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Candid, constructive commentary on Israel, the Arab-Israeli conflict, America’s Middle East policies and their domestic political context.
Give me just 1 good reason to oppose UN anti-settlement resolution
I have yet to hear one good reason why the U.S. should veto a new UN Security Council resolution that condemns Israeli settlements, or why it should try to keep the resolution from coming up for a vote. Oh there have been protests from the usual suspects who support the settlers or object to any and all criticism of Israel, but they don’t count. I’ve been waiting patiently to hear from those who supposedly want diplomatic progress and back a two-state solution.
But the only objection voiced by those people is that the UN is not the proper forum for addressing the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy.
Hillary Clinton told reporters last week that “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be resolved through direct peace negotiations, not by submitting resolutions to the UN Security Council,” according to Haaretz.
That echoes Israel’s party line, as presented in the New York Times: “The Israel mission to the United Nations described the resolution as an attempt to bypass direct talks. `The only road to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is through direct negotiations that address the core concerns of both sides,’ read a statement by the mission’s spokeswoman, Karean Peretz.”
The problem with this argument is that the UN resolution agrees with the Israeli government and Clinton. Rather than trying to “bypass direct talks,” it unequivocally calls for them. At least that’s what the text uncovered by Foreign Policy’s “The Cable” tell us. After condemning the settlements as “illegal” and calling on the parties to continue taking confidence-building steps, the resolution:
Calls upon all parties to continue, in the interest of the promotion of peace and security, with their negotiations on the final status issues in the Middle East peace process according to its agreed terms of reference and within the timeframe specified by the Quartet in its statement of 21 September 2010;
5. Urges in this regard the intensification of international and regional diplomatic efforts to support and invigorate the peace process towards the achievement of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.
So what’s wrong with that? The U.S. is coming across like a petulant little child. “I don’t want it there,” Clinton is insisting. “I want it here!. It belongs here! ” Ask why, and the only answer is “It belongs here because it belongs here!”
Egypt’s UN ambassador put in well in the NY Times:
“Nothing is happening outside,” said Maged A. Abdelaziz…“The statements given by the secretary of state and the American administration are that ‘We are against settlements and we are not going to do anything about it and we don’t want you to do anything about it. We will let the Israelis do what they want.’ ”
Ultimately, he said, “We will wake up one day to find that the two-state solution has become a dream that is unachievable.”
If you see or hear anything that convincingly refutes him, please let me know. In the meantime, you can find good reasons to support a U.S. abstention from J Street, Americans for Peace Now, and Dahlia Scheindllin.
Topics: American foreign policy, Americans for Peace Now, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Israeli occupation, Israeli settlements, J Street, United Nations | 8 Comments »
By Dan Fleshler | January 24, 2011
Is there a shred of hope for a renewed Israeli Labor Party? Sure…
Today, two days after I posted a lament about the rightward tilt of Israel’s Labor Party, Ehud Barak announced that he was quitting Labor and forming a new party, “Atzmaut,” that would be “centrist, Zionist and democratic.” He took four Knesset members with him. Good riddance. While this blog obviously doesn’t keep track of the daily rush of events in the Middle East, I thought the previous post deserved a timely update.
Three of the eight remaining Labor MKs, –Yitzhak Herzog, Avishai Braverman and Binyamin Ben Eliezer– resigned today and they are trying reconstitute and rebuild the party, which will now, at long last, be in the opposition, as noted here.
“The time has come to stop lying to ourselves and leave the government which has brought us to a dead-end and forced upon us Avigdor Lieberman and his party with its unacceptable racist discourse, which threatens our democracy,” Herzog said in his announcement. About time!
Tom Mitchell’s Self-Hating Gentile (best name for a blog on the entire Web, for my money) offers a useful historical analysis. Daniel Levy also offers instructive, very gloomy commentary:
The Labor Party split serves to clarify rather than change the existing political dynamic – one of absolute impasse on the Israeli-Palestinian front. There is no prospect of meaningful change being generated internally by the Israeli side. Netanyahu is now under even less and perhaps no pressure from his coalition to do anything on the peace front. The US has so far decided not to step into this vacuum with a clear effort of its own.
