Augean Stables

I just received the link to this piece from someone on my Class of ‘71 Listserv. She presents herself to everyone as a lover of peace, but she apparently is drawn to some of the worst war-mongering propaganda around. I don’t have time to tackle this right now. I welcome your comments both on the film itself (and its two authors Joe Mowrey, scriptwriter, and Anthony Lawson), and the way in which such a piece of work can appeal to people who think they are in the peace camp.

Judge Richard Goldstone spoke yesterday at Yale in the framework of the George Herbert Walker Bush Jr. Lecture in International Relations. Obviously a most prestigious platform for someone of stature, but inappropriate for a figure who is not only highly controversial, but has done much to marginalize himself, as Noah Pollak and Adam Yoffie pointed out the previous day in the Yale Daily.

The talk did not directly address the “Gaza Fact-finding Mission Report” as Goldstone referred to it, but it did tackle the subject of “Accountability for War Crimes,” and Goldstone brought in Israel on occasion as an example of the issues he raised.

Perhaps the single most striking feature of the talk was its staggering superficiality. Goldstone might have a reputation (at least among those familiar with his report) for being biased, but not for being a lightweight. And yet in the less than forty minutes of his formal lecture, at no point did one get the impression that one was listening to a trained legal mind, much less a brilliant one. Most of the lecture could have been written by an undergraduate who combined entries at Wikipedia on International Law, Nuremberg Trials, Geneva Convention, and Rome Treaty, with a warmed over version of “war is not the answer,” and “why can’t we all just get along and follow the law?”

In the world of academia, where presumably we have high standards, such a mediocre performance - especially when widely praised - attests to a distinct deterioration in academic discourse. That people, like Phillip Weiss (below), can find Goldstone’s presentation “brilliant” and “wise” suggests that we are (once again) in an age of misapplied superlatives, grade inflation, and partisan judgments.

Goldstone’s initial discussion sounded quite reasonable: in order for “universal jurisdiction” to work in a court like the ICC, they have to deal specifically with “grave breaches.” The court has to have credibility, it must be trusted for its fairness, in order for it to work. And in order to gain that kind of credibility, it needs to focus on deeds that are “so shocking to the minds of people that they constitute crimes against humanity.” Proportionality is a matter of judgment, and in such cases, great leeway is given to commanders in the “fog of war” in making such judgments.

So far so good, although I confess I couldn’t figure out from these remarks why he ever took on the Gaza Mission. Could that letter to the Times from Amnesty International signed by three of the four future members of the Gaza Mission, including Goldstone, be a clue? After all, the signatories had expressed how the recent events (not the previous eight years of suicide bombings and rockets aimed at civilians), “have shocked us to the core.” Nothing similar appeared from these signatories at the death of some 20,000 civilians in Sri Lanka only months later, nothing about the millions in Congo. But the Israeli attacks on Gaza, in which, even by the most hostile Palestinian counts, fewer than a thousand civilians were killed, that “shocks to the core.”

I kept thinking to myself, “how could he, with these principles and concerns in mind, have accused Israel of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity”?

That impression was further confirmed when he began his most “interesting” discussion, of the principle of “equality.” Initially, the discussion seemed to reinforce my puzzlement. Equality relates intimately to human dignity: [below is a paraphrase taken from notes, the lecture will be available online in about a week]

…if some are given greater rights, the greater the inequality the greater the indignity… Most if all human rights violations are the product of such indignities… Without dehumanization people don’t commit crimes against humanity; the people who engage in genocide have already dehumanized their targets.

Isn’t this precisely what Elihu Richter and Maurice Ostroff had warned Goldstone about in their memos about the way Hamas operates. How could the man who says this have gone to Gaza and come out without a word about the industry of hatred and dehumanization that rules the public sphere there? Worse yet, how could this man say these things when his own report had allowed and highlighted a Palestinian “witness” accusing Israel of this execrable practice.
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I have just published an article in MERIA (Middle East Review of International Affairs) on Goldstone’s Gaza Report in two parts:

The Goldstone Report Part I: A Failure of Intelligence

and

The Goldstone Report Part II: A Miscarriage of Human Rights

From the conclusion:

Intimidation and Advocacy: The Narcissistic Payoff

There is something more sinister here even than various forms of animosity toward Jews, conscious and unconscious, or radical ideologies that have somehow lost their way. If it were only that problem, then reasoned discourse, hard evidence, and some serious self-criticism on the part of the parties involved might help, at least in some cases. One wouldn’t find so much unanimity. There is, however, something more fundamental that underlies the positions taken in the Arab-Israeli conflict, something that explains why, despite so many powerful anomalies (like Hamas using human shields and shutting out aid at the Egyptian border), “progressives” continue to cling to their self-destructive paradigms and adopt positions that so violate the very principles they claim to espouse. That more powerful factor is: “We are afraid and we cannot admit it.”

