Backgrounder: The Human Rights Council Flotilla Report

Gilead Ini
CAMERA Media Analysis
30 September '10

The United Nations’ Human Rights Council (HRC) voted on June 2, 2010 to investigate, in the words of the its resolution, "violations of international law ... resulting from the Israeli attacks on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance." The Council subsequently established a three member fact-finding mission, and on Sept. 22 published an advance unedited version of the group’s conclusion.

The vote and investigation were the latest examples of what UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon once described as the Council’s "singling out" of Israel, and what his predecessor Kofi Annan had termed its "disproportionate focus" on the Jewish state.

The obsession with Israel on the part of the Human Rights Council is certainly significant and worthy of comment on its own. It is, after all, nothing less than bigotry and injustice to consistently judge one country by a particular set of standards while failing to apply those standards to the rest of the world. (The separate standard for the rest of the world is most notable when it involves regimes that voted to investigate Israel. For example, even as HRC member Kyrgystan was sitting in judgment of Israel's naval operation, hundreds of thousands of minority Uzbeks were forced from their homes in that country by brutal, gruesome violence at the hands of their Kyrgyz neighbors. )

That said, it is not necessary to focus HRC’s discriminatory treatment of Israel to raise serious concerns about its report. The text itself, which goes so far as to accuse Israel of summary execution and torture of innocent passengers, is deeply flawed, leading the U.S. ambassador to the Council to criticize its "unbalanced language, tone and conclusions."

(Read full analysis)

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Socrates meets Mahmoud Abbas

Fresnozionism.org
02 October '10

Here is a poster by the artistic Elder of Ziyon. Is he being fair to Mr. Abbas?

I conducted a Socratic thought-interview to find out. Everything Mahmoud Abbas says below reflects a position he has taken recently.

FresnoZionism: Hello, Dr. Abbas. Thank you for agreeing to this fictitious interview.

Mahmoud Abbas: You’re welcome. Anything to advance the cause of peace.

FZ: Mr. Abbas, why won’t you allow Israelis to live in ‘Palestine’?

MA: Obviously because Palestine is the nation-state of the Palestinian People. That means that only Palestinians can live there.

FZ: So is Israel the nation-state of the Jewish People?

MA: No, there is no Jewish people, only a Jewish religion.

FZ: But if there were a state belonging to the Jewish People, then Palestinians couldn’t live there?

MA: There can’t be, because there isn’t a Jewish people.

(Read full post)

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The Netanyahu Government at It's Halfway Point: Keeping Things Quiet?

Jonathan Spyer
MERIA Journal
September '10

The key policy challenge put forth by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been the threat of the Iranian nuclear program. Yet there is a sense of contradiction between his bold assertion of dangers that must be stopped (when in opposition) and his cautious, tentative treatment of issues once in office. This contradiction appears to mirror his performance as prime minister from 1996 to 1999. At its halfway point, the second Netanyahu premiership has been characterized by pragmatism, caution, and a general desire to preserve the status quo. This approach is, however, unlikely to prevent the emergence of a nuclear Iran, Netanyahu's primary goal.

From 1996-2000, Benjamin Netanyahu served as prime minister of Israel. He was re-elected to the post in 2009. His second period of incumbency is taking place during a time of severe foreign policy challenges for the Jewish state. Building an effective response to these challenges is at the center of the agenda that Netanyahu has set himself.

The key challenge put forth by Netanyahu is the threat of the Iranian nuclear program. However, the perceived gravity of the Iranian nuclear threat is related to other aspects of the Israeli prime minister's conception of the region, and the threats facing Israel therein. Unlike many of his predecessors, Netanyahu came to the prime ministership with a worldview and strategy clearly articulated and written. As such, it is possible to some degree to measure the success or failure of his prime ministership to date in its own terms against a fairly clear yardstick.

