How did today's Tel Aviv bombers get around the security fence? We will be hearing about it, no doubt.

The real indication of the success of the fence will be if and when the terrorist groups start trying to shift their tactics away from the Islamikaze bombings and towards things like firing things over the fence or attacking settlements.

The latest in evil spam seems to be mail messages that just contain a lot of random words. The spammers figure this will mess up Bayesian spam filters and force providers to stop using them.

Soon I will write about Sharon's Herzliya speech.

Regarding the rumors of a suicide bomber in New York: of course it's impossible to know if there's anything to the rumor (and let's hope not); and New York is so big that anyone's chance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time are small.

Nonetheless from a purely selfish perspective - here in Israel it's possible to keep relatively safe by avoiding crowds and premises that don't have security guards (assuming you and your family have the luxury of not needing to ride public buses). But you can't avoid crowds in Manhattan.

Repeating lies often enough seems to make them a commonplace. Christopher Hitchens:

Meanwhile, leading Israeli conservatives speak openly about a “transfer” or mass deportation of the remaining Arab population, and boast that this is no more than what they began doing in 1947/1948.

"leading Israeli conservatives"?? As I've often noted, you'll have to go out to the Kahanists or the far-right of the settlement movement to find "speaking" like that.

Someone please tell Hitchens, Judt et. al that their failure to provide names and hard facts when they conduct their malicious smears is leading people to conclude that they are the zealots and demagogues.

In fairness, Hitchens makes many sensible points that conflict with the leftist conventional wisdom on the situation (not that I generally agree with him); it's when he gets to discussing Sharon and the current political dynamic that H. loses good sense.

ISM leaders Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro have received funding from an organization called Echoing Green. Echoing Green was set up by several hi-tech VC types and backs leftwing causes that it sees as "start-ups" - Shapiro and Arraf are two of the "visionaries" they've chosen to supply with cash. Their project is described as a training program for Palestinian youth - quite likely it will support the activities of the ISM's Palestinian coordinators like Osama Qashoo or the al-Titi family.

The other projects funded by EG seem to be leftish and unusual but nothing quite comparable to the ISM (though a description of another project claims that Arabs can't lease housing on Israeli state property - which is a lie).

As an Israeli I'm not pleased about "charitable efforts" aiding groups who cooperate with terrorists and ultimately aim to wipe my country off the map.

Blogrunner is a nice blog search engine.

Tony Judt responds to critics here. He moderates his early "dissolve Israel" remarks a bit, but still smugly tosses off stuff like this:

I am not the first person to remark upon the distressing state of Israeli public life, increasingly dominated by zealots and demagogues; the subject is commonplace in Israeli writing, as Amos Elon notes. It is mainly Israel's American defenders who seem blithely unaware of this state of affairs. Lenin used to describe Bolshevism's foreign admirers—fellow-traveling progressives who resolutely heard and saw no ill in their promised land—as "useful idiots."

Judt has not visited here (his observations are so way off and anyway he would have mentioned it). He can't be reading much of the Israeli media either (even Haaretz) if he thinks that "public life is increasingly dominated by zealots and demagogues". So where are these ideas (and venom) coming from?

Afterthought: Could well be that Judt would apply the term "zealot" to me (or Gil or Imshin) and only Beilin, Burg etc. are "within the pale" for him. At some British blogs there seems to be an unarguable sensibility under which expressing support for Sharon is regarded as akin to supporting Mugabe.

A few more worthwhile Geneva articles:Gordon Singer Rubin

I'm still not sure what to make of Ehud Olmert's statement in favor of unilateral withdrawal.

This article says that the statement is a "trial balloon" from the Sharon camp - which would be really shocking, and also suggest that the idea was hatched at the same time as the decision to go ahead with the security fence. Obviously, withdrawing without a peace agreement is a form of surrender - noone should pretend otherwise. And it would increase the PA's determination to fight for everything else that they are demanding (ie. Jerusalem, settling millions of Palestinians into pre-1967 Israel, whatever's after that), while in no way reducing international pressure.

