THE LIST:

1. Dr. Sandor Kepiro – Hungary

Sandor Kepiro (Alliance)

2. Milivoj Ašner – Austria

Milivoj Asner (l), Croatian Ustashi victims (r) (The Sun)

3. Samuel Kunz – Germany

4. Adolf Storms – Germany

5. Klaas Carel Faber – Germany

6. Karoly (Charles) Zentai – Australia

Charles Zentai (Deutsche Welle)

7. Soeren Kam – Germany

Soeren Kam (About.com)

8. Peter Egner – United States

Peter Egner (Seattle Weekly)

9. Algimantas Dailide – Germany

Algimantas Dailide (About.com)

10. Mikhail Gorshkow – Estonia

Not on the list, possibly dead:

Alois Brunner – Syria

Alois Brunner (Deutsche Welle)

Dr. Aribert Heim – Location unknown

Aribert Heim (Deutsche Welle)

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Still, even for Ha’aretz, this is crazy. In an editorial titled: “Netanyahu, the US has given you a second chance. Use it.” the paper tries to argue that (a) the Americans are offering a “second chance” that, presumably, may not return, (b) “the US had demanded that Netanyahu … agree to deliberations on all the core issues,” and (c) that “Netanyahu will commit a grave error if he is tempted to continue the damaging clash with Obama, and if he uses the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to enlist the president’s political enemies to advance the positions of the Israeli right wing.”

The degree of disinformation contained in this piece is staggering, and begs the question: Are Ha’aretz’s savvy editors so disconnected from reality, or are they knowingly lying to advance their politics?

First, the Americans aren’t offering a “second chance.” What happens if Netanyahu declines? Cancels his trip? Will the US start bombing Tel Aviv? What does “second chance” even mean? After all, the Palestinians have been getting second chances for 17 years, and have yet to compromise on a single issue.

Second, Ha’aretz knows but is obfuscating the fact that the Israeli government has agreed, again and again, to begin negotiations. It is the Palestinians who continue to refuse, on the apparently correct assumption that delay works in their favor, since Ha’aretz types will always urge the Israeli government to give in for the sake of getting the Palestinians to negotiate over, um, what we’ve just surrendered.

Would that this strategy worked. Unfortunately, it will most likely end up in disaster. The Israeli government has real limitations – especially on issues like Jerusalem and refugees, where the Palestinians have been unable to bend even over the Temple Mount, and the Israeli public unable to give ground on such fundamental questions. Pressuring the Israelis to acquiesce, at every turn no matter the cost, is a sure-fire way to bring real Israeli rejectionists to power, the kind unseen since the early 1990’s. If Ha’aretz is simply a cheerleader to every Palestinian demand, it enables their rejectionism – which, after all, remains the unsolved problem everyone likes to ignore.

Third, why would Netanyahu be “tempted to continue the damaging clash with Obama?” This whole time, he’s the one trying to dial it down, while Hillary and Obama worked feverishly to keep the flames burning. As Ha’aretz itself reported.

And as for enlisting the aid of the pro-Israel lobby “to advance the positions of the Israeli right wing,” Ha’aretz is consciously and inexcusably propagating the conspiratorial lies about AIPAC’s allegiances. AIPAC officially supports a two-state solution and negotiations to that end. But why would Ha’aretz care?

Related posts:

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3. Why Palestine must be negotiated, not declared

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.

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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.”

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3. Anti-Israel, with a dash of intellectual pretense

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.

Dr. Alex Yakobson

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?

Related posts:

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2. Why JStreet will neither help nor harm the peace process
3. Why Obama is optimistic about peace

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?

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2. On marriage and racism
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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.”

Human Rights Watch reports (Amazon)

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.

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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.”

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I pointed out that Israel’s marriage laws, like its divorces, burials, etc., are not constructed against Muslims or Catholics, but in the old Ottoman confessionalist models, which are agreed upon by everybody.

Now he returns to accuse me of misrepresenting the essential evil of this system:

Well I’m reading Shlomo Sand’s great book now and Gur is I believe misrepresenting the reality. Sand makes it clear that a bar on intermarriage was no leftover accident of history. “In 1953 the political promise to bar civil marriage in Israel was given a legal basis. The law defining the legal status of the rabbinical courts determined that they would have exclusive jurisdiction over marriage and divorce of Jews in Israel. By this means, the dominant socialist Zionism harnessed the principles of the traditional rabbinate as an alibi for its fearful imaginary [sic] that was terrified of assimilation and ‘mixed marriage.’”

