A Prisoner Swap and a Land Grab in Israel/Palestine

The timing cannot be an accident.

The same day Israel courageously and controversially released 550 Palestinian political prisoners (though not, tellingly, Marwan Barghouti), the Israeli housing authority issued 1,000 new settler permits. All of the new settler tenders apply to areas around Jerusalem.

According to Israeli Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Atias, "The decision was reached last month after the Palestinians were accepted into UNESCO."

"Some countries won't be pleased with this, but they won't be surprised," he added.

Tragically, Atias is correct. Israel's continued policy of using settlements as both a bargaining chip and a flail is about as unpredictable as an M. Night Shyamalan twist. Whenever Israel wants something, settlements are there to be discussed. Not, mind you, a settlement freeze, but rather the dismantling of existing settlements. And whenever Israel feels threatened or spurned - and in this case, it feels spurned, UNESCO is hardly a threatening organization - the housing ministry approves new settlement permits.

You might ask why. Settlements cause nothing but trouble, it would seem. Israeli soldiers that could be defending the country's existing and much-complained-about borders must instead help settlers defend themselves, monitor supply lines, water resources, etc. Israel's allies wring their hands in distress, and occasionally malign an Israeli leader. Human rights groups condemn the activities, which is something of an embarrassment given historic Jewish commitment to the rights of man. The settlements cost Israel money, time, human and military resources, prestige, legitimacy, friends, trustworthiness. They are, at first glance, a strategic liability.

Until you look at the settlers themselves.

Israeli soldiers are bound, however loosely, by a code of conduct. Israel likes to claim that its soldiers are the most humane in the world, though at least one late Palestinian protester would beg to disagree if he still had a face. Israeli settlers are not. It speaks volumes about our media that Katyusha rockets with a dismal (or, objectively, happy) casualty count generate more attention that repeated and escalating settler attacks on mosques, homes, and individuals themselves.

And what better way to remind Palestinians, even as they welcome home their recently detained, of their place than to send a group of religious zealots into their midst, to do the work that really could backfire on the slick PR machine that is Israeli foreign policy?

Gingrich's Mystery Middle East History

Recently, Newt Gingrich said that Palestine was not a country, its people an "invented" people, and offered as evidence the fact that "historically, it was part of the Ottoman Empire."

I have news for Gingrich. It shouldn't be news, especially as the man keeps insisting he's a historian, but apparently he hasn't heard about this.

The Ottoman Empire was destroyed during the Great War, also known as WWI. As early as 1916, the Allied powers had planned for its dissolution and made secret agreements about the division of its territories. Agreements such as Sykes-Picot-Sazanov, the Balfour Declaration, the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, etc. drew lines in the sands, creating countries based on the Western notion of nationalism whose borders resembled the linguistic, ethnic, and religious reality of the situation on the ground the way my feet resemble the Mona Lisa.

Modern Syria? Not the way it ought to look, judging from history. Most of Lebanon and large parts of modern-day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan were part of Sham, or "Greater Syria." Iraq? That's a messy marriage of Mosul, Baghdad, Basra, and Kurdish areas, designed to make sure oil-rich territory remained under a single ruler beholden to the West and to ensure an uninterrupted British sphere of influence stretching from Sudan to India. Sometimes, it seems that parts of that marriage cheat on each other with Iran, and I often fear it will all end in divorce. (That's something Gingrich knows all about.) Jordan? Historically, a fiction, part of an Ottoman district referred to as, you guessed it, Palestine. Israel? The quite impressive product of dreams, hard work, perceived war-time expedience, and, in the words of Israeli historian Tom Segev, "the misguided and anti-Semitic belief that Jews turned the wheels of history."

All those countries and more were part of the Ottoman Empire. I have been to many of them, and I can attest to the fact that the people there no longer speak Ottoman Turkish, complain about the Capitulations, wonder about the Tanzimat, or address their leaders as Bey or Pasha. They are far too busy overthrowing despotic leaders propped up by the West to engage in such nostalgic pursuits. In fact, one can argue that now is the first time these "invented" Syrians, Yemenis, and Iraqis have expressed themselves in the framework of that identity.

