EDITOR: Name change required in order to bring peace to the Middle East!

Obama has at last worked out what is wrong with Israelis. No, it is not the fact that they feel the need to kill Palestinians and other Arabs, neither their brutal occupation. It is their deep suspicion of his middle name! So as his first name is already a Hebrew one, why not change his middle name to a Hebrew one also? Maybe Benjamin? Shimon? Avigdor? Just think how esteemed a US president will be with a name like Barack Avigdor Obama… on second thoughts, it will not work; he needs also to change Obama, it seems, in order to really increase the appeal. Go for it – Barack Avigdor Peres sounds so much better! Even the pictures look better!

Obama: Israelis suspicious of me because my middle name is Hussein: Haaretz

U.S. president tells Channel 2 Israel is unlikely to attack Iran without coordinating with the U.S.
U.S. President Barack Obama told Channel 2 News on Wednesday that he believed Israel would not try to surprise the U.S. with a unilateral attack on Iran.

In an interview aired Thursday evening, Obama was asked whether he was concerned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would try to attack Iran without clearing the move with the U.S., to which the president replied “I think the relationship between Israel and the U.S. is sufficiently strong that neither of us try to surprise each other, but we try to coordinate on issues of mutual concern.”
Obama spoke to Channel 2’s Yonit Levy one day after what he described as an “excellent” meeting with Netanyahu at the White House. The two leaders met alone for about 90 minutes Tuesday evening, during which time they discussed the peace process with the Palestinians, the contested Iranian nuclear program, and the strategic understandings between their two countries on Tehran’s efforts to achieve nuclear capabilities.

Netanyahu promised Obama during their meeting that Israel would undertake confidence-building measures toward the Palestinian Authority in the coming days and weeks. These steps are likely to include the transfer of responsibility over more parts of the West Bank over to PA security forces.

During the interview Wednesday, when confronted with the anxiety that some Israelis feel toward him, Obama said that “some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”

“Ironically, I’ve got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors. My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the U.S. Senate,” Obama said.

“I think that sometimes, particularly in the Middle East, there’s the feeling of the friend of my enemy must be my enemy, and the truth of the matter is that my outreach to the Muslim community is designed precisely to reduce the antagonism and the dangers posed by a hostile Muslim world to Israel and to the West,” Obama went on to say.

Obama added that he believed a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians could be achieved within his current term. “I think [Netanyahu] understands we’ve got a fairly narrow window of opportunity… We probably won’t have a better opportunity than we have right now. And that has to be seized. It’s going to be difficult.”

The American President entirely sidestepped the question of whether the U.S. would pressure Israel to extend a current 10-month moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements, failing to give a clear answer. The moratorium is set to expire in September, and Netanyahu has announced that he would not extend the timeframe. The U.S., however, views continued Israeli settlement construction as a serious obstacle to peace efforts.

When asked whether he thought Netanyahu was the right man to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians, the U.S. President said that “I think Prime Minister Netanyahu may be very well positioned to bring this about,” adding that Israel will have to overcome many hurdles in order to affect the change required to “secure Israel for another 60 years”

In a separate interview with another Israeli media outlet, Obama proclaimed that he was not “blindly optimistic” regarding the chances of a Middle East peace agreement.
Israel is right to be skeptical about the peace process, he said in another yet-to-be-aired interview that was taped on Wednesday. He noted during the interview that many people thought the founding of Israel was impossible, so its very existence should be “a great source of hope.”

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Netanyahu told U.S. Jewish leaders that direct Palestinian-Israeli talks would begin “very soon”, but warned that they would be “very, very tough.”
Netanyahu told his cabinet earlier this week before flying to Washington that the time had come for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to prepare to meet directly with the Israelis, as it was the only way to advance peace.

Israelis and Palestinians have been holding indirect talks mediated by Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. Aides to Obama sounded a hopeful tone regarding the negotiations last week, telling reporters that the shuttle diplomacy between the two sides had paid off and the gaps have narrowed.

At a meeting with representatives of Jewish organizations at the Plaza Hotel late Wednesday, Netanyahu discussed the efforts to promote Middle East peace. “This is going to be a very, very tough negotiation,” he said, adding “the sooner the better.”
“Direct negotiations must begin right away, and we think that they will,” he said.

Israel threatens to expel Palestinian politicians from Jerusalem: The Guardian

Case of four men with affiliation to Hamas is first in which Israel has cited political grounds for expulsion from city
Mohammed Abu Tir, of the Palestinian Legislative Council, is in police custody for failing to leave the city by the end of June. Photograph: Stoyan Nenov/Reuters
Israeli authorities have threatened four Palestinian politicians with expulsion from Jerusalem because of their affiliation to Hamas in a case which could have wide ramifications for others deemed undesirable by the Jewish state.

Mohammed Abu Tir, 59, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), is in police custody for failing to leave the city by the end of last month. Instantly recognisable for his dyed orange beard, Abu Tir was released from an Israeli prison in May after almost four years, and was immediately told he must abandon political activity or leave Jerusalem.

Two other members of the PLC and a former Palestinian minister have moved into the grounds of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent in East Jerusalem in protest at the deportation orders.

The men’s cases are to be heard by the supreme court in September. However the court rejected a plea to prohibit deportation in the interim, so the men are at risk of being expelled from the city at any time.

The threatened deportations are part of a wider pattern of revoking the Jerusalem residency permits of Palestinians from the city. In most cases, Israel claims that the people it strips of the right to live in Jerusalem have voluntarily relocated to the West Bank or abroad. This is often contested by the individuals concerned and human rights groups representing them.

