From Michael J Totten.

As always, indispensable.

“It’s not just a question of targeting the schools,” Colonel Eisen said. “It’s also about the hour. When kids are out and about all over the city, when parents are taking them to school. If we educate the population on how to live within this kind of environment, we can radically reduce the number of casualties. For the people of Sderot it’s the most obvious. They’re not the ones who stand outside and look at the rockets. They hear the alert, and they run into the shelter. They have ten to fifteen seconds, and they know that. They’ve kept themselves alive here. Sderot doesn’t really have casualties now.”

“The explosion on impact is lethal,” she continued, “and the explosion goes up, so all the instructions in Israel are for you to lay down flat and put your hands over your head. But if it lands right next to you, it doesn’t leave you a lot of room. A woman protected her son in Beersheva a few days ago. They got out of the car, they lay down, she was laying over him, and he got a fragment in his head. He’s been in critical condition ever since.”

She showed us a house across the street from a school. A rocket exploded in the front yard the day before. The family was watching TV in the living room and ran for shelter as soon as they heard the “incoming” alarm. They would have been killed if they hadn’t because shrapnel from the explosion tore apart their living space. Their outdoor furniture at ground level caught on fire and the exterior walls were pocked with shrapnel holes that looked almost like bullet holes. The windows were, of course, broken. The house looked as though somebody had parked in front and assaulted their home with automatic weapons fire and a grenade launcher.

Life can and does go on under the circumstances, but would it be possible for an entire country to endure these kinds of attacks? Perhaps that’s the wrong question. What country in the world would tolerate these kinds of attacks? Almost certainly none. They are only tolerable if a small percentage of a country’s population is exposed, and they’re only barely just tolerable for a while.

Norm Geras posts an excellent piece. I agree with nearly everything he says here, except that, on the evidence so far available, I do not accept that Israel is guilty of war crimes.

Norm writes:

This is a post about war crimes in Gaza and the widespread public outrage over them directed at Israel. Since it is a long post, I begin by providing a brief map of what is to follow.

In Part 1 I present a sample of the angry public reaction to Israel’s alleged war crimes in Gaza, as gathered mostly from the British liberal press. In Part 2 I consider the source of this anger, pointing to what may be thought to be the most likely one – the great and visible suffering caused by Israel’s recent military action. I argue that the hypothesis that this was the cause of outrage against Israel is not decisively rebutted by a standard argumentative move made by Israel’s defenders: namely, that if Israel was guilty of war crimes, then so too was Hamas, for sending rockets against Sderot and other civilian centres. In Part 3 I go on to show that the claim that anger at Israel was due, or mainly due, to the suffering caused by its military action is open to question nonetheless. If we are examining this issue under the rubric of responsibility for war crimes, then public outrage about them is skewed when directed, as it widely has been, exclusively at Israel. In Part 4 I draw three conclusions from what has gone before. The first of these concerns the implication of the attitudes explored here for the future progress of international law. The second bears on the present condition of the Western liberal-left. And the third is about the alarming worldwide growth of anti-Semitism.

He concludes:

In the outpouring of hatred towards Israel today, it scarcely matters what part of it is impelled by a pre-existing hostility towards Jews as such and what part by a groundless feeling that the Jewish state is especially vicious among the nations of the world and to be obsessed about accordingly. Both are forms of anti-Semitism. The old poison is once again among us.

Read the whole thing.

Via Michael J Totten.

The veteran Palestinian journalist, long an indispensable source on the Israel/Palestine conflict through his reporting for the Jerusalem Post, shares his thoughts in a long address followed by a searching Q&A session.

Read it, read it, read it! Well, read it, anyway. I’ll try to cherry-pick some bits, but really you have to read the whole thing.

A taste:

And where are we standing today? I told you before that I’m one of those people who support a two-state solution. I think it’s a wonderful solution. But in the end we’re getting a different kind of two-state solution. We have two separate entities. One in Gaza, and one in the West Bank.

The one in Gaza is an Islamic state run by Hamas and supported by Ahmadinejad, Syria, Hezbollah, and some people say Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s a very dangerous situation, and as a moderate Muslim that’s the last place I want to live on this earth.

