The State of the Jews

Is the Palestinian Diaspora part of the solution?

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:42:04 +0000

This is worth following. Could an affluent, Western Palestinian Diaspora be part of the solution?

Here’s an attempt to create some kind of ‘Palestinian Agency’:

The state of Palestine does not exist; the courts are still not working, local government has numerous problems, not to mention health care, education and infrastructure. Representatives of Palestinian communities abroad have come to Bethlehem to kick off the independent “Palestine Network.”

“Welcome to your second home,” announces Ramzi Khoury, executive director of the Palestine Network. “You are representatives from 23 countries who have chosen to be engaged in building this Palestinian state and not just talking about it. This is a do tank, rather than a talk tank. This is not a political club.”

…

“If you want to build a democratic state, you need to tackle all the sectors of that state,” Khoury says. “So doctors need to come down here and revamp our health system, engineers need to come here and help us build, lawyers and judges need to come and help us create an independent judiciary and a state of law, and we need educators.”

The Palestine Network is not just another charity or source of funding. The Palestinians have many economic backers. In 2008, global financial aid to the Palestinian Authority exceeded $2 billion, including about $526 million from Arab countries, $651m. from the European Union, $300m. from the US and about $238m. from the World Bank, according to the Arab League’s 2009 economic report.

The founding conference, sponsored by the governments of Germany and Belgium, was held in the opulent Convention Center on the outskirts of Bethlehem, hub of Palestinian culture and tourism.

The network’s goal is to use expertise from Palestine’s diaspora communities to develop the local economy, judiciary, education and health infrastructures in what will be the future state.

Why, in Palestine, is Baruch Goldstein a hero?

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:31:24 +0000

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.

Can Dubai happen again?

admin — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:17:13 +0000

Only if you’re willing to get caught:

The spread of technology of the kind that uncovered the Dubai operation has permanently altered the rules, wrote Yossi Melman, Haaretz’s intelligence correspondent. “The conclusion could be that the era of heroic operations in the style of James Bond movies is close to its end.”

Inspired by Dubai’s success, neighboring Abu Dhabi announced Wednesday that it would spend more than $120 million to blanket the city with surveillance cameras.

Today, said Gad Shimron, a field operative for the Mossad in the 1970s and 1980s, agents risk leaving electronic footprints everywhere: credit card charges, passport information in airport computers and easily traced cell phone calls. As Dubai demonstrated, they must also plan for the possibility that law enforcement will be able to put the pieces together.

Stop donating to basic symbols of Israeli statehood

Haviv — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:30:34 +0000

I’m back to blogging after a hectic couple of months that included reserve duty and getting back into my studies. Here are some recent issues that came up that shouldn’t go unnoticed.

When Sheldon Adelson was feted like a head of state at 2008’s lavish star-studded President’s Conference – because he had paid for it – popular Yediot Ahronot columnist Nahum Barnea said (I’m paraphrasing), “someone bought my country’s birthday for $3 million.”

Now, Israel is accepting money from the Rothschild Foundation to conduct “emergency repairs” at the President’s House – the official residence of our head of state.

There’s something disturbing in this trend of allowing others, even well-meaning Jews, to finance Israel’s basic symbols of sovereignty.

It’s not as though we are a frugal nation. Millions of shekels are spent each year on unnecessary ministries (not satisfied with several ministers-without-portfolio, this government actually has a deputy minister-without-portfolio), hundreds of millions of shekels on one ugly bridge in Jerusalem and redundant, politically-inspired “projects” that eat up huge chunks of the budget of the Education Ministry.

If we can’t pony up $500,000 for “emergency repairs” at the President’s House or $3,000,000 for the national birthday party, then we don’t actually care about either.

Try to imagine the White House holding off on urgent repairs until they got matching funds from the Ford Foundation.

From eJewishPhilanthropy:

Israel’s Cabinet is expected to approve today acceptance of a $500,000 grant from the Rothschild Foundation to carry our emergency repairs at Beit Ha’Nassi, the official residence of Israel’s President. This will cover approximately half the cost of needed structural repairs caused by years of neglect at the complex. The Ministry of Finance has issued the necessary sign-offs.

Completed in 1971, with no infrastructure updates since, the complex suffers from – among other things – faulty wiring, serious mold issues, and a lack of adequate facilities for official receptions and press coverage. Last year, Peres was able to secure government approval for a $3 million grounds overhaul paid for by the Jewish National Fund prior to the visit of Pope Benedict XVI.

Assuming approval, work is planned to begin immediately.

Forward March

Haviv — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:25:33 +0000

I’m off to Miluim and will return with lots of zest in about a month or so. Keeping the Jewish State safe and sound is tough work.

Go ahead, pressure Israel

Haviv — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:59:34 +0000

Henry Siegman, former head of the American Jewish Congress, continues his effort to punish and pressure Israel into more concessions toward the Palestinians. Writing in The Nation, he warns:

Israel’s relentless drive to establish “facts on the ground” in the occupied West Bank, a drive that continues in violation of even the limited settlement freeze to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed himself, seems finally to have succeeded in locking in the irreversibility of its colonial project. As a result of that “achievement,” one that successive Israeli governments have long sought in order to preclude the possibility of a two-state solution, Israel has crossed the threshold from “the only democracy in the Middle East” to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.

