Soccer Dad

Editorial in the New Candor Times 8/31/05

I read the following editorial, "The Battle for Palestine's Future," in the New Candor Times:

The Fatah Party has long been one of the Palestinians' most powerful political movements, a home for right-wing nationalists who champion Arab settlements on land that had long considered to be Israel. The strength of Fatah has always been its grand vision for the land of Palestine, and along with that, its refusal to completely accept the Israel's more liberal vision of exchanging land for peace.

Unfortunately, Fatah's ambitions have always been its greatest weakness. They are the reason the party became so irredentist that even its Holocaust denying leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, the man responsible for funding the horrific Munich Olympics terror attack in 1972 seems positively reasonable in comparison.

In the past week Israel has been subject to a number of terrorist attacks validating the fears of those who were skeptical of disengagement. Palestinian Additionally, Prime Minister Ahmed Quriea has talked belligerently of a "battle for Jerusalem" and Lands Authority chief Freih Abu Meddain wishes to name evacuated Israeli towns in Gaza for "martyrs" and terrorist leaders like Sheikh Yassin. The violent actions of terrorist organizations under his jurisdiction and indendiary statements by his colleagues make Mr. Abbas appear moderate and concilliatory in comparison, but they hardly encourage the world that Fatah is committed to the peace that would so benefit the Palestinian people.

Make no mistake Mr. Abbas is no peacenik. He was a leading member of the PLO, a terrorist organization for many years. And even after Israel accepted the PLO in 1993, Mr. Abbas spent the subsequent years at Yasser Arafat's side, not rocking the boat, even as Mr. Arafat violated the letter and spirit of every agreement he made with Israel.

But now is a different time, and in the current reality of the Middle East, Mr. Sharon has just boldly gone where Mr. Abbas has refused to tread. Mr. Sharon's withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza, completed last week, was a historic shift that should be acknowledged and extended.

Now that Mr. Sharon has demonstrated that he is able to carry out a territorial compromise, Mr. Abbas needs to confront, disarm and defeat the terrorist organzations that thrive under his authority. Mr. Abbas and Fatah would be foolish and shortsighted not to match Mr. Sharon's initiative by fulfilling their "Road Map" obligations and (by not acting) reduce the chances of any further progress toward peace. If they fail to stop or even reduce terror, they may well deprive their government of any chance of leading Palestine to the self-determination that it desires.

The New York Times though, unfortunately (and predictably) ran "The Battle for Israel's Future."

Technorati Tag: Israel, New+York+Times.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Pondering about davening

Psycho Toddler discovers that someone in his family "enhanced" his siddur (prayer book) and even has a picture.

This reminds me of my Shabbos siddur. The one I had for 20 some years. It was a leather bound pocket size "Tefilas Kol Peh" from the Eshkol publishing company. I had it when I was single. When I was married. And for 3 children it was fine. The binding got a little torn but it was fine.

Child #4 was another story. When he got hold of it a couple of times (I'm a slow learner ...) he tore pages out. Dutifully I taped them back in.

Child #5 was even rougher on the siddur. She tore pages out and then tore them up. I had to tape the pages back together. I actually didn't do a bad job of it. But something wasn't the same. I wanted my Shabbos siddur to be special and by now it just had had too many surgeries.

So my wife got me a new one. The old one is still available for service, of course. But it's not my Shabbos siddur.

Elie's Expositions relates an anamolous situation he noted while davening on vacation:

Each morning I was treated to the incongruous sight of young men in hats, tefillin, and long peyos, shukeling with a "Boars Head Ham" sign right over their heads.

Around the web 08-31-05

Useless words
In "The stakes after Gaza," Charles Krauthammer - who supported disengagement - raises concerns about where disengagement is leading:

Nonetheless, the parallel images carried an unintended truth. It is not the Gaza withdrawal itself but what follows that could lead to another and final extinction of Jewish independence, this time not just for 2,000 years but forever.

What follows is the world saying, almost in unison, that the Gaza evacuation is just the beginning of a total Israeli retreat, one Dunkirk to be followed by many more. What follows is Condoleezza Rice declaring that "it cannot be Gaza only," a thrilling encouragement to the Palestinians jeering the Israeli withdrawal with chants of "Gaza today, Jerusalem tomorrow."

I'm not in agreement with him about the final extinction of Jewish independence; however the bottom line is that there's reason to be concerned that the Palestinian causus belli will continue to be understood by the world and anti-Israel terror will continue to be excused within that context. The price of disengagement may well be high even if not the level that Krauthammer fears.
.(Krauthammer made a similar point seven years ago in "At Last Zion."
He asks a fair question in the second paragraph quoted above about Dr. Rice's encouragement of further Israeli concessions while de-emphasizing Palestinian obligations. However Jewish Current Issues did some searching and believes that the NY Times "dowderized" Dr. Rice's comments.

LGF links to a response from Mere Rhetoric arguing that Dr. Rice indeed considers Israeli concession necessary regardless of Palesitnian compliance and from Neo Neo Con seeming to split the difference between JCI and MR.

Hypocritical words
The IRIS blog points to an excellent article from Evelyn Gordon that describes the nobility of religious Zionists and the double standard by which they are judged:

Leading leftists have repeatedly urged soldiers to refuse to serve in the territories and at least 635 (according to Courage to Refuse) have answered this call, yet no one has ever suggested barring leftists from officers' courses. But when leading rabbis urged soldiers to refuse to participate in the disengagement, politicians, journalists and even senior army officers instantly asserted that religious Zionists can no longer be trusted – never mind the lack of evidence; we all "know" that they obey their rabbis blindly – and should henceforth be barred from becoming officers. Yet instead of rejecting the society that was so quick to reject them, most religious soldiers consulted their consciences and concluded that despite rabbinic urgings, their own opposition to the disengagement and the horror of evicting people from their homes, the rift that mass refusal could create in Israeli society was the greater evil. As a result, only 72 soldiers refused orders prior to the pullout and five during the evacuation itself – less than one-eighth the level of leftist refusal.

(BTW, I'm flattered that IRIS uses a statement I wrote as a blurb, but would it be churlish to ask that he credits the statement to me? And I should admit I learned about the IRIS blog from Biur Chametz.)

Bad words
Treppenwitz ponders the continuum of good and bad. Not everyone who is bad is the same level of evil. (Not unlike Alice's contemplation of the Walrus and the Carpenter. One ate all the oysters he could; the other one ate more oysters, period.) The focal point of his discussion is the International Committee of the Red Cross, which does many good works, but still abides the Arab inspired boycott forbidding Israel's Mogen David Adom to be a recognized affilliate.
This is something I think about too. A few months ago I went to the local American Red Cross headquarters for apheresis. I was struck by the mural in the vestibule that depicted how the Red Cross helped people everywhere. I mused that that excluded Israel, where the humanitarian organization doesn't allow the local organization to join its ranks.

But there's not just hypocrisy here, there are real consequences too. Consider the cases of Sgt. Shmuel Akiva Weiss and Sgt.-Maj.(res.) Yochai Porat. Both young men were medics. Both undoubtedly wore the patch of the MDA identifying them as medics and yet they were shot as they attempted to treat wounded comrades. If the patch was an internationally recognized symbol, their murders would have been international crimes.

It's true that when dealing with Israel one cannot assume that outrages committed against Israeli Jews will raise anyone's hackles. Nor will I assume that the murderers of these young men would have obeyed the rules of international law. Still why is Israel denied even the fiction that its people are afforded the same protections as anyone else in the world? That is what is so bad about the ICRC. The American Red Cross, especially under the leadership of Dr. Bernadine Healy, has fought this injustice. But the complicity of the ICRC to deny Israel the same rights all other countries have is evil. Maybe not the same level as those who pulled the trigger; but it's an evil that allowed the triggers to be pulled.

Old words
My Right Word considers the usage of Judea and Samaria and observes:

While Judea and Samaria appear extensively in the Bible as well as the New Testament (Acts 8:1, for example), they were terms used by the British during their Mandate period 1920-1948 and by the United Nations in its Partition Resolution 181 (Part II, Para. A).

This recalls an article from November 4, 1991. It is a fawning and unquestioning profile of Hannan Ashrawi by Caryle Murphy of the Washington Post and it displays the built in biases of much of the MSM when dealing with the Middle East:

As spokeswoman for the Palestinian delegation at the Middle East peace conference here, the 45-year-old Ashrawi has been arguing that case with a composure, conciseness and clarity long missing in the bitter Palestinian-Israeli dispute. In the process, she has left many of the outworn cliches and taboos surrounding this conflict cut to ribbons.

Take, for example, the man who rose at Friday's press conference to confront her. A representative of an American Christian broadcasting outlet, he said he "didn't understand" how Ashrawi could ask Israel "to exchange land for peace," because "when Judea and Samaria were in the hands of the Arab world, Israel was attacked three times."

"First of all, I find your reference to 'Judea and Samaria' a statement of extreme bias, and rather offensive," Ashrawi replied, homing in on his use of the biblical names for the occupied West Bank that echoes the Israeli government's religion-based claim to the land where Ashrawi lives and where the Palestinians hope someday to have an independent state. "I am a Palestinian Christian, and I know what Christianity is. I am a descendant of the first Christians in the world, and Jesus Christ was born in my country, in my land. Bethlehem is a Palestinian town. So I will not accept this one-upmanship on Christianity. Nobody has the monopoly."

After dismissing the man's challenge with a deft mini-dissertation, she ended with: "Are there any serious questions?"

There is, of course, a striking problem with this "deft mini-dissertation." What would Jesus have called the areas in question? He almost certainly wouldn't have called them Palestine! Most likely he would have referred to them as Judea and Samaria, the biblical names of the places. But Murphy was so enamored of the put down of someone sympathetic to Israel, she didn't bother to note that Ashrawi's response was seriously and historically wrong.

Skeptical words
Bloghead criticizes Likud for being willing to sacrifice its electoral health to get back at PM Sharon.
I believe 1) that she's taking these early polls too seriously.
a) PM Sharon - like him or not - is a master politician. I don't mean that cynically. In 1982 he had to resign in disgrace. Less than 20 years later he was leading his country. Aside from Nixon that has to be one of the great political comebacks of all time. There's no luck involved. Sharon is a top notch politician who can never be underestimated. A poll with no consequences may say something about how people really feel, but politicians have no interest in ceding power. If the Likud party members feel that Sharon is a better bet to keep them in power, they'll support Sharon when it counts. I think he's good enough to be able to stave off Netanyahu's challenge.
b) That's made easier because as I've written before Bibi's resignation really hurts him, even if it was something that was forced on him. He may still recover politically, but it will take awhile. I wouldn't bet on his success in his first election after resigning.
2) She's overestimating Sharon. No I'm not contradicting myself. It seems every election there's excitement about a third way part. In 1996 it was Avigdor Kahalani. In 1999 it was the perfect storm of Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Yitzchak Mordechai and a cast of thousands. Neither of these parties fared as well as initial speculation expected them too. If Sharon breaks off from Likud, I'm sure he'll be disappointed. Though Sharon has campaign experience that the others didn't, he's not a great campaigner. He needs Likud as much as the party needs him.

Biased Words
New blogger SerandEz writes about media bias and quotes an eminent greybeard - OK I'm not eminent and my beard isn't grey .... yet - Soccer Dad to prove a point.

Solomonia interviews Prof Richard Landes who is starting a new blog about media criticism. Here's a sample of the exchange:

S: Somewhat related question...You believe at that level there's very little difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism?

L: Let me put it to you this way, if you do one of those Venn diagrams between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, there's a 90-98% overlap. It's a ludicrous distinction. It's a fig-leaf to say you're anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic. Show me an anti-Semite who's not also an anti-Zionist.

Technorati Tag: Israel.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Popular culture in the news 8/30/05

via Pillage Idiot
There's now a "human zoo" exhibit at the London Zoo:

London Zoo unveiled a new exhibition -- eight humans prowling around wearing little more than fig leaves to cover their modesty.

The "Human Zoo" is intended to show the basic nature of human beings as they frolick throughout the August bank holiday weekend.

"We have set up this exhibit to highlight the spread of man as a plague species and to communicate the importance of man's place in the planet's ecosystem," London Zoo said.

Ah yes.

This reminds me of "The Cage" the original Star Trek pilot that featured an alien race of zoo keepers that wanted to capture the Enterprises crew, specifically Capt Pike to be on display in their "zoo." Of course this is Earth not Talos IV and this "human zoo" seems rather pedestrian.

Un-stated

Ehud Yaari writes in "The non-State":

though Israel is abandoning the Strip, it will still be considered an "occupying power" by the Palestinians, a kind of absentee landlord, responsible for what happens on his property although he isn't there. Thus, the Palestinians can demand that Sharon allow them to exercise sovereignty at the same time as they urge him to keep shouldering the burden of an occupier's obligations. A bizarre situation will arise, with Gaza no longer under occupation, but also not free, and certainly not independent. It's a non-state, finally liberated but still perceived as conquered.
...
Indeed, the disengagement in Gaza is the fulfillment of Arafat's dream of "runaway statehood" come true. As often pointed out in this column, he wanted a state not bound by agreements, a state won by blood and not ink.

This is what's pernicious about the peace process. No number of "confidence building measures" will ever be enough. The legal mechanics of this claim are laid out by Dore Gold in "Legal Acrobatics":

Remarkably, even as Israel completes its withdrawal from 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, official Palestinian spokesmen are already making the argument that Gaza disengagement changes very little and, as far as they are concerned, Gaza remains "occupied" territory. According to the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas already stated on July 7, 2005, that "the legal status of the areas slated for evacuation has not changed."

Of course this is an occurence that we've seen before. In June 2000 the Security Council certified Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon as complete:

After consultations throughout the weekend, the Security Council this afternoon endorsed the work done by the United Nations as mandated by the Security Council, including the Secretary-General’s conclusion that, as of 16 June, Israel had withdrawn its forces from Lebanon in accordance with Security Council resolution 425 (1978).

There actually was more from the UN:

"6. Calls on the Government of Lebanon to ensure the return of its effective authority and presence in the south, and in particular to proceed with a significant deployment of the Lebanese armed forces as soon as possible;

"7. Welcomes the establishment of checkpoints by the Government of Lebanon in the vacated area, and encourages the Government of Lebanon to ensure a calm environment throughout the south, including through the control of all checkpoints;

So the Lebanese had some responsibilities here too.

Of course even then there were problems:

The Lebanese Government advised that the line used for the purpose of confirming the withdrawal did not conform in three locations to the internationally recognized border with Israel. Concerning the Shab'a farmlands, both Lebanon and Syria state that this land belongs to Lebanon.

Whoops, so even as the UN was certifying Israel's withdrawal Syria and its vassal state Lebanon were making sure that Hezbollah would retain its grievance against Israel.

And of course, because Israel had fully withdrawn from Lebanon, the UN no longer turned a blind eye to Hezbollah's terrorism. Actually, not. The UN served as an accomplice to the kidnapping by first denying that it had a videotape of the kidnappings and then by refusing to show it to Israel lest it take sides in a conflict between a member state and a terrorist organization.

This site counts at least 28 attacks agains Israeli positions in Har Dov. It does not include the numerous attacks on civilians. Overall about 20 Israelis have been killed in cross border attacks since the withdrawal and the Lebanese army has not taken control of southern Lebanon, nor has Hezbollah laid down its arms.

No doubt that any accomodation Israel reaches with the Palestinians will be met with similar non recognition that the Israeli step help resolve the conflict. Even without the legal maneuverings that Dr. Gold discusses we had a recent declaration by "moderate" Mohammad Dahlan that the areas north of Gaza also needed to be evacuated. The Jerusalem Post was correct when it argued:

The fact that the rocket attack on Netiv Ha'asara last week came a short time after PA minister Muhammad Dahlan took Israeli disengagement coordinators by surprise when he seemingly casually raised demands for that village's land cannot be written off as a mere unfortunate coincidence.

Some seemed to dismiss the attack, which killed 22-year-old Dana Galkovitch, and to take Dahlan's retractions at face value. But the fact that Netiv Ha'asara was subsequently targeted with such deadly precision leaves too little room for comfort.

We may be witnessing nothing less than the germination of the next set of demands to fuel further conflict following the projected completion of the disengagement from Gaza. Netiv Ha'asara's shelling speaks louder than Dahlan's wan backtracking. It and neighboring kibbutzim, all essentially Ashkelon suburbs situated inside the Green Line, have much to fear from the approaching border if that means mortar fire from closer range.

There's a joke that a man goes to a zoo and sees a lion lying down in the same cage with a lamb. He is amazed. The messianic vision of peace on earth has finally been achieved. He goes to the zookeeper and asks how he managed this feat. The zookeeper simply answers, "We put a new lamb in each morning."

The peace process is, alas, a lot like this. Israel takes some tangible step for peace and its value is quickly forgotten followed by new demands for withdrawals, prisoner releases, arms transfers or other confidence building measures are made on Israel without reciprocal or even minimal demands made on Israel's enemies.

We will not see peace unless Israel's enemies want it. For now they've made it clear, they'd rather fight Israel than build a future for themselves and their children. The world, it appears, will just stand back and let it continue.

Technorati Tag: Israel.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

When speculation replaces reporting

According to a number of reports Mahmoud Abbas condemned yesterday's terrorist attack in Be'er Sheva. But that wasn't enough:

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, condemning the attack, described it as a "terrorist operation".

But he also described a recent Israeli raid in the West Bank in which five Palestinians died as a "provocation".

(Please note the picture at the BBC report of a member of Zaka covering the head of the attempted mass murderer; giving a measure of dignity to the individual who would have killed more had an alert bus driver not acted decisively.)

The New York Times, a "real" newspaper to some, goes a bit further, in "Palestinian bomber kills only himself near Israeli bus station", Steven Erlanger reports:

The raid was aimed, Israel said, at a cell of Islamic Jihad that had planned the two most recent suicide bombings, in Tel Aviv on Feb. 25 and in Netanya on July 12, in which 10 Israelis died. But the raid was controversial in its timing; the main target, Ribhi Amara, escaped; and at least one innocent teenager was killed in the gunfire, according to an article about an internal army investigation in the newspaper Maariv on Sunday.

The army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, reportedly criticized the "lack of sensitivity" of the timing of the operation, saying, according to Maariv, "In timing like this we must be much more sensitive, to act only against ticking bombs and do everything possible to refrain from killing wanted people." He was not informed of the operation in advance to approve it, as he should have been, the newspaper said.

