Soccer Dad's Mideast Media Sampler 9/2/11‏

Today's sampler and analysis of Mideast media content from my pal Soccer Dad:

1) Darth Friedman

Lando: Lord Vader, what about Leia and the Wookiee?
Darth Vader : They must never again leave this city.
Lando : [outraged] That was never a condition of our agreement, nor was giving Han to this bounty hunter!
Darth Vader : Perhaps you think you're being treated unfairly?
Lando : [after a pause; nervous tone] No.
Darth Vader : Good. You know it would be unfortunate if I had to leave a garrison here.
Lando : [to himself] This deal is getting worse all the time!

Darth Vader: Calrissian. Take the princess and the Wookie to my ship.
Lando: You said they'd be left at the city under my supervision!
Darth Vader: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further

Dialogue from The Empire Strikes Back

A few months ago, in End of Mideast Wholesale, Thomas Friedman wrote:

For the last 30 years, Israel enjoyed peace with Egypt wholesale — by having peace with just one man, Hosni Mubarak. That sale is over. Today, post-Mubarak, to sustain the peace treaty with Egypt in any kind of stable manner, Israel is going to have to pay retail. t is going to have to make peace with 85 million Egyptians. The days in which one phone call by Israel to Mubarak could shut down any crisis in relations are over.

It was an outrageous judgment then; the recent terror attacks from Egypt exposed the perniciousness of this viewpoint. Just as Darth Vader expected Lando Calrissian to accept his changing circumstances with equanimity, so does Thomas Friedman expect Israel to act. By Friedman's logic, Israel must keep Egypt happy, but Egypt need not reciprocate.

Guy Bechor questions this ideology in Mideast Rules must Change (h/t Love of the Land)

While Israel paid with hard, irreversible currency when it handed over land to the Arab side, the Arabs paid with soft, completely reversible currency - that is, words and agreements. Now we are hearing claims that these deals were made with the regimes rather than with the “people”; that is, they lack any legitimacy.

In Egypt there are many voices, including among presidential candidates, declaring that the Camp David Accord with Israel must be annulled or at least changed. That is, change the aspects that pertain to “peace” with Israel. Yet if the Egyptians wish to annul the Camp David Accord, will they return the Sinai desert to Israel? After all, they received this territory through the peace treaty between the two states, after failing to secure it through war. Yet for some reason, this is unthinkable for them.

Why is Israel responsible to make everyone else happy for there to be peace?


2) Can Libya teach us anything?

Many are treating the apparently overthrow of Qaddafi as a clearcut victory, though it may be too early to pop the corks. Still Reuel Marc Gerecht wonders if there's a lesson for Syria.

Syria will be his real test. The arguments for supporting Syrian protesters are easily as strong as those mustered to save the people of Benghazi. After months facing the regime snipers’ machine guns, tanks and torture, demonstrators are openly calling for foreign intervention. And the regime’s strategic sins against the United States are far greater than those committed by the Libyan Nero. Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah — the two terrorist powerhouses of the Middle East — are Damascus’s closest friends. Almost every Arab terrorist group, spawned in the hothouses of Islamic militancy and Arab nationalism, has had a presence in Damascus. The ruling Assad family has been the great enabler of terrorism against the United States — from the 1983 Beirut bombings to the 1996 attack on Khobar Towers, and quite possibly to Sept. 11 via the operational carte blanche given to Imad Mughniya and Hezbollah. Mughniya, Iran’s dark Arab prince who served as Tehran’s liaison with Arab terrorists, and Hezbollah likely aided al-Qaeda in the 1990s. More so than any Sunni-led Arab state, the Assad regime has reveled in its “front-line” hostility toward Israel.
For decades foreign policy “realists” dreamed of severing the Assads and Syria’s ruling Shiite Alawite clan from Iran and marrying them to the peace process. This delusional aspiration — it ignored the sectarian and religious reality of Syrian politics — appears dead. Addicted to viewing the region through a Palestinian-Israeli lens, Obama may finally look strategically at Syria.

Gerecht clearly believes that the United States needs to get involved because the Syrian government isn't just turning its guns against its own people but has been an enemy in war to the United States and its allies.

3) 1 million on the 3rd?

A funny thing with the protests in Israel, reality intruded. Isabel Kershner reports:

After six weeks of tent encampments and rallies featuring popular singers that drew as many as 300,000 people into the streets on the first Saturday in August, the Sept. 3 rally has been described by its promoters as a million-person march.
But for now the movement is in a kind of hiatus, with nagging questions about where it will go. The mid-August attack by Palestinian militants that killed eight Israelis near the southern city of Eilat, close to the Egyptian border, followed by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza and Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza, proved to be a major interruption, abruptly changing the public discourse back to the more familiar mode of Israeli security in hostile surroundings.
In addition, disagreements have emerged among the groups that make up the leadership of the protest movement, along with increasing grumbling about some of the higher-profile leaders themselves. The giddy festival atmosphere that first enveloped the social protest has dissipated. The rows of tents at the flagship encampment lining Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv are gradually emptying.

I wish that Kershner had provided more details about the dissatisfaction with the leadership of the protests. Of course the emptying of the tents may just be a sign that summer's over and that protesters no longer have the time.
Despite Kershner's generally positive portrayal of the protests, Challah Hu Akbar pointed out that a feeder demonstration did not go well.

Some 20 activists from southern Israel marched to Jerusalem from the south and are protesting against the cost of living in front of the prime minister's residence.

If the million protesters don't show it won't be the only recent underwhelming protest.


4) Yelling "fire"

The new editor of the Jerusalem Post, Steven Linde defends his decision to fire Larry Derfner:

By trying to rationalize the murder of his fellow Jews by terrorists, Derfner – who has always been the consummate journalist for the Post – went beyond the pale. Consequently we terminated his employment.

The move, I stress, had nothing to do with threats to cancel subscriptions or advertisements; it was an editorial decision taken on moral grounds. While politically independent, the Post is a quintessentially Zionist newspaper priding itself on its patriotism and credibility, as well as its balanced reporting and diverse commentaries.

If I'm understanding Linde he's arguing that Derfner's post was similar to yelling "fire" in crowded movie theater. So he, in turn said, "you're fired." A rabbi was recently arrested for incitement, so I wonder if there may have been a legal concern too.


5) Followup

Yesterday I wrote that Ehud Olmert was Netanyahu's successor, which is technically correct, since Netanyahu served as PM from 1996-1999 (I didn't write "immediate"), given the context, I meant "predecessor." Thank to Carl for pointing it out!

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