Our new HateWatch post is now online at Winds Of Change.NET

This entry's highlighted topics include extensive commentary on some of the more acute bigotry, anti-Semitism, and outright idiocy from the last month:

* Religious Hate: Islamist terrorists commit mass murder across globe; anti-Semitism in Mexico; anti-Semitic violence in Russia; Jew-hatred in the United States grows during holiday season; anti-Semitic campaigning in the Ukraine; anti-Semitism in Britain; Islamists in Egypt torch Church; Afghanistan Islamists murder teacher; Islamofascism gains a foothold in Britain

* Idiotarian Seethings: Leftist adoration for anti-Semitic Hugo Chavez; Ray Nagin is not smart; Muslim kidnappers and the hostages who love them; AP: "terrorists = martyrs"; David Letterman jumps the shark; suicide bombers being recruited on college campuses; British gay rights groups punish gays who speak out against Islamist homophobia; Barbara Streisand does not make good arguments; perverse celebrations of Prime Minister Sharon's collapse; US politicians think Congress is a plantation; Hollywood loves suicide bombers - seriously

* Race and Culture: Muslim violence in France; method behind the madness of Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial; British cleric loves Hitler; Holocaust trivialization sweeping Europe

* A Hopeful Note: Al Qaeda in Iraq weakening; Arab and Muslim journalist takes on Holocaust deniers; increased political rights in Turkey; criticism of terrorism in Arab and Muslim press

Iran thinks that the Hamas victory is great news. Apparently, contrary to the opinions of many European policy-makers and American journalists, apparently the people who talk to Hamas all the time don't think that the group is going to moderate. Kind of the opposite:

When they say "great achievements", they don't mean a "negotiated peace deal". They mean more of what they said a couple days ago - that they intend to put Israel in an "eternal coma" (this was an reference to Prime Minister Sharon's condition... charming).
Belmont links the Hamas victory to a spread of Islamism that includes Iran. But the connections aren't that abstract - Ahmadinejad recently met Hamas representatives in Syria in the interests of advancing a final war between the West and Islam. That's a direct quote:

The nightmare scenario has now become a reality that could happen in half a year: Iran will get a nuke, and they will give it Hamas. Hamas will smuggle it into Gaza, then into the West Bank, and then into Tel Aviv. Millions of people will die. No doubt, the State Department and European diplomats will express their "concern" and "shock" about the "unacceptability" of this act. Who knows - maybe they'll even threaten to impose sanctions on Iran.

Despite our earlier castigation of people on the right who are gloating because they've been insisting on the popularity of terrorists for years, we do want to point out that a Hamas victory was relatively easy to predict. We were certainly confident enough to predict a Hamas victory on the eve of the election, and not because we had access to any kind of cutting-edge polling data. 66 regional seats and 66 national seats - the regional seats were between individuals and the national seats were between parties. In the regional elections, Fatah disorganization meant that multiple Fatah candidates were running against single Hamas candidates. There were plenty of predictions that Hamas could sweep the regionals, but nobody drew the obvious conclusion - if Hamas was running 35% to 45% against Fatah nationally, regional sweeps would be overwhelming. We understand why media outlets are all shocked - shocked - by the Hamas victory. Willful ignorance, after all, is hard to give up. But we don't understand why the scenario was never even considered by Israeli intelligence
Even our pessimism regarding the Palestinian public's willingness to give up on its genocidal intentions, however, wasn't enough to convince us that Fatah would lose in national voting. We thought that the best argument that the Left would have after the election would be that "the Hamas victory doesn't mean that Palestinians love terrorism - it was because of Fatah disarray regarding regional seats." Jonathan at the Head Heeb was already hinting at that argument yesterday, when exit polls showed Hamas winning the regionals but losing the national polls. Turns out, he had to kind of take that back when it turned out that Hamas won on the national level too. Poll after poll after poll has shown that the Palestinian public supports terrorism - why is it so "shocking" that they elected terrorists?

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]

