EclectEcon

The staged appearance of the killing of al-Dura, staged to make it appear the boy was killed by Israeli troops, set off a wave of fury:

On September 30 2000, two days after Ariel Sharon, then the leader of Israel’s opposition Likud Party, went for a walk on Temple Mount, Palestinians mounted a demonstration at Gaza’s Netzarim Junction. A 55-second piece of video footage of that demonstration, transmitted that day by the French TV station France 2, was to cause unprecedented violence in the Middle East and throughout the world.

The footage, with a voice-over by France 2’s Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, showed what was said to be the killing of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura by Israeli marksmen. Viewers saw the child crouching in terror behind his father, Jamal, as they sheltered next to a barrel under what Enderlin said was Israeli gunfire, and then slumping to the ground as Enderlin pronounced that he was dead.

That image of the boy screaming in terror before being killed was uniquely incendiary. It portrayed the Israelis as diabolically gunning down a child in cold blood, even as he cowered for his life. It ignited the Arab and Muslim world with apparent proof that the Israelis were deliberately killing their children, inciting a murderous frenzy.

Al-Dura became a poster boy for the Palestinian and Islamist war against Israel and the West. The day after the France 2 broadcast, the second intifada erupted in its full fury; according to the 2001 Mitchell report, the two events were directly connected. Twelve days later, a mob of Palestinians shouting, ‘Revenge for the blood of Mohammed al-Dura’ lynched two Israeli army reservists and dragged their mutilated bodies through the streets of Ramallah.

When al-Qaeda decapitated the journalist Daniel Pearl, the video of this atrocity was punctuated with references to al-Dura. After September 11 2001, Osama bin Laden said: ‘Bush must not forget the image of Mohammed al-Dura.’ Several Arab countries issued postage stamps with his picture. On Palestinian Authority TV and in its school books, al-Dura’s example is used to encourage other children to emulate his spirit of ’sacrifice’.

But we now know that this whole fiesta of violence and incitement was based on a lie. For whatever people think they saw in those 55 seconds, it was not the death of that boy. He was not killed by Israeli bullets; he was not killed at all. At the end of France 2’s famous footage, he was still alive and unharmed. The whole thing was staged, a fantastic piece of play-acting, an elaborate fabrication designed to blacken Israel’s name, and incite the Arab and Muslim mobs to mass murder.

Melanie Phillips has a very detailed account of the entire affair. I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

In addition, Alan Adamson links to some insightful comments about the media trial that ensued, in which France 2 and Charles Enderlin sued Phillipe Karsenty for libel when he exposed the sloppiness, bias, and outright untruths in the original story as reported on France2 by Enderlin.

To understand the al-Dura affair, it helps to keep one thing in mind: In France, you can't own up to a mistake.

Not even if it contributes to intifadas, death, anti-Semitism, and more hatred.

For links (omitted here), see this.

Pretty effective. Lavendar is pre-surge; maroon is post-surge.


Civilian Casualties in Iraq


US Military Casualties in Iraq
Source and comments.

Dani Yatom, a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, was invited to attend a NATO conference in Brussels last year. While reviewing the agenda, Yatom, a retired major general, was surprised to see that the meeting was titled “The Iranian Challenge” and not “The Iranian Threat.”

When a speaker with a French accent mentioned that a US military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities would be the most dangerous scenario of all, Yatom said, politely but firmly: “Sir, you are wrong. The worst scenario would be if Iran acquired an atom bomb.”

Given this position, Nouriel Roubini considers what might be the effects if Israel were to attack Iran:

First, even before Iran may try to retaliate to this action by trying to block the flow of oil from the Gulf, oil prices would spike above $200 dollar a barrel.

Second, Iran could react militarily to such Israeli action (that would be taken with the tacit support and the military logistic support of the US) by unleashing its supporters in Iraq against the US military forces there. That would trigger a military reaction by the US that would start a sustained air-led bombing campaign against Iran’s military capabilities (air force, anti-aircraft defenses, radar and other military installations, etc.)

Third, Iran would unleash its supporters in Lebanon and Gaza (Hezbollah and Hamas) in a military confrontation with Israel. A broader war will follow in the Middle East.

Fourth, Iran would use both the threat of blocking the flow of oil out of the Gulf and an actual sharp reduction of its exports of oil (an embargo) to spike the price of oil. Oil prices would rapidly rise above $200 per barrel and the US and global economy would spin into a severe stagflationary recession (like those triggered by the sharp spikes in the prices of oil following the staflationary shocks of the Yom Kippur war in 1973, the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990).

Fifth, while Sunni regimes may – in private – sigh relief following the destruction of the nuclear capabilities of the Shiite Iranian regime – the Sunni Arab street (the masses of poor Sunnis) from Algeria to Egypt and all the way to Pakistan, India and Indonesia may become even more anti-Western and anti-American leading to the risk over time of rise of anti-Western fundamentalist regimes in many Arab countries.

Sixth, the Bush administration whose hands have been tied by the new National Intelligence Estimate (that argued that Iran had suspended its program of development of nuclear weapons) would thus be able to strike Iran – via Israel - before the end of its term. Such October surprise by Israel would also certainly lead to the election of McCain and defeat of Obama as a national security crisis of such an extent would doom the chances of Democrats to win the White House. So both Israel – that prefers McCain to Obama and is hurried to act as it is wary of the constraints that an Obama presidency may put on its ability to act against Iran – and the Bush administration would guarantee the election of McCain.

Where is the international outrage this time [h/t to Jack]?

Iran's president said on Monday Israel would soon disappear off the map and that the "satanic power" of the United States faced destruction, in his latest verbal attack on the Islamic Republic's arch-foes. ...

Opposition to Israel is a fundamental principle in Shi'ite Muslim Iran, which backs Palestinian militants opposed to peace with the Jewish state.

A 2005 statement by Ahmadinejad saying that Israel should be "wiped off the map" outraged the international community.

This past Sunday evening I attended a dinner in honour of Paul Davenport, president of The Univesity of Western Ontario. He was being honoured by the Jewish National Fund for his continued strong support of openness, freedom, and tolerance. For more details, please see this.

The guest speaker was Alan Dershowitz, a man with a strong presence and a brilliant mind, and author of The Case for Israel. At one point during his address, he said (loosely paraphrased, with apologies):

Some time ago, I spoke at the University of California at Irvine. There were 1200 people there to hear me. Of course most of them were there to see if I would say that OJ really did it. But there was a small group over on one side who were strong supporters of Israel, and there was a small group on the other side who were strong supporters of the Palestinians....

I asked the supporters of Israel how many would be willing to accept a negociated, secure two-state solution, and they all raised their hands. I asked the supporters of Palestine the same question, and not one of them raised their hands.

And that example says more than you might imagine about why so many of my postings are pro-Israel. Two-state solutions of various forms have been offered intermittently for over 70 years, and Israel (even before it existed as a country) has always been willing (albeit sometimes reluctantly) to accept them. The Arabs living in Jordan, Syria, and Egypt were, for the most part, unwilling to accept them.

And then Dershowitz dropped a bombshell: he said he suspects that Yassir Arafat eventually rejected the negotiated settlement of 2000-2001 on the advice of ex-president, Jimmy Carter. If his suspicions are correct, Carter has even more to answer for.

There were perhaps 30-50 usual-suspect protestors outside the venue where President Davenport received his honour and Professor Dershowitz spoke. Before the ceremonies began, and in keeping with the spirit of the evening, Dershowitz went out to speak with some of the protestors and gave them a copy of his book.

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One would think that with approximate doubling of oil prices (in US$) over the past year, Iran would be gaining even more clout in the Middle East and on the world scene. Stratfor Analysis doesn't think so ($ required).

Stratfor points out that although Iran is a major exporter of oil, its production, exports, and reserves per capita are waayyyy lower than for the other major oil producers in the Middle East.

Also, Iran is not a rich country overall; it's per capita GDP is roughly only 40% of Mexico's!

In addition, Iran's absurd subsidies for domestically consumed gasoline and its inadequate investment in refining capacity, mean that Iran ends up importing about 40% of its gasoline. The result is that as Iran earns more from its oil exports, it pays more for its gasoline imports, and on net is not a lot better off — certainly nowhere near as much better off as other Arab oil producers; and whatever gains it experiences do not have a major per capita impact.

Stratfor opines that with a more secure investment atmosphere, western AND Chinese firms would be very active in Iran and their oil output would be much greater than it is. But given the low reserves, per capita, Iranian leaders might well be choosing to hold more oil in the ground and sell it later (i.e. speculating on even higher oil prices in the future).

The other interesting point made by Stratfor is that because Iran is not making as much on its oil production as are other Middle East countries, its influence (vis-a-vis the Sunnis) will continue to wane. And that might well be one reason that Syria and Israel are engaged in negotiations.

Note: Stratfor is an expensive service. However, I recommend that if you have the opportunity, sign up for their one-month free trial whenever it next becomes available. Once you have assessed it for a month, you might well decide it is worth the price.

Despite his protectionism, despite his fiscal profligacy, despite his over-reliance on Cheney et al. and the lack of WMD in Iraq, I like Bush's sense of history when he recently said this, quoted in Reuters:
[h/t Ted Belman]

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said.

