Realistically, the Next Time Hamas Must Be Destroyed

...the only way to stop what many see as an inevitable rematch in Gaza will be to convince Hamas that the next war will be its last. That may be a course of action that the Obama administration will oppose as it seeks to revive a peace process that has no chance of succeeding after the Iran nuclear deal has been signed and ratified by Congress. But it is exactly what U.S. Middle East policy ought to be if it was being conducted in a manner that prioritized peace rather than the president’s fantasies about bringing peace to the world.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
07 July '15..

One year ago, Hamas terrorists launched a war against Israel that lasted 50 days. When the dust settled, both sides were forced to accept a return to the status quo that had prevailed before the fighting began. But as both sides to the conflict continue to prepare for what seems to be an inevitable next round, Israeli leaders must consider whether the change in tactics by Hamas last time requires them to adjust their own strategy. If, as Mitch Ginsburg writes in the Times of Israel, Hamas’s approach is no longer purely defensive but rather predicated on a belief that carrying the fight into Israel will bring them victory, that may lead Jerusalem to start thinking the heretofore unthinkable about a Gaza war plan that could hinge on decapitating the Hamas leadership and/or ending its rule.

Last year’s war was a summer-long nightmare for Israelis who spent much of it scurrying into shelters during air raids. But after thousands of Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli cities and the use of terror tunnels not much had changed other than the loss of more than 2,000 Palestinians (including several hundred civilians) dead and the fact that much of the strip was left in ruins. Hamas paid no political price for its cynical decision to go to war or its continued use of civilians as human shields. To the contrary, Israel was battered by unfair criticisms of its tactics, including some from an Obama administration that failed to listen to the statement from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that said its actions were a model for U.S. forces.

Hamas has signaled at times during the past months that it would like to extend the cease-fire with Israel that went back into effect after the shooting stopped. But a combination of factors may lead it to change course and launch another terror offensive. The increased pressure on its rule from Egypt that rightly sees it as an ally of Muslim Brotherhood terrorists that seek to overthrow the Sisi government and the revived support from Iran could lead the Hamas leadership to think that another war would further undermine support for the Fatah rivals that rule the West Bank. They also may think the hostile attitude of the Obama administration toward the Netanyahu government is a green light to action that might further divide the two allies.

If so, the Israel Defense Forces is prepared. As Ginsburg writes, the IDF is seeking to learn the lessons of the last war and is working hard to be ready to counter terror tunnels into Israel as well as what appeared to be a shift in Hamas tactics that prioritized offensive actions aimed at taking the fight into the Jewish state rather than sitting back and waiting for their foes to exhaust themselves in Gaza.

Not Only Do Israeli Peace Gestures Not Work, They Make Matters Worse.

...Until a sea change occurs in Palestinian political culture, Israel’s leaders would be wise to make no more concessions that will only whet the appetite of the terrorists for more Jewish blood. Nor should Netanyahu be under the illusion that President Obama will react with any more generosity toward Israel in the next two years than he has in the previous six. Far from staving off destruction as Ross and his friends think, their advice will likely lead to more diplomatic problems as well as more violence. Just as doctors are advised by their Hippocratic oaths to do no harm, so, too, should Israel’s prime minister be wise enough to eschew a repetition of the mistakes that he and his predecessors have made in the not-so-distant past.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
31 March '15..

For those Americans who care about Israel, this is a time of crisis. The Obama administration’s reckless pursuit of détente with Iran and its anger over the reelection of Prime Minister Netanyahu has brought us to a critical moment in which it is now possible to imagine the United States abandoning Israel at the United Nations and taking steps to further distance itself from the Jewish state. Many in this country place most of the blame for the problem on Netanyahu because of his willingness to directly challenge the president on Iran and his statements about the two-state solution and the Arab vote prior to his victory that have undermined his reputation among non-Israelis. In response some well-meaning thinkers are proposing that the answer to the problem lies in gestures that Netanyahu could undertake that would both improve Israel’s image and lower tensions with the United States. But Netanyahu is right to not think the effort worth the bother. The recent history of the conflict illustrates that Israeli concessions intended to prove their devotion to peace don’t impress either the Arabs or foreign critics. In fact, they may make things worse.

While President Obama has been spoiling for fights with Israel’s government since he took office in 2009, his temper tantrum about Netanyahu’s victory now threatens to make his previous tilt toward the Palestinians seem trivial. So it is hardly surprising that veteran peace processers would think the time is right for Netanyahu to do something to appease the president’s wrath. That’s the conceit of a Politico Magazine article jointly credited to former State Department official Dennis Ross and think tank figures David Makovsky and Ghaith Al-Omari that lays out a series of suggestions intended to calm things down and get Israel out of the presidential dog house as well as to calm the waters with both Europe and the Palestinians.

Ross, Makovsky, and Al-Omari are smart enough to realize that the time isn’t right to revive a peace process that is dead in the water. The Palestinians have repeatedly rejected peace offers and show no sign that they are any more willing to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state alongside one of their own no matter where its borders are drawn.

But they think it would be wise for Netanyahu to freeze building in settlements beyond the blocs that most concede would remain inside Israel in the event of a peace agreement. Allowing the Palestinians the right to build more in parts of the West Bank that would, at least in theory, be part of their state would calm the waters as would less confrontational rhetoric from Netanyahu. This would, they say, counter the campaign to delegitimize the prime minister and his nation and might prompt similar gestures from the Palestinians, such as a promise to avoid bringing their complaints to the United Nations instead of negotiating as they are committed to do under the Oslo Accords.

It all sounds very smart. Fair or not, Netanyahu is perceived as politically radioactive in Europe and, despite Israel’s popularity in the United States, President Obama’s efforts to turn both Iran and Israel into political footballs has undermined the bipartisan nature of the pro-Israel coalition. Gestures aimed at restoring Israel’s good name seem the only answer to a crisis of these dimensions.

But as logical as that sounds, such a course of action not only wouldn’t improve Israel’s image, they would probably further damage it.

How can that be?

Because the recent history of the conflict teaches us that gestures even more far reaching than those suggested for Netanyahu have the opposite effect on both the Palestinians and their foreign cheerleaders.

Dearest Jodi. Guess What Keeps Palestinian Lovers Apart?

...But the bottom line of this issue is not about Israeli rules. It’s about a Palestinian people and its leadership that has consistently rejected every opportunity for peace including four times in the last 15 years. When the Palestinians are prepared to give up their dream of Israel’s extinction and recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, free passage between peaceful countries won’t be an issue. Until then, Palestinian lovers stuck in the two areas should send their complaints to Fatah and Hamas and not to Israel via the New York Times.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
09 February '15..

