Anti-Boycott Group Forms

A new organization of left-wing British academics has formed to fight the Association of University Teachers' recently adopted anti-Israel boycott. The group, called 'Engage', defines itself as follows:

1. Engage opposes the idea of an academic or cultural boycott of Israel.

2. Engage aims to encourage, facilitate and publicise positive links between Israeli, Palestinian, British and global academia. Engage is for closer engagement, not boycotts.

3. Engage stands up against antisemitism in our universities, in our unions and in our students unions.

Check out their website, which contains articles and updates on their battle.

Peace or Timeout?

In a previous post, I discussed Ehud Ya'ari's recent article in the Jerusalem Report which suggested there might be a return to violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories in the near future. His contention was that either (1) Fatah may decide to postpone its parliamentary defeat at the hands of Hamas by launching a third intifada, or that (2) Hamas may decide to launch a new wave of violence because the political benefits they were promised as a result of their abiding by the tahadiya (lull in violence) have not materialized.

On the heels of this speculation, there comes a new report from Haaretz quoting a senior military official who proclaimed that the IDF was having a tough time dealing with the smuggling in the West Bank; he estimates that huge quantities of arms are being channeled in from Sinai.

The fact that the Palestinian militant groups have declared the current period of calm to be one of tahadiya (a lull in violence) and not a hudna (ceasefire) is the clearest indication of their intentions. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas tried to get an agreement on a hudna in his Cairo talks with the militant leaders, but all he came away with was an agreement to continue the tahadiya. The fact that the militants are continuing to smuggle massive quantities of weapons shows that they will constantly hold the violence card up their sleeves and will not hesitate to use it if they feel like Abbas is not abiding by their rules. This threat of renewed violence is extremely dangerous since the weapons being smuggled are not just assault rifles, but also arms that "tip the balance" - anti-tank rockets, anti-aircraft missiles, military-grade explosives and materials to manufacture Qassam rockets. Some are even speculating that in order to keep Fatah militants (Al-Aqsa brigades) quiet, senior Palestinian Authority officials are turning a blind eye to the smuggling. This could explain why Palestinian national security advisor Jibril Rajoub demanded that the Palestinians be allowed to have full control of the Sinai border routes with Gaza in exchange for Palestinian coordination over the Israeli disengagement.

As James Bennet's March NYT magazine article on Abbas points out, the Palestinians have elected Abbas because they are tired. Arafat thought that a renewed intifada would push Israel to make even greater concessions, but he was wrong. Sharon's tough approach which included "eliminating" many of the leaders of Hamas and imposing a new oppressive system of checkpoints throughout the West Bank truly defeated the intifada and made most ordinary Palestinians think twice about the benefits of using violence to further their cause. The tahadiya was necessary not because of hopes for a peaceful, Garden-of-Eden future with the Israelis, but because the Palestinians desperately needed a timeout in the fighting which was making their lives unbearable. But practically all the Palestinians interviewed in Bennet's article agreed that a third intifada is inevitable. They correctly recognize that Sharon will never take advantage of Abbas' political capital and grant far-ranging concessions to strengthen the sole Palestinian leader who has consistently preached the pitfalls of violent intifada because Sharon would prefer a disengagement where he can define the borders than a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders (a minimum Palestinian demand) in exchange for a a peace agreement. For his part, Sharon may wonder if Abbas even has the strength to dismantle militant organizations (a minimum Israeli demand). The lesson of Sadat, who was assassinated for making peace with Israel, constantly hangs over the head of Arab leaders, and if Arafat could not risk cracking down on Palestinian terrorists, how can the much weaker Abbas be expected to do so?

Syria Quits Lebanon

With the closure of Syria's intelligence base at Anjar, Lebanon, Syria has finally completed the withdrawal of its military forces from the country, in accordance with the Taif Accords ending the Lebanese Civil War.

The occasion will be marked with a ceremony tomorrow, and in the United States with a rally outside the White House on Saturday.

More from Haaretz and Naharnet.

British academics boycott Israel

Britain's Association of University Teachers (AUT) has voted to boycott Haifa University and Bar-Ilan University for supposedly suppressing academic freedom and supporting the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Some good insight into the intellectual level of the British academics in question can be gleaned from the website of the boycott's primary organizer, Sue Blackwell, formerly a Christian fundamentalist, now a dogmatic Communist and anti-Zionist:

Q: Aren't all Zionists Jewish, and most Jews Zionist?

A: No. There has always been at least one important strand of Jewish political thinking which has been opposed to Zionism, namely socialism. Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg - my top 3 political heroes by the way - were all Jewish

Socialism isn't a "Jewish" philosophy, nor is it necessarily opposed to Zionism at all. Labor Zionists (ie, socialists) dominated the Israeli political scene for a long, long time.

Q: Are you a pacifist?

A: No, I believe in the right to self-defence, both individually and collectively. Governments commit daily acts of violence against their own citizens and those of other countries, and I support the right of ordinary people to resist that violence, using their own violence if necessary. Other than in self-defence the only war worth fighting is the class war.

Ah, yes, the class war...

