So It Goes

Another View on Misguided Diplomacy

BEYOND MANY OF THE EDITORIAL PAGES OF MAJOR WESTERN NEWSPAPERS, most of the public criticism of former President Jimmy Carter's meetings this past week with Hamas leadership came from largely from Israelis and most of Israel's Jewish supporters around the world. That's not to say that the criticism was any less valid. But I worry that, when Israelis and the Jews are once again fighting a battle like this on their own, many others around the world tend to discount their views as the same old intransigence.

So rather than rehearse many of the same arguments that other Jewish supporters for Israel are making about President Carter's misguided diplomacy, I thought it would be refreshing to look at a different source and see what his views are on the subject. In this case, I've chosen someone who has been in a good position to evaluate the role of violent extremism among Arab groups in the Middle East, someone who is not motivated necessarily by his embrace of Israel.

I'm referring to Farid Ghadry, a Syrian-born businessman who now lives in the United States and who founded and currently heads a group called the Reform Party of Syria.

RPS describes itself as a "Syrian opposition party to the Assad regime that has emerged as a result of September 11.  The party is governed by secular, peace committed American-Syrians, Euro-Syrians, and native Syrians who are determined to see that a 'New Syria' is reborn that embraces real democratic and economic reforms." And, with his frequent and vigorous speeches, testimonies in Congress, regular blog entries and various other public utterances, Ghadry provides anyone who will listen regular reminders to pay attention to the misdeeds of the Assad regime and to the courageous efforts of those who oppose it.

With that in mind and knowing of his longtime criticism of extremists (particularly those with strong ties to Assad), it's not entirely surprising that Ghadry would be critical of President Carter's meetings with Hamas. But, as with Jewish and Israeli responses to President Carter's meeting, Ghadry's  perspective still gives his arguments as much power as any.

In a blog posting yesterday, Ghadry wrote:

The direct and indirect effect of President Jimmy Carter's visit to Gaza, Egypt, and Damascus to meet with members of Hamas sends chills down the spine of every Arab and Muslim working for reforms in the Middle East because it legitimizes terror and violence and dilutes all the efforts that peaceful Arab reformers have committed themselves to. One such reformer told me: "Why are we working so hard for peace if the Americans prefer to deal with terror?.'" I could not utter but words of encouragement knowing deep inside that he is right.

He goes on:

Under the auspices of “seeking peace”, President Carter is reversing years of hard work by many Palestinians and Israelis who see the road to co-existence paved by true peaceful acts. For President Carter to meet with individuals with blood on their hands not only legitimizes terror but it also encourages it in two ways: It sends the signal to Hamas that its violence pays off but also inspires those who vacillate between violence and peace to surrender to violence.

Ghadry's most valuable message, then, is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, despite that terminology, not strictly between Israelis and Palestinians. Rather, it is between the forces of moderation and the forces of extremism on both sides of the conflict. My belief (and more knowledgeable people than I would probably agree) is that there are a large number of Israelis and Arabs, who if they had their way, could pretty quickly come close to resolving many of the issues that have divided them for so many years. The main obstacle, however, are those who see any such co-existence and cooperation between the two peoples as a threat and who will do anything to derail peace.

Ghadry is not saying (nor am I) that the forces of good should do nothing at all to deal with groups like Hamas and extremist regimes like Iran and Syria. As he writes:

Part of the blame for Carter’s trip falls on this administration as well. The policy of “no policy” towards Syria and Iran has fostered this sense of mid-air suspension that inevitably encourages people like president Carter to apply the laws of physics. Had the US foreign policy been more forceful than simply attempt to isolate Hamas and Syria, the US may had seen faster pace to peace than what the molasses isolationist policy can deliver.

I'm not completely sure what Ghadry means when he says "more forceful." I hope he means it in the diplomatic sense and not through military action against these groups. That's my preference, and one only needs to look at the mess in Iraq to understand why.

But we need diplomacy that's more careful and evenhanded than what President Carter, who has vilely compared Israel to the South African Apartheid governments of years past, has to offer. Ghadry's right that someone with the stature of Jimmy Carter -- a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and tireless advocate for peace and human rights -- frustrates the careful (and probably not-so-careful) efforts of those on both sides of the Israeli-Arab divide who are trying to solve this problem of extremism. It allows the good guys to look like the obstructionists to peace and the bad guys look like great statesmen willing to compromise without really having to compromise.

