Israel and the Middle East

Viewpoints

This is from the BBC:

I was very happy for all the prisoners and their families as they were reunited after years of unlawful separation and inhumane treatment, but especially for the al-Ghouls who live in Mughraga, central Gaza, close to the former Israeli settlement of Netzarim.

Omar al-Ghoul was a member of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. He received a triple life sentence from an Israeli court 24 years ago for his role in attacks on Israeli targets in Gaza and for joining a secret cell of fighters.

OK so let’s get this straight: members of the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed branch (meaning they sanctify the murder of Israeli Jews) are “unlawfully separated” from their families – that is, they were in prison for terrorism.

This is a bad thing to do, as they miss their grandchildren terribly.

This is followed by some sentimental nonsense about broken-up families and the pains of separation:

It has been difficult to grow up without getting to know his dad. “It’s like you are told you have a father but you have never seen him,” Ibrahim told me.

Suheir has always said that her husband Omar is not a murderer, but a hero. He was fighting for our freedom and our dignity. He never wanted to fight anyone but living under the Israeli occupation is very tough.

So Suheir was in an Israeli prison for killing people, which was a heroic duty. Once that is established – that killing isn’t murder if it can be called “freedom-fighting” – then one begins to comprehend the author’s mindset. (No mention here that Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005, the year before Shalit was kidnapped.)

What one doesn’t comprehend is how a quick run-through of the Hamas Charter, disguised as a victim’s tale, makes it onto the BBC website as a “viewpoint.”

I also believe Gilad Shalit was a legitimate target for capture. As I remember, he was inside a tank while on patrol near the border with Gaza at the time. He was a soldier in the Israeli army, which has murdered Palestinian women and children. The world should not value an Israeli’s life more than a Palestinian’s.

Wait, Shalit was near the Gaza border? He wasn’t in Gaza, you see, but he was near enough to be considered game (translation: he was in Israel). And he may never have killed anyone, but other Israeli soldiers have, and that was enough to make Gilad Shalit guilty of murder.

Maybe we should turn this logic around, and make all Palestinians guilty because some Palestinians have murdered Israelis. This is the logic of Hatfields vs. McCoys. And it’s in the BBC. Shame, shame, London.

But hey, it’s just another viewpoint, right?

A letter from Bibi

This is a wishful-thinking letter from Bibi to Obama, courtesy of Yaacov Lozowick (it’s his wishful thinking):

Israel recognizes that the blockade of Gaza is causing human suffering, and wishes to end it as soon as possible. Since there are no Israeli forces or citizens in Gaza, and the border between it and Israel is undisputed, all that remains for Israel to fully desist from any sort of intervention in the lives of the Gazans is that they not interfere in the lives of Israelis. This means they must return the single Israeli still in Gaza, Gilad Shalit; they must desist from any form of aggression against Israel; and they must pay the bill for whatever services they receive from Israel such as electricity or medical bills of Gazan citizens. Should these terms be met, the blockade will be lifted completely and immediately.

Israel now turns to the United States, to Turkey, and to the United Nations. We hereby announce that it is our urgent wish to lift the blockade from Gaza so as to enable the Gazans to live their lives independently of us. We will take this measure as soon as you can assure us of the following:

1. There will be no attacks from Gaza on Israel.
2. Imports of aggressive weapons into Gaza will not happen.
3. Gilad Shalit has returned to his family.

Israel has decided that Gaza is the test for the continuation of the peace process. Should the international community in collaboration with the Palestinians be able to deliver the three simple conditions described above, Israel will be eager to move forward in negotiations regarding the West Bank. If these three simple conditions cannot be met by the Palestinians, or cannot be guaranteed by the US, Turkey and the United Nations, how can Israel lower its defensive abilities on the West Bank?

The onus is now on you: Gazans, the United States, Turkey, and the United Nations. Please hurry, since the populace of Gaza is suffering, and we wish to end our part of that suffering as soon as possible.

Making Friends, Making Enemies

Andrew Sullivan’s response to Wieseltier is here (It’s already old news; the world has moved on.) I haven’t read it all through, partially because I’m not getting paid by anyone to read and write, unlike the folks at the heart of this dispute. That I can find time to read or write anything amazes me to no end.

