A Belated Response to Jeffrey Goldberg

At the end of August 2012, I commented on something Jeffrey Goldberg published.

I now have stumbled on to his response to my comments and, to my surprise, it seems I did not retort. And that is quite unlike me.  Five years have passed. Did I start to compose and forget to finish?

Odd.

Well, since the issues are still with us (and why shouldn't they be?) and as I had occasion to enjoy a lunch together with him at the Merlot Cafe and Restaurant in my home community of Shiloh some months ago, I return to his points.  To the first part of his post:

First, "Arabs living in Judea and Samaria are not citizens of Israel. So, they can't vote." Imagine the following sentence, justifying apartheid: "Blacks in South Africa are black. Therefore, they can't vote." How is this an argument and not a tautology? Obviously (or not obviously, to some people) this is the crux of the situation -- Arabs on the West Bank are denied voting rights in Israel, and are also denied the right to separate completely from Israel. (Their leaders haven't helped the situation, but the Israelis have not helped much either.) A more accurate, if still tautological, statement would have read: "Israel will not enfranchise Arabs living in Judea and Samaria. Therefore, they are disenfranchised."

His example of a comparison of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria to the fact that blacks in South Africa are blacks and therefore cannot vote (but they do, don't they?) - is quite ridiculous, facile and malevolent.  I did not indicate a racial basis for lack of enfranchisement but citizenship.

In fact, the Arabs resident in Judea and Samaria do vote but only when their elected leadership permits them to do so.  Since 2005, when Mahmoud Abbas was elected President of the Palestinian Authority, there have been no elections for that position.  Not very democratic.  If they cannot vote even within just their own limited sphere, how can they learn to be good citizens?  How can they promote a real statehood?

I practiced tautology?  Or did Goldberg simply pervert what I wrote and set up a convenient, and very non-existent, straw man?

If they are granted voting rights, say, in Jordan in a future confederation alignment, they they would possess exactly the same status as the status of the Jews.

They are not denied their own state.  They have refused, since at least 1937 and I would add earlier, to accept any offer of a state but have refused to do so because it would mean a Jewish state is acceptable to them.  For them, it is a zero-sum game.  Even now, they refuse to take any steps in that direction by rejecting US suggestions to halt payments to terrorists.

His "A more accurate, if still tautological, statement would have read: "Israel will not enfranchise Arabs living in Judea and Samaria. Therefore, they are disenfranchised."" is plain nonsensical and silly.

Next:

"Just like an Israeli living in the United States but who is not a citizen cannot vote." Is this what passes for a deep thought among the intellectual leaders of the settlement movement? There's one crucial difference between an Israeli immigrant in America and a Palestinian on the West Bank: The Israeli immigrant in America voluntarily moved to America. The Arab on the West Bank is from the West Bank. He didn't move to Israel, Israel moved to him.

I really do not know how many but I do know that not all Arabs residing in Judea and Samaria are "from the West Bank".  I do know that to be a "Palestinian refugee", one had only to reside in Judea, Samaria and Gaza for but two years. Two years! I hope this isn't too deep for Goldberg to grasp.  It means that a two-year residency gained many Arabs from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan (itself part of Palestine actually) and Egypt, at least, money, food and residency all free from UNRWA, for almost seven decades now.

As for those truly "from the West Bank", I do not know how many supported the Mufti, or the fedayeen or the PLO prior to 1967 and earlier, but there is a price for that. Part of that is that since they attempted numerous times to deny Jews their state - and to kill as many of them in the process - they lose the right to a state.  They could have achieved autonomy, or in September 1967 all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza except Jerusalem, or during 1968-70 the Allon Plan, etc., but they refused.  I do not have to be liable to correct all their mistakes, errors and evil intentions especially as a "state of Palestine" would endanger the lives and existence of Jews and Israel.

They "invited" us in by their terror. They continue to keep us here by their rejectionism and refusal to compromise.

Goldberg's next section:

Of course, the occupation of the West Bank was justified militarily, after Jordan used it to launch an attack on Israel in 1967. But that doesn't change the basic fact, known to all, that Arabs happened to be living on the West Bank when Israel arrived. They are not immigrants to the West Bank. They are native to the West Bank.

And those Jews who were ethnically cleansed from Hebron, Gaza, Gush Etzion, Jerusalem, Atarot, Neveh Yaakov, Bet HaAravah, etc., they are equally native. 

Fourth section:

As for the rest of Medad's post, I simply don't know if he sincerely believes that Arabs on the West Bank have equivalent legal rights before Israel's High Court, or equal access to Israeli services, or if he knows he's pulling our legs.