If you have any doubt that Hamas really doesn't want to compromise, by the way, just read what Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas's "foreign minister," wrote in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post three days ago:

A "peace process" with Palestinians cannot take even its first tiny step until Israel first withdraws to the borders of 1967; dismantles all settlements; removes all soldiers from Gaza and the West Bank; repudiates its illegal annexation of Jerusalem; releases all prisoners; and ends its blockade of our international borders, our coastline and our airspace permanently. This would provide the starting point for just negotiations and would lay the groundwork for the return of millions of refugees. Given what we have lost, it is the only basis by which we can start to be whole again.

This is not compromise, especially when you know that Hamas has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel. Rather, it is like one boxer telling another to tie his hands behind his back so the first boxer can finish the other off -- with knives and bullets.

And these are the guys to whom President Carter decides to lend his prestige? Does President Carter have any prestige left to give?

Jeff

What Makes a President "Good for Israel"?

OVER THE PAST COUPLE OF MONTHS, I’ve heard a number of Jewish friends say in private and other Jewish voices say in public that they worry that Barack Obama will be “bad for Israel.”

What’s most intriguing about these observations is that, while Obama is maddeningly vague and unspecific on practically every issue (which is mostly why I voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary), these American Jews somehow seem to know for certain where he stands on Israel.

Much of the present whisper campaign against Obama seems curiously to have emanated from Jewish Republicans. For example Marc Zell, who identifies himself as Co-Chairman of Republicans Abroad in Israel (boy, there’s an organization for everything), went after Obama in a Jerusalem Post piece recently. So did the Republican Jewish Coalition, which regularly and shamelessly plays a more-pro-Israel-than-thou act, accusing Jewish Democrats of selling out the Jewish State. Strangely enough, for example, the RJC gladly quoted Ralph Nader recently, for saying that Sen. Obama was "pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois before he ran for the state Senate" and "during the state Senate." All of the sudden, Nader’s a credible source for the RJC.

But, to be fair the attacks on Obama don’t appear to be only the work of a Republican smear campaign. I’ve heard nervousness about Obama, too, in the voices of many committed Democrats who are Jewish.

Of course, everyone (even his supporters) is reading Obama's tea leaves.  He offered a little more substance (but not a lot) to his thinking about the Israeli-Arab conflict and about how he finds Louis Farrakhan unsavory, in some recent public utterances on the subject, meant to disarm the charges against him. I personally find what he said fairly unobjectionable, though his past statements such as, "Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people" are troubling in their ignorance.

Obama’s Jewish critics are focusing less on what he has said (or not said) than on the advisors who surround him –- “guilt by association,” he calls it.

Frankly, I think assessing any candidate by the company he keeps is fair game, especially in Obama’s case. While he may not himself know or want to articulate in detail what he will do on any of the wide range of policy challenges he would face as President, I have to believe –- or, better yet, I sincerely hope –- he will have the good judgment to bring in good people who know about specific issues. So it’s not unreasonable to look at the credentials and views of the people on his campaign foreign policy team.

On that criterion, Obama’s candidacy turns out to be a mixed bag, at least as far as some people are concerned. Some of his advisors (some of which are truly advising him, he says, and some are pretty much in name only) have reputations as solidly “good for Israel,” and a few –- really only a few –- have records that have for understandably concerned some in the pro-Israel community.

Even Martin Peretz, the Editor-in-Chief of The New Republic, and a full-throated supporter of Obama, conceded recently that a “charge, circulating on the Internet, has not yet been sufficiently refuted. This is that he has advisers on the Middle East who despise Israel.”

Interestingly, however, Peretz, is a hawkish supporter of Israel, which might surprise many who are responsible for or influenced by the anti-Obama whisper campaign.  “Barack Obama's views on Israel and the possibilities of peace between it and the Palestinians are both tough-minded and deeply comprehending,” Peretz wrote. “I don't at all think that I'd be disappointed with an Obama presidency, and certainly not with his attitude towards the Jewish State."

I really don't think Obama will be hostile to Israel. But the truth is, we never really know what someone’s position on Israel (or any other major policy issue) will be until he’s faced with real and difficult decisions as President of the United States. 

Most of the pro-Israel hardliners’ money in 2000 said that George W. Bush would be “good on Israel,” and in 2004, I heard that sentiment again, even from some Jewish Democrats who were concerned that John Kerry would not be sympathetic enough (based on seemingly no good evidence).

But who among those hardliners would have believed that George W. Bush would endorse –- as President! –- the idea of a fully autonomous Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel? Who would have thought that his administration would use up all-too-little political capital on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for most his presidency –- at least not until a few months ago in Annapolis when most of that political capital had waned? If pro-Israel supporters of candidate Bush had known that’s how President Bush’s term would have turned, I have to believe they would have roundly criticized him in 2000, and opposed him again in 2004, too.

