The Magnes Zionist

The So-Called Partial Settlement Freeze -- Mapai Unilateralism Again

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:42:00 +0000

So Bibi has announced a unilateral 10 month "settlement freeze," except in East Jerusalem. Perhaps the proper Palestinian response will be to restart the Kassams? Or the suicide bombing? I can already hear the Israeli hasbara-niks saying, "We announced a settlement freeze, and all we got was terrorism." Good PR for Israel from the master of Israeli PR.

In every generation, Israel needs to sound conciliatory in order to take the diplomatic heat off it. That, dear readers, is why Israel withdrew from Gaza. Not, God forbid, in order to give peace a chance. If that were the reason, then the move would have been negotiated and coordinated with the Palestinian Authority. But Sharon never believed in peace, and he certainly didn't believe in the Arabs. No, he decided to cut and run from Gaza in order to deflect attention from the Geneva Initiative and, more importantly, in order to ease pressure on Israel to cede portions of the West Bank he was not interested in giving up. At least that is what he told the Israelis.

Israel invades, Israel retreats, Israel declares itself a state. All unilateral steps. The important thing is never to acknowledge that there is another side, never take them seriously,never treat them as equals. What the goyyim say is not important; only what Jews do is important. Keep juggling and talking peace in order to keep the world (in this case, Obama) off your back. It's all about hasbara, the medium is the message. Attorney General Mazuz has already said that there is no way to enforce even the partial freeze. "Israbluff" is what they call stuff like that in Israel. Count how many illegal outposts there are today. And come back in ten months and then count.

Only Rabin thought otherwise. And he was shot by a frummie.

The Second Coming of Sarah Palin

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:18:00 +0000

Among the things that Sarah Palin said this past week to Barbara Walters this week was this little gem on settlement expansion was the following gem"

I disagree with the Obama administration on that. I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don't think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand."

This remark sailed right over the heads of the secular media who are not used to hearing Christian evangelicals. Here's one example, from the Christian Science Monitor.

While her assertion that more and more Jews will be "flocking" to Israel soon is dubious (the immigration of US Jews to Israel hit an 18-year low in 2007 while the Palestinian population in the area is growing at faster rate than the Jewish one), her wholehearted support for settlement expansion on land Israel seized in 1967 is an outlier. The West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered to be illegally occupied by the UN and most world governments . Direct support for settlements would be a stunning departure for the US.

Once is tempted to say "dumb goyyim," but Jeremy Ben-Ami of J-Street reacted about the same.

Palin's pandering to her right-wing base comes at the expense of the security of the State of Israel, the lives of those actually living the conflict, and the fundamental American interest in achieving a two-state solution in the near term. Her words reveal a glaring ignorance of damaging facts and a callous disregard of past and present U.S. policy.

For Ben-Ami, Palin's support of settlement expansion was a case of "pandering to her right-wing base," as if she didn't really care about Jews or Israel – she just wanted to pick up some votes.

Dr. Marsha B. Cohen has pointed out privately that Palin's remark has a lot more behind it. Indeed, maybe you have to be a religious Jew or a Christian evangelical – or, for that matter, somebody who has studied those groups, like Dr. Cohen – to understand that Palin's remark came from her deepest convictions. Because as has already been pointed out, her version of Christianity preaches that very soon now (or as Chabad says, be-karov mammesh) there will be an ingathering of all the Jews to Israel as part of the final eschaton. And then the Lord Jesus Christ will return after Armaggedon, etc.

As an orthodox Jew who respects – well, at least understands – religious belief, I take Sarah Palin seriously. She is motivated by an ideology that is almost indistinguishable from that of the West Bank settlers, who also see that the Messiah is just around the corner. True, they disagree over the details – like the identity of the messiah and the message – but they are both motivated by a fundamentalist religious ideological.

Under these circumstances, the most natural organization to call out Sarah Palin on this religious interference into the Middle East would be the Anti-Defamation League.

Think again. Abe Foxman went out of his way to defend Palin against J-Street's attack. According to Foxman, who the hell is J-Street to tell Israel what its security needs are. Foxman, whose loyalty is almost always to whatever Israeli government is in charge (one remembers how he left his shul during Oslo because his rabbi was dissing the Rabin government), sees no problem with questioning J-Street's "pro-Israel" moniker and defending a position which any person with a grain of sekhel would understand as problematic at best, or benignly anti-Semitic at worst.

For Ben-Ami's response see here.

David Shulman on Moshe Halbertal on the Goldstone Report on the NYRB Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:49:00 +0000

One of Moshe Halbertal's criticisms in the Goldstone Illusion was that the report brought in extraneous material about Israeli's Occupation of the West Bank. "Why should a committee with a mandate to inquire into the operation in Gaza deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at large?

The question was anticipated and answered already in the Goldstone Report, and I cite it in my post below. Another answer has now been provided by Prof. David Shulman, Halbertal's Hebrew University colleague. Shulman, whose book Dark Hope was reported on in this blog, has long been an activist on the West Bank with the Jewish-Arab group Ta'ayush.

Shulman's piece, "Israel Without Illusions: What the Goldstone Report Got Right" starts off with partial agreement with Halbertal on some points.

There are, in my view, problems, distortions, and lacunae in the Goldstone report—some of them resulting from the fact that the Israeli government refused to cooperate with the UN commission. At the very least, Israeli testimony, both by ordinary soldiers and higher-ranking officers, might have modulated the sweeping conclusions in three of the most damning chapters of the report: "Chapter X. Indiscriminate Attacks by Israeli Armed Forces Resulting in the Loss of Life and Injury to Civilians"; "Chapter XI. Deliberate Attacks Against the Civilian Population"; and "Chapter XIII. Attacks on the Foundations of Civilian Life in Gaza."

Shulman doesn't say what these "problems, distortions, and lacunae" are, but when he writes that "at the very least," more interviews with the IDF "might have modulated the sweeping conclusions in the three of the most damning chapters of the report," you know how fundamentally he disagrees with Halbertal's moral outrage over the report.

So where does he agree? On the "eerily neutral tone" taken by the report towards Hamas. C'est tout.

But after the perfunctory attempt at sounding conciliatory, Shulman gets down to business.

But the report's attempt to link whatever happened in Gaza with what has been going on in the West Bank for the last forty-two years is wholly justified. The political background to the report is, before all else, a cultural and moral one. I do not believe that a society can disenfranchise, dispossess, and effectively dehumanize large numbers of people living between Jenin and Hebron without this process influencing the way it conducts a war in Gaza. No one who regularly visits the Palestinian territories controlled by Israel has to speculate about whether or not Israel is engaged in the routine abuse of human rights.

And further

But at heart the problem is not, after all, a legal one: rather, it reflects our deeper vision of ourselves in the world and our ability to see, to imagine, and to acknowledge the suffering of other human beings, including those aspects of their suffering for which we are directly responsible. It is also important to note that the public debate itself has its limits, as you can see by the recent attempts to silence Dr. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University or the no less invidious government campaign to dry up international funding for Shovrim Shtika ("Breaking the Silence"), the remarkably courageous group of ex-soldiers who have exposed recurrent acts of army violence against Palestinian civilians that they witnessed in Hebron and elsewhere in the territories. Shovrim Shtika has also meticulously collected soldiers' testimony about what they saw or did during the Gaza campaign last December and January.

Shulman ends with saying what many have said – that the Gaza Op was different from previous operations in terms of dealing with civilians -- that with each operation the IDF sinks to a new low. Those of us who have been around for a while remember when Israelis had at least a modicum of outrage over civilian deaths. A whole commission was set up to probe Israeli responsibility for a massacre in which the IDF did not even take part! Sorry to wax nostalgiac, but those were the days!

As prophesied long ago by the late philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz and others, the occupation—and above all the settlement project—have profoundly eroded the moral fiber of Israel, corroded central institutions of the society, and undermined our integrity as a political community. None of this happened in a vacuum; the "other side" has much to atone for as well. But even I can remember a time when charges of war crimes were not simply sloughed off by Israel's leaders, when military mistakes that cost innocent civilian lives were acknowledged as such and elicited expressions of sorrow, and when Israeli courts clearly articulated the principle that a soldier has not only the right but indeed the duty not to carry out an order that is at odds with his conscience as a human being or with basic human values.

I remember vividly an eloquent apology offered on national television by then Chief of Staff Mota Gur for accidental civilian casualties caused by shelling during Operation Litani in Lebanon in the spring of 1978. One might also recall the time in late 1982 when some 300,000 ordinary Israelis came out to demonstrate in Tel Aviv because of Israel's indirect responsibility, as occupying power, for the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut. Times have changed.

Indeed.

(h/t to ibn ezra)

The Children of Abraham vs. the Children of Joshua

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:28:00 +0000

In today's weekly Torah portion, we read how the patriarch Abraham bought the field of Ephron the Hittite, and the Cave of the Machpelah, in order to bury his wife, Sarah. Although he is recognized as a powerful chieftain, he refuses to receive the field and the cave as a gift. Instead, he pays the (perhaps exorbitant) sum of four hundred shekels, Ephron's asking price.

Now Abraham knows how to bargain – he bargained with the Lord in order to save the city of Sodom. So why doesn't he bargain here? Because he knows that, as a "stranger and a sojourner in the land", his peace and security depends upon his good relations with his neighbors. He does not want anything that doesn't belong to him, or that will compromise his values; he declines the spoils of war offered him from the King of Sodom. He has been assured that his descendants will inherit the land, but he does not act now on that knowledge, nor does he try to hasten that day. And his approach is imitated by his son, Isaac, and his grandson, Jacob. It is part of Abraham's legacy to seek peace and accommodation – while retaining his own identity – with the peoples of Canaan.

Not so Joshua. In his book we read of warfare, of conquest, of wiping out the inhabitants of the land of Canaan (all of which is probably an invention of authors who lived centuries after the events; there is no archaeological record of any conquests during this period.) True, Joshua is guided by the Lord, and the Israelites are successful, in a way, in inheriting much of the Land, with blood and fire. But is it coincidental that the period of conquest is followed by the period of lawlessness and internal strife, where everyone did what he considered to be right in his own eyes?

When contemplating the return to an imagined homeland, the Zionists had in front of their eyes the model of Abraham and the model of Joshua. As is well-known, it was Joshua that won out. War, conquest, the elimination of Palestine from the map, which included the refusal to allow the native Palestinians to return to their homes, the destruction of three hundred villages, the expropriation of homes, and the settling of immigrants therein, was the order of the day. Many Zionists looked at Joshua as their forerunner. They spoke of kibbush ha-aretz in Biblical terms, and they were proud of their military prowess, like the ancient Hebrews of old.

Yet there were some Zionists who rejected the conquest-model, and Judah Magnes was the most prominent of them. Shortly after the massacre of the Jews in Hebron, when nationalistic feelings were at a fever pitch, he wrote, "Like All the Nations." Magnes is today remembered for his binationalism, but that was not the essential part of his thinking, and he abandoned binationalism in favor of federation when the Jewish state was a fait accompli. What was essential to his Magnes was his belief that any political solution had to be with the consent of the native Palestinian Arabs; otherwise, the Jews would enter into a state of perpetual war with them. His was the opposite thinking to the "Iron Wall" mentality of the statist-Zionists, left and right. He was the ultimate opponent of unilateralism.

Well, he lost, didn't he? And look how things have turned out….

Today, there are "Jewish" settlers who live in the vicinity of the Cave of the Machpelah, in Hebron and in Kiryat Arba. They may be Jewish, but they are not of the seed of Abraham; they are the children of Joshua, at best. The real children of Abraham are both those of the seed of Ishmael who have been banished from their houses, and those Israeli Jews who have devoted their lives to seeing justice done in Hebron.

It is best to close with the words of Magnes from "Like All the Nations":

Palestine is holy to the Jew in that his attitude toward this land is necessarily different from his attitude toward any other land. He may have to live in other lands upon the support of bayonets, but that may well be something which he, as a Jew, cannot help. But when he goes voluntarily as a Jew to re-people his own Jewish Homeland, it is by an act of will, of faith, of free choice, and he should not either will or believe in or want a Jewish Home that can be maintained in the long run only against the violent opposition of the Arab and Moslem peoples. The fact is that they are here in their overwhelming numbers in this part of the world, and whereas it may have been in accord with Israelite needs in the time of Joshua to conquer the land and maintain their position in it with the sword, that is not in accord with the desire of plain Jews or with the long ethical tradition of Judaism that has not ceased developing to this day.

Spoken like a true child of Abraham.

When the Liberal Israeli Meets the Judge – Moshe Halbertal On the Goldstone Report: Part Two

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:58:00 +0000

In "The Goldstone Illusion", Prof. Moshe Halbertal reserves his greatest ire for those sections of the Goldstone report that deal with the historical context of the Gaza operation, and a review of Israel's activities on the West Bank:

The commission that wrote the report could have performed a great service if it had concentrated on gathering the testimonies from Gaza and assessing them critically, while acknowledging (as it failed to do) that they are partial and incomplete. This would have forced Israel to investigate various matters, provide answers, and take appropriate measures. (I do not imagine Hamas engaging in such an investigation of its own crimes. This is yet another asymmetry.) But instead the commission opted to add to its findings three unnecessary elements: the context of the history that led to the war; its assessment of Israel's strategic goals; and long sections on Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Why should a committee with a mandate to inquire into the operation in Gaza deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at large?

