditions, lacking their most fundamental human rights, foremost of which is the right to live on their homeland. Though the issue of refugees will be addressed in the final status negotiations, it is certain that no political settlement can be accepted by Palestinians without a just and agreed solution to this fundamental issue in accordance with international resolutions, including UN General Assembly Resolution 194.

The refugee issue will remain under the jurisdiction of the PLO, through its Department of Refugees’ Affairs. The Government affirms its full commitment to all PLO decisions in relation to this issue. Within limits of its jurisdiction, without derogation of PLO’s responsibility, and in a manner that does not exempt the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from its responsibilities, the Government emphasizes that it will do all within its power and authority to bolster on the legal rights and living conditions of refugees in the occupied territory, particularly in refugee camps, including the provision of all the resources it can afford to support and alleviate the suffering of refugees in all aspects of their lives.

Translation:
We are never going to accept any conclusion to the conflict without acquiring a right for all Palestinians to move into Israel. In order to avoid this appearing to be messy or part of our aggression as a newly formed government, we’re going to remove this issue from our government.

Now if one reviews their plan, there are 32 new ministries, authorities and bureaus listed. Thirty two government agencies are going to function in the new, never-before seen state of Palestine, but the refugee problem is handed off to the PLO. Why would they do that if they thought the achievement of statehood would be sufficient? They wouldn’t. The PLO is going to be the address for those things that a “state” couldn’t and wouldn’t do. Any fighting that takes place, any attacks, any language that is deemed too aggressive will be blamed on the PLO, and of course “refugee rights,” not the new state of Palestine.

They also are demanding that UNGA 194, the so-called “right of return” resolution which the Arabs rejected when it was first presented 60 years ago, become the governing rule for the Palestinian refugees. UNGA is a Trojan Horse, code for the desire to recreate demographics so that Israel could stop being a Jewish state. It is a desire to return not to 1967/1949 lines, but a desire to return to 1920 lines.

As for Israel, what can it do to counter this new diplomatic onslaught by the Palestinians?

Their solution is a simple one. Offer the Palestinians what Barak offered at Taba in 2001, without any delineation of sovereignty over any part of the Temple Mount. Make it public that this peace plan is on the table. Do it loudly and do it everywhere. In the worst case scenario, the Palestinians will accept, in which case Israel will have peace. That’s a pretty good worst case scenario! In the best case scenario, the Palestinians will reject this offer as they do every offer. That’s a lousy best case scenario, but it’s the best way to come out of this set of traps the Palestinians are trying to set for Israel.

Relevant Jewlicious Posts:

The Palestinians Think They Are in the Endgame

The Palestinian Endgame Enters High Gear

Details of the Taba Plan

By Shimon Peres (from Ha’aretz).

South African jurist Richard Goldstone lambasted President Shimon Peres on Thursday for a personal attack on him, which the president launched in response to a damning report he compiled on the Israel’s winter offensive in Gaza.

“I would say that the President’s comments are specious and ill-befitting the Head of the State of Israel,” Goldstone said in an interview with Haaretz.

….

The jurist was referring to comments Peres made on Wednesday to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during a meeting in Brasilia.

Peres told his Brazilian counterpart that, “Goldstone is a small man, devoid of any sense of justice, a technocrat with no real understanding of jurisprudence.”

It’s not okay for Israel’s president to speak that way about Goldstone. Even if Goldstone made serious errors, including the serious mistake of taking on leadership of this inquiry and then maybe letting Israel’s avoidance of his commission anger him when he should have been entirely impartial, this criticism by Peres is over-the-top and unwarranted. It’s one thing to say, “I disagree with the way he went about this as well as his conclusions,” and it’s entirely different to personally attack him as somebody with no sense of justice or jurisprudence.

It’s also stupid to attack him this way because it takes away attention from valid criticism of the Report and Goldstone’s choices in the report and turns that attention to whether people are insulting Goldstone unfairly or not.

Peres should apologize so the world and Israel can deal with the critical issues at hand.

Other Jewlicious articles on Goldstone:

Dore Gold and Richard Goldstone Debate

Goldstone interviewed by Moyers

It’s About Time Somebody Said Something – things that might be of interest to Goldstone

Forward editorial about Goldstone

Goldstone on the Media Trail

Ken Roth of HRW dukes it out with international jurist Irwin Cotler

Goldstone Report Released

Why the Goldstone Commission is Tarnished

President Obama was helped greatly by the many Jewish voters and supporters who supported him.

Obama’s relationship with Israel since coming to office has been troubling, to say the least, and has pushed Israel into a corner where it should not have been pushed by creating both expectations and demands that weakened Israel’s position and negotiating stance dramatically. It is true that his White House has not been friendly to the Goldstone Report, but it did join the UNHRC and has still not left despite the obvious bias against Israel exhibited there even since America’s joining. One could easily believe that the cold shoulder to Goldstone has less to do with Israel and more to do with America’s wars and ensuring that the US doesn’t support measures that could be used against the US army and political leadership.

Today, I believe, Obama has sent messages that can’t be ignored. After treating Netanyahu, the democratically elected PM of Israel, like dirt for the first several months of his tenure, Obama has possibly agreed to give Netanyahu a short evening meeting after delaying a decision to meet him for weeks. This can be contrasted with the handsome treatment accorded to Arab heads of state such as Jordan and Egypt, countries whose human rights records are objectionable on the best of days. Apparently they get plenty of face time in the middle of the day with Obama.

That, however, isn’t the real slap on the face. That would be the cancellation of Obama’s talk at the The Jewish Federations of North America’s annual General Assembly. While the reason is more than reasonable – he is attending the memorial for the murdered Fort Hood soldiers – the GA is taking place in DC over 3 days and one can’t escape the impression that Obama could have found a way to fulfill his commitment to attend, even if briefly and without giving the keynote address. Emanuel Rahm will attend instead, probably serving as pacifier to those whiny, demanding Jews an ambassador to the Jewish community.

We can be certain that Emanuel Rahm will say all the right things about this Administration’s support for Israel. He will make a few funny one-liners, including a couple of self-deprecating ones. He’ll talk about the strong bonds between the two countries and how the US is adamant about pursuing peace in the Middle East.

It won’t matter. It has been made clear that this Administration prefers dictators who control their media and have no compunction about torturing people, to the Israeli leadership; that an audience filled with members who strongly supported Obama’s presidential campaign can be treated with nonchalance. In the meantime, Hillary goes around bending knees to dictators and undemocratic regimes in the Muslim and Arab worlds with Israel as the centerpiece of her commentary. Even mild praise for Israel is rescinded and tendentious statements about illegal settlements in east Jerusalem roll off tongues as if their implications aren’t extremely troubling and meaningful. To remind the Obama Administration, east Jerusalem had no Jews living in it from 1949-1967 because that’s how the Jordanians wanted it. It is not “Arab east Jerusalem” but the part of Jerusalem that holds the virtual heart of the Jewish people. Rahm knows this, of course, but it’s time to inform his boss in great detail.

On the Jewish voter end, it is time to acknowledge what has been obvious but hard to acknowledge for months now: Obama and his Administration are often working against Israel’s best interests, against Israel’s just claims and together with those who would harm Israel in a heartbeat if they could. And let me be clear that these actions are not necessarily in America’s best interests, or they would be far more understandable.

There is no reason for the Jewish community to permanently turn away from Obama, but a strong case can be made that we probably shouldn’t be as supportive of him or the Democratic party either in the short run. Perhaps it’s time to stand on the sidelines for a while and maybe even do so for the 2010 elections. There are some elections where the Jewish vote can be the difference between victory and loss, and there are also some where Jewish fundraising is critical. Why then let ourselves be taken for granted?

