X-Plain, the Israeli hasbara rap
We don’t really go for rap, but this one is clever, and not too patriotic. Sometimes, Eretz Nehederet really gets it.
LISA, the satellite that will change your universe
An earth-shattering revolution in physics, explained for the rest of us:
Is Gaza too crowded to prosper?
Some thoughts of former Netanyahu official Lenny Ben-David bear repeating:
Gaza is the “most overpopulated few square miles in the whole world,” wrote veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk in a recent dispatch in the British Independent. Both Israel’s Army Radio station and Al-Jazeera’s English television reported that “Gaza is the densest populated area in the world.” But the claim is simply not true.
About 9,713 Gazans are crowded into each square mile of the strip’s total 147 square miles, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But there are denser areas in the world such as Singapore (18,645 people per square mile on 241 sq. mi. of territory) and Hong Kong (18,176 per sq. mi. on 382 sq. mi.).
Population density need not translate to abject poverty and political unrest. Singapore and Hong Kong are situated along maritime trade routes and their per capita GDP surpasses $42,000. Gaza, however, despite its Mediterranean shoreline and an estimated $4 billion in offshore natural gas reserves, tallies only $1,100 per capita. Surely, Israel’s siege of the hostile Hamasland chokes Gaza and is a major factor in its astronomical unemployment. But, Gaza is not necessarily destined to remain a “rubbish dump of destitute people,” to use Fisk’s words.
Before the next mistake, an idea for peace
In what is becoming an annual ritual, we poor nations of the Middle East are about to be subjected to another glitzy round of optimistic photo-ops collectively but inaccurately known outside the world as a “peace process.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy apparently came up with the latest idea:
Sarkozy seeks to capitalize on the momentum created by the participation of European leaders at a summit Sunday in Sharm al-Sheikh summit on the recent hostilities in Gaza, according to Le Figaro.
The paper also states that Sarkozy convinced German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who had feared the cease-fire would not be kept, to attend the summit in Egypt.
The goal of the conference, the paper reported, is to reach a peace accord within a year, and it will be held a few weeks after a meeting of European foreign ministers in Egypt due to take place in February.
The form of the summit will reportedly be similar to that of the one the United States hosted in Annapolis in late 2007.
Here’s our problem with this “peace with a year” idea. According to our sources, Israeli intelligence believes Hamas would win election in every single Palestinian city were they held right now. Hamas rejects every arrangement with the Zionist entity that does not somehow lead to its destruction. The organization even took pains not to “accept” – but only “acknowledge” – the ceasefire announced yesterday.
If peace with Hamas itself is impossible, and peace with Fatah is meaningless because it doesn’t solve Gaza and may not hold traction in the Palestinian street, what could a French diplomat’s cajoling possibly change here?
We got here through the mistakes of many sides, including the Israelis, the Americans and the Europeans. But most importantly, we got here because the Palestinians have not yet decided as a nation to take their fate into their own hands. The leadership robbed its own people and the international community of an entire national economy. They refuse to begin even the most basic processes of sovereignty until all issues are resolved, things like currency, customs, diplomatic representation.
There is only one path to peace we can see. The US and a significant Arab party – Saudi Arabia? Egypt? – must begin a serious nation-building project in the West Bank, recreating an economy, an education system, the trappings of statehood (recall that both a US president and an Israeli PM have publicly declared the goal of negotiations to be a Palestinian state). Create a Palestine that will allow Israelis to believe that a pullout of settlements from the West Bank won’t bring a second Hamastan and rockets on Tel Aviv.
Is Sarkozy planning to do that? Does Obama, weighed down by the US financial implosion and blood on the line in Afghanistan and Iraq, have the bureaucratic bandwidth to engage in such a project? Can Egypt or Saudi Arabia participate in something like this without ruining it by trying to control it?
We don’t know. But we do know this: this conflict has not continued for lack of French cocktail parties.
The terror group that couldn’t
We met with some paratroopers today, men who just walked out of Gaza this morning and had come face-to-face with Hamas fighters. Their story was one of frustration.
They did not mind the booby traps or use of civilians in the battlezone by Hamas troops. Those were the expected battle conditions. But they were surprised and disappointed by the enemy’s cowardice, the automatic retreat by nearly every enemy fighter.
It’s hard to blame Hamas for rejecting the certain martyrdom of directly engaging IDF Paratroopers – as it is, Hamas lost hundreds to every IDF casualty – but the Paratroopers had high hopes of decisive battle after Hamas leaders threatened to turn Gaza into a graveyard of IDF troops.
Interestingly, Musa Abu Marzouk in Damascus claimed victory on Sunday because, as he put it in an interview on Syrian television, Israel had failed to “dictate terms” for the ceasefire.
The Paratroopers may feel cheated out of a victory, but surely they didn’t do too badly if the enemy is reduced to claiming victory by virtue of petulant stubborness.
Before the celebration: What to do with the tunnels
With a fresh ceasefire upon us, it’s time to seriously examine the sustainability factor. Is Hamas sufficiently hurt, it’s powers sufficiently curtailed, that Israel’s leadership can responsibly return to what it would much rather be doing with the next three weeks: campaigning for Knesset seats?
