rolling middle east 2013 thread

There's always that last possibility. I guess they were friendly when Obama was in the Senate.

Hagel was/is known as a foreign policy realist and a no-nonsense guy. This bolsters Obama on the FP front, shows he's bi-partisan, and puts the Senate Republicans in a bind.

Senate Republicans may not be in a bind if some of the Senate Dems who don't like him for various reasons also oppose him (but the Senate Dems may choose when it comes time to vote, to say that Hagel regrets past statements, and then vote for him )

Obama hardly needs to be bolstered on the FP front!

jeff goldberg (who i find i have less + less time for every day) writes:

Discussions inside [AIPAC] -- and what the group is hearing from its friends on the Hill, and in the Administration -- is that the President very much wants Hagel at Defense, and would be very upset if a group whose agenda he has more-or-less supported (a strong no to containment of Iran, maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge, siding with Israel at the United nations) tries to deny him the defense secretary he wants, and who is a personal friend.

if the cw that obama trusts next to nobody in his life is true, that would explain quite a lot of it.

what hagel and brennan as picks 'say' to the rest of the world is important too

That's the weirdest part to me. I don't think Obama needs to rush out and bomb, bomb Iran but he should definitely be signaling aggression and willingness to intervene militarily. Hagel undermines that to some extent.

yeah but doesn't brennan indicate that while we may not start any new wars, we sure will kill anyone anywhere if we want to i.e what everyone already knows?

he should definitely be signaling aggression and willingness to intervene militarily.

why do this if nobody believes it.

The way you get ppl to believe it is by signaling it.

yeah idk man

it's a meme now: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/120807/the-new-one-state-solution

Essam el-Erian, a top advisor to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, has resigned from his position, Egyptian media reported Sunday. "Although the report said that el-Arian had willingly made the decision because he was “occupied with other work,” analysts said that there was no doubt that he was pressure to quit – after inviting back to Egypt the descendants of Jews who were thrown out of the country, or who fled due to anti-Semitic violence."

Some 5,000 Hezbollah fighters crossed from Lebanon into Syria last month to fight on the side of Bashar al-Assad’s forces the Al Watan newspaper reported on Monday. According to the paper, nearly 300 of those fighters have been killed in the last several days.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/05/david-frum-where-is-the-palestinian-state-in-embryo/

From that Tablemag article:

...concluded that the Jews, as the indigenous people of the biblical land of Israel, have clear historical rights there...

This argument has always amused me since it kinda fails to take the Canaanites into account

The way you get ppl to believe it is by signaling it.

Empty threats are especially pernicious

That's silly. It's not self-evidently empty.

I don't think Obama needs to really signal any more than he already has. He has clearly stated that he does not believe in Iranian nuclear containment and will intervene before Iran gets nuclear weapons. He has also facilitated a huge military buildup in the gulf and the strait of hormuz. So I don't see it as an empty threat - but I think picking Hagel might suggest that it's an empty threat.

The biblical story of the biblical exodus & conquest of the Canaanites is pretty suspect, as well. The archaeological evidence, as I understand it, is that with the invasion of the Sea Peoples, coastal Caananites were displaced to agriculturally poor central highlands, where there were a few hundred hilltop villages of Habiru, herders & raiders that had practiced a kosher diet excluding pork for centuries. Myths were adapted from Canaanite/Ugarit predecessors, a merged pantheon of El, Yahweh, Asherah, and Ba'al emerged, which was whittled down during temple/dynastic disputes from 1100-600 BCE, and we're left with a fragmentary record of the polemic.

