Augean Stables | Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you. (William Blake,

Time 2020-11-14 20:06:55

Web Name: Augean Stables | Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you. (William Blake,

WebSite: http://www.theaugeanstables.com

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Today is the 20th anniversary of the most disastrous event to occur in the year 2000, an event which has cast a long shadow over the unhappy early decades of a troubled new millennium. On this day twenty years ago, a Palestinian cameraman clumsily filmed what he claimed was footage of a boy under fire and killed by Israelis, and a French-Israeli journalist edited the brief fragments (cutting the last contradictory scene) and broadcast the accompanying narrative on France2. The image of Muhammad al Durah under fire, via the narrative that the IDF had targeted him, became the global symbol of Palestinian suffering at the hand of Israeli cruelty. It rapidly became an “icon of hatred,” that has had a greater immediate and long-term effect on the new century/millennium than any other such vehicle of incitement.A cry arose in the Umma, for some of pain, for some of rage, but for all, a clear sign that the Infidel, led by the twin Satans Israel and USA, were making war on Muslims. Indeed, no single event so far, has done more to arouse the spirit of Jihad against the West than this footage, which, as Bin Laden quickly pointed out in his recruiting video for global Jihad, demanded vengeance against al Yahood and their allies. Vengeance justified suicide attacks on civilians (two previously “forbidden” practices). The sentiment so resonated, that even “conservative” al Azhar had to yield before the sanctification of their combination – martyrdom operations. While itself not apocalyptic, the al Durah icon fed an apocalyptic Jihadi narrative: to #GenerationCaliphate Israel was the Dajjal (Antichrist).The West followed suit. Lethal journalists like Robert Fisk quickly affirmed the charge of deliberate murder. Where before such comparisons were considered ugly if not worse, now comparing Israel to the Nazis became common. A prominent French news anchor, speaking for many, declared that al Durah “erased, replaced the image of the boy in the Warsaw ghetto.” It was a new, post-modern “replacement narrative.” Instead of Christians or Muslims replacing Israel as the true chosen people, it was the former chosen people replacing the Nazis, and the poor Palestinian victim, suffering the fate of the Jews. The progressive refrain: “Israel has lost the moral high ground.” Nobel Peace Prize winners, politicians, diplomats, award-winning playwrites and journalists, prominent academics, UN officials, Jews and non-Jews, all joined in the chorus, aligning with the Jihadi apocalyptic narrative: Israel the new Nazi was the secular Antichrist.When the Western legacy media spread the meme of the “Jenin massacre” in April 2002, everything the Palestinians had claimed about al Durah – IDF intentionally murders children – buttressed new and equally dishonest claims of mass executions of hundreds and thousands. For weeks, even after given access to the camp, a credulous legacy media published these claims as news. Angry protests in the West accused Israel of genocide and a large plurality of Europeans believed it. “Politicians like Livingstone, Gallaway and Corbyn, pacifist academics like Judith Butler, openly sided with Hamas despite its openly espousing genocide. As Irwin Cotler noted that Israel is the only country that is at once the object of threats of genocide and accused of committing it.The al Durah icon was the first successful blood libel in the West since the Nazis rode their ecumenical Jew-hatred to mega-death for all in 1930s and 40s. Unlike earlier versions, this was spread by a Jew and carried by the professional news media, and its primary impact was on progressive, leftist circles, giving birth to a “new antisemitism” in its 21st century avatar, eliminationist “anti-Zionism.” Today’s rising tide of Jew-hatred from all directions, right, left, Muslim, Christian, secular, knowing, unknowing, starts on September 30, 2000.Others have never heard of it thanks to a news media which, when confronted with their errors about Israel, prefers to drop the story. Whether we know it or not, those of us entering this very grim-looking third decade of the 21st century, are the inheritors of this al-Durah-triggered new wave of Jew-hatred and its accompaniments – fake news, conspiracy theory, and violence.Tocqueville, noting the rise of compassion already when writing Democracy in America in the 1830s, quotes a letter written in 1675 by Mme. de Sévigné to her daughter, in which she calmly describes watching a fiddler broken on a wheel for stealing some paper, and then being quartered after death (i.e., his body cut into four pieces) with his limbs exposed at the four corners of the city. Tocqueville, amazed that she speaks of this as lightly as she discusses the weather, attributes the softening of customs that had occurred since then to the rise of equality. Democracy breaks down the walls that had earlier divided social classes, walls which prevented educated and sensitive people like Mme. de Sévigné from even recognizing the fiddler as a fellow human being. Today, our compassion extends not only to lower classes of human beings, but to the higher animals as well. (The End of History, p. 261)In To Kill a Mockingbird when the lawyer gets people to flip the identity of the victim, he did it along a racial line. Hari Krisna did it on a cosmic plane in which not only tribal but even individual identities dissolve in the oceanic feeling of oneness. John Lennon was channeling that when he composed Imagine.This radical act of empathy, throws into complete turmoil the certainties of the us-them world that have informed human calculations for millennia if not hundreds of millennia. Their pleasure our sorrow (envy), their suffering our joy (Schadenfreude), and the political axiom: rule or be ruled.But with the woke, this senseless world of zero-sum competition yields to the positive-sum embrace: everyone s a winner. Not: I can only win if you lose , but: We can both, all win! At its core, this sense of cosmic solidarity with all humans, indeed with all creatures, is existentially a religious experience that turns the suspected hostile other into an unimpeded extension of the self. It is so compelling that people will sacrifice a great deal of their mimetic desires and even their survival instincts, in order to cleave to it. This was certainly a central feature of the 1960s, especially the American combination of Woodstock, Communes, Eastern religions, sex, drugs and rock and roll. The empathic revolution. We all win when we are all one. To paraphrase Pogo, the woke says: We have met the enemy, and it is the guys among us who say “us,” and calculate victories on the back of others.The following is from my book ms: They re so Smart cause we re so Stupid: A Medievalist s Guide to the 21st Century. It is part of a chapter on the Jenin Massacre and concerns the self-justification of Janine de Giovanni to documentary-maker Martin Himmel (Jenin: Massacring the Truth) for her claim about that what she saw in Jenin “Rarely in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life.” When it became clear that no massacre had occurred at Jenin, some papers and individual journalists, like Phil Reeves, ran apologies for the errors of their coverage after the UN came out with its report of fifty plus dead.[1] Others, often the most egregious offenders, like the Guardian, refused outright to acknowledge the error, even a decade later.[2] Martin Himmel, with one of the soldiers from Jenin, tried to track down some of the British press’s most lethal journalists, and found himself either refused audience, or, when granted interviews, dismissed with more misinformation.[3] The prize for dishonest response to being caught engaging in lethal journalism goes to Janine di Giovanni, whose claim to fame was writing in the London Times (possibly Britain’s most high-minded paper), “Rarely in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life.”[6] Note how both remarks involve attributing (malevolent) motive: “deliberate… disrespect.” Given the massive and savage destruction of Bosnia, Chechnya et al., where massacres of civilians and mass rape of women ran into the thousands and tens of thousands, where whole cities were devastated, as compared to five square blocks of a refugee camp, it is hard to imagine a more dishonest, personal “testimony.” And anyone among her readers who wanted to put Israel, that nation of sovereign Jews, in the gutter of Nazi-like behavior, could avail themselves readily of her false “witness” as a journalist. Unlike A.N. Wilson of “genocide” fame at theEvening Standard,[7]and the Guardian’s team (Susannne Goldenberg, Peter Beaumont, Seumas Milne,Brian Whitacker, and Chris McGreal), all of whom declined to be interviewed byHimmel, Janine, completely unrepentant, had the immodesty to think she coulddefend herself. In so doing, she gives us a striking profile of a lethaljournalist – how one thinks about his or her work, subjects, critics, evenself… None of it is particularly attractive, much of it very damaging to aprofession with alleged ethical standards. “We’re not naïve,” Di Giovanni insists, notrealizing that the alternative to naïve in this case, is maliciously dishonest.“Well into 15 years of covering war, we [I and my colleagues] were horrified,really horrified. The level of destruction was quite unnecessary, to level it,to make it look like a football pitch was shocking,” she explained, as if sheknew the military issues that made the IDF’s choices “unnecessary,” and as ifso tightly contained an area of destruction were worse than the vast,indiscriminate, destruction she had been seeing for 15 years. “They were hidingsomething,” she asserts confidently, clinging to the massacre-meme that theIsraelis had buried the bodies of those they had executed.[8]“What happened at Jenin was an outrage and a violation of all human rights,”she asserts, though she did admit that the Israelis had not committed amassacre. Asked how she felt about apologizing for herown coverage, she responds authoritatively, “I would never do that. I standcompletely by what I write.” Whether this is meant as a normative statement (myimpression), or specifically about Jenin, it bespeaks a remarkable attitudetoward self-criticism on the part of an alleged journalist. Not only is itobvious to her that she has done nothing wrong, it is equally obvious thatIsrael has committed heinous war crimes. For her, the only significantdifference between the Serbs, the Hutus, and the Israelis is that when it cameto the first two, war criminals were condemned, but “the Israelis never are,”as if everyone knows they’re guilty but they always get away with it. Asked to explain how 56 dead in three weeks ofurban warfare can be worse than Chechnia and Bosnia, where a third of amillion, primarily civilians, died, Di Giovanni first takes refuge behind herpersonal experience – “Have you been to Chechnya?” – then resorts to thestunningly naïve: Was it [my comparison] disproportionate? Well I’ve been to all those places, and I’ve been to Jenin, and I don’t… I still really believe that one human life is one human life… so I think in a sense… [discusses the thousands and thousands massacred by the Hutu]… horror is horror, injustice is injustice, human rights abuse is human rights abuse.