Mideast Media Sampler 04/08/2011

From an email from DG:

1) Good for OIC or for us?

Judge Goldstone's op-ed in last week's Washington Post could be viewed as a defeat for the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). It was the OIC - a group that asserts that Sudan's Omar Bashir is not a war criminal - that initiated the Goldstone commission.

So I was happy to see that the group apparently suffered another loss in its efforts to subvert international law to its interests last week.

A long-term campaign by the U.N.’s large Muslim bloc to impose worldwide blasphemy strictures — like those in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran — was given a quiet burial last week in the Human Rights Council, the U.N.’s main human-rights body. At the session that ended in Geneva on March 25, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), sensing defeat, decided not to introduce a resolution calling for criminal penalties for the “defamation of religions” — a resolution that had passed every year for more than a decade. This is a small but essential victory for freedom.

But another article suggests that this isn't a setback as much as a change in tactics.

Indeed, rather than an admission of defeat, the OIC’s acquiescence to the new Human Rights Council resolution should be seen as a change in tactics. The concept of “defamation of religion” has no basis in international human-rights law, which protects individuals, not religions as such. However, international human-rights law does include hate-speech prohibitions that encompass religion. Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that “any advocacy of . . . religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination [or] hostility . . . shall be prohibited by law.” The recently adopted resolution includes several references to Article 20. But it also mentions “derogatory stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of persons based on their religion or belief” and “deplores any advocacy of discrimination . . . on the basis of religion or belief.” This wording is vague and unclear, and falls well below the threshold established by Article 20, opening this provision for abuse. The resolution should thus be seen as an attempt by the OIC to broaden the scope of Article 20 to include instances of so-called Islamophobia, such as the Danish Mohammed cartoons, which were condemned by the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression in 2006. 

I don't know which interpretation is correct, but what is clear is that the OIC wishes to change subject the rest of the world to its strictures.

2) Bus attacked with anti-tank weapon

The New York Times reports in Missile from Gaza hits School Bus

A 16-year-old Israeli boy was critically wounded on Thursday when an antitank missile fired out of Gaza struck a school bus in southern Israel, according to military officials, setting off a new round of hostilities along the Israel-Gaza border. This was the first time that an antitank missile had hit a civilian target in southern Israel, sharply raising the stakes for residents of the area. It also prompted one of the most intensive Israeli retaliatory bombardments of Gaza in the past two years, killing five.

Further down we read:

Violence along the Israel-Gaza border has ebbed and flowed in the past few weeks. Last month was marked by 10 days of heavy rocket and mortar fire from Gaza against southern Israel, repeated Israeli airstrikes in Gaza and fears of escalation into all-out confrontation.   

Still, neither side appeared keen to allow the violence to spiral out of control. In late March, Hamas met with the smaller Gaza groups that carried out much of the rocket fire and persuaded them to reinstate an unofficial cease-fire with Israel. The cease-fire has largely held since Israel ended its three-week offensive in Gaza in January 2009. 

But as Daled Amos has pointed out previously, this ceasefire that has "largely held" means that Israel, during that time, was attacked with over 600 rockets.

It's interesting how a narrative takes hold and then becomes shorthand for a situation in a way that is exceedingly misleading.

The Washington Post's account Gaza missile hits Israeli school bus, wounding teen; Israel hits back, killing four informs us

An antitank missile fired from the Gaza Strip hit a school bus in southern Israel on Thursday, critically wounding a teenage boy and prompting Israeli helicopter and artillery strikes that killed four Palestinians and wounded dozens more, military and medical officials said. The bus driver was lightly wounded in the attack and a 16-year-old passenger, the last on the bus, was wounded in the head. A spokeswoman at Soroka Hospital in the southern city of Beersheba said the teenager was in critical condition late Thursday. 

A military spokesman said initial findings indicated that the bus had been struck by an advanced Russian-made Kornet antitank missile that had been fired from about two miles away. Militants in Gaza have fired antitank rockets at Israeli tanks and armored vehicles, but Thursday’s attack was the first in memory in which such a missile struck a civilian vehicle. 

Note the qualification of a "civilian vehicle."

Again Daled Amos points out that schools have often been the target of rocket attacks from Gaza.

This is a point that Meryl Yourish observed a couple of years ago.