Predictably, the right of self-defense doesn't apply equally to Israel, though: "I don't think the violence of the Israeli state - armed with tanks and F-16 bombers supplied by the USA and Britain - can be equated with the violence of Palestinians fighting back against illegal occupation."

The most stunning aspect of this fiasco is the AUT's sheer hypocrisy. In defense of "academic freedom," they are boycotting the scholars of a fellow democracy, many of whom oppose Israel's policies in the territories, and demanding that they adhere to a murky, ill-defined political test. Meanwhile, these defenders of academic freedom denied the targets of the boycott the chance to present their case in open debate before voting on the measure.

Who killed Rafik Hariri?

The latest theory focuses on the role of Ali Salah Haj. According to the story, Haj was a security escort close to Hariri until Hariri suspected him of informing on him to the Syrians. Haj was then reassigned to an intelligence post in the Bekaa valley, but seems to have played a controversial role in the initial investigation of Hariri's death by removing Hariri's car from the scene of the explosion that killed him.

Does Islam call for the murder of infidels?

As I mentioned in a recent post, the meaning of Islam isn't derived just from the words written in the Quran--it's derived from the interpretation that Muslims give those words. It seems to me that the question in the title has yet to be answered conclusively in our times. It is the internal Muslim debate over who has the right to interpret the Quran and what interpretations are valid that will settle it.

In the second part in a series of posts on the relationship between Islam and violence, Dr. Hassaballa analyzes the context in which the Quranic verses calling on Muslims to "fight the unbelievers" were revealed and the context in which they should be interpreted.

He is already being attacked for "speaking out against acts of violence committed by Muslims" ...

A Return to the "Fire"?

Violence has subsided in Israel and the Palestinian territories lately, but is the calm just a passing phase? In the latest Jerusalem Report political analyst Ehud Ya'ari points out that there are compelling reasons to consider this violent possibility entirely likely.

While the Israeli political world is now fixated on the Sharon government's disengagement effort, the Palestinians are occupied by something else entirely. There is not nearly enough coordination with Israel on the disengagement or a serious discussion on how a post-pullout Gaza would look precisely because the Palestinian Authority is spending a great deal of their energies worrying about the upcoming Palestinian legislative elections.

Most of the Palestinian opinion polls and conventional Palestinian political wisdom point to a major Hamas victory over Fatah in the upcoming elections. A Hamas victory would not be surprising, given the Palestinian Authority's reputation for corruption and Hamas's success in establishing local social services. This has led to a great deal of worry among Abu Mazen and his camp and has even led to some Fatah activists calling for Abu Mazen to postpone the election. The fact that the Sharon government's efforts to bolster Abu Mazen by removal of roadblocks and release of prisoners has been meager and insufficient does not help the situation. Some Palestinians have even been comparing Abu Mazen to Shadhli Ben Jedid, a reference to the unlucky Algerian president who called the elections that ended up in a landslide victory for the fundamentalist Islamic FIS, the equivalent of Hamas in the territories.

In order to avoid this scenario Abu Mazen and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigade may go to a plan B. This would include cancelling the elections and returning to violence, not against Hamas, as this would cause a fitna or civil war, but rather against Israel in what would constitute a third intifada and take the focus off of internal Palestinian political problems.

The second possibility, one also being contemplated and prepared for by Fatah, is that if Abu Mazen postpones the election or somehow undercuts Hamas' seemingly inevitable rise in political power, Hamas will see itself as free from the obligations it made in Cairo to refrain from violence and will "blow up" the political capital earned by Abu Mazen with the Israelis and Americans by "starting the fire" again in the form of new and improved longer range Kassem Rockets (still being prepared and held in reserve at this very moment) on Israeli towns and other forms of violence. Hamas has always kept this option as a "card up its sleeve" and it is for precisely this reason that they refused to sign a Hudna in Cairo which translates into a cease-fire, but rather agreed on a Tahadiyya which more accurately translates as a "lull in violence," often used as a period to regroup and strengthen. If anyone doubts this consider the statements of the head of the Hamas political bureau, Khaled Mash'al at a recent conference organized by the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram in Cairo:

"... Every term has a special meaning, and our choice [of the term] Tahdiah is not incidental. A Hudna [cease fire] is an agreement whose terms are acceptable to both sides, but in the current situation there are no such terms. The Palestinian side is the weak one... we treat this Tahdiah as a Palestinian initiative conditional to the other side fulfilling the terms...

"Tahdiah means Tahdiah [and when you talk of] escalation, there is escalation. There is a commitment and it is honored... In the eyes of Hamas, Tahdiah is a trick within the resistance plans, [but] in the eyes of the [Palestinian] Authority, Tahdiah is a step on the way out of the resistance plan... but we still give it a chance... we can be patient and suffer, but not from the perspective of those who want to be free of the Intifada..."

Is it any wonder that Abu Mazen has refrained from causing a Palestinian civil war by dismantling the terror infrastructure of Hamas as required of him by the roadmap? Even his baby step efforts of requiring militants to register their weapons have not been entirely successful. With this kind of internal Palestinian tension it is doubtful that law and order or a successful united Palestinian security forces (prerequisites for a successful Palestinian state) will be established in the Palestinian territories in the near future.

