Gaza: Two years before the mast

The mast would be genocide and conquest, likely pre-planned, as per The Dissident, there's good reason to believe the government of Bibi Netanyahu knew at least some basics of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack in advance. It clearly was prepared in advance to invoke the Hannibal Directive.

At the same time, there's been levels of incompetence in this war. The hasbara, on things like the mass rapes claims, has been so bad it's been unofficially withdrawn. 

Read The Dissident at Substack for details on much of this.

Two things are my focus.

One is a piece of goy-written hasbara by a Clinton Tankersley on Ed Buckner's Substack. (I have since blocked Tankersley and unsubscribed from Buckner, in part because this is not secular humanism, beyond the support for genocide, beyond the lies and other things. It's a narrow, non-humanist worldview. Tankersley may well be an atheist, but he's a politically at least fairly conservative one, and he's not a secular humanist, and this is why I call myself one.) 

Tankersley repeats the lies about the mass rapes, about anti-Israel media, and more. Here's the reality of how the US media has propagated these lies, from Mondoweiss.

It ignores (Tankersley is probably ignorant of, or else in denial of) Israel engaging in ethnic cleansing even before the Nakba, and other things.

Beyond that, it's simply laughable to read Tankersley blame postmodernism and other things. And, it's high-grade ignorance, probably self-willed, to claim Salvador Dali is a postmodernist. It's why he's not a secular humanist, and if Ed willingly ran this, he's not so secular humanist as he claims, in my book. As for those rantings, I've read Derrick Bell's "Silent Covenants," a seminal book in critical racial theory.

On the matter at hand? 

My comments.

I should not and will not support genocide. Or Zionism like this in general. Or lies. Like the "mass rapes." Even Israel itself has, backhandedly, admitted these are lies. And lies they are. Read The Dissident, here on Substack. I've written about this occasionally, but he covers it in detail. Or read Mondoweiss. Or The Electronic Intifada. Or the lies of alleged anti-Israel media, even as Ellison fils has announced the leader of modern cancel culture, Bari Weiss, will run CBS News. I'll stand by Mondoweiss. And may just unsub from here. No, I'll almost certainly unsub. Ed may have some other good things, but I can't support hasbara lies. But I will share back the suggested reading of Mondoweiss as a website and the likes of Shlomo Sand and Ilan Pappe as authors.

That's the big one. Pappe? "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine." Sand? "The Invention of the Jewish People." Zionists in Israel know both, though rejecting them. Zionists in the US generally don't even know who they are.

One respondent said they'd be looking to read Pappe for rebuttals. Well, THERE you go on reading with an open mind. He also claimed this wasn't a genocide or ethnic cleansing. Well, beyond Pappe, the UN, and the International Criminal Court, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch says it is too, as does Phil Weiss of Mondoweiss. He probably claims they're self-hating Jews. And, yes, I've seen that phrase used since Oct. 7, 2023.

Ed himself had been losing me off and on, and the last piece of his own before giving Tankersley the reins pretty much completed the job outside of secular humanism broadly defined. 

The second piece, directly refuting one of Tankersley's lies? Not only has CBS/Paramount acquired Bari Weiss' Substack empire, "The Free Press," she will RUN CBS NEWS! Yeah, anti-Israel media my ass. Most the mainstream media has yet to report that the alleged mass rapes were lies. Update: Nepo Baby David Ellison also wants to buy the already wingnut New York Post. The Post's own piece about that also discusses the Free Press acquisition, noting he paid 10x over Free Press earnings. 10x over EARNINGS, not profit.

Is Hamas perfect? Absolutely not. Is it tied to Iranian influence? No shit.

Does that Iranian influence help it maintain the power it does? Absolutely. Should it let go of that, for that reason? Absolutely not.

Did Israel help, if not create, then install, Hamas in Gaza under the old "divida et impera" maxim? Absolutely.

Has the US been hypocritical on Hamas, as far as presidents of both parties, like Dear Leader? Yes. 

And, that's part of what irks me on this.

Hamas is the best option for Gazan Palestinians because Israel and the United States made it so, hoping it would be rejected. And, because it wasn't, and because Israeli apartheid made it an open-air prison, eventually something was going to "snap." 

And, Israel was ready and willing and waiting for that. 

On the Iran angle, this is not to justify Ayatollah Khamenei or the Revolutionary Guards, but why the hell would Iran trust the United States or Israel, let alone give up leverage in the Middle East, even as Turkish President Erdogan is a shit-faced liar playing one side, and half of the other, against the middle? 

Otherwise, per Open Democracy? If the Israeli man or woman in the street is worried about security, then boot Netanyahu out. 

