Bashing Netanyahu Won’t Bring Peace Any Closer. By Jeff Jacoby.

Bashing Netanyahu won’t bring peace any closer. By Jeff Jacoby. Boston Globe, March 5, 2014. Also here.

Jacoby:

The delusion at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is that the lack of Palestinian sovereignty is what keeps the conflict alive, and that the tension and violence would end if only the Arabs of Palestine could have a state of their own.

That has never been true. What drives the conflict is not a hunger for Palestinian statehood, but a deep-rooted rejection of Jewish statehood. Arab leaders vehemently rejected the “two-state solution” that the United Nations recommended in 1947. Nearly 70 years later, the Palestinians are still unwilling to acknowledge Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people — to recognize that Jews are entitled to a sovereign state in their national homeland, just as the Irish are entitled to Ireland, the Italians to Italy, and the Japanese to Japan.

Yet Palestinian leaders heatedly insist that they will never agree to any such thing. “This is out of the question,” Abbas said last month. Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat complains: “When you say, ‘Accept Israel as a Jewish state,’ you are asking me to change my narrative.”

Just so. That narrative — that Jews are aliens in the Middle East, and Jewish sovereignty over any territory is intolerable — is precisely what must change if this conflict is to be resolved. Bashing Netanyahu may please the anti-Israel set, but it brings a just and lasting peace not one hour closer.

Rick Perry at CPAC: It’s Time for a Little Rebellion on the Battlefield of Ideas.

Rick Perry at CPAC: It’s Time for a Little Rebellion on the Battlefield of Ideas. Video. The ACU, March 7, 2014. YouTube. Also at Real Clear Politics.

Rick Perry: “Time for a Little Rebellion.” By Jerome Corsi and Garth Kant. WND, March 7, 2014.

Rick Perry wows crowd with #CPAC2014 speech. By Mandy Nagy. Legal Insurrection, March 7, 2014.

The Lure of Nationalism. By Robert Kaplan.

The Lure of Nationalism. By Robert Kaplan. Real Clear World, March 6, 2014.

Kaplan:

Nationalism is in the air. The scholars may talk about universal values and the need to combat all forms of determinism and essentialism. The media may see the world through the prism of universal human rights. The global elite may meet at Davos and proclaim the ability to engineer a liberal order that can defeat what it sees as primordial divisions. And yet nationalism – as well as other exclusivist tendencies such as tribalism and sectarianism – manages to survive and prosper.

 

Nationalism is alive and well throughout East Asia, where modern states united by race and ethnicity, such as China, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, contest not lofty ideas but zero-sum geography – that is, lines on the blue water map of the Pacific Basin. The advance of military technology (fighter jets, ballistic missiles, surveillance satellites, warships) has created a new geography of strategic competition between two great world civilizations, those of China and India. The Middle East has experienced less a democratic revolution than a crisis of central authority, in which ethnic, tribal, religious and sectarian identities have become more important than ever in modern times. In Europe, the steady decline of the European Union, originating in a half-decade-long economic crisis, has led gradually to the resurgence of national identities and right-wing, anti-immigrant movements. In the heart of Africa we see fighting and the fear of ethnic cleansing based on religious and tribal identities in the Central African Republic and South Sudan. Clearly, the scholarly, journalistic and business elites are speaking a different language than large elements of the masses worldwide.

 

The elite vision of a world in which a universal identity would vanquish narrower ones was a product of the end of the Cold War and the onset of the communications revolution. The Cold War's conclusion fostered the hope that a democratic universalism would make increasing headway, now that ideological battles were a thing of the past. The communications revolution that followed – that is, the dynamic development of the Internet, smartphones, social media and more frequent and cheaper air transport links – was believed to be an additional force for global unity.

 

But technology is value-neutral. It can be a force for division as well as for integration. The more that people of different origins and values come in contact with one another, the more they become aware of not just how similar they are, but of how different they are. Proximity, whether real or virtual, can ignite the deepest animosities.

 

And so can freedom.

 

“Freedom” is a sacred cow in the American political lexicon. But freedom can unleash not just the power of the individual, but also the power of the group. For as people become liberated from oppression they become aware not just of a prideful self-identity, but also of a prideful ethnic or sectarian identity. Americans assume that other people’s experience of freedom will necessarily mirror their own, but that is a conceit more than an analysis.

 

In this vein, the immediate post-Cold War era constituted an interlude of naïve assumptions. Perhaps the most obscure but telling of those naïve assumptions was the easy conventional wisdom in the early 1990s that what the Middle East required was commercial mass media – a media relatively free of government constraints, which would dilute the region’s anti-Western attitudes and its political, ethnic and religious divides, especially those between Arabs and Israelis. If only the dictatorial regimes controlled less of what people thought, then the Middle East would be more peaceful. More freedom, in other words. Well, such mass media did come into being. By the standards of the region’s past, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya were independent networks modeled in style and sophistication after American ones. But their points of view – in their Arabic language broadcasts, at least – turned out to be extremely hostile to Western and Israeli interests, perhaps more so than the government channels they replaced. For the new networks reflected the narrow attitudes of their culture just as American networks do.

