"Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you." "Opposition is True Friendship." -William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1796
The Augean Stables and The Second Draft
This blog takes its name from the Fifth Labor of Herakles, to clean the stables of Augeas, where thousands of cattle had left so much un-cleaned dung that the whole Peloponnesus smelled of it. At Second Draft, our discovery of both Pallywood and the Al-Durah Affair have led us to realize that — at least where the Arab-Israeli conflict is concerned — our MSM represent a veritable Augean Stables of accumulated misreporting. We dedicate this weblog to exploring the many aspects of our MSM’s problem, not only those concerned with the Middle East problem, but more broadly with the many ways in which our media’s errors and our media’s extraordinary resistance to admitting their errors, have contributed and continue to contribute to the serious problems that plague our globe in this young 21st century.
An article at Ynet illuminates the combination of insanity and cowardice that now animates much of the Western “left.” The largest Gay Pride parade in the world disinvited the Israeli contingent because of pressure from increasingly violent anti-Israel demonstrators in Spain, especially since the Flotilla Fadiha.
On the one hand, we have Israel, the only country in the Middle East where Gay Pride Parades occur, the only country which, despite being labeled a theocracy run by a bunch of rabbis who think homosexuality is an abomination, even allows Gay Pride parades in the holy city of Jerusalem, right in the face of the religious zealots, without violence.
And in between, we have progressive, peace-loving, free-spirited, rather flamboyant Western homosexuals, who side with the Arab homophobes. Why? It’s hard to gauge the part that’s idiocy (Palestinians are a progressive cause) and the part that’s cowardice (we’re afraid of security problems). But it sure does add up to produce yet another fine example of the useful infidel.
Spanish pride parade doesn’t want Israelis
Sources say pro-Palestinian groups led Madrid to cancel invitation extended to LGBT delegation
Yoav Zitun
Published: 06.08.10, 00:44 / Israel News
Organizers of Madrid’s pride parade, scheduled for the beginning of next month, have announced that they are cancelling the invitation of Israeli representatives slated to appear there, Ynet learned Monday.
The Israeli delegation, made up of members of the LGBT association and the Foreign Ministry, was scheduled to run an Israeli “bus” in the parade, for the first time since its establishment.
But the delegation has recently received hints from Spain that their arrival may cause anger among local pro-Palestinian groups, which may require excess security and, more importantly, cause a lot of embarrassment.
And we don’t want to be embarrassed when we’re being proud, do we? (more…)
Right now videos are doing a great deal to bring people to a realization that the situation in the world has been deeply distorted by the obsession with Israel. In some senses, the Flotilla Debacle has begun to shake even committed leftists from their slumber.
Here’s a good example of a major comeback in the cognitive war. Maybe, ironically, the idiocy of world response to the Flotilla will be a turning point. If so, something like this can help.
Please see two important posts that deal with this issue:
Turkish CNN Footage from boat during fight 31.05.10: highest definition available, you can see soldier being swarmed with sticks, stabbed near a door, and a soldier with face wound.
Israeli thermal footage of battle on top deck 31.05.10: taken from above.
Israeli thermal footage of the attack on IDF soldiers 31.05.10: taken from boat alongside before dawn. you can see one soldier thrown down to the lower deck, lots of sticks beating soldiers.
From CIF Watch:
I’m not sure it’s anti-semitic (a term I give specific meaning to), but it does distort.
I’m about to use a cartoon from Ellen Horowitz that I asked her to design. It gets at the unreal nature of perceptions surrounding this. She can amend it if anyone has suggestions (say on how to portray the MSNM in all this).
Early this morning, IDF Naval Forces boarded six ships attempting to break the maritime closure of the Gaza Strip. This happened after numerous warnings from Israel and the Israeli Navy that were issued prior to the action. The Israel Navy requested the ships to redirect toward Ashdod where they would be able to unload their aid supplies which would then be transferred over land after undergoing security inspections.