This article will attempt to outline the core foreign policy perceptions and goals of the Netanyahu government in a number of central areas. Key events from the time Netanyahu took office in March 2009 will be discussed. Throughout, the policy success or failure of the actions of the government will be assessed in terms of Netanyahu's own professed goals and objectives. The domestic political constraints incumbent on the prime minister, and his success or failure in navigating these and ensuring the survival of his government, will also be considered.

(Read full article)

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BDS and South Africa - 2

Jon Haber
Divest This!
02 October '10

I’ve always been curious whether certain words create their own power or simply draw upon the power of that which they describe. The term “Holocaust,” which starts with soft vowels implying vastness and ends with knife-sharp consonants, seems like it would be evocative regardless of what it describes. Yet once this term came into general use to describe the Nazi’s extermination of European Jewry, it drew upon the massiveness of that event, eventually pushing out other terms (some foreign like “Shoah,” some euphemistic such as “Final Solution” – a simple phrase which itself can mean only one thing to today’s ears) to become synonymous with history’s most horrific crime.

Fights over the term simply demonstrate its unique power to move people emotionally. As horrific, vast and mind-numbing as other historic mass murders have been (such as the Armenian genocide, which many see as an historic “warm up” for other 20th century ethnic exterminations), there is a reason we describe these as the “Armenian Holocaust,” the “Rwandan Holocaust,” etc., rather than describing the Shoah as the “Armenian genocide of the Jews.”

“Apartheid,” meaning “seperateness”, resonates as a word, even to those unfamiliar with the Dutch dialect used by South Africa’s white Afrikaans population, implying as it does the English terms “Apart” and “Hate.” And yet the ugliness of the system it describes, a form of mass racial discrimination masquerading under formal legalism, certainly contributes to this term becoming synonymous with bigotry as state policy.

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J Street – The Masquerade Laid Bare

Daphne Anson
02 October '10

It’s been reported that plans are afoot to set to up a British organisation comparable to J Street, involving such leftwing Jews as Guardian journalist Jonathan Freeland (and presumably, though this is just speculation, with assistance from the New Israel Fund). I look on such a development with a jaundiced gaze; there are enough Israel-demonising groups in Britain today without adding to their number with a (yet another leftist) Jewish communal initiative. J Street’s plausible dishonesty has duped many well-meaning people into assuming that it has Israel’s welfare uppermost in its heart, and can achieve that aim more readily than AIPAC.

It’s hard to dispute Alan Dershowitz’s contention, made last March during its conference in Washington when he buttonholed one of its officials giving a press interview, that J Street has sown discord within the American Jewish community; it is a divisive force and damaging to Israel. "I reject J Street because it spends more time criticizing Israel than supporting it," Dershowitz declared. "They shouldn't call themselves pro-Israel.” He added that although he too opposes settlements, he makes “the 80 percent case for Israel”. The fact that J Street invited former U.S. Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski – no great fan of Israel – to its March conference was an indication, he maintained, that J Street is “not pro-Israel". J Street has supported the odious slur on Israel that comprises the Goldstone Report, which prompted Colette Avital MK to quit as J Street’s conduit in Israel.

(Read full article)

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Obama Administration Tells Israel: Make Us Look Good For Election and We Will Reward You (A Little Bit)

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
01 October '10

Contents of a White House letter have been published saying what the Obama Administration will offer Israel if it extends the moratorium on building inside West Bank settlements for two months. The specific proposals reveal again how the White House doesn’t seem to understand the situation, or perhaps is thinking of something other than the Israel-Palestinian peace process.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu couldn’t continue the freeze because there isn’t enough support in his coalition for doing so. Thus, minor U.S. offers don’t change that fact in any way. Moreover, the main underlying problem is lack of confidence that the Palestinian Authority (PA) wants peace with Israel, is willing to compromise, or will implement commitments in future. As you read this, keep in mind all of the problems I've written about which Israel must keep in mind in making any peace agreement.

