"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.
Rebecca Abou-Chedid, former director of outreach at the New America Foundation’s Middle East Task Force and former national political director at the Arab American Institute, writes about why she should be able to proudly give to JStreet and JStreet should not be ashamed to take her donations.
It’s a no-brainer why an Arab prominent in the American-Arab community wants to support a group that wants to pressure Israel into unilateral concessions for the sake of “peace,” and it’s not surprising that she would dismiss the opposition’s substantive objectives — forced concessions that are not reciprocated will bring hostility and war — as so much pique at not controlling the agenda (another ad hominem).
What’s not understandable (unless you accept the honor-shame paradigm), is why Arabs and Muslims haven’t formed an A-Street, militating for Arab/Muslim/Palestinian concessions aimed at making peace more likely?
Instead it’s perfectly pitched demopathic discourse about how my supporting Israelis working for peace is my democratic right and who are you to question my motives. Well I do question them. If you want peace, do what the Israelis and Jews do: criticize your own people, demand that they back down from their crazy, hardline positions, denounce immature and unjustified rioting on Haram al Sharif as harmful to the process, and demand that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state just as every Arab state is a Muslim state (except, for the time being, Lebanon).
Or are you afraid that the opposition to your Lobby group will not be as mild as that — for which you show contempt — of people like Lenny David, who merely argue with those he opposes. Or are you afraid you could never get more than a dozen people to openly support you? Or has it not even occurred to you that this is how to help peace?
Nightmare on J Street
Why can’t Arab Americans work for peace, too?
BY REBECCA ABOU-CHEDID | OCTOBER 22, 2009
At last, somebody found me out.
This week, former AIPAC and Israeli embassy official Lenny Ben-David published an article revealing that I had given a donation to the “pro-Israel and pro-peace” organization J Street. Because I am of Lebanese descent, this clearly indicates that my dollars must be intended to advance some pernicious anti-Israel agenda — and that J Street must be the vehicle for those aims.
I would be only too happy to ignore Ben-David’s article as a collection of cheap innuendo and loose associations, but the stakes are too high. With J Street’s inaugural conference less than one week away, opponents are desperate that it fail. The attacks on the organization, its founder Jeremy Ben-Ami, its staff, and their supporters have taken on an all too-familiar form — eschewing substance to malign the motives and associations of those they disagree with. Ben-David and his supporters are now attacking J Street for accepting contributions from Americans of Arab descent. The donations in question are largely symbolic, many of them in amounts between $30-$100, but his point is loud and clear — an organization that receives Arab-American support must, by definition, be suspect.
But why on earth should J Street be ashamed to have the support of Arab-Americans like me? And why should Arab-Americans worry that participating in the political life of their country and exercising their freedom of speech might — simply because of their ethnicity — harm the candidates and causes they hold dear?
Helena Cobban, who to her pacifist credit, expressed deep disapproval of Marc Garlasco’s unsavory hobby, despite the fact that she is on the board of HRW, and shares their attitude towards Israel, here gives us a fine example of how the “human rights” community think. It’s a stunning ride through the wild side of liberal cognitive egocentrism, the epistemological priority of the other, and masochistic omnipotence syndrome weaponized against those who dare defend themselves against sub-altern aggression. An excellent guide to what ails our chattering classes, including their chattering tone of self-confidence.
Michael Goldfarb, who was the deputy communications director for John McCain’s campaign, worked for a while in that temple of neoconservative organizing, the Project for a New American Century, and is a kind of scuzzy attack-dog for the pro-settler hard right, has now decided to come after–poor little moi.
(Yay! I made the big leagues of this guy’s ‘enemies’ list’! Oops, suppress that childish thought, Helena.)
HT to Richard Silverstein, co-rabbi of our “off-broadway” bloggers’ panel at J Street, next Monday noon-time, for having read Michael Goldfarb’s blog so the rest of us don’t have to…
For those who don’t know, “the rest of us” means, it’s, in Amira Hass’ proud phrasing, the global hamoulah [clan]” of leftists/progressives who know they’re at the cutting edge of global morality, leaders of the fight for a truly just and peaceful world, by identifying with the oppressed. And they’ve gathered, somewhat comically, at the JStreet conference in force. (more…)
The Frustrated Wolf, the Lamb with the Black Belt, and Kafka’s Judge (additional or variant text in bold, original from Aesop)
WOLF, meeting with a Lamb astray from the democratic fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the Lamb the Wolf’s right to eat him. He thus addressed him: “Sirrah, just now you grossly insulted me by trying to pray at my third most sacred site.” “Indeed,” bleated the Lamb in a mournful, apologetic tone of voice, “That was French tourists.” Then said the Wolf, “You starve and impoverish my people.” “No, good sir,” replied the Lamb, “We send them food, but Hamas steals it, and we can’t let them have cement because they use it to build tunnels to smuggle weapons.” Again said the Wolf, “You poison my wells and sell my people shampoo that makes us bald and chewing gum that turns our daughters into sex-pots.” “No,” exclaimed the Lamb, “We actually purify the water and our shampoos and chewing gum do not have secret ingredients.”
