More Disputed Territories

No, I don't mean 'more on the disputed territories', the territories of Judea and Samaria that Israel administers.

No, I mean this:

UN to launch report on Iraq's disputed territories to avert clashes

The United Nations will hand to Iraq on Wednesday a report on disputed territories, including Kirkuk, that it hopes will avert war between Kurds and the Arab-led government in Baghdad, western officials said.

...Ending tensions in the north is also seen as crucial to lasting peace in Iraq, where many fear that six years of bloodshed between once dominant Sunni and majority Shi'ite Muslims could be followed by war between Arabs and Kurds.

While foreign officials speak of an auspicious moment for compromise between Kirkuk's rival ethnicities, it will be hard to unravel a conflict rooted deep in Iraqi history.

"The dispute over Kirkuk is connected to oil, ethnicity, identity, land -- everything," said Rakan al-Jubouri, an Arab who is deputy governor of Kirkuk province.

a. "disputed territories" and not occupied.

b. there are other deeply-rooted ethnic conflicts.

Jewish Words of Wisdom

The comedian Robert Schimmel recalls his father, who survived a Nazi death march, telling him, “If you want to live, keep moving forward.”

Source

Well, Well, Some Culture From 'Beyond-the-Green Line'

Here's one story that isn't, or shouldn't be, political:

Settler Rock Comes to The States

“We don’t get into politricks, man.” So says Shmuel Caro, the heavily bearded lead guitarist of the Israeli jam-collective Aharit Hayamim, or End of Days. It’s an unexpected statement from the front man of what’s been called the house band of the Hilltop Youth, the young radical settlers known for setting up makeshift outposts deep in the occupied territory of the West Bank.

Caro and his band are backstage at 92YTribeca, a Jewish music venue in Manhattan, preparing for a headlining set on the East Coast leg of a North American tour that had included a performance annual Jewlicious festival for Jewish college students, among other venues. While the band is associated with some of the most extreme elements of the settler movement, fellow performers and promoters say that their politics shouldn’t prevent them from appearing in mainstream Jewish venues.

“We’re here to represent the real vibe of Israel,” says keyboardist Yehuda Leuchter, before bursting into spontaneous harmony with the rest of Aharit Hayamim. Dressed in flowing shirts and large, knitted kippot, the four band members sang a reggae-inflected round of “Holy Mt. Zion.” After a minute, Yehuda announces: “That’s all we got to say, man.”

A clip:

...Chaya Hershkopf, a young Lubavitch woman from Crown Heights, says that she first saw Aharit Hayamim perform at T’Koa D, a small, unauthorized outpost 2 km from the settlement of T’Koa, itself 8 km past the Green Line. “They talk a lot about the earth and the land and how it’s ours and the importance of holding on to it,” says Chaya. “They talk about Jerusalem and keeping it ours. They’re very settlery, and that’s mostly what I like about them.”

When asked whether they considered themselves Hilltop Youth, the members of Aharit Hayamim are evasive. “If you have a beard and a big kippah, you’re on the spot,” says Leuchter. “Doesn’t matter if you’re, like, Arab…Kids all over the world have tattoos and long hair. So, in Israel, they don’t have tattoos and they don’t have earrings. They have big payis and they believe in the land and they believe in peace and they believe in music and they believe in redemption.”

...Dan Sieradski...doesn’t object to their appearances at major Jewish venues alongside American Jewish artists. “I think their views are abhorrent,” he says, “but if I don’t engage them and I don’t share a stage with them, how can I ever hope to change their minds or confront them to question their own beliefs? I don’t support cultural boycotts. I would support financial boycotts against companies doing business in the West Bank, but I wouldn’t support an artistic boycott of a band that lives in the West Bank.”...

Is This Torture? Family Abuse?

Here.

Land Dispute? Outside The Middle East?

Found here:

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- A band of Sioux whose ancestors were driven from the majestic Black Hills more than 130 years ago is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, upsetting other tribal members who say taking money for the sacred land would be legitimizing the theft.

A lawsuit filed last week asks a federal judge to release as much as $900 million in compensation and interest that eight Sioux tribes refused decades ago. The tribes insisted instead on return of the rugged land in southwestern South Dakota they lost in military battles that included Custer's Last Stand...

