Posted by middleeast on November 6th, 2011
31 October, 2011 3 Heshvan, 5772
Taking on Water
Sir,–With Larry Derfner’s understandable departure from The Jerusalem Post, there is no longer a truly outspoken Left-Zionist to balance the regular and outspoken Right-Zionism of Caroline B. Glick, Michael Freund, Isi Leibler, Sarah Honig (in your weekend magazine) and others. Nobody at all is around to say, as would Derfner with conscience and courage, that the West Bank is the world’s last neo-colonialist misadventure, or to expose the transparent fallacies of so much of Israel’s hasbara that are perfectly obvious to most of the world — except to the “converted” who speak only to the converted.
And so, just as with Israel’s isolation in the world, so the Post has become more isolated and poorer, sometimes listing so far over to one side as almost to be taking on water.
JAMES ADLER
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Posted by middleeast on November 6th, 2011
Tue, October 25, 2011 Tishrei 27, 5772
Barghouti should be freed
Gilad Shalit’s release shows Israelis as the big family they are, with so many regarding Shalit as if he were their own son. It also shows how achingly they want Jonathan Pollard to go free, and the agony of so many who lost their loved ones to the swapped prisoners. But Haaretz always brings out the complexities of the conflict in both of the sides’ narratives.
And so on the other side, even after the exchange, Israel will hold thousands of Palestinian prisoners (some for as long as 30 years ) in jail.
And yet in order to help bring both sides – with their so profoundly divergent narratives – closer to peace, how calamitous it is to leave in jail Marwan Barghouti, perhaps the one Palestinian leader able to unite the divided Palestinians behind an effective peace agreement.
If only Franz Kafka could still be here he would surely put this in one of his stories.
James Adler
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Posted by middleeast on November 6th, 2011
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Posted by middleeast on November 6th, 2011
Sun, Oct 16, 2011 18 Tishri, 5772
Sir, – Thank heavens for what we hope will be the release of Gilad Schalit. If only he could be released together with the disgracefully over-punished Jonathan Pollard. And also with Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti. If anyone, it is Barghouti who could unite the polarized Palestinians around a peace deal acceptable to both the Israeli and Palestinian publics.
Egypt’s Anwar Sadat was at first more of a warrior than Barghouti ever was – and how many Israeli youths died in the Yom Kippur War that Sadat launched? But this is precisely what made the Egyptian a credible peacemaker to his people.
JAMES ADLER
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Posted by middleeast on October 1st, 2011
Tue, Sep 27, 2011 28 Elul, 5771
Sir, – Imagine if the UN speech by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (“‘Recognize the Jewish state and make peace with us,’ Netanyahu calls on Abbas,” September 25) had been that Israel would immediately support, based on the 1967 lines (with future land swaps), Palestine’s request for full UN membership, and would encourage the Security Council to vote yes.
Such an earth-shaking, openhearted gesture would have stunned the Palestinian public, the PA, the anti-Israel extremists, the wider Arab and Muslim “streets,” Western intellectuals and governments, and the entire world.
Why not do it? It’s not too late for Netanyahu to announce that Abbas’s speech changed his mind. Israel’s Foreign Ministry could even work with Palestinian diplomats to lobby wavering nations to vote yes.
If tangible peace and security, a turn-around for Israel’s isolation and a two-state solution are so much in Israel’s interest, why not? Consider how much this Sadat-like tsunami would reverberate, and how this 180- degree turnaround would jumpstart high-morale and high-momentum peace talks.
How could it hurt Israel even a single iota? I’d like someone to show, on a pro-and-con chart with a column for each, a single item to place in the “con” column, and then compare it with the full “pro” column.
It’s a no-brainer and has been since the beginning. What is stunning is Israel’s lack of imagination and emotional paralysis.
If Netanyahu really wanted forward movement and had a single Sadat-like bone in his body, he could transform everything completely in a single moment.
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Posted by middleeast on September 18th, 2011
Fri, Sep 16, 2011 17 Elul, 5771
Post-Derfner boredom
Sir, – Larry Derfner’s blog words remain unconscionable, and I realize that had he remained at The Jerusalem Post his journalism would probably have led to escalating hostility and still more heat and less light. No one would have listened to him at all – not that it seems many of your readers ever did.
