West of Eden: Washington

Image from Greenmarc Farms.

Why we hate the New York Times:

Article by Michael Gordon and Isabel Kershner with the headline,

Talks Begin on Mideast, to Doubts on All Sides

and then the doubts, for the first 16 paragraphs, are represented by a single source, convicted criminal Elliott Abrams. After which some other voices from "all sides" are heard, but none of them quite as doubtful as that. Abrams seems to think the purpose of the negotiations is [jump]
to get everybody through the next session of the UN General Assembly without any applications for Palestinian statehood (or the next two sessions, judging from the curious stipulation or prophecy that the talks will last nine months, or a Friedman unit and a half). He may well be right at that, at least on Netanyahu's purpose, but I still wouldn't lower myself to quoting him if I were a journalist.

I personally want to say that I have no idea what is going on. I can't imagine Binyamin Netanyahu agreeing to anything that the Palestinian side would be able to accept—not because his principles or the stern ghosts of Benzion and Yonatan Netanyahu won't let him (I imagine poor Yonatan, having died as an actual warrior, would favor peace), but because his governing coalition won't. These are some truly bloodthirsty and evil mothers.

Mondoweiss:

Yesterday, on July 29, 2013, Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported that the leader of HaBayit HaYehudi, Israel's Minister of Industry Trade and Labor and of Religious Affairs Naftali Bennett said, "I've killed many Arabs in my life and there's no problem with that." Asked to clarify his statement, Bennett's spokesperson told 972 Magazine that he was speaking not of all Arabs, but of Arab militants who are captured -- in other words, prisoners of war.

Today, July 30, 2013, the ultra-Orthodox website BeHadrei Hadarim reported that David Lau, who began a ten-year term as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel less than a week ago, castigated Jewish youth for watching sports broadcasts, since the players are just "niggers". News site Maariv NRG uploaded a YouTube video that contained an audio file of Lau making the racist statements.

The first English-language Israeli news site to run the story, Ynet, completely buried the lead of the story -- the rabbi's revolting racism - and focused instead on his aversion to sports. Worse still, they intentionally mistranslated the word he used, "kushim", which means niggers, as "black men", which in Hebrew is actually "shchorim", or "anashim shchorim".

Bennett saw fit to respond to Lau's statement over Facebook, not condemning him for saying them, but rather condemning "the media" for "hounding" Lau. Bennett termed the comments "jovial", "marginal" and "insignificant" and announced his support for Lau.

Is he planning to throw them all under the bus and start his own new party the way Sharon did? Something tells me he hasn't got the gravitas, heh-heh.

Anyway, if you want something to cheer up about, here is a sweet piece from the Forward on John Kerry's Jewish hippie background (Via @lrozen). Says Obama has no faith in the so-called peace process but Kerry really believes. That could kind of make them an effective team.