And, otherwise? Stop lying about the mass rapes. Per the Dissident, linking to thorough refutation of that and a call for freelancers to boycott the New York Times opinion 

 

Israel doubles down again on warmongering

Israel's assassination of Ismail Haniyeh is having plenty of fallout in most circles that are not either US wingnuts or Kamala is a Zionist Cop #BlueAnon. Part of the fallout is Iraq's government again calling for the US to leave Iraq, and again being ignored, as both the left and right hands of the US imperium duopoly have done for years.  

Jeremy Scahill has much more for the Charles Kuffner #BlueAnon lackeys of the world. Ken Klippenstein chips in with a new note.

Also on Substack, Murtaza Hussain talks about the possibility of an Israel-Iran war.

Vaguely related? Michael Moore has no problem with being a genocide whisperer in general, along with no problem turd-polishing Dementia Joe's decision to stand down. Moore's long, clearly been a tribalist for the the left hand of the duopoly, but he's now reached a greater degree of fabulism than he ever showed in any of his movies, and to reverse the old cliche? That's a high bar to hurdle.

Did Bibi not take an Israeli history class in high school?

I mean, his blanket refusal to negotiate period with Hamas is, beyond being genocidal and warmongering.

It's also plain stupid.

And full of crap.

Per the rhetorical question in the header, James Dorsey gets at the details.

He mentions, as have other news and opinion outlets, Netanyahu's statement that no, Israel won't "occupy" Gaza in nine months or so (his projected date for the end of the war), won't get involved in guerilla warfare, etc.

He then mention's Bib's oft-stated plan to have some Palestinian administer Gaza after those nine months or whatever.

Really? 

What fucking planet do you live on?

Even more likely than the likelihood of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy being assassinated if he actually tried to implement the Minsk Accords (in 2019, let alone today), any Palestinian who volunteered to run Israel's toxic inferno in Gaza would be a walking dead man.

And, per the high school history class part of the rhetorical question?

It was long after he graduated high school, of course, but ...

ISRAEL FUCKING HELPED CREATE HAMAS.

I mean, as The Times of Israel reported just after Oct. 7, 2023, Bibi was involved personally with puffing up Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority. This idea has that stupidity written all over it.

But, that's not new. At the Intercept, Mehdi Hasan has the full backstory in a 2018 story:

“When I look back at the chain of events, I think we made a mistake,” David Hacham, a former Arab affairs expert in the Israeli military who was based in Gaza in the 1980s, later remarked. “But at the time, nobody thought about the possible results.”

"They never do, do they?" Hasan himself said right after that as the last sentence of the story. 

I think there's one other issue. I don't know what the Israeli Hebrew phrase is for "Irish Alzheimer's," but Bibi makes #GenocideJoe look like a piker on that.

Jamie Metzl: Disingenuous on Gaza, at a minimum

"Disingenuous" is one of those words that has a clear denotative as well as connotative meaning, and in fact, in common use, the denotative often takes the lead, with insinuations of something like earned opprobrium behind it.

So, I use it reluctantly of Metzl, the Clinton Administration National Security Council staffer who was one of the early, leading, non-conspiratorial voices on COVID discussing the possibility of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, while admitting he didn't know for sure and remained open-minded toward a purely zoonotic origin.

I was nosing around his site last week, seeing if he had updated his main post on COVID, re the Fauci investigation by the House subcommittee last week Monday, when I noticed a piece that he had entitled called "Response to Gaza Open Letter."

Here's the background:

On March 17, 2024, I received an email regarding the Gaza conflict from six of my former colleagues from when I served in the White House and State Department during the Clinton administration. The people who sent the letter are among the people I respect most in the world, and so their invitation to sign on to the open letter to President Biden they had drafted was something I took with the utmost seriousness. Upon reading the letter, however, I realized I could not sign and responded with a letter outlining my reasoning.

What follows is an originally private response to them that he made public after their letter was published.

OK, we'll look at the why.

First:

While the letter focuses on the actions of Israel, it is largely silent on the responsibilities of Hamas in deliberately fomenting this crisis.

Well, maybe it primarily is about Israel, the original letter, but not totally.

Then there's this:

Hamas leaders extolled the October 7 terrorists to commit the worst possible abuses and desecrate the dead bodies to highlight Israeli outrage and undermine Israel’s deterrence.

We know that many of those claims (maybe not all, but yes, many) by Israel are nothing more than hasbara. And Metzl either does know that or should know that himself. 

Metzl then mentions the infamous tunnels, which, IIRC, were already being discussed mid-March.

Then there's the nutgraf on how Metzl said the letter should have started:

“As former U.S. foreign policy and national security officials who served several presidential administrations, we write to express our deep concerns about the situation in Gaza. We call on Hamas to release all the hostages immediately and to surrender unconditionally and for Israel to wage its justified war to defeat Hamas with the greatest care possible. We also write to encourage your administration to continue and substantially strengthen efforts to protect civilians and promote a just and durable peace.

