Female Soldier Jailed for Leaking IDF Assassination Policy

Israel is punishing its kosher version of Bradley Manning, the fomer IDF conscript and online reporter Anat Kam, who was just sentenced to four and a half years behind bars, despite her lengthy secret house arrest.  But the journalist who reported on her leaked documents about the IDF's hit list, Uri Blau of Haaretz, is presently holed up in Britain --in an odd echo of Wikileaks' Julian Assange. Blau's not as defiant, though. In a plea bargain, he has returned all confidential documents to the Israelis.

So, what is the price of speaking truth to power inside Israel? The Independent of London's Catrina Stewart reports on this crime, its punishment, and the Israeli gag order:

Israel has sentenced a former soldier to four and a half years in prison for leaking classified documents to a journalist who used them to expose an alleged army policy to assassinate wanted Palestinian militants in violation of court rulings.

Anat Kam, 24, was convicted in February for copying 2,085 military documents on to a disc as she completed her mandatory army service and passing some of them to Uri Blau, an investigative reporter with the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper.

She escaped the much more serious charges of harming state security after reaching a plea bargain.

 Her case provoked a domestic uproar - in part because she was held for four months under secret house arrest with the Israeli media banned from reporting on it, but also because it was viewed as an assault on the freedom of the press. The Independent was the first newspaper to report on Ms Kam's arrest.

In passing sentence yesterday, the three-judge panel elected to send a clear message to other would-be whistleblowers. "If the army cannot trust the soldiers serving in various units and exposed to sensitive issues, then it cannot function as a regular army," the judges wrote. They said that Ms Kam's motive for taking the documents was "mainly ideological". Ms Kam has already served nearly two years of house arrest, which will not count towards her prison term, and she received a further 18-month suspended sentence.

As a clerk in the Israeli Defence Forces' central command, Ms Kam stumbled across documents that appeared to point to the premeditated killing of Palestinian militants in the West Bank, despite a Supreme Court ruling that severely restricted such operations, determining that the army should arrest suspects if possible.

 The photo of Anat Kam comes courtesy of SabbahReport, where reporter Gila Svirsky has probed into the scandal of the Shin Bet hit list, the gagging of the gag order, and the perils of whistle blowing.

Crossposted on Feral Beast

Beck and Call - is this radio shock jock friend or foe to Israel?

As Glenn Back prepares to lead his so-called "Restoring Courage" rally near Dung Gate, an appropriately named Old City venue,the US consulate cautioned its diplomats from being near the area, for their own safety:

On Wednesday, August 24, 2011, there will be a rally held near the southeast corner of the Old City. The areas between Dung Gate and Lions Gate are off-limits to official U.S. Government personnel from 4:00pm until 10:00pm on that day due to recent clashes in that area.

Hmmm. Whose courage does the tear-prone radio shock jock wish to restore? So far, the reception for Beck, who at Caesaria pointedly criticized Jews for their "2000 year old flinch" from an embrace with Christians, has been decidedly ambivalent. Some Israeli critics shrug him off as a neo-fascist comedian, and the public have far more time for actor Jon Voight, who went to Beersheba hospital to hug rocket victims in front of the cameras. (He is Angelina Jolie's daddy, after all.)

Rachel Tabachnick, a researcher documenting Christian Zionism and Millennial Jews, sounds off in Haaretz about his message:

Beck headlined this year's conference of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), founded by televangelist John Hagee. Hagee had appeared several times on Beck's show, including one where they speculated the earth as we know it would end within 20 years.

Beck's embrace by Israeli leaders is further indication to Americans that support for Israel is becoming linked to an extreme political agenda in the United States. This threatens to alienate Jews and Christians, Democrats and Republicans.

Ironically, this alienation of Israel is seen by Christian Zionists as fulfilling end-times prophecy, which, they claim, requires a second Jewish holocaust before Jesus returns. Surviving Jews must accept Jesus before a 1000-year Christian utopia, ruled from Jerusalem, can begin.

Beck's cultivation of Israeli leaders follows, step by step, the instructions Christian Zionists have used to gain access to Jewish communities and leaders. One of the most popular of these manuals is the 2001 book, "Your People Shall Be My People," by Don Finto. Finto's network of evangelists is encouraging churches around the world to "bless Israel" by supporting Messianic Jewish ministries and proselytizing Jews. His book has been promoted internationally, including by directors of Hagee's CUFI.

Finto's book provides instructions to: 1 ) avoid overt proselytizing, 2 ) vocally repent of the Holocaust, 3 ) tell Jews that Christian Zionist support is modeled after the biblical story of Ruth with no strings attached, and 4 ) emphasize that Christian Zionists are Israel's only friends in an increasingly hostile world.