The problem isn’t that the Jewish community hasn’t done enough, it’s that for the Democrats the Jewish vote and fundraising are counted on automatically. The leadership, including Jewish Administration members David Axelrod and Emanuel Rahm, knows that there’s a lot of bandwidth between their treatment of the Jewish community or Israel and the point where the Jewish Democrat-vote and even financial support is endangered. That’s a problem that actually takes away the little leverage the community has, and the treatment of the GA and Netanyahu reflect this.

Mahmoud Abbas can throw fits, act all pouty, threaten to leave and then enjoy the benefit of being courted again. Why not the Jewish community? Why not create an incentive for the Democrats to fight for the Jewish vote? Make them sweat a bit. Then, maybe, just maybe, the President will think about us differently and hopefully without taking Jewish votes or donors for granted.

I was going to call this piece “Abbas Plays Poker” but then Khaled Abu Toameh wrote a piece in the J Post called Abbas’s Big Bluff in which he argues that Abbas has called for Palestinian elections now with the knowledge that Hamas won’t participate. Khaled doesn’t quite make the point that this is a way for Abbas to stay in power, but that’s exactly what it is.

That touches on the big bluff. The bluff is not the one directed at Hamas, but the one directed at the international community and especially the Obama administration. For years and years American foreign policy has been built around the premise that there is a Palestinian partner for peace. After Arafat died and Abbas became the new leader of the Palestinians, the word came out from American diplomatic circles and parroted by the media, that Mahmoud Abbas was a moderate and sympathetic to the West.

Well, Abbas has now told the world that he is planning to quit. He is so darned frustrated with the non-progress of the peace talks, and especially with the Americans’ inability to “freeze” all Israeli building activity not only in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, but also in east Jerusalem. He’s had enough of this and now he’s going to leave. Unspoken in the threat is that there isn’t anybody else who is “moderate” and of a leadership capacity to replace him. Salam Fayyad, for example, the current PM of the Palestinians is considered capable, but a technocrat who is not particularly beloved among the Palestinians. Others like the young guard, Dahlan and Barghouti are either not ripe yet or in prison. Abbas is the only known quantity and since the conventional wisdom places him as a moderate, losing him would spell the end of the known and entry into the unknown. Chaos is sure to follow, is the assumption among many diplomats in the West.

Let’s call this Bluff #1.
(more…)

Dura Reserve

HaYarkon Park

Herzliya

These three were taken by the exceptionally talented Tal Shavit and much of her beautiful work can be seen (in a larger size) on her account at Flickr. For those who want to see it, she also has a set she calls Palestine which includes images taken at checkpoints. It appears that sometimes even harsh politics can be depicted beautifully.

SHABBAT SHALOM!

One of the two key centers for Palestinian demonstrations against Israel, which have supposedly been non-violent, as long as stone throwing counts as non-violence, is Na’alin. Today some young Palestinians were able to knock over part of the Security Barrier.

With shouts of Allah Hu Akbar, they bring it down…

Today at 5:00 PM Brandeis University hosted Richard Goldstone and Dore Gold to discuss the Goldstone Report.

Well Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the UN and probably one of the primary intellectuals whose ideas influence Israel’s current government, bumped into a South African Jewish judge by the name of Richard Goldstone. The icy body language and the stern look on Gold’s face told half the story – there is a deep and profound anger among those who love and care deeply about Israel towards Goldstone and what he has, wittingly or unwittingly, wrought upon Israel.

There were a couple of things that stood out for me in the discussion. The first was that Goldstone’s report was indeed colored, tainted actually, by his palpable anger at Israel for not cooperating with him or letting him visit with his commission in an official capacity. It may even be pettiness, but he seemed to relish saying over and over that had Israel participated, then the report would likely have been different.

Along those lines, however, not only is it troubling that such a damaging report was written with some immature petulance at the key accused in the report, but it was even more troubling when Goldstone suggested that his report would have been different had the Israeli government supplied the same information that Gold provided in his presentation today.

This is exceptionally troubling because most of what Gold said was publicly available information. For example, he showed the clip from Colonel Kemp saying that Israel had fought a war that more than any other war in history sought safety for civilians. Kemp had made himself available to the commission which had no interest in hearing him. The speech he gave at the UNHRC hearing about the Goldstone Report, however, was first given three months ago and is available in full on the internet. So, for that matter, are the Hamas speeches shown by Gold. So are the maps by Israel of how the Palestinians organized their preparations for the upcoming war. Is Goldstone actually saying they couldn’t do some research on the internet?

Gold also spoke about how the scale of destruction that so affected Goldstone, which may have been misleading because about 20% of the houses in some neighborhoods had been booby-trapped by Hamas. In one stunning moment, he mentioned that the IDF has no record of attacking the mosque that according to Goldstone was attacked in daylight while worshippers were inside. The IDF says it has no record of this attack. If the IDF can prove this, that alone would undermine the credibility of this report permanently.

Also troubling was that Goldstone has clearly not thought through the implications of his report. When asked how Israel could fight wars where the enemy is embedded in civilian centers, he recommended commando raids. Great idea! Except for the possibility of capture by Palestinians that increases exponentially. Goldstone is familiar with what happens to Israeli captives and even took credit for bringing up Gilad Shalit. Does he think that a few more Israeli soldiers in Palestinian captivity for years without any Red Cross visits will help anybody? The short of it is that he doesn’t have a clue about how to fight a war like this with the limitations he has placed on Israel.

Dore Gold stressed that one of the key reasons this report is flawed is that it is the product of a UN full of bias toward Israel, which he called a minority state because it has no bloc to protect it. He acknowledged that the US helps Israel in the UN, but compared that to the automatic votes other countries can garner because of these blocs. He stressed the partiality of the UN Human Rights Commission and the absolute chutzpah of calling into question Israel’s abilities to investigate itself. Goldstone tried to rebuff by claiming the IDF should not be investigating itself and the absence of real convictions to date indicates their investigations are not meaningful. Gold bristled at this and twice spoke about how there are other bodies in Israel that also have authority to investigate Israeli conduct.

More than anything, this was a sad, sad event. Goldstone has put Israel in a difficult corner and those of us who see the many flaws with the report, flaws that undermine any objective reader’s assessment of this work, are outraged and deeply saddened by this report, its implications and its consequences.

Here are questions I’d like to ask Richard Goldstone:

- Why did you agree to work for a UN body that you acknowledge is anti-Israel?

- Why did you agree to do so when the country in question is Israel?

- Why did you not consider that your Zionism and Jewish faith made you an ideal candidate to ward off the criticism that a report from this tainted body would justifiably encounter?

- Why do you believe it’s fair to critique the validity of IDF investigations, but it’s reasonable for your committee to bring aboard people who accused Israel of war crimes before the commission ever met or had evidence presented?

- Why did you permit Israel’s refusal to collaborate with your mission, that was sent by this tainted UN body, to color your views as displayed in your constant complaints about this?

- Why did you accept testimonies from people that your own report acknowledges may have been intimidated?

- Why did you not research using readily available material such as videos, maps, images, speeches and even the Israeli government’s own materials, all of which are readily and easily available on the internet?

- Why have your comments about the report differed when addressing a Jewish audience and other audiences, as can be seen in your Forward interview? There you dicount the actual legal meaning of the report, which is very different than the claims made in the report or claims you have made since the report’s publication in other media outlets?

- Since you claim to have identified that Hamas was playing a “shrewd” game with their claim that the political body doesn’t have a connection with their military body, why did you trust anything that involved them or people who might be influenced or scared by them?

- Why do you provide leniency to Hamas and their crimes by using soft language and avoiding mention of them in lieu of using “armed groups” to deflect their responsibility?

