Life of Lurey
Personal Blog of Matan Lurey

Sort of addicted to Star Wars, the Old Republic.

Anybody play?

Via Slate:

Tensions have been running higher than usual between the United States and Iran this week. Not only has the Islamic republic begun enriching uranium, a fact confirmed by international watchdogs Monday; it has also threatened to block off shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and sentenced an American to death for what it says was acts of espionage. That all in mind, Jon Stewart took time out from “The Daily Show” last night to have a candid conversation with Iran about the risks of its bellicose behavior

Let me just say this Iran. Americans don’t hate you. And I hope Iranians don’t hate us. But if you really want a war, f*** with America during an election season.

Salon’s Andrew Leonard asks:

It’s almost as if Republicans are actively striving to get a reputation for being mean to poor, hungry people. On Tuesday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the administration of Gov. Tom Corbett plans to start restricting eligibility to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as the food stamp program). Specifically, the state is imposing an “asset test” — anyone under 60 years old with savings of more than $2,000 is no longer eligible for assistance.

The news isn’t quite as bad as some outlets are spinning it. Pennsylvania’s proposed asset test conforms to federal guidelines for SNAP and doesn’t include the value of a recipient’s home, retirement savings or car. But what’s troubling is that the nationwide trend has been headed in exactly the opposite direction. Only 11 states currently impose asset tests for SNAP eligibility. Just four years ago, in fact, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Ed Rendell, abolished the state’s asset test.

Via Ed Husain on the Council of Foreign Relations:

Last night, I attended an Intelligence Squared Debate in New York. As expected, the debate was spirited and lively. How could it not be? The motion was “The UN Should Admit Palestine as a Full Member State.”

As is the norm with almost all debates on the Arab-Israeli conflict, emotions were high and sparks flew. Daniel Levy, an Israeli citizen with a British background, abandoned proverbial British reserve and stiff-upper-lip culture. Levy was impressive, his arguments coherent, and his presentation was passionate, to put it mildly. You can view the full video here.

While I was pleased that Levy and Mustafa Barghouthi, a prominent Palestinian politician and peace activist, won the debate, their whitewashing of Hamas left me deeply disturbed. Barghouthi cited a recent statement from Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal that allegedly commits to nonviolence. Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, the Qassam Brigades, and other Hamas leadership figures clearly did not get the memo. They are yet to confirm that Hamas will adopt nonviolence.

Levy was right to highlight that the United States engaged with terrorists during the Sunni awakening in Anbar, and now is in discussions with segments of the Taliban. But to suggest that this means Israel should now engage with Hamas without preconditions is dishonest and insensitive to realities on the ground. Problematic though they are, neither the Taliban nor the Sunni awakening are lobbing rockets into the United States, as Hamas is with Israel. Granted, one way of disarming Hamas is to bring it into the political process. But to do so with eyes closed, to deny Hamas’ militant nature, undermines the credibility and honesty of Barghouthi and Levy. Worse, it gives the signal to other terrorist organizations that while they conduct a campaign of violence, they can rely on left-leaning opponents (Levy) and peace activists (Barghouthi) to advance their political cause by using a single statement disavowing violence (Meshaal) as a fig leaf to obscure Hamas’ continued commitment to violence.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. It remains so. It actively seeks Israel’s destruction. These facts must be accepted, not ignored, while attempting to disengage Hamas from violence and move it closer, where possible, to other Islamist movements in the region that have opted for nonviolence. Ending Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and admitting it to the UN can be one way of attempting to end the current cycle of violence

Via The Jerusalem Post:

Iran and Hezbollah are actively assisting Syrian President Bashar Assad and providing him with weaponry as part of an effort to ensure that he survives in face of growing resistance and protests, head of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi said on Wednesday.

The European Union, Syrians themselves, and Turkey have collaborated this story.

