Fatah and the “Armed Struggle” Against Israel. By Khaled Abu Toameh.

Fatah and the “Armed Struggle” against Israel. By Khaled Abu Toameh. Gatestone Institute, February 7, 2014.

Ali Abunimah at Bowdoin College: The Battle for Justice in Palestine.

The Battle for Justice in Palestine. Part 1. Video. Bowdoin Cable Network, February 5, 2014. Also here. Part 2 here and here.

Yes, John Kerry, There Can Be a Single, Democratic State in Palestine. By Ali Abunimah. NJBR, November 11, 2013. With related articles and video.

At SodaStream, Palestinians Hope Their Bubble Won’t Burst. By Elhanan Miller.



Sodastream CEO Daniel Birnbaum stands next to Palestinian and Jewish employees, February 2, 2014 [photo credit: Elhanan Miller/TOI].

At SodaStream, Palestinians hope their bubble won’t burst. By Elhanan Miller. The Times of Israel, February 3, 2014.

Seeing SodaStream for myself. By Simon Plosker. The Times of Israel, February 3, 2014.

Demonizing Israel; Demonizing ScarJo. By Jonathan S. Tobin. NJBR, January 28, 2014. With related articles and video.


Miller:

A manual worker at the settlement-based factory that sparked the Scarlett Johansson controversy, Nahida Fares of Ramallah earns triple the pay of her husband, an officer in the PA.


MISHOR ADUMIM, West Bank — The SodaStream factory, situated just off the highway leading down from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, was abuzz on Sunday with journalists from across the globe trying to get a glimpse of the action.

 

The tour of the carbonated beverage-maker plant was organized especially for curious foreign correspondents on the eve of the Super Bowl, which featured an ad starring its glamorous spokeswoman Scarlett Johansson. The factory, SodaStream’s charismatic US-born CEO Daniel Birnbaum proudly declared, used to produce munitions for the Israeli army. It was bought in 1996 by the fizzy drink start-up, seeking to better the world by doing away with polluting plastic bottles.

 

A statue at the entrance to the plant, Birnbaum pointed out, encapsulated the company spirit with the immortal words of the prophet Isaiah: “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

 

SodaStream’s business has grown exponentially since Birnbaum was hired by the private equity firm that bought the company in 2007. Under the previous management, SodaStream manufactured 20,000-30,000 counter-top soda machines a month. Now it produces that number every day.

 

As SodaStream’s global market expanded, so did its need for manual laborers. Today, the Mishor Adumim plant — the first of eight Israeli locations and 22 worldwide — employs 1,300 workers; 950 Arabs (450 Israeli and 500 Palestinian) and 350 Israeli Jews. Salaries and work benefits — management asserts and workers confirm — are equal for all workers in comparable jobs, regardless of ethnicity or citizenship. The factory secures Israeli work permits for its Palestinian employees as well as rides from their home and back, SodaStream’s Chief Operating Officer Yossi Azarzar told The Times of Israel.

 

Proponents of the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanction) campaign posit that any Israeli business located beyond the 1949 armistice frontier known as the Green Line is by definition exploitative, in addition to being illegal under international law. They castigated Johannson for representing the firm; she rejected the onslaught — declaring that “SodaStream is a company that is not only committed to the environment but to building a bridge to peace between Israel and Palestine” — and resigned as an ambassador for British-based charity Oxfam when they critiqued her role.

 

Birnbaum, the CEO, was clearly cognizant of the dispute. He spoke of Jewish-Arab coexistence as he stood next to a veiled young Arab woman working on the assembly line across from an older woman with a black head covering who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union in 1993.

 

Zooming in on Birnbaum and the two women, the camera crews and microphone-holding reporters overlooked another young Palestinian woman standing nearby, fitting plastic valves into a large metal tray. Nahida Fares, 28, graduated Nablus’s A-Najjah University in primary school education. She began working for Israeli companies two years ago, when she could find no work in her field in Ramallah, where she lives with her husband and infant child.

 

“There are no job opportunities in the West Bank,” Fares told The Times of Israel. “Even the jobs that do exist pay no more than NIS 1,500-2,000 ($430-570) a month.” Fares now earns triple those sums.

 

Many educated women like Fares were forced to seek work outside the home following the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 to support the household as the Palestinian economy collapsed, she explained.

 

Fares’s husband, a first lieutenant in the Palestinians’ prestigious Preventive Security Force, earns NIS 2,000 ($570) per month after 10 years of service.

 

Given the relatively low levels of political violence in recent years, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has increased the number of work permits granted to Palestinians by some 37% between 2010 and 2012. Still, Palestinian men must be above the age 24 and married with a child to be eligible for work permits within Israel. Israeli workers’ unions do not protect Palestinians from exploitation by employers, critics note.

