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

Israel’s ‘pinpoint accuracy’ targeted assassination policy struck again yesterday as the IDF fired on a vehicle supposedly carrying militants intent on a rocket attack. After the first missile missed its target, the pilot launched a second missile. According to the IDF, after launch, civilians entered the vicinity of the vehicle. Instead of directing the missile away from the target, the pilot decided to let it fly. The result? Eleven dead of whom eight are civilians; among them two children and three medical personnel attempting to treat those injured by the first missile strike (this account from Ynetnews):

IDF sources explained that the first rocket fired from an Israeli military aircraft apparently hit next to the targeted car, and therefore it was decided to aim another missile to ensure that the cell members, which the IDF has been pursuing for a long time, would in fact be hit. The second missile hit the cell members in the car, but also hit nearby civilians.

A senior officer explained that after the second missile was fired, at a certain point civilians were identified near the car, but if they had decided to veer the missile off course, it could have killed even more innocent victims.

[IDF Head of Operations Directorate, Brigadier General Gadi] Eisencott gave details of the preliminary investigation into the incident. “This afternoon an Islamic Jihad cell got into a car very near the launch site, with the intention of firing long-range Grad missiles at Israel.”

“The vehicle was located and munitions were fired at it. Simultaneously, nearby civilians ran towards the car and were hit by a second missile that was fired. When the second missile was fired, no civilians were identified at the target location. As in earlier incidents in which civilians not involved in terrorism were hit, we express deep regret over the incident. With that, we are fulfilling our duties as an army to provide security for the citizens of the State of Israel that live in the Gaza perimeter. That is what we were doing and that is what we will continue to do.”

What the good general neglects to mention or does not comprehend is the fact that killing innocent Palestinians civilians does not “provide security for the citizens of the State of Israel.” It sows hatred among Palestinians and guarantees that there will also be Israeli widows and widowers joining in the suffering of the survivors of these Palestinian victims.

I also found the explanation for not sending the second missile off course to be quite interesting. Doing this “could have killed even more victims.” Even more than the eleven already killed? Or might it be possible that the pilot made a swift mental judgment deciding that a sure kill of three militants was worth the ‘collateral damage’ of possibly killing innocent civilians? I’m sure that calculation never entered the pilot’s mind, aren’t you?

Haaretz’s description of the incident differs in a few telling details and provides quite a lot of reasonable doubt regarding the IDF account:

The incident began shortly after noon, when IAF planes fired a brace of missiles at a van containing four or five Islamic Jihad operatives. According to the IDF, the van also contained GRAD Katyusha rockets; this was confirmed by television footage from the scene of the strike, in which the rockets were visible. The Jihad operatives were apparently en route to launch the rockets at Israel.

The missiles landed near the van, causing only minor damage, and the Jihad operatives quickly abandoned it, apparently unharmed. Some of them then went to a nearby house, while others, aided by the numerous bystanders who had gathered at the site, surrounded the van and apparently tried to extract the Katyushas.

At this point, a second brace of missiles was fired. These missiles, which landed on the sidewalk nearby, killed nine people [current death toll is actually eleven] and wounded more than 20, some of them seriously…

Palestinian eyewitnesses told Haaretz that the second brace of missiles was fired three to four minutes after the first - a gap long enough to enable many civilians to gather at the site. However, a senior IAF officer said that only a minute elapsed between the two missile strikes. According to the officer, a lookout discerned civilians gathering at the site only seven seconds before the second brace hit, and that was not enough time to abort or divert the launch. Had the missiles been diverted at that point, he said, the number of civilian casualties might have been even larger.

Nevertheless, the IDF declined to present any evidence to support its version on Tuesday, even though it has films of the aerial assault in its possession. Moreover, if only a minute elapsed between the launches, it is hard to see how the medical crew would have had time to arrive at the scene.

