A World-Historic Find in Jerusalem. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

A World-Historic Find in Jerusalem. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, February 2010. Also here.

In Arabic, Jerusalem is Jewish. By Simcha Jacobovici. The Times of Israel, August 14, 2013.


Tobin:

The greatest threat to the hopes of those who think parts of Jerusalem should be off-limits to Jews comes not when Jewish-owned buildings go up in the city, but rather when Jews start digging into the ground of East Jerusalem. Because the more the history of the city is uncovered, the less credible becomes the charge that Jews are alien colonists in what the media sometimes wrongly refer to as “traditionally Palestinian” or “Arab” Jerusalem.

That’s the upshot from the release of an amazing archeological dig conducted just outside Jerusalem’s Old City. The excavations conducted by archeologist Eilat Mazar in the Ophel area revealed a section of an ancient city wall of Jerusalem. According to the press release from the Hebrew University, under whose auspices the project was carried out, the dig uncovered the wall as well as an inner gatehouse for entry into the royal quarter of the ancient city and an additional royal structure adjacent to the gatehouse as well as a corner tower. While ancient buildings are not uncommon in the city, the significance of this discovery is the fact that these edifices can be dated to the 10th century before the Common Era — the time of King Solomon, credited by the Bible for the construction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Pottery found at the lowest levels of the dig is dated to this era.

Even more telling is the fact that bullae — seal impressions — with Hebrew names were found, as well as seal impressions on jar handles inscribed with the words “to the king,” which means they were employed by the Israelite state in that time. Inscriptions on the jars, which Mazar says are the largest ever found in Jerusalem, showed them to be the property of a royal official.

Daniel Mintz and Meredith Berkman funded the dig. They are a New York couple whose funding is supporting both the dig and the preservation of the site for public viewing as part of the national park that exists around the Old City walls. You can view pictures of the site here.

The significance of this extraordinary find is that it provides new proof of the existence and power of the Davidic monarchy, the Israelite state that it led, and the more than 3,000-year-old Jewish presence in Jerusalem. These new discoveries, along with those of a previous dig in a different area of the city of David, contradict contrary Palestinian claims that the Jews have no claim to the area. They also debunk the assertions of some Israeli archeologists who have sought to portray the kingdom of David and Solomon as an insignificant tribal group and not the regional empire that the Bible speaks about. Indeed, Mazar believes that the strength and the form of construction required to build these structures correlates with biblical passages that speak of Solomon’s building of a royal palace and of the Temple with the assistance of master builders from Phoenicia (modern-day Lebanon). Moreover, contrary to those who speak of the Jewish presence in the city as a passing phase in ancient times, the discovery of Jewish seals, which speak directly of an Israelite state, proves that what Mazar has found are not the remains of a Jebusite fort conquered by the Jews but rather of a great city built by David and his son Solomon.

While finding ancient Jewish artifacts as well as the traces of Solomon’s city in Jerusalem may seem nothing out of the ordinary, for the last century and a half, a great many academics and intellectuals have attempted to put down the existence of the ancient Jewish kingdom — which has always served as a symbol of Jewish nationhood — as a religiously inspired fiction. This deconstruction of both biblical literature and history has sought to undermine the very idea of the historical truth about ancient Israel, as well as the notion that Jewish nationhood had its roots in the past. This has been put to use by anti-Zionists and Arabs who have thought that if they could destroy the idea of King David’s existence as a historic figure, they could delegitimize modern Israel. Thus, Palestinian propagandists and the Palestinian Authority itself, which has steadfastly denied any Jewish connection to the Old City, the Temple Mount, or even the Western Wall, have copied revisionist scholarly work doubting Jewish history and incorporated that work into their negotiating position about the city’s future. The Muslim religious authority that controls the site of the Temple Mount has vandalized the area, destroying a treasure trove of antiquities in the ancient place because its officials fear that any find revealing the Jewish origins of the place will undermine their fallacious claims that seek to portray Jews as foreign occupiers in their own ancient capital.

It serves the purposes of the enemies of modern Israel to pretend that there is no such thing as biblical history or an ancient kingdom of Israel. But what Eilat Mazar and her colleagues have done is to illustrate once again just how deep the roots of Jewish Jerusalem run. Three thousand years.

Palestinians Build a Settlement. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

Palestinians Build a Settlement. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, August 11, 2013.

Another Sign the Middle East Talks Are Fake. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, August 12, 2013.

Tobin (Palestinians):

Though it was entirely unintentional, the New York Times deserves credit today for pointing out the hypocrisy of critics of Israel’s settlement building. No, the paper hasn’t reversed its policy of treating the presence of Jews in the heart of their ancient homeland as wrong or an obstacle to peace that is reflected on its news pages as much as it is on their editorial page. What they did was something more subtle than that and will require some context for their readers to understand. They published a feature about the Palestinians doing something that Israel hasn’t tried in more than two decades, the building of an entirely new city in the West Bank.

 

What’s wrong with that? Actually, nothing. If the planners of Rawabi own the land where they are constructing a town north of Ramallah, then why shouldn’t they build new homes and places of business for Arabs who want them? But the story about the effort and the travails of the planners—who are, ironically, under attack from Palestinians for their efforts to cooperate with Israel and Israeli businesses and contractors to get the job done—should remind us that doing so is no more of an obstacle to peace than the builders of homes for Jews.

