Early Repentance Opportunity for Foreign Policy Magazine
On the afternoon of Yom Kippur at my synagogue, Adas Israel, in Washington, I held an hour-long dialogue with Michael Oren, the new Israeli ambassador, who is, like all past Israeli ambassadors to America, a member of our congregation. About a thousand people turned up between prayers, and we had a great discussion, about the Goldstone U.N. report and the meaning of Jewish existence and Einstein's Zionism and whether America might in fact be the Promised Land. A great hour, even though everyone was fasting. Or maybe because everyone was fasting.
In any case, I didn't realize this, but there was someone in the audience who was actually working on Yom Kippur -- a reporter for Foreign Policy magazine named Josh Rogin.Yesterday, Rogin posted his account of Oren's statements, and it was a wildly inaccurate account on many fronts. Most notably, he wrote this:
Oren said that Israel had no choice but to hold in reserve its right to strike Iran first, saying, "If you know someone is going to cause harm to your family, you are compelled to launch a preemptive strike against them. You can't let that person come."
In fact, Oren was quoting from the Talmud -- and said he was -- and he was referring to the recent war in Gaza, not to some future theoretical war with Iran. In truth, despite my best efforts, he would barely say anything about Iran. On Gaza, though, he was pugnacious. When I asked him if he believed, per our rabbi's sermon about the need to learn even from your enemies, if Judge Goldstone could teach him anything about Israeli behavior, he brushed the question aside, and then talked about Israeli restraint in the face of Hamas rocket attacks. It was at that point that he quoted the Talmud on the moral necessity of protecting one's family from attack. Iran was not part of the conversation.
I e-mailed Rogin this morning with a question: Had he taped the dialogue, or taken notes on it? For those non-Jews out there, or for my apostate Jewish readers (some of my best friends are apostate Jews), it would be a violation of the law and spirit of Yom Kippur to do either thing. Rogin e-mailed me back the following: "I attended the talk and wrote the story from notes I jotted down when I got home. I assumed a recording device would not be kosher."
What is also not kosher, of course, is quoting from memory! I don't know a single journalist who could accurately reproduce 90-word quotes after a single hearing. I'm waiting to see if Foreign Policy will stand by these miracle quotes, and I'll update this post when they respond.
UPDATE: 4:17 p.m.: Foreign Policy has posted this incomplete correction:
CORRECTION: The initial version of this post incorrectly stated, "Oren said that Israel had no choice but to hold in reserve its right to strike Iran first, saying, 'If you know someone is going to cause harm to your family, you are compelled to launch a preemptive strike against them. You can't let that person come.'"
Oren was actually responding to a question from moderator Jeffrey Goldberg about whether Israel's use of power since its inception was in accordance with Jewish moral standards, and the above quote references the teachings of the Talmud. Oren was making the argument that Israel had in fact exceeded the Talmud's moral requirements in recent operations in Gaza. FP regrets the error.
...When talks begin in Geneva tomorrow, there should
be little concern with the formerly dominant question of suspending
enrichment at Natanz. Rather, Iran must be made to produce a complete
map of its nuclear sites, together with a history of how each was
created and provisioned.
This means getting access to
scientists, records, equipment and sites. It is a lot to ask, and we
may not have the leverage to get it. But anything less will provide no
protection against what we now know is Iran's determination to build
the bomb.
I'm probably not the only person to be struck by the seeming impossibility of the prescription.
After 44 staffers were laid off at CQ-Roll Call last week, veteran editor Brian Nutting emailed the entire editorial staff demanding answers from management's about the cuts.
Now, he's been fired, according to multiple newsroom sources.
Given how popular Nutting was at CQ, and his 27 years of service, several staffers told me this morning that the news is both upsetting and demoralizing.
I've argued for a while that frisking people at airports, or at other security checkpoints, is worthless except if the TSA and other government agencies are willing to actually invade peoples' privacy. And I mean invade, as in checking the body's various useful and surprisingly capacious hiding places. Innocent people carry Swiss army knives in their front pockets. Sophisticated terrorists hide bombs in their anuses:
Taking a trick from the narcotics trade - which has long smuggled drugs in body cavities - Asieri had a pound of high explosives, plus a detonator inserted in his rectum.
This was a meticulously planned operation with al Qaeda once again producing something new: this time, the Trojan bomber.
Since we're not, as a society, going to allow anal cavity searches at airports, there's really no point whatsoever in the manual pat-down. The good news here is that maybe al Qaeda will have a slightly more difficult time recruiting suicide bombers now that this new technique is known. You can imagine the pitch to the potential bomber: "Okay, what we're going to do is, you're going to make a suicide video, then you're going to bend over and Osama's going to shove a bomb up your ass. It's going to be uncomfortable for a while, but then you'll blow yourself and go to heaven, but without your ass, and probably also without your balls. So, good luck, and try to walk naturally."
Washington's fixation on stopping settlement activity did have a powerful echo in at least one Middle East country: Israel. America's freeze-mania managed to transform Israel's deep national ambivalence about the wisdom of expanding West Bank settlements into patriotic support for the right of Jews to live in their ancient capital. By giving off vibes that it wanted a freeze even more than the Arabs themselves, and that it wanted to halt building even in Israel's capital, the administration succeeded in making Netanyahu more popular than when he came to office in March. Obama's own approval ratings among Israeli voters fell to single digits--and this is before he had shown whether he had the mettle to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions, the region's real strategic threat. Getting into a fight with Israel without having anything to show for it from the Arabs was not what the president bargained for.