One of the most dispiriting aspects of the Middle East conflict is the inability of both sides to see that their enemy also has legitimate claims to the territory in dispute. Palestinian rejection of the right of Jews to live in their ancient homeland is absurd and immoral. But so is the notion that Palestinians on the West Bank are somehow immigrants, and should be punished as immigrants until they agree to enjoy their punishment. 

I do know, I do. And they seem to do quite well exploiting our court system.

I see Arabs as having legitimate claims, as in the spirit of the League of Nations Mandate decision of 1922:

in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine

Civil rights. Religious rights. Human liberties and freedoms. But that does not include the establishment of a fictitious Arab state of Palestine in the area of the historic Jewish homeland.  It didn't then and after all their rejectionism, animosity, opposition, violence and such, they surely do not deserve it now.

Jeffrey, is that clear?

^

Jeffrey Goldberg: Settlers = Hamas

Jeffrey Goldberg equalizes and equates the Hamas with the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria (in an attack on Peter Beinart k/t=LK):-

In other news from Happyland, the number-two of Hamas, Moussa Abu Marzook, gave an interview to the Forward in which he -- and this will be very surprising to people who aren't paying attention, and to Peter Beinart -- rules out recognizing Israel, and says that the most Hamas could offer Israel is a long-term truce. "We will not recognize Israel as a state. It will be like the relationship between Lebanon and Israel or Syria and Israel."


And those are excellent relationships!
I mention Peter because he has argued for quite a while that Hamas is actually moderating, and that we should not pay too much attention to the group's charter (which calls for, you know, killing a lot of Israelis and destroying their country). One of the irksome qualities of Peter's benign interpretation of Hamas is that he doesn't extend the same benefit of the doubt to another group of bearded fundamentalists, the Jewish settlers. For Peter, settler ideology is deadly and should be treated as such; Hamas, on the other hand, is just waiting for the right moment to emerge as a moderate, non-anti-Semitic force. I think it's better to take all religious fundamentalists at their word, which is why I worry incessantly about the willingness of some settlers to bring about the apocalypse, as I wrote here.

Two liberals fight each other and both dump on the Jews.

^

Slowing Down On J Street

From the interview of Jeremy Ben-Ami by Jeffrey Goldberg:

JG: But you publicly disagreed with his op-ed in which he called for a boycott of products made in settlements. Why do you disagree with it?

JB: Because I don't think that it makes any sense to put negative pressure on people whose behavior you hope to change. I think that the way that Israelis will feel comfortable making the compromises and the sacrifices--and Israel as a whole, not just the settlers --is when they really feel that not only American Jews, but the United States, is going to be there for them...

...The biggest obstacle I see in the Israeli psyche at the moment is this sense that two states is never going to happen, that there's just no way peace is ever going to come. While 70% of Israelis want a two-state solution, 80% of them think it's never going to happen in their lifetime.

JG: How do you dislodge the settlers?

JB: The way that you overcome the mindset, which I think is the first step, is you actually present an agreement that, lo and behold, the world supports, and Palestinians would support, and you realize that, hey, we actually can get it. And that positive pressure to make that decision by creating a path to hope, a path to the future, gives you then the national political will and the national political consensus to make that very difficult move: to say to the settlers, it's time to come home.

...The problem with Oslo was it laid out a process without ever telling you what the end result is going to be. What does that Palestinian state look like? What does the border look like? What are the security arrangements? Let's actually skip over the three to five years of process and talks, because we don't need them--because we already know what the end result looks like. Let's put that deal on the table and force the political decision on both sides--both the Palestinians and the Israeli political world--to decide if they are really ready to say yes to a realistic resolution to this conflict.

...JG: We expect J Street to condemn settler violence, or provocative settlement building, or the power of the religious right parties in Israel. But another thing that we don't seem to hear from J Street enough is where the left side of the framework is. I understand where you go on the right, but it's always this concern--look, some of it is manufactured by people who don't like your general outlook, but some of it is real. What is "too left" for J Street? What sort of expression of criticism is too far to the left, from your perspective?

JB: We established at the beginning of the interview some of the tactical things that are too far. We don't support, obviously, BDS but also Peter's conception of "Zionist BDS," that that is either advisable, doable, or workable.

JG: Do you think that this would put you on a slippery slope toward full BDS?

JB: I think it's very hard to make a clear line between what is "settlement business" and what is not. So many businesses do business on both sides of the Green Line. Very few things are simply, purely done on the other side of the Green Line.

JG: And isn't it, of course, the Israeli government that subsidizes factory-building in settlements that then create products that are sold?

