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Go Home Operation Make the World Hate Us

POLITICS JUNE 3, 2010

Operation Make the World Hate Us

BY LEON WIESELTIER

Israel does not need enemies: it has itself. Or more precisely: it has its government. The Netanyahu-Barak government has somehow found a way to lose the moral high ground, the all-important war for symbols and meanings, to Hamas. That is quite an accomplishment. Operation Make the World Hate Us, it might have been called.

I leave it to others to make the operational criticisms of the Israeli action, and will say only that even my amateurish understanding of the tactical challenge posed by the interdiction of the boats suffices to suggest that there were other ways to do this. I also will not pretend to a perfect grasp of what happened on board the Mavi Marmara. I have pondered the videos that both sides have released, and concluded that the Israeli soldiers sliding down that rope had no intention of attacking the people on board and that the people on board had no way of being confident of this. I cannot expect Palestinians and their supporters to believe the best about the Israeli army. (This is what Israeli hardliners call “the restoration of deterrence.”) I do not doubt that some of the activists on the ship welcomed a confrontation with Israel, but the Israelis should not have obliged them. In any event, what took place on that deck looks to me like a tragic misunderstanding. Yet there was no reason to think that anything else would have transpired.

The important point is that the killing of civilians on the Mavi Marmara—I understand that they were “armed” with metal bars and a knife, but still they were civilians, and soldiers are trained to respond unlethally to the recklessness of a mob—cannot be extenuated by reference to “asymmetrical warfare” and Israel’s right to defend itself. This was not warfare, at least of the physical sort. Israel was not under attack. A headline in The Washington Post yesterday reported that “Israel says Free Gaza Movement poses threat to Jewish state.” Such a claim is absurd. It is true that the movement has grown in recent years, and is now troublesome to Israel’s policy in Gaza; and it is also true that the Turkish charity that sponsored the “Freedom Flotilla” has ties to Islamicist groups. But this is hardly what Israel likes to call, in the Iranian context, and there quite plausibly, an “existential threat.” The extension of the definition of a security threat to include hostile activities that have little or no bearing upon security is an ominous development.

It is also the inevitable consequence of Benjamin Netanyahu’s cunning pronouncement last year that Israel is now endangered by “the Iran threat, the missile threat, and the threat I call the Goldstone threat.” The equivalence was morally misleading, and therefore dangerous. Ideological warfare is not military warfare. I have studied the entirety of the Goldstone Report, and whereas I do not doubt (and wrote in this magazine in the days before Goldstone) that Operation Cast Lead caused the unjustifiable death of non-combatants, I also do not doubt that the Goldstone Report, which was nastily indifferent to Israel’s security predicament and to the ethical challenges of Israeli self-defense, was an instrument in a broad campaign of delegitimation against Israel—and yet the threat of delegitimation is not like the threat of destruction. It is different in kind. A commando operation is not an appropriate response to an idea. “This was no Love Boat,” Netanyahu said yesterday. “It was a hate boat.” He is right, but so what? The threat of delegitimation is not a military problem and it does not have a military solution. And the attempt to give it a military solution has now had the awful consequence of making the threat still greater. The assault on the Mavi Marmara was a stupid gift to the delegitimators.

You do not have to be a general to grasp these distinctions. In fact, judging by Israel’s recent history, it might help not to be one. But the militarization of the Israeli government’s understanding of Israel’s situation—this has been the most sterile period for diplomacy in all of Israel’s history—is not all that led to the debacle at sea. Rules of military engagement that allow soldiers to fire on political activists (I leave aside the question of their humanitarianism for a moment) may signify something still deeper and even more troubling. It is hard not to conclude from this Israeli action, and also from other Israeli actions in recent years, that the Israeli leadership simply does not care any longer about what anybody thinks. It does not seem to care about what even the United States—its only real friend, even in the choppy era of Obama—thinks. This is not defiance, it is despair. The Israeli leadership seems to have given up any expectation of fairness and sympathy from the world. It is behaving as if it believes, in the manner of the most perilous Jewish pessimism, that the whole world hates the Jews, and that is all there is to it. This is the very opposite of the measured and empirical attitude, the search for strategic opportunity, the enlistment of imagination in the service of ideals and interests, that is required for statecraft.

The complication—the one that deprives anybody who acknowledges it of membership in any of the gangs of commentary—is that there is a partial basis in the actually existing world for a degree of Israeli pessimism. There are leaders, states, organizations, and peoples whose hostility to the Jewish state is irrational and absolute and in some cases murderous. Things are said critically about Israel that wildly burst the bounds of thoughtful criticism. The language in which Israel is described by some governments and international organizations is lurid and grotesque and foul. Anti-Semitic tropes—the conspiracy theory about the Jews, most conspicuously—are regularly encountered in otherwise respectable places. The analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that absolves the Palestinians of any significant role in it is widespread. I do not see how any of this can be denied, or shunted aside, or explained entirely in terms of Israeli behavior. But it is emphatically not the whole picture, except for those Israelis and Jews whose political interests and ideological inclinations prefer it to be the whole picture. For there are forces in Israel, and in its government, that have a use for Jewish hopelessness.

There is a verse in Numbers that Jewish pessimists like to cite: “the people shall dwell alone, and not be reckoned among the nations.” It is Balaam’s divinely inspired description of the Israelites—Balaam, who came to curse and stayed to bless. But I have always regarded it as a curse, this promise of loneliness. I have heard it intoned lachrymosely and proudly—in our time Jewish pride has a disturbingly parasitic relationship with Jewish lachrymosity—all my life. It chills me to the bone. It is a locution for prophets, not prime ministers. The Jews cannot dwell alone. In fact, their history shows that they never did dwell alone. It is not a tale of insularity and isolation. The apartness of the Jews was never a complete secession from their environment. The engagement of the Jews with the world was a matter not only of practical necessity, but also of theological conviction. And not even the darkest and most dire adversity succeeded in driving them entirely into themselves.

When, in the modern era, the Zionists concluded, quite correctly, that the Jews must extract themselves from anti-Semitic societies and establish a society of their own, a sovereign one, in the land of Israel, it was in part to “normalize” them by making them “reckoned among the nations,” and therefore like other nations. Zionism was a reversal of Balaam’s phony blessing. The state was not supposed to be a bunker, even if it had enemies. But Netanyahu is a creature of the bunker. He talks about peace, but not like a man who hungers for it. He takes no steps toward peace except as the consequence of a crisis—a crisis not with the Palestinians but with the Americans. He liturgically intones his warnings, some of them true, about the external dangers facing Israel, and mistakes brutishness for toughness, and offers nothing. He is a gray, muddling, reactive figure. His preferred strategy for his country is: one quiet week after another unto eternity. His problem is that there are not many quiet weeks.

But about those activists: a great deal of bathetic rubbish has been written about them. Insofar as they were bringing food and medicine to Gaza, they were humanitarians; but insofar as they were striking a blow for the government of Gaza, they were anti-humanitarians. A real “Freedom Flotilla” would have sailed for Gaza to liberate it from its rulers. For Hamas stifles Gaza from within even as Israel stifles it from without. It oppresses the Palestininans who live under its sway and has brought them ruin. When did it become progressive to support a theocracy? Consider the case of Henning Mankell, the Swedish writer of thrillers (and the son-in-law of Ingmar Bergman) who was a passenger on one of the boats in the “Freedom Flotilla.” In his youth he took part in anti-Vietnam and anti-apartheid demonstrations, presumably in the spirit of secular reason. For a while he lived in Norway and participated in the activities of a radical Maoist party: let us call that secular unreason. Now he does the work of Hamas and its mullahs. Last year Mankell attended the Palestine Festival of Literature in east Jerusalem—or would have attended it, if the Israeli authorities had not idiotically closed it down. When he returned to Sweden, he wrote that “there is a straight line between Soweto, Sharpeville, and what recently happened [I presume he was referring to the war] in Gaza.” And: “Is it strange that some [Palestinians] in pure desperation, when they cannot see any other way out, decide to become suicide bombers? Not really. Maybe it is strange that there are not more of them.” And: “The state of Israel in its current form has no future. Moreover, those who advocate a two-state solution have not got it right. … The question is whether it will be possible to talk sense into the Israelis in order for them to willingly accept the end of their own apartheid state.” This man has rights, at sea and on land, but he can hardly be lauded as a champion of peace and reconciliation. You are not for co-existence if you advocate the disappearance of one of the terms. (Consider, analogously, the recent adventures of Noam Chomsky in the region. It was widely noted that the Israelis, again idiotically, turned him away at the Allenby Bridge. It was less widely noted that a few days later a reporter for The New York Times accidentally discovered him in Lebanon at the home of Nabil Qaouk, the deputy head of Hezbollah, which is not what Voltaire had in mind.)

And yet the screw must be turned again: the anti-Israeli virulence of Henning Mankell and his maritime comrades does not make Israel’s assault on the Mavi Marmara more just or more wise. Now the Israeli government may find it impossible not to modify or even to lift the blockade of Gaza—an outcome that no decent person can decry, as long as Hamas does not exploit the respite to acquire weapons or what it needs to make them, and the past is not encouraging in this regard. Netanyahu will do what he can to get past the mess, hoping that the approach of the midterm elections in the United States will rescue him from the pressure, and the deadening hand of the status quo will be back. And Israel will be known to more and more people—in a wounding misrepresentation—mainly for cruelty.

Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor of The New Republic.

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185 comments

"In any event, what took place on that deck looks to me like a tragic misunderstanding." Like much of the rest of this analysis, this is naivete personified.

- nhrds@earthlink.net

June 3, 2010 at 11:43am

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Wieseltier should take a look at television programming in Turkey, and then watch Hezbollah's popular 'Elders of Zion" tv series, and the PA children's programming while he searches for "the enlistment of imagination in the service of ideals and interests, that is required for statecraft..." oh, that would be NYT's Frank Rich's job. any guess as to the plot for this season's final episode, to be released in Turkey today? from January 12, 2010: "...Israeli politicians and media outlets roundly condemned an episode of the popular Turkish soap opera, "Valley of the Wolves: Ambush," that depicted the Israeli intelligence service Mossad spying inside Turkey and kidnapping Turkish babies. The program also showed Mossad attacking the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv and taking the ambassador and his family hostage. ..." http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/01/12/turkey.israel/index.html

- K2K

June 3, 2010 at 11:58am

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Despite the blathering immediately above, this is a superb piece. It is the meditation of a thoughtful and brilliant man. It is a considered response and not a tic, such as issues daily from Andrew Sullivan, who has what might be called Blogger's Tourette's. It is an essay by one who has viewed events for a long time and who has a tragic sense of the world. The assault on the flotilla was ill-considered and did and will and shall damage Israel' image further. Not that some need any assistance to do so, as Leon WIeseltier eloquently writes here. But all the same, it is a terrible tragedy.

- liberal reformer

June 3, 2010 at 11:59am

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Je supplie de différer. Motifs à suivre lorsque le temps le permet plus.

- basman

June 3, 2010 at 12:00pm

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"When did it become progressive to support a theocracy?" There are two different ways of approaching that question. The first is simply to note that one may support a population without necessarily supporting its government: we do this in, say, North Korea and Zimbabwe, so why not in Gaza? Absent the rhetoric (which is cheap and mutable), I don't see that attempting to move wheelchairs, cement and, what, coriander? into Gaza is necessarily support for the Hamas government. Of the hundreds of people on those ships, what balance is there between different views of this conflict. We don't know - so why is Henning Mankell necessarily the poster boy for the group? And second, when did it become progressive to support the outcome of democratic elections? Hamas is (among other things) certainly a group of fanatical theocrats that bears as much of the blame for stifling Gaza as does Israel.... but it was also voted in to power in elections that were more free and more fair than, for example, the last elections in Afghanistan, and in the region that is no mean thing. The tactic undertaken by Israel, the USA and Fatah after those elections was simply, immediately and unreflexively to try and make the lives of people in Gaza so unbearable that they would throw Hamas out. That didn't/couldn't/wouldn't work - but the stupidity of the attempt at collective punishment continues. The roots of Hamas can in part be traced back to a set of Israeli initiatives in the 1970s, when the Muslim Brotherhood was encouraged to operate in Gaza and (to a lesser extent) the West Bank, as a counterweight to Fatah and other secular organisations. At that point, Israel held its nose and collaborated with Islamicists, which at least implies that the exercise is not impossible.

- SMacEachern2

June 3, 2010 at 12:04pm

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Réformateur libéral: puis-je suggérer moins dans la manière de titres honorifiques et plus dans la voie de l'analyse. (Je sais très bien quelqu'un qui est éteint à Montréal aujourd'hui pour l'obtention du diplôme de sa fille de l'Université McGill Law School.)

- basman

June 3, 2010 at 12:05pm

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In playing the blame game, Leon is at a loss for suggestions in dealing with this situation other than platitudes that have failed in the past.

- NR114746

June 3, 2010 at 12:48pm

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basman, felicitations, mais je dois demander- pourquoi en francais? It's bigger than this, though. One doesn't have to be an anti-semite to wonder- sure the blockade needs to keep weapons and weapons components out of Gaza- but why chocolate and pasta? Is there some nefarious use for tortellini that I am not familiar with?

- miceelf

June 3, 2010 at 12:52pm

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Excellent essay. It won't surprise anyone who has read my recent comments on the flotilla tragedy that I agree completely with Wieseltier on this. It has often struck me that Israeli policy toward Arabs, and Arab policies toward Israel, are curiously parallel, though mirrored, to one another. Israel is by far the most powerful state in the Arab Middle East, not only militarily, but technologically and economically as well. As it has proven numerous times, Israel is not only more powerful than any of its neighbors, it is mightier even than several together. And yet, Israeli policy continues to operate within the frame of a powerful myth, the myth of the "weak Jew," alone in the world and victim of it. The confluence of this myth with Israel's overwhelming power has had profound consequences for Israel, and the world's opinion of it, since at least 1967, though it appears to be intensifying under the current government. I am reminded of a famous Zionist poem by Yitzak Lamdan, "Massada." The ancient story of Massada, concerning the conquering of a Roman fortress by Sicarii rebels, became through Lamdan’s words a powerful presentation of heroic victimization. At the end of the story, the Romans lay siege to Massada, and the Sicarii, rather than allow themselves to be slain by their enemies, kill their families and then themselves. The myth exalts in liberty, heroism, and the preference of death to bondage. There is a sense in the story, explicitly revealed by Lamdan, of a freedom from any moral or territorial limits. "From here," Lamdan writes, "there are no boundaries." The Palestinians and other Arab peoples who surround Israel are broadly operating under a similar, though reversed, perspective. Their states are undeniably, provably weaker than Israel in many respects and over many generations. This, however, conflicts with a myth of Muslim power that was only ended relatively recently. The impact that the fall of the Ottoman Empire had on Muslim intellectual and political thinking cannot be overstated. It was profound. Islam is (supposed to be) the faith of civilization, wealth, unity, just governance, and military victory. And yet, the Muslim states of the Middle East are overwhelmingly weak, poor, unjust, badly governed, and at each other's throats. The fact that the myth does not agree with the facts does not damage the myth; in a paradoxical way, the two sustain each other and, like Israel's evident need for existential crisis, become ends in themselves.

- bacchant

June 3, 2010 at 12:59pm

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MacEachern seems to think that if a government is democratically elected, it can then make war as it pleases and, if anyone objects, it suffices to answer that it is a democratically elected government. There exists an openly declared state of belligerency between the de facto state of Gaza and its government, Hamas, and the State of Israel. Hamas declares its intention to destroy Israel, maintains that it can use force to do so as it pleases, and in fact repeatedly attacks Israel with missiles. Therefore, there exists a state of war that Hamas declines to terminate and pursues actively. In the midst of active hostilities, blockade is a a perfectly legal and non-lethal tool of legitimate defense as long is it is not pressed to the point of civilian death, as quite clearly the blockade of Gaza has not been. That the blockade causes discomfort to the civilian population or fails to result in the removal of its unlawfully belligerent government is of no importance as a matter of human rights law or the law of war. The shortest means of ending the blockade is for Hamas to cease making war on Israel and cooperate in establishing assurances that it will not resume doing so. Despite the absolutely unambiguous legitimacy of the blockade and the enforcement of the blockade, in international waters or not, I think that doing more than is necessary to prevent the acquisition of weapons or materials for weapons is imprudent and self-defeating for Israel. The Israeli policy should be, explicitly, that the Gazans can rant and rave, declare that they will destroy Israel, live under theocracy, continue to murder each other, and it is all a matter of indifference. What they cannot do is use violence against Israel, and as long as they declare that they will do so and/or do so in fact, whatever they may declare, Israel will use whatever means and force are necessary to prevent itself from being Hamas's target. Under such a policy, I think Israel would be better served politically by allowing a flourishing Gazan commerce of all kinds that do not give Hamas access to or the ability to make weapons. MacEachern's complaints are, however, arid nothing. They have no grounding in law or human rights or reality and, as usual, are without any evidence of human decency. They are the self-righteous prattle of one who thinks that declamations about the welfare of human beings excuse any depradation. One has merely to declare oneself a lover of humanity, and then anything goes. He is a Leninist with exactly the same relationship to the truth as Lenin -- there is no truth, only useful lies and useless lies.

- roidubouloi

June 3, 2010 at 1:06pm

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Liberal reformer: I suggest less in the way of honorific titles and the more in the way of analysis. Basman, why are you writing in French? I see no real reason for it. I mean, great for your friend at Montreal and all, but you do know this is an English web site. Are you just in a whimsical mood, which, as I understand it, is how all Canadians are? I agree that this is an excellent essay, and in response to NR above, what suggestions do you have in mind. We are at the perpetual crossroads, unless Hamas recognizes it can not win a war of aggression and stops fighting, this will never end. So I am with Roid on this.

- blackton

June 3, 2010 at 1:27pm

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As carefully worded and structured Wieseltier's piece is, it seems a little unbalanced. What does it matter who's running Israel at any given time? Put the screws on Netanyahu, Barak, et.al., as much as you want, the real point is what Wieseltier calls "the complications," and he describes those issues brilliantly. They're the basic reality of the situation Israel has faced, is facing, and will continue to face for the foreseeable future. It barely matters who is in power in Israel, or the mistakes Israel makes. If Israel makes no stupid errors at all (and this was one giant stupid error), those complications are a fact -- at least if and until the Islamic fringe extremists -- Hamas, Hizbullah, etc., take your pick -- make it at least to the 19th or 20th century. What can Israel do, how should it, how can it act in the face of this reality? How much does the Jewish hopelessness LW describes have to do with this? It's a troubling and sad question, but at this point how much does it matter in confronting the reality of the "complications?" In any case, let's hope for fewer stupid mistakes and more competence going forward. That would be nice.