A Palestinian witness, Abdelkarim Dalbah, told The New York Times last week that the Israelis had fired first and used heavy firepower, an account supported in the Maariv report. Palestinians say three teenagers who were killed had only loose ties to militant groups; the Israelis say four of the dead were militants.

There was also a suggestion that a local leader of Islamic Jihad who was killed in the operation, Adel Abu Khalil, 26, was providing inside intelligence to the Palestinian Authority.

After the raid, Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas, promised revenge. On Sunday, Jibril Rajoub, an Abbas aide who was once in charge of Palestinian preventive security for the West Bank, said, "Whoever gave the order for the Tulkarm massacre is responsible for the attack in Beersheba."

This is extraordinary. The lengths to which the Times goes to discredit the Israeli account is astounding.

Using the "reported" statement of the Chief of Staff that the raid was inappropriate is poor sourcing at its best (or rather worst.)

I checked out three other Israeli sources on the Be'er Sheva bombing: the Jerusalem Post, Ynet and Ha'aretz. The only reason that Erlanger gives for believing the article in Ma'ariv that, for now, has been ignored by 3 other newspapers is that an element of the Ma'ariv account is supported by Palestinian eyewitness! (And we know how reliable they are!)

Later on in the article Erlanger writes about the question surrounding Israel's withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor and handing the job of managing its security to Egypt:

The cabinet vote approving Egyptian patrols at the Gaza border is important for the longer term. Israel wants international recognition of the end of its occupation of Gaza, but one obvious condition is to withdraw all of its troops - including those on the eight-mile border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi route.

Israeli troops there are highly exposed, but serve to try to stop smuggling of arms, people and other contraband from Egypt, much of which comes through tunnels under the border. Israel has had only modest success in that effort, and Egypt, which has intelligence about the families that run the tunnels as a business, is thought to have a clear national interest in keeping Gaza from becoming a haven for terrorism.

Still, people in the Israeli right - in other words, in the conservative wing of Mr. Sharon's conservative Likud Party, including his rival Benjamin Netanyahu and the legislator Yuval Steinitz - have regularly criticized any deal with Egypt. They argue that even 750 border guards will open the way to the remilitarization of the Sinai and could undermine Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, which limits the number of armed men Egypt can have in the Sinai.

The new agreement with Egypt, which is an amendment to the peace treaty, will be voted on in a special session of Parliament. The discussion could be contentious, but the amendment is expected to pass. It was passed Sunday by the cabinet 18 to 2.

Mr. Netanyahu is expected to openly challenge Mr. Sharon for the leadership of Likud this week.

First of all Erlanger presents a paradox: Israel has had only modest success in that effort [to control arms coming into Gaza] and that "Egypt ... is thought to have a clear national interest in keeping Gaza from becoming a haven for terrorism." So then why hasn't Egypt done more to stop the tunnels until now. Erlanger here is finessing an issue: Egypt's trustworthiness in helping Israel stop arms smuggling into Gaza by presenting an Egyptian "interest" - that hasn't been demonstrated by Egypt's actions - as a reason Israel should trust Egypt.

He compounds this by ascribing doubts as to the wisdom of inviting 750 Egyptian soldiers to Israel's "right" or as he put it "...the conservative wing of Mr. Sharon's conservative Likud Party" (it's odd to describe a party that won a plurality of seats in the last election as conservative rather than mainstream but let that slide for now.) Why does Erlanger portray objections to the renewed armed Egyptian presence in the Sinai as simply a cynical political move designed to boost the prospects of Binyamin Netanyahu's electoral chances?

In Ha'aretz, an article reporting that PM Sharon's national security advisor Gen. Giora Eiland plans to step down, Amir Oren reports:

At Sunday's cabinet meeting, Eiland said there were significant flaws in the the proposal to bring an Egyptian military force into Rafah, before Israel has decided whether to abandon the Philadelphi route and without receiving anything from the Egyptians and Palestinians in return.

This objection can hardly be said to be partisan as the article subsequently tells us:

However, unlike Dayan and Halevy, who ended their term after falling out with Sharon, Eiland and the premier have maintained correct working relations, despite professional disagreements and political confidants' efforts to come between them.

Let's just review: In the course of a single article Steven Erlanger of the New York Times cites an unsupported report that questions whether Israel was right in defending itself, then fails to do similar digging when ascribing objections to an increased Egyptian presence in the Sinai to political motives. This is not reporting. This is propaganda; plain and simple.
Technorati Tag: Israel.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Not in a pie

While we waited in line for the Tiny Timbers ride at Hershey Park my 3 year old daughter noticed this little guy bravely nibbling on some nearby vegetation. The rabbit seemed rather unafraid of humans and, several times, ventured awfully close to other amusement park visitors.
Still watching him, I couldn't get out of my head, Peter Rabbit's mother's exhortation to her son, "Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. MacGregor." I rather think this fellow's fate will be somewhat happier than Peter Rabbit's father.

Haveil havalim #34 is UP

Mosey on over to Me-ander or Shiloh Musings - both by the same talented lady - and read the latest Haveil Havalim/ Vanity of the Vanities (#34 to be exact) - the Jewish/Israel blogging carnival. There's a lot worth reading - especially about the aftermath of disengagement.

Next week's host is Israel Perspectives. Please e-mail him with your (self-) nominations of the best of the Israeli/Jewish blogosphere this week so he can include you at orny35 at yahoo dot com
Or use Conservative Cat's handy dandy carnival submission page. Thank you very much,

If you'd like to host Haveil Havalim - Vanity of Vanities - The Jewish/Israel blogging carnival - send me an e-mail at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com and I'll pencil, er electron you in.

Finally, I've recently started a Haveil Havalim e-mail list to keep people apprised of the most recent editions. Send me an e-mail if you'd like to keep up. At most I'll send out 2 e-mails a week, one to announce the new HH the other (if I remember) a mid week reminder. Again to subscribe, send me an e-mail at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

You'll notice below that I've added tags to Haveil Havalim, I'm hoping to raise the profile of Haveil Havalim so that more people will be aware of it. If you host and do trackback pings, cut and paste these tags. I'm also attempting to get Haveil Havalim noticed by TTLB's Ubercarnival.

Haveil Havalim (The Jewish/Israeli blog carnival) can also be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, haveil_havalim, Israel, Judaism.

NOTE: I plan to do some upkeep on this later as I am in a rush. I wanted to make sure that you could get started this morning.

Continue reading to see past editions

#33 Soccer Dad
Tisha B'Av Blogburst
#32 Bloghead
#31 Soccer Dad
#30 Jack's Shack
#29 Crossing the Rubicon2
#28 Soccer Dad
#27 Mirty's Place
#26 Shiloh Musings
#25 Soccer Dad
#24 Mirty's Place
#23 Soccer Dad
#22 Mystical Paths
#21 Rabbinical Authority Consortium of HACKers
#20 Shiloh Musings
#19 Devarim
#18 Soccer Dad
#17 Mystical Paths
#16 Critical Mastiff
#15 Soccer Dad
#14 Multiple Mentality
#13 IsraPundit
#12 DovBear
#11 Kesher Talk
#10 Biur Chametz
#9 Soccer Dad
#8 It's Almost Supernatural
#7 Bloghead
#6 Willow Tree.
#5 Crossing the Rubicon2
#4 Dov Bear
#3 Biur Chametz

Will he come up short?

In 1999 the Orioles traded Juan Guzman to the Cincinatti Reds for Jacobo Sequea and BJ Ryan. BJ has become the O's closer and a very good one at that. Sequea, last year, set AA Bowie's single season record for saves. A few months ago the O's released him.
The problem with single season records in the minor leagues is that it often means that the player is just good enough for the level he's at, showing some weakness that indicates that he's not ready to move up. These records are nice but a player achieving them may not consider it the best possible sign.
Yesterday the Washington Post featured a nice article about Rick Short, a career minor leaguer, who is playing for the New Orleans Zephyrs the AAA team of the Washington Nationals.
Short - who was originally drafted by the Orioles, I had seen him play at Bowie - is flirting with becoming the first player to bat .400 in a minor league season since 1961.
In Short's case, even this attention is a bit late, it's very sweet. He's been toiling in the minor leagues for 12 years. This year has brought him his first two cups of coffee in the bigs - for a team that didn't exist until this year. But now he's getting attention for his above average average.
The Post notes an irony about the bats Short acquired while he was up in the big leagues:

He found a box of bats that shortstop Cristian Guzman didn't want, pulled one out and immediately loved the way it felt. This is what he took with him to home plate when they called him to pinch hit a few innings later.

He hit the ball twice off Seattle pitcher Joel Piñeiro. One was a foul ball, the other a single to left. The contact left two black scuff marks on the bat. When the game was over, he pulled a long sock over the bat to protect it and took it, along with the rest of Guzman's discarded bats, and went back to New Orleans. Which of course brings delicious irony to this story -- while Guzman is having the worst offensive year of any big league regular in nearly two decades, Short is using his bats to chase something that hasn't been done in the minors since 1961.

Rick Short will never be a star. But this year, at age 32, he's succeeding on his own terms, finally achieving some recognition - and making the big leagues. The title of this post was a play on Rick Short's name, but let me answer that I hope not.

Orioles 2 - angels 0

A friend had tickets for tonight's Orioles-Angels game that he couldn't use. So he offered them to us. We don't get out much so this was a perfect opportunity to get out and spend some time alone. With about 24000 other people.

The players of the game were the Lopez's - Javy and Rodrigo. Javy's fourth inning home run provided all the offense for the game; Rodrigo pitched seven strong innings shutting down the Angels' offense when it mattered most.

I most feared Vladimir Guerrero. After having a little adventure in the third, Rodrigo faced Vlad in the fourth with one man on and no one out. I had figured that Vlad would get an extra base hit. But it didn't happen. He hit a chop to Miguel Tejada. Tejada had it, but then dropped it, putting Rodrigo into an even more difficult situation. But Rodrigo got the next three batters.

The bottom of the fourth did not start auspiciously. The play by play says that Melvin Mora grounded to third. But it wasn't that simple. Most of his bat made it to short.

Usually I'm an obsessed scorekeeper at a baseball game, but I had little interest in doing so tonight. Tonight I wanted to play sports photographer with my wife's camera. Usually I focused on batters, tying to get the timing right and catch someone hitting one out. But it's not as easy at it looks. I'm not sure that I got Tejada's double swing, but I did get Javy's home run swing. Unfortunately I had him at the back of the frame not the front. Oh well.

In the end, I probably photographed the most significant moment of the game.
In the fifth the Angels loaded the bases and Rodrigo was on the ropes. With two outs, he had to face Vlad.

And with that pitch, Rodrigo struck Vlad out, preserving the O's lead.

Until the fifth inning both pitchers had thrown about the same number of pitches but Lackey's S/B ratio was about 2:1 while Rodrigo's was closer to 3:2. I thought that that difference was going to come back and haunt Rodrigo; but he prevailed. After the fifth inning Rodrigo's had thrown 10-20 more pitches than Lackey. The difference was the home run. Lackey pitched better than Rodrigo, but in the end his mistake cost some runs; but Rodrigo stranded 7 runner in 7 innings.

Finally in the 6th inning I got the batting shot I wanted. Tejada hit a single that I caught.

Rodrigo surprised me by finishing the 7th, I had thought that he would have been removed after 6. Still after his day was over, he had thrown 112 pitches or about 20 more than Lackey threw in an extra inning of work.

A few observations.
1) I thought that Gibbons looked pretty good in right. He seems to judge the balls pretty quickly.
2) I was surprised at the level of booing for Raffy. I understand booing him when he comes up the first time. But twice he came up with men on and he was booed then too. The radio guys have said that his at bats have been accompanied by a mixed reaction. What I heard tonight was not that mixed.
3) The double by Quinlan against BJ Ryan in the 9th was a very questionable call. Everyone near where I was sitting saw the ball on the foul side of the foul line. It seemed that only the umpire saw it fair. Though Perlozzo did not come out, Raffy seemed to have a few words with the ump.

All in all. The O's played well and won. We had a great time.

Sbarro's rememberance

Two years ago when we were in Israel, my wife and two daughters and I went to Sbarro's. I took this picture of the plaque. The Hebrew simply says "Remembering the darkness that fell upon us ..." and gives the date of the 20th of (the Hebrew month) of Av 5761 (2001). Today is the 4th anniversary of the deaths of Giora Balash, Zvika Golombek, Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, Tehila Maoz, Frieda Mendelsohn, Michal Raziel, Malka Roth, Mordechai Schijveschuurder, Tzira Schijveschuurder, Ra'aya Schijveschuurder, Avraham Yitzhak Schijveschuurder, Hemda Schijveschuurder, Lily Shimashvili, Tamara Shimashvili, Yocheved Shoshan, Aliza Malka, Tzahi Grabli, Kobi Nir, Gil Oz, Sharon Ben-Shalom and Yaniv Ben-Shalom.

At the time it was the most shocking of the many terror attacks that had been perpetrated against Israel by the Palestinians during that first of year of the "Aqsa intifada or Oslo war.

Ben Zion Nemmett whose daughter was injured in the atrocity wrote a haunting essay "Remembering Shema Yisrael."

The Roth family, whose daughter Malki was killed that day in Sbarro as she ate lunch with her best friend Michal Raziel, who was also killed, created a foundation Keren Malki in their daughter's memory. The Roths who have a disabled child created a foundation to carry on the work that Malki did. Malki had been a big help with her sister and worked with other disabled children. The foundation is devoted to helping families cope with their disabled children. The parents, Arnold and Frimet Roth frequently write and speak of their tragedy.

At Keren Malki there are a number of articles available from the media by both parents, including the recent rememberence by Frimet Roth on the occasion of her daughter's 4th Yahrzeit. Though I was no fan of the Washington Post's Israeli correspondent at the time, Lee Hockstader, he presented a very effective and affecting profile of Arnold Roth a week after the terror attack, "The Suicide Bomber Took Our Daughter's Life But Not Our Convictions."

Jack Kelley's harrowing and sympathetic reporting of the attack for USA Today was fabricated. He may have been close to the scene but much of what he described never happened.

Students at Al Najah University showed their sympathy with a tastefully done re-enactment so they could relive the experience of killing Jews (scroll down). A spokesman for the university compares it to playing sports.

Finally it's worth noting that in the wake of this atrocity Charles Krauthammer wrote "Mideast Violence: The Only Way Out" pretty much suggesting the disengagement as PM Sharon eventually carried it out.

Katrina makes waves

And brings no sunshine to walk on.
UPDATE: When I wrote this, I don't think anyone realized how terribly devastating Katrina would be. Had I known. I would surely not have posted anything so glib.

Like a honey bee stings you've gone ...

Did you know that Dumbledore is another name for a bumblebee? My daughter found that when she was looking for another Harry Potter site. More on that later.

First a quick detour to another bit of popular culture: Star Trek.
In the spirit of Odo's immortal line: "Another glorious chapter of Klingon history. Tell me, do they still sing songs of the great Tribble hunt?" there's a page of Klingon (fractured) fairy tales. (via Crossing the Rubicon)

Now back to our originally scheduled item of popular culture. If you haven't already read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, do not venture further as following the next link will lead you to major spoilers. To go further without having read the latest Harry Potter would be "an act of violation, it is against nature."

You have been warned.

I really mean it.

Even the name of this website is a spoiler.

So I won't give its name.

Just a link.

Israel etc.

I thought it would be funny to do this. Elder of Ziyon writes about the Protocols. Alas it's not really funny.

Bloghead writes about a royal pain. But as we (a number of us J-bloggers) concluded recently, nearly everyJew alive today is likely descended from King David. But that raises another question. The Hashemite dynasty derives its royalty from the fact that they can trace their ancestry back to the prophet. I suspect (though don't know for sure) that the ibn Sauds probably make the same claim. What would happen if a demographer or geneaologist starting studyin the Muslim world and determined that more than 90% of the Arab/Muslim world alive today is descended from Mohammed. Do you think that the dynamics of the Arab world change if more of its subjects thought that they were royalty too?

Biur Chametz revisits his arguments against disengagement. And they still stand up.

In the early days of the internet before most people had access at home there was Information Regarding Israel's Security or IRIS. At that time about the only way to get alternative news from Israel was from IRIS, IMRA or the Jerusalem Post. I'm pretty certain that this even pre-dated Arutz-7. Well now it's back. With a blog to boot. And who should be the #1 blogger at IRIS but longtime Best of the Web Today contributor Barak Moore! And what does IRIS have on it's plate right now? Bush Administration's Arab Radio Gaining Market Share. Administration critics love claiming that the Bush administration is bad at public diplomacy. I wonder how they will explain this away.

It's Almost Supernatural gets a well-deserved mention in Media Backspin. He's also all over South Africa's Mail and Guardian for its biased coverage of disengagement. One item in particular caught my eye:

Two full pages were devoted to the disengagement, with what the editorial staff would say was perfect balance - analysis by Daoud Kuttab, director of the Institute of Modern Media at Ramallah's Al Quds University;

Mr. Kuttab, who never has a word to say about the fate of his fellow Christians under the PA has been rather busy. Actually the Mail and Guardian's op-ed, is roughly the same one that appeared in the Washington Post. In short, these articles are pleas for international pressure on Israel to negotiate with the PA because unilateralism can't possibly work. (Ignoring the bilateral nature of the years 1993 - 2000 and the wonderful success that brought about.):

Washington’s quixotic decision to call Israel’s unilateral move part of the road map has failed to convince many Palestinians. The prevailing opinion among Palestinians is that the road map will be put into deep freeze once the Israelis complete their Gaza withdrawal.

But the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, their leaders and the international community must all respond to the challenges that will follow. Most importantly, the future of the conflict and the chances for genuine peace in the region will depend on understanding the limits of offensive military power, defensive resistance and unilateralism. Serious face-to-face talks, in accordance with international law and with the help of the international community, are the only way forward.

