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Archive for January 25th, 2008

A Must Read

Jan 25

Posted by Marlena in Israel | No Comments

Lawrence of Cyberia wrote a thorough, clear explanation of the Palestinian Catastrophe. It’s long but well worth reading all the way through. To wit:

What it comes down to is that in this day and age, we consider nationality rather than ethnicity to be the defining factor in citizenship. This is why Israel finds itself in the position of the perennially misunderstood, square peg in a round hole, as it tries to hold on to the idea of “genetic stock” as the basis of citizenship. While Zionist Israelis want diplomatic recognition of the “Jewish state”, the rest of the world - like the PLO - gives recognition instead to the state of Israel. I think on an instinctive level, people understand this issue without having to have it explained to them at this sort of length. For example, since the Annapolis Conference, Israel has killed more than 100 Palestinians. Obviously, from a U.S. perspective, that sort of thing doesn’t make it into the evening news. But just for the sake of the exercise, imagine that it did. We take for granted that it would be reported as “Israelis” killing 100+ Palestinians, not “Jews”. Even the thought of wording it as “the Jews have killed more than 100 Palestinians since Annapolis” makes you cringe, and so it should. And I’m sure the Israeli government would object loudly to that phrasing as well, even while it is asking you to accept the underlying logic that makes that identification possible. What Olmert really wants is to be able to have this both ways: on the one hand to say Israel is the state of the Jewish people, in order to justify discrimination against non-Jews, but to simultaneously reserve the right to call you anti-semitic if you follow his defective logic to its natural but fallacious ending, and attribute the actions of Israel not to “Israelis” but to “Jews”. In English, I think the phrase for this is “wanting to have your cake and eat it too”.

I just have to quibble with the part about people understanding instinctively and not needing such lengthy explanations. This does need to be explained at length, and in exactly the way he has done so here. An instinctual understanding is necessary but not sufficient to bring pressure to bear on Israel. So much has been done to confuse the matter, especially for those who don’t follow the news very closely (except on tv) and/or don’t have a good grasp of the history, which is practically everybody in the US! Facts are also needed. History is also needed. Perspective is also needed. Comparisons are also needed. Analogies are also needed. These he provides in abundance, so that a just person with a few brain cells to rub together can see that the Palestinian position stands on the merits.

I’ve read lots of heated posts and essays about Zionism during this past week, but this one, by carefully and dispassionately crossing every t and dotting every i, was the most withering. Well done.

UPDATE: Here’s a real-life example of how this all works:

Iran’s foreign minister on Friday urged the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to “correct their past mistakes” and draw up a a resolution ending council involvement in his country’s nuclear affairs.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki also said that — while it makes sense to talk with Washington over common interests such as Iraq — he could not imagine substantially improved ties with the United States even after a change in U.S. administrations.

Mottaki spoke to The Associated Press on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, the Davos gathering of world political and economic leaders, whose focus on areas of international concern include the Mideast.

Earlier in the week, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni urged Davos attendees to take a personal stand against Iran’s leadership by ending business ties with the country.

“Iran exports terrorism, destabilizes the region, denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel, my home, off the map,” said Livni, referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s frequent calls for the elimination of Jewish state.

Mottaki attends Davos, presses for some reasonable policy and acknowledges the difficulty of Iran/US relations. Livni, on the other hand, escalates the situation by urging Davos attendees to take a personal stand and end business ties with Iran. Then she gets right into some melodramatic accusations. The reporter frames Livni’s statements by saying that she is “referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s frequent calls for the elimination of Jewish state.” He does not explain, unfortunately, what that really means, leaving it to the reader to assume that Livni must be stating a valid concern. After all, we’ve all been told thousands and thousands of times that Ahmadinejad is a crazy person and Israel is a noble, democratic state. Or to put it the way the NY Times recently did in a story about electric cars, “Israel, tiny and bereft of oil, has decided to embrace the electric car.”

Tiny and bereft, just like an orphan. Think Tiny Tim, hobbling along on his bad leg and crutch, one foot on the banana peel and the other in the grave. Seriously, that was the lede to a story in the NY Times, and language like that influences people all the time whether they realize it or not. Multiply that out a few million times, and voila!, you have created a monster.