Without mentioning Obama by name, Bush compared "this foolish delusion" to the prelude to World War Two.

"As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history," he said.

It isn't surprising, but it is disappointing, that democratic leaders were outraged by Bush's remarks.

Today's Globe and Mail carries a scurrilous opinion piece, billed as a web-exclusive comment, asserting that Israel's war in 1948 was an act of ethnic cleansing.

What the piece does not mention is that

• It is not "ethnic cleansing" when one country whose existence is threatened fights wars to hold off the aggressors; why do so many writers keep forgetting or refusing to refect upon the implications of what the Arab-Israeli wars were about?
• Israel's actions were the result of the Arab countries' refusal to acknowledge the creation of the state of Israel. The shelling and the fighting by the Israelis would not have taken place if Jordan, Syria, and Egypt had accepted the existence of Israel in 1948.
• Israel did not set out to cleanse the area of its former residents. Those residents left primarily because of (a) the war that was started by the Arab countries, and (b) assurances by those Arab countries that Israel would soon be driven out of existence and they would be able to return to their homes in a matter of days or weeks or months. And,
• these Arab countries themselves were carved out of the former Ottoman empire. What about all the Jews who were forced to leave their homes and possessions in Arab countries by the anti-Semitic regimes in those countries? Their losses have by far outweighed those of the Arabs who left Israel.

I can easily be convinced that the Israelis made mistakes in their early years. But to emphasize those mistakes without granting Israel the right to fight for its very existence gets to the heart of most writings that castigate Israeli policies. If the Israelis had not fought hard and wisely in 1948, 1967, and 1973, they would not exist as a country today. And most of the displacement that has followed during the 60 years of Israel's existence would not have occurred had Jordan, Syria, and Egypt been willing to accept their new neighbour.

Update: Eric, a friend and former colleague, writes,

Here are useful antidotes to this, on Israel's sixtieth anniversary:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200403u/int2004-03-25

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/1948--israel--and-the-palestinians-br--the-true-story-11355?page=all

1948 was a big mess, and if it had not been Israel, it might have been worse for the Palestinians--with all of the mistakes made. A two-state solution, with the right security moves, is the way to go. Even though Israel has accepted this and the Arab world has refused it several times. Don't forget that Israel's national anthem, Hatikvah means 'hope'.

Most of us know that, for the most part, the mainstream media have a serious anti-Western bias. Nobody says it better than Rebekah, who started her posting by noting that the weather forecast was inaccurate:

Still, it seems to me that the little picture of a gloomy sky is a lot more accurate, in the long run, than the Associated Press, ABC News, and other sources, on the topic of the "unrest" in Lebanon. Sure, they mention "possible civil war." Sure, they mention the numbers of dead, the "militants", the people of Beirut, Tripoli, etc., still living in fear... but they gloss right over its true root cause:

Heavy fighting broke out Sunday between supporters of Lebanon's Western-backed government and opposition followers in the central mountains overlooking the capital, security officials said.

Um. "Western-backed government". Would those "opposition" members be Hezbollah? Who's backing the "opposition followers"? No mention, although it has been very well-established that Iran and Syria have been pulling the strings for that "opposition" group for quite some time, now. Hezbollah, the invading force, gets labeled as "opposition"!

This sits right up there with blaming the Israelis for shooting back at the sphincters in Gaza who target Israeli civilians for death. Nice "journalism", guys!

Reductio Ad Absurdum or is it just too close to the truth to be funny [h/t to BenS]? As usual, click on the image to see it larger and clearer.

From the Sandbox [links omitted in this excerpt],

The Boston Globe has just run an op-ed under the headline "Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza." The authors are Eyad al-Sarraj, identified as founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, and Sara Roy, identified as senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. The bias of the op-ed speaks for itself, and I won't even dwell on it. But I do want to call attention to this sentence:

Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.

You don't need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day.

A typographical error at the Boston Globe? Hardly. The two authors used the same "statistic" in an earlier piece. They copied it from an article published in the Ahram Weekly last November, which reported that "the price of a bag of flour has risen 80 per cent, because of the 680,000 tonnes the Gaza Strip needs daily, only 90 tonnes are permitted to enter." Sarraj and Roy added the bit about this being "a reduction of 99 percent."

Note how an absurd and impossible "statistic" has made its way up the media food chain. It begins in an Egyptian newspaper, is cycled through a Palestinian activist, is submitted under the shared byline of a Harvard "research scholar," and finally appears in the Boston Globe, whose editors apparently can't do basic math. Now, in a viral contagion, this spreads across the Internet, where that "reduction of 99 percent" becomes a well-attested fact.

What's the truth? I see from a 2007 UN document that Gaza consumes 450 tons of flour daily. The Palestinian Ministry of Economy, according to another source, puts daily consumption at 350 tons. So the figure for total consumption retailed by Sarraj and Roy is off by more than three orders of magnitude, i.e. a factor of 1,000. No doubt, there's less flour shipped from Israel into Gaza--maybe it's those rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel?--but even if it's only the 90 tons claimed by Sarraj and Roy, it isn't anything near a "reduction of 99 percent."

[T]he Arab and Islamic states, represented by Syria and Pakistan, have called an emergency “Special Session” of the UN Human Rights Council for this Wednesday, January 23, 2008.

The proposed resolution would condemn Israel yet say nothing about the Hamas attacks. This inverts the simple reality whereby Hamas and its terrorist allies are deliberately targeting civilians, while Israel in its defensive measures takes pains to avoid harming civilians.

From UN Watch.

The ledes of the coverage of George Bush's statements in the Middle East were truly horrid. From the opening paragraph in the coverage by Washington Post,

JERUSALEM, Jan. 10 — President Bush said Thursday that Palestinian refugees should receive compensation for the loss of homes they fled or were forced to flee during the establishment of Israel and declared that there should be an end to Israel's "occupation" of lands seized in war four decades ago.

Bush tied his remarks about ending the occupation to statements expressing concern for Israel's security. In fact, he expressed an understanding that so long as Israelis are experiencing rocket attacks and suicide (and other) bombings, there would good reasons for Israel not to want to pull back to the pre-1967 borders. But we see that only much later in the story:

"These negotiations must ensure that Israel has secure, recognized and defensible borders."

He also said,

"I can also understand that until confidence is gained on both sides, why the Israelis would want there to be a sense of security."

These are important qualifications to "end the occupation." The stories could just as easily have led with "Bush defends Israel's right to security," and have captured the essence of much of his speech.

If I were an Israeli leader, I would say something like this:

We, too, want peace in our land. We have tried time and again to negotiate a withdrawal from the west bank territories, but every time we reach an agreement, the arabs renege and our security is threatened once again. Until the rest of the world can guarantee our security, we must hang onto those territories and maintain the security fence.

And as for compensation, keep in mind that most of the arabs who fled Israel nearly 60 years ago did so not out of fear of the Jews. They did so because the arab nations (in particular, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt) told them to leave, promising they would drive the Jews into the sea in a few days. I.e., don't blame Israel for most of the dislocations.

I understand that paying compensation is probably preferable to the "right of return" that the region's arabs are demanding. But if there is to be compensation, make the surrounding arab nations pay it. And not just because of the bad advice they gave in 1948, but also because they refused to allow, much less encourage, the refugees to integrate into their new countries. But of course the western media don't mention these little items.

For a solid analysis of Bush's speech and of the situation, see this.

For more on media anti-Israel bias, see this about the BBC.

Melanie Phillips has a recent item by this same title. Here are some excerpts, dealing with the exodus of Christians from Bethlehem:

... the only reason the Palestinians are suffering from the security barrier is that it was erected solely to stop them from murdering any more Israelis. If they abandoned their terrorism, the barrier would immediately come down.

Such moral blindness apart, it is truly remarkable that these mindless bigots never pause to ask themselves the obvious question. If it really is Israel that is driving out Bethlehem’s Christians, then why isn’t it equally driving out Bethlehem’s Muslims? Same Israeli ‘occupying’ forces; same separation barrier; same hardship, brutality, economic sanctions etc. Are we to assume, perhaps, that Israel has a particular problem with Christians, rather than the Muslims or Arabs in general, that the rest of the world has somehow missed?

(In which case, might they not also scratch their heads at the fact that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians have thrived and multiplied, rising in number from 34,000 in 1948 to nearly 130,000 in 2005?) Might there not be the teensiest, weensiest morsel of a clue in the fact that, whereas a few years ago Bethlehem was mainly Christian, now it is 80 per cent Muslim? Might the fact that such a dramatic change occurred simultaneously with Bethlehem coming under Muslim control after Oslo (thus making all those responsible for that satirically named 'peace process' accessories to the persecution of Bethlehem's Christians) just possibly have something to do with it?

From Mark Steyn (h/t to Eva):

This is the time of year, as Hillary Clinton once put it, when Christians celebrate “the birth of a homeless child” — or, in Al Gore’s words, “a homeless woman gave birth to a homeless child.”