….The commission should not have dealt with the context leading to the war; it should have concentrated on its mandate, which concerned only the Gaza operation. By setting its findings about the Gaza war in a greatly distorted description of the larger historical context, it makes it difficult for Israelis--even of the left, where I include myself--to take its findings seriously.

Before responding to Prof. Halbertal's objection, let us put to rest two of his assumptions. The first is that had the Goldstone mission simply published testimonies from Gaza, Israel would have been "forced" to investigate. This is an absurd claim, and Prof. Halbertal knows it. When the Israeli NGO "Breaking the Silence" published IDF soldier testimonies from Gaza last summer, the government turned on the young veterans and refused to deal or even to respond to the testimonies. It reacted similarly when similar reports were published by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. So why would the government treat the Goldstone report differently, especially after Israel had already refused to cooperate with the Mission?

As for the criticism that the Mission overstepped its mandate by discussing things that occurred outside of Gaza, here is the report's justification, which he does not mention:

As explained above in chapter I, the Mission believes that the reference in its mandate to violations "in the context" of the military operations in Gaza required it to go beyond the violations that occurred in and around Gaza. it also believes that violations within its mandate in terms of time, objectives and targets, include those that are linked to the December 2008 –January 2009 military operations, and include restrictions on human rights and fundamental freedoms related to the strategies and actions of Israel in the context of its military operations.

Developments in Gaza and the West Bank are closely interrelated, in the Mission's view, an analysis of both is necessary to reach an informed understanding of and to report on issues within the Mission's mandate. On the one hand, the events in Gaza have consequences in the West Bank, on the other, pre-existing problems in the West Bank have been exacerbated by the Gaza military operations. In its examination of the West Bank with respect to actions taken by Israel, the Mission focused on four key aspects in their linkage to the Israeli military operations in Gaza: (a) the sharp increase in the use of force by Israeli security forces, including the military, in the West Bank; (b) the tightening and entrenchment of the system of movement and access restrictions; (c) the issue of Palestinian detainees and especially the increase in child detainees during and after the military operations; and (d) the Gaza corollary of the detention of Hamas members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.702 While the treatment by the Gaza authorities of those opposing its policies is discussed in chapter XIX, similar issues with regard to the conduct of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank also called for investigation. Linkages with the Israeli operation in Gaza are elaborated in the respective chapters.

While it is understandable that Prof. Halbertal wishes to limit the Mission's investigation to events in "Hamastan," where it's all about a "war on terror", it is obvious that Israeli actions in Gaza were both related to, and full of repercussions for, its actions in areas outside of Gaza -- since Gaza is one of two parts of the territory allocated to the Palestinians, and there are strong connections between the two. In fact, there were arguably two "fronts" in the Gaza war, as can be seen from the relevant sections of the report. While the "Eastern Front" was relatively quiet, it certainly was affected.

One point I will grant Prof. Halbertal: the section on historical context generally favors the Palestinian and not the Israel narrative. The suicide bombings of the Oslo period are mentioned, as are the Kassam rockets, but only laconically. The Separation Wall is not connected with security but with land expansion. But why is it illegitimate to view much of Israel's strategy and motivation in the Gaza operation in the context of its forty-two year Occupation? And suppose that the historical context had included all the things that Israel doesn't like about Hamas, e.g., its anti-Semitic charter, its history of suicide bombings (briefly mentioned), its refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist? Of what significance would that be to be to Israel's conduct of the war and considerations of jus in bello? Surely, Prof. Halbertal doesn't wish to suggest that Israel's operation in Gaza was motivated by a desire for revenge or to get even with Hamas for the bombings. In any event, the report's criticism focused not on the treatment of combatants but of civilians.

Prof. Halbertal is outraged at the report's accusation that the IDF deliberately targeted civilians: "…the claim that Israel intentionally targeted civilians as a policy of war is false and slanderous." Unfortunately, he neither produces any evidence on behalf of his own claim nor does he mention, much less attempt to refute, the evidence marshaled by the Mission in the report. Instead, he refers to the ratio of civilian deaths to militants deaths and concludes that this was reasonable, indeed better than other Western armies. This is a fallacy, since he infers, wrongly, that if the IDF had deliberately targeted civilians, then there would have been many more civilians dead than there were (or the ration of civilians to militants would have been greater.) But nowhere in the Goldstone report is Israel accused of mass murder, or of deliberately killing as many civilians as it could. Rather, it argues, on the basis of representative declarations by Israeli officials, the accuracy of Israeli artillery and air force, the vast destruction to property, and testimonies, that military necessity did not always play a decisive role in decisions to bomb. And this is correct. The goal of the Gaza operation was to reestablish deterrence perceived lost as a result of the Second Lebanese War and to punish (or at least scare the hell out of) the Gazans. Ba'al ha-bayit hishtage'a, 'The boss has gone bonkers'. Now whether a policy of relaxing the rules of engagement, of quick fingers on the trigger, etc., constitutes deliberate targeting of civilians is debatable. But it is not debatable that the numbers of civilians killed were not due to merely to carelessness, negligence, or regrettable accidents in urban warfare.

In fact, Halbertal's failure to grapple with the report's evidence raises the question whether he actually read it, or at least read it carefully. He makes several accusations which are simply false. For example, he writes that "Israel chose not to cooperate with the commission, and so the Israeli version of events is not here." But even the most superficial reading reveals that the Israeli version of events is on every page, culled from official reports, news reports, and even websites like the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs. What Halbertal and most Israelis find galling about the report is not that the Israeli version of events does not appear, but rather than it is consistently rejected as less credible than the Palestinian testimonies. There are reasons for this, too, as the report mentions in exhaustive detail, but Halbertal ignores this as well.

Here's another case where Halbertal does an injustice to the report, the bombing of the Police Academy.

Consider a painful issue that comes up in the Goldstone Report--the matter of the Gaza police force. In the first minutes of the war, Israel targeted Hamas police, killing dozens. There is no question that, in an ordinary war, a police force that is dedicated to keeping the civilian peace is not a military target. The report therefore blames Israel for an intentional targeting of noncombatants. But such a charge is only valid concerning a war against a state with a clear and defined military institution, one that therefore practices a clear division of labor between the police and the army. What happens in semi-states that do not have an institutionalized army, whose armed forces are a militia loyal to the movement or party that seized power? In such situations, the police force might be just a way of putting combatants on the payroll of the state, while basically assigning them clear military roles. Israeli intelligence claims that it has clear proof that this was the case in Gaza. This is certainly something that Israel will have to clarify. But it is clear to me that Goldstone's accusation that targeting of the police forces automatically constitutes an attack on noncombatants represents a gross misunderstanding of the nature of such a conflict.

Now contrast this reading, which attributes to Goldstone the "accusation" that "targeting of the police forces automatically constitutes an attack on noncombatants" with what the report actually says.

The Mission examined the attacks against six police facilities, four of them during the first minutes of the military operations on 27 December 2008, resulting in the death of 99 policemen and nine members of the public. The overall around 240 policemen killed by Israeli forces constitute more than one sixth of the Palestinian casualties. The circumstances of the attacks and the Government of Israel July 2009 report on the military operations clarify that the policemen were deliberately targeted and killed on the ground that the police as an institution, or a large part of the policemen individually, are in the Government of Israel's view part of the Palestinian military forces in Gaza.

To examine whether the attacks against the police were compatible with the principle of distinction between civilian and military objects and persons, the Mission analyzed the institutional development of the Gaza police since Hamas took complete control of Gaza in July 2007 and merged the Gaza police with the "Executive Force" it had created after its election victory. The Mission finds that, while a great number of the Gaza policemen were recruited among Hamas supporters or members of Palestinian armed groups, the Gaza police were a civilian law-enforcement agency. The Mission also concludes that the policemen killed on 27 December 2008 cannot be said to have been taking a direct part in hostilities and thus did not lose their civilian immunity from direct attack as civilians on this ground. The Mission accepts that there may be individual members of the Gaza police that were at the same time members of Palestinian armed groups and thus combatants. It concludes, however, that the attacks against the police facilities on the first day of the armed operations failed to strike an acceptable balance between the direct military advantage anticipated (i.e. the killing of those policemen who may have been members of Palestinian armed groups) and the loss of civilian life (i.e. the other policemen killed and members of the public who would inevitably have been present or in the vicinity), and therefore violated international humanitarian law.

Does the presentation above justify Halbertal's conclusion that according to Goldstone, "the targeting of the police forces automatically constitutes an attack on noncombatants." On the contrary, we have here at least an attempt to examine a) whether these particular policemen had the status of combatants or not b) if they were combatants, were they justly attacked, and c) if they were justly attacked, did the direct military advantage anticipated justify the collateral damage? We also have a reference to the Government of Israel's position. One may wish to argue with the Goldstone analysis, but Halbertal studiously avoids it.

And then comes the volte face in section four. Having thoroughly discredited the testimonies, and having made accusations about the fairness of its authors, Prof. Halbertal concludes his essay by claiming that the report's "sections devoted to the Gaza war do make claims and cite testimonies that no honest Israeli can ignore. They demand a thorough investigation.,,,"

Pardon me? What is it about these testimonies that Halbertal feels compelled to investigate? And why here and not elsewhere? Thus, he claims that it is worthy to investigate the bombing of a chicken farm, which, if the testimonies are correct, "was done to leave a brutal scar as proof of the Israeli presence, as immoral and illegal instruments of deterrence." Why is Halbertal willing to believe that the IDF deliberately wreaked destruction for the sake of "immoral and illegal" deterrence, but he is not willing to believe that the IDF had a policy of "shoot first and ask questions later" – also for the sake of deterrence?

Are we expected to accept his distinction between killing chickens and killing human beings as a matter of faith?

When the Philosopher Meets the Judge -- Moshe Halbertal On the Goldstone Report: Part One

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:29:00 +0000

Recently we have been witness to the curious spectacle of Israelis criticizing vehemently the Goldstone Report, yet at the same time calling for an independent investigation of the IDF's actions in Operation Cast Lead. I am not referring to those who believe that a pro forma investigation is necessary in order to stop the damage caused by the Goldstone Report. No, I mean those folks who say, "The Goldstone Report is one-sided, biased, and denies Israel the right to defend itself (or doesn't explain how it can do so)" and then turn around and say, "Still, there is enough evidence in the report to require an investigation." The latest one to do so is Prof. Moshe Halbertal in a rather long essay in the current issue of the New Republic, in which he criticizes the Goldstone report as a "terrible document…biased and unfair," which offers "no help in sorting out the real issues." And yet it took the Goldstone Report to arouse Prof. Halbertal from his dogmatic slumbers and to call for an independent investigation.

Barukh ha-Shem for that.

A word of introduction. Prof. Moshe Halbertal is a professor of medieval Jewish thought and the philosophy of Jewish law. Although he has done some work with the IDF, he would be the first to admit that he is not an expert in the field of military ethics, just war theory, or international humanitarian law. (Neither am I.) So it was with some surprise that I saw that he had written on the subject, especially when much of it accepts uncritically the Israeli narrative and thus will be rejected as one-sided and biased by non-partisans. The first section of the essay begins with many pronouncements on the subject of just war, asymmetric warfare, etc., without any reference at all to the highly contentious literature on the subject, or to historical or legal precedent. For Prof. Halbertal, the war that Israel is fighting against Hamas militants is quite simply a "war against terrorism" Here is a typical statement:

Since the early 1990s, the nature of the military conflict facing Israel has been dramatically shifting. What was mainly a clash between states and armies has turned into a clash between a state and paramilitary terror organizations, Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north. This new form of struggle is now called "asymmetrical war." It is defined by an attempt on the part of those groups to erase two basic features of war: the front and the uniform. Hamas militants fight without military uniforms, in ordinary and undistinguishing civilian garb, taking shelter among their own civilian population; and they attack Israeli civilians wherever they are, intentionally and indiscriminately.

In fact, the term "asymmetrical war," not to mention the phenomenon, predates the 1990's; some consider the American Revolutionary War to be a good example of an asymmetrical war. The ethics and law of asymmetrical wars – where one side has considerably less resources and power than the other -- has also been much discussed, though one would not know it from the essay. Contrary to what Halbertal writes, paramilitary organizations made up of combatants without uniforms may or may not be terror organizations; in fact, it would be better to leave the term "terrorist organization" for those groups whose goals are nothing more than to terrorize the other side, something that cannot be said either of Hamas or, for that matter, the Hagganah and Lehi. It is much better to talk of illegal tactics and actions, such as the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, which both Israel and Hamas appears to have been guilty of, at least according to the Goldstone Report, and a number of other human rights reports.

