Nonsense Round-Up: George Will and Steven Rosen

Every day we see numerous articles, opinion pieces or blog posts which flat out get the story wrong when it comes to the question of Palestine. On as regular as a basis as I can keep up with, I'll put together this PTN feature called "Nonsense Round-Up". I'll feature a few items which are off base and explain some of the problematic areas in the arguments or reporting. Some might ask why I'd bother spending time on this, well, the reality is that nonsense is too often part of the discourse on Palestine and unless its confronted and corrected it becomes accepted. So after you read through the nonsense, you can take action by either writing a letter to the editor or leaving comments in the comment section at the bottom of online articles.

Let's start with this piece today by George Will in the Washington Post. Will argues that world leaders should not dare ask Israel to "take risks for peace" because Israel is the ultimate victim and knows more about the cost of war than any other. I'm not going to go through every part of Will's piece because it is frankly so filled with distortions that I'd have to dedicate this entire post to it and, well, there is plenty of other nonsense out there today. But let's take a few examples from the piece. Will writes:

In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America's eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take "risks for peace."

This is Will's opening paragraph. An Israeli death toll is in the first line of his piece. No where, in the entire article, will you find that the Palestinian death toll was 5 times as high and that the vast majority of Palestinian casualties were civilians. Will is quick to put the Israeli toll in terms of the US population but had he done so with Palestinian figures he would have written 450,000 or almost 8 times the American death toll in Vietnam.

He goes on later:

In 1936, when the British administered Palestine, the Peel Commission concluded that there was "an irrepressible conflict" -- a phrase coined by an American historian to describe the U.S. Civil War -- "between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country." And: "Neither of the two national ideals permits" a combination "in the service of a single state." The commission recommended "a surgical operation" -- partition. What followed was the Arab Revolt of 1936 to 1939.

It's sad to see accomplished journalists willfully toeing the Israeli line about the historical narrative. Here, Will repeats the oft used Israel taking point that the Arabs respond to offers of compromise with rejection and violence. He purposefully neglects to mention that the revolt had much deeper origins than the Peel partition plan and that, in fact, the Peel commission came to Palestine after the start of the revolt, not before it. The deliberations he speaks of did not take place until 1937, a year after the revolt started. Of course, these are simple historical facts, Will cannot be bothered with them.

Then, there is this bit of nonsense:

On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations recommended a partition plan. Israel accepted the recommendation. On Nov. 30, Israel was attacked.

If Israel isn't created until 1948, how did Israel accept the partition plan and who attacked the yet to exist Israel the following day? Notice, Will says 'Israel' was attacked. Full stop. But by whom? From where? Why? No other information is given. You are just supposed to accept it because it doesn't matter what the facts are. Don't you get it, you shouldn't lecture the Israelis.

Of course the reality is that Israel was created at the end of the British Mandate in Palestine in mid-May 1948. By that point, Israel had commenced the systematic depopulation of Palestine from its native Arab inhabitants. It's was not until more than half of the total refugee population was created that Arab armies, which were in total weaker than the Israeli forces, entered into Palestine.

Then the kicker:

The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state since the Romans arrived. And if the Jewish percentage of the world's population were today what it was when the Romans ruled Palestine, there would be 200 million Jews. After a uniquely hazardous passage through two millennia without a homeland, there are 13 million Jews.

What is this even supposed to mean? Is Will really arguing that because there are proportionately fewer followers of the Jewish faith today than there was in the Roman era that this proves hundreds of millions of more Jews would be alive today if they had a homeland? There is no doubt that Jews suffered through the ages from persecution, as have other minorities, but to reduce this reality to such absurd calculations without considering that many Jews, like Ancient Egyptian Pagans or Zoroastrians or other contemporary religions, probably converted to other religions and were not, as Will's argument suggest, subjected to termination over the years. There is a lot less Whigs in the American political system today, in fact, a mere 150 years ago more than 50% of the House of Representatives were Whigs and today there a none. Did I miss the persecution and en masse termination of the Whigs?

Will's piece is at the top of the nonsense pile today. If you'd like to write a letter to the editor of the Washington Post you can do so here.

