Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

I’ve been reading the NY Times for a long time. My father did before me. I read every article published there about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and often write about them here. I have a long and deep respect for the wonderful reporting that has come out of Israel in its pages. Steven Erlanger, the Jerusalem bureau chief, has, until now, been in that august tradition that included David Shipler, (the early) Tom Friedman, Deborah Sontag, James Bennett and Serge Schmemann. But he really let himself and his predecessors down today.

He wrote a terribly imbalanced story about incitement against Jews fomented by Hamas, which practically gave over his article to promote the views of propaganda outfits like MEMRI and Palestine Media Watch. In doing so, Erlanger touted them as if they were dispassionate, professionally competent observers of the Arab media. Nothing could farther from the truth. This sentence in particular is problematic:

Along with Mr. Marcus’s group, the Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri, also monitors the Arabic media. But no one disputes their translations…

How can a journalist writing for as distinguished a newspaper as the Times make such a statement? For one, Brian Whitaker, an editor of The Guardian’s Comment is Free blog, has written regularly about MEMRI’s distorted translations of Arab media–translations which are designed more to prove ideological points rather than provide an well-grounded, proportionate picture of what the media is actually saying. These are a few of the columns he’s written over the years:

Selective MEMRI
Yigal Carmon-Brian Whitaker Debate
Arabic Under Fire
Arabsats Get the MEMRI Treatment

And Whitaker is not the only one. Any Google search would uncover multiple reputable media critiques of MEMRI and Palestine Media Watch.

Several images accompany the story including one with this caption:

In a play staged at a Gaza cultural center this month, a Palestinian farmer pulls his dead child from a house bombed by Israel.

I have no idea about the content of this play, but why would such a work be seen as an impermissible expression of anti-Jewish incitement? Are Gazans not allowed to dramatize their suffering as peoples of most other nations of the world do? Personally, I think Erlanger and his editors really lost their way on this story.

Let me take a slight detour by acknowledging there is hate and incitement against Israelis and Jews in Gaza. Hamas is an organization riddled with anti-Semitic attitudes. This is real. This is troubling. It is rightly written about in the Times and condemned by all who support tolerance and respect between both peoples and religions. But the grievous problem with Erlanger’s story is that he completely omits any context for it.

Why do Gazans hate Israelis and Jews? Could it possibly have a wee bit to do with Israel’s strangulation of the Gaza Strip and the privation that this has caused for the 1.5 million people who live there? If Steven Erlanger lived on handouts, couldn’t afford to feed his family, couldn’t get any medical treatment if his children became ill, couldn’t leave his home to travel anywhere for business or pleasure, and was treated as the enemy by an occupying power–might he not harbor deep hatred for those he blamed for such treatment? Might his hatred possibly even be irrational, prejudiced and grossly distorted? I don’t know. That’s for Erlanger to say. But if he’s honest and recognized human frailties shared by many of us, he might acknowledge this as a distinct possibility.

Erlanger also commits a sin of omission. He bangs on the incessant drumbeat of Muslim hate without acknowledging a problem as deeply troubling on the Israeli side: Jewish incitement against Arabs. I know something about this subject since I’ve just published a Comment is Free essay on it. There is a long tradition within Israel of such hatred against Israel’s perceived Arab enemies. And it is more than just words. It is hatred that has led to violence. Haaretz reported this week that a prominent Israeli Orthodox rabbi called for the children of Palestinians who murder Israelis to be hung from trees. Not the murderers, but their CHILDREN!

Erlanger somehow believes that this phenomenon is less pressing, less prevalent and less problematic than the hatred he wrote about in Gaza’s mosques. I beg to disagree. Such incitement led to the assassination of an Israeli prime minister who many serious analysts believe would have succeeded in resolving the I-P conflict had he lived. Jewish hate is no less poisonous and deadly than Muslim hate. Discount it at your peril.

I want to make clear that my purpose here is not to minimize or justify Palestinian hate. It is to point out that hate is not a one-way street, as Erlanger implies. It is a two-way street. And as long as journalism like this passes for fair and balanced, no one will be able to address the problems and divisions keeping both sides apart in order to bridge them.

