Richard Silverstein claims to be a friend of Israel and publishes a blog called Tikun Olam. Instead of a cuddly fluffy “heal the world” site, his blog is popular with both anti-Zionists and anti-Semites alike, drawn to Silverstein’s mix of anti-Israel demonization and peculiar “exclusives” from unnamed and unverified sources in the intelligence community.
Clearly Silverstein is a mass of moral confusion which he aptly demonstrates in a jointly written op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor. In the covert war being played out against Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Silverstein believes that “what goes around comes around” i.e. Iran has every right to retaliate against Israel by targeting Israeli diplomats in response to the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.
According to Silverstein:
Israeli military and diplomatic personnel serving in foreign assignments are frontline troops in their nation’s covert war against Iran. If Israel does not want its own civilians targeted, it must not target Iranian civilians.
So which is it? Is the wife of an Israeli diplomat injured in Dehli a “frontline troop” or a civilian? Irrespective of her status, she was targeted by Iran simply by virtue of being an Israeli. A far cry from Iranian scientists knowingly working on a project that represents an existential threat to Israel itself.
Is Silverstein really convinced that Israel and Iran are on an equal moral footing or is it just another one of his attempts to make Israel look bad?
Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.
Was Khader Adnan’s hunger strike a victory for Palestinian non-violent resistance? Is the Syrian army’s use of the world’s largest mortar shells against Homs a war crime? And how significant are budding Golan Druze protests against Assad?
• Everybody picked up on Khader Adnan ending his hunger strike. Take your pick of NY Times, BBC, or AP.
• In a NY Times op-ed, Mustafa Barghouti declares Khader Adnan’s hunger strike a victory for Palestinian non-violence.
Iranian Atomic Urgency
Bushehr nuclear power plant
• In a Times of London column (paywall), Anatole Kaletsky argues against an Israeli strike on Iran. After sifting through various issues, Kaletsky concludes on this surprising note:
Israel, with a population of only seven million, would proclaim by its actions that it considers the hundreds of millions of Muslims living around it as permanent and implacable military enemies. It is this attitude, far more than any nuclear programme, that poses the real “existential threat” to Israel’s long-term survival.
Uh, Ahmadinejad hasn’t made repeated calls to wipe out the hundreds of millions of Muslims living around Israel.
But if it’s any consolation to Kaletsky, he’s joined in fretting by Seumas Milne (The Guardian print edition) and by the tag team of Richard Silverstein and Muhammad Sahimi (Christian Science Monitor).
• Jerusalem’s conundrum: By being too vocal with the US about stepping up pressure on Iran, Israel risks “owning” the problem. Former diplomat Itamar Rabinovich‘s advice?
Israel would therefore be wise to reinforce its pressure on the US administration with a broader diplomatic campaign. Like it or not, Israel must urge the world to remember that Iran is everyone’s problem.
Arab Spring Winter
• New details on Syrian war crimes emerge as rights groups say Assad is using the world’s largest shells against Homs. The Christian Science Monitor writes:
From Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, comes an indication why the death toll has been steadily climbing in Homs. He says a video from Homs that shows the fragments of a mortar the struck a building there is proof that Assad has deployed the Russian-made “Tulip” weapons system against the town, which fires the largest mortar round in any military’s arsenal. The tank-like vehicle that serves as the firing platform can lob 240mm mortar rounds up to 20 kilometers away, and they carry over 70 pounds of explosives. The largest mortar used by the US, in contrast, is 160mm . . . .
The Tulip was designed for use against dug in positions from a standoff distance. But its lethality has been used in the past to bring devastation to civilian neighborhoods, most famously by the Russians during the siege of the Chechen capital of Grozny over a decade ago, where thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of buildings reduced to rubble. The use of such weapons in dense urban environments is a war crime.
From Russia with love: the 240 mm Tulip mortar
•Reuters reports two Western journos killed in the shelling of Homs today. Marie Colvin, a US national, was a correspondent for the Sunday Times of London. In the 80s and 90s, she was the Times’s Jerusalem correspondent. The shelling also killed French photographer Remi Ochlik and injured two other journalists. According to AFP, 31 civilians were killed on Tuesday.
• A Syrian blogger who posted on YouTube graphic images from Homs was killed in an arm shelling. The Lede has lots of links and video about Rami al-Sayed.
• A Times of London staff-ed wants Bashar Assad prosecuted for crimes against humanity in Homs.