Upon which the Wolf, frustrated at his ability to convince the Lamb that he was guilty and deserved to be eaten, and unable to seize him and eat him up, began to snap at him. The Lamb, whose martial arts training was unequaled, fought back and hit the wolf repeatedly. The battered wolf, who repeatedly put his cubs in the path of the lambs blows, responded, saying, “Well! I won’t remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations.” So he turned to Judge Goldstone and said, “Condemn this Lamb for his effrontery and his crimes against my poor victimized brothers.”
And Judge who had not read the fable, but felt strongly that the strong should not beat up on the weak under any circumstance, and who had not read the rabbis warning that he who is merciful to the cruel will be cruel to the merciful, took up the cudgels for the poor wolf and hammered away at the martial-arts lamb. How dare you, sir, attack these poor baby wolf cubs. Have you no decency!
Aesop’s Moral: The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.
Pomo Moral: When people who believe in “I’m with whoever is right, my side or not” begin to embrace “I’m with the other side, right or wrong,” they destroy justice.
Judge Richard Goldstone continues to try and salvage his reputation and work. Here’s his latest effort. It is so disingenuous — and that’s being generous — that one has to wonder… Only someone with no background knowledge in this affair can find this apologia convincing. Isn’t that the definition of propaganda — manipulating people with either false information or suppressed information to take your side when, were the readers to know the full story, they would not take your side. For someone who’s publicly, volubly in favor of “the right side, mine or not,” he sure does want it to be “my side, right or wrong.” Curious. I wonder if that’s a pattern.
My mission - and motivation
Oct. 18, 2009
Richard Goldstone , THE JERUSALEM POST
Five weeks after the release of the Report of the Fact Finding Mission on Gaza, there has been no attempt by any of its critics to come to grips with its substance.
As one blogger at Understanding the Goldstone Report put it, “what are we, chopped liver?” Apparently. We’re planning to put the entire report up in HTML (not the impenetrable PDF) and welcome a massive fisking. Maybe then he’ll realize… but I doubt it.
It has been fulsomely approved by those whose interests it is thought to serve and rejected by those of the opposite view. Those who attack it do so too often by making personal attacks on its authors’ motives and those who approve it rely on its authors’ reputations.
Probably more the former than the latter. Our position, at least, is ab re [absurdo] usque ad hominem ipsum (from the matter [the absurd report] to the very person who produced it). But that may be hard to follow for someone who wants to believe he’s been treated unfairly.
Israeli government spokesmen and those who support them have attacked it in the harshest terms and, in particular my participation, in a most personal and hurtful way. The time has now come for more sober reflection on what the report means and appropriate Israeli reactions to it.
People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. You can’t play with the nastiest kids on the block, who systematically bully your own people, give them a major weapon against them, and then expect them to treat you with kid gloves. This personal sensitivity is perhaps the single most eloquent expression of the sense of entitlement of people like Richard Goldstone. As long as they are heroes in their own minds — courageous men of integrity and scrupulous fairness (to others) — then how can anyone accuse them of base motives or base actions. And this from a man whose report repeatedly, gratuitously, even illegitimately, accuses Israel of base motives. He’s too old to be a Dr. Spock baby, but he sure shows all the signs of it.
Hezbollah released a video today that they say refutes the IDF aerial footage released two days ago.
Here’s the IDF footage taken shortly after the nighttime explosion:
It’s damning because they are removing the incriminating evidence of their violations of the cease-fire agreement before they let the UNIFIL forces in to inspect.
Here’s the Hizbullah footage.
There are several gaping holes with this argument.
1. The Hizbullah video was shot in broad daylight, whereas the IDF footage was taken at night, shortly after the blast occurred.
2. The position of the truck in the Hizbullah version and the IDF video are not the same. In the Hizbullah version the truck is backed up directly to the loading dock and there are two men shoving the debris into the back of the truck. In the IDF footage, the truck is parked a little bit away and there are at least 5 men carefully carrying the disputed object and loading it onto the truck.
3. In order for the Hizbullah video to disprove the IDF footage, their video has to be of the same event, which is impossible given points 1 and 2.
4. If it is not of the same event, and the Hizbullah video was shot the next day, then that does not disprove anything, since they could have shown up, and started clearing debris while filming themselves. This would also account for the presence of the Lebanese Military and UNIFIL forces since Hezbollah gave them access to the explosion site several hours after the explosion, after they had removed various items.
