Israel's Future

(http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/17943)

Topics covered:

The unpredictable future of Israeli politics... Can Netanyahu dance at two weddings?... Is it possible to negotiate with a fractured Palestinian government?... What’s Obama going to do?... Debating the difficulty of dismantling Israeli settlements... David says Arab leaders could settle the whole thing today...

Problems Without Solutions

(http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/17080)

Topics covered:

Is Israel achieving anything of strategic value in Gaza?... Lamenting the reflexive rhetoric of the Israel/Palestine debate... Jonah challenges the CW on the ‘06 Israel-Lebanon war... Peter says Hamas is only being strengthened... Jonah’s advice to newspapers: Head back to the 19th century!... Will great investigative reporting become extinct?...

American Politicians Continue Unquestioning Backing Of Israel

Glenn Greenwald continues his biting criticism:

World concern over, and opposition to, the Israeli war in Gaza is rapidly mounting:

International pressure intensified sharply on Israel on Thursday, the 13th day of its Gaza assault, after the United Nations suspended food aid deliveries, the International Committee of the Red Cross accused the Israelis of knowingly blocking assistance to the injured, and a top Vatican official defended comments in which he compared Gaza to a concentration camp.

The Israelis have deliberately made it impossible to know the full extent of the carnage and humanitarian disasters because they continue to prevent journalists from entering Gaza even in the face of a now week-old Israeli Supreme Court order compelling them to do so. According to Palestinian sources, there are now 700 dead Palestinians -- at least 200 of them children -- and well over 1,000 wounded. Those numbers are not seriously doubted by anyone. By comparison, a total of 10 Israelis have died -- 10 -- almost all of them by "friendly fire." The unusually worded Red Cross condemnation of Israel was prompted by its discovery, after finally being allowed into Gaza, of starving Palestinian children laying next to corpses, with ambulances blocked for days by the IDF. Even with the relative "restraint" Israel is exercising (the damage it could cause is obviously much greater), this is not so much of a war as it is a completely one-sided massacre.

Continue reading.

Increasingly, it seems as though the tide of American public opinion really is beginning to turn on this issue. But it's hard for it not to when the Israelis are reacting with such disproportionate deadly force minus any clear and realistically attainable military objective.

There's no question both sides are partially to blame, but we're not arming both sides. It's time to seriously debate whether we ought to be arming either.

No one's hands are clean

Every day dozens more die from Israeli bombs and shells. Every day images of death, destruction, and desolation are released from Gaza. Every day young boys recently orphaned by the Israeli campaign begin to identify with the adulterate version of Islam offered by Hamas. Every day Israel reasserts it's right to exist and it's right to defend itself from terrorist attacks.

Every day I toil with the idea of writing a diatribe on the Gaza attacks; every day I find myself with so much that I want to say and a complete loss on how to say it. The disproportionate response of the attacks; Israel's right to self-defense; Palestinians as pawns; the role of the United States; is a long-term truce a reality given that both sides refuse to acknowledge the other's right to exist? All of these topics bounce around in my head. The problem isn't writer's block; it's the fact that there is no concise and simple way to discuss the tragedy and hypocrisy on both sides. If I criticize Israel, I'm an anti-Semite - never mind that Arabs are Semites too. If I criticize Hamas, I'm an Islamophobe - never mind that they are a militant political movement not the spokespersons for the religion or even a sect of Islam.

My dilemma is the quintessence of the mutually exclusive views of the parties involved. It's almost a binary operator; you are either a 1 or a 0. The Western media gives us only two options: Pro-Israel or Anti-Israel. Hamas believes Israel has no right to exist; Israel refuses to give a two-state system any legitimate consideration. Pointing out the Israelis are using disproportionate force and violating international law by killing noncombatants is unacceptable unless you are willing to be loathed by most of America as a "Terrorist lover." Concomitantly, pointing out that the civilian deaths are largely unavoidable given the dense population and the willingness of Hamas to let Palestinians die for their "higher cause" will lead to being called inhumane, cold, and a typical ignorant American. It goes on and on ad nauseam.