 

The point about the West Bank that cannot be reiterated enough is that the conflict about ownership of the land is one in which both sides can muster arguments in their favor. Should the Palestinians ever reject their culture of violence and delegitimizing of Jewish rights to any part of the country, peace will be possible and the land will have to be divided, however painful that would be for both sides. Such a negotiation would be difficult but, assuming that the Palestinians were ever actually willing to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders were drawn, it would not be impossible. And since it is likely that if such a partition were ever to take place, Rawabi would be part of the Palestinian state, then why would Israelis complain that building on the site would make peace impossible?

 

Of course, Israelis aren’t making such a protest, any more than they speak out against the building going on in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem or any other place in the West Bank.

 

But when new homes are built in existing Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem or in those towns and communities in the major settlement blocs in the West Bank that everyone knows would be retained by Israel in the event of a peace accord, they are bitterly condemned by the Obama administration, the Europeans, and the liberal media.

 

In fact, Israel hasn’t done anything on the scale of Rawabi in many years. Outside of scattered hilltop camps with trailers, it hasn’t actually built a new settlement since the Oslo Accords. What Israel has done is added new housing developments to existing places. But the Arabs have done the same and in the case of Rawabi, they are seeking to expand their hold on the land by establishing new facts on the ground that strengthen their claims.

 

Of course, Israel’s critics assert that Arabs have a right to live in Rawabi while the Jews don’t have a right to live in “stolen land” on the West Bank. That argument rests on the fallacy that history began in 1967 when Israel came into the possession of the West Bank as a result of a defensive war. But in fact, the “West Bank” (a name for the territories of Judea and Samaria that only came into existence when the Kingdom of Jordan illegally occupied the land to differentiate it from their territory on the East Bank of the Jordan River) is part of a territory set aside by international authorities for a Jewish homeland where Jews, as well as Arabs, had rights. Though the international community has sought to abrogate Jewish rights there, they cannot be extinguished in this manner. The resolution of the dispute over the land requires a negotiation in which each side must be prepared to compromise rather than, as the Palestinian Authority continues to do, simply dictate.

 

Contrary to the claims of Israel’s critics, if both sides continue doing as they are now and building at the same pace, peace won’t be any easier or harder to reach in the future than it is now. The same boundaries will be there to be drawn with Jews and Arabs on Israel’s side and Arabs only on the Palestinian side (as Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority have repeatedly made clear), then as they are now. The building of new settlements, whether Jews or Arabs populate them, won’t stop peace if both peoples truly want it. Israel has already demonstrated that it is prepared to do so, as it has repeatedly offered and made territorial withdrawals while the Palestinians have never given up their maximalist demands that aim at Israel’s destruction, not coexistence. The reason the Palestinians focus on settlement building as a threat to their future is not because these places are actually obstacles to peace but because they are opposed to Jews living in anywhere in the country.

 

Rawabi also demonstrates the priorities of Israel’s foes. Many of them are, as the Times makes clear, opposed to it, because building it undercuts the attempt to boycott Israel. Much like the efforts to prevent the descendants of the 1948 refugees from being resettled so as to keep them as an issue to hold over Israel, they’d rather keep Palestinians from having a new town so long as it doesn’t mean doing business with Jews.

 

If the Palestinians that will live in Rawabi and elsewhere in the West Bank truly want peace with Israel and to gain self-determination in exchange, they will get it. Moreover, if Palestinians persist in building on lands they are likely to keep and Israel keeps building in those places they will retain, it won’t put off peace by a single day. Let’s hope that, like its Jewish counterparts in Maale Adumim and Ariel, Rawabi will raise the quality of life for its inhabitants. Perhaps in doing so it will undermine the efforts of those Palestinians that continue to foment the hatred of Jews and Israel that remains at the core of the conflict.

Are French Women Perfect? By Anne Penketh.

Are French women perfect? The myths of foreign beauty . . . By Anne Penketh. The Independent, August 12, 2013. Photo Gallery.

French women aren’t effortlessly perfect – they just fake it! Gallic beauty myths busted by one of their own in Le Figaro magazine. By Deni Kirkova. Daily Mail, August 13, 2013.

French women lie about gorging on buttered baguettes - and they smoke. “Natural” blondes scour salons for best colourists. Invest in expensive anti-wrinkles creams from age of 25. Work hard to keep up with new trends.

A French woman’s real beauty secret? Fake it. By Katy Young. The Telegraph, August 13, 2013.

Why French women look younger than their British counterparts. By Katy Young. The Telegraph, March 21, 2013.

Thanks to an early uptake of anti-aging skincare, studies say French women look on average seven years younger than their British equivalents by the time we reach 40.

The French woman is “an American dream.” By Peggy Frey. Le Figaro, August 12, 2013. Google translation. French original.

Penketh:

Are French women perfect? Judging by the piles of American and British books attempting to nail their je ne sais quoi, it would appear that the rest of us are filled with a mix of envy and insecurity when contemplating France’s glamorous fair sex.

 

The way they walk, the way they dress, the way they do their hair, and the way they raise their families. It has all been put under the microscope in books ranging from French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano to Pamela Druckerman’s Bringing Up Bébé. Le Figaro decided to get to the bottom of the French feminine mystique and came up with a startling conclusion – it’s all a lie. Or “an American dream.”

