Mere Rhetoric, October 18, 2008:

Memo to ostensibly pro-Israel Obama supporters: circa 2010 there are going to be headlines about the "severe crisis in US-Israel relations." You're not going to be able to say that you didn't know.

Reuters, March 15, 2010:

Israeli envoy sees "historic crisis" with U.S.:report - Israel and the United States are in a "crisis of historic proportions" over a settlement dispute that has brought relations to a 35-year low, Israel's ambassador to Washington was quoted on Monday as saying.

The Washington Post writeup about Clinton's over the top condemnation also included the line "the close allies are facing their deepest crisis in two decades." But the headline wasn't as on point and elegant as with the Reuters story, so that's what you got.

The idea is nonetheless the same throughout. Netanyahu had announced a temporary construction freeze that excluded East Jerusalem. Clinton had described the freeze as an "unprecedented" concession. Then Israel announced new construction within that framework.

But sensing the opportunity to pick a public fight with Israel, Obama personally ordered Biden to "condemn" the Jewish State. Clinton followed up by insisting that the US had been "insulted." For their part the Palestinians tweaked their ever-expanding construction halt demands, setting up Israel to take the blame for failed proximity talks. All over a neighborhood that borders two other Jewish neighborhoods and that had never, ever been controversial before.

Coincidentally - and just in time - there are a flurry of articles being published with different reasons why the US-Israeli relationship should be abandoned. This morning's is from Mark Perry, who "reports" how Israelis are getting American boys and girls killed. His FP article fails to note his previous job as an Arafat adviser, though that detail did seem salient to Laura Rozen. Also seemingly salient: "There seems to be more in the ether in recent days suggesting a diverging of perceived U.S. and Israeli interests in the region." Yes, there do seem to be that.

The really obnoxious thing? We're supposed to pretend that this policy is a reluctant recourse by an otherwise pro-Israel administration. Or that journalists are slowly discovering and objectively describing the situation. Come on now.

References and related after the jump...

We're a couple hours away from today's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. With Mitchell and Biden on the ground the show is going to be extremely diplomacy-heavy, making allowances for the time needed to cover this-week-in-Iranian-warmongering. You can tune in live via the show page or the episode page starting at 6:30pm PST, and as always I'll have the chatroom and the phone lines open for questions and comments.

There are functionally two full interviews this week. Larry Greenfield, Claremont Institute Fellow and Executive Director of The Reagan Legacy Foundation, comes on as a special guest to talk about "Israel's Increasingly Dangerous Neighborhood," the enormous writeup he just completed on the recent Jerusalem Conference. Given his role in conservative and Jewish politics - the Obama campaign banned surrogates from debating him when he was head of the California RJC and then NJDC moron Aaron Kayek targeted him in one of the dumbest attacks I've ever read - that comes up too.

Today's Diker segment goes for almost 20 minutes, which is what you'd expect given that the show topic is diplomacy and he's among Israel's top diplomacy analysts. One of the money lines from the beginning of the conversation: "we haven't seen this type of sympathy by an American administration... really since Carter, and even the Carter administration was somewhat more measured in its approach." Cf. the rest of the Israeli political world, where that exact conclusion is on its way to becoming conventional wisdom. You'll want to stay till the end where he evaluates whether Obama will actually succeed in detonating the US-Israel alliance. Tough to say, tough to say.

Official show blurb:

Omri interviews Larry Greenfield, Claremont Institute Fellow and Executive Director of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. They discuss Greenfield's recent missile defense talk at the 7th Annual Jerusalem Conference, the political climate in Israel and within American Jewry, and the future of the US conservative movement. Dan Diker also joins the show, talking about Israel's recent public and state-to-state diplomacy in the context of the Iranian threat. In between Omri runs down the week's news on global terrorism, Middle East geopolitics, and the left's Big Government push in the United States.

I'm also in the process of going over all the old shows and reediting them to make them listenable (or at least to remove cracks and pops - any unlistenable content will, alas, stay the way it is). More on that in the next week or so. In the meantime, see you in a bit.

References:
* Jerusalem's Misgivings with Larry Greenfield [TOCS]
* Israel's Increasingly Dangerous Neighborhood [Larry Greenfield]
* Obama Campaign Demands Ban On Republican Jewish Group, Escalates Thuggish Intimidation [MR]
* NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Helpfully Illustrates How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears [MR]
* Politics: Not afraid to speak her mind [JPost]
* Israeli Officials: Hey, Do You Think That Maybe Obama's Going To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship? [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy
* Jewish Politics

Almost difficult to understand why Malmo's Jews are getting a Nazi vibe from their political establishment. Europe 2010: where sneering anti-Jewish bigotry is fun again:

Representatives for the Jewish Community in Malmö have slammed the city's mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, for his use of the term "Israeli lobby" in a Danish television interview. "I encounter a great many people from what one could call the Israeli lobby, who are not interested in what I say and what I think, but who do want to attribute lots of opinions to me," Reepalu said in an interview with Danish TV2... He has also denied that there had been any attacks on Jews in the city despite police figures showing that violent incidents against Jews have doubled over the last year.

Last month Reepalu also equated Zionism with antisemitism, telling Malmo's Jews that they'd better "distance" themselves from Israel if they know what's good for them. You'd think the money quote from that little would have been "Malmo does not accept anti-Semitism and does not accept Zionism." But in fact the highlight was when he blamed local Jews for violent anti-Jewish hatred. The venomous little bigot is a veritable fount of wisdom.

Punishing and blaming the Jewish victim is actually kind of a thing in Sweden. The Swedish taekwondo federation barred the Israeli national team from playing in the country because "10,000 Muslims" would attack them. Swedish journalist Andrew Bostrom and his editors whined about persecution after publishing their execrable organ theft blood libel. And when Israel pointed out how Sweden's pro-ethnic cleansing resolution on East Jerusalem violated the EU's own diplomatic position, the Swedish government pushed back by - no joke - attacking the the Jewish State for sowing dissent and division in the EU. It's Israel's fault.

Swedish NGOs were also behind one of the major awards Goldstone got for his libelous pamphlet. On account of his brave willingness to scrutinize and attack Israel. Because that's what's lacking in Europe.

References and related after the jump...

Compare...

Washington refused to endorse British claims to over the Falkland Islands yesterday... Despite Britain's close alliance with the US, the Obama Administration is determined not to be drawn into the issue. It has also declined to back Britain's claim that oil exploration near the islands is sanctioned by international law, saying that the dispute is strictly a bilateral issue... a State Department spokesman told The Times. "The US recognises de facto UK administration of the islands but takes no position on the sovereignty claims of either party."

... and contrast...

The Obama administration criticized Israel Wednesday for designating two shrines on Palestinian territory as national heritage sites... Underscoring those difficulties, the State Department on Wednesday sharply criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government for adding two shrines in the West Bank to Israel's list of national heritage sites... State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the administration viewed the move as "provocative" and unhelpful to the goal of getting the two sides back to the table.

The Palestinians have sovereignty over Jewish holy sites in the West Bank - which they've historically desecrated and destroyed - but the UK has no sovereignty over the Falklands. Nice to see the White House responding to increasingly public UK concerns that "Obama has it in for Britain." Overflowing with nuance and agility, is this government.

Add this to Obama's early snub of Brazil, which included misspelling Silva's name and was later repaid in the form of Brazilian backing for Ahmadinejad. But presumably Argentina now owes us a favor, so we've got that in our pocket in case they ever magically become the largest country in South America or a nuclear-armed European NATO ally.

Just out of curiosity, if Obama was trying to detonate all of the US's traditional alliances - what would he be doing differently?

References and related after the jump...

Fresh off creeping rapprochement with the US - Obama just reinstated our ambassador and State has dropped their travel advisory - Syria wants you to know that they're ready to return to the Western fold. Or to light up the Middle East in the process of completing a decade-old genocidal war against the Middle East's sole, beleaguered democracy. But definitely one of the two:

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem recently told Israelis that "you know that war at this time will reach your cities." The statement bolsters the recognition that the Syrian strategy in a future war will be based on targeting population centers in Israel. It seems that after the enemy's attempts to act through conventional military means and terrorism failed, it tried to locate Israel's weak point. Damascus sees our cities as a weak point. The Syrian minister's comments show the extent to which Damascus has adopted a terrorist modus operandi that is no different from that of Hezbollah or Hamas.

It must be nice to have the freedom to explicitly threaten the other side's civilians. Israel, of course, focuses exclusively on military targets. Which isn't something they should be rewarded for - it's what decent countries do - but the contrast is stark. Not only does the Israeli political echelon refrain from threatening war crimes, but the IDF really does goes out of its way to limit civilian casualties. And yet for some reason, over the last year, Syria has grown closer to America while US/Israeli relations are at historic lows. Strange, that.

Syria's also skirting their NPT obligations and refusing the IAEA access to their bombed nuclear site. Israel haters will point out that the Jewish State isn't even a member of the NPT, so Syria is more in line with global norms than is the Jewish State. Then someone will remind them that Israel's entire concern is that international law is politicized, and that Israel's Arab enemies don't live up to their treaty obligations. So this spectacle crystallizes exactly why Israel refuses to sign ostensibly balanced treaties that in practice allow totalitarian regimes to cheat with impunity. Then the Israel haters will scream about how it's not right to accuse them of antisemitism and shoot off an email to Andrew Sullivan.

Rational debate.

References and related after the jump...

So perfectly does this fit the "Obama is deepy anti-Israel" narrative that I'm almost inclined to doubt it's true. A story about how the WH is generically hamstringing weapons sales, fair enough. The Pentagon is again dragging its feet on Israel's Joint Strike Fighter requests, because apparently the two year delay created by WH "obstacles" hasn't sufficiently damanged US/Israeli relations. So there's some precedent.

But blocking Apaches that are critical to Israel's urban warfighting because Israel used them to fight an urban war - that's meat a bit too red. And yet, two separate sources:

The administration... is delaying an upgrade project for Israel's military on the grounds that it could be deployed against Palestinian militants. Industry sources said the Defense Department has taken measures to slow down an upgrade of Israel's AH-64 Apache attack helicopter fleet. The sources said at least three Apache helicopters have been awaiting an upgrade at Boeing, the prime contractor... The sources said the delay of the Apache project stemmed from the White House's concern that Israel was rebuilding its military for another war. They said... Obama was dismayed by the widespread use of the Apache and other U.S. platforms during the January 2009 war with the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. "Everything having to do with Israel's Apache fleet has been delayed by the administration," another source said.

So much for that year-end Forward article about how US/Israeli arms sales demonstrate that "strategic security relations between the two countries are flourishing." It's become a standard lefty talking point in the last few months, and it really ought not be.

It's not just that Obama's anti-Israel diplomatic offensive has actually damaged strategic security relations across the board, though it has. It's that the entire article - from the headline about arms cooperation all the way through the stuff about promoting Israel's qualitative military edge - is the opposite of true. No arms deal has been made with Israel since Obama took office, while Arab countries have been the beneficiaries of unprecedented largess:

This story won't get international play until there's an incident between Gaza fishermen and the Israeli Navy, but apparently Hamas has found a new set of Palestinian human shields. Those explosive-filled barrels that have been washing ashore in Israel are coming from Hamas boats disguised as fishing vessels, all but guaranteeing a miscalculation that will drag in Palestinian civilians:

Barrels filled with explosives sent by terror organizations from Gaza are putting Palestinian fishermen in danger, a senior Navy official estimated Tuesday following the discovery of explosive devices off Israel's southern shores... "The terror organizations often use innocent-looking fishing boats in order to carry out attacks, making things very difficult for us. On the one hand, we would like to allow Palestinian fishery, but on the other hand, it's our duty to thwart attacks. This leads to serious inner conflicts."

And when Palestinian fishermen do get tangled up in an Israeli anti-terror operation, you can be quite sure that Israel will get the blame. Because per the rules codified by the Goldstone Report, normal reasoning like "the people who use human shields are responsible for their deaths" doesn't apply when the Jewish State is defending its civilians.

Of course Israel will end up getting demonized for this even without a live fire incident. If Hamas is going to use Gaza fishing to turn the Mediterranean into a minefield, Israel will have to restrict Gaza fishing to prevent the Mediterranean from being turned into a minefield. The headlines about Israelis starving Gazans will follow shortly thereafter, just like they did after Israel shut down the border crossings that Hamas kept spraying with gunfire. Those headlines were false back then and will be false the next time around. But whatever.

Hamas is only throwing explosives off fishing boats because they can't launch attacks out of Gaza any other way. The security fence that surrounds their little terror statelet has limited them to a grand total of one successful suicide bomber in the last few years. All of which is weird because the foreign policy experts who tried to block Israel's West Bank security barrier assured us that fences don't work.

References:
* Militants pledge to float more bombs toward Israel [WaPo]
* IDF source: Gaza fishermen in danger [YNet]
* Deputy IDF chief: Terror groups facing difficulties [YNet]
* Main terrorist attacks carried out at Gaza Strip crossings [Israel MFA]
* Gaza's Booming Economy - Underground Mall System, Hundreds Of Supermarkets, Latest Fashions (Plus: New Gaza Tunnel Wasn't For Smuggling) [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy
* Israel
* Palestinians

On one side of the vaunted Palestinian territories, Hamas absolutely refuses to negotiate with Israel, thereby confirming every single thing they've ever said. On the other side Fatah can't handle their own terrorists let alone go after Hamas or Islamic Jihad infiltrators. It's an open question whether they even want to any more:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday spurned a new US effort to revive Mideast peace talks, sticking to his position that he will not resume negotiations unless Israel freezes settlement construction. With Abbas digging in, an upcoming diplomatic mission by US Mideast envoy George Mitchell could be doomed from the outset... the US has failed to get Israel to halt construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, lands the Palestinians want for their state... Abbas said on Tuesday he will not resume talks under the current conditions... "We won't agree to resume negotiations without a full settlement freeze, especially in Jerusalem, for a certain period." The Obama administration has recently suggested bypassing the settlement issue by getting the two sides to discuss the borders of a Palestinian state. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that by focusing on the endgame, such talks would defuse the problem of settlements.

Yeah, listen. If the US didn't want the Palestinians to focus on settlements they shouldn't have functionally forced the Palestinians to focus on settlements. Abbas had always been willing to negotiate in the face of ongoing Israeli settlement construction, both during the Bush years and during the first months of the Obama administration. Then State and the WH - bragging all the while about publicly slapping around Netanyahu - launched their anti-Israel diplomatic offensive last spring. Among the demands: a full construction freeze. No playgrounds or supermarkets for Jews, not even in Israel's capital. Abbas had to follow along lest he appear less pro-Palestinian than the US President.

In the most generous scenario this was a misguided attempt to move the goalposts, bleeding the Israelis on concessions. More likely the WH actually believed the self-deceiving propaganda of ostensibly pro-Israel groups like J-Street - duly funneled into the Oval Office via a special someone - that the Israeli public is much further left than the last election would indicate. Anti-Israel foreign policy experts like Walt even supplied polling data on the question. You can't argue with science!

The hope was to use settlements as a wedge issue to peel Israeli citizens away from the government, creating a win-win for anti-Israel diplomats. If Netanyahu caved then Obama would see his stock rise in the Arab world, this per the predictions of foreign policy analysts like Marc Lynch. If Netanyahu resisted then he would be toppled via popular disapproval and - by assumption - the next Israeli government would reflect the Israeli public's pro-concessions position.

As will inevitably happen with plans based on pseudo-sophisticated fantasies, the entire stunt backfired and Obama managed to alienate Israel and harden Palestinian demands. Smart power!

References and related after the jump...

Back in October 2008, on his way to securing American Jews as his single most sustained bloc of supporters, candidate Obama seemed quite explicit about the status of US loan guarantees to Israel. Quite explicit:

US presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has promised not to cut foreign aid to Israel if he is elected in November, a spokeswoman for Obama has said. In a statement to the Israeli business daily Globes, a spokeswoman for Obama said he would honor existing agreements pertaining to foreign aid and as such was committed to 'increasing aid to Israel to $30 billion over 10 years.'

So a few months ago the Israelis went ahead and locked in 2010/11 loans without any peace process-related conditions. Unfortunately they forgot the part where all Obama promises come with an expiration date:

On the eve of his visit to the Middle East, US special envoy George Mitchell threatened that his country would freeze its aid to Israel if the Jewish state failed to advance peace talks with the Palestinians and a two-state solution. Mitchell clarified in an interview to the PBS network that the United States would use incentives or sanctions against both sides. According to American law, Mitchell said, the US can freeze its support for loan guarantees to Israel. He added that all options must remain open and that the sides must be convinced about what their important interests are.

Forget the part about how this White House seems committed to detonating the US/Israeli alliance, if only because that's not really newsworthy. More broadly - and here I'm shamelessly cribbing from Instapundit - if Obama was trying to wreck America as a superpower, what would he be doing differently? If he was deliberately working to erode US influence in the Middle East, would there be a better way than putting the US on a collision course with both of the region's most powerful countries? He's taking a softline approach with Iranian antagonists, which only emboldens them, and a hardline approach with Israeli allies, which only alienates them. Smart power!

Both Israel and Iran will respond by doing what countries do: pursuing their own interests. Like so many other world leaders are beginning to do, Israeli and Iranian pols will simply start ignoring Obama. It'll be bad for the United States to lose its influence in one of the most dangerous and energy-rich regions in the world. It would be disastrous for Israel to lose its most consistent and powerful international ally. But it's not like Israel doesn't have other options, some of which they've been neglecting precisely because of US pressure. Cf. Caroline Glick from this morning.

References and related after the jump...

Hamas is promising to get involved in an Israeli/Iranian war - an inevitable Israeli/Iranian war - by blanketing millions of Israeli civilians with rockets. That's not exactly surprising given that they're functionally a wing of the Iranian military, armed in precisely the way the international community promised would never happen if Israel evacuated Gaza and called off Cast Lead. Now they can destroy Israel's airport and they can knock down Tel Aviv's skyscrapers. Risks for peace!

And when Hamas does get involved you'll still see Israel get blamed for "drawing them into the conflict." So just in advance, let's all be clear that these lunatics are already sufficiently motivated to commit mass genocide:

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said that gaining control of the Gaza Strip was "just a step toward liberating all of Palestine." "This movement liberated the Gaza Strip with the help of the militant factions," said Haniyeh... "Brothers and sisters, we will not be satisfied with Gaza," he declared. "Hamas looks toward the whole of Palestine."... Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters thronged downtown Gaza City... Gaza was decked out in Islamic green, with Hamas flags fluttering from rooftops, lampposts and cars. Some parents dressed small children in combat fatigues and green Hamas headbands.

That follows similar statements from November and October and September and so on. But maybe they're just kidding about that, and a couple more Israeli concessions would empower whatever fictional "moderate camp" our foreign policy establishment has invented this week. Could be!

The Palestinian child abuse thing was a nice touch on the genocidal festivities, I thought. It was a little too routine for my taste - via Elder, here are 100,000 Hamas kids being brainwashed to kill Jews - but still a nice touch:

700 summer camps, for children and teenagers, operated this summer by terror organizations along the Gaza Strip - operating under the slogan - A "Victory for Gaza - The Glory of Jerusalem". The camps are operated by the Hamas in order to encourage the next generation of this organization.... 100 thousand children and teenagers participated in Hamas camps this year. The budget of these camps is estimated to be 2 Million Dollars. The youths were guided by 1,500 counselors that went through special training courses. A marketing campaign of the Al-Aqsa channel of the Hamas and a special internet site encouraged participation of children in these camps.