In 2008, more than 4,500 Palestinians were excluded from Jerusalem.

However the case of the four Hamas politicians is the first time Israel has cited political grounds for expelling people from the city.

“For the first time Israel is using a claim of disloyalty to revoke residency,” said Hasan Jabarin, director of the Israeli human rights group Adalah. “The consequences for Palestinians in East Jerusalem are dangerous. This case could open a new window to revoking residency on purely political grounds.”

Abu Tir was imprisoned with dozens of Hamas politicians and activists after the Palestinian election in January 2006, which was won by the Islamic militant party.

“The election was legal and transparent. They found themselves in jail simply because they were elected,” said Jabarin.

The men’s case has been raised in the past week in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Labour MP Andrew Slaughter asked whether the British government had raised the issue with the Israeli government.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, urged Israel to “stop these sort of actions”. Ahmad Bahar, the deputy speaker of the Palestinian parliament, described the revocation of residency permits as a “massive ethnic cleansing campaign”.

More than 270,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied and annexed in 1967.

In a separate development, Israel’s supreme court has rejected a petition on behalf of Gazan lawyer Fatima Sharif to be allowed to travel to the West Bank to begin a masters degree in human rights, citing the “current political-security situation”.

The Israel Defence Forces made it clear in the court hearing yesterday that there would be no relaxation of the policy restricting the movement of Palestinians in and out of Gaza except in the most extreme circumstances, despite Israel’s decision to ease its blockade of the territory.

EDITOR: Good news! Fewer war criminal to travel in Europe this year!

Counter Terrorism Bureau warns all Israelis traveling abroad: Haaretz

Bureau issues travel advisory warning of likely revenge attacks against Israelis by Iran or Hezbollah.
Israel’s Counter Terrorism Bureau on Thursday issued a travel advisory calling for Israelis to keep their wits about them in all parts of the world, suspicious of revenge attacks by Iran and Hezbollah.
According to the warning, Hezbollah continues to blame Israel for the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the Lebanese militia’s former operations officer, and Iran blames Israel for the death of a nuclear scientist in Tehran.

The bureau statement reads “according to our intelligence, there continue to be threats of revenge killings or kidnappings of Israelis traveling outside the country, especially businesspeople and high-ranking ex-government officials.”

The bureau advised Israelis traveling abroad to take precautions, completely avoid visiting countries mentioned in travel advisories and refuse all unexpected or tempting business or social offers and refuse all unexpected invitations to meetings, especially in remote areas and after dark.

The bureau further advised Israelis to refrain from entering a hotel room or place of residence and from receiving suspicious or unexpected visitors.

On extended stays abroad, the bureau advised altering one’s personal habits by varying traffic routes, restaurants, entertainment venues and hotels frequented.

An excellent meeting: Haaretz

Two statesmen met in Washington on Tuesday who are looking smaller and smaller, who are taking smaller and smaller steps.
By Gideon Levy
It really was an excellent meeting: The chance that a binational state will be established has improved as a result; relations between Israel and the United States are indeed “marvelous.” Israel can continue with the whims of its occupation. The president of the United States proved Tuesday that perhaps there has been change, but not as far as we are concerned.

If there remained any vestiges of hope in the Middle East from Barack Obama, they have dissipated; if some people still expected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead a courageous move, they now know they made a mistake (and misled others ).
The masked ball is at its peak: Preening each other, Obama and Netanyahu have proved that even their heavy layer of makeup can no longer hide the wrinkles. The worn-out, wizened old face of the longest “peace process” in history has been awarded another surprising and incomprehensible extention. It’s on its way nowhere.

The “warm” and “sympathetic” reception, albeit a little forced, including the presidential dog, Bo, the meeting of the wives, with the U.S. president accompanying the Israeli prime minister to the car in an “unprecedented” way, as the press enthused, cannot obscure reality. The reality is that Israel has again managed to fool not only America, but even its most promising president in years.

It was enough to listen to the joint press conference to understand, or better yet, not understand, where we are headed. Will the freeze continue? Obama and Netanyahu squirmed, formulated and obfuscated, and no clear answer was forthcoming. If there was a time when people marveled at Henry Kissinger’s “constructive ambiguity,” now we have destructive ambiguity. Even when it came to the minimum move of a construction freeze, without which there is no proof of serious intent on Israel’s part, the two leaders threw up a smoke screen. A cowardly yes-and-no by both.

More than anything, the meeting proved that the criminal waste of time will go on. A year and a half has passed since the two took office, and almost nothing has changed except lip service to the freeze. A few lifted roadblocks here, a little less blockade of Gaza there – all relatively marginal matters, a bogus substitute for a bold jump over the abyss, without which nothing will move.

When direct talks become a goal, without anyone having a clue what Israel’s position is – a strange negotiation in which everyone knows what the Palestinians want and no one knows for sure what Israel wants – the wheel not only does not go forward, it goes backward. There are plenty of excuses and explanations: Obama has the congressional elections ahead of him, so he mustn’t make Netanyahu angry.

After that, the footfalls of the presidential elections can be heard, and then he certainly must not anger the Jews. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is pressuring Netanyahu now; tomorrow it might be Likud MK Danny Danon, and after all, you can’t expect Netanyahu to commit political suicide. And there you have it, his term in office is over, with no achievements. Good for you, Obama; bravo Netanyahu. You managed to make a mockery of each other, and together, of us all.

Netanyahu will be coming back to Israel over the weekend, adorned with false accomplishments. The settlers will mark a major achievement. Even if they don’t not admit it – they are never satisfied, after all – they can rejoice secretly. Their project will continue to prosper. If they have doubled their numbers since the Oslo Accords, now they can triple them.