- How is it conceivable that in a report such as this, where you claim the mandate was modified at your behest to investigate both sides, that you would deny or equivocate the accusations against Hamas that it used civilian areas and installations to conduct this war?

- How could you do so when there is available evidence in the public statements and speeches of Hamas leaders?

- Considering that you now know information you claim you didn’t have before, why have you not backtracked on any of your claims?

- When the UNHRC made a mockery of your report – and especially of your claim that the mandate of the commission had been changed – by planning to vote on a document about the report which charged Israel at length but did not mention the Palestinian crimes, why did you simply express your disappointment and agree to a neutral addition to the language which still did not mention the Palestinians or Hamas?

Very sad.

Enough of the doom and gloom. Here’s something a little nicer coming out of Israel.

Among the Jerusalem Post’s blog posts, there is one today by Ira Sharkansky, a Hebrew University Political Science professor, called “Why the Stalemate.” Sharkansky also posts at Shark Blog. To explain why a high ranking US official has said that the “peace process” appears to be “at an impasse,” Sharkansky suggests the following reasons:

There is no free lunch in international relations
You screw us; we’ll screw you
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” may be a spiritual ideal, but the more popular norm in international politics is the simpler one of “Do unto others.”
Israel can live well enough without solving the problem of Palestine.

The Palestinians may pride themselves in their willingness to die for their national cause, but they have committed national suicide. There will be no Palestinian state as long as key factions persist with the dreams of turning back the clock to 1967, to 1947, or to the mid-19th century before Jews began coming to this area.

Sharkansky goes on to suggest that Hamas, the Goldstone Report and Iran stand in the way of any further progress and therefore while “Israel can live well enough without solving the problem of Palestine,” the Palestinians will not gain a state any time soon.

This strikes me as the type of thinking I hear from many Israelis, both in the center and the right of the political spectrum. The consensus appears to be that Israel can continue to grow and thrive while the Palestinians continue to dither and miss opportunities to build their state.

In order to agree with this premise, one has to believe the Palestinians seek a two state solution and their own state.

They don’t.

No, the Palestinians are stalling because they believe they have entered the endgame. They believe they are closer than ever to winning the decades-old war against Israel and are launching what they believe to be a new battle in their war. They appear to believe this stage of the war will last several years, maybe a decade, but this final battle is supposed to culminate in a victory that has the international community imposing and establishing a single state from the river to the sea. That alone will create a serious challenge to the notion of a Jewish state, but the Palestinians most likely believe demographics will complete their task.

Right now, by the Palestinian count, there are around 4 million Palestinians in the Judea and Samaria/West Bank and Gaza (a count which is disputed by some, but the international community as well as many Israelis accept this number). Another 1.1 million Israeli Arabs who are not Beduin or Druze reside inside the Green Line and have Israeli citizenship. In contrast, there are about 6 million Jews living inside Israel. The Israeli birthrate stands at around 20 births/thousand while the Palestinian birthrate was at 39/1000 in 2006 but is said to have dropped to 27/1000 last year. Critically, the percentage of young Palestinians (under 18) is very high so that even if parity in population (from the sea to the river) does not occur within the next decade, the following couple of decades will probably give them a decided advantage, especially if they can vote as a bloc.

Having numeric equality or superiority is useless if the election does not include one’s population. Achieving the right to vote in Israeli elections appears to be one of the goals set out by the Palestinians. As we learned in the recently held Sixth Congress held by Fatah, the party behind the Palestinian Authority, they intend to wage an international campaign against Israel that resembles the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. That struggle ended with a white minority giving equal civic rights to their black population after the world essentially boycotted South Africa to the point where it gave up.

Unlike whites in South Africa, Jewish Israelis are the majority and the Palestinians are the minority. Also, historic ties to Israel place the Jews there well before the Palestinians arrived. These facts don’t seem to matter, the Palestinians have already begun their apartheid-style anti-Israel campaign. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has received some major press coverage in recent months, including our coverage of one of the movement’s leaders, Omar Barghouti, who advocates for a boycott while studying at Tel Aviv University. One key success was the attack on the Toronto Film Festival (addressed on Jewlicious here), which may have failed to dissuade movie-goers from seeing the Israeli films being shown, but it managed to get coverage around the world for several days. The amount of publicity the BDS movement received was astounding, and most of that publicity involved equating Israel and its policies with apartheid South Africa. This is not an accident, it is a measured and well thought out strategy.

It is also not an accident that most of the signatories on the original letter to the Toronto Film Festival were either Jewish or gay with no Arabs among them. This is reminiscent of the OIC (Organiztion of Islamic Conference – the Islamic countries’ 57 nation coalition at the UN) guided UNHRC to appointing a Jewish rapporteur to report on Israel’s actions against the Palestinians, Richard Falk, and a Jewish judge to head the commission investigating Cast Lead, Goldstone. Recently Mustafa Barghouti, an eloquent Palestinian politician and former PA leadership candidate, was joined by a Jewish woman on a visit to the Daily Show. Barghouti did not need her, but her role is obvious. On campuses, one sees the same developments. The Muslim Student Association on many campuses leads the attacks against Israel and its supporters, but it’s not unusual to see Jews in visible roles within the protests. At York University in Toronto, for example, a Jesse Zimmerman was allegedly a leader in the action taken against the students hiding in the Hillel office. On the internet, some of the leading anti-Israel sites are run by Jews – Mondoweiss, JVP, Muzzlewatch, etc.

The Palestinians, however, are not only counting on the fight for establishing an international boycott of Israeli products and culture. Simultaneously, they are maintaining severe international pressure on the diplomatic front. The Goldstone Commission could not have happened without diplomatic support. In fact, the Secretary General of the OIC has bragged to Al Jazeera that they were responsible for having the Goldstone Commission appointed. Many countries in the EU are placing their relationships with the Arab world far ahead of their relationship with Israel, and both Russia and China are also keeping their toes moist in the Muslim/Arab oil wells. Similarly, on the legal front, the Palestinians continue to try to trip Israel in Europe by attempting to have Israeli officers and leading politicians arrested. It is only a matter of time before an Israeli leader gets arrested on such a visit, opening the door to a media storm, especially if he loses the case.

Demography, apartheid, diplomatic aggression, campus activism and international law are the ingredients, and time is the sauce. Time enables the Palestinians to grow in number, achieve successes on the BDS front, score diplomatic victories, put Israel in the dock, put Israeli leaders on trial, establish the idea of Israeli “apartheid” in the public’s mind and plan for the future.

The last is a key clue to what the Palestinians are doing. Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian PM, has established a two year plan for creating the infrastructure of a Palestinian state. This has been described by the Palestinians as a proactive measure intended to lay the groundwork for peace. However, they have also made it clear that if no “peace” is forthcoming, then they will take their preparations and declare a state unilaterally. While it’s doubtful they would do so, the point of the exercise is to be ready and to function like a proper government in the view of the world’s western nations. It is also, of course to place pressure on Israel because Israel would end up losing a great deal of negotiating leverage if the world accepts a new Palestinian state. Also, becoming a high contracting party gives the Palestinians some advantages they do not currently enjoy on the diplomatic and other fronts.

Along the same lines, is it no accident that Palestinian violence has diminished greatly in the West Bank and is on hold in Gaza. Certainly, Israel’s security measures have achieved success, and Cast Lead hit Hamas hard. However, it seems the Palestinians are satisfied playing the nonviolence game for a while. They consider their efforts at Bilin to be successful – sufficiently large to make a media impact and to tarnish Israel’s image, but not so large that they have to convince a large number of Palestinians to make this effort. In fact, while dozens of activists show up at Bilin, thousands of Palestinians are being trained by the Americans to fight like a proper army. Twenty five thousand Palestinian soldiers, so far. Of course, once those are trained, they will train others. Weapons are being provided by Israel and the US to help the cause.