...The dispute dates back more than a century. In an 1868 treaty, the United States government agreed the Black Hills would be set aside for use by the Sioux. After gold was discovered there, miners and other fortune-seekers flocked to the area. That led to military battles culminating in George Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn in 1876.

When the Sioux refused to sign a new treaty giving up the Black Hills, Congress passed a law taking the land in 1877.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 upheld a lower court ruling that awarded eight Sioux tribes $106 million in compensation, the 1877 value of $17.5 million plus interest. The justices said the government had to pay for taking the tribal property.

But all the Sioux tribes have refused to take the money, insisting instead on the return of the land.

Still thinking this one out.

My very good friend and fellow-activist L. Marc Zell once wrote this:

I wanted to give you a perspective that the articulate and well-known left-wing activist David Newman saw fit to overlook. The Jews of Gush Etzion are not interlopers or trespassers; just as their counterparts all over Judea, Samaria and Gaza are not. They are the "Indians" (Native Americans) who have returned to their ancient home. They are part of the long and unending chain of Jewish "settlers" who have been part of this landscape since the time of Abraham to this very day.

and a Elias Sanbar spoke this (and here, too)in 1982:

We are also the American Indians of the Jewish settlers in Palestine.

and to mix you up, read this:

“The Inquisition only had authority over Catholics,” Bedolla said. “The Inquisition could not force anyone to become Catholic. But once you were Catholic you had to stay Catholic.” Klein said regardless of what the Inquisition had the power to do, it was administered by people who “went after anybody.”

“They went after Jews and Indians,” he said. “They thought they could out there...

I Think I Was Ignored

Among the topics addressed by Susan Chira, who was named foreign editor in January 2004, in answering reader questions recently was the Conflict in the Middle East (click here to open to a single page) and there you can this query of mine

Q. The foreign news in The New York Times is not an island unto itself. Foreign news resonates in editorials, op-eds and special profile stories in the Sunday Magazine. How do you as editor assure that the readers of the paper are not overwhelmed by the newspaper's slant? For example, Jewish communities, "settlements" in the disputed territories, are a major item of the foreign news agenda but for the past two decades and more that I can personally recall, not one op-ed by a resident of those communities, providing a different perspective, was ever published. Is not the overall foreign news presentation lacking in such a journalistic framework?

— Yisrael Medad, Shiloh, Israel

among these:

Q. Until recently I had no idea that Israel's policies were subjecting so many Palestinians to such a limited life. Foreign reporting is so skewed on this subject that I believe it is influencing and encouraging the separation between the two peoples and thus the continuation of division and war.

We 50-something's have been basically spoon-fed the Israeli propaganda our whole lives. I was totally unaware of the specifics of the situation, I operated under the assumption that Israel was the good guy promoting peace. Through my own research, I find that the situation in Gaza is ultra-oppressive, I learn about the checkpoints, the water rights, the divided road — how many U.S. citizens would really think that is a viable solution for peaceful relations?

Many of your readership has no special relationship with Israel, we've never given it much thought. So you have two types of readers — the people protecting everything about the policies and the people who are semi-interested in world affairs. Both people need the hard and true facts in order to be informed and in order for policies to evolve which would benefit peace and the long term security of Israel. I believe few people realize that Israel is actually illegally occupying much of the Palestinian land preventing movement, development and the general feeling of respect, hope and well being.

Won't you please address the bias and begin to let the path of the situation be paved with truth in reporting for the good of all.

—Joellen Aviza

Q. What steps do you take to ensure The Times presents a balanced view of the Israel-Arab conflict?

— Benji Gabler, Kochav HaShachar, Israel

Q. Is there covert agreement among editors to never or rarely mention Israel's nuclear arsenal? Iran seems to be doing what the U.S., the Soviet Union, France, Pakistan, and India did, namely to acquire nuclear weapons as soon as a potential adversary has them. Israel introduced them into the Middle East and thereby kicked off proliferation in that region. Western measures to stop that aim at putting pressure on Iran to prevent it from doing what Israel and others did. The problem, however, is systemic, not idiosyncratic to one nation. Discussion of a systemic solution, striving for a nuclear-free region and involving the nuclear disarmament of Israel, seems to be off limits for The Times and other media.