Just for the record, Jesus wasn’t “homeless.” He had a perfectly nice home back in Nazareth. But he happened to be born in Bethlehem. It was census time and Joseph was obliged to schlep halfway across the country to register in the town of his birth. Which is such an absurdly bureaucratic over-regulatory cockamamie Big Government nightmare it’s surely only a matter of time before Massachusetts or California reintroduce it.

In anticipation of the upcoming Annapolis Conference and preliminary peace talks, it is good to keep the following points in mind, by Barry Rubin [h/t to former student, AlanP]:

1. Palestinians cannot stop other Palestinians from attacking Israel. To do so would be betraying the cause, becoming Israel's lackey. This applies even if the Israelis are bringing in supplies or providing jobs to Palestinians, or if the attack damages Palestinian interests. If the victims are schoolchildren or shoppers or people riding on a bus, of course, is irrelevant in this world view.

2. He who is most militant is always right. Extremism equals heroism. This is one reason why Fatah has such a difficult time competing with Hamas. It cannot denounce these rivals for being too hardline and intransigent. Suicide bombers along with those who incite and manage them are role models, not misled individuals, much less evil ones.

3. More violence is good and a victory if it inflicts casualties or damage on Israel. Other than ritual denunciations for the foreign media, these are matters for pride, with the implication being that they advance the cause rather than sabotage it.

4. No Israeli government can do anything good. Thus, Olmert is no better than anyone else even as he withdraws from the Gaza Strip, offers to accept a Palestinian state, and is ready to give up east Jerusalem. Some Palestinian leaders can talk privately to Israeli counterparts about cooperation and even their dream of peace but don't tell this to their own people.

5. Since Palestinians are the perpetual victim they are entitled to everything they want and never need to give anything in exchange for Israeli concessions. Thus, the preferred PA diplomatic option is that Israel withdraws from the West Bank and east Jerusalem, recognizes an independent Palestinian state, releases all Palestinian prisoners, and then talks can begin. (Note: I thought of this as a satire but a high-ranking Syrian official just proposed the equivalent on that front.)

6. No Palestinian should be imprisoned for attacks on Israel one minute longer than required by international public relations' needs. After all, if they are doing heroic deeds against an evil enemy — even by murdering civilians on purpose — why should they be punished?

7. Fatah won't discipline or expel anyone for launching attacks.

8. Wiping Israel off the map is morally correct. If anyone says anything different they will be scared or ashamed, justifying their lapse as a temporary tactical measure or way to fool enemies.

9. While pretending to be nationalist, the movement sets as top priority the so-called "right of return," the demand that all Palestinian refugees or their descendents — several million people — must be allowed to live in Israel. It is better not to get a state than to give up this demand. Even though having many Palestinians go live in Israel would make Palestine weaker and poorer it is better to focus on destroying Israel from within.

10. It is more important to be steadfast and patient with a terrible status quo than to make big gains by ending the conflict forever. To do so would give up future Palestinians' chance to seek total victory. Their right to all of the land cannot be given away.

11. No speeches, no foreign aid, and no international plans or meetings have altered these basic rules. Palestinian leaders may sincerely voice their dismay with this problem privately but won't fight to smash them. If they ever really do change we'll know. But until then, these are the reasons why the Palestinian side cannot and will not reach for peace or keep existing commitments very well. Even if a handful of top Palestinians want to reach agreement with Israel, they cannot — and even worse, dare not — violate these commandments.

Alberta, like the United Arab Emirates, has considerable oil wealth. The politicians in Alberta, like the Shieks of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, et al., want to stay in power, and believe that sharing the oil wealth with the citizens will help them stay there.

And both places face a similar problem: how to share the wealth without creating serious distortions of incentives. Taxes can be eliminated, and doing that will probably promote efficiency. But after that what? "Free" education and "free" health care? Both will be overused if prices are not allowed to play a rationing role. Free utilities? Same thing.

John Chilton, The Emirates Economist, has more:

The UAE is a very rich country and it is only natural that the wealth owned by the government/rulers is shared with the citizens. Where economists begin to worry is when the size of the transfers creates adverse incentives. For example, suppose you get more from the government if you earn less. This cuts your incentive to work. Or suppose the underpriced utilities causes you to waste water and electricity — there are more efficient ways to make transfers. Or suppose that government jobs are not demanding and pay much more than the private sector — where's the incentive to choose the private sector rather than engaging in rent seeking activities (wasta) to get a government job? Or suppose you a guaranteed a government job as long as you have any college degree — where is the incentive to excel in college?

It's not the size of the transfers. It's their design.

For more on this topic, see this, which I wrote earlier.

Are higher gold prices a sign that many investors are expecting the rate of inflation to rise rapidly?

Not necessarily, according James Pethokoukis, columnist with USNews. He summarizes strong evidence that inflation expectations are, if anything, dropping:

Since their peak on September 20, the difference between nominal and inflation-indexed Treasury yields from five to 10 years in the future has come down to 2.57 percent from more than 2.6 percent. This is probably still higher than Fed officials would like, but not in truly worrisome territory.

So if high gold prices are not the result of rising inflationary expectations, what is causing them?

I think the real message of gold today, as it has been since 2001, might just be that we live in a world of heightened risk, and gold has always been the ultimate safe-haven investment.

The most recent surge in gold prices comes at the same as time there's been more talk—particularly by the French—of taking military action again Iran if it doesn't abandon its efforts to build a nuke. (Interestingly, the last great gold surge happened during the Iranian revolution in 1979.) ...

After falling throughout the 1980s and 1990s, gold bottomed in 1999 and then began a steady march higher in early 2001. You could interpret that 20-year drop as a sign not only of diminishing inflation but also that the world was becoming a safer place, with less threat of a nuclear war. Likewise, the rise since 2001 and 9/11 is a sign that the world is becoming a dangerous place again.

The fear factor is also at play with stocks. The market's current price-to-earnings ratio is right at its historical average, a strangely subdued state given fat corporate profits and a lengthy economic expansion. Higher gold prices? Blame Ahmadinejad, not Bernanke.

John Chilton, aka The Emirates Economist, explains that in the United Arab Emirates,

During the fasting month [Ramadan] the demand for food actually rises. Fasting takes place during the daylight hours. Iftar, the daily breaking of the fast at sundown, is a festive event. In homes families gather for large meals that have been under preparation all day. Restaurants offer buffets to serve the crowds at Iftar. I'm speculating, but my guess is that demand rises through a combination of celebration and the inevitable waste of dealing with feeding a crowd all at once.

Check out his full posting for discussions of the UAE's attempt to regulate prices in the face of shifting supply and demand curves.

From Ynet news:

A UN conference, held at the European Parliament in Brussels, heard an array of speakers call for a boycott against Israel and strategize on ways to achieve its international isolation, during the first day of an event billed by organizers as a gathering to promote "Middle East peace".

The 'International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace' has been organized by the UN's Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, and attracted political figures and pro-Palestinian members of non governmental organizations (NGOs).

WHAT? The UN actually has such a committee?

The loaded language of such rhetoric is very disturbing. It is the same people dragging out the same tired arguments we heard from Durban in 2001. They were wrong then and they are still wrong.

[h/t to Scoop]

From the Telegraph back in June [h/t to Judith]:

In the Gaza Strip's Jab aliya refugee camp, Aref Suleiman was raised on Palestinian struggle against the Jewish state. Today he lies in an Israeli hospital bed, his body riddled with Palestinian bullets, his wounds tended daily by Israeli nurses.

For the 22-year-old Mr Suleiman, who was shot five times point blank by Hamas militants last month during a renewed bout of Palestinian infighting, this is not the Arab-Israeli conflict he learnt about as a child growing up in Gaza's desperate, rubbish-strewn alleys.

"Palestinians shoot me and Jews treat me," he laughs bitterly. "It was supposed to be different." ...

"The Jews are like honey, like flowers," he says theatrically. "They wash me, clean me, and change my gown every day. Even in my home, my own family wouldn't change me every day."

"Here, everything is beseder," he adds, using the Hebrew word for "okay".

For the young Israeli nurses, most from nearby communities that live in constant fear of the Palestinian rocket fire, the cultural exchange flows both ways. The Palestinian patients they treat put a human face on the conflict. Nurse and patient can even find a shred of common cause now that the Islamist Hamas movement, which has killed dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings, is locked in a deadly power struggle with the more moderate Fatah movement.

By a Druze student from Israel [h/t to MA]:

As a holder of two degrees from the University of Haifa and a PhD student at the University of London, I traveled to Bournemouth for the meeting of the British University and College Union (UCU) as an Israeli delegate on behalf of the Israeli Council for Academic Freedom.

The discussions at the meeting regarding the imposition of a boycott on Israeli academia took place in a hostile environment while ignoring all the facts we presented regarding freedom of expression and academic freedom at Israeli institutions of higher learning.

Evidence that Israeli lecturers who hold pro-Palestinian views are able to express their positions uninterrupted both in their research work and lectures, as well as in the media, had no effect whatsoever on the discussions.

Even when we presented a list of organizations and research centers that operate in the framework of Israeli universities and boast Israeli-Palestinian or Israeli-Arab cooperation, with the promotion of ties between the peoples their top agenda, it did not make a difference.

