Israel Daily News Stream 05/17/2012
May 17, 2012 13:52 by Pesach Benson
Everything you need to know about today’s media coverage of Israel and the Mideast.
Is Big Media underplaying the Hamas-Fatah split? What dirty laundry is Yasser Arafat’s wanted moneyman hinting he’ll expose? Doesn’t Bashar Assad realize he lost the info war months ago?
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Israel and the Palestinians
• The Hamas-Fatah split is more profound than people believe, and Jonathan Spyer says this is a story inadequately covered by Big Media.
The nature of the regime created by Hamas in Gaza, and its strength and durability, has received insufficient attention in the West. This may have a political root: Western governments feel the need to keep alive the fiction of the long-dead peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. One of the necessary components of this is pretending that the historic split between nationalists and Islamists among the Palestinians has not really happened, or that it is a temporary glitch that will soon be reconciled. This fiction is necessary for peace process believers, because it enables them to continue to treat the West Bank Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas as the sole representative of the Palestinians.
But fiction it is. An Islamist one-party quasi-state has been built in Gaza over the last half-decade.
• The Washington Post‘s Walter Pincus thinks the US is putting Israeli budgetary concerns ahead of its own in the area of defense spending. Pincus targets a $680 million deal to help Israel pay for and procure additional Iron Dome batteries. Last I saw of this, Congress was indeed playing hardball for some rights to the defense system.
• Mahmoud Abbas swore in a new PA cabinet. Salam Fayyad remains Prime Minister, but he had to relinquish the finance portfolio. The BBC writes:
The new finance minister is Nabil Kassis, a former university president and independent. He will have to cope with a projected $500m gap in the Palestinian Authority’s $1.3bn budget, most of which comes from the European Union, United States and Arab countries.
• Open Zion‘s Emily Hauser thinks she has proof that Gaza is still occupied by Israel. But Hamas honcho Mohammed Zahar bursts Hauser’s balloon. He’s going to travel unhindered to Egypt in order to vote in the upcoming elections.
• Writing in Foreign Policy, Aaron David Miller disagrees with Ambassador Michael Oren’s recent Wall Street Journal commentary on Israel’s image.
But I just don’t buy the argument that Israel’s image has eroded principally because of a dedicated campaign to delegitimize it.
Three other factors drive Israel’s very bad PR: the realities of nation-building, the image of the asymmetry of power, and Israel’s own actions, which, like those of so many other countries, value short-term tactics over long-term strategy . . .
The notion that Israel’s unfavorable image is a result of some evil cabal that plots daily against it infantilizes the Israelis and takes them out of history as real-world actors who sometimes do well in pursuit of their interests and at other times screw up badly. Israel is a remarkable state that has sought to preserve its moral and ethical soul in a cruel and unforgiving world. But it is still only a nation of mortals trying to survive in that world.
• AP‘s Karin Laub expands on the the PA’s corruption case against Yasser Arafat’s financial advisor, Mohammed Rashid. The story’s getting juicy:
In comments posted Tuesday on the website Inlightpress, Rashid said he would not respond to the allegations now, but warned that Abbas “made a huge mistake and must suffer the consequences.” He did not elaborate. The website, which is believed to be linked to Rashid, announced in a separate section that it would soon run a series of articles by Rashid about the circumstances of Abbas’ rise to power.
• Meet Boualem Sansal, an Algerian novelist shrugging off critics to attend the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem. He shared his jaundiced view of the Mideast conflict and Arab Spring with the Jerusalem Post:
On Wednesday, Sansal, a staunch secularist, reiterated his warnings about the rising tide of Islamism in the wake of the Arab revolts.
“I feel we’re in the 1930s in the last century – then, no one responded properly. Today Islamism is becoming fascism,” he said. “If there’s no democracy, people will look for religion to be their parliament, their government and so forth. There’s a lot of work to be done.”
“Let’s not delude ourselves that this will take 10 or 15 years – this will be very difficult work,” he added.
jeb stuart
3:32 pm
May 17, 2012
The Pincus article appearing in the Washington Post already had the comments closed. I have to wonder if this is the new tactic of the radical left to deny open forums for earnest debate on topics they themsleves do not have good arguments for. We have seen this evident in the recent attempts to label Israel an apartheid state which failed but hasn’t gone away and in the Palestinian co-opting Universities to give them single voice forums to project unliaterally a one state solution where they remain inept at declaring any kind of a statehood further demonstrating an incapability to self-rule. The Palestinians also insist on retaining their refugee status in any state even though they would not be refugees and the UN went along with it. The USA is getting a bargain by assisitng Israel with arming itself to protect itslef from intolerant Islamist bigotry, in a period of US withdrawal from the region (Obama’s proclamation of victory in Afghanistan, without victory, not withstanding.) and becoming more reliant on discretionary forces the Pentagon may slash another 100,000 troops. beyond current projections. When the IAF recieved F-15′s and F-16′s from the USA and rewrote the book on their capabilites and took out Hussein’s Nuclear program. The F-35 contract had already been offered by the Obama Presidency to get the Israeli’s to return to negotiations with the PA on a basis favored by J street and Soros, while demonizing Zionism. Obama who is politically indebted to radical pacifists and other ideologically insane people who are ever and for always against any war for any reason, especially if it favors Western interets and even survival have done the only sane thing possible by enabling the Israeli’s to better defend themselves, and American oil interests. Especially as Obama has been loathe to characterize the real threat in the region, Islamic militancy and terrorism evolving into state expressions of sharia law in themselves an expression of a crime against humanity. Another billion for Israel’s defense needs when it is Obama’s policies that have contributed to the potential for more hostilities and more sharia law, Jim Crow Islamist governments, I consider a bargain.
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
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Bob Poplar
5:29 pm
May 17, 2012
A simple response like “bull shit”. My Dad would say to me “if it’s bull shit just say it’s bull shit”. Anytime you respond you give the lie credibility. That was our advisers approach – respond – I say respond yes – BULL SHIT. LET THEM PROVE THEIR CLAIMS WE HAVE OTHER THINGS TO DO. Bob Poplar
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Len Kurtz
10:09 pm
Jun 22, 2012
Now that I’ve see the other profile in the BBC dispatch, I do believe that the bird look like Winston Churchill, but with a nose job.
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