Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

The Iranians just had a big shindig about selling oil:

The largest contingent came from China, which has an extensive record of dealings with Iran and indifference to sanctions. So does U.S. ally Germany, and more than 40 German companies were in Tehran this week. Austrian companies were also well-represented, and the Spanish government sent an official delegation. Also present were India's Essar Group and Norway's Statoil, two firms that previously announced they were cutting ties with Iran—and thereby earned recognition from U.S. officials as examples of successful international pressure. So much for that.

 Norway. Might that be this Norway? (h/t Barry M)

Germany is Iran's main European trade partner. Austrian imports from Iran rose by 397% in 2010.

I'll be traveling to Germany to give some lectures next month. I suppose I should add this item to the agenda.

There's a new film out, Iranium, about how dangerous Iran really is, not only to Israel but to everybody else. I'm not an expert on the matter, but having spent years studying Nazism, I don't see any reason to think it inconceivable. On the contrary, it's eminently conceivable.

The film can be watched here.

Jeffrey Goldberg last week got it all wrong when he blogged about Israel's potential loss of democracy. I was offline, however, and didn't find the time to respond. In the meantime, Victor has done a good job at it.

The Military Attorney General (MAG) of the IDF has posted some information about naval blockades in international law and the application of the laws to Israel's blockade of Gaza. Knowing how lawyers operate there will be inevitably be some who disagree, just like there are those who disagree that Israel has left Gaza, or has claims to Jerusalem, or any of the usual things. Still, it's good to see this material online.

If you thought George Kennan finally died, in 2005, well, apparently not. Werner Scholem, however is long dead - but worthy of a quick moment of memory.

An Iranian weightlifter came in 2nd in a competition in Poland recently. Standing on the winners' podium, he refused to shake the hand of the gold medalist, an Israeli, though he did remain standing while the Israeli anthem was played. Some folks thought his snub was highly improper. The Iranian authorities thought so too, from the opposite direction: he seems to have been banished for life from representing Iran, for the crime of competing against an Israeli in the first place.

Amira Hass has an article up about how if only Israel would be nice to the Gazans, Hamas would disappear. I wouldn't even know how to begin arguing with her, but perhaps I don't even have to. Go back and read everything she has written in her career (25 years?) and you'll see that at any given moment she was always advocating that Israel should be nice and whatever problem was acute would go away. Some people find such thoughts comforting, which is why they persist.

Most Israelis, however, assume the conflict can't be ended, only managed. Yet managing is a delicate art, not easily given to evaluation let alone perfection. It's a never-ending on-going process of multi-level trial and error, in the hope the errors won't cause too much damage, and can be learned from as you go along.

Just in the past few days we've heard how Iran and Syria are moving missiles into Hezbullah's Lebanon (so much for United Nations Resolution 1701), and the Nigerians (!) have intercepted a shipment of Iranian armaments towards Gaza. Yossi Melman, meanwhile, Haaretz' expert on intelligence matters, explains how having the data and understanding it are two separate things, neither of which is easy to do. Martin Kramer, via Michael Totten, shows how this works also in the opposite direction: the more Israel contemplates the growing Iranian threat, the more of its strategic command centers and such it puts underneath Jerusalem, daring the Iranians to even think of attacking the holy city of al-Quds.

(I would tell you more about these excavation projects, but The Economist this week explained that blogging in the Middle East is becoming ever more hazardous, so I'll stay on the safe side and not tell).

The upshot of all this is not, as you might expect, an ever intensifying arming and bolstering of Fortress Israel. On the contrary. Long term conflict management means forever gauging what the precise correct balance is, including trying conflicting measures simultaneously. See, for example, the story from earlier this week about how the PA is beginning to ask the IDF to stop arresting terror suspects in the Palestinians cities since this limits Palestinian sovereignty; the IDF seems willing to acquiesce and is preparing for the day it happens. Another facet of the exact same story is that the IDF and the PA together are looking into ways to enable exports from Hamas-controlled Gaza in ways which will benefit the Gazans, the Israelis and the PA, but not Hamas. There will be folks out there - the Mondoweiss gang comes to mind - who will spin this into a story of Israeli perfidy and PA servility, but it seems me that if you've got an Amria-Hass frame of mind, anything that makes the lives of ordinary Palestinians more pleasant must be a key to peace and thus worthy of trying.

And so, in an unexpected turnaround, at the end of this post I'm going to suggest a Hass-ian thesis of my own.

A negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not achievable at the moment. On the other hand, in the past few years, and especially since the IDF operation in Gaza succeeded in mostly putting an end to rocket fire from there, a calm has settled upon Israel and the Palestinian territories that is good for almost everyone. The longer it goes on, the more it can be reinforced, by opening roadblocks, collaborating in combating terrorists, growing economies in all three political units. So here's my suggestion: let's stop trying to negotiate what can't be negotiated, and let's strengthen the processes that are already happening. If we could prolong the present 20-month calm by ten years, we might all discover, to our great surprise, that renewed final-status negotiations actually could lead somewhere.

True, no-one wold get any Nobel Peace Prizes for the time being - but ordinary people might lead better lives.

MEMRI has dug up an undated old video of Hassan Nasrallah offering his views. Undated, but partially datable: he refers in present tense to Ayatollah Khomaini, who died in 1989, and since he himslef was born in 1960 and clearly is a figure of some authority at the time of his speech, and Hezbullah was founded only in 1982, it must be sometime in the late 1980s.

His topic wasn't Israel, but rather the overall political positioning of Hezbullah: as he says explicitly, they aren't interested in Lebanon and its sovereignty, but rather in promoting the goals of Iran.

I don't think there's any compelling evidence he has changed his mind at anytime since.

Khaled Abu Toameh says that things were getting better between Israel and the Palestinians until the Obama administration forced negotiations neither side was interested in, and now things are getting worse.

Robin Shepherd writes about the hypocrisy of Israel's critics who remain silent as ISAF's war in Afghanistan-Pakistan uses the same methods used by Israel. He tells that he's made this point to colleagues in the British bureaucracy, but sadly he doesn't tell how they respond.

The figures are rising fast. In September, the number of publicly admitted drone attacks was 22. And they are extremely deadly too. In 2009, more than 700 people were killed, many if not most of whom will have been civilian bystanders. By the end of this year, the death toll is likely to have far exceeded the 1,400 or so estimated to have died in Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

So where’s the Goldstone Report against the United States and its NATO allies? And where is the uproar against Obama’s policy of mass targeted assassinations? Of course, I’m not suggesting either course of action. And, to be fair, the Obama administration has been resolute in opposing Goldstone at the United Nations which is a lot more than can be said for the brazenly hypocritical Europeans.

With apologies to Abu Toameh and Shepherd for putting them in the same blogpost,  the other day I asked Juan Cole if he might wish to comment on Ahmedinejad's fiery anti-Israeli rhetoric while in Lebanon. Cole was one of the main people to invent and propagate the idea that Ahmedinejad never said he wishes Israel to be destroyed, an idea still often cited in the Mondowiess swamps, the CiF comments section and similar venues. His answer to me: Ahmedinajad merely wishes Zionism to disappear, as the Soviet regime once did, leaving everything else intact behind it. I have no idea what he bases this assertion on, and am reporting on it here merely for purposes of documentation.

A top honcho at the State Department gave a media briefing yesterday, as State Department honchos are wont to do. So far as I can see, however, only Haaretz of all the media types present picked up on the comic part of his message: "US: We suspect Iran doesn't have Lebanon's interest at heart".

Ya think? Why?

Also in Washington (and New York), Jeffrey Goldberg and Alana Newhouse are putting together a list of Jewish English (American) words. I recommend you also read the comments.

As any Jerusalemite will tell you, the single most common sentence used by teenager and post-teenager American Jewish women is "I CANT BELIEVE IT!!!!"

Danny Gordis is very worried about the looming Iranian nuclear threat, and explains why he expects Israel will attack unless the Americans do. Not because Iran will try to bomb Israel, but because the very ability to make the threat will send us back to pre-Zionist powerlessness which will cause Israel to crumble.

I hope lots of people read the article, and take it seriously.

Alas, for what it's worth, I disagree. I don't see millions of Israelis, or even tens of thousands of the brightest and bestest streaming out of Israel to plushy jobs in America merely because the Iranians have nuclear weapons. I can easily see the sense in which a preemptive attack on Iran's nuclear capabilities can be justified, for the potentially far greater number of lost lives such an attack might prevent. I spent some of my childhood however in an American city which knew it was targeted by Soviet missiles, and don't remember anyone moving to New Zealand because of it.

The Jews waited a very (very very) long time to come home, and as a group they're not about to be chased out, certainly not because of a troublesome spot of adversity.