It may be that Netanyahu considers that the time will soon be ripe to introduce an initiative of his own, the logic being that, assuming US timidity, he is in a strong position and that he rather than the Palestinians can define the agenda for 2011. Any such Netanyahu initiative is likely to be extremely limited in its scope – forget any settlement evacuations or serious territorial adjustments and think instead of more economic projects, attempts to entrench the PA as a subcontractor for Israel, and perhaps the notion of a vaguely defined and territorially inconsequential Palestinian mini-state.
On the one hand, the newly diminished, 66-seat coalition government will be even more extreme and right wing, as Yossi Verter explains. On the other hand, it might be more prone to haggling and bickering between secular and religious right wing parties.
Regardless, I cling to the hope that a mainstream, left-leaning Labor Party that clearly stands for something can be rebuilt by the remaining MKs. Stranger things have happened, haven’t they? Verter explains:
The Labor Party’s future looked gloomy last night, but it wasn’t too bright before the split, either. After going through seven leaders and losing dozens of Knesset seats over the last two decades, it has reached the moment of truth. The coming weeks will show whether it is at the end of the road or still has something to contribute to Israeli politics.
I know Herzog and admire him. I’ve met Braverman a few times. Both are decent, progressive men who were in the wrong government, at the wrong time. Don’t count them out.
Topics: Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Isaac Herzog, Israel, Israeli Labor Party | 6 Comments »
By Dan Fleshler | January 17, 2011
The Labor Party’s new flirtation with the settlers
I don’t think there is much chance of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without a revival of the parliamentary left –or at least left-center– in Israel, the development of a powerful and consequential counterweight to the aggressive right. (Of course, there is not much chance of resolving it even if there were such a revival, but a more powerful peace camp would certainly increase the odds of a breakthrough).
That is why Noam Sheizaf’s article in 972.com about the new, official face of the Labor Party is so sad. The piece is entitled “Here is your peace camp: Labor’s supportive visit to the settlements:”
Last week, members of the Labor party, including the party’s Secretary-General Hilik Bar and several advisers to Knesset Members and ministers, went on a visit to the West Bank. Labor members visited the Barkan industrial park, the Ariel academic center and several settlements in the area of Nablus, east of Israel’s security barrier and well outside what is sometimes referred to as “the settlements blocks”. The tour was hosted by the head of the Yesha Council (the settlers’ representative body), Danny Dayan.
The article then cites a report by right wing journalist Hagai Huberman, who covered the visit:
Hilik Bar, the new secretary general of the Labor Party, surprised his hosts by saying: “Judea and Samaria is the land of our fathers and the Bible, and the Labor Party and its members are not disconnected from what this region represents, historically and religiously. We should all stay true to the legacy of the nation’s Fathers and Mothers, and pass it on from generation to generation. Labor belongs to the center and not to the far left […] we feel closer to the settlements’ people here than to the far left.”
While Mr. Bar’s hosts might have been surprised by these remarks, those who know Labor have given up hope on this party a long time ago. Labor, it should be reminded, never evacuated a single settlement. In fact, the colonization of the West Bank started on the party’s watch back in the seventies, and a decade ago, under Ehud Barak’s short lived government, the settlements prospered in ways Binyamin Netanyahu could only dream of. Mr. Bar – a former adviser to Labor’s strongman Binyamin “Fuad” Ben-Eliezer – is right: in visiting the West Bank’s settlements, he simply follows the party’s line.
I think Sheizaf is being a bit harsh and simplistic by calling settlement expansion the “party line” of Labor. Labor Party leaders didn’t want the settlements to expand in the 1990s. Some, notably Yitzhak Rabin, stood up to the settlement movement. But for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with political expediency, Labor acquiesced. They caved in.
That’s all dirty water under the bridge. It really doesn’t matter, at this point. What matters is that, while a few brave souls are trying to reconstitute the left wing of Labor and calling for the party to leave the coalition government, others appear to be leading it steadily to the right. In another post, Sheizaf points out that most Labor MKs were conspicuously absent when the Knesset recently voted to probe human rights NGOs.
