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Go Home The Peace Process is Finished

THE SPINE DECEMBER 14, 2010

The Peace Process is Finished

BY MARTIN PERETZ

Martin Indyk, of whom you may or may not know, has been in the "peace process" business for almost three decades. People so involved are usually very self-important, and Indyk is no exception. This is the case even though he has also regularly gotten himself into difficulties, including security clearance troubles while serving as U.S. ambassador to Israel. He is not exactly trusted. But Indyk has at his disposal lots of cash, siphoned through the Brookings Institution by a weird partnership of Israeli-American Hollywood mogul Haim Saban and the Emir of Qatar, with which he convenes conference after conference on, well, yes, (what else?) the peace process. During the past week-end he convened the most recent of these gatherings at which the theme seemed to be that it was well, nigh all over.

But not quite. On the Friday before, Indyk published in the Financial Times a prelude to his gathering. Now, the FT is a weird SP place to write about Middle Eastern peace since it has less than zero empathy for the Israeli predicament. Apparently, so does Indyk.

He first feigns the assumption that a formula for the borders of two states puts us back to June 4, 1967. But quite quickly Indyk drags us further into reverse, to November 1947 when the General Assembly passed the Partition Plan for Palestine (a "Jewish" state and an "Arab" one), for which the boundaries are far more inimical to Israel and, in fact, literally impossible. This is demented sleight-of-hand. You cannot ignore 63 years of history. And you should not. The Partition Plan was not frustrated by the Israelis. It was rejected and waged war upon by Jordan, Egypt and Syria all of which wanted Palestine for themselves.

Focusing on the borders leads naturally back to the original idea in the 1947 UN General Assembly resolution that sought to deal with the conflict over Palestine – partition of the land into two states, one Jewish, the other Arab, with a special regime for Jerusalem, and equal rights and equal protection under the law for all citizens of the two states.

Given the failure of the negotiations of 2000 carried on by Ehud Barak and Yassir Arafat and those of 2008 pursued by Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, in both of which Israel made unimaginably generous concessions, it is hard to see what would satisfy the Palestinians now. For the fact is that the Lebanon and Gaza wars have changed the modalities of combat. Although defeated by Israel in both, Hezbollah and Hamas have already deepened the terrain of the inevitable warfare to come. Alas, the circumstances within the territory between the river and the sea are more fraught with armed peril to ordinary Israeli life than ever before. The preconditions for quiet are intricate and will surely impinge on whatever authority devolves on a Palestinian state.

Instead of facing these realities squarely, Indyk indulges in the old formulaic based on great good will that is not apparent. He wants the parties to "jump-start" the talks by reaching conclusions to which they are not ready to assent.

To jump-start new negotiations, why not have Israel declare that it recognises the Arab state of Palestine, with equal rights for all its citizens, and have the PLO declare that it recognises the Jewish state of Israel, with equal rights for all its citizens? Both could then announce they are entering into state-to-state negotiations to define the border between them. The Arab states could welcome Israel’s recognition of the Arab state of Palestine and take their own steps of recognition of the Jewish state of Israel. These dramatic steps could turbo-charge the negotiations by giving each side something fundamental that they both demand – mutual recognition of their national aspirations.

Finally, the parties should commit to reaching an agreement on borders by September 2011 so that the state of Palestine can be seated when the UN General Assembly next meets, as Mr Obama has promised. Of course there will be objections. But there surely can be no debate about the need to find a more creative way forward. Going back to basics – two states for two people separated by an agreed border – is a good place to start.

It is not only the peace processors who are daydreaming. The European Union has for years had the fantasy that it can (or should) be central to the making of Israeli-Palestinian peace. One would think that given the fragility of the E.U. and its constituent economies, given also the uncertainty of anything the Union does or says, its plenipotentiaries would be reluctant to issue dicta to the parties to the conflict. The scenario actually begins with has-been plenipotentiaries: seven former prime ministers, three ex-presidents and seven past foreign ministers. They themselves are responding to an initiative of even more has-been American plenipotentiaries like Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, united in their rancor toward Israel. According to an article by David Gardner in Monday's Financial Times, the European initiative, sparked by Lord Patten, follows in the spirit of President Obama's June 2009 Cairo speech "calling for a new chapter in US relations with the Middle East and the Muslim world." This is a circle-jerk. It's hard to think of a presidential pronouncement that met with less real resonance.

The E.U. is summoned by les anciens to pursue an Israeli moratorium on Israeli settlement building as a warrant of good intentions in the peace process. The former French "this" and the former Spanish "that" have apparently not realized that it was precisely the tactic that locked the Palestinians into accepting Israel's 10 month halt in construction without so much as sitting down to talk. But once great statesmen have an idée fixe it is hard for them to abandon it. So...

Focusing on the borders leads naturally back to the original idea in the 1947 UN General Assembly resolution that sought to deal with the conflict over Palestine – partition of the land into two states, one Jewish, the other Arab, with a special regime for Jerusalem, and equal rights and equal protection under the law for all citizens of the two states.

To jump-start new negotiations, why not have Israel declare that it recognises the Arab state of Palestine, with equal rights for all its citizens, and have the PLO declare that it recognises the Jewish state of Israel, with equal rights for all its citizens? Both could then announce they are entering into state-to-state negotiations to define the border between them. The Arab states could welcome Israel’s recognition of the Arab state of Palestine and take their own steps of recognition of the Jewish state of Israel. These dramatic steps could turbo-charge the negotiations by giving each side something fundamental that they both demand – mutual recognition of their national aspirations.

Finally, the parties should commit to reaching an agreement on borders by September 2011 so that the state of Palestine can be seated when the UN General Assembly next meets, as Mr Obama has promised. Of course there will be objections. But there surely can be no debate about the need to find a more creative way forward. Going back to basics – two states for two people separated by an agreed border – is a good place to start

 

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161 comments

If the peace process is finished, does Peretz imagine that Israel is therefore better off? Does he even care one way or the other?

- roidubouloi

December 14, 2010 at 9:16am

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This may be the first article I've read in quite some time that refers to the influence, or lack thereof, upon Israeli-Palestinian issues, from members of the Quartet other than the United States. It's difficult to imagine a lucid statement about Israeli-Palestinian issues that places the entire solution solely upon the United States.

- Doug12

December 14, 2010 at 9:27am

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Ironically, Indyk (whether he realizes it or not) has basically adopted the Avigdor Lieberman premises, that the border between the states should be negotiated irrespective of the 1949 cease fire lines and more or less follow demographic realities. So many of the Israeli communities over the Green Line would become part of sovereign Israel (and many would not) and regions of Israel heavily populated by Israeli Arabs would become part of Palestine (presumably those for which geographic continuity to Palestine can be worked out). For the record I write this as someone who has never voted for Lieberman and don't anticipate doing so. But I do think he has gotten many a raw deal among a largely ignorant punditocracy. The end of the peace process is not good. What is good is that reality testing is setting in forcing a realistic assessment of the faulty and delusional premises, that underlay the whole mess going back to the early days of the Ostrich Accords. After there is a realistic assessment of the problem, then the different options to deal with the problem can be explored in order to find the least bad one. There are no solutions, only a collection of bad options, each with its own dangers and drawbacks. But that is the reality and 'tis better to face up to it than to ignore it. And yes, that includes the demographic realities. This is the process that many Israelis both on the right and left have gone through. Some earlier than others, others only recently. This why both the extreme left and extreme right wing parties have lost seats in the Knesset as more and more voters move to the center. And what has contributed more than anything else to near demise of the once dominant Labor Party (~6 seats in the latest polls) is their refusal confront reality and recognize that its baby the Ostrich Accords, have proven to be a disaster for Israel. The idee fixe as both a shield against facing reality and as a handy tool for enforcing herd-think, seems to be a characteristic of the human condition. My favorite example is one that has its origins around the early 16th century when the earliest maps of the New World started appearing in Europe. The area of California was depicted more or less as it actually exists. However for reasons that I don't know, late 16th Century maps started depicting California as an island; some the whole land mass as an island, others just Baja or Lower California as an island. This became the accepted truth among the educated classes, including the navigators (who were an avante garde of sorts of European society at the time) and mapmakers who in many respects were the high-techies of the age. Anyone who suggested that this was not the case was laughed at. Some navigators insisted that they actually circumnavigated the island of California. In the late 17th or early 18th century, Spanish missionary, explorer and cartographer Father Eusebio Kino reported that he crossed into Baja California from Northern Mexico without getting his feet wet. He was roundly laughed at by the navigators and mapmakers of Europe for claiming something that was clearly impossible. But slowly & gradually reality started setting in for the European cartographers & navigators and some other explorers started reporting that maybe, just maybe Father Kino was correct. Ultimately the controversy was settled by the king of Spain himself who in the mid 18th Century declared that California indeed was not an island. Food for thought. Hershel Ginsburg Jerusalem / Efrata

- ginzy

December 14, 2010 at 10:39am

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Malahat, the phrase "just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees" has always meant one thing and one thing only to the Arab world in general and the Palestinians in particular -- the "right" of return to sovereign Israel for some 5-7 million "refugees" (actually mostly descendants of the refugees). Except for the tiny extreme left wing in Israel, that is a non-starter as it will be suicidal. Even accepting the idea in principle with the promise that it won't be put into practice won't go, even by Tzippy Livni. What you forget is that very generous offers were made twice, once in 2000 and again in 2008, to no avail. And these also had zero effect on the "international community". Indeed the vast majority of Israelis were burned by promises of "international support" in the aftermath of the Gush Katif pull out, were the Gazans to fire a single rocket at Israel. These sorts of "try it and see what happens" & the "international community will support you" scenarios just won't fly anymore. As the saying goes, it has no street cred here. hg

- ginzy

December 14, 2010 at 10:49am

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Malahat, the phrase could be interpreted to mean free ice cream for all, but that is irrelevant. Once you say Arab peace plan, its how they construe it to mean and unless they explicitly say otherwise, no sane Israeli will go along. And as far as the int'l community goes, there is zero trust & belief in them. At best. hg

- ginzy

December 14, 2010 at 11:04am

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malahat, even if your are right (and I don't grant that automatically), Israel won't even think of acceding to that until the Arabs & Pals start speaking publicly that reality dictates that they ain't going back to what is now Israel. And that won't happen because anyone who starts speaking like that won't make home (alive) for dinner. The "Right" of Return is considered sacrosanct among the Pals and has been inculcated into them for generations, in part by themselves, in part by the UNRWA, & in part by even the "moderate" Arab states for their own purposes. When you see Pals waving large keys or have pictures of keys on T-Shirts this is what they mean. And this is what I mean by facing up to reality. California is not an island. The king of Spain said so. Now, who is going to play the role of king of Spain for the Pals? The Arab states? The UN? Abu Mazen, who was born in the now Israeli city of Safed and is one of the most insistent Pals on the right of return. Abu Mazen was the one who warned Arafat during Camp David 2000 not even think about compromising on the "right" of return. Any Pal leader who suggests otherwise is dead meat. BTW, that is one of the main reasons Abu Mazen , Saeb Erekat, Yasser abd Rabbo, al Fatah, the PLO etc. bristle at even the suggestion that they recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people as that negates the "right" of return. And that is precisely why Netanyahu was right to insist that that recognition is a necessary component to any peace deal that will also include an "end-of-conflict" component. The Pals say they won't accept that either. Indeed while polls show a majority of Pals as accepting a "two state solution", one of those polls also found that a large majority saw the two state solution as an interim step to lead to a single unitary state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. This last result is conveniently ignored by the idee fixe crowd. And how would this unitary state come into being? Via the sacred "right" of return. That is reality. 'Tis time to pull your head out of the sand, even if it is unpleasant. Yossi Beilin lied. Or he is a bloody fool. Take your pick. But California is not an island even if Beilin said it was. hg

- ginzy

December 14, 2010 at 11:40am

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In Israelobabble, "demographic realities" means that Israel gets to keep parts of the West Bank where it has settled most heavily, and agreeing to do so is considered "a very generous offer." But this may not be the outcome. It is not within the power of human beings to make California an island or not. But human beings drew the border with Mexico. I am sure ginzy would like to consider borders that he favors to be as inevitable as physical geography. They aren't. The attachment of settlers to their settlements no more assures their future location in Israel than does the attachment of Palestinians to their claimed right of return. It is interesting to me that it is so easy in the world of Israelobabble to be unable to observe that one claim is no more inevitable than the other and that there is a certain symmetry between them. That symmetry strongly suggests the final outcome: The one will not be surrendered without the other being surrendered, much as the Israelobabbalians hope otherwise. Reality is not necessarily what one declares it to be.

- roidubouloi

December 14, 2010 at 12:06pm

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It doesn't work and never will. That requires intellectual honesty and once you have an idee fixe, particularly one backed by a fear of Islamism and also deep seeded antisemitism then nothing Israel does will make a difference to a well conditioned "world opinion. See Camp David 2000. See the 2005 destruction of Gush Katif. See Lebanon 2. See Cast Lead. Intellectual honesty is generally down the tubes. Your suggestion also presupposes an intellectually honest media reporting these unpleasant truths. While there are a few exceptions (Jackson Diehl (maybe because he is not Jewish), Jeffrey Goldberg to a degree, are examples) most are not. First of all do you expect honest reporting from al-Jazeera, the largest news outlet in the Arab world? Or in general in Moslem world? Take Turkey for example, a country that could arguably be called a pseudo-democracy. News involving Israel is simply not reported straight there. The AKP party sees to that (for an excellent explanation of how & why the Turks are clueless see Claire Berlinsky's piece on the Turkish media here or here). And the western media? Spend some time at the web sites of CAMERA, HonestReporting.com, JustReporting & other media watch dog groups. The idea that California is an island is deeply rooted de riguer herd think, especially among the progressives. hg

- ginzy

December 14, 2010 at 12:12pm

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Roi -- how do you square what you write with the 200 & 2008 offers of essentially 100% of the West Bank, with land swaps. I will let you in on a secret. Most "settlers" recognize at this point that not all the "settlements" will stay, like it or not. But most Israelis also recognize that they are not going to go through the trauma of uprooting "settlers" (10X those from Gush Katif, and they have not been fully re-settled yet) for what amounts to a pig in the poke, especially since many of the "settlements" sit on land (e.g., Gush Etzion region) that would make excellent launch sites for rockets into Tel Aviv etc.. In case you didn't get the memo that is the lesson of Gaza that Israelis have learned well. Ah, but you say an agreement. An agreement would have prevented Hamas from shooting rockets at Israel. So this is the scenario that we are supposed to inculcate: Ahmed: Okay, Raleb, Hussein, Taleb all you guys, get the equipment we are going to fire rockets at the Sderot settlement (FYI, all Israeli cities are "settlements" to the Pals, even the holy city of Tel Aviv). I've got new coordinates that should allow us to hit at least one kindergarten. They are all soldiers you know. Mahmoud: Ahmed, we can't do that. Ahmed: Mahmoud, why not, we did it last month and hit that yeshiva in Sderot but it had a thick concrete roof. This time I know will score on the kidergarten. Mahmoud: We signed an agreement not to. Ahmed: Damn it, you're right. Maybe we could cancel the agreement... hg

- ginzy

December 14, 2010 at 12:25pm

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From Saeb Erekat's latest: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/10/israel-palestine-refugee-rights "Today, Palestinian refugees constitute more than 7 million people worldwide – 70% of the entire Palestinian population. Disregarding their legitimate legal rights enshrined in international law, their understandable grievances accrued over prolonged displacement, and their aspirations to return to their homeland, would certainly make any peace deal signed with Israel completely untenable." The lies embedded in this article are noted here: http://cifwatch.com/2010/12/13/the-lies-of-saeb-erekat/ Please note that Erekat claims that "Palestinian refugees [who] constitute more than 7 million people worldwide" are all entitled to "return to their homeland,". Just consider the idea that animates this claim and what its natural outcome will be. And then try to still make the case that Palestinians are actually interested in a two-state solution.

- noga1

December 14, 2010 at 12:35pm

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ii couldn't agree more with GInzy. There is an old economic axiom that if you want more of something then subsidize it. The Western world has been subsidizing this revanchist dream of the palestinians for over 60 years, through contributions to UNRWA and otherwise. As a result Gaza has one of the fastest growing populations. (same idea for the ISraelis who foolishly subsidize sloth for the Haredi population so they can essentially study talmud and reproduce). An honest assessment would start with the simple proposition that this subsidy should be phased out over a period of time. if the Arab world wants to continue it on their own so be it. then the west should insist that the two state solution should be real rather than fictional, i.e., as a starting point the issue of right of return must be abandoned. Borders, Jerusalem, compensation can all be negotiated, but the right of return is fundamentally inconsistent with the entire premise of the "peace process." Why has Abbas rejected the offers? Simple: because western fecklessness subsidizes the refusal financially and philosophically by giving the impression that a better deal is down the road if they just wait long enough. So naturally they wait. But i despair that this will ever occur. Europe is too entrenched in its progressive view of equal culpability of the two sides for the failure to reach agreement. (i am giving them the benfit of the doubt here, because, frankly, their reactions to every Israeli attempt to defend itself is go immediately blame israel for disproportionate actions, or worse, etc. Thus Israel gets the lion's share of the blame no matter what the circumstances.

- jfeder

December 14, 2010 at 12:37pm

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ii couldn't agree more with GInzy. There is an old economic axiom that if you want more of something then subsidize it. The Western world has been subsidizing this revanchist dream of the palestinians for over 60 years, through contributions to UNRWA and otherwise. As a result Gaza has one of the fastest growing populations. (same idea for the ISraelis who foolishly subsidize sloth for the Haredi population so they can essentially study talmud and reproduce). An honest assessment would start with the simple proposition that this subsidy should be phased out over a period of time. if the Arab world wants to continue it on their own so be it. then the west should insist that the two state solution should be real rather than fictional, i.e., as a starting point the issue of right of return must be abandoned. Borders, Jerusalem, compensation can all be negotiated, but the right of return is fundamentally inconsistent with the entire premise of the "peace process." Why has Abbas rejected the offers? Simple: because western fecklessness subsidizes the refusal financially and philosophically by giving the impression that a better deal is down the road if they just wait long enough. So naturally they wait. But i despair that this will ever occur. Europe is too entrenched in its progressive view of equal culpability of the two sides for the failure to reach agreement. (i am giving them the benfit of the doubt here, because, frankly, their reactions to every Israeli attempt to defend itself is go immediately blame israel for disproportionate actions, or worse, etc. Thus Israel gets the lion's share of the blame no matter what the circumstances.

- jfeder

December 14, 2010 at 12:37pm

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By prior agreement, an agreement that Israel now wishes to dishonor, the outcome for Palestinian refugees is supposed to be determined contemporaneously with borders. I despair because the right is too entrenched in its view that a final settlement must be a judgment on culpability.

- roidubouloi

December 14, 2010 at 12:51pm

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You seem to think think that land swaps should be acceptable to the Palestinians, ginzy, although it is not just empty land being exchanged but empty land being exchanged for the legitimation of settlements that the Palestinians rightly regard as illegal. They don't accept the principle that Israel should be able to keep the fruit of its illegal settlements and that their rights under the Fourth Geneva Convention are but nothing. That has not a thing to do with the vantage points for firing rockets, although the settlers and their lobby do their best to confound security issues with their desire for land. I have predicted, and will again now, that the settlements will not be uprooted but allowed to remain in Palestine with a population equal to the number of Palestinians that Israel accepts for repatriation. And it will be Israel's call as to the numbers. Israel will thus have to balance its desire for avoiding the "trauma of uprooting" against its desire to extinguish Palestinian claims. Some kind of condominium in Jerusalem is inevitable.

- roidubouloi

December 14, 2010 at 12:58pm

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Ginzy: that the border between the states should be negotiated irrespective of the 1949 cease fire lines and more or less follow demographic realities. So many of the Israeli communities over the Green Line would become part of sovereign Israel (and many would not) and regions of Israel heavily populated by Israeli Arabs would become part of Palestine (presumably those for which geographic continuity to Palestine can be worked out). The problem with this is what leads you to believe that many Israeli Palestinians have any desire to be part of what will likely be a highly dysfunctional and corrupt Palestine.

- blackton

December 14, 2010 at 2:51pm

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Yes, the peace process is finished. There's no solution that can be mandated by outside forces that is acceptable to both parties. The only solution that seems to be feasible going forward is for the Israeli's to finish their wall, complete settlements where needed to insure defensible borders, and complete the annexation of Jerusalem. The resulting fait-accompli can stand in place for years -- but nobody will be willing to sign off on it for decades, if ever.