When we consider the specifics, then, the U.S. offer isn ‘t relevant. But there are more problems:

First, the administration offers not to seek an extension of a two-month freeze. Why two months, why not three or four? Why not two weeks?

Hmm, readers, what is happening within two months? The U.S. election! The implication is that the Obama Administration is offering Israel the following basic deal: Make us look good until the vote and we will give you a pay-off.

That’s it. Because the only alternative view is that the United States believes that the once-every-two-week talks will make such dramatic progress in two months that both Israel and the Palestinians will be on the verge of peace or an end to the freeze won’t matter.

(Read full article)

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The lessons of Stuxnet

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
01 October '10

There's a new cyber-weapon on the block. And it's a doozy. Stuxnet, a malicious software, or malware, program was apparently first discovered in June.

Although it has appeared in India, Pakistan and Indonesia, Iran's industrial complexes - including its nuclear installations - are its main victims.

Stuxnet operates as a computer worm. It is inserted into a computer system through a USB port rather than over the Internet, and is therefore capable of infiltrating networks that are not connected to the Internet.

Hamid Alipour, deputy head of Iran's Information Technology Company, told reporters Monday that the malware operated undetected in the country's computer systems for about a year.

After it enters a network, this super-intelligent program figures out what it has penetrated and then decides whether or not to attack. The sorts of computer systems it enters are those that control critical infrastructures like power plants, refineries and other industrial targets.

Ralph Langner, a German computer security researcher who was among the first people to study Stuxnet, told various media outlets that after Stuxnet recognizes its specific target, it does something no other malware program has ever done. It takes control of the facility's SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition system) and through it, is able to destroy the facility.

(Read full story)

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UN Flotilla Report Lacks Credibility and Transparency

NGO Monitor
29 September '10

JERUSALEM – The UN Human Rights Council’s (HRC) report on the May 31, 2010 flotilla violence is based on secret and unverifiable allegations, is highly biased, and is therefore no more than hearsay, finds NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institution. The HRC-appointed “fact-finding mission” submitted the report to the HRC during the Fifteenth Session currently underway in Geneva.

“This so-called fact finding mission met with numerous political advocacy NGOs and interviewed hundreds of witnesses from different countries, but it refuses to disclose these names or their statements,” says Professor Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. “The UNHRC and their latest ‘report’ indicting Israel have no legitimacy if the sources of the allegations and narrative are hidden. Unfortunately, this is indicative of the general lack of transparency surrounding the role of NGOs in the exploitation of human rights and international law.”

The “Free Gaza” flotilla violence involved the IHH, a Turkish-based organization with a history of links to terror, as well as the ISM, whose virulent incitement against Israel is also well documented. But instead of focusing on these organizations, the mission, chaired by Karl Hudson-Phillips, former justice on the International Criminal Court in The Hague, interviewed some participant-witnesses as well as ambassadors in London, Geneva, Amman, and Istanbul. News reports show that interviews in Jordan included members of the Muslim Brotherhood and those involved with anti-normalization campaigns with Israel. In addition, the panel spoke to MK Hanin Zoabi, a member of the Balad party, which rejects the idea of a Jewish state. Zoabi has also spoken in support of Iran's fierce hostility to Israel, and was on the boat involved in this violent incident. But the sources of other testimony remain secret.

(Read full report)

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Shock, horror! Arafat (gasp) encouraged terrorist attacks!!

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War
01 October '10

In a syndicated Associated Press report issued yesterday, one of the highest-up thugs in the Hamas terror hierarchy, Mahmoud Zahar, is quoted telling Gaza City students that when Yasser Arafat realized negotiations with Israel were failing ten years ago, he "recommended to Hamas to carry out a number of military operations in the heart of the Hebrew state."

The AP report says it has confirmation of the closed-door session, and says Zahar declined to deny them. It says other Hamas leaders refused to discuss the statements on the record, and several privately expressed displeasure but did not deny them. Zahar's statement were made Tuesday - the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 28, 2000, eruption of violence that became known as the second intifada.