Who in the world is going to vote for that party? Why –other than the perks of power that are enjoyed by a dwindling number of Knesset members– does it exist?
Topics: American Jews, Israel, Israeli Labor Party, Israeli occupation, Israeli settlements | 6 Comments »
By Dan Fleshler | January 13, 2011
“Not All Criticism Of Israel Is the Same”
My op-ed on the campaign against the “anti-delegitimization” of Israel was just posted on the New York Jewish Week web site. The far left won’t like it. The far right won’t like it. I don’t know what the centrists will think…
Here it is:
Not All Criticism Of Israel Is The Same
In an article on the recent General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, The Jewish Week’s Gary Rosenblatt noted the delegates’ understandable “angst” over “international efforts to delegitimize Israel.” Then he asserted: “Many of the 4,000 delegates witnessed that effort firsthand [my italics] when a tiny group of hecklers … disrupted the keynote address by Prime Minister Netanyahu.”
But those young people were not trying to delegitimize Israel or destroy it.
They protested policies that many delegates to the GA also found appalling, such as the loyalty oath and settlement expansion.
The inclusion of the protestors into the same category as true delegitimizers exemplifies the hazy, imprecise definitions of the “enemy” that are being tossed around in the Jewish community’s conversations about heated, anti-Israel rhetoric and activity. Fortunately, a multimillion-dollar campaign to confront delegitimization is being organized by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the JFNA. This initiative must distinguish carefully between vehement opposition to Israeli policies and pernicious efforts whose ultimate goal is to unravel the Jewish state. If it doesn’t, it will be perceived as mounting a generalized assault against any passionate criticism that mainstream Jews find grating, rather than rhetoric that is truly dangerous.
In an influential report on delegitimization that has helped to catalyze this effort, the Re’ut Institute, an Israeli think tank, notes that “criticism [of Israel] should be viewed as legitimate, even when harsh or unfair.” But without more precise definitions of what is over the top vs. what is simply unpleasant, the effort will lack credibility — especially on university campuses — and be seen as an initiative of Jewish thought police.
Re’ut misses the mark when it claims that “criticism against Israel becomes delegitimization when it exhibits blatant double standards, singles out Israel, denies its right to exist as the embodiment of the self-determination right of the Jewish people or demonizes the state.” The first category of criticism — exhibiting double standards or singling out Israel — is not as objectionable as the second. It is possible to harangue Israel for human rights violations or other actions, and unfairly ignore similar behavior by other nations, yet not be guilty of trying to destroy the Jewish state.
It would be more helpful to distinguish between two categories of rhetoric or activities, and to respond to them differently: defamatory claims that assert or strongly imply that the very existence of a Jewish state is immoral; and claims that are simply wrong, but which can be credibly made in intelligent conversation and need to be answered cogently and respectfully.
Here are some examples of truly delegitimizing actions and rhetoric that should be vigorously denounced and countered:
The signs at rallies that proclaim “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free.” The claims that Israel is a “Nazi state” and/or one that is “genocidal,” implying that there is a moral duty to oppose the Jewish state.
“Lawfare” initiatives that seek the arrest of Israeli officials when they touch down in England or other countries, which imply that Israeli governmental institutions are, by definition, illegal and the embodiment of all evil.
Another dangerous strain of criticism, often heard in comments in the blogosphere and bolstered by some academics, attacks the whole notion of the “Jewish people” as a distinct collective with the same right to self-determination as any other people.
On the other hand, mistakenly calling Israel an “apartheid state” or referring to an “apartheid wall” is not necessarily an act of delegitimization. Those who use the apartheid analogy often cite Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s statements comparing Israeli policies to those perpetrated by the Afrikaners. Bishop Tutu is not someone who rejects the premise or existence of the Jewish state and surely he knows something about apartheid. I think his opinion is wrong, but worth taking seriously and countered in a respectful manner.
What about the movement known as BDS, referring to boycott, divestment and sanctions? Some activists clearly are for the eventual internal collapse of the Jewish state. But many are pressuring Israel to change its policies. They — and the larger, more important audience of people who are following this conversation — cannot be convinced that there is something intrinsically wrong with pressuring Israel, particularly when the BDSers target policies deeply offensive to many American Jews who want Israel to survive and thrive.
