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Heaven On Earth
Monthly Archives: December 2007
Uri Avnery, Still Pining for Arafat, Wallows in Self-Hatred in Al-Jazeera
Uri Avnery, former commando and current ‘peace’ activist, has long been used by the enemies of Israel. And he allows himself to be used, almost revelling in it. As a confidant of Arafat, Avnery allowed himself to be photographed with him for propaganda purposes and defended him even at the height of Arafat’s terror campaign. As Avnery said in an interview with Ari Shavit-
“Of course he used me. I was perfectly aware of that. In various situations it was convenient for him to have an Israeli like me by his side. But, after all, that is why we met: so we could used each other for the cause that both he and I believed in.”
Today, he published an article in Al-Jazeera dripping with nostalgia for the days when a one-state solution (or a no Israel solution) was still feasible. Avnery has defended Walt and Mearsheimer’s notion of a powerful Israel Lobby controlling American politics:
The findings of the two professors are right to the last detail. Every Senator and Congressman knows that criticizing the Israeli government is political suicide. Two of them, a Senator and a Congressman, tried – and were politically executed. The Jewish lobby was fully mobilized against them and hounded them out of office. This was done openly, to set a public example.
The Jews-killing-Jesus parallel is barely hidden.
Islamic Moderates? Where?
Recent events in the Islamic world, most notably the Qatif rape case and the Sudan Muhammed teddy bear, have brought the nature of Islamic justice to focus in the Western media. While this may be a blip on the screen before the return to contented head-in-the-sand reporting, there is at least the potential that our media’s indignation will ease the path for coverage like Glenn Beck’s show on Jihadi Islam.
Muslim organizations’ concern with the image of Islam over the nature of Islam is a function of an honor/shame society. The West is concerned with guilt, which comes as a result of introspection. Honor/shame societies, such as those in Muslim countries, are concerned with their image in the eyes of others, and do not engage in self-criticism.
The following article, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, appeared in The New York Times.
Islam’s Silent Moderates
By AYAAN HIRSI ALI
Published: December 7, 2007The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication, flog each of them with 100 stripes: Let no compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day. (Koran 24:2)
IN the last few weeks, in three widely publicized episodes, we have seen Islamic justice enacted in ways that should make Muslim moderates rise up in horror.
A 20-year-old woman from Qatif, Saudi Arabia, reported that she had been abducted by several men and repeatedly raped. But judges found the victim herself to be guilty. Her crime is called “mingling”: when she was abducted, she was in a car with a man not related to her by blood or marriage, and in Saudi Arabia, that is illegal. Last month, she was sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes with a bamboo cane.
The Differences in Israeli and American Intelligence Estimates
Israeli and American intelligence differ significantly in their assessment of the timeline for the Iranian nuclear program. Yaakov Katz explains the reasons behind those discrepancies in The Jerusalem Post. (Hattip- A.M.)
All it took was eight pages, and the entire international front against Iran has undergone a revolution.
The US intelligence report released Monday with the claim that Iran froze its nuclear military track four years ago has Israel concerned that the United States is weakening its strong stance against Iran that had President George W. Bush warning that World War III would break out if the ayatollahs got their hands on a bomb.
What the report makes even clearer are the major differences between the various intelligence agencies in Israel and the United States.
The Connection between Iraq and the NIE
What effect did the American-led invasion of Iraq have on the Iranian nuclear weapons program in 2003? JINSA argues it may have convinced Iran, much like Libya, that the U.S. was serious about ensuring countries did not achieve nuclear weapons capability. This is an idea the MSM, in their reluctance to point to any major positive result of the war in Iraq, do not often entertain.
The NIE – A First Thought
One of the interesting things about national intelligence is that while it describes what it thinks it sees (hedging its bets with what it calls “estimative language” and degrees of confidence), it derives no implications and prescribes no policies. Also remember that National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) only cover what the intelligence community is studying – our intelligence community missed the Pakistani nuclear test until it happened, missed the three-stage North Korean rocket until it was fired over Japan, and missed the extent of the Libyan nuclear program until the Libyans turned it over.
So what to make of the new unclassified NIE on Iran? Not having to worry about implications or policy, it is quick reading. The “Key Judgments” are only three pages long, followed by a handy-dandy chart comparing the 2005 NIE to its current counterpart.
Quotes Regarding Iran and Annapolis
A round-up of this week’s quotes regarding the Iranian threat and the Annapolis conference, from Isranet.org.