5. The IDF video shot shortly after the explosion shows Hezbollah cordoning off the area, loading items which could be a missile onto a truck and then driving the trucks 4km away to a known Hizbullah arms depot in another village. After they were done clearing the house, they let UNIFIl and the Lebanese Military enter the area.
The most obvious question that comes to mind is: “Who do they think they’re kidding. Do they take us for imbeciles?”
Not a word on the glaring discrepancies. It’s just “he said… she said.” So I guess the answer to the question about who Hizbullah takes us for is, “fools.” And the evidence is, they’re right.
Final note: Why did they bother to do this cheap and silly fake as “disproof”? Because they do care what we think, and they want to manipulate us. So if we call them on this stuff, we actually do put the squeeze on them.
So the real question is, “what’s wrong with the Beeb and Reuters?”
Mel Brooks has a memorable line in his 2000-year-old man shtick. Carl Reiner asks, “what’s the difference between comedy and tragedy? “Tragedy is if I cut my finger, I’ll cry alot, go into Mount Sinai for a day and a half. Comedy is if you fall in an open manhole and die. What do I care.”
David Brooks recently attended a conference on the latest hot field in psychology: social cognitive neuro-science. There, among the many items he listed, one caught my eye:
Reem Yahya and a team from the University of Haifa studied Arabs and Jews while showing them images of hands and feet in painful situations. The two cultures perceived pain differently. The Arabs perceived higher levels of pain over all while the Jews were more sensitive to pain suffered by members of a group other than their own.
This is an experimental illustration of the current knot in which we find ourselves and in which we are currently losing the cognitive war for progressive values, the marriage of pre-modern sadism and post-modern masochism. On the one hand we have people who exaggerate their own pain. As Charles “Oh-they-do-that-all-the time-it’s-a-cultural-thing” Enderlin said to me to illustrate why he dismissed the faking in Talal’s tapes: “Oh they do that all the time. It’s a cultural thing. They exaggerate. When I was in Egypt during an earth quake people with minimal injuries were shrieking and moaning.”
On the other hand, you have a culture in which concern for the pain of the other has been raised to a matter of principle: “Do not oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in Egypt and you know the heart of the stranger.” And how does the world read the emanations of these two cultures: the Palestinians scream: “They are committing genocide against us; they are like Nazis.” Some Israelis respond: “I hate to say it, but they’re right. We are racist, Israel is apartheid, we are like Nazis.” Others defend the integrity of Israel’s behavior, having the nerve to say Israel - and especially its army - can match any nation’s moral record.
And the world concludes: “The poor Palestinians, why are you Israelis so mean to them.” What is wrong with those boorish, sinister pro-Israel extremists? And is so doing, they foster and fertilize the culture of victimization that pervades Palestinian self-destructivenes. For insights into this last phenomenon, there’s a must read at Ynet by Dan Schueftan - also of the University of Haifa - on the what the latest Palestinian maneuvers reveal about their dysfunctional political culture.
Dan Schueftan
Published: 10.12.09, 18:21 / Israel Opinion
Part 1 of analysis
The recent Temple Mount riots and Mahmoud Abbas’ renewed request for a UN discussion of the Goldstone Report again point to the deep structural failure inherent in the Palestinian political culture.
The Palestinians are proving yet again that even the responsible elements among them cannot act in a constructive manner in order to build society and promote stability, welfare, and an agreement with Israel. They cannot do it because, as it turned out again, at the moment of truth we see the irresponsible, violent, and demagogical radicals who incite and fan the flames gain the upper hand.
[This has been published without links at the Jerusalem Post. Text in brackets was cut from the published version.]
Judge Goldstone has presented his Report on Gaza and, among other recommendations, suggested that Israel conduct its own inquiry. Israeli government officials, assuming he meant an investigation, like his, into Israel’s misdeeds, declined, noting that that they have and continue to investigate their army’s behavior on a constant basis.
But after reading most of the report, another possibility presents itself. It rapidly becomes clear to any reader not driven by a thirst for “dirt” on Israel, that Goldstone’s work represents a new low in the tragically deteriorating world of international justice. It fails on every count, from it’s handling of evidence, to its legal reasoning, to its unstated but pervasive assumptions of Israeli guilt and Palestinian innocence, to its astonishing conclusion (from someone who knows the gruesome details of Bosnia and Rwanda), that Israeli behavior was so bad it might well constitute “crimes against humanity.” As a result this report takes the army with the best record in the history of warfare for protecting enemy civilians (even by dubious Palestinian statistics), and accuses it of targeting them. Goldstone makes Kafka’s Trial seem fair.
