What Terms for Middle East Peace Would Actually Work? By Michael Lerner.

What Terms for Middle East Peace Would Actually Work? By Michael Lerner. Tikkun, Winter 2014.

Living the Middle-Class Dream—Beyond the Green Line, in a West Bank Settlement. Callie Maidhoff and Sara Ivry

Living the Middle-Class Dream—Beyond the Green Line, in a West Bank Settlement. Audio. Callie Maidhoff interviewed by Sara Ivry. Tablet, January 17, 2014.




Far from being religious ideologues, most settlers say they are apolitical and just want a house and some quiet.

 

Many people outside Israel think that settlers in the Palestinian territories are a small but powerful group of religious zealots—back-to-the-land types who form hilltop encampments and chase Palestinians from their olive groves. Though that kind of scenario exists, it is not what anthropologist Callie Maidhof found, for the most part, when she embarked on her field research in the West Bank. Maidhof wanted to find out who lives in settlements and why they go there, so she moved to a settlement of 8,000 people—she likens it to an American bedroom community—for nearly a year. The answers she found challenged the perception that religious Zionism has motivated nearly one in 10 Israeli Jews to put down roots in the West Bank and raised the new question of why that perception persists.

 

Maidhof joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to discuss how Israelis inside Israel view settlers, how the American dream is responsible for settlement growth, and how her experiences living on the settlement compare to where she lives now: in the heart of Ramallah.

Did Netanyahu Invent the Demand that Israel Be Recognized as a Jewish State? No. By Yair Rosenberg.

Did Netanyahu Invent the Demand that Israel Be Recognized as a Jewish State? No. By Yair Rosenberg. Tablet, January 21, 2014.

Why the End of Communism Didn’t Make Capitalism Popular. By Elliot Burns.

Why end of communism didn’t make capitalism popular. By Elliot Burns. The Commentator, January 23, 2014.

The Left has successfully blamed market economics for policy failings of their own. The longer it is unfashionable to be a laissez-faire capitalist, the more people will suffer.

Prof. Juan Cole Asks: Who Are These Jews Anyway? By Ralph Seliger.

Prof. Juan Cole: Who are these Jews anyway? By Ralph Seliger. Partners for Progressive Israel, January 23, 2014.

Recognizing Israel as a Jewish state is like saying the US is a white state. By Juan Cole. Informed Comment, January 6, 2014.

Brave New World Revisited. By Aldous Huxley.

Brave New World Revisited [1958]. By Aldous Huxley. Huxley.net.

Brave New World Revisited. Key Excerpts and Summary. By Michael Krieger. A Lightning War for Liberty, January 21, 2014. Also at Zero Hedge.

Aldous Huxley interview, 1958. Video. TruthTube1111, May 24, 2011. YouTube.

Fact-Free Liberals, Part 4. By Thomas Sowell.

Fact-Free Liberals, Part 4. By Thomas Sowell. Real Clear Politics, January 21, 2014.

Refugees Who Insist on the Impossible. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

Refugees Who Insist on the Impossible. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, January 21, 2014.

Kerry’s “obsession” with Palestinian peace talks worries Israeli right. By Joel Greenberg. McClatchy DC, January 20, 2014. 

4,000-Year-Old Erotica Depicts a Strikingly Racy Ancient Sexuality. By Ilan Ben Zion.

Sexual intercourse between a woman and a man on a terra cotta plaque from Mesopotamia, early 2nd millennium BCE (photo credit: The Israel Museum).

4,000-year-old erotica depicts a strikingly racy ancient sexuality. By Ilan Ben Zion. The Times of Israel, January 17, 2014.

Julia Assante website.

Sex, Magic and the Liminal Body in the Erotic Art and Texts of the Old Babylonian Period. By Julia Assante. Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East, Actes de la XLVIIe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Helsinki, 2-6 July 2001). Edited by Simo Parpola and Robert M. Whiting. Helsinki, 2002.

Style and Replication in “Old Babylonian” Terracotta Plaques: Strategies for Entrapping the Power of Images. By Julia Assante. Ex Mesopotamia Et Syria Lux: Festschrift für Manfried Dietrich. Edited by Oswald Loretz, Kai A. Metzler, and Hanspeter Schaudig. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2002.

Bad Girls and Kinky Boys?: The Modern Prostituting of Ishtar, Her Clergy and Her Cults. By Julia Assante. Tempelprostitution im Altertum. Edited by Tanja S. Scheer. Berlin: Verlag Antike, 2009.

The Lead Inlays of Tukulti-Ninurta I: Pornography as Imperial Strategy. By Julia Assante. Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context. Edited by Jack Cheng and Marian H. Feldman. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2007.

Undressing the Nude: Problems in Analyzing Nudity in Ancient Art, with an Old Babylonian Case Study. By Julia Assante. Images and Gender: Contributions to the Hermeneutics of Reading Ancient Art. Edited by Silvia Schroer. Fribourg, Switzerland: Academic Press Fribourg, 2006.