Zionism 101.

"Surrender, Hamas and throw yourself on the tender mercies of Bibi."

What fucking planet do you live on?

The planet where the IDF gets a pass:

Third, it would be hard for any of us to declare with certainty, as the letter does, that “military tactics employed in that response have been indiscriminate, created a humanitarian catastrophe, jeopardized the potential for further progress toward regional stability, and undermined U.S. credibility and influence in the region and around the world.”

That was bad enough as of March 18. It's godawful as of now. (Speaking of which, the letter to him looks ahead to Rafah, which Metzl ignores.)

He then goes on to reject a negotiated ceasefire because:

Doing so would hand Hamas an historic victory and, in my view, give Hamas a controlling veto on any future political arrangement. If the second, Israel has already offered a negotiated temporary cease fire in exchange for the release of some hostages.

Oh, so, despite hating Bibi, he's a full-on Zionist by that point, re the first sentence. Re the second, no, news sites generally called that a "pause." It should also be noted that his blog, and his website as a whole, do not have a search function. I'll assume, based on everything up to this point, that he simply doesn't discuss the background to Oct. 7, 2023, and surely doesn't even use the word "Nakba."

Now, to show how disingenuous Metzl is, to the point of duplicitousness? Here's Reuters' piece on the letter to him.

In its letter, the group said that an Israeli military operation against Hamas was "necessary and justified."

But Israel's operations "have been marked by repeated violations" of international law banning indiscriminate killing and the use of weapons that do not permit discrimination between combatants and civilians, the group said.

You lying sack of shit. That's hardly "largely silent," contra the first pull quote from your letter.

And, that letter explicitly mentions international law. Yours does NOT.

And, on background? The Nakba, or Israeli actions that precipitated it, actually started in 1947, before any Arab League member attacked Israel.

The background in general? Mondoweiss has it for you, Metzl.

Congrats, Metzl. You totally earned the "disingenuous," both connotatively and denotatively.

James M. Dorsey — slipping on Israel-Gaza

James Dorsey has to me been generally very good and very insightful on Middle Eastern affairs — before Oct. 7. This piece, though, shows that while he's not Genocide Joe, he's not all that in the last two months, with this, emphasis mine:

Hamas’ current notion of realpolitik falls far short of anything that would qualify it as an acceptable and credible party to the negotiation of a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I might accept "short," by itself, without the modifier "far." But, that is itself ... too far. He goes on to talk about the PLO/PA endorsing the two-state solution when liberal and leftist ex-Zionists like Peter Beinart know that Israel itself killed that long ago.

His interviewing a Brown University prof who rejects the idea that Israel is committing genocide, and two weeks-plus later, not interviewing anybody with an alternative point, is further "slippage." 

And, his "fog of war" piece of last Monday is the latest slippage. He says that after the fog lifts, among things need to be done is "determine whether Hamas has or should have a future."

He does redeem himself with:

Yet, the Israeli campaign demonstrates that brutality and disrespect for the life of the innocent other are not a Hamas preserve. 

In addition, Israel’s assertion that Hamas uses the Gazan population as human shields by utizing hospitals, schools, and mosques amounts to the pot calling the kettle black.

He does redeem himself further with notes that Israel refuses to allow Palestinian elections in East Jerusalem.

I've had Dorsey on my blogroll for, what, three years, now? Maybe more. But, he doesn't have to stay there.

More Israel-Palestine thoughts: 'Nobody's hands are clean'

Dear Leader has said "nobody's hands are clean." He didn't explicitly include his own, and like some fellow leftist types, it would be easy to scoff at him talking around an issue, as the podcast excerpt at least doesn't have him offering a solution, or even explicitly calling for a cease-fire. But, it's more than either Genocide Joe, Fatuous Fetterman, or St. Bernard of Sanders have said.

And, speaking of that sheepdogger, gotta "love" how many Berners like "Beth: An Alien" are only just now freaked out by St. Bernard of Sanders' visceral hatred of Gaza, despite him having people arrested 30 years ago for protesting the bombing of Serbia, having hated on Gaza before, and having a long history of lusting for F-35s. Also, note to David Klion, re this piece: Norman Finkelstein has the same Holocaust family heritage as Sanders.

Reality or wishful thinking? I'll take the under, so to speak on David Rothkopf's claim that Biden and Netanyahu are near a "breakup" on how genocidal Israel gets in Gaza. Rather than wishful thinking, let's call this what it is: #BlueAnon hopium. That said, Mondoweiss wonders somewhat the same.

"A Textbook Case of Genocide" at Jewish Currents, by Jewish academic Holocaust scholar Raz Segal, is BIGLY stirring the shit within the Jewish world. And, uh, no, it's not referring to Hamas as that textbook case.

