PDavidHornik

Linked at Power Line

My Frontpage piece today "Abbas' Damascus Odyssey" got linked and discussed on Power Line. It's happened a few times before but it's always nice when it happens. Here's Scott Johnson's post:

Abbas in Damascus: Processing right along

I learn from David Hornik's excellent Frontpage column that Mahmoud Abbas was in Damascus this week. According to Hornik, "Abbas was in Damascus to meet with Bashar Assad and with leaders of three anti-Israeli, anti-American, anti-Western terrorist organizations — Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine — to discuss achieving unity between two other terrorist organizations, Hamas and his own Fatah." Hornik links to the Jerusalem Post story by Khaled Abu Toameh on Abbas's meeting with the Islamic Jihad head Ramadan Abdullah Shalah -- a member of the FBI's most wanted terrorists list. If you're wondering why you haven't heard about Abbas's Damascus meetings, Hornik helpfully explains:

[T]here’s nothing sexy here for the international media, nothing you can spin into “Palestinians seek peace, but Israel keeps building settlements” or “Moderate Palestinians and Israelis seek peace, but both need to curb their extremists.”

Abbas apparently did not meet with the head of Hamas, who is also holed up in Damascus. Secretary Rice reportedly "set a limit on Abbas’s activities in Damascus by warning him not to meet there with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, with which Abbas complied." If accurate, this would imply that Rice approved of Abbas's meeting with Shalah.

Someone who reports the news for a living really should ask Bush administration spokesmen for their view of Abbas's get-togethers in Damascus. (emphasis added)

Fayyad sticks up for Hamas

Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad, lieutenant of President Mahmoud Abbas, is pretty much enshrined in the West as a "moderate" even more, if it's possible, than Abbas is. Fayyad has a PhD in economics from U. Texas at Austin and has worked at the Federal Reserve Bank and the World Bank, and he looks nice and comes off well. To Western eyes this means "he's Western."

Yet here he is sticking up for Hamas against Israel. Is there real enmity between Abbas and Fayyad's Fatah, and Hamas? Yes (though not unbridgeable). But Abbas and Fayyad both come from a certain culture that they have not transcended: the enmity toward the external enemy--Israel--is greater than toward the internal rival. One unites with the fellow Muslim-Arab rival against the true, hated, infidel foe.

That is not an absolute rule (there aren't many of those in the word); in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, Muslims are fighting alongside Western forces against other Muslims. But Israel is particularly hated because it's a sovereign entity on land that's regarded as Muslim. The same Muslims who in Iraq or Afghanistan will fight other Muslims along with American, British, Canadian, etc. forces would not agree to include Israeli forces in their coalition. I don't point out these things because they're pleasant but because they're true and important.

Dysfunction

Aaron Lerner gives this very good rundown of the Olmert government's repeated screw-ups and excuses for them. How much longer?

Arens exposes hypocrisy

Former defense and foreign minister Moshe Arens is once again a voice of good sense and incisive points in this oped. Unfortunately, even in the matter of the execrable prisoner exchange with Hizballah, now already underway, the Israeli government and media have given way to the culture of spin and politically correct "feelings" over reasoned positions. Arens shows that amid all the moralistic posturing over "paying the price" for the remains of the two soldiers kidnapped by Hizballah in 2006, the question of Ron Arad, whose fate is unknown since 1988, is getting short shrift. I am still hoping a new government will be voted in this year or next year that will represent the older Israeli values of fortitude and self-assertion, and that the modern democratic rot of weakness disguised as spin and smarmy moralism hasn't set in for good. If the latter, our prospects aren't bright.

Keyboard wizardry

Piano wizardry by Nat Cole. He's playing in A here, not a very piano-friendly key in jazz, but it doesn't seem to matter to him.

I grew up in the U.S. but in a classical music-favoring house and in my youth I only heard snatches here and there of Ray Charles, Nat Cole, and the like, but whenever I heard it, particularly their piano playing, I was enchanted. At 17 I finally began messing around on the piano myself and it developed into something pretty good, but not Nat Cole.