The best argument against BDS is that it is tactically counter-productive because it will accentuate Israelis’ us-against-the-world mentality and make them even less likely to compromise. The worst arguments are those that accuse BDS supporters of harboring motives that they may not have.
Some argue that even if they don’t intend to undermine Israel’s existence, harsh critics of Israeli policies are being duped and manipulated by those who do have that intention, and all of them are creating a climate of public opinion that is an existential threat to the Jewish state. Even if that were true, it is unwise to treat all vociferous critics as if they had the same goals. That is a surefire way to lose those who can be convinced to tone down their rhetoric and take a more balanced approach to a conflict in which neither side is blameless.
Dan Fleshler is the author of “Transforming America’s Israel Lobby –The Limits of Its Power and the Potential for Change,” and a board member of Ameinu and Americans for Peace Now.
Topics: American Jews, anti-Zionism, Apartheid, Arab-Israeli conflict, BDS, delegitimization, Far left, Israel, Israeli occupation | 94 Comments »
By Dan Fleshler | December 14, 2010
Have a strong stomach? Track the settlements on your cell phone
Americans for Peace Now has just released a “Facts on the Ground” application that gives iPhone and iPad users real-time, digital maps of the West Bank settlements. It’s also available on the web. You can find it here.
Interviewed by Ha’aretz, APN’s estimable CEO Debra DeLee said, “One of the things that make this tool so powerful is that it democratizes data. In the past, not many were able to tour the settlements with an expert guide. With the introduction of our app, anyone can explore the West Bank with just a click of a mouse or a touch of a finger.”
APN deserves praise not only for the use of this new communications tool, but also for the powerful, sickening, saddening visceral experience it provides. Settlements are symbolized by little blue houses. In the main map, a “West Bank Overview,” they form thick, deep clusters east of the Green Line, and look very much like cancer cells that have metastasized and run amuck.
One sign of how interesting this is: it prompted me to do a blog post for the first time in weeks (and the second time in months).
Topics: Americans for Peace Now, Israel, Israeli occupation, Israeli settlements, Palestinians, Peace Now | 13 Comments »
By Dan Fleshler | September 20, 2010
Is there any hope?
We’ve been here before, of course. We’ve been here so many times I’ve lost count. Most of what needs to be said about the upcoming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks was expressed in a poem written nearly sixty years ago by the late, truly great Yehuda Amichai.
In The U.N. Headquarters Headquarters in the High Commissioner’s House in Jerusalem, he described an early version of the Middle East peace process industry:
The mediators, the peacemakers, the compromise-shapers,
the comforters
live in the white house
and get their nourishment from far away,
through winding pipes, through dark veins, like a fetus.And their secretaries are lipsticked and laughing,
and their sturdy chauffeurs wait below, like horses in a stable,
and the trees that shade them have their roots in no-man’s land
and the illusions are children who went out to find cyclamen
in the field
and did not come back.
After devoting more lines to sadly mocking this nest of illusionists, Amichai concludes:
And hopes come to me like bold seafarers,
like the discoverers of continents coming to an island,
and stay for a day or two
and rest…
And then they set sail.
There has been an unrelenting barrage of gloomy pronouncements about the Israeli-Palestinian talks. All manner of pundits from the right, left and center have explained why the talks will amount to nothing and might even do more harm than good, why only fools and impractical dreamers would permit our bold seafarers, our hopes, to arrive and remain.
One of the most thorough and convincing critiques comes from Donald Horowitz, a scholar who doesn’t seem to have any ax to grind (HT: Tom Mitchell). On the left, Juan Cole explains “how little Netanyahu is interested in real peace with the Palestinians” and offers compelling reasons to be scornful. On the right, Barry Rubin is equally convincing when he explains how “Palestinian Authority incitement to kill Israelis and destroy Israel” is a “powerful subverter of chances for peace.” (Note that he is talking about the PA, not Hamas).
Just wander around the blogosphere for five minutes and you will find many more.
