Everything I Know About Music

Don't worry--this won't take long.

During a Music for Poets class that I took years ago, when our teacher played for us Beethoven's 7th Symphony he explained to us that in the 2nd movement, in the 85th measure, the tympani--after going boom -rest-  boom -rest- , goes -rest- boom--which from what I gathered was supposed to be an indication of Beethoven's ingenuity and sense of humor.

With that handy bit of info, I can now participate in any conversation about music--something that I have done on average about once every ten years since then.

Here are the measures in question (click to enlarge--you can get the complete sheet music for the movement here, in PDF)


and here is the second movement by the Amarillo Orchestra on August 18, 2007. I set the video to begin a few measures before. Once you hear the timpani, just follow the score above.



Now, when you are caught in a conversation about classical music, you can talk about Beethoven's ingenuity and sense of humor too.

BTW, that same teacher also taught us the words to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony:

This is the symphony, that Schubert wrote but never finished,
This is the symphony, that Schubert wrote but never finished
No never,
No never...

(According to Google there are about 1,740 websites that have this or some variation)

Here, try it out for yourself, it starts at 1:44 into the piece:



One final note: my 15 month old son has learned how to turn on our CD/tape player. The other day, he turned it on--and out came Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D Minor--and he came running. He ended up traumatizing himself and will probably be turned off to classical music for life:



End of lesson.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Beethoven's Seventh Symphony and Schubert's Unfinished Symphoney and Bach's Toccata and Fugue and Classical Music.

Was Operation Cast Lead A Bigger Failure Than The War With Hezbollah? (Updated)

In an article in The Jewish Week about renewed rocket attacks against Ashkelon, Joshua Mitnick writes about the growing sense that as in the case of the war with Hezbollah, Operation Cast Lead against Hamas has also turned out to be a failure:

Amid reports of Israeli army officers warning that the military gains from the war were being eroded by the missile fire, there seems to be a growing consensus that Operation Cast Lead is not turning out to be the success that the government initially trumpeted after declaring a unilateral cease-fire on Jan. 18.

Middle East analyst Meir Javedanfar said that Israel’s handling of the conflict is worse than the 2006 Lebanon War. For all of the criticism of Israel’s inability to deliver a decisive blow against Hezbollah and the resulting erosion of Israeli deterrence, that cease-fire has held for the most part.

If the failure has been greater, there is no sense that there will be another commission in order to determine its cause--in this case, the failure does not stem from the conduct of the war itself, but from the way it was concluded:

In the case of Gaza, “Israel sent a message that it has the capability to inflict heavy damage against Hamas’ military infrastructure, but because the conflict wasn’t followed up by any agreement, Israel missed an opportunity to restore its deterrence,” he said.

“Israel made the mistake of declaring a unilateral cease-fire without any agreement from Hamas,” Javedanfar continued. “That gave Hamas the initiative. By taking the initiative they’ve eroded the gains of the war. We should have had an agreement worked out behind the scenes, with the Egyptians to work out the rules of the game — but we didn’t do that.”

Operation Cast Lead was Olmert's last chance to leave a legacy epitomizing his term as Prime Minister.

Unfortunately, he was successful.

David Hazony writes about a poll by the Palestine Center for Policy and Survey Research:

According to the poll, Hamas leader Yismail Haniyeh has now pulled ahead of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, 47% to 45%, in a popularity survey conducted in the West Bank alone. If elections were held in the West Bank today, the poll suggests, Haniyeh would be the new president of the Palestinian Authority.

The poll suggests that the December Gaza war, known as Operation Cast Lead, may have backfired. And we can understand why: By leaving the Hamas regime in place, Israel gave Haniyeh the opportunity to declare himself the victor, just by virtue of his having survived — much the way Saddam Hussein touted his “defeat” of American forces after the first Gulf War, or the way Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has done since the 2006 Lebanon War.