Ajami on Lebanon

Fouad Ajami puts the Lebanese "independence intifada" into context in a new essay in the May/June Foreign Affairs. His argument is basically that--unlike his father Hafez--Bashar al-Assad isn't up to the task of "properly" running Syria's autocratic regime, especially not in the world of the Bush Doctrine.

He also gives us the following interesting analysis on Iran, which touches on the potential for a Syria-Iran alliance that I blogged about a few days ago:

"The claims of an Iranian-Syrian accord should also not be given much credence. Iran's horizons are wider, and Iran's interests differ radically from those of Syria. For all their strident revolutionary poses, the Iranians are shrewd, unsentimental practitioners of realpolitik. Iran's pursuit of its nuclear ambitions (or the barter of these ambitions for economic and political concessions from Europe and the United States) overwhelms the concerns of Syria, with its extortion rackets in the Bekaa Valley and Tripoli. Tehran will not ride to the rescue of Damascus."

It's worth a read.

The Power of the Internet

Check out this amazing Israeli commercial. It's just an ad for Internet service, but it qualifies as a true work of art. It's a visually powerful, moving commentary on the situation in the Middle East and on the potential for the Internet to bring people together.

The slogan on the t-shirt, which rhymes in Hebrew, means "Combat is the best, brother," referring to Israeli army combat units (as opposed to other details in the army). Obviously, it's meant to be ironic here.

The translation of the end is: "In life this is still impossible, but on the Internet connections like these are formed every day."

(Via Rishon Rishon, via Balagan).

Palestinian Jews?

This week's bitterlemons poses an interesting question which, despite never having been examined seriously by either Israelis or Palestinians, nevertheless presents an intriguing possibility for resolving part of the conflict over the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River:

Is it feasible for Jewish settlers to not be evacuated but instead stay where they are live under Palestinian sovereignty in a future Palestinian state?

The reason this option seems preferable to some settlers is obvious: They don't want to leave their homes. Many settlers have resorted to the language of human rights in order to fight Sharon's disengagement plan. Tearing settlers from their homes--where many of them have lived for the better part of the last 30 years--amounts to an undeserved and cruel human rights violation, they say. Settler leaders have been discussing the possibility of large scale psychological help to deal with the divorces, depression, and juvenile delinquency that may accompany such an uprooting. Allowing the settlers to stay put in a Gaza under Palestinian rule could help avoid many of these anticipated difficulties. Besides, say opponents of the disengagement, why should a person be uprooted from their home based on their religion or ethnicity? (The fact that this is oversimplified reasoning and that some of the more extreme settlers have long been advocating uprooting Palestinians has not seemed to deter this argument).

In any case, the most convincing reason to let the settlers stay is that in any future peace agreement Palestinians will be living on both sides of the Green line (20% of Israel's citizens are Palestinian). Shouldn't Jews also be able to live on both sides? The fact that many of the Jews settled in the West Bank after 1967 is not that relevant, since the border was always gray or nonexistent, and some of the large Jewish settlements around Jerusalem had existed prior to 1948 and had been evacuated during the independence war. Hebron was likewise cleared of its ancient Jewish community in 1929. Many Israeli Jews can also claim lost and confiscated property in places like Iraq, Syria, and Iran as Gazan settler Avi Farhan points out. (Farhan himself is an Israeli of Tunisian origin).

However, despite these benefits, this plan is weighted down by its complications. Certain segments of the settler population harbor extremely hostile attitude towards the Palestinians, and large segments of the Palestinian population feel the same way about the settlers. Having these two populations in such close proximity could result in bloodshed. Although, conversely, if settlers and Palestinians could live together, not under the auspices of an occupying army, but rather as fellow citizens, this could be a tremendous beginning to a new kind of attitude in the region.

Ultimately, though, this plan is unrealistic because there doesn't seem to be sufficient support for it from either Palestinians or settlers. At least the prospect of a relatively violence free disengagement looks more and more promising...



A Kippah identified with Religious Zionism with the Gazan shore in the Background

Israeli Incitement Exposed!

For a good laugh, take a look at this Arab News article about how Israeli textbooks incite hatred and violence against Arabs. The headline is our first clue that this is--or should be--something of a joke: "Israeli Textbooks Incite Anti-Arab Hatred, but So Very Subtly."

The article, about a new book that has revealed the depths of Israeli racism through studying Israeli textbooks, begins:

"To say that the Israeli media incite hatred against Arabs is an understatement, especially as Israeli press rarely misses [sic] an opportunity to publish daily reports about the terror the country is subjected to by the Palestinians."

Now, imagine that--The Israeli press rarely misses an opportunity to publish reports about the Palestinian terrorism the country is subjected to. Inciters!

But it gets better. According to the report:

"The Israeli books include stories about the early settlers like 'Jerusalem for me and you', 'I'm the discoverer of Jerusalem', [and] 'Homeland'." Wow, 'Jersualem for me and you'? The title clearly inspires hatred...