- LISAH

June 3, 2010 at 1:44pm

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Excellent as always Leon. TNR has been a real beacon in this whole incident. The TNR commenters have been on incredible roll too, wise and often brilliant. We've mostly all kept our heads about us. I have found the tone between rivals to be careful, if passionate. What a relief in such a painful situation. I don't think the main issue to be addressed has much to do with the blockade, Hamas, or Turkey. Those components, while pivotal, feel like dangerous distractions to the precise thinking that is needed. As I see it, the primary issue is one of military and political incompetence. There is no military, tactical, political or intellectual justification for such sloppy decision making on Israel's part. The "we have to protect Israel" arguments have been unpersuasive at best. This incident just made them more in danger than ever, just like their enemies hoped it would. Apache heliocopters and machine guns in international waters versus a crew of people somewhat credibly calling themselves activists and idealistic misguided kids (one of whom, 19 years old, died with four bullet holes in his head - an American kid, way to go Bibi you macho ass) with sticks and knives clumsily and obviously trying to set up Israel - how could Israel have been so easily duped? Of course there was nothing dangerous in the cargo. How could that motely crew of people have been smarter than the Israeli military in something so basic? Hamas is in heaven right now.

- WandreyCer

June 3, 2010 at 2:03pm

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In a world where only Israel is criticized, it does the Palestinians no good at all for writers to jump on the bandwagon. If there are moderate Palestinians somewhere (a big IF), they should hear of columnists who are willing to say that the Hamas Charter, which excludes the possibility of either peace or negotiation, hurts the Palestinians. A Palestinian state can be achieved only with Israel, not against it. When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it gave the Gazans independence with no strings attached. Gaza should have declared indepepndence and begun negotiations with Israel. Instead, Hamas was elected and rockets began to fall on Sderot. The fact that the rockets were ineffective doesn't matter. They were a statement. The rockets were saying: Reoccupy us! Reoccupy us! Waging wars always involves making errors. Errors are bad, but the side that is committed to war forever is Hamas.

- jochnowitz

June 3, 2010 at 2:13pm

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So what can I say? I have long admired Leon Wieseltier's writing and I just wished to say so here. I have told him this many times on messages that I have left on his voice mail and a number of times directly when he has picked up the phone. It is not that I celebrate all things Wiesletier, I don't; my favorite philosopher is the late Richard Rorty and Wieseltier has had harsh words for him. Sometimes, Leon W. is too dour and pessimistic and cranky for my taste. But the good with the bad, no? All in all, reading Leon is a virtual liberal arts education in itself. I read his book Kaddish just after my father died in early February 1999, and it was a tremendous comfort, which I told him when I spoke with him on September 11, 2003. His work, Against Identity, is a superb blast against the multicultis. If any of you people can write like him, I will be celebrating you, too.

- liberal reformer

June 3, 2010 at 2:20pm

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Jeff Goldberg, presumably not a left-wing naif fellow traveller bent on islamic domination, reports on conversations with Israeli generals: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/06/says-one-israeli-general-everybody-thinks-were-bananas/57514/ I happen to be around a lot of Israeli generals lately, and one I bumped into today said something very smart and self-aware: "Does everybody in the world think we're bananas?" He did not let me respond before he said, "Wait, I know the answer: The whole world thinks we're bananas." I asked this general if this was a good thing or a bad thing. After all, Nixon seemed bananas and he achieved great things internationally. So did Menachem Begin. This is what the general said, however: "It's one thing for people to think that you're crazy, but it's bad when they think you're incompetent and crazy, and that's the way we look." ... I'm not going to predict the political fall-out from this, because I'm not clever enough to fully grasp Israeli coalition politics. But the feelings of shame and embarrassment are palpable, and someone will have to pay a price.

- miceelf

June 3, 2010 at 2:30pm

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roudubouloi: "MacEachern seems to think that if a government is democratically elected, it can then make war as it pleases and, if anyone objects, it suffices to answer that it is a democratically elected government." Not at all. Wieseltier asked a question: how can progressives support a theocracy? I gave two answers: (1) a government and a population are not the same thing, and (2) there is this question of democracy, which is not irrelevant. For America, and I presume for Israel as well, there is rhetorically at least some value in democracy in Middle Eastern countries, and one of the outcomes of such a process is that sometimes you get governments that you dislike (eg, governments with Avigdor Lieberman as Foreign Minister) or that you absolutely hate (Hamas in Gaza). Neither Hamas on the one side, nor Israel/America/Fatah on the other, demonstrated any respect for democracy after those elections took place. But it cannot be completely ignored when thinking about how the world treats Gaza. Talking of 'evidence of human decency' - what, nine people killed this time? Humans, I believe, although you'd never know that if you only read much of what passes for commentary on TNR (although not, in this case, Wieseltier's article, much of which I agree with). As for the rest, accusations of being a Leninist and all that... that's just static, stock-in-trade for the cause.

- SMacEachern2

June 3, 2010 at 2:37pm

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"What can Israel do, how should it, how can it act in the face of this reality? How much does the Jewish hopelessness LW describes have to do with this? It's a troubling and sad question, but at this point how much does it matter in confronting the reality of the 'complications?'" It matters a great deal. For one thing, Israel has lost sight of the differences between self-defense and pursuit of political goals, such as settlement of the West Bank, by military means. Pretty soon, you are no longer defending yourself with force but defending your political adventures. Great powers can get away with this sort of thing; small powers less so. Israel is a small power. It cannot afford, either militarily or politically, undertakings that exceed its self-defense needs. A lot of the excess gets justified, at least politically, on the theory that the world will hate us anyway so what does it matter what we do? I think it is this particular type of despair, and the imprudent, self-defeating, maladroit behavior that results, that Wieseltier is lamenting. And I agree. Israel must be adroit because it does not have the power and weight to survive big mistakes or endless numbers of small mistakes. If Israel had been concerned, as it should have been, about public opinion, then a nighttime commando raid, when there are no lives at stake, is objectively a ridiculous way to proceed. And if you need commandos, you had better arm them properly, not with paintball guns. And if you think that heavily armed commandos are too dangerous for the situation, the answer is not to disarm them but to do something else. In this case, the way to proceed would have been, in effect, a traffic stop. Pull abreast of that ship in broad daylight, with lots of camera crews to observe, and demand that the ship accept boarding. When the police are aboard, you demand surrender of control Like the Coast Guard, you know? If it resists or refuses these lawful orders, then you have to have some way to disable the ship short of lethal force, or stand in its way for as long as it takes for them to run out of food and water and surrender. Those are actions that display an acute sensitivity to world opinion. What Israel did in fact displays indifference. That is dangerous -- to Israel.

- roidubouloi

June 3, 2010 at 2:47pm

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Pretty much everything you have to say is static, bullshit piled on bullshit for your faux human rights pretensions. Day in, day out. Always the same nonsense. Here is a perfect example: "For America, and I presume for Israel as well, there is rhetorically at least some value in democracy in Middle Eastern countries, and one of the outcomes of such a process is that sometimes you get governments that . . . you absolutely hate (Hamas in Gaza). Neither Hamas on the one side, nor Israel/America/Fatah on the other, demonstrated any respect for democracy after those elections took place. But it cannot be completely ignored when thinking about how the world treats Gaza." Missed the point, did you? The issue is not whether Israel or the US hates Hamas government. The point is that the Hamas government is engaged in active warfare against Israel and refuses to desist. It matters not whether Hamas was elected or descended from Heaven with Mohammed in the lead. What matters is that it is a belligerent engaged in active, open warfare. Got that? When you make war, the people you are warring against are going to do their best to defend themselves -- including interdiction of weapons and blockade. And if you try to run a lawful blockade, you may get hurt. That's what happens when you make war. You may be hurt or killed. Hamas does not need to make itself over in the image of liberal democracy. Israel is not engaged in combat with Syria although Syria has a government it hates because Syria is not engaged in active hostilities. You and your Leninist ilk love violence as long as it serves your own political ends. No, you adore it. The very idea that such as you might be concerned with nine deaths is ludicrous. Like the good Leninist you are, what matters to you is only whether the deaths served your cause. That is why you cannot even bear to be reminded that the problem of Hamas is not its words, but its deeds.

- roidubouloi

June 3, 2010 at 2:57pm

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The incident was and is tragic it seems to me only in the sense that, under the circumstances, it was a pathetic blunder by the commander of the unit that landed on the boat. Israel was within its rights to board it, but it also had the responsibility to take all necessary measures to avoid the kind of confrontation that took place. As it happened, the blunder turned out to be fatal. Lives were lost unnecessarily, and the policy that put the blockade in place has been fatally undermined if not also deligitimated. The purpose of the blockade has died along with the passengers on the boat. If Israel cannot safely interdict a convoy, then it can no longer justify doing so. The blockade must cease, since it is no longer legitimate under the terms that put it in place.

- Tgossard

June 3, 2010 at 3:22pm

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Not exactly, Tgossard, as there is no right to run a lawful blockade imposed in the midst of hostilities. People who do that, whatever they may consider themselves, are participating in hostilities. They are not innocent bystanders. Moreover, the answer to excessive police violence is not to disband the police or leave laws unenforced. It is to assure that the enforcers are properly trained for foreseeable contingencies and can enforce the law with the least force and harm necessary. However, "necessary," in the sense of successful enforcement, is part of the bargain too. In this case, although Israel did not do what it could have or should have done, it was misled into thinking that the blockade-runners were as peaceful, because they declared themselves to be. I think the belief was rather naîve and in the end it cost nine lives, but, plainly, you don't send commandos in with paintball guns if you are expecting violence.

- roidubouloi

June 3, 2010 at 3:36pm

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roi -- I get your response -- and as I said, Israel was pretty much off-base in how it handled this. It's got to get more competent thatn this...But that said, it still won't matter all that much in the long run. Although...although -- I've been kind of (pleasantly) surprised in skimming some of the blogs at what seems to be a fairly large number of comments supporting Israel, the blockade, etc....and excoriating Hamas....

- LISAH

June 3, 2010 at 3:41pm

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Blackton: Indulge Basman. It is a great day for a daddy to see his daughter graduate from Law school in one of the most prestigious Canadian universities! I wish such days on all of us who have daughters for whom we plan great things. I suspect basman's French mood comes from being in Montreal, a city in French speaking Quebec. He hears French, sees French, eats French and being the French momentum, he cannot help but write in French, even on TNR!

- noga1

June 3, 2010 at 3:41pm

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This is a great piece. This line, in particular, rings true: "For there are forces in Israel, and in its government, that have a use for Jewish hopelessness." Yup. Let's be clear, the source of the blockade in Gaza is a terrorist group, Hamas, who could easily end it by acknowledging the right of the state of Israel to exist. Having said that, Israel's policy of "collective punishment" doesn't seem to be working, not only in the sense that it provides disastrous ammunition for the propaganda campaign being waged against it, but also because Gazans have not overthrown Hamas as a result. For both these reasons -- not to mention the suffering incurred there -- some altered approach is needed.

- josh_y

June 3, 2010 at 3:50pm

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roi, I would agree with you (I do agree with you in principle) but regardless Israel has defeated itself in the process. The moral grounds it had for imposing the blockade are severely weakened de facto if not de jure. Israel had better issue apologies than come out swinging as if it were being unjustly criticized.

- Tgossard

June 3, 2010 at 3:54pm

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josh_y, exactly my point, the policy isn't working as intended, simple as that. Something has to happen, something has to change and the ball is in Israel's court to take the necessary action and make the change. This is the sort of disaster that Waco, TX was. The action was lawful but ultimately unsuccessful because it resulted in unnecessary loss of life, and heads rolled (figuratively speaking) accordingly. The Israeli government has to recover and restore legitimacy to its policy at least to its enforcement. Something has to be done at once and it should be announced publicly.

- Tgossard

June 3, 2010 at 4:01pm

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What part of the last 2600 years of Jewish history don't you get? Our greatest enemies are not the Muslims but the Christians of European ancestry because their Greco-Roman roots insist that they do. We have no common cause, no frame of reference with the Christian. The entire Christian faith is the bastard child of Jewish schismatics and Greco-Roman pagans. It was adopted by Constantine as a means of keeping Rome's slave population quiescent in their oppression. If you focus the ignorant on the "afterlife" you can piss all over them in this one. We Jews have been the clear rejectors of Christian claptrap and as such must, in the Christian worldview, be destroyed. Nothing less will satisfy the Christians and we cannot hope for better.

- georgecorgi

June 3, 2010 at 8:58pm

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George, you may be correct as far as it goes, but Islam is as much a "son religion" as Christianity and deep down inside lies the anxiety that the father might reclaim his patrimony, though nobody of any religion talks about it. However, sectarian violence was discredited among Christians, except in Ireland, after the mass bloodletting in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. The problem here is that European anti-Semitism spilled over to engulf nonbelievers such as Voltaire, Hitler and Stalin and became "the socialism of fools" among left-wingers. The day will come when sectarian violence will be discredited among Muslims as well, though it may take intrafaith bloodbaths on the scale of the Reformation wars to do the job. In the meantime, anti-Semitism remains as much a certainty of life as death and taxes.

- NR114746

June 3, 2010 at 10:11pm

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How has fanatical Islamicist regime like Hamas been able to convince thousands of well meaning liberal idiots to support it? It’s as if the Franco regime had been able to get the international brigade to support it instead of the democratically elected Spanish government. There is something sinister afoot when one of the most illiberal and antisemitic regimes in the world is able to count on the support of so called “liberal” young people from around the world including some “liberal” Jews. It’s not liberal values that these young ‘progressive” young people support, it’s illiberal antisemitic values.

- jdyer

June 3, 2010 at 11:08pm

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jackson: "How has fanatical Islamicist regime like Hamas been able to convince thousands of well meaning liberal idiots to support it? " Hamas fights Jews. Plus, Bush43 did Israel a favor by getting those well meaning liberal idiots to focus on Iraq, and all the other stuff. Ironic that Iraq may again be de-stabilizing, but no one cares about that, except the Iraqis.

- K2K

June 4, 2010 at 12:22am

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Jackson, "the socialism of fools" meets "red diaper doper babies." (M. Savage) The U.S. and Israel won the Cold War and they lost, and they haven't gotten over it.

- NR114746

June 4, 2010 at 1:10am

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A central part of Wieseltier’s argument is that Israel’s interdiction, gone terribly badly, exemplifies its currently incompetent politics under Netanyahu, which incompetence feeds the world’s hatred of Israel, based as that politics is according to Wieseltier—on the way overly binary virtual conclusion “…that the whole world hates the Jews, and that is all there is to it.” So, incompetent leadership, instanced by the interdiction, fails to make necessary distinctions amongst existential threats, the Free Gaza Movement, delegitimation, and the “Goldstone threat”. Wieseltier’s version of Israeli political reasoning appears to be: perilous Jewish pessimism washes away the need to discriminate amongst different kinds of threats and that, therefore, starting from this premise of perilousness, all threats are part of the same seamless anti Israeli whole: “This was no Love Boat,” Netanyahu said yesterday. “It was a hate boat.” He is right, but so what? The threat of delegitimation is not a military problem and it does not have a military solution. And the attempt to give it a military solution has now had the awful consequence of making the threat still greater. The assault on the Mavi Marmara was a stupid gift to the delegitimators.” A big problem with this argument—the argument that there are specific and different trees in the anti Israeli forest— as instanced at least by the interdiction is the inclination not to see the forest for all the admittedly very different trees. Seeing the forest as context, Israel’s interdiction makes sense and Wieseltier’s tree bound parsing does not. To try to test what I suggest, I’ll deal with a big brunt of Wieseltier’s argument as built out of the points he makes in his second and third paragraphs which form the core of his argument from interdiction, which then expands outwards. In those paragraphs he says the following: 1. while the young Israeli soldiers intended no mayhem, those on board the Mavi Marmara had no expectation of that—they likely expected mayhem, even as the “activists” on board welcomed a confrontation; 2. and even though the “activists” welcomed a confrontation, Israel should not have obliged them; 3. what eventuated was a “tragic misunderstanding”; and its happening was inevitable; 4. beyond this inevitable tragic outcome, the “important point” is the civilian dead, albeit “‘armed’ with metal bars and a knife”; 5. neither self defence—neither Israel’s nor the young soldiers’—nor assymetricality can accommodate any justification for these dead civilians. After all, “This was not warfare, at least of the physical sort”; 6. the proposition that the Free Gaza Movement imperils Israel is absurd, even as it’s troublesome; and it is not what Israel likes to refer to as an existential threat; and, coup de grace, 7. “The extension of the definition of a security threat to include hostile activities that have little or no bearing upon security is an ominous development.” But how do these points and the overarching argument that emerges from them stand up in context? That context is this: Israel is at war with an Iranian backed Hamas, an Islamist group bent on Israel’s destruction; when Israel left Gaza and Gaza was under Fatah’s governance, such as it was, it employed no embargo; but after Hamas violently and murderously wrested control of Gaza from Fatah, it embarked on bombing and rocketing Israel, limited, in large part, by the limits of its weaponry; Israel then took steps to protect its citizenry, Jew and Arab alike, including the embargo to staunch the inflow of war materials, as did Egypt, with the embargo being legal under international law; to be functional the embargo at a minimum entails inspecting shipments and extracting war materials and then letting through non war materials; the Free Gaza Movement has no time for concern about the security threat to Israel a broken embargo makes real; and so with some succor from Turkey and operationally driven by a jihadist organization with ties to al Qaeda, and with some useful idiots on board too, the Mavi Marmara became the vessel with which either to break the embargo or, hopefully, die trying; Israeli attempts to forestall the sailing, and then its pleas, warnings, offers after inspection to deliver any humanitarian cargo, and threats fell on purposefully deaf ears as the drivers of this operation had a twofold purpose, to which the delivery of humanitarian goods was mere pretext: 1. run the embargo and thereby help lay a foundation for for breaking it by breaking Israeli resolve; and / or 2. foment an incident leading to “civilian death”, world condemnation and increased international pressure, more Goldstoneism, and finally the imposition of terms on Israel in tandem with the intensification of its status as a pariah among nations. Given this context, what do Wieseltier’s paragraphs two and three points and the argument they raise come to? Following my numbering of Wieseltier’s points I say against them: 1. Those driving the embargo breaking operation calculated on the basis of the young Israeli soldiers’ reaction to an attack on them of unexpected ferocity. The real point here is the opposite of Wieseltier’s. The jihadis baited the young soldiers’ reaction in expectation of it. It was the soldiers, armed with paint guns, and their command that did not the ferocity of the attack. The deaths of any useful idiots on board form another issue. But they put themselves in harm’s way by accompanying, and trying to facilitate, the war like act of breaking the embargo. And here again, as in Lead Cast, jihad was only to ready to use civilian shields and death for its own strategic and tactical purposes. 2(a) The notion that Israel shouldn’t have obliged the “activists” is pious coming from a secluded literary editor with nothing more threatening him than the D.C traffic and the occasional scuffle with Andrew Sullivan and other like perils. The corollary to the bromide of Wieseltier’s prescription was the maiming and death Israeli’s young soldiers and a display of feckless weakness, sacrifice on the altar of Wiesletier’s acontextual abstraction. On board, things were real, even without Andrew Sullivan, and without fighting back the “activists” and the “civilians”—about who, the “civilians”, more soon—would have maimed and murdered to any extent possible. 2(b) If by non-obliging, Wieseltier means the initial higher command decision to interdict in the first place, what would the consequences of not- obliging have been: allowing the ship to break the embargo with impunity; creating a kind of template for the further breaking of it; rendering the embargo dysfunctional; the unimpeded inflow of war material; the consequences of that Israeli citizens, Jew and Arab alike; Hamas enabled to do its relatively unencumbered will? 3. So, stipulating for argument’s sake the operational failures of the interdiction, the locution “tragic misunderstanding” is precious. Putting to the analytical side the tragedy of the loss of life as a necessary condition of war, “tragic misunderstanding” as formulated here by Wieseltier isn’t only precious it has the vice of smuggling in an implicit and inapposite moral equivalence, a tragedy of misunderstanding on both sides. But against that implicit moral equivalence, there is in this incident, misunderstandings granted, a clear immoral hierarchy and an equally clear moral hierarchy and those clarities ought not to be occluded. Paramount evil resided in the jihadist driven project only too willing to lay life—Israeli and Jihadist and “armed” civilian—to waste in furtherance of its ultimate ends. Morally, in context, Israel has nothing to apologize for, whatever mistakes it operationally made. The leap from those mistakes to the railing against the justice and wisdom of the interdiction and the included issue of the young Israeli soldiers defending themselves against maiming and death, even possibly some disproportion in the immediate circumstances, trashes context and makes no case. The intended interdiction and included self defence were neither, to invert Wiesletier, unjust or unwise. 4. It is hard to understand both Wieseltier’s notion of civilians “‘armed’ with metal bars and a knife” and their death being the “important point”. The important point, I argue, is, rather, to understand how context informs where to draw the moral lines here. With those drawn lines understood, then one can go forward to deal with Wieseltier’s concern over “Operation Make the World Hate Us.” But getting back the armed “civilians”: not only are their deaths not the “important point”, but I feel Wieseltier is uncharacteristically disingenuous in under describing them to make his bad point for at least two reasons: 1. so armed and with maiming and killing on their minds, these civilians lost their civilianality and became part of the machinery of a war like effort to break the embargo; and 2. more generally, Wieseltier makes a hash of any meaningful distinction between fighters and non fighters by assimilating the armed to civilians. 5. So, in precise antithesis to Wieseltier, in context, self defence—which is to say the young soldiers’ and Israel’s too—and asymmetricality provide an understanding of the deaths of those armed who attacked. The battle on board was, in context, warfare or at least akin to warfare. And for the young Israeli soldiers being beaten, stabbed, thrown overboard, and shot at comes within my definition of “the physical sort.” 6. Acts furthering the Free Gaza Movement are not in themselves, obviously, existential threats to Israel. But, in context, they are more than “troublesome”. And, in context, these acts carry within them the seeds of breaking the embargo, allowing thereby the inflow of war material to Hamas who will use same to kill Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike. Interdiction was a proportionate response to the unrelenting determination of the Jihadists to run the embargo, for as wrong as the interdictions may have gone. Any possible stepping by the young Israeli soldiers over the line of proportionality is understandable in the circumstances and was done in pursuit of a lawful objective. 7. Finally, Wieseltier is just flat wrong when he concludes that the interdiction was not undertaken in relation to a threat to Israel’s security. I context, the attempt at running the Mavi Marmara through the embargo was nothing but. It may be that not seeing that, as Wieseltier does not, is an ominous development.

