Soccer Dad

Polls going South?

vis Instapundit: The Washington Post reports:

Costs are soaring as cooperation rates remain at or near record lows. In some surveys, less than one in five calls produces a completed interview -- raising doubts whether such polls accurately reflect the views of the public or merely report the opinions of stay-at-home Americans who are too bored, too infirm or too lonely to hang up.

and

But far more refuse to participate in surveys today than a few decades ago. In the 1960s, it was common for two-thirds of those contacted to complete a telephone survey. But participation dropped steeply through the 1980s and early 1990s, when it appears to have leveled off.

Political junkie that I am, I love it when I get these calls. I was called this election cycle. I suspect though it was for the (one-sided) Congressional race in my district. (The questions focused on the Presidential race and the Congressional race, leaving out the - also one-sided - Pipkin vs. Mikulski senatorial race.) But my wife doesn't. She just hands me the phone. (Unless for their sampling they need a woman or the first person who answers.) But today the Post is apparently complaining about Rasmussen!

Rasmussen in particular stirs controversy because of his polling methods. Unlike traditional pollsters, he does not have a room full of questioners phoning randomly around the country. Instead a computerized voice, using an automated calling system operated by a Texas firm, conducts the interviews. People on the other end of the line who are willing to cooperate give answers by punching buttons on their telephone keypads.

Another firm, New York-based SurveyUSA, also uses the disputed method in the dozens of polls it conducts for local television stations and makes available on its Web site.

Some academic experts on public opinion research believe such "robo calls" are methodologically unsound. By this reckoning, people are less likely to give thoughtful answers to a computer. Some mischief-makers, critics believe, might even be more prone to give deliberately false answers.

"I would not rely at all on the Rasmussen data," said Michael W. Traugott, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who has written academic articles criticizing robo-calling. "The computer does not know who's really at the other end of the phone."

But if the earlier article is accurate, "traditional" pollsters aren't doing much better. It's true that the Post allows Rasmussen a response but the tilt of the article seems to be that there's something less scientific about the Rasmussen Report.
(The beginning of the article is frustrating because it discusses how traditional pollsters were affiliated with one party or another and that an independent pollster is portrayed as a new beast. Well what about the network and news organization polls? Is the Post saying that this new beast is "controversial" or is it a subtle acknowledgement that such polls are representing one party or the other?)
I'm at a point where I find it hard to take any poll seriously, Rasmussen or traditional. If the president wins by 5% or more then I will be convinced that most polling is no more honest than reporting. (I guess I should apply the same standard for a significant Kerry victory. But I'm too partisan to believe that pollsters are underestimating Kerry; I can believe that they are underestimating the President. And I'm convinced that Florida will not be close, as I've mentioned before.

Pulling out the cliches

Yesterday's Times editorial "Pulling Out of Gaza" was filled with cliches but little substance. At least the two letters to the editor the Times published were effective responses to the editorial.
Second paragraph (of the editorial):

It deserves support simply because it leads to the breakup of Jewish settlements that force Israeli security troops to defend far-flung clusters of housing surrounded by hostile Palestinians. Gaza - a teeming, thirsty strip of land in which 7,500 militant Jewish residents are surrounded by more than a million Arabs and protected by 20,000 Israeli soldiers - is the ultimate example of the bankruptcy of the settlement policy. But it is also only a side issue.

Militant settlers? All the settlers in Gaza are militant? How do they know? It's worth pointing out that Alei Sinai and other Jewish communities in Gaza are founded by people who left the Sinai as a result of the peace treaty with Egypt. Israel is perhaps the only place in the world where people who make sacrifices for peace are considered militants. At least in the view of the NY Times.

Paragraph 6:

The old "road map" for peace, which the Bush administration has shamefully failed to pressure Israel to pursue, calls for working with elected Palestinian officials to create a plan for a gradual Israeli withdrawal. The responsibility of the Palestinians, in return, would be to clamp down on terrorist activity against Israelis.

Failed to pressure Israel to pursue? Has the PA taken a single step? Why is the success of peace dependent only on the actions of Israel?

Paragraph 7:

The obvious problem has always been the lack of a Palestinian leader willing and able to make the hard choices. But Palestinian moderates do exist, as do Arab governments interested in helping to prod the peace process along. Reaching that goal is going to be a very long and hard road, but the first rule for Israel must be to do no harm, and particularly to avoid making the situation worse by expanding West Bank settlements.

That's why it's Israel's obligation. Israel must do no harm. I guess we could call that the Times's Hippocratic hypocrisy.

Paragraph 8:

Instead, Mr. Sharon is pursuing his own road map for Israel, one that includes erasing all vestiges of the Oslo peace accords, battering Palestinian militants whenever and wherever possible, even when innocent civilians are in the line of fire, and incorporating areas of the West Bank behind Israel's new security barrier - as well as cutting Israeli losses in Gaza.

International law is pretty clear on this point. Terrorists who hide among civilians are the war criminals. The Times has no problem if the innocent civilians allow the villains to escape justice. But don't you think the editors could write "even though international law allows place the burden of civilian casualties on the terrorists, we think it better if Israel did not pursue them..."? Nah.

Paragraph 10:

It is no surprise that this plan arouses enormous suspicion and resistance among Palestinians and their supporters. To them, Mr. Sharon is out to chop up a national Palestinian homeland into a patchwork of Israeli-controlled homelands. The militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are certain to do everything they can to make it appear that Israeli is withdrawing because of their "armed struggle." The far more sensible and humane response should be to accept the opportunity that the Gaza withdrawal plan offers.

And the NY Times editors are obviously among the Palestinians' supporters. "[P]atchwork?" After 11+ years of perfidy there's no reason the Palestinians should expect to get 100% of Yesha and Gaza. There was never any reason they should have expected it anyway. Israel and the PA were supposed to negotiate. By saying that the only way for peace is for the PA to get 100% of what they demand and derogating anything else as "Israeli-controlled homelands" is to embrace the extreme position of the PA. Erakat and others consistently say that they cannot accept less than 100% of Yesha and Gaza because they're already sitting on only 38% of Palestine. They've already compromised. The Times is essentially backing this extreme position. Israel must conform to Palestinian demands or it can't expect peace. There's nothing progressive or noble about such a position. It simply offers justification for continued grievances against Israel and makes excuses for terror.

Paragraph 10:

Mr. Sharon's Gaza plan still has many hurdles to overcome before it becomes reality. The powerful and passionate settler movement is certain to use all means, including violence, to prevent the withdrawal. Mr. Sharon's own Likud Party is deeply divided, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the finance minister, has strong allies in Israel and the United States behind his effort to derail the plan. And if the plan does go ahead, little effort has been made to help moderate Palestinians fend off a likely Hamas bid to take over Gaza's administration.

The "settler" movement will use violence. Yeah. I suppose some individual "settlers" have committed violence, but the movement doesn't endorse violence at all. (See Josh Hasten's letter.) Unless making a human chain is violent in the eyes of the Times' editors. (Actually Jews in Gaza are more likely to be victims of terror than perpetrators of it. Again the Times is just inverting reality.)

Pro Israel is Pro Peace

One of my pet peeves about media coverage of Israel is their failure to look at the whole picture. When assessing a crime (particularly murder) authorities look at means, motive and opportunity. For the most part coverage of the Middle East focuses on motive and ignores the other two elements.
A perfect example of that tendency was yesterday's column by Richard Cohen "Pro-Israel, But Pro-Peace?"

Everywhere I go, people tell me they will vote for Bush because he has been a mighty friend of Israel.
I cannot argue. But I can point out that his friendship has hardly been a boon to the Jewish state. Let me make my argument arithmetically. From the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993 until September 2000, when the Camp David summit came to naught, about 256 Israelis -- civilians and soldiers alike -- were killed by Palestinian violence. Bill Clinton was in office during those years.

The next four years were mostly Bush's, and the numbers tell a different story. Between Sept. 29, 2000, and September 2004 -- four, not eight, years -- 1,026 Israelis were killed by Palestinians. While it is true that those years correspond to the second intifada, which erupted after the collapse of the Clinton-inspired peace talks, they nevertheless speak for themselves. It cannot be argued that Israel is better off because George Bush is in the White House.

This is a crude measure. But when did the Palestinians acquire the means for their latest war against Israel? When did they get the impression that they would have significant support for that war? When were they able to organize their various terror groups with impunity? That was when Bill Clinton was president.

In February and March 1996 Israel was subjected to a horrible spate of bus bombings. In less that two weeks, 60 people were killed. We kept on hearing the mantra that the terrorists were "killing the peace." That was their motive. No attention was paid to something more important. A few months earlier, Israel withdrew from six Arab cities. With the end of occupation and the transfer of power to the PA, Hamas was able to regroup, plan and organize its infrastructure. They were given a new opportunity to strike at Israel and took advantage. Arafat's role in allowing that to happen was never mentioned. Certainly not by Clinton who invited the unrepentant terrorist to a ludicrous "peace summit" a few weeks later.
But the critical episode that signaled Arafat that he could get away with his "intifada" were the tunnel riots of September 1996. Israel opened up a tunnel near the Temple Mount. Though the government had cleared the proejct with the WAKF, the WAKF betrayed the government and soon the PA was inciting violence against Israel because the tunnel supposedly undermined the the Al Aksa Mosque. (The tunnel was opened along the northern edge of the Temple Mount; the mosque is located at the southern end. The charge was bogus.)
Violence ensued as the Palestinian police were organized and turned their guns on Israeli troops. There was widespread violence. And who was blamed for it? Why PM Binyamin Netanyahu.
Though nothing he did at this time violated the Oslo Accords he was blamed for showing insensitivity to the Palestinians or provoking them. Arafat who incited his people to violence against explicit terms of the Oslo Accords escaped any blame.
Had the Clinton administration made clear that the violence was unacceptable and dealt a political or diplomatic punishment to the PA, Arafat might have learned that violence was unacceptable. Clinton's failure to hold Arafat culpable for the violence taught Arafat well. He knew that if he ever needed to foment violence again he could do it with impunity. The latest intifada showed how well he learned that lesson.

(Cohen's reasoning is interesting. Does he feel that Binyamin Netanyahu was the Israeli Prime Minister who did the most for peace. His standard here suggests he should. After all during Netanyahu's term in office terror against Israel was at its lowest point for the past eleven years.)

Finally I have a hypothetical. It's taken from Hillel Halkin's "Beyond the Geneva Accord.(analysis of Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement) " from the January 2004 issue of Commentary:

Consider a hypothetical scenario. The year is 2012. Following a series of attacks across Israel's pre-June 1967 borders, carried out by refugees whose "right of return" has been denied and actively countered by Israeli retaliations, tensions in the region are running high. The government of Palestine, citing its 2006 peace treaty with Israel based on the Geneva Accord, has issued an ultimatum: either Israel agrees at once to admit additional Palestinian refugees or it will be regarded as having abrogated the treaty. Meanwhile, Islamic countries have begun massing troops in Jordan--a country that, ever since a coup in 2010, has been an ally of Syria, of a nuclear Iran, and of the pro-Iranian Shiite government of Iraq. With soldiers no longer in defensive positions on the Jordan River, the Israeli army has a grim choice: either it mobilizes fully and invades Palestine first, striking preemptively and being blamed for the outbreak of hostilities, or it makes do with a partial call-up and digs in along the 1967 border, a thin sliver of coastal plain behind it, while waiting for the threatening divisions to move. If it decides to invade or is forced to run a race to the river, or at least to the controlling mountain ridges of the West Bank, it will need to fight its way past a Palestinian "security force" equipped with the latest armor-piercing and anti-aircraft missiles, easily enough concealable to have been smuggled into the "demilitarized" state in large quantities under the nose of a politically neutralized "Implementation and Verification Group."

We saw a lot of this during the Oslo years. Arafat threatening violence if his interpretation of the Oslo Accords wasn't accepted followed by pressure for Israeli concessions. The threats were effective because Arafat had accumulated materiel to make good on his threats. At some point, though, Arafat would have demanded something that no Israeli government could accede to and he would have had his forces (both regular and irregular) launch a war against Israel. That's what happened after Camp David four years ago. And as long as the PA and its allied terror groups had the capacity to attack they would. It was necessary to reverse that situation and reduce that ability. That's what Ariel Sharon did. And I doubt he could have done it if Bill Clinton were president.
What Cohen doesn't get is that if Arafat had the means to wage war against Israel, he would. It was necessary to deprive him of the means to do that. That intensified the violence for sure. But it was not the cause of violence that would otherwise not have occurred. Arafat did not stockpile weapons and allow Hamas and Islamic Jihad to thrive under his watch for nothing. He did those things in order to have a credible threat against Israel. And he did.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Is Florida in Play?

I keep on hearing that Florida is a battleground state. The president has a slight lead and the state could go either way. I don't believe it.
Two years ago, when the president's brother ran for re-election he was deemed vulnerable by the Democrats. Supposedly Gov. Bush was tainted by his role in throwing the election to his brother and there was deep resentment. So strong was this belief that the Democrats recruited former AG Janet Reno to run for the Democratic nomination. (Though she didn't win the nomination.) IIRC most of the polls showed the race to be very close until the end. But it wasn't close at all. I don't think that the Presidential race will be either.
And why is everyone surprised that the President is doing well in Hawaii? Two years ago Hawaii elected a Republican governor, Linda Lingle. Maybe another Republican can carry the state too.

Sports Predicts Politics?

So can we rely on the World Series to determine who will be the next president of the United States? Maybe:

There are only minor trends toward US presidential predictions based upon the 24 elections conducted in the same year as a World Series.

Republicans have been elected on nine of the 16 occasions in which an American League champion has won the Series, something for Bush to celebrate if his rival's beloved AL champion Red Sox claim the crown.

Democrats have won the White House in five of eight times when the National League winners capture the Series, a fact that might be some small consolation for Kerry if the Cardinals rally to deny the Red Sox yet again.

There is one good omen for the Red Sox. AL winners have won three titles in a row during election years - Toronto in 1992 when Bill Clinton (news - web sites) was elected and the New York Yankees in 1996 for Clinton's re-election and in 2000 for Bush's controversial victory.

So with the American League's Red Sox taking the World Series it suggests a Bush victory next week.

However maybe there's a different trend at work: The Redskins:

This election season, Washington Redskins cornerback Fred Smoot has a predicament: For Kerry to win, the Redskins have to lose on Sunday — at least according to a bizarre statistical correlation that's been accurate for seven decades.

"We've got to win this game no doubt, but I'm hoping John Kerry (news - web sites) can kind of reverse the curse," Smoot said. "I'm wishing him luck, man. This is the millennium for all trends to be broken."

Since the Redskins became the Redskins in 1933, the result of the team's final home game before the presidential election has correctly predicted the White House winner. If the Redskins win, the incumbent party wins. If they lose, the incumbent party is ousted.

I guess I'll be rooting for the Redskins this week :-)
Actually these are every bit as silly as Jay Leno's silly unscientific contests to determine who will win the election. Still I'm not convinced that "scientific" polls are really helping us understand who will be the next president either.

More on Lawn Signs

My unofficial and inexact count this morning leaves me with the impression that in my neighborhood the Bush signs outnumber the Kerry signs by 5 - 1 or better. I assume that's not the usual case in Maryland.

Cancelled

My wife and I had been discussing cancelling the NY Times for some time. Though it has some very good reporting the bias had really started to wear on us. Finally the other day,my wife had it. She heard on the Liddy Show how the Times unfairly blamed the administration for missing explosives in Iraq. Sen Kerry immediately seized upon this "news" to launch new attacks against the President's running of the war. It was as if the Times had become the chief propagandist for the Kerry campaign.
My wife cancelled by calling and complaining about the bias. It appears that the Times is oblivious to its rank partisanship.
We plan to start getting the Washington Post. It's just as liberal but slightly less partisan. In its editorial on the subject, the Post makes clear that it feels that the administration went to war with two few troops, but in the end seems to buy the administration's version. Alas it seems to deflect blame from the Times simply to place it on Mohamed ElBaradei. But ElBaradei's bad behavior doesn't excuse the Times. They should have been a lot harder on the Times. Despite that the Post clearly has more credibility. Plus my boys say it has a better sports section!

They've got the A-Rod; We got the Ring!

I watched the end of the game. Earlier I was in the car and listened and Jon Miller was going on about all the pitchers who won the deciding game in the World Series when it was the last game they pitched for that team. Jimmy Key won for Toronto over Atlanta in 92 before signing with the Yankees. Again in 1996 he won for the Yankees over Atlanta before signing with the O's. Obviously he was inspired by the possiblity that Derer Lowe might leave the Sox this offseason. It reminded me why I liked him so much.
When I watched the game, I realized that there was only one fitting way to hear the end of the game. I had to hear Jon Miller make the call. So I turned on Fox, turned off the sound and then turned on the radio. The oddest thing. Jon Miller was describing the play a second or two before I saw it on the TV! I didn't realize that TV broadcasts were delayed. (I can understand halftime shows, but the game?)
I wondered something similar after the ALCS, but has there ever been a bigger disparity in grooming between two World Series teams, since Philadelphia faced Toronto in 1993?
I noted earlier that David Pinto had questioned the hiring of Terry Francona. Well in the post season it doesn't appear that Francona made many (if any) missteps as David happily acknowledges:

The managing and coaching was good. I can't say I saw a move by Francona that I disagreed with.