Who doesn’t sympathize with the plight of two lovers separated by a heartless bureaucracy? Certainly not Jodi Rudoren, the Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times who, with the assistance of one of the paper’s stringers in Gaza, wrote a story published yesterday in which the star-crossed romance of a Gaza woman and a Nablus man serves to highlight Israeli restrictions on the movement of Palestinians between the Hamas-run strip and the West Bank. The situation of teacher Dalia Shurrab and social media marketer Rashed Sameer Faddah is worthy of sympathy. But as much as the story Rudoren has written casts the Israelis as the villain of the piece, the real culprits are not to be found in the Jewish state. Palestinians who would like to see more liberal travel policies should address their anger to their leaders whose war on Israel is responsible for their inconvenience. Those who would like the borders of these areas to resemble the ones that separate Canada from the United States can’t at the same time support the ongoing war to extinguish the existence of the Jewish state.

There’s no doubt that Shurrab and Faddah appear to be innocent victims of a struggle that has nothing to do with the efforts of two individuals to find happiness. But when you are a citizen of an area ruled by a terrorist group pledged to fight a genocidal terrorist war against your neighbor, is it really fair to cry foul when the government of that country isn’t particularly interested in facilitating your travel?

Palestinians and their foreign supporters apparently think so. They believe that Israel should let Palestinians from Gaza come and go as they please and settle in the West Bank if they like. In a better and more peaceful world, that shouldn’t be a problem. Indeed, if the Palestinian Authority that runs the West Bank and/or the Hamas government in Gaza were ever prepared to make peace with Israel, it might be possible. As Rudoren points out, a commitment to facilitating free travel between the two Palestinian areas was part of the original Oslo Accords. That seems to paint the Israelis as not only hard-hearted but also treaty breakers. But the truth is a little more complicated than that.

Were Israel and the territories as peaceful as the Israelis who helped draft the Oslo Accords assumed they would be once their deal was signed then free passage might make sense. But the reality of Oslo was very different from the “New Middle East” fantasies popularized more than 20 years ago by Shimon Peres and others who championed the accords. Under PA leader and arch terrorist Yasir Arafat, both regions became hotbeds of terror and incitement. Free passage, which was a matter of course during the pre-Oslo period of Israeli rule, was impossible under those circumstances. Once Arafat turned down then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s two offers of statehood and independence in 2000 and 2001 and launched a terrorist war of attrition, it become even less likely. After Hamas seized control of Gaza in a bloody coup in 2007, even Western nations that were not sympathetic to Israel agreed that the area had to be kept in quarantine lest the terrorists exploit travel to further their bloody ends.

Hamas Terrorist or Fatah Corrupt? Which Palestinian State Do They Want?

...Both promote hate against Israel in their official media and schools making peace less likely with each generation of children more steeped in the violent language of the conflict and a sense that all violence against Jews is to be condoned than the one that preceded it. What the two also have in common is a corrupt political system. Both rule by distributing money to large numbers of no-show or no-work government employees. Spreading the wealth around in this manner means that a huge percentage of Palestinians are directly dependent on either the PA or Hamas. This frees up the elites of both groups to loot the vast sums donated to help the Palestinians by foreign governments for either personal use or to pay for terror activities.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
15 January '15..

In the last week, Islamist terror in Europe has at least temporarily distracted the continent from its habitual foreign-policy obsession: the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. But in spite of the current focus on domestic terror, there can be little doubt that Europe’s parliaments and diplomats will soon be back campaigning to recognize a state of Palestine and for pressure on Israel to make unilateral concessions in order to make that state a reality. But as a story in today’s New York Times illustrates, those in the international community that are so intent to pretend that a Palestinian state already exists and is need of international recognition need to figure out which one they are backing. Is it the Hamas terrorist state in Gaza? Or the corrupt Fatah state in the West Bank?

The Times focuses on one tragicomic example of the dysfunctional world of Palestinian politics. At the Beit Hanoun crossing point between Israel and northern Gaza, there are two Palestinian border checkpoints a half-mile apart. Those who seek to enter Gaza from Israel must pass through both, enabling both Fatah and Hamas to pretend to control the area. When Hamas sought to set up its own makeshift facility at the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority site, the system broke down and no one other than foreigners or Palestinians with emergencies was able to pass. Hamas backed down yesterday and the situation returned to normal but the anomalous situation remains as two governments attempt to carry on operations.

This was supposed to have been solved last year when PA leader Mahmoud Abbas signed a unity pact with Hamas that would bring both areas under joint control. But the pact was more of a ruse intended to blow up the peace negotiations with Israel the PA had been forced into by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry than an actual attempt at unification. Though the two rival groups actually have much in common—principally a commitment to ongoing conflict with Israel and an aversion to recognizing the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn—they are bitterly divided by conflicting financial interests as well as ideologies.

A fictitious state in any case and bound to be erased shortly

...Connect, the magazine of the well-known London School of Economics, did the same. During his Arabic class, a San Diego University professor distributed a map of the Middle East without Israel, just as Arafat would have wanted it. In addition, a Norwegian NGO recently funded an exhibit of maps, painted by children in Lebanon, from which Israel has been erased. Perhaps HarperCollins thought that it was going to cost it nothing to eliminate from its prestigious map a country that is now fashionable to consider an “entity” to be destroyed, maybe while using Google, an Israeli invention.

Fiamma Nirenstein..
Times of Israel..
08 January '15..

If you do not exist, you cannot make peace. If you do not exist, neither those oranges do, nor all those fruits sprouted up in a desert that had never produced a single bud, those medicines to cure the worst diseases, all those inventions allowing the evolution of mobile phones and computers, those basketball teams, those Nobel prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Literature, those young people who go out dancing till the small hours in Tel Aviv, those pilgrims coming from all over the world who place notes between the stones of the Wailing Wall saying “Dear God”, all those exhausted soldier girls with their scruffy braid, and all those Holocaust survivors who have finally found their home and hope, the new immigrants from France who are leaving the new anti-Semitism behind their backs…

If you do not exist, as the new Atlas “specifically designed for schools in Middle East countries” by HarperCollins shows on its maps, all this becomes dust, destruction, a bad sci-fi movie. Last year, in May, the enormous publisher company allowed its subsidiary, Collins Bartholomew, to produce an abject, opportunistic “Primary Geography Atlas for the Middle East”, from which Israel, hocus-pocus, has disappeared, just as Ahmadinejad wanted when he said: “We will wipe Israel off the map”.