- basman

June 4, 2010 at 1:31am

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Wieseltier is a fool. - While the cabinet most likely approved blocking the flotilla, the operational details were the province of the IDF, which fell victim to poor intelligence. Neither of these have anything to do with Netanyahu. - It is indicative of the twisted, sick pathlogy of leftist Jews like Wieseltier that sevral articles at this moment at the National Review site, authored by gentiles, defend Israel and place the blame entirely on Turkey, whose reliability (and value to NATO) is now roughly zero.

- TNR.Reader

June 4, 2010 at 2:01am

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"Our greatest enemies are not the Muslims but the Christians of European ancestry because their Greco-Roman roots insist that they do." This is nonsense. Jews in Islam were as much second-class citizens as in Christianity; the yellow badge was a Muslim invention. That Muslims never went so far as gas chambers may be just an accident of their inferior technology. The idea of complete emancipation and legal equality for Jews, and of secular government, also arose from the Christian world's Enlightenment, a movement which has scarcely touched the Islamic world. That's why, today, Judaism counts more than seven millions in the nominally Christian world, and barely 45,000 in the Muslim world -- a ratio of more than 150:1.

- TNR.Reader

June 4, 2010 at 2:17am

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Basman, excellent post. Still ignored by all parties is the likelihood that the flotilla was just a test run for pro-Hamas radicals smuggling heavy Iranian weaponry to Hamas.

- TNR.Reader

June 4, 2010 at 2:25am

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Enough of this verbal hand-wringing. What part of the Hamas Charter does Wieseltier NOT understand? I take some comfort in my imagination that, when the fanatical Islamicist regime of Hamas rules it's Islamic Caliphate of Palestine, the liberal idiots like Beinart and Wieseltier will be the first in line for Hamas-sponsored 'Crucifixion-for-Heretics Sunday', admission free. Or, maybe Hamas might "go Taliban", and do stonings during the soccer game intermissions. May the Turkish voters understand they are voting for the wrong future with Erdogan.

- K2K

June 4, 2010 at 9:35am

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"Most ironically, Turkish government expressed sorrow about the death of human lives which can either be construed as a shift of strategy in Turkish foreign policy or unparalleled, unheard-of sympathy for humanity. Till now, Turkey continues to commit the most gross human rights violations against its own Kurdish masses. On a daily basis, hundreds of Kurdish women and children die of hunger, disease and poverty in South East Turkey. Whatever has been able to influence Turkey to alter its mind and commiserate with the death of civilians sounds a bit astounding! Apparently, the immaterial loss of thousands of Kurdish civilians in Turkey does not have a bearing but when it comes to few Turks, it matters a big deal. The Gaza blockade seems more pivotal than the rapidly devastating economic state in southeast (Kurdistan) and internal growing political turmoil inside Turkey. Frail to resolve its long-standing Kurdish dilemma, how does the global community have expectations from a state like Turkey in being able to broker a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine and other regional nations? Turkey should first resolve its own internal disputes it is coping with before trying to mediate be tween other parties. Sadly, the international community has expressed reservation toward the continuing suppression of 25 million Kurds by Turkey; while they portray the Israeli inadvertent storming of a trivial flotilla more momentous than the massacres being carried out by Turkish navy, air force and ground forces in sync in the Kurdish-peopled areas. Turkish senior military officers should be prosecuted for carrying out such war crimes against defenseless Kurdish civilians. Hopefully, in near future the countless death of innocent Kurdish civilians in southeast Turkey (Kurdistan) will also draw a modicum of attention by global media and international philanthropist community and organizations such as United Nation will convene an emergency meeting to discuss and address the Kurdish dilemma in the worsening Turkey." http://www.kurdishaspect.com/doc060110BB.html

- noga1

June 4, 2010 at 9:45am

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No approval is coming forth for the wieseltier views... the monumental tehran propaganda machine is just a tool to keep the mullah oppression alive. some non violence message could pierce their armor. gene sharp, ferenc deak, john rawls....to lift the veil of ignorance.

- sf4200

June 4, 2010 at 10:07am

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Basman protests far too much. The post reads like a brief in a lost cause where you make the best arguments you can despite the overwhelming likelihood of failure. The most zealous advocates of Israel seem to me to be unable to entertain the thought that Arab or Moslem wrongs do not therefore make Israel right, just, or prudent. Nor does the justice of Israel's cause mean that whatever it does in that cause should be considered acceptable. Peretz suffers from this syndrome big time, although he has been uncharacteristically restrained in his discussion of the flotilla. His customary behavior is to act as thought any ill-motivation of critics of Israel, imputed or otherwise, suffices to negate the criticism and/or that, if he can in any instance find some Moslems somewhere doing something worse, that too negates the criticism. Not so. In this case, the action of Israel can best be analogized to a police action to enforce the law, even though it arises in the context of enforcement of a blockade that is legal under the law of war. In this manner, we can see what is and is not acceptable. Indeed, the purpose of the Israeli action was to arrest the vessel. (Under maritime law, vessels can be said to be "arrested" like people, which is not the case for objects in general.) The "activists" injected themselves into a battle as human shields and some of them met their deaths as a result. I do not mourn them. They had a choice and foolishly made a very bad one. Most likely many were duped by the professions of the professional agitators to purely peaceful intent. Those agitators have now essentially admitted that they had every intention of giving battle to Israeli authorities upon the incorrect theory that (1) Israel had no right under law to interdict and board the vessel and (2) that they were therefore justified in resisting Israeli authorities. This is incorrect. If the police come to arrest you on a false charge or somehow in excess of their jurisdiction, that does not entitle you to offer violent resistance, or any resistance. Your obligation is to surrender peaceably. Even if you are originally guilty of nothing, once you resist arrest, you are committing a separate crime. Sensible people also understand that if they offer violent resistance to the police, things can at times escalate out of control even though no one intends that to happen. Although the police have an obligation to use no more force than necessary, once violence begins and the police themselves are under threat of physical harm, it can quickly become confusing as to how much force is necessary, and generally it is the unarmed civilians who are the losers in such cases. That happened here. However, we do not generally believe that if the police are justified in using force that they are justified in using more force than a reasonable person would think necessary. Beyond that, we expect the police to organize themselves and to be trained in such a manner that the force they require is in fact about the minimum actually necessary and does not become more than necessary because the police, through bad tactics, lose control of the situation. We expect them to know how to maintain control and to do it, not unnecessarily to put themselves into situations where they are threatened and have to use more force than would have been necessary had they not done so. For example, we don't allow the police routinely to break down people's doors in the middle of the night and enter a home in with weapons drawn just because they are making a legal arrest. Sometimes, where there is reason to believe that the people inside are armed and likely to give violent resistance, there is no other way. But we reserve such tactics for those cases because we understand that such forced entry can often result in death or injury both to the people inside -- even if they are criminals -- who may not understand that the people invading are the police. That is what Wieseltier means when he calls this a misunderstanding brought about by poor tactics. Israel needed to arrest the ship; it had no need to stage a night-time commando raid in the absence of any reason to believe that those aboard the ship had firearms and were prepared to use them. Nor was there any defense justification. Although the blockade needs to be enforced, the ship presented no imminent threat. It was well offshore, not a military vessel, and was carrying a lot of passengers who were perhaps misguided but clearly intended no violence. There was no reason for a commando raid to effect the arrest. The proper tactic would have been to interdict the ship in broad daylight and ask to board, then take control. If the ship refused, it should have been disabled or prevented from making headway until it surrendered. As long as the criminal does not start shooting or present any imminent threat of harm, we do not permit arrests to be made by forced entry. We wait for surrender. Someone above analogized this to the Branch Davidian meltdown, and that seems apt. Unquestionably the Branch Davidians had to be arrested. There was more than probable cause to believe them guilty of crimes. But it was only the impatience of the authorities in a situation where there was no escape for the wanted the resulted in the use of force that led to many deaths, unnecessary because patience would likely have won the day. As far as Netanyahu's responsibility, he has the responsibility, even though subordinate commanders are responsible for devising tactical plans. Quite clearly, this had the potential to be a major diplomatic incident. There was no extreme time pressure. How could Netanyahu not have required any plans to be presented and subjected to criticism in front of him by competent people? What does the guy do all day to justify himself, play shesh-besh? I happen to think Netanyahu is a very stupid guy, and I have said so often. This is to my mind the biggest reason for his failures. But he is also a thug, a belligerent sort who thinks that his constant attitude of belligerence is justified by hostility to Israel and serves Israel's interests. Neither is the case. Nor is stupidity in the service of a just cause a virtue. Time for the Netanyechid to rethink their support for him. Yet again, he has damaged Israel through his special combination of stupidity and belligerence.

- roidubouloi

June 4, 2010 at 10:14am

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I should have noted, as I have before, that it is perfectly clear that the Israeli commandos did not intend violence or they would certainly not have been armed with paintball guns. But this was truly stupid. Commandos are threatening and hence invite attack unless they are armed and organized to make clear that they enjoy overwhelming force. You don't send them into a threat situation armed with paintball guns, and if you think the situation is one that does not require serious armament, you don't use commandos.

- roidubouloi

June 4, 2010 at 10:17am

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We have just been provided, thanks to noga, with yet another example of the genre that excuses self-destructive and imprudent behavior by Israel on the grounds that there are Moslems doing worse things elsewhere without being subjected to criticism. We consider ourselves successful because we are not the worst we could be? Who conducts their own lives this way? Who would want to?

- roidubouloi

June 4, 2010 at 10:25am

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Leon's carefully wrought piece reminded me a bit of Baudelaire's poem from Les Fleurs du Mal, L'Héautontimouroménos (The Self-Tormenter). Notwithstanding its elegiac quality, it boils down to the following: It's the fault of the Jews. Someone, somewhere, should have known better than to let this happen. So let us wring our hands, beat our breasts, and ask ourselves how we could have allowed innocent(?) blood to be spilled. On the right, the mood is less grim. In fact, they're actually trying to have some fun with the madness of it all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV6DVk04HkM Enjoy...

- willjames77

June 4, 2010 at 10:44am

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Here is more fun with madness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOGG_osOoVg&annotation_id=annotation_665723&feature=iv

- jdyer

June 4, 2010 at 10:49am

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Sorry, wrong link in my last post. This is the fun one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOGG_osOoVg

- willjames77

June 4, 2010 at 10:50am

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Noga "Turkey continues to commit the most gross human rights violations against its own Kurdish masses." ... and against Assyrians.

- TNR.Reader

June 4, 2010 at 10:51am

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noga: Thanks for adding to the exposure of the hypocrisy of Erdogan's Turkey, pretending to support Hamas in Gaza while simultaneously oppressing the original Kurdish residents of the centuries-long Turkish occupation of Kurdistan. I wonder how long Defense Minister Ehud Barak can maintain any credibility for effectiveness. If Barak stays on and fails yet again, I expect his Labor Party will be down to one seat in the Knesset by October. Hamas just raided, looted, and shut down six NGOs in Gaza: "...The UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Robert Serry, expressed deep concern over the raids and closure of the NGO offices. “This targeting of NGOs, including UN partner organizations, is unacceptable, violating accepted norms of a free society and harming the Palestinian people,” he said. “The de facto [Hamas] authorities must cease such repressive steps and allow the re-opening of these civil society institutions without delay. ...” http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=177444

- K2K

June 4, 2010 at 10:56am

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TNR.R: I thought Turkey expelled all the Assyrians starting in the 1920's through the 1980's, after Turkey finished with the Armenians and Greeks :) The difference today is the Kurds were there first, and it is Turkey's "Kurdish Solution" that has led Erdogan to embrace Syria and Iran, for fear Iraqi Kurdistan just might lead to the restoration of Greater Kurdistan, with control over the water resources of the Middle and Near East.

- K2K

June 4, 2010 at 11:02am

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"To Sara Miller, a senior editor with Ha’aretz, Israel’s small but highly influential centre-left daily newspaper, there’s something unmistakeably sinister about the hysterical antipathy towards Israel that has become so prevalent in Europe and North America in recent years. “Something is seriously wrong. I never thought of myself as one of those Jews who would cry anti-Semitism about things like this,” she told me, “but a phenomenon crops up every 40 or 50 years. What other word is there?” Three weeks after we spoke, it was all but impossible to pick up a newspaper anywhere in Europe or North America that did not describe the debacle aboard the Mavi Marmara as anything less than a bloody assault launched by the Israeli Defence Forces in order to prevent peace activists from delivering much-needed humanitarian supplies to the desperately oppressed people of the besieged Gaza Strip, whose sufferings are solely the fault of Israel. There’s no lack of cause to slag off Israel for the blockade. Cutting off Gaza has meant a lot of suffering among ordinary people there. But neither is there a lack of evidence that the Foundation for Human Rights & Humanitarian Relief (IHH), the Turkish charity that partnered with the Cyprus-based Free Gaza Movement to launch the flotilla, has a history of shadowy ties with some of the world’s most bloodthirsty terrorists. The IHH is openly affiliated with Hamas, and is also part of an umbrella coalition headed by Muslim Brotherhood leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who says suicide bombing is wrong except when it targets Israelis, and even pregnant Israeli women are fair game. You have to look hard to find these facts reported anywhere unless they are presented as merely claims that Israel is making, but you will spend a much longer time looking for any reports at all that reveal just what the flotilla’s other big sponsor, the Perdana Global Peace Organization, is all about. The New York Times disclosed that Perdana helped the Free Gaza Movement buy two yachts and a cargo ship for the flotilla, but even the Times noticed only that Perdana "describes itself on its Web site as opposed to war." Perdana’s founder and guiding light is the deranged former Malaysian strongman Mahathir Mohamad, who was harping on about “hook-nosed” Jews as far back as 1970. Up to the days immediately before his retirement in 2003 he was still carrying on about how “the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.” Only a few months ago, Mohamad proclaimed that European Jews “had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred. But still they remained, they thrived and they held whole governments to ransom ... Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world.” Nice bosses these “peace activists” have found for themselves." http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1635-no-israeli-palestinian-reconciliation

- noga1

June 4, 2010 at 11:05am

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“Something is seriously wrong. I never thought of myself as one of those Jews who would cry anti-Semitism about things like this,” she told me, “but a phenomenon crops up every 40 or 50 years. What other word is there?” All the more reason to hand them propaganda victories. Defense of stupidity brings us, as always, more of the wacko right-wing delusion that right makes might, that if virtue is on your side, you win, no sound strategy or tactics necessary. This is the despair that Wieseltier addresses, the fatalism that abjures the need for effective action in favor of any ineffective action or inaction that can be "justified," whether before or after the fact.

- roidubouloi

June 4, 2010 at 11:19am

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Roi, true to self, rants: "We have just been provided, thanks to noga, with yet another example of the genre that excuses self-destructive and imprudent behavior by Israel on the grounds that there are Moslems doing worse things elsewhere without being subjected to criticism. We consider ourselves successful because we are not the worst we could be? Who conducts their own lives this way? Who would want to?" Yet just a comment earlier he says: "it is perfectly clear that the Israeli commandos did not intend violence or they would certainly not have been armed with paintball guns. " So which is it, exactly, IDF soldiers doing their duty in accordance with the rules of engagement, or IDF soldiers' "self-destructive and imprudent behavior" ? And suppose IDF soldiers were every bit as mendacious as roi's first quote suggests, are we not allowed to note that Turks, with their record, are the last people to be criticising Israel's mendacity? roi pitching and rolling on the high seas of his incontinent political sentiments.

- noga1

June 4, 2010 at 11:37am

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Have trouble with English again, noga? Are you unable to distinguish the responsibility of soldiers doing their duty in accordance with the rules of engagement they are given and that of their superiors who send them out on a mission stupidly devised, heedless of the implications and potential, or indeed likely, costs to Israel? Yes, I think you are unable to distinguish, which is why you constantly defend stupid, imprudent, self-destructive behavior on the grounds that the cause is just or the intentions of the actors were not malign or someone else somewhere is doing something worse. You and yours are the problem for Israel, noga, whatever your intentions. It is because the right has elevated stupidity to a virtue that Israel's room for maneuver keeps shrinking. You cannot even tell the difference between a "political sentiment" and the observation that particular tactics or strategy are ineffective or worse. Actually, you probably don't care. Your own belief in your own surpassing virtue suffices as a defense against everything. If only real enemies were cowed by your righteousness. Might I suggest you march around and blow trumpets to call their attention to the fact that God is on your side?