... The truth is that it is clear to this group of lecturers that Israeli academia is least at fault for what is happening in our region, certainly when compared to the freedom of expression at our neighbors' academic institutions. After all, the English know full well that the technological, academic, and cultural achievements in the State of Israel stem first and foremost from the freedom of expression and research in every field in Israel.

Therefore, the figures we presented were futile, because all they cared about was their one and only objective: De-legitimizing the State of Israel with no relation to its academia; presenting it as an apartheid state that deprives its minorities of elementary rights such as education and the freedom of expression.

The UCU: a bunch of scary non-scholars.

[h/t to JC] from the Gulf News:

'Cover up or we will cut your throats'

Gaza City: An Islamic group threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they don't wear strict Islamic dress, frightening reporters and signaling a further shift toward extremism in the Gaza Strip.

The threat to "cut throats from vein to vein" was delivered by the Swords of Truth, a fanatical group that has previously claimed responsibility for bombing Internet cafes and music shops. The new threat was the first time the organization targeted a specific group of people.

On Sunday, around 50 anchors and employees from government-run Palestine TV, mostly women wearing Muslim headscarves, marched from the station's offices in Gaza City toward the office of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to protest the threat.

Most of the 15 women broadcasters on government-run Palestine TV wear headscarves. But they also wear make-up and Western clothing — not considered strictly observant by extremists.

The Swords of Truth issued the statement Friday in an e-mail to news organizations.

"We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation," the statement said. The group also accused the women broadcasters of being "without any ... shame or morals."

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East [SPME] have issued a scathing criticism of the UCU's motions proposing a boycott of Israeli academics. SPME seems to me to be somewhat leftwing, with many members opposed to the west-bank settlements; nevertheless they have spoken out against the boycott. Here, in part, is the SPME reaction:

[T]his action [was] instigated by a small group of anti-Israel union delegates who appear not to represent the views of the union membership and who have singled out Israel for opprobrium. The motion is an attempt to delegitimize and to silence the only Jewish state in the world, one of a tiny minority of states in the Middle East that truly honor academic freedom. In Israel's prestigious universities, faculty members represent all religious and political persuasions. Many Israeli professors are Arabs; many are Muslims. How professors at universities in Arab countries are Jews? How many are non-Muslims? How many belong to nondominant Muslim denominations?

In Iran, professors have been purged from universities for ideological and religious reasons, and an American academic, Haleh Esfandiari, was recently imprisoned while visiting her 93-year-old mother. Despite the gargantuan scale of human rights abuses in Sudan, Syria, China, Saudi Arabia, and, yes, Gaza, the UCU is not considering a boycott against any of them. Why not?


The proposed boycott is immoral and antithetical to academic principles. It shuts off dialogue, when one of the key purposes of universities is to promote dialogue and thereby the pursuit of truth. It ignores existing projects where Israeli and Palestinian academics cooperate. It requires academics to hew to one ideological line. And it constitutes discrimination on the basis of nationality.

Why is it that so many members of the left-wing (we're gonna find something about some establishment to protest) spend so much time and effort attacking Israel for its alleged human rights abuses? There are so many much more deserving targets, as Perry de Havilland points out:

There is an article on the Guardian site called Throw a pebble at Goliath: don't buy Israeli produce, by Yvonne Roberts, in which she urges people to boycott Israel because of its human rights record.

Now I know nothing about Yvonne Robert and have never even heard of her before, but I assume she also an avid campaigner for people to boycott products from Cuba, Burma, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, China (good luck doing that), Iran, Syria, Belorus, Zimbabwe, North Korea (assuming they actually produce any products) etc. etc. etc... after all, if she is such a tireless campaigner for human rights, surely she could not possibly feel it was alright for people to trade with all those places, given the state of human rights in those places. Right?

Anyone want to take any bets on this? [links are in the original]

As one of the commenters there said,

The day when those regimes become predominantly Jewish is the day that these people will start criticizing them, regardless of whether their human-rights records get better or worse.

Oh, oh. Now the British architects are getting into the act. What a bunch of ignoramuses. Read the comments there to get a good idea of just how ignorant they are.

Anyone who says,

This is not against Israel, it's for Palestine,... I think the Palestinians are living in a prison.

has not been paying attention to Middle Eastern events for the past five years and what it means to be pro-Palestinian. The suicide bombings, the kidnappings, the rockets, the promises to drive Israel into the sea... these count for nothing?

[h/t BenS]

It is so difficult to understand how scholars worthy of the name got to these views. Click here for a complete list of the motions that are to be discussed at the Bournemouth meetings later this week. I will not reproduce them here.

My recommendation: find out which schools support such anti-Semitic drivel, such blind one-sidedness, and boycott academics from those institutions. My guess is that such a retaliatory boycott would be totally unnecessary; I cannot imagine the authors of these motions produce much, if any, work that is truly scholarly in nature.

I see from the SPME website that there will be a booth at the Congress, operated by a combination of Israeli and Palestinian students, presenting examples of Israeli/Palestinian co-operation.

This week, the new union of post-secondary educators in the UK will be meeting, and one of the agenda items will be a proposed boycott of Israel and Israeli academics.

Why not a boycott of China for its treatment of Tibet? Why not a boycott of Palestine (and the other Arab-Muslim states) for their treatment of Jews? Why single out the country that has more democracy and more human rights (and, in many ways, less aggression) than any other country in the Middle East?

Even if you think Israel should not have occupied the west bank (and should have left it for the Jordanians and Syrians to use as a further launching pad for additional raids and rocket attacks on Israel), read this by David Hirsh, who believes Israel should withdraw from the west bank but who strongly opposes the boycott.

The boycott rhetoric does not help Palestinians. But it is seductive because it functions as a way to help boycotters feel better about living in a world in which horrors continue to happen. The boycott rhetoric doesn't stop the horrors and it doesn't make the world fair, but perhaps it can absolve us from the existential guilt that we bear because the world is what it is.

Perhaps it can do something about our terrifying feelings of powerlessness? In a post-national and a post-imperial world, the guilt of nationalism and imperialism can be focused on to Israel and we can thereby feel absolved ourselves. It is the ultimate "not in my name" gesture politics. It doesn't change anything but it enables us to step outside of the tear-stained reality of anti-semitism and empire, Holocaust and Nakba, aggressive settlement and nightclub bombing. But the dream of stepping outside history is vain and is intimately related to the nightmare of totalitarianism.

My own view is that academic freedom is more important than these types of political statements. But I've said all this before. Michael Yudkin makes the case quite well in one of his recent articles at Engage.

More on boycotts of Israel to follow this afternoon.

Headline in First Post:
France ‘was seconds’ from downing Israeli jet
The story continues with assertions that there have been confrontations between France (heading the UN mission) and Israel in Lebanon,

In the most serious confrontation, French troops were said by sources in Paris to have been "just two seconds" from launching an anti- aircraft missile at two Israeli F-15 fighters carrying out mock low-level attack runs over one outpost.

I give the French a less-than-five-percent chance of ever being able to do this.

And, as a side note, the coverage by First Post certainly seemed anti-Israel to me.

I have written about Sir Martin Gilbert in previous postings [see here (and be sure to see the compendium of additional sources added by Pooh in the comments); also see here]. Gilbert is the official Churchill biographer and has written extensively about the Middle East as well. He will be speaking at The University of Western Ontario on April 19th:

“Churchill and the Jewish National Home in Palestine”

Lecture: 4:00pm
Location: The McKellar Room
University Community Centre
Given his insight and knowledge, this talk will undoubtedly be worth attending.

. .

The article below by Prof. Kellner (Professor of Jewish Thought at the University of Haifa and of the IAB executive committee), has appeared on Babylon (Norwegian based journal about the Middle East and North-Africa), vol. 5, nr. 1, April 2007, pp. 122-131. It is reproduced in whole with the permission of the author. The lower-case Roman numerals in brackets are endnotes, which are well-worth reading.

Kellner's important article "Resisting Falsehood and Protecting Integrity" is a reply to Omar Barghouti's call for an academic and cultural boycott: "Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Why the Academic and Cultural Boycott?" that also appeared in Babylon.
-------------------------------------------

"Resisting Falsehood and Protecting Integrity"

Menachem Kellner, University of Haifa[i]

Omar Barghouti's call for an academic and cultural boycott, "Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Why the Academic and Cultural Boycott?" is a sustained attempt to demonize Israel, intended to bring about its destruction.


I shall reply to Mr. Barghouti's essay calling for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. At the outset, let me grant him one important point. If, for a moment, I believed that Israel was as bad as he describes, I would support his call for a boycott. Unlike many of my colleagues, I do not believe that such boycotts are never justified. But I do believe that such boycotts are destructive of the trust upon which the scientific endeavor must be based, and may be used only in the most extreme cases and if there is some reasonable expectation that they will accomplish something positive. So, the question between us boils down to the following: is Israel the evil incarnate that Mr. Barghouti pretends it to be — or not?