[9]This is not the seasoned voice of a serious warcorrespondent, who understands the terrible truth of triage, of a journalistwho “bears [honest] witness” to her time. Rather, it is the sophomoric voice ofthe “every life is precious” meme, of the most empathic of progressives livingin a civil society bubble of non-violence and safe-spaces. Having thusundermined her repeatedly invoked “I’ve been around and let me tell you…”claim, Di Giovanni then switches to a “ridiculous” moral equivalence, in whichpainfully avoided collateral damage is equated with deliberate genocide because in both cases, people died.[10]As Martin Sieff comments to Himmel, “Where were these people coming from? Whatdid they see and what did they imagine they were seeing?”Time and time again Sharon has been excused for massive human rights violations… I could go on and on, and it’s not just that they’re excused from it, but it’s very rarely accurately reported… in America, in North America… [where] the Zionist Lobby is much stronger than in Europe.Consider this double imprint of the lethaljournalist’s attitude. First, the target has been acquired: Sharon and the IDFare a priori guilty, as bad as the worst, and need to be brought beforejustice. Therefore, as a journalist, she is completely justified in comparingthe IDF to the Hutus and Serbs, in order to right that standing ‘injustice.’Second, like those who attack the press for being too pro-Zionist,[11]she complains that not enough Palestinian claims get passed on as news, andthat American journalists, less willing to be lethal journalists and turn onIsrael, are less free.[12]How can we get Sharon and the IDF punished for their crimes, if not enough ofthese “massive human rights violations” get reported?[13]But perhaps her most telling attitude wastowards the Israeli soldier who had come with Himmel. Asked to address her self-justificationto the soldier before her, she responded, “I don’t want to talk to him. Infact, I don’t even want him in the room when I’m talking.” Then turning toHimmel, she asks, “Are you Israeli? Are you Jewish?” In other words, the “humanrights” advocacy journalist has so completely bought the Palestinian narrativethat she will not even consider interacting with an Israeli “war criminal.”[14]As she herself insists, there is no way that she might be wrong and he might beright. Pretty tribal for a progressive.In this, she sheds light on David Blair’s falsememory that he would have reported it, had the Israelis made their case, andKuperwasser’s observation: these journalists were not listening to Israelis(unless they confirmed their beliefs). They always-already considered them“beyond the pale.”[15]The question about Himmel’s Jewishness reflects, on the one hand, thewidespread attitude that “only a Jew would defend Israel,”[16]and on the other, a treatment of another human being that, were it addressed toany other group, would readily be called racism.[17]None of this hurt De Giovanni’s career. Shewent on to positions in Newsweek and Vogue, where she hasrepeated her self-justification about Jenin.[18]She even gave a talk in which she advised aspiring journalists on how to do thejob professionally.[19]Here the lethal journalist has cleaned up her act (aside from warmlyrecommending Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as reliable sources).You have to be extremely careful and check stories, especially of massacres… The reader will always be able to tell if you have bias… footage is often not reliable… Be very careful when interviewing… you have to maintain distance without giving witnesses impression you don’t trust them… you need to be objective. I try not to be for one side of the other, but sometimes it’s very hard when someone is the victim of state terror… There’s no need to exaggerate, just tell the story… You’re not a prosecutor… [but] an objective writer, above, trying to tell it.The only connection here to her Jenin lethal journalism is the semi-admission of bias “when someone is the victim of state terror.” In other words, in Jenin, for example, she sided against Israel which was, in her and Human Rights Watch’s PoMo-PoCo victimology book, committing “state terror,” the worst of all.[20] Otherwise, she advocates the kind of journalism that she decidedly did not practice at Jenin. No wonder the talk is so flat and lacking in conviction. Pretending to be an objective reporter, above it all, trying to tell it like it is… is not Janine’s passion.[2] “Truth-Seekingin Jenin,” Guardian, August 2, 2002;on the ten-yearretrospective, see above n. 25. [3] Himmel, “Challenging the British Media,” Jenin:Massacring the Truth. [5] Conversation with (rtd) General YossiKuperwasser, 2006.[8] A theme that recurs in Palestinian testimonyover and again in Jenin, Jenin (see below).[9] Himmel, Jenin, “Comparing Jenin withother Conflict,” *** [10] Compare this thinking with the technicalprevarication of the Human Rights Watch official explaining how what Israeldoes (collateral damage) is a war-crime but what Hamas does (suicide terror) isnot, despite the key factor being intent: “***.”[12] This is the complaint not only of theacademics who defend the lethal journalists (Falk and Philo), but of thePalestinians themselves: Abo Gali complains to Rehov that the information doesnot flow as it should (Route de Jenine, **:**).[13] On the political agenda of lethal journalists,see ibid, n. 47. For the example of a Harvard Student excoriating the US pressfor failing to report the massacre as luridly as the European press, see above,n. 27.[14] Just as the crowd of Israeli admirers of Muhammad Bakri considered David Zangen a war criminal when he tried to defend the IDF operation (below).[15] For an in-depth analysis of this syndrome, seeRobin Shepherd, A State Beyond the Pale,” [16] See French consul’s remark to me; thejournalist to the French Jewish teacher I, 1, n. **.[17] See Richard Ingrams, a columnist for theObserver, who refuses to read letters from Jews about the Middle East, andwants that Jewish journalists to declare their racial origins when writing onIsrael. Julie Burchill, “Good,Bad and Ugly,” Guardian, November 29, 2003. Can one imaginesuch a demand from Muslims? Ha aretz Editorial Board Stupidity marches onEditorialHa’aretz Nov. 10th The death of Mohammed al Dura, the 12-year-old boy who was caught with his father in cross fire between Palestinians and Israel Defense Forces soldiers at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip, was the event which epitomized the character of the conflict in the territories for many people: A confrontation between stone-throwing boys and armed soldiers who did not hesitate to use their weapons. In the course of these events, dozens of other boys have also been killed by IDF fire, and many have suffered head and chest wounds. One can accuse the Palestinians of failing to stop children from taking part in violent incidents. One can also be indignant over the use of child fighters and of the exploitation of their injuries and deaths for propaganda purposes. However, the IDF must take action to stop killing a high number of young people. Israel should not accept the use of lethal fire when it is not for self-defense purposes. The IDF, too, understands the impact on Israel s image of the list of those killed in the conflict. This is apparently the basis for the inquiry which Southern Commander Major General Yom Tov Samia ordered into the death of Mohammed al Dura. Anat Cygielman s investigative report (Ha aretz, November 7) reveals that the IDF has asked two civilians, physicist Nahum Shahaf and engineer Yosef Duriel, to try and reconstruct the incident. These people, who have volunteered their services, had their own preconceived ideas about the reason why al Dura was killed. In interviews to the media, Duriel contended that it was a premeditated incident staged by the Palestinians with the participation of the father, the television cameraman and Palestinian shooters. Shahaf admits that he shares Duriel s view, but is convinced Duriel made a tactical error in talking to the media. Duriel has been duly removed from the investigative committee, but Shahaf, who continues to serve on the committee, has not bothered to consult ballistics experts. Nor has he depended on the testimony of the soldiers or of the television crew. It is hard to describe in mild terms the stupidity of this bizarre investigation. The circumstances of al Dura s death raise questions that definitely require a response. The IDF was quick to apologize at the time, without conducting an investigation as to whether the youth was killed by IDF fire. No Israeli institution bothered to set up an independent, expert investigation when this was possible. Now it is clear that the chances of getting to the truth of who shot the youth have been lost. With it, the belief in an independent IDF investigation has also been lost. The fact that an organized body like the IDF, with its vast resources, undertook such an amateurish investigation almost a pirate endeavor on such a sensitive issue, is shocking and worrying. Is this the level of management of the head of the southern command? Where was the chief of staff? Why didn t the political echelons the defense minister, for example demand that a proper investigation be conducted? Even if the investigation of the death of al Dura has gone badly wrong, top brass in the IDF as well as the political echelon which oversees the army must take into account the mounting significance of the growing list of youthful victims on the Palestinian side. It is their duty to find a solution that will decrease or even prevent this phenomenon. Haaretz. November 7, 2000.   After the demonstration by Shahaf and Duriel, proving that the fire that allegedly killed Muhammad al Durah could not have come from the Israeli camp, Haaretz cub reporter, with the encouragement of her boss, Shmuel Rosner, took apart the claims of the investigation. NB: At no point does the author let the reader know what the investigation s evidence for their minimal conclusion (ie IDF fire could not have a) killed the boy, and b) produced the bullet holes in the wall). Similar technique used by Bob Simon at CBS (to which she refers anonymously) and the Haaretz editorial board a couple of weeks later. IDF keeps shooting itself in the foot Army efforts to interest journalists in a dubious probe of the al Dura case backfires Anat CygielmanOn Monday, October 23 the IDF staged a re-enactment of the October 1 [sic] gun battle at Netzarim junction in which 12-year-old Mohammed al Dura was killed. Blocks were piled up at one of the army s firing ranges in the south, to simulate the wall where the boy and his father Jamal al Dura were pinned. A concrete barrel was brought in, to represent the one behind which the father and son crouched. Soldiers sent to the firing range by the IDF Southern Commander, Major General Yom Tov Samia, stood on top of a dirt embankment and fired shots at the wall and barrel, using a variety of different weapons. Two Israeli citizens took part in the re-enactment Nahum Shahaf, a physicist, and Yosef Duriel, an engineer. A film crew from the prestigious American news program 60 Minutes was there, having been given exclusive rights to film the replay of the Dura shooting. In the past two weeks a number of reports have circulated about new IDF findings in its investigation of the killing at Netzarim. These reports have stirred considerable interest in Israel and elsewhere, because for the Palestinians, the death of Mohammed al Dura captured by a French television crew has become the symbol of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The dramatic footage of his death has been seen in every corner of the world. Palestinian television runs an edited version pictures of an IDF soldier shooting have been spliced into the original footage. Poignant photographs of the father and son have been plastered along the sides of roads throughout the West Bank. The Cairo newspaper Akbar al Yom has reported that the city authorities have decided to name the street where the