And I thought Gaza was awash in breaking poverty, bereft of even the resources to purchase basic necessities. Weird.

References and related after the jump...

It's unclear whether Human Rights Watch has reinstated their anti-Israel investigator Marc Garlasco yet. His obsessive collecting of Nazi regalia got him suspended a few months ago, but reader JM says that Garlasco's HRW bio page doesn't reflect the suspension - and that it used to. I asked a second guy who would know and he didn't remember anything like that, and there's no way to definitively check. Gigablast reports that HRW had disabled caching on the page, which would explain why none of the search engines have an old copy.

Either way it won't be very long now. Doug Bandow has a post up on HuffPo - HuffPo being where Garlasco started his rehabilitation with innocent protestations of naivety before having sympathetic journalists write him up in Esquire - hinting that Garlasco's good to go:

I'm thinking a bit more about my collecting these days after the controversy that erupted over Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch, who collects World War II German militaria. It is the most popular military genre, but Garlasco was attacked as a Nazi-sympathizer by people who don't like his analytical work critical of Israel. Garlasco--whom I have never met--seems to have survived the kerfuffle, but the controversy demonstrated not only Washington's tendency toward the ad hominem but also a more general failure to understand collectors. Collectors collect. The doing often is as important as the what. Few collectors collect because they identify with the politics behind the items they are accumulating. In fact, many can't even explain why they like what they like.

I'll admit that I "don't like" Garlasco's reports, though in fairness they're an objectively unlikable pile of systematic and repeated - to say nothing of inaccurate - smears and fabrications, all of which he happily funnels to legacy and new media outlets.

Not that it matters. Motivation and bias are things you get to attack after you disprove something. So a pro-Israel activist might say "given that Garlasco's anti-Israel publications have been repeatedly debunked, it's relevant to investigate what's so consistently undermining his objectivity." Less argumentatively legitimate: "even though Garlasco's critics are undeniably right, you should ignore how a Nazi-obsessed investigator fit in so well at our organization because those critics don't like us and you do." And since we're on the topic of what exactly is getting proven, it's flat false to imply that I ever accused him of being a Nazi sympathizer, bigot, or racist.

The way I know that is because I wrote things like "Garlasco's not a vulgar racist. He's simply not. He's someone torn by sensibilities that make him wildly inappropriate as a choice for a Middle East investigator" and "I would guess that he clings very, very tightly to the belief that he's a history buff who happens, for purely familial reasons, to be utterly fascinated by the Nazis." Which are all the things that Bandow pedantically claims people "fail to understand."

The only caveat I added - a minor one, admittedly - is that anyone riven by an inchoate obsession with the color and pageantry of Nazism ought abstain from multi-year campaigns to demonize the Jewish State and drag Jewish officials in front of politicized international tribunals. Garlasco was drawn to Nazi collectibles for some reason. The guy wasn't collecting postage stamps, even though his Nazi grandfather presumably mailed stuff.

This emerging theme of vague "people" engaged in "ad homs" so as to undermine "work critical of Israel" has nonetheless become quite the pro-HRW talking point. When HRW founder Robert Bernstein turned his back on the organization for its anti-Israel pathology, that was the reality-based community's instinctive go-to. And here's HRW program director Iain Levine sounding exactly the same note:

Ha'aretz broke the draft of their resolution, which recognizes a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Sweden insists it will represent and commit all 27 EU members. An utterly devastating diplomatic game-changer.

Israel will focus on how the resolution locks in unilateral Palestinian moves in explicit violation of the Oslo accords, a shameless bait-and-switch that began with promises of EU coordination in exchange for Israeli territorial concessions. One Jerusalem just blogged it, honing in on the gall it takes for an international organization to carve up the territory of a sovereign and democratic country:

The Europeans have become aggressively active in a desperate attempt to save the collapsing government of Palestinian Authority. Ever since Hamas won the "elections" in Gaza, the PA has been fighting an uphill battle to stay relevant. All indicators are reporting that with each day the PA and its President Abbas are growing weaker and weaker... But it is important to understand that this is not just a debating point. Israel is now faced with a very serious challenge. How can it function in an international community that feels it can impose its will on Israel without consent of this democratic government.

All true and fair enough. But there's also the small matter of the EU's breathtaking moral hypocrisy. Arabs who left Israel in 1948 apparently still have a colorable claim to the "right of return" five generations later. But Jews who were ethnically cleansed from the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem after thousands of years of continuous habitation - they're expected to stay cleansed just like the gleeful Jordanian war criminals of the time intended:

At the turn of the 20th century the Jewish population of the quarter reached 19,000... In 1948 [its]... 2,000 Jews was besieged, and forced to leave en masse. Colonel Abdullah el Tell, local commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion... described the destruction of the Jewish Quarter: "The operations of calculated destruction were set in motion.... I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews who caused their fighters a good deal of interference and difficulty.... I embarked, therefore, on the shelling of the Quarter with mortars, creating harassment and destruction.... Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it.... [By] Friday, May 28, 1948... the Jewish Quarter emerged convulsed in a black cloud - a cloud of death and agony."...

The Jordanian commander who led the operation is reported to have told his superiors: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible."

Then again, Sweden's a country where calls to "kill the Jews" are - as a matter of juridical precedent - political opinions about Middle East policymaking. When other EU nations walked out of Ahmadinejad's speech because of his genocidal incitement, Sweden declared him in-bounds. So it's not exactly a surprise that they'd have some problems understanding the nuances of ethnic cleansing.

This week's top Council posts, coming from an intimidating slate of nominations that mixed domestic and foreign policy issues, present a neat little juxtaposition between old-fashioned military honor at home and something less so abroad. The very top Council post came from Bookworm Room, who related several upshots from a family outing to see the Blue Angels at a fundraiser on the USS Hornet:

Despite the varied responsibilities of the people we met, all of the Blues have certain characteristics in common: First, and most obviously, they're all lovely to look at (men and women alike)... because its members are all in superb physical condition... Second, without exception, these people were gentleman and ladies in the old-fashioned sense of the term. They were kind to the children and courteous to everyone. They looked us in the eye, spoke clearly, and, despite the crowds around them, made every person feel as if he, or she, was important... Third, and this is something I tried to emphasize for the kids on the way home, the make-up of the Blue Angels shows that reputation matters... Fourth -- and this is something I've commented upon after every interaction I've had with men and women in the American military -- the Blues manifestly love their work. Each person with whom we spoke felt that his (or her) job has meaning and purpose

One of the two tied runner up Council posts, this one from Right Truth, paints a picture that some might characterize as a little bit unworthy of these men and women: our ongoing abandonment of women to sharia in the Middle East and in the AfPak. And per the non-Council post from Benjamin Kerstein at The New Ledger, Obama's betrayal of our natural friends and allies - freedom-loving people who are oppressed and besieged - goes all the way up to entire nations:

Obama's reputation in Israel might have survived... had it not been for his much-hyped "speech to the Muslim world" delivered in Cairo on June 4. Taken as a whole, the speech was simply a craven embarrassment; but the references it made to Israel could not have been more alienating and insulting had they been calculated for the purpose... Obama's speechwriters and advisors became convinced that equating the Holocaust with the Palestinian nakba (the word means "catastrophe," and Arabs use it to describe the establishment of Israel and its War of Independence in 1948), comparing Israeli treatment of the Palestinians to segregation in the United States, and pointing to the Jewish people's "tragic history" as the sole justification for Israel's existence would assuage Israeli concerns... this single speech (which everyone in Israel watched) did more to demolish Obama's credibility in Israeli eyes than any of his demands on Netanyahu ever could have.

Betraying allies, and the inevitable decline triggered by that kind of cravenness, doesn't have to be inevitable. The non-Council runner up article from Charles Krauthammer emphasizes that it's a reversible choice. Though given how our cultural bien pensants trash the complicated history of Columbus described by Council runner up The Glittering Eye, signs for a revival of national pride aren't exactly great.

References and previously after the jump...

References:
* Reputation Matters - Obama and Israel: Betrayal in the Broken Places [Watcher Of Weasels]
* Watchers Council Nominations - Who Needs Free Speech When You've Got A Post-Partisan Utopia? [MR]
* What's not to like about the Blue Angels? *UPDATED* [Bookworm Room]
* What about the women Obama? [Right Truth]
* Obama and Israel: Betrayal in the Broken Places [New Ledger]
* Decline Is a Choice [Weekly Standard]
* Columbus Day, 2009 [The Glittering Eye]

Previously:
* Watchers Council Results - Gratuitous Insults Are Especially Obnoxious Coming From Mindless Cultists
* Watchers Council Results - Dem's ObamaCare Strategy: If You Can't Beat Them, Bait And Switch Them. Failing That, Bully Your Own Hometown Newspaper.
* Watchers Council Results - Putting Israeli Self-Defense Out Of Bounds

Lots of people are saying Obama's done nothing to promote global peace. Certainly, the refrain goes, he hadn't done anything by day 12 of his Presidency, which is when he was nominated to share in the same glory as Yasser Arafat and Iranian stooge Mohamed ElBaradei. I think that's just so unfair.

If you believe - as I do - that continued Israeli territorial concessions in the context of ongoing Palestinian intransigence are a recipe for war, you have to concede Obama's got at least some case. Before he came along the Israeli electorate was inclined to support further peace gestures. Palestinian leaders were willing to sit across the table from Israeli negotiators and offer unenforceable intangible promises in exchange for tangible land - promises Israeli diplomats were loath to reject.

Just two years ago the Bush administration - by pushing on Israeli leaders slowly without alarming the Israeli public - managed to stage Annapolis. It was predicted by secular Israeli centrists to be a total disaster for the Jewish State. It turned out merely to be a substantial disaster. That's the drip drip drip method you have to use if you want to get Israelis to buy into one bad diplomatic deal after another.

Instead last Spring the Obama White House decided to kind of sort of spectacularly detonate the US-Israel alliance. They leaked to everyone that they were going to kick Netanyahu's ass and ordered Israel to come up with a peace plan by July. Somehow that managed to backfire. I'm not sure if it was because Obama telegraphed his sellout on Arab TV or because Mitchell announced that America would push for the "Israel has to commit suicide" Saudi Initiative or because pipsqueak State Department officials publicly reveled in slapping around a sitting Prime Minister. But somehow Israeli officials got the distinct impression that Obama really didn't like them.

And just to keep things topical, yes Obama's counterproductive anti-Israel moves began before that crucial twelfth Presidential day. On the eve of the inauguration he promised to make a point of investigating Cast Lead literally on Day 1. Because why would Israel get nervous about promises to "address" their self-defense against Hamas?

It was Obama's weird demand for a total Israeli settlement freeze, though, that was really inspired. Netanyahu was willing to commit to offering the Palestinians statehood. So something else had to be found so Obama could pick a fight with Israel and build some anti-Israel cred in the Arab world. Settlements seemed like a good target since someone in Obama's inner circle really thought they could be used as a wedge issue with the Israeli electorate.

Sure the utterly shameless bait and switch on Bush's "settlement blocs" promises was particularly ill advised, given that Israel needs to believe in US security assurances to take "risks for peace." Sure it turned Israelis against Obama, united them behind Netanyahu, and even brought Ehud Olmert out of retirement to support the Israeli right that defeated him. Sure average Israelis started urging their leaders to reject Obama's demands, which Israel subsequently and loudly did on Jerusalem. And sure the situation became so grim that ostensibly pro-Israel liberal American Jews started openly whining that Israelis are spoiled (because that's persuasive!)

But it was the dustup's effect on the Palestinians that was really magical.

The investigation's mandate was so structurally one-sided that Mary Robinson - the woman who oversaw the Durban I hatefest - avoided it lest she grant it her imprimatur. First the UN picked a time window that excluded the Palestinian rocket attacks which led to the war. Then, just in case any Palestinian war crime slipped through, they precluded the investigators from looking into much except "Israeli war crimes."

Goldstone took the job anyway, bringing his reputation and his Judaism to bear on legitimizing the predetermined anti-Israel slander. He actually invoked his personal views on the Holocaust as a reason to take the report seriously. Apparently the trauma of historical anti-Jewish persecution - totally forbidden as a reason for supporting Israel - is a laudatory ethical basis for trashing it. Cue sneering anti-Israel partisan Stephen Walt:

It was disappointing that the Obama administration felt it had to denounce the report within days of its release, despite Goldstone's impeccable credentials (former member of South Africa's Constitutional Court and chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Bosnia and Rwanda) and his strong Zionist convictions. Israeli PM Netanyahu hasn't been doing Obama any favors of late, and the release of the report would have been a golden opportunity for Obama to play a little hardball and remind him that stiffing your principal patron has a price.

Elder of Ziyon has been compiling a seemingly unending list of Goldstone inaccuracies. He's currently on #18 and probably has at least a dozen to go (not exactly a surprise since the report has to make biased and untrue libels seem objective and tenable, which isn't straightforward).

His post about how "the Mission found no evidence that members of Palestinian armed groups engaged in combat in civilian dress" is as brutal as Israel Matzav's post is thorough. Israel Matzav's goes on for pages and pages, with photographs and videos specifically debunking Goldstone paragraph by paragraph. It's a really impressive take down, though in all honesty it's probably kind of a gimme.

More entertaining: Elder's discovery that Goldstone uncritically relied on a Palestinian who thinks Israel is infecting Gaza with sex gum.

And as far as structural bias is concerned - time window, mandate, etc - the recent post about how Goldstone condemned the Gaza blockade but excluded the reasons for it is to the point. There was no way to make the investigation fair. There was only a way to make it seem fair, which is what Goldstone tried and is trying to do. And now his daughter wants Israel to thank him for it:

Had Richard Goldstone not served as the head of the UN inquiry into the Gaza war, the accusations against Israel would have been harsher, Goldstone's daughter, Nicole, said... "My father took on this job because he thought he is doing the best thing for peace, for everyone, and also for Israel," Nicole Goldstone told Army Radio.... "It wasn't easy [for him]," Nicole Goldstone said. "My father did not expect to see and hear what he saw and heard." Nicole Goldstone, who currently lives in Canada with her family, spoke of her great love for Israel. "Every time I dream of returning to the country or that my son will one day immigrate there," she told Army Radio.

I don't know why she would want her son to move to such an ostensibly horrible place. But I'm beginning to see why Diaspora Jews felt the need to invent the word chutzpa.

References and previously after the jump...

Alternative MR headline: "Oh Please:"

Girl, 15, seeks justice for Gaza in world court (AFP) - Aug 31, 2009 - THE HAGUE -- A 15-year-old Palestinian girl who says Israeli troops killed her father and two siblings in Gaza in January, sought justice from the International Criminal Court on Monday. "I am here to lodge a complaint against the occupying army," Amira Alqerem told journalists in The Hague, seven months after her family was killed in an early-morning assault in the Tal Al Hawa neighbourhood that also left her severely injured. "I hope this complaint will succeed because it is the truth," the soft-spoken teenager said, seated next to her lawyer on his way to the ICC to file the complaint with the office of the prosecutor...

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced in February he had begun a "preliminary analysis" of alleged crimes committed by Israel during the Gaza offensive... Amira, meanwhile, is undergoing physical and psychological rehabilitation in France. "I am doing this for all the children of Gaza," she said through an interpreter. "I want to do something to change the situation."

The headline for this oh-so-conveniently timed ICC prosecution, as it appeared on the blog of anti-Zionist activist Kawther Salam: "A Palestinian Child Against Israel at The ICC." Which means that an unedited blogger writing for a froth mouthed audience still managed to be less incendiary than the AFP hack who penned this crap agitprop.

As for the timing: putting aside the cringe-inducingly brutal and ongoing shreddings of the Goldstone Report, I don't think the specific charges were ever meant to be taken seriously. They were meant to create a sense of Israeli brutality, so that if any particular one was debunked anti-Israel partisans could slide to the next. And if all the smears were eventually debunked? Well, the effort that would take would be paradoxical lady-doth-protest-too-much proof of the charges in the first place. Elegant.

The Goldstone Report, the anti-Israel motions at the UN launch, this ICC nonsense, the impending collapse of the peace process, pressure on Israel's nuclear arsenal - these are a cascade of ad hoc and foggy accusations that amount to a drip drip drip erosion of Israel's diplomatic and public positions. They're meant to set up a global anti-Israel boycott effort over the next few months, the first stirrings of which are already under way:

British trade unions approved a boycott against importing goods produced in some Israeli settlements. The boycott was approved Thursday by the Trade Union Congress at its annual conference. The congress also called for an end to arms trading with Israel and for disinvestment from some Israeli companies. According to the London Times online, the unions had considered a comprehensive boycott of consumer goods produced in Israel but reconsidered following "frantic behind-the-scenes negotiations." The statement approved by the delegates read: "To increase the pressure for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories and the removal of the separation wall and illegal settlements, we will support a boycott of those goods and agricultural products that originate in illegal settlements through developing an effective, targeted consumer-led boycott campaign."

It's weird though: when Israel withdrew from Gaza you actually saw boycott calls increase, as if anti-Israel sharks smelled blood in the water. It's almost as if the shrill histrionics over the "Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories" are just a pretext for opposition to Israel that comes from a much uglier place (h/t: Richard Landes for the Salam post).

References and previously after the jump...

Via the Guardian, here's one perspective on what Obama's got planned for the opening. Let's call it - and I'm just choosing a random moniker here - the "official White House spin":

Barack Obama is close to brokering an Israeli-Palestinian deal that will allow him to announce a resumption of the long-stalled Middle East peace talks before the end of next month, according to US, Israeli, Palestinian and European officials. Key to bringing Israel on board is a promise by the US to adopt a much tougher line with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons programme... In return, the Israeli government will be expected to agree to a partial freeze on the construction of settlements in the Middle East. In the words of one official close to the negotiations: "The message is: Iran is an existential threat to Israel; settlements are not."... Obama has pencilled in the announcement of his breakthrough for either a meeting of world leaders at the UN general assembly in New York in the week beginning 23 September or the G20 summit in Pittsburgh on 24-25 September.

And here's a different perspective that we might call - again for no particular reason - "what's actually going on:"

Several sources have informed One Jerusalem that the Obama Administration is planning to significantly step up the pressure on Israel by announcing a comprehensive plan for Israel and the Palestinians at the opening of the United Nations General in September. Picture this: The anti-Israel nations of the world surrounding President Obama as he demands that Israel give up sovereignty over Jerusalem, abandon settlements, and recognize a terrorist state on the West Bank. If this happens, Israel will be isolated from the rest of world in a very dramatic manner.

If Obama is actually holding Israel hostage on Iran it would be breathtakingly mendacious. It wouldn't be unexpected - British officials were leaking exactly this trade as far back as July, with Clinton playing the bad cop and saying that "Israel may lose Arab support on Iran" - but it would still be out and out blackmail.

Now consider that this "give up your territory of face nuclear extinction" bargain is the least anti-Israel of whatever Obama's got cooked up for the UN opening. Almost difficult to understand why only 4% of Israelis think he's is pro-Israel.

Which is weird because the functionally interchangeable cluster of pro-Obama liberal groups - J-Street, MJ Rosenberg's IPF, the NJDC, etc - have indicated that you'd have to be a total wingnut idiot not to realize that The One is a huge fan of the Jewish State.