I do not mean to suggest that because Syria, Iraq, etc. are largely recent creations their peoples are "invented." I am aware, as Gingrich is apparently not, that most countries in the world are fairly recent creations, their people struggling to adjust to the quite young idea of nationalism, their philosophies and ideologies constantly changing, shifting. And I am aware that the emergence of a new people (for example, Israelis) does not mean that people is a fiction. Change is the nature of history. A modern day Syrian is a Syrian, just as I am an American, Gingrich an idiot, and Mahmoud Abbas a Palestinian.

I wonder, though, about the selectivity with which Gingrich has applied his "invented" moniker. If modern Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire, and Armenia only recently became independent, are Syrians and Armenians "invented" people? How about the Israelis? Zionist luminaries such as Herzl and Jabotinsky wanted Israelis to be different from the Jews of old - they intended Zionism to create a new breed of human being, a new breed of Jew. Since the Israelis are so new, and their "invention" is quite well documented, will the eminent historian Gingrich disparage their origins as well?

You know what? Don't answer that. Gingrich's capacity for incendiary stupidity and confident ignorance cloaked in self-attested expertise frightens me.

The More Things Change...

For months, Russia has been obstructing UN Security Council resolutions condemning the ongoing violence in Syria.

Let me get one thing out of the way: I love Russians. I love them for Dostoevsky, for Rachmaninoff, for the seductive, sibilant whisper of their language, and for their habit of doing completely inscrutable things. For example, blocking even the most tepid UNSC resolutions on Syria.

So when, after the Russians again vetoed a Security Council resolution on Syria a few months ago, I simply threw up my hands at Al Jazeera English’s UN bureau and said, “That’s just the ____ing Russians being ___ing Russian,” my exclamation was tinged with admiration.

Luckily, Ramy, the Al Jazeera Arabic intern, had a better explanation for Russia’s diplomatic maneuvers. He sent me the information so I would stop blathering like a vaguely racist idiot in the UN’s press wing. To anyone who’s studied WWI, this is going to seem incredibly retro.

Syria provides Russia with its only warm water naval base.

Access to the Mediterranean has informed Russian policy toward the Middle East since, well, forever. Russia fought wars with the Ottoman Empire, signed secret agreements with France and England, tried to use its role as protector of Eastern Orthodox Christians, and supported Israel for naval access to this most important of seas. The Mediterranean gives Russia’s navy and merchant marine a perennial gateway to the Atlantic and the world, undercutting NATO’s dominance in Europe and opening new avenues for Russia’s trade.

To discover this familiar motive on the part of an age-old player in Middle Eastern politics in such a time of flux and dynamism was…well it was like running into a beloved friend in a new city. But it also shows that the USA is not the only country that can’t seem to escape outdated objectives in its Middle Eastern policy.

Now, as the UN Human Rights Commissioner says Syria is descending into civil war, Russia needs to adapt. One Mediterranean port isn’t going to do it much good when revolutionary governments control the Southern coast (Libya, Tunisia, Egypt) and NATO the Northern. The Cold War is over. The Great Game is over. And the world’s powers need to recognize that and act accordingly. Bashar Al Assad is one of the last remaining specimens of an endangered species – the Arab dictator. And those who help or allow him and his ilk to continue their repression of democratic protesters will find their come-uppance both in this world and the next.

The New Orientalism

I first realized the existence of a new Orientalism several years ago, when someone asked me my favorite color in Arabic.

At that time, after three years of study, I could have held my own in a conversation about politics, religion, or economics. I could have debated the relative merits of a Pan Arabic or single country approach to solving the Israeli Palestinian conflict or pontificated at length about multiculturalism in Islam’s history, but I could not tell this person that my favorite color was green.

The problem wasn’t me – though I spent a considerable amount of time in my dorm room at Lebanese American University in Beirut alternately berating myself and lamenting the past three years of hard word, all the while drinking quite heavily. The problem became evident as I perused my textbooks, looking for the chapter on colors.

There wasn’t one.

There wasn’t a chapter on pets either, or on sports, or parts of the body, hobbies, artwork, public transportation. In fact, the Arabic word for United Nations preceded any discussion of something as simple as food by several chapters. Vocabulary and expressions relating to daily life and commonplace events were scattered amongst chapters dedicated to politics, religion, and history. The word for “republic” (jumhurriyah) appeared before the word for “cat” (qittah). I was not learning a language from these textbooks. I wasn’t learning how to communicate with an Arab. I was learning how to talk to diplomats, government officials and businessmen.

