UPDATE: Thanks to Elder of Ziyon for figuring out a way to copy the above map. Some of you have said that the link below isn’t working, so if you want to see the above online, go here.
As David Axelrod might put it, this is an insult and an affront. Visit the online route map of EgyptAir, the airline owned by the same state which signed an historic peace agreement with Israel in 1979, and you will see, once you click on the “Middle East & Gulf” section, that Israel has, well, disappeared.
Even if the Ramat Shlomo announcement and its aftermath is a salutary reminder of the old Yiddish proverb about not spitting in the well you drink from, that should not be the only lesson we draw from this week’s events. Continue reading ‘Meanwhile, in Ramallah…’
The propensity of some Israeli political leaders to speak publicly or take action before thinking clearly of the consequences hit a new low this week during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit.
If Israelis were looking for reassurance that the United States is genuinely the Jewish state’s number one ally, the vice president couldn’t have been clearer. “The bond between the U.S. and Israel has been and will remain unshakable,” declared Biden. “Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel.” But, alas, there is a significant gap, on settlements, and it was an Israeli Cabinet Minister who decided to remind all with international media focused on every step of Biden’s visit.
After a week in which the Israeli government displayed its exquisite sense of timing, Vice-President Biden delivered a major speech at Tel Aviv University today. For those who don’t have time to watch the video, here are the bullet points.
El Páis of Madrid is a wonderful newspaper. In the lead editorial of today’s edition it fearlessly condemns the supposed assassination by Israel of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
As well as being legally reprehensible and morally unacceptable the policy of selective assassination, or to put it another way, the dirty war only contributes to the illusion that there are alternative solutions to the one that Israel will sooner or later have to face: an end to the occupation and the opening of talks with the Palestinians on the basis of a two state solution.
Ariel Ilan Roth maintains that Israel’s objection to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is not based on a fear that those weapons would be used against it as he believes that the certainty of a devastating Israeli response is likely to deter the ayatollahs.
I received an e-mail circular from B’Tselem today about Israel’s policies towards Gaza. The first substantial argument offered is this:
“The siege of Gaza is causing enormous suffering among innocents, and it’s hard to see how that deprivation can be justified,” said Uri Zaki, B’Tselem’s USA Director. “International law, as well as basic human and Israeli values, demands that Israel do its utmost to address its legitimate security concerns without inflicting unnecessary harm to the civilians of Gaza. The current policy doesn’t come close to meeting that standard.” Gazans’ rights to minimal standards of food security, shelter, health, education and to travel are protected under international law. These needs should not be held hostage to security and political issues.
This article by Richard Landes is cross-posted from Augean Stables.
Judge Richard Goldstone spoke yesterday at Yale in the framework of the George Herbert Walker Bush Jr. Lecture in International Relations. Obviously a most prestigious platform for someone of stature, but inappropriate for a figure who is not only highly controversial, but has done much to marginalize himself, as Noah Pollak and Adam Yoffie pointed out the previous day in the Yale Daily.
Norway FM Jonas Gahr Støre toured the Middle East between January 16th-20th, visiting Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, Israel, Egypt and UAE. The topics of Støre’s meetings in the different countries as well as the manner in which he was received shows us a Norwegian foreign policy bathed in the gold sheen of hypocrisy. The manner in which the Norwegian media reports on Støre’s tour reveals how this hypocrisy is rooted in a bedrock of popular denial.
As readers of this blog will be well aware, Juan Miguel Muñoz, is a man of constant sorrow. He’s the Jerusalem correspondent of El País and over the last couple of years it has fallen to him to report on the daily outrages against the conscience of humanity committed by Israel.
However, in this piece in today’s edition of Spain’s most popular serious newspaper he seems a bit more cheerful. The world, as he sees it, is finally waking up to the reality of the many evils that allowing the Jews to govern themselves has brought upon the world. His analysis, however, doesn’t resist serious consideration.
Just a note to direct readers to an interesting piece in Tuesday’s New York Times about Iran’s use of tunnels to protect its nuclear facilities. The article quotes Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak as saying that the plant near Qom is
… located in bunkers that cannot be destroyed through a conventional attack.
Just a quick note to alert readers to a post by Jonathan G. Campbell over at Normblog. It offers us a summary of Yaacov Lozowick’s Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel’s Wars. Of course you’d be better off to read to the book but the post serves as a handy reminder of the best arguments with which to mow down the “It’s all Israel’s fault” hordes.
From David Newman in the Jerusalem Post, two kinds of arguments concerning contemporary antisemitism: the first is a straw man, while the second is just irrelevant.
On Thursday, December 10, President Obama will deliver the Nobel Peace Prize Lecture in Oslo. Prominent among the issues that the president may want to bring up is the failed quest for peace that began in Oslo back in 1993, when Israeli and Palestinian negotiators held a series of meetings in the Norwegian capital to formulate the accords that launched the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The feeling that it is time to give up on this process - and perhaps even on peace - is widespread, but claims that everything has been tried are not quite true.
Even if the Ramat Shlomo announcement and its aftermath is a salutary reminder of the old Yiddish proverb about not spitting in the well you drink from, that should not be the only lesson we draw from this week’s events.