Nathan J. Robinson has a good backgrounder on what led to this point. But, as I, Sabby Sabs and others know, unless his feet are held to the first nine months from now, he may still go off Democratic sheepdogging. In other words, your hands aren't clean either, Nathan, as I believe you sheepdogged in 2020. And, they won't at all be clean if you push "safe states OK, tight states sheepdogging" or something next year.

Ditto in spades for The Nation, David Klion and all others. (Since The Nation is sheepdoggers, they'll stay that way.)

You're especially a sheepdogger given that a now-suspended Israeli Cabinet minister mulled nuking Gaza. (Eliyahu is NOT "ex-cabinet".)

Meanwhile, CNN has officially agreed to be IDF's hasbara-peddler.

And, PsyPost's hands certainly aren't clean, trying to psychologically weaponize a deliberate conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

House Dems' hands certainly aren't clean, not any who wind up supporting an attempted gag order against Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a censure that since went through.

And fuck Twitter Security, which has a "thing" about the word ZioNazi, whether directed at a person or not. (It eventually allowed that, after the #ZionismIsNazism hashtag started trending.)

A few brief new Gaza-Israel notes

Credit where credit is due to Elon Musk IF he follows through on his promise. Last Saturday, Musk said he would extend Starlink connectivity to internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza. To #BlueAnon who say "But what about Crimea?" I pre-emptively say FUCK OFF.  That said, the "internationally recognized" gives Elmo all sorts of outs.

Turkish President Reçip Erdogan threatened on Sunday to send Turkish troops to Gaza to fight Israel. A mix of thoughts here, with this overall appearing to be good, bad and ugly. The good? This is in theory a "tripwire" on Israel that the US won't establish while it continues to largely write blank checks to the Israeli government. The bad? What I just said, in reality rather than theory. The ugly? If Israel doesn't respect the tripwire, Erdogan is out on some sort of limb domestically, and will do something, in all likelihood, even if not sending a bunch of ground troops. And, if any "advisors" get killed, the heat in Ankara increases. We could have a mix of a giant game of "chicken" with other games.

Reminder: Any claims you hear about Khaled Mashal or other Hamas founders being billionaires is nothing other than Israeli hasbara, which has been amplified by the "telephone" game or similar since first being pronounced.

The "global South" thinks Warmonger Joe is an even bigger hypocrite by far on this issue than on Russia-Ukraine. And, contra Mr. Dorsey, I don't think Mike Johnson as Speaker constrains Biden's options that much more than would be the case if Kevin McCarthy were still in charge.

#GenocideBibi claims that calls for a cease-fire are really calls for Israel to surrender.

Reality or wishful thinking? I'll take the under, so to speak on David Rothkopf's claim that Biden and Netanyahu are near a "breakup" on how genocidal Israel gets in Gaza. Rather than wishful thinking, let's call this what it is: #BlueAnon hopium. That said, Mondoweiss wonders somewhat the same.

"A Textbook Case of Genocide" at Jewish Currents, by Jewish academic Holocaust scholar Raz Segal, is BIGLY stirring the shit within the Jewish world. And, uh, no, it's not referring to Hamas as that textbook case.

Nathan J. Robinson has a good backgrounder on what led to this point. But, as I, Sabby Sabs and others know, unless his feet are held to the first nine months from now, he may still go off Democratic sheepdogging.

And, speaking of sheepdogging, gotta "love" how many Berners like "Beth: An Alien" are only just now freaked out by St. Bernard of Sanders' visceral hatred of Gaza, despite him having people arrested 30 years ago for protesting the bombing of Serbia, having hated on Gaza before, and having a long history of lusting for F-35s.

#Israel enters the #StarTrek phase of its war on Gaza

Israel's war with Gaza has gone beyond US drone strikes in trying to make war as "humanless" in some ways as possible.

When posting more briefly on Facebook, I started with the rhetorical line of,

Is there an app for that?

Israel said it sent text messages and phoned residents of northern Gaza — including Shijaiyah, the site of one of the war's bloodiest battles last week — urging them to flee their homes and move toward Gaza City.

What next, Eminiar VII in "A Taste of Armageddon"?

In case you don't remember that episode of the original "classic" Star Trek, it's about a centuries-old war between two planets in the same solar system.

It's lasted that long because it's waged by computers, and like super-neutron bombs, they "kill" people while not damaging property. The "kill" is in scare quotes, because people have to report to disintegration chambers to actually be killed. A couple of actual quotes will illustrate:

Anan 7: We have been at war for 500 years.
Captain James T. Kirk: You conceal it very well.

Obviously, Israel and Hamas would never reach an agreement about that. But, the text messaging is in that general direction. But, could they still be at war 450 years from now? Your guess is as good as mine.

Another quote from that Star Trek episode may illuminate:

Spock: [after hearing Anan 7 explain their system of computerized warfare] There is a certain scientific logic about it.
Anan 7: I'm glad you approve.
Spock: I do *not* approve. I *understand*. 