— Sepp Meier

Q. Why has The Times mostly failed to follow up on the withdrawal of Charles Freeman's appointment to the national intelligence board, and the continued hammerlock of AIPAC, and some other influential private citizens, on balanced coverage of the Israel/Palestine Gordian Knot, including the increasingly admitted implausability of a so-called "two-state solution?"

— Charlton Price

Q. Why do you not press the administration about Israel? If well informed, the American public would demand withdrawal of support, and probably demand aid to rebuild the area and promote peace. Why does our press avoid the voice of reason and peace?

— Eric Stephens

Q. Why can't The Times give an honest view of the situation in Palestine? For a paper that holds itself out as the "paper of record," I find I can't trust anything pertaining to the Middle East that comes out of The Times. As an American I'm incredibly ashamed of our support for the genocide we support by sending our tax dollars, weapons and political clout to the failed state of Israel. If Israel wants to survive in the long run, they must stop this march to insane destruction of the indigenous people who lands they have and continue to steal today. Why can't The Times give Americans an honest view?

— Sarah Smith Redmond

Q. You recently ran a front-page article, “Soldiers’ Accounts of Gaza Killings Raise Furor in Israel”. The accounts discussed were all from anonymous soldiers. However, it was clear from the article the reporter did not himself speak to the anonymous sources. Rather, the accounts came from a second-hand source, the head of a military academy. Was this in keeping with The Times’ policy on anonymous sources?

— Daniel Barenholtz, Teaneck, N.J.

Q. Why hasn’t your paper insisted on an independent investigation of the massacre at Gaza — by fascist Zionists. Or won’t your Jewish handlers let you?

— Bert DeMars

and here's her reply:

A. Without a doubt, the subject of Israel and the Palestinian territories is the one that enrages the largest number of our readers -- and is probably the topic on which words, phrases and articles are chosen and scrutinized most thoroughly by reporters in the field and by editors on the desk. The question of Times coverage of this issue -- how we label the combatants, how we characterize the conflict and its history, when we use the word terrorist and when we do not, our use of photographs -- all these have been examined and addressed thoroughly by Bill Keller, the executive editor, Jill Abramson, the managing editor, and Clark Hoyt, the public editor. There is little that I can add to Bill and Jill's remarks; they reflect my assessments as well.

As an editor, I keep several principles in mind when examining articles written about the Israeli-Arab conflict. Each side's history of grievances stretches far into the past. We try, when reporting on an attack, to say as crisply as we can what cycle of events preceeded or provoked it -- thus, in Gaza, apart from Israel's attacks, we reported that Hamas had been firing rockets at Israeli civilians for years. We try to explain as fully as possible the ideological stance of our sources and the motives they may have to skew the truth. As a rule, we try to describe actions, rather than to label them. We try to pull back and assess whether we are consistently reporting from both sides of the conflict. To cite another Gaza example, we checked in periodically with Israeli victims of Hamas rockets even as we reported the rising death toll, including that of civilians, in Gaza. And we also reported that Hamas fighters deliberately positioned themselves among civilians and placed weapons in civilian and religious buildings. But fair does not mean absolutely equal. If the number of deaths is far higher on one side than the other, you are going to read more articles and see more pictures of that toll.

To address a few specific questions: we wrote a substantial front page article about the Charles Freeman controversy. If further developments occur, we will report them. And we wrote a front-page article about the increasingly shaky prospects for a two-state solution. We have mentioned Israel's nuclear arsenal when relevant, and we have no informal taboos or agreements not to do so. That's not how journalists work.

We need to assume that readers understand the divide between the editorial page and our news pages. I know that can be confusing, but journalists for the news pages do not take sides and are not influenced by the positions of the editorial page.

The accounts of soldiers describing killings in Gaza first appeared in two major Israeli newspapers, and set off a furor in Israel. The army announced a criminal investigation into these specific incidents -- the only such investigation resulting from the Gaza war. Every major Israeli news organization reported these accusations extensively.

We reported the accusations with significant and prominently displayed caveats: that the accounts were anonymous, that they were leaked to the newspapers by someone who felt the military was not taking them seriously, hinting at motive; that soldiers and reservists immediately said they did not recognize the stories being told as accurate. Some of the anecdotes involved accusations of shooting women; the article noted that Israeli soldiers had in the past been targets of women suicide bombers.

