Mideast Media Sampler 09/06/2011

From DG:

1) The Peter Principle in Palestine


Last week Khaled Abu Toameh wrote Failed Leaders Do Not Deserve to Become "Presidents" in which he lambastes Mahmoud Abbas for pursuing the unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) at the UN later this month. (There's a similarly themed article at Comment is Free by Mehdi Hasan. h/t Lynn)

The 76-year-old Abbas, however, is evidently not concerned about the consequences of his UN gamble.


So what if the Americans cut off more than $500 million in annual aid to the Palestinians?
Who cares if many of the Palestinians' friends in Europe are advising Abbas that his initiative would damage the peace process and further complicate the situation in the Middle East?
And who cares if even some Arab countries are opposed to the statehood plan? Just this week it was reported that Jordan's King Abdullah II had advised Abbas to reconsider the statehood bid out of fear that it would result in the loss of the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees.
Like the rest of the Arab regimes, the Jordanians are afraid that a Palestinian state would mean that millions of refugees living in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon would stay in these countries.The refugees do not want to go to a Palestinian state in the 1967 territories.They want to go back to Israel, and this is what the Palestinian Liberation Organization has been demanding. So if the PLO is gone, the refugees will not have anyone to represent their case.

That last paragraph makes me a little uncomfortable as is it sounds much like an argument that Hamas would make.  Abu Toameh has followed up that article with another, Why Palestine Will Not Have Peaceful Relations with Israel

How can the Palestinians have diplomatic and peaceful relations with Israel when many are calling on Jordan and Egypt to close down the Israeli embassies in Amman and Cairo and expel the ambassadors?
The Palestinian Authority is now saying that after the UN vote on the proposed Palestinian state, it will start talking with Hamas and other groups about the need to hold presidential and parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories.
But can anyone provide guarantees that Hamas, or a more radical group, would not win the vote? In January 2006, many Palestinian Authority officials and Western "experts" assured the Americans and Europeans that Hamas would never win the parliamentary election.
Abbas is well aware of the fact that the state that he is seeking from the UN will have jurisdiction only over those areas in the West Bank that are under his control today.

Both articles present the Palestinian diplomatic efforts in a much different light from the way they are portrayed in the mainstream media.


Jennifer Rubin makes an interesting observation at the end of a column yesterday regarding the Palmer report (h/t Love of the Land):

Not only is this an implicit repudiation of the premises of the Goldstone Report (which, in Operation Cast Lead, portrayed the Israelis as aggressors and Gazans as victims), but it is a powerful argument against granting the Palestinians their request for a declaration of statehood. The government of that new state is co-run by the very terrorists described in the flotilla report as waging war on Israel.
The United Nations is now going to reward Hamas with a declaration (albeit symbolic) that its unity government joins the “international community” of civilized nations? It’s of course preposterous. Neither the United Nations nor anyone else knows how, or even if, the unity government will function. What we do know is that Israel is involved (still) in an ongoing war against terrorists who target Israeli civilians in contravention of international law. Perhaps when it is Israelis’ turn to speak on the resolution, its representatives should hand the microphone over to Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Álvaro Uribe, who can read their informative report to the General Assembly.

There's another side to this observation too. A few months after the Goldstone report, Judge Goldstone himself, said that his investigation wasn't necessary. The Palmer report confirmed that Israel's blockade, despite the chorus of critics, is legal under international law. And now following those two, the Palestinians wish to use international law to achieve their goals. To anyone who is paying attention, Goldstone and Palmer point out the current corruption of the state of international law (at least as practiced by the UN), which should make the UDI even more suspect.


2) Critiquing the critics


David Bernstein of the Volokh conspiracy takes on two of Israel's critics regarding the Palmer report. In the first case he rejects Kevin Jon Heller's assertion that the blockade is illegal.

Because the Report concluded that the Hamas-Israel conflict was an IAC, it didn’t contradict Heller’s argument that if it’s not an IAC, the blockade is illegal under international law. But Heller also, as he acknowledges, “questioned the legality of the blockade” and said that it was not just wrong but that Israel’s claim to be in an IAC with Hamas is wholly implausible. While one Report cannot establish in everyone’s mind the lawfulness of the blockade, surely if an unsympathetic (or at the very least, non-sympathetic) forum like a U.N. commission adopts the Israeli position on IAC, that position cannot be deemed beyond the realm of even plausible argument, and Heller’s analysis is indeed “contradicted.”

In the latter case he reminds us the Juan Cole claimed that the Mavi Marmara was populated by peaceful volunteers. The Palmer report though writes:

Palmer Report: Israeli forces “faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for their own protection. Three soldiers were captured, mistreated, and placed at risk by those passengers. Several others were wounded.”
As I pointed out at the time, Israel relied on faulty intelligence, and should have recalled its forces and started from square one when it became clear that they weren’t facing peaceful “aid volunteers,” but organized, violent fanatics itching for a fight.

Many of Israel's critics were refuted by the Palmer report, yet that aspect of the report seems to have been largely ignored.

3) Burning documents


Anti-Israel blogger and publicity hound, Richard Silverstein must be thrilled that he is once again a principal in a New York Times story, Leak Offers Look at Efforts by U.S. to Spy on Israel (via memeorandum)


I really don't want to give the limelight seeker more attention, but Israel Matzav noted

And by the way, someone in the US Attorney's office in Seattle ought to be looking into prosecuting Silverstein for destroying evidence.

He said he had burned the secret documents in his Seattle backyard after Mr. Leibowitz came under investigation in mid-2009, but he recalled that there were about 200 pages of verbatim records of telephone calls and what seemed to be embassy conversations. He said that in one transcript, Israeli officials discussed their worry that their exchanges might be monitored.

Sounds like destruction of evidence to me.

The guy is an unprincipled egotistical scoundrel; if he gets prosecuted because he boasted of a crime to the New York Times that would be satisfying.


4) Cohen-head


It's hard to come up with new insults for Roger Cohen, though calling him a Zionist agent is pretty clever. his latest Israel Isolates Itself is typical of his work. It's filled with half-truths and distortions. My Right Word and Elder of Ziyon have already fisked it. One point here, Cohen writes:

The Palmer report, leaked to The New York Times last week, is a split-the-difference document, with the Israeli and Turkish members of the panel including notes of dissent. My rough translation of its conclusion would be this message to Israel: You had the right to do it but what you did was way over the top and just plain dumb. 

Except this is from a previous Cohen article:

The logic of the Israeli offensive, if there is one, must surely be that Hamas can be so weakened as ultimately to crumble. That is also the logic of the relentless blockade that persisted during the six-month cease-fire despite Israel’s earlier commitment, as part of the deal, to opening border crossings.

In other words he believes the blockade to keep weapons out of Gaza to be wrong. The Palmer report showed that he was wrong. That's more than a split decision; Cohen's premise was knocked out. He possesses neither the good sense nor the humility to acknowledge that he is mistaken.

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