In the end, Operation Cast Lead is another missed opportunity:

Operation Cast Lead handed Israel everything it needed to eliminate the Hamas regime. Israel had the tacit support to do so, not just from the U.S. and Europe, but also from Egypt and even the Palestinian Authority. And it had the capability as well: A much-revamped IDF showed far superior tactical abilities in Cast Lead than it had in 2006. But what was missing was what so often seems to be missing among Israel’s leaders — a recognition of the strategic need, and of the political moment.

Is what Abba Eban said about the Palestinian Arabs proving true about Israel's leaders as well?

UPDATE: Soccer Dad pointed me to an article in Aviation Week that is dated just yesterday. The title of the article is New Tactics Yield Solid Victory in Gaza and it concludes:

Retired general and Knesset member Yizhak Ben Israel says the operation was so successful that it could become part of the historic memory of Middle East nations for years. The IDF not only restored its deterrence vis-a-vis Hamas, Ben Israel says, but against other enemies such as Hezbollah and the Iran-Syria axis.

While sporadic rocket fire continues from Gaza, leaders of Hamas—and Hezbollah—will have to take into account that the IDF could strike again with even greater force. Experts say it is doubtful that people in these areas will be willing to absorb another blow.

True, against a normal enemy, a government that is answerable to the people, this would be considered a victory. But we are talking about a terrorist group whose only concern is that they are alive to kill another day and holds their people hostage.

You cannot tell Israelis in Sderot and Ashkelon that Israel won. For all of the military prowess demonstrated, the declared goal was not achieved and no agreement was signed.

True, only "sporadic rocket fire continues from Gaza"--but that is the background that led to the war in the first place.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Hamas and Operation Cast Lead.

Illegal Construction In Israel: The Facts

Human rights lawyer Justus Reid Weiner has written a study on illegal construction in Jerusalem, discrediting the conventional wisdom and documenting the politically-motivated behavior and criminal profiteering typical of much of the construction that goes on in the Arab sector of the Jerusalem.

For instance:

In the Jewish neighborhoods, illegal construction typically takes the form of additions to existing legal structures - such as closing a balcony or hollowing out under a building to create an extra room. In the Arab sector, however, illegal construction often takes the form of entire multi-floor buildings with 4 to 25 living units, built with the financial assistance of the Palestinian Authority on land that is not owned by the builder. [emphasis added]

Other points:

• Illegal construction has reached epidemic proportions. A senior Palestinian official boasted that they have built 6,000 homes without permits during the last 4 years, of which less than 200 were demolished by the city.
  
  
• This frantic pace of illegal construction continues despite the fact that the city has authorized more than 36,000 permits for new housing units in the Arab sector, more than enough to meet the needs of Arab residents through legal construction until 2020.
  
  
• Arab residents who wish to build legally may consult urban plans translated into Arabic for their convenience and receive individual assistance from Arabic-speaking city employees.
  
  
• Both Arabs and Jews typically wait 4-6 weeks for permit approval, enjoy a similar rate of application approvals, and pay an identical fee ($3,600) for water and sewage hook-ups on the same size living unit.
  
  
• The same procedures for administrative demolition orders apply to both Jews and Arabs in all parts of the city, as a final backstop to remove structures built illegally on roadbeds or land designated for schools, clinics, and the like.
  
  
• The Palestinian Authority and Arab governments have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in an intentional campaign to subsidize and encourage massive illegal construction in the Arab sector, seeing this as part of their "demographic war" against Israel.
  
  
• Many large, multi-story, luxury structures have been built by criminals on land they do not own, frequently land belonging to Palestinian Christians living abroad.
  
  
• This epidemic of illegal construction is similar to illegal building that troubles cities in scores of countries worldwide and where the authorities utilize the law to demolish the structures.
  
  
• More than any single factor, the 35-year-long boycott of municipal politics by the Palestinian leadership has resulted in the continued imbalance in municipal services in Arab neighborhoods vis-a-vis Jewish neighborhoods.
  
  
• Despite frequent accusations that the city's planning policy seeks to "Judaize" Jerusalem, the Arab population of the city has increased since 1967 from 27% to 32%. Moreover, since 1967 new Arab construction has outpaced Jewish construction.