JB: Right.

JG: So then why are you blaming the factory? Shouldn't you be blaming the guy who gave you the money to build the factory, which in this case is the Israeli government?

JB: The same issue comes up with divestment. Because if you divest from a company that produces a military product that is used in the occupation, that same company is probably producing a product that helps defend Israel from, let's say, rockets. So if you're saying you shouldn't be supporting a truck company or a boot manufacturer, is that the boots of the soldiers who are going to defend Israel itself? It is a slippery slope and very hard to draw that line.

JG: Do you think Beinart's idea is going to catch on?

JB: I think there are a lot of people in the progressive part of the pro-Israel community who are personally, deeply bothered by the notion that we would doing anything that helps to perpetuate this occupation. So I think on a personal level, people do, when they find out that a product or a wine or whatever it is comes from the West Bank, then personally I think people will consider this.

JG: I don't think this is going to gain traction in the American Jewish community. Tell me I'm wrong.

JB: No, I don't think so either...

^

Can You Follow Goldberg's "Logic"?

Jeffrey Goldberg wants to know:-

...is "Israel-firster" antisemitic?

And here's his logic:-

Its origins are certainly antisemitic, and the idea that Jews are incapable of being loyal to the country of their citizenship and are only loyal to world Jewry, or the Jewish state, is an age-old antisemitic trope. This doesn't mean that those who use it are antisemitic.

It doesn't?

Well, he continues:

They just might be ignorant, like J Street's Jeremy Ben-Ami, who to my surprise buys into the trope. Obviously, "Israel-firster" is a term deployed by opponents of Israel...

Did you follow that?

(k/t=BW)

Here's background:

“The language is corrosive and unacceptable,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He added that the blog posts and tweets from CAP staffers “are the responsibility of the adults who run the place, not only the kids who play.”

Cooper conveyed his concerns about CAP during a private White House meeting last week with Obama’s newly hired Jewish community liaison.

The White House official, Jarrod Bernstein, told Cooper that the situation at CAP was “troubling,” adding “that is not this administration.”

A White House spokesman, Matt Lehrich, declined to comment on CAP. He said Obama “has repeatedly reiterated America’s unshakable commitment to Israel’s security and stood up against attempts to single out Israel in international forums.” He added that the administration has “ratcheted up unprecedented pressure on Iran.”

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said some of the statements from CAP staffers “are anti-Semitic and borderline anti-Semitic.”

^

The World and Israel - J Goldberg For the Record

.

...the world has it out for Israel. Israel is held to a completely separate standard than any country including the United States. Europe, and this shouldn’t be surprising, Europe is a place that is hostile to the idea of Jewish nationalism. The Arab world is moving toward more extreme forms of anti-Semitism, not toward reconciliation. So, it is true that Israel is singled out for special scorn, it is true that the world has a pornographic interest in Israeli failings, real or imagined...

Jeffrey Goldberg

Now, that makes sense but this, I fear, is a Goldberg double-standard ploy:

My definition, and the definition of the original Zionists, I think, is that Zionism is a liberation movement of a people. But there is a minority, but very powerful faction within Israel and the Jewish people, who argues that Zionism is about the redemption of a specific piece of land, and that side, though I think it’s the minority, seems to be driving Israeli policy...I think that there are some people, a minority, who believe at this point, that God is telling them it is more important to have Jewish land than to have a Jewish state.

All Zionists believed that in renewing Jewish presence on the land, in Hebrew, kibbush, or conquering. whether in the sense of purchasing land, tilling it, moving Jews into economic positions or labor employment roles not usually Jewish - farming, watchmen, security, etc., - was what liberation was all about as well as viewing the land as sacred, either in a religious sense or secular but nevertheless, as a primary value to be achieved.

The hiking throughout the Land of Israel, disregarding temporary boundaries, during the Mandate period is one indication.  Adapting the first fruits ceremony on the kibbutzim was another.

And if these forces were truly in the minority, well, Goldberg perhaps doesn't grasp the real thrust of Zionism not to mention that he never seems to downgrade "Palestinianism" which exploits religion.

And so, he devolves down to this:

We’re very good at survival. We’re not—history shows—we’re not so excellent at statehood. Survival has occurred mainly in the Diaspora. We are mainly a Diaspora people. We’re not really good at this. That’s just the record. On the other hand, we just tend to survive.

^

But Do They Really Write Intelligently?

.