During the boarding of the ships, the demonstrators onboard attacked the IDF Naval personnel with live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs. Additionally one of the weapons used was grabbed from an IDF soldier. The demonstrators had clearly prepared their weapons in advance for this specific purpose.
As a result of this life-threatening and violent activity, naval forces employed riot dispersal means, including live fire.
According to initial reports, these events resulted in over ten deaths among the demonstrators and numerous injured, in addition, more than four naval personnel were injured, some from gunfire and some from various other weapons. Two of the soldiers are moderately wounded and the remainder sustained light injuries. All of the injured, Israelis and foreigners are currently being evacuated by helicopter to hospitals in Israel.
Reports from IDF forces on the scene are that it seems as if part of the participants onboard the ships were planning to lynch the forces.
The interception of the flotilla followed numerous warnings given to the organizers of the flotilla before leaving their ports as well as while sailing towards the Gaza Strip. In these warnings, it was made clear to the organizers that they could dock in the Ashdod sea port and unload the equipment they are carrying in order to deliver it to the Gaza Strip in an orderly manner, following the appropriate security checks. Upon expressing their unwillingness to cooperate and arrive at the port, it was decided to board the ships and lead them to Ashdod.
IDF naval personnel encountered severe violence, including use of weaponry prepared in advance in order to attack and to harm them. The forces operated in adherence with operational commands and took all necessary actions in order to avoid violence, but to no avail.
From the Foreign Ministry (live feed no longer operative, should be posted soon)
premeditated ambush
linked to global terror
found weapons (at least two guns) prepared in advance and used against our forces.
violent in planning and execution
outcome the responsibility of the organizers
their intent not humanitarian, not interested in kidnapped soldier
wanted to establish corridor of weapons trafficking to Hamas
can’t say this is very constructive. almost no details whatsoever.
Details are still sketchy as I write this post, so all is subjected to changes. However, here are a couple of things that need to be watched, and understood at this time. I will update this post as we go along.
1. Obviously, this was not the intended result of Israel’s intercepting of the convoy. Did Israel know in advance that the soldiers will be ambushed? If not, that is a problem. Maybe the problem. If they did, how did Israel prepare the forces and what was the plan for taking over the ships
Agreed.
2. With all the all-too-familiar outcry about public relations, public opinion, world opinion, Israel’s image etc, one has to remember that PR - as important as it might be - is not all in life. Definitely not all in military life. If force had to be used as to prevent the flotilla from going into Gaza - if there was no way around it - than PR becomes a secondary issue and will have to be dealt with later.
It’s not that simple. If the IDF didn’t anticipate this, and they didn’t have at least one photographer with every landing team, then that’s a failure to understand what this is about. This is cognitive warfare and the violence is for effect, not for victory. If you drop the cognitive and just focus on the military, you’ve taken your eye off the ball. PR is not secondary; it’s above all primary in this situation. This doesn’t mean you let soldiers by killed for PR, but it means that if you’re going to have to kill - as this case turned out to be - then you damn well better have your ass covered. (more…)
Human rights activists, claiming to act for humanity and justice, bring supplies to a Gaza they think is starving under a brutal Israeli blockade. Courageous crusaders, they come to the salvation of the poor and oppressed Palestinian people, strangled by a colonial, racist state.
They believe themselves far removed from their Christian forebears who, nine hundred years ago, charged into the Holy Land, wading up to their horses bridals in the blood of slain Muslims, singing, “This is the day the Lord made, we will rejoice therein.”
But something is wrong in this morality play. Indeed, virtually every detail, when compared with the reality it supposedly describes, seems off, way off. This heroic morality tale describes not post-modern, post-colonial heroes, charging off like Lord Byron, to fight for freedom, but a regression to the least admirable of medieval narratives.
First, the victims: the flotilla brings nothing to Gaza not already there. Granted Gaza is poor, much poorer than the other Palestinian-run, entity in the West Bank. But it’s not poorer than the surrounding Arab world, and better off than many.
