QOTD: Confucius

QOTD: Confucius (via Motley Fool)

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

The Old Arik

Bret Stephens describes how the old Ariel Sharon ran Gaza.

Ariel Sharon once ruled Gaza. From July 1971 to February 1972, Mr. Sharon, then the officer in charge of Israel's southern command, suppressed a PLO guerrilla insurgency with one of the most inventive and relentless campaigns in modern military history. To stop Palestinian boys from stoning Israeli infantry, Mr. Sharon gave their fathers a choice: Discipline your children, or face deportation to Jordan. To uncover underground PLO bunkers, Mr. Sharon assigned a bulldozer to every search-and-destroy patrol, literally rooting out Palestinian fighters from their hiding places and possibly burying some of them alive. To facilitate military operations in refugee camps, Mr. Sharon widened alleyways into streets, demolishing whatever housing stood in the way.

And to make certain Gaza would never again pose a security problem for Israel, Mr. Sharon recommended the building of several Jewish settlements that would divide the Strip into four zones. "If in the future we wanted to control this area," Mr. Sharon recalls in his memoirs, "we would need to establish a Jewish presence now. Otherwise we would have no motivation to be there during difficult times later on."

The Right Questions to Ask

QOTD: Bret Stephens in WSJ

In Israel..., suicide bombings are commonly understood by the foreign press as acts of desperation by a people who have lost all hope for a better future. Ease the economic hardships of Palestinians and end the occupation, so the thinking goes, and terrorism will be deprived of its motive.

It's a convenient notion, which more or less excuses mass murder as the deeds of men who have been robbed of their property, pride and patrimony. But is it right? What if suicide bombings aren't an act of despair at all but something approaching the opposite: a supreme demonstration of contempt for everything Westerners hold dear, not least life itself? What if, too, suicide bombers are no poor-man's F-16 but a robust expression of confidence that the Palestinians are infinitely more ruthless than Israelis in what amounts to a zero-sum game?

...There are lessons here for us today. If, for example, you think the Palestinian national movement headed by Yasser Arafat seeks only to form a state within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, then the answer to the problem is to get the Israelis to make way. If, however, you think Palestinians are in the grip of a fantasy ideology, acting as the vanguard for a Muslim counterattack against a latter-day Crusader state, then granting a Palestinian state becomes a bit like allowing Hitler to march into the Rhineland: It perpetuates a fantasy that deserves to die.

Fuel Cell Fantasy

The NYT explains why we're not moving away from an oil-based economy to a fuel-cell one.

the least-expensive methods of hydrogen production use fuels like coal or natural gas, and those create pollution, experts say. Hydrogen is also difficult to ship and store. In addition, power from fuel cells is far more costly than
the same amount of power from a gasoline engine...

[According to Joseph J. Romm, the chief Energy Department official in charge of conservation and alternative energy in the Clinton administration,] Most hydrogen produced today is made from natural gas, he said, and using that gas to make electricity, and thus replace coal-based electric plants, would do more for the environment than using the gas to make hydrogen to replace gasoline. He said society would get more energy from a cubic foot of natural gas burned in a modern gas-powered electric plant than if it was converted to hydrogen.

Gaza Redux

A7 describes the history of Jews in Gaza.

Contrary to popular perception, Gaza has long been a Jewish area, and is in fact included in the Biblical Land of Israel; a dispute among traditional Jewish commentators exists only regarding the area west of El Arish in northern Sinai. It is mentioned as land that should have been conquered by Joshua; was home to Jews during the times of the Hasmoneans and the redaction of the Mishna; and its Jewish population was strong enough to withstand an attempt by Constantine in the 4th century to build a Christian church there. More recently, Jews lived there from 1885 until World War I, and a renewed Jewish community remained there until the Muslim pogroms of 1929. Kfar Darom was established there in 1946, lasting only until the War of Independence two years later, and in 1973, Netzer Hazani - the first of 17 Jewish communities that now exist in Gaza - was established.

The Crux of the Middle East Conflict

Jonathan Tobin says that the crux of the Middle East conflict is the value placed on human life by each side.

Why are Israelis so willing to trade so much for a single life when the Palestinians are willing to expend their own so needlessly? I suspect that it may be not so much a matter of devaluing life as it is the greater value they place on the ultimate victory they seek.

This is more than a philosophical question, because if we think that Israel's foes share our horror at the conflict, then we will always try to appease them with concessions. If their goals are different from those of the Jews, then a change in long-term strategy may be in order.

We may not understand why Arabs honor murder and Jews don't, but at this point in history, we're forced to at least pose the question. If, rather than a dispute about territory, something darker within Palestinian society is driving t his terrible war, then every debate about the peace process is ultimately moot. And that is a possibility very few of us wish to acknowledge.

Gaza Notes

David Bedein reveals some interesting and probably lesser known tidbits about Ariel Sharon's proposed pullout of Gaza.