The Jews of Guantanamo Bay
Many of the lawyers representing prisoners at Guantanamo are Jewish. This is the least surprising news of the year, I know, but I found this too-good-to-check anecdote below amusing:
"Several Jewish attorneys also invoke the story of a
detainee who asked his lawyer whether he was Jewish. When the answer
was negative, the detainee was crestfallen. "I heard they were the
best," he said...."
Wasn't there an "All in the Family" episode just like this? Didn't Archie Bunker once demand the services of a "good Jew lawyer"?
The only area where Yom Kippur melds easily with Israel's
technological advancement is environmental science. Being the only day
on the calendar without automobiles makes the holiday the perfect
control for studies in air pollution. The Israeli Environmental
Protection Ministry found
that on Yom Kippur in 2007, the amount of nitrogen oxide in the air in
Jerusalem dropped from 250 parts per billion to 12 parts per billion.
The holiday is also something of an unintentional trendsetter: "A Day
Without Cars," a green event, has been implemented around the world
since 2000 as a way of both reducing carbon emissions and getting
urbanites to rediscover their cities on foot. As Orna Coussin observed
in a lovely Haaretztribute
to the holiday, a minor coincidence of this phenomenon is that Ford's
Model T first rolled off the assembly line in Detroit on the week of
Yom Kippur in 1908.
These are the realistic choices for America's Afghanistan policy -- all out or all in, surrender the place to the Taliban or do armed nation-building. And we might as well acknowledge that it's not an easy call. The costs and rewards are tightly balanced. But in the end, President Obama was right: "You don't muddle through the central front on terror. ... You don't muddle through stamping out the Taliban."
I don't know about this whole "central front" business. I thought President Bush made sense when he told the world that those who harbor terrorists would be treated no differently than the terrorists themselves. But in fact there is a difference. The Taliban on its own would not have attacked New York and Washington, even putting aside the issue of capability. The attacks of 9/11 were rooted in a particularly Arab dysfunction, not in some sort of Afghan (or Persian, for that matter) pathology. The goal of the Afghan war, after all, is to deny terrorists who are mainly Arab a safe base of operations. The central front was, is and will be the Arab world. I don't mean "central front," by the way, as an exclusively military idea, or even partially. The Arab world is the central front of a civil war between two Muslim ideas, the Qaeda idea and the idea of modernity, of an Islam existing in harmony with the rest of the world. We are a sideshow to that fight. And rebuilding Afghanistan or not rebuilding Afghanistan -- a country marginal to the development of Muslim thought -- is immaterial in that struggle.
The Danger of Refuting Holocaust Denial
Goldblog reader Lila M. writes:
Just watched Bibi's UN speech and was absolutely shocked. An Israeli Prime Minister, standing on the floor of the UN, holding up documents to prove the Holocaust happened??!! What, Ahmadenijad called him out and he came to play? What'll be next - a Foreign Ministry powerpoint presentation debunking Mein Kampf? Or maybe a close up of Netanyahu's head to finally show the world, once and for all, that we don't actually have horns?
As an Israeli I fully expect our politicians to cheapen the memory of the Holocaust in all sorts of creative and sundry ways - but this??
M.J. Rosenberg, Cut-and-Paste Libeler
M.J. Rosenberg, the former policy director of the Israel Policy Forum, doesn't like my post on the MacArthur grant recipient
James Longley and his simple-minded understanding of Gaza. I think the Longley post survives Rosenberg's attack
(except if you believe, as Rosenberg apparently does, that Egypt isn't
an independent country with its own defense policy), but I wanted to respond to something Rosenberg wrote about me in comments section of his post:
I never was picked on as a kid for being a Jew in schools which (at
most) had less than six others. I got picked on sometimes but there was
bo (sic) ethnic component.
Maybe all the neocon types are just getting back at the kids who abused
them. So Pat Harrington is mean to Jeff and Ahmed pays the price.
Rosenberg is making reference to something I wrote in my recent profile of Quentin Tarantino (an article, by the way, that calls Tarantino's vision of Holocaust retribution un-Jewish) but he is doing so in a wildly dishonest way. He knows perfectly well -- because we've had exchanges on this -- that when I was in the Israeli Army, the opposite was true. On several occasions, I physically protected Palestinians from beatings at the hands of my fellow soldiers. I catalogued the experience here. I never once lost myself to violence (against "Ahmed," as Rosenberg endearingly puts it), and several times I confronted my commanders about human rights abuses occurring under their watch. So Rosenberg is libeling me, and he undoubtedly knows he is libeling me.
This is par for the course. Here's another example of Rosenberg's ethics in action. After he posted a screed attacking me and several others for allegedly supporting the occupation of the West Bank, I reminded him that the opposite was true, that I've been writing against the settlement movement for years, and that I support the creation of a Palestinian state on the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. He wrote in an e-mail back to me:
Jeff, Well, that was pretty mean. But deserved! I would not have put you in there except I think I lifted the whole block of names from some other column so I wouldn't have to re-type.
In other words, M.J. Rosenberg is too lazy even to commit libel properly.
Do you really think the Taliban is going to go away now? Do you really think a freeze on settlements is going to start us on the yellow brick road to peace in the Middle East? I congratulate you. I'm sure life is more tolerable for the solutionist. Ever read David Copperfield? Then you know about "Micawberism." "Something will turn up," Mr .Macawber liked to say. The solutionist's mantra. "Something will turn up -- dead," the anti solutionist counters.