The only part in the whole article that seems to directly reference anything that could be termed incitement is the mention of "'City of Taparia', a selection of stories that shows the sacrifices made by the early Jewish generations 'despite a harsh climate and an environment full of the Arab embezzlers, killers, thieves and terrorists who cause insecurity in the holy land.'" Yet it appears that this quotation (about killers, theives, and terrorists) comes from the study of Israeli textbooks, not the textbook itself.

Meanwhile, the publisher plans to market the book worldwide due to the "interest of international readers to know about the Zionist plans of Israel." Yes, Israel's shocking Zionist plans have been exposed at last.

I don't know too much about what books they teach in Israeli schools, but neither do these folks, I would bet.

Disarming Hezbollah

If the Cedar Revolution is going to lead toward a viable, democratic, and sovereign state of Lebanon, and if there is to be peace with Israel, Hezbollah must ultimately disarm. But how do we get there?

Daniel Byman, writing in Foreign Affairs, thinks that instead "of trying to ostracize Hezbollah, Washington should focus on trying to get the organization to stop pursuing its goals through violence." The idea is to weaken Hezbollah's military strength, strengthen its political position, and boost the Lebanese Armed Forces--all simultaneously. Then, at some point in Lebanon's post-Syria future, the Lebanese government, when it is sufficiently strong, will call on Hezbollah to disarm, and Hezbollah will feel more comfortable doing so, since it will be a major power player in the government anyway.

Understanding "True" Islam

Is Islam a religion of peace or does it promote violence and terrorism? In The New Republic, Reihan Salam trashes the latest book to address that inane question, Paul Sperry's Infiltration : How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington.

According to Salam, Sperry condemns Islam itself as a religion of violence (despite Sperry's inclusion of the obligatory disclaimers asserting that he's not doing so). Salam cites the following quotation from the book: "Bin Laden has not betrayed his faith. Quite the contrary, he has honored it like few other Muslims have over the past fourteen hundred years of Islam ... He is a deeply religious man and a mass murderer. Of course, these two things are hard to reconcile if you do not understand true Islam." Sperry apparently bases his own understanding of "true Islam" on his reading of the Quran, the Islamic holy book, which seemed to him "more like a manual of war than any religious tract."

Well, guess what? Unless you're a Muslim, you don't really have much of a say on what "true Islam" is or isn't. Like all religious texts, the Quran can be interpreted in multiple ways. Jewish religious texts, for example, also contain their fair share of passages that could be interpreted as condoning violence, but most Jews choose to interpret these passages in a non-violent way. In other words, Judaism isn't really based on what's in the Bible; it's based on what Jews say is in the Bible. Islam is the same way. If most Muslims today conclude that their religion requires them to, say, kill non-Muslims or bad Muslims or whomever, then it would be safe to say that Islam is a religion of violence, at least right now. Similarly, if they conclude otherwise, choosing, for instance, to apply a metaphorical or spiritual interpretation to passages of the Quran that seem to condone violence, then it would be correct to say Islam is a religion of peace. So we non-Muslims can read the Quran all day long looking for the "true" meaning of Islam, but we'll never find it because that task belongs to Muslims themselves.

More on Columbia Unbecoming

Dailyscorecard dissects the New York Times' coverage of one of the professors at the heart of the uproar. Check it out.

The Syria-Iran Axis

In a column in the Daily Star, Nizar Abdel-Kader argues that because of U.S. pressure and recent political changes in the Middle East, Syria and Iran now have only one logical strategic option: "to create under the auspices of Tehran a new, dangerous alliance encompassing Hizbullah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, as a spearhead of resistance to American interests and to Israel."

My first response to that is, hasn't that dangerous alliance existed for a while now?

But Abdel-Kader is right to say that the Syrian and Iranian regimes must be feeling awfully lonely and down these days. If the mullahs in Tehran look west, they see a Shiite-dominated democratic government emerging in Iraq that could serve as an alternative model for Iran's Shiites; they also see 140,000 American troops. To the east, they see U.S.-allied Pakistan and Afghanistan--and more U.S. troops. To the south...nah, nothing but water--and the U.S. Fifth fleet. Finally, and most importantly, if they look around at home, they see a people increasingly fed up with living under a repressive theocracy. Bashar al-Assad's long-term prospects don't look much better. These are dead-end, unsustainable regimes that will collapse. And it's a good thing too, especially in the case of Iran, whose Islamic Revolution was critical in setting off the global wave of Islamist violence that culminated in the September 11th attacks.

But is Abdel-Kader right in his implication that in the short-term these regimes will become more dangerous? The answer to this question hinges on Iran's potential nuclearization as well as the potential responses from the U.S. or Israel. The idea of targeted military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites is being tossed around in some policy circles, but I'm of the opinion that these strikes would be extremely ill-advised. It seems unclear how much damage such an operation could actually do to Iran's nuclear program, and a foreign attack on Iran like that might actually prolong the life of the Iranian regime by providing a credible external enemy to focus national sentiment upon. The world should be able to contain a nuclear Iran, and the international stigma that will arise if Iran develops a bomb should add to its isolation.

