Thursday, March 18, 2010
U.S. Navy Aviation Ordnanceman Airman Recruit Chanda Axton fires a salute battery during a live-fire exercise aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) while under way in the Pacific Ocean March 12, 2010. Nimitz and embarked Carrier Air Wing 11 are en route to the United States after an eight-month deployment to the Arabian Sea in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. (DoD photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class John Philip Wagner Jr., U.S. Navy/Released)
Indoctrinate the kids and then get 'em out and fight...and note the threat to the kids themselves...stay in line, or else.
MEMRITV: Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV Children's Puppet Show: 'We Must Rise Against the Zionist Criminals, the Enemies of Allah, and Liberate Jerusalem and All the Holy Places' (Link to transcript.)
...Uncle Hassan: "Unfortunately, 'Alloush and dear children, the Arab and Islamic nation is in a slumber. A deep slumber. We must stand up. We must awaken. 'Alloush and dear children - each one of you must tell his father, his grandfather, and the rest of his family that they should all arise as one. They must rise up against the criminal Zionists, who are planning to destroy Jerusalem, and to turn the Islamic waqf into something bad. We must rise against the Zionist criminals, the enemies of Allah, and liberate Jerusalem and all the holy places. We should liberate them. Do you hear, 'Alloush?"
'Alloush: "Ah, now I get it. I thought the Jews wanted to enable people to visit the Ibrahimi Mosque, but it turns out that they want to steal it."
Uncle Hassan: "That's right, 'Alloush. It's a good thing that you got it. Did you tell this to anyone else, or just me?"
'Alloush: "Just you."
Uncle Hassan: "Very good. You didn't make us look bad. Do you know what people would accuse you of, if you said this in the street?"
'Alloush: "Of what, Uncle Hassan?"
Uncle Hassan: "They would accuse you of being a collaborator. They would think that you are a Zionist collaborator. I would like to tell you two things, in conclusion: We must think before we speak. Get it? We should be familiar with all our Arab and Islamic holy places, okay?"
'Alloush: "Okay."...
It's David T., over at Harry's Place: Now I'm Being Sued By George Galloway!
Read the whole thing, but apparently Galloway is actually claiming to have been defamed due to his having been associated with Hamas through a comment David T. left at another blog. Get it? Galloway, who does, in fact, associate with Hamas, is claiming damages because someone pointed it out.
I believe in American court such a claim would be absurd, but in this case it's Britain, so who knows. As David T., I smell shades of Lipstadt/Irving should it go on.
Americans for Peace and Tolerance has released an excellent new video. Must watch:
New Video Shows Radical Islamic Network in New England
Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) today released an 8-minute online video clip describing a network of Islamic radicals operating in New England. The video focuses on the October arrest - and the response to that arrest - of a Sudbury, Massachusetts resident who the FBI charged with planning to machine gun shoppers in a New England mall.
"The arrest of Tarek Mehanna was shocking," said APT President, Dr. Charles Jacobs. "It occurred just two weeks before the murder of 13 Americans at Fort Hood.
Jacobs said "What is especially disheartening, given the historical moderation and success of Boston Muslims, is the current groundswell of support for Tarek within a segment of the Boston Muslim community and its virulent response to his arrest."
This comes as no surprise to those of us who have read Richard Evans' Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial
...A commission of historians confirmed earlier findings that up to 25,000 people died in the firestorm unleashed by British and US bombers on February 13-15, 1945.
The study was meant to resolve a dispute that has raged in Germany for decades, with far-right groups claiming that up to 500,000 people were killed in the attack. Critics of the raids have sought to have them classified as a war crime, arguing that they were strategically unnecessary because Germany was already on its knees, and that they targeted civilians rather than military objectives.
In recent years a consensus has emerged among most historians that between 25,000 and 40,000 were killed in the bombing of one of the most beautiful Baroque cities in Europe. However, the reaction to yesterday's exhaustively researched figure suggested that many in Germany still believe that the death toll was significantly higher...
...During five years of research the Dresden Historians' Commission reviewed records from city archives, cemeteries, official registries and courts and checked them against published reports and witness accounts. The figure of 25,000 matches conclusions reached by local authorities immediately after the war, in 1945 and 1946...