Check out how to get a copy of the study.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Illegal Construcdtion.

Anti-Semitism: You've Come A Long Way, Baby

In The National Post, John Kay writes about the focus of Anti-Semitism has changed, from the Nazi paradigm of the Jew as "a piece of filth — a rogue pathogen within gentile society" to today. While the view still remains that

the Jew (or, to give the fig leaf its due, “the Jewish state”) is a scourge upon the world, everything has changed. The Jew is no longer diseased and wretched. Just the opposite: He is an omnipotent, teched up superman, murdering a defenseless Palestinian child from above.

John Kay describes 3 factors that have led to this necessary adaptation by Anti-Semites:

The first is ideology: When the Nazis went down to defeat, they took with them the intellectual basis of “germ-theory” anti-Semitism — the toxic notion that certain races or groups are genetically inferior or parasitical. In our era, to compare Jews to leeches is to announce oneself as a bigoted creature from society’s discredited fringe.

The second reason is tied up with the history of Israel itself: After the Jews established their own state in 1948, it became impossible to typecast them as mere parasites contaminating foreign hosts. This was especially true after the Six-Day War of 1967, in which Israel scored a crushing military victory against Egypt, Jordan and Syria — not the sort of maneuver you’d expect from typhus-stricken old men.

The third reason is political: The leaders who find anti-Semitism useful today aren’t extreme nationalists such as Hitler, Stalin or Mussolini (though Hugo Chavez admittedly has been wandering into that territory). Instead, they are radical Muslims — and their allies in Western activist groups, who speak the tropes of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-Americanism, anti-racism and all the other fashionable antis. In this left-wing intellectual climate, disparaging any race or religion per se is off limits. The preferred tactic is to disparage the allegedly colonial, imperialist, racist etc. nature of their actions.

As part of this adaptation of Anti-Semitism, the main source no longer comes from the right--but rather from the left:

These days, the hatemongers targeting Jews’ right to live peacefully spout the mantras of “social justice” and “peace studies,” not racial purity...

It also must be admitted that the anti-Semitism of today is a lot more subtle than the old-fashioned variety: Except in clear cases of blood libel such as the IAH poster, it’s often hard to tell where legitimate criticism of Israel ends and Jew-hatred begins. As a result, Jews themselves — middle-aged university professors and career feminists, most typically — are often drawn into radicalized campaigns against Israel, and sometimes even can be seen marching gullibly arm-in-arm with Kafiyeh-clad protestors chanting for Jewish blood in Arabic.

This change has made addressing Anti-Semitism that much harder:

Vilifying Nazis is easy. Taking on politically correct Muslims and campus lefties on parade is hard. Anti-Semitism thrives when lazy people look the other way. That much, at least, hasn’t changed.

Kay leaves out pseudo- scholars and diplomats--but his point is well taken.

Read the whole thing.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Anti-Semitism.

Freeman Attacked The Wrong Lobby!

In his statement, Freeman claimed:

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East.

But actually, Freeman has got it all wrong!

Jennifer Rubin writes that it apparently not the Israel Lobby that is stifling Freeman's views:

Like the old joke, “Franco is still dead,” the New York Times is still mum on the Chas Freeman nomination. Aside from an automated response, Clark Hoyt, the public editor previously charged with explaining why the Times didn’t report for weeks on the Reverend Wright story, hasn’t responded to my inquiry as to why the Times remains mute.

Mark Steyn adds:

Poor old Freeman. He has the guts to spill the beans on the Israel Lobby, and either their stooge Pincus [of The Washington Post] or the sinister cosmopolitan Jews who control America's Union of Newspaper Delivery Boys hoover any reference to the dark truth out of the paper before it reaches your doorstop.

Starting to day, though, The New York Times and The Washington Post will come out about this surprising story that apparently came out of nowhere.

Technorati Tag: Chas Freeman and Media Bias.

