What happened to Israel's legendary ingenuity?

Whenever Israelis take over ownership of homes in east Jerusalem you can be sure that the Israel-bashing forum will have a field day. Viewers and readers of the international media will hear about alleged ugly and violent actions by Israelis toward helpless Arab inhabitants of the homes; there will be reports of household goods being damaged and carelessly cast into the street, and there will be stories of injuries to evicted children and the elderly. And of course there will be pictures and well-chosen sound bites.

No matter how justified the new owners of the homes may be, there is no way that they can take possession of their property without creating an ungodly scene and causing significant damage to Israel's international image.

Donald Macintyre, writing in The Independent, has written about the al-Kurd family from Sheikh Jarrah and their recent encounter with a group of Israelis who have apparently established their legal ownership of the al-Kurd home. Macintyre provides his readers with the whole nine yards, straight from the mouth of Mrs. al-Kurd, including her colorful description of violent, vulgar Israeli owners abusing her family, doors being smashed, a television set shattered, a refrigerator, cushions and household furniture thrown out into the rain, and a tear-jerking account of Israeli barbarism.

Macintyre even embellishes his story with the unrelated account of a distant al-Kurd family member who died from unspecified causes after a similar encounter last August. I don't know how accurate Macintyre's story is, but one thing is sure. There are two sides to it and he is only telling one.

Here's the other side. If the new Israeli owners have a court order establishing their ownership, and if the courts have ordered the eviction of the al-Kurd family, and if the family has not successfully contested the eviction order in court and has refused to vacate the property, then the Israeli owners are within their rights.

But from the perspective of Israel's national interests, is this the smart thing to do right now? There is a popular saying in Hebrew, "better to be smart than right."

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Israel is losing the war - A year of Point/Counterpoint

After a year of scouring the international English-language press and responding in this column to published commentary about Israel, my conclusion is this: Israel is losing too many battles in the press, and is in danger of losing the war.

For the past year, I have responded on this blog to opinions published in Britain, Canada, Ireland, The United States and Australia regarding Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, calls for the United States and the European Union to isolate Israel, criticism of Israel's record of human rights and civil liberties, the Israel-Palestinians peace negotiations, and of course the United Nations Human Rights Council and the Goldstone Report.

While I occasionally agreed with some of the criticism, much of my response was devoted to the disproportionate condemnation and singling out of Israel which seems to characterize much of the media coverage of Israel today. Without a doubt, criticism of Israel would be substantially more effective if it didn't appear so overwhelmingly biased, hyperbolic and even hypocritical.

But in all opinion pieces published in the print media, the topic that has of late commanded the most attention by far has been the calls for war crime tribunals against Israeli leaders and military officers. These calls have particular shock value because of the picture they conjure up in the reader's mind of the Nuremberg war tribunals, thus tacitly equating the victims of the alleged crimes to the most vicious war criminals in recent history.

This is media warfare, and this is the field in which Israel has performed so poorly.

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A letter to Richard Goldstone

Counterpoint to:

Justice in Gaza
For the equal application of international justice, the perpetrators of serious violations [in Gaza]  must be held to account."
Richard Goldstone
The New York Times
September 17, 2009

Dear Dr. Goldstone,
You have just published one of the most damning condemnations of Israel in the country's modern history. Apart from accusing Israel of war crimes, severe human rights violations, and possibly crimes against humanity, you have shown contempt for Israel's widely respected judicial system (respected even by Israel's Arab neighbors) as well as for the level of freedom and civil liberties enjoyed by its citizens.

Please be aware, Dr. Goldstone, that few in Israel will argue, least of all I, that there is much to criticize in Israel. Israel has never claimed to be a perfect society (which society is?), and in fact, nowhere is there more criticism of Israel than within Israel itself.  Self-criticism has been defined here as a national pastime.
 
The commission of inquiry that you led was established by the United Nations Human Rights Council, an organization described in The London Times as "an international body utterly lacking in credibility or balance" and whose actions were unsupported by the European Union, Canada, Japan, and Switzerland. So we thought we knew what to expect from your investigation.

It was therefore quite interesting to read in The New York Times your explanation of the proceedings that led you to produce and publish such a report.

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History didn't start with Netanyahu's government

Counterpoint to:

The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything  
The heart of the [Israel-Palestinian conflict] is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel."
Hussein Agha and Robert Malley
The New York Times
August 11, 2009

In the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, history stops while the previous day's events are erased, and the day is then relived in a different way. I was reminded of this movie while reading the Hussein Agha and Robert Malley opinion piece in The New York Times.

For them, it would appear, history stopped at the end of March and the events of previous Israeli governments were erased. History was then restarted in April with Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister.

Here is Agha and Malley's version of the policies of Israel's governments:

Mr. Netanyahu conceded the principle of a Palestinian state, but then described it in a way that stripped it of meaningful sovereignty. In essence, and with minor modifications, his position recalled that of Israeli leaders who preceded him."

But much more than "minor modifications" separate Netanyahu's official position from those of Barak, Sharon and Olmert, the Israeli leaders who preceded him.