Let’s just see what it means, exactly, to reject a “Jewish state”. Back to Lawrence…

Third, it would be useful to clarify at the outset what exactly the PLO is rejecting when it refuses to say Israel is a “Jewish state”. Let’s at least know what the PLO refuses to recognize before we get upset that they reject it. I think there’s a tendency among some of the Usual Friends of Israelâ„¢ to misinterpret in the most extreme sense possible the words of anyone who criticizes Israel or Zionism, playing up real fears of anti-semitism and past genocide, so as to avoid having to deal with the merits of the original criticism. If you can just reduce every unsympathetic comment about Israel to “anti-semitism”, then Israel and Zionism can never be criticized. For example, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem would disappear from the pages of time. He’s not a Zionist. He doesn’t think the pre-existing people and culture of Arab Palestine should be destroyed to make way for a Zionist state populated by an overwhelmingly immigrant population of Jewish people from all over the world. To him, the creation of a minority, sectarian regime in the Muslim-dominated land of Palestine raises all sorts of questions, like: What is the justification for it, and how do you expect the disenfranchised majority population will react to it? Why should Jewish people anywhere in the world have greater rights to Palestine than native Palestinian Christians and Muslims? Is a regime like that sustainable, or will it go the same way as the Soviet regime in the USSR, the rule of the Shah in Iran, and Saddam’s regime in Iraq? But once you translate his original words as “wiping Israel off the map”, and hammer it into people’s heads that he was threatening to nuke Israel and “kill the Jews”, you don’t have to answer any of those questions. Once you have successfully framed the debate in terms of “Ahmedinejad wants to wipe out the Jews, just like Hitler; you surely don’t support Hitler, do you?”, you have closed down the possibility of debate.

Exactly. And as Livni did, you make it personal. You demand other leaders take a personal stand about these matters, all the better to harangue and weaken anyone who doesn’t. Too much is never enough.

The Zionists have a gaping, black abyss where their souls used to be, and that is why they cannot recognize the humanity of the Palestinians or of any other people. Because certainly, they do not treat anyone as equals. They demand fealty and subservience from all, including the US, who dutifully obliges them with our blood and treasure. The Zionists believe their own hype, that they are a special, chosen people; but in truth they are the most pitiful, miserable people on earth, beyond lost.

My moral compass works just fine. I don’t take direction from people who’s moral compass has clearly been smashed to bits, and I don’t appreciate it when other people do. It’s not helpful to humanity.

Sister Wendy, where art thou?

Jan 25

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Psychology | No Comments

Does anybody remember Sister Wendy? If I were the type of person to watch tv, I would watch her show.

What’s more, each work of art is described in typical Sister Wendy style. Noting that a delicate porcelain figurine is making an obscene hand gesture, the nun remarks, “I won’t sully your ears by telling you what it means, but there are contemporary equivalents.” And while admiring an Issey Miyake dress from the 1990s, she concedes, “You won’t be surprised to learn that I know absolutely nothing about fashion.”

At times, however, the contemplative nun — who leads a life of complete solitude when not sharing her artistic vocation with television viewers and readers of her many books — surprises with her commentaries. Describing a 15th-century pitcher that depicts the great Aristotle being played for a fool by a young maiden, Sister Wendy comments, “I defy any feminist not to smile at Phyllis the dominatrix, tugging on Aristotle’s beard and patting him condescendingly on the rump!”

Excellent analysis. I admire her. Sadly, Sister Wendy never made it to the White House to elucidate matters on George’s favorite picture. So he has waxed poetically to his many visitors over it’s deep meaning and prophetic significance.

George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled “A Charge to Keep.” Bush was so taken by it, that he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography. And here’s what he says about it:

I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

So in Bush’s view (or perhaps I should say, faith) the key figure, with whom he personally identifies, is a missionary spreading the word of the Methodist Christianity in the American West in the late nineteenth century.