The series may not have been as exciting as the ALCS (except for game 1). But overall this was a pretty darn good post season. And, of course, read Thomas Boswell.
UPDATE: I am very embarrassed. I misconstrued two posts by David Pinto. When the Sox fired Grady Little last year, he wondered why sabermetric GM's didn't hire sabermetric managers. Later he found an interview with Terry Francona that showed that Francona had drunk from the wells of sabermetrics and appreciated the value of objective analysis. Somehow I combined these two posts in my mind and came to the conclusion that David didn't understand why the Sox hired Francona. My mistake. Sorry David.

A perverse thought

If the Red Sox were to lose the next four games to the Cardinals wouldn't that become the worst choke in history?
UPDATE: I didn't think that it would happen. Of course I kept on telling my Yankee fan wife last week that no baseball team had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a 7 game series. And the Red Sox looked about as helpless after losing Game 3 to the Yankees as the Cardinals did after losing Game 3.
And I wasn't the only one to harbor such a thought.
Maybe the Red Sox will collapse. But it wasn't this year!

Last Year's Lunar Eclipse

Nov 8, 2003 7:41 PM

The Jewish Vote

Part of me was proud earlier this year when Sen Joe Lieberman insisted that the Democratic debate in South Carolina start late enough on a Saturday night so that he could participate. Lieberman stood up for is religion.
Part of me was disappointed. I wished that he had decline to debate at all. I wanted him to say that he wouldn't share the stage with the Rev Al Sharpton, for Sharpton's actions had revealed him as an antisemite. Of course Lieberman did no such thing.
Joel Engel author of "From Me to Jews" in the Weekly Standard, is similarly bothered:

Even before Al Sharpton stood as a presidential candidate last year, Democratic politicians genuflecting for black votes--Al Gore, Bill Bradley, and Hillary Clinton, for example--often trekked up to Harlem to kiss his ring. And yet, this was a man who in previous years had either led or instigated two anti-Jewish demonstrations, one in Crown Heights and one in Harlem, which together resulted in the deaths of eight people. Does that matter to Democrats and John Kerry? Apparently not. Sharpton was rewarded with a choice slot at the Democratic National Convention, something that is impossible to imagine being given to the likes of former Republican David Duke, whose incitements have frankly born far less blood than Sharpton's.

Put aside his disgraceful role in the Tawana Brawley hoax. The fact that Democratic candidate Sharpton never had to answer questions during primary season from either the press or the other contenders about his anti-Semitic statements (to wit: "diamond merchants" whose hands bear "the blood of innocent babies") should tell Jewish Democrats something important about their party. It should tell them that anti-Semites have found safety in numbers.

Engel is mostly right here. The one problem is that Sharpton's role in the Crown Heights rioting started after Yankel Rosenbaum was killed. As much as I'd like to, I can't pin that death on him. For the other seven - those killed at Freddy's - he should have been tried for as an accessory. Surely in Crown Heights Sharpton is guilty of prolonging the riots and engaging in awful antisemitic rhetoric at the funeral of Gavin Cato, but the death of Yankel Rosenbaum is not on his head.
It's true that Jews don't make enough of the problem of antisemitism in the Democratic party, but that doesn't make Engel right on his main point.

"F*** the Jews," Republican James Baker snapped during Bush 41's reign more than a decade ago. "They didn't vote for us anyway."

Right he was. And if only 20 percent of them vote for Bush 43, American Jews won't need James Baker--they'll have done it to themselves.

For a supposedly smart people, we can be awfully stupid.

For me Baker's comment became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I took his hostility to Israel and Jews seriously and in 1992 I voted for Bill Clinton - the only Democrat I voted for for president. (Something I now deeply regret.) But I believe he's wrong about the Jewish vote. The percentage of the Jewish vote going to President Bush will be higher this year than 20. My guess is between 30 and 40.
Inbred biases are hard to overcome. But this one is slowly fading.
William Safire is similarly bothered. In "Arab and Jewish Votes" he writes:

Jewish American voters who differ with their Arab and Muslim compatriots, one might logically conclude, would seriously consider supporting the candidate who many Israelis believe has been their best friend in the White House.

But such logic is misleading. Four years ago, candidate Bush received 20 percent of the "Jewish vote," about halfway between the low point for a Republican candidate (5 percent for Goldwater) and the high point (39 percent for Reagan). Today, it appears that Bush is getting only slightly more than the 20 percent of last time.

Despite the fact that this president has firmly backed Israel's vigorous self-defense - and time and again vetoed or denounced lopsided U.N. votes to ostracize Israel - 8 out of 10 Jewish American voters will still vote as a bloc to oust him.

As with Engel, what proof does he have that only 20% of Jewish voters will vote for the President? The only poll I'm aware of is one that was this one:

Three years of extraordinarily close relations with Israel, tough talk toward the Palestinians and historic decisions favoring the Jewish state have done virtually nothing to build support for President Bush among U.S. Jewish voters, according to new data from a Democratic pollster.
Likely U.S. Jewish voters favor Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) over Bush by 75 percent to 22 percent in the coming presidential election, according to a poll published Monday by the National Jewish Democratic Council.

With a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points, that’s a statistical tie with the 19 percent Bush scored among Jewish voters in the 2000 elections, according to exit polls at the time — and bad news for Republicans scrambling for Jewish voters in key swing states like Florida.

“There’s been literally no progress in outreach to the Jewish community on the part of the Bush administration and the Bush campaign,” said Anna Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a firm with ties to the Democratic Party. The firm carried out the poll of 817 respondents from July 26-28.

As is noted later in the article, this was a Democratic pollster. I believe there were probably biases built into to the sample.
Perhaps I'm living in my own little cocoon. Where I live, in the Orthodox Jewish section of Baltimore, I believe that the President has very strong (but not unanimous) support. Rumors have it that 80-90 percent of us voted for Republican Gov Ehrlich. I've heard - though I haven't confirmed it - statewide about 30-40 percent of all Jews voted for Ehrlich two years ago. That's not a majority, but it's a sign that Jews are changing.
Part of that is that Orthodox Jews are Republican or have more conservative political leanings. The other part is that the Jews are changing as a group. Both Engel and Safire are being much too negative. They'll both be pleasantly surprised when they wake up next Wednesday morning.
UPDATE: Peter Beinart wrote an interesting column "The End Of the 'Jewish Vote'" His argument is that the Jewish vote is not really monlithic anymore.

This year, for probably the first time, Orthodox Jews will vote like "traditionalist" Christians. Conservative, Reform and non-affiliated Jews, on the other hand, will vote like secular, or "modernist," Christians. And the Jewish vote, in a meaningful sense, will cease to exist.

In other words, Jews aren't becoming more conservative or Republican, only a small segment of them are. It's a clever use of words, I suppose, but it seems just another way of saying that Jews have realigned. Maybe the realignment is limited, and we'll never find 80% of American Jews voting Republican. But it may well be that we won't see the Jewish vote dropping 30% Republican.
Still I have some problems with what he wrote:

Some commentators speculated that his strong support for Ariel Sharon would win over Jewish voters. Actually, it has divided them. Orthodox Jews are far more likely to vote on Israel than other Jews. According to a recent American Jewish Committee survey, 74 percent of Orthodox Jews feel "very close" to Israel, compared with only 31 percent of Jews overall. And Orthodox Jews are also more likely to oppose dismantling settlements, which puts them more in sync with Bush and Sharon's hard-line policies.

For one thing here he's suggesting that Orthodox Jewish voters are largely one issue voters. I find it offensive. Sure Israel's important but there are many other issues too. If I agreed with Bush on every issue but Israel would I still vote him? Probably.
And while I am skeptical that dismantling settlement will help bring peace any closer, there's no evidence that President Bush feels the same way.
Beinart concludes:

Don't expect this to have a dramatic impact at the polls. Orthodox Jews make up less than 10 percent of the American Jewish population, so even though they will probably vote overwhelmingly for President Bush, he will still overwhelmingly lose the Jewish vote as a whole.

As I noted above Ehrlich reportedly received 30-40 percent of the Jewish vote. The Orthodox component of the vote does not account for all of that. I disagree with Beinart. Jews are starting to vote their interests more. And that means running away from the party of antisemites. It means voting for the party that doesn't believe that every problem can be solved by spending more. And yes it means supporting the party that is more likely to support Israel defending itself without criticism.
Part of what I think Beinart is doing is issuing an apology for Jews who are not enlightened like he is. He's saying, my friends and I are right-thinking people, please don't associate me with those single minded Orthodox Jews. And I think he will find that he is wrong next Wednesday morning.

Check out Doubting Thomas

I have a couple of new entries in my Doubting Thomas blog - devoted to the shedding light onto the distortions of Thomas Friedman.

Ramadan and the Lunar Eclipse

via IMRA: Two weeks ago the Saudi government issued a notice:

Friday, October 15, will be the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, the Royal Court announced in a statement today.
It said that the Judiciary Higher Council has not received any eyewitness of Ramadan's crescent, hence Thursday, October 14, will be Shaaban 30, the completion of the month.
The Council congratulated Muslims on the advent of the holy month.

I found this fascinating because this is also how the Jewish calendar used to be determined. If witnesses observed the new moon in time a new month could be celebrated early after 29 days, else the new month would start after 30 days.
Unlike the Jewish year though, the Islamic year has no correction to keep it more or less in sync with the solar year. Thus the Islamic year loses about 11 days a year relative to the solar year.
Arab News also reported this. In addition Arab News reported the upcoming lunar eclipse. (This week on Wednesday night.)
While I was searching for this announcement I came accross a fascinating Islamic astronomical website, Moonsighting.com. This reference on eclipses is especially interesting.

Not succeeding ...?

As I laid out yesterday, I believe that President Bush is a far superior candidate to John Kerry when it comes to Israel.
(Note: Roger L. Simon and Michael Totten - substituting for Instapundit - sieze on a comment by Kerry foreign policy guru Richard Holbrooke to make the same point a bit more succinctly.)
However, that doesn't mean that Bush's approach has been without fault. Daniel Mandel author of "Try, Try, Try Again: Bush's Peace Plans" in the Middle East Quarterly, though, lays out a critical reading of the administration's changing approaches to the Middle East. Mandel concludes

By endorsing the Sharon disengagement plan, the Bush administration has accepted the Israeli assessment that "there is no partner," and has aligned itself with Israeli unilateralism. This is true even if U.S. officials announce that the plan is really part of the roadmap, and that it does not prejudge final outcomes. (In fact, Israeli unilateralism is the antithesis of the roadmap, and the disengagement plan and security barrier could affect final outcomes.)

At the same time, it remains a goal of U.S. policy to renew diplomacy with a new and different Palestinian leadership, should it emerge. Even as the United States supports Israeli disengagement, it should take measures to encourage the emergence of a Palestinian leadership committed to peace. Such measures should consist of the following elements:

Insistence on verifiable Palestinian compliance on fighting terror and ending incitement, which alone can afford the evidence that the necessary change of heart has occurred, if and when it does. This could permit the consummation of a genuine peace agreement at some future date.

Working with U.S. allies to endorse the U.S. position that the resettlement of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, largely in a future Palestinian state or territory earmarked for this purpose, is an essential element for concluding an eventual peace. The "right of return" is at the heart of Palestinian rejection of peace, and indulging it ensures the failure of peace efforts. When a political climate is created that renders this demand unsustainable, the Palestinians will be that much closer to abandoning their war aim: the disappearance of Israel. This demand has subverted every past peace effort of recent years; its removal is a prerequisite for genuine progress on the road to peace.

Intensifying and prioritizing diplomacy aimed at Arab states, insisting that they dismantle terror groups and stem the flow of recruits, funds, and weaponry to terrorists. There is little doubt that a region that tolerates and abets terrorism is unlikely to see the end of it. Without its end, no peace process stands a chance of success.

Publishing periodic reports on Palestinian violations in the realm of security, and candidly basing U.S. policy on the findings. By continuing to suppress evidence of violations, Washington communicates to the world, not least to the terrorists themselves, that it lacks seriousness of purpose in bringing the post-Oslo reign of terror to a close. By its reticence to tell the full truth about Palestinian violations, the United States has subverted the attainment of its own objectives. It sometimes happens that policy is not entirely consistent, but downplaying Palestinian violations is practically schizophrenic, and must be remedied.

All these steps could have been taken with advantage long ago. The failure to do so has had deleterious results. Hopefully these steps, taken today, will produce a different situation in one, two, or five years—one in which U.S. officials will not need to urge the dismantling of terror groups, counsel restraint in the face of the latest outrage, or urge recommitment to yet another plan offering phased panaceas. This is the cycle that must be broken.

Well said. And I can't argue with it. Still, for whatever faults there have been in the Bush adminstration's handling of the Israeli-Arab conflict, the most important step taken by President Bush was to sideline Arafat reversing the effects of eight years of deodorizing the thug. It was a necessary, though not sufficient, action to make peace possible.

Holbrooke's quote suggests that there is a real danger that a Kerry administration would reverse Arafat's isolation.
Crossposted in Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

The Oldest Family

According to the JTA:

You may not find Dr. Neil Rosenstein’s new book listed on national best-seller lists, but the noted genealogist — with his tongue halfway in his cheek — compares it to the popular thriller “The Da Vinci Code.”
Both books, the noted American genealogist and surgeon said, deal in varying degrees with family trees reaching back 30 centuries to the biblical House of David.

But Rosenstein, a 60-year-old New Jersey resident, notes that while Dan Brown’s novel presents a clever blend of fact and fancy, “The Lurie Legacy,” published recently by the New Jersey-based publishing house, Avotaynu, is based entirely on accurate historical information, with all sources carefully noted.

In “Legacy,” Rosenstein links the Lurie lineage — which includes such modern luminaries as Sigmund Freud and Martin Buber — to Rashi, the 11th-century sage, and many other revered Jewish figures from Hillel to Hezekiah — and ultimately to King David of the 10th century BCE.

The Luries are, according to many sources, the oldest family on record (and according to the JTA article accepted by Guinness). (i.e. the family that can trace its roots back the furthest.

That Rashi - the great French Rabbi whose commentary on the Bible is the most popular among Orthodox Jews - who lived from 1040 - 1105 - is descended from King David is something I've heard before. What interests me, is that I'm also supposedly descended from Rashi.

My mother's family is descended from an 18th century Rabbi named, Reb Leib Sarahs, who was a disciple of the famous Ba'al Shem Tov. R' Leib Sarahs is said to be descended from the great 15th century Rabbi, the Maharal of Prague. And the Maharal is descended from Rashi.

(This means that I am related to John Kerry on his father's side as he also claims to be descended from the Maharal. On his mother's side Kerry is related to George Bush, Princess Diana and Vlad the Impaler - aka the original Count Dracula.)

Of course most Jews of European origin are probably descended from Rashi. I once asked Rabbi Wein what percentage of Jews were descended from Rashi and he said 80 percent.

Getting back to R' Leib Sarahs, my brother recently informed me that the surname Sorotzkin. (ie "Sarahs kin") Is anyone familiar with the origin of the name Sorotzkin?

Got a Lawn Sign

I was picking up my daughter from nursery when another parents said "Psssst. You want a lawn sign?" He had them in his trunk. I'm happy. One of my neighbors was jealous. He wants one too. Now this feels like an election.

For Israel; Against Kerry and For Bush

Surely one of the key issues is the campaign for president is foreign policy. One of the main areas of concern within foreign policy is the Middle East. Specifically, the Arab Israeli conflict. I have blogged about this several times. This is meant simply as a summation. I'm going to try to limit my comments and let the experts make their cases.
Where does Kerry stand on the Middle East? Lawrence Kaplan was one of the earliest questioners. In "Hebrew Lesson" Kaplan notes that though Sen Kerry has a typically pro-Israel voting record, he hasn't usually taken the lead on Israel related issues:

Despite his record--which, excellent though it may be, hardly distinguishes him from his fellow senators in the northeast corridor--he rarely, if ever, took the lead on Israel-related issues in the Senate, and, even according to his supporters, remains something of a novice on the subject. "Kerry is not one of the handful of those in the Senate who follows Israel issues minutely," says Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Filling the void during the early days of his campaign were advisers who share a very particular view of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Among these was Alan Solomont, who, as well as being a longtime Kerry confidante and top fund-raiser, serves as a member of the executive committee of the left-leaning Israel Policy Forum (IPF) and is an outspoken Geneva proponent with close ties to Beilin. Another voice dispensing wisdom to Kerry on Israel has been Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger, an animating force behind the failed negotiations at Camp David and Taba, who insists that Geneva dispelled the "myth" that "there is no constituency among Palestinians for a peace settlement that recognizes Israel's right to exist." And, though a Kerry adviser denies that Beilin himself has been in touch with the Kerry team, reached by telephone in Israel, the Geneva architect says he discussed Middle East policy with Kerry prior to the campaign, adding, "Yes, I am in contact with Kerry's camp--I have met with and I speak with Alan Solomont and Sandy Berger."