Mr. Barghouti seeks to convince his readers that Israeli Jews are inveterate racists, and that Israel is an apartheid state. In the space allotted to me, I cannot possibly correct all of the deceptive falsehoods he uses — as the Hebrew expression has it, it is easier to throw mud than clean it up. By characterizing more accurately than Mr.
Barghouti the true nature and history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and then addressing his two main charges, racism and apartheid, I will undermine his call for a boycott.


ACADEMIC LIFE IN ISRAEL


Reading Omar Barghouti's essay brought to mind a series of experiences I had when serving as Dean of Students at the University of Haifa in the 1990's. I used to organize various sorts of Arab-Jewish dialogues and discussions. Conducted by persons of good will from both communities, the discussions invariably foundered on questions of perception and context. Arab students saw themselves as a beleaguered minority on a campus in which roughly 80% of the students were Jewish (about the same ratio as in the general population), at which the language of instruction was not their own, and in a country which seemed to them to field a huge and frightening army. The Jewish students saw themselves as a beleaguered and threatened minority in a Middle East in which the vast majority of states not only refused to recognize Israel's right to exist, but remained in a state of war with Israel, supported terror organizations which wrought death and destruction on Israelis in school, on buses, and in cafés, and which drew upon the support of a billion or so Muslims around the world. Even then, a period of relative peace and optimism with the Oslo process in full swing, Jews and Arabs each saw themselves as victims of the other. Over the last seven years, since the late (unlamented by me) Yasir Arafat launched the so-called 'al-Aksa Intifada'[ii] the situation has grown markedly worse, and the conflict of perceptions has grown deeper. Over these same years, my own perception of the world has grown closer to that of those Jewish students whom only a decade ago I thought were paranoid.[iii] Unlike the Arab students at the University of Haifa who sincerely sought for an honorable and constructive modus vivendi with their Jewish colleagues, Mr. Barghouti seeks for the utter destruction of Israel and has put together a pastiche of distortions to generate support for that aim among readers of his article.[iv]


PALESTINIAN VS. ISRAEL ATTITUDES - A FUNDAMENTAL ASYMMETRY


Mr. Barghouti's essay reflects the fundamental asymmetry of the Israel-Palestine conflict. I am not referring to the asymmetry of military power between Israel and the Palestinians, but to the asymmetry of objectives. Ever since the Camp David accords of 1978, Israeli governments and Israeli society have more and more come to accept the inevitability and rightness of there being two states west of the Jordan River, one predominantly Israeli-Jewish and one exclusively Palestinian-Arab.[v] But, in contrast, ever since the year 2000, it has become painfully evident that Palestinian society has overwhelmingly rejected the right of Israel to exist at all.[vi] Thus, the 'al-Aksa Intifada' was not launched in order to undo the results of the 1967, but to undo the results of 1948.[vii]


This fundamental asymmetry is reflected in other ways. Every Israeli withdrawal from territory it had occupied has repeatedly been misconstrued by its enemies as a sign of weakness and has had devastating consequences for Israel. Israel under Sharon withdrew from the Gaza Strip, uprooting 8,000 Israelis and destroying two dozen towns and villages,[viii] and Hamas responded by increasing its daily shelling of Israeli settlements in the Western Negev.[ix] Earlier, Israel under Barak withdrew from Southern Lebanon and Hezbollah moved 10,000 katyusha rockets into the area, turning every resident of Lebanon into a hostage for its adventurism.


But the most chilling asymmetry is that of ultimate ends: what would Israel do if Hezbollah disarmed? Turn its back on Lebanon. What would Hezbollah do were Israel to disarm? The repeated pronouncements of their leadership leave no doubt: those Jews who were not butchered would be drowned in the sea. This asymmetry finds expression in a chilling fact which never ceases to bother me: every kindergarten in Israel has and needs an armed guard to protect it from Palestinian terrorists. Not a single Palestinian school has or needs such a guard (unless it is to protect the children in the school from rival Palestinian factions).[x]


The Israeli view of the world has room for Lebanon, for Jordan, for Egypt, for Saudi Arabia, and even, for the majority of Israelis, for a free and independent Palestine. For more and more Palestinians, there is no room in the world for Israel.


Finding Israelis (Jews and Arabs) to criticize Israel is no problem for Mr. Barghouti — Israel is indeed a lively democracy. In contrast, one can occasionally find a Palestinian who will admit that terror attacks against Israeli citizens are counter-productive but finding a Palestinian willing to condemn the out and out murder of children, when the murderers are Arabs and the children are Jewish, is next to impossible — Another asymmetry.


Asymmetries exist in the way that outsiders view the conflict too.
Israel is held to standards of behavior to which no other country in the world is held, and when it fails to live up to those standards, it is condemned in absolutist, Manichean terms as thoroughly depraved and corrupted. In the eyes of its enemies,[xi] the Israeli cup must be brimming over with goodness; otherwise it is empty of all redeeming value. Palestinians, on the other hand, are consistently forgiven their excesses. Often this forgiveness is on the grounds that the Palestinians, being militarily inferior, have no choice but to use means which, if used by any other group in the world, would be condemned (and rightly so) as uncivilized war crimes and crimes against humanity. For all its faults, Israel is the only country in the Middle East in which Arab citizens are truly free and safe to criticize their government, being protected by law and by a court system well-known for forcing the government to back down when it infringes upon their rights. It is also the only country in the Middle East in which Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims and Christians of every persuasion are free to worship without discrimination. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have created a form of government unique in the world, a kind of kleptocratic thuggocracy.
In the eyes of those who support Mr. Barghouti, Israel gets no credit, Palestinians gets no blame.




RACISM?


Mr. Barghouti's argument rests upon a number of incendiary claims, not one of which can stand examination. Barghouti opens by accusing the "overwhelming majority of Jewish-Israelis" of "unbridled racism." How does he know this? Because of their "fervent support" for recent IDF "atrocities" in "occupied Palestinian territory" and in Lebanon. It is rather rich for a man who gives at least tacit support for a truly racist organization (Hamas[xii]), to accuse others of the same crime.[xiii] Certainly horrible things have happened to innocent Palestinians in Gaza and to innocent Lebanese.[xiv] But were the deaths in Kfar Kana[xv] last summer and in Khan Yunis last month tragic accidents of war or the result of callous calculation on the part of Israeli planners?[xvi] To demonstrate the mendacity of the latter claim, let us start by examining the context in which these events took place.
Barghouti ignores the fact that after Israel withdrew from every square centimeter of the Gaza Strip and announced its intention of making further withdrawals from the West Bank, Hamas continued its rocket and guerilla attacks on the Western Negev, culminating in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit on June 25, 2006 and the murder of 2 of his comrades. Two weeks later, Hezbollah, in a wholly unprovoked assault, crossed the internationally recognized border from Lebanon to attack Israeli reservists on routine patrol, killed 8 and kidnapped two, whose fate remains unknown to this day. Hezbollah simultaneously launched deadly rocket attacks on Israeli towns near the Lebanese border. That is the context ignored by Mr. Barghouti, but without which one cannot judge Israeli reactions to subsequent events.[xvii] Hamas and Hezbollah both like to place their rocket launchers in civilian areas,[xviii] in the hope of either protecting them from Israeli attack, or, and this I take to be more likely, in the expectation that Israel's attempts to protect its citizens (my children among them) will result in Arab casualties, so that cynics can use this in their propaganda war against Israel.[xix] Terrible things happen in war-time. If Israelis are racists for deploring but failing to condemn unfortunate and unplanned tragedies, what does that make of Palestinians who enthusiastically enshrine as martyrs and national heroes people who calmly walk in to restaurants, pat little children sitting there with their families on their heads, and then blow them up?


Let us look at this a little more deeply. Mr. Barghouti claims that it is racist for Israelis not to condemn their army when it accidentally brings about the death of Palestinian civilians while in his view it is not racist for Palestinians publicly to applaud the purposeful murder of Jewish children. Underlying this claim is the assumption that while Palestinian nationalism is a legitimate expression of the national aspirations of the Palestinian people, Jewish nationalism must be racism.[xx] One can applaud nationalism or deplore it, but for the life of me I cannot understand why Palestinian nationalism is appropriate and Jewish nationalism is not. That smacks of racism![xxi]


APARTHEID?