 

The journalist Peggy Frey set about exploding the myths, one by one, starting with the “natural beauty” of the French woman.

 

Her trim figure? Don’t believe the myth that French women never diet, says Le Figaro. It’s true that they never talk about dieting, just “being careful”. If you consider that almost half of French women smoke it’s hardly surprising that their appetites are suppressed.

 

Her sexy appearance? The paper quotes from a recent study showing that French women spend €97 on lingerie – or only a fifth of what American women spend. As for her “natural” blonde highlights, they come straight out of a bottle, except that the French woman is likely to have spent months finding the right hairdresser and will never give you the address.

 

Forget the image of a French cook slaving over a hot stove, preparing dishes whose recipes were handed down from generation to generation. The modern French woman spends two minutes 30 seconds heating up dishes in the microwave.

 

Her exquisite innate fashion tastes? Don’t be duped. Not everyone has the wherewithal of a TV presenter like Laurence Ferrari – who comes as close as anyone to the stereotypical “perfect” French woman – and most people make do with “putting on a bit of everything and any old thing … in any old way.”

 

According to the paper, the secret of French women is “to do everything falsely: [they are] falsely coiffed, falsely dressed, falsely fatal.”

 

To sum up, the French woman is a wizard of pretence. “What she does is to apply the motto: less is more – in almost every domain. A talent which apparently not everyone has!” the paper concludes.

 

France itself has been so in thrall to its image of women that a real woman is used as the model for the Marianne national emblem whose bust stands in every town hall. The models for past Mariannes include actresses such as Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve. But even the French seem to be doubting the strength of their own myth: this year, the Marianne on the nation’s stamps was inspired by a Femen activist (Inna Shevchenko) from Ukraine.

TV newscaster Laurence Ferrari, who at age 47 typifies the ideal of the fashionable,
 ageless French woman.

Casualties of Syria’s War Find Medical Salvation in Israel. By Inna Lazareva.

“I lost consciousness in the blast. When I woke up I was in a hospital in Israel”: Casualties of Syria’s war find salvation in an unlikely place. By Inna Lazareva. The Independent, August 8, 2013.

Why Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks Will Fail. By David Suissa.

Why peace talks will fail. By David Suissa. Jewish Journal, August 7, 2013.

Suissa:

The conventional wisdom is that the revived Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are doomed to fail. The popular reason cited is that “the maximum the Israelis can offer is less than the minimum the Palestinians can accept.”

 

From a pragmatic view, that may well be true, but I think there’s an underlying emotional reason why these talks are doomed to continue the failures of the past.

 

No one wants to negotiate — let alone compromise — with a thief.

For several decades now, the Palestinians have successfully sold the world and themselves on the narrative that Israel stole their land. This has given them zero incentive to compromise.

 

Over time, as this unchallenged narrative has taken on the aura of accepted truth, it has undermined all attempts to reach a final peace agreement, as well as expose Israel to a global campaign of boycotts and condemnations.

 

To make matters worse, whenever there is more settlement construction, the perceived level of “criminality” has only gone up.

 

I get why Israel never made a big deal of challenging the “illegal occupation” narrative. Because it has already shown its willingness to dismantle settlements for the sake of peace, it probably figured, “Why bring up this red herring? What purpose would it serve?”

 

Israel’s mistake was to overlook a crucial  truth of the Middle East: Honor trumps all. If you don’t defend your honor, you’re worthy of contempt, not respect. It’s not a coincidence that Palestinian leaders have consistently used contemptuous language in accusing Israel of every possible sin.

 

Concentrating on pragmatic issues while ignoring this emotional poison is like cooking a rotten fish with a tasty tomato sauce. Eventually, you’re bound to bite into the fish.

 

We saw another example last week of how dismissive the Jewish world can be about defending Israel’s honor.

 

A petition signed by 1,000 jurists from around the world was delivered to European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton asserting that the E.U. is wrong in holding that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are illegal, and that the term “1967 lines” does not exist in international law.

 

Remarkably, I couldn’t find any mention of this initiative in the Jewish media, except for the right-wing Israeli news site Arutz Sheva.  No coverage in the mainstream media; no supportive statements from major Jewish organizations.

 

The jurists who signed are certainly no slouches. As reported on Arutz Sheva, among the signatories are former Justice Minister Yaakov Ne’eman, former U.N. Ambassador Meir Rosen, Britain’s Baroness Ruth Deech, and law professors Eliav Shochetman and Talia Einhorn, as well as legal scholars from more than 20 countries around the world.

 

It’s well known that when prominent Jews release public statements encouraging Israel to make “courageous concessions for peace,” they get major coverage.

 

But apparently, when prominent jurists release a statement defending Israel’s honor, it’s not even worth a news mention.

 

Even if you’re a J Street-supporting peacenik whose definition of Mashiach is the two-state solution, this state of affairs should trouble you. It’s bad for peace.

 

However impractical you might think it is to defend Israel’s honor and assert her land rights, in this case there is one very practical advantage: If you have a legal right to the land, it makes your concessions worth something. The concessions of a thief are worthless.

 

Sadly and ironically, Israel could have made a compelling legal case regarding her land rights. The settlements may be a bad idea, but that hardly makes them illegal.