Editor in chief Steve Linde and, before him, David Horovitz both said they hoped no one could tell what the politics of this paper were. With very great respect for each, who are they kidding? This is a right-wing paper, and without Derfner it is becoming implacably and monotonously far-right-wing.
It’s rapidly losing my interest and, I would assume, the interest of many other pro-Israel liberals.
One can see how few even bother to write in, realizing the implacability of the Likud stranglehold
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Posted by middleeast on September 18th, 2011
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Posted by middleeast on September 18th, 2011
Thu, Aug 11, 2011 11 Av, 5771
Jerusalem Norway and the Post
Sir, – Caroline Glick not only can’t stop blaming the latest victims of a major terrorist attack, but can’t stop writing about her own earlier writing about them.
She is still going on about what “propelled me to write my July 29 column, ‘Breivik and totalitarian democrats.’” So forgive me for being unable to leave that column behind either.
In it, Glick wrote that “The Left’s attempts to link conservative writers, politicians and philosophers with Breivik are nothing new.” She continued that “the same thing happened in 1995, when the Left tried to blame rabbis and politicians for the sociopathic Yigal Amir’s assassination of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The same thing happened in the US last summer with the Left’s insistent attempts to link the psychotic Jared Loughner, who shot congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her constituents, with Gov. Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.”
But Glick omitted the elephant in the room: Why is it that it’s almost always conservatives or rightists, and hardly ever liberals or leftists, who shoot people? And why, as Post editor-in-chief Steve Linde said in his column published on the morning of the Norway attacks (“Halting the hate,” Editor’s Notes, July 22), have rightists also now made death threats against a liberal Post columnist? It seems nearly inconceivable that anyone on the Left would ever make death threats against a conservative Post columnist.
Why shouldn’t it be inconceivable against any columnist? It would be helpful if Glick used her considerable analytical skills to examine the one-sidedness of this pathology.
I wish also to thank the Post for its “Apology to Norway” (Editorial, August 5). Let us ask ourselves how many newspapers in the world would have the bravery and integrity to publish such an apology. We should be proud of this paper.
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Posted by middleeast on September 18th, 2011
Setting an example
Sir, – The Post deserves praise for opposing recent Knesset legislation (“The bad boycott bill,” Editorial, July 12).
Suppose Alabama had outlawed Martin Luther King, Jr.’s boycott of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus system. Yet this “bad” bill is even more fundamental – it would be as if Alabama had also revoked the freedom of Alabamans to discuss and debate among themselves the pros and cons of the bus boycott.
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin recently wrote in one of Israel’s Hebrew dailies: “Woe betide the Jewish democratic state that turns freedom of expression into a civil offense, and woe betide Knesset members who hoped to produce good grapes, but instead produced rotten fruit, to paraphrase the words of the Prophet Isaiah.”
Thank heavens for the sake of Israel’s reputation that Rivlin joined the Post on the right side of history. If only the rest of Israel would follow your example.
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Posted by middleeast on September 18th, 2011
Haaretz
Wed. June 01, 2011 Iyar 28, 5771
Letters to the Editor
Who’s tearing down who? In response to “The spoiler,” May 24 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resistance to U.S. President Barack Obama’s peace plan, a plan that from the outset involved simply the plain old “Clinton parameters” (and George W. Bush’s ), somehow reminds me of Golda Meir famously asking why the Palestinians had tried to build their state instead of tearing down Israel’s – and make peace. But for 40 years it has been precisely the other way around: Palestinians are not taking over and tearing down Israel’s land; instead Israel has been taking over and tearing down the Palestinians’ tiny remaining residue of land. If Israel had put soldiers but never sent half a million settlers into the West Bank, compounded with endless housing demolitions, then in the decades of changed times since then, with the stakes so low, and hence the tone of the region so low-key, Israel and the Palestinians could easily have coasted to peace.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, whose assassin was imbued with fanatical ideology, would have continued his work. Oslo could have worked. So could the Geneva Peace Plan. The 2002 Arab League Peace Plan, which Israel has ignored for nearly a decade would have brought instant and comprehensive security and peace.
It is Israel that has preferred keeping and expanding its half million settlers in the territories, has preferred the conflict over security and peace.
James Adler
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