(Usually papers do not want op-ed articles that are written for other newspapers. I wonder how the Post and Mail & Guardian would feel if they knew that Kuttab cut and pasted parts of one article into the other.)
The New York Times article "Live from Gaza: A New View of Israel" was slightly different. (The title though, evoking Saturday Night Live, is a bit flip.) It was to the effect of "Palestinians can't believe that Israelis are human." Still Kuttab had the ability to make the article nastily critical of Israel:

Of course, Palestinians didn't miss the context. Talk in our living rooms and over Turkish coffee at the office has been mixed: "Do you think they were acting?"; "Anyway, they were illegally on our land"; "Imagine what Palestinian refugees felt as they were being forcibly evicted years ago"; "What about the 120 homes in Rafah that were razed a few months ago?"; "Where was the world press as Palestinians were killed, often by these same settlers?"

Do we know that any of these statements describe actual events? I guess no matter, it's only an opinion piece.
but I was surprised by this:

Another network countered such images with an interview with the parents of Muhammad al-Dura, the 12-year-old boy who was photographed dying in his father's arms in 2000 and whose image has become a symbol of the intifada.

Nowhere does that item suggest that Israeli troops shot Mohammad al-Dura. Maybe James Fallows' work has made a difference.
Finally there's:

It carried an editorial on Thursday about the effects of the images of settlers crying and Israeli soldiers embracing them. It concluded that such scenes could have been avoided had Israel not grabbed Palestinian lands in the first place.

Which is really no different from what you would read in Ha'aretz. Or the message of the cartoons It's Almost Supernatural complained about at the beginning of this item.

Right now, however upset we are (or aren't) about the disengagement, it has happened and supporters of Israel must be ready for the next step. Ruthie Blum's interview of Dore Gold "Defensible Borders" shows why that's necessary:

"While Israel is consumed with the issue of disengagement," he says, in the style of someone well-versed in diplomacy, "the rest of the world isn't standing still; it's already thinking about the post-disengagement period. And over time, if we're not articulating what our long-term goals are, others' impressions of what final-status talks will look like begin to coagulate and harden."

Remember the Douad Kuttab article above calling for international pressure on Israel? That is going to be the most common call among those who are not pro-Israel. It will be the mantra of the New York Times and Washington Post. And it has been unfortunately been mentioned by Secretary of State Rice.
Here are the two key questions and answers:

When you refer to 'defining our territorial requirements,' don't you mean withdrawals? Unlike the Palestinians, who can aim at something they don't have, Israel is saying: "We are willing to retreat from X, Y, and Z. Whatever we put forth as a territorial goal, it is less than what we have now. Correct?
That's true. It is less than what we have today.

So, would you still call it a goal?

Unless we articulate that we have territorial rights in the West Bank for defensible borders, sooner or later we will find ourselves fighting over the '67 lines. This is what I want to avoid.

When most people talk about the boundaries between a Palestinian state and Israel, they have certain reference points. For example, they use the term "viable Palestinian state." They claim that the '67 lines are absolutely necessary for a such a state, because anything less would not be viewed by the Palestinian people as legitimate.

Furthermore, many analysts look at the whole issue of the West Bank and Palestinian statehood and ask what its limitations are. Their answer is Israeli settlements. So the methodology goes like this: How does one draw a line in the West Bank to pack in the maximum number of Israelis into the minimum amount of territory? Once that line is figured out, they assess, a solution to the conflict is at hand.

I was approached two years ago by members of Congress, who said, "When you say 'Palestinian state,' most people think '67 lines. No one is hearing any counterpoints to that."

When Prime Minister Sharon presented the disengagement plan to President Bush on April 14, 2004, it was pretty clear – since Arafat was still alive – that he didn't think he could get a quid pro quo from the Palestinians. He did think, however, that he could get one from the United States. What he got was a letter from the president which talked about Israel's realistic expectation to retain settlement blocs in the West Bank. It also used the expression "defensible borders."

I took that expression and built a conference around it at the Knesset six months later, in conjunction with MK Yuval Steinitz.

At the conference, I talked about US policy – about Resolution 242 and about "defensible borders," among others – and turned it into a user-friendly booklet in English, with pull-quotes and attractive maps.

Everybody forgets that Resolution 242 never required Israel to withdraw fully from the territories it accrued in the '67 war. In fact, the fight over the wording of the resolution – whether to say, "withdraw from territories," "withdraw from the territories" or "withdraw from all the territories" – wasn't at the level of a nit-picking drafting team in New York.

Another reason we chose the term "defensible borders" as our mantra had to do with the late Yitzhak Rabin. One month before he was assassinated, he presented the interim agreement for ratification by the Knesset. Amazingly, in that speech, he laid out the future borders of Israel! He spoke of the Jordan Valley in the widest sense of the term. He talked about the settlement blocs. He talked about united Jerusalem.

Efforts to support Israel now must be centered around this approach. Like it or not, (I don't) this is what the government is doing or will be doing. (And it won't e any better if Likud is ousted and Labor takes its place.) Yes it's a retreat, but for too long the settlement to the conflict has been defined by the Palestinians and their supporters internationally and in Israel. We'd better make sure that the withdrawal from Gaza leads to pressure on the Palestinians to deliver and not invite more unilateral pressure on Israel.
I must emphasize that it must be clear that if the Palestinians don't accept Israel's minimum security requirements, there will be no more concessions.
Technorati tag: Israel.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Milbloggers etc.

(via NRO's Media Blog) About two weeks ago The Washington Post featured an article on Milbloggers (Military Bloggers). When I read it I couldn't believe it. Here's how PostWatch neatly sums up the article:

What do you suppose the Post would focus on in a front-page story titled The New Ernie Pyles: Sgtlizzie and 67cshdocs by Jonathan Finer?

1. Milbloggers often complain that mainstream media is biased against the war and don't report on the good they're doing. This is their story...
2. Military officials earlier this year issued regulations on milblogs, and some have been shut down after reporting on casualties and antiwar sentiment among troops
3. Other blogs haven't been shut down. They report on the horror of war.
4. I know, let's run a sidebar featuring an Iraqi blogger with a "chilling 5,000-word posting" on being interrogated by U.S. forces.

PostWatch readers know they can skip "1" and run merrily along to 2,3 and 4.

Since the Washington Post won't give you a taste for other Milbloggers (though the article mentions the Mudville Gazette) I'd like to give you a taste of a couple that I follow (though not as consistently as I ought to.)

For one there's Firepower Forward. In "Something to chew on" he uses quotes from the Civil War classic, "Killer Angels" to frame his feelings as to why he's fighting by contrasting the cause of the Union to the evil nature of the Taliban that he is now fighting:

…This was the land where no man had to bow. In this place at last a man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become. This was the first place on earth where man mattered more than the state. True freedom had begun here and it would eventually spread over all the earth…

If freedom is the ability to choose your own destiny, then the recent history of this country that has been engaged in war and conflict longer than most of its citizens can remember, is truly the antithesis of freedom. Following a peaceful monarchy and a bloody subjugation by the Soviets, a new, more sublime method of enslavement manifested itself, a slavery of the worst kind. It is a slavery in which the chains that bind a person are the scriptures and sacredly held religious beliefs which have been perverted and used to exploit the most vulnerable, the ones whose physical condition has become so desperate that they feel the only tangible possession they have is the paradise that awaits them in the afterlife.

Going from eloquent to harrowing we leave Afghanistan and read of Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum's close encounter with an IED in "Simple Words and Power:"

Yesterday I finally came face to face with an IED. The soldiers…no men of Delta Company 1-184, and Rogue platoon recognized the threat. As we passed by the device, the driver became hyper aware, he saw what most of us did not, a glint of metal amongst the trash strewn road. As we passed by it, it lay there barely visible, yet it was the only thing I could see, it became what could have been our end. Life does not flash before your eyes when you come face to face with mortality, but a resignation that this could be the last moment, then sadness. Yet oddly, it didn’t take us. We cordoned off the area and kept the civilians away, spectators began to gather, and the danger became three dimensional. Moments before we passed our IED, another of our patrols was struck by an IED of similar design, there were no injuries, within moments of that report we seemed years away surrounded by onlookers, and trapped within our own cordon. The walls we had built to keep people away had also trapped us within.

I felt as if we were on a stage, and everyone from everywhere was looking at us. Demon 6, the on scene commander called up the report and help was on the way. Until then we were to wait literally on top of the weapon. Uncertain if the man who was to detonate it was amongst the on lookers, uncertain if an attack was to come at us. As the temperature rose so did the tension. Everyone was visibly on edge. We were each assigned sectors to scan for threats, yet the uneasy feeling that you were in someone’s sights was never far from our thoughts. It is that uneasy feeling you get when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and your spine tingles because you know you are not alone. The urge leave had to be overcome; each man there knew his duty and his job. Yet, each and every one of us knew that innocent lives were on the line, it sounds cliché but as we looked at the crowds gathering, the people getting out of their cars, we knew that the real danger didn’t lie with the IED itself, the real danger was us… We were the bait, if we were blown up, the crowds could easily swell to hundreds of onlookers. There is an old Arab saying; “It is foolish to hunt a tiger when there are plenty of sheep to be had.” If we were blown up, our enemies know that the civilians would converge upon the scene providing a much more lucrative target.

I realize that the Post's article reported on real people and told no lies. I also realize that by focusing mostly on those milbloggers that share the reporter's apparent opposition to the war the article gave an impression that was as dishonest as a lie.
And of course the mainstream media has not just made soldiers against the war a focus of its coverage; now with Cindy Sheehan, relatives of soldier now have a voice - a special moral authority - in opposing the war.
But Ms. Sheehan doesn't speak for all military families. Ronald Griffin, for one, disagrees and he quotes other grieving relatives who feels as he does:

Although we all walk the same sad road of sorrow and agony, we walk it as individuals with all the refreshing uniqueness of our own thoughts shaped in large measure by the life and death of our own fallen hero. Over the past few days I have reached out to other parents and loved ones of fallen heroes in an attempt to find out their reactions to all the attention Mrs. Sheehan has attracted. What emerges from those conversations is an empathy for Mrs. Sheehan's suffering but a fundamental disagreement with her politics.
Ann and Dale Hampton lost their only child, Capt. Kimberly Hampton, on Jan. 2, 2004, while she was flying her Kiowa helicopter. She was a member of the 82nd Airborne and the company commander. She had already served in Afghanistan before being deployed to Iraq. Ann Hampton wrote, "My grief sometimes seems unbearable, but I cannot add the additional baggage of anger. Mrs. Sheehan has every right to protest . . . but I cannot do that. I would be protesting the very thing that Kimberly believed in and died for."

One of the side effects of the focus on Ms. Sheehan is the way writers use her grief to paint the president as an insensitive boor. But President Bush isn't avoiding Cindy Sheehan because he's insensitive to her pain; he's avoiding her because she is trying to use him to highlight her cause.
If he were to meet with her (as he once did) it would be a private matter, not for the media as a story that Jack's Shack links to tells us:

Privately, Bush has met with about 900 family members of some 270 soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. The conversations are closed to the press, and Bush does not like to talk about what goes on in these grieving sessions, though there have been hints. An hour after he met with the families at Fort Bragg in June, he gave a hard-line speech on national TV. When he mentioned the sacrifice of military families, his lips visibly quivered."

For the president meeting with grieving military family members isn't a publicity stunt; it is a dignified private audience. Those who disparage him for not meeting with Cindy Sheehan disparage his sensitivity.

Israel's messianic political cult

No doubt you've heard of a segment of Israel's polity that insists on imposing its will on the rest of Israeli society. This group is politically well connected with its influence far outweighing its relatively small size. Most Israelis categorically reject this group's designs and yet it remains a potent force. Recently a Prime Minister with unimpeachable military credentials was elected to reverse the fortunes of the country and fulfill the agenda of this group. The Prime Minister's tenure, though, brought about the exact opposite of what this group had anticipated. But despite being defeated by reality, this group was insistent that its view was correct and persisted in imposing its messianic views on the country.
Of course I'm referring to Israel's "peace" camp, and politicans like Yossi Beilin. Beilin is the person most responsible for Oslo, an agreement that he laid the groundwork for while it was still illegal for Israelis to have any contacts with the PLO. It was an agreement that legitimized Yasser Arafat, who, as we now know, never rejected the path of terror.
If the "peace" camp had been correct, the year 2000 would have ushered in an era of peace as Israel's most decorated soldier, PM Ehud Barak offered over 90% of what Syria and the Palestinian Authority demanded. PM Barak also withdrew Israeli troops from Lebanon, and even had the withdrawal certified as complete by the UN. Yet the year ended with the new war imposed on Israel by the PA not in peace.
The forces of the peace camp were still strong. Even after Barak lost his parliamentary majority he still sought to sweeten the offer he made to Arafat at Camp David in 2000. (This contradicts Barak's current claim that he was testing Arafat's intentions. If that were true, once Camp David failed he should have washed his hands of Arafat.)
The elections of 2003 marginalized the "peace" camp even further. Yossi Beilin proved too extreme even for the Labor party and founded his own party that did miserably in the elections. But that didn't stop Beilin and his cohorts. In late 2003 Beilin defeated by reality and by the Israeli electorate enaged in publicity stunt called the Geneva Accord with the intent of undermining the democratically elected government of Israel.
It's important to remember this as the vicious leftists of Ha'aretz (Ari Shavit excluded) crow over the "demise" of religious Zionism. These are people whose views have been proven wrong and who still insist that theirs is the only right way to go. These are people whose views have been rejected by the Israeli voters.
Even after all this, the editors of Ha'aretz condemn zealotry but fail to see that quality in themselves when they write:

After decades of occupation and exploitation, Israel has an obligation to be at the forefront of giving assistance to rehabilitate Gaza and ensuring the Palestinians' prosperity. Realizing the dream of its old-new neighbors is to a large extent also in Israel's interest. And the Palestinian leadership, for its part, is facing an enormous challenge, because what is needed is not only an improved standard of living, but also construction of a security, economic and political model that, alongside the benefits it will bring to residents of Gaza, will also tranquilize Israeli fears about additional diplomatic moves in the West Bank.

Since 1993, no country had done more to create than Israel. But as long as Israel's help didn't conform to the Palestinians' most extreme aspirations it was never enough (and never could be enough). Nothing's changed. No amount of help that Israel gives the PA is going to help, unless the Palestinians accept Israel's right to exist. But demonizing the Jewish state has always been easier for the Palestinians than building one of their own. (This is true to a large part of other Arab/Muslim states; with their failing political systems they find it easier to condemn Israel than to build a state that serves its citizens instead of its leaders.) The editors of Ha'aretz pretend that world has changed to conform to their political views. But that is a messianic vision that has not been realized.
Technorait Tags:Israel, Judaism.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Popular culture in the news cont.

Last week I had a number of news items that sounded like they'd come from popular culture, but I'd forgotten one. Over the weekend I finally remembered it.

Suicide theme park proposed for Hong Kong island

A Hong Kong official said one of the territory's tiny islands could make a killing with a novel theme park based on its unsavoury reputation as a suicide spot, a media report said on Tuesday.

The morbid suggestion to create a ghost-town attraction where guests were dared to spend the night in "haunted flats" came at a meeting of local leaders on little Cheung Chau island.

Morbid? Yes. But doesn't it sound like Ian Fleming's "You only live twice" the next to last James Bond novel:

Shatterhand is a botanist who, with his wife, has come to Japan near the first of the year, 1963 (right after Tracy’s death). Dr. Shatterhand has asked that he be able to bring one million British pounds into the country, in exchange for property where he will be able to build a lavish garden, filled with fatal plants and killer animals, such as piranhas. . The plants and animals that Shatterhand has placed in the garden are expertly discribed, and add a good touch of detail to the character.

As soon as word gets around, people begin to flock to the “Castle Of Death” that Dr. Guntram Shatterhand has created. He sets up a bright red balloon, that entices people to kill themselves in Shatterhand’s garden.

(Dr. Shatterhand, it turns out, is Bond's nemesis, Ernst Stravo Blofeld.)

Taken from my msn home page

Movie Box Office Gross
The 40 Year-Old Virgin

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Haveil Havalim #33

UPDATE: Welcome to all of you who have come from MSNBC's Clicked! Thanks for visiting. Haveil Havalim is the Jewish or Israel related blogging carnival (based on the venerable Carnival of the Vanities idea.) For more information on this week's hostess, Shiloh Musings, see here. For previous editions of Haveil Havalim see the end of this post. Thanks for visiting and come back soon!
Disengagement
Mirty's Place has an IM disengagement discussion with her husband.

Is there a pot of gold after disengagement? Alas, Shiloh Musings tells us not. Nor has the government adequately prepared for the influx of students who were evacuated from their homes.

Life of Rubin has a picture gallery showing two sides of disengagement. Not for the fainthearted. Did you notice the picture of the woman showing off her key? When Palestinians do that reporter credulously quote them as saying that those are the keys to the houses that were taken from them.

Point of Pinchas tells of his participation in the Gush Katif protests and illustrates his post with photos.

Israel Perspectives wonders why there wasn't more activism on behalf of those who were against disengagement. He also questions praise from the Israeli media.

Dubious Profundity asks if the Palestinians can be counted on to take any reciprocal action to demonstrate their commitment to peace. One look at the picture that illustrates the item, answers his question.

Cox and Forkum illustrate that point a bit differently.

Jack's Shack hopes that disengagement will help Israel but is discouraged by the early returns.

Ocean Guy runs a journalist's account of the evacuation of Neve Dekalim.

Yourish warns us of "The Great Israeli Settler Danger." I guess she doesn't read Ha'aretz!

Elder of Ziyon asks if the density of Gaza's population is a cause of terror when we can expect terror from other countries and areas that are even more densely populated than Gaza.

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred are disturbed that some Palestinians will now be losing their jobs.

Knockin' on the Golden Door considers the difference between the way Israel and the Palestinians approach terror committed in the name of their goals.

Over at The Jewish View he wonders about one of the possible
ramifications of the reburial of those Jews who were interred in Gaza. (with credit to Willow Tree.)

Devarim condemns condemnable behavior demonstrated during the disengagement.

Finally, Jack's Shack asks if you can be right and still be wrong.

A First Impression of Bolton
Solomonia praises the first major action taken by recess appointee Ambassador to the UN John Bolton: condemning the UN for financing Palestinian propoganda. Unfortunately, he doesn't think there will be much of a consequence to this abuse. And he's probably right. When it turned out that the UN was protecting Hezbollah, no one paid the price.

Debates
DovBear rejects the Israeli policy of killing terrorist leaders.

Prima Impressionis outlines the reasons (here and here) the policy is sound.