 

As the man behind the initiative, Alan Baker, explained to Arutz Sheva, “It is true that most of the world thinks so [that the settlements are illegal], but that does not make it true legally. Legally, the clause in the Geneva Convention that they use to say that settlements are illegal was not intended to refer to cases like our settlements, but to prevent the forced transfer of populations by the Nazis. This is not relevant to the Israeli settlements.”

 

Baker is Israel’s former ambassador to Canada and legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, who was also a member of the three-person committee headed by former Supreme Court Judge Edmond Levy, which pronounced last year that Judea and Samaria were not occupied territory.

 

Beyond the issue of the strategic or moral wisdom of Israeli settlements, the Levy committee showed there’s plenty of evidence supporting Israel’s legal right to settle the disputed land — including binding international agreements that predate the United Nations and were never abrogated.

 

In their well-intentioned zeal to challenge the wisdom of these settlements, the pro-Israel peace camp has tragically reinforced the enemy’s narrative that the settlements are a criminal enterprise. The real tragedy is that it’s probably too late now to correct this libelous narrative.

 

At this moment, it’s clear that external conditions — such as the presence of Hamas, the wide gap between the parties and the instability of the region — mitigate against the success of the peace talks.

 

But we should never underestimate the power of internal, emotional conditions.

 

Because even if external conditions were to improve, one human truth will remain: As long as you enter negotiations with the mark of “thief” on your forehead, good luck trying to get the other side to compromise.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel Plays History Teacher on Berlin Wall Anniversary.

Merkel plays history teacher on Berlin Wall anniversary. AFP. Yahoo! News, August 13, 2013.

Netanyahu Tells Kerry That the Palestinians Are Inciting Against Israel. By Dan Williams.

Netanyahu tells US mediator Palestinians inciting against Israel. By Dan Williams. Reuters. Yahoo! News, August 11, 2013.

Abbas: Arabs in Israel; No Jews in Palestine. By Jonathan S. Tobin. NJBR, July 31, 2013.

Rick Santorum Says Social Conservatives are Getting Beat by Popular Culture. By Charlie Spiering.

Rick Santorum: Social conservatives are getting beat by popular culture. By Charlie Spiering. Washington Examiner, August 12, 2013.

Rick Santorum: The Family Leadership Summit. Video. Caffeinated Thoughts, August 10, 2013. YouTube.

Oprah Winfrey Faces Fahsion Retail Racism and Size Bias. By Heidi Moore.

Oprah faced not just fashion retail racism, but size bias too. By Heidi Moore. The Guardian, August 9, 2013.

Palestinian Leaders Must Halt the Hatred. By Andrea Levin.

Palestinian leaders must halt the hatred. By Andrea Levin. Boston Globe, August 8, 2013.

Levin:

As renewed negotiations get underway between Israelis and Palestinians, it’s vital for the success of the endeavor to identify what went wrong in earlier discussions.

 

Secretary of State John Kerry wisely stressed in his July 30 briefing with Israeli and Palestinian leaders the central aim of “ending the conflict” and he emphasized as well the “end of claims” against Israel. These are basic tenets of any rational definition of peace and would mean, finally, the end of the drive to remove the Jewish state. They would mean genuine acceptance by Palestinian Arabs of the sovereign rights of a Jewish nation in what is an overwhelmingly Muslim-dominated region.

 

Notwithstanding the many previous signed agreements, hand shakes and photo ops, such acceptance has been largely cosmetic. While Palestinian leaders have endorsed coexistence in speeches for Western audiences, including at Washington think tanks and international gatherings, too often for the audience that counts most — Palestinian Arabs who live next door to Israel and who need to hear their leaders’ clear affirmation of the legitimacy of the Jewish state — the message has been the opposite.

 

Indeed, the Palestinian leadership over the two decades since the signing of the landmark Oslo Accords in 1993 has failed disastrously to prepare the Palestinian people for peace with their Jewish neighbors.

 

Ironically, before Oslo, there was no Palestinian-controlled TV to demonize Jews, but after Israel’s ceding of territory and authority, official media outlets came into existence that regularly glorify terrorist violence, deny Jewish ties to the land of Israel, denigrate Jews in crude stereotypes, vow expulsion of the Jews and claim all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine.

 

Regrettably, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas continues to play a double game. Thus on May 26, 2013, at the World Economic Forum, Abbas offered up the familiar public rhetoric, declaring: “We don’t teach and we don’t educate our children to hate or even discriminate against any religion, be it Judaism or any other.” He said: “We strive to spread the culture of peace among our people.”

 

Yet, for example, on July 3 another of hundreds of broadcasts on Palestinian television directly controlled by Abbas’s Palestinian Authority featured young girls reciting crude anti-Jewish bigotry:

 

Oh, you who were brought up on spilling blood

 

You have been condemned to humiliation and hardship.

 

Oh Sons of Zion, oh most evil among creations

 

Oh barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs. (Palestinian Media Watch)

 

The murderers of Jews are constantly extolled in what is cast as a fight to the death with Israel. On May 9, 2013, for instance, a TV segment was devoted to praising and thanking Abdallah Barghouti, currently serving 67 life sentences for his participation in such terror attacks as the Sbarro Pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem. In that attack families were singled out for particular slaughter and included Malki Roth, a 15 year old who was lunching with her best friend. They’re buried next to one another.