A far more reliable source, the Jerusalem Post's peerless Khaled Abu Toameh, writes that this is the first time a senior Hamas source has conceded that some of the suicide-bombing murders carried out by its agents during the second intifada, which erupted 10 years ago, were ordered by Arafat. Until now, it was widely believed that Arafat had only ordered his Fatah militiamen to carry out terror attacks on Israel.

(Read full post)

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Letter? What Letter?

JINSA
Report #: 1,028
01 October '10

The story in Washington is that President Obama, eager to have Israel extend the "settlement freeze" for another two months, i.e., until after the November election, sent Prime Minister Netanyahu a letter offering Israel a heavy list of inducements, including U.S. agreement to:

Support the presence of the IDF in the Jordan Valley after the establishment of a Palestinian state;

Not ask for any more building freeze extensions;

Veto any anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution in the next year; and

Deal with the future fate of the settlements only as part of a final status agreement.

Plus:

Guarantees to prevent the smuggling of weapons and missiles into a Palestinian state;

A lengthy interim period of security arrangements in the Jordan Valley;

A comprehensive regional defense pact for protection from Iran following the establishment of a Palestinian state;

A promise to upgrade Israel's security capabilities;

An increase in the three billion dollar annual security assistance package; and

Commitments to advanced weapons and early warning systems, including satellites.

What a bargain! But there are two problems: first, the implicit threat that if Israel doesn't take the deal, it will be punished with the corollary that the United States now conditions its commitment to Israel's security on being obeyed; and second, whether the United States can actually deliver.

(Read full report)

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Clinton’s KuBa conceit.

Sarah Honig
Another Tack
01 October '10

Rare is the American president with true strategic comprehension of the convoluted intricacies of the Mideast’s assorted disputes, especially the one arising from the implacable Arab refusal to accept a sovereign Jewish state in what they consider their lebensraum (one of Hitler’s favorite terms claiming entitlement to “living space” for his superior race)

The wisdom or imbecility of any given US president is inevitably as good as that of the aides who whisper in his ear. But some have unquestionably displayed greater capacity for preposterousness than others. It may be a mere accident of history or the result of left-wing proclivities, but the greatest inanities have of late emanated from Democrats – the present White House resident and his two living Democratic predecessors, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Barack Obama’s grasp of the Mideast is so skewed and so predisposed to support the Arab/Muslim narrative that he liberally subscribes to its copious falsehoods as part of his multicultural, moral-relativist, postmodern aggrandizement of the Third World. His fawning Cairo address in 2009 was just the preview of coming attractions.

THE LESS said about Carter the better. Suffice it just to note that yesteryear’s self-professed honest broker, who had subsequently slandered Israel as an apartheid state, happens to be the closest ideologically to Obama and most like him in terms of abysmal failure as the leader of the free world.

Then comes affable Clinton, who manages to endear himself to all and sundry as a more pragmatic product of the Democratic Party machine and even a good friend of Israel. For all we know he may have convinced himself that he’s indeed the Jewish state’s outstanding chum. His utter immodesty surely leaves little doubt in his mind that he knows better than us what’s best for us. But does arrogance endow him with exceptional insight?

(Read full story)

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80% of participants in latest UN rights council vote against Israel ranked “Not Free” or only “Partly Free” by Freedom House

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
30 September '10

In the latest display of sickening hypocrisy at the United Nations, the Human Rights Council yesterday endorsed by 30 votes to one this month’s report by three anti-Israeli lawyers which charged Israel with “wilful killing”, “torture” and “inhuman treatment” over the Mavi Marmara Gaza-flotilla incident earlier this year.