In related news, Nizar Abdel-Kader happens to be a political analyst at the Lebanese newspaper Ad-Diyar, which is being prosecuted on charges of offending Lebanese President Emile Lahoud. As Ya Libnan puts it: "Without freedom of press there is no democracy!"

Juan Cole, Deception, and Temple Mount Politics

In an extremely misleading post on the recent uproar over a planned rally on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, Juan Cole blames the American media for not properly explaining the Palestinian position: that they needed to defend the Al-Aqsa mosque because they thought that Jewish extremists were going to blow it up. If anyone needs their memory refreshed, a rightist Israeli religious group called Revava planned a rally of Jews to ascend to the Temple Mount for prayer, and to show that they "will not compromise on the holiest place in Judaism" (Revava Website). The Temple Mount is the site in Jerusalem where the First and Second Jewish temples mentioned in the Bible stood. In the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad is mentioned as having taken a night journey to the "farthest mosque" ("al-aqsa"), which some Muslim scholars have speculated was on this same spot in Jerusalem (although the city of Jerusalem itself is not mentioned at all in the Quran). The 9th Caliph built the Dome of the Rock mosque on this site between 687-691; there is another mosque, actually called the "al-Aqsa" mosque, that has been built on the site as well.

This rally by Revava was rightly seen by most Israelis as an unnecessary and dangerous provocation. Israeli public security minister, Gideon Ezra declared, "I think it's the most sensitive place in the Middle East, and we'll do everything we can to prevent a provocation." The government barred all Israeli Jews from entering the Temple Mount area; hundreds of Israeli police converged on the Old City of Jerusalem to enforce the ban.

Nevertheless, these measures did not stop Palestinians and Muslims from all over Israel and the Palestinian territories from calling for masses of Muslims to "defend" the Al-Aqsa mosque from the Jewish extremists. Hundreds of Palestinians, including a Hamas leader, came to the mosque compound to defend it, while about 50 or so Revava activists were prevented by Israeli police from entering.

Now, in his post, Cole, humorously enough, admits that "maybe Revava never threatened to destroy the mosque. I don't know," at the same time that criticizes the American media for not reporting on the threat. He wouldn't be surprised if they did, though, because "They don't appear to be humane, level-headed people." (As if the Hamas members gathered that day must be perfectly humane and level-headed, even though their group's own charter proclaims that the day will come when the trees will announce "oh Muslim there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.") Is Juan Cole advocating that the media report on a threat that hasn't even been made? Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he just wanted the entire story to be reported, recognizing that these Palestinian fears were an integral part of that story. Well, in that case, shouldn't he mention that this spot is actually the holiest spot in the entire world for Jews, akin to Mecca's importance in Islam? It is also mentioned hundreds of times in the Jewish prayers and Bible; every Jew who has ever uttered a Jewish prayer has faced towards it while praying. In any kind of fair context which states that this spot is the third holiest place in the world for Muslims, its importance to Jews should be included as well, shouldn't it?

Juan Cole doesn't think so. He tries to undercut Jewish claims to the area by mentioning that the Jewish King David, who ruled the area hundreds of years before the birth of Islam, was "for all we know actually a Bedouin chieftain later mythologized into a king with a city." Again, see Across the Bay's refutation of Juan's "scholarship" on that issue here.

The Jewish connection to Jerusalem would seem pretty obvious because even the Quran acknowledges it when speaking of the change in the direction of prayer (qibla) from Jerusalem to Mecca. Of the Jews, the Quran notes: "They would not follow thy direction of prayer (qibla), nor art thou to follow their direction of prayer; nor indeed will they follow each other's direction of prayer... "(Quran, Sura 2:145, "The Cow").

All Quranic commentators explain that "thy qibla" is obviously the Kaaba of Mecca, while "their qibla" refers to the Temple Mount area in Jerusalem.

Cole also fails to mention that it was not really the Muslims that came to the Mosque who actually defended it, but rather the Jewish Zionist police and Israeli government who prevented the puny 50 or so members of Revava from ascending the mount at all. Perhaps Cole was right in saying that this issue deserves especially nuanced reporting, yet if all the nuances of the issue were taken into account, the outrage at Israel would have been much less and not much more as Cole claims.

A Major Mistake?

Haaretz reports on the growing trend of establishing Israel studies programs in American universities. Now, writing as someone who co-founded an Israel studies journal three years ago, it is definitely nice to see some attention and resources being devoted to an important and neglected area of scholarship. Nevertheless, I am worried about the way Israel studies programs will be implemented in the curriculum, especially insofar as Israel studies is considered the new "answer" to the problem of Middle East studies departments that are biased against Israel.

Do we really want the antagonisms of the Arab-Israeli conflict to be endlessly replicated in the structure of the American university? At a school where Middle East studies is biased against Israel, adding Israel studies scholars might provide some degree of balance. It also might not: At UC-Berkeley, an alumna disturbed by anti-Israel sentiments and hoping to improve Israel's image at the school gave $5 million to establish a chair in Israel studies. However, the university filled the chair with Oren Yiftachel, a professor from Ben Gurion University who is outspoken in his criticism of Israel, which he considers to be an "ethnocracy." Not exactly what she had in mind.