The last paragraph is of course the most compelling part of the passage and indicates that the IDF report must be taken with a very large grain of salt till it’s willing to provide any hard evidence to prove its account. If three to four minutes elapsed between the first strike and the second, then civilians clearly would’ve had enough time to congregate at the scene and would’ve been clearly visible to both the IDF spotter and pilot indicating that they would’ve deliberately fired on a group that they must’ve known included innocent civilians. Bloodthirsty, if true.

Eisencott’s closing words in the Ynetnews are quite telling and typically deluded:

“Terror will continue for many years. There is no miracle solution that will beat it, but with a series of operations of various types, it can be minimized,” Eisencott said.

I’d change one of his sentences above to: “There is no solution that will beat it.” And certainly botched operations like this one will guarantee that rather than ‘minimizing’ terror, the IDF will exacerbate it.

I’ll close with my regular rant on these horrible occasions: IDF counter terror operations will NOT solve the problem of Palestinian terror. Walls won’t do it. Artillery fire won’t do it. Targeted assassinations won’t do it. The ONLY thing that will is Israel’s government biting the bullet and sitting down with Mahmoud Abbas for final status talks at which both sides make serious compromises in their maximalist positions. The bottom line for Israel is that it must retreat to 1967 borders (with small revisions) and recognize an independent, viable Palestinian state. For the Palestinians, they will have to give up on a literal right of return to Israel proper and they will have to recognize Israel and renounce terror. No amount of military might or terror from either side will substitute for this politically-negotiated outcome.

tags collateral-damage, eisencott, idf, palestinian-terror, targeted-assassination

All I can say is thank God for American Friends of Peace Now (and Brit Tzedek and Israel Policy Forum). They’re leading the charge against The Palestinian Anti Terrorism Act of 2006 ((HR 4681), a piece of draconian anti-Palestinian legislation that would further erode the already miserable quality of life for average Palestinians. It will tie Pres. Bush’s hands if he wishes to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. It will prohibit paying the salaries of the 160,000 Palestinians who work for the Palestinian Authority, effectively starving them if not to death, then to a state of perpetual want.

According to the Jerusalem Post, all three Jewish groups are directly taking on the behemoth of American Jewish organizations, Aipac, which is the 800 lb. gorilla behind this legislation. Aipac distributed an FAQ memo in the run up to the legislative vote on the bill, which contained specious arguments and erroneous interpretations of its language. Aipac would have you believe that the bill isn’t intended to penalize Palestinians for voting for Hamas in the last election. Even if you give the group the benefit of the doubt (which you shouldn’t) and say they don’t INTEND to penalize them, the net effect of the legislation will be to do precisely that. And thank God, APN issued an immediate rebuttal refuting Aipac’s distortions point by point. The group organized messages of opposition sent to 300 members of Congress in only 12 hours! Now that’s organizing.

Over 50% of Gazans live below the international poverty standard of $2 a day. The Australian Broadcasting Corp. says Israel Radio reports four Gaza hospital deaths already because kidney dialysis treatments have been reduced by one-third due to running out of necessary medicines, supplies and equipment. Imagine what’s to come once the crisis deepens. Here’s what one dialysis patient had to say to a NY Times reporter:

In the dialysis ward of Shifa Hospital, Ahmed Shabat, 51, sits in fraying clothes. He must come every other day. “This is my work,” he says, then shows the swollen veins on his arms caused by a lack of mineral supplements normally provided. “What is the relationship between humanitarian and political aims here?” he asked. “The United States is the mother of democracy. What is political about salaries to teachers and nurses? Please,” he said, “please don’t mix humanitarian help with politics. Please separate the two.”

Malnutrition is rampant. IDF shelling is incessant. And Aipac proposes ratcheting up the pressure even further with this poison pill of a bill. Someone should tell these people that our Jewish God is one of mercy, not of blind justice. And besides, what’s just (or merciful) about the bill or the Israeli punishment policy it represents?