And then what? Here then is a question for Obama and Netanyahu: Where to? No playing for time can blur the question. Where are they headed? What will improve in another year? What will be more promising in another two years? The Syrian president is knocking at the door begging for peace with Israel, and the two leaders are ignoring him. Will he still be knocking in two years? The Arab League’s initiative is still valid; terror has almost ceased. What will the situation be after they have finished compromising over the freeze in construction of balconies and ritual baths?

Two statesmen met in Washington on Tuesday who are looking smaller and smaller, who are taking smaller and smaller steps. They have decided not to decide, which in itself is a decision. When the chance of a two-state solution has long since entered injury time, they have decided on more extra time. Get ready for the binational state, or the next round of bloodletting.

Obama and Netanyahu: All smiles over gritted teeth: The Guardian

If Netanyahu has been punching the air over not having to make concessions that threaten his coalition, his triumph will be short-lived
There is a current in Israeli thinking, shared by left and right, which is deeply relaxed about the case for change. The argument goes thus: if the present occupation is messy, a future solution will be messier still; there will be no dramatic political consequence caused by demography – that point in the future when Jews are outnumbered by Arabs in their own land; wars are brief, terrorism containable and neither involves an unacceptable level of Israeli casualties; the Palestinians are weak and divided, and besides, as one former top adviser put it, we are not negotiating a marriage but a divorce.

Wrong on all counts. Things cannot carry on as are they, and, if to make no other point, Barack Obama should go to Israel and say so in those terms. Set to one side the dreadful familiarities of the occupation. Apart from tearing up the diplomatic relationship it had nurtured over three years with Turkey, by killing Turks on the flotilla attempting to break the blockade of Gaza, the second enemy Israel identified was the one lurking within: Haneen Zoabi, an Israeli Arab member of the Knesset, and Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch, who were both on the Mavi Marmara. Zoabi was accused in the Knesset of being a terrorist and a traitor and faces the stripping of her parliamentary privileges and the possible loss of citizenship.

Her party, Balad, rejects the idea of Israel as a Jewish state, but even those Palestinians with Israeli citizenship who express no such views face the loss of residency rights. In 2008 the residency rights of 4,557 Palestinian inhabitants of Jerusalem were abrogated – the highest number ever. Even if the foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman does not speak for his country when he says a land swap should be accompanied by a population swap of Israel’s Arab citizens, it is not difficult to see where the next battleground could be. What worse reaction could a government that fights international boycotts, ostracism and delegitimisation, have than to turn on its own citizens – people with a history of being shunned by the Arab world?

Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu made a show of getting on with each other on Tuesday. But the former talked of a sovereign Palestinian state, while the latter said no such thing. If Mr Netanyahu has been punching the air in his Washington guesthouse over not having to make concessions that threaten his coalition, his triumph will be short-lived. Until he realises there is a choice to be made between continuing to expand the nationalist state and stopping it on, or close to, the 1967 border, and that he cannot do one while talking indefinitely about the other, there is no future, other than one dominated by war.

Israel must lift Gaza blockade and answer for flotilla raid, says Turkey: The Guardian

Foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu uses London visit to issue warning that Israel faces ‘gradual disengagement’ by former ally
Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague (right), with Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, after a press conference in London today. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/EPA
Israel must lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip and be “held accountable” for its attack on a ship carrying aid to the Palestinian territory, Turkey’s foreign minister has said.

Ahmet Davutoglu, visiting London, demanded that Israel face its legal responsibility for boarding the Mavi Marmara, an action in which eight Turks and a Turkish-American citizen were killed in international waters on 31 May.

Davutoglu did not repeat a warning earlier this week that Turkey would sever its diplomatic relations with Israel but warned of “gradual stages” of disengagement if did not respond to Ankara’s demands over the “freedom flotilla” affair.

Turkey would take “any measures to protect its citizens”, he said after talks with the British foreign secretary, William Hague. “We expect Israel either to apologise or to accept an international investigation. I think this is a just and fair request from Turkey. The attack took pace in international waters and there should be accountability in international law.

“Israel must end the siege of Gaza. It is not a problem between Israel and Turkey but between Israel and the international community.”

Davutoglu said Israel’s own internal investigation was not enough since “the accused cannot be judge and prosecutor at the same time”.

Israel has said it will not apologise for “defending its citizens”. Turkey withdrew its ambassador from Tel Aviv in protest and is barring Israeli military planes from using its airspace. Turkish officials have said the envoy will not return until Israel meets Turkey’s demands.

Davutoglu said Turkey wanted to play a constructive role as a Middle East mediator, as it has done in negotiations between Israel and Syria. “No one should tell us we are losing our mediating role because of our stand on Israel’s policy on Gaza.”

Hague warned: “Time is running out for a two-state solution. It is in Israel’s interest to make sure that it is still possible.” The foreign secretary described the blockade of Gaza as “unacceptable and unsustainable” but praised Tony Blair, as Middle East envoy, for helping to persuade Israel to ease restrictions on the goods it permits to enter the Palestinan territory.

Ending the ‘War of Narratives’: Z Space

By Brian Klug
[Remarks at an event co-sponsored by The Council for Arab-British Understanding, Arab Media Watch, and Independent Jewish Voices, launching Gilbert Achcar’s book, The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, at the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce, London, July 1, 2010.]