Short answer: It all depends on finding a solution to the weapons smuggling. And that means shutting down Hamas’ rabbit-warrens of tunnels criss-crossing the Gaza-Egypt border.
The best collated discussion of what this would involve comes from an unlikely source: Slate.
The ‘radical peace camp’ spinning its wheels
The “radical peace camp,” for lack of a better term, continues to baffle us. It seems utterly committed to remaining in the ridiculed sidelines of a complicated conflict. Its latest anti-Israel act comes in the form of a statement calling for IDF troops to refuse to fight in Gaza.
Nothing surprising in the text:
We refuse to remain silent while Israeli leaders force Israeli soldiers to commit war crimes: crimes against humanity for which they will one day be called to account. Israeli soldiers of conscience can, and must, stop this dangerous, illegal, and immoral war.
Etc., etc., etc.
A member of one of the sponsoring organizations brought this petition to our notice, noting with pride that it has nearly 700 signatures from 37 countries. We agreed with her that 700 names was remarkable, but in the other direction: the vast majority of Jews are not against the Gaza operation.
But the question of popularity aside, what about the sheer inanity of the text? It’s hard to see as a serious part of the discussion someone who comes out for peace and quiet only now when Israel is shooting back.
Also, isn’t it just a bit intellectually lazy to label Israeli actions “war crimes?” International agreements clearly stipulate that the party that drags the civilians into the battlefield, or takes the battle to the civilian population, is the criminal. A statement that fails to deal with that is both misleading as to the meaning of “war crime” and irrelevant to any conversation about the realities on the ground.
How do they countenance a statement that calls only Israel to account? We fancy ourselves peace-loving liberals yearning for Palestinian statehood, but we still marvel at the glaring lacuna in the peace statement: where is the recognition that the opponent here is Hamas, not Mohandas Gandhi?
Is Iran getting nervous?
In an article unabashedly titled “Jewish lobbies make US support Israel,” Iran’s English-language Press TV website explained to its readers the following diabolical conspiracy:
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has given an approving nod to a Senate bid, which sides with Tel Aviv and “conveys America’s unequivocal and steadfast support for Israel’s right to self-defense.”
The resolution – which was sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell – justifies Israel’s raids on the coastal silver, which has so far killed 783 and wounded 3,050.
Note that (1) the article itself only accuses AIPAC of “approving” the resolution, not forcing the US Senate to pass it, as the headline suggest, and (2) you only discover in the second paragraph that, in fact, the leaders of both sides in the Senate actually sponsored the bill. Very diabolical, n’est-ce pas?
In a radio address on January 3, George W. Bush refused to offer any criticism of the saturation bombing of Gaza and refrained from commenting on whether he considers Israel’s response as proportionate to the scope of rockets attacks on Israel.
This paragraph contained a lie. Not that we’re too excited about this, but just for the record: saturation bombing is a term that actually means something, and it is not even close to what is happening in Gaza, as evidenced by the lack of 200,000 dead.
This news report pleased us. We figure if Iran is upset, the IDF must be doing something right.
‘Gazans should be happy their loved ones are martyrs’
The New York Times offers an unusually candid report from Gaza dated yesterday in which an Islamic Jihad fighter expresses the supreme joy of terror.
The relevant quote is in the last paragraph, but the short article, by Taghreed El-Khodary, is worth quoting in full:
GAZA CITY — The emergency room in Shifa Hospital is often a place of gore and despair. On Thursday, it was also a lesson in the way ordinary people are squeezed between suicidal fighters and a military behemoth.
Dr. Awni al-Jaru, 37, a surgeon at the hospital, rushed in from his home here, dressed in his scrubs. But he came not to work. His head was bleeding, and his daughter’s jaw was broken.
He said Hamas militants next to his apartment building had fired mortar and rocket rounds. Israel fired back with force, and his apartment was hit. His wife, Albina, originally from Ukraine, and his 1-year-old son were killed.
“My son has been turned into pieces,” he cried. “My wife was cut in half. I had to leave her body at home.” Because Albina was a foreigner, she could have left Gaza with her children. But, Dr. Jaru lamented, she would not leave him behind.
A car arrived with more patients. One was a 21-year-old man with shrapnel in his left leg who demanded quick treatment. He turned out to be a militant with Islamic Jihad. He was smiling a big smile.
“Hurry, I must get back so I can keep fighting,” he told the doctors.
He was told that there were more serious cases than his, that he needed to wait. But he insisted. “We are fighting the Israelis,” he said. “When we fire we run, but they hit back so fast. We run into the houses to get away.” He continued smiling.
“Why are you so happy?” this reporter asked. “Look around you.”
A girl who looked about 18 screamed as a surgeon removed shrapnel from her leg. An elderly man was soaked in blood. A baby a few weeks old and slightly wounded looked around helplessly. A man lay with parts of his brain coming out. His family wailed at his side.
“Don’t you see that these people are hurting?” the militant was asked.
“But I am from the people, too,” he said, his smile incandescent. “They lost their loved ones as martyrs. They should be happy. I want to be a martyr, too.”
That’s the only side in this fight that seems to be enjoying itself. They are hard at work inflicting their pain — much of it on the Palestinians themselves, of course.