There are two flavors of "negotiations are still possible" circulating around today. One says that Israel should negotiate with Hamas since Hamas should/will become more moderate. The other advocates negotiating with Abbas and the PLO rather than with the elected, Hamas-led Palestinian government. Each represents one level of the two-level Oslo wishful thinking: since Israel needs a partner who wants peace and can swing the Palestinian public to deliver peace, advocates of bilateral solutions have to pretend that whoever Israel is negotiating with is peaceful and can deliver peace. Neither are true here - Hamas will not stop wanting to destroy Israel, and today's elections conclusively proved that the Palestinian population is overwhelmingly radicalized.
Even if the Palestinian population wasn't radicalized, negotiating with the PLO as if they spoke for the Palestinian public is suicidal. The problem with the Oslo formulation (even in theory) has always fundamentally been its asymmetry: Israel must give up tangible land in return for intangible peace. This asymmetry, however, plays out in a very real way - giving up land makes it easier for the terrorists who 'haven't accepted peace yet' to murder Israelis. This tradeoff happens even in a 'successful' Oslo-type process: presuming that the PLO wanted peace, Israel was giving up land it made it easier for Hamas terrorists to slip into Israel and commit atrocities. And while that happened, Arafat insisted he didn't have control over those Hamas terrorists even though he was ostensibly in control of Gaza and the West Bank. But in a world where the government in control isn't even pretending to be committed to fighting terrorism, this psychological myopia is insane. Saying that Israel should negotiate with the PLO and not the Hamas-led Palestinian government is literally the advocacy that, even though Abbas can't deliver peace or security to Israel, Israel should negotiate with him - and should give up land and suffer suicide bombing. It's an Oslo replay to the extent that it pretends that the parties that Israel is negotiating with can deliver peace, but this time it's just lunacy: it literally calls on Israel to pretend that a person who doesn't have political or social control of the Palestinian public has both of those things. And yet this advocacy that is being heard from the White House (where Bush is urging Abbas to stay in power and negotiate with Israel) and from the West Bank (where Abbas is saying that Israel should negotiate directly with the PLO). Serious people are suggesting that Israel give up land and security to people who by definition can offer them nothing in return, even as people dedicated to destroying the state of Israel are legally in charge of all Palestinian territories. It is the surreal advocacy that Israel hand over land to Hamas, through Abbas.
Then there is the "Hamas will moderate" version. Note that this argument, even at its best, is ultimately still an Oslo delusion - even if Hamas moderates, it was not elected on a moderate platform (quite the opposite, in the last two weeks Hamas went out of its way to clear up any ideas that it might be moderating). This means that the vast majority of the Palestinian public swept into power a terrorist, "no negotiations ever" platform. And that means that if Hamas moderates, they'll lose the support they have now - which would at a minimum prevent them from swinging the Palestinian public towards peace. The Palestinian public is just too far gone.
Not that this 'what if Hamas moderates' debate matters - Hamas simply won't moderate. They announced immediately after the election that they're committed to liberating all Palestinian lands (even the usual journalists are only half-heartedly adding 'but they didn't define what they mean by Palestinian lands' - a particularly silly argument). Hamas's 'political' wing is as filled with terrorists as their 'terrorist' wing. We're not sure how many hundreds of times Hamas can declare their genocidal intentions while the Western media tries to find signs of moderation, but we're confident that we're going to find out.
Some people are arguing that Hamas is going to moderate - not because they want to, but because they'll have to when they're put in charge of day-to-day governing. But these are the same people arguing that Hamas was elected because of their networks of schools and hospitals, not pm account of their continued insistence on terrorism (they have to make that argument, otherwise they have to concede that the Palestinian public is too far gone to let any leader make peace with Israel). So now the argument is that putting Hamas in power and forcing them to pay attention to public utilities will force them to give up terrorism. But no one would deny that Hamas has successfully run their public service networks alongside their campaign of genocidal terrorism - if there was any tradeoff between the two, Hamas would have had to give up one or the other already. Hamas has always had more than enough people to simultaneously serve food in the West Bank and blow up cafes in Tel Aviv. They've proven that for decades, and pretending that the influx of money and legitimacy they just inherited will make their task harder is just incoherent.
Hamas may send out a single, dotty candidate to make sounds about New Age peace during the day, but at night they still dress up 2 year olds as suicide bombers. Hamas members are that far gone. Yet there are plenty of people willing to parse out already parsed statements in a desperate effort to find moderation (Hamas's "tone has changed as well"... oh well that's good).
The ultimate point is that there is overwhelming evidence that Hamas is not going to moderate - you have to discover potentially hidden intent in plainly clear statements or make historically falsified arguments about the intentions of terrorists. Anyone who is declaring that Hamas is going to moderate has to ignore a lot of evidence to the contrary. Anyone who is declaring that Hamas is unalterably committed to the destruction of Israel is just repeating what Hamas's leaders say. People are entitled to ignore evidence in the interest of wild, speculative claims. They shouldn't be entitled to undermine Israeli security on that basis. Israel has no negotiating partner. Anyone who argues otherwise has done a lot of work and twisted a lot of evidence to argue otherwise - their arguments are untenable and their motives for insisting upon them in the face of Hamas's statements and Middle East history should rightly be treated with suspicion.

We're going to try to keep track of the steady progression that dominant opinion is going to make from "no contact with Hamas" to "Hamas is the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people (so we should give them money and guns, cause that's what Palestinian people need)". The precocious peanut framer that he is, Jimmy Carter is already at the end of the road:

Almost difficult to believe that this man let Iran fall to the Islamo-fascists.

The Davos World Economic Forum is an annual conference attended by the brightest scholars and most powerful figures in the world. It is the kind of place where the agenda setters of the world meet to exchange ideas and, in some ways, to literally decide their agendas. It is also a place where rabid hatred of Israel is on display:

The problem is that apologizing for legitimizing vicious discourse doesn't take that discourse back. Once a position is introduced as a legitimate topic for discussion, it can't be taken back because the 'taking back' occurs within the space created by the position. Now the debate is 'should Schwab have apologized?' and, moreso, 'is there anything to this boycott idea?' In some quarters, of course, that discussion will reach the point of 'the Jews got to Schwab - look how they control everything and stifle dissent.' But even where it doesn't, communities are shaped by the things that it is permissible to say out loud - once a topic is explicitly broached, it moves the line of legitimate discussion (even if what's being discussion about is an apology and a declaration of what can't be talked about). These unwritten rules of permissible discourse in polite company are what have been eroded in the highest diplomatic, intellectual, and cultural circles - and it should be no surprise that there are presumably serious thinkers who believe, even in the light of massive Palestinian support for terrorists, that it is Israel that stands in the way of Middle East Peace.

Memo to the Right: Let's have a a little less gloating, shall we? Yes, of course you've been correctly saying for years that the Palestinian public is becoming more and more radical. Yes, you've been accurately skeptical for the last few months about the possibility of Hamas's moderation. But celebrating bad news just because you knew it was coming is what the other side is supposed to do. Memo to the Left: when everyone on the Right was saying that the Oslo process would empower terrorists, this isn't exactly what they meant. They meant that it would empower the terrorist Fatah organization, who would then raise a generation of Palestinians who would end up supporting even more widespread and genocidal terrorism. So on second thought, it is kind of what they meant. Maybe some introspection about this whole moderation thing is due.