This is the fourth time this year, Gilbert, that I have had the pleasure of sharing the platform with you. It’s getting to be a habit — though one that I have no wish to kick. This evening the pleasure is even greater; for on this occasion, unlike previous ones, the focus is on your new book, The Arabs and the Holocaust. Having read the book and having got to know you a little (both on and off the platform) since January I am especially pleased to be here tonight, speaking at your launch. And I know that my colleagues on the Steering Group of Independent Jewish Voices are delighted to be co-sponsoring this event together with Arab Media Watch and the Council for Arab-British Understanding.

The fact that our three groups have come together over your book is a ray of hope in the gloom — the second ray of hope to emanate from a London book event in the last couple of weeks. The first event took place on 16 June, at another Mayfair location, when a prestigious annual literary prize was awarded to the author of My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness, the biography of the contemporary Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali. I was present when the chair of the judging panel announced the prize. Saying that all four judges “fell in love” with the book, she explained that in places it “reads almost like a detective story” as the author “painfully excavates the truth about how all traces of the Palestinian village of Saffuriyya were erased and replaced by the Israeli village of Tzippori.”[1] In her book, the author introduces her subject thus: “Taha was born and grew up in Saffuriyya, a Galilee village that Israel destroyed in the wake of the 1948 war, and most of his poems well up from the hard ground of that setting.”[2] Citing All That Remains, the reference work in which Walid Khalidi and a team of researchers set out “to chronicle the 418 Palestinian villages that Israel effectively erased in 1948”, she describes her own “task” as “similar”.[3] In short, Taha Muhammad Ali, who fled with his family in 1948 and returned to live in Nazareth as one of Israel’s ‘internal refugees’, is a poet of the Nakba, and the book about him a kind of exposé of the Palestinian catastrophe.

Why, you are wondering, do I refer to this prize-giving event as ‘a ray of hope’? It is because the facts about it are counter-intuitive. The author of My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness is Adina Hoffman, an American Jew living in Jerusalem; all the members of the judging panel were Jewish; one of them, the filmmaker Naomi Gryn, is the daughter of Rabbi Hugo Gryn, who survived Auschwitz; the chair, Anne Karpf, whose Polish-born parents also came through the Nazi Holocaust, wrote the family memoir The War After: Living with the Holocaust; and, finally, the prestigious award, the centre-piece of the evening, was the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize for 2010.

As I listened to the warm applause that greeted the judges’ announcement, my mind leaped ahead to tonight’s launch and I found myself dwelling, in particular, on the subtitle of Gilbert’s book: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. The phrase refers to a brutal war of words that both reflects and reinforces the conflict on the ground. It is a narrative battle that revolves around “the two defining traumas of the conflict: the Holocaust and the Nakba”.[4] It is hard to imagine anything more macabre than this desperate, relentless contest of catastrophes. If tonight’s launch is one ray of hope in the gloom, and the Jewish Quarterly literary prize another, it is because both events — and indeed both books — transcend this ‘war of narratives’.

Now, I doubt that Gilbert will take offence if I do not say that his book “reads almost like a detective story”. On the other hand, Sherlock Holmes would have thoroughly endorsed his methods: meticulous logical reasoning combined with close attention to empirical detail. Moreover, as the author of a number of monographs on abstruse topics, Holmes would have appreciated Gilbert’s erudition. These qualities have led one distinguished academic after another to extol his book for its contribution to historical scholarship. But, without for a moment contradicting this assessment of the book, nor meaning to put scholarship down, I think the importance of the work goes deeper. It is, above all, as a contribution to peace, to bringing the ‘war of narratives’ to an end, that I value Gilbert’s book. Unless I am mistaken, this is also the spirit in which the book is written. It is not a whodunit, more a how-to-do-it: how to break the cycle of verbal violence on both sides. As Gilbert explains in his preface: “My aim is to open up avenues of reflection that make it possible to go beyond the legion of caricatures, founded on mutual incomprehension and sustained by blind hatred …”[5]

Blind hatred is hatred that makes no distinctions and sees no shades of grey. The opposite is analysis, or taking complex things apart at their joints, which is one of the main methods that Gilbert employs in seeking to “open up avenues of reflection”. So, taking a leaf from his book, so to speak, I would like now to turn to the main title, The Arabs and the Holocaust, and briefly consider each of its two constituent parts in turn.

First, the phrase ‘the Arabs’. Gilbert opens Part 1 of his book with this remark: “It ought to be a truism that ‘the Arabs’ do not exist …”[6] This is doubly paradoxical. For if anything is obviously true here then surely it is the opposite; not even Golda Meir would have cast doubt on the existence of the Arabs! Furthermore, the book is about ‘The Arabs’, and so the author seems to subvert his own work with his opening gambit. It is certainly an arresting beginning for a text that includes ‘The Arabs’ in its title. But I have cheated a bit, for Gilbert goes on to qualify or clarify his remark. Here is the sentence in full: “It ought to be a truism that ‘the Arabs’ do not exist — at least not as a homogenous political or ideological subject”. In this sense, neither do ‘the Jews’ exist, nor, for that matter, ‘the Muslims’ — as Gilbert goes on to state. It is a fundamental logical point, about as fundamental as any other point that he makes; which is why he makes it at the outset of Part 1.

But the point is not merely logical. Much of the substance of this book consists in the different conclusions that the author reaches when he examines the record of different groups and individuals — all of whom come under the broad heading ‘the Arabs’. In other words, and in case anyone might be misled by the title, Gilbert’s work demonstrates that there is no single relationship between ‘the Arabs’ and the Holocaust; far from it. This is one of the principal findings of the work.

