The Last Exile

Another night of talking until pretty much the dawn has left me pretty much brain dead. So I just wanted to offer up this story from the Moscow Times.

A dispute has escalated over plans to build a mosque in Moscow’s southeastern outskirts, with local residents vowing to send an appeal with about 2,000 signatures to President Dmitry Medvedev and nationalist groups promising to support them.

Muslim leaders defend the need for the worship site, saying the capital’s four mosques are overflowing with people.

Residents of the Tekstilshchiki district in southeastern Moscow will send Medvedev a complaint signed by more than 1,800 people opposing construction of the mosque, mainly on the grounds that it might cause massive traffic jams in the area on Islamic holidays, activist Mikhail Butrimov told The Moscow Times on Friday. Butrimov leads the movement Moi Dvor, or My Yard, which supports residents in their fight against the mosque.

Butrimov said residents asked local authorities several years ago to build a Russian Orthodox chapel or create a park on the unused lot. But authorities banned construction on the plot, saying utilities ran underneath it, he said.

Apparently, New York isn’t the only city where the citizenry are up in arms over the building of a mosque – all of which makes me wonder if there is a Russian equivalent of the American Tea Party movement.

My calendar runs out at the end of September and I spent a fruitless few hours looking for a replacement this afternoon. Of course, my year ends sometime in September so a standard 2011 calendar leaves me short a few months. Usually, I order calendars from the Hebron Community but this year I have been exceptional busy and distracted and so I just forgot. Besides, I like have the sunset times as well as the Jewish months so your standard kitty-flower calendar just doesn’t work for me. Just after I came home from the futile calendar hunt I decided I would check to see what mail to see what has arrived in the last few days. Low and behold, I received another calendar from the Hebron community. These guys so rock.

In other news today, another Palestinian terror attack failed to murder a pregnant woman and her husband outside the South Hebron Hills on Route 60. Mother, Father, and son are all doing well.

In Jerusalem, the peace partners have decided to commemorate the day with stonings, firebombs and more rioting all of which means its just another day in Jerusalem.

The Latma people have done it again. This time it’s ‘Shlomit builds a succah’ and destroys the peace process.

To say I have been distracted in the last few weeks is merely to underscore the the extent of my disengagement with just about everything. But that being said, its not like everything has slipped under the K-radar. I notice and make note which is why I am going to mark these two stories which on the surface seemingly have very little to do with each other. The Jerusalem Post is carrying a report from an Arab paper that the Obama administration is demanding the Israeli government extend the building freeze for another 3 months.

The Obama administration wants Israel to expand the 10-month moratorium on West Bank settlement construction for another three months, according to London-based paper A-sharq al-Awsat. The Arabic language paper reported Thursday morning that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had agreed to the US suggestion, but that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had yet to respond

.The report came after hours of discussions at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem between Netanyahu, Abbas, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and their respective staffs on Wednesday night. There were indications, specifically from US Mideast envoy George Mitchell, that the sides were not only talking about how to overcome the settlement construction moratorium, but also about core issues such as security, Jerusalem, borders and refugees. In his comments after the trilateral meeting however, Mitchell refused to shed any light on the nature of the compromise being worked out on the moratorium issue, other than to say the issue was being tackled, and that progress was being made.

Now while the White House pressures the Israeli government to make more concessions for the sake of peace and the alleged Israeli partners for peace in the south have Israel under rocket attack again. Jerusalem Post

The attacks from the Gaza Strip escalated on Wednesday with 10 rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel – including two containing phosphorus – as defense officials predicted that the violence would quiet down after Succot. The violence peaked as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met in Jerusalem with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the first time since the launch of the new round of peace talks in Washington two weeks ago.

Rockets and shells pounded the Eshkol region throughout the day. One of the rockets – a 122-mm. Katyusha – hit just north of Ashkelon. No injuries or damage were reported. Gazan rocket attacks have been increasing since before Rosh Hashana, understood by the IDF to be part of a Hamas attempt to torpedo the peace talks with the PA.