And one has to wonder whether the invasion of Iraq, President Bush’s biggest foreign policy initiative -– and the perhaps the biggest foreign policy disaster in the history of the republic -– was ultimately good for Israel. I know a lot of pro-Israel people thought it would be (which is not to say, as some vile critics of Israel and Jews have, that the Jewish community somehow duped our nation’s leaders into this war). But in retrospect these pro-Israel supporters of the U.S. invasion of Iraq have to admit that things didn’t turn out the way they had hoped. Arguably, Israel’s neighborhood is even more dangerous and unstable now than it was before March 2003. Still think George W. Bush was “good for Israel”?

All of this, of course, prompts the question: what makes a U.S. President good for Israel? I’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts, but here are a few from me (not necessarily an exhaustive list). He or she recognizes and acts on the principle that:

• Israel is an ally that shares the values of the U.S., and it is a critical fulcrum of economic and political progress in the Middle East.
• Israel is not to blame for all the calamities of the Middle East.
• The conflict in the Middle East is ostensibly between Israel and its Arab adversaries, but really between moderates (Arabs, Muslims, Jews and many others in the region), who would be happy living side-by-side, and extremists, who only want to create chaos.
• Israel has been forced to fight a frontline battle against extremism that is aimed not just at the Jewish state but at many other countries. For this reason, those countries should be respectful and sympathetic to Israel, which is fighting their war for them, not critical of its every action.
• Israel’s military actions are, at their root, defensive, borne of the necessity to protect its citizens and, indeed, its existence against those who threaten them.
• Israel is faced with a choice between two bad options: taking military action, which brings about resentment, rage and criticism from the international community, and not defending its citizens against terrorist attacks, an unconscionable path for any sovereign nation.
• A U.S. President must expend some energy and political capital to help move Israel and the Palestinians in the direction of reconciliation.
• There cannot be any progress unless there is an ironclad guarantee that any agreement will make Israelis secure and put Palestinians on a path to prosperity and peace for themselves.
• This is unlikely to materialize so long as there are parties, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, that are out to destroy Israel.
• Israelis truly want peace and deserve it.
• Palestinians, too, deserve what every human being deserves: peace, prosperity and happiness.

Enough for now. I’d like to hear others chime in.

Jeff

Stop Making Sense

YESTERDAY, I HEARD SOMEONE REFER TO THE HORRIFIC SHOOTING SPREE at Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem on March 6 as something "we need to make sense of."

That's a familiar phrase we hear in the wake of such evil events as this, or mass killings at a school or another public place here in the U.S., or other terrorist attacks across the world. Media tell us of grieved survivors who are just 'trying to make some sense of this tragic loss.'

I seriously don't mean any disrespect to those who use this phrase. I think what they are really trying to say is that the survivors and others touched by the tragedies are "trying to cope." I'm sure they mean well and are just grasping at some words to express outrage and grief.

But, in this language, there is an embedded idea that somehow we can figure out what went on here, find meaning in the losses, even as there was no meaningful reason for them, and (another phrase that mystifies me) attain "closure."

The idea seems to be that we can make sense out of an act that has no good purpose and is nonsensical on its face. I don't want to make sense of these acts because it would treat them as more rational than they truly are. It would make explicable the inexplicable. To me that's a little too close to making them excusable.

Perhaps we can stop using this 'making sense' phrase in these situations.

Jeff

Forty Years and Still Making a Good Impression

NOT SURPRISINGLY, A LOT IS BEING WRITTEN AND SAID right now to analyze the legacy of the Six-Day War, which began 40 years ago yesterday. One of the pieces that especially caught my eye appeared on the Web site of the Pew Forum of Religion and Public Life.

Titled "A Six-Day War: Its Aftermath In American Public Opinion," the analysis by Robert Ruby of the Pew Forum showed how a consistently large majority Americans prior to and certainly following the Six-Day War have always favored Israel over its Arab adversaries. While many in the pro-Israel community in the U.S. are ever wringing their hands that Americans are turning their backs on Israel, poisoned by biased media reports from the Middle East and by increasingly sophisticated anti-Israel campaigns, the empirical research just doesn't bear that out.

Indeed, if anything, the events in the Middle East themselves and Israel's own actions appear to have more of impact on American opinion, but even then, Israel comes out strong.

Ruby points out that in 1948 and '49, surveys showed that Americans sympathized for Jews over Arabs in the "conflict in Palestine" by a three-to-one margin, roughly 33 percent to about 12 percent -- though more than half had no opinion at the time.