The popular media will undoubtedly report that Sharon's settlement abandonment policy will sit well with both the PLO and the U.S.

Most reporters have not noticed the map of "illegal settlements" published by the Palestinian National Authority, indicates that all of the settlements that Israel established after the 1948 war, especially in the Negev region of southern Israel, would be considered to be "illegal."

For that reason, Arabs in Gaza have a legal problem with Israeli Jewish settlements that were established after the 1948 war, not with the Israeli settlements that were established after the 1967 war.

Menachem Begin, who advocated Israeli settlement activity in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan, made a cardinal rule when he became Israeli Prime Minister in 1977, which was that no Israeli community in the Golan, Judea, Samaria or Katif would cause Arab villages to be uprooted.

Begin reversed the post-1948 policy allowing Israeli Jews to claim abandoned Arab properties and entire Arab villages for settlement purposes.

What has been forgotten is that the U.S. never recognized Israel's acquisitions of land in the 1948 war. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles made that point when he visited Israel in 1953, and placed the U.S. on the record as opposing Israeli settlement in the "conquered" Negev and the Galilee regions.

For that reason, the U.S. never recognized the 1949 or 1967 cease-fire lines as the borders of Israel. Those cease-fire lines are mistakenly believed by many to be fixed borders.

What the popular media will probably also miss is that the agricultural produce of the 17 farming communities in Katif successfully competes with the agricultural produce of the hundreds of Israel's collective farms -- a factor that has figured into the Israel Labor Party's enthusiastic support for the eradication of their agricultural competitors.

You Have to Laugh

A7 has this ironic quote from Shimon Peres.

Opposition leader Shimon Peres is opposed to forcibly removing citizens from their homes. He said last week, "You're going to force them to move? They don't want to, and you can't just do things by force. They are Israeli citizens with rights and obligations just like yours and mine... Listen to them. They are saying, 'We are connected with our place, we were born here, this is our land, we are citizens of the country.' What can you answer them?"

In case the context is not clear, Arutz-7's Ariel Kahane notes that Peres was not referring to the Israeli citizens of Gush Katif, but rather to the Israeli-Arabs of Um el-Fahm. It was announced last week that Prime Minister Sharon was entertaining the possibility of trading Um el-Fahm, an Israeli city of close to 40,000 Arabs bordering on Samaria, to the Palestinian Authority, in exchange for Jewish-populated areas in Judea and Samaria.

Whitewashing the Palestinian Leadership

Francisco J. Gil-White "converted" from a pro-Palestinian Arab point of view to a pro-Israel point of view in this interesting article.

Here is what I used to believe about the Middle East (all of these beliefs are quite popular):

1) That the media (at least the American media) has a uniformly pro-Israel bias;
2) That Arafat’s Fatah is a secular nationalist organization trying to combat the fundamentalist influences of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Islamist terrorists;
3) That Palestinian terrorism is not anti-Semitic, but aims at national liberation;
4) That the Palestinian leadership has attempted to implement the Oslo accords in good faith, but the Israelis have sabotaged the process;
5) That Israel is a state overwhelmingly made up of European and American Jews who moved into Palestine and displaced Middle Eastern natives;
6) That historically, Jews were well-treated in the Arab world, and that current Arab hostility therefore stems from the current conflict.

Now, having spent time studying the historical record, I believe I was wrong about all six points.

Why They Hate Us

QOTD: Bernard Lewis in the WSJ.

For 300 years, Mr. Lewis says, Muslims have watched in horror and humiliation as the Christian civilizations of Europe and North America have overshadowed them militarily, economically and culturally.

"The question people are asking is why they hate us. That's the wrong question," said Mr. Lewis on C-SPAN shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. "In a sense, they've been hating us for centuries, and it's very natural that they should. You have this millennial rivalry between two world religions, and now, from their point of view, the wrong one seems to be winning."

He continued: "More generally ... you can't be rich, strong, successful and loved, particularly by those who are not rich, not strong and not successful. So the hatred is something almost axiomatic. The question which we should be asking is why do they neither fear nor respect us?"

Gas on Ice

Technology Review contains an interesting article, entitled Gas on Ice, that shows promise for expanding our available natural gas supplies.

Hydrate forms when gas, usually methane, mixes with water under just the right temperature and pressure conditions. A lattice-work of frozen water molecules encases each molecule of the gas, creating a flammable, ice-like substance....If we could produce gas from only 1 percent of all the hydrates in the world, says USGS researcher Tim Collett, we would have enough natural gas to last more than 170,000 years at the present U.S. consumption rate of 23 trillion cubic feet annually.

This seems to me to have much greater promise than solar ever will. Hydrogen as well, given the amount of investment in exploration, production, and distribution for petroleum and natural gas products in the world.