Ben Zion:

Museums are often misconstrued as dusty and lifeless — the least likely place to find something hot and steamy. But the Ancient Near East section in The Israel Museum’s Archaeology Wing features rare erotic art from the land between the rivers (Tigris and Euphrates), which predates India’s Kama Sutra by over 1,500 years. Such astonishingly intimate works reveal a side to the ancient Near East that contrasts sharply with the modesty prevalent in the modern Middle East.

 

Two clay plaques, small enough to hold in your palm, depict couples copulating in remarkable detail. Dating from the early second millennium BCE, the Old Babylonian period, they come from a 300-year window when mass-produced terra cotta plaques were popular, including those that exhibit sexual acts.

 

Mesopotamian erotica was “really something racy,” Laura A. Peri, curator of Western Asiatic Antiquities, said when we met in the labyrinthine bowels of the museum. “It’s not all, you know, missionary and that’s it.”

 

The first plaque shows a man penetrating a woman from behind, while standing. The second, slightly smaller one, depicts a man and woman in a similar position, with the woman drinking beer through a straw from a jug.

 

According to Dr. Julia Assante, a Near Eastern social historian, the woman drinking beer from a straw was not just a reflection of lifelike sexual encounters, but was “undoubtedly a [visual pun].” The straw in the woman’s mouth and the man raising a cup of wine to his lips were symbolic of performing oral sex on their respective partners. The Babylonians, Assante writes, held “an exalted cultural view of sex as inducing an altered state of wonder.”

An Old Babylonian clay plaque on display at The Israel Museum depicts a couple having sex. (photo credit: The Israel Museum).

 

The terra cotta plaques from Mesopotamia yield numerous different sexual positions, but one of the most popular was what’s referred to technically by the Latin: coitus a tergo – from behind. While erotic Mesopotamian art doesn’t detail a specific means of entry, anal sex was deemed a popular means of contraception by ancient couples before the invention of prophylactics. The depiction of couples engaging in rear entry may be indicative of that practice. Other plaques show partners side-by-side, standing up (aka lleváme) and plain old missionary; some depict women with legs spread, squatting over a comically large phallus.

 

That the erotic clay plaques were found in temples, graves and private homes makes it difficult to generalize about their intended use, but is testament to their popularity. That excavators found the erotic artwork in high-traffic rooms of homes leads Assante to infer that they were accessible to men, women and children.

 

“It’s a kind of pop art, because it’s very cheap material and easy to make,” curator Peri said. She explained that sexuality was very prominent in ancient Sumerian and Babylonian art and literature, particularly in the late-third and early-second millennia. Cylinder seals — small cylinder-shaped stones etched with figures and cuneiform used as a signet — occasionally featured men and women in erotic poses. Peri, an expert in understanding the symbolism of the seals, noted that erotic scenes usually weren’t the central image, nor did those seals belong to the king or officials.

 

Ancient Mesopotamian texts were so graphic in their detailing of the erotic arts that “you can really reenact the actions — what they did between the sheets — according to the descriptions,” Peri explained when we met at her office in The Israel Museum.

 

The Epic of Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia’s great literary work, lauds sex as one of the carnal pleasures humans ought to indulge in during our brief tenure on this planet. Siduri, a divine alewife, tells the eponymous king of Uruk to “let your belly be full, your clothes clean, your body and head washed; enjoy yourself day and night, dance, sing and have fun; look upon the child who holds your hand, and let your wife delight in your lap! This is the destiny of mortals.”

 

Peri explained that “delight in your lap” was a common euphemism for sex in ancient Akkadian, the language in which Gilgamesh was written.

 

The Gilgamesh epic also describes sexuality as a potent force that distinguishes humans from beasts. Enkidu, the wild man who becomes Gilgamesh’s comrade-in-arms, is tamed by a temple prostitute who ensnares him with her sexual wiles: “She was not restrained, but took his energy. / She spread out her robe and he lay upon her, / She performed for the primitive the task of womankind.”

Sketching of Canaanite scarab from Tel el-Far’a
 shows a man approaching a woman from behind.
 (photo credit: Courtesy of Dr. Daphna Ben Tor,
 curator of Egyptian Archaeology at The Israel Museum).

 

Israelite and Canaanite artwork, by comparison, typically had very little overt sexuality, only nude female figures that disappeared after the institutionalization of early Judaism in the eighth century BCE. A mid-second millennium BCE Canaanite scarab seal found at Tel el-Far’a — near the junction of the Israeli border with Egypt and the Gaza Strip — shows the figures of a man and woman in a standing posture similar to the clay plaque at The Israel Museum. Both figures are fully clothed, however, and there is no latent intercourse, only the suggestion of it.

 

Siduri’s advice finds its way into the biblical literature, appearing in a toned-down version in Ecclesiastes 9:7-9. “Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart,” Kohelet says among his many iterations of “under the sun.” But whereas the Mesopotamians spoke of enjoying sex, the Bible enjoins man to “Enjoy life with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity.”

 

The similarity between the two passages comes as little surprise. Ancient Israel was the land bridge connecting the two major civilizations of the ancient Near East, Egypt and Mesopotamia, and its culture was influenced heavily by both. A stark difference, however, was the difference in ancient Babylonian and Israelite perspectives on male homosexuality. The Babylonians, writes Prof. Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat in her book Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, “didn’t condemn this practice” and observed a live-and-let-live attitude in regard to male-male sex. The Book of Leviticus, on the other hand, bans lying “with mankind, as with womankind” as “an abomination.”