References:
* Barack Obama on brink of deal for Middle East peace talks [Guardian]
* ALERT :: OBAMA PLANNING ISRAEL AMBUSH AT OPENING OF UN ASSEMBLY! [One Jerusalem]
* World may back Iran op as part of deal [JPost]
* Clinton: 'Israel may lose Arab support on Iran' [JPost]
* Poll: 4 percent of Jewish Israelis see Obama as pro-Israel [JTA]

Previously:
* Obama's Anti-Israel Diplomacy Spectacularly Fails To Win Even A Single Arab Or Muslim Concessions
* Obama: Israel Must "Engage In Serious Self-Reflection"
* Obama State Dept To Israel: You'll Open Your Borders To Who We Say You'll Open Your Borders To

Just so everyone's clear: for the purposes of pressuring Israel to give away territory, there is a timeless distinction between Palestinian land and Israeli land. But when it comes to letting random Israel-hating US citizens wander between terrorist havens and Israeli cities - well, it's all just land, ya know?

The United States said Wednesday it had complained to Israel about restrictions on the travel of US citizens of Palestinian origin, calling the measures "unacceptable." The State Department said that Israel has been issuing entry stamps for some travelers, mostly those of Arab ancestry, stating that they are only allowed in the Palestinian Authority and cannot transit through Israel.

"We have made it quite known to the Israeli government ... that we expect all American citizens to be treated the same regardless of their national origin," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. "These kinds of restrictions we consider unacceptable," Kelly told reporters. "We will continue to protest."... Israeli authorities recently started to stamp in visitors' passports whether they are heading to Israel or the Palestinian territories, potentially preventing them from traveling to both.

Interesting. Usually the US asks Israel not to stamp passports because intransigent Arab states bounce travelers with Israeli stamps, making it harder for US citizens to get into those countries. That's a policy State is presumably not "continuing to protest." Now they're asking Israel not to stamp passports because it makes it difficult for genuinely suspicious US citizens "of Palestinian origin" - and believe it or not, such people do exist - to move between Gaza and Israel at their leisure.

The policy isn't racist, the AFP's implicit smear by omission aside. It very emphatically extends to moonbat activists who want to burn Israeli flags with terrorists in the morning and chain themselves to a Jerusalem building at night. It's not exactly hard to understand why Israel wants to limit their movement.

There's an easy solution to this though. If the choice is all or nothing - Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza or no entrance at all - well, that almost solves itself doesn't it?

References:
* US complains to Israel on Palestinian-American entry rules [AFP]
* State Dept Importing 1,350 Palestinian Saddam Supporters From Iraq Into Southern California [MR]

Previously:
* Obama Alienates The Israeli Left: "He Has Spoken About Us But Not To Us"
* Obama's Top NSA And CIA Picks: Harsh On Israel, Sympathetic To Iran And Hezbollah
* State Dept. Banning Pro-Israel Obama Officials From Speaking Out

Can you believe these guys?

The United States and the European Union hit out Monday at Israel for evicting Palestinian families from east Jerusalem, warning that such moves endangered the Middle East peace process. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led the international condemnation, labelling the evictions "deeply regrettable" and "provocative" and accusing Israel of failing to live up to its international obligations under existing peace initiatives. "I have said before that the eviction of families and demolition of homes in east Jerusalem is not in keeping with Israeli obligations," Clinton told reporters.

This coming from an administration that led an international campaign to pressure Israel to keep Jews out of homes they had legally purchased in East Jerusalem. That apparently didn't count as "deeply regrettable," presumably because ostensible ethnic cleansing is only "provocative" when it's done against non-Jews.

Not that this eviction is ethnic cleansing. Israel allows Arab families to legally purchase homes anywhere in Jerusalem, the emphasis on legality being an unfortunate byproduct of living under the democratic rule of law. The Israeli Supreme Court - which in the same session once OK'd the demolition of Jewish settlements in Gaza but halted the destruction of a suicide bomber's house - firmly ruled that the Arab ownership documents were forged and that the homes legally belong to Sephardic Jews. I understand that the Obama administration is uninclined to defer to the the Supreme Courts of other sovereign nations - cf. Zelaya, removal of - but they actually are kind of important.

The stuff about demanding a total ban on Israeli Jews legally moving back into the Old City, where Jews have lived continuously for thousands of years minus the 19 years when Jordan kept the city Jew-free - that actually does count as ethnic cleansing.

Here's how CSM choose to cover the story:

It was 13-year-old Diala who was awoken first, just after 5 a.m. on Sunday morning, by the commotion outside. She rushed to the window, saw special riot police in black uniforms, and ran to wake her parents. By the time she did, the Israeli police were already breaking in through doors and windows, forcing the 17-member Hanoun family - three brothers, their wives, and children - to leave the home their relatives acquired a half-century ago. In all, 58 Palestinians were evicted in this predominantly Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah. Though they had received - and refused to obey - a court order in May to leave after losing a longstanding dispute over property rights, it was still a shock.

Therein follow two extended paragraphs worth of quotes from the oh-so-put-upon, illegally squatting children and parents. This is exactly the kind of coverage that the Jewish residents of Gaza got when they were evicted by the Israeli government so Palestinians could have land for their own state. Except those Jewish were residing in homes that had been legally purchased. And they had a reasonable expectation of government protection. And they actually got the opposite kind of media coverage. But except for that, identical.

I do like the touch of opening the article with "it was 13-year-old Diala who was awoken first." The writer can't possibly know that and it's totally irrelevant and it only serves to muddy a century-old juridical controversy, exactly reversing what good journalism is supposed to accomplish. But it's a nice bit of shameless anti-Israel journalism, so you have to admire it on an aesthetic level if nothing else.

References:
* Clinton leads condemnation of Jerusalem evictions [AFP]
* Attacks On Israeli Sovereignty Over Jerusalem Coalescing After Obama's Broadside [MR]
* Netanyahu To Obama: Actually, We're Going To Keep Letting Jews Build Homes In Jerusalem [MR]
* Israel defends Jerusalem evictions [CNN]
* Evicted Palestinians stand their ground - on thin mattresses [CSM]

Previously:
* Flashback: Candidate Obama Doubles Down On His AIPAC Commitment To An Undivided Jerusalem
* Reader Poll: Which Israeli City Will Obama Try To Ban Jews From Next?
* AP: US Pressuring Jews Who Live In "Traditionally Arab East Jerusalem"

As of this morning: Iran is holding three American civilians, Saudi Arabia says that they won't make any gestures toward Israel, Syria is insisting on a series of non-starters as preconditions for talks, the oh-so-moderate Fatah party is about to harden their party line to match Obama's anti-Israel stance, and Hamas is threatening to boycott Palestinian unity talks because of whatever today's pretext is.

At least the US didn't spend the week pressuring Israel in an attempt to curry favor with the Arab and Muslim world:

The US demand for an Israeli settlement freeze remains unchanged, Mideast envoy George Mitchell told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at his Ramallah headquarters on Monday evening, according to Palestinian official Saaeb Erekat, who took part in the talks. "Mitchell told Abbas that contrary to what has been said in the mass media there is no agreement with the Israeli side on anything," Erekat told reporters. Another Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to divulge Mitchell's comments to Palestinian leaders, said the US envoy reported that while there had been some progress in his talks with the Israelis on the issue, gaps remain.

Good. Because creating unreasonable expectations on one side and historically unprecedented distrust on the other is the way to move negotiations forward. Smart power!

References and previously after the jump...

References:
* Iran confirms detaining three US hikers [JPost]
* Saudi FM: No gestures toward Israel [JPost]
* Assad: Golan issue non-negotiable [YNet]
* 'Fatah conference to harden party line' [JPost]
* Obama's Anti-Israel Posture Undermining The Peace Process, Hardening Palestinian Demands [MR]
* Hamas threatens to boycott Cairo talks [JPost]
* 'US settlement-halt demand unchanged' [JPost]

Previously:
* Former Peace Process Diplomats To Obama: Renewed Peace Process Guaranteed To Fail
* Obama Alienates The Israeli Left: "He Has Spoken About Us But Not To Us"
* NYT: Israel Is Kind Of Undermining Obama's Diplomacy, Isn't It?

This keeps getting better and better:

[Oren] then went on to suggest that, now more than ever, the US may need the relationship - even its dispensing of dollars - more than Israel does. Oren reminded the crowd that by long-standing, tacit agreement Israel turns right around and spends most of the two billion in the "company store", i.e. in the US arms industry, thereby keeping Americans who work at places like Lockheed in jobs. He pointed out that the US economy was floundering while Israel's was smoking, that Israel had even recently stepped in to buy large blocks of dollars in an effort to prop up the currency so that American tourists could keep buying trinkets at the Dead Sea, and that the US, having decimated its own security services, was heavily dependent on foreign intelligence services like the Mossad.

Obama's determination to detonate the US-Israel alliance is already having a chilling effect on US-Israeli military ties. It's only a matter of time before the mutual distrust spreads into the intelligence community. It shouldn't be a problem though: I'm sure Obama's new-found popularity in Syria will forge the kind of long-lasting regional cooperation that makes up the shortfall.

After all, we're going to peel Syria out of Iran's orbit.

References:
* Why America needs Israel more than Israel needs America [Telegraph]
* Figures: Obama's Manufactured Spat Undermining US-Israeli Military Cooperation, IDF Action Against Iran [MR]
* Syria Responds To Obama's Outreach By Strengthening Ties With Iran [MR]

Previously:
* Obama Alienates The Israeli Left: "He Has Spoken About Us But Not To Us"
* Obama Gearing Up To Present Ultimatum To Israel, Detonate US-Israel Alliance
* Israeli Newspapers Not Very Hopeful About Impending Change In US-Israel Alliance

A more cynical blogger might be tempted to characterize this policy barrage - being delivered to Israel by not one, not two, not three, but four different senior White House envoys - as "suffocation:"

The Obama administration is dispatching four of its most senior foreign policy and security figures to Israel this coming week with the same message on two open questions causing friction between the close allies: Don't do it. Taking a firmer line with Israel than the Bush administration, President Barack Obama is urging Israel to stop all settlement construction in the West Bank or risk closing off the most promising avenues for peace negotiations. Washington also wants Israel to shelve any plan for a military strike to sabotage Iran's nuclear facilities, arguing that Obama's offer of engagement and talks with Iran deserves time to bear fruit.

I like how Clinton is trying to offer up assurances about Iran at the exact same time that the White House is brazenly ignoring past US agreements on settlements. That should be persuasive.

Alan Dershowitz said that if I voted for McCain we'd never have a pro-Israel liberal in the White House. He was right.

References:
* US: Parade of officials to caution Israel [AP]
* Clinton says Israel should be patient on Iran [AP]

Previously:
* Reader Poll: Which Israeli City Will Obama Try To Ban Jews From Next?
* Awesome: Obama Now Wrecking Israel's Economy Too
* Israeli Officials: Hey, Do You Think That Maybe Obama's Going To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship?

I'm genuinely curious. There has been a continuous Jewish presence in East Jerusalem for all but 19 of the last 1,000 years. It's actually a lot longer than 1,000 years but I choose that number because it's a figure everyone can agree on:

At the turn of the 20th century the Jewish population of the quarter reached 19,000... In 1948 during the Arab-Israeli War, its population of about 2,000 Jews was besieged, and forced to leave en masse... As the dawn of Friday, May 28, 1948, was about to break, the Jewish Quarter emerged convulsed in a black cloud... The Jordanian commander who led the operation is reported to have told his superiors: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible."

Nonetheless Obama seems intent on leading a global effort to ban Jews from moving back into the Old City, despite a well-publicized campaign by Fatah and Hamas to buy up land all over Jerusalem with Saudi cash. So I'm just wondering what other Israeli cities The One thinks should be cleansed of Jews.

References:
* Netanyahu To Obama: Actually, We're Going To Keep Letting Jews Build Homes In Jerusalem [MR]
* Attacks On Israeli Sovereignty Over Jerusalem Coalescing After Obama's Broadside [MR]
* Do Obama's Jewish Backers Have Any Red Lines? [Tobin]

Previously:
* Obama Complains: It's A Media-Fueled "Misperception" That I'm Trying To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship
* Obama: Israel Must "Engage In Serious Self-Reflection"
* Flashback: Candidate Obama Doubles Down On His AIPAC Commitment To An Undivided Jerusalem

This is what foreign policy experts would call "diplomatic momentum." It's what the rest of us call "starting a fight and then stepping back so you don't have to take the blame." Although Obama's Israel policy is such a diplomatic train wreck in so many ways that I'm almost willing to believe this was unintentional. Almost:

On the brink of this flood of top US officials, one senior Israeli source noted with satisfaction that the US administration's response to Netanyahu's pledge to continue building in east Jerusalem despite American opposition was relatively low-key... But if the US response was relatively low-key, Russia, France and Germany all called on Israel on Tuesday to stop all settlement construction, including construction in east Jerusalem, creating what one Israeli source called "unpleasant momentum."

"The settlement should be stopped immediately in line with the road map," AFP quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko as saying, in reference to the plan to build 20 housing units in Sheikh Jarrah. The French media reported that its Foreign Ministry would summon Israeli Ambassador Daniel Shek to protest the plan, and in Germany Reuters quoted Ruprecht Polenz, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, as saying Israel ran the risk "of gradually committing suicide as a democratic state" if it did not stop the construction. Polenz, head of the German parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Rheinische Post daily, "Israel is overlooking the fact that neither Palestinians nor Arab states will agree to a solution without east Jerusalem."

Well you know: the Palestinians who left Israel in 1948 because advancing Arab armies told them to wait elsewhere while they annihilated the local Jewish population - they have "legitimate grievances" related to their "right of return." But the thousands of Jews who were cleansed from Jerusalem while Jordanian generals bragged that "for the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter" - they don't get to move into Israel's capital because it would impinge on Arab sensibilities. Poor babies.

And for what it's worth, were I the head of the German parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, I would avoid talking about "solutions" that involve keeping entire neighborhoods Jew-free.

References:
* Obama Alienates The Israeli Left: "He Has Spoken About Us But Not To Us" [MR]
* Obama's Anti-Israel Posture Undermining The Peace Process, Hardening Palestinian Demands [MR]
* US says sanctions on Israel 'premature' [JPost]
* Netanyahu To Obama: Actually, We're Going To Keep Letting Jews Build Homes In Jerusalem [MR]

Previously:
* Obama: Israel Must "Engage In Serious Self-Reflection"
* Awesome: Obama Now Wrecking Israel's Economy Too
* Figures: Obama's Manufactured Spat Undermining US-Israeli Military Cooperation, IDF Action Against Iran

At first I was hopeful that academics could at least use Obama's Middle East peacemaking for textbook chapters like "how not to conduct negotiations." Then I realized that case studies are only really useful when there are one or two notable features and everything else is held constant. When you're Obama and you've repeatedly screwed up in ways unimaginable only a few months ago - that's just plain useless.

Ehud Olmert, April 2008:

It was clear from day one to Abbas, Rice and Bush that construction would continue in population concentrations - the areas mentioned in Bush's 2004 letter... I say this again today: Beitar Illit will be built, Gush Etzion will be built; there will be construction in Pisgat Ze'ev and in the Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. It's clear that these areas will remain under Israeli control in any future settlement.

Despite this oh-so-outrageous-outrage, the Palestinians kept negotiating. They negotiated so much that they actually started bragging about the progress they were making. And why not? Everyone's assumed for a long time that Israel has a free hand in the West Bank areas that will remain Israeli in any future deal.

Then Obama decided to deploy some of his smart power.

First he went out of his way to overturn past Us assurances about the settlement blocs. Above and beyond destroying all trust that any ally could ever have in US guarantees, the weird move also had the upshot of causing the Palestinians to incoproate that into their negotiating stance:

Abbas [restated] the PLO's expectations of a complete return to pre-1967 borders, the right of return of Palestinians to Israel proper, and Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, and in addition demanded a complete freeze of construction in the Jewish communities strewn around the West Bank. Toameh said that the Palestinians, like Netanyahu, were looking to buy time."I think they know that nothing is going to come out of these talks and they see the clash between Netanyahu and Obama," he said, adding that the Palestinians secretly hoped their position might increase pressure by the Obama administration on Israel.

That new total freeze precondition was given as the excuse for rejecting Netanyahu's offer to resume peace negotiations.

Then Obama - having demanded a freeze on all settlement construction - upended decades of implicit understandings and declared that East Jerusalem is a settlement just like any other. Which is to say, construction in East Jerusalem had to be frozen as well. This was pure imperial whimsy on Obama's part. The State Department doesn't even count East Jerusalem neighborhoods when they tabulate settlements. He basically made it up.

The Palestinians reacted - surprise - by adopting that the demand as a precondition:

This morning's One Jerusalem conference call was with George Gilder, the Reaganomics revolutionary who's now a capitalism and technology guru. His new book is the The Israel Test. The book's argument is two-fold, per a couple of Gilder's lines from the conference call: "Israel's technologies lead the world today" and Israel is hated precisely because "what Israel does is the best in the world." Israel is despised not because of where it supposedly fails - human rights violations, occupation, etc - but because of where it's most successful - capitalism. The left's blind and irrational anti-Israel fanaticism is driven by pure, old fashioned resentment.

The audio from the call should be on the One Jerusalem frontpage soon enough. You should at least take 5 minutes to listen to Gilder's synopsis of the book - clear, concise, powerful. In the meantime other bloggers from the call - Carl from Israel Matzav, Clyde Middleton from Patriotroom.com, and Rick Richman from Jewish Current Issues - will probably also post their thoughts.

Gilder's Israel Test has a relatively precise definition:

The [Israel] test can be summarized by a few questions: What is your attitude toward people who excel you in the creation of wealth or in other accomplishments? Do you aspire to their excellence or do you seethe at it? Do you admire and celebrate exceptional achievement or do you impugn it and seek to tear it down?

In a lot of ways the book takes Gilder's old argument that anti-capitalism emerges out of old-fashioned vulgar resentment and applies it to the contemporary Middle East. That a lot of anti-capitalism is tied up in ugly envy is pretty straightforward. You can see it in the eyeroll-inducing schadenfreude that erupted across Europe last year:

The spectacle of highly paid American bankers falling on their faces inspired smug lectures from afar about the reckless pursuit of profits, disdain for regulation, and manic risk-taking that characterize U.S.-style capitalism. The tsk-tsk-ing reached a new level with a cover story in the German newsweekly Der Spiegel, "The End of Arrogance": "The banking crisis is upending American dominance of the financial markets and world politics." The piece notes the delicious irony of the United States having to nationalize parts of its financial system. "The Americans are now paying the price for their pride," it notes. "Gone are the days when the U.S. could go into debt with abandon." Gone, too, are the days of "turbo-capitalism" imposing its mores of "avarice and greed" on the global economy.

It's a vicious cycle. Hatred of Israel, a shining jewel of the free market, fuels anti-capitalism. Anti-capitalism, which gives the Jewish State breathing room to excel, fuels anti-Semitic resentment.

This is an administration obsessed with winning hearts and minds. The State Department has gone so far as to appoint a super-special "representative to Muslim communities," a woman who can devote her full time to the global apology tours that Bush's public diplomacy envoy Karen Hughes used to embark on. Obama has spoken to the entire Muslim world, sought to curry favor with the African continent wholesale, and assured the Europeans that - though he doesn't speak their languages - he's at least embarrassed about that. In every corner of the globe The One has personally offered his Hope and Change Gospel to all people of all creeds.