In the meantime, Iran is arming and preparing the other Palestinians…Hamas… for future rounds against both Fatah and Israel. They are also preparing Hizbullah for a future war. Both armies have rockets that can hit Israeli civilian centers and have now tested and proven that their fighting tactics may not win the battle on the ground, but certainly win the war once the world watches the news. Obviously, arming and preparation requires time. This seems to contradict what Fatah, in the guise of the PA, is trying to do to Israel as I describe above, but it actually plays right into their goals. Both the US and Israel are so concerned about Iran’s influence and Hamas conquering the West Bank, that they fully back the training, arming and diplomatic support that Fatah receives in abundance. The more time passes, the more resources the PA gains in terms of soldiering and arms.

Time matters. Time IS the strategy and buying it is the most critical issue for the Palestinians. They know full well that there is a peace agreement on the table, first put there by Barak and then by Olmert. Their job, as they see it, is to acknowledge it, criticize it as insufficient and wait. Now they are blaming settlements, but last year when Olmert offered everything that was offered at Taba plus an international Jerusalem, they were talking to Israel while settlements were being built. Then they said “no.” Why did they refuse a very generous offer that would have established the first ever Palestinian state? According to Abbas, the “gaps were too wide,” but considering that Olmert offered over the limit of what Israel will ever offer again, this was just an excuse. The “gaps” weren’t the problem. The problem was that a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria/West Bank and Gaza is not the Palestinians’ endgame. To the same ends, we now have friction at the Temple Mount. This is not accidental and it is certainly not happening because of Israel. From the Palestinians’ point of view, some tension that pits the Israeli army against Palestinian civilians is good for publicity and for finding excuses not to discuss peace.

All this is in the hope that their other endeavors will coalesce over the next few years as Israel is pushed up against the ropes, eventually to be forced by external forces and circumstances to yield to a one state solution.

And that’s why they are stalling.

There are now two follow up posts:

The Palestinian Endgame Enters High Gear

More About the Palestinian Endgame

(Dear readers, the comments below include some interesting criticisms of this post and even many choice insults directed at yours truly. I think my responses expand on this thesis so please read on…)

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The talented Nehemia Gershuni who usually focuses on military subjects in his photos captured this image. More of his stuff can be seen on Flickr.

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BW Ruth’s beautiful eye captured this images of the Jordan River in the Upper Galilee.

Shabbat shalom!

The Jerusalem Post reported that the student section of the J Street U national conference voted to remove the words “pro-Israel” from their self-description while keeping the words “pro-peace.” In the original article, the Jerusalem Post sources stated that the words “pro-Israel” might turn off students who might otherwise be interested in J Street.

Today the Jerusalem Post reports:

…Student board president Sophia Manuel putting out a statement Wednesday that, “The national board of J Street U neither discussed nor voted on any action to remove the term ‘pro-Israel’ from our platform, policy or the way we describe ourselves at J Street U’s national conference.”

The J Post then explains that in actuality this was already presented and decided upon previously but was only disseminated to attendees at this conference. It seems the broader J Street movement does use “pro-Israel” in their motto, and only J Street U, the student section, has eliminated it from their motto.

All well and good and not so surprising. However, what was surprising was another board member’s assertions to the J Post in explaining the reasoning of the J Street student activists:

Another member of the student board, Yonatan Schechter, said Sunday the students “decided that we would use the ‘pro-peace’ terminology [because] it was more conducive to discussion. With our generation, it seems that if you use ‘pro-Israel,’ people really want to say ‘anti-Palestine.’”

I am positive that nobody at J Street U will mind if I put my response to this in a form that students understand well.

F.

Let’s face it, there’s just too much to read out there. Our local paper for one, the NY Times for another, The Atlantic, New Yorker, Slate and for those of us who enjoy reading about business, the Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Fortune, as well as more general offerings such as Wired, Fast Company and some photography magazines. As far as Jewish reading goes, I’ve bitterly given up my Jerusalem Report subscription because they kept asking for $80/year, but there’s still the Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz, Yediot, The Forward, JTA, some blogs out there and now there’s a new publication online, Tablet Magazine.

I have to say that despite some tough competition, Tablet is holding its own and then some. Their articles tend to possess unusual depth, a high quality of writing, a broad and rich slate of subject matter and leisurely length that permits the authors to explore topics at length.

Take for example Seth Lipsky’s recent article about Marek Edelman, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Well, okay, it’s not exactly about Marek Edelman, it’s about the Bund. Mmm, well maybe it’s not exactly about the Bund either, but the loyalty that movement engendered. It’s also about the trajectory of significant movements that have touched the Jewish world profoundly in the past century. Then again, it’s also a lament for the passing of a man who maintained his values steadfastly throughout a challenging life that could and should have thrown his ideology into question on many occasions. And of course, it’s about Israel today and the problems it faces.

Here’s the first paragraph:

A wonderful novel could be written about the year 1897. That’s the year of the first issue of the newspaper known as the Jewish Daily Forward, which became a tribune of the idea that Jews could become Americans. It’s also the year in which Theodor Herzl convened at Basel the First Zionist Congress, which stood for the idea that the Jews could find redemption in the Land of Israel. It was also the year in which, at a secret meeting at Vilna, there was founded the General Association of Jewish Workers, known as the Bund, which reckoned Jews needn’t go anywhere but could find their future in Socialism.

Here’s the concluding paragraph:

What a concluding chapter that would make to the novel 1897—an aging Revisionist defense minister of Israel, weeping, if figuratively and from a distance, over the Bundist-bier of Marek Edelman. Let us ask what would prompt a hero like Arens to make this kind of bow to a hero at the other end of the ideological spectrum. We have come through a period marked by a vanishing Bund and an American Jewry in a crisis of intermarriage and assimilation. So it is a haunting question. No doubt Arens knows that we are in a time as dangerous for the Zionist enterprise—and so for all Jews—as any in history. We are in a period in which, if we are not careful, the dream of Herzl and the millions whose lives Zionism saved and inspired could be dealt a fate as cruel as that which was dealt to the socialists and to the Bund. It’s a moment when the example of a man like Marek Edelman towers over the generations.

Beautiful. Informative. Deep. Interesting.

I say that because I would normally probably glance over an article such as this and skip it. I read this one and decided it was time to pay homage to Alana Newhouse and the crew she’s put together.

Tablet is built on the foundation of Nextbook, a website and publisher that attempted to bring a focus to interesting Jewish books and writings. I don’t believe Nextbook ever got a large readership primarily because while well written, it was a cerebral approach to Jewish publishing and probably not on many readers’ wavelengths.

Not being from New York, I’m not quite sure of who is funding Tablet (and since I’m not a reporter, I’m not picking up the phone to ask somebody at that publication), but it appears to be getting its funding through Nextbook. According to the JTA, Nextbook is a non-profit which used to receive about $4.5 million a year from Keren Keshet Foundation and now receives about $3 million a year, most of which seems to go toward maintaining Tablet. Tablet has an impressive stable of writers and editors apparently on full time salary and it shows in the product they put out.

Having said that, I found this statement by Tablet’s editor, Alana Newhouse, a bit odd:

“There shouldn’t be the impression that we sunk a big load of money into this.”

$3 million a year may not be much money for a New York publication, but it seems to be a fair chunk of money by other standards. At Jewlicious, for example, I believe our budget, thanks to the small amount of advertising we get, is a couple to a few thousand dollars a year which ck uses to keep the site running, buy some cigarettes and maybe pay rent once or twice a year. The rest of us are paid nothing but somehow content gets published. Granted, it’s not edited (thank god, since I get to blather on and on), we sometimes post idiotic articles and I cannot compare ck’s or Grandmuffti’s writing to Seth Lipsky’s, but we’re probably running about $3 million bucks a year behind Tablet/Nextbook in our budgeting. This means that Muffti can’t even afford to use a program with a spell-checker, much less compete with Leon Wieseltier ( ).