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Richard Goldstone's phony Gaza inquiry

Counterpoint to:

Stretching the Reach of the Law
The prosecution of crimes against humanity is not an exercise in partisan score-settling. It is an assertion of the core values of civilized society. ...The elements are in place for a more just and peaceful future."
Richard Goldstone
The New York Times
June 1, 2009

In August 2002, the United States Congress passed a law airily referred to as The Hague Invasion Act. It ostensibly permits the US president to send troops into The Hague in The Netherlands to rescue any US officials or military personnel being held there for prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC). This is not just a remnant of the Bush era; the law, officially named the American Service-Members' Protection Act, was broadly supported in Congress by both Republicans and Democrats.
 
South African jurist and fervent ICC supporter, Richard Goldstone, writing in the New York Times, states that the ICC is "the world's first permanent court to investigate and try individuals accused of committing genocide war crimes, and crimes against humanity," but that is not entirely accurate. Most of the world, including such key countries as India, Russia, China, and of course the United States, has not accepted the court's jurisdiction, and neither has Israel.

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Turbulence ahead for Washington & Jerusalem

Counterpoint to:

Baker's Ghost in Cairo
"It was in the time of the former secretary of state [James Baker], two decades ago, that the United States last had a balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Roger Cohen
The New York Times
June 3, 2009

Here's a question for you. Who was the previous prime minister of Israel? Before Binyamin Netanyahu. Many, including New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, will tell you that it was Itzhak Shamir. There was no Itzhak Rabin, no Ehud Barak, no Ariel Sharon, and no Ehud Olmert governments. They never happened.
 
At least that is the impression you will get from reading Cohen's latest opinion column, and those of many others in the world media who are preparing public opinion for President Obama's speech to the Muslim world in Cairo on Thursday.

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How Israel lost a friend

Counterpoint to:

The Limits of Force in the Middle East
"Between the late 1970s and 1990s, I was one of those foreigners who progressively fell out of love with Israel."
Max Hastings, former editor of The Daily Telegraph
University of Oxford Lecture

On May 7, Sir Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, went to Oxford University to tell his story of Israel and how he fell out of love with the country and its people.

During more than fifty years, it has been my experience that most of those who fell in love with Israel ultimately fell out of love with the Jewish state.  Among Israel's friends and foes, I have seen admiration and respect for Israel survive the test of time, and occasionally among its friends even affection, but not love.

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Lawfare and media warfare

Counterpoint to:

A step toward ending Israel's impunity

The appointment of Richard Goldstone to head a United Nations fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip represents an important first step toward ending Israel's impunity from international law.

George Bisharat
The Baltimore Sun
April 16, 2009

In 1999, two Chinese military officers, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, wrote a book entitled Unrestricted Warfare. In it, the two authors propose tactics that, in the event of a high-tech war, would compensate developing countries, in particular China, for their military inferiority to the United States.

The authors view the 1991 Gulf War, with all its complex political alliances, battle technology, and global media coverage, as a pivotal point in warfare that has fostered new principles and battlefields unfamiliar to today's professional military people. Among these new battlefields the authors list media warfare (manipulating what people see and hear) and international law warfare (using the law as a weapon - later dubbed 'lawfare').

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The response 'The Guardian' wouldn't print

Over the past few days, The Guardian has been publishing a torrent of reports, opinion pieces, and video clips condemning Israel for war crimes during the Gaza conflict, and calling for an international inquiry and intervention by the International Criminal Court.
 
These articles have produced hundreds (and probably thousands) of responses on the paper's Web site, "Comment is Free" (CiF), many of which have depicted Israel as a country inhabited by monsters.
 
While heavily criticizing Israel's actions in Gaza, the paper has been selective in its willingness to publish responses from supporters of Israel criticizing the Guardian's extreme lack of balance and proportion. One of the more detailed responses, from a reader named "TheVoiceOfIsrael," which was removed from the CiF site by the Guardian's moderators, is on my desk.

I am providing it here because I can find no justifiable reason why the editors of any respectable newspaper would remove it, and because the counter-arguments are well presented.

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A history of Israel in ten minutes

Counterpoint to:

My play is not anti-Semitic
"I find it extraordinary that, because my play talks about the killing of children in Gaza, I am accused of reviving the medieval blood libel that Jews killed Christian children and consumed their blood."

Caryl Churchill
The Independent (London)
February 21, 2009

Consider the movie Gone with the Wind, the American civil war saga, or Lawrence of Arabia, about the legendary British officer who led the Arab revolt against the Turks. They may be great movies, but they are long - more than three hours. Some people don't have the patience or the desire to sit through hours of storytelling. 

Such was my old friend, Dr. Yossi Shiftan, who had a magnificent video library that contained many of the great classics, several of which were only about ten minutes long. Yossi could show you his edited version of High Noon with just the gunfight so you wouldn't have to watch Garry Cooper and Grace Kelly arguing over whether they should get out of town. In his shortened version of Gone with the Wind you could watch Atlanta burn to the ground without having to follow the events that led to the destruction of the city.

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