The whole idea of appointing professors to support a specific side in a political debate is unseemly in the first place, and can quickly devolve into a contest over who appoints more professors, or whose endowments are bigger, or who gets to teach what. Universities should be focused on scholarship, not politics. The best approach, in my opinion, is to scrap our current conception of area studies departments altogether. Middle East or Near Eastern studies faculties should concentrate purely on languages and classical cultures. Courses and faculty dealing with the modern Middle East should be categorized and appointed based on academic discipline--history, political science, sociology, etc. Compartmentalizing scholarship into hostile, opposing camps based on the region or society a scholar focuses on--usually the same region or society the scholar is from--is at odds with the academic mission of the university.

UPDATE: For a more detailed argument focusing on proposed changes to the Middle East studies curriculum at Yale, check out this article I wrote for the Yale Herald a couple months back.

Middle East "Expertise"

Across the Bay has a long, informative post on the double-standards at work in blogger/professor Juan Cole's analysis of Middle Eastern history.

Here's how one of Cole's latest posts breaks down. He begins by linking to a story about how President Bush warned Israeli Prime Minister Sharon against settlement expansion, or as Cole prefers to call it, "large-scale land theft."

Rather than analyzing this development, he jumps into a long tirade linking Israel to September 11 and Islamic terrorism generally. He claims the September 11th terrorists' "stated purpose was to punish the U.S. for its support of Israel's crackdown on the Palestinians." That's completely misleading. The terrorists were primarily Saudi--none were Palestinian--and in this famous fatwa, the grievances related to Saudi Arabia clearly are most prominent. Complaints about U.S. policy in Iraq come second, while the offenses of the "Jews' petty state" get an obligatory mention third.

Next, Cole suggests Sharon failed at "any show of respect at all for the needs of the United States" after September 11th, because Israel continued to battle Palestinian terrorists. Some might argue that Israel was, in fact, serving U.S. needs by fighting terrorists with a similar ideology to those that attacked the U.S., and who helped legitimate high-casualty suicide terrorism in the first place.
Not Cole, though. He thinks "Congress should cut [Sharon] off without a dime until he stops stabbing the United States of America in the back with his aggressive expansionism." Thanks for sharing.

In any case, the spat over the Israeli construction plans between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem seems like a manufactured crisis, since the construction isn't even slated to begin until 2007. By emphasizing big settlement building plans now, even though they aren't scheduled to start for a long time and can obviously be changed, Sharon can pacify some of his more right-wing constituents in the Likud ahead of the disengagement plan. Ha'aretz correspondent Aluf Benn has some interesting analysis:

"It seems neither Sharon nor Bush had much to lose by displaying their disagreement. Sharon can show his rivals in the Likud that he isn't the Americans' yes-man; Bush can show his European and Arab friends that he isn't in Sharon's pocket."

Gotta love the Guardian

The Guardian recently printed a brilliant op-ed by one John Rose that contains a sure-fire, realistic plan for solving the Israeli-Arab conflict immediately: Israel should transform itself from a Jewish state into an Arab state. Moreover, this transformation should be achieved by Israeli Jews rejecting Zionism and assimilating into "Arabic culture."

Wow. How come I never come up with great ideas like that? Maybe it's because I don't have as strong a grasp on history as Mr. Rose. See, according to him, the idea that European Jews were persecuted throughout most of history is a "lachrymose" view. Rose points out cases of Jews and non-Jews working together in the resistance against the Russian Czar. Forget the Holocaust, focus on the good times. As for Middle Eastern Jews, well, Rose points to the case of the Iraqi Jews. "They certainly did not want the Zionists" -- they immigrated en masse to Israel only because of a crisis "cynically engineered by both Israel and Britain." Right.

Does the Guardian have any standards anymore?

What's in a handshake?

At the Pope's funeral, Israeli President Moshe Katsav did the right thing for Israeli diplomacy and for peace by shaking hands with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, two of Israel's sworn enemies. Khatami and Katsav were born in the same town in Iran and reportedly had a conversation in Persian. While these exchanges have no practical value, they symbolize the potential for a Middle East in which peoples interact cordially, rather than constantly trying to demonize and kill one another all the time.

Now, hardliners in Israel are criticising Katsav for the gesture, while Iran's Khatami denied it ever happened. Predictable.

Meanwhile, Ya Libnan has posted a new poem inspired by the handshake. It might not be the greatest work of art, but the sentiment is there...

Contradiction in Iraq's Time of Revolutionary Change

As Josh pointed out in the last entry, there seems to be a monumental accomplishment in Iraq's forming of a government with of all things, a Shiite as Prime Minister and a Kurd as President. Both these groups are minorities within the larger Arab/Muslim world and have been treated with intense persecution and oppression, especially under the former regime of Saddam Hussein. To have these groups come to power in the center of the Middle East as a result of a democratic vote is both a revolutionary accomplishment and an affront to certain old attitudes.