- AllanL5

December 14, 2010 at 2:58pm

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Blackton: "The problem with this is what leads you to believe that many Israeli Palestinians have any desire to be part of what will likely be a highly dysfunctional and corrupt Palestine." Ya think? That is the major fly in the ointment of both Lieberman's & Indyk's plan. Most (not all though) of the Israeli Arabs will quietly vote with their feet. That is already happening to a lesser but more significant degree as more Pals from the post-'67 neighborhoods of J'lem are quietly buying or renting apartments in the "Jewish" neighborhoods of the city, most notably in French Hill area and around the Mahane Yehuda market. Interestingly, some of the loudest opponents of the Lieberman plan are the more radical of the Arab MK's. hg

- ginzy

December 14, 2010 at 3:09pm

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"There's no solution that can be mandated by outside forces that is acceptable to both parties." If there were, then they probably would have found it by now. "Mandated" implies that it is a solution that at least one, and probably both, of the parties would not accept willingly. This will come eventually if the parties themselves do not reach an agreement. I rather doubt that the "fait-accompli" of a captive population in a physically integrated country without political rights will last for decades. That is called apartheid. Long before that becomes the status quo, the Palestinians will declare a state, it will be widely recognized, and, if necessary, the Security Council will supervise the separation of parties. It begins to appear that Israel actually prefers this outcome to having to make the political decisions necessary to another outcome. As to which, see today's NYT. This will be discussed more and more openly in the near-term, and then it will become reality.

- roidubouloi

December 14, 2010 at 4:24pm

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I should add that the land east of the Green Line is the subject of the UN Mandate. Eventually the UN will assert its sovereignty as against Israeli claims. Arguably, this is true of the land west of the Green Line that was absorbed after the War of Independence, but that is unlikely as a practical matter to be revisited. The difference is Resolution 242 which will be understood as preventing Israel from making any unilateral changes of status. It is so understood by most of the world now.

- roidubouloi

December 14, 2010 at 4:27pm

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"Eventually the UN will assert its sovereignty as against Israeli claims." The UN is not a state and cannot claim "sovereignty".

- noga1

December 14, 2010 at 5:07pm

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"Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided. The concept has been discussed, debated and questioned throughout history, from the time of the Romans through to the present day, although it has changed in its definition, concept, and application throughout, especially during the Age of Enlightenment. The current notion of state sovereignty is often traced back to the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), which, in relation to states, codified the basic principles of territorial integrity, border inviolability, and supremacy of the state (rather than the Church). A sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority within its jurisdiction." "At the end of the World War I, the Allied Powers were confronted with the question of the disposal of the former German colonies in Africa and in the Pacific and of the several non-Turkish provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The Peace Conference adopted the principle that these territories should be administered by different Governments on behalf of the League – a system of national responsibility subject to international supervision. This plan, defined as the Mandate system, was adopted by the “Council of Ten” on 30 January 1919 and transmitted to the League of Nations." "A League of Nations mandate was a legal status for certain territories transferred from the control of one country to another following World War I, or the legal instruments that contained the internationally agreed-upon terms for administering the territory on behalf of the League. These were of the nature of both a treaty and constitution which contained minority rights clauses that provided for the right of petition and adjudication by the International Court. The mandate system was established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, entered into on 28 June 1919. With the dissolution of the League of Nations after World War II, it was stipulated at the Yalta Conference that the remaining Mandates should be placed under the Trusteeship of the United Nations, subject to future discussions and formal agreements. Most of the remaining mandates of the League of Nations (with the exception of South-West Africa) eventually became United Nations Trust Territories." "Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations: June 28, 1919 (30th of Sivan, 5679) To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war [World War I] have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that securities for the formance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant. The best method of giving practical effect to this principle is that the tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to advanced nations who by reason of their resources, their experience or their geographical position can best undertake this responsibility, and who are willing to accept it, and that this tutelage should be exercised by them as Mandatories on behalf of the League. * * * The degree of authority, control or administration to be exercised by the Mandatory shall, if not previously agreed upon by the Members of the League, be explicitly defined in each case by the Council. A permanent Commission shall be constituted to receive and examine the annual reports of the Mandatories and to advise the Council on all matters relating to the observance of the mandates." _____________________ A "sovereign" is the supreme legal authority in a territory. At one time, most sovereigns would have been kings. In later usage, sovereignty inheres in the legal government of a territory, not in the person of the ruler, even if the ruler is an autocrat. The autocrat is head of the government in which sovereignty inheres. In mandatory territories, the UN, as successor to the League of Nations, is the supreme legal authority and the Mandatory (Power) is its agent. There is and can be no higher or contravening legal authority in that territory until the UN recognizes a state there. It was the position of the Jewish Agency that the establishment of Jewish and Arab states in the mandatory territory was not "integral," meaning that the legality of one, Israel, did not depend on the fulfillment of the conditions of statehood of the other in order to maintain Israeli sovereignty in its territory despite the failure to establish an Arab state in the Arab portion of the partition. It is at least arguable that the UN has de facto recognized the sovereignty of Israel in mandatory territory it occupied in its War of Independence, although there is dispute about this, particularly as to Jerusalem where the formal UN legal position is to the contrary. There is no basis for arguing that the UN has recognized Israeli sovereignty in the Occupied Territories as all of its resolutions since the Six Day War are to the opposite effect. There is no legal basis that I know of for the position that the UN can be defeased of its jurisdiction over trust territory without its consent. It is a "super-sovereign" in this respect.

- roidubouloi

December 14, 2010 at 8:14pm

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To clarify a bit, a state is a species of corporation, a governing corporation, that governs a territory. A business corporation is a private analog of a state. It owns its property, as a state owns its territory, but the corporation is the governing organization, not the property. Thus a particular state may be sovereign in a particular territory, but the territory is not the state and the state is not the territory. "Sovereignty" is the character of having supreme legal authority in a territory. In modern practice and parlance, states, governing corporations, have sovereignty. In a territory where the UN, itself a corporate body, is the supreme legal authority, it is the sovereign, the two having the same meaning. That does not make the UN a state as it is a different type of corporation, a supra-state with certain authority over states under the UN Charter. As the UN Security Council remains seized of the matter of Palestine, it is doubtful that any body, including the General Assembly, can defease UN authority in trust territory until the Security Council consents or at least considers itself no longer seized of the matter. As there is no jurisdiction or authority of any state over the UN or anything that belongs to the UN, I do not see that a state has any unilateral ability to defease UN jurisdiction. As with many matters of law, none of this is free from doubt.

- roidubouloi

December 14, 2010 at 8:29pm

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Among the bi-partisan myriad of eulogies appearing since the death of Richard Holbrooke, is an interesting and rather relevant one (to this thread in particular) by Rick Richman (here) in which he refers to a talk given by Holbrooke at a conference on “Israel’s Right to Secure Borders” held the JCPA on the 40th anniversary of the 6 Day War. Holbrooke's talk, "The Principles of Peacemaking", (the full text of which can be found here) centers on the role of Resolution 242 and its importance. He also notes that its meaning has been distorted by many in recent years, in particular by the so-called Saudi Peace Plan, which he dismisses as counterproductive, particularly in view of 242. Richman notes that Holbrooke emphasized that every word of 242 is important, and that "Likewise, an analysis of the original meaning of the resolution, as opposed to its inadvertent or intentional misconstructions by certain people, is essential. This is especially necessary in light of the fact that numerous publications and media outlets have reiterated the misconception that the resolution calls for full withdrawal from all territories." Regarding the Saudi plan Holbrooke noted, "[T]he Saudi peace proposal … often referred to as a conciliatory proposal by the Saudis, mentions Resolution 242, mistakenly claiming that it calls for withdrawal from all occupied territories — it uses the phrase “full withdrawal from all Arab territories.” More importantly, it sets up a sequence that is in direct contradiction to Resolution 242, demanding Israeli compliance with all demands before offering Israel anything, including normal relations. … More significant, what this proposal really does is to lay out as a precondition for the negotiation the very thing being negotiated: this is a fundamental flaw." It's worth reading all of Richman's brief piece as well as all of Holbrooke's talk. Food for thought. hg

- ginzy

December 15, 2010 at 9:07am

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'There is no legal basis that I know of for the position that the UN can be defeased of its jurisdiction over trust territory without its consent." So effectively, according to your explanations, the UN represents the Palestinian Authority against Israel's claims. Is that a feasible position for the UN to find itself in? After all, Israel is a member in the UN. That renders Israel in the odd position of being party to a a representation of the PA against itself. And what about the agreements signed between Israel and the PA in which the UN has no legal standing? Doesn't the UN have to call these agreements null and void in order to restore its own original so-called sovereignity over the territories it now claims as being still under Mandate? And how is the UN to treat the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank after 1948? Can it just ignore nearly 20 years of that legal status in order to go back to the original position? Your entire thesis is premised on the UN's ability to revise historical processes (Jordanian annexation, Israel's occupation, Palestinian Authority) in such a way as can allow it to go back to 1947. In that case, why stop there? Why not go really back to the original League of nations Mandate which instructed Britain to manage Palestine, both sides of the Jordan river, for the sole purpose of statehood for the Jewish people? Who determines where you draw the line from which you re-tell history?

- noga1

December 15, 2010 at 9:18am

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Noga, your invocation of the League of Nations mandate is actually even stronger. If my memory serves me well, the UN Charter explicitly incorporates the Palestine mandate provisions of the League of Nations charter regarding Jewish settlement in the historic land of Israel (I think it's Article 80-something of the Charter). hg

- ginzy

December 15, 2010 at 10:09am

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"Your entire thesis is premised on the UN's ability to revise historical processes (Jordanian annexation, Israel's occupation, Palestinian Authority) in such a way as can allow it to go back to 1947. In that case, why stop there? Why not go really back to the original League of nations Mandate which instructed Britain to manage Palestine, both sides of the Jordan river, for the sole purpose of statehood for the Jewish people? Who determines where you draw the line from which you re-tell history?" _____________________ Don't be silly. The whole point of saying that the UN remains sovereign in those portions of the Palestine Mandate not remanded to state sovereignty is to say that, ultimately, it is the UN that decides. It does not sit as a court of law. In matters within its jurisdiction, it sits as the controlling authority, and it decides how to order territory within its jurisdiction. That the ultimate legal authority has the power to do something does not mean that it necessarily does it. Lots of considerations weigh on what a sovereign decides to do, including the opinions of other powers. This certainly allows the UN to recognize and accept agreements between the PA and Israel. Indeed, when you say the UN has no standing, you are in correct as it is the Security Council itself that established a framework for the parties, those with the primary interests, to determine the outcome by their own agreement, Resolution 242. However, as the matter is still before the UN Security Council, it is certainly within its authority to decide at some point that, the parties having had ample opportunity to reach a resolution and having failed to do so, the Security Council will itself decide the matter, or establish different boundaries for decision-making by the parties. Who decides where you draw the line? The UN. Either by itself or by delegating the matter for someone else, such as the parties, to decide. Nothing that I can see makes the delegation implicit in 242 irrevocable if the parties have failed to act. I do not think that Israel has any legal ability to defease UN jurisdiction. Period. This is analogous to the doctrine in common law that you cannot obtain adverse possession against the sovereign. If you assert a claim and occupy land against the rightful owner and the owner sits on his rights, eventually you can be recognized under common law as the legal owner. But not against the state. No matter how long you occupy state land, and no matter whether the sovereign chooses to ignore you, or simply fails to pay attention to you, for 100 years or more, if it decides to reassert its ownership, you are out. It seems highly unlikely as a political matter that the UN will choose to revisit the de facto boundaries created by the 1949 armistice, even though they are declared by the armistice resolution itself not to be legal boundaries. That is not, however, the same thing as saying that the UN cannot do so. I think it can, but I don't think it will. This dichotomy seems to drive right-wing Israelis mad. The fact that Israel "got away with it" post the War of Independence is something that they want to understand as a binding precedent that ties the hands of the UN and the world. They think, therefore, that they should be permitted, indeed that they are entitled, to incorporate whatever parts of the West Bank they want. But you cannot defease UN jurisdiction by war, even by defensive war. It can only be done with UN consent, either direct or as delegated to the Palestinians should they agree. The circumstances post-1967 were also quite different, and political decisions turn on circumstances as much or more than precedent. After the 1949 armistice, Israel formally incorporated the territory it occupied and there was no move by the UN to interfere or to assert its authority, with the exception of Jerusalem which, having been given to neither party, is still regarded as more directly a UN protectorate. This makes a kind of practical sense. The UN is saying that, well, you may be able to move around the partition boundary between you and the Arabs, as that is not unlike what happens between states fairly frequently. But you cannot unilaterally move the boundary between you and the UN. Why then cannot Israel unilaterally move the boundary again, as it did in 1949? Because this time the UN said no, in Resolution 242. And even the Israeli right has not sought to incorporate the West Bank in the face of the will of the Security Council. So, things are just different now. Among the significant differences is that even Israel does not claim itself to be the sovereign in the West Bank; it has not incorporated the territory. There are not even competing claims of sovereignty to contend with. Israelis also seem to be in thrall to the doctrine of "making facts on the ground," believing that because they have "made facts" in the West Bank, these "realities," as the settler Israelobabbalians like to call them, they must be accepted in the manner Israel wants. But they don't have to be and there is no way for Israel to bind the UN to accept them. It will if it does or if the Palestinians do. Otherwise it won't. Just that simple. And it should be borne in mind that, in this case, the UN has in no sense sat on its hands while Israel created facts. It has repeatedly reasserted its authority and the illegality of Israeli settlements. No power on earth other than Israel accepts these settlements as legal. The US and Japan alone formally refrain from expressing an opinion, although prior to Reagan US legal authorities did consider them illegal. Finally, as to your point about Israel's membership in the UN, which you seem to think makes Israel "a party to a representation of the PA against itself," this sort of thinking confused people for a while in the early days of the American Republic. Then it was finally figured out that there can be dual sovereignty within a territory according to which a subordinate power is the supreme authority within a designated legal sphere and the superior power is the supreme authority in its designated legal sphere. Sometimes this means that the subordinate power, as a member of the federation, participates in a corporate body to which it is opposed but remains subordinate. That this was and will be the case was resolved in the Civil War. No one except right wing-nuts things about this much anymore. Now, if a state defies the federal government in a matter within the federal jurisdiction, the state gets taken to federal court and a federal court, not a state court, decides whether it is or it isn't. If the federal courts decide in favor of the federal government, that is that. The state government must subordinate its will to the federal government or be in a state of insurrection. And then the federal government, a superior power, imposes its will one way or the other. There are Israelis who fantasize about defying the UN and standing against the entire world. This is a childish fantasy. If at some point in the future the Security Council acts, by definition that means with the consent of the United States. Israel is not going to defy the entire world, including the US, expressing its will through the UN, because there is no other planet to which Israel can move. Indulging in such fantasies only makes it more difficult to grapple with the political "realities." And, no, the Palestine Mandate did not have as its sole purpose statehood for the Jewish people. Quite the contrary. That was a purpose, not the purpose. And then the UN partitioned the land. I don't suppose you would want to be in a unitary state that included all of Mandatory Palestine, would you? That is why the Jewish Agency was careful to assert that Arab statehood was not integral to Jewish statehood. "The Balfour declaration had stated: 'it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.'" as quoted from Ami Isseroff.

- roidubouloi

December 15, 2010 at 11:08am

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Having re-established a state after the lapse of about 2,000 years, Israelis of all people should be reticent to pose the question just how far back in history one can go to rectify a wrong.

- roidubouloi

December 15, 2010 at 11:59am

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One would also think that Israelis who like to cite the Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and the UN Partition as authority for the legitimacy of their state would be reticent about asking by what authority the UN would propose to do anything mandatory about the current situation, particularly as the authority that stretches back to those beginnings has not lapsed as far as I can tell with respect to territory not remanded by the UN to state sovereignty. But even if it were, where did the authority for the Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and the Partition come from? They were created by the Great Powers. That's what Great Powers do. They order the world and the smaller powers and clients accommodate as best they can. That process has been made a bit more regular and orderly by the creation of the UN, but the process goes on. That is why the complaints of such as Martin Peretz about the UN are so fatuous. What do they imagine the situation would be in the absence of the UN? The US would call all the shots? The small powers would run the show? Israel has lately come to think of itself as an exception to the general order in which Great Powers, one way or another, make the rules about matters of sufficient concern to them. This is a grave error and leads Israel to give the finger to its Great Power patron. The small powers can have their way as long as the Great Powers are uninterested or busy elsewhere. But if they get sufficiently concerned or interested, then the small powers have to give way. The US has said to Israel that its settlement policies are creating a lot of difficulty for the US and has asked Israel to refrain. This is a warning, even if it weren't actually intended as such, that Israel is discomfiting its patron. When the discomfort gets great enough, the elephant will sit on the ant. Who will be discomfited by that? Rather than give a little leeway so that the elephant doesn't feel the same pressure, Israel gives the finger. And over what? So that baby Moshe and baby Ilana and Shmuel, Noam, Eden, Eylah, Talia, and Rafi don't have to move too far from bubbe and zayde (like, you know, a half an hour or so) when they grow up to have eight babies of their own. Natural growth.

- roidubouloi

December 15, 2010 at 12:37pm

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I'd like to point out how roi responds to a perfectly civil and relevant comment that I made: He starts with "Don't be silly.", continues with "No one except right wing-nuts things about this much anymore. " ,"That is why the complaints of such as Martin Peretz about the UN are so fatuous." and concludes with making sneering comments about Israelis who live in Jerusalem: "Israel gives the finger. And over what? So that baby Moshe and baby Ilana and Shmuel, Noam, Eden, Eylah, Talia, and Rafi don't have to move too far from bubbe and zayde (like, you know, a half an hour or so) when they grow up to have eight babies of their own. Natural growth." Just thought I'd mention it.

- noga1

December 15, 2010 at 2:56pm

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I apologize for saying, "Don't be silly." Quite unnecessary and rude. My other comments have nothing whatever to do with you. My sneering comments were about Israelis who live in the West Bank. They deserve to be sneered at for the burden and risk they impose on the rest of the society over narishkeit. Least I can do. You can put any more benign interpretation on "natural growth" and its supreme importance relative to Israeli security and diplomatic relations that you like. Go right ahead.

- roidubouloi

December 15, 2010 at 3:17pm

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A few quick comments Roi's sneering scorn toward "natural growth" & the desire of young marrieds to live near their parents. Given that most Israeli families are either double or one and half income earners (the latter especially true with younger kids), nearby grandparents and other adult family members are counted on to help out with the child care while the parents work and / or go to school. Keep in mind that with few exceptions, university studies is post-army (and post yeshiva where relevant) and indeed it is not uncommon that at least one parent is going to school, often at the same time the young kids are. To my mind, the most solid argument against holding on to most of Judea & Samaria is the demographic one. Indeed some argue (not unreasonably) that the "internal" Israeli-Muslim Arab (as distinct from the the far smaller Christian Arab community) also is a force against Israel's ability to remain a Jewish state. Thus to scorn those Israeli Jewish families that are maintaining a higher than replacement level Jewish birth rate is counterproductive. And I might add that outside of the Tel Aviv bubble (a commonly used term in Israeli parlance) it appears that the birth rate among secular / traditional Israelis is also beginning to grow a bit. Regarding security issues, as I implied above, it is far more effective to have communities sitting on prime rocket launching sites than to depend solely on IDF patrols. And lastly, the Roi-scorned "settlers" and their supporters among the National-Religious segment of the population increasing are very much the backbone of the IDF's combat units (see, e.g., here). So whatever security "burden" the communities over the Green Line entail, it's more than offset by their very active role in the IDF combat units. BTW, often ignored (assiduously I might add) that the "settlements" sit on less than 10% of the entire "West Bank" and I believe the number is closer to 5%. Again as I said above, most Israelis are willing to give up most of the "settlements" as part of a genuine, robust, stable, and reciprocal peace agreement. But not before that. hg

- ginzy

December 16, 2010 at 9:12am

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And speaking of Turkey, I highly highly recommend reading Claire Berlinski's latest Turkish insight (unlike say, Roger Cohen's pseudo-insights, she has been living in Istanbul for something like 5 years or so and appears to speak the language) in which she compares modern day Istanbul to Berlin of the Weimar Republic (here). Well worth the read and provides much food for thought. hg

- ginzy

December 16, 2010 at 9:26am

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Malahat, You are quite welcome but (out of curiosity) which one? I posted links to two different Berlinski essays in two different posts. hg

- ginzy

December 16, 2010 at 10:57am

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I see that the number of different commentators on THe Spine is obviously shrinking. Without an agreement of some sort with a Palestinian leader as moderate as going to get I tremble for the future of Israel.