Anti-Semitism Does Not Require Jews To Thrive

In History's Oldest Hatred, Jeff Jacoby writes:

So hardy is anti-Semitism, it can flourish without Jews. Shakespeare's poisonous depiction of the Jewish moneylender Shylock was written for audiences that had never seen a Jew, all Jews having been expelled from England more than 300 years earlier. Anti-Semitic bigotry infests Saudi Arabia, where Jews have not dwelt in at least five centuries; its malignance is suggested by the government daily Al-Riyadh, which published an essayclaiming that Jews have a taste for "pastries mixed with human blood."

In investigating Anti-Semitism against the background of Purim, Jacoby notes:

What drives such bloodlust? Haman's indictment accuses the Jews of lacking national loyalty, of insinuating themselves throughout the empire, of flouting the king's law.

Imagine: the first accusation of an Israel Lobby!

Maybe Freeman's resignation yesterday was no coincidence?

Looking for the reason for Anti-Semitism often fails for the simple reason that the search is being done in the wrong place:

"The Jews have been objects of hatred in pagan, religious, and secular societies," write Joseph Telushkin and Dennis Prager in Why the Jews?, their classic study of anti-Semitism. "Fascists have accused them of being Communists, and Communists have branded them capitalists. Jews who live in non-Jewish societies have been accused of having dual loyalties, while Jews who live in the Jewish state have been condemned as 'racists.' Poor Jews are bullied, and rich Jews are resented. Jews have been branded as both rootless cosmopolitans and ethnic chauvinists. Jews who assimilate have been called a 'fifth column,' while those who stay together spark hatred for remaining separate."

...Some Jews are no saints, but the paranoid frenzy that is anti-Semitism is not explained by what Jews do, but by what they are. The Jewish people are the object of anti-Semitism, not its cause. That is why the haters' rationales can be so wildly inconsistent and their agendas so contradictory. What, after all, do those who vilify Jews as greedy bankers have in common with those who revile them as seditious Bolsheviks? Nothing, save an irrational obsession with Jews. [emphasis added]

Persia is now Iran--and things have not changed a bit.

Technorati Tag: Anti-Semitism and Purim.

Iraq, Israel--Whatever...

Michael Yon on Obama's handling of Iraq:

Today Iraq is succeeding, but as Generals Petraeus or Odierno might say, the situation remains fragile and reversible. Whereas the Bush-war ended in a new if messy democracy, this year we could see an Obama-war begin; the new President has sent a clear signal that we intend to mostly abandon Iraq during this crucial transition period. Today, the progress is obvious. But if Iraq descends back into chaos, the Obama-war, a newborn war, will not be a result of U.S. aggression, but of limp leadership intent on fulfilling campaign promises that were misinformed to begin with.

For all the standard talk we heard from Obama about how the US being a friend of Israel and being concerned for Israel's security--just how much can Israel rely on Obama? With the $900 million Obama wants to give Gaza, what kind of stand would the US take the next time Israel decides it does not want Hamas make target practice out its citizens?

Now Biden has announced that the US will be negotiating with the Taliban. 

In response to a question about how many of the Taliban might be considered "moderate" and therefore open to reconciliation, Mr. Biden ticked off some percentages.

"Five percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another 25 percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, [of] the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency," Mr. Biden said during a press conference.

"And roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money, because of them being...paid," he said.

For years there has been talk about distinguishing between 'moderate' Hamas and the ones who apparently are under the influence of the Dark Side of the Force--one can only imagine the impatience of Obama to start talking to start talking to the members of Hamas who are not incorrigible.

Actually, there may very well be a great deal of incorrigiblity about Obama's approach in general. According to Wikipedia:

In philosophy, incorrigibility is a property of a philosophical proposition, which implies that it is necessarily true simply by virtue of being believed. 

That would explain alot.

Check out Memeorandum for more.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Iraq and Hamas and Taliban.

