Soccer Dad

The confusing situation in israel

So much of the conventional wisdom about the Middle East generally and Israel specifically is confused.

Last week Treppenwitz asked a couple of good questions that highlighted these confusions:

My questions are as follows:

1. Why is it considered by many to be inflammatory when a Jew wants to legally purchase land or housing in a predominantly Arab area, and equally inflammatory when Jews want to exclude an Arab from doing the same thing in a predominantly Jewish area?

2. Why are even the most tenuous Arab land claims that date back to Turkish Ottoman times considered legally binding, yet Jewish land/property claims (many dating back to the same period or at very least British mandatory period) are dismissed out of hand as irrelevant to the current reality. In both cases a legally binding transaction took place. Money changed hands. A land/property owner sold something of concrete description and value to someone else... yet only the Arab claims seem to stand the test of time.

Elder of Ziyon regurgitates (bad word, good post) a racism test, that covers similar territory.

Or consider the recently expired truce between Hamas and Israel. Daled Amos tallies the toll of the truce complete with a table and a timeline.

Elder of Ziyon cites Daled Amos (who, in turn, cited Elder of Ziyon) and observes:

Of course, during that "calm" the only let-up in terror attacks is because of Israeli responses to terror and the terrorist desire not to sabotage the Gaza withdrawal, not from any real commitment from the terrorist side.

In a related note, Meryl Yourish recounts the Legacy of Arafat and notes trenchantly:

Israelis create drip-irrigation technology, cures for diseases, and inventions that help the world. Palestinians create ways to cause more death and destruction, and then pass that knowledge onto other terrorists.

And the world demonizes Israel.

And that, unfortunately, is the bitter truth. The first half of her argument was made by Elder of Ziyon a few months ago in "Plastics." The second half of her argument is the late Michael Kelly's thesis in his Sept 12, 2001 column, "When Innocents are the Victim."

The whole argument is that the Palesitnian could have had peace if they worked for it (instead of devoting their energies to terror) and that the West's easy acceptance of that terror tells others who would terrorize us that we won't fight back and that they have everything to gain by attacking us.

Hamstringing Israel in its fight against terror not only doesn't bring peace it encourages those who would terrorize Israel, and also those who would terrorize us.

Mediacrity, not surprisingly, finds the New York Times engaged in such terror apologia. Backspin, finds the AP engaged in similar pursuits.

Citing IRIS, Deja Vu notes that editorials in both the NY Times and the Washington Post are questioning the American $2 billion in annual aid to that corrupt dictatorship. Good for them. But why haven't they uttered a word about Mubarak's consistent failure to live up to his obligations to Israel or even to support American initiatives?

Finally, many who defend disengagement refer to the "demographic threat" that it deflected. If Israel held onto Gaza, it was argued, soon more Arabs than Jews would reside between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and Israel would be forced to choose between being a Jewish state and a democratic state. But as Critical Mastiff points out (quoting Carolyn Glick extensively) the means by which PM Sharon achieved the withdrawal, played havoc with the Israel's system of democracy:

During the Gaza pullout debacle, Sharon ignored the advice of the IDF, fired the Chief of Staff and the head of military intelligence for daring to disagree with him, and dissolved his cabinet. He ignored the results of a Likud referrendum that decisively rejected the pullout, claiming that such a vote did not reflect the desires of Israel as a whole; he then refused to hold a national referrendum, despite the incalculable damage this caused to Israeli civil society.

He declared Gaza a closed military zone, and had peaceful protesters within Israel proper arrested by executive fiat (just one of the fringe benefits of ruling a country without a constitution). Sharon did this all while he's been under constant suspicion of financial corruption. Now, he seems to have built a political coalition that amounts to little more than a personality cult.

Maybe Sharon saved Israel's democracy, but to do it in such a way to thwart the will of the people should, at least raise a doubt or two, in the minds of sincere people. The lack of misgivings about PM Sharon's maneuvering among the pro-disengagement crowd calls into question their intellectual honesty.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Israel politics.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.