By 1967, Israel's stunning victory over its Arab enemies so captivated Americans that more than 45 percent said they sympathized with Israel as opposed to four percent for "Arab States," which was how Gallup worded the surveys at the time. The lowest favorability rating by Americans for Israel, 32 percent, came in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon.  But for the most part that level hovered in the 40 percent range no matter what party was in power or what debacle the Israeli government found itself in. Indeed, more Americans (64 percent) sypmpathized with Israel at the time of the first Gulf War -- when Iraqi Scuds rained on Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Israel showed its restraint by not entering the war -- than at any other time.

Ratings for "Arab States" or later Palestinians stayed mostly in the teens and below, shooting up to a high of 28 percent for the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Even during last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, 53 percent of Americans sympathized with Israel (up from a year earlier) and 11 percent sided with the Palestinians (down by a number of points from the year before).

If you look at the numbers graphically (which you can, if you go to the Pew Forum's site), you'll see that the gap is enormous and, expect in 1982, almost never came close to closing.

The obvious question is why, and the answers are not altogether obvious. I think it comes down to the fact that Israelis reflect many of the same enlightened democratic values that Americans do, and Americans see that -- notwithstanding some of the ugly, seemingly undemocratic things Israel must do because it has been conducting a defensive military operation since its creation in 1948. Americans don't see those same values reflected in the voices of Hamas leaders or others who have been the loyal antagonists to the Jewish State.

There's also the religion factor. America is, not officially but demographically, a Christian nation, and many Americans have a fondness and yearning for "The Holy Land." This is especially true among Evangelicals, a majority of whom, when asked in a Pew Survey in 2004, agreed that the U.S. government should support Israel over the Palestinians. Most other religious groups, save Jews, favored Palestinians.
What emerges from many of these numbers, too, is an answer to those who argue that the Jewish "lobby" in American has undue influence over our nation's foreign policy. It would be disingenuous to act as though the pro-Israel community in the U.S. has not organized itself well to advocate on behalf of Israel, that it has not tried to make the case for a strong relationship between Israel and the U.S. There's no question about that.

But maybe, just maybe, the politicians and policymakers in the Administration are responding to a genuine feeling of support from the American people for a country that, against staggering odds 40 years ago, pulled off a miracle and has since then proven its worth to them.

It's interesting, too, that according to the 2006 Pew Global Attitudes Project, Americans stand far away from the rest of the world in their regard for Israel. A larger plurality of Brits 29 percent to 24 percent) sympathize with the Palestinians over Israel, according to the Project. In France the proportion is even at 38 percent; Indians favor Palestinians by 20 to 22. In China, only seven percent favor Israel to 23 percent for the Palestinians, and in Spain that proporation is a surprising 9 percent for Israel to 32 percent for Palestinians. German opinion is, believe it or not, much closer to American opinion, with 37 percent sympathizing with Israel and 18 percent with the Palestians, and the Russians pick Israel by a 21 to 16 margin.

My point in citing these numbers is that, even in many places where the so-called "Jewish lobby" is much weaker (if it exists at all) than it is in the U.S., there is no strong support among the people.No one accuses the 'lobby' of subverting their intests, though many of their governments do have good political ties to Israel.

Favorability is not the entire game, but it's not unimportant.I think that will be good for Israel for a long time to come

The Moral Equation In Killing

THE WASHINGTON POST RAN A REMARKABLE AND FASCINATING ARTICLE the other day giving an inside account of the decision making that goes on within the Israeli military, intelligence and political community when it comes to targeted killings. That's Israel's practice of pinpoint killings of terrorist leaders.

It was remarkable not only for the level of detail the reporter, Laura Blumenfeld was able to gather and describe (she has, over the years, filed many great stories like this one on a pretty wide range of topics). It was notable also because it showed the exquisite dilemmas the Israelis go through before they decide to pull the trigger, as it were, to eliminate their supreme enemies.

The article illustrates vividly what I have noted on this blog several times in the past: Israel is constantly offered two equally bad choices: attacking its adversaries, which sometimes involves killing innocents and, even when it doesn’t, usually brings about the opprobrium of the international community; or backing off and exposing its citizens to harm.

According to the article, Israel arrived at this practice as a way of getting at the hardest of the most hardened leaders of the terrorists who plan deadly attacks against Israelis. They reason that it might be a deterrent to get the guys who don't really kill themselves in these operations and get their own hands dirty, to speak. And they go after them only when all other means of capturing them are exhausted.

But it's not so easy, especially when you consider that doing so could mean hurting or killing innocents. 

Blumenfeld portrays Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, one of the Israel's top military commanders as the proponent of some restraint, as the one more driven by the moral considerations than by the cold military needs. And, in the other corner, she puts Avi Dichter, who at the time of the events described in the piece was the head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency.

As far as Dichter is concerned, Israel's approach to counter-terrorism is, "It's not an eye for an eye. "It's having him for lunch before he has you for dinner." He adds elsewhere: "And if the terrorists walk out [of a targeted attack] alive, and tomorrow another bus explodes, how do we explain it to our people?"