The essay barely refers to international humanitarian law, the law of war, the protocol of Geneva Conventions, etc. For Halbertal, a professor at NYU law school (albeit a professor of Jewish law), this omission is rather striking. Thus, from the paragraph above it would appear that those combatants who do not distinguish themselves from civilians are ipso facto "terrorists," despite the fact that article 44 of the Geneva Convention recognizes "that there are situations in armed conflicts where, owing to the nature of the hostilities an armed combatant cannot so distinguish himself".

In short, Prof. Halbertal stacks the deck of his critique against the Goldstone Report from the outset by presenting a highly partisan picture of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the guise of a neutral philosophical introduction to the issues. We are told of the ways in which Israel is hampered from conducting war, whereas we are not told of the ways in which Hamas, or the Palestinians, are so hampered. All the restrictions, self-imposed or not, on the stronger party in an asymmetric war still leave that party with considerably more resources and military options than the weaker one. Of course, if the latter is defined as terrorist, the only courses available to it are to surrender or die.

The second section of the essay describes current IDF "code of ethics concerning moral behavior in war." Presumably that is a reference to the new IDF code for the War on Terror authored in 2004 by Yadlin and Kasher (I have been told that the IDF has distanced itself from the discussions of the committee composed of Profs. Halbertal, Avi Sagi, Saul Smilansky, and Daniel Stetman.) There is no question that the code is full of high-minded principles; the question is whether the code is ever actually applied, or that, when it is applied, its purpose is to provide cover for IDF actions that are contrary to international humanitarian law. For example, Halbertal writes:

In 2002, for example, Israel bombed the Gazan home of Salah Shehadeh, who was one of the main Hamas operatives responsible for the deaths of many Israeli civilians. Fourteen innocent people were killed along with Shehadeh. The Israeli chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon, claimed that the collateral deaths were not only unintentional, they were not even foreseeable. The innocent people who were killed lived in shacks in the backyard of the building, which, in aerial photographs, looked like storage units. Yaalon claimed that, had Israel known about this collateral harm, it would not have bombed Shehadeh's hiding place. It had already aborted such an operation a few times because of concern with foreseeable civilian death. I believe that such care is right. It is better to err on the side of over-cautiousness concerning collateral damage.

Halbertal accepts Yaalon's statement at face value; he never once expresses skepticism at the truth of an IDF spokesperson, and implies that this is the IDF policy. He also doesn't mention that in Operation Cast Lead, the IDF dropped a two thousand pound bomb on the house of Niyar Rayan, a Hamas leader, killing him, his four wives, and eleven of his children, despite the IDF's knowledge that his family had not left the building (six months later it changed its story). This is a perfect example of how the IDF does not put in practice what its own ethical code suggests.

As for the duty of soldiers to risk themselves rather than harm civilians, one of the principal authors of the IDF code of ethics, Asa Kasher, has famously argued against Avishai Margalit and Michael Walzer that no such duty exists. Halbertal disagrees with Kasher and points to the battle in the Jenin refugee camp as a case where IDF soldiers took risks. (He attributes their motivation to a concern with civilians; as I recall, the concern was how not to repeat the public relations nightmare of the Kana Village bombing in Operation Grapes of Wrath) But in Operation Cast Lead, soldiers took minimum risk; mortars and bombs did their work for them, and the result was death and destruction. On this Halbertal is silent.

So where does the Goldstone Report fail, according to Halbertal? For one thing, it doesn't treat Israel's moral dilemmas with sufficient complexity:

These are not simple issues. They are also not political issues. They are the occasions of deep moral struggle because they are matters of life and death. If you are looking for an understanding of these issues. Or for guidance about them, in the Goldstone Report, you will not find it.

Halbertal, the philosopher, finds the Goldstone Report insufficiently complex and quite insensitive to Israel's legitimate military needs. Yes, the Goldstone Report recognizes that Israel has a right to defend itself, but it doesn't provide guidance on how to do it. It does not occur to Halbertal that the report of a UN fact-finding mission is not the appropriate place for philosophical complexity or what military strategy one should pursue in the "war against terror". As I recall, the report also doesn't counsel Hamas how to proceed with its war against Israel. (Putting on uniforms and sleeping in army camps? Not a great idea.)

Sections 3 and 4 deal with the Goldstone Report's account of the background to the conflict, and the specific charges it levels against the IDF that Halbertal finds worth investigating. I will discuss those tomorrow.

As US Congress Clears the IDF of Alleged War Crimes, the IDF Investigates Alleged War Crimes

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:32:00 +0000

On the same day that the US Congress condemned the Goldstone Report and cleared Israel of war crimes in Gaza, YNET is reporting that the Israel Defense Forces are investigating troops on suspicions of war crimes. Such an investigation was anticipated and insufficient; a government inquiry is called for. But the Congress has already made up its mind: the IDF committed no war crimes. So will it condemn the IDF for investigating alleged war crimes?

Here's the entire article. I invite you to compare the allegations reported herein with those of the Breaking the Silence testimonies. Recall that when the testimonies talked about the "Johnnie" policy (i.e., the neighbor policy in which a Gazan civilian is forced to risk his life by entering houses), the IDF shot back and said, "There was no employment of the Neighbor Policy in Cast Lead."

So why is the IDF investigating? Do I hear the word, "Goldstone"?

The article is here

Regiment commander, troops questioned on Gaza war

Hanan Greenberg

While Israel is being pressured to form a stance in regards to an investigation into last winter's military operation in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces is thoroughly investigating criminal aspects in its fighters' conduct.

Ynet has learned that the Investigating Military Police has begun summoning soldiers who fought in Gaza for interrogations over a number of unusual incidents.

One of those questioned was a commander of one of the regiments, an officer holding the rank of lieutenant colonel. The suspicions include violence offenses, use of excessive power, using the "neighbor procedure" (using civilians to order wanted Palestinians to leave their houses to be arrested) and firing at populated areas, including incidents which led to the alleged injury of Palestinian civilians.

At least seven soldiers and officers, some of them reservists, have been summoned for questioning at the Investigating Military Police's facilities over the past few days. The alleged incidents they were involved in took place in the Gaza Strip between December 2008 and January 2009.

So far, the Military Advocacy has decided to launch 27 investigations into a series of matters, after examining both the operational inquiries conducted by IDF commanders and some 140 complaints filed by various organizations and Palestinians.

At first, the army collected evidence from about 50 Palestinians, mostly in a meeting held at the Erez crossing. The military then attempted to locate the force which operated in the area in each incident.

The soldiers, including a regiment commander in the Infantry Corps, were asked many questions about their conduct during the incidents and were asked to explain why they had chosen to act the way they did and what were the orders they received.

None of those questioned has been arrested so far, and no arrests are expected. However, after the Military Advocacy examines the testimonies, decisions will be made on whether to file charges against the soldiers or close the cases.

According to a military source, at least 10 more soldiers and officers are expected to be questioned in the near future.

"The investigations deal with a variety of incidents and are just at their beginning, at least as far as the interrogees are concerned, and it's hard to predict how many of them, if at all, will end with an indictment. Summoning the soldiers is a routine procedure carried out when a certain incident is examined," the source said.

"Naturally, these are very sensitive issues which are being examined meticulously as this is not a routine security activity, but an operation handled like a war in which civilians are present against their will," the source added.

IDF legal officials added that it was too early to estimate how the investigations would end, and that there was a long way to go before decisions were made.

Mind you, we are almost a year after Gaza. The only reason there is any investigation at all is to forestall a more serious one.

And whom are they going to investigation about the use of White Phosphorus?

Score One for the Bad Guys

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:35:00 +0000

The House, as predicted, ran over the Goldstone Report. The automatic pro-Israel majority, working without any scruples or decency, or concern with truth, much less the destruction of Gaza, showed once again how irrelevant it is to US foreign policy. Goldstone's objections presented here last Friday had some effect; the resolution was slightly reworded as a result of them. But it was clear that the US Congress, which doesn't seem to care about the United States' own human rights violations, would care even less about Israel's.

The original resolution seemed like the hatchet job of some staffer who didn't know what he (or she) was doing. Berman's response to Goldstone had lawyerly fingerprints all over it and reeked of bad faith.

For example, after the Berman resolution repeatedly criticized the report for one-sidedness, without mentioning that Israel refused to provide any information to Goldstone, despite Goldstone's entreaties, or to let Goldstone set foot in the country, the judge wrote in response:

Finally, I note that there is not a word to record that notwithstanding repeated pleas to the Government of Israel, it refused all cooperation with the Mission. Amongst others, I requested the views of Israel with regard to the implementation of the mandate and details of any issues that the Government of Israel might wish us to investigate.

Berman's Response:

Justice Goldstone is correct. The Government of Israel decided not to cooperate with the Mission, based on its biased mandate, as well as the UNHRC's long history of anti-Israel bias. I find that position, at the least, understandable.

But Justice Goldstone's "correct" point was not that the Government of Israel decided not to cooperate with the Mission (duh!), but that the resolution did not mention Israel's refusal to cooperate, whether that refusal was "understandable" or not. That's the level of intellectual dishonesty that is rampant in the Berman's response to Judge Goldstone.

And about that "original biased mandate" -- Would Israel have cooperated with the UN had the original mandate mentioned investigating Hamas war crimes?

I don't think so….

I can't resist another example:

[Goldstone:] "12. Paragraph 17: That Hamas was able to shape the findings or that it pre-screened the witnesses is devoid of truth and I challenge anyone to produce evidence in support of it."

Berman's Response:

The evidence is within the Report itself. Page 111 of the Report reads as follows: "In its efforts to gather more direct information on the subject, during its investigations in Gaza and in interviews with victims and witnesses of incidents and other informed individuals, the Mission raised questions regarding the conduct of Palestinian armed groups during the hostilities in Gaza. The Mission notes that those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian armed groups. Whatever the reasons for their reluctance, the Mission does not discount that the interviewees' reluctance may have stemmed from a fear of reprisals."

How can a speculation of the Mission regarding the reluctance of the witnesses to testify from fear of reprisals be cited as evidence that Hamas was able to shape the findings of the Mission or that it pre-screened the witnesses? The speculation is just that – a speculation without evidence. And the other "evidence" provided by Berman – that Hamas intimidates opponents, is also irrelevant to the Goldstone report, which reported that it found no evidence. And neither did Berman.

What is peculiarly ironic is that when groups like Breaking the Silence produce testimony, it is rejected by the pro-Israel crowd as unsubstantiated, hearsay, and fabricated – precisely the sort of testimony that the the pro-Israel crowd produces, if it produces testimony as well.

Barukh ha-Shem that the Congressional know-nothings like Berman don't set foreign policy. For the record, here is a list of the tzaddikim in Sedom. J-Street take note.

"Nays"

Baird

Baldwin

Blumenauer

Boustany

Capps

Carson (IN)

Clarke

Clay

Davis (KY)

Dingell

Doggett

Edwards (MD)

Ellison

Filner

Grijalva

Hinchey

Johnson, E. B.

Kilpatrick (MI)

Kucinich

Lee (CA)

Lynch

McCollum

McDermott

McGovern

Miller, George

Moran (VA)

Olver

Pastor (AZ)

Paul

Price (NC)

Rahall

Snyder

Stark

Waters

Watt

Woolsey

"Present":

Becerra

Cooper

Dahlkemper

DeFazio

Delahunt

Duncan

Eshoo

Farr

Heinrich

Hirono

Honda

Johnson (GA)

Jones

Kaptur

Loebsack

Lofgren, Zoe

Luján

Obey

Speier

Tierney

Welch

Goldstone’s Detailed Response to the Berman- Ros-Lehtinen Resolution Criticizing the Report

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:10:00 +0000

I received Judge Goldstone's response to the House Resolution a few minutes ago as a pdf file. I OCR'ed, but there are probably many typos. Shabbat is soon, and I have to run

Jerry.

Shabbat Shalom

The Honorable Howard Berman

Chairman, House Committee on Foreign Affairs

The Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

Ranking Member, House Committee on Foreign Affairs

October 29, 2009

Dear Chairman Berman and Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen,

It has come to my attention that a resolution has been introduced in the Unites States House of Representatives regarding the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which I led earlier this year.

I fully respect the right of the US Congress to examine and judge my mission and the resulting report, as well as to make its recommendations to the US Executive branch of government. However, I have strong reservations about the text of the resolution in question – text that includes serious factual inaccuracies and instances where information and statements are taken grossly out of context.

I undertook this fact-finding mission in good faith, just as I undertook my responsibilities vis à vis the South African Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, the International War Crimes Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Panel of the Commission of Enquiry into the Activities of Nazism in Argentina, the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, and the Volker Committee investigation into the UN's Iraq oil-for-food program in 2004/5.

I hope that you, in similar good faith, will take the time to consider my comments about the resolution and, as a result of that consideration, make the necessary corrections.

