Apropos Of Nothing

It has caused this Israeli some amusement to watch the contortions international observers are putting themselves through to excuse the unequivocal choice for terror just made by the Palestinian electorate. The prevailing theme is that the Palestinian people were reluctantly compelled to overlook the carnage-loving side of Hamas in order to bring some social order to the fractured and disintegrating Palestinian Authority. “Palestine” was well on its way to becoming a failed state, so the people, in desperation, swallowed their discomfort at Hamas’s slightly problematic foreign policy and voted them in for the sake of sewage systems and electrical grids.

Mm-hmm.

Now, it is undeniable that the Palestinians were short on good options, and I am the last person to defend the scandalously inept administration of the useless Mahmoud Abbas. But a choice did exist. If their concern was solely social order, or even social order plus an eventual rapprochement with Israel, the Palestinians had it in their power to demand a corruption-free Fatah that actually gave a damn about the people, their daily lives and their future. There were popular Fatah leaders, particularly “young guard” stalwart Marwan Barghouti, who were adamant that Fatah should be cleansed of dithering, corrupt cronies (and how’s that for a sad commentary – their most moderate prospective leader is himself a multiple murderer). The alternative was to throw the party out lock, stock and barrel and formally bring in the terrorists – an option that would identify the general population squarely with an unapologetic Israel-destroying ethos. The population grabbed that option with both fists.

And that brio is significant. Hamas did not squeak in by a whisker; they were brought in on a landslide. It is the height of folly to maintain that Palestinian local concerns were so great that they somehow blinded the vast majority of voters to the total Hamas package. The people handed Hamas a breathtaking victory, and it is preposterous to suggest that all those people were oblivious to Hamas’s admirably clear foreign policy. The more logical inference is that the foreign policy of the winning party reflects the will of the people. It is deeply odd for Western, democracy-loving observers to willfully infer in this particular case that the voters were only electing a part of the victors’ platform.

There is something extremely off-putting about this eagerness to absolve Palestinians of responsibility for their actions – to suggest that they took this fateful step reluctantly or, more offensively, out of ignorance. This is obviously particularly irritating from our perspective, since we are not generally granted similar apologias for our decisions. As a commenter on Hurry Up Harry astutely observed prior to the election,

When Sharon was re-elected as Prime Minister, many commentators implied that this proved most Israelis didn’t want peace and that because a right-wing leader was elected, that Israelis could only hold themselves responsible for future attacks against them, by offering a gun instead of an olive branch. If Hamas win outright or a considerable percentage in the election, I wonder how many commentators will say that the Palestinians have only themselves to blame for any future violence against them, since they voted against peace and for a terrorist organisation that promotes hatred and aggression? Somehow I doubt there will be many.
(Via Damian.)

Thinker, scholar, author and friend Claire made a similar point in an email to me yesterday:

When Sharon was elected, did a wide swathe of the commentariat ever attempt to suggest that the Israelis did not actually mean to elect the…author of Sabra and Shatila, they were just sort of … seduced by his grand ideas on domestic policy, and frustrated with the opposition?

What all this boils down to, in my view, is a question of context. For the Palestinians, context is used to excuse. For us, context (when it is even allowed into the discussion) is used to condemn.

To illustrate this point, I’m afraid I have to bring up the reality of terrorism – the true face of it, from the point of view of a target. When Palestinians enter Israel and splatter Israeli women and children all over the walls of ice cream parlors and grocery stores, context is everything; the act is nothing. They’re poor. They’re frustrated. They’re dispossessed. They’re economically stagnant. What else can you expect?

When Israel responds to such attacks on its citizens by, say, killing a Hamas leader who has already killed Israeli civilians and is known to be planning further mass murders – or, only slightly less provocatively, by building a wall to keep the murderers out – context is nothing; the act is everything. When the IDF went into Jenin, the history that led up to that operation – the fact that more than two dozen (two dozen!) suicide bombers had entered Israel from that city – was irrelevant.

This imbalance extends backwards into history. The Palestinians’ actions, no matter how nihilistic, gruesome or self-defeating, are excused by their passionate attachment to their historical roots on this land. Our passionate attachment to our historical roots on this land, however, is not relevant to the discussion. Suggesting that it may be is at best a tactic of the religious right wing and at worst an outright lie (which would probably come as a surprise to my great grandmother, a Jew of Palestine whose family can be traced back on this land for centuries).