The world already sees America as a heartless bully due to our militaristic forays into the Mideast. Is this legislation the face we really need to show the world? That we would willingly stand by while Palestinians drop dead in the streets and hospitals from conditions that would be easily curable in any modern society? Do we want to stand by while Israel and Aipac turn the screws ever tighter on an already debilitated people and society?

PLEASE, write your Congressmember asking that he or she opposes HR 4681. It is bad for America. It is bad for the Palestinians. It is even bad for Israel because it will draw us farther from a reasonable solution to the conflict. This bill is a worrisome distraction from the real issues confronting the parties–their need to sit down face to face and negotiate for peace. In other words, it’s a big fat waste of time for our elected representatives.

UPDATE: APN reports that Congress has delayed action on the bill, a victory for forces opposing it. This gives Congress further opportunity to amend the bill and make it more consonant with the milder Senate version.

tags aipac, american-israel-public-affairs-committee, americans-for-peace-now, hamas, HR-4681, israel, Palestinian-Anti-Terrorism-Act, palestinian-terror, u.s.-mideast-policy

So the eternal cycle of Mideast hatred and violence continues…In this attack, Islamic Jihad has succeeded for the first time in several months in evading Israeli security measures and possibly evading the vaunted Separation Wall which supposedly prevents such attacks. Haaretz reports:

The bomber reached Tel Aviv from the West Bank despite a total closure on the territories, and large numbers of security forces deployed around the country due to a high alert for Passover. The Shin Bet security service is trying to work out the route the bomber took to reach his destination.

If a bomber can make his way past such onerous obstacles how can we believe that there can ever be strong enough security measures to ensure peace in the long term short of a mutual settlement of the conflict agreed to by both sides after face to face negotiations (which both Israel and Hamas seem to oppose)?

Nine poor, innocent souls are lost.

There is a cruel, absurd calculus involved in the location targeted. Best to let Adam Keller of Gush Shalom speak to this subject:

One o’clock. In the noon news magazine on the radio, the commentator speaks in a rather bored way of the ongoing army raid into Nablus, words nearly identical to the reports of yesterday and of last week…

Suddenly: “We interrupt this report. A large explosion just occurred at the Old Central Bus Station in Tel-Aviv. Dozens of casualties. Stand by for further details”

The Old Central Bus Station. The least fashionable part of Tel-Aviv. The lively dirty streets which are the haunt of migrant workers one jump ahead of the notorious Immigration Police and the most poor and disadvantaged among Israel’s own citizens. The place where people have again and again to endure suicide bombings, too. Today, once again…The bombing had targeted the very same cheap restaurant which was attacked in the previous Tel-Aviv bombing, three and a half months ago.

The cruelty of targeting the Central Bus Station is that it is the poorest section of the city. It is where the Mizrahi Jews live and work. It is where migrant workers congregate (two of whom were among the dead). It is nowhere near the corridors of power or an army base. Those killed live lives almost as hard as the Gazans who suffer under Israeli siege and bombardment. Why them? How does killing them make a statement about Palestinian suffering or resistance to Israeli tyranny? It is mindless. It is stupid. It is pointless. It gains Palestinians nothing except a small measure of satisfaction to know there are now Israeli mothers and fathers suffering in the same way Palestinian mothers and fathers suffer when they lose one of their own at the hands of the IDF.

What lessons are there for Israel in this? Again, let us turn to Keller:

As always, the dilemma: Should we go there, to the scene where six people have just perished and forty others wounded, a place which is just a short bus ride away and where we just a few days ago went to buy sandals? Go there, as Israelis and human beings and and peace activists - but to do what? To say what?

Sure, we are horrified by the senseless random killing. But we have also something to say about why it happened, how it might have been prevented, how the next one can still be prevented. But how to say it on this day and in that location? How to make comprehensible, to shocked and angry and traumatized people, that the occupation is the root cause of our suffering as well as the Palestinians’? How to explain convincingly that we must dry at source the oppression which makes young Palestinians don explosive belts and throw away their lives together with those of others?