Don’t believe it. Siegman’s vision suffers from a disparity between the real Israel and the Israel he believes he knows.

For example, he argues that “it is now widely recognized in most Israeli circles–although denied by Israel’s government–that the settlements have become so widespread and so deeply implanted in the West Bank as to rule out the possibility of their removal (except for a few isolated and sparsely populated ones) by this or any future Israeli government unless compelled to do so by international intervention, an eventuality until now considered entirely unlikely.”

Really? When over 80% of settlers live on 5% of the West Bank, most of it adjacent to the Green Line, when the popular reaction to the Disengagement from Gaza was an overwhelming yawn – no Galilee bed-and-breakfast and no Tel Aviv beach was empty during those two ostensibly traumatic weeks in August 2005.

The settlements can be removed, and the vast centrist Israeli mainstream that has so far escaped the notice of an ignorant world media will implement this removal. But only when it knows that the Palestinians won’t use the withdrawal from the West Bank the way they used the one from Gaza.

In short, Siegman is not a serious observer of Israel.

In 2008, he wrote another piece in the Nation seeking to prove Israel’s dishonesty in peacemaking. His sole proof: the settlements. Always the settlements.

It would be one thing if Israeli governments had insisted on delaying a Palestinian state until certain security concerns had been dealt with. But no government serious about a two-state solution to the conflict would have pursued, without letup, the theft and fragmentation of Palestinian lands, which even a child understands makes Palestinian statehood impossible.

I’m a big fan of American Jews taking Israel to the cleaners. I am genuinely mystified at their failure to protest the corrupt Israeli rabbinate’s efforts to define who is Jewish, or the complete absence of education about the Diaspora in all 12 years of an Israeli’s schooling, or the lack of Israeli support for Diaspora education while Israel joyfully drinks up American Jewish love and money with barely an acknowledging nod.

But the criticism on the peace process is not serious, and is repeatedly disproven by events. To insist on punishing Israel at this stage, Siegman must ignore the simple glaring fact that the Palestinians are refusing to prove the Israelis’ intransigence through, um, negotiating.

Yes, there are settlements. And yes, the settlement movement is a serious constituency with a resonant narrative. So it would be excruciatingly difficult for Netanyahu to take on the entire far-right unless he can show the mainstream that there is a reason to do so.

But it is also true that the settlers have lost every time they were challenged – in Sinai, Gaza and the current extra-Jerusalemite freeze. The broader culture war within Israel over the past two decades has left them marginalized politically. It is only Palestinian brutality that has left the majority of the settlements intact.

To seriously suggest further punishment of Israel without giving even casual consideration to the simple fact that the Palestinians have yet to concede anything in 17 years of negotiations – not even simple rhetorical gestures such as recognition of the Jews’ right to self-determination – is either stupid or willfully disingenuous.

You don’t trust Netanyahu? Fine. But right now, it isn’t Netanyahu that has to prove his good faith and capacity for peacemaking.

Pressure Israel all you want. As Obama has discovered in recent months, the Palestinians will only up their demands and push off the inevitable compromise.

'Birthright has follow-up, even if it's hard to see'

Haviv — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:27:31 +0000

Last week, I argued that Taglit-birthright israel is an astonishing, unexpected success, but that the communities that send their young people to it have failed them by neglecting any follow-up programming. Thus, the experience doesn’t get a chance to transform into a long-term identity-building relationship with the Jewish world.

Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner, who directs one of the largest post-birthright programs in North America, begs to differ.

The JPost published a short letter from him. I’m publishing the full text (which he emailed me).

Post-birthright programs, he says, are “invisible” beside the thousands of birthright buses crisscrossing Israel. But they’re there, and they’re huge.

Birthright Israel’s Post-Trip Doubling Effect

Rabbi Daniel S Brenner

In his opinion piece on December 30th, 2009 Haviv Rettig Gur writes regarding Taglit- Birthright Israel “these connections are wasted if they are not directed at new Jewish experiences back home.” He ends the piece with a short question: “Where’s the follow-up?”

The work of “follow-up” is not as apparent to the public eye as the sight of hundreds of Taglit- banner buses on Israel’s roads. But since I have the pleasure of working with a young staff who have succeeded in providing new Jewish experiences to over fifty thousand Taglit-Birthright Israel alumni in North America during the past year, I have the opportunity to see the follow-up every day. Here is one example:

In 2009, the total number of Taglit-Birthright Israel North American trip participants for 2009 was just shy of 19,000. In the last few months, we have worked with volunteer leaders from those buses to host over 12,200 young adults for home-hospitality Shabbat meals in North America. 93% of our NEXT Shabbat meals involved some or all of the core ritual elements of Shabbat. More importantly, we found that nearly every volunteer felt that this was a positive Jewish communal experience and wanted to host again and get more involved in their local community. By the end of 2010, volunteers from this group of 19,000 trip participants will have hosted over 30,000 young adults for a NEXT Shabbat event.

This particular program is one of four areas of focus for Birthright Israel NEXT that begin on the trip and flow naturally into involvement post-trip (the others being Hebrew language learning, deepening the Israel connection and encouraging community involvement). In addition to the Shabbat program, Birthright Israel NEXT runs ulpanim for young adults in ten North American cities, works with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through local consulates in select cities to deepen ties to Israel, and has involved thousands of post-college young Jewish adults by partnering with local Jewish and Israel-focused organizations (we linked up with thirty-two such organizations in the last year). It is through these four areas (and through many partners) that we are on track to involve 100,000 young Jewish adults in our programming in 2010.