Whereas clause #2: "Whereas, on January 12, 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed Resolution A/HRC/S-9/L.1, which authorized a `fact-finding mission' regarding Israel's conduct of Operation Cast Lead against violent militants in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008, and January 18, 2009; "

This whereas clause ignores the fact that I and others refused this original mandate, precisely because it only called for an investigation into violations committed by Israel. The mandate given to and accepted by me and under which we worked and reported reads as follows:

"...to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after".

Whereas clause #2: "Whereas the resolution prejudged the outcome of its investigation, by one- sidedly mandating the `fact-finding mission' to `investigate all violations of international human rights law and International Humanitarian Law by ... Israel, against the Palestinian people ... particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression'"

This whereas clause ignores the fact that the expanded mandate that I demanded and received clearly included rocket and mortar attacks on Israel and as the report makes clear was so interpreted and implemented. It was the report carried out under this broadened mandate – not the original, rejected mandate – that was adopted by the Human Rights Council and that included the serious findings made against Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups.

Whereas clause #3: "Whereas the mandate of the `fact-finding mission' makes no mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks, which numbered in the thousands and spanned a period of eight years, by Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel, that necessitated Israel's defensive measures;"

This whereas clause is factually incorrect. As noted above, the expanded mandate clearly included the rocket and mortar attacks. Moreover, Chapter XXIV of the Report considers in detail the relentless rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel and the terror they caused to the people living within their range. The resulting finding made in the report is that these attacks constituted serious war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

Whereas clause #4: "Whereas the `fact-finding mission' included a member who, before joining the mission, had already declared Israel guilty of committing atrocities in Operation Cast Lead by signing a public letter on January 11, 2009, published in the Sunday Times, that called Israel's actions `war crimes';"

This whereas clause is misleading. It overlooks, or neglects to mention, that the member concerned, Professor Christine Chinkin of the London School of Economics, in the same letter, together with other leading international lawyers, also condemned as war crimes the Hamas rockets fired into Israel.

Whereas clause 5: "Whereas the mission's flawed and biased mandate gave serious concern to many United Nations Human Rights Council Member States which refused to support it, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Republic ofKorea, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland;"

This whereas clause is factually incorrect. The mandate that was given to the Mission was certainly not opposed by all or even a majority of the States to which reference is made. I am happy to provide further details if necessary.

Whereas clause #6: "Whereas the mission's flawed and biased mandate troubled many distinguished individuals who refused invitations to head the mission;"

This whereas clause is factually incorrect. The initial mandate that was rejected by others who were invited to head the mission was the same one that I rejected. The mandate I accepted was expanded by the President of the Human Rights Council as a result of conditions I made.

Whereas clause #8: "Whereas the report repeatedly made sweeping and unsubstantiated determinations that the Israeli military had deliberately attacked civilians during Operation Cast Lead;"

This whereas clause is factually incorrect. The findings included in the report are neither "sweeping" nor "unsubstantiated" and in effect reflect 188 individual interviews, review of more than 300 reports, 30 videos and 1200 photographs. Additionally, the body of the report contains a plethora of references to the information upon which the Commission relied for our findings.

Whereas clause #9: "Whereas the authors of the report, in the body of the report itself, admit that `we did not deal with the issues ... regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding officers `in the fog of war. '

This whereas clause is misleading. The words quoted relate to the decision we made that it would have been unfair to investigate and make finding on situations where decisions had been made by Israeli soldiers "in the fog of battle". This was a decision made in favor of, and not against, the interests of Israel.

Whereas clause #10: 'Whereas in the October 16th edition of the Jewish Daily Forward, Richard Goldstone, the head of the `United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict', is quoted as saying, with respect to the mission's evidence-collection methods, `If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.'"

The remark as quoted is both inaccurate and taken completely out of context. What I had explained to The Forward was that the Report itself would not constitute evidence admissible in court of law. It is my view, as jurist, that investigators would have to investigate which allegations they considered relevant. That, too, was why we recommended domestic investigations into the allegations.

Whereas clause #11: "Whereas the report, in effect, denied the State ofIsrael the right to self- defense, and never noted the fact that Israel had the right to defend its citizens from the repeated violent attacks committed against civilian targets in southern Israel by Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations operating from Gaza;"

It is factually incorrect to state that the Report denied Israel the right of self-defense. The report examined how that right was implemented by the standards of international law. What is commonly called ius ad bellum, the right to use military force was not considered to fall within our mandate. Israel's right to use military force was not questioned.

Whereas clause #12: "Whereas the report largely ignored the culpability of the Government of Iran and the Government ofSyria, both of whom sponsor Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations;"

This whereas clause is misleading. Nowhere that I know of has it ever been suggested that the Mission should have investigated the provenance of the rockets. Such an investigation was never on the agenda, and in any event, we would not have had the facilities or capability of investigating these allegations. If the Government of Israel has requested us to investigate that issue I have no doubt that we have done our best to do so.

Whereas clause #14: "Whereas, notwithstanding a great body of evidence that Hamas and other violent Islamist groups committed war crimes by using civilians and civilian institutions, such as mosques, schools, and hospitals, as shields, the report repeatedly downplayed or cast doubt upon that claim;"

This is a sweeping and unfair characterization of the Report. I hope that the Report will be read by those tasked with considering the resolution.

I note that the House resolution fails to mention that notwithstanding my repeated personal pleas to the Government of Israel, Israel refused all cooperation with the Mission. Among other things, I requested the views of Israel with regard to the implementation of the mandate and details of any issues that the Government of Israel might wish us to investigate.

This refusal meant that Israel did not offer any information or evidence it may have collected regarding actions by Hamas or other Palestinian groups in Gaza. Any omission of such information and evidence in the report is regrettable, but is the result of Israel's decision not to cooperate with the Fact-Finding mission, not a decision by the mission to downplay or cast doubt on such information and evidence.

Whereas clause #15: "Whereas in one notable instance, the report stated that it did not consider the admission of a Hamas official that Hamas often `created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen, against [the Israeli military]'specifically to `constitute evidence that Hamas forced Palestinian civilians to shield military objectives against attack. '• "

This whereas clause is misleading, since the quotation is taken out of context. The quotation is part of a section of the report dealing with the very narrow allegation that Hamas compelled civilians, against their will, to act as human shields. The statement by the Hamas official is repugnant and demonstrates an apparent disregard for the safety of civilians, but it is not evidence that Hamas forced civilians to remain in their homes in order to act as human shields. Indeed, while the Government of Israel has alleged publicly that Hamas used Palestinian civilians as human shields, it has not identified any cases where it claims that civilians were doing so under threat of force by Hamas or any other party.

Whereas clause #16: "Whereas Hamas was able to significantly shape the findings of the investigation mission's report by selecting and prescreening some of the witnesses and intimidating others, as the report acknowledges when it notes that `those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian armed groups ... from a fear of reprisals '• "

The allegation that Hamas was able to shape the findings of my report or that it pre-screened the witnesses is devoid of truth. I challenge anyone to produce evidence in support of it.

Sincerely,

Justice Richard J. Goldstone

The Goldstone Report and Jewish Law

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:58:00 +0000

In "The Goldstone Report and Jewish Law", Rabbi Ido Rechnitz, Director of the Mishpetei Eretz Institute, displays his unfamiliarity with the Law of War that underlies the Goldstone Report. Some of what he proposes as Jewish law is no different from the Law of War, such as the permissibility of killing civilians where there is military necessity ("collateral damage") and the demand to reduce civilian casualties. He misreads the Law of War as based on the distinction between individual and collective responsibility, and argues that Gaza should be treated as a collective entity under the rule of Hamas. Again, this assertion is perfectly compatible with the Goldstone report, which does not argue that Israeli should treat Hamas combatants as criminals, and Gazans as innocent bystanders.

Where Rabbi Rechnitz gets it right, and where Jewish law does indeed differ from contemporary Law of War, is his claim that wars are fought between collectives. According to Jewish law, there is no fundamental distinction between combatants and non-combatants, although in the Bible there is occasionally a distinction drawn between potential combatants on the one hand, and women and children on the other. The Law of War, on the other hand, draws a sharp line between combatants and non-combatants, and for good reason: the genocides and war crimes of the twentieth century, including the Holocaust, were predicated on the notion that peoples must suffer along with their combatants because they are collectively responsible for their leaders' actions. According to postwar law and conventions of war, wars are, or should be, fought between armies and not between peoples.

There are some collectivist approaches in recent discussion of just war theory – I will elaborate next week – but not in the manner that Rabbi Rechnitz mentions.

On Rabbi Rechnitz's reading of Jewish law, it would be perfectly permissible for Syria to bomb Tel Aviv and kill thousands of Jewish civilians in a war. The Syrian army would not have to risk its soldiers life in order to avoid harm to Israeli civilians; it could bomb yeshivot and synagogues. It couldn't do so only for the sake of killing, but would need some cause, such as punishing Israel for its aggression. Perhaps Rabbi Rechnitz assumes that civilians can be killed with impunity only when the war is just. So let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Syria is fighting a just war against Israeli aggression, and let us assume further, for the sake of Rabbi Rechnitz, that the government of Israel is run by pork-eating heretics. On his view of the Jewish ethics of war, if the Syrian army could bomb a girls' seminary and thereby achieve a military objective, without risking its own soldiers, then that would be permissible.

The Goldstone Report does not criticize Israel for harming Palestinians where there was military necessity. The Goldstone Report argues that for many operations it examined there was no military necessity; and in some cases where there was military necessity, the damage was disproportionate (another term apparently unfamiliar to Rabbi Rechnitz) to the military objective. If securing a position can be achieved by killing 50 civilians, it is wrong and illegal to kill 500. It is also wrong and illegal to destroy civilian installations, even if one recognizes some sort of collective responsibility. That is because the whole thrust of the laws of war after WWII is to ensure that civilians are removed from the picture.

That Rabbi Rechnitz and Hamas want to return civilians to the picture shouldn't surprise anybody who knows how much political-fundamentalist Judaism and Islam share in common

Does Criticism of the Goldstone Report Pass the “NGO Monitor Test”

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:20:00 +0000

Torrents of criticism have rained down upon the Goldstone Report. Some are by enthusiastic bloggers and journalists; others by law professors; even some of them expert on international law.

What's a fair-minded individual, who is no expert in international law, to think?

Well, I suggest that we judge the critics of the Goldstone Report by using the same methodology that NGO Monitor uses to judge the reports of the human rights NGO's. That is to say, we examine the authors of the criticisms, find out their ideological leanings, and, without actually analyzing the content of their criticism, dismiss them as hopelessly biased.

What follows is a partial list of the critics, according to a list provided by NGO Monitor here.

Ed Morgan, Yisrael Medad, Aharon Leshno Ya'ar, Alan Dershowitz, Benjamin Pogrund, Ben-Dror Yemini, E. B. Solomon, Harold Evans, Melanie Phillips, Robert O. Freedman, John Bolton, Haviv Rettig Gur, RW Johnson, Yisrael Harel, Irwin Cotler, Hillel Neuer

Almost all Jews, almost all Zionists, almost all center right, and in some cases, famous for having moved to the right. Centrist Zionists like Cotler and Pogrund have increasingly been spending their time defending Israel and avoiding criticism. Why can't they be like Michael Walzer, another liberal Zionist, and avoid the fray?

Where are the non-Zionist writers who sharply critique the Goldstone Report? Is the world really divisible into sonei yisrael (anti-Semites) and pro-Israeli apologists? Surely Gerald Steinberg and Co. could find unbiased critics of Goldstone, those without solidly center-right Zionist credentials?

Since these are precisely the folks we would have expected to blast the report, the NGO Monitor test says that there is no reason to take their criticism seriously.

I am still waiting for the law professors who couldn't care less about Israel and Gaza to weigh in. NGO Monitor cannot cite as evidence Jessica Montell's criticism of the Goldstone Report here. After all, she is the Executive Director of B'Tselem.

And, NGO Monitor never tires of telling us, we surely can't take B'Tselem seriously.

Of course, using NGO Monitor's methodology, we can't take it seriously, either.

Blogging from the J-Street Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:05:00 +0000

I will not rain on the parade, I will not rain on the parade, I will not rain on the parade….

So last night I was at the J Street opening, and it was deeply gratifying to be with the liberal-Zionist-peace crowd. Yes, there were many moments when I thought that we had not moved much further than the peace discourse that led to Oslo, and, yes, there was no grappling with what I consider to be the real issues, either of the conflict or of the Jewish state. But how can one not be pleased to see more than 1200 people who care about Israel, and who are not satisfied with the status quo. And who can't stand AIPAC.

Of course, one has to be impressed with how a few people put together such an organization that has received such media and government attention in such a short time.

Still, last night was mostly smoke and lights, and so there was not much to comment about, except that I heard some interesting remarks about the future of the American Jewish community, and, mostly American Judaism (I seldom venture out of my orthodox Jewish enclave; I haven't seen so many non-orthodox Jewish Jews in one place in years.)