 

There is another element to the communications revolution to which elites are blind. Elites, by definition, are often brilliant and attractive-looking people who, because of their own sophistication and social confidence, welcome cosmopolitanism in all its aspects. For they are never insecure in the midst of exotic environments. But most people in this world are not brilliant, not terribly attractive and therefore not confident. Their lives are full of struggle. So they naturally take refuge in family, community, religion or some form of solidarity group. And in an era when mass communication technologies foster a vulgarized assault on traditional values – whether directly or indirectly, knowingly or unknowingly – the sense of alienation among the masses intensifies, leading them deeper into such exclusivist beliefs.

 

So it is not an accident that there is now a resurgence of Orthodox Judaism and evangelical Christianity in the United States, just as there is a resurgence of ideological Islam across the Greater Middle East. Whether it is trashy mass culture in America or relentless Westernization in the Muslim world, people require an ethical and a spiritual anchor against the forces of technological alienation. In Asia, perhaps the most technologically modernized region on the globe, nationalism helps to fill this void. For nationalism is modernism writ large. As people who do not retreat back into religion lose their literal faith in God and thus their belief in individual immortality, they take refuge in what the late Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz called a “collective immortality.”

 

Europe is, after a fashion, a more severe example of this phenomenon because in Europe, we have a cosmopolitan global elite that actually runs an empire-of-sorts: the European Union. And so the rise of anti-EU, right-wing tendencies demonstrates not only a cultural, but also a direct political hostility to such elite rule. The EU leaders and bureaucracy long ago made the calculation that nationalism was dead and that the European masses, after two world wars, wanted nothing so much as a respite from divisive forces. But the masses may increasingly require an anchor in history, nationalism and religious identity that protects them against the bland universalism and increasing (albeit exaggerated) Islamization of the continent that the EU has thus far delivered.

 

Though, while globalization may have sparked a certain alienation that leads to a return of nationalism, that does not mean this new nationalism will be as intense and intoxicating as the kind that ravished Europe in previous centuries. Nationalism may return, but in a far more nuanced state – a result of the very globalization that caused it in the first place. Indeed, there may currently be a rebalancing taking place in terms of personal and communal identities, for we are all not simply indistinguishable individuals bumping into each other in a global meeting hall. We have linguistic, cultural, ethnic and religious attributes that are very much a part of who we are, and which set us apart from others.

 

So the tension between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, and between universalism and exclusivism, must continue. Soon after the Berlin Wall collapsed, anticipating a degree of global unity, Milosz observed, “our bond of being born in the same time, thus being contemporaries, is already stronger than that of being born in the same country.” Will, in fact, the bond of time overcome the bond of blood or narrow belief? It is this question that towers above us all.

Rachel Canning Rails Against Spoiled “Suburban Baby Boomer Types” in Facebook Rant. By Irving DeJohn.

Rachel Canning rails against spoiled “Suburban baby boomer types” in Facebook rant. By Irving DeJohn. New York Daily News, March 7, 2014.

Judge Rules Against Rachel Canning Who Sued Parents for Tuition. Video. CBS New York, March 4, 2014. YouTube.

Rachel Canning

Rachel Canning

At the Heart of the Jewish State Issue. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

At the Heart of the Jewish State Issue. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, March 6, 2014.

Liberals Outraged by Cadillac Ad. By Rush Limbaugh.

Liberals Outraged by Cadillac Ad. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, March 6, 2014.

Cadillac Made a Commercial About theAmerican Dream, and It’s a Nightmare. By Carolyn Gregoire. The Huffington Post, February 26, 2014.

The First Ever 2014 Cadillac ELR: Poolside. Video. Cadillac, February 7, 2014. YouTube.

Do Palestinians Really Want a State of Their Own? By Oren Kessler.

Do Palestinians Really Want a State of Their Own? By Oren Kessler. Foreign Policy, March 6, 2014. Also here.

Kessler:

The Palestinians have all the leverage, a former top State Department specialist on the Mideast peace process recently told me over red wine in Tel Aviv. “I’m not sure they’ll ever sign on the dotted line.” In that moment of candor – lubricated no doubt by the Golan Heights cabernet – the ex-bureaucrat admitted something U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration would never concede publicly: The Palestinians are under little to no pressure to sign a final peace agreement with Israel.

 

The consensus among right-thinking people, of course, is that self-determination is the incentive par excellence for Palestinian leaders to strike a deal. That was the view Obama articulated on Feb. 27, four days before he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he told journalist Jeffrey Goldberg that more than anything else, the Palestinians seek “the dignity of a state.” Secretary of State John Kerry repeated the “dignity” talking point on March 3 at the pro-Israel policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

 

But if the Palestinians are desperately seeking a negotiated settlement that grants them a state of their own, they’re certainly hiding it well. In July, Kerry announced an ill-advised nine-month deadline for delivering Middle East peace. That gestation period is nearly complete, but there doesn’t seem to be a bun in Washington’s oven. Undeterred, the administration is making a final push: Netanyahu visited the Oval Office on March 3, with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas set to follow on March 17. If, however, Kerry and Obama are to succeed where their predecessors have all failed, they will have to fundamentally reassess their policy toward the Palestinians.

 

It’s actually the Israelis, not the Palestinians, who are under pressure from all corners to reach a peace deal. Obama often reminds the Israelis that time is working against them, as high Palestinian birthrates could mean that the land between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River will have an Arab majority before long. For his part, Kerry warns Israel that the threat of boycotts and delegitimization is growing. The European Union, meanwhile, has set new guidelines against its funds going to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and it is considering labeling goods that originate there. The United Nations has declared 2014 the “International Year of Solidarity With the Palestinian People.”