 

Extreme fabrications regarding Jewish history may seem to the uninitiated too ludicrous to take seriously – the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, is said to have no Jewish connection despite vast archeological, biblical and other evidence. Jesus is said to be a Canaanite Palestinian teaching Islam, a claim that repudiates Jewish and Christian history together. Moses is said to be Muslim. Newspaper columns and broadcasts in official Palestinian media deny any ancient Jewish ties to any of the land of Israel, relentlessly altering place names and substituting Muslim ones. The ferocity of the campaigns in every aspect of society, saturating Palestinians in false beliefs – and hatred – make the prospects of normalization almost impossible to imagine. Indeed, the content of the invective against Jews and Israel is so violent – one Gazan speaker urged the harvesting of Jewish skulls – that many in the West seem prone to averting their gaze from what is clearly genocidal rhetoric with vague claims that progress in the peace talks will help do away with the unpleasantness.

 

But the cycle of indoctrination and violence cannot be broken without facing up to its existence, to the need for Western media attention and, above all, to the necessity for the Palestinians’ own leadership to halt the hatred and declare clearly in Arabic to Arab audiences that Israel and its people have a rightful place in the Middle East.

Egypt Blockades Gaza. Where Are the Flotillas? By Khaled Abu Toameh.

Egypt Blockades Gaza. Where Are the Flotillas? By Khaled Abu Toameh. Gatestone Institute, August 9, 2013.

Peace Is More Than a Piece of Paper. By Emily Schrader.

Peace is more than a piece of paper. By Emily Schrader. Jerusalem Post, August 10, 2013.

Schrader:

Obama’s public condemnation of Israel rapidly sent his entire first term down the wrong path for American supporters of Israel.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, obviously wiser than all the leaders of Israel as well as every secretary of state who preceded him, is now overseeing the resolution of the longest-running conflict on earth – the conflict between Arabs and Jews. And he and the Obama administration appear quite certain that peace is just around the corner.

 

This unparalleled arrogance is nothing new. The Obama administration has repeatedly strong-armed Israel from the start, perpetuating the myth, believed by many European countries, that Israel takes unnecessary actions that harm the prospects of peace with the “oppressed” Palestinians. Obama’s public condemnation of Israel as one of his first actions as president rapidly sent his entire first term down the wrong path for American supporters of Israel (which happen to be most Americans). With every word he spoke, he seemed to place all blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict squarely on Israel’s shoulders, all the while ignoring the racist incitement, corruption and hypocrisy from Palestinian leaders in the West Bank.

 

In March 2013, however, it almost seemed as if Obama had turned a new page with Israel, visiting for the first time and delivering a rousing speech in support of the Jewish state. But alas, with John Kerry as secretary of state, it seems any improvement was fleeting and the administration is back to its old tricks: Israel concedes, but not the Palestinians.

 

What has Israel done to restart peace talks? In addition to setting no preconditions, when the Obama administration wanted a settlement freeze, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu conceded.

 

The response? The Palestinians still refused to come to the negotiating table and blamed Israel for not extending the settlement freeze.

 

When Obama pressured Israel to negotiate with Hamas for a cease-fire during Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel bit its tongue and negotiated – even taking no action when rockets were repeatedly fired immediately preceding the cease-fire agreement.

 

And now, not only has the US government strong-armed Israel into releasing over 100 cold-blooded terrorists in order to appease the Palestinians, but it has simultaneously ignored Abbas’ statement to the Egyptian press that Palestine will be Judenrein. One can’t help but wonder what the reaction would be if Netanyahu had stated that no Arabs will live in the State of Israel.

 

Kerry stated on Tuesday that “two states deserve countries to call their own” and that “the time has come for a lasting peace” – but Mr. Kerry, this is not what lasting peace looks like. Lasting peace is two parties coming to the negotiating table equally because they truly want to resolve this conflict. The Palestinian Authority has made it abundantly clear that peace is not their objective – so where is American pressure on the PA? The answer is that it’s non-existent.

 

The Americans place no pressure on the PA; this administration seems to have achieved a level of willfully ignorant arrogance that allows it to believe it doesn’t need to.

 

The first example of this is illustrated by the Obama administration operating from the false premise that if Israel surrenders sufficient territory, the Palestinians will stop the conflict. History of course teaches exactly the opposite.

 

What’s more, the PA can’t even control its own population, demonstrating time and time again its ineptitude at enforcing existing peace agreements and preventing violence.

 

Second, the Obama administration seems to think that because Obama visited Israel and showered Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres with praise, Israel will now do this administration’s bidding, even making unprecedented concessions. This proposition, both arrogant and naïve, relieves the Palestinians of virtually any responsibility at all.

 

But the height of both naiveté and arrogance is that the Obama administration appears to honestly believe that a peace agreement signed by the leaders of Israel and the PA will actually bring peace. This is undoubtedly, and sadly, the most dangerous aspect of Obama’s misguided hubris, and one need look no further than Oslo for proof.

 

Peace can only come when the people of Palestine learn to value individualism and life, and have representation that believes in those same principles of liberty.

 

Instead, they have leaders who blame others for their shortcomings and demand the world pay for their services because of irresponsible and corrupt leadership. Of course, what Kerry and the Americans are missing, or refuse to accept, is that the Palestinian leadership doesn’t want to stop the conflict.