Granted, Modern Standard Arabic is primarily used for political and religious matters. But since all dialects – the languages of the Arab street – derive from MSA, shouldn’t I have learned the word for “cat” before the word for “inflation?” After all, the dialects only change one letter (qittah becomes ‘ittah or gittah depending on where you are.) And in my experience – which, linguistically speaking, is long and varied – dialects prevail in every language. That didn’t stop my French teacher from getting me to talk about crepes before discussing Sartre. Even my Latin professor – Latin, people, only used to talk to the Pope! – didn’t prepare us for Cicero right off the bat; we started with basic expressions.

Hello. How are you? My favorite color is green.

Edward Said published Orientalism in 1978. His main argument was that Western perceptions of and interactions with the East – from Arabia to China – took place within a cultural framework that portrayed the “Oriental” as a lazy, lascivious, irrational deviant, controlled by an odd mixture of hedonism and religious fervor.

Judging from the Al Kitaab fii Ta’allum al Arabiyah series – the most widely used Arabic language textbooks in the USA – the old, stale image of the leering, fanatical Arab has been replaced by a new image; the Arab as a solely political being. This view is not only sad and false, it is also dangerous.

Imagine a person devoid of any characteristics, any social context. He has no friends, no family, no history, no future. All he has is a political stance, a set of beliefs, a commitment to an ideal. Imagine making a decision about how to deal with such a person – you would be like an amateur looking through a telescope, seeing what is in front of you and not understanding how it got to be that way. You yourself would make political decisions about this person, without taking circumstances, which by nature explain politics, into account. This naturally leads to poor decisions; for example, in spite of ample evidence that right-wing activists pose a greater threat to our society than radicalized Muslims, Representative Peter King is conducting hearings directed exclusively at investigating our Muslim population.

I was lucky enough to have teachers who supplemented our textbooks with movies, conversational excercises, and out-of-the-book vocabulary. I was even luckier to get the chance to study Arabic in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. But I’ve never quite escaped the sensation that our books taught us Arabic not with the goal of linguistic mastery, but with the goal of political clout. And that just won’t work – with Bush Jr, we saw what political clout looks like when it lacks eloquence.

The Al Kitaab series has gone through several editions and, to the editors’ credit, the treatment of Arabs as people rather than political playing pieces has improved with each revision. But until we start learning Arabic the way we’d learn German, French, or Spanish, don’t expect us to have the relationship with the Middle East that we do with our European friends.

Shifting

For years, American policy in the Middle East has sat, like a stool, atop three legs. Support for Israel, protecting economic interests (it's not just oil - there's also a fair amount of trade and banking involved), and the power struggle between the regions two great Muslim powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

One of those legs is about to be broken, and our government needs to construct a new one if it doesn't want to topple ignominiously off of its precarious regional perch.

The poles of influence in the Arab and Muslim world are shifting. Though still wealthy and formidable, the Saudis don't have the same clout they used to. And even as Iran pursues its nuclear program, its leaders are scrabbling to maintain toe-holds in a region that increasingly deems them irrelevant.

Take a look at what's happened over the past few months. Saudi Arabia has been unable to take decisive action in any of the protests erupting throughout the Arab world. Its many GCC-brokered deals to get Yemeni President Saleh out of power have - obviously - failed, many of the troops now keeping the peace in Bahrain are actually Qatari, and the strict, Wahhabi state has had to relent on civil and women's rights fronts to mollify even the threat of protest.

Iran, meanwhile, couldn't even get Iraq to vote against sanctioning Syria. Iraq, which shares a border, a religion, and a number of cultural traits with Iran, instead abstained, allowing the Arab League to ram tough sanctions down Syria's already parched throat. And while Iran might support Bahraini protesters, the Bahrainis don't support Iran, however Shi'ite it is. In fact, according to Wikileaks, Bahrainis from the ruling al Khalifa family to street vendors fear Iran more than anything else.



But as these two powers diminish in regional influence, two others are ascending. One is new to such geopolitical power, the other a veteran playing piece and sometime player of the Great Game - the struggle for colonial and imperial power that took place from the early 19th to early 20th centuries.