 

To work in a settlement, however, a Palestinian man need only be older than 18 and have no negative security record. To work in Israel, Palestinians must apply to the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority; to work in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank (like the Mishor Adumim industrial zone) they must apply to the Civil Administration, the branch of COGAT entrusted with Palestinian civilian matters. A COGAT spokesman told The Times of Israel in a written response that 24,000 permits are given to Palestinians wishing to work in the settlements on average every month. More than double that number (49,250) were allowed to work in Israel in January, mostly in the construction industry.

 

Fares, for instance, first began working at a laundromat in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone (where SodaStream is located), but left because of management mistreatment. At SodaStream she is much happier, working a 12-hour shift from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and receiving a 15-30 minute break for every two hours of work. Food in the cafeteria is great, she said, as she showed me the valve that she boasted is “the most important component of the soda dispenser.”

 

Another employee, Sa’ida, 28, began studying Hebrew in her hometown of Jericho but only started using it at the plant, where she first came in contact with Israeli Jews. Jews and Arabs mix freely here, she noted; “they even change clothes together,” she said, and blushed.

 

While declining to discuss the political ramifications of her sensitive employment at Mishor Adumim (working in settlements is illegal under Palestinian law), Sa’ida said she and her colleagues were wondering why SodaStream had been singled out by the media from all the other companies in the industrial zone.

 

“It’s because of Scarlett Johansson,” she was told.


Plosker:

When asked about the effect of the BDS campaign on SodaStream’s business, Birnbaum pointed to 30-40% growth over the past five years. The people who pay the price for boycotts are the Palestinian workers themselves. Some Scandinavian countries have demanded that their SodaStream products be sourced from elsewhere, instead preferring that they get their goods made in that beacon of human rights, China. Were it not for a boycott like this, the Mishor Adumim factory would employ more Palestinians.

 

Asked about the current controversy and publicity, Birnbaum stated that it is convenient and popular to demonize Israel and that NGOs such as Oxfam were more concerned with attacking Israel than dealing with human rights. After all, what would be achieved if SodaStream were to lay off hundreds of Palestinians leaving them jobless with no way to feed their families?

 

Birnbaum also accused Oxfam of funding groups responsible for the BDS campaign.

 

I was tremendously impressed with Daniel Birnbaum’s commitment to peaceful co-existence and SodaStream’s practical role in promoting it. While the boycotters may wish to see the factory closed down, he would not let his workers down.

 

Less impressive, however, was the line of questioning from many of the journalists. The same people who had just met with and interviewed Palestinians happy with their lot were still unable to get beyond their preconceptions. It seems that even if Birnbaum were to throw wads of free cash for the Palestinians, it wouldn’t be good enough for them.

 

In their eyes, the welfare of ordinary Palestinians is secondary to the wider consideration of cleansing Jews from the West Bank. Sadly, some of the journalists’ worldview evidently isn’t that far from that of the BDS movement.

Israelis, Palestinians, and the Status Quo. By Tom Wilson.

Israelis, Palestinians, and the Status Quo. By Tom Wilson. Commentary, February 3, 2014.

Wilson:

With Secretary of State Kerry gradually unveiling his proposal for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is worth asking what it is that Kerry seeks to solve. The present situation is certainly far from ideal. Yet, most Israelis feel safe most of the time and most Palestinians don’t live under “occupation”; they live in areas controlled and governed by the Palestinian Authority. In the last decade this conflict has generated comparatively fewer casualties than those in nearby countries and if one doesn’t count Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon or Hamas-controlled Gaza, which are after all not even being included in Kerry’s peace plan, then the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of recent years has been positively uneventful. A cold war between Israel and the PA.

 

For most Israelis and most Palestinians the present situation is tolerated with the understanding that this is not a permanent arrangement. What each side thinks a permanent arrangement should look like, however, is still vastly different. In this way the unresolved nature of the standoff leaves open the hope for each side that their vision will win out. Drawing from this, there are those on the two sides that prefer perpetuating and advancing the status quo, even if only as means of keeping open the possibility of achieving more far-reaching objectives in the long run. For these parties it has essentially become about playing the long game. For each the hoped-for future remaining just out of reach.

 

While the Palestinian population in the West Bank is clearly far from happy with the status quo, it also seems that they prefer an outcome that is unachievable as things stand. Electoral support for Hamas and polling of Palestinians in recent years would suggest most Palestinians either reject the two-state proposal outright, or they believe two states should be used as a step toward eventually eliminating the Jewish state. The dream of seeing Israel ended and Palestinians return in its place has remained prominent and unaltered, constituting the core of Palestinian identity ever since it was formed in the aftermath of Israel’s establishment. This is what most Palestinian politicians continue to express support for–in Arabic at least–and it’s what they broadcast on their television networks and teach in their schools.