Genetic markers generally show that while there is evidence of Y-chromosome/patrilineal continuity of Ashkenazim, there's no evidence of a geneic purity/isolation in matrilineal mitochondrial DNA or the rest of the genome - ie, through the centuries Jewish men married and converted enough shiksas that there's no "genetically" Jewish people aside from the patrilineal Y chromosome. And the population of Jewish Y-chromosomes are indistinguishable from those of Palestinian Arabs. So, in a sense, the population of biblical Israel has remained in Palestine for thousands of years, its only in the last century they've been displaced off their land by miscegenated populations that are fractionally similar to the original biblical population.

lol sea peoples are everywhere these days

there are no valid historical claims to land imo

^^^

It's odd that a ppl w/matrilineal self-identity has more genetic coherence on the patrilineal side...

Also, wasn't Canaan a pretty broad area comprised of quite a few ethnic, linguistic and religious groups, inlcuding the Israelites, the Moabites, etc...? Canaan and Phonecia were interchangeable for some ancients, iIrc,

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/world/middleeast/chemical-weapons-showdown-with-syria-led-to-rare-accord.html

WASHINGTON — In the last days of November, Israel’s top military commanders called the Pentagon to discuss troubling intelligence that was showing up on satellite imagery: Syrian troops appeared to be mixing chemicals at two storage sites, probably the deadly nerve gas sarin, and filling dozens of 500-pounds bombs that could be loaded on airplanes... What followed next, officials said, was a remarkable show of international cooperation over a civil war in which the United States, Arab states, Russia and China have almost never agreed on a common course of action.

Canaan is the geographical area, Canaanites usually referring to the pre-Israelite city-states subject to Egypt. Phoenicians were the richer coastal city states, invaded in the 13th century BCE by Sea Peoples but retaining Canaanite language and culture. "Canaan" is analogous to the geographical extent of England, with its several regional kingdoms, and "Phoenecia" with England's eastern extent controlled by 9th century Danish/Viking invaders, and known by the the 11th century as the Danelaw.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/israel-vows-to-use-veto-power-if-chuck-hagel-confi,30824/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/technology/online-banking-attacks-were-work-of-iran-us-officials-say.html

The skill required to carry out attacks on this scale has convinced United States government officials and security researchers that they are the work of Iran, most likely in retaliation for economic sanctions and online attacks by the United States.

“There is no doubt within the U.S. government that Iran is behind these attacks,” said James A. Lewis, a former official in the State and Commerce Departments and a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Mr. Lewis said the amount of traffic flooding American banking sites was “multiple times” the amount that Russia directed at Estonia in a monthlong online assault in 2007 that nearly crippled the Baltic nation.

So here it is, the early days of the Cyber Wars.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's pick for defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, is meeting with senior Pentagon staff to try to set the record straight about his stand on Iran, saying he backs strong international sanctions against Tehran and believes all options, including military action, should be on the table, defense officials said Wednesday.

Following a meeting with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, Abbas said that he had appealed to the UN to intercede on behalf of Palestinian refugees living in Syria and demand that Israel allow them to enter the West Bank and Gaza.

Abbas said Ban was told Israel “agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee ... sign a statement that he doesn’t have the right of return (to Israel).”

“So we rejected that and said it’s better they die in Syria than give up their right of return,” Abbas told the group.

Just like the Palestinians to outdo the Israelis in callous political idiocy. You have to wonder if the Israelis were even serious about letting the refugees in, knowing that the PA would gladly rush to trip over themselves to make themselves look utterly unserious.

You know it's okay to condemn Abbas without explaining how terrible the Israelis also are. It was a generous offer on their part imo, especially since everyone claims 'right of return' is just a bargaining chip that will never actually happen. You might get a bad reputation for wanting to nuke Gaza, but false equivalencies are intellectual cowardice.

Mordy, I am not always pleased with Israeli policy and I often think it callous and wrong-headed. I imagine the Israelis would have been forced to honor their offer if Abbas had gone along with the ceding of the right to return but I also imagine they knew he would never allow that and would prefer to see his people dead than politically disenfranchised. It's akin to perfering your daughter dead than seeing her honor besmirched. Fat load of good her honor is going to do for a dead girl.