These figures do not count the “ramping up” of programs from our on campus partner Hillel and from our colleagues at MASA, two organizations who have certainly devoted significant energy to “Birthright follow-up” in the last two years. Nor do they include the work of forward-thinking Federations, like the CJP in Boston, that have adopted new models on campus that are delivering follow-up success.

Gur asks the right questions, but I would like to offer a counter-analysis. Those young adults who go on Taglit-Birthright Israel trips and then get involved in Birthright Israel NEXT or with campus-based partners are actually doubling and in many cases quadrupling the overall impact of the trip. In our programs, we see young Jewish women and men come off of their Israel trips with a spark of energy that causes them to reach out to their friends (most of whom have not gone to Israel) and involve them in Jewish life. As a result they are transforming their social circles and injecting Jewish content and Jewish experiences in ways that they never did before. Our job at NEXT is to work within these social circles and to provide critical initial steps that will help grow sparks into new commitments. Those commitments, however, ultimately require the active engagement of young adults by the entire Jewish community. We hope to partner with many more community-based organizations, both established and emerging, as we continue to grow.

Although it is often unseen, Taglit-Birthright Israel participants are quietly transforming their generation in North America and every Jewish organization has the potential to benefit from their renewed passion for Israel and for Jewish life.

Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner
Executive Director
Birthright Israel NEXT

'Even if American olim come, Israel is doomed'

Haviv — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:24:29 +0000

UPDATE: Dan Ben-David rejects the Ha’aretz headline, which he says was a misinterpretation that stretched his original words to places he did not intend. If anything, he notes, folks such as the immigrant volunteer soldiers from Western lands are keeping Israel afloat despite its deep structural problems.

Regardless of the mistakes in this article or the debate raging at JPost about aliya, I urge you to delve into Ben-David’s research and advocacy, a good sample of which was published this Friday in Ha’aretz.

I leave the post up only because I’m loathe to change (too much) the original record. But Ben-David says he emphatically does not mean to discourage aliya, and that his words were misunderstood and taken out of context.

ORIGINAL: First, the JPost claimed aliya from America won’t come. Now Ha’aretz is reporting that even if it does, Israel is doomed.

Here, Ha’aretz reports on a lecture by Prof. Dan Ben-David about how Anglo aliya won’t reverse the destructive social trends that everyone seems to be ignoring.

The boost in Anglo immigration in 2009 will not help ensure Israel’s survival as a Western and Jewish democracy over the next two decades, a leading economist told an astonished crowd of lone immigrant soldiers on Wednesday. “It feels strange to say this to people who chose Israel, but our current trend means fewer people will come here and more will leave as our position deteriorates.”

He told the crowd that Israeli society’s situation is “unsustainable” because of a “growing group which does not work, does not study and does not produce.”

This group, of course, are large swaths of the Arab and Ultra-Orthodox minorities.

If you don’t know Ben-David’s research, you’re seriously behind the curve. Forget the peace process – this stuff is what will make or break Israel’s future.

Extra! Extra! A Jewish story leads YNet!

Haviv — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:35:27 +0000

Unbelievable. A once-in-a-decade event. Enjoy it while it lasts. YNet, the largest Israeli news site (in Hebrew, at least) is leading with a story about the next Jewish decade.

Of course, the story is negative, predicting a shrinking Diaspora and a demographic crisis in Israel. But at least we’ve discovered how to punch through Israeli media’s deep disdain for Jewish issues: wait a decade, make it grim.

Here it is, preserved as evidence of this rare event:

Haredi rabbis force closure of haredi websites

Haviv — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 11:02:07 +0000

Anshel Pfeffer, my colleague at Ha’aretz, reports from the frontlines of the ongoing intra-haredi culture war in Israel:

Two Charedi news websites closed down this week and a wave of resignations has hit other sites following the strictest rabbinical ruling against the internet to date.

A letter signed two weeks ago by some of the most senior rabbis of the Charedi community in Israel, including Rabbis Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Aharon Leib Steinman and the leaders of the main Chasidic sects, reiterates a “severe prohibition of private usage of internet in every home”.

But it particularly singled out the ostensibly Charedi websites which have flourished in recent years, supplying insider news and gossip to tens of thousands of eager readers.

These sites, according to the letter, disseminate “lies and terrible impurity”, besmirch the community and cause many to “use the filthy internet which has caused many to commit many serious sins of the Torah of a nature that should not be mentioned”.

The result so far is that two websites, which had invested large sums in design and a team of reporters and editors, have already closed down. Other sites which are trying to hold out have suffered a rash of resignations by editors and writers who are afraid of the consequences of defying their rabbis.

Hat tip: Religion and State in Israel

Thank you Tony Judt

Haviv — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:18:35 +0000

Emmanuel Navon

A wonderful discovery, Dr. Emmanuel Navon of Tel Aviv University and his blog For the Sake of Zion.

He expresses beautifully the consensus feeling among most Israelis. Shlomo Sand may be sexy in a certain foreign milieu, but he is so radically disconnected from the Israeli discourse and Israeli identity that no one even bothers to challenge him here. The Jewishness of the Israeli state is so obvious, and ethnic Jewish identification so universal that Sand is little more than a circus curiosity in this country. Only abroad, among those profoundly ignorant and exceedingly loud about Israel, can he find his groupies.