If you were expecting persuasive rebuttals, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I don’t disagree with any of these arguments for gloom. Daniel Levy probably doesn’t disagree either, although he bravely shoulders the burden of showing why the talks might defy expectations and amount to something:
(T)he main reason for hope rests with the potential that President Obama, having taken ownership of this issue, will pursue decisive leadership down the line. As a candidate, Barack Obama flirted with a definition of pro-Israel that was more sophisticated and more relevant to contemporary realities than the standard fare served up by pandering politicians (at a campaign stop with Jewish leadership in Cleveland, Ohio, he suggested that pro-Israel need not only be defined as pro-Likud. In insisting that a two-state solution and comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace is in the U.S. interest, President Obama is advancing a narrative that was adopted rather late in the day by his predecessor and that is very much the consensus of the U.S. military…
…The seemingly plodding progress made by the Obama administration thus far can be more generously interpreted as the U.S. methodically walking the parties to a place where decisive U.S. intervention and presentation of U.S. proposals becomes more possible, more justifiable, and more likely to succeed. According to that view, this week represents another and particularly important step in that direction. American officials have openly acknowledged that bridging proposals might be forthcoming and are showing a greater commitment to being present in the room at negotiations than has been the case in past efforts.
That helps. At least it helps a little bit. But even if the PA and Israel astonishingly come to terms under American auspices, given the deep political divisions within both peoples, and given the profound gaps in their narratives, it is unlikely that either party would be able to implement an agreement that would hold up in the near future.
If there is little hope for the short-term, though, that doesn’t mean the long-term prospects are entirely bleak. Lately, the popular analogy of this mess to the one in Northern Ireland has been demolished by many different commentators, including Horowitz and Levy. They point out the many differences between the players and the circumstances of the two conflicts. But they miss the most important point about the Republican-Unionist struggles, a more general and much much less complicated point: eventually, people in both communities just couldn’t take any more violence and turmoil. Eventually, the extremists on both sides decided that violence was counterproductive and gave up their maximalist demands.
Tom Mitchell is one of the few people around with a detailed knowledge of the nuances of both conflicts. In a message he sent to me that will eventually become part of a post, he wrote: “Peace in Northern Ireland came about only after the Republican Movement realized that a military victory was impossible and that there was a political cost to pay for the continued conflict.”
In a subsequent note, he gave one explanation of why the Republicans made that decision, a point that will make the left very uncomfortable: “British, and to a lesser extent Irish, intelligence did a very good job of infiltrating the IRA and INLA during the 1980s and early 1990s and thus were able to neutralize many IRA operations and imprison experienced terrorists.”
For a host of reasons, somehow both sides eventually grew tired enough to put aside centuries of resentment and bitter memories and sectarian passions.
There are any number of reasons why that kind of transformation probably won’t happen in Israel and the territories. But no one should assert with smug certainty that it will NEVER happen. Nor should anyone try to predict how long it will take. People and nations do change, change utterly. Grand ideologies are discarded and others replace them (e.g., China got fed up with Maoism and embraced free enterprise). Assumptions are overturned. Bitter conflicts somehow end (think France and Germany). That is not a very sophisticated political analysis, but that doesn’t make it less true. Right now, I confess it is the only reason for my bold seafarers to hang around.
So I will conclude with Yehuda Amichai, who, unsurprisingly, got it right decades ago. In “Sort of an Apocalypse,” he wrote:
And they’ll beat their swords into plowshares and plowshares into swords,
And so on and so on, and back and forth.
Perhaps from being beaten thinner and thinner
the iron of hatred will vanish forever.
Topics: American foreign policy, Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel, Israeli occupation, Middle East peace process, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians | 31 Comments »
By Dan Fleshler | September 1, 2010
NY Times perpetuates myth that American Jews are single-issue voters
More and more Jewish voters are deserting the Democratic party, according to a Pew Research Center poll. The survey shows that 33% of American Jewish voters now identify or lean Republican, up from 20% in 2008.
That’s interesting and troubling to a died-in-the-wool Democrat like me. But Charles M. Blow’s take on the poll in the New York Times is even more troubling, because it bolsters the canard that American Jews are single-issue voters who judge politicians mainly on the basis of their positions on Israel. Commenting on Pew’s results, Blow asserts, “This is no doubt a reaction, at least in part, to the Obama administration’s having taken a hard rhetorical stance with Israel while `taking special time and care on our relationship with the Muslim world.’”