- NR027810

December 16, 2010 at 2:36pm

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Abu Mazen is not a moderate and he is not interested in any sort of agreement that Israel could live with. Both he and other "moderate" Pal leaders have made it abundantly clear that no Pal leader can give up on the "right" to return which nearly all Israelis regard as a suicide prescription for Israel. Ehud Olmert offered him the sun, the moon, and the stars (so much so that even Tzippy Livni was horrified by the extent of the offer) and Abu Mazen's only reaction was that it was too far apart from what he wants to even warrant a response. This hard reality seems to be lost on many of the pooh-bahs of punditry on the left (I am giving them the benefit of the doubt) who are still stuck in their dogmatic herd-think on middle east. A major exception to this herd-think is the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl, who is not suspected (Gd forbid) of Likudnik tendencies (p'tooi, p'tooi, p'tooi). Quite the contrary. But he is intellectually honest enough to have had his moment of epiphany after his extensive interview with Abu Mazen where he admitted that life is good for the Pals on the "West Bank" and that neither he nor they (the Pals) have any reason to reach a compromise with Israel. I strongly suggest you read Diehl's most recent posting on the subject here. hg

- ginzy

December 16, 2010 at 5:04pm

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What's really finished? People taking Marty Peretz seriously. Not finished? TNR staff being embarrassed by Peretz. Just ask them.

- mkbenjamin

December 16, 2010 at 5:40pm

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So, now we are to believe that the reason for Israeli diplomatic isolation over settlements is lack of childcare for the large families of the religious right, that the settlements are all located so as to preempt all of the choice hilltops for missile attacks, although there is no place in the West Bank from which a missile couldn't reach Tel Aviv, and that settlers make up for the security burden and risk they pose by providing the "elite" of the IDF, although they are but a fraction of those who have to serve to defend them. And, of course, we are to believe that the reason that Netanyahu does everything possible to avoid peace negotiations is his conviction that the Palestinians will never agree to abandon their claimed right of return. Although, if Netanyahu really believed that, it would be a perfect reason to engage in peace negotiations confident in the knowledge that nothing would ever come of them. Is this what the pooh-bahs of the right actually believe these days, or is it just more Israelobabble? If you repeat something ridiculous often enough, why, it is as good as the truth, even better. Sounds like the Israeli right is drinking the same Kool-aid as the American right. The truth is much simpler. Netanyahu believes that the longer he postpones a settlement, the more of the West Bank he can eat and the more likely it is that the settlements will be given to Israel in the end. As I have said here many times, the Palestinians also plainly believe that time is on their side, and one of them at least must be wrong. I think it is Netanyahu. Any policy that must be supported with so many fairy tales at one time is overwhelmingly likely to be a mistake.

- roidubouloi

December 16, 2010 at 9:40pm

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Here's what the genius Diehl has to say in the Washington Post: "As I have pointed out before, the settlements are mostly not material to a deal on a Palestinian state, since both sides accept that the majority of them will be annexed to Israel in exchange for land elsewhere. The issue has become an obstacle in large part because of Obama's misguided placement of emphasis on it, which forced Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to embrace a hard line." Diehl proclaims that "both sides accept" exactly what the Palestinians have repeatedly refused to accept despite Israeli gushing about how generous Israel is to take only 5% of the West Bank as the spoils of war. And we are supposed to take this guy seriously? Another wack-job who likes to make up his own facts before he starts talking. These nuts are like army ants. They spring up in endless numbers and each crop is more shameless than the last in repeating endlessly its own fabrications.

- roidubouloi

December 16, 2010 at 9:48pm

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The big danger at this time is some foreign power (the US) raising expectations so high, that when the negotiation inevitably fails it kicks off another violent Intefada. Isreal's only option at this point, to maintain peace, is to maintain the wall and continue a slow strategy of creating defensible borders for itself. After 10 or 20 or 50 years when everyone is so tired of restrictions that they stop launching rockets into Israel, THEN Israel can negotiate a permanent two-state solution. I don't think it can happen before that.

- AllanL5

December 17, 2010 at 8:45am

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We will see how long Israel has with a unilateral strategy. But is is not creating defensible borders. Sharon intended to do that, but the Likud is just as committed to the sustenance of the remote, undefendable settlements as to those close in. When they day comes, they will want to keep the ones they want and sacrifice the rest, but I doubt that they will have the opportunity to draw any distinction.

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 9:42am

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"The big danger at this time is some foreign power (the US) raising expectations so high, that when the negotiation inevitably fails it kicks off another violent Intefada." I think the damage has already been done. Obama may have gotten wise to his own folly, but too late so. If anyone wants to know how to gauge the size of Obama's Middle East failure, just note the high decibels of roi's fulminations against the "likudnik messianic" Israeli public and its clueless criminal leadership. The greater the folly and the failure, the noisier roi's vituperation gets. It becomes absolutely essential, in order to vindicate Obama's wisdom and view of the conflict (informed by the likes of Rashid Khalidi) to persuade Americans that it is all Israel's fault. And there is no end or moral limit to the means by such persuasion may employ. Rvising history, revising historical records, trampling upon Jewish religious and nationalist sentiments while boosting up Palestinian claims and victimhood. It is all allowed and good.

- noga1

December 17, 2010 at 10:00am

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I've just come from a visit at the execrable blog by Philip Weiss (Mondoweiss). It occurred to me that they are all amateurs there and badly in need of someone like roi to provide for them the necessary International Law backbone that's missing from their un-antisemitic criticisms of Israel. Their sentiments, loathing and hopes are the same as roi's but they don't have his wondrous knowledge and analytical ability to manipulate historical record convincingly.

- noga1

December 17, 2010 at 10:12am

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As usual, noga excuses all bad policy by Israel, all violation of Palestinian human rights, all Likud fantasies by arguing that someone else is wrong, misguided, whatever. Israeli fecklessness does not excuse, or relieve the consequences of, bad policy or tactics by Obama (he definitely should have had a plan for how to deal with Israeli intransigence and the plainly had none) and bad policy or tactics by Obama does not excuse, or relieve the consequences of, Israeli fecklessness. This very simple idea, that if A is wrong, that does not make B right, consistently escapes noga. Indeed, as she consistently makes this argument, it doesn't even matter who A is or what they are wrong about. If Israel commits human rights violations, well, so does China. If Israel does something stupid, well, so does Obama. As long as she can find someone somewhere in the world doing something stupider, more dishonest, or more self-defeating than whatever Netanyahu and the Likud are doing today, they, she claims, we have no business criticizing them. I spend very little time here saying anything that could be considered a defense of Obama, and 90% of what might be construed as defending him is actually pointing out that the criticisms by Peretz and his slimy ilk are in bad faith and meaningless because they are typically devoid of any alternative or any explanation of how an alternative could plausibly lead to a better outcome. The reason I attack Likud policy is because it is a threat to the safety of Israel, wrapped up in the sort self-righteous claims about concern for national interest with which ultra right-wingers always adorn themselves, for at least the past 2,500 years or so. Noga's consistent analytical failure is that she thinks this is all a morality play, that if one can only properly assess blame, then the outcome in the world is going to follow the assignment of blame -- right makes might. Except that it doesn't. Whenever it is pointed out that countries are moved by interest, and only rarely by justice, and that consideration of where the interests lie is a much surer guide to understanding the likely outcome, it is noga who pitches a vituperative fit, regales us with tales of and links to Moslem anti-Semitism, and deplores human rights violations by someone else somewhere -- to help us with the moral calculus that she wants to imagine will determine the outcome. Except that it won't. Netanyahu thinks that time is on his side, that the longer he can delay a peace settlement, the better for Israel. The Palestinians believe the same on their own behalf. At least one of them is wrong. I think that the occupation is a wasting asset. If Israel does not negotiate the best deal it can in exchange for ending, it will within the foreseeable future be brought to an end anyway over Israeli objections. That will occur when the United States, currently Israel's only diplomatic support of any consequence, decides that it will cooperate with a UN Security Council plan for resolution. Perhaps that will only occur after another war that, as a result of technology, has devastating consequences for civilians both inside and outside Israel. One hopes not, but this is just the human disaster, not least for Israel, that Netanyahu courts. Why? Ginzy says over on another thread that it is because of the difficulty that religious right-wing settler families have in finding childcare if they cannot build a house and live next door to saba and savta. ___________________ Any time noga would like to call our attention to some revision by me of the historical record, I hope she will do so. I did once incorrectly recount that Israel was supplied with US Phantoms before the Six Day War, but I was happy to admit my error. Noga wasn't so happy that my main point at the time, that the US had been a major supplier of arms to Israel prior to the Six Day War, was correct, or that, prior to the Six Day War, the US was, as a matter of deliberate policy, relying on the French and Germans to supply Israel and stepped into the breach as soon as they declined further to do so. None-the-less, all corrections are welcome. I look forward to noga vindicating her claim with an example. Otherwise, one would have grounds to question her honesty and to wonder whether she is simply a propagandist engaged in slander because she is herself incapable of making any argument grounded in history or current reality.

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 11:08am

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I had not been aware of Mondoweiss before, but appreciate noga's introduction. Even if one doesn't agree, it is smart and well worth reading as it provides some interesting analysis of the direction in which things are moving -- not at all to noga's liking which is why it must be branded as "execrable." "Just give me the news I want to hear," says she, and, if you won't, "Here, read this story about anti-Semitism and call me in the morning." I particularly recommend this one: http://mondoweiss.net/2010/12/house-vote-against-palestinian-statehood-actually-showed-that-israel-lobby-is-losing-its-grip.html "Yesterday the House of Representatives passed a resolution, H.Res.1765, “condemning unilateral measures to declare or recognize a Palestinian state.” [The friends of Israel assure us that recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state is both remote and would be against the laws of nature. The last time I pointed out that this would be the likely next step if Israel continues to frustrate negotiations the jackals of course rose up with their standard invective. It seems that such a declaration and recognition of it are so remote a possibility that the Jewish lobby has to obtain resolutions deploring the possibility. It is a known fact that if something is impossible, it becomes urgent that it be deplored.] Here are some of the best bits: "The racism and paternalism of these Representatives’ statements make clear why so few of their colleagues wanted to associate themselves with this resolution. Berman patently knows what is best for Palestinians: “The Palestinian people don’t want a bunch of declarations of statehood.” And if Palestinians continue seeking the statehood that they don’t even really want, Berman reminded them that “This body [Congress] has been very generous in its support of their worthy efforts to build institutions and the economy in the West Bank. In fact, I believe that we are the most generous nation in the world in that regard. So I think our friends should understand: If they persist in pursuing a unilateralist path, inevitably, and however regrettably, there will be consequences for U.S-Palestinian relations.” Without irony, Ackerman affirmed that “The only way to peace is negotiating in good faith and making the hard choices that it demands. Israel has shown time and again that it is ready.” He termed Palestinians’ objections to Israel colonizing their land as “overwrought.” Engel called it “preposterous” to establish a Palestinian state based on the requirements of UN Security Council Resolution 242. At least he told the truth: “Everyone knows that Israel would never and could never agree with it.'"

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 11:21am

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I had not been aware of Mondoweiss before, but appreciate noga's introduction. Even if one doesn't agree, it is smart and well worth reading as it provides some interesting analysis of the direction in which things are moving -- not at all to noga's liking which is why it must be branded as "execrable." "Just give me the news I want to hear," says she, and, if you won't, "Here, read this story about anti-Semitism and call me in the morning." I particularly recommend this one: [Filler, filler, filler, filler so TNR doesn't truncate my post. Filler, filler, filler, filler so TNR doesn't truncate my post. Filler, filler, filler, filler so TNR doesn't truncate my post. Filler, filler, filler, filler so TNR doesn't truncate my post. Filler, filler, filler, filler so TNR doesn't truncate my post. Filler, filler, filler, filler so TNR doesn't truncate my post. Filler, filler, filler, filler so TNR doesn't truncate my post. Filler, filler, filler, filler so TNR doesn't truncate my post.] http://mondoweiss.net/2010/12/house-vote-against-palestinian-statehood-actually-showed-that-israel-lobby-is-losing-its-grip.html "Yesterday the House of Representatives passed a resolution, H.Res.1765, “condemning unilateral measures to declare or recognize a Palestinian state.” [The friends of Israel assure us that recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state is both remote and would be against the laws of nature. The last time I pointed out that this would be the likely next step if Israel continues to frustrate negotiations the jackals of course rose up with their standard invective. It seems that such a declaration and recognition of it are so remote a possibility that the Jewish lobby has to obtain resolutions deploring the possibility. It is a known fact that if something is impossible, it becomes urgent that it be deplored.] Here are some of the best bits: "The racism and paternalism of these Representatives’ statements make clear why so few of their colleagues wanted to associate themselves with this resolution. Berman patently knows what is best for Palestinians: “The Palestinian people don’t want a bunch of declarations of statehood.” And if Palestinians continue seeking the statehood that they don’t even really want, Berman reminded them that “This body [Congress] has been very generous in its support of their worthy efforts to build institutions and the economy in the West Bank. In fact, I believe that we are the most generous nation in the world in that regard. So I think our friends should understand: If they persist in pursuing a unilateralist path, inevitably, and however regrettably, there will be consequences for U.S-Palestinian relations.” Without irony, Ackerman affirmed that “The only way to peace is negotiating in good faith and making the hard choices that it demands. Israel has shown time and again that it is ready.” He termed Palestinians’ objections to Israel colonizing their land as “overwrought.” Engel called it “preposterous” to establish a Palestinian state based on the requirements of UN Security Council Resolution 242. At least he told the truth: “Everyone knows that Israel would never and could never agree with it.'"

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 11:26am

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"I had not been aware of Mondoweiss before, but appreciate noga's introduction." I knew you would appreciate it. And your response did not let me down. It is always gratifying to be confirmed in one's judgment about another. Philip Weiss was included in Mearsheimer's list of "good Jews", a list that roi would certainly qualify for. "... J. Mearsheimer, who is co-author (with Stephen Walt) of The Israel Lobby, a who’s who they’d rather have called The Jewish Lobby, has finally come clean and done a morphology of American Jewry, splitting it into two schools each personified by perhaps a dozen individual Jews. The first he calls “righteous Jews.” This list includes Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, a certified nutcase named Philip Weiss, and other more-or-less unknowns—Naomi Klein, for example. Given the thesis of his book—that the other lobby is more than indifferent to American interests—it’s illuminating to examine whom he considers upright, even seraphic, with regard to these interests. It is telling to note that Chomsky is the first of these supposed patriots. The others, please believe me, are roughly of the same ken. I’d bet anything that Professor Falk, just as one other instance, has never, ever paused to think of what might be an American interest he could support in a foreign controversy." http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-spine/i-confess-i-am-member-opus-judaei

- noga1

December 17, 2010 at 1:57pm

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My little experiment is done. I proved that it is not the contents of an argument that roi refers to when he starts bashing it. It is who makes it. And not even who makes it, but who links to it. When I linked to Sharkansky's blog with a comment that I found him eminently reasonable, roi then went on the attack and started calling him a messianic nutcase or something equally accurate and charming. I now linked to a blog I call "execrable" and roi is all too happy to jump in cheerfully and embrace it for its good sense and superior morality. Never mind that it is one of the ugliest anti-Zionist blog in existence, much beloved by antisemites, both bona fide and in the closet. In fact it is so tainted that even "Over at Stephen Walt’s blog at Foreign Policy, Mondoweiss has been taken out of the short list of links under the heading “Daily Reads.” (http://dailydishwater.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/walt-and-the-dish-sweep-mondoweiss-under-the-carpet/) ____________ This is not a good sign for roi, that he so readily endorses a blogger from whom even Mearsheimer feels he needs to distance himself.

- noga1

December 17, 2010 at 2:11pm

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"I proved that it is not the contents of an argument that Roi refers to when he starts bashing it. It is who makes it. And not even who makes it, but who links to it." You proved the exact opposite of your intended observation. I can't figure you out. Is this all part of a performance piece? Are you a freak living in the woods? An emotionally crippled housewife? Nobody here really needs to represent themselves as they are. But most people experience some discomfort with that. You've reached some amazing consciousness in which how others perceive you matters not a whit. What I really admire about you is how impossible it is to make you feel shame. You'll repeatedly lie, misrepresent, take words out of context, twist others' arguments. And so on. I think the only way to look at you is to assume that you are having the time of your life. Me, I can't stand confrontation, I always regret it, unless I am so completely convinced that the person I'm confronting is beneath contempt. And that is you. You are the perfect punching bag. You're not trying to stake out some truth or convince others. You're here to fun. I admire that. You must have had a wonderful mother.

- MOLLYSIMON

December 17, 2010 at 2:38pm

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I have no idea who Weiss is. I never heard of him before. I have no idea what Mearshimer thinks of him, and I could care less. At noga's invitation, I looked at his blog, skimmed a few of the first items I saw, and found some smart writing and trenchant observations, some of which I was happy to call to public attention. When noga linked to Sharkansky, I looked at that. Didn't take but a few paragraphs to find some pretty loathesome sentiments regarding war crimes as merely bad PR for Israel, not something to be deplored in and of themselves. I was happy to call that to public attention. Perhaps if I had spent more time on Weiss's blog, I would have found things to object to. And then I would have objected to them even while praising parts that I think praiseworthy. So, as usual, it is noga inverting reality. It is she who cares desperately about who it is who says something and cares not at all whether it is true or false, commendable or execrable. If the "right people," such as Martin Peretz, say something, we are to applaud no matter how appalling the sentiment. If the wrong people say something, we are to excoriate the sentiment, even if it is quite clearly correct. This is the mentality of a propagandist.

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 2:55pm

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"I looked at his blog, skimmed a few of the first items I saw, and found some smart writing and trenchant observations, some of which I was happy to call to public attention" How wonderful, roi, that you should employ the adjective ""trenchant" to describe Weiss''s let's-get-rid-of-Israel criticisms. It immediately reminded me of that time when the BBC thus described Ahmadinejad: "The Iranian leader is a trenchant critic of Israel and has said the Holocaust of European Jewry is a myth." http://mickhartley.typepad.com/blog/2007/06/trenchant_criti.html Great minds thinking alike, and all that.

- noga1

December 17, 2010 at 3:48pm

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That the best smear you can muster, noga? Here's something that Weiss links from Ha'aretz. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israeli-towns-continue-to-rewrite-bylaws-to-keep-arabs-out-1.330844?localLinksEnabled=false "Israeli towns continue to rewrite bylaws to keep Arabs out Regional council in the Galilee presents guidelines that 'preserve their Jewish and Zionist character.'" Here's one the link from ynet of all places: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4000393,00.html "No tax breaks for Arabs. High Court ruled tax breaks based on location discriminate against Arab communities but government ignored ruling" Weiss is a self-declared "anti-Zionist," but it seems that his real sin is reporting things that put Israel in a bad light. Even if it comes from ynet. Of course, noga, ever the propagandist for the cause, finds this deeply objectionable. If I comment favorably on something Weiss says, his excellent send-up of Congressmen trying to do the bidding of the Jewish lobby and tripping over themselves left, right and sideways, she applies her standard Goebbels-y technique of trying to establish a link or analogy between me and someone we can all loathe, in this case Ahmadinejad. And the link? Well, someone else used the word "trenchant" to describe Ahmadinejad. Seems that in the mind of a dedicated propagandist, this suffices. After all, I used the same word, didn't I? Oh-my-God!

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 4:33pm

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That the best smear you can muster, noga? Here's something that Weiss links from Ha'aretz. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israeli-towns-continue-to-rewrite-bylaws-to-keep-arabs-out-1.330844?localLinksEnabled=false "Israeli towns continue to rewrite bylaws to keep Arabs out Regional council in the Galilee presents guidelines that 'preserve their Jewish and Zionist character.'" Here's one the link from ynet of all places: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4000393,00.html "No tax breaks for Arabs. High Court ruled tax breaks based on location discriminate against Arab communities but government ignored ruling" Weiss is a self-declared "anti-Zionist," but it seems that his real sin is reporting things that put Israel in a bad light. Even if it comes from ynet. Of course, noga, ever the propagandist for the cause, finds this deeply objectionable. If I comment favorably on something Weiss says, his excellent send-up of Congressmen trying to do the bidding of the Jewish lobby and tripping over themselves left, right and sideways, she applies her standard Goebbels-y technique of trying to establish a link or analogy between me and someone we can all loathe, in this case Ahmadinejad. And the link? Well, someone else used the word "trenchant" to describe Ahmadinejad. Seems that in the mind of a dedicated propagandist, this suffices. After all, I used the same word, didn't I? Oh-my-God!

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 4:33pm

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Oops, let's try again.