It is under these circumstances therefore that it would seem to be puzzling to hear the news today that tens of thousands of people rallied in the Baghdad capital demonstrating against the US occupation and Saddam Hussein. These were not just any people mind you but rather Shiite followers of the Shiite cleric Muktada al-Sadr. Considering the fact that Saddam Hussein was toppled as a result of the US invasion, and a Sunni-Baathist-Jihadist insurgency seems to be roiling the country by targeting innocent Shiites, it would seem strange that this Shiite group was pushing for a demonstration against the US occupation at this time and not against the sunni insurgency that has collaborated with the Sunni salifists of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who claims that Shiites are not real Muslims and in fact infidels who can be killed as justifiably as any Jew or Christian. Even stranger is that they coordinated their rally with another Sunni anti-US rally in the streets of Ramadi

There are a few important points to note about this rally:

1) Shiite Cleric Sadr predicted 1 million people at this rally and the result was far short of that goal with only tens of thousands of Iraq's millions of Shiites attending. This is and of itself is a commentary on the stength of the likes of Sadr among Shiites

2) Even with all these logical contradictions one can not discount the effects of massive amounts of anti-US propaganda and conspiracy theories so prevalent in the Middle East throughout the years of Baath party rule and even today. Actually the first Sadr uprising began when a newspaper that had claimed that a insurgent bomber targeting a Shiite mosque was actually a US missile. The continuation of False reporting can leave its mark on the attitudes of certain people.

3) Probably the most significant and outstanding points of the rally was the fact that "No major violence was reported during Saturday's demonstration, which the Iraqi Interior Ministry agreed to protect. U.S. Soldiers kept watch from behind concrete-and-barbed wire barriers, while gunmen manned surrounding rooftops". The fact that the new Iraqi government who has a policy of cooperation with America agreed to protect this violence-free rally while US forces kept watch from behind barriers shows the extent of Iraq's change! A peaceful rally held against the very people who made this sort of rally possible points to the fact the extent of change and sea of change can not be stopped at this point.

That seems to be the underlying effect of all these points. Iraq and as a result the larger Middle East, has changed unreversably.


Effigies of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, left, Saddam Hussein, and U.S. President George W. Bush at a rally in Baghdad on Saturday. At left, a sculpture symbolizing freedom.

The academy of fools

A leading British academic union, the Association of University Teachers, is once again proposing a boycott against Israeli academics "who refuse to condemn their government's policies." The boycott failed in the past, but this time, there's a new twist:

"We are now better organized," said Sue Blackwell, one of the authors of the motion. "One of the reasons we didn't win last time was that there was no clear public call from Palestinians for the boycott. Now we have that, in writing."

Imagine that--they managed to convince the Palestinians of all people to support a boycott against Israel. And in writing, too!

Meanwhile, no word yet on any proposed boycotts against Palestinian universities, where student political factions have been known to hold debates over who has killed more Israelis...

Sharon's Peace Plan

The Israeli government now plans to ban all Palestinian laborers from working in Israel within three years. Viewed together with the plan to disengage from Gaza and the northern West Bank as well as the construction of the security fence, this latest announcement provides the clearest picture yet of Sharon's grand strategy: complete separation between Israelis and Palestinians.

In the current situation, banning Palestinian workers will spell continued disaster for the Palestinian economy. That is undesirable for Israel for a number of reasons, including the fact that continued Palestinian economic trauma means that the global financiers of terrorism, like Hezbollah and Iran, will find no shortage of Palestinians willing to attempt terrorist attacks for cash. If this plan is to succeed, Israel will need to lobby for massive foreign investment to create jobs in the Palestinian territories. Industrial zones on the Egyptian and Jordianian borders--similar to the now defunct Erez zone--will also help boost the Palestinians' economy.

Though Sharon's strategy is unilateral and doesn't involve attempting to reach a permanent settlement to the conflict at this stage, it, ironically, will do more to benefit eventual peace than negotiations would at this point. By defining a provisional border and separating Israel from the Palestinians, Sharon is creating de facto the provisional Palestinian state called for by the "road map," and paving the way for a negotiated two-state solution in the future.

Ashrawi at Yale

Palestinian negotiator, legislator, and spokesperson extraordinaire Hanan Ashrawi spoke at Yale Law School tonight to a nearly full auditorium. The crowd was about evenly split between Yale students and aging community members, most of whom appeared to be lefty activist types (socialist newspapers were in abundance). Ashrawi's talk was indeed well-tailored for left-wing, American activist audiences. Throughout it, Ashrawi, a feminist, secular-minded Christian, referenced many of the left's favourite (and questionable) themes: unilateralism never works; American foreign policy is overly simplistic and sees only good and evil; civil rights are being rapidly eroded in post-Sept. 11 America. On this last point, she said, only half-jokingly, that instead of the U.S. exporting democracy to the Middle East, the Arab regimes apparently exported their oppressive practices to the U.S. Whatever.