So we're driving to the Cairo airport in Hillary Clinton's very impressive motorcade, and Keith Johnson of The Wall Street Journal, who is sitting next to me, is writing an article on his Blackberry, in the dark, in a speeding van, and his deadline is four minutes away, and he manages to pull it off, while I was doing the only thing I know how to do while driving through Cairo, which is trying not to throw up. I was very impressed with Johnson, particularly because I'm mainly a magazine writer who is given time and solitude to think about the information he has, and what information he's missing. Johnson, and the other daily (and hourly) reporters on the Clinton magical mystery tour through the Middle East are given no time at all to write intelligently, and yet they do. It is always a humbling experience to be around reporters who can perform at this level.

That was Jeffrey Goldberg.

Who, is fairly intelligent himself.

BTW, not one mention at his blog of the Fogel Family slaughter. But he's busy right now in Cairo.


^

Op-Ed Dished

Following an op-ed piece in ther NYTimes that asserted that Benjamin Netanyahu's government coalition

...is both internally argumentative and habitually intransigent, has not provided much confidence in the chances of even a provisional compromise, especially as settlers continue to build in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

when we know that Jerusalem is not a "settlement" and to describe it as such is simply adopting the Palestinian narrative that denies Jewish national connections to its 3000-year old capital

and refers to

Palestinian incitement and Israeli belligerence

thus equalizing two different matters, besides ignoring Arab terror acts

and proposes an absurd balance of dependence of Israel's

...future as a Jewish democratic state depends on the creation of a peaceful, democratic and stable Palestinian state by its side

and would have us accept a racist proposal which is not to be applied to Israel which must continue to maintain a 20% Arab presence in the state by writing

...no Palestinian state will emerge on a West Bank blanketed with settlements, and the future of the larger, more far-flung settlements must ultimately be decided by a negotiated agreement.

among other nonsensical comment on the situation.


Then these leters were published and I am thankful to Petrushka, Dishler and Rapp and am embarassed for Bronstein:-

To the Editor:

Re “Good News From the Middle East (Really)” (Op-Ed, Jan. 26):

Kudos to Jeffrey Goldberg and Hussein Ibish for presenting a refreshingly optimistic, balanced and moderate view of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. May the Israeli and Palestinian governments follow the advice recommended by the two commentators en route to the long-awaited compromise between the two peoples.

Yitzhak Bronstein, New York

•


To the Editor:

The major flaw in Jeffrey Goldberg and Hussein Ibish’s analysis is the assumption that a two-state solution demands a Palestine free of Jews. That does not leave a warm and fuzzy feeling with many Israelis and their supporters about the future neighborliness of the new state.

Second, such an outcome is impossible to achieve for a whole host of logistical, political and religious reasons. A Palestine free of Jews is a show stopper.

Menachem Petrushka, Flushing, Queens


To the Editor:

This very long essay giving the joint perspective of an Arab and a Jew on the prospects of finally settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does a good job of reviewing the multitude of strategic and political perspectives involved from both sides. But it doesn’t stress enough a fundamental problem: the continuing systematic indoctrination of Palestinian and Arab youth with a distorted religious and racial view of Israelis and Jews.

Since Israel’s founding in 1948 and up to the present, textbooks and other educational materials in Palestinian schools and in schools throughout the Arab world have been filled with anti-Semitic distortions and propaganda, essentially ensuring that continuing generations of Arab youth grow up hating Israel and Jews. Many of the weekly Friday sermonizers at Arab mosques continue to spew forth venomous anti-Israel and anti-Semitic diatribes, reinforcing a maniacal hatred of Jews.

There is no comparable institutionalized demonization of anyone occurring among the vast majority of the democratic Israeli society.

“The softening of hearts” that Jeffrey Goldberg and Hussein Ibish correctly recognize as an ultimate requirement for a lasting, peaceful resolution of this conflict will not likely occur until this basic flaw is corrected.

Jerry Rapp, New York


To the Editor:

I wish I could be as optimistic as Jeffrey Goldberg and Hussein Ibish regarding peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The only scenario that they didn’t discuss and that haunts me is the possibility of Hamas’s winning an election in the West Bank after Israel recognizes a Palestinian state.

Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and is heavily armed by Iran. A repeat of the Gaza takeover would be intolerable.

Bernard Dishler, Upper Gwynedd, Pa.