Journalists in particular, subject to pervasive threats and occasional violence in the Palestinian territories (and elsewhere in the Middle East), cannot possibly admit this to their readers and viewers for fear of losing credibility. Moreover, not inclined toward living in the constant recognition that they have succumbed to the double indignity of bending their knee to jihadi demands, and to hiding that fact from their audiences, they prefer to believe that they say what they do out of advocacy. They can thus feel noble by embracing the cause of the oppressed (who happen to be the same people who threaten them). How much braver it feels to accuse the Israelis of whining about unfair coverage than to admit one cannot report honestly on Hamas’ behavior. With the alchemy of advocacy for the “oppressed” and “wretched of the earth,” they transform this double cowardice into bravery, “speaking truth to Israeli power.”

That intimidation, however, extends beyond the journalistic front lines to the home front as well. Since the Salmon Rushdie affair in 1989, Muslims have realized that they can extend Shari’a through intimidation, that when they call for targeted killings of blasphemers of Islam, the West will back down. The twenty-first century has been a privileged terrain for such spectacles of intimidation and appeasement, among the most spectacular (and enduring) concerned the “Muhammad Cartoons.” Note that the same radical forces in Islam that responded so violently–and so openly about their agenda–to Western indiscretions, also, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, produced a stunningly long list of suicide attacks on civilians of all faiths around the world, beginning with Israel, but then becoming frequent in both the West and Muslim-majority societies.

Much of this intimidation has been internalized in the form of a politically correct narrative whose hegemony depends on the silences it imposes. It denounces any criticism that offends Muslims as gratuitous insult and provocation. The key issue, of course, is where should one draw the line between gratuitous insult and important criticism? If politeness is not saying certain things lest there be violence, civility is being able to say certain things and there won’t be violence. Is contemporary Western discourse too obsessed with being polite with Muslims? Are they too thin-skinned (especially given how violently they can dish out the criticism)? It certainly seems strange then that supporters of human rights and defenders of free speech expend far more effort silencing those who “seem” to insult Islam, than offensive Muslims who call for the death of blasphemers, who carry signs in the streets of European capitals that read: “Slay all those who insult Islam.”

Those who follow this politically-correct line so dominate the public discourse that any dissent takes one on a perilous path to marginalization–those who make even mildly critical remarks about Muslims, Arabs, or Palestinians are rapidly dismissed as proto-fascists. If they persist, they may be accused of incitement, Islamophobia, and even holocaust denial (of the genocide against the Palestinians). What is portrayed as politically correct–whether Hina Jilani’s it would be “cruel not to believe” or Erik Alterman’s it is an “inarguably racist rant” to say that “Arabs are feigning outrage”–trumps trying to determine what actually happened based on the evidence. They think they are being virtuously generous and open-minded; but in the world of cognitive warfare, the outcome is systematic renunciation all the West’s main defenses.

As a result, Americans don’t know how to protect themselves from real enemies like Major Malik Hassan, FBI Arabic translators whose loyalties lie elsewhere, or government advisors who “help” law enforcement and security deal with the Muslim community. Ironically, stigmatizing as a “right-winger” and an “Islamophobe” anyone who points out the “us-them” ideology–wala wa bara (loyalty to fellow Muslims and enmity to infidels), a mentality so prevalent among Muslims and so effectively incited by radicals–will make it harder to counteract that problem. The losers here are moderates on all sides, especially among the Muslims whom jihadists like Hamas and Jama’at-e-Islami are permitted to stigmatize as collaborators with the enemy.

Alas, Goldstone may have won his peaceful sleep at the cost of the Gazans’–and everyone else’s–nightmares, for not only does his report target Israel, it will eventually serve to target every civil polity with a powerful army attacked by this asymmetrical war waged by jihadi forces. Ironically, once these other armies become aware of the heightened standards, they go straight to Israel for advice on how to lower the civilian tolls in their military maneuvers.

The consequences of such self-delusion are massive. The Goldstone Report embodies an astonishing failure of Western culture to collect reliable intelligence, to “see” clearly enough to make sober judgments and take effective decisions. A systematic inversion sets in: al-Dura 2000, symbol of Palestinian blood libels, becomes “Israel’s images of hate”; Jenin 2002, the most exceptional example of military self-sacrifice for the sake of sparing enemy civilians in the history of human warfare, becomes “the Jenin Massacre”; Lebanon and Gaza 2006-2009, the revolting spectacle of religious fanatics victimizing their own people in a war of extermination, become symbols of freedom fighters resisting Israeli apartheid imperialism. The result, as Irwin Cotler points out, is the grotesque double moral inversion of making Israel the only country accused of genocide, even as it is the only contemporary country subject to incitement as the object of genocide.