- roidubouloi

June 4, 2010 at 12:07pm

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Actually, noga, the better tactic when subjected to criticism is not to point out that the Turks, or the Syrians, or the Iranians, or somebody somewhere is worse. What you do is exclaim in a loud voice, "Look, over there! Cows."

- roidubouloi

June 4, 2010 at 12:10pm

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Simple moral clarity would demand a direct alternative from the author: did he have access to full and complete intelligence that was not public which could have directed the Israeli leadership to do something different? What might that be? Unless there are specific details as to an alternative, it is indisputable that failure to enforce the blockade would open up Gaza to a free flow of Iranian arms and terrorists. Thus, Israel had to act, and is being punished for not having had perfect knowledge in advance that boarding the ship with paintball guns at the ready would result in attempted lynching of its military. If the author is unhappy with the results, he should tell which of the remaining choices Israel should have made: sinking the ship, or national suicide.

- maranoff

June 4, 2010 at 1:25pm

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Sounds like a bunch of whining children around here. "But he did it, too!" And, it's a tactic that never works, either. Israel was perfectly within its rights to enforce the blockade, but it was extremely stupid to do it in such a way as to give its enemies a propaganda victory.

- zardoz67

June 4, 2010 at 1:36pm

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Sinking the ship, or national suicide: a false choice. Like skinning a cat, there is more than one way to interdict a ship.

- zardoz67

June 4, 2010 at 1:38pm

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Well roi has a point though I understand what Noga is trying to impart. But - it isn't disloyal or "self-hating" to point out real stupidity on the part of the Israeli government - one can't blame the soldiers who were sent on this needlessly dangerous mission. But the leadership is on the hook. Maybe Bibi remembers Entebbe? but this wasn't an Entebbe situation and maybe it would have been better handled, in daylight, and probably within Israel's territorial waters. Nu? I agree with others above that the "peace flotilla" was a provocation that could be interpreted as an act of war or as an element in the de facto war between Israel and Hamas and other extremists. However, there are aspects of the blockade which are stupid and inhumane. Punishing the Palestinian people by withholding spices and houseplants is idiotic and so is the idea, also employed in Lebanon, that if Israel works real hard to make people miserable the people will turn on their leaders. What happens in the real world is that the people, like the residents of Southern Lebanon, start really hating Israel and Hezbollah has become better armed than ever and also part of the legitimate Lebanese government, so it is now nearly impossible to get rid of and/or separate it from Lebanon in general and there's no extant power than can or would be willing to disarm them let alone the Palestinians in Lebanon. I read a letter in a comment thread last night - can't remember where - maybe Mead's piece? from a Lebanese Christian. He refers to Hezbollah as a "monster" but blames Israel for playing into their hands and thereby endangering all of Lebanon and it's hard to see where he's wrong about this. According to him Hezbollah and Iran are now paying to rebuild all the structures flattened in 2006 - so are the people who suffered in the war, and Lebanese in general, more fond of Israel now? Are we seeing peace proffers from Beirut? By the same token, it's one thing to blockade arms to Gaza and another to blockade coriander. Punishing the people of Gaza for the misdeeds of Hamas was not guaranteed to make the people hate Hamas, but it had a strong likelihood of making people hate Israel, not just in Gaza but around the world. This debacle has shown several things: a) the need to modify the blockade while also recognizing the fact that Hamas isn't interested in making peace with Israel b) the fact that "the world" doesn't seem to get that Hamas is serious c) the world doesn't care, which is frightening and definitely reinforces the assertion that Israel is acting out of despair. The fact is, "Operation Make Everybody Hate Us" follows upon decades of war against Israel which was created shortly after the Shoah which was merely the most recent mass murder of Jews - also there were pogroms in the Middle East and the expulsion of Jews from the Arab world since the WWII era. Of course you all know this but one gets the sense there's a disconnect in the much of the world, which doesn't see this and/or which doesn't care and/or which is actively antisemitic to begin with. There is a continuum here and this flotilla must be seen in that context. I'm beginning to wonder about much of the "proPalestinian" movement in general to be honest...I think there are idealists who just see people who apparently need help, but there are others who aren't so innocent, and this certainly includes Europeans in particular. Meanwhile it's not an accident that the Peace Activists chanted "Khaibar, Khaibar" and on that score the general ignorance of history in the Western press is inexcusable (which still doesn't get the Israeli leaders off the hook.) Finally as K2K and others have asserted, this has laid bare an apparent sea change in Turkey, which is extremely dangerous not only to Israel and to Middle Eastern stability such as it is, but also to the US. This could also affect pipeline projects I've read about, from Turkmenistan to Istanbul; I don't know the status of those or how the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan affects this issue but definitely, "American (and British and Russian) interests" are involved (ie the oil industry) and could be impacted if Turkey turns against the West. Plus, if Turkey is now openly flipping the bird at the US this should impact its NATO standing. So I suppose the silver lining here is knowledge, unpleasant as it might be.

- Sophia

June 4, 2010 at 1:48pm

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So zardoz, tell us what the Israeli Navy should have done, not with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. If you knew in advance a better way, you should be an adviser to the Israeli Navy. If you did not, then the "more than one way to skin a cat" is a worthless observation.

- maranoff

June 4, 2010 at 2:20pm

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There have already been plenty of options mentioned here, if you have not noticed.

- zardoz67

June 4, 2010 at 2:26pm

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Zardoz, the only option that I saw in the comments was the implication that rather than pointing paintball guns, the commandos should have had their automatic weapons out to begin with. I would expect that Israel did not want that, as they hoped non-lethal force would have worked. Again, even that more aggressive approach is one that appears of value only in hindsight. Let us see how the next ship is dealt with.

- maranoff

June 4, 2010 at 2:48pm

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"So zardoz, tell us what the Israeli Navy should have done, not with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. If you knew in advance a better way, you should be an adviser to the Israeli Navy. If you did not, then the "more than one way to skin a cat" is a worthless observation." The US Coast Guard interdicts vessels all the time, and searches vessels all the time. They don't do it by dropping commandos on board from helicopters in the middle of the night. They do it by pulling abeam in a decently but not heavily armed cutter and demanding that a Coast Guard party be allowed to board. Then they send them over in a zodiac rubber boat half the time. There may be some marines with vests and side-arms who are expected to supervise and take control backed by others with full body armor and automatic weapons to make sure no one gets crazy. Obviously in this situation there was at least the potential for a violent response which means that a much more powerful back-up would have been necessary if the soldiers (marine police would have been better) came under attack. For that purpose, it might have been well to have heavily armed ships with commandos, and helicopters, immediately available. If boarding is refused, then you disable the ship or get in its way so that it cannot make headway and wait for it to surrender. You might even call upon the Turkish navy at that point to come and retrieve the vessel. If violence was expected, or if you expect an effort to take hostages, then it would have been appropriate to interdict the vessel with a heavily armed naval vessel so that lots of force was at hand, not with commandos. This was like a comic book, but that's how Netanyahu thinks, as if international and public affairs were a comic book.

- roidubouloi

June 4, 2010 at 2:59pm

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It has also been mentioned that the flotilla should have been surrounded by Israeli naval ships in broad daylight, and announce that they were to be boarded and inspected, and escorted to an Israeli port, if necessary. The ships could also been disabled and towed. Rappelling soldiers one-by-one from a helicopter was needlessly dangerous, especially if the Israelis suspected the true motives of the flotilla. These people WANTED a confrontation. Israel should have done everything to prevent one.

- zardoz67

June 4, 2010 at 3:01pm

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Thank you, roi, for stating it much more eloquently that I could.

- zardoz67

June 4, 2010 at 3:02pm

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Israeli forces have diverted nine previous flotillas, without incident, and peacefully boarded five of the ships this week. As noted by Israel's Ambassador, Michael Oren, "Their cargoes, after proper inspection, were delivered to non-Hamas institutions in Gaza. Only the Marmara, a vessel too large to be neutralized by technical means such as fouling the propeller, violently resisted." The ship was in fact surrounded, told that they were to be boarded and inspected, but the Marmara refused. Daylight or not is irrelevant. The Coast Guard, unless dealing with a terrorist attack, usually deals with drug dealers and the like. Not a fair model for this case. Hindsight tells us that the Israelis were duped into thinking that, despite the "motives of the flotilla," there were many aboard intent on violent confrontation. The critical question is not whether there might be a tactical adjustment, but whether Israel's actions earlier this week were an "Operation to Make the World Hate Us," based on the plans in advance. As the "world" has already hated Israel, the notion of these acts changing anything is absurd.

- maranoff

June 4, 2010 at 3:17pm

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Yeah, peaceful drug dealers. "Hindsight tells us that the Israelis were duped into thinking that, despite the "motives of the flotilla," there were many aboard intent on violent confrontation." This is ridiculous. If you expect violence, you don't arm commandos with paintball guns. You want to tell me that it was not possible for the Israeli navy to prevent this vessel from making headway and force it to surrender? If so, Israel needs a new navy. You surround it, prevent it from moving, and if necessary put divers in the water to foul or wreck the props. You offer to allow all passengers who want to leave to be taken off and if some finally refuse, or keep the others hostage, then you know you have a real terrorist situation and the Turks are the ones taking the propaganda hit. Brains and wits. Israel used to be widely admired for the clever way in which it fought. Now it lumbers, a luxury the US can afford but Israel cannot.

- roidubouloi

June 4, 2010 at 4:13pm

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I meant to write that Israel was duped into thinking that there would not be many aboard intent on violent confrontation. As Oren wrote, wrecking the props was not an option for a ship that size. If you choose to not believe him or the Israeli Navy, that is your choice, but I do believe them. There would have been nothing to be gained by risking a lynching and then have to use lethal force after being attacked. This was a result of simply not knowing in advance what would happen. It is easy to write the words to "surround it, prevent it from moving. . ." but a world of difference to effect that under the circumstances in actual operation. I must believe that Israel's military is fully reviewing all tactics to see what alternatives would work better.If the defense forces are compelled by the terrorists to fire into the crowd, then there may be no alternative to saving their own lives. What else might be done will be seen in the future, and not decided through glib assertions on a magazine website. Pundits like Wieseltier can shake their heads in disgust, but we should have greater concern about the lives of those who must be sent in harms way to deter a terrorist build up. Israel is, and it is unfathomable as to why anyone would conclude that it is not.

- maranoff

June 4, 2010 at 4:44pm

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"You and yours are the problem for Israel, noga, whatever your intentions. It is because the right has elevated stupidity to a virtue that Israel's room for maneuver keeps shrinking." This is a very telling statement by roi. He is incapable of thinking outside the narrow and rigid Right/Left binary and his ignorance about Israel leads him to bark up trees that are not even there. This is not A Left/Right issue. Maybe roi is seeking to milk it in that respect for his own unfathomable intentions but Israeli society in this case regards the matter from a very different prism. And ultimately, it's Israeli society that will decide what's what, once the dust has settled. Sophia: "Maybe Bibi remembers Entebbe? but this wasn't an Entebbe situation and maybe it would have been better handled, in daylight, and probably within Israel's territorial waters. "??? Do you really imagine for a second that Netanyau was seeking to recreate that moment which in no way resembles this one? The soldiers were sent into the lion's den, under misconceived expectations of encountering peaceniks, not crazed and armed militants. It was a failure in imagination and intelligence of unforgivable size. Those soldiers could have been killed if they had not kept their heads. What can you be thinking of? Have you imbibed enough of the royal venom to suppose that an Israeli leader would cynically have put soldiers in harm's way for a publicity stunt?

- noga1

June 4, 2010 at 5:39pm

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Noga, enough already: you sound like some desperate house wife standing by her man. The Israeli operation was a disaster and it needs to deal with that fact. Yes, the world is against us, (Jews, Israelis or non Israelis) yes legaly Israel was in the right. But one can be in the right and still do wrong. Netanyahu as the PM needs to take responsibility and resign. This crises was a revelation, though, from people like Helen Thomas yelling at Israelis to go "back to Germany" http://www.frumforum.com/helen-thomas-israelis-should-go-back-to-germany to the Captain of the ship telling the Israeli navy captain to go "back to Auschwitz." http://blog.z-word.com/2010/06/flotillista-tells-idf-go-back-to-auschwitz/

- jdyer

June 4, 2010 at 6:22pm

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I do not appreciate these personal comments, JD. I do not recall ever making similar comments to you, no matter how tedious, pompous and self-important you sound.

- noga1

June 4, 2010 at 6:51pm

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Sophia: "I read a letter in a comment thread last night - can't remember where - maybe Mead's piece? from a Lebanese Christian. He refers to Hezbollah as a "monster" but blames Israel for playing into their hands and thereby endangering all of Lebanon " Yes, that comment was in WRMead's thread. It was chilling to read it, except hard to totally blame Israel for the fate of Lebanon under Hezbollah. I believe Turkey is the central issue. Not that I can influence the global media, but it explains why even The Guardian UK is asking questions about Turkey's role. NATO is a mutual defense organization. Is Erdogan's Turkey a reliable ally to anyone but Syria, Iran, and Hamas? Considering his purge of Turkey's military, is Erdogan trying to go totally Islamist before the 2011 elections? It would seem the size of the Marmara called for different techniques. The other ships were boarded from IDF zodiacs. Still does not excuse the failure of Israeli intelligence, although I would expect Ehud Barak to resign, not Netanyahu, whose weakness was in agreeing so fast to allow the suspicious cohort of 40 -100 of the Marmara passengers to leave. I thought Charles Krauthammer: "Those troublesome Jews" in today's WashPo explained the real risk to Israel. "...But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself -- forward and active defense. ..." washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304287.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions [My method of beating the captcha blockade is to remove the http://www of the URL]

- K2K

June 4, 2010 at 7:14pm

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Yea, Noga, self important and pompous. Thanks for a rational reply.

- jdyer

June 4, 2010 at 7:30pm

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Just posted at Wash Po, for anyone interested in the IDF tactics and that they respected Turkish sovereignty of the Mari Marmara so much that there was NO intelligence, although the shouting of "Go Back to Auschwitz" might have been a clue: "Israel gives its account of raid on aid ship headed for Gaza" By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 4, 2010; 6:34 PM "This is the Israeli version of the deadly raid on an aid ship bound for Gaza: Operation "Sea Breeze," the Israeli code name for the military action that resulted in the melee, began at midnight Sunday when the Mavi Marmara was about 90 miles off the coast of Haifa. Israeli forces spent four hours trying to persuade the 300-foot-long Turkish ship to shift course away from Gaza, senior Israeli officials said in a briefing Friday for a small group of reporters. The activists responded repeatedly with shouts -- "Go back to Auschwitz!" -- and kept the ship at its maximum speed of 10 knots. Now it was 4 a.m., and the ship was 70 miles from the Israeli coast. Israeli officials ran through the calculations. Colliding with the ship could sink it, given its size and speed. Shooting at a ship with 560 passengers on board, including a baby, could result in casualties. So officials decided to dispatch one commando team (14 soldiers) who would board the upper deck by rappelling off a helicopter, and three other 14-man teams who would board the lower decks by sea. The officials insist they had no choice but to enforce the blockade of Gaza, controlled by the Hamas militant group, because allowing selective ships to pass would have rendered it legally meaningless. "Either you have a blockade or not," one military official said. Turkish officials have angrily said that the blockade is illegal, that the assault should not have taken place in international waters and that the use of force was disproportionate and even criminal. The Israeli officials conceded their intelligence was poor. They thought the soldiers would encounter protesters who might, at worst, chain themselves to prevent access to the ship's control room. The soldiers were equipped with paintball guns and bean bags, and "low-velocity" pistols to protect themselves, the officials said. The Israeli Defense Forces "was not collecting intelligence on this ship," one of the officials said. "It was legitimate Turkish vessel. We were not spying on a friendly country." He added: "I have to admit were surprised. We did not expect such resistance from humanitarian aid activists." Initially, the troops threw flash grenades on deck, which are intended to scatter people but the officials acknowledged that civilians might interpret the noise as the sound of weapons. In any case, things quickly went wrong when the first group of commandos -- in the helicopter -- attempted to board the ship. About 40 activists had gathered on the upper deck, waiting and watching. When the first rappel rope was lowered out of the helicopter, the activists grabbed it and attached it to the ship. Because of the potential danger to the helicopter, the crew had to quickly drop the rope. That left only one rope left for the assault -- and the soldiers coming down it were quickly outmanned. The first commando was attacked as soon as he hit the deck. Then so was the second, who lost his pistol to an activist. As the fourth soldier came down, he saw an activist use the pistol to shoot the third soldier -- and then began to aim it at him. The fourth soldier quickly pulled out his pistol and shot the activist in the head. A deadly clash followed. The Israelis estimate that besides the 40 activists on the upper deck, 30 activists battled the soldiers on lower decks, meaning that the vast majority of the people on board did not participate. The Israeli commandos began to shift the balance of power within two or three minutes, once the rest of the 56 commandos boarded the ship by sea, the officials said. After 10 minutes, the fight was over and the ship was secure. But it came at a cost. Nine activists were dead, including a 19-year-old with U.S. citizenship. Turkish media reports say he suffered four head wounds and one chest wound from pistol fire at close range. Seven IDF soldiers were wounded, including two critically. Three of the soldiers had been captured by the activists. One was so wounded he could not move, but the other two escaped by leaping off the 60-foot-high deck into the ocean. On board the ship, besides outdated pharmaceutical supplies, toys, blankets and construction materials, officials said they discovered 100 metal rods, 200 knives, 50 wooden clubs and 150 military vests. No guns were found, though a telescopic sight for a gun was recovered. Some of the materials could have been fashioned into potential weapons from the construction supplies on board, officials said. The activists also had substantial funds, perhaps 1 million euros. Many of the activists who battled the soldiers were each carrying 10,000 euros, which officials speculated meant that they were mercenaries who had been paid to fight. In the future, one official said, "I guess now we will have to be more cautious." " washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/04/AR2010060404272_2.html?sid=ST2010060204691

- K2K

June 4, 2010 at 7:31pm

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Well, the WaPo piece puts a little different light on matters. A 300 foot ship has a lot of momentum and wouldn't be easy to stop, for one thing. The Helen Thomas rant is alarming. I'm shocked to be honest. I had thought more of her. I guess it's becoming OK for respected journalists to be openly antisemitic.

- Sophia

June 4, 2010 at 8:00pm

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"Thanks for a rational reply. A rational reply, JD, to "Noga, enough already: you sound like some desperate house wife standing by her man."?? What, are you competing now with roi as to who can up with the most belittling metaphors for me?

- noga1

June 4, 2010 at 8:20pm

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Helen Thomas was recently honoured by Obama at the white house press room on her birthday: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5213299n A sweet woman, on the front of liberalism. May she live long enough to see her wishes come true.

- noga1

June 4, 2010 at 8:26pm

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good photo at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Mavi_Marmara looks like a ferry, but, now that I think about it, must have sleeping accomodations. a cruise ship the length of a football field bought for 800,000USD? that sounds way too cheap for a ship this size. I have had enough hand-wringing. where is a North Korean midget-sub when you need one? (Sophia - I got the idea of going North Korea from WRMead's post comments)

- K2K

June 4, 2010 at 9:00pm

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Sophia "The Helen Thomas rant is alarming. I'm shocked to be honest. I had thought more of her. I guess it's becoming OK for respected journalists to be openly antisemitic." She has always been anti-Israel, though never openly. I am glad it's out in the open. A crises will often show you who your friends and enemies are.