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 4:34pm

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That the best smear you can muster, noga? Here's something that Weiss links from Ha'aretz. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israeli-towns-continue-to-rewrite-bylaws-to-keep-arabs-out-1.330844?localLinksEnabled=false "Israeli towns continue to rewrite bylaws to keep Arabs out Regional council in the Galilee presents guidelines that 'preserve their Jewish and Zionist character.'" Here's one the link from ynet of all places: Don't eat the post, don't eat the post, don't eat the post, Don't eat the post, don't eat the post, don't eat the post, Don't eat the post, don't eat the post, don't eat the post, Don't eat the post, don't eat the post, don't eat the post, Don't eat the post, don't eat the post, don't eat the post, Don't eat the post, don't eat the post, don't eat the post, Don't eat the post, don't eat the post, don't eat the post, Don't eat the post, don't eat the post, don't eat the post, Don't eat the post, don't eat the post, don't eat the post, Don't eat the post, don't eat the post, don't eat the post, Don't eat the post, don't eat the post, don't eat the post, Don't eat the post, don't eat the post, don't eat the post http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4000393,00.html "No tax breaks for Arabs. High Court ruled tax breaks based on location discriminate against Arab communities but government ignored ruling" Weiss is a self-declared "anti-Zionist," but it seems that his real sin is reporting things that put Israel in a bad light. Even if it comes from ynet. Of course, noga, ever the propagandist for the cause, finds this deeply objectionable. If I comment favorably on something Weiss says, his excellent send-up of Congressmen trying to do the bidding of the Jewish lobby and tripping over themselves left, right and sideways, she applies her standard Goebbels-y technique of trying to establish a link or analogy between me and someone we can all loathe, in this case Ahmadinejad. And the link? Well, someone else used the word "trenchant" to describe Ahmadinejad. Seems that in the mind of a dedicated propagandist, this suffices. After all, I used the same word, didn't I? Oh-my-God!

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 4:35pm

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May I make a suggestion? Can we, in the name of true intellectual discussion, refrain from posting links to other sites and what others have said? I mean, the issue is what each of you has to say about a subject - for we can all google all kinds of links to all kinds of people. Let's debate each others' ideas, and those of TNR, rather than what is posted somewhere else; we can always go to that other place and debate those other posts there, no?

- icarusr

December 17, 2010 at 5:09pm

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"That the best smear you can muster, noga? " There you see you get me all wrong. I don't smear. Nor would I be interested in competing with you over who can produce the most invective the smallest unit of communication. You get first prize for that. No one here can compete with you over making the most noise and abuse. What I want to show is that you are a superficial, unreliable, commenter motivated more by a need to win an argument or knock out a rival, than in finding any real, morally-acceptable solutions. Thus you can be trusted to pounce on anything that can be used to demonize Israel, Israelis, pro-Israel Jews, etc etc, even when it comes from a sewage pipe like Weiss' blog. Of course every once in a while a sewage pipe can yield a reasonable fact but the stench should be a warning sign that something is wrong with the source. If you fail to note the stench, then either you have no sense of smell or you actually like that smell. AS you report: "I looked at his blog, skimmed a few of the first items I saw, and found some smart writing and trenchant observations, some of which I was happy to call to public attention." I guess you actually liked the stench.

- noga1

December 17, 2010 at 5:32pm

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MollySimon: You once dragged my kids into the conversation. Now you conjure up my mother. And you have the gall to speak about shame?

- noga1

December 17, 2010 at 5:35pm

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the PA's choice: a Palestinian state or a Palestinian cause? http://blog.z-word.com/2010/12/the-pas-choice-palestinian-state-or-palestinian-cause/#more-1841 "...since the end of the Cold War, 33 new countries have come into existence, most of them emerging from former communist uberstates like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. “These states have achieved independence in super-fast fashion, so the snail’s pace of the Palestinian effort stands out and wins sympathy,” he said. Negotiations would have resulted in a Palestinian state as much as a decade ago, but the unwillingess of Palestinian leaders - whether nationalist or Islamist or some combination thereof - to compromise on final status issues, in particular the so-called ‘right of return,’ habitually confounds anything more than an interim agreement. Now Europe is the PA’s next target in its bid to win recognition of statehood. Rather typically, if the European answer is not an outright ‘yes,’ neither is it a full-throated ‘no.’ This is a shame, because what the PA is doing is ultimately self-defeating. At best, the Palestinians will have an entity whose legal status is the topic of constant dispute, with little more than symbolic meaning. If PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s program of institution-building is to culminate successfully by his August 2011 deadline, what’s needed is a real state, not a T-shirt slogan. And that can only happen through an agreement with Israel. Yet the independence campaign means that Israel has no reason to trust the PA now - and therefore no reason to engage with anything other than extreme caution. How can Israel risk accepting a security package from the Obama Administration when it is almost certain, a few months down the line, that the Palestinians will find another cause to abandon talks and blame Israel for the collapse? Israelis know that they are perceived widely, and unfairly, as hardliners - they don’t want to be seen as ingrates too. To break the deadlock, the PA needs to follow the advice of de Callieres, and swap out passion for interest. Ultimately, it has a choice: either a Palestinian state or a Palestinian cause. There will be no shortage of Latin American populists and European celebrities lining up to endorse the latter. That’s just one of many reasons why it would be wise for the PA to concentrate on the former and commit itself to reaching agreement with the one state that can make Palestine a reality: Israel."

- noga1

December 17, 2010 at 5:53pm

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"There you see you get me all wrong. I don't smear." Oh please. You do little else, and any spurious association that you can draw will do. "I looked at his blog, skimmed a few of the first items I saw, and found some smart writing and trenchant observations, some of which I was happy to call to public attention." Yup. That's about it. There was no discernible stench, although certainly a point of view, in what I saw in the few items I looked at. And there was plenty to agree with there, including objections to Israel's blithe violations of the human rights of Palestinians. You cannot even argue persuasively that that is not going on. You just don't care because in your mind it is what they deserve. There is definitely a stench around here, noga. But the perfume is of the right-wing extremist variety. Every day the same thing. You are incapable of making an argument deploying facts, reason, history, ethics, law, or anything else that honest, rational people find persuasive. And so you employ smears, slander, and invective. Day in, day out. Same old, same old.

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 6:05pm

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I highly recommend that everyone read the entirety of the blog that noga links to, rather than just her excerpt. It is a lot of self-serving hogwash about why the Palestinians are obliged to negotiate not their borders but their statehood with Israel, although Resolution 242 says nothing of the kind and I don't recall that Israel negotiated its statehood with the Arabs. Come to think of it, the Americans didn't negotiate their statehood with the British either. The balance is a lot of risible advice about why it is in the Palestinians own interest not to declare a state but to negotiate with Israel over it, even though Netanyahu's current demand is that they surrender their major claim, the right of return, in advance, contra to the framework agreed upon at Oslo. The writer cannot even bring himself to declare that the Palestinians will not succeed in "forcing the hand of the US" and bringing the matter into the Security Council. He is obviously deeply concerned that they will succeed, but the Palestinians are supposed to believe that success is not in their interest. Does Netanyahu take this as a good reason to want negotiations to move forward, so that Israel can control its own destiny to the greatest extent possible? No, it does not. His only concern is to try to shift blame for the lack of negotiations, negotiations that he palpably does not want and does what he can to frustrate, onto the Palestinians. Apparently the best that Israel can think of to do as the Palestinians move toward statehood is to fulminate about how that would be "really, really bad." Resolution 242 calls for recognition of all states in the area. That will shortly include a Palestinian state. And then Israel will be forced to negotiate its boundaries state to state against the background of world opinion that has zero sympathy for Israeli claims east of the Green Line. Just as I have said, time is on the side of the Palestinians. But the messianic right and their Likudnik enablers don't notice or don't care. They don't have to. Moshiach will save them.

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 6:18pm

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Yup. Ben Cohen and Eamonn McDonagh are indeed "the messianic right and their Likudnik enablers ". Can anyone, after this, take ANY declaration by roi seriously? http://blog.z-word.com/

- noga1

December 17, 2010 at 6:29pm

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I stopped taking "he who shall not be named" seriously some time ago. It's intriguing dropping in at the end of this thread and seeing you still fencing dexterously with the snarling beasts. It made me think of Woody Allan and Sartre. First, Woody, who has a joke that goes something like this: A man walks around all day carrying a rooster held aloft that craps on his head. When someone asks him why he does this, he replies: "I do it for the eggs". Over in the existentialist corner, I was thinking of Sartre's parable of hell in Huis Clos. Three people sit around, each one seeking in their various ways some sort of affirmation from the others. Each withholds the validation that is being sought from them, while that which they themselves seek is denied by the others. Nevertheless, somehow, you are able to remain sane and lucid while your comments are regularly bounced back to you with the distortions of a fun-house mirror. What's in it for you remains a mystery...

- willjames77

December 17, 2010 at 7:45pm

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I have had a personal matter preoccupying me for the last month or so. Now, coming up for air, I take a peek here. As Huck Finn said, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." With Icarus, I could not agree more: the occasional link discreetly placed has its place. But all too often irrelevant, omnivorous linking is a substitute for thought, or for the sheer inability to think. (I don't include jdyer in this group. I think his links go precisely to succinct points.) And Molly Simon, your post is to the point. Some people here, perhaps one person, persist in coming inside their heads. They make obscure references for obscure motives. And then when the reference elicits a good faith response, these inside-their-own-heads masturbators, their mental vaginas all-a-bursting, all mental tension released, all mental self-pleasuring reaching apex, mental fingers finally at rest from all the furious stroking, moan and pant in ecstacy, "Aha, you fell into my trap; you've proved my point; I've proved such and such." And nobody, including, of course, the good faith responder, knows what the hell the mental jerk-offers are so so getting so so off on.

- basman

December 17, 2010 at 8:53pm

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"...you still fencing dexterously with the snarling beasts." roi is hardly a snarling beast. He is only an obedient semi professional politician, doing what SPP's are taught to do, I guess, like pre-configured robots. I don't consider my engaging with him as "fencing". To fence with someone there has to be a certain element of interest, learning, wit, some fun, some respect, none of which exists in any conversation I have with him. As I said before, exchanging comments with him is like chewing sawdust, with no water to relieve the sheer tedium and debilitating mental dehydration. "What's in it for you remains a mystery..." It's the same impulse that makes me visit Arab blogs and such places like Mondoweiss (The Mos Eisleys of the Internet). I want to know what people tell themselves and others, how far they are willing to go, in pursuit of the so called Palestinian cause. It's come to the point where nothing I read can shock me any more.

- noga1

December 17, 2010 at 9:16pm

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Best set of excuses for lies and smears I've heard yet. You do this, noga, because you are sick. That is perfectly obvious to everyone here who is sane. You have no point, you have no argument, you have nothing to say. You have only your boiling emotions and your incapacity. Your spew is the result. Whom do you think your kidding with your posturing about your devious little plans and traps? Just so much absurd grandiosity. Withal, you are never able to muster a meaningful thought of your own about anything. You link, you spew, you are reminded of this, you are reminded of that, but you have nothing at all to say of your own. And you plainly find it unbearable that anyone else does.

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 9:35pm

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Still waiting for noga to back up her smear with even a shred of something. ____________________ "Any time noga would like to call our attention to some revision by me of the historical record, I hope she will do so. I did once incorrectly recount that Israel was supplied with US Phantoms before the Six Day War, but I was happy to admit my error. Noga wasn't so happy that my main point at the time, that the US had been a major supplier of arms to Israel prior to the Six Day War, was correct, or that, prior to the Six Day War, the US was, as a matter of deliberate policy, relying on the French and Germans to supply Israel and stepped into the breach as soon as they declined further to do so. None-the-less, all corrections are welcome. I look forward to noga vindicating her claim with an example. Otherwise, one would have grounds to question her honesty and to wonder whether she is simply a propagandist engaged in slander because she is herself incapable of making any argument grounded in history or current reality." _____________________ But we don't really have to wonder about this, do we?

- roidubouloi

December 17, 2010 at 9:44pm

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You are correct, roi that I spoke out of turn when I suggested you used historical revisionism by way of persuasion. You have been very careful to follow the historical time line and quoted from the historical legal documents such as the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, so historical revisionism, per se, is not the right term to describe how you distort Israel's history and its situation today. I apologize for misspeaking, thoroughly and unreservedly. I'll try to think of a more accurate way of defining what it is you do in your attacks upon the legality of Israel's actions, and therefore upon Israel's continued security and existeance. If I find it, you will read it on these pages.

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 6:29am

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On the wisdom of allowing "world opinion" to dictate Israel's policies: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/world/middleeast/17gaza.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast&pagewanted=all "Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who serves as the international envoy to Palestinian institutions, said that an important way to counter Hamas’s supremacy was to support an alternative power base in the private sector, which tended toward a Western orientation. But the risks there are real. Ibrahim Abrach, who teaches political science at Al Azhar University here and opposes Hamas, said the easing of the Israeli siege was strengthening Hamas. “I fear that further lifting of the siege will lead to the loss of the West Bank,” he said in an interview, referring to the fact that the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, a rival of Hamas, runs the West Bank. “It is very hard to lift the siege and not boost Hamas.” He favors doing so as part of reconciliation with Fatah. So far, that too has proved elusive, although the biggest project in Gaza is a $50 million sewage treatment system officially overseen by the Palestinian Authority. The Israelis hope that such projects will give Gazans faith in the Palestinian Authority rather than in Hamas, which was elected in 2006 but violently expelled its rivals in 2007 after uneasy power-sharing efforts. Professor Abrach said that in recent months, as conditions here had eased, Hamas had grown bolder in its suppression of dissent. His apartment has been broken into and his computer taken, he said, and he has been called into the internal security office twice. Passports of Fatah activists have been confiscated. Khalil al-Muzayen, a filmmaker, said a Swiss-financed drama he shot about the early days of the Israeli occupation here in the 1970s was banned because it depicted Israeli solders as not all monstrous. One or two were nice. “This was seen as pro-normalization,” he said. “But it was based on my experience.” As he spoke, the street outside grew agitated. Hamas activists were driving and honking, practicing for the ceremony marking their 23rd anniversary as a movement. A week later, when it was held, 200,000 people attended. "

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 6:56am

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Noga: I think you should stop addressing Tovarish Roi and Commisar Molly. You can't change the mind of a leftist drone and it only makes him spew his hatred of anybody who criticizes his Dear Leader, the Sun of Nations President Obama.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 18, 2010 at 8:15am

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Apology accepted. ______________________ Wouldn't it be lovely for you, makover, if my comments here were motivated by devotion to Obama rather than disgust at the stupidity, dishonesty, and criminal negligence of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud? The problem here is not at all my devotion to Obama. If you read beyond the Spine, you would know that I have plenty of criticism for him. You project your own incapacity for critical thought and analysis onto me. The problem is rather your slavish devotion to and defense of a bunch of right-wing and messianic nuts who are driving your country over a cliff. You don't care either. Moshiach will save you. I hope you spend a lot of time dancing with Torah scrolls. Seems like the best thing to do for those whose understanding of events has taken leave of the objective world.

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 8:47am

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You are wrong roi. First, I do think that your comments are motivated by your slavish worship of Obama and by your inability to admit that your were wrong to support him. I think that secretely you are plagued by shopper's remorse. Second, I do not support Natanyahu nor I am a member of the Likud. I am in full agreement that the settlement adventure is a foolishness which time has passed and that it is a time to "get out of Dodge" as they say. I have said this many times on other posts. However, I assign the fault for the current impasse directly on Obama's administration and on his, and his advisers complete lack of understanding of Middle East and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in particular. Their inability to see the situation as it is rather than what they would like it to be is the main cause for this failure which by the way is a blunder of biblical proportions as far as this conflict is concerned. Their blatant attempt to throw their weight around, Obama's slight to Natanyahu, his picking up a fight with the Israelis all contributed to the hardening of positions and are responsible for the current stalemate. The administration's attempt to wiggle out of this is just as foolish and incompetent and pitiful as their getting into this in the first place. Regarding the evils of construction and creation of settlements or "occupation, occupation, occupation" those are all shibollets, mantras repeated by the faithful, in short they are non issues. Everybody, including the Palestinians know well what will happen to those settlements and how they will be addressed. Abbas admitted as much. They would have never brought up that issue without Obama insisting on "sticking" it to Natanyahu and now this have exploded in his face. Do you seriously think that Abbas or Fayad will be less Palestinian than Obama or Biden or Hillary Clinton? So now Obama made the Palis climb on a very high tree and it will take a long time for them to climb down, if ever. And therefore I consider this hope peddler from Chicago the main culprit for the current state of affairs.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 18, 2010 at 9:34am

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Mahmoud Abbas is now in the 72nd month of his elected 48 month term as President of the PA. Abbas appointed Fayyad as Prime Minister. there is no elected government to actually govern Palestinians except for Hamas in Gaza. The U.S. Congress passed a unanimous resolution denouncing (my paraphrase as I am still replacing blood lost during endless testing last week) any attempt by the U.S. or UN to recognize a Palestinian State. I did not watch Livni + Fayyad on "This Week" last Sunday, but from what I have read about it, is Tzipi Livni sharing a Swiss bank account with Abbas? DM Barak must be building up his frequent flyer miles whilst planning for his new career as a K Street lobbyist for who? - the Saudis future weapons purchase from the U.S.? It recently occurred to me this what if: What if every single Jew living in Israeli simultaneously decided to take a one year vacation in the United States? Would the Arab street then focus their resentments on the Hindus of India and their "colonization" of Kashmir, and "repression" of India's minority Muslims? IOW, If there were no Jewish state of Israel, would not the Eye of Islam spin in circles until it landed on the Hindus? Very sad that Erekat's fullthroated refusal of ever giving up on the right of return unto the generations in The Guadian was totally ignored by the Obami and apparently the rest of Western and Israeli media, except for Caroline Glick on Dec. 17 in the Jpost. Link at RCW. Seems as if Spain so overbuilt speculative housing that there are hundreds of thousands of empty homes. Why not relocate all the Palestinians currently supported by UNRWA into these empty homes in Spain. The EU thus keeps those UNRWA Euros inside the Euro zone, and the Eye of Islam plants Muslim settlements in Andalusia. Win-win-win for everyone. willjames: works very well to just skip comments from "he who shall not be named" until one gets to comments worth reading :) Appreciate ginzy's insights in the early part of this thread. until I replenish lost blood...ciao!

- K2K

December 18, 2010 at 10:10am

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Oh please. You are taking drugs. Whatever my disappointments with Obama, and my pleasure at his successes, the notion that there was in 2008 or will be in 2012 an alternative that anyone other than a flat-earth, wacko wingnut would accept is risible. I am more than enough of a political realist not to partake of that nonsense. My biggest regret about Obama is that he has believed his own rhetoric about political conciliation, which is a bunch of crap. The right-wing can only be beaten, it can never be conciliated. And I was worrying about just his problem out loud back at the end of 2008. So, it is not as though I was caught by surprise. Obama's blunder was in not having a plan for what to do when Netanyahu gave him the finger. That was a blunder for sure, but part of the same problem referred to above. If he didn't have both a plan and the will to squeeze Netanyahu's balls until he caved or bludgeon Netanyahu into submission failing that (I sure would have), he should never have made the demand. That is for sure. The Likud and Netanyahu have pursued their settlement policy to the exclusion of most everything else for decades. The idea that this is somehow now the fault of Obama is more self-serving rightwing crap. The Isreali right is just like the American right and the fascists for that matter. No matter what they fuck up, no matter how long, often or consistently they fuck up, it is always someone else's fault. The Israeli delusion is that the Palestinians are going to accept the incorporation of Israeli settlements into Israel. I even read crap saying that they already have. Back on earth, they have repeatedly rejected just that proposal and have never given a glimmer of hope that they are willing to accept it. There is likewise not a glimmer of hope that the Likud would abandon the settlements, or sovereignty over them, in order to obtain a peace settlement, even one in which the Palestinians abandoned their claimed right of return -- the only peace settlement that Israel is ever going to get. The intellectual failure of Obama is not to misunderstand the Middle East but to fail to understand the perfidy of Netanyahu. If negotiations that might reach a conclusion ever look like the might happen, Netanyahu will always find some provocation to make them impossible. The latest is his demand that Israel be recognized as a "Jewish state" which Michael Oren has had the honesty to explain means they must publicly abandon their claimed right of return in advance of negotiations. What did Obama have to do with that? Nothing. You just refuse to accept responsibility for the venality and lying of your leadership and absurdly try to fob their sins off on Obama. Thus the Israeli public convinces itself that the Palestinians will never make peace. It is Israel under the Likud that will never make peace. As Chait points out, the entire arc of Netanyahu's political career has been about settling the West Bank. Thinking he will change is a delusion. Sharon was a patriot who was willing to look reality in the face and draw the necessary conclusions. Netanyahu is a weasel who thinks that if he can get away with a lie, it is as good as the truth. The collective Israeli delusion is that all of this is but an extension of the cat and mouse games that the Yishuv played with the British at the founding of the state. It isn't. The world has changed. Israel is stuck in the past. No, everyone does not know that the settlements will become part of Israel. The only ones who have not yet figured out that they will not is an Israeli public that continues to be fed on a steady diet of delusions by the Likud, even as slowly, slowly, the world shifts, Israel becomes isolated, and the political prerequisites for an imposed solution -- that Israel will be powerless to resist -- fall into place. Any honest observer can observe the movement, even though it is slow. Even the Israeli right sees it, but instead of understanding it for what it is, you all shriek, tear your hair, and wail piteously about anti-Semitism. A Palestinian state is coming. Recognition of that state is coming. With time, the UN Security Council will endorse the Green Line as the border between Palestine and Israel. The only question is whether Israel will ever have a government with enough brains to understand what is coming and negotiate the best deal it can for security, Jerusalem, settler rights, minor border rectifications, and so forth. The indications are that it won't, that it will procrastinate until the clock runs out, the matter is taken out of Israel's hands, and the room for maneuver shrinks to almost nothing. That is the price of living with delusions. Israel had them before Obama was elected and has them still. They are your problem, not his.