What we have in the West Bank is the secular, corrupt, powerless regime of the PLO. Abu Mazen, Abu Shmazen, all these Abus. The Arafat cronies who failed their people over the past fifteen years. Who lost the election in January 2006 because of the corruption. Who were kicked out of Gaza because they failed. Who have lost control over half the Palestinians who live in this part of the world. And they are sitting in Ramallah. These people are in power only thanks to the presence of the IDF in the West Bank. If the Israeli army were to leave the West Bank tomorrow morning these PLO people would collapse in five minutes and Hamas would take over.

The question we should ask ourselves in the wake of this scenario is whether or not there is really a partner on the Palestinian side for any deal, let alone a peace agreement. Any kind of deal. Is there really a partner on the Palestinian side? And the answer is simple. No.

Hamas is not a partner for any peace agreement because Hamas is not going to change. All these people who believe that Hamas will one day change its ideology, that pragmatic leaders will emerge in Hamas, these people are living under illusions. Hamas is not going to change. To their credit we must say that their message has been very clear. It’s the same message in Arabic and in English. They’re being very honest about it. They’re saying “Folks, we will never recognize Israel. We will never change. We will not abandon the path of the resistance.” They’re very clear about it.

After they won the election, by the way, the international community went to Hamas and said “Listen. If you want us to deal with you, accept Israel and everything will be okay.” And Hamas was very honest. They said “No. We are not going to renounce terrorism. We are not going to recognize previous agreements between Palestinians and Israel. And we are not going to recognize Israel’s right to exist.” They were very clear about it. And they say the same thing today.

Shimon Peres, Israel’s current president, has been at the heart of everything major that has happened in the Middle East for fifty years. He probably knows the conflict better than anyone else still alive.

Here the old man of Israeli politics speaks with great force at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in response to Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan (who walked out following Peres’ speech).

A lot of fire, a lot of passion, a bit of anger. I agreed with every word.

And we never gave up, all my life as you said, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate it, I am fighting for peace, what we did is not…the thing that we wanted to do… It’s not our choice, our choice is peace. What we did is because the lack of a choice, we were threatened with a choice. Would you vote for such a convention, to kill the Jews? OK, those are words, but to kill the Jews and send rockets to kill them. What you want us to do?

I created the Peres Center, all the money we have collected went to the cure of children. Palestinian children. They didn’t have insurance, they didn’t have hospitals, in five years we have brought to Israel 5500 Palestinian children and their mothers to be cured. By the way, there is no hospital today in Israel that does not have Arab doctors, so the children can communicate with the doctors in the Israeli hospitals. That is our choice, to touch a child. But if you put a child, if you put bombs in the kindergarten, and if you hide yourselves behind innocent families, and before we shell, we, before we try to shell anybody, we try and telephone the people, we say, please leave the place. We don’t want to hurt you. We made during those twenty days, 250,000 telephone calls before we shoot. What could we do, what was our choice? And what would any government do?

Thanks to Elder of Ziyon for the transcript, but you really have to watch it, and hear it. Not the best English, perhaps, but this is real eloquence: unforced, from the heart.

Skip forward to the 39th minute.

At Commentary, Terry Teachout lists his top 25. I don’t know any of them!

I’m going to do my own list.

(And my top 25 films, TV shows, blogs, conspiracy theories….)

Via Yael (fave Israeli blogger). I found this moving and apposite, and its conclusions absolutely correct.

An Open Letter to A citizen Of Gaza: I Am the Soldier Who Slept In Your Home
By: Yishai G (reserve soldier)
[Originally published in Hebrew in Maariv]

Hello,

While the world watches the ruins in Gaza, you return to your home which remains standing. However, I am sure that it is clear to you that someone was in your home while you were away.

I am that someone.

I spent long hours imagining how you would react when you walked into your home. How you would feel when you understood that IDF soldiers had slept on your mattresses and used your blankets to keep warm.

I knew that it would make you angry and sad and that you would feel this violation of the most intimate areas of your life by those defined as your enemies, with stinging humiliation. I am convinced that you hate me with unbridled hatred, and you do not have even the tiniest desire to hear what I have to say. At the same time, it is important for me to say the following in the hope that there is even the minutest chance that you will hear me.

I spent many days in your home. You and your family’s presence was felt in every corner. I saw your family portraits on the wall, and I thought of my family. I saw your wife’s perfume bottles on the bureau, and I thought of my wife. I saw your children’s toys and their English language schoolbooks. I saw your personal computer and how you set up the modem and wireless phone next to the screen, just as I do.