We've posted a couple of articles on Palestinian civil society today, and just wanted to give you some recent news about the health of Israeli civil society. First, much if not most of the Zionist ethos is bound up in the phrase "Jerusalem is the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish people." And since we've always heard that Zionism is an anti-democratic, fascist institution (which build an anti-democratic and fascist state), we're having some trouble with Israeli jurisprudence that proves the exact opposite:

We're not fans of this ruling, but there it is anyway. Where's that fascist state we were promised? And then from the JPost article about Barghouti there was this:

Clearly, when international activists choose to march against the biggest human rights violator in the Middle East, their targeting of Israel is based purely on a level-headed assessment of the facts. And not on anything even close to fashionable and institutional anti-Semitism.

Not so much:

Iran is shocked and disheartened that anyone would think that their Holocaust-denial conference is anything but a truth-seeking endeavor:

One should always be wary of radical theories which purport to let the facts speak for themselves. This is more often than not the clarion call of the conspiracy theorist - the one who cherry-picks facts amenable to his theory and dismisses the others as (of course) the trick being played by the conspirators. Ahmadinejad can stitch together every purported gap in evidence as "proof" that the "theory" of the Holocaust isn't credible - and he can dismiss every fact that could plug those gaps as "fabrications" created by the Zionists. The trick of conspiracy theory is to lower the bar for how facts can be credible knit into a "pattern" while raising the bar for disproof to impossibly high (sometimes definitionally impossible) levels.
We've written about the pathological effects that conspiracy theories have on the societies that buy into them, but there are also broader social effects. When no one but raging anti-Semites show up to his conference, Ahmadinejad and his allies will crow that the "Holocaust defenders" were afraid of honest, scientific debate. The genuine Holocaust historians are in the double-bind that conspiracy theories always place genuine experts in: showing up legitimizes the crazies, staying home gives them an open microphone and a claim to have "scared away" the "conspirators". There is literally no solution to dealing with this problem - it is why there are so few ways to deal with conspiracy theorists who somehow end up with a critical mass of followers.
And then there is the problem that most of the "opinions" that will be presented are just flat out lies - and when arguments are premised on lies, there is no space for any kind of deliberation - let alone Ahmadinejad's pathetic pretenses toward "scientific" deliberation.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]

Of course:

What a stupid policy. Anyway, this is from yesterday's MR:

In fairness to you and to us, this isn't exactly a difficult story to cover. Barak at IRIS Blog is also covering it, and Meryl followed the same 'no is not really no' process when the EU played it last week. But you'd think they'd at least wait more than a day to start backtracking. Just for appearance's sake.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]

As Palestinians prepare to go to the polls on Wednesday, final electoral strategies are solid. In the past, Palestinian "militants" have attacked international donors, members of other Palestinian groups, and - of course - Jews. Then last week, the ruling Fatah party adopted a new strategy: attack people from your own party. While we expressed a healthy amount of skepticism as to the potential of this new tactic, the Fatah seems committed to seeing it through:

Gentle readers, we give you the lead-up to the future "legitimately elected representative government of the Palestinian people". Disaray within Fatah means that in most of the regional elections (which determine half of the 132 member parliament), multiple Fatah candidates are running against each other and splitting the vote. But if members of the ruling Fatah party keep shooting election workers, the Hamas's impending and unprecedented electoral victory might still be put off.
But probably not.

Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra has announced that Israel won't allow jailed Fatah terrorist Marwan Barghouti to serve as a Minister in the Palestinian government - no matter how many votes Barghouti's mass-murdering reputation brings him:

Barghouti has a lot of two things: Jewish blood on his hands and popularity among the Palestinian public. Those two things are not, we suggest to you, unrelated. Oh, and he's also committed to preventing any future peace deal with Israel (because, according to him, it would discredit Arafat's legacy). We really don't know why Ezra's banning him from representing the Palestinian government. The symbolism would have been just so perfect.

UPDATE: Terrorists are really popular:

Seriously - this society is nothing if not ready for a healthy, democratic state. What's so weird is that the New York Times has repeatedly assured us that Hamas's massive popularity is because they're "against corruption" and has nothing to do with terrorism. Which leaves unexplained why all these other terrorists are really popular too.

Mark the date and time:

The article goes on to say that:

What it doesn't mention, of course, is that the Europeans have already backtracked on this promise. We expect a slow progression from "will not recognize" to "government legitimately elected by the Palestinian people". And soon thereafter, the United States will "reluctantly" indeed recognize a Palestinian government in which Hamas participates.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]

Former US President Jimmy Carter - who believes that Hamas is run by "so-called" terrorists - isn't done helping in the Middle East:

Not to be overly 'historical' on the point, but it turns out that opening a dialogue with Arafat as bad. It gave him the legitimacy to build up arms and international political capital, which he eventually use to launch a well-planned and well-financed war. So Carter's idea turned out to be not so much good as bad. And so it would seem that doing something like that again would be (at least presumptively) not so much good - as bad.

The annual Herzliya Conference is happening this week, which partly explains why nobody is putting out any of the usual breathless, wide-eyed speculation we know and love from the Israeli press - there's nobody around to interview. The conference brings together all of the most important people in Israel for chit-chats and presentations about the most pressing political and military threats facing Israel. Literally anybody who's anybody from anywhere - academia, army, politics - attends to hear lectures and exchange sometimes startlingly frank views. You can listen to the lectures here.