Blow devotes much of the article to describing the Obama administration’s rocky relationship with Israel and the extent to which this troubles the Jewish community.
But he does not even mention the possibility that many Jewish voters are troubled by Obama and the Dems for the same reasons that other voters are troubled: the sorry state of the economy, concerns about the health care initiative, a general feeling that the country is heading in the wrong direction, etc. And he offers no evidence whatsoever that Obama’s dealings with Israel are more important to these voters than domestic matters.
On the contrary, any number of surveys show that Israel-related matters are a relatively low priority for most American Jewish voters. When pollsters from Gerstein Agne asked American Jews in March to choose the top two issues they will use to decide their 2010 Congressional votes, Israel ranked 7th. It was deemed to be less important than the economy, health care, the deficit and government spending, Social Security and Medicare, and terrorism and national security. Israel was given the same ranking as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only 10% of the respondents chose Israel as one of their top two issues.
Similarly, while Israel’s fate is certainly a concern for most American Jews, an American Jewish Committee poll in November, 2007 revealed that it is an obsession for a tiny minority of Jewish voters:
When asked to pick their most important campaign issue from a list of options, 23% of those surveyed named the economy and jobs, followed by health care (19%), the war in Iraq (16%), terrorism and national security (14%), support for Israel (6%), immigration (6%) and the energy crisis (6%).
Does Israel matter to the American Jews who have jumped ship and joined the Republicans in recent months? Most likely. But nowhere in the results of the Pew poll or any previous survey is there an indication that issues connected to Israel are the most important factors in determining American Jews’ political affiliations.
As I’ve noted elsewhere on this blog, “Israel is one of the things Americans Jews care about and worry about, but when it is time to exercise our civic responsibilities, what happens here at home is what matters most to us.”
Topics: American Jewish Committee, American Jews, Arab-Israeli conflict, Charles M. Blow, Obama administration, Palestinians | 18 Comments »
By Dan Fleshler | August 21, 2010
Philip Weiss and the inconvenient truth of suicide bombers
In a recent post, the increasingly influential Philip Weiss tells of a Gaza psychiatrist who pleads with his visitors to “reach out and heal” Israelis because they are “gripped by fear.” Weiss accepts the challenge. After saying Israelis have a “psychosis” because of their fears, he asserts:
I use the word psychosis because Israeli society is conditioned by the Holocaust and the 6 million and the belief that Jews can trust no one else. As Norman Mailer said, Hitler’s bitterest achievement was reducing Jews to the concern, Is it good for the Jews?
But not Mailer. And this is the sad truth about Zionism: it distilled distrust. Its nationalistic appeal sorted out Jews who were fearful about antisemitism from those who were not. It sorted out those who believe that Jews must look out for Jews from those who favor integration in western societies. It sorted out the ethnocentric, Is-it-good-for-the-Jews types, from Jews who think it’s OK to marry non-Jews. And in that division, the fearful took power. They moved to Israel or manned the barricades of the Israel lobby, and the integrators married non-Jews or wrote books about jazz and checked out. The fearful were granted power by the rest of the community.
I searched that post and the rest of MondoWeiss in vain for an acknowledgment that the fears of Israeli and American Jews are based on anything other than the Holocaust and an innate suspicion of the outside world. The Holocaust has certainly helped to “condition” Israeli consciousness. But Israelis and their supporters here (including realistic doves like me) have also been conditioned by a more recent phenomenon which is apparently of little consequence to Weiss and his allies: suicide bombings and rocket attacks on civilians.
The second intifada began 10 and 1/2 years ago, and the litany of incessant terrorist attacks against innocent civilians is still fresh in people’s minds. The idea that these attacks –and the rockets from Gaza that bombarded southern Israel– frightened and angered Israelis and made them believe there was no Palestinian partner seems so obvious that there should be no need to repeat it. Apparently there is.