Who created Stuxnet, the computer malware that seems to be afflicting the Iranians? I have no idea; I don't even have the faintest idea who does know, though I'll bet I could find them within six degrees of separation if I knew where to look and how. Nor do I expect anyone to know publicly with certainty for the next few decades. Still, it's nice that Israel is on the short list of possible culprits

Based on what he knows of Stuxnet, Mr. Lewis said, the United States is “one of four or five places that could have done it — the Israelis, the British and the Americans are the prime suspects, then the French and Germans, and you can’t rule out the Russians and the Chinese.” 

Not bad company to be in, huh? Israelycool has additional speculations on the matter.

No matter who did it, it must be said that the whole cyber-warfare thing is a bit unsettling. If this is what early generations of it can do, think what will be possible once the warriors really get into stride.

It's been a while since I did a Daf Yomi post. Partly this was because the Shavuot tractate was unusually complicated and rather remote, and frankly I didn't enjoy crossing it. Now we're in Avoda Zara, however, which is one of my favorites. Avoda Zara means paganism, but mostly the tractate deals with the relations of Jews and their surrounding societies.

The first two layers of the Talmud, I remind you, are the Mishna and Mishnaic literature, created in Hebrew in Erez Yisrael roughly between 30-200 CE, and the Gemara, mostly in Aramaic with lots of Hebrew, mostly in Babylonia, Bavel, (present day Iraq), between about 200-500 CE. Then there are the medieval layers, written mostly in Hebrew, sort of, with quite a bit of Aramaic interspersed. The whole edifice assumes its students know the entire Bible (Old Testament) by heart, so the Biblical texts are all over but rarely written except in three-word snippets which everyone recognizes in context, obviously. Additional layers are still being created to this very day, but the first two are the heart of the project.

The Mishna was created under a mostly antagonistic Roman Empire, sometimes genocidal. The Gemara was created under the Sassinids, a Persian dynasty. While life for the Jews in Erez Yisrael got steadily worse (with some exceptions) from 30CE for many centuries, life in Bavel generally got better, at least until the 6th century by which time the Gemara was mostly completed.

If you're studying the relations with the surrounding society, as the Avoda Zara tractate does, you're going to find expressions of these differing contexts. As for example when the Mishna forbids Jews to sell various things to heathens.

Rav Ada ben Ahava says: it is forbidden to sell them sheets of iron.Why? Lest they beat them into weapons.

The Gemara asks: If so, it should be forbidden to sell them even hoes and shovels [which they might also beat into weapons]?

Rav Zvid explains: Iron sheets from India are forbidden, because they serve only for weapons [but hoes and shovels may be sold].

The Gemara: But we do, today, we sell even Indian sheet iron to the heathens?

Rav Ashi explains: we sell [Indian sheet iron] only to the Persians, who protect us.

Avoda Zara 16a
[This thread began and is explained here]

Update: Joe in Australia, in the comments below, adds some fascinating context:

Wow! You know what they're talking about? The iron that came from India was the famous "Wootz". The secret of its manufacture has been lost, but it's both hard and flexible, and it was used to produce quite beautiful patterned blades. In this form it's called Damascene (i.e., "from Damascus") steel. It would only have been used for weapons, as the Talmud says, because it was enormously expensive.

So, this sugya tells us that Jews were the ones who imported the billets of wootz from India to Persian Babylon! I wonder if this is generally known?

Various links of interest:

Jeffrey Goldberg's big piece about Israel bombing Iran or not, is of course the big story of the moment. Over at his blog, however, Jeffrey warns that:

I really do suggest that you subscribe to the magazine and read these sorts of stories in print, and not only because reading long articles on the Intertubes causes leprosy, while reading stories in print increases your chances of winning Powerball.

Now it just so happens that I've got a subscription to The Atlantic, so I actually probably will wait a few days and read the article on paper; I'd rather not take the chance with the leprosey. So I'm linking, but have nothing intelligent to say.

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post disapproves of The Economist's ability not to see antisemitism. Ouch.

George Will, also of the Washington Post, compares Obama unfavorably with Netanyahu. Also ouch.

Netanyahu, his focus firmly on Iran, honors Churchill because he did not flinch from facts about gathering storms. Obama returned to the British Embassy in Washington the bust of Churchill that was in the Oval Office when he got there.

Finally for the moment, David Horovitz has a new website, with a faintly ridiculous picture of Tony Blair. Ouch.

Forecasting is never easy, especially about the future, which is one reason I've had nothing to say about where the Iranian attempt to develop nuclear weapons is going to lead: I haven't the faintest idea.

Alas, it's not clear the Obama administration is in any better position than I. Which is a bit unsettling.