Israeli embassy is located after Mohammed al Dura. Shortly after the boy s death, the IDF acknowledged there was a high probability that IDF gunfire ended his young life and, speaking for the IDF, Deputy Chief of Staff Moshe Ya alon expressed his sorrow over the tragedy. Assuming that the damage to Israel s reputation was irreversible, and knowing it faced the realities of more children dying, the IDF was inclined to put the al Dura matter to rest. However, senior officers in the Southern Command were bitter about Israel s hasty decision to accept responsibility for the death. As days passed, reports circulated that they were increasingly convinced IDF soldiers did not shoot and kill the boy. Shahaf and Duriel also believed the matter had been settled too quickly. Two days after the incident, Duriel wrote in Ha aretz: The IDF spokesman deserves a prize for stupidity Ten minutes after the incident a normal spokesman for a normal army would have released a categorically formulated statement saying that provocateurs opened fire against IDF soldiers, behind the back of a child, and made sure he would be killed in front of cameras; and after the boy, they killed the ambulance driver who tried to save him. All this was done to score propaganda points by depicting murderous behavior on the part of IDF soldiers. After Ha aretz published these remarks, Shahaf phoned Duriel and suggested they investigate whether it was necessarily true that IDF soldiers shot the boy. The two were acquainted they met when they jointly reviewed Shahaf s findings on an altogether different matter, the Rabin assassination. Shahaf claims to have in his possession dramatic photographs which change the picture with respect to Yigal Amir s involvement in the murder. Shahaf and Duriel discussed ways of disseminating these Rabin assassination materials. With regard to Mohammed al Dura, the pair studied the angle of the shots fired by IDF men and concluded that the claims of the boy being killed by Israeli army bullets are dubious. Shahaf, who says he is a reservist in an intelligence division that deals with visual material, left a number of messages for Southern Commander Samia, asking for a meeting. He made his initial call to the major general after learning from the media that the IDF planned to demolish structures around the Netzarim junction. He warned against erasing physical evidence at the site such as the wall and concrete barrel, key pieces of evidence he wanted preserved. He says that when Samia got back to him, it was too late to effect such evidence preservation measures. But anyway, the Southern Commander agreed to meet Shahaf and Duriel and this took place, Duriel says, on October 19. The two went over their calculations with the IDF major general and urged him to initiate a review. They offered their professional services, gratis. Shahaf emphasizes this was designed as an impartial inquiry. He says Samia accepted his terms as he put it to Samia, nobody in the army can intervene in my activity and analysis. Samia has administrative responsibility, and I have responsibility for carrying out the project. I do the tests, I decide who should be involved in them. The army only helps me when I need assistance. Shahaf adds that he agreed to one caveat on his independent authority: The IDF decides when to release the findings. The pair did not get a formal assignment from the army to carry out the task, because of legal complications, Shahaf adds. Five days after the meeting with Samia, the first re-enactment was staged at the IDF firing range. As the scene was re-enacted, Duriel gave an interview to the American television crew. He expounded his thesis in front of the 60 Minutes camera. Al-Dura s death was staged with the aim of producing an image which would become a symbol and besmirch Israel s reputation around the world. Actors in the staged incident included Palestinian gunmen, a French television cameraman (who received production instructions ), and the father Jamal al Dura ( who apparently didn t understand that the act would end in the murder of his son ). Duriel mentioned that the father can be seen gesturing to the photographer in the film. When Samia learned about Duriel s interview, he ordered that the engineer be removed from the inquiry. Shahaf says I supported Duriel, but I think he made a tactical error, because you have to prove whatever you allege. Shahaf prodded ahead with the investigation, without his estranged partner. More tests were arranged tests Shahaf stresses were done with exacting scientific rigor. All results will meet the standards of scientific inquiry, he says. He says that he already has final results in hand that are very interesting. Asked about the professional character of this al-Dura shooting investigation, and about the participants who have taken part in it, the IDF spokesman refused to comment.Shahaf says he has promised not to divulge details, neither about the results of the investigation, nor the testing procedures followed. Despite the physicist s reticence, the work methods seem puzzling. During the first re-enactment, the distance between the IDF position (the dirt embankment upon which the soldiers stood) and the replicated barrel was only half of that separating the real IDF position and the Duras at Netzarim. Duriel says additional re-enactments were staged to rectify this distance issue. Did ballistics experts take part in the tests? Shahaf concedes he is no authority on ballistics however, he says, as a physicist I read scientific material, both theoretical and experimental, and try to consult with several experts in this area, and so I have basically finished all the stages necessary in learning this topic. Yossi Almog, a retired senior police officer who specialized in evidence-gathering, says: I don t believe the IDF would release a conclusion revising a previous declaration without first conducting a thorough examination, using the best professionals in the security establishment. I wouldn t rely on an approach made by some anonymous person. I might welcome that person s initiative, but I certainly wouldn t accept his conclusions without conducting a systematic, orderly examination, under the best possible conditions. Anything less than that isn t serious. In Shahaf s view, the fact that the [investigation] committee is impartial and the IDF doesn t interfere in its work, is an advantage. When the need arises, I turn to all sorts of authorities to get feedback. Any decision about whom to consult is my own. Under the Manhattan Project which developed the atom bomb a scientist was used to lead the effort, and from the moment he was selected , he chose people to help as he saw fit. Choosing 20 people in advance to investigate the matter wouldn t be prudent. Somebody who has sufficient knowledge and scientific experience should be chosen at the outset, and then that person should select consultants as he sees fit. Shahaf continues: If you don t want the committee to make any headway, then you should appoint a hundred people instead of three. Among other consultants, Shahaf sought out Yitzhak Ramon, an engineer from Haifa who published a letter in Ha aretz claiming that the films provide evidence the bullets which struck the father and son weren t fired from the IDF post. Had the shots been fired by the IDF soldiers who were positioned to the side of the Duras, the bullet holes in the wall couldn t have been so circular and clean, Ramon contended. Charles Enderlin, director of France 2 s Israel bureau, raises additional questions concerning the methodology of the IDF inquiry. French television has original footage shot at Netzarim the film has been shown to Ha aretz, and it includes shots of what happened at the junction before and after al Dura s death, as well as photographs of the wall and the bullet-ridden concrete barrel taken after the incident, and an interview with the father from a Gaza hospital. This is evidence which is crucial in any investigation of the al Dura death. Shahaf asked Enderlin for permission to use the material, but he didn t mention that his intention was to conduct a professional investigation of the event. Instead, Shahaf presented himself as a media professional. In a fax to Enderlin, Shahaf wrote that he wanted the full, unedited version of the footage since the film would enhance the understanding of the background and atmosphere which preceded the killing of the Palestinian boy. Shahaf added in the fax that since the material is likely to be presented to professional media forums, including film schools, we need the full footage, including pictures that are hard to look at, including gunshot wounds and the like. Enderlin rejected Shahaf s request. Subsequently he was stunned to discover that Shahaf is affiliated with an IDF investigation. He says when the IDF spokesman later phoned and asked to receive the film materials, France 2 said they would be released only under formal court order. Duriel is angry with the IDF. He can t fathom why the army isn t publishing the truth. Each day that goes by, he says, increases the damage to Israel s name. He hints that the IDF has an interest in holding back the disclosure of the investigation s findings. He also suggests that the IDF has kept concealed from the public a crucial fact next to the father and son, he claims, there was a second site from which Palestinians fired at the IDF. On Duriel s calculations, the bullets which killed Mohammed al Dura had to have been fired from this second Palestinian position. Asked why the IDF is keeping secret crucial facts which would apparently exonerate its soldiers, Duriel is evasive. The answer is explosive, he says, refusing to elaborate. The IDF has to decide when and how it will release the investigation s results. The army tried to stir some interest among some American journalists in the findings, but the attempt backfired the professionals were not impressed by what they heard and decided not to use it. In choosing Shahaf and Duriel as partners in the al Dura inquiry, the IDF has again shot itself in the foot. Even if the investigation and its conclusions should pass muster on scientific and professional grounds, they simply won t be accepted by the public. That might make little scientific sense but it s a hard public-relations fact. Duriel s ill-conceived 60 Minutes interview was a case in point. The police officer, Yossi Almog, put it best: If you want to release some conclusion that carries weight, it is important that the investigation be carried out by the most professional staff the state can put together. Why, then, did the IDF decide to involve Shahaf in its professional review? The IDF spokesman just refuses to relate to questions of this sort. Published date 07/11/2000 rights reserved Ha aretz © ץראה , תורומש תויוכזה לכAfter the demonstration by Shahaf and Duriel, attempting to prove that the fire that allegedly killed Muhammad al Durah could not have come from the Israeli camp, Haaretz cub reporter, with the encouragement of her boss, Shmuel Rosner, took apart the claims of the investigation. NB: At no point does the author let the reader know what the investigation’s evidence for their minimal conclusion (ie IDF fire could not have a) killed the boy, and b) produced the bullet holes in the wall). Similar technique used by Bob Simon at CBS (to which she refers anonymously) and the Haaretz editorial board a couple of weeks later.Army efforts to interest journalists in a dubious probe of the al Dura case backfiresOn Monday, October 23 the IDF staged a re-enactment of the October 1 [sic] gun battle at Netzarim junction in which 12-year-old Mohammed al Dura was killed. Blocks were piled up at one of the army s firing ranges in the south, to simulate the wall where the boy and his father Jamal al Dura were