Andrew is punching with big fluffy gloves on this time. The vitriol is gone. It’s time to make amends, if they can be made. The rest is commentary. But, like I said, it’s yesterday’s news.

Their tiff reminds me so much of what happens whenever Israel is at the center of some public dispute. Like a global civil war, it tears friendships and families apart. There are people who no longer speak to me on account of my views on the Israeli-Arab conflict (perhaps they weren’t friends to begin with, one must conclude), and I’ve even been called a “Nazi”. Which is exactly what happened to Jeffrey Goldberg the other day, only he was called a “Goebbels” – but by a Zionist! Which goes to show you can’t please all the people all the time.

I wish only to point out that, for whatever reason, passions run amok when Israel is in the question. I don’t think even religion (the other half of the Sullivan-Wieseltier debate) comes close to being this volatile. It makes me wonder what stake most people have in this debate, myself included. Or is it just an overgrown meme gone crazy?

The Trouble with God

When I wrote my post on Wieseltier-Sullivan, I wasn’t cognizant that I had entered into battle in this year’s Dershowitz-Phillips debate. Silly me. In fact, I wasn’t even cognizant of the fact that the world was paying attention to Wieseltier-on-Sullivan-on-Wieseltier-on-Sullivan (-on-Kristal?).

This is a debate I’ve been trying to get away from, but which keeps following me. Blogging is for hotheads, which was pointed out at least twice by Leon Wieseltier and once by Andrew Sullivan himself. Somehow a debate over criticism of Israel has turned into a debate over religiosity, which I find a bit infantile.  When calling Catholicism “polytheistic crudity” compared to the Judaic concept of divine unity, Wieseltier opened the door wide to the new atheists. At that point my impulse is to kick it in and say, “But, Leon, don’t you realize even your Judaic conception of God is vulnerable to the scrutiny of reason and skepticism? I mean, can it really be defended from the likes of Sam Harris? Or even Julia Sweeney?”

No, Wieseltier holds on to his God as if it were the irrefutable result of a life of pure reason. Which makes me wonder what the subtle difference is between him and Andrew Sullivan, who apparently believes all sorts of stuff shared by a billion other people worldwide which to an atheist sounds much like hoodoo.

Or: can we have a serious political discussion while invoking arguments for God? Are the underlying tensions of Wieseltier-Sullivan just a rehash of good old medieval debates about the trinity? And, if so, who cares?

Some of the primary links in the above discussion have been gathered here. Go nuts.

Leon Wieseltier Blasts Andrew Sullivan

It was a long time coming. If you’re in the mood for a nice long article (well, not so nice), put your boxing mittens on:

Criticism of Israeli policy, and sympathy for the Palestinians, and support for a two-state solution, do not require, as their condition or their corollary, this intellectual shabbiness, this venomous hostility toward Israel and Jews. I have striven for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, and territorial compromise, and two states, for many decades now, but Sullivan’s variety of such right thinking is completely repugnant to me. There are decent and indecent ways to advocate change. About the Jews, is Sullivan a bigot, or is he just moronically insensitive? To me, he looks increasingly like the Buchanan of the left.

And don’t be put off by the initial discussion of Auden’s theology. My question for Wieseltier would be: if the Christian doctrine of the trinity is so ridiculous, “a retraction of the monotheistic revolution in thinking about God,” then isn’t “thinking about God” in itself equally a retraction of the more logical position of non-theism? After all, to hold up even an ethereal, invisible, incomprehensible God to the universe only complicates matters unnecessarily. It’s no wonder religious thinkers like Augustine, Auden and Sullivan make such a mess of things.

Or is Wieseltier just another de facto atheist begging to be let out of the closet?

Colonel Richard Kemp Defends the IDF

“During Operation Cast Lead, the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.” Kemp said this at the United Nations. Courtesy of UN Watch.

The Economist Weighs in on the Goldstone Report

It sounds (almost) as if The Economist was about to express a less than negative opinion of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Almost. You can read the entire report here. UN Skeptics can have fun with this.