The assessment within Military Intelligence is that the wave of increased terror will continue until the Jewish holiday season finishes at the end of the month. The IDF does not attribute too much significance to the use of phosphorus mortar shells, which have been fired into Israel in the past, most recently during Operation Cast Lead in January 2009. The assumption in the IDF Southern Command is that the group that fired the mortars did not know that they contained phosphorus. These shells carry less explosive material than standard mortars, but are highly flammable.

Now the choice the Israeli prime minister has to make is simply this – should the building freeze be extended in courtesy to the failed leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which would endanger his standing with his coalition government and break faith with the Israeli people – in effect, put events into motion which will continue to play Russian roulette with the ordinary lives of Israelis or draw the line in the sand and stand up to pressures of both the White House and the Palestinian Authority?

Now there are many competing voices for our attention but the one sound we do not hear is the cries of outrage from all the usual suspects condemning the continued use of phosphorus munitions against Israeli civilians by the Palestinians. We even have the IDF play down the use of such munitions and the one question no one asks is ‘why’.

So I have been off-line and not paying much attention to anything and have been busy playing catch up this morning with the 2500+ things in my reader. Remarkably, I have discovered the world is pretty much the same as when I left it. Kassams are still falling, the peace process is stuck in redux, and just what exactly is the Palestinian leadership’s obligations to the process? Just once I would like to read an Israeli Prime Minister is refusing to come to the peace talks unless Palestinians stop building in the disputed territories.

It is probably pure callousness on my part but I find the excess of emotion on 9/11 rather wearying. 9/11 changed everything, and yet, what has really changed other than we wallow in the alleged ‘holiness’ of a deeply profane act? The most remarkably thing I have learned so far is if you want to drink healthy orange juice; squeeze the oranges yourself, but deep down – we all knew that.

Less than 24 hours after the Israeli Prime Minister left Israel to go the United States to participate in the ongoing peace talks four Israeli civilians were murdered in an ambush as they drove on highway 60 outside the Hebron area.

Their deaths were inevitable. It is a cycle, a pattern, we have seen it play out over and over again as peace negotiations begin. Every time it happens, there are official announcements from all interested parties that the participants will not let these deaths deter them from continuing negotiations which lead nowhere quickly.

Why this time should be different from any other talks when the Palestinian leadership is represented by the weakest leader the PLO has ever produced, a leadership camp which fractured and fraught with competing and conflicted interests should produce a different result than all the other xxx times peace talks have commenced; beyond my ability to engage in irrationality. And the Americans this time around are no better. Ynet News is quoting US Assistant Secretary of State Phillip Crowley as saying:

“We also are cognizant that there may well be actors in the region who are deliberately making these kinds of attacks in order to try to sabotage the process,” he said.

All of which goes to prove he just doesn’t get it. These aren’t actors, actors pretend to kill people, but are instead Israel’s neighbours and alleged peace partners except they are not prime for peace but war.

As a show of …good faith – the Palestinian Authority has rounded up 200 suspected Hamas members in the West Bank. Personally, given the area and its’ history, I would suggest rounding up the Palestinian security forces for interrogation would be a far more fruitful endeavour for appending the murderers. Colour me cynical, but using the ambush as a pretext for jailing one’s political proponents doesn’t strike me as taking one for Team Justice and Peace.

Ha’aretz is reporting Labor Minister of Defense Ehud Barak is suggesting Israel is willing to cede part of Jerusalem ahead of negotiations – and this after the murder of four Israelis. It just might be in Israel’s best interest to cede Barak to the Palestinians instead. It certainly couldn’t hurt.

What Bibi needs tell Obama is simply this; He is ready to meet the Palestinian leadership after the Palestinian have worked out their internal matters, and the Palestinian people are prepared for peace, real peace, which includes painful compromises on their part - as otherwise there is simply not anything to negotiate or even say. Time to go home and bury the dead and fortify Yisrael for the next round.

Until then, let’s shelve the two-state peace talks and explore the possiblity of a one state discussion.

I just finished watching Mad Men’s Season 4, episode 5 – The Chrysanthemum and the Sword so this Jezebel article caught my eye. I voted for the Ken doll…thank G-d, the Last Amazon never played with barbies. Her father would never have been able to act so resolutely in a ‘crisis’.