It sometimes amazes me that someone can launch a years-long cultural attack against an entire society without knowing some really basic facts about it, such as the degree to which its “ethnic democracy” is a common phenomenon, or the mechanisms for marriage, or the fact that its marriage laws that effectively forbid intermarriage are supported by the minority religions more than by the Jews.

Of course, the problem is not with the singular fact of the year of the passage of the law, but with the thick layer of deconstruction slathered over it by Sand. The law formalized the already-existing Ottoman system, preventing the state from having to take away from the Muslim minority its generations-old sharia courts. The Muslims, Druse and Christians were not predisposed to give these up for a new Israeli jurisprudence. This wasn’t accomplished by Israeli racism – by and large the Druse are admired by Israeli Jews, but still demanded their own courts – but by a cultural commitment of Israel’s religious groups to maintain their traditional collectivist identities.

I neglected to note – and this is important for Weiss to consider – that I am no supporter of the rabbinate. I have done everything in my power, including Jerusalem Post editorials, interviews, etc., to advocate against Israel’s established rabbinate. My own father is a Reform rabbi. My wife’s father is an Orthodox rabbi. When we married in Israel in March 2008, it was in a wedding unrecognized by the state of Israel because neither of our fathers (who together officiated) were recognized rabbinate officials. We refused to invite a state rabbi to our wedding. Our legal standing is through a quickie civil marriage conducted in a Baltimore courthouse a few weeks earlier.

I don’t like this system. I think the “state church” of Israel has utterly politicized Israeli spirituality and collectivized Israeli religious identity. Without getting into the real suffering the haredi-controlled rabbinate is causing to agunot and would-be converts, the greatest tragedy is that the politicization of religiosity has had the effect of making Israel a spiritual wasteland. I yearn for the day – and I teach in a high school program and premilitary academy to bring it closer – when Israelis look to American Jews to discover how to construct authentic personal spiritual journeys.

But for all that, it’s simply not the reality to claim that the system was born primarily as a means of preserving Jews from religious intermarriage. That misunderstands the motivations of the early years of the state, and ignored some of the most basic identity structures of Middle Eastern religions – where religion is more akin to tribes than to the individualistic confessional faiths of the United States.

Consider: How much is the Sunni-Shi’ite split in Iraq to do with theological difference, and how much tribal? Are the Christians of Syria merely a confessional difference, or a collective tribal one? Or the Druse in Israel, who have an intermarriage rate estimated at 1% despite commonly dating Jews during our shared military service, and who live in their own villages apart from the Arabs or the Jews – are they primarily an American-style religion or a Middle Eastern tribe?

Weiss doesn’t prove anything by quoting the date of the passage of the law and then Sand’s ideological interpretation. He must show not that the Jews of Israel identify collectively like all other Middle Easterners, but that their personal status laws go beyond that and are motivated by a special prejudice against minorities. Since he can’t prove it, he interprets it.

I grew up with these attitudes in American Jewish life. They’ve faded a lot since I was a kid. But in Israel they were memorialized in law. Later Sand writes that even the liberal secular Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak said, “A Jewish state is one in which Hebrew Law plays an important part, and in which the laws of marriage and divorce of Jews are based on the Torah.”

Here is Weiss’ main mistake: believing that at their core Jews are the same in the US and Israel, and therefore the values of one can easily judge the other. American Jews have transformed into a Protestant-style individualistic faith. Israelis, perhaps 60% of whom hail from the Muslim world, have transformed the notion of Jewishness into a Middle Eastern religion-affiliated national collective that draws more from Muslim world identities than from Zionist ideology.

This is a vast gap in the basic structures of identity, and the two communities (which are together 80% of all Jews) will have to start learning about each other in order to begin to understand each other better. In the meanwhile, it’s not legitimate to offer cheap and easy indictments of the other community. Israelis are fond of saying that American Jews are either disappearing or living on “borrowed time.” Both are false, and come from an Israeli misunderstanding of what it means to live one’s Jewishness as Americans. Some Americans (still a small minority) believe Israeli Jewish nationhood is somehow a warping of the essentially religious nature of Jewishness. True, it’s a deep change, but no deeper than the American spiritualization of Jewish identity. After all, the shtetl Jew was not merely an autonomous citizen with a spiritual affiliation. He was part of a feudal corporate system that identified Jews as a distinct group with distinct living areas and separate legal obligations.

Jews have been many different things in different periods, and both Americans and Israelis are new kinds of Jews. Neither is “wrong.”

