An interesting tidbit, delivered by the Algemeiner:
A British document from early 1948, declassified only weeks ago, tells the story:
“the Arabs have suffered a series of overwhelming defeats…. Jewish victories … have reduced Arab morale to zero and, following the cowardly example of their inept leaders, they are fleeing from the mixed areas in their thousands.”
Do read the whole thing.
The Elder of Ziyon comments (here):
Gaza Siege! Collective punishment! – And no condemnations!
After reproducing the BBC confirmation of the Egyptians closing off the Gaza crossing, the Elder makes the following observations and comments:
“I cannot find a single call for an emergency session at the UN.
Nor any criticism from the Arab world.
Nor any criticism from any Gaza groups.
Nor any condemnations from “human rights” organizations.
Funny, isn’t it?”
The Elder sees what others ignore. Shame on them all.
This essay, from Bruce Schneier, is an important refresher of one he did after 9/11. It’s a solid, sensible view of terror as he sees it from a western perspective. However, from my perspective, it’s one of those areas – one of the few, you might argue – where Israel and Israelis have a different perspective. Where such events are unusual, in Israel they are not. Indeed, much ‘low level’ terrorism – which is assuredly not low level to those who are its victims – is just not reported out of Israel. It is not newsworthy.
Therefore, be aware that this is a valid view, but it is not the only one. I would very much like to see how Mr Schneier would cover the same topic from our viewpoint.
As the details about the bombings in Boston unfold, it’d be easy to be scared. It’d be easy to feel powerless and demand that our elected leaders do something — anything — to keep us safe.
It’d be easy, but it’d be wrong. We need to be angry and empathize with the victims without being scared. Our fears would play right into the perpetrators’ hands — and magnify the power of their victory for whichever goals whatever group behind this, still to be uncovered, has. We don’t have to be scared, and we’re not powerless. We actually have all the power here, and there’s one thing we can do to render terrorism ineffective: Refuse to be terrorized.
It’s hard to do, because terrorism is designed precisely to scare people — far out of proportion to its actual danger. A huge amount of research on fear and the brain teaches us that we exaggerate threats that are rare, spectacular, immediate, random — in this case involving an innocent child — senseless, horrific and graphic. Terrorism pushes all of our fear buttons, really hard, and we overreact.
But our brains are fooling us. Even though this will be in the news for weeks, we should recognize this for what it is: a rare event. That’s the very definition of news: something that is unusual — in this case, something that almost never happens.
Remember after 9/11 when people predicted we’d see these sorts of attacks every few months? That never happened, and it wasn’t because the TSA confiscated knives and snow globes at airports. Give the FBI credit for rolling up terrorist networks and interdicting terrorist funding, but we also exaggerated the threat. We get our ideas about how easy it is to blow things up from television and the movies. It turns out that terrorism is much harder than most people think. It’s hard to find willing terrorists, it’s hard to put a plot together, it’s hard to get materials, and it’s hard to execute a workable plan. As a collective group, terrorists are dumb, and they make dumb mistakes; criminal masterminds are another myth from movies and comic books.
Even the 9/11 terrorists got lucky.
If it’s hard for us to keep this in perspective, it will be even harder for our leaders. They’ll be afraid that by speaking honestly about the impossibility of attaining absolute security or the inevitability of terrorism — or that some American ideals are worth maintaining even in the face of adversity — they will be branded as “soft on terror.” And they’ll be afraid that Americans might vote them out of office. Perhaps they’re right, but where are the leaders who aren’t afraid? What has happened to “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”?
Terrorism, even the terrorism of radical Islamists and right-wing extremists and lone actors all put together, is not an “existential threat” against our nation. Even the events of 9/11, as horrific as they were, didn’t do existential damage to our nation. Our society is more robust than it might seem from watching the news. We need to start acting that way.
There are things we can do to make us safer, mostly around investigation, intelligence, and emergency response, but we will never be 100-percent safe from terrorism; we need to accept that.
How well this attack succeeds depends much less on what happened in Boston than by our reactions in the coming weeks and months. Terrorism isn’t primarily a crime against people or property. It’s a crime against our minds, using the deaths of innocents and destruction of property as accomplices. When we react from fear, when we change our laws and policies to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed, even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we’re indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail, even if their attacks succeed.