Navon’s latest captures the hypocrisy of the likes of Tony Judt and Sand, and should be read by, well, Judt and Sand. Unfortunately, their academic credentials don’t seem to drive them to self-critical reflection.

One wonders what happens when Navon and Sand pass each other in the hallways of Tel Aviv University.

Anyway, here’s Navon:

The understandable frustration with the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has led some people to suggest that, for the conflict to abate, one of the two protagonists must give up. But what if both sides prove relentless forever? A Freudian answer to that question has recently been devised by (you guessed it) Jews: explain to the Jews (but not to the Palestinians, Heaven forbid), that they don’t actually exist, and they will stop fighting for their “imagined self.”

It is logically undisputable that there would be no Israeli-Palestinian conflict if there were no Israelis or no Palestinians (or both); that there would be no anti-Semitism if Jews didn’t exist (though even that is debatable); and that there would be no car accidents if cars hadn’t been invented….

This is the underlying argument that Shlomo Sand is promoting in his book The Invention of the Jewish People. A historian of modern French and European history at Tel-Aviv University, Sand is no expert in the Ancient Middle East and in Jewish history. His book has been dismissed and ridiculed by scholars of Jewish history as a cheap and embarrassing piece of falsifications and propaganda. Even Tony Judt (also an expert on modern European history, and also an anti-Zionist Jew), had to admit that Sand’s contribution to the knowledge of Jewish history “is at best redundant” (”Israel must unpick its ethnic myth,” Financial Times, 7 December 2009). Judt does not dispute that Sand’s book is academically sloppy, but he argues that this sloppiness is irrelevant (if not forgivable): What counts, according to Judt, is the point that Sand is trying to make.

For Judt, “the perverse insistence upon identifying a universal Jewishness with one small piece of territory … is the single most important factor accounting for the failure to solve the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio.” In other words, one of the central tenets of Judaism is “perverse” and is “the single most important” reason for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So Jews must abandon one of their strongest beliefs –a belief that gave them hope and helped them survive throughout two millennia of exile. On the other hand, the fact that Islam holds that a land that was once ruled by Muslims must be “liberated” from “infidels” is not a problem. Nor is the fact that the Palestinians insist on invading Israel with millions of descendants (or alleged descendants) of the 1948 refugees, or that they deny the very existence of the Jerusalem Temple. The problem is not Muslim theology or Palestinian myths. The problem is Jewish faith.

The trouble and promise of the rules of war

Haviv — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:51:47 +0000

Ultimately,the laws of war are an Israeli strategic asset.

That’s my take-away from a beautiful and heartbreaking description of war’s moral complexity published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. Well worth the read:

Five years ago, a particularly gruesome image made its way to our television screens from the war in Iraq. Four U.S. civilian contractors working in Fallujah were ambushed and killed by al Qaeda. Their bodies were burned, then dragged through the streets. Two of the charred bodies were hung from the Euphrates Bridge and left dangling.

This barbaric act left an impression that our military did not forget: In a special operation earlier this year, Navy SEALs captured the mastermind of that attack, Ahmed Hashim Abed. But after he was taken into custody in September, Abed claimed he was punched by his captors. He showed a fat lip to prove it. Three of the SEALS are now awaiting a courts-martial on charges ranging from assault to dereliction of duty and making false statements.

…

Rules of war are important. They are something to strive for as they separate us from our distant ancestors. But when only one side follows these rules, they no longer elevate us. They create a very unlevel field and more than a little frustration. It is equally bizarre for any of us to judge someone’s behavior in war by the rules we follow in our very peaceful universe. We sit in homes that are air-conditioned in the summer and warmed in the winter. We have more than enough food in our bellies and we get enough sleep. The stress in our lives won’t ever match the stress of battle. Can we honestly begin to decide if a soldier acted in compliance with rules that work perfectly well on Main Street but not, say, in Malmedy or Fallujah?

The question is important and well-portrayed, but I don’t think it’s entirely relevant to Israel’s situation. For one thing, the IDF has succeeded in repeatedly defeating its nonconventional enemies without great civilian casualties on either side. (30,000 of some of the best-trained infantrymen on Earth were fighting in densely-populated Gaza for a whole month, and even Hamas says that fully a third of the Palestinian dead were its fighters, who were operating at the time from within populated neighborhoods. If civilians were the target, as Goldstone and Hamas claim, then the IDF is rather frighteningly incompetent.)

But there’s another reason to obey the laws of war, besides the simple demonstration that you can still win while obeying them: for Israel’s adversaries, civilian dead are a weapon of great strategic significance. In fact, Hamas has no other strategic lever over Israel than forcing it into killing Palestinian civilians by targeting Israel’s own civilians. Neither act is tolerable for Israel politically and internationally, so creating this catch-22 – utterly ignored by Goldstone, incidentally – is the essence of Hamas’ strategy.

You can only de-incentivize Hamas’ particularly vicious brand of warfare by exacting a price for aggression without “giving” them Israeli or Palestinian civilian deaths.

With this thinking, a scrupulous adherence to the laws of war is not just morally important, but strategically advantageous.

Maybe that’s why the IDF, for all the criticism it faces abroad, has actually done better in avoiding civilian deaths than similar armies fighting in places like Helmand or Fallujah.

