So It Goes

Logic for Unity Accord Escapes Me

PLEASE HELP me out with something. Someone explain to me why there is so much puzzlement that the Israeli government would object to the unity arrangement between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.  Why is this so hard to understand?

In today's Washington Post, for example, former President Jimmy Carter hails the unity accord as something that will somehow solve all the problems of the terrible and protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflice. Through a system of checks and balances, he seems to imply, the combined PA and Hamas regime will "lead to a durable cease-fire" with Israel, captured Israeli prisoners of war such as Galid Shalit will be returned home, Hamas will recognize Israel's right to exist. And so on.

"Suspicions of Hamas," Carter writes, "stem from its charter, which calls for Israel's destruction. I find the charter repugnant. Yet it is worth remembering that Israel negotiated the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Liberation Organization while its charter had similar provisions. It took five more years before the PLO Charter was altered."

No, suspicions of Hamas stem from more than just the charter; there is also Hamas's bad habit of killing innocent people -- not just Israelis but any Palestinians who disagree with it. The charter, which so many critics of Israel often dismiss as nothing to be worried about, is only a statement in words of what Hamas is all about in deeds (which is why the charter really does matter). And Hamas has made it clear over and over - via actions and words - that it would like to kill Israelis and eliminate the State of Israel.

Also, while I was a hopeful supporter of the Oslo Accords, it's hard even for me and others like me to say that it led to an idyllic future (though we probably have a lot more to work with today than we did before the Accords). Even under Yasser Arafat's watch as the head of the PA, there were repeated murderous attacks by Palestinians against Israelis in Israel proper. Either Arafat was unwilling or unable (or both) to stop them. That ultimately undermined the Oslo Accords. Again, as important as words are, deeds count more.

Carter has, to his credit, made a lot of effort to go to the region, meet with people and study what it's all about. All the more reason why his blind spot for Hamas's criminality is shocking and puzzling. He's basically saying it's okay for a legitimate political party -- say, the Democrats or the Republicans -- to ally with Tony Soprano's organization because... well, he doesn't really say why. But he relies on some magical faith that such an alliance would clean up Tony's act, hold him in check.

My guess is that if the Sopranos had the chance to rule a government (from the inside), they'd jump at it  and take advantage of the power it gives them to carry out their misdeeds. There would be no checks on their power. On the contrary, they would seize the power and it would be hard to hold them back. 

One need only look to the immediate north of Israel, in Lebanon, where a similar murderous Hezbollah has strived hard -- and succeeded -- in taking control of the government there. That hasn't put a brake on Hezbollah's ambitions to go to war again some day with Israel. Indeed, the conventional wisdom is that Hezbollah has continued to arm itself for that very scenario.

"This accord should be viewed as the Palestinian contribution to the 'Arab awakening,'" Carter writes. Again, what is he thinking? The "Arab awakening" is about putting an end to the corrupt, tyrannical and immoral regimes that have oppressed their people for generations. Inviting another corrupt, tyrannical and immoral group to rule over Palestinians is exactly the opposite of what the Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans, Syrians, Bahrainians and other Arab populations have been trying to accomplish over the last few months.

Look, I want Palestinians to live peaceful and prosperous lives. I hate what they have to live through now. Ditto the Israelis. A two-state solution is probably the only solution to this. But I don't get the logic that Hamas, even when it's supposed held in check by Fatah, will lead to this scenario. Just the opposite.

Jeff

 

 

Reflecting "Real Life" on "The Office" and "Friday Night Lights"

I FINALLY got around to watching the series finale of "Friday Night Lights, Steve Carrell's farewell on "The Office", both of which are on my short list of best-ever TV comedy and drama shows. [Note: Earlier, I thought this was the season finale of "The Office," but an alert reader corrected me.]

For those of you only now seeing "Friday Night Lights" on broadcast TV and wondering how I've seen the whole season, I get Direct TV, where the program aired first and finished in February. (So, why, you wonder, have I only just gotten around to it? Just busy.) I won't spoil it for you, but I'll say that it doesn't end with a 30-mile wide asteroid crashing into the the city of Dillon, Texas.