pinned. A concrete barrel was brought in, to represent the one behind which the father and son crouched. Soldiers sent to the firing range by the IDF Southern Commander, Major General Yom Tov Samia, stood on top of a dirt embankment and fired shots at the wall and barrel, using a variety of different weapons. Two Israeli citizens took part in the re-enactment Nahum Shahaf, a physicist, and Yosef Duriel, an engineer. A film crew from the prestigious American news program 60 Minutes was there, having been given exclusive rights to film the replay of the Dura shooting. In the past two weeks a number of reports have circulated about new IDF findings in its investigation of the killing at Netzarim. These reports have stirred considerable interest in Israel and elsewhere, because for the Palestinians, the death of Mohammed al Dura captured by a French television crew has become the symbol of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The dramatic footage of his death has been seen in every corner of the world. Palestinian television runs an edited version pictures of an IDF soldier shooting have been spliced into the original footage. Poignant photographs of the father and son have been plastered along the sides of roads throughout the West Bank. The Cairo newspaper Akbar al Yom has reported that the city authorities have decided to name the street where the Israeli embassy is located after Mohammed al Dura. Shortly after the boy s death, the IDF acknowledged there was a high probability that IDF gunfire ended his young life and, speaking for the IDF, Deputy Chief of Staff Moshe Ya alon expressed his sorrow over the tragedy. Assuming that the damage to Israel s reputation was irreversible, and knowing it faced the realities of more children dying, the IDF was inclined to put the al Dura matter to rest. However, senior officers in the Southern Command were bitter about Israel s hasty decision to accept responsibility for the death. As days passed, reports circulated that they were increasingly convinced IDF soldiers did not shoot and kill the boy. The following text is excerpted from my book (now) titled, Stupidity Matters: A Medievalist s Guide to the 21st Century. It discusses the alleged revision of the PLO Charter as demanded by the Oslo Accords. It was cut from an article published based on this material at the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs on the reasons for the failure of the Oslo Process and the disastrous misreading of that failure.The Hudaybiya episode also shed light on the international game at play in the Oslo Peace Process. When American journalists discussed the Hudaybiya speech (European presses tended not even to mention it; in the US, only the “right-wing” press raised it), they immediately aroused the ire of Caliphater Da’īs. Daniel Pipes wrote repeatedly about the Johannesburg mosque speech, about the meaning of the Treaty of Hudaybiya, and the trouble any Westerner who mentioned it quickly encountered when they brought up the subject. Despite being studiously fair to the Muslim prophet on historical grounds, citing as plausible the Muslim apologetic version that the Meccans broke the treaty, and Muhammad never meant a deliberate deception, Pipes provoked furious condemnation and some of the earliest accusations of “Islamophobia” from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim ‘civil rights’ organization with ties to the same Muslim Brotherhood of which Hamas is a branch.[1] The Muslim outcry essentially forbade infidel critics from examiningevidence relevant to their pressing concerns, a pattern that replicated itselfin academia, with Daniel Pipes’ work being banned by some professors as“Islamophobic.” Instead, peace enthusiasts viewed Arafat and the Palestinianleadership, as they themselves insisted they were while speaking English:full-fledged modern players who yearned for their own nation and freedom, andwhom one could trust to keep commitments to the ‘peace of the brave.’ When theopportunity presented itself, they believed, Arafat would choose the imperfect,positive-sum, win-win, over the zero-sum, all-or-nothing, win-lose. They‘believed’ in the Palestinian leadership and rejected indignantly – as racists!– anyone who dared to suggest the Palestinians leadership was still in limbiccaptivity to atavistic revenge.Thus, when Arafat tried in 1995 to convene the PLOto rewrite their charter and eliminate calls for the destruction of Israel, asprescribed by the Oslo Peace Accords, he found the resistance too great. Even a‘moderate’ like Hanan Ashrawi opposed such a move, which, she claimed, echoingSaïd, “will appear tobe a succumbing to Israeli dictate.” In other words, obligations to apositive-sum resolution took second seat to Palestinian concerns about theoptics of ‘appearing to submit.’ So instead the Palestinians delayed any actualchanges in their charter, and gave it to a committee that promptly buried theinitiative to this very day over 20 years later.Peres,deep in an election campaign, nevertheless hailed the prevarication as “one ofthe most dramatic developments of the 20th Century,” And the media dideverything it could to cover for the Palestinians: “P.L.O. Ends Call forDestruction of Jewish State,” blared the NYT headline of the same article thatreported Ashrawi’s no-vote.[2] Tothis day, the charter remains unchanged; and while Palestinians politicians andreligious figures continue to adhere to liberating Palestine ‘from the River tothe Sea,’ their spokesmen insist in English that they’ve fulfilled all theirobligations. And the media, and their invited experts, rather than challengethem, repeat their talking points as if, “everyone knows.”[3] Tothis day, in Arabic, members of the PNC insist that the issue of recognizingIsrael is ‘out of the question,’ and has ‘never been raised at any PNCgathering.[4]Western journalists and policy experts not only failed (and continue tofail) to challenge such claims, they ignored the long and troubling list ofPalestinian violations of the accords, and pressured Israel, to stop harping onthe negative, lest they ‘queer’ the peace process.[5] Indiscussing the Hudaybiyya speeches, Buck notes: The speeches wereviolations of the spirit, if not the letter, of the accords, and, although theRabin-Peres Labor government rarely acknowledged it publicly, there were manyother violations as well… “We had books and books filled with violations,” thisperson told me, and added, “I saw Rabin and Peres so angry at what they had toeat from the Palestinians.”But of course, this was the price of peace… letting them violate theagreement without complaining, lest those who so complain, ruin the chances forpeace.[6]Thus, even as Jerusalem and Washington prepared for a grand finale tothe peace process at Camp David in the summer of 2000, even as Israel’s mediaprepared their people for peace, Arafat’s media prepared Palestinians for war. PalestinianTV featured horrendous and staged footage of Israeli troops murderingPalestinian children and raping their women – the full panoply of lethalnarratives with which the PA incited its people to war.[7] And none of the key decision-makers paid anyattention.[1] DanielPipes, “Lessonsfrom the Prophet Muhammad’s Diplomacy,” Middle East Quarterly, Sept. 1999; idem, “Arafat and the Treaty ofHudaybiya,” Sept. 10, 1999; idem, “HowDare You Defame Islam?“ Commentary,Nov. 1999; idem, “DoI Win a British ‘Islamophobia’ Award?” Lion’s Den, June 26, 2004,updated Mar. 28, 2016. Note Pipes was more generous than Arafat, who, onlyweeks later, repeated the analogy to another group of Muslims, this timespecifying that the “treaty with the infidels was torn down two years later”(Karsh, Arafat’s War, 149).[3] Dennis Ross has an interesting account of asecond ‘try’ at getting the Palestinians to revise their charter, in which thePalestinian maneuvering to give the impression of a change, in the presence ofthe visiting President Clinton, becomes clear, and, in the end, face-saving forall involved trumped any substantive change: The Missing Peace, pp.**-**. On the perpetuation of this narrative even to this day, see “Everyone Agrees,”Second Draft, December 2016.[4] Fatah Central Committee member MuhammadShayyeh, “Tothis moment Fatah does not recognize Israel,” Official PA TV,Topic of the Day, March 26, 2017.[5] The Prime Minister’s office prepared a whitepaper on Palestinian violations of the accord, which they only releasedNovember 24, 2000: “PalestinianAuthority and P.L.O. Non-Compliance with signed agreements and commitments: Arecord of bad faith and misconduct,” Barak Government White Paper,November 24, 2000. Even though this came almost two months after Arafat hadopened the Oslo Trojan Horse, it met with much criticism both within Israel andespecially abroad: Aluf Benn, “White Paper Tiger Unleashed,”Haaretz, November 29, 2000.[6] Buck’s source fingers the fear of publichumiliation that drove Peres and Rabin not to admit they were wrong aboutArafat. Add to that the enormous (messianic) pressure to get the peace tosucceed. See Golan Lahat, HapituiHameshihi: Aliyato Unefilato shel Hasmol Haisraeli (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 972series, 2004), chapter **, “The Sacrifices for Peace.”[7] Itamar Marcus, “Rape,Murder, Violence, and War for Allah against the Jews: Summer 2000 onPalestinian Television,” Palestinian Media Watch, Jerusalem, Sept. 11, 2000.Last summer, I attended the annual ISGAP conference on antisemitism in Oxford, where a wide range of people, from scholars to graduate students, gathered to learn about antisemitism and build curricula for teaching it as courses in various fields (social sciences, history, religion, literature, art). A number of speakers invoked the observation, “it only startswith the Jews.” In the long run, many, including the Jew-haters themselves,become victims of the hatreds they set in motion. How many fervent Christianswho believed that the Jews had secretly sent messages to the Antichrist todestroy the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem (1009) and watched them slittheir own throats rather than convert, realized that within littleover a decade, their fellow Christians would facesimilar, unprecedented and terrifying choices of life or death at the hands of ecclesiastical androyal authorities (1022)? How many Germansat the Nuremberg rallies (1933-39) realized what a catastropheHitler would bring down upon their cheering heads? How many Westerners realizehow much they contribute to the collapse of their own, quite remarkable civilsocieties (and all the progressive movements they foster) with their indulgencein antisemitism in its 21stcentury avatar, anti-Zionism? One evening during the conference, I visited atwitter friend,the physicistDavid Deutsch,who’s writing a book about patterns of irrational thought that sabotage humancreativity and progress (a fine, positive-sum endeavor). He has a chapter onthe Jews in which he identifies what he calls it “the Pattern” concerning theJews (He writes it with a capital P; I’ve given it the twitter handle #DeutschsPattern).The key to people’s behavior in regard to Jews, he argues, is the need to preservethe legitimacy of hurting Jews, for being Jews. Maintaining this legitimacy,and making sure Jews know their condition, Deutsch insists, is much moreimportant than actually hurting Jews. (In what follows, I quote from adraft chapter Prof. Deutsch shared with me.)According to Deutsch, this is a powerful force that spanscivilizations and millennia; and, a mysterious and self-destructive one.No one yet knows what causes the need to legitimise hurting Jews. Butpeople who have it – Jews and non-Jews – are typically willing to pay a pricefor this: to suffer, and in many cultures even to die for it. And theyconfabulate for themselves the same explanations that they