To your question, Quentin
Quentin Tarantino arrived in Tel Aviv last month for the glorious premiere of Inglorious Basterds. "I am here to find out how the Jewish people might feel when they see my new film," he was quoted saying. Well, Quentin, without further ado, to your question. (Or: this is what a Jew might feel when she sees your film.) Of Inglorious Basterds. Were Richard Goldstone (of the UN Human Rights Council) to walk out of your movie, just a few days after releasing his bashing report against the Jewish State, he'd probably be saying to his wife, "See darlin', Quentin is as right as I was. These Jews are all about 'eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.'" Only while Goldstone has accused the Jewish state of purposely targeting the Gaza civilians during Operation Cast Lead, you, Quentin, have been slightly less imaginative, and contemplated a Jewish-American commando targeting the Nazis. Indeed, your ability to fathom and bring to life a concept as profound as Inglorious Basterds suggests that your decade's research of the Jewish psyche does deserve some serious acclaim. For, in a two-worded, typoed nick-for-a-nation, you have plunged a finger into one of our nation's deepest, bloodiest wounds. Is Obama ready to speak his mind?
President Obama's address at the United Nations on 23 September gave some indication that he would soon be releasing his own plan for achieving the creation of a new Arab state between Israel and Jordan - the so called "two-state solution" - that has avoided the best efforts of previous American presidents for the last sixteen years. In his carefully crafted address he made the following statement:
No doubt Obama had hoped that his fruitless trilateral meeting with Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu the previous day would have enabled him to tell the United Nations that negotiations were soon to resume. That was not to be. To compound his irrational stance, Abbas has now insisted that he would not enter into any negotiations unless their end result would be the withdrawal by Israel from every inch of territory occupied by it since the Six Day War in 1967. [Wafa Palestine News Agency 22 September 2009]. Netanyahu - and previous Israeli governments - have made it clear Israel would not be obliging Abbas in this demand. President Obama appears to have supported Netanyahu on this issue by pointedly not calling for an Israeli return to the territorial position that existed at 4 June 1967 - but merely an end to the occupation that began in 1967. Obama's insistence that Israel be recognised as a Jewish state also is completely at odds with Abbas' long standing refusal to accept such a proposal. Given the above, it is extremely unlikely that Abbas is politically strong enough to get off his high horse, lose face and resume negotiations with Israel without preconditions. Hamas - and Fatah, his own faction - will ensure this does not happen. His preferred course will be to employ the tactics of the past and engage in rhetoric accusing the Israel lobby of controlling Obama and Congress and totally ignoring the victims of the conflict and their ongoing suffering. Goldstone, Rwanda, Hamas, Iran and incitement to genocide
I can prove the phoniness of Judge Goldstone's claim in The Jerusalem Post that had the Government of Israel submitted its case to his Commission, the latter could have been encouraged to move in a new direction, "beneficial to Israeli interests." The implication of Goldstone's statement is that Israel, not the Commission, is responsible for the latter's errors of omission and commission. I personally submitted a nine-page, annotated and referenced brief to the Commission last July. Goldstone's claim that the Commission was driven by the evidence is refuted by the fact that the Mission ignored my brief and its attached evidence. Subsequently, I have published additional evidence showing that the high male-female ratio of fatalities among Palestinians in Gaza argues for the combatant status of many whom human rights organizations classified as non-combatants, and supports other investigations making the same point. The punch lines of my brief were:
In support of the above points, I submitted Elena Bonner's eloquent statement on behalf of Gilad Schalit, data on Israel providing ever more medical permits to Gazans during a period of increasing rocket attacks, and documentation of Hamas' and Iran's incitement to genocide using the dehumanizing metaphors of Mein-Kampf type hate language. Iran, as is well known, is a supplier, enabler, instructor and enabler of Hamas, and its government is now the world's epicenter for incitement to genocide. The Goldstone Commission ignored all the above. In short, the Commission was not driven by the evidence, but by its preset agenda and rigged mandate. Gaza, Goldstone and Gallstones
There is no doubt that the Goldstone Commission Report will have political ramifications for Israel, but very little legal effect. From a legal perspective Israel is not subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, nor do the provisions of the Geneva Convention apply to Gaza since it is not part of the territory of any state signatory - called a "High Contracting Party" - to the Convention. Under international law, Gaza is still a "no-man's land" where sovereignty is yet to be decided. It should be remembered that officially, Israel only evacuated Gaza in 2005. It has not ceded any claim to Gaza or parts of Gaza under the rights conferred on the Jewish people pursuant to the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in any part of that territory. Israel had the inherent right of self defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter if an armed attack was made on it. It absorbed 7000 rocket and mortar attacks after evacuating Gaza before undertaking the invasion of Gaza last December. Such indiscriminate attacks on civilian population centers would not have been endured for such a lengthy period by any other member of the United Nations. There may well be some rotten eggs in Israel's basket. War is a great dehumaniser and soldiers can act in inhuman ways under the stress of war - they can be trigger-happy, especially when the enemy they're confronting does not wear uniforms and hides among the civilian population. Israel has and is still continuing its ongoing investigations into the invasion of Gaza and will no doubt bring to justice those whose conduct is found to be unacceptable. The Goldstone Commission's dismissal of these investigations as "pusillanimous" is backed by not a scintilla of evidence. However, as part of an ongoing campaign by the 56 members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to delegitimize Israel, the Report will be extensively used and quoted to beat Israel over the head in a multitude of UN forums and in the General Assembly. The Report will be used to support new calls for: (i) Economic and political boycotts of Israel (ii) Disinvestment in Israel (iii) Outlawing Israel as a pariah state in the international community The singlehood effect
If you want to understand why you behave the way you do, take an hour to read "Is Happiness Catching?" (NYTimes, Sept. 10, 2009). Christakis and Fowler, two Harvard-based social scientists, have found that much of our social behavior (including obesity, smoking and even happiness) is essentially contagious. In other words, if your friend has recently gained weight to the point of obesity, you are more likely to legitimize your eating more when you're around him, and gain excessive weight yourself. This is true not just if your friend gained weight, but also if a person who's three-degrees removed from you has. So if your friend's brother's girlfriend quit smoking, you may well be induced to quit smoking, since social behavior spreads in clusters. These researchers also found that people are more likely to compare themselves with their friends, rather than with their spouses. So if your best friend quit smoking, you're more likely to quit smoking too, than, say, if your wife did. Finally, we compare ourselves with same-sex friends, more than we do with the opposite sex. Essentially, if my girl friend lost weight, I'd be more likely to lose weight than if my guy friend trimmed down. There's much more in this insightful article, and probably a ton more in these scientists' upcoming book, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. But let's take just a few of these principles and apply them to our Tel Aviv social network. Specifically, what has boggled my mind since I moved to Tel Aviv a couple of weeks ago is the question: To What Extent Am I Affected by My Friends' Singlehood? America's contribution to a Middle East nuclear arms race
President Obama's long-promised plan for peace in the Middle East is due in October. The only question is: how is pursuing the mirage of a distant and unlikely peace between Israel and the Palestinians more pressing than the Iran's nuclear program, and the likelihood of a Middle East nuclear arms race should the Islamic Republic get the bomb?