Jeffrey Goldberg has some excellent points on the recent flury of news (with no evidence) about ‘Israel killing an Iranian nuclear scientist’. If anybody on Tumblr can answer these questions before they post their conspiracy theory, I would be very interested in hearing the answers:

1) Why aren’t the Iranians attempting to kill Israeli defense officials? The answer, I believe, has more to do with Iranian technical limitations: Since the Iranian regime has no compunction about killing Israeli civilians (through its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas), I doubt it has reservations about attacking military or intelligence officials. Perhaps one thing holding back Iran, though, is fear that attacks on Israeli officials (or, even more consequentially, American officials — though of course, Iran is already killing American soldiers in Afghanistan) would prompt an immediate Israeli strike on Natanz, before the regime is able to move its centrifuges to its underground facility at Fordow.

2) Does Israel, or whoever is assassinating Iranian scientists, believe that these killings will actually slow-down Iranian nuclear development? In other words, do the people behind the assassinations believe that Iranian nuclear knowledge is so concentrated in the minds of a few scientists that a limited series of assassinations can cripple the program? This doesn’t seem likely, obviously.

3) Is the goal of the assassination program to convince Iranians nuclear scientists to seek other lines of work? This is also plausible, but not likely to work: I think the regime would take the Tony Soprano approach — you can’t resign from the Mafia — and tell frightened scientists to get back to work, or suffer the consequences, or have their families suffer the consequences.

4) Why is Iran so incompetent at protecting its nuclear scientists? This is a perplexing issue.

5) Why is the Mossad, assuming this is the Mossad, so deft at assassinating people in Tehran? It’s a very hard target, Iran, and the Mossad has on more than one occasion bungled assassinations in terrible ways (the attempted killing of the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Jordan is only one case in point).   6) Another question, or something closer to an observation: If I were a member of the Iranian regime (and I’m not), I would take this assassination program to mean that the West is entirely uninterested in any form of negotiation (not that I, the regime official, has ever been much interested in dialogue with the West) and that I should double-down and cross the nuclear threshold as fast as humanly possible. Once I do that, I’m North Korea, or Pakistan: An untouchable country.

There are a lot of people that accurately fit that description. There are also some that are actual anti-Semites that are trying to mainstream their opinions. On top of that, there are people who are not anti-Semitic, but that repeat classical anti-Semitic tripes thinking that they are just being critical.

I’d say that Tumblr also has a fair mixture of all three categories. Recently, some pro-Palestinian bloggers have done a good job ‘outing’ activists that compare Israelis to Nazis. The most dangerous, however, is not the outright anti-Semites, but the third category - the one’s that spread anti-Semitic ideas, but truly do not hate Jews (or even necessarily hate Israel or Israelis). That’s also probably the most common on Tumblr, and because some of the ‘pro-Israel’ community commonly label everyone as anti-Semites, it can be difficult to critique their critiques.

Certainly the recent fire-bombs thrown at a New Jersey Synagogue is not a ‘critique of Israeli policy’, right?:

Law enforcement officials urged residents and religious institutions to be vigilant after a synagogue and its rabbi’s sleeping quarters were firebombed early Wednesday, the fourth such incident within a month that has been classified as a bias crime against a Jewish center or religious institution.

Or this, via Goldblog:

Or this, via Jerusalem Post:

Egypt has canceled the annual pilgrimage from Israel to the tomb of the Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira in the Nile Delta because of the country’s current instability, the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram reported on its website Wednesday.

According to the report, local authorities in the governorate where the shrine is located advised the military authorities to cancel the pilgrimage, scheduled for later this week to mark the anniversary of his the rabbi’s death (yahrzeit).

There are certainly animosity against Jews that is because of Israel, but it is beyond naive to suggest that the root cause of hate against Jews is Israel.

Via The Wired:

How’s this for timing: by accident of Navy schedules, the U.S. military now has two aircraft carrier battle groups near Iran’s shores, with a third on her way, right as a bomb killed an Iranian nuclear scientist and Iran threatens to close off a key waterway. But while there was just one carrier in the region for weeks, the Pentagon insists that its ship movements aren’t a response to Tehran’s recent bellicosity

universalidentity:

Amazes me how quickly people are to jump on others who critique Jews or Israel and just blurt out “Anti-Semite” clearly your over use of the word shows that you don’t even understand the implications behind it.

I agree with this, except that ‘critiquing’ Jews as being behind the financial meltdown, behind all the Washington Lobby activity, behind war-mongering, etc, is classic anti-Semitism, not a ‘critique’.