If these noble spirits think they are coming to the rescue of a maid tied to the railroad track, then they’re in for a surprise experience. Everything the Flotilla wants to bring in, the Israelis have agreed, once checked for dangerous items, to pass over their crossings. This is not about poor Gazans, it’s about publicity.
Second, the heroes: the only people this flotilla does assist, are the elected leaders of Gaza, Hamas. Here it gets curious. These European saviors think that they will help these leaders help their people. But Hamas is not a social democratic regime. It is a pre-modern, predatory élite that exploits its people, in this case, theocratic fanatics who promised an end to domestic corruption, and honor in the struggle for Palestine, and gave their people instead, death, destruction, and more misery.
And more corruption. When Israel recently opened its crossing in the far south, militants targeted it with Qassams on behalf of the tunnel moguls, who were losing money as prices dropped. With the material Hamas garnered through those tunnels – especially cement – they now build police stations, a shopping center where Hamas employees get special privileges, and rebuild their prison. As for the wretched people who lost their homes in a war Hamas did much to provoke… it’s Israel’s fault. Hamas has a vested interest in the blockade: it secures their power. This flotilla comes not to the aid of blockaded Palestinians, but to the aid of those people responsible for the blockade.
Third, the villains: The allegedly ruthless Israeli occupiers don’t quite live up to negative expectations. Against all previous military precedent, during the hostilities in Operation Cast Lead they ceased fire daily, in order to let in tons of critical aid (food and medical supplies) into Gaza. Today through the checkpoints they allow in a wide range of goods, while thousands of patients and companions pass the other way for medical treatment in Israel. Even Arab journalists will tell you – off the record – that there’s no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. So the “hard” questions at a press conference complain that Israelis are not consistent about which kinds of non-essential items let into Gaza… or: “Since Hamas gets its own cement through the tunnels, why not let the “people” get the cement they need to rebuild?”
So how do these Israelis, who treat their own Arab citizens better than the Arab élites treat their own people, come to be seen as the dark forces of evil, the cause of all the suffering and conflict in the Middle East? Because they have fallen for a “lethal narrative” straight out of their own Middle Ages.
The Arab world despises the Jews for medieval reasons, for having thrown off the yoke of the Dhimma (Muslim domination of Christians and Jews); for trying to be a free people in their own land, which happens to lie within borders of the “eternal” Dar al Islam (the realm of “submission” where Islam rules). Since the creation of Israel, Arab leaders have tried to reverse the humiliation by victimizing their own people – especially the refugees they’ve held captive for over 60 years – and then distracting them with a scapegoat. Anti-Zionism, like anti-Semitism, the WMD: weapon of mass distraction.
One would hardly expect post-modern, self-critical pacifists to go for this kind of weaponized, medieval scapegoating. Did not Europeans renounce their addiction to tales of Jew hatred? Was that not a part of a maturing process that has brought sixty years of peace and international cooperation to Europe?
So why does the progressive European Left, the people loudly shouting from this flotilla, embrace these fevered narratives of hatred? Have they, by closing their ears to Hamas’ venomous words about Jews, also failed to hear how they will be the next target?
If someone had told the Hamas leaders who wrote their genocidal paranoid doctrine of world conquest in 1988, that in two decades, Europeans would dance in the street shouting “We are Hamas!” they would have laughed at his optimism. “The infidels are not that stupid.”
But alas! Apparently if you put up a picture of a windmill with a Star of David on it, some hallucinating Europeans with a savior complex and a yearning for attention, will come tilting. A ship of fools… now grown into a Flotilla of Fools.
But what about the rest of Europe? Does no one there see this folly and understand the terrible forces that it feeds? Do they not know that Hamas shares far more with the men who blew up London transport than with Europe’s progressive values? Is there no one to say, “this Emperor is naked!”?
I recently attended a press conference at Erez Crossing point at the top of Gaza. While the earlier one in Hebrew had quite a few participants, the one in English and Arabic had me, another blogger, a European AFP reporter, and three Arab journalists, one for AP, Al Jazeera English, and Arabic. They were accompanied by a crew of Arab cameramen.