It seems that out there in America, we have developing, possibly, a non-ethnic Judaism, a Judaism that is being formed by intermarriage and conversion. The lost of ethnicity will mean a loss of connection with the center of Jewish ethnicity, Israel. The liberal rabbi who communicated this news seemed alarmed; I, actually, thought, "Wallah, that sounds promising." What this means for American Jewry and Israel is not clear. Will it mean that the Israel Lobby will end up being an orthodox enclave, an NRA with kippot? Will it mean that Israel will continue to lose relevance for American Jews? Is that a bad thing? Who knows? I would like to hope that with an American Jewry that is increasingly distanced from Israel, the Israel Lobby will shrink to the republican rightwing. I can live with that.

But we are not there yet, and maybe we won't get there.

I am now listening to a power-point presentation by Akiva Eldar, which is taken from the updated version of his book (with Idit Zertal). The room, one of the largest for the individual sessions, is packed. We are talking about the easiest issue for the liberal Zionists, the West Bank settlements. He gave background and came up with the standard line about the settlements – that they are undermining the viability of a two-state solution.

Now, Hagit Ofran is pointing out that 60% of the settlers on the West Bank (I don't know if that includes East Jerusalem) arrived after Oslo, and that is why there is a Palestinian insistence on freezing totally the settlements. She hopes that the Obama administration will hang tough, and she reports (as good news) the increased building prior to a feared freeze, which she believes is around the corner. And now, Jerusalem

Have you learned anything that you didn't know? Well, of course, you haven't. And neither have many of the people sitting in the room. So what are they doing here?

Well, at the end of the session, people will ask what they always ask, and what they have always asked: What can be done? And the answer will be, get active and get other active.

But does anybody really think there can be change? With an American Jewish community that is becoming distant from Israel, with an Israel that is increasingly ethnonationalist and orthodox?

I will not rain on the parade, I will not rain on the parade, I will not rain on the parade….

The Passion of Richard Goldstone

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:21:00 +0000

It is truly sad, though hardly surprising, how a Goldstone-basher coalition has emerged in the last week, a coalition made up of Israeli war crimes apologists, states opposed to international humanitarian law (except when it serves their own interest), and ultra-nationalists everywhere. Now the Obama Administration and the Congress, for reasons of political expediency , or because of a naïve confidence in the so-called peace process, have jumped on the bandwagon.

On human rights, the message of folks like Robert Bernstein, Natan Scharansky Elie Wiesel and Alan Dershowitz, is clear: My side has human rights; the other side, my enemy, does not. That was the message of Helsinki Watch, the predecessor of Human Rights Watch, which as Helena Cobban has pointed out here, originated not out of a concern for the rights of humans everywhere, but in order to open another front in the Cold War. The Jews in the Soviet Union did not suffer a tenth of what the Gazans have suffered and continue to suffer in terms of the infringement of their basic rights to life, liberty, employment, movement, etc. But for these gentlemen, all men are created equal -- provided they are on our side.

And so it is not surprising that Elie Wiesel, who has repeatedly criticized the world for its silence during the Holocaust, and American Jews for not heeding the suffering of Soviet Jewry , has publicly attacked Human Rights Watch in a letter to the New York Times, which contains the following vicious lie:

In a region dominated by regimes that violate human rights in horrendous ways, Human Rights Watch has instead chosen to single out Israel for condemnation, often using highly unreliable witnesses to do so

It is a vicious lie because anyone with even a superficial knowledge of HRW knows that it focuses precisely on the Middle East regimes that violate human rights in horrendous ways, and devotes much more energy in reporting about them than it does about Israel, which for the most part violates human rights in less horrendous -- though still horrendous -- ways. Wiesel and his co-author Alan Dershowitz lob their kassams indiscriminately at Human Rights Watch, when they really want to hit the UN Human Rights Council.

But while the Israel Lobby is up in arms about Goldstone, and while sane voices from Israeli liberals and conservatives have called for an independent investigation, the best person to listen to is Goldstone himself, in this interview with Bill Moyers. Bill Moyers asks Goldstone sensible question and presses him when he should be pressed. Goldstone responds as one would expect a man of his stature, intelligence, experience, and character to respond.

How sad that one of the great men of our time, and certainly one of the great Jews, is maligned by such tiny men, who chucked their moral compasses long ago so that their tribe could survive.

Part One of the interview is here

Part Two of the interview is here.

Progressive Bloggers Lunch Held at Hotel Where J-Street Conference Will be Held

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:12:00 +0000

WARNING What you are about to be invited to is neither sponsored, nor supported, nor endorsed by J-Street. There may be left over food from the morning sessions, maybe not. And J-Street is not insisting on rent from the bloggers for the hotel room. In fact, the bloggers have absolutely nothing to do with J-Street, officially or unofficially.

When in DC on Monday come hear progressive I/P blogger/journalists speak briefly about the issues of the hour. I mean quite literally "the hour" since lunch at the second day of the J-Street Conference is from 12:30-1:30.

Here is some of the line-up

Phil Weiss (Mondoweiss)
Jerry Haber (Magnes Zionist)
Richard Silverstein (Tikun Olam)
Dan Sieradski (formerly of Jewschool)
Helena Cobban (Just World News)
Max Blumenthal (Daily Beast)
Laila el Haddad (Gaza Mom)
Matt Duss (Think Progress)
Joseph Dana (Ibn Ezra)
Ray Hanania
Jesse Hochheiser (Across the Border)

I am not entirely sure that all of the above will show; there has been extraordinary pressure from the far right for them to cancel their participation at the lunch.

(That was a joke.)

In fact, there has been a lot of pressure on Congresspeople not to show, and a lot of hot air about J-Street. And you know what? It doesn't seem to be working. After an initial minyan of folks dropped out, nothing new to report…except the good news that the smears against J-Street are from the usual smearers: ZOA, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, and assorted West Bank settlers. Even the Jewish liberal hawks have been cutting the new kid on the block some slack.

And that's the way it should be. Because after the J-Street conference next week, AIPAC will be indelibly identified with the hard-core "pumped-by-Sarah-Palin-and-Rush-Limbaugh" right. If you are a liberal democrat, you shouldn't be backing AIPAC, or for that matter, the right-wing Netanyahu government.

Jonathan Sarna on Why Young American Jews Distance Themselves from Israel

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:43:00 +0000

In a recent op-ed in the Forward, Prof. Jonathan Sarna, the foremost historian of American Jewry, attempts to explain why American Jews, especially the young and non-orthodox, continue to distance themselves from Israel. In a nutshell, his answer is that many American Jews are disappointed that Israel has not fulfilled the utopian dreams of its founders and their parents' generation. Failing to understand that Israel's actions are necessary in order to survive in a dangerous neighborhood, American Jews hold Israel to an unreasonable, higher standard than any other state, including America.

Amicus Johannis vero, but I find his explanation unconvincing – and, surprisingly, anti-Zionist.

Why anti-Zionist? Because a central tenet of statist Zionism was that the Jews in the Diaspora were powerless, and that only in a Jewish state, would Jews become – collectively -- actors on the stage of history. The Zionist philosopher Emil Fackenheim called the establishment of the State of Israel, "the Jewish return to History". No longer would Jews sit around passively and wait for things to happen to them; they would act, for better or for worse, and their actions would have consequences.

But for Prof. Sarna, Israel is not really responsible for its actions, nor should it bear the consequences of its decisions. It is compelled to act in the way it does, because of self-defense, because it is in a bad neighborhood, because of Arab terrorism, and the collective Arab failure to accept as just the dispossession, or the partition, of their homeland. So the establishment of the Jewish State in the way that it was established, hastily and unilaterally, and culminating in Israel's refusal to let around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs return to their lands, which they later expropriated, along with the thousands of dunams of Arab citizens of the Jewish state, for the purpose of Jewish growth and settlement -- none of this, it seems, has an effect on Palestinian Arabs' attitudes towards Israeli Jews. The same can be said for the occupation and siege of the West Bank and Gaza -- the longest occupation in modern history. Millions of Palestinians are governed without their consent while their lands are confiscated in the name of Israel's security, or the settlement of Eretz Yisrael, or both.

Is it any surprise that Israeli and American Jews are starting to wonder whether the continued existence of the state set up in 1948 under these conditions is worth it? After all, no advocate for Zionism ever made the argument to the world that in order for there to be a secure, Jewish state, most of the Palestinian inhabitants would have to leave their homes, or that millions would have to be governed against their consent.

According to Prof. Sarna, Israel is acting the way any normal state would act under such difficult conditions. And so, idealistic young people with higher standards, are tired and upset with Israel.

Yet a closer look at his argument shows that Prof. Sarna is not describing the younger generation, but his own.

In place of the utopia that we had hoped Israel might become, young Jews today often view Israel through the eyes of contemporary media: They fixate upon its unloveliest warts.

Why should the younger generation, who did not have their consciousness seared by the movie Exodus, the Six Day War, and Jewish Federation "Missions," who have seen only a tiny bit of what Israel does in the Occupied Territories on the mainstream American media (was the Goldstone report even mentioned in the liberal MSNBC evening lineup?)—why should it feel disillusionment or disappointment that the Zionist dream has not come true? That may indeed by the case for those who were exposed to that dream, and disillusionment may indeed characterize the boomer generation of 67.

But what the younger generation has seen is a never ending cycle of "peace-processes," Jewish settlement, and suffering, both Israeli Jewish and Palestinian, but mostly Palestinian. And a gross imbalance and exercise of power which is as old as the State of Israel itself. Is it any wonder that, unlike thirty years ago, the young supporters of Israel today in the US are overwhelmingly Jewish orthodox or Christian fundamentalist, Republican, and neocon?

The same young progressive Jews who campaigned passionately for Obama, opposed the war in Iraq, and fight hard for civil liberty and equality, do not view Israel as a failed utopia. Rather, they view Israel as a failing state, one that offers to the Palestinians the shards of a state, a truncated, demilitarized, and powerless entity.

With Israel's Zionist left in disarray, and with a rightwing chauvinistic national consensus that is bolstered by religious fundamentalists and ethnonationalists from the former Soviet Union, who has distanced itself from whom? American Jews from Israel, or Israel from American Jews?

Still, while Prof. Sarna's explanation is not convincing, his call to action is:

The deepest and most meaningful of relationships, however, survive disappointments. By focusing upon all that they nevertheless share in common, and all that they might yet accomplish together in the future, American Jews and Israelis can move past this crisis in their relationship and settle in, as partners, for the long haul ahead.

Amen to that. The wrong thing for liberal Jews to do is to turn their back on Israel, to give up hope, to lose interest. On the contrary, liberal American Jews should apply at least the same energies to working for justice in Israel-Palestine, as they do in America. That means engaging with Israel, helping to transform the 1948 ethnocracy into a liberal democracy of all its citizens, fighting for justice for the Palestinian Israelis, the foreign workers, political refugees, and othe disadvantaged groups. Let there be a Birthright Human Rights, in which Jewish college kids join Israeli-Palestinian human rights groups like Ta'ayush, Yesh Din, B'tselem, and many others. There is so much that liberal American Jews can and should do. It is immaterial to me that they do it as Jews or simply as decent human beings, as yidden or as mentshen.

Who knows? Perhaps not only Zion, but also Zionism, can be redeemed through justice.

J-Street Strikes Back at the Smearers

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:39:00 +0000

A smear campaign against J-Street has been launched by – who else? The Weekly Standard, Commentary and the Standwithus crowd. They are telling their supporters to hound the members of Congress who are part of the J-Street Gala's Honorary Host Committee and get them to withdraw. So why not? Hey, it's a free country, isn't it?

Sure, and if they played by the rules, that would be fine. But their rules include smearing and guilt-by-association. Remember how they went after Obama? Now they are saying that because one of the many speakers at the J-Street Conference, Salam al-Marayati, made a remark on radio suggesting that Israel should be on the lists of suspects for the 9/11 attack. He did this on September 11, and then immediately apologized for it the next day and on the same radio show.

So why is Salam al-Marayati speaking at J-Street? Because of something which he does not apologize for – his support of the two-state solution. In an op-ed he wrote for JTA

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a key issue of U.S.-Muslim world relations. My position on the conflict -- and that of MPAC -- centers on the two-state solution whereby Israel and Palestine exist side by side with security and opportunity. I believe also that the injustices that the Palestinian people have endured for more than 60 years, as well as the ongoing occupation that started in 1967, must be addressed and rectified through negotiation, not violence. Middle East wars have not resolved anything in the 20th century or in the first decade of this century"

In other words, the man is as extreme as…Barack Obama and Bibi Netanyahu!

Oh, did I tell you that al-Marayati's support for the two-state solution is not mentioned in the smear campaign.

Please read the appeal below, and contact the congresspeople. I am sick of the McCarthyite tactics of those who still worship at the feet of Joe McCarthy. You don't like al-Marayati? Don't go to hear him speak. Attack him publicly. But withdraw from the conference because of that?

Only a neocon could sink so low.

Yesterday, in a classic "Swift Boat" move, the Weekly Standard magazine - dubbed the "neocon bible" by The Economist - launched an attack on our conference and the whole pro-Israel, pro-peace movement. [1]

They're working the phones - calling the offices of every one of the 150-plus members of Congress on our Gala's Honorary Host Committee to frighten them away from associating with J Street. The most infuriating part is that their thuggish smear tactics are having an impact -- already 5 members of Congress have pulled off of our Host Committee.