Two questions face countries that have gone to war. Was the cause just? And, where possible, did the troops do their utmost to spare civilians? It was over the second of those questions that Israel found itself under a cloud on September 15th, when a United Nations mission accused it of having deliberately committed war crimes during its three-week attack on Gaza that ended in January. Yet this week’s report was deeply flawed. In a conflict where missed opportunities are as common as Qassam rockets, the risk is that both sides will now conclude the wrong thing: Arabs that Israel has just been found guilty; and Israel that it will never get a fair hearing in a hostile world.

From the very start, this report had to overcome the taint of prejudice. It was mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, an anti-Israeli outfit notorious for having congratulated Sri Lanka’s government on brutal conduct that led to appalling loss of life among Tamil civilians. Israel refused co-operation. But the mission was headed by a respected international jurist, Richard Goldstone. A Jew himself, Mr Goldstone insisted on scrutinising the conduct of Hamas as well as Israel. There was hope that he might wrestle the inquiry into balance.

Yet the report takes the very thing it is investigating as its central organising premise. Israeli policy in Gaza, it argues, was deliberately and systematically to inflict suffering on civilians, rather than Hamas fighters (see article). Israel’s assertions that, in the difficult circumstances of densely populated Gaza, it planned its military operations carefully and with constant legal advice are taken by the report as evidence not of a concern to uphold international law but of a culpable determination to flout it. Israel’s attempts to drop warning leaflets, direct civilians out of danger zones and call daily humanitarian pauses may well have been inadequate, but the report counts them for nought. As many as 1,400 people died in the fighting. It is a grisly thought, but if Israel really had wanted to make Palestinian civilians suffer, the toll could have been vastly higher.

Israel has argued that Hamas fighters endangered civilians by basing themselves around schools, mosques and hospitals. The mission had Hamas’s co-operation, but its fact-finders could detect little or no evidence for this—despite plenty of reports in the public domain to support it. The report does criticise Hamas for firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel and for using the conflict as cover to settle scores with its Palestinian rivals. But its seemingly wilful blindness to other evidence makes that look like a dash for political cover.

To some, Israel’s Gaza war will always be in principle unjust: a disproportionate response to Hamas’s rockets. Indeed, the suffering in Gaza, from war and the economic blockade, has been grievous. They may be tempted to applaud Mr Goldstone’s report for that reason alone. Yet if the mere fact of Israel’s attack were enough to condemn it then Mr Goldstone’s report was pointless all along. And there is a danger of double standards. American and European forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo also caused thousands of civilian deaths, without attracting a Goldstone.

The pity is that the report frustrates the objective that Israel should be striving for: to hold its politicians and soldiers to the highest standards of Israeli and international law. After its costly war in Lebanon in 2006, Israel plainly chose to minimise its own casualties by using massive firepower in Gaza. It went too far. There have been credible allegations that individual soldiers broke rules banning the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields sent first into properties where fighters may be holed up; that civilians known not to pose any military threat were killed in cold blood and that Israeli forces used white phosphorous over built-up areas. Israel is pursuing 23 criminal investigations so far into the Gaza operations. It must finish the job. Unlike Syria, say, Israel is a democracy that claims to live by the rule of law. It needs to make its case by moral force as well as by force of arms.

The UN report has not come at a good moment. Barack Obama is trying to restart direct talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The peace process was never going to be easy. With its thimbleful of poison, the Goldstone report has made the job all the harder.

 

A Nation Stricken with Grief

Asaf Ramon, the son of Ilan Ramon, was buried today next to his father in Israel’s Nahalal cemetery. Like his father, he was a captian in the IAF. Like his father, he wanted to be an astronaut. His father Ilan died in the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, which exploded upon re-entry.

Asaf’s fighter jet exploded during a routine training flight.

I’ve been working on and off on a poem about Ilan Ramon. After the explosion, scraps of his space diary were found on earth and pieced together by forensic scientists in Israel. It is an amazing story. I wonder how people can praise God in such situations, though.

You Don’t Need God To Be Jewish

Are you there, God? Its me, Yehudis.
Are you there, God? It's me, Yehudis.

This is the topic of much debate when Jews decide they don’t believe in God. Can’t Jews be atheists, non-theists or anti-theists? Is there a discriminatory principle according to which Jews cannot not believe in a supernatural power, just like Jews once could not own property or hold certain jobs? Don’t Jews have absolute liberty of thought like everyone else?