Those like Erlanger who allow you to believe that only one side are to blame in causing this bloody mess of a conflict are doing a deep disservice to truth and history. Both sides are wrong. Both sides are imperfect. Both sides hate. Both sides must acknowledge their errors and turn away from them in a mutual compromise.

tags brian whitaker, comment-is-free, hamas anti-jewish incitement, In Gaza Hamas Fiery Insults to Jews Complicate Peace Ef, memri, new-york-times, palestine media watch, steven-erlanger

Bush, who used his family connections to avoid Vietnam, told troops serving in Afghanistan on Thursday that he is “a little envious” of their adventure there, saying it was “in some ways romantic.”

Can someone tell me where the ‘romance’ is? Only a guy who’s never served in a war could say wartime service was “romantic.” The closest this guy’s gotten to combat is watching Saving Private Ryan in the White House living quarters. He probably didn’t even watch that as it would’ve put him off the notion of war being jolly good manly fun. I won’t ask whether the guy’s taken leave of his senses because clearly, if he was ever in touch he hasn’t been for about the last seven years or so. But every day brings new confirmations of this like the passage above quoted in Maureen Dowd’s NY Times column today.

tags bush-says-afghanistan-service-is-romantic, maureen-dowd, new-york-times, Soft-Shoe-in-Hard-Times

Thank God for the clear-eyed thinking of Israelis like Ronen Bergman. Though he’s essentially recapitulating some of the major points of the Uri Avnery essay I’ve posted here, getting such views into the pages of the New York Times is a real achievement. Here are some of Bergman’s main points:

…However much backslapping and Champagne-cork popping may be going on in Tel Aviv and Langley, Va., the questions remains: Was it worth the effort and resources and the mortal risk to the agents involved? Few would deny that Mr. Mugniyah, who had the blood of many hundreds of Americans and Israelis, not to mention Frenchmen, Germans and Britons, on his hands, deserved the violent death that befell him, or that eliminating this top-flight mass murderer might prevent more death. But this act of combined vengeance, punishment and pre-emption might extract a far greater cost in the future.

…There are precedents. It was on Feb. 16, 1992, that Ehud Barak, then chief of staff of the Israeli military and now minister of defense, gave the order for two combat helicopters hovering over south Lebanon to rocket a convoy in which the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Abbas Musawi, was traveling. Sheik Musawi, his wife and his 6-year-old son were killed. The response was not long in coming: for five days, Katyusha rockets rained down on northern Israel. A 5-year-old girl was killed.

This was only the beginning. Watching television coverage of Sheik Musawi’s assassination at their home in Turkey had been Ehud Sadan, chief of security at the Israeli embassy in Ankara, and his wife. “I hope this doesn’t spark a war of assassinations,” Mrs. Sadan said. Her husband reassured her that nothing would happen. On March 7, he was blown up by a bomb planted under his car. The authorities arrested several members of Turkish Hezbollah, acting under orders from Mr. Mugniyah.

Ten days after that, Mr. Mugniyah’s men blew up the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people and wounding more than 220. Two years later, in July of 1994, a suicide bomber struck at the offices of a Jewish community organization in Buenos Aires, killing 85. A joint investigation by Mossad and the Central Intelligence Agency uncovered clear evidence of Mr. Mugniyah’s involvement in all three bombings. The telephone monitors of the United States National Security Agency turned up “not a smoking gun, but a blazing cannon,” in the words of a Mossad official. A senior Hezbollah operative, Talal Hamiyah, was taped rejoicing with Mr. Mugniyah over “our project in Argentina” and mocking Israeli security services for not preventing it.

My point is not to defend Mugniyah as being a saint or even a hero to the Arab resistance. He was undoubtedly a scumbag as is anyone who engages in such killing of civilians (and I include Israeli generals in this category as well). The point is that strategically such acts simply DON’T WORK. They are palliatives that ease a symptom for a minute or an hour but eventually make the disease much worse. We’ll just have to wait and see for the proof of this statement to emerge, when we hear the news of the next Hezbollah attacks against Israeli or Jewish targets.

What is truly sad is that Bergman goes on the explain that Israeli governments between 1992 and now seemed to understand the logic of my statement above and refrained from such assassinations:

Ever since, the Israelis have been very cautious about assassinating Hezbollah leaders. Two weeks before Israel withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000, military intelligence had Mr. Mugniyah in its sights. Mr. Barak, then prime minister, ruled out a hit, for what he claims were operational reasons, but he surely had the aftermath of the Musawi assassination in mind.