 

The Palestinians, meanwhile, are watching from the sidelines with glee. As one Palestinian negotiator told an Israeli official during a spate of terrorist attacks a decade ago, “Victory for us is to see you suffer.” Viewers of the Palestinian Authority’s official television station are unceasingly reminded that the Arab-Israeli conflict is an existential, zero-sum dispute. The channel assures its audience that cities in Israel will ultimately return to Arab rule, that the murder of Israeli civilians is a heroic deed, and that Jews are “barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs” – or in the words of putatively peace-minded Palestinian Authority official Jibril Rajoub, “Satans” and “Zionist sons of bitches.” And that’s not to speak of the fire-eyed theocrats of Hamas, who run the show in the Gaza Strip.

 

It’s inconceivable that Palestinian leaders, watching Israel squirm under unprecedented international pressure, would allow the Jewish state to rehabilitate its image as peace-seeker. Instead, they recognize that after the peace talks’ inevitable failure, the Jewish state will be faced with only bad options. If Israel maintains the status quo, international pressure upon it can only grow. If it unilaterally withdraws from all or part of the West Bank, it will almost certainly face the same rocket attacks that followed its last two withdrawals – from Gaza in 2005 and from south Lebanon in 2000. This time, however, the rockets will be aimed at Tel Aviv and its international airport. The Palestinian Authority will then argue that it can’t be blamed for the security breakdown, because it was not consulted in carrying out the withdrawal.

 

The Obama administration seems determined not to contemplate the idea that the Palestinians habitually choose Israeli occupation over independence. But we’ve seen this show before: In 2000, Israel offered to dismantle more than 60 settlements, withdraw from 92 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza, share the prickliest areas of Jerusalem’s Old City, and grant the Palestinians a capital in the city's eastern areas. Some 100,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants would be allowed to move within Israel’s borders. Yasser Arafat, then the Palestinians’ leader, turned down the offer without making one of his own and then gave tacit or explicit sanction to the Second Intifada, an outburst of bombings and shootings that killed more than 1,000 Israelis over several years.

 

Between 2006 and 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with Abbas 36 times, giving even more concessions – offering some 95 percent of the West Bank, with swaps of land in Israel to bring the exchange to 100 percent, and a fund for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Abbas walked away. As Olmert lamented in 2013, “I am still waiting for a phone call.”

 

Is Abbas as toxic as Arafat, the unreformed terrorist? No. Is he Palestine’s version of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, ready to turn his sword into a ploughshare and lock hands on the White House lawn? Not a chance.

 

Abbas may have realized that Israel, to use Obama’s words, “is not going anywhere.” Sadly, he has obdurately refused to pass on the memo to his people – in Arabic, he continues to feed them the fantasy of a wholesale “right of return” of millions of Arabs to Israel that no Israeli leader will ever allow. In 2012, he conceded to an Israeli journalist that he would return to his Galilee hometown of Safed only as a tourist – but quickly walked back his comments after the resulting uproar. Having thus primed his people, Abbas predictably finds that there is virtually no Palestinian constituency for a realistic peace deal.

 

That’s why Shlomo Avineri, an octogenarian Israeli peacenik and former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, can write in the dovish daily Haaretz: “Don’t expect Abbas to sign anything.” That’s why, this week, Abbas’s underlings reacted to Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech – a veritable olive branch, by his standards – with canned outrage. Netanyahu’s demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, thundered Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Shaath, is “totally rejected” and “contravene[s] all the rules of the peace negotiations.”

 

None of this is to suggest that Israel is blameless. Israel could have avoided many, though not all, of its current predicaments by not having embarked on the West Bank settlement enterprise in the first place – at least not in areas distant from Israel proper and heavily inhabited by Palestinians. The enterprise has been damaging to Israel because it obscures the fact that Palestinians still overwhelmingly reject the Jewish state to begin with and because it gives the Palestinians a plausible pretext for endlessly deferring difficult decisions. In other words, it gives them nearly limitless leverage.

 

So what is to be done? The good news is that the United States does have ways to influence the Palestinians to negotiate seriously – if only it is willing to use them. Washington is the single biggest donor to the Palestinian Authority, and thus Congress could condition U.S. aid on stopping all that monkeys-and-devils incitement (two such initiatives are currently in the first stages of legislation). The United States could also offer significant aid boosts to the Palestinians if they make tangible steps toward peace, and threaten corresponding cutbacks if they fail to do so.

 

Such a policy will ultimately benefit the Palestinians more than anyone. Washington, as well as the world, does them no favors in forever excusing their failure to better their lot and in painting them as a people always acted upon but never acting. The Palestinian leadership currently has no incentive to make a deal – but in the interest of peace, that can and must change.

Why Putin Doesn’t Respect Us. By Thomas L. Friedman.

Why Putin Doesn’t Respect Us. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, March 4, 2014.

John Legend: All of Me.

John Legend: All of Me. Video. johnlegendVEVO, October 2, 2013. YouTube.

Aimee Mann: That’s Just What You Are.

Aimee Mann: That’s Just What You Are. Video. AimeeMannVEVO, June 16, 2009. YouTube.




’Til Tuesday: Voices Carry. Video. TilTuesdayVEVO, October 25, 2009. YouTube.

Ralph Peters: Putin Believes in Russia’s Destiny; Obama Does Not Believe in American Exceptionalism.