 

Artifacts from ancient Babylon exhibit latent — even shockingly graphic — sexuality, but the exact purpose of the plaques remains unclear. Dr. Ilan Peled of The Hebrew University said there’s a scholarly debate over what purpose the erotic art served, with some contending they were votive objects for the veneration of Ishtar, the love goddess. Assante argues they were apotropaic, like other terra cotta amulets from the era, meant to keep away evil spirits. Others say that the clay plaques “portrayed prostitution, sexual relations conducted within a tavern, or sexual intercourse between a husband and wife,” with no particular context.

 

“It is possible that we merely face here a very early version of Playboy, Middle-Eastern style,” Peled said.

Our Animal Side Shows in Songs About Sex. By Laura Dimon.

Our Animal Side Shows in Songs About Sex. By Laura Dimon. The Atlantic, January 22, 2014.

“Blurred Lines” Isn't As Blurry As Everyone Is Making It. By Chloe Stillwell. PolicyMic, August 2, 2013.

Robin Thicke: “Blurred Lines” Is a “Feminist Movement,” Lyrics Got “Misconstrued.” By Madeline Boardman. The Huffington Post, July 31, 2013.

Adaptive Significance of Female Physical Attractiveness: Role of Waist-to-Hip Ratio. By Devendra Singh. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 65, No. 2 (August 1993).

Robin Thicke: Blurred Lines. NJBR, November 26, 2013.


Dimon:

In 1993, Snoop Dogg titled his album “Doggystyle.” A year later, Nine Inch Nails famously roared, “I wanna fuck you like an animal” in their song “Closer.” In 1999, Bloodhound Gang declared: “You and me, baby, ain’t nothin’ but mammals.”

 

More recently, Robin Thicke offended some people last summer with his undeniably catchy song “Blurred Lines,” in which he sings, “You’re an animal, baby, it’s in your nature. Just let me liberate you.” Though many took issue with the song’s sexism, the problem is not just that the women are objectified; it’s that they’re animalized. Thicke does not just degrade them as women; he devolves them as humans.

 

In the music video, when Thicke first sings, “You’re an animal,” the model turns her near-naked backside to him and purrs, “Meow.” The women are nearly naked whereas the men are dressed in expensive suits and leather jackets. The girls make animal sounds and play with animals; the men sing and play instruments. The women assume primal sexual positions; the men do complicated dance moves.

 

In a Today Show interview, Robin Thicke said his song is “saying that women and men are equals as animals and in power.” That’s not the message that was communicated, though. The “blurred line,” in his song and many others, is the one between human and animal.

 

On the one hand, humans are driven by primitive instincts that have been encoded in our genes over millions of years of evolution, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In his book The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, points out that human beings share 98 percent of their genes with chimpanzees. So only 2 percent of our DNA is what makes us “human.” It’s perplexing.

 

Darwin theorized that a major incentive for all species is to procreate. He posited that successful mate selection is achieved in two ways: competing with others for the mate you want, or having specific mechanisms for attracting that mate. Robin Thicke and T.I. use both tactics in “Blurred Lines.” They put down the fictitious competition multiple times: Thicke insults the man who wrongly tried to “domesticate” the girl in the song; and both men shamelessly advertise the size of their genitalia.

 

Our primal, animalistic side comes out in music. For example, there is an obvious science behind the constant male praise of the female butts in music. A certain amount of fat signals that the woman is past puberty, fertile, and able to become pregnant, carry to term, and breastfeed.

 

It’s even more formulaic than that: It’s not just about the size of the woman’s behind, it’s about its size in proportion to the woman’s waist. Sir Mix-a-Lot confessed that he loved “an itty bitty waist and a round thing [his] face.” And he just couldn’t lie. In Nelly’s song “Ride Wit Me,” he raps, “How could I tell her no? Her measurements were 36-25-34.” It’s unlikely that Nelly actually did the calculations, but the woman he’s describing has a waist-hip ratio (WHR) of .73, precisely in the range that scientists say males find the most attractive, because WHR is “a reliable signal of reproductive age and reproductive capability.”

 

Daniel Bergner, journalist and author of What Do Women Want?, said that WHR “over and over again” proves to be a factor in sexual attraction, not because men are “mathematically locked in,” but rather because they have cultural preferences. However, the forces of science and culture work simultaneously. Cultural forces, he said, are determined “not by cultural construction, but genetic manifestation.”

 

Dr. Lionel Tiger, professor emeritus of anthropology at Rutgers University, feels strongly that “animalistic” is not a helpful word. “The nature of an animal is in its culture.” At the same time, he said, there is nothing wrong with it. “If you’re not animalistic, you’re dead or sedated. . . . We are animals; it’s like accusing someone of being a hominoid.”

 

And yet, humans can react badly when we’re confronted with our animalism. To be associated with animals has negative connotations.

 

But there is a fundamental disconnect here. When it comes to sex, in many ways, we are not animalistic at all.