Today, whether Mr. Barak has unlearned his lesson or not, Hezbollah has no doubt that it was Israel who eliminated its top terrorist, and once more it is bent on vengeance. As Hezbollah draws no fine distinctions between the United States and Israel, both nations, along with Jews around the world, might well have to pay the price for the loss of the man whose mystical aura was as important as his operational prowess.

In the immediate aftermath, Hezbollah has chosen not to respond with volleys of rockets aimed at Galilee, as many Israelis feared. But an inkling of how the group might respond can be found in the July 2007 statements of Michael McConnell, America’s director of national intelligence, expressing grave apprehension about Hezbollah sleeper cells in the United States that could go into action should the Americans cross the organization’s “red line.”

This line has now been crossed.

And now we wait for the bloody chickens to come home to roost. Some of my readers who oppose my views will no doubt claim that I’m somehow supporting or defending Hezbollah vengeance. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I oppose all violence especially against civilians no matter what side it comes from. But it is clear there will be a very high price for this apparent Israeli act of vengenace against Hezbollah. Denying this is simply denying past history and the logic of tit for tat vengeance of the Israeli-Arab conflict. It’s deeply ugly and inhumane. But when you play with fire, you and yours will get burned whatever side you’re on in this conflict.

tags bracing-for-revenge, hezbollah, israel-mugniyah-assassination, new-york-times, ronen-bergman

“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” (Kevin Frayer/AP)

To paraphrase Kris Kristofferson in the light of yesterday’s dramatic destruction of the Gaza border fence with Egypt: a siege is just another word for nothin’ left to lose. In other words, the Gazans came to the end of their rope and decided that since they couldn’t break out towards Israel that Egypt was the next most likely alternative. They in effect told the world: “if you won’t help us we’re not going to die here a slow death; we’re going to take our fate in our hands.” Kol hakavod lahem. Now, the rest of the world should bow its head in shame. It did nothing while 1.5 million Gazans suffered for the sole reason that a few hundred of them are firing rockets at Israel. This collective punishment, outlawed under international law, is what passes for sensible policy in Israeli circles.

The NY Times story claims that Israel is satisfied with what happened because it will supposedly mean that Egypt will take this problem off their hands:

A senior Israeli official…said the development might solve a problem.

“This may be a blessing in disguise,” he said…“If it continues like this, it will ease tremendously the pressure on Israel on the humanitarian level. The humanitarian organizations will get off our backs. There won’t be any shortages. So that is a good thing. We don’t care if people buy food in Egypt…

“Second — there’s a notion that Barak believes in — and I think Sharon did too — of getting out of Gaza, and throwing away the keys…”

Another Israeli official said of the border: “…Some people in the Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry and prime minister’s office are very happy with this. They are saying, ‘At last, the disengagement is beginning to work.’ ”

Beginning to work? How so? Do they really believe that the Qassams will stop merely because Gazans can now buy bread in Egypt? If Israel really believes this and isn’t merely making lemonade from overripe lemons, they’re more foolish than I thought. Those enormous holes in the border fence also poked enormous holes in the vaunted international siege of Gaza of which Israel was the prime instigator.

This Hamas statement too seems a calculated attempt to throw Israeli settlement policy (”creating facts on the ground” as Sharon used to call it) back in Israel’s face:

Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas official in Gaza, refused in an interview to take direct responsibility for ordering the Egyptian border opened, but said: “We are creating facts. We have to try to change the situation, and now we await the results.”

With the crossings to Israel closed and minimal goods coming in, Mr. Zahar said: “Rafah is our only lung. If Rafah remains shut, it means our acceptance to be strangled, our acceptance to die. We warned the Egyptians yesterday that people are hungry and dying.” Sometimes, he acknowledged, it was necessary to create a crisis to settle another one.

In other words, if you refuse to accept the reality imposed on you, then create a new one by sheer pluck. That’s what happened yesterday.