It may make many in the West feel good to “believe” the Arab Muslim narrative of suffering at the hands of the Israeli oppressor. After all, it allows them to be generously empathic, and to wag the finger at Israel. Yet it also empowers the very forces of intolerance, violence, and reactionary goals they imagine they are opposing. It is neither honorable nor courageous; it is a capitulation that endangers the most hard-earned freedoms. Even as they congratulate themselves on bravely balancing advocacy and “objective” journalism, reporters daily betray the very charge given to them by the citizens they serve–to report accurately.

If someone had told the founders of Hamas, as they penned their genocidal “charter” of Islamic supremacy in 1988, that in 20 years time, infidels in Europe would be carrying their flags and chanting “We are Hamas,” they would have laughed in disbelief. It is not that the jihadists–violent and “non-violent”– are so smart or talented at deception; it is that their Western counterparts are so stupid. Great civilizations do not necessarily die or fall to superior powers; they can self-destruct.

Goldstone’s inexcusably unprofessional report represents a major step on the way to either the suicide of a human rights culture unique in history and a millennium in the making, or a global war that will beggar World War II for casualties. The tragedy is that this fight might be won largely non-violently by showing some courage, honesty, and judgment. Given the cost in lives that would ensue in a war with the vicious forces now empowered daily, is that too much to ask for?

Several years ago I was asked to write an essay on the progressive case for Israel. The editor did not like the essay — thought it too convoluted, I think. I just ran across it, and thought I’d put it here. Comments welcome.

The Progressive Case for Israel, the Arabs, and the Global Community.
2005

The following essay constitutes the groundwork for a discussion about globalization and fairness, with the Arab-Israeli conflict as the focus of a particular case study. It represents a progressive case that aims to benefit both Israeli and Palestinian peoples, and, in the longer run, hopefully, peoples all over the globe. It begins by making explicit progressive values and goals, and then considers how best to empower such values. Then the essay looks first at the ways in which these values play out in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and which forces on both sides of the ethnic conflict show commitment to those values. It then compares this analysis with the current Leftist consensus on the causes and possible solutions to the Middle East conflict, a contrast that suggests that current consensus actually undermines the progressive values it claims to promote. It concludes with the outline of a course of discursive actions which will hopefully lead to a progressive outcome for everyone in the Middle East and in this increasingly globalized world in which we live.

I. Progressive Values

The fundamental progressive commitment concerns the relationships between those with a hand on the technologies of power (elites) and those who labor (commoners). Put briefly, we might sum it up as the belief that elites should make the bounties of nature and culture available to all, commoners as well as elites, and hence dedicate themselves to programs that educate, empower and elevate commoners both to exercise freedom and participate in the deliberations of power. Correspondingly, all that seeks to prune back the excesses of power – opacity, arbitrariness, privilege, arrogance, violence, hierarchy and authoritarianism – find favor among progressives.
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I recently attended the History conference of the Athens Institute of Education and Research. Even the organizers admit it’s something of an occasion to visit Athens. I decided to praise the ancient Athenians for their notion of parrhesia (despite their brilliantly self-destructive flaws) and criticize our current pusillanimous academic scene’s dhimmi behavior vis-a-vis Arab and Islamic efforts to bully us into curtailing our freedom of speech so we can “respect” their thin skin. No one challenged me, and later, singly, a dozen people came to tell me how glad they were I had spoken up. I wonder how deep the politically-correct consensus goes, or is it as fragile as the crowd’s praise of the emperor’s new clothes? Below, my talk.

The so-called “Democratic West” today faces significant challenges both from other cultures, and from critics generated from within. Some of these challenges involve typical competition from rival societies, and helpful self-criticism from members of our own societies. But some represent lethal attacks, both from the outside and from within, and we seem to have exceptional difficulty telling the difference between beneficent and malevolent discourse. This talk is both about the Athenian principle of Parrhesia (“free speech”), and an illustration of it.

Let’s begin with why speech is almost universally not free. In most cultures it is allowed, expected, even required that alpha males shed blood for the sake of honor… if not another’s blood, then one’s own blood (as in seppuku). If you criticize those in power, they will make you pay; if they do not, they lose face and their power immediately begins to wane. People self-censor to avoid suffering the inevitable consequences. In such cultures, violence and intimidation pervade; indeed in tribal warrior cultures, one is not a “man” until one has killed another man. And you’re surely not a man if another demeans you publicly and you do not respond.