 

The Palestinian leadership also has multiple practical reasons for maintaining the status quo. For one thing, they have long grown fat on the financial aid and sympathy that comes with playing the part of the ever-destitute nation. They are also confident that under the status quo they are better able to advance their strategy for weakening Israel, chipping away at its international legitimacy while believing that demographics are ultimately on their side. With every round of negotiations they have been able to win more concessions from Israel, the consensus about the final-status parameters gradually drifting in their favor. When new talks begin it is with Israel’s previous concessions assumed as given, with the expectation that Israel now agree to further demands. The division of Jerusalem and land swaps being a case in point. Each time the amount Israel is obliged to offer increases.

 

The Israeli public became sick of policing the West Bank decades ago. The electoral success of those promising to end the impasse has been persistent, even in the face of unrelenting Palestinian terrorism. However, this hope for peace accompanied by the constant background noise of violence against Israeli civilians creates a strange kind of cognitive dissonance. Israelis find themselves unwilling to stay with the present arrangement, while not quite able to embrace a new one.

 

Land-for-peace compromises only served to weaken Israel’s security, undermining the left-wing peace camp, adding weight to the arguments of Israel’s security hawks who, like many Israelis, still hope for a complete and definitive defeat of Palestinian terrorism. These voices insist that given current Palestinian attitudes and incitement, for now it is safer to manage the conflict than attempt to solve it. For such an agreement would mean evacuating the strategically vital Jordan Valley and abandoning the West Bank hilltops that overlook Israel’s narrow coastal strip where its major population centers, industrial infrastructure, and transit network are all situated. Israel would have to do this knowing a Palestinian state has every likelihood of turning out to be another failed state, a terror state and an Iranian satellite. Far better, they argue, to have the IDF in the West Bank, keeping Hamas and Islamic Jihad at bay, while strengthening the Jewish presence in the settlement blocks ensures that the areas most vital to Israel’s future will be retained in any agreement.

 

In this way the unhappy status quo at least leaves open the possibility to people on both sides of eventually achieving their most precious objectives. The problem with Kerry’s final-status plan is that it threatens to permanently slam the door firmly shut on these hopes. We have already seen what unsettling the status quo looks like. It was during the Oslo years that suicide bombers first ventured into Israel’s cities. Equally, the failure of the Camp David peace talks in 2000 played no small part in unleashing the horrors of the second intifada.

 

Israel and the PA have already agreed to disagree, for now. Kerry may yet come to wish he’d left well enough alone.

Welcome to Sochi: Beware the Water. By Stacy St. Clair.

The accommodation and facilities complex, under construction in Sochi, with the Bolshoi Ice Dome in the background, on December 2, 2012. Construction is due to be completed by August 2013 according to organizers. (Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski).

Welcome to Sochi: Beware the water. By Stacy St. Clair. Chicago Tribune, February 5, 2014.

St. Clair:

SOCHI, Russia — The alarms sounded every 45 minutes, with a stern Russian woman advising that a fire had been reported and the hotel needed to be evacuated immediately.

 

I believed it the first time.

 

And the second.

 

I might have fallen for it a third time Tuesday morning, if I hadn’t thrown caution to the bone-tired, jet-lagged wind and decided to stay in bed. Whatever would befall me, it had to be better than wandering along the western Caucasus Mountains in my pajamas.

 

It was already 5:50 a.m. and I couldn’t fall back to sleep so I figured I would just begin my day. I turned on the water to brush my teeth, but nothing came out. Just the gagging, asthmatic sound of pipes wanting to produce water.

 

I tried to flip on the shower. It wouldn’t work. The toilets wouldn’t flush either.

 

I called the front desk.

 

“It will be fixed in 40 minutes,” the sympathetic man at the reception desk told me. “But when it comes back on, please do not use on your face because it contains something very dangerous.”

 

Welcome to Sochi 2014, the dystopian-like Games where a simple shower poses a threat to your face, fire alarms ring constantly and several hotels remain unfinished. Russian President Vladimir Putin spent more than $50 billion on these Games — the most expensive Olympics, winter or summer, ever — yet he seemingly forgot to pay the water bill.

 

No one likes to hear sportswriters complain about their hotels. I’m not a sportswriter, so believe me when I swear that I mock those whiners right along with you.

 

But this is different.

 

The Sochi Olympics aren’t just a sporting event. They represent Putin’s pride, his metaphoric muscle flexing in an effort to show the international community just how virile his country has become under his leadership. He dared the world to admire Russia’s ability to produce these Games, so we must.

 

And, in some respects, the effort looks extraordinarily weak.

 

Only six of nine media hotels were finished on time, leaving hundreds of reporters scrambling to find temporary lodging.

 

When the water eventually came back on at my hotel — my temporary housing for a night until my scheduled room could be finished — the water that poured through the faucet was dark yellow. It was the color of apple juice or a performance enhancing drug test specimen. The shower left what looked like fish food flakes coating the tub.