The weekend Yediot had an article called "Korbanot Hagader" ("casualties of the fence") - a play on "Korbanot ha-shalom" ("casualties of the peace") which was the term applied by Oslo supporters to the casualties of "first-generation" suicide bombings. The article by Tsadok Yehezkeli is both informative and melodramatic in that it contrasts the initial successes of the fence with the hardships endured by Palestinians in Jayyous, Jabara, and a third village.

Yehezkeli tries to describe the situation from the first-person vantage point of those affected (including the standard baseless bit about how they think malicious land confiscation and "transfer" are in the offing), asserting (mistakenly) that this aspect is lost in the "sterile" language of Israeli discussion of the fence. I actually want more "sterile" information ie. how many people are really going to be substantially affected (the article quotes an untenably large estimate from B'tselem) and what possible alternatives exist.

I will try to write more from this article later, though real-life may well end up taking precedence.

More on 'Geneva' Another right-on evaluation from Yossi Klein Halevi:

The Israeli initiators of the Geneva Accord are guilty of multiple outrages. They've summoned a campaign of international pressure against their own democratic government, hampering its diplomatic maneuverability. They've undermined the legitimacy of the Sharon government while strengthening the legitimacy of Yasser Arafat's. They've lied to the public about the accord's supposed renunciation of the right of return, when in fact the accord reaffirms it. They've negotiated away Israel's most basic assets, not least its right to defend itself, and gotten vague Palestinian promises in return. And, hardly surprising, they allowed the Geneva signing ceremony to be overtaken by a blame-Israel atmosphere without offering any defense in response.

But perhaps their greatest damage is domestic. In the past three years, Israeli society has managed two extraordinary achievements. The first is to withstand a planned, systematic terror campaign whose purpose was to break our will and slowly erode our viability. Shortly after the outbreak of the Terror War in September 2000, Ehud Barak warned that, in a contest of wills between two societies, the loser will be the one who blinks first. Now, with Geneva, a part of Israeli society has blinked.

No less serious is Geneva's erosion of Israel's second great achievement: the marginalization of both the ideological Right and Left and the end of the no-win debate between them. The combined effects of the first and second intifadas on Israeli consciousness was to convince the majority that both Greater Israel and Peace Now were delusions. And so, arguably for the first time since the 1967 Six Day War, most Israelis were no longer viewing the territories through an ideological prism of wishful thinking but facing reality, however grimly, on its own terms.

This article says that Arafat's last minute decision to ambigously smile on the Geneva ceremony was the result of pressure from Egypt.

Haaretz writer Sara Leibovich-Dar levelled some criticisms at Jpost. Jpost editor Bret Stephens responds that Leibovich-Dar is a tendentious interviewer and a plagiarist.

I variously read Jpost, Haaretz, and Yediot - all of them have good and bad writers (at Haaretz: Ari Shavit, Zeev Schiff, Amos Harel, and Amir Oren are the best ones). In 2002, Jpost and Haaretz both interviewed me about my blog, and Jpost was the more professional of the two. The Haaretz article has a lot of sloppy misquotes, including an anecdote told by Sgt. Stryker that was attributed to me. The Haaretz interviewer was also quite envious of my ability to say whatever I want on my blog.

On the off chance that you were thinking of going to see the excellent musicians (like Omri Mor, Daniel Sarid, and Daniel Zamir's Ad Matai) at the Tel Aviv"Fringe Jazz Festival" , you might take a look at the home page of the Communist Party-sponsored arts space that's hosting it and have second thoughts.

Palestinian 'Geneva' negotiator Jamal Zakot on why Palestinians shouldn't fear that the plan would eliminate unlimited "right of return" to pre-1967 Israel for descendents of refugees from 1948:

"The document does not promise a full and collective return for millions of Palestinians, but it also does not cede this right. On the contrary: the proposed time frame for the solution of the refugee problem is five years, while the time frame for the Israeli retreat from the Palestinian lands [sic], evacuation of settlements and completion of installing Palestinian sovereignty on its lands according to the maps - which are more important than the texts - is only three years."

So Zakot is saying that the PA will first get everything that it wants in the West Bank/Gaza, so it will be able hold out and stay maximalist. And don't think that they wouldn't.

Arutz-7 translates the above from PA daily Al Hayat al Jadida. Perhaps Ribbity will take a closer look.

