Showing posts with label analysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label analysis. Show all posts

Thursday, March 04, 2021




In his 1986 capsule review of Raphael Patai's book, The Seed of Abraham: Jews and Arabs in Contact and Conflict, John C. Campbell concludes:
The author draws some personal conclusions of his own that seem unduly optimistic, such as that the Israeli Arabs are moving through evolving cultural values to a status of equal partners in the democratic and liberal state of Israel. [emphasis added]
Is Campbell right?

In his book, Patai writes that Arabs living under foreign rule is not something new. Until World War I, most Arab countries were ruled by the non-Arab Turks, followed afterward by control under the forces of Great Britain, France and Italy in the region.

But in those cases, the Arabs were the majority population.
In Israel, in 1948, the Arabs almost overnight became a minority in a country in which for many centuries they had been the overwhelming majority even though they did not enjoy self-rule. [p. 322]
With the reestablishment of the State of Israel, not only did the Arabs become a minority -- for the first time, Arabs were exposed to the kind of non-Arab influences which few Arabs had ever experienced before.

Patai describes the compulsory education, exposure to Hebrew and integration into the Israeli workforce, as the Arabs commuted to nearby Jewish cities, towns and villages. All this brought improvements to the Arab standard of living -- and also gave the Arabs increased exposure to Israeli society and culture.
In brief, although in no segment of Israeli Arab society had things reached a stage even in the 1980s where one could speak of the onset of Arab deculturation that is, a decline of their national Arab culture, it soon became clear that what was happening was that the Israeli Arabs were rapidly becoming bicultural...At the time of this writing (1985), this process is still in full swing. [p.323]
To get an idea of how the Israeli-Arabs themselves viewed this, Patai quotes from research done by Mark A. Tessler in 1974, published as "The Identity of Religious Minorities in Non-Secular States." Tessler examines Jews in Tunisia and Morocco -- and Arabs in Israel. As a result of his research, Tessler finds Israeli Arabs to be a "non-assimilating" minority with an "unnarrowed cultural distance" between Arabs and Jews in Israel.

Tessler's evaluation is supported by these responses from the 348 Israli Arabs he interviewed:
23% said they feel more comfortable in Israel than they would in an Arab or Palestinian state
30% said it made no difference
55% considered Israel's creation in 1948 to have been illegal
But on the other hand:
53% stated the term "Israeli" described them "very well" or fairly well"
40% said they felt closer to Jews in Israel than to Arabs in distant lands such as Algeria or Morocco
As a measure of the extent of bicultural acculturation:
50% rejected the statement that it was unacceptable for a married woman to go out socially in public without he husband
Most listened to Hebrew radio and television programs as often as Arabic ones.
55% felt it was important for their children to study the history of Judaism
65% felt it was important to study the history of Zionism
78% said they would not object  to their children attending a Jewish high school
Tessler writes that "the rejection by many Israeli Arabs of some aspects of traditional Arab culture is unmistakable, suggesting that the distance between Jews and Arabs in Israel is reduced in some areas" -- but then goes on to conclude that "no plausible outcome of the struggle among [the] cultural and religious facts would bring about a situation in which non-Jews can share fully the mission of the state."

But based on the positive side to some of Tessler's results, Patai interjects:
The data presented do not seem to justify this conclusion.
According to Patai, the tension between Arab and Jew is aggravated by 3 things:
The Arab religion, tradition and history have conditioned them to have a disparaging view of Jews as dhimmis
o  Never before in Arab history have they lived under Jewish rule
o  An Arab's knowledge of the Koran and Islam has taught them that for a Jew to rule over Arabs is against the will of Allah and intolerable
Based on this, we might expect matters to be worse.
Why aren't they?
Arabs are also pragmatists, and, if not in thought and word, certainly in action, have always recognized and accepted the limitations of the possible. [p. 328]
Because of that Arab pragmatism, Patai still cautions that in the event of renewed hostilities, Israeli Arabs would side with their fellow Arabs if given the opportunity, seeing as at the time of the writing of his book, Arabs have still not reconciled themselves to life under Israeli rule. And material improvements to the lives of Israeli Arabs will not necessarily improve matters. 

Then what will?
Israeli Arabs will have to absorb enough of the Israeli-Hebrew culture and values to erase from their psyche that age-old Arab contempt for the Jewish dhimmis...It can come about only gradually as a result of the de facto symbiosis of Arabs and Jews. [p.328]
Patai sees the contact of Israeli Arabs with Palestinian Arabs as a major factor preventing "Israelization." This is the second consequence of Israel's victory in the Six Day War, that the presence of these Palestinian Arabs and the challenges of Gaza and the "West Bank" since 1967 serves to radicalize Israeli Arabs. The other problem, which Patai mentions earlier in the book is that while Gaza and the West Bank were under the control of Egypt and Jordan, there were no expressions of independence or of establishing a Palestinian state, knowing that neither Nasser nor King Hussein would take kindly to the idea. The miraculous victory also removed that inhibition on calls for a Palestinian Arab state. 

Similarly, as Patai writes in his preface to the 1976 edition of The Arab Mind (p. xxiv-xxv), the fact that Egypt was able to hold its own in the beginning of the 1973 October War, not only gave Sadat the self-confidence to pursue a peace treaty with Israel with honor -- instead of being merely a defeated foe -- but as Patai adds here, it helped create a new generation of Palestinian Arabs who actively supported the PLO.

On that score, evidence that this ominous radicalization of Israeli Arabs that Patai saw may be counterbalanced by surveys of Israeli Arabs in recent years which indicate a decrease in the identification Israeli Arabs feel as Palestinians, as noted in an earlier post, More evidence that fewer Arab Israelis identify as "Palestinian":

Survey as Israeli as Israeli-
Arab
as Israeli-
Palestinian
as Arab-
Palestinian
as Arab as Palestinian as Religious
(Muslim,
Christian,
Druze)
Smooha I
(2012)
--- 40% 40% 20%  --- --- ---
Smooha II
(2014)
--- 32% 45% 22%  --- --- ---
Shaharit
(2017)
20.5% --- --- ---  28.4% 14.6% 35.8
+972 Magazine
(2019)
--- 46% 19% ---  22% 14% ---
JPPI
(2020)
23% 51% --- ---  15% 7% ---

An apparent problem with this chart is that it does not jive with Tessler's survey that back in 1974 53% of Israeli Arabs stated the term "Israeli" described them "very well" or fairly well -- unless you include in the above chart those who see themselves as Israeli-Arab/Israeli Palestinian as well.