Exactly.

Meanwhile, will the fighting stop soon? Well, the US and EU are trying to stop it:

The United Nations on Monday called for an "immediate" cease-fire in the fighting and on Sunday, President Barack Obama called Netanyahu to push for an immediate end to the conflict.

This, though, is one of the cases where the old cliches about the word "try" are correct.

If Dear Leader were serious, he would take a page from Poppy Bush's book and freeze some of our foreign aid money to Israel.

But, as the Al-Jazeera leaks showed, his actual seriousness has been about freezing aid to Palestine and nobody else.

Can #Hamas and the #PLO really kiss and make up?

Well, they say they can, the New York Times reports, noting that they've talked about it before and failed.

Related: should they? (That of course depends in part on who's asking that question.)

That said, politics, and political enemies, make strange bedfellows.

Given that Israeli prime minster Bibi Netanyahu is in bed with people in his cabinet that make him look halfway sane, it's no wonder that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have renewed unity government talks. And, this shouldn't have surprised either Israel or the US. Things like the PA (PLO) working to get officially accepted into more United Nations-affiliate organizations should have been a sign that the PA was tired of getting the back of the hand from the US as well as Israel.

This is yet another area where Dear Leader and both his current and previous foreign policy leaders, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, have been all talk and no show, except when the show's been to give the PA the back of the hand.

I have repeatedly blogged about this, like here, based on leaks to al-Jazeera and other things, where the US continually threatened to turn the financial screws on the PA unless it kowtowed to every Israeli demand. At the same time, Obama never threatened the foreign aid funding for Israel.

Say what else one will about Poppy Bush, I'll give him credit for being the only president in the last 30 years to link foreign aid to Israel to it not building settlements on the West Bank, that is, Palestine.

Of course, I still won't hold my breath too much. The Palestinians have long been their own worst enemies. At the same time, the fact that Egypt's new secular government is overseeing negotiations between Hamas and the PA means we shouldn't expect a guaranteed failure.

On the other hand, if this does pan out, the US will now have a Netanyahu who is even more foaming at the mouth than normal. And, a Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan willing to exploit this for domestic Turkish wag the dog reasons if nothing else. And, Bibi's intransigence, silently supported in Washington, is at root.

As for the "should," in a big picture sense? I don't want it to happen until Hamas officially rejects Holocaust denial, among other things. As for expecting jihad of some sort to make all of Israel and Palestine Muslim? I had a Lutheran seminary professor say that we ought to evangelize Muslims at the point of a gun then cut their heads off before they could reconvert, and this was a full decade before 9/11.

And, it was more than 2,000 years ago, but Google the two words of "Hasmoneans" and "Idumeans" or similar. Judaism, although much more rarely, has itself occasionally evangelized at the point of a sword.

Update, April 23: Israel has officially suspended talks.

===

Related to all of this?

My ideal solution for Palestine would be:
1. Eliminate the Gaza Strip;
2. Give Palestine lands in the Negev in compensation;
3. Give Israel a decade to move people out of most of its settlements (the precise details of "most of" to be negotiated);
4. Without expecting a peace treaty, have a unified Palestine and Israel sign joint recognition documents, with the understanding that the PA and Israel will both likely want their equivalent of "presidential signing statements" as part of that;
5. Get the Saudis to give an under-the-table pledge to Israel that, unless it lurches further right, it will never be the target of a Saudi oil embargo.

And, now, I'll just crown myself as a more omnipotent version of John Rawls.

That said, Hamas has offered long-term truces to Israel before.

U.S., Palestinian statehood and Arab-world credibility

Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal pens a mildly worded but strongly voiced op-ed in the New York Times saying the U.S. needs to support Palestinian statehood at the U.N. rather than "risk losing the little credibility it has in the Arab world."

If that's not a shot across the bow, this should be:

Moreover, Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to cooperate with America in the same way it historically has. With most of the Arab world in upheaval, the “special relationship” between Saudi Arabia and the United States would increasingly be seen as toxic by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims, who demand justice for the Palestinian people. 

Saudi leaders would be forced by domestic and regional pressures to adopt a far more independent and assertive foreign policy. Like our recent military support for Bahrain’s monarchy, which America opposed, Saudi Arabia would pursue other policies at odds with those of the United States, including opposing the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq and refusing to open an embassy there despite American pressure to do so.

 That's a big, big threat there. In Iraq, that would mean the Anbar Awakening would re-awaken; Shi'a-Sunni warfare would start over. That's especially true if "opposing Maliki" meant the Saudis (through appropriate third-party funneling) actually started providing money, arms or both to an Anbar Re-Awakening. The U.S. would either be hamstrung or else forced to keep more troops there. And, Iran would surely up its support for Moqtada al-Sadr, who would probably push Maliki to fight back harder, or else would himself disavow the Maliki government.