tell other people.Alongside Augustine’s libido dominandi, a libido nocendi? The need to harm at all costs?The following are the journalists, in-house analysts, and invited guests from December 23-29, 2016 who participated in BBC Global and CNN International news. * =adherent of occupation paradigm (ie Israeli settlements main obstacle to peace)The following are relatively accurate transcriptions of the broadcasts of BBC Globe and CNN International from December 23-29, 2016. I have the recordings of all of these passages.Don Lemon: Unprecedented phone call stops UNSC s Israel vote. …but unlike most other presidents in waiting, Trump has now jumped in with both feet into in to the most complicated difficult foreign policy issues for any president – the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Trump has been working the phones calling world leaders to scuttle an anti Israel resolution at the UN, Elise Labott reports. …Obama was prepared to let the resolution pass. Either by abstaining or voting in favor of it. the US has traditionally seen Jewish settlements in areas controlled by Palestinians, as an obstacle to a peace process, but has never gone so far in a UN vote. The move today would have been seen by many as a provocation. A parting shot at Israel s PM with whom Obama has strained ties. (rest same as previous) YES RLS very important TOLOunprecedented policy move, John Vause with Dave Jacobson (Dem. Strategist) John Thomas (Thomas Partners Strategists) Josh Lockman (USC GouldSchool of Law) Obama was prepared to let this resolution pass not use the veto… itsincredibly broad. If you look at the language being used, in some respects itwould have meant that parts of EJerusalem, including the Jewish quarter in the old city the Western Wallwere technically off limits to Israelis? The following is a glossary list of terms I (and others) have developed to help describe the civilizational dynamics of the 21st century. I welcome suggestions for my definitions and for others I haven t included.Accuracy: best approximation one can make describing reality/actuality.Journalistic Accuracy: best effort to describe what actually happened.Al Yahud: Arabic for “the Jew,” a pervasively derogatory phrase, sons of apes and pigs.Analogic dyslexia: wild and inappropriate historical analogies. See:Cultural relativity/EquivalenceChronologic dyslexia:putting cart before horse. SeeCult of OccupationApocalypticism: urgent sense that time for the Final Events is nowActive cataclysmic apocalyptic: agentsof apocalyptic destructionPassive cataclysmic apocalyptic: outside force destroys.Transformative apocalyptic: voluntary transformation into new worldApocalyptic narrative: cosmic/global story/scenario: how good will soon defeat evil.Augean Stables: bad practices accumulated over long periods. My blog onWMSNMCaliphate: rule of Islam, of Shari’a applicable to all including infidel dhimmiGlobal caliphate: world submitted to Sharia, triumphalist millennial goal.See: Muslim Triumphalism, Global Jihad, Da’wa.Global Caliphater: Muslim believingthetime for global Caliphate is now.Caliphater’s three choices: conversion to Islam, death, or dhimmitude.Civil/Demotic polity: substitutes fairness discourse for violence in settling disputes.Cognitive Egocentrism: projecting one’s own mentality onto others.Liberal CE (LCE): projecting good faith/positive-sum motives on others.Dominating EC (DCE): projecting bad faith/0-sum, rule or be ruled.Moebius strip of CE: interaction of LCE-DCE to the advantage of DCE.Cognitive Warfare (Cogwar): convince a more powerful foe not to use his force.Cult of “Occupation”: attributing world-salvific results to ending Israeli Occupation.Dar al Islam/Dar al Harb: world divided into realm of submission, and realm of war. See: Triumphalist Islam, Jihad, Global Jihad.Da’wa: “summons”, call to infidel to convert and Muslims intensify their devotion;Da-i Caliphaters: those waging global Jihad non-violently, by Cogwar.Demopaths:using human rights to protect enemies of human rights. See: Da-i Caliphaters, Cogwar, DCE.Dupes of demopaths: people who cede to the demopathic argument. See HRNGOs, Halo Effect, LCE.Demotic:of/for the people (demos), aimed at empowering commoners.Demotic Values: egalitarian, dignity of manual labor.Demotic Religiosity: egalitarian religious style of being in society.Demotic Polity: based on equality before the law, voluntary, contractual relations.See: Civil PolityDignity-guilt culture (DGC): dignity from mutual respect not dominion, d. of labor.See: Demotic Values, Demotic/Civil Polity;cf:Honor-Shame CultureDhimmi: status of favored infidels in Dar al Islam, protected as long as degraded. See: Triumphalist ReligioistyProleptic Dhimmitude: submitting in anticipation of conquest.Dhimmi Leaders: charged with suppressing criticism of Muslims in their communities. See: IslamophobiaDominating Imperative: Rule or be ruled.Empathic Imperative: judge others as favorably as possible.Eisogesis: aggressively reading outside meaning into a given text, imposition.Exegesis: deriving implied meaning from a given text, interpretation.Global Jihad: Mujahedeen’s purifying destruction brings on the *Global Caliphate. Global Jihadi Right (GJR): hierarichal movement of conquest/dominion.Global Progressive Left (GPL): leader of humanity’s evolution to global civil society.Halo Effect: HRNGO s good reputation because of their mission’s moral nature.Honor Killings: (see Shame Murders)Hopium: addiction to misplaced hope in decision-making. See LCE, .Human-Rights NGOs (HRNGO): NGOs dedicated to global human rights. See: Halo Effect, Moral Equivalence Human Rights Complex (HRC): ignore victimizers of color; obsess about “whites.”Humanitarian Racism: people of color as force of nature; make no moral demands. See: Victim Studies, IntersectionalityIcons of Hatred: visual embodiments of lethal narratives, powerful war propaganda. See: Own Goal Lethal War JournalismInformation Professionals: charged by public to inform accurately on relevant issues (academics, researchers, journalists, public intellectuals).Intifada: “shaking off,” as in mighty beast of Islam shakes off Zionist fly. Al Aqsa Intifada: first campaign of 21st century global Jihad. *Intifada, *Trojan Horse Intifada, *Oslo Jihad, *Y2KMind, *Oslo LogicJihad: “to struggle” (German, kampfen),either internally or holy war to spread Islam.Kalam Alnass: Arabic term for fear of others judging negatively. *OneidophobiaLethal Narratives: false atrocity-charges hard to disprove, poisoned war propaganda. Lethal Journalism: passing on one side s lethal narratives about the other (war propaganda) as news. Own-goal war journalism: reporting the enemy’s war propaganda as news.Patriotic war journalism: reporting one’s own war propaganda as news.Livingston Formulation:complaints of anti-Semitism are merely efforts to stop legitimate criticism of Israel. Cf:*IslamophobiaMainstream News Media MSNM: major print, video news outlets, news agencies. WesternMSNM (WMSNM): world’s most professional news production services. *Augean StablesMasochistic Omnipotence Syndrome MOS: everything our fault; if we do better, we fix everything.Marriage of Pre-Modern Sadism and Post-Modern Masochism (MPreMoS PomoM): Colonial Victim: it s all your fault! Westerner: How can I atone? Millennialism: an age of justice, abundance, peace and mutual love is coming (soon). Progressive vs Restorative:brave new world vspast golden age lost Demotic vs Triumphalist: bottom-up egalitarian vs top-down hierarchyModerate Muslim: one whoexchanges triumphalism for religious freedom; grateful to live in civil polity. *Y2KCompliantMoral Relativism/Equivalence: equating very different levels of moral behavior. *Dupes and Demopaths, *HRNGOsMoral Schadenfreude: taking pleasure in the moral degradation of another.Nakba: 1948 “catastrophe” in Arab-Muslim world, among refugees, when Israel won. Naksa: “setback” of 1967, Nakba 2.0. Naksba: mentality of those who scapegoat Israel while abusing own people. *Prime Divider Society *Negative-Sum Games *Strong Horse PoliticsOikophobia: repudiation of inheritance/home, “their side right or wrong.”Oneidophobia: dread of public disgrace, can paralyze, can galvinize.Oslo Intifada: war begun by Palestinians who treated Oslo Process as Trojan Horse. Oslo Jihad: first major successful campaign of Caliphater global Jihad in 21st century. Oslo Logic: positive-sum logic of Oslo peace process,Land for Peace, *2SSPalestinian Media Protocols Compliance (PMPC): measures WMSNM’s adherence to Palestinian lethal narrativesPallywood/Hizbollywood/Fauxtography: staged lethal narratives for *WMSNM use purveying Israel-Goliath/Palestinian-Victim frame.Paradigms: conceptual frameworks to understand Islam/West, Arab/Israeli conflicts. Shame-Honor Jihad P (SHJP): triumphalist, honor through global conquest. Politically Correct P (PCP1): *underdogma, Palestinian/Muslim as victim Post-colonial P (PCP2): Whites worst imperialists; must atone. Israel is white squared.Peace Journalism: emphasize the positive developments, downplay negative, encourage own side to trust other side.PoMo-PoCo: Post-modern, post-colonial; combination weaponized against West. See GPL, Active Transformative/Cataclysmic apocalyptic, MOC.Praeparatio Caliphatae: play on Eusebius’ notion of the Roman empire as a vehicle for Gospels. *Globalization, *Global Caliphate.Prime Directive: StarTrek: Don’t interfere. 21st C: Don’t piss Muslims off. *Proleptic DhimmitudePrime Divider Societies: fundamental cultural divide between elite and commoners. *Zero-Sum Shame-Honor; Cf: Demotic/Civil Polities, DGPPropaganda: manipulate opinion to accept what, better informed, one would reject.Public sphere: arena for discussion of matters of public interest. See: *MSNM, *WMSNM, *Information ProfessionalsrekaB Street (“Baker” backwards): analysts who ignore clues, dismiss key evidence. *Proleptic Dhimmi, *ASSO21C, *Own-Goal War JournalismReligiosity: a style of living one’s religious beliefs in the social world. Demotic Religiosity:egalitarian, treats all with dignity. Triumphalist Religiosity:hierarchical, treats unbelievers with contemptReplacement Theology: monotheist claim to replace predecessors as chosen of God Secular Replacement Theology (SRC): GPL values have replaced religionSupersessionism: claim to sit on top (supersedeo) of predecessor. *Triumphalist Religiosity, *Zero-Sum Games, *DhimmitudeSchadenfreude: The pleasure one takes in the suffering of another, malevolent envy. Moral Schadenfreude: pleasure in another’s loss of moral “high ground.”Self-criticism: ability to both generate self-criticism and hear criticism from others. *MOS.Semiotic Arousal: readily seeing signs and meaningful patterns in data/events. Semiotic Promiscuity: anything means anything. *Eisogesis *Moral EquivalenceShame Murders: murder of family member (women) driven by peer-enforced shame.Shame-Honor culture (SHC): shedding blood preserves or restores honor. *Zero-Sum Games, *Prime Divider Society; Cf: *DGC, *Civil SocietySocial Game theory: emotional aspects of zero-sum and positive-sum game-playing. Zero-Sum games: one side wins, other loses; one only wins if others lose. *Lethal Narratives, *Triumphalism, *HSJP, *Schadenfreude Positive-Sum games: win-win; voluntaristic; based on trust/ trustworthiness Negative-Sum games: lose-lose; if losing 0-sum… make everyone miserable.Strong-Horse Politics: seek out the strongest most ruthless player, join in his dominion. *Prime Divider Society, *HSJP, *Zero-Sum GamesTriumphalist religiosity: “Our God True God because we rule.” Our dominion proves our Religion the True one.See: *Replacement Theology, *Supersessionism, *Dominating Imperative Muslim triumphalism: Destiny of Islam to rule over mankind.Two-State Solution (2SS): land for peace ,positive-sum resolution to Palestinian-Israeli conflict.