Simultaneously these evangelists help to foment hostility toward Jews by teaching a narrative in which Jews hold power over the future of Gentiles.

Beck contemplated switching the location of the event away from the base of the Temple Mount because he feared “40,000 Muslims” were going to gatecrash. It's to be held down in Davidson Center, for increased security. Speaker John Boehner urged US House members not to attend the event (to avoid the appearance of joining a political event while on a policy-related trip to Israel). Consequently, both Rep. Eric Cantor and Sen. Joe Lieberman cancelled their RSVPs. And in the post-earthquake anxiety in Washington DC and elsewhere, the atmosphere is increasingly apocalyptic.

Messing around with a Jewish Housemaid

Why must an Arab Israeli household agree to an act of deceit in order to get their apartment thoroughly cleaned? This humorous column by Sayed Kashua ran in the Haaretz weekend magazine and lifts the veil on the personal details of getting spic 'n span.

This is it. It's happening. Our first housemaid will arrive on International Women's Day. Our first Jewish housemaid, our first Jewish employee. When all is said and done, I wonder how many Arabs have been in a position to pay a Jew for work.

I arranged to pick her up at 8. At 7:30 I will send the kids off to school, take my wife to a friend's house and then get Tikva. It doesn't have to be complicated, there's no sign with our name at the entrance to the building. Afterward I will leave her on her own - my friend said she's very reliable - and when she's done I will return to drive her home. At which time I will also pay her. I will actually take money out of my wallet and pay the Jewish woman. Okay, my wife really let me have it, but I still think it's a type of revolution.

Now I have to hide every telltale Arab sign in the house. First I disconnected the telephone, in case my mother should phone, heaven forbid, and frighten our Tikva. Then I started to take the family photos off the walls.

"What are you doing?" my wife shouted.

"With all due respect, and you are very beautiful," I told her as I went on taking down the photos, "but still, it's sometimes pretty obvious that you are an Arab."

I hid the family photos together with a stack of children's books and a few books of poetry in the storeroom. I made a final tour of the house to ensure that no scrap of paper, workbook or other sign of Arabic remained visible. A few paintings we had received as gifts and which I was afraid suffered from "Arab taste" were also thrown into the storeroom, which I then locked. To be on the safe side, I threw out a bag of squash and a package of pitas which announced in Arabic, "Beit Safafa Bakery." "That's that," I asserted when my labors were done, my gaze scanning the empty walls. "This is what a Jewish home looks like."

Click here for full article.


Cartoon by Amos Biderman. Hat tip to Sheera Frenkel for the Haaretz link.

The Shadow over the bubble

Author Margaret Atwood, a Canadian gentile, writes poignantly about "the situation" in Haaretz:

Recently I was in Israel. The Israelis I met could not have been more welcoming. I saw many impressive accomplishments and creative projects, and talked with many different people. The sun was shining, the waves waving, the flowers were in bloom. Tourists jogged along the beach at Tel Aviv as if everything was normal.

But… there was the Shadow. Why was everything trembling a little, like a mirage? Was it like that moment before a tsunami when the birds fly to the treetops and the animals head for the hills because they can feel it coming?

“Every morning I wake up in fear,” someone told me. “That’s just self-pity, to excuse what’s happening,” said someone else. Of course, fear and self-pity can both be real. But by “what’s happening,” they meant the Shadow.

I’d been told ahead of time that Israelis would try to cover up the Shadow, but instead they talked about it non-stop. Two minutes into any conversation, the Shadow would appear. It’s not called the Shadow, it’s called “the situation.” It haunts everything.

The Shadow is not the Palestinians. The Shadow is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, linked with Israeli’s own fears. The worse the Palestinians are treated in the name of those fears, the bigger the Shadow grows, and then the fears grow with them; and the justifications for the treatment multiply.

The attempts to shut down criticism are ominous, as is the language being used. Once you start calling other people by vermin names such as “vipers,” you imply their extermination. To name just one example, such labels were applied wholesale to the Tutsis months before the Rwanda massacre began. Studies have shown that ordinary people can be led to commit horrors if told they’ll be acting in self-defense, for “victory,” or to benefit mankind.

I’d never been to Israel before, except in the airport. Like a lot of people on the sidelines – not Jewish, not Israeli, not Palestinian, not Muslim – I hadn’t followed the “the situation” closely, though, also like most, I’d deplored the violence and wished for a happy ending for all.

Again like most, I’d avoided conversations on this subject because they swiftly became screaming matches. (Why was that? Faced with two undesirable choices, the brain – we’re told -- chooses one as less evil, pronounces it good, and demonizes the other.)