The United States was the only country to oppose the report, while France and Britain were among 15 others abstaining. What really strikes one, however, are the liberal-democratic credentials of those who backed the motion. To think! Being judged on a human rights issue by China, Libya, or Saudi Arabia? Actually this is no laughing matter. It is a depraved and disgusting statement on what the United Nations has become. It is, therefore, worth looking at the backers of this motion in a little more detail.

I have used the Freedom House Freedom in the World 2010 index — which ranks countries as either Free (F), Partly Free (PF) or Not Free (NF) — as my point of reference. Here are the countries which voted in favour of the report with their Freedom House designation in brackets:

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J-Street unmasked

Isi Leibler
Candidly Speaking from Jerusalem
01 October '10

Two years ago, when I first condemned J Street’s anti-Israeli agenda, I tagged George Soros, the billionaire Hungarian born currency speculator, as one of its major sponsors. Yet J-Street founder and executive director Jeremy Ben Ami, on repeated occasions, adamantly denied this. He even said that he wished that Soros was a funder adding that “we got tagged as having his support without the benefit of actually getting funded.”

It has now been disclosed that some $750,000, amounting to almost a third of J-Street’s 2008-2009 US revenue, was provided by Soros.

After being exposed as an outright serial liar, Ben-Ami tried to weasel his way out of his shameful behavior by “accepting responsibility for being less than clear” about J-Street funding.

In fact Soros and J-Street make a perfect match. Soros has proudly proclaimed “I am not a Zionist, nor am I a practicing Jew.” He believes that Israel is largely responsible for anti-Semitism. Much of his venom is concentrated on AIPAC, and he has consistently been attacking all-pro Israeli institutions. He also calls for the recognition of Hamas. His “Open Society Institute” pours vast funds into organizations whose prime objective is to undermine elected governments of Israel. Only last month ago, he contributed a record $100 million towards Human Rights Watch, the purportedly human rights watchdog, which no longer bothers to disguise its blatant bias and hostility towards Israel.

(Read full article)

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Dangerous delusions

Tony Badran
NOW Lebanon
30 September '10
Posted before Shabbat

Syria’s foreign minister, Walid Mouallem, followed his rare meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday with a typically brazen interview in which he denied that his government was illegally transferring advanced weapons to Hezbollah. However, Mouallem’s denial is hardly credible, as the Syrian media has already exposed the Syrian regime’s intention to transfer Russian-made anti-ship missiles to the Shia militia in Lebanon.

Ten days prior to the Clinton-Mouallem meeting, Russia’s defense minister announced that Moscow would fulfill a 2007 contract to supply P-800 (Yakhont) anti-ship cruise missiles to Damascus.

The announcement set off a storm of criticisms and objections in Israel, with officials there labeling the Russian decision irresponsible. The Pentagon also shared Israel’s concerns, although the Obama administration has not forcefully commented on the issue. Meanwhile, some officials in Israel have threatened to sell arms to Russia’s enemies, while one defense official said that Russia’s decision puts future cooperation with Israel in doubt, namely the deal to purchase advanced unmanned aerial vehicles from Israel.

Israel’s concern is directly linked to the probability that Syria will pass these missiles on to Hezbollah, as it has been doing with other advanced weaponry. A look back at a number of reports and statements from April and May offers evidence that this is precisely, and explicitly, what the Syrians have in mind.

The first report came out in the Kuwaiti al-Rai in April, around the time when the story of Syria’s smuggling of Scuds to Hezbollah was still raging, along with assessments of growing military integration between Syria and Hezbollah in preparation for the next war with Israel.

(Read full story)

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Will Abbas, Too, Order Hamas to Carry Out Terror Strikes?

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
01 October '10

Former Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, who won the Nobel Peace prize, fooled all of the people all of the time.

Mahmoud Zahar, a prominent Hamas leader, has just revealed that Yasser Arafat, when he failed to get what he wanted at the negotiating table, instructed Hamas to launch terror attacks in the heart of Israel. Hamas obviously took Arafat's orders seriously, waging an unprecedented campaign of suicide booming and terror attacks that killed and injured thousands of Jews and Arabs.

