Is Iran Asking For It?

With Israel blaming Iran for terrorists' murder of six Jews in Bulgaria today, Barack Obama will have a harder time managing the looming Israel-Iran crisis, Jeffrey Goldberg argues:

Prime Minister Netanyahu will be under extraordinary political pressure to retaliate in some serious way, and he will be under more pressure from himself than ever to deal with a regime he believes seeks the annihilation of six million Jews. As Amos Harel put it in Haaretz yesterday, the nuclear clock seems to be ticking more quickly than ever, and the "the key question will be whether...Netanyahu can fulfill his ideological and historical commitment to prevent what he describes as a potential second Holocaust."

I doubt Netanyahu will retaliate for the Bulgaria bombing by launching an immediate attack on Iran's nuclear sites. But there is a good chance he will launch attacks on Hezbollah targets and individuals, and possibly certain Iranian targets as well, and this sort of back-and-forth can only escalate tensions further, which could only bring us closer to an Israelii preemptive strike on Iran.

Borders, Not Boycotts

Jeffrey Goldberg says that Israel and the Palestinians must get back to the table and decide on the borders of a new state:

Borders -- those are the issue, in my opinion. I used to think settlements were a main stumbling block. But they can be bypassed. If you can negotiate the borders of Palestine, the settlement problem dissipates. It gets ugly, also -- the extremists will make sure of that -- but it's obvious that settlements are secondary. Settlements that are outside the negotiated border will have to be dismantled (or their residents will have to take Palestinian citizenship) and those settlements inside the border become normal communities within Israel. We just have to get back to negotiations. I'm hoping President Obama, if he's reelected, will be visiting Israel and the West Bank by spring of next year to lay out his vision of how the two sides need to act.

Sullivan's Obama-First Policy?

Bloggers Jeffrey Goldberg and Andrew Sullivan profess to remain friends, though their public argument over Israel and the Palestinians has become so heated that it's hard to imagine their finding much common ground to have a beer over. Today Goldberg appears to take it up a notch by accusing Sullivan of personalizing the issue to an alarming extent:

I remember when Andrew, of course, characterized Palestinians as devils and thought Israelis wore halos, but this was before, as he told me over lunch one day a couple of years ago, he realized that Netanyahu, in his opinion, was standing in the way of President Obama's destiny. Once Netanyahu got in the way, Andrew said, he was finished defending Israel.

Nightstick At The Ready

Filing from Jerusalem on March 19, Jeffrey Goldberg says the "bad cop" is toughening its stance:

The arguments I’ve outlined here -- and those I’ll describe in my next column -- all lead to a single conclusion: The Israeli political leadership increasingly believes that an attack on Iran will not be the disaster many American officials, and some ex-Israeli security officials, fear it will be.

Cops And Bloggers

For two years Jeffrey Goldberg has been warning readers about the likelihood of Israel attacking Iran. Writing during a Middle East visit last week, Goldberg speculated that Benyamin Netanyahu may have been bluffing the whole time in order to get the U.S. to toughen its position. Andrew Sullivan, perhaps forgetting Winston Churchill's maneuvers before the U.S. entry into World War II, is shocked, just shocked that Israel would leverage and manipulate its generous ally. For his part, Goldberg admires the Washington-Jerusalem two-step:

[Obama and Netanyahu] they have accomplished something extraordinary together over the past two years. The sanctions Obama has placed on Iran are some of the toughest ever placed on any country. Even some hardliners now believe that they just might force a change in Iran’s nuclear calculus. And how has Obama convinced the world that these sanctions are necessary? By pointing to Netanyahu and saying, “If you don’t cooperate with me on sanctions, this guy is going to blow up the Middle East.”

Obama’s good-cop routine is then aided immeasurably by the world’s willingness to believe that Netanyahu is the bad cop.

No one fully understands the dynamic between Obama and Netanyahu, apart from the men themselves. And no one, maybe not even their closest advisers, knows what they said to each other when they met alone March 5 in the White House. I recognize the suggestion that the two men are deliberately tag-teaming Iran is a bit much to swallow, and I recognize, too, that believing Netanyahu never intends to attack Iran by himself is dangerous.