I did have some distant background. As “Egypt” at a Model U.N. in 1956, my high school’s delegation had presented the Palestinian case. Why was it fair that the Palestinians, innocent bystanders during the Holocaust, had lost their homes? To which the Model Israel replied, “You don’t want Israel to exist.” A mere decade after the Camps and the six million obliterated, such a statement was a talk-stopper.

Then I’d been hired to start a Nature program at a liberal Jewish summer camp. The people were smart, funny, inventive, idealistic. We went in a lot for World Peace and the Brotherhood of Man. I couldn’t fit this together with the Model U.N. Palestinian experience. Did these two realities nullify each other? Surely not, and surely the humane Jewish Brotherhood-of-Manners numerous in both the summer camp and in Israel itself would soon sort this conflict out in a fair way.

But they didn’t. And they haven’t. And it’s no longer 1956. The conversation has changed dramatically. I was recently attacked for accepting a cultural prize that such others as Atom Egoyan, Al Gore, Tom Stoppard, Goenawan Mohamad, and Yo-Yo Ma had previously received. This prize was decided upon, not by an instrument of Israeli state power as some would have it, but by a moderate committee within an independent foundation. This group was pitching real democracy, open dialogue, a two-state solution, and reconciliation. Nevertheless, I’ve now heard every possible negative thing about Israel – in effect, I’ve had an abrupt and searing immersion course in present-day politics. The whole experience was like learning about cooking by being thrown into the soup pot...

There are many groups in which Israelis and Palestinians work together on issues of common interest, and these show what a positive future might hold; but until the structural problem is fixed and Palestine has its own “legitimized” state within its internationally recognized borders, the Shadow will remain.

“We know what we have to do, to fix it,” said many Israelis. “We need to get beyond Us and Them, to We,” said a Palestinian. This is the hopeful path. For Israelis and Palestinians both, the region itself is what’s now being threatened, as the globe heats up and water vanishes. Two traumas create neither erasure nor invalidation: both are real. And a catastrophe for one would also be a catastrophe for the other.

See the entire article here

IDF colonel says remaining flotilla boats 'Sabatoged'

Guest post by Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement, filing from Cyprus.

On Tuesday, Colonel Itzik Tourgeman told the Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday that two more ships are on their way to try and break the naval blockade of Gaza. The head of research in the operations division said, "The ships have not reached their target as of today because covert action was taken against them."
We had suspicions about our two boats, Challenger 1 and 2 and their mechanical problems as they sailed toward the flotilla, but we were not going to say anything unless we could prove it. Turns out we didn't have to prove it. Israeli mouthpieces did.

The Guardian ran a piece the same day, saying,

Israel gave strong indications today that its forces had secretly sabotaged some of the ships bound for Gaza as part of the freedom flotilla.

Matan Vilnai, the deputy defence minister, was asked on Israel Radio whether there had not been a smarter alternative to direct assault. He answered that "all possibilities had been considered," adding: "The fact is that there were less than the 10 ships that were due to participate in the flotilla."

An unnamed Israeli Defence Force source who briefed the Knesset's foreign affairs and defence committee on the widely criticised armed interception of the flotilla at sea, also spoke of "grey operations" being mounted against the flotilla."

We were lucky that our two captains were superbly trained and able to offload the passengers safely.So we are going to make sure the Rachel Corrie is well protected and that Israel is put on notice that anything that happens to her, the passengers and the crew will rest with Israel. As a result of these threats, we're going to pull Rachel Corrie into a port, add more high-profile people on board, and insist that journalists from around the world also come with us.

And sabotage happens with more than deeds. It also happens with words. In today's Haaretz, Barak Ravid reported,

"A diplomatic solution seems imminent to allow the humanitarian aid vessel the Rachel Corrie to dock without incident at the Ashdod Port. According to European diplomats and senior Foreign Ministry officials in Jerusalem, quiet messages have been exchanged over the past few days between Israel and the group operating the ship, to allow it to dock."

This, too, is sabotage in writing. We called Haaretz and the reporter. He did not return our call.We have no intention nor would we ever have any intention of ever docking in Ashdod.