Ralph Peters: Putin Believes in Russia’s Destiny; Obama Does Not Believe in American Exceptionalism. Video. Real Clear Politics, March 4, 2014. Also at Mediaite, YouTube, YouTube.

Kerry to Putin: Lurch Into the 21st Century; Seminar Caller Reads Leftist Talking Points; WaPo OMG: Obama Lives in Fantasy World. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, March 4, 2014.

Obama Wasn’t Alone Misreading Putin. By Michael Rubin. Commentary, March 5, 2014.








LT. COL. RALPH PETERS: Look, the bottom line on this is Russia has a real leader. You may not like him, and I don’t, but he is brilliant and ruthless, he has clear goals and he moves straight toward those goals. The West lacks a leader. Like it or not, the president of the United States is the de facto leader of the West, and our president just is – he’s incapable and unwilling to lead.

 

The weakness is phenomenal. Now, you know, we are not weaker than we were in the Carter years. I was in that military, it was pathetic. Our military today is the best in the world, best in our history, although Obama wants to dismantle it. We’re also immensely wealthier than the Carter years. The problem is, that as a president Obama is far weaker than Carter, and he’s probably the worst president we've ever had.

 

He is a man who's incapable of making a hard decision. And by the way, one other key point, Vladimir Putin believes in Russia. He believes in Russia’s destiny, its mission. Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism. He does not believe in this country.

Israel’s Big Mistake. By Yoav Sorek.

Israel’s Big Mistake. By Yoav Sorek. Mosaic, March 2014.

How my countrymen gave up the hope for real peace, and how they can get it back.

An Alternative to the Two-State Solution. By Tom Wilson. Commentary, March 5, 2014.

An Optimist’s Case for the Kerry Peace Process. By Michael Omer-Man.

An optimist’s case for the Kerry peace process. By Michael Omer-Man. +972, March 4, 2014.

Is a Settlement Boycott Best for Israel? Daniel Gordis vs. Lara Friedman.

Is a Settlement Boycott Best for Israel? Debate between Daniel Gordis and Lara Friedman. New York Times, March 3, 2014.

America’s Misguided Gender Missionaries. By Martha Bayles.

America’s Misguided Gender Missionaries. By Martha Bayles. The American Interest, March 3, 2014.

Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? By Susan Moller Okin. Boston Review, October/November 1997. Also here.

Putin Invades Crimea: Obama Hardest Hit? By Walter Russell Mead.

Putin Invades Crimea: Obama Hardest Hit? By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, March 3, 2014.

How the Boycott Got Boycotted. By Adam Kredo.

How the Boycott Got Boycotted. By Adam Kredo. Commentary, March 2014.

Countering Israel Boycotts, With Glamour. By Mark Landler. New York Times, February 28, 2014.

Why Liberals Must Repudiate the BDS Movement. By Howard Wohl. The Tower, March 2014.

Don’t Buy the Israel Boycott Hype. By David Rosenberg. Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2014.

Obama to Israel – Time is Running Out. By Jeffrey Goldberg.

Obama to Israel – Time is Running Out. President Obama interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg. Bloomberg View, March 2, 2014. Excerpts at The Atlantic.

Obama threatens Israel on the eve of Netanyahu visit. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, March 2, 2014.

For Netanyahu, a bombshell battering by Obama. By David Horovitz. The Times of Israel, February 3, 2014.

The President’s Prophetic Threats to Israel. By John Podhoretz. Commentary, March 2, 2014.

On Israel, Obama Has No Clue What He’s Talking About. By David Harsanyi. The Federalist, March 3, 2014.

Obama’s Scary Mideast Interview. By Elliott Abrams. The Weekly Standard, March 3, 2014.

Surprise: Obama Kills the Peace Process. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, March 3, 2014.

Obama puts Israel on notice. By Hussein Ibish. NOW Lebanon, March 4, 2014.

Obama’s Settlement Construction Lie. By Evelyn Gordon. Commentary, March 4, 2014.


Podhoretz:

In an extraordinary—and I don’t use the word in a complimentary way—interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg, President Obama follows his secretary of state in warning Israel and its leader that a failure to “make peace” now with the Palestinians will have terrible consequences. Israel is “more isolated internationally,” and will become more so; there will be more Palestinians and Israeli Arabs as time goes on, not fewer, so Israel had better move now; and not to move now is to create the conditions for a “permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank. . . . there comes a point when you cannot manage this anymore.”

 

The wild logical contradictions in his remarks expose the degree to which the American approach in the Kerry peace talks is to haunt Israel with the dire nightmare it will face should the talks fail; Palestinian rejectionism plays almost no role in the Obaman calculus here.

 

The Palestinians, in Obama’s view, do not actually need to make changes; astonishingly, he says, they’re ready for peace. “The Palestinians,” the president says, overlooking every piece of polling data we have about the opinions of the Palestinians, “would still prefer peace. They would still prefer a country of their own that allows them to find a job, send their kids to school, travel overseas, go back and forth to work without feeling as if they are restricted or constrained as a people. And they recognize that Israel is not going anywhere.”

 

Ah. So that 2011 poll that says 60 percent of the Palestinians reject a two-state solution is bunk—a poll whose findings have not been  contradicted since. If Palestinians refuse to accept a two-state solution, they do not “recognize that Israel is not going anywhere.” Rather, they are still engaging in a pseudo-national fantasy about Israel’s disappearance or destruction. And they are so eager for peace and coexistence with Israel that they remain the only significant Muslim population that still has a favorable view of suicide bombings, according to a Pew survey.