Video: The fractured Jewish people

Haviv — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:37:37 +0000

Update: The partial interview was replaced with the complete one.

Shameless plug: A conversation on how the Jewish people may be falling apart.

Now from Apple: Poke Ahmadinejad in the nose

Haviv — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:28:46 +0000

This is an ad for an iPhone app by an Israeli news portal called “Walla!” The iPhone is newly-arrived on Israel’s shores and has caused a stir in local media. I don’t know if Apple came up with this campaign, but since they’re very controlling with this stuff, I’ll let them get the credit.

Poking Ahmadinejad in the nose is a brilliant way to get Israelis interested in iPhones, imho. The tagline reads “To Touch the News.”

Jimmy Carter: Sorry if I 'stigmatized' Israel

Haviv — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:14:02 +0000

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.”

Is there nothing to Israel besides politics?

Haviv — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 09:42:01 +0000

How do you know you’re losing touch with Israeli society? For one thing, you forget that it exists.

The latest “MAKOM Hot Topic” on Ha’aretz’s website:

If the Freakonomics guys liked it, then there really must be something behind the fascinating book Start-Up Nation. In the book, Senor and Singer explore reasons why Israel has more companies on NASDAQ than any country other than the US, and the highest number of start-ups per capita than anywhere else in the world.

To the liberal mind, the success of the book and its subject matter, ought to give cause for concern. First, it would seem to be an attempt to draw attention away from Israel’s political failings – in its very apolitical-ness, it is political. Second, it hints that business and hi-tech success is the pinnacle of Jewish endeavor. Third, it would seem to credit the Israeli army with much of this success. Fourth, and most importantly, the book draws attention to an Israeli and – dare we say it – Jewish exceptionalism.

This would then beg the question: Can we express pride about anything? Is any Israeli collective achievement – so long as it isn’t peace with the Palestinians – to be frowned upon?

Are these guys for real? The book “ought to give cause for concern” because, possibly, “any Israeli collective achievement” is bad if it doesn’t concern the Palestinians? So, for example, democracy? Or the rescue of the Muslim world’s expelled Jews or Europe’s tattered refugees? Or how about cures for some cancers? Or Yehudah Amichai’s poetry? Or simply surviving the 20th century, an achievement in no way guaranteed at the century’s start? Or being the only country in the Middle East that has more Christians, not less, than 60 years ago?

How about this question for a hot topic: What kind of obsessive advocacy leads someone to suggest that an entire society is nothing more than a single political process? Is MAKOM dangling dangerously off the edge of the Israeli discourse, about to fall off?

What more can Bibi do just to start negotiating?

Haviv — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:22:41 +0000

I have written about the automatic credibility gap that Israeli leaders face in the international arena, where the world questions the Israeli commitment to peace even when it is demonstrable – and often fails to take the Palestinians to task when they flatly work against accommodation and reconciliation.

But what more can Netanyahu do to overcome this distrust?

Isn't the surging Palestinian economy proof that Bibi wants peace? Pictured: A Palestinian man sells sandwiches in Gaza City during Eid al-Adha festivities. (Photo accompanying WSJ article quoted below)

Ha’aretz’s Ari Shavit points out:

Unlike Rabin [in 1995], Netanyahu now accepts the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state. Unlike Rabin, he is issuing orders prohibiting construction throughout the Jewish West Bank. Netanyahu has crossed the Rubicon, on both ideological and practical levels, and reinvented himself as a centrist.

All this just to bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table, which they still refuse to do.

In a must-read in today’s Wall Street Journal, British analyst Tom Gross explains the results of Netanyahu’s pro-peace policies, especially the recent dismantling of hundreds of roadblocks and other measures to jump-start the Palestinian economy.

(True, Keith Olbermann once called Tom “the worst person in the world” for basically supporting military action against Iran’s nuclear program – for what it’s worth, Olbermann misquoted him – but Tom is also a passionate supporter of Palestinian independence and democracy.)

The piece is worth reading in full. Here are some choice parts:

Wandering around downtown Nablus the shops and restaurants I saw were full. There were plenty of expensive cars on the streets…

And perhaps most importantly of all, we had driven from Jerusalem to Nablus without going through any Israeli checkpoints. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has removed them all since the Israeli security services (with the encouragement and support of President George W. Bush) were allowed, over recent years, to crush the intifada, restore security to the West Bank and set up the conditions for the economic boom that is now occurring…

The shops and restaurants were also full when I visited Hebron recently…

Life is even better in Ramallah, where it is difficult to get a table in a good restaurant. New apartment buildings, banks, brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships and health clubs are to be seen. In Qalqilya, another West Bank city that was previously a hotbed of terrorists and bomb-makers, the first ever strawberry crop is being harvested in time to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe…

Palestinian economic growth so far this year—in a year dominated by economic crisis elsewhere—has been an impressive 7% according to the IMF, though Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad, himself a former World Bank and IMF employee, says it is in fact 11%, partly helped along by strong economic performances in neighboring Israel…

The truth is that an independent Palestine is now quietly being built, with Israeli assistance. So long as the Obama administration and European politicians don’t clumsily meddle as they have in the past and make unrealistic demands for the process to be completed more quickly than it can be, I am confident the outcome will be a positive one.