But the free tongue is silenced not only by political violence, but by group solidarities. Here we also find the working of a deep-rooted solidarity that insists on silence: “my side right or wrong.” Here we have community pressures in punishing violators: failure to side with “one’s own,” brings shame, and effectively excommunicates the offender. If I do not avenge my relative, I am not a man. Thus any breaking of ranks, even if done on principle, will bring accusations of cowardice not only from the opposing clan, but more devastatingly, from relatives.

And finally we silence ourselves: if one will shed blood to counter unwanted criticism, how much the more will one not reveal embarrassing things about oneself. As a principle, one might describe public self-criticism – admission of fault, sin, failure – as something people avoid whenever possible. As a French friend of mine said, “in France no one admits they were wrong; it’s a sign of weakness.” Public self-criticism is like chewing broken glass; virtually no one does it voluntarily.

The overall point I want to make here is that given these cultural and personal dimensions, the principle of “freedom of speech,” or differently put, the art of giving and receiving public criticism, is actually opposed by an extraordinary array of forces. Its accomplishment, therefore, takes far more than merely legislating free speech or a free press. If the cultural dimensions, both individual and group, are not addressed, no legislation will make a significant difference. Obviously and thankfully, we all self-censor, but the degree of self-censorship, especially in political issues, makes a key difference in the cultural “atmosphere.”

Which brings me now to one of the crucial accomplishments of Athenian society in the middle of the first millennium BCE: the extension of the right of parrhesia, to the public as a whole, or isegoria.
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David Matas, an international human rights lawyer, has written a devastating legal analysis of the Goldstone Report, which he has allowed me to post at Understanding the Goldstone Report even though it has not yet been published elsewhere (it’s longer than most editors, with the exception of Barry Rubin at MERIA) would accept. Nonetheless, it bristling with incisive comments that only a lawyer with an extensive background in the subject might note. He focuses on 10 issues that should have appeared in the Report and did not. His conclusion:
“The Report oozes with intellectual dishonesty.”

The Goldstone Report: Stone or Gold?
by David Matas

Table of Contents

A. Introduction

B. Exclusions

1) The Human Rights Council mandating resolution

a) The problem
b) Preambular paragraphs
c) Operative paragraphs
d) The World Court precedent
e) The Presidential mandate

2) The bias of Christine Chinkin

a) The problem
b) The answer
c) The Report

3) The Hamas Covenant

4) Terminology

a) Blockade
b) Collective punishment

5) The blockade and Egypt

6) Standard of proof

7) The distinction between disproportionate and indiscriminate response

a) The omission
b) The differences
c) The blending

8) Sources

9) Military expertise

10) The wings of Hamas

C. Conclusions

Read the whole report

I attended most of the two days, but missed important events at the end of each day (including, alas, the final dinner). I missed the first day’s events at the Knesset so I could do the interview with IBA. So my remarks will be less “comprehensive.” Overall, it was well-planned, well-organized, but of limited scope. Repeatedly attendees complained about the problem of limited follow-through – there should be a dozen smaller meetings generated by the Global Forum during the year, rather than an annual meeting the inevitably has to play off “political speeches,” with informative material from researchers.

From my perspective there were two serious lacunae. First, I am now fully convinced that Israel’s (and therefore the West’s) problem is not a matter of hasbarah (explanation, clarification, PR, Public Diplomacy), but a cognitive war in which the physical battlefield (where Hamas/Hizbullah/Fatah will always lose), is an adjunct to the cognitive field (where, as every speaker attested in one way or another, the drive to delegitimate Israel is succeeding). This cognitive war must be recognized. As my guru on this subject, Stuart Green, puts it, “you can’t win the battle of the Midway if you don’t know you’re in a battle.” And it must be recognized for what it is, the systematic abuse of our hard-earned means of free communication, by people who have nothing but contempt for the principles they invoke – human rights, humanitarian concerns, “justice.”

As a result, there was a) too little on the role of the news media in this phenomenon; and b) a notable absence of Israeli military at the conference. This latter point is crucial because until the military realizes that its success on the battlefield has shifted the enemy’s strategy, and it adjusts its priorities – e.g., releasing very powerful information that could be used in the cognitive war, but which intelligence forces almost by default keep private – we will continue to lose the cognitive war. Indeed, every victory on the in the physical battlefield – Hamas’ rocket attacks have dropped steeply since Operation Cast Lead – produces a massive loss on the cognitive field. Maybe if key members of the IDF were present to hear about the disastrous situation world-wide, then they might begin to reorder their priorities. As of now, this is a MFA show, and most people think it’s their job and their job alone.