I wanted you to know that despite the immense disorder you found in your house that was created during a search for explosives and tunnels (which were indeed found in other homes), we did our best to treat your possessions with respect. When I moved the computer table, I disconnected the cables and lay them down neatly on the floor, as I would do with my own computer. I even covered the computer from dust with a piece of cloth. I tried to put back the clothes that fell when we moved the closet although not the same as you would have done, but at least in such a way that nothing would get lost.

I know that the devastation, the bullet holes in your walls and the destruction of those homes near you place my descriptions in a ridiculous light. Still, I need you to understand me, us, and hope that you will channel your anger and criticism to the right places.

I decided to write you this letter specifically because I stayed in your home.

I can surmise that you are intelligent and educated and there are those in your household that are university students. Your children learn English, and you are connected to the Internet. You are not ignorant; you know what is going on around you.

Therefore, I am sure you know that Qassam rockets were launched from your neighborhood into Israeli towns and cities.

How could you see these weekly launches and not think that one day we would say “enough”?! Did you ever consider that it is perhaps wrong to launch rockets at innocent civilians trying to lead a normal life, much like you? How long did you think we would sit back without reacting?

I can hear you saying “it’s not me, it’s Hamas”. My intuition tells me you are not their most avid supporter. If you look closely at the sad reality in which your people live, and you do not try to deceive yourself or make excuses about “occupation”, you must certainly reach the conclusion that the Hamas is your real enemy.

The reality is so simple, even a seven year old can understand: Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip, removing military bases and its citizens from Gush Katif. Nonetheless, we continued to provide you with electricity, water, and goods (and this I know very well as during my reserve duty I guarded the border crossings more than once, and witnessed hundreds of trucks full of goods entering a blockade-free Gaza every day).

Despite all this, for reasons that cannot be understood and with a lack of any rational logic, Hamas launched missiles on Israeli towns. For three years we clenched our teeth and restrained ourselves. In the end, we could not take it anymore and entered the Gaza strip, into your neighborhood, in order to remove those who want to kill us. A reality that is painful but very easy to explain.

As soon as you agree with me that Hamas is your enemy and because of them, your people are miserable, you will also understand that the change must come from within. I am acutely aware of the fact that what I say is easier to write than to do, but I do not see any other way. You, who are connected to the world and concerned about your children’s education, must lead, together with your friends, a civil uprising against Hamas.

I swear to you, that if the citizens of Gaza were busy paving roads, building schools, opening factories and cultural institutions instead of dwelling in self pity, arms smuggling and nurturing a hatred to your Israeli neighbors, your homes would not be in ruins right now. If your leaders were not corrupt and motivated by hatred, your home would not have been harmed. If someone would have stood up and shouted that there is no point in launching missiles on innocent civilians, I would not have to stand in your kitchen as a soldier.

You don’t have money, you tell me? You have more than you can imagine.

Even before Hamas took control of Gaza, during the time of Yasser Arafat, millions if not billions of dollars donated by the world community to the Palestinians was used for purchasing arms or taken directly to your leaders bank accounts. Gulf States, the emirates – your brothers, your flesh and blood, are some of the richest nations in the world. If there was even a small feeling of solidarity between Arab nations, if these nations had but the smallest interest in reconstructing the Palestinian people – your situation would be very different.

You must be familiar with Singapore. The land mass there is not much larger than the Gaza strip and it is considered to be the second most populated country in the world. Yet, Singapore is a successful, prospering, and well managed country. Why not the same for you?

My friend, I would like to call you by name, but I will not do so publicly. I want you to know that I am 100% at peace with what my country did, what my army did, and what I did. However, I feel your pain. I am sorry for the destruction you are finding in your neighborhood at this moment. On a personal level, I did what I could to minimize the damage to your home as much as possible.

In my opinion, we have a lot more in common than you might imagine. I am a civilian, not a soldier, and in my private life I have nothing to do with the military. However, I have an obligation to leave my home, put on a uniform, and protect my family every time we are attacked. I have no desire to be in your home wearing a uniform again and I would be more than happy to sit with you as a guest on your beautiful balcony, drinking sweet tea seasoned with the sage growing in your garden.

The only person who could make that dream a reality is you. Take responsibility for yourself, your family, your people, and start to take control of your destiny. How? I do not know. Maybe there is something to be learned from the Jewish people who rose up from the most destructive human tragedy of the 20th century, and instead of sinking into self-pity, built a flourishing and prospering country. It is possible, and it is in your hands. I am ready to be there to provide a shoulder of support and help to you.

