Hamas Boot Camp

Hamas Boot Camp Photo-essay courtesy of ForeignPolicy.com-- click on the image above.

The Zohan

Well, I finally saw Don’t Mess with the Zohan, and I have to say that it was Adam Sandler’s best movie in years.

The Zohan can be summed up as: Moshe Dayan moves to New York to become a hairdresser. It was genuinely funny (although perhaps not everyone will understand all the hummus jokes), while at the same time maintaining a philosophical point.

The Zohan, played by Adam Sandler, is an Israeli commando who kicks ass and takes names; he can even catch a bullet between his thumb and forefinger. And yet, he’s fed up with the Arab-Israeli conflict. “When does it all end?” he’s constantly asking himself.

During a meeting to plan the apprehension of a terrorist the Zohan asks, “Why take him if we are going to release him in the end anyway?”

So he fakes his own death and moves to New York to pursue his dream: live in tranquility and make a living as a hairdresser.

High jinks follow but the film raises a key issue as Israel is preparing for a prisoner swap with Hezbollah. The Israelis will supposedly be swapping Samir Kuntar, a convicted terrorist who, among other things, killed a Jewish child by crushing her skull. –I’m sure he will be given a hero’s reception in Lebanon and the Arab world- perhaps that says something.
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Best line: some WASPish business man refers to Arabs and Israelis as being “kaki” colored.

A Week without News

Israel is diplomatically engaging Syria, and now, for the first time, Lebanon. Here’s an analysis from the Council of Foreign Relations.

Israel and Hamas have come to a six month hudna/truce. This may likely have little long term consequence as both sides will probably be prepping for the next round.

Israel conducts war games exercise with Iran and her nuclear facilities in mind. I take this seriously.

Hezbollah may be preparing terrorist attacks across the globe as a response to the February assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the terrorist group’s operational chief. According to U.S. and Canadian intelligence agencies, certain Hezbollah terrorist leaders have left Lebanon (nobody knows why) and Hezbollah members were seen casing Ottawa’s Israeli Embassy and Synagogues in Toronto.

Opec and the other big energy players are convening an impromptu meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia this weekend to see what can be done about oil prices, currently over $130 a barrel.
-Don’t get your hopes up-
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This is only a a minuscule summary of what’s happening in the world. But imagine if there were no news?

Negotiation

Last week President Bush touched off a media firestorm which is sure to rear its head again this fall. He lambasted “appeasers” who “believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.''

Ironically Bush uttered these words in Israel, a country that is currently doing the very things he was condemning. The Israelis are indirectly negotiating with Syria (through Turkey) and Hamas (through Egypt). The Syrians are state-sponsors of terrorism; they give money, training and sanctuary to both Hamas and Hezbollah, and are strongly suspected of being behind the 2005 assassination of Lebanese President Rafik Hariri. Meanwhile, Hamas – who violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007- indiscriminately fire missiles onto southern Israel and are responsible for innumerable suicide bombings.

Let’s put aside for the moment issues like the correctness of criticizing from abroad (personally I don’t really care) or whether an outgoing President should inject himself into the new Presidential campaign (Bush’s comments were –at least in part- a shot at Obama after all). The President is speaking to a fundamental issue regarding our way forward in the Middle East and the fight against terrorism.

There are those who compare negotiating with terrorists and their state sponsors to Neville Chamberlain’s naïve 1938 dealings with Hitler. Hitler very clearly spelled out his intentions in Mein Kampf and letting the Germans take hold of the Sudetenland was futile. In no way did it stop the Nazis from carrying out the rest of their agenda.

Like Hitler Iranian President Ahmedinejad has made in very clear what he wants to do: acquire nukes and “wipe Israel off the face of the map.” Consequently, negotiating with Iran would be an act in futility as well.