Biased BBC discusses the unfortunate news of a legal decision by the UK’s courts to allow the BBC to keep the Balen Report on the bias of BBC’s Middle East coverage secret. The decision’s reasoning seems in line with the “Goldstone Standard” of Kafkaesque legal reasoning. But what the extensive effort of the BBC to keep this report under wraps reveals most, is how afraid they are that, if the public were to see hard evidence of their bias — from their own report — they would lose the confidence of their readers. It would be a weapon in the hands of pro-Israel activists to use against the BBC — a double horror. It reminds me of Charles Enderlin telling Esther Schapira that he would not give Israel the raw footage because he had no intention of allowing them to “whitewash themselves.”
The article is itself incomprehensible to me and I make several appeals for help in understanding. If anyone has more material on this, please post it.
Last Updated: Friday, 27 April 2007, 13:49 GMT 14:49 UK
BBC report to remain confidential
The report looked at the BBC’s news coverage of the Middle East
The BBC has won a legal battle to keep the contents of an internal review of its Middle East reporting confidential. A judge overturned an order that the report should be made public under Freedom of Information laws.
London lawyer Steven Sugar, who had asked to see the document, said he hoped the BBC Trust might reconsider and publish it in the public interest.
The BBC, which had been accused of biased reporting against Israel, has welcomed the High Court ruling.
It had argued the so-called Balen report - named after the senior editor who wrote it - had been produced “for purposes of journalism”, and therefore fell outside the scope of right-to-know laws.
Nice. And do we have any evidence that the BBC has used it in this fashion? Shall we conduct another study on the (invisible) impact of the Balen report on BBC Middle East coverage since its appearance?
The information commissioner agreed, but Mr Sugar took the case to appeal and the Information Tribunal backed him.
‘Technical win’
Mr Justice Davis, sitting in the High Court, accepted the Corporation’s argument that the tribunal had no jurisdiction in a case where a public service broadcaster and the information commissioner agreed documents fell outside the scope of the act.
I need help here. Are they saying that if the public service broadcaster wishes to hide a negative report from the public, and the information minister agrees, then hide it? What about the arguments involved? Is that why it’s a technical win?
The judge described the position as “most odd” and “potentially inconvenient in its consequence”.
There were, said Mr Justice Davis, “powerful reasons in favour of there being a right of appeal to the tribunal in circumstances such as the present”.
I don’t understand. Am I stupid, or is this badly written? Or is it addressed to insiders? Can someone explain?
Commercial solicitor Mr Sugar, from Putney in south London, described the ruling as a “technical win” for the BBC.
He added: “Perhaps the BBC Trust under its new chairman, will take a different view from BBC management and conclude it is in the public interest for Mr Balen’s report to be published.”
Who’s the new chairman and why would he change? Arlette Chabot came in after the al Durah affair and didn’t change anything. I’m not ruling it out, just asking.
Bias allegations
Mr Sugar said the government now needed to look again at the way the act was framed.
“It is clear that the journalism exception was introduced into the Freedom of Information Act principally in order to prevent access to broadcasters’ out-takes,” he said.
Are outtakes the same as rushes? And if so, shouldn’t at least some oversight groups be allowed to examine outtakes of material that looks highly suspicious?
“But unfortunately the exception was drafted in general terms which has allowed its use to prevent the public gaining access to much material which I am sure the government intended should be publicly available”
Critics of the corporation’s Middle East coverage had wanted it made public, suspecting it would show the BBC itself had found evidence of anti-Israel bias in its news coverage of the region.
The BBC had said it was vital for independent journalism that debates among its staff about how it covered stories did not have to be opened up to the public gaze.
This is choice. We journalists are in the job of washing everyone else’s dirty laundry in public, but heaven forbid we engage in the same process. Reminds me of Enderlin’s defenders insisting that the court’s listening to Karsenty was infringing on the freedom of the press. I’d sooner say “unaccountability of the press.” I guess that’s a kind of freedom, but if these guys were real liberals, they’d realize that a freedom that deprives fellow citizens of freedom is oppression, not freedom.
A statement from the corporation said:
The Balen report was always intended as an internal review of programme content, to inform future output. It was never intended for publication… The BBC’s action in this case had nothing to do with the fact that the Balen report was about the Middle East - the same approach would have been taken whatever area of new output was covered.
Members of the public had other ways of joining the debate over impartiality it said.
Wow. This belongs in the annals of how the emperor kept the crowd from acknowledging his nakedness. We really need an update of the story; after all, the original is all about live responses. Now virtually everything is mediated.
CA: Even some Israelis who feel that unless they investigate they’re going to get an international investigation. In the Jerusalem Post shortly after the report was made public one writer wrote that the kind of report that came out closed down what could be or should be a vital debate even before it got started because of the heightened nature of this precise report. He said, for instance a debate about, when does negligence become recklessness, when does recklessness slip into wanton callousness, and then into deliberate disregard for innocent human life.