 

In addition to radical factions opposing the existence of a Jewish state in the first place, the PA itself has no interest in resolving conflict because it’s how its leaders prosper. At the end of the day, the PA could not enforce an agreement even if one were to be reached. For the Obama administration to think otherwise is dangerously imperious.

Kansas and Al Qaeda. By Thomas L. Friedman.

Kansas and Al Qaeda. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, August 10, 2013.

Arab Muslims Yearn for Lost Greatness. By David Ignatius and Hisham Melhem. NJBR, July 14, 2013.


Friedman:

SALINA, Kan. — I’ve spent the last few months filming a Showtime documentary about how climate and environmental stresses helped trigger the Arab awakening. It’s been a fascinating journey because it forced me to look at the Middle East through the lens of Arab environmentalists instead of politicians. When you do that, you see the problems and solutions very differently. Environmentalists always start by thinking about the health of the “commons” — the shared air, soil, forests and water — that are the basis of all life, which, if not preserved, will undermine the whole society. The notion that securing the interests of any single group — Shiite or Sunni, Christian or Muslim, secular or Islamist — over the health of the commons is nuts to them. It’s as laughable as pictures of gun-toting fighters strutting on the rubble of broken buildings in Aleppo or Benghazi, claiming “victory,” only to discover that they’ve “won” a country with eroding soil, degrading forests, scarce water, shrinking jobs — a deteriorating commons.

 

Our film crew came to look at the connection between the drought in Kansas and the rise in global food prices that helped to fuel the Arab uprisings. But I stumbled upon another powerful environmental insight here: the parallel between how fossil fuels are being used to power monoculture farms in the Middle West and how fossil fuels are being used to power wars to create monoculture societies in the Middle East. And why both are really unhealthy for their commons.

 

My teacher here was Wes Jackson, the MacArthur award winner, based in Salina, where he founded The Land Institute. Jackson’s philosophy is that the prairie was a diverse wilderness, with a complex ecosystem that supported all kinds of wildlife, not to mention American Indians — until the Europeans arrived, plowed it up and covered it with single-species crop farms, mostly wheat, corn, or soybeans. Jackson’s goal is to restore the function of the diverse polyculture prairie ecosystem and rescue it from the single-species, annual monoculture farming, which is exhausting the soil, the source of all prairie life. “We have to stop treating soil like dirt,” he says.

 

Jackson knows this has to be economically viable. That’s why his goal is to prove that species of wheat and other grains that scientists at The Land Institute are developing can be grown as perennials with deep roots — so you would not need to regularly till the soil or plant seeds. The way to do that, he believes, is by growing mixtures of those perennial grains, which will mimic the prairie and naturally provide the nutrients and pesticides. The need for fossil-fuel-powered tractors and fertilizers would be much reduced, with the sun’s energy making up the difference. That would be so much better for the soil and the climate, since most soil carbon would not be released.

 

Annual monocultures are much more susceptible to disease and require much more fossil fuel energy — plows, fertilizer, pesticides — to maintain. Perennial polycultures, by contrast, notes Jackson, provide species diversity, which provides chemical diversity, which provides much more natural resistance and “can substitute for the fossil fuels and chemicals that we’ve not evolved with.”

 

Jackson maintains some original prairie vegetation. As we walk through it, he explains: This is nature’s own “tree of life.” This prairie, like a forest, “features material recycling, runs on sunlight, and does not have an epidemic that wipes it all out. You know during the Dust Bowl years of the ’30s, the crops died, but the prairie survived.” Then he points to his experimental perennial grain crops: “That’s the tree of knowledge.” Our challenge, and it will take years, he notes, is to find a way to blend the tree of life with the tree of knowledge to develop domestic prairies that could have high-yielding fields planted once every several years, whose crops would only need harvesting and species diversity could “take care of insects, pathogens and fertility.”

 

And that brings us back to the Middle East. Al Qaeda often says that if the Muslim world wants to restore its strength, it needs to go back to the “pure” days of Islam, when it was a monoculture unsullied by foreign influences. In fact, the “Golden Age” of the Arab/Muslim world was when it became a polyculture between the 8th and 13th centuries. Of that era, Wikipedia says, “During this period the Arab world became an intellectual center for science, philosophy, medicine and education. . . .” It was “a collection of cultures, which put together, synthesized and significantly advanced the knowledge gained from the ancient Roman, Chinese, Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, Byzantine and Phoenician civilizations.”

 

What is going on in the Arab world today is a relentless push, also funded by fossil fuels, for more monocultures. It’s Al Qaeda trying to “purify” the Arabian Peninsula. It’s Shiites and Sunnis, funded by oil money, trying to purge each other in Iraq and Syria. It’s Alexandria, Egypt, once a great melting pot of Greeks, Italians, Jews, Christians, Arabs and Muslims, now a city dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, with most non-Muslims gone. It makes these societies much less able to spark new ideas and much more susceptible to diseased conspiracy theories and extreme ideologies. To be blunt, this evolution of Arab/Muslim polycultures into monocultures is a disaster.

 

Pluralism, diversity and tolerance were once native plants in the Middle East — the way the polyculture prairie was in the Middle West. Neither ecosystem will be healthy without restoring its diversity.

Dear Jeff Bezos, Here’s What I Saw as an Analog Nobody in the Mailroom of the Washington Post. By Kara Swisher.