*Oslo Logic, *Y2KMindVerbal Vegetarians: speech of conflict-averse Westerners avoiding confrontations especially with Muslims. *Triumphalism *Proleptic Dhimmitide.Victimology: study of victims, impact of victim experience on their behavior. *Demopaths and their Dupes, *MOS, *MoPreMoS PoMoM,Y2K:Year 2000, computer bug problem. Y2KCompliant:capable of handling switch to 2000 (computers); capable of tolerating others in global millennium (religion) Y2KMind: insisting Palestinians ready for Oslo Logic no matter how they behave. Y2K Logic: Since 2SS only fair solution, Palestinians/Muslims will, under right circumstances, accept a positive-sum deal. *LCE, *Demopaths and their Dupes, *Oslo JihadY6K: Year 6000 since biblical “Creation”, advent of the sabbatical millennium = 500 CE (Hippolytus), 801 (Eusebius), 1996 (Ussher), 2048 (Bede), 2240 (Rabbinic)It s the never-dying fantasy of peace at hand this time from Susana Terstal, the EU’s Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process. HT Moshe Dann, who claims even normally sane people find this compelling.September 21 marked International Peace Day. While I look forward to one day celebrate the peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, in the meantime we shouldn’t lose sight of the need to keep moving in that direction. The very embodiment of the Sisyphean fantasy. We know what the direction is, and we should keep pushing the boulder of peace up the mountain. It s a standing proof that we re of good will (want peace) and good resolve. Of course underlying the virtue-signaling stand the classic liberal fantasies of a positive-sum solution (land for peace), based on the fair-minded but deluded notion that both sides want peace and will be willing to sacrifice their maximal demands for peace s sake. No evidence to the contrary from the Palestinians can penetrate this impermeable mindset, which means, predictably, that any problems will get blamed on Israel.While the EU believes peace is possible, current trends are pushing it further away than ever. We see the two-state solution being dismantled piece by piece, day by day. Believes is a good verb here: 1) it is an act of faith (remarkably from an organization whose leaders tend towards agnosticism if not atheism); 2) it is in the singular because the fantasy is a collective one, leading some of us to suspect it s a matter of [EU] identity. In the meantime, get ready for an Oslo Logic catechism.To give some background, the West Bank was divided into Areas A, B and C under the Oslo Accords. Any unilateral modification undermines the entire agreement. Of course all of this fell apart 19 years ago when the Palestinians launched a vicious war on Israeli civilians and unilaterally modified the Oslo Accords, thereby undermining the entire agreement. And nothing the PA has done since, either under Arafat or Abbas, indicates in any way that they want to abide by the Oslo Accords or reach the compromises it envisions. But somehow, not only does that behavior not register with the (single-minded) EU, but any Israeli response to the attitudes and behavior of the Palestinians registers (as here below), as a violation of Oslo. Catch 22.The purpose of the Oslo Accords was to cement the steps necessary leading to a negotiated final status agreement to end the decades-old conflict. Note the bizarre use of the present tense, as if the Accords are still in operation.The following article was published by MERIA: Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer 2017). For some reason it is not available at that site, so I post it here. FCaliphater: one whobelieves that in our day, Islam will triumph over all other religions andestablish a global Caliphate.Among the currently active apocalyptic movements in theworld today, none has had the success of Caliphaters in promoting theirrhetoric and mobilizing action in pursuit of their millennial goal: Islam’sglobal dominion. Caliphaters believe that now is the time for Islam to fulfillits disrupted destiny, and where there was Daral Harb (realm of war, of free kufar/infidels),there shall be Dar al Islam (realm ofsubmission to Allah and his servants, of dhimmikufar). With this global victory, Caliphaters believe, Islam will redeemhumanity through Allah’s/their dominion. Like all millennial movements, it is salvific. Indeed, onefinds among the faithful of all monotheistic traditions those who believe that theultimate salvific destiny of humanity is either to convert to their religion(whatever that means), or to serve their religion. And, as long the faithfulbelieve that those dramatic moments are far off (say, the year 6000 Annus Mundi),such beliefs have a limited impact on the lives of non-believers. In practiceit can even encourage deep passivity in believers who patiently await apromised redemption.[1]But when activated by an apocalyptic sense of “now, at longlast, is the time!” millennial dreams gain momentum and can become historicalmovers.[2]Driven by a sense of cosmic urgency, drawn together with goal of transcendent powerand glory, millennial movements are (hyper-)active.The Deeds of God through the believerswill transform the current world along its destined arc of perfection.[3]People who enter apocalyptic time, whether they are violent or not, lose theirconventional inhibitions and fears; they stop committing to long-termstrategies (“planting trees”), and instead commit to active, daring, radical,agendas whose success they fervently believe will change and transform the(unjust) rules and conventions, that they, apocalyptic warriors, so readilyviolate. When the Muslim Brotherhood formed in the 1920s CE/1340s AH,Hassan al Banna judged the time not yet right. So he set in motion amulti-generational millennial project of first restoring Dar al Islam where itonce was, and then moving onto the unfinished conquest of Dar al Harb.[4]In technical terms, Caliphaters have a triumphalist millennial goal (worlddominion), an apocalyptic time horizon (our lives), and an active scenariowhereby their deeds would bring on redemption: either cataclysmic, Jihad and/or transformative, Da’wa.[5]Caliphaters first caught the attention of the outside world withthe advent of the mujaddid/renewal atthe Muslim century mark, in this case, 1400 (1979)[6]– most notably in Khoumeini’s stunning victory in Iran, but, to those payingattention, also in the assault of followers of a Mahdi on the Grand Mosque ofMecca on the first day of 1400,[7]and the emergence of the Maitatsine in Nigeria.[8]From the perspective of several decades since, that Mujaddid became a keymoment in the emergence of Caliphaters in this century (1500/2076). Yussufal Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood preacher turned the Mujaddid of 1400 into a generations-long process. This is what I prefer in understanding this noble hadith [mujaddid]and its implementation in our century which we parted from [the fourteenth Hijri century which ended in 1980] in order to receive a new century; in which we ask Allah to make our today better than our yesterday, and our tomorrow better than our today.[9] Five years later, al Qaradawi made it clear what this “better tomorrow” would look like: Da’wa conquers the Crusaders’ in their own lands.[10] From the perspective of several decades since (late teens of the 21th century CE), the Caliphater energy released by that Mujaddid of 1400 became a key moment in the emergence of a Caliphater movement in this century, the one ending in 1500/2076.[11]Like many other millennial movements, Caliphaters view thecurrent state of the world as irredeemably evil and corrupt: it must pass awayto make way for the coming redeemed world. Among their apocalyptic signs ofgrowing corruption and evil, are key Western cultural tendencies and values: women’sliberation, freedom of speech and press, equal rights for all (including LGBTs,atheists, Jews, other infidels), freedom of speech and assembly for all.[12]For them, the permissiveness involved has corrupted morals (sexual freedom,especially for women) and equality between Muslims and infidels underminessocial structures (end of patriarchy, triumphalist religiosity).[13]Indeed, for them, the West’s very scholarship, with its critical analysis ofholy documents and the intellectual movements that produced them, constitutesan unacceptable blasphemy against the one true faith, Islam. On the millennialquestion of what this coming heaven on earth, this world of Dar al Islam, of Islam triumphant, willlook, Caliphaters like to remain vague, just as Marx and communists were vagueabout the workers’ paradise. The vaguer, the more people can be drawn into theapocalyptic excitement. Actual attempts to realize it, like ISIS, maydisappoint, but, as with communists, they don’t dissuade.[14]Once inside the apocalyptic time of Caliphater circles, however,major disagreements prevail on four major questions: 1) How fast will theredemption occur? 2) Where are we in the process? And, 3) How much of what isto come is due to the active work of the faithful, and, if so, 4) What actionsdo the times demand? The answers to these apocalyptic questions give a widerange of potential groupings within the movement. At the two extremes stand:Jihad: Active cataclysmic apocalyptic: The globalCaliphate will happen rapidly because of thefaithful. By destroying evil (the unjust world that now prevails) they will bring on Allah’s promisedredemption. Thus, mujahideen(jihadis)are Allah’s soldiers onearth to destroy evil and pave the way for the Caliphate. For some, like Hamas,this means implementing the promise of the Hadith of Rock and Trees, andexterminating the Jews.[15]Tribal jihad has had a remarkable success in the 21st century,especially in the Muslim majority world, where whole regions have melted downinto states of chronic war, dislocating millions of victims and tens ofmillions of refugees.[16]They have also penetrated Western societies with dramatic acts of suicideterror. These Shahids have turnedwarriors into apocalyptic weapons, creating a new and extremely potent weaponof 21st century jihadi warfare: “The demons released by this age ofchaos and war in the Middle East have become an unstoppable force,” warns PatrickCockburn.[17]Da’wa: Active transformative apocalyptic: Atthe other end of the range are Caliphaters who believe the process will happenmore gradually, through persuasion rather than force. Da’wa – summons to the faith – they insist, is how Islam shouldspread: the faithful summon, the infidels will respond, and if they do notbecome Muslims, they become prolepticdhimmi (accept subjection beforeconquest).