 

I took a picture of the water and tweeted it out.

 

“On the bright side,” I wrote, “I now know what dangerous face water looks like.”

 

My tweets about the water went viral — more than 1,500 people have retweeted it — not because I wrote something exceptionally clever, but because I pointed out the annoyances that many here have endured.

 

One of my colleagues, for example, went to his assigned hotel room only to find an AP photographer already sleeping there. Others have dealt with a lack of hot water, sheetless beds and baths without shower curtains.

 

“Congrats to @Dave _Schwartz only media personality who’s arrived in Sochi with a hotel room that’s ready, with doorknob that doesn't fall off,” Minnesota Wild spokesman Ryan Stanzel tweeted.

 

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach told reporters Monday that 97 percent of Sochi hotel rooms were delivered without a problem. Only 3 percent of the rooms — about 750 total — had some kind of a problem, he said.

 

“I have some travel experience and I know how embarrassing it is when you arrive after a long flight to a place and your room is not ready,” he said.

 

I’m not sure why Bach thinks I should be embarrassed by my ‘bathroom faucet spitting urine-colored water. First of all, I ended up washing my face with bottled Evian water, which made me feel like a Kardashian.

 

And, second, it’s made me extremely popular among my fellow journalists here in southwestern Russia. I’ve received tweets in Russian, German, Danish and languages I have not yet determined.

 

On a bus down the mountainside Tuesday night a Swedish photographer came up and asked if I was the person who tweeted the hotel photo.

 

“You are the dangerous face water woman, right?” he said.

 

I am now. Thanks a lot, Putin.


Sochi hotel tells our reporter: Don’t let dangerous water touch your face. By Scott Kleinberg. Chicago Tribune, February 4, 2014.

The Disaster That Is My Sochi Hotel: Stacy St. Clair had quite the morning in Sochi. By Kate Seamons. Newser, February 5, 2014.

15 signs that Russia is not very ready for the Olympics. By Caitlin Dewey and Max Fisher. Washington Post, February 5, 2014. Also here.

Stacy St. Clair tweet. Twitter, February 3, 2014, 7:02 PM. 7:57 PM. 8:00 PM.

 

 

 

 

 

Stacy St. Clair, Chicago Tribune.

Putin Pets a Persian Leopard. By Stephen R. Hurst and Nataliya Vasilyeva.

Putin, Persian leopard in pitch-perfect photo-op. By Stephen R. Hurst and Nataliya Vasilyeva. AP. AOL, February 4, 2014. Also at The Christian Science Monitor.

Putin and the snow leopard: Russia’s leader pictured stroking a big (tame) cat as the country prepares to host the Sochi Winter Olympics. Daily Mail, February 4, 2014.




Russia’s President Vladimir Putin caresses a Persian leopard cub as he visits the Persian leopard breeding and rehabilitation centre in the National Park in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, on February 4, 2014. (ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/AFP/Getty Images.)

Stephen Walt Is the George Kennan of the Obama Administration. By Lee Smith

As George Kennan Inspired Truman’s Foreign Policy, Now Stephen Walt Inspires Obama’s. By Lee Smith. Tablet, February 5, 2014.

Plenty of pundits have jockeyed to be the top voice on the Middle East, but only one person’s ideas dominate the conversation.


Stephen Walt is Not Obama’s George Kennan. By Zachary Keck. The Diplomat, February 10, 2014.

Slouching Toward Offshore Balancing. James R. Holmes. The Diplomat, February 9, 2014.

From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing:America’s Future Grand Strategy. By Christopher Layne. International Security, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Summer 1997).

Saeb Erekat and Tzipi Livni Clash Over Historical Narratives at the Munich Security Conference.

Erekat, Livni argue history at Munich meeting. Ma’an News Agency, February 2, 2014.

World should punish “racist” Israel, PA official says. By Gavriel Fiske. The Times of Israel, February 4, 2014.

The Talks, Round Two. By Roger Cohen. New York Times, February 3, 2014.

Saab Erekat: Palestinians Were Here Before the Jews. NJBR, February 3, 2014.

Breakout Session: The Middle East Peace Process. Video. Munich Security Conference, January 31, 2014. Livini-Erekat exchange starts at 50:55. Erekat’s remarks/tirade on his historical narrative as a proud son of Jericho with roots 5500 years before Joshua ben Nun start at 58:35.

Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Clash Within a Civilization. By Anthony Cordesman.

Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Clash Within a Civilization. By Anthony Cordesman. Real Clear World, February 3, 2014. Also at Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Cordesman:

Western experts may argue with some justification that the upheavals in the Arab world since 2011 have been the product of decades of authoritarian repression, weak and ineffective governance, failed social policies, poor economic development and growing inequality of income distribution, corruption, and crony capitalism – points made equally clear by Arab experts in the series of Arab Development Reports issued by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

 

The fact remains, however, that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies have valid reasons to see these upheavals as direct threats on or near their borders, and to the two other remaining monarchies in Morocco and Jordan, and can argue that they were far better at meeting popular needs with their oil wealth than any of the Arab states with titular presidents and pseudo democracies. It is also interesting to note how many Russian and Chinese diplomats and scholars have the same impression of the results of the upheavals in the Arab world and the Western response – views that strike an immediate chord with Arab experts at conferences and meetings in the region.

 

It is hard to argue why most citizens of any Arab Gulf state or Arab monarchy would envy or want to emulate any citizen of Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, or Yemen. Whatever hopes outsiders may have in the eventual triumph of modernization, democracy, and development, it is far from clear why anyone in their right minds would want to live through any of the examples of such transitions to date. At present, the best any outside power can do is to try to find the least bad course of action. There are no good sides, merely ones that offer less risk and less potential for future damage.

Boycotts Driven By Hate, Not Settlements. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

Boycotts Driven By Hate, Not Settlements. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, February 4, 2014.

The Dark Side of the War on “the One Percent.” By Ruth R. Wisse.

The Dark Side of the War on “the One Percent.” By Ruth R. Wisse. The Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2014.

Our Founding Fathers Must Have Been Paranoid Too, Like Tom Perkins. By Paul Roderick Gregory. NJBR, January 30, 2014.


Wisse:

Two phenomena: anti-Semitism and American class conflict. Is there any connection between them? In a letter to this newspaper, the noted venture capitalist Tom Perkins called attention to certain parallels, as he saw them, between Nazi Germany's war against the Jews and American progressives’ war on the “one percent.” For comparing two such historically disparate societies, Mr. Perkins was promptly and heatedly denounced.

 

But is there something to be said for his comparison—not of Germany and the United States, of course, but of the politics at work in the two situations? The place to begin is at the starting point: with the rise of anti-Semitism, modernity's most successful and least understood political movement.

 

The German political activist Wilhelm Marr, originally a man of the left, organized a movement in the 1870s that charged Jews with using their skills “to conquer Germany from within.” Distinguishing the movement that he called anti-Semitism from earlier forms of anti-Judaism, Marr argued on professedly rational grounds that Jews were taking unfair advantage of the emerging democratic order in Europe, with its promise of individual rights and open competition, in order to dominate the fields of finance, culture and social ideas. Though some of Marr’s rhetoric and imagery was based on earlier stereotypes, he was right to insist that anti-Semitism was a new response to new conditions, channeling grievance and blame against highly visible beneficiaries of freedom and opportunity.

 

These were some of its typical ploys: Are you unemployed? The Jews have your jobs. Is your family mired in poverty? The Rothschilds have your money. Do you feel more insecure in the city than you did on the land? The Jews are trapping you in factories and charging you exorbitant rents.

 

Anti-Semitism accused Jews of undermining Christian authority and corrupting the German legal system, the arts and the press. Jews were said to be rabid internationalists spreading Bolshevism—and ruthless capitalists exploiting for their own gain the nation’s natural and human resources. To ambitious politicians seeking office, to rulers of still largely illiterate populations, “the Jews” became a convenient catchall explanation for deep-rooted and sometimes intractable problems.

 

But though the origins of modern anti-Semitism may be traced to Germany, anti-Semitism itself remains sui generis and cannot be simply conflated with either Germany or Hitler. True, the latter gained power on a platform of anti-Semitism and then proceeded to put his Final Solution into effect, but the modern organization of politics against the Jews is independent of Nazism—and of fascism, since the Italian variant did not specifically target the Jews. Features of anti-Semitism are present in other political movements, on the left fully as much the right.

 

The parallel that Tom Perkins drew in his letter was especially irksome to his respondents on the left, many of whom are supporters of President Obama’s sallies against Wall Street and the “one percent.” These critics might profitably consult Robert Wistrich, today’s leading historian of anti-Semitism. His From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews, and Israel (2012) documents the often profound anti-Semitism that has affected socialists and leftists from Karl Marx to today’s anti-Israel movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions. It was Marx who said, “The bill of exchange is the Jew’s actual god,” putting a Jewish face on capitalism and accusing both Judaism and capitalism of converting man and nature into “alienable and saleable objects.”

 

Herein lies one structural connection between a politics of blame directed specifically at Jews and a politics of grievance directed against “the rich.” The ranks of those harping on “unfairly” high earners include figures in American political life at all levels who have been entrusted with the care of our open society; in channeling blame for today’s deep-rooted and seemingly intractable problems toward the beneficiaries of that society's competitive freedoms, they are playing with fire.

 

I say this not only, and not even primarily, because some of those beneficiaries happen also to be Jews. So far, mainstream American politicians and supporters of movements like Occupy Wall Street have confined their attacks to the nameless “one percent,” and in any case it is doubtful that today any U.S. politician would be electable on an explicitly anti-Jewish platform.