When the accusations appeared, our Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, had been in the process of interviewing soldiers on that very topic; the article included an interview he conducted with a soldier who described being given instructions to shoot and not worry about the consequences -- instructions that he described as significantly less careful about the prospect of civilian casualties than ever before in 12 years of his reserve duty. During and just after the Gaza war, senior commanders acknowledged that they were giving more aggressive instructions than they had in the Hezbollah war of 2006, where they felt they had taken such pains to avoid civilian casualties that it hampered their conduct of the war.

During the war in Gaza, The Times reported several incidents of civilian casualties. So the assertions of these soldiers was consistent with other reporting.

When Mr. Bronner learned that doubts were circulating about the soldiers' reports, we published another article; when the army investigations concluded that the specific accounts were secondhand, we reported that, too. Since the Israeli Army is not in Gaza, and cannot investigate on the ground there, its findings on what happened in Gaza — civilian death counts, alleged abuses — are not necessarily the last word. As with so many other incidents in this conflict, it is very difficult to come to a definitive conclusion.

I can assure our readers that we take all criticisms seriously, and that we strive to provide the deepest, most reflective, most thorough and most honest coverage that we can. I am very proud of our correspondents' work. It is brave and unflinching. But we do not lull ourselves into believing that just because both sides are angry at us, we are off the hook — to borrow a coinage from James Bennet, a former Jerusalem bureau chief who is now editor of The Atlantic.

And yet, again and again, we offend and outrage many of our critics, on either side. I have thought long and hard about why this is so, why we remain so far apart from a segment of our readership. I believe the source of the deep anger I encounter so frequently is the fundamental divide between advocacy and journalism.

Many of our readers judge our coverage by whether it helps or harms the cause that they believe in, whether it reflects well or badly on the side they champion. This includes many readers who try to maintain civil discourse, but are honestly troubled by what they see as bias. And it includes some whose passion will not allow shades of gray.

To some of these critics, to speak of balance is a moral dereliction, a willfull blindness to evil. Supporters of Israel believe that we fail to condemn those who seek the eradication of Israel itself and who kill and maim innocents in that quest. Supporters of the Palestinians believe that we fail to condemn an oppressive occupying power that kills and maims innocents to maintain its grip on their land. Every incident we report, every tragedy we document, is seized on by this segment of our critics as proof of one of these theses.

Our job, as we see it, is to provide the evidence from which readers can make up their own minds. I'm afraid we will never be able to satisty those who want us to come down firmly on their side.

I think, if you got this far, that you'll notice that Ms. Chira doesn't respond to my query.

Purim, Jesus and Antisemitism in the Times Literary Supplement

Here:-

Purim

Sir, – Robert Fraser’s essay concerning Sir James Frazer’s response to the misappropriation of his work by anti-Semites was an interesting sidelight on the influential scholar’s life and work (Commentary, April 10). But Fraser distorts Sir James when he summarizes the argument that the Easter story may be linked to the version of the killing of the mock king found in the Purim story and associated rituals, which included the hanging of a Haman surrogate or burning of an effigy. Fraser states that Sir James “was at pains to argue” that in the year in question (the year of Jesus’ crucifixion) Passover and Purim “happened to coincide”. Frazer makes no such argument, as reference to the abridged edition of The Golden Bough, edited by Robert Fraser, makes clear.

Frazer points out that one objection to linking the crucifixion with the death of Haman is that Purim and Passover are a month apart (Purim is celebrated on the 14th of Adar and Passover on the 14th of Nissan). Frazer offers several “considerations” to overcome the objection. One is that Christians deliberately changed the date of Christ’s death from Purim to Passover. Another is that “occasionally, for special reason, the Jews should have celebrated . . . Purim, or at least the death of Haman, at or about the time of Passover” in keeping with parallel rituals in the Saturnalia that gave the mock king “licence of thirty days before he was put to death”. But Frazer, ever the cautious writer, offers no argument in support of these suppositions; he merely is throwing out “some hints and suggestions...in the hope of stimulating and directing further inquiry”.

MARTIN GREEN
609 West 114th Street, New York, New York 10025.

Sorry, couldn't find the original article online.

History Is Slippery

A follow-up to this

Here:-

Sir, – Paul Preston’s reply (Letters, April 10) to David Roman’s criticism of the review of Preston’s book about the Spanish Civil War, We Saw Spain Die, manifests a disturbing bias.