Dear Jeff Bezos, Here’s What I Saw as an Analog Nobody in the Mailroom of the Washington Post. By Kara Swisher. All Things D, August 7, 2013.

The Washington Post and the Future of Journalism. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, August 11, 2013.

Declining Industries vs Growing Jobs: What the WaPo Deal Tells Us About Innovation. By Michael Mandel. Progressive Policy Institute, August 6, 2013.

Washington Post’s sale: What it means for journalism. Video. Meet the Press. NBC News, August 11, 2013.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Arabs Can’t Blame America for All the World’s Problems. By Hussein Ibish.

Arabs can’t blame America for all the world’s problems. By Hussein Ibish. The National (UAE), August 11, 2013.

Ibish:

Anti-Americanism, a ubiquitous feature of contemporary Arab political culture, arises from an insidious and deeply- ingrained concept: the myth of American omnipotence.

 

Thus the will of the United States becomes the default explanation for everything that happens in the Middle East, particularly when people don't like it.

 

America the omnipotent occupies a unique position in the moral economy of contemporary Arab political thought: it is always blamed for whatever people don’t like, but rarely gets credit for anything that most in the Arab world find good.

 

Recent events in Egypt are only the most striking and current demonstrations of this very long-standing pattern.

 

Supporters of the former Egyptian president, Mohammed Morsi, are convinced that the United States was directly responsible for his removal from office.

 

But his opponents believe, perhaps even more strongly, that Washington had put Mr Morsi into power and wanted to keep him there.

 

The Egyptian media has been full of the most bizarre theories, from both sides, about various supposed conspiracies hatched by US Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson.

 

Virtually the only thing Egyptians now agree upon is that whatever it is they don’t like, it must be the fault of the United States.

 

The same kind of assumptions apply in Syria. Last year I took part in a televised debate, on an Arabic TV outlet, along with three Syrians.

 

The first, a Salafist, argued that the Americans wanted to keep the Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad, in power, and that this was at the behest of Israel, because the Israelis feared the “Islamic Awakening.”

 

The second, a nationalist, agreed that the US did indeed want Mr Al Assad to stay in power, but for a different reason: because he had cooperative relations with Israel.

 

The third Syrian participant in the broadcast, a regime stooge, insisted on the contrary that there was an American plot to overthrow Mr. Al Assad, because he was the leader of “resistance” against Israel.

 

But how did it happen that the United States has become this “great Satan” that is said to deserve, and that gets, the blame for all bad things?

 

Like western Islamophobia, the pervasive anti-Americanism we see has been fuelled by centuries of rivalry between Muslims and the Christian West. Arabs feel, and for good reason, that they have in many ways been mistreated by the colonialist powers.

 

Further, decades of nationalistic, religious, xenophobic and chauvinistic propaganda have entrenched anti-American narratives. After all, since the 1950s, the US has been the primary regional power in the Middle East and has acted like it, with all the regional resentment that naturally follows.

 

But the underlying, latent theme actually seems to be a profound sense of unrequited love.

 

Of course anti-Americanism is consciously and cynically abused in much Arab political rhetoric. But it’s so pervasive and visceral that it most closely resembles the rage of a jilted romantic partner.

 

Why is America so inexplicably biased towards Israel? Why are their policies always so unfair? Since America is omnipotent, and bad things keep happening, why does the US do them?

 

Yet while Arabs rail against the United States, they indisputably love its culture and products. They fight for visas, and to send their children to US universities. Even Islamists like Mr Morsi studied and taught in California.

 

Arab sensibilities about international relations are defined by a profound sense of disempowerment, which is even stronger when contrasted with the illusion of American omnipotence. These fantasies feed each other in a neurotic vicious circle.

 

Even as American influence around the world is palpably waning, absurdities – such as the idea that the recent abdication of the Emir of Qatar was, for some reason, “ordered” by Washington – remain common.

 

Things look radically different from DC, where a new and uncharacteristic sense of helplessness has taken root in the aftermath of the Iraq fiasco, the Afghan failure and the fiscal calamity.

 

Washington looks at Syria and incorrectly sees no good options. It thinks that it has virtually no influence in Egypt. Even in its most familiar territory, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, US policymakers feel that they are at the mercy of the domestic politics and caprices of Tel Aviv and Ramallah.

 

The new US feeling of impotence, or at least risk-aversion, is just as exaggerated as are Arab delusions about US omnipotence. There is much the US can do to help its friends in the Arab world, if only it would. But there is a persistent, crippling reticence to support those who share American goals or values, particularly if they are not fully trusted by Israel.

 

Arab anti-Americanism rests on two pillars: disillusionment and perceived betrayal by an ideal, combined with a wild overestimation of US power. Arabs therefore oscillate between yearning for American leadership and resenting American clout.

 

Contrast the ubiquitous negative Arab sentiments towards the United States with the Arab world's almost total lack of interest in the role of Russia. Yet if there is an external power up to no good in the Middle East, it is Russia. Its support for the Syrian dictatorship has helped kill at least 100,000 people in the past two and a half years.

 

But there is no unrequited love affair with Russia, and so no sense of betrayal, no feeling of an abandoned ideal or a love-hate neurosis. That Russia does what’s in its interest is simply accepted with a shrug. The dearth of outrage about Russia’s Syrian role, and of conspiracy theories about the Kremlin’s machinations, reveals Arab anti-Americanism to be a collective neurotic symptom, fundamentally disconnected from reality.