While their formal questions to the spokesman - whose Arabic was considerably more fluent than his English - were largely contentious, their conversation was strangely open and even mordant. At first I suspected ideologues. When I asked my companion about the population of Gaza, he said, “1.5 million,” immediately corrected by one of the Arab journalists to “1.7.”
But after the press conference, and before we could leave, there was an alert and we spent about 20 minutes in a room waiting for the all-clear. Israeli soldiers lounged around, obviously quite used to this. The Arabs gathered around one table, looking a bit out of place. I imagined they were feeling hostile to these “Occupation Army” soldiers with whom they were forced to spend time. I went over to join them.
“Statistically speaking, you might not want to sit here,” said a cameraman from East Jerusalem.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well considerably more Arabs are killed by Hamas rockets than Israelis, so if a rocket does land on this base, the statistical odds are it will hit this table.” (more…)
In an op-ed which will hopefully appear in a Swedish newspaper and which I will then post here, I wrote about the bizarre behavior of the European progressives participating in this “flotilla of fools” to Gaza.
The only people this flotilla does assist, are the elected leaders of Gaza, Hamas. Here it gets curious. These European saviors think that they will help these leaders help their people. But Hamas is not a social democratic regime. It is a pre-modern, predatory élite that exploits its people, in this case, theocratic fanatics who promised an end to domestic corruption, and honor in the struggle for Palestine, and gave their people instead, death, destruction, and more misery. Even its kindergartens teach their death cult.
And more corruption. When Israel recently opened its crossing in the far south, militants targeted it with Qassams on behalf of the tunnel moguls, who were losing money as prices dropped. With the material Hamas garnered through those tunnels – especially cement – they now rebuild their prison and more police stations, as well as a shopping center where Hamas employees get special privileges.
As for the wretched people who lost their homes in a war Hamas did much to provoke… it’s Israel’s fault. Let the do-gooder Western progressives pressure Israel to open the borders to cement. Hamas has a vested in the blockade: it secures their power. This flotilla comes not to the aid of blockaded Palestinians, but to the aid of those people responsible for the blockade.
Now today this article in Ynet (HT/TB5Y) about an exchange between the Shalit family and the organizers — who all invoke great zeal for human rights the world over — reveals an interesting dimension to their problems identifying reality.
Kidnapped soldier’s family asks organizers of aid mission to urge Hamas to allow international organizers to visit him. Family’s attorney: I thought they supported human rights
Ahiya Raved
Published: 05.27.10, 13:46 / Israel News
Gilad Shalit’s family offered to support the international flotilla to Gaza if its participants would demand that Hamas permit various organizations to visit the kidnapped Israeli soldier and allow him to receive packages.
Members of the campaign for Shalit’s release said the organizers of the international aid mission to Gaza declined the offer.
Attorney Nick Kaufman, who approached the Free Gaza Movement on behalf of the kidnapped soldier’s family, told Ynet that he offered the flotilla’s organizers the family’s full support provided that “in addition to their demand that Israel lift its blockade they will urge Hamas to allow the soldier to receive letters and food packages from his family and allow international organizations to visit him.”
According to Kaufman, he was referred to the movement’s legal counsel, who rejected the offer.
It would be nice to know the wording of the response. Always valuable to know how people explain themselves publicly.
“I thought this movement supports human rights, as it claims, but according to the reaction it seems that it is only interested in provocation and expressing support for a terror group that doesn’t really care about human rights,” said the attorney.
Now there are two scenarios here. 1) They are afraid to ask for fear of alienating Hamas; 2) they feel Shalit is not a victim, but an aggressor, and therefore not their concern. (more…)
Ben Dror Yemini has an provocative piece on the fraud of the notion of the Nakba. It’s a bit too pre-post-modern for my taste. I prefer not to talk about “facts” and “truth” and more about reliable evidence, and accurate interpretations. Do its polemics undermine its history?
