Palin Answers Questions, Sort of

Sarah Palin is interviewed by Charles Gibson:



Oh, oops. Wait. Sorry. I had the wrong one. They were just so similar! Here's the right one:

From Another Angle

In covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I've heard a lot of complaints from both sides. Why can't they just... is a common prefix for such complaints, framed as questions. And they're logical questions, ones I've had myself.

Well, there's an article on Haaretz today that might answer one of those questions. And this article is by no means out of the ordinary.

The jist is this:

Some 90 right-wing activists on Thursday besieged an Israel Defense Forces post north of Ramallah, in protest against the civil administration's decision to remove construction supplies from an illegal outpost in the West Bank.

The settlers rallied around the civil administration officials, pierced the tires of a supervisor's car, and sicked a dog on one of the soldiers.

Israeli settlers were about to start building a house, or houses, in an unapproved area, so the IDF showed up and carted their construction materials away. This may partly answer the question, Why can't they just stop letting in more settlers?

Illegal settlements have been dealt with in a multitude of ways. Sometimes the government ignores them. Sometimes the government gives passive support. Sometimes the government gives active support, like providing IDF guards to protect the settlers. Sometimes the government evicts them. No doubt the Israeli government's reaction to each settler has more to do with the strategic placement of that particular settlement, and whether it supports the land grab, but illegal settlers are not always supported wholeheartedly.

However, when the IDF does take any action against Israeli settlers, the backlash is fierce, both immediately and long term. In the short term, you have attacks like in the Haaretz article above. You have settlers spitting, yelling curses, and the like, at their IDF brethren. Calling them traitors. In the long term, well.

In 1947, David Ben-Gurion struck a deal with the orthodox Agudath party. In exchange for implementing Jewish law as national law in the new state of Israel, Agudath supported Ben-Gurion politically and he became the well-loved first Prime Minister of Israel.

Ever since then, the orthodox Jews in Israel have had extraordinary power over the government. One cannot win office without their support. And once in office, one would be swimming against the tide to try to accomplish anything without their support.

And they support Jewish settlement of the West Bank.

So any Israeli politician who dares to remove settlers from Palestinian areas will first have the soldiers they send spit on, cursed, and possibly beaten, and then they will be booed out of office.

This is the state of affairs.

Palin Seems Likable Behind Her Curtain

So like, I don't know anyone who has ever voted Republican. At least not that I know of. I've never thought about voting Republican. I'm still not thinking of voting republican.

But.

Ever since I realized Obama is behind 20 points I've found it useful to at least look at the bright side:

Yes, both McCain and Palin identify as anti-abortion, but neither has led a political life with that belief, or their other religious principles, as their signature issue. Politicians act on their passions - the passion of McCain and Palin is reform. In her time in office, Palin’s focus has not been to kick the gays and make abortion illegal; it has been to kick the corrupt and make wasteful spending illegal.

It wouldn't be the end of the world, right?

Yesterday I read a NYT's piece, which I subsequently cannot find again, which basically spent a thousand words talking about how Palin brings her kids to work and how she nurses Trig during conference calls and says things like, "Mommy has to go do this press conference."

So I find that she's just too likable. I can't seem...to stop myself...from liking her.

ALTHOUGH! It has been ten days since she was announced and she still has not spoken to the press. So I am still waiting for the other shoe.

Andrew Sullivan has opinions on this:

Notice that most campaigns actually believe that it is good for them to get press interest in their vice-presidential pick. Normally, they can't wait to get him or her in front of the cameras. It's important to realize that, whatever the intimidation from the GOP, what is happening with Palin is without historical precedent.

The question we have every right to ask is: why?

UPDATE:
Found the Time's piece, and I give you quotes:

She assured them she would not take much time off: she had returned to work the day after giving birth to Piper. “To any critics who say a woman can’t think and work and carry a baby at the same time,” she said, “I’d just like to escort that Neanderthal back to the cave.”

Ms. Palin installed a travel crib in her Anchorage office and a baby swing in her Juneau one. For much of the summer, she carried Trig in a sling as she signed bills and sat through hearings, even nursing him unseen during conference calls.

Olmert's Last Gasp

Haaretz announced today that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is finally being indicted for corruption charges. Olmert has been under investigation for suspicion of bribery since early May of this year.

Last month, when the bribery investigation reached critical mass, Olmert agreed to step down as soon as an election for leadership of the Kadima party was held. The two front runners for the party are Tzipi Livni, a politician on par with Obama in that she has great potential but has not been tested, and Shaul Mofaz, a man Palestinian leaders said would "derail the peace process."

Two weeks ago, Livni agreed to release 200 Palestinian prisoners in a show of good faith to faciliate peace negotiations.

And today, in one of his last gasp efforts to leave a meaningful legacy, Olmert proposed to prepare for the eventual evacuation of Israeli settlers from the West Bank.

He wasn't saying they should actually evacuate. He's just saying they should be prepared. An ounce of prevention or what have you.

But Mofaz made his opposition to the proposal known right away:

"The bill weakens the position of Israel in all future negotiations and I will not lend my hand to it," said Mofaz, a frontrunner in this month's Kadima leadership battle.

Note that Olmert suggested that the government should prepare for the evacuation of settlers living east of the security fence, not settlers living east of the green line, otherwise known as the pre-1967 border.

Nevertheless, suggesting that Israelis be evacuated from anywhere in the West Bank is not an advisable action for any Israeli politician whose retirement isn't already imminent. The last Israeli politician who made formal land concessions to the Palestinians was assasinated.