In response to a recent Daniel Pipes column, Mere Rhetoric argues that American pressure or fear of American pressure is what necessitated PM Sharon's decision to disengage. Better to take control of the process and save what he can of Yesha, than to be forced into a worse position diplomatically.

I cited a number of reasons why I didn't see the American pressure.

Mere Rhetoric has the very kind last word, for now...

Elsewhere in the Jewish World
Velveteen Rabbi announces a new graphic novel treatment of the Book of Esther.

Jack's Shack remembers Leo Frank.

Aaron's cc reminds us of the lyrics to Bob Dylan's "Neighborhood Bully." (I guess, appropriately, in came from the "Infidels" album.) Complete with links for illustration. I once requested the song on an alternative station. The DJ thought the song was about Fidel Castro.

Psycho Toddler laments the proliferation of Minyanim (prayer groups) at weddings.

Elie's Expositions rather prefers having an individual one at his own house.

The lighter side

It would be easy to sympathize with Cindy Sheehan if she didn't hold such offensive views. Confederate Yankee quotes her, um, in the original German.

Fortunately Pillage Idiot noticed that a member of the cabinet has agreed to talk to her.

I remember long ago there was a famous Dry Bones cartoon depicting Menachem Begin explaining that America must withdraw from all occupied territories. I don't know if A Knight's Blog was aware of the cartoon but he posts about an American disengagement from Mexican territories that were occupied by America.

Clarity and Resolve has some prime real estate that he'd like to sell you. With good reason.

To submit a post for Haveil Havalim send me an e-mail at b>dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.
Or use Conservative Cat's handy dandy carnival submission page. Thank you very much,

If you'd like to host Haveil Havalim - Vanity of Vanities - The Jewish/Israel blogging carnival - send me an e-mail at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com and I'll pencil, er electron you in.

Finally, I've recently started a Haveil Havalim e-mail list to keep people apprised of the most recent editions. Send me an e-mail if you'd like to keep up. At most I'll send out 2 e-mails a week, one to announce the new HH the other (if I remember) a mid week reminder. Again to subscribe, send me an e-mail at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

Next Up
Shiloh Musings has agreed to hostess Haveil Havalim #34 next week August 28. e-mail your entries to shilohmuse at yahoo dot com this week to be included.

The following week, Sept 4, the scheduled host is Israel Perspectives.
Please e-mail him (next week that is) at zevinzion at yahoo dot com.

To submit a post for Haveil Havalim send me an e-mail at b>dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.
Or use Conservative Cat's handy dandy carnival submission page. Thank you very much,

If you'd like to host Haveil Havalim - Vanity of Vanities - The Jewish/Israel blogging carnival - send me an e-mail at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com and I'll pencil, er electron you in.

Finally, I've recently started a Haveil Havalim e-mail list to keep people apprised of the most recent editions. Send me an e-mail if you'd like to keep up. At most I'll send out 2 e-mails a week, one to announce the new HH the other (if I remember) a mid week reminder. Again to subscribe, send me an e-mail at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

You'll notice below that I've added tags to Haveil Havalim, I'm hoping to raise the profile of Haveil Havalim so that more people will be aware of it. If you host and do trackback pings, cut and paste these tags. I'm also attempting to get Haveil Havalim noticed by TTLB's Ubercarnival.

Haveil Havalim (The Jewish/Israeli blog carnival) can also be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, Haveil Havalim, Israel, Judaism.

Continue reading to see past editions

Tisha B'Av Blogburst
#32 Bloghead
#31 Soccer Dad
#30 Jack's Shack
#29 Crossing the Rubicon2
#28 Soccer Dad
#27 Mirty's Place
#26 Shiloh Musings
#25 Soccer Dad
#24 Mirty's Place
#23 Soccer Dad
#22 Mystical Paths
#21 Rabbinical Authority Consortium of HACKers
#20 Shiloh Musings
#19 Devarim
#18 Soccer Dad
#17 Mystical Paths
#16 Critical Mastiff
#15 Soccer Dad
#14 Multiple Mentality
#13 IsraPundit
#12 DovBear
#11 Kesher Talk
#10 Biur Chametz
#9 Soccer Dad
#8 It's Almost Supernatural
#7 Bloghead
#6 Willow Tree.
#5 Crossing the Rubicon2
#4 Dov Bear
#3 Biur Chametz

Haveil Havalim notice

Due to a family Simcha, I will be out of town until Sunday evening. Yes that's when I plan to post Haveil Havalim. It also gives you an opportunity to send (or tell your blogger friends to send) their suggestions to dhgerstman at hotmail dot com. I'll be happy to post them. If you'd like to host on August 28, please let me know.
Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, Haveil Havalim.

Reality check check

The New York Times and Washington Post weighed in on the aftermath of Israel's disengagement from Gaza. In "Gaza Reality Check" the editors of the Times start off reminding us of the extreme behavior of some Israelis:

Some Gaza settlers pinned orange stars to their chests in a reference to the Holocaust. One West Bank settler grabbed a security guard's gun and opened fire, killing several Palestinians - an act that Prime Minister Sharon rightly denounced as "Jewish terror."

Strangely there's no mention of the attempted terror attack in Gush Katif. Of course there's a reason for mentioning Israeli behavior that the Times disagrees with: it's an introduction to other examples of Israeli excesses.
The second paragraph gives a brief history of Gaza:

Without denying the genuine grief of many of the protesters, it's perhaps helpful to do a historical reality check. Gaza, a 25-mile-long, 6-mile-wide strip of land, was part of Mandatory Palestine, which was ruled by the British after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It was never part of the Zionist state intended by the United Nations partition plan that led to the establishment of Israel in 1948. At that point, five Arab nations immediately attacked the new nation, but Gaza wasn't even part of the territory Israel got in signing truces in 1949. It became the home of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing Israel, and Israel's armistice with Egypt in 1949 put it under Egyptian rule.

Elder of Ziyon has provided an alternative (and not inconsistent) history:

A fascinating timeline I found on this site shows the history of Gaza. During the first millenium, after the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews slowly moved back into Gaza. (The remains of one 1500 year old synagogue are still there today.) The number of Jews moving there accelerated during the Middle Ages and throughout the tumultuous history of the region.

During WWI, the Ottoman Empire ordered the eviction of Jews from Gaza City.

Jews returned in small numbers during the 20's, but were forced out by the Arabs during the riots in 1929, leaving all their possessions behind.

In 1946, the kibbutz Kfar Darom was founded the east-central part of Gaza on the same area as the Kfar Darom mentioned in the Talmud in around the year 500. It was abandoned under Egyptian fire in the 1948 war.

Of course, under Egyptian rule, no Jews were allowed to live in Gaza. They started returning after the Six Day War, with Kfar Darom being built for the third time in 1970.

So while history may be repeating itself in that Jews are being forced to leave Gaza, who knows - history may also repeat itself where Jews may end up going back there yet again.

The Times doesn't acknowledge that Jews were forcibly evicted from Gaza in 1948, that would mess up their neat little formulation that the acquisition of territory by force is illegitimate and that only Israel has gained territory in that manner in the Middle East.

The editorial continues:

Gaza represents the worst side of Israel's settlement movement. The densely populated strip is home to 1.3 million Palestinians - most of them refugees, or offspring of refugees. Each square mile of Palestinian land holds, on average, about 14,000 people. Until this week, the Jewish settlers occupied 33 percent of the land.

Because of an army blockade of Gaza that started during the Palestinian intifada in 2000, the Palestinians who live there have generally been unable to cross into Israel for work. Israeli military checkpoints, set up in response to terrorist attacks from militant groups, also hamper the movement of Palestinians within Gaza. Unemployment among Palestinians is estimated at 45 percent, and most Gaza families live on less than $2 a day.

The worst? What about those people who had previously made sacrifices for peace and settled Elei Sinai? And if Israel occupied 1/3 of Gaza, what happened between 1948 and 1967 why didn't Palestinians settle in those empty areas? In the 1970's Israel attempted to build housing for the Palestinian only to have their efforts condemned by the UN. Nor does the Times write about the money meant for Gaza housing that has gone instead to build luxury homes for Arafat's cronies.
As far as what's happened since 2000, it's ridiculous to blame Israel for the lack of Palestinian mobility. If a was was launched against any other country the Times would, no doubt, understand its need to fight back. Only Israel is expected to absorb the slings, arrow, Kassems and suicide bombers of its outrageous neighbors.
The poverty of Arabs living in Gaza is largely due to their exploitation by the Arab world. If, in ten years, things are significantly better in Gaza; I'll tip my hat to the Times; but for now it's up to the Palestinians to prove the Times right.

In "Mr Sharon's Resolve" the Post started of positively, praising PM Sharon, but alas, showing little or no sympathy for the displacement his policy was causing. It doesn't take long for the editorial to get lost though:

And it will bear fruit only if the Israeli leader stands ready for further negotiations toward the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state. Mr. Sharon and his advisers have given mixed signals on that theme, and on the prospect of further territorial concessions in return for Palestinian steps toward peace. By telling Israelis the other day that the withdrawal from Gaza "will allow us to look inward" at domestic social and economic problems, he did little to reassure Palestinians and the world that he intends to pursue a durable solution to the Mideast's most intractable conflict.

As Charles Krauthammer notes today:

The idea that if only Israel made more concessions and more withdrawals, the Palestinians would be enticed into making peace is flatly contradicted by history.

We are not talking ancient history here; we are talking the past 12 years. Under Oslo, Israel made massive, near-suicidal concessions: bringing the PLO back to life, installing Yasser Arafat in power in the West Bank and Gaza, permitting him to arm militia after militia, and ultimately offering him (at Camp David 2000) the first Palestinian state in history, with a shared Jerusalem and total Israeli withdrawal from 95 percent of the formerly occupied territories (with Israel giving up some of its own territory to make the Palestinians whole).

How were these concessions met? With a savage terrorist war that killed 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands more.

(And this is also a rebuke to Dr. Rice, though I suspect her statement is more a matter of a diplomatic necessity.)
The reason that the Israeli Palestinian conflict is the most intractable in the Middle East is the result of the Arab and Muslim world's refusal to countenance a Jewish presence in their midst. Until that mindset changes there will be no peace. And if Palestinian Media Watch's account is any indication, the withdrawal from Gaza has only encouraged that refusal. Ascribing intractability to anything else simply excuses that intransigence.
Technorati Tags: Israel, disengagement.

Dazzled

Usually when I'm visually dazzled I'm referring to the fractal art of Not Quite Perfect. Her fractals have really increased in their dazzle factor recently. Check out Gallaxia, Electric Octopus and Silk Sea Shell. Marvelous titles too!

But that's not the only blog I follow with a talent for the visual arts. Elder of Ziyon has tiled together a series of photographs taken with his new digital camera to create a breathtaking montage of lower Manhattan. Check it out and if you wish, download it!
EoZ zoomed in on one of the photos. It is of the World Financial Center. (I didn't remember the name; EoZ reminded me in an e-mail.) I guess that what's behind it is why a lot of us blog these days. Before September 11, 2001, there were two very tall building that would have sprouted up behind that location. Now there is an empty space behind them. The picture is affecting not just because of what's there; but also because of what's missing.

Not quite at the same level, I took a photo of sunset tonight.

I just bought a CD of oldies that included "Twilight Time" by the Platters, somehow these lyrics seemed appropriate:

Deepening shadows gather splendor as day is done
Fingers of night will soon surrender the setting sun
I count the moments, darling, til you're here with me
Together, at last, at Twilight Time.

Technorati Tags: Art. Photography

An effect of gender imbalance

Atlas Shrugs quotes Astute Blogger:

Of the thirty (30) nations on the list (being the thirty with the greatest IMBALANCE, with far more men than women - and far more than might be expected if there were no intervention - 20 of them are predominantly Muslim (or with a very large Muslim segment of the population).

Or see the red areas on the maps here. While I'm not certain of the reason that so much of the Muslim world has high male/female ratio, it could be infanticide, but I don't think that there's been any studies of that.
However there is likely an effect to this imbalance. If a young man's possibility of finding a young lady to marry is somewhat diminished; wouldn't the promise of 72 young ladies be even more enticing?

Parsha ponderings etc.

I have some accumulated thoughts over recent Torah readings.

When I studied Matos/Matot, with a Chavrusa (learning partner) he noted that Aharon's death was the first of Av. The same day that we read the Parsha on Shabbos. Does this happen anywhere else that the day we read the Parsha can possibly be a date that's mentioned in the Torah. (Obviously I'm not talking about Yom Tovim (holidays) where we specifically read the appropriate parts of the Torah; just during the regular annual cycle?)

The usual explanation for why Moshe did not go into Eretz Yisrael was that he made a mistake when the people asked for water in the case of "Mei Meriva." If so, what do we make of the possuk (sentence) Devarim 1:37 "Hashem also was angry with me on account of you saying, "Also you will not go there." Moshe is talking about the spies here. (I have answers from the Malbim and the Me'am Loez. But what do you think?)

I find it interesting that in Devarim we read 1:12 to the tune of Eicha, but it is from this week's Parsha that we read on Tisha B'Av morning - without the tune of Eicha. Furthermore, what's described in 1:12 ("How can I manage by myself ...?") is actually considered a positive development - Moshe's creation of an appeals system as per the recommendation of Yisro.)

Devarim/Deuteronomy "Those of Sidon call Hermon "Sirion," and the Emori call it "Snir." (picture taken from an old bunker on Mt. Bintal, on the Syrian border in the Golan.)

Who lost gaza?

For the past year and a half Daniel Pipes has followed the progress of the idea of disengagement. He started by arguing that PM Sharon was bluffing but now concludes that Israel is a democracy killing itself. Not so fast argues Mere Rhetoric:

In fact, a world that has for five decades forced Israel into senseless concession after senseless concession has no right to act either surprised or indignant when Israeli leaders calculate that Israel will eventually be pressured to make more senseless concessions. Sharon is evacuating Gaza now rather than later, and hoping to salvage something in the process. It might turn out that he fails, and that the disengagement loses Israel Gaza and while gaining the country nothing. But even then, the blame must be laid not at the feet of Sharon for taking a desperate gamble, but at the feet of a world that made him think he had no other choice.

Central to Mere Rhetoric's case is that he argues that even Sharon wasn't forced by the Bush administration, he sensed that he would be forced. Mere Rhetoric supports disengagement, but not enthusiastically. It's more of it's the least worst of all options.
I have a number of problems though, with Mere Rhetoric's position.
1) Norman Podhoretz's support of disengagement - For one thing Podhoretz's son-in-law, Elliott Abrams, had been one of the top administration officials in charge of the Middle East. While I don't suspect Abrams of telling his father in law anything he shouldn't have, I'd think that if there was any pressure from the US to Israel Podhoretz would have known about it and registered his discomfort with disenagement. From other things he's written, it's pretty clear the Podhoretz has access to the highest levels of government in Israel. Again nothing in his essay suggests that he's gotten wind of pressure from the United States from the Israeli side either. I find the Podhoretz essay fascinating in that most of the views he recounts tend to be critical or pessimistic about disengagement and yet he still endorses the plan.
2) Recently Israel refused a request from Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to transfer arms to the PA. Israel's refusal was, of course, sensible; the request was absurd. But if there was such pressure on a minor issue why risk the fallout of defying the administration (and the President's seemingly closest advisor) on a lesser demand if you give in on a major demand?
3) Mere Rhetoric noted himself recently a disturbing comment by Ehud Olmert. As Mere Rhetoric notes, he supports disengagement because it's a way to ensure Israeli control over certain parts of Judea and Samaria:

Our support for disengagement is predicated on two things: (1) the inevitability of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and (2) the possibility that Sharon might be able to trade Gaza for parts of the West Bank. Now that the Israeli government has out-right denied the latter, we sincerely hope that they don't come out tomorrow and say something like "really, we don't have to withdraw - we just kind of want to".

If Olmert, who's been the government's bellwether, is talking about going back to the Road Map what does that say? Is it American pressure again? Or is it unilateral surrender? (This would also seem to contradict Aluf Benn's view.)
4) Going back to Aluf Benn. Benn is a diplomatic correspondent for Ha'aretz. His article doesn't mention American pressure. Again (as with Podhoretz) if it was there wouldn't he have noted it? I know that a lot of reporters wrote of tension between Pres Bush and PM Sharon during the latter's recent visit to Crawford, but they seemed relying more on tea leaves, entrails and body language than on actual sources. (Herb Keinon of the Jerusalem Post actually reported that they got along great, IIRC.) In the past when an administration is unhappy with Israel there are usually lots of sources to back it up. Maybe it's the Bush administration's discipline. Or maybe the pressure isn't there.
I hope that I've presented Mere Rhetoric's views fairly. I just don't see signs of the pressure that he sees.
UPDATE: I don't know if this is authorotative, but here's what Ze'ev Chafets wrote:

As a master politician, Mr. Bush realized that there were political limits on what Mr. Sharon could do. Neither Mr. Sharon nor any conceivable Israeli prime minister would ever evict the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who now live in East Jerusalem and the major settlement blocs of the West Bank. Asking for that would be an automatic deal-breaker. Same for the Palestinian demand that millions of Arab refugees and their descendants be "returned" to Israel. And Israel would never relinquish its option to respond militarily to armed aggression.

Mr. Bush acknowledged these Israeli truths in an official letter he sent to Mr. Sharon in April of 2004. In exchange for that recognition, however, the president asked for - and got - Mr. Sharon's agreement to do what he could do. Evacuating Gaza was one of those things.

Later Chafets writes that if the Palestinians blow this opportunity, President Bush won't push for any more Israeli concessions. (Jim Hoagland has written something similar. I also believe that Norman Podhoretz implied as much in his article.)

So does that mean that there was American pressure for the disengagement? I guess you could say "yes" but that doesn't mean that it was adversarial and dishonest, like the Clinton pressure on Netanyahu.
Technorati Tag: Israel.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Of resigning, reneging and remembering

Resigning
Earlier I had written that I expected Netanyahu to suffer politically for his resignation. That still may be the case. I had relied in part on a poll I had seen that showed him trailing PM Sharon in popularity. However since his resignation, another poll showed him leading the Prime Minister.
Still I've thought that resignation is a ticket to oblivion. Then I read this story:

Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's resignation from Ariel Sharon's government came with the same surprise as Sharon's resignation from Yitzhak Shamir's government at the beginning of 1990, when he was minister of Industry and Commerce.