Where did the higher numbers come from? Largely from Holocaust denying, Hitler-admiring David Irving, who was simply using numbers originally put forward by the Goebbels propaganda machine:
...The inflated death toll was partly the work of the far-right historian David Irving, who in his 1963 book The Destruction of Dresden called the bombing a deliberate war crime. He based his figures on a Nazi document that reported 202,400 dead: the historian Frederick Taylor said the document had been faked by the Nazis, who had simply added a nought to each total...
Via Oliver Kamm, who also comments here.
Lee Smith has been on a roll with good material lately. Here he is with a very positive look at that Lefty Jewish bogey-man, the Evangelical Christian: Evangelical Christians have emerged as Israel's staunchest allies--even as some American Jews are made uneasy by the show of support
...While escorting evangelicals through the landmarks of their faith, Brog introduces his charges to the modern Middle East. The Galilee, where Jesus lived and worked, is where Hezbollah rains rockets down on the villages from which Jesus recruited his disciples; Jerusalem, where he died for man's sins, is protected by a security barrier against the suicidal designs of the enemies of God's chosen people. And for evangelicals, even as the Jews rejected Jesus, God never rejected the Jews, who remain God's chosen people.
The Biblical verse that inspires American evangelicals' love for the Jews, the nation that gave them their savior, is Genesis 12:3: "I will bless them that bless thee," God told Abraham, "and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." Their philo-Semitism is a reversal of the millennia-old Christian tradition of replacement theology, or the belief that God's covenant with the Jews was superseded by his covenant with the church through Jesus Christ. Central to this understanding is the interpretation of the word "Israel." "Evangelicals read the Bible literally," says Brog. "If you take Israel to mean Christ's church, then this can be used as an example of God rejecting the Jews. But if you believe Israel means the Jews, then the Bible becomes a Zionist book."
The fact that sacred history is alive to evangelicals can make them powerful advocates for the modern state of Israel. Their witness extends beyond the congregations, small churches, and mega-cathedrals spread throughout the country and now reaches all the way to Washington, D.C., where Brog shows them how to put their philo-Semitism to practical use. "When they come up to meet with their congressmen or senators," says Brog, "we share with them the details of timely legislation like the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act." That is to say, they show them how to support it...[More.]
[The following, by Ben Cohen, is crossposted from Z Word.]
In my earlier post (here or join the debate at Harry's Place,[Also here, below. -MS]) I mentioned that my appearance this week on CNN was introduced with three clips about the evils of the Israel Lobby featuring Rami Khouri, Stephen Walt and Loretta Napoleoni. I added that I'd never heard of Napoleoni, but one of the Harry's Place commenters, David Thompson, has. And he points out this miserable apologia for the late, unlamented Al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi which Napoleoni published in Socialist Worker, no less!
Here's a flavor of what she has to say: "He showed strong leadership qualities and organisational skills. The inmates elected him their leader. People were impressed by his determination and his kindness. Once he personally bathed a mujahideen who had been injured and had lost a leg."
Got the kleenex out yet?
Apparently, CNN International believes that this apologist for Zarqawi, the murderer of American troops and Iraqi civilians, both Shi'a and Sunni, can simultaneously be presented as an authoritative analyst of Middle East politics.
[The following, by Ben Cohen, is crossposted from Z Word.]
To anyone who knows the medium of television, the statement that a news program is probably the last place to have a serious discussion about a serious matter is hardly a revelation. The allotted timeframe, generally three or four minutes, precludes any in-depth analysis. Discussants are acutely aware that they have to communicate in soundbites, so rather than engaging with each other, they artfully twist the presenter's questions into answers that emphasize the talking points they arrived at the studio with. That's how it's always been.
A key assumption here is that the anchor will keep a respectful distance, editorially-speaking, between his or her guests. The anchor will allow each guest equal time to speak. Whether the anchor is in passive listening mode or acting like an amphetamine-fueled interrogator, the accepted norm is that all guests will receive the same treatment.