The US Dodges A Bullet: Chas Freeman Is Out (But Not Quietly)

From US News & World Report:

In a dramatic conclusion to a building political fight over his selection as the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, former U.S. Ambassador Charles "Chas" W. Freeman, Jr., asked that the appointment not proceed, the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, announced Tuesday.

But that does not begin to describe it.

Foreign Policy has the complete statement.

In the same statement where he says:

I am not so immodest as to believe that this controversy was about me rather than issues of public policy.

...Freeman claims:

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

So not only is this all about him, but there is a special foreign interest group behind it. Care to guess which one? Freeman leaves nothing to the imagination:

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel.

Someone should point out to Freeman that the irony works both ways--or is Freeman actually going to claim that the Saudis do not try to influence opinion in the US? Let's not forget the controversy from 2005:

Saudi Billionaire Boasts of Manipulating Fox News Coverage

Accuracy in Media (AIM) is urging a full inquiry into a report that a Saudi billionaire caused the Fox News Channel (FNC) to dramatically alter its coverage of the Muslim riots in France after he called the network to complain. The Saudi billionaire, Al-waleed bin Talal, is a friend of News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch and controls an influential number of voting shares in the company. “This report underscores the danger of giving foreign interests a significant financial stake in U.S. media companies,” declared Cliff Kincaid, editor of Accuracy in Media...Liberal journalist Danny Schechter, a participant in the conference, reports that Al-waleed, who is a member of the Saudi Royal Family and investor in the Fox News parent company News Corporation, gave an interview boasting that he had called Fox to complain about coverage of the “Muslim riots” in France. He said he “called as a viewer” and “convinced them to change” the coverage because “they were not Muslim riots but riots against poverty and inequality.” And “they changed” the coverage, the Saudi reportedly said.

And how about this Reuters story in 2006 about a meeting in Saudi Arabia:

"Muslim investors must invest in the large media institutions of the world, which generally make considerable profits, so that they have the ability to affect their policies via their administrative boards," OIC chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told the gathering in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

"This would benefit in terms of correcting the image of Islam worldwide," he said, calling on Muslim countries to set up more channels in widely-spoken foreign languages.

Muslim stakes in Western media are minimal. Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns 5.46 percent of media conglomerate News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch-run group behind the Fox News Channel. The U.S. channel is generally seen as right-wing and no friend of Arab or Muslim interests.

Reuters apparently forgot about the Saudis flexing their muscle with Fox News the previous year.

Of course, Freeman is not the first individual to receive money from the Saudis. Let's not forget about Jimmy Carter. In 2002, Newsmax had the following story:

Carter’s Arab Funding May Color Israel Stance

NewsMax has reviewed annual reports that indicate millions of charitable dollars have flowed into the center from His Majesty Sultan Qaboss bin Said Al Said of Oman, Jordan, from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and from the Government of the United Arab Emirates.

Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been donated to the center by the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development. H.R.H. Prince Moulay Hicham Ben Abdallah of Morocco has also contributed tens of thousands of dollars.

There are no corresponding contributions apparent from Israeli sources, however.

And Alan Dershowitz has more:

Carter has also accepted half a million dollars and an award from Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, saying in 2001: "This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan." This is the same Zayed, the long-time ruler of the United Arab Emirates, whose $2.5 million gift to the Harvard Divinity School was returned in 2004 due to Zayed's rampant Jew-hatred. Zayed's personal foundation, the Zayed Center, claims that it was Zionists, rather than Nazis, who “were the people who killed the Jews in Europe” during the Holocaust. It has held lectures on the blood libel and conspiracy theories about Jews and America perpetrating Sept. 11.

Another journalist, Rachel Ehrenfeld, in a thorough and devastating article on "Carter’s Arab Financiers," meticulously catalogues Carter’s ties to Arab moneymen, from a Saudi bailout of his peanut farm in 1976, to funding for Carter’s presidential library, to continued support for all manner of Carter’s post-presidential activities. For instance, it was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), founded in Pakistan and fronted by a Saudi billionaire, Gaith Pharaon, that helped Carter start up his beloved Carter Center.