It's an interesting (tho unfavorable) theory that Israel knew that Abbas would never allow the Syrian Palestinian refuges to enter the West Bank, but ultimately unsubstantiated conjecture that, in my eyes, tries to draw an equivalency between Abbas allowing refugees to suffer and die and Israel making a disingenuous offer. Until there is evidence otherwise, why not take them at their word?

prefering, ffs

Just like the Palestinians to outdo the Israelis in callous political idiocy.

My comparison wasn't to (my admittedly cynical take on) the offer but to recent developments in East Jerusalem planning, etc...

I'd save that particular outrage for when Israel almost certainty annexes area C in the next few years.

Abbas' actions are consistent with what political leaders in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza have been doing to Palestinian refugees for years -- denying them quality of life, safety, and real political representation to exploit their existence as a cudgel to use against the state of Israel.

Yeah, that area C annexation and the popularity of Bennett make me think the Palestinans may have mis-managed their diplomacy to the worst point possible save for maybe being forcibly resettled in Antarctica or something.

as a cudgel to use against the state of Israel.

Not to mention a distraction to their own populations from more immediate local problems.

The ouster of Egypt’s interior minister earlier this week was due to his opposition to a secret meeting between an adviser to President Mohammed Morsi and a high-ranking commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm reported Wednesday.

That is sinister as heck. What the hell do a Sunni Arab politician and a Persian Shia military officer have in common that must be said in secret?

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/tehran-wants-get-closer-cairo-says-iran-foreign-minister

been in Morocco for a few weeks meeting with people about "social issues" & it's been eye-opening...everyone reminds me that Morocco was the First Nation to acknowledge the independence of the USA as if that should matter today

also it's interesting to see Moroccan license plates that feature a map of the nation including the Western Sahara. Apparently locals believe that a GOP presidency might have helped Morocco finally win that battle with the UN

Hundreds of Egyptians demonstrated on Wednesday Jan. 2 in Safenex Square in Cairo to commemorate the 521st anniversary of the fall of Granada.

The demonstration was called by The Free Movement (Harakat Ahrar).

The protesters organized a human chain around the square and held signs that said: "Obligatory return","We have not forgotten Al Andalus" and "Of course we will return" ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/world/middleeast/as-academy-snubs-affleck-for-argo-iran-plans-own-movie.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20986428

To many, this is a historic moment, the closest Saudi women have ever come to public participation in politics. But to critics of the Saudi system, appointing women to the Shura Council is a largely symbolic measure.

The council can advise the king and question ministers, but it has no power to make or veto legislation and its members are appointed by the king.

Yet even this move will have entailed lengthy debate between the Royal Court and the "ulama", the country's ultra-conservative clergy, who once opposed female education and even television.

To allay their fears, special gates are being incorporated into the Shura Council building so that women can enter and leave by a different entrance from the men. There will be a separate seating area for them and an earlier announcement spoke of screens and internal communications to prevent any mingling of the sexes, which is forbidden by the country's strict interpretation of Islamic law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/world/africa/a-trail-of-bullet-casings-leads-from-africas-wars-to-iran.html

i guess this is a thing now, i keep seeing coverage of it:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2013/01/11/news-flash-jews-are-apes-and-pigs-so-why-is-egypts-morsi-the-elephant-in-americas-newsrooms/

genuinely curious -- is "apes and pigs" a standard trope of anti-semitism?

lol even if he was "putting aside the invasions and the genocide" he's still offering up an autocratic usurpation of the democratic process as an example of an effective presidential system. well i guess effective might still be in play but only a presidential system in that it very briefly flirted w/ democratic legitimacy b4 jettisoning the entire thing.

Asked on his return from a visit to Hitler whether an autocratic system was possible while maintaining the unitary structure of the state, he said: “There are already examples in the world. You can see it when you look at Saudi Arabia, though you need to make sure the autocrat isn't old, senile, bellicose and causing huge budget deficits."