I had forgotten that Ariel Sharon had resigned from government. Perhaps an Israeli politician can come back. Of course it took the PM eleven years to get back. (He wasn't strong enough, for example, to take on Netanyahu in 1996. BTW, this is a fascinating "Can this marriage be saved?" article.)
On the other hand two recent articles that Netanyahu didn't jump; rather he was pushed. First there's "Bibi as Bad Guy - as usual" by Yossi Verter:

When Olmert was asked about "the day after" the disengagement - a term that has already become an onerous cliche - he provided a headline that for some reason did not get the attention it deserved.

"After the disengagement," he declared, "we will turn our attention to dealing with the social issue. I travel around the country," Olmert revealed to his interviewers, "and I meet mayors who don't talk to me at all about the disengagement, but only about the distress in their cities, about the gaps, the poverty and the hunger."

In a certain villa in Caesarea, where Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sarah reside on the weekends, the red warning lights suddenly went on. When Olmert declares so publicly and determinedly that the Sharon government's next agenda will be "social," only someone who is chronically naive will not wonder about the political implications. The finance minister is not naive. He is even suspicious at times and most certainly asked himself on Friday night whether once again Olmert is the bird who is the portent of spring, as he was in the disengagement scheme [Olmert, it must be recalled, set out the principles of the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and isolated settlements in the West Bank before Sharon did - Y.V.], and whether this pair, Sharon et Olmert, are preparing a social intifada for him in advance of the discussions of the 2006 budget.

Early signs that back up this assessment/suspicion at the Finance Minister's bureau have already appeared during the past weeks: After all, it was Sharon himself who confided to television personality Eli Yatzpan that the treasury's policy is merciless and heartless. A source close to Sharon was asked about a week ago what the prime minister will be busy with after the pullout, and the reply was swift: "personal security, social welfare and the bringing of hearts closer together."

Caroline Glick demonstrates that Netanyahu, by resigning cut himself off from a valuable platform:

As a regular member of Knesset, Netanyahu today doesn't even have the ability to gain a leadership position in the parliament. All the senior committees have chairmen who will not budge. Even receiving membership in the powerful and prestigious finance or foreign affairs and defense committee will be difficult. Aside from this, he will have a reduced personal staff and thus a limited ability to reach out to party members to whom, anyway, he will no longer have any favors to offer in exchange for their support in the party. The same is the case for the remaining Likud ministers in the government. Danny Naveh, Yisrael Katz, Tzahi Hanegbi, Silvan Shalom and Limor Livnat have nothing personal to gain from supporting Netanyahu. And the same is the case with the deputy ministers.

Sharon, for his part, has the media firmly in his court. In the wake of Netanyahu's surprise announcement, the chief anchors in the television studios wasted no time in sanctimoniously accusing Netanyahu of political opportunism. Whereas former prime minister Ehud Barak has no trouble getting long interviews on television and radio, it is hard to imagine that Netanyahu will receive anything other than a wall of silence from the media that will likely do everything it can to encourage the public to forget about him.

She feels that Bibi stayed in place as long as possible to see his economic reforms through.
I'm not changing my view that the resignation hurt him. Certainly Glick's article shows how hard it will be for him to get back.

Reneging
The Prime Minister promised not to give anything to the enemy. He's elected. He negotiates and makes concessions to an enemy?
Ariel Sharon 2003.
Or Yitzchak Rabin 1992.
Or Menachem Begin 1977.

In "Everything is Personal" Ofir Haivry writing for the editors of Azure examines this phenomenon in the latter two cases.

The first case happened in 1979, when Prime Minister Menachem Begin agreed to the Camp David accords, returning the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty. Begin, more than anyone else, had built his political life on the belief that “not one inch” of land taken in the Six Day War should return to Arab hands. Camp David was no momentary loss of nerve or expedient compromise: Without warning, Begin adopted (and permanently enshrined) the idea of “land for peace” which he had so long abjured, and as a result “not one inch” remained in Israeli hands. He did not resign for betraying his voters. Nor did anyone ask him to. After a moment of shock, Begin’s own ideological peers accepted the fait accompli, and dutifully donned the emperor’s new clothes themselves.

Fourteen years later, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin did more or less the same thing. The leader identified with an iron-fist policy against Palestinian terror, who taught the West that the only way to defeat terrorism was by never negotiating with its perpetrators, suddenly and completely reversed himself, recognizing the PLO and negotiating what became the Oslo accords. Again, he was not sacked as Labor leader, nor did his government fall; he was praised as a hero by his party—a party which had relied heavily upon his hawkish repute in order to come to power in the first place.

And now it's happening with Ariel Sharon. Haivry's point isn't against any of these per se, but that there's a lack of accountability in Israeli politics. When Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Rabin changed course they didn't try and get legitimacy and go back to the people to ratify the changed policy:

At issue is not whether Camp David and Oslo were right or wrong, but what such monumental reversals do to the public’s faith in politics. After leaders as beloved as Begin and Rabin violated their sacred trust, how can anyone have faith in political ideas? How can a voting citizen ever again pin his hopes for the national future upon a strong, dynamic, content-driven leader? Twice fooled and still smarting, many Israelis are reluctant to walk down that road again.

This was written in the run up to the 1999 election and Haivry was decrying the lack of a platform that Netanyahu, Barak and Mordechai had in the campaign. The irony is that there was a very clear choice in the 2003 election. Pro or con unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.
The politiciam promising not to withdraw was elected. And he proceeded to change his worldview and never went back to the people to validate his change.
Haivry writes that the failure for politicians to be accountable has a corrosive effect on the politics of Israel.

I thought I'd posted before on the element of Israeli politics that baffles me, but I was unable to find it. In 57 years of existence Israel has been led for all but a little less than 5 years (1996 - 2001) by leaders of its first generation. (It is a little bit of a stretch to call PM Sharon of Israel's first generation, but he at least fought in the War of Independence.) Netanyahu and Barak, the two younger generation leaders, could hardly be said to have been great successes and it could be argued that they were only elected by the accident of direct elections. (It could be said that Netanyahu lost because of direct election too. When he lost in 1999, he was the issue.) In essence they were elected due to their ability to ignore the coalition building usually necessary to be successful in Israeli politics. But what is it in the nature of that coalition building that seemingly suppresses talent from developing.

Remembering
Going back to what I referred to yesterday .... Lewis Roth of Americans for Peace Now mentioned that "...it's important to recognize that Israel reaped tremendous diplomatic benefits from withdrawing from Lebanon."
What exactly were those benefits?
When the Palestinians started their so called "Aqsa intifada" Israeli ambassador to the UN, Yehuda Lancry wrote a letter to Secretary General Kofi Annan:

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.

Note that Ambassador Lancry mentions that the increased violence against Israel started 2 weeks prior Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount. Did the UN say, you know we better look at how Arafat planned this violence in advance, after all we trust you since you withdrew from Lebanon. Well no. Resolution 1322 passed with the United States abstaining. And we all know how the UN responded to the cross border attack that same month in which Hezbollah kidnapped and killed 3 Israeli soldiers. The UN covered up for Hezbollah. I expect similar diplomatic gains for Israel accruing from their withdrawal from Gaza.
It's also important to remember, that though I disagree with the withdrawal, there are differences between Sharon and Mitzna. Two obvious things for example are that Sheikh Yassin and Dr. Rantisi would not have been killed in advance of a withdrawal had Mitzna been elected. (Or at least I doubt they would have.) I also have a hard time believing that Mitzna's government would have refused Dr. Rice's recent ridiculous request to re-arm the PA.
But it's important to remember one other thing that Sharon's disengagment plan was not greeted with any enthusiasm (from Krauthammer):

It is in this kind of atmosphere that Israel offers unilateral withdrawal from Gaza -- uprooting 7,000 Jews, turning over to the Palestinians 21 settlements with their extensive infrastructure intact and creating the first independent Palestinian territory in history -- and is almost universally attacked.

Moreover, and much overlooked, Israel will also evacuate four small West Bank settlements, which creates extensive Palestinian territorial contiguity throughout the northern half of the West Bank.

The Arabs have variously denounced this as Israeli unilateralism, a departure from the "road map" and a ruse and a plot. The craven Europeans have duly followed suit. And when Tony Blair defied the mob by expressing support for the plan, he was rewarded with a letter from 52 Arabist ex-diplomats denouncing him.

I.E. Sharon - much to the chagrin of the editors of the NY Times and Washington Post - is defining Israel's borders himself. He does not believe that Israel has a peace partner. While the Palestinians will claim victory for now at some point, if Sharon hasn't lost control of the situation, the withdrawals will stop and the Palestinians will complaing that Israel hasn't given them enough. This is a point made by Aluf Benn in the LA Times in "Why Sharon?":

Upon taking office as prime minister, Sharon feared an internationally imposed resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, one that would require Israeli withdrawal from east Jerusalem and virtually all of the West Bank. To preempt it, he avoided negotiations with Arafat, whom he viewed as a hopeless terrorist. To Sharon, peace talks equaled a "corral" leading Israel to the slaughterhouse.

When Mahmoud Abbas took the reins of the Palestinian Authority, following Arafat's death last November, Sharon praised his moderation but dismissed him as a peace partner. For Sharon, acting unilaterally leaves the initiative in Israel's hands and avoids the corral. He had also learned the lesson of his hapless predecessor, Ehud Barak, who withdrew Israeli forces from Lebanon but failed miserably at negotiations with Syria and Arafat. As long as Sharon refused to negotiate, he could avoid a similar failure.

So after an initial hesitation, Sharon launched the project of his lifetime, drawing Israel's border with the Palestinians in two segments — the security barrier in the West Bank (which leaves about 10% of the West Bank's land on its western, Israeli side) and the pre-1967 "green line" in Gaza.

Although Sharon still denies the territorial implication of the barrier route — it is not a border but a means of ensuring Israel safety, he says — it is clear to most Israelis (and everyone else) that what looks and behaves like a border will eventually become one, even though this implies the future evacuation of more Israeli settlements on its "other" side.

Needless to say Mitzna would be seeking Palestinian approval every step of the way. (The article would be better if Benn had left out much of that sneering Ha'aretz attitude early on.)

Of course, Sharon should still have gone to the voters.

Technorati tag Israel.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Chat follow up

Lewis Roth of APN did indeed respond to my question:

Baltimore, Md.: Since Israel has withdrawn its troops from Lebanon, Hezbollah has maintained its arsenal, and continued attacking Israel occasionally killing Israelis - civilians included - across the U.N. certified border garnering virtually no outrage from the world community. Do you expect the same will happen following the Israel withdrawal from Gaza? Will the forces of the PA, Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue attacking Israel from Gaza evoking little or no outrage?

Lewis Roth: First, it's important to recognize that Israel reaped tremendous diplomatic benefits from withdrawing from Lebanon, and that although attacks continue to take place from time to time, the northern border is much quieter now than when Israel had troops across the border. If things go well--that is, if Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas manages to keep a handle on terrorist groups, if Israel provides the Palestinians with a political horizon the day after disengagement, and if the international community increases its involvement in the conflict--then there is a chance that terrorist attacks will decrease, especially from Gaza. On the other hand, if things don't go well, there is the possibility that Hamas and other terror groups will decide to increase their attacks on Israel from the West Bank. In order to avert this possibility, Israel and the Palestinian Authority need to cooperate and work to strengthen each other against extremist elements.

I wish I had had the opportunity to follow-up. What diplomatic benefits? Did the UN (and world) respond when Hezbollah kidnapped and killed three soldiers a few months after the withdrawal from Lebanon? And the border is quieter but aren't civilians more at risk?
And if Israel supports Abbas there will be less violence. If the international community increases its involvement, that too, will be good. And what did such involvement gain Israel unitl now? The moment Arafat could shed his "peacemaker" role, Israel was under attack from a weaker position.
A day after Israeli newspapers report that the PA is bringing "militants" from Lebanon to Gaza it's a bit odd to be arguing that if Israel strengthens Abbas it will help against "extremist elements."

I suppose though, that my main objection to Roth was here:

Lyon, France: Since you liberal Americans believe Israel should carve out sections of its territory to create a state for the Arabs within its borders, wouldn't it also be fair for Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other Arab states to do the same for the Jews living within their borders? You do want a "fair" settlement, don't you?

Lewis Roth: Your question assumes that Israel has internationally recognized borders. Unfortunately, after so many years since its establishment, it doesn't have such boundaries. One of the goals of the peace process is to allow Israel to have secure, internationally recognized borders. Ironically, only an agreement with the Palestinians can deliver this--the status quo will not suffice and it cannot be done unilaterally.

Here's the problem, and it's the usual problem with the "peace process" until now. (Presumably, this is what PM Sharon's trying to change.) By saying that one of the goals of the peace process is that Israel should have "internationally recognized borders" essentially gives the Palestinians (and Arabs generally) veto power of that process. The moment the Palestinians say that Isreal hasn't withdrawn enough, then Israel must conform to the new Palestinian demands or Israel doesn't have peace and it doesn't have internationally recognized borders. Consider Mohammed Dahlan's recent demand that Israel that Israel withdraw further north or else it's not completely out of Gaza. Or consider Thomas Friedman's Saudi "peace" initiative, where Saudi Arabia made a series of demands on Israel that Israel would have to observe, in order to have peace.
And this is the basic problem, that for peace, democratic Israel is being asked to prove its legitimacy by acceding to the demands of a bunch of dictators and kings who never had their own legitimacy ratified by their subjects!
In general, all three chats including the ones by David Makovsky, Dr. Amiel Unger were worth reading. Surprisingly it seemed that quite a few, perhaps the majority, of the questioners were hostile, or at least skeptical of disengagement and certainly pro-Israel. I've noticed that a lot of these Washington Post chats tend to the left. BTW, did anyone reading this, contribute a question to any of the hosts?
Technorati tag Israel.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad

More washington post on disengagement

In Sunday's Washington Post, the editorial "A Mideast Crossroads" is disturbing for a number of reasons. Breaking down one paragraph:

1) Mr. Sharon, by dint of his formidable will, has driven his policy from conception to reality, surmounting the emotional opposition of his own Likud Party members as well as that of Israeli extremists and militants, some of whom are likely to do their utmost to sabotage the evacuation.
2) Many or most Israelis, even some in the majority that supports Mr. Sharon's policy, believe he is risking the country's security;
3)certainly, given the passions his move has provoked, he is risking his own life.

Notice how item 2) is given the short shrift. First the editorial describes Likud's response as "emotional" then it acknowledges that "...many ... believe he is risking the country's security." Now of course this understates the issue. First of all, two of the leading experts in Israel's defense establishment, Avi Dichter and Gen Moshe Ya'alon have predicted this will be a disaster from a security standoint. So their terms were ended by PM Sharon. Second of all even PM Sharon's government has designated 44 communities within the "green line" to be front line communities and given extra funds for anticipated security needs. That's hardly an emotional response; it's one based on the judgments of experts. To only acknowledge PM Sharon's own risk without seriously mentioning that of his constituents, is to be blatantly dishonest. (Just because your paper doesn't report the risks; doesn't mean they're not there.)

OK it's bad enough that the Post doesn't acknowledge the risks to Israel, but what happen if God forbid they come about? What then? Will the Post support Israel's right to defend itself?

Mr. Sharon's challenge is to manage the fissures his policy has aggravated in Israeli society while simultaneously exercising restraint in the face of Palestinian provocations if they occur....If isolated Palestinian attacks prompt Mr. Sharon to order that Israeli forces sweep and pulverize Gaza, he will only undercut Mr. Abbas and strengthen the hand of militant Palestinian groups, such as Hamas, that are vying for control of Palestinian territories.

I wonder how many Israelis being killed will change the terror from being mere "provocations" or "isolated ... attacks" to being reasons for an Israeli counterattack? Given the Post's editorial position - total silence - on continued Hezbollah attacks and provocations to Israel's north since Israel acceded to international law five years ago (remember that this international law is one that raises no concern over continued terror but condemns Israel for defending itself) my hopes are not great.
I haven't yet read the NY Times, I'm scared to. But in the case of the Post's editors, there's no excuse for their obliviousness towards Israel's risks unless they believe that "occupation" is some sort of unprecedented, incomparable evil. It isn't of course and anyone who believes it cannot be considered a friend of Israel. Or even an unbiased observer.
The Post has more pictures of the withdrawal. The Last Mourning and "An emotional exit." Item #4 in "An emotional exit" is of Hitler Hamas youth celebrating. There's something discomforting about their salute.
Item #1 in "The Last Mourning" is mis-captioned describing a young woman praying from a Torah. Others in that gallery of the cemeteries in Gush Katif make me wonder when the grave of my brother's friend, Rabbi Shimon Biran will be dug up. (Yes, if we're hoping for normalization why is there an assumption that any Jewish graves in Gaza will be defiled?)
Finally a reminder that later today the Post will be hosting 3 chats with David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy at 11 AM EDT (see his recent op-ed here); Dr. Amiel Ungar at 12 Noon EDT (who was quoted in this article on Saturday) of the College of Judea and Samaria; and Lewis Roth of Americans for Peace Now at 2 PM EDT. I posted the following question for Mr. Roth:

Since Israel has withdrawn its troops from Lebanon, Hezbollah has maintained its arsenal, and continued attacking Israel occasionally killing Israelis - civilians included - across the UN certified border garnering virtually no outrage from the world community. Do you expect the same will happen following the Israel withdrawal from Gaza. Will the forces of the PA, Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue attacking Israel from Gaza evoking little or no outrage?

I wonder if he'll answer it.
UPDATE: I had inadvertantly left out the link to APN, but just added it. My brother e-mails me that Dichter, last week told and Israeli paper that disengagement would lead to a decrease in violence. I don't believe that's what he was saying when he was still working for the Israeli government. But I don't have time to look for documentation right now.
UPDATE: Here's an excellent, succinct formulation of the problem with Washington Post's editorial from fellow blogger Jewish Current Issues who commented below:

The treatment of Palestinian attempts to kill Israelis as "isolated," but Israeli responses as "sweeping" and "pulverizing," does not even rise to the level of moral equivalence. It is language that simultaneously excuses terrorism and condemns defense. Absolutely disgusting.