 

“The voices for peace within the Palestinian community will be stronger with a framework agreement,” the president says. But why would the “voices for peace” need to be “stronger” if they reflect the actual views of the Palestinian people? They should be more than strong enough on their own now. Indeed, if they are so strong, we would not be hearing repeated denunciations of the “framework” process from Palestinian negotiators.

 

The president’s fantasies about the Palestinians also  involve Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. “I think,” he says, “nobody would dispute that whatever disagreements you may have with him, he has proven himself to be somebody who has been committed to nonviolence and diplomatic efforts to resolve this issue.” Nobody would dispute? In 2008, offered a peace deal by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that involved Abbas actually drawing a new West Bank map giving the Palestinians something between 92 and 95 percent of the territory, Abbas basically fled the table and didn’t return. Granted, he didn’t do what Yasser Arafat did after a similar deal at Camp David in 2000 and begin the second intifada, but this hardly demonstrates a commitment to a diplomatic effort—except for one that fails.

 

So the Palestinians, in the president’s view, are all in. It’s really quite wonderful, in fact: “You’ve got a partner on the other side who is prepared to negotiate seriously, who does not engage in some of the wild rhetoric that so often you see in the Arab world when it comes to Israel, who has shown himself committed to maintaining order within the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority and to cooperate with Israelis around their security concerns — for us to not seize this moment I think would be a great mistake.”

 

Yes, the PA is such a partner for peace that even with negotiations going on, it celebrates acts of violence against Israel on a constant basis, as this report details.

 

Not to mention the little wrinkle that Abbas doesn’t speak in any way for half of the Palestinian polity, the half living under the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza. Ah, but that’s no problem, in the president’s view. “There would still be huge questions about what happens in Gaza,” the president says, “but I actually think Hamas would be greatly damaged by the prospect of real peace.” Really! Unlike Abbas, who has not faced Palestinian voters since 2004, Hamas actually won a free election in the past decade and its unquestioned commitment to Israel’s destruction is clearly shared by the people who live under its aegis. They do not want peace.

 

All of this is folderol, anyway, because the president clearly thinks peace is solely Israel’s to make, and basically, Binyamin Netanyahu should listen to Obama’s mother and rip off the band-aid: “One of the things my mom always used to tell me and I didn’t always observe, but as I get older I agree with — is if there’s something you know you have to do, even if it’s difficult or unpleasant, you might as well just go ahead and do it, because waiting isn’t going to help. When I have a conversation with Bibi, that’s the essence of my conversation: If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who?”

 

Now that’s some chutzpah right there, because of course the president is invoking the words of Hillel, the ancient Jewish sage, as a rhetorical tool against the Israeli prime minister. Of course, Obama leaves out the key words of Hillel’s famed plaint, which are: “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?” Israel must be for itself, because there is almost no country left in the world that will be for it; while the president says the American commitment to Israel is “rock-solid,” clearly he does not believe it will necessarily be so in the future . . . nor should it be.

 

Says the president of Netanyahu, “if he does not believe that a peace deal with the Palestinians is the right thing to do for Israel, then he needs to articulate an alternative approach. And as I said before, it’s hard to come up with one that’s plausible.” That’s ridiculous. A peace deal with the Palestinians is of course the right thing to do for Israel. But if there can be no peace deal, or can be no peace deal that does not pose a severe danger to Israel’s survival, then it is not the right thing to do.

 

The only “plausible” thing to do is to challenge the Palestinians to cure themselves of their psychotic political culture and become a rational actor with whom a true peace can be made. Is that a tragedy? It sure is. Sometimes there are tragedies, and they must be faced realistically, not wished away.

 

One thing that cannot be wished away is the president’s insistence on placing the burdens on Israel. This is something else his apologists can no longer wish away.

Putin Smashes Washington’s Cocoon. By Walter Russell Mead.

Putin Smashes Washington’s Cocoon. By Walter Russell Mead and Staff. The American Interest, March 1, 2014.

Red Lines in Crimea. By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, February 28, 2014.


Mead and Staff:

A Politico report calls it “a crisis that no one anticipated.” The Daily Beast, reporting on Friday’s US intelligence assessment that “Vladimir Putin’s military would not invade Ukraine,” quotes a Senate aide claiming that “no one really saw this kind of thing coming.”

 

Op-eds from all over the legacy press this week helped explained why. Through the rose tinted lenses of a media community deeply convinced that President Obama and his dovish team are the masters of foreign relations, nothing poor Putin did could possibly derail the stately progress of our genius president. There were, we were told, lots of reasons not to worry about Ukraine. War is too costly for Russia’s weak economy. Trade would suffer, the ruble would take a hit. The 2008 war with Georgia is a bad historical comparison, as Ukraine’s territory, population and military are much larger. Invasion would harm Russia’s international standing. Putin doesn’t want to spoil his upcoming G8 summit, or his good press from Sochi. Putin would rather let the new government in Kiev humiliate itself with incompetence than give it an enemy to rally against. Crimea’s Tartars and other anti-Russian ethnic minorities wouldn’t stand for it. Headlines like “Why Russia Won’t Invade Ukraine,” “No, Russia Will Not Intervene in Ukraine,” and “5 Reasons for Everyone to Calm Down About Crimea” weren’t hard to find in our most eminent publications.