HarperCollins did it: while Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon appear on that map, they eat up and digest the State of Israel. So, a publisher company as HarperCollins is de facto suggesting to accept the prevalent version among the Palestinians, according to which Israel is a fictitious state created by the imperialist and colonialist fantasy and bound to be erased shortly.

Is the Price of Doing Business in the Middle East Wiping Israel Off the Map?

...As the Post’s education writer pointed out in a follow-up story: Sorry? Given that the omission was a deliberate decision to appease customers who wish Israel didn’t exist, one thing we can be pretty sure of is that HarperCollins is sorry that somebody noticed the omission outside the countries where these maps were welcome.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
05 January '15..

Much is said here and elsewhere about Palestinian incitement and how the Arab world’s rejection of Jewish rights, if not Jewish existence altogether, has poisoned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Much is also written about the international community’s toleration of Arab anti-Semitism, and the many forms it takes. But we should single out for special attention those who seek to make a buck off this deadly hate, as a major publishing house was recently caught doing.

The Washington Post highlighted the indefensible actions of HarperCollins when the company was discovered to have been publishing an atlas for schools in the Arab world whose maps did not include Israel. HarperCollins literally wiped Israel off its maps. The Post explains:

For months, publishing giant HarperCollins has been selling an atlas it says was “developed specifically for schools in the Middle East.” It trumpets the work as providing students an “in-depth coverage of the region and its issues.” Its stated goals include helping kids understand the “relationship between the social and physical environment, the region’s challenges [and] its socio-economic development.”

Nice goals. But there’s one problem: Israel is missing.

There’s Syria. There’s Jordan. There’s Gaza. But no mention of Israel. The story was first reported by a Catholic publication, the Tablet.

How and why did this happen? They knew their audience:

Collins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of HarperCollins that specializes in maps, told the Tablet that it would have been “unacceptable” to include Israel in atlases intended for the Middle East. They had deleted Israel to satisfy “local preferences.”

Yes, “local preferences.” The Jewish people just keep ending up on the wrong side of “local preferences.” Of course, the Arab world teaches its children such hateful propaganda because Israel’s enemies hope to make HarperCollins’s maps one day reflect reality. How does HarperCollins feel about profiting from being used as a marginal tool in a genocidal quest? They’re sorry! Really, really sorry:

“HarperCollins regrets the omission of the name Israel from their Collins Middle East Atlas,” HarperCollins UK said on its Facebook page. “This product has now been removed from sale in all territories and all remaining stock will be pulped. HarperCollins sincerely apologizes for this omission and for any offense it caused.”

Wiping Israel off the map gets the classic Facebook apology. But hey, no worries. Happens all the time. You have to make a living somehow, right?

It's Open Season on Jews for Palestinians. And...

...Palestinians leaders have declared open season on killing Jews and the world isn’t particularly interested. It is little surprise that Palestinians listen to their leaders and imams and throw gasoline bombs and attempt to run down or stab Jews whenever they can. Under these circumstances, this week’s casualties just like all those that have become before them, should expect little sympathy or notice from the international press.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
26 December '14..

Last month, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was blasted by Israel for making statements that both incited terrorist attacks and for his praise of those who committed such actions. But the PA head, who is vowing to get a vote for his effort to have the United Nations Security Council recognize a Palestinian state without making peace first with Israel, noted that Western nations did not join in the criticism. Palestinians were similarly undaunted and the toll of terrorist attacks on Israelis in both Jerusalem and the West Bank has continued to rise. Just this week, Palestinians firebombed the car of a Jewish family resulting in life-threatening burns to an 11-year-old child. Days later, two policemen were stabbed in Jerusalem by a Palestinian who had just attended prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. But rather than these and other attacks generating international outrage, the world shrugs. Palestinians trying to kill Jews is so ordinary that few people, including many American Jews, think it worth the effort to complain about it.

In a sense those that think this way aren’t entirely wrong. Attacks on Jews on the roads in the West Bank have always been so commonplace as to not even raise many eyebrows in Israel. Indeed, the most interesting detail in the story about the firebombing that nearly killed an 11-year-old girl is that her mother said she barely escaped a similar fate recently when another firebomb just missed her.

The same is true of attacks in Jerusalem recently. The horrific stabbings of four rabbis at prayer in a Har Nof synagogue last month generated a momentary surge of interest in the surge in Arab terrorism that quickly dissipated. While that crime was considered more noteworthy, the numerous attempts by Palestinians to run down Jewish pedestrians or to stab or incinerate them in the weeks since that attack demonstrates that it was unique only in terms of the number of casualties and the barbaric methods used by the murderers.

Why does the world yawn when it hears of Palestinians attacking Jews?

First Step. Don’t Like Anti-Semitism? Then Don’t Encourage It.

...To be clear: when Miliband and Cohen decry the rise of anti-Semitism it is not in doubt that they are being sincere. But they are also being woefully naive if they fail to see the role the organizations they head have in stoking that same anti-Semitism.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
23 December '14..

In Britain, prominent Jewish figures are expressing concern about the rising tide of anti-Semitism in that country. Most recently the director of the BBC Danny Cohen has stated that he has never felt so uncomfortable being Jewish in Britain. He even went so far as to cast doubt on the long-term future of Anglo-Jewry. Similarly, Labor Party leader Ed Miliband—also Jewish—has called for a “zero tolerance” approach to anti-Semitism. The great irony here, however, is that both men are Jews heading organizations which, through their portrayal and policy on Israel, are laying the groundwork for yet more Jew-hatred.

The correlation between the demonization of Israel and attacks on Jews worldwide is hardly in doubt. The dramatic spike in anti-Semitic attacks throughout the diaspora that coincided with this summer’s Gaza war speaks for itself. That is not to suggest that Israeli policy is the underlying cause of anti-Semitism, but rather just as Church doctrine or Social Darwinism were ideologies used as a conduit for anti-Semitism, today anti-Zionism, with its depiction of events in Israel, takes the position as the primary outlet for anti-Semitism. And while both Danny Cohen and Ed Miliband are quite right to be concerned by the rising tide of Jew-hatred in Britain today, there is no escaping the fact that both the BBC and the Labor Party have played a role in stoking the kind of contempt for the Jewish state that leads directly to the increasingly common verbal and physical attacks on British Jews.