I don't think there ever will be a "good" solution to the strife over Israel. Just more strife -- if we're lucky -- or strife ending with holocaust or apocalypse, if we're not.
"Weeds" Is the Jewiest Show on Television
Most shows on television are more-or-less Jewish (Except for "Dancing with the Stars") but "Weeds" is exceptional. Joanna Smith Rakoff makes the case, and cites my brief mention on the show as partial proof:
Though the show is over-the-top and
even cartoonish in its coverage of topics from evangelical
Christianity to casual sex, when it comes to things Jewish, Weeds
tends toward the subtlety, irreverence, and occasional iconoclasm of
real life. Rather than over-explaining-or apologizing for-the
inclusion of a not-immediately-recognizable religious ritual, Jenji
Kohan and her team of smart writers allow the story to unfold as if
unveilings-and, later, rabbinical school, the IDF, circumcision,
Yiddish, Jeffrey Goldberg, and a host of other Jewish ideas and
references-are as much a part of mainstream American life as, well,
watching television. And that in and of itself-the lovely
casualness with which the Botwin's Jewishness (or lack of it) is
simply a part of the texture of their lives-makes Weeds
unusual in the deracinated world of the cathode ray tube.
Three great tastes that taste great together: Circumcision, Yiddish and Jeffrey Goldberg.
Wookiees in Tehran
A scene of a march around Ayatollah Khomeini's tomb today in Iran, in memory of the 29th anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war, the one in which Iraq dropped poison gas on Iran (even though it never posed a WMD threat, of course) and in which Iran used its children to clear minefields.
Obama, Bush and the Occupation
Andrew praises Obama for using "plain English" in calling the occupation of the West Bank an "occupation." But George W. Bush called the occupation an occupation as well. No news here. What was news was Obama's clear description of Israel as a "Jewish state." He's laying down a marker that Israel's enemies don't like at all. Even Avigdor Lieberman liked the line.
September 23, 2009
What The Times Doesn't Understand about Ahmadinejad
This is from the early write-up of Moody's speech, by Sarah Wheaton, under the absurd headline, "A More Conciliatory Ahmadinejad at the U.N.":
Mr. Ahmadinejad called Israel's attack on Gaza in November "barbaric"
and said the economic blockade of Palestinians amounts to "genocide."
But he did not call for the complete destruction of the country, as he
has in the past. Instead, he called for "a referendum and free
elections in Palestine in order to prepare a conducive environment for
all Palestinians, including Muslims, Christians and Jews, to live
together in peace and harmony."
How unsophisticated can you be? A "referendum" for "all Palestinians," including "Jews," means one thing and one thing only in the minds of eliminationists like Ahmadinejad, and in actual fact: The destruction of the Jewish state of Israel. It's not even code, and only slightly euphemistic.
Duped by Ahmadinejad
A numberof pundits are commenting on Ahmadinejad's diversionary tactics, which not only cost him a place to stay in New York but also -- more importantly -- are distracting everyone else from addressing a crucial point: his illegitimate reelection and the grave human rights violations that followed. I've commented on Ahmadinejad's futile attempt to distract his own people with a massive we-hate-the-Jews rally, but the rest of the world doesn't seem to be listening. Melody Moezzi writes:
What is likely, however, is a continued crackdown on opposition
leaders, activists and journalists inside Iran. The international
community would be better served to concern itself more with these
internal Iranian developments than with uranium enrichment today
because the best hope for a non-nuclear Iran is a free Iran.
And the greatest assets the world has in ridding the country of
hard-liners such as Ahmadinejad are the Iranian people themselves.
Foreign intervention, military or otherwise, cannot hold a candle to
the potential power of the Iranian people to bring down this regime.
"Wearing a traditional copper-colored outfit and a pin in the shape of Africa on his chest, Colonel Qaddafi gestured and glowered, with occasional reference to scrawled written notes, and at one point grabbed an audio device to check how his words were being translated. Ali Abdussalam Treki, the Libyan diplomat who now holds the rotating presidency of the General Assembly, introduced him as the 'leader of the revolution, president of the African Union, King of Kings of Africa.'"
The troubling part: "...the Libyan diplomat who now holds the rotating presidency of the General Assembly." It's hard to believe, actually.
'How Else Is He Going to Learn Not to Fall Off That Bike?'
Not even an hour into today's U.N. General Assembly gathering and, as per Jake Tapper's Twitter feed, everyone's upset about the main threat facing the world:
As far as I know, under a unique definition of refugee that applies
only to the Palestinians (as established by the UN Relief Works
Agency), any descendant of a MALE (they exclude females who marry
non-refugees) refugee is considered by international law a refugee, and
is entitled to all the "benefits" associated with this label.
The fact-checking reader also links to this book, which discusses the hypocrisy of the UNRWA, the group that instituted the obscure definition in the first place.
'Lula in the Hizzy'
Rather than attend the U.N. General Assembly today (and have to worry about housing), I've decided to follow my goombah Jake Tapper, who's been tweeting little gems from his prime seat as the parade of leaders goes by. See for yourselves:
When Even Mary Robinson Doesn't Like Goldstone...
Mary Robinson -- who isn't exactly Hadassah Lieberman -- is troubled by how the Goldstone Report was executed. The Huffington Post reports that, in March, Robinson said, "Unfortunately, the Human Rights Council passed a resolution seeking a
fact-finding mission to only look at what Israel has done, and I don't
think that's a human rights approach."
