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The Cold War Is Back

Sweet.

In what might have been either a Freudian slip or an innocent mistake but was no doubt a diplomatic gaffe, Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday assailed Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko's campaign for using "anti-Russian, Zionist" slogans.

The US supports Israel. Russia supports the Arabs. None of this messy stateless global terrorism garbage. It couldn't be simpler. Unfortunately, the Russians are saying it was a slipup, not geniune hostility. Oh well, hope springs eternal.

UPDATE: Some of my readers, while no doubt being genuine and right-thinking souls, are not good with sarcasm. No, I don't really want to see an Israeli-Russian war.
Omri | |

Screw Syria

Israelis are now literally feeding starving Syrians:

In about a week's time, Syrian children may begin chomping on luscious Israeli apples... Israel and Syria agreed earlier this week – for the first time – to let Golan Druse sell their apples in Syria...
Shalom said... that a new diplomatic approach should be tried with the Syrians... Israel should adopt an "evolutionary," step-by-step approach similar to what is now being employed vis-a-vis the Palestinians.

Two things:
(1) Free trade is good. Lets keep the Golan so that Israel can keep selling apples to Syria.
(2) The evolutionary step-by-step approach with the Palestinians was called Oslo. It failed spectacularly.
And whlie we're on the subject of miserable failures, how about this touching contribution from the Red Cross:

Masad said that since the Golan is under military occupation, the ICRC deals with a number of humanitarian issues concerning the Druse there.

It's great that of all the Arabs in all the world that the Red Cross could be focusing on, they're concerned about the Druse - the most politically empowered group anywhere in the Arab world. One should never miss a chance to point out that the folks who run the Red Cross are shameless hypocrites.
Omri | |

JPost Catches Up With the Blogosphere: Iran Really Evil

What Mere Rhetoric linked to two days ago , the Jerusalem Post finally got today:

The new Iranian TV... titled For You, Palestine..."reveals" how Israeli doctors are harvesting organs from Palestinian children and focuses on the campaign of fictional prime-ministerial candidate Yitzhak Cohen, who is particularly interested in seizing young Zahra's arresting eyes.

When asked why they felt it necessary to celebrate the Holiday Season through rampant Anti-Semitism, the Iranians responded "hey, if the Christians can do it for 2000 years, what's the harm of another couple of decades?" Kidding, kidding. They didn't say that. They did say this:

"The major film companies are under the Zionists' influence," said writer-director and former education ministry employee Ali Derakhshni in an interview about his program also translated by MEMRI. "Fortunately, the Iranian Islamic Republic and our Islamic regime have made many films and series like Zahra's Blue Eyes, which is a film about children."

The Iranians' response to "why must you demonize Jews as baby eaters" is "Jews control Hollywood."
Omri | |

This is Too Much Fun

Yasser Arafat: international terrorist, Jew killer, and bowling aficionado. Watch the guy who essentially laundered Arafat's money into unsuspecting businesses go on tilt:

SilverHaze, meanwhile, also came out swinging. "We at SilverHaze Partners take seriously the right of the Palestinian people to invest their legitimately acquired funds. Mischaracterizing this process to exploit complex political sensitivities serves no one," it said in a statement.

"Legitimately acquired funds". My favorite kind of lying is the brazen kind.
Omri | |

Peace Now: Anti-Anti-Disengagement

This counts as gloating:

Peace Now launched a new campaign Thursday intended to "fill the ranks" of any soldiers that refuse to serve in the evacuation of settlers from their homes under the disengagement plan.

They're not only reveling in the fact that Israel is about to forcibly evict Jews from their homes - they're actually rubbing it in the settlers' noses. Then again, the settlers aren't exactly endearing themselves to anyone:

Residents of settlements in the Gaza Strip took the law into their own hands on Friday, raiding and taking control of a Palestinian house near Kfar Darom, blocking intersections and setting tires and a telephone pole alight... "We feel that we've been abandoned to the wind," continued Kirshenzaft, "We've had enough. The state has abandoned the Jews [in Gush Katif] to evil, just like in the Shoah [Holocaust]. Soon the pressure cooker here will explode."

With understated and well-aimed rhetoric like that, they'll swing Israeli public opinion in no time. It's like a race to the bottom between the left and right in Israel. And stuck in the middle are, well, the centrists.
Incidentally, has anyone made the joke yet that we've finally found a refusnik that Peace Now doesn't like? If not, can I get credit? Where are all he glowing pamphlets and press releases about soldiers following their conscience?
Omri | |

Good Job Lebanon

Every year, the UN passes 20 or so resolutions expressing their outrage that Israel hasn't fulfilled this or that non-binding General Assembly resolutions. Lebanon's gross violation of their obligations under Resolution 425:

As far as the IDF is concerned, the hut is the beginning of a trend by Hizbullah: to be poised along the border with the option of ambushing a border patrol and kidnapping soldiers.

Lebanon, you'll remember, was supposed to deploy its troops to the south and disarm the illegal army currently operating within its borders. And I'm sure they'll do it just as soon as their Syrian masters let them.
Omri | |

Mere Rhetoric is So Confused

What the hell? Indian security delegation ends secret visit to Israel. It's so secret only the Ha'aretz diplomatic coorespondents know about it. Also, presumably, Pakistani, American, Russian, European, and Arab intelligence services. You'd think.
Omri | |

Turning Over A New Leaf Watch

The Palestinians are ready for peace:

The radical Hamas movement made a surprisingly strong showing in local Palestinian elections, according to preliminary results, signaling a drop in popularity for the ruling Fatah movement ahead of next month's presidential poll.

Surprising to whom?! There are undiscovered tribes of pygmies in the Amazon who have never heard of Jerusalem who knew that Hamas would win big in these elections.
Omri | |

Debate and Dissent

Late last night I posted a small but relatively harsh note expressing disappointment with the folks over at IsraPundit for letting one of their posters, Tiburon, cross the line into incitement. IsraPundit has generally served as a reasonable voice for the Israeli and Jewish right, and I was surprised to find them flirting with what effectively amounted to treason.
This morning, another regular poster there, Joseph Alexander Norland, posted his own pretty harsh comment in response to Tiburon's original post, calling for a model of resistance to disengagement that explicitly ruled out violence. He also posted a longer article indicting calls for violence.
That there can be dialogue, debate, and dissent about such an emotional issue is a small blessing. Of course passions will run high over the next, dangerous couple of years. It's important to have a framework for resolving disputes without resorting to violence. IsraPundit won't be that forum of course, but it should serve as a model for what that forum must look like: driven by dialogue, with an appreciation for the weight of the ideas being discussed, and above all foregrounding the unacceptability of violence. The debate there goes on, as it will for the foreseeable future. My most recent contribution:

Tiburon:
I understand what you're advocating to be a tactical maneuver - force those implementing disengagement to calculate the possibility of a civil war in their costs and benefits. Force them to consider that they might have to face massive violence if they go through with their plans and then, if they still go through with their plans - then resist only in legitimate ways.
The problem is this strategy NEVER works. "We're so clever and are in control of ourselves - we can turn the incitement on and off; we can turn the violence on and off" is a tiger that opponents of disengagement won't be able to get off of. All it takes is a young member of Gush Katif hearing the implied message in PE's position: "I'm not saying violence is OK, but resistance is most the most important goal" and convincing himself that now is the time for armed resistance. The implications would be nothing short disastrous: a permanent weakening of the Jewish state much worse than what disengagement would do, an opening for Israel's enemies for outright attack, and a sense in the international world that Israel doesn't have its house in order and that they can therefore be pushed around.
Your observation that sensible right-of-center voices have been purged from Israel merely makes this strategy of silence more dangerous, because once the boulder of violent resistance starts rolling there's no way to hold it back because there's no way to keep everyone on the same page - all it takes is a couple of hotheads who think they have a mandate to, G-d forbid, attack an Israeli soldier. And the point is that they're more inclined to think that they have this mandate because there are no sensible right-of-center media outlets explaining to them the right way to resist disengagement - there is no subtlty, there is no way nuance, and above all there is no reliable way to issue information once violence begins. That there is no way to reorient those opposing disengagement once, G-d forbid, violence begins - no way to disseminate calls for moderation in the middle of, G-d forbid, the sparks of a civil war - makes it all the more incumbent that we do everything possible to avoid going down that path before it starts.
If Israel's media is truly dominated by the Left, then a call for violence also spells the end of the settler movement. Do you believe for a second that Hamas would fail to take advantage of a Jewish civil war? Do you believe for a second that, after a schoolbus or cafe is bombed, that those on the right who started the war would not be blamed? The demonization that would occur following such an incident would make how the right was portrayed following the murder of Rabin, alav hashalom, seem like good press!
The greatest danger is not disengagement - it is, G-d forbid, civil war in the Jewish state. Armed conflict between Jews will take generations to heal. Regardless of where one falls on disengagement, this nudge nudge wink wink rhetoric about violent resistance is staggeringly dangerous.

So while I would have preferred that this debate never even occur, that IsraPundit is able to serve as a site for civilized debate and dissent is heartening.
Omri | |

Knock It Off

I initially wrote this off as just another stunt by overzealous settlers:

The opponents of the disengagement plan sharpened battle lines Tuesday when dozens of settlers donned orange Star of David badges, comparing the evacuation of settlements to the Holocaust.

But after thinking about it a little, I'm more inclined to join with everyone else who has a brain (Ma'ariv's gentle way of putting it: "response was equally harsh across the political spectrum") in finding it patently offensive:
(a) it's false:

"It is unfortunate to force people to relocate but it is still not a concentration camp, not gas chambers or Auschwitz crematoriums. The use of the Star of David as a publicity stunt does not help the settler cause, in spite of the fact that their pain is understandable", Lapid added... Weiss added, "How can the two be compared? Is anyone, God forbid, being strangled to death in suffocating train cars? Is anyone being tested in Mengele’s laboratory? Is anyone led to the gas chambers? What kind of comparison is this?"

(b) you're not allowed to compare Jews to Nazis, especially if they happen to be Jewish teenagers conscripted into the IDF to protect the Jewish state.
(c) it's offensive in the extreme:
Former Knesset Speaker and current Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, Professor Shevah Weiss used harsh words to describe the latest protest. "As one who wore a Star of David, I call on every one involved to take it off. There are countless ways to express pain and protest. Do not use the Holocaust as one"

(d) it's counter-productive to the settlers' ostensible goal of national unity:

"The plan to wear orange stars perverts the historical facts and damages the memory of the Shoah," said the chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, Avner Shalev. "It is important that the memory of the Shoah remain a unifying factor in Israeli society, not the opposite."

Nonetheless, it's important to remember that these are people being ripped from their homes, and that they deserve understanding and compassion (and it's also important to remember that many settlers are against this disgusting stunt). They built lives with assurances from their government that they'd be protected and with gratitude from their country that they'd be serving as the front line against Arab aggression.
We would also do well to contrast the coverage being given to Israeli settlers with what would happen if the roles between Jew and Arab were reversed. Imagine if Israeli Arabs were being expelled into a new Palestinian state. There would be front-page stories on every front page of every newspaper with pictures of crying kids holding teddy bears in the dust and of wallpapered baby rooms in childhood homes being left behind. Imagine the rallies and human rights declarations showing solidarity with the Arab protesters outside the Knesset. Imagine the calls for us to understand their passions and their excesses and their lash outs. Imagine the Guardian justifying a Tel Aviv suicide bombing as the inevitable result of displacing people who have lived in the same place for 40 years. And now look how the Israeli settlers are demonized.
The difference, of course, is that Israeli settlers are expected to comport themselves more ethically and reasonably. And they should - which is why this Orange Star stunt has to stop. But their sacrifices should be recognized and they should be defended when the rest of the world disparages them.
Omri | |

They'll Put Anyone on TV

The washouts and terrorist sympathizers (I'll leave it for you to figure out which are which) of the Geneva Accords are back:

On the one-year anniversary of the signing of the Geneva Accord, an advertising campaign is being aired on Palestinian television, featuring Israeli and Palestinian statesmen voicing their support for the venture... Six short films, one minute each in length... are broadcast by local television stations in the territories, and the speakers stress their support for the idea of two states for two peoples.

All it took was six badly-produced infomercials for Ha'aretz to breathlessly declare in a fawning 1800+ word piece that The Geneva Accord moves to center stage". If Sharon gave up Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem tomorrow, these people would headline it with "Sharon begins negotiations on limited Palestinian demands". And yet, quietly and without ceremony, even Ha'aretz is celebrating Sharon's historic determination:

a few facts are becoming evident. The main one is that the prime minister, in a series of well thought-out moves, has for the moment achieved most of his complicated goals. He's the knight of disengagement, but he manages to get along with his own unruly party... In a remarkable historical irony, there is nobody in the arena nowadays who speaks so loudly and effectively in favor of the values of the withdrawal and evacuation like the champion of the settlement movement, Sharon.
Omri | |

Incitement

I've almost always enjoyed reading IsraPundit. They've usually been a little farther right than I am, but they've been good to me - linking to some of my stories and sending traffic in my direction. And of course, they're a valuable source of news. That said, this evening (about 11:00pm my time and 9:00am Israel time), one of their posters crossed the line into incitement:

But now a practical warning. While you focus efforts on defeating disengagement from Gaza, and while you speak of “civil disobedience,” know that it is counterproductive to say you will not resort to violence—which does not mean that I advocate armed resistance. I only recommend silence on this issue.

"I'm not saying that you should be violent - but you gotta do what you gotta do." It's sad. I know a lot of good folks at IsraPundit, and I'm hoping that some of will take this back.
Omri | |

What's Next? Eating Babies?

How is it that the average citizen in the Arab world can hate Jews so much?