The new one is Qatar. This tiny country has wealth, Islamic credibility, and, though its government doesn't interfere with the station's dealings too often, Al Jazeera. Qatar was the first Arab government to recognize Libya's National Transitional Council, provided Libyan rebels with access to the airwaves, agitated for sanctions against Syria, helped end the Sudanese civil war, and enjoys warm ties with everyone from Hamas to the USA.

The old one is Turkey. Under Prime Minister Recep Erdogan's ruling AKP, Turkey's economy has boomed. His defiance of Israel and his willingness to host Syrian refugees have made him a darling of the Arab press, and his charisma is eerily reminiscent of such great historical figures as Mustafa Kemal and, yes, I'm going there, Winston Churchill. Moreover, Erdogan has managed to do all he's done for Turkey as a member of an Islamist party, without trampling women's rights or compromising Turkey's strong identity as a secular country. (His record on Kurds leaves much to be desired, I admit.)

I think this is a good development, if our leaders choose to recognize it. Qatar and Turkey have legitimacy in the Arab world. They have momentum. They were not created from lines drawn in the sand by colonizing powers. And most importantly, from our perspective, they are far from hostile to Western interests.

Unfortunately, as I've lamented before, our foreign policy in the Middle East always seems to lag far behind developments there. But then again, everything in the Middle East is in flux right now. Maybe our habit of tardiness will change as well.

How Do You Pronounce Qatar?

As Anthony Shadid pointed out in the New York Times a few days ago, the tiny nation of Qatar is becoming pretty influential in the Middle East these days.

For those few people who've followed events in the country, the past eight months of frenzied, high profile activity are just the continuation of a methodical, intentional, and brilliantly planned ascension in word politics. And for those same few people, Shadid's poorly veiled allegations of an Islamist agenda are silly, and unworthy of a reporter with such knowledge and experience.

Yes, Qatar has contacts with groups such as Hamas. Yes, Qatar has sent troops into a neighboring Shi'ite country - Bahrain - at the behest of the Sunniest of all Sunni Muslim states, Saudi Arabia. And yes, Qatar has cultivated ties with Islamists in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt, hosts Islamic TV shows, and gives Islamists a voice through certain programs on Al Jazeera.

Shadid makes much of these connections, as do many of the people he quotes. But there's something missing in his analysis, something he identifies as "murky" but something that is as clear as the glass you can make from the sands of Qatar's deserts. Intention. The "why" of it all.

Qatar is a country of immense wealth, a wealth built on skeletons. Literally. The Qataris owe their massive high per capita income and absurdly lavish lifestyle to natural gas, a fossil fuel. And because they rely on a nonrenewable resource, and because they rely on business, the Qataris want stability.

Qataris want stability so much that they serve as intermediaries between the US and Iran, according to diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, a role that must feel awkward at the best of times and impossible whenever else. In an effort to find stability, Qatar has offered to help talk Hamas into not being so, well, Hamas-like, according to those same cables. In its quest for stability Qatar lets the US keep an air force base in its territory, invites Western universities to set up campuses near Doha, and hosts Israeli officials.

And in a region where secularists have been largely smeared with totalitarian brushes, where Ennahda has won elections in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood represents the vanguard of renewed protests in Egypt, Qatar's seemingly dubious contacts with Islamists look a lot more like a good investment in stability than a sinister plan of attack.

Frankly, we need to get out of this trend of seeing any new power that talks to Islamists as having an Islamist agenda. It's a bit narrow-minded and reactionary. If I talk to Rick Perry, does that mean I want to execute 234 people? And if, as a reporter, I talk to a jihadi, does that mean I support the demise of all things Western?

Of course it doesn't. So why apply that flawed logic to Qatar?

Given the way things are going in the Middle East, we're going to need some people who can talk to Islamists, and that might not be such a horrible thing. The world didn't come to an end after Ennahda won the Tunisian elections, after all.

Oh. And it's pronounced "Gatt'r."

A Hook Too Fast - UFC on Fox

For those of you who don't know, the UFC stands for Ultimate Fighting Championships. It started as little more than a no-rules brawlfest, dominated by grapplers, and has developed into a multimillion dollar company with a stable full of some of the most amazing fighters you will ever see.