A Great Roger Cohen Column
No, really. I've been wondering why the President slighted Poland last week (and wondering if it's such a great thing to be a small country -- or non country, i.e. Tibet -- in the Age of Obama) and here's a tough, penetrating and nuanced column on the subject. And as a bonus, he makes a non-satirical reference to the Iran threat:
Now I'm sure Obama had no desire to insult Poland, even if the announcement also came as Russia conducted large-scale military maneuvers with Belarus, an exercise on its western flank that summons the darkest specters of post-Soviet Polish and Baltic-state angst. As U.S. timing goes, this was pitiful.
Strategy is another matter. The new U.S. plan to deploy proven SM-3 interceptor missiles, first at sea and later on land, makes better sense overall. It's nimbler and saner on the Iranian threat. Why goad the Russian bear for little gain?
The Promise of the Torah
My rabbi, Gil Steinlauf, gave a killer sermon on the first day of Rosh HaShanah (I'm not actually sure you're allowed to describe sermons as "killers," but it was) and it's now on the Intertubes, so I thought I would point you in his direction. I won't try to summarize. Read the whole thing. But here's a brief excerpt:
When he finally gave up trying to figure out what was in front of him, Isaac realized that the blessing of his innermost being was just so much bigger than he was, it just flowed from his lips, it moved right through him. He realized that this moment is all we have ever had and all we ever will have. And--have you noticed?--we have all the money, all the food, all the health we need right now to be able to experience this very moment, the greatest blessing in the whole world, this Life that we have now. This moment might not feel good, or the way we had hoped. We may be painfully aware of how we now have less. But look deeper: every loss you have ever known before made other blessings--perhaps later on in life--possible. Today's experience of loss IS blessing--that's the promise of Torah--it's just hidden from the eye!
Quote of the Day
"If we neglect to be vocal about human rights, our message to the Iranian people is 'We don't care about you. We only
care about nukes.' Ultimately, it has to be Iranians themselves who
change their history. We can't want it more than they do. But it should
be a U.S. foreign policy imperative not to do anything to deter the
green movement's success or alter its trajectory. We cannot forget that
the underlying problem we have with Iran has more to do with the
character of its regime than its nuclear ambitions."
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can't catch a break. First the Helmsley Hotel rescinded its invitation to host a banquet at which the Iranian president was scheduled to speak, and now the Essex Hotel is facing similar pressure to turn its back on the Holocaust-denying fruitcake. It's tough out there for a lunatic, even at the U.N. General Assembly, which is a lunatic-heavy gathering. So as a public service, I dispatched Goldblog Travel and Leisure Editor Tali Yahalom to find him a hotel room. Here are some suggestions: Blue Moon Hotel Lower East Side, NYC Description: Kosher hotel in polyglot neighborhood. Kosher = Halal, mostly. Why it would work: It is minutes away from Yonah Schimmel's. Even anti-Semites like knishes. The Avenue Plaza Hotel Brooklyn, NYC Description: Located in the heart of Boro Park, the Avenue Plaza is located near shopping centers and synagogues. Why it would work: The hotel "provides an all-encompassing haven for the most discriminating guest," according to its website. Also, female guests cover their heads, Teheran-style.
Park House Hotel Brooklyn, NYC Description: Website is down. This suggests a suitable level of paranoia. Why it would work: Moshe Aryeh Friedman, a member of the Iranian regime-loving Neturei Karta, once stayed there.
Lawrence Beach Club Atlantic Beach, NY Description: Top-notch private resort along the beach. Why it would work: Direct access to powerful Jews who might enjoy harangues about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Capitol Hotel Lakewood, NJ Description: It's like staying in Meah Shearim. Why it would work: It's like staying in Meah Shearim.
Doubletree Hotel Tarrytown, NY (20 minutes west of Scarsdale) Description: A premiere Westchester hotel, replete with a heated swimming pool, a multilingual staff, and a glatt kosher kitchen. Why it would work: Old Jewish men wear Members Only jackets; Ahmadinejad would blend in.
Inn at Great Neck Great Neck, NY Description: This 1920s-style luxury inn, situated among plenty of shops, restaurants and shuls, has its own glatt kosher restaurant and jacuzzi room. Why it would work:Great Neck Jews have brought down Israeli politicians.
A Meeting That Signifies Nothing
A number of you out there asked me why I had not commented on the big Obama-Netanyahu-Abu Mazen meeting in New York today. The reasons are: 1) I'm trying to get some journalism done; 2) The meeting means nothing. I've been doing a lot of reading lately about the minutiae of Israeli-Arab talks over the past thirty years, and I've come to various depressing conclusions. Well, strike that, I'm coming to various depressing conclusions, and to a question: What does it mean if there is never peace?
Are You Wearing a Sweater?
On Jewish mothers and @Goldberg3000 Twitter:
The Lucrative Business of Israel-Bashing
The MacArthur genius grants are to be officially announced today, and along with deserving recipients such as Jerry Mitchell, a very brave journalist I know from my work on Preacher Killen, and Lynsey Addario, a very brave photographer, the documentary maker James Longley shows up on the list. I'm somewhat familiar with his work on Gaza, and, alas, it's no surprise he's on the list. Longley's anti-Israel propaganda isn't particularly clever (though it's well-shot, if memory serves). In fact, it's entirely typical of the genre. Here's a statement from his website about his understanding of Gaza:
To my great relief, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip turned out to be people like everyone else. It's the situation they find themselves in that is extraordinary: The Gaza Strip is essentially an open-air prison for Palestinian refugees, guarded on all sides by the Israeli military. Barely 28 miles long and 4 miles wide, it contains more than 1,200,000 Palestinians - over one third of them living in squalid refugee camps built in 1948 to hold the people forced out of their homes by the creation of modern-day Israel. It is one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Nobody can pass through its borders without the permission of the Israeli soldiers. Like the West Bank, the Gaza Strip has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. Most people living in the Gaza Strip have never known a single day of real freedom.