Leon Wieseltier? Seth Lipsky? Jeffrey Goldberg? Victor Navasky? Daphne Merkin? Or lesser known, capable writers such as Jordan Hirsch (he’s an intern!) who wrote this fascinating article about Michael Oren and Dore Gold’s common links to a group of young committed Jews at Columbia in the early 1970s. Alright, I get the the $3 million. It appears to be money well spent and Tablet is putting out an excellent publication. Congratulations to Tablet and its leaders on entering an extremely competitive marketplace with a quality product that gives the other publications a run for their money.

I was led to this interview by screeching and yelling pro-Palestinian (read: anti-Israel) internet activists who complained about the unfairness of this interview and the manner in which Bill Moyers “took Israel’s side” in his interview of Richard Goldstone. So I actually took the time to listen and watch the entire interview and realized that many pro-Palestinians are idiots. This is an exceptional interview and one that gives Goldstone a great deal of credibility even if the really tough questions are not asked of him.

The bottom line of this interview is that Israel can play the political game all it wants, but it will not be able to avoid the inevitable investigation that the Goldstone Commission has called for. By postponing the inevitable, the Israelis are only hurting their own credibility. They should have taken on the challenge of an open investigation within days of this report coming out.

Goldstone is a sophisticated, articulate foe who is able to calmly counter most points raised to criticize his commission and responses to his most challenging questions have not been addressed by any party. The key questions and concerns he raises publicly relate to the destruction of agricultural and food producing sources, namely the flour mill and large chicken farm, as well as 200 industrial factories. I have less of a concern about the factories, since many may have been used for military efforts, but the food production sources raise legitimate questions that should be addressed by Israel.

The bottom line is that Goldstone is doing the media circuit across the globe but particularly in the US. His claims lie there on the table and even skeptical, skilled journalists are not challenging him on the details of his report or his mandate to the degree they should. For example, Moyers takes at face value that Goldstone’s mandate from the UNHRC was modified, but there is no actual modification to the original mandate and there is no challenge to Goldstone’s assertion that he was able to have the UNHRC change the language of their response to the Report. In that instance, Goldstone acknowledges that the UNHRC wrote a document full of anti-Israel bias but claims that he was able to influence an addition of a short paragraph demanding that all violence against civilians. Of course, the tough questions that are never asked of him are:
- Why do you accept any document that shows such anti-Israel bias?
- Why are you satisfied with a modification that still does not even hold the Palestinians minimally responsible for their actions and does not even mention the accusations against them specifically?
- Why do you contend that the mandate for your investigation was changed when in fact the outcome at the UNHRC reflects the original mandate and not the one you claimed you had?

And so on. There are many points on which to challenge Goldstone, but this is not going to happen on his current media circuit and with every interview he gives such as this, his credibility increases and Israel’s diminishes. Israel needs to stop procrastinating and delaying the inevitable investigation it will have to conduct.

Here is the Bill Moyers – Richard Goldstone interview, Part I.

Here is Part II.

Shabbat shalom!!

(Photo by the talented Rotem of Rotemtmonot on Flickr).

Very well done editorial about Goldstone, his report and the implications for Israel by the folks over at The Forward.

When he spoke with our Gal Beckerman on October 2, Goldstone took pains to characterize his mission for the U.N. Human Rights Council as purely fact-finding, gathering information that would later be evaluated and tested. A useful road map for further investigations, he said. It was almost as if he were trying to frame the 575-page report as a brief that members of the international community could look at and decide for themselves whether further action was warranted.

“We had to do the best we could with the material we had,” he said during the interview. “If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.”

And: “I wouldn’t consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turn out to be disproved.”

Nothing proven? Allegations? The air of tentativeness that hung over Goldstone’s remarks that day was surely missing from the stark and disturbing legal conclusions in the report, in which Israel was told flat out that it had violated international law by targeting civilians — “the people of Gaza as a whole.”

Nor is there anything tentative about Goldstone’s words in a New York Times opinion article published after the report was released, in which he wrote, “Repeatedly, the Israel Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as the laws of war strictly require.”

It is difficult to know what to make of these contradictory statements, except that it’s obvious Goldstone is trying to climb down from the dangerous perch he had built.

Read it all.

Also at the Forward, there’s a discussion of the JFNA Jewish Community Heroes competition where our own Rabbi Yonah Bookstein was the top vote-getter. Apparently some people are upset that an online competition had people using a variety of online tools to get votes. Other people are more upset that there are so many Chabadniks among the finalists. People should stop being upset and should be pretty glad that this competition was an unqualified success.

Okay, listen up! Anti-Semitism is an ugly scourge. It dehumanizes Jews and enables the hate and violence that has colored so much of our history.

But there’s anti-Semitism and there’s anti-Semitism.

There are anti-Semites who treat Jews as sub-human, or animal-like. There are some who consider Jews liars, cheats, thieves, etc. There are anti-Semites who attack Jews on the basis of looks, physical attributes, etc. There are anti-Semites who find negative stories or incidents relating to Jews and ascribe those motives, actions or behavior to all Jews. There are anti-Semites – sometimes embodied in the form of organizations and countries (certain NGOs and UN bodies…) – who treat the Jewish state, Israel, differently than all other states . Of course, there are anti-Semites who practice or seek to practice violence against Jews.

Then there are errors in judgment that may be anti-Semitic but unintentionally so. Malice is the differentiator. For example, when somebody who is ignorant about Jews but is a good person who means well, says something unpleasant about Jews, the first thing to do is gently correct them. Once corrected, take note of their behavior and it will be pretty easy to see whether they meant to be malicious or had made an innocent comment.

Let me also elaborate on one more point: many Jews are inherently paranoid. This is because we are the survivors of some of the horrors perpertrated against our people over millenia and in true Darwinian fashion, we’re the ones who are still around because we are lucky and because we are attuned to dangers lurking around the corner. Now just because we’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some people who are out to get us…but we need to be aware of who is an enemy and who isn’t.

It is in this spirit that I declare Ronan Tynan innocent!

“Two Jewish ladies were coming to view [an apartment in his building] and the agent said, ‘They are very particular’. And I said, ‘I don’t know how they will deal with having a singer beside them, practising all the time. That could be scary.’ We laughed about it.”

Tynan (49), from Kilkenny, had both legs amputated after a boating accident when he was 20. He studied medicine, became a recording artist and emigrated to New York 10 years ago. He became famous for singing at memorial services for firefighters and police killed on September 11th, at Ronald Reagan’s funeral, George W Bush’s White House and the wedding of former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani. He is best known for his performances at Yankees games.

On Thursday morning, another estate agent showed up with a potential tenant. “At least they’re not [Boston] Red Sox fans,” the agent joked. “At least they’re not the Jewish ladies,” Tynan replied, alluding to the finicky clients he had met earlier.

Dr Gabrielle Gold-von Simson, the prospective tenant, who is Jewish and a paediatrician at NYU Medical Centre, asked: “Why would you say that?” Tynan replied: “That would be scary” and laughed. “I referred back to the previous three weeks, when I had that conversation with the estate agent’s partner,” Tynan explained…

Apparently the good doctor recommended he make a $1000 contribution to charity as penance. Did he really need to do penance for that comment? Why not invite him for a chat, explain what was hurtful and move on? He wasn’t being malicious.

And in the same spirit I declare Edwin O. Merwin Jr., Chairman of the Bamberg County Republican Party, Denmark and James S. Ulmer Jr., Chairman, Orangeburg County Republican Party, North, INNOCENT.

