Recently in Israel Category
Forty-two percent (42%) of Americans say that if Israel launches an attack against Iran, the United States should help Israel. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 46% believe the United States should do nothing while just 1% believe the U.S. should help Iran.I have a feeling, based on nothing more than my own silly notions, that the one-percent is made up of half ethnic Iranians and the other half are people that have actually read and understand our international obligations under the UN Charter to come to the aid of member nations who are victims of an otherwise unprovoked attacked by a rogue nation acting outside of the the rule of law.
I'm not saying what we should do, although even if we just stand by and watch Israel do everybody else's dirty work when it comes to Iran's nuclear aspirational goals, it's certain that we could be counted on to veto any interference by the UN against our closest Middle Eastern ally.
However, it's interesting that less than one percent of Americans even care what the UN obligates us to do.
(cross posted at Daily Kos)
Recently, while browsing another blog's comment thread I was brought up short when I came upon this statement:
It’s still unclear where the main source of our problem in Iraq lies.Gosh, where do we start?
But let's cut the snark and try to answer the man's question. Because until we can do that, not only will we have lost the Iraq war, we will have embarked on a path that will lead to one disastrous war after another, being bled dry by "leaders" who want one thing only: ultimate power.
- TPMmuckrakers have swarmed the 3,000 page DoJ document dump like a bunch of hungry ants and dismantled it tout de suite. The result? Oh, baby -- lots of juicy tidbits for sure.
- Gonzalez cancels a Thursday meeting with a House committee. Will he really still be here by then...or not?
- Enough already with Web 2.0.
- Mitt's Macaca Moment? Poor baby. Let Ann kiss it and make it better.
- Obama says it wasn't anyone in his campaign that did the now ubiquitous Mac-1984/Hillary mash-up. Whoever it was, it's done pretty well -- check out the Obama logo on the girl's tank-top. Cool.
- M.J. Rosenberg cries foul when Hamas gunmen kill an Israeli electrician -- but only because he was attacked inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel. This is exactly the kind of pointy-headed intellectual drivel I so hate from otherwise sensible liberals.
- Ditto Kristof.
- Holy crap! Even more juicy tidbits from the DoJ document dump.
- Anybody here hang out at Flixster?
- Apparently Heather Mills made quite an impression last night. Anyone see it?
- That new glass-bottom observation deck at the Grand Canyon gives me vertigo just reading about it: it projects 70 feet out beyond the cliff's edge and you can see 4,000 feet straight down to the bottom of the Canyon.
- Despite what Tony Snow says, there is apparently no precedent barring White House staff from testifying in front of Congress.
- While they were rationalizing about dumping selected US attorneys, insiders at the DoJ were ready to rank Patrick Fitzgerald as "not distinguished." If any of the ones that they DID fire were half as professional as Fitz, then for sure these hacks at Justice (and the WH) were out of control.
- This is weird: among 454 likely Democratic primary voters in Michigan, Sen. Hillary Clinton leads Sen. Barack Obama 45%-29% in a statewide primary. It's weird because I know lots of people in Michigan and I haven't met anyone yet that admits to wanting Hillary to get the nomination. Ditto Louisiana.
In Israel, the honeymoon with Bush is over:
To many in or involved with the Israeli government, George W. Bush's presence in the Oval Office was once reassuring. Now, it is increasingly worrying. Back in early 2004, when I started working in the Israeli Mission to the U.N. -- during the first year of the U.S. occupation of Iraq -- one of the senior diplomats there had an autographed photograph of Bush hanging behind his desk. But by the summer of 2005, as Iraq spiraled into chaos, I noticed that he had replaced it, without explanation, with a photo of U2's Bono.That anecdote, believe it or not, is the high point of a much longer article that is steeped in gloom. Things are not going well in Israel, where over 75% of the populace is down on their leaders and not optimistic about the future.
See, I told you we have a lot in common with the Israelis.