Okay, one by one: "Palestinians in the Gaza Strip turned out to be people like everyone else." Essentially true -- I make much the same argument in my book on the subject. Except that some residents of Gaza are, in fact, members of a suicide terrorist organization who seek out their enemy's children to kill. This is fairly unusual. Only the Tamils in Sri Lanka have constructed a similar cult. So this would be worth mentioning.
"The Gaza Strip is essentially an open-air prison for Palestinian refugees, guarded on all sides by the Israeli military." No, not true. The Strip shares a border with Egypt, an Arab state.
"[I]t contains more than 1,200,000 Palestinians - over one third of them
living in squalid refugee camps built in 1948 to hold the people forced
out of their homes by the creation of modern-day Israel." There are very few refugees left in Gaza. The children and grandchildren of these refugees are not, according to international law, refugees. They are only considered "refugees" because the Arab states have refused to resettle them or build them permanent housing. Also, not all Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948 were "driven out." Some fled areas of fighting, some were expelled by Jewish forces, and some left of their own accord.
"It is one of the most densely populated places on the planet." Not true. Most cities in the world are more densely populated than Gaza. Manhattan, for instance, is more densely populated than Gaza. Also, Cairo. And many suburbs of major cities, as well.
"Nobody can pass through its borders without the permission of the Israeli soldiers." Not true. The Egyptians could lift their blockade of Gaza, which would allow easy passage.
"Like the West Bank, the Gaza Strip has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967." Not true. During the 1990s, most parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were under the control of the Palestinian Authority. In 2005, Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza and turned over control of the entire area to the Palestinian Authority.
"Most people living in the Gaza Strip have never known a single day of real freedom." See above. This is partially true, though Gaza knew no freedom when it was occupied by the Egyptian military until 1967. And of course, "real freedom" is not a prevailing condition in most of the Arab Middle East. But Longley is not interested in the complications of life in the Arab world, or in Israel, and God knows, he could make honest films that still expose various Israeli sins. But he doesn't seem to be someone who closely adheres to the truth. He seems mainly interested, in the Middle East context, in libeling Israel. Which, of course, is good for business, as we see this week.
Goldblog on Facebook
My pseudo post about last week's UN Report, which found Israel guilty of most every war crime known to exist, has caused quite the stir on the Atlantic's Facebook page, on which a tech-savvy intern linked to my blog and asked whether the UN is biased toward Israel. I have yet to create a Facebook account of my own -- well, actually I have, but if you don't ever use your Facebook account, does it really exist? -- so I can't respond there, but from what Goldblog Vice President for Social Networking Tali Yahalom has told me, the responses, albeit welcomed, are mostly baseless yakking.
September 21, 2009
Purim Redux?
Goldblog reader Guy Handelman writes:
Did anybody else recognize the similarity between the Al-Quds Day protests and the final chapters of the Book of Esther? A day officially devoted to the hatred of Jews suddenly and unexpectedly turns into a day devoted to anti-government sentiment. And to top it off, it all takes place in Persia.
See, this is the sort of desperate race-baiting Rush Limbaugh predicted we would get when Barack Obama was elected. This is NOT a story about monkeys. This is a story about the screwed up mentality of Washington D.C. and the need for conservatives to accept it as is rather than merely complain about it. But since a half-white, half-black African liberal Democrat is the President, obviously it is a subtle racial slur.
Brzezinski: Shoot Down Israeli Planes
I kind of always suspected that this was the case, but now Zbigniew Brzezinski makes it plain: He wouldn't mind terribly if the United States waged war against Israel. He can always dream, can't he?
Worst Dan Brown Sentences
A very funny story about Dan Brown's god-awfulest stretches of writing. Such as:
Deception Point, chapter 8: Overhanging her precarious body was a jaundiced face whose skin resembled a sheet of parchment paper punctured by two emotionless eyes.
The Da Vinci Code, chapter 4: A voice spoke, chillingly close. "Do not move." On his hands and knees, the curator froze, turning his head slowly. Only fifteen feet away, outside the sealed gate, the mountainous silhouette of his attacker stared through the iron bars. He was broad and tall, with ghost-pale skin and thinning white hair. His irises were pink with dark red pupils.
And on one or another interminable flight recently, I watched as much of "Angels and Demons" as I could stand. Apart from Ayelet Zurer, who is delightful (and I'm not just being ethnocentric here), it really was one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen, in particular the bit in which the priest flies a helicopter filled with anti-matter high above Vatican City and then parachutes back into St. Peter's Square. Pure unintentional comedy.
Perhaps most significant, Hamas's rival for Palestinian leadership, the
West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, is considerably stronger than it
was before the war. Probably it will renew peace talks with Israel
within weeks. As for the Goldstone report, the heat it briefly produced
last week will quickly dissipate; the panel was discredited from the
outset because of its appointment by the grotesquely politicized U.N.
Human Rights Council.
When is a Story About Monkeys Not Just About Monkeys?