Except….except that’s not at all what the painting is about. Scott Horton at Harper’s:

I was not able to find much about Koerner and his sense of religion, through it is very clear that he did not engage in public displays of religious fervor and religious themes are absent entirely from his work.

So Bush’s description of “A Charge to Keep” struck me as very strange. In fact, I’d say highly improbable. Now, however, Jacob Weisberg has solved the mystery. He invested the time to track down the commission behind the art work and he gives us the full story in his forthcoming book on Bush, The Bush Tragedy:

[Bush] came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

So Bush’s inspiring, prosyletizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency. Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious. The president of the United States has identified closely with a man he sees as a mythic, heroic figure. But in fact he’s a wily criminal one step out in front of justice. It perfectly reflects Bush the man. . . and Bush the president.

From time to time it’s abundantly clear that the Lord truly has a great sense of humor.

The writing on the wall

Jan 25

Posted by Marlena in Civil Rights | No Comments

The rate things are going here, someday soon we’ll see stories like this one, except all the names will be American.

A three-judge panel in northern Afghanistan has sentenced a student journalist to death for distributing a paper he printed off the Internet that allegedly blasphemed Islam, according to international media groups.

But media groups in the country say the journalist is in fact being punished for investigative pieces his brother wrote.

Those articles exposed human rights abuses by political and paramilitary factions in northern Afghanistan.

Sayed Perwiz Kaambaksh, 23, was tried behind closed doors and without representation in Mazar-e-Sharif Tuesday, the group Reporters Without Borders said.

Soon after, the deputy provincial prosecutor in charge of the case threatened to imprison any reporter who expressed support for Kaambaksh, the group said in a statement.

The charges of distributing anti-Islamic propaganda are based on a document that Kaambaksh downloaded from the Internet last October and shared with students at Balkh University in Mazar-e-Sharif where he is a journalism student.

…Media groups in the country believe Kaambaksh was actually arrested for articles his brother wrote that criticized provincial authorities.

“(The brother) feels very strongly that it’s a campaign of intimidation against him and others like him who might want to take on these powerful commanders,” Jean Mackenzie, country director of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, told CNN.

The brother, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, is one of the leading independent journalists in the region and has written numerous stories that detail human rights abuses, MacKenzie said.

…”(Ibrahimi) is a very brave reporter and I’ve never known him to falter,” MacKenzie said. “But having his brother sentenced to death has made him very, very anxious.”

And I saw this via Chris Floyd, who asks the blogosphere to swarm the story. He has this to say about the whole affair:

The case is like a perfect transplant of the noxious Bush-era ethos: Huckabee-like theocrats operating with Cheney-like secrecy cover up sexual hypocrisy and rampant corruption by McCain-like militarists with Romney-style disregard for due process and Guiliani-like draconian punishment. But far more important than these domestic echoes is the very real danger hanging over the life of Kaambaksh. Perhaps if enough noise is made about his plight, the resulting bad PR will cause the satrap appointed by our own autocrat to grant clemency. For yes, that is what are reduced to in our ultra-modern 21st-century world: pleading for mercy from tyrants and their tools, just like the lowliest serf coming in supplication to the Tsar.

Yeah, that sure is strange.

Jan 25

Posted by Marlena in Israel | No Comments

Very short, very interesting observations.

Just the land counts, not the people on it

Jan 25

Posted by Marlena in Injustice, Israel | 1 Comment

I’m trying to understand what’s really happening in Gaza. The wall is breached, and thousands of suffering Palestinians flood into Egypt to buy supplies, medicine, food. We can understand.

But think about this. The Israelis consider the Palestinians nothing but a big problem. They stand in the way. Wouldn’t it be nice if this problem became someone else’s problem?

Mike Whitney puts it this way:

Forget everything you’ve read about the “Great Escape” from Gaza. It’s all rubbish. The whole farce was cooked up in an Israeli think tank as way to rid Palestine of its indigenous people. Here’s an excerpt from the Israeli newspaper Arutz Sheva which explains the real motive behind the incident:

“MK (Israeli Knesset member) Aryeh Eldad is hailing the Arab exodus to Egypt as proof that voluntary transfer is indeed an option.”