Danny Cohen only took over as head of BBC television in May 2013, and so can hardly be held responsible for the BBC’s long legacy of slanted reporting on Israel. And in fairness, Cohen has pledged to give prominence to programming about the Holocaust to mark the upcoming memorial day. Still, during the recent Gaza conflict there were several troubling moments at the BBC. One particularly memorable incident was news anchor Emily Maitlis’s grilling of Israeli spokesman Mark Regev. Maitlis—who is herself Jewish—hounded Regev on the point of a UN shelter that had been hit, possibly by Israel, possibly by Hamas. The implicit suggestion in Maitlis’s questioning was that Israel had the exact coordinates of the shelter, that Israel knew that it was full of women and children, that Israel had refused to permit an evacuation of those in the shelter, and that Israel had intentionally gone ahead and hit it anyway. Her accusatory questions became fiercest when she asserted: “But you said you were going to hit it, you hit it, you killed them! You knew there were children in that building!”

Meanwhile, under Ed Miliband Labor has veered toward being far more overtly hostile to the Jewish state. While it is true that this process has been taking place on the left of that party for some time, under the stewardship of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown Labor policy remained resolutely supportive of the Jewish state. Yet under Miliband, the son of Holocaust refugees, this has begun to change. Not only did Miliband condemn Israel’s war against Hamas this summer, but he publicly attacked Prime Minister Cameron’s refusal to join in with the chorus of condemnation, calling Cameron’s stance “unacceptable and unjustifiable.” Miliband further outraged Israel supporters when he recently attended the gala dinner for Labor Friends of Palestine—a group which reportedly backs anti-Israel boycotts.

Hamas Rebuilds Tunnels With International Aid As Israel’s Critics Say ...

...By acquiescing to a situation in which a criminal terrorist group not only continues to rule over a captive population and threaten war against a neighboring sovereign state but also standing by silently as Hamas creates the conditions for another terror war, the West is demonstrating its moral bankruptcy on the Middle East.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
19 December '14..

Five months ago Hamas rained down rockets on Israeli cities and attempted to use a tunnel network to infiltrate into the Jewish state and kidnap and kill as many Jews as they could. But predictably most of the world’s attention was focused on Israeli counter-attacks to suppress the missile fire and take out the tunnels and it came under severe criticism, even from its American ally, for the toll of civilian deaths that were caused by Hamas using the population of Gaza as human shields. But those who deplored the 50-day war as a tragedy for the Palestinian people now need to ask themselves whether they are really interested in watching another such round of fighting in the future. The same international community that blasted Israel for having the temerity to defend itself now needs to address the fact that the aid that is pouring into the strip for the purpose of rebuilding homes destroyed in the fighting, is actually being used to rebuild the terror tunnels. If they don’t, they’ll have no right to criticize Israel when it is once again forced to act to defend itself.

As the Times of Israel writes, the Israel media is reporting that:

Some of the cement and other materials being delivered to the coastal Palestinian territory, as part of an international rebuilding effort, has been diverted to the tunnels.

The story goes on to detail some things that can’t come as a surprise. Even as it rebuilds its terror tunnels, Hamas is replenishing its supply of missiles and rockets. Given that the group has just kissed and made up with Iran, the flow of money and munitions into the strip by one means or another is bound to increase.

Though expected, this does increase Hamas’s leverage over the Palestinian Authority, which isn’t interested in making peace with Israel but will certainly never do so while it remains under threat from its erstwhile unity partner. Though many in Israel and elsewhere assumed Hamas would emerge weakened from a war in which Gaza was flattened and little material damage was done to the Jewish state, it is more popular than ever (especially in the West Bank which did not suffer much from the terror group’s murderous policies) and may soon be as much of a threat to Israel as it was before the fighting started. Indeed, if, as reports indicate, Hamas is working on ways to defeat Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system succeed, the danger will be far worse the next time the terrorists decide they wish to try their luck.

The Application of Lipstick on the BDS Pig

...What’s dangerous about the Third Narrative’s supposedly kosher BDS is that it offers the legions of thought police throughout academia an outlet for their anti-Israel fervor that also flatters their unearned sense of academic integrity. But they can put all the lipstick they want on this pig, it won’t make it kosher.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
11 December '14..

The BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement targeting Israel has had more success in the Kafkaesque confines of the modern American university than in the real world. Yet even in the academy, where both the rule of law and basic constitutional rights are heavily curtailed and anti-Semitism is tolerated if not fostered, it has begun to lose battles. That’s because a few principled American academics still support academic freedom, and make their argument convincingly. Yet now another group of leftist academics is offering a way to target Israel while maintaining a façade of academic integrity.

The group is a leftist organization called the Third Narrative, which seeks to replace the prevailing anti-Israel narrative on the left with their own anti-Israel narrative, which they consider morally superior. It’s as though one Illinois governor is claiming to be less corrupt than one of his predecessors. Fine, but let’s remember just how relative your morality is here.

The Third Narrative’s mission statement criticizes the overheated anti-Israel rhetoric of the left, but still wants the left to take aim at Israel:

The Third Narrative initiative is our response to this situation. We hope to engage people on the left who suspect that it is wrong to lay all blame for the Arab-Israeli conflict at the feet of Israeli Jews…but aren’t sure how to respond to Israel’s most vitriolic critics. Some of what these critics say is true, some of their accusations are justified. Some of what Israel’s traditional defenders say is also accurate. When it comes to this conflict, the truth is rarely black or white; it resides in a gray area where advocates on either side typically don’t like to venture. That is where we try to go with The Third Narrative.

In theory, it sounds good. A less hateful left is still thoroughly intellectually dishonest, but still an improvement. (It’s a low bar.) Once fiercely opposed to BDS, the organization now seems to have been opposed to the form the mainstream BDS movement was taking, especially the anti-Semitic umbrella BDS organization. The Third Narrative apparently thinks there’s a third way between BDS and no BDS, as it explained in an open letter titled “A Time for Personal Sanctions”:

Will Media Acknowledge the Truth? Another Myth About Israel Debunked

...When Haaretz reports something, despite its well-known truthfulness deficiency, the leftist media abroad picks it up. (Haaretz is not a newspaper for Israelis but rather for foreign correspondents.) That means the New York Times will be among the first to broadcast it, especially if it’s critical of Israel’s security establishment, and regardless of its accuracy. That can (and will) persist even after initial stories get debunked, which is why the Western reporting on Israel is so unimaginably terrible. Will the Times stop referencing the now debunked narrative on housing demolition? Whether they do will indicate if there is still any room at all for the facts in the paper’s reporting on Israel.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
10 December '14..

“Israeli security forces revived a controversial antiterrorism policy,” the New York Times reported in November, “demolishing the East Jerusalem home of a Palestinian man who plowed his car into pedestrians last month, killing a baby and a young woman.” Anyone who follows the conflict knew precisely what they were going read, without a doubt, at some point in the article. And sure enough, Times reporter Jodi Rudoren gets there eventually: Israel halted “the widespread practice in 2005, when a commission found that it rarely worked as a deterrent.” For a decade, this claim has been used against Israel. And now we know it’s false.