I didn't have time to provide support for Avi Dichter's position on disengagement. This is from an editorial in Yedioth Achronot two months ago:

Yediot Aharonot, in its second editorial, surveys recent media interviews by former IDF chief of General Staff Moshe Yaalon and former ISA director Avi Dichter and suggests that, “Both of them are convinced that the Palestinians are not mature enough for a normal state of their own and are not yet ready for a true peace and historic reconciliation with Israel. Both of them say that the withdrawal from Gaza will be seen on the Palestinian street as a victory for the terrorist line. Both of them paint a reasonable portrait of a renewed outbreak of terrorism in a few months and an outraged Israeli reaction to it that will include the military reoccupation of parts of Gaza. And in the end, both Dichter and Yaalon have the same approach to disengagement: They see it as a tactical step only in which the costs must be unsentimentally weighed against the benefits. Yaalon emphasizes the costs, Dichter the benefits. This is an argument over the price and not over the merchandise.”

So Dichter did warn about the possibility of greater violence resulting from disengagement; he thought it was worth the price. His view has apparently changed somewhat:

And that reputation is now being exploited with a clear political purpose. Having come out in strong support of the plan to evacuate all 8,500 settlers from Gaza by force if they will not go voluntarily, Mr Dichter is Ariel Sharon's most potent weapon against the settlers' argument that withdrawal from Gaza is a "surrender to terrorism" and will increase rather than decrease attacks by Palestinian militants.

He argues that withdrawing from Gaza drastically reduces the "carpet of targets" open to militants in Gaza in the first place. He is optimistic that there won't be an organised outbreak of violence - as opposed to sporadic attacks like that on Kfar Darom yesterday - during the disengagement process against settlers and soldiers by Palestinian militants, who have been warned to expect heavy retaliation if there is. More importantly perhaps, he is sceptical that there will be after disengagement too.

Almost every settler you speak to in Gaza mentions the likelihood that Hamas will soon have the range to fire Qassams at Mr Dichter's own home town. Yet he professes bemusement that the international community sometimes seems disproportionately exercised about the militants' use of its makeshift artillery when its success has been so - relatively - small.

"From 600 to 700 Qassam rockets fired we suffered eight fatalities and from 3,500 mortar shells we suffered five fatalities. Which is one suicide bomber."

Technorati tag Israel.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Popular culture in the news

THE MAN WITH THREE WIVES:

A man has been exposed as a double bigamist after his three wives showed up to visit him in hospital.

Melvyn Reed was recovering from a triple bypass heart operation when his deception was exposed.

The 59-year-old was trying to pass off his third wife, Lyndsey, as a hospital visitor to his second, Denise, when his first and only legal wife, Jean, appeared.

The wives reportedly held a meeting in the parking lot soon after and learned they were all married to the same man.

Triple bypass? Was that one for each wife?
Kind of reminds you of Micki and Maude doesn't it?

(link via Mirty's Place):

A South Korean man who played computer games for 50 hours almost non-stop died of heart failure minutes after finishing his mammoth session in an Internet cafe, authorities said Tuesday.

The 28-year-old man, identified only by his family name Lee, had been playing on-line battle simulation games at the cybercafe in the southeastern city of Taegu, police said.

Lee had planted himself in front of a computer monitor to play on-line games on Aug. 3. He only left the spot over the next three days to go to the toilet and take brief naps on a makeshift bed, they said.

"We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion," a Taegu provincial police official said by telephone.

Lee had recently quit his job to spend more time playing games, the daily JoongAng Ilbo reported after interviewing former work colleagues and staff at the Internet cafe.

I remember a 30+ year old song by Danny O'Keefe (apparently later done by Dwight Yoakam), "Good time Charlie's got the blues" with the lyrics:

You play it too long you'll lose your life

Then here's a story about the hole in one that took an hour and 4 seconds to reach its mark:

Marthinussen teed off from the 14th hole (par 3, 115 meters) and his ball ended up soaring over the border, which cuts across the green. It took four seconds for the ball to land on the green and roll right into the cup.

But since the 14th's hole is technically in Finland, it's also in a time zone one hour ahead of Sweden's. That meant it actually took one hour and four seconds before Marthinussen's drive plopped into the cup.

Marthinussen said he has played golf for eight years but this was his first hole-in-one. It was duly registered n both countries.

Not really an hour and four seconds, but writing it like that recalls a combination of "Caddyshack" and "Groundhog Day"; both movies where Bill Murray has problems with subterranean creatures.

Then once more we go to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Mere Rhetoric knows how to torture those prisoners:

"Tell us who gave you the money or we'll tell you who dies at the end of the book."

. Yikes. I'm sure Amnesty International will be up in arms about that. Shudder.

And words are all i have ...

Sometimes we say that words can't possibly describe something. It is too amazing or too awful. And sometimes words can be more than up to the task.

Chayyei Sarah does a beautiful job of describing davening praying at the Kotel (Western Wall) with sunrise one morning last week:

At 5:30, the sky is turning a slightly lighter blue, and morning prayers formally begin. Most of the women seem able to follow easily, though the acoustics are poor, leading me to believe that many of them attend the 5:30 services often. There is yet more noise, and the women's section is half-full. But at around 5:50, when the Amidah begins, there is not a sound save for the chirping of the birds in the growing morning light and the weeping of one or two women who are shedding tears into the wall . . .

I prayed that whatever happens next week should be for the best, and that if the disengagement happens, it should happen peacefully and in a way that sanctifies Hashem's name.

I don't remember the last time I davened at sunrise at the Kotel, but I probably had my mind more on the freshly baked pastries I was going to pick up on my way back to Yeshiva (seminary.) The most affecting prayer I remember from the Kotel, was 25 years ago and we were davening with Vishnitz (a chassidic group) minyan. The baal tefilah (prayer leader) had an indescribable look of joy on his face as he sang Lecha Dodi and welcomed the Sabbath.

Elie's Expositions has been a friend of mine for over 25 years. Through college, dating, marriage and children. Many of you who read my blog, read his too, and you know that one of the focuses of his blog, is the death of his eldest son Aaron. And even knowing how the story sadly ended, reading the beginning of it is no less disconcerting as he recounts the signs of Aaron's illness in Headaches and Heartaches:

My world stopped. Somehow, a chair found its way under me as my legs collapsed.

And then, as Pillage Idiot reminds us, sometimes the lack of words is very telling too:

Mr. Eccleston: This interview is being concluded at 10:35 hours. Mr. Smith is unable to continue with this interview.

Non jewish support for israel

Secular Blasphemy notes that an Islamic organization is bashing the BBC for being part of the "pro-Israel Lobby." Blogger Don Singleton who linked to the item notes:

I am not sure which I would say is further left: the BBC or the Guardian, but both are so far left and so pro-Palestinian that to have an extreme Muslim group complain either was pro Israeli has me rolling on the floor, laughing.

Mystery Achievement is wondering what's going on with many of his fellow Catholic bloggers:

With one or two shining exceptions, the attitudes of most of my fellow Catholic bloggers towards the plight of Israel--a plight I define as the threat of genocide under the guise of a campaign to establish an Islamofascist terror state--could be plotted on a continuum that runs from indifference to hostility. And the ugly little unspoken thought behind those who fall on that continuum goes something like this: If, by a combination of phony moral indignation over Israeli "injustices" towards the "Palestinians" and looking the other way, the Vatican--working in concert with Western politicians--can offer up Israel as a sacrificial lamb to the "foaming, Bronze Age fanatics," then we'll be safe. We can sit around in one gigantic circle jerk cooing to each other about peace; secure in the knowledge that those ignorant brown folk will be happy where they are in the vast tracts of chaos, slaughter, and filth they've created wherever their feet have come to rest.

He follows this up with excerpts from an interview with native Lebanese Christian activist Brigitte Gabrielle.

In a similar vein, I must thank friends who e-mailed this petition.

Clarity and Resolve's impressed with CosmicX's description of the recent prayer gathering at the Kotel (Western Wall) and observes:

He was with a quarter million other Jews praying to their Lord for justice at the Temple Mount on Wednesday, showing that blessed spiritual unity has nothing to do with crying death to the infidel!, waving a Kalashnikov around in one hand and a holy book in the other, or revelling in maniacal hatred in God's name.

Technorati tag Israel.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Blogburst & c.

Please check out KesherTalk's Temple Mount blogburst. It's broken down into a number of sections: Tisha B'Av; Jihadism and Reality; Israel: Past Present and Future ; The Mount since 1967; Unlayering History; and Poetry pierces the iron curtain.

I have a family Simcha out of town next week and will find it difficult to do Haveil Havalim. So if you'd like to volunteer, I'd really appreciate it; at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

As always you may send me your entries at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com or use the Conservative Cat's handy dandy entry form.

If you have trackbacks, you can announce the most recent Haveil Havalim at Conservative Cat's Carnival news by pinging it. (I'll give you the ping or you can find it. I won't post it here, so that no one will abuse it.)

Additionally I've just discovered that you can automatically manually add your carnival entry to The Truth Laid Bare's Uber Carnival lineup. Instructions are here.

Now there are two ways to boost your blogs popularity through Haveil Havalim. That plus the satisfaction that you're letting more people know about the hidden gems of the JBlogosphere. What are you waiting for.

There's something else I noticed about the ecosystem. A recent entry of mine got picked up in The Truth Laid Bare's Hot Topics section on Israel. I'm not sure why. Certainly part of it is that I'm registered in the Ecosystem. Could it be that I just started adding Techoratic tags?

Adding tags is easy, and if it helps gain you some recognition; so much the better.

Technorati tag Israel.

Of pictures and chats

LGF has started a section called Gaza Watch. Remember the picture of the police and protestors davening (praying) together? Here's a picture of a protestor and a policeman learning Daf Yomi together. If you live in Israel and have relevant pictures please send them to charles at littlegreenfootballs dot com.

There are more pictures at the Washington Post. They have parallel galleries, Life in the Territories and Scars of violence. The former gallery is to show the difficulties of the Palesitnians; the latter the terrible cost of terror. (WARNING: some of these pictures are disturbing.)

On Monday with the disengagement scheduled, the Washington Post will be hosting 3 chats. The first is with David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Middle East Peace at 11 AM; the second is with Dr. Amiel Ungar of the College of Judea and Samaria at noon; and the final is with Lewis Roth of Americans for Peace Now at 2 PM. (All times are Eastern Daylight Times.)

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Technorati tag Israel.

You need a license to drive but not to have children

Two recent cases that I've associated.
A woman pushes her four year old out of the car:

Virginia State Police said Miss Green, of Newport News, Va., left her 4-year-old son on the side of the Beltway near Falls Church at about 10 p.m. Tuesday.
Police said that as the boy tried to get back into the 2002 Mitsubishi Lancer, his mother bumped him with the car and knocked him down as she drove away, leading to the hit-and-run charge.
A driver who asked not to be identified found the boy on the interstate near the Lee Highway overpass and told WJLA-TV (Channel 7) that the toddler jumped into her husband's arms.
"I said, 'Why are you out here?' And he said, 'My mommy left me. She was angry and she pushed me out of the car,' " the woman said.

A woman leaves her child in the car:

Brenda Johanna Oliva, 21, of new Carrollton was being held in lieu of $50,000 bond Tuesday after being charged with reckless endangerment and other crimes, said Prince George's County State's Attorney Glenn Ivey. Oliva can also be released from jail if she agrees to supervision by pretrial services officers, Ivey said.

The girl, whose name was not released, was found Sunday morning by a neighbor near 42nd Avenue and East-West Highway, Hyattsville police said. He saw the girl in the car when he left his home Sunday morning and called police after he saw her again when he returned about two hours later.

I'd say that the second case is not as bad as the first, in that it might well have been an mistake. A reckless mistake. But it didn't have the viciousness of the first case.

In both cases it's worth noting that the women had their children when they were 18 and there's no indication if there's a father involved.

More thoughts on raffy

Earlier, I had suggested that the Orioles fired Lee Mazzilli because he possibly knew about Rafael Palmeiro's failed steroids test. Apparently not:

Orioles officials were not informed of the matter until Monday morning -- owner Peter Angelos was the first to find out, then Vice President of Baseball Operations Mike Flanagan. Manager Lee Mazzilli was not informed of the suspension until around 11 a.m. Monday, roughly two hours before the Orioles' game in Baltimore against the Chicago White Sox.

I've now heard Sam Perlazzo on a couple of pre-game shows. What can I say? He sounds a lot more animated than Lee Mazzilli ever was. I know that Mazzilli wowed the GMs during his interview, whatever he did in that interview doesn't seem to have stayed with him. I found his admission that he might have Rodrigo Lopez in two batters too long refreshing.
Steve Davis at WBAL has been hounding Palmeiro to tell his side of the story. Sorry, but Tom Marr at WCBM had it right this morning. Tom said that given that he's under investigation, Raffy, if he has a lawyer who is the least bit competent, is going to shut up. Tom's also skeptical about the steroid Raffy's accused of taking. I understand that whoever leaked that information broke the rules, but I suspect that it's accurate. After Raffy said that this was all one big misunderstanding, there was probably someone in the commissioner's office who said, "Who does he think he's fooling?" and decided to force Raffy onto the defensive.
Why am I so hesitant to trash Raffy? I guess I always felt he was a good guy. He could come accross as slightly arrogant but brazen? He didn't seem the type. As bad as it looks for him right now, I'm hoping that this will all be straightened out. However unlikely that seems.
There are those who call on the Orioles to release Palmeiro. Look if the rule is ten days the first time, then that's it. Besides it won't be a punishment. Now that Jim Thome's on the disabled list don't you think the Phillies would love to have Raffy at the league minimum? Raffy won't be punished by a release, he'll just be playing elsewhere.
I'm not convinced about the awfulness of steroids. Well I'm not convinced that it's cheating to the degree that people feel. An athlete doesn't take steroids and simply grow muscles. He still has to work at building those muscles; it's just easier to build them. Nor do I think that it makes a huge difference in a player's production. I'm not alone, John Brattain at the Hardball Times writes:

My point? If Palmeiro has indeed been a long-time user, the benefits to his game were primarily in the power department. His “pre-steroid” years featured his best batting averages, which might well mean--steroids or not--he’d still be a member of the 3000 hit club. Since the durability knife with regards to steroids cuts both ways (it can prolong or shorten careers, as well as make one more durable or more susceptible to injury) we cannot assume with any certainty that steroids contributed to the durability that allowed him to bang out 3000 hits. If you wish to discount 25% of the home runs he hit since he allegedly started using then he’s left with 3000 hits and over 450 HR (and probably well over 600 doubles).

He also writes that he feels that in five years people will mostly forget about the steroids.
Which brings me to my final point. I'd love to be a sportswriter. I could write the stupidest things and no one would pay attention. I'd get praised for pushing the envelope. No risks. And I'd get to go to ballgames as part of my job. Lots of reward.
In 1988, when the O's traded Eddie Murray, the sportswriters at the Baltimore Sun couldn't wait to shove him out the door. (Had Eddie been on a ledge of a tall building, they would have been on the sidewalk below shouting "Jump, jump." But a few years ago, when Eddie was elected to the Hall of Fame, the Sun honored him with a special pull out section. John Eisenberg wrote about how great Eddie was.
I suspect that many of the same people who are trying to drive Raffy out now, will be on his bandwagon when he's looking at the Hall of Fame five years from now.
Technorati tags Orioles, Rafael Palmeiro

Verbs again

Elder of Ziyon remembers.
Shiloh Musings demonstrates.
Chayyei Sarah clarifies.
Pillage Idiot leyns.
Treppenwitz drives.
Elie's Expositions puzzles.
Mirty's Place plays.
Not Quite Perfect dazzles.

Article 20

Article 20:
The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

From Benny Morris:

Barak recalls Clinton telling him that during the Camp David talks he had attended Sunday services and the minister had preached a sermon mentioning Solomon, the king who built the First Temple. Later that evening, he had met Arafat and spoke of the sermon. Arafat had said: "There is nothing there [i.e., no trace of a temple on the Temple Mount]." Clinton responded that "not only the Jews but I, too, believe that under the surface there are remains of Solomon's temple." (At this point one of Clinton's [Jewish] aides whispered to the President that he should tell Arafat that this is his personal opinion, not an official American position.)

From Steven Stalinsky:

The theme that there is no Jewish connection to Jerusalem is also common in sermons and statements by Palestinian religious figures. For example, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, the Mufti of Jerusalem and the highest ranking Palestinian religious figure gave an interview to the German Die Welt on January 17, 2001, stating, “There is not [even] the smallest indication of the existence of a Jewish temple on this place in the past. In the whole city, there is not even a single stone indicating Jewish history… The Jews do not even know exactly where their temple stood.” When the interviewer asked why he could not respect the Jewish connection to the place, he added, “It is the art of the Jews to deceive the world... There is not a single stone in the Wailing-Wall relating to Jewish History. The Jews cannot legitimately claim this wall, neither religiously nor historically.”

Palestinian textbooks:

As part of the overall de-legitimization, the books deny the continuity of the Jewish nation and its place in Israel, by severing modern Jewry and modern Israel from their history in the land. The children are taught that the Jews are not a nation, but rather, a religious group:

"The Jewish Question:
Zionist thinkers suggested a number of solutions to the problem of the non- integration of the Jews in the societies in which they were living in Eastern Europe... The Jews deluded themselves that their religious faith was sufficient to turn them into one nation. Their thinkers sought to find a national homeland for the Jews, similar to other nations."

[Modern Arab History and Contemporary Problems, Part II, for Tenth Grade #613, p. 49]

The denial of the Jewish claims to Israel and to Jerusalem specifically is a central tenet of Palestinian nationalism. Those who support Palestinian nationalism implicitly - and often, unknowingly - endorse this ahistorical view. Yet it is common. Recently the New York Times reported on the discovery of what might be King David's palace. Here's how the Times's reporter, Steven Erlanger frames the issue:

The find will also be used in the broad political battle over Jerusalem - whether the Jews have their origins here and thus have some special hold on the place, or whether, as many Palestinians have said, including the late Yasir Arafat, the idea of a Jewish origin in Jerusalem is a myth used to justify conquest and occupation.