Iran's Sahar 1 TV station is currently airing a weekly series titled "For You, Palestine," or "Zahra's Blue Eyes."... Israelis disguised as UN workers visit a Palestinian school, ostensibly to examine the children's eyes for diseases, but in reality to select which children's eyes to steal to be used for transplants. In Episode 2, the audience learns that the Israeli president is being kept alive by organs stolen from Palestinian children.

Oh.
Omri | |

Hey World Bank, Shove It

The nerve:

World Bank President James Wolfensohn met with Sharon and other Israeli government officials yesterday... He heard promises from the Israelis for cooperation with the World Bank for advancing aid to the Palestinians, and a serious approach to the recently released World Bank report on rehabilitating the Palestinian economy. The bank is recommending increasing annual aid to the PA from $900 million to $1.4 billion, but conditions it on Israel easing checkpoints and closures, as well as on reforms by the PA.

"You need to take down all of your defenses against terrorists so that we can give them money. Its all your fault anyway."
Omri | |

You'll Take It and You'll Like It

This takes a certain amount of chutzpa:

Palestinian Authority officials said on Monday they were deeply disappointed by Israel's decision to release only 170 security prisoners.

The Palestinians should be grateful that Mubarak took time out of his busy schedule of not getting dead and giving the US bad advice to get some of their dumber criminals out of Israeli jails.
Omri | |

The Diplomats are Coming. Quick, Look Busy.

Last time Blair held a peace conference Israel wasn't invited. But now that some filthy terrorist has finally died, the Jews are welcome again:

Blair is likely to exert pressure on Israeli leaders to attend the London Middle East Peace Conference scheduled to take place next month. On Monday, Sharon said that although Israel supports the conference it would not take part in it.

In fact, Sharon conditioned his support for the conference only on the Brit's promise that it would have nothing to do with the Road Map. Instead, they swore up and down that the conference would be limited only to discussing realistic Palestinian reforms. Problem: what are they going to discuss after the first couple of hours? Solution: cheat:

Blair on Wednesday emphasized the role that Britain would like to fulfill on the road to a Middle Eastern peace, explaining that the London conference scheduled for early next year is a preparatory step towards getting back into road map..."My purpose is not simply to hold a meeting or conference," Blair said. "My purpose is to help the Palestinian Authority and its people, so that they can develop a viable Palestinian state, and then get back into the road map.

In the meantime, Blair is still somehow making his Israeli hosts all warm and fuzzy by actually suggesting that any peace deal should probably involve some sort of Palestinian promise not to kill Jews:

Standing next to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Wednesday, Blair didn't seem at all like a man interested in turning up the heat on his host... "There is not going to be successful negotiations or peace without an end to terrorism," Blair said. "The world has changed in these past few years."

This is really what we've come to - "support" for Israel is "not pressuring them to completely surrender to terrorists". Apparently the pressure rolls downhill from the Palestinians, through the British, until it collides with Israel:

Blair arrived in Jerusalem last night from Iraq, and constrained by a very tight schedule this morning will meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Originally he was to have met only with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, but according to a senior government source, the British gave in to heavy pressure from senior political figures and agreed to meet with them.

Who exactly are these senior political figures who can force the Prime Minister of Great Britain to meet with a non-existent, stateless political faction that still has very obvious and very close ties to terrorists? Are they British? French? Palestinian? Isn't it far more likely that Blair intended to meet with Palestinian leaders all along? And shouldn't someone ask him?
Omri | |

Breaking News from the Arab World

The Palestinians still want to destroy Israel.
Iran and Syria still support terrorism.
See, this is why it's important to read the news every day - otherwise you'll miss these things.
Omri | |

Cocktail Party Fodder

The Jerusalem Post's Talya Halkin has a very flattering write-up on swanky Labor MK Colette Avital. You should go learn something.
Omri | |

How'd That Nuclear Weapon Get In the Room?

Iran has now taken to randomly arresting people just to make it look like they're doing something to protect their nuclear installations. But try to wrap your mind around the Orwellian kaleidoscope that is this:

Earlier this month, the Intelligence Ministry said it had arrested a spy who had been pretending to work on nuclear centrifuges in order to cast doubt on Tehran's recent agreements to suspend such work.

Scene: Super secret, impossible to penetrate Iranian nuclear facility
Well-meaning Islamofascist nuclear inspector: "Hey, how'd all these centrifuges get in here?"
Eager energy providing Islamofascist nuclear worker: "Uhh... I dunno boss. I've been busy providing safe, clean energy to our Great Voting Republic all day"
Well-meaning Islamofacist nuclear inspector: "And hey, what the hell is that guy doing working on those centrifuges?!?! GET HIM OUT OF THERE! He's going to ruin our dream of not nuclearizing!"
Iran is so not nuclearizing that they've put their air force on alert to protect all those non-nuclearizing nuclear sites.
Omri | |

What The Hell?

Ma'ariv has taken their English news website offline indefinitely. This is terrible! Does anyone know anything about this? Maybe someone with someone with an intimate knowledge of Israeli media?

UPDATE: Even AK Sommer doesn't know what's going on. Weird.
Omri | |

Amazing

This film, supposed to be a library entry from 2014, is nothing short of brilliant:

In the year 2014, The New York Times has gone offline.
The Fourth Estate's fortunes have waned.
What happened to the news?
And what is EPIC?

If you have any interest in journalism, media, consumerism, information technology, or news, you can't afford not to click through.
Omri | |

Losers

You know, it only takes one cowardly tunnel bombing to ruin the party for everyone:

Fearing an Israeli reprisal attack, Hamas has decided to cancel a major rally marking the 17th anniversary of its founding. The rally was supposed to be held in one of Gaza City's stadiums on Friday, but Hamas decided to postpone it indefinitely out of fear that Israel would target the Islamic movement's leaders in retaliation for Sunday's attack on an IDF outpost near Rafah, in which five soldiers were killed and six others wounded.

"Postpone it indefinitely" - and they say that terrorists can't be taught! I think they might be getting some coaching on this whole "the IDF has plenty of time, a long memory, and helicopter gunships" thing from their friends up north. Eh - they'll forget about it in the morning.
Omri | |

Sharon: Seriously, Do I Have To Do Everything Around Here

It must be hard for Sharon to sit back and go through the motions of letting incompetence skirt near disaster before stepping in and taking care of things:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon personally intervened in the coalition talks between Labor and Likud on Wednesday when he called Labor Chairman Shimon Peres and offered Labor eight ministerial portfolios... Sharon then invited Peres for a meeting, expected to take place on Thursday.

Speaking of Peres, it's not like he can possibly be pleased with the subtle and effetive negotiating team that his people appointed:

"Let's act like leaders and take responsibility and resolve this dispute," Sharon reportedly told Peres. "This is my final proposal. If your party intends to bring about elections in order to obtain control over the Israel Land Authority and the Israel Broadcasting Authority then explain that to you voters," Sharon told Peres...
Peres responded that he has to consult with his coalition negotiation team and Sharon's associates said they hope both teams will meet today...
Citing differences of opinion between the two parties, head of coalition talks for Labor MK Dalia Itzik cancelled a meeting scheduled for Wednesday with her Likud counterpart.