The persistence of conspiracy theories throughout the Arab world - take today's declaration from Basher Assad that Israel was behind Arafat's death - is something that's generally just taken for granted. The phenomenon is such pervasive and is such a part of the cultural landscape that it's not uncommon to hear Arabs joke about the Arab propensity for conspiracy theorizing - but of course, the theories work anyway:

Often, those conspiracy theories are used in just the way that Assad used them - to deflect blame away from failing Arab regimes and towards Israel ("no electricity? Israel cut it"... "unstable currency? It's the Jews"). But conspiracy theories also have a pernicious effect on the way a society thinks and acts - they are a way of thinking that prevent rational discussions about anything, not just about whatever corrupt regime happens to be in control. So it's not just that Palestinians in the West Bank who trade theories about how Israel poisons their wells miss fixing whatever it is that's actually damaging the water supply - it's also that not looking for the most obvious problem and fixing it becomes an entire way of thinking. Conspiracy theories are not just dangerous for the supposed conspirators, now picked out for extermination through no fault of their own, but debilitating to the conspiracy theorist. And when we here them, sure they induce eye-rolling on our part - but they're also both the result and at least some of the cause of the pathologies afflicting Arab societies.

Iran's President, consumed by hatred towards the Jewish state, doesn't think that Jews really like Israel either:

In addition to being a genocidal lunatic, Ahmadinejad is also bad with numbers: Israelis are the most patriotic people in the world: 85% of the population would be willing to fight and die to defend the country, and that includes figures drawn from the 20% of people in the country who are Israeli-Arabs.
Iran, of course, is more than willing to help Israelis make up their minds by funding the wave of terrorism that has been going on during the "fragile ceasefire". Russia, of course, refuses to take any significant action against Iran - because apparently it's too early to tell whether they're up to anything.

How can it be the case that France is in favor of using nuclear weapons against terrorists, but is against highly precise pinpoint strikes at terrorist leaders? We believe that it has something to do with the fact that it was Israel conducting the pinpoint strike against a Palestinian terrorist. We could be wrong though - maybe mathematics, physics, and ethics just work differently in Paris (that's not really that fantastic a joke, because ethics do work differently in Paris...)

With the Palestinian elections just days away, Hamas and Fatah are running neck and neck:

A terrorist organization who's primary mission is to help other genocidal lunatics wipe Israel off the map is now drawing tens of thousands to their rallies. Most of the things that can be said about this phenomenon have been said, but it's probably important to keep in mind that the Palestinians get more money from the international community than any other people anywhere else on the planet, and that the United Nations regularly holds events in favor of Palestinian rights and pours its own billions into Palestinian coffers.

That can't be true, can it? Former US President Jimmy Carter didn't really refer to Hamas as "so-called terrorists" did he? Turns out, yes:

Almost impossible to believe that he didn't understand the gravity of Islamo-fascism in Iran or believe in the existence of Arab states' genocidal intentions toward Israel. The "element within Hamas" that wants to destroy Israel happens to be the "element" that finances, controls, and sets the agenda for the terrorist organization. So, with all due respect to the former President, he has failed to comfort us.

The New York Times has a heartwarming story about the tragic yet touching life of the suicide bomber who tried to commit mass murder in Tel Aviv yesterday. If you're at all concerned about the plight of the poor Palestinians or about the existential torment that is existence in general, you really must read it. The literary devices in the story ("blew a large hole in his circle of family and friends, who did not see this coming") are worthwhile in themselves, but really, the entire story is a nuanced and worthy argument for why terrorists suffer exactly as much as the civilians that they murder.

Geocartigraphy Institute poll: Kadima 40, Likud 13, Labor 21, Shinui below the threshold. It's nice to see Labor get a bump from their primaries - but it's never good when you literally need to remind voters that you exist in order to get them to consider voting for you.
Yedioth Ahronoth poll: Kadima 43, Likud 12, Labor 21. All of the Reuters stories describe this as Kadima "widening its lead". Since Kadima was polling at 52 over the weekend, we have no idea why they're writing this. Well, we do, but it's no a polite idea, and this is a Family roundup.

Kadima Actually, the real reason they're doing it is because the YNet story about the poll includes the phrase "rise of one seat compared to the previous poll", but they mean the previous Yedioth poll - which leapfrogged Kadima's high water mark this weekend. Despite the misleading headline, Kadima has been losing momentum this week.
Shimon Peres is confident Kadima will do well. Obviously, this is not a good sign for Kadima supporters.

Labor
Labor had their primaries, and now Ha'aretz has the accompanying puff-piece (lede: "a hard night's work, a fresh list of high quality... this is the week of Amir Peretz." - if blind wishful assertions were credibility, Ha'aretz would almost be taken seriously). People who aren't as confident about quality the fresh list: Labor giants , who ditched the first post-primary meeting because of their problems with the list.
Labor's new #2 is begging Barak to return to Labor and save it. He's even offering to give up his hard-fought #2 slot if Barak will take it. Only Peretz is insisting that he can do just fine without a former Prime Minister helping him out. For his part, Peretz is waiting for "good will" from Barak. But he announced Wednesday night that he's not going to give Barak either a slot near the top of the Labor list or the promise of a Defense Portfolio. Which means that he's going to be waiting for Barak to return to the Labor party until about March 29th (at which point, presumably, the Chairman position will be open). JPost says that Barak will get a ministry but no slot on the ticket.

Likud
The Likud has hired Schwarzenegger aide John McLaughlin to help them in the campaign. As of three days ago, Schwarzenegger had a 40%/51% approval/disapproval rating in California. We don't even know where to begin. Suffice to say, when a party's #2 has to warn the party against collective ritual suicide, perhaps the train has strayed a little bit off the tracks.