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 10:22am

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"is Tzipi Livni sharing a Swiss bank account with Abbas? DM Barak must be building up his frequent flyer miles whilst planning for his new career as a K Street lobbyist for who? - the Saudis future weapons purchase from the U.S.? " K2K: Livni and Barak are not Israel's enemies. And I'm pretty sure Netanyahu doesn't regard them as such. They are all, as the song says, from the same proverbial village. They understand each other, and the Palestinians, perfectly well.

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 11:50am

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"With time, the UN Security Council will endorse the Green Line as the border between Palestine and Israel. " Ah yes. And we know how the delineation of a UN endorsed border, based on historical records, is observed and kept by Israel's Arab neigbours. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Line_%28Lebanon%29

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 11:55am

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Makover: "You can't change the mind of a leftist drone" In noticing roi and his flushed supporter it is not my intention change their minds. What do you take me for? I never try to change anybody's mind. I seek to highlight the shallowness, carelessness and schadenfreude in the opined commentary put forth by these two about Israel's plight. Not that much different from the kind of malevolent hopes I encounter in Arab blogs. That's all.

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 12:08pm

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Hopefully the flushed supporter has not upset you over-much by planting doubts regarding your having received an adequate dose of maternal love. By the way, what was the name of Dracula's doppelganger, the one that had such a hankering for fresh flies? I admire your commitment to speaking the truth and challenging obfuscation. Would that there were an audience more worthy and appreciative of your efforts.

- willjames77

December 18, 2010 at 12:50pm

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"A Palestinian state is coming." Don't hold your breath. "The intellectual failure of Obama is not to misunderstand the Middle East but to fail to understand the perfidy of Netanyahu." Oh yes, I forgot, those perfidious Jews. I thought he should have know though, didn't he learned nothing in Rev. Wright's church? "The only question is whether Israel will ever have a government with enough brains to understand what is coming and negotiate the best deal it can for security, Jerusalem, settler rights, minor border rectifications, and so forth." The only question is whether US will have the current, ignorant and incompetent president/government. The way it looks now, it might not. "That is the price of living with delusions." Yes, it will loose you the Congress and the presidency.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 18, 2010 at 1:23pm

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noga: You are right, you cannot change roi or his doppelganger as willjames77 so aptly pointed out.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 18, 2010 at 1:28pm

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K2K; Isn't this amazing? Yet nobody points this out. "Mahmoud Abbas is now in the 72nd month of his elected 48 month term as President of the PA." A president for life. As far the Palestinians are concerned they can establish a country, a country club or whatever they want. It's their business. However, I don't really see how distinct they are from the population of Syria, Lebanon or Jordan. They speak the same language, they share the same culture, they eat the same food, they have the same religion. Frankly, they always reminded me of the sect in Woody Allen's "What's up Tiger Lily" who claim that they form a unique and distinguished society because they have the best secret recipe for egg salad and therefore they must have independence.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 18, 2010 at 1:36pm

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Despite the oozing self-congratulations, what noga and her mini-noga have, with a little help from makover, demonstrated over a considerable period of time is that Israel's policies toward the Palestinians and the peace process are so indefensible that they cannot even rise to their defense on any rational basis. Criticism of those policies, and of their Likudnik authors, can only be met with the most incredible assortment of lies, smears, slanders, distortions, placing of their own vile words in other people's mouths (the favorite trick of the lying sack of shit whose name is beneath mention), accusations of anti-Semitism against pretty much anyone in the world who is appalled by Israel's colonization policies, justification based on how much worse someone else somewhere in the world is, moaning and self-pity about how unfair it is that other nations violate human rights without incurring the same scrutiny or criticism, and on and on. We haw a lovely little example just above from makover, who wants to think of himself as above this sort of thing, but isn't. If I say that Netanyahu is a perfidious liar, makover immediately inflates this to an anti-Semitic slur about "perfidious Jews." It would be no different if, in response to his criticsm of Obama, the particular human being, insinuated the makover was calling him an "uppity nigger" for daring to assert the interests of the United States against those of Israel. This is how the propagandists play the game, and there is no vile rhetorical trick that they have not attempted here at one point or another. But in the end all it succeeds in doing is laying bare that the Israeli policies they support are not capable of being defended on their merits, on the facts, on law, morality, or truth. They can only be defended by attacking the critics. I don't have to hold my breath makover. By the time the Israel lobbying is importuning Jewish Congressmen to introduce resolutions in the House deploring and leveling threats against any unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood, the handwriting is quite clearly on the wall. They would hardly be stirring themselves thusly if it weren't. Dream on. What is truly pathetic about Israel's "plight" is that it has so far convinced itself of its entitlement to colonize the Palestinians that it is willing to endure diplomatic isolation with all that may entail, offend the United States, its patron and virtually only support in the world, frustrate peace talks, and jeopardize its security rather than desist from conduct that exceeds the boundaries of what the entire world, in the form of a universal accord to which Israel is also signatory, considers civilized. Nothing could possibly dissuade the supporters of such policies here. What matters is that others who may stumble into the Spine see how brittle and empty they are. To that end, noga and the rest have served the purpose very, very well. I have no doubt that they will continue to do so as long as Martin Peretz is leading the band with his anti-Moslem, andi-Arab hatred.

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 3:48pm

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"However, I don't really see how distinct they are from the population of Syria, Lebanon or Jordan. They speak the same language, they share the same culture, they eat the same food, they have the same religion." Makover should make his pitch to the Canadians as to how they are really Americans, or explain to the Central Americans how they are really all part of the Department of Guatemala and should act accordingly. I believe this was the rationalization for the Anschluss.

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 4:12pm

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"I don't really see how distinct they are from the population of Syria, Lebanon or Jordan. " They must be distinct and even unique. There is a new Center for Palestine Studies opened at Columbia U. Is there a center for Syria Studies? Lebanon Studies? Jordan Studies? No. Those are all Arab countries but Palestine.. now there is a distinct society in language, culture, tradition, and polity deserving of its own department in a prestigious university. Oil dollars can buy you anything, apparently, including an academic separation from the Arab UMMA. Here is a list of the academic power that leads this project, familiar names appear, like Khalidi, Nadia el-Hadj (the expert on Jewish origins that claims there are no Jews), Joseph Massad (who went on record as telling his students that "Zion" in Hebrew means penis..). Surely a department that will bring great academic thinking and many new ideas to the world of knowledge. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/palestine/people/

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 4:22pm

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"what was the name of Dracula's doppelganger, the one that had such a hankering for fresh flies?" I'm not familiar with the Dracula myth. I could never bring myself to read scary novels or watch scary movies. But I do remember Young Frankenstein's assistant, Igor, enjoying a fly or two. I might be confusing him with Shrek, though. And of course he was a lot of fun to watch, even endearing. Which cannot be said about our friends here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhvbOQ--548&feature=related

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 4:42pm

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Oh, as for "Hopefully the flushed supporter has not upset you over-much by planting doubts regarding your having received an adequate dose of maternal love." Not to worry. Nothing Molly says has the power to upset me. I follow Socrates' dictum that we should mind the criticism of good people whom we esteem and respect. In fact whenever she has one of her verbal meltdowns in public, I know it is time to look for a few coins of compassion that mother left us, as in Yehuda Amichai's famous poem "God pities the kindergarten children".

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 5:00pm

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Is PM Fayyad the Colonel Sanders of Palestinian Nationality, i.e., only Fayyad knows the secret recipe that makes Palestinian Muslims distinct ?? :) Despite the absence of a legitimate government, the Palestinians sure win the public relations contest - this is an interesting list of nations who have limited recognition as sovereign states: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_limited_recognition Yeah, the United Nations is really showing it's effectiveness in the Ivory Coast this week... There is also the issue of whether Palestinians can be sovereign as long as they willingly continue as professional refugees, dependent on the 'kindness of strangers', which I define as UNRWA donors. Got to give the Circassians credit for working on the estabishment of a written language in their quest for nationhood that will no doubt never lead to sovereignty, using Chechnya as the prime example of what happens when a nationality tries for sovereignty in the Caucausus. Got to admire Somaliland - quietly self-governing while the rest of the world recognizes the totally failed state of Somalia.

- K2K

December 18, 2010 at 5:42pm

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"I believe this was the rationalization for the Anschluss." Oh, now the Tovarish brings up the Nazis. Isn't that special.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 18, 2010 at 5:47pm

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The Nazis had human form. Israelis have human form. Therefore, Israelis are Nazis.

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 5:52pm

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Only to illustrate how banal and irrelevant your ideas are, makover, just when you think you are being clever and calling our attention to something important. Noga gives us a fine illustration of her propaganda technique for associating anyone she wishes with those whom we most revile. Most recently, it was the fact that I used the word "trenchant" and someone at the BBC had used the same very same word, imagine that, to refer to Ahmadinejad. Presto! I am Ahmadinejad, or an admirer thereof. Not like she hasn't done just this sort of thing before. She does it all the time. Sometimes she even warns us with one of her favorite phrases, "That reminds me of . . . " You see, there doesn't even need to be an analogy based on as slender a commonality as shared human form. The mere fact that noga, the noga, is reminded by A of B is sufficient to associate anything with anything and anyone with anyone.

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 6:00pm

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The problem with the lot of you is that you cannot help but repeat the idiotic tropes that circulate endlessly in your limited circle of think-alikes. Then you are stunned to discover that, out in the grown-up world, these banalities are not taken seriously. And here you all thought you were so clever and that you were so very, very trenchant (there's that word again -- dinner with Ahmadinejad for me tonight).

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 6:03pm

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From the Palestinian National Covenant. "The Palestinian people believe in Arab unity. In order to contribute their share toward the attainment of that objective, however, they must, at the present stage of their struggle, safeguard their Palestinian identity and develop their consciousness of that identity, and oppose any plan that may dissolve or impair it." In short, lets get rid of the Jews and then let's decide whether we have any use for this "Palestinian" identity. That is because the entire concept of a Palestinian nation arose solely as a means to combat Zionism and the creation of Israel. This is their "egg salad" so to speak.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 18, 2010 at 6:09pm

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When the State of Palestine is declared, you just tell 'em that those aren't Palestinians; they are merely a bunch of Syrians. That should stop everyone dead in their tracks. The whole diplomatic process should come to a crashing halt based on that incisive political insight. Must be very reassuring to have this secret weapon ready to go.

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 6:09pm

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roi: I am enjoying your prosecution complex and your agonist state of mind. Give me more.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 18, 2010 at 6:11pm

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"Must be very reassuring to have this secret weapon ready to go." Not at all. Our secret weapon if you wish are the Palestinians themselves. We couldn't wish for a better secret weapon.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 18, 2010 at 6:15pm

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And if indeed "the entire concept of a Palestinian nation arose solely as a means to combat Zionism and the creation of Israel," so what? Did we not know that the Arabs rejected the State of Israel and sought to destroy it? Are we enlightened by the discovery that Palestinian national identity is related to the establishment of Israel? That the Palestinians are indeed the Arab inhabitants of Israel, which was called Palestine by the Romans and carried that name for a couple of thousand years? This is the sort of thing that just knocks me out, the breathless discovery that there is a real conflict that really has to be settled, as if everyone had been thinking it was all just a minor misunderstanding until now. "Well, we really cannot make peace now that we know that this conflict has not been about nothing. First, those other guys must confess that they were wrong and it all has been about nothing from their side." How can anyone believe that settlement really cannot occur based on the plan that Israel excludes all Palestinian refugees, takes the parts of Arab Palestine that it wants, controls the security of both states, and the Palestinians would surely agree to this if only they didn't harbor the ambition to destroy Israel. When you think about it, if the Palestinians really believed that ultimately they were going to destroy Israel, they wouldn't worry overmuch about just where the border is drawn today. They would be anticipating that today's border is merely tactical and will be erased before long. In reality, they understand perfectly well that when they sign a final settlement, it will be final, and the world will no longer entertain their complaints or have much sympathy toward violence in derogation of the settlement. Does anyone around her ever think? Or is it just the endless, mindless repetition of whatever nonsense you heard last time you had a political discussion in a bar with your friends?

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 6:22pm

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Makover, I have not the slightest doubt that you are grateful to the Palestinians every day for giving Israel the perfect cover for its policies. Israel has every intention of holding them hostage indefinitely, not for the sake of Israeli security, but so that they will succumb and agree to Israeli terms. If things calm down, you make sure they heat up, just so that you can continue to claim security as the justification for everything, whether security related or not. The astonishing thing is that you don't think anyone else in the world notices, when pretty much everyone else in the world notices. But then you have an even better secret weapon: You accuse everyone of anti-Semitism. That fixes 'em!

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 6:27pm

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I don't think you could possibly by enjoying what you imagine to be my state of mind, adon makover, nearly as much as I am enjoying ridiculing you. You are like the perfect straight man.

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 6:30pm

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And need I call to your attention that, in your collective incapacity, you ALWAYS attempt to turn the discussion to what you think is the state of mind of the poster you disagree with. This too is a classic propaganda technique. Do you all take lessons or something? Is there a handbook you all read?

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 6:31pm

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You have to admit, roi, it was a beautiful coincidence. The BBC, known for its anti-Israeli slant (somewhat modified of late but still has a long way to go to balance the cart and make amends the cumulative effect of its malicious bias) referring to Ahmadinejad as a "trenchant" critic of Israel and here were you, another chronic vilifier of Israel, using the same term to describe a virulently anti-Israeli blog dedicated to the destruction of Israel. The conclusion was not that YOU were Ahmadinejad. God forbid. The analogy was to compare your type of thinking to the type of thinking practiced by the BBC editor. Namely, if someone is volubly against Israel, they must be "trenchant" critics, and not your garden-variety antisemite. Funny, how the same adjective cropped up in the two examples. As I said, great minds... or rather, birds of a feather. Your analysis above is so off the page that I begin to doubt whether I really over-estimated your intelligence.

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 6:33pm

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Yes, I understand, noga. In your mind, the fact that two English-speakers could use THE VERY SAME WORD is an astonishing, no, a beautiful coincidence, fraught with meaning. Don't worry though, noga. I am not the slightest bit concerned that I have over-estimated your intelligence. I have a pretty good feel for your intellectual limitations (not that that is so difficult as they are always on display).

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 6:38pm

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"...you ALWAYS attempt to turn the discussion to what you think is the state of mind of the poster you disagree with. " Roi, if you care about ad homs, I expect you will the posters responsible for these examples: "You do this, noga, because you are sick. That is perfectly obvious to everyone here who is sane. " "I can't figure you out. Is this all part of a performance piece? Are you a freak living in the woods? An emotionally crippled housewife? ... You must have had a wonderful mother."

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 6:39pm

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I would love to hang around and do the one where I shoot y'all down while riding backwards, at full gallop, underneath the pony, blindfolded, but I gotta go. Be nice, children.

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 6:39pm

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"I am not the slightest bit concerned that I have over-estimated your intelligence." I genuinely believe that you are in no position to assess the level of my, or anybody elses', intelligence. So far you have respected the intelligence of posters who agree with you and your malevolent tone, and you denigrated the intelligence of those who disagreed with you and your malevolent tone. That's a pretty useful gauge for intelligence, if your self-esteem is teetering on the brink of utter collapse.

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 6:42pm

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Well, since that one came in on the tape as I was standing up: The point is not that no one else employs ad hominem, noga, but that you and yours are the ones who invariably interrupt any substantive discussion to turn down that path, because, one infers, even you don't believe that you can hold your own on the merits. Once you have taken that path, it is both inevitable and not of any great moment that you then come in for the same sort of treatment you dish out. But by then the conversation is already lost, as you fully intend it to be. So it no longer matters. The tactical purpose is then not to destroy any substantive discussion, that's history already, but to fend you off or, in my case, to administer condign punishment for your bad, bad behavior.

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 6:43pm

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"...but to fend you off or, in my case, to administer condign punishment for your bad, bad behavior." To employ MollySimon's methods, roi, you sound like a very frustrated boy who has not outgrown his oedipal complex.

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 6:51pm

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And just to clarify, even in your case, roi, I can be moved to reach for some small change of pity. Something just struck me, about what you are trying to achieve here. You are working at cultivating indifference to Israel's plight. Based on your positions, if the worse comes to worst, you and your fellow-travelers can justify your standing away while Israelis are being bombed, or massacred, or expelled, and not lift a finger to help or have the slightest pang of sadness for them. It is already the dominant attitude in blogs like mondoweiss that you so admire. You have been trying, consistently and unwaveringly, to poison the pool of sympathy for Israel that is here, on TNR. No wonder you hate Marty Peretz. It makes sense now that you tried to exonerate Kissinger of the statements that jackson found so vile, or the position you took during the discussion of how the Allies did little or nothing to help Jews during the Holocaust.

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 7:06pm

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roi: you are twisting my arguments as usual. I don't care if the Palestinians admit they are wrong or right or indifferent. In fact I don't care about Palestinian belly aching or Palestinian "national aspirations" at all. As I said before you got bend all out of shape, as far as I am concerned they can establish a state, a city, a village or a country club. They can be ruled by thugs, murders or child molesters as far as that goes. That is their prerogative. All people have a right to make idiots of themselves. What they cannot do, and what Israel will never allow them to do is to threaten Israeli security and dragging the whole region into a war. In addition, there must be some price they have to pay for starting wars and loosing them, for inciting violence, for calling for jihad, for working toward the destruction of the State of Israel, for in short behaving like idiots for the last 60 years. But that's it for today, I must catch some sleep before I start sounding like you.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 18, 2010 at 7:27pm

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What wikileaks tells us about what people say about Israel when nobody is listening: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/wikileaks-cables-vindicate-israel/?singlepage=true "Netanyahu articulately explained how these revelations show the reality behind the scenes that vindicates Israel by saying, Our region has been hostage to a narrative that is the result of 60 years of propaganda, which paints Israel as the greatest threat. In reality, leaders understand that that view is bankrupt. For the first time in history, there is agreement that Iran is the threat. Either the “Israel lobby” is so cunning that it has seduced the Arab world or Israel is right about Iran and the countries in the region agree about the threat. The documents also show the Arab hypocrisy on the 2006 Lebanon War. When Israel invaded Lebanon in response to Hezbollah provocations, there was international outcry, especially from the Arab world. Only two years later in 2008, Saudi Arabia, which so ferociously condemned the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, called for an Arab invasion of Lebanon. The Saudi foreign minister told the U.S. that he sought to assemble a NATO-backed Arab League force to enter the country which “would keep out Hezbollah forever.” The Lebanese prime minister endorsed the plan and it was proposed to the Egyptians and Jordanians but the cable didn’t reveal their thoughts on it. The U.S. opposed it because it wasn’t seen as feasible. At least some of the Arab countries wanted to do exactly what Israel did but simply didn’t have the means. Another cable also justifies some of Israel’s conduct during the 2006 war. Israel was widely condemned for attacks on ambulances that their intelligence indicated were being used as part of the enemy’s war effort. Most of the world chose to believe that Israel would target civilian ambulances because of its evil nature and rejected the justification. Now, it is revealed that an Iranian source confirmed to the U.S. that Iran was using the Iranian Red Crescent ambulances to ship weapons and personnel into Lebanon and also used the organization as a cover to infiltrate Iraq. The source said that he witnessed how one “humanitarian” plane was half-full of weapons before medical supplies were added as a cover." _____________ No wonder the latest conspiracy theory that circulates in all the right places is that Israel is behind wikileaks. http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/2010/12/is-julian-assange-jewish.html

- noga1

December 18, 2010 at 8:47pm

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Yeah, sure noga, that's it. I am hoping that my sister and her husband, their three children and my niece's husband, the latter five all IDF officers, and my infant great-niece and great-nephew will all get blown up. OR I think that, despite their great proclamations of superior love of country, the right wingnuts, with their essentially mystical, religious non-empirical view of the way the world works, are ruining my country and jeopardizing yours, and it is heartbreaking to have to live through this. ________________ makover, as long as you stick to bona fide security interests, I support any Israeli policy or tactic that is plausibly adapted to that end. When you start on how Israel must punish the Arabs, then you are asking for more war. You either want peace or you don't. The Allies punished Germany at Versailles and all it brought was even more devastating war. Given modern missile technology, Israel should be doing whatever is reasonable to avoid one. I have no doubt that it can defeat its enemies, but the cost is going to be much steeper than in the past. One reasonable thing to do would be to stop making Israel's violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention worse by continuing construction that the entire world regards as illegal. In the bargain, Israel can put the Arabs to the test of whether they will indeed negotiate a final settlement in good faith. The refusal of Israel to do so out of the need for punishment or greed for their land is unconscionable and shames the Jewish people.