As for Aharon Barak, again, this is a twist of the truth. Some of the influence of Halacha in Israeli law includes, for example, viewing the prostitute as the victim, and the pimp and client as its perpetrators. That Israel draws from millenia of Jewish legal thought is not bad, as long as it is subject to oversight over the question of equality and the Basic Laws.

There are more responses to my claims in the comments on Weiss’ site, but I can’t respond to them because I’m awaiting approval as a commentor. These include the claim that what I wrote about “German ethnic origin” in article 116 of the German constitution isn’t there at all. This is a strange complaint. Google it. It’s there. (Search “right of return” on Wikipedia to find it easily.) It refers to East European German-speakers in the post-war period who had nowhere else to go – but had never been citizens of Germany.

Another comment responds to my statements about Israeli marriage law by bringing up the debate over Palestinian family reunification across the Green Line. This is an important question – the Supreme Court decided it on one vote – and I’m happy to get into it if that’s necessary. It continues to be debated to this day. But it has nothing to do with marriage law. Can we stick to one topic at a time?

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JStreet. From left: Daniel Kohl, political director; Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder and executive director; Rachel Lerner, chief of staff. (NYT)

This policy was disastrous for Obama in Israel because it was spectacularly disconnected from reality. This wasn’t a demand for no geographic expansion of settlements (something Netanyahu has already committed to), but of no population growth.

Why is that shockingly stupid, you ask? For one thing, American officials publicly refused to distinguish between far-flung towns like Emmanuel and generations-old Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. For another, 960 children are born each year in settlements. Presumably Israel was expected to snatch these from their parents and sell them to the Chinese?

But none of that was as serious as the profound damage this elephant-in-a-china-shop policy did to the Palestinian Authority. With America demanding of the Israelis more than the PA seemed to demand, and then, because the demand was demonstrably stupid, suddenly withdrawing it, US diplomats left the PA with hat in hand facing an unprecedented wave of Arab excoriation for its “collaboration.”

I’m not saying Obama shouldn’t lead on peace, but he should do so competently and carefully. It wasn’t Bush’s Zionism that prevented peace in the past eight years, as Obama suggested to Jewish leaders back in July. It was Palestinian political dysfunction and ideological rejectionism. Remember the suicide bombings? Those were in Bush’s term, too.

Whether or not Obama gets this basic reality barely matters, since the Palestinians will explain it to him in short order. We know how to extract concessions from Israel for peace treaties, territorial withdrawals – even on the dismantling of settlements. Has anyone figured out how to extract a “yes” from the Palestinians?

So I couldn’t bring myself to share the excitement about JStreet, either for or against. It won’t bring peace because it’s barking up the wrong tree. But neither will it “undermine” or “betray” Israel’s security, since the ball will always stop, motionless, in the Palestinians’ court.

At some point, I figure, it is the Palestinians who will set the JStreet folks straight.

As I noted a month ago:

J-Street is not “Left” because its fundamental point of disagreement with AIPAC has nothing to do with the old division of peace vs. territorial redemption. Rather, J-Street stands out in the American Jewish landscape because it trusts Palestinian intentions and capabilities – a trust that, ultimately, it cannot convincingly explain to the rest of us.

Whatever its power becomes in Washington – and I suspect it will not be very great until J-Street wisens up on the only issue that distinguishes it – it will remain irrelevant on this side of the Atlantic. Lacking a healthy distrust of the intentions of the intransigent Palestinian leadership, it will lack any shred of credibility when it tries to convince Israelis to compromise once more for the sake of Palestinian freedom.

Now if only I could be as confident vis-a-vis JStreet’s stance on Iran, where its lack of support even for sanctions is just plain dangerous…

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Philip Weiss

Of all the events I’ve covered surrounding Jewish identity and Israel in the last year, none has given me so much pleasure as the lecture last night by Shlomo Sand at NYU on the Invention of the Jewish People.

Weiss’ joy surrounds Sand’s new history of the Jews – a history that rips away the old “Zionist” narratives and replaces them with a new story: the Jews are Khazars and Yemenites and Bergers. There’s no such thing as “Jewish peoplehood.” Israel is founded on a lie.

I’m all for intellectual stimulation, and I love new theories based on new historical evidence. Unfortunately, in Sand, I got neither. As Weiss points out:

Sand offered very little by way of evidence. You will find that in his “boring” book, he said. This was an aria not a chalktalk.

Will you? Or will you find more historical surmising based on partial records and incomplete theories? Elsewhere, Weiss reports Sand saying that:

…at the supposed time of the Exodus, the Egyptians also controlled Canaan. The kingdom of David and Solomon was not a kingdom at all, but a small settlement around Jerusalem.