Poor old Edwin and James were out there defending Jim DeMint from some well-intentioned, well-deserved and probably correct Democratic attacks. In the process, they put their foot in it:

There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.

Well, based on the reaction in SC, you’d think they were preventing Jews from working in hospitals or law firms, keeping them out of the country club, calling them hook-nosed shysters, trying to gas them or just being all mean and stuff.

One of two Jewish Democratic state Senators, Joel Lourie, said he was outraged:

“The words of these key Republican leaders are disgusting, unconscionable and represent prejudice in its purest form,”

Well, not quite.

You see, they were making a generalization, but they were trying to make a positive generalization. They didn’t say all Jews were wealthy, they didn’t say Jews got wealthy by cheating or stealing, they didn’t comment about Jewish values or Jewish ethics. No, all they did was say that some Jews watched their pennies and those pennies became dollars.

Now, I’ll give Rep Lourie a pass here. I’ve never lived in the South and I can understand how there may be greater sensitivity to the issue down there than in large urban centers in the Northeast, Midwest or West Coast. But for heaven’s sake, do they need to be shamed or insulted? It’s not as if they splattered Israel’s name all over the media because of an FBI sting operation that had nothing to do with Israel. It’s not as if they wrote a letter of admiration to Electronic Intifadah. It’s not as if they tried to become members of Stormfront. It’s not as if they came on to our site and began making disgusting generalizations about Jews or encouraging violence against us.

None of the above.

Can we all try to be sensitive but reasonable please? Isn’t this an opportunity to MAKE FRIENDS with people who should have known better but made an innocent mistake? Let’s bring them to our side, folks, because we need friends and not more enemies. Seriously, let’s try to be smart about this…

Oh and before somebody tells me I don’t know what I’m talking about, know that I used to have pennies thrown at me by some not so nice Catholic teenagers when I was a teenager because I was Jewish. This happened a number of times and I didn’t always have a chance to fight back. Today, however, their children probably wouldn’t throw pennies at my son because as they’ve grown, their attitudes have changed. Our society is changing and while there may be deep-rooted negative feelings about Jews in some circles (Mel Gibson anybody?), these are all people who can be shown the mistake of their ways. Gently. It’s easy to make enemies, but it’s also stupid. It’s also not necessary when a little tolerance and smarts could make them friends and allies.

Let these poor Republicans go back to their cigar-smoking, country-clubbin’ ways and let’s save our anger and outrage for truly outrageous anti-Semitism.

Somebody should put Mr. Goldstone in a room, lock the door, and read this to him about twenty or thirty times.

From today’s NY Times

Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast

By ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN
Published: October 19, 2009

AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics.

…

When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.

Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.

Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

…

Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.

…

But how does Human Rights Watch know that these laws have been violated? In Gaza and elsewhere where there is no access to the battlefield or to the military and political leaders who make strategic decisions, it is extremely difficult to make definitive judgments about war crimes. Reporting often relies on witnesses whose stories cannot be verified and who may testify for political advantage or because they fear retaliation from their own rulers. Significantly, Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and an expert on warfare, has said that the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza “did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

Robert L. Bernstein, the former president and chief executive of Random House, was the chairman of Human Rights Watch from 1978 to 1998.

UPDATE:

HRW released a letter, linked to in the comments below, poorly defending against Bernstein’s accusations. The Forward covered the story, where Bernstein’s old friends accuse him of having changed. Bernstein responds,

Bernstein, for his part, said he intends to keep writing about the issues he raised in his Times opinion article. And he rejects the accusation that his devotion of Israel has led him to compromise his principles.

“The easiest way to dispense with an argument is by saying that somebody is either pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian,” Bernstein said. “I’m just going to try and come off as pro-human rights. Simple as that.”

And by doing so, rightfully shames them yet again.

Speaking of Mr. Kemp, here is his full comment spoken in June and here is what he said last week at the UNHRC’s farce that proved just how wrong Goldstone was to claim that the “mandate” of his mission had been changed.

Remember when we wrote about the possibility that the Steve Weissman and Keith Rosen case was a set up by the FBI that may have had some nasty underlying motives. Of course, their case was dismissed recently in a total vindication for them. It only took several years and the destruction of their lives and careers for the truth to come out, however, and in the meantime, anti-Israel forces got a lot of traction accusing Israel of all sorts of sordid deeds in the US and US Jews who support Israel of preferential loyalty to Israel.

A telling epilogue to the Weissman/Rosen case was its conclusion when, as they were being vindicated, it was leaked that Jane Harman was “exposed” in WIRETAPS for having supposedly given promises to help AIPAC out. The Harman story received a ton of press, and was vehemently denied and objected to by Rep. Harman, a Jewish woman who was being clearly, if indirectly, falsely accused of dual loyalties. It became apparent that this was some sort of hit job and that she had done nothing improper, but once again, a Jewish person was attacked by forces in the Department of Justice or the FBI for supposedly doing something improper to advance Israel and it took a great deal of denials and the probable loss of her reputation permanently to lift the attacks of conspiracy and dual loyalty from the air.

Something similar happened again today in a new law enforcement matter. If you haven’t seen them, thousands of international headlines are screaming similar headlines to “US scientist charged with attempted spying for Israel” and “US Scientist Arrested for Allegedly Attempting to Pass Secrets to Israel.”

The story is that in a sting operation, the FBI trapped Stewart David Nozette, a NASA employee with extensive knowledge of satellites and other space technologies, by convincing him they were the Mossad and were willing to pay him for his knowledge of classified data.

Nozette, apparently a brilliant scientist with the street smarts of a goldfish, fell for it hook, line and sinker. He let them record him, permitted them to leave him money in a PO box, answered their questionnaire with some classified information and even provided computer data. He thought he was working for the Mossad, but in reality, he was working for the FBI. Why did the FBI target him? Apparently he had a conversation a couple of months earlier with a co-worker where he claimed that were he in criminal trouble, he would escape to an unnamed foreign country or Israel by providing them with classified data. Oops.

Now, the unnamed foreign country is an interesting bit of information because it appears that Nozette already had some dealings in another country where he was running a part time technology business. Nowhere in the indictment is the name of this country listed. However, Israel is listed numerous times. In what can only be described as an outrage, particularly since it has fed all the headlines around the world, the Conclusion in an affidavit provided by the agent, Leslie G. Martell, who was the key contact in the sting, states:

“Nozette knowingly and willfully attempted to communicate, deliver and transmit to a foreign government, to wit the Government of the State of Israel, and representatives, officers and agents thereof, both directly and indirectly, classified documents and information relating to the national defense of the United States…with intent and reason to believe that said documents and information would be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation, namely the Government of the State of Israel…

Nozette asked for an Israeli passport at one point. Here’s how he did it:

“I would like, I don’t know if it going to cost me anything, but I have no idea how to, or effectively, bureaucratically do it. So, my parents are Jewish, right?…So I have, I theoretically have the right of return.”

Martell responds:

“Okay, to the state. Yes.”

Nozette:

“Right. How could I get an Israeli passport?”

The guy doesn’t refer to himself as Jewish, doesn’t know much about the right of return, doesn’t know how to get a passport (how about calling an Israeli embassy or consulate to ask, you idiot, or google it!) and is committing this crime for money and not because of loyalty or concern for Israel or because he identifies as a Jew.

Not only that, but at no point in any of this were Israel or the Mossad involved in any way. This was a pure FBI operation based on Nozette’s comments to his colleague. The official Department of Justice press release about this case states this fact:

The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case.

So why did the media report this story as an Israel espionage story? Because the agent’s affidavit is a public document and this document, presumably seen by his superiors and by the legal staff at the FBI, blames and names Israel. “Nozette knowingly and willfully attempted to communicate, deliver and transmit to a foreign government, to wit the Government of the State of Israel…with intent and reason to believe that said documents and information would be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation, namely the Government of the State of Israel.”