This is exactly how the neoconservative far-right of the pro-Israel community has - for decades - imposed strict boundaries of acceptable political conversation on Israel in this country. Cross them and prepare to feel the full effect of their smear machine.

Enough. Not this time. Today, the mainstream majority goes on offense.

If you're getting this email, you've got a Senator or Representative on our Honorary Host Committee. Will you call them right now to thank them for signing on to our Host Committee before the Weekly Standard guys get to them?

Click here to call your member(s) of Congress using our easy-to-use call-in tool. We'll connect your phone directly for no hassle and no extra cost.

So what's causing our political opponents to become so totally unhinged?

It's the whole pro-Israel, pro-peace movement's growing influence.

We've got an exciting conference planned that starts in just 9 days, and over 1,000 people are slated to attend.

The New York Times Magazine published a lengthy profile on us, showing that even top national media outlets are recognizing the change that's coming to our issue. [2]

We're showing Congress that political support exists from those of us that believe supporting Israel's future as a Jewish, democratic homeland means supporting President Obama's balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Don't let these neoconservatives and their Swift Boat tactics win the day. Call your representative today and make sure they hear from the mainstream majority.

Click here to call your member(s) of Congress right now. Our easy-to-use tool will connect your phone directly for no hassle and no extra cost.

Thanks so much for all you do.

Isaac Luria

Campaigns Director

J Street

October 16, 2009

[1] "The Neocon Bible, The Weekly Standard." The Economist, September 2005.

[2] "The New Israel Lobby," by James Traub. The New York Times Magazine, September 9, 2009.

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The Goldstone Report is Accepted by the UN Human Rights Council

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:16:00 +0000

When Stephen Sondheim wrote "Have an eggroll, Mr. Goldstone" for the musical Gypsy, he was prescient. The Goldstone Report has now been formally accepted by the UN Human Rights Council, and will be referred to the UN Security Council. The report's recommendations were approved by a vote of 23 including China (hence the nod to Sondheim) to six, with 11 abstentions. Read about it here.

The Israeli knee-jerk response will be to talk about the "automatic anti-Israel majority" and the states in the majority that are human rights violators. Well, I guess it takes one to know one. Let's not forget that two weeks ago Israel was crowing about how it had buried the report with the help of the Palestinians. Israel was only able to get six states to side with it – and only two Western European states, Italy and the Netherlands. France and England did not vote. This is an achievement for the Palestinians, because what state interest is served by adopting a human rights report that limits the power of states?

The US rejected the report on three grounds: a) the resolution included matters not in the Goldstone report; b) adopting the report would hurt the Peace Process; c) "The report failed to deal adequately with the asymmetrical nature of the confrontation." This last one is disturbing because it smacks of the Bush-Cheney doctrine that says that when engaged in a asymmetric "war on terror" the enemy combatants (and those surrounding them) are not protected under the laws and conventions of war. And who gets to determine what is a war on terror and who are enemy combatants? You guessed it, the state that is at war.

But Gaza is not ruled by al-Qaeda or the Bader-Meinhof gang. Gaza is ruled by a Palestinian political party, Hamas, which Israel treats as the governing authority when it suits it and as a terrorist organization when it suits it. The only asymmetry is that Israel has virtually all the effective weapons – and the Gazans barely fought the IDF in the Gaza Op. Were the report to deal adequately with the asymmetrical nature of the confrontation, it would condemn Israel not only for the conduct of the war but for its decision to go to war – since other less belligerent options were open to it, given the nature of the Hamas threat to its own citizens.

This is not the US's finest hour. If it had not voted, the peace process would not have been affected at all.

When human rights become hostage to a nonexistent (or, for that matter, existent) "peace process," I say, "Enough of the carrot. Bring on the stick."

Beyond Chutzpah – Jewish Responses to the Goldstone Report

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:50:00 +0000

Jews worldwide are on the eve of the holiday celebrating the completion of the public reading of the Torah in synagogue. It is a lovely holiday, the Rejoicing of the Torah, and Jews are to supposed to be happy (whether they actually are happy while waiting for all the dancing to stop is something else.)

But I am writing these words on Hoshana Rabbah, the last day of the festival of Sukkot, which, according to tradition, is the last opportunity for Jews to repent their sins of the past year and make amends for it.

When it comes to Israel and its Jewish supporters, we are not in a repentance mode. On the contrary, self-righteousness , moral superiority, smugness, and condescension are the order of the days.

It used to be that the classic example of chutzpah was the man who murders his parents and then pleads for clemency on the grounds that he is an orphan.

Now the example of chutzpah should be the state that refuses to cooperate with the human rights committee and then criticizes its report as "one-sided" and "biased".

Is the Goldstone Report one-sided? Not as much as one would expect, given that Judge Goldstone was barred from entering Israel, not allowed to interview Israelis in Sderot, not allowed to speak with the Israel Defense Forces. That the investigating panel paid for Israelis to fly to Geneva to give testimony to his committee has not been mentioned in the hysterical Jewish reaction to the report. Or that the report was based also on the Israeli human rights organizations, and even on the testimony of Israeli soldiers who supported the operation. We hear a lot about the bias of the report of its original mandate, or that it took testimony from (gasp) Palestinians (and we all know how much Arabs exaggerate, right?)

I have not, I confess, read through all of the report. As I wrote before, what I read of it did not strike me as new; the incidents described were already described in real time, and we have had further confirmation of incidents from Palestinians and Israelis and foreign aid workers. I assume that there are errors, only because testimonies contain errors. The report called for both sides to do a serious investigation (and no military investigation can be a serious one), and that call has been echoed by voices of civil society. No doubt a sober examination of some parts of the report – as any report – would raise further questions. Nobody is perfect. But there is condemnation of Hamas rocket fire, and there is considerable examination of the destruction in Southern Israel (including the psychological trauma) that followed in its wake. And, of course, the report condemns Hamas and finds no justification for its actions.

So I am at a loss to explain the hysterical reaction of Israelis and American Jews who – I thought – were a tad more intelligent than ZOA and the Standwithus crowd.

Let's begin with Ambassador Michael Oren's hatchet job in the New Republic, "Deep Denial: Why the Holocaust Still Matters". After explaining the relevance of the references to the Holocaust by the Israeli Prime Minister (when will the Holocaust never be relevant to an Israeli prime minister?) he writes that the Goldstone Report portrays Israel as a Nazi state, and that it "takes up where Ahmadinejad leaves off"!

The Goldstone Report goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves. If a country can be pummeled by thousands of rockets and still not be justified in protecting its inhabitants, then at issue is not the methods by which that country survives but whether it can survive at all. But more insidiously, the report does not only hamstring Israel; it portrays the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents--as Nazis. And a Nazi state not only lacks the need and right to defend itself; it must rather be destroyed

Ribono shel olam! Oy to the ears that hear such shtuyot (imbecilities)! This man is supposed to be representing the Jewish State in America? My God, I don't hear such narrishkeit in my shul; no, wait, that is unfair to my shul, I don't even hear it among the Hebron settlers!

I see nothing in the Goldstone Report that criticizes Israel for its decision to go to war, or that even hints that the military option was not justifiable. Everything that the report discusses with respect to Israel has to do with the IDF's conduct of the operation. So Oren is dead wrong on that point.

As for the report portraying "Jews as the deliberate murder of innocents," that is also a libel. The report claims that there is considerable evidence that Israel – not "Jews" – deliberately bombed civilian facilities. And Israel admits to this; it only claims that the civilian facilities were, in some cases, harboring terrorists or weapons, and thus proper targets. So the question is, did the IDF deliberately bomb such facilities, and if so, what was their justification for doing so? I would like to remind my dear readers that the IDF routinely impresses upon Palestinians its power. It is called "le-hafgin nokhekhut", to demonstrate the army's presence. In the Gaza Op we had the phrase, "baal-habayit hishtagea'", "the boss has gone berserk." There are times when the military can't pull its punches. It is called harta'a 'deterrence'.

Now it is perfectly legitimate for the IDF to dispute this or that incident; it has the obligation to do so. But who says that Israel or the IDF are immune from such criticism?

And as for the Nazi comparison… Puhleese. I guess Oren thinks that the Allies were Nazis when they carpet bombed Dresden.

So you think it is only Oren? Let's go to his neocon Israeli buddy, Haaretz's Ari Shavit. In this op-ed Goldstone isn't just accusing the Israelis of being Nazis, he is bringing about their destruction through the next war, the "Goldstone War"

Nobody knows yet when the next war will break out. Maybe in a decade, maybe in a year, or maybe even next month. It is also not clear where the next war will erupt - perhaps on the Gaza border, perhaps the West Bank, or maybe in Jerusalem.

But it is already clear what the next war's name will be - the Goldstone War. It will be the war brought upon us by the Goldstone report, Judge Goldstone and his Goldstoner followers

Now, let's follow Shavit's line of thought, which Is truly "Orenian." It goes like this: Israel, in the absence of peace, has to beat up the Palestinians every once in a while. The moral cost is "intolerable" but what to do, somebody has to teach those guys a lesson in deterrence (the magic word) and hope that the moderates will emerge.

But then comes along Goldstone and the human-righters and out goes the deterrence. Because – and here's the kicker – the Gazans know that after they are bombed to smithereens, they will be defended by the UN! And while this may be cold comfort to rational people, those terrorists might actually think that future Goldstoners will protect them. So they will terrorize Israel knowing that – even though they are condemned by the human rights people, at least the adversary Israel will also be condemned!

One wonders whether mainland China's newspapers has a spot reserved for Shavit?

And finally, let's not forget the liberal-minded American Jewish newspaper the Forward. Here, at least, you would expect less hysteria, maybe, even fair-mindedness?

Think again. Although it is the first in-depth Jewish journalistic account to actually look at the report, it is more one-sided than the report itself. At least Goldstone's committee took testimony from Israelis, and not just "Goldstoners" like the human rights organizations. And the committee was boycotted by Israel, as I mentioned above.

But, aside from getting reactions from Goldstone, the Forward's article bases itself entirely on Israeli sources, some of which are associated with the ultra rightwing think-tank, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, none of which are on the left of the spectrum. Not a single Palestinian is interviewed, nor are reactions to specific claims solicited from Israeli human rights groups.

But worse, the Forward (and most Israelis) seems to assume that it is permitted to kill summarily members of the Hamas organization because it is considered to be a terrorist organization. But in a war, there is immunity for fighters who are not actively contributing to the war effort, much less simply members of a militant organization. The fact that Hamas websites, for its own propaganda purposes, claims certain people to proud fighters in their organization (remember the competition between Hamas and Fatah over the suicide bombers?) does not mean that they can be killed with impunity.

For if you think it does, then you are justifying the murder of the Israeli soldiers at the Beit Lid intersection, when they were waiting for a bus.

From a moral point of view, merely putting on a uniform doesn't mean that you are a legitimate target. And if you don't put on a uniform, and simply join an organization, even a military one, then you are certainly not a legitimate target.

And of course, there is no mention in the Forward of the white phosphorus use, the killing of civilians reported by Israeli soldiers in the Breaking the Silence testimonies.

From Gal Beckerman's article, it seems that the real problem of the Goldstone panel was that that it did not listen to all the evidence from Israel but rushed to judgment.

And that, considering Israel's boycott of the committee, is beyond chutzpah.

Throwing Judge Goldstone (and the Gazans) Under the Bus – Who Won and Who Lost

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:29:00 +0000

It took about a week to finish off Richard Goldstone and his Gaza Report. You have to give a lot of credit to the Netanyahu government. They get better at killing the messenger each time they do it. This time a few days of Israeli phone calls to the European capitals, intensive public relations, and a lot of help from the US government, did the trick. Hillary bought the Israeli line that acting upon the Goldstone Report would damage a (non-existent) peace process. As if the war crimes in Gaza had anything to do with any sort of peace process.

But an honorable mention and a big yashar koah goes to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, which buckled under "intense pressure" from the US, and agreed to delay deliberations on the report until March.

So who are the winners and losers in l'affaire Goldstone?

Well, the winners in no special order are the rightwing Israeli government and its rightwing supporters, the American administration, and Hamas. The first two are obvious; for Bibi and Hillary (and her boss), the Goldstone Report was a "distraction" from the main issue, which is how to pretend there is a peace process and to juggle at the same time.

And why Hamas? Because at the same time that the PA was capitulating to the Israelis and the Americans, much to the crowing of the Israelis, Hamas managed to exchange a videotape of Gilad Shalit for Palestinian prisoners. Moral of the story: kidnap Israeli soldiers, and you get a prisoner release. (It didn't take Khaled Mashal a long time to figure that out.) Collaborate with the Israelis, and you get bubkes, although I would like to think that at least some people of Ramallah will be well-rewarded for their efforts.

And how is this going to play in the Palestinian street? Do I need to spell that out for you? Just read the wise analysis by Amjad Atallah here.