Last night, the UFC tried to break its 18-34-year-old male tough guy demographic and go mainstream. After a few exploratory and ultimately successful jabs with fights on Spike TV and a reality show, the UFC got Fox to host the promotion's equivalent of a cross-hook-takedown-bloody-KO-elbow-to-prone-opponent's face: the heavyweight championship bout between Cain Velasquez and Junior Dos Santos. Both are skilled, aggressive, and have the stamina of a migrating blue whale. The fight was to be a classic - Velasquez' wrestling and cradio against Dos Santos' brutal, pinpoint precise hands and ever-evolving ground game.

I think my apprehension took out my excitement when I noticed that a full half hour of the UFC's debut on Fox would be devoted to slick, highly produced back story.

You see, in mixed martial arts (MMA), the slicker you try to be, the more painful your demise.

Sure, there are exceptions. Anthony Pettis' showtime kick, Georges St Pierre throwing a superman punch off his lead hand, Lyoto Machida's leaping front kick. But generally speaking, a good fighter relies on fundamentals, and a good fight production does, too.

So after being treated to beautifully shot, slyly edited, and frankly compelling footage of both fighters training, talking, and glowering threateningly at the camera, fans and newcomers to the sport of MMA watched two of the most elite heavyweights in the world go to war.

For 63 seconds.

That's how long it took for Dos Santos to connect with a right hand to Velasquez' temple, follow him down to the ground, and rain punishment on him until the ref stopped the action. Dos Santos upset Velaquez for the heavyweight crown, and the fight upset, well, me, and more importantly, UFC President Dana White.

As the AP reported, "White chose the two fearsome fighters for his Fox debut because of the high potential for a stoppage victory -- Velasquez and Dos Santos had ended nearly all of their fights by early stoppage. But White was clearly not thrilled with just how quickly that end arrived, criticizing Velasquez’s decision to stand and fight with Dos Santos, one of the best boxers in M.M.A."

Twitter, which is an important tool for fans to voice grievances with judges, fighters' strategies, ticket prices, etc., reflected some negativity as well. Below are two quotes that summed up what a lot of people were feeling.

"Wow.. Cain Velasquez just got his ass whooped the 1st round.. todays ufc heavyweight chamionship fight was a #disappointment"

"Cain Velasquez vs JDS...what a disappointment."

A quick KO is not what the the UFC needed in order to attract fans and legitimacy. I've been watching fights - and fighting - for an embarrassing number of years, and while participants and spectators alike enjoy a good KO, they like to work for it. Imagine eating the most delicious dish you've ever had without chewing - the taste is there, but not the experience. That's what a first round KO is like. (I could also make comparisons to bedroom mishaps, but that's just crass.)

In an odd way, the event might help the UFC get licensed in New York. After all, a quick KO yields little blood and seems much less like institutionalized ferocity than a drawn-out 5 round fight, and opponents to the promotion and its sport tend to be averse to its brutality. But as far as a positive, lasting introduction to a new group of people and potential fans (and consumers) goes?

My guess is that people who were testing the waters with the UFC on Fox will say to themselves, "Oh, that's what the hype is all about. That was pretty cool."

And 63 seconds later, they'll be back to talking about football, the NBA lock-out, the Pacquiao-Marquez fight, or, God help them, politics.

Outdated

When I was younger, I rode a fixed-gear bicycle.

It was a nightmare. You try riding a fixy on Manhattan’s hilly Upper West Side in the 90’s and then come and tell me how awesome it was.

There’s a reason fixed-gear bicycles are a thing of the past, except in Williamsburg. They are outdated. Their structure, including the lack of handbrakes, makes them frankly dangerous in an urban environment.

In many ways, the USA’s policy in the Middle East reminds me of a fixed-gear bicycle. It is outdated, has not adapted to the times, and is dangerous.

But where a fixy these days helps your image, our policy is alienating us from people we may need as friends.

Consider the travesty of a reaction to Palestine’s admission as a member of UNESCO. Though many American officials, including President Obama, didn’t want to cut off funding to that most cerebral of UN bodies, a 15-year-old piece of reactionary legislation meant they had to stop underwriting any UN organ that admitted Palestine as a member.