Most people would say yes, of course they do, but once they stop believing in God (if they ever did) they thereby stop being Jews. Baloney. Here’s an example of what I’m trying to convey:

I’m on vacation in Virginia, where I went to college. Whenever I’m in the States I watch a good amount of television in order to tap back into the lifeblood of my countrymen and women. My sister’s television has six-hundred channels, and when I get tired of giggling at Fox News and ogling the Food Network I go channel surfing until I hit the Good News stations. Every evening I watch as faith healers knock down their congregations in the spirit of Jesus, heal blindness, exorcise demons and rearrange human bones in living bodies–all on television. Of course, I don’t believe a word of it, and neither should you. Tonight I even heard a preacher tell the devil to leave his congregation’s bank accounts alone. No shit. This is unbelievable stuff–not the least bit supernatural, but still kind of incredible.

There’s even a Jewish life channel (called, imaginatively, Jewish Life). By the above-stated rule that Jews are defined by their belief in a supernatural God (curiously, not the same one that defines Christians and Muslims), one would expect Jewish Life to be full of programs about Hasidism, Kabbalah, Talmud-Torah, or whatever might interest Jewish believers. Well, tonight I jotted down what they broadcasted in the three-or-so hours I was watching while flipping back and forth between the televangelists. Here’s what I saw: a concert clip by Israeli singer Shlomo Artzi, a documentary on Birobidzhan, an endorsement for a Jewish outreach network, and some arbitrary footage of Israeli life: windsurfing on Lake Kinneret, Tel Aviv by night, Masada and people walking, praying and looking generally suspicious in Jerusalem. Add to this last night’s documentary on the Exodus (the ship, not the book), and so far not a measly mention of the man upstairs on an entirely Jewish television network.

I don’t wish to make prophecies. I don’t know if the Jewish people can survive the next three-thousand years if they were all miraculously to go secular. Then again, I don’t know if any of us will survive that long. I doubt such a scenario is possible–though it may be desirable. I am making a case in the here and now for the Jews as a people with a very complex historical identity, of which the Jewish religion plays a significant–but not dominant–role.

You don’t need God to be Jewish.

American So-Called Jews

The ambiguous title of this post is an example of the brilliant commenting that takes place on the web. The full comment reads:

This article is insane, as 79% of American so called Jews. -Yigal

Here’s the article, if you’re interested. From The Forward:

Alarm bells have been ringing around the neighborhood pretty much nonstop since July 13, when President Obama sat down to talk Middle East policy at the White House with a pack of leaders from a dozen American Jewish organizations.

The meeting was supposed to help buff up Obama’s relationship with the Jewish community, which is bubbling lately with resentment at the president’s aggressive peace-processing. By reaching out to the community’s customary spokesmen, he hoped to build rapport and perhaps recruit a few backers for his policies. Instead he unleashed a whirlwind of attacks against himself, his administration and the Jews who met with him.

The critics accuse Obama of unfairly singling out Israel by demanding a unilateral settlement freeze, without requiring reciprocal Palestinian concessions, and disregarding past American promises to permit some construction. They say he is trying to curry favor with the Arab world, breaking a long-standing presidential tradition of siding automatically with Israel. Some say he is threatening the important legacy of George W. Bush. I didn’t make that one up.

***

If there is a substantive argument in all this, it’s the claim that Israel is being pressured for concessions while the Arab side is not. Obama himself conceded the point at that meeting. He’s now pressing Arab states for gestures to help Israelis get the medicine down. But freezing settlements doesn’t depend on that. Jerusalem is already committed to “freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).” It’s written in black and white in President Bush’s road map, which Israel signed in 2003 — and which Avigdor Lieberman reaffirmed this past April 1 in his maiden Knesset speech as foreign minister. Israel was able to put off the freeze because the Palestinian Authority wasn’t honoring its commitment to crack down on terrorists. Now the Palestinians are cracking down, and Netanyahu is making up excuses.

As for Obama being the new Roosevelt, we should live so long. FDR, if memory serves, was the guy who defeated Hitler and saved the world, after the Japanese air force convinced congressional Republicans to let us join the war. If Obama has any tricks like that up his sleeve, bring ’em on.