Except to Israelis:

Obama did not try to communicate with the Israeli public and convince them that freezing settlements will be an important and positive step to contribute to peace and a better future. Obama addressed the Arabs and Muslims, but not the Israelis. His neglect increased concerns among Israelis that they do not have a friend in the White House. When the president is "Hussein," he is perceived as being pro-Arab and picking on Netanyahu. The administration's pathetic attempt to deny the existence of understandings with Israel on construction in the settlements only bolstered this impression. It was possible to blame Israel for violating its promises, or to say that the policy had changed and to explain why, but not to lie.

Obama's concern for public diplomacy - such an important emphasis when he justifies sucking up to anti-woman, anti-gay, undemocratic, illiberal terrorist states - somehow evaporates when he's dealing with Israel:

With all of Obama's goodwill and all-embracing ambition, there is something naive, not to say infuriating, about his policy of rapprochement and about the whistle stops he has chosen on his travels dealing with our issue. He spoke in Turkey, he spoke in Egypt, he appeared before students in Saudi Arabia, in Paris, in England, in Ghana and in Australia. Even there the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was mentioned. His plan to begin rapprochement with Iran, which openly threatens to destroy Israel, and to reassure its fanatic leadership, which cruelly suppresses any attempt by the younger generation to get rid of the regime of the ayatollahs, is delusional. The only place where he hasn't been is as president Israel. He has spoken about us, but not to us.

That's from Yoel Marcus, an unrepentant Israeli leftist with no love for settlements or for the Israeli right. That's why even public diplomacy experts like Marc Lynch - a guy who recently blasted Biden for suggesting that Israel had the right to defend itself against Iran - are sounding the alarm about Obama's lack of outreach:

The vast majority of this article by Ha'aretz military affairs correspondent Amir Oren deals with how Israel contributes to US intelligence and US military readiness. But then at the end there's this:

Brun heads the Dado Center for military thinking in Glilot. He is known to take part in American war games that focus on "hybrid threats" posed by semi-guerilla and semi-military groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Brun lectures on the lessons learned by the IDF in Lebanon and Gaza within the context of the West's struggle with countries like Iran, Syria, and Iraq... The weakness in Israeli-American relations stems from the rift at the top. Without prior planning by the military bodies, diplomatic coordination will be of no benefit, not even the partial, limited coordination that we saw during the 1991 war. But the Israeli prime minister's bickering with the U.S. president over the nonsense surrounding the settlements is harming the IDF's capability in dealing with its most vital missions.

Bad for IDF, obviously. But not exactly great for the US either. Israeli technology has been used to kill al-Zarqawi and to escalate the Afghan drone war that's now beginning to pay dividends.

No worries. I'm sure this will all be worth it when Obama's pressure on Isreal brings peace to the Middle East.

References:
* Amir Oren / Netanyahu-Obama spat harming IDF capability on Iran [Ha'aretz]
* Reload this Page Israeli technologies used to kill al-Zarqawi [Israel Forum]
* Israeli Drones Over Afghanistan [Danger Room]

Previously:
* The WH's Eight-Step Plan For Detonating The US-Israel Relationship
* Obama Complains: It's A Media-Fueled "Misperception" That I'm Trying To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship
* Obama: Israel Must "Engage In Serious Self-Reflection"

There was Obama's AIPAC speech where he supported an undivided Jerusalem, which liberal Jewish groups immediately printed on literally millions of pamphlets and sent to low-information Jewish voters looking for an excuse to vote Democratic. Then there was Obama's immediate flip-flop when he came under "Palestinian pressure," which for some reason didn't get as much public attention.

But then there was the reversal of the reversal a few days later, where the campaign insisted that Obama would not interfere with Jerusalem, that "Israel has a legitimate claim on" the Old City, and that "no one should want or expect [Jerusalem] to be redivided:"

In an interview today with CNN's Candy Crowley, Obama said of Jerusalem, "obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations." Of his feelings about dividing Jerusalem, Obama said: "As a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute. And I think that it is smart for us to -- to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city."...

The Obama campaign put a reporter in immediate contact with Rep. Robert Wexler... who told ABC News, "that is not backtracking." "His position has been the same for the past 16 months," Wexler said. "He believes Jerusalem should be an undivided city and must be the capital of a Jewish state of Israel. He has also said... that Jerusalem is of course a 'final status' issue," meaning it would be one of the key and final points of negotiation for a Palestinian state. "And Sen. Obama as president would not dictate final status issues. He will permit the Palestinians and Israel to negotiate, and he would respect any conclusion they reach."...

And in these answers to questions from the American Jewish Committee, Obama wrote that the U.S. "cannot dictate the terms of a final status agreement. We should support the parties as they negotiate these difficult issues, but they will have to reach agreements that they can live with. In general terms, clearly Israel must emerge in a final status agreement with secure borders. Jerusalem will remain Israel's capital, and no one should want or expect it to be redivided."

Obama's new approach of counting East Jerusalem as a settlement is a break with previous administrations. It's not that the US explicitly recognized Israel's rights to an undivided capital, though Obama obviously promised as much during the campaign. It's just that the status of the Old City - which had been cleansed of thousands of Jews by the Jordanians before Israel captured it and let them return - was never an issue. The State Department doesn't even count those neighborhoods when they tabulate settlements. It's just never been a thing before now. Obama just made it up.

Netanyahu, for his part, has had enough:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, responding to the reports that Washington had asked Israel not to build 20 apartments in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in east Jerusalem, near Mount Scopus and the National Police headquarters, said, "I would like to reemphasize that united Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel. Our sovereignty over it cannot be challenged; this means - inter alia - that residents of Jerusalem may purchase apartments in all parts of the city. "This has been the policy of all Israeli governments and I would like to say that it is indeed being implemented because in recent years hundreds of apartments in Jewish neighborhoods and in the western part of the city have been purchased by - or rented to - Arab residents and we did not interfere," he said.

The original article had Netanyahu quite a bit more piqued, talking about how Obama had crossed a "red line" by denying Jewish sovereignty over its ancient capital.

One last flashback:

This is getting kind of tired isn't it?

A senior US defense official has told The Jerusalem Post that an Israeli strike on Iran could be profoundly destabilizing and would affect US interests. Israel needed to take its relationship with America into account in contemplating any such attack, he warned... In his interview with the Post at the Pentagon, the senior US defense official also suggested that Syria might be ready to "fundamentally" reorient its position toward the United States, which would include restarting talks with Israel, at a time when Hamas and Hizbullah have been put "on the defensive" by Obama administration policies and events in Iran.

Those events, said the official, who insisted on anonymity, hadn't been seen to affect Iran's timeline on developing nuclear weapons. What was clear, he indicated, was the negative effect an Israeli strike would have. "A unilateral third-party attack on Iran's nuclear program could have profoundly destabilizing consequences, and it wouldn't just affect the general level of stability in the region. It would affect Israel's security and it would affect our interests, and the safety of our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere," the official said, when asked if the US expected Israel to inform it of any decision to strike Iran. "It's a pretty big deal, and given the closeness of our relationship with Israel, I think we would hope that they would take those strategic calculations into account."

At least when the administration trotted out surrogates like Brzezinski and Gates and Biden to threaten Israel, they did it in terms of raw power politics: Obama is determined to have talks with Iran and if Israel screws that up by defending itself there's going to be hell to pay. It's an unseemly way to treat an ally in pursuit of a fundamentally naive and morally unjustifiable policy - but it's not dishonest. Conservatives insisted that Obama was selling out Israel for a plan that would never work and the election proved the administration was misguided - but still, the argument wasn't dishonest.

Now that it's become undeniable that conservatives were right, Obama's anti-Israel team needs a new set of excuses for keeping Israel on a leash. So now it's "Syria might be willing to reorient itself," which is false. And it's "Hamas is on the defensive," which is also the opposite of true. And it's "Iran will attack our forces in Iraq," which is already happening.

An obnoxious, dishonest regression from the administration's earlier vacuous realpolitik. Change!

Not that any of this matters. Another couple months and there won't be a US-Israel relationship to shred, which will free up Netanyahu to act in Israel's self-interest. Of course Israel will unblinkingly be blamed for detonating the alliance anyway. But only someone like Roger Cohen would be willing to write about a break in relations one week and then pretend that Israeli self-defense caused a rift the next.

I'm pretty FP blogger David Rothkopf just came to the same conclusion, which is what caused him to tell liberal foreign policy specialists to "be careful what [they] wish for." Sure it feels good to come out of an 8 year exile in think tanks and departments to slap around Israel for a while. But maybe someone should consider the consequences of putting a nuclear-armed erstwhile ally in a do-or-die position.

References and previously after the jump...

Obama's brilliant plan of reviving long-dormant Arab fantasies regarding Israel's destruction is encouraging entities like the Palestinian Authority and countries like Saudi Arabia to run out the clock and wait for the US to abandon the Jewish State. Which is exactly what you'd expect. Which begs the question of what Obama could possibly have been thinking when he signaled that he intends to detonate the US-Israel alliance:

Sources say Obama was hoping to persuade the king to be ready to show reciprocal gestures to Israel, which Washington has been pushing to halt settlements with the goal of advancing regional peace and the creation of a Palestinian state. "The more time goes by, the more the Saudi meeting was a watershed event," said the former U.S. official who recently traveled to Riyadh. "It was the first time that President Obama as a senator, candidate, or president was not able to get almost anything or any movement using his personal power of persuasion."

"The bottom line is that the Saudis were not prepared," the former official continued, for Obama to ask them to take steps toward Israel. Obama changed his trip to go to Saudi Arabia, he pointed out. "Senior sources in the Saudi national security team," he said, "think the president's trip was poorly prepared." From their perspective, "he was coming and asking them for big favors with no preparation," but "the Saudis never give big" in that situation. The former official said that Ross has told associates that Obama was "upset" about the meeting "because he got nothing out of it." Ross didn't respond to a query.

What I really want to know is which member of Obama's team - undoubtedly working off something that some prince said at some reception - assured the President that Justice's pro-Saudi stance in the 9/11 lawsuit would translate into concessions elsewhere. I'm curious to figure out how many members of the White House Iran Lobby are following Chas Freeman's lead and also carrying water for the Saudis.

Smart power!

References and previously after the jump...

Jordan captured East Jerusalem in 1948 and expelled all surviving Jews from the city. Meanwhile Israel - being Israel - had no problem letting Arabs own homes in West Jerusalem. Israel then reunited the city in 1967, allowing anybody to purchase property anywhere. Arabs continued to buy land in the western part of the city and Jews began to move back to the portions Jordan had occupied. Theoretically this is what we call a "free market" in a "free country" where people live under the "rule of law."

Unfortunately the Palestinians find Jews kind of icky so they're complaining to the White House about a new cluster of Israeli apartments in East Jerusalem. The State Department dutifully summoned Israel's ambassador to deliver Obama's stern warning: "no letting Jews live move into the capital of the Jewish State!" This is working out about as well as you'd expect:

Jerusalem is the "unified capital of Israel and the capital of the Jewish people, and sovereignty over it is indisputable," Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday, responding to an American demand to put an end to a housing project to be built in east Jerusalem. "Hundreds of apartments in the west of the city were purchased by Arabs and we didn't get involved. There is no prohibition against Arab residents buying apartments in the west of the city and there is no prohibition barring the city's Jewish residents from buying or building in the east of the city," Netanyahu added at the weekly cabinet meeting. "That is the policy of an open city that is not divided."...

Netanyahu's remarks came after Israel's Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren was summoned to the US State Department over the weekend and was told that the Obama administration wanted Israel to put an end to construction work at the site of the historic Shepherd's Hotel in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The summons came following a complaint by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who reportedly told the Americans that allowing Jewish housing in the neighborhood would shift the demographic balance in east Jerusalem.

Obama is such a delicate statesman isn't he?

But I can understand how the Palestinians would be bummed about the return of Jews to the Old City. During the mid-20th century the Arab world was pretty psyched about how they had successfully and permanently cleansed the ancient Jewish Quarter of Jews. So from a strictly genocidal perspective, this whole thing has to be kind of disappointing:

At the turn of the 20th century the Jewish population of the quarter reached 19,000... In 1948 during the Arab-Israeli War, its population of about 2,000 Jews was besieged, and forced to leave en masse. Colonel Abdullah el Tell, local commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion, with whom Mordechai Weingarten negotiated the surrender terms, described the destruction of the Jewish Quarter, in his Memoirs (Cairo, 1959): "... The operations of calculated destruction were set in motion.... I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews who caused their fighters a good deal of interference and difficulty.... I embarked, therefore, on the shelling of the Quarter with mortars, creating harassment and destruction.... Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it.... As the dawn of Friday, May 28, 1948, was about to break, the Jewish Quarter emerged convulsed in a black cloud - a cloud of death and agony."...

The Jordanian commander who led the operation is reported to have told his superiors: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible."

Since the Jews were never going to return, it seemed natural to the Jordanians to destroy 34 out of the 35 ancient synagogues and use them as hen-houses, to rip up ancient Jewish gravestones and use them for roads, and to turn the ancient Western Wall into a garbage dump. So Obama's peons to demographic balance - super persuasive!

References:
* 'We won't halt J'lem housing project' [JPost]
* Jewish Quarter [Wiki]

Previously:
* Palestinians: Jews Infesting Jerusalem With Giant Racist Attack Rats
* New One Jerusalem Video, Site Show Consequences Of Post-Annapolis Hamas Takeover Of Jerusalem [Video, Hebrew]
* The Costs of Giving Up Jerusalem

Well naturally. Israelis disagree with The One's grandiose plans for carving up their country so obviously the problem is that they haven't thought about it enough:

U.S. President Barack Obama met with 15 American Jewish leaders at the White House for the first time on Monday. The president and the Jewish officials huddled for talks aimed at clearing the air following allegations that his administration was taking a tough line with Israel over settlement activity. At the meeting, Obama told the leaders that he wants to help Israel overcome its demographic problem by reaching an agreement on a two-state solution, but that in order to do so, Israel would need "to engage in serious self-reflection."

That's the problem with Israel. No self-reflection. That's why the Israeli press is regularly lauded as the freest in the Middle East and one of the most diverse in the world. It's why the anti-settler left is a constant media fixture. And it's why the pro-peace Labor party is in the ruling coalition. Zero self-reflection.

Basic fact: since Obama took office the US has rolled back diplomatic and military ties with Israel and expanded diplomatic and military ties with the Palestinians. Anyone who implies otherwise is lying.

And anyone who voted for Obama on the basis of his ostensible sympathy for the plight of the besieged and rocket-weary Jewish State is an idiot.

References:
* Obama to U.S. Jewish leaders: Israel must engage in self-reflection [Ha'aretz]
* It's Official: Obama Policy Triggers "Most Tense Encounter" In Years Between US And Israel (Plus: Can You Guess MR's Blind Item?) [MR]
* Obama Bundles $200 Million Palestinian Aid Into Emergency Iraq/Afghanistan Supplemental [MR]
* Abbas: Olmert Offered Us The West Bank And The Right Of Return, But It Wasn't Good Enough [MR]
* US Gen. Arming And Training Palestinian Troops: You Know, They Might Attack Israel [MR]

Previously:
* Obama Complains: It's A Media-Fueled "Misperception" That I'm Trying To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship
* Obama Gearing Up To Present Ultimatum To Israel, Detonate US-Israel Alliance
* Awesome: Obama Now Wrecking Israel's Economy Too

Even if his explanation about how he's also pressuring the Palestinians wasn't vacuous - and it is - "American pressure on Israel" is just a sideshow. The administration's genuine broadsides against the Jewish State have been (a) Obama's reversal of past diplomatic guarantees and (b) Obama's insistence that progress on Middle East instability, including Iranian nuclearization, is linked to Israeli territorial concessions. Some might add, from the Cairo speech, (c) Obama's minimization of the Jewish right to Israel and (d) Obama's juxtaposition of the Holocaust and the Israeli "occupation," but I think those had more to do with cheap moral equivalence than active diplomatic animus.

None of those could possibly be misperceptions of opaque negotiations since they are policy formulations based on words that came out of Obama's mouth as far back as the campaign. Obama's implication that Israel is responsible for the length and breadth of Middle East instability became an explicit policy when Emanuel linked progress on Iran to progress on the peace process.

But hey, if Obama didn't really say that Israeli concessions "strengthen our hand... in dealing with a potential Iranian threat" or, in reference to natural growth in settlement blocs, he didn't really say "it is time for these settlements to stop" - if he didn't say those things then I guess I might be suffering under media misperceptions.

Just on principle though, it's worth pointing out that even his shtick on the "pressure" sideshow was so unpersuasive that Obama-worshiping liberal Jewish leaders "still disagreed:"

Several representatives from the 14 Jewish groups that participated described Obama as blaming the media for the "misperception" that Israel needs to do more than the Arabs at this stage, equating it with a "man bites dog" story when the US criticizes Israel as opposed to the Arab states... Ira Forman of the National Jewish Democratic Committee, said Obama stressed he fully appreciated how difficult the challenges were. "He must have said a dozen times, 'This is really hard.' This is not sitting around the campfire singing kumbaya," said Forman, who praised the president's grasp on the complexities of the region. But Anti-Defamation League Director Abraham Foxman said that, for his part, while he was impressed with Obama's response, he still disagreed... Obama also indicated that US Middle East envoy George Mitchell and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were close to reaching an agreement on the settlements after weeks of shuttling back and forth.

The logical question - "if Mitchell isn't disproportionately applying pressure to Israel why is he holed up in meetings with Israel" - was presumably never asked. I'd also like to know which part of the media misled Israeli Minister of Intelligence Dan Meridor into throwing up his hands in disgust at how the Obama administration was abrogating past diplomatic agreements:

Ambitious!

Whatever the parameters of the settlement "freeze" ultimately agreed upon between Israel and the Obama administration, it is certain that the first to feel its effects will be the companies that build in the West Bank, where 2,500 units are currently in various stages of construction... Construction is one of Israel's largest and most central business sectors. The companies that build in the West Bank and stand to lose from a settlement freeze are some of the country's biggest and most well-known construction firms... with apartments selling for more than NIS 1 million and little hope for full government compensation, many of the companies are looking at possible losses of tens of millions of shekels. In an economy that is slowly emerging from a housing recession, a settlement freeze may mean smaller companies will go out of business.

Maybe some of those Israeli companies could shift their work to Gaza and the West Bank, given that the Obama administration is pouring over a billion dollars into those regions. Since the "tough love" approach to Israel and the "suck up" approach to the Palestinians is going to bring peace to the region, I'm sure that even Gaza's genocidal lunatics will be more than willing to hire Jews.

Anyway, the US and Israel have apparently worked out a deal settlements. The rumors are that Obama will only renege on some of the binding assurances that Bush gave to Sharon in exchange for Israel's disengagement. No word yet on whether that means Israel gets to take back some of the Gaza Strip.