This Israeli writer basically said that this is an area of legitimate debate, but because of the heightened feelings it’s probably not going to happen.
She’s talking about David Landau, famous for his “Oh Condi, it’s been my wet dream to tell you to rape Israel into making concessions to the Palestinians” remark, whose reflections on the Goldstone report I fisked here.
The point that both he and now Jessica Montell made is that, no matter how critical they are of the Israeli army, the notion that the IDF targets civilians is beyond the pale. Not for Goldstone though (see below).
RG: Well, you know, it seems now at least of the prospect of it happening and certainly there has been an active debate, if one reads, and I have been trying to keep up with to the best of my ability with the Israeli media, the report has opened a huge debate within Israel, and that’s a very good thing, and I think its opened a debate internationally and its certainly my hope that the effect of the report will have consequences in the future for the protection of innocent civilians in many places of the world.
On the contrary, the reaction in Israel — even on the Left — is almost across the boards sense that Goldstone blew it by going so far over the top. As for the international scene, only the far-far-left (i.e., someone who thinks the NYT is a warmongering paper) sees what Goldstone sees.
Contrary to his pious wishes, as a number of people have pointed out, the report stands every chance of making things much worse. But Goldstone, as shown in the report he produced, and somewhat like his epigone, Gideon Levy, has a prodigious ability to hear only what he wants to hear. (more…)
I was interviewed this afternoon on the Israel Broadcasting Authority English News. If you want to see it, it’s up for 24 hours at IBA Closeup. I come in a little after half-way through.
It will be up tomorrow for 24 hours at Jewish TV News Network. Click on Israel Daily News from the IBA.
Gideon Levy wrote a piece filled with contempt for Netanyahu’s UN Speech, which I posted last week. Now, having heard and read the speech, I’m amazed at what Levy says, since it barely even accords with the speech. In a sense what Levy has done is illustrate the famous Gary Larson cartoon.
I tried to find the one with the wife yelling at her husband: “You are impossible. If you don’t make the bed right now, I’ll go crazy.” And he hears: “You…me…bed…now…crazy.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cheapened the memory of the Holocaust in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. He did so twice. Once, when he brandished proof of the very existence of the Holocaust, as if it needed any, and again when he compared Hamas to the Nazis.
If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, Netanyahu cheapens it. Is there a need of proof, 60 years later? Or, the world might think, is the denier right?
Apparently Levy lives in a universe where Holocaust denial is a mere pecadillo of the extreme loony right. He seems unaware of the growing encroachment of denial — especially among his people’s enemies — or the increasing mainstream credibilty it now receives in places like Spain. Cheapen? Many of the people in that room (a lone Palestinian delegate was still there) think it’s a serious debate, and all who left think the Jews made most of this up.
This purist claim that trying to refute Holocaust denial should be considered cheapening the Holocaust is doubly revolting coming from someone who surely would have no truck with those who make the Holocaust a sacred issue, and on the contrary, whose work is especially appreciated by people who belittle the Holocaust. Indeed, Norman Finkelstein, who regularly dismsses Holocaust-mongering, and compares Israel to the Nazis — something Levy would never do — loves Levy’s column. (One might argue that Finkelstein is to Levy, what Levy is to Netanyahu in the Gary Larson cartoon.) (more…)
Two articles today exemplify the vast differences between sanity and masochism in Israeli journalism, one by Gideon Levy of Ha-aretz expressing sheer contempt for Netanyahu’s speech at the UN, another expressing sheer contempt of Richard Goldstone for being the tool of “the dark side.” I link to the beginning of Levy’s (which I don’t have the time to fisk, but welcome your suggestions), and the full text of Yemini’s which appeared originally in Hebrew in Ma’ariv.
First, the arsonist who, in his glorious ability to “self”-criticize, spews his venom where all who hate his people can come and draw sustenance:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cheapened the memory of the Holocaust in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. He did so twice. Once, when he brandished proof of the very existence of the Holocaust, as if it needed any, and again when he compared Hamas to the Nazis.
If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, Netanyahu cheapens it. Is there a need of proof, 60 years later? Or, the world might think, is the denier right? A Advertisementnd it is doubtful that any historian of stature would buy the comparison the prime minister made between Hamas and the Nazis, or between the London Blitz and the Qassam rockets on Sderot. In the Blitz, 400 German bombers and 600 fighter planes killed 43,000 people and destroyed more than one million homes. Hamas’ Qassams, perhaps the most primitive weapon in the world, have killed 18 people in eight years. Yes, they sowed great terror - but a Blitz?