Slicing East Jerusalem's 'swiss cheese'

1. Gilo: 850 homes approved for publication and planning objections in Nov 2009

2. Pisgat Zeev: 600 homes approved for publication and planning objections in Jan 2010

3. Sheikh Jarrah: Municipality approves the building of 20 new apartments on the site of an old hotel

4. Ramat Shlomo: 1,600 homes approved for publication and planning objections in Mar 2010

5. Silwan: Demolition orders on 88 Palestinian homes built without difficult-to-get permits - Israel planning controversial renewal project

6. West Bank barrier: Making Palestinian movement between West Bank and Jerusalem harder - Israel says it is for security

Now the US is expected to abstain from the upcoming vote in the United Nations to denounce Israeli expansion settlement across the old Green Line border in East Jerusalem. The Beeb provides the map above to show exactly where the controversial building sites are to be located. And correspondent Tim Franks' report explores deep new ruptures between Israel and Britain, its erstwhile colonizer, amid the "howls and harrumphs" of Israeli public opinion. The Brits currently are being labelled "dogs" in a curiously Maoist phrase of contempt! Fallout from Bibi's trip to Washington continues; Haaretz is less than pleased. Click here to read their analysis

Check out Britney Spears' Conversion Diary

As soon as a new Star of David dangled in the cleavage of a certain blonde singer, one who does not answer to the name of Madonna/Esther, the world's tabloids jumped on the Haaretz scoop and went wild. "Oy, I did it again!" quips the Daily Beast. Southern Baptist born Britney is reportedly converting to Judaism out of love for her latest boyfriend, following in the stiletto heel footsteps of Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Ivanka Trump, et al. The New Yorker magazine, sniffing an irresistible opportunity for satire, has followed up with the imagined jottings of Britney's religious awakening in the "Shouts and Murmurs" column. Will Judaism's eleventh Commandment... Never Buy Retail... get evoked when the Trailer Park chick goes from gilt to guilt on Saturday nights?

Shalom, Diary:

I think Rabbi Pearlstein is really pissed at me. Today in Jewish class he was going through the Halakha, which I thought was the Jewish word for Hannah Montana but turns out to be like a whole bunch of boring laws about days of the week and pork and shit, and I was like, “Rabbi P., is there any way you could break this down into a bunch of tweets? I’ll read it on my phone on the way to rehearsal.” He got so mad those curls on the sides of his head started shaking. (I don’t know why he won’t let my stylist snip them off. They’re not a good look for him, K.?) On the plus side, he taught me this awesome Jewish trivia fact: You don’t have to call Jewish people “Jewish people.” It turns out they don’t mind being called plain old “Jews.” LOL.

There's more... (click here). A more thoughtful and enlightening perspective would be the journal of the long suffering Rabbi Pearlstein.

IDF Troops say lax rules of engagement in Gaza allowed lapsed ethics and brutality

How the Israeli army carried out its latest war against Hamas rocketeers, with a civilian population of a million and a half people corralled in the midst of hostilities, came to light at a prep school less than a month after the opposing sides called unilateral ceasefires. The newspaper Haaretz is disclosing eye-witness testimonies from soldiers who took part in Operation Cast Lead, and who claim they saw lead shot indiscriminately at Gazans and their private property wrecked on purpose. It makes grim reading indeed for a nation which supported a "defensive action" by the "world's most moral army," and the leftist paper is bound to get flak for its efforts. Fuller details will be published in tomorrow's newspaper, but it's chilling to read the initial scoop by Amos Harel, headlined:"IDF in Gaza: Killing civilians, vandalism, and lax rules of engagement."

The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader of an incident where an IDF sharpshooter mistakenly shot a Palestinian mother and her two children. "There was a house with a family inside .... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said.

"The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay, and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders."

According to the squad leader: "The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away. In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them.

"I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it .... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way," he said.
Another squad leader from the same brigade told of an incident where the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed; she was walking on a road about 100 meters from a house the company had commandeered.

The squad leader said he argued with his commander over the permissive rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning the residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, the squad leader's soldiers complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the center of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist."

The squad leader said: "You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won't say anything. To write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."

And to learn that during Operation Cast Lead, many women soldiers finally broke through the "mud ceiling" and took part in full combat is not a reason to rejoice, given the circumstances of this lopsided war. Israelity Bites.

This photo drew criticism for being a "glib image". On reflection, Izzy Bee has placed a more gung-ho photo at the start of the blog. Anyone else feel this photo is objectionable? To me, it shows the louche highjinx of an IDF unit and feels real.

Why Israeli Spin-doctors don't win Propaganda Battles in Foreign Media

Gideon Lichfield, a veteran Economist scribe who has been based in Latin America, Moscow and Israel, explains Hasbara for the diaspora versus Pallywood in a guest post below. (His article ran as an op-ed in today's Haaretz). Justifying apparent atrocities is not an enviable task. The IDF's dispassionate explanations, backed by uploads of YouTube "weapon porn" videos shown striking targets, penetrating, and exploding, draw fire in the world's media. Lichfield writes about the ins and outs of military p.r.:

It had to happen at some point. The army attacks a civilian building identified as a source of fire; dozens of civilians are killed, and what little sympathy Israel enjoyed in whatever war it's currently fighting evaporates. It happened in Qana during the Second Lebanon War, and yesterday a school in the Jabalya refugee camp became a global symbol of indiscriminate Israeli aggression.