I have a professor cousin who believes that King Solomon didn’t even exist. Sand isn’t radical in his historical reconstructions. In fact, his “discoveries” are really just run-of-the-mill and johnny-come-lately academic theories.

His error is not in the theories themselves, but in pretending to hold newly-obtained truths that spectacularly affirm his preexisting politics. It is this sleight-of-hand effort that transforms this project – like Weiss’ own pretense to scholarship – from honest critique to mere political hypocrisy.

How else to explain the confusion reflected in Weiss’ account. He quotes Sand:

“I don’t deny Jewish identity. I’m not fighting against someone’s identity. There is identity of homosexuals. They are not a people. We are composed of a lot of identities.”

Shlomo Sand

“I am anti-racist. And an anti-anti-semite,” he said. “But look at me, do you think I hate the Jewish?” More devil eyes flashing. “I don’t hate myself… I hate the Jewish people? But that doesn’t exist. How can I hate something that doesn’t exist?”

So the Jewish identity he is emphatically not fighting against – does not exist. Did you get that?

You can argue Jewish nationhood is antithetical to, oh, Jewish religiosity (as do some haredim) or universal liberal values (as do some on the radical left). But faced with millions of people that believe that they personally constitute a Jewish nation, does it make any kind of sense to say it doesn’t exist?

Identities are decided by the people who hold them, not by the politicized professors who oppose them.

Leaving identity behind, we then have another example of what I am beginning to call the anti-Israel “errors-by-labeling.” Here, Sand creates a definition of democracy which, well, removes much of the free world from the democratic camp.

When Sand said that Israel was not a democracy, and a Zionist called out, “It is a flawed democracy,” Sand bellowed. No: a democracy is founded on the idea that the people are the sovereign, that the people own the state. That is the first principle of a republic going back to Rousseau. Liberalism and civil rights are not the core. Yes, Israel is a liberal society. It tolerates Shlomo Sand’s heresy, for instance, and puts him on TV. But it is a liberal ethnocracy.

His theories on Ashkenazim carrying Khazar blood – interesting. His theories on Jewish roots of the Palestinians – fascinating. But this? This is just stupid.

Sand's book

Israel’s “ethnocracy” is the standard among democracies, not the exception. In fact, only two states share Sand’s view that the state belongs to the sum of its residents or citizens: the US and France.

A good example is in a survey of the “rights of return” of various democracies – a right granted to non-citizen “affinity Diasporas.” Such a “right of return” is not the province only of Zionists (or of the future Palestine). In fact, it is shared by these fine states:

There is Germany (link is PDF), whose constitution, in article 116, recognizes something called “German ethnic origin” as a grantor of automatic citizenship.

India allows “Indians by descent” easier access to full citizenship than other residents.

And Finland, which despite defining itself as a “state of all its citizens” still grants special naturalization rights to ethnic Finns who have lived for centuries in areas under Russian or Czarist sovereignty.

Lithuania’s constitution is explicit (article 32.4) that “Every Lithuanian person may settle in Lithuania” – a right granted not to absentee citizens (which would be obvious), but to non-citizen ethnic Lithuanians.

How about democratic Armenia? Article 14 of its Constitution states: “Individuals of Armenian origin shall acquire citizenship of the Republic of Armenia through a simplified procedure.”

Or Bulgaria, whose constitution (Article 25.2) states: “A person of Bulgarian origin shall acquire Bulgarian citizenship through a facilitated procedure.”

Or Greece, whose constitution (article 108) decrees that:

The State must take care for emigrant Greeks and for the maintenance of their ties with the Fatherland. The State shall also attend to the education, the social and professional advancement of Greeks working outside the State.

It was Greece that granted automatic citizenship to Ukrainians after the fall of the Iron Curtain merely because they belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church.

Even Israel’s national religion – something I have written against often – is not unusual among the democracies. Both Greece and Ireland place a single national religion above others and give it constitutional status that has made it synonymous with national identity. Thus Greece’s constitution assures us that:

The prevailing religion in Greece is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ. The Orthodox Church of Greece, acknowledging our Lord Jesus Christ as its head, is inseparably united in doctrine with the Great Church of Christ in Constantinople and with every other Church of Christ of the same doctrine, observing unwaveringly, as they do, the holy apostolic and synodal canons and sacred traditions.

Similarly, the Preamble to Ireland’s constitution:

In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred,
We, the people of Éire,
Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial,
…
Do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves this Constitution.

And on and on. If Israel’s “ethnocracy” is not democratic, we need a whole new set of words. Because then neither is India, Japan, all of Eastern Europe, Ireland, Germany or Mexico.