In an important piece on the issue on Monday, Yishai Schwartz explained how this narrative took hold:

The problem is, the commission conducted no serious study of the demolitions’ effects, and the latest evidence actually points in the opposite direction. The 2005 Times article on which much of the subsequent coverage seems to have been based is itself an overstatement of a contemporaneous account in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. But Haaretz made no claims about conclusive findings, simply stating that the military committee recommended ending the program and referencing a general, preliminary “study of the first 1000 days of the conflict” from 2003 that merely stated, “as of today, there is no proof” of effective deterrence from the demolitions.

The ineffectiveness trope was just simple enough for the media to understand. Schwartz explains that the Israeli leadership was looking for a justification to end the practice of demolishing the homes of terrorists. Violence from the intifada had been waning, and Israeli leaders wanted a return to normalcy of sorts.

The problem is that if home demolitions worked, how could they justify ending them? The commission’s report was not based on a real study of the practice and was never intended to be the last word on the topic. It was simply to give the political class cover. Yet the media absorbed the spin all too well, and it became conventional wisdom.

Now that conventional wisdom is about to be upended. Schwartz writes of a forthcoming study by Israeli academics (who personally weren’t exactly enthusiastic about the practice), which comes to a very different conclusion:

In fact, they found two separate correlations. Precautionary demolitions resulted in a significant increase in suicide attacks, a “48.7 percent increase in the number of suicide terrorists from an average district,” according to the study. By contrast, punitive demolitions led to a significant decrease in terror attacks, between 11.7 and 14.9 percent, in the months immediately following the demolition. The study suggests that, at least in the aggregate, terrorists can be understood as “rational actors”: “The results support the view that selective violence is an effective tool to combat terrorist groups and that indiscriminate violence backfires.”

This will not be the last word on the debate over home demolitions, nor should it be. It’s only one study, a snapshot of one (albeit important) time period. Additionally, you can separate the moral implications of the policy from its efficacy, to some degree.

BDS Is Not About Settlements, It's About Israel

...A few years ago the fierce critic of Israel Norman Finkelstein attacked some on his own side, calling BDS “a cult.” It is a cult, but more than that, it’s also a fundamentally racist movement, and that is what the world needs to be hearing about BDS.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
10 December '14..

The campaign to boycott Israel–the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement–is undoubtedly a fringe campaign. But where this small band of anti-Israel extremists have experienced some traction is among those whom they have been able to convince that BDS is only against settlements. The argument goes that a boycott of Israeli settler produce will somehow persuade the Israelis to abandon their security concerns and bring an end to their so-called occupation of the West Bank. Yet one only has to look to how BDS conducts its campaigns in practice to see that this alleged concern with the “occupation” is just one of many disingenuous claims from what is, at its heart, an entirely disingenuous movement.

Listening to the words of BDS leaders such as Omar Barghouti you soon realize that the end goal of BDS is nothing less than the total elimination of the Jewish state. But unlike Barghouti, most of the BDS movement has the common sense not to state this so publicly. As such, BDS efforts have been ostensibly focused around boycotting settlements; although in practice this still allows campaigners to attack most Israeli companies by making flimsy arguments about guilt by association. So for instance the Israeli national theater company Habima was targeted on the grounds that it had previously performed in settlements. In Europe this argument is beginning to take hold. Supermarket chains, churches, city councils, and now EU diplomats are all coming round to the idea that boycotting the Jewish state outright may be going too far, but boycotting Jews who dare to live on the “wrong side” of a defunct armistice line is perfectly acceptable.

For BDS, SodaStream was the ideal target. This high-profile company, with its popular products and Super Bowl commercials featuring Scarlett Johansson, had one of its factories just to the east of Jerusalem in the West Bank. The fact that SodaStream boasted of being the largest commercial employer of Palestinians in the world did nothing to dissuade BDS from its efforts. Indeed, just a few months back when it was announced that SodaStream would relocate its factory from the West Bank to the Israeli Negev, BDS expressed no remorse for the Palestinian workers losing their jobs, but only exuberance at their own apparent victory.

Still, now that SodaStream is relocating from the West Bank BDS will be dropping the boycott, right? Wrong! As if proof was needed that fleeing the settlements will do nothing to appease those who simply hate the Jewish state in its entirety, BDSniks have said that they will continue to boycott SodaStream. Now the pretext for boycotting is the allegation that the new factory will be based “close to” a town being built to provide local Bedouin with housing. And supposedly this renders SodaStream “implicated in the displacement of Palestinians.” One can scarcely believe that the movement’s leaders believe such claims, but then these are the feeble excuses of bigots trying to hide and justify their unacceptable agenda.

The true character of BDS is becoming increasingly apparent as the boycotters shift their attention toward targets that even they can’t bracket in with settlements and “stolen land,” except of course for the fact that BDS clearly considers all of Israel stolen land and any Jewish enterprise on that land to be a pollution. Israeli-Arabs are of course exempt from boycotts. Because at its core BDS is a movement that makes ethnicity the dividing line that determines who is to be boycotted and who isn’t. As such, it comes as no surprise that BDS activists in the UK have launched action against Sabon, an Israeli cosmetics company that has always been based within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

Examining and Remembering Forced Expulsions in the Arab World

...Whether or not Algeria comes clean on its actions taken against the backdrop of Cold War animus, let us praise the Moroccans for doing the right thing. It’s time to recognize that Rabat and Jerusalem represent the best practices in refugee resettlement, and UNRWA the worst. Let’s replicate a model that works, and recognize UNRWA not only betrays Palestinians, but refugees around the world, many of whom desperately need aid not to build rockets but rather to get their lives restarted after suffering dislocation and tragedy.

Michael Rubin..
Commentary Magazine..
08 December '14..

There are two ironies concerning refugee flows in the Arab world. The first is how selective some Western advocates are when they focus exclusively on displaced Palestinians and Palestinian refugees, and the second is how they effectively punish those countries which do the right thing and absorb and settle refugees rather than using them as a political pawn.

Attending the concurrent NGO fair, I spent some time at the booth of the Association des Marocains Victimes d’Expulsion Arbitraire d’Algérie (AMVEAA). Basically, there story is this: On December 18, 1975, the Algerian government expelled 45,000 families—about 500,000 people—who were legally resident in Algeria, and many of whom had lived in Algeria for decades. Houari Boumediene, the chairman of Algeria’s Revolutionary Council, ordered the Moroccans detained and expelled in response to the Moroccan “Green March” into the Western Sahara.