I’m sorry to say that the Israeli government has reacted to this horrible act in a way that is all out of proportion to what really happened. I just heard Dan Gillerman, Israel’s UN ambassador assess blame for the crime. Naturally, he mentioned Islamic Jihad but almost as an afterthought. That’s because IJ is of marginal significance in the death struggle between Israel and her Mideast enemies. Israel, or at least the Israeli government, sees its real enemies being Hamas and Iran. And naturally, they were the primary target of Gillerman’s analysis. But there was something strangely missing from the ambassador’s pronouncements. There was absolutely no separation in his mind between Iran, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They were equally culpable even though IJ did the deed and Hamas and Iran merely supported it tacitly. Gillerman certainly brought no proof that Hamas or Iran had any direct connection to the crime. He didn’t feel he needed to. The reason: lumping them all together confuses the untutored listener into believing that each actor could have been the one to plant the bomb given the opportunity. Here’s what Gillerman had to say to the BBC (audio stream):

“It’s very clear who is responsible. It’s a combination of the people who took direct credit for it–the Islamic Jihad–and the Al Aksa Brigades who are, by the way, part of Fatah, which is under control of the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. But it is also the newly elected government of the Palestinian people, Hamas, a terror organization which has claimed and said time and time again that not only will it not recognize Israel, but it is intent on the destruction of Israel. But in addition to that the people who are responsible are the additional voices we are hearing from Iran, from Teheran, from the president of Iran…including his statement in a conference convened only at the end of last week in which he again called for the destruction of Israel.

So what we’re seeing on the ground is the implementation and a very swift one of the extreme and mad statements made by the leader of this new axis of terror, Iran. This axis of terror which consists of Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah–which threatens not only the safety of Israel but the whole free world and civilization as we know it.”

What’s astonishing about this analysis is its full-blown hysteria. Iran moves from being merely a mortal threat to Israel to being a mortal threat to “the whole free world and civilization as we know it.” The reason for such fevered thinking is clear. Israel is desperate to ring the alarm bells in Washington about Iran. Israel wants the Bush Administration to do its dirty work by taking out Iran’s nuclear facility. Later in the interview, the BBC correspondent asks whether Israel would support military action against Iran. Gillerman dutifully lies and says that Israel is confident that diplomatic solutions will work in this situation. The truth is that Israel does not believe diplomacy will work. Israel believes that only military force will work. And if you scratched the surface, Israel would certainly agree with the Pentagon planners who are saying that only a nuclear bomb could penetrate Iran’s defenses and destroy the underground bunkers housing the nuclear facilities. In fact, the Israelis don’t want us to stop with attacking Iran’s nuclear plants. They want regime change. They want a full-fledged invasion to topple the mullahs and install a quiescent regime that will not threaten Israel.

I hope to God that Bush will realize that Israel has a vested interest in fomenting a war with Iran. I hope he will not take the bait offered by spokespeople like Gillerman who paint the most lurid picture possible of Iranian capability. In the interview, he warns that Iran is rapidly reaching the point of no return after which it will have the capacity to make nuclear weapons. This, of course, is a wild exaggeration. No doubt, Iran has made serious advances in its capabilities to enrich uranium. But it is years away from having a bomb. Israel says three years. U.S. experts say ten. So the idea that we must take out Iran now is preposterous.

Israel’s overblown rhetoric in this crisis reminds me of how Gershon Gorenberg describes the onset of the Six Day War. Gorenberg believes that neither side really wanted war. But that the increasing bellicosity of statements coming from each side convinced the other side it had to ratchet up the rhetoric until war became inevitable. In the current crisis, Iran is Egypt and the Iranian president, Nasser. Israel is reacting to Iran’s bellicosity in precisely the same way that Levi Eshkol and his cabinet reacted to Nasser’s taunts. The only difference between 1967 and 2005 is that much more is at stake. Now, there are nuclear weapons, superpowers, and the Arab street at play. A war or even a military attack against Iran carries much higher stakes not just for Israel or the Mideast region, but for the entire world.