Ahmadinejad accepts criticism, but not in Farsi

Haviv — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:31:03 +0000

What can I say? My friend David Keyes has something against tyrants:

It’s hard to believe in light of this Internet repression, but Iran’s president is himself a blogger. “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Personal Memos” is the place where he goes to vent and stay in touch with the common folk. He says he allots himself 15 minutes a week to write on his blog, but admits that at times he exceeds this limit.

Ahmadinejad wrote of his blog that “The magnitude of the reception and acclamation from the viewers was beyond expectations.” It is a half truth at best. The English version of the site is full of scathing critiques by readers. Nicholas from the United States writes “You’re one of the most stupid president [sic] ever. I’m sure about half of the comments posted on this blog are just totally fake and used as propaganda.” Gary from Great Britain adds “Why would anybody want to listen to you. You’re suppressive.” Jack opines: “I hope someone puts a bullet in your head very soon.”

What sort of tyrant allows for open debate and harsh critique on the front-page of his own blog? Someone who has clearly studied the playbook of Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian leader mastered the art of offering platitudes about peace in English while simultaneously rallying his people to jihad in Arabic.

I asked one of Britain’s leading Iranian bloggers to help me translate the Farsi version of Ahmadinejad’s Memos. His homepage in Farsi contained not a single negative comment by readers. The closest one gets to criticism is “Homayan” who wrote prior to the June election: “Last night by seeing your supporters in the streets I realized that you will win. I wanted to say as someone who opposed you to congratulate you . . . I had a lot of criticism but I feel none of them are that important to stop me from voting for you. It’s interesting to me how you turned your opponent into your supporter.” One Canadian-Iranian student gushed: “I am proud to be the citizen of a country who has a brave President like Ahmadinejad.”

Though the Islamic Republic of Iran desperately wants to be seen as a world power, all the military parades, blustering rhetoric, and menacing threats cannot drown out the fact that the government in Tehran is terrified of men and women typing on computers.

Costa Rica: Sure Palestine can be disarmed, like us

Haviv — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:45:43 +0000

As many have noted following Binyamin Netanyahu’s June speech at Bar Ilan University, it’s not a crazy demand on the part of the Israelis that the new state of Palestine be disarmed. Besides the traumatic experience of the Gaza withdrawal, where land vacated by Israel quickly became the launching pad for incessant attacks on Sderot, there is actual precedent for disarmament in the international arena – both Costa Rica and Iceland have no militaries, and it has served them well.

Oscar Arias (Wikipedia)

Now, Costa Rica’s president Oscar Arias, a Nobel peace laureate and supporter of Palestinian independence, agrees.

In an interview with the Israeli news website YNet over the weekend (The English article is here, but the Hebrew one has the full quote I translated below), he says:

“In my conversations with the Palestinians, I’m trying to suggest a crazy idea – get rid of your army. In practical terms, this isn’t really a crazy idea, because we did it 61 years ago, and we have only benefited from it. In my opinion, a small state, a poor state like Palestine doesn’t need an army. Clearly not everyone will agree with me, but it takes a bit of courage to make such a decision and I hope the Palestinian Authority will have the courage to take this step.”

YNet’s Netanel Shlomovich adds:

The Costa Rican president’s position [on disarmament] will likely make the Netanyahu government happy, but not on all issues. During Arias’ term, Costa Rica established diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority and even recognized a Palestinian state. Yet President Arias doesn’t understand why these actions constitute a controversial decision.

“Over a hundred nations have recognized a Palestinian state. This was the vision of the United Nations from the partition agreement of 1947 that called for the establishment of two states. Very few people will disagree with the idea of two states,” [Arias said].

What pro-gay, pro-Israel and Brazilian looks like

Haviv — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:57:52 +0000

Looks like a fun party.

Anti-Ahmadinejad protest in Rio de Janeiro last week, where demonstrators carried Brazilian, Israeli and gay pride flags.

Hat tip: Tom Gross.

Is Sari Nusseibeh in hiding for suggesting Jews belong in Jerusalem?

Haviv — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:42:15 +0000

I don’t know yet, but the right-wing Arutz Sheva says so:

Middle East expert Mordechai Kedar said Monday that Dr. Sari Nusaiba of Birzeit University, north of Ramallah, has had to go underground in the wake of an article that claims an historical connection between the Jews and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Interviewed on Arutz Sheva’s Hebrew news journal, Dr. Kedar said that Nusaiba would not be the first prominent Arab to publicize the link.

Dr. Kedar said that Haj Amin El-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, declared in 1929 that the site’s association with King Solomon’s Temple was beyond all doubt, even though he would become part of the Nazis’ efforts against the Jews.

NYT politely calls Shlomo Sand a liar

Haviv — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:01:22 +0000

Just wondering if you noticed: The New York Times politely calls Prof. Shlomo Sand a liar – not for his theories on the origins of today’s Jews, but for pretending his ideas were either new or proven.

In his wonderful “History of Zionism,” Walter Laqueur chides the post-Zionist historians by saying that what is true in their work is not new, and what is new is not true. Shlomo Sand, former campus radical turned publicity-hound professor and wanna-be destroyer of Jewish nationhood, seems to have written his book precisely to fit that description.

Patricia Cohen of The New York Times explains:

Mixing respected scholarship with dubious theories, the author, Shlomo Sand, a professor at Tel Aviv University, frames the narrative as a startling exposure of suppressed historical facts.