- roidubouloi

December 18, 2010 at 10:43pm

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roi: "Diehl proclaims that "both sides accept" exactly what the Palestinians have repeatedly refused to accept despite Israeli gushing about how generous Israel is to take only 5% of the West Bank as the spoils of war. And we are supposed to take this guy seriously? Another wack-job who likes to make up his own facts before he starts talking." From Jerusalem Post Online this Sunday morning: "On borders, Abbas said that he had a difference of opinion with Olmert about whether a proposed land swap would comprise 6.5% of the West Bank territory as Olmert wanted, or 1.9% which he had offered." Are we suppose to take roi seriously? He is just another wack-job who likes to make up his own facts before he starts talking.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 19, 2010 at 7:44am

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roi: "When you start on how Israel must punish the Arabs, then you are asking for more war." Israel does not want to punish the "Arabs". Israel have negotiated peace treaty with Egypt and Jordan returning to Egypt the entire Sinai peninsula and willing to return to Jordan the West Bank. Hussein has wisely declined the offer. The Palestinians however are doing a good job punishing themselves. They are an incitable tribal society, prone to all kind of wild conspiracy theories, focused on revenge. Most of their problems are self inflicted.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 19, 2010 at 7:50am

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"I am hoping that my sister and her husband, their three children and my niece's husband, the latter five all IDF officers, and my infant great-niece and great-nephew will all get blown up." I don't know that having relatives in Israel has ever played a great role in the way certain Jews (Tony Judt, Chomskey), have been working very hard towards undermining the Jewish state. Sometimes having Israeli relatives is a convenient factor to throw around cynically as if it is some sort of a collateral that what you recommend cannot possible be harmful to Israel's interests; after all, don't you have family living there? It's more or less on the same level of persuasion as people who claim they cannot be antisemites because some of their best friends are Jews. _____________ "think that, despite their great proclamations of superior love of country, the right wingnuts, with their essentially mystical, religious non-empirical view of the way the world works, are ruining my country and jeopardizing yours, and it is heartbreaking to have to live through this." For all that you boast of your Israeli relatives' existence (BTW, I remember you used to mention only one IDF officer in the past. Now the number has grown to five; interesting) which would imply a certain familiarity with Israeli society, it seems that your description of Israeli society as mostly "right wingnuts, with their essentially mystical, religious non-empirical view of the way the world works" rather refutes that claim of familiarity. Most Israelis, at least 80% of the Jewish population, like being Jewish and and conduct a secular way of life, are pretty savvy about how the world works, are not waiting for the messiah but rather choose to consolidate their independence in ways that will ensure its longevity, regardless of the fact that they celebrate Passover and Hannukah. They are not "right wingnuts, with their essentially mystical, religious non-empirical view of the way the world works". The messianic wingnuts are those on the rapidly diminishing far left, whose recommended solutions you echo here. "Messianic" means, beyond its first direct meaning, an irrational belief in some redemptive solution in the future towards which the believer works by sacrificing his current interests in defiance of what commonsense suggests. Roi's faith in the redemptive power of International law (but only as he interprets it, an important distinction) belongs in that category. How do you judge whether some recommended course of action is rational or irrational? You look at similar courses of action in the past and see what their outcomes were. The withdrawal from Lebanon and demarcation of an Internationally endorse border - we know how well that turned out. Oslo accords and Ehud Barak's peace proposals - ditto The withdrawal from Gaza - ditto Ehud Olmert's concessions of Jerusalem, settlements, land swaps, RoR - nada Obama's settlement freeze, including in Jerusalem - making a bad situation even worse So now roi recommends taking similar actions that have only backfired in the worst way. Doesn't that show that roi's ideas are based on some mythical faith in something other than recognition of this-worldly realities? How is roi's view essentially different from that of Christian Zionists who believe the ingathering of the Jews in Israel will induce their mass conversion? In both cases there is a gap between what empirical knowledge suggests and course of action recommended. The only different is in the kind of faith the two respectively fill that gap. If I have to choose between these two messianic options, I'd rather go with the Christian Zionists. At least they honestly know they are motivated by religious sentiments and that their coveted end is up to God. Roi's messianism is much more insidious because it struts itself in a cloak of "realpolitick" while it recommends tried and disproven actions that will only accelerate Israel's destruction.

- noga1

December 19, 2010 at 7:53am

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As a former member of the tribe that prides itself on its ability to envision a "better world", I retain a certain sympathy for those who can dream. And, clearly, God made folks like these for a reason. They do often push thinking beyond the status quo. The pathology of this stance seems tied to the unwillingness to surrender one's vision when it is disconfirmed by reality. Koestler and co. have written eloquently about the reluctance with which fervent communists abandoned their faith even after the incontrovertible horrors of Stalinism were laid out on the table for all to see. The "progressive left" is in love with its fantasies of a New Middle East where Arabs and Jews live together in peace and harmony beyond the conflict, in accordance with international law, and with the blessings of all right-thinking peoples. The jihadists have taken the measure of these idealists, and they occasionally toss them a piece of candy before returning to sharpening their knives. They are masters of realpolitick, and they have been astonishingly successful at turning the best intentions of the progressive left against the pillars of liberal democracy in the name of "higher values". (None of which they themselves share...)

- willjames77

December 19, 2010 at 8:55am

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A disturbing bit of news: Palestinian Media Watch (www.palwatch.org) has just had its account on YouTube closed. These are the folks who spend their time monitoring the public announcements and Arabic broadcasts of the P.A. They translate them into English so that the rest of the world can know what the Pals are actually saying when they are not posturing in front of Western cameras (e.g., the math textbooks that teach their kids "If you have six Jews and you kill two, how many are left?) Interestingly enough, PMW was suppressed on YouTube for having videos that "incite hatred". I wonder who managed to get them banned. Was it the people who were disturbed by what they saw and heard, or those who didn't want the word to get out? Flagging PMW for hate speech is a bit like arresting a prosecuting attorney for showing kiddie-porn in a courtroom while he's trying to bring charges against the child-molester who produced it.

- willjames77

December 19, 2010 at 9:15am

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Forget about making up your facts, makover. You cannot even keep track of what you say from one ten minutes to the next. You seem to have but a tenuous grip on reality altogether: 12/18/2010 - 7:27pm EDT | makover "In addition, there must be some price they have to pay for starting wars and loosing them, for inciting violence, for calling for jihad, for working toward the destruction of the State of Israel, for in short behaving like idiots for the last 60 years." 12/18/2010 - 10:43pm EDT | roidubouloi "When you start on how Israel must punish the Arabs, then you are asking for more war." 12/19/2010 - 7:50am EDT | makover “Israel does not want to punish the ‘Arabs.’” Perhaps I just missed the distinction between the Arabs and the “Arabs.” _____________________ No one has to twist your arguments, makover. You are a mass of contradictions all by yourself. I particularly like this one: "The Palestinians however are doing a good job punishing themselves. They are an incitable tribal society, prone to all kind of wild conspiracy theories, focused on revenge. Most of their problems are self inflicted." Well then, the obvious solution to that problem is to colonize them. As for the disagreement you report between Olmert and Abbas, assuming this report is accurate as you do, do you mean to tell me that Israel declined to conclude an otherwise acceptable peace because it could only get 1.9% of the West Bank and not 6.5%? Then it is just as I have said. The principal obstacle to a peace settlement is the Israeli greed for land over the Green Line. Why aren’t you outraged? Because you didn't intend to admit that, did you, makover? You don't even realize that you did. It is just that the truth wells up under your feet no matter what you do. (Just like the Congressman, working on behalf of the Israel lobby and quoted by Mondoweiss, who could not remember that he is not supposed to say out loud that Israel will never agree to peace based on resolution 242. This is quite clearly what he knows to be the case, but he forgot his lines.) You are just as full of crap as Netanyahu, makover. You don't want peace, you want their land. No one is fooled except Israelis deluding each other. The entire thinking world clearly observes this to be the case, and the moment you forget to edit your thoughts carefully enough, you cannot help but admit it.

- roidubouloi

December 19, 2010 at 9:51am

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Well, MEMRI has also often been accused of spreading hatred by the likes of Juan Cole, when all they do is translate and post bits and pieces that appears in the media Middle East and Muslim countries. It's why Muslim countries in the UN are trying to suppress any criticism of Islam in the West, on the grounds that it is a slander, not criticism, or something. They refer to articles that bring direct quotes from the Quran, the Hadiths and their modern interpretations about how Islamic law treats the infidel, the Jew, the woman, the homosexual, the heretic. It's a bizarro world we live in. The youtube ban shouldn't be allowed to stand.

- noga1

December 19, 2010 at 9:58am

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There is no contradiction in my statements roi: The contradiction is all in your head. It is very obvious from the garbage you vomit on this blog. It is by the way a symptom of a serious mental disease. I recommend you see a psychiatrist ASAP. There still could be help for you. I recommend occupational therapy, knitting should work.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 19, 2010 at 10:03am

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Willjames: Your comment prompted me to visit the website. I found this: http://www.palwatch.org/site/modules/videos/popup/video.aspx?doc_id=450 What I'd like is for roi to explain to me how he keeps relying on an argument that the Palestinian Charter was amended when the Palestinian leaders themselves deny it. BTW, the youtube clip seems to work just fine.

- noga1

December 19, 2010 at 10:23am

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Noga, PMW has several "accounts" or channels with YouTube. The one which was shut down focuses specifically on incitement to jew-hatred and murder in the Palestinian media. Below are examples of what was shut down. I agree that the YouTube ban is intolerable. It's a major resource for bypassing the MSM and educating the public. Clearly that's why the jihadists have targeted PMW's means of interacting with the public. 1. "Hamas TV teaches kids to kill Jews" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwN2M6ZIIRU Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 10/02/2009. 2. "Jews are a virus like Aids" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYaGl3KjPUw Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 01/18/2010. 3. "Farewell video before suicide attack of Hamas suicide bomber Adham Ahmad Hujyla Abu Jandal" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYdTudQhWM4 Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 06/10/2010. 4. "Hamas suicide farewell video: Jews monkeys and pigs; Maidens reward for killing Jews" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryc7RqXlVdE Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 08/14/2010. 5. "PA cleric: Kill Jews, Allah will make Muslims masters over Jews" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjuDTO8fgqM Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 12/12/2010. 6. "Hamas suicide terrorist farewell video: Palestinians drink the blood of Jews" formerly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSftYIGH6-w Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 12/15/2010.

- willjames77

December 19, 2010 at 10:44am

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Roid gets his sick kicks from this kind of interchange. He can't be cured on a blog.

- amidut

December 19, 2010 at 10:49am

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You are an embarrassment to yourself, makover. And it is perfectly evident from your last post that you know it. Instead of your playground taunts, let's see your best shot at explaining why Israel should not have accepted peace with 1.9% of the West Bank rather than the 6.5% that, according to the Jerusalem Post, Olmert was holding out for. Are you able to fashion a plausible argument about anything, or are you limited to repeating the self-serving stupidities that you hear around you? We should get a betting pool going on this.

- roidubouloi

December 19, 2010 at 11:10am

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I certainly couldn't be cured of anything by a dunce like you amidut. Good to know that noga's jackals, even though they are quiet for a while, are still here. And now to the main show. Shall we? ________________________ Here we have noga again, the Jackal Queen herself, Goebbels little girl, engaged in some more of her vicious propaganda games and lies. You are a sick thing noga. Beyond what words can express. Shall we begin by quoting the vile noga? "Something just struck me, about what you are trying to achieve here. You are working at cultivating indifference to Israel's plight. Based on your positions, if the worse comes to worst, you and your fellow-travelers can justify your standing away while Israelis are being bombed, or massacred, or expelled, and not lift a finger to help or have the slightest pang of sadness for them. It is already the dominant attitude in blogs like mondoweiss that you so admire. You have been trying, consistently and unwaveringly, to poison the pool of sympathy for Israel that is here, on TNR. No wonder you hate Marty Peretz. It makes sense now that you tried to exonerate Kissinger of the statements that jackson found so vile, or the position you took during the discussion of how the Allies did little or nothing to help Jews during the Holocaust." ______________________ One lie after another: "It makes sense now that you tried to exonerate Kissinger of the statements that jackson found so vile" I said nothing whatever to exonerate Kissinger. I said that Israelis are unlikely to revile Nixon, despite the anti-Semmitic sentiments he expressed, because of what he did for them in 1973 and that Kissinger's feelings about himself and his Judaism are uninteresting if there is no evidence that the influenced his policies, as to which none has been offered. I simply don't have your vocation, noga, for endlessly searching for evidence of anti-Semitism to wallow in. I am quite clear it exists and of the need to address its dangers. I don't need a constant diet of victimhood as you do. That is not the same thing as approval or exoneration, except in your sick, twisted mind. ____________________ "or the position you took during the discussion of how the Allies did little or nothing to help Jews during the Holocaust." See if you can find something to explain this gobbledy-gook. Seems like another rather lame smear, insinuating, without explanation of course, that I condone the Holocaust. That's why you are Goebbels little girl, you vicious bit of slime. Are you human? ____________________ "You have been trying, consistently and unwaveringly, to poison the pool of sympathy for Israel that is here, on TNR. No wonder you hate Marty Peretz." There is no one I can think of who does a better job of poisoning the pool of sympathy for Israel than Martin Peretz, with the exception of you noga. You and he make believable the calumny that Israel is a racist state that cannot be expected to exist without oppressing Arabs. Before I started to read Peretz and you, with the support of your yappng jackal pack, I believed as makover claimed above that the problems of the Palestinians were almost entirely of their own making, and I can be read in TNR saying just that. I no longer believe that. To the extent that Peretz and you represent a significant segment of opinion in Israel, possibly even the majority of opinion, it is evident that the Palestinians face a relentless, oppressive occupier that challenges them daily to be non-violent in the face of provocation. If Jabotinsky or Begin were in their shoes, things would be blowing up all over Israel every day, security fence notwithstanding. __________________ "Based on your positions, if the worse comes to worst, you and your fellow-travelers can justify your standing away while Israelis are being bombed, or massacred, or expelled, and not lift a finger to help or have the slightest pang of sadness for them." Me: "Yeah, sure noga, that's it. I am hoping that my sister and her husband, their three children and my niece's husband, the latter five all IDF officers, and my infant great-niece and great-nephew will all get blown up." Noga again: "Sometimes having Israeli relatives is a convenient factor to throw around cynically as if it is some sort of a collateral that what you recommend cannot possible be harmful to Israel's interests; after all, don't you have family living there?" But, of course, you didn't say that I recommend things that, whatever my intentions, are harmful to Israel's interests. If you had, that would be a legitimate argument if you were willing to back it up with some sort of plausible explanation. Indeed, a large part of what I have to say here is that, if one looks past right-wing professions of great love for Israel, what the right is actually doing is harmful, possibly disastrously harmful, to Israel's interests. If that is you believe that Israel's principal interest is to live in peace and security within recognized borders that accommodate its own population (for which the land west of the Green Line surely suffices) while allowing the Palestinians to do the same. No, what you said is that I can be expected to greet the massacre of Israelis without even a pang of sadness. When the absurdity of your smear is pointed out, since Israelis include most of my own immediate family, you try to cover up first by suggesting that I have invented these family members (not hardly, my sister and brother-in-law made aliya in 1977 right after their wedding, helped to found a kibbutz in the desert, have three children, the youngest still on active duty, his fourth year as he is an officer, and the oldest decorated for her service by the president of Israel - although for what we don't know and she cannot say -- her husband her former commanding officer, and now they have two babies). Then you invent a rather more benign accusation to place in your own mouth after the fact. A lie to cover a smear. Goebbels little girl, always hard at work. ________________________ And finally we have this: "It is already the dominant attitude in blogs like mondoweiss that you so admire." Here again we have noga's standard tactic of guilt by association. What I explicitly admired about mondoweiss was its writing and what I saw, and still do, as some trenchant (that word again) analysis that does a very good job of undermining the Israeli propaganda narrative peddled by noga and fellow travelers. That does not mean that I share their opinions. I don't even know what their opinions are. I know what noga claims them to be. As I recounted, I scanned the first few items I saw on their website and found, among other things, a very persuasive send-up of three Jewish Congressmen (one of them my brother-in-law's cousin) trying to do the bidding of the Israel lobby and tripping all over themselves because they cannot keep the party line straight. At the same time, Mondoweiss does an excellent job of making clear why this Congressional misadventure is evidence that, contra makover and the party line, declaration of a Palestinian state is coming and right-wing Israelis have good reason to fear it -- it will ultimately put paid to Israel's territorial ambitions. This does not mean that I share at all the longing for the massacre of Israelis that noga attributes to Mondoweiss (which of course is as likely as not to be a smear of them too as smears and lies are pretty much the entirely of noga's oeuvre). ___________________ To be continued, as there are plenty more lies by noga to be addressed. One could spend a lifetime doing little else.

