The State of the Jews

Why do the Palestinian Baruch Goldsteins rule the Palestinian public square? What possible conclusions are we supposed to draw from the decision to name a Ramallah square after Dalal Mughrabi, “who led the worst terror attack in Israel’s history when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus and murdered 37 civilians in 1978″?

And why is Ramallah doing it on the anniversary of the attack?! I know this blog has a handful of readers in Arab lands. Anyone care to explain?

From Palestinian Media Watch:

Not only does [the Ramallah municipality] still intend to name the square after the terrorist, but the date chosen for the inaugural ceremony is this Thursday, March 11, the 32nd anniversary of the terror attack.

…

Headline: “Preparations for inauguration of Shahida (Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi Square complete”
“The El-Bireh Municipality has completed construction work at the Shahida (Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi Square in the Um Al-Sharait region, and has commenced preparations for its inauguration this Thursday, the anniversary of Mughrabi’s Martyrdom. The mayor, Jamal Al-Tawil, said that… this year the municipality will celebrate the inauguration of the Shahida (Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi Square in order to commemorate her memory and her sacrifice as a Palestinian woman who resisted the occupation. City Council member Aida Abu-Ubeid said that the square is considered a symbol of the sacrifice of the Palestinian woman. She also noted that flowers and trees will be planted there, and that a picture of the Shahida Dalal Mughrabi will be placed at the center of the square.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 7, 2010]

There has been no public comment from the Obama administration about the PA’s honoring of the terrorist.

It’s been almost two weeks of crazy busy-ness. Apologies to visitors. The good news is I’ve been bookmarking some interesting things you may have missed in this time which I’ll be posting shortly.

First is Jimmy Carter’s extremely short apology “for any words or deeds of mine that may have” caused Israel to be “stigmatized.”

You know, like putting “apartheid” on his book cover (a book which, incidentally, sells alongside Ilan Pappe on Amazon), or accusing the Israel lobby of being something other than a legitimate expression of a particular American grassroots feeling, or willfully forgetting any Palestinian culpability for their condition, etc. ad infinitum.

Notice how Carter never actually admits to doing anything wrong, but merely apologizes in case his actions “may have” had immoral results. As any rabbi will tell you around Yom Kippur time (no worries, still nine months away), the first step of forgiveness is acknowledgment of culpability. Carter hasn’t done that yet.

In a letter released exclusively to JTA, the former U.S. president sent a seasonal message wishing for peace between Israel and its neighbors, and concluded: “We must recognize Israel’s achievements under difficult circumstances, even as we strive in a positive way to help Israel continue to improve its relations with its Arab populations, but we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel. As I would have noted at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but which is appropriate at any time of the year, I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so.”

We’ve already noted that the Obama administration’s demands for a settlement freeze wreaked havoc on the peace process by undermining the moderate Palestinian leadership.

The demand was ridiculous – Obama wanted not just a geographic freeze to the size of settlements, which Bibi Netanyahu gave him, but a demographic freeze. Israel was not to build kindergartens for the 960 children born each year in settlements. And “settlements” included Jerusalem.

No Israeli leader, on Left or Right, could agree to this as a pre-negotiation concession. And once uttered by the Americans, no Palestinian leader could demand any less. By undermining the Palestinians, Obama has set back all of us.

Or so I believed.

But now I’m starting to wonder if my thinking on this may have been premature. Yes, the Obama administration goofed as only self-righteous fools can. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Dr. Alex Yakobson of Hebrew University, my teacher on these issues and a family friend, made some important points in Ha’aretz last week, suggesting that acceding to Obama’s demands now would leave Israel better off strategically even in the short term.

First, he notes, the American public’s support for Israel is strong and getting stronger:

…According to the poll, 64% of Americans continue to believe that Israel is serious about reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians. By a 3:1 ratio, the American people express more sympathy with Israel than with the Palestinians: 45% to 15%.

This support, however, is based on the perception that Israel genuinely sought and continues to seek peace. The settlement debate, says Yakobson, is getting in the way:

The support of a majority of Americans is still a much more important factor than all the attacks on Israel and the calls for a boycott. The American people would never have awarded such support to a country they viewed as not pursuing peace.

This is an asset of enormous importance, and it should not be wasted on a dispute with the Obama administration over the expansion of the settlements. The settlements are the main cause for questioning Israel’s desire for peace and its willingness for a two-state solution. Even among our best friends in the United States and elsewhere, the great majority disagrees with Israel over this issue.

…

There is no real gap between the Obama administration’s positions on the settlements and those of the Bush administration. The only difference is that Obama has decided to focus public and diplomatic attention on this issue. From the moment this happened it became clear – beyond any ideological or political dispute – that it is an essential Israeli interest to find a way to reach an agreement with the Americans on a formula for a settlement freeze.

He concludes:

Such a prolonged and public dispute with the United States over the settlements harms Israel. It is a battle where even victory would be a serious defeat. Netanyahu understands America well enough to know that. The question is whether such a critical national interest is a good enough reason in his eyes to confront the extremists within his coalition and party.

Devil’s advocate for a moment: What can Bibi give Obama on settlements without paying an exorbitant political price? And is it worth the trouble just to make the Palestinians willing to talk?

It’s all been said, but I’ll say it again. It’s important. There are two points to be made about the November 5 rampage at Fort Hood, it seems to me.