- jdyer

June 4, 2010 at 9:05pm

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noga1 "A rational reply, JD, to "Noga, enough already: you sound like some desperate house wife standing by her man."??" Well your support for Netanyahu has been a little desperate methinks, though the “housewife” bit was over the top, I admit.

- jdyer

June 4, 2010 at 9:08pm

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I have thought about Mr. Wieseltier's post here and have to comment. My first thought is that dangerous things happen during military advetures. Not everything goes according to plan. The Israeli's borded with pain guns and soon found out that the Peace Activists were playing with paint balls. Yes it was a miscalculation, but that is why we have the battles. If we knew how they would turn out why would we provoke each other. Remember the Liberty and it's sinking during the 1967 Six Day War. Israel did not want to attack an American Ship. But testosterone gets the best of a soldier with a gun and things happen. And do you really think Hamas will not succemb to the same temptations? I give them 3, maybe 6 months before they overplay their hand and send a few too many rockets into Sredot. Perhaps a Suicide Bomber or two and the tables turn. My second point is Mr. Wieseltier's contention that Israel diplomacy has not had the recent success of previous eras. I wish to offer a different opinion, and I think more people would agree. Some may consider Oslo Accords a diplomatic success, but 17 years later they really exposed the failure of the Palestinians to come to terms with Israel. Yes Israeli diplomacy changes with the election of Ariel Sharon. Sharon knew Arafat intimately, and I belive truly hated him. There were two strong personalities there and Shoron exposed the lies of Arafat and succeded in isolating him. In addition Sharon took the offensive in stopping terrorism and engaging the United States. I think Sharon's diplomacy was wildly successful. Sharon's sucess was demonstrated shortly after America was attacked and decided to build a case for war with Iraq. American national interests were not great and Iraq was easily contained. But taking over Iraq has huge benefits for Israel and realy drew America into the Middle East in ways that were not imaginable 7 years ago. I would request a few examples of Israeli diplomatic failures before I buy into this idea. Yes Israel is have difficulties but none of those countries have really been staunch supporters or independent in thought. I know that Mr. Wieseltier supports Israel and is an independent thinker and his writing and thinking is first rate. But not everything is always straighforward.

- CRS9TNR

June 4, 2010 at 9:18pm

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"Sharon's sucess was demonstrated shortly after America was attacked and decided to build a case for war with Iraq. American national interests were not great and Iraq was easily contained. But taking over Iraq has huge benefits for Israel and realy drew America into the Middle East in ways that were not imaginable 7 years ago." As I recall, Israel was not so enthusiastic about the war in Iraq. It was much more concerned about Iran. But Israel could not been seen to contradict the US's policies so they publicly supported the initiative. And pray tell, what good has come out of it for Israel? What huge benefits has it gained from the toppling of Hussein? Has Iraq turned into a genuine democracy as I had hoped it would, things would have been different.

- noga1

June 4, 2010 at 9:30pm

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"Turkey's ambassador to the United States, called for Hamas to take part in "the final solution." Was it an unfortunate turn of phrase?" http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTUwMzA3OWUyN2NjNWY5M2E1MjA5NWRkM2VjYzRkYzg=

- noga1

June 4, 2010 at 9:43pm

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Me: You and yours are the problem for Israel, noga, whatever your intentions. It is because the right has elevated stupidity to a virtue that Israel's room for maneuver keeps shrinking. Noga: This is a very telling statement by roi. He is incapable of thinking outside the narrow and rigid Right/Left binary and his ignorance about Israel leads him to bark up trees that are not even there. This is not A Left/Right issue. Maybe roi is seeking to milk it in that respect for his own unfathomable intentions but Israeli society in this case regards the matter from a very different prism. And ultimately, it's Israeli society that will decide what's what, once the dust has settled. _____________________ Did noga say something coherent? If so, I missed it. It may not be a left issue, but it is surely a right issue -- the willingness of Israeli society to support a blundering right-wing government that manifests its indifference to US opinion and world opinion in a multitude of ways, apparently either from the delusion that there will be no price to pay or, as Wieseltier says, in despair that anything will make a difference in how the world behaves toward Israel. But it does and will make a difference. If Israel becomes completely isolated, it cannot stand, and the right is hell bent on arriving at complete isolation as fast as it can get there. I speculate that this is due to delusions of power that flow from delusions of virtue and the delusion that power flows from virtue rather than from the adroit use of economic, political, and military resources. But it doesn't matter why the right is driving Israel over a cliff; it only matters that it is doing so and that its pretensions to be those best able to see to Israel's defenses is the greatest delusion of all. The right is in fact a menace. Yes, Israeli society will decide, and Israeli society will also pay the price of its decisions.

- roidubouloi

June 4, 2010 at 10:38pm

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Interesting article in the jpost: "Public Diplomacy: At war without an army" By HAVIV RETTIG GUR http://www.jpost.com/Features/FrontLines/Article.aspx?id=177466 "Israel isn't equipped to fight the media war."

- jdyer

June 4, 2010 at 11:50pm

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K2K, some examples: http://www.atour.com/education/20000825c.html http://www.aina.org/releases/turkey.htm

- TNR.Reader

June 5, 2010 at 12:37am

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"You and yours are the problem for Israel, noga, whatever your intentions." I see the Roid hasn't changed - still so arrogant as to claim the right to speak for all Israel.

- TNR.Reader

June 5, 2010 at 1:03am

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The argument that I see here from Roi which essentially recaps Leon's theme for this piece is that "they should have seen it coming". And the fact that they didn't demonstrates the lack of intelligence or the lack of humanity on the part of Israel's present government. What shameful nonsense. When someone stops to pick up a hitch-hiker who gets in and pulls out a knife, or helps a little old lady cross the street who tosses acid in his face, the last thing we need is someone who offers the cold comfort of saying that they should have known better. Might as well tell the folks in the boxcars or on their way to the showers that they shouldn't have fallen for the ruse. What makes such acts of treachery successful is that they utilize the familiar conventions of daily life to disguise their true intent. The victim never sees it coming. Next time around you learn to be more cautious. But the Mavi Marmara incident was a first time, and no one saw it coming. If you need to get angry with somebody, it should be the Turks or Hamas or the idiots in the Western media who tell the story with any insight into the plot. But seeing it all as a moral or logistical failure on the part of Israel is just an exercise in self-hatred. Like a bunch of cats who the farmer put in the bag who are shredding one another with their claws.

- willjames77

June 5, 2010 at 2:36am

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No, the argument is not that they should have seen it coming. The argument is that the preoccupations of Israel's right-wing government are evident in its behavior and the means it chooses and that both its preoccupations and its behavior are slowly leading to disaster for Israel. If something is important to you, or its loss is potentially very important to you, you put time and effort into protecting it and avoiding the loss. That does not assure success, of course. Human beings overlook things and make mistakes. But if it matters to you seriously, and you are not a child, you give it thought and attention. What seems to me quite evident from the behavior of the government of Israel is that it has become almost indifferent to world and even U.S. opinion. Hence, it devotes little thought and attention to world opinion -- summarized by Wieseltier in his claim that Israel has essentially abandoned diplomacy. For example, if you think that, because of world opinion, because of the potential diplomatic reaction, avoiding bloodshed on these Turkish ships is as or more important than immediately enforcing the blockade, you do several things, none of which Israel did. First, you review and criticize your plans at the highest level in front of people who are genuinely concerned with the importance of protecting the diplomatic side. You don't leave it to military commanders alone who, even if extremely well-meaning, are less likely to be sensitive to the diplomatic implications or alert to those dangers. Where was Bibi? Ottawa. Who stood in for him in this regard? Apparently no one. Second, the means you choose reflect the balance you strike between the dangers on the one side and the dangers on the other. A daylight attempt to arrest the vessel and the effort to block its path until it surrendered would have had several possible outcomes. The vessel might have surrendered (this is not the same as simply demanding by radio that it proceed to Ashdod). If the vessel, still 70 miles at sea, had literally tried to run the blockade, that would have been violent, aggressive action that would have changed perceptions and the diplomatic impact of subsequent more forceful efforts to stop the ship. "We have attempted every peaceful means of arresting this vessel. Those in control of it have demonstrated their intention to violate the blockade by the use of force, at risk to the lives of those on board and to Israeli authorities charged with enforcing the law." Third, your planning is not limited to the military. The military is for the purpose of exerting force, violent force. If that is not your primary purpose, then you include in your discussion other people, such as the police who are supposed to know how to effect arrests and control crowds while avoiding violence to the greatest extent possible. No evidence that that was done. It was a military job conceived of in entirely military terms. Hence, the outcome was, from a strictly military point of view, a success. The ship was seized and all the deaths were on the other side. The casualties to one's own forces were relatively limited. Except that it was a failure because the problem was not principally a military problem. In contrast to what it might have done, or at least considered doing, Israel chose, bizarrely, to use a disarmed commando raid. This is a weird nod to the importance of avoiding loss of life with means that are childishly inept -- demonstrating, as if any more evidence were needed, that the planners were accustomed to using force and had no experience or thought as to how to avoid it. They were doing their best, but the people who should have been taking responsibility for avoiding the use of force were absent. The very notion of sending in the police armed with guns (the situation requires a show of lethal force), but fake guns (the situation requires that we avoid lethal force), is ludicrously self-contradictory, but one can see in the mind's eye just how this happened: A commander of a commando unit is told that this is his job, but that it is very important that no one get hurt. The specialty of commandos is the use of quick, light, but overwhelming force that is intended to achieve the objective while assuring, not that no one gets hurt, but that if anyone gets hurt it is the bad guys. The commando leader only knows how to do what commandos do. He has been given what amount to conflicting orders. He solves his dilemma by resolving to do what he and his troops know how to do but substituting fake weapons for real weapons. And no one from the top of the political echelon that should be paying the closest attention is paying any attention at all. While rhetorically acknowledging the importance of Israel's diplomatic stature, Netanyahu and company either don't really believe it, out of devotion to arms as, in their minds, the singular guarantor of Israel's security, or they are possessed by the fatalism that Wieseltier identifies, that it doesn't matter what Israel does or does not do, everyone is an enemy, declared or undeclared, and enemies cannot be mollified. I think both of these are the case and that there is a third element as well, the pervasiveness on the right-wing of religious thinking, of messianism, the belief that if one is the virtuous party in the struggle (as one assuredly is) that God will somehow provide in the end, rendering the coldest, most analytical evaluation of the correlation of all forces, military, economic, and diplomatic, within their geographic and demographic context unnecessary. In the end, however, it matters less why the right-wing constantly blunders and further isolates Israel but that it does so. It does so with its settlement policy, the greatest disaster it has given the state of Israel, and its constant ham-handedness, as with Bibi's petulant refusal publicly to embrace the two-state solution in order to form a coalition with Kadima and the insulting behavior during the visit of Vice President Biden. All of a piece: Fuck you. We are strong enough to do what we want. Unfortunately, Israel is not in fact strong enough to do what it wants. If, at some point, a point that the right seems determined to bring upon the nation, Israel is sufficiently isolated, it will then become diplomatically possible to exert extreme pressure, and Israel will be the loser. ___________ TNR.reader, grasping for something with which to insult me, says that I arrogantly presume to speak for all Israel. I don't even speak for any of Israel, and nothing that I have to say relies on the "authority" of anyone in Israel. I observe the world and I try to think about how particular actions or inactions express the intentions of the actors and how they are likely to play out regardless of the desires of those affected, most particularly those in Israel with whom I am most concerned. Typical responses, leaving aside the insults, are to profess Israel's virtue on the one hand and the lack of virtue of its enemies on the other. (If only Israel had virtuous enemies, life would be so much easier!). In one form or another, they invariably try to substitute a discussion of the morality of the conflict for a discussion of the reality of the conflict. This is fatuous because irrelevant to the realities of how the correlation of forces in the world will work out. I am constantly amazed at the inability of those who argue in this manner to understand that, even if everything they say is absolutely true, it is of no more consequence to the outcome than the fact that the sun rises in the east.

- roidubouloi

June 5, 2010 at 8:40am

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I propose the following as fitting words on the tombstone of Wieseltier's wrought exercise in hand wringing: "From Frum: '...Enforcement works. The last of the Gaza flotilla rejected a deal negotiated between Israel and Ireland to dock at Ashdod and submit there to inspection. It tried to break the blockade instead. The vessel was intercepted by Israeli forces – and this time there was no violence. The blockade runners surrendered to arrest. Prediction: there will be no second flotilla...'"

- basman

June 5, 2010 at 10:38am

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"Prediction: there will be no second flotilla...'" Well, only if Obama and/or NATO will succeed in preventing Erdogan from venturing on a flotilla by himself. Small chance for that, as he seems quite intoxicated with the global popularity this incident has gained him. He wants more.

- noga1

June 5, 2010 at 11:09am

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The "peaceniks" on the Irish vessel were on their best behavior. They were trying to show the world that the scummy ISM was really a peace loving bunch of guys fighting an army of Shylocks. This is how they and their Jew hating friends will see it at the end of the day.

- jdyer

June 5, 2010 at 11:11am

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Here is more speculation about Erdogan's ambitions: "Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been urging European Turks to 'integrate, not assimilate' for quite a while. On official visits to Germany, Belgium and France, he's repeated this call. It wasn't that surprising. Countries want their expats to keep in touch. Erdogan has gone further, and called assimilation a 'crime against humanity'. It sounded hypocritical coming from a guy whose country has an official policy to forcibly assimilate its Kurds and force them to be Turks, but besides that: it just sounded wrong. Forcible assimilation might be a crime against humanity. Voluntary assimilation might be sad, but it's actually a human right." http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2010/06/opinion-does-turkey-want-to-be-empire.html

- noga1

June 5, 2010 at 11:22am

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“No, the argument is not that they should have seen it coming. The argument is that the preoccupations of Israel's right-wing government are evident in its behavior and the means it chooses and that both its preoccupations and its behavior are slowly leading to disaster for Israel.” I disagree; it’s not as if Israel were in command of the situation. They are not just dealing with one enemy and even their “friends” (Turkey) are not above joining the cause of their enemies. Turkey, (under their Muslim government) for example has its own agenda and Israel stands in the way. They want to be a leader along with Iran and perhaps Pakistan of the Muslim world. There is nostalgia fro the old Ottoman Empire. Their president has been making anti-Israel noises for a while now. It helped create the incident by sponsoring the vessel with the jihadists on board. I doubt that even five years ago they would have done so. If Israel is to be faulted it is in refusing to recognize openly the Turkish strategic shift away from the West and toward the Muslim world. They are probably hoping that in the long run this government will be toppled in elections (or by the military) and that a secular government will take its place. I have my doubts, though its possible if not probable. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his people keep upping the ante in part for domestic political reasons. I expect that in the near future we will see him acting like Chavez if not like Ahmadinejad. Israel is guilty of falling into a trap. What made it possible for the Netanyahu government to fall into this trap was inability to see how the world is changing. It seems to me that the PM and his party are incapable of admitting error and changing direction. The country needs a new government.

- jdyer

June 5, 2010 at 11:25am

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"Erdogan has gone further, and called assimilation a 'crime against humanity'." Like the word "racism," the phrase "crime against Humanity" is on the lips of every criminal and racist regime in the world. I call this the Ahmadinejad effect: if you accept his charges against Israel and denials of the Holocaust, then you will accept anything. Racist and criminal regimes don’t need to hide their crimes of be ashamed since they sit openly in the international courts of justice and public opinions and think of themselves as the “real oppressed” peoples.

- jdyer

June 5, 2010 at 11:31am

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"Israel is guilty of falling into a trap. What made it possible for the Netanyahu government to fall into this trap was inability to see how the world is changing. It seems to me that the PM and his party are incapable of admitting error and changing direction." I agree, with some qualification. By the time the flotilla was approaching Gaza, it was no longer a matter of understanding the larger shifts in the world, but of devising tactics that, as far as possible, minimized diplomatic damage while enforcing the blockade. The core of the failure was prematurely militarizing the situation in the absence of any reason to believe that the vessels were heavily armed or presented any imminent threat to life and limb. It should have been dealt with as a law enforcement matter first, with escalation to a military matter only after steps that made clear to the public, to the extent possible, that there was no alternative left other than succumbing to breach of the blockade. To that end, Israel, if it does not already have one, should have a civil forfeiture statute. If an approaching vessel declines to be escorted to Ashdod as ordered and requires itself to be boarded and arrested, it should be subject to prosecution and forfeiture for blockade-running. And the captain should be subject to prosecution and imprisonment for 6 months to a year (assuming no violence). If, on the other hand, it complies peaceably to instructions to proceed to Ashdod, the cargo should be unloaded, inspected, and permitted items transferred to Gaza under the observation of some NGO (as Israel did offer to do). The vessel should then be allowed to go. This would make clear that the enforcement is limited to preventing the entry of banned items and that those who cooperate an provide all the aid to Gaza that they want. If, every time a vessel refuses to observe lawful orders it is forfeited, the "activists" will quickly run out of will and money, and I predict they will show no great interest in lawfully transferring aid to Gaza. They aren't interested in aid, only in making a political point. Beyond that, a smart move now would be to reduce the list of banned items to only those that have a military use and offer to make the port of Ashdod freely available for shipment of Gazan exports and for import of any items not banned, with international participation in the inspection of cargoes. Many of Israel's mistakes are in trying to use its military not for defensive purposes but for political purposes. Whether or not that is legal in a given case, it is a mistake that does Israel more harm than good.

- roidubouloi

June 5, 2010 at 12:00pm

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Jackson, if any "good" has come from this episode, I think it's that Turkey has revealed its cards in a way that makes some readjustment on the part of the Israel and the West an absolute requirement. Individual actions over the past 7, 8 years could be rationalized away, but when one connects the dots the pattern becomes all too clear. From the no-fly interdiction to the vehement denunciations of "genocide" on the part of Israel during the Gaza campaign, to the irrational insults hurled at Peres at Davos to the putsch of military brass to the promotion of anti-western hate films to the flotilla stunt, we're witnessing a slow-mo transformation of a pro-western secular country into another yet another anti-western totalitarian theocracy. The generals used to execute a "reset" operation whenever things went too far in this direction. But now that they've been neutered to prevent them from interfering with "democracy", this is unlikely to ever happen again.

- willjames77

June 5, 2010 at 12:05pm

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12:00 Roi for once makes a reasonable post. My only addition to it, is to point out that the fiasco was caused by the IDF's lack of advance intelligence and lack of preparedness - and that these IDF errors are operational decisions by the IDF, not by the PM.

- TNR.Reader

June 5, 2010 at 12:58pm

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When the diplomatic stakes are high, it is not just an operational decision. It requires political supervision at the highest level. Warfare is never purely operational in any case. Plus, it didn't require any specific intelligence to see that there was the potential for violence -- else why the fake guns and real sidearms -- and that the diplomatic potential required a visible exhaustion of peaceful means and the visible use of the least force necessary. Bush claimed intelligence failure too. It was nonsense. Just a matter of evading the commander-in-chief's responsibility.