…

Professor Sand, a scholar of modern France, not Jewish history, candidly states his aim is to undercut the Jews’ claims to the land of Israel by demonstrating that they do not constitute “a people,” with a shared racial or biological past. The book has been extravagantly denounced and praised, often on the basis of whether or not the reader agrees with his politics.

…

Since Professor Sand’s mission is to discredit Jews’ historical claims to the territory, he is keen to show that their ancestry lines do not lead back to ancient Palestine. He resurrects a theory first raised by 19th-century historians, that the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, to whom 90 percent of American Jews trace their roots, are descended from the Khazars, a Turkic people who apparently converted to Judaism and created an empire in the Caucasus in the eighth century. This idea has long intrigued writers and historians. In 1976, Arthur Koestler wrote “The Thirteenth Tribe” in the hopes it would combat anti-Semitism; if contemporary Jews were descended from the Khazars, he argued, they could not be held responsible for Jesus’ Crucifixion.

By now, experts who specialize in the subject have repeatedly rejected the theory, concluding that the shards of evidence are inconclusive or misleading, said Michael Terry, the chief librarian of the Jewish division of the New York Public Library. Dr. Ostrer said the genetics also did not support the Khazar theory.

See also the argument I had with Philip Weiss over Sand’s quixotic effort to destroy the basic narrative of Israeli identity: “Anti-Israel, with a dash of intellectual pretense.”

Why Palestine must be negotiated, not declared

Haviv — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:35:02 +0000

Am I the only pessimist left standing on this business of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood?

The Atlantic Wire, the blog section of the Atlantic magazine, juxtaposes my view on this with three other commentators extolling the idea. For the record, I wrote that unilateral statehood would give the Palestinians nothing while freeing Israel’s right-wing government from its standing obligations.

The other commentators, on the other hand, didn’t even try to deal with the question in strategic terms.

Yossi Sarid, as is his wont, is hopeful and optimistic to the point of irrelevance: “When he declares independence, Abbas should call upon the Jews living in the state of Palestine to preserve the peace and to do their part in building up the new country as full and equal citizens, enjoying fair representation in all of its institutions.”

Juan Cole is inexplicably paranoid: “Since the Netanyahu government is about the least likely government to negotiate a Palestinian state within 1967 borders you could imagine, the Palestinians are giving up any hopes that talks will lead anywhere. Moreover, since Netanyahu has secret plans to thousands of further Israeli houses on Palestinian land in the next few years, time is short.”

This is just plain weird. First of all, Netanyahu doesn’t need “secret plans.” There are perfectly non-secret construction plans available for public viewing in the Housing and Construction Ministry. Second, the non-negotiable Palestinian demands aren’t just about borders, but also about refugees, Jerusalem and other issues. Third, on Cole’s doubts about Netanyahu’s intentions, he would do well to remember that both Sinai and Gaza – two withdrawals that included dismantling settlements and resettling thousands of Jews – were carried out by right-wing governments.

Finally, Chris Hedges seals the debate by comparing Palestine to all sorts of non-comparable places: “It worked in Kosovo. It worked in Georgia. And it will work in Palestine.”

But it didn’t work in Chechnya or Kurdistan, and worked only partially in Scotland and the Basque country – because these are all completely different situations.

Consider: Unlike in Kosovo, Israelis have been willing to withdraw from Palestine for over a decade (according to Tel Aviv University’s annual Peace Index). Unlike in either Georgia or Kosovo, Palestine has Hamas waiting in the wings to take over. Unlike in either Georgia or Kosovo, Israel is neither Russian nor Serbian in its intentions or in its political capacity for brutality.

Besides, supporting unilateral independence implies a trust in the current Palestinian leadership to get it right – to build institutions, to construct a national economy. Does Hedges trust them to do this?

The occupation is bad, undemocratic and temporary – even according to Israel’s own laws. But should the PA, which has suffered for almost two decades mainly from its own corrupt and incompetent leadership, unceremoniously jettison the entire Oslo process in the hope that more UN pressure will give them independence and prosperity? Will the need to negotiate over Jerusalem, refugees and borders disappear because Cuba, Sweden and Russia recognize Ramallah and Nablus as a “state” rather than an autonomous “authority?”

Haredi protesters: Young, bored and violent

Haviv — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:44:29 +0000

A brilliant comment on the haredi protests:

Hundreds of energized young haredim are looking for something to do; looking for something interesting. They have no e-mail, no Facebook, and no place where they can play soccer. They don’t join the army and most of them will never work.

They have no real interaction with the world that rages around them, and this impossible reality coupled with their archaic and unrealistic way of life, along with the strict modesty limits, leads to protests that are sometimes wild and reckless; the type of protests that even haredi leaders don’t know how to stop.

After all, these young haredim are not really committed to the Shabbat. Had they been truly devoted to it, they would not be holding protests that prompt hundreds of police officers to desecrate the Shabbat. They would also not be assaulting reporters and media personnel with such crude violence.

However, the young protestors from the haredi neighborhoods have no commitment to the Shabbat. In fact, they have no commitment or obligation to anything. They do not need to make a living or support anyone, they do not need to join the army, and they do not need to take entry exams for university. All they need to do is pass the time in the great darkness surrounding them.

Hat tip: Dan Brown.

Are Obama's settlement demands good for Israel?

Haviv — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:41:04 +0000

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.