 

For one thing, unlike almost all other species, we have sex for fun. “In no species besides the human has the purpose of copulation become so unrelated to conception,” Diamond wrote. We have sex month-round, not just when the female is capable of becoming pregnant. Diamond writes that this fact “must be considered freakish by the standards of other mammal species.”

 

We have concealed ovulation. “The unfortunate human male [unlike a male monkey] has not the faintest idea which ladies around him are ovulating and capable of being fertilized,” Diamond writes. This is part of the reason that human males rely heavily on visual cues for fertility. Tiger said that studies have shown that women actually show more skin during ovulation.

 

Our copulation sessions last for longer periods of time. Diamond writes that a chimp’s average session is seven seconds. For them, sex is risky: They’re burning up valuable calories, missing out on time to gather food, and are vulnerable to predators (which is perhaps why humans started doing it in private.)

 

So, Robin Thicke might tell that girl she’s an animal, and, technically speaking, he is correct. But he probably doesn’t need to “liberate” her. We’re past that. We live largely within the powerful 2 percent of genetic coding that makes us “human.” That 2 percent— where we break off from chimps—makes a huge difference when it comes to sex alone.

 

Uniquely human though we may be, when we use developed, civilized tools, such as language and music, to express our basest instincts, it feels like an uncomfortable irony. That violation, that regression, crossing back over the blurred line, can be frustrating. In Shakespeare’s King Lear, when King Lear learns his beloved daughter Cordelia is dead, he cries, “Howl! Howl! Howl! Howl!” Language fails him and he’s reduced to his ultimate primal nature. It’s a particularly riveting, shocking, memorable, and disturbing moment in the play.

 

We, unlike chimps, have the critical thinking skills that allow us to contemplate this, to interpret songs’ lyrics, debate or be offended by them, and then read an article about it. We have the capability to make the songs in the first place.

Hussein Ibish on the Fantasy World of the One-Staters. By Jeffrey Goldberg.

Hussein Ibish on the Fantasy World of the One-Staters. By Jeffrey Goldberg. The Atlantic, November 3, 2009.

Goldberg and Ibish:

JG: But the one-staters are a very marginal group. I think one of the interesting things you do in your book is show very coolly, calmly, the essential ridiculousness of one-state advocacy based on the simple fact that in order to have a successful one-state plan, you need Israeli Jews to want it, and today, not even one percent of Israeli Jews want it.

 

HI: You could put all of them in a small auditorium.

 

JG: I don’t think you need an auditorium. Talk about these guys, the Tony Judts –

 

HI: I don’t want to be too hard on Judt. Judt put out this argument and then he immediately admitted that it was utopian, that it wasn’t serious and he was just doing a thought experiment. And since then, he basically has more or less withdrawn from the conversation Judt has not been a person who suggests that this is a realistic plan and a serious proposal for the future.

 

There are two fundamental flaws with pro-Palestinian strategic thinking that focuses on the idea of abandoning two states and going for a single state. The first is the question of feasibility, and it’s hard to argue with that. Obviously anyone who is familiar with this sees the difficulty, and I would be the first to say that success is not assured by any means. Even a two-state agreement looks, at the moment, like something of a long shot. The difference between the two-state solution and everything else is that yes, it’s a long shot, but it would work. And if we could conceivably get it, if we did get it, it would solve the conflict.

 

The fundamental argument that the one-staters seem to be making, which is that we can’t possibly get Israel to end the occupation and relinquish their control of the 22 percent of Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza) but we will inevitably succeed in getting them to relinquish one hundred percent of the territory under their control. This is a problem of logic. The second thing is that once you’ve realized this, obviously what you’ve done is set yourself the task of convincing Jewish Israelis to voluntarily do this.  The idea of coercing the Israelis into this through military force is absurd, and it could only really be done through voluntary persuasion. What the one-staters argue, actually, is that they don’t have to do that. What they’re going to do, they say, is bring the Israelis to their knees.

 

JG: South Africa style?

 

HI: Well, South Africa style, except we don’t have a South Africa equation here.

 

JG: But they believe they do.

 

HI: They believe that through the application of what they call BDS – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – globally that they can crush the will of the Israelis and break the Zionist movement. To me, even if you believe that boycotts were plausible, which I don’t, certainly I don’t think the American government and institutions and corporations would participate.

 

JG: You have to move from the American consensus that supports supplying Israel with the best weaponry to not just a military cutoff but a complete cutoff and boycott. It’s very hard to picture.

 

HI: Anyone who thinks that is plausible in the foreseeable future doesn’t understand the nature of the American relationship with Israel. The commitment of the U.S., not just the government but American society, is to the survival and security of the Israeli state. And then there’s another aspect, which is the extent to which Israeli institutions, organizations and corporations are interwoven at a very fundamental level with many of those in the U.S.