So when Freeman talks about irony, he should at the same time be aware that in accepting Saudi money he is walking a well-tread path of accepting money from people who have acknowledged what they are up to.

In addressing concerns about his accepting money from foreign governments or lobbying on their behalf, Freeman takes that position that he will not answer his critics because they are not really interested in the answers anyway:

Those who have sought to impugn my character are uninterested in any rebuttal that I or anyone else might make.

Still, for the record: I have never sought to be paid or accepted payment from any foreign government, including Saudi Arabia or China, for any service, nor have I ever spoken on behalf of a foreign government, its interests, or its policies. I have never lobbied any branch of our government for any cause, foreign or domestic.

I have no idea if Freeman personally received any of the money that made its way from foreign governments to groups that he was associated with, but as far as his claim to have never spoken on behalf of a foreign government, that claim is contradicted by former Secretary of State James Baker in his book The Politics of Diplomacy. Mark Hemingway at The Corner notes that in 2 places in his book Baker writes that Freeman asked him to go easy on Saudi Arabia in regard to financing the Gulf War:

The first instance appears in a passage in which Baker is recounting his visit to Saudi Arabia in September 1990, to build up support for the coalition to expel Saddam from Kuwait:

From the start, they [the Saudis] were always advocates fro the massive use of force. We knew that if it came to war, permission to launch from Saudi bases would be automatic. And we suspected that the King was also willing to bear any burden asked by his American benefactors. Even so, I was urged by our ambassador, Chas Freeman, to go easy on the numbers. "They're strapped for money," he told me before the meeting. "Don't press for too much right now." I disagreed. (p. 289)

Baker asked for a lot and got what he asked for from the Saudis. The next index entry for Freeman appears in connection with discussions in early January 1991, after the decision to attack Saddam's forces had been made:

Our ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman, suggested to me that perhaps we shouldn't ask quite so much of the Saudis. As a result of their previous commitments to Desert Shield, he said, they had a liquidity shortage that Saud hadn't wanted to admit to me. It seemed to me to be a classic case of clientitis from one of our best diplomats. "I'm going in front of the Congress and I'm asking them to go ahead and fund this effort," I said, "and I've got to explain that American blood will be spilled. If you think we're not going to ask the Saudis to pay for this, you've got another thing coming." It was the last I ever heard from him about going easy on the Saudis in terms of the costs of the operation. (p. 373).

Freeman was wrong about the surge in Iraq, defended what the Chinese govenment did at the Tianemen Square Massacre and called Benjamin Netanyahu a right wing yahoo.

Let Freeman and his supporters say what they will: the US has dodged a bullet.

Also, check out Jonathan Tobin's post: Learning From Freeman's Fall.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad

More at Memeorandum

Technorati Tag: Chas Freeman.

Purim At HonestReporting

Check out HonestReportings blog, Media Backspin for its Purim Exclusives:

• HonestReporting's Swimsuit Communique
• UK Media U-Turn on Avigdor Lieberman
• Haman to Give 'Alternative' Purim Speech
• Daily Bugle Photographer Addresses Critics

Technorati Tag: Purim.

Proponents Of Removing Israel's Settlements Have Not Been Paying Attention

Powerline's Paul Mirengoff writes:

Now that Israel's military action in Gaza is finished (for the time being), we're hearing renewed complaints about Israeli settlements in the West Bank. There's an irony here: Israel forcibly removed its settlers from Gaza when it withdrew from that territory, only to be subject to rocket attacks from Gaza once the Israelis were gone.

...The "blame the settlements" theme doesn't necessarily spring from anti-Israel sentiment. It may stem, instead, from the view that the West can move Israel on this issue, or at least that the prospects here are better than the prospects of causing Hamas and other militants to change their behavior. In other words, diplomats looking for "momentum" may well view the settlements as low-hanging fruit, at least as compared to other issues..

The irony here will be lost on the politicians and the others who can see peace in the Middle East as tied inexorably to Israel's continued concessions.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Settlements.