In other words it's a debate that's unsettled. Thus we have the anamoly that people who deny a decade of Jewish history are considered beyond the pale (except for a certain Dr. Abbas who got his doctorate in the subject) but those who deny 3000 years of Jewish history are "partners for peace."
It is necessary for the Palestinians to believe that there's no historical connection between Jews and Israel, and that Jews are Europeans who moved to and conquered their land. These myths give a legitimacy to their cause. It also makes Palestinian nationalism and Zionism mutually exclusive ideologies. One, Zionism, is based on the idea that after 2000 years of exile Jews are returning to their land. The other says that Jews have no ties to the land and therefore the Palestinians can determine what degree of a Jewish presence is legitimate.
And even if the Palestinian Authority ever abrogated its charter, this is such a deeply held belief among Palestinians that a simple vote would not reverse its force. Article 20, then, is the reason there's no peace in the Middle East and it will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.
Technorati tags Israel, Zionism

20000 +

On Monday I hit 20000 on SiteMeter, thanks to all visitors who made it possible. It only took me 4 months to reach this milestone after taking about 1 1/2 years to reach 10000. One problem is that initially I didn't have sitemeter set to register hits on individual entries.

The proximate causes of reaching this milestone were two fortuitous mentions - one in Instapundit and the other in the most recent Carnival of the Capitalists. Thanks for the mentions. So far this is the best week I've ever tracked.

On the matter of Able Danger, well, I've read parts of the books by Rich Lowry ("Legacy"), Richard Miniter ( "Losing Bin Laden" ) and Gerald Posner ( "Why America Slept" ), I'm convinced that the Clinton administration didn't do enough. Other than Richard Clarke (who was stymied at every effort to raise awareness of the terrorist threat) there seems to be no one in the administration who understood the possible threat. Why Clarke turned against the Bush administration is anyone's guess. Was it because he was passed over for a promotion? But it's clear that no one listened to him in the Clinton administration and he was clearly on target then.

Having said that, I don't believe that a Dole administration would have seen the threat of Bin Laden either. Though the 3 books cited above were generally hostile to the Clinton administration, there's little there that suggests that ignorance of the terror threat was unique to those in power at the time. It was just unthinkable.

The one thing that should have been done was to use publicly available information to fight Al Qaeda in the US. The agency responsible for that and that failed was clearly the FBI. Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson pointed out 3 months before 9/11 that there was plenty of information about Al Qaeda operations in the US available from the trial of the embassy bombers. That the FBI almost certainly didn't act upon it is a disgrace. (Just One Minute refers to the article here, I believe on my recommendation.)

Why wasn't the information shared? Rush Limbaugh points to the wall erected between government agencies, erected by 9/11 commissioner Jamie Gorelick. (Andrew McCarthy wrote about it here.)

Why didn't we know in advance about 9/11? My best guess is that there was a failure of imagination. That and too many agencies with too many agendas to look at the whole picture. If the new intelligence oversight agency will look at the big picture, maybe it will solve those problems. If not, it will just be one more bureaucratic layer that prevents us from defending ourselves.

An american azkaban?

Pillage Idiot has the details. It even has dementors.

U.N. Officials Seek Guantanamo Bay Visit

Yikes.
Technorati tag Harry Potter
UPDATE: I added the headline to the post. And thanks to Abracadabrah for linking here!

Around the web 8/10/05

Media Backspin links to a number of bloggers who note the hypocrisy with the way the media handles Jewish terror.

Captain's Quarters (found again via blogdigger) criticizes the Washington Post for running an op-ed by a woman from Gaza. He finds her complaints dishonest. I agree:

Haddad notes that the Israelis plan on controlling Gaza's borders after pulling out and have declared that they will still respond to attacks coming from the region -- and asserts that this policy makes Gaza little more than an open-air prison. She goes on to note that nothing has changed since Oslo, and that the Israeli security wall disrupts Palestinian lives and causes aggravation and inconvenience.

Where does one start with this nonsense?

Haddad must know about the recent case of a Palestinian woman to whom Israel granted access. The Israelis allowed Wafa Samir al-Biss to cross over into Israel for medical treatment to correct burns and scars so she could lead a more normal life -- and she repaid them by attempting to set off a bomb belt. In fact, she later told the Telegraph that she wanted to kill Israeli babies at the hospital.

Haddad uses her credentials as a Harvard trained journalist as a reason she should be exempt from searches. But she refused to acknowledge that terrorists are often the last people you'd expect. Such as a young woman being cared for in an Israeli hospital.

Knocking on the Golden Door takes time out from remembering Jerry Garcia to hold forth on "The demonization of Israel". He concludes:

If the roles were reversed, and I behaved as innappropriately to someone I knew was a Buddhist, and trounced the Tibetan government without any prompting, what would be the reaction? How about Muslims and the Iraqi government under Saddam? Or Catholics and the Pope? Why are Israelis open to such an attack, and why is support for Israel considered such an aberration among members of the Left? I expect it is because anti-Semitism is finally getting its day in the sun, cloaked in "anti-Zionism", and those who would never think of admitting to such racism under ordinary circumstances think they have found a way to practice their bias surreptitiously. Trouble is, they aren't fooling anyone, least of all me.

Or as Norman Podhoretz once wrote (I think quoting someone else), "Jews might be their own worst enemies, but, if so, they have some pretty stiff competition." (Or something like that.)

Chayyei Sarah asks how much time is enough when dealing with disengagement. Was the six months enough time? My problem isn't that there wasn't enough time, but that if the government was going to do this, it did it in the most divisive and thoughtless way possible. Even now, there are not reasonable accomodations for everyone who will be in transition. No one in government took the time to consider the logistics. Forgetting about bug free lettuce; Gush Katif provides a non-trivial amount of Israel's produce, has anyone considered how that production will be replaced. Has the PM or anyone else in government pointed out that Elei Sinai was founded by people who made a sacrifice for peace a quarter of a century ago? Rather he has set up those who are there as enemies and extremists.
Meeting Mirty. That's what Treppenwitz did.

It's Almost Supernatural considers the "The Pony or the Manure?" in recounting a talk given by Dennis Ross. I don't much respect Ross. Though he seems to have changed a bit since he was betrayed by Arafat. Still he leaves out the most important requirement for there to be peace. The Arabs have to change their mindset about Israel. And they haven't.

The Yehupitzer Rov wonders.

On such a downer of a week, at least there are fractals to cheer me up. Not Quite Perfect has been pretty darn near perfect lately look at Orange Daze, Pastel Party, Psychadelic Compass, Bright Buoy, Alien Dart Board, Star Swirl, and, finally Glass Star. This stuff is great. And to top it all off she asks us to find a mistake on a stamp.

UPDATE: One of the entries here was removed and posted on its own.

Bibi disengages from his political ambitions

By resigning, Binyamin Netanyahu has effectively ended his political career. He stayed in the government much too long to be embraced by those against disengagement; the fact that he left the government at all makes him a pariah to those who support disengagement.
Arutz-7 notes that despite the fact that Netanyahu has apparently hung a large anti-disengagement banner from his residence:

At the press conference following his resignation, Netanyahu told reporters that he does not intent to fight to thwart the implementation of the Disengagement Plan, but wanted to be recorded in history as having objecting to it.

This is not the action of someone who is deeply committed to an idea, but of someone who is positioning himself in opposition to the government. True, in his resignation, Netanyahu hit all the right notes but he's been part of this government much too long.
The New York Times mocked Netanyahu:

Mr. Netanyahu, apparently preparing to face off against Mr. Sharon soon for the leadership of the Likud Party, said he had to resign as finance minister because of his concerns about Israel's security. He has certainly done all he can to fan Israelis' fears with fiery speeches warning that Gaza could become a base for radical Islamic terrorists.

But when you read articles like this, or that 44 communities near Gaza have been designated "front line" towns it's hard to say that Netanyahu is simply "fan[ning] ... fears". There are grave risks attached to disengagement that the Times refuses to acknowledge.
And Netanyahu also mentions how the disengagement divides the nation. PM Sharon has gone about this in the most divisive way possible.
(The Times objects to Netanyahu's reasons for leaving. This is from IMRA's translation:

As I warned, the
Hamas is strengthening, the terror continues, the firing of rockets and
mortars on our communities has not ended, and terror elements proclaim that
they will move the rockets that drove us out of the Gaza Strip to Judea and
Samaria, and from there will operate them until "the complete liberation of
Palestine."

I wish the Times had pointed out which terms here were hyperbole and which were accurate.)
But Netanyahu's accuracy doesn't matter. Benny Begin was correct about Arafat but, in the end, he was marginalized. The same happened to Natan Sharansky. In Israel it appears the choice to be right or Prime Minister (or even a minister) is a real one. Netanyahu has chosen somewhat belatedly to be right; but he has probably sacrificed his political future in doing so.
The Washington Post reported:

Increasingly, Israel's political alliances appear to be forming along generational lines, with men such as Sharon and the leader of the rival Labor Party, Shimon Peres, clashing with younger leaders such as Netanyahu over Israel's future boundaries and its relationship with the Palestinians. Sharon and Peres, who are old friends, have been involved in public life here since before Israel's creation nearly six decades ago.

Biur Chametz doubts this:

no "big bang" realignment in which (most of) Likud merges with (most of) Labor to form a ruling centrist national unity party

(Just recall the last time there was supposed to be such a re-alignment. Remember the excitement over the Center party? Here's the Washington Post from Jan 7, 1999:

Still, by dint of his poll ratings and military record, Lipkin-Shahak is regarded as an important wild card in the race. And his candidacy poses a dilemma not only for Netanyahu, his main rhetorical target, but also for Ehud Barak of the Labor Party, who preceded Lipkin-Shahak as military chief of staff.

For Barak, 56, Lipkin-Shahak's decision makes an outright victory by either one of them more difficult in the first round of voting May 17. The two former generals have similar military resumes and, it seems, similar views on security and social issues. Polls suggest they will split Israel's center-left vote and force a runoff against a right-wing candidate, probably Netanyahu, on June 1. In the latest surveys, Lipkin-Shahak is far ahead of Netanyahu in a one-on-one race but trails Netanyahu and, by a small margin, Barak in a three-way contest.

(This was written before Yitzchak Mordechai joined the party but it still shows the mindset.) The polls cited reflected the media excitement about the anti-Bibi party, but since that's all the party was - a collection of has beens and wanna bes united against Netanyahu - their electoral prospects crashed and burned when they faced a real poll, the 1999 elections.

Finally there's the issue of the new finance minister. Ehud Olmert, termed an "obstructionist" by Daniel Doron - interested in preserving the monopolies that hurt Israel's economy - will be taking over for Netanyahu who has reformed many aspects of Israel's economy. Will Netanyahu's improvements persist? Or will the new finance minister try to return to the days of yore? Perhaps Netanyahu was right to stay in government as long as he did on account of the economy. Resigning by itself was damaging to his political fortunes; resigning as late as he did only made matters worse for him.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Peter Jennings remembered

I guess it's not sporting of me to speak ill of the dead. But here's how the Washington Post describes Peter Jennings' coverage of the Munich massacre:

He was at the Summer Olympics in Munich on Sept. 5, 1972, when Arab terrorists seized and killed Israeli athletes. Familiar with the history and goals of the Black September terrorist group, Jennings filed a series of reports and moved his camera crew close enough to get clear pictures of the terrorists, a risk that "displayed considerable moxie," Barbara Matusow wrote in "The Evening Stars: The Making of the Network News Anchor." She called the reports "among the most gripping episodes ever shown on live television."

Here's what Martin Peretz wrote in the New Republic, March 18, 1985:

The first time I ever remember being conscious of Jennings at all was in September 1972, only hours after the murder by Palestinian terrorists of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich. Jennings came on the tube, quite cool about the victims but, as I recall, eager to explain the act from the victimizers' point of view: the massacre was a demonstration of the misunderstood and esperate Palestinians' frustration at an unappeased grievance--as if they had not had from the beginning the option of a negotiated compromise for peace. With authoritatively clipped speech and a mannequin-handsome face, I thought, here was someone whose banalities were destined to be with us for years.

(As I've noted before, Jennings wrote a letter to the New Republic protesting that characterization; but Peretz remained unconvinced.)
Not everything was hunky dory, though, not even in the sanitized Washington Post obituary:

His years at the helm were not without glitches. He, along with the other major networks, prematurely and erroneously reported that Democratic nominee Al Gore won Florida in the 2000 presidential election.

And what about his infamous "temper tantrum" comment after the 1994 elections?
The Post continues:

Jennings was frequently accused of liberal bias by conservative media watchdog organizations and of pro-Palestinian bias by Israeli partisans.

In response to 1, see "temper tantrum" above. In response to 2, see "Munich massacre" above. (And no mention of his dalliance with Hanan Ashrawi.)
But we do learn:

A 2004 commentary in a journalism trade magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, dismissed criticism that ABC's newscast was "antiwar," noting that "despite the pressure to be a cheerleader, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings was more probing during the war than its rivals. The center's antiwar label is looking like ABC's red badge of courage."

Not antiwar?
I'm not going to say that we're better off without him. But clearly Jennings wasn't deserving of the virtually uncritical praise he received in that obituary.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Haveil Havalim #32 is up

Bloghead has returned to the scene of the crimes, so to speak, and has once again treated us to a quite thorough Haveil Havalim, (#32 to be precise), please read, follow the links and learn. And she has an almost complete list of links to posts about Rashi's Yahrzeit. However I discovered another one, On the Main Line, who doubted (at first) that a large percentage of Ashkenazi Jews are descended from Rashi. The comments, though, may have convinced him otherwise.

This next week Haveil Havalim will be on hiatus. Kesher Talk is arranging a blogburst relevant to Tisha B'Av (not just directly about Tisha B'Av, read the announcement for full details) and there's no value in duplicating efforts. Please check it out and write something and link to her blogburst.

Next edition of Haveil Havalim, #33, is scheduled in two weeks ( 8/21/05 ). If you'd like to host Haveil Havalim - Vanity of Vanities - The Jewish/Israel blogging carnival - then, or any other time in the future, send me an e-mail at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com and I'll pencil, er electron you in.

To submit a post for Haveil Havalim send me an e-mail at b>dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.
Or use Conservative Cat's handy dandy carnival submission page. Thank you very much,

If you'd like to host Haveil Havalim - Vanity of Vanities - The Jewish/Israel blogging carnival - send me an e-mail at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com and I'll pencil, er electron you in.

Finally, I've recently started a Haveil Havalim e-mail list to keep people apprised of the most recent editions. Send me an e-mail if you'd like to keep up. At most I'll send out 2 e-mails a week, one to announce the new HH the other (if I remember) a mid week reminder. Again to subscribe, send me an e-mail at b>dhgerstman at hotmail dot com.

Continue reading to see past editions

#31 Soccer Dad
#30 Jack's Shack
#29 Crossing the Rubicon2
#28 Soccer Dad
#27 Mirty's Place
#26 Shiloh Musings
#25 Soccer Dad
#24 Mirty's Place
#23 Soccer Dad
#22 Mystical Paths
#21 Rabbinical Authority Consortium of HACKers
#20 Shiloh Musings
#19 Devarim
#18 Soccer Dad
#17 Mystical Paths
#16 Critical Mastiff
#15 Soccer Dad
#14 Multiple Mentality
#13 IsraPundit
#12 DovBear
#11 Kesher Talk
#10 Biur Chametz
#9 Soccer Dad
#8 It's Almost Supernatural
#7 Bloghead
#6 Willow Tree.
#5 Crossing the Rubicon2
#4 Dov Bear
#3 Biur Chametz

A head for baseball?

Last year, Baseball Musings linked to a Baltimore Sun article (no longer available online) on the Orioles' use of psychological testing to determine which players to draft.
(More on this here, here and here.) What brings me back to this, is not the Orioles' recent tailspin, at least not exactly. It's a paragraph in Thomas Boswell's recent ode to Sam Perlazzo, the Oriole's new interim manager:

On one hand, the Orioles could pick handsome Lee Mazzilli, the ex-Mets center fielder known as the "Italian Stallion," who was completely unqualified to be a major league manager. But he'd been a first base coach for Joe Torre's Yankees and could spout cliches during a four-hour wow-'em interview about the power of a positive attitude. Ironically, the Orioles' other obvious choice was to pick Perlozzo, perhaps the most demonstrably qualified man in baseball.

In the original Boswell column he wasn't so down on Mazzilli, but more on that later. What struck me here was the "...power of the positive attitude." Was Mazzilli hired because Beattie and Flanagan saw that he was with their psychological program? If so, what are the chances that their hypothesis will outlive the season (and will they be general managing after the 2005 season)?
Anyway, for those who are curious, here is Boswell's first Mazzilli column, "Known more than only by name." He writes there:

You can call Beattie and Flanagan daring, or, if Mazzilli fails, you can nickname them "Dumb" and Dumber" for tearing up the standard script and going with their gut. But, for once during the Angelos regime, intelligent career baseball people have been put in charge of the club and, in this instance, they've picked their man for baseball reasons.

And now that it hasn't worked out, is Angelos ever going to let his baseball people the same freedom again? Yikes!

People can be trusted

Last week there was a great miracle. A plane crashed, and all aboard survived.
In "A Hero in every Aisle seat", Baruch Fischhoff argues that the first responders who make the greatest difference in preventing such disasters from being worse, are the non-professionals at the scene who instinctively react correctly to a disaster:

Indeed, the critical first responders in almost any crisis are ordinary citizens whom fate has brought together. As Kathleen Tierney, head of the University of Colorado's Natural Hazards Center, has noted, "The vast majority of live rescues are carried out by community residents who are at the scene of disasters, not by official response agencies or outside search and rescue teams."

Where have I heard this before? Why here.
I'd also suggest that the volunteers of Zaka have filled this role. Though they are now semi-official, these volunteers realized that they got to the scene of terror attacks faster than the authorities did. So even though their initial job was to collect body parts, they started teaching their volunteers some emergency medicine. This gives these first responders a chance to stabilize, and, thus, save injured victims of terror attacks.
UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. Thank you for stopping by. Take a look around and hopefully you'll find something else of interest too!

What's changed

Barry Rubin in a perceptive column "The Debate that won't Happen" this week wrote:

Therefore, there will be no big response in the region and the withdrawal will have little effect on Arab states' policies. The exception to a limited extent is Egypt which will now have to manage its border with the Gaza Strip, either getting tough or being permissive toward arms' smuggling. For the moment, though, that country is preoccupied by other things, notably the start of its presidential election campaign.