Patai sees the situation of Israeli Arabs as not merely a problem that needs to be solved. After all, he is a cultural anthropologist, not an old-school Orientalist.
The Israeli Arabs by acquiring modern Hebrew Israeli culture, are thereby transforming themselves before our very eyes into a radically new coinage in the Arab world: into an Arab people whose cultural physiognomy will have two sides, an Arab and a Hebrew. [p. 329]
Going a step further, he sees a "reversal" of classical Arab history itself. The Koran duality reflects Muhammad's original respect for Jews, whom he hoped to convert -- as well as his later contempt for them when they refused.

But now:
The present-day Israeli Arabs' attitude to contemporary Israel has no choice but proceeds in the opposeite direction, from the tradional Arab contempt for the Jewish dhimmis to a respect for the people of Israel which will inevitably develop as a by-product of the growing Arab familiarity with and understanding of the nonmaterial aspects of Israeli-Hebrew culture. One hardly maintains a contemptuous attitude to a people whose culture one has absorbed and values internalized. [p. 329]
The importance of Patai's analysis is that he provides a view not only of the enormity of what Israeli Arabs are experiencing, but also of the slowly progressing success of their integration into Israeli society, even with the bumps in the road along the way.

These days, we are witnessing this acceptance of Israel on a larger scale that Patai may not have foreseen, with the Abraham Accords and Israel's normalization with the UAE in particular, which we can see goes beyond being a joint defensive pact against Iran. 

It is a rocky road, after all -- this is the Middle East after all, and nothing is easy or can be taken for granted.

But the Abraham Accords is leading to a growing relationship that itself is also affecting Israeli Arabs, demonstrating the potential for accepting Israel, not only as a neighbor in the Middle East, but as another home for Arabs in it.



Thursday, February 25, 2021




I still remember when our family went to Disney World, years ago, and we went to the exhibit for "It's A Small World After All." To illustrate the point, the exhibit contained caricatures of every nationality. 

The typical Israeli was depicted as -- a Chassid.
Maybe the people at Disney had trouble figuring out what an Israeli is. 
Or perhaps they thought their visitors did.

Times haven't changed.
Depictions of Jews in the media are often inaccurate.

As an extreme example, take the new show on NBC called Nurses:
Set in Toronto, "Nurses" follows five young nurses working on the frontlines of a busy downtown hospital, dedicating their lives to helping others, while struggling to help themselves.
In a recent episode -- which NBC has now pulled off its digital platforms -- one of the subplots is that a Chassidic boy requires a bone transplant in order to be able to walk again.

The boy, with his father at his side, refuses the transplant because the bone might be from an Arab or a woman, or -- as the nurse helpfully chimes in -- an Arab woman.
Elder of Ziyon outlines the extent to which the show Nurses mischaracterized Orthodox Jews as:
Being against any modern medical procedures
o  Being against grafting bone or tissue from non-Jews
o  Being against having women's organs or bones placed in men
o  Jewish men not directly addressing female nurses
o  Saying that prayer and medicine are incompatible
Against that background, we can understand The Wiesenthal Center's reaction:
The writers of this scene check all the boxes of ignorance and pernicious negative stereotypes, right down to the name of the patient, Israel – paiyous and all.

In one scene, NBC has insulted and demonized religious Jews and Judaism.

Overreaction? Orthodox Jews are targeted for violent hate crimes – in the city of New York, Jews are number one target of hate crimes in US; this is no slip of the tongue. It was a vile, cheap attack masquerading as TV drama. What’s NBC going to do about it?
(Note: Apparently the name of the patient is Ezriel, not Israel.)

It is insulting not only for the deliberately negative slant the show casts on Orthodox Jews, but the show's writers couldn't even be bothered to do the minimal research necessary to realize that under the circumstances, no Orthodox Jew and no Orthodox rabbi would object to such an operation.

The website TV Fanatic does offer a possible context for this sub-plot and what it was intended to do -- draw a comparison with the nurse, who is a religious Christian:
I understand what they were going for. Ashley [the nurse] comes from a religious background. She has issues with her conservative Christian home and with her conservative Christian mother.

They were trying to draw a parallel and stir up some feeling for her with this push-button topic.
Stir up some feeling?
Mission accomplished!

But even so, the thinking behind the plot of this episode is not even new.

In 2005, Grey's Anatomy ran an episode with a similar sub-plot: a 17-year-old girl who has recently become more religious finds out that she has a potentially threatening heart condition that could kill her. The good news is that her life can be saved with an operation that will provide her with a new heart valve.

But the valve is from a pig.

The subplot revolves around her refusal to accept the operation because of the source of the valve.

That Jewish law in no way forbids such use of pig parts (only their consumption – and not even that when life is endangered) is not noted; quite the contrary, the viewer is led to believe that the girl’s refusal would be the natural stance of any observant Jew. The silliness of the scenario is only compounded by the casting of a woman as the Orthodox girl’s rabbi (and the episode’s “good guy,” of course).

...But the most egregious element of the fantasy is the character’s, well, character. The Orthodox youth is portrayed as, in the words of one viewer, “a crazy fundamentalist fanatical Jew [who] was rude and behaved horrendously to the doctors who were only trying to help her.” The character belittles her less-observant parents, cursing like a sailor in the process. Just your standard-fare nice, newly religious Jewish girl. [emphasis added]
Realism and accuracy clearly were not considerations. The writer admitted to The Forward, "Whenever there is a story that has a rabbi I never see a woman, I just see old men. I wanted to clash with the stereotype a bit."

But there is more going on in this episode on Grey's Anatomy than just a clash in stereotypes of what a rabbi looks like. As in the episode in Nurses, in this episode of Grey's Anatomy, the writer deliberately created a character who was obnoxious because of her religiosity.