Kaplan mostly demonstrates that Kerry, well, waffles a lot when it comes to the Middle East concluding:

The more intriguing question concerns what sort of approach a candidate who, in Israel's case, genuinely has straddled the fence would enshrine in official policy. The answer may lie with the last person who whispers in his ear.

That's not exactly a vote of confidence.
The editor of the New Republic Martin Peretz (where Kaplan's article appeared), echoed much of Kaplan's arguments in "Kerry the Clueless" (also available here). This is particularly powerful as I can't tell if Peretz intends to vote for Bush or Kerry. His magazine TNR endorsed Kerry. But though the Middle East is often an area of concern for TNR, the issue did not come up at all in the endorsement. This makes me wonder: Did Peretz go outside of his own magazine to dissent with the endorsement? Or simply to point out a significant weakness of Kerry (though he goes along with the endorsement.)?
In particular:

I’ve searched to find one time when Kerry — even candidate Kerry — criticized a U.N. action or statement against Israel. I’ve come up empty-handed. Nor has he defended Israel against the European Union’s continuous hectoring.

Another thing that bothers me about Kerry is the deus ex machina he has up his sleeve: the appointment of a presidential envoy. It’s hard to count how many special emissaries have been dispatched from Washington to the Middle East to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. What’s easy to see is that none of them has gotten to “yes.”

Again this seems to echo Kaplan's feeling that Kerry has nothing new to offer and what he does have, has been tried and failed.

Charles Krauthammer sharpened the point in his recent "Sacrificing Israel."

John Kerry says he wants to "rejoin the community of nations." There is no issue on which the United States more consistently fails the global test of international consensus than Israel. In July, the U.N. General Assembly declared Israel's defensive fence illegal by a vote of 150 to 6. In defending Israel, America stood almost alone.

You want to appease the "international community"? Sacrifice Israel. Gradually, of course, and always under the guise of "peace." Apply relentless pressure on Israel to make concessions to a Palestinian leadership that has proved (at Camp David in 2000) it will never make peace.

The allies will appreciate that. Then turn around and say to them: We're doing our part (against Israel), now you do yours (in Iraq). If Kerry is elected, the pressure on Israel will begin on day one.

Krauthammer doesn't just see Kerry pursuing an obsolete agenda in the Middle East, but an agenda that is inimical to Israel. And he sees this as a priority for Kerry.

In order to say that President Bush will be a better president regarding Israel, it's not enough simply to show that John Kerry's approach to the Middle East is wrong or dangerous. We must show that President Bush's approach is good.

In his essay "The same Loyalty" Jonathan Rosenblum doesn't cite his choice for President by name. However from the final 3 paragraphs of essay, it's pretty clear he is for the incumbent:

Only the transformation of failed Moslem societies offers, in the long run, a means of draining the swamps in which the terrorists breed. Creating examples of free civil societies in Iraq and Afghanistan provides the only means of reducing the threat of Islamic terror. Abud Musab al-Zarqawi has explicitly acknowledged that the emergence of democracy in Iraq would spell his doom. Thus the savagery employed to stop it.

Promoting strongmen, in the name of stability, cannot lead to requisite transformations. The great error of Oslo, for instance, was the failure to recognize that a Palestinian dictatorship would always need Israel as an external enemy to distract the population from their downtrodden state. That is why America has correctly recognized Palestinian democracy as a pre-condition for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Prior to that, a return to the peace process – i.e., further Israeli concessions – is not only pointless but counterproductive.

The candidate who most thoroughly comprehends the nature of the struggle will be the best for the entire free world, not just Israel.

His argument though isn't just that the candidate willing to take the fight to the Jihadists is best for Israel. It's that that candidate - presumably Bush - is doing what is best not only for Israel - or even the United States - but what is best for the whole world.

Rosenblum echoes two other authors in his essay. One is Natan Sharansky who wrote "On Hating the Jews" last year. Sharansky concluded:

Despite the differences between them, however, anti-Americanism in the Islamic world and anti-Americanism in Europe are in fact linked, and both bear an uncanny resemblance to anti-Semitism. It is, after all, with some reason that the United States is loathed and feared by the despots and fundamentalists of the Islamic world as well as by many Europeans. Like Israel, but in a much more powerful way, America embodies a different--a nonconforming--idea of the good, and refuses to abandon its moral clarity about the objective worth of that idea or of the free habits and institutions to which it has given birth. To the contrary, in undertaking their war against the evil of terrorism, the American people have demonstrated their determination not only to fight to preserve the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity, but to carry them to regions of the world that have proved most resistant to their benign influence.

Like Rosenblum, Sharansky ties the hatred of Jews to hatred of America. And like Rosenblum, Norman Podhoretz in "Enter the Bush Doctrine" ties the fight against Israel's enemies to the fight against America's enemies. To Podhoretz Israel's fight is a subset of America's fight, and he sees that President Bush has done a good job of identifying and fighting the enemies of both.

In "The Frequent Abstainers Club" Evelyn Gordon pointed to diplomatic progress that the United States in achieving in vetoing any and all UN resolutions that are one sided against Israel.

Yet a survey of the Security Council's voting record over the last 15 years reveals that there has in fact been a slight, but potentially significant, improvement. And that improvement is largely thanks to a new policy adopted by US President George Bush.

For years the US has vetoed resolutions it deemed too biased against Israel. But during the late 1980s and 1990s Washington was unable to sway any other council member to its side: With monotonous regularity such resolutions failed by a vote of 14-1.

Over the last four years, however, there has been a shift. While no country has yet joined the US in voting "no," there have consistently been two to four abstentions - usually from Europe, occasionally from Africa as well.

Since Security Council resolutions need nine votes to pass, this means that the council has been inching toward a situation in which anti-Israel resolutions could be defeated even without an American veto.

Bush achieved this shift by setting a clear, consistent standard for what constitutes bias: Condemnations of Israel are biased unless the resolution also condemns anti-Israel terror.

And, more importantly, vague condemnations of "all violence against civilians" do not qualify. The resolution must explicitly condemn Palestinian perpetrators such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

That is such a simple and reasonable demand that some countries have found it impossible to ignore. Yet the Palestinians, and hence the Arab countries that sponsor Security Council resolutions on their behalf, have never once been willing to agree.

Perhaps it's a small thing. But it isn't trivial. If it were the Clinton administration would have done it. The Question is where Kerry would stand. Lawrence Kaplan thought it possible with the correct advisors, Kerry would continue this policy in the UN. On the other hand Charles Krauthammer sees Kerry's desire to rejoin the family of nations as being too strong to avoid sacrificing Israel in the UN in order to gain approval of the EU.

In "The Principled President" Anne Bayefsky lays out many of the particulars of the brief for supporting President Bush on account of his support for Israel. She also makes the case conceptually:

Throughout his tenure, President Bush has been under serious pressure to cede greater control over the Middle East peace process to the European Union and the U.N., and to buy into their familiar refrain that the Israeli occupation is the root cause of Arab and militant Islamic terrorism. The EU and U.N. seek American support for the view that the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" is the greatest challenge to international order (as British foreign minister Jack Straw told the Labour party's recent annual conference), and American help in pushing Israel into major concessions while under fire.

President Bush has responded by telling the U.N. and EU members that they've got it backwards. The greatest challenge to international order is the absence of democracy, and the breeding grounds for terrorism that result. Moving forward means — in the words of the president's recent U.N. speech — that "we must take a different approach" from that of tolerating and excusing "oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability.... Commitment to democratic reform is essential to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Peace will not be achieved by Palestinian rulers who intimidate opposition, tolerate corruption, and maintain ties to terrorist groups."

Aluf Benn in "Bush's indelible imprint" makes a similar point but with a bit more specificity:

The Bush administration, which appears indifferent, has been far more involved than any previous administrations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has courageously presented the two sides with practical objectives and demands, instead of making do with the statement that the U.S. cannot want a peace settlement more than the parties themselves - a statement that has justified past failures. Under Bush, Sharon has adopted a policy that is the reverse of what he believes in, and has accepted severe limitations on his own freedom of action. Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, who tried to lead the previous administration by the nose, has tried to continue his policy of lies with Bush and has been punished: He is under house arrest and is being blackballed diplomatically.

Despite expressing some reservations about President Bush's approach to the Middle East, Daniel Pipes in "In the Mideast, Bush dared to be different" points to 4 changes that he credits to the Bush administration:

War rather than law enforcement. From the beginning of Islamist violence against Americans in 1979 (including the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, for 444 days), Washington responded by seeing this as a criminal problem and responded by deploying detectives, lawyers, judges and wardens. On Sept. 11, 2001, itself, Bush declared that we are engaged in a "war against terrorism." Note the word war. This meant deploying the military and the intelligence services, in addition to law enforcement. In contrast, Kerry has repeatedly said he would return to the law-enforcement model.

Democracy rather than stability. "Sixty years of Western nations' excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe." This declaration, made by Bush in November 2003, rejected a bipartisan policy focused on stability that had been in place since World War II. Bush has posed a challenge to established ways such as one expects to hear from a university seminar, not from a political leader. In contrast, Kerry prefers the dull, old, discredited model of stability.

Preemption rather than deterrence. In June 2002, Bush brushed aside the long-standing policy of deterrence, replacing it with the more active approach of eliminating enemies before they can strike. U.S. security, he said, "will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives." This new approach justified the war to remove Saddam Hussein from power before he could attack the United States. In contrast, Kerry waffles on this issue, usually coming out in favor of the old deterrence model.

Leadership rather than reaction in setting the goals for an Arab-Israeli settlement. In June 2003, I dubbed Bush's revamping of U.S. policy to the Arab-Israeli conflict perhaps "the most surprising and daring step of his presidency." Rather than leave it to the parties to decide on their pace, Bush came up with a timetable. Rather than accepting existing leaders, he sidelined Yasir Arafat. Rather than leaving it to the parties to define the final status, he made a Palestinian state the solution. Rather than keep himself out of negotiations until the very end, Bush inserted himself from the start. In contrast, Kerry would go back to the Oslo process and try again the tired and failed effort to win results by having the Israelis negotiate with Arafat.

In the end he expresses his approval of the President's changes and notes that:

It is easy to overlook Bush's radicalism in the Middle East, for in spirit he is a conservative, someone inclined to preserve what is best of the past. A conservative, however, understands that to protect what he cherishes at times requires creative activism and tactical agility.

In contrast, although John Kerry is the liberal, someone ready to discard the old and experiment with the new, when it comes to the Middle East, he has, through his Senate career and in the presidential campaign, shown a preference to stick with the tried and true, even if these are not working.

Here Pipes notes something an irony others, in different contexts (I forget whom) have pointed to. Despite being the incumbent, President Bush is the candidate of change. His opponent is alas arguing for a return to a past that failed miserably.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Running Feud

The other day Greg Myre of the NY Times wrote "Israel Feuds With Agency Set Up to Aid Palestinians":

For years, Israel has feuded with the United Nations refugee agency for Palestinians over a wide range of issues, and recently Israel thought it had found a smoking gun to press its case.

Based on a grainy videotape shot from a spy plane, Israel asserted that Palestinians in Gaza City had placed a rocket of the type being launched against Israel into a United Nations ambulance.

Well, I'm not convinced that the item was a stretcher. I could have sworn that I saw tailfins on it in some of the earlier frames. But that's not really relevant. The Israeli military backed of its claim because the film was inconclusive not because it was certain it was wrong.

Unfortunately the whole article could be what I'd call a Sylvius excuse. Count Sylvius is Sherlock Holmes' nemesis in "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone." Holmes confronts Sylvius with a litany of crimes. The last one though, Sylvius objects and says he nothing to do with it. Holmes pounces, "Then I am right on the others!"

That's exactly what's happening here. Only there's no Holmes. Just a reporter for the New York Times unwilling to look into the unsavory aspects of the UN agency.

Why not? Another of the Israeli charges against UNRWA is that it allows incitement against Jews and Israel in the textbooks used in its schools. The New York Times has a reporter, Neil MacFarqhar who speaks Arabic. Why not allow him to look at these books and see if that Israeli charge holds any water.

Heck, I'll do the work for them. I'll check the "Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP) website and see what they've uncovered. Nope. It doesn't look good for UNRWA. The CMIP people found this quote in a textbook.

"Racism: mankind has suffered from this evil both in ancient as well as in modern times, for indeed Satan has in the eyes of many people, made their evil appear beautiful…such a people are the Jews""

The UNRWA called it correct. CMIP called it "Generalization, Stereotyping, Incitement" Who looks to be correct?

The problem is that by reducing Israel's complaints against UNRWA to a "long running feud" the NY Times makes no effort to expose the organization's complicity in undermining the cause of peace. Why didn't the Times do some real work and expose the UNRWA?
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

The pro-Israel case for President Bush/against Senator Kerry

In his criticism of Sen Kerry's positions on Israel, "Kerry the Clueless"

It's the ramifications of his foreign policy in general, especially his fixation on the United Nations as the arbiter of international legitimacy, proctor of that "global test."

Save for the U.S. veto in the Security Council, Israel loses every struggle at the U.N. against lopsided majorities. In the General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission, Muslim states trade their votes to protect aggressors and tyrannies from censure in exchange for libels against the Jewish state. The body's bloated and dishonest bureaucracies are no better, as evidenced most recently by the head of the U.N. Palestine refugee organization, who defended having Hamas militants on his staff.

I've searched to find one time when Kerry — even candidate Kerry — criticized a U.N. action or statement against Israel. I've come up empty. Nor has he defended Israel against the European Union's continuous hectoring.

Peretz doesn't like Kerry's inclination to rely on the UN for his foreign policy. In "Sacrificing Israel" Charles Krauthammer points out the logical extension of Kerry's hankering for the UN (and EU):

In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places such as Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel.

No Democrat will say that openly. But anyone familiar with the code words of Middle East diplomacy can read between the lines. Read what former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger said in "Foreign Policy for a Democratic President," a manifesto written while he was a senior foreign policy adviser to Kerry.

"As part of a new bargain with our allies, the United States must re-engage in . . . ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. . . . As we re-engage in the peace process and rebuild frayed ties with our allies, what should a Democratic president ask of our allies in return? First and foremost, we should ask for a real commitment of troops and money to Afghanistan and Iraq."

Then Krauthammer spells out what this means:

Do not be fooled by the euphemism "peace process." We know what "peace process" meant during the eight years Berger served in the Clinton White House -- a White House to which Yasser Arafat was invited more often than any other leader on the planet. It meant believing Arafat's deceptions about peace while letting him get away with the most virulent incitement to and unrelenting support of terrorism. It meant constant pressure on Israel to make one territorial concession after another -- in return for nothing. Worse than nothing: Arafat ultimately launched a vicious terror war that killed a thousand Israeli innocents.

"Re-engage in the peace process" is precisely what the Europeans, the Russians and the United Nations have been pressuring the United States to do for years. Do you believe any of them have Israel's safety at heart? They would sell out Israel in an instant, and they are pressuring America to do precisely that.

So what then is President Bush's sin when it comes to Israel:

Why are they so upset with President Bush's Israeli policy? After all, isn't Bush the first president ever to commit the United States to an independent Palestinian state? Bush's sin is that he also insists the Palestinians genuinely accept Israel and replace the corrupt, dictatorial terrorist leadership of Yasser Arafat.

Krauthammer has it precisely right here. I may not agree 100% with President Bush on the Middle East, but he has taken an untenable situation where nothing was expected of the Palestinians and insisted that they earn their state.
Jonathan Rosenblum, takes a slightly different (or perhaps parallel) view from that Krauthammer:

The West must understand what Israel rediscovered after the Netanya Pesach massacre: the battle must be taken to the enemy: Once the suicide bomber is strapped up and on his way it is too often too late.

Only the transformation of failed Moslem societies offers, in the long run, a means of draining the swamps in which the terrorists breed. Creating examples of free civil societies in Iraq and Afghanistan provides the only means of reducing the threat of Islamic terror. Abud Musab al-Zarqawi has explicitly acknowledged that the emergence of democracy in Iraq would spell his doom. Thus the savagery employed to stop it.

Promoting strongmen, in the name of stability, cannot lead to requisite transformations. The great error of Oslo, for instance, was the failure to recognize that a Palestinian dictatorship would always need Israel as an external enemy to distract the population from their downtrodden state. That is why America has correctly recognized Palestinian democracy as a pre-condition for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Prior to that, a return to the peace process – i.e., further Israeli concessions – is not only pointless but counterproductive.