As a result, UNESCO will find itself $70 million shorter as it seeks to, among other things:

Choose and help protect World Heritage Sites

Research water scarcity and how to respond

Fight for gender equality

Teach Afghan policemen how to read the laws they’re supposed to enforce

Condemn racism during soccer matches…

The list goes on.

This will not reflect well on the USA. Our country was one of only 14 to vote against Palestine’s admission to UNESCO. 

The votes for? 107.

Do some quick math – we’re about 7.6 times less popular than we were. From the director of UNESCO to the President of Bolivia, the American stance on Palestine's UNESCO membership has drawn little but criticism. Israel, however, was so grateful that it once again flouted American demands by hastening the construction of new housing units in occupied East Jerusalem.

A pity the world can't be more like Williamsburg. Our fixed-gear policy would be trendy.

An Odd Accusation at Occupy Wall Street

I’m accustomed to seeing charges of anti-Semitism levied against supporters of Palestinian rights, critics of Israel and AIPAC, and even against those who protested the Iraq War. The reason behind those accusations seemed simple enough to me – since its inception, political Zionism has sought to speak for Judaism as a whole, thereby rendering any criticism of Israeli actions a criticism of the Jewish people as a whole.

But charges of anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street?

While there’s a lot to criticize about the protests going on in Zuccotti Park (and God knows, I love to do it), discrimination on a racial or religious basis seems totally out of sync with the protesters’ still nebulous goals.

Yet Abraham Foxman of the Anti Defamation League (ADL), a group whose myriad accusations of anti-Semitism resemble a game of pin the tail on the donkey, has found “individuals holding anti-Semitic signs at the 'Occupy Wall Street' rallies, and some videos posted on YouTube from the rallies [that] have shown individuals expressing classic anti-Semitic beliefs such as 'Jews control the banks' and 'Jews control Wall Street.'”

I’ve been to Zuccotti Park a few times so far, and had no clue what Foxman was talking about. So I decided to go down to the protests again. I wanted to do a story on religion there anyway, which I figured would be a natural segue into a discussion of Judaism.

And I found an honest-to-God anti-Semite.

Now, before we go ahead and say that the ADL was in the right, let me tell you about this anti-Semite. (And yes, I only found one.)

His name is David Smith. He looks pretty crazy, and given that the company he keeps has been living in a public square for the better part of six weeks, that’s saying something. He was calling for the imprisonment of all bankers and investors and, somewhat inexplicably given his merciless rhetoric, holding a sign that said “Jesus Loves You” when I approached him.

I asked him to explain what he thought religion had to do with the protests and with financial inequality in the country, and he launched into a diatribe about Jewish bankers.

“The role of Wall Street is primarily Jewish. The hedge fund managers are Jewish, the bankers are Jewish. If you Google Jewish billionaires, you’ll see that Jews make up 50% of all the billionaires in this country, which is astounding because Jews only represent 2% of the population. If you prosecute more than one Jew at a time it’s called anti-Semitic. The fact of the matter is that America is a Christian nation, the Jews on Wall Street are robbing us hand over fist, I don’t know if they call it getting back for the Holocaust or whatnot…”

At this point, I stopped David Smith.

I didn’t stop him because what he said was offensive, even though it was. I didn’t stop him because his data lacked the social, political, and historical context that would make it completely understandable, though it did. I didn’t even stop him because I’m a Jew, which I am, or because I wanted to head-butt him in the nose, which I was tempted to do.

I stopped him because I felt like I was about to start laughing.

This is the face of the anti-Semitism we have to fear at Occupy Wall Street? This sad, lonely, old man, spouting the stalest of all stale anti-Semitic rhetoric, constitutes an existential threat to our 5772-year-old people?

If that’s the case, I think we’re in pretty good shape.

Abraham Foxman did acknowledge that "there is no evidence that these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are representative of the larger movement or that they are gaining traction with other participants,” but that trying economic times historically facilitate anti-Semitic rhetoric and behavior. In a sense, Foxman is right. In a Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, or German sense. In the USA, people like David Smith remain, thankfully, laughed at, ignored, or repudiated. And that is indeed what happened at Zuccotti Park – one protester burst out laughing during Smith’s diatribe, another shook his head, and one woman became incensed at Smith and scolded him.