Don’t glorify the terrorists and their actions by calling this part of a “war on terror.” Wars involve two legitimate sides. There’s only one legitimate side here; those on the other are criminals. They should be found, arrested, and punished. But we need to be vigilant not to weaken the very freedoms and liberties that make this country great, meanwhile, just because we’re scared.
Empathize, but refuse to be terrorized. Instead, be indomitable — and support leaders who are as well. That’s how to defeat terrorists.
[This essay originally appeared on TheAtlantic.com. Available, here.]
This is too important to passover. From the Elder of Ziyon (with my added emphasis):
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Don’t believe anything you read in the PalArab media
The “International Middle East Media Center” says:
Monday evening, May 13 2013; a group of extremist Israeli settlers set ablaze Palestinian olive orchards and farmlands that belong the villages of Qaryout, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
Local sources reported that the armed settlers burnt the agricultural lands, and prevented the villagers from reaching their lands to put the fire off.
Bashar Qaryouty, coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements in Qaryout village, reported that the burnt lands were planted with wheat and olive trees.
And from Palestine Info:
Jewish settlers set ablaze more than 20 dunums of cultivated land lots in Qaryut village, south of Nablus, on Monday and prevented their owners from approaching to put it off.
Bashar Al-Qaryuti, in charge with monitoring settlement activity in the village, said that dozens of settlers from the settlement of Shilo started the fire that burnt the land cultivated with barley, wheat, and olives.
He charged that the Israeli occupation forces provided protection for the settlers and blocked the land owners, 25 individuals, from extinguishing the fire.
There are stories like this daily in the PalArab media. Unfortunately, it is all too rare to find out the other side of the story.
Luckily, this time we can.
The land is owned by a Jew and this was upheld by a court judgment. He is the only person who ever cultivated that field. He started a controlled fire to get rid of overgrown brush.
No barley, no wheat, no olives, no Arab owners. Every single word that was reported by the Arab media, and by the spokesman, was a lie.
How can anyone believe anything these people say when we have proven time and time again that they lie with impunity?
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Ra’anana Gamer: I suggest the last question is directed to every mainstream western media outlet. Just what fact checking do they bother to do?
From Israel HaYom:
On Shavuot, the holiday which Jews around the globe begin celebrating this Tuesday night, Iraqi Jews mark 72 years since the Farhud — the 1941 riots in which 137 people were slaughtered and hundreds more injured. The Babylonian (Iraqi) Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda has inscribed the victims’ names, and Iraqi Jews worldwide recall the horrible disgrace of those events, which were so reminiscent of Kristallnacht in Germany. The Farhud riots were carried out by a mob that had been incited to violence, and resulted in the Iraqi Jewish community losing faith in the country they had called home for millennium; the community of some 140,000 Jewish people dwindled to just a sparse few today.
You can read the whole thing, here. It rather debunks the nonsense about how well Jews were treated in Arab countries before the establishment of modern Israel.
(And as to why the establishment of Israel should be any kind of excuse or reason for anti-semitism in the Arab world, that only ‘works’ if you assume their culture resembles that of a collection of immature alpha males, unable to cope with a challenge to their world view. In other words, it’s crap.)
And while the recollection of the events must be a terribly sad occasion, there hopefully is some comfort in the gathering of these exiles and others in Israel today. I love the melting pot nature of the population. (Though it has to be said, the pot’s pretty white in Ra’anana!)
[I first saw this at Point of no return. It will add something to my Shavuot.]
In a Guardian/Observer interview (promoting a debate on the topic they are hosting later this month) David Simon (of the Wire) makes a couple of points worth highlighting:
Question: The picture painted in The Wire and The House I Live In is bleak, and people don’t like to look at bleak pictures. How can America turn and face this huge problem?