The Palestinians have been holding the title of “refugees” for over six decades. They have succeeded in creating a unique historical narrative for themselves. This myth is growing, so it should be shattered and the real facts presented: the Palestinian population before the first Aliya was sparse, hundreds of thousands of Jews were also expelled from Arab countries, and there is no precedent anywhere in the world for the right of return.
The Nakba - the story of the Palestinian refugees is the greatest success story in the history of modern times - a success that is a complete fraud. There is no other group of “refugees” in the world that has gotten such broad global coverage. Not a week goes by without a conference, another conference, about the wretched state of the Palestinians. There is not a campus in the West that does not devote countless events, conferences and publications, each year or each month to the issue of the Palestinian refugees. They have become the ultimate victims. A million calamities and injustices and expulsions and population exchanges and acts of genocide and slaughter and wars have befallen the world since the Arabs, among them the Palestinians, declared a war of annihilation on Israel - but the Nakba of the Palestinians takes up most of the space. A visitor from another planet would think that it was the greatest injustice suffered by the entire universe since the Second World War.
The Palestinians, for whom their pain vastly exceeds the pain of others, certainly feel that this is so. The question is, why would the rest of the world agree with them?
Consider, for example, this casualty footprint of the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1988-2008 compared to that of the various conflicts going on within the Democratic Republic of Congo.
That’s less than 10,000 deaths among the Arabs, and more than five million among the people of the DRC.
Now reverse the names, and you have the media footprint.
So it is best to shatter this lie. It is best to present the real facts. It is best to expose the fraud.
Elie Wiesel published a major ad, “For Jerusalem,” in several US newspapers, prompting President Obama to meet hastily with him and reassure him that he understands the importance of Jerusalem to the Jews. Jeremy Ben-Ami of J-Street responded with his own ad featuring a counter-attack by Yossi Sarid, one of the unrepentant architects of the Oslo process, that dismissed Weisel as misinformed, misled, deceived, and, worst of all, “imbuing our current conflict with messianic hues.”
This last accusation is particularly significant. Any religious affection for Jerusalem on the part of Jews appears on J-Street’s radar as messianic attachment, and since, by J-Street’s analysis, compromise on Jerusalem is a sine qua non of achieving peace, such feelings are impediments to reaching a “rational” solution.
Now one of my greater gripes with J-Street concerns the inconsistency with which they apply their principle that pressure should be put “on both sides.” When in doubt, their motto seems to run, squeeze Israel. I am open to correction, but I am unaware of one formal position that they have taken in which Palestinian concessions are the principle target of their actions or declamations.
Only the Jews should be restrained from messianic urgings; indeed they should restrain their messianic yearnings to make room for those of the Muslims. Then we’ll have peace.
Barry Rubin, in a brilliant study of Assimilation and its Discontents, pointed out how Jews, eager to succeed in the modern world, found their talent for self-denial one of their most valuable tools, and, for example, would champion any people’s liberation cause but that of their own people. J-Street steps right into the mold, and in so doing, reveals just what levels of contempt it feels for anyone whose sensibility gets in the way of their own sure-fire recipe for peace.
And what if… what if such a strategy of self-denial and sacrifice for the sake of peace ends up backfiring? The fact that J-Street would have Israel carve up its capital to make Palestinians happy, without any attention to the religious stakes for Palestinians, speaks eloquently for a perspective I think as cruel to Jews as it is unwise.
For J-Street, Palestinians need not compromise on Jerusalem as their “capital,” despite the fact that when it lay in Arab hands, Palestinians showed no interest in making it their capital. It matters not that their attachment is part and parcel of a violent and irredentist demand for Palestine from the “river to the sea” for both Fatah and Hamas. It matters not that, in their demand for control of the sacred precincts of their “third most holy city,” Muslims treat Jewish claims with dismissive contempt.