When Arafat reportedly unleashed Hamas's terrorists against Israel, both he and the Palestinian Authority were still on the payroll of the international community, first and foremost the Americans and Europeans.

Arafat pretended back then that he was doing his utmost to stop the terror attacks that were launched not only by Hamas, but also by members of his own ruling Fatah faction. It now appears - from what Zahar has to say - that Arafat was bluntly lying to Israel and the Western donors.

What is interesting is that Zahar's revelations about Arafat's role in the terror campaign come at a time when the Palestinian and Hamas have resumed efforts to end their differences and achieve "national unity."

Does this rapprochement mean that Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, is planning to use Hamas again against Israel if the Palestinians don't get all what they want through direct and indirect talks? Some of the Palestinians who are negotiating with Israel these days were very close to Arafat back then; it is highly likely that they knew about his instructions to Hamas. Nabil Sha'ath, Saeb Erekat and Yasser Abed Rabbo were among Arafat's inner circle of advisors and confidants.

(Read full article)

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[Draft denied?]Negotiator says Mitchell denied US guarantees

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
30 September '10

[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: Of course there was no letter. Technically. There apparently was a draft of the letter that President Obama would sign in the event that PM Netanyahu extended the freeze by 60 days. But since PM Netanyahu hasn't extended the freeze the letter hasn't been signed and thus does not exist. And that's good for Israel because the letter implied that the U.S. would go along with the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state via the UN in the event that talks between Israel and the Palestinians failed to be concluded within a year. ]

Negotiator says Mitchell denied US guarantees
Published yesterday (updated) 30/09/2010 
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319742

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A member of the PLO negotiating team said Thursday that US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell denied reports in the Israeli media that the US had offered Israel guarantees in exchange for freezing settlements.

Israel's Hebrew language daily Maariv reported Wednesday that US President Barack Obama sent a letter of guarantees to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in bid to save direct peace talks from collapse.

The guarantees were reportedly in exchange for an immediate halt to settlement construction and dealt with issues around Israeli security negotiated between Israel defense minister and head of the Israeli negotiating team during visits to the US.

According to the report, Obama committed the US administration to providing Israel with upgraded weapons if a final solution to the conflict is reached. The US would also veto any attempt by Arab nations to present the Palestinian issue to the UN Security Council for one year, and prevent Palestinian negotiators from setting settlements as the central condition to
a peace agreement, the report said.

But PLO negotiator and Fatah leader Nabil Sha'ath said Mitchell denied the report.

"Mitchell's denial came during the meeting with President Abbas, and he affirmed there are no such US guarantees concerning this issue," Sha'ath told the Nazareth-based radio station Shams.

Israel's return to building settlements in the occupied territories has cast the future of peace talks into question following a brief return to negotiations following a 20-month hiatus sparked by Israel's assault on Gaza in December 2008.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton was scheduled to meet with Mitchell shortly after her arrival to the region on Thursday and speak with Abbas the day after. Informed sources told Ma'an that Abbas would sit with Mitchell for a second set of discussions Friday.

Palestinian leaders have made clear in public that they will not compromise on demands, made even before talks began on 2 September, that continued settlement construction on lands intended for a Palestinian state under a two-state solution would not be acceptable.

While Netanyahu said he hoped talks would continue, he has not agreed to halt construction despite reports that the US offered the package of incentives to get the peace process back on track. Netanyahu met with Mitchell on Wednesday.

Abbas said he would discuss continuing talks at an Arab League meeting next week.

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Gissin talks Sharon's Temple Mount visit 10 years later

Former PM's spokesman tells ‘Post’: Sharon knew Palestinians were planning violence, but wanted to show he wouldn’t compromise on J’lem.