But only you can move the wheels of history.”

Regards,
Yishai, (Reserve Soldier)

Michael J Totten, the world’s best photo-journalist (and deserved winner of the 2008 Best Middle East of Africa Blog – congratulations, Michael), has penned a sobering assessment of the Israel/Palestine conflict in the wake of the recent war in Gaza.

He writes:

A clear majority of Israelis would instantly hand over the West Bank and its settlements along with Gaza for a real shot at peace with the Arabs, but that’s not an option. Most Arab governments at least implicitly say they will recognize Israel’s right to exist inside its pre-1967 borders, but far too many Palestinians still won’t recognize Israel’s right to exist even in its 1948 borders. Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist inside any borders at all.

And:

Far too many Westerners make the mistake of projecting their own views onto Palestinians without really understanding the Palestinian narrative. The “occupation” doesn’t refer to the West Bank and Gaza, and it never has. The “occupation” refers to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. A kibbutz in the center of Israel is “occupied Palestine” according to most. “It makes no sense to a Palestinian to think about a Palestinian state alongside Israel,” Martin Kramer from the Shalem Center in Jerusalem said to me a few days ago. “From the Palestinian perspective, Israel will always exist inside Palestine.”

Michael characterises the conflict as unsolvable, intractable. For that reality to change, the Middle East itself must change.

It’s hard to disagree. I can’t see anything material changing unless a genuinely moderate leadership emerges on the Palestinian side.

But why should it? Why risk the bullet and the bomb from the assassins’ camp, which have killed so many Palestinian moderates or potential moderates over the decades? Why forego the limitless assistance available from Iran and Syria, who will only support terror, and the power and cachet that goes with it? Why forego Europe’s billions, for which peace was never a pre-condition? Above all, why pursue an objective that no-one in the region really wants, or has ever wanted from the very beginning – except the Jews of Israel?

Peace won’t even be possible for at least a generation.

Because I have a new Furtwangler gravatar, and because we’ve been surrounded by the echoes of a war these past weeks, I’ve had occasion, over the past few days (not that I needed an excuse), to listen to three of Furtwangler’s performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, given in 1937, 1942 and 1951.    These were in London, Berlin and Bayreuth respectively before, during and after World War II.  I was interested to see if I could gauge what he thought of the war that was coming, the war he was part of, and the war he remembered.  I think I got something out of the experience which I’d like to share.

But first, some words about  Wilhelm Furtwangler, the greatest of all conductors in the age of recorded music.  For Furtwangler, the romantic repertoire of symphonies, concertos, songs and operas was like the flow of a great, unending river.  Under Furtwangler’s baton, you are carried on its breast, in calm and flood, for an hour or so, until the work comes to an end.  Then you are released from it, and it sets you down, but the river flows on, in time and space and memory, until the next of his performances you are privileged to be part of.  Once you have heard Furtwangler conduct Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner or Wagner, it is almost impossible to listen to anyone else conduct their works.

So conscious was Furtwangler of his responsibility, and the power he wielded in calling up the passions and poetries of composers long dead, that his hand often trembled before the first downbeat of the baton.  A famous story is told of a leader of first violins who looked up to see the conductor tormented by hesitation at the start of a performance, and called out encouragingly, “Coraggio, Maestro!”

For Furtwangler, any performance of Beethoven’s Ninth was a religious ritual.  He gave the symphony only on special occasions.  The work is, of course, most famous for its chorale, the fourth movement which sets Schiller’s Ode to Joy to music of extraordinary power and force.   Furtwangler saw the great finale as the culmination of all that went before it, the dread, the storms of violence, the tearing grief, the hope, the longing, expressed in Schiller’s words: “Alle Menschen werden Bruder, Wo dein sanfter Flugel weilt!”

But Furtwangler knew better than any before or since that in Beethoven’s setting of the Ode the joyful processional and the auto-da-fe go ever together.  Human nature walks as readily to an execution as to a wedding, and the grim beat of war compels no less than the gentle words of peace.  Each elegant polka masks the Dance of Death. The pipe-and-drum march of the Chorale leads as surely to the death chambers as to the canivale.  That is why Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (although perhaps not Schiller’s) is also an Ode to Despair.

All this Furtwangler understood with a perfection never equalled.  And because of that, the three statements he left us with these performances of the Ninth might cause us to reflect on how a great artist and a man of good conscience and decent instincts responded through the fragile medium of music to the reality of a war which, with all its ineluctable brutality and inexorable cruelty, tore his treasured dreams to pieces – and those of the German people, who never wanted the war that Hitler forced them into.