And if we can compare a poorly equipped terrorist organization to the horrific Nazi killing machine, why should others not compare the Nazis’ behavior to that of Israel Defense Forces soldiers? In both cases, the comparison is baseless and infuriating. Netanyahu began the speech as if he were chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial - Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust; his family and his wife’s family…
Let’s start at the end. Richard Goldstone perpetrated a moral crime. Not against the State of Israel but against human rights. He turned them into a weapon for dark regimes. Goldstone was not negligent. He did this with malice.
The criticism that was made in the first days following the report was on the basis of preliminary study. But time passes. And the more that the details of this report are revealed, the more it becomes clear that it is a libel. A libel with legal cover. A libel that was prepared in advance to incriminate the State of Israel, in the service of Libya and Iran. Goldstone willingly took up the loathsome role. He supplied these countries with the goods. The claim that “the discourse of rights” has become the dark forces’ most effective tool is a familiar one. The Goldstone report is the supreme expression of this. Its legal terminology is exemplary. It gushes about international human rights treaties. But it cannot hide the result: It is a libelous indictment of the State of Israel, in the service of the axis of terrorism and evil. Yes, there is marginal – very marginal – lip service regarding criticism of Hamas. Goldstone’s ilk is a sophisticated lot. They now reiterate from every stage, and Goldstone does it well, that they were actually objective. Here, they also leveled criticism at Hamas. How enlightened of them!
Goldstone sold his soul for an endless series of lies. Even Mary Robinson, who is not known as an admirer of Israel, understood that, “This is unfortunately a practice by the [UN Human Rights] Council: adopting resolutions guided not by human rights but by politics. This is very regrettable.” She refused to take the post. Goldstone took it and carried it out with excessive enthusiasm. If international law worked as it should, if the representatives of dark regimes did not have an automatic majority in it, Goldstone would have to stand trial. But this is impossible. And therefore, not only Israel but every moral person, every person for whom human rights are important, must declare Goldstone a criminal. Here is the proof.
Khaled abu Toameh has an interesting analysis of the dilemma that Obama’s lates “peace-making” moves have created for Mahmoud Abbas. Although I don’t agree with his analysis, he does point out the central dilemma of the Arabs in dealing with the world — one also highlighted in the response to the failure of Farouk Hosni to become the head of UNESCO. (HT/Lianne)
Sep 24, 2009 1:11 | Updated Sep 24, 2009 1:23 Analysis: Tripartite summit undermines Abbas
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Talkbacks for this article: 5
Article’s topics: Mahmoud Abbas, Barack Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority
Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah have not hidden their disappointment with the tripartite summit that was held in New York and which brought together US President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Binymain Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.Photo: AP [file]
On Wednesday, the officials said they were not only disappointed with the outcome of the summit which, they noted, did not achieve any breakthrough in the stalled peace talks, but also with the circumstances under which the meeting was arranged.
Even many representatives of Abbas’s Fatah faction voiced their deep disappointment over his agreement to meet with Netanyahu unconditionally. Some went as far as accusing Obama of “humiliating” Abbas by forcing him to meet with Netanyahu against his will and contrary to his pledges.
Note here that anything the Palestinians insist on and is denied them they see as a humiliation. In this case, they want Israel to make major concessions just for the privilege of speaking with Abbas. Anything else — like meeting with no preconditions — they view as a loss. So the zero-sum game here is hard: they want Netanyahu to freeze settlements as a precondition to sitting down. Any compromise, in the honor-shame world, shows weakness.
Of course, Obama is strongly to blame for this situation, since he and his administrators acted at the beginning as if the settlement issue were nonsense that they could put an end to with a sweep of their hand (something like an intifada in the original sense), encouraging the Palestinians to dig in and watch Israel squiirm. When they realized how complex the issue (and hopefully how unbalanced their approach), they left Abbas stranded on a limb he had proudly gone out. (more…)
Marty Peretz has a short post at The Spine on how dangerous the Goldstone Commission’s Report is for the ability of democracies to defend themselves against enemies who attack from the midst of civilian populations. It elicited a hostile comment from a reader who signs as george walton, which, I think, offers a fine insight into the workings of a peculiar kind of mindset that I’d like to label according to the meme “their side right or wrong.”
george starts by quoting Peretz:
MP:The fact is that the Taliban do not fight by the rules of modern warfare which try to limit the exposure of non-combatants.
george:
Here’s what the Taliban should do. They should strike a deal with the coalition forces. If the coalition forces will agree to scale back on military hardware that is at least a thousand times more sophisticated and lethal than the terrorist’s arsenal, the Taliban will agree to back off from the civilians.
At first read, it’s hard to know if this is an Onion imitation, or serious sarcasm. The reader will forgive me for interpreting it as the latter (evidence below). Essentially, if I understand the sarcasm here, the Taliban has the right to hide among civilians because it’s the only way to fight against an oppressive external invader (who happens to be the allied forces).