That is why diplomacy must work. That is why there is no feasible military option available. That is why anyone who believes there is could further destabilize the entire Mideast and the world, setting the dogs of terror loose to roam the streets of western capitals. I don’t know precisely what’s in store if we bomb Iran. But I do know it will escalate the horror that we’ve already known in New York, London and Madrid.

Why Israel’s hysteria in the face of the Iranian threat? There’s no question that Iran is a threat to Israel. A nuclear Iran would be bad for Israel. But it’s more than that. Let’s not forget that Israel HAS the bomb. As the only current Mideast nation with nuclear capability Israel possesses the ultimate weapon; the one that stops any argument with its enemies in its tracks. No enemy of Israel could possibly contemplate striking a mortal blow against it because that nation knows it would receive a nuclear response. There’s a weird form of deterrence in that. But if Iran goes nuclear, then Israel loses that card. If Israel ever contemplated using its nuclear weapons it knows that Iran would likely respond in kind. This immediately cheapens the value of the deterrent and thus, at least in Israeli eyes, makes Israel more vulnerable. In Israel’s view it MUST be the only nation in the region with WMD. That’s why it pulls out all the stops to draw the U.S. into its ‘death-struggle’ with Iran. But should the U.S. attack Iran merely to preserve Israel’s nuclear dominance of the Mideast?

tags bbc, dan-gillerman, iran-nuclear-weapon, islamic-jihad, israel, israeli-occupation, palestinian-terror

The NY Times’ Julia Preston has just broken an earth-shattering story! A charity in the United Arab Emirates actually provides charitable support to families of Palestinian suicide bombers and civilians injured by Israeli violence. It can only mean yet another example of the perfidy of the UAE and how right our beloved Congress was in keeping those terror-mongers out of our ports:

In the last four years the United Arab Emirates has provided substantial financial support, through its Red Crescent Society, to families of Palestinians, militants as well as civilians, who have been wounded or killed by Israeli forces, according to Red Crescent documents.

The United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven small states including Dubai, where a government-owned company was due to take over some American port operations. Facing intense Congressional opposition, the company said recently that it would sell its operations in the United States to an unrelated American company within six months.

In 2002 and 2003, the United Arab Emirates Red Crescent Society, a quasi-governmental organization, made donations to Palestinian charities that included social groups associated with Hamas…

REALLY! This story is an absolute snoozer. A non-issue. Boring. But why?

First, the Emirates charity is only doing what scores of other Arab charities in other Arab countries do. So why pile on the Emirates except if you wish to reinforce American xenophobia regarding the Dubai ports deal and further the notion that UAE is a ‘bad egg?’ There is a general consensus (which many of us in the West disagree with) that shaheeds, or terror perpetrators, are “martyrs” for the Palestinian (and by extension “Arab”) cause. Thus, the survivors of a shaheed, in this view, are worthy of support by all who support the Palestinian cause. I’m not going to argue that this view is right because it isn’t. But I’m also not going to argue that a Palestinian mother with three or six or eight children, who may or may not have known of her spouse’s plans to blow himself and innocent Israelis up, should be shunned, ostracized or otherwise penalized. Or as an Emirates official said:

“What is the fault of the orphans?” a government official said, referring to children in the martyrs’ program. “By helping them, you are pulling them away from extremism.”

Of course, whether such payments “pull away” a survivor from future acts of terror may be debatable. But what is not debatable is that shunning such an individual or leaving them to stew in their own juices of hate and impoverishment (caused possibly by the loss of a family breadwinner) will be much more likely to lead to future bombers. We do need to pull them away from extremism and shutting off such funds is a way to guarantee your failure at doing so.