That is the toll Dichter is trying to prevent, and Yaalon is on the same team. But he is also trying to prevent a more insidious toll. "How can we look in the eyes of our pilots if they kill innocent people?"

And, just as we saw in Lebanon and as the Israelis have seen in other battles (such as the 2002 battle in Jenin), there is always a danger that targeted killings will kill innocents. And, as was the case in the operation Blumenfeld describes, that can scuttle a whole mission.

In fact, the Israelis are so concerned about the possibility of killing innocents that they consult with ethicists and have actually taken what sounds like an absurd step of engaging a mathematician to calculate how many civilian casualties in such an operation would morally acceptable. (Maybe not so absurd, a colleague of mine explained. Isn't that what the Environmental Protection Agency does when it calculates many illnesses are acceptable versus the benefits of allowing a certain agent to be released into the environment? And doesn't the FDA do the same with drugs? I dunno, it's just hard to fathom quantifying a moral idea. And, by the way, according to Blumenfeld, "the mathematician whom the military had enlisted had failed to produce a formula.")

What's more the fail safes Israel puts in place to insure it is targeting the right person are formidable, and, as the article points out, they can scrub an operation at the last minute.

I see no evidence that Israel’s adversaries have taken any steps to fight in anything in the neighborhood of a just manner. Indeed, instead of trying to avoid innocents, groups like Hamas and Hezbollah have deliberately targeted them.

This is not to say that killing is ever a purely morally just practice, even if all the ethicists in the world can argue that there are times it is. I'm glad it is not my job to carry out this practice of targeted killing, and it leaves all of us, even those of us who root on a government that practices it, a little sullied.

Still, I don’t see that Israel has much better options considering what it is up against, and I’m glad to see (and not surprised) that it doesn’t take its responsibility to wage war lightly.

Jeff

A Letter to an American Christian Leader on the Current Arab-Israeli Conflict: Part II

BECAUSE I WROTE EARLIER ABOUT THE “Pastoral Letter to Palestinian Friends and Partners,” by Rev. John H. Thomas, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ (USA), I thought it would be worth sharing also a Religion News Service column on the same subject by Rabbi A. James Rudin.

Copyright restrictions don't allow me to share the entire column here, but Rabbi Rudin has some tough criticisms and concludes that the Pastoral letter "removes Thomas from playing any constructive role in achieving Middle East peace."

Jeff

"The status quo is untenable."

JOHN WATERBURY, the president of American University of Beirut, argues on today's Washington Post Op-Ed page that Israel's "distinct preference for the status quo, founded on conventional military superiority over all its neighbors and some strategic depth through its retaining the occupied territories" is the essential source of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It all began, he says, "at the end of formal combat in 1967, [when] Moshe Dayan declared 'mission accomplished.'"

By Waterbury's lights, I guess, the "mission" was the subjugation and colonization of poor Arab peoples by Israel.

Never mind that on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War the armies of those Arab peoples had massed on Israel's borders and were calling for the extinction of the Jewish state.

Never mind that the doctrine of pushing the Jews into the sea remains clear and present even today among Islamic militant groups, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and many others, not to mention wonderful guys like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, who has been unambiguous about this.

Never mind that, as far as Israel is concerned, the "mission" has never been about asserting its hegemony across the Middle East but about survival, which is what Moshe Dayan and his Army accomplished in 1967. It has always been about being left alone to thrive on its own small patch of earth. Good relations between Arabs and Jews would be nice, but even the most idealistic doves in Israel would settle for disengagement and peace.

I find it ironic that Waterbury would invoke the term "status quo" because for years I have heard Israelis from the left to the right of the spectrum repeat this mantra: "The status quo is untenable." That's to say, 'Israel's occupation of Gaza and all of the West Bank will undermine Israel's own future well being.' Now, it's fair to say that both the left and the right in Israel (and their supporters in the diaspora) had very different views about how to break away from the status quo, and I personally believe that the right wing was at times disingenuous about their willingness to do so.

I also find it startling that someone so close to the scene as Waterbury can conclude the conflict is all the fault of the Israelis. Even the unilateral withdrawal by Israel from Gaza and Southern Lebanon is, to Waterbury, a suspicious act!

It is yet more startling that Waterbury would tacitly say, by omission, that voraciously ambitious and morally corrupt terror groups, which deliberately put at risk the very people they claim to be fighting for, bear no responsibility at all. Not even the Saudis would agree with him.

What is Waterbury thinking?

Jeff

How Not to Wage a War?