Stop Blaming Israel for Every Grievance in the Middle East. By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

Stop blaming Israel for every grievance in the Middle East. By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. The Independent, May 2, 2011.

Alibhai-Brown:

First came the Arab spring (followed, in some lands, by the harshest of winters) and now Hamas and Fatah have signed a deal for unity. Naturally, Israel is as panicked as are Arab despots by the shifts and quakes, the shaking ground beneath their boots. Israel depended on an everlasting, adamantine status quo. Nothing will ever be as it has been. Successive Israeli governments and their global cheerleaders and backers across the world are guilty of crimes against the humanity and rights of the Palestinian people, they who were made to pay for the European Holocaust. Hitler’s unspeakable annihilation project can’t be laid to rest and shouldn’t. But excruciating historical experiences do not entitle a nation to grab land, to humiliate, to destroy the livelihoods of others and to expect no censure; in effect to be above international law.

 

I am as pro-Palestinian as the next leftie and try to do my bit; to speak up against repressive Israeli policies and acts, which is never easy, as many of us have had to learn. We go to protests against the collective punishments meted out in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine and on Arab citizens of Israel; others lobby influential people; the brave ones go on flotillas, and the less brave but committed refuse to buy Hass avocadoes and instead purchase olive oil from the West Bank. All of us need to stop and think, to use this moment of upheaval to scrutinise ourselves and our habituated responses to the Middle East.

 

For many years now, British and American Zionists have complained that progressives pick on Israel, expect higher standards from that government and most iniquitously, that any criticism of their land is in effect a lightly disguised and now approved expression of anti-Semitism. Using a combination of guilt, suggestion and aggression they have managed to, if not suppress, certainly inhibit fair and free debates on the Zionist nation. Think of it as global super injunction. The unreasonable, absolutist supporters of Israel include some crazies but are mostly highly educated, talented professionals and fierce advocates of free speech. These days they are heeded less and so are getting more strident. But what if some of their complaints are valid and justifiable? Do I dare think that, and then say it? And if I do, is that a betrayal of a righteous cause?

 

These thoughts have been spooling round and round in my head this last month. As Gaddafi systematically massacres his people and the country descends into civil war, as armies slaughter civilians in Yemen and Bahrain, now Syria, I ask why good people have focused only on Palestine/Israel for more than half a century and not attended to the brutality and oppression endemic in the Islamic states. Is it OK for dictators to do what they wish within their own borders to crush democratic demands? I think not, and strongly. No flotillas for their victims? One fact that is kept tightly sealed and buried is this: More Muslims are killed by their brethren in religious and power struggles than are killed by foreign powers and that, as far as I can ascertain is true even after the war on Iraq. It could be that some of the relentless focus on Israel does indeed rise out of a deep stream of anti-Semitism. It is also a useful displacement activity.

 

Last week I drove past the Syrian Embassy – where I know and like some individuals – and there were a handful of protesters outside, looking hopeless and pathetic. No massive demos pass outside the grand Saudi or Bahraini sites in London either while boys are being hanged in Bahrain for daring to dissent. Why the double standards? We have an obligation to judge all governments and rulers by the same universal values, to listen to Zionists who complain of unfair treatment and open our minds as we enter a new era in the Middle East.

 

Reading nuanced analyses by thoughtful Jewish thinkers has been illuminating. Change is in the air. On the website of the Union of Jewish Students you can find, for example, the text of a speech by Mike Davis at the Herzliya conference: “[the unfolding events] show that the world can change with alarming speed and that our basic assumptions can be overturned in the blink of an eye. They and the reactions of the West demonstrate the potency and very real nature of the security challenges faced by Israel at this juncture in history. . . .” Davis goes on to tackle the “line between criticism of Israel and delegitimisation.” “Not every criticism of Israel is delegitimisation. Not even every untrue or unfair criticism of Israel is delegitimisation. In fact, the link between ‘criticism’ and ‘delegitimisation’ is sometimes overstated, damaging the credibility of our responses . . . If the Israeli government had internalised and prioritised the threats to its legitimacy then perhaps it would have understood the need to be seen to be doing everything possible to break the deadlock. We control the land. We hold the people. It is up to us. We need to accept that burden.”

 

We Muslims need to accept our burdens too. Whilst still holding Israel to account, we must stop dumping blame on it for all Middle Eastern grievances. The same happened to South Africa under apartheid. It was necessary for the world to come together and help topple that loathsome, racist regime. What was never right was that the worst African dictators were allowed to get away with more violence and viciousness against their citizens while sounding off about evil South Africa. It’s always the same. Humans easily excuse themselves and their own for foul acts they condemn in their enemies.

 

The mulishness and narrow-sightedness of the most unrelenting Zionists is today almost matched by the mulishness and narrow-sightedness of their unrelenting counterparts, anti-Zionist activists. I am not abandoning my total support for Palestinian nationhood and right of return, and here renew my vow to that cause. But that struggle is only one in the big fight for freedom in the Middle East. It is no longer morally justifiable for activists to target only Israel and either ignore or find excuses for corrupt, murderous Arab despots. That kind of selectivity discredits pro-Palestinian campaigners and dishonours the principles of equality and human rights. It has enabled hideous Arab ruling clans to carry on disgracefully for too long.