The condition of the Moroccans’ expulsion was appalling, and it was done without prior notice. Algerian police hunted down Moroccans wherever they could be found and dumped them across the border. Many Moroccans died, and the humanitarian crisis caused by hundreds of thousands of individuals strained the Moroccan government. Meanwhile, the deportation split mixed families, and the expelled Moroccans lost pensions, and left behind bank accounts and personal property.

AMVEAA wants restitution for lost property and cites language from the UN’s Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families to support their claim.

Realistically, the chance they will collect is between zero and null. But, their case does illustrate just one more case—the mass expulsion of Jews from Arab lands following Israel’s independence being the other—of the hypocrisy of the refugee issue. The 500,000 persons expelled from Algeria are greater than the 472,000 Palestinians which the United Nations Mediator on Palestine concluded had left Israel in 1948.

France, Symbolic Votes and Anti-Semitic Incitement

...French President Francoise Hollande can distance himself from the vote all he wants, he’s done nothing to change course. When the last bout of anti-Semitic violence broke out, the French Jewish community mobilized to defend itself, since the state wouldn’t. The state then moved to disarm the Jews. Hollande is overseeing the further disintegration of civilized French society. I’m sure he and others would love to believe that, as the Times claims, “the strident tone of parts of the parliamentary motion and the wide margin of passage reflect Europe’s growing impatience with the breakdown of negotiations over a two-state solution,” rather than the truth, which is a far greater indictment of European society and its leaders.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
03 December '14..

Yesterday (Tuesday) the French parliament voted to recognize the nonexistent state of Palestine in a nonbinding move, in keeping with France’s firm commitment to base its foreign policy on delusions, appeasement, and surrender at the first sign of trouble. My initial instinct was to dismiss it, both because of France’s general irrelevance to the defense of the free world and because of its symbolic nature. But I was wrong to do so. In fact, the symbolic nature of France’s action is precisely what makes it so deadly, so dangerous, and so utterly indefensible.

What specifically changed my mind was the story accompanying this headline in the Algemeiner yesterday: “Paris Jewish Community in Shock Over Rape, Home Invasion ‘Because You Are Jews’.” On Monday, anti-Semitic thugs robbed a Jewish family in a Paris suburb and raped the 19-year-old woman, telling them it was because they were Jewish. I was far from alone in making the connection between the two stories–not because one caused the other (the vote happened after the rape) but because it makes clear the French government has no interest in protecting its Jews and no intention of combating–when it isn’t promoting it itself–the anti-Semitism that courses through the blood of French society.

The barbaric has become the prosaic in France today, and the parliamentary vote on “Palestine” is a good indication of why that is and will continue to be the case. Of course such votes against Israel are not victimless crimes, since Israel does suffer in the court of world opinion and subsequently at home: two more Israelis were stabbed today by an Arab terrorist who knows the world won’t muster outrage at the targeting of Jews simply for being Jews. After all, that’s how it is Western Europe today.

Yet aside from the impact on Israel’s diplomatic isolation, it’s also not a victimless crime at home. Indeed, the fact that the votes are symbolic is no justification at all. If the “Palestine” vote were replaced with something more than symbolic, if the French were playing some constructive role in an active (and actual) peace process, they could at least claim they were helping all parties take steps toward peace. The Israelis make sacrifices for peace all the time.

But the French are admitting that they are not doing anything of the sort. The vote is symbolic, meaning that it’s simply a case of the French government yelling again about the Jews and how the French government believes they must be blamed.

During this past summer’s Gaza war, France saw an uptick in anti-Semitic violence. This is because bigots draw no distinction between the Jewish state and the Jewish people. When they are angry at Israel, they start a pogrom; they aim their violence not at embassies but at synagogues. And when the French government makes a show of standing against Israel, it serves only one purpose: incitement.

Has the Post-Abbas Mideast Already Arrived?

...Just what is Abbas actually doing, as leader of the PA? Getting the Palestinians closer to a peace deal? Certainly not; he walked away from it (more than once). Preventing Hamas from setting the terms of the debate? Hardly. Keeping a lid on an angry Palestinian polity inclined to violence? Not anymore. Abbas may or may not get swept away by a new uprising. It’s ironic that what could save him from such a fate is the fact that, increasingly, it might not even be worth the trouble.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
05 November '14..

Hamas celebrated an act of suicide terrorism in Jerusalem today that mirrored both late October’s attack at a Jerusalem light rail stop and another attack later today in the West Bank. It is not suicide bombing, but more like a form of Islamist suicide by cop. Terrorists are driving cars into civilians–a tool of attack not new to the conflict but which is currently happening with some regularity–and in the first two attacks the terrorist killed a civilian and the terrorist was also killed, in each case by Israeli police arriving at the scene to stop more violence. In this afternoon’s attack, the third in the last two weeks, the driver of the vehicle sped away.

Hamas and other Palestinian “resistance” groups have not, apparently, abandoned suicide terrorism after all and are now engaged in a renewed campaign. This type of violence is, of course, reminiscent of the second intifada, which is why it has Jerusalem on edge. The Palestinians have responded to each attack by rioting, so they are basically in a consistent state of violent agitation.

There is something more concerning about this latest round of Palestinian violence, however. Though it is perpetrated in some cases by members of Hamas, it has a spontaneous quality to it, and the riots in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem are keeping the atmosphere that engenders it going seemingly around the clock. And as much as it is reminiscent of past such campaigns of violence, there is indeed something a bit different about this one: it is heralding the arrival of the post-Abbas Palestinian polity.

The implicit message that the U.S. has no problem with more violence

...Rather than focusing their anger and contempt at Netanyahu for defending Jewish rights, they should be signaling Abbas that there must be consequences for his abandonment of even the pretense of a pursuit of peace. If, instead, they keep praising him despite his egregious misconduct, they will be encouraging the Palestinians with the implicit message that the U.S. has no problem with more violence. If so, blame for the blood that will be shed will belong to those who made more excuses for Abbas.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
03 November '14..

How far can you go to foment violence and encourage terrorism while still being considered a hero of peace by the Obama administration? Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has long pushed the envelope on this question but has arguably gone further in his condolence letter to the family of Mu’taz Hijazi, a slain terrorist, in which he described the man who attempted to murder a Jewish activist last week as a “Shahid” or martyr and said that “he rose to heaven while defending our people’s rights and holy places” and described his death while fighting Israeli soldiers as “an abominable crime” carried out by “terror gangs of the Israeli occupation army.” But rather than merely express outrage about this astonishing statement, the administration should be taking a lesson from history and realize that its coddling of Abbas and his support for violence such as that practiced by Hijazi is playing a role in worsening the conflict.