What do we learn from this latest example of intellectual laziness? Beware unfounded labels, and call out those who use them.

Related posts:

1. Thank you Tony Judt
2. NYT politely calls Shlomo Sand a liar
3. On marriage and racism

David Makovsky

Could he be right?

Where does this optimism, which is apparently shared by the Obama administration, come from? Are the Americans impervious to the experiences of the past 16 years of peacemaking?

Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, says Makovsky. “Sometimes the news is what isn’t reported.”

What isn’t being reported is the quiet revolution taking place in the West Bank under Salam Fayyad, one that should impress even the more fatalist of cynics, he adds.

The Hamas takeover in Gaza in 2007 “was an unbelievable wakeup call that made the PA understand that Hamas is coming to the West Bank if they don’t get their act together.” For the Israelis, too, “the alternative to Salam Fayyad is not the Hadassah women of Brooklyn. It’s Hamas that will pick up the pieces.”

This has created a whole new willingness to work together that has not been seen since Oslo.

“Since 1996, [in the wake of the Hamas terror attacks of that year,] we’ve been hearing about the ‘revolving doors’ of the Palestinian security services – that the Palestinians arrest the Hamas guys and let them go. They’re not doing that anymore. There are 800 Hamas prisoners in [PA jails in] the West Bank.”

In the religious sphere, too, “they’re moving imams out of the mosques. There are 1,800 mosques [in the West Bank] and the PA is slowly changing their imams” from those sympathetic to Hamas’ message of destroying Israel to others more willing to compromise in order to end the conflict.

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So, without dumping this farce on Obama’s doorstep, let me add a fact I’m not sure everyone has yet realized: the deadline for his nomination was February 1.

He didn’t win the Nobel for the past nine months in office, which might theoretically be enough to do something grand if you’re the president of the United States. For instance, giving 40 million Americans health insurance could count as a serious project for the betterment of humanity.

But no. Obama won the Nobel for what he had achieved in the first 12 days of his presidency.

Tom Friedman has a wicked and wonderful and very moral idea. He urges Obama to accept the award not in his name, but in the name of American soldiers:

“As I said on the day it was announced, ‘I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize.’ Therefore, upon reflection, I cannot accept this award on my behalf at all.

“But I will accept it on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century — the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

…

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers who stand guard today at outposts in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan to give that country, and particularly its women and girls, a chance to live a decent life free from the Taliban’s religious totalitarianism.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American men and women who are still on patrol today in Iraq, helping to protect Baghdad’s fledgling government as it tries to organize the rarest of things in that country and that region — another free and fair election.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the thousands of American soldiers who today help protect a free and Democratic South Korea from an unfree and Communist North Korea.

…

“Members of the Nobel committee, I accept this award on behalf of all these American men and women soldiers, past and present, because I know — and I want you to know — that there is no peace without peacekeepers.

Of course, this would be impolite. He was given the award for shying away from American power, not for defending its recent record. But it would be a smart political move for Obama, who has a credibility problem internally on his vast domestic agenda and externally on Afghanistan.

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Prof. Ada Yonath

(As Noah Pollack notes in a blog over at Commentary, news of the Israeli woman’s triumph comes on the same day that Hamas bans Gaza women from riding motorcycles.)

But there is another angle to this story that is perhaps more interesting: the recurring question about patenting biomedical techniques. Yonath was part of a team that discovered a new way of modeling the action of ribosomes, which are the chemical machines that transform the DNA “blueprint” into cellular structures. This discovery opened up new directions of research into antibiotics.

It was a wonderful discovery, but here’s the question: Should Yale University be holding a patent on the knowledge discovered by Yonath and her colleagues?

YalePatents.org opposes the patenting of “basic biological discoveries” on the grounds that limiting scientific research through commercial licensing harms research and delays the discovery of cures.

Weighing in on the latest Nobel, the site authors wonder whether “research so fundamental to life, such as the ribosome structure, [should] be locked up for commercial gain – like [Nobel's original discovery] Dynamite? Should a private institution, such as Yale, have the only say over how ribosomes may be developed into new biomedical technologies?”

In other words, should a fact of nature be off-limits to all but the original discoverer (or their funder)?

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Manouchehr Mottaki

The Iranian regime-run website Tabnak quotes Asharq Alawsat (cleaned up translation):

Asharq Alawsat quoted Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying, “We will present our complaint regarding the kidnapping of our nuclear scientists to international organizations.”