As Rabbi Shafran points out:

...If the character is a positive one, or even a neutral one, no one, save perhaps an anti-Semite, would complain. But if he or she is consciously crafted to be obnoxious – and not merely obnoxious, but obnoxious in her dedication to her ostensible religious beliefs – does that not border on provocation? [emphasis added]

So what is going on here?

In 2005, Wendy Shalit examined the books written about the ultra-Orthodox world, many of which painted a negative picture, and wondered aloud about the audience for such books:
What is the market for this fiction? Does it simply satisfy our desire, as one of Mirvis's reviewers put it, to indulge in "eavesdropping on a closed world"? Or is there a deeper urge: do some readers want to believe the ultra-Orthodox are crooked and hypocritical, and thus lacking any competing claim to the truth? Perhaps, on the other hand, readers are genuinely interested in traditional Judaism but don't know where to look for more nuanced portraits of this world.
Does the same desire to undermine the Orthodox Jews motivate the writers of these kinds of episodes on Grey's Anatomy and Nurses?

For whatever reason, many writers today like to create immoral haredi and newly-religious characters. The truth is, I don't know why. Perhaps because they are not from these worlds, they fail to appreciate the idealism that's there. Or perhaps it's because, as Ms. Mirvis has admitted, nowadays "there is a great deal of discomfort with religiosity, and I have to admit, I feel it myself as well."

...But when all your Orthodox characters are cold and dysfunctional, and unlike anything this group understands itself to be, then I think one must ask what else might be going on. [emphasis added]
Shalit ends this article with a challenge:
Let's turn the tables. Suppose there is a new genre in American Jewish literature, in which Reform Jews are vilified regularly. There is the temple's secretary who kills one of her Hadassah sisters in order to get the latest Judith Lieber bag, and a gay Reform rabbi who seduces younger male congregants. There are idealistic college coeds who want to escape Reform life, but are daunted by the prospect of learning Hebrew, so they abuse drugs instead. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is such a genre. And suppose further that these novels are a bit short on character development, that they are primarily driven by page after page of weirdo Reform characters, and mouth agape, one must turn the pages in order to satisfy one's curiosity: what will this bad Reform bunch do next? The authors, who are not Reform themselves, are celebrated in the non-Jewish world and their Reform-bashing literature is translated into multiple languages.

How would we feel about such novels? My guess is that they would not be so popular, and the fact that we have toasted such literature about Orthodox Jews for so long might -- just might -- tell us something about our prejudices. [emphasis added]
There was a time that simple curiosity was the driving force in the depiction of Orthodox Jews. In his review of the book This Ain't Kosher, Elliot Gertel reveals that "the (Jewish) producers of [the TV show] Kung Fu originally thought of making the martial arts master a Hasidic rebbe."

But those were simpler days that are long behind us.



Wednesday, February 17, 2021


 

During those eight years [of President Bush], there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.
Obama, July 13, 2009

With each passing day, speculation is mounting as to what to make of Biden's failure to call Netanyahu.

Lahav Harkov of the Jerusalem Post quotes sources that there is not really a big deal going on here and no snub of Netanyahu, per se.

She quotes sources that claim Biden simply does not want to be seen as interfering with Israel's upcoming March 23rd elections by allowing Netanyahu to make political hay out of a phone call from the president of the United States -- this according to 2 Israeli political parties who have been in contact with the Biden administration.

That explanation might be taking for granted the respect that Israelis are supposed to have for Biden.

But take into account that Israelis favored Trump over Biden in last year's election and it is just as likely that the impression will be that Biden is specifically trying to interfere and influence the upcoming election against Netanyahu by refusing to make that phone call.

The fact that Biden has not contacted any other leaders in the Middle East is supposed to support the claim that there is nothing personal in that phone call not being made. 

And in addition to the phone call, Biden's putting his selection of an ambassador to Israel on hold until after the Israeli elections -- because some of the people being considered, such as former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, have a poor relationship with Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Schanzer of The Foundation for Defense of Democracies points out that there is still plenty of communication going on between the US and Israel -- Secretary of State Blinken is speaking with Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is speaking with Meir Ben Shabbat.

With talk of returning to the Iran Deal, it's all very well for Biden to indicate a return to Obama's foreign policy, but those days are not the kind that Israel is eager to return to.

Those 2 sources Lahav quotes both claim that Biden wants to convey the message that “there is no special relationship with Bibi.” That may be, but in the process, Biden is also conveying the message that there is no special relationship with Israel either.

And that is something that conflicts with the readiness of past presidents to quickly connect with Israel's leaders.
Schanzer gives a short history lesson, pointing out that
Clinton called Prime Minister Rabin on January 23 and met with him 2 months later. 
o  Bush called Prime Minister Sharon on February 6. 
o  Obama spoke with Olmert on January 2 (before his own inauguration) and then called Netanyahu on April 1, the day after Netanyahu was sworn in. 
o  Trump spoke with Netanyahu on January 22, and hosted him the following month. 
Abbas is no doubt relieved to see Biden push off making that phone call -- imagine what kind of message Hamas might see in this.

But there is more going on than just a delay in making a phone call.

Last Friday, during a White House press briefing, press secretary Jen Psaki was asked what seemed to be a straightforward question:
Can you please just give a broad sense of what the administration is trying to achieve in the Middle East? For example, does the administration still consider the Saudis and the Israelis important allies?
Her response was a painful attempt to avoid giving an answer:
Well, you know, again, I think, we, there are ongoing processes and internal interagency processes, one that we, I think confirmed an interagency meeting just last week to discuss a range of issues in the Middle East where we've only been here three and a half weeks.

And I think I'm going to let those policy processes see themselves through before we give kind of a complete lay down of what our national security approaches will be to a range of issues.
If the Biden administration cannot even call Israel an ally when Biden is barely a month into his presidency, then we really are going to a very contentious 4 years.

And then there is the issue of some of the staff Biden has chosen for influential posts in his administration -- people about whom Mort Klein of ZOA has warned:
The new secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, has ‘publicly said the IRGC, the Iranian terror group, should never have been put on [the State Department’s] terror list, because that would “provoke” Iran’. Robert Malley, the chief negotiator of the Iran Deal, is a ‘public, unabashed supporter of the mullahs, an unabashed supporter of Hamas’.