Turning now to the second part of the book’s title, there is not even a scintilla of a jest that the Holocaust did not exist or did not occur. Nor could there be; for the reality of the Holocaust is something that Gilbert treats, from start to finish, with the utmost seriousness and respect. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, he is immensely sensitive to the scale of the suffering and the destruction involved in the Nazi genocide of the Jews. In the introduction, ‘Words Laden With Pain’, he asks, “What name should be given a calamity that, from the standpoint of a humanist ethics, will remain forever ‘unnameable’?”[7] The careful attention he pays to this question is worth the price of admission alone. But suffice to say that he uses the phrase ‘the Holocaust’ broadly to refer not only to the so-called ‘Final Solution’, the systematic extermination of two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe from 1942 to 1945, but to the whole period of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, from Hitler’s accession to power in 1933 to his defeat by the Allies.[8]

In the second place, at the heart of his analysis lies the thesis that, in the words of Edward Said, “the Jewish tragedy led directly to the Palestinian catastrophe”.[9] For this reason, Gilbert is scathing on the subject of Holocaust denial, which he describes as an “ignoble, perverse and stupid game” — and that is when he is being kind.[10] Gilbert does not mince words when he uncovers either antisemitism or Holocaust denial in the Arab world: he exposes it and he condemns it. At the same time, he also excoriates those people who play the game in reverse: who seize upon such cases and use them to tar all Arabs or all Muslims with the same vile brush, implying that deep down ‘the Arabs’ are Nazis.

The structure of the book reflects Gilbert’s project of, as it were, deconstructing ‘the Arabs’ and showing that they had multiple relationships to the Holocaust and that these relationships have changed over time. Part 1, which deals with the period from 1933 to 1947, provides, as he puts it in the preface, “an ideological mapping of the Arab world”.[11] Separate chapters examine in turn four different ideological groups: the liberal Westernizers, the Marxists, the Nationalists, and finally the reactionary or fundamentalist pan-Islamists. With each group he sifts carefully the evidence concerning reactions to Nazism and to antisemitism, and what he paints is a picture in which there is light and dark and shades of grey. He carries this ‘map’ forward into Part 2, where a series of three chapters takes us chronologically from 1948 to the present. The argument of the book is brought to bear on the current state of affairs, both the conflict on the ground and the war of words that hovers above it, in a vigorous and outspoken Conclusion that does not spare the rod — not for any of the parties on either side.

I shall leave it to Gilbert to go into details about his findings. I prefer, in the short time remaining to me, to dwell on something that I mentioned earlier. I said that the chief value of this excellent book is that it makes a contribution to peace, to bringing the ‘war of narratives’ to an end. I have already touched on some of the ways in which it does this: breaking down collective subjects, such as ‘the Arabs’ and ‘the Jews’, so as to reveal the variety and complexity of views within each of these populations; taking both sides to task when they are guilty either of bigotry or playing the propaganda game without regard to the truth; and asserting the tragic link between “the two defining traumas of the conflict: the Holocaust and the Nakba”. There remain two other virtues of his work that I wish to identify — and to identify with: contextualizing and humanizing

First, contextualizing. Time and again, Gilbert takes evidence and puts it into its proper context, without which it is impossible to weigh it fairly. The same facts can mean something quite different according to differences in time, place and circumstances. Sometimes this calls for courage on the part of the author. Thus, in the Conclusion he asks, “Are all forms of Holocaust denial the same?”[12] It is a dangerous but necessary question. It is dangerous because it could open the door to a response that would make certain forms of Holocaust denial legitimate. But, as I have said, Gilbert is unwavering in his total denunciation of Holocaust denial. No reader can be in doubt about this if they have read through to the Conclusion. And yet the risk of misunderstanding exists. It is a risk he has to run in order to get the record straight concerning those Arab citizens of Israel who deny — or who say they deny — that the Holocaust happened. According to a poll carried out in 2006 by Professor Sami Samuha, dean of social sciences at Haifa University, 28 percent of Israeli Palestinians said the Holocaust never occurred. Three years later, the figure shot up to 40 percent.[13] What does this mean? In a European or Western context, it could mean only one thing: rampant antisemitism on the rise. But in the Israeli Palestinian context, it is more likely to mean something else: perhaps a way of hitting back at Israel. Events on the ground, in Lebanon, Gaza and within Israel itself, might well have exacerbated this motive — which appears to be the view that Professor Samuha himself took.[14] This does not make the act of denial one iota more legitimate. But, if this interpretation of the data is correct, it suggests that, in the particular context of the Israeli Palestinian population, the best way to bring Holocaust denial to an end is to bring the conflict to an end.

This book does not put forward solutions to the conflict; that is not its business. But it does conduce towards a climate of debate in which solutions can be sought. It is impossible to talk peace when the ‘war of narratives’ is raging. Somehow, the antagonists, without altogether surrendering their particular point of view, must be able to recognize what they share: their common humanity. In closing, I would like one more time to make a connection with the book that I mentioned at the outset, the one that won the Jewish Quarterly literary prize for 2010. The jacket cover, describing the contents, says as follows: “The story that emerges is, like Taha Muhammad Ali’s own poetry, at once profoundly local and utterly universal. In an era when talk of the ‘clash of civilizations’ dominates, My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness offers something else entirely: a view of the people and culture of the Middle East that is rich, nuanced, and above all, deeply human.” Getting to know you, Gilbert, as I happily am, I know that you share a deep commitment to these selfsame qualities and values. They shine through in your book. It is why both books, yours and Adina’s, are rays of hope in the gloom.