Of course, Mr. Barghouti needs to claim that Israelis are racists, in order to justify his claim that Israel pursues a policy of apartheid. I always have to scratch my head over that one. I live in a city (Haifa) in which Jews and Arabs live in the same neighborhoods, in the same blocks of flats, frequent each other's businesses, and cheer the home town football team together. The week that I am writing this Haifa is celebrating "the festival of festivals," marking Hanukkah and Christmas.[xxii] I live next door to an absorption center for black immigrants to Israel from Ethiopia. I swim every day in a pool at the Technion with, I assume, Arab colleagues and students. I often eat out in (kosher!) restaurants owned and operated by Arabs.[xxiii] One of my physicians is an Arab and were I to be hospitalized it is likely that I would be treated by Arab physicians and nurses. The pharmacist at my local branch of an Israeli drugstore chain has an Arabic name. Last night on the TV news I watched the Vice-Speaker of the Knesset (Israel's
parliament) commenting on recent events (Palestinians killing each other over political power and division of spoils in Gaza). Who was that Vice-Speaker? Dr. Ahmad Tibi, one-time personal advisor to and spokesman for Yasir Arafat. I teach at a university of about 17,000 students, over 20% of whom are Arabs (more than their relative population in the country as a whole). A quarter of the students in the university dorms are Arabs, and a similar percentage of the student body receiving student aid are Arabs. Until recently, the chair of one of the most prestigious departments on our campus was an Arab, and now the most powerful Dean at our university (the person responsible for all research
funds) is an Arab. Neither of these gentlemen, it hardly needs saying, is an enthusiastic Zionist; but they are both fair-minded individuals who earned their posts through distinguished academic work. All this in an "apartheid" state![xxiv]


Pots seem to enjoy calling kettles black. If I were to look for truly apartheid societies in the world, it is not to Israel that I would look, but to many countries in the Arab world. The genocide in Darfur, the fact that not a single Jewish community exists in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, the fact that no Christians or Jews can be citizens in Saudi Arabia[xxv] (or even bring a bible into the country temporarily)[xxvi], the persecution of Copts in Egypt, the persecution of Christians in Bethlehem,[xxvii] the list goes on and on, but of course, it is only Israel which is tarred with the apartheid brush.


In order to make his implausible charge look prima facie reasonable, Mr.
Barghouti quotes anti-Zionist Israelis like Ilan Pappe and Tanya Reinhart. Ilan Pappe has made a career of ignoring evidence inconvenient to his theses, of promising but never actually providing evidence to back up his wild accusations, and of simply lying whenever the spirit moves him.[xxviii] Pappe has the gall to make reference to Israel's "killing fields" — in one shot, both lying cynically about Israel and diminishing the horrors of Pol Pot's regime.


COLONIAL WALL?


Just as the accusation of apartheid bursts apart at the merest glance, so also the claims about "Israel's colonial Wall, built mostly on occupied territory and condemned as illegal … by the ICJ." Mr. Barghouti is nothing if not a clever controversialist. Note the insertion of the world "colonial,"[xxix] the capitalization of the word "Wall,"[xxx] and the failure to mention that the ICJ ruling, rejected as politicized by many European states,[xxxi] was predicated upon the prima facie absurd notion that Israel has no right to defend itself against non-state actors.[xxxii] Why is this barrier being built? Did the government of Israel simply decide one day to invest billions of dollars in the construction of a fence (97% of the barrier is chain linking fencing, not concrete walls) in order to make life difficult for Palestinians?
Reading Mr. Barghouti, one would think so. Not a word about the endless stream of mass murderers flowing across the Green Line in order to wreak havoc and death among Israelis (Jews, Muslims, and Christians); it is to stem that tide that the barrier is being erected and so far, thank God, it seems to be working pretty well.[xxxiii]


REFUGEES


An important element in Mr. Barghouti's call for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel focuses on "Israel and Palestinian Refugee Rights." No decent human being could fail to be moved by the plight of Palestinians living in slums in Gaza. But the question which must be asked, and which Mr. Barghouti carefully ignores, is: why are they confined to those camps and slums? Palestinian spokespersons have found it useful to present themselves as the ultimate victims of the Twentieth Century — in this way they garner support from well-meaning people in the West who have an admirable tendency to support the weak and down-trodden. This strategy has been extraordinarily successful (and underlies the obscene use of Holocaust imagery by those Palestinian apologists who do not deny that it occurred). But it comes with a very high price: people who consistently present themselves as victims soon come to see themselves in that way alone. They take no responsibility for their own fates and blame all their misfortunes exclusively on others. Omar Barghouti appears to be a classic example of this unfortunate syndrome.


In order to understand this, it is necessary to present a quick survey of the history of the Palestinian refugees. In 1948 Israel was created by a UN decision; it was the Arab states which rejected that decision, invaded the nascent state, were defeated, and thus brought about the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. Ilan Pappe and other propagandists to the contrary,[xxxiv] there is absolutely no real evidence that there was any general policy of expelling Arabs from their villages. Huge populations were displaced by and after World War II; in all cases but the 1948 Arab refugees those displaced were eventually resettled in new homes. These poor miserable people were forced by the very states which precipitated their catastrophe, and which were legally and morally responsible for it, to fester in squalid refugee camps, without being granted equal rights as citizens, or even as residents, of these same countries whose invasion turned them into refugees. Their Arab brethren have manipulated them for decades as pawns in their ongoing war against Israel.


At the same time that Arab refugees were being cruelly and cynically abused by their supposed protectors, close to a million Jews, driven from their homes by government-inspired or tolerated pogroms, were being welcomed and resettled in Israel.[xxxv] The majority of Israeli Jews today are the children and grandchildren of these refugees from Arab persecution.


Jordan illegally absorbed the West Bank (after 1948), consciously sabotaged the UN-mandated Palestinian Arab state, and kept its Palestinian majority subjugated to a Bedouin minority. In 1967 it was the decision of Jordan's King Hussein to join Egypt and Syria in their attempt to wipe Israel off the face of the map which led to Israel's occupation of the West Bank. It was the Arab states meeting in Khartoum after that war which rejected all negotiations with Israel, guaranteeing that Israel would continue its occupation, and condemning the local population to live under occupation. Had the Arab states been willing to negotiate with Israel after 1967, there would have been no occupation and no Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. It was the Palestinians in the 1970's who chose the route of murderous attacks aimed at civilian targets (such as airliners and Olympic athletes) as opposed to what would clearly have been a more effective route, namely civil disobedience — think of what Arafat as Gandhi could have accomplished! Repeated massacres of innocent men, women and children invite armed responses and harden positions.


In Mr. Barghouti's zeal to absolve Palestinians of all responsibility for their fate, and in his hatred for Israel, he ignores all this, and also fails to take up an interesting question. Many Palestinian Arabs live in festering refugee camps in areas from which Israel withdrew after Arafat's return to Palestine in 1994. For the following seven years, when the attacks of the 'al-Aksa Intifada' forced Israel to reoccupy much of the West Bank, these refugee camps were under an internationally recognized Palestinian government, showered with largesse by the world at large. Why were none of the billions of euros that were transferred to the Palestinian Authority used to ameliorate the lot of these people?[xxxvi] There is a simple answer. Just as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt kept Arab refugees in camps instead of absorbing them into their countries, in order to use them as pawns against Israel, so also has Palestinian leadership kept its own population in conditions of misery to use them as pawns against Israel.[xxxvii] This is cynicism of the highest order; what can one say of Mr. Barghouti's purposeful failure to even take note of it?


BOYCOTT ISRAEL?!


In closing, I would like to address those Europeans actively supporting Mr. Barghouti's call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
Such individuals have been convinced that Palestinians are passive victims, wholly innocent of any responsibility for their plight. This ultimately expresses disrespect for Palestinians, treating them like children. It encourages irresponsible behavior on their part — European supporters of the Palestinians have encouraged them to believe that political and military adventurism carries no price. No matter what Israel does (withdrawing from Gaza, uprooting 8,000 Jews from their homes, electing a government publicly committed to withdrawing from much of the West Bank), Palestinian supporters will condemn us in hysterical and outrageous terms and seek to demonize Israel and Israelis, turning us into pariahs; no matter what the Palestinians do excuses will be found for their behavior. Having been turned into entirely passive and innocent victims, with no accountability for their actions, the Palestinians behave as if they can do no wrong.


The only reason why there is no Palestinian state thriving next to Israel (to which Palestinians the world over would have the right of
return) is because the Palestinians do not want such a state: they would rather destroy Israel than build Palestine - and often well-meaning Europeans encourage them in that idee fixe.


Palestinians are playing a zero-sum game while Israeli governments have finally become reconciled to the reality of Palestinian national aspirations and are thus not playing a similar game. That is the true asymmetry of the conflict here in the Middle East — not primitive kassam rockets vs. F-16's, but Israeli Jews willing to live with and next door to Palestinians vs. Palestinians unwilling to live with or next door to Israeli Jews. If I considered myself a friend of the Palestinians, as do those who support boycott calls, I would not encourage delusions of victimization by crudely misusing terms like 'apartheid'; I would remind them that barriers and checkpoints are Israeli responses to a terror campaign initiated on their behalf and with their overwhelming support; I would urge them to build rather than to destroy; I would remonstrate with them for creating a regime of unparalleled sleaze and violence in which billions of euros of aid money have been squandered on corruption and murder instead of on construction and education. I would treat them as equals.


Well-intentioned people often paint Israel in the darkest of colors (and, by implication white-wash every really murderous regime on the face of the planet), condemn us in the harshest of terms for every sin - real or imagined - which we commit, minimize anything right which we might do. What message does this behavior transmit? To myself, and people like me, this automatic response to Israel and to Israeli behavior, good or bad, squelches any tendency we might have to criticize our own faults and our own government more loudly. To the Palestinians it reinforces the message: be as corrupt and as murderous as you like, treat every Israeli withdrawal or peace overture as a sign of weakness
-- whatever you do, we will find ways to justify it while blaming Israel for it. Is this the behavior of a true friend of either side? I hardly think so.