One, it was an evil attack by a man who saw himself serving a radicalized interpretation of Islam that seeks the destruction of the liberal world. No, Major Nidal Malik Hasan didn’t suffer “secondary PTSD” from counseling vets. Since when do psychiatrists exhibit PTSD-based outbursts of violence from hearing patients? How can anyone even suggest this seriously?

Second, and equally important, Major Hasan is not an example of the danger Muslims pose to America, but of the lack of that danger. Much like with its Jews, Buddhists and other religious and ethnic minorities, American Muslims are so integrated into the larger liberal individualistic American society that Hasan is, in fact, the freak aberration from the norm. In showing clearly the face of Islamist terrorism, Hasan is a stark reminder that America’s Muslims are nothing like him.

Yes, Hasan represents an outright evil, an evil that has to be challenged and destroyed.

But no, he does not represent American Muslims. In fact, the surprising lack of American Muslim terrorism – millions of Muslims produced a small handful of actual or attempted attacks – is the real story.

Is there any other way to see this story?

The following handful of posts are from the past week or so. It’s been a hectic period, so apologies for the scant posting.

First, there’s this Nov. 3 Foreign Policy article, which reports that “Whichever side of the fence you fall on, there’s no denying it: There’s a politics to human rights.”

The crux of it is the authors’ statistical analysis of human rights reports produced by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Both organizations’ advocacy focuses inordinately on states rich in indigenous media, possessing large economies and boasting democratic institutions.

Yet these lists were also notable for the countries they did not include. When we used data on poverty, repression, and conflict to identify some of the worst places on earth, we found that few of these countries were covered much by either Amnesty or Human Rights Watch.

The reasons, the authors find:

At first, this seemed puzzling; why would the watchdogs neglect authoritarians? We asked both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, and received similar replies. In some cases, staffers said, access to human rights victims in authoritarian countries was impossible, since the country’s borders were sealed or the repression was too harsh (think North Korea or Uzbekistan). In other instances, neglected countries were simply too small, poor, or unnewsworthy to inspire much media interest. With few journalists urgently demanding information about Niger, it made little sense to invest substantial reporting and advocacy resources there.

…It’s easier to sell people what they already want than to try create new demand, and businesses that do too much of the latter will quickly run into trouble.

The human rights groups defend themselves thus, according to the authors:

In response, the watchdogs say they call ‘em as they see ‘em, reporting as best they can on the misdeeds of democracies and authoritarians alike. Apologists who cry foul are being defensive and insular, refusing to acknowledge the seamy underside of their favored regimes. Fair point indeed.

Fair point? Why is this a fair point? They are demonstrably ignoring dictatorships and “some of the worst places on earth” in favor of media attention. Why do the article’s authors let them get away with the excuse that they are “reporting as best they can on the misdeeds of democracies and authoritarians alike,” when the whole point of the piece is that they do not, in fact, report on democracies and authoritarians alike whatsoever?

And why do the protestations of some Israelis or Americans constitute the “defensive and insular” protests of “apologists?”

I, for example, think Israel’s government is making a whole series of terrible mistakes on a vast range of issues, from religious personal status law to West Bank law enforcement to an imploding, nearly third-world education system. I have written about all these and more. But I also think human rights groups often behave like politicized news hounds who only have the courage to take on countries already so free and self-critical that their reporting is largely redundant.

Try this exercise. Take away Amnesty International’s criticism of Israel. Did anything change? Did Israel just get away with anything? Did Israel’s internal critics suddenly stop speaking? Now take away Amnesty coverage of Niger (what little there is) and ask yourself this: What’s left?

We already have a media – hostile, neutral and supportive alike – telling us Israel’s rights and wrongs. We need Amnesty and HRW to point the finger precisely at Niger. That they fail to do so, that they choose to follow in the media’s wake rather than step in front and bring attention to humanity’s most desperate members, is a far greater indictment of their work than the banal accusation of being “anti-Israel.”

Hat tip: Shmuel Rosner.

One meeting at a private home + about 85 wealthy Jews + the news that times are rough for the poor and needy Jews of the world = $43 million.

It’s hard not to wonder what Israel would look like if it had that kind of philanthropic culture.

The UJA-Federation of New York raised $43 million at its annual campaign kickoff last week, funding that will go toward Jewish families in need throughout the world.

The fund-raising event held at the home of former Bear Sterns chairman and CEO Alan “Ace” Greenberg and his wife, Kathryn, in Manhattan last Wednesday brought together more than 85 philanthropic and business leaders from the New York Jewish community.

Despite the worldwide recession and the resulting impact on philanthropy, the amount raised by the federation matched the total in 2008, according to Jerry Levin, the chairman of the UJA-Federation of New York and a former CEO and chairman of AOL Time Warner. He said the money raised will have a profound impact on New Yorkers of all backgrounds and on Jews from around the world.

“Perhaps in no other room in this city or country would fewer than a hundred individuals come together to raise this exceptional sum to fund services needed now more than ever,” Levin said at the fund-raiser. “We’re living in extraordinary times, an era already being called the Great Recession. Given these financial conditions, when a number of individuals who have given so generously in the past could not make the same contribution, others in the room stepped forward to give significantly more to raise tens of millions of dollars when those contributions are needed most.”