- roidubouloi

June 5, 2010 at 1:46pm

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excellent points williamjames77 at 2:36 am, and even better at 12:05 pm. The Marmara incident is all about the bigger picture, which is about Turkey in addition to Hamas being at war with Israel. I came back because Reuters reported this about Derek Graham, Irish owner of The Rachel Corrie nee The Linda: "...Graham said, however, he would be open to an escort from the United Nations. "We're willing to let the U.N. come and inspect the cargo. We will accept an escort from the U.N.," he said. When asked if any such offer had been made, he said: "Our communication is pretty limited but we would hope there would be people working on that as we speak." ..." which brought to mind the image of Ban Ki Moon in his bathtub, playing with the Navy of the United Nations. I find it so offensive to use this as yet another excuse to bash Netanyahu's government. Do people really think an Israel without the economic changes made when Netanyahu was FM in the 1990's would still have ANY support from the free-enterprise/free market obsessed United States? U.S. foreign policy since 1945, has always been about capitalism and free markets, only willing to tolerate bits of socialist leftovers in parts of Europe as long as they were socialists fighting communism. Too bad we are not obsessing over Japan, where American bullying about the US military base on Okinawa can bring down a Prime Minister.

- K2K

June 5, 2010 at 4:11pm

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BTW, strong editorials from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal today calling for TURKEY to be investigated, both published BEFORE "...IDF forces piloted the Rachel Corrie to the port of Ashdod early Saturday evening after boarding the ship earlier in the day. None were harmed in the military operation as the international activists on the ship cooperated with the boarding party. The activists went as far as lowering a ladder to the soldiers patrol boat to allow them to board, army sources have revealed. The boarding of the Rachel Corrie containing activists and aid for Gaza was described by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Saturday as a quiet operation. Netanyahu was quick to distinguish between the boat of Irish and Malaysian activists and the Turkish-sponsored Mavi Marmara which was boarded May 31 in an incident that left nine dead and scores wounded. "The different outcome we saw today underscores the difference between peace activists who we disagree with but respect their right to express their different opinion and flotilla participants [on the Mavi Marmara] who were violent extremist supporters of terrorists," said Netanyahu. ..." http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177526

- K2K

June 5, 2010 at 4:24pm

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K2K says: "I find it so offensive to use this as yet another excuse to bash Netanyahu's government." President Obama fails to say Jew often enough or publicly to lambaste the entire Moslem world. No one dies, and Martin Peretz bashes him for it relentlessly. Is that offensive too?

- roidubouloi

June 5, 2010 at 6:36pm

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roid "President Obama fails to say Jew often enough or publicly to lambaste the entire Moslem world. No one dies, and Martin Peretz bashes him for it relentlessly. Is that offensive too?" wow. if that is your impression of Martin Peretz, so be it. I prefer reading Commentary's Contentions, but they do not allow comments. Israel was never even an issue for me until I got involved in Obama's campaign for a few months. I have never supported Obama's world view of a multilateral kumbaya. people ARE dying because of what Obama says and does, mostly Muslims, so far. roid, go try your tit-for-tat on someone else. you are a knee-jerk ideologue. end of transmission.

- K2K

June 5, 2010 at 10:33pm

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K2K, which specific deaths would you ascribe to Obama? (I mean, obviouslly, other than people like the al qaeda guy in Afghanistan, which I don't mourn, and which peretz has conveniently ignored.) I personally don't think Peretz much cares about how much Obama says "Jew". Peretz's hates are much greater than his fears- which is why he supported Obama because obama had beaten H. Clinton.

- miceelf

June 6, 2010 at 1:01am

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Sorry, should be Peretz's hates are greater than his loves.

- miceelf

June 6, 2010 at 1:01am

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Roid (il)logic: Bush claimed intelligence failure too. It was nonsense. Just a matter of evading the commander-in-chief's responsibility. In other words, Roid says Bush was an idiot, therefore Netanyahu is an idiot. It's amazing the Roid is able to walk. News flash, Roid: Bush made the wrong judgment about an entire war, ignoring the best intelligence. Netayah made the right judgment to enforce the ambargo, properly leaving the operational details to the IDF. The IDF handled six ships correctly, and one ship incorrectly. Pace fools like Wieseltier and Roid, Netanyahu's Israel is emerging victorious: - Gaza and the flotilla are now old news, out of the headlines - nine Turkish jihadists met Allah, setting Turkish neo-imperialism back on its heels - true pacifists (as on the RC) now know they must play nice - the blockade is still in place - there will be no Iranian arms to Gaza for use against Israeli civilians - Erdogan's Turkey looks nicer to an Arab world which can do little for it, and looks poorly to the US and Europe which control NATO and the EU. But, it's unlikely Wiseltier or Roid wil admit their foolishness, their strange haste to conden the Jewish state or its leadership.

- TNR.Reader

June 6, 2010 at 1:24am

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"The Helen Thomas rant is alarming. I'm shocked to be honest. I had thought more of her. I guess it's becoming OK for respected journalists to be openly antisemitic." Helen Thomas and Ralph Nader are of Lebanese descent, which may explain their virulent anti-Zionism.

- TNR.Reader

June 6, 2010 at 1:38am

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miceelf: "K2K, which specific deaths would you ascribe to Obama?" I do not personally blame Obama as Commander in Chief for this example (only because war is a dangerous tragedy for everyone), but the Afghans seem to blame him, and the United Nations has a problem with U.S. use of missile-equipped drones. Those who blame Netanyahu for the Marmara means they have to blame Obama for the Shahidi Hassas???? "Operators of Drones Are Faulted in Afghan DeathsBy DEXTER FILKINS Published: May 29, 2010 KABUL, Afghanistan — The American military on Saturday released a scathing report on the deaths of 23 Afghan civilians, saying that “inaccurate and unprofessional” reporting by Predator drone operators helped lead to an airstrike in February on a group of innocent men, women and children. ..." source: nytimes.com/2010/05/30/world/asia/30drone.html

- K2K

June 6, 2010 at 12:08pm

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Micelf says: "I personally don't think Peretz much cares about how much Obama says Jew.'" Actually, Peretz wrote a whole post complaining of this very thing. ____________________ K2K says: "roid, go try your tit-for-tat on someone else. you are a knee-jerk ideologue. end of transmission." K2K, you are as much the ignorant poseur as ever. Long rambling nonsense to persuade someone, anyone, that there is a thought in your head, when there isn't. What you write doesn't even rise to the level of ideology. It is merely blather. Hence, no need to go tit-for-tat with you. You are self-refuting -- self-tit-for-tatting as it were. __________ TNR.Reader says: "In other words, Roid says Bush was an idiot, therefore Netanyahu is an idiot. It's amazing the Roid is able to walk. News flash, Roid: Bush made the wrong judgment about an entire war, ignoring the best intelligence. Netanyahu made the right judgment to enforce the embargo, properly leaving the operational details to the IDF. The IDF handled six ships correctly, and one ship incorrectly." No, Bush was an idiot AND Netanyahu is an idiot. What they share in common are dangerous right-wing delusions about the nature of power in the world. Any leader who through ignorance, indifference, and belligerent stupidity inflicts unnecessary diplomatic losses on his nation is an idiot. Bush and Netanyahu both qualify. When the "operational details" have the potential for significant diplomatic consequences, as was perfectly obvious, a leader who is not an idiot wants to be assured that there is a balance between political risk and military risk. Not Bibi, the thug. Couldn't care less. Too stupid. The embargo needed to be enforced. It could more than likely have been enforced without the collateral damage, or at least enforced in such a way that it would have been clear that there was no means to avoid the collateral damage. None of that for Bibi. He is a menace to the security of the State of Israel, as Bush was a menace to the security of the United States.

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 12:45pm

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This is quite fascinating, as linked above. http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177526 Netanyahu attributes the difference in the outcome on the Rachel Corrie to the fact that the activists on the Mavi Marmara were violent extremists. That is not wrong, but is a lot less than the whole story. In the case of the Rachel Corrie, the IDF did exactly what I said somewhere here that it should have done: First, there was the demand that the vessel proceed to Ashdod and an expression by Israel that it had no desire to board the vessel if it was not necessary. When that was refused, the IDF made to board. There were two warships nearby, making clear the potential, but the approach was made by small boats and in broad daylight where the actions of all concerned would be clearly discernible. None of the grandstanding with helicopters and night-time commandos. Might the Mavi Marmara have resisted violently had the same been done? Possible. Might the Rachel Corrie have resisted violently had there not just been deaths on the Mavi Marmara? Possible. But we will never know. It is also possible that an effort to arrest the Mavi Marmara without first resorting to what might have appeared to be a night-time attack would have succeeded. So, the activists may have learned a lesson, but, thank god, the Israeli government has appeared to learn one too.

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 12:59pm

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There is a very simple difference between the Rachel Corrie and the Mavi Marmara: the first issued from Ireland and the other from Turkey. The Mavi Marmara carried 600-700 passengers many of whom with connections to global jihad-affiliated terrorist organizations. The killed were all Muslim Turks. The Rachel Corrie, Irish-owned, carrying six Malaysian and five Irish campaigners plus 11 crew. BTW, here are recent photos from the Marmara, courtesy of Turkish media: http://fotogaleri.hurriyet.com.tr/GaleriDetay.aspx?cid=36575&p=1&rid=2 Truth telling motivation is not reflected in the caption to the photos: “Commando In Tears”. More like indulging the need of Turkish readers to see bloodied and frantic Jewish bodies...

- noga1

June 6, 2010 at 1:20pm

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BTW, how do you make the world hate you? Remember the aftermath of 9/11 and how "progressive" liberals rushed to urge patience and suspension of suspicion until all facts came out, and even beyond? How the London review of books assembled a litani of articles in which the wrath of the writers was turned against the US? Even that nearly apocalyptic atrocity did not draw the kind of hate orgy that Israel has been subjected to. I'm reading Arendt 's "Origins of totalitarianism" in which she meticulously dissects that passage from social prejudice to proto-Nazi type of antisemitism. She looks for "root causes" and finds them in Jewish behaviours being always in some conflict with the times. The bottom line is that Jews were persecuted when they were confined to the ghettos and regarded as the ultimate alien and they were persecuted even more lethally after they were granted emancipation, moved out of the ghetto, became legally equal and secular, and at least superficially invisible. This is where things took a turn towards eliminationist antisemitism in Europe. The Jew, barely tolerable when removed from common respectability becomes intolerable when he actually becomes a part of the public sphere. There is a lesson in it for how Israel is treated by the world. I'm not yet sure how it can be translated into what is happening today but there seems to be some continuity. The creation of Israel did not reflect a paradigm shift in the direction of history. It was a singularity after which everything pretty much returned to "normal".

- noga1

June 6, 2010 at 3:21pm

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Yup. Wieseltier is exactly right when he recites that Israel has abandoned even the semblance of diplomacy due to the fatalism of too many Israelis, the belief that all opposition to Israeli policy is anti-Semitism and that nothing can be done. Totally antithetical to Zionism which was founded on the belief in Jewish agency and responsibility for action both effective and morally correct. That has been submerged by one giant Masada complex. See above.

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 4:04pm

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"How Liberal Jews are Are Enabling the Second Holocaust" Philip Klein The problem, however, isn't with leading Jewish organizations that defend Israel, but with liberalism. As sickening as it sounds, Jewish liberals see their fellow Jews as noble when they are victims being led helplessly into the gas chambers, but recoil at the thought of Jews who refuse to be victims, and actually take actions to defend themselves. ... Israel, right now, is surrounded by terorrist groups dedicated to the nation's destruction. Palestinian society teaches its children to aspire to slaughter Jews much in the same fashion as the Nazis indoctrinated their young. Suicide bombers who die in the act of killing Jewish civilians are celebrated as heroes. It's a culture that glorifies death and uses women and children as human shields to gain sympathy from the international community -- and especially liberal Jews. And the terrorists are receiving aid from Iran, a radical nation that vows to wipe Israel off the map within the context of seeking a nuclear weapon. Yet against this backdrop, all liberal Jews want to do is to pin the blame on Israel's efforts to defend itself, and engage in the magical thinking that more Jewish concessions will create peace and security. By doing so, they are helping the enemies of the Jews who are intent on finishing the job that Hitler started. ...While I would never suggest that Jews who happen to be politically liberal would want a second Holocaust to happen, I do think that by participating in a campaign to defang Israel and prevent it from taking the actions necessary to defend itself, that Jewish liberals are making things significantly easier for those who do want to carry out a second Holocaust. Luckily, though, there are a lot of Jews in Israel who are determined not to let that happen. " p://spectator.org/blog/2010/05/17/how-liberal-jews-are-enabling K2K adds: Luckily, one of those Jews in Israel is PM Benjamin Netanyahu. American Liberal Jews NEVER supported Israel, and should find a new hobby IN America- are there not enough problems to solve with verbal handwringing in your own backyard?

- K2K

June 6, 2010 at 5:39pm

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Pure unadulterated sewage from K2K. It is not liberals who conceive of Jews as victims, but the wacko right that wallows endlessly in Jewish victimhood attributing every problem of Israel to its victim status -- no agency, no responsibility, no alternatives, and hence no need for thinking about anything or distinguishing what works from what doesn't work. You can read endless such wallowing right here on the pages of TNR. Harry Truman, god bless him, was a Democrat, hence someone with a both a brain and a conscience, not one of you right-wing jingos with fantasies about power that bear no relationship to the real world and its exigencies. Ben Gurion would view you with complete disgust and disdain, K2K, as should everyone here. You are another suicide Jew. You want it for yourself and wish it upon the rest of us.

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 6:09pm

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A sampling of Turkey's Hurriyet indicates some dot-connecting between the Marmara and Erdogan's political problems in advance of the controversial September referendum intended to change Turkey's Constitution. A worthwhile read, copying only the conclusion here: "Why is Palestine ‘a second Cyprus’ for Turks?" Thursday, June 3, 2010 BURAK BEKDİLA "...Anyone curious why do the Turks, when they take to the streets for political demonstrations, carry placards written in Turkish, but in the case of Palestine the protest tools are often decorated with Arabic and Quranic scripts? Subconsciously (and sadly) the Muslim-Turkish thinking tolerates it if Muslims kill Muslims; does not tolerate it but does not turn the world upside down when Christians kill Muslims; pragmatically ignores it when too-powerful Christians kill Muslims; but is programmed to turn the world upside down when Jews kill Muslims. " www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=why-is-palestine-8216a-second-cyprus8217-for-turks-2010-06-03 so easy to trigger 'Roid Rage by posting the words of a neo-con. same tactic that Erdogan is using to trigger Turk Rage :)

- K2K

June 6, 2010 at 6:34pm

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"It is not liberals who conceive of Jews as victims, but the wacko right that wallows endlessly in Jewish victimhood attributing every problem of Israel to its victim status -- no agency, no responsibility, no alternatives, and hence no need for thinking about anything or distinguishing what works from what doesn't work. " _____________ Nick Cohen (not a Jew, despite his name): "It is impossible for discussions of Middle Eastern dictatorship, the rise of psychopathic Islamism or the alienation of immigrant Muslim communities in the west to continue without participants maintaining that Jewish influence is "the root cause" of the evils to hand. From the far left to the Liberal Democrats, alleged progressives have Jews on the brain. The point to make against them is not that there are worse countries than Israel, which receive nothing like the same level of opprobrium – even though there are and they most certainly do not – but that Israel's critics ignore the uses of racism and forget the lessons of the 20th century. [-] The refusal to understand what antisemitism is and what antisemites want to do to Jews and non-Jews alike makes sense as a general explanation for attitudes towards Israel. It is, however, a measure of the political failure of the Netanyahu government that it no longer suffices as a particular explanation for the bias of the Gaza debate. I have no wish to lay myself open to unwarranted accusations of even-handedness, but knowing where to begin with a defence of Israel or any other cause also involves knowing when to stop. The true measure of the disastrous consequences of the Gaza blockade for all sides is the unwillingness of Palestinians who have most to fear from Islamism to condemn Hamas." ________ Prof. Geras: "Adrian Hamilton in today's Independent: As with North Korea, Burma and Zimbabwe, so the international community (however defined) demands that something be done, the UN meets in disapproval and there are outraged calls for sanctions against the offending state. Oh, come now - the level of outrage over Israel's behaviour exceeds by far what you standardly get for North Korea, Burma or Zimbabwe. Hamilton goes on to say: It may seem excessive to lump Israel in with rogue states such as North Korea. Some of us would say so, yes. But amongst the outraged, what's excessive is anyone's daring to wonder why there should be such different levels of outrage." http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2010/06/israel-and-north-korea.html _________ In her speech before the Freedom Forum in Oslo, Elena Bonner, wife of the late Andrei Sakharov, asks: "And another question that has been a thorn for me for a long time. It's a question for my human rights colleagues. Why doesn't the fate of the Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit trouble you in the same way as does the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners? You fought for and won the opportunity for the International Committee of the Red Cross, journalists and lawyers to visit Guantanamo. You know prison conditions, the prisoners' everyday routine, their food. You have met with prisoners subjected to torture. The result of your efforts has been a ban on torture and a law to close this prison. President Obama signed it in the first days of his coming to the White House. And although he, just like president Bush before him, does not know what to do with the Guantanamo prisoners, there is hope that the new administration will think up something. But during the two years Schalit has been held by terrorists, the world human rights community has done nothing for his release. Why? He is a wounded soldier, and fully falls under the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The conventions say clearly that hostage-taking is prohibited, that representatives of the Red Cross must be allowed to see prisoners of war, especially wounded prisoners, and there is much else written in the Geneva Conventions about Schalit's rights. The fact that representatives of the Quartet conduct negotiations with the people who are holding Schalit in an unknown location, in unknown conditions, vividly demonstrates their scorn of international rights documents and their total legal nihilism. Do human rights activists also fail to recall the fundamental international rights documents? [...] Returning to my question of why human rights activists are silent, I can find no answer except that Schalit is an Israeli soldier, Schalit is a Jew. So again, it is conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism. Again, it is fascism." _________ Decent, genuine, free-standing liberals keep asking why Israel is being singled out for such disproportionate outrage. Clearly, as much as they care for Palestinians, they cannot quite understand how the rights of Israelis are not only ignored but trampled under the stampede of hatred. 1600 apartments in a neigbourhood in Jerusalem does not quite provide the sufficient impetus for this grotesque imbalance. Only a Casaubon-like personality can claim with such certainty that he holds the key to the whole of mythology: all the mythologies of the world are corrupt fragments of an ancient corpus of knowledge, to which he, and he alone, has the key.