And no, don't say there wasn't anything that could ever have worked. This is not true.

Don't say you didn't see this coming. Judeosphere has the story.

Greg Sheridan, in far-away Australia, reads the tea leaves and learns that Obama has reconciled himself to Iran's going nuclear; his wild over-reaction to Israeli building in East Jerusalem is a ploy to isolate Israel to such an extent it won't even dream of attacking Iran's nuclear facilities.

US President Barack Obama has decided to abandon any serious effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He is determined instead to live with a nuclear Iran, by containment and, if possible, negotiation.

This is the shifting tectonic plate in the Middle East.

This is the giant story of the past few weeks which the world has largely missed, distracted by the theatre of the absurd of Obama's contrived and mock confrontation with Israel over 1600 apartments to be built in three years' time in a Jewish suburb in East Jerusalem.

Iran is the only semi-intelligible explanation for Obama's bizarre over-reaction against the Israelis.

I don't know if this is true - how could I? Except the part about how Obama calculated his over-reaction to Israeli actions which his administration had previously agreed to: that part everyone could see without recourse to classified documents and secret discussions. Still, it's as likely as any other interpretation swirling around.

Yesterday was Purim (in Jerusalem it's today). Purim, Judaism's jolliest holiday, starts from the story of Esther, queen to Ahasveros who may or may not have been Artaxerxes, and tells of a foiled plot to kill all the Jews in the Persian Empire. There are various morals to the story, but the historical one is that the Jews and Persians go back a l-o-o-on-g way even if nowadays the Persians call themselves Iranians. Centuries before the Europeans ever met their first Jews, and more than a thousand years before the Arabs burst out of Arabia onto the world stage, the Jews and Persians were deep into their ups-and-down relationship.

Also yesterday, Purim, Ahmadinejad announced (again) that the Jews are the source of all evil:

"Supporters of the Zionist regime who are shouting slogans of human rights and anti-terrorism support systematic crimes of the occupying regime," Ahmadinejad said, adding that "everybody knows that the regime is seeking hegemony over the world." Israel is the "origin of all the wars, genocide, terror and crimes against humanity," he said, and a "racist group not respecting the human principles," IRNA reported. "With God's grace and thanks to the Palestinian resistance, the occupying Zionist regime has lost its raison d'etre," Ahmadinejad said. "The only way to confront them is through the Palestinian youths' resistance, and that of the regional nations."

Look's like we're in a "down" right now.

President Obama's policy of offering an open hand to clench-fisted regimes was plausible, to my mind, if it strengthened the sinews of determination, not if it allowed the clenched fist to intimidate. It always had to be clearly temporary; if by a given time the fist was still clenched it would be met accordingly. If the Iranians were arming because they felt threatened, they might desist if they felt respected; if however they were arming because they're truly bellicose, it will still be possible to stop them, one way or another, once this has become clear. The determination to stop them will be strengthened by the comprehension of their bellicosity and the inevitable need to curtail it.

It was a policy with two targets: the Iranian hawks were to be encouraged to loosen up; and the Western doves were to be shown - if need be - the necessity of being resolute, even to take hawkish actions, convinced that the nicer options had failed.

Obama said the crucial date would be September 2009; he finally began acting at the end of January 2010, so the Iranians got an extra four months. Whether his actions will be effective remains to be seen; the amount of Iranian nuclear development completed under cover of the year given to them is also not yet publicly known.

What is clear, however, is that at least some of the home-team doves have no intention of being swayed by the exercise. For them, any saber rattling by the Americans is wrong, always:

In Iran, after 12 months in office, Obama has got nowhere by making nice. He didn't try that hard. He didn't try for that long. And now it seems the US is reverting to type.

Yes, the Guardian. How did you guess?

About Israel's long-term expectations...

The New York Times has an op-ed by one Alan J. Kuperman, who has a snazzy-sounding title at U. of Texas, Austin. He spends a chunk of time setting up his credentials as an expert, but then suddenly takes off in a belligerent direction: The only thing that will stop Iran from causing nuclear damage is to bomb it. By the US, not Israel, because it will need to be bombed repeatedly.

I don't say much on this matter, because I don't know enough about the many technical and cultural aspects to have anything meaningful to say. (Though I did once, in some detail, here). Nor do I know to tell how representative this Kuperman fellow is of anything. I doubt he has a hot-line to the White House. Still, Obama's outstretched hand has clearly found a clenched fist in Teheran, with sharp steel knuckles. Something will have to happen.