Couldn’t they leave it at “foreign nation?” It could have been Zimbabwe or Sri Lanka. Why name Israel? And why say “advantage of a foreign nation?” What advantage is that? That nation wasn’t even aware of any of this and according to the affidavit and charges seems to have no involvement with Nozette. Also, why does the claim include the charge that the information would be injurious to the US and advantageous to Israel? How did a pretend FBI operation run by American agents against an American scientist who clearly has few or no ties to Israel become something advantageous to Israel? How is all of this stated openly while the other foreign country in this case, the one with which Nozette apparently had actual dealings, is listed simply as Foreign Country A? Couldn’t they name that country instead? Couldn’t they use that country’s secret service agency as their cover?

What the hell?

What the hell is wrong with this world?

UPDATE:

A friend and former colleague of Nozette’s writes that he had no idea Nozette was Jewish. There’s a short and interesting discussion that follows.

The New York Times reports that:

In a startling shift, the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council dropped its efforts to forward a report accusing Israel of possible war crimes to the Security Council, under pressure from the United States, diplomats said Thursday.

The Americans argued that pushing the report now would derail the Middle East peace process that they are trying to revive, diplomats said.

“We don’t want to create an obstacle for them,” Ibrahim Khraishi, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said by telephone from Geneva, where the Human Rights Council is based. “We want to get a strong resolution to deal with the report in a good manner to get a benefit from it.”

Trying to find the reason, the reporter, Neil MacFarquhar, suggest the reason for this shift is pressure by Israel on the Americans and possibly on the Palestinian Authority:

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, warned the Palestinians and international powers earlier Thursday that any action to advance the report would be a denial of Israel’s “right to self-defense” and would kill any chance of peace talks.

Mr. Netanyahu, speaking during a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, said that any international endorsement of the report would “strike a severe blow to the war against terrorism.”

But most immediately, he said, it would “strike a fatal blow to the peace process, because Israel will no longer be able to take additional steps and take risks for peace if its right to self-defense is denied.”

Well, that’s an interesting theory, but let’s read what David Horovitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post has to say (read it, it’s an excellent analysis):

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Here we go again…

We already brought you one excellent example of Israeli apartheid and now it is time to bring all of our readers yet another hideous example of Israeli apartheid.

Our previous example of Israeli apartheid told of a non-Jewish Arab Israeli citizen with full voting rights in Israel who was a member of the same fitness club as Israel’s IDF Chief of Staff who is Jewish. In South Africa’s apartheid regime, a black and a white couldn’t share the same bus, get married, or have the black person vote for the country’s government, and they definitely did not share fitness facilities. Obviously Israel has much to learn about apartheid.

However, Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter and Ronnie Kasrils have all compared Israel to an apartheid regime and in light of that we at Jewlicious.com have a responsibility to update our readers with as many examples of Israeli apartheid as we can find. Today’s example is the ongoing education of Omar Barghouti.

Omar Barghouti first came to my attention as a speaker at the York University Let’s-Make-Israel-A-Single-State conference a few months ago. There he spoke about settlers and indigenous people, without differentiating whether the “settlers” were inside or outside the Green Line. I didn’t hear his talk but in the abstract of his presentation at York University, he proposed a system that works quite well in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Iran and Libya:

…Addressing the basic requirements of justice, the secular democratic state model has the best chance to ethically de-dichotomize and decolonize, or de-zionize, Palestine, thereby leading to a just and lasting peace that is anchored in international law and universal human rights and is conducive to ethical coexistence. Such a process of non-violent transformation requires a revitalized, democratized Palestinian civil resistance movement with a clear vision for a shared, just society and international support for Palestinian rights and for ending all forms of Zionist apartheid and colonial rule, mainly through boycott, divestment and sanctions, BDS, campaigns.

Just as a side note, Omar Barghouti was permitted to present at the York conference although he has no Ph.D. and isn’t an academic. His bio at the conference stated that he is:

…A founding member of the Palestinian campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel to uphold international law and universal human rights…He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering.

Using those standards, it’s surprising that the York conference didn’t invite me to give a talk about Zionism and justice, but what can you expect when the conference itself was organized by another fella, Mazen Masri, who didn’t have a doctorate. Master’s degrees are apparently excellent degrees – and in fact all you need – to possess when decrying Israeli apartheid.

An interesting omission on the conference’s bio of Omar Barghouti is that he is currently studying for a doctorate at an Israeli university – Tel Aviv University. Of course, Mazen Masri, the conference’s co-organizer, earned one of his degrees, a law degree, at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. APARTHEID!!

Just in case this isn’t fully clear, allow me to explain. The apartheid state of Israel funds its public universities with taxpayer funds. Needless to say, these are the taxes paid primarily, though not solely, by the apartheid-monster-like secular and modern Orthodox Jewish Israelis to the apartheid state of Israel (there are serious tax collection problems in the Haredi and Arab sectors because of poverty rates and rejection of the authority of the state). Then, these apartheid-funded apartheid universities allow non-Jewish Palestinian Arabs (or Israeli-Arabs if you prefer) to study within them at apartheid-taxpayer subsidized rates. True success is measured by the urgency and vigor of the graduate’s attacks on Israel. Mr. Masri and Mr. Barghouti are indeed poster children for how efficiently and effectively this system works.

In fact, it works so well that Mr. Barghouti decided to stick it out after his master’s and go for the doctorate.

Now, you may be thinking in your little apartheid-loving mind that somebody should try to get Barghouti out of Tel Aviv University since the tax dollars could go to another student who might decide to, you know, practice apartheid instead of decry apartheid. Well, you apartheid-junkie, you think just like a colonizing settler who is victimizing the indigenous Barghoutis! In fact, some of them wrote letters and put out a petition addressed to TAU complaining that apartheid regimes don’t subsidize their enemies.

Go and tell that to the apartheid President of Tel Aviv University:

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
May 3, 2009
Dear Governors and Friends,
I am writing to you to clarify the University’s standing on the recent debate regarding Omar Barghouti, a Tel Aviv University master’s student of philosophy. Mr. Barghouti is leading an international campaign to boycott Israeli universities, despite being a student at one of those universities.
A university campus should be a place that encourages and tolerates free speech, no matter how offensive the expressed opinions may be to the majority of students and faculty at that institution, or indeed to the public at large. Our university has adopted a similar policy also in previous occasions. Moreover, if legal issues are involved, a university does not have the authority to prosecute individuals. Rather, such a matter should be pursued by the State through legal channels.
In response, therefore, to the petition calling for the expulsion of Mr. Barghouti that will be submitted to us in the near future, the University cannot and will not expel this student based on his political views or actions. He will be assessed only on the basis of his academic achievements and excellence.

Yours faithfully,
Prof. Zvi Galil

It is easy to understand why the world needs a boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel and its apartheid policies, isn’t it?

By the way, when a Forward reporter asked Barghouti about his subsidized Israeli education, Barghouti said that he “wouldn’t discuss his personal life.”

Of course not. Who has time when one is fighting apartheid?

Hmmm. An Open Letter?

The Anti-Hate Declaration: An Open Letter to the Toronto Palestine Film Festival
September 25, 2009

Let me state for the record that I am merely expressing my opinions and I do not advocate a boycott against TPFF. This is merely a protest letter.

I have been inspired by the letters of protest and boycott against the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival and have come to realize that as a member of the international internet, film, culture and media arts communities, I am deeply disturbed by the Toronto Palestine Film Festival’s decision to host a celebratory film festival in 2009 with an emphasis on certain types of Palestinian films. I protest that TPFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Palestinian propaganda machine.