- noga1

June 6, 2010 at 7:15pm

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"so easy to trigger 'Roid Rage" Isn't it fortunate, then, that his rage is that of a "liberal"? Imagine if the fountainhead of his rage fed upon religion, or some really evil ideology. He would be nothing more than a curiosity, minus the obvious charm: http://www.threesources.com/pix/rageboy.jpg

- noga1

June 6, 2010 at 7:23pm

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How the media becomes complicit in the propagatation of hatred: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/36488_Did_Reuters_Crop_a_Photo_to_Remove_a_Peace_Activist

- noga1

June 6, 2010 at 7:41pm

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"The refusal to understand what antisemitism is and what antisemites want to do to Jews and non-Jews alike makes sense as a general explanation for attitudes towards Israel." _________________ No matter what strategic and/or tactical stupidity the moronic right-wing visits upon Israel, no matter how inept, not matter how self-defeating, no matter how damaging or dangerous, the right will ALWAYS excuse its incompetence with the words above. ALWAYS. When the day comes that the Palestinians declare their state and the UN starts to force Israel out of all the territory east of the Green Line, the same moronic, messianic, right-wing fantasists will not suddenly have a revelation about the meaning of "strategic over-reach," they will not recognize that they are to blame for the debacle and that it was the inevitable, predictable outcome of their policies. No, they will whine and moan that the anti-Semites are at work again and that the Jews are yet again victims and they will point the finger and claim that Israel was stabbed in the back by liberals in unconscious echo of the early Hitler. The perpetual soi-disant victims think that no one but they understands that Israel has real enemies, that there are real anti-Semites. We do. But we conclude that the fact that vicious enemies are real requires astute, adroit use of power -- economic, miiltary, and diplomatic -- in defense. The right concludes that, if you merely talk tough and are sufficiently belligerent on any and every occasion, ineptitude will not come back to haunt you and your enemies, in shock and awe, will fall down in defeat. Say the magic words, "Axis of Evil," or some equally vacuous phrase conjured by the likes of Martin Peretz and his acolytes, and you win. Identify all the anti-Semites in the world, and you win. Prove that you are hated for no reason, and you win. What pathetic, useless, impotent garbage. Vying for the title of chief victim, the ghetto within that Zionism was meant to put an end to. Probably the reason why Israel could never have been created by the right -- self-pity is not sufficient for statehood. Just ask the Palestinian Arabs. ____________ As for K2K and his vile sputum. that ain't rage. That's the objective reality about his evil stupidity. Rage, in contrast, is incoherent and incontinent, like the endless wallowing in victimhood that is noga's speciality, as if rage at the terrible injustices of the world will protect anyone. Decent, genuine, free-standing liberals don't keep asking why Israel is being singled out for such disproportionate outrage. They know. The ones who need to keep asking are the wallowers in self-pity. Decent liberals understand the necessity of effective policy and action and that rightist self-pity is a waste of valuable time and resources.

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 8:02pm

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"so easy to trigger 'Roid Rage by posting the words of a neo-con. same tactic that Erdogan is using to trigger Turk Rage :)" Quite right, because the neo-cons are but anti-Semites with a different ax to grind, overcome with the same hatred, the same incontinence, the same fantasies of power, of epic struggle between good and evil, the same lust for religious war. If they lived in the Moslem world, they would be jihadists. Indeed, it is only their particular material circumstances that separate them from the jihadists. The habits of mind are the same. The jihadists, however, are mostly over there, and the neo-cons, regrettably, are over here. They are our jihadists, our Erdogans.

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 8:11pm

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"If they lived in the Moslem world, they would be jihadists. " Exactly my thoughts about you, roi, but I considered it too strong medicine even for your leathery heart to bear.

- noga1

June 6, 2010 at 8:41pm

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noga: "How the media becomes complicit in the propagatation of hatred:" yes, that Reuters edit of the Hurriyet photo was troubling. I had seen all nine of the Hurriyet photos earlier, but did not notice the knife in that one until I followed the link from Contentions to LGF. It was LGF that exposed the doctoring of a photo of an Iranian missile test, maybe in 2008. I kind of wonder why the IDF allegedly erased all the photos they confiscated from the Marmara. Hurriyet publishing the few that got back to Turkey seems to have led to some debate in Turkey questioning the truth of the Erdogan and Davatoglu claims of "war crimes". roid: please turn the rage off. you embarrass yourself. you are also committing criminal offenses with each personal attack, Class A misdemeanors, in New York State. 14 days on Rikers Island might interfere with your legal license. well, 14 minutes on Rikers will definitely cure you of your raging liberalism, so keep leaving evidence. :) beyond roid's comprehension that anyone can be neither an ideological liberal nor an ideological conservative, but an independent. commenting on The Spine does not equal Peretz-acolyte. back to ignoring roid. the only cure.

- K2K

June 6, 2010 at 8:44pm

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Oh yes, I'm a jihadist. That's me. Insisting upon avoiding self-pity and the meme of victimization, avoiding magical, religious thinking, messianism, uber-particularism, bombast, or obsessing about the end-of-days evil represented by one's enemies. Insisting rather upon thinking about just what should be done under the circumstances, upon intelligent deployment of all ones resources in defense, upon realistic appraisal of risks and outcomes. The very essence of jihadism. As contrasted with the messianic right-wing nuts and neo-cons who engage in exactly all of those jihadist behaviors and none of the rational ones. You are so observant, noga. What a keen analytical mind.

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 9:13pm

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It is not an embarrassment to denounce nasty scum such as you for what you are, K2K. It is a moral necessity. The only way to deal with the sewage that you dump into the public square is to call it for what it is. Why don't you take the garbage that spills from you mind and go away, somewhere were your vile and ugly self will be appreciated. If you think you have a legal action, you moron, bring one. Make my day. Subpoena TNR and swear out a criminal complaint. Your cluelessness knows no bounds. And don't think for a moment that I shall ignore you. Not a chance. Your every vile emission shall be met with a condign response.

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 9:21pm

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K2K, there may be a pattern; the more competently you demolish the Roid's arguments, the more abusive to you he becomes. Thus I should count myself privileged for having been victim of his abuse in the past.

- TNR.Reader

June 6, 2010 at 10:15pm

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The Roid pontificates: "[Bibi] is a menace to the security of the State of Israel, as Bush was a menace to the security of the United States." Bush had negligible miltary experience and could barely complete uni. Netanyahu was a Sayeret Matkal commander and has two MIT degrees. There is no comparison between the two men. And, fortunately, Bibi's fate depends upon the Israeli electorate, not upon King Roid.

- TNR.Reader

June 6, 2010 at 10:25pm

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"K2K, there may be a pattern; the more competently you demolish the Roid's arguments, the more abusive to you he becomes." Oh please. The man cannot string two coherent sentences together in a row. As for Netanyahu and his two MIT degrees (in management and architecture), one has only to attend some of the elite universities here (Harvard, Columbia, Cornell in my case) to know that there are stupid people everywhere. Even there. And many of them earn degrees. Some of them even teach. Fortunately, I don't live in Bibi-land. I have to suffer principally from the idiocies of the right here, leaving Israelis both to suffer from Bibi's idiocies there and then to decide his fate. Better them than me, for sure. The United States is strong enough and rich enough to live down most of the depredations of the right. For Israel, it is a much closer call. None-the-less, I would happily make this deal just for the peace: If Israelis would volunteer no longer to hold and share opinions about the United States, its people, and its government (let alone pontificate about us), I would willingly agree no longer to give Israel a moment's thought and leave the Israelis to their own mess. Of course, I would ask my government to do the same.

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 10:43pm

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More meaningless blather from the Roid, who couldn't qualify for Sayeret Matkal, or a MIT-Sloan degree, if his life depended on it.

- TNR.Reader

June 6, 2010 at 11:04pm

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Gee, and I couldn't get elected prime minister or president either. I would just love to hear TNR.reader's qualifications for having opinions and sharing them with us. Nobel Prize? Lieutenant General? Acclaimed novelist? Actually, I'm sure I could get a Sloan degree as I got A's there as a graduate business student, and at Columbia, and at Cornell, and at Harvard. Pretty sure I could hack MIT too, but the place didn't appeal to me. Too many nerds.

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 11:17pm

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"I could get a Sloan degree as I got A's there as a graduate business student... I could hack MIT too" Sloan is MIT. Thus we have caught out Roid in false self-aggrandisement, which he would know had he attended. Let's hope his employers never learn about his c.v. creativity.

- TNR.Reader

June 6, 2010 at 11:22pm

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"a graduate business student... " I thought roi you were a lawyer?

- noga1

June 6, 2010 at 11:33pm

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You are quite right. I attended Stern (NYU), not Sloan (MIT). My slip as to which I plead poor eyesight and a complete lack of recall of the name of MIT's business school. You can rest assured that my c.v. says nothing about MIT or Sloan. Now, weren't you about to tell us your impeccable qualifications for having opinions?

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 11:36pm

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I once mistakenly said that Israel had Phantoms in 1967 too. Oh my god! These terrible slips of memory. Proving . . . proving . . . that I have slips of memory, conflate names and places from 30 years ago, get time sequences out of order, and on and on. My bad.

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 11:39pm

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Yes noga, I am a lawyer too. I have attended at various times eight different institutions of higher education, in physics, law, business, and economics. I practiced law on Wall Street, sent myself back to business school, was then a merchant banker, then a statistical arbitrageur, followed by a stint in politics. I am now studying for a doctorate in economics in addition to running my statistical arbitrage business and raising two young children, all of which leaves not enough time for reading Jane Austen. :-)

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 11:44pm

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And, by the way, NYU's Graduate School of Business Admininstration was not called Stern, just NYU, back when I attended 30 years ago, which is how I managed to get the names confused. I do walk by it now and then, Stern that is, and see the new name and on this occasion confused it with Sloan.

- roidubouloi

June 6, 2010 at 11:48pm

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In other words, Roid couldn't make it in one profession, so he tried a few others. Probably won't make it in StatArb either.

- TNR.Reader

June 6, 2010 at 11:56pm

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Well, TNR, I took my winnings from LBOs and used them to fund the start-up of my business in 1991. This is the 17th year trading with not a single down year. The largest retracement to date is 5% (peak to trough) in 2001, no others above about 2.5%, and the average annual yield since we started is a bit more than 17%, unlevered. Most people think that's pretty good. It's a comfortable living and leaves me time to go to school and do other things. I am happy to report that I have been quite successful in all of my professional undertakings. But once I have mastered something, I get bored and want to do something else new and challenging. I have been fortunate to be able to do just that. Now, weren't you about to tell us your impeccable qualifications for having opinions?

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 12:05am

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"Well, TNR, I took my winnings from LBOs" So, the arrogant self-righteous true blue leftist turns out to be just another arch-capitalist corporate raider ....

- TNR.Reader

June 7, 2010 at 12:49am

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"Well, TNR, I took my winnings from LBOs" So, the arrogant self-righteous true blue leftist turns out to be just another arch-capitalist corporate raider ....

- TNR.Reader

June 7, 2010 at 12:49am

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"So, the arrogant self-righteous true blue leftist turns out to be just another arch-capitalist corporate raider .... " Well, no TNR. You are just making unwarranted assumptions because you don't understand the business. The firm of which I was a member did not do either hostile deals or public company deals. Its speciality was buying companies where there was a management/ownership succession issue. The transactions we structured enabled the owner/entrepreneurs to cash out their equity and for management to obtain equity. Everyone involved was quite grateful for the opportunity and lenders were willing to invest to make this possible because of their confidence in our management oversight. One of the reasons I lost my taste for the business was that by the end of the 80s prices were being bid up to levels that required debt to earnings ratios that I didn't consider prudent, and I did not want to be part of transactions, however legal or sought by the market, that I felt were not responsible. So, I struck out on my own to do something else. Now, weren't you about to tell us your impeccable qualifications for having opinions?

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 12:58am

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"The transactions we structured enabled the owner/entrepreneurs to cash out their equity and for management to obtain equity. Everyone involved was quite grateful" Notice not a word about the employees. The true-blue leftist doesn't think the common man counts for superior beings such as himself. "Now, weren't you about to tell us your impeccable qualifications for having opinions?" Once more the hypocrite betrays himself - one must have "qualifications for having opinions", thus excluding most of the proletariat. Once again the true-blue leftists shows himself just another reactionary, elitist bourgeois.

- TNR.Reader

June 7, 2010 at 1:08am

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Oh no, TNR.reader, it is you who were asserting that one requires particular educational or professional credentials in order to express opinions about political leaders. I never said anything of the kind. Then you speculated about what mine might be so it seemed appropriate to explain what they are in the expectation that, since you consider this important, you were about to do likewise. But now you are getting coy. What ought we infer from your silence about your educational and professional accomplishments? ____________ Nope, employees below a fairly high management level didn't get stock. But then, I never claimed to be a socialist. I am a capitalist. Just not a moron capitalist like those who are politically right-wing and insist on all sorts of absurd fantasies -- like revenues will go up when you cut taxes for the rich, or markets are self-regulating, or international trade is self-regulating, or that government is not essential to a successful capitalist economy, or that the wealthy should be entitled to buy the government and control it. You know, dingbat notions like that. As with many things, you have simply made assumptions about what I think based on the lies that the right tells about the left. But they are all liars and completely corrupt so you shouldn't believe a word they say about anything.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 1:24am

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TNR.Reader: a statistical arbitrage business is a euphemism for one type of hedge fund that brought down the global economy, most recently in 2008. limousine liberal getting a doctorate in economics from the New School. absolutely no room in his economic model for the little people whose lives are ravaged. no wonder he has such venom for me. I know who he is.

- K2K

June 7, 2010 at 1:30am

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"Nope, employees below a fairly high management level didn't get stock." So, the Roid is more worried about far-off Palestinians that fellow Americans. Is his real name Grundy? "Oh no, TNR.reader, it is you who were asserting that one requires particular educational or professional credentials in order to express opinions about political leaders." So, we see that the self-aggrandising Roid in the end hasn't the intellectual capacity to understand plain English. Read the thread again, hemorRhoid; it was you, not I, who expressed contempt for Netanyahu's credentials to lead Israel. Of course, hemorRoid has an even bigger problem: he has set his royal self up as superior not only to the proletariat, and not only to many readers here (K2K, Noga), but as well to the whole Israeli electorate, which (however indirectly and fractiously) have democratically chosen to be led by the Likud-Avoda coalition, essentially a Netanyahu-Barak coalition. From his comfortable American armchair the hemorRoid insists he knows better than them all. But, of course, some of us have respect for Israel's democratic choices - as well as for its current government's victories in the matters of settlements, Jerusalem, and now the Gaza blockade.

- TNR.Reader

June 7, 2010 at 1:42am

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No, TNR, you are having trouble keeping track of things again. I didn't scoff at Netanyahu's education. I just scoffed at the notion that his credentials should be taken as proof that he is not stupid when we see such ample demonstration that he is stupid. It is one thing to stand on your academic degrees when you are 25 or 30 years old and haven't done anything yet. But by the time you are Netanyahu's age with a long public track record, it is quite idiotic to insist that he is worthy of respect or that his leadership is not profoundly flawed and burdened with absurdist ideology because of courses he took in school 40 years ago. Nor does the mere fact that someone is an elected leader oblige us to respect what that leader does. If either educational accomplishment or the fact of election were sufficient reason to pay respect to a political leader then you and the rest of the right-wing boobs would shut your foul mouths and stop criticizing President Obama. But you and the rest of the Peretziyech aren't about do that, are you? So, you see TNR.reader, the problem here is that, like all the rest of your ilk, you are an atrocious hypocrite but also so incapable of keeping track of the things you say from one moment to the next that you cannot even observe that you are contradicting yourself left, right, and sideways. When you criticize Obama, do I say that you pontificate, that you are setting yourself up as king, that you think you know better than the American electorate, that you don't have near the sort of professional experience that qualifies you to say anything at all, or offer any of the other fatuous rejoinders that you offer up? Of course not. Such things are childish and irrelevant. Rather, I point out what nonsense your criticism is on its merits. And when I lead you by the nose through your nonsense, even you eventually conclude how ridiculous it is. It is just that by the end you have forgotten that it is you who said all those ridiculous things. Now, don't you feel a little foolish? On the merits, what you think of as victories for Israel are merely digging the hole that Israel is in deeper. But, hey, that's what the lunatic right is good at, both here and in Israel. Digging holes for the nation that turn into disastrous burdens to be overcome. Same old, same old.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 2:15am

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No K2K, statistical arbitrage has absolutely zero to do with the fiscal disaster. If it did, I would hardly have been making money throughout the whole debacle. It is a form of market-making, the sort of thing that market-makers on the New York Stock Exchange do, but without the benefit of the inside information that they have. It does not involve high degrees of leverage, phony securities, or laying off risks to anyone else through derivatives or any other such mechanisms. It also has nothing whatever to do with what you refer to as "little people," for good or ill. It provides a better matching of buy and sell orders than what the designated market-makers offer and takes as compensation a piece of the advantage that accrues to buyers and sellers as a result. A small service, but an honest one that does not take advantage of anyone.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 2:25am

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"I once mistakenly said that Israel had Phantoms in 1967 too. Oh my god! These terrible slips of memory. " It was a surprising error because it revealed a basic incongruence between your claim to know Israel's history very well and what you actually base your arguments on. You furnished that fact as one more proof of how the US assisted Israel in her struggle against the Arabs. It's not a mere "slip of memory". I never really took you seriously after that mistake. You may have done all you say you did but still there is an awful rigidity and narrowness about your understanding of the world. You claim to understand how power works but you don't, really. Your understanding is of Ossama Bin Laden's type of understanding; strong horse, weak house. You don't get it that there is a moral dimension to how things work or are perceived. And going along with your formula means that the concept of truth and justice have no place in the world. You might benefit a great deal from reading more novels, that's for sure.

- noga1

June 7, 2010 at 6:55am

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Yeah, yeah. Unbelievable, to have confused in memory the aircraft types in use in 1973 and those in use in 1967 in the Six-Day War (which the US did in fact start to supply to Israel shortly thereafter). The topic at the time was whether the US was a major arms supplier to Israel prior to the Six-Day War. Someone said it was not. I was correct that it was, although to that point supplying only hundreds of tanks, not aircraft. What a faux pas! You never really took me seriously after that? Not to worry. I have never taken you seriously at all. On a good day, you are an addled reader of Jane Austen, despite a spotty command of the English language. Like Chance the Gardner, who thinks everything can be analogized to his garden, you find all you need to know about geo-politics, international law, military affairs, politics generally -- everything actually -- in the pages of Austen. All of modern life is revealed to us in the pages of 18th-19th century romantic novels about the manners and mores of English gentry. Of course the concepts of truth and just have a place in the world. But you govern your own behavior in accordance with them, and "with a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." These simple ideas are unknown to you. In contrast, you cannot govern your enemies' behavior you with them because you cannot control your enemies's behavior, or even that of your friends, unless you understand how to use power, a subject about which Ms. Austen has plainly taught you nothing. Now isn't that surprising, that you don't learn about the use and abuse of power amongst nations from the pages of romantic 18th-19th century novels? Whodda thunk it? Terribly funny too that you should consider yourself an advocate for truth and justice in international affairs since I am the one who constantly maintains that there are standards of behavior that decent nations must observe -- and talk at length about them -- while your standard of behavior is constantly revealed to be only to be better than the worst actors on the international stage, the criminals, combined with constant outrage that Israel should be criticized by anyone while criminal states are doing far worse. What would Austen say about a self-perception so wildly at odds with reality?

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 7:25am

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And I have NEVER made the claim to know Israel's history very well or even the history of the US very well. I don't claim "authority" for any of my opinions which is why I am at pains to explain them at length -- so that they stand or fall on their own terms, not based on some claim of special knowledge.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 7:29am

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"The topic at the time was whether the US was a major arms supplier to Israel prior to the Six-Day War. Someone said it was not. I was correct that it was, " The Six day war was won by Israel's air force. It was a major gaff on your part not to know that. "You never really took me seriously after that? Not to worry. I have never taken you seriously at all." The mountains of words you spend on describing how you don't take me seriously and how stupid or whatever you think me indeed support your claim that you do not take me seriously at all. "And I have NEVER made the claim to know Israel's history very well .... " Good. Finally, some well-deserved modesty from you.