 

JG: Right, Intel and Google –

 

HI: I’m talking about corporate, governmental, intelligence, military, industrial, scientific ties. The point is that you can only take talk of boycott and sanctions seriously if you really don’t understand any of this. And if you don’t understand any of this, then you’re living in a fantasy world. So here’s the thing: Obviously the only real task for one-staters is to convince Jewish Israelis to agree to their solution. But instead of trying to do that, they engage in the most hyperbolic discourse about the badness of Zionism, the badness of Jewish Israelis, the rightness and primacy of not just a Palestinian narrative, but the most strident traditional Palestinian narrative, and the most tendentious Palestinian narrative, the one that places blame for the conflict entirely on the side of the Israelis, that casts Israel as the usurper and what they call in one-state circles now the “temporary racist usurping entity.”  These are the ones, by the way, who won’t talk about my book. There’s a refusal to acknowledge or read my book. I’ve nicknamed my book “the temporary racist usurping book.”

 

These people are trapped in the language of the Fifties and Sixties. You’re talking about a worldview is anachronistic in the most fundamental sense. It doesn’t recognize any of the changes that have taken place since then. For example, the strategic situation that’s emerged in the Middle East, where the Arab states and the Arabs generally have a lot of other things to worry about other than Israel. This is a world in which a lot of Gulf states are extremely concerned about Iraq, and where there are Arab states – Jordan and Egypt – that have treaties with Israel, where Syria has a motive to be civil with Israel that is unpleasant but completely stable, and where it’s a very different environment than simply the Arabs and Israelis are enemies. The other thing that they’ve missed completely, and this is sort of the amazing thing, is the total transformation in American official policy toward the Palestinians over the past 20 years. Twenty-one years ago, there was no contact ever between the U.S. and the PLO. No contact, zero, and now Palestinian statehood is the consensus American foreign policy and it is a national security priority under Obama. People in the House, key positions like the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Howard Berman, chair of the Subcommittee on the Middle East, Gary Ackerman, Nita Lowey on Appropriations – all of them Jewish American members of Congress, stalwart supporters of Israel, and all of them committed to peace based on two states. And all of them, by the way, who were on the host committee of the American Task Force on Palestine gala last week.

 

JG: You’ve reached the Promised Land.

 

HI: Except that we haven’t achieved the results.

 

JG: Yes, there’s that. But you’re on the road.

 

HI: Exactly. The transformation in American attitudes is almost mind-boggling, an official American attitude on ending the occupation, which has been the traditional goal of the Palestinians. And at this very moment, a group of Palestinians turns around and says, “Sorry, not good enough, we want it all. Not only is a single Palestinian state not achievable, it’s not desirable, it’s not acceptable, it’s not enough, we want it all.”

 

JG: Who are the leaders of the movement?

 

HI: People like Ali Abunimah, Joseph Massad, Ghada Karmi, Omar Barghouti.

 

JG: And you think they’re succumbing to fantastic dreams. This is the traditional criticism of Palestinian politics over the past sixty years, that it's very hard to separate out the dreams from—

 

HI: It goes back further than sixty years. It’s an article of Palestinian nationalist faith that is almost one hundred years old, which is that demography is destiny, demography is power. This notion that if we just sit here, on the land, have children, are steadfast and don’t agree to anything, then political power ultimately will flow to us. In the twenties, they believed if we do that, then, just by virtue of our presence in the land, our numbers, our demography, Israel will never be established. After Israel was established, it was just, “Well if we’re steadfast and we don’t agree, then Israel will be reversed.” Then it was, “Well if we just do this, then independence will come in the occupied territories.” Now the latest version is if we’re just steadfast, we can create a South Africa-like model and we will reverse the war of 1948 at the ballot.

 

JG: But I have to tell you that for people like me, this is a real worry. This goes with the argument that the settlements are the vanguard of one-statism.

 

HI: Now there is some truth to this. I think it’s useful for people like (Ehud) Olmert or people like yourself to point out that with the occupation going the way it is, there won’t be a Palestinian state, and then Israel will be in a situation where it is neither meaningfully Jewish nor meaningfully democratic. I think you could claim that already, if you talk about the de facto Israeli state rather than Israel in its normally perceived borders, that is already the case and it will be increasingly so. Now here's the thing: The alternative, though, is not going to be a single state in the foreseeable future. It's possible we could get there, but it won’t be a solution, it will be an outcome. There’s a big difference. An outcome of a horrible, brutal, bloody civil conflict that drags on for generations, because even though this demographic issue and the legitimacy issues are crises for Israel, I don’t think they result in the dissolution of the Israeli state.

 

JG: In other words, most Israeli Jews would rather have a Jewish state than a democratic state.

 

HI: Yes, it’s obvious. And I think that what you would get is a protracted civil war that is essentially an intensification of the civil war we've had. So I do say the single state is a potential eventuality, but it would be the outcome of a horrible scenario. Look, the idea that if the current round of talks breaks down and Obama gives up and the U.S. gives up and we all give up, then the alternative is a Gandhian non-violent struggle of sanctions and boycotts that will somehow bring Israel to its knees, that is not the way it’s going to go. We know the way it’s going to go.

 

JG: Each intifada is more violent than the last.

 

HI: And more religious. You’ll end up with two sets of bearded fanatics on both sides fighting over holy places and God. It will be a complete disaster. And I think the Israelis will end up ultimately dealing with forces not only beyond its borders, but beyond its comprehension in the long run. This has the possibility of turning into not an ethno-national war but a religious war between the Muslims and the Jews over the holy places with the whole concept of Palestine gone and the Jewish population of Israel in a very unenviable situation, protected in the end only by its nuclear weapons. It’s a nightmare.