“The Israeli left continues to claim that there is no such thing as voluntary transfer, and simply ignores reality,” Eldad said. (Arutz Sheva)

Voluntary transfer. Bingo.

So the fleeing Palestinians just fell into a trap. Now they’ve been banished to Egypt by their own volition. We’ll have to wait and see how many are allowed to return.

…Hamas poses no threat to Israel and it controls nothing; certainly not the border. They’ve even suspended all suicide attacks since they won democratic elections a year and a half ago. But that is not enough for Israel whose goal is to extinguish any trace of Arab solidarity or Palestinian nationalism. Nearly all of the 4,000 articles now appearing on Google News follow this same absurd narrative about ‘clever terrorists’ who’ve out-foxed Israel and liberated their people. It’s just another way of concealing the criminal brutality of the 60 year long occupation. In truth, Hamas probably had nothing to do with the destruction of the wall. It’s just part of Israel’s plans to exile more Palestinians.

… The Jerusalem Post’s Yaakov Katz clarifies how the destruction of the border wall serves Israel’s long-term policy objectives:

“Without even knowing it, Egypt helped Israel on Wednesday to complete the disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he opened the crossing for Gazans since they were “starving due to the Israeli siege,” what he did proved to the world that his country is perfectly capable of caring for the Palestinians when it comes to food and medical care.

Wednesday’s events and particularly Mubarak’s decision to open a floodgate into his country for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, demonstrated that there are alternatives to Israel when it comes to being Gaza’s provider. ” (Jerusalem Post)

That says it all, doesn’t it? The Palestinians are regarded as a mere nuisance and a drain on Israeli resources. Now that the wall has conveniently been knocked down, the problem appears to be solved.

Hamas had nothing to do with blowing up the wall. And if they did, they were just unwitting accomplices in Israel’s masterplan to drive more Palestinians off the land and to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the ones that remain.

Now, for more along this line of thought, look here:

Despite its prowess at repression, Egypt will not accept this role willingly. There is near universal sympathy for Palestinians in Egypt, and becoming their policeman will make Egypt’s internal politics even more volatile than it is now. Furthermore, it is bound to strain relations with Israel, whenever Egypt fails to restrain Palestinians to Israeli satisfaction. Egypt’s decision to allow thousands of stranded Palestinian pilgrims through the Rafah crossing without Israeli concurrence was a taste of the potential disputes that could arise.

However, Egypt may find itself with few choices, given the pressures to provide Gaza with basic humanitarian needs that Israel is withholding. In that case, Egypt will find itself as the executor of the principle that underlies all Israeli policy from immigration, land use, building permits and humanitarian measures:

Reduce Palestinian existence to the minimum possible in areas coveted by Israel.

There is no better definition of genocide.

This all makes sense in the big picture, doesn’t it. The Palestinians have been squeezed so hard for so long, that eventually they would burst through somewhere. Let Egypt deal with them. But there’s even more to the story, a piece I never heard before and which really makes things crystal clear.

Israel claims its recent moves are retaliation for continued rocket attacks originating in Gaza that despite their consistency cause scant damage and few actual casualties. But the reasons may include motivations with roots back in 2000, when the British firm British Gas Group (BG) discovered proven natural gas reserves of at least 1.3 trillion cubic meters beneath Gazan territorial waters worth nearly $4 billion.

Ahh. The Palestinians must not be allowed to have that.

The Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF), a financial holdings company owned primarily by independent Palestinian shareholders, is investing in the project and heads the negotiations in coordination with Mahmoud Abbas’ government in the West Bank. BG won a majority stake in the concession to develop the Gaza Marine Field and originally targeted Egypt for the sale of the natural gas. But pressure from then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair led the company to redirect its efforts toward Israel and develop plans for an underwater pipeline that would transport the gas to an Israeli refinery at Ashkelon. That deal could have eventually provided Israel with approximately 10 percent of its annual energy requirement, and would have generated approximately $1 billion for the PIF. The Hamas election victory in 2006 put all that in jeopardy.