 

Nobody, including us, is infallible about the future. Giving the public your best thoughts about where things are headed is all a poor pundit (or government analyst) can do. But this massive intellectual breakdown has a lot to do with a common American mindset that is especially built into our intellectual and chattering classes. Well educated, successful and reasonably liberal minded Americans find it very hard to believe that other people actually see the world in different ways. They can see that Vladimir Putin is not a stupid man and that many of his Russian officials are sophisticated and seasoned observers of the world scene. American experts and academics assume that smart people everywhere must want the same things and reach the same conclusions about the way the world works.

 

How many times did foolishly confident American experts and officials come out with some variant of the phrase “We all share a common interest in a stable and prosperous Ukraine.” We may think that’s true, but Putin doesn’t.

 

We blame this in part on the absence of true intellectual and ideological diversity in so much of the academy, the policy world and the mainstream media. Most college kids at good schools today know many more people from different races and cultural groups than their grandparents did, but they are much less exposed to people who think outside the left-liberal box. How many faithful New York Times readers have no idea what American conservatives think, much less how Russian oligarchs do? Well bred and well read Americans live in an ideological and cultural cocoon and this makes them fatally slow to understand the very different motivations that animate actors ranging from the Tea Party to the Kremlin to, dare we say it, the Supreme Leader and Guide of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

As far as we can tell, the default assumption guiding our political leadership these days is that the people on the other side of the bargaining table (unless they are mindless Tea Party Republicans) are fundamentally reasonable people who see the world as we do, and are motivated by the same things that motivate us. Many people are, of course, guided by an outlook not all that dissimilar from the standard upper middle class gentry American set of progressive ideas. But some aren’t, and when worlds collide, trouble comes.

 

Too much of the Washington policy establishment looks around the world and sees only reflections of its own enlightened self. That’s natural and perhaps inevitable to some degree. The people who rise through the competitive bureaucracies of American academic, media and think tank life tend to be those who’ve most thoroughly absorbed and internalized the set of beliefs and behavioral norms that those institutions embody and respect. On the whole, those beliefs and norms have a lot going for them. It would not be an improvement if America’s elite institutions started to look more like their counterparts in Russia or Zimbabwe.

 

But while those ideas and beliefs help people rise through the machinery of the American power system, they can get in the way when it comes to understanding the motives and calculations of people like President Putin. The best of the journalists, think tankers and officials will profit from the Crimean policy fiasco and will never again be as smug or as blind as so much of Washington was last week. The mediocre majority will go on as before.

 

The big question of course, is what President Obama will take away from this experience. Has he lost confidence in the self-described (and self-deceived) “realists” who led him down the primrose path with their empty happy talk and their beguiling but treacherous illusions? Has he rethought his conviction that geopolitics and strategy are relics of a barbarous past with no further relevance in our own happy day? Is he tired of being humiliated on the international stage? Is it dawning on him that he has actual enemies rather than difficult partners out there, and that they wish him ill and seek to harm him? (Again, we are not talking about the GOP in Congress.)

 

Let’s hope so. There are almost three years left in this presidential term, and they could be very long ones if President Obama chooses to stick with the ideas and approaches he’s been using so far.

Northern Exposure: Launching Excavations at Tell Abil el-Qameḥ (Abel Beth Maacah). By Nava Panitz-Cohen et al.

Tel Abel Beth Maacah looking east from the main road

Sheba passed through all the tribes of Israel to Abel of Beth-maacah; and all the Bichrites assembled, and followed him inside. Joab’s forces came and besieged him in Abel of Beth-maacah; they threw up a siege-ramp against the city, and it stood against the rampart. Joab’s forces were battering the wall to break it down. Then a wise woman called from the city, “Listen! Listen! Tell Joab, ‘Come here, I want to speak to you.’” He came near her; and the woman said, “Are you Joab?” He answered, “I am.” Then she said to him, “Listen to the words of your servant.” He answered, “I am listening.” Then she said, “They used to say in the old days, ‘Let them inquire at Abel’; and so they would settle a matter. I am one of those who are peaceable and faithful in Israel; you seek to destroy a city that is a mother in Israel; why will you swallow up the heritage of the Lord?” Joab answered, “Far be it from me, far be it, that I should swallow up or destroy! That is not the case! But a man of the hill country of Ephraim, called Sheba son of Bichri, has lifted up his hand against King David; give him up alone, and I will withdraw from the city.” The woman said to Joab, “His head shall be thrown over the wall to you.” Then the woman went to all the people with her wise plan. And they cut off the head of Sheba son of Bichri, and threw it out to Joab. So he blew the trumpet, and they dispersed from the city, and all went to their homes, while Joab returned to Jerusalem to the king.

– 2  Samuel 20: 14-22.


Northern Exposure: Launching Excavations at Tell Abil el-Qameḥ (Abel Beth Maacah). By Nava Panitz-Cohen, Robert Mullins, and Ruhama Bonfil. STRATA: Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, Vol. 31 (2013). Also here.