Not forgetting lesser luminaries like Maher Bitar, who used to be on the board of the racist Students for Justice in Palestine and is now the NSC’s senior director for intelligence programs. Or Hady Amr, who used to be national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice Network, has written of being ‘inspired’ by the Palestinian intifada, and threatened vengeance after Israel assassinated a Hamas leader. Amr is now deputy assistant secretary of state for Israel-Palestine.
The choice of Malley, Bitar and Amr are concerning.
But Israel is not the only country on edge.

Walter Russell Mead of The Wall Street Journal writes about Biden’s Rough Start With the World, claiming that "this has been one of the shortest and coldest diplomatic honeymoons on record," referring to Biden's boast that "America is back" not being welcomed by US allies quite as enthusiastically as Democrats may have expected. In Europe, American "wokeness" is being rejected by France while Russia and China are being viewed as attractive trading partners by Europe, ignoring Biden's talk of human rights.

And in the Middle East:

Iran is showing no eagerness to ease the administration’s path back into the 2015 nuclear deal. And both Israel and the conservative Arab states resent the American shift in that direction.

After just 4 years of Trump, Biden might just discover that this is no longer Obama's Middle East.
Or world.




Friday, February 12, 2021




Ruth Wisse, a scholar of Jewish history and culture, writes about what she sees as The Dark Side of Holocaust Education, that teaching about the Holocaust might not be the cure for antisemitism that some think it is. One of the reasons for Wisse's skepticism is the way that the teaching of the Holocaust has been universalized to include all victims of persecution.

And that is a trend that took a giant leap forward when Jimmy Carter was president.

Wisse points to Carter's surprising support for the construction of the Holocaust Museum -- surprising on account of his support for a Palestinian state and the sale of F-15 fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia. In fact, when the suggestion was first made to Carter, in 1977, to establish the museum, the idea went nowhere. It was not until the following year after the suggestion was made a second time that 
Carter surprised a group of rabbis he was meeting in the Rose Garden by saying he had decided to appoint a commission to explore the construction of a Holocaust memorial.
A presidential aide suggested that the commission overseeing the project should not be composed only of Jews. It had to have members who represented all those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Otherwise, Congress wouldn't support it. For example, the aide insisted that the membership had to include Lithuanians because they were members of the resistance -- ignoring the fact that the Lithuanians had been a part of the problem. 

Wisse comments:
One should have appreciated the leverage this gave him to steer its mission in the universalizing direction he preferred. 
Eventually, Elie Weisel quit the committee because it became too politicized. And as it turned out, the only limit on universality was Carter's insistence that when it came to funding, that would have to come primarily from the Jewish community alone.

This universalization of Jewish persecution is still alive and well. 

In January 2019, New York Democratic representative Carol Maloney introduced the "Never Again Education Act," which was passed near-unanimously by both the House and Senate. On May 29, 2020, the bill was signed into law by Trump, authorizing $2 million annually in support of Holocaust education for 5 years. 

But just 3 months after Maloney introduced the bill, Democrats in Congress responded to antisemitic comments by Ilhan Omar by putting together a resolution condemning antisemitism generally, along with anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry against other minorities as well.

Now, the generalizing of antisemitism is being taken one step further, that anyone can speak about and define antisemitism.

Linda Sarsour, who opined that “nothing is creepier than Zionism,” praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and believes one cannot support the right of Jews to a homeland of their own and still be a feminist.
Perhaps they were just looking for the voice of experience.

Of course, if you can advise Jews on what is and isn't antisemitism, there is no reason to stop there:


In fact, why should Sarsour be the only non-Jew who can lecture Jews on what is -- and isn't -- antisemitism:


Appearing on the panel will be Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who supports a “one-state solution” in which Israel is replaced by an Arab state; Peter Beinart, the only Jewish panelist, who has openly rejected the existence of Israel in its current form; Marc Lamont Hill, who has publicly recited the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”; and Barbara Ransby, an academic who supports the antisemitic BDS movement.
And when the topic was described as dismantling antisemitism, the goal is to dismantle the claim of antisemitism:
The panel, billed as “Dismantling Antisemitism, Winning Justice,” claims in the event description that, “Antisemitism is used to manufacture division and fear. While anyone can fuel it, antisemitism always benefits the politicians who rely on division and fear for their power.”

“We will explore how to fight back against antisemitism and against those that seek to wield charges of antisemitism to undermine progressive movements for justice,” it states.??
Normally, identity politics dictates that members of a targeted group have shared life experiences which provide them with a special insight and understanding that outsiders don't fully understand when it comes to the racism that group suffers.

But if that does not apply to Jews, maybe it is no longer a thing. If non-Jews can now define antisemitism, maybe in this progressive age of intersectionality now all persecuted groups fully understand and identify with all other persecuted groups.

Not according to Sarsour.

When Marc Lamont Hill started tweeting earlier this week about BDS, he went so far as to claim that even the Palestinian Arabs themselves who work for Israelis and enjoy superior wages favor boycotts against Israel. 

Anila Ali, a Democratic activist and a Muslim, challenged him to debate the issue, a challenge Hill declined.



She's not Palestinian and she will never speak for us.
But Sarsour would have no problem with Ali speaking for Jews.

So according to identity politics, when minorities cry racism -- they are to be believed.
Yet when it comes to Jews, when they cry racism -- they are up to something.

And what could be more sneaky and underhanded than to describe what antisemitism looks like using the IHRA working definition of antisemitism? 

Rejecting a formal definition of antisemitism are those -- not even necessarily non-Jewish -- who warn Jews to just cut it out, because unlike those minorities whose claims of racism are initially assumed to be true,
By contrast, the Livingstone Formulation, named in 2006 after the then Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, is the standard articulation of the opposite assumption. The Livingstone Formulation says that when people raise the issue of antisemitism, they are probably doing so in bad faith in a dishonest effort to silence legitimate criticism of Israel. It warns us to be suspicious of Jewish claims to have experienced antisemitism. It warns us to begin with the sceptical assumption that such claims are often sneaky tricks to gain the upper hand for Israel in debates with supporters of the Palestinians. And this is the substantial position of the ‘call to reject’ the IHRA definition of antisemitism. [emphasis added]
Jews just cannot win:
Discussion of Jewish persecution must include all persecutions
Anyone can discuss and define antisemitism
o  When Jews insist they must define what antisemitism is, it's a trick
o  Antisemitism is being used as a way to deflect criticism of Israel
o  Anyone can define antisemitism, but not anyone can define how other minorities feel
o  Intersectionality is universal and encompasses all races, classes and genders into common discrimination -- except for Jews.
Maybe not all progressives are as anti-racist as they think they are.