Gil Hoffman
JPost
29 September '10

Future prime minister Ariel Sharon was told by his spokesman Ra’anan Gissin that visiting the Temple Mount could be used by Palestinians as an excuse for violence, Gissin said Tuesday on the 10th anniversary of Sharon’s controversial visit.

Palestinians began throwing rocks immediately after Sharon left the compound. The Palestinians called the uprising that began the “Al-Aksa intifada,” even though an IDF sergeant critically wounded in a bomb attack the day before Sharon’s visit is considered the first victim of the wave of violence, and Palestinian officials have admitted that then- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had planned the intifada months before.“It was a sensitive time during the High Holy Days and at the end of Ramadan,” Gissin said. “I told him the situation was tense in the West Bank and that [Palestinian general Tawfik] Tirawi’s people were planning to do something on the Temple Mount, whether the trigger would be Sharon or something else. Sharon knew he was playing into their hands, but he went in a clear-headed manner to prove that he wouldn’t compromise on Jerusalem and that Israel would stand up for its rights.”

The initiator of the wave of violence, Marwan Barghouti, later told the Al-Hayat newspaper that he had decided that Sharon’s visit would be the most appropriate moment for the outbreak of the intifada.

(Read full article)

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A Ridiculous Misnomer

J.E. Dyer
Contentions/Commentary
30 September '10

It’s way past time for mainstream news outlets to stop referring to the “flotillas” mounted against Israel’s blockade of Gaza as “aid ships.” They are nothing of the sort, a truth amply demonstrated with the latest attempt by a Jewish group to run the blockade with a catamaran. The catamaran Irene has a length of 33 feet, which makes it smaller than the famous 42-foot Boghammar speedboat used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. With crew and passengers totaling nine people, this little catamaran can’t possibly have carried much cargo. In photos of its encounter with the Israeli navy (see it here flanked by Israeli inflatable patrol boats), it looks absurdly small. In fact, it looks downright silly — a perfect emblem of the irresponsible ineffectiveness of this type of parlor-activism.

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Kneejerk Responses

Emanuele Ottolenghi
Standpoint Magazine
October '10

Much has been said about the EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht's outrageous remarks on the alleged Jewish influence over US politics. De Gucht's attack on the "grip" that the "Jewish lobby" supposedly has on the US Congress evoked imagery rooted in a history of prejudice. It assumes that Jews promote an unpatriotic agenda through stealth and deception, using money and power.

The old canard has morphed over the years, as anti-Semitism has lost the social respectability it enjoyed until not so long ago. But there is a residual prejudice in Western societies about Jews that has been recently camouflaged by what people increasingly call "legitimate criticism of Israel". There are many ways to criticise the conduct of foreign affairs and domestic policies by a government. But evoking the grip of a "Jewish lobby" should not be one of them. It has, however, become a sign of our times — repeatedly propped up in the last decade by mainstream media and politicians. There have been at least two prominent cover stories in leading UK magazines about the supposed power of the "lobby", which were accompanied by images clearly bordering on anti-Semitism. A recent BBC Panorama documentary promoted the same notion.

But what was particularly surprising was not de Gucht decrying Jewish influence — it was his sweeping and derogatory characterisation of Jews as irrational creatures. Regardless of political persuasions and religious backgrounds, they are all wrong about the Middle East and all are stubbornly convinced that they are in the right: "It is not easy to have, even with moderate Jews, a rational discussion about what is actually happening in the Middle East," said de Gucht.

And here, we should listen more carefully, because de Gucht, as an EU Commissioner, should know a thing or two about being invariably irrational and persistently wrong about the Middle East. Consider the EU's reaction to the flotilla incident off Gaza back in May. The day after, its Foreign Minister, Baroness Ashton, said: "The EU condemns the use of violence that has produced a high number of victims among the members of the flotilla and demands an immediate, full and impartial inquiry into the events and the circumstances surrounding them."

(Read full article)

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Do Israelis from Arab countries weaken democracy?