•Elliott Abrams: It’s time to make Assad’s ouster a US policy goal and “encourage the arming and funding of the opposition.”
The problem is that our speeches and even our sanctions have not helped defend the people of Syria against Assad’s bullets . . .
Because the real questions in Syria now are who will win and how long will this take. We ought to find an Assad victory (or perhaps one should say an Assad, Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and Hezbollah victory) unacceptable. Moreover, we should avoid the false moral equivalence that leads people to say, “Oh, don’t arm anyone, just call for a ceasefire.” As in Darfur or Kosovo, such calls are in reality an abandonment of people fighting against oppression.
Druze elders in Majdal Shams
• These protests may be small in comparison to other places, but AP finds Golan’s Druze community starting to openly demonstrate against Assad:
But the very act of stepping into the square is a major departure for the Golan’s 20,000-member Druse community, which historically has been extremely reluctant to openly criticize the autocratic Assad family that has ruled Syria for the past four decades.
Some, particularly older residents who remember the days of Syrian rule, maintain a strong affinity for Syria. Others feared they might be harmed if the territory is ever returned to Syria, or had concerns that the Syrian regime would retaliate against relatives across the frontier.
But faced with the mounting scope of carnage in Syria, where thousands of people, mostly civilians, are believed to have been killed in an 11-month uprising against Assad, small numbers of Golan Druse are bringing their criticism out in the open.
• Hmmmm. According to the WSJ, Iraqi tribes are in a bind over helping kinsmen on the Syrian side of the border fight Assad.
But their leaders worry that an expanding cross-border arms trade here is re-energizing a radical group they say they have only just brought under relative control—al Qaeda in Iraq.
Professor Norman Finkelstein is an odious character, infamous for his anti-Israel activities and his book on the “Holocaust Industry”. Finkelstein is also a supporter of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Which is why a video of Finkelstein calling out the BDS movement as dishonest is causing such a stir.
It’s the video that the BDS movement didn’t want you to see as Finkelstein leaves his BDS supporting interviewer speechless. Here’s some of the highlights:
The video pretty much speaks for itself as one of the heroes of the BDS movement trashes it. That the person calling out BDS for what it really is happens to be Norman Finkelstein says it all about BDS’s moral bankruptcy.
Here’s just some of the highlights:
Norman Finkelstein on BDS
I’ve earned my right to speak my mind, and I’m not going to tolerate what I think is silliness, childishness, and a lot of leftist posturing.
I mean we have to be honest, and I loathe the disingenuous. They don’t want Israel. They think they are being very clever; they call it their three-tier. We want the end of the occupation, the right of return, and we want equal rights for Arabs in Israel. And they think they are very clever because they know the result of implementing all three is what, what is the result?
You know and I know what the result is. There’s no Israel!
. . .
It’s not an accidental and unwitting omission that BDS does not mention Israel. You know that and I know that. It’s not like they’re “oh we forgot to mention it.” They won’t mention it because they know it will split the movement. ‘Cause there’s a large segment of the movement that wants to eliminate Israel.
. . .
Are you going to reach a broad public which is going to hear the Israeli side ‘they want to destroy us?’ No you’re not. And frankly you know what you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t reach a broad public because you’re dishonest. And I wouldn’t trust those people if I had to live in this state. I wouldn’t. It’s dishonesty.
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Islamic Jihadnik Khader Adnan ended his hunger strike. Whether you think he’s just a baker or simply half-baked, let’s be clear about the kind of person Israel’s dealing with.
Arab media fact checkers fell asleep at the wheel. The result? An Arab League condemnation of Benjamin Netanyahu over comments he never made about 10 Palestinian school children tragically killed in an road accident on Thursday.
Shortly after the fatal accident last Thursday, Netanyahu posted a message of consolation on his official Facebook page, but some responders posted expressions of relief and even joy at news that the victims were Palestinian. Those comments were removed by Netanyahu’s staff within an hour.
But Jordanian daily A-Dustour ran an article titled “Netanyahu wishes death to all Arabs,” misquoting coverage of the story by the Israeli daily Haaretz.
The Jordanian article quickly spread across Arab media and has now even reached the top political institution of the Arab world.
This Jordanian government mouthpiece has some ‘splaining to do. Attributing lowest common denominator talkbacks to the Prime Minister tells me that the A-Dustour writer didn’t bother to carefully read the Haaretz article he so sloppily ripped off.