The other side of the coin is that diplomacy and appeasment are not the same. We lose nothing by sitting down to talk with our enemies. We negotiated many times with the Soviet Union (even under Ronald Reagan) and under Bush's watch have done so with Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

I have to say that I’m more inclined to talk with no preconditions (with nation states, not terrorists nor any other non-State entities). However, deep down I harbor doubts that this indeed may be naïve, and I do think we should be very careful in what and how we negotiate. Here are two good op-eds from the New York Times on the issue: Yes, We Should ------ No, We Should Not
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For an excellent read I highly recommend The Shia Revival, by Vali Nasr. It’s a real eye opening book that summarizes the split between Sunnis and Shia and their history of relations. But the crux of the book is about the sectarian conflict(s) unleashed by the War in Iraq, why they came about, and why they are so important, not just to Iraq, but to the entire region.

Too Old to Learn a New Language?

There are many things I wish I could do. Playing soccer again is one of them, but that’s a story for another time. I wish I had more money, I wish it were a nice day out, but above all I wish I could speak Hebrew, the language of my people.

Learning a language is hard though, and very time consuming. Especially a non-Indo European language. That’s why I envy little kids for their language ability. Who cares if you can’t cross the street or tie your shoes, when you’re four years old you can learn a language in mere MONTHS. Even more, a four year old will learn to speak with a NATIVE accent, that’s almost super human. Oh, to be young again.

When I was 17 I spent a month touring around Israel. Upon returning to beautiful exotic New Jersey I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a Hebrew language text book. I was going to learn the language of my people. Yet here I am lamenting years later so there’s little need to recount the outcome of this noble endeavor.

But six months ago I decided to take a Hebrew course at the 92nd Street Y. The class was relatively small, we met once a week, and the teacher was a Sabra, a native born Israeli. Yet the class didn’t go so well. We moved though the material very quickly. I was still struggling with the alphabet when we were reviewing past tense verb conjugations. Moreover, due to personal issues I was having, I didn’t have time to study the vocabulary or do much work on my own.

Now I’m thinking of ordering a Hebrew Rosetta Stone program. This (quite pricey) computer program is supposed to be highly effective in foreign language acquisition and is what the U.S. State Department uses with its Foreign Service Officers. Click here for a free demo

The program takes its name from the Rosetta Stone, an ancient Egyptian artifact (shown right). Egyptian hieroglyphics had long baffled western archaeologists when Napoleon’s army invaded Egypt and in 1799 uncovered the stone. It was engraved with an ancient Greek text, along with translations of two different sets of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Archaeologists of that era were familiar with ancient Greek and used it to break the hieroglyphic code. This proved to be a watershed moment, archaeologists then used the deciphered text to make sense of other hieroglyphics which had been prior deemed undecipherable. The computer program is supposed to work the same way and be an invaluable tool in learning a new language. We’ll see.

Israel Turns 60

Sixty years ago this week David Ben Gurion gave a wink to all our ancestors, then he icily smiled and gave the finger to Hitler and his Nazis, Torquemada and his inquisitors, the Cossacks, Islamists, Romans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Ancients Egyptians and every other anti-Semite who has ever lived when he announced the founding of the State of Israel.

This post is meant to celebrate the Jewish state and all it’s achievements in the last sixty years. I am not attempting to refute anti-Zionists/ anti-Semites, nor condemn anybody for any policies. Nor am I attempting to call Jimmy Carter an asshole (all this, perhaps, will be done another time).

TO ISRAEL: L’CHI-AM!!
“Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.” –Moshe Dayan

“Above all, this country is our own. Nobody has to get up in the morning and worry what his neighbors think of him. Being a Jew is no problem here.” –Golda Meir

"Many say the message of the Holocaust is to never forget. I disagree. The message is, it's harder to kill us when we have AK 47's."
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There are articles everywhere you look about Israel’s 60th. Why? What makes the Jews so special? Do you know how few Jews there are in the world? There are more Basques than there are Jews. If you're now asking yourself who the Basques are do not feel discouraged, what does the average person know about the Basques? Nothing. There are only 13 million of us Jews the world over, yet our name is known where ever the wind blows. I’ll post my thoughts on this issue another (more sober) time.

Here’s a thought provoking piece from Jeff Goldberg of the Atlantic (again) on Israel’s future. It’s been much discussed in the blog world, some people love it, others hate it. Here’s an op-ed from the International Herald Tribune.

The Death of Ari Ben Canaan

The real life Ari Ben Canaan dies at home in Tel Aviv.