Okay so my personal life is busy but it’s always busy. I’m less in engaged because there is so much news going on that I just don’t care enough about to have more than a knee-jerk response. I do not care Tiger Woods’ divorce is finalized since I am not included in the settlement.

Pakistan hasn’t asked the government deploy the Dart team…oh, well, their loss and my wallet is safe for another day. Of course I am completely apathetic towards Pakistan – even on a good day.

The city of Toronto is primed to elect a buffoon for a mayor. Oh well, he’ll join the ranks of other primates we have elected. I expect Toronto will survive.

A new biography is released on Canadian radio personality Peter Gzowski and my first reaction was – Peter who? Once I found out all I thought was who really cares? The book will be lucky to sell 5,000 copies and I bet most of the sales will come from Libraries.

Iran – enough already – just bomb them and get it over with and let the chips fall where they may.

Anne Frank’s tree has fallen down. I know I am a lousy human being (see above) but I am just not inspired nor filled with sorrow for the tree, and did you really expect it to last forever?

Peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians…same old song and dance. What will make these talks very different from any other peace discussions? In fact, I expect these talks to have less ‘cred’ than any of the previous talks considering that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas can no longer be considered to represent the Palestinian side – even legally - as his term of office ran out two years ago. Furthermore, Hamas is ruling the Gaza Strip and making in roads in the West Bank and until Fatah and Hamas bury the AK-47 there are two different narratives coming out of the Palestinian camps – competing world views even. Meanwhile the pedestrians on the Palestinian street have moved on and are discussing one-state solutions.

Steve Harper is evil and hates puppies – I get it, but what the conservatives don’t quite get is that Harper has so polarized the country that his legacy borders strictly on what divides and demeans us as a nation. There is no way this country is going forward until he’s removed as party leader so time to call a leadership review. Harper’s taken conservatives as far as he can…although the lack of quality conservatives is what continues to dog the party and explains why the conservatives cannot make real traction in the polls with support always ebbing and flowing just under the 40% mark.

The almost-ground-zero-mosque/Islamic community centre. If I have to draw the line anywhere; I am always going to come down on the side of religious liberty. Take it from one group and it’s just a matter of time before you attempt to tell me where, when and how I can pray. Having said that, I find it interesting that President Obama made an initial statement in support of mosque/Islamic community centre on the grounds of religious liberty and yet sees no conflict or hypocrisy in telling another sovereign nation that Jewish landowners cannot occupy or build on land they hold legal title to. Oh well.

I am really on a time crunch but this Jerusalem post article is too important not to post:

They are hung from trees by metal chains attached to their arms and provided with plastic bags to collect their urine to drink when they are thirsty. They are gang raped, tortured with electricity and held prisoner in desert camps. When they escape they are shot, either by their Beduin captors or by Egyptian police. These savage and disturbing details, published piecemeal over the years, are just a part of the picture of what is being done in Egypt’s Sinai desert to African migrants.

The story probably begins with the end of the Ethiopia-Eritrea War in 2000, the beginning of the Darfur genocide in 2003 and the end of the war in South Sudan in 2005, each of which in its own way created numerous refugees. In December 2005, Egypt began cracking down on African migrants, in one infamous incident many (between 10 and 60) were massacred by police attempting to clear a park of their encampments. This helped provide incentive to travel further afield, with Europe a tough destination, they trickled into Sinai and thence to Israel.
(…)
Today Sinai has become a human prison, a place of death, gang rape and murder. While initially many of the Africans were refugees it seems now that, as with the sex slave trade in Eastern European women that was a staple of the 1990s in Sinai, the slave trade in Africans in Sinai has become a business – one where victims are recruited and then transported to Israel only as a way to get rid of the human cargo. Israel has decent relations with Egypt’s security forces in Sinai. It is time to send the message that only a massive and coordinated crackdown on the Beduin smugglers will stop the flow of illegal immigrants, help Egypt’s image and end the hell that Sinai has become.

Read and weep. But sure, sure, feel free to continue to discuss stupid people’s facebook pictures.

Shirza Herzog has what passes for a prominent name in Israeli politics but for the life of me I cannot recall one article or position she has taken via the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where she has been right. I really tuned out big time as she tried to pass off Sharon’s disengagement as the best thing since sliced bread rather than a disaster of biblical proportions in the making for both the Israelis and Palestinians.