 

My point is broader: Stoking class envy is a step in a familiar, dangerous and highly incendiary process. Any ideology or movement, right or left, that is organized negatively—against rather than for—enjoys an inherent advantage in politics, mobilizing unappeasable energies that never have to default on their announced goal of cleansing the body politic of its alleged poisons.

 

In this respect, one might think of anti-Semitism as the purest and most murderous example of an enduring political archetype: the negative campaign. That campaign has its international as well as its domestic front. Modern anti-Zionism, itself a patented invention of Soviet Communism and now the lingua franca of the international left, uses Israel just as anti-Semitism uses Jews, directing grievance and blame and eliminationist zeal against an entire collectivity that has flourished on the world scene thanks to the blessings of freedom and opportunity.

 

Herein lies a deeper structural connection. On the global front today, the much larger and more obvious beneficiary of those same blessings is the democratic capitalist system of the United States, and the ultimate target of the ultimate negative campaign is the American people. Anyone seeking to understand the inner workings of such a campaign will find much food for thought in Mr. Perkins’s parallel.

The Peace Process Is Frozen, But Israel Is Winning. By Larry Derfner.

The Peace Process Is Frozen, But Israel Is Winning. By Larry Derfner. The National Interest, February 3, 2014.

The View From Halhul. By David Ignatius.

The View From Halhul. By David Ignatius. Real Clear Politics, February 2, 2014.

Ignatius:

Hoping to understand the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in human terms, I made a visit last week to a Palestinian farmer named Hammadeh Kashkeesh, whom I first met 32 years ago.

 

The encounter reminded me of the pain that’s at the heart of this dispute, and how hard it will be for any diplomatic settlement to resolve the bitterness on both sides.

 

First, try to imagine the landscape, and how it has changed in the years of Israeli occupation. Halhul is an agricultural town in the rock-ribbed hills just south of Bethlehem. When I first traveled this route in 1982 to spend two weeks with Kashkeesh, to write a profile of his town, the hillsides were mostly barren. Now, the landscape is dense with Israeli settlements, many of them built since the Oslo Accord in 1993 that created the Palestinian Authority.

 

Kashkeesh and his neighbors pride themselves on raising what they claim are the tastiest grapes in the world. His access to his vines was obstructed more than a decade ago when a special road was built for Israeli settlers who live nearby. He had given up his precious grapes when I visited in 2003, but he’s now found a way to tend them again. Some of his neighbors aren’t so lucky; their vines have grown wild or died.

 

Kashkeesh, 67, worked for years as a stonecutter and then a farmer. He somehow managed to send all of his seven children to high school or college.

 

The indignity and bitterness that come with military occupation are deeply embedded in Kashkeesh’s voice. In Halhul, the Palestinian Authority is in theory largely responsible for security. But the Israeli military controls access and intervenes when it sees a security threat. The night before my visit, Kashkeesh said, the Israeli army arrested 10 people for throwing stones at soldiers.

 

There’s no condoning rock-throwing, let alone terrorist violence. Such tactics have had ruinous consequences for Palestinians, not least in undermining Israeli hope that they ever could live in peace. Hearing the anger in Kashkeesh’s voice, and seeing the sullen faces of young men gathered near his house, was a reminder that Palestinians experience life as a series of daily humiliations. Life in Halhul feels closed, embittered, confrontational.

 

When I first visited the town, openly advocating a Palestinian state could get you arrested. Villagers would hide a Palestinian flag disguised as embroidery, or a map of Palestine on the back of a wall photo. Now, the U.S. is working with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on a “framework agreement” outlining terms for peace accord.

 

But Kashkeesh said he has nearly given up. He dislikes the Palestinian Authority almost as much as the Israelis. “They are liars,” he says, whose corrupt leaders build themselves fancy villas and operate “like a trading company.” He also rejects Hamas, and says the Palestinian leadership overall has “destroyed itself, by itself.”

 

As for the peace negotiations, he asks how Palestinians will control their destiny in the demilitarized state that Israel is demanding. “How can we have a sovereign state if we don’t have control over the border with Jordan?” he wonders. If Israel gains the recognition it wants as a Jewish state, he argues that Christian and Muslim citizens of Israel will feel unwelcome. “Nobody will believe in the agreement, which means there will be no peace.”

 

Thinking sadly that Kashkeesh might be right in his skepticism – and that a real end of this conflict may be impossible – I asked him to tell me again the story about the boy and the swimming pool. Listen with me:

 

It was 1975. Kashkeesh was 29 and had recently been released from prison after serving a six-year sentence for membership in the Fatah guerrilla group. He was working at a resort in Arad when he saw an Israeli infant fall into the swimming pool. The parents were elsewhere, and though Kashkeesh couldn’t swim, there was nobody else to save the boy. So he jumped in the water and took the child in his arms. When an Israeli investigator asked him why he had risked his life to help a Jew, he answered that the boy was a human being.