London, 1937
The world was poised on the brink of a great war, one which most of Europe regarded as inevitable. Furtwangler stood before the British public in London’s Queen’s Hall with his Berliners and tried to tell them it was not going to happen. He projected a sense of reassurance: the orchestra’s great hammer blows were constrained, the violence contained. He made the Ninth sound almost like Haydn, recalling a Germany so very different to Hitler’s, so different to the Germany of which he was now a reluctant emissary. In the first movements, at quite broad tempi, he seemed to be saying, “Don’t forget – we’re not what you think”. And: “Despite today, please remember…”. There is a sense sometimes of wistful longing for the better times past, especially among the soughing of the strings.

But at the same time, there is the feeling of the calm before the storm. There are portents, vagaries, threats, but Furtwangler pushes them aside. Instead, he takes us back to the Sixth Symphony, with its smiling countryside. The music opens its arms, perhaps in a plea, an invitation to the dance. In the Chorale, it’s the morris dance we hear, not the funeral march. And yet, throughout, despite his mastery of score and orchestra, how uncertain Furtwangler sometimes sounds, how hesitant, as if he himself were not convinced!

Berlin, 1942
What a different world is this. It is the time of Hitler’s birthday, 24th March. Among the audience are Himmler, the chief of the SS, and Goebbels, master propagandist. From the very first bars, the orchestra cries: We are lost! No light hearts, only sad memories. Wildness, abandonment, a sense of being caught up in the sweep of events that no-one could control – almost the hopelessness of being only human. The orchestra gives us jagged edges of violence, but also moments of reflection. The drums roll on, steady, purposeful, heavy with dread. There is a sense of watching unimaginable horror, with stoicism, with numbness. Whilst we’re periodically overwhelmed, there is at other times a sense of frozen, appalled aloofness, of detachment.

This is the most perfectly crafted symphonic performance you will ever hear. Indeed, it is not “crafted” at all. It emerges from the roots of experience, the condition of the time. It is a long scream at the world for being the world, broken off at the end of every movement, then taken up again. Ego is forgotten, and art seamlessly reflects the actuality of the real. The orchestra under Furtwangler are responding to something beyond and behind them: the beating of the wings of the angel of death, perched that night on the roof of the Philhamonie, and never to depart.

Time and again the horror breaks through. Time and again, Furtwangler unleashes Beethoven’s fury. The echoes of the Pastoral 6th are there, it is true, but they are swallowed up at once and thrown mockingly aside. We are in the Third Movement now. We see under the sweet pastoral strains to the anguish beneath. Where five years earlier, Beethoven had welcomed us to his world, he now bids us an unforgiving farewell. The abandonment of all promises, conveyed by an orchestra playing with all the delicacy of a string quartet. Hope is recalled, but is no longer believed in.

And then the war drums and the trumpets end it. Here is the tearing anger of the finale, waves of rage over an ocean of anguish, as Furtwangler signalled his farewell to everything he had known and loved of Germany. A metallic drum punctuates the tenor’s first solo. The quartet of soloists sound frantic. The pipe-and-drum march would have fooled no-one: it is a dirge. No calm consolation here: the horror swells, it does not recede. The chorus are not singing “Ode to Joy”, but the Prisoners’ Chorus from Fidelio. This is the song from within the prison.

One wonders what on earth Himmler and Goebbels would have made of it.

You can watch them here:

Bayreuth, 1951
Six years after the war, Furtwangler gave a performance of the Ninth at the re-opening of the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth, designed by Wagner for the performance of his operas. It is probably the most famous of his recordings of the work.

Here Furtwangler has recovered a sense of sureness and affirmation. Musical lines are lucid and vibrant, and the tempi are unhurried. It seems to be a journey over old ground towards some kind of reconciliation, not least, perhaps., with Germany’s own recent past. Memory is a strong impression, with musical figures reflected upon, rather than stated.

Weariness? There is a sense that the symphony – or Furtwangler, perhaps both – are exhausted. There is hope, but also uncertainty, as if Furtwangler wants to advance the cause of hope but falters as he tries to do so, overwhelmed by the weight of memory. Something baleful seems to approach from behind: he shakes his head, trying to dismiss it, but cannot. It is the past.

In the 2nd and 3rd