On more substantive matters, she railed against Israel for all the Palestinian grievances du jour, such as the plan to build in the "E-1 corridor" between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem, the route of the security barrier, and the extent of Sharon's disengagement plan.

I asked a question about whether the Palestinians could give up their demand for "right of return," which is as divisive an issue as borders. She answered, reasonably, that any Palestinian negotiator who gave up the right would lose legitmacy. She said that there were three "steps" in the process of solving the refugee issue: (1) Palestinians will ask for recognition of Israel's role in creating the refugee problem; (2) they will ask for recognition of the "right" to return; and (3) the actual resettlement of refugees will take place. This last step, she implied, can be manipulated so that only a limited number of refugees end up entering Israel. It was unclear in what sense she meant that these three points constituted "steps," but the only way this solution will be workable is if all three steps are arranged simultaneously--i.e., Israel recognizes the refugees' claims only within the context of an agreement that effectively limits the number of refugees that actually enter Israel; otherwise the potential for Israel to be flooded with Palestinian refugees will remain, a possibility that Israel won't accept.

Another person asked about the potential for a one-state, binational solution to the conflict, which some PLO figures have recently been touting to scare demography-obsessed Israelis. The idea also has a lot of currency in left-wing activist circles, so I was interested to hear her response in light of the crowd. Ashrawi was pretty honest about how infeasible--and bad for the Palestinians--the binational plan is, even making a point about how Israel and Palestine are "not like South Africa."

I believe an Israeli government could strike a viable peace deal with someone like Ashrawi. But the question is, how representative a Palestinian representative is she? Given the strength of the militant and Islamist groups, not very, I think.

The Iranian Connection

In an interview in the Sunday Times, a Palestinian fighter in the Al-Aqsa brigades explains how Hezbollah has financed terrorist attacks against Israel throughout the intifada, and how they are continuing to do so in order to disrupt the current calm:

"They would send Islamic Jihad money in amounts of something like $4,000," said Ala'a Sanakreh, the 27-year-old leader of [Al-Aqsa in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus]. "It's easy - they just use Western Union."

According to Sanakreh, Hezbollah is still contacting militants in the West Bank about sponsoring attacks, though Al Aqsa and Hezbollah have had a falling out because of Hezbollah's willingness to undermine Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas' efforts to restore calm and its insistence on funding attacks without proper financial concern for the "martyrs'" families.

Since Iran is the primary backer of Hezbollah, the hand of Tehran is likely behind Hezbollah's attempts to sabotage any sort of reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. There are a few reasons why Iran and Hezbollah would want the intifada to continue, even though it's obvious the Palestinians are exhausted and have nothing to gain from continuing the policy of random terrorist attacks:

• Continued fighting in Israel takes world attention away from Iran's nuclear program.


• If Syrian troops withdraw from Lebanon later this year, Iran will be especially keen on maintaining Hezbollah as an armed force, so it can maintain its influence in Lebanon and its ability to mount proxy attacks against Israel when desired.


• Decreased violence in Israel will add to the pressure on Hezbollah to shed its weapons and become a Lebanese political party. This pressure is only likely to grow as time passes. President Bush has been pushing for Hezbollah to disarm, and--especially if Syrian troops leave Lebanon--the other, unarmed Lebanese factions will feel rather uncomfortable about Hezbollah's militia.

Intelligent Intelligence

David Brooks enters the debate on intelligence reform by citing a paper by my classmate, Sulmaan Khan. Following the paper, which deals with China, Brooks slams CIA intelligence reports as "bloodless compilations of data by anonymous technicians" that "do not draw patterns based on an understanding of ... history."

Overspecialization--looking too closely at the details and missing the big picture--can indeed be a problem, especially in Middle East studies. Just check out the article titles in the Arab Studies Journal. Nevertheless, I suspect that the generalist approach that Brooks supports, if it isn't grounded in some pretty significant details, can end up leading to bad predictions too. We ought to take advantage of what both analysis traditions have to offer, balancing them with each other.

Lebanon Terror Wave Continues

The latest attack in the terrorist campaign against Christians in Lebanon. Some people seem to want the Lebanese to fear a new civil war...because if there's no security in Lebanon, the Syrians will have no choice but to continue their occupation.

Good News From Iraq

An encouraging sign that the Sunni Arab ulema in Iraq may be close to abandoning its support for the insurgency.

If they are insistent on their support for the Iraqi police, it would mean the beginning of the end for the terrorists wreaking havoc in Iraq, and also bring U.S. troops a big step closer to coming home. Too soon to tell...

A new approach to Palestine

The editor of the Khaleej Times proposes that the Gulf states establish diplomatic contacts and economic ties with Israel.

Good idea, even if his reasoning is a little backwards:

"We all know Israel was blocking a solution all these years. Once contacts are there, they will see for themselves and know it is no good to be remain isolated. The Israelis will see how Europeans, Americans, the Japanese, Australians, Indians, central Asians are all benefiting from the opportunities they got in the AGCC states [ie, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia]."

Then again, maybe contacts are still too traumatic a step for people who can't handle the sight of Jews in a photo (also from the Khaleej Times).