Tuesday, March 19th, 2024
Sunday, March 17th, 2024
From what looks like his regular chair in his cluttered leafy office, Dan Schueftan — or should we call him Dr Dugri — provides a primer on Israel (dugri meaning something like English’s plainspokenness or brass tacks).
Reading up on Schueftan however, despite all the sagacity he seems the intellectual architect of much of the present misery, having advocating for unilateral withdrawals.
In retrospect one might be able to guess that this would be the general thrust of his advice, given his mercurial impatient demeanor; and that he gets the listener’s acquiescence — perhaps in Ariel Sharon’s case against their better judgment — with his many “ok?”s.
Saturday, March 16th, 2024
What a splendid piece by Charles Moore in The Telegraph on Israel.
Britain (with other powers) claims that Israel has been, in international law, the “occupying power” in Gaza even after it left the place in 2005. This is a strange idea, since the definition of occupation is “effective control”, which Israel even now does not have over the whole of Gaza.
If their subscription department was a bit less shady I’d totally resubscribe.
The official rejoinder to Chuck Schumer’s “Lost His Way” speech, given within days of Nathan Glazer’s statement at the Oscars:
We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.
comes not from the Israeli government but from the Likud Party, thereby demonstrating the very content of its statement: that Israel is indeed “an independent and proud democracy” complete with political parties proud of their heritage.
Benny Gantz made a commendable statement condemning the speech to which Arutz Sheva commendably dedicated a story. While the Likud’s statement is exquisitely-crafted English, Gantz’s is more Israeli — less catty, more direct: first unabashed fulsome praise, then: “but he made a mistake.” Blunt yet surgical. Lapid meanwhile chose to harness the speech to rail on Netanyahu.
We make such a fuss of all these bloviations even as the situation rages. I like the take by Danny Cohen, a producer on Glazer’s movie, who, as reported by The Hill, said on the Unholy podcast:
My support for Israel is unwavering. Listen, it’s his film. He can stand up there and choose his own words.”
Commentary reports for duty too.
Thursday, March 14th, 2024
Wednesday, March 13th, 2024
Anti-Israel Jews are not a political but a clinical sub-category.
Edward Luttwak
Howard Jacobson, I didn’t know you had it in you. So there is such a thing as a well-known public intellectual British Jew with at least half a bollock.
Wednesday, March 6th, 2024
Thank you, past and likely future Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, in particular for this Twitter post in memoriam for Dennis Yekimov, killed in action in Gaza. That big wide intelligent friendly face, and in the biographical notes:
He would hike dozens of kilometers in streams and in the hills of Jerusalem and the whole country.
Younger, betters versions of myself, that is how I see these heroic guys, who have so much to lose and are willing to lose it, and are doing so in the hundreds.
Monday, February 26th, 2024
My impression is that R2-D2 and C-3PO were the Laurel and Hardy, the comedy relief, with one being the superior intellect and dominant personality, pushing around a more innocent friend.
Mark Hamill
Monday, February 19th, 2024
Forget a 2-state solution: emulate the Emirates! In English, Mordechai Kedar explains a political horizon to Arutz Sheva. Update: In the wake of Bibi’s outline for post-war Gaza announced just a few days later, Kedar seems prescient, so much so that either he has the Cabinet’s ear or was tasked to float the notion.
As Rumsfeld say, if you can’t fix problem, make it bigger. So what we’re going for is not a 2-state nor even a 3-state but an 8+ statelets solution! I wonder if the Biden Administration will grudgingly go along with this. You know what, I’m guessing they will. Viva la chamulot!
Wednesday, February 14th, 2024
Gadi Taub at his best, in Tablet, saying “Sorry, but There Is No Two-State Solution”.
As a sidenote, it’s getting harder to differentiate among the various competent public intellectuals in terms of style these days; this could have been written by any number of people — Seth Mandel for one, who seems to be writing everything in Commentary these days.
Tuesday, February 13th, 2024
Jeremiah Rozman:
I want a homeland, not a 22,000 sq. km. Yad Vashem … Victory will ensure both Israel’s security and its image.
Monday, February 12th, 2024
Jason Fried again, with an insight into Apple’s new Vision Pro that one important value proposition is recording:
What I think is super interesting about the Apple Vision Pro is the potential to be able to literally see through someone else’s eyes. Not just see their field of vision — you can get at that with head or eyeglass mounted cameras — but to actually see where they’re looking. To know what they’re focused on. To lock in with them. To see how they see. To watch them look from their point of view. Standing in someone’s shoes is one thing, but even if you could do that, you’d still be looking through your own eyes. But to literally see as they’d see from someone else’s point-of-view perspective feels groundbreaking. If I was making an app for this, I’d call it “See With”.