The fundamental problem is that it's not cut and dry. Hamas is equally to blame for all of the deaths in Gaza. Israel is equally to blame for the damage and deaths caused by the rocket fire. The Arab nations are guilty of intentionally ignoring the Palestinian plight in Gaza; they have used the Palestinians as political pawns since the dawn of modern Israel, while at the same time proclaiming to be the protectorate of a persecuted population. The Jewish lobbyists are to blame for continually allowing Israel to over-react with absolutely no accountability or pressure to reform. America is to blame because we sell Israel their toys of death in a continuance of our Cold War strategy and then shake our finger when they use them to kill civilians. The ulema is to blame for fomenting religious and ethnic hatred towards Israel within the umma instead of finding legal precedent for condemning the bastardized Islam promoted by Hamas.

It's time to stop acting like there is a right and wrong side. Scores of people are dying daily. Most of the dead are innocent children. It's time to admit that unless we are willing to compromise and forego meaningless ideological and polemical suppositions, until we are willing to concede that neither Israel's nor Hamas' military responses are justified, will there ever be the slimmest hope of peace in the Holy Land. Until the world is willing to admonish both sides and hold steadfast in its opposition, the possibility of peace will only continue to erode until either the Palestinians or Israelis are wiped off the map.

Update: Commentary from CNN by Arsalan Iftikhar calling out both sides

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict In American Public Discourse

Glenn Greenwald writes:

Opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute are so entrenched that any single outbreak of violence is automatically evaluated through a pre-existing lens, shaped by one's typically immovable beliefs about which side bears most of the blame for the conflict generally or "who started it." Still, any minimally decent human being -- even those who view the world through the most blindingly pro-Israeli lens possible, the ones who justify anything and everything Israel does, and who discuss these events with a bottomless emphasis on the primitive (though dangerous) rockets lobbed by Hamas into Southern Israel but without even mentioning the ongoing four-decades brutal occupation or the recent, grotesquely inhumane blockade of Gaza -- would find the slaughter of scores of innocent Palestinians to be a horrible and deeply lamentable event.

But not The New Republic's Marty Peretz. Here is his uniquely despicable view of the events of the last couple of days:

So at 11:30 on Saturday morning, according to both the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz, as well as the New York Times, 50 fighter jets and attack helicopters demolished some 40 to 50 sites in just about three minutes, maybe five. Message: do not fuck with the Jews.

"Do not fuck with the Jews." And what of the several hundred Palestinian dead -- including numerous children -- and many hundreds more seriously wounded?

Continue reading.

Egypt's Fate After Hosni Mubarek

Thomas P.M. Barnett writes:

Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarek's "emergency rule" is deep into its third decade, with modernizing son Gamal teed up as the pharaoh-in-waiting. While Gamal's efforts to open up Egypt's state-heavy economy have progressed nicely the past few years, so has Mubarek the Elder's repression of all political opponents, yielding the Arab world's most ardent impression of the Chinese model of development.

But with the global recession now reaching down deeply into emerging markets, serious cracks emerge in the Mubarek regime's facade. Unemployment is - unofficially - somewhere north of 30 percent. Worse, it's highly concentrated among youth, whose demographic bulge currently generates 800,000 new job seekers every year.

Ask young Egyptian men, as I did repeatedly on a trip, what their biggest worry is, and they'll tell you it's the inability to find a job that earns enough to enable marriage - a terrible sign in a society becoming more religiously conservative.

Continue reading.

Are the trumpets sounding?

I can't figure out if a battle over chickpea mush - tasty mush, don't get me wrong - is a sign that things are getting worse or better in the Middle East.

Better: They are less concerned about Hezbollah, bombing each other, or Israeli troops in Lebanon. Bickering over a regional dish is an augury of hope for peace in the Middle East. The final barrier to reconciliation, right?

Worse: Not only are they willing to fight over land, religion, and ethnic differences, now it's getting down to who owns the cuisine. Even the food they eat has to be Israeli or Arab. Oy.