WEEKLY QUOTES
“Iran was dangerous. Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon…. Iran had a hidden, covert nuclear weapons program. What’s to say they couldn’t start another covert nuclear weapons program? The best diplomacy, effective diplomacy is one in which all options are on the table…. I view this report as a warning signal [because] they could restart it. And the thing that would make a restarted program effective and dangerous is the ability to enrich uranium…”-U.S. President George W. Bush, who is scheduled to visit Israel next month to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, responding to the new National Intelligence Estimates report, a combined analysis of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. The NIE indicates that Iran suspended its nuclear program in 2003 but continues to enrich uranium-a requirement in the production of an atomic weapon-and develop long-range ballistic missiles. (CanWest, Dec. 5; National Post, Dec. 4)
Tom Gross on Believing Ahmadinejad
The new National Intelligence Estimate is being trumpeted by much of the mainstream media as proof that there is nothing to fear from Iran. One can sense the relief in the reports, and immediately the media started attacking the “hawks” who warned about the Iranian threat.
This behavior is to be expected by a media that considers a major part of its role to be reducing the chances of war. The NIE is much more ambiguous than is being reported, and contains the work of those same agencies that last week were being ridiculed for their work on Iraq. Iranian disinformation is injected to the heart of the West’s public opinion through its media.
The following is from Tom Gross’ posts on National Review’s media blog.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
AHMADINEJAD DOESN’T WANT A NUCLEAR BOMB? JUST LIKE THERE ARE NO GAYS IN IRAN?
I don’t think we can rely too much on the National Intelligence Estimate report yesterday if we want to avoid nuclear war in future. The chances that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is telling the truth about not wanting a nuclear bomb – or at least a dirty bomb he can give to one of his client militias like Hizbullah or Hamas – are about the same as the chances that he is telling the truth when he says there are no homosexuals in Iran.
Ahmadinejad, however, was thrilled by the American intelligence report’s contents and the timing of its release. He told cheering crowds this afternoon that it was “Iran’s biggest victory in 100 years”.
Noah Pollak Factchecks Daniel Levy
Noah Pollak, writing for the National Review Online, checks Daniel Levy’s accuracy and honesty. Not surprisingly, neither are Levy’s forte.
Rewriting History
Factchecking Levy.By Noah Pollak
Daniel Levy has of late become one of the most sought-after leftist commentators on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and one of the most frequently quoted and interviewed pundits on the subject in the mainstream press. His name regularly appears in news stories in the New York Times and Washington Post, among other papers. Cultivating an image of expertise and sobriety, he is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, which advertises itself as a center-left source of serious analysis. The day after Annapolis, he debated David Frum for 40 minutes on bloggingheads.tv, the video of which was posted at the end of last week and which has now been posted on the New York Times’s website.
The Sudanese Muhammed Bear: Not Yet a Happy Ending
The Muhammed teddy bear episode, coming on the heels of the Saudi rape-victim flogging case, could prove to be a catalyst to awaken the West to nature of today’s Islamic political/religious culture. The USA Today hopes that it will arouse moderate Muslims to a prolonged and serious campaign against Muslim extremists.
Message from a teddy bear
The pictures and sound bites scream: “Hollywood happy ending!” On Tuesday, British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons, 54, arrived home in Liverpool after being pardoned by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir from a 15-day sentence for “insulting Islam” because she had let her class of 7-year-olds call a teddy bear Mohammed. Days earlier, crowds on Sudan’s streets, incited by hard-line imams, had sought her execution.
After Months of Struggle, Glenn Beck Managed to Air Show on Extremist Islam
Last year, Glenn Beck of CNN Headline News ran a series entitled “Exposed: The Extremist Agenda”.
In the first segment, Beck asks the crucial question- As someone ‘in the know’, why hadn’t he been exposed to the virulence and intensity of Jihadi propaganda coming from the Muslim world? The first clip was his wake-up call, and he felt it was his duty to make this important, vastly under-reported aspect of Muslim and Arab society known to Western viewers.
It is proper that he let the viewer know that he is editorializing, and is not engaging in dispassionate journalism. He does so. However, the fact that his report paints the Islamic world in certain light does not necessarily mean the piece is unbalanced, as he says. While there are many other aspects of Muslim and Arab political culture, the footage and propaganda seen in Beck’s piece are a central aspect of that culture, and an honest account must present this kind of footage.
Central to a complete grasp of the issue is the international nature of the problem. An argument by those who wish to trivialize the problem is that each country has its own dynamic, and Iranian Jihadism cannot be lumped together with Saudi or Palestinian. Beck takes the appropriate broad view, seeing a phenomenon that is anti-nationalistic, and is not affected by borders or countries.
Sad al-Din Ibrahim: No Friend to America, Israel, or Islamists
Sad al-Din Ibrahim is a noted Egyptian sociologist and reformer, and is head of the Ibn Khaldun Center in Cairo. While he is not a friend of the United States or Israel (he supports Hezbollah’s armed ‘resistance’ against Israel) , Ibrahim is not afraid to recognize and speak publicly about the benefit that could be reaped for the Arab world if it would accomodate American democratization efforts, and use Israeli and American democracy as a model.