Dr. Alex Yakobson

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?

Bostrom 'rethinks' organ trafficking story

Haviv — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:40:53 +0000

According to JTA, Aftonbladet journalist Donald Bostrom, who spectacularly accused Israeli soldiers of running a massive organ-trafficking operation preying on Palestinian youngsters, is “reconsidering” his story.

Aftonbladet's Donald Bostrom

Donald Bostrom cancelled a scheduled appearance at a conference in Beirut after a visit to Israel in which he participated in dialogue on the issue, according to Army Radio. Bostrom was in Israel last month for a media conference in Dimona.

The Beirut conference was set to be an anti-Israel hate fest, according to reports.

“The visit to Israel and the fact that I was part of a fair dialogue made me rethink the whole issue,” Bostrom reportedly told associates, according to Ha’aretz.

In an article published in August in the popular Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, Bostrom reported that Israel seized young Palestinian men and returned them to their families with missing organs.

The story, which ran under the headline “They plunder the organs of our sons,” also cited the recent arrest of a New York rabbi accused of trafficking in human organs.

During the Dimona conference Bostrom admitted that his only proof of the organ stealing came from the allegations of the Palestinian families.

Check out what Ha’aretz military reporter Anshel Pfeffer recently did to Bostrom’s story.

Summing up Fort Hood

Haviv — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 21:32:46 +0000

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?

Yet another conversion disgrace by Israeli officials

Haviv — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:57:21 +0000

Another of the endless series of reports about the disgrace of Israeli officialdom’s treatment of converts – once again despite the approval of the conversion by the official Orthodox rabbinate.

The thing about power, it corrupts. And religious power? It just corrupts religion…

(Hat tip: Religion and State in Israel.)

Maksim and Alina were due to exchange their wedding vows in 10 weeks, but instead of being busy preparing for the joyful event, they have been going through a nightmare – Their marriage was not approved by the Chief Rabbinate clerks in Ashkelon, where the couple resides.

…

Two weeks ago, after setting the wedding date, Maksim and Alina went to the Rabbinate in their hometown to open a file with a marriage registrar.

To their surprise, Ashkelon’s chief Rabbi Haim Bloy told the couple he will not approve their marriage, and suggested that they get registered in a different city.

“The rabbi explained that because Maksim only observes some of the mitzvot, we will have to register in a different city,” said Alina, explaining that “meanwhile I met with a different rabbi that agreed to register me, but not in my city, because in Ashkelon ‘they don’t register converts for marriage’.”

…

Rabbi Shaul Farber, director of the Jewish Life Information Center (ITIM), said on Thursday that “it is not plausible that marriage registrars who are employed by the country and are getting paid by the Chief Rabbinate will make up their own mind whether to recognize documents issued by their employers.”

“Registrars who distrust the Chief Rabbinate must resign from their positions. If they don’t do it themselves, the state should do it,” Farber added.

Following this recent phenomenon, ITIM institution opened a hotline that will guide converts and help them bypass the rabbis. The hotline number is 1-700-500-507.

Who are Diaspora Jews to tell us Israelis who is Jewish?

Haviv — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:51:22 +0000

Whatever our politicians may tell their overseas donors, official Israel, when it even notices the Diaspora, has a profound disrespect for it.

The Jerusalem rabbinate, the picture accompanying the JPost story. But this time, it isn't the rabbinate that's the problem.

Rabbi Dr. Ed Rettig (my dad) and Rabbi Dr. Seth Farber explain in The Jerusalem Post how tragic this disrespect can be in the field of conversion.

Of the convert Ilana, they write:

Scandalously, Ilana lives without medical insurance, is unable to work, and has been waiting for more than two years for her case for citizenship to make it to the Supreme Court. In every other Jewish community in the world, Ilana is Jewish. Not here. This is because the Interior Ministry has taken it upon itself to review conversions that were performed worldwide in terms of its own bureaucratic criteria.

Let’s be clear here. Ilana’s conversion was Orthodox. Israeli law demands official recognition of her conversion. And those refusing to recognize it are not rabbis. They’re not religious at all, in fact. They’re merely Interior Ministry pencil-pushers trying to prevent the “floodgates” of conversion granting automatic Israeli citizenship through the Law of Return.

Since 2002, however, the State of Israel has taken a step backward, refusing immediate recognition of conversion certificates issued by recognized communities in the Diaspora. Today, if someone converts in a Diaspora community, it will take at least a year before the State of Israel recognizes that person as Jewish.

Though the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that all converts should immediately be allowed to emigrate under the Law of Return – a law that has become sacrosanct in Israel-Diaspora relations – the Justice and Interior ministries continue to insist on draconian “citizenship tests” for converts that horrify each of us, from our different perspectives.

American Orthodox rabbis, the Interior Ministry feels, can’t be trusted to decide who is in and who is out of the Jewish people.

It is the feeling of a handful of ignorant bureaucrats – ignorant of Judaism and Jewish identity, and ignorant of Israeli law – that decides the day.

Why? Because the Diaspora is silent and respectful. Instead of demanding respect for their support and love, the Diaspora assumes Israelis are either their betters or their “ethnic” cousins. Either way, you can’t demand too much.

So Ilana falls through the cracks.

What's so bad about unfairly targeting Israel?

Haviv — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:20:38 +0000

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.”

Human Rights Watch reports (Amazon)

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.