When word got around the Episconixonian newsroom about Goldberg's use of that particular law enforcement metaphor, our voices were raised as one proclaiming "Holy Guacamole!" Back on Feb. 22, I wrote:

Whether taking the threat of an Israeli or U.S. attack seriously would lead to war or the negotiating table remains an open question. It occurs to me that President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, without having set out to do so, have fallen into a good cop, bad cop dynamic that is making the threat of an Israeli attack seem more imminent than it perhaps is -- which, again, may help draw Teheran into a meaningful conversation about how to avoid war, which would be by not developing a nuclear weapon. George W. Bush pulled off something similar with Libya.

An Iranian Nightmare

Jeffrey Goldberg urges the Obama administration to reach out to Iran:

[A]dvocates of an attack on Iran today would be exchanging a theoretical nightmare -- an Iran with nukes -- for an actual nightmare, a potentially out-of-control conventional war raging across the Middle East that cost the lives of thousands Iranians, Israelis, Gulf Arabs and even American servicemen.

Reuters' Rotten Logic

Reuters on today's terrorist attack in Jerusalem:

Police said it was a "terrorist attack" -- Israel's term for a Palestinian strike.

How could anyone write that sentence? Is the Palestinian National Authority at war with Israel? No: Its prime minister, Salam Fayyad, called it a terrorist attack, too. Doesn't that put the Palestinian imprimatur on "Israel's term"? Would Reuters have called an IRA bombing an "Irish strike" even though it was condemned by Ireland?
Hat tip to Jeffrey Goldberg

NPR's "Morally Deranged" Critic

Jeffrey Goldberg is appalled by the NPR sting -- the sting part, not the NPR part:

This is a horrible story, and not because this silly man from NPR kept on chewing while his fake donors told him they represented an organization founded by Muslim Brothers, or that he seemed to agree with the anti-Zionist invective they spewed. What is horrible about this is that an NPR executive has lost his job (and his next job, apparently) after falling victim to a truly pernicious sting operation run by a morally-deranged individual. Schiller is being punished (everyone at NPR named Schiller is being punished, in fact) for saying a couple of dumbass things in private, and nodding in agreement to another set of dumbass statements. How about we turn this story around, and assert that these types of sting operations are what is morally egregious here; that humans often say stupid things; and that a person's life should not be destroyed for making the sort of statements made in the Schiller entrapment.

Bibi's Big Move?

Jeffrey Goldberg thinks Benyamin Netanyahu may finally be about to go to China:

Goldblog Central has been hearing rumors and intimations for some time that Bibi is going to announce something dramatic -- perhaps before a joint session of Congress (a friendlier audience than the Knesset, by a long shot). How dramatic? This is what is unclear. It's got to be pretty dramatic to keep Bibi's ostensible allies, President Obama and Angela Merkel among them, from giving up on him. According to Ha'aretz, Bibi has been telling associates that he fears the creation of a binational state in Israel's place if the country fails to allow the birth of a Palestinian state next door. He is even said to be thinking about endorsing a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.

Obama Toes the Israeli Line On Settlements

Jeffrey Goldberg challenges Israel to reciprocate.

Will Egypt Be Democratic For Its Women?

Freedom will begin to die if people like CBS News' Lara Logan ever stop running the risks of battlefields and revolutions. Journalists who are attacked or injured while keeping us informed deserve to be called heroes no less than the volunteers in our armed forces.

Sneering at media victims or saying they asked for it is unforgivable. Andrew Sullivan and Jeffrey Goldberg rightly castigate those on the left and right who have slipped beyond the pale in their commentary about the sexual assault Logan suffered. And yet (how best to put this, since my question was prompted by one of the slobs Sullivan and Goldberg quote?) I wonder if the media are being attentive enough to women's interests in their coverage of the upheavals in the Arab world.