 

He tells that story now without much animation. As with millions of Israelis and Palestinians, I suspect that his heart has been hardened by so many years of pain and failure. Will the peace negotiations work amid so much mistrust and anger? I don’t know, but this quest for peace is surely still worth the effort.

John Kerry as Secretary of State: Overselling and (So Far) Under-delivering. By Adam Garfinkle.

Overselling and (So Far) Under-delivering. By Adam Garfinkle. The American Interest, February 2, 2014.

Coca-Cola Super Bowl 2014 Commercial.

Coca-Cola Super Bowl 2014 Commercial. Video. SuperBowl Commercials, February 2, 2014. Also here.

Coca-Cola “America the Beautiful” Super Bowl Ad Celebrates Diversity, Twitter Explode. The Huffington Post, February 2, 2014.

Coca-Cola’s “It’s Beautiful” Super Bowl Ad Brings Out Some Ugly Americans. By James Poniewozik. Time, February 2, 2014.

Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad ignites online debate. By Ashley Killough. CNN, February 3, 2014.

The Best and Worst Super Bowl Ads. By Ian Crouch. The New Yorker, February 2, 2014.

Myth-Making About Economic Inequality. By Robert J. Samuelson.

Myth-Making About Economic Inequality. By Robert J. Samuelson. Real Clear Politics, February 3, 2014. Also at the Washington Post.

Samuelson:

Unless you are exceptionally coldblooded, it’s hard not to be disturbed by today’s huge economic inequality. The gap between the rich and the poor is enormous, wider than most Americans would (almost certainly) wish. But this incontestable reality has made economic inequality a misleading intellectual fad, blamed for many of our problems. Actually, the reverse is true: Economic inequality is usually a consequence of our problems and not a cause.

 

For starters, the poor are not poor because the rich are rich. The two conditions are generally unrelated. Mostly, the rich got rich by running profitable small businesses (car dealerships, builders), creating big enterprises (Google, Microsoft), being at the top of lucrative occupations (bankers, lawyers, doctors, actors, athletes), managing major companies or inheriting fortunes. By contrast, the very poor often face circumstances that make their lives desperate. In an interview with the New Yorker, President Obama recently put it this way:

 

“[The] ‘pathologies’ that used to be attributed to the African-American community in particular — single-parent households, and drug abuse, and men dropping out of the labor force, and an underground economy — [are now seen] in larger numbers in white working-class communities.”

 

Solutions elude us. Though some low-income workers would benefit from a higher minimum wage, most of the very poor would not. They’re not in the labor force; they either can’t work — too young, old, disabled or unskilled — or won’t. Of the 46 million people below the government’s poverty line in 2012, only 6 percent had year-round full-time jobs. Among men 25 to 55 with a high school diploma or less, the share with jobs fell from more than 90 percent in 1970 to less than 75 percent in 2010, reports Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution . For African American men ages 20 to 24, less than half were working.

 

It’s also not true that, as widely asserted, the wealthiest Americans (the notorious top 1 percent) have captured all the gains in productivity and living standards of recent decades. The Congressional Budget Office examined income trends for the past three decades. It found sizable gains for all income groups.

 

True, the top 1 percent outdid everyone. From 1980 to 2010, their inflation-adjusted pretax incomes grew a spectacular 190 percent, almost a tripling. But for the poorest fifth of Americans, pretax incomes for these years rose 44 percent. Gains were 31 percent for the second poorest, 29 percent for the middle fifth, 38 percent for the next fifth and 83 percent for the richest fifth, including the top 1 percent. Because our system redistributes income from top to bottom, after-tax gains were larger: 53 percent for the poorest fifth; 41 percent for the second; 41 percent for the middle-fifth; 49 percent for the fourth; and 90 percent for richest.

 

Finally, widening economic inequality is sometimes mistakenly blamed for causing the Great Recession and the weak recovery. The argument, as outlined by two economists at Washington University in St. Louis, goes like this: In the 1980s, income growth for the bottom 95 percent of Americans slowed. People compensated by borrowing more. All the extra debt led to a consumption boom that was unsustainable. The housing bubble and crash followed. Now, weak income growth of the bottom 95 percent “helps explain the slow recovery.”

 

This theory is half right. An unsustainable debt boom did fuel an unsustainable consumption boom. From 1980 to 2007, household debt rose from 72 percent to 137 percent of disposable income. Consumption spending jumped from 61 percent of gross domestic product (the economy) to 67 percent for the same years, a huge shift. These increases could not continue indefinitely. But growing inequality didn’t cause these twin booms. Just because households wanted to borrow didn’t mean lenders had to lend. They lent, signifying relaxed credit standards, because they thought that the risks had dropped.