When these things happen, Israel is quick to respond on the public-relations front. It didn't take long before we foreign correspondents started getting text messages from the Israel Defense Forces on our cell phones. One said that the school was targeted because it was "a source of mortar fire." Another informed us that video footage was available of rockets being fired from another UNRWA school several months earlier. A third told us the names of the Hamas operatives who were killed along with the children and mothers cowering nearby.

I frequently get asked by Israelis, "why aren't we winning the PR war? Why don't people understand that this is what we have to do?" Many are convinced that there is something wrong with Israeli hasbara (public advocacy), that the spokespeople aren't effective enough, or that the Palestinians have a huge and demonically efficient propaganda machine.

When I hear this I have to explain that Israeli hasbara is so sophisticated that there is still no adequate word for it in English; that some of Israel's spokespeople could talk the hind legs off a donkey and then persuade the donkey to dance the hora, and that the Palestinians barely even know what a spokesman is, let alone be able to provide one who is available when he needs to be and knows anything about what is actually going on. So why isn't Israel winning the PR war?

Partly, of course, it's because the numbers are against it. Six hundred Palestinians dead versus nine Israelis, as of today's figures: There's just no way to make that proportion look pretty. Retired generals can drone on all they like about what "proportionality" really means in the laws of war, ambassadors can helpfully point out that many more Germans were killed than British in the Second World War, but these are theoretical notions; on television, what looks bad looks bad. (Nor do I really buy the argument that if Israel's casualties were more visibly bloody - if, say, the media showed the gory pictures of the few people who have been hit by Qassams instead of holding them back to keep the home front from getting agitated - then you could counter the stream of barbaric images from Gaza. There's just no competition.)



But the deeper reason is this: Israeli hasbara is perpetually trying to answer the wrong question: "Why is this justified?" Of course, it's natural for either side in a conflict to try to explain why it, and not the other side, has the moral high ground. But, especially in a conflict where both sides have been claiming the moral high ground for decades, nobody in the outside world is all that interested. From a foreign correspondent's point of view, it makes for boring journalism: "The Israelis said this, but the Palestinians said that." And since we're all studiously trying to be "neutral," we'll always balance your view against theirs; so the fact that you make more of an effort to explain than they do doesn't really matter.

The question the foreign media really wants answered is invariably not "who's in the right?" but "how will this round of fighting improve the overall situation?" And on that point, Israel never has a convincing argument. Given the country's long history of engaging in wars that kill many more of its enemies than its own citizens but only buy a few months or years of calm, it's a tough call to explain how this latest escapade will change the strategic balance, bring peace and prevent the need for another such bloodbath further down the line. Often that's because there is in fact no good reason: Wars are fought for short-term gains. And it doesn't help that with the constant competition for power within Israeli coalitions, it's easy to interpret this war, like many others, as a political imperative, not a strategic one.

And so when the question the world is asking is not "who's right?" but "what works?" the consistent impression Israel leaves is that it kills people because, at best, it simply doesn't have any better ideas, and at worst, because some Israeli leader is trying to get the upper hand on one of his or her rivals. And no amount of hasbara can make that look good.

Gideon Lichfield, until recently The Economist's Jerusalem correspondent, will be moving to the weekly's New York bureau.

Izzy Bee's afterthought: note that cultural references can go terribly wrong and produce utterly the wrong message. Hence this dubious item, which was posted on the Facebook page of a humanitarian NGO in Ramallah by earnest American entrepeneurs.
Pro-palestinians were asked to buy these t-shirts for their pets, ostensibly as a means of showing support for the people of Gaza. A real dog of an idea, no? This pooch looks like he's in a sniper's cross-hairs. These guys should be hounded out of business.

Israeli scribes rescue Palestinians

Avi Issacharoff , a passionate journalist at Haaretz, recounts how he and several other Israeli journalists apparently saved a large Palestinian family from being lynched during the unsettling events near Hebron. He called it a Pogrom in his opinion piece, written shortly after the experience. Since then, Sir SHimon Peres has echoed the Pogrom comment, after settlers were videoed firing on Palestinians.

Checkpoint Jerusalem carries a writeup, if you missed it.

Hat tip to Dion Nissenbaum for the headsup
(Izzy Bee is away from the Middle East for the moment.)