Watch this video and decide for yourself:
September 20, 2009
A Poisonous Endorsement For J Street
Stephen Walt, who makes his living scapegoating Jews, writes in a Sunday op-ed (thanks for the special Rosh Hashanah gift, Washington Post!):
Why is Obama letting Netanyahu thwart his efforts? To begin with, the president has too much on his plate -- the economic crisis, the health-care battle, Afghanistan, Iran's nuclear problem -- so the attention he can devote to Israeli-Palestinian peace is limited.
And then there is the Israel lobby. The good news is that there is a new pro-Israel organization, J Street, which is committed to the two-state solution and firmly behind Obama. The bad news is that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other defenders of the status quo remain powerful, and they will surely oppose any attempt to pressure Netanyahu.
J Street would be better off with Osama Bin Laden's endorsement than it would with Stephen Walt's. As best as I can tell, the bulk of J Street's backers are people who ardently support the creation of a Palestinian state and don't very much like Benjamin Netanyahu, but they are also people who don't like grubby Jew-baiters like Stephen Walt. I'm curious to see what Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of J Street, has to say about this.
September 18, 2009
The Abuse of the Palestinians
Has there ever been a better example of the cynical manipulation by repressive Muslim governments of the Palestinian cause than what we are witnessing today in Iran? The regime was hoping for a day of good old-fashioned Jew-bashing on behalf of the Palestinians, a group of Sunni Muslims the average Iranian cares about not one whit. Instead, the pro-Palestinian demonstrations have turned into anti-regime protests, some of which have brought about a violent response. The people of Iran seem not to care about Sheikh Nasrallah, or Hamas, or whether Auschwitz actually existed (I'm fairly sure that most Iranians, unlike their deranged president, actually acknowledge the Holocaust as an historical fact). They care that they're government beats them and tortures them and denies them their basic rights, and no amount of anti-Semitism will change their minds.
"Neither Gaza, Nor Lebanon, I Give My Life to Iran!"
Wise words from Goldblog's chief rabbi, David Wolpe:
This year has presented a series of shocks to the Jewish
system: the Madoff scandal and others indicted for financial crimes;
rabbis who stole and laundered money; the ex-Prime Minister of Israel
indicted. With each successive shock I would be told that these things
don't really represent our community. To some extent I agree. But if we
take pride in those who do well, and feel them a part of ourselves, can we
really disclaim those who do wrong and say their choices have nothing to
do with our heritage or community? Can we celebrate the good and not be
chastened by the evil?
The Dubno Maggid told a story that should be learned by
every Jewish child. He told of a father in a small Eastern European
village who was walking his child to cheder, to school. Suddenly
they heard a fanfare of trumpets and an elaborate coach pulled by
beautiful horses rode down the road. The coach stopped right by them and
out stepped a man wrapped in lush furs and dripping with jewels, dazzling
the onlookers.
The father whispered to his son: "Take a good look, my
child. For unless you learn and live Torah, that's what you are going to
look like!"
Learning Torah -- and living Torah -- can save us from the
excesses that masquerade as meaning. How many of us are wise enough to
whisper those words to our children -- or heed them ourselves?
The Pornography of Rugelach
Deli aficionado David Sax has filled the Atlantic Food Channel with Rosh Hashana-themed food porn. The photos show mostly oil-soaked dishes from delis around the country, including noodle kugel, kishka and kreplach. A sample below, and the rest here.
Israelis Approve of Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino's Nazi-killing extravaganza finally hit Israeli theaters this week. Aside from Germany (where giddy critics went overboard with praise after the film's debut there), Israel was Tarantino's ultimate barometer to gauge whether he could get away with bringing spaghetti-Western justice to Nazis. When I interviewed Tarantino about the film over the summer, we discussed my ambivalence about how liberal Israelis, who deal with issues of power and aggression on a daily basis, would take to the film. Judging from the audience's reaction at the film's Israeli premiere, I was wrong. Tarantino, shouting the same pre-movie pep talk that he's used to introduce Inglourious Basterds at other theaters, earned wild applause and cheers from his first ever Israeli critics:
I've been looking forward for the past few movies to coming to Israel, and I figured this might be the movie to do it with. ... You guys just made me feel really welcome and I just thank you from the bottom of my heart [applause and whistling]. And I'm very looking forward to seeing the movie with an Israeli audience. ... Try not to throw tomatoes ... So are you guys ready to kill some Nazis? [loud cheers, 'yeahs!'] Are you ready to fuck up some Nazis? [louder applause] Let's get this motherfucker started! [audience goes wild].
Roger Cohen is Ahmadinejad's Charlie Brown
It's inevitable: Roger Cohen writes a column either defending the Iranian government; excoriating Israel for being unkind to the Iranian government; describing Iran as a Middle East version of Scarsdale; calling for negotiations with an I-just-realized-they're-odious-but-no-matter Iranian government; whatever -- and almost immediately, Ahmadinejad, or one of his minions, pulls the football out from under him.
Earlier this week, Cohen wrote, in reference to the "Cooperation for Peace, Justice and Progress" platform just issued by Teheran (the platform that neglects to mention Iran's nuclear program) that:
There's a lot of verbiage -- some that Orwell would have seized on -- in the Iranian "package," but that's just the way of things in Iran. Like many much-conquered countries, not least Italy, Iran loves artifice, the dressing-up of truth in elaborate layers. It will always favor ambiguity over clarity. This is a nation whose conventions include the charming ceremonial insincerity known as "taarof" (hypocrisy dressed up as flattery), and one that is no stranger to "tagieh," which amounts to the sacrifice of truth to higher religious imperative.