The candidate who most thoroughly comprehends the nature of the struggle will be the best for the entire free world, not just Israel.

When I first read Rabbi Rosenblum's article, I thought he had explicitly endorsed Bush. I was wrong. But his conclusion (quoted above) leaves no doubt that he sees that President Bush understands that Israel's and America's fights against terror are the same fight. Senator Kerry would rather promote the strongmen in the name of stability.

Anne Bayefsky in "The Principled President" sums this up nicely (sort of a synthesis between Dr. Krauthammer and Rabbi Rosenblum):

The EU and U.N. seek American support for the view that the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" is the greatest challenge to international order (as British foreign minister Jack Straw told the Labour party's recent annual conference), and American help in pushing Israel into major concessions while under fire.

President Bush has responded by telling the U.N. and EU members that they've got it backwards. The greatest challenge to international order is the absence of democracy, and the breeding grounds for terrorism that result. Moving forward means — in the words of the president's recent U.N. speech — that "we must take a different approach" from that of tolerating and excusing "oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability.... Commitment to democratic reform is essential to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Peace will not be achieved by Palestinian rulers who intimidate opposition, tolerate corruption, and maintain ties to terrorist groups."

President Bush's stand has not been without political costs. As he pointed out in the second presidential debate: "You know, I've made some decisions on Israel that are unpopular. I wouldn't deal with Arafat, because I felt like he had let the former president down, and I don't think he's the kind of person that can lead toward a Palestinian state. And people in Europe didn't like that decision. And that was unpopular, but it was the right thing to do."

One final note, Peretz found another reason to be skeptical of Senator Kerry's position on the Middle East:

Another thing that bothers me about Kerry is the deus ex machina he has up his sleeve: the appointment of a presidential envoy. It's hard to count how many special emissaries have been dispatched from Washington to the Middle East to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. What's easy to see is that none of them has gotten to "yes."

In recent years, both former CIA Director George Tenet and former Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, once the chief of the U.S. Central Command, have served in this meaningless position. And who would Kerry designate? He first suggested the sanctimonious Jimmy Carter and James Baker, Bush 41's secretary of state.

Then he found out — why he didn't know this is another matter — that both Carter and Baker are deeply distrusted by the Israelis, and by American Jews. There was no mystery as to why. Carter (well, how does one say this?) is not exactly a friend to the Jewish nation and, besides, his favorite politician in the Middle East was the mass murderer Hafez Assad, the late president of Syria. A huge beneficiary of Saudi business, Baker was adept at pooh-poohing concerns about Israeli security. So we are left with Kerry's other putative designee, Bill Clinton, whose national security staff was so mesmerized by the mirage of a quickie Israel-Palestinian peace at the end of his term that, according to the Sept. 11 commission report, it couldn't be bothered take out Osama bin Laden after the attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole. Clinton succeeded in squeezing Israel into the extravagant Camp David and Taba formulas but failed to get Arafat to go along. At least for Israel, these proposals are now toast.

Why does the idea of a special envoy sound familiar? Could it be this?

As the newly elected President of the United States, you assume the leadership of our nation at a critical time in our history. As American Jews, we call on you to commit our nation to vigorous and persistent engagement in the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We ask that within the first hundred days of your administration you appoint an internationally respected envoy at the highest level to signal your intentions to pursue full implementation of the disengagement agreement and a renewal of negotiations leading to a final status accord.

The above is an excerpt from an open letter that Peace Now intends to send to the winner of the presidential election. It would appear that Senator Kerry's views match the dead end ideas of the folks who feel the need to save Israel from itself and believe that settlements are the root of all violence in the Middle East rather than Israel's existence.
These four essays taken together show that if someone supports Israel, the incumbent has earned his/her vote.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

The Alternate Blogosphere

The transporter whines and I materialize. It was a strange transport. I felt queasy as I became solid; I didn't usualy feel that way.
I stumbled a bit as I stepped off the platform. "Are you all right Captain Soccer Dad," the transporter technician asked as he came to give me a hand. "I'll be fine," I replied. Still the techie came over to assist me. He helped me down and then, despite my protests, he accompanied back to my quarters. We chatted pleasantly, as we strolled the corridors; I had the most recent issues of Commentary, the National Review and the Weekly Standard with me. I would relax and recover quickly.
We had not noticed the odd metallic ore that had settled on the transporter platform. After we left, the transporter whined again and a second figure reassembled itself out of scattered atoms. He also had a nameplate that read "Captain Soccer Dad," but he was different. He was carrying the Nation, Mother Jones and the Village Voice. He might have been me ... but he wasn't. It was as if he came from an alternate blogosphere.
Sorry for that Star Trekky intro, because this is a serious subject. It just feels odd having someone with my handle whose views are diametrically opposed to mine.
I've noted before that through blogdigger I discovered that there was a blogger, Soccer Dad, on an extreme left wing blog "The Left Coaster". I usually pay him no mind, but this recent posting, "Killing children is no longer a big deal" really deserves a response.
Soccer Dad bases his post on an article Gideon Levy in Ha'aretz. Basing oneself on Levy is hazardous as his credibility level is low as IMRA noted here:

Irit Linor, a popular Left-wing author, columnist and radio personality, revealed this week that Gideon Levy neither speaks, reads, or understands Arabic. Levy's pro-Palestinian reports appear regularly in Ha'aretz, including a weekly feature in the Friday Magazine.

In a letter to Ha'aretz in which she explained why she was canceling her subscription to Ha'aretz for its anti-Israel position that was published this Friday in Hatzofeh and distributed widely via Internet, Linor wrote:

"When Gideon Levy charges Israel with changing Marwan Barghouti from a peace lover to the organizer of suicide attacks, this is as logical an interpretation as claiming that the wave of attacks on September 11 was a Mossad plan. Once he told me in a private conversation that he would not drive a hundred meters to save the life of a settler, and it appears to me that his loves and hates have stained for a long time his heart touching reports from the occupied Palestinian territories. . . . He is one of the few Arab affairs correspondents in the world who doesn't know Arabic, doesn't understand Arabic and doesn't read Arabic. He makes due with simultaneous translation."

Levy's reports never indicate that he is using a translator, nor the identity of the translators. Not only can translators filter the message. If they themselves are part of a group (for example Fatah) they can prevent, by their very presence, interviewed Palestinians from straying from the Palestinian propaganda line.
Last week one of the parents of a young Gazan shahid declared he would kill the Palestinian who sent his son to his death the moment he finds out who did it. Such remarks do not find their way into Levy' reports.

Like Amira Hass, Levy's goal is to besmirch his country. Frimet Roth recently critiqued Hass like this:

The crucial element in the Hass formula is the lack of context. Roadblocks exist for no reason. Searches are conducted on soldiers’ whims. Financial troubles are caused solely by Israel's unjustified entry restrictions. Children killed by IDF fire are never used as “human shields” by Palestinian gunmen. Innocent Israelis have not been murdered by ruthless terrorists. Palestinian children have not had explosives strapped to their bodies. And unarmed Palestinians never aid and abet the terrorists.

Mrs. Roth's point about human shields is important because as Alan Dershowitz recently pointed out in a Q & A at the Jerusalem Post:

The law certainly does need to protect innocent civilians. The first step it should take is to recognize that it is a war crime for terrorists to hide among civilians, thereby requiring democracies to choose between allowing the terrorists to continue to kill innocent civilians in a democracy or taking military action which will often result in some civilian casualties. The fault for all civilian casualties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies exclusively with the Palestinian terrorists, who deliberately create a situation in which civilians will be killed.

And it's not just freelance terrorists who introduce themselves into civilian populations endangering them, it's part of a concerted effort led by the PA itself as Palestinian Media Watch documents:

An article this week in the official PA daily, reported that children are aiding terrorists in the following combat support roles:

“In spite of family members’ warnings, groups of children are spreading around the [Gaza] camp, both to pass on information to the resistance and to bring them water.”
(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 11, 2004)

It should be stressed that supplying water and gathering information for terrorists in active combat zones, puts these children in life-threatening situations and has led to the deaths of many children. Note that the term “resistance” is used by the PA leadership and media to refer to all terrorists, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others.

These two combat support roles are precisely the roles taught in PA schoolbooks. A 6 th grade schoolbook teaches PA children to follow the example of a young child, who according to Islamic tradition, fulfilled these combat support roles. According to this tradition while Muhammad and his companion Abu Bakr hid in a cave, Abu Bakr’s young daughter aided them by passing them information about the enemy and giving them water. The schoolbook teaches children to see themselves in similar roles with such language as: “Asma, Abu Bakr’s daughter, was my age when she played a role...” and immediately asks the question: “What role can I play ...?”

And it's not just that the PA encourages the surrounding of terrorists with civilians that leads to many of the children's deaths. The PA ensures that other children are endangered needlessly. There's an Israeli organization, Save A Child's Heart that treats children from around the world who have heart problems. About a third of the children treated are Palestinian. But according to an article about this incredible organization, the PA won't allow the doctors to come back an oversee the recovery of the children.

Since September, when Palestinian and Israeli hostilities resumed, Cohen and his team have operated on 27 Palestinian children. Cohen is saddened that the Palestinian Authority’s government won’t allow him to speak to their local doctors about vital follow-up care, as he does with other doctors around the world. But he prides himself on the personal relations he has developed with the parents and children. "Everybody is the same the world over," Cohen says. "All the parents want is a healthy kid."

There is no reason for the PA to refuse these contacts. Unless it's more important for children to die than to allow Israelis to help. Of course Arafat & co also encourage childrent to expose themselves to violence so there's no harm in preventing children from getting the treatment they need.
That's especially so if there the likes of Gideon Levy and the *other* "Soccer Dads" who are willing to whitewash the exploiting of children in order to demonize the Jewish state by dishonestly taking the exaggerated claims of the Palestinians at face value. If these people cared about Israeli children who were killed, they would focrefully protest each death instead of treating to us a cliched and phony statement that they condmen violence on both sides. The only lives that matter to these people are the non-Jewish ones.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

It's Biur Time

A couple of Biur Chametz posts I wanted to comment on.
Politically, Biur sounds similar to me. The only difference I see is that he voted for Bush 41 over Clinton and I voted for Clinton. I was very uncertain 12 years ago. What seemed to be the hatred that President Bush 41 and James Baker had for Israel made it very hard to support that administration. In addition, I didn't see Bush 41 as being particularly conservative. So I voted for Clinton.
I regret that. There is a difference between a moderate Republican and a moderate Democrat and I don't like the direction Clinton went. He was, however, better than I could imagine Kerry being. And in terms of Israel, I don't care how often Peace Now and its allies claimed that Clinton was the best friend Israel ever had in the White House, his acceptance and legitimization of Arafat did more damage to Israel than anything I can imagine the Bush/Baker team doing.
On a lighter note, he notes that a Hebrew musical group is setting a Halachic ruling to music in "They're running out of lyrics". It's not the first time it's happened, one of the more popular wedding tunes is "How do we dance before the bride ..." ("Keitzad merakdin lifnei hakallah ...")
In my sillier moments I've notice that the tune could be transferred to another Mishnah: "How are the witnesses impeached." ("Keitzad ha-eidim na-asim zomemin...")

TNR Supports Kerry

I think there was some doubt where Martin Peretz would come down in this election. He recently trashed Sen Kerry's record towards Israel in the LA Times in an essay titled "Kerry the Clueless." It's a pretty strong indictment of Kerry. But still, as I noted earlier, Peretz wrote in the essay:

Now although there are many reasons one might want to vote for John F. Kerry, remembering Jerusalem — remembering to stand up for the state of Israel — is not among them.

I took this as meaning that Dr. Peretz accepts those "many reasons." Maybe not. On the other hand (Thanks to Real Clear Politics) Peretz's magazine, the New Republic endorses Senator Kerry.

And so a president who promised to make America safer by making the Muslim world more free has failed on both counts. This magazine has had its differences with John Kerry during his career and during this campaign. But he would be a far better president than George W. Bush.

It's sad. I used to - when I was younger and more liberal - subscribe to the New Republic. I used to find its arguments interesting if not convincing. Of course, when I subscribed, Fred Barnes was its White House correspondent and I could still read Charles Krauthammer every few weeks. Either I've changed or the magazine has. (I think a little of both.)
What bothers me is how much of this endorsement could have come from the New York Times. It doesn't seem to reflect thought as much as boilerplate liberal rhetoric.
For one thing the editors of TNR declare that the President's effort to democratize the Arab world has been an abject failure. But as I noted earlier (same link as before), Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post, whose favorite topic is Arab reformers, noted that Arab reformers have been emboldened somewhat by the current administration.
There was a time, I think, when TNR would have been less partisan and more thoughtful. It sometimes still is. But not in its endorsement.

Heroes of Red Sox Nation

Ken Rosenthal runs down the players who made the Boston victory possible. I wondered on Wednesday, what it must have felt like to be David Ortiz. In consecutive games he delivered the victory in sudden death in front of a home crowd. It's wonderful, I'm sure do it once. It's much greater to do it twice. Wow.
Whoops, Ken Rosenthal missed one. And in both games Dave Roberts used his speed to get the tie and send the game into extra innings.
Francona used Roberts perfectly.
And to that I recall that David Pinto wondered why sabermetric organization like Boston would hire a non-sabermetric manager.

So the question I've been asking myself since reading Moneyball is, "Why don't these teams hire someone like this to manage? Why put so much control in the hands of the GM? Why not hire someone who understands your plan and has the intelligence to implement it?"

I still don't know why. But it would appear that Francona at least has some sense how to "us[e] players in situations in which there was a high probability of them succeeding."

It's funny, it was like two different series. In the first one the Yankees could do no wrong with their bats. In the second one the Yankees could do nothing with their bats. I know that their missing Giambi, but Jeter, Rodriguez, Sheffield and Matsui are as potent a foursome as any in the Majors.

UPDATE:Some other thoughts as a comment on Penny Stock.

Hopping Glad

I'm very happy to see that I've achieved the level of "Marauding Marsupial." I figure that my eleveated status has come from being included in the "Carnival of the Bush Bloggers" (Thanks to Res Publica. I liked her post about Kerry's support here.)

Snape in Fenway

Remember the scene in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" where Snape is trying to counteract Quirrel's hex at the Quidditch match? Everyone's watching the action and Snape's there chanting something that we can't hear. It sure seemed that way last night in Fenway. How many people were mouthing silent prayers? I saw quite a few! I guess there are no atheists when your team is on the verge of elimination :-)
I saw parts of the last two Fenway games. Baseball doesn't get much better than this. Maybe there was no race to the wire, but the drama of these games is rarely matched. And as much as there is to be said about David Ortiz, what about Dave Roberts? Last night he unnerved Tom Gordon and made it to third on Nixon's single settng up the tying run. A night earlier he also scored the tying run after unnerving (is that possible?) Mariano Rivera and stealing second setting up the tying run. As Joe Sheehan noted, Terry Francona used Roberts perfectly. (Roberts was daring, but careful. He seemed to be very cognizant of how far he was from the bag. Some throws came close to catching him, but not frighteningly close.)
Incidentally, Sheehan summed up how I feel quite well. (And I think he is a Yankees fan!)

No matter what happens in the rest of this series, these two teams have given us two days that we'll be able to remember for a long time. Fans in Boston will no doubt be disappointed if their team once again falls short of the World Series, but the memories of two long, cold evenings at Fenway Park that ended in pandemonium will serve as a balm to that wound.

I've been watching the games surrounded by Yankee fans. No I don't want the Yankees to win, but if my family's happy, I can take some comfort from that. And after these last two games, I'll feel a lot better when the Sox succumb to nature and lose the series. It looked like they'd be embarrassed. But now that won't be the case. They could lose 20-0 tonight, and they'd still be able to go home proud for how they won games 4 and 5.
Once the game was over, I knew that the one article I had to read was Thomas Boswell's. He did not disappoint with "October's Great Boston Marathon":

Mark down Oct. 18, 2004, in the baseball book of dates. Perhaps it will be a mere footnote. That's what the odds still say. But in 48 hours, it may be recalled as a date that is second to none in the game's postseason history for drama and impact.

If the Boston Red Sox become the first team in 101 years of postseason baseball to overcome a three-games-to-none deficit, and if they do it against the hated New York Yankees, then this one day, with its two wins in a span of 21 hours, a doubleheader sweep of a whole different species -- may go down as New England's own Independence Day. Forget the Fourth of July.

David Pinto at Baseball Musings has more.
I think he goes a bit overboard on the idea of momentum. But I still enjoyed it.
Finally, has there ever been such a great disparity in grooming between two post season teams since, oh, the Phillies-Blue Jays World Series in 1993? (Common elements Schilling and Olerud.)