No skewed “story” dies a quiet death anymore. Other papers relying on A-Dustour’s credibility repeated this “scoop,” and the Arab League condemnation elevates the idiocy to a life of its own.
It’s ain’t for nothing that in Journalism 101, the supreme importance of fact checking is best described by an adage familiar to any newsroom — except, it seems, A-Dustour’s:
We’ve all see outrageous reports about Israel from Arab sources. Reading the Arab press, you might be forgiven for assuming that when Israel isn’t sending Mossad sharks into Arab waters, it’s busy plotting ways to sow disease in Arab society.
But what happens when an Arab writer defends Israel, or suggests that the Arab world may have something to learn from the Jewish state? Well, Lee Habeeb, a writer of Lebanese origin, found out the hard way.
First came the letters to the editor, then the personal insults. It was as if I’d broken a secret code I didn’t know existed. Some secret blood oath, which goes something like this: Arabs don’t speak unkindly of Arabs in public, or kindly about Israel.
After pondering the backlash he experienced and looking at the effect this Arab groupthink has on the wider culture, Habeeb came to some very important conclusions.
It is all about Arab self-doubt. It is all tied to a profound lack of cultural self-confidence, and a deep-seated fear that maybe, just maybe, Arabs won’t be very good at the self-governance thing. That Arab nations won’t be capable of building democratic cultures that engender the flourishing of human freedom, and that these nations won’t have the ability to tap the God-given talents of their people the way Americans and Israelis do.
That maybe, just maybe, the Arab world will never measure up to America or Israel.
No wonder the Arab world is happy enough to vilify Israel at every turn. It’s much easier to scapegoat a regional minority than to deal, head on, with one’s own inadequacy.
•Maan News reports that Gaza’s electrical crisis was alleviated with the arrival of 300,000 liters of fuel — via the smuggling tunnels.
• Mark Regev explains to CNN‘s impatient Hala Gorani why Khader Adnan’s in administrative detention.
Meanwhile, AP reports that Israel’s Supreme Court moved up a hearing on Adnan’s appeal. The Islamic Jihad member is being treated for his hunger strike in a civilian hospital, where his health and living conditions are closely scrutinized by doctors, lawyers, journalists and NGOs. Gilad Shalit should’ve had it so good.
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• A widely quoted AFP report says the US is putting big time pressure on Israel not to attack Iran.
‘Israel is under pressure from all sides. The Americans don’t want to be surprised and faced with a fait accompli of an Israeli attack,’ a senior Israeli official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
‘They are telling us to be patient and see if the international sanctions against Teheran will eventually work,’ he said.
See also JPost coverage of Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s meeting with the visiting US National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon.
• German military expert Hans Ruhle argues in Die Welt (German) that an Israeli strike could set the Iranian atomic agenda back 10 years. The ever-prescient Spengler quotes and expands on Ruhle’s essay. It’s polar opposite more pessimistic assessments at the NY Times and CNN.
• If Egypt unilaterally alters the Camp David treaty, Israel may refuse to sign peace agreements with other neighbors.
. . . why sign agreements with other neighbors if these accords are not kept, Intelligence Agencies Minister Dan Meridor said Monday.
• Unrest spreads to Damascus, where soldiers fire on protesters. Reuters writes:
Demonstrations and clashes with security forces have rocked Damascus in the past week, undermining President Bashar al-Assad’s claims that the 11-month uprising has been the work of saboteurs and limited mainly to the provinces.
For years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, weapons and fighters slipped in across the border from Syria. Now the roles are being reversed with the flow coming the other way, although the numbers involved remain unclear.
You are not the same woman who once spoke to me about the plight of children in Palestine and elsewhere. A river of blood, including that of children, runs through your country. It’s hard for me imagine your hands blood-soaked, but your family is behind this ongoing massacre.
Asma, you are a mother, so how can you stand by a man who gives the orders to execute entire families in their homes? How can you sing lullabies to your daughter and son when so many Syrian mothers, especially in Homs, now have no one to sing to? How can you sleep in a bed with a man who has mastered the dark arts of torture and murder?
Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.
Will Big Media take any interest in legal rulings chipping away at the myth of Mohammed al-Dura? Is the “Start Up Nation” phenomenon rubbing off on Palestinians? And who is really responsible for Gaza’s continuing fuel crisis?
• Following a French court’s acquittal of Dr. Yehuda David, YNet looks at some of the other legal cases stemming from the al-Dura video.
