J-Street Blues: World’s smallest violin concerto for Jeremy Ben-Ami, the anti-Israel pro-Israel guy who can’t get Michael Oren or anyone in the Netanyahu administration to give him the time of day. Hm, let’s think. It’s a supposed pro-Israel lobbying group that is against Iranian sanctions, was against the Gaza war, thinks that Israel is ultimately just another country in the group of nations… hm. I can’t figure out why Oren doesn’t want to talk to them. Let me go read Six Days of War by Michael Oren again and see if I can figure it out.
Awesome! Separately signed Palestinian unification agreements! Yes, it’s true. Fatah and Hamas are getting back together again, but they’re doing it so well that they refuse to have a joint signing ceremony. And Hamas is saying that it’s not really sure it’s going to sign the truce.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said his organization would not be pressured into signing a truce deal Fatah had already signed. “Things happened that our public opinion cannot accept, and the Goldstone affair is still shaking up the atmosphere,” he said.
You can’t make this stuff up. I wish them all they deserve, and would like to know who gets to keep the cat in the divorce agreement. (Can’t be a dog. Unclean, Muslim, and all that.)
Turkey and Syria, together again: Now Syria will be holding joint military exercises with Turkey. I hope the Turkish pilots are good at ducking, because the Syrian Air Force is pretty crappy overall (80 Syrian jets downed by Israel, zero Israeli jets by Syria, in that dogfight in the Lebanon war). Good luck with those exercises, Turks! You deserve each other. (Wait—wait—just did more than skim the article. Land exercises only. Can we get a BWAHA! from the crowd?)
The Quartet’s still around? Apparently, there is no statute of limitations on any Israeli-Palestinian agreement. They’re still yammering about Oslo and the Road Map, and now, there’s actually a news story that references The Quartet (the U.S., Russia, the EU, and the UN). And now that I think about it, that isn’t four parts. It’s two states, the EU, and the EU and two states all over again with the UN. So that means that everyone in the EU gets two votes, Russia and the U.S. get three votes, but states that aren’t in the EU and aren’t Russia or the U.S. get only one vote. I think that’s wrong. You should subtract the EU, subtract Russia, and right now, subtract the U.S. because our leadership is filled with morons when it comes to Israel. Um. I completely forgot what I was going to mention about the Quartet. Oh, yeah! They’re saying that the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement has to abide by the Road Map, meaning Hamas has to renounce violence, recognize Israel and respect past agreements. So, anyway—the Quartet’s still around?