The London-based Arab newspaper added: “Mottaki believes that the four Iranian nuclear experts have been kidnapped and that they are presently being held by the US in a country of the US’s choosing.” Based on the report, an individual by the name of Shahram Amiri is believed by Mottaki to have been kidnapped last month in Saudi Arabia and so far has not been heard from.

Mottaki also claims that Alireza Asgari, former deputy defense minister, was also kidnapped in Turkey. The third individual, known only as Ardebili, is said to have been kidnapped in Georgia. The fourth nuclear scientist allegedly kidnapped is Nasrollah Tajik, the former Iranian ambassador to the UK.

Asharq Alawsat also claims that these four were the source for the discovery by Western intelligence of the second uranium enrichment installation near Qom, and that the Islamic Republic is extremely upset by this development. Though the news of Shahram Amiri’s kidnapping has been previously discussed by a Mottaki spokesman, it is the first time anything has been publicized about Ardebili.

On September 8, the Kayhan news service quoted the government-controlled Press TV about one of the missing scientists:

Saudis Not Cooperative on Missing Pilgrim

TEHRAN (Press TV) – Iran said on Monday that it has not received any clear response from Saudi Arabia’s officials regarding a missing Iranian pilgrim.
“We have provided Saudi Arabia’s police, security officials and Hajj Organization with all information and documents regarding the pilgrim (Shahram Amiri) who went missing in the Saudi land,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hassan Qashqavi said.
“But, we have not received any clear response from Saudi Arabia’s officials regarding the case,” he went on to say.

And finally, Meir Javedanfar wondered yesterday about the significance of these media stories:

In the current war of intelligence between Iran and West, distinguishing between rumors and real genuine breakthroughs is sometimes difficult. The case of Mr. Amiri and Ardebili are a perfect example. The West could have scored major victories, if they are nuclear scientists. However at the same time, it may at the end be proved that both were innocent cases which received excessive media coverage.

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First, Shmuley Boteach, publicist-rabbi extraordinaire, tackles the moral conundrum that is Jimmy Carter. Boteach has a habit of saying things in a succinct and clever way, so it’s a pleasure to read how he structures the argument.

The take-away: It’s one thing to worry about Palestine, quite another to blame Israel alone for the lack of peace. It’s one thing to seek dialogue, quite another to side with a string of failed dictators over four decades. So what’s Carter’s deal, anyway?

You’ve got to hand it to Jimmy Carter. No matter how wrong he is, no matter how many times he is refuted, no matter how inane his ramblings, he just keeps on coming back. Forget that he was eviscerated in a landslide election. And forget that historians and the public rate him as the worst president of all time. Carter doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. We’re stuck with him forever.

For example, on Carter’s accusation of racism in the opposition to Obama, Boteach notes:

Obama himself disagreed. More importantly, Obama’s biggest critics like him a lot more than the ex-president, even though Jimmy is a white man.

Is Carter criminally naive?

Carter, I have argued, is not so much an anti-Semite as he is what Lenin famously called, ‘a useful idiot,’ his mistake being to always side with the weaker party, notwithstanding their immorality. Let us never forget that the Carter administration tried to view the Khmer Rouge as the rightful government of Cambodia even though they slaughtered one out of three Cambodians. For Carter, weakness is itself a sign of righteousness.

Or is he an anti-Semite?

Therefore, when Carter said in 2006 that Israel’s policies in the West Bank were actually worse than apartheid South Africa, I began to question whether my readers were right. When he added in his 2009 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy that due to “powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the US, Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate our media,” I said to myself that anyone who rolls out the old Jews-control-the-world theory probably is an anti-Semite.

But no, Boteach concludes. He’s nothing so dramatic. He’s just a man who accepted “millions of dollars”

from leading Arab sources, including Saudi King Fahd, the now-defunct BCCI bank, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and Agha Hasan Abedi, among others. These millions, some of which even went to bail out the Carter peanut business in the late 1970s, finally vindicated my earlier theory.

Jimmy Carter is not an anti-Semite. He is simply a man with a price.

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The American B-1B strategic bomber - I'm just saying...

The AJC survey revealed that 56% of American Jews would support, and 36% would oppose, United States military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. A year ago, the AJC survey found that 42% would support the U.S. taking military action against Iran, while 47% were opposed.

And, in another sign of heightening concern about Iran’s nuclear program, 66 percent would support, and 28 percent would oppose, Israel taking military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.

On the peace process:

In response to a new AJC survey question, 94% of American Jews agree that the Palestinians should be “required to recognize Israel as a Jewish state in a final peace agreement.”

Demonstrating American Jews’ skepticism of Arab intentions regarding Israel, 75% agree, and 19% disagree, with the statement, “The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel.” In the 2007 survey, 82% agreed and 12% disagreed.