We've convinced that there are very sound reasons to declare that the suicide bomber buddy movie Paradise Now is a decent film. We're equally convinced that the film's recent Golden Globe win had nothing to do with any of those reasons. Instead, what happened is that Hollywood glitterati decided that we were entitled to their opinion, and so they took some time off from gossip rags and speed balls to give it to us. We're glad that they took time to enlighten us about the 'humanity' of Palestinian suicide bombers 'resisting' the Israelis. And we're also glad that so many people could feel so good about themselves for the brief 25 seconds that they spend listening to the acceptance speech - which apparently had very little to do with peace. There's nothing like blustering about the legitimacy of other people's violence and the necessity of other people's deaths to make resentful, impotent, wannabe activists feel like they're on the front lines. We're skeptical that 10% of the cheering crowd- convinced that they were doing their duty to world peace by applauding for a speech which pointedly did not advocate peace - could find Israel on a map. We're quite sure that no more than 1% of them know the first thing about the West Bank - at least, they don't know that the Palestinians have yet to declare a state there. Which is kind of an important thing to know about the area.
Charles Krauthammer has expressed his displeasure with that other Hollywood contribution to the Israeli-Arab conflict, Spielberg's execrable propaganda piece Munich. In his review, Roger Ebert commented that Spielberg really loves Israel. That's nice. But we're sure everyone would appreciate his love a lot more if he didn't produce lies that experts are convinced will undermine Israel's diplomatic - and thus military - prospects. This is the problem with Hollywood celebrities - even if you grant that they mean well within their own myopic, narcissistic standards, in the final analysis they still end up making the world worse. Then they talk to their therapists about it while the rest of us have to deal with the consequences of their naive garbage.

At least 10 injured.

UPDATE 1: (06:16am PST) YNet's Hebrew page lists the injuries at 14 now, and the English page has an update to the effect that the blast occured at a fast food stand near the city's central bus station.

UPDATE 2: (6:20am PST) Ha'aretz reports 16 injuries but no deaths other than the suicide bomber. No claim of responsibility

You know how sometimes we point out that Arab countries tend to violate the peace treaties that they sign with Israel with something approaching regularity? It's because they do:

The phrase "full normalization" must mean something different when it's in reference to the Jewish State. Or to Jews.

After the elections, in which you can be quite sure that Hamas will win a huge number of votes and a substantial amount of power, they will start attacking Israel again. At that point, we fully expect the media to write that Israel's subsequent actions will be threatening "the informal no violence pledge" that Hamas took before the elections:

What we don't expect to see anything resembling an acknowledgment of this part:

Not going to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist? But wait, we were told that Hamas has dropped their call to destroy Israel. Apparently not so much. And yet, there's at least one person who isn't giving up hope:

We know! Call on us - we know! The only people who still say that Hamas might "change its policy" are people the willfully ignorant. And liars.

The Knesset interrupt their recess next week because 25 MKs thought it would be funny to call everyone back to declare that Palestinians firing missiles into Israel are not nice. We agree with the sentiment, but it hardly seems like an issue for legislative deliberation.
Labor primaries have ended. We've been making predictions about them for weeks. Turns out, we were right.
Your poll numbers:


Kadima
Kadima got around to officially appointing Olmert as their chairman. Good for them. They've also made Cabinet appointments to replace the outgoing ministers. Nothing really interesting - Mofaz kept the Defense portfolio and Olmert kept the Finance portfolio.

Likud
The Likud will call for defensible borders through a negotiated settlement. Mini-rant: we don't understand the Israeli Right's obsession with "negotiated settlements" as opposed to unilateral withdrawals. This is a group of people who take it as axiomatic that the Palestinians will cheat on any negotiated settlement. Now, if you also take into account that Israel has to give up more in negotiated settlements than in unilateral withdrawals, then isn't the result of any negotiated settlement a situation in which Israel has given up more than they would have otherwise, but still for nothing in return (because the Palestinians will cheat)? The plan also includes some probably substantive differences about holding on to hilltops and certain parts of the Jordan Valley - differences that are surely worthy of discussion, but this visceral reaction against unilateralism makes no sense.
There's also some very suggestive unrest in the Likud:

So let's see if we understand this: rumors are that Netanyahu seeks to undermine the Central Committee. He's planning to expel eight activists from the party for trying to topple him. And we've already discussed how he's committed to territorial concessions. Gosh, between his conflicts with the Committee, his suppression of internal dissent, and his diplomatic plan, the only difference between a Likud led by Netanyahu and a Likud led by Sharon is about 20 mandates.

Labor
Big winner: Yitzhak Herzog. Full list:

Remember when we made fun of Ha'aretz for announcing a revolution of youthful, party enthusiasm in the wake of the Peretz nomination? Remember how we said that they understood less about electoral politics than "stoned teenagers whose only source of political knowledge comes from watching reruns of the Daily Show". Yeah:

This is where we'd also make fun of Ha'aretz for assuring the Israeli public that "he large number of voters will reduce the effect of [corrupt] deals" between Labor factions associated with Peretz, but that would make us insufferable.
We have in the past - in perhaps something less than a circumspect manner - indicated our belief that Amir Peretz was showing something of an overly warm political appreciation for his former union buddies. One can find our opinions on the subject here ("allies and sycophants"), here ("stacking Labor with union friends"), here ("mobbed-up thug... ran a union filled with other, less successful, mobbed up thugs" - that one was probably unfair), or here ("sycophants and personal friends"). In fact, we've been downright tedious with this whole "Peretz is stacking Labor with his union friends" thing. And by "tedious" we mean "right":

Oh, and we're not done:

MR: always glad to accept credit for abusing our readers' patience with the obvious and then taking credit for it. Which doesn't change the fact that Peretz is a union hack filling a once-proud party with his union hack friends. In case we hadn't mentioned that.
Ha'aretz has an editorial which purports to claim that Peretz isn't a 1950s era socialist because Avishay Braverman, his favorite for Finance Minister, has essentially announced a platform of free market reforms. Except the Braverman didn't so much "announce" that platform as discussed it in an interview that got put on the last page of a single newspaper. And it wasn't so much a "platform" as his professional opinions as an economist, which he admits in the interview aren't necessarily politically viable. So that's like Peretz renouncing his socialist economic platform, except whatever the opposite of "announcing" is. The only good thing left for Ha'aretz to say about the party they're committed to shilling for is that the party will betray their own principles. Sad. Or funny. But definitely either sad or funny.