Question for Jeremy and Yossi Sarid, and all the other believers that unilateral compromise will bring peace: What if Israel’s agreement to share Jerusalem, pressured by the Obama administration, produces the opposite effect on Palestinians? What if, rather than empower the moderates to produce matching Palestinian concessions, as you seem to fervently believe, it strengthens the position of the irredentists who argue “East Jerusalem today, Palestine from the River to the Sea” tomorrow?
I have been working with a powerful new tool that an associate has prepared for me at Second Draft. We’ve been recording all the news coverage from CNN and BBC since December 27, 2009 that deals with Israel (and some relevant other coverage). As I go through the coverage, it’s hard not to notice how much the journalists themselves (especially the anchors like Jim Clancy of CNN and Jeremy Bowen of BBC) are hostile to Israel. Bowen even admitted how much he’s enjoying the dust-up between Israel and the US.
‘It has been an unusual and enjoyable new experience to be able to look on as the Israelis argued with their most important ally. The fact that the dispute is over Jewish settlements is even better for the Palestinian [sic].’
Nothing like a good dose of Schadenfreude to make a journalist’s day.
But beneath this fairly obvious layer, I’ve begun to detect something else: a game of honor-shame in which the media plays the role of taunter.
It follows three basic principles. 1) Play up Israeli insults to the Arabs and the West, thus taunting those so insulted to retaliate.
2) Play down Arab insults to Israel and the West, thus
3) Taunt Arabs into becoming more hard line.
The overall contribution of these subliminal messages which pop out here and there, is to stir hostility to Israel. It is as if the journalists want, above all, to have Israel get slapped in the face. Apparently their own efforts just don’t seem to satisfy them.
1) Play up Israeli insults to the Arabs and the West, thus taunting those so insulted to retaliate.
The following, from BBC announcer Kathy Kay gives a good sense of how it works from a news anchor:
You can watch the whole file, but the opening soundbite sets the tone:
The Vice President gets a very public slap in the face when he visits Israel… is the US going to let this ride?”
As a result of the dust-up about his grandson’s bar-mitzvah in South Africa, Goldstone had to address the concerns of the Jewish community there. Here’s his apologia. I’ll be writing a column in the JPost in response later this week. My initial responses here; suggestions welcome. For readers unaware of my substantive quibbles with Goldstone, see the two part article at MERIA.
Excerpts from a statement by Judge Richard Goldstone for the meeting with South African Jewish community leaders on Monday.
Let me say that I have taken no pleasure in seeing people around the world criticize the South African Jewish community, and I commend the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and all responsible for bringing an end to the unfortunate public issues that had arisen relating to my grandson’s bar mitzva. My family and I are delighted that I was able to attend the bar mitzva on Saturday, and that it was such a joyous and meaningful occasion. I am deeply grateful to Rabbi Suchard, the members of the committee and the congregation at Sandton Synagogue for having made this possible.
Imagine the reaction of Gazans were Mosab Youssef to come back for a wedding. People take this “amicable” resolution for granted. It’s actually testimony to the extraordinary tolerance of the Jewish community in South Africa.
Without more, allow me to turn to the Gaza report that has caused so much anger in this and other Jewish communities. It is well-known that initially I refused to become involved with what I considered to be a mandate that was unfair to Israel by concentrating only on war crimes alleged to have been committed by the IDF. When I was offered an even-handed mandate that included war crimes alleged to have been committed against Israel by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza, my position changed.
Let’s leave the quibbles about whether or not the mandate did change. Let’s say it really did empower you to go after “both sides.” What did you do with Hamas? Here’s a wordle of your report.
If I hadn’t marked it, you’d never find Hamas.
If you had been “even-handed,” then half (at least) of your work would have been about Hamas using their own civilians as shields. Instead, you indirectly accused them of what everyone already knew - they targeted civilians in Israel. The real story, the one your allegedly changed mandate would have permitted you to reveal to the world, was how they targeted their own civilians.