- noga1

June 7, 2010 at 10:36am

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Well, I went to 8 different high schools and was asked to leave 7 of them. I finished the 8th with an 8 ball concentration and a minor in snooker. I like to think of them though as the Ivy League of Vancouver high schools.

- basman

June 7, 2010 at 11:40am

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The matter under discussion was not how the Six-Day War was won but the relationship between the US and Israel at the time. Someone, amidut as I recall, asserted that the US was not a major arms supplier to Israel until after the Six-Day War. I said that was incorrect and cited the supply of Phantoms. In fact, Phantoms were not supplied until after the Six-Day War when the French refused to continue to supply Mirages. But the US had supplied a few hundred tanks to Israel in about 1965 and it was perfectly clear after reading the history that US policy, both before and after the Six-Day War, was that Israel be supplied with necessary weapons. We were content to have the French supply aircraft that served the purpose -- a wise policy for many reasons -- and stepped in to supply aircraft as soon as the French withdrew. Thus, in every important aspect, my recollection was correct and your pal's was incorrect. If you think that my incorrect recollection that the aircraft used in the Six-Day War were Phantoms rather than Mirages is somehow either important or particularly relevant to what was the subject of contention at the time, I am not surprised at all. You relentlessly focus upon trivia and irrelevancies to the exclusion of everything that is important in any political, strategic, or tactical situation. This is no exception. Why would it be? You also make the mistake, as usual, of assuming that when I talk about you or the things you say it is because I want to persuade you or think that the things you say carry weight. I don't. Mostly I think they are ridiculous (and what you say on this subject of Phantoms and Mirages is a perfect example). At best you are a useful foil for making points for the benefit of others who don't say a lot here, but are reading along none-the-less. We know because they occasionally poke their heads up and it is apparent that they have been paying attention. I always have them in mind, not you.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 11:41am

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Bravo, basman. That is an enviable record.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 11:43am

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"If you think that my incorrect recollection that the aircraft used in the Six-Day War were Phantoms rather than Mirages is somehow either important or particularly relevant to what was the subject of contention at the time" The fact that you did not know that Israel fought the war with French Mirages (don't even try to pretend that it was a momentary lapse of memory; it was simple ignorance) illustrates exactly what I said it did and what you tacitly agreed with: that when you speak about Israel, the tone of authority and confidence you assume are based on some serious lacunae.

- noga1

June 7, 2010 at 12:04pm

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"Bravo, basman. That is an enviable record." Here is roi, trying to counter irony with irony and as always, fails miserably.

- noga1

June 7, 2010 at 12:06pm

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Noga, if I started to catalog your endless errors and confusions, one would quickly have to conclude that the only thing you are competent to speak about is fiction. Actually, that is more than likely the case. But I prefer to deal with your mistakes (including the fiction that the US was not a major arms supplier to Israel until after the Six-Day War -- lacuna anyone?) one at a time rather than en masse because it is more useful. I certainly did know what aircraft were used in 1967 at one time because I am well old enough to have been paying close attention to the newspapers throughout the Six-Day War. And I recall the change of policy of the French and the subsequent coup of retrieving by stealth the missile boats the French had built for Israel and refused to deliver. If you think this lapse of memory is significant, by all means, have at it. You make yourself look foolish (is it actually possible for you to make yourself look more foolish than usual?) by trying to make trivia seem important. In the future, rather than sound too authoritative and confident, I shall adopt your querulous tone and timidity about facts and claims as my guide. (Note: This is sarcasm, noga. Get it? Although your tone is indeed querulous, and grating for that, you are never timid about your assertions, no matter how far afield from what you know and understand.)

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 12:56pm

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the emerging story of Turkey's central role in the Marmara provocation continues to overshadow the Israel-always-to-blame frame. Perhaps a bit of insight into Turkey's view of the U.S. offers welcome relief from roid's ego-centric highjacking still in process here. K2K posted this, along with other updates on TURKEY at The Spine: "Or, As Vice President Biden Put It, “What’s The Big Deal Here?" Fethullah Gulen's movement owns Turkey's Zaman newspaper (#1 in circulation). They have an English version. from Zaman opinion columnist ÖMER TAŞPINAR "The anatomy of Turkey’s frustration with Washington" "...There are three main problems in Turkey’s perception of Washington. All three of these issues constantly fuel Turkish anti-Americanism and characterize the way Turks think and speak of the United States. First, there is America the promoter of “moderate Islam” in Turkey. This is a favorite topic of conversation for Turkey’s Kemalist establishment, a declining yet still important segment of the power elite. Second, there is America, the power behind “Kurdish separatism.” This is a favorite topic of almost all Turks, from university academics to cab drivers. And finally, there is America, the land where the “Jewish lobby” controls everything. This too is a national pastime in Turkey and involves the whole political spectrum from the anti-Semitic Islamists to the ultranationalist secular left and extreme right. What is the common point of all three? A huge national appetite for conspiracy theories. ...There is not a single soul in Turkey’s body politic, media or intelligentsia that refutes the idea that American wants to create a Kurdish state in the region. Washington, it is argued, secretly supports the PKK and openly wants the Kurds in Iraq to achieve their dream of a greater Kurdistan. The evidence for all this? Just look at the map CNN uses each time they talk about Kurds in the region. It shows half of Turkey as Kurdistan. What else do you need to understand the evil intentions of the CIA? Dig a little deeper and you will see that most Turks believe Israel wants the same thing. ..." http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/columnists-212343-the-anatomy-of-turke...

- K2K

June 7, 2010 at 1:42pm

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Here, a quote from Jeffrey Goldberg, that summarizes most everything wrong with the noga view of the world: "We all understand the reality that Israel will be judged more harshly than other nations -- it has always been so, though only recently has this been true on the Atlantic website. Israel is not big enough -- and the world's fourteen million Jews are not strong enough -- to reshape this particular reality. So we have to learn to live within the reality created by others. This doesn't mean that Israel must go and commit suicide, as much of the world (including the Turkish humanitarians) would like it to do. But it means -- and I repeat myself here -- that Israel should approach its problems with elegance and subtlety." I wish I could have written that. Now, think about these words together: elegance, subtlety, Netanyahu. Is the problem clear? And here is a quote by Goldberg quoting Ari Shavit: "During the 2006 war in Lebanon I concluded that my 15-year-old daughter could have conducted it more wisely than the Olmert-Peretz government. We've progressed. Today it's clear to me that my 6-year-old son could do much better than our current government. Even a child would have seen the imbalance in the risk-threat assessment in overpowering the flotilla ships. Any smart kid would understand that you don't sacrifice what is important for what is not. But the cabinet did not understand. Under the leadership of Netanyahu, Barak and (Minister for Strategic Affairs Moshe) Ya'alon it came to a patently unreasonable decision. It was a decision of complete fools." What took me paragraphs to say on one or other of these threads, Shavit says with incredible economy, "Even a child would have seen the imbalance in the risk-threat assessment . . . " To which TNR.reader would of course respond, "Netanyahu was a Sayeret Matkal commander and has two MIT degrees." Ergo, Netanyahu cannot be a fool, despite all the evidence, and what sort of degrees does Ari Shavit have, and what did he do in the IDF? Cook? ____________________ There are many days when I wish that there were someone among the Peretz acoloytes with even a smidgeon of sense to argue with rather than correct. I am beginning to think that it is impossible to convey what should be understood about these matters when the interlocutors who paper these threads are so jejune.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 2:11pm

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weeks of bilateral diplomacy before the Marmara sailed and 5-1/2 hours of contact before the commandos boarded is not enough elegance and subtlety for Jeffrey Goldberg, who seems to be missing the internal debate in Israel about the failures of Labor's Ehud Barak. what a tragedy. roid can not find ANYONE to argue with.

- K2K

June 7, 2010 at 2:21pm

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That you think that what you describe is either elegant or subtle and that nothing needed to come between that and dropping commandos down a rope in the middle of the night armed with paintball guns and sidearms pretty much makes my point about how vacuous the Peretziyech are. Tragedy? Hardly, but it is a pity that the discussion can never rise about the intellectual level of you, noga, TNR.reader, and amidut. Surely there must be more useful things to say, more interesting things to say, in opposition to my point of view than what the lot of you can come up with. It would be nice actually to learn something here once in a while rather than have to repeat endlessly the obvious -- that which, as Shavit put it, any smart kid would understand. A smart 12-year old can be very impressive. An adult who is not even is astute as a smart 12-year old is, above all, a bore.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 2:54pm

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"If you think this lapse of memory is significant, by all means, have at it. " It was not a lapse of memory. It was an error based on a faulty knowledge of history. That's all I said and you have dedicated three or four lengthy comments to persuade me that it was not an error but a momentary neglect of proper vigilance. It's irrelevant whether the error did not count for much in your mind to the gist of the argument you were making. Who cares, anyway? But it does matter that you instinctively made that mistake which is a serious lapse of knowledge. It means that you subscribe to a version of US-Israel relationship that is not really a very reliable version.

- noga1

June 7, 2010 at 2:59pm

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""During the 2006 war in Lebanon I concluded that my 15-year-old daughter could have conducted it more wisely than the Olmert-Peretz government" As you know, Israeli society was very much in line with this perception of the war and that is why there was a Winograd Commission which questioned not the justness of the war but rather how it was conducted. The Mavi Marmara is a different case altogether. Israelis are firmly behind the government in this. Maybe because unlike you for example, they actually understand much better what happened there and support both the action and the reasons for it.

- noga1

June 7, 2010 at 3:05pm

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Who cares indeed? You are ridiculous, your conclusions are ridiculous, but, worse, your ignorance, like that of the rest of your crowd, is tedious. The US was a major arms supplier to Israel before the Six-Day War. The point, such as it is, goes to me. Game over.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 3:06pm

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No one I know of, including me, questions the reason for, or necessity of, interdicting those vessels. But, "Even a child would have seen the imbalance in the risk-threat assessment in overpowering the flotilla ships. Any smart kid would understand that you don't sacrifice what is important for what is not." If Israeli society has now sunk to the point where it is in fact "firmly behind the government in this," you are history, toast. The will to engage the world with any semblance of realism has vanished and the bill will come due sooner or later.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 3:11pm

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While you and yours defend every Netanyahu stupidity, there is a big article in the NYT today about how Israel is coming to be seen by the US government as a strategic liability, in part because the Israeli government increasingly appears to lack any sense of proportion, allowing, for example, 1,600 apartments in Jerusalem for the rapidly reproducing Haredim to dominate its diplomacy. You will, of course, attribute this to anti-Semitism, showing how little you understand about US political life. But, even if so, so what? That somehow makes it alright to court disaster over trivia? Perhaps Netanyahu thinks the Israel lobby will protect him, or that the administration will change and there will be another Bush II. Both are dubious propositions. The occupation will not last much longer and Israel's ability to negotiate the most favorable terms for its passing is a wasting asset, rapidly waning. This should be the consuming concern of any Israeli government, and look what we get. With a little luck, Netanyahu fill fire Barak, the government will fall, and maybe, just maybe, the next government will be run by grown-ups. From my mouth, to His ears.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 3:41pm

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"The US was a major arms supplier to Israel before the Six-Day War. The point, such as it is, goes to me. Game over." Can you prove this allegation? ________ "If Israeli society has now sunk to the point where it is in fact "firmly behind the government in this," you are history, toast. The will to engage the world with any semblance of realism has vanished and the bill will come due sooner or later." You shouldn't say these things with such very obvious relish. It stands in contradiction to your general avowal here that you love Israel. I don't believe you, BTW. I used to hesitate but now it is quite clear that winning a point in an argument with me is so important to you that you don't mind what kind of foul accusations against Israel you concoct or what levels of contempt you express towards Israelis. You are not impressing anyone. The game is not over, roi. You did not rebut my claim that your mistake was not a serious gap in knowledge which you cannot attribute to a momentary weakness of memory. It was a very important clue as to what kind of "knowledge" informs your views here.

- noga1

June 7, 2010 at 3:50pm

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You have no idea what you are talking about, noga, even when the facts are not in seriosu dispute. http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/vehicles/tanks/magach/Patton_Tanks_in_Israeli_Service.htm "Israel made an application to the US in 1955 to purchase 60 M47 tanks and after the US refused, Israel applied again in 1958, this time to purchase 100 M47 tanks but the answer was the same. In the early 1960's, Israel signed a deal with West Germany, for the purchasing of 150 M48A2 [which I believe required US consent as these were US arms]. However, due to strong Arab nations opposition, out of the 150 tanks planned to be delivered, only 40 did Israel finally receive. Since West Germany didn't fully fulfill its obligations, the US had decided to supply the remaining 110 M48A2 tanks and to add another 100 M48 tanks. In 1965, Israel received 90 M48 tanks from the US and another 120 M48 tanks in 1966. At this time Israel had 250 M48 tanks, 150 of them M48A1 and 100 of them M48A2, all of these armed with a 90mm main gun."

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 4:41pm

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"You shouldn't say these things with such very obvious relish." Despair and disgust would be more like it.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 4:42pm

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Since you are completely oblivious to the forces at work in the world other that your obsession with anti-Semitism and perfecting the status of the Jews as the world's number one victims, you have no idea how painful and frustrating it is to observe the slow unfolding of political disaster while the Israeli political system, and the right most particularly, remains mired in fantasies.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 4:46pm

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"remains mired in fantasies." And what fantasies would those be? Please inform Israelis what they fantasize about.

- noga1

June 7, 2010 at 4:49pm

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"The US was a major arms supplier to Israel before the Six-Day War." Noga, I noticed that blooper, too. Prior to the six-day war, it was France which was Israel's major arms supplier. In fact, the US had imposed an arms embargo. The six-day war was won with Mirages, not phantoms. People like Roid ar dangerous; they think themselves the smartest of men and entitled by divine right to rule the world. When in reality it is questionable how much Roid knows about the region, whether he knows Hebrew or Araic, whether he has ever lived there - i general, whether he knows what he's talking about. "Thos who don't know and don't knwo that they don't know, are dangerous; shun them."

- TNR.Reader

June 7, 2010 at 4:50pm

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And, frankly, given your foul attitude toward the United States and Americans, you would deserve it if the US turned its back on you. Don't think Americans are not increasingly aware of attitudes like yours, that the US owes you support when it doesn't. Just another part of the politically disastrous course of Israel.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 4:54pm

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Roid said: "I am at pains to explain [my opinions] at length" The only true statement this זיין שכל has ever made.

- TNR.Reader

June 7, 2010 at 4:55pm

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Roid: "And, frankly, given your foul attitude toward the United States and Americans, you would deserve it if the US turned its back on you. Don't think Americans are not increasingly aware of attitudes like yours, that the US owes you support when it doesn't. Just another part of the politically disastrous course of Israel." Not the first time Roid has espoused the anti-Semites' arguments.

- TNR.Reader

June 7, 2010 at 4:56pm

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You two are so ignorant it just hurts. While the war opened with the destruction of much of Egypt's air force, giving Israel the huge advantage of air superiority, the war was fought on the ground with tanks and infantry. Read above as to the source of Israel's most modern tanks at the time. Not France. ______________ "And what fantasies would those be? Please inform Israelis what they fantasize about." About what will happen if Israel does not soon negotiate its way out of the West Bank. The fantasy is that the status quo can be maintained and will continue indefinitely, that there are no consequences to Israel's increasing isolation or to the growing perception in the US that it is a strategic liability.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 5:07pm

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Yes, TNR, I'm an anti-Semite. And you of course are a back-stabbing, America-hating traitor who wants to destroy the United States. The attitudes expressed by Israelis here toward America and Americans, if expressed toward Israel and Israelis, would and do evoke howls of fury and accusations of anti-Semitism. And even to notice the same provokes accusations of anti-Semitism. Israel needs no other enemies TNR when it has you.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 5:17pm

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Yes, roi will say anything to "persuade".

- noga1

June 7, 2010 at 5:20pm

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"Yes, TNR, I'm an anti-Semite. And you of course are a back-stabbing, America-hating traitor who wants to destroy the United States. " This I suppose is what passes for "irony" with roi. It is wonderful, however, to note how well he get into the minds of antisemites and emulate their brutish paranoias. It is almost impossible to discern the line that separates himself from his imagined eiron.

- noga1

June 7, 2010 at 5:23pm

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Shun me! Oh, please do TNR. There is only so much of your crushing stupidity that I can bear to read. If the unfathomable vacuum between your ears were even capable of so much as a blooper it would be an enormous step up.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 5:24pm

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Persuade? Persuade you two numbskulls of something? That would not be possible, and who would bother? To what end? So that your empty heads could contain a single thought or true fact? How would that improve the world? You wanted proof that the US was in fact a major arms supplier to Israel prior to the Six-Day War. You have it. That's about all I can do for you. There is no light that can penetrate the darkness.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 5:30pm

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Obama made Israel into a strategic liability when he failed to identify the question that should be answered first: Who exactly is ANY Israeli government supposed to be negotiating with? Egypt failed to reconcile the PA and Hamas, so now Turkey is going to give it a try. While Egypt was trying with Hamas, Turkey was working on the Syria-Israel rapprochement, but it seems Turkey decided to side with Syria and Iran instead. The U.S. has greater strategic liabilities than Israel. Pakistan (straining US and India), Turkey (straining US/Iraq/EU/NATO), and Mexico (War on Drugs) are far greater strategic liabilities. The New York Times is so behind the curve that even Hollywood has more credibility on international analysis these days.

- K2K

June 7, 2010 at 5:49pm

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And for good measure: In February 1966, the US agreed to sell Israel 48 A-4 jet bombers. _________________ "The New York Times is so behind the curve that even Hollywood has more credibility on international analysis these days." That's the way to comfort yourself. Just deny that there is any reality to the Times article (which is in any case an analysis of US domestic politics and attitudes, not of international affairs). But, never mind. The important thing is that it isn't real, just a movie script.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 6:24pm

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Roid wrote, "you of course are a back-stabbing, America-hating traitor". Traitor? This fellow is not only incompetent at irony, he is replete with assumptions - for examle, that I am American. What a clown.

- TNR.Reader

June 7, 2010 at 6:48pm

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And you are so unbelievably thick that you don't even understand that the whole point of the claim was its very absurdity, in mocking satire of you. What would you know about irony? You have to develop past a mental age of five to have a shot at understanding it. That leaves you way out in the cold.' Get back to shunning me, why don't you, you hopeless toad?

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 10:42pm

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Hehe. Whenever the hemorRhoid is caught out, making bigoted (and often anti-Semitic) assumptions, he tries to claim irony or satire, of which he is completely incapable. Except for parody - his natural parody of a sentient human being.

- TNR.Reader

June 7, 2010 at 10:51pm

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I wasn't parodying a sentient human being. I was parodying you. And I leave the Jewish self-loathing to you. You have your work cut out for you because in your case there is a lot to loathe. Could be enough work for two.

- roidubouloi

June 7, 2010 at 11:13pm

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who votes for roid to shun TNR, and move to Huffington Post?

- K2K

June 7, 2010 at 11:14pm

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