I don't mean to be hysterical, and I know I'm not the only one asking this question - but is anyone else terrified about what's going to happen when the next generation finally takes over without Sharon, Peres, or Lapid to save them from themselves? I mean, Barak and Netanyahu are the skilled diplomats in that bunch.
Omri | |

Confusion Runs Rampant

This is a new low. I literally do not know what this headline even means: Perceptions count as much as bombs in war with Syria. Back to writing papers. No really, grad school is rewarding.
Omri | |

That's Nice of Them

Kofi Annan wants UN members to "commemorate the Holocaust". I'll take a pass on commenting on the... er... impercise language being used. Suffice to say I'd be much happier if he was doing more to prevent another one.
Omri | |

Nothing Makes Sense to Me Today

The confusion continues. AP says that Egypt and Israel to sign trade deal to create jobs, encourage peace. And here I thought that that's why we gave up the Sinai.
Omri | |

So Confused

The Palestinians are against terror. No, wait, no they're not! It's OK - the IDF knows what to do.
Omri | |

WHAT?!?!

I take a break from blogging for like four days to finish some papers. When I left, the intifada was over and Labor ministers were literally picking out portfolios. I come back, unity negotiations have broken down Sharon is ready to light up Hamas. Is there someone I can talk to about this?
Omri | |

The Next Time You Complain About Peres...

Regular readers of this blog know that I'm quite a fan of Shimon Peres (I know that this is the case, since regular readers of this blog regularly complain to me about being quite a fan of Shimon Peres). Here's what I like about Peres: he's (a) smart and (b) a patriot. Now, perhaps he was a little too eager to solidify his place in history after Rabin's murder. Perhaps. But to deny that he's either (a) smart or (b) a patriot represents either absurd malice or willful ignorance. So when he was villified and denied the Presidency because he was too eager to make peace with the Arabs, some ungenerous souls chortled. Here's what they got instead:

Katzav held contacts with Assad without Sharon’s knowledge - Six months ago, Israeli and Syrian presidents exchanged messages via diplomatic channels. When told that Katzav represented only state and not government, Assad rejected proposed meeting.

Now the problem is that Katzav apparently doesn't really much about diplomacy (or really, about how to do his job). So he wants to be known as a player, as a man who does great things and thinks great thoughts. Unfortunately, great thoughts are a touch beyond him, and so we get this. All the eager servile ingratiation towards Arab dictators, none of the delicacy or smarts. Good job guys.
Omri | |

Pitt Roundup

Undergraduates discovering ancient species, scientists cloning monkeys, and linguists being cutting edge yet fun. Oh, and have I mentioned we're going to the Fiesta Bowl? It's something they put in the Oakland water.
Speaking of sports, check out my good friend (and proud Pitt grad) Jason Lawrence's absurdly detailed sports blog - he sometimes gets morose, but usually only when the Cubs disappoint (read: October).
Omri | |

What if You Threw a Peace Party and Everyone Showed Up?

Dr. Laurie Eisenberg, my Middle East professor at Pitt (brilliant brilliant brilliant), used to point out that the reason why Iraq and Iran could be so intransigent towards Israel was because it didn't cost them anything. Egypt and Jordan have to deal with a powerful Jewish state right on their borders - and so they have an incentive to show some flexibility. Similarly, Egyptian officials know their opposite Israeli numbers intimately - wives, children, tastes, etc (although which direction this cuts in when it's time to actually make peace is an open question). So it should come as no surprise that, now that the Palestinians seem to have exhausted themselves, the Egyptians are the ones who understand Israeli redlines:

In addition, the official said, Mubarak is trying to enlist other Arab governments to back disengagement and closer ties with Israel to make the idea of warming ties and sending Egypt's ambassador back to Israel more palatable to his own public. Jerusalem feels that Tuesday's report from Egypt's official Middle East News Agency claiming that Cairo reached a framework understanding with Israel, the PA, Europe and the EU on final status issues - a report denied in Israel - is all part of the government's desire to prepare the Egyptian people for a dramatic improvement of ties with Israel.

Compare that with the patronizing, superior attitude taken by the British:

Israel is increasingly wary that British Prime Minister Tony Blair will use his impending visit to Israel to force the pace of the peace process as he promotes his own Middle East conference following the death of PA Chairman Yasser Arafat... Although Ariel Sharon will embrace Blair as a "great friend" of Israel when the latter arrives for the two-day visit on December 21, concern is increasing in Jerusalem at Britain's attempts to force a greater role for Europe in ending the conflict. Sharon has denounced Europe as pro-Palestinian and, earlier this year, said he did not feel the need to negotiate with anyone but the White House.
More immediately, Israel is skeptical about Blair's proposal for a Middle East conference in the new year. It is concerned the meeting will bypass the first phase of the Road Map, particularly the requirement for the Palestinian leadership to curb violence, and push on to the second phase which foresees the creation of a provisional Palestinian state.

I'd be concerned too. The last time Blair held one of these little peace process get-togethers, Israel wasn't invivted. Screw Europe.
Omri | |

Well That's a Relief

The EU is taking a little siesta from hypocritcal Israel bashing:

One senior European diplomatic official in Israel said the EU has made clear to the Palestinians they would not support a Palestinian resolution on the security fence... In July the EU "disappointed" Israel by supporting a General Assembly resolution that called on Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice ruling to dismantle the fence... At the time Israel feared the Palestinians would try to bring another resolution slamming Israel for noncompliance to the General Assembly in the fall, and then possibly to the Security Council with a recommendation for sanctions.

So the EU has breaked off from the threat to punish Israel for not complying with unwarrented, illegal, and nonbinding court decisions. It almost seems like general harmony, world peace, and the end of anti-Semitism are just around the corner.
Omri | |

Head. Sand.

European Jews are reasonably copasetic about their future:

Dahan, speaking by telephone from Lille, painted a picture of a flourishing community and warned against getting carried away by exaggerations. "Certainly, our ancestors and grandparents had much more difficult lives than we do today. Today we are better organized and equipped, more conscious. We have a young generation that asks questions," Dahan said... "There is certainly no reason to panic. The [European] states are doing everything in their power to keep the Jewish community here," Haddad said.

By "everything in their power" he means "letting Hezbollah advocate murdering Jews on national television" and "ignoring anti-Semitism." Which I guess are kind of the same things. And then there are the minor inconviences that come with life in multiculturalist, tolerant Europe:

A mob of teens yelling "Croak, dirty Jew!" on the main pedestrian mall of Lille, in northern France, upset Rabbi Eliahou Dahan, but did not scare him into leaving France, he said.
Omri | |

Israeli Political Roundup - Place Your Bets

Ha'aretz does the meta-work in two seperate editorials. The Ha'aretz editorial staff puts their heads together to explain the stakes. Then the voice of Israel's liberal establishment officially endorses a unity government.:

The Likud convention is expected to decide today whether to form a government in partnership with Labor, a vote that is likely to determine whether the withdrawal from Gaza will take place as planned. There is currently no other political option that would enable the Gush Katif settlements to be evacuated on schedule. Nor is there any other coalition that would enable the implementation of other cabinet and Knesset decisions on the disengagement. Anyone who proposes holding new elections is proposing a postponement of the withdrawal from Gaza, and perhaps even its cancelation...
Those who view the very establishment of a unity government as a serious democratic aberration should understand that there is no more serious aberration in Israel's democracy than its control over 1.5 million Palestinians to whom that democracy does not apply... The arguments against a unity government are valid for the moment after the withdrawal. But for the withdrawal itself, the public and its elected officials must mobilize as for a war and carry out the task with as many political forces as possible consolidated behind it.

