I love Israel

I love Israel even though the almost fifty years since the onset of the occupation has for all practical purposes rendered it a fascist state. As long as voices like that of Uri Avnery can be heard there is hope for redemption. Scant hope, perhaps, but hope nonetheless. After all, Germany was a fascist state at one time too.

The road to fascism has been paved by opportunistic politicians like the current PM. He's built a career out of doing the unthinkable and rendering it palatable. A few more (Palestinian) home demolitions here and a few more (Jewish) settlements there and the world can go fuck itself, because the Americans will always always have my back.

Any state of oppression can only persist over time with the complicity of the oppressed, of course, which is why Israel keeps Mahmoud Abbas in power and Marwan Barghouti in jail. God forbid that the kaffirs choose their own leaders... look what happened in Gaza!

Back in the hippy era a stop at a kibbutz for a few weeks or months was near mandatory. It was part of the hippy-dippy Kashmir trail. Today? Not so much.

Which is why stories like this matter more than ever.

As long as you can still find humour in the dead-end you're on, you might be able to find a way out.

How to recognize a true child of God

The blood was not yet scrubbed from the Kehilat Bnai Torah Synagogue and already the political opportunists from across the spectrum were braying for vengeance.

Netanyahu was first off the mark, promising a resumption of house demolitions and "many other steps."

Bennet tried to score a few cheap points by blaming the attack on Israel's lap dog, the toothless Mahmoud Abbas.

Canada's ever-outraged FM John Baird, forever angling to be seen as Israel's best friend, chimed in with a press release that featured his vocabulary of indignation in finest form; condemns, condemns, cowardly, cowardly, savage terrorist attack, despicable terrorist acts...

Yes, it was certainly a red-letter day for the eye-for-an-eye crowd...

Meanwhile, back in Har Nof, a JPost reporter found a radically different attitude. An attitude of quiet resignation that, while deeply wounded, nevertheless believes that vengeance and judgement are in the hands of God, not up to the politicians.

"We are not a vengeful people. We are not a culture of blood for blood," a congregant of Kehilat Bnai Torah told the paper. "Our answer to such events is to strengthen our faith and our religious practice."

If more people, from every side in every conflict, could leave vengeance and judgement to God, and focus instead on being a better child of God, the world would be at peace.

Israel to help Arab neighbors fight terrorism

No, I'm not making that up; here's Pres. Peres quoted in the JPost yesterday;

He said he was certain, however, that if Israel and the Palestinians could resolve their conflict, Israel could be of help to the Palestinians and by extension to the rest of the Arab world in dealing with the problem of terrorism.

It may be uncouth to spell it out, but the man is well into his 91st year, and perhaps not all the marbles are rolling in the same direction anymore.

He was speaking on the occasion of a shadow-state visit by self-anointed US shadow Secretary of State Senator John McCain. As the second most popular American politician in Israel, McCain has assigned himself the task of following John Kerry around on his so-called peace initiative to make sure Kerry doesn't push Netanyahu into giving too much away.

And if that's not funny enough, Netanyahu reaffirmed the obvious in claiming yet again, in case anyone missed the previous ten thousand declarations of same, that Palestinian incitement is the main roadblock to peace. It's a vicious cycle; incitement - another couple hundred settler homes - more incitement - another few hundred settler homes, and so on for forty years now.

Obviously only a moron would expect this cycle to be unwound so long as there is no cessation of Palestinian incitement.

Alas, the Senator from Arizona, perhaps also showing a few signs of marble-management issues, was soon distracted by events in Iraq, claiming in the same brief presser that he was "even more troubled by al-Qaeda's reconquest of Falluja." 

He sees the American withdrawal from Iraq as having been a grave error. The very idea that democracy was going to flourish in an Arab land without US boots on the ground was wishful thinking of the highest order, as any Republican could see at the time.

Fortunately, once Kerry has this Abbas-Netanyahu framework agreement wrapped up, the IDF can start helping the Palestinians and other Arab neigbors fight terrorists. I'm guessing they'll start with Hamas and Hezbollah...

And then on to Falluja!

Middle-East math; why Abbas may not be the patsy that we think he is

On the face of it, the latest announcement of settlement expansion should be another nail in the coffin of Abbas' credibility.