ISRAELI MILITARY HISTORIAN Michael Oren, writing in The New Republic, declared today that "for three weeks now, Israel has presented a textbook case of how not to wage a war." Oren argues that the aerial war has left "Hezbollah largely intact militarily and with its political prestige greatly enhanced. Syrian and Iranian influence will be immeasurably strengthened. A disaster of regional and perhaps global dimensions appears imminent -- unless Israel seizes its last opportunity to regain the initiative and deliver a decisive blow to Islamic extremism."

That opportunity, Oren says, "is a massive ground campaign to gain control of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. By clearing the terrorists from the area adjacent to its northern border and by eliminating Hezbollah's most strategic strongholds, Israel will have won a concrete achievement. And though long-range rockets will continue to be launched at Israel from central Lebanon."

Just such a ground campaign appears to be underway right now. But while Oren may be right that the aerial bombardment has not eliminated Hezbollah and may have emboldened it, was there any other way to go? Could they have dispensed with the aerial campaign, which might have exposed more of the ground troops -- not to mention civilians in Northern Israel -- to even more harm? Again, was Israel faced with two equally bad choices as they were in Jenin in 2002?

To support Oren's case, just yesterday I heard Fawaz Gerges, a Sarah Lawrence College and native of Lebanon who had been there on vacation with his family when the bombing began, say, as he does from quote in the New York Sun:

"Hezbollah has become now a symbol of resistance and defiance, not just for Lebanese, but I think for many Arabs and Muslims. And the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, I think has become one of the most undisputed Arab heroes for Arabs and Muslims.
  

"Mr. Gerges added,"Just this week… a very prestigious Beirut research Institute, along with the Lebanese-American University, did a survey of thousands of Lebanese.And the findings, they show almost 87% of all Lebanese, Shiites, Sunnis, and Christians support Hezbollah.… This tells you that there has been a swell of support for Hezbollah inside Lebanon.… The longer the war continues, the stronger Hezbollah would become, and, in fact, the weaker the democratically elected Lebanese government would be."

Gerges, who had no kind words to say about Hezbollah and called Hezbollah's kidnapping of the Israeli soliders an monumental mistake, said that prior to the conflict there was a strong and growing antipathy for Hezbollah in Lebanon and maybe even a lack of antipathy (if not a fondness for) Israel there. That is a major casualty of this war.

No doubt that much of what Israel has done over the last three weeks has contributed to this overnight change and that it could take longer to repair this than it will take to rebuild the physical infrastructure of the country. But, not to play the finger pointing game, but how can we not say that siting missile batteries in residential areas is not a trap to make Israel look bad and that the bait is the people of Lebanon?

But, again, the Catch-22 for Israel: should it have just not retaliated? Indeed, I have to believe that one of the reasons Israel absorbed rocket attacks from southern Lebanon over the last several years is that Israel saw that the Lebanese were rallying away from Hezbollah and wanted to give that movement time to gel. But this latest step was too much.

And as for proportion, I, too, have struggled with this question, and I think reasonable minds can disagree. But would a measured tit for tat have done the job? Would Israel have been respected by its enemies and liked by its allies? Hard to believe, but we don't know, and this war isn't over yet.

Jeff

Playing Games with Body Counts

IT NOW TURNS OUT THAT THE BODY COUNT at the collapsed building in Qana in Lebanon is 28, not twice that number, as was originally reported on Sunday.

That is, of course, no comfort at all to those families who suffered losses there. It certainly doesn't make me feel good, and I want to be careful not to appear to be playing games about proportionalism when every life is sacred and the conditions for the people of Southern Lebanon must surely be miserable. 

But who's playing the games?

We saw a similar phenomenon when in 2002 the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) invaded the Jenin Jenin Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank to root out the reputed masterminds of suicide bombing attacks on Israelis. The initial reports were that "hundreds" of innocent residents of the camp had been killed in the fighting, and people were calling for hauling Israel into the international war crimes tribunal. But when the dust cleared, a U.N. investigative team counted 52 dead Palestinians, still a lot of people in what was described as a hideous scene. But it was not hundreds.

The problem then was the same as it is today: how to extricate these bad boys from a densely populated area without hurting innocents they were using as shields? Three choices: 1) don't go in, which will ensure that the suicide bombings continue; 2) level the town with bombs, as Hafez al-Assad did in the Syrian town of Hama when it didn't like the political movement arising there. Or 3) Conduct a ground campaign, eliminating the enemy block by block, which will subject IDF soldiers to a lot of peril.