The Labor vote is going to be a bloodbath - Peres lost his move to try to push it back today, and no one really knows what's going to happen. The Likud vote was supposed to be the easy part - but even that is running into problems (although no one seriously anticipates any real problems - Sharon owns those jokers).
Having given their collective imprinture to the unity government, Ha'aretz then goes all point-counterpoint. Point by Israel "token Likudnik" Harel: a unity government is bad because it's a victory for terrorism. Counterpoint by Gideon "the problem with Mapai is there was too much dissent" Samat: a unity government is bad because Sharon is evil evil evil:

Those who began their careers watching de Gaulle, Eisenhower, Stalin and Churchill at work will succeed - or fail - at a move that will determine if there will be more foot-dragging by a disintegrating regime or the start of a new chapter... Labor's entry into the government under the current circumstances will be of no little shame for Peres and his party. As ministers, they will be small pawns on a board on which Sharon is playing until he decides to checkmate them.

Sharon would literally have to start signing copies of the Communist Manifesto "here's hoping for a New Middle East -- Arik Sharon" before Ha'aretz would even think of suggesting that he might possibly be a human being, with emotions and everything.
Omri | |

Turns Out France Really Does Hate Israel

Yesterday's political roundup had a bit about how even France seems to be hopping on board the Sharon is a badass train. Turns out not so much:

In Paris, by contrast, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs appeared deeply discomfited by the ambassador's warm comments. Without denying their accuracy, a spokeswoman initially claimed that the ambassador had made them "off the record" . Later in the day, the ministry issued an official statement to the Post, abandoning the "off the record" assertion and instead intimating that he may not have made the comments while simultaneously claiming that they had been taken out of context.

In fairness to them, people would openly laugh at them if they pretended to support Israel while at the same time allowing Hezbollah to broadcast the most disgusting anti-Semitic canards. And so to get some consistency in their policy, it's much easier to bash Israel than stand up to terrorists.
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Peace Buzz

It's everywhere. Sharon the murderer, the racist, the war criminal is on the verge of doing something that all of Europe's darlings and all of the Arab terrorists could never accomplish: bringing peace to the Middle East:

Israeli officials.. confirmed that progress was being made in behind-the-scenes negotiations. Egypt's official Middle East News Agency claimed late Tuesday that Cairo has reached a framework understanding with Israel, the Palestinians, the United States and Europe on principles to settle the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Not that anyone should get too excited:

Israeli, Palestinian and US officials all poured cold water on claims from Egypt that a comprehensive peace plan for the Middle East was in the pipeline.

You can also see NRO's Steven Stalinsky for more not-sunshine on whether or not the Palestinians really want peace. But it's becoming pretty clear that even the Arab world is not only buzzing but is buzzing everywhere with the possibility of an over-arching Arab-Israeli peace. Vicious dictators are nothing if not bold: Mubarak is speaking in terms of full-fledged relations.
And if there is something coming down the pipeline, it shouldn't have been leaked - the potential of a peace deal is about the surest way to radicalize the Palestinian street and destroy any hope of moderation or successful elections. For exactly that reason, though, you'd expect to see the loud denials that are coming out. Now, taking a lack of evidence as evidence is the quintessential characteristic of conspiracy theory, but it does look like something's in the works. How else to explain Mubarak's sudden embrace of Sharon (freeing Azzam Azzam, saying that Sharon is the best chance for peace, etc) - let alone France's even more baffling praise of Israel:

In a radical departure from years of Parisian critical rhetoric, the French ambassador to Israel, Gerard Araud, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that he thought Israel "has tried to show the utmost restraint" in the course of the conflict with the Palestinians since 2000. The ambassador even evinced a certain understanding of the deaths of Palestinians during the course of Israeli army activity. "It's unavoidable that in some operations...," he said, leaving that sentence uncompleted. "War is dirty, war is always dirty," he went on, and then added: "Occupation is never clean."

Seriously: what. the. hell??
Anyway, the downside of any peace deal is having to put up with months and months of this kind of crap:

PA Negotiations Minister Saeb Erekat said that, "The Palestinians have always devoted every effort to ending the cycle of violence between the two peoples."

Yeah, OK. Peace, yes. Forgiveness, maybe. But let's not forget the crimes that Arabs have committed against Jews who have sought nothing but peace and acceptance for over a century.
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Israeli Political Roundup - Sharon Makes Friends, Influences People

Mubarak:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon telephoned Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and thanked him for releasing Azzam Azzam... Mubarak said to Sharon: "I did it especially for you."

Azzam Azzam:

Azzam Azzam told Prime Minister Sharon: "Mr. Prime Minister, thank you very much, I love you very much and I don’t know how to express this. This is only thanks to you. I don’t have the words to thank you for your determination. I told my brothers that if I’m not released while Arik Sharon is Prime Minister, I would never be released. I am fortunate and proud to have been born in Israel."

Netanyahu:

Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday that he supports the plan to bring Labor into the coalition, and has instructed his followers in the Likud Central Committee to vote in favor of the plan. Both sides said there was a good atmosphere at the meeting between the two rivals, and that Netanyahu did not pose any conditions or ultimatums.

Disengagement Opponents:

After Sharon's associates were quoted as saying that promotions in the Likud would be based on how active the candidates' campaigns for widening the coalition are, Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz granted radio interviews in which he endorsed bringing Labor into the government.

What a pimp.
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Educating the Next Generation

The blogosphere is all abuzz with the new coping strategy that Germans are using to deal with the guilt of gassing and burning six million Jews:

Six decades after the mass extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust by Nazi Germany, more than 50 percent of Germans believe that Israel's present-day treatment of the Palestinians is similar to what the Nazis did to the Jews during World War II, a German survey released this weekend shows.

The psychological drive behind his vicious demonization is not difficult to understand:

There is another enticement where Israel is concerned: The victims of the Nazis have become similar to Nazis, and the Palestinians have become similar to Jews. This in turn begets the comparison between separation fence and Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz, a comparison that raises to absurd levels the political correctness of the homogeneous European press.