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*Israel's turning 60, I'll post about that, and other developments, soon.

Al Qaeda Complains

Don’t you just hate it when someone else gets credit for something you did? All that time, all that hard work you put in, only to see others bask in the glory. Anybody can understand the frustration.

Well, that’s how Ayman Zawahiri and the rest of Al Qaeda feel when people blame 9/11 on “the Jews.” -----See the BBC article here

Zawahiri, on a recently released audio recording on some Islamist website, claims it as an idea propagated by (shia) Iran to discredit the Sunnis.

Please, don’t forget to rub this in the face of any conspiracy theorist/anti-Semite you might meet in the future.

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As an addendum, the Onion beat me to it:

What I'm Reading

The history of the twentieth century was a clash of ideologies: Communism, Fascism, and Capitalism. Will the 21st century be an ideological/civilizational clash as well? Capitalism? Secularism? Zionism? Whabbism? Salafism? And God knows what else?

Over the past year I’ve been trying to read up on the Middle East. History, literature, journalism, you name it. I really want to know every detail of how the U.S. got itself into Iraq, how the Middle East came into it’s present state, and what the future holds.

I just finished The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker. Published in 2006, the book traces the rise of Islamic fundamentalism from the mid-century writings of the intellectual Sayyid Qutb to 1970s Egyptian jails to Soviet occupied Afghanistan to Al Qaeda and 9/11 with a lot of stops in between. It’s a very informative read, it illuminates a lot of issues, and brings even more questions to the fore. Wright is a great story teller and really moves you through the book, no easy task given the subject matter.

Next up is Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski on the 1970s overthrow of the last Shah of Iran. In addition I’m planning to read Once Upon a Country by Sari Nuseibeh.

I am also itching to read War and Decision, Douglass Feith’s recently published memoir of his time in the Bush administration. Feith is the former Undersecretary of Defense -he worked for Rumsfeld- and has (in)famously been called “the stupidest fucking guy on the planet” by General Tommy Franks (ret). He was one of the driving forces behind the decision to invade Iraq. It’ll be interesting to read his side of events, and his self-criticism – I’m assuming it’ll be there anyway. (But I’ll wait until the book comes out in paperback).

Another clip of Obama's pastor

Now, up until now I've been ambivalently pro-Obama. I was just as moved as the next democrat by Obama's speech addressing racism earlier this week and would vote for him over Billary (little did we know that they were co-Presidents after all these years!!), and most likely take him over McCain as well.

But what to make of this clip?


This is Reverend Wright, Barak's "spiritual adviser" of twenty-some-odd years, clearly an influential guy in the candidate's life. Up until last week he was very much a part of Obama's campaign. What else has this guy said that we don't know about yet?

It gives me pause. It makes me "scurred."

When Moshe Dayan became a Hairdresser and Indiana Jones

A lot's been going on in Hollywood lately. The writers' strike, the slow motion ten car pile up that is Britney Spears, I could go on. But the twos most important developments.... Below are two summer previews.
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Zohan was a decorated war hero. Zohan was a Mossad secret agent. Zohan wants to move to the States and become a hairdresser. (What type of name is Zohan? Doesn't really sound Hebrew to me)



What the Fuck? This new Adam Sandler movie’s coming to a theater near you this summer.
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Indiana Jones (no intro here, pretty self explanatory)

It's Classified

Nobody knows what happened for sure, all we are really certain of is that on September 6, 2007 Israeli Air Force planes entered Syrian airspace. They might or might not have bombed a building in Eastern Syria. The building might or might not have been a nuclear reactor. The nuclear reactor might or might not have been a joint project with North Korea.

Adding to the mystery, the Israelis were mum and Syria did not retaliate at all.

The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh investigates.

Annapolis

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while now, but the Annapolis Conference/
Meeting/whatever-you want-to-call-it finally happened yesterday. Both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) pledged to negotiate an agreement to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict by the end of 2008. They even shook hands.

I’m skeptical. First of all, weak leaders cannot make concessions and stay in power, only strong leaders have the political capital to do so. Neither Olmert nor Abbas are strong leaders. Abbas has lost control of Gaza to Hamas, and only has tenuous control of the West Bank. (As a side note, Abbas is universally hailed as a moderate but is also a Holocaust denier. Until recently I thought that “Moderate” and “Holocaust denier” were mutually exclusive, I guess not.)