References:
* Analysis: The financial fallout from a settlement freeze [JPost]
* Mere Rhetoric: Savages: Hamas Broadcasts Cartoon Mocking Shalit (UPDATED And BUMPED: Obama Wants Another $400m Next Year, Full Text Of Waxman Email Added) [MR]
* Adorable! Palestinian Kindergarteners Graduate, Do "Victory Dance" Around IDF Bodies. [MR]
* US, Israel settlement deal emerging [JPost]
* Abrams: Of Course There Was A Bush-Sharon Agreement On Settlements [MR]

Previously:
* State Dept. Banning Pro-Israel Obama Officials From Speaking Out
* Obama: We Must Achieve Peace By Forcing Israel To Give Up Jerusalem And Open Its Borders
* Israeli Officials: Hey, It's Almost As If Obama's Trying To Detonate The US-Israeli Relationship

You don't need to be all that smart to be an effective populist thug (Chavez, Ahmadinejad, etc). You really only need two instincts. You have to be able to smell weakness, just in general so you have a sense for what's possible. And you have to be able to pick out internal and external scapegoats that other people are willing to sacrifice, either in the name of unity or in the hope of quiet.

Ahmadinejad has all but ensured that Iran will become a nuclear power. First he did it by exposing the West as a paper tiger. Along the way he put the destruction of Israel back on the spectrum of public debate. Every brazen call for genocide created a drip drip drip effect that eroded public discourse and shifted the center of debate. Open "anti-Zionism" - which is really the call to destroy a democratic nation-state - is now just one of the things that people say.

The ostensible "middle ground" that liberal foreign policy elites chose was to insist that pressuring Israel will somehow fix Iran, presumably because Ahmadinejad seems really sincere when he says that Israel is the source of regional instability. The Obama White House being what it is, that linkage fetish is now official policy.

Which brings us to this article by Rick Richman:

Asked if EU diplomat Javier Solana was correct about the U.S. "announc[ing] its vision for peace in the Middle East before the end of July," Mitchell responded as follows... The noteworthy part of the response is Mitchell did not deny that an American peace plan is coming - soon. Obama appears to be following the five-year old advice of Rob Malley (his erstwhile foreign policy adviser), who in 2004 dismissed reliance on a step-by-step process and argued for a plan defining upfront "the shape of a permanent peace" to be pushed on the parties. Malley proposed that: "[T]he process ought to be turned on its head, with the U.S. seeking to describe the endgame at the outset and with the parties agreeing on the means of getting there afterward..." ...

In his brief period in office, Obama has refused to answer whether the U.S. is bound by the April 14, 2004 letter given to induce Israel to turn over Gaza to the Palestinians, and has reneged on five years of understandings about "natural growth" of existing settlements. His response to Israeli objections has effectively been "sue me" -- the understandings are not "enforceable." It is not an approach inspiring confidence in him as a reliable or principled ally.

The thing I like about this is how it's an elegant example of all the especially moronic parts of Obama's policymaking:

I was going to title this post "Abrams: I Can't Believe What A Shameless Liar Hillary Clinton Is"...

Despite fervent denials by Obama administration officials, there were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. As the Obama administration has made the settlements issue a major bone of contention between Israel and the U.S., it is necessary that we review the recent history.

... but Steve Rosen's take is a little more subtle. As opposed to seeing this as a straightforward continuation of decades of anti-Israel bait-and-switch diplomacy, he thinks that it's an extension of Bush-era battles that the anti-Israel side is now pretending they won:

A little history here will help to explain the contradiction between Abrams and Kurtzer. Abrams and Steve Hadley, the Deputy National Security Adviser to Bush at the time, crafted the settlements growth understandings. Dan Kurtzer, then U.S. Ambassador to Israel, opposed them. He confirmed to Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post in April 2008, that he had opposed accepting an April 2004 letter from Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, reconfirming U.S.-Israeli understandings that restrictions on the growth of settlements would be made "within the agreed principles of settlement activities"... So these dueling op-eds by Kurtzer and Abrams are a continuation of a policy war withing the Bush Administration, a war that Kurtzer lost at the time but is trying to win now.

So you see? This isn't just an unblinking campaign of anti-Israel diplomacy, complete with four consecutive days of Washington Post articles attacking Israel's position (including one that reached for Carter-era memos to discover an anti-Israel nugget!) There's also vindictive personal animus at stake.

Anyway, Clinton just explicitly said that East Jerusalem construction must stop as part of the administration's blanket ban on natural growth. Israeli officials were already in mild disbelief that the Obama administration would detonate a decades-old alliance over an issue as stupid as stopping natural, above and beyond how the position itself is counterproductive. Now they're just kind of like "well, if that's actually their stance, we suppose the US isn't really serious about the peace process after all."

And yes, of course there was a Bush agreement on settlements in exchange for Sharon's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. And of course the US is straightforwardly abrogating it, which makes a mockery of Obama's insistence that now Israel can afford to take risks for peace because this time US security assurances will be reliable.

References and previously after the jump...

I thought this lede would get published in early 2010 and I thought the exact wording would be "most severe crisis," but close enough:

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, clashed face to face with her Israeli counterpart on Wednesday as the two countries remained at loggerheads over the expansion of settlements in occupied territory. In what appeared one of the most tense encounters between the sides for several years, Mrs Clinton and Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister, disagreed on both the US call for a complete freeze on settlement growth and Israel's contention that the administration of George W. Bush, the former president, had signalled that some expansion was permissible.

I'm still in awe that, out of all the complicated regional issues in play, the Obama administration picked this pretext for detonating a multi-decade alliance. They could have gone for "lack of progress on the Israeli-Syrian track," which is directly linked to the Iran issue. They could have gone for "Israeli reluctance to arm Palestinian security forces," which the State Department has spent years setting up as a shining example of Israeli intransigence. But instead they choose "Israelis want to build porches in front of their houses." What the hell?

At least two possibilities:

(1) Obama really thinks that Palestinians will stop blowing up Israeli schoolchildren if Israelis stop building schools in West Bank cities like Ariel, where 20,000 Israelis live. The technical description for this fantasy is "blisteringly stupid," but given how Obama got his Middle East education it's not totally beyond the realm of possibility. I used to think he got his sense of the Israeli-Arab conflict from radical anti-Israel academics. That would explain why he thinks it's normal for people to sneer at "pro-Likud approaches to Israel," since "Likudnik" is a euphemism for "warmongering Jewish nationalist" in academic circles where "Zionist" has lost its sting.

But Steve Rosen recently made a solid case that Obama's views were shaped by American Jewish leftists. That makes even more sense. Obama's original pert quote was "there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel."

Begin with a West Bank population that, by the admission of the Palestinian President, is living "a good life." Then build up totally unrealistic expectations about a near-term state and arm them to the teeth as if those expectations were realistic.

Now turn around to the Israelis and say "well, it's true that when we were selling you on this plan we breezily assured you that Palestinian soldiers would never turn our weapons on Israelis - but you never know:"

Beyond Obama's timeline, over the past week, two other developments made it apparent that regardless of what Iran does, the Obama administration will not revise its policy of... weakening Israel rather than on stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons... US Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, who is responsible for training Palestinian military forces in Jordan, indicated that if Israel does not surrender Judea and Samaria within two years, the Palestinian forces he and his fellow American officers are now training at a cost of more than $300 million could begin killing Israelis. Assuming the veracity of Yediot's report, even more unsettling than Dayton's certainty that within a short period of time these US-trained forces could commence murdering Israelis, is his seeming equanimity in the face of the known consequences of his actions.

The stuff about Dayton is more or less true, though that's been obvious for a long time. But Glick is wrong to imply that this is an Obama policy. Giving security assistance to Fatah ideologues, who are supposed to use their weapons against fanatical but ideologically akin Hamas soldiers - that's a State Department and Pentagon project going back to the Bush administration.

Ditto for arming the Lebanese army, which is supposed to be taking on Hezbollah. Rice pushed that through during her time at State. If you've been nervously waiting for the announcement that the US assistance is getting turned against Israel, you can relax now. I wonder how soon US generals will be telling Israel to make territorial concessions to the Lebanese, lest US-trained and armed LAF soldiers regretfully forget that they're not supposed to target Israelis.

Back in Gaza and the West Bank, only Hamas has openly used hundreds of tons of captured US explosives against Israel. As of January 2009 they still hadn't run out. As far as US-trained Fatah soldiers go, they've only been caught training Hamas soldiers after their President threatened to return to armed struggle.

It's almost difficult to believe that the Israelis don't take US security assurances seriously any more.

References and previously after the jump...

The guy who spent the last decade equivocating between Israel and its intransigent neighbors is inclined to put the onus for peace on the Jewish State? And it's been obvious since at least the transition that he'd be the one pushing Obama's "even-handed" Middle East approach, which George Will describes as unworthy of America:

Will C George F. Will was the featured speaker at the dinner Monday evening at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, in celebration of the Claremont Review of Books... he took a few questions, including one that led him to reflect on President Obama's apparent belief that disharmony among nations results from misunderstandings that can be cured by dialogue and communication (and the force of his own personality) -- a view that Will characterized as reflecting a 1930s approach to foreign policy:

"They said 'Well, who would be best for Israel?' And I responded 'Of course it would be Ronald Reagan.' They said 'Why?' I said -- 'Two reasons: he believes in aircraft carriers. He believes in the projection of American power. Second, he is a romantic. He's got the story of Israel, plucky little Israel.' You need both. You need aircraft carriers and you need to appreciate the fact that Israel is an embattled salient of our values in a bad neighborhood. It is unworthy of the United States to aspire to be even-handed between those who would destroy and those who would preserve the only democracy in that region."

Give this to Mitchell - he's nothing if not consistent:

The regional agreement that the Obama administration is trying to push forward is not only about peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but also peace between Israel and both Syria and Lebanon, US special Middle East envoy George Mitchell said on Wednesday, on the eve of trips to both Beirut and Damascus. Mitchell's comments came at the outset of a meeting with opposition head Tzipi Livni that concluded two days of meetings in Israel and the Palestinian Authority... While the State Department's Jeffrey Feltman and the US National Security Council's Dan Shapiro have traveled to Syria twice since US President Barack Obama was sworn into office in January, this will be Mitchell's first visit to Damascus and - according to diplomatic sources - indicates an interest in involving Syria in the new US-propelled process.

Yes that agreement would include the strategically critical Golan Heights and no, the Arab states that Obama reached out to won't budge on even the most minor condition.

Interesting that Assad would meet with Obama's envoys during the election, pull back from peace negotiations until the Inauguration hoping for a better deal, and turn out to be right. He's just lucky I guess.

The Obama administration, by the by, spent $1 million to build Mitchell comfortable offices in Israel. Stephen Walt was pretty psyched, saying that it signaled that Obama would be downgrading the US-Israel alliance. Unsurprisingly, he also turned out to be right.

References and previously after the jump...

I don't know if this is standard operating procedure or not - it would be for the military, a half-decade of anti-Bush leaking aside - but it certainly has something of a whiff of stifling dissent. Via MR sister site Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched?

Dennis Ross, the U.S. Secretary of State's special adviser on Iran, says in a new book that the United States will not make progress toward peace in the Middle East with the Obama administration's new plan... Contrary to the position of the president and other advisers, Ross writes that efforts to advance dialogue with Iran should not be connected to the renewal of talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Other senior officials in the Obama administration told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his recent visit to Washington that Israeli gestures and the advancement of talks with the Palestinians will help the administration get Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. Because of Ross' position, his superiors at the State Department do not allow him to promote the book or be interviewed about it.

Unless I'm misreading that, it means that linkage is now the official position of the Obama administration. That's been predictable since the election, when the ostensibly pro-Israel Obama blamed Israel for the entire length and breadth of Middle East instability. But it's interesting to see it codified as official State Department policy.

It's also doesn't make much sense, except maybe as a way to put the US and Israel on a collision course. Even anti-Israel realists admit that Iran is going nuclear, at a minimum, because of: national pride ala the Pakistani Bomb, regional power projection, Sunni-Shiite tensions and the tramau of the Iran-Iraq War, and the cache that comes with being a member of the nuclear club. But at least the left is no longer blaming Iran's Manhattan Project on the US presence in Iran. I wonder why that meme got dropped so quickly.

It's also kind of neat how, any time Arab and Muslim nations want stall on something, it becomes Israel's fault. Convenient, that.

References:
* Dennis Ross vs. Obama: No link between Iran, Mideast peace [Ha'aretz]
* Clenched For Reasons That Have Nothing To Do With The Israeli-Arab Conflict [Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched?]
* New Palin Smear: She Supports Hamas (Plus: Obama's Anti-Israel FP Sensibility, Support From Hamas) [MR]
* 'US shouldn't link Iran, Palestinians' [JPost]
* Mathematical Proof That Negotiating With Iran Is Stupid. Not Wrong. Stupid. [MR]

Previously:
* US Security Assistance To Lebanon Already Being Turned Against Israel
* UNRWA: It's Israel's Fault That Our Schools Teach Kids To Be Terrorists
* Rice: Failure Of Peace Process Is Israel's Fault (Plus: The Two Dogmas Of Foreign Policy Faux Sophistication)

You think that the Yemenite Jews who are fleeing their homes of 2,500 years - do you think they're taking their keys with them, to be passed on from father to son for the next 60 years while the UN supplies them with room and board? And if so, do you think the AP will publish surreal agitprop to criticize Yemen for this clear cut human rights atrocity, the way they demonize Israel for an Arab dislocation that is at best historically murky? I'm thinking probably not:

Yemen is in danger of losing what's left of its Jewish community, which has called the country home for more than 2,500 years and provided its kings for a century. Growing intimidation and violence are pushing the 300 Jews left in the Arabian Peninsula country to flee to Israel or the U.S. Four months ago, a Muslim extremist gunned down Jewish-studies teacher Moshe Yaish Nahari, a father of nine, in the town of Raida, north of the capital of Sana'a.

I only ask because Obama is reaching out to these cretins to help him with his misguided plan to close Gitmo. Luckily they seem to be responding well:

An informed source in the Yemeni government welcomed on Friday speech of the President of the United States of America Barack Obama which he delivered in Cairo for the Islamic and Arab worlds. The source described the speech as balanced with regards to stances towards the Islamic religion and the Arab-Israeli conflict, specially adherence to the two-countries solution, the Palestinian and Israeli, stopping building settlements and his confession of the Palestinians' rights and that security of Israeli is linked to a just solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Less high on Yemen's list: closing the terrorist camps that their intelligence services use for political ends, up to and including the targeting of domestic opponents:

Nietzsche has this line about how the best way to damage a cause is to deliberately defend it with faulty arguments. I already flagged how Obama's Cairo defense of a Jewish state seemed all but intentionally awful. One of the standard eliminationist tropes - regularly trotted out by Ahmadinejad and his ilk - is that a European Holocaust only justifies a Jewish State in Europe. And yet:

[Obama said] "The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world. America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied."

[This was] a much better choice than, say, "... the recognition that Israel has the same legal and moral right to exist as any other nation, and has enjoyed that right for decades." Because appealing to the stereotypes of your audience is just good public persuasion.

Luckily the lack of any potentially persuasive justification for a Jewish homeland - which is to say, anything that wasn't already assumed by Obama's mostly anti-Israel audience - was "not a deliberate omission." Maybe the White House just didn't have time to carefully edit the speech:

The official acknowledged that Obama may have missed an opportunity during his speech to speak about the Jews' historical connection to Israel, framing Israel's legitimacy instead only within the context of persecution and the Holocaust. He stressed that Obama had spoken about the Jews' historic connection to the land in the past. "It was certainly not a deliberate omission this time," he said.

As gratifying as it is to be reminded that Obama mentioned Jews' historical connection during speeches to Jewish groups, it would be even better if he did it in a forum where it mattered.

References:
* Obama: We Must Achieve Peace By Forcing Israel To Give Up Jerusalem And Open Its Borders [MR]
* Iranian president: If the Holocaust happened, why must Palestinians pay? [Ha'aretz]
* US official to 'Post': We can find deal on West Bank settlements [JPost]

Previously:
* Top Obama Adviser Explains Iraq War: Turns Out, It's The Jews' Fault. Again. (Plus: Ha'aretz Political Correspondent's Pro-Obama Apologism Getting Increasingly Desperate)
* Pro-Obama Jewish Group's Anti-RJC Smears Are Asinine, False
* Pro-Obama Jewish Groups: The Pre-1967 Arab Stranglehold On Israel Was "Pretty Wonderful"

Stan emailed me this morning to ask about some scheduling issues that the WH is apparently having. I think it took them more time to translate the speech out of the original Arabic than they originally budgeted.

What Obama should have said about Israel: "I've come hear to speak honestly about the tensions between the west and Islam. I've said that for peace to take root 'we must face these tensions squarely.' Honesty compels me to say out loud what everybody already knows: a tiny strip of land no bigger than the American state of New Jersey cannot possibly be the source of our differences. Antipathy toward the Jewish State is nothing but an excuse, a proxy. And it must stop, for the good of Israel and for the good of the Muslim world."

Instead he placed the Israeli-Arab conflict above nuclear weapons, democracy, and human rights as a source of Western-Islamic tension, below only 9/11. The myth of linkage at its finest. In fact he bought into the entire anti-Israel narrative wholesale. The parts where he recited anti-Israel "common knowledge" that even Palestinian President Abbas has pointed out are myths - those were the best.

Along the way he managed to impose obligations on Israel that no Israeli government can or should meet - the internationalization of Jerusalem, the Arab Initiative and its national suicide clause, etc.

At least Hamas is cautiously optimistic. Not so optimistic that they're willing to back off their genocidal pledges. But given that Obama's best argument was his sincere and heartfelt belief that "violence doesn't work," that's not exactly a surprise.

It's technically Stephen Walt's plan, from his FP blog. But it's obviously not something he personally brainstormed in one sitting. These ideas have been percolating for years, getting developed informally by anti-Israel partisans around water coolers, in hallways, and at dinner tables.

The pro-Iranian academics and experts behind them - now safely ensconced in the White House - spent the last few years stewing on the sidelines in university departments and think tanks. Since they couldn't spend all of their effort on vaguely anti-Semitic and academically indefensible polemics, they had plenty of time left over to craft an agenda for the next Democratic President. So after many conversations - no doubt punctuated by exasperated hand waving and outraged tongue clucking - this is roughly what they came up with:

The question is: if the Netanyahu/Lieberman government remains intransigent, what should Obama do? Are there usable sources of leverage that the United States could employ to nudge Israel away from the vision of "Greater Israel" and towards a genuine two-state solution? Here are a few ideas.

1. Cut the aid package? ... [T]hat's not where I'd start. Instead, I'd consider a few other options, such as:
2. Change the Rhetoric. The Obama administration could begin by using different language to describe certain Israeli policies. While reaffirming America's commitment to Israel's existence as a Jewish-majority state, it could stop referring to settlement construction as "unhelpful,"
3. Support a U.N. Resolution Condemning the Occupation.... If the Obama administration wanted to send a clear signal that it was unhappy with Israel's actions, it could sponsor a resolution condemning the occupation and calling for a two-state solution.
4. Downgrade existing arrangements for "strategic cooperation." ... such a step would surely get the attention of Israel's security establishment.
5. Reduce U.S. purchases of Israeli military equipment. ... Obama could instruct Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to slow or decrease these purchases, which would send an unmistakable signal that it was no longer "business-as-usual."
6. Get tough with private organizations that support settlement activity. ... Just as the United States has gone after charitable contributions flowing to terrorist organizations, the U.S. Treasury could crack down on charitable organizations (including those of some prominent Christian Zionists) that are supporting these illegal activities.
7. Place more limits on U.S. loan guarantees.
8. Encourage other U.S. allies to use their influence too. ... we could quietly encourage the EU not to upgrade its relations with Israel until it had agreed to end the occupation.
I don't think Obama needs to employ all of these steps --and certainly not all at once -- but the United States clearly has plenty of options if pressure turns out to be necessary.