If the Jews are evil enough to be the Nazis, then either they retroactively deserved what the Nazis did or the Nazis weren't all that bad. But these absurd justificatory fantasies don't just emerge out of a vacuum - they are intellectualized, legitimized, and justified by well-managed and highly-organized academic institutions. Here is where modern anti-Semitism really meets academic anti-Zionism: it is not just that anti-Zionism is a mask and a vehicle for crude anti-Semitism. Rather, anti-Zionism functions as the soothing salve that takes the sting out of anti-Semitism. The taboos that protect Jews from anti-Semitism are undermined in the exact moment that the justification for anti-Semitism is reinserted. Trying to follow the dizzying and surreal double-dynamic, we turn our heads from side to side and end up not getting a clear picture of either.
The results have become inescapable: existence in Europe is becoming unlivable for Jews:

Returning from an intensive two-month trip throughout Europe, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former chief rabbi of Israel and a Holocaust survivor, declared Sunday that European Jewry has no future. "In the past months I've traveled to Austria, Britain, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands, and I'm telling you there is no future for European Jewry," said Lau...
European Jewish families he had met that they live in fear. "I've met parents who tell me that when they send their children to Bnei Akiva (a religious-Zionist youth movement) for evening activities they are in constant fear that something terrible will happen, G-d forbid, until they return. "Once Jews had no choice but to live with anti-Semitism. Now they do."... Anti-Semitic violence has spread to include the burning of synagogues, the desecration of graves, attacks against Jewish schools, and anti-Semitic propaganda spread via the Internet and on university campuses.

It is not Jews who are abandoning the world - it is the world that is forcing Jews out. And when the history of the end of the Diaspora is written, it will be the colleges and universities (places where Jews had always been able to trade ideas for sanctuary even in the darkest times) who will be held responsible.
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Still the World's Most Moral Army

Andrew Sullivan says that the killing of 13 year-old Iman al-Hamas is unspinnable. I'm not so sure. A little background: during a massive anti-terrorism operation in Gaza, the girl walked into a closed Israeli military zone in between active fire-fights (in fact, there would actually be a fire-fight during the course of this incident). A little before-hand, the Israeli military had recieved intelligence that, during this exact operation, Palestinians were planning to use teenagers to lure soldiers into snipers' nests. In the past, of course, Palestinian murderers have dispatched children strapped with suicide belts to blow themselves up for the sake of killing soldiers. Pre-teens have been given schoolbags rigged with bombs.
Now, another young teen carrying a schoolbag ran into buffer zone seperating Israeli soldiers from the people who were firing at them. Before realizing that she was just a young girl, the soldiers saw her enter the closed military zone and shot her. A certain "Captain R" went out to investigate. From what I've read, he clearly seems to be a sadistic lunatic - though the girl was either fatally injured or dead, he emptied his gun into her.
And then we're off to the races. Everyone gets a hold of this story. Finally, proof that Israeli soldiers are child-murderers! Al-Jazeera, BBC, and (discovering this story a little late), the Guardian, whose story Sullivan linked to. Check out the lede:

An Israeli army officer who repeatedly shot a 13-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza dismissed a warning from another soldier that she was a child by saying he would have killed her even if she was three years old.

What's missing from this paragraph? First of all, there's the minor point of not mentioning that the girl was probably already dead when she was shot again (later in the story she is described as "wounded" - factually correct but clearly misleading).
But more than just massaging the lede, this article is eggregious in its lack of context. Writing about dead Palestinian children provides a cheap emotional punch to uninformed British audiences (and American college students), but any article about Palestinian children that doesn't mention Palestinian military indoctination can only be described as willfully dishonest. It is the Palestinians who have created the impossible situation where Israeli soldiers have to be afraid of schoolchildren carrying schoolbags.
More significantly, what I never see is any appreciation for the wonder that an act committed in the heat of a war is recognized, investigated, and punished by the offending soldiers' own country. The very fact that this story could be written at all gets no mention - no one seems to find it at all remarkable that Israel regularly goes after its own for being immoral. The world just quietly holds Israel to a higher standard - precisely because Israel holds itself to those higher standards:

In a time of relative calm after four years of a Palestinian uprising, these events have renewed soul-searching for the Jewish nation: Is this who we are? Is this what we've become? "It's touched a nerve," said Jessica Montell, the executive director of B'Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights group. "What's surprising is that whereas usually these kinds of things are treated as one bad seed, the case of the girl in Gaza has opened a Pandora's box and unleashed a range of issues we have been dealing with for four years."

Israeli prosecuters went as far as to actively beg the girl's parents to allow them to exhume her body so that they could find evidence to really nail the soldier. But the more that Israel tries to stay moral during the horrible war that they have been forced into, the more their own human rights institutions are used to incite murderous rage against them. There's a nauseating irony in Al-Jazeera using B'Tselem data and Israeli government testimony as evidence that Israelis and Jews are wicked and immoral. Where else in the world do governments demand that their highest-ranking army chiefs publically call out unethical soldiers? Where else are human rights organizations who do nothing by attack the army invited to lecture that army on morality?
Israeli soldiers are not perfect. Every 18-21 year old in Israel is in the IDF - inevitably, some not too bright and not too stable teenagers will slip in. All of them are placed in situations which would test the morality of even the best of us. Inevitably, some of the worst will find themselves in situations that enable them to act inappropriately - even atrociously. The way that this Captain R acted turns the stomach - the visual of confirming that a 13 year old is dead by emptying a clip into her is sickening. But when the IDF makes these incidents public in order to highlight their unacceptability - whenever they launch investigations into immorality - their findings used to prove how Israelis don't care about morality.
This leaves the IDF in a double-bind: either cover up atrocities committed by soldiers to avoid fueling more international condemnation, or expose inhumanities to make the rest of the army more ethical. The people in charge of the IDF consistently choose the latter. But having prominent editors of prominent left-of-center magazines smugly asserting that the IDF's actions are "unspinnable" and recommending subtly misleading articles is not helping anyone.

UPDATE:Israel-Line (no link up yet) has this summary of this morning's Hatzofeh (Israel's far right newspaper) editorial:

Hatzofeh praises OC Manpower Branch Maj.-Gen. Elazar Stern's recent remarks to the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee: "In every generation, IDF officers must see themselves as if they left Auschwitz - not to do what was done to us and to see to it that what was done to us will not be done again."

Damn right. The world's most moral army.

ANOTHER UPDATE: That was quick. I just got an angry email from a bright-eyed undergraduate (no caps or punctuation - because grammar is oppressive) accusing me of smearing the young girl by using the spelling "al-Hamas" ("of Hamas") for her last name, rather than the more popular, sanitized "al-Hams" being used by the Western press. His suspicion is that I'm implying that she deserved to die because her parents raised her in an environment that probably did somewhat less than condemn terrorism. But it's not me - it's the Palestinian Ministry of Education.
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Sigh

Another Israeli boy killed defending his country from terrorists:

His love of animals and his desire to serve his country made it only natural that St.-Sgt. Nadav Kudinsky, 20, would serve in Oketz, the IDF's dog-handling combat unit. Kudinsky... was killed... by a roadside bomb in the Gaza Strip together with his dog. His father, Hanoch... related Tuesday that he had always hoped that his only son would carry on the name of his parents, who are Holocaust survivors. "He was our only son, and now he is no longer," Hanoch Kudinsky said... "He always was so proud of the things his dog could do," Natan recalled. "In the end, he met his death alongside his dog."
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They Just Lie

Leading Palestinian media on Azzam Azzam:

Sharon himself gave Azzam a cool reception, no warm hugs or kisses for his spy. Azzam hugged and kissed Sharon as if he was seeing God’s incarnate. Perhaps that indicates the subtle status of Arabic-speaking Druze as a third-rate Israeli citizens, even if they went to jail for their adopted country, they would still be lesser citizens.