I have spent much of my professional life in the cause of international criminal justice. It would have been hypocritical for me to continue to speak out against violations of international law and impunity for war crimes around the world but remain silent when it came to Israel simply because I am Jewish.
No one is after you for speaking out about Israeli military misdeeds. Everyone can do that, none so energetically as Israelis. It’s the eagerness to judge them “war crimes” and “possible crimes against humanity” on the one hand, and the reluctance to look at the context of Hamas’ use of civilian shields on the other, that has people up in arms. Your defense, tiresomely repeated, is either dishonestly jejeune, or a deliberate feint. In either case, it’s unworthy of someone who would have us take him seriously as a major contributor to the culture of human rights that we all would like to succeed. (more…)
The New Republic has just published a major piece on Human Rights Watch and their deeply disturbed relationship to Israel. Its a case study of demopaths and dupes, human rights complex, masochistic omnipotence syndrome, and the left-jihadi alliance. Below, a few choice passages.
With Palestinian suicide bombings reaching a crescendo in early 2002, precipitating a full-scale Israeli counterterrorist campaign across the West Bank, HRW’s Middle East and North Africa division (MENA) issued two reports (and myriad press releases) on Israeli misconduct—including one on the Israel Defense Forces’ assault on terrorist safe havens in the Jenin refugee camp. That report—which, to HRW’s credit, debunked the widespread myth that Israel had carried out a massacre—nevertheless said there was “strong prima facie evidence” that Israel had “committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions,” irking the country’s supporters, who argued that the IDF had in fact gone to great lengths to spare Palestinian civilians. (The decision not to launch an aerial bombardment of the densely populated area, and to dispatch ground troops into labyrinthine warrens instead, cost 23 Israeli soldiers their lives—crucial context that HRW ignored.) It would take another five months for HRW to release a report on Palestinian suicide bombings—and another five years for it to publish a report addressing the firing of rockets and mortars from Gaza, despite the fact that, by 2003, hundreds had been launched from the territory into Israel. (HRW did issue earlier press releases on both subjects.)
In the years to come, critics would accuse HRW of giving disproportionate attention to Israeli misdeeds. According to HRW’s own count, since 2000, MENA has devoted more reports to abuses by Israel than to abuses by all but two other countries, Iraq and Egypt. That’s more reports than those on Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Algeria, and other regional dictatorships. (When HRW includes press releases in its count, Israel ranks fourth on the list.) And, if you count only full reports—as opposed to “briefing papers,” “backgrounders,” and other documents that tend to be shorter, less authoritative, and therefore less influential—the focus on the Jewish state only increases, with Israel either leading or close to leading the tally. There are roughly as many reports on Israel as on Iran, Syria, and Libya combined.
HRW officials acknowledge that a number of factors beyond the enormity of human rights abuses go into deciding how to divide up the organization’s attentions: access to a given country, possibility for redress, and general interest in the topic. “I think we tend to go where there’s action and where we’re going to get reaction,” rues one board member. “We seek the limelight—that’s part of what we do. And so, Israel’s sort of like low-hanging fruit.”
I just received the following piece from a friend in Israel. I post it here at his request not because I endorse it, but because I think it’s important to think out of the box, and that’s precisely what he does. Comments and criticism welcome as always.
Unlike our brethren in the diaspora, most Israeli Jews – myself included – had no illusions about then presidential candidate Barack Obama being a friend of Israel. But even I did not foresee that Obama would team up with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to subject Israel to a “good cop- bad cop” routine, and with Iran in the role of the “good cop”, no less.
By now, even many well known figures in US Jewry have come to recognize President Obama’s undisguised hostility toward the Jewish State. Ed Koch, Alan, Dershowitz, and Martin Peretz are just three of the more prominent American Jews who have publicly broken with Obama over his treatment of Israel. Here in Israel, distrust of Obama has reached such staggering heights that this Passover, at Seder tables throughout the country – or so my extrapolation from the experiences of my friends and acquaintances leads me to believe - Barack Obama’s name came up when the Haggadah (ritual reading) came to the text of “Vehi she’amda”, which –in English translation – reads:
“This is what has stood by our fore- fathers and by us! For not just one [oppressor] alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us; and the Almighty rescues us from their hand!”