Minor Parties
Poraz, having been humiliated by Shinui's 'youth revolution', isn't coming back. Lapid hasn't said whether he's going to quit - or what he's going to quit. The good money is on him leaving with the other victims of the Shinui voters' enthusiasm and founding a new party.

We have some friends who live in New England. Those friends have some friends who we sometimes have the pleasure of dining with. Unfortunately, that latter category also occasionally contains particularly obnoxious specimens of fashionable liberalism. Specimens who, armed with a New York Times editorial but lacking the basic grace not to discuss politics at dinner, insist on having 'debates' about the Israeli-Arab conflict. And inevitably, the conversation devolves into us having to explain that, no matter how much they believe Noam Chomsky, it is simply not the case that Israel murders tens of thousands of Palestinians a year. but lacking the manners which would inhibit friends - for reasons genuinely beyond our abilities to reason - often try to engage us in 'debates' about the Israeli-Arab conflict.
We are then forced to wonder: how can people be so obliviously stupid? Sometimes, the answer involves relatively nuanced discussions - ranging from the sensibilities embedded in insulated political communities to the effects of unconditional grade-school affirmation on a generation of otherwise mediocre, shallow 'activists'. But other times, we're inclined to believe that most of their problems come from just being willingly fed near-lies. Consider yesterday morning's apologia for Hamas by Boston Globe staff writer Anne Barnard. Most of the article displays the usual feel-good liberal themes about Hamas (the election will moderate them, their support has nothing to do with their desire to kill Jews, etc), and that's of course tired enough. But right in the middle, the contradictions become so blatant that Barnard has to sound like an idiot just to make them work.
The only people who believe that being elected by a majority of Palestinians will make Hamas moderate are people who who refuse to listen to Hamas:

These enlightened staff writers are the ones who insisted throughout the Oslo years that putting Arafat in control and giving him billions in aid would cause him to give up terrorism. Throughout those years, Arafat repeatedly incited hatred and violence against Israelis, and then of course he went on to start that whole "war" thing. Yet these liberals - not embarrassed at all that Arafat ignored their patronizing insistence that they knew what he 'really meant' better than he did - are now shamelessly insisting that they know what Hamas 'really means' better than Hamas does.
The rest of the article repeats and amplifies the current chic talking point that all the Boston, New York, and Los Angeles cocktail party liberals have been passing off as nuanced analysis: Hamas is gaining support because they're the anti-corruption party, not because Palestinians want to destroy Israel. The last time we addressed this nonsense, we sited all of the polling data that indicated the exact opposite. But Barnard is so certain in her conclusions that she feels comfortable citing and then (in her mind) refuting that polling data:

Read that again: "continued attacks" and "continuing a truce" - in the same sentence! Barnard is baffled that a majority of Palestinians favor "continuing a truce" in which they get to launch "continued attacks"! Of course they do - it's the best of all possible worlds: murder Israelis, and then, when Israel goes after the terrorists responsible, whine about how Israel is threatening some kind of shaky truce or fragile ceasefire. Then she has the unblushing gall to transition with "yet" - as if the numbers in the second sentence (that say that 86% of Palestinians believe in armed struggle) somehow contradict the numbers in the first sentence (that say that a lot of Palestinians like their strategy of pretending to stop their "continued attacks" as long as they get to call it a "truce").
Maybe we're overanalyzing liberal anti-Israel activists: maybe it has nothing to do with the echo-chamber of the Left or with a perverse resentment that celebrates "resistance" in far away places by exotic "marginalized" groups. Maybe they're just too dense to realize that they're openly contradicting themselves.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]

If you've noticed that we've been decreasing the pace of our medical updates, you've probably also noticed that there's unfortunately not much changing on a day to day basis. The Prime Minister underwent a tracheotomy on Sunday - although he is breathing on his own, he is still being aided by a respirator and the tube was damaging his throat. The tube was then connected directly to the trache, but it malfunctioned overnight and had to be replaced.
Reports from his family to the effect that he had opened his eyes have been declared by doctors to be of "no medical significance". The Prime Minister remains comatose, and the longer he remains comatose the worse the situation becomes. He now has very little chance of ever awakening, and almost no chance of regaining even functionality.

Early this month, we wrote a kind of memorial to Lt. Uri Binamo, who was murdered at a checkpoint in the northern West Bank preventing suicide bombers from entering Israel. The army has just learned the true extent of the tragedy he averted at the cost of his own life:

The belts were filled with 10 kilograms of explosives, packed with nails and shrapnel. The terrorists were heading to crammed halls, packed wall to wall with running and laughing children. Words fail to express what the extent of this planned atrocity demonstrates about the moral abyss of Palestinian terrorism - but for some reason most fashionable opinion leaders insist that we're supposed to remember that this is "resistance".