Of course, we should be thankful to Ibish for this analysis from 2005 about the failure of Arab governments to help the Arabs of the territory of the former Mandate of Palestine:

...The outrageous and shameful behaviour of the government of Lebanon, my home country, towards its own Palestinian refugee population would probably be exhibit A, excluded as they are from so many professions, hemmed into some of the most wretched refugee camps in the entire world. There are many other key examples, of course, including the expulsion of Palestinians from Libya and Kuwait, one could go on and on. I doubt anyone in this audience is unaware of this sorry record. It's a sad but true commentary and one that we need to face up to, that Palestinians living in my adopted country, the United States, have more rights than they do in any Arab state. Worse still, Arab governments have consistently encouraged the Palestinian national movement to adopt a set of self-defeating strategies in the pursuit of national liberation. While almost all Arab states have developed pragmatic policies of their own towards Israel, they have promoted political stridency and militant rhetoric among Palestinians, encouraging them to live in a fantasy world in which a simplistic formula of armed struggle, steadfastness, you have to love these buzz words, steadfastness, and worst of all, the very worst buzz word of all, martyrdom, are framed as a serious response to the incredibly complex challenges facing Palestinian national liberation. Many Arab governments have uncompromisingly championed the Palestinian cause with words, of course, only with words, encourage Palestinians to confront the vastly more powerful Israelis alone and virtually unarmed, and then fetishised images of dead and dying Palestinians on satellite television, while fearing and mistreating Palestinians, live Palestinians, in their own states, and at the same time doing all sorts of business, whether openly or covertly, with Israel. In effect, many Arab governments have been willing and committed to fight the Israelis till the last Palestinian.

Ibish has been dished by CAMERA previously.


As for Goldberg, the second author of the original op-ed, well, he was disappointing. The less said, the better for him.

^

Goldberg's Goldblog Goes Gone

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic takes on Rabbi Reuven Spolter of Elkana who opposes Goldberg's "contention often made on [my] blog, that it is in Israel's best interest to help birth a Palestinian state on the West Bank".

He quotes Spolter:

Why is it always up to us? Why does the Israeli Prime Minister need to travel to Ramallah to provide a vision? Has he ever heard of Hamas? Does he really think that the larger Palestinian goal is two live peacefully, side-by-side? And even if he does, would he bet his life on it, much less mine?

and attempts briefly to answer his questions. His answers follow - with my comments:

1) It is not up to Israel entirely, of course, but it is Israel that occupies the land in question, not the Palestinians;

Since the reason that Israel administers that portion of its homeland that was to be established as "the Jewish national home" with "the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine" taken into consideration (whereas the word "Arabs" does not appear at all but rather "non-Jews") as a result of a defensive response to Arab aggression in 1967 that was preceded by 19 years of terror attacks on its civilian population by fedayeen and Fatah, a territory that was not to "be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power" the administration of which, "while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co­operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes", all of this guaranteed by the League of Nations as international law, I would suggest to Goldberg that Israel has the better right to administer the area of Judea and Samaria and is in no way obliged to be the first to yield on its rights which foremost belong to the Jewish people which, of course, introduces another interpretation as to Israel, Jews and the Land of Israel.

2) Ramallah would be a good place to challenge the Palestinians to grapple with a generous vision of the future, because it is their de facto capital; Paris would be a nice place, too, but it is less relevant to the issue at hand; 

I'd go for Hebron since it the de facto capital of Hamas in Judea and Samaria (Hamas already has a statelet in Gaza) and most probably, as it did in Gaza, will seek and most probably succeed overthrow the PLO's Fatah in Ramallah.  All of which, of course, indicates that Goldberg is flogging am almost-dead horse.

3) Hamas is that chickpea spread you put on pita, right?

Golldberg fails at being funny or facetious and pundits should never attempt to be witty if thet are wrong - see #3 above.

4) I'm not sure what the larger Palestinian goal is. I believe there are many Palestinians who would see a Palestinian state as a launching pad from which they could begin the final assault on Israel; I also believe there are Palestinians who, in their hearts, have reconciled themselves to their Jewish neighbor. Israelis have a profoundly important stake in empowering that latter group; 

I would suggest that 'empowering', or whatever, should come before surrendering territory and subjecting Israelis to intolerable security threats.  Moreover, why can't CBMs (confidence building measures) be provided by the Pals. in the form of cessation of incitement, halt to those military-style summer camps, using maps in school that include Israel, accept that a supposed 'right of return' is not acceptable, agree not only to the concept of a Jewish state but accept Jews as residents no less than Arabs are citizens of Israel (12 Arabe MKs, et al.) and more?

In addition, if he is interested in knowing what Pals. think, let Goldberg try this and this, as a small, as it were, sampling.

5) Let me reverse this question on Reuven Spolter: Does he believe that his country will survive if it continues to dominate another ethnic group that resists domination? Because that, in essence, is what he is arguing for.