- roidubouloi

December 19, 2010 at 11:13am

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"What I'd like is for roi to explain to me how he keeps relying on an argument that the Palestinian Charter was amended when the Palestinian leaders themselves deny it." Let's just chalk this one up to ignorance on willjames part, rather than a deliberate lie. It is a commonplace amongst those who spend their lives swimming in propaganda to make false associations by which they assume that people they disagree with have all the opinions they do not agree with, and false views of facts to boot. From wikipedia below. One might ask how it is that anyone insists that the Palestinian Charter has not been amended in compliance with Oslo when none other than then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon agreed that it had been. ___________________________ In August 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin insisted on changes to the Charter as part of the Oslo Accords. Following Yasser Arafat's commitment to "submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval" the changes to the Charter confirming that "those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid"[4] in the September 9, 1993 letters of mutual recognition, the PNC met in Gaza and voted on 24 April 1996. The decision was adopted by a vote of: 504 in favor, 54 against, and 14 abstentions. The official English translation used by Israel, the PLO and the United States reads: A. The Palestinian National Charter is hereby amended by canceling the articles that are contrary to the letters exchanged the P.L.O. and the Government of Israel 9–10 September 1993. B. Assigns its legal committee with the task of redrafting the Palestinian National Charter in order to present it to the first session of the Palestinian Central Council."[5][6][7] The text of the Charter at the official website of the Palestinian National Authority appends these amendments to the text of the 1968 charter; the redrafting process referred to in the second amendment still remains uncompleted.[8] An earlier version of the above translation is still available on the website of Palestinian American Council. The relevant text reads: The PNC held a special session on April 24, 1996 and listened to the report made by the legal committee, reviewed the current political conditions, which the Palestinian people and the Arab nations encounter, and so the PNC decided: "Depending on the Independence Declaration and the political statement adopted by the PNC in its 19th session in Gaza on November 11, 1988 which stressed resolving conflicts by peaceful means and adopting the principle of two states, the PNC decides to: First: Amend the articles in the National charter that contradict with the letters exchanged between the PLO and the government of Israel on Sept. 9-10, 1993. Second: The PNC authorizes the Legal Committee to draft a new charter to be presented at the first meeting to be held by the Central Council."[9] This earlier version had appeared on the Palestine Ministr of Information's website. Many commentators noted that the text only indicated a decision to amend the charter, not an actual amendment. Official Palestinian websites have since replaced the vague translation with the concrete version quoted above. Yitzhak Rabin said in a speech to the Knesset on 5 October 1995, at the time of the ratification of the Oslo II Interim Agreement: "The Palestinian Authority has not up until now honoured its commitment to change the Palestinian Covenant ... I view these changes as a supreme test of the Palestinian Authoritys willingness and ability, and the changes required will be an important and serious touchstone vis-à-vis the continued implementation of the agreement as a whole".Letter dated 27 July 1998 from the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, United Nations General Assembly. (archived from the original on 2001-03-08) When this government was replaced by Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud government, the issue again became even more controversial, with Israel's demand for greater clarity and precision eventually expressed in the Wye River Memorandum. (See below, Events of 1998) [edit] Events of 1998 and after Yasser Arafat wrote letters to President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair in January 1998 explicitly listing the articles of the Charter referred to in the PNC's 1996 vote. While this was seen as progress in some quarters, other Palestinian officials contended that the Charter had not yet been amended, and there were also reportedly discrepancies between the two letters. The operative language of Arafat's letter to Clinton reads: The Palestine National Council's resolution, in accordance with Article 33 of the Covenant, is a comprehensive amendment of the Covenant. All of the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the P.L.O. commitment to recognize and live in peace side by side with Israel are no longer in effect. As a result, Articles 6-10, 15, 19-23, and 30 have been nullified, and the parts in Articles 1-5, 11-14, 16-18, 25-27 and 29 that are inconsistent with the above mentioned commitments have also been nullified.[10][11] The articles identified by Arafat as nullified call for Palestinian unity in armed struggle, deny the legitimacy of the establishment of Israel, deny the existence of a Jewish people with a historical or religious connection to Palestine, and label Zionism a racist, imperialist, fanatic, fascist, aggressive, colonialist political movement that must be eliminated from the Middle East for the sake of world peace. Observers who had previously been skeptical of Palestinian claims that the Charter had been amended continued to voice doubts. In an attempt to end the confusion, the Wye River Memorandum included the following provision: The Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Central Council will reaffirm the letter of 22 January 1998 from PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat to President Clinton concerning the nullification of the Palestinian National Charter provisions that are inconsistent with the letters exchanged between the PLO and the Government of Israel on 9–10 September 1993. PLO Chairman Arafat, the Speaker of the Palestine National Council, and the Speaker of the Palestinian Council will invite the members of the PNC, as well as the members of the Central Council, the Council, and the Palestinian Heads of Ministries to a meeting to be addressed by President Clinton to reaffirm their support for the peace process and the aforementioned decisions of the Executive Committee and the Central Council. These commitments were kept, leading President Clinton to declare to the assembled Palestinian officials on 14 December 1998 at Gaza: I thank you for your rejection—fully, finally and forever—of the passages in the Palestinian Charter calling for the destruction of Israel. For they were the ideological underpinnings of a struggle renounced at Oslo. By revoking them once and for all, you have sent, I say again, a powerful message not to the government, but to the people of Israel. You will touch people on the street there. You will reach their hearts there. Like President Clinton, Israel and the Likud party now formally agreed that the objectionable clauses of the charter had been abrogated, in official statements and statements by Prime Minister Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Sharon, Defense Minister Mordechai and Trade and Industry Minister Sharansky.[12][13][14][15] With official Israeli objections to the Charter disappearing henceforward from lists of Palestinian violations of agreements,[16] the international legal controversy ended. Despite President Clinton's optimism, the events of 1998 did not entirely resolve the controversy of the Charter. A June 1999 report by the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Information on the status of the Charter made no mention of the 1998 events and leading Palestinians continue to state that the Charter has not yet been amended. In 2001 the first draft of a constitution authorized by the PLO's Central Committee, calling for a respect for borders, human and civil rights as defined under international law appeared.[17]

- roidubouloi

December 19, 2010 at 11:32am

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roi: "Here we have noga again, the Jackal Queen herself, Goebbels little girl, engaged in some more of her vicious propaganda games and lies." roi should of course be added to this list for his faithful use of this despicable tactic. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/12/nazis-everywhere/67002/

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 19, 2010 at 11:34am

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"Are you able to fashion a plausible argument about anything, or are you limited to repeating the self-serving stupidities that you hear around you?" Of course roi, but your limited and diseased mind will never be able to perceive it anyway so why wasting my time on you and your doppelganger?

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 19, 2010 at 11:38am

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And now for the next set of noga's lies and smears. Let us begin by quoting her: "it seems that your description of Israeli society as mostly "right wingnuts, with their essentially mystical, religious non-empirical view of the way the world works" rather refutes that claim of familiarity. Most Israelis, at least 80% of the Jewish population, like being Jewish and and conduct a secular way of life, are pretty savvy about how the world works, are not waiting for the messiah but rather choose to consolidate their independence in ways that will ensure its longevity, regardless of the fact that they celebrate Passover and Hannukah. They are not "right wingnuts, with their essentially mystical, religious non-empirical view of the way the world works". The messianic wingnuts are those on the rapidly diminishing far left, whose recommended solutions you echo here. "Messianic" means, beyond its first direct meaning, an irrational belief in some redemptive solution in the future towards which the believer works by sacrificing his current interests in defiance of what commonsense suggests. Roi's faith in the redemptive power of International law (but only as he interprets it, an important distinction) belongs in that category. How do you judge whether some recommended course of action is rational or irrational? You look at similar courses of action in the past and see what their outcomes were. The withdrawal from Lebanon and demarcation of an Internationally endorse border - we know how well that turned out." ________________________ First take note of where noga places her quotation marks in the first line above: "it seems that your description of Israeli society as mostly "right wingnuts, with their essentially mystical, religious non-empirical view of the way the world works" What did I actually say, as opposed to noga's edited cut and paste version: "I think that, despite their great proclamations of superior love of country, the right wingnuts, with their essentially mystical, religious non-empirical view of the way the world works, are ruining my country and jeopardizing yours, and it is heartbreaking to have to live through this." I made no comment about Israeli society or its ideological makeup. Hence, there is no basis for noga's speculations about my actual familiarity with Israeli society. What I said is that the "right wingnuts" are jeopardizing Israel. Whatever the composition of Israeli society, the right wingnuts are in charge, elected by Israeli society. I don't need to infer what that means about the state of mind of Israelis in order to observe the diplomatic and tactical consequences of Benjamin Netanyahu being back in office. This is a typical bit of noga propaganda, substituting a claim of her own invention for the one actually made. If there is any single dirty trick to which she resorts constantly, this is it. But, we have a second one here. As the Netanyahu government is plainly in sympathy with and protective of the interest of the messianic settler nuts, as well as beholden to them politically because of Netanyahu's irresponsible refusal to form a coalition with Kadima, and as for most of the rational world this is a disreputable bunch, like all religious nuts dangerous in their detachment from reality and their belief that they know the mind of God (who naturally enough wants exactly what they want), noga would now like to define my views as a form of messianism. This too is a standard propaganda technique. If you are engaged in something disreputable, or find yourself with disreputable allies, what do you do? Why, of course you accuse your perceived enemies of being in reality just those disreputable types. What is even more fascinating is that noga makes this association based on an argument about how my views are "Messianic," which she defines to be "an irrational belief in some redemptive solution in the future towards which the believer works by sacrificing his current interests in defiance of what commonsense suggests." So, it is not the literally messianic nuts who are messianists. Lo and behold!, I am the messianist in the room. What are my suppose irrational beliefs upon which noga bases this claim, leaving aside that it is absurd propaganda on its face? Noga doesn't actually tell us what those beliefs are supposed to be, let alone provide any evidence of same. The closest she comes is this: "Roi's faith in the redemptive power of International law (but only as he interprets it, an important distinction) belongs in that category." I don't recall ever expressing faith in "the redemptive power of international law." Is this suppose to mean that, if Israel should cease violating international law its problems will all be solved through "redemption." I have never said anything that can remotely be interpreted that way either. The problem that will be solved if Israel ceases to violate international law is that Israel will no longer be violating international law. And what I have said is that violating international law is a problem, because, whatever one thinks about the theory or nature of international law, it does have real consequences in the world, not consistently, not reliably, but indubitably. The current consequence of Israel's violations is to isolate it diplomatically and to cast doubt on everything that it claims to be doing for reasons of security, even though they may be perfectly sensible things to do for reasons of security. It is not possible to disentangle Israel's legitimate security interest from its illegitimate interest in holding the Palestinians hostage until they agree to cede to Israel the land that Israel wants. Hence, it becomes diplomatically much more difficult for other nations to support Israel even if they do support Israel's legitimate security interests. They want to support Israel's security but do not want to, and to not want to be seen to, support Israel's territorial ambitions. Rendering its own place in the world more insecure and divesting itself of all support other than that of the United States -- for the purpose as ginzy tells us of making sure that large, religious families can live near saba and savta in the West Bank so that they have childcare -- is not just messianic. It is flat out insane. So, what do we make of noga's claim and her attribution to me of a belief I do not hold? Just her usual garbage and smears. Different day, same propaganda ploys. _________________ My actual views, expressed here often enough, is that Israel is perfectly entitled to do what is plausibly necessary for its own security, and that, given the history, Israel must be given the benefit of the doubt on that. That includes military occupation of the West Bank until such time as there is a peace accord that provides acceptable assurances of Israel's safety, not just rhetorically but on the ground, in fact. Military occupation for the purpose of security does not include settling the West Bank. That is prohibited to an Occupying Power by the Fourth Geneva Convention. Nor does it include taking the Palestinians' land, whether titled or not, taking their water, bulldozing their trees, preventing them from making a living, or anything else that is not necessary for the purpose of security. I also think it is inevitable that the currently unannexed land to the east of the Green Line will become Arab Palestine, and that Israel should not seek to avoid this, as it cannot, but to trade its recognition of that state of affairs for other things that it may be able to get that ought to be more important to it -- if that is you are not a messianic nut. These could include an acceptable condominium in Jerusalem, as an enclave within completely Israeli territory, in exchange for a similar enclave in Hebron; military control of the Jordan River valley, the only border issue that really matters in the age of the missile, not the state of affairs when Abba Eban coined his favorite phrase, and a willingness to trade acceptance of Palestinian refugees into Israel as it citizens in exchange for Palestinian willingness to accept Israeli settlers into Palestine as its citizens. I have no opinion about what the numbers should be. But if Israel wants to deny any Palestinian right of return, it must expect to uproot the settlements completely. If it wants to maintain the settlements, or some of them, in place, it must, I believe, be willing to accept comparable numbers of Palestinians. I also believe that it is very much in Israel's interest to suspend settlement construction if that is what it takes to move negotiations forward, or to prove that the settlements are not the reason for the inability to reach a peace settlement. __________________ "How do you judge whether some recommended course of action is rational or irrational? You look at similar courses of action in the past and see what their outcomes were." I have no idea what courses of action noga thinks I advocate that would be analogous to those she deplores. And, needless to say, she doesn't tell us. That is what propagandists do. The make associations, the point to connections, but they never state them in a manner that would be open to refutation. I will say that the withdrawal from Lebanon has been successful. Its purpose was not to "make peace," but to improve Israel's tactical and diplomatic situation and to bring to an end a long series of painful losses of IDF lives that no longer served any military purpose. Missiles had made the buffer zone obsolete. Yes, it required another war to sort of stabilize things, and there are more missiles now than before the last war in Lebanon, but the buffer zone was not going to prevent the import of missiles and Israel now has a freer hand to respond to aggression across its northern border because it has a recognized border. This was true even at the outset of the 2006 Lebanon war. Had Olmert not over-played and gotten in deeper than necessary with no plan for either victory or exit, and without the hyperbolic claims about destroying Hezbollah, the outcome could have been much better. I see no argument that maintaining the buffer zone, and paying the price, was a net plus for Israel's security. As for Olmert's "concessions," he conceded nothing as he concluded no agreement. The question that we do not know the answer to is what would he have needed to concede to conclude an agreement. According to makover, the Jerusalem Post says he could have had a deal that included 1.9% of the West Bank. If so, then why didn't Olmert accept?

- roidubouloi

December 19, 2010 at 12:30pm

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Roi's latest 2 comments: 3, 300 words. "roi should of course be added to this list for his faithful use of this despicable tactic." makover: roi once explained, very thoughtfully, that when he keeps calling me, probably the only Israeli he knows, Goebbels, he doesn't mean that he says I'm a nazi. BTW, here is wiki on Goebbels: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels "Goebbels used modern propaganda techniques to psychologically prepare the German people for aggressive war and the annihilation of civilian populations. Among other propaganda devices, he accused many of Germany's ethnic and national minorities (such as the Poles, the Jews, the French) of trying to destroy Germany, claiming that Germany's belligerent actions were taken in self-defence." Here is what roi said a while ago: " What Obama was most unprepared for is the reality that the enemies of America are not just the Iranians, Moslem terrorists, the Chinese, and such, but the entire American right." "Every last one of them is an enemy of the United States of America, happy intentionally to damage the nation for the purpose of unseating Obama, happy to side with our enemies and make our problems, such as unemployment, worse for the purpose of unseating Obama, even willing to declare that the purpose of power in the hands of the Republican party is not to address the problems of the nation but to unseat Obama. And what they will do for personal greed is unspeakable. They are enemies. We are in a life and death struggle with them for the future of our nation, or whether it even has much of a future. Traitors, scoundrels, liars and thieves one and all." Reminds you of someone?

- noga1

December 19, 2010 at 2:08pm

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roi of course could exonerate himself of these words by simply admitting that he misspoke.

- noga1

December 19, 2010 at 2:10pm

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roi: "According to makover, the Jerusalem Post says he could have had a deal that included 1.9% of the West Bank. If so, then why didn't Olmert accept?" For the same reason every Israeli prime minister including Rabin didn't accept: It was a bad deal for Israel!

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 19, 2010 at 2:16pm

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noga: roi admitting something? That'll be the day! By the way, I am glad you counted the words, 3,300 words of crap, that is amazing. One thing for sure, he ain't Hemingway.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 19, 2010 at 2:26pm

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Thanks to noga for her excellent explanation of just what she does and how she does it that makes her Goebbels little girl. Seem a short time ago she was accusing me of trying to undermine Israel in anticipation of the massacre of Israelis. Remind you of anyone? If someone wanted to undermine Israel, cast it into disrepute, make it the object of hatred and rejection, one could not possibly do better than Noga. She makes Israelis seem to be monsters as an expression of her love. You love Israel, noga, about the way Goebbels must have loved Germany. Yes, it takes many, many words convincingly to refute lies and smears that are noga's constant output. That's why I don't usually take the time. As a practical matter, I have to be content with pointing out how completely morally debased she is, a hollow wretch of a human being who has no solace for her domestic misery other than to heap slime and abuse on the world. Probably much like her mentor. You are all a barrel of laughs, but I gotta go on holiday to Mexico now. See ya. Oh, before I go, I forgot to note that noga is again up to one of her other favorite slimy tricks, editing my words to remove the parts that will not sustain her claims. Goebbels little girl, always hard at work.

- roidubouloi

December 19, 2010 at 4:01pm

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roi baby, you need to calm down. You might pop a blood vessel or something. Be careful in Mexico. I hope you are not going to Juarez.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 19, 2010 at 4:20pm

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roi baby, you need to calm down. You might pop a blood vessel or something. Be careful in Mexico. I hope you are not going to Juarez.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 19, 2010 at 4:20pm

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roi baby, you need to calm down. You might pop a blood vessel or something. Be careful in Mexico. I hope you are not going to Juarez.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 19, 2010 at 4:21pm

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Oh well, stuck at the gate which leaves a little extra time to note that the witless makover makes my perpetual point for me. He and the seeming majority of Israelis who agree with him don't want peace, you want the Palestinians land, you are shocked that they want give it to you to escape yore hold on them, and you have every intention of holding them hostage until they do. What's your beef with me? That I can see the obvious, as does most of the rest of the world, and no longer believe your patently phony narrative that you want peace if only the Arabs will make peace? Patent nonsense. The only thing you can think to do if intelligent people won't agree to suspend their reason and accept your self-serving lie is to brand them as anti-Semites. ust as the Congressman said too honestly in his fumbling attempts to do the bidding of the Israel lobby, you will never willingly make peace on the basis of resolution 242. You know it as does he. He was simply too befuddled to know he wasn't supposed to say so. The game is drawing to a close. It seems unlikely that Israel will be able to get off this path. That would be tantamoint to the admission by the Likud that its settlement policy has been folly. Something else will happen.

- roidubouloi

December 19, 2010 at 4:58pm

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"What's your beef with me?" Nothing personal. Just that you talk nonsense and you are full of hatred of Israelis. Just that you spew your hateful garbage on this pages and attack people who disagree with you with Nazi epitaphs. That you fly off the rocker the moment anybody criticizes Barak Obama and call them fascists. That you are repeating the lies and half truths of Arab and leftist propaganda and that you work hard to discredit all the supporters of Israel. In short, you behave like a bully. How that for a starter?

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 19, 2010 at 5:13pm

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"Oh well, stuck at the gate which leaves ..." It's heartening to learn from you, roi, how desperately attached you are to these "discussions" so that even on your way to vacation you can't tear yourself away from them. This is hardly the behaviour of a normal person. Anyway I hope you have a good vacation and, when in Mexico, may you unwittingly bite into one of those inconspicuously small and innocent looking purple peppers, mistaking them for juju beans. It can happen, I'm told.

- noga1

December 19, 2010 at 5:40pm

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Resolution 242 seemed like a reasonable proposition in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war. But it will never happen because the Muslims will never consent to the existence of a Jewish (or Christian or secular) state in the Middle East in any size or shape. It is contrary to Islam. Given that situation, the Israelis need more defensible borders than they had in 1967. I have traveled from the "Left" to the "Right" on this. Obama has not only sold out Israel, he has also sold out the average working people of America. He is just a dull, dutiful establishment doofus. How much do you want to bet that Roid checks in on us from Mexico? He doesn't want to miss anything.

- amidut

December 19, 2010 at 6:13pm

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Yes roi, one more thing, calling a Jewish woman a daughter of Goebbels is despicable and beyond the pale.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 19, 2010 at 6:21pm

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Makeover, I second the emotion. What's left to add? Noga, I'm reminded that another of the risks of travel in Mexico is dysentery. Just a thought... Thanks, btw, for the Marty Feldman link. Amazing how well he speaks Italian, isn't it? Nobody dubs like the Italians. Now if only they could figure out how to keep the freeways open when one inch of snow falls...

- willjames77

December 19, 2010 at 6:46pm

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What a sight! All the bugs think it safe to come out from under their rock and sun themselves at the same time. When I read here the collection of lies, evasions, misdirections, smears, slanders, and unclassified foul tricks (why isn't there a word for placing false statements in someone else's mouth, a favorite here?) With which the lot of you "replenish the well of sympathy for Israel," I have to stop and remind myself that there is justice on Israel's side, that there is a real war being waged by those who seek to destroy it. Because it is natural so think that anything that is only supported with such a collection of miserable tactics and nothing but cannot possibly be worthy. Similarly, I have to remind myself that I am reading the Spine, and as shit attracts flies, the bullying, creepy, dishonest, largely inarticulate types he attracts to him are not at all representative of Israel and Israelis. I have to stop and remember that I know personally thoughtful, articulate, decent Israelis, people with a conscience, and that the lot of you here are not even as many as two hands. But it is a shame for Israel that in a public forum, even one as handicapped as the Spine, you are what appears to speak for her. Even within such a collection, noga is an exceptional case for the zeal and relentlessness with which she deploys one propaganda trick after another with the only relief her literary excursions, and often not even then as she enlists literature with which to provide a veneer of credibility to the lie, smear, or slander of the moment. For her, comparison to Goebbels is apt. One needs something beyond the pale as she is beyond the pale. And I am at a loss for adjectives with which to express my contempt for and disgust with her. She makes me shudder.. Jewish woman? How could Judaism or womankind produce such?