Barack Obama seems to me a person full of self-regard but totally lacking in self-awareness, so at the White House “Seder” that he hosted, he probably had no sense that those words – written in reference to such villains of Jewish history as Pharaoh, Amalek, Nebuchadnezzar, Titus and Hadrian and more recently associated by one and all with Adolph Hitler – were now being recited with a picture of Barack Obama in people’s minds. It took real skill for an American president, elected with 78% of the Jewish vote, to be recognized by millions of Jews as a potential destroyer of the Jewish People.
It has been reported that the Obama administration’s intention in creating an artificial crisis in US – Israel relations was politically to weaken Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and to force him either to form a new coalition with the Kadima party and its leader Tzippi Livny, or to engineer a situation in which Livny will form a new government. The most recent manifestation of Obama’s hostility seems to be a recent report in the Washington Post, that Obama, encouraged by his own National Security Advisor, Jim Jones, and such past – unfriendly to Israel - National Security Advisors as Zbigniew Brezinski and Brent Scowcroft – plans to try to impose a settlement on both Israel and the Palestinians, and will “link” Israel’s cooperation on that violation of our sovereignty to action on the Iranian nuclear issue.
To help forestall this possibility I recommend that Israel-supporters in the United States start being very vocal, and preemptively equate any attempt to impose a settlement on Israel with 1930’s era appeasement. Ed Koch has already applied the “M-word”, writing of Obama’s foreign policy “There is a foul whiff of Munich and appeasement in the air.” We may as well start using the “NC-word” (i.e. – “Neville Chamberlain”) in this context as well.
Obama is already tanking in the polls and is suffering the most rapid decline in his presidential approval rating of any first term president since polling began. He might decide that whatever benefit he had hoped to gain, by imposing a “peace settlement” on Israel, would not be worth the additional damage to his image and political standing.
The most mystifying aspect of this report is that Obama wants to make American action against the Iranian nuclear program contingent on Israel accepting the imposed settlement. The underlying premise would seem to be that Iran is only Israel’s problem, and that America’s friends and allies in Europe and the Middle East – let alone the United States itself – are in no way threatened by a nuclear armed Islamic Republic of Iran. (more…)
I have not posted for a long while because I’m madly trying to get my manuscript to the editor by the end of the month, and I much appreciate the fascinating conversations that are taking place in the comment section. Here’s a topic to discuss:
Jerusalem — Craig and Cindy Corrie, I welcome you to Israel where, I understand, you plan to bring a civil suit before an Israeli court on March 10 “to put on public record,” the British Guardian wrote, “the events that led to [your] daughter Rachel’s death in March 2003.”
I thank God for the well-being of my children and grandchildren, and I cannot imagine the pain and anger you feel over the loss of your daughter, Rachel.
My sons have served as combat soldiers, and may have actually fought on the very ground where your daughter died. The area was laced with tunnels to smuggle weapons and explosives for use against Israelis. My children are Israelis who ride in buses and eat in pizzerias, and by the grace of God they have been spared attacks by the suicide bombers your daughter championed.
Some may see the irony in your using the courts and the free press of Israel in your attempt to pursue and denounce the nation your daughter loathed. I see the tragedy in your allying with the International Solidarity Movement — the very people and organization who led and, in a sense, really pushed Rachel to her death.
According to news accounts, Israel will permit four of Corrie’s colleagues from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to enter Israel to give testimony on what occurred that day. Actually, I believe it’s a good decision to permit the four into Israel’s jurisdiction where the ISM members could and should be arrested for reckless endangerment, fraud, manslaughter, aiding terrorists, and a host of other charges. The public may also discover who paid for your lawsuit and the expenses of bringing you and ISM witnesses to Israel.