Meanwhile, Olmert’s popularity sank after the 2006 War in Lebanon (which most see as botched), he’s under investigation in a number of corruption probes, and is so unpopular he can only envy Bush’s 28% approval rating. Neither leader can afford to make unpopular decisions and hold on to power, but most importantly, the decisions would not be seen as legitimate.

Let’s take a look at some of the issues from the Israeli side.

Israeli Settlements in the West Bank. The settlements and outposts (illegal settlements) give Israel a terrible image abroad and inflame Palestinians. Nevertheless, the settlers have huge lobbying power in the Israeli government (akin to the NRA’s power). Olmert should at the very least suspend the building of all new settlements. But if he were to do just that his parliamentary coalition would fall apart.

Then there's the Palestinian Right of Return. This is a HUGE stumbling block, much more so than most people think. About 800,000 Palestinians were displaced after the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. There are presently over 3 million descendants of these refugees (mostly living in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon) and they are a cause-celebré among the European Left. What is often times forgotten is that these people were displaced during a war their leaders in fact initiated. But forgetting that for the moment, the problem is that the Palestinians are demanding the descendants of these 800,000 refugees have the “Right of Return” into Israel.

This is unfeasible for Israel and furthermore is contradictory to the Two State Solution. The Two State solution provides for a Jewish-Israeli state, and a Palestinian-Arab state. Each side would give up whatever claim it believes it may have to the other’s land. So, each side would have Right of Return to their own land; no Palestinian would have Right of Return to Israel because they’ve given up claim to it.

Next up is “the Wall/Security Barrier,” what Jimmy Carter and others see as a symbol of “Apartheid.” I disagree. The security barrier was actually an idea of the Israeli Left and the Israelis began constructing it in 2002 as a response to the second Intifada. Now, one could certainly argue that it should be constructed along the Green Line and not cut deep into Palestinian territory, but without a doubt the barrier saves lives. It prevents Palestinian terrorists from infiltrating Israel and blowing themselves up in buses and pizzerias, which in turn prevents the Israeli military from invading the West Bank to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure - as happened in 2002 with a lot of collateral damage.

Anyway, you can agree or disagree but you know where I stand. I’ll add more about the whole thing later, if you’re really interested in the conflict I encourage you to read articles from Bitter Lemons. This website presents the thoughts and analyses of journalists, intellectuals, policy figures, and others from both sides of the conflict. It’s a forum for discussion and ideas, rather than negotiation.

Marcelo Birmajer: the Argentine Woody Allen

“Argentina is full of Jews,” so said a lot of people I met in my South American travels a year ago. Actually, there are about 200,000 Jews in Argentina, a country of about 38 million people. A community? Yes. A country full of Jews? No. However, there are more Jews in Argentina than in any other Latin American country, and Argentine Jews take a big role in the country’s media and politics.

Take for example Marcelo Birmajer, who wrote El Abrazo Partido, a critically acclaimed movie which came out in 2004. Birmajer is Jewish and has been dubbed Argentina’s answer to Woody Allen. El Abrazo Partido is an interesting movie set in El Once, Buenos Aires’ Jewish neighborhood, and is about a 20-something Jew trying to get a Polish passport so he can immigrate back to Europe. Here’s an interesting feature from Haaretz (a prominent Israeli newspaper) about Birmajer, his writing career, and the contradictions of being Jewish in Argentina.

Yalla ya Nasrallah

In July, 2006 Israel went to war with Hezbollah, a Shiite terrorist organization led by Hasan Nasrallah. Soon after the war began a certain song became ubiquitous on both Israeli and Lebanese airwaves: Yalla ya Nasrallah (loosely translated to Bring it on Nasrallah).


CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

In Israel the song became a rallying cry and at the same time lightened people’s tense minds. In Lebanon the Israeli Defense Forces periodically hacked into television stations to broadcast the song.

As an addendum, here’s a pretty good post war analysis. It’s from a German newspaper, but was written by an Israeli Journalist.