Why President Bush Matters

Powerline, Pejmanesque, LGF and Instapundit all have mentioned "Kerry the Clueless" by Martin Peretz.
Before I go into a detailed analysis, I think that a quick observation or two is in order. I'm not convinced that the article means that Dr. Peretz will vote for President Bush. He wrote:

Now although there are many reasons one might want to vote for John F. Kerry, remembering Jerusalem — remembering to stand up for the state of Israel — is not among them.

I guess the question is whether Israel will trump every other issue in Peretz's mind. My guess is that it won't. (Would TNR endorse Bush? I can't imagine that.)
The other point is that four years ago there was some speculation that a President Gore would appoint Martin Peretz to be Ambassador to Israel. I think that the speculation was idle. But despite Peretz's clear affinity for Gore, I can't believe that Gore's approach to the Middle East would have been much different from Clinton's or a possible President Kerry.
For one thing, as Peretz notes, Kerry worships at the altar of the UN. But didn't Clinton also (despite not getting permission to bomb Serbia)?
But there's another thing, that's specific to the Israeli-Arab conflict, that seems to be an article of faith among Democrats. That is that Israel must make peace to ensure its legitimacy. This has the odd effect of making Israel's legitimacy a hostage to the judgment of the group of unelected monarchs and despots who rule the Arab world.
Nowhere was this more evident than with Thomas Friedman's Saudi Peace - Fraud - I mean initiative. The whole perverse premise of that exercise was that if Israel withdrew to lines approved by the Arab League, then the Arab countries would offer Israel some unspecified form of "recognition."
Though this initiative was proposed when Bush was already president, it was the logical extension of eight + years of "peacemaking." During those years Israel freed "political" prisoners and gave the PA land, money and weapons. Israel received nothing of substance in return. The PA fulfilled none of its obligations to Israel; yet whenever Israel ceded land to the PA or agreed to another demand it was reportred as "progress."
This is reflective of the "peace now" mindset that prevailed at the time from the Clinton administration. Anything Israel did helped the Palestinians and helped Israel too because it lessened the "occupation" that was the main source of conflict in the region. Any Israeli deviation from this prolonged the "occupation" and thus the conflict.
From "After Arafat Engagement" by Jim Hoagland:

Ross does not hold blameless the Israelis, who "acted as if all decisions should be informed by their needs, not by possible Palestinian needs or reactions." He is particularly scathing about former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's own subversion of the Oslo agreements and the resulting Palestinian frustrations, which exploded in the September 2000 intifada.

I don't doubt that Ross felt this way. But while Netanyahu was Prime Minister Israel made the painful concession of ceding most of Hebron. While Netanyahu was Prime Minister there was less terror and the Palestinians were better off. (A press release from November 1998 boasted the highest rate of Palestinian employment inside Israel since 1992.) Netanyahu made the "peace process" safe. So safe, in fact, that in 1999 he was booted from office when Israelis felt they could do better with Ehud Barak. He's never given enough credit by the peace processors for that. But if Netanyahu hadn't rescued the "peace process" it would have died in 1996 for the PA's complicity in or failure to prevent the four major terror attacks in February-March 1996.
This notion that Israeli withdrawals were of primary importance to the "peace process" flowed from another faulty notion. That was that terror was solely the result of frustration, resentment and other negative feelings that were the result of Israel's "occupation." In other words Palestinian terror against Israel had a motive. No attention was paid to the means or opportunity of terror.
Those terror attacks in early 1996 were ascribed to Hamas wanting to "kill the peace process". ie the "peace process" was so successful that Hamas wanted to slow it down by bringing Likud to power, else Hamas would become irrelevant.
That may be true. But what was also true was that those terror attacks followed by a few months, Israeli withdrawals from Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus, Kalkilya, Ramallah and one other city. With Israeli forces replaced by the PA, Hamas was then able to its work (virtually) unmolested. In other words Hamas was given the opportunity to expand its operations against Israel and it did.
Indeed the editors of the NY Times wax nostalgic for that time. In an editorial yesterday "The Middle East Awaits" the editors assert:

Although the United States has long been a close ally of Israel and firmly committed to its security, Washington had also managed, prior to the Bush administration, to convince the Palestinians of its good faith as a peace broker. Over the past three and a half years, that trust has been needlessly and recklessly forfeited. This administration has allowed itself to become the pawn of Mr. Sharon's machinations.

Actually, as Aluf Benn noted (and is referred to by Martin Peretz; thanks to Malka Young for the Benn article):

The Bush administration, which appears indifferent, has been far more involved than any previous administrations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has courageously presented the two sides with practical objectives and demands, instead of making do with the statement that the U.S. cannot want a peace settlement more than the parties themselves - a statement that has justified past failures. Under Bush, Sharon has adopted a policy that is the reverse of what he believes in, and has accepted severe limitations on his own freedom of action. Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, who tried to lead the previous administration by the nose, has tried to continue his policy of lies with Bush and has been punished: He is under house arrest and is being blackballed diplomatically.

The big difference between the Clinton administration and the Bush administration is that the Bush administration has introduced a new element to the dynamic: it has made demands on the Palestinians in addition to those it makes on Israel. And it expects those demands to be met.
To the New York Times, that means that the Bush administration is taking sides. To any objective observer - and that includes Benn who is no right winger - it means that the Palestinians will no longer have the free ride they had in the 90's. It means that statehood for the Palestinians is not a freebie but something they will have to earn.
It's interesting because there are two other recent articles that show this side of the Bush administration. As I noted earlier, Evelyn Gordon's "The Frequent Abstainers Club", the United States had demanded that any Security Council criticism of Israel also condemn the terror Israel suffers. If the Arab states cannot bring themslelves to condemn the slaughter of innocents, then the United States willl use its veto freely. As a result of America having set down terms of performance, some other Security Council members have started abstaining from votes against Israel. This is a small but concrete step that helps Israel in the world community.
John Cullinan in the National Review Online, in "With Friends Like These ..." notes that the United States is finally starting to turn its attention to Saudi Arabia:

When the State Department recently designated Saudi Arabia as a "country of particular concern" in its annual religious-freedom report, few took notice. But this unprecedented step may — just may — signal the start of a tectonic shift for the better in the troubled U.S.-Saudi bilateral relationship, and in the broader war against Islamist terrorism.

Saudi Arabia's welcome, if belated, addition to State's religious-freedom blacklist — along with the likes of Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Vietnam — fulfills the clear policy mandate of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA). This measure explicitly recognizes that religious freedom is inseparable from the full range of other basic human rights, whose promotion and observance in turn advance vital U.S. interests and reflect basic American values. Where religious freedom is threatened or denied, so too are other basic human rights; and such violations of universally agreed-upon norms often reflect wider threats to international public order. Consider only this year's rogues gallery and their handiwork, from ongoing genocide in Sudan to nuclear proliferation efforts by Iran and North Korea.

Instead of paying lip service to the need for change in the Arab world, the Bush administration is demanding it in small but significant ways. Jackson Diehl, no fan of this adminstration, notes that it's started to make a difference:

The unpopularity of the Bush administration and the predictable resistance from the dictatorships of Egypt and Saudi Arabia are cited as proof that the region's hoped-for "transformation" is going nowhere.

And yet, the process started at the Sea Island summit of Group of Eight countries in June is gaining some traction -- sometimes to the surprise of the administration's own skeptics. A foreign ministers' meeting in New York two weeks ago produced agreement that the first "Forum for the Future" among Middle Eastern and G-8 governments to discuss political and economic liberalization will take place in December. Morocco volunteered to host it, and a handful of other Arab governments, including Jordan, Bahrain and Yemen, have embraced pieces of the process.

More intriguingly, independent human rights groups and pro-democracy movements around the region are continuing to sprout, gather and issue manifestos -- all in the name of supporting the intergovernmental discussions.

This is not to say that these changes are large. But they are there and they reflect a change in attitude for which the current administration deserves much credit.

As it relates to Israel, Israel may have to withdraw from Gaza, something I'm skeptical will bring about peace. But Israel has been allowed to act against the means and opportunities of the terrorists (as described recently by Bret Stephens on his return to the Wall Street Journal. It's also important to note that the violence was made possible by years of Palestinian violations of the Oslo Accords accumulating weapons and creating a supportive infrastructure for terrorists.) and the Palestinians have been required to do more than just mouth the right words. They haven't met those requirements and statehood for them has become more remote.

Given the mindset of the Clinton administration, it's hard to see that a Kerry administration (or even a hypothetical Gore administration) would be any different. President Bush has introduced elements into his diplomacy in the Middle East that have been absent until now. I think that these make Israel more secure. (The world too.)

Finally, I referred to the previous adminstration's view of the Middle East as being a "peace now" vision. That's because Debra Delee, the CEO of Americans for Peace Now is a prominent (and presumably influential) member of the Democratic Party. Given that many of President Clinton's foreign policy advisors such as Sandy Berger and James Rubin are now advisors to Senator Kerry and the likely influence of Debra Delee, it's pretty clear that a President Kerry would reverse many of the changes wrought by the Bush administration. Once again the burden of peacemaking would be solely upon Israel and Palestinian compliance would be optional. That will not make Israel or the United States any more secure.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Are Polls being manipulated?

I am very skeptical of the mainstream media. And I feel that they manipulate polls. Often to show a Kerry rebound they will emphasize a "registered voter" poll over a "likely voter" poll. Of course even if they're consistent with the kind of voter, they may oversample one demographic or another.
Steve Den Beste has discovered some anamolies in the polling over the past few months, are the media trying to manipulate public opinion? It certainly seems possible.
On the other hand four years ago, IIRC, the Gov. Bush seemed to have been carrying a lead into election day, when polls started trending away from him. I assumed that the media were doing this to help VP Gore. But they were right. And the election was much closer than expected even a week earlier.
Powerline is skeptical of a Gallup Poll showing the President up by 8 points. For fun, he finds at a similar time 4 years ago, Gallup had him up by 13. That's probably high, but as Den Beste noted, the trend, right now, favors the President.
If the final tally is out whack with the latest polls, I think that the media and pollsters will have to take a long look at themselves. They tried to propel Howard Dean to the Democratic nomination even though he had little or no real support.

30 Years ago and today

Thirty years ago, to John Kerry, American soldiers were "baby killers," rapists, village burners and mass murderers. While there were abuses, it's clear that he wasn't exactly telling the truth. (A number of commentators have noted that some of his testimony includes admissions that he participated in atrocities. That makes him either a liar or a war criminal. Neither is a particularly flattering portrayal for the man who would be president.)
What about American troops nowadays? What are they like? We know of course about the abuse at Abu Graib prison; the media will grab onto anything that makes this country look bad.
Well recently there was "Operation Virtual Pencil" in which American troops provided school supplies to Iraqi children. Here's a photo essay.
In "Task Force Pirate" families of soldiers donated supplies to help an Afghan village.
LGF has a letter from a soldier giving his perspective.
I wish I felt that at this time of war that a challenger would be more likely to praise our troops for the job they are doing in making us safer; especially whent there's ample evidence that America's soldiers are succeeding. Alas it seems that America's military has only been a stepping stone for Sen Kerry. It has been usefull booster to his ambitions. He is seemingly incapable, though, of taking pride in the troops he seeks to command.
I know this last picture doesn't have anything to do with this post. But it is very cool.

A friend indeed

In "The frequent abstainers club," Evelyn Gordon makes the case that the Bush administration's handling of the UN has actually made the Security Council slightly less hostile to Israel's existence.

Bush achieved this shift by setting a clear, consistent standard for what constitutes bias: Condemnations of Israel are biased unless the resolution also condemns anti-Israel terror.

And, more importantly, vague condemnations of "all violence against civilians" do not qualify. The resolution must explicitly condemn Palestinian perpetrators such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

That is such a simple and reasonable demand that some countries have found it impossible to ignore. Yet the Palestinians, and hence the Arab countries that sponsor Security Council resolutions on their behalf, have never once been willing to agree.

The result is that a handful of nations that once voted consistently against Israel - England, Germany, Norway, Romania, Bulgaria and Cameroon - turned into frequent abstainers.

John Danforth, Washington's current ambassador to the UN, provided an eloquent example of how the new system works during last week's debate on the latest anti-Israel resolution, which would have condemned Israel's current military operation in Gaza and demanded that it cease immediately.

Danforth did not say that the US was unwilling in principle to condemn the operation, which began after Hamas killed two Israeli children in Sderot with a Kassam rocket launched from Gaza on September 29. That would have been unacceptable to every other Security Council member, and therefore counterproductive. Instead he explained in detail why the resolution was unbalanced as it stood and what would have to be added to make it acceptable to the US.

The resolution, he said in addresses to the council on Monday and Tuesday, "tends to put the blame on Israel and absolves terrorists in the Middle East - people who shoot rockets into civilian areas, people who are responsible for killing children, Hamas. Nothing was said in this resolution about that problem."

Specifically, he said, "it does not mention even one of the 450 Kassam rocket attacks launched against Israel over the past two years It does not mention the two Israeli children who were outside playing last week when a rocket suddenly crashed into their young bodies.

On a parallel note Khaled Abu Toameh reports "Bombings and Kassams hurt support for Palestinians":

A senior Palestinian official told me that when he contacted different governments to complain about the Israeli “massacres” against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, he was surprised to hear that there was almost full understanding for Israel’s motives for the operation, which began two weeks ago after two infants were killed by Kassam rockets in the Israeli town of Sderot.

“Before you call us to complain about Israeli atrocities, why don’t you tell [Palestinian Authority Chairman] Yasser Arafat and Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israeli cities,” a senior European diplomat reportedly told the Palestinian representative.

On the other hand Reuters reports "Israel, Europe Could Be on Collision Course -Report"

Israel could end up on a collision course with the European Union (news - web sites) and face sanctions like apartheid-era South Africa unless the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved, a confidential government report warns.

Reuters Photo

The document, a 10-year forecast prepared by Israel's Foreign Ministry, predicts that the Jewish state could become increasingly isolated internationally as the EU grows more influential, political sources said.

The report says that if the recently expanded 25-nation bloc can set aside internal differences and forge a unified foreign policy, it could "harm Israeli interests" by cutting into the clout wielded by the United States, Israel's chief ally.

Of course reading the story it seems that this report is probably one of those "worst case scenarios" that is then conflated into fact by media that wishes to paint Israel in the worst possible light.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Walter Young

When I saw the Baysox this year with the children I was intrigued by Walter Young. He is a very big first baseman who set the Baysox record for HR in a season, as well as a pretty agile fielder. So I asked John Sickels at ESPN about him and he answered me. Thanks. I didn't mean the Sam Horn comparison as a knock against Young; just suggesting that he might well have a similar career path.

Tarazi ^ 3

Earlier I had commented on Michael Tarazi's recent op-ed in the NY Times here and here. First I offered my own critique; then I linked to other rebuttals.
Now Barry Rubin has weighed in with "A Giant Palestinian Step Backward".
Rubin sees Tarazi's article as part of a trend. Here are the 3 most important paragraphs:

The key to understanding the history of the last half-century's Arab-Israeli conflict is that the PLO was never a true nationalist movement. If it had been, the problem would have been solved long ago. For the PLO, destroying Israel is more important than building an independent Palestinian state or relieving the Palestinian people's suffering.

and

If the goal was to build a strong, stable Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel, everything would be done to discourage refugees from going to Israel. Why should a Palestinian state make a gift of these people, their money and talents to someone else? Knowing that Israel would reject such a "right of return," demanding it ensures postponing the end of the occupation, violence, casualties, and obtaining compensation billions of dollars in compensation.

and

Finally, and regrettably, this new campaign shows that even if Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip--or even accepts a Palestinian state in all the West Bank, too--this would only initiate a new phase in which the Palestinian leadership would demand Israel's elimination as the next step. Of course, Tarazi tries to make this Palestinian demand seem something forced on it by Israeli policies. In fact, Palestinian leaders have repeatedly made such points in private conversation for years, even at the height of the peace process.

By all means, read the whole thing. But this is a very important article. The New York Times, has an obligation to publish this. Rubin is correct that you can't accept the nationalist argument of the PLO without accepting the genocidal one too. The New York Times of course wants to say that it accepts the nationalism and the two state solution no matter how illusory that combination is.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Accomplishing in the courts what couldn't be done at the Ballot Box; Round 2

The November 27, 2000 issue of the New Republic ran an article "Overtime" by Ryan Lizza that started with a boast:

If al gore eventually wins Florida and the presidency, historians will likely trace his victory to the early morning hours after he retracted his concession to George W. Bush. In those crucial first hours of November 8, while the Bush campaign was still waiting for the results of Florida's first tally, Team Gore was already beginning to fight a recount the same way it fought the campaign itself: ferociously.

Gore's advisers had actually begun preparing for a recount battle even before Election Day. Weeks before November 7, Joe Sandler, the Democratic National Committee's general counsel and the lawyer who helped defend Maryland Governor Parris Glendening against a recount challenge in 1994, had convened a team to draft a memo on recount laws in every state that might be close. Late on election night, in the Nashville campaign bunker dubbed "the boiler room," Sandler's memo became Team Gore's initial operations manual. "We knew that [Florida] was going to be a battleground," says one Gore recount staffer. "We knew that the law required the canvass to start the next day. We knew that we needed people there to watch the canvass."