Second, there was virtually no attention to the problem of the Jewish contribution to the problem of anti-Semitism. If there is one major gaping hole in our defenses in this cognitive war, it’s the “useful infidels” like Goldstone who think they’re doing “good and right” and promoting “peace and the defense of civilians,” when they’re empowering the very forces that seek war and victimize civilians, friend and foe alike. Alvin Rosenfeld’s “Progressive Jews and the New Anti-Semitism,” remains the gold standard in this matter, taking to task Jews who, in their eagerness to perfect Israel, engage in indecent comparisons of Israel with apartheid and Nazism, that feed the forces of deligitimation the world over.

Unfortunately, the conversation has not advanced since his report was greeted by “progressives,” as an assault on “any criticism of Israel.” The inaccuracy (dare I say, dishonesty) of such a response (embraced by everyone from NYT reporter Patricia Cohen, to Lenny Pogrebin, to Michael Lerner, to Samuel Freedman, illustrates well how the ardent defense of “free speech,” no matter how indecent it might be, serves forces deeply hostile to any freedoms in this cognitive war. Anyone who can denounce Israeli apartheid, and not even mention Muslim apartheid especially against women and infidels, or talk about Israelis doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to them, without noting the extensive and enthusiastic ties between the Nazis and the Palestinians to this day, is, in my book, dishonest.

This dishonesty contributes seriously to a massive epistemological crisis for everyone who does not know the situation on the ground (and ultimately none of us can know it all, we have to get it from the media in one form or other). How can outsiders, especially non-Jews who do not come from a culture in which self-criticism is learned with one’s mother’s milk, understand what it means when the Palestinians say, “It’s all Israel’s fault,” and most of the representatives of the Israeli side that the MSNM cherry picks, says, “They’re right.”

Of course, how to distinguish between legitimate, decent criticism of Israel – whether by Jews or by non-Jews – is a very delicate subject, and although the Jewish community is light-years away from the kind of suffocating intimidation that prevents Arabs and Muslims from public self-criticism, we certainly don’t want to engage in a slippery slope of squashing dissent. But rather than ignore the subject, we need to address it, seriously, with a sense of appreciation for how vital self-criticism, the ability to give and take rebuke (tochacha) is to Jewish culture, and explore what are the limits of decency.

Maybe next year…

The title of the post is the working title for the book I’ve subtitled: A Medievalist’s Guide to the 21st Century and am working on now.

The title came to me while reading about the Fort Hood Affair, and the following remark actually nailed it for me. Shades of Larry Derfner on my racism for saying the Palestinians staged al Durah: political correctness induced stupidity.

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a long time. Here’s just a brief take on a remarkable essay by Eric Alterman, who clearly considers himself a spokesman for liberal thinking on why he thinks Marty Peretz is a racist.

Peretz regularly employs TNR’s website to publish what are inarguably racist rants directed toward Arabs and other adherents of Islam. A recitation of just his greatest hits on this score might fill this entire magazine, but here’s a representative example:

I actually believe that Arabs are feigning outrage when they protest what they call American (or Israeli) ‘atrocities.’ They are not shocked at all by what in truth must seem to them not atrocious at all. It is routine in their cultures. That comparison shouldn’t comfort us as Americans. We have higher standards of civilization than they do.”

What I like here is the juxtaposition of “inarguably racist” and an example of a perfectly legitimate and, I’d say, fairly obvious observation about Arab/Muslim indignation. The idea that we should take Arab/Muslim indignation at face value is one of the most foolish notions imaginable. It’s essentially saying, “we cannot, must not challenge hypocrisy.”

Several cases in point:
1) Abu Graibh: Arabs — Hamas and the PA in particular — engage in far more grotesque and vicious forms of torture. Who are they to denounce us?
2) The Danish Cartoons: The Arab and Muslim world are filled with far more vicious images of the West; why would we allow them to cow us with their indignation?
3) The Pope’s comments on Islam as a violent religion: their response? to riot; our response? denounce the pope for provocation. They should be the laughing stock.
4) Operation Cast Lead: read Understanding the Goldstone Report.
5-3000): fill in the blanks.

Alterman concludes the essay:

In the meantime, perhaps anyone who considers him- or herself to be a genuine friend of Marty Peretz or his magazine might suggest that he consider a long, restful vacation. It would be good for The New Republic, good for American liberalism and, believe me, good for the Jews.

So much for the embrace of a healthy atmosphere of contesting ideas. No. The opposition “smears” (not Alterman, who refers to the “neo-con dominated world of Jewish institutional politics”), and I [Alterman] know that Israel must “find[] a common ground for peace with the Palestinians… [and] withdraw from the West Bank,” therefore anyone who disagrees with me should shut up for the sake of peace. Anyone who doesn’t shut up, and continues to harp on such unpleasant aspects of the problem as the motivations and behavior of those nice people with whom we are to find “common ground,” is “hurting the Jews and Israel.”

And we thought it was mostly the Palestinians who engaged in mirroring.

