Month: October 2009

One of the good things to have come out of the Goldstone report is a deeper awareness that the US too is killing innocent civilians in its drone attacks on al Qaeda suspects in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The question of whether the way this is done violates the laws of war is real. Jane Mayer is on the case. Ambers summarizes.

If it pans out, a major coup for Obama and a big success for a policy of engagement. For background on the deal, and its elaborate secret diplomacy over the last few months, see here.

A reader writes:

I’m sorry but that Yglesias “Quote For The Day” was utter bullshit. You are comparing a death cult who fires a missile and hopes it lands in a school yard to a country that makes mistakes, but venerates and celebrates life. What is it about Jews that drives people like you batshit? To object to the Gaza operation is to object to Israel’s existence. They were defending themselves.  From Goldblog to Peres at Davos, every Jew knows that. For a people that can’t agree on anything, Jews can agree for the most part on what Israel did during the Gaza operation was out of necessity, not out of malevolence.  

The question is not, it seems to me, a binary choice between necessity and malevolence. I don’t think, strictly speaking, the Gaza assault was either. I think it was a legitimate response to terrorist rocket attacks that nonetheless went too far in targeting civilian populations and infrastructure and included several deeply troubling incidents and reports of war crimes. To deploy a double standard and excuse Hamas’ war crimes would be grossly unfair. And it remains palpably true that Israel is on a plane by itself in grappling with these issues at all in the Middle East. But look: disprove the serious reports of war crimes. Then go off on critics. And there were and are, of course, many Israelis and many Jews who were appalled by the Gaza assault and its human and civil toll. The Israeli press was full of remorse only recently. There is no unanimity of Jewish opinion on this (or anything).

Yglesias is not exactly goyim. Neither is Goldstone. And the notion that objecting to the pulverization of Gaza’s already beleaguered population and infrastructure is some kind of anti-Zionist eliminationism is absurd. It is perfectly possible to believe in good faith that Israel’s actions in Gaza will hurt Israel in the long run, rather than help it, that war crimes are war crimes, whoever commits them, and that the interests of the United States and the world are not always congruent with one particular Israeli government or another.

But you will note from this email how any criticism of Israel is automatically regarded as anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism. The emailer is an intelligent, educated person. But on this subject unhinged by passion and paranoia. Yes, some of that paranoia – with respect, for example, to the UN’s grandstanding – is justified. But the defensiveness here helps no one, least of all the Israelis. You don’t have to be an anti-Semite to have been disturbed and shocked by the images and stories that came out of Gaza. You just have to be a human being.

But will use Sean as a propaganda vehicle. Like father like daughter. Cowardice is always the flip-side of bullies.

Some fascinating detail from the Jerusalem Post:

According to the taped conversation, only brief excerpts of which were provided in the 18-page affidavit, Nozette expected to be recruited by Israel since he had been working on sensitive defense information as part of his job consulting for the Israeli-owned company for the last decade.

“I knew this day would come,” he allegedly said. “I knew you guys would show up.”

The affidavit also quotes him as saying, “I thought I was working for you already. I mean that’s what I always thought, [the foreign company] was just a front.” Though the affidavit doesn’t name the business, press reports have identified it as Israel Aerospace Industries.

There is no evidence at present that the Mossad was in fact recruiting him or had recruited him – just that he hoped they would.

The FBI presumably suspected he had – and the company he worked for, IAI, was owned by the Israeli government, and another alleged spy for Israel had worked there, according to Laura Rozen. Another thing worth noting:

Another former associate wrote (in 2004) that Nozette used to write speeches for Dan Quayle (Nozette worked in the George H.W. Bush/Dan Quayle White House). Another associate who says he’s known Nozette 30 years also writes that he is shocked.

Quayle? If true, how did he get that job? Here’s his friend’s reaction:

I didn’t know he was Jewish. And maybe he’s not, but while I wouldn’t be shocked (in retrospect) to learn that he is, it seems more mercenary than ideological. I wonder if he was in financial trouble, or if something snapped after working in frustration for the government for three decades, with little progress in space. I mean, what “other foreign country”? It seems to be more anti-US than pro-Israel.

“It’s like they’re coming in and saying to you, ‘I’m going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?’ And you say, ‘I don’t think you should drive your car off the cliff.’ And they say, ‘No, no, that bit’s already been decided – the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.’ And you say, ‘Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.’ And then they say, ‘We’ve consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says …’” – Rory Stewart, on the Af-Pak policy deliberations of the US, in the FT a while back.

As I try to figure out for myself what on earth the West should do there, his words resonate more and more. He is, it seems to me, a modern Tory. From Eton, of course. Just to give Orwell the willies.

The latest salvo from a foreign lobbyist for Turkey and Georgia, and former AIPAC staffer, Lenny Ben-David, resorts to this:

So far, only J Street’s Political Action Committee has disclosed its contributors, as mandated by federal law. But who are the donors to the main J Street organization? Make that list public, and these pesky inquiries will probably go away.

When asked about J Street’s funding by the Jerusalem Post — the newspaper that ran the original exposé — you responded “at most 3 percent” of contributors were Muslim or Arab.  Now you state that the figure may be closer to 10 percent. One tenth of J Street’s budget of $3 million, or $300,000, is a substantial sum. Why do so many Arabs contribute to an organization that purports to be “pro-Israel?”

There are many Arabs in Israel and America. Why is merely being an Arab some kind of mark against someone contributing to a lobby seeking a resolution to the Israel-Palestinian stalemate? And why is it in any way relevant what the ethnic origins of any contributor is? The racist tribalism behind this kind of argument is surely part of the problem, not the solution. Ackerman is less polite but more to the point here.