Abbas’s praise of Hijazi doesn’t come out of the blue. It was the PA leader, after all, that helped incite the attack on Rabbi Yehuda Glick by claiming he and others who advocated for Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount should be resisted by all means. In doing so Abbas was following the same game plan for whipping up Arab hatred by falsely claiming Jews were intent on destroying the mosques on the Mount, a tactic that has been used by predecessors such as Haj Amin el-Husseini, the ally of the Nazis that incited anti-Jewish pogroms in the 1920s and ’30s.

Whatever one may think of those who wish to alter the status quo on the Temple Mount where Jewish prayer is now prohibited or those who support Jewish building in areas of east Jerusalem, the notion that Palestinians should feel free to attack them is incompatible with any notion of peace. That Abbas should encourage such attacks with intemperate language and then follow such statements up with extravagant praise for those who took his advice marks him as someone who is not only not a true partner for peace but also very much part of the problem negotiators are seeking to solve.

But this is part of the story about the Middle East that you almost never hear about from the Obama administration or its apologists in the media, such as The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. Goldberg made headlines last week when he quoted “senior administration officials” lobbing vulgar insults at Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. But in the same piece and others, Goldberg has justified the administration’s attitude toward Netanyahu by saying he has been insufficiently supportive of Abbas, whom he described as “the best interlocutor Israel is going to have despite his many flaws.” The president and Secretary of State Kerry have gone further by praising Abbas’s alleged courage and his supposed dedication to the cause of peace. Clearly these testimonials are incompatible with Abbas’s behavior. His role in the recent disturbances goes beyond mere “flaws” and illustrates just how desperate he is to compete with his Hamas rivals for the support of a Palestinian people that is not reconciled to Israel’s existence whether or not its borders include Jerusalem or Jews are prohibited from stepping foot on the Temple Mount, as the PA has urged.

This is significant not just because Abbas’s fomenting of violence and paeans to those who try to kill Jews is despicable. It is important because it is part of a pattern by which the U.S. and even some Israelis become so attached to both a Palestinian leader and the concept of negotiations with him that they decide to ignore what he is doing or his ultimate goals.

The Proud Western Enablers of Abbas’s Incitement

...Hamas gets results, in other words, though they may come at a high price. Abbas does not spill enough Jewish blood and he does not put enough fear into the hearts of Israeli civilians to compare favorably to the genocidal murderers of Hamas. Therefore, he has to step up his game. If the international community were to do the right thing and isolate Hamas while refusing to fund the next war on Israel, Abbas could plausibly have the space to do something other than incite holy war. But they won’t do the right thing, and Abbas predictably resorts to terror and incitement. I hope the humanitarians of Washington and Brussels are proud of themselves.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
20 October '14..

It was not a quiet holiday weekend in Jerusalem, though all things considered the violence and anti-Semitism against Jews in their eternal home and capital was not as vicious as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas might have hoped. Abbas, Israel’s supposed “peace partner” and raving anti-Semite, echoed some of the ugliest moments in the modern history of the land when he explicitly attempted to incite violence against Jews seeking to enter the Temple Mount and resorted to the kind of fear mongering over Jerusalem that has long been a prelude to anti-Jewish rioting.

And yet the revolting persona Abbas has adopted more publicly of late is an indictment of the international community as well. Here is a brief rundown of Abbas’s Jew hate over the weekend:

Abbas said it was not enough for Palestinians to say that “settlers” have come to the Temple Mount.

“We should all remain present at the Noble Sanctuary [Temple Mount],” he added.

“We must prevent them from entering the Noble Sanctuary in any way. This is our Al-Aksa and our church. They have no right to enter and desecrate them. We must confront them and defend our holy sites.”

Abbas said Palestinians must be united to defend Jerusalem.

“Jerusalem has a special flavor and taste not only in our hearts, but also in the hearts of all Arabs and Muslims and Christians,” he said. “Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Palestinian state and without it there will be no state.”

What Abbas wants is to enforce by terror and rioting a full-fledged ethnic and religious apartheid against Jews on the Jewish holy site. He won’t be the target of “apartheid weeks” the way Israel is on college campuses because most young leftists are ignorant hypocrites, and their defense of “human rights” in the Middle East has always had precisely zero to do with human rights. But Abbas would be a good candidate for such opprobrium, were the Western left to at any point develop a degree of intellectual integrity.

Machinations and the Settlements Dodge

...We are talking about 600,000 Israeli settlers planted on Palestinian soil,” declared Slaughter. But this is pretty astounding stuff. Would Slaughter describe an Arab living in Israel as “planted on Jewish soil”? Indeed, he’d cause a minor crisis within British politics if he started describing Pakistani immigrants to Britain as colonizers “planted on English soil.” Presumably, Slaughter’s belief that the very soil of the West Bank is somehow intrinsically and exclusively Palestinian stems from his equally misguided view that the West Bank is a foreign country.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
15 October '14..

Responding to Monday’s Palestinian statehood vote in Britain’s parliament, Times of Israel editor David Horovitz penned an op-ed provocatively titled “It’s the Settlements, Stupid.” Horovitz argues that the erosion of Israel’s diplomatic standing that made Monday’s vote possible has in large part been on account of Israel’s settlement policy. If true, then we live in strange times, where building homes for Jews can cause more outrage than Hamas stockpiling rockets and Iran developing nuclear weapons with which to murder those same Jews. And yet the following day, Sir Alan Duncan, Britain’s envoy to Yemen and Oman, gave a shocking speech asserting that those endorsing settlements should be considered on par with racists and hounded from Britain’s public life. The reality is, it is not the settlements that have eroded Israel’s standing, but rather the completely warped narrative that now surrounds them. And what’s worse, many Israelis have in no small part helped to create that narrative.

As Horovitz points out, settlement building was referenced some 40 times during the Westminster debate. That is certainly testament to the extent to which this issue has been turned into the weapon of choice for those looking to pour scorn on Israel. Horovitz also gives examples of the kind of talk about settlements that he’s referring to. One Conservative MP, who began by professing his deep friendship for Israel, went on to say that the recent “annexation” by Israel of 950 acres of West Bank land had outraged him more than anything else in his entire political life. He explained that, given all his support for Israel in the past, this move had made him appear the fool. But the truth is, many people had been fooled by the way that this event was willfully misrepresented, first by the Israeli left, and then by the international media. For as Eugene Kontorovich pointed out here at the time, there had in reality been no annexation whatsoever. Israel had simply come to a factual administrative finding about the status of the land in question (much of it purchased by Jews before Israel’s founding), but the world was encouraged to imagine privately owned Palestinian property being appropriated for colonization.