...Preston chooses to overlook and to remain completely silent on Roman’s most serious contention – that the Republican side, at the time, was equally guilty, and perhaps more so, of perpetrating appalling atrocities (he cites the slaughter of thousands of prisoners transferred from prison in Madrid to nearby Paracuellos de Jarama, arguably the biggest atrocity during the Civil War)...

It is a pity that in this way Preston uses his authority to lend credence to the prevailing simplistic, fashionable, liberal-leftist orthodoxy, officially sanctioned by the current Spanish government, that the Republican side fought the Civil War against Fascism in defence of liberal representative democracy. The Left in Spain now seeks to exploit the memory of nationalist atrocities as part of a cynical, opportunistic campaign aimed at associating the conservative opposition with the Franco regime.

In marked contrast, objective historians, using evidence available in the Moscow archives since the collapse of the USSR, show that the threat to the Second Republic came just as much from the revolutionary Left, and increasingly as the Civil War progressed, from the Moscow-dominated Republican government itself through Stalin’s main instrument, the Spanish Communist Party...had the Republican side won, the most likely outcome would have been the establishment of an East European-style communist regime during the Soviet era, i.e., a state in which all meaningful vestiges of democracy and opposition would have been brutally eliminated at the cost of thousands of lives.

JOHN HARGREAVES
Flat 1, 23 Nightingale Lane, London SW4.

Here They Come - The Internationalists

Found here:

The International Solidarity Movement is issuing a call-out for internationals to volunteer as field activists and office workers in the West Bank, Gaza, and occupied East Jerusalem this summer...the summer campaign, which will run from June 6th until August 15th, aims to challenge the continued theft of Palestinian land for the rapid expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and their infrastructure in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank...

Below are some of the actions ISM volunteers can anticipate this summer:

1. ISM volunteers will stand in solidarity with the Palestinian families of occupied East Jerusalem who face dispossession...

2. In the West Bank, volunteers will join Palestinian villagers in nonviolent demonstrations against the Wall, and other apartheid infrastructure of the occupation such as checkpoint, settlements, and Israeli-only roads. Activists will be working in communities such as Ni’lin, Bil’in, Jayyous, Husan and Tulkarem...

3. The ISM volunteers in the Gaza Strip will continue to accompany Palestinian farmers who frequently face live fire from the army as they work their land in the buffer zone...

Settlement Talks, Settlement Negotiations

Ah, you thought I was referring to those Jewish revenant residential communities in portions of the Jewish national homeland not under Israel political sovereignty?

Naw.

This:-


Talks start on polygamous sect’s property trust

SALT LAKE CITY — Negotiations are under way in a year's long battle for control of a polygamous church property trust seized by the Utah courts in 2005 after allegations of mismanagement.

At stake are the assets of the United Effort Plan Trust, an arm of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints...

Two days of settlement negotiations began Wednesday at the state Capitol. University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell is the mediator...

...Among the issues to be resolved are how to distribute homes held in the trust, whether Hildale and Colorado City must be platted as subdivisions, how to divide undeveloped and communal properties...

...The UEP trust was founded in the 1940s on a religious principle called the Holy United Order, which calls for the sharing of assets and a communal lifestyle that benefits all who follow the tenets of the FLDS faith...The FLDS view secular management of the trust as a violation of their constitutional rights to practice their religion. They have largely ignored Wisan’s management authority, but changed course last fall when he sought court permission to sell off land set aside for a church temple. That triggered the current settlement talks.

The Washington Post Uses The "A" Word

The Obama administration and...appeasement.

Now we're going somewhere.

You Needn't Be A NYTimes Editorial Writer To Be Smart

You can be even smarter and just a writer of a letter-to-the-editor like this:

Re “More Hatred From Mr. Ahmadinejad” (editorial, April 21):

What does Israel’s handling of the Gaza war have to do with President Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic rant at the United Nations conference on racism? Mr. Ahmadinejad’s hatred of Israel has no more to do with Israel’s actions than Hitler’s opinions of Jews had to do with the behavior of German Jewry.

Iran’s president isn’t interested in discussing the subtleties of Israel’s behavior; it’s Israel’s existence that he objects to. To get drawn into a discussion of Israeli policy is to play by his rules, not ours.