Friday, February 05, 2021

daledamos2

 

Last month, Jonathan Tobin sounded the alarm on Biden's foreign policy in the Middle East, which is guided by the foreign policy establishment now back in charge. Tobin is looking at the return of Robert Malley, who will advise on Iran; the resumption of aid to UNRWA and to the Palestinian Authority itself; and at Biden's decision to halt, at least temporarily, the arms sales to the UAE and Saudi Arabia -- the former considered a part of the Abraham Accords.

 
As Tobin sees it:
Biden’s choices show that he has learned nothing from the mistakes made during the Clinton and Obama administrations.
But what exactly are the mistakes of the Clinton and Obama administrations?
 
Enter Yoram Ettinger, Israeli researcher, who this week looked beyond the Clinton and Obama administrations, and traced the history of various US administrations in the Middle East, going back to 1948:
President Biden’s foreign policy and national security team reflects a resurgence of the State Department’s worldview. An examination of this worldview and its track record is required, in order to avoid past mistakes.
Remember how Abba Eban said the Palestinian Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity?
Notice the pattern of misjudgements that Ettinger finds in US Middle East policy:
 
 
1.  In 1948, the State Department opposed the recognition of Israel for a variety of reasons:
Israel would be helpless against the Arab armies arrayed against it
Israel would be pro-Soviet
Israel's existence would undermine US-Arab relations
Israel's existence would destabilize the Middle East
Israel's existence would threaten the US supply of oil
Israel's existence would damage US interests

2.  During the 1950s, the US courted Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser as a potential Middle East ally, going so far as to extend non-military aid to Egypt. But In return:
Nasser turned into a key ally of the then-USSR
Nasser supported anti-Western elements in Africa
o Nasser intensified anti-US sentiments in the Arab world
Nasser attempted to topple pro-US Arab regimes
 
3.  In 1978-1979, the Carter administration betrayed the pro-US Shah of Iran and instead embraced Ayatollah Khomeini and even shared intelligence with the Khomeini regime during its first few months. Carter assumed Khomeini was controllable and looking for freedom, democracy and positive ties with the US.
 
 
4.  In 1980-1990, during the Reagan and first 2 years of the George H. W. Bush administrations, the US collaborated with Saddam Hussein and supplied him with:
intelligence-sharing
supply of dual use systems
$5 billion loan guarantees
This time, the guiding principle was “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” For his part, Saddam saw this as a green light for Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait -- especially when the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Gillespie, 8 days before the invasion, told the leader, in accordance with the position of the State Department that an invasion of Kuwait was an inter-Arab issue.
 
Interestingly, Ettinger does not list the overthrow of Hussein and the subsequent weakening of Iraq -- removing Iraq as a check on Iran which in turn became a major destabilizing influence and global sponsor of terrorism -- as an error by the Bush administration.
 
 
5.  From 1993-2000, during the Clinton administration, the US praised Arafat as a messenger of peace, worthy of the Nobel Prize for Peace and of annual US foreign aid. In doing so, Clinton ignored:
Arafat's goal of destroying Israel, as reflected the 1959 Fatah and 1964 PLO charters, 
Arafat's hate-education system, demonizing Jews and glorifying terrorism 
Arafat's intensified terrorism.
 
6.  In 2009, the Obama administration embraced the anti-US Muslim Brotherhood, ignoring its terroristic nature, and looking at it instead as a political, secular entity and turned a cold shoulder toward the pro-US Mubarak. This paved the way for the Muslim Brotherhood to gain power in 2012/13, which was a blow to pro-US Arab countries, which have been afflicted by Muslim Brotherhood terrorism.
 

7.  Up until the 2011 civil war in Syria, the State Department considered Bashar Assad to be a reformer and possibly a potential moderate, based in part on Assad being 
an ophthalmologist in London
married to a British woman
president of the Syrian Internet Association
-- just as his father, Hafiz Assad -- known as “the butcher from Damascus” -- was regarded as a man of his word, and a credible negotiator, justifying Israel’s giving away the strategically important Golan Heights.
 
 
8.  In 2011, the Obama State Department was a key supporter of the US-led NATO military offensive, which toppled Libya’s Qaddafi, despite the fact that Qaddafi 
dismantled Libya’s nuclear infrastructure
conducted a war on Islamic terrorism
provided the US counter-terror intelligence 
The overthrow of Qaddafi transformed Libya into a platform for civil wars and global Islamic terrorism.
 
 
9.  In 2011, the Washington, DC foreign policy and national security establishment welcomed the eruption of violence on the Arab Street in various Arab countries, and interpreted it as a march toward democracy and progress toward peaceful-coexistence -- calling it an Arab Spring.

In fact, this released intra-Arab and intra-Muslim terrorism and violent power struggles across the region.


10.  In 2015, the Obama administration ignored Iran’s core fanatical and repressive ideology and its systematic perpetration of war and terrorism. Instead, the architects of the Iran nuclear accord (JCPOA) provided Iran with $150 billion, which allowed it to bolster their terrorism and expansionism across the region. 
 
Obama and his 'experts' operated under the assumption that the Ayatollahs were open to negotiation and willing to live in peaceful-coexistence with their Arab Sunni neighbors. In doing so, the US disappointed most Iranian citizens, by renouncing a military regime-change option against the ruthless Iranian regime.
 
---
 
In his rush to reinstate the Iran deal, Biden is not merely pushing back the clock on the mistaken policy in which he participated during his time as vice president in the Obama administration.
 
screen-cap
YouTube screencap

 
Now Biden is adding his name to the list of US administrations whose foreign policy errors have inflamed the instability of a region that is more than capable of generating tensions and instability all on its own.