This sense of alien colonization of Palestinian land sits at the core of what many feel about the settlements. That was certainly the notion promoted in the other statement referenced by Horovitz, this time from Labor’s Andy Slaughter. “Who can defend settlement building — the colonization of another country? We are talking about 600,000 Israeli settlers planted on Palestinian soil,” declared Slaughter. But this is pretty astounding stuff. Would Slaughter describe an Arab living in Israel as “planted on Jewish soil”? Indeed, he’d cause a minor crisis within British politics if he started describing Pakistani immigrants to Britain as colonizers “planted on English soil.” Presumably, Slaughter’s belief that the very soil of the West Bank is somehow intrinsically and exclusively Palestinian stems from his equally misguided view that the West Bank is a foreign country.

There is of course an argument for turning the West Bank into a Palestinian state one day, but like the misbelief that the green line holds some sacrosanct status under international law, it is hard to understand why the territory seized and occupied by Jordan for just 19 years represents the precise boundaries for any future Palestinian state. Besides, long before anyone starts trying to determine exactly which areas should constitute a Palestinian state, someone has to come up with a model for making the land-for-peace transaction workable. So far this exchange has proved catastrophic. Gaza is the most obvious example, although there are several others. But in Gaza the Israeli experience has been one of removing settlements and getting a security nightmare in return.

NYT's Roger Cohen, the “Nakba,” and the Falsification of History

...Cohen begins by explaining that as he sat in a Reform shul in London over the High Holidays, he couldn’t help but notice that the rabbis were not using the pulpit to bash Israel. No matter–he has a pulpit in the New York Times, so he could do it himself.

NYT's Roger Cohen

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
07 October '14..

For the particularly cynical, monomaniacal critics of Israel and global Jewry, there are myriad ways to hijack the humble, introspective liturgy of the High Holidays to produce a sanctimonious ego-boosting tirade in order to make your column deadline with enough time left over to pat yourself on the back afterwards. If you’re Roger Cohen of the New York Times, there’s the added challenge of making sure to also mangle your history and dishonor the victims of genocide so your readers will get the column they’ve come to expect from you. And readers, Cohen’s post-High Holidays column does not disappoint.

Cohen begins by explaining that as he sat in a Reform shul in London over the High Holidays, he couldn’t help but notice that the rabbis were not using the pulpit to bash Israel. No matter–he has a pulpit in the New York Times, so he could do it himself. On the topic of Palestinian children killed in Hamas’s recent war with Israel in Gaza, Cohen offers this:

However framed, the death of a single child to an Israeli bullet seems to betoken some failure in the longed-for Jewish state, to say nothing of several hundred. The slaughter elsewhere in the Middle East cannot be an alibi for Jews to avoid this self-scrutiny.

One straw man up, one straw man disposed of. And in particularly accusatory fashion as well: as if Israeli self-scrutiny needs Cohen’s prodding, and as if any defense of its actions is properly labeled an “alibi,” thereby affirming the criminal nature of Israeli self-defense. Cohen then swings again:

Throughout the Diaspora, the millennia of being strangers in strange lands, Jews’ restless search in the scriptures for the ethics contained in sacred words formed a transmission belt of Judaism. For as long as the shared humanity of the other is perceived and felt, such questioning is unavoidable. The terrible thing about the Holy Land today is the denial of this humanity to the stranger. When that goes, so does essential self-interrogation. As mingling has died, separation has bred denial and contempt.

This is a classic tactic of the left: whatever the Palestinians are obviously guilty of–in this case, dehumanizing the Jews–the Jews too must be guilty of, because otherwise there would be no moral or intellectual basis for Cohen’s worldview, which assumes Israel’s guilt.

And it’s especially rich of Cohen to throw the “separation” in Israel’s face. In fact, Israeli policy is, as we saw this past week, to encourage Jews and Arabs to live side by side in shared peace and prosperity. The view of the left, the Obama administration, and the editorial board of the newspaper that employs Roger Cohen is that ethnic segregation–and in some places, like Givat Hamatos, racial segregation–must be enforced. Cohen’s segregationist employers might be a better target for his ire, though that would require a level of intellectual honesty Cohen is not prepared to demonstrate.

Surprise! Obama and Media Call for Segregation in Israel

...Can the Israeli prime minister possibly–assuming he even wants to comply with the American president’s order–intervene to overturn a legal sale because it was made from an Arab to a Jew? What on earth could Obama be expecting here? That Israel be the one Western country to legally restrict Jewish property rights? In the year 2014? In Jerusalem? Does the president even understand what he’s asking here? The safe bet is generally to answer such questions in the negative: no, Obama does not understand what he’s saying.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
06 October '14..

The most concerning aspect to the periodic arguments between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is not that they fight, but what they fight about. No one expects a disagreement about how to approach the Iranian nuclear program not to raise the temperature a bit; it’s something many Israelis consider an existential threat and it would shift the balance of power in global politics further away from the West while isolating Israel even more. If the two are going to argue, in other words, argue over something important.

But you can tell the relationship is really on the rocks by the fights the Obama administration chooses to pick, most recently on two issues: Jewish construction in Givat Hamatos, a Jerusalem community just over the green line, and the private sale of existing homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan from Arabs to Jews. The case of Givat Hamatos is standard fare for fights over settlements: although the Obama administration is wrong here (as usual), it’s a petty but classic fight to pick for American officials looking to take potshots at Israel. (Though the optics of telling black Ethiopian immigrants they must live in substandard housing is not the Obama administration’s proudest moment, to be sure.)

The Givat Hamatos tiff, therefore, doesn’t speak well of Obama, but doesn’t really break any new ground. That’s not true of Silwan. Obama’s objection to a Jew legally buying a home from an Arab in Jerusalem is nothing less than ethnic segregationism, and press secretary Josh Earnest’s classification of such a home as an “occupation” is the kind of pro-Palestinian propaganda the parroting of which is, quite frankly, evidence of a level of surpassing ignorance shocking even for the Obama administration. (Discrimination which the New York Times endorsed as well.) On that note, this nugget from an earlier Times of Israel story about the controversy jumps out:

When asked about Netanyahu’s allegations that the US was telling Jews that they could not buy houses in the Arab East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, which several Jewish families moved into earlier the week, Psaki did not clarify Washington’s position regarding the Ir David group’s independent purchase of Arab-owned houses there.

Instead, Psaki said that there were questions involving building permits and construction — an answer that seemed to address the municipality’s involvement in Givat Hamatos rather than the private initiative in Silwan.

It wasn’t clear that Jen Psaki even knew what she was being asked about. The degree to which this administration’s advisors and spokesmen are uninformed about issues on which they pronounce judgment is simply incredible.