 

JG: So you have three scenarios. One, the one-state solution: Somehow the Jews and the Arabs decide, even though their narratives completely contradict each other, that we’ll be like Belgium, where we don’t have to really like each other but we’ll be fine. The second alternative is the one you described of basically endless war. The third is the two-state solution. But, sorry to say it, we don't seem that close right now. You have an Israeli government who seems extremely hesitant to pull down any settlements, you have a Hamas government in Gaza, just for starters.

 

HI: What you do with Hamas, in my view, is you make the situation such that Hamas has to choose, and you do this by creating progress and by creating momentum – and there are two ways of creating momentum. One is diplomatically, which right now, seems difficult. The other is through the Fayyad plan, which is state building in the occupied territories. That would have a very powerful effect. It is extremely important that we use that idea as a means of gaining momentum, that the Israelis do not block it, that the U.S. protect it politically, and that the Arabs, Europeans and the Israelis support it technically and financially. This is a way of really moving forward in a manner that is complimentary and not contradictory to the diplomatic process, and I think people who suggest that this is some kind of capitulation or some kind of collaboration are dead wrong. This is a very powerful way of effectively resisting the occupation without doing anything violent. Israelis may fool themselves into thinking that this is just economic peace, but it's not; it’s Palestinians preparing for independence.

 

Now with regard to Hamas, I definitely don’t think it would be wise for the West to open up dialogue with Hamas under the present circumstances. I think that would simply reward them and it would benefit them in their competition with the PLO and there's a stark choice that Palestinians are facing between two strategies: an Islamist violent strategy and a secular nationalist negotiation strategy. I think I’'s very important to bolster the second and to make the first appear what it actually is: Non-functional.

Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish: A Personal Middle East Conflict in the Fight for Palestine. By Ben Smith.

A Personal Middle East Conflict in the Fight for Palestine. By Ben Smith. BuzzFeed, January 21, 2014.

What does Ali Abunimah really believe? By Hussein Ibish. IbishBlog, May 29, 2009.

Mr. Mileikowsky and the “seal of Netanyahu”: the perilous encounter between modern nationalism and ancient history. By Hussein Ibish. IbishBlog, August 17, 2011.

Hussein Ibish on the Fantasy World of the One-Staters. By Jeffrey Goldberg. The Atlantic, November 3, 2009.

Zionism is anti-Semitism. By Ali Abunimah. Twitter, May 16, 2013.

Ali Abunimah: Lightning Rod of the Boycott Israel Movement. By Naomi Zeveloff. The Jewish Daily Forward, March 9, 2012.

Comment by Herbert Kaine:

The one state solution would be more violent than being Christian in Egypt, Lebanon, or Iraq. Ali Abuminah, his followers on this website, and the by extension, the editorial board of the Forward know this well and promote this vision. In fact, it is the vision of Czarist prime minister Pobedonostsev, who in the 1880s proposed a similar solution to Jews living in the Pale of Settlement (illegal settlers in the Ukraine and Poland). His vision, and that of Ali Abuminah, for the Jewish people is “One third emigration, one third conversion, and one third extermination.”

Obama’s Middle East Recessional. By Adam Garfinkle.

Obama’s Middle East Recessional. By Adam Garfinkle. The American Interest, January 21, 2014.

Part 1: What Real Instability Looks Like.

Part 2: Syria Policy Up Close and Ugly.

Part 3: Gambling With Iran as Iraq Disintegrates.

Part 4: The President’s Mental Map.

The West’s Catastrophic Defeat in the Middle East. By Dominique Moisi.

The West’s Catastrophic Defeat in the Middle East. By Dominique Moisi. Real Clear World, January 17, 2014. Also at Worldcrunch.

Moisi:

Bashar al-Assad is still in power in Damascus and al-Qaeda’s black flag was recently waving above Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq. Not only has the process of fragmentation in Syria now spilled over to Iraq, but these two realities also share a common cause that could be summarized into a simple phrase: the failure of the West.

 

The capture, even though temporary, of the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi by Sunni militias claiming links to al-Qaeda, is a strong and even humiliating symbol of the failure of the policies the United States carried out in Iraq. A little more than a decade after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime – and after hundreds of thousands of deaths on the Iraqi side and more than 5,000 on the American side – we can only lament a sad conclusion: All that for this!

In Syria, the same admission of failure is emerging. Assad and his loyal allies – Russia and Iran – have actually emerged stronger from their confrontation with the West. Civilian massacres, including with chemical weapons, did not change anything. The regime is holding tight, despite losing control of important parts of its territory, thanks to its allies’ support and, most importantly, the weakness of its opponents and those who support them.

 

In reality, from the Middle East to Africa, the entire idea of outside intervention is being challenged in a widely post-American region. How and when can one intervene appropriately? At which point does not intervening become, to quote the French diplomat Talleyrand following the assassination of the Duke of Enghien in 1804, “worse than a crime, a mistake?”