True, this conception of the anchor's role now seems almost quaint, a throwback to the days when journalism placed a supreme value on objectivity. Nonetheless, it remains valid, particularly when it comes to straight news shows (as distinct from the more charged talk show environments.)
Keeping the above template in mind, I want to relate what happened to me when I appeared, in my capacity as AJC's Associate Director of Communications, on CNN International earlier this week. In a segment anchored by Jim Clancy, Jeremy Ben Ami of J Street and myself were discussing the diplomatic row between the US and Israel sparked by the announcement, during Vice President Biden's visit to Israel, of a new housing development in the east Jerusalem district of Ramat Shlomo.
I expected a rough ride as I watched the introductory clips: Palestinian propagandist Rami Khouri, Israel Lobby author Stephen Walt and some Italian journalist I'd never heard of called Loretta Napoleoni, all waxing lyrical about the inordinate power of the Israel Lobby. There was no dissenting view.
When it came to the "discussion," Clancy was extremely deferential toward Ben Ami, beginning and ending the segment with him and not interrupting him once. In marked contrast, he interrupted me no less than ten times in a three minute segment. Moreover, he insisted on portraying AJC - a decidedly centrist organization that has long supported a two-state solution - as a collection of wild-eyed fanatics.
For my part, the most telling moment came when I tried to raise the ten-month moratorium on West Bank settlement announced by the Israeli government last November. This is what transpired:
Ben Cohen: ...one thing Jeremy did not mention is that there has been a 10-month moratorium on settlements by the Netanyahu government, that was a very important concession...
Jim Clancy (interrupting): ...Now wait a minute, settlements...Ben Cohen, you're drawing lines here that are absolutely false, you know well when you say that that Israel continues to build in occupied east Jerusalem. Ok, I know it is not completely sorted out, but there is no sense in you looking the audience straight in the eye and not telling the truth....
BC: I am looking the ...
JC (interrupting): The last word here, I've got to give it to Jeremy.
BC (sarcastic): Of course you do, Jim.
Had Clancy allowed me to continue, I had planned to say that the announcement was significant for two reasons: firstly, because it came from Netanyahu, in spite of the fragile coalition he heads and his long-standing reputation as a hardliner, secondly, because when the announcement was made, it was explicitly welcomed by the US, even though east Jerusalem was outside the terms of the freeze.
By any standards, what I wanted to say was reasonable and relevant, even if not everyone would agree with my analysis; yet I was rudely shut down. Why this happened is really the heart of the matter - much more than the personal discourtesy shown towards me, which resulted in an apology from Clancy when he called me the following day.
Recall the three clips I mentioned which introduced the segment: all the speakers advanced the thesis of a shadowy, unaccountable "Israel Lobby" that runs policy and "controls the discourse," as Mearsheimer and Walt put it in their shabby book, "The Israel Lobby." It's a thesis which has pierced the mainstream to the point where it has become unremarkable, despite its psychedelic assertion that a cluster of loosely-connected non-governmental agencies exercise more power over Middle East policy than the White House, the State Department and The Pentagon.
Once you buy into this thesis, you cannot help but regard any representative of one of the "Lobby's" constituents as a born liar whose prime loyalty is to the West Bank settler movement (as Clancy said to me, before I'd addressed the substantive point he put to me, "you're drawing lines here that are absolutely false...there is no sense in you looking the audience straight in the eye and not telling the truth.")
Therein lies the paradox: just as those who indignantly deny that antisemitism is a problem are usually the same people doing their utmost to promote it, those who protest that the "Lobby" is muzzling honest debate are invariably the first to close down the viewpoints they object to, on the grounds that these viewpoints must really be lies. In other words, they do to us what they accuse us of doing to them.
There is plenty to think about here, and not only for those of us doggedly combating the portrayal of Israel as the source of every ill, whether a terrorist bomb on a Madrid commuter train or a slain American soldier in Afghanistan. J Street also needs to ask itself whether it wants to be the "good Jew" in a universe of "bad Jews." I certainly don't blame Jeremy Ben Ami for what happened to me on CNN; he was there to put across his own position, and he did so in an accomplished manner. That notwithstanding, does he want to be regarded as an ally by those whose objection is not to Israeli policy, but their bigoted, half-baked conception of what Israel is?