Arab regimes are not going to play up the withdrawal because that will make Israel look good. As if Israel actually wants peace. They also won't play up the angle that Hamas forces Israel out because that would bring up the question why, if Hamas, is willing to fight Israel (successfully) are they not willing to fight the big bad Zionist bully that they justify all their defense spending and dictatorial authority with.
In a nutshell then, Dr. Rubin then doesn't think that anything will change after Israel withdraws from Gaza. And of course that would be consistent with the peace process since 1993. It doesn't matter what Israel has done or offered it's never been enough and the world mutters sadly that Israel hasn't done enough or not quickly enough.
Right now editorialists shed tears for the lack of mobility afforded the Palestinians because of Israeli closures. And back in 1998 they bemoaned the lack of political progress made while Binyamin Netanyahu was prime minister. But guess what (and I've noted this before) in November 1998 the Netanyahu government reported:

The number of Palestinians working in Israel is steadily growing. Lawfully employed Palestinians in Israel today number about 60,000, of whom some 13,000 work in industrial zones and in the settlements. All told, more than 100,000 Palestinians are estimated to be employed in Israel approaching the record number employed in 1992.

So when things were going well economically the Palestinians and their supporters complained about the political process. And when disengagement is in the air - the greatest boost to the political process in a long time - the Palestinians and their supporters are complaining about the economics. Israel cannot win at this game. Lucy pulls the football away again and again and the world cheers her on.
Rubin seems to support disengagement because he apparently feels that this is the only way to break out of this vicious cycle.
Contrast Rubin to Jackson Diehl's "A Golden Opportunity Squandered":

Yasser Arafat's death last November created, it was commonly said, a golden opportunity for Palestinians to arrest their society's downward spiral into squalor and suicide bombing. It also set up a test for all those who believed that Arafat himself was the principal Palestinian problem.

Diehl then goes on to enumerate the ways that the Middle East has not taken advantage of Arafat's death. Throughout the article you get the impression that Diehl never heard the term "necessary but insufficient."
Well yes there never was going to be peace as long as Arafat lived. But the main change had to come from the Palesitnians. They had to appreciate the degree of Israel's sacrifices and, sometimes, forebearance. But egged on by the likes of Diehl, they consistenly blamed their failures on Israel. Consider:

Part of the problem, in fact, is that the Palestinians don't get to work at their own pace. Undoing the Arafat regime, building a new one, and finding a way to integrate or at least disarm radical forces can't easily be done in six months. But that timetable has been imposed by Israel's prime minister, Sharon, who has proceeded with his plan for the Gaza withdrawal without regard for Palestinian circumstances. Sharon clearly doesn't expect Abbas to succeed, and he has tailored his actions accordingly: Concessions to the new Palestinian regime have been held to the bare minimum required to satisfy pressure from Washington. The Israeli leader meanwhile proceeds with the unilateral solution he designed before Arafat's death. Following withdrawal from Gaza, Israel will retreat behind the border-like system of fences and walls it is constructing through the West Bank and around Jerusalem, and prepare to live with that status quo indefinitely.

It's out of Palestinian hands. Sharon's only doing the minimum.
Well no, it's not out of Palestinian hands. The incitement against Israel and glorification of terror continue. If there was a will, if statehood was important enough it would be done. But the Palestinians don't much want statehood if the price is normalization with but not demonization of Israel. And there is no shortage of those like Diehl who are willing to overlook that. And excuse that.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Rashi's yahrzeit

Elder of Ziyon notes that today is the 900th Yahrzeit (anniversary of the death) of Rashi, one of the great Jewish scholars of all time. His explanations of the Bible and the Talmud are essential to understanding the works. And when he wrote them, he didn't have a word processor. His work was absolutely monumental.
In his honor here's a link to a discussion I started in Mail-Jewish about Rashis Descendents (scroll down). Actually I just asked the question. Michael Gerver did the hard work. I also put the question to Rabbi Wein a few years ago after the screening of his movie about Rashi. Rabbi Wein estimated that 80% of Ashkenazi Jewry is descended from Rashi. Michael Gerver's calculations led him to believe that the percentage was somewhat higher.

Death in the kingdom of saud

One aspect of King Fahd's recent death that has received a lot of attention is the fact that he was buried in a simple grave. It seems that there are a lot of simple unmarked graves in Saudi Arabia. The problem is the manner in which many people were dispatched to those graves.
A fellow who writes by the name of R F Burton works in Saudi Arabia and he tells of some of those deaths. In "High noon at Chop Chop Square" he recounts the story of an execution that he heard of from a friend. I don't have a problem with the death penalty in general. However in Saudi Arabia it is the too severe punishment for some lesser crimes. And the crowds who gather seem to regard executions more as sporting events. And I am not convinced that the condemned receives anything like a fair trial or a chance to defend himself. (A number of years ago Commentary ran an article "Execution Day in Riyadh." It had a number of similar elements to R F Burton's account, but is not freely available.)
The other article I noticed by R F Burton was "The Price of Honor" in which he tells of the time he saw a young woman run from a car and then get captured by a man from the car. Later he was informed that the woman was likely on her way to be killed for violating the "honor" of her family.
These two articles show different aspects of the harshness of the Saudi regime yet the obituaries for King Fahd would discuss his closeness to the United States. But these two anonymous lives in Saudi Arabia say a lot more about the country than the final humility of the king.
And on a much different note, Elder of Ziyon tells of the Jewish doctor of the kings.

Mazzilli fired

One of the few things I admired about Peter Angelos and his ownership of the Orioles is that he didn't fire managers mid-season. I'm no fan of Lee Mazzilli but I had hoped that he'd at least finish out the year. But his firing begs a few questions.
1) If he was at fault for the Orioles' swoon was he also responsible for their dominant two months of the season? (UPDATE: My wife's point.)
2) Assuming that the decision to fire Mazzilli came from Jim Beattie and Mike Flanagan (and not from Peter Angelos), who hired him less than two years ago, what does it say about their judgment in hiring him in the first place?
3) Also when your outfield isn't producing much is that really the manager's fault?
4) If I remember correctly, when the O's were looking for a replacement for Mike Hargrove, Angelos was initially very taken with Eddie Murray. How happy will he be that the choice of his GM's didn't work out?
5) The Orioles just played the Angels. The Angels' GM is Bill Stoneman. He's a former GM of the Montreal Expos. Why oh why are the (past and present) two front office guys for the O's who previously were GM's for the Expos Kevin Malone and Jim Beattie? While, I guess, the verdict's still out on Jim Beattie he doesn't have much time left to prove himself. And by his second year as GM Bill Stoneman was running a championship team.
6) Finally, I can understand that the Orioles' management was a bit miffed this week. Instead of confiding in team officials and protesting his innocence, Rafael Palmeiro let them get blindsided by the news of his failed drug test. I doubt that they'd take out their frustrations on Mazzilli. However, I'm wondering if he, at all, had a role the Palmeiro scandal and if that might be the unstated reason for his dismissal.

Despicable

What else can you say about Edan Natan Zaada? It's worse because unlike Boruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir, the report suggests that this guy had help. (Other than his brother, I really don't think Amir had real help. Dror Adani seemed to have been arrested for being a friend of the Amirs and Margalit Har Shefi was less culpable than GSS agent Avishai Raviv.)
Why do I say that?

Yitzhak Zaada, 49, the father of the suspected gunman, said he has been requesting that the army find his son, who fled from his unit after refusing to participate in the Gaza pullout. Zaada said he was concerned his son's weapons would fall into the hands of fanatics in Tapuah.

If the army knew he was missing I believe they would have found him unless he had significant help. Of course if the government wasn't spending so much effort on preventing legal demonstrations maybe it'd have been able to prevent this terror.
Elie's Exposition's has no patience for those who would descend the dubious slopes of moral equivalence:

For any in the anti-settler camp who will draw thinly-caveatted parallels between isolated cases like Zada or Baruch Goldstein, and Palestinian terrorism, I will say this: When Israel starts calling them "martyrs" and naming summer camps after them, then come back and talk to me.

Mid-week Haveil Havalim update & other stuff

This week's (7/7/05) hostess is Bloghead. Please e-mail her at miriam at miriamshaviv dot com with your (self) nominations of the best of the Jewish and Israel blogosphere. That makes her job a lot easier.

The following week (7/14/05), the week of Tisha B'Av there will be no Haveil Havalim. That is the week that Kesher Talk is sponsoring a Blogburst in honor of the Jewish connection to the land of Israel and Jerusalem. That's it in a nutshell. For more details see Kesher Talk. Contact her at judith at yehudit dot org. It didn't seem useful to duplicate efforts that week.

Of course if you're a blogger with an interest in Israel or Jewish topics please contact me at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com and volunteer to host a future edition of Haveil Havalim. Haveil Havalim ideally goes up on Sundays so I'm looking for hosts starting 8/21 and later ...

It took me a long time to do it but thanks to Presence for the tip on how to make each item's URL more identifiable; not just a number.

I had an entry in this week's Carnival of Education.

Finally I was very pleased to discover that an item I had sent to Best of the Web Today was included in Monday's return of the feature. See if you can figure out which one.

Disappointed

As unlikely as his story sounded, I wanted to believe Rafael Palmeiro. In "A Big Star Plays a Bad Hand" Thomas Boswell writes:

For those of us who have known Palmeiro for years and like him -- which is not the same as believing him -- this is a bitter day. Palmeiro may have the most logical line of self-defense ever uttered by someone who will be believed by very few.

"Why would I do that in a year when I went in front of Congress and I testified and I told the truth?" Palmeiro said. "Why would I do this in a season when I was going to get to 3,000 hits? It makes no sense. I would not put my career on the line. I would not put my reputation on the line and everything I have accomplished throughout my career. I would not do that. . . . It was an accident. I'm paying the price. . . .

"This is the toughest time that I've gone through in my life with anything."

All this makes sense -- of a sort.

But Boswell points out that Palmeiro, if innocent, had an out to explain what really happened:

Palmeiro and his agent, as well as the Orioles, repeated many times that they could not go into details about Palmeiro's steroid blunder because of some "confidentiality" issues. "I would love to tell what happened to me so that everyone would understand," said Palmeiro, "but under this confidentiality agreement, I cannot get specific."

Unfortunately, what we may have here is a Stupidity Test. As in: How stupid are we? Whose "confidentiality" is being protected? Palmeiro's, of course. If he wanted to explain more, who could stop him from defending his good name? The union and baseball have a confidentiality agreement that prevents them from releasing information. But that doesn't put masking tape over the player's mouth. If Palmeiro had a compelling story, who could force him to stay silent?

(Steve Davis on WBAL made a similar point on his show Monday night.) The confidentiality agreement is to protect the player. If the player feels that telling his story is better protection, he certainly could have told it.
Unfortunately for Raffy, someone else wasn't playing by the rules here, and someone in the commissioner's office told the New York Times.

The positive drug test that has left Rafael Palmeiro's legacy in doubt involved the potent anabolic steroid stanozolol, a person in baseball with direct knowledge of the sport's drug-testing program said yesterday.

Stanozolol, known by its brand name, Winstrol, was most notably linked to the Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson of Canada, who was stripped of a gold medal in 1988 after testing positive for that steroid.
...

The person who said that Palmeiro tested positive for stanozolol did not want to be identified because the testing policy prohibits anyone in baseball from disclosing information about test results without authorization.

(The Times of course will protect the identity of this anonymous rule breaker.)

It seems less and less likely that Raffy ingested his steroids unintentionally. I'm disappointed less with the steroids than with the boldness of (apparent) lies.

Charming terrorists

Anne Applebaum in the "The Discreet Charm of the Terrorist Cause" notes that the sympathy of Muslim for the Muslim terrorists in Britain isn't entirely unusual:

The notion that events in distant deserts should lead the middle-class inhabitants of London or Leeds to admire terrorists seems inexplicable. But why should this phenomenon be so incomprehensible or inexplicable, at least to Americans? We did, after all, once tolerate a similar phenomenon ourselves.

I am talking about the sympathy for the Irish Republican Army that persisted for decades in some Irish American communities and is only now fading away.

Alas, Applebaum limits her critique to the IRA. Had she cast a wider net she would have written (with outrage) at the sympathy given to Palestinian terrorism. And Michael Kelly had it right when he discussed the consequences of that terror on Sept 12, 2002:

If it is morally acceptable to murder, in the name of a necessary blow for freedom, a woman on a Tel Aviv street, or to blow up a disco full of teenagers, or to bomb a family restaurant -- then it must be morally acceptable to drive two jetliners into a place where 50,000 people work. In moral logic, what is the difference? If the murder of innocent people is for whatever reason excusable, it is excusable; if it is legitimate, it is legitimate. If acceptable on a small scale, so too on a grand.

It is the Western tolerance of Palestinian terror that has taught Bin Laden well.
Applebaum's column would have been better if she too had mentioned Palesitnian terror against Israel. Unfortunately she didn't.
Outrages against Jews were omitted in another item on the Post's editorial page. In "A constitution for Iraq" the editors of the Washington Post rightly fret about some of the less promising developments or possibilities of the Iraqi constitution writing committee. But despite their concern for the possible lack of women's rights or that the clerics will be able to overrule the constitution there is not a word about the denial of the rights of Iraqi Jews to return as citizens.

Also, the draft would prevent tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews who emigrated to Israel in the 1950s from getting back their Iraqi citizenship. It says only Iraqis who lost their citizenship after Saddam's Baath Party came to power in 1963 "will be allowed to get it back."

(Actually they didn't simply emigrate. They were forced to leave.) So once again the Arab hatred of Jews is unmentioned and thus tolerated.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Surreal

via Chayyei Sarah
There's something surreal about the Israeli government claiming to limit the size of the protest due to the threat of Qassam missiles from Gaza. In other words, the government is effectively conceding a point to the protestors. It's too dangerous to leave Gaza because Israel will have no way to control Hamas; look how strong Hamas is now! BTW I don't think that female protestor is a religious Zionist.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Short takes

Eventually they come around.
I feel her pain.
Steve Spruiell praises the NY Times for its rigorous fact-checking.

Untroubled

Jeff Jacoby has a thought provoking column "Nazi Reminders in Gaza?" Like me he is quite clear that those who equate the fate of the Jews living in Gaza to the Jews deported by Nazis are wrong:

Let's be clear: You don't have to support disengagement to agree that the Nazi-talk is grotesque. The Israeli army is not the Gestapo. The peaceful Jewish residents who will be forced from the homes and land they love are not being sent to gas chambers. Sharon's plan may be delusional -- instead of enabling Israelis to ''disengage" from Palestinian violence, it will bring them more of it, and in deadlier forms -- but it isn't the Final Solution.

However he continues ...

And yet there is no getting around the fact that Israel is about to become the first modern, Western nation in more than 60 years to forcibly uproot a whole population -- men, women, children, babies -- solely because they are Jews. There is no getting around the fact that the forthcoming expulsions are rooted in the belief that any future Palestinian state must be Judenrein -- emptied of its Jews. And while it goes without saying that Sharon and every member of his government abominate the Nazis and all they stood for, there is no getting around the fact that disengagement is meant to appease an enemy that has always regarded the genocidal hatred of Jews in a very different light.

There is also no getting around that many of the actions taken by PM Sharon in order to facilitate the withdrawal would, in nearly any other context, give pause to those who now so enthusiastically extoll his plan. If any other leader in any other country fired those who would vote against him in order to ensure a victory on a cabinet level or ignored the results of a referendum, the editors at most newspapers would spill gallons of ink condemning the leader for cutting democratic corners. Only the withdrawal of Jews from Gaza is so important that democratic niceties need not be adhered to.
The problem isn't just, as Jacoby points out, that many disengagement proponents in Israel are untroubled by its implications. It's a worldwide problem. Consider the photographs of the yellow cages Israeli troops plan to use to remove those Jews who don't leave on their own. Say the Israelis, instead, were planning to use them to quell violent Arab demonstrations. How would the world react? Would it end with eager photographers snapping pictures of these tools? Or would we read news stories and op-eds condemning Israel for planning once again to dehumanize the Palestinians?
With the government, I'm bothered less that Israel plans to it, than with the way PM Sharon has chosen to do it in the most divisive way possible. With those outside government I'm bothered less by those who support than those who are untroubled or (it goes without saying) enthusiastic about it. Unless the presence of Jews in Gaza is some unprecedented evil, the actions to reverse it are severe. Whether or not they're justified is a separate issue. To be oblivious to that is to be without conscience.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Calling the kettle black

It's interesting being accused of cherry picking and dishonesty by a guy whose idea of media criticism is copying from Eric Alterman, James Wolcott or David Brock and highlighting one paragraph with the heading "money quote" rather than someone who actually does his own research.

Recently I showed the contrast between headlines for current Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts and President Clinton's nominees, Justices Ginsburg and Breyer. The headline that upset me about Judge Roberts was "Democrats Say Nominee Will Be Hard to Defeat." I couldn't imagine a similarly headline for either President Clinton's nominees; and indeed, when I researched the Washington Post's archives, I couldn't find one.

DovBear, in his comments, drew a phony distinction between "profile" and "process" articles. The Post had run a couple of positive "profile" articles about Judge Roberts; something I freely conceded. However I pointed out that there was no similarly negative article about either Judges Ginsburg or Breyer. (And one of the articles about Judge Ginsburg was a "process" article that heralded the ease of her confirmation. Something that DovBear, apparently missed.)

I guess DB was frustrated that comments close after a week, so he actually posted again on his own blog and claimed that I cheated. (Closing comments was a necessity because of comment spam.) He claims that the article that upset me was anything but adversarial. Here's paragraph 3:

An array of interest groups on the left began mobilizing opposition to Roberts, but reticent Senate Democrats demonstrated little eagerness for an all-out war against him. Some Democratic senators laid the groundwork for a struggle focused on prying loose documents related to Roberts's career in government and using any resistance by the administration against him. Yet as the day progressed, Democrats seemed increasingly resigned to the notion that they cannot stop his appointment.

"Increasingly resigned?" and the article's not adversarial? The Democratic side of the article is presented as a how and why the Democrats may derail or at least oppose the nomination. No it's not completely adversarial, but it's not simply descriptive of the process either. This is crossing a line between reporting and advocacy.
I have nothing further to say on the topic and just wish that DB would get over his need for attention by being nasty whenever he disagrees with someone. There's a difference between analysis and name calling, alas he doesn't seem to grasp it.