Was anyone raped by a gang of men in Tienanmen Square in 1989, for instance, or in Chicago or Paris in 1968? You might reply that it's not fair to Egyptians to try to make the attack on Logan emblematic of a larger problem with gender in their society. Yes, a significant though still relatively small percentage of the demonstrators were women. Women are much better off in Egypt than Saudi Arabia.

Yet 82% of Egyptians still believe that adulterers should be murdered -- and please tell me the last time you saw a photo or video of a man being stoned to death in the Islamic world. Only 41% of Egyptian men believe women should be allowed to serve in top government positions. CBS itself wrote of the indignities women usually suffer on the streets of Cairo, adding that demonstration organizers took care to minimize these in Tahrir Square. Was that just for the sake of Western media crews such as Logan's, ironically enough? We certainly wouldn't fall for it if habitual abuse of members of an ethnic minority was being hushed up for PR purposes.

The attack on Logan should help us remember that Egypt is having a mostly men's revolution to decide which new group of mostly men will be in charge next. Does the U.S. have its political house in order when it comes to gender equality? Not by any means. Our racial politics still usually come first. Gender even took a back seat when we were debating the lower Manhattan cultural center and mosque. But it ought to be worth an occasional mention that we're considerably better off than Egypt and that the democratic ideal toward which it and other mostly Muslim countries are finally straining grows from the radical equality of all people, especially men and women.

Pharoah Is Still In The Building

Jeffrey Goldberg on Egypt's next round of challenges.

The Muslim Brotherhood's Pursuit Of Death

To assure his readers that he hasn't gone soft on Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Jeffrey Goldberg has surveyed the breadth and especially the depth of its current thought so you don't have to.

If there's one thing we can probably be sure about, it's that the Obama administration is calibrating all its public statements and using all its private influence (at least until Julian Assange publishes everybody's e-mails and cables) to try to keep the MB from dominating any new Egyptian government.

Neocon Dreams

Jeffrey Goldberg:

[U]ltimately I have to come down on the side of people like Reuel Gerecht, who argue that the imposition of ostensibly pro-Western autocrats on Muslim populations leads to nothing good in the end. If President Bush had carried through his worthy freedom agenda (and if President Obama had picked up the standard of democratic change) Hosni Mubarak might have long ago been convinced to seek retirement before his people sought it for him, and today we would be watching orderly elections in Egypt in which the Muslim Brotherhood represented one choice among many, and not images of Cairo on fire.

Is The Muslim Brotherhood Getting Cuddly?

The Muslim Brotherhood, though it's standing back from the turmoil in Egypt, is bound to be a major factor if the Mubarak regime falls. Jeffrey Goldberg offers grounds for cautious realism.

Good News From Jerusalem

Jeffrey Goldberg and Hussein Ibish co-author a cautiously optimistic and comprehensive Middle East assessment:

We tend to forget, amid the welter of commentary about Palestinian incitement and Israeli belligerence, that we have recently seen startling shifts in both Israeli and Palestinian attitudes on the need for compromise. The Palestinian Authority government, led by President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, two of the most conscientious and sober-minded leaders the Palestinian people have had, continues to push forward a remarkable state-building program, and has been innovative in working against violence and incitement.

In Israel, the shift is also startling. Prime Minister Netanyahu — the leader of the Likud Party, which was previously the guardian of the ideology of territorial maximalism — has openly endorsed the creation of an independent Palestine. A majority of Knesset members plainly realize the necessity of a two-state solution. (Even Israel’s truculent foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has said that he was “ready to quit my settlement home to make peace.”)

Photo: Sea of Galilee

The Worst Airport Security, Except For The Others

Writing in the aftermath of the Moscow murders, Jeffrey Goldberg on one of the world's safest airports:

I think Ben-Gurion airport in Israel has a decent system. All people going to the airport -- in taxis, cars and buses -- have to pass through a checkpoint a couple of miles away from the main terminal. When you get to the main terminal, plainclothes security officers are everywhere, looking for suspicious behavior.