Martin Solomon adds: Peaking of CNN, take a look at what happened when Rick Sanchez was interviewing Wolf Blitzer, and live responses to Sanchez's Twitter feed were scrolling along the screen...take a look at the type of thing that made the air: From CNN's lower third: 'Jewish lobby runs America'
Three Israeli parents who lost children to terrorism have an excellent op-ed in yesterday's LA Times. This is the kind of thing that is going to prevent Obama's intended use (and instigation of) the current crisis coming to anything: Dalal Mughrabi helped kill 38 innocent men, women and children in Israel. Palestinians named a square after her.
Vice President Joe Biden took umbrage last week when Israel announced during his visit that it had approved new housing construction in East Jerusalem. But another contentious incident that took place during Biden's visit got far less scrutiny.
March 11 marked the 32nd anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel's history, and this year the Palestinian Authority decided to honor the 19-year-old leader of the attack, Dalal Mughrabi, by naming a square in a town outside Ramallah after her. The commemoration was scheduled for the anniversary.
The official ceremony was ultimately canceled to avoid antagonizing Biden during his visit, but the square was nevertheless named for Mughrabi, and several dozen Palestinian students from President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement gathered in her honor for an unofficial dedication.
So what was the deed that deserved this commemoration? On a Saturday in March 1978, the squad of Palestinian terrorists led by Mughrabi entered Israel by boat from Lebanon and made their way to the main road between Haifa and Tel Aviv. By day's end, they had murdered 38 innocent men, women and children.
The first person Mughrabi and her gang of terrorists encountered was Gale Rubin, an American photojournalist taking photos of birds near the beach. They killed her and continued on their deadly path.
They then hijacked a bus full of happy families returning from a Saturday excursion. On their way to Tel Aviv, the terrorists shot at passing cars and killed more innocent people.
The terrorists tied all the men's hands to the bus seats. When Israeli security forces stopped the bus, the terrorists ran out while throwing hand grenades into the bus, setting it on fire. The men inside were burned alive.
The three of us writing this article each have experience with Palestinian terrorists. Seven years ago this month, on March 5, 2003, our children were killed by a Palestinian suicide murderer who exploded the bomb he was carrying on a city bus in Haifa. Seventeen people, mostly children on their way home from school, were killed.
Our children were just beginning their lives when that bomb exploded. Tal Kehrmann was 18 years old. Yuval Mendelevich was 13 1/2 . Asaf Zur was almost 17 years old.
We don't believe people who murder children should be held up as heroes. Though the official Ramallah ceremony was canceled, Mughrabi's name will remain on that square. And she is already commemorated in Hebron, where a girls school is named after her...[The rest.]
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
From an email from Barbara L. This is a little visual on what it's like to be a minority in a Muslim land [Update: Yes, this is actually in Israel itself]. Where are the Western Churches?:
From a friend visiting Israel: One marked point I noticed was the intolerance of the Muslims in Nazareth... their banners boldly proclaiming that Allah is God and that he has no "begotten son" across the Church of the Annunciation there. If we dared to state that Jesus was the last prophet from God near a Mosque there would be WWIII. It's so biased. I am glad that I can see first hand how small the nation of Israel is, the land mines the Syrians planted in the Golan (Our guide is a Jewish lady from Russia that shared how a child recently had his foot blown off from the mines the Syrians had planted there.)
A Palestinian youth throws a petrol bomb at Israeli soldiers during clashes at Qalandia checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem on March 16, 2010. Hundreds of Palestinians clashed with security forces in east Jerusalem and the West Bank as tension boiled over Israel's announcement last week of plans to build 1,600 new Jewish settler homes in mainly Arab east Jerusalem, while a senior Hamas leader called for a new 'intifada,' or uprising.
Palestinian demonstrators prepare to battle Israeli border policemen during clashes in the Shuafat refugee camp on March 16, 2010. Hundreds of Palestinians clashed with security forces in east Jerusalem as tension boiled over in the city and a senior Hamas leader called for a new 'intifada,' or uprising.