In order: the Obama administration has gone ballistic over settlements, a quixotic reason over which to detonate an alliance. At the UN, Susan Rice is gearing up to do what Susan Rice does. There are rumors of a massive downgrade in security cooperation, in the form of blocking Apache sales. Private pro-Israel groups have been forcefully told that they have to share space with objectively anti-Israel organizations like J-Street and the Israel Policy Forum.

The White House has been leaking to every reporter that it can find that it's reconsidering loan guarantees. Even a billion dollar aid cut - which Walt hinted should wait until leftist Jewish groups diluted AIPAC's base - has been floated.

So that leaves only cutting off purchases and wrangling the EU. Fearless prediction: reports of European pressure will leak before anything happens with weapons purchases. EU diplomats just won't be unable to contain themselves.

Pretty amazing though. Obama's close knit group of foreign policy advisers - who during the election promised to up the pressure on Israel after years of figuring out how to best do it - are upping the pressure on Israel. Almost as if, given the chance, ideologues will try to implement their agendas.

My first inclination was to go with something like "you know what's really weird? That the guy who smeared 'pro-Likud approaches to Israel' during his campaign would be having problems with a Likud Prime Minister." But whatever. This was so inevitable that during the election I was already trying to guess the actual headlines and ledes that would be used to describe the implosion of the US-Israeli alliance.

Just one quote from a post from last September, then I'll give you the blockquote from this morning's inevitable news:

Of course the Obama White House will degrade US-Israeli ties. That's what his foreign policy team thinks needs to be done to promote American interests. It will be a White House that changes US priorities. It will be friendlier with Hamas and friendlier with Syria and friendlier with radical Muslim countries and friendlier with Hezbollah - all at the expense of Israel. Following the personal declarations of Obama, it will obviously be friendlier with Iran. And it will be an administration institutionally predisposed to blame Israel for Middle East instability across the board.

Of course that's how it will play out. That's what distinguishes liberal foreign policy from conservative foreign policy. Those are the policies that Obama is running on. Those are the policies that his advisers discuss at length in their academic work.

And so, almost as if Obama's statements as a candidate could have been used to predict his policies as President:

Well, unless Netanyahu refuses to go along with their cunning plan to transform the Middle East into Switzerland by undermining Israeli security. Then all bets are off. But until then, they're just going to ceaselessly pressure our ally to placate our enemies:

Several days ago, a classified telegram was received in Jerusalem discussing a meeting between Jones and a European foreign minister... "The new administration will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestinian question," Jones said. "We will not push Israel under the wheels of a bus, but we will be more forceful toward Israel than we have been under Bush." Jones is quoted in the telegram as saying that the United States, European Union and moderate Arab states must redefine "a satisfactory endgame solution." The U.S. national security adviser did not mention Israel as party to these consultations. In the face of the strongly worded American signals, Netanyahu reiterated on Monday to the Knesset that "recognition of the State of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people is the necessary basis for genuine peace between us and our Palestinian neighbors."

Jones is going to hold meetings where he will ask Israel's enemies to write down everything they don't like about the Jewish State, and then he's going to turn around and "convince" Israel to meet those demands. I'm sure the "convincing" will look nothing like he blackmail that this administration reflexively reaches for when they need to get things done. It'll probably be very polite and measured, both in recognition of Israel's precarious security position and on account of the historical alliance between the US and the Middle East's only functioning democracy.

Oh - unless this is the James Jones who proposed putting international troops in the West Bank after he created an institutionally potent paper trail in the State Department blaming Israel for Palestinian intransigence. If it's that James Jones - the one who has consolidated power in the White House and has the President's ear - then he's going to detonate the US-Israeli alliance.

In fairness to ostensibly pro-Israel American Democrats though, there's no way anybody could have seen this coming.

References and previously after the jump...

Hey, remember that time when the Democrats had a Presidential candidate who attended a church for 20 years that supported Hamas, who had advisers meeting with Hamas and urging him to engage Hamas, and who endorsed the 2006 Hamas election? And remember how the Jewish left insisted that supporters of the US-Israel alliance were wallowing in paranoia because Obama was "a stalwart enemy of Hamas?"

MR, Feb. 27, 2009:

At least Obama didn't stack his administration with anti-Israel hacks like all those voters filled with "Obama paranoia" said he would. I'd say we're about a month away from a climbdown on his oh-so-nuanced election promise not to engage Hamas, with a Palestinian unity government providing the thin pretext.

Chicago Tribune, April 26, 2009:

he Obama administration... has opened the door, if only slightly, to engagement with the militant group Hamas. The Palestinian group is designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization and under law may not receive federal aid. But the administration has asked Congress for minor changes in U.S. law that would permit aid to continue flowing to Palestinians in the unlikely event that Hamas-backed officials become part of a unified Palestinian government.

I was a month off, though it fairness to me I couldn't have expected Obama to blatantly pour funds into Hamas coffers beforehand, undercutting their incentive to move even an inch during unity talks. The best part is how the Obama administration is actually pushing Fatah into a unity government. Which means that the Obama administration is actually trying to create their own pretexts for funding Hamas.

Just for fun, here's a link about the left's disingenuous anti-Palin smear, saying she supports Hamas. Not like Obama, who is "a stalwart enemy of Hamas."

As always, I'm not really upset by the actual policy. Of course I would prefer it if the US President wasn't funding the genocidal anti-American enemies of a democratic ally, after 15 years of administrations which promised to support Israel if American-initiated "risks for peace" didn't pay off. But what do you expect? And I'm not even surprised by the left's bad faith on this, given how pervasive it is on issues as huge as torture and as petty as flu funding.

Of course he did:

President Obama released his FY 2009 supplemental request... asking for $83.4 billion to fund ongoing military, diplomatic and foreign assistance activities... There are programs included in this supplemental request that could otherwise be funded in the base budget. Some of the major items requested in this supplemental are long-term acquisition programs that are not directly related to ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan...
* $600 million to purchase four new F-22 fighter jets;
* $400 million for a new Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capabilities Fund;
* $3.6 billion to train and equip Afghanistan Security Forces;
* $806.2 million to upgrade the U.S. diplomatic facilities in Pakistan; and
* $200 million for budget support to the Palestinian Authority.

Nothing like hiding $200 million's worth of de facto Hamas funding in an "emergency funding for our troops" request that's insulated from political opposition. Although it couldn't have been that well insulated since the original request was for $800 million. Still - fingers crossed that they pick up the slack in the regular budget, right?

I'm not sure exactly what these funds are earmarked for. They could be going to Gaza infrastructure, freeing up Hamas to move more money into attacks and war crimes. Or they could be going to Fatah weapons, getting hardware into the region so that Hamas can get it sooner rather than later. Either way, at least we know that boosting Hamas is now officially shovel-ready.

Less shovel-ready: offensive and defensive military cooperation with Israel. F-22 projects employed 95,000 Americans and boosted American and Israeli offensive capabilities. They were - at worst - nowhere near as inefficient as the rest of the stimulus black hole. But whatever. The Palestinians will probably put the money to better yes.

And it's not like Israel will be needing any offensive capabilities, since they're cooperating with the US to develop next-generation Arrow-3 interceptors. Except not:

Israel's Arrow-3 anti-ballistic missile may be one of the first victims of U.S. President Barack Obama's defense spending cuts. Ynet, the Web site of the respected Tel Aviv daily Yediot Aharonot, reported Monday that U.S. funding for the Arrow-3 program is likely to be eliminated... Ynet reported that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a strong enthusiast for the Arrow-3 program, recently met with a delegation of visiting U.S. senators and congressmen; following that meeting, he briefed a private meeting of his Labor Party, in which he warned of the pressures to kill the Arrow-3.

It's fine though because Israel doesn't face a missile threat. Nor if it faced such a threat would it need access to home grown anti-missile technologies. In the absolute worst case the Israelis can always count on the White House to support them on critical national defense issues.

Well, unless the Israelis want support for an operation against Iran's genocidal mullahs. Then they're out of luck.

References and previously after the jump...

It'll be Israel's fault!

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned against an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, asserting that such a strike would have dangerous consequences, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday. According to the report, Gates explained that a strike was dangerous because it would unify Iran, "cement their determination to have a nuclear program, and also build into the whole country an undying hatred of whoever hits them."

This argument is awesome for at least two reasons:

(1) It's unblinkingly stupid. It doesn't matter how many times Iran declares that they'll never give up nuclearization. It doesn't matter how obviously true it is that we can't give them anything they want more than a bomb. It will still be Israeli self-defense that causes them to cross the nuclear threshold. Of course it will be.

(2) It's obnoxiously predictable. Of course the Obama administration is going to tag Israel for the length and breadth of Middle East instability. The only people who really denied that during the campaign were pro-Obama Jewish shills. And I don't think they ever really believed it.

I don't know how other people cracked the code, but my clues were when Obama's top advisers - followed by Obama himself on multiple occasions - implied that Israel was responsible for the length and breadth of Middle East instability. That's the subtle hint that tipped me off.

More pointedly, Israel has been getting set up to take the fall for Obama's diplomatic failures since before the inauguration. It's a win-win for opponents of the US-Israel alliance. If negotiations don't work out, Israel gets blamed for Obama's naivety.

Begging the increasingly salient question: devious realist payback or total fucking amateur hour?

Officials in Jerusalem are quietly scratching their heads in wonderment as to why the White House did not release an official statement condemning yesterday's tractor terrorist rampage here, the third attack of its kind in recent months... The attack with a Tractor came less than 18 hours after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton strongly protested as "unhelpful" the planned bulldozing of more than 80 Jerusalem Arab homes built illegally upon Jewish land in Jerusalem. Usually, following any terrorist attack in Israel, the White House like clockwork immediately releases an official statement condemning the attack. But this time, no statement was forthcoming from either the White House or Clinton's State Department. Speaking to WND, a White House spokesman would only confirm he was not aware of any statement regarding the attack, but he would not speculate as to why the terrorism wasn't condemned.

And the verdict is... amateur hour. When these tools decide to use terrorist attacks as Teaching Moments they do it by hamfistedly inserting "cycle of violence" into their statements. In this case it just never occurred to them that the State Department is in the business of condemning terrorist attacks. Which is weird since we've all been assured in the most effusive terms that the Obama White House is preeminent in diplomatic nuance:

President Obama traveled to the State Department yesterday afternoon for a visit that was as rich in symbolism as in substance, underscoring his pledge to give top priority to diplomacy as he outlined an activist policy in the Middle East... Obama and Vice President Biden stood to one side as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced new special emissaries [such as] Mitchell for the Middle East... Just hours earlier, about 1,000 cheering civil service and Foreign Service employees had packed the building's lobby to welcome her on her first day at work... The new secretary... buoyed a workforce that often felt disdained and relegated to the back seat behind the military over the past eight years. "People were just elated that the president came here and said all the right things about strengthening diplomacy," one official said. "It is my privilege to come here and to pay tribute to all of you, the talented men and women of the State Department," Obama said. "I've given you an early gift, Hillary Clinton"

Do you think maybe it was Mitchell's job to remind them and it just slipped his mind? Or maybe they were still busy handing out Fulbrights to international anti-Israel celebrities. Or maybe the condemnation got lost among all the apologies Hillary's been issuing. Or maybe they just missed the memo. Could be anything really.

"As rich in symbolism as in substance." Honestly. Who the hell's writing this tripe? (h/t: CB)

References and previously after the jump...

Four and a half billion dollars that Hamas can transfer from infrastructure development to launching rockets at Israeli schools and hospitals:

Palestinian officials from rival factions welcomed pledges of more than $4.4 billion to rebuild the war-torn Gaza Strip that were made at the donors conference held in Sharm e-Sheikh on Monday. "We appreciate this very much, and we hope it can be transferred into reality in an expeditious fashion so we can see the reconstruction of Gaza begin immediately," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told The Jerusalem Post. Earlier on Monday, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told reporters in Gaza that the group welcomed "any Arab and international effort to rebuild what the occupation destroyed," calling the reconstruction process "a humane and moral" one.

And no of course Israel didn't do 4.4billion in damage. In fact new eyewitness reports says that they didn't do much damage to civilian infrastructure at all:

What I saw was that there had been precision attacks made on all of Hamas' infrastructure. Does UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon criticize the surgical destruction of the explosives cache in the Imad Akhel Mosque, of the National Forces compound, of the Shi Jaya police station, of the Ministry of Prisoners?... THERE WERE empty beds at Shifa Hospital and a threatening atmosphere... Terrorized Gazans used doublespeak when they told me most of the alleged 5,500 wounded were being treated in Egypt and Jordan. They want it known that the figure is a lie, and showed me that the wounded weren't in Gaza. No evidence exists of their presence in foreign hospitals, or of how they might have gotten there... Gazans contradicted allegations that Israel had murderously attacked civilians. They told me again and again that both civilians and Hamas fighters had evacuated safely from areas of Hamas activity in response to Israeli telephone calls, leaflets and megaphone warnings.

No worries though, because Clinton says that only $300 million of the $900 million US contribution will be going to Gaza. Hamas will have to join a unity government before Abbas gives them the rest of the money:

Surprise!

In a swift about face from her views as New York's senator, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now hammering Israel over its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. As First Lady, Clinton raised eyebrows when she kissed Suha Arafat. Since she was then seeking a Senate seat the resulting brouhaha caused her to "re-think" her positions. "I'm a very strong supporter of Israel," Clinton said back in February 2000. On Thursday, as Secretary of State she had yet another about face in the form of angry messages demanding Israel speed up aid to Gaza. Jewish leaders are furious... Clinton's decision to hammer Israel comes as the Clintons and President Barack Obama are planning to give the Palestinians $900 million toward the rebuilding of Gaza in the wake of the Israeli offensive that was sparked by Hamas rocket fire.

At least Obama didn't stack his administration with anti-Israel hacks like all those voters filled with "Obama paranoia" said he would. I'd say we're about a month away from a climbdown on his oh-so-nuanced election promise not to engage Hamas, with a Palestinian unity government providing the thin pretext.

But at least he's committed to preventing Iranian nuclearization. "Contain" means the same thing as "prevent," right?

References:
* Jewish Leaders Blast Clinton Over Israel Criticism [CBS]
* Obama Shill Tells Jews To Get Over Their "Obama Paranoia" [MR]
* Obama Publicly Endorses Netanyahu-Lieberman Right Wing Coalition! [Daled Amos]
* Obama's Iran strategy [LAT]

Previously:
* No Kidding: Obama To Pressure Israel On Its Nuclear Deterrent
* Israeli Officials: Hey, Do You Think That Maybe Obama's Going To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship?
* WaPo: Israeli Voters Are Kind Of Undermining Obama's Diplomacy, Aren't They?

It's official - Chas Freeman will be in charge of filtering and evaluating the intel that President Obama sees. He'll be using the same kind of analytic nuance that led him to once declare that "Israel excels at war... it has shown no talent for peace." And in case you didn't know - that little piece of propaganda, per Soccer Dad's winning Council post from a few weeks ago, is bullshit:

I'm not sure how much of this is meant to be Abdullah's voice and how much Friedman's voice, but the term "colonial Israeli settlements" is jarring. I'm sure Abdullah feels that way, but does Freidman also? Anyway this has things exactly backwards. The most important thing is what Abdullah mentions last: the deepening ties of Iran between the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah has been made possible by the Israeli withdrawals from Gaza in 2005 and southern Lebanon in 2000. Those withdrawals, having strengthened the terrorists, emboldened them to threaten Israel ever more seriously until Israel was forced to defend its citizens. And Fatah's decline in Judea and Samaria didn't occur in a vacuum either. It was the result of Operation Defensive Shield, which, like Israel's defensive wars against Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas last month, was launched to protect Israeli citizens from a terrorist organization that had been given freedom to operate with impunity. Another factor in Fatah's decline was that it was corrupt. Once it was no longer capable of killing Israelis, Palestinians (and the rest of the world) were shocked to learn that most of the foreign aid it had received had gone to Arafat's favored cronies, rather than to building a coutnry. Again, I don't know if the order is supposed to be Abdullah's view alone or Friedman's endorsement of Abdullah's views, but it reveals a dishonest view of recent history.

Of course Freeman is also a huge fan of Abdullah - reportedly referring to him as "Abdullah the Great" - so it makes sense that he'd echo the King's smears. Similarly relevant to Freeman's appointment: the top non-Council post by Judea Pearl, analyzing how Western apologists have allowed pure jihadi evil to become a matter-of-fact bargaining position. Contrast that with the genuine sensitivity displayed in the second-place non-Council post, a letter from an Israeli soldier to a Gaza civilian. Whatever causes people like Freeman to embrace the anti-Israel, pro-Saudi cause - it's something beyond mere poor judgment.

Both Council runner up Joshua Pundit and non-Council runner up The Anchoress (there was a tie for second) dealt with the ice storm in Kentucky:

Imagine a disaster where at least a million Americans are without power in the dead of winter, 46 people have died and the president and FEMA are nowhere to be found. You've just described what's been going on in Kentucky for the last five days: Utility crews renewed work in subfreezing temperatures Saturday in their effort to put the power back on for nearly a million customers left in the dark by an ice storm that crippled parts of several states this week... Kentucky has called out its entire national guard in an effort to evacuate people to shelters where they can find some kind of respite from the cold, but in a largely rural state with no help from FEMA and the Feds, they're fighting a losing battle against time and the freezing weather. Conspicuously absent is the press,which lined up shoulder to shoulder to bash the Bush Administration for the way it handled Hurricane Katrina with much less cause. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.

I for one welcome the return of competence and compassion to the White House.

References and previously after the jump...

If you're interested in how the vaunted foreign policy community is circling its wagons around professional Israel hater Chas Freeman, you can check out this endorsement in the guise of an article by pro-Freeman partisan Laura Rozen:

A source close to Freeman said that among the critics taking shots at the would-be appointee, several "opposed Obama on the spurious ground that he wanted to do in Israel. He doesn't." The source noted that some critics of Obama's appointments had also targeted national security advisor James L. Jones... "It seems to be the president these guys are after," the source said... Some sources noted that among Freeman's most outspoken critics, are those who have accused many other administration officials of being insufficiently pro-Israel or too even-handed, such as NSC senior director for multilateral affairs Samantha Power, U.S. Middle East peace special envoy Sen. George Mitchell, and indeed, during the election campaign, Obama himself... Pillar continued. "The kind of 'anti-Israeli' perspective getting criticized is of course not new criticism or by no means unique to this particular target."... The source close to Freeman said that the former ambassador was recruited for the post by Admiral Blair and had not been seeking a return to government service, which Freeman had retired from in 1994. In this person's view, Freeman would be brought in "not to reverse the polarity of U.S. intelligence analysis but to de-gauss it." ... He also disputed that Freeman's views were anti-Israel, noting a 2000 New York Times op-ed by Freeman entitled, "A U.S. Role is Crucial for Peace."

So: (1) it's out of bounds to claim that Obama is appointing anti-Israel advisers because he's appointing too many obviously anti-Israel advisers and (2) it's absurd to claim that Freeman is hostile to Israel because his editorial about how the US should pressure Israel had a positive-sounding title. This is the level of argumentative acumen being used to prove that there's a vast Lobby of Jews - and the Christians whom they've flipped - undermining the United States. Objective and professional, these sophisticates.