Ron Radosh has an interesting meditation on this piece including some material on what would appear to be a more nuanced attitude by Alterman on these issues, which apparently don’t have much staying power in his short term memory.

I have often tried to argue that the situation is the Arab-Israeli conflict is not only exaggerated by the media, but inverted, and that statistics play a critical role in this process.

Now we have two key pieces of evidence of how this works.

Exhibit A: Exaggerate Israeli-inflicted damage by an order of ten.

Palestinians constantly make wild statistical claims, as in when Mahmoud al Zahar of Hamas accuses Israel of killing 8000 in the first, “peaceful” intifada, when the Israelis and the Palestinians killed about 1000 each.

Or when al Zahar accuses Israel of imprisoning one quarter of the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian “human rights” NGO, Adalah gives a number to the fraction: 700-750,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons since 1967. This figure, absurd by any careful statistical analysis – was cited by an Adalah representative who testitifed before the Goldstone Commission. Again the figure is off by an order approaching ten.

But the Goldstone Report took the figures and rounded them down by a mere 50,000 (making the real number of prisoners since 1967 a statistical error):

¶1444. It is estimated that during the past 43 years of occupation, approximately 700,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been detained under Israeli military orders. Israel argues that these detentions are necessary on grounds of security

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Alexandre del Valle has posted at his blog an interview with France Soir of the Egyptian-born, Italian journalist and European deputy, who has just published a book, in response to Islamist terrorism, a hymn to life entitled, « Pour que Vive Israel » (ed du Roche). Since his conversion to Christianity, there are fatwas out on his life.

Apparently he’s been reading Fiamma Nierenstein.

Must say, it reminds me of the political cartoon Ellen Horowitz did for me some years back and I posted as part of an essay she had done on the way Arabs project their brutality onto Israelis:

Magdi Cristiano Allam: Halte à l’antisémitisme sous couvert d’antisionisme!
Lundi, 2 novembre 2009

L’avis inédit du célèbre journaliste italien député européen sur l’actualité internationale. Bientôt de passage en France, il publie en réponse au terrorisme islamiste un hymne à la vie intitulé « Pour que Vive Israel » (ed du Rocher),

Magdi Cristiano Allam, ancien Vice-Directeur du Corriere dela Sera, est l’une des personnalités politico-médiatiques les plus populaires d’Italie. D’origne égyptienne, auteur de nombreux best-sellers sur l’islam et l’Occident, il est menacé de mort par le Hamas et Al Qaïda en raison de ses positions sur l’islamisme, sur Israel et depuis sa conversion au christianisme. Député européen sur les listes de l’Union du Centre (UDC) parti membre comme l’UMP du Parti populaire européen, il a créé son propre mouvement, Io Amo L’Italia, Anima d’Europa, qu’il ambitionne d’implanter dans toute l’Europe. Protégé en permanence par de nombreux gardes du corps, France soir l’a rencontré au Parlement européen ;

France Soir : Les fatwas contre vous ont été renouvelées depuis que vous avez quitté l’islam, le fait de lier l’islamisme à l’islam a–t-il agravé votre cas ?

MCA : Je me bats plus que quiconque en faveur de la reconnaissance de droits des Musulmans en tant que personnes, mais je suis opposé à l’islam en tant que religion, que j’ai essayé en vain de réformer mais dont les textes fonateurs légitiment la violence. Hélas, les Musulmans modérés sont moins orthodoxes que les Islamistes.

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In his “debate” on Thursday November 5, at Brandeis, during question and answer, Goldstone got chummy with the audience and told them an anecdote about how he felt going into Gaza:

As far as conditions in Gaza are concerned, I must say that my visit to Gaza turned out very differently from what I had anticipated. Frankly, and I make no, no, no, and I’m not ashamed to say it, I was very nervous about being a Jew going into Gaza on probe by Hamas, especially when the first reaction to my appointment by Hamas was to reject a meeting with me because I was Jew.

And my wife sitting here will remember that three nights before I went, I woke up in the middle of the night after a terrible nightmare, with sweat on my brow, because I had a vivid dream that I’d been kidnapped by, by Hamas, and people in Israel were rejoicing. [laughter] That was the nightmare, based on real fears.

Now Goldstone clearly didn’t tell this anecdote in order to reveal the utter intellectual bankruptcy of both his Report’s methods and and conclusions. But that’s what he did.
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At a number of points in the controversy over his report, Judge Goldstone has referred to the fact that his Mission selected 36 “representative” incidents to investigate. Here he explains to Bill Moyers:

We chose those 36 because they seemed to be, to represent the most serious, the highest death toll, the highest injury toll. And they appear to represent situations where there was little or no military justification for what happened.