For the past few months I’ve retreated from working on a software product to, well, for a month after October 7th I didn’t seem to get much work done, then I was working on software systems for clients. Now dipping my toe back into RSSDeck, the biggest edifice I’ve ever created, I’m inspired by this short piece by Jason Fried, “To Make”:
I’ve consulted. I’ve done client work. I’ve advised. I’ve served on boards. I’ve invested. I’ve written books. I’ve spoken on the circuit. I’ve blogged for years. I have to say, I’ve found no greater professional joy than working with a tight group of people to ship and support our own products.
The New York Post has published a post by Mordechai Nisan advocating that Gazans leave. After October 7th this position — “transfer” in Israeli parlance — went from the extremist fringe to being I think the unspoken mainstream preference among Israelis.
The world power with the strongest ideological opposition to transfer — apart from the Arabs still wanting to keep it as a bludgeon against Israel — is probably the USA, as it seems to go against the American grain of self-determination for peoples. But if the West Bankers manage to make a go of it — highly unlikely but still — then former Gazans could always migrate there again eventually if the call to return remains strong.
Saturday, February 10th, 2024
Thursday, February 8th, 2024
It’s so weird reading The Telegraph’s news feed of the day’s events because it reads like Iranian Press TV, full of Israel’s dastardly deeds. I guess it’s like The Wall Street Journal where there’s a real schism between the leanings of the so-called news division vs the editorial section.
Wednesday, February 7th, 2024
I must admit I knew almost none of this history of Gaza as narrated by Jean-Pierre Filiu in Foreign Affairs. After long staying clear I think I’ll look more closely at this magazine.
Gaza’s sudden new prominence should hardly come as a surprise. Although little of it is remembered today, the territory’s 4,000-year history makes clear that the last 16 years were an anomaly; the Gaza Strip has almost always played a pivotal part in the region’s political dynamics, as well as its age-old struggles over religion and military power.
As the recounting reaches the present day, no mention is made of the fundamental wound kept open: that Palestinian refugee status is uniquely passed down the generations.
It’s most discomfiting, seeing prominent Israelis self-lacerate in foreign journals. Here Aluf Benn of Haaretz, whom I previously admired before he took up its editorship and thereby become responsible for its seditious bile, writes in Foreign Affairs a piece entitled “Israel’s Self-Destruction”.
He opens with Moshe Dayan’s now much-recalled eulogy for Roi Rotberg of Nachal Oz. Very quickly however two items give me pause. First, Benn refers to “Netanyahu’s effort to undermine [Israel’s] democratic institutions and turn it into a theocratic, nationalist autocracy” — this is obviously a very partisan view of the judicial reform bill. Second, Benn writes: “If they finally heed Dayan’s warning, the country could come together and chart a path to peace and dignified coexistence with the Palestinians.”
Tellingly, Benn does not link to the actual text of Dayan’s short speech, which is much more about advocating for a Jabotinsky-like iron wall than State Department-esque “risks for peace”. Dayan in fact refers to foreign mandarins quite colorfully as “the ambassadors of malevolent hypocrisy who call upon us to lay down our arms” and bleakly concludes that Roi himself was blinded by the notion that peaceful coexistence — of the sort Benn is implicitly pushing for — is possible.
Tuesday, February 6th, 2024
Saturday, January 20th, 2024
At the same time that the US says it’s “devastated” at the killing of a young Palestinian with American citizenship, silence regarding the injuries to Americans in the Ra’anana attack.
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024
“Expert, unbiased global coverage,” the Financial Times claims. But this so-called Long Read on Gaza, “What will be left of Gaza when the war ends?” is undersourced, underdeveloped and quite biased indeed — it could have been published in any freebie and seems inappropriate for a leading £59/month newspaper. “I heard [the Israelis] shot the horses,” one Gazan is quoted. But did the Israelis in fact do so? Nobody bothers to check. Yet the statement remains, dangling potently at the end of a paragrah. The term “Hamas” appears very infrequently, and when it does, is in bland terms, eg, “Hamas won Palestinian elections and in 2007 ousted Fatah”. The term “terror” appears only once, quoting Tzachi Hanegbi’s op-ed in a Saudi newspaper.