Now I don’t know if george has any criteria for what constitutes legitimate resistance that is then allowed to sacrifice its own civilians for the cause, and what the chances that resistance movements that adapt such tactics might turn into “occupiers” of their own “liberated” populations, were they to succeed. Certainly the Taliban before the alliied invasion, with their policies towards women — acid in the face for not wearing the veil in public, a practice they continue even as “insurgents” — could hardly be called a liberating force. But that “sin,” however oppressive seems to be washed away as a result of the Taliban’s war against the US: their side right or wrong.
Even hyper-self-critic David Landau, whose astonishingly self-destructiive advice to Condaleeza Rice, I’ve discussed before, finds Goldstone unpalatable. And yet, he remains firmly inside his moral narcissism, obsessing over the four-dimensional Israeli soul, implicitly treating Gentiles as three-dimensional bit players, and the Palestinians as two dimensional cardboard figures whose moral angency does not even exist.
Even for Goldstone, getting criticized by someone like Landau has to hurt. From fashlah to fadihah.
ISRAEL intentionally went after civilians in Gaza — and wrapped its intention in lies.
That chilling — and misguided — accusation is the key conclusion of the United Nations investigation, led by Richard Goldstone, into the three-week war last winter. “While the Israeli government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercises of its right to self-defense,” the report said, “the mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.”
The report has produced a storm of outraged rejection in Israel. Politicians fulminate about double standards and anti-Semitism. Judge Goldstone, an eminent South African jurist and a Jew, is widely excoriated as an enemy of his people.
The report stunned even seasoned Israeli diplomats who expected no quarter from an inquiry set up by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which they believe to be deeply biased against Israel. They expected the military operation to be condemned as grossly disproportionate. They expected Israel to be lambasted for not taking sufficient care to avoid civilian casualties. But they never imagined that the report would accuse the Jewish state of intentionally aiming at civilians.
Israelis believe that their army did not deliberately kill the hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including children, who died during “Operation Cast Lead.” They believe, therefore, that Israel is not culpable, morally or criminally, for these civilian deaths, which were collateral to the true aim of the operation — killing Hamas gunmen.
It is, some would argue, a form of self-deception.
When does negligence become recklessness, and when does recklessness slip into wanton callousness, and then into deliberate disregard for innocent human life?
Note that we have yet to even reach the Palestinian starting point — target civilians deliberately… or, in short, terrorism. This simple observation, not on Landau’s radar screen because he doesn’t really think about Palestinians as human beings (i.e., moral agents), but only as victims (i.e., as innocent creatures), will become especially important in noting how the Goldstone Commission used the “T” word only to refer to Israel and never to refer to Hamas. (more…)
I’m creating a category for “irony of the day,” which generally involves either useful idiocy or civic heroism. Here it involves both: Ahmadinejad wanted to make “Al Quds/Palestinian Day” a big expression of national unity. Instead anti-Government protesters came out again, turning shouts of “Death to Israel” into shouts of “Death to Russia” (which quickly sided with Ahmadinejad). So, on the one hand, we have an elite who treat their commoners with contempt, and systematically abuse power, using the classic “anti-Semitic” trope for their scapegoating… only this time it blows up in their face.
Note how revealing the photo of Khatami jostled. This is an immense loss of face for so prominent a cleric (who actually supported Mousavi, but was attending the government rally).
What a fine expression of the surfacing of “hidden transcripts,” as James C. Scott describes them. The emperor’s fine anti-Zionist cloak comes unraveled. These are critical moments in the emergence of a civic polity: when the public can openly challenge the scape-goating narratiive with which an authoritarian elite keeps them focused in the wrong direction.
Associated Press
Mohammad Khatami, center, a former Iranian president, is attacked as he attends a Quds Day rally.
By ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: September 18, 2009
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Tens of thousands of protesters chanted and carried banners through the heart of Tehran and other Iranian cities on Friday, hijacking a government-organized anti-Israel march and injecting new life into the country’s opposition movement.
The protests, held in defiance of warnings from the clerical and military elite, served as a public embarrassment to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had hoped to showcase national unity just two weeks before he is set to meet Western leaders for talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
He used the annual rally for Jerusalem Day, also known as Quds Day, to deliver a fiery anti-Israeli speech in which he called the Holocaust “a lie” and impugned the West again for its criticisms of Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential election.
But his efforts to recapture the stage were largely drowned out by a tumultuous day of street rallies, in which the three main opposition leaders marched with their followers for the first time in months. Flouting the official government message of support for Palestinian militants, they chanted, “No to Gaza and Lebanon, I will give my life for Iran.”