Nonetheless, regarding the establishment of a Palestinian state, 49% favor that outcome, and 41% are opposed. In AJC’s 2007 survey, 46% were in favor and 43% opposed.

On settlements:

The AJC survey found that a majority, 51% of U.S. Jews, disagree with the Obama Administration’s call for a stop to all new Israeli settlement construction, while 41% agree with that tactic.

Among the denominations, 74% of Orthodox, 62% of Conservative, and 46% of Reform Jews disapprove of the call for a full settlement freeze.

Still, there is wide recognition among American Jews that the question of settlements is a topic to be resolved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. When put in that context, most American Jews say Israel should be willing to dismantle all (8%) or some (52%) of the settlements as part of a permanent peace settlement with the Palestinians. 37% oppose dismantling any.

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Ahmadinejad in Natanz, April 2008

That Iran has secret nuclear facilities beyond its acknowledged ones is knuckle-draggingly obvious to all but the Jimmy Carter crowd. The revelation today that Western countries know about them is a minor relief. But that’s not the really good news.

Here’s the really good news (collated from the CNN and the New York Times) stories:

Obama: The new facility “is inconsistent with a peaceful (nuclear) program,” Obama said. “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow.” The newly revealed site “represents a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime.”

Brown: “The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community. The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.”

Sarkozy: Iran “is taking the international community on a dangerous path,” and has two months to comply before crippling sanctions are imposed.

There are all sorts of ways to respond to this news: shrugging, promising a reinvigorated “engagement,” outright anger. It’s profoundly important that Obama, and some of his closest allies, have finally chosen anger.

It barely needs to be noted that an Iranian nuclear weapon is not just an Israeli problem. A nuke-backed Hizbullah will be the end of Lebanon. It will trigger an Arab scramble for parity that will bring nukes to Egypt and Saudi Arabia in short order. It will make the current Pakistani proliferation problem seem like child’s play.

If Obama wants to “engage” before resorting to paralyzing sanctions or even force, fine. But he has to do it in Middle Eastern fashion, with a clear sense of when he’s being cheated and a clearer willingness to up the ante in a game that, for the sake of all mankind, he really can’t lose.

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US troops over southern Afghanistan

The New York Times, which vociferously opposes the murder of noncombatants, was indirectly involved in the deaths of women, children and other civilians just a week ago. It happened near Kunduz, Afghanistan, when British and Afghani commandos liberated kidnapped Times journalist Stephen Farrell: Civilians were caught in the cross-fire and killed, as was Farrell’s Afghani interpreter.

Had the Times, a bastion of opposition to harming to civilians in war zones, known that civilians would be killed in the rescue, would it have preferred that the operation be called off, and that Farrell remain in the hands of his captors? What will it write if a similar operation is undertaken to release Gilad Schalit?

Unlike journalists, governments and field commanders deal with this dilemma every day. It is easy to decide when the target is a battalion of tanks in the desert. But it is more complex when the threat to a military unit comes from within a civilian environment – the very civilians the unit has been sent to protect. Ignoring the nature of military action is the height of hypocrisy.

Forget about investigating China, Somalia, etc. – which Israeli spokespeople are rightly noting is not on the agenda of the Human Rights Council – but where is the international investigation of American actions in Afghanistan? Oren notes:

In that same Afghan strip of land known as Kunduz, dozens of civilians were killed this month in an air strike carried out by American warplanes looking to provide cover fire for German forces on the ground. The incident is still being investigated, yet it is believed that the civilians did not die as a result of the actual bombing of fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban and which could later be used as mobile bombs against the Germans. Rather, the deaths are believed to have occurred as a result of explosions which took place after the air strikes, when civilians are believed to have tried to extract fuel from the tankers.

What other conclusion is there except this one?

In the end, it is not about the law, but about power, military and political. Goldstone is now free to go to Kunduz, but American might means there is no chance that he will.

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Chavez and Putin, Sept. 10, 2009 (AP)

First, Chavez announced he wants a nuclear program. But it’s okay, he said, because like Iran, his would be peaceful:

The Venezuelan leader is already dismissing critics’ concerns over his nuclear ambitions, offering assurances his aims are peaceful and that Venezuela will simply be following in the footsteps of other South American nations using atomic energy.

“I say it before the world: Venezuela is going to start the process of developing nuclear energy, but we’re not going to make an atomic bomb, so don’t be bothering us afterward … (with) something like what they have against Iran,” Chavez said Sunday.