David Simon: It won’t happen from leadership. There are two things politicians in my country pay attention to. One is money and the other is votes, and the two are inextricably linked in many respects. For a long time the inner city hasn’t voted. In the inner city you have an incredibly disenfranchised American population that understands the burden of the drug war. One of the fundamental ways in which they’ve disconnected is that if you’re convicted of a felony you lose your right to vote for ever. So this is an agenda that has no immediate gain for a politician. That’s why jury nullification and a refusal to co-operate with drug prohibition is going to be a grass roots movement.
So, if Simon is correct, there’s nothing to be gained by way of money or votes, if a politician wants to help his country face up to the real situation about the war on drugs.
There is also this exchange:
Question: Decriminalisation still leaves an international criminal network and distribution business in place. With legalisation there is a basis on which to start unpicking all of that.
David Simon: When I make the distinction for decriminalisation I don’t care about laws any more because the first step will not be to change any laws. And certainly there will not be a sufficient number of politicians with enough courage to legalise drug use. The mistake you’re making is that you’re leading from the rear. You’re having a dilettante’s argument about something that will never be considered by the political infrastructure. Getting them to stop jailing people for this crap is plausible. To start talking about legalising heroin and cocaine, you might as well go to a university and shave your head into a point.
Some thought provoking material there. (He also says, incidentally, that drugs are – effectively – legal in Baltimore because the number of users makes enforcement impossible.)
The inimitable Elder of Ziyon has an important essay about the Hawking BDS situation.
“In a nation that has embraced the false themes of unlimited Israeli evil and absolute Palestinian Arab victimhood, can we expect people to suspect that they are being fed a diet of lies? Finding out the truth takes time; it takes effort, and it takes commitment, all resources that most people cannot be bothered with. If their newspaper says that Israel is the intransigent party, who will spend the time to research the other side? Who would even consider that there is another side?
Read it all. If you are British, read it twice. Then never say again that you haven’t been warned.
I first saw this cracking Michael Gove quote at Guy Fawkes’ blog:
“One set of history teaching resources targeted at year 11s – 15 and 16 year olds – suggests spending classroom time depicting the rise of Hitler as a ‘Mr Men’ story.
[...]
I may be unfamiliar with all of Roger Hargreaves’ work but I am not sure he ever got round to producing Mr Anti-Semitic Dictator, Mr Junker General or Mr Dutch Communist Scapegoat.”
Ouch!
Gove’s continuation is worth quoting:
“But I am familiar with the superb historical account Richard J Evans gives of the rise, rule and ruin of the Third Reich and I cannot believe he could possibly be happy with reducing the history of Germany’s darkest years to a falling out between Mr Tickle and Mr Topsy-Turvy.”
Oh dear.
These pieces come from this speech by the UK Education Minister. He was skewering teachers’ approach to providing pupils with ‘relevant’ material.
Gove makes a number of good points, but having had my attention drawn by the humor, I want to note one aspect about his approach that I think is wrong: the emphasis in literature and drama that says pupils must learn pre-20th century material. For example, Shakespeare. Why?
I had to study the Blasted Bard at school. I hated it.
My kids had to study it, too. Guess what; they hated it too.
Shakespeare and the like is difficult, and hard work. But so is some modern stuff; age is no guarantee of quality. But Shakespeare and the like are burdened with archaic language that does nobody any real good.
I hate the theatre as a medium, probably because of having the Blasted Bard forced down me at school. I’m sure I am not alone. And it’s not that I don’t want it taught at all; I just do not think it’s a good starting place.
If you want to teach kids, inspire them. Inspire them with something they can relate to. (No, not flipping Mr Men.) So in drama, for example, kids can learn modern works to get a solid grounding in the medium. Then, and only then, having a decent foundation to work with, their teachers can think about the Bard. (If they must.)
I suppose there is a balancing act, but while Gove is right to talk about quality being important, quality does not begin and end with everything that is pre 20th century.
