Israel

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Recipe for Disaster

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg has a very interesting interview with Benjamin Netanyahu which includes this passage: Netanyahu offered Iran’s behavior during its eight-year war with Iraq as proof of Tehran’s penchant for irrational behavior. Iran “wasted over a million lives without batting an eyelash … It didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness. It wasn’t Britain after World War I, lapsing into pacifism because of the great tragedy of a loss of a generation. You see nothing of the kind.” He continued: “You see a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.” I asked Netanyahu if he believed Iran would risk its own nuclear annihilation

Charles Freeman

Appointing Charles Freeman to run the President’s National Intelligence Council is not quite the same thing as asking him to be National Security Advisor or Secretary of State. How many people could name any of Freeman’s predecessors? Clive links to most of the pieces I was planning to mention (though I’d add that Matt Welch makes a good and blessedly un-Israel-related case against Freeman here). Still, most of the loudest objections to Freeman concern his alleged hostility to Israel and, apparently “Jews generally”. Maybe this exists and I confess I don’t think I’d choose to die in the last, or indeed any, ditch to defend Freeman. Nonetheless it is painfully

How do you know Obama will defend Israel? John Bolton says he won’t.

How do you know the Obama administration isn’t “soft” on Israel? John Bolton says it is. To wit, Bolton was asked at CPAC today if Obama would defend Israel “when” the “Arab nations” attack it and here’s what he said: BOLTON: I would certainly hope they would come to Israel’s assistance, but I think there’s no guarantee of it. I think the more likely response is to appoint a special envoy and try to negotiate an end the hostilities. Q: Your short answer then would be “no”. BOLTON: I very much fear that’s right. Bolton is an engaging fellow who is always good copy (apart from anything else he is

Obama and Israel

Melanie Phillips makes a pretty remarkable claim at the end of this post: The fact is that Israel faces the nightmare scenario that it now stands alone — and against America. Whether through naivety, ideology or rank malice, there is now a fifth columnist in the White House, undermining the cause of the free world. The vast majority of Americans who staunchly support Israel’s struggle to exist in the face of genocidal attack, and understand only too well its role as the front line of defence for the free world, need to become aware of what is being done in their name. As polemic, this is fine stuff. But as

Reporting protest

Anyone who has ever been on a protest march or felt the heady frission of student rebelliousness should check out Hugo Rifkind’s piece in the Times today. A really subtle piece of reporting, with no hint of the usual establishment sneer. What’s fascinating about his observations the history of student revolt is how similar the present wave of sit-ins is to the protests of the past. The latest generation of student revolutionaries use the Israeli action in Gaza as their starting point but their real gripe is with global capitalism. They know as little about the realities of life in Isreal’s occupied territories as their precursors in the 1968 “events”

Concerned about Obama?

Via Yglesias, here’s a charming leaflet from the Republican Jewish Committee that helps demonstrate just why the GOP deserves – even needs – to lose on Tuesday. Nice touch too, that the photograph used shows Barack Obama speaking in Germany. Obviously Obama is, rather oddly, Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain. Equally obviously, it scarcely needs saying that Neville Chamberlain was not in fact to blame for the Holocaust.

Why oh why oh why indeed?

Is this Glenn Reynolds post a plea for more coverage of Tibet or less of Palestine? GOOD QUESTION:  Why Do Palestinians Get Much More Attention than Tibetans? But, just perhaps, the Israel-Palestine question receives lots of coverage because it’s a question, at root, of competing rights, not because the media has an incurably anti-Israeli bias or is, in this instance at any rate, acting in an especially hypocritical fashion. The other answer, of course, is that readers, are much more interested in the Middle East than they are in China and Tibet and, consequently, this is just market forces at work. Shocking!

Hold the foreign page…

Matt Yglesias writes:              People often note that there appears to be a more vigorous debate over Israel’s approach to the Israeli-Arab conflict in the mainstream Israeli press than there is in the mainstream American press. This is, however, the kind of judgment that it’s hard for a casual American observer to make with much confidence. Writing in International Security, however, Jerome Slater takes a more systematic comparison of coverage of the conflict in The New York Times and in Haaretz and concludes that, indeed, Israelis debate this matter more freely. To which Megan responds: 1)  No one in Israel is worried about being called anti-semitic. 2)

Supper with Rupert

I’ve defended Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal, but that’s not an endorsement of his political sensitivity. From the Campbell diaries: Thursday January 17th, 2002:Murdoch was coming in for dinner and… brought James and Lachlan [his sons]…Murdoch was at one point putting the traditional very right-wing view on Israel and the Middle East peace process and James said that he was ‘talking fucking nonsense’. Murdoch said he didn’t see what the Palestinians’ problem was and James said it was that they were kicked out of their fucking homes and had nowhere to fucking live. Murdoch was very pro-Israel, very pro-Reagan. He finally said to James that he didn’t