Despite my desire to be cynical about Golberg's audacious hubris, let me just say that (a) there are many such countries - and if believes they are immoral in their actions, well, let him go after them first and when he's finished, we can re-discuss Israel; (b) perhaps it may be that Arabs are illegally occupying Jewish territory; (c) I would suggest that Israel's survival is best served by retaining Judea and Samaria - even if we did not, as a people, possess rights to that land; (d) since Israel has done so for 43 years, with 325,000 Jews resident in Judea and Samaria and 250,000 in the new neighborhoods in Jerusalem, it is obvious that this is the trend that, to use Goldberg's word, dominates the politics of the situation.

One more thing: if American Jews would only be willing to accept what they know is true - and the above is only part - and promote that agenda, reject J Street and the subversion of Hillel, stand up to the Obama Administration and a few other matters, all of us, Jews in America and we Jews in Israel, would be part of a New Coalition - JUSTIS, Just Israel.

And JUSTIS, which has already taken its first steps will be seeking a greater impact on US-Israel relations. Stay tuned.

^

A Position To Ponder

The position of Jeffrey Goldberg:

Do I agree with Obama that Jews should be forbidden to build in certain areas of Jerusalem? My Judaism will survive my inability to live in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem (which, last time I checked, have no particular holy significance for Jews). What matters in Jerusalem is the Temple Mount. Everything else is commentary...

But what does matter to you about the Temple Mount, Jeffrey?

Today, before any suggested alternative plan is adopted or even discussed, a Jew cannot openly pray on the Temple Mount, he cannot identify himself too overtly as a Jew, cannot read a religious text there, say Lamentations, for example, on this coming Thursday to mark its destruction on Tisha B'Av, cannot prevent Muslims from destroying Jewish historical, cultural and archeological artifacts found there, cannot stop Muslim construction, cannot conduct a scientific dig there and a few other things all the while as Arab kids play soccer there, families picnic there, etc.

What could be worse, not quantitatively but qualitatively?

And what should the proper framework of respect for the Temple Mount be?

Spin-off on "Amalek"

What's better, reading a former lefty-leaning (Jeffrey Goldberg) defend Bibi or realizing that current lefties (Andrew Sullivan) are dumb?

Check this out.

Goldberg's Hillary Wish

One of the few things said by Jeffrey Goldberg with which I can agree:-

The Palestinians suffer sometimes from the irrational hope that America's support for Israel is mutable, and that the key to success is to bring about direct American pressure on Israel.

and one I cannot (his Hillary wish):-

...Then, the secretary of state should speak to the Israeli Knesset, and lay out, in very clear terms, the U.S. vision for Israel's borders, and talk very specifically about the need to bring about the end of the settlement project, and the birth of a viable Palestinian state -- and to speak of that birth as a direct American national security interest (and a direct national security interest of the State of Israel).

because one is true and one would be false.


P.S. Jeffrey once interviewed me twice in one week, once in person for an hour or so and then by phone but included nothing of my incisive, persuasive arguments against his onw private personal prejudices regarding the Jewish communities in Yesha. I was not happy about that.

Gosh, Goldberg

I have written about Jeffrey Goldberg in the past - I consider him a bit sneaky and untrustworthy, but that's just my opinion based on my experience with him over several days and many hours of interview time.

I also mentioned this article of his but but found The Atlantic's cover at Atlas Shrugs:



Is that "Palestine"?

Goldberg Misses It Again

One section from Jeffrey Goldberg's latest piece in the May issue of The Atlantic, "Unforgiven":-

Israel’s greatest military victory, in 1967, led to a squalid and seemingly endless occupation, and to the birth of a mystical, antidemocratic, and revanchist strain of Zionism, made manifest in the settlements of the West Bank. These settlements have undermined Israel’s international legitimacy and demoralized moderate Palestinians. The settlers exist far outside the Israeli political consensus, and their presence will likely help incite a third intifada. Yet the country seems unable to confront the settlements.

and

It is a cliché for Middle East leaders to warn that time is running out, but today it seems that the possibility of a two-state solution is swiftly fading. Palestinian rejectionists and unbending Jewish settlement leaders are in harmony on this point. “It does not matter what the Jews do. We will not let them have peace,” Ibrahim Mudeiris, the imam of the Ijlin Mosque in Gaza, told me not long ago. We spoke after Friday prayers. The street outside the mosque was crowded with angry young men who had been excited by Mudeiris’s sermon, in which he identified Jews as “the sons of apes and pigs.”

“They can be nice to us or they can kill us, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “If we have a cease-fire with the Jews, it is only so that we can prepare ourselves for the final battle.”