Notes

1. Anne Karpf, quoted on the Jewish Quarterly website at http://jewishquarterly.org/events/wingate-prize-2010/.

2. Adina Hoffman, My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, p. 4.

3. Ibid., p. 13.

4. Gilbert Achcar, The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, London: SAQI, 2010, jacket cover.

5. Ibid., p. 11.

6. Ibid., p. 39.

7. Ibid., p. 13.

8. Ibid., p. 10.

9. Ibid., quoted on p. 24.

10. Ibid., p. 146.

11. Ibid., p. 10.

12. Ibid., p. 161.

13. Ibid., p. 257.

14. Fadi Eyadat, ‘Poll: 40% of Israeli Arabs believe Holocaust never happened’, Haaretz,17 May 2009. http://www.haaretz.com/news/poll-40-of-israeli-arabs-believe-holocaust-never-happened-1.276190.

Brian Klug is Senior Research Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy at St. Benet’s Hall, Oxford.

After U.S. Praise for Netanyahu’s “Restraint”, Israeli Journalist Amira Hass Asks Obama to Imagine Life as A Palestinian Under Occupation: Democracy Now

Meeting at the White House, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized the “unbreakable” bond between Israel and the United States. Despite ongoing Israeli settlement expansion, roadblocks, closures and the attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla, Obama said he thinks Israel “has shown restraint.” The meeting came on the heels of a decision by the Israeli military prosecutor to take disciplinary and legal action in four separate cases from Israel’s 22-day assault on Gaza last year. We speak to veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass.

Amira Hass, Ha’aretz correspondent for the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the only Israeli journalist to have spent several years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank.
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Israeli Activists Criticize US House for Considering Resolution Condemning Goldstone Report on Israeli War Crimes in Gaza
Palestinian President Abbas Faces Uproar for Aiding US-Israeli Derailment of UN Report on Gaza Assault
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AMY GOODMAN: President Obama hosted talks of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House Tuesday in a push to restart direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials. Obama urged the two sides to resume talks before the partial freeze on building illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank expires in September. At a joint news conference after their meeting Tuesday morning, both Obama and Netanyahu emphasized the unbreakable bond between Israel and the United States and downplayed recent U.S. Israeli tensions over the settlements. In his remarks to the press, President Obama made no mention of settlement expansion or the Israeli commando attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla that killed nine people including a U.S. citizen. He noted that Netanyahu is “Willing to take risks for peace” and praised Israel’s moves to begin easing the blockade of Gaza.

BARACK OBAMA: Let me first of all say that I think the Israeli government working through layers of various governmental entities and jurisdictions have shown restraint over the last seven months that I think has been conducive to the prospects of us getting into direct talks. I think it is very important that the Palestinians not look for excuses for incitement, that they’re not engaging in provocative language, that at the international level they are maintaining a constructive talk as opposed to looking for opportunities to embarrass Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed President of in his optimism about moving forward with direct negotiations but warned that Israel wants a secure peace.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: We don’t want a repeat of the situation where we vacate territories and those are overtaken by Iran’s proxies and used as launching grounds for terrorist attacks, rocket attacks. I think there are solutions that we can adopt—but in order to proceed to the solution, we need to begin negotiations in order to end them. Without proximity talks, I think it’s high time to begin direct talks.

AMY GOODMAN: Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama came on the heels of a decision by the Israeli military prosecutor to take disciplinary and legal action and four separate cases from Israel’s 22-day assault on Gaza last year. One soldier was charged with manslaughter in connection with the deaths of a Palestinian mother and daughter who were shot while waving white flags. The prosecutor also called for criminal investigation into air-strikes on a building into which Israeli troops had ordered 100 members of a single-family. Over two dozen members of the family were killed in the shelling. For more on the U.S. Israeli relations and prospects for peace and accountability, I’m joined on the telephone from Tel Aviv by veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass, she’s the Ha’aretz correspondent for the occupied Palestinian territories and the only Israeli journalist to have spent several years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. Amira, welcome to Democracy Now!, your comments on the meeting between Netanyahu and Obama yesterday and what came of it.

AMIRA HASS: Oh, I have no comment, I thought we were talking about something else, I did not even watch it. By the time we know really what happened there—it will take some time before we know really what happened there. I only hope that or I suspect Obama allowed himself to be misled by the sweet talk of Netanyahu. That is my impression, or that is my guess. I am sorry because I—

AMY GOODMAN: Well Amira, let me ask you, President Obama praised Netanyahu for the easing of the blockade. Can you talk about what that means?

AMIRA HASS: Perhaps Obama should ask himself if he would set aside in life of just getting chips and ketchup and Coca-Cola and not being allowed to produce, to create, to export, to send his daughters to university, to have visitors from outside—if this is the life that he thinks are suitable for human beings, then maybe all the Americans who voted for him made a mistake.

AMY GOODMAN: Well explain—

AMIRA HASS: Because the blockade here. Look, everybody talks about food when we come to this blockade. So now Israel is giving some more items of food, allowing the Palestinian merchants to buy some more items of food to get into Gaza and maybe some other stuff, I don’t know. But everything which is connected to raw materials for industry, for producing, anything connected to construction material is very limited. Nothing has changed. So adding ketchup, as somebody told me, does not make people feel that the blockade is over. Maybe now there are more types of shampoo that Israel will allow to enter. But anyway, in the past years, Palestinians have managed to bring in shampoo and some other hygiene products from Egypt through the tunnels. This is not the blockade.