And for anyone parachuting into this blog from the moon who has never read me before: none of the above should be read to imply approval of the attacks against Sderot, which I abhor. I’d just as soon see the Islamic Jihad and Hamas rocketeers in the dock at the Hague along with Barak and all those who planned this stupid siege.

tags new-york-times, Palestinians-Topple-Gaza-Wall-and-Cross-to-Egypt, qassams-fired-at-sderot

The NY Times weighed in in today’s Arts & Leisure section on the upcoming Walt-Mearsheimer book noting that they have been disinvited from speaking at numerous venues. I covered the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ shameful capitulation to the American Jewish fear machine. The Times article revealed that J.J. Goldberg, editor of the Jewish Forward had also backed out of moderating an evening with Walt and Mearsheimer. J.J. is a former Jewish student radical whose roots go back to the 1960s. He edits a forward-looking progressive newspaper that is far and away the most liberal national Jewish publication. So what is J.J. afraid of?

The article makes this otherwise liberal, tolerant journalist sound timorous:

As for City University, Aoibheann Sweeney, director of the Center for the Humanities, said, “I looked at the introduction, and I didn’t feel that the book was saying things differently enough” from the original article. Ms. Sweeney, who said she had consulted with others at City University, acknowledged that they had begun planning for an event in September moderated by J. J. Goldberg, the editor of The Forward, a leading American Jewish weekly, but once he chose not to participate, she decided to pass. Mr. Goldberg, who was traveling in Israel, said in a telephone interview that “there should be more of an open debate.” But appearing alone with the authors would have given the impression that The Forward was presenting the event and thereby endorsing the book, he said, and he did not want to do that. A discussion with other speakers of differing views would have been different, he added.

“I don’t think the book is very good,” said Mr. Goldberg, who said he read a copy of the manuscript about six weeks ago. “They haven’t really done original research. They haven’t talked to the people who are being lobbied or those doing the lobbying.”

J.J. says “there should be more of an open debate” yet he declines to participate. He doesn’t think the book is very good, yet he passes up an opportunity to make his objections to the book known to a broad audience. As for the charge of “not doing original research,” I don’t know that this is true. But even if it is, who says that a book on this subject has to contain original research. All that is required in my opinion is that the authors have something important and relevant to say to current conditions. And they’ve satisfied that requirement in spades.

I myself took issue with some of the arguments W-M brought forth in their original essay. But to throw the baby out with the bathwater as J.J. has done seems churlish and counter-productive. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to read this new book. Does the Jewish community want to throw a blanket of silence over the venture or does it want to engage in, and try to shape the debate? Does it want to make its views known to those hundreds of thousands or does it want to stand silently by and let events overtake it?

Progressive Jews know about the fear that permeates the organized Jewish community which leads it to try to silence voices like Walt-Mearsheimer. J.J. understands this problem too. So why would he contribute to such a nasty phenomenon by running and hiding from an opportunity to engage the two authors??

I know J.J. to be a principled, courageous journalist. But in this case, he’s made a mistake and not upheld those principles as he might have.

UPDATE: I wrote J.J. hoping there was story behind this interview that explained his views in a more nuanced, persuasive way and he graciously wrote a long reply laying out his thinking. In short, J.J. strongly objected to the essay and dislikes the new book even more. When approached by the publishers about moderating the event, he felt uncomfortable at the prospect of having to skewer the authors with his objections to their work. He didn’t feel that would be the proper role of a moderator. And he certainly didn’t feel good about being a more conventional moderator who merely facilitated the evening. The only format he felt comfortable with was the type advocated by the Chicago groups which disinvited Walt and Mearsheimer, where other speakers would represent a contrasting view to theirs.

J.J. also forwarded to me the editorial he wrote outlining his objections to the original essay and while he raises some good points and at least dealt with W-M’s actual arguments, unlike most of the opponents, I still fundamentally don’t find the critique which argues that the work is garbage to be at all persuasive. And that’s why I wish J.J. would’ve seen his way to decide this differently. I’d like to have seen the three of them go at it hammer and tong and see if some fundamental truth or clarity might’ve arisen from it all. And even if it hadn’t, it would’ve been worth the effort.

tags Backlash-Over-Book-on-Policy-for-Israel, israel-lobby-and-u.s.-foreign-policy, j.j.-goldberg-refuses-to-moderate-walt-mearsheimer-even, new-york-times

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