For Palestinian radicals, the closing of the settlements would be a terrible blow. The smartest Palestinian strategists understand this. “The longer they stay out there, the more Israel will appear to the world to be essentially an apartheid state,” the former Palestinian Authority negotiator Michael Tarazi told me a few years ago. “The settlements mean that the egg is hopelessly scrambled. Basically, it is already one state.”

The hard-core settlers are as intransigent, and as patient, as their Palestinian counterparts. The mayor of Ariel, one of the West Bank’s largest Jewish towns, told me that time is on the side of the settlers. Ariel, which has a population of roughly 20,000, is southwest of Nablus, the largest Arab city in the West Bank. “We have to hold on for a few more years, at most,” Ron Nachman, the mayor, said. “Then the world will realize that the solution lies with Jordan.” Nachman, along with many other West Bank settler leaders, believes that the Palestinians of the West Bank should be made Jordanian citizens. The Palestinians don’t generally seek this. Nor do the Jordanians. But Nachman said that once the world realizes that Israel’s presence in the West Bank is eternal, it will come to view the “Jordanian option” as a plausible solution. “Trust me, no one is throwing us out of Ariel,” he said.

Okay, that was Goldberg's view (if you search this blog, you'll read my various run-ins with Jeffrey).

Now, let's get some other information to your attention:

Peace Index Poll: Israeli Jews: 47%:40% peace process" historic mistake, 23% favor Green Line as future border

Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Prof. Tamar Hermann write,

This survey, too, found overwhelming support (68%) for the "two states for two peoples" solution (except among voters for the National Religious Party-National Union and Yisrael Beiteinu, where only a minority supports this solution). A similar rate also favors continuing the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. We also found, though, evidence of profound pessimism about the chances of reaching a real peace with the Palestinians. About three-quarters do not believe the negotiations will lead to an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and an identical proportion says that even if an agreement is signed it will not, from the Palestinians' standpoint, end the historic conflict with Israel.

...It turns out, for instance, that in retrospect only among Meretz, Labor, and Kadima does a majority say the decision to launch the peace process at the beginning of the 1990s was correct. In the public overall, the number of those who think so (40%) is lower than the percentage of those who believe it was a mistake to enter the peace process that enabled the Oslo accords (47%). We found a similar mindset among those who say that if a peace treaty entails difficult concessions, it's preferable to remain in the existing situation (49%, with 43% preferring an agreement even
if its price is difficult concessions).

We were surprised to discover that even though, over the years, the concept of "occupation" has become more common both in the political discourse and the media, today a majority of the Jewish public defines the West Bank as "liberated territory" (55%) and not as "occupied territory" (32%). This may explain the new popularity of the position (57%) that the Green Line should not be considered the future border between Israel and the Palestinians, and that a new borderline should be established so that most of the settlements will be on the Israeli side and large Israeli Arab communities would move to the Palestinian side (only 23% of the Jewish public currently favors the Green Line as the future border; only among Meretz voters does a majority take the opposite view).

...if a peace agreement is signed on the basis of the two-states-for-twopeoples formula, the majority (65%) would want the border between the two states to be a closed one, without free passage from state to state. The desire for segregation of the two peoples also emerges in the broad opposition (75.5%) to the idea of a binational state as an alternative solution to the two-state formula.

Now, does Goldberg portray a true picture of Israel's mood?

Gosh, Goldberg

The Jeffrey Goldberg saga, continuing (expect more postings soon)
=============================================

Dear Jeffrey,

I just managed to get over being dumped from your New Yorker piece after spending
a good deal of time with you at my office at the Begin Center and on the phone (and after waiting a long time between your first approach to me and then finally sitting down to talk) and now your NYTimes op-ed.

You had me fooled, I'll admit. I took you for a serious, open-minded individual,
knowledgeable of the circumstances, the instricacies and at times, the covoluted narratives of Israeli officialdom, Arabs, and the Jewish revenants who reside in portions of the historic land of Israel not yet under sovereign Jewish rule. But reading carefully through you two last products, I'm stumped.I presumed that I did not make it into your New Yorker opus because I was not extremist enough or, to be self-conglaturatory, that I was too cogent, rational and logical and had a good enough answer for every question you raised. I was under the impression that you were objective and wanted to tell the story as it is, a simplistic but very fundamental journalistic credo, one they teach or sort of mention in passing in
Journalism 101.

Of all the figures you included there, I was chagrined that I didn't even merit a small two sentence paragraph. After all, I've been in Yesha, in my community of Shiloh, since 1981, managing to participate in the first settling attempt at Sebastia in 1975 and serving as part of the English-language information & PR team of Gush Emunim for three decades.