I've been getting quite a few emails on this little confrontation, as Chris Matthews pulls out the race card...no, that's not quite right, he hints, and the New York Times' Ethan Bronner gives him what he wants... CAMERA's Andrea Levin has an excellent post on the subject, with video of Bronner's appearance. Honestly, these guys really need a new storyline, the whole "racism" thing is getting so old: NYT's Bronner Smears Israel as Racist on MSNBC
BRONNER: I would say that there is some level of prejudice about the fact that he had some Islamic background through his stepfather. But I think it has to do more with the fact that when he came into office a year ago, he wanted to recalibrate the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. And the easiest and clearest way of doing that was to put some distance between the United States and Israel, and he did that. And that made people nervous. I think there's also some sense here that--some degree of racism, to be perfectly honest.
The problem here is that the left is still worshiping Obama to such an extent, and is so ill-informed as to what his critics are saying -- that, or they tend to write it off so quickly that is never registers -- that they look for the irrational where the rational does just fine. In fact, as Levin notes, Israelis were fine with Obama...up until he got into office and they experienced him in actions:
...On what does Bronner's "honest" allegation of racism rest? Are there polls to show Israelis are less favorable toward the president because he's African-American?
There are polls - but they reveal something very different. Multiple polls in Israel before Obama's election showed him the favorite over John McCain. In July 2008 a Maagar Mohot Survey found 37% preferred seeing Obama elected, compared to 28% for McCain. In November, just after the election a Shvakim Panorama poll found 63% said they were not concerned about the election of Barack Obama.
In May 2009 a poll by the Begin-Sadat Center found Israelis remained positive about the U.S. president, with 38% perceiving he had a friendly attitude toward Israel and just 7% an unfriendly view. Similarly, despite expressing uncertainty about his possible policies, a full 60% expressed favorable opinion about the president.
A Smith Research poll found a similar number of 31% in May perceiving Obama being friendly toward Israel. These attitudes plummeted though in June, by which time only 6% of Israelis considered Obama friendly. That dropped even further by August 28 when 4% found him favorable to Israel.
What happened between May and August? On May 18, at a joint White House press conference with Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Obama appeared to sidestep the Oslo Accords saying: "Settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward." Responding later to questions about this, Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev said: "The issue of settlements is a final status issue, and until there are final status arrangements, it would not be fair to kill normal life inside existing communities."...
One group of merchants is doing just fine: the gold merchants:
GAZA CITY -- Gaza's borders are closed and its economy in shambles, but the glittering alleys of the territory's centuries-old gold bazaar are packed with young brides to be.
The market has experienced an unlikely renaissance in recent years as Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers have championed weddings and Israeli closures have crippled the local economy, making gold an attractive investment.
"Not only have we not been hurt by the Israeli blockade, but our business has actually gotten better," gold merchant Iyad Basal says as people cram into his crowded family-run shop.
"We have not stopped working since the blockade because the gold comes to us through smuggling and Hamas encourages marriage," he adds...
Yossi Klein Halevi has a very good piece at TNR worth reading in full, but here's a significant taste (let me know if you can't see this behind a subscription wall and I'll see what I can do):
...not even the opposition accused Netanyahu of a deliberate provocation. These are not the days of Yitzhak Shamir, the former Israeli prime minister who used to greet a visit from Secretary of State James Baker with an announcement of the creation of another West Bank settlement. Netanyahu has placed the need for strategic cooperation with the U.S. on the Iranian threat ahead of the right-wing political agenda. That's why he included the Labor Party into his coalition, and why he accepted a two-state solution--an historic achievement that set the Likud, however reluctantly, within the mainstream consensus supporting Palestinian statehood. The last thing Netanyahu wanted was to embarrass Biden during his goodwill visit and trigger a clash with Obama over an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.
Nor is it likely that there was a deliberate provocation from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which runs the interior ministry that oversees building procedures. Shas, which supports peace talks and territorial compromise, is not a nationalist party. Its interest is providing housing for its constituents, like the future residents of Ramat Shlomo; provoking international incidents is not its style.