The ADL’s self stated goal is to “stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” If that’s really the case, then Foxman’s words on Occupy Wall Street are redundant.

It seems the protesters have what little anti-Semitism there is at Zuccotti Park pretty well handled.

Moderate Muslims Abound

I have found the moderate Muslims!

According to a variety of Western politicians, bloggers, and experts, the “moderate Muslim” either does not exist, is endangered, is gutless, or is some combination of the three.

Peter King, a Representative of New York, has said he is disappointed that more Muslims didn’t express their outrage at 9/11. Geert Wilders, a vocal and – given his party’s small size – absurdly influential Dutch parliamentarian, has said there’s no such thing as a moderate Muslim. Blogs like Jihad Watch and Gates of Vienna attract a truly disturbing number of views and references (Breivik, anyone?), and, in the interest of timeliness, I saw this comment on The American Thinker posted just hours ago.

“…post 9/11 very few Muslims have condemned terrorist actions. We are still waiting for moderates to stand and deliver, identifying and removing extremist thugs from their mosques and their communities. Waiting for this self-correction is our modern version of searching for unicorns.”

I just realized – not only have I found moderate Muslims, I’ve also found unicorns. Call Ripley’s!

Ramsy Youssef is one of the moderate Muslims I found while researching a story on the New York Arab American Comedy Festival, which is in and of itself a hotbed of moderation. I asked him about jihad, a troubling word for New Yorkers.

“I think jihad has been translated through the media to mean terrorist attack. Jihad has been translated to mean holy war. When actually, Islamically, jihad means struggle. Trying to keep a relationship with God, trying to keep on time with your work schedule, trying to keep on time with your family and balancing all these things at once to a Muslim is jihad.”

(He's right, incidentally. Jihad is a permutation of the three letter radical jim ha daal (j,h,d) - one of its other permutations, ijtihad, refers to individual intellectual exertion in an effort to reconcile Islamic scripture with the world around us.)

Dean Obeidallah, the founder of the festival, is another moderate Muslim. Abbas Noori Abood, one of the participants, another. And so on and so forth.

The kicker? All these people live in the NY metropolitan area. They’ve been here the whole time, speaking out, making jokes, using comedy to try to bridge the gap between the real Islam, the Islam practiced by them as opposed to Al Qaida, and we, the viewers of the US media.

There are others like them…my friend Imran Battla, who was in the army, Salah A-Din (Saladin), who protected Jews and Christians from reprisals during the Crusades, the Yemeni soldier who greeted me at Sana’a’s airport two years ago and, upon hearing that I was Jewish, simply offered me a cup of coffee and said, “It takes all kinds,” my Arabic professors…my list of moderate Muslims is probably longer than the no-fly list.

Cat Stevens!

People like the commenter I quoted above are like a man searching for the glasses he's already wearing – the moderate Muslims they think don’t exist are right in front of them, all around them, their moderation rendering them almost invisible to an American public conditioned to look for a gun or a bomb whenever it hears an Arab name.

But people like Peter King and Geert Wilders, blogs like Jihad Watch and Gates of Vienna…they are deliberately spreading misinformation and hate. They are cherry-picking history, theology, and linguistics.

If anyone is really interested in seeing moderate Muslims, go to the festival.

Or better yet, just talk to a neighbor.

You might be surprised.

Oh, To Be Egyptian!

To all the would-be Wall Street occupiers, I get it. I understand. 

It sucks when someone looks cooler than you do.

All those Egyptians and Tunisians, bravely facing down the forces of oppression, brandishing signs and kuffiyehs…who wouldn’t be inspired? The campout in Tahrir Square looked like a blast, too.

So, we have signs and kuffiyehs, right? We can get tents and stoves and stuff for campouts, right? We can get on camera, fight the power, and come out on top as the world looks on in stunned approval, right?

And we – the educated, white American youth with enough time to go camp out at Wall Street - we’ve totally suffered the same kind of brutal, bare knuckled, strangling, adjective-defying repression as the struggling people of the Arab world, right?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that there is something very wrong with the political system in this country. The level of corporate influence in our government is unacceptable, the partisanship stifling, and the disconnect between the governed and those who govern is quickly approaching oceanic proportions, just like the chasm between rich and everyone else. We must indeed send a message to our bankers and our politicians that their continued adulterous affair at our expense and on our dime will no longer be tolerated.