(A note: Ellen Sauerbrey's challenge of Parris Glendening's victory ten years ago was not a recount. Maryland has no recount law. She was challenging the validity of some of his voters.)
The pride reflected in these paragraphs is appalling. Even if President Bush had won by 5000 votes the Gore campaign would still have sought to change the rules to its benefit. And it was going to do it with lawyers who knew the particulars of election law so they could shape the results to the needs of party.
Whenever a Democratic friend, acquaintance or relative moans about how the Bush campaign fought to invalidate votes, don't listen. 2000 was an effort to subvert election rules to allow votes that should have been disqualified.
Well the bad new is that they're at it again. The New York Times reports, "In '04 Florida, Lawsuits Begin Before Election":

Not a single ballot has been counted in the presidential election, yet Florida is already teeming with lawsuits charging the state and its county elections supervisors with voter disenfranchisement, a legal muddle likely to grow worse before Election Day.

The "legal muddle" is a product of the Democratic effort to twist the law toward their own end. It is nothing that should concern us.
UPDATE: Whoops! Ocean Guy is right. That didn't come out the way I intended. I meant that we shouldn't pay attention to the charges that the Republicans are suppressing voters. This is a legal game the Dems are playing to undermine the legitimacy of elections. They plan to win it with lawyers. It is not unlike the baseball challenge between St. Peter and the Devil. And here's Vodkapundit's post (aka Stephen Green) that OG referred to.

Krauthammer vs. Edwards

I was reasonably certain I knew what Charles Krauthammer would write about today. I figured it would be about stem cell research. Dr. Krauthammer is uniquely qualified to discuss how stem cell research could benefit victims of paralysis: he trained as a medical doctor, he serves on the President's commission of bio-ethics and he is paralyzed. He has written before about the false promises of dubious cures. I figured that Sen Edwards comment about Christopher Reeve would inspire another such column. I was right. (Alas I didn't blog my prediction yesterday!)
Here is Sen Edwards' complete statement:

"If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

(The partial quote that circulated for a bit was truly ghoulish as it suggested that Reeve would get up out his wheelchair.)
Still, in "An Edwards Outrage" Dr. Krauthammer blasts the statement as a "loathsome display of demagoguery" because:

First, the inability of the human spinal cord to regenerate is one of the great mysteries of biology. The answer is not remotely around the corner. It could take a generation to unravel. To imply, as Edwards did, that it is imminent if only you elect the right politicians is scandalous.

Second, if the cure for spinal cord injury comes, we have no idea where it will come from. There are many lines of inquiry. Stem cell research is just one of many possibilities, and a very speculative one at that. For 30 years I have heard promises of miracle cures for paralysis (including my own, suffered as a medical student). The last fad, fetal tissue transplants, was thought to be a sure thing. Nothing came of it.

As a doctor by training, I've known better than to believe the hype -- and have tried in my own counseling of people with new spinal cord injuries to place the possibility of cure in abeyance. I advise instead to concentrate on making a life (and a very good life it can be) with the hand one is dealt. The greatest enemies of this advice have been the snake-oil salesmen promising a miracle around the corner. I never expected a candidate for vice president to be one of them.

Third, the implication that Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies is a travesty.

George Bush is the first president to approve federal funding for stem cell research. There are 22 lines of stem cells now available, up from one just two years ago. As Leon Kass, head of the President's Council on Bioethics, has written, there are 3,500 shipments of stem cells waiting for anybody who wants them.

As Krauthammer acknowledges, he is also a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. And at the end Krauthammer really lets Edwards have it, plumbing the depths of the senator's cynicism:

Politicians have long promised a chicken in every pot. It is part of the game. It is one thing to promise ethanol subsidies here, dairy price controls there. But to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cures is beyond the pale.

There is no apologizing for Edwards's remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.

Given the choice betweeen a malpractice attorney who channels unborn children and someone who trained as a doctor, who would choose as being more credible?

The Wife Question

Instapundit scores the answers to the wife question:

Both do the best of the evening so far. But Bush hits it out of the park. Kerry hits a double.

My wife noticed something else: After mentioning that all 3 men "married up," Kerry stops talking about his wife and talks instead about his mother! Why would that be?
Instapundit also quotes Roger Simon:

Why did Kerry's mother feel she had to remind him "Integrity! Integrity! Integrity!" from her hospital bed when he told her he was thinking of running for President. What did she know. My mother would have assumed I would have integrity in the same situation.

Might it be the same reason that the Kerry/Edwards campaign emphasized the word "strong" during the convention? Maybe they're protesting a bit too much.

You rang?

From a recent Washington Post article about Sen. Kerry:

But rather than "set a course and lead," as Codinha described, Kerry has lurched from course to course, periodically switching drivers and road maps -- and messages -- as he reacts to more and more information and advice.

"Lurched?" describing Kerry?
(The MSNBC version actually has "lurch" in the secondary headline!)

On a more serious note, the Post reports that "Networks Vow Caution in Calling Election":

What ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox did, as anyone who was watching well remembers, was to project an Al Gore victory in Florida on the basis of exit polls, and then to award Florida -- and the presidency -- to George W. Bush six hours later. But the race was so agonizingly close that it triggered a 36-day recount battle, and the news division presidents later apologized at a House hearing.

Pretty bad huh? Let's look at the particulars:

In 2000, the networks made their initial Florida projections while some voting was still taking place in the portion of the state on Central time, sparking complaints that they were influencing the voting.

And the second part of the indictment:

Fox, whose decision desk was then headed by John Ellis, President Bush's first cousin, was the first to call the race for Bush, and the other networks followed suit within four minutes. Network officials insist they will not be stampeded this time.

Though it's later in the story, this is treated as an equally poor judgment. But it wasn't. Based on the data that Fox had they apparently had a winner, so what was wrong with calling the state for Bush? This was at 2 or 3 in the morning, well after all polls had closed. The absolute difference in New Mexico between the vote totals for the candidates was actually smaller and no one apologizes now for calling New Mexico for Gore.
The difference between New Mexico and Florida is that President Bush did not have an army of lawyers prepared to win the election in the courts if he didn't win it at the ballot box. That Gore did, says a lot more about Gore than about the news organization that (correctly) estimated the Bush victory.
Finally, is there any evidence that Ellis's relationship to the President affected his judgment? If not mentioning it is simply gratuitously adding fuel to the charges that President Bush "stole" the election.

Name Game

Even though he didn't ask me, I'd like to add my 2 cents to Biur Chametz's discussion of possible names for the new Washington baseball team.
I liked Washington Insiders, but I think that should have been the basketball team (instead of the Wizards - yecch). After all, unless I'm very wrong there's an "inside" game of basketball.
My idea for a baseball team's nickname would be the "Speakers." Not just because of the political term, but also because baseball great Tris Speaker played a short time for the Washington baseball team. OK. It was one year at the end of his career. But he still played there.
I guess it will be an uphill battle lobbying for "Speakers."

The Election Canard

One of the common canards of Israel's critics is that an American President will do nothing to pressure Israel in the runup to an election. In fact, four years ago, after the Palestinians commenced their violence in late September, the Security Council issued a typically biased resolution, 1322. By failing to veto this resolution (and abstaining) the United States allowed the resolution to pass. This apparently didn't hurt President Clinton's presumed successor, Al Gore with Jewish voters. It was still inexcusable. At least Ambassador Holbrooke did a reasonably good job of explaining the abstention:

It is critical that these commitments be carried out in a concrete way on the ground and sustained over time. We noted recently that Israel took a significant step to defuse tensions in Nablus by withdrawing from Joseph's Tomb. Unfortunately, that step was not reciprocated.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the explanation was simple evenhandedness. (And saying that the Palesitnians didn't reciprocate at Joseph's tomb is understatement to the point of hyperbole: they destroyed it and remade it into a mosque.)
But Holbrooke's statement is nothing compared to that of Ambassador Danforth's last week:

Now consider what this resolution does not say. It does not mention even one of the 450 Qassam rocket attacks launched against Israel over the past two years. It does not mention two hundred rockets launched this year alone. It does not mention the two Israeli children who were outside playing last week when a rocket suddenly crashed into their young bodies. It does not mention the undisputed fact that Qassam rockets have no military purpose-that they are crude, imprecise devices of terror designed to kill civilians. It does not mention that Hamas took “credit” for killing these Israeli children and maiming many other Israeli civilians-calling these deaths and woundings a “victory.” It does not mention that the terrorists hide among Palestinian civilians, provoking their deaths, and then use those deaths as fodder for their hatred, lawlessness, and efforts to derail the peace process. It does not mention the complete failure of the Palestinian authority to meet its commitments to establish security among its people. It does not mention any of these facts, nor does it acknowledge the legitimate need for Israel to defend itself. The resolution is totally lacking in balance.

There is an old saying that silence indicates consent. The silence here today is deafening. I said yesterday, and I reiterate today, that when the rest of the world gangs up on Israel with insidious silence about terrorism, it does not advance the cause of peace. It encourages both sides to dig in; it makes Israel feel isolated and backed into a corner, and it discourages dialogue.

Despite some unfortunate excursions into evenhandedness, Danforth re-affirms his theme by noting that there is a difference between intential and accidental killings. (Hat Tip to cousing JJ Hart for pointing out the Danforth speech!)
(A usefull resource for tracking the UN's war against Israel is here.)
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Seller's Regret

Heading into the ALCS with Boston facing NY, I can only think about A-Rod. Nearly a year ago it appeared that he was headed to Boston but the deal was scuttled by the union. Boston learned a lesson the hard way. The Yankees rubbed their noses in it. A subtext to this series therefore will be the one that got away. If Boston wins, it will be vindication. If NY wins, well, it will be one more insult.

What if Atlanta faces St. Louis in the NLCS? Will the Cardinals come to regret trading JD Drew? On the face of it they shouldn't miss him with Pujols, Edmonds, Rolen and now Walker. But who expected Atlanta to come this far, without Gary Sheffield?

Which brings us to, will the Braves regret letting Sheffield go if they end up facing the Yankees in the World Series? Or will the Yankees perhaps end up regretting not offering Clemens arbitration to cover all their bases, just in case he decided not to stay retired. The arbitration may not have kept him in pinstripes. But given the degree to which the Yankees control their own fates, it seems like a curious oversight. I know that even the Yankees have their limits. But they still could have shown interest and extracted a price from any club willing

May Bests Tarazi

Earlier, I took issue with Michael Tarazi's op-ed in the NY Times. Perhaps it's something best left to the experts. Courtesy of Media Backspin, we learn that Clifford D. May has unleashed the force of reason against Yasser Arafat's mouthpiece. Here's the clincher (IMHO)

But Mr. Tarazi believes he can convince "the international community" that if Israelis are unwilling to open their doors to millions of people who have been indoctrinated to believe butchering Jews is a form of "martyrdom," it is the Israelis who are the bigots and oppressors.

I also discovered that the LA Times takes issue with Tarazi (though without mentioning him by name) in "Who Needs a Jewish State?":

Good fences make good neighbors, as Robert Frost famously put it. In 1947, the same year Britain abandoned Palestine, it also left the Indian subcontinent. But first Britain divided the area into two nations: India for Hindus and Pakistan for Muslims. The result hasn't been blissful. But there hasn't been an all-out war for 33 years. A one-state solution would have been nastier.

Israel must remain a Jewish state, and to do that and be a democracy as well, it must always have a Jewish majority. That has been a limit on the imperial ambitions of some of Israel's less-attractive leaders. It is also a limit on what the world and the Palestinians can expect Israel to accept.

It took the Israelis decades to accept the idea of a Palestinian state next door. They saw it as a staging ground for conquest and elimination of the Jewish state. The "single-state" solution would achieve that same illegitimate goal by more decorous means.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Do they read their own newspaper?

From "The Verdict Is In

Sanctions worked. Weapons inspectors worked. That is the bottom line of the long-awaited report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, written by President Bush's handpicked investigator.

In the 18 months since President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, justifying the decision by saying that Saddam Hussein was "a gathering threat" to the United States, Americans have come to realize that Iraq had no chemical, nuclear or biological weapons. But the report issued yesterday goes further. It says that Iraq had no factories to produce illicit weapons and that its ability to resume production was growing more feeble every year. While Mr. Hussein retained dreams of someday getting back into the chemical warfare business, his chosen target was Iran, not the United States.

From the next day's news in the NY Times "U.S. Report Says Hussein Bought Arms With Ease":

Enriched with billions of dollars raised by exploiting the United Nations' oil-for-food program, Saddam Hussein spent heavily on arms imports starting in 1999, finding six governments and private companies from a dozen other nations that were willing to ignore sanctions prohibiting arms sales, the report by the top American arms inspector for Iraq has found.

The purchases, which included components of long-range missiles, spare parts for tanks and night-vision equipment, were not enough to allow Iraq to significantly rebuild its conventional military or create a viable chemical, biological or nuclear weapons program, according to the report by the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, which was released Wednesday.

But the relative ease with which Mr. Hussein was able to buy weapons - working directly with governments in Syria, Belarus, Yemen, North Korea, the former Yugoslavia and possibly Russia, as well as with private companies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East - is documented in extraordinary detail, including repeated visits by government officials and arms merchants to Iraq and complicated schemes to disguise illegal shipments to Iraq.

"Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem," the report says. "Indeed, Iraq was designing missile systems with the assumption that sanctioned material would be readily available."

The report suggests that Mr. Hussein was justified when, speaking at a gathering of leaders of the Iraqi armed forces in January 2000, he boasted that despite efforts by the United States and the United Nations to isolate Iraq, he would still be able to buy just about whatever he wanted. "We have said with certainty that the embargo will not be lifted by a Security Council resolution, but will corrode by itself," Mr. Hussein said in the speech, a remark that is quoted on the cover of the chapter in Mr. Duelfer's report that details the ineffectiveness of the embargo.

So which is it? Did the sanctions work as asserted by the editorial or were they ineffective which the Times's reporters reported after actually having read the report. Hmmm.
UPDATE: I hadn't yet seen Best of the Web Today on Friday, but they had this exact item.

Scott Muni dies

It makes me feel old when I realize that the days of my misspent youth twenty years ago, were not when I was 6 or 7, but actually in my early twenties. That's when a friend turned me on to WNEW-FM, then considered one of the top rock radio stations in the nation.
The early eighties were the time of punk and new wave. So I heard plenty of "Talking Heads" "Clash" "Ramones" etc on WNEW, but I also got a pretty good education into the history of rock 'n roll from listening to "The Professor", the mid-day DJ and program director on WNEW, Scott Muni. He seemingly knew just about every rock star there since, at least the 60's (he had a special place in his heart for the Beatles.)
Scott Muni died last week. The NY Times obituary has a pretty incredible story:

Musicians were constant guests at the station. During one interview, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin collapsed in mid-sentence; Mr. Muni played an album, revived the guitarist and finished the interview with Mr. Page lying on the floor.

The Unbearable Lightness of John Edwards

I didn't get to hear the whole debate, but of the parts I heard, VP Cheney came off as much better, more, um, vice-presidential, than his opponent, Senator Edwards.
I was very happy with VP Cheney's first response. I'd been hoping for the President to say:

"What we learned during the previous Democratic administration is that terrorist groups without definite allegiences will coalesce in a lawless society and metastasize into a deadly enemy. Ignoring the growth of these groups, as well as the societies that incubate them, is a risk that America cannot afford to take ever again."

The Vice President more or less said that in his opening statement:

CHENEY: Gwen, I want to thank you, and I want to thank the folks here at Case Western Reserve for hosting this tonight. It's a very important event, and they've done a superb job of putting it together.

It's important to look at all of our developments in Iraq within the broader context of the global war on terror. And, after 9/11, it became clear that we had to do several things to have a successful strategy to win the global war on terror, specifically that we had to go after the terrorists where ever we might find them, that we also had to go after state sponsors of terror, those who might provide sanctuary or safe harbor for terror.

CHENEY: And we also then finally had to stand up democracies in their stead afterwards, because that was the only way to guarantee that these states would not again become safe harbors for terror or for the development of deadly weapons.

Concern about Iraq specifically focused on the fact that Saddam Hussein had been, for years, listed on the state sponsor of terror, that they he had established relationships with Abu Nidal, who operated out of Baghdad; he paid $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers; and he had an established relationship with al Qaeda.

Specifically, look at George Tenet, the CIA director's testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations two years ago when he talked about a 10-year relationship.

The effort that we've mounted with respect to Iraq focused specifically on the possibility that this was the most likely nexus between the terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.

The biggest threat we faced today is the possibility of terrorists smuggling a nuclear weapon or a biological agent into one of our own cities and threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action. The world is far safer today because Saddam Hussein is in jail, his government is no longer in power. And we did exactly the right thing.