Finally, the very ordinariness of the building procedure--the fact that construction in Jewish East Jerusalem is considered by Israelis routine--is perhaps the best proof that there was no intentional ambush of Biden. Apparently no one in the interior ministry could imagine that a long-term plan over Ramat Shlomo would sabotage a state visit.
In turning an incident into a crisis, Obama has convinced many Israelis that he was merely seeking a pretext to pick a fight with Israel. Netanyahu was inadvertently shabby; Obama, deliberately so.
According to a banner headline in the newspaper Ma'ariv, senior Likud officials believe that Obama's goal is to topple the Netanyahu government, by encouraging those in the Labor Party who want to quit the coalition.
The popular assumption is that Obama is seeking to prove his resolve as a leader by getting tough with Israel. Given his ineffectiveness against Iran and his tendency to violate his own self-imposed deadlines for sanctions, the Israeli public is not likely to be impressed. Indeed, Israelis' initial anger at Netanyahu has turned to anger against Obama. According to an Israel Radio poll on March 16, 62 percent of Israelis blame the Obama administration for the crisis, while 20 percent blame Netanyahu. (Another 17 percent blame Shas leader Eli Yishai.)
In the last year, the administration has not once publicly condemned the Palestinians for lack of good faith--even though the Palestinian Authority media has, for example, been waging a months-long campaign denying the Jews' historic roots in Jerusalem. Just after Biden left Ramallah, Palestinian officials held a ceremony naming a square in the city after a terrorist responsible for the massacre of 38 Israeli civilians. (To its credit, yesterday, the administration did condemn the Palestinian Authority for inciting violence in Jerusalem.)
Obama's one-sided public pressure against Israel could intensify the atmosphere of "open season" against Israel internationally. Indeed, the European Union has reaffirmed it is linking improved economic relations with Israel to the resumption of the peace process--as if it's Israel rather than the Palestinians that has refused to come to the table...
Related: David Rothkopf at Foreign Policy: The fake U.S.-Israel crisis: Obama's flawed response to an ally's gaffe
A big win in California (from Divest This):
On Monday evening, the forces of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) were handed a major defeat when the Davis Food Co-op, located in Davis California, turned down demands by BDS activists to put a boycott of Israeli goods to a Co-op wide vote.
While this story may not be big enough to hit the national press, the details surrounding the decision make this as significant an event in the continuing annals of BDS failure as the Presbyterian Church's 2006 decision to abandon divestment altogether (a decision which changed the threat level of BDS from "potential issue" to "serious loser").
As backdrop, the Davis Food Co-op is a highly successful, member-owned cooperative with a nearly forty year history and over 9000 member-owners. Given the nature of the organization, the institution takes understandable pride in its progressive values and responsiveness to members needs, connections to the community that have contributed to its decades of success.
Sadly, it was these very qualities that made the organization a target for the local branch of the BDS movement, a movement whose two major tactics involve: (1) dressing up their mission of de-legitimization and demonization in a progressive/human-rights vocabulary; and (2) abusing the openness of organizations like the Co-op for their own narrow, political ends.
The Co-op recently reduced the number of members needed to put an issue to a Co-op-wide ballot from 15% to 5%, which gave local BDS organizers the impression that less than 500 signatures were needed to put their proposed ban on Israeli food products to a vote. And so their project kicked off with ongoing "tabling" at the Co-op featuring petitioning backed up by the usual context-free, anti-Israel propaganda (where Israelis were assigned the role of bullying tyrants, the Palestinians that of pristine victims, and the rest of the Middle East and all of history dumped down the memory hole).
Fortunately, large numbers of Co-op members chose to not take this challenge lying down, organizing their own tabling to educate members about the issues, and working with the leadership of the Co-op (with help from the local Jewish community) to inform the Co-op about the true nature of BDS.
What happened next was an exact replay of what's gone on whenever the boycott project tries to insinuate itself into an open-minded organization. This included all of the bitterness and divisiveness of the Arab-Israeli conflict spilling out into the community, forcing neighbors to take sides in one of the world's oldest and most complex disputes lest they be accused of betraying their progressive values.