"Moderate" Damage

This description of the latest suicide bombing should be read in its entirety; however, this quote about "moderate" wounds" is telling. This was an eye witness account by Bret Stephens, the editor of the Jerusalem Post.

Erik's wounds were described as "moderate." What that meant was that his knee-cap had been shattered and that he had sustained shrapnel wounds and vascular damage. He will spend between three and six months in recovery.

Palestinians' Misery Self-inflicted

Craig Weiss in the Arizona Republic describes how the Palestinians have brought their own misery on themselves.

Palestinians have a long history of preying on Israel's humanity. Palestinians have often used Red Crescent ambulances to transport terrorists past Israeli checkpoints. In the past three years alone, Palestinian terrorists have been captured at Israeli checkpoints, posing as ambulance drivers, doctors and patients.

Palestinian terror groups have hidden explosive suicide belts under gurneys carrying sick children and in the garments of pregnant women.

As a direct response to these Palestinian abuses of international law and human decency, Israel has been forced to establish checkpoints and search ambulances. Palestinian complaints about what happens at checkpoints should cause us to think of the story of the child who murders his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the judge because he is an orphan.

Palestinian atrocities are why checkpoints were created. Virtually all of the checkpoints in the territories were dismantled 10 years ago, after the signing of the Oslo accords. Israelis were filled with hope in the peace process, and the belief that the Palestinians would use their freedom of movement to tackle terrorism and begin the task of responsible nation-building.

It was only during the last three years, which has seemed to Israelis like one long Sept. 11, that these checkpoints needed to be re-established. Yet, Palestinians never accept responsibility for the reality that they have brought upon themselves.

Human Rights Groups Exposed

David Trimble, Ulster Union leader and Nobel Peace laureate, confirms what Israelis have seen of "peace" NGOs.

Nobel Peace laureate David Trimble called human rights organizations a "great curse" Friday, accusing them of complicity in terrorist killings.

"One of the great curses of this world is the human rights industry," he told the Associated Press news agency at an international conference of terrorism victims in Madrid. "They justify terrorist acts and end up being complicit in the murder of innocent victims."...

He made his comment as one of the keynote speakers at the first international congress of terrorism victims, which ended in Madrid on Tuesday night. He backed another politician at the conference, the Colombian vice-president Francisco Santos, who said that human rights groups were hindering progress towards peace in his country. "For human rights organizations to call [the Colombian rebel group] FARC 'armed opposition groups' undermines the struggle of those who have decided to side with democracy," Santos said. "That is not right. It is unacceptable."

The Madrid conference ended with a powerful declaration which went some way to supporting Trimble. It said: "We call on NGOs and other civil organizations that stand for the defense of human rights to make a commitment to defend victims of terrorism and to identify terrorist acts for what they are, regardless of their cause or pretext and without striking balances or blurring the distinction between victims and executioners."

Why It?s Islam Vs the Rest of the World

Tavleen Singh explains to moderate Islam why Islam is perceived as the problem.

It would, in my view, be a terrible mistake to try and understand the causes of Islamic terrorism. And, please let us call it Islamic since nearly every terrorist act in recent years has been committed by Muslims in the name of their so-called jehad. These terrible acts of violence cannot be excused on political grounds. There have always been political disputes and there always will be but the solution is not terrorism. As for ??socio-economic?? causes we need to remember that none of the hijackers of 9/11 were poor, illiterate or underprivileged. Many of them have abandoned their repressive home countries for comfortable, middle-class lives in Europe and the United States but were so consumed by hatred of the West that they were prepared to die for it.

Moderate Muslims need to ask why just as they need to ask why, despite all their oil, even rich Muslim countries are unable to create just and enlightened societies instead of ones that produce disaffected, desperate youths who are prepared to give their lives to kill innocent people. If the West is such a terrible place and America Satan incarnate then why do so many Muslims choose to migrate to cities like New York and London? Why are they not happy to live bigoted, blinkered lives in Riyadh and Jeddah?

There would be no problem with Islam, no ??clash?? of any kind, if it would restrict its jehad to its own boundaries. It is precisely because it has chosen to internationalise its ideological and religious battle that there is trouble. Just as young Muslims think their way of life is worth fighting and dying for, so young people who are not Muslim feel their way of life is worth fighting for. And, whether Muslims are prepared to admit it or not modernity does mean questioning ancient religious beliefs and demanding answers. A religion that is based on the belief that the last word or ideology, faith, social mores and law was written fourteen hundred years ago will always find itself in conflict with change. Modernity is in its essence the ability to accept change.

This is the jehad that needs to be fought but it needs to be fought within Islam so that moderate, rational voices can rise above the violence and hatred of the bigots who seem to be the only ones able to speak for Islam.

The European Predicament

Excellent article by Robert J. Samuelson on the structural economic problems of the European "socialist democratic" states.

Its economy is enfeebled by high taxes and regulations. Unless leaders take unpopular steps today, Europe faces dire consequences.