This makes it irrelevant to argue, as Sen. Edwards repeatedly did that there were no ties between Saddam and 9/11. The point is to prevent another 9/11, and this was the best way to do it once the Taliban was ejected from power in Afghanistan.
Other than the contrast in demeanor between the two candidates, Sen Edwards lack of gravitas was made apparent by constant harping on two inconsistent talking points.
1) Insisting that due to decisions of the Bush/Cheney leadership team too much of the cost of the war in Iraq was being borne by America
and
2) That a Kerry-Edwards administration would allow no nation a veto over America's security.
If 2) holds, then if there are not the necessary allies, how can we assure America's security unless we are willing to bear most of the burden?
The contrast in the two men's temperments, as noted above, was stark. VP Cheney was consistently even tempered even when delivering his zinger about Sen. Edwards voting record ("With respect to the cost, it wasn't $200 billion. You probably weren't there to vote for that." - He's so good with his stiletto ...). While Sen Edwards came across as the student who was always trying to currty favor with his teacher. I found him annoying. (Maybe it's because I'm supporting the other guy.)
It's pretty clear that VP Cheney won this debate.

Mob Injustice

Like the mob lawyer who must insist that his client is an honest businessman who is being unjustly hounded by the government, Michael Tarazi, legal advisor to the PLO - a terrorist organization, must stand truth on its head to make his client look good. Unfortunately, like the mob lawyer, there is no way Mr Tarazi can make his case and simultaneously maintain his integrity. "Two Peoples, One State" takes a seemingly benign argument, but uses it to mask a malign intent.
Indeed one letter writer to the Times, Elliot Lowenstein(last letter), accurately got to the bottom of Tarazi's argument:

The Oct. 4 Op-Ed article by Michael Tarazi, a legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, calling for a single state of Palestine to replace the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority makes clear that the goal of the Palestinian movement remains the destruction of the Jewish state.

The one-state idea is meant to reward the past four years of Palestinian violence and terrorism as well as the suffering it has caused.

Beware of this wolf in sheep's clothing.

Still the particulars of the letter beg for further rebuttals. First:

Israel's untenable policy in the Middle East was more obvious than usual last week, as the Israeli Army made repeated incursions into Gaza, killing dozens of Palestinians in the deadliest attacks in more than two years, even as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reiterated his plans to withdraw from the territory. Israel's overall strategy toward the Palestinians is ultimately self-defeating: it wants Palestinian land but not the Palestinians who live on that land.

But why did Israel make "repeated incursions in Gaza?" Was it because PM Sharon had nothing better to do? Or because he wanted to capture more territory? No it was because a series of attacks on Israeli targets by terrorists in Gaza had killed 3 civilians - including two toddlers - in the previous few days. The toddlers lived in Sderot that even the PA believes is part of Israel. PM Sharon was acting as any other head of state would act when his citizen were being killed by an enemy, he fought back to reduce or eliminate the threat. There's no indication that Israel was trying to remove any Palestinians who were uninvolved in the attacks.
Then Tarazi sets Muslims and Christians against Jews:

As Christians and Muslims, the millions of Palestinians under occupation are not welcome in the Jewish state. Many Palestinians are now convinced that Israeli support for a Palestinian state is motivated not by a hope for reconciliation, but by a desire to segregate non-Jews while taking as much of their land and resources as possible. They are increasingly questioning the most commonly accepted solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict - "two states living side by side in peace and security," in the words of President Bush - and are being forced to consider a one-state solution.

Not welcome? Palestinians serve in the Israeli government and can be elected to the Knesset. If Israel were as exclusive as Tarazi is claiming these opportunities would be denied too. But it is not the Jewish state that is uninsterested in sharing. It's the Palestinians:

But in fact, for years under Israeli rule, Bethlehem was a peaceful tourist attraction for Christian pilgrims. Now, under Palestinian rule, it a hotbed of radicalism and terror.

▪ In 1995, Bethlehem was 62% Christian, but today is less than 20% Christian. Before 1995, Bethlehem had a majority-Christian municipal council, but when the Palestinian Authority took over the town, Arafat replaced the municipal council with a predominately Muslim council. Today Christians have virtually no political power in Bethlehem.

▪ Christian Arabs fled Bethlehem in droves after a radical Islamic wave began inciting against them. For example, in a Friday sermon on October 13, 2000, broadcast live on official Palestinian Authority television, Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya proclaimed: "Allah the almighty has called upon us not to ally with the Jews or the Christians, not to like them, not to become their partners, not to support them, and not to sign agreements with them."

▪ Physical violence followed: On February 6, 2002, the Boston Globe reported "a rampage of Palestinian Muslims against Christian shops and churches in Ramallah...Police made no attempt to stop the mob, which besieged and damaged a widely respected youth center associated with the Boy Scouts of America after torching the Christian properties...'The truth is this is a problem between Christians and Muslims,' said one Christian businessman."

▪ National Review reports: "The draft Palestinian constitution says, 'Islam is the official religion in Palestine,' and makes the 'principles of the Islamic sharia' a 'main source for legislation.' Textbooks, PA television, and government-sponsored preachers now stress Islamist rather than nationalist themes...Under this pressure, Christians throughout the Middle East are fleeing their homeland."

(For more on the treatment of Christian Arabs under Muslim Palestinian control, see the report from The Prism Group.)

A few paragraphs later Tarazi goes further:

But in this de facto state, 3.5 million Palestinian Christians and Muslims are denied the same political and civil rights as Jews. These Palestinians must drive on separate roads, in cars bearing distinctive license plates, and only to and from designated Palestinian areas. It is illegal for a Palestinian to drive a car with an Israeli license plate. These Palestinians, as non-Jews, neither qualify for Israeli citizenship nor have the right to vote in Israeli elections.

These Palestinians have their own government, dysfunctional as it is. They voted in one election in 1996, and were never allowed to vote again. That state has asked for the trappings of sovereignty and been granted them. With some reasonable limits. Given that the government officially was the professed enemy of Israel until 1993, it was reasonable that some of its power would be circumscribed until such time that it showed its reliability.

Alas that time has never come. The lack of power the Palestinians have is directly attributable to the failure of the Palestinian Authority to build durable institutions of government. For Tarazi to blame this state of affairs on Israel is akin to the person who kills his parents and asks for mercy because he's an orphan. There's a word for his argument: Chutzpah.

There are no limits to Tarazi's chutzpah, though, in the next paragraph he writes:

In South Africa, such an allocation of rights and privileges based on ethnic or religious affiliation was called apartheid. In Israel, it is called the Middle East's only democracy.

In 1998 the Palestinian legislative council passed a bill calling the sale of territory to Jews a "crime of high treason." Subsequently a number of Palestinian real estate agents were attacked and five killed. This could be called a Nuremberg law and it was an official law of Palestinian Authority. Jews do have an advantage in Israel, but that's no different from the status of Muslims in any Muslim country. In fact non-Jews have more rights in Israel than non Muslims have in Arab countries. Is Mr. Tarazi accusing Arab states of apartheid? Or is his outrage selective? The answer is clear.
Then Tarazi engages in an incredible inversion:

Most Israelis recoil at the thought of giving Palestinians equal rights, understandably fearing that a possible Palestinian majority will treat Jews the way Jews have treated Palestinians. They fear the destruction of the never-defined "Jewish state." The one-state solution, however, neither destroys the Jewish character of the Holy Land nor negates the Jewish historical and religious attachment (although it would destroy the superior status of Jews in that state). Rather, it affirms that the Holy Land has an equal Christian and Muslim character.

What?
Maybe Jews fear that Palestinians would treat them the way Muslims have treated Jews since the time of Mohammed with a very few exceptions.
Here's how the prophet treated Jews:

After one successful battle, Muhammad tells his men, “Go and take any slave girl.” He took one for himself also. After the notorious massacre of the Jewish Qurayzah tribe, he did it again. According to his earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad “went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for [the men of Banu Qurayza] and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches.” After killing “600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900,” the Prophet of Islam took one of the widows he had just made, Rayhana bint Amr, as another concubine.

Albert Memmi, a Jew born in Tunisia, can testify to the more recent depradations suffered by Jews at the hands of Muslims. Jews don't fear retribution from Arabs, they fear a continuation of the contempt they've experienced over the ages from their Arab/Muslim "brothers".
And of course the Jews were chased from Hebron in 1929 by a massacre. Jews living in the terrirtory of Yemen that was illegally occupied by the nascent state of Saudi Arabia were forces from their homes and wealth confiscated. Jews who lived nowhere near the theater of Israel's war of Independence were forced from their homes in greater numbers than Arabs who fled what was then called Palestine by their Arab hosts. The history of Muslims and Arabs toward Jews is one of oppression. That Israel didn't force out every single Arab from its domain in 1948 and 1967 is a sign of its compassion. That Israel is blamed for not solving the "refugee problem" shows how successfully the Arab world has wielded the Western concepts of 'self-determination" and "occupation" to blacken the reputation of the one open country in their region (with the active connivance of both naive and hostile diplomats, journalists and politicians.) Michael Tarazi's effort emulates this sort of skewed morality.
For a representative of the PLO to talk of shared sacredness is truly offensive. The Arab world has shown no sensitivity to the holiness of shrines revered by other religions. As noted above Christians in recent years have been driven from Bethlehem. A few years ago terrorists escaping from the Israeli army took refuge in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
Jewish shrines - including graves - were destroyed by the Jordanians who illegally occupied the West Bank (of Jordan) between 1948 and 1967. Four years ago the Palestinian burned Joseph's tomb to the ground and the guards in front of Rachel's tomb have frequently been targeted by snipers. In contrast Israel has allowed free access for all Palestinians to worship at their holy sites (though there have been occasional restrictions due to security concerns). In fact Israel has warned that the Palestinians are damaging their own shrine on the holiest site of Judaism. The Palestinian relgious trust has refused to take responsibility and rectify the situation. The former mayor of Arab Hebron repeatedly has said that if control of Judaism's second holiest site reverts to Arab control, Jews will no longer be allowed to pray there.
Israel is and has been a beacon of freedom in the Middle East, even, at times, at cost to its own well being. Israel's enemies, including Michael Tarazi, a mouthpiece for the terrorist, Yasser Arafat, try to obfuscate that fact. Just as we are skeptical of the slick lawyer who calls a hit man a simple family man who's being unjustly harrassed we should dismiss the overwrought words of Michael Tarazi who seeks a similar inversion of the truth.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Ethiopians in Israel

Earlier I posted "Think this will bother Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson?", it was a link to this item from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The items tells of the killing of Dorit Aniso, two, and Yuval Abebeh, four. The pictures accompanying the news item shows the two children who are of Ethiopian families.
I've received one comment for this posting that I am a "sick man."
The post was meant to criticize the lack of outrage that either Jackson or Sharpton expressed over these murders. They were also silent in recent weeks when Tekele Tiroyaient was killed Be'er Sheva and Mamoya Tahio died a hero preventing a young female terrorist from approaching a crowd.
Sharpton and Jackson have made their antisemitism clear in different ways. Sharpton by preaching hatred. Jackson, in part, by his open support of the Palestinian cause at the expense of Israel. Both have ignored Israel's noble rescue of thousands of Ethiopian Jews in the 1980s and 1990s.

They are not alone.
Two of the most persistent charges against Israel is that it is too militaristic and that it is discriminatory. The rescue of Ethiopian Jews gives lie to both those charges. The rescue was carried out by subterfuge. Despite the evil of the Mengistu regime, Israel didn't attack it but rather smuggled out thousands who would have been starved by the worst tyrant of the 1980's.

While the integration of the Ethiopian Jews has not been perfect, it has been remarkable. People of a different skin color have been accepted into the Israeli mainstream on the basis of a common heritage.

Perhaps I'm too strong about Sharpton and Jackson, but they don't care about all black people. Certainly not Jewish ones.

Yirga on the Orioles

Yirga's up on the Orioles and after a not as disappointing season as usual recently (how's that for an enthusiastic description of this past year?) it's easy to see why he's happy. I, however, am not as encouraged.
The O's offense was led by Miguel, Melvin, Javy and Rafael. And ably assisted by David and BJ. And that's about it. What's missing from this picture: young everyday regulars. Brian Roberts put up a disappointing .720 OPS. He gets on base at a reasonable rate but has little power to speak of. Larry Bigbie's development has seemingly stalled. His .768 OPS is OK, for a second baseman, but he's a corner outfielder. Jay, and Luis were disasters. Maybe Jay was injured, but Luis's 2003, is looking rather fluky right now. Jerry Jr. played at a good level for a second baseman, but his injury makes him look fragile, not someone you can count on for a full season. There wasn't much of a bench to speak of.
On the pitching side, most of the year it was just plain ugly. I hadn't looked at the stats for several weeks before I saw the final stats. The final stats looked much better than I had seen in awhile, but the problem - even in a minimized form - still exists. For most of the year the O's were allowing over 1.5 baserunners per inning. If you do that, you're ERA won't be below 5. Somehow in the past few weeks that figure has been lowered to 1.49. Clearly Rabbit was doing something right, but aside from BJ and Rodrigo there's not a pitcher who distinguished himself over the course a full year. I'm willing to believe that Sidney has turned a corner and will be effective over a whole season next year, but there's no one else who looks to be a sure bet to be effective and healthy next year.
The pitchers' big problem has been baserunners, they've allowed too many this year. Despite leading the league in Slugging PCT allowed, the O's got into trouble by allowing too many hits and walks. (The slugging PCT allowed is an anamoly, the other teams that were nearly as stingy in allowing extra base hits, all had an OBP allowed of 90 or MORE points llower than the slugging PCT allowed. Perhaps there was a concious effort to get the pitchers to keep the ball down.)
This team is further away than just a player here and a player there. It won't be competing on a regular basis until there's a farm system to produce everyday players to complement the talented core. This year was fun. But I don't know that there's a bright future right now. I'm not wearing shades.
UPDATE: Baseball Prospectus's latest Triple Play paints a similarly grim picture of the O's near term future prospects. However John Sickels sees an upside to Matt Riley and Erik Bedard.

Rocket or Stretcher?

Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post seems much bothered by the controversial video apparently showing a man tossing a missile into a UN vehicle. In today's NY Times we have this:

Meanwhile, Israel and a United Nations refugee agency are feuding over video taken by an Israeli drone hovering over Jabaliya.

The grainy, black-and white images, which have appeared on Israeli television, show a man comfortably carrying a long, thin object as he walks to the back of a United Nations ambulance. He then casually tosses the object into the vehicle.

Israel said that the man was carrying a Qassam rocket, and that it would formally complain to the United Nations in New York.

But Peter Hansen, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said he was convinced the object was just a folded stretcher.

"While the quality of the video clip is poor, its analysis shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that the object carried and thrown into the vehicle cannot be a Qassam rocket," Mr. Hansen said in a statement.

Mr. Hansen said a rocket, which is made of metal, would be far to heavy for a man to carry easily with one arm. However, the Israeli military asserts that smaller rockets weigh as little as 11 pounds, and can be handled in such a fashion.

The dispute is the latest episode in a long-running feud between Israel and the United Nations agency.

"Long running feud?" No this goes to the legitimacy of the UN. And frankly the record doesn't look too good on the Israel front. Four years ago UN soldiers stood by as three Israeli soldiers were kidnapped and killed across the UN approved border. The UN had video of the kidnaping and denied that it had it. Finally it allowed Israeli officials to view the video, but only after they hid the identities of the members of Hezbollah. In a "feud" between a member state and a terrorist organization, the UN wouldn't want to take sides.
(More on the UNWRA's record later.)
Here's the Washington Post from Saturday's paper

Three days of fighting have provided several examples of abuses of the local population by combatants on both sides.

The military gave Israeli television stations video footage from a remotely piloted aircraft that it said showed a vehicle marked "U.N." being used to transport Qassam rockets. Meir, the Foreign Ministry official, called the use of a such a vehicle attacks "horrendous."

Peter Hansen, who heads the Gaza offices of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which administers Palestinian refugee camps, said he had not seen the film and had "grave difficulty" believing his agency's workers had helped transport rockets.

Hansen said he had received reports from the Jabalya camp that Israeli forces took over three schools run by his agency. When the soldiers withdrew from the schools, he said, residents reported that Palestinian guerrillas took their places. Hansen said both sides' abuse of the schools was "equally serious."

It appears that the Washington Post doesn't want to take sides either. Abuses on both sides? One is a response to the other. On one side a terrorist organization goes about hiding arms to attack civilians in (non-occupied) territory; on the other is the army that seeks to eradicate that enemy who is hiding among civilians. Those are abuses on both sides. Of course Molly Moore's failure to investigate the Israel charges further allows her to report later:

Hassanin said Israeli forces have repeatedly fired on ambulances and medical workers attempting to remove the dead and wounded. An Israeli military spokeswoman said the defense forces have received no reports of ambulances being fired upon.