Bataween
Point of No Return
29 September '10

Now here's an interesting thought: have citizens from countries with no democratic tradition weakened democracy in Israel? That's certainly the opinion of two prominent Israeli writers of German-Jewish extraction, Tom Segev and the late Amos Elon - argues Seth Frantzman in The Jerusalem Post. There is a separate but related issue: should hardline Jews from the ex-Soviet Union be blamed for constituting an impediment to peace - an opinion recently voiced by Bill Clinton? Or could it be that immigrants to Israel from Arab countries and eastern Europe are the best guardians of democratic values simply because they know what it's like to live under totalitarian regimes?

Elon, who was then living in “exile” in Italy because he had become estranged from the Israel that had provided him with fame and luxury, called the country a “quasi-fascist” state with “religious people [who] would be better off behind bars and not in politics.”

He complained that Israel was no longer a democratic Western country, and summed up his views with: “There was provinciality here. [in Israel]. There was this upstart’s arrogance.

I’m not surprised when you look at the population. We know where it comes from. Either from the Arab countries or from Eastern Europe.”

Here Elon adds the category of Jews from “Arab countries” to the reasons why Israel became, in his view, a non-Western nondemocratic society. The argument over Israeli society’s lack of democracy thus tends to decline into the realm of blaming “others,” especially immigrants, for taking away the Western democracy that once flourished here.

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Obama’s Repudiation of Promises to Israel Comes Back to Haunt Him

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
30 September '10

The Israeli media ran a mind-boggling story today: in exchange for a two-month extension of the freeze on settlement construction, Barack Obama has offered Israel various mouth-watering goodies, as Jen noted in an earlier post. Yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is leaning toward refusing.

Obama’s offer reportedly includes the following (see here and here, for instance): support for Israel’s demand that any Israeli-Palestinian deal include a long-term Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley; a Security Council veto of any anti-Israel resolution submitted in the coming year; additional military aid; advanced weaponry; stringent measures to halt arms smuggling; and a pledge not to seek another extension when this one expires.

Israel needs all of the above, and Obama has hitherto often failed to provide them. Thus the offer’s benefits would seem to far outweigh the damage of extending the freeze for two months. Yet Netanyahu claims his cabinet — those same ministers who approved a 10-month freeze in exchange for nothing — wouldn’t approve another two months, even for these lavish promises. What gives?

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The UN Accuses Israel of War Crimes — Again

The UN Human Rights Council releases its report on the flotilla raid.

Michael Weiss
The Weekly Standard
29 September '10

A mere two days after May’s deadly flotilla raid off the coast of Gaza, the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), in a special “emergency session,” passed a resolution by a 32 to 3 count that “condemn[ed] in the strongest terms the outrageous attack by the Israeli forces against the humanitarian flotilla of ships.” Despite already forming its consensus view of the flotilla raid, it nonetheless ordered a “fact-finding Mission,” which went ahead despite the support of Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for a wider and more legally consequential UN inquiry, which Israel later agreed to cooperate with.

In addition to agreeing to work with the general UN inquiry, Israel has conducted an internal military review which acquitted the IDF commandos of any professional misconduct, faulting them only for not anticipating the violence they were met with onboard the Mavi Marmara. Furthermore, Israel is also now engaged in a domestic civil review headed by retired Israeli Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel and observed by Northern Irish First Minister Lord David Trimble and former Canadian military judge Ken Watkin.

The results of the UNHRC flotilla investigation were published last week in an “Advance Unedited Version” of its official report and the verdict is as predictable as it is one-sided. As with the Goldstone Report, Israel is once again accused of war crimes. And once again, the UNHRC’s Mission sacrifices methodological rigor and dispassion for a politicized and prefabricated ruling.

It claims to have interviewed “more than 100 witnesses in Geneva, London, Istanbul and Amman” but in perhaps the most naked acknowledgement of its own distorted approach to fact-finding, the report states the following in its Methodology section:

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