In June, 2007, Egyptian MP Murtadha Mansour filed a lawsuit against Ibrahim accusing him of treason and conspiring against the homeland. Mansour claimed that Ibrahim was paid by the U.S. embassy in Egypt and the wife of Qatar’s emir to disseminate false information about Egypt.
The following video is from Dubai’s Al-Arabiya TV, October 10, 2005.
Prof. Barry Rubin: In Support of ‘Constructive Cynicism”
Prof. Barry Rubin, Director of the GLORIA Center, introduces the idea of “Constructive Cynicism”. As it relates to the Annapolis conference, Rubin argues that there is tangible benefit for America and Israel from the illusion of a renewed peace process, so long as the Bush Administration does not actually pressure Israel to accept a significant agreement that would change the political and security arrangement.
Prof. Rubin discusses briefly the media’s “Both Sides” approach, a point that I have put forth on these pages. When the reader sees an op-ed arguing something along the lines of “both sides are controlled by extremists, both sides have legitimate grievances that they must relinquish, etc”, the reader knows that he is being given an idealized, all-sides-are-equal argument that allows the Western journalist to remain in the comfort zone- there are no real villains, just two sides making the same mistakes, and if they only sat down and talked about their misunderstandings, there would be peace.
Annapolis: One Cheer, One Yawn, One Cynical Shrug
Barry Rubin
December 03, 2007Before the Annapolis meeting, some said the operation would save the patient; others that it would kill the patient. In fact, the patient is exactly the same but the doctors had a hell of a big party and congratulated themselves on doing a terrific job.
We’ll end the conflict by December 2008, says President Bush. We want to make peace and get along, say Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) The Western media cheers it as a big success since everyone showed up and said the right words; nobody walked out or hurled insults. It’s enough to make you believe that peace is at hand.
Humiliation and Apartheid: On how NOT to make Peace
When people hear my analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict in terms of honor and shame, they quite consistently challenge me in one of two ways: 1) “That’s racist”; and 2) “So what do you suggest we do?”
The sous-texte of such a challenge is: “This is a cultural problem so deep there’s nothing one can do to change it.” Indeed, right under the surface of the argument that this is racism lies a particularly nasty “essentialist” argument that Arabs cannot grow up; they will always be stuck in a world of excessively touchy honor to which they will consistently sacrifice not only the lives of those they feel have “humiliated them,” but their own welfare as well.
And yet, the self-same people who dismiss trying to change Arab/Muslim attitudes towards honor, regularly seek to appease and cater to those same concerns. The entire edifice of Western appeasement — don’t provoke them by criticizing them — rests on an astounding abdication of the great power we have to influence them, indeed, a surrender to their weakest trait: their desperate need for “respect.”
Caroline Glick’s recent column on the Annapolis meeting offers an ideal opportunity to examine not only the dynamics of this misconceived policy, but also how to change it constructively.
Column One: Apartheid, not peace
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 30, 2007This week the Bush Administration legitimized Arab anti-Semitism. In an effort to please the Saudis and their Arab brothers, the Bush administration agreed to physically separate the Jews from the Arabs at the Annapolis conference in a manner that aligns with the apartheid policies of the Arab world which prohibit Israelis from setting foot on Arab soil.
Evident everywhere, the discrimination against Israel received its starkest expression at the main assembly of the Annapolis conference on Tuesday. There, in accordance with Saudi demands, the Americans prohibited Israeli representatives from entering the hall through the same door as the Arabs.
Glick is absolutely right to put this in the context of apartheid, since apartheid is all about humiliating others, all about the efforts of insecure people to reassure themselves of their superiority by showing how they can visibly dominate others. This is the logic of the dhimma in Islam, where those who refuse to convert to Islam deserve humiliation because they were irrational enough to reject Islam. Several scholars have noted the correlation between the insecurity of Muslims and the intensity with which they insisted on humiliating the Dhimmi:
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The periods when Islamic states were strong generally coincided with more relaxed attitude towards dhimmis; however, treatment of non-Muslims usually became harsher when Islam was weak and in decline.[51][52] Over time, the treatment of dhimmis tended to develop in cycles, such that periods of when restrictions imposed on dhimmis were relaxed were immediately followed by the periods of pious reaction when such restrictions came to be enforced again.[53]
The Saudi demand not only not to shake hands with the Israelis not only reflects this apartheid mentality, but also expresses their utter refusal to recognize the Israelis as legitimate. No better symbol of the fundamental problem in this conflict: an independent Jewish state cannot — must not — exist in the heart of dar al Islam. For the Americans to allow this at a alleged “peace” conference represents the height of folly. It is a clear signal to the Saudis — and their fellow Arabs — that they can continue to militate for the elimination of the humiliating Zionist entity.