And while it's true that "among Freeman's most outspoken critics... [are] those who accused Obama" of seeking to degrade the US-Israel relationship, it's also true that among Freeman's most outspoken critics are those who defended Obama against those charges. Marty Peretz, for instance, vociferously backed Obama during the election but thinks Freeman is a bigot. Pointing that out might dilute the "far-right pro-Israel neocons are trying to tear down a great American" party line. So better not to mention it.

In any case, Freeman has spent the last few years feverishly spinning conspiracy theories about the US-Israel relationship at the behest of his Saudi funders. Now he'll get the chance to spin them from the top of the US intelligence network:

Oh really?

US Middle East special envoy George Mitchell said Thursday that predominantly Muslim Turkey's friendship with Israel gives it a unique opportunity to help achieve peace in the Middle East. Mitchell's remarks reflect the US desire to see Turkey and Israel maintain close relations despite a dispute between the two US allies after Turkey accused Israel of using excessive force in an offensive against Hamas. "As an important democratic nation with strong relations with Israel, (Turkey) has a unique role to play and can have significant influence on our efforts to promote comprehensive peace in the Middle East," Mitchell said after meeting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey has long been Israel's closest ally in the Muslim world, and has tried, along with Egypt and France, to mediate for peace in the Middle East.

Erdogan publicly called on Allah to wipe out Israel and lied about who broke the ceasefire. He tried to get Israel thrown out of the UN and urged Obama to recognize Hamas. He repeatedly lashed out at the Israeli Prime Minister. Then he triggered a once-in-a-decade diplomatic brawl by hissing at the Israeli President and stalking off the stage.

Oh - and his party published anti-Semitic incitement on their website denigrating Jews and denying the Holocaust:

An article rife with anti-Semitic commentary was removed from the website of Turkey's ruling party Friday after receiving brief exposure, the country's Hurriyet News reported. Another paper, the Radikal Gazetesi, featured printed screens proving the article had been posted on the Justice and Development Party (AKP)'s internet site under the heading: 'The Promised Land - Palestine'. In the piece, Jews were dubbed "a swarm of grasshoppers" among other derogatory terms. It also denied the Holocaust had happened.

Or, in the language of the Associated Press, he "accused Israel of using excessive force in an offensive against Hamas." Yeah, because that's what the Israelis are grumpy about.

But just so we're clear: Israeli diplomats have declared that they no longer trust Turkey to provide mediation. Israeli military officials have become particularly tired of dealing with a government and a population that demonizes them and threatens to arrest them. Erdogan himself said before and after the Israeli elections that he doesn't see any point in being a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

And why shouldn't he personally and politically degrade Turkish-Israeli ties? His hateful behavior at Davos elevated him to hero status among Israel-hating Turks. Also among Israel-hating Palestinians and Israel-hating Brits. Iran actually thinks he should get a Nobel Peace Prize for his shrill disrespect of a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

So naturally Mitchell thinks that Erdogan should mediate between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Of course he does.

References and previously after the jump...

This is a conference on racism and human rights chaired by Libya and co-chaired by Iran and Cuba. There's no mention of the Holocaust. There's no reference to the waves of anti-Semitism that are cascading across Europe. Because why would those be relevant? It's more important to ban criticism of Islam and blame the West for a litany of historical wrongs. And of course, to demonize the Jewish State.

When Obama's anti-Israel advisers pushed the US into Durban II they didn't demand any changes as a condition for our participation. They were going to show up with zero leverage and then somehow they were going to change the course of the conference. Obviously that wasn't going to work. But even I thought that they would at least make an effort. Apparently not so much:

This put the Holocaust provision in dispute. But the American delegation chose not to go on the record strongly supporting the EU's proposal, as it had on other items. Not a peep came from the "change the direction in which the Review Conference is heading" folks. Here's an even more troubling example, this time involving a paragraph the Palestinian delegation proposed Tuesday in the presence of the American representatives... Dead silence again, despite the fact that an objection could have made a real difference by putting the paragraph unequivocally in dispute. Everybody knew that there was no other country-specific provision in the 250-paragraph-plus document. Yet there were no comments objecting to the idea of singling out Israel in an anti-racism manifesto, and no call for a paragraph decrying racism in any other state... the new paragraph is scheduled to appear... it didn't take President Obama's delegation two days before it sat in silence while Israel was singled out as guilty of racism - again.

The inevitable result:

Besides issues relating to Israel, the draft has problematic paragraphs regarding free speech, defamation of religion and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, [Ambassador to the United Nations Geneva Roni Leshno Yaar] said. "At this stage it is not possible to say what in the text would improve, if at all. In fact I expect the text to get only worse on all issues which are important for western democracy...[a] paragraph calls for the right of return for Palestinian refugees and refers to the "racial policies of the occupying power." Israel itself is not named in the document, although the reader can clearly understand where it is being referenced... In the last week, the Palestinians tried to introduce language into the document regarding the 2004 advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice at The Hague against the security barrier, said Leshno Yaar. The Americans were present but did not appear to have made improvement in the document, which he said "is getting worse every day."

At least Obama's people didn't eat up a couple news cycles by privately and publicly misleading Jewish leaders about the US's deafening silence:

Obama's cadre of foreign policy experts insist that - no matter how much of a hatefest Durban II becomes - there's never any harm in just talking. That's 100% true. Unless you count undermining British and Italian objections to the bigoted spectacle...

Britain and Italy could join Canada and Israel in refusing to attend the Durban II Review Conference in April unless they receive cast-iron guarantees that it will not turn into an antisemitic, anti-Israel arena of hate. The conference, to be held in Geneva, is a follow-up to the UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. The Durban conference became notorious for its unbridled attacks on Israel, led by Iran and a number of other Arab states. This time, a number of countries are awaiting a final decision by America -- which has agreed to send a delegation to Geneva for an organisational meeting in the next few days -- before they clarify their position. Jewish NGOs held an informal meeting on Sunday before the start of the conference to agree their strategy.

... and muting Israeli objections to the display of anti-Semitism...

My worry is this: Israel should be very careful not to be perceived as an obstacle on America's road to world acceptability. Unless public opinion is mobilized against this distorted version of a human rights forum by other (namely, non-Jewish) leaders concerned about human rights, dramatic Israeli objection will have unfortunate consequences -- either because Obama will choose to take part and give credence to the conference or because the enemies of Israel will be able to argue that by lobbying against Durban it has damaged American interests.

... as "costs." If you do count those then Obama's fetish for engagement is incurring a huge cost. At the very least it legitimizes anti-Jewish discourse, putting it on the spectrum of acceptable public debate. It also apparently prevents those who would shun that debate from walking out and those who would condemn it from afar from speaking.

But I guess it could go either way.

References:
* The Durban Dilemma [Commentary]
* Britain and Italy threaten to drop out of Durban II [The JC]

Previously:
* Marty Peretz: Based On All Available Evidence I Disagree With Susan Rice, Who Is Nonetheless Awesome In Every Way (Plus: Misguided Victim-Complex Paranoia On The Pro-Israel Right)
* Austrian Jews Too Terrified To List Their Children As Jewish (Plus: Europe Reaches An Anti-Jewish Tipping Point)
* Human Rights NGOs: We Don't Talk About Hamas's War Crimes Because They're Too Blatant And Savage

Actually that's an exaggeration. It's only a little more than $900 million:

The United States plans to pledge more than $900 million to help rebuild Gaza after Israel's offensive against Hamas and strengthen the Palestinian Authority, a U.S. official said on Monday. The money will be channeled through UN and other bodies and will not be distributed via the militant group Hamas, which rules Gaza, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to make the announcement next week at a Gaza donors conference in Egypt. The March 2 donors conference in Sharm el-Sheikh resort aims to raise humanitarian and rebuilding funds for Gaza after Israel's offensive against Hamas at the end of last year. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed during the campaign, according to Gaza officials, as were 13 Israelis.

Old Reuters boilerplate: "About 1,300 Palestinians were killed during the campaign, about two-thirds of which were civilians..."

New Reuters boilerplate: "About 1,300 Palestinians were killed during the campaign, according to Gaza officials..."

And people say that there's no upshot to thoroughly debunking the credulous pro-Hamas propaganda published by Western media outlets. Look how much more straightforward and honest they're being!

Anyway, one billion US dollars are going to UNRWA for infrastructure. I would point out that this is effectively a backdoor subsidy for Hamas since normally they'd have to spend some of their money being effective civil administrators. This way they can use all their resources for weapons and war-fighting. But since the money is going to UNRWA it's actually a direct subsidy for Hamas.

References:
* 'U.S. plans to pledge $900 million for Gaza' [Ha'aretz]
* Gaza Body Count: Were We Duped? [TIME]
* Obligatory Post About Kerry Being Shocked Shocked That UNRWA Works For Hamas [MR]

Previously:
* UN: "Clerical Error" Made Us Mistakenly Think Israel Bombed UNRWA School. Opps.
* UN Imposes Collective Punishment On Gaza Population In Response To Hamas Crimes, Suspends Humanitarian Shipments
* Congress: Hey, Has Anyone Heard About This "We Fund UNRWA And UNRWA Funds Hamas" Rumor?

Admittedly, the foreign policy acumen of Congressional Democrats tends toward the less than impressive. But even they know that UNRWA is a de facto Hamas outlet. The way I know they know is because they said as much a few days ago. So come on:

U.S. officials are furious with the United Nations for its role in Hamas' attempt to enlist U.S. Sen John Kerry to transfer a letter from the Palestinian militant group to President Obama during Kerry's trip to the Middle East, an official source told FOX News. The incident also has raised security concerns over how much Hamas knew about Kerry's travel plans. Kerry turned the letter over to the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem on Friday, saying he was unaware that it was from Hamas until hearing about the letter in media reports, including on the BBC. He told FOX News on Saturday that he will not be visiting Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal during his trip to Syria on Saturday. He is scheduled to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad. U.S. officials in Jerusalem are outraged at the United Nations Relief and Works agency for apparently handing the letter off to Kerry.

Here's CAMERA's new roundup of the open collaboration between Hamas and UNRWA. It's not exactly the Middle East's best kept secret. UNRWA officials brazenly spin anti-Israel lies for Hamas. They openly provide funds for Hamas. They unblinkingly inflate casualty figures for Hamas. But that they would pass on a letter from Hamas to a US Senator touring the Gaza Strip with leading anti-Israel Democrat Keith Ellison - that's unthinkable.

So, to sum up: come on.

References and previously after the jump...

I've been wondering how Palestinians were going to reconcile their strong support for terrorism...

A new poll has shown that Palestinians support continued suicide bombings against Israel by 55.4 percent as compared to 37.6 percent who oppose it. The poll, conducted by Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, also found:
* That 50.8 percent of Palestinian believe that rocket attacks upon Israel from Gaza help Palestinians achieve their goals, as against 20.8 percent who believe such attacks harm the attainment of Palestinian goals;
* If elections were held today, 28.6 percent of Palestinians would vote for Hamas and 27.9 percent of Palestinians would vote for Fateh;
* Similarly, 27.7 percent of Palestinians most trust Hamas while 26 percent most trust Fateh. (Jerusalem Media & Communications Center, Poll No. 67, January 2009).

... with the bitter realization that the IDF systematically dismantled Hamas. I originally thought it was going to be wild conspiracy fantasies about how Hamas actually won. But it looks like reality still counts for something on the Palestinian street. Hamas's failure to commit mass murder did some damage to their credibility. Palestinians are losing confidence that Iran's proxies can be entrusted with a full-blown genocidal project like eradicating Israel.

One potential solution: combine Hamas's fanaticism with Fatah's "the US will never let Israel attack us" impunity. The Palestinian public gets to keep their delusions of eventually wiping out the Jewish State and the international community gets to keep its increasingly tenuous nudge-wink pledge not to embrace Hamas. And wouldn't you know it, the Obama administration seems pretty psyched about exactly that arrangement:

The Obama administration has given the Palestinian Authority a "green light" to talk to Hamas about forming a Palestinian unity government, a PA official in Ramallah said over the weekend. The official said that Washington had also given Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the go-ahead to resume his efforts to achieve reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. "The new administration has a different policy than that of [former US president] George W. Bush," the official told The Jerusalem Post. "The administration of President Barack Obama believes that a Hamas-Fatah government is good for stability." Cairo has issued invitations to representatives of Hamas, Fatah and several other Palestinian groups to attend reconciliation talks that are due to begin in Cairo on Wednesday. Fatah and Hamas officials confirmed that the Egyptians had invited them to the talks. Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri said that for the talks to succeed, the PA must first release all "political prisoners" from its West Bank jails.

At least this will save Hamas the trouble of militarily expelling or politically uprooting Fatah from the West Bank. They're going to get those billions of dollars of internationally-supplied PA weapons one way or another. Might as well be efficient about it. Ditto for officially releasing prisoners. Fatah's current approach: just let them escape. See? Efficient!

Israel has already made it clear that they won't be doing business with Hamas. But Obama envoy George Mitchell has made it clear that Israel is expected to do business with the Palestinians until they have their own state. No way this goes poorly.

References and previously after the jump...

First James Jones was plucked out of his Middle East State Department job - where he was creating a paper trail blaming Israel for Palestinian intransigence - and appointed National Security Adviser. Since then he's been very efficiently making sure that the President only hears what he wants the President to hear:

General Jones, Obama's National Security Adviser, is making an effort to assert sweeping authority over the national security decisionmaing process... "Jones, a retired Marine general, made it clear that he will run the process and be the primary conduit of national security advice to Obama, eliminating the 'back channels'...Directorates inside Jones's NSC staff [such as the Near East section headed by Dan Shapiro] will oversee implementation of decisions. 'It doesn't mean that we micromanage or supervise,' he said. 'But you have to make sure, . . . particularly if it's a presidential decision, that the president is kept abreast of how things are going. That it doesn't just fall off the end of the table and disappear into outer space.'"

Samantha Power was drawn away from her public rants about "a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import" and installed as the director of the NSC's multilateral affairs section. Once there she immediately to the US involved in Durban II.

Now Chas Freeman - who quite literally made a career out of being cozy with the Saudis and channeling their anti-Israel ravings to Washington...

Freeman, the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, [said], "As long as the United States continues unconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected" and decrying the consequences of "Israeli violence against Palestinians."

... is set to become chair of the National Intelligence Council. He'll be in charge of filtering the bulk of the US's intelligence output:

Sources tell The Cable that Chas W. Freeman, Jr., the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will become chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community's primary big-think shop and the lead body in producing national intelligence estimates... Associates say that at a recent board meeting of the Middle East Policy Council, of which he has been president, Freeman said that he was resigning to take a job in the administration. He said his post was not in the State Department and did not require confirmation, but did not specify what the job was.

The appointment has been confirmed by a second source, prompting Steve Rosen to write a followup post to his first writeup about how deep in the anti-Israel camp Freeman really is. From a 2006 speech that Freeman gave:

For the past half decade Israel has enjoyed carte blanche from the United States to experiment with any policy it favored to stabilize its relations with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors, including most recently its efforts to bomb Lebanon into peaceful coexistence with it and to smother Palestinian democracy in its cradle. The suspension of the independent exercise of American judgment about what best serves our interests as well as those of Israelis and Arabs has caused the Arabs to lose confidence in the United States as a peace partner... Americans need to be clear about the consequences of continuing our current counterproductive approaches to security in the Middle East. We have paid heavily and often in treasure in the past for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel's approach to managing its relations with the Arabs. Five years ago we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home.

It's hard to overestimate the kind of access and influence that the NIC chair wields. He personally and regularly sits in on the President's daily intelligence briefings. The rest of the time he's in charge of filtering the intelligence products that the President sees. Among those products are the NIEs that the intelligence community produces. Those, you'll recall, have been kind of a thing lately.

Oh - and none of these positions require Congressional approval. Jones, Power, and Freeman are all handpicked, institutionally anti-Israel appointees. I wonder if being suspicious about that qualifies as the kind of "Obama paranoia" the Jeffrey Goldberg sneered about during the election (h/t: Soccer Dad).

References and previously after the jump...

Marty Peretz is undoubtedly among of the most serious, argumentatively adept pro-Israel American leftists. That's not exactly high praise in a community stacked with people like Bob Wexler and NJDC tool Aaron Keyak. But it's still not nothing. During the election he did yoeman's work for Obama in the American Jewish community, publishing reams of copy so Jewish Democrats could guiltlessly vote the way they were going to vote anyway.

The only problem is that his arguments were kind of bad and that reality - as it does to bad arguments - keeps pointing that out. He had to defend President Obama's reinstatement of Samantha Power by suggesting that Power's desire to invade Israel was motivated out of love (presumably her nudge-wink smear about "a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import" was also misplaced affection). He subsequently wrote an article entitled "Samantha Power Is a Friend of Israel" that was interesting for two reasons. The first is that at the beginning he defended Susan Rice by saying he didn't know anything about her, which seems like a strained rhetorical move. The second is that it had this passage:

There will be a test for Susan Rice and for Barack Obama very soon. Whether she opposes the United States participating in the United Nations' gang rape of Israel at Durban II. I doubt that she will. And here we can follow the government of Canada which has already declined the gracious invitation from intellectual and political hoodlums. Here we can test the limits of engagements. And now I come to the ZOA's other victim of the day, Samantha Power. The New Republic carried many of her most searing articles from Bosnia.

I think that the first part is an editing hiccup. The original draft was probably something like "whether she acquiesces... I doubt that she will" or "whether she opposes... I think that she will." At least that's how I think it happened since the implication is clear: the test for Obama will be whether he follows Canada's lead and refuses to engage the Durban II organizers. Now keep in mind that passage about actively opposing Durban II is from an article specifically written to defend Rice and Power.

Hmm:

While the US has said it would decide at a later date whether to participate in the conference, the State Department on Saturday said that it would send diplomats to participate in preparatory meetings being held next week for the 2009 World Conference Against Racism, which is set to be held in Geneva on April 20-24 and which Israel and Canada have already decided to boycott... Nonetheless, the apparent departure from the Bush administration's outright rejection of the conference has fueled speculation that Obama administration officials are at odds with one another over how to proceed. One official who is reportedly pressuring Secretary of State Clinton to take part in Durban II is the new American Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, who was Obama's close campaign adviser and has pushed for the US to join the UN Human Rights Council, which was boycotted by the Bush administration, partly because of its one-sided criticism of Israel. The other official reportedly pushing for American involvement in "Durban II" is Samantha Power, an Obama adviser at the National Security Council who participated in the initial Durban conference as the representative of an NGO and has a history of making controversial statements about Israel.

This is outreach to Jew-hating fanatics. Even if the White House bails on the conference, the anti-Semitic organizers will have succeeded in moving the "engagement" goalposts.

And none of that matters for whether Peretz should be publicly retracting his defenses of Rice and Power. They're not pushing for involvement in the planning stages. They're pushing for involvement in Durban II as such. They apparently have Obama's ear since they've thus far achieved involvement in the planning. If the President bails out later that might be a limited defense of his actions. Maybe. But it wouldn't be a defense of Rice and Power.

It turns out that people who make their career out of criticizing the US-Israel alliance will, given the opportunity, try to erode the US-Israel alliance. Who knew?

References and previously after the jump...

Hey, remember that time when Clinton said that the Obama administration would never change their conditions for accepting Hamas?

Secretary of State Clinton said forcefully today, "Our conditions with respect to Hamas have not and will not change...We have a very clear policy toward Hamas, and Hamas knows the conditions that have been set forth. They must renounce violence. They must recognize Israel. And they must agree to abide by prior agreements that were entered into by the Palestinian Authority... We are not able to, you know, look into the future to see whether there will be changes on the part of Hamas that would meet our conditions. But you know, certainly, that would be a clear path for them to follow."