And, in an ongoing recession, if we do start to recover, any would-be Saudi help on oil supplies could go by the boards. Turki doesn't mention that, but ... does he have to?

Other than that, Turki is right: The only real losers from a Palestinian state, at least one with Hamas marginalized and the Palestinian Authority in charge, are Syria (and proxies in Lebanon) and Iran.

At the same time, as Israeli-Egyptian events of the past two weeks have shown, Tel Aviv is feeling isolated indeed. If the Saudis are leaning on us in public, they're leaning on the Netanyahu government through third channels, too.

And, Turki didn't write this column alone. This is the public expression, in some way, shape or form, of what Riyadh has privately told the Obama Administration through diplomatic channels in the past few weeks.

Will Dear Leader listen, or will he listen to Zionists and semi-Zionists in the U.S. instead?

Spot the AP error with the Netanyahu bullying

From an AP story on the U.S. trying to jump-start Middle East peace talks:

Senior U.S. diplomats have returned to the Middle East for an unannounced visit to try to find a way to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that collapsed last year and now face new challenges.


They met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday (among others) and discussed ways to renew peace talks, Israel Radio reported.

In a statement late Wednesday, Netanyahu reiterated his key demands for a resumption of talks. He said the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state, accept a demilitarized Palestinian state with an Israeli security presence along its border with Jordan and drop their demand for a return of Palestinian refugees to Israel. He also said all of Jerusalem must remain in Israeli hands.
All are conditions previously rejected by the Palestinians.

Not true on the "recognition" issue. The Palestinian Authority has long recognized Israel's right to exist. Arguably, Hamas does too, with preconditions, some claim.

That said, the other three ideas are simply bullshit. A demilitarized Palestine? That's essentially what Austria-Hungary wanted to make Serbia in 1914. All of Jerusalem Israeli? Not a chance. A "security presence"? Err, that means "an Israeli right to intervene."

Zionism treads on its merry way.

Bibi's speech: Lies, damned lies, smugness, intransigence

Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was clearly playing to suckers like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, he of undercutting Obama's non-change statement on 1967 borders, during Netanyahu's speech to Congress.

Let's start with the most basic of lies: Netanyahu's demand that Palestinian President Mahmoud Aabbas recognize Israel's right to exist. Abbas' predecessor, Yasser Arafat, did that LONG ago.

Smugness? Well, when you have somebody as stupid as Harry Reid running the U.S. Senate, it's easy to be smug.

Intransigence? Starting with his statement on borders, that's clear enough.

As for his offer to make "painful compromises," that probably means "I'll stop construction on one West Bank settlement of 50 houses."

And, I love the mainstream media that says there is no "Jewish lobby" manipulating public opinion. The mainstream media that doesn't have Arab commentators, even for an issue like this, on talk shows. That said, the claim is technically tru, only if you ignore the fundamentalist Christan "Amen corner." And, given Mr. Rapture, Harold Camping, ignoring Christian millennialists is something we do at our peril.

Speaking of that Amen corner, Glenn Greenwald snorts derisively at such "American patriots."

Surprisingly, Josh Marshall, whom I have characterized in the past as a semi-Zionist on Middle East issues over his eye-closing on the al-Jazeera leaks, sees through Netanyahu.

And that gets to the crux of the issue. Just as Israel essentially "created" Hamas decades ago, Zionists like Bibi want to yoke Fatah to it all they can, then claim Fatah did this freely, rather than being backed into an Israeli-American corner.

Don't forget that, Josh. You're still a semi-Zionist until you recognize how much a role the U.S. is playing here.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Goldberg notes Bibi is becoming as bumbling as stereotypical Palestinians.

And, here's great oversight on how theocrats are gaining more power in Israel, how it's a myth that Israel is so "insecure," and more.

Admit Palestine to the UN? Sounds like a good idea

Well, why not? It is a nation. And, Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas makes a good case. But, several issues abound.

First, the U..S. will use the Fatah-Hamas rapproachment to fight against this idea.

Second, Abbas ignores that Jordan took over the West Bank in 1948. True, it relinquished its legal claims in the 1990s, but it illustrates that the Palestinians have often been the red-headed stepchild of the Arab world. And, theoretically, if Jordan hadn't acted as it did, maybe Palestine could have been (it should have been) admitted along with Israel in the first place.

Anyway, if it did happen now, it would be fun to see Bibi Netanyahu shitting a few bricks.

Israel caused this - don't just blame Hamas

The "this"? The Fatah-Hamas reconciliation that is now official.

As I blogged repeatedly when the "Al-Jazeera leaks" were released, Israel, starting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, needs to look itself in the mirror when any Israelis talk about a "mortal blow to peace."