The key to understanding the decision that was taken on Monday is that the Co-op by-laws require that member initiatives must be based on requests that were of a "lawful and proper purpose," a clause that they agreed would be more "stringently interpreted and enforced" once the threshold for a membership vote was reduced from 15%-5%.
Early in the debate over the proposal, the Co-op's board focused primarily on the "lawful" part of that phrase, seeming to reject the ballot request due to potential that it might place the organization in legal jeopardy. Now I've written before on the issue of whether or not BDS could be considered illegal based on current US anti-boycott legislation, concluding that the matter is murky (or, at least, open to interpretation).
Had the Co-op chosen to nix the boycott on the ground of potential legal risk alone, this would have been within their rights, and certainly would constitute a win over the boycotters. But the Co-op decided to do more than that. Much more.
If you look at the response they released on Monday, (click on the March 15, 2010 Resolution link of this Wiki) their entire reasoning for rejecting the boycott proposal was based on whether the proposal fulfilled the requirement regarding "proper purpose." And in over a dozen "Whereas-es" (some multi-part), the organization's leaders made it clear in no uncertain terms that a boycott does not come close to meeting that threshold.
Needless to say, the boycotters complained that, unlike matters of legality, what constitutes "proper purpose" is undefined, and thus open to the interpretation of the organization's leaders. But that is exactly why the decision made by the organization is so significant.
In this case, "proper purpose" meant the organization deciding which matters were in the community's interest and which were not. It meant grappling with the core values of the organization, and determining which issues need to be debated in the context of a cooperatively owned supermarket and which didn't. It meant looking at the obligations the organization owed not just to its membership at large, but also to the wider world. And in each and every case, the institution explained in clarifying detail why BDS did not belong at the Co-op, and why individual choices (like whether or not to buy Israeli oranges) are best left to individuals, not be subject to a majority vote.
All of this is, needless to say, incomprehensible to those behind the boycott attempt since a lack of propriety (i.e., a willing blindness to what constitutes "proper purpose" for themselves and others) is one of the key weapons of anti-Israel activists, giving them license to insert their political project (under various guises) into all manner of civic organization, regardless of what pain or damage this might cause to the institution they are trying to infiltrate.
But on Monday night, the leadership of the Davis Co-op laid down the law in terms that cannot be interpreted as anything other than a sweeping rejection of BDS.
Does this mean that Davis has suddenly become a hotbed of Zionism? Of course not. Political opinions on the Middle East vary within the Davis community on this and other issues as much as they've always done. But in making their decision, the Co-op was not making a statement on the Middle East conflict, but was instead taking a stand (based on their own rights and principles) to not be dragged into that conflict just because a group of single-issue partisans tried to exploit the organization's openness for their own ends.
No doubt, the BDSers who put so much time and effort into this project saw the Davis Co-op as one of the few institutions in America that might be vulnerable to their boycott calls, and hoped to be able to leverage success there to bring the message generated by this debate to other food co-ops and potentially other food retailers across the country.
And in this one case they were absolutely correct that the message from Davis must travel far and wide, warning similar organizations across the land of what happens to an organization when BDS comes knocking.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
As Max Boot relates, Mark Perry's big scoop of a supposed Petraeus briefing that lead to the big blow out between Obama and Bibi and promised a subsequent ushering in of the great Age of Aquarius where anti-Zionist academics, Arabist diplomats, and Jewish Lobby paranoiacs strode the planet like Philosopher Kings...well, that day is looking to be disappointingly (for them) still remote. It's much ado about not very much: Is General Petraeus Behind Obama's Dressing Down of Israel?
...I further queried this officer as to whether he had ever heard Petraeus express the view imputed to him by Mark Perry -- namely that Israel's West Bank settlements are the biggest obstacle to a peace accord and that the lack of a peace accord is responsible for killing American soldiers. This officer told me that he had heard Petraeus say "the lack of progress in the Peace Process, for whatever reason, creates challenges in Centcom's AOR [Area of Responsibility], especially for the more moderate governmental leaders," and that's a concern -- one of many -- but he did not suggest that Petraeus was mainly blaming Israel and its settlements for the lack of progress. They are, he said, "one of many issues, among which also is the unwillingness to recognize Israel and the unwillingness to confront the extremists who threaten Israelis."...[More.]