Abstract:

Tell Abil el-Qameḥ, identified with the Biblical site of Abel Beth Maakah, is an imposing site strategically located on the farthest northern border of Israel, a border in antiquity as well as today. In the Iron Age, this boundary separated - and joined - Israelites, Phoenicians and Arameans. In the Bronze Age, it served as a springboard for relations with the great kingdoms in Syria and Mesopotamia. Despite its prominence and strategic importance, the site had never been excavated. Following a survey in 2012 led by the authors, excavation began in the summer of 2013. Iron Age remains exist just under the topsoil in the two areas explored this first season. In the center of the eastern slope (Area A) a series of Iron Age occupation levels were found and in the southern end of the lower mound (Area F) there was a large stone structure that might be a fortification overlooking the Huleh Valley.

Report: Survey at Tel Abel Beth Maacah – May 2012. By Nava Panitz-Cohen, Ruhama Bonfil, and Robert Mullins. Tel Abel Beth Maacah Excavations.

Tel Abel Beth Maacah Excavations website.

Abel Beth Maacah Facebook page.

Breaking Ground at Tel Abel Beth Maacah—Why Dig at the Gateway to the Arameans. By Robert Mullins and Nava Panitz-Cohen. ASOR Blog.

Mullins and Panitz-Cohen:

Abel Beth Maacah is an imposing 35-acre mound controlling one of the most strategic passes in northern Israel and has the honor of being the northernmost site in Israel (running neck-and-neck with nearby Tel Dan, but winning by a nostril). It was also ancient Israel’s northern gateway to the Aramean world.

 

But this summer, a team of 40 led by Robert Mullins of Azusa Pacific University and Nava Panitz-Cohen of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in collaboration with Cornell University, began excavations at the largest site in Israel yet to be touched by the archaeologist’s spade.

 

The identification of Tell Abil el-Qameḥ with Abel Beth Maacah (1 Kings 15:20; 2 Kings 15:29; 2 Chronicles 16:4) has been accepted by most scholars, beginning with Edward Robinson and Victor Guerrin in the 19th century and continuing into the 20th century with W. F. Albright, Y. Aharoni, W. G. Dever, and others. But remarkably, despite the site’s size and obvious importance, it has never been excavated.

 

What are we looking for? For one thing, there is Abel’s Aramean connection. References to a political entity called “Aram Maacah” (1 Chronicles 19:6) and to the “king of Maacah” (2 Samuel 10:6, 8) evoke possibilities of Aramean presence at the site, allowing us to examine such an entity in relation to other presumed Aramean sites like Bethsaida, Tel Hadar, and En Gev. Even though the Arameans are specifically mentioned in ancient records, we know very little about them “on the ground,” especially within the borders of modern Israel. Can they be defined in terms of a distinct material culture? The location of Abel Beth Maacah on the northern borders of Israel (then and now) makes this site a viable candidate for the study of Aramean cultural and political influences.

 

Passages in the Hebrew Bible suggest that Abel Beth Maacah became an Israelite town during David’s reign, and it apparently remained so until its destruction by the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III in 733 BCE. In the story of the Wise Woman of Abel Beth Maacah (2 Samuel 20:14-22), the city is enigmatically referred to as “a mother in Israel.” Her power and influence is apparent in that she directly negotiates the surrender of the Benjaminite rebel Sheba ben Bichri with Joab, David’s military commander.

 

The Abel Beth Maacah project is also intent on pursuing Phoenician connections in Iron Age II. The city’s location on a branch road of the International Highway leading north to Ijon (Tell ed-Dibbin) in Lebanon’s Marj Ayyun Valley, and roads leading west to Tyre and Sidon, will enable us to study cross-cultural ties with coastal Lebanon during the Bronze Age and Iron Age.

 

A modern illustration of the proximity of Tel Abel Beth Maacah to the Phoenician coast can be found in an exhibit in the local museum at nearby Metulla. An advertisement from the 1930’s invites one to spend their summer vacation in lovely, cool Metulla. According to the ad, the easiest way to get there from Tel Aviv is to take a boat to Tyre and then a carriage from there to Metulla, 35 kilometers away! We dream of the day when we too can take such a ride.

 

Scattered ruins of the small Arab village of Abil el-Qameḥ from 1948 are visible on parts of the tell, particularly on the upper mound. While not part of our immediate research agenda, the remains of the Arab village and the associated strata dating to Late Antiquity are slated for exploration in the future as an integral part of the occupation sequence of the site, emphasizing the longue durée of human occupation on this prominent mound.

 

If the tell is so impressive, important, intriguing, and full of potential, why has it never been excavated? The answer may lie precisely in the element that made the site so important throughout history – location, location, location. The geopolitical situation that drew Canaanites, Arameans, Israelites, Phoenicians, and Assyrians to this “bottleneck” between the verdant Huleh Valley to the south and the lush Lebanese Beq’a Valley to the north also placed it a sensitive zone in modern times – it lies less than one kilometer from the Israel-Lebanon border. Archaeologists may have also shied away from the site due to the extensive excavations at nearby Dan and Hazor.

 

Whatever the explanation, we are extremely fortunate to be the team who has accepted the challenge of this great site, made possible by friends and alumni of Azusa Pacific University in Los Angeles, with additional contributions from Cornell University, made possible by Professors Chris and Lauren Monroe. We have also started a fruitful new partnership with Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and its enthusiastic group of Biblical and Near Eastern Archaeology and Language students led by Professor John Monson. A Harris Fund grant allowed us to purchase a much-needed digital camera. Our excavation has also been granted ASOR affiliation, and academic guidance is provided by Amihai Mazar, Professor Emeritus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Prof. Lawson Younger of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Ruhama Bonfil, veteran of Hazor and chief surveyor in the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is our surveyor and expert field adviser.