Study a list of those attacks and focus on 2001-2003, and it is easy to understand why the intifada demolished much of the Israeli peace camp. It was not just the major, storied bombings like those directed at a banquet hall in Netanya, buses and cafes in Jerusalem, the Hebrew University cafeteria, malls and a disco in Tel Aviv. There was also a host of attacks, a constant barrage of them, that barely made the news here: in one 5-month period in 2002, there were bombings of a bus in Hadera, a bus at the Meron Junction, a bus in French Hill in Jerusalem, the central bus station in Tel Aviv, a bus near Afula.
There are many reasons for the perpetuation of the occupation, some of them inexcuseable, such as the persistent grip of Jewish settlers on Israel’s political system. But one of them is the legitimate Israeli worry that no one will exert control over extremist groups that see nothing wrong with blowing up Israeli women and children. To Weiss and the rest of the unremittingly anti-Israel left, when Palestinian terrorism is mentioned at all, it is explained away as understandable resistance to the occupation. In one blog post, Weiss mocks “the centrality of the Palestinian suicide bomber in Western demonology.” Mostly, he and his fans ignore what happened to Israelis in the second intifada or the rockets hitting Sderot. I don’t meant to imply that they are always wrong when they deplore Israel for over-reacting to Palestinian provocations. But they are wrong to discount the reasons for the reaction.
There is no doubt that Palestinians have suffered more than Israelis because of this conflict. There is an asymmetry of grief as well as an asymmetry of power. The occupation is immoral as well as illegal. Many more Palestinians than Israelis were killed during the intifada. But the fact remains that about 1,000 Israelis died and many more were seriously injured. That didn’t happen very long ago. Remembering those Israeli deaths and injuries, and being worried about more deaths and injuries, is not a symptom of psychosis. It is a rational response.
I believe Philip Weiss is making a good faith effort to understand Israelis and their followers in the U.S. He is correct in saying that the “fearful” have too much power, at least in the American Jewish community. But he should understand that there are widows, widowers, orphans, maimed victims and justifiable fears on both sides of the conflict.
Topics: Israel, Israeli occupation, Palestinians, Philip Weiss | 89 Comments »
By Dan Fleshler | June 13, 2010
The Israeli blockade is actually strengthening Hamas
The estimable Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now has provided ten reasons for Israel to reassess its blockade of the Gaza Strip. One rationale for the blockade is Israel’s desire to weaken and undermine Hamas. The opposite has occurred, according to Friedman. Oops. This is a classic, tragic example of the law of unintended consequences. Here are a few of her points:
5) The blockade is actually strengthening Hamas.
As a result of the blockade, Gaza’s civilians are suffering and its independent merchant class has been wiped out, while Hamas’ hold over Gaza has been strengthened through the control of the smuggling tunnels. Outside of UN aid and the limited aid that Israel permits to pass through its crossing points, nearly all regular goods for Gaza must pass through Hamas-controlled tunnels, which today are the backbone of Gaza’s pseudo-economy. Today Hamas is even taxing the goods that come through these routes, meaning that the blockade has indirectly become a source of income for the Hamas government.
(6) The blockade has helped wipe out moderate opposition to Hamas within Gaza.
As a result of the blockade, Gaza’s moderate middle class – the people who in the past traded with Israel and had regular relations with Israelis – has been wiped out politically and economically. While one rationale for the blockade was that it would cause the people to rise up against Hamas and in favor of the kind of more moderate leadership that exists in the West Bank, instead today the only real opposition to Hamas comes from foreign-inspired and foreign-funded Islamists who oppose Hamas for being too moderate.
(7) The blockade undermines the domestic legitimacy of Palestinian President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad.
Some argue that lifting the blockade would deal a blow to the Fatah-run PA and its leaders, President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. This argument is facile.
Abbas and Fayyad continue to call for an end to the blockade. For the sake of their own credibility as well as for their claim to lead all the Palestinian people (not just the West Bank) Abbas and Fayyad cannot sit by quietly and acquiesce to a situation in which more than a million Palestinians suffer. Similarly, they know that the Gaza blockade is actually strengthening Hamas’ hold on Gaza, while diminishing the influence of those Gazans who would traditionally have represented their own power base.