[18]The global Caliphate might come now, but it might also take another generation,it might take till the end of this 15th century, so auspiciouslybegun in 1400 (1979) and destined to conclude with a global Caliphate in 1500(2076). For Qaradawi, Da’wa is analternative form of conquest: “political Jihad.”In the summer of 2006, during the appalling coverage of the IDF s first post-Jenin military campaign, in Lebanon, Hizbullah scored a major cognitive war victory over Israel as a result of the Kafr Qana airstrike, which blunted whatever military offensive Israel could mount. With the help of an Israeli errant Israeli missile and a grotesquely cooperative media, the Shiite Jihadis were able to stage a massive humanitarian disaster for the cameras, while Israeli spokespeople tripped over themselves to apologize. Nidra wrote a fierce response which she published at Atlas Shrugged but which I cannot find there. She has given me permission to post it here for readers.Don’t fall into that trap.Apologize in private, in the privacy of the heart, apologize in prayer,ask for divine forgiveness, but don’t apologize to public opinion. Don’t fall into the traps set by viciousjihadis and relayed by unscrupulous media.Investigate, hold to the highest standards, but don’t promise toinvestigate. Don’t make promises to thecynical birds of ill augur perched on the fringes of the battle, squawkingaccusations against your brave hearts.Don’t say “we will investigate” because they translate it to “guilty ascharged.” Did they ever ask a jihadi toinvestigate? Did they ever scrutinize ajihadi investigation with their steely eyes?Do they investigate their own misfiring, misjudgments, misleadingmisinformation?Don’t apologize to a world that does not share ourvalues. Don’t play into the perverseblood libel game. Your noble words fallinto their meat grinder and it’s our own blood and macerated flesh that comesout the other end. Don’t apologize formisdemeanors, for slips of the gun in the heat of battle, because the ears thatslurp up those innocent explanations are on fire with lust for our originalsin. They are not accusing you ofcollateral damage, they are accusing us of killing the divinity we brought tothe world, accusing us of existing, accusing us of existence itself. The jihad gods belch it out through theirbeards: you love life, we love death. They want death to win. And their misguided handmaidens pounce onevery apology and throw it into the maw of the death worshippers.The hand trembles to write these words. How not to apologize, how not to suffer theirpain in one’s own flesh, how not to have nightmares?Don’t apologize to public opinion for killingcivilians. Because dead civilians arethe WMDs of this war. Israel isbombarded with rockets and with alleged civilian casualties. Either Lebanese sources are lying, orHizbullah fighters are invincible, because every Israeli operation yields a newcrop of civilian deaths. And the mediatake notes, like dutiful stenographers, and the statistics are racked up andturn into more weapons aimed at the total destruction of Israel and the Jews.These jihad battles don’t begin with military action, theybegin with civilian deaths in the jihad camp.Mohamed al-Dura for the jihad-intifada, the Gaza Beach episode for thecurrent Hamas-Hizbullah offensive. Theybegin with blood libel Israel is massacring our children and everything thatfollows is justified by that initial crime.After the opening act, the jihad campaign segues into a small foray,just one more incident among dozens or hundreds in the never-ending war ofattrition. If Israel counterattacks, thejihadis throw up their arms in horror and scream “what’s all this fuss about afew captured [sic] soldiers?” At thesame time, their bearded chieftains, who have run for cover, send out crediblethreats of annihilation of Israel and all the Jews on the face of theearth. The rhythm of attacks accelerates shahidmartyrdom operations after September 2000, rocket attacks now—into a ragingwave of atrocities aimed at Jewish civilians, accompanied by uninhibitedexpressions of genocidal intent. Thejihadis are quick to declare victory.And redefine triumph. They beginwith the stated goal of destroying the “Zionist enemy,” but as soon as they seethat they are losing, they start attacking with dead civilians. The Jenin massacre, the Qana massacre, andcountless mini-massacres, an endless series of macabre crime scenes, bloodiedbodies, Israeli guilt, and it is all relayed without verification by the verymedia that pick up Israeli regrets and slather them over the “massacre” to makeit look even worse. Subsequently, when a bit of the truth comes out, Israeliapologies are used to contradict it.“What do you mean Mohamed al-Dura is not dead? The IDF apologized!” And Qana?A rare opportunity to dig under the rubble of lies and extract livingtruths: it was certainly not a heartless intentional massacre, and probably notan unfortunate side effect of war in tightly crowded villages but, most likely,a self-inflicted wound enhanced by gory fabrications. Yes, rockets are launched from homes in Lebanon,deliberately attracting counterattacks that will kill civilians and Hizbullahfighters dressed as civilians, but it is worse than human shields and moremacabre. And this time the evidence isleaking quickly. Lebanon is not Gaza,local stringers are not alone, the international press is in the field, thebloggers are on the job 24/24. Thedisturbing facts about the Qana bombing were rapidly uncovered and broadcast inreliable media. Will they be dismissed,as France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin continues to this day to dismiss theal-Dura manipulation, by claiming that Palestinians (or Hizbullis) are notclever enough for such complicated staging?What is the role of French diplomacy in the Lebaneseconflict? President Chirac packaged it asa “humanitarian crisis”…only two days after the outbreak of hostilities. MFA Douste-Blazy inadvertently admitted thatFrance has been calling for a cease fire…since the very beginning. Is France a secret ally of Hizbullah? Or simply a well-behaved dhimmi state? A dhimmi does not need to be told how toreact to this or that incident, he just has to grasp the underlying concept ofjihad conquest: jihadis can attack infidels, infidels do not have the right tostrike back. If the conquering jihadisare in a position of supreme power, they decimate the conquered population anderect their version of the monument to the war dead a mountain of severedheads. But when the jihadis are fightingan uphill battle, as is the case in Lebanon today, their main line of defenseis civilian suffering. The plight of therefugees, the dead and the injured, widows and orphans, the destruction ofLebanon a coherent strategy designed to engage the international community ina concerted effort to force Israel to stop fighting and submit to Hizbullah’sdemands.Don’t apologize.Don’t apologize to European countries all dolled up with plaques andmemorials to the Shoah and now mobilized to facilitate another extermination project.Don’t fall into European traps. Here inEurope local jihadis attack, then fall back and complain that Muslims are beingpersecuted. Don’t bow your head whenEuropeans shake their fingers. At theheight of the conflict, and smack between two Ahmadinejad Jew-killingdeclarations, the French foreign minister shamelessly caressed Iran’s rump withone hand and fondled domestic Jew-hating immigrants with the other. Don’tapologize because there is no one on earth to apologize to. You can’t apologize to people who are sittingon the sidelines enjoying life while Israeli civilians suffocate in bunkers andIsraeli soldiers courageously face death, fighting Hizbullah that is fightingfor Iran that is fighting to destroy us all, Israelis, Americans, Europeans,Japanese, Indians…Don’t apologize.Stand up to them the way you stand up to katyushas, and fight back againstthis lethal narrative jihad with equal valor and intelligence. No ordinary PRefforts can counter it. New methods are necessary, far more severe, far less defensive. Your critics do not care what you arefighting for or how nobly you are fighting; they run for cover, side with thevillains, hide behind the killers. Theyhave to declare Israel guilty because they are terrified at confronting thereal force that is bearing down on them.You can’t reassure them by saying how good you are, how careful not tomake tragic mistakes. Apologies feed their anguish, and their anguish is turnedagainst us, against Jews. How dare we be so humane when subject to such vileaggression?The injustice is beyond belief: the small nation of Israelhas to fight against Iran, and as if that’s not enough, gets stabbed in theback while engaged in fierce battle. Don’t explain this, they don’t want toknow. Use it to our advantage, use it totransform our place in the world. You are fighting to defend Israel’s existence,to establish authentic sovereignty for Israel and, beyond that, to bring an endfor Jews everywhere to vicious cycles of persecution, extermination, and restoration. We are not victims, we are not mercenaries,we are no one’s protectorate. The costof this war is too high today but the benefits can be multiplied if we rise to thefull dignity that goes with such momentous responsibility.What is Israel doing in Lebanon today? Israel is doing to Lebanon what we would havedone to Germany when Hitler came to power…if we had a state then…but wedidn’t…and we do now. I have just spent the week at Oxford (St. John’s College) at the annual ISGAP conference on antisemitism. A really impressive group of people at all levels, the scholars, the speakers, the participants, young and old. Rarely have I had the delight of such high-octane conversations day and night. (One might think, “rarely,” since I retired in 2015, but academic conversations have already become increasingly low-octane since the turn of the millennium.)Wednesday evening, July 10, 2019, however, stood out for asequence of four episodes, each striking in its own way.That afternoon David Patterson spoke. Among many things, he echoed and deepened two points that others had made: 1) antisemitism starts with the Jews but doesn’t end with them; and 2) people target the Jews precisely because they represent the “other” with whom, in a civil society, you live in peace and mutually beneficial (positive-sum) relations. Patterson, reflecting on the ties that bound Hitler to his contemporary, the leader of Palestinian nationalism (Haj Amin al Husseini), and the near seamless transfer of the most delirious, genocidal, antisemitism from early 20th century Germany/Europe to the post-war Arab Muslim world, remarked that, at least for this variety of (exterminationist) antisemitism, the paranoid narrative gives the believer permission to kill: as Norman Cohn called it, a “warrant for genocide.” Little surprise that, when they’ve killed Jews, antisemites don’t have trouble killing others. I think it’s fair to say that every person who has mobilized hatred of Jews to incite riots, pogroms, and massacres, is belligerent in the original meaning of the word (bellum=war) a war-monger. If you want to know if a peace-maker is sincere or a war-monger, check how he or she treats the Jews. For reasons that surpass understanding, these days (and so many times in the past), people find it very hard to be fair to Jews, or as one student asked, “why is it so hard for people to empathize with Jewish suffering?”After that last lecture I went to visit a twitter friend, the physicist David Deutsch. He’s writing a book about patterns of irrational thought that sabotage human creativity and progress. He has a chapter on the Jews in which identifies a pattern (he calls it “the Pattern”) concerning the Jews. The key to people’s behavior in this regard, he argues, is the need to preserve the legitimacy of hurting Jews, for being Jews. This legitimacy is much more important than actually hurting Jews. And it targets only the Jews. It is not, accordingly, either a hatred or a fear, a form of racism or prejudice in the conventional sense, even though it can lead to those feelings and attitudes. But it is actually unique. No other group can substitute for the Jews as the target whom it is legitimate to hurt.The following is from my ms They re so Smart cause We re so Stupid, in response to a tweet from Daniel Rubenstein.  It follows a discussion of Arafat s Hudaybiyya speech.This Muslim outcry essentially forbade infidel critics from examining evidence relevant to their pressing concerns. Instead, peace enthusiasts viewed Arafat and the Palestinian leadership, as they themselves insisted they were in English, as full-fledged modern players who wanted their own nation and their freedom, and whom one could trust to keep commitments to the ‘peace of the brave.’