In 2009, Hamas, the ruling party in Gaza, was accused by the UNHRC’s Goldstone Report of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. In response, a Hamas minister announced to the press that the Palestinians were using “primitive rockets” and were actually aiming at army bases. This disingenuous response after the launching of 8000 rockets at Israeli civilian centers, including towns as far as Ashdod and Beersheva is clearly unsatisfactory and serves as no defense.
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The NY Times reports about a wartime service by Max Fuchs who led a service just before an attack. Fuchs was studying to be a cantor but the war interrupted.

A private first class in the First Infantry Division, Mr. Fuchs volunteered to sing that day because there was no cantor available. In fact, Mr. Fuchs had been studying to become a cantor, when the war broke out. But he had left his studies and was drafted, and never considered the chaplaincy.

His parents emigrated from Poland in 1934, when he was 12. Some of his aunts, uncles and cousins who remained were killed after the German invasion in 1939, he said in the interview. He wanted to fight the Nazis.

For 20 years afterward, Mr. Fuchs said, he suffered recurring nightmares about the war. He tried not to think about it too much.

And just to show you how on top of things we are on Jewlicious, this Youtube video has been out there for only 4 years, and it only took a NY Times article to point out the existence of this video to yours truly. We’re obviously getting old.

Israel is missing the boat here. Attacking Goldstone is not going to win the day. The only way they can actually rebut the challenges in the Goldstone report is with FACTS. They need to present facts about their attacks, the reasoning for the attacks, the intelligence (if any) gathered prior to the attack, the proportionality of the attack, etc.

If they are dreaming that somehow they will be able to ignore the presentation of facts as a counterweight to a 600 page report filled with information, they need to wake up. It is also in the interest of objective justice that they present counter-evidence. There can be no acceptance by Israel of crimes by its own soldiers. Their investigations can avoid the bias that Goldstone permitted in his research, but they need to be authentic investigations with real outcomes – whether the parties are innocent or guilty.

The problem for Israel now is that Goldstone doesn’t want his efforts wasted. He has decided that this report should not end up in the dustbin of history. In light of this, he had his daughter provide Israeli newspapers with a heartwarming tale about his Zionism and her passionate love for Israel. After buying his bona fides as a good Zionist and Jew (she mentioned he was visiting her for Rosh Hashanah), today Goldstone wrote an op-ed in the NY Times (so that a certain US President would be certain to see it) in which he stands by the objectivity of his committee and actually justifies their flawed mandate. Then he presses hard for international bodies, the International Criminal Court and the UN Security Council, to take steps that follow his report’s recommendations.
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Ken Roth could have attacked his own organization for employing well-known anti-Israel activists such as Joe Stork and Sarah Whitson, or analysts who have a passion for Nazi uniforms and insignia. He could have asked himself whether years of bias against Israel including being a driving force in the bigoted, one-sided attacks on Israel at Durban I, or going to fund-raise in Saudi Arabia of all countries while pointing to HRW’s critiques of Israel as a selling point give him or his organization any right to speak about Israel at all.

But no, instead Ken Roth decided to attack Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian Minister of Justice, for publishing criticism of the Goldstone Commission. We have published parts of Mr. Cotler’s powerful argument against the Goldstone Commission, but now I have to publish part of his response to Ken Roth who wrote about Cotler:

Irwin Cotler’s attack in these pages on Judge Richard Goldstone’s UN-mandated investigation of the conflict is of a piece with these efforts (”The Goldstone Mission – Tainted to the core,” August 17 and 19). Rather than addressing the sad reality in Gaza, he effectively offers an apology for Israeli abuse.

…

Cotler, like other uncritical defenders of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, undoubtedly feels that he is doing Israel a service by deflecting criticism of the serious abuses committed.

…
The problem is not the messenger carrying news of that misconduct, whether Judge Goldstone or the human rights groups that have been the target of a disinformation campaign launched by the Israeli government and some supporters. The problem is the conduct of the Israeli military.

The government does great harm to the security of its people if it uses the kind of diversionary public-relations techniques favored by Cotler rather than acknowledging, and correcting, that disturbing reality.

That is pretty harsh stuff and Cotler did not take it lying down.

Never mind that I have appeared in Israeli courts and made representations to the Israeli government on subjects ranging from the protection of Palestinian refugees to the status of Ethiopian Jews; never mind that I served as international legal counsel to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group – until I became minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada – on issues regarding human rights violations in the occupied territories and in Israel; or that I have visited Israel and Gaza more than Ken Roth has, including meeting with Palestinian government leaders and leaders of Palestinian civil society in Ramallah this past August.

…

Roth ignores that I write as a Canadian for whom the UN is an organizing idiom of Canadian foreign policy; for whom international law is part of my Canadian DNA as well as my DNA as a law professor; for whom human rights has been my country’s – and my own – clarion call. That is what concerns me so much about the Goldstone mission, and it is this very concern which Roth chooses to ignore or misrepresent.

Simply put, this flawed mission is not only established under the authority of the obsessively discriminatory UN Human Rights Council, it is irredeemably tainted by the prejudicial resolution establishing the mission itself. Roth should read – or reread – the resolution; it is a star-chamber indictment. It is precisely Goldstone’s participation and distinction that is used to sanitize the resolution, which Goldstone acknowledged was one-sided, though he believed he had a more even-handed mandate given to him by the president of the UN Human Rights Council.

…

In a word, Roth writes not like a lawyer – let alone a human rights lawyer – but as a propagandist. There is an old adage that if you are weak on the facts, argue the law; if you are weak on the law, argue the facts; if you are weak on both, smear. At the end of the day it is what Roth’s article was all about.

I’ve been reading the Goldstone report and while the charges against Israel are strong, at every turn I keep asking two questions: how can anybody fight a war differently when the enemy uses civilians and civilian areas as cover, and, how can Goldstone trust any witness accounts since the report acknowledges that witnesses may have been intimidated.

It is also surprising to see that despite the clear limits of his mandate, limits which precluded Goldstone from deeply delving into the years of Hamas attacks on Israel and the Israeli DIPLOMATIC attempts to have these attacks stopped, he had no problem attacking the Israeli judiciary as well as parts of Israel’s “occupation” which include, according to his report’s language, “Occupied Palestinian Territory: the West Bank, including east Jerusalem.”

It ain’t Palestinian territory, and unless they come to a peace agreement, it won’t be. Also, UNSCR 242 ensures that Jerusalem will not be treated as “Palestinian territory” and at best will require a compromise over its sovereignty. To remind Goldstone and even the UN, while acquisition of territory by force is impermissible, the territory must have been in the legal possession of a high contracting authority – a state. Jordan’s rule over the West Bank was (correctly) never accepted by the international community and there was no ownership of that territory prior to the Jordanian conquest since the Ottomans lost all rights to it and the British only controlled it in order to, as the League of Nations demanded in their mandate handed to the British, prepare the area to become a home for the Jewish people.

My sense is that just as Israel told the Commission to go stick it, perhaps the head of the Commission was a tad offended or angry – which would be understandable – and maybe for a brief moment forgot the need for impartiality and decided to stick it right back to the Israelis. If they weren’t going to give him the information he sought, then he would force them to provide it anyway, hence his recommendations to have Israel provide investigation information to key UN bodies DESPITE the fact that Israel has been investigating its forces and their actions during the Gaza War.

Hamas, which of course is not held to any such obligations, is laughing their beards off. So is the Palestinian Authority.

I should add that in a surreal turn of events, Nicole Goldstone, daughter of the now infamous judge, actually gave interviews to Israeli papers defending her dad. She proclaimed her fervent love for Israel and acknowledged the report was harsh but she loves her dad. Yay.