French leader supports Obama's Iran policy; flings cold freedom fries at Haaretz story

Conservatives the world over are getting nervous as November 4th draws nigh. But, despite headlines to the contrary, the French are not in agreement with the GOP's bogus "Joe the Plumber. " Diplomats have refuted Jerusalem gossip that suggested Sarkozy, who is half Jewish, shares the impression that "a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel." The Huffington Post details how:

The last-ditch attempt by the Israeli hawks to trash Barack Obama appeared in the respected English daily Haaretz , which has been noticeably tilting further right in the past few months. Oddly, an anonymously-sourced news item echoed the latest volley of television ads by John McCain, faulting the Illinois Senator for his diplomatic stance towards Iran. Between the lines, lurked the unspoken caveat: Barack your world and we Israelis get nuked.

Haaretz’s front page story berated the Democratic candidate as “utterly immature”, an interesting choice of insult, given the quarter century age chasm between the US presidential contenders.

"Sarkozy has made his criticisms only in closed forums in France. But according to a senior Israeli government source, the reports reaching Israel indicate that Sarkozy views the Democratic candidate's stance on Iran as 'utterly immature' and comprised of 'formulations empty of all content.' 

"Obama visited Paris in July, and the Iranian issue was at the heart of his meeting with Sarkozy. At a joint press conference afterward, Obama urged Iran to accept the West's proposal on its nuclear program, saying that Iran was creating a serious situation that endangered both Israel and the West. 

"According to the reports reaching Israel, Sarkozy told Obama at that meeting that if the new American president elected in November changed his country's policy toward Iran, that would be 'very problematic.' "

Putting these words into the mouth of the French President, who like most Gallic statesmen ranks diplomacy as a French art as elevated as its cuisine, perhaps was intended as punishment for Obama’s ‘presumptious foreign tour’ this summer when he advocated negotiating with America's adversaries. It backfired rather quickly. A crisp diplomatic communiqué from the French embassy in Washington flung the cold freedom fries back in the face of the nameless rumor-mongers.

"The remarks attributed by the newspaper Haaretz to the President of the French Republic concerning Senator Obama's positions on Iran are groundless. To the contrary, the in-depth discussions between the President of the Republic and Senator Obama on Iran during their meeting in Paris in July demonstrated a broad convergence of views on this issue. President Sarkozy and Senator Obama agree to oppose Iran's development of a military nuclear capability."

Furthermore, Sarkozy has said that France ought to worry more about tensions between Iran and Israel than between Iran and the United States, and has urged neighbours to ramp up sanctions against Tehran.

One can only conclude that Israeli hawks view a McCain administration as an extension of the sweet deal they had under George W Bush. For the past eight years, the US offered scant criticism of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and very little pressure to adhere to a ‘roadmap’ or even the gentle Annapolis nudge towards conflict resolution. The nags of Condoleezza Rice during her more than 20 diplomatic shuttles to the Holy Land resulted in very little substantial action. Israeli expansion was emboldened, and even the lame duck Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has despaired belatedly that he allowed too many "facts on the ground" to go unchecked. Now it appears that under Barack Obama, the Israeli right may fear that “No, we can’t.”

Lost in translation? Gallic accents and Israeli diplomacy

As Colonialists, the French used to be known for their adventurous palates and few Frenchmen were adverse to trying out and adapting native cuisine, however odd it might apear to , say, an Englishman. Still Izzy Bee was intrigued by the correction that the Israeli daily Haaretz ran today following their interview (in English) with the French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner:

The minister intended to say that Israel would "hit Iran" before it obtains a nuclear bomb, and not "eat Iran".

Hmmm. And the French must be "angry", not "hungry", about the misunderstanding. Perhaps this little mix-up helps explain why French used to be the language of diplomacy instead of English.
The op-ed page of that same daily warns the designated Israeli Prime Minister, Tzipi Livni, not to strike Iran out of political ambition, as a means to show aggressive ballsiness. The foremer Mossad operative has been criticised for her diffidence in making "cruel decisions", ie code for taking out Tehran's nukes in a pre-emptive strike.

Do-it-yourself coalition governmment online

As Tzipi Livni faces the challenge of putting together a government, an online game lets Israelis, the diaspora, and anyone else, really, try out political nous and test coalition building skills. You can pretend to be Livni or Labor leader Ehud Barak, and predict what ought to happen and what will happen. Israel's English daily, Haaretz, and playthenewsgame.com are the sponsors, although you can access the current event games site as a Facebook application, too.

To have a go, simply click here and follow the instructions.

Take one hot topic and try to predict the outcome. Use the game's guides and advisers for advice on what to do - and what not to do!

Good luck and happy coalition building!

Does Jerusalem's new bridge come with strings attached?