While Goldstone never made the list public, here is, as close as possible, a list of the incidents that the Goldstone Report discussed in some detail, which only come out to a somewhat vague 32. The only two that examine behavior unbecoming of the Palestinians are Gilad Shalit (6 paragraphs) and Palestinian attacks on Fatah supporters (25 paragraphs). The Qassams are condemned, but not investigated, and Hamas is never named as a culprit in the “war crime and possibly crime against humanity that these rocket attacks constitute.”

In other words, the principle incidents — those chosen, and those upon which the Report lavished their attention and their ink — are exclusively about alleged Israeli attacks on Palestinian victims.

List of 32 Incidents in Goldstone Report (compiled by Anne Herzberg, NGO Monitor)

1. The Israeli air strikes on the Gaza main prison and on the Palestinian Legislative Council building (paras 336-373)
2. Arafat City Police HQ (398-402)
3. Attacks on 5 police stations (403-407)
4. UNWRA Compound Gaza City (paras. 543-595)
5. Al-Quds hospital, Tal el-Hawa, Gaza City (paras.596-629)
6. Attacks on al-Wafa hospital, 5 and 16 January 2009 (paras. 630-652)
7. The shelling in al-Fakhura Street by Israeli armed forces (paras. 653-54)
8. Al-Samouni (paras. 706-35) (yet this involves 3 specific incidents)
9. The shooting of Iyad al-Samouni (paras. 736-744)
10. The death of Muhammad Hajji in the attack on his family’s house
11. and the shooting of Shahd Hajji and Ola Masood Arafat (paras.745-754)
12. The shooting of Ibrahim Juha (paras.755-763)
13. The killing of Majda and Rayya Hajaj (paras. 764-769)
14. The shooting of Amal, Souad, Samar and Hajja Souad Abd Rabbo (paras.770-779)
15. The shooting of Rouhiyah al-Najjar (paras.780-787)
16. The Abu Halima family case (paras.788-801)
17. The attack on the al-Maqadmah mosque, 3 January 2009 (paras. 822-43)
18. The attack on the al-Daya family house, 6 January 2009 (paras. 844-866)
19. Attack on the Abd al-Dayem condolence tents (paras. 867-885)
20. The destruction of el-Bader flour mill (paras.913-941)
21. The destruction of the Sawafeary chicken farms (paras.942-961)
22. The Gaza wastewater treatment plant, Road No. 10, al-Sheikh Ejlin, Gaza (paras. 962-974)
23. Namar wells group, Salah ad-Din Street, Jabaliyah refugee camp (paras. 975-989)
24. The destruction of housing (houses of Saleh Hajaj, of Wa’el al-Samouni, of Khalid Abd Rabbo and of Muhammad Fouad Abu Askar [–are these all one incident or four?] (paras. 990-1007)
25. The case of Majdi Abd Rabbo (paras. 1033-1063)
26. The case of Abbas Ahmad Ibrahim Halawa (paras. 1064-1075)
27. The case of Mahmoud Abd Rabbo al-Ajrami (paras. 1076-1085)
28. The case of AD/03 (paras. 1086-1088, 1143-63)
29. Al-Atatra sandpits (paras 1112-26)
30. Detention and abuse of AD/02 (paras 1127-42)
31. Gilad Shalit (paras.1336-1342) [6 paragraphs]
32. Several cases of Hamas killings of Fatah members [though none are mentioned by name and the specificity does not approach other incidents – are these part of the 36? No idea.) (paras 1343-1368).
33? Various incidents in the West Bank?
34? No specific incidents of rocket attacks are detailed.
35? Repression of Dissent chapter lists several incidents.

What’s missing here, of course, is any investigation into the extensive evidence that Hamas used the civilian population as a shield, that they deliberately fired from the midst of civilian neighborhoods in order to provoke attacks, that they dressed as civilians, commandeered ambulances, stole food supplied by Israel to the Gazan population… in short that they did everything they could to maximize their own civilians’ casualties.
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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?

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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.

The value of the human rights frame
Posted by Helena Cobban October 22, 2009 11:15 PM EST

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.

Ad hominem? 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.
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A modern, pomo variant of Aesop’s fables:

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.

On October 16, in Geneva, Goldstone expressed disappointment and sorrow at the way the UN Resolution had weaponized his report in a one-sided attack on Israel that included matters extraneous to his report.

The next day, he was interviewed by the BBC and offered every opportunity to repeat his reservations. He didn’t.

Did someone give him a call and tell him to back off? Just how subservient is Goldstone willing to be in this process?

I recently posted a satirical piece by the Onion on Obama negotiating with a forest fire — we have common interests — which I’ll replicate below. At the time it was part of making fun of Obama for the Nobel Peace Prize. Now we have the tale of his diplomacy with Iran which is unraveling before our eyes. Liberal cognitive egocentrism, politically correct paradigm, dupes of demopaths… you couldn’t write a script more tailored to the follies of the age.