In the course of a discussion about an assertion by Norwegian Television that Israel's security fence is creating "apartheid", Bjorn Staerk enunciates the real issue regarding "antisemitism" among European media and intelligentsia:

We don't have to call it anti-semitism or Jew-hatred. Those words are so intertwined with modern history that their defining qualities have been pushed aside. But "irrational fear of and attribution of malicious intent to the only country in the world that is dominantly Jewish, and Jewish influences in other countries" covers it. It highlights the sinister part without strawman-friendly diversions like whether this is hate, or whether Hitler would have approved.

I've been thinking along similar lines for a while. We just need a good name for this phenomenon - eg. where Tony Judt will wave away physical and verbal attacks on Jews by Europeans as "misguided", while castigating (with comparisons to Pontius Pilate) Israeli leftists who have become (understandably) disillusioned.

Standard liberal gestures - ie. trying to "understand", suspending judgement, trying to "build bridges" - just seem to be absent. Although the Guardian seems to have started changing in the past week or two.

The Swiss just wouldn't risk offending the Palestinians (report):

It had been agreed beforehand that a message from Arafat would not be read aloud at the ceremony - but at the last moment the PA delegation demanded and threatened, and the Swiss hosts gave in. The message from Arafat, considered to be the father of modern-day terrorism, stated, "While Israel continues to build a Berlin Wall, we hold an olive branch.

So apparently in Geneva they blamed Israel for everything, cursed at the fence, and called Sharon a "fascist". And no criticism at all for the Palis.

The one-sidedness is partly because that's how many of these people actually think. But it's also because any criticism of Arafat or the Palis would "offend" the Palestinian delegation. Castigating Israel and giving Arafat a free ride is part of trying to drum up Palestinian support for the Geneva enterprise.

Similarly, if some peace plan gets support from an Israeli gov't (whether Likud or Labor), Palestinian support for it is then likely to decrease. The thinking is: "if the Israelis are willing to accept it, then it's probably a trick and we should be demanding more".

Heard the Geneva affair (including some of the Carter speech) on Channel 2 news. I bet most of the people there never actually read the "accords", and have no recollection of the Camp David or Taba negotiations (except for Beilin & co. of course, who were present at them).

Carter apparently called repeatedly for "return" of refugees to the territories beyond what the "accords" call for. He obviously hasn't read the documents, which call for unlimited settling of refugees into the "territories" and an additional "limited" (but TBD) number of refugees to be settled in Israel proper.

More: This article describes how Carter and Arafat have a longstanding close relationship (via Kesher Talk). Carter is not disturbed by Arafat's support for Al-Aqsa Brigades etc.

I will eventually force myself to read the reports of the Geneva "signing". Most normal people would probably not be able to participate at this thing in an official capacity (eg. by making a speech) without somehow noting that it's basically meaningless.

But professional politicians (and ex-politicians) aren't normal people, and will largely ignor the fact that Beilin etc. have no mandate from the Israeli public, and that the hypocritical Palestinian delegates don't even represent themselves, let alone Arafat or the Palestinian public.

The real evidence of the shallowness of the sponsors (ie. Blair, Carter et. al. ) is that none of them will actually try to treat the Palestinians' ostensible (though mega-ambiguous) blessing of the Geneva document as readiness to make the single concession that it apparently requires of them - ie. giving up their demand that millions of descendents of refugees from the 1948 war be settled in Israel proper.

Still on the very local side of things: Jpost print edition has more info on the Templer cemetery in Jerusalem's German Colony neighborhood and Beilin's plan (ie. 'Geneva') to provide the PA with "access" (which is not defined within the Geneva document).

The area actually contains two burial grounds - the one belonging to the Templers has been unused for about 50 yrs; a second one belongs to an evangelical Christian movement, whose administrator expressed surprise that the PA had expressed any interest in the site. This confirms to me that the provision was a not-particularly-well-considered "tit-for-tat" in exchange for Israeli access/sovereignty of the large and centuries-old Jewish cemetery on Mt. Scopus.

Mazal Tov to Ribbity Frog + spouse on the addition of a new tadpole.