After years and years of hearing that all but like 1% of Palestinians are good and peaceful people, we're almost ready to believe it. You know who's not ready to believe it? Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas:

Hamas is "part of the fabric" of the Palestinian people. But Hamas continues to reject the right of Israel to exist. Does that mean...
Now of course, if asked outright, Abbas would never really say that destroying Israel is part of the fabric of the Palestinian people. He would say that such views are only held by the tiniest and most marginal minority of Palestinians. Yet let him be just a little less careful, and he says essentially the same thing. Which, of course, follows the dynamic of most dialogue about the Israeli-Arab conflict - even when everyone knows what the situation really is, the Arab side can mouth the most transparent platitudes and everyone is expected to behave as if those platitudes are genuine. That's why there's so much shock when Iran's President comes out and says out loud that his country seeks the destruction of Israel - even though everyone knew that that was always their policy. There is a charade being played out, but it's a charade with a twist - in a normal charade, the one perpetuating it has to actually try to deceive the other side. In the Arab-Israel conflict, Israel's enemies only have to go through the motions of perpetuating a charade, and everyone else only has to pretend to be deceived - but the results are the same.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]

Iran, as you may have heard, has become a bit of a problem lately. Especially with Israel, what with the whole "they're going to nuke everybody there" thing. And so, if an Israeli citizen - with all of the civil, political, and economic rights that any Israeli citizen has - chose to spy against his country, surely that would be treason, right? And if he came from a community where it seemed like his sentiments were supported, surely that community would be treated with justifiable suspicious, right? Right?

Only in Israel could an enemy state really believe that someone openly hostile to the state could get himself elected to a position that would put him into contact with sensitive information. In any normal country, politicians aspiring to high office have to at least pretend to be patriotic. Not so in the case of Israeli Arab politicians. They can visit countries Israel is at war with, they can advocate violent revolution against the state, they can openly call for their followers to undermine state security, and they can outright refuse to pledge allegiance to the state they make laws for and decisions about - and yet, Israel can do nothing but continue allowing them to serve. Certainly, if Israel took any kind of systematic action against these politicians, the country would be accused of racism by all of the usual, fashionable European outlets. The State Department would probably express "concern". And so, despite the fact that Israel's Arab citizens enjoy more political, social, and economic rights than the Arab citizens of any other country in the Middle East, they continue to elect borderline traitors to national offices and outright traitors to community offices.

Among the very, very many reasons why we think that the coming Palestinian elections are going to go somewhat less than fabulously, today's might be least funny and most obviously troubling:

Farbeit from us to belabor the obvious, but there's no reason to try to kill election monitors unless you plan to rig an election. Which is what Palestinian terrorist groups are planning to do. And by terrorist groups, we mean the ruling, 'moderate,' internationally recognized Palestinian ruling party:

So while we're really glad to see that the EU is pretending to consider beginning to rethink the unaccountable billions they give to the Palestinians, maybe it's time for someone to point out that the current ruling party isn't exactly made up of eager little democrats either. Meanwhile, the election observers are spending their time trying to puzzle out what all those death threats are really trying to convey:

International humanitarian organizers are always trying "to understand beyond" the obvious, brutal surface of terrorism. Rarely, however, is the deeply counter-productive silliness of their sensibilities so obviously. In an effort "to understand beyond" what the Palestinians are trying to convey with all of those death threats, Murphy is willing to entertain the possibility that "it appears that they are saying that international elections observers are not wanted here". Oh, you think so? Yes, it certainly does appear that way, doesn't it? Hey, you don't think - you don't think that maybe that's it? That maybe, instead of a some reason "beyond that", it's just that the Palestinians don't want the people they're threatening to kill to stick around?
Palestinian terrorists say "leave our land or we'll kill you because we don't like you", and the international looks for some meaning beyond that. The targets differ - Jews, election monitors, etc - but the strategies of denial remain the same.

The Labor party is complaining about US interference in Israeli electoral politics, which is kind like us complaining when people have multiple martinis at lunch: sure, it feels good to be judgmental, but no one can really take you seriously. This is the party that hired the Clinton election team to steer Barak to victory and was more than willing to make political hay out of the Clinton administration repeatedly snubbing Netanyahu in the run-up to the election. Oh, and they just hired Democratic advisers again. Then again, hypocrisy doesn't really make you a liar - it just makes you a hypocrite. But a hypocrite it makes you nonetheless.
We've moved updates about minor parties to their own section, since it made no sense to lede with the parties that matter least.

Kadima
Friday poll data shows Olmert with - get this - a 71% approval rating. Kadima is at 42 and 43 seats depending on the poll you're looking at. Old conventional wisdom: Kadima would fall apart without Sharon. New conventional wisdom:

We especially like the fact that Israeli media has gone back to referring to Peretz as an "ex-union boss" rather than, say, "Labor Chairman".
Tzipi Livni will be appointed Foreign Minister following the resignation of the Likud ministers. So much for Peres demanding the post as a price for his continued support - although, in fairness to critics of our favorable Peres coverage, we didn't think he'd get the number 2 slot either, which he did end up getting. On the other hand, there's something to be said for his argument that it is in Kadima's best electoral interest to have him just below the top of the list - he is Israel's most successful #2.

Likud
The list is so bad that Kadima announced that they were literally insulted that Likud voters thought that this list was good enough to run against them.

Labor
In our last political roundup, we joked that Labor should return to their strategy of saying that there's no difference between Kadima and Likud, because that strategy worked so well for the US's Ralph Nader. So they did:

We have no idea what the YNet people are translating as "go-getters," but surely that can't be right.
Is union hack Amir Peretz planning to formally stack the Labor party with allies and sycophants? We think he might be:

So with Israeli voters placing their disgust with corruption near the top of their priorities, Peretz is indeed positioning the Labor party at the cutting edge of Israeli politics. Not necessarily in the way that he'd like to, but no publicity is bad publicity. Unless the publicity makes it look like you're the kind of party that voters hate. Then there is such a thing as bad publicity.
Hey, maybe the move to criticize Kadima for using US influence to move voters will work out. Sure, hiring Clinton's spin team to run their campaign won't help in selling that line, but consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, right?