Yesterday, Ahmadinejad, on "Qods Day," the day designed to divert the attention of Iranians from the failures of their own bloody and repressive government to the supposed sins of the Jews, once again denied that the Holocaust took place. I guess "that's just way of things in Iran." It's uncanny -- every time Roger Cohen tries to explain why the Iranian regime might just be ripe for rational negotiations, Ahmadinejad enters the room with a plateful of crazy.
I suppose, at this point, I need to say it again: I'm opposed to an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, and I'm for a time-limited negotiation between the U.S. and Iran. Unlike Cohen, however, I think the Iranian regime is not so hard to understand. It's malevolent and narcissistic and violent and corrupt and anti-Semitic, and for all those reasons, I hold out virtually no hope that something good will come from these talks. But at least, at the end of the talks, we'll see the Iranian government for what it is.
On That United Nations Report
A number of loyal Goldblog readers have asked me why I haven't commented on the U.N. report that found Israel guilty of various war crimes. The reason is simple: The U.N. is hopelessly biased against Israel; the mandate of Goldstone, the chief of the hanging party, was to find Israel guilty (yes, he's Jewish, but so what? There are all kinds of Jews, including this guy); the report does not differentiate between offensive action and defensive action, and so on. Why this report, from an organization that has Saudi Arabia and Cuba on its Human Rights Council, should be taken seriously is beyond me. I'd much sooner read Human Rights Watch reports on Israel, even the ones written by a Nazi-memorabilia-collecting-fetishist.
Do I have to say that I don't support everything Israel did in Gaza? Yes, I suppose so. I don't support everything Israel did in Gaza (starting with pulling out of Gaza, but that's another story). Shooting isn't always the smartest response to provocation, and shooting wildly certainly isn't, as I wrote here. What I object to is scapegoating. It's been with us for a while as a phenomenon, and we hoped that after the Holocaust, it would subside, but it's apparently an undying disease.
September 17, 2009
"Every Book Gets the Readers it Deserves"
One of the many difficult aspects of being Stephen Walt (aside from the eventual obituary difficulty -- you know, the, "Walt, most famous for scapegoating Jews in the book he wrote with John Mearsheimer....") must be having David Rothkopf as a colleague on the Foreign Policy website. Rothkopf can write circles around Walt -- especially when he's writing about Walt. In a way, it's unfair: Walt gives Rothkopf so much great material. Or should I say, Osama Bin Laden gives Rothkopf so much great material. Walt is already having a bad week, what with Bin Laden's endorsement of "The Israel Lobby." On the other hand, this might have been his first good review. Walt finally responded to Bin Laden's endorsement with a ludicrous statement of his own:
"Ironically, bin Laden's 'endorsement' of our book could even be a self-defeating gesture. If enough people were to read our book and U.S. policy were to evolve in the manner we recommend, bin Laden's call to arms would fall on deaf ears and he'd become even more irrelevant than he is today. Furthermore, any would-be imitators who might subsequently emerge would find an even less receptive audience."
Get it? No, of course not. Because it's twisted. But let me try to translate: If the U.S. listens to the psychotic mass murderer Bin Laden and hops on Walt's anti-Israel bandwagon, then Bin Laden will lose popularity, because America, by abandoning Israel and moving closer to Bin Laden's view of the world, will no longer alienate radical Muslims, for whom the number-one cause is the destruction of Israel, and therefore Bin Laden, having won, will lose relevancy. See? If we just sacrifice Israel, then everything will be okay.
Of course, this argument assumes a couple of things: That the Palestinian cause is uppermost in Bin Laden's mind, for one, even though no serious Bin Laden scholar believes that to be the case; and two, that giving apocalyptic mass-murdering terrorists what they say they want will make them stop being apocalyptic mass-murdering terrorists. Stephen Walt advertises himself as a "realist," but could his argument that the way to stop lunatics from killing you is to let them kill other innocent people be for real?
But why am I talking? Here's Rothkopf:
"Walt's response gets really good when he then goes so far as to suggest that Osama's embrace of his book only proves his point that the Israel lobby (or is it The Israel Lobby?) is used as a justification by terrorists. Blind to the irony all his book did was weave precisely the kind of fabric of partial truths and old biases that are used to dress up the hatreds of demagogues everywhere, Walt actually has the chutzpah to try use the news that the most evil man in the world is reading his work as a soap box from which to once again sell his argument (and books)."
Let's never forget that selling books seems to be Walt's raison d'etre. Rothkopf, once again:
"(Walt and Mearsheimer) may not be anti-Semites themselves but they made a cynical decision to cash in on anti-Semitism by offering to dress up old hatreds in the dowdy Brooks Brothers suits of the Kennedy School and the University of Chicago. They did what the most desperate members of academia do, they signed up to be rent-a-validators, akin to expert witnesses who support the defense of felons with specious theories served up on fancy diplomas. They would argue that they were daring to speak truth to power. In reality they were giving one crowd in particular precisely what it wanted to hear."
Is The Washington Post Losing Itself?
Thank God for the New York Times, the Atlantic and the New Yorker. They (we) all have their problems, but these publications are indispensable because they maintain their standards even in a vicious advertising climate, and in a period when the superficial seems to have triumphed over the serious. Editorial decisions are made at these publications based on what is important and true, not on what is popular. (A good example is the Atlantic's cover story this month by Andrew Sullivan on torture.) The Washington Post, alas, seems to be a different story, at least on occasion. The Post's publisher, the accident-prone Katharine Weymouth, seems to have an aversion to "depressing" stories, an aversion that may have led to the spiking of one such piece for The Washington Post Magazine, about a woman who lost all her limbs. (For a full accounting of the controversy, see Jack Shafer.)