One topic guaranteed to split Jerusalem dinner parties into rabid warring factions is the brand new light railway bridge that the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava has erected at great expense- at $73m, triple the original estimate. Add to that the pricey opening ceremony last night, which blew half the city's cultural affairs budget for the whole year on dazzling skyrockets, aerial acrobats and pop singers. Since the railway is at least a couple of years behind schedule, and its construction creates maddening chaos for drivers, kvetching is inevitable.

Love it or hate it, there's no middle ground on this bridge. The response of Jean Max, a grandmother who's lived three decades in Jerusalem, is typical:"It might even be great architecture. But not for this city. It's too modern and it clashes. Ugly, ugly, ugly." At the opening ceremony, opponents booed the mayor and called it "cursed." They labelled it a "clothes line", rather than use the lofty official name Bridge of Chords (more like discord). Most Jerusalemites call it the Bridge of Strings, because of its suspension with 66 steel cables from a tilted mast over 100 meters high. From certain angles , it resembles a goliath David's Harp. Or a Bedouin's tent. From afar, it's striking, even though it pokes out from a clutter of grubby apartment complexes and hotels. (Every time Izzy Bee catches a glimpse of the spectacular structure, it makes me gasp. A modern and useful landmark in a modern part of West Jerusalem is to be praised. So what if it's not imitating the buildings from King Herod's day?)

Haaretz newspaper griped on its front page how the opening ceremony for the bridge brought the city to gridlock for ten hours, when the whole idea was initially to ease traffic. Commentators complained that there are 40 Calatrava bridges scattered around the globe, and they all share a "processed and globalized aesthetic" which makes them comparable to "the McDonalds of bridges: easy to digest but whose nutritional value is suspect." What's more, it's super-sized!

When it emerged that a Palestinian subcontractor for the project employed workers during the Jewish Sabbath, when observant Jews do not work, many ultra-Orthodox demanded the opening ceremony be cancelled.

“The municipality was stunned to discover this week that a subcontractor from East Jerusalem … carried out surfacing work at the bridge’s plaza before the end of Shabbat (Sabbath)” the city said in a statement.
The subcontractor was fired.

For admirers, this bridge evokes harps and psalms and the Midrashic legend

that David went everywhere with his harp in hand, and would hang his harp above his bed when he slept. At midnight as the wind would blow from the north, the harp would begin to play by itself. He would awaken and begin anew to praise G-d..

Arabs living in East Jerusalem have little time to fuss over the aesthetics of the new white suspension bridge at the city's opposite gateway. Most of them get greeted at gunpoint by soldiers at checkpoints along the less-than-lovely separation barrier, after all.

Professor casts doubt on 'Wandering Jews' in exile and brands them converts

She's an amazing Amazigh preistess who drove back Arab invaders from Morocco back in the eighth century.
Professor Shlomo Sand, a Tel Aviv University historian,has just penned a controversial academic treatise in Hebrew, which translates as 'When and How was the Jewish People Invented?'. In it, he extols this Berber warrior queen and high priestess, Dahia al-Kahina, as an appropriate and overlooked Jewish heroine and suggests that the Jews as a people were never dispersed and exiled from Eretz Israel. Most are converts, he insists, and Eastern European Jews can trace Khazar origins.
The Haaretz reporter Ofri Ilani takes Sand to task for shattering a 'national mythology' and undermining the historic birthright to the Holy Land.

..he argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the
Christian gospel.

Professor Sand is likely to be written off as a self-hating crank, and the timing of this piece, coinciding with Purim festivities and Good Friday, means it won't get much notice. Izzy Bee wonders if shifting Sands is merely being contrarian, or seeking publicity for deliberately heretical views. Suggesting that an hour in memory of "the Nakba" be instituted as part of pan-Israeli Memorial Day Independence Day holidays won't go far, I reckon.

Jerusalem Arabs shelter Homeless Jews

A touching clip is posted on Haaretz website, a tale of how a homeless Mizrahi family [Middle Eastern Jews] came to take refuge in the village of an Arab neighbour for the past two weeks after the government failed to give them aid. The family of four children and their mother were evicted from an illegal squat and are entitled to official welfare assistance, but this was not forthcoming.
Distraught, the mother complains about how most of her neighbors dispassionately watched her humiliating personal drama as police tossed their meager belongings into the street, as if it were "a play".
For a change, talkbacks for this post are not as full of invective as usual: they praise the kind-hearted Arab as an exception, a hero, an example. If people can reach across the divide in this way, maybe there is some hope for this fractured society to heal.