President Obama was right to pull out, but I’m especially proud of Canada for having led the way months ago.

Marjorie Gann
Toronto

Important for Supporters of Arabs Who Identify as "Palestinians"

This notion of total extermination is important for yet another very precise and concrete reason: namely, Israel. The Shoah did not cause Israel to come into being. And we must do everything, truly everything, to break the insidious chain that, in linking the two, ends up imputing a providential cause to, and, whether we want it to or not, justifying the Shoah. All the same, there is another inanity heard all over, which consists of the following: "Yes, alright, it was a crime; yes, if absolutely necessary to admit, a singular crime; but as for the survivors of the tragedy, why weren't they moved to Germany? Why a national Jewish homeland in the Arab world--the only part of the world that did not take part in the crime?" And the answer remains that the world itself was a trap for Jews; there wasn't a single part of the world where the evil wind of this death didn't blow; and the Arab world did not recuse itself, any more than the rest of the world, from this plan of total extermination...

Today we have very detailed information on the matter. We have the memoirs of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem describing, relentlessly, during the entire duration of the war, his admiration for Hitler. We have the work of historians citing the existence of an Arab SS legion waiting, at the rear guard of Rommel's army, for the order to descend on the Yishuv in order to exterminate the 500,000 Jews who had already settled there. We know, in other words, that Nazism was a global ideology that manifested itself in national versions and, in particular, in an Arab version no less criminal than the European version. This changes nothing--quite the contrary--when it comes to the necessary fight for democracy in the Arab world and, in particular, in the Palestinian State to come. This is simply an argument for honesty, an argument to oppose relentlessly those who, sustained by an ignorance related to an absence of memory, try to delegitimize Israel--and who sometimes, unfortunately, succeed. Commemorating the Shoah is also a matter of honesty. It is also a fight against ignorance.

Bernard-Henri Lévy,
April 20, 2009, at Place des Nations in Geneva.

Elie Weisel Called a "Zio-Nazi"

What's a "Zio-Nazi"?

And how many times does he say it?



And who is he?

What State? Where? Why?

Shmuel Rosner sent me here:

Do the Palestinians Really Want a State?
by Robert D. Kaplan

Why landlessness may be its own source of power

The statelessness of Palestinian Arabs has been a principal feature of world politics for more than half a century. It is the signature issue of our time. The inability of Israelis and Palestinians to reach an accord of mutual recognition and land-for-peace has helped infect the globe with violence and radicalism—and has long been a bane of American foreign policy...

Obviously, part of the problem has been Israeli intransigence. Despite seeming to submit to territorial concessions, one Israeli government after another has quietly continued to bolster illegal settlements in the occupied territories...And yet this Israeli government faithfully represents the Israeli electorate, which is in utter despair over the impossibility of finding credible partners on the Palestinian side with which to negotiate...And because the Palestinians are unable to cut a deal, a majority of Israelis, as shown by the recent election results, have apparently given up any hope for peace.

But there is a deeper structural and philosophical reason why the Palestinians remain stateless—a reason more profound than the political narrative would indicate. It is best explained by associate Johns Hopkins professor Jakub Grygiel, in his brilliant essay, “The Power of Statelessness: the Withering Appeal of Governing” (Policy Review April/May 2009)...Statehood is no longer a goal, he writes. Many stateless groups “do not aspire to have a state,” for they are more capable of achieving their objectives without one. Instead of actively seeking statehood to address their weakness, as Zionist Jews did in an earlier phase of history, groups like the Palestinians now embrace their statelessness as a source of power.
...the most tempting aspect of statelessness is that it permits a people to savor the pleasures of religious zeal, extremist ideologies, and moral absolutes, without having to make the kinds of messy, mundane compromises that accompany the work of looking after a geographical space.

Grygiel raises a challenging proposition. If his theory is correct, then the Palestinians may never have a state, because at a deep psychological level, enough of them—or at least the groups that speak in their name—may not really want one. Statehood would mean openly compromising with Israel...Better the glory of victimhood, combined with the power of radical abstractions! As a stateless people, Palestinians can lob rockets into Israel, but not be wholly blamed in the eyes of the international community. Statehood would, perforce, put an end to such license.

...the U.S. should also brace itself for an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that may never end, because the Palestinians may already have what they want.