I also disagree with the U.S. government position on this matter as articulated by the Treasury official:

Daniel Glaser, a deputy assistant Treasury secretary, said the Emirates was “one of our primary partners” in the Middle East in combating financing of terrorist groups. He said the Treasury had a close working relationship with the Emirates central bank, and that financial officials there had provided concrete cooperation in recent investigations.

Mr. Glaser said he was not familiar with the details of Red Crescent programs. But as a general matter, he said, “Charities that are supporting terrorist activities, including by supporting family members and orphans — we consider that to be terrorist financing.”

This seems a preposterous overgeneralization to me. Supporting an orphan whose father killed himself in a terror attack is not “terror financing.” It is helping a child in need. Do you think that such a child deserves to sink into poverty and hopelessness at the loss of a father? Or does the fate of this child not matter in the face of the ‘overwhelming threat’ of Palestinian terror?

I realize that many suicide bombers are young and unmarried and in those cases I would not find any justification for supporting family members such as parents, siblings, etc. I have no idea what the policies are for determining which family members may receive such financial support.

Now let’s examine how NYT got this story because that is very instructive as well:

A glimpse inside the Emirates aid programs comes from documents provided to The New York Times by Gary M. Osen, an American lawyer litigating cases in the United States federal courts on behalf of American victims of Palestinian terror attacks. The documents include unclassified materials seized by Israeli forces from Palestinian organizations in the West Bank.

Mr. Osen, of Oradell, N.J., said researchers in Israel who were helping him gather evidence for the lawsuits had found the documents there in archives of materials captured in Israeli military operations.

I have no problem with American victims of Palestinian terror suing the parties responsible for their trauma and injuries. But what do charitable contributions made to Palestinian families of suicide bombers or survivors of Israeli violence have to do with such a lawsuit? In my opinion, the lawsuit and the research outlined above smack of an ideological motivation that goes far beyond merely recovering Palestinian assets to pay victims of violence (with which, as I said, I would have no problem). It seems designed more to embarrass Arab governments and further damage Hamas’ reputation in the U.S.

A highly lurid Jerusalem Post article about the PA’s supposed “support for terrorism” (through paying salaries to those in Israeli prisons) quoted Osen endorsing a campaign to hold it responsible for terror and make it “pay” for doing so:

As Gary M. Osen, a leading expert in terror financing litigation, observed: “Court victories against the Palestinian Authority are necessary and important, but at the same time, because most of the world’s governments shield the PA’s assets, collecting on a judgment against the PA is still very difficult.”

Moreover, while the international community, including the European Union and the United States, shield Palestinian assets, they continue to fund the PA. The abrupt and angry resignation of Fayad [former PA finance minister in October, 2005], who was seen by all as the symbol of a new Palestinian system of financial reform, should have resulted in immediate sanctions against the massive corruption in the PA. But the international community has set out to create a Palestinian state, and nothing - not even the PA’s admitted sponsorship of convicted terrorists - is likely to stop it.

It would seem that Mr. Osen has found an ideological soul mate in the writer of the Post article, Rachel Ehrenreich, a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, a neocon think tank founded by Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter among others.

The Times’ Preston in writing this article has given the neocons and Aipac supporters an ideological triple play. They can attack UAE, Hamas and all Palestinians for their “support of terror.” This leaves aside the pesky little questions of whether indeed any such funds directly support terrorism and the intellectual leaps of faith you have to make to embrace this argument.

Now, returning to the Dubai ports issue…what possible connection would a story like this have to do with DPW? How does an Emirates charity supporting Palestinians have anything to do with how DPW would manage our ports? Would DPW somehow funnel its profits to Hamas or support terror? Puh-leeze!

The article does mention one instance in which the Red Crescent Society funneled funds to a Hamas operative which may or may not have been used for purposes other than strictly charitable. But the RCS promptly ended its association with this individual and there have been no further charges of a similar nature.