If she had bothered to spend time investigating Israel's charges, maybe this charge about Israeli troops firing on ambulances would be undestandable. If Israel's enemies misuse supposedly neutral vehicles, structures and personnel, they should have no protection. (One of the recent Israeli soldiers killed was a medic. Someone, who would have international protections in any other conflict. Of course since the Mogen Dovid Adom is not sanctioned by the antisemitic International Committee of the Red Cross, he was not legally protected. That isn't an issue tha Moore addresses either. Surprise.)
Since neither the Washington Post nor New York Times much care about the UN's documented active assault on Israel, let's provide a list:
From Arutz-7:

Israel has documented UN involvement in past attacks perpetrated by Hamas as well as by Hizbullah. Most significantly, a UN vehicle was used in October 2000 to abduct IDF soldiers from Israel's northern border, leading to the deaths of three soldiers. Other attacks have involved UN vehicles assigned to Arabs living in PLO-controlled areas.

Arnold Beichman, scholar and research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, wrote in the Washington Times in May 2002, "UNIFIL, the U.N. force stationed on the Israel-Lebanon border, hid a videotape of Israeli soldiers being abducted by Hizbullah in October 2000. After finally admitting to having the tape, the U.N. would only show an edited version (in which Hezbollah faces were hidden) to the Israeli government. They claimed they needed to maintain neutrality between a member state and a terrorist group."

(Read the whole thing.)
Israelly Cool has a bit more (courtesy of Israel's MFA):Hansen has not provided one example of another false allegation made by Israel against the UN. In contrast, the IDF has on many occasions found proof of UNRWA ambulances being used for terror, including the following:
In a document seized during Operation Defensive Shield, it was noted that weapons were concealed in the floor of an ambulance.
In an another document it is noted that the PLO Arab general intelligence service used an ambulance to transfer a suspect from Husan to Bethlehem.
On March 27, 2002 IDF forces arrested Islam Jibril, a Tanzim operative at a checkpoint near Ramallah. Jibril, born 1971, a resident of the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, worked as an ambulance driver in the Palestinian Red Crescent. Jibril was arrested while driving a Red Crescent ambulance containing an explosive belt and explosive devices. During his investigation Jiblril confessed that the bombs were handed to him in Nablus by Mahmud Titi, a senior Tanzim operative in the Samaria area who was killed by security forces. The explosive belt was hidden underneath a stretch carrying a sick Palestinian boy aside his family members.
Investigation has revealed that during March 2002 several PLO Arab terrorists in Ramallah were using ambulances in order to move from one spot to another. The terrorists were wearing medical uniforms and some of them used city hospitals as a hiding place.
(Again read the whole thing!)
UPDATE: For the video of the incident go here and click on the relevant link.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Even Paranoiacs have Enemies

My first college roommate had a poster (appropriately) hanging in his closet with the punchline "Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
It's funny how, over the years, Israel's detractors and critics in the media will write about the "alleged" terrorist or the collateral damage caused by Israeli responses to terror as if the bystanders are obvious victims of Israeli negligence.
But the Israeli claims have merit. Two stories last week underline that yes, Israel is killing the right people and when the wrong people die it's because the fighters are firing from among non-combatants. I'm sure it's happened many more times than just these two cases.

First there was the killing of Jihad Hassan. Israel apparently sold him a booby trapped weapon. Guess who posted obituary notices for this paragon of virtue? Why none other than Tawfiq Tirawi.

An obituary notice published by the General Intelligence Force, headed by Gen. Tawfik Tirawi, revealed that the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades commander also served in the force with the rank of lieutenant.

(I'm not suggesting that Tirawi's hands are clean. They're not. But he is ostensibly a non-criminal member of the PA.) It's inconceivable that Tirawi was unaware of the extracurricular activities of is Lieutenant.
(And let's not forget that the Palestinian PM himself thinks that the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade need a little understanding from Israel and needs to be absorbed into Fatah.)
Then there was this admission from a member of Martyr's Brigade from "Losing Faith in the Intifada":

From the beginning, civilians were caught squarely in the middle by the tactics of Palestinian militants. Abu Fahdi described the use of thickly populated areas as cover when staging attacks.

"It made me uneasy when we would use someone's house to fire at [Jewish targets] and know that the army would shoot back at the families in the area or destroy the home," he said. "But we thought it was something that had to be done in the short term, in order to inflict blows."

Mind you the reporter simply takes her subject's "uneasiness" in stride. It doesn't appear to have made her re-think whether Israeli soldiers were justified in firing back in such circumstances.

So yes in this case a fellow Israel called a terrorist really was one. And yes this fellow fired at soldier from among crowds. The question is how many more were like them that aren't documented or that the media does not care one whit about.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

A Giant Dies

Dr. Zev Lev (William Low) passed away. Arutz-7 memorializes this giant of Torah and science.

Unhappy Anniversary

We just passed the 4 year anniversary of the latest wave organized violence - sometimes called by the sanitized term "intifada" as if it were merely a political revolt - perpetrated against Israel by the Palestinians. I figured that a corrective history lesson would be in order. From Yahoo! news there are, so far, two feature articles about this anniversary. The one from the NY Times, "Intifada's Legacy at Year 4: A Morass of Faded Hopes" by Steven Erlanger might well have come from the PA's propaganda department.

Sgt. David Biri was Israel's first fatality of the current wave of violence. He was killed by a roadside bomb near Netzarim. David Biri was killed prior to opposition leader Ariel Sharon's walk along the Temple Mount.

Here's how Erlanger described the early days of the violence:

What began as a popular uprising quickly became a low-intensity war

A roadside bomb is not a product of a popular uprising. It is planned. This was low intensity war from the start. There may have been riots from the start, but that doesn't make it a popular uprising. The "Aksa intifada" was planned from before Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount.

The early violence focused on Israeli in uniform. David Biri was a soldier. The second victim of the violence, Border Police Supt. Yosef Tabeja was a policeman on joint patrol with a Palestinian. The Palestinian pulled out his gun, yelled "Allahu Akbar" and killed Tabeja. The Palestinian claimed that their guy was crazy. I believe (though I have no proof) that the Palestinian on joint patrols were told to turn on their Israeli partners. This occurred on the same day as Sharon's visit, so this murder was likely not in response to the visit.

The Israelis who were pinned down when Palestinian snipers killed Mohammed Al-Dura, likewise, were soldiers.

I guess that the brutal lynching of Yosef Avrahami and Vadim Norzhich could be classified as popular, even though they were soldiers. The picture of one of their murderers proudly holding his bloody hands aloft is one of the indelible pictures of the early violence.

My point, lost in some of this rambling, is that the violence carefully orchestrated. A roadside bomb requires organization and planning. But what else is there? There's more. Here's an excerpt from a letter from then Israeli Ambassador Yehuda Lancry to Kofi "Oil for Food" Annan, dated October 2, 2000.

The events in these areas represent the latest and most severe developments in a wave of violence that has been building over the past few weeks. The attacks began with the throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails in the vicinity of the Netzarim Junction on 13 September. This was followed by the killing of an Israeli soldier by a roadside bomb on 27 September, and the murder of an Israeli police officer by a Palestinian policeman in a joint patrol on 29 September.

The events of this past Friday on the Temple Mount represent a further escalation of the Palestinian violence. Muslim worshippers, out of a desire to violently confront both Israeli police and civilians on the eve of the Jewish New Year, hurled rocks and other objects at Jewish worshippers gathered at the Western Wall below. Israeli police attempted to turn back the protesters through non-violent means, but the mob persisted, attempting to force its way out of the Temple Mount area and through the Mughrabim gate to the Western Wall plaza. At this point, Israeli forces, who had been deployed outside the perimeter of the Mount, were compelled to enter the area to push back the charging mob. The stone-throwing mob continued in its violence for a period of more than four hours.

Regrettably, the wave of Palestinian violence did not stop there. During the last 24 hours alone, there have been over thirty incidents of unprovoked live gunfire directed against Israeli civilians and security forces. One Israeli civilian was shot and killed at close range when dropping his car off at a Palestinian-owned garage in the village of Maskheh.. A soldier was killed, and a civilian moderately wounded, in a shooting near the town of Beit Sahour. Two Israeli policemen were wounded in gunfire from armed Palestinian security forces near Jericho and Palestinian attackers opened fire on a school bus near Shiloh.

Note the beginning of that excerpt. "...wave of violence that has been building over the past few weeks." The violence was organized and started in the middle of September. And how can I corroborate this further? How about this:

Over the past several weeks, the Palestinian Authority has granted extended vacation leaves to dozens of jailed Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists, among them militants who were involved in serious terror attacks against Israel.

It is clear, that though the article paints the release of these terrorists as a way of appeasing the "extremists", that it also coincided with the increase of terror noted by Lancry. Clearly Arafat gave them a "green light" if he didn't actually coordinate with them.
Erlanger noted:

Local actors like mayors, kinship networks, and armed militias compete for authority in the vacuum and "the result is growing chaos throughout the West Bank," the report said.

Well actually that is nothing new as Graham Usher noted back in 1997:

"Since the PA was installed in 1994, Arafat has based his rule on two crucial constituencies. One was his Fatah movement, many of whose cadres were absorbed into the PA's burgeoning and often lawless security forces. But the other was Arafat's deliberate reempowerment of Palestine's traditional or tribal families, like the Abu Samhadanahs or, for that
matter, the Al-Dhairs. In Rafah, the two constituencies have become one,
with tribal and political loyalties so interwoven as to be inseparable.

"For Palestinian analysts like the sociologist, Isah Jad, the PA's "revival of tribal structures" is not only inimicable to Palestinian hopes for a law based and democratic society. It is corrosive of the modern national consciousness Palestinians have forged out of their conflict with Israel. For 30 years, says Jad, "the national movement conducted a long struggle to weaken loyalty to the family and the tribe and strengthen the concept of nationalism and loyalty to the homeland. Any rebuilding of tribal structures will reinstate the family and the tribe as the individual's first loyalty."

And of course Erlanger spends much time bemoaning the poverty of the Palestinians despite the massive infusion of foreign aid. But never once does he ask the most important question: What if the Palesitnian Authority had spent the past eleven years creating industry and political progress instead of creating and acquiring weapons, and promoting grievances, hatred and terror. Wouldn't they have a state by now? By looking at the results of the failed Palestinian Authority, he misses the main questions. Shouldn't he be looking at the politicians, diplomats and, yes, journalists who didn't hold the Palestinian government (and society who supported the terror) accountable for its multiple breaches of the Oslo Accords? Israel under four Prime Ministers, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu and Barak did all they could to create a viable Palestinian state. But instead of looking at that, they focused on the perceived failures of these Israeli governments to make their concessions more appealing to the Palestinians.
It's also worth noting that with the advent of this violence most of the media threw all caution to the wind when it came to objectivity when reporting on the Middle East and actively supported the perpetrators of violence. HonestReporting.com started in response to this. The Photo that Started it All was of a Yeshiva student, Tuvia Grossman - bloodied after being beaten by an Arab gang - being rescued by an Israeli policeman. Despite many problems the NY Times, followed by many other newspapers captioned the photo as the policemen beating the "Palestinian" in the foreground. (The Baltimore Sun published the photo with the false caption five days after the truth was widely known. They claimed that since the Sunday section was published early in the week, they didn't have the information in time. If truth was so precious to the Sun, they would have done a second run.)

The late Scott Shuger did an excellent expose of the sanitizing of the lynching of Yosef Avrahami and Vadim Norzhich, "Making Excuses for Ramallah".

Finally it took awhile but James Fallows undermined the common fairytale that Israel killed twelve year old Mohammed Al Dura. The aeriel picture the Israeli army provided should have made it clear that the Israeli troops under fire had no clear shot at the Al Dura's position. (I'll have to find it, I know that it's on the MFA website.) This was a myth that should have been debunked immediately.

Maybe this anniversary should be spent by the media looking at themselves and correcting their terrible slant that only allows the terror against Israel to continue with impunity.

Finally check out Israel's MFA "Four years of Conflict." There's a 40 page Word document available at the site.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Think this will bother Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson?

Behind the Headlines: Fighting the Kassam rocket attacks

In Sukkos You shall Blog Seven Days

Biur Chametz is concerned that the main mitzvah (commandment) of dwelling in the Sukkah is the sleeping not the eathing. He wonders why that is.
I don't have a definitive answer, but unless I'm very wrong 30 to 40 years ago, people generally didn't have Sukkahs. It's only since the 1970's that they have become commonplace in America. Granted I was a child at the start of the time in question, but when we lived in Springfield Mass, I'm pretty certain that we were one of only a few families who had their own Sukkah. I'm pretty certain that when we moved to Baltimore in 1968 that the same held true.
That doesn't answer Biur's question. But if one was introducing a new practice, what would meet with less resistance? Eating or sleeping? I suspect the latter. (Also going to the time when there were fewer Sukkahs and the Shul -synagogue - had one, what would the Shul offer? For people to eat or sleep in the Sukkah. Maybe that got transferred to private Sukkah owners too.)

But if Biur's friend enjoys the Mitzvah of sleeping in the Sukkah, he has nothing on Aishel, who's bloging in his!

Deacon on Barak

Deacon of Powerline writes about news that Ehud Barak is considering a comeback

I think this is good news. Barak was an enormous disappointment the last time around when, under pressure from President Clinton, he was willing to make shocking concessions to Arafat at Camp David. However, Barak states that he has learned from his mistakes and, if the interviews I've seen in the past few years are indicative, that seems to be the case. The bottom line is that someone has to be the leader of Israel's Labor Party. If Barak has learned anything at all, he is plainly preferable to those who have led the party since he left the scene of the crime at the end of 2000.

I cannot say that I've read many interviews, but earlier, I wrote about Barak's Q & A at Ha'aretz. He denied Deborah Sontag's charge that Arafat had begged him not to allow then opposition leader Sharon to visit the Temple Mount. That was good. However when asked about the withdrawal from Lebanon his answer was

That's nonsense. I can understand why the Palestinians adopted this story - or even why the frustrated Hezbollah, which found itself paralyzed from acting against Israel by the presence of the invisible wall of international legitimacy, did so - but I cannot see why Israelis should fall into this trap. Can anyone seriously think that if we were still in Lebanon, bleeding continuously, the Palestinians would never have raised their heads and would have accepted being under Israeli occupation forever? The opposite is true. When the inevitable eruption of violence would have taken place, we would have been paralyzed by the need to deal with two fronts simultaneously, and it would be much more complicated to execute operations like Defensive Shield without risking an immediate deterioration into a regional war.

The whole argument about more terror resulting from leaving Lebanon is ridiculous. We are talking as if there were no Palestinians terror when we were in Lebanon, which is not true. I decided to end a tragedy that lasted 18 years and cost the lives of 1,000 Israelis, and I was proud of being able to do it against the judgement of so many.

The case with Gaza is different, because in Lebanon we could withdraw to an international border backed by a UN Security Council resolution and expect the government of Lebanon to take care of the rest.

Perhaps he's right that the withdrawal did not encourage the intifada.
But
1) Hezbollah is now reported to be active in Yehuda, Shomron and Azza. If it is it is because it no longer has to defend its home turf. While it is terrible to lose soldiers, Hezbollah, might now be responsible for the murder of civilians.
2) International legitimacy means nothing. Hezbollah has persisted in crossborder attacks that have killed between 10 - 20 in the past 4 years, including civilians. This has not been met by a single condemnation, formal or informal, by the international community. Additionally, Hezbollah still persists in the fiction that Shebaa Farms belongs to Lebanon and is thus still legitimately opposing Israeli occupation.

Barak also says that Oslo was necessary, from an Israeli perspective. Maybe he means it as Daniel Pipes alleged in an off-beat column that Barak was acloset right winger showing that peace was impossible with the Arabs.

Is Ehud Barak really the ultra-left-winger he appears to be, the prime minister who offers more concessions than any of his predecessors to the Arabs? Or might he be a shrewd nationalist who is just going through the motions of diplomacy?

The second idea sounds crazy, but give it a hearing. According to well-informed analysts, on taking office in mid-1999 Barak heard from intelligence that unless he gave Syria's Hafez Assad and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat everything they demanded, they would reject his diplomatic overtures.

Assad insisted on regaining Syria's pre-1967 borders; the Palestinians demanded full sovereignty over their holy places in Jerusalem. Offered as much as 95 percent of their demands, they would say no to the whole package. According to these analysts, Barak understood that he could offer almost everything to his Arab interlocutors, knowing that they would turn him down.

He saw this as a painless opportunity to offer vast concessions, thereby winning a reputation for magnanimity without ever having to deliver. He had to do two things however: stop short of offering enough for the Arabs to say "yes," and convince the world of his sincerity by some great acting.

I don't think that Pipes really believed that. An in any case Barak's responses in the Q & A showed him, perhaps, a bit sobered, but still quite left wing. While it's true that he might be better than most in Labor, I'm not sure that's really high praise.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.