Boot also links to this Josh Rogin piece at Foreign Policy which would seem to be another straw putting paid to Perry's fantasy: Petraeus: I never formally asked for command of the Palestinian territories
Perry allowed himself to be made a fool, and it's been pretty obvious from the start, as I said in my first post on the subject. The story was just too perfect, designed to market directly to a certain mindset just waiting to consume this type of tale.
A U.S. service member directs a landing craft, air cushion carrying Marines and equipment onto the beach in Djibouti on March 4, 2010. The Marines, who are assigned to Battalion Landing Team, 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment and Combat Logistics Battalion 24, attached to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, are in the area to conduct training and live-fire ranges. DoD photo by Sgt. Andrew J. Carlson, U.S. Marine Corps. (Released)
[The following, by Bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]
The house on Rehov Graetz
With thanks: bh
In 1948, Munir Katul, now a retired Oregon urologist, lost his house on what is now Rehov Graetz in the German colony in Jerusalem: his is a sad story of displacement resulting from the Arab-Israeli conflict, repeated many times over in the region. The Jerusalem Post waxes lyrical:
Before he left his one-story, stone house for the last time, he looked down at the Persian rug lining the formal living room where he had played with his brother, George, 18 days earlier, as his father, Jibrail, huddled over the console radio, listened to the UN General Assembly vote on the partition of Palestine.
As he walked from the now empty living room, across the colorful tile porch, and passed the green-shuttered windows to the waiting taxi, he studied the pine trees and green gardens around him in the German Colony.
He remembered how he loved to get lost in all that backyard greenery, with his best friend, Leila Itayyim. After school they played tag and hide-and-seek, built dirt castles, raced their pet turtles and helped his father tend the garden. He took one last look at his favorite tree, where he loved to hide high up in the branches to see everything without being seen, and wished he was sitting there instead of leaving.
Two aspects are striking about Munir's story: the first is that his Greek Orthodox parents and grandparents were born in Lebanon and came to Palestine because of the greater economic opportunities, thus giving the lie to the idea that Arabs have always lived in Palestine since 'time immemorial'. Munir's family fled back to Lebanon, yet the component of Munir's identity most important to him today is 'Palestinian'. Even today, aged 72, he chooses to line his hallway with photographs of the house on Rehov Graetz. Is this normal, or has Munir made a fetish of the 'wrong' Israel committed against him? It means that he can never feel at home anywhere else: he is not prepared to abandon his goal of repatriation to his old home in Jerusalem (although, to be fair, he also recognises this might be impractical):
Continue reading "Jews Still Owed Lion's Share of Lost Property"[This entry, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from the GLORIA Center. I was going to include it in the link round-up below, but decided it was so good in a general sense it needed to be pulled out on its own.]
General David Petraeus is a smart guy, one of the smartest in the U.S. government at present. But he's no Middle East expert. Let's examine two remarks he made in his congressional testimony. Before we do, though, promise me you will read paragraph 17 because there's a very explosive point made there you won't find anywhere else. Agreed? OK, let's go.
Please note, by the way, that what he actually said is far milder than earlier leaks claimed. In addition, of course, Petraeus has to support White House policy, whatever he really thinks or knows. The Defense Department's recent Quadrennial review, also written to please the White House, contained not one mention of Iran's drive to get nuclear weapons or the threat of revolutionary Islamism. And he also has advisors who tell him the wrong stuff.
Statement One:
"A credible U.S. effort on Arab-Israeli issues that provides regional governments and populations a way to achieve a comprehensive settlement of the disputes would undercut Iran's policy of militant 'resistance, which the Iranian regime and insurgent groups have been free to exploit."
On the surface this makes a lot of sense. But let's examine it closely. Let's assume there is a comprehensive settlement to which the Palestinian Authority (PA) agrees. It isn't going to happen but this is for demonstration purposes.
Continue reading "Barry Rubin: Why What General Petraeus said is Wrong about the Middle East (or is it just being misinterpreted?)"or Monthly Archives:
, p.44