This is not the only slander trial surrounding the al-Dura case. A series of trials revealed an abundance of contradicting testimonies, and evidence trying to ascertain whether al-Dura was killed by IDF fire or Hamas cross fire. However, rulings are always limited to the question of slander, leaving the mystery of al-Dura open for debate.
See also Lilac Sigan‘s must-read reaction asking, Where’s the media?
I don’t blame the boy’s father for lying, by the way. If it were me that had to choose between lying, or telling the truth and being attacked with axes and knives by terrorists again, I’m pretty sure I’d do the same. But while the poor father’s motive for lying is clear — what’s the motive of the western world to keep silent about the truth, and prefer to keep believing the myth?
Sadly, these are the rules of our allegedly truthful world. The myth was aired all over the world and burned into the collective memory. It will live forever, and who knows how many others will be “inspired” with hatred as a result. And what about the real story? For some crazy reason — no one is interested in reporting it. None of the major news channels that reported the incident 12 years ago felt necessary to report the ruling of the French supreme court. I guess it will remain our little secret, then. It kind of makes you wonder — maybe all we really want is a good story with a hero? And once we get it — please, don’t confuse us with the facts.
•Dan Margalit comments on Khader Adnan’s hunger strike. The Islamic Jihad member’s stunt is now at day 65.
Ashton and others like her, here and around the world, have demanded that Israel minimize its use of administrative detention. One can understand where she is coming from, and this should be Israel’s objective too. But we must beware of the Islamic Jihad prisoner’s objective: He is trying to force Israel to refrain from one of the integral and essential aspects of the war against terror. If he wins, there will be no more administrative arrests . . .
Israel should make it very clear to the world that three principles will guide its approach toward Adnan and others like him: Israel will use administrative detention as infrequently as it possibly can; it will fight attempts to force it to abandon a key aspect of the war on terror, despite efforts by Adnan, his father and a handful of journalists to undermine the country’s security; and at the same time, Israel will forcibly prevent Adnan from dying.
• Gaza’s fuel crisis ain’t over yet. Maan News says Egyptian fuel deliveries hit a snag you could’ve seen coming:
Egypt wants to stop the passage of fuel through tunnels under the border between the countries, but the official Rafah terminal is not equipped for goods transfers and its development is restricted by an agreement between Egypt, Israel and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
The only alternative route while this agreement is being renegotiated is for the fuel to cross into Israel, and then back into the Gaza Strip . . .
Unfortunately for the people of Gaza, this Haaretz update says Hamas and the PA are balking at the latter option.
•Newsweek calls Beitar Jerusalem onto the carpet over the soccer team’s lack of Arab players:
“It’s hard to explain the policy as anything but racism,” says Yoav Borowitz, an Israeli journalist who writes regularly about football.
Supporters of the team have a more nuanced explanation. They say the ban is bound up with Beitar’s history and with tensions in Jerusalem, a city where Arabs and Jews live mostly in their own segregated neighborhoods (Israeli Arabs make up 20 percent of Israel’s population) . . .
But people who know Beitar from the inside say the managers fear that any change would prompt a backlash among fans. “Even if the racists are a small minority, they would cause a lot of trouble in the stands if the team suddenly put an Arab on the field,” said one person affiliated with the team who did not want to be identified.
• Is the “Start Up Nation” phenomenon rubbing off on the Palestinians? According to the Christian Science Monitor, West Bank entrepreneurial geeks are hip:
Until now, the primary Palestinian contribution to technology has been outsourcing programmers and engineers to firms in the United States and Israel, including Google and Cisco Systems.
But these new entrepreneurs want to do more. They want to create companies based on their own ideas and hire people to implement them. Already their ventures range from smart phone apps to Web design.
Crucially, the community is now beginning to attract investors.
•Haaretz: Bibi’s peace proposals at January’s Amman talks are remarkably similar to Kadima’s plan.
John Baird
• Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird is tougher on the Palestinians than his speechwriters. Now you know:
Mr. Baird ended up delivering a much tougher address than envisioned by his speech writers, one that unequivocally emphasized Canada’s support for Israel – a position for which he makes no apologies and which has generated much criticism of the Harper Conservatives.
Copies of the draft texts of the speech, obtained under the Access to Information Act, show Mr. Baird used a radically reworked text when he represented Canada for the first time at the General Assembly on Sept. 26, 2011.
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• The NY Times assesses what an Israeli strike on Iran would entail. We’re talking about four primary targets, three possible flight routes, and at least 100 planes making a round trip of some 2,000 miles.