Like many apologists for the Palestinians, Omar Barghouti argues as if the end justifies all means, and truth must be sacrificed; thus the Nazi analogy.[xxxviii] But beyond that, by telling Palestinians that Israeli Jews are Nazis, he tells them that the fight against Israel is a Manichean struggle against ultimate evil, a fight which justifies all means, and a fight against an enemy who must be destroyed before it destroys them; in other words, he tells Palestinians not to negotiate, not to compromise, not to seek to live with and next to Israeli Jews, but to kill and kill and kill. Just as he is no friend of truth, he is certainly no friend of the Palestinians. Indeed, for the reasons I have just outlined, he is a greater danger to the Palestinian people than any Israeli. It is a tragedy that he and his supporters abroad do not channel their considerable energies and talents into activities which might conceivably lead towards peace, rather than towards more war.


Mr. Barghouti wants to boycott Israeli academic institutions, institutions in which Jews and Arabs work together for the common good, and for the good of all humankind. There is one sanction already in place, to which Mr. Barghouti would rather not draw attention: upon entering any Israeli university campus, one must surrender one's bags for inspection (like at an airport) — for fear that someone influenced and supported by Mr. Barghouti might set off a bomb on campus.[xxxix] To join in a boycott of these institutions is literally to add insult to injury.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[i] My thanks to Paul Bogdanor, Harvey Chisick, Ofir Frankel, Linda Montag, Jonathan Rynhold, Wendy Sandler, Edwin Slonim, and especially Amy Rosenbaum.

[ii] I write "launched" and not "broke out" because of the widely accepted Palestinian claim that Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount (the holiest site for Jews as well as the location of the Al-Aksa mosque, third holiest site for Muslims) on September 28, 2000 was deliberately provocative, triggering the subsequent violence. Less well known is that Sharon's visit occurred after assurances were made by Yasir Arafat to then-Prime Minister Barak that the visit would go smoothly as long as Sharon did not attempt to enter the mosques.
Further, in a speech made in December 2000 by Imad Falouji, PA Communications Minister, Falouji explains that the violence had been pre-planned since Arafat's return from Camp David in July, months before Sharon's visit. (The speech can be viewed at
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qb5flP-MfAc.) The day before Sharon's visit, IDF Sgt. David Biri was killed, arguably the start of the Intifada.
Further on this, see Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp.
203-207.

[iii] For an account of the changes in my thinking, see my essay, "Daniel Boyarin and the Herd of Independent Minds," in Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor (eds.), The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2006): 167-176. Other essays in this book refute charges brought against Israel by many of the people whom Mr. Barghouti cites as authorities, such as Ilan Pappe, Tanya Reinhart, and Noam Chomsky, among many others. See also:
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyquotes.html

[iv] In what is arguably his most horrifically untrue statement, Mr.
Barghouti avers that “Israel treated Palestinian children as dispensable creatures.” And the horror of it is only exceeded by its hypocrisy. If any group has treated Palestinian children as dispensable creatures, it is Palestinians. USA Today correspondent Jack Kelley reported:
“Children serve as infantry in the confrontations between Israeli and Palestinian soldiers. In scenes reminiscent of Iranian children sent to the Iraqi front equipped with plastic keys to heaven, Palestinian children are sent close to Israeli positions with rocks and molotov cocktails, while the gunmen and snipers fire from positions hundreds of yards back” (10/23/00). The Jordanian newspaper “Al-Rai” (citing an interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper “Al-Zaman” on June 20, 2002), quotes Abu Mazen, then deputy chairman of the Palestinian authority, who spoke of how Palestinian children are being exploited into carrying out terror attacks: ‘at least 40 children from the city of Raphah have lost their arms as a result of the explosions of pipe bombs. They received five Israeli shekels (about one US dollar) for throwing them.” The PA has provided children with military training. The New York Times reports that 25,000 children were trained in the summer of 2000 in PA camps in the use of firearms, the making of molotov cocktails, the methods of kidnapping Israeli leaders, and conducting ambushes (New York Times, 8/3/00). For other corrections to many of Mr. Barghouti's incendiary claims, see the article by Amnon Rubinstein, cited below in note 24.

[v] My language here reflects another important asymmetry: Israel is a Jewish state with a substantial minority of Arab citizens ever more assertive (and rightly so) of their rights as citizens. No one expects the Palestinian state when it comes to be to have a substantial Jewish minority, and only an inhabitant of Aristophanes' cloud-cuckoo land would believe that such a state would protect the lives, let alone rights, of a Jewish minority. Indeed, the Palestinian Authority has failed to protect the rights and security of the Palestinian Christian minority currently residing in PA-controlled territory. (See for
example: "O, Muslim town of Bethlehem...", Daily Mail, 6/16/06; "AP Reports on Arson Attacks by Muslims Against Palestinian Christians,"
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), 9/6/05; "Christians Under Cover," The Jerusalem Post, 2/23/06; "Small Christian group in Gaza threatened with elimination,"
www.worldtribune.com, 2/24/06; "YMCA warned to vacate Hamas town: After
6 years of operation, Christian organization being booted by terror group," WorldNetDaily.com, 4/21/06; "Christians Persecuted in the Holy Land," Christian Broadcast Network, Winter 2005; "Anti-Christian Pogrom in the West Bank,"HonestReporting.com, 9/6/05, "Away from the manger - a Christian-Muslim divide," The Jerusalem Post, 10/21/05.)

[vi] As evidenced by Hamas' recent rise to power.

[vii] In 1967, Israel, in consequence of an unprovoked attack by Jordan --while already fighting a two-front war with Soviet-backed Egypt and
Syria-- occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River. In the 1948 conflict, Israel, called into being by the United Nations, survived an attack from all the neighboring Arab states and by local Arabs from within.

[viii] That there are no Israeli soldiers in Gaza does not stop Mr.
Barghouti from talking about "innocent Palestinian civilians under occupation, particularly in the Gaza Strip" (emphasis added).

[ix] It is estimated that 1,000 Qassam rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza since September 2005 when the last Israeli troops withdrew. ("AIPAC v. Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel's Assault on Gaza," www.democracynow.org)

[x] In the week before I wrote these words, three Palestinian children in front of their school in Gaza were gunned down by other Palestinians seeking to murder their father.

[xi] Not all critics of Israel, obviously, are its enemies (or I and every Israeli I know would be counted among its enemies), but the level of criticism in many circles is such that it is clearly motivated by enmity, not honest differences.

[xii] See the Hamas charter at:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/hamas.htm

[xiii] In the same vein, Barghouti claims that in the light of the events of last summer, "many Palestinians, particularly in Israel, feel a true existential threat looming over [their] heads." Given the present Iranian regime's threats to wipe Israel off the map, coupled with Iran's accelerated quest for nuclear arms, Palestinians should indeed feel a true existential threat looming over their heads.

[xiv] And, I would add, as Mr. Barghouti does not, to innocent Israelis.

[xv] According to Orde Kittrie, who served in the office of the legal adviser at the U.S. State Department from 1993-2003, “at Qana, Israeli aircraft fired toward a building to stop Hezbollah from shooting rockets at its cities. The aircraft did not deliberately target civilians; but Hezbollah rockets are targeted at civilians, a clear war crime. UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland…called on Hezbollah to stop its ‘cowardly blending’ among women and children. If Hezbollah used Lebanese civilians in Qana as ‘human shields,’ then Hezbollah, not Israel, is legally responsible for their deaths.” (“A War Crime At Qana?” The Wall Street Journal, 8/6/06.)

[xvi] http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=1617

[xvii] Similarly, Mr. Barghouti makes reference to "the Nakba, a well-planned, and very well documented, Zionist campaign of terror that led to their [the Palestinians] ethnic cleansing around 1948." Every word of this sentence is false [see E. Karsh, "Nakbat Haifa: Collapse and Dispersion of a Major Palestinian Community," Middle Eastern Studies
37 (2001): 25-70] but even were there some truth to it, to present the events of 1948 without any reference to the Arab League/Palestinian actual attempt at the ethnic cleansing of (not by!) Jews in the Land of Israel at that time takes amazing gall, and treats one's readers as either ignorant or gullible.

[xviii] This positioning of military and guerrilla installations in residential areas is considered a war crime, as defined by protocol 1
(1977) to the Geneva Convention, article 51(7).

[xix] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,205349,00.html

[xx] Let it be noted that any number of European nations (e.g., Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and
Slovenia) grant official status to ethnic kin abroad. See Amnon Rubinstein, "Zionism's Compatriots," Azure 16 (2004):
http://www.azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=168&search_text=.

[xxi] For instances of the deeply entrenched racism in PA radio, TV, and newspapers, see http://www.pmw.org.il/murder.htm

[xxii] On years when the Muslim calendar makes it possible, Ramadan is also marked.

[xxiii] It is probably no accident that the two restaurants targeted by terrorist bombers in my home town of Haifa were under combined Jewish-Arab ownership.

[xxiv] I do not pretend that all is sweetness and light for Arabs in Israel, but by any measure their share of the national pie is consistently growing. The social gap between the two communities is narrowing at an ever accelerating pace (so much so that it is narrower today than in the UK and France, for example). Moreover, the reason for the continuation of the gap is not primarily Israeli 'racist' policies but the lack of modernization among Muslim Israelis. Overall, Christian-Arab Israelis have done very well. See Amnon Rubinstein, "Israeli Arabs and Jews: Dispelling the Myths, Narrowing the Gaps,"
http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nl/content3.asp?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=846567&ct=1
043985.