So why are none of the Palestinian militants scheduled for release declining their good fortune to protest this settlement expansion being facilitated by Abbas?

After all, at least some of these guys are hard-core nationalists who have made a life-long commitment to putting the fate of their nation ahead of their personal fate. Why are they playing along with the Abbas strategy of allowing settlement expansion even while "negotiating" a supposedly final peace agreement?

Because they fully understand that the two-state solution becomes less likely with every new settler home approved for the occupied territories, and you should believe that Abbas understands this too.

Which leaves us where?

Which leaves us with the status quo... ever expanding settlements, ever expanding publicity for the BDS movement, and an ever-decreasing likelihood that Israel as a "Jewish state" has a viable future in the community of nations.

Abbas may not be such a hapless dipshit after all.

Congressional buffoonery threatens to derail Kerry's peace charade

Pity John Kerry; racing back and forth between Washington and Ramallah and Tel Aviv, twisting arms here and kissing ass there, all to bring the Israelis and the Palestinians to the negotiating table for the first time in three years.

So what better time for the knobs in Congress to declare Jerusalem the "undivided capital of Israel for historical, biblical, and moral reasons!"

This might look like a good strategy from inside the beltway, but what's it look like to the rest of the world? Is there anyone outside the beltway who doesn't fall over laughing at the premise that the US makes foreign policy decisions for moral reasons?

As for invoking sacred texts, does that not sound like something we'd expect from some benighted theocracy?

And where else on the planet does the US reference 3,000 year old historical claims when weighing in on contemporary security matters?

The only practical effect of H.R. 2846 is to strip Mahmoud "Uncle Tom" Abbas of what little credibility he still enjoys.

But maybe that's the whole point; antagonize the PA delegation away from the table before negotiations start, just to prove once and for all that there is no partner for peace.

The resurrection of Ehud Olmert

Look who is emerging as the voice of reason in Israel's political landscape. None other than the guy who seemed so eminently forgettable, that everybody thought would spend at least a couple of months behind bars for that corruption hanky-panky, Ehud Olmert.

Ehud is remaking himself as the voice of moderation. He is the phoenix rising from the dust-bin of history.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Ehud has no problem whatsoever with the Abbas gambit at the UN.

 "We have to support the moderates" he says.

Well, no kidding! This is the most profound revelation to strike the Middle East since Saint Paul's vision on the road to Damascus... oh, probably an unfortunate metaphor at this moment in history...

But he is absolutely right.

That's why I don't really get the anti-PA line coming from Hillary and a few other adherents of the anti-Palestinian hard line.

If you can't make a deal with Abbas, you'll never make a deal with anybody.

Is there still time for him to put together a list for January?

"Diplomatic terror" and the PA's UN canard

Tomorrow's vote on granting "state" status to the PA observer delegation at the UN is an exercise in imbecility from beginning to end.

As every serious person who follows these matters well understands, Mahmoud Abbas is America's bum-boy in Palestine.

While he's been "negotiating" a sovereign Palestinian state with Israel for the last eight years, the settler population in the occupied territories has doubled.

During those eight years the credibility and prestige of his Hamas rivals has blossomed.

But Israel and the Nations of Virtue claim that this empty UN gesture is some sort of "short-cut" that seeks to by-pass negotiations with Israel. Hence you see the spectacle of international lightweights like Canadian PM Harper waxing grave on how Canada cannot support any attempt to bypass negotiations.

What a crock of shit!

At no point in his tenure have the Nations of Virtue conceded a single hollow "victory" that Abbas could take to his people and show them that he's a serious champion of a Palestinian state.

That's no way to treat a bum-boy.

Meanwhile Hamas looks better and better to the Palestinian masses, because they're willing to take a beating every few years, and after every beating they come back stronger.

Unlike Abbas, who bows to every demand of his US masters and comes back looking weaker and weaker.

So his juvenile act of defiance, taking this issue to the UN General Assembly in defiance of his handlers, should be applauded and supported by Canada and the US and that handful of other countries that still deny the realities of the new Middle East.

Supporting Abbas in this vote is their last chance to make the PA look like a meaningful option.

The only other option is Hamas.