But she does bring up an an important topic which is being discussed seriously by both the Israeli and Palestinian body politic. Probably much more seriously in the Palestinian side than the Israeli – possibly because the so-called intelligentsia in Israel are leftwardly bent – even the so-called centralists bend from the left, and most of the opposition to the idea of a one state solution to the conflict comes from the Israeli left rather than the right. The Globe and Mail,

New winds seem to be blowing in Israel’s right wing. Prominent voices opposed to relinquishing the West Bank and Jewish settlements are calling instead for its annexation, with citizenship for Palestinians living there. On the face of it, this sounds virtuously democratic. But the right has no intention of abandoning its vision of a Jewish state in expanded territory. What’s being proposed is neither practical nor intellectually honest.

Israel’s 7.5 million residents already include nearly one million Palestinian citizens. Palestinian numbers are debated, but incorporating the West Bank and East Jerusalem would mean the addition of close to three million more and a narrower Jewish majority. Israeli support for a two-state resolution of its conflict with the Palestinians is largely based on this demographic imperative. If Israel wants to remain a democracy, maintain a Jewish majority and be a homeland for the Jewish people, it can’t possibly become a single binational state. (This underpins the reluctance of all Israeli governments to annex territories captured in 1967.)

In spite of this, Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, former Likud defence minister Moshe Arens and former Settlers’ Council chair Uri Elizur believe that evacuating settlements and an unstable Palestinian state alongside Israel are worse than the risk of incorporating an even larger Palestinian minority in a Jewish state. The Israeli right has espoused annexation since 1967 but wouldn’t face up to its underlying weakness – the demographic issue and its impact on Israel’s democracy.

Ah, the demographic bogey-man. That argument was considered compelling during the re-birth pangs of the Jewish state, but in 2010, there is simply no place except for it in the modern state of Israel. I won’t even bring up the charge intellectually dishonest charge – cause I cannot do it without a great deal of name calling, but ironically, the largest block against a single state solution comes from a marriage of the Israeli left and the official Palestinian leadership. C’est surprise – not.

Yoram Ettinger takes on the demographic bogeyman in Ynet News, an Israeli daily.

In 2010, a surge in the Israeli Jewish fertility rate is a long-term, unique, global phenomenon, while fertility rates decline sharply in the Third World in general and in Muslim countries in particular.

In 2010, there is a 66% Jewish majority in 98.5% of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean (without Gaza) – and a 58% Jewish majority with Gaza. That Jewish majority benefits from a demographic tailwind and from a high potential of aliyah (Jewish immigration) and of returning Israeli expatriates.

In comparison, in 1900 and 1947 there was an 8% and a 33% Jewish minority, deprived of economic, technological and military infrastructures. In 2010, the number of Arabs in Judea and Samaria is inflated by 900,000 (1.6 million and not 2.5 million) through the inclusion of 400,000 overseas residents, a double-count of 200,000 Jerusalem Arabs (who are counted as Israeli Arabs by Israel and as West Bank Arabs by the Palestinian Authority), and by ignoring annual net-emigration since 1950 (e.g. 17,000 in 2009), etc. Meanwhile, a World Bank study documents a 32% “inflation” in Palestinian birth numbers.

Since the appearance of modern-day Zionism, the demographic establishment has contended that Jews are doomed to be a minority west of the Jordan River. It asserts that Jews must relinquish geography in order to secure demography. But, what if demographic fatalism is based on dramatically erroneous assumptions and numbers? What if the demographic establishment has adopted Palestinian numbers without auditing, although such numbers are refuted annually by an examination of birth, death, migration and 1st grade registration records?

What if the contended Palestinian numbers require a population growth rate almost double the highest population growth rate in the world, while Gaza and Judea and Samaria are ranked 5th and 38th in global population growth rate? What if the demographic establishment failed to realize that the Arab demographic surge of 1949-1969 (in pre-1967 Israel) and 1967-1990 (in Judea and Samaria and Gaza) had to be succeeded by a sharp demographic decline?

