Mideast Media Sampler 08/08/2011

From DG:

1) Isolated

The New York Times has an editorial Palestinians and the U.N.

If the Palestinians want full U.N. membership, they have to win the backing of the Security Council. The United States will undoubtedly veto any resolution, and that will further isolate both Israel and Washington. The Palestinians may instead ask the General Assembly to recognize them as a state or give them observer status as a state. Either would undoubtedly pass. But it would be in name only. After the initial exhilaration, Palestinians would be even more alienated, while extremists would try to exploit that disaffection.

When the Times argues that the United States and Israel would be further isolated in the wake such a vote, that isn't the fear of the writers. Isolated in this case means being principled. It's that the Times doesn't agree with the principle (in this case, giving the Palestinians an unearned diplomatic victory and defending Israel) not the isolation. (While I don't know where all the non-permanent members of the Security Council stand, France, also a permanent member, apparently be joining the United States in voting against Palestinian statehood.)

And while the Times deplores the extremists, it doesn't ask why the extremists still exist so prominently after nearly 18 years of peace.

The Times of course assigns blame all around, but this is astonishing.

Arab leaders haven’t given the Israelis any incentive to compromise. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, seemed to give up on diplomacy when Mr. Obama could not deliver a promised settlement freeze. We see no sign that he has thought even one step beyond the U.N. vote. 

President Obama did pressure Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu did implement a settlement freeze, for 10 months. It was only at the end of those 10 months that Abbas got around to start talking with Israel, and, of course, by then there was no time for any substantive negotiations. And it was Abbas who walked out of negotiations. The Times clearly believes that Israel must give incentives to the Palestinians to engage in talks for their own benefit (statehood)!

I'm not expert, but more and more, this unilateral declaration gambit is looking like less and less. For all of the hyperventilating at the Times, this is probably just one more stunt that will yield the Palestinians very little. An expert, Barry Rubin, has more specifics.

My Right Word and Israel Matzav explicate the editorial too.

In other statehood news, the Daily Mail reports the British money too is going to families of suicide bombers. (h/t Jeremy Newmark)

The Palestinian Authority, which gets £86million of British aid a year, has authorised payments of almost £5million to the families of ‘martyrs’.

Another £3million has been given to 5,500 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. The payments, using taxpayers’ cash donated from Britain and the European Union, have been described as ‘ludicrous’ by one Tory MP.

The Palestinian Authority, which oversees the West Bank, has introduced a new law which pays the families of suicide bombers out of its civil service budget.

Fatah and Hamas are apparently planning on a mutual release of prisoners by the end of Ramadan.

Izzat Rashaq, a top Hamas member, said Sunday all detainees will be released before the end of the holy month of Ramadan in about three weeks.
Chief Fatah negotiator Azzam al-Ahmed said most of the detainees on both sides had been released already, and the remainder would soon be freed.

Why weren't they released before Ramadan so they could celebrate with their families?

2) The Israeli literary scene

If I were to write a satire of a class devoted to teaching reporters how to cover the Middle East, the instructor would tell his fledgling journalists that one of the advantages of reporting from Israel, is the opportunity to exercise their skills as the many layers of society lend themselves not only to reporting but to literary interpretation. This literary instinct is apparent in many articles written from Israel, but rarely is it on display as blatantly as in Ethan Bronner's news analysis Protesters Yearn for an Israel That Does More to Help Its People for the New York Times.

More than most countries, Israel seeks a lyrical narrative about itself stemming from notions of history, divinity and collective redemption. Writers and poets have therefore long held an honored place in public dialogue, and it is noteworthy that Mr. Oz and two other writers, David Grossman and Meir Shalev, are suddenly back with high public profiles after several years of being seen as politically passé.
The writers come from the political left, which has been in steep decline over failed Middle East peace efforts, but the kinds of arguments they tend to make about Israeli society — invoking its early years and larger purposes — are once again being sought out. 

It isn't just Israel that "seeks a lyrical narrative" but writers who seek to impose it; it is after all a way of demonstrating their sophistication.

But just because writers like Amos Oz and David Grossman are famous writers doesn't mean that their political pronouncements are necessarily mainstream or accepted, except among the elite (or elitist) circles in which they travel.

Bronner admits that when he writes of the "steep decline" of the political left, but leaves it as a mystery as to why.