Yes, I know, having shepherded 28 fellow St. John's pilgrims through the process on Saturday evening. What's unique, at least in my experience, is that you go through security before you check in as well as after. Moments after we'd entered the terminal, each of us had been interviewed, out of the hearing of the others, and asked a series of questions about our luggage and whether we'd been given any gifts while in Israel.

After our bags were examined by a machine, most of us were sent to have at least one bag opened and inspected. When one of our pilgrims had made it all the way to the check-in desk, she casually asked me if it was okay that she had packed some items for another pilgrim who'd run out of space in her suitcase. We were evidently overheard by a plainclothes officer. A couple of seconds later, she was directed back to secondary, where she had to unpack her luggage item by item.

As I think everyone knows, the Ben Gurion system is based on profiling. Arab friends say it takes them at least two hours to clear security, every time. Sometimes they're subjected to strip searches. Absolutely nobody likes that. But everybody likes a safe airport. Not that it would ever fly politically (unless the U.S. suffers another catastrophic attack), but the Israeli approach at U.S. airports would cost the TSA up to $150 billion more a year.

One thing about Ben Gurion's system for checking people and their carry-on baggage: You don't have to shed shoes and belts or go through a body scan. Either the Israelis have cooler machines, or they're more casual at the second stage because of the thoroughness of the pre-check-in process.

Jewish State or Democratic State?

Jeffrey Goldberg, visiting Israel, is wondering how much its leaders really value democracy:

[T]here's very little Israel's right-wing government has done in the past year or so to suggest that it is willing to wean itself from its addiction to West Bank settlements, and the expansion of settlements bodes ill for the creation of a Palestinian state -- and the absence of Palestinian statehood means that Israel will one day soon confront this crucial question concerning its democratic nature: Will it grant West Bank Arabs the right to vote, or will it deny them the vote? If it grants them the vote, this will be the end of Israel as a Jewish state; if it denies them the vote in perpetuity, it will cease to be a democratic state.

A Jerusalem Christmas

Jeffrey Goldberg (who's Jewish) describes Christmas Eve in multicultural Jerusalem. With Israeli friends, he went to services at the Church of the Redeemer (Lutheran) in the Old City and heard a German pastor read Luke's gospel in Hebrew. But that's not the half of it. Earlier in the day, he took one of his kids to see a doctor:

The clinic, called Terem, is well-known in Jerusalem in part because it was started by a physician named David Applebaum, who was killed in the September 9, 2003 terrorist bombing of a cafe in the Germany Colony neighborhood, along with his daughter Naava, who was scheduled to get married the next day. The physician who saw my son at Terem, like many of the clinic's physicians, is an Arab from East Jerusalem. In Terem, and at Hadassah Hospital, and the other hospitals in town, Jews treat Arabs, Arabs treat Jews, and no one thinks twice about it. No one who lives here, I mean. For visitors (even one, like myself, who once lived in Jerusalem), these sorts of commonplace facts of life -- Germans praying in Hebrew, Arab physicians treating Jews in a clinic founded by a terror victim, and on, and on -- can be astonishing.

It's hard to see clearly, but this photo, which I took in the Old City during a 2007 pilgrimage, shows a minaret on the left, a cross on the right (station #3 on the Via Dolorosa, "Jesus falls for the first time"), and (in the middle of the image, in the distance) a menorah.

"Maybe Israel Has No Plan"

Jeffrey Goldberg on the new settlement construction projects Israel has launched in the West Bank, especially those, Ethan Bronner reports, "in more remote communities that are least likely to be part of Israel after any two-state peace deal":

I would like someone in the Netanyahu government to please explain the plan here. It would make things so much easier to understand if we just knew the plan. Is the plan to continue settling Judea and Samaria so that there is no chance whatsoever of creating a Palestinian state? And if this is the plan, then what happens to those Palestinians who are being denied a state? Will they be absorbed into democratic Israel, thus bringing about an end to the idea that there should be a single small country on earth where Jews can be a majority? Or are they going to be denied democratic rights, in which case, well, Israel as we know it will cease to exist. Or is there some other plan? Or -- maybe -- there is no plan. Maybe these things just happen.