The result of years of unsolicited apologias, not surprisingly, is a blithe refusal to be held accountable for anything – an absolute absence of any sense of shame, a chutzpah par excellence. This is reflected in, to take just one small example off the top of my head, the Palestinian response to their destruction of the Israeli settler greenhouses purchased for them by James Wolfensohn’s team of donors – that these things happen, but hey, Wolfensohn should keep up the good work. If we want to take sledgehammers to your gifts to us, that’s our business; just keep the bucks coming. It is reflected in the total lack of any scruples or collective conscience about terrorist attacks committed on behalf of the Palestinian people — I don’t recall ever hearing a Palestinian voice, either inside or outside the territories, publicly say “Not In My Name” while Israelis are burying their murdered citizens. And it is reflected in the massive victory handed to a jihadist terrorist organization by the vast majority of the Palestinian people. No apology necessary — the rest of the world will provide it in any case.

For our part, the denial of the relevance of context for our actions has created an interesting dualism: both a stoic “we’ll do what we have to do” unilateralism (c.f. Sharon) and a cringing surfeit of shame (ladies and gentlemen, please meet Yossi Beilin). I would hazard a guess that the tenacity of the peace-at-all-costs camp in Israel is based in part on a desperate, almost abject eagerness to be admitted to the club of people who are allowed a history, a context of their own: see, look, I’ll give you everything I have if only you’ll let me exist the way you exist, take pride in my name and my religion and my country the way you do. I don’t want to feel ashamed to defend myself anymore, and so I won’t. Take it all.

Well, the situation could be worse. Hamas could be lying. While it is disappointing that they are the Palestinian people’s choice, it is a good thing that that choice has been made so absolutely clear, and that Hamas is not massaging its message to suit the palates of outside observers. As Andrew Sullivan put it,

On the negative side, we have a clear indication that a majority of Palestinians elected a government dedicated to the destruction of Israel. On the positive side, we have a clear indication that a majority of Palestinians elected a government dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In other words: we’re done with the minuet with duplicitous, double-dealing crypto-terrorists claiming to want a negotiated peace.

Similarly, Westhawk (courtesy of Bernard) puts it this way:

The Hamas victory is a positive development because it finally reveals the reality of Palestinian political preferences. With that reality now transparent, the various actors in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can finally proceed to establish realistic policies.

Hamas might well find that the job of governance doesn’t leave a lot of time for jihad (see my earlier post about the Hamas-run constituency of Kalkilya for a possible case-study). Anything is possible. In the meantime, the situation is what it is. Our immediate neighbors have elected an administration that, in its current incarnation at least, wants me and everyone I know dead. That’s a pretty clear reality. Let’s not muddy it up with nonsense.

Hamas has won the Palestinian elections.

They won an absolute majority of the vote, taking almost every one of the 16 constituencies in the West Bank and Gaza and all four Muslim seats in the Jerusalem district.

There is much concern over their refusal to alter, or even introduce any diplomatic shading into, their policy statement that their ultimate goal is the total eradication of the State of Israel. (Well, senior Hamasnik Mahmoud al-Zahar did tell Al-Arabiya television that Hamas could conceivably sign an accord with Israel without recognizing its right to exist, but it’s hard to imagine any Israeli government agreeing to enter into so surreal a compact.)

Personally, I’m always much more comfortable when our enemies (and I’m referring to the enemies of freedom in general, not exclusively the enemies of Israel) state their intentions with complete honesty. Nothing gets us in trouble faster than doubletalk. The instant Hamas starts making Euro-friendly soft-soap noises, we’re in for it: we’ll have an international chorus shrieking at us to make “concessions” to Hamas for the sake of a negotiated Oslo-esque two-state roadmap solution faster than you can say “is that one ‘m’ or two in dhimmi?”

The Palestinian electorate did not vote in a homicidal religious cult (and please note that Hamas is already talking about introducing sharia law into the territories and phasing out secular Palestinian legislation) because of health care, although that did have something to do with it. Whatever the observing community prefers to believe, these people are not stupid. They know what Hamas represents and they have made their choice. Listen to them.