Coming a day after President Obama announced a revised missile defense system that aims to check Iran’s military ambitions, the rallies underscored the continuing vitality of the domestic opposition movement, which has rejected the election as fraudulent and fiercely criticized the violence that followed it.
In a striking contrast with earlier rallies, the police often stood on the sidelines as protesters faced off against huge crowds of government supporters — many of them bused in from outside the cities — and chain-wielding Basij militia members. There were reports of arrests in Tehran and the southern city of Shiraz, but no shootings or deaths, with the police apparently showing greater restraint than during earlier protests.
Here’s the latest posting at the IDF YouTube site.
The combatant calls to a group of kids who appear to be accompanied by an adult woman and they wllingly go to provide cover for him.
This raises 2 points:
1. In terms of Israel getting blasted for collecive punishment, and for not discerning between civilians and miltants — how are you supposed to do that when everyone is involved, some wllingly? In this case the kids and woman are enabling a terrorst to escape after he committed terror act. What is their level of responsibility/involvement? legally? How should Israel respond when Hamas exploits the fact that Israel won’t attack civilians?
2. Is this not proof that Israel doesn’t fire deliberately on civilians. If they did, this tactic would make no sense. Here he exploits the IDF’s unwillingness to incur Palestinian civilian casualties, and yet Goldstone condems them for it.
Note that the Goldstone Commission explicitly addressed this issue with a dismissive sweep of the hand now familiiar to those reading the report. They themselves cite the following video in which a Hamas leader, warned by cell phone by an Israeli intelligence officer that his house will be bombed, acts just as the fellow in the video above. Goldstone’s response:
The Mission notes, however, that the incident occurred in 2007. No such incidents are alleged by the Israeli Government with regard to the military operations that began on 27 December 2008. The Mission received no reports of such incidents from other sources.
Couldn’t have looked very hard. Israel Matsav posts a good example from January 8, 2009:
Notes “the Mission,
475. The Mission is also aware of the public statement by Mr. Fathi Hammad, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, on 29 February 2009, which is adduced as evidence of Hamas’ use of human shields. Mr. Hammad reportedly stated that … the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death seeking. For the Palestinian people, death became an industry, at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the mujahideen excel and the children excel. Accordingly,
476. Although the Mission finds this statement morally repugnant, it does not consider it to constitute evidence that Hamas forced Palestinian civilians to shield military objectives against attack. The Government of Israel has not identified any such cases.
Historians often use this kind of reasoning when the evidence disturbs their argument… “there is no evidence… nothing suggests that… not a shred of evidence supports…” It’s got nothing to do with reality, only with narrative.
Richard Goldstone has an op-ed in the NYT today. It is most striking because it is so transparently misleading. Indeed, it’s just the kind of misinformation that fisking was invented to counter. So I couldn’t help doing so.
Goldstone clearly counts on addressing a sympathetic audience ignorant of the facts — a choir. I address those readers of the news who still want to be part of a “reality-based” community, for whom evidence must be addressed, analyzed, and assessed. You make up your mind if Judge Goldstone is an honest, fair-minded man, or someone who, for whatever mysterious reason, is in thrall to a narrative he must serve, regardless of the evidence.
By RICHARD GOLDSTONE
I ACCEPTED with hesitation my United Nations mandate to investigate alleged violations of the laws of war and international human rights during Israel’s three-week war in Gaza last winter. The issue is deeply charged and politically loaded. I accepted because the mandate of the mission was to look at all parties: Israel; Hamas, which controls Gaza; and other armed Palestinian groups.
This is astonishing. Mary Robinson — the presiding genius of Durban I — rejected it because the mandate was only to investigate Israel, tainted from the beginning. Goldstone requested, in vain, that the mandate be widened. For him to pretend that the mandate was to investigate all groups when it never was, whether he threw in some comments on Hamas or not, assumes a pervasive illiteracy among his audience — the readers of the NYT.
I accepted because my fellow commissioners are professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation.
The case against the composition of his committee — not one person sympathetic to Israel, at least one, Christine Chinkin, openly hostile — has led two groups of lawyers, in England and in Canada, to demand Chinkin’s disqualification since she had already pronounced herself — long before she saw any real evidence — on Israel’s guilt. Goldstone, even as he tossed out the petition on a subtle technicality, admitted that Chinkin’s case was borderline and the report reconfirms her prejudice. So whence comes this bland denial?
But above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.
I am about to open a website, a part of the Second Draft initiative, to examine the Goldstone Report. I welcome all my readers to contribute any and all links to articles about the report — including favorable ones — as well as their own thoughts on the subject. The site will encourage submissions, and I’d be happy to include work from this blog’s extremely sharp and well-informed readership.
In the meantime, I hope to start posting material here again soon.