And back in reality:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke a short while ago with Azzam Azzam and told him as follows:
"Welcome home! This is a happy moment in the history of the State of Israel, a moment that we have waited for a long time. Today, the entire country is united in its joy over your coming home. I am happy that you are returning to your loving family, to your brothers, to your wife and to your children, who have met with me many times and who spared neither time nor effort in working towards your release. Immediately after I was elected, I met with your family and I promised them that during my tenure as Prime Minister, we would release you. Since then, I have worked tirelessly in all my meetings with Egyptians and others, in order to do so, and as I promised your family, I delivered. I expect to see you soon and I say again, welcome home."

Which begs the immediate question - if both you nor everyone in your country thinks that you're an integral part of the nation, are you still a third-rate citizen?

There was something genuinely heartwarming about watching the country share in the joy of one of its Druze sons. The emotional scenes of Azzam's return and reunion with his family -- the smiles, the hugs, the kisses -- touched a nerve. Natan Sharansky, who served nine years in a Soviet jail, put it well: "A free citizen cannot understand the depth of joy at being freed after years of being unjustifiably sent to prison." The country may not be able to understand this as Sharansky can, but it can truly rejoice. And it did.
But there is more. At a time when some are damning Israel as an apartheid state, when an academic conference is being held in London bashing Israel as a racist and fascist country, Azzam - not a Jew - tells Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "I love you very much," and adds "I am fortunate and proud to have been born in Israel." So much for apartheid.
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Knock It Off

I think that those bloggers who proudly pat themselves on the back for "calling out their own side" are a sometimes a little too conceited for their own good (like anyone cares about their personal consistency?) Pro-Israeli bloggers shouldn't link to articles about idiot settlers threatening IDF soldiers because it shows their integrity - they should post it because it's important for their readers to know that those settlers are idiots.
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Not So Racist

I don't mean to be pedantic about this, but racism is about viceral reactions to a person's race. So I find it a little difficult to understand how Israelis can be racist when they're constantly granting massive rights and accolades to Arab groups and individuals. Now, you might point out that those groups or individuals are Arabs who have helped the State of Israel - but the entire point is that Israel is a pluralistic country in which multiple races co-exist and contribute. You didn't see the Confederacy, let alone Nazi Germany, handing out accolades to black soldiers.
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FBI Sets Up Jews, J. Edgar Hoover Proud

The FBI is apparently having some trouble letting go of some of their venerated traditions:

Members of Congress have expressed anger and dismay over Sunday's report in The Jerusalem Post describing how the FBI set up the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC... "I think it's very disconcerting to think that an investigating agency of the United States, while investigating the alleged misdeeds of a [Pentagon] employee [Franklin], would look to cut some kind of deal with him if they believe he committed a crime and to give him a better deal if they could get some Jews instead," said Ackerman.

A couple months ago, I thought that this story was just good, old-fashioned election-season Jew baiting. Turns out, Jew baiting is fun no matter what the season is. Apparently, the FBI planted false information that Iran was about to launch attacks against Iraqi Jews. It was made it very clear that the United States wasn't taking any measures to protect these Jews and that Israel did not and would not have this information. Having placed Jewish Americans in the ethical pressure-cooker of formal rules versus saving lives, they sat back and watched the fun. An AIPAC member apparently cracked under the pressure and told Israel that there were some Jews about to be killed just for being Jewish, and the FBI then leaked this as "Jews spying for Israel" right on the eve of the election. It's all good though - trumped-up charges of Jewish double-loyalty never get out of hand or incite violence.
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Old School

For all of you who were sad that the Cold War was over, good news! It's back:

Medical experts have confirmed that Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s opposition leader, was poisoned in an attempt on his life during election campaigning... Asked if the aim had been to kill him, Dr Korpan said: "Yes, of course." It would raise questions about whether the poisoning was ordered by Mr Yanukovych, his allies, or even the Kremlin, which fears that Mr Yushchenko will take Ukraine out of its sphere of influence by joining Nato and the EU.

You have to love the fact that the Russians just don't care. Putin has that innocent (and by innocent I mean "undead") look on his face, and just deadpans "are you accusing us of poisoning the legitimately elected leader of an independent country? How dare you!" You also have to love the opposition's "we wouldn't dream of it" response:

Mr Yanukovych’s supporters ridiculed the opposition, saying the illness was probably caused by bad sushi, too much cognac or a severe case of herpes. A parliamentary investigation found no evidence of poisoning.

"What? Poison him? That's absurd - maybe if he didn't have HERPES, this wouldn't be a problem."
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GO PANTHERS!

Good: My beloved Pittsburgh Panthers in the Fiesta Bowl.
Bad: Road trip to Tempe four hours after New Years party ends.
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You Can Choose Any Candidate

Sure, elections are good and all. Everyone loves choice. As long as there're no other parties running:

Day after Hamas’s announcement, group decides to call on its supporters not to take part in vote "because of the Israeli occupation".

Oh, and now that we've got this single party thing going, we're also not too hot on having any internal competition either:

A Senior PA official last night lashed out at former Fatah-Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti after his decision to run in the January 9 Palestinian elections.
"Barghouti has taken himself out of the Fatah", General Secretary of the Palestinian Presidency Tayeb al-Rahim said. "We believe that the turnaround in his views is no more than a desperate political zigzag to disrupt our election process", he added.
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Basic Humanity

I mean, OK:

During the court proceedings, Zeidat's girlfriend stood up and asked the judge for permission to conduct a brief engagement ceremony before Zeidat returns to jail... the judge permitted the two to conduct a brief engagement ceremony outside the courtroom. Both Zeidat and Adra's family, who were in the courtroom, attended the ceremony. As soldiers gathered outside the court clapped, the young couple exchanged rings and hugged each other.

And they say Israeli soldiers have no heart. But this brings out a serious point: Israel is in a difficult position when it comes to their soldiers. They demand that the soldiers remain moral, humane individuals - but they must put them in positions where their basic humanity is risked in the day-to-day grind of trying to deal with a hostile population. And yet even Israel's military is committed to preventing their soldiers from becoming monsters:

Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon is encouraging IDF soldiers to speak with their commanders about issues that bother them while fighting in the territories, calling on them to "break their silence". Speaking before the IDF reserve command last night, Lt. Gen. Ya’alon referred to testimonies presented by the new movement "Breaking the Silence". The group is comprised of soldiers who served in the territories during the recent intifada, who claim that the IDF’s moral standard has suffered tremendously in the past four years.