 

Following a preliminary survey in May 2012, we conducted a four-week season in June and July 2013. We focused on two areas – Area F on the southern end of the lower mound and Area A on the eastern end of the connection between the upper and lower mounds.

 

Our choice of areas was guided by finds made during our preliminary survey, including an intact late Iron Age I ring flask at the foot of Area A and three very large stones visible in topsoil in Area F. We were greatly rewarded by a dense Iron Age I domestic occupation in Area A, whose finds included numerous collared-rim jar fragments. We also found an intriguing structure built of massive stones that might be part of a tower in Area F.

 

The date of this structure is yet to be determined. But our prize find in Area F was a small jug containing a silver hoard that sat on a floor abutting the structure. We have tentatively attributed this to very late Late Bronze-early Iron Age I. Much work still needs to be done to better understand our first season’s finds, but the beginning is extremely promising and exciting.

 

Standing on top of this lofty mound, bounded on the west, north, and east by the hills and valleys of modern Lebanon, and the imposing Lebanese/Syrian Hermon massif majestically dominating the scenery on the east, and the expansive Huleh Valley opening up to the south, one has the feeling of being transported to a different land and time. We saw early morning fog rising from the peaceful Lebanese village of Aadaisse to the west, sleepy UN patrols slowly climbing the road on the east, and farmers from Metulla and the nearby kibbutzim working in the fruit orchards surrounding the tell. Horses and cows grazed on the summit, and herons flew low and nonchalantly as they effortlessly crossed the border alongside pink and gray clouds that drifted by. And here we were, this small dedicated group, digging even further to find another link in this chain of everyday life that took place in the shadow of portentous events – just like today. We cannot wait to continue excavating this amazing site and fulfill our research goals – as well as dreams of peaceful coexistence in this border zone.


Abel Beth Maacah: Beneath the Surface of Israel. By Robert Mullins. Azusa Pacific University, September 25, 2012.

’Abel-Beth-Ma‘acah: “Northern Gateway of Ancient Israel.” By William G. Dever. The Archaeology of Jordan and Other Studies. Presented to Siegfried H. Horn. Edited by Lawrence T. Geraty and Larry G. Herr. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1986. Pp. 207-223. Also here.

The Forgotten Kingdom: The Archaeology and History of Northern Israel. By Israel Finkelstein. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013. Also here.

Abel Beth Maacah Excavations Uncover Silver Hoard at an Ancient Crossroads. By Noah Wiener. Bible History Daily, February 26, 2014.

Wiener:

The city of Abel Beth Maacah was located at an important juncture between several ancient Near Eastern cultures. During the Bronze Age, it was a threshold between the Levant and the major empires of Syria and Mesopotamia. In the Iron Age, the Biblical city of Abel Beth Maacah was a crossroads between Israel, Phoenicia and Syria, and it may have served as the capital of the Aramean kingdom of Maacah (Joshua 12:5; 2 Samuel 10:8).

 

The site features an extensive Bronze Age occupation centuries before it became a prominent Hebrew Bible-era city. In 2 Samuel 20:14-22, Sheba son of Bichri took refuge in the city after calling for revolt against King David. Joab’s negotiations with a “wise woman” of the city resulted in Sheba’s beheading. Abel Beth Maacah (referred to as Abel Maim in 2 Chronicles 16:4) was later conquered by Ben Hadad of Aram-Damascus (1 Kings 15:20) and by Tiglath-pileser III in 733/32 BCE (2 Kings 15:29).

 

Despite its early identification as Abel Beth Maacah in the 19th century, Tell Abil el-Qameḥ was never excavated until 2013. Yigael Yadin planned to dig the tell in the 1950s, but opted to investigate Hazor instead. Last summer’s inaugural excavations at Israel’s northernmost site not only uncovered Bronze and Iron Age architectural remains, but also a silver hoard, including five hoop earrings and hacksilber ingots—valued pieces of silver in the pre-coinage era. The precious metal was wrapped in fibrous material inside a small 13th-century B.C.E. jug, though the silver may have been shaped at a later date–the early Iron Age–based on comparisons with other hacksilber finds in the region. While the establishment of an exact chronology at the site will require more than a single excavation season, the 2013 excavation material will surely shed light on the Bronze Age, the period of the Bronze Age collapse and the early Iron Age from the second millennium B.C.E. into the first millennium–an understudied era in what is now northern Israel.

 

Excavations at Abel Beth Maacah are conducted by Hebrew University professor Nava Panitz-Cohen and Azusa Pacific University professor Robert Mullins in conjunction with Cornell University professors Lauren Monroe and Christopher Monroe. The 2013 excavations have already been published by Robert Mullins, Nava Panitz-Cohen and Ruhama Bonfil in the journal Strata. Additional photos of the finds are available on the project’s Facebook page.


3,300-year-old silver earrings found at biblical site. By Ilan Ben Zion. The Times of Israel, February 25, 2014.

The Rebellion of Sheba. 2 Samuel 20.

In Focus: Abel Beth Maacah. Video. Tel Abel Beth Maacah Excavations. YouTube.

Robert Mullins: The Emergence of Israel in Retrospect. Video. Bible History Daily, February 1, 2014. YouTube.