As if Iran was only Israel's problem, and Israel was driving US policy. What of the "existential threat" to American interests in the Gulf, the need to protect the Sunni Arab oil producers threatened by Iran, or those US forces based in Iraq and Afghanistan that the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen said would be vulnerable should the US attack Iran? It appears that US policy, from Bush to Obama, is: If an attack has to be, let Israel do it - and let Israel suffer the consequences. But if Israel doesn't bite; if the US is forced to accept responsibility and take action, then make Israel the excuse for that action, and for whatever follows. This would not be the first time US presidents have attempted to shift the blame to Israel for an American adventure gone awry. The Reagan administration tried to make the world believe Israel was somehow responsible for the "Irangate" debacle (in fact, Reagan requested that Israel, the Saudis and the Gulf Emirates assist that US misadventure). And when the war in Iraq began to appear endless, White House aides tried to shift blame to Israel - even though Israel had in fact warned Bush not to invade. In other words, Obama is falling back on that tried and failed Bush policy: tough talk backed up by... tough talk. Madonna in Israel: Why it matters
Buckle your seat belts, it's time to put the events of the last 48
hours into perspective. In case you've been living under a rock or in
Yerucham, you know that Madonna's in Israel and performed two
much-ballyhooed shows in Tel Aviv. (I'm just teasing, people living
under rocks.) She met with Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, she dominated
social media sites, and caused a rabbi in Tzfat to urge her to dress
appropriately. After all the hype, scrambling for tickets, and rumors
about certain FOM [friends of Madonna] showing up, here's a complete
wrap-up of what went down and why this is actually a big deal in the
Middle East. Battling swine flu with... a shofar? Stephen Colbert responds
When I first began to see the reports, I instinctively cringed. Now, I'm not a kabbalist and I certainly don't know any kabbalistic prayers, but I've never heard of a prayer for a specific disease. And if there was a prayer that could rid a country of a disease, I'm not sure that I'd first go after the Swine Flu. (Anyone heard of cancer? Heart disease?) I've also never heard of blowing a trumpet or shofar to ward off H1N1 - but who knows? I could be wrong. "The purpose of the flight was to stop the epidemic," Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri told local media. "We are certain that because of our prayers, the epidemic is already behind us." Calling all cars
There's a saying in the Israeli police force that goes something like this; "good things happen to the police only when bad things happen to the country." A recent upsurge in violent crime, including the barbaric murder of a 59-year-old man enjoying a night out on the beach with his family, has once again brought the Israeli police force under scrutiny. The police rightly feel that they are the unwanted stepchild of the security apparatus, under-funded and under-manned. Studies indicate that Israel has a lower ratio of police officers to the population than most western countries. Israel relies on over 70,000 volunteers as a way to beef up its ability to fight crime and assist in the war on terror. As one of those volunteers, I am acutely aware of the lack of manpower. In terms of resources, it's hard to forget the time I was on patrol with a veteran officer and our patrol car wouldn't start. We radioed the station and requested cables so we could try to jump-start the car, but our request was denied because the police station in Modi'in had no jumper cables. Is Israel responsible for Palestinian misery?
At Camp David in 2000, Yasser Arafat rejected Israel's offer to return to the 1967 pre-war borders with minor land swaps, East Jerusalem as Palestinian capital, the return of refugees to unite Israeli Arab families, and compensation for Arab refugees settling outside of Israel. Seven years later, Mahmoud Abbas is reported to have turned down a better offer, and for the same reason: the demand that Israel absorb "all refugees and their descendents." Do the Palestinians want independence and sovereignty? Put differently and more to the point, are their leaders willing to share what was previously Mandatory Palestine with an independent Jewish state? In 1947, the Palestinian leadership turned down any division of the land leading to Jewish independence. The result was what they now describe as the nakba, the loss not only of the opportunity for their own state, but also the creation of the Palestinian Diaspora and their 60+ year-long refugee problem. Fifty years later, in 1998, Yasser Arafat turned down Netanyahu and Clinton at the Wye River summit, and two years after that refused Ehud Barak and Clinton at Camp David, turning down concessions many believe to be maximum Israel can offer if it is to survive as an independent state. |
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