In 1993 Amos Oz wote:

Once peace comes, Israeli doves, more than other Israelis, must assume a clear-cut "hawkish" attitude concerning the duty of the future Palestinian regime to live by the letter and the spirit of its obligations. The plan now being negotiated, Gaza and Jericho first, is a sober and reasonable option. If the Palestinians want to hold onto Gaza and Jericho, eventually assuming power in other parts of the occupied territories, they will have to prove to us, to themselves and to the whole world, that they have abandoned violence and terror, that they are capable of suppressing their fanatics, that they are renouncing the destructive Palestinian Charter and withdrawing from what they used to call "the right of return." 

Last year, Oz was criticized by Dina Porat for showing too much understanding of Hamas (via IMRA):  

I must confess I was surprised by your op-ed "Israeli Force, Adrift on the Sea" (published in  Haaretz Hebrew Edition June 2), and I would be grateful if you could clarify some of your central arguments. 

You note that "Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea." What kind of an idea is Hamas? The Hamas charter, which was issued in August 1988 and has never since been altered, sums up the movement's ideology quite bluntly. Among other things it says: "Leaving the circle of conflict with the Zionists is a major act of treason and it will bring curse on its perpetrators"; "Israel will remain erect until Islam eliminates it" since the land is sacred to Islam and cannot be compromised; and the banner of Jihad will be raised "to extricate the country and the people from the [Zionists'] desecration, filth and evil." 

From Hamas' perspective, the Jews are a cruel enemy, comparable to the Nazis, with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion providing sufficient proof of this. I'm sure this is not the idea you had in mind, Mr. Oz, so which idea was it? 

It wasn't the "failed peace efforts" that caused the decline of the Israeli left, but the continued identification of the left to the peace process, primarily blaming Israel for that failure and excusing the chronic violations of the Palestinians.

Maybe the current protests have given new life to Israel's left. The New Israel Fund is proud to be able to fund the protesters.

Joel Greenberg of the Washington Post reports Netanyahu scrambles to counter economic protests

Confronted by mounting economic protests that brought more than a quarter-million Israelis onto the streets Saturday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday that he had appointed a panel of experts to come up with a plan to curb the rising cost of living.
The move signaled the depth of the political challenge to Netanyahu posed by the grass-roots protest movement, which has swept up tens of thousands across Israel and shattered a sense of public complacency in the three weeks since a tent encampment sprouted in Tel Aviv to protest rising rents and housing prices.

And while the left may have co-opted the protests, the solution to the discontent is probably less, not more government. Joe Settler writes:

But the solution to these problems is not socialism, its more capitalism.

Open up the market to more imports.

In America, when you go into a kosher food store you have a tremendous choice of kosher products to choose from (and I’m including cheeses and meats – of excellent quality), both local and from Israel, yet here in Israel it’s always the same Israeli companies over and over again.

Reduce the bureaucracies involved in opening and running a company in Israel. Let’s create a State of Delaware in Israel for companies and watch the market flourish with small businesses. Make importing easier.

Lower these horribly high taxes. Who needs 16% VAT on top of our high income tax and Bituach Leumi? If people could only spend more, they’d buy more.

Why does a car cost twice as much as in the US – taxes – that is the only reason.

Free up land for construction. Reduce the bureaucracy to new construction. Let us build again in J.J.&S.

These are all basic steps, simple steps even, that would fix the problems in our economy. Giving out apartments is not the answer, freeing up the economy from these artificial road blocks is.

While there are those in the background driving these protests with the hopes of overthrowing Netanyahu, or through ideological hate, or through a philosophy of socialism and entitlement, my hope is that the majority who showed up are people like you and me. Concerned by the real rising cost of living – an artificial problem that can be nipped in the bud.

And while the media, motivated by their opposition to Netanyahu are hyping the protest, Daniel Doron, back in March, wrote that they are part of the problem:  

Since government provides so many jobs, plus near-absolute job security, and since it spends billions, our tycoons have become adept at milking it. They spend scores of millions on lawyers, accountants and lobbyists to help secure benefits of all sorts, plus laws and regulations that inhibit competition.

The strong bond between government and capital that developed here has a third partner, the media. Until recently, when Yisrael Hayom broke the mold, the media were a duopoly owned by the tycoons, and protected them (with the noble exception of The Marker and its valiant editor Guy Rolnik, who, at great cost, leads the struggle against excess media concentration).

A cooperative media assists the very powerful lobbyists that the tycoons employ. The lobbyists are extremely powerful. They secure lucrative jobs for former bureaucrats and MKs, as well as contributions for primaries and advertisements for the press. They also make sure that those who cooperate get favorable coverage, while those who do not get clobbered.

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