This photo, along with the heart-rending story of the death of 11-month-old Omar Mashhrawi, ran in mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post and the BBC last November.

The baby’s death was attributed to Israeli airstrikes and suggestions that Hamas rockets might have been at fault were roundly dismissed:

Despite the evidence pointing towards an Israeli air strike, some bloggers have suggested it might have been a misfired Hamas rocket.

But at that time, so soon after the launch of Israel’s operation, the Israeli military says mortars had been launched from Gaza but very few rockets.

Mortar fire would not cause the fireball that appears to have engulfed Jehad’s house.

Other bloggers have said that the damage to Jehad’s home was not consistent with powerful Israeli attacks but the BBC visited other bombsites this week with very similar fire damage, where Israel acknowledged carrying out what it called “surgical strikes”.

As at Jehad’s home, there was very little structural damage but the victims were brought out with massive and fatal burns. Most likely is that Omar died in the one of the more than 20 bombings across Gaza that the Israeli military says made up its initial wave of attacks.

Omar was not a terrorist.

Last week, though, a report issued by the UN Human Rights Council confirmed that it was a Hamas rocket, not an Israeli airstrike, that caused the baby’s death:

“On 14 November, a woman, [an] 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.”

It’s critical to keep in mind the way in which death and destruction is routinely used to further someone’s agenda. In this case, more important than figuring out what actually happened, the Post, the BBC, and even Human Rights Watch immediately made this terrible story the centerpiece of their broader criticism of Israel and dismissed any blame that might fall to Hamas.

Of course, while many Israelis and their supporters are now feeling vindicated, it’s also crucial to remember that these people and many others like them still died. And that many more will likely die as a result of the rockets and airstrikes routinely and cavalierly unleashed by parties to this conflict.

Israelis, Palestinians, and their supporters around the world act as though this is some sort of game that one side can win if only enough people come over to their side; with each death, whether it’s a baby or a grandparent, it’s pretty clear that no one’s winning.

The headline miserably says it all:

“Israel launches segregated bus service”

Rabbi David Hartman, the American-born director of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, passed away on Sunday. He was 81.

Hartman was one of the world’s leading Jewish philosophers and a promoter of diversity among Jewish theological trends.

[…]

Menachem Lorberbaum, a professor at Tel Aviv University who worked closely with Hartman at the institute, said he “inspired a whole new generation of teachers in Jewish philosophy and theology.”

Lorberbaum said Hartman will be known for his accomplishments on religious ethics, and as “a pioneer of interfaith dialogue.”

“He was committed to the notion that morality precedes Jewish law,” he said.

I teach David Shipler’s book Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land every year in my class on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and quotes from Rabbi Hartman are featured throughout that book; they are most often presented as a counterpoint to some of the virulent statements in opposition to pluralism that Shipler unearths in conversations with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, citizens, and students.

It’s fortunate that Hartman inspired a new generation of Jewish teachers because his position on interfaith dialogue is a necessary corrective to the potential polarization that comes from a deep immersion in one’s own religious faith … especially in the midst of a conflict that is often cast as occurring between religions.

(via pols470)

European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor called for an apology Sunday from Britain’s Sunday Times, which published a cartoon of Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu building a wall on the bodies of Arabs. The cartoon, which appears on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, depicts the blood of the Arabs as cement.

Many observers found the cartoon reminiscent of blood libels against Jews, and noted a similarity to anti-Semitic cartoons published by Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer in the leadup to the Holocaust.

In case you think someone might be stretching the comparison and seeing anti-Semitism where none exists, here’s a blood libel cartoon from Der Stürmer:

The simple truth is this:

When people are overtly anti-Semitic in their attempts to criticize the Israeli government, it gets more difficult for those of who aren’t anti-Semites to do so.

In other words, rather than successfully making public a critique of the Netanyahu government, disgusting cartoons like this one can actually have a chilling effect on other critics of the Israeli government.

It’s very easy to make compelling arguments against the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu without even the slightest whiff of anti-Semitism … which is why a cartoon like this makes clear that some critics of Israel’s government just hate Jews in general.

(Source: israelnationalnews.com)

Michael Koplow, writing in Foreign Affairs, argues that the narrative that emerged immediately after the Israeli election probably isn’t correct:

No, Israel Did Not Just Vote for the Center: Why the Right is Still Dominant

The surprisingly strong performance of Yair Lapid in Israel’s election, coupled with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s losses, have led many to conclude that Israeli voters have shifted to the center. But Lapid’s party is conservative where it counts—on security issues—and the voters who left Netanyahu largely went even further to the right.

I finally had a chance to see “The Hobbit” over the weekend and was amazed that I hadn’t heard from anyone about the Zionist undertones to the film, ones which certainly didn’t come across to me when I read the book so many years ago.

In fact, a quick search turns up only one blog post on the subject, written by Rabbi Jeffrey Saks (amid a bunch of posts arguing about whether or not the race of dwarves are supposed to represent the Jews and whether anything in Tolkien is supposed to represent anything else).

Of course, whether or not Tolkien intended for “The Hobbit” to have Zionist undertones when he wrote it in the mid-1930s, I’m surprised that no one has talked about some of the changes and additions made by the screenwriters for the new film.