The Post's report continues:

The Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the militant group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, asserted responsibility for the attack, calling it retaliation for an Israeli airstrike that killed three senior Hamas operatives last Friday. Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said the attack was an act of “self-defense to protect Palestinian civilians and citizens.” 

Nice touch that. Targeting a school bus is pre-emptive self defense.

Nonetheless such an admission won't bring condemnation because as Ray Cook pointed out:

Yet Hamas never really figured in the aftermath of the Report, all focus was on Israel. Why? Because “it goes without saying” that Hamas are criminals, according to Goldstone. We all know they are terrorists so there’s not much point going after them. So put Israel under the microscope and see what dirt you can dig up.

And as Elder of Ziyon puts it:

Hamas brags that it targets civilians. Which means, according to the bizarre logic of "human rights groups," there is no need to write reports and issue lots of press releases condemning them. 

3) Merkel wants peace

The New York Times reports Germany pushes Israel on peace

As Germany moves closer to other European countries in adopting an increasingly tough stance toward Israel’s reluctance to resume peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that it was more urgent than ever that the talks be restarted.  

With the Middle East highly volatile as fighting and protests continue in a number of countries, Mrs. Merkel warned the visiting Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, against any further delay in returning to the negotiating table. 

I am reminded of a joke.

Two Jews were sentenced to the death by the Czar's regime. They were taken out to be shot, tied and blindfolded. They hear the commands, "ready" and "aim." Then one of the two men shouts out "Down with the Czar."

The other one responds, "Shaaa! Do you want to get us into trouble?"

With the Middle East "highly volatile" why does Netanyahu need to be warned to make peace? Half the population is under control of Hamas which is attacking Israel rather regularly and will continue to do so negotiations or not. A candidate to lead Egypt is increasingly belligerent towards Israel. (Though a recent poll show that Egyptians do favor keeping the treaty.) How exactly do the lack of negotiations make that situation worse? And wasn't it the Palestinians who walked out of negotiations? 

Not surprisingly, Prime Minister Netanyahu apparently sees things differently.

The democratic uprisings that have swept through the Middle East will make it harder for Israel to reach a peace deal with Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week in an interview. “Any potential deal with the Palestinians has to account for the tremendous instability in the region,” he said. Netanyahu has long insisted on the need for strong security guarantees, such as maintaining an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley.    

From the start of the Egyptian revolution in January, Netanyahu has expressed skepticism that the uprising would transform Egypt into a democracy. He has worried that Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel could be jeopardized. Rather than inking a peace deal with Palestinians, “Let’s cement the peace that we already have with Egypt and Jordan,” a senior Israeli official said. “I don’t think there will be an American attempt to go around the negotiators,” he said. “They may present their ideas, but they will stress that an agreement must be negotiated between the parties.” 

4) Focused on the important stuff

John Hannah opines in the National Review:

An instinct for reassuring hardened enemies, disregarding longtime friends, and distrusting the exercise of American power. These were, unfortunately, the dominant notes that a troubled region heard emanating from Obama’s uncertain trumpet for much of the last two years. “Where is U.S. leadership?” What is U.S. policy?” Who’s in charge?” The most fundamental questions about American purpose, which anxious Middle Eastern leaders struggled in vain to divine answers to from visiting U.S. friends. The unhappy results? A pervasive — and corrosive — sense of waning American power. Adversaries emboldened to continue pressing every challenge. Disheartened friends resorting both at home and abroad to short-sighted measures of self-help and self-preservation. And a vital region of the world increasingly brought near the boiling point, poised between revolution, chaos, and civil war; teetering between the malignant ambitions of an aspiring Persian hegemon and the withering resolve of a traditional patron grown uncertain in the rightness of its cause and weary of shouldering the burdens of leadership.

Of course, this is not a criticism that appears to have made much of an impression on the administration.

President Shimon Peres said Tuesday Israel was willing to change things in the Golan Heights, but will not agree to Iranian presence there. 

The president spoke after the US State Department expressed "deep concern" over the approved plans for construction of 942 new homes in the neighborhood of Gilo, which lies beyond the 1967 borders. The condemnation was issued just hours after Peres's meeting with US President Barack Obama.

No doubt the administration's "deep concern" will stop Hamas rocket fire, get Islamists to be less aggressive and solve much of the instability in the Middle East.

Technorati Tag: Middle East.