Last week a French court overturned a libel conviction against Dr. David Yehuda who exposed yet another Big Lie in the long-running saga of Mohammed Al-Dura. Dr. Yehuda caught out Al-Dura’s father for falsely claiming that he had been injured in the incident when, in fact, Yehuda had previously treated him for those injuries some years before.
You’d think this would make news, wouldn’t you? Yet another part of the myth goes up in flames. But the mainstream media, having reported extensively on Al-Dura twelve years ago don’t want to know.
In the world of literature and entertainment, a story of fiction always captures the public’s heart. It’s quite easy to understand why: with fiction you’re free to use your wildest imagination, and create a perfect hero and a perfect story. Whereas in the non-fiction world, the rule is that you have to stick to the truth. But is that really so? Apparently, we’ve become so smitten with fiction, that not only do we use it on the news, when the truth comes up — we prefer to ignore it.
. . .
… what’s the motive of the western world to keep silent about the truth, and prefer to keep believing the myth? Sadly, these are the rules of our allegedly truthful world. The myth was aired all over the world and burned into the collective memory. It will live forever, and who knows how many others will be “inspired” with hatred as a result. And what about the real story? For some crazy reason — no one is interested in reporting it. None of the major news channels that reported the incident 12 years ago felt necessary to report the ruling of the French supreme court. I guess it will remain our little secret, then. It kind of makes you wonder — maybe all we really want is a good story with a hero? And once we get it — please, don’t confuse us with the facts.
• Isabel Kershner is the latest reporter to look at the IDF’s treatment of Palestinian minors. HR addressed similar stories in recent months.
• Hunger strike of Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan reaches 63 days and continues to draw international attention, most recently from Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief.
• CIF Watch takes on Pheobe Greenwood’s story from the Telegraph covering last week’s tragic bus accident but including the fact that two people posted nasty comments in a the Facebook thread of the story.
• David Ha’ivri decries accusations of racism against Israel.
In Israel (West Bank area included,) Arab residents enjoy the kind of freedom and security that many in neighboring countries can only dream of – but they generally expect Israel to be better than others. The fact that Arabs are being oppressed, beaten and slaughtered by dictators in Arab countries is of no consolation to Israeli Arabs who are delayed at security checkpoints.
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• Former Mossad head Efraim Halevy gives LA Times a Q+A on the Syrian situation and how it relates to Iran.
How does Israel ensure that Iran is defeated in Syria? Wouldn’t it backfire if Israel were seen to be involved?
Israel shouldn’t be directly involved for obvious reasons. Once Israel enters the fray, this becomes an Israeli-Arab or Israeli-Muslim confrontation, which deflects attention from the main issues of Sunni-Shiite, and the Shiite repression of a majority in a foreign country. Israel should promote through its channels with major powers in the world a dialogue between leaders in Western nations and Russia to try to forge a common policy on Syria, which would entail mutual concessions at the American and Russian level.
• CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviews Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• Freedom House official gets Wall Street Journal op-ed space to lament the worsening situation in Egypt since the fall of Mubarak.
The repression of civil society is far worse than anything seen under Mr. Mubarak. In the past, Egyptian groups were routinely harassed and occasionally shut down, but they never faced the kind of large-scale investigation that is going on now. Similarly, foreign democracy-assistance organizations encountered some interference but were tolerated by Mr. Mubarak’s regime. They have operated openly, and have never before had their offices shuttered, their foreign staff prevented from leaving the country, or their staff threatened with criminal prosecution.
• US officials to NBC News: Drones are monitoring Syria clashes.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Normal Finkelstein calls out the BDS movement, calling it dishonest and referring to it as a cult.
• Turns out, Americans love Israel after all. Gallup poll shows Israel 8th most beloved country.
• HR Canada scores nice victory with CBC, as ombudsman rebukes station for Middle East coverage.
• Prime Minister calls Dr. Yehuda David a hero for fighting for the truth about Jamal al-Dura, father of Muhammad al-Dura.
• Israel Hayom looks at the efforts of Phillipe Karsenty and Dr. Yehuda David on the al-Dura story and of Steven Sugar on the BBC’s Balen Report.
• Stephen Walt, co-author of the Israel Lobby, weighs in on the Twitter controversy surrounding newly appointed New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren.
• The White House is looking for a waiver on the ban on funding to UNESCO.
Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.
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Everything you need to know about the weekend coverage of Israel and the Mideast.