I was even at the Yesha delegation that shadowed Yitzhak Shamir at the 1991 Madrid
Conference and during 1983-1988, served as editor of Counterpoint, the Gush Emunim
periodical, was founding editor of The Yesha Report in 1990 and sat on the Yesha Council and the Nekuda editorial board. As a second-echelon person, I think my opnions could have counted for some literary value.Then comes your latest in this week's New York Times.

If you go to my blog web site, - www.myrightword.blogspot.com - you'll see that I wrote these comments, pithy and concise(with a few newly added notes):-

a) Why dateline "Ofra"? Nothing in the story relates to Ofra. Why not Jerusalem?(I now know you were at Amona. But if so, why dateline it Ofra?)

b) Okay, we have a Kachnik, one. Does that reflect on 250,000 other Jews?
c) The last political assassin was not a "settler". Why emphasize the "settlers" in this if the issue is the future assassination of Sharon?

d) If Dichter believes 200 potentials are out there, and he believes in administrative detention (=A.D.), how come no one is in A.D.? After all, they put Noam Federman in (and had to release him as, we suppose, they had no real proof), why not Haim, Yankel or even Mrs. Ayelet?

e) He misquotes Rav Neventzahl.(the Rabbi said that while he cannot erase the Halachic principle from our books, it should not be part of "hashkafa" - sort of philosophical outlook).

f) Meir Kahane was assassinated by a Muslim fanatacist - according to Goldberg's logic, should we start then assassinating muslim fanaticists (or are we already doing that and now Goldberg says its okay)?

g) Wilder claims he didn't exactly quote him in proper context.(I spoke with him yesterday)

h) Sharon himself could be doing a lot more to prevent, heavens forbid, his future assassination if he acted at least within democratic parameters, no? Wouldn't a liberal like Goldberg support that position?(could it be that this is a form of "liberal projection"? That the liberals are set on uprooting people from their homes and so need a counter-criminality from the Right?).

In addition, the spokeswoman of Ofra, Ruchie Avital, wrote this:

Although Jeffrey Goldberg datelined his article, "Protect Sharon From the Right," Ofra, West Bank, nowhere in the article is Ofra mentioned and none of the people referred to or quoted live in Ofra. I fail to understand the reason for this - did Mr. Goldberg stop off on his way and write the story on his laptop in the Ofra bus stop or local restaurant? The dateline could just have well have been Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. He seems to imply that Ofra is somehow part of the alleged threats and violence he discusses in the article, while this is not at all the case. Goldberg, I would think, has violated basic journalistic ethics in this case.

and this, too, she penned:

From the description, I had no way of understanding from the article itself where the
"outpost" Mr. Goldberg mentions is. He mentions it being "in the radical settler heartland near Nablus." Ofra is 15 minutes north of Jerusalem and 10 minutes from Ramallah - Nablus, on the otherhand, is a good 50-60 minutes to the North. Amona itself, the "outpost" Goldberg visited, is only about 8 miles north of Jerusalem,
as the crowflies, as I'm sure he could clearly see from the synagogue where the Brit was held. Being a very small country, these distances are verysignificant. Additionally, he mentions "rough trek through Arab villages to get to this hill." To reach Amona, one travels a well-paved highway to Ofra - both from north and south - a large community of about 550 families, and then drives up a paved road.

In addition, Goldberg's screed against settlers and Orthodox Jews is filled with inaccuracies and selective facts; to mention just a few: Rabin was not assassinated by a settler, the vast majority of Jews living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, including among the younger generation, do NOT support Kahane or his extremist followers, and Kahane himself was murdered by a Muslim fanatic in New York.

But the most important fact of all is that besides their strongly felt moral repugnance towards the idea of murder, political or otherwise, the Jews of Judea, Samaria and Gaza are well aware that nothing could bemore disastrous for the entire settlement movement than an attempt or even hint of an attempt to harm Ariel Sharon. Goldberg claims to have heard 14 people express a desire to murder the prime minister. I must admit, I have never heard even one.

And now back to me, Yisrael Medad:

I was contacted by Ayelet's father-in-law who claims that she denies the circumstances and narrative of her meeting with you that you included in your story. Gosh, Jeff, have we a problem with you or have you a problem with yourself?

The conflict between us Israelis and us revenants is bad enough without fabrications
and muddling interference from either clumsy ignoramuses or high-minded "save-Israel-from-itself" crusaders. Jeff, decide, are you an op-ed writer, a journalist and a media person or are you a Peace Now activist in disguise?

Please, you have your right to be either, but don't disguise your purpose in life.

Yisrael Medad