I hope that this latest incident represents (another) hiccup as the Post figures out its future (one suggestion: Don't let John Harris leave the paper. Oh, wait.). But in this Daily Beast world we live in, who can be sure? I'm sure about The Atlantic, however: For 152 years, the Atlantic has done the right thing -- long-form, narrative journalism that exposes sin and corruption and holds powerful people accountable and at the same time enlightens and, yes, even entertains. There is no doubt in my mind that the current leadership of The Atlantic will maintain the magazine's righteous course, even if newspapers like The Post lose their way.
September 16, 2009
France is "Sure" Iran is Working on Nuclear Weapons
"We cannot let Iran acquire nuclear" weapons because it would also
be a threat to Israel, Sarkozy said during a meeting at the Elysee
presidential palace with lawmakers from his conservative UMP party on
Tuesday.
"It is a certainty to all of our secret services. Iran is working today on a nuclear (weapons) program," he said.
The
French leader also said he would not "shake the hand of someone who
wants to wipe Israel off the map", referring to Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In reading that last paragraph, I have to say that I felt some jealousy; I wish the American President would make a bit more clear his outrage at Iran's desire to see Israel eliminated. I don't doubt that he finds it outrageous, but sometimes a little emotion would be useful.
And Now for a Little Climate Change
I just got back from the Atlantic's Green Intelligence Forum at the Newseum, where Jim Fallows interviewed my friend Todd Stern, the Obama Administration's special envoy for climate change. Todd is the sort of person you want in government -- he's ferociously dedicated to his cause, and extremely competent, but I got the sense in listening to him that the health care debate is hurting whatever chance he has of going to the big Copenhagen climate change meeting in December with more than a smile and his good intentions. In other words, unless Congress passes something useful on climate change in the next three months, the Chinese and Indians, most notably, will look at him and say, in essence: "Why don't you go cap yourself first, and then you can lecture us about our responsibilities."
Todd remains officially optimistic, but, as he put it to Fallows, it's hard to work two "behemoth" issues through Congress at the same time. He mentioned, somewhat ruefully, that at his first international meeting as the climate envoy, people were so enthusiastic about the Obama Administration that he "got a standing ovation just for showing up." He joked, "I should have quit then." He went on to say, however, that "as my old boss Bill Clinton said, 'at the end of the day, the American people usually get it right.' At the end of the day -- and I hope that day is before December -- I think we will get this right."
I hope he's right, but given what has happened in the debate over health care -- the scaremongering and lying and barely-veiled racism -- I wouldn't be surprised if in November we hear Sarah Palin accusing the Obama Administration of planning to import French heating inspectors to invade our homes and force us to turn down our thermostats.
Curling Up in Front of the Eichmann Trial
This is actually pretty funny (h/t Jennie Rothenberg Gritz):
September 15, 2009
Race-Baiting at the Drudge Report
See below. Is this national news? Is this even local news? Beatings are terrible, and the students who did this should be punished, but you have to ask yourself why Drudge would feature this inconsequential story on his homepage. The answer, unfortunately, is fairly obvious -- the message is that white people ought to be very afraid of black people, starting with the President.
Human Rights Watch Follies
I suppose I have to say it each time Human Rights Watch commits another stupidity (appointing people ideologically opposed to the existence of a Jewish state to monitor the Jewish state, hiring as a military analyst a Nazi memorabilia fetishist) but the group has its merits. It has done good work in many regions of the world, including on the Arab states, and yes, including on Israel, but, really, its Middle East division is looking increasingly ridiculous.
On Bin Laden's Endorsement of Walt and Mearsheimer
The Jews are certainly clever. What better way to undermine the credibility of Walt and Mearsheimer's screedish "The Israel Lobby" than to manipulate an endorsement of the book from the psychopathic mass murderer Osama Bin Laden?
How do we do it? Maybe Walt, on his Foreign Policy blog, can explain. So far, as best as I can tell, he hasn't commented on Bin Laden's support for his scholarship. I can't imagine why he hasn't.
September 14, 2009
More on Parasites
Thank you, loyal Goldblog readers, for your sympathy and concern in re: my parasites. It's not really that bad. And there's a bright side to these things (as many of you know, I'm an inveterate optimist) -- the weight-loss benefits of tropical diseases. In the '90s, when I did a lot of work in sub-Saharan Africa, I was infected with malaria twice, and on one occasion I lost 25 pounds. Of course, my kidneys almost stopped functioning and my brain almost exploded, but I did lose 25 pounds, in about five days. Whatever second-string parasite I have right now won't do that sort of job on me, alas. These sorts of diseases are also a useful reminder of what the average African goes through each day. I was just in Liberia, where there are some excellent people trying to put their country back together again, but the challenges are vast, and they start with basic public health issues like clean water. I'm not feeling well enough right now to delve into the issue, which I suppose is the point -- it's hard to do useful things when you're sick all the time, and too many people in these countries are constantly sick from preventable diseases.
Parasites
The real kind, not the Washington kind -- I think I got 'em. Sorry about not blogging, I was doing some reasonably hard traveling through East and West Africa for stories about which I will say not a word, and I just washed back up in D.C. and let me put it this way: I've felt better. So give me a day or two, and then I'll turn to the looming mega-story, which is Iran. It's nice to be back.
September 1, 2009
Away from the Intertubes
I'm presently out of range, but I should be back fairly soon. In the meantime, you could subscribe to The Atlantic. It wouldn't kill you.