This, of course, distinguishes the Jewish State's military from every other military on the planet (ok, ok - I guess there are armies in Scandinavia that spend all their time examining hypothetical questions about morality and warfare - but I meant armies that actually have to fight).
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Israeli Political Roundup - Together Again?

No confusion here:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intends to ask Labor chairman Shimon Peres to run the country together with him in a new "super-deputy premiership," that would grant Peres vast powers, beyond those enjoyed by any number two before, sources close to Sharon told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday... [Sharon] said, "the people of our generation have on their shoulders the responsibility to resolve the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict."

Damn right. Now the two of them have to go back to their respective parties and convince ideologues who have no idea what's going on that they should trust the people who do. Ha'aretz's Yossi Verter does examines the political upshot, including the impact that a deal would have on internal primary dates. Ma'ariv goes day-to-day on the political process, including what pursuing Central Commmittee approvals will look like:

However, both Sharon and Peres face a serious obstacle on their path towards unity. The alliance would have to be approved by the parties’ central committees. In fact, Sharon would have to bring about a reversal in its previous decision forbidding him to hold talks with Labor. If the Likud fails to support the alliance, as many as ten of its MKs would likely vote against a unity government when and if it is presented before the Knesset.

Not that that's going to be a problem - surprisingly, Sharon turns out to be a tactical genius. Who knew? Seriously - even Ha'aretz is willing to admit that - kinda.
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Here, Take the Golan. Just Shut Up.

I've been firmly against Sharon giving the Golan up to Syria. But the barrage of news stories about Syria that the world is being subjected to is seriously weakening my will. Apparently even Sharon is willing to do anything just to make the pain go away. Syria turned him down. I'm really begining to think that this entire fiasco is just a desperate acting out to get some attention.
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That Explains It

I mean, is anyone suprised?

Nearly half of Britons in a poll said they had never heard of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in southern Poland that became a symbol of the Holocaust and the attempted genocide of the Jews.

They have, however, heard that Jews eat babies. But we're told that Israel must be wrong because almost all of the world is against it. Wonder why.
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What the Hell?

The Middle East can get so weird:

In surprising statement, Egyptian President says, "If Palestinians are not able to make progress during Sharon’s tenure, they would have hard time achieving anything with someone else".

So on one hand, there's a chance that the Egyptian President had an attack of honesty. But between me and you, I think that he just couldn't resist the opportunity to interfere in an election, and this was the only way that he thought he could introduce the topic.
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I'm Really Excited About This Election Thing

You can tell that the Palestinians really have their shit together when it comes to this whole "organized and well-run elections" thing:

In a dramatic turnaround, imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti registered as a candidate for the Palestinian Authority election on January 9, running against Fatah nominee and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, his wife announced shortly before the midnight Wednesday deadline.

So you're thinking: if the Palestinians elect this murderer, it would really show that they're not ready for peace. Because, I mean, his whole platform is to keep killing Jews (in Arafat's name, no less... hey, at least he's honest):

Barghouti said he is running "to protect the intifada"... Fatah leaders received a letter from Barghouti Wednesday in which he accused the Fatah leadership of trying to discredit the uprising and blame the late PA chairman, Yasser Arafat, for the misery of the Palestinian people. Talking about the possibility of achieving true peace now, after Arafat's death, is tantamount to discrediting his path.

So Barghouti isn't exactly the feel-good candidate of this election. But consider the alternative:

Abu Mazen may well be playing the same game that Arafat played - feigning moderation but adhering to a zero-sum position...
Recall that it was he who conducted the secret negotiations on Arafat's behalf with Shimon Peres's Uri Savir and Yossi Beilin; that it was Abu Mazen who wrote a doctoral dissertation riddled with Holocaust denial. That it was he who secretly financed the Munich Olympics attack that ended in the slaughter of 11 Israeli athletes... Palestinian incitement against Israel continues unabated. Perhaps Abu Mazen is incapable of changing this, assuming he wants to.
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Arab-Israeli Peace in Practice


Ma'ariv says Sharon missed an opportunity to give the Golan back to Syria. The Jerusalem Post asks who cares? And besides, Assad thinks he's actually still in a position to make demands:

In Damascus, Syria's official news agency quoted Assad as restating Syria's long-standing position that peace talks must resume from the point they broke off in 2000.

Amazing, it's a Ha'aretz editorial that has exactly the right attitude about the Syrian track. More than anyone else, they're responsible for the Six Day War. Nowhere else on the planet is a country that started a war and lost as brazen as Syria is:

Syria, only three years after the Holocaust, invaded the State of Israel the day it was born in order to complete the work of the deadly foe. When it did not succeed, there came the second attempt, that of the Six-Day War. And in this attempt it lost the Golan. Afterward came the aggression of the Yom Kippur War. These three major acts of aggression, in addition to the other exploits of Syria - for instance, the instigation of the Hezbollah against Israel - are sufficient reason to apply to it the same tenet that the world applied to Germany and Japan: the aggressor pays, mainly in the coin of territory, the cost of his aggression.
Alsace-Lorraine was taken from Germany, and is now France. No one says a word. Eupen-Malmedy is now Belgium. And East Prussia, Silesia, and Pomerania, which once belonged to sovereign Germany, are now part of Poland. Danzig is a Polish city. The Oder-Neisse border is the border, and some 15 million Germans were transferred - heaven forbid we follow this example - from the territories that were expropriated from the Germans. The world viewed these expropriations and this transfer as a worthy punishment because the deportees had put their lot in with their people, the Germans, in the attack on their country - in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, the Baltic states, etc...
A few years ago, the German parliament passed a resolution, with barely any opposition, saying Germany had no territorial demands whatsoever from its neighbors, and that its condensed borders are its final borders. The enlightened world was beside itself with joy. To sum it up, modern-day Germany understands that these are suitable punishments for the aggression of the previous generation, even though the current generation did not commit the crimes.
The reason that there is one rule for the aggression of Germany and another, diametrically opposite, rule for Syria, Jordan and Egypt has not only to do with the evil of the nations of the world, although this does exist, or their own interests... Arab propaganda, which is often assisted by left-wing Israelis, presents to those who reached adulthood or were born after these events that Israel is an aggressor. And this sector, people under the age of 50, now constitutes the majority of the world's population.

Read the whole thing. At some point, someone's going to have to sit me down and explain to me what exactly Israel gets by signing over the Golan to Syria - Assad can't control Hezbollah, he's not a military threat to Israel, and seriously - they started the war. Screw em.
Meanwhile, peace with Egypt has worked out so well that Israel is now in a position where it has to voilate the demilitarization terms of the Sinai accords in order to get Egypt to enforce the other, non-weapons-smuggling part of the Sinai Accords:

Egypt will deploy 700 heavily armed soldiers along the Egyptian-Israeli border to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza and enhance security... The introduction of these forces, which is precluded under the Israel-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979, will necessitate an exchange of letters between the sides stipulating agreement that this can take place. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, after meeting Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit, said these letters should be exchanged in the near future.

So that thing's worked out real well for everyone.
(Hat tip for the Ha'aretz editorial: Stan)
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