They went with Option Three, and, indeed, 23 IDF soldiers died, a huge toll for Israel, and many others were wounded. My cousin, who lives in Israel, knew a kid who fought in Jenin and was wounded (not seriously). During the whole few days the battle raged, the soliders on the ground who were were calling to the guys outside, called, "Bring in the daisy cutters," 15,000-pound bombs that obliterate everything in sight, as President Assad would have done. Even as IDF soldiers died, the superiors would not pull exercise that option. They knew that the retribution in the world community would be too great.

There is also some chatter, coming only from the Israelis, of course, that Israeli bombs may not have been responsible for the fateful strike that collapsed the building on the 28 people (many of them children) in Qana. The building collapsed, Israel says, at least seven or eight hours after the air strikes. The implication is that the Hezbollah folks must have bombed the building themselves to make it look like the Israelis did it.

Whoa. These Hezbollah guys are cold blooded, but that's ice cold. I'd like to believe it's not true, but buildings don't just fall on their own, though it's certainly possible that the air strikes could have seriously destabilized them.

The truth is we don't yet know the truth about this. But we do know that Hezbollah and has made a perverse practice of locating its missile batteries in populated areas for the purpose of either keeping Israeli bombers away or embarrassing Israel when it goes ahead and bombs anyway. The Israelis have clear video evidence that Hezbollah launched rockets from Qana, and the IDF simply could not let this stand.

In that sense, Hezbollah is reckless and uncaring of the people it purports to protect, and it bears responsibility in the deaths of these poor people (many of them children) in Qana. It was the same bad scenario as in Jenin and the many other hornets' nests Israel has had to stick its hands into.

Jeff

Update on August 2: So as not to be playing games with body counts myself, I should say that Human Rights Watch has announced that at least 13 people from the wreckage in Qana are not accounted for. That could mean many of those missing died, so the total number of dead could be higher. In any case, it's too high now.

A Letter to an American Christian Leader on the Current Arab-Israeli Conflict

RECENTLY, REV. JOHN H. THOMAS, the General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ (USA), produced a  “Pastoral Letter to Palestinian Friends and Partners,” which outlines his views on the current chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. I offer here a letter I have sent to him in response.

July 30, 2006
Dear Rev. Thomas,
I write to you with profound concern about your recent “Pastoral Letter to Palestinian Friends and Partners.” I know your aim, as is mine and many others around the world, is to bring about peace and justice in the Middle East and elsewhere. But I would respectfully submit that your interpretation of events in this letter may do more to frustrate progress toward that goal than to help it along.

A letter like this is no idle matter, as you are the leader of an important faith community in the United States, and with that role comes a high moral authority and a significant forum. For that reason and because you speak candidly and forthrightly, I hope you will not mind some candid and forthright feedback reflecting how your words ring in the ears of at least one American Jew – and, I think, you will find, a great many others. Just as we in the American Jewish community and our brethren in Israel are constantly urged to be mindful of how our views and actions sound to other communities, please allow me to say that you trouble me greatly in this letter when you:

•    single out “lobbying by Jewish groups” of “many in our own churches” as if that is something sinister or unjust, because it renders some of your ecumenical partners to speak “what may seem to you to be an uncertain voice.” According to your letter, this very letter that you’re reading now would be suspect, rather than something that people do in an open society: carry on civil dialogue, in which the parties are free to agree or disagree. Are you saying that there is something improper when Jews “lobby” the Christian community (and others), but that what everyone else argues is perfectly fine? Is there a double standard for honest, open public discourse?

•    characterize Israel’s actions toward the Palestinians as “systematic oppression,” which carries with it undertones of “apartheid,” “fascism,” and even “Nazism,” terms that, as you surely know, are often applied to Israel by many of its fiercest enemies. Whether or not you mean to associate yourself with the use of those ugly terms with respect to Israel, you must surely be aware that when a major American religious leader uses a phrase like “systematic oppression,” it gives others what they think is license to use the more vile terminology I mentioned above.

•    fail to acknowledge the extraordinary and imminent threat Israelis face with the barrage of missile attacks over the last two-and-a-half weeks and how the build up of Hezbollah and Hamas military capability represents an existential threat to the State of Israel. You do cite “Hizb Allah’s attack on military personnel near Lebanon,” and say that “we pray for the Israeli soldiers’ release and safe return to family,” but you make absolutely no mention of the fact that thousands of rockets have rained down on Northern Israel in recent weeks, killing and wounding many civilians – human lives, which I hope have room in your prayers alongside the many other victims of this and other conflicts around the world. Similarly, you say nothing that about how Hamas has fired Katyushas on Israeli towns almost constantly since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip last year.

•    offer any criticism of Hezbollah and Hamas, two groups that have taken over the Palestinian and Lebanese populations by force and represent a source of destruction and death that I’m sure must offend your spiritual and moral sensibilities.