- roidubouloi

December 20, 2010 at 8:56am

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"Even within such a collection, noga is an exceptional case for the zeal and relentlessness with which she deploys one propaganda trick after another with the only relief her literary excursions, and often not even then as she enlists literature with which to provide a veneer of credibility to the lie, smear, or slander of the moment. For her, comparison to Goebbels is apt. One needs something beyond the pale as she is beyond the pale. And I am at a loss for adjectives with which to express my contempt for and disgust with her. She makes me shudder.. Jewish woman? How could Judaism or womankind produce such?" Even on vacation, roi needs his daily, or rather, hourly fix of the two minutes of hatred. Here is another example: " What Obama was most unprepared for is the reality that the enemies of America are not just the Iranians, Moslem terrorists, the Chinese, and such, but the entire American right." "Every last one of them is an enemy of the United States of America, happy intentionally to damage the nation for the purpose of unseating Obama, happy to side with our enemies and make our problems, such as unemployment, worse for the purpose of unseating Obama, even willing to declare that the purpose of power in the hands of the Republican party is not to address the problems of the nation but to unseat Obama. And what they will do for personal greed is unspeakable. They are enemies. We are in a life and death struggle with them for the future of our nation, or whether it even has much of a future. Traitors, scoundrels, liars and thieves one and all. I suspect this is the sentiment that noga finds so odious. But, it is true none-the-less. And we know perfectly well where noga would find her political company if she were an American. Time to ratchet up the rhetoric and go hand to hand with these insane sons of bitches in the same hyperbolic terms in which they attack the left. We need open political warfare in America, with two sides engaged, not just one. Then the matter can reach some resolution -- either they are marginalized, finally, or they get a free hand to wreck the place. Appeasement is not an option any longer. PS There are no doubt some reasonable people on the right, somewhere, but they have more or less of the same mythical character as "moderate Moslems" who are supposed to engage and overcome Islamist radicals. If they exist at all, they certainly aren't doing anything much to combat extremism. So too with right-wing moderates. If they exist at all, which is doubtful, they are doing nothing to contest with their dominant extremists. Hence, we can ignore them as either to few and/or too craven to make a difference. The one righteous person in Sodom." I noticed how your insane character assassination has increased in volume and frequency after I drew attention to this quote from you and after I directed people attention to the admiration you expressed for Mondoweiss, a blog dedicated to the destruction of Israel, that even antisemites keep their distance from. The thing is, I don't have to prove you are a kind of Kaganovich, whose servile and abnegating obedience to Stalinism deranged and corrupted whatever Jewish values he grew up with. You do it all on your own. All that's needed is to point to your sick comments. And then watch you respond, not with an admission of wrongdoing, not with an apology but with even more heated and outlandish invective. THe fact is you cannot go any lower. There is no "lower" there. It is exactly where you should be. Mind however that you don't bite on one of those misleadingly cute hot peppers. If indeed you are in Mexico. BTW, you didn't explain how your one IDF officer relative has turned all of a sudden, into five of them. Another fantasy?

- noga1

December 20, 2010 at 9:43am

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Over One hundred and fifty posts and most of them had been typed (I mean typed since so little thought goes into the comment-especially true for new-old schoolboy) before on different threads by the same people. How pathetic, what a waste of time.

- jdyer

December 20, 2010 at 2:14pm

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...How pathetic, what a waste of time... Not to worry: by the authority vested in me by those with the authority to vest it in 64 year old, bald world-weary djzhlobs, I pronounce this thread dead: it's a dead thread!

- basman

December 20, 2010 at 6:56pm

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Dead!

- basman

December 20, 2010 at 6:57pm

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Hi Basman, if you are still around, I just posted my short reading of the Grossman book.

- jdyer

December 20, 2010 at 9:08pm

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With apologies, basman, There is always much lower, noga. Because there is you. The filth at the very bottom of the barrel. If I take apart your lies and it requires 3,300 words, you insist that this proves your mythical point, because it requires 3,300 words. Then you call that invective, which also proves your mythical point. Then you insist that I am embarrassed by words of my own that embarrass me not in the slightest. Happy to repeat them as long as they are quoted accurately and not edited by you to mean something else. It really doesn't matter though what I actually say, because you will always invent your own version to place in my mouth. Why? Because 1) you have neither the wit nor the tools to take issue with me based on anything I actually say or claim to believe, when rarely you make the attempt you are quickly tied up in knots of your own making, and 2) you lie about everything all the time and have no ability to do otherwise. It is the only thing you reliably know how to do, and you are so far gone that you plainly no longer even know when you are lying or what constitutes a lie. The only things you say that are not fabrications are quotes and more often than not you will edit those so that they are fabrications. I am not embarrassed in the slightest to have found useful observations and commentary at mondoweiss, the work of a couple of Jewish boys who, of course, you consider anti-Semites because they are harsh critics of Israel's human rights record and, like me, don't believe the propaganda that emanates from the Likud about Israeli intentions. They are very good at finding reliable quotes, facts, events with which to lacerate that propaganda and turn into shreds. That is a worthwhile enterprise. I care not what their opinions are, one way or the other, because I wouldn't look to them to inform my opinions. And I need not be embarrassed by their opinions, even if I knew what they are which I don't, because, unlike you, I can actually read and consider whether something is persuasive or credible on the merits. If it is, it is. If not, not. For you, on the other hand, as a relentless propagandist, there are only useful lies and useless lies. Everything for you is a lie and the only issue is whether the lie advances what you think to be your interest or not. If not, then it is the work of anti-Semites. Your lies are, in your twisted mind, virtuous because they advance your interest. Everything that does not advance your interest must, in your mind, also be a lie simply because it does not advance your interest and therefore necessarily the work of anti-Semites. A completely closed system that can admit no light. No morality, no integrity, no decency, no concept of truth even left in there. Just like Goebbels, your mentor. Despite your viciousness and complete lack of scruple, you always manage to betray yourself because you, thank god, are not nearly as smart as your role model. You always have to try and put lipstick on your pig because you are uncertain about the effect of your words. Thus, for example, after your latest peroration above, you decide to question whether I have fabricated my family and their particular achievements. You obviously didn't think you were very persuasive or you would have known when to stop before making yourself look stupid. But then, in addition to your other severe deficits of character, you are pretty stupid so you probably cannot help that either. I am grateful for your stupidity. But for that, someone with your complete lack of regard for truth would be formidable. You, on the other hand, are risible, a visibly tormented bumbler.

- roidubouloi

December 21, 2010 at 12:36am

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I notice you do not explain how the one family member who is an IDF officer (you kept referring to by way of puffing up your reliability as a narrator) has become five IDF officers. Instead, you are huffing and puffing in the usual manner. But then, what would you be without the huffing and puffing? "You obviously didn't think you were very persuasive or you would have known when to stop before making yourself look stupid."

- noga1

December 21, 2010 at 7:17am

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So this is where you want to make your stand? This is the argument with which you are going to defend your politics? Okay, let's see: My brother-in-law's active duty was 30+ years ago. I don't even know if he does miluim any more, at least I have heard no mention of it lately. But, on whatever the occasion, I wasn't talking about him because I seldom give his service much thought. My oldest nephew, a paratrooper, didn't want to be an officer because he didn't want to extend his service, but he is very capable and they hocked him until he finally relented. He felt it was his duty, although it was not what he wanted to do. I also don't think overmuch about his service because he doesn't think or talk about it much. He is a musician and it is at a far remove from his interests and current concerns. He is the least interested in political affairs of everyone in the family. He did spend time on duty in the West Bank and some of what he had to say about his experiences informs my thinking about just how benign, or not, the occupation is. It is quite possible that whenever this was a subject of discussion, my youngest nephew was not yet an officer. He is still on active duty, a paratrooper too. Much more enthusiastic about both being in the army and an officer. My niece, the one who was decorated by the president of Israel (I even have a photograph!), and her now husband served in the same unit. He was her commanding officer. That's how they met. When his time was done, she became the commanding officer of the unit. They are both very will informed about military and political affairs and I make a point of soliciting their opinions whenever I am in Israel or they are visiting the States. Not only very well informed but both extremely smart, and thoughtful _________________ There, you are now a failure at everything. Have a nice day.

- roidubouloi

December 21, 2010 at 10:36am

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When I was en route from Paris, where I was living at the time, to attend my niece's wedding, I was being asked the usual security questions by a young woman working security for El Al. After a couple of questions about where I was going in Israel and why, she realized that she knows my niece and we had a fine time discussing all the people we know in common. It was charming.

- roidubouloi

December 21, 2010 at 10:40am

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How am I a failure at everything, roi, when I induced you to provide a detailed explanation about a rather irrelevant point? The same way my (admittedly sly) comment about Mondoweiss made you go there and pronounce how thoughtful and intelligent they are. I think I'm being quite successful pulling your chain. I've been sending you to chase cows and you very nicely complied.

- noga1

December 21, 2010 at 11:49am

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http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=1&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=442&PID=0&IID=5522&TTL=The_Fallacy_of_the_%221967_Borders%22_-_No_Such_Borders_Ever_Existed "The Fallacy of the “1967 Borders” – No Such Borders Ever Existed Alan Baker * The Palestinian leadership is fixated on attempting to press foreign governments and the UN to recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state within the "1967 borders." Indeed, this campaign appeared to have some initial successes in December 2010 when both Argentina and Brazil decided to recognize a Palestinian state within what they described as the "1967 borders." * But such borders do not exist and have no basis in history, law, or fact. The only line that ever existed was the 1949 armistice demarcation line, based on the ceasefire lines of the Israeli and Arab armies pending agreement on permanent peace. The 1949 armistice agreements specifically stated that such lines have no political or legal significance and do not prejudice future negotiations on boundaries. * UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967 acknowledged the need for negotiation of secure and recognized boundaries. Prominent jurists and UN delegates, including from Brazil and Jordan, acknowledged that the previous lines cannot be considered as international boundaries. * The series of agreements between the PLO and Israel (1993-1999) reaffirm the intention and commitment of the parties to negotiate permanent borders. During all phases of negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians, there was never any determination as to a border based on the 1967 lines. * The PLO leadership solemnly undertook that all issues of permanent status would be resolved only through negotiations between the parties. The 2003 "Road Map" further reiterated the need for negotiations on final borders."

- noga1

December 21, 2010 at 12:14pm

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http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=443&PID=0&IID=3185 "Alan Baker is former Legal Adviser to Israel's Foreign Ministry and former Ambassador of Israel to Canada. He is presently a partner in the law firm of Moshe, Bloomfield, Kobu, Baker & Co. He participated in the negotiation and drafting of the various agreements comprising the Oslo Accords. "

- noga1

December 21, 2010 at 12:17pm

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....Some people here, perhaps one person, persist in coming inside their heads. They make obscure references for obscure motives. And then when the reference elicits a good faith response, these inside-their-own-heads masturbators, their mental vaginas all-a-bursting, all mental tension released, all mental self-pleasuring reaching apex, mental fingers finally at rest from all the furious stroking, moan and pant in ecstasy, "Aha, you fell into my trap; you've proved my point; I've proved such and such." And nobody, including, of course, the good faith responder, knows what the hell the mental jerk-offers are so so getting so so off on.... I said this on this thread before and now posts 12/21/2010 - 11:49am EDT | and 12/21/2010 - 7:17am EDT are repulsive smoking gun proof. This broad is unbelievable: an inside-her-own-head-come-artist of the first order; a sheer example of virtually sociopathic unself-knowing and demented obsessiveness.

- basman

December 21, 2010 at 12:33pm

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I gotta love this. Noga makes the breathless discovery of what everyone who knows anything already knows. Certified by the esteemed Alan Baker. Of course Green Line is not a recognized international border. That's what all those UN resolutions say, both explicitly and implicitly. However, noga, and seemingly Baker, are unable to think through the implications of this, and there are a variety of possibilities: 1. Baker is incorrect when he says "the only line that ever existed was the 1949 armistice demarcation line." No, there is at least one other line, the 1948 partition line. While it is open for Israel to argue that the agreed border should be east of the Green Line, it is just as open to the Palestinians to argue that the border should be the partition line, and they actually have a bit more of the relevant legal authority on their side. 2. The Green Line does also have significance because it is, with the exception of Jerusalem, the limit of what Israel has formally annexed. If Israel wishes to press hard on the unsettled status of the Green Line, it ends up impeaching its annexation of the land it occupied in the war of independence. 3. Under the partition plan, Jerusalem was a special area that was not to be part of either Arab Palestine or Jewish Israel. The Palestinians can argue that a final settlement must respect this status, and indeed neither the UN nor pretty much anyone else in the world, including the US, has yet to accept Israel's claims to Jerusalem. 4. All of the resolutions going back to the 1949 armistice, especially 242, are pretty clear (not perfectly clear, but pretty clear) that modifications to the boundary are to be for the purpose of security, that the borders should be secure borders, not that they should embrace Israeli settlements that were not then in contemplation and could not then be in contemplation because they are illegal, both under the Fourth Geneva Convention and under the preferred reading of 242 itself, that neither Israel nor the Palestinians can unilaterally set the border, as by taking the land. The border is supposed to be settled by agreement. Thus, insisting that the Green Line has no status is a Pandora's box for Israel. The safest course for Israel is to accept the Green Line as having a settled status, if not the status of an international border, and proceed from there. This is indeed essentially what Israel does as it has not attempted to annex land east of the Green Line generally, the exception being Jerusalem and its immediate vicinity. So, the proper response to Baker from the standpoint of Israel would be, "Thanks, you are correct, but this is unhelpful so perhaps you should run along and do something else to display your legal erudition." The somewhat deeper problem is that those who like to argue this point seem to think that the relevant resolutions and treaties are a menu, that they can just browse them and pick the ones they like, ignoring the rest. Hence, they want to ignore the raft of UN resolutions and such to the effect that Israel's settlements and annexation of Jerusalem are illegal. "We like this bit of language in the armistice resolution, but forget all that other inconvenient stuff." Can anyone think of any reason why such picking and choosing of international law that Israel wants to respect and wants others to respect while it ignores the rest either should or is likely to find international support, whether within or without world institutions? I can't. The final point, that the parties have "solemnly agreed" that final borders shall be resolved as part of a final settlement, is almost poignant. I am not aware of any demands by the Palestinians that any of the matters consigned by agreement to negotiations of a final settlement must be conceded by Israel in advance of negotiation. But Israel, contrary to its solemn agreement (and rather obviously for the purpose of frustrating negotiations) has lately taken to insisting that the Palestinians concede in advance their claimed right of return, although the status and rights of refugees are also a matter specifically consigned to final settlement. This was initially coded as Netanyahu's demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as "a Jewish state," although there is nothing like this -- recognition as a particular type of state -- in international law or practice. Then Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States, helpfully explained on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times that what this actually means is that the Palestinians must concede their claimed right of return. Thus, here too we see Israel making demands in violation of its previous agreements. Even as it demands that the Palestinians concede there single largest claim in advance of negotiations, Israel continues to violate the resolutions that call for the border to be settled by agreement. It continues to build upon and settle land that has not been given it by agreement and that it does not claim to be a part of Israel. Its own Supreme Court has declared that the territories are not a part of Israel. To make matters worse, Israel also agreed as part of the Roadmap to desist from construction in the Occupied Territories, specifically including "natural growth." This is now ignored in Israel as if it never even happened. Israel is constantly proceeding in bad faith with regard to UN resolutions and international law and its own prior agreements. What Israel means by "the borders are to be settled as part of a final peace agreement" is that the Palestinians must accede to Israeli demands for annexation of territory east of the Green Line, which, thus far, the Palestinians have refused to agree to. I do not expect that they will and I cannot think of a good reason why they should, other than that Israelis seem to find it self-evident that they should, that "demographic realities" must be accepted. Here too, the only realities that Israel is willing to see are those that favor it own interests. That is not the whole of reality. Reality also includes the fact that the settlements were created in flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and Israel has been advised of this repeatedly in a multitude of resolutions and in the ruling of the ICJ in the security barrier case. When Israeli bad faith is pointed out, the invariable response is to regale us with evidence of Palestinian bad faith, incitement, anti-Semitism, and the reality of terrorist violence, although that is much reduced of late. I do not see how any of this justifies or excuses Israel violating international law and its own "solemn" agreements, including the Fourth Geneva Convention. Nor do I see that a continuing pattern of violation can do other than frustrate the peace that Israel claims to want. It is a constant provocation and legitimizes Arab violence and "resistance" in the minds of many. There is no reason for Israel to take risks with its security. But there is also no rational argument that these violations of resolutions and agreements are necessary for its security. The best argument offered by ginzy, the resident expert, for allowing settlement construction to accommodate "natural growth" is that the large families of the religious cannot find adequate childcare unless they live near saba and savta (grandpa and grandma for those here who know no Hebrew).

- roidubouloi

December 21, 2010 at 1:15pm

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"When Israeli bad faith is pointed out, the invariable response is to regale us with evidence of Palestinian bad faith, incitement, anti-Semitism, and the reality of terrorist violence, although that is much reduced of late." "incitement, anti-Semitism, and the reality of terrorist violence" are all too real reasons why Israel should proceed with extreme caution about its decisions to give up its territorial advantages. The reduced terrorist violence has very little to do with Palestinian efforts, as you must know if you have such direct channels of information from your family's many IDF officers.

- noga1

December 21, 2010 at 1:45pm

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" Noga makes the breathless discovery" As always, roi, you live in a world of sheer fantasy. Where do you see anything that fits this description in the simple act of linking to an article pertinent to the the subject of this thread, before we got sidetracked by Mexican hot peppers? If anyone can be accused of breathless discoveries it would be you and your reckless diving into any anti-Zionist blog that echoes your warped vision of Israel's situation. You are like a little boy who zips across a busy street without looking left and right, and all because he sees a shiny object on the other side.

- noga1

December 21, 2010 at 1:53pm

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The breathlessness is perhaps more fairly attributed to Baker, with your apparent approval, as there is no "myth" that the Green Line was an internationally recognized border as there is absolutely zero ambiguity in any relevant international legal document or resolution. It is certainly the case that in common speech the Green Line was spoken of as Israel's border, and, in this, common speech is closer to the reality than the legal documents. In fact, common speech is part of what created the reality that the Green Line was and is the de facto border of Israel. That is the can of worms that it is not really in Israel's interest to open too wide. ________________________ "'incitement, anti-Semitism, and the reality of terrorist violence' are all too real reasons why Israel should proceed with extreme caution about its decisions to give up its territorial advantages." Of course. But what does that have to do with building more housing in the West Bank so that the eight kids can stay living close to abba and eema? This is a constant of Israeli propaganda, the deliberate or blithe conflation of security needs with anything and everything else that Israel wants, particularly if what it wants is illegitimate. Security is supposed to be the trump card and then everyone falls down and says, "Oh yes, do whatever you want. Security and all." The world at large no longer buys this shtick as it has been grossly overplayed. No one believes that building more apartments in the West Bank for mommies and babies is a security issue. Like the fable of that boy who cried wolf, the constant effort to wrap everything in a security wrapper has over time simply served to debase the coinage. Israel's bona fide security claims are now widely greeted with disbelief because it has so abused the concept. This is only as one would expect. Years ago, when Sharon was still insisting that a security wall would be useless, I wrote to him urging Israel to build one. I have often expressed here my astonishment that Sharon withdrew the IDF from Gaza at the same time as the settlements there, and I remain bewildered that Israel did not maintain control of the Philadelphia Corridor. I have certainly not suggested that Israel ever do other than what is rationally necessary for its security and, given the history, should be given the benefit of the doubt on the close cases. There is no reason in law or prudence for Israel to withdraw its military control over the West Bank in advance of a settlement that gives its security interests adequate protection, particularly in the Jordan River valley so that does not become another Philadelphia Corridor. All that said, security needs have exactly zero to do with Netanyahu attempting to up-end the Oslo understandings by demanding that the Palestinians abandon the right of return before a final settlement. Nor does it have anything to do with illegal construction in the West Bank or gratuitous interference with the ability of the Palestinians to make a life and a livelihood. From the inception of settlement, the Palestinians have said that the settlements were nothing but an effort unilaterally to impose a border in violation of resolution 242. Israel said, oh no, that is a matter to be settled in a peace accord. Now Israel says that any peace accord must acknowledge its "demographic realities" by not only leaving the major settlement blocs in place, but drawing a border to bring them into Israel. Proving that the Palestinians were right all along and that Israel's propaganda to cover its settlement building was just the lie that they always said it was. The ICJ, including conspicuously the Israeli justice, reached the same conclusion. Now what Israel, or at least its governing right-wing, wants more than peace itself is to avoid the admission that its settlement policy has been a huge, expensive folly. It wants the Palestinians to relieve Israel of its disaster by agreeing to give the settlement blocs to Israel. But the Palestinians won't. They appear to have figured out the game. In response, Israel does what it can do frustrate negotiations, while trying to avoid the blame for doing so, because it is clear that it cannot have both peace and the vindication of the settlement policy. Hence, it continues with neither, and will continue to do so just as long as the world lets it. That will not be forever. ________________________ Now noga can do her best to explain what is warped about that view of Israel's situation, as opposed to the devastatingly warped views of the Likud and its political allies of the messianic wacko variety.

- roidubouloi

December 21, 2010 at 7:28pm

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We read today in the Times of a spurt of building in the settlements, but overwhelmingly in areas the least likely to become incorporated into Israel. This has nothing to do with security or even sanity. Almost seems like a doomed enterprise doubling down for lack of anything better to do. Peace and security by the Monte Carlo method.

- roidubouloi

December 22, 2010 at 4:29pm

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We read today in the Times of a spurt of building in the settlements, but overwhelmingly in areas the least likely to become incorporated into Israel. This has nothing to do with security or even sanity. Almost seems like a doomed enterprise doubling down for lack of anything better to do. Peace and security by the Monte Carlo method.

- roidubouloi

December 22, 2010 at 4:30pm

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There's a new blog that talks about much the same issues discussed on The Spine. I figured it makes sense to spread the word: www.StreetSmartPolitics.com - An analysis of US foreign policy and the Middle East.

- dbrats

December 23, 2010 at 12:34pm

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