Granted, the Americans were in a pickle. They desperately wanted the Saudis to come, and [did not think they] were not in a position to tell them to either grow up or not come. But they could have isolated the Saudis, by having them come through their own door, and the Israelis and the others come through the main door. Standing firm on this — you cannot insist on the humiliation of the Israelis — seems to me to be a fundamental principle that should underlie all US diplomacy. This should be non-negotiable.
At the meeting of foreign ministers on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called her Arab counterparts to task for their discriminatory treatment. “Why doesn’t anyone want to shake my hand? Why doesn’t anyone want to be seen speaking to me?” she asked pointedly.
Apparently, allowing the Saudis to come made sure that everyone stepped into line. It is one of the characteristics of an honor-shame culture (and the MSM) that pack mentalities rule. If you shake hands with the Israelis along with many others, that’s okay; if you are the only one to shake hands with the Israelis, then you are ostracized. One of the ways the US could have handled this Saudi demand, was to insist that all the other delegations shake hands with the Israelis.
Israel’s humiliated foreign minister did not receive support from her American counterpart. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who spent her childhood years in the segregated American South, sided with the Arabs. Although polite enough to note that she doesn’t support the slaughter of Israelis, she made no bones about the fact that her true sympathies lie with the racist Arabs.
As she put it, “I know what it is like to hear that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are a Palestinian. I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness.”
Rice’s remarks make clear that for the Secretary of State there is no difference between Israelis trying to defend themselves from a jihadist Palestinian society which supports the destruction of the Jewish state and bigoted white Southerners who oppressed African Americans because of the color of their skin. It is true that Israel has security concerns, but as far as Rice is concerned, the Palestinians are the innocent victims. They are the ones who are discriminated against and humiliated, not Livni, who was forced – by Rice – to enter the conference through the service entrance.
The problem of Condoleeza Rice’s projections of her own “liberal” cognitive egocentrism onto the Arab Israeli conflict are well known. Indeed, her insistence on seeing the conflict through the screen of American race relations — Israeli checkpoints are like Jim Crow laws; Abbas, like MLK, wants peace — call into question her renowned intelligence, and illustrate how easily even the most intelligent conservatives are subject to the kind of idiotic analogies that so often drive “progressive” thought.
Of course, the Israelis should have seen this coming, and hit CR with a pack of information distinguishing between the predicament of the Palestinians and that of the African Americans, as soon as she started making this grotesque analogy. She should be publicly ashamed to make such hair-brained comparisons that illustrate the worst of “progressive” thought these days. Instead, she feels she can make these kind of remarks as part of a “balanced,” “both sides suffer pain” speech that encourages the worst kind of thinking.
Annapolis shows that long-range thinking is completely absent from both the Israeli and the American agenda, and as a result, the long-range Arab thinking consistently positions itself well. The core of the conflict is honor-shame; and the core of its resolution will be to address these issues. Israelis owe it to themselves and the rest of the free world to think these things through carefully, and be prepared not only to make some demands the next time these issues arise, but to make clear why those demands are in everyone’s favor — Israelis, Westerners, Palestinians, Muslims… the whole world. No one but the most regressive warmongers can benefit by this complete abdication in the face of the demands of Arab “honor.”
UPDATE (HT: Judith Rosay): Caroline Glick has subsequently retracted this report which both US and Israeli government officials have contradicted, denying that there were separate entrances at Annapolis. This obviously changes the tenor of my remarks about US behavior which was considerably better than I had feared. The underlying analysis remains; as does the revolting behavior of the Arabs at Annapolis.
Karsenty Interview in the Jerusalem Post
After largely disappointing Jerusalem Post coverage of the Karsenty appeal, the Post’s Ruthie Blum sat down with Philippe Karsenty -
‘The Muhammed al-Dura image instantly became an icon that altered public consciousness,” says Philippe Karsenty, discussing the case that has consumed his life for the past five years. “[And] since World War II, there hasn’t been such a powerful tool to fan the flames of anti-Semitism.”For anyone unfamiliar either with al-Dura or Karsenty, an abbreviated review is in order.On September 30, 2000 – the day that became known as the start of the second intifada – France 2 TV broadcast footage of a shootout in Gaza, zooming in on a Palestinian father and his 12-year-old son taking cover behind a concrete drum, allegedly to no avail. According to the report – filmed by a Palestinian stringer for the state-run French network – the boy, Muhammed al-Dura, was killed by IDF bullets.