I managed to squeak through into the finals of the JIB Awards in one category: Best Post. Please have a look at it if you have a moment — you can find it here — and if you like it, please vote for it here.

Same rules apply: it’s kosher to vote every three days between today and February 2, when ballots will close.

Many thanks again.

Our mandibly-challenged neighbor to the northeast, Bashar al-Assad –

– possibly depressed at putting more people in mind of Ichabod Crane than of Salah-al-Din — is apparently undergoing behavior modification therapy at the hands of his new best friend, fellow statesman and all-around loon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Assad, who lacks his mentor’s flair for the original (Alaska, anyone?) has — in a pretty sorry-ass attempt to pull off that old Arab leader gambit, the ridiculous lie combined with puffed-up righteous indignation — dragged an already stale canard out of the closet and accused us of murdering our old partner for peace, Yasser Arafat.

Bashar, Bashar, Bashar. Think about it for a minute. If we had been inclined to do this, and if we really are the world-dominating force for evil you say we are, would we have sat around waiting until he was a decrepit 70-year-old? Would we have plotzed through the entire Arafat-orchestrated second intifada without taking the old ghoul out? I ask you.

Well, two can play at that game. I was going to throw my hat into the inane conspiracy-theory ring with a few suggestions regarding who might have felled our leader, Ariel Sharon, but Jewlicious has beaten me to it. He suggests we take a close look at the recent doings of Mr. Potatohead, among others.

I’ll just point out that Mr. Potatohead’s wardrobe contains quite a fetching pair of glasses. And where there are glasses, somewhere there is an eye doctor. Cherchez le ophthalmologist.

Just saying.

There is much speculation this morning that last night’s suicide bombing at a shawarma stand at Tel Aviv’s old bus station has the fingerprints of Iran all over it. This is a reasonable conclusion, since responsibility for the attack has been claimed by Islamic Jihad — a terrorist organization that is directly supported by Iran. Islamic Jihad is the only Palestinian organization to be boycotting next week’s parliamentary elections, which appears to support the premise that their object is to humiliate Mahmoud Abbas and sabotage those elections.

Maybe. There is another possibility, however: that a deeper look will reveal the fingerprints of Fatah itself, the party of Abbas (who seems to have learned quite a bit about semantic duplicity from his predecessor in office, Yasser Arafat). Fatah desperately wants to avoid having to go through with the elections, which are almost sure to deal them a serious blow. It is no coincidence that most of the anarchy that has been prevailing in Gaza since disengagement has been committed by Fatah thugs — for all Abbas’s hollow pontificating about the internal violence threatening the elections, no outcome would suit him better than an indefinite postponement. He was hoping the Israelis would provide him with an excuse for postponement by refusing to permit East Jerusalemites to vote, but Israel spoiled that plan by permitting the vote to go ahead despite the presence on the ballot of Hamas, a party dedicated to Israel’s destruction. (After the announcement of Israel’s decision, it took about a minute and ten seconds for the Palestinian Authority itself (read: Fatah) to declare that Hamas was not permitted to campaign for votes, which rather gave the lie to Abbas’s earnest protestations that no Palestinian would be left out of the great sweep of Palestinian democracy. The excuse Abbas gave for shutting down Hamas’s campaign operation was that Hamas does not support the Oslo Accords [understatement of the week], and as the elections are part of the Oslo framework, Hamas does not belong there. Hamas’s response is that only the truly delusional still believe Oslo is alive — an area in which Hamasniks are in full agreement with many Israelis.)

As expected, Abbas is making noises today about the attack sabotaging the vote. He goes on to express much righteous indignation at that prospect — indignation that is only to be expected, considering his position, but that does not ring true on even a cursory inspection.