Zionism up against the Wall: the NYer interviews Avraham Burg

The Israeli government has to confront its own crazies and create a national consensus on democratic ideals, enact a secular constitution, and really confront the settlers. So far, the government is only willing to say that it is making ‘painful’ moves. We are told that we have to grieve with the settlers, think about making deals, but quietly let on that we actually think these are the real Israeli pioneers. Bullshit

Thus concludes "The Apostate", David Remnick's rumination on the state of Zionism in the current New Yorker magazine. After the aggressive and moralistic interviewer, Ari Shavit, took on Avraham Burg, a former Speaker of the Knesset and author of "Defeating Hitler" in the liberal Haaretz newspaper, Israelis were appalled by the vitriol. 450 comments were posted on the paper's website. When Burg described Israel as a perpetually “frightened society,” things grew tense:

SHAVIT: You are patronizing and supercilious, Avrum. You have no empathy for Israelis. You treat the Israeli Jew as a paranoid. But, as the cliché goes, some paranoids really are persecuted. On the day we are speaking, Ahmadinejad is saying that our days are numbered. He promises to eradicate us. No, he is not Hitler. But he is also not a mirage. He is a true threat. He is the real world—a world you ignore.

BURG: I say that as of this moment Israel is a state of trauma in nearly every one of its dimensions. And it’s not just a theoretical question. Would our ability to cope with Iran not be much better if we renewed in Israel the ability to trust the world? Would it not be more right if we didn’t deal with the problem on our own but, rather, as part of a world alignment beginning with the Christian churches, going on to the governments and finally the armies? Instead, we say we do not trust the world, they will abandon us, and here’s Chamberlain returning from Munich with the black umbrella and we will bomb them alone.

Now that Israel will receive a $30m weapons package from America, Burg seems rather out of touch with reality when he says Israel would be better off to spurn financial aid from the United States: “I don’t like it. A state like mine should live on its own means,” he told Remnick. What Israel does need from its superpower ally is the impetus to move forward on peace negotiations.

Ominous Knock at the Door for Ploni Almoni

Many ultra-orthodox bloggers in Israel are to be forced offline, according to Yair Ettinger in Haaretz. Kosher computing is quite a struggle. Already a home internet connection for the Ger Hassidics requires a rabbi's approval, so most family PCs are used just for word processing or to play G-rated kosher DVDs--though allegedly never on the Sabbath.

promotional for cartoonstock.com.

Ultra-orthodox online forums are braced for the fallout and most dread the plug being pulled. This Rabbinical decree against home computing will, er, forever Alter the hobbies of Orthodox nerds.(Pairs of Ger elders in fur hats soon will go house to house, knocking on doors to warn against the "spiritual dangers" of cyberspace. Last year, two ultra-orthodox brawlers were named and shamed by an anonymous John Doe, who dubbed himself "Ploni Almoni" on the internet. This post spurred a long drawn-out vendetta against orthodox bloggers after Gerrer Yisrael Ackerman, one of the accused, petitioned the court to force the cyber-slanderer to reveal his identity.

Big communities of Gerrer chasidim, originally from Poland, now are established in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, New York, London and Antwerp. More Israeli communities flourish in Ashdod, Bnei Brak, Arad in the Negev desert, and Hazor in the Galilee, as well as Beit Shemesh and Kiryat Gat. Will their emails cease?

In Modim Ilit, an all ultra-Orthodox community outside Tel Aviv, men who pursue religious studies are increasingly unable to provide for their large families. To fight poverty, which is as dire as for Bedouin families in the area, cyber-savvy wives and daughters have begun to work online from home, earning the entire household budget through outsourced telemarketing, or even tech support. Edicts like the Gerrer crackdown on the internet would lead to their financial ruin.

Nuclear nasties and collective amnesia

Ozzy Bee says: i was going insane this morning reading the splash to haaretz: "Mossad chief: Iran will not get nuclear bomb before 2009".
i was sure the mossad chief was saying something very different last year.
i admit that i have a bit of a nervous tick when it comes to talk about the bomb. i think this comes from growing up in the shadow of the cold war and the nuclear arms race and being fed a diet of holocaust films. so this morning for my sanity i did a bit of googling. It seems that mossad's boss has done a backflip with pike, yet this spectacular manouvre has not aroused much journalistic interest, it seems. today he says there's no such thing as a "point of no return" but last year he was certain that iran was within striking distance of this in its nuclear program. there's not even one paragraph reminding readers of this background/history... so the question i have is this just more hyperbolic spin from the israelis or are they telling us the truth? .... the first half of this year - in fact till the war erupted - was a steady diet of alarm raising stories about iran and its deadly intent. ... this kind of political jerking around really, really irritates me because it really makes me feel very unsure and very threatened. but hey, maybe this is what it is to be israeli. australian politicians backflip on taxes and health and australians gripe, groan and sulk. israeli politicians and their servants backflip on war and conflict and israelis, well, they feel like they are constantly under existential threat. i don't blame them.