The PIF is ostensibly overseen by the Palestinian Authority; revenue generated by the fund could potentially be available to a Hamas-led government. Through the deal structured with the PIF, BG owns 90 percent of the Gaza Marine license. Consolidated Contractors Company, a Palestinian owned construction firm, owns the remaining 10 percent. The Palestinian Authority retains an option to take a stake in the concession once production is sanctioned. After the 2006 Palestinian election results, Israel began stalling in its negotiations with BG. Any deal that could result in funds reaching Gaza would seriously undermine official Israeli policy toward Hamas. For its part, Hamas assured it would not interrupt development of the project, but reserved its right to restructure parts of the deal it deemed harmful to Palestinian interests. In an interview with Dow Jones Newswires, Minister of Economy Ziad al-Zaza reiterated Hamas opposition to any sale of fuel to Israel.

After the Hamas election victory, Israel embarked on an intense campaign to eliminate the movement as a viable political entity in Gaza while at the same time attempting to rehabilitate the defeated Fatah as the dominant political player in the West Bank. By leveraging political tensions between the two parties, arming forces loyal to Abbas and the selective resumption of financial aid, Israel and the United States effectively re-installed Fatah in the West Bank, projected the party back onto the international stage and revived the possibility of concluding the energy deal.

With Hamas isolated geographically in Gaza, Israeli policy focused on isolating it politically as well. Israel has made significant progress toward this goal. Fayyad was appointed Prime Minister of the new unelected West Bank government recognized by the West, and by April 2007 the Israeli Cabinet had reversed an earlier decision to prohibit the purchase of natural gas from the Palestinian Authority. But with 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip, Hamas retains significant influence in the Palestinian political arena. Israel will have to eliminate the party completely in order to create a political climate suited to accommodate the BG deal. Time is running out.

In January, BG announced it was pulling the plug on negotiations with Israel due to the long impasse, and was again considering Egypt as a buyer. The Egyptian option includes liquefying up to a third of the gas for export to the US and Europe. BG announced plans to close its office near Tel Aviv at the end of January and sell its share in Israel’s offshore Med Yavne natural gas field. Since the announcement, Israel has radically expanded its sanctions, cut fuel shipments entirely and stepped up its military campaign. Increased air strikes and use of internationally proscribed tank shell ammunition has led to a drastic increase in civilian deaths and injuries in hopes of eroding support for Hamas in Gaza. Combined with dangerous shortages of food, water and basic supplies, the coastal region has fallen into catastrophe. Israel and the United States refuse to acknowledge the growing chorus of international condemnation. Appeals from Ramallah lack the popular mobilization needed to effectively advocate an end to the Israeli siege. Regardless of the future of the Gaza Marine Field, Gazans can be sure they will be denied any relief it might once have afforded them.

Putting it all together, the Palestinians flooding into Egypt accomplishes at least two things:

1. It reduces the Palestinian population in Gaza, thereby reducing support for Hamas.

2. It transfers the burden of caring for destitute Palestinians, whose lives and economy have been shattered by years of Israeli abuse, onto Egypt, it’s rival in the BG deal.

What will happen over the next days? Let’s say some Palestinian family member had to leave his family behind and travel to Egypt to get supplies and medicine. Will he be allowed to return? Is that family now broken? Does another family who leaves together bother to return to Gaza? Do they try and make a new life in Egypt, where at least they have a chance of surviving? Of course people must be facing and making these decisions by the thousands, not knowing how the situation will play out. Egypt is now successfully embroiled in resolving the Palestinian “problem”. Egypt’s and Israel’s relationship will now be under more strain, furthering tensions in the Middle East.

Again, it comes back to oil. Who has it, and who controls it. We know that the United States has guaranteed Israel’s oil since 1975 via a Memorandum of Understanding. Click through that link to read some fascinating stuff.

But just to be safe, Israel is also going to test out the electric cars. Love the lede:

Israel, tiny and bereft of oil, has decided to embrace the electric car.

Poor Israel, tiny and bereft, and ready to embrace clean energy. That is classic. A Valentine from the NY Times. XOXO. Just don’t pay any attention to what all else they’re doing in the meanwhile.