It is perfectly possible that Abbas really is as pathetically powerless as he wants to appear, and that his flat refusal to take any steps to curtail Palestinian terrorism really is based on helplessness (note the Arafat echo). Or perhaps he’s the one pulling Islamic Jihad’s strings after all. This bombing serves his interests — particularly if the Israelis respond with a whopping military response, which I imagine is what Abbas is hoping for (it would serve as a fall-back blame-Israel excuse for delaying the elections). There is no contradiction, by the way, between the involvement of Iran and the involvement of Fatah: Fatah, via Arafat, has been giving the green light to Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorism for years (for which the Karine A, the Palestinian Authority-owned freighter massively laden with Iranian and Russian terrorist materiel that was intercepted by Israel on its way to Arafat’s Gaza in 2002, is but one example).

By the way, it’s astounding that the bomber, who stood in the middle of a crowd of people eating shawarma, managed to kill only himself. None of the thirty or so people wounded during the attack was critically injured, praise God. Back in Nablus, home of the young bomber (another comfortably-off university student — what was that I heard about grinding poverty being the explanation and excuse for the phenomenon of suicide bombing?), the bewildered family and friends are busy extolling the “honor” brought to them by the “martyr”. The people interviewed seem to be clinging to the word “martyr” less as a political statement than as a means of comforting themselves that there’s some meaning behind this act of violence, which surprised all of them. I understand the need to cling to any scrap of comfort when a young, healthy, apparently much-loved person is suddenly dead, but I can’t help but cringe inwardly, as I do every time, at their use of that term “martyr”.

The hijacking of language is part and parcel of the hijacking of a political narrative. (For another example, consider the American anti-abortion label “pro-life” — what does that make people who support a woman’s right to choose, “pro-death”?) This is a big subject, and best left for another post. But in the name of the people miraculously spared during yesterday’s attempted slaughter, I’ll just point out (and how odd the world has become, that his needs to be said at all): martyrs are the people killed by mass murderers. They’re not the mass murderers themselves.

Today is the last day to vote in the preliminary round of the Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards. The final tally at the end of today will decide who is a finalist.

I’m being pretty soundly trounced all around (that Politics tally really hurts!), but there’s a category or two in which it’s not impossible for me to squeak into the top six (which would make me a finalist). If you’ve been enjoying the blog, please pop over and cast your vote for Apropos of Nothing in these categories: Best Post, Best Overall, Best Politics, and Best New Blog.

If you’ve voted before, please do so again. (The rules permit multiple votes.)

Okay, I’ll try to stop blushing now…(how do politicians do this?)…

Israeli military Chief of Staff Dan Halutz was recently asked how far Israel was willing to go to put a stop to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Answer: “Two thousand kilometers.”

(Courtesy of Damian.)

Last week, the Lebanese army caught a boat loaded with weapons and long-range missiles headed for Israel (shades of the Karine A). The weapons were apparently intended for the use of either Hamas or the Islamic Jihad in Gaza. The boat departed Lebanon from Naher Al Bard, a Palestinian refugee camp near the southern port of Tripoli. There were four people on the boat as well, and they were detained by the Lebanese.

This action by the Lebanese is quite encouraging. It indicates an independence on the part of the Lebanese army from the desires of Hezbollah, and more speculatively, it might suggest an inclination among the Lebanese to take advantage of the Syrian collapse to reach out to Israel. That’s an extremely hopeful scenario, but not at all an impossible one.

Yee haa!! I’m finally a real member of the blogosphere: I’ve been tagged by a meme. (Isn’t that a great phrase?)

Daniel in Brookline, who did the tagging, calls this the “Four by Four” meme. Here goes:

1. Four jobs I’ve had in my life:
· sweater folder at Benetton
· writing teacher
· person who tried twice to write a mystery novel and is now permanently devoted to nonfiction
· financial editor at an investment bank (much more interesting than it sounds – crazy deadlines, yes, but I was working with funny, smart people all day; what could be better?)

2. Four movies I could watch over and over:
· A Sunday in the Country (every frame looks like an Impressionist painting, and the main female character spends the whole movie in the perfect dress)
· Best In Show (truly hilarious)
· Adam’s Rib (my favorite costars and a charming portrait of a great marriage)
· The Rookie (in fact, I really do watch this movie over and over. I’ve shifted my baseball-loving three-year-old son from 61* [an all-time great] to The Rookie because he’s now at an age where he might start repeating the rampant swearing that is all over 61*. The Rookie is just as good – it’s loaded with good baseball [you should hear the way my son laughs every time we first see the Jim Morris character bring the heat] and it’s nice and wholesome. And it has the big advantage that Mommy gets to spend an hour and a half looking at Dennis Quaid.)

