RSS
Home
October 30 quotes of the week
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Follow the links to read the whole thing.
Representatives of 16 Arab states convened in Damascus last week for a conference aimed at strengthening the decades-old Arab economic and trade boycott of Israel.
The annual event brought together regional Arab League boycott liaison officers from participating Arab countries, as well as representatives of the Palestinians and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Michael Freund, “Arab leaders meet to reinvigorate Israel boycott,” Jerusalem Post, October 25, 2009
I made my way over to the J Street conference today to see for myself just how "pro-peace, pro-Israel" the organization really is, and there can be no doubt, J Street is pro-peace. But while the leadership of J Street may be pro-Israel, the conference they've organized was at times openly anti-Zionist and anti-Israel. . . .
Ben-Ami is a professional Democratic operative who is careful to calibrate his message to his audience. When I asked him at a press conference this morning how J Street could be for a mark-up of sanctions legislation but against passage of that legislation, he explained that J Street is "not for passing sanctions at this moment in a way that would undercut the diplomatic process." He later added that "the possibility of military actions is probably the most counterproductive thing that could happen." So the passage of sanctions legislation and the possibility of military action -- the two sticks the Obama administration might use to further the diplomatic process -- are both off the table for J Street. But accuse J Street of opposing sanctions or the use of force and they'll say you're misrepresenting their position. . . .
J Street is trying to find the space between its hard left, anti-Zionist base and the larger community of liberal, pro-Israel Jews. It's not clear they'll succeed.
Michael Goldfarb, “The Space Between Pro-Israel and Anti-Israel,” Weekly Standard, October 26, 2009
J Street's university arm has dropped the "pro-Israel” part of the left-wing US lobby’s "pro-Israel, pro-peace” slogan to avoid alienating students. . . .
“We don’t want to isolate people because they don’t feel quite so comfortable with 'pro-Israel,’ so we say 'pro-peace,’” said American University junior Lauren Barr of the "J Street U” slogan, "but behind that is 'pro-Israel.’”
Barr, secretary of the J Street U student board that decided the slogan’s terminology, explained that on campus, "people feel alienated when the conversation revolves around a connection to Israel only, because people feel connected to Palestine, people feel connected to social justice, people feel connected to the Middle East.”
Hilary Leila Krieger, “J Street's campus branch drops pro-Israel slogan,” Jerusalem Post, October 27, 2009
Yesterday I appeared on a panel at J Street, where I debated Matthew Yglesias on what it means to be pro-Israel, as well as J Street’s role in this debate. My main argument was that the Jewish community needs a group like J Street to keep the most extreme elements from defining "pro-Israel” too restrictively, to provide a counterweight against the natural inclination of any ethnic community toward tribalism, and to provide political space for the territorial compromises needed to create a two-state solution.
The problem, though, was that J Street had loosened the definition of "pro-Israel” to the point where it had virtually no meaning. As a result, the group has attracted the support of a lot of people who do not think of themselves as pro-Israel at all, some of whom oppose Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish state. My bottom line was that J Street could be a group that represents a significant chunk of the American Jewish population, or it could be a group that represented people with Walt/Mearhseimer-esque views on Israel, but it couldn’t be both and would have to choose.
Jonathan Chait, “J Street’s Choice,” The New Republic, October 28, 2009
Today Egypt will play host to the 56th Congress of Liberal International (LI), which bills itself as the world federation of liberal and progressive democratic parties. . . .
In Cairo, the visiting delegates will be hosted by the Al-Gabha, or Democratic Front Party (DFP). Western liberals (in the old-fashioned sense of that word) are always delighted to discover like-minded people in the Third World, and perhaps nowhere more so than in Arab countries. Yet, at least in Egypt, there’s a dirty little secret about these self-described liberal parties: They are, for the most part, virulently anti-Semitic. . . .
As late as the 1930s, Jewish politicians occupied ministerial posts in Egyptian governments and participated in nationalist politics.
But all that changed with the rise of totalitarian and fascist movements in Europe, which found more than their share of imitators in the Arab world. When Egypt’s monarchy was overthrown in 1952 by a military coup, anti-Semitism became an ideological pillar of the new totalitarian dispensation.
Since then, Egypt has evolved, coming to terms (of a sort) with Israel and adopting some market-based economic principles. But anti-Semitism remains the glue holding Egypt’s disparate political forces together. This is especially true of the so-called liberals, who think they can traffic on their anti-Semitism to gain favor in quarters where they would otherwise be suspect.
Amir Bargisi and Samuel Tadros, “Why Are Egypt’s ‘Liberals” Anti-Semitic?” Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2009
UNIFIL - the UN's 13,000-strong peacekeeper force in southern Lebanon - is doing a good job of preventing Hizbullah from operating out in open areas, but dares not enter the hundreds of villages which dot the area, and which have become the central bases of operation for the Shi’ite terrorist group.
Yaakov Lappin, “Every village in S. Lebanon has a Hizbullah arms depot,” Jerusalem Post, October 29, 2009
The postcard from the Home Front Command that recently arrived in my mailbox looks like an ad from the Ministry of Tourism. A map of Israel is divided by color into six regions, each symbolized by an upbeat drawing: a smiling camel in the Negev desert, a skier in the Golan Heights. In fact, each region signifies the amount of time residents will have to seek shelter from an impending missile attack. If you live along the Gaza border, you have 15 seconds after the siren sounds. Jerusalemites get a full three minutes. But as the regions move farther north, the time drops again, until finally, along the Lebanese and Syrian borders, the color red designates "immediate entry into a shelter." In other words, if you're not already inside a shelter don't bother looking for one.
Yossi Halevy Klein, “The Return of Israel’s Existential Dread,” Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2009
More About:
Quotes of the week
Related Articles:
Comments
Follow the links to read the whole thing. "If you think you understand Lebanon," a friend counseled me as I prepared for my first trip to …
The International Atomic Energy Agency's Mohamed ElBaradei has finally publicly admitted the obvious: Iran is not willing to prove that its nuclear …