Israel Wags the Dog

LobeLog has yet another interesting take on Sarah Palin's candidacy, this time prompted by her meeting with AIPAC.

Jim Lobe, the Washington Bureau Chief of IPS, writes:

MSNBC and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) are reporting that Gov. Palin met this afternoon with the board of directors of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Sen. Joe Lieberman to, in the words of one McCain campaign official cited by MSNBC, put “the American Jewish community at ease over her understanding of US-Middle East relations.” It’s worth noting that Palin, who has obviously been completely off-limits to reporters since she was rolled out as McCain’s running-mate in Dayton Friday, stiffed a reception in her honor sponsored by none other than Phyllis Schlafly a couple hours later. (One wonders what other lobbies have tried to arrange a meeting with Palin in the last 96 hours and with what success.)

Obviously the first lobby Palin meets with after the announcement of her candidacy would be AIPAC, which is usually referred to more casually as "The Jewish Lobby."

One of Lobe's commenters summed up my own reaction quite succinctly:

The Israeli-U.S. relationship has evolved into a classic case of the tail wagging the dog.

Palestinian President Throws Temper Tantrum

I've decided it's time for an update of my continuing coverage of Gilad Shalit. This update was inspired by a July 29 message sent by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and subsequently leaked to the press. The message was sent through Hussein al-Sheikh, head of PA civil affairs, to Israeli General Gadi Shamni.

It was a warning to Israel that if they released certain prisoners in their custody loyal to Hamas, that Abbas would dismantle the Palestinian Authority. Not simply resign, but dismantle the actual government.

Let's put aside the audacity and childishness of that warning for a minute and move on to the particulars involved here.

Hamas has held IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in Gaza for over two years now. After he was captured, Israel captured 64 members of the democratically elected Hamas-majority government, including eight cabinet members, twenty legislative council members, and the mayor of Qalqilyah and his deputy.

Just try for a minute to imagine what that would look like in any other country. What the international response would be. How fast it would get resolved. Just visualize.

40 of those elected officials are still in Israeli prisons.

Israel continues to hold them as a bargaining chip to exchange for Shalit. Hamas has since demanded their release, along with about a thousand other Israeli prisoners, some of which have been accused or convicted of murder.

Meanwhile, in June of 2007, Hamas took over Gaza, which was basically a declaration of war against the Fatah-majority government that remained in the West Bank. Since then Abbas and Israel have teamed up to destroy Hamas' infrastructure and avenues of funding. However, as I have mentioned, neither the PA nor Israel has managed to replace the community services they destroyed in the process. Numerous charities, medical centers, summer camps for kids, after school programs, and the like have been shut down in this process.

But back to that whole Shalit issue. Haaretz says:

According to an Israeli source well-versed in what is happening in the PA, publication of Abbas' threat to dismantle the PA if Israel releases the Hamas parliamentarians is liable to discredit him massively in the eyes of many Palestinians.

In addition, the source noted, this threat creates another obstacle to Israel's efforts to reach an agreement for Shalit's release.

This suggests first that this "statement" could be a Hamas-engineered ploy and second, that the journalist who wrote those very words has no qualms with causing Abbas to lose face.

But most interesting about this passage is the last sentence. This seems the most logical direction to take this development, but I don't think it's true. While the public is led this way and that and Shalit's family is dragged along, I don't think Hamas has ever had any intention of releasing Shalit. You may ask why they abducted him if not to trade for their own people, but instead of looking at what has happened since his abduction, look at what hasn't happened.

Hamas has fired missiles into Israel's cities and towns almost every day in the last two years. Gilad Shalit may be the only factor compelling enough to prevent a sweeping IDF operation in Gaza.

He's not a bargaining chip, he's an insurance policy.

And his worldwide fame at this point makes him more valuable than any nameless Israeli who dies as a result of those missiles, and certainly more valuable than any Palestinian politician.

Including Mahmoud Abbas. Israel and Uncle Sam are perfectly capable of installing a more agreeable PA president just as they installed this one.

And in response to the possibility that Abbas' temper tantrum could have been engineered by Hamas, the Haaretz writer adds:

Since his election as PA president in January 2005, Abbas has repeatedly threatened to resign - sometimes due to lack of progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, or due to internal power struggles within his Fatah movement. However, he has never yet carried out his threat.

In related news, Hamas and Fatah continue to antagonize each other like children, leading Hamas to retort most recently to Fatah that they are only safe and still in power in the West Bank because they enjoy Israel's protection.

Haaretz says, in a separate article:

Abbas' security forces have detained at least 150 Hamas supporters in the West Bank in response to a sweep in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas seized nearly 200 Fatah sympathizers after a bomb blast killed five Hamas militants and a girl on Friday. Hamas blamed the bombing on Fatah, which denies involvement.

These sorts of mysterious bombings are common here. Both sides accuse the other. It reminds me again and again of an ancient and well-proven warfare tactic: when you have two enemies, you don't fight them both, you get them to fight each other.

The US did it in Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan twenty years ago. When we wanted to destabilize Iraq, we gave weapons to the Kurds. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, we gave weapons to the Afghanis. When Iran and Iraq went to war, we sold weapons to both of them and then sent the profits to the Contras in Nicaragua.

Let's look at the big picture, folks.

All Palin, All the Time

Wow.

Andrew Sullivan posted this chart showing the instances of the above search terms in google in August. Notice that "sarah palin" peaks at August 29th.

All the lefties (me included) have been yucking it up about how there's no way she's going to get elected. Not with all that bad press.

But we forgot the cardinal rule of media: no press is bad press.