Turns out, her firm and principled rejection of Hamas's intransigence had some wiggle room:

In the first meeting of its kind in more than two years, senior Fatah and Hamas officials met in Cairo over the weekend to discuss ways of ending the power struggle between the two parties and forming a "national unity" government... A PA official in Ramallah told The Jerusalem Post that the meeting was also the result of the change of government in the US. He noted that the previous administration of President George W. Bush was strongly opposed to any form of reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.

I'm not sure what the big deal is. It's not like the Obama administration isn't de facto funding Hamas via UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority. Why not make it official?

References:
* Clinton: Our Hamas principles will not change [Rosen / Obama Mideast Monitor]
* Hamas, Fatah try to form 'unity gov't' [JPost]
* Congress: Hey, Has Anyone Heard About This "We Fund UNRWA And UNRWA Funds Hamas" Rumor? [MR]
* Hamas: You Know What? Starting Friday We're Not Even Going To Pretend There's A Ceasefire. [MR]

Previously:
* Hamas Taking Limited Losses, Waiting For Obama Inauguration To Negotiate Ceasefire Terms
* Hamas: Oh All Right, We'll Let Obama Try To Appease Us
* Human Rights NGOs: We Don't Talk About Hamas's War Crimes Because They're Too Blatant And Savage

But even the rightist secular parties are walking into the election with some egg on their face. Remember the time when Arieh Eldad wanted Barak charged with treason for letting aid trucks into Gaza. Opps!

The polls show that it'll be a narrow Likud win. Factional considerations mean that Netanyahu will get picked to head the new government even if it's close. Plus the only reason to vote for a centrist party is so they'll get along with the State Department - and Kadima not so much. So we're set for a replay of the 1990s with Netanyahu in Israel, a Clinton State Department. Except this time there's a nuclear Iran to Israel's east and missile-armed Iranian proxies to the north and south.

MR's fearless prediction: the first big blowup won't be over settlements. It'll be over Syria:

If Benjamin Netanyahu is tapped to form Israel's next governing coalition, he will not appoint Yisrael Beiteinu chief Avigdor Lieberman as his defense minister, the Likud chairman told Channel 1 on Monday, just hours before Israelis go to the polls. "If I am elected, I will approach all the Zionist parties to join a coalition headed by the Likud," Netanyahu said. "We will take all these parties - Kadima, Labor, Yisrael Beiteinu." Netanyahu added that he is not ready to commit to holding negotiations with the Syrians. "The Olmert government's understandings with the Syrians do not obligate me," he said. "Rather, Israel's security [obligates me]."

For their part, the Syrians are holding out for Obama's original offer of talks without preconditions. Talks will eventually happen because Obama's vaunted experts think that Syria can be peeled away from Iran's orbit. That's not true - the dynamics of Arab nationalism, regional hegemonic power politics, and Assad's own unequivocal declarations guarantee as much. But wouldn't it be great if that wasn't true?

References and previously after the jump...

What is it they say about unwanted house guests making themselves at home?

The special US envoy for Middle East peace, George Mitchell, has asked to open his own office in the region to deal with day-to-day developments between Israel, the Palestinians and neighboring states, signaling a desire for greater American hands-on involvement in negotiations. Mitchell, who just returned from the region on Monday and plans to go back this month after Israel's February 10 elections, has proposed placing a small staff in Jerusalem to monitor the situation on the ground, officials briefed on his recommendation said Tuesday... "I plan to establish a regular and sustained presence in the region," he told reporters. "There are no easy or risk free courses of action, but I am convinced ... that with patience and determined and persevering diplomacy we can help to make a difference and we can assist those in the region achieve the peace and stability that people on all sides long for," he said.

If only there was a place in Israel where American envoys could have offices. A place staffed by diplomats, where visiting US officials could temporarily stay while they're working in the country. Someone should invent something like that.

It's not that this request makes any formal difference. Mitchell is going to be in the region no matter what. Critics of the US-Israel relationship like Stephen Walt are pretty psyched about how he's going to "pressure" Israel. He's inevitably going to publish his "it's Israel's fault that my Hamas equals the IRA approach failed" report. The office building he's sitting in when he types it up isn't really the concern.

What's obnoxious is the expectation that Israel should welcome an envoy who was appointed as a signal of impending US pressure. This goes beyond assuming that Israel will adhere to a colorless nicety like greeting a new envoy at the airport. This is expecting Israel to be happy about getting knocked around diplomatically. It's part and parcel of a whole attitude toward Israel, where the norms of decency and reciprocity just don't apply.

It's the same attitude that caused the writers at the London Daily News to complain that Israelis were following their "own selfish security concerns" during Operation Cast Lead. Israelis aren't supposed to care about that. Hamas's willingness to sacrifice Palestinian and Israeli civilians in their genocidal quest to establish a sharia state in Gaza? That's something we have to "understand" because it springs from "legitimate grievances." But Israel doing what any other state would have done and what countries like Turkey regularly do? Perish the thought!

For 15 years diplomatic sophisticates have told Israel to take "risks for peace" - to give up territory and the security that comes with it - while the Palestinians built up enough "confidence" to end anti-Semitic incitement and genocidal violence. That's a decade and a half of moral asymmetry: Israelis letting go of precious land while the Palestinians were suppose to give up the ghost on pathological hatred. It's also a decade and a half of structural asymmetry: the Israelis sacrificing something tangible in expectation of intangible Palestinian concessions. The ostensibly reasonability of the process has now officially become a habit of thought - a deep-seated expectation - where Israeli citizens are supposed to eagerly embrace making concessions.

References and previously after the jump...

You know why this is disappointing? It's not because the appointment is going to be a source of tension in the US-Israel alliance. At this point, whatever. And it's not because I always thought she'd come back as Secretary of State. Given her role during the transition, I'll settle for partial credit.

Nope. The real downer is that I was this close to believing the media's panegyrics about Obama's vaunted "Team Of Rivals." Diverse thinking, best of the best, etc. But between Power's appointment and NSA Chief Jim Jones, I'm getting something less than a heterogeneous vibe from the NSC:

Samantha Power, the Harvard University professor who earned notoriety for calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a "monster" while working to elect Barack Obama president, will take a senior foreign policy job at the White House, The Associated Press has learned. Officials familiar with the decision say Obama has tapped Power to be senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, a job that will require close contact and potential travel with Clinton, who is now secretary of state. NSC staffers often accompany the secretary of state on foreign trips. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Power's position, as well as that of other senior NSC positions, have not yet been announced. One official said the announcements would be made in the near future.

Apparently advocating the invasion of a key US ally doesn't earn you notoriety on the foreign policy left, provided that the ally is Israel. Nor does talking darkly about "a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import" that would be troubled by said invasion. But calling someone a mean name and tarnishing The One's halo of purity - that's the kind of thing you get tagged with for life.

Now in fairness, Marty Peretz thinks that Power only wants to invade Israel because she's overflowing with affection for the Jewish State. Which is weird, because promising to pressure Israel is also how Power and her foreign policy colleagues express their affection for the Arab world. I guess Israelis and Arabs really do have the same underlying interests!

Obligatory video of Power demonstrating her foreign policy bona fides:

References and previously after the jump...

UPDATE 13:10 PST - I didn't realize people were coming the this post for liveblogging. That's going on in another post. Sorry about that.

ORIGINAL - Looks like it's a done deal:

Israel plans to halt its Gaza offensive without any deal with Hamas, an Israeli official said on Saturday, in an apparent effort to deny the Islamist group any gains from the three-week-old conflict. Hamas leaders in exile have vowed to fight on, but many of the 1.5 million Palestinians enduring incessant bombardment and privation in Gaza seemed desperate for their ordeal to end. "The goal is to announce, subject to cabinet approval, a suspension of military activities because we believe our goals have been attained," said the official, asking not to be named... Without an accord with Hamas, diplomats said they feared Israel would let only a trickle of goods into Gaza, hampering reconstruction and creating more hardship for its people. The security cabinet is due to meet in the evening and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will address the nation after that. "There is no agreement with Hamas," the Israeli official said, adding that Israel would reserve the right to act if Hamas continued firing or launched rockets across the border.

This sounds a lot like what's known about Livni's preferences: you don't negotiate ceasefires with intransigent lunatics like Hamas. To the extent that they force your hand, you take military action, physically degrade their capabilities, and then leave when you've done what needs to be done. Fair enough. But there's going to be plenty of second-guessing about whether Israel's actually done what needed to be done.

(1) The smuggling tunnels - Yes, Israel has severely degraded Hamas's smuggling tunnels, blowing up about one-third of the estimated 300 tunnels. And yes Livni and Rice signed a memorandum of understanding committing the US to helping suppress smuggling. But that means that there are still 200 tunnels left. Plus the MOU won't actually work. Plus the State Department is notorious for pulling anti-Israel bait and switches - making security commitments to lock in irreversible Israeli concessions and then changing the terms of the original agreements. Plus Egypt says they won't cooperate on the MOU even though the actual text acknowledges that Egyptian cooperation is critical. But even with all of that - yes, it will take Hamas a while to rebuild their lifelines and restock their weapons.

(2) Shalit - This might be Israel's last real chance to secure Shalit's release. The pressure on the government to succeed is enormous - protesters are talking about a national moral meltdown if the government fails. His actual status is unknown - Hamas made a big deal out of turning him into a de facto human shield during Cast Lead. But he's probably too much of a bargaining chip to be endangered and he obviously won't be released if Israeli soldiers just halt their fire unilaterally. The medium-term plan appears to be that he'll get bundled into negotiations over opening border crossings - a win for Israel since on the very evening of Cast Lead the price that Hamas was demanding was much heavier. But those negotiations might stall out because Hamas's demands are unacceptable to Israel. The result would be that Shalit's status would get put back into limbo.

(3) Rocket fire - Rocket fire has decreased by half since the Operation began, although part of that is because Hamas has been conserving their stocks. Their most powerful rockets and missile have only been trotted out a couple of times - long-range Grad missiles that they've fired at Israeli cities, anti-aircraft missiles that they've launched at IAF planes, and anti-tank missiles that they've used on Israel troops. The rest of the stockpile is hidden under Shifa Hospital and beyond the reach of anything but ground troops. That hasn't stopped Hamas from launching drip drip drip rocket barrages at Israeli civilians, hitting homes and schools. You should check out LGF's exclusive report about how the Israeli home front tries to cope with this kind of terror. This is the condition that's most cut-and-dry. Either Hamas stops firing rockets - an admission that they've been cowed by Israel - or they keep firing rockets. If they keep firing rockets it's a near certainty that the Israeli government will have to enter Stage 3 of Operation Cast Lead, except by that time under a new American President and far less favorable diplomatic conditions ("but we proved Hamas didn't want peace" won't really matter). Still - it might work.

In any case the ceasefire was probably a done deal earlier this week when Olmert threatened to escalate the Operation if ceasefire negotiations didn't work out. Israel has made modest gains while taking genuine but limited losses. There has been some progress on Operation Cast Lead's military goals and Israel may have succeeded in moving the goalposts on Shalit negotiations. And while Hamas will certainly trot out the Hezbollah "we achieved victory by surviving" line - the sheer scale of the devastation, the failure to inflict heavy losses on the IDF, and the inability to panic Israeli civilians will make those boasts look hollow. So Israel's "declare victory and get out" strategy might have something to it.

But if negotiations on Shalit start to drag on or if open smuggling resumes - and of course if the rocket fire continues - it will look like the Olmert government again managed to wrest diplomatic defeat from the jaws of military victory.

References and previously after the jump...

Opps:

Two captured terrorists interviewed by Maariv/NRG say that Hamas was not expecting Israel's response to the escalation in missile attacks on Israeli targets that preceded Operation Cast Lead. One of them, a 52-year-old victim of a premature detonation who had already done time in an Israeli jail, said, "Hamas took a gamble. We thought, at worst Israel will come and do something from the air - something superficial. They'll come in and go out. We never thought that we would reach the point where fear will swallow the heart and the feet will want to flee. You [Israel] are fighting like you fought in '48. What got into you all of a sudden?" The second terrorist, a 21-year-old, said Hamas brought order to Gaza, but also brought fear. He noted that it was dangerous in Gaza for non-Hamas members, citing an instance of his being beaten and another in which he saw a friend killed when he went to get gas. "Now they're all gone," he said. "There have been no Hamasniks in the streets since the start of the campaign."

Except now Israel is getting tangled in international agreements and stuttering ceasefires. Today there was that anti-smuggling understanding with the US that won't work. And tomorrow Israel's cabinet will probably wrap up the whole thing by declaring a unilateral ceasefire. Why unilateral? Because Hamas has made it clear that they won't stop their attacks on Israelis.

Figures.

References:
* "Iranian Unit" Destroyed, Hamas was Suprised [A7]
* US, Israel sign anti-smuggling deal [YNet]
* Defense officials: Truce won't stop smuggling [JPost]
* Cabinet to decide on unilateral ceasefire Saturday evening [JPost]
* Reuters Headline On Israel's Demand For Long-Term Truce: "Israel Rebuffs Temporary Truce" (Plus: Hamas Rejects Truce. Again.) [MR]

Previously:
* Video: Hamas Broadcast Tells Gaza Children To Form Human Shield Around Weapons Cache
* Hamas Taking Limited Losses, Waiting For Obama Inauguration To Negotiate Ceasefire Terms
* No, Of Course Hamas Didn't Accept A Ceasefire

Erdogan declared that Allah will personally wipe out Israel and just this morning informed the Turkish parliament that "media outlets supported by Jews are disseminating false reports". Seems perfect:

Hamas is set to announce that it is willing to allow a Turkish force to deploy at Rafah crossing, despite earlier insistence that it would treat any international presence along Gaza's border as an occupying force. Hamas would agree to a Turkish deployment of forces because it "harbors respect to Turkey as an Islamic nation," a Hamas source told the paper. Turkey has made clear that it would be willing to contribute to a "technical" or "observer" mission.

In fairness, the secular Turkish military is quite literally the farthest thing from their increasingly Islamist political echelon. Some of the army's more exuberant nationalists have been getting visibly antsy for months and Erdogan's public musings about Allah's wrath can't be helping. But things have gotten so bad in Turkey that there's no way to know how a coup would play out: there may not be enough secular sentiment left in the country for it to be sustainable. And if Islamists start influencing the military then these vaunted monitors are going to be exactly as useful as those nonexistent EU monitors.

Plus the full plan calls for a dual French-Turkish monitoring force. And French peacekeepers - how can I put this gently - fucking suck.

References:
* Turkey: Allah Will Personally Wipe Out Israel [MR]
* Erdogan slams Israel harshly in televised parliamentary session [JPost]
* 'Hamas agrees to Turkish force in Rafah' [JPost]
* Suspected coup plotters arrested in Turkey [JPost]
* EU Again Backs Out of Monitoring Agreement, Endangers Israeli Security [MR]
* France, Turkey willing to send troops to Gaza as part of cease-fire [JPost]
* Again With the Idiotic French Self-Congratulation On How Their Soldiers Haven't Disobeyed Basic Instructions [MR]

Previously:
* Wonderful Story Of Jewish-Muslim Cooperation On Temple Mount Destroyed... By Radical Muslims
* Abe Foxman Should Stop Saying Words - Incoherent Support For Armenian Genocide Resolution Edition
* Awww... Turkey's So Pissed Off At Israel That They Might Not Help Israel Give Syria Back The Golan

This is exactly how the Nazis did it, right? I only ask because "Jews = Nazis" is now the standard anti-Israel line for Arab governments and liberal activists. It's almost like they're wildly exaggerating just so they can make a particularly vicious, borderline anti-Semitic smear:

The creative minds inside Israel's Border Police have invented a new crowd control weapon, one that pays homage to that devil of a stinker, Pepé Le Pew... Imagine the worst, most foul thing you have ever smelled. An overpowering mix of rotting meat, old socks that haven't been washed for weeks - topped off with the pungent waft of an open sewer. Imagine being covered in the stuff as it is liberally sprayed from a water cannon... The smell... apparently lingers on the skin and in hair for days and can be smelled from quite a distance... neither soap nor tomato sauce is doing the job.

The smell is so awful that police stations can't even store it, while the actual substance is 100% nontoxic.

Vicious lunatics go on violent rampages where they alternate between attacking police and screaming for Israel's destruction. In response the Jewish State develops cutting-edge technology to minimize injuries - and still has to bear the brunt of the UN's condemnations. Nothing to worry about though - those condemnations come from clearheaded and objective anti-Zionism. Obviously.

References:
* Israel's new weapon [FP Passport]
* Libya spurs UN protest with Nazi remark [JPost]
* Terrorist Loving British Tool: Israel Running "Concentration Camp", Gaza Like Darfur [MR]

Previously:
* The IDF Is The World's Most Moral Army (Humanitarian Coordination Edition)
* The Most Moral Army In The World - Soldier Testimonials [Video]
* Still the World's Most Moral Army

Forget the military takeover that they could pull off anyway. All Hamas has to do now is wait a few months:

Hamas is planning to declare one of its top officials as interim president of the Palestinian Authority after Mahmoud Abbas's term in office expires in January 2009, Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip said Sunday. The officials told The Jerusalem Post that Hamas would not recognize Abbas as president of the PA after that date. "We will remove his pictures from all the public institutions," said one official. "Until now, our policy has been not to challenge Abbas's legitimacy as the elected leader of the Palestinian Authority." But, the Hamas official warned, his movement was determined to see Abbas step down in January.

And if they don't take over the Palestinian Authority directly, they'll just reconcile with Fatah and do it that way:

While Fatah's security professionals seek conflict with Hamas, the movement's political faction wishes to reconcile with Hamas and redirect the anger at Israel. Eight years after the second intifada's eruption, the controversy in the PA could lead to a renewed conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank... Last week, Kadoura Fares, a leader of the Palestinian "peace coalition," called on PA President Mahmoud Abbas to halt the talks with Israel immediately. Fares, a key Fatah leader from the generation below Abbas, made this statement at a conference on the Geneva Initiative in Tel Aviv. He said it was inconceivable for Abbas to keep talking with Israel while construction in the settlements continued.

It's not like any of this is a surprise. People have known for months that Abbas will have no choice but to hand over control in January. And prominent Fatah leaders have been calling for a Fatah-Hamas merger for years.

Here's a bit of a query though, given the continued millions in security assistance that State has been mindlessly pouring into the West Bank: how many Israelis have been directly murdered by US weapons? There's never any end to the liberal hand-wringing about "Made In The USA" weapons used against Palestinian terrorists. Has anyone checked the figures going the other way? Not even counting the battalions of potential terrorists who've gotten US military training. And not even counting how State Department assistance to Hamas has freed up money that the terrorist organization used for weapons. Just actual, physical US weapons turned on Israeli civilians.

Hamas has at least 200 tons worth of US arms that they captured in Gaza and turned against Israeli civilians. That leaves only the weapons that Fatah soldiers used against Israelis. Plus the weapons that they gave to other terrorists. And probably also whatever weapons they kept when they defected to other terrorist groups. Am I forgetting anything?

Regardless: now that Hamas is going to be a legitimate government, that pretty much means that President Obama will have no excuse but to talk to them. Which is the opposite of what a President McCain would have done - but, well, yeah.

Previous and references after the jump.