There are only three countries that have been created, whole-cloth, out of cultural pluralities: Australia, the US and Israel. In two of them, the separation of church and state has been a crucial point of contention. In the US, government and religion are meant (in theory) to run on parallel tracks. Not so much in Israel. And I worry about that because I believe that the US blueprint is the most durable one. Whether or not Israel can retain her cultural identity (let alone her independence) should she somehow follow that blueprint, remains to be seen. But that's a discusison for another time.
I was reminded of all of this when I read that the Israeli Cabinet has approved a Muslim minister. The Israeli government has always included Arab lawmakers. But only one other Arab has ever been a cabinet minister. As you might expect, Israeli public opinion is all over the place on this:
the appointment of Raleb Majadele, mired for weeks in political infighting and charges of racism, drew renewed criticism from hard-liners who said the move was little more than political expediency. Even Arab lawmakers dismissed the development, saying the government has little real interest in improving the lot of Israel's Arabs.Sounds hopeful, but you can never tell.Majadele told AP Television News that his goals as a Cabinet minister would be "promoting coexistence between the two peoples inside the state, and promoting dialogue between the Palestinians and the Israelis toward negotiations and political agreement."
P.S. When do you supposed the Iraqi government will include a Jewish cabinet official? Or Iran? Or Egypt? Or Afghanistan?
P.S.S. We already know what happens when a Muslim Congressman gets elected to the US House.
(This article was, of course, cross posted at Daily Kos)
Yesterday I listed the ten most read posts at E Pluribus Unum.
Today I'm listing my Top Ten "high-impact" diaries cross-posted at Daily Kos.
First, a word of explanation:
As you may know, there are thousands of diaries (posts) per day at Daily Kos. A tiny percentage become "recommended diaries" and are highlighted on a side-bar panel. An even tinier percentage are placed on the front page of the site. The vast majority of diaries come and go like waves lapping on the beach -- coming and going and being constantly replaced by new waves that also come and go. A "high-impact" diary represents the middle ground between a recommended diary and one of those waves on the beach. It is one of those diaries that gets the "optimum" combination of recommendations, comments and commenters. The system is somewhat arbitrary. Nonetheless, once a day, the high-impact diaries are recognized and share a brief moment of recognition.
These, then, are the diaries I posted at Daily Kos that recieved this recognition in 2006:
10. Connect dots:Cheney,Whittington=Bush lied under oath? (2/13)
8. (tie) Do the Democrats Have A Ground Game Like THIS One? (9/24)
8. (tie) (POLL) Dem Response To al-Maliki (7/25)
7. Fourth Generation Warfare: "You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network." (8/15)
6. NJ-04: Crum-believable! Colbert disses my ad for Carol Gay! (10/23)
5. Screw The Polls: Watch Prediction Markets (8/25)
4. Bush: Hiding a Serious Heart Condition? (8/23)
3. When Bush Taunts, Don't Defend: Attack Him Back HARD (6/29)
2. I'm an anti-war, yellow-dog Democrat -- and a Zionist, too (7/14)
And the highest impact diary I posted to Daily Kos in 2006 was...
Stop the presses: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called off coalition talks with Hamas because the two sides could not agree on the recognition of Israel.
Really, this is news?
P.S. Prime Minister Haniyeh denies the talks are off.
Contrary to what I've urged previously, it now looks more likely that the Israel-Lebanon war really might be the undercard to the main bout: US-Iran. Meteor Blades tells it.
The Economist (no link, sorry):
Lebanon's prime minister is in a fix. Lebanese patriotism obliges him to celebrate Mr. Nasrallah's great victory. But most of the coalition government over which he presides wants to seize the opportunity, enshrined in [U.N. Resolution] 1701 (and made possible by Israel's deplorable bombs), to turn Lebanon into a normal country, not one in which Iran and Syria maintain the Hizbullah fief.Good luck with that. The Lebanese Army is toothless, the UN mandate to disarm Hezballah is a non-starter, Israel is licking its wounds and the US government is AWOL. Looks like Lebanon will be, again, a puppet state and possibly vulnerable to another civil war.
Hey Seniora -- was it worth it, making nice with terrorists?
(HT to Slate)
MJ Rosenberg makes an interesting, but flawed, observation about the situation in the aftermath of the Israel-Lebanon war:
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