[xxv] http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2005/51609.htm

[xxvi]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/19/ubible11
9.xml; see also:
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1012.html under "standards of conduct and religious police."

[xxvii]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_
article_id=423126&in_page_id=1770

[xxviii] http://www.meforum.org/article/897

[xxix] Enemies of Zionism love to present it as the last gasp of a dying Western colonialism, instead of as another expression of nationalism, one of the most powerful forces of the Twentieth Century (and, I might add, a force which called the Palestinian people into being).

[xxx] A cunning if dishonest attempt to equate this barrier with the Berlin Wall. For the truth, see:
http://securityfence.mfa.gov.il/mfm/web/main/document.asp?SubjectID=4587
4&MissionID=45187&LanguageID=0&StatusID=0&DocumentID=-1. The barrier becomes a wall in places where Palestinian snipers can (and have!) targeted Israeli motorists.

[xxxi] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:2:./temp/~c108EE2BVc::

[xxxii]
http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/idocket/imwp/imwp_advisory_opinion_declara
tion_buergenthal.htm

[xxxiii]
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=36&x_article=752

[xxxiv] Pappe denies the possibility of writing any history that is not the history of one side of a conflict or another; in simple English that is called propaganda. See his own words:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_print=1&x_context=2&x_outlet=55&x_arti
cle=994

[xxxv] See: http://www.jimena.org/

[xxxvi] For details of the wealth squandered by the PA, see Michael Keating, Anne Le More and Robert Lowe [no particular friends of Israel] (eds.), Aid, Diplomacy and Facts on the Ground: The Case of Palestine
(London: Chatham House, 2006).

[xxxvii] See:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=52&x_article=960

[xxxviii] Mr. Barghouti is nothing if not a clever controversialist. He introduces the Nazi analogy by quoting Ronnie Kasrils, a South African Jew, instead of making the claim himelf; he introduces the fascism charge by quoting (wildly out of context) the former Israeli government minister Shulamit Aloni, and he introduces the "killing fields" charge by quoting the "historian" Ilan Pappe.

[xxxix] As happened in a cafeteria on the Mt. Scopus campus of the Hebrew University on July 31, 2002.

Rondi Adamson raises some interesting questions (in addition to making some other insightful comments):

I know the sailors were under duress, but did they need to be smiling and shaking Ahmadinejad's hand today? Even in those early film clips of them, I wondered about their training. I mean, it didn't look to me like they were in Camp 16 from Bridge on the River Kwai or anything. And why did they go so willingly with the Iranians in the first place? How did these people ever get such a spectacular empire?

Yes, yes, I know. We have only seen what Tehran wanted us to see, and I will be quite keen and open to hear what the sailors have to say.

Rondi's posting is more poignant than the others I have read so far. Be sure to read all her postings on this topic, here.

The UN Security Council has voted more sanctions against Iran in an attempt to force Iran to halt its uranium enrichment programme. From the NYTimes,

All 15 members of the Security Council adopted the sanctions, Resolution 1747, which focus on constraining Iranian arms exports, the state-owned Bank Sepah — already under Treasury Department sanctions — and the Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military organization separate from the nation’s conventional armed forces.

No surprises were in the resolution, which modestly strengthens largely financial sanctions adopted in December in a first, limited resolution.

Meanwhile, of course, French and Russian financial institutions and arms dealers are licking their chops in anticipation of big profits to be made; so is Kofi Annan's son.

Addendum: These cartoons from a previous posting capture the situation pretty well.

The United Arab Emirates, concerned about the health, weight, and obesity of its nationals, is considering slapping price controls on health foods to induce consumers to buy more health foods. Unfortunately, the UAE Health Ministry is only half right: Yes, lowering the price would lead to an increase in the quantity demanded, but they are ignoring the supply side. John Chilton points out that price controls will actually lead to less consumption of healthy fruits and vegetables, contrary to the intentions of the price fixers:

Introducing a price ceiling to lower the price of healthy foods would give consumers the incentive to seek to consume more healthy food, but it will also give suppliers less incentive to provide healthy foods. Consumers will find the amount or quality of healthy food decline. Consumers will end up consuming less, not more healthy food - exactly the opposite of the good intentions of the Health Ministry.

If the ministry wants to spur consumption of healthy food it needs to either convince consumers to buy more at given prices, or subsidize healthy food in the marketplace.

Follow the link to read his take on the distinction between "nationals" and "residents" and on the expansion of Krispy Kreme donuts into the UAE.

Please click on each one to see it in better resolution and to read the text.

Be sure to click on this one to read the fine print!








For these and many more (and more recent) cartoons about Iran and the mideast, see this site.

A Palestinian boasts of using the location of a former synogogue as a launching site for rockets into Israel. He proudly admits it.

• Where is the international outrage at these continuing attacks on Israel?
• Why aren't the mainstream media (MSM) all over this?

The ruins of two large synagogues in evacuated Jewish communities of the Gaza Strip have been transformed into military bases used by Palestinian Arab groups to fire rockets at Israeli cities, according to a senior leader of a Gaza militant group....

Speaking to The New York Sun from Gaza, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, Abu Abir, said the area in which the synagogues once stood is now used to fire rockets at Israel.

"We are proud to turn these lands, especially these parts that were for long time the symbol of occupation and injustice, like the synagogue, into a military base and source of fire against the Zionists and the Zionist entity," Mr. Abir said.

Sir Martin Gilbert is a noted historian, having studied and written extensively, primarily about Sir Winston Churchill but also many other 20th-century events and figures. He says he is always interested in how interpretations and analyses change when archives become available. From a recent interview (the link to the full interview is here),

[H]e stressed that archival sources consistently showed major discrepancies between what is really going on in world affairs and the inaccurate way in which events and personalities are perceived at the time.

"As a historian, I'm very cautious about anyone's claiming to know what any government is doing at the present time," he said. "I study archives as soon as they are open - normally 30 years after an event; sometimes a bit less. What you see when you do this is that the people you imagined had been strong were weak; the people you thought weak were strong; and things you thought couldn't possibly be taking place were taking place."

That was part of an interview in which he said that Lawrence of Arabia was a strong Zionist.

. .

If you can, take the time to read the entire interview; it is very informative.

notes: Sir Martin Gilbert has been visiting The University of Western Ontario off-and-on this academic year. [h/t to Pooh for the link to the full interview].

Bill Sjostrom at Atlantic Blog brutally dissects a poll of international relations "scholars". The poll construction and results reveal the field of international relations to be rife with left-wing anti-Semites. The title of this posting came from this paragraph:

[I]n questions 66 and 67, only 8% (6% in Canada) support an attack against North Korea if it continues developing nuclear weapons, but that jumps to 53% (50% in Canada) if the Security Council approves. Questions 68 and 69 show the same result for Iran. Support for invading Iran if it continues to develop nuclear weapons jumps from 9% without Security Council approval (7% in Canada) to 48% with it (41% in Canada). The poll offers for no explanation for the fetish for the largely irrelevant Security Council. Is there something about IR scholars wanting to keep Putin happy?

Several years ago, a colleague told me that in many developing countries, when a person gets a job, suddenly dozens of relatives show up and expect to be supported by that person. But because this reaction is expected by possible job-seekers, it amounts to a fully anticipated tax that, not surprisingly, deters people from seeking reasonably paying jobs in the legitimate market, forcing more work into the underground economy.

Here is another effect [via Judith]. A Saudi female physician is being forced to divorce her husband, in part so her family can arrange her marriage to a partner of their choosing, and in part because they are dependent on her financial support.

The case of Rania Albou-Enin, a 27-year-old Saudi physician has caused particular concern. In her last month of pregnancy, she is anxiously awaiting an appeals court decision in a case of forced divorce brought by he father.

Her husband, Saud Al-Khaledi, is being held in a police jail in Alkhobar, according to her lawyer Ibrahim Al-Behairi. Rania, who had been paying all her family's bills, has claimed she was beaten by one of her brothers and that the family brought the case to ensure they would not lose their main breadwinner.

Update: thanks to John Chilton for reminding me about this piece by Tyler Cowen, which sets out the family tax on employment. Be sure to read both the piece and all the informative examples provided in the comments!

from BenS:

Woman ticketed for having sex with passenger on highway fast lane
By Reuters

Police investigating why a car was blocking traffic in the fast lane of a major highway on Sunday found a couple inside having sex.

A police spokesman said the female driver and her male passenger gave in to their passions without pulling over to the side of the road, causing congestion and leaving other motorists having to swerve to dodge their stationary vehicle.

A patrolman gave the woman a ticket for holding up traffic.

What impresses me about this situation is the implied calculation that must have been made by the couple, assuming they are rational maximizers: the incremental benefits of pulling to the shoulder of the road were expected to be less than the incremental costs of doing so, even without considering the benefits to other drivers had the couple pulled off the road. That has to say something of significance.