I have a question: there are Israeli Arabs between the sea and the Green Line; Palestinian Arabs between the Green Line and the river; and Jordanian Arabs from the rive to the desert. I am ignoring the more radical approach of Israeli Arabs who define themselves as Palestinian Arabs who just happen to be citizens of Israel.

Is that just - three different Arab "national groups" within a width of 50 miles? With two of them (and the third, too) demanding separate states with the Jews just maybe deserving one?

What Can Be Done

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's Opening Remarks Before the House Foreign Affairs Committee
Washington, DC, April 22, 2009

In the Middle East, we engaged immediately to help bring the parties together to once again discuss what could be done to reach a two-state solution. We’re maintaining our bedrock core commitment to Israel’s security, providing economic support, security assistance, and we are also doing what we can to bolster the Palestinian Authority, and to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Zinni Zinging It

Gen. Anthony Zinni spoke of his first-hand experience as a mediator between Israeli and Palestinian political parties at Cornell this week.

Excerpts:.

“I have never encountered a process as complicated and complex as this one,” Zinni said...[The peace process] is singularly the most important issue, if not in terms of what it might do to alleviate other problem directions, but also in terms of psychological relationships with the West”...

...“The U.S. has a vision and paths to peace, but I don’t think that everyone else has laid their cards on the table,” Zinni said...“The prospects are honestly not good, but there are glimmers of opportunity and hope. Maybe those ashes and sparks can be fanned a bit and maybe something will catch on,” Zinni said.

Okay, we all lknow that. Tell us something new.

...the United States has to change its approach towards peace efforts. Specifically, Zinni explained how envoys, summits, agreements in principle and moderators fail to take into account the complexity of the situation. For example, envoys, who are government agents sent on specific missions, are too temporary to solve a problem that needs a group of committed, full-time individuals. Summits are also typically not thoughtful or long enough to resolve the issues at hand.

...Lastly, the general suggested making a “permanent address in Jerusalem,” where political, economic and monitoring components create a series of working groups that simultaneously address specific issues. He suggested that these working groups would diffuse the “constant rhetoric and screaming” that have little to do with the actual peace process. He also suggested using both official and unofficial tracks of communication to move along compromises.

That's it?

'Judaizing' Jerusalem

Found here:

A press conference on Tuesday held in a protest tent that has been erected at the site centered around what many of the speakers decried as Israeli "ethnic cleansing" of east Jerusalem's Palestinians and "violations of international law."

"The Israeli government is carrying out an ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in east Jerusalem," said Mairead Maguire, a Nobel Peace Laureate from Ireland who told the crowd of around 50 journalists and Silwan residents that she was there to support the residents' struggle.

"If this was happening in any other country in the world, the international community would be up in arms...It's a Judaization of the area."

Ms. Maguire should know that 'Judaizing Jerusalem' is like bringing coals to Newcastel or, pardon the flip, bringing Irish Cream to Dublin or guns to Belfast.

No one is cleansing no one. There is more than enough room to build houses in Jerusalem, in areas zoned and properly approved.

The struggle should be to expand those areas into places where historical, cultural, religious and archeological elements are not harmed.

The Trouble With Polls

'80% of both peoples want two states'

But 'One Voice' poll finds Israelis, Palestinians diverge on critical points of Jerusalem, refugees.

The JPost reports.

Details:

Eighty percent of both Israelis and Palestinians support the establishment of a Palestinian state, according to a survey...commissioned by the One Voice organization...

The poll showed both peoples were strongly opposed to the notion of one bi-national state.

It also showed a will on both sides to cooperate on economic and security issues, but found that Israelis and Palestinians still disagree on Jerusalem and the holy places, the Palestinian refugee and other national issues.

77% of Israelis were against any partition of Jerusalem and both sides converged mostly in their vehement opposition to declaring it an international city. While almost all Palestinians polled cited the establishment of an independent state as their top priority, this was only 11th on the priority list with Israelis. Conversely, the security of Israeli residents was highly important with Israelis but only 12th on the Palestinians' priority list.

Polls are like a swim suit.

They show a lot but not all, and certainly not the most important parts.

Some People Eat Matzot in The Most Awesome Places

Question:

Where are these young women eating their matzot?


Answer:

Ibiza.