But taking over Wall Street a la Tahrir Square? That, in my mind, means that the protesters feel their experience to be analogous to those of the Egyptians, Tunisians, Syrians, and Libyans. That does a disservice to the Arab youth now overthrowing their rusted, pitted oligarchs, and does a dishonor to the ones who died in the process.

Frankly, the whole protest is kind of farcical. Why begin an anti-corporate movement on a Saturday, when the business establishments targeted are closed? Why make a stockbroker even happier that it’s the weekend? Why start an outdoor occupation when fall is upon us and an apparently brutal winter is just around the corner? The love affair between Wall Street and Washington is hardly a recent development.

And then there’s this, from the New York Times’ City Room blog.

“After a police lieutenant used a megaphone to tell those sitting on the sidewalk that they were subject to arrest the protesters got up and marched south.”

Arrest!? Oh spare us, sweet God of democracy! How awful it would be to spend a night in the Tombs, where we shan’t be beaten, tortured, have our families threatened, and possibly “be disappeared.” How awful it would be to lose an evening and bail money as the price of our convictions.

What bravery. What courage.

Maybe if the police had brought camels, the protesters would have made a stand. It would look a lot cooler.

My great grandfather once said that God is so plagued with unjustified tears that he has no time for the justified ones. (I’m sure he was quoting from somewhere.) The words seem rather a propos here.

Israel's Sugar Problem

As I read this Op-Ed in today’s New York Times, the image of a petulant child and an overindulgent parent at the supermarket came to mind. The child demands candy and cookies. The parent insists on one or the other. Vegetables do not enter the conversation.

The article, by DavidMakovsky, accompanied by maps, advocated peace based on land swaps – land swaps involving Israel’s settlements.

The suggestions left me a little surprised.

Let us not equivocate. Settlements and water resources are Israel’s candy and cookies, and Israel is becoming a diabetic. The settlements are illegal, according to the 4^th article of the Geneva Conventions, an International Court of Justice decision, and common decency. In fact, they are illegal according to Israeli law itself, and Israel has often promised to stop building them.

Yet the op-ed and accompanying maps advocate an eventual two-state solution in which Israel will annex certain settlements, thereby becoming even stronger, and that the Palestinian state would have to absorb some settlers, adding to its well-documented insecurity. In other words, Israel will be rewarded for bad behavior with territory located directly above precious aquifers – candy and cookies - while Palestinians will have to deal with a zealous, uncompromising, fundamentalist Jewish bloc. (Brussel sprouts?)

I think there’s a simple, just solution to the question of settlements. The American media and government skirt this simple, just solution with all the grace of a figure skating rhinoceros.

Why not abandon all the settlements?

Doing so would be difficult, but so was setting up a Jewish state where none had existed for several thousand years. Moreover, it is the only legal option. It’s as simple as that.

As for leaving some settlers in Palestine…Israel wants recognition as Jewish state, fine. Allow Palestine to exist as Palestinian state.

There are, of course, Arabs in Israel. Though they are increasingly discriminated against, they serve in the Knesset, in the civil service, even in the army. Grudgingly, slowly, reluctantly, they have undertaken the task of adapting to a society that dispossessed their ancestors and continues to make life as impossible as they can for cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents living in the occupied territories.

Israeli settlers living in an eventual Palestine would never do what Arabs living in Israel have undertaken. Israeli settlers endorse a radical form of religiously fueled nationalism. To them, Palestine is not Palestine - it is Israel. While Palestinians implicitly acknowledge the Jewish state by trading with it, negotiating with it, and accepting the fact that it will continue to exist, Israeli settlers have hijacked the peace process, caused both sides too much misery, and compromised Jewish commitment to social and cosmic justice.

Because of their nationalist, border-line messianic fervor, settlers will not leave land on which they live. Nor will they submit to Palestinian suzerainty. Just like the Irgun and the Stern Gang, just like Hamas and Al Aqsa, they will be a violent force for chaos if left in Palestinian territory.

It is time for the settlements to be dismantled. It is time for peace.

It is time for Israel to eat its vegetables.