The big losers, again in no special order, are Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, which have been quick to spin their decision as only a delaying tactic. Believe that, and I have a security fence you may be interested in.

Of course, their patrons, the Israelis Dons, spun the Palestinian surrender their own way. According to Haaretz

The Palestinian decision not to push the report was "proof that Israel was right not to cooperate with the investigation and that it was a political tool that can be blocked through diplomatic activity," a source said.

Good to see that the PA has joined the Coalition Forces.

Other big losers are the human rights organizations, the folks who care about little things like the death, dismemberment, and trauma of innocent civilians, and the destruction of their lives and property. What Israel, the US, and the PA proved today was that power trumps justice, that war criminals are held to account when and only when they are not friends of the big boys.

But the biggest losers, aside from the Gazans, are good people everywhere. We are taught that crime doesn't pay, that the bad guys will be punished, that pride goeth before a fall. It's doesn't get easier to learn that the bullies often get their way.

Of course, Torah teaches that the ledger is open, and that there is a hand that records the deeds and misdeeds. The ray of hope in all this is that nobody opposed to the Goldstone report, or for that matter, any of the human rights reports, disputed the facts therein. (I exclude the hardcore right-wingers and the Israeli government, which always dispute the facts.) The claims have been that the original mandate was biased, that the report lacked context, that its conclusions were over the top, that the UN hates Israel, yada, yada, yada. Discrediting the messenger is a good short-term tactic, but a lousy long-term one. So while I don't share the optimism of the last optimist in Israel, Gideon Levy, who thinks that the Goldstone report will affect future Israeli behavior, I am hopeful that a lot of people out there know a rat when they smell one.

And let's not forget a VERY BIG winner of throwing Judge Goldstone under the bus – the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions people. For we now know that the way to get results out of the Israeli government is through public action – and that action cannot be left to government actions, especially when the governments are serial human-rights violators such as the US, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority.

Will the Goldstone Report Force an Israeli Commission of Inquiry into IDF War Crimes in Gaza?

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:43:00 +0000

When the Goldstone Report was published, the initial reaction of the Israeli government and the IDF was to push back hard. After all, last summer they had managed to silence "Breaking the Silence," the IDF veteran group that published testimonies from IDF soldiers in the Gaza Op. Had Israeli society reacted to the BtS testimonies by establishing a Commission of Inquiry then, as called for by distinguished Israeli writers, intellectuals, Haaretz, and Nahman Shay, there would have been little fuss in the world over the Goldstone report. On the contrary, the Goldstone report would have been significantly altered, since Goldstone's recommendation was for Israel and Hamas to set up Commission of Inquiries. But Israel, like Hamas, is incapable of engaging in any significant self-criticism and has been incapable for decades. The Winograd Commission was forced upon the Olmert government by an unruly public; the Or Commission was set up to heal Labor's relations with potential Palestinian Israeli supporters. Nothing at all came of the interminable discussions of the latter; the former simply embarrassed Olmert. The last serious Commission of Inquiry dealt with the first Lebanon War, especially Sabra and Shatila. Sharon was burned by that one, but only temporarily. No, the only commission that managed to set into motion a political sea change was the Agranat Commission after the Yom Kippur War, and the conclusions of that commission, initially, were quite tame.

So why would the Israeli government – a very rightwing government, whose "leftwing" fig leaf (Ehud Barak) was almost detained in London this week for his responsibility for Israeli war crimes, and which feels no pressure by the Israeli electorate -- set up a commission to investigate Gaza? The answer is simple: to whitewash, to head off international repercussions, to rap a few knuckles, to buy time – in short, to kill the Goldstone report. With the US representative on the UN Human Rights Council calling for a commission of inquiry, and with European countries being able to hold court proceedings for IDF officers, there is growing pressure for Israel to do something on its own.

That is why even Bibi is considering setting up a commission, according to Haaretz. Or maybe not; the story was written by Barak Ravid, who is notorious for publishing spin and rumors.

My hunch is that if Bibi goes with a Commission of Inquiry, it will be one with a limited mandate and appointed by the government, and not an independent, judicial commission. Yet a commission is not likely and a serious commission is impossible. Bibi, who generally crumples under pressure, will feel the greatest pressure from his right. And I believe that he is genuinely upset, shocked, and amazed, that anybody questions the morality and the adherence to the code of ethics of the IDF. So even though there will be international consequences, it makes more sense for him to continue to conduct an international campaign against the report

In the meantime, Judge Goldstone told Christiane Amanpour that Israel intentionally targeted civilian building and installations. Israel, of course, argued that those installations were used to house weapons. But according to Goldstone, there was no evidence of weapons. Of course, had Israel cooperated with the Goldstone Commission from the beginning, the final report may have been somewhat different. Or not, after all, from what I have seen, much of the Goldstone report was known in real time back in January – there were few surprises. Still, the tone may have been a bit different, and Israel's version of the story may have had some effect. But Israel boycotted Goldstone, and now it may have to open its own commission.

More likely, it won't. And for those who think that the only way Israel can come to its senses is through external intervention and pressure, that has to be good news. I, for one, am grateful that Israel is sticking close to the script. Israel is a systematic violator of human rights, but unlike many other systematic violators, it is intensely sensitive to its international reputation. That is why the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment campaign is so attractive. There is no other violator of human rights in the world that is more sensitive to world public opinion (and governmental opinion) than Israel.

And Judge Goldstone will not be silenced. I have now heard him speak several times. Listen to him speaking with Christiane Amanpour here He is an eloquent and persuasive spokesman against Israel's war crimes, and against the world's double standard of only punishing weak countries with no powerful friends, for human rights violations.

Thursday Update: I was right. Haaretz now reports that Bibi's strategy for dealing with the Goldstone Report is to argue that the report hurts the war on terror and the peace process.

Since there is no peace process, and the war on terror died with the Bush administration, that may prove to be a tough sell.

“The Times They Are A Changin’” I -- Rabbi Asher Lopatin’s One-State Solution

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:13:00 +0000

When a young modern orthodox pulpit rabbi in Chicago calls for an unlimited right of return of Palestinian refugees to the State of Israel, and proposes a bi-national Israel-Palestine, conjuring up the ghost of Magnes, you know that "the times, they are a changin'."

Rabbi Asher Lopatin published in June on the moreorthodoxy blog an essay entitled, "What Netanyahu Should Have Proposed." Here are some of his proposals, which he calls, in a nod to Muslim sensibilities, the Five Pillars of the One Democratic State from the Jordan to the Mediterranean.

1) All citizens – Jews, Muslims, Christians and others – can live anywhere in the land. Jews will return to live all over Jerusalem – Muslim quarter, Christian quarter, Silwan, City of David – and all over the promised land: in the ancient Israelite cities of Hebron, Bethlehem, and Shechem, and all over Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip. Just as in America restrictive covenants are illegal, so, too in the One State: Jews and Palestinians can acquire property anywhere in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Gaza, West Bank, etc. Property rights will be respected, and returning refugees will be accommodated through new housing in or close to their original housing. All Jewish settlements that are legal by current Israeli law will remain, with compensation where necessary.

2) New constitution – needing a super-majority to change – establishing a full democracy, with full separation of church/synagogue/mosque and state, with both a Jewish Bill of Rights and a Palestinian Bill of Rights guaranteeing that the state can be both a Jewish state and a Palestinian state

3) Law of Return for Jews; Law of Return for Palestinians

4) The IDF and internal police and security services will stationed everywhere in the One State – there will be no "no go" areas; and these forces will be slowly integrated, at a pace consistent with the security needs of the new state.

5) Demographic issues will be negotiated with at least three possible solutions: increasing Israel's Jewish population radically by admitting millions of Jewish identifiers from Africa, Asia and South America before the One State is implemented; returning Palestinians based on an equal admission of Jewish identifiers – perhaps limited to a certain time period; allowing for a natural growth of Jewish or Muslim – or other – populations, while the constitution guarantees that the One State remains compatible as a Jewish state as well as a Palestinian state, perhaps guaranteeing a majority representation for a certain number of years.

Rabbi Lopatin goes on to explain some of the initial steps to be taken, mostly confidence-building measures for a one-state solution.

Now Rabbi Lopatin is not the first modern orthodox, or even religious Zionist, Jew to propose a one-state solution. In fact, I know of few religious Zionists who favor two states, certainly not the settlers. Usually the point of their proposals is to ensure that the settlers won't be moved from that part of Eretz Yisrael over the Green Line. The novelty of Rabbi Lopatin's plan is to accord Palestinian refugees the ability to return to areas near their former homes, if they so desire, and to provide for equal rights for the two communities. One may say that in exchange for Eretz Yisrael, Rabbi Lopatin is willing to transform the Jewish ethnic state that was founded in 1948 into a secular, binational state. He will have few Jewish allies, but a whole bunch of Palestinian ones.

There are, of course, weird elements in the proposal, like the wholesale conversion of "Jewish identifiers" in order to keep a demographic balance. This is especially weird for an orthodox rabbi, who seems to drop all traditional criteria for conversion just so he can count Jewish heads. What other western democracy grants citizenship automatically after a religious conversion, a kind of "naturalization via circumcision and mikveh"?

"Millions" of unskilled third-world immigrants flooding any society carries grave social consequences. But a deeply racist and tribalist society like Israel could become unhinged. And, anyway, the counting heads business is not only silly but unnecessary, given the proposed constitutional structure.

One also wonders whether the settlers and Israel should be rewarded for illegally settling in the West Bank. Why allow Israel a sixty-year head-start on settlements at the expense of the Palestinians?

But the point of this post is not to examine in detail Rabbi Lopatin's proposal. It is to congratulate him with a great yasher koah for having the courage to think way outside the modern orthodox – nay, the American Jewish -- box.

Once again we have evidence that some of the younger generation, which doesn't have the hang-ups of the Jewish baby-boomer generation that lived through the traumas of 1967 and 1973, recognize that the two-state solution leaves much unsolved, and that it's time to go back to 1948.

Israel vs. Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:09:00 +0000

Remember the time when Israel was praised as a beacon of democracy in an undemocratic region, when the world cheered tiny Israel fighting a sea of hostile Arabs? Now that the Goldstone Report has come out – the last in a series of reports criticizing Israel's Gaza Operation -- Israel is supported by all the usual suspects – rightwing Jews, rightwing Israelis (Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres on the moderate nationalist right to hyper-fascists like Ayalon and Lieberman), and, I suppose, Christian evangelicals and some conservative goyyim. Not a single liberal or progressive will rise to Israel's defense, because let's face it – when Israelis, Jews, and the rest of the world rise to criticize the bully's actions, when the person accused by the prime minister of Israel as conducting a "kangaroo court" is one of the most respected judges and scholars of international law (and a Jew and a Zionist to boot), when all the evidence against the Goldstone report is linked to research done by the rightwing Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, or the rightwing NGO Monitor (which itself does not do fact-checking but instead a lot of googling to dig up dirt on its opponents), then you know that Israel has already lost.

The real issue is not whether the human rights NGOs or whether the Goldstone Commission made this or that mistake, or relied erroneously on this or that testimony, or had biased members.

No, Israel's battle is not against the human rights NGOs but rather against the whole concept of human rights and international law. If Israel could point to a single human rights NGO that supported Israel's claim, or, for that matter, a single, unbiased expert in international human right law – this rules out strident Israel-apologists such as Irwin Cotler – then its defense would have some credibility. But because this is not possible, Israel's only recourse, after it violates the rights of Palestinians, is to deny that such rights exist.

Now, it Is not self-evident that there are human rights. Philosophers have debated the question. And international law does indeed restrict the unrestrained power of states to as they see fit. That is why conservative legal authorities in the US (and nationalists everywhere) do not like international law. They deem the use of international law against its violators "lawfare". They have no problem when lawfare is used against their enemies. I didn't hear any complaints against Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International in the Israeli media when the published reports critical of Hizbollah and Fatah (except, perhaps, that they were too little, too late.)

When Israel is accused in report after report of gross violations of human rights, and now, war crimes and perhaps crimes against humanity, its knee-jerk reaction is to accuse the organizations of bias, anti-semitism, holding kangaroo court. And this is precisely the response of rogue states like Mugabe's Zimbabwe, or Bashir's Sudan to critical reports by the same human rights NGOs against them.

And why? Because Israel – at least its government –simply doesn't get human rights or just war doctrine. It assumes that it discharges its duty to minimize civilian casualties by dropping leaflets and telling civilians to leave areas. By that reasoning, Hamas could blow up civilians legitimately if they simply warned them (like the IRA) to leave areas where they have planted bombs.

I don't want to minimize the complexity some of the issues. Just war theory, for example, is notoriously tricky when dealing with unlawful combatants. And, as I have written here before, it Is not without its detractors, and not necessarily on the right.

Let me take one example: the bombing of the police graduation that started the Gaza War. A report prepared by the rightwing Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs argued that there were not innocent traffic cops but members of militant organizations.