In a way, one almost hopes for that sort of an ending. As I've written here in the past, "Friday Night Lights" is a show that got too little attention from the American viewing public, which, the ratings will show, seems more interested in schlockey so-called "reality shows" and cliche detective and doctor dramas. Part of me thinks that destroying the entire town and all its compelling characters in a single stroke, while a tad heavy handed, would symbolically tell all those who missed this great show that they can't have it, don't deserve it. Also, as with the ending of "The Sopranos" (yes, they did kill Tony), the producers could pretty much say, 'we're proud of what we did, and we're not going to mess it up with a disappointing movie version' (I'm thinking of you, "Sex and the City").

We've known for a few months that Steve Carrell was leaving "The Office." So the only suprise this season was how the producers were going to ease him out without destroying the show. Not an easy trick considering he is probably one of the funniest people in America and because so much of the show revolves around everyone reacting to his loveable icky self. It's a bit like taking a nucleus out of a cell and replacing it (if that's what they're trying to do with Will Farrell) with a new and different one.

My guess is that "The Office" will survive this transformation, if only because it is one of the best ensemble shows of all time. Those of us who have watched it loyally (if not obsessively, as I think my family and I may), know all the subtle back stories of every character and still care a great deal about where they end up. And the writing has always been extraordinarily creative, always surprising and experimenting without distorting the characters and the story arc so that they become parodies of themselves. "The Office" hasn't jumped the shark. Not yet at least.

Both "Friday Night Lights" and "The Office" are great because they're as close to "real" as we get not only on TV but in most of our entertainment in the United States.They are much more real than the most popular shows where, say, a dozen people are put through a punishing obstacle course on a remote tropical island and put in the position to be nasty with one another; or where B-list celebrities fight with another for the attention and respect of a famous egomaniac or stumble over themselves to become America's favorite ballroom dancers, or any of the other "reality" shows that, when you think about it, not all about what happens in real life.

To be sure, I can't imagine there are any offices in America that operate quite like the Scranton, Penn., branch of Dunder Mifflin Sabre, at least not any that could remain profitable.

But those of us who have spent a lot of our lives in offices know that the personalities that make up "The Office" are only slightly exaggerated versions of the sorts of people we have worked with. Maybe not all of them at once in one place, but we recognize all of them, don't we? They are filled with the same insecurities, tedium, jealousies, annoying habits, neuroses, nastiness, secret crushes, sweetness and loyalties we encounter every day when we walk into our own offices. The show is really a fictional experiment that tries to show what happens when we subject this very typical collection of personalities to strange, unexpected and sometimes dangerous circumstances. That -- along with great writing and acting -- is what makes it so funny and what makes it such an accurate mirror on our own real worlds.

Like "The Office," some of the situations in "Friday Night Lights" are a bit more exaggerated or accelerated than we know from real life. We have to allow for some dramatic effect and, after all, they can't show everything they should about a couple of dozen characters in less than an hour each week.

But "Friday Night Lights" has dealt directly and candidly with the most difficult realities we find in many American lives: the struggle to succeed and do right, in spite of the pull of negative forces and flagging economic opportunities; fractured families; catastrophic illness; petty but sometimes profoundly damaging political battles; racial conflict; the sometimes strained dynamics of parent-child and husband-wife relationships; how our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq reverberate in the lives of ordinary Americans; the exhilaration of glory and how hard it is to hold onto over the long run; the power of love and, ultimately, how each of us needs a father or mother figure in our lives, no matter our age. It's hard to understand why that hasn't attracted a larger and more loyal audience, but we can argue all day about the relative attraction of escapism versus realism.

As the parent of three teenage girls, I have to say, for example, that Tami and Eric Taylor's interactions with their teenage daughter Julie were as real as it gets. Not that my kids are doing any of the crazy stuff she did (or quite as whiney). But my wife and I could truly relate with the give and take that comes with that relationship. Both the writing and the acting that went into some of those scenes (and all the rest) was stripped right out of real life.

So I'll miss "Friday Night Lights" and Michael Scott. But the people in both of those shows will continue on, not only on the TV screen, as will be the case with "The Office," but also in the real world.

Jeff

P.S. For my money, episode of "The Office" this year when Michael proposed to Holly was one of the two best episodes ever, next to Jim and Pam's wedding. See it if you haven't already.