[1] When the opportunity presented itself at Camp David in 2000, they believed, Arafat would choose the imperfect, positive-sum, win-win, over the zero-sum, all-or-nothing, win-lose. They ‘believed’ in the positive-sum Palestinian leadership and rejected indignantly anyone ‘racist’ enough, who dared to suggest the Palestinians leadership was still in limbic captivity to atavistic revenge.Thus, when Arafat tried in 1995 to convene the PLOto rewrite their charter and eliminate calls for the destruction of Israel, asprescribed by the Oslo Peace Accords, he found the resistance too great. Even a‘moderate’ like Hanan Ashrawi opposed such a move, which, she claimed, echoingSaïd, “will appear tobe a succumbing to Israeli dictate.”[2] Inother words, obligations to a positive-sum resolution took second seat toPalestinian concerns about the honor-driven optics of “appearing to submit.” Soinstead the Palestinians delayed any actual changes in their charter, and gaveit to a committee that promptly buried the initiative. Yani.deep in an election campaign, hailed the prevarication as “one of the mostdramatic developments of the 20th Century,” and the media did everything itcould to cover for the Palestinians: “P.L.O. Ends Call for Destruction ofJewish State,” blared the NYT headline whose content contradicted it. To thisday, the charter remains unchanged; and while Palestinians politicians andreligious figures continue to adhere to liberating Palestine “from the River tothe Sea,” their spokesmen insist in English that they’ve fulfilled all theirobligations. And the media, and their invited experts, rather than challengethem, repeat their talking points.[3]Western journalists and policy experts not only failed (and continue tofail) to challenge such claims, they ignored the long and troubling list ofPalestinian violations of the accords, and pressured Israel, to stop harping onthe negative, lest they ‘queer’ the peace process.[4] Indiscussing the Hudaybiyya speeches, the New Yorker’s Buck notes: The speeches wereviolations of the spirit, if not the letter, of the accords, and, although theRabin-Peres Labor government rarely acknowledged it publicly, there were manyother violations as well… “We had books and books filled with violations,” thisperson told me, and added, “I saw Rabin and Peres so angry at what they had toeat from the Palestinians ”But of course, this was the price of peace… letting them violate theagreement without complaining, lest those who so complain, ruin the chances forpeace.[5]After all, Israel was hardly white as snow in this process.Thus, even as Jerusalem and Washington prepared for a grand finale tothe peace process at Camp David in the summer of 2000, even as Israel’s mediaprepared their people for peace, Arafat’s media prepared Palestinians for war. Inthe summer of 2000, Palestinian TV featured horrendous and staged footage ofIsraeli troops murdering Palestinian children and raping their women – the fullpanoply of lethal narratives with which the PA incited its people to war.[6] And despite being warned, none of the keydecision-makers paid any attention. They were sure everyone was ‘so close.’[1] For arecent example of this double-talk, see “Palestinianhypocrisy: Jibril Rajoub forbids Palestinian-Israeli sports, yet inParis says sports is “a bridge of love and connection with the internationalcommunity,” PalWatch, June 13, 2019.[3]Dennis Ross has an interesting account of a second ‘try’ at getting thePalestinians to revise their charter, in which the Palestinian maneuvering togive the impression of a change, in the presence of the visiting PresidentClinton, became clear, but, in the end, face-saving for all involved: TheMissing Peace, pp. **-**. On the media’s pack repetition of the PalestinianEnglish talking points over two decades later, see Landes, “Everybody Agrees,”Second Draft, February 2018.[4] ThePrime Minister’s office prepared a white paper on Palestinian violations of theaccord, which they only released November 24, 2000: “PalestinianAuthority and P.L.O. Non-Compliance with signed agreements and commitments: Arecord of bad faith and misconduct,” Barak Government White Paper,November 24, 2000. Even though this came almost two months after Arafat had openedthe Oslo Trojan Horse, it got criticized both within and abroad: Aluf Benn, “WhitePaper Tiger Unleashed,” Haaretz,November 29, 2000.[5] Bruck’ssource fingers the fear of public humiliation that drove Peres and Rabin not toadmit they were wrong about Arafat (“The Wounds of Peace,” p. **). Add to thatthe enormous (messianic) pressure to get the peace to succeed. See Golan Lahat, Hapitui Hameshihi: Aliyato Unefilato shel Hasmol Haisraeli (Tel Aviv:Am Oved, 972 series, 2004), chapter **, [6] Itamar Marcus, “Rape,Murder, Violence, and War for Allah against the Jews: Summer 2000 onPalestinian Television,” Palestinian Media Watch, Jerusalem, Sept. 11, 2000.Hehasgivenmepermissiontopost his response which appears below.Ihavenothadthechancetoverifysomeofthedetails,andwelcomeanychallengesorverificationsfromreaders.Let me walk you through this entire process, because I was in the middle of it as an observer at the time. Rather than say it verbally, let me put it down in writing so that you can follow it more easily and, if you wish, quote from it.Cropped photos of the September 17 event show President Bush flanked by Muslim Brotherhood operativesNihad Awad(of CAIR) andKhaled Saffuri, then of the American Muslim Council (AMC), now defunct, which was headed at the time byAbdurahman Alamoudi. Alamoudi was reputedly head of the North American Muslim Brotherhood. He is now in federal prison, serving a reduced 23-year federal prison sentence for terrorism-related crimes. At Abdurahman al-Amoudi, an advisor on Muslim Affairs to President Clinton, later found guilty of raising funds for terrorist organizations, A PBS special described Alamoudi as an expert in the art of deception, expressing moderate, pro-American sympathies in his lobbying and public relations work with Americans, but then expressing support for Hamas and Hezbollah at Islamist rallies. Al-Almoudi asks the assembled if they, like he, support Hamas. They shout out their agreement, while Mahdi Bray, a black American convert to Islam and major player in the future ‘Anti-War movement,’ fist-pumped his approval. Al-Amoudi then calls takbir – the call to acknowledge the faith – to which the crowd responds “Allahu Akhbar.”From chapter on 9-11 in They resosmartcausewe resostupid(I.2)His enthusiasm for H H dates to their early suicide bombing phase in the mid-90s. In other words, a Caliphater, doing Da wah, hence a master demopath. These rallies were Caliphater celebration and recruiting grounds.President Bush stands with Islamic leaders during a visit to the Islamic Center of Washington, Monday, Sept. 17, 2001, to try to put an end to rising anti-Muslim sentiment in the wake of last week s terrorist attacks. (AP Photo/Doug Mills)Uncropped photos of the same event show Alamoudi standing several feet to Bush s left. A twitter friend pointed to this article by Shadi Hamid, suggesting it was worth a read. Rather than answer him on twitter, I thought it worth a fisk, because the essay is so quintessentially illustrative about what s wrong with the mainstream punditocracy on the subject of the conflict between Israel and her neighbors. So here is the fisk:The White House can’t end the conflict by expecting one side to surrender unconditionally.MAY 25, 2019Shadi HamidSenior fellow at the Brookings InstitutionPalestinian children watch a band perform from the rubble of a building destroyed by Israeli air strikes.MOHAMMED SALEM / REUTERSNote both picture and caption. Not: Palestinian children watch a band perform from the rubble of a building destroyed by Israeli air strikes in 2014 and now, five years later, still not yet rebuilt by a government that spends its resources on building this:Is the Israeli-Palestinianconflict fundamentally about land and territory? It is certainly partly about that. But when you hear the objections and grievances of both sides, the issue of who has what part of which territory doesn’t necessarily figure all that prominently.One might assume from this opening that Hamid has been listening to both sides. Alas, not.I recently took part in astudy touron religion and nationalism in Israel and the West Bank organized by the Philos Project. One Palestinian official whom we met told us, “I’m not going to compromise my dignity.”Given how long and hard Palestinians have invoked honor in their crazy war of extermination against Israel, one should be very careful before assuming that when a Palestinian official uses dignity , he means the Western version of the word.And given how Palestinian elites get their honor on the backs of their people s indignities, the pattern of zero-sum honor over positive-sum dignity seems embedded in Palestinian (and more broadly Arab) political culture, independent of the Zionist entity which just seems to make it worse. Did Hamid ask him to define dignity (just as every Westerner should ask a Palestinian interlocutor what he means by Occupation and Settlements ), or did he just take his sound byte and run with it? The problem with what we know of the Trump administration’s “peace plan” is that it asks Palestinians to do precisely that. And no one even knows what the plan actually calls for. But we all know it demands that Palestinians give up their dignity. The entire Donald Trump approach seems to be premised on calling for unilateral surrender. It is premised on destroying the will of a people, and on hoping that despair might one day turn into acquiescence. SPME deplores the recent FacultyCouncil of DePaul University’s vote to censure an articleby Prof. Jason Hill, advocating the Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Regardlessof how one feels about Hill’s extreme policy recommendations, his treatment atthe hands of his colleagues was at once deeply unfair, counterproductive, andanti-intellectual. The censure, despite its insistence on respecting academicfreedom, surrendered to demandsof the public-shaming squads that increasingly dominatecampus politics, especially when it concerns discussionof Israel and the Palestinians. Far from a blow for academic freedom anddecency, this Faculty-Council initiative represents one more brick in acognitive edifice that systematically excludes a widerange of both opinion and fact by branding it hate speech, or merely “viewsnot representative of the [U of Cambridge] student body… not a valuable contributionto the University.” Worse, the move was doneat the demand of student groups who practice some of themost virulent hate speech, and advocate for groups who regularly deploy genocidal hate speech. Forprogressive forces that treasure tolerance and inclusion, this censure was amassive own-goal.The Abuse of Procedures in order to force the censurethrough. The chair of the Faculty Council, Scott Paeth, wrote andproposed the censure. Rather than therefore recusing himself, he violated theparliamentary rules to rush it through with minimal discussion. Since one ofthe avowed goals of the censure motion was to advance “conversations thatadvance social justice,” it hardly seems fitting for a democratic, academicinstitution to set such a poor example for how to act fairly.The designation of an opinion as unacceptablebecause it offends some people’s sensibilities. Theresolution invokes AAUP Principles about “respect for the opinion of others,”and censures Hill for his “the real harm his words have caused to students and othermembers of our community.” The word “real” here is most problematic, since the“harm” spoken of was the hurt feelings of students who claim the article “madeit difficult for Arabs, Palestinians, Muslims and other marginalized groups tofeel safe on campus and freely register for classes,” and that “hiscomments createunsafe and uncomfortable spaces.” Anyone who treasures freedom, likethe scholar, has learned to havea thick skin.

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