3. Four places I’ve lived:
· New York City
· Durham, North Carolina
· Washington, DC
· Oxford, England

4. Four TV shows I love to watch:
· Sex and the City
· The West Wing
· Northern Exposure
· The Odd Couple (the series with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall)
(As you can probably tell, I’ve completely stopped watching new TV.)

5. Four websites I visit daily:
· Pootergeek
· AL Daily
· Daniel in Brookline
· Normblog

6. Four of my favorite foods:
· my mother’s brisket with kasha varnishkes
· Mimrachit (an Israeli chocolate spread that is meant to be slathered on bread or pita, but that works just as well eaten straight off a spoon, especially on top of a nice blob of peanut butter)
· a large, juicy, perfectly done steak with a baked potato heaped with butter and sour cream (yes, both; you have a problem with that?)
· cappellini with white clam sauce (not something I ever have anymore now that I live in a shellfish-free zone, alas)

7. Four places I’d rather be
· The Four Seasons Hotel in New York City
· a well-heated, well-appointed cottage in New England with a full larder, a roaring fire and a big, friendly dog
· a big Southern house (wraparound porches, French windows, hardwood floors, multiple fireplaces, huge, well-equipped kitchen) in North Carolina
· Paris

8. Four albums I can’t live without:
· Step Inside This House by Lyle Lovett
· At Li Laila by Boaz Sharabi
· O Quam Gloriosum by Tomas Luis de Victoria, sung by the Westminster Cathedral Choir (I’m pretty sure this is the most sublime thing I’ve ever heard)
· my recording of the novel Pigs Have Wings by P.G. Wodehouse (read by Jeremy Sinden)

Thanks, Daniel. That was fun!

Constituents of British Member of Parliament and world-class suck-up to dictators George Galloway, who mysteriously won the hearts of his Muslim fanbase by emphatically objecting to the liberation of a whole nation of Muslims from a genocidal maniac, are finally starting to wonder whether they might have voted for an ass.

Why? Because he impersonated a cat on a dopey TV reality show.

The Respect Party MP, who last year lambasted the United States Senate over the war in Iraq, crouched on all fours, purring and licking imaginary milk from the hands of the actress Rula Lenska.

She then rubbed the “cream” from his “whiskers” and stroked his head and behind his ears before he put his head on her lap.

Mr Galloway, 51, faced an immediate backlash from residents of his Bethnal Green and Bow constituency, east London, who voted for him last May.

Monir Ali, a 50-year-old tailor and a constituent of Galloway’s, said, “I think a lot of people are regretting voting for him”. Hmm. Advocating on behalf of one of the worst mass-murderers of Muslims in history — no problem! Impersonating a cat on national television — disgraceful!

Of course, it might have been Galloway’s additional remark, later in the program, that his favorite pursuits are “sex and sunbathing.”

Whatever. May the well-deserved humiliation continue.

UPDATE: Nick Cohen serves up a magnificently scathing post-mortem on the Galloway fiasco in the Guardian:

Was it Galloway’s support for every anti-American tyrant on the planet that did for him? Not at all. He could salute the ‘courage, strength and indefatigability’ of Saddam Hussein, Tariq Aziz and Bashar al-Assad with impunity. How about his apologetics for the ‘martyrs’ of al-Qaeda and the Baath Party who represent everything the liberal-left has been against since the Enlightenment? No, not at all, that was fine, too. Or perhaps his sickening attacks on ‘quisling’ Iraqi trade unionists when they were being murdered by those same al-Qaeda and Baathist terrorists?
…
The liberal media have turned on Galloway because of a far more heinous crime: his appearance on Celebrity Big Brother. The Independent and the BBC are furious that Galloway is failing to represent his constituents while he is in the Big Brother house. Why they believe an operator who saluted Saddam and described the fall of the Soviet Union as ‘the worst day of my life’ should want to observe the niceties of parliamentary democracy is beyond me. He was hardly ever in the Commons when he wasn’t on Big Brother.

(Via Norm.)