This is an extract from an acceptance speech by Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein, on being presented with the Dr Bernard Heller Prize at Hebrew Union College, NYC:
“Three hundred million Arabs do not enjoy freedom of speech. Half of them, 150 million, as women, not only lack freedom of speech, but have barely any rights at all. And the private rights of how to pray and how to love are wrongly dictated by governments, all across the Arab World. Three years ago, we witnessed what was called the Arab Spring. Dictators who had oppressed their own people — and deceived them by telling them that Jews and Israel’s very existence were one of the primary causes of their misery — were toppled. It was a time for human rights organizations and governmental organizations to try to push for these rights long denied, with the hopes that they would take some root. One might have hoped, too, that it was also a time for human rights organizations to tell the people living in Arab countries that their governments not only misled them about their own rights, but also falsely portrayed Israel as a threat and an enemy to detract attention from their plight. Sadly, they did not do this. And the reason, in my opinion, is because of where many in the human rights community have placed their emphasis in recent years.
In my opinion, over the last few years, many in the human rights field have steadily retreated from upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Instead of focusing on insuring basic human rights for all citizens across the Arab world and in other closed societies, they have waded into the muddle of trying to become experts in the laws of warfare, deciding what constitutes a legitimate act of war and what does not, what should be considered a war crime and what should not. The result is that human rights organizations are trying to act like a referee at a sports event, calling war crimes of both sides. They come across like a group of litigator lawyers playing a game of “Gotcha!” mostly with the Israeli Defense Forces and occasionally with Hamas, Hezbollah, and from time to time, Iran.
Instead of this role, for which they are not well qualified, if they want to have an impact for good in the Middle East, human rights organizations should be focusing on state-incited hate speech. And, unfortunately, there is plenty of it in closed societies across the Arab world. If human rights organizations wanted to be open and honest with the suffering Arab masses, who are certainly suffering, they would point out that blaming Jews is a distraction and not what is holding them and their children back from enjoying the miracles of today’s world. For decades, government-sponsored hate speech in closed societies has been fostering a revenge rather than reform mentality.
A point that cannot be made too often: incitement and hatred are a barrier to peace in the Middle East, and to progress of these closed societies. It would have been good to highlight how Western funding props up this sorry state of affairs.
Here’s where you come in. State-incited hate speech in closed societies by Arab governments and Iran, among others, for over 65 years has had an enormous effect. It has prevented peace. It has had a chilling effect on minorities, and not only Jews, but Christians, Bahai’i and others. And it has prevented the kind of popular empowerment that is the region’s only hope for a better future. Iran and its non-state allies, Shiite Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas, have actually been calling for genocide, not only of Israel, but of all Jews everywhere. They have not only called for it, but are carrying on a war of attrition, mostly against Israel, but also striking many cities throughout in the world.
Ayatollah Khamenei has declared that he can destroy Israel in 9 minutes. Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has wheeled Iran’s largest rocket through Tehran, declaring: “This is for Israel.” Incitement to genocide is a crime under Article 3(c) on the Convention and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide-General Assembly Resolution 260 that came into force in 1951.
It is hard to believe that major human rights organizations have taken no action on the matter. They call the statements of the Iranian leadership “advocacy” – a form of protected free speech – rather than “incitement.”
Incitement seems to be among the few issues where Sunni and Shiite dictatorships and terrorist groups are in agreement. Sunni Saudi Arabia runs a huge textbook business that reaches Arab children of all ages, that calls Jews “Descendants of monkeys and pigs,” among other things, and they do a pretty good job attacking Christians too.
I, as a publisher, and you, as graduates of one of the great Jewish institutions in this country, know the value of words. The power of words in the past has certainly been recognized. Julius Streicher, publisher of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, was tried at Nuremberg, convicted and hung. The power of speech was certainly recognized in the trials following the Rwanda genocide as well. Yet, the major human rights organizations have found no way to confront the problem and recognize that the 300-plus million people living in closed Arab countries have been taught for decades that a small Jewish state has no right to exist.”
You can read the whole thing, here.
[A great spot at my right word.]
Richard Millett has a report about a BDS demonstration at John Lewis (department store) in Oxford Street, London. You can read it here.
Somebody (Hadar Sela?) in the comments posted a link to the following video which puts the Sodastream case across rather well.
After watching that video, can you please explain what good BDS think they might be achieving? In the short term? In the long term? Ever? They are absolutely off their rockers.
Next time you see a BDS activity, you may see it in a different light. It won’t be a good one.