Thursday, December 28th, 2023
Tuesday, December 26th, 2023
Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
Daniel Gordis
♦♦♦♦
In appreciation for erudite talkshow host Hugh Hewitt’s unflagging support for Israel in its war against Hamas, I took his advice to read Daniel Gordis’s concise history of Israel. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is milquetoast or lackluster — it is totally competent — but it is what, to be fair to Hewitt, he says it is: a handy primer for those not too familiar with Israel’s history. There is more emphasis on Israel’s national poets than I have seen otherwise — Bialik, Alterman — and less on the details of Israel’s wars.
Sunday, December 24th, 2023
Strong words, maybe the strongest I’ve seen, from Lee Smith in Tablet, as might be surmised by the title, “The Global Empire of Palestine”:
To the literal-minded, and others who do not yet recognize the character of the pathologies ushered in with the age of the Empire of Palestine, it may seem bewildering, for instance, to see LGBTQ+ organizations demonstrating on behalf of a Hamas triumph. But Queers for Palestine don’t need to be told how Hamas actually deals with queers in Gaza and the West Bank. That’s irrelevant. In the Empire of Palestine all difference is transcended. It’s not a place, it’s a spiritual principle guided by the inversion of reality and governed by the equation 2+2=5.
Monday, December 18th, 2023
In what may be Harvey Mansfield’s final book, Machiavelli’s Effectual Truth: Creating the Modern World is reviewed in City Journal.
Now it’s been a while since I mildly wrestled full-time with such issues, but through the mists and wisps of memory I recall that although the reviewer treats the title as hyperbolic and provocative, I thought it was pretty much conventional wisdom among any who care.
In reaction to and also growing out of the fevered dream palaces of the Christian Church, the cornerstone of modernity is epistemological humility. Alongside Descarte’s application of it in science with his Discourse on the Method is Machievelli’s application in politics. This pragmatism brought about the world-historic boon that is political tolerance; 150 years after Machiavelli’s The Prince came Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration.
Sunday, December 17th, 2023
Andrew Pressin, Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College, asks the one simple question in order to articulate the bleedin’ obvious.
“Is it acceptable to slit babies’ throats, rape little girls, chop off of the hands and feet of teenagers, gouge out eyes, murder children in front of their parents, murder parents in front of their children then kidnap the children, bind entire families together then burn them alive, and livestream all the above—and worse—on a mass scale—in the pursuit of some political aim?”
Saturday, December 2nd, 2023
Here is a fascinating thing: Salem AlKetbi, A UAE columnist in a right-of-center Israeli paper. Reading his “What’s next for Gaza?”, I like his tone, calling it the “Palestinian file” like something one pulls out a cabinet somewhere. I like how he immediately attests to the Iranian angle — clearly what Emiratis care about — specifically warning that if a vacuum opens up in Gaza (as others have recommended) then Iran will obviously work to fill it.
Iran may even start helping Hamas more directly as it approaches destruction, AlKetbi argues, if only because once Israel vanquishes it, she’s free to turn to Iran’s crown jewel Hizballah. That is: while Hamas is around, Hizballah is safe.
AlKetbi is also worried that Iran will start attacking Israel given the perception of tepid US support for Israel. Actually I’d just been musing on the very opposite: Israel is tied down with Hamas, and America wants it that way so as not to expand the war, but the necessities of events could mean that the USA could inadvertently end up fighting Iran where it otherwise could have had Israel do this had it not leaned on Israel to leave Hizballah alone.
Sunday, November 26th, 2023
There’s so much strong stuff being published in Tablet but I’ll just link to this long and searing piece by Andrew Fox entitled “A Dark Thanksgiving” about his teenage son’s experience at school in Durham in northern Virginia, where Muslims outnumber Jews by a ratio of at least 50 to 1.
I was particularly moved by his mention of his other two children:
My oldest son, who had started a chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America at the same high school, refused to hear a word I had to say about Israel, abruptly leaving the dinner table whenever the subject arose. My middle son was hardly any more receptive, pinging me with the moral equivalencies he’d picked up from Instagram posts and then ignoring the long responses I sent in return. Now my youngest son had accused me of betraying him and using him.
This is rough.
Saturday, November 25th, 2023
Watching “The Gaza War on US Campuses’, an episode of Glenn Loury and John McWhorter’s The Glenn Show, there are two guests today: Daniel Bessner and Tyler Austin Harper. And all I can say is: hoo boy that Daniel Bessner is a piece of work.