The socialist president is closely allied with Iran and defends its nuclear program while the U.S. and other countries accuse Tehran of having a secret nuclear weapons program.

Who would actually sell crazy-man Chavez a nuclear reactor? Why, Russia, of course!

Yet his project remains in its planning stages and still faces a host of practical hurdles, likely requiring billions of dollars, as well as technology and expertise that Venezuela lacks.

Russia has offered to help bridge that gap, and Chavez has announced that the two countries have created an atomic energy commission.

The role of enabler of the nuclear ambitions of sketchy quasi-dictators seems to be par for the course for Russia right now (this paragraph about two-thirds of the way down):

Indeed, a senior Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday that Jerusalem was concerned that Russia was playing the role of “the wrench in the works” when it came to international pressure on Iran. “All the other nations are roughly on the same page. China seems to be taking its cue from Russia. It’s Russia that’s saying this [Iranian proposal] is something we can work with,” said the official.

In other happy-go-lucky Venezuela news, Venezuela’s foreign minister blamed US support for Columbia for the country’s growing arms purchases:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced a string of recent contracts with Moscow to buy 24 advanced fighter jets, 92 battle tanks and 300 surface-to-air missiles among other weapons acquisitions. The total value of the deals is more than six billion dollars.

A fierce US critic, Chavez has said the arms are not to threaten neighboring countries but a response to threats he sees from the US “empire” wanting to invade his oil-rich nation.

You get the general trend? Last Thursday, the Washington Post finally did.

Huge hat tip: Mere Rhetoric

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NYT's dramatic view of J-Street. From left: Daniel Kohl, political director; Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder and executive director; Rachel Lerner, chief of staff.

Ben-David’s key point is that J-Street is not “pro-Israel,” but a pro-Obama infiltrator into the pro-Israel camp. Now, I don’t know J-Street’s top honcho Jeremy Ben-Ami personally, so I can’t say with confidence whether Ben-David is right or wrong. But I think the criticism is misguided in the sense that J-Street’s error is even more fundamental if its intentions are good and honorable.

J-Street is not so much wrong on Israel as it is lost.

When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is no real division nowadays between Right and Left, only between those who understand that Palestinian intransigence and dysfunction make the price of an Israeli pullout too high, and those who don’t. After Gaza and Sinai, with some 35 settlements uprooted and tens of thousands of settlers resettled, how can anyone believe that settlements are permanent and Israel, given the prospect of genuine peace, wouldn’t remove them?

I’m not saying settlements are right or wrong – that’s a different discussion. I’m saying that the settlements would certainly be gone by now had the past 10 years not included hundreds of dead Israelis due to terror assaults on our pizzerias and the near-certain reality that the withdrawal of the IDF from Kalkilya will result in rockets falling on our only international airport.

It’s easy to see why the terror of the past decade has gone out of sight and out of mind for most in the West ever since the IDF forcibly dismantled the Palestinian terror infrastructure – including the Fatah’s – and took the issue out of the news cycle. But we Israelis haven’t forgotten quite so easily what was, on an Israeli scale, almost three-dozen 9/11s.

J-Street is not “Left” because its fundamental point of disagreement with AIPAC has nothing to do with the old division of peace vs. territorial redemption. Rather, J-Street stands out in the American Jewish landscape because it trusts Palestinian intentions and capabilities – a trust that, ultimately, it cannot convincingly explain to the rest of us.

Whatever its power becomes in Washington – and I suspect it will not be very great until J-Street wisens up on the only issue that distinguishes it – it will remain irrelevant on this side of the Atlantic. Lacking a healthy distrust of the intentions of the intransigent Palestinian leadership, it will lack any shred of credibility when it tries to convince Israelis to compromise once more for the sake of Palestinian freedom.

UPDATE: J-Street has launched an initiative to campaign for a two-state solution on American campuses. Once again, it shows how strangely disconnected it is from reality. There are few things Israelis and Palestinians agree on more than that they do not want to live in each other’s state. The two-state solution is a given – even for Bibi.

How about campaigning to make sure that any future Fatah-Hamas reunification does not oust Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the man bringing real reform and economic revival to Palestine?

UPDATE 2: Lenny Ben-David responds via Facebook:

Haviv — good questions and good blog. I don’t share your belief in J Street’s naivete. I respect (don’t have to agree) transparent orgs like Peace Now America and IPF — after the hate-full Rosenberg left. But too much is hidden in J Street – $, motives, backers. They don’t reflect the opinion of anyone in Israel unlike other orgs. J St isn’t lost; they’re following a path mapped out and paved for them. But by whom?

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