Minor Parties
The National Religious Party has chosen its Knesset list. Since they're currently polling at a threshold three percent (and well below it in some parts of the margin), nobody really cares. Sad, but true.
Shinui is obviously in a panic, since all their most important people left in the little 'youth rebellion' that their 170-member guiding committee staged last week. Now many of the ten sitting Shinui MKs (read: the people with experience, read: the people who matter) are considering quitting Shinui and forming a party not controlled by idiots. The people who would be left behind are proposing a compromise that would essentially reverse the primary elections - specifically, Avraham Poraz would regain his #2 slot on the Shinui ticket, and Tommy Lapid would get something more than the narrow mandate that he received last week to lead the party. Problem: Ron Levinthal, the candidate that ousted Poraz from the #2, won't accept the deal. He'd rather be at the top of a party that will get like five votes than accede to the people who built Shinui from the ground up. What is it about pride and falls? We keep forgetting.
Drama a little further left on the political spectrum, as Haim Oron beats Ran Cohen for the #2 slot on the Meretz list. The problem with Meretz's electoral chances is that they still haven't recognized the whole "we're way, way far Left" thing that they've got going on:

Meretz is arguing that Peretz's recent stance of bilateral negotiations with the Palestinians - coupled with his 1950s era state-union socialism - isn't a Leftist position. And even if this doesn't bode ill for their political prospects, it definitely says something about their sobriety.

It's easy to castigate Iran's President as a lunatic, albeit a genocidal one with a nuclear weapon and cutting edge ballistic missiles. With his Holocaust denial conference, however, we're beginning to suspect that there's very much something to his suggestion last month that there is a strategy behind his anti-Israel rhetoric. Don't make the mistake of thinking that he's simply stark raving mad - what he is doing is precisely introducing the most vicious anti-Semitic lies and the most genocidal of intentions into the spectrum of public discourse. The market-place of ideas aside, it quite simply matters what is being discussed and what isn't. Ideas can be defeated, but discourse leaves its mark. Ahmadinejad will be castigated, but someone will ask why he's being castigated for expressing ideas. And then someone will protest that he's being shouted down. And then somebody will give voice to the suspicion that maybe there is something unseemly behind the vehement opposition to him. It's the classic problem with answering conspiracy theories - you don't want to legitimate them with reasoned opposition, but refusing to address them allows the conspiracy theorists to insist that their opponents are 'afraid to debate them'. So no one of any public respectability will show up at Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial fest - but everyone who does show up will insist that the reason why only one side is represented is because the other side is lying.

Is it a democracy if you don't get to choose who to vote for:

Obviously, this is no worse than Hamas members killing people who disagree with them (or who are Jews), but it does undeniably lack something in the way of the Jeffersonian spirit, no?

Unless one is a professional contrarian (we're thinking Chris Hitchens attacking Pope John Paul II the week that the Pope passed), strict propriety imposes the expectation that one will refrain from attacking the ill or dying. Social conventions being what they are, there are few rational reasons for these norms to exist - if you dislike someone's past with cause that past doesn't go away as time passes - but they are nonetheless and properly adhered to as markers of respectability.
But since PM Sharon collapsed, the international vilification of him continues - it remains only somewhat abated and still largely wrong:

This refusal to adopt the circumspection demanded by age-old norms of propriety is often accompanied by a snide, smirking kind of brashness: "maybe everybody else is willing to pretend - but I'm not going to keep my mouth shut just because he's dying." This is a kind of intentional obtuseness - cheap moral exhibitionism conveyed through vulgar and intentional insult.
There will always be a few people like this. Pathetic "activists" and neglected "radicals" want for attention, and they inevitably try to abuse the better sensibilities of others to get it. They're the social equivalent of a ill-trained dog ruining furniture. But the problem is particularly widespread and acute in relation to Prime Minister Sharon (even far Left Jews participate in this shameful posturing). The notion that cheaply slandering him is within the spectrum of "enlightened dialogue" is accepted at the highest levels of intentional diplomacy and has reached something of a shibboleth in the lowest poseur circles of self-styled activists and radicals. Of course, the demonization is only in the rarest of circumstances based on factual claims - we will commit to the claim that literally none of the unshaven, unbathed college students handing out pamphlets in front of cafeterias understand the nuances of ICJ jurisdiction or the brute reality of what happened Sabra and Shatila. But being able to throw out a cheap line about Prime Minister Sharon being a war criminal has been a badge of respectability and a handshake of recognition in certain Leftist communities for decades, and change happens only at the most glacial of paces in these self-enclosed and self-justifying swamps of moral fashionability.
And so, if what you pathetically tell yourself about yourself is based on being "unconventional" and chanting the words "Sabra and Shatila", you'll take every opportunity to be vulgar and to demonize Sharon. A time when everybody else is trying to act decorous turns from a time to follow suit into an opportunity to be particular offensive - all the better to prove to yourself that you remain, in this dark night of Rumsfeld-ian fascism, an unafraid voice for the oppressed. Pathetic.

The United States continues to pressure Israel to abrogate its rights under the Oslo Accords and to allow Palestinians to vote for Hamas in East Jerusalem. We wonder if the imposition of the pressure goes anything like this: "sure, you signed a treaty... but come on, nobody really expects Israeli treaty rights or Arab treaty obligations to be enforced... oh, don't act so surprised... Egypt allows weapons smuggling in violation of Camp David, normalization with Jordan is a joke in violation of that peace treaty, the UN notoriously exceeds the legality of its already pro-Palestinian mandates." Probably not, but at least that would be more honest:

So the Palestinians think