I say for shame to the Times for wasting precious space on its news pages for this dumb issue.

tags emirates, hamas, palestinian-terror, terror-financing, uae-red-crescent-society

I’m glad to know that my online colleague, M.J. Rosenberg, Director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum, has joined the debate over the controversial Palestinian film, Paradise Now which is a hot contender for Best Foreign Language Oscar. Like me, Rosenberg is made very uncomfortable by the hysterical campaign being waged by Israelis against the film’s candidacy:

I’m trying to describe the phenomenon when people appear trapped in a different historical period than the present and react to events in an outdated context. The phrase “time warp” comes to mind.

The thought struck me after reading an article about a campaign by, what the Associated Press called, “pro-Israel activists” to prevent the Palestinian film, “Paradise Now” from winning an Oscar for best foreign language film when the Academy Awards are presented this Sunday.

…In today’s Washington Post, the always hyperbolic Charles Krauthammer publishes a column called Oscars for Osama. (I’m serious). In it he fulminates about “Paradise Now” and “Munich” but adds George Clooney’s “Syriana,” which he says is “pathological” and “could have been scripted by Osama Bin Laden.”

And for more such over-the-top ranting, take a look at Debbie Schlussel who one of my readers tells me “has been screeching” about Paradise Now for A YEAR! She calls the film “the pro-homicide bomber movie.” She seems like an Ann Coulter wannabe (”We are fighting a religion that is now dominated globally by fascism and extremism”). Maybe a Jewish Coulter? Though Ann is thankfully sui generis. No one can be as toxic and insanely incendiary as she, not even Debbie.

Rosenberg continues by explaining why Paradise Now threatens no one, not Israel, not Israelis:

…This mindless hysteria is truly offensive.

It should be obvious that Israel is not threatened by the Motion Picture Academy. Even if the actors portraying the suicide bombers walked off with dual “Best Actor” Oscars, Israel would survive. It will even survive a Steven Spielberg film that simply raises the question of whether the status quo, the cycle of violence and retaliation, is in Israel’s best interests.

So why the movie madness?

I think it’s because it’s considerably easier to worry about an imaginary Hollywood threat to Israel than the real threat posed by continuation of the status quo.

Absolutely, in my experience what Rosenberg calls the “status-quoniks” want desperately to maintain the illusion that all’s well with Israel’s current policies toward the Palestinians. The Occupation is manageable. Nothing needs to change. So when the news media publish a disturbing article or a filmmaker creates a work that threatens that status quo, then all hell breaks loose. The attitude seems to be: how dare you rock the boat. We were doing just fine without your intervention, thank you very much. Now go away. And if you won’t go away we’ll make you go away. We’ll mount a campaign against you. We’ll will you into oblivion.

I join Rosenberg is hoping that Paradise Now overcomes such negative smears and campaigning and wins an Oscar.

tags academy-awards, best-foreign-language-film, israel-policy-forum, M.J.-Rosenberg, munich, oscar, palestinian-terror, paradise-now, steven-spielberg

Agence France Presse notes in Oscar-nominated pleas for Mideast peace spark controversy, the controversy surrounding two films nominated for Academy Awards which deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict: Munich and Paradise Now. The story indicates that an Israeli father whose son was killed in a Palestinian terror attack led a campaign to disqualify Paradise Now on the grounds that it was not a "Palestinian" film. Paradise Now is nominated for Best Foreign film representing Palestine: A group inspired by Yossi Zur, whose 16-year-old son Asaf was killed by a suicide bomber three years ago on March 5 -- the same day on which the Academy Awards ceremony is to take place ...

Paradise Now, a most remarkable and controversial film has won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, which may give it a considerable boost for Academy Award consideration. The film was directed and written by Hany Abu-Assad, the Palestinian director who also created the wonderful Rana's Wedding. The film's press materials summarize the plot: PARADISE NOW is the story of two young Palestinian men as they embark upon what may be the last 48 hours of their lives. On a typical day in the West Bank city of Nablus, where daily life grinds on amidst crushing poverty and the occasional rocket blast, we meet two childhood best friends, Saïd ...