Tuesday, February 02, 2021


Last Friday, during the White House Briefing led by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, we were treated to the following exchange:

Q Thank you, Jen. Two quick foreign and one domestic, if that’s okay. Can you confirm officially that Robert Malley has been appointed Special Envoy for Iran? Is that —

MS. PSAKI: I can. I believe it was announced this morning. Yes? Or I guess I can confirm it here too for you.

Q That would be great. And then the — as you know, settlements have been a major obstacle to getting the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. Would President Biden consider it — does he believes settlements are — should be halted in the West Bank so that the Palestinians will come back?

MS. PSAKI: I don’t have any new comments from President Biden on this or the current circumstance. He’s obviously spoken to this particular issue in the past and conveyed that he doesn’t believe security assistance should be tied. But I don’t have anything more for you on the path forward toward a two-state solution. [emphasis added]

The journalist's question contains 3 mistaken assumptions -- assumptions that at this point have also been accepted without question by the media as fact.


Assumption #1: Settlements are an obstacle to the Palestinian Authority coming to the negotiating table.

Just last month we noted that historically this claim is simply not true. Jackson Diehl -- the deputy editorial page editor for The Washington Post -- made the point in 2010 that Abbas admitted that he demanded a settlement freeze before coming to the table because Obama did:
When Obama came to power, he is the one who announced that settlement activity must be stopped. If America says it and Europe says it and the whole world says it, you want me not to say it?
Going a step further, the settlements are part of the negotiations as per Oslo, not a sweetener to encourage the Palestinian Arabs to first come to the table:
Settlements are only one of the six issues to be negotiated by Israel and the Palestinians according to the original Oslo Accords from 1993. To single out the issue of settlements ahead of any negotiations while ignoring other bilateral issues constitutes a fundamental distortion of these signed agreements.
Yet this distortion has taken hold, including in the minds of the journalists who are supposed to be in command of the facts.


Assumption #2: Israel should make unilateral concessions

Why should the assumption be, as this journalist clearly believes, that unilateral concessions by Israel owes it to the Palestinian Arabs -- and the peace process itself -- to make immediate sacrifices?

Why does nobody suggest a freeze on Abbas's pay-to-slay policy that encourages terrorism and the murder of Israelis?

In fact, we have already seen Israel commit to a freeze in the settlements in 2009, in a sign of good faith that Abbas would come to the negotiating table.

To the contrary, when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu implemented a 10-month security freeze in order to coax the Palestinians to the negotiating table, Abbas essentially responded with a 9-month negotiating freeze. And after the moratorium on Israeli building expired, he again refused to talk peace.
Those unilateral concessions to the Palestinian Arabs do not work.


Assumption #3: Settlements are being built

The building of Israeli settlements is supposed to be a a major obstacle -- and that is a claim that was made over and over by the Obama administration:

Back in 2014, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg about his Middle East policy, Obama claimed:
we have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we've seen in a very long time.
Obama's deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes claimed, on December 23, 2016, that "thousands of new settlements are being constructed...you saw tens of thousands of settlements being constructed"

On December 28, 2016, following the US abstention that allowed the passing of UN Resolution 2334, then-Secretary of State Kerry claimed, "We’ve made countless public and private exhortations to the Israelis to stop the march of settlements."

In a speech Biden gave before J Street in April 2016, he copied that heated rhetoric, condemning "the actions that Israel’s government has taken over the past several years – the steady and systematic expansion of settlements..."

In January 2017, I wrote a post debunking the claim of settlement expansion in detail -- and showed how even then the media parroted these fabrications. 

In point of fact:
There were 228 settlements -- not tens of thousands
What Kerry calls a march of settlements in 2016 is 3 settlements in 2012 -- with none from 1990 till then and none from the end of 2012 to 2016 when Kerry made his claim
If you look at what is actually going on, you see the issue is not the building of an expanding number of settlements, but of homes inside those settlements.
Even taking into account that the issue is the houses being built, according to Haaretz in 2015 -- the number of houses constructed was down under Netanyahu:
According to data from the Housing and Construction Ministry, an average of 1,554 houses a year were built in the settlements from 2009 to 2014 — fewer than under any of his recent predecessors.

By comparison, the annual average was 1,881 under Ariel Sharon and 1,774 under Ehud Olmert. As for Ehud Barak, during his single full year as prime minister, in 2000, he built a whopping 5,000 homes in the settlements.
So:
Israeli settlements are not the obstacle to negotiations, they are one of the issues to be discussed at the negotiations
There is no justification for Israel to concede on a negotiating point, while Abbas merely pockets those concessions
Settlements are not expanding. Houses within the settlements are being built to meet the need.
There was a time when journalists asked the kinds of questions that kept the administration on its toes --  attacking the points, not the people presenting them.

Of course, that would require a certain level of knowledge as well as a willingness to challenge the common perception.

My favorite example is a daily press briefing held on November 17, 2009, when the following exchange took place between the State Department Spokesperson Ian Kelly and Matt Lee, reporter for the Associated Press. The topic was what the Obama administration had accomplished till then in advancing peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs:
MR. KELLY: Well, I would say that we’ve gotten both sides to commit to this goal. They have – we have – we’ve had a intensive round or rounds of negotiations, the President brought the two leaders together in New York. Look --

QUESTION: But wait, hold on. You haven’t had any intense --

MR. KELLY: Obviously --

QUESTION: There haven’t been any negotiations.

MR. KELLY: Obviously, we’re not even in the red zone yet, okay.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MR. KELLY: I mean, we’re not – but it’s – we are less than a year into this Administration, and I think we’ve accomplished more over the last year than the previous administration [under President George Bush] did in eight years. [emphasis added]

QUESTION: Well, I – really, because the previous administration actually had them sitting down talking to each other. You guys can’t even get that far.

MR. KELLY: All right.

QUESTION: I’ll drop it.
The question is, who in the media is both willing and able to keep the Biden administration honest about its Middle East policy now.

Hat tip: IM



Monday, January 25, 2021


Now that Biden is president, Israel and the Jewish community look on as the various pieces of his new administration fall into place, waiting to see what this means for both the Jewish community and for Israel.

Everything becomes part of the cup of tea leaves that Jews are trying to read.