Madness summarized

Col. Yehuda Wegman, Israeli expert on military doctrine and history, sums up the madness of the latest Olmert-government policy on the Gaza "truce" and the living-for-dead deal with Hizballah. How much longer?

Jihadists' next target: the dollar

They see sinking the dollar as an important way to sink the Great Satan. (Boy, has the dollar's decline so far hurt people in countries like Israel who have U.S. earnings.) Read all about in on MEMRI.

WSJ on Iran, Israel

The Wall Street Journal sums up the situation regarding: Israel, Iran, and the world. Count on the democracies to do something about the growing catastrophic threat? No, I don't think so. That was tried before and it didn't work out too well.

Can it get much worse?

Israel has been undergoing a severe crisis of governance since 1992. Only Netanyahu's 1996-1999 term as prime minister was somewhat better. Rabin, Peres, Barak, Sharon, and Olmert have behaved in astoundingly irresponsible ways. Just lately with the "truce" with Hamas it's reached a new nadir of frightening proportions. As Debkafile summarizes below, not a few people in Israel are aware of this. What's lacking is activism by the citizenry to say enough is enough. People ask me about this--why the citizenry doesn't rise up, with demonstrations and protests, and demand a change. The answer is that an unhealthy listlessness has set in. Another answer is that no democracy has ever been under such persistent attack for so long; this, combined with catastrophic leadership, may be the outcome--tuning out.

As Debka notes:

Gaza truce faces increasing domestic fire in Israel

June 22, 2008

Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin reported more smuggled arms from Sinai were reaching Gaza in the first 72 hours of the Israel-Hamas truce and Palestinian combat training had been stepped up. Mahmoud Abbas’ rival Fatah had taken a serious beating.

Justice minister Prof. Daniel Friedman called the Israel-Hamas truce deal “a first-class strategic blunder.” He condemned the decision to reopen the crossings, especially the Rafah border terminal on the Egyptian border, without obtaining the captured Israel soldier Gilead Shalit’s release, as “mayhem” in governance.

In tones of “I told you so,” Israel’s military intelligence (AMAN) director, Brig. Amos Yadlin reported Sunday, June 22, the Gaza truce in force since Thursday had fulfilled all Hamas goals: ending the siege, opening the door to international recognition of the terrorist group and a permit to continuing building up arms.

In his briefing to the Knesset foreign affairs and security committee, Brig. Yadlin warned that the Palestinian fundamentalists were now advancing on their next objectives, the West Bank takeover a year after their coup in Gaza, followed by the whole of Israel.

Jordan scared of Pal. state

WorldTribune.com reports that

Jordan has quietly let the Bush White House know it is concerned over the prospect of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank

Officials said the Hashemite kingdom has been urging the administration to link any Palestinian entity in the West Bank with Jordan. They said an independent Palestinian state would soon be dominated by Hamas and threaten the kingdom.

"This is not a new message, but it has been repeated on more than one occasion to the United States amid its effort to set up a Palestinian state by 2009," an official said....

Officials said Jordan's King Abdullah has warned the administration that a Palestinian state in the West Bank would fuel the Islamic opposition and could lead to an attempt to overthrow the kingdom. They said Hamas has already made significant inroads in Jordan in the wake of its takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Jordan has urged the United States to link any Palestinian entity in the West Bank to Amman. They said Abdullah has proposed a merger of the West Bank and the East Bank, an arrangement that lasted from 1949 to 1967.

[No thanks!!!]

Some officials have raised the prospect that a Palestinian state in the West Bank would result in a Jordanian backlash. They said such a backlash would include a sealing of its western border and a downgrading of relations with Israel.

Although Abdullah always comes out publicly in favor of a Pal. state, this is politically correct parroting and Jordan's actual fears of that situation go back a long way. His position as a weak Arab dictator entails inauthenticity and speaking with a forked tongue. In reality Jordan is not suicidal as are the Israeli Left and--lamentably and alarmingly--Center.