 

Optimism seemed justified. Beginning in the 1980s, inflation fell, reducing interest rates. Lower interest rates raised stock prices and home values. People felt wealthier and, on paper, they were. Buoyant consumer spending kept the economy advancing and unemployment low. Recessions were mild and infrequent. Economists called this the Great Moderation. Its complacency led directly to the Great Recession. The boom and bust had little to do with economic inequality.

 

Americans in the top 1 percent are convenient scapegoats. They don’t naturally command much sympathy, and their rewards sometimes seem outsized or outlandish. When most people are getting ahead, they don’t worry much about this economic inequality. When progress stalls, they do. There’s a backlash and a tendency to see less economic inequality as a solution to all manner of problems. We create simplistic narratives and imagine that punishing the rich will miraculously uplift the poor. This vents popular resentments, even as it encourages self-deception.

Saeb Erekat: Palestinians Were Here Before the Jews.

Chief Palestinian negotiator: We were here before the Jews. By Daniel Siryoti, Shlomo Cesana. Israel Hayom, February 2, 2014.

Erekat Is Wrong: The Jewish Presence in the Land Dates Back for Millennia. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

PA Negotiator Saeb Erekat Claims Family was Canaanite, in Israel for 9,000 Years. By Joshua Levitt. The Algemeiner, February 2, 2014.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat rejects Israel as a Jewish state, claims his ancestors were in Jericho 5,500 years before Joshua. By Yifa Yaakov. The Times of Israel, February 2, 2014.

Saeb Erekat is Not Descended from Canaanites. By Rachel Avraham. Jerusalem Online, February 3, 2014.

Breakout Session: The Middle East Peace Process. Video. Munich Security Conference, January 31, 2014. Livini-Erekat exchange starts at 50:55. Erekat’s remarks/tirade on his historical narrative as a proud son of Jericho with roots 5,500 years before Joshua ben Nun start at 58:35.

Erekat:

You mentioned something about narratives. It is a narrative. I am the son of Jericho. I am ten thousand years old. I celebrated last year the birth date of my city. I am the proud son of the Natufians and the Canaanites. I’ve been there 5,500 years before Joshua ben Nun came and burned my hometown Jericho. I’m not going to change my narrative. When you say accept Israel as a Jewish state it means you’re asking me to change my narrative.

Saeb Erekat and Tzipi Livni Clash Over Historical Narratives at the Munich Security Conference. NJBR, February 5, 2014.

The fabricated Palestinian history. By Nadav Shragai. Israel Hayom, February 7, 2014.

Erekat’s latest lie: “My family was in Palestine for 9000 years.” They are really from Arabia. The Elder of Ziyon, February 2, 2014.

The Elder:

From the Times of Israel:

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator over the weekend again ruled out the notion of Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Speaking at a Munich conference, on a panel with his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni, Erekat said the demand was unacceptable: “When you say ‘accept Israel as a Jewish state’ you are asking me to change my narrative,” he claimed, asserting that his ancestors lived in the region “5,500 years before Joshua Bin-Nun came and burned my hometown Jericho.”

Joshua lived about 3,300 years ago, so Erekat is claiming that his family was in the region for nearly 9000 years.

Is this true?

Not even close.

Erekat was born in Abu Dis, near Jerusalem. I found an interview with another Erekat who was born in Abu Dis, named Hussein Mohamed Erekat. He says that his family actually comes from the Huwaitat region of the northwestern Arabian Peninsula.

Indeed, this article about the dialects and clans of Saudi Arabia confirms the existence of the Erekat (sometimes spelled Areikat or Ariqat) families in Huwaitat, and they are one of seven clans that ended up in Palestine.

Is Saeb a member of this clan? Yes, he is.

This Facebook page of the Erekat family traces the Erekat family history, and this article confirms that the family came from the Huwaitat region, and it also mentions prominent Erekats – including Saeb.

That article also says that before Huwaitat, their ancestors emigrated from Medina.

All of the Erekats are related. Most of their most prominent members have held positions in Jordan’s government or armed forces, but three PLO diplomats are from the family, including Saeb, the US representative of the PLO Maen Rashid Areikat, and the PLO’s delegate to the Ukraine Khaled Erekat.

(Saeb is also implying that he was born in Jericho, but he wasn’t.)

Saeb Erekat is, once again, lying. Just as we caught him lying many, many times before.

And after all these years of documented lies, no one in the media has had the guts to confront him. Because, you see, he may be a liar, but he is a moderate liar, and therefore deserves everyone's uncritical support.

And why should Israel have a problem signing a peace agreement with liars?

UPDATE: Erekat actually said “I am the son proud of the Canaanites who were there 5,500 years before Joshua bin Nun burned down the town of Jericho.”