Granted – but so what? Under the Geneva Conventions, one cannot kill even soldiers when they are not engaged in hostile activity, or supporting it. If Hamas were to bomb an IDF graduation ceremony, that would be a violation of military convention. Now, it may be true that this is a protection only extended to regular armies. But from an ethical standpoint there is no difference. Every state sees its own army as just and peaceful and the enemy's army as barbaric and unjust. The point of conventions is to limit military action to the battle-field as much as possible. Even if military forces are located in civilian areas, such as the location of the IDF Kirya in the heart of Tel-Aviv, that does not give carte blanche, to an attacking army to wreak havoc on a civilian population.

In short, can anybody take Israel seriously when the evidence collected by Goldstone, and by NGOs – many of them Israeli -- is so overwhelming that the Gaza Op violated international humanitarian law? To argue otherwise is to accept the testimony of the IDF as infallible and to dismiss the testimony of eyewitnesses – Israeli and Palestinian – as inherently biased.

Israelis congratulate themselves that they did not nuke Gaza. After all, if they really wanted to, they could have killed hundreds of thousands, and not 1,400.

The world doesn't buy it. And Israel's isolation is growing. When an Israel's deputy foreign minister can compare the Goldstone Report to the Zionism = Racism UN, you know that Israel is grasping for straws.

Shalom, Dad

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:29:00 +0000

It's been two and a half weeks since my last post. During that period, I was pre-occupied with my father's final days and death, followed by his shiva, the traditional seven-day mourning period. And now I say kaddish in shul/synagogue three times a day. So it has been hard to think of anything else.

I try to keep my personal life and my blogging life separate. But last year I could not resist blogging about my father's support of Obama during the primary battles with Hillary here. Suffering from depression, he was thrilled when Obama took time out from a busy campaign schedule to inscribe for him one of his books, with a message of encouragement. Throughout his illness, until he was too far gone for coherent conversation, Dad asked me how Obama was doing.

How does one explain this 94 year-old's passionate support? My brother summed it up in his eulogy:

Dad, you were not only liberal with your time and energies for your children, grand children and great grandchildren and for the greater communities to which you belonged; you were an old-fashioned Jewish liberal, an FDR or Kennedy liberal. This commitment to liberalism accompanied you throughout your life and has been embraced by your children and grandchildren. The only republicans you ever supported were those you thought were sufficiently liberal. And well into your nineties, while a few members of our family were still supporting Hillary, you jumped onto the Obama bandwagon, having been impressed by Obama's intelligence and core values, and being excited by the prospect of an African-American president. You showed how one can be a loyal and proud member of one's community while at the same time, defending the rights of other communities.

Even now I find it difficult to write about my father, who contributed so much to his family, his community (Jewish and non-Jewish), and to his religion.

Last Shabbat, the haftarah (the portion from the Prophets read weekly in the synagogue) was from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 62. It was the last of the seven "consolation" haftarot that mark the period from Tisha B'Av to Rosh Hashanah. That consolation is the rebuilding of Jerusalem to its former glory. And yet Isaiah does not revel in the restoration of political sovereignty or the building of the Temple, or even the ingathering of exiles. No, this is how he begins…

For Zion's sake I will not hold My peace,

And for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest,

Until her righteousness goes forth as brightness,

And her salvation as a lamp that burns.

Until Jerusalem's righteousness, her Zedek, goes forth as brightness, her salvation will not be effected. And until that day, the prophet will not remain silent. Jerusalem will be redeemed not by armies, not by crazies, not by sacrifices, but by justice and righteousness– Ziyyon be-mishpat tipadeh ve-shaveha bi-tzdekah. Zion will be redeemed through justice and its returnees through righteousness. (Isaiah 1.27) Without justice and righteousness Jerusalem is only of historical interest, a quaint little Williamsburg (New York or Virginia, take your pick.) Without justice and righteousness there is nothing Jewish or holy about Jerusalem.

My Dad loved the State of Israel, and during the 1973 war he served as the chairman of the Baltimore Jewish Federation's Israel Emergency Campaign. He supported Israel without being a card-carrying Zionist, and he visited Israel on numerous occasions. But I cannot say that Israel was central to his life the way the pursuit of justice was. It was a question of priorities. Israel's actions against the Palestinians disappointed him and confused him. He never spoke publicly against Israel, but he was disturbed all the same. And he was a fervent believer in pursuing a just peace.

The generation of the old-fashioned Jewish liberal is fading fast. Maybe organizations like J-Street can rekindle the flame for a new generation.

We need such a flame in these dark ages.

Los Angeles Jews Respond Positively to Neve Gordon’s Call to Boycott Israeli Academic Institutions

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 02:43:00 +0000

This has got to be one of the funniest stories of the dog days of August. Never Gordon, a leftwing professor at Ben-Gurion University, published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, supporting the BDS movement (that's boycott, divestment, and sanctions) against Israel. In other words, Gordon called for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel here.

Some Los Angeles Jews have responded by threatening to cut-off donations to Ben-Gurion University.

which is, of course, what Gordon was calling for!

So maybe this should now be the tactic of supporters of BDS in Israel: Get leftwing academics from all the universities to call for boycotts, and then angry Jews will response by cutting off funds from their university.

I know, I know. Gordon is not the first Israeli academic to join the BDS movement. Let's not forget Ilan Pappe when he was still at Haifa, and the late Tanya Reinhart, who did the same while at Tel Aviv. And there are others.

But Gordon is the first Israeli academic to get an op-ed in a major metropolitan newspaper with a major Jewish community, and the largest concentration of Israelis outside of Israel (I think). If the LA Jews don't give their money to BGU, maybe they can be convinced not to give their money to any of the Israeli universities.

Except to Bar-Ilan and the pseudo-university, the College of Judea and Samaria.

"Why the Two-State Solution Solves Nothing"

noreply@blogger.com (Jerry Haber) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:59:00 +0000

My favorite pair of analysts, Hussein Agha and Rob Malley, have published an important Op-Ed in the New York Times entitled, "The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything." I will print it in full below. But before I do, here are some comments:

Agha and Malley point to an Oscar Wildean irony in the Israel-Palestine mess. Since there is an international consensus for a two-state solution, and that includes the parties to the Israel-Palestine dispute, the likelihood that there will be an agreement on two states is close to zero. You know this must be the case when both Israel's Bibi and Hamas' Khaled Mashal agree.

This has nothing to do with the question whether three hundred thousand settlers can be moved back to the State of Israel (or whether 80% of them remain in settlement blocs). Let's assume that there is absolute agreement on the issue. (There, you see, I said that the settlers are not the major obstacle to peace. Please make a note of that.)

The real problem is that the core problems remain, not only from 1948, but from before.

In diplomatic language, and without using the "Z-word", the last paragraph of the article says it all:

For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees' rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.

This does not seem a promising opening for the policy-driven, 'where-do-we-go-from-here' folks. Like the New Englander who said, "You can't get theyah from heyah" I read Malley and Husseini as saying that we may have to go way back in order to get to where we want to go. And that is not going to make supporters of the 1948 state happy.

Malley and Agha see that the conflict is now, as it always was, about one thing – how to define a Jewish state in Palestine. They are not raising the question how an outmoded ethnic-nationalist state can liberalize into a state of all its citizens. I think they are raising the core question of what it means to have a Jewish state in Palestine. Heck, they are not going back to 1948, they are going back to the 1930's and 40's. This is a breath of fresh air for the liberal Zionist New York Times, both its editors and its readers. Times readers take the State of Israel as a given and then ask, "What sort of Palestinian state can accommodate that given"? And that is the wrong approach.

I have some caveats about the article I would have, indeed, liked less "balance" between two totally imbalanced sides, and more focus on the problems of compromise when one side has all the power. But this is, after all, the New York Times, where dogma dictates that there are two sides to every question. Henry Siegman would have done it differently, and I would have liked him better. But I think the duo's approach is not bad, given the venue and its readership.

August 11, 2009

The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything

By HUSSEIN AGHA and ROBERT MALLEY

THE two-state solution has welcomed two converts. In recent weeks, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas's political bureau, have indicated they now accept what they had long rejected. This nearly unanimous consensus is the surest sign to date that the two-state solution has become void of meaning, a catchphrase divorced from the contentious issues it is supposed to resolve. Everyone can say yes because saying yes no longer says much, and saying no has become too costly. Acceptance of the two-state solution signals continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle by other means.

Bowing to American pressure, Mr. Netanyahu conceded the principle of a Palestinian state, but then described it in a way that stripped it of meaningful sovereignty. In essence, and with minor modifications, his position recalled that of Israeli leaders who preceded him. A state, he pronounced, would have to be demilitarized, without control over borders or airspace. Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and no Palestinian refugees would be allowed back to Israel. His emphasis was on the caveats rather than the concession.

As Mr. Netanyahu was fond of saying, you can call that a state if you wish, but whom are you kidding?

As for Hamas, recognition of the state of Israel has always been and remains taboo. Until recently, the movement had hinted it might acquiesce to Israel's de facto existence and resign itself to establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. This sentiment has now grown from hint to certitude.

President Obama's June address in Cairo provoked among Hamas leaders a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. The American president criticized the movement but did not couple his mention of Hamas with the term terrorism, his recitation of the prerequisites for engagement bore the sound of a door cracked open rather than one slammed shut, and his acknowledgment that the Islamists enjoyed the support of some Palestinians was grudging but charitable by American standards. All of which was promising but also foreboding, prompting reflection within the Hamas movement over how to escape international confinement without betraying core beliefs.

The result of this deliberation was Hamas's message that it would adhere to the internationally accepted wisdom — a Palestinian state within the borders of 1967, the year Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas also coupled its concession with caveats aplenty, demanding full Israeli withdrawal, full Palestinian sovereignty and respect for the refugees' rights. In this, there was little to distinguish its position from conventional Palestinian attitudes.

The dueling discourses speak to something far deeper than and separate from Palestinian statehood. Mr. Netanyahu underscores that Israel must be recognized as a Jewish state — and recalls that the conflict began before the West Bank or Gaza were occupied. Palestinians, in turn, reject recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, uphold the refugees' rights and maintain that if Israel wants real closure, it will need to pay with more than mere statehood.

The exchange, for the first time in a long while, brings the conflict back to its historical roots, distills its political essence and touches its raw emotional core. It can be settled, both sides implicitly concur, only by looking past the occupation to questions born in 1948 — Arab rejection of the newborn Jewish state and the dispossession and dislocation of Palestinian refugees.

Both positions enjoy broad support within their respective communities. Few Israelis quarrel with the insistence that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state. It encapsulates their profound aspiration, rooted in the history of the Jewish people, for a fully accepted presence in the land of their forebears — for an end to Arab questioning of Israel's legitimacy, the specter of the Palestinian refugees' return and any irredentist sentiment among Israel's Arab citizens.

Even fewer Palestinians take issue with the categorical rebuff of that demand, as the recent Fatah congress in Bethlehem confirmed. In their eyes, to accept Israel as a Jewish state would legitimize the Zionist enterprise that brought about their tragedy. It would render the Palestinian national struggle at best meaningless, at worst criminal. Their firmness on the principle of their right of return flows from the belief that the 1948 war led to unjust displacement and that, whether or not refugees choose or are allowed to return to their homes, they can never be deprived of that natural right. The modern Palestinian national movement, embodied in the Palestine Liberation Organization, has been, above all, a refugee movement — led by refugees and focused on their plight.

It's easy to wince at these stands. They run against the grain of a peace process whose central premise is that ending the occupation and establishing a viable Palestinian state will bring this matter to a close. But to recall the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian clash is not to invent a new battle line. It is to resurrect an old one that did not disappear simply because powerful parties acted for some time as if it had ceased to exist.

Over the past two decades, the origins of the conflict were swept under the carpet, gradually repressed as the struggle assumed the narrower shape of the post-1967 territorial tug-of-war over the West Bank and Gaza. The two protagonists, each for its own reason, along with the international community, implicitly agreed to deal with the battle's latest, most palpable expression. Palestinians saw an opportunity to finally exercise authority over a part of their patrimony; Israelis wanted to free themselves from the burdens of occupation; and foreign parties found that it was the easier, tidier thing to do. The hope was that, somehow, addressing the status of the West Bank and Gaza would dispense with the need to address the issues that predated the occupation and could outlast it.

That so many attempts to resolve the conflict have failed is reason to be wary. It is almost as if the parties, whenever they inch toward an artful compromise over the realities of the present, are inexorably drawn back to the ghosts of the past. It is hard today to imagine a resolution that does not entail two states. But two states may not be a true resolution if the roots of this clash are ignored. The ultimate territorial outcome almost certainly will be found within the borders of 1967. To be sustainable, it will need to grapple with matters left over since 1948. The first step will be to recognize that in the hearts and minds of Israelis and Palestinians, the fundamental question is not about the details of an apparently practical solution. It is an existential struggle between two worldviews.

Hussein Agha is a co-author, with Ahmed S. Khalidi, of "A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine." Robert Malley, the director of the Middle East Program at the International Crisis Group, was a special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs to President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001.