Mr. K.M. Pollack: I Have a Grievance

How either misinformed, uninformed or malicious can someone be?

Here, from a book review of Ronen Bergman's history of Israel's targeted assassination operations:

Israel has a big problem here. Targeted killings, barriers and other security activities can suppress terror attacks, but it is not at all clear that Israel can ever win the hearts and minds of the Palestinians, the crucial foundation for Palestinian terrorist groups. It had the same problem with the Shiites of Lebanon and their support for Hezbollah. That’s because the Israeli occupation is a central grievance of the Palestinians, as it was for Lebanon’s Shiites.

That was by Kenneth Pollack in the New York Times. 

Pollack, Kenneth M. to be exact, is, I learn:

a noted former CIA intelligence analyst and expert on Middle East politics and military affairs. He has served on the National Security Council staff and has written several articles and books on international relations. Currently, he is a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Advisor at Albright Stonebridge Group, a global business strategy firm.

There are three problems in that paragraph above.

The first is it is misleading in that Israel's program began before 1967 and even before 1948. So what "occupation" is he talking about?

Second, even if he can identify a specific "occupation", what has that to do with the need to protect Israelis, and Jews (not to mention the non-Jews Arab terrorists have attacked over the years)? Why should that justify in any form Arab violence against civilians? He considers Israel's existence a proper "grievance"?

Third, if this is the level of analysis at the CIA, Brookings, etc., then just wow.

It would seem I have a grievance with Mr. Pollack.

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I see now that Ira Stoll found something else that discredits Pollack as someone who supposedly knows something.

Here.

(Hint:  Israel “so far has not tried…trading land for peace”)

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