Then there is Steven Rosen, who spent 23 years working for AIPAC, writing this piece in ForeignPolicy.com today. He argues that Obama should pick up where Bush left off in the Middle East. This is terrifying when you recall that where the lame duck Bush left off was a period of silent consent in the face of Israel's devastating 23-day attack on Gaza which left hundreds of children dead. Here is Rosen:

The Palestinians deeply distrust interim arrangements, and they have frequently asserted that they will not enter another interim agreement. For example, Abbas told then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Aug. 31, 2008, that the Palestinians would accept nothing less than a complete settlement. "Either we agree on all issues, or no agreement at all." His prime minister, Salam Fayyad, reiterated the point three times in December 2009: "We strenuously reject ... solutions involving interim arrangements ... We have no intention of continuing with the formula of interim arrangement...We will reject every attempt to once again enter ... long-term interim arrangements."

Since Rosen provides no context for why the Palestinians oppose interim agreements, the uninformed reader is left thinking that the Palestinians are greedy hasty maximalists. The reality of course, which Rosen conveniently neglects to mention, is that interim agreements have only provided the illusion that peace talks were functioning, giving Israel time and cover to further expand its settlement enterprise in the West Bank, the territory that is supposed to be part of the new Palestinian state which would, at best, give only 22% of historic Palestine to Palestinians. In deed, during the Oslo period, which was an interim agreement, the number of Israel settlers in Palestinian territory doubled, home demolitions and residency revocations increased dramatically, and Israel built a wall deep into the West Bank.

Rosen continues:

But the Palestinian Authority might not hew to this uncreative position if intelligent American mediation led the way. Abbas accepted the Quartet's Middle East Roadmap in 2003 knowing that it called very clearly and explicitly for an interim arrangement with a Palestinian state having "provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty ... as a way station to a permanent status settlement." The Roadmap made this interim Palestinian state Phase II of the process, after Phase I ("Ending Terror and Violence, Normalizing Palestinian Life, and Building Palestinian Institutions") and before Phase III ("Permanent Status Agreement and the End of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.") During Phase II, the Quartet members are to "promote international recognition" of the provisional state, "including possible U.N. membership." And during this period of the Palestinian state with provisional borders, the Arab states are to "restore pre-intifada links to Israel (trade offices, etc.)" and "revive multilateral engagement" with Israel "on issues including regional water resources, environment, economic development, refugees, and arms-control issues." In other words, the Palestinians have already accepted the idea of "interim arrangements." (Palestinian objections to interim agreements have been a continuing feature of Middle East diplomacy, but the record is replete with past examples where they did in fact agree to the step-by-step approach.)

Will Obama build on this recorded agreement to pass through an interim stage, or will he throw it away in a headlong rush to the dream of a millennial rearrangement?

This is where the argument borders on comical. But in case there are any doubts about what Rosen is saying, it's made clear by his last paragraph:

Will Obama take the advice of the pressure-on-Israel enthusiasts who twice led him into the cul-de-sac of the "freeze on natural growth" of settlements? If he does, we are headed for another nasty squall with no constructive outcome. He has another choice, staring right at him in the Roadmap. Does the Roadmap's provenance in the hated Bush administration make it so repulsive to this administration that miss the opportunity Bush left him?

OK. So Rosen is saying Obama should adopt the Road Map as opposed to pressuring Netanyahu for a settlement freeze...or is he? Well, if you actually read the Road Map, you will see why Rosen is a walking talking contradiction and why this piece made the nonsense list today. Linked in Rosen's Foreign Policy article, from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs' website, is the Road Map document. One wonders if Rosen has ever read it. Despite elaborating above on the different obligations Palestinians had under the different phases of the Road Map, he missed this one important obligation the Israelis had in Phase 1 which consequently blows a hole in his entire argument:

Settlements

* GOI immediately dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001.
* Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).

By asking Netanyahu to freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth, Obama is merely asking him to follow his obligations under the Road Map which, as Rosen points out in his article, "Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accepted it on May 23, 2003, and Sharon's government, by a majority vote, accepted it on May 25, 2003."

So what Rosen is really saying, in true AIPAC fashion, is that he wants Obama to adopt the interim nature of the Road Map, one that would draw out this peace process for years on end while Israel continues to colonize the West Bank, but he also wants Obama to turn a blind eye while Israel violates it's obligations under that same Road Map.

Huh, I guess that would be just like President Bush.

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