You have to be aware that one side is a nuclear-armed power with one of the most advanced militaries in the world, the other side is not. There’s not an excuse for any of the brutalities that Hamas committed and particularly all of us in this liberal bourgeoisie context within which we operate, you know, we’re anti-violence in every particular situation, this is why you have this “Do you condemn Hamas” argument.
It goes on. His poor mama; if this Jewish American is the future, God help us all. For a start, does he not see that his dismissiveness towards opposition to violence as being a merely liberal bourgeoisie fancy must, if he is being intellectually honest, apply at least as much to the violence visited by Israel upon Gaza, which he condemns, as it does to the violence visited by Hamas upon Israel, which he all but excuses?
I am disappointed in Gadi Taub and Michael Doran’s latest Israel Update conversation, “Understanding the Hostage Exchange Deal” on the video platform Rumble. Gadi comes to agree with Mike that the Kaplan compaigners are not actually going to affect the continued prosecution of the war despite the pause. This acknowledgement effectively nullifies his reason for not supporting the hostage deal. And yet instead of taking Mike’s point on board or making some other argument Gadi simply concludes the discussion by reiterating his opposition to the hostage deal.
The deal is too important an issue to treat so cavalierly; doing so at the very least affects Gadi’s intellectual credibility. At the risk of belaboring the point, he seems here to be suffering from a strong case of KDS — Kaplan Derangement Syndrome, wherein anything a Kaplanist wishes for must inherently be suspect. There are it seems to me vital reasons for supporting this hostage deal that are far from wanting to undermine Netanyahu, and unfortunately this episode touches on none of them.
For example, I believe Gadi’s position about setting a bad precedent for future conflicts is wrong; after all, it’s not as if the idea of taking hostages had never occurred to anyone before this. And if anything this deal has reduced rather than raised the price Israel pays for the return of hostages given the crazed lopsidedness of previous deals. As well as humanitarian there are military and societal morale reasons to support the deal, and long-term national mythic ones.
Mike shrinks from opposing Gadi’s poor position here by stating that being neither Israeli nor Jewish he lacks the bona fides to opine on such heavy issues. But I for one as an Israeli — and Gadi should have said this emphatically otherwise what’s the point of this show: Of course we want you to opine! Indeed if it were up to me I’d give the wonderful Mike Doran the keys to cities from Metulla to Eilat!
Monday, November 13th, 2023
Among other points, in his piece “Initial Lessons From the October 2023 War” at The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, Yaacov Amridor admonishes:
It is wrong to argue – as some significant critics have done – that too much money has been spent on technology at the expense of training and high levels of combat readiness. As it turns out, ground operations are demonstrating that technology is vital for the IDF’s success in general and for the specific challenges of urban warfare in particular.
Saturday, November 11th, 2023
In a saner world, what Elie Kirshenbaum writes at Mida would be the mainstream viewpoint:
The Greek government had basic self-respect and understanding of where to draw the line with the international community and with its neighbors. Unfortunately, Israel did not wake up in time to the existential threat posed by the Palestinian national movement, but it is better that to wake up late than to continue to remain asleep on this issue.
Such a double-hitter in today’s Wall Street Journal editorial page, both pieces by Muslims. Kudos.
From “The Theology of Hamas” by Ed Husain:
Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar has said that Palestine is only a “toothbrush in our pocket.” Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood aspire to create a regionwide Shariah state, a more anti-Western confrontational caliphate in line with Iran’s political model than that of moderate Arab nations in the neighborhood. That intention has led several Arab nations—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt—to ban both groups from organizing within their borders. In 1979 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed a peace agreement with Israel. Two years later Islamists assassinated him.
From “The Scenes of Genocide I Saw in Israeli Morgues” by Qanta A. Ahmed:
I’ve been to northwestern Pakistan and met child Taliban operatives groomed for suicide missions. I still attend to 9/11 first-responders in New York. I’ve been to post-ISIS Iraq to meet with Kurdish and Yazidi survivors of genocide. I’ve spoken with former ISIS child soldiers and the Peshmerga veterans of that brutal and bloody three-year war. The Oct. 7 genocide was different, more barbaric than anything before it.