One of the things that got this process going in earnest was the change made to the Twitter account of the US Ambassador to Israel. 

Last Wednesday, the account suddenly read:



The question was: why change it to US Ambassador to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza?

Legal Insurrection quotes from the original article in the Washington Free Beacon which sounded the alarm:
The change in title marks a significant shift in policy toward Israel. The United States has for decades declined to take a policy position on the West Bank and Gaza territories, maintaining the Israelis and the Palestinians must decide in negotiations how the areas will be split up for a future Palestinian state. By including Gaza and the West Bank in the ambassador’s portfolio, the Biden administration appears to be determining that neither area is part of Israel—a move that is certain to rile Israeli leaders. [emphasis added]
In the end, it apparently turned out to be a false alarm, as the page was quietly changed back to "US Ambassador to Israel" and WFB updated their article accordingly. No one knows if it was the work of an overeager staffer or whether Twitter accidentally refreshed the old page.

But this is a good example of the eagerness to jump at the most trivial indication of Biden's new Middle East policy, especially in terms of what policy changes we should expect, especially when it comes to Iran.

Attention dutifully went back to following the procession of Biden nominees for various positions within his administration.

Biden's new National Security Adviser is Jake Sullivan.

Last May, Sullivan co-wrote an article in Foreign Affairs about America’s Opportunity in the Middle East, which advocated
a phased approach that delivers nuclear progress up front and creates space to address regional challenges over time. Under such an approach, the United States would immediately reestablish nuclear diplomacy with Iran and salvage what it can from the 2015 nuclear deal, which has been fraying since the Trump administration abandoned it in 2018. The United States would then work with the P5+1 and Iran to negotiate a follow-on agreement. In parallel, the United States and its partners would support a regional track.
It is to be expected that Sullivan supports some kind of return to the Iran deal, albeit cautiously.

On the other hand, Sullivan also praised the Abraham Accords back in September, saying it was a "positive accomplishment" that was "good for the region, it’s good for Israel, it’s good for peace" while balancing that with "we should praise this deal for what it is but not for more than what it is...It’s been a long time coming. This is not a bolt out of the blue."

But over the weekend, when Sullivan spoke by phone with Israeli National Security Advisor Meir Ben Shabbat, the White House released an oddly phrased statement that
They discussed opportunities to enhance the partnership over the coming months, including by building on the success of Israel’s normalization arrangements with UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.


She also pointed out that while in Israel it was reported that
The two agreed to discuss soon the many topics on the agenda including Iran, regional issues and advancing the Abraham Accords.
in the White House statement, there was no mention of Iran at all.

There are those tea leaves again.

And then there is Tony Blinken.

During his confirmation hearings last week, Tony Blinken -- Biden's choice for Secretary of State -- was asked about Biden's Middle East policy.
The Biden administration would consult with Israel and Arab allies before taking any action regarding returning to the Iran deal, though he admitted that he "believes that if Iran comes back into compliance, we would too"
But we would use that as a platform with our allies and partners, who would once again be on the same side as us, to seek a longer and stronger agreement, and also as you and the chairman have rightly pointed out, to capture these other issues, particularly with regard to missiles and Iran’s destabilizing activities. That would be the objective.

Having said that, I think we are a long way from there. We would have to see once the president-elect is in office what steps Iran actually takes and is prepared to take. We would then have to evaluate whether they were making good—if they say they are coming back into compliance—[on] their obligations, and then we would take it from there. But in the first instance, yes, we absolutely will consult with you, and not only with you, I think as the chairman suggested, it’s also vitally important that we engage on the takeoff, not the landing, with our allies and with our partners in the region, to include Israel and to include the Gulf countries. [emphasis added]
First of all, Blinken seems to be taking an awful lot for granted about getting Israel and the Gulf Arab states on board negotiations with the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East.

Secondly, his metaphor about engaging US allies "on the takeoff, not the landing" implies a willingness to push those US allies off the plane -- if not under the bus.

And Blinken is nothing if not a party man, who claimed during his confirmation hearing:
In my judgment, the JCPOA, for whatever its limitations, was succeeding on its own terms in blocking Iran’s pathways to producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon on short order. [emphasis added]
But overall, the general consensus does seem to be that Biden's picks for his staff have been reassuring on the issue of Iran.

Except for one.

There are indications that Biden could pick Robert Malley as his special envoy to Iran, which Eli Lake describes as a reason to believe that Biden’s First Foreign Policy Blunder Could Be on Iran. The problem is that Malley favors talks with Iran as the only way to get any results, and claims that pressure does not work.

Lake demurs:
More important, the notion that Iran’s regime does not respond to pressure is a talking point of the Iranian regime, especially Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. It also happens to be false. Obama’s maximum pressure campaign between 2011 and 2013 ultimately coerced the regime to enter open nuclear negotiations with the U.S., China, Russia, France, Germany and the U.K. [emphasis added]
More to the point, appointing Malley would directly contradict statements that Biden made just last year while on the campaign trail:
Biden himself during the campaign has said he would support targeted sanctions to punish Iran for human rights abuses, developing ballistic missiles and support for terrorism. And Blinken and Sullivan have committed to working with regional allies to press Iran to change its ways. What message would it send if the administration’s envoy to Iran believes no Iranian leader could ever agree to stop making war on its neighbors?
Part of Biden's problem is that he is beholden to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, one that favors the Iran Deal and supports for a Palestinian Arab state on the one hand and is antagonistic to Israel and Saudi Arabia on the other, and is not impressed by the Abraham Accords either.

However, he said the Biden administration would “take a hard look at” some of the “commitments” that were made in tandem with those accords.
Is Biden going to try to thread this needle -- both in terms of his Middle East policy abroad but also in terms of satisfying his progressive base that expects to be rewarded handsomely for their support?

And if he does make this attempt, will he succeed?
Or are we already seeing signs of it beginning to unravel?



Thursday, January 21, 2021

B'tselem's accusation of Israeli Apartheid has been a long time coming, after cynical comment made by their then-CEO Jessica Montell in a 2003 interview:
I think the word apartheid is useful for mobilizing people because of its emotional power
She noted approvingly how Palestinian Arabs called Israel's security barrier the 'Apartheid Wall'.