Topics: Gaza blockade, Gaza flotilla, Gaza Strip, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians | 26 Comments »
By Dan Fleshler | June 3, 2010
Dialogue on the Gaza Flotilla
“I appreciate your call. My staff was going to get in touch with you. The task force is meeting tomorrow at 8:30. Can you make it?”
“I’m afraid the Consulate will need to get someone else. I’m calling to tell you I can’t help anymore. I’m too upset…”
“But the facts are on our side. Didn’t you see the IDF video we just released? It’s great! It proves that our soldiers were attacked when they descended from the helicopters. So Israel had every right to…”
“..Jeffrey, my son, isn’t buying it. That’s why I’m upset. He’s home from Brandeis and he’s reading all the Twitter feeds, the blog posts. He’s even started to read Haaretz.”
“Oh no!”
“He wants to know why I keep automatically defending your country every time it gets accused of something. He says I look for the facts that help me come to Israel’s defense and ignore all of the other facts. He accuses me of not wanting to offend everyone else in the JCRC by being a non-conformist and thinking for myself.”
“Yes, we greatly appreciate your help, Si.”
“I taught my boy to be an independent, critical thinker. So now he’s thought about that attack, and he’s telling me there was no justification for storming the boat in international waters. He says Israel wasn’t protecting itself. Its actions had nothing to do with Israeli security; it was protecting a blockade of Gaza that is a form of collective punishment, which is illegal. And immoral.”
“Did you tell him why the blockade is necessary? That Hamas is a terror organization, and we can’t allow them access to weapons, or materials that could be used to make weapons?”
“Yeah. And he pointed out that if it were all about keeping out weapons, why is there a blockade of exports from Gaza? Why don’t you let Gazan workers into Israel? Why can’t students there get visas to study abroad? He said Israel wants to keep people living in a wretched state so they’ll blame Hamas. He dared me to defend that and I couldn‘t do it. I didn’t want to do it.”
“But there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Did you tell him that?”
“No”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not sure I believe it myself, I don’t know why I should trust you more than I trust Amnesty International. They say there’s a crisis. So I tell myself, `somebody must be lying. Why should I believe Israel isn’t lying?’”
(Long, long pause). “Si, could we get back to the original topic? Your son should know that the volunteers on that ship were pro-Hamas activists. They were armed with clubs and knives because they wanted a confrontation. That was their choice, not ours.”
“Jeffrey doesn’t buy it. That’s the point. He doesn’t believe anything Israel says anymore. Look, I know you’ve got a tough job and I’m sorry. But there are just too many things about your country I can’t defend when he talks about them….”
“…I would be happy to supply you with more talking points. Ask me anytime…
“…Tossing Palestinians out of their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem, so that settlers can move in…And not letting in Noam Chomsky…And your foreign minister, your boss, pushing for Israeli Arabs to take loyalty oaths…”
“Those are all isolated examples. What does any of that have to do with the Gaza flotilla?”
“It has to do with my only son. He asks me why I would want to be the p.r. mouthpiece for a country like that!”
“Has he been to Israel? Does he understand how complex the situation is?”
“Sure he’s been there. This summer, he went to Bi’lin, on the West Bank, and he saw how the security barrier cut that village in half. So he joined the protestors. I told him that was a mistake…But I didn’t really believe what I was saying. Now he’s considering joining the boycotters when he gets back to school. You’ve lost him. But I don’t want to lose him. Forget it! Enough is enough! The respect of my kid is more important to me than helping your country!”
“Look, if you’re concerned about him, why not tell him he doesn’t need to leave the fold? There are liberal Zionists against the occupation. He can still find a home in the pro-Israel community.”
“You mean an official of the Israeli government is recommending that someone join J Street, or Americans for Peace Now, or Ameinu? Does the Foreign Ministry know about this?”
(Long pause. Sigh) ”I didn’t even want this posting. I wanted them to send me to Costa Rica.”
Topics: Ameinu, American Jews, Americans for Peace Now, Gaza flotilla, Gaza Strip, Israel, J Street, Palestinians | 60 Comments »
By Dan Fleshler | June 1, 2010
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