First the satire:

Now, alas, the real live “peace-process” with Iran. From John Hinderaker at Powerline:

IRAN DOUBLE-CROSSES OBAMA
October 19, 2009 Posted by John at 6:24 PM

This morning, I noted that Iran’s government is telling the Iranian people that the Obama administration has consented to Iranian enrichment of uranium, thereby dismaying our European allies. I linked to, but did not discuss in detail, a Time article that appeared today. The Time article was based on interviews with Obama administration officials and was intended to put a positive spin on the administration’s effort to engage with Iran. Now, news from Vienna, where representatives of Iran, the U.S. and other nations are meeting, allows us to put the whole story together.

The Time article is the best place to start. It breathlessly describes President Obama’s personal involvement in negotiations with Iran, and the genesis of what the administration considered to be a brilliant plan:

President Barack Obama has a personal stake in the outcome of Monday’s meeting in Vienna between Western and Iranian nuclear experts on the future of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium. That’s because, Administration sources tell TIME, Obama personally weighed in three times during secret, multiparty negotiations with the Iranians over the last four months….

The backroom talks began in June, when Iranian officials told the International Atomic Energy Agency their country was running out of fuel for an aging research reactor built for the Shah in 1967 by American technicians….

“We very quickly saw an opening here,” says a senior Administration official involved in the multiparty negotiations that ensued, speaking on condition of anonymity. The U.S. realized it could arrange for the manufacture of the specialized plates from an unorthodox source: the stash of low-enriched uranium Iran has produced in violation of U.N. Security Council demands at its massive Natanz uranium-enrichment plant over the past several years. The U.S., Israel and others had estimated that the Iranian stockpile was enough — if Iran kicked out inspectors and repurposed its enrichment facilities to enrich uranium to weapons grade — to produce material for a single atom bomb. So, the idea that Iran might agree to send most of it abroad to be turned into harmless plates for the research reactor seemed an opportune way to defuse tensions.

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Lots of people accuse Goldstone of being a self-hating Jew; and lots scoff at such an accusation. I think they’re both wrong. It’s not an impossibility to scoff at, and for sure the idea that the accusation of “self-hating” is not leveled at “just about anyone who dares to criticize Israel on any grounds,” a joke, a bad joke for anyone who knows how often Jews criticize Israel. No, it’s Jews who compare Israel to the Nazis (like Norman Finkelstein, Richard Falk, and David Theo Goldberg), it’s Jews who think that somehow they show the bona fides by being viciously critical of Israel, when the crimes they denounce in public, play out on a world stage where, by their morally exacting standards, everyone behaves more like Nazis than Israel.

Note that the proud “self-hating Jew,” M.J.Rosenberg cites Palestinian statistics with apparently no idea of where they come from or how deeply unreliable they are.

I’ll fess up. I’m an SHJ. I thought the Gaza war was everything Goldstone said it was and more. It’s hard to call it a war actually because the casualty numbers were so unbalanced.

1387 Palestinians killed of whom 320 were children
(773 were not fighting at all)

10 Israeli soldiers killed (3 by friendly fire).

For him it’s an obvious step from MSNM reports to despising Israel. What’s your problem? As Anthony Julius called these folks who don’t even have the decency to inform themselves, so eager are they to plaster their liberal credentials in public: proud to be ashamed to be a Jew. Of course, just because M.J. Goldberg mockingly declares himself a “self-hating Jew” doesn’t mean I’d consider him one. (That would probably mean reading more of him than I really want to do.)

But it also doesn’t mean that “self-hatred” isn’t both an identifiable phenomenon and one that characterizes Jews more than any other identifiable group.

Now Goldstone is not necessarily in this group. Indeed, in an interview with Fareed Zakaria, he responded to the question, “How does this compare with previous cases you’ve studied - Kosovo, Rwanda?” he replied:

I don’t like making comparisons, each situation different. One can’t compare what’s happened here with genocide in former Yugoslavia, nowhere near that situation.

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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?”

Here’s the Beeb:

The Hezbollah footage suggests the objects in Israel’s spy-plane video were debris from the blast not weapons.

Pending an investigation, it is impossible to verify either claim.

Reuters is not any better.

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?”

Christiane Amanpour has a reputation for serious journalism. She certainly didn’t burnish her credentials with this interview. I’ll be doing a “Dialogue with the Media” on this next week.

TRANSCRIPT (HT/DS)

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.

Even supportive editorials (no substance here) are published in marginal places (Mary Robinson in the Daily Times of Pakistan, Richard Falk in Electronic Intifada).

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.
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