By constantly undercutting the Palestinian Authority, they emasculated it to the point where a detente with Hamas was the only way for it to maintain political legitimacy.

Now I know Zionists and semi-Zionists (and there's plenty of them in the U.S., right, Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo) and their Amen corner will blame any slowdown in peace talks all on Hamas.

That said, why SHOULD Hamas officially recognize Israel unless it's accompanied by "linkage." Not just Bibi, but allegedly more liberal politicians in Israel like Tzipi Livni have shown themselves to be:

Simply untrustworthy on Palestinian issues.

End of story.

More proof of that?

Israel's calls in the past for a Hamas cease-fire before any talks.

With links to mainstream media stories, Wikipedia's bio of Hamas reminds us what happened when Hamas DID call a cease-fire:

In June 2008, as part of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, Hamas ceased rocket attacks on Israel and made some efforts to prevent attacks by other organizations.After a four months calm, the conflict escalated when Israel carried out a military action with the stated aim to prevent an abduction planned by Hamas, using a tunnel that had been dug under the border security fence, killing seven Hamas operatives.

So, let's talk Israeli hypocrisy.

Fatah, Hamas reach deal - an Israeli self-inflicted wound

And Bibi Netanyahu craps in pants.

Per the Times story, Netanyahu says that if this is a fait accompli, it will kill Middle East peace talks.

“You can’t have peace with both Israel and Hamas,” Haaretz quoted him as saying. “Choose peace with Israel.”

Actually, per the al Jazeera leaks, as I blogged here, here and here, Bibi plus current Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, with a significant assist from the United States, killed Middle East peace talks over the past two years and left Fatah (Palestinian Authority) leader Mahmoud Abbas no choice but to seek some sort of deal with Hamas.

That said, the "regime change" in the Middle East has to be staring over Abbas' shoulder. Per Glenn Greenwald, American popularity among Egyptians is even worse since Obama became president. That includes the fact that by a 54-36 percent margin, Egyptians favor junking the peace treaty with Israel.

With such numbers, Bibi will certainly be pushing Obama to lean on the eventual new leadership to stay in lockstep. And, much as Israel dislikes Syria, who knows what new leadership would emerge there if Bashar Assad is toppled?

Why did Goldstone flip-flop contra actual evidence?

NYT columnist Roger Cohen wants to know, as do I.

And a flip-flop it is, that South Africa's Richard Goldstone did, distancing himself from the report of his own UN commission on whether Israel, as well as Hamas, committed war crimes in 2008.

I have to quote extensively from Cohen's column to set the background:

He says his report would have been different “if I had known then what I know now.” The core difference the judge identifies is that he’s now convinced Gaza “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.”

His shift is attributed to the findings of a follow-up report by a U.N. committee of independent experts chaired by Mary McGowan Davis, a former New York judge, and what is “recognized” therein about Israeli military investigations. Well, Goldstone and I have not been reading the same report.

McGowan Davis is in fact deeply critical of those Israeli investigations — their tardiness, leniency, lack of transparency and flawed structure. Her report — stymied by lack of access to Israel, Gaza or the West Bank — contains no new information I can see that might buttress a change of heart.

On the core issue of intentionality, it declares: “There is no indication that Israel has opened investigations into the actions of those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw Operation Cast Lead.”

It says Israel has not adequately answered the Goldstone Report’s allegations about the “design and implementation of the Gaza operations” or its “objectives and targets.” Victims on both sides, McGowan Davis argues, can expect “no genuine accountability and no justice.”

In short there is a mystery here. Goldstone has moved but the evidence has not, really.

Was it all the varieties of the "self-hating Jew" epithet hurled at him after the report's release, as Cohen wondered? Did Israel threaten not to let him in the country as a private citizen, which may have mattered indeed to an observant Jew like him?

We don't know because he's not talking, which makes it worse.

That said, it's arguable Zionism has won again.

It's won not because Goldstone is or was a self-hating Jew, but because he's no longer a self-examining one, or however we phrase it.

It's won because many low-key Zionists will see this as affirmation of their low-key intransigence, NOT toward Hamas, but toward the Palestinian Authority and the UN.

It's won because these low-key Zionists and semi-Zionists in the U.S., along with their Christian millennialist Amen Corner, will up the political pressure on Democrats and Republicans alike, when Goldstone's report offered at least the possibility of relief.

Egypt and US hypocrisy - a thumbnail

First, what every story has been saying the past 24 hours — US demands real reform in Egypt rather than the fake reform we've tolerated for years.

The State Department's chief spokesman, Philip Crowley, said in a Twitter message that the Egyptian government "can't reshuffle the deck and then stand pat. President Mubarak's pledging reform must be followed by action."

But, the reality was expressed by Crowley just seconds later, when Hosni Mubarak named his intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, as vice president. The story notes that his is despite the fact he's never held that post during his tenure.