Such cynicism appears widespread within B'tselem --

1.)  In 2019, B'tselem hired Simone Zimmerman to be their US director. Zimmerman is one of the founders of IfNotNow, a group that avoids addressing the right of Israel to even exist:
We do not take a unified stance on BDS, Zionism or the question of statehood.
In 2016, Zimmerman was let go from her position as Jewish outreach director for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign for a curse-laden attack on Netanyahu that she posted on Facebook.

B'tselem apparently thought that made her a good fit with their other employees --

2.)  B'tselem's International Advocacy Officer, Sarit Michaeli responded to an article in Ha’aretz about a Palestinian psychologist who said that more than a third of the children in a Gazan refugee camp had been sexually abused -- tweeting that it was Israel's fault:




3.)  In 2014, journalist Tuvia Tenenbom published his popular book, “Catch the Jew.” In it, he writes about a conversation with B’Tselem researcher Atef Abu Rub, who was serving as a guide to his group at Yad Vashem and told Tenenbom that the Holocaust was a "lie, I do not believe it."

B'tselem originally defended Abu Rub, who claimed the comment was made by a third party. In the end, however, B'tselem fired Abu Rub.

4.)  In 2011, a B'tselem photographer, Nariman al-Tamimi providing video supposedly showing Israeli police arresting an 11-year-old Palestinian boy for stone-throwing, and deliberately putting him into a police car without his mother.

Yet, a careful viewing of the clip (with Hebrew and Arabic dialogue) reveals that the exact opposite was the case; the policemen invited the mother to accompany her child. At 2:07 minutes into the video, one of the policemen says to the mother, “Come, come, get in.” The cop then asks one of the people standing nearby, “Is that his mother?” When the bystander answers in the affirmative, the policeman repeats, “Get in with him” (the boy). The door is opened for her and she is about to get into the vehicle, as the policemen are saying “get into the car,” but then (2:27) the mother is pulled away from the car by the Palestinian man wearing a black jacket. After the policemen closes the van’s door, a woman wearing a pink shirt pushes the mother towards the vehicle, and then the mother bangs on the door, a heartrending scene.
5.)  In April 2010, B'tselem staff member Lizi Sagie resigned under pressure for statements she made on her personal blog -- including: “The IDF Memorial Day is a pornographic circus of glorifying grief and silencing voices,” “Israel is committing Humanity’s worst atrocities…Israel is proving its devotion to Nazi values…Israel exploits the Holocaust to reap international benefits.”

6.)  On January 8, 2016, the Israeli investigative news program “Uvda” (Fact) reported that B’Tselem employee Nasser Nawaja conspired with Ezra Nawi, a radical activist from the NGO “Ta’ayush,” to entrap a Palestinian man who was interested in selling land to Jews in the West Bank. They did this knowing that the sale was illegal according to Palestinian law and was punishable by death, not to mention the torture that would be likely to precede it.

Responding to the piece with a statement on its Facebook page, B’Tselem said that while it opposed tortures and executions, reporting Palestinians interested in selling land to Israelis to the PA was “the only legitimate course of action.”
When they defended Nasser Nawaja on their Facebook page, B'tselem added a picture describing Uvdah as "Uvdah For Hire"


That is an interesting accusation, considering that B'tselem gets most of its funding from outside of Israel.

NGO Monitor reports that for the years 2012-2019, B'tselem donors include: European Union, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the US, and Germany -- and according to annual reports, donations from foreign countries amounted to 64.7% of total donations from 2012-2016.

And there is a reason that most of B'tselem's funding comes from outside Israel.

Writing in 2016, Shmuel Rosner writes in the context of the above-mentioned Uvda report about the B'tselem employee who helped entrap a Palestinian Arab, noting that "B’Tselem is an organization that many Israelis dislike, and they have reasons to dislike it." 

Rosner explains:
Why do human rights activists turn to such immoral methods? Many of them do it because of anger and because of fear. They are angry at a country that refuses to accept their political recipe for Israel. They fear that their activity of many years will be in vain as the country moves in a direction they disagree with.

The angrier they become, the more apprehensive they become – the more they lose their inhibitions. Thus they turn to immoral methods, they turn to other countries to look for the support they cannot get among Israelis, and they turn to language that makes Israel a caricature – a fascist state, an apartheid state, a villain among nations. They say that they act out of love of Israel – and some of them certainly do – but with time and frustration some are made hateful. And hate makes them lose the ability to separate right from wrong, acceptable from unacceptable, useful from not-useful.
Speaking of the name-calling by human rights activists -- and by B'tselem in particular -- B'tselem recently came out with a report fulfilling Montell's admiration for the usefulness of the word Apartheid "for mobilizing people because of its emotional power."

The media jumped at the opportunity to spread the word about the report, with some describing B'tselem as a "leading human rights organization" -- just the shot in the arm B'tselem needed.

But CAMERA's Tamar Sternhal asks the nagging question: Is B'Tselem Israel's 'leading human rights organization'?
Progress in improving human r.ights in Israel and the West Bank is a legal battle waged in the Knesset and the courts, and in recent years B’Tselem has zero presence, activity and accomplishments in these areas. Tellingly, B’Tselem’s 2019 Activity Report mentions no action taken in the Knesset or courts...On the international level of advancing human rights, the battle is waged at the United Nations Council on Human Rights in Geneva, and B’Tselem is absent from that key venue as well.
What's left?
Social media.

That will certainly keep B'tselem in the news -- but those foreign governments may not necessarily feel they are getting their money's worth.

If those foreign governments are really interested in change, they might be better served supporting the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Worker's Hotline. Sternthal lists their activities -- and accomplishments.

The reason for their success might have something to do with the fact that they actually have lawyers among their staff.
B'tselem does not.

The media may have noticed the incongruity of non-lawyers weighing in on the legal definition of Apartheid.

The Seventh Eye reported that while the Israeli media did have stories on the recent B'tselem report, it was covered in English -- not in the Hebrew papers.

It quoted B'tselem's Roy Yellin, who asked Haaretz why they covered B'tselem's Apartheid report in English, but not in Hebrew:


Apparently, B'tselem's attempt to have a any impact inside Israel continues to end in failure.

Will their foreign investors notice?



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