Contrary to demographic projections, the first half of 2010 sustains the growth of the Jewish fertility rate and the sharp and rapid fall of the Arab fertility rate throughout the Muslim World, as well as west of the Jordan River. The decline in Arab fertility results from accelerated urbanization and modernization processes, such as education, health, employment, family planning, reduced teen pregnancy, enhanced career mentality among women, in addition to domestic security concerns.

The Washington-based Population Resource Center reported a sharp dive in global Muslim fertility, trending toward two births per woman. For instance, Iran shrunk from 8 births 30 years ago to 1.7, Egypt – 2.5, North Africa – 1.9, Jordan – a “twin sister” of Judea and Samaria – is below 3 births per woman and Judea and Samaria’s fertility rate is 3.2 in 2010. According to demographic precedents, there is a very slight probability of resurrecting high fertility rates following a prolonged period of significant reduction.

In contrast with demographic fatalism, the share of Jewish births in pre-1967 Israel has increased in 2010 – mostly due to the secular sector – to 76% of total births, compared with 75% in 2009 and 69% in 1995. From 80,400 births in 1995 the number of Jewish births catapulted by 50% to 121,000 in 2009, while the annual number of Arab births has stabilized at 39,000 due to their most impressive integration into Israel’s infrastructures of modernity.

The fertility gap between Arabs (3.5 births per woman and trending downward) and Jews (2.9 and trending upward) was reduced from 6 birth per woman in 1969 to 0.6 in 2009. The erosion in the Arab fertility rate is 20 years faster than projections made by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.

Okay, that’s the elites duking it out, but what of those gun-crazed settlers roaming around Samaria and Judea? Joe Settler has this to say.

I’ll admit, certainly if you keep the Palestinian state of Hamastan (Gaza) out of the picture, it does have some points of merit.

Israel still remains a Jewish democratic state because we’re still the majority, and probably will continue to be so (and even with Gaza we still would have a Jewish majority). Israel annexes the whole of Judea and Samaria and gradually and carefully naturalizes the Arab population. It certainly diffuses the absurd claims that the Palestinians don’t have democratic representation (though I will admit that since the PA hasn’t had elections for a while, and the term of their Prime Minister expired over a year ago, there is something to that claim, but they’re just blaming the wrong people for that problem). The US trained PA military can be incorporated into the Police, where they’ll get along fine. And finally, everyone can live and build where they want (I can just see Tel Aviv getting flooded with West Bankers, and I would certainly start my expansion). Jerusalem wouldn’t need to be divided according to anybody, and the path of the light rail wouldn’t need to be changed. And finally, we can tear down that ugly wall heading towards the middle of my house.

After all, if we can all shop and work in Rami Levi together, a single state isn’t such a impossible idea.

Joe has a valid point – it isn’t an impossible idea and its time to seriously explore the idea rather than the knee-jerk no way, no how, response from the Israeli left. As for the demographics, if Jews in the homeland of the Jewish state can’t care enough to keep the mitzvot – specifically be fruitful and multiply; is there any reason for Israel to remain the homeland of Jews who don’t exist? Really people; what is the point?

Now there are a rather large number of practical hurdles which would have to be broached in any discussion of a one-state solution – none the less would be the Palestinian Authority and what passes for the political leadership of the Palestinians would be obviously dead set against the idea.

The red-line in the sand for the Israelis would be Hamastan in the south and 4 million+ Palestinians disbursed throughout the Arab world, but given, even if a Palestinian state would be established no one would be returning any time soon due to the one practical reality, which is, a Palestinian state could not adsorb an influx of 4 million people. The water resources and infrastructure would make it a human catastrophe in less than 6 months. Oh, did I mention Israel already has two official languages – Hebrew and Arabic – already?

Officer Bubbles makes an appearance at the announcement of the G20 civil lawsuits but he keeps a ‘low profile’ this time.

I really think the taxpayer’s ought to start looking very closely at the idea of garnishing the pay of all officers involved in the civil rights violations given that any payout (not to mention the cost for the government to defend the indefensible in court) will have to come out of out of the taxpayers’ pockets.

It just seems to me when we let the authorities get a free ride on the cost of civil rights violations we enabling the very kind of behaviour we not only scorn in a free society but actively legislate against.

And just because bullies make me feel particularly meanspirited I present Officer Bubbles – the cartoon.