The administration appeared to react positively to Suleiman's choice. Crowley said in another Twitter message that Suleiman "is somebody we know well and have worked closely with."

I.e., someone "we can do business with."

Real message of Crowley? Between the lines:

Reshuffle the deck, then visibly cut the cards twice, to avoid the appearance of standing pat.

And, what if the Muslim Brotherhood gets elected in free elections? What then, self-righteously opining Elliott Abrams and other Bush-loving neocons? We've already seen how precious you and Chimpster consider democracy when it involves Hezbollah or Hamas.

So STFU and shut your piehole.

Al Jazeera just droppped an A-bomb on the Middle East

The Arab-world-based news service uncovered a treasure trove of leaked documents about Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and exclusively shared them with the Guardian. (Here's the link to the al Jazeera main webpage for the coverage, to make sure it gets its due.)

An Al Jazeera explainer page notes what's behind the papers:

There are 1,684 total documents, including
* 275 sets of meeting minutes;
* 690 internal e-mails;
* 153 reports and studies;
* 134 sets of talking points and prep notes for meetings;
* 64 draft agreements;
* 54 maps, charts and graphs;
* and 51 “non-papers.”

Among the bombshells, in numerous sublinks at the Guardian?

Israeli intransigence on negotiations, U.S. acquiescence, and Palestinian desperation.

In an emotional – and apparently humiliating – outburst to Barack Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, in Washington in October 2009, the senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat complained that the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership wasn't even being offered a "figleaf". ...

(W)hen Palestinian leaders balked at the prospect of an entirely demilitarised state, Livni made clear where the negotiating power lay. In May 2008, Erekat asked (Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister): "Short of your jet fighters in my sky and your army on my territory, can I choose where I secure external defence?"

"No," Livni replied. "In order to create your state you have to agree in advance with Israel – you choose not to have the right of choice afterwards."

By the following year, Erekat appeared to have accepted that choice. "The Palestinians know they will have a country with limitations," he told Mitchell. "They won't have an army, air force or navy." A string of other major concessions had been made, but the issues were no further forward. "They need decisions," Erekat pleaded.

Wow. A demilitarized Palestine.

Israeli annexation of most East Jerusalem settlements.

There's more. Go to the main link, the first one up top, and start reading.

If I'm Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, I'm not walking anywhere now without a bulletproof vest. And, no, that's not too hyperbolic. Plenty of people at various spots in the Hamas food chain would surely be willing to pull a trigger.

Beyond that, this undermines plenty of actors beyond the Palestinian Authority.

Livni is now head of the opposition Kadima Party. Whenever it gets into power again, she'll be no more trusted by Palestinians outside the PA than Bibi Netanyahu is now.

Given that American acquiescence to Israeli intransigence carried over into the Obama Administration, it loses credibility.

And, to the degree more moderate Arab governments are seen has having thrown their collective lot with the PA rather than Hamas, to the degree either further al Jazeera information or WikiLeaks cables shed any light on this, they lose credibility too.

A couple of other thoughts, too.

The cui bono question is running through my head, mainly.

Yes, we know that WikiLeaks had the U.S. diplomatic cables, but the al-Jazeera leak is separate. So, who gave it what it got and why? And, how did that person come into the info, if he or she isn't an insider?

Would this benefit an Israeli ultrahawk like Avigdor Lieberman? By deliberately sabotaging future talks, which it will?

Or, somebody from Hamas? Though it would be tough for anybody from Hamas to have gotten such detailed information.

Or, either a rival to Abbas for leadership within the PA, or a principled PA negotiator who finally had had enough?

Meanwhile, Team Obama threatened to cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority if it replaced Mahmoud Abbas as leader.

This would be the same Abbas whose negotiating team, in private, officially accepted that Israel could define itself as a Jewish state.

This all further impinges on the "who benefits" issue.

And, was this leak, whoever did it, already planned before the WikiLeaks release of the U.S. cables or not?

Who doesn't benefit? Per one al Jazeera piece, everyday Palestinians, likely to see further Israeli intimidation and violence.

Bibi could reduce Mideast tensions more

Assuming that Hamas' price for releasing Gilad Shalit isn't way out of line with similar deals Israel has made, why hasn't Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled the trigger this time? If there's enough internal public pressure, will he?

Turkey wins, Iran loses, Israel still looks idiotic

A doctoral candidate and a professor at Princeton (both being Jewish, I believe) note how Turkey and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan smell like roses over the Gaza flotilla. And, Iran stinks, even in the nostrils of Hamas. While the Arab sheikdoms are jealous of democratic Turkey. And, Israel, and by extension, the US, remains clueless.

Other than the possible danger of an Armenia genocide resolution passing Congress, as long as Batman and Robin remain clueless and act on their cluelessness, Turkey continues to be the winner.