The blockade is about being imprisoned in Gaza. This is the real closure. This is the real siege. And this is not going to change. Only today there was a court hearing of the petition of a Palestinian lawyer, woman lawyer, female lawyer, from Gaza who wants to complete her M.A. Studies at the University and the state does not allow her because they say when it comes to the passage, the movement of human beings, nothing has changed. They still do not allow or they haven’t been allowed anywhere for the past ten or fifteen years but evermore severely, they don’t allow the passage, the movement of people between Gaza and the West Bank except in some rare, very exceptional humanitarian cases. So this remains the same. This remains the same. also, Palestinians cannot export. Israel is talking only about bringing in products, not exporting. So even if Palestinians got raw materials, for example for textiles for furniture, the traditional industry that Gazans excel at, they are not allowed to export them. So they won’t earn a living. So Gaza is a huge prison where people are dependent on charity, some sort of charity. This situation is not going to change now, with Israel’s new measures.

AMY GOODMAN: Amira Hass, the meeting yesterday between Netanyahu and Obama came on the heels of the decision by the Israeli military prosecutor to take disciplinary and legal action in four separate cases in the Israeli assault on Gaza last year. Among them, a soldier charged with manslaughter in connection with the deaths of a Palestinian mother and daughter. Can you explain that story?

AMIRA HASS: There’s several—I have spoken to the family, I think it was the—second day or the first morning, the first day of the ground invasion where people understood that they should leave their homes and go from the east of Gaza more to the west, towards the city itself. There was a group of people, 30, 40 people, with children, with women. The whole area is an agricultural area, with scattered house, it is not heavily populated. They left with waving white flags and from a distance, I do not remember how many meters, 60, 70, 100, a tank stopped them then shot the mother and the daughter. The family couldn’t even bury them, they had to flee. They had to flee, they came back a week or 15 days later to recover the corpses. These are the mother and the daughter.

The same unit was in charge of the whole area and I have like many others and human rights field workers, we have researched all the measures of this unit over the area, the destruction of houses, the bombings, shellings, not allowing people to reach—to get rescued by medical teams. This has been the case all over this area and other places, but very strongly in this area, where the Samouni’s, a bit further to the west, the Samouni family, which you also mentioned, are a typical one—one of the most difficult cases of this onslaught. As you said, 29 people were killed. 21 or 22 of whom in the house to which the soldiers themselves ordered them to be in. So the soldiers knew very well there were civilians gathered in the house feeling secure because there were asked to be there. And what is very surprising is it took the army so long, a year and a half, to admit that something-–went wrong there-–even to according to their criteria. Because all the information was valid, was available from the start. From the start the information to at least suspect about what the soldiers were saying. Why wait so long? It seems not by surprise-–not by coincidence the announcement came yesterday just on the eve of Mr. Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama.

AMY GOODMAN: So the Samouni family, 29 killed in that family, the Israeli military told them to go into that house and then they struck the House?

AMIRA HASS: Sorry?

AMY GOODMAN: The story of the Samouni family, the 29 members—

AMIRA HASS: This is just—it is in the same area where the other family, the mother and the daughter were killed. It’s the same unit. We see overall the practices of shooting at civilians from very short range, close range, shooting at people carrying white flags, not allowing rescue teams to arrive to the wounded, not allowing people to rescue their own relatives. Here in the Samouni family, the unique case, the soldiers were talking to the people. They were even talking in Hebrew because all of these people knew the man in the family spoke Hebrew because they were working in Israel for many years. This was-–in that particular case, it was an extreme in the standards of the onslaught on Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you also comment on the committee tasked by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate the nine deaths aboard the aid flotilla that was headed to Gaza? The head is going to be Philippe Kirsch, the former president of international criminal court.

AMIRA HASS: When was it published? When was it known? I did not follow it.

AMY GOODMAN: It just recently came out. But this meeting that is happening between Netanyahu and Obama its the first since then. In fact, Netanyahu was supposed to meet with Obama, but Netanyahu left in the midst of—right after the strike to return to Israel when the attack on the flotilla happened.

AMIRA HASS: He left?

AMY GOODMAN: This is the first meeting they’ve had since then. The fallout from that, Amira Hass?

AMIRA HASS: I am sorry, the line—

AMY GOODMAN: The fallout from the attack on the Gaza flotilla. It wasn’t mentioned yesterday, but what you think the fallout has been?

AMIRA HASS: I don’t know.

AMY GOODMAN: In the territories—

AMIRA HASS: Why it has not been mentioned?

AMY GOODMAN: No, what has been the fallout in Israel and Gaza?

AMIRA HASS: Look, right now people think it has calmed down. People are looking for, and politicians are looking for, ways to sort things out with Turkey, especially the military. I think the military cherishes, the relations—old relations with Turkey. I think they want to amend. They came yesterday with a story, some of the corpse posthumous analysis showed that some of the people-–there were some other bullets other than the military bullets. So they still keep to the version that it’s the Israeli soldiers who were attacked. So right now in Israel, the flotilla, people know it was a big political flop and military flop, too. But now you know events are tracing one after the other here. So right now there is not so much talk about the flotilla as there was two weeks ago or three weeks ago.

AMY GOODMAN: Well Amira Hass, I want to thank you for being with us, Ha’aretz correspondent for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, only Israeli journalist to have spent more than a decade living and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. Thanks for being with us, she talked with us from Tel Aviv. This is Democracy Now!, we’ll be back in a moment.

Mad Israelis section

EDITOR: Today we have high level entrants, new in this section, but most promising and likely to return with further rantings. Read and enjoy. Israel is probably unique vis the number of its very senior personalities of the social elite, who feel free with expressing such views freely, and who would be deeply offended if their motives or sanity were to be questioned. It is good that at last the Israei elite are open about their intellectual influences…

The other contributors, though less famous, are just as welcome to this section.