 

When is intervention necessary? “Humanitarian emergency” is a very elastic concept. Is the fate of Syrian civilians less tragic than that of Libyans? Why intervene in Somalia in 1992 and not in Sudan? The decision to intervene reveals, in part, selective emotions that can also correspond to certain sensitivities or, in a more mundane way, to certain best interests of the moment.

 

Intervention becomes more probable when it follows the success of some other action; or, on the contrary, a decision to abstain that led to massacre and remorse. The tragedy of the African Great Lakes in 1994 – not to mention the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia in 1995 – certainly contributed to the West’s decision to intervene in Kosovo in 1999. In reality, the intervention of a given country at a given time is typically driven by multiple factors: the existence of an interventionist culture, a sense of urgency, a minimum of empathy towards the country or the cause justifying the intervention, and, of course, the existence of resources that are considered, rightly or wrongly, sufficient and well-adapted.

 

A French example

 

But more than “when,” it is a question of “how” – the two being often inextricably linked. Intervening alone can have many benefits, including the rapidity of execution, which often leads to efficient operations. The French army was not unhappy to end up alone in Mali. On the other hand, although it can slow down the operations schedule, forming a coalition gives the intervention more legitimacy, and helps share the costs and risks between the various operators.

 

It is likely that France, which after the Mali operation has engaged in the Central African Republic in a much more uncertain conflict, would now prefer having some support – for reasons related to costs and resources as well as geopolitics. No one wants to share success, but no one wants to end up alone in a potential deadlock either.

 

America's failure – in Iraq and in Syria – should be considered the West’s failure as a whole, even though Washington’s share of responsibility is unquestionably the largest.

 

Failure is generally the result of the interaction between three main factors that are almost always the same: arrogance, ignorance and indifference. Arrogance leads to overestimating one’s capacities and to underestimating the enemy’s capacity for resistance. It is all too easy to win the war but lose the peace.

 

“Democracy in Baghdad will lead to peace in Jerusalem,” a slogan of the American neo-conservatives, took a disastrous turn in Iraq.

 

Arrogance is almost always the result of ignorance. What do we know about the cultures and histories of the populations we want to save from chaos and dictators? Yesterday’s colonial officers, who drew lines in the sand to create the borders of the new empires and states, turned their nose up at the local religious and tribal complexities. Today, the situation may be worse still. Sheer ignorance prevails.

 

Finally, there is the sin of indifference. Of course, the ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) is worrying Washington, thus leading to closer ties between the U.S. and Iran regarding Iraq. But the starting point was, in Syria, the U.S.’s refusal to take its responsibilities.

 

The result is clear: a double defeat, strategic and ethical, for the West. Washington has brought a resounding diplomatic victory to Moscow and has allowed Bashar al-Assad to stay in power.

Canada and Australia’s Stand for Israel and the West. By Tom Wilson.

Canada and Australia’s Stand for Israel and the West. By Tom Wilson. By Tom Wilson. Commentary, January 21, 2014.

Australia FM: Don’t call settlements illegal under international law. By Raphael Ahren. The Times of Israel, January 15, 2014.


Wilson:

With President Barack Obama seeming to have taken a leave of absence as leader of the free world, the task of providing such leadership continues to fall to others. Increasingly, this task is being taken up by leaders in other English-speaking democracies, and for several of them their defense of the West’s values is never more strongly pronounced than when it comes to Israel.

 

This has been particularly noticeable with the recent visits to Israel by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Both of these individuals have not only seen to it that their countries have taken concrete actions to defend Israel on the international stage, but they have also voiced this support in terms of standing by democratic values and doing what is just. In short, both have demonstrated a clear sense of moral clarity, where other Western governments have failed to do so.

 

Prime Minister Harper’s speech delivered before the Knesset on Monday was a case in point. Rightly, Harper spoke of Israel’s accomplishments, defending unequivocally its right to exist as a Jewish state and denouncing in no uncertain terms the new anti-Semitism that masquerades as anti-Zionism–or as Harper put it, “the old hatred has been translated into more sophisticated language for use in polite society. People who would never say they hate and blame the Jews for their own failings or the problems of the world, instead declare their hatred of Israel and blame the only Jewish state for the problems of the Middle East.”

 

Ironically, when Prime Minister Harper came to rebutting the apartheid charge leveled against Israel, two of the Arab Knesset members present began to loudly interrupt him, before then promptly storming out–their very position in the Knesset, of course, serving to refute the accusation that they apparently felt so strongly about insisting upon.

 

This sense of obligation to speak out against such lies and bigotry clearly stems from the prime minister’s wider worldview. Harper declared unapologetically that we live in a world where “moral relativism runs rampant” and that “in the garden of such moral relativism, the seeds of much more sinister notions can be easily planted.” For, as Harper noted, “Those who, often begin by hating the Jews . . . history shows us, end up hating anyone who is not them.”

 

Indeed, the most important aspect of Harper’s speech was the explanation he gave for why Canada would stand by Israel. Having begun by stating plainly, “Canada supports Israel because it is right to do so,” Prime Minister Harper went on to explain that “Israel is the only country in the Middle East, which has long anchored itself in the ideals of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.”