Just a few quick items for readers to consider, some of which are original to the novel and some of which are new to the film:

1. The Misty Mountain song of the dwarves, which you can watch above, recalls the many, many songs of mourning and longing for Zion, sung for centuries by Jews in the diaspora;

2. The dwarf diaspora itself recalled the Jewish experience after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, complete with the way that the elves rebuffed the dwarves’ call for assistance and the way that the dwarves remained an alien presence wherever they went;

3. Many people have pointed to a Tolkien interview from the 1970s in which he explicitly compared the Jews and dwarves, with some simply pointing to the similarites and others looking for (and still others, hoping for) possible anti-Semitic undertones:

Tolkien suggested that the race of dwarves who populate his mythology “of course are quite obviously – wouldn’t you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews?” Tolkien was by trade a linguist and philologist, and created languages for each of his fictional races. “Their words are Semitic, obviously, constructed to be Semitic,” he said of the Dwarvish tongue. Of course, the dwarves have a great love of gold, and some have drawn attention to a possible anti-Semitic sentiment here. “I do think of the ‘Dwarves’ like Jews,” he writes (Letters, p. 229), “at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue.”

4. Bibo’s speech to the dwarves, near the very end of the film, might have been written by Theodor Herzl for some hoped-for non-Jewish ally:

“I often think of Bag End. That’s where I belong. That’s home. You don’t have one. It was taken from you, but I will help you take it back if I can.”

Of course, one of the most interesting things about all of this is how much it turns on the perspective of the film’s viewer. With my own background, I was immediately reminded of the songs about the loss of Jerusalem and about the history of the Jewish people, as was my wife; it was the first thing we talked about when we left the theatre. I suspect that someone with a different background might watch the same movie and think of the Palestinian struggle for a national homeland of their own … or might not see at all these themes that seemed so obvious to me.

Speaking of things about which I’d be very interested to hear comments from both Netanyahu and Meshal, how about reports that Abbas mulls forming confederation with Jordan:

Palestinian Authority officials confirmed Thursday that they were studying the possibility of establishing a confederation with Jordan, but stressed that this would take place only after the creation of an indecent Palestinian state within the pre-1967 lines.

The officials were commenting on a report in the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper that claimed that Abbas had asked senior Fatah leaders to prepare for the formation of a confederation between a Palestinian state and Jordan.

The notion that anyone in Fatah would float this idea out loud while prominent members of the Israeli government are still making the old argument that Palestine should actually be Jordan is totally crazypants kinda hard to figure out.

I’m supposed to teach a class on all of this stuff in a month; maybe politicians over there could just simmer down for a bit?

HT: Zack Beauchamp.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas came out on Thursday in criticism of Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who said last week during his visit to Gaza that the organization will never recognize Israel, and called for its destruction.

Speaking to Turkish reporters in Ankara, Abbas said that he does not agree with Meshal’s statements. “We recognized Israel in 1993,” he said. “There is an agreement between Fatah and Hamas that recognizes the two-state solution. Meshal approved this agreement.”

It will be interesting to see how Netanyahu responds to Abbas’ statements, given his criticism of Abbas for supporting Meshal in any way at all.

But it will be even more interesting to see how Meshal responds.

Responding to my post that asked people to send in screen shots if they came up with Israel/Palestine borders using this interactive map, University of Nebraska alum and current Marshall Scholar Zach Smith writes:

My proposal more closely resembles the Geneva lines of 2003, which ought to be unsurprising. The Israeli proposal of 2008 seems to me to be completely unserious: The annexation of some of those settlements really destroys any potential for territorial contiguity.

Don’t like Zach’s map? Make your own and send it it.

From The Atlantic, here is a thing I will definitely be using in my “Israel and the Middle East” class next semester:

Crowdsourcing an Israeli-Palestinian Border

A new interactive tool allows you to decide how many Israeli settlers to annex and what constitutes a viable Palestinian state.

One day after the Palestinians successfully upgraded their state at the United Nations General Assembly, the Israeli government announced “preliminary zoning and planning preparations” for a plot of land just outside of Jerusalem known as E1. Many were quick to condemn the move as a significant blow to the already-gridlocked peace process, perhaps even more so than other settlement construction announcements, since construction in E1 would separate the major Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem from Jerusalem. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon decried the plan as “an almost fatal blow to remaining chances of securing a two-state solution,” while The New York Times declared that “If such a project were to go beyond blueprints, it could prevent the creation of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.”

[Image: S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace/SAYA/Is Peace Possible?]

Click here to play with the interactive map directly. I’d be interested to see where different people draw the borders … if you feel like sending me a screen shot when you’ve got your map finished.

This is what a vicious circle looks like:

Israel plans to build some 3,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem and West Bank settlements in response to the Palestinians’ successful bid for recognition at the UN General Assembly this week, a senior diplomatic source told Haaretz on Friday.

According to the source, Israel also plans to advance long-frozen plans for the E1 area, which covers an area that links the city of Jerusalem with the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.

If built, the controversial plan would prevent territorial contiguity between the northern and southern West Bank, making it difficult for a future Palestinian state to function.

In the beginning of his term, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the Obama administration a commitment that Israel would not build in the area. Both of his predecessors, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, also promised the U.S. administration that Israel would not build in E1.

The Israeli government, responding to the Palestinians’ push for the upgraded UN status of non-member observer state, now must demonstrate that some UN vote doesn’t make Palestine into an actual state. And how to do that in the most obvious possible manner? By building more settlements on land that would, of necessity, be involved in negotiations regarding a future Palestinian state.

The intent is to show Israelis that their government will not take its marching orders from the UN or from their enemies, but will instead be the one to dictate terms. And, of course, to demonstrate to the UN General Assembly that their judgements are meaningless.

The response from the Palestinians and their supporters might range from outrage at further evidence of Israeli imperialism to outright hostility (and hostile actions) against Israelis. Either way, the prospect of a negotiated conclusion to the conflict recedes farther into the distance and Netanyahu’s reelection seems ever more likely.