Israeli judge: Learn from Nazis: YNet

Retired Judge Hadassa Ben-Itto says as part of PR war, Israel should adopt tactics used to distribute Protocols of Elders of Zion

Published:     07.05.10, 16:44
LONDON – “We must learn from the Nazi tactics,” Retired Israeli Judge Hadassa Ben-Itto said recently during a conference discussing ways to improve the State of Israel’s PR efforts in the world.
The meeting, which was held last week in the English capital, was attended by some 150 senior Jewish legal experts.
Ben-Itto said during the conference that Israel should adopt the tactics used by the Nazis after they distributed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Refusing to reach a compromise and continuing their battle in the courts although they had no proof of the protocols.
“I thought about it, about our ‘hasbara’, and nothing is working because our story is complicated and the world is used to a sound bite,” she explained.
“I have reached the conclusion that we must use these tactics in courts worldwide, just like the Nazis – with all distinctions – used the courts to spread their message.”

Hating Israel on our campus: YNet

Ben-Gurion University turning into village fool, hotbed of anti-Israel activity
Israel David
Published:     07.07.10, 18:52
The protests following the Turkish flotilla incident included activists marching outside the Ben-Gurion University senate building while giving the Nazi salute and shouting “Heil Bibi.” These were apparently outside provocateurs, yet members of the university’s teaching staff participated in the demonstration.
Teaching staff members also took part in the illegal protest held on the outskirts of campus two days earlier. Some of them have been calling for a boycott on Israel and characterizing it as an “apartheid state” – a term that has been well-perceived in the global anti-Israel market.
The true role played by Ben-Gurion University in Israeli academia’s overall anti-Zionist activity does not justify the reputation it built in this area. However, in recent years the university assumed the role of village fool in the academic arena, characterized by ridiculous displays of the abovementioned type.

However, it is not one professor or another who are responsible for Ben-Gurion University being perceived as second only to the Palestinian Birzeit University in respect to anti-Israeli sentiments. Such phenomena do not grow in a vacuum.
Let’s take the boycott motive for example. Upon taking office, a senior university official submitted to an interview where he pledged to take part in leftist student protests yet shun rightist ones. In the same interview, the official explained that one should join a boycott on global universities “should a substantial crime take place there.” Earlier, in January 2005, a boycott was organized against a guest lecture by Professor Yaakov Bergman, for “fear of his influence on young minds.” This year, ahead of the board of trustees’ session, a donor was boycotted (in writing!) and the same happened to a university professor.

Artistic freedom?
And what about the Nazi circus discussed at the opening of this piece? Not too long ago, the university dismissed a member of the appointments committee for speaking out against the candidacy of an Israeli lecturer who lives in the US. This candidate organized a military insubordination campaign and compared IDF commanders and soldiers to the Nazis. The university’s official spokesman said that “a member of the appointments committee cannot take non-academic factors into consideration” – a response that infuriated online readers (“And what if it was Dr. Mengele?”)

Outside the university senate building we have a large poster bearing Prime Minister Netanyahu’s image, graced with a large “catastrophe” caption.” Anyone can come and see the display, which originally was meant to glorify Prime Minister Ben-Gurion. The protest expressed by about 90% of those signing the exhibit’s guestbook have not impressed university officials, who responded by saying this is “artistic freedom.”

Are we really war criminals?: YNet

IDF probes into Gaza operation include needless self-flagellation
Yoaz Hendel
Published:     07.07.10, 11:51
Sometimes it appears that we make so much effort to be normal that we stick our head in the sand and mutter words of comfort to ourselves. This is at least what we’ve been doing since the end of Operation Cast Lead.

We came, we fought, we withdrew, yet despite all the efforts to be more righteous than the Vatican’s army and despite the operation’s success in the view of southern residents, we ended this operation badly in the eyes of the world’s self-righteous observers. These are the facts, as opposed to our responses to the Goldstone Committee and the legal inquiries of the IDF’s judge advocate general, which are the interpretation.

Military prosecutors’ need to probe suspicions of grave offences during the operation stems from two reasons: The first and most important one is us – the desire to know that our camp is untainted, much before the Goldstone attack and the complaints of “Human rights” groups. We, the people who believe in our right to live here in a just society, want to know that the IDF maintains high moral standards.

The second, more problematic reason is them. What will those who smeared us chronically ever since the operation ended say? How will the hypocritical (or hateful) critics who view us as a brutal occupier unable to probe itself respond?
And this is precisely where we find the odd reflex that prompts military prosecutors to turn every stone en route to an indictment. When prosecutors look into hundreds of false charges of war crimes they bears the heavy burden of proof on their backs. When an army wishes to prove its innocence in the face of thousands of complaints (most of them fabricated) it must contend with the cruel burden of statistics.

How can one return empty handed after probing so many complaints? How could it be that we don’t have even one war criminal?
Critics will remain unsatisfied
And so, an indictment takes shape, as well as criminal investigations and disciplinary action that give off a stench. Indeed, it may be that the soldier who fired at civilians is a brutal war criminal. On the other hand, ever since the Fourth Geneva Convention, not one criminal had been caught who operated in line with the IDF’s strict rules of engagement: Warning, firing warning shots in the air, firing warning shots towards the legs, and only then “carrying out one’s evil plot” – even if the circumstances required immediate action.

So indeed, it’s possible that the battalion commander who permitted a begging Palestinian to personally clear terrorists from a nearby building (which happens to be this Palestinian’s only property, which could have been destroyed by the army otherwise) violated the delusional ban on the so-called “neighbor procedure.” However, this is not a problem that requires disciplinary action – rather, it’s a test case dilemma for IDF instructors to go over with their trainees.
And as a matter of fact, deep inside, we know that even if we make the utmost efforts and somehow find half-guilty parties and semi-war criminals, it won’t satisfy those who write the reports about us.