 

Crucially, he observed that, “These are not mere notions. They are the things that, over time and against all odds, have proven to be the only ground in which human rights, political stability, and economic prosperity, may flourish. These values are not proprietary; they do not belong to one nation or one people. Nor are they a finite resource; on the contrary, the wider they are spread, the stronger they grow. Likewise, when they are threatened anywhere, they are threatened everywhere.”

 

It is a similar tone that we hear when the Australian foreign minister speaks, and indeed acts. In contrast to the policies of her predecessor, Julie Bishop has twice now ensured that Australia has been one of only a handful of countries at the United Nations to resist voting in support of motions demanding that Israel halt all settlement activity. In an interview during her recent visit to Israel Bishop stated that she thought the international community should refrain from calling settlements illegal, remarking, “I would like to see which international law has declared them illegal,” and arguing, “I don’t think it’s helpful to prejudge the settlement issue if you’re trying to get a negotiated solution. And by deeming the activity as a war crime, it’s unlikely to engender a negotiated solution.”

 

Foreign Minister Bishop has likewise been unwavering in her opposition to boycotts, seeing to it that funding from the Australian government does not reach organizations calling for them. Of the BDS movement Bishop exclaimed, “It’s anti-Semitic. It identifies Israel out of all other nations as being worthy of a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign? Hypocritical beyond belief.”

 

Bishop stands out as an almost lone voice on a number of these issues, yet in doing so she echoes the Canadian prime minister’s attitude when he stated that his country will “stand for what is principled and just, regardless of whether it is convenient or popular.”

 

With all America’s coming challenges on the world stage, Obama and Kerry would do well to pay attention to Harper’s example and remember his words when he spoke Monday of how “either we stand up for our values and our interests, here, in Israel, stand up for the existence of a free, democratic and distinctively Jewish state or the retreat of our values and our interests in the world will begin. Ladies and gentlemen, just as we refuse to retreat from our values, so we must also uphold the duty to advance them.”

Non-Intervention Has a Price Too. By Max Boot.

Non-Intervention Has a Price Too. By Max Boot. Commentary, January 21, 2014.

Palestinian Incitement: An Obstacle to the Peace Negotiations? By David Pollock.

Palestinian Incitement: An Obstacle to the Peace Negotiations? By David Pollock. The Henry Jackson Society, January 21, 2014. Executive Summary by Alice Bexson.

Al Jazeera: Why Can’t Arab Armies Be More Humane Like Israel’s? By Tom Gross.

Al-Jazeera: Why can’t Arab armies be more humane like Israel’s? By Tom Gross. Tom Gross Media, January 16, 2014.

Arab TV host touts Israel’s humanity. The Times of Israel, January 17, 2014.

Al Jazeera Arabic Admits Israel Ain’t So Bad. By David Lange (Aussie Dave). Israellycool, January 17, 2014.

Al Jazeera Arabic admits France, Israel better prevent civilian casualties. Video. Mecalecahi Mecahinyho, January 14, 2014. YouTube.

Gross:

I attach a remarkable new video from Al-Jazeera (the Arabic version of al-Jazeera) in which the presenter asks his audience why Arab armies (and in particular the Iranian proxy organization Hizbullah) can’t act in a more humane way to civilians, like the Israeli and French militaries do. (The guest in the video on the right, Mr Muhammed, also agrees with him.)

 

Among the questions posed on air: “Why don’t they learn from the Israeli army which tries, through great efforts, to avoid shelling areas populated by civilians in Lebanon and Palestine? Didn’t Hezbollah take shelter in areas populated by civilians because it knows that Israeli air force doesn’t bomb those areas? Why doesn’t the Syrian army respect premises of universities, schools or inhabited neighborhoods? Why does it shell even the areas of its supporters? . . .

 

“I will also give you the example of France. All Syrians remember that the French forces, when they occupied Syria tried to avoid, when rebels entered mosques or schools, they stopped. The people would prefer that France come back! For god’s sake, if a referendum were to be held . . . if people were to be asked, who would you prefer the current regime or the French, I swear by God they would have preferred the French.”

 

“The Israeli army, if it wanted to break up a demonstration, would have used water cannons or rubber bullets, not rockets or explosive barrels as happens in Aleppo today.

 

“You mustn’t compare the Syrian army with French or Israeli . . . The Israeli army didn’t shell Aleppo University and students there. They didn’t shell the university with rockets killing dozens of students . . . The Israelis or the French didn’t kill their people. Please tell me how many of their people did the French army kill?”

 

***

You can watch the video below. One wonders when Western news outlets, such as The Guardian and BBC, which day after day single out Israel for denigration, will be as honest as this al-Jazeera anchor and studio guest?

 

Palestinians Divided Over Boycott of Israeli Universities. By Matthew Kalman.

Palestinians Divided Over Boycott of Israeli Universities. By Matthew Kalman. New York Times, January 19, 2014.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Speech to the Israeli Knesset.

Stephen Harper’s speech to the Israeli Knesset. Text and video. CBC News, January 20, 2014. YouTube.

Harper sees Israel light amid darkness. By Campbell Clark. The Globe and Mail, January 24, 2014.