If I have misinterpreted you, Rev. Thomas, or taken your words out of context, please tell me. But I have read your letter carefully and repeatedly, and I find it hard to come to any other conclusions than these.

Before I conclude, please indulge me a few thoughts.

First, throughout its history, Israel has been forced to choose between two options, both of them bad.

The first bad option is, to put it simply, turn the other cheek when its people or its existence as a state is threatened. With every conflict in which it is engaged, there’s significant pressure from many in the international community (and even within Israel and the world Jewish community) for Israel to back off, to restrain itself. But the cost of restraint could very well be exacted in the killing or maiming of Israeli lives – and I’m not talking just about soldiers, as you do in your letter, but also about, say, civilians sitting on buses targeted by suicide bombers in Israeli cities or in their own private homes in the North of Israel targeted by Hezbollah missiles.

That, Rev. Thomas, is why the barrier, the wall, the fence – whatever you want to call it – was erected between Israel and the West Bank. It is there not to oppress Palestinians as you say. Indeed, the barrier has dramatically reduced the number of suicide bombings. That, Rev. Thomas, is why Israel is retaliating ferociously against the Hezbollah missile attacks from Lebanon and Hamas attacks from Gaza.

That is the second bad option, firing back, imposing the terrible privations on the Palestinian people that you have decried and that I assure you no one, most especially the Israelis, likes or cheers for from the rooftops. Israel would gladly stop those actions in a minute if she could trust that the extremists among the Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims would not carry out their unambiguous vows to wipe Israel off the map. But, surely you must agree, Palestinian extremists have given Israelis no reason to believe that they want anything but the destruction of the Jewish state.

I agree with you 200 percent that is heart-shattering that innocent Lebanese civilian lives are being lost in these retaliations. The images on our TV screens of these victims sadden me greatly, and you can bet that the vast majority of Israelis feel the same. Most, I’m sure, likely subscribe to the famous quote by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, who said in 1969: "When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons."

But what is Israel to do when Hezbollah is putting its missile batteries in residential neighborhoods in Lebanon? Please, put yourself in Israel’s shoes. Should it just continue to allow the attacks to shatter Israeli lives? In Friday’s New York Times (July 28), an article reported from Tyre, Lebanon, noted that “for some of the Christians who had made it out of this convoy, it was not just the privations they wanted to talk about but their ordeal at the hands of Hezbollah…. ‘Hezbollah came to Ain Ebel to shoot its rockets,’ said Fayad Hanna Amar, a young Christian man, referring to his village. ‘They are shooting from between our houses. Please,’ he added, ‘write that in your newspaper.'”

If you were presented with these two bad options, and these are truly the only two options, what would you do? Would you leave your own people exposed to violent threats, in violation of what any sovereign nation is sworn to do? Or would you fight back, knowing that any blow you launch will be criticized almost immediately by the world community?

Finally, there is another, often-ignored way to look at what’s going on in the Middle East, and it comes from the celebrated Israeli novelist and peace activist Amos Oz.  A few days after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in November 1995, Oz told the Washington Post that “the real battle in the Middle East [is] no longer between Arabs and Jews but between fanatics of both faiths and the rest of the people in the Middle East who want to find some reasonable compromise."

With that in mind, I will “lobby” you not by “demonizing the Palestinian community in general,” as you say in your letter, because I feel that most Palestinians have long been poor pawns in a bigger game and deserve something much better than they have been dealt over the last half century. The demons are the fanatics, the extremists who have held the average Palestinian hostage with thuggery, violence and nihilism and who have by extension held many others hostage – not just the Israelis, but also the Europeans, the Muslims and Arabs around the world (the vast majority of whom I believe are reasonable and want nothing of this murder and mayhem) and Americans.

Many observers of the Arab-Israeli conflict have, either deliberately or unwittingly, given support to groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, or governments like Syria’s or Iran’s, with language that makes Israel the great bogeyman (the purveyor of  “systematic oppression”), with words that paint its supporters, particularly in the United States, as political manipulators and with silence when morally bankrupt regimes and terrorist groups carry out unconscionable actions that should offend anyone who claims to care about peace and justice. Whenever this happens they gain ever more legitimacy, operating falsely under the mantle of “freedom fighter” or “humanitarian,” and the struggle to defeat them slips further away.

Each of us needs to be clear about this and ask ourselves, to borrow the title of the old labor movement song, which side are we on? I think the lines are pretty clear and that the fight is against the forces of chaos and destruction, which groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas embody. Israel is fighting virtually alone against them and on everyone else’s behalf. It is a fight that neither Israel, nor the rest of the civilized world can afford to lose.

So I ask: Which side of this struggle are you on, Rev. Thomas?

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Weintraub