Thursday, November 9th, 2023
Monday, November 6th, 2023
What a masterful, lengthy piece by Shany Mor in Mosaic, “Ecstasy and Amnesia in the Gaza Strip”. His first theme is that Palestinians have demonstrated a clear pattern of murderous exultation leading up to a defeat in which they cast themselves as the terrible victims. His second theme is that these spasms of aggression have consistently been parts of larger global intellectual currents. And thirdly that the subsequent defeats have unnaturally been rewarded by outside larger powers, which eggs them on to the next catastrophe.
Again and again, the Palestinians have served as the tip of someone else’s spear. But the tips of spears tend to break when thrown, and when they do, it’s evidently easier to blame the wall they hit than the person who threw them.
Kobi Michael and Gabi Siboni write:
The Gaza war is also a historic opportunity to dismantle UNRWA, which is an active partner in perpetuating the conflict by fostering the ethos of armed resistance, the demand for the return of refugees, and incitement against Israel.
And the next step:
The sole course of action vis-à-vis Hezbollah must be its complete and utter destruction.
Sunday, November 5th, 2023
Democracy around the world is America’s spiritual grand strategy.
Robert D. Kaplan
Saturday, November 4th, 2023
Wow I find this moving: in the plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, people paint portraits of the kidnapped.
Each artist in that Tel Aviv square was directing their talent toward a singular cause: the creation of a portrait of one of the hostages as part of a project called This Is Us, which seeks to call attention to the plight of the missing and help bring them home safely.
On Tel Aviv University’s YouTube Channel, host Ido Aharoni interviews former Director of TAU’s program in Ottoman and Turkish Studies at the Department of Middle East and African History Ehud Toledano on the current situation.
Toledano characterizes himself a believer in credible ultimatums. Rather than finishing off the Hamas leadership, Israel should surround them and offer them death or expulsion (perhaps to Turkey) akin to the PLO model from Beirut to Tunisia, with exile also contingent on hostage release.
He’s against Israel occupying Gaza in the aftermath, instead recommending a laissez faire approach of instant withdrawal resulting either in the West rushing in or else letting locals organize, with Israel conducting offshore balancing militarily (ie bombing) to suppress any jihadists emerging victorious.
Then with credibility at a high, he suggests Israel present Hizballah with an ultimatum: dismantle the missiles and retreat north of the Litani River or face war. Hizballah would not go for it, he points out, as Hizballah’s very existence is to provide a deterrent against an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear program. So Hizballah would not comply and Israel would face two devastating days of missile attacks and it would be over.
It’s all perhaps slightly fanciful — starting wars is not Bibi’s style — but worthy strategic thinking in the mix (plus he may not be in the saddle by then).
Friday, November 3rd, 2023
I hesitate to even bother linking to Matthew Continetti’s Washington Free Beacon column “Let Israel Win” because it’s such a statement of the bleedin’ obvious, as even Continetti himself writes:
Hamas could end all this tomorrow if it released the hostages, put down its arms, and surrendered. Hamas, not Israel, is the aggressor. Hamas, not Israel, is the “occupier” of the Gaza Strip. Hamas, not Israel, rejects international law. Hamas, not Israel, steals food, fuel, and water from civilians. And the fact that these words need to be written at all is evidence that the culture-producing institutions of the West—the media, the universities, cultural and political celebrities—are irreparably broken.
Thursday, November 2nd, 2023
Should Israel’s UN delegates be wearing those yellow Never Again stars? Along with Yad Vashem, The Jerusalem Post editorializes not to wear it though most of the comments disagree and ultimately so do I; subtlety is not a virtue in today’s overcrowded information landscape. One perspective on this: in David Goldman’s formulation of Christians abhorring power and Muslims humiliation, the yellow star might positively influence the former but be merely a counterproductive Kick Me sign to the latter.
Einat Wilf addresses Palestinian refugeeism. Finally taking UNRWA with the deadly seriousness it deserves should be the next top priority of a resourceful country that needs to stay mobilized for the foreseeable future.
One group only of refugees from that time and those wars [of the 20th century] were allowed to maintain themselves as endless refugees in anticipation of one day winning a war they had lost.
Wednesday, November 1st, 2023
Love it! Finally someone uses this rhetoric on someone else and it’s a doozy! As reported by The Times of Israel, this is Foreign Minister Eli Cohen to the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric:
The Red Cross has no right to exist if it does not succeed in visiting the hostages being held captive by the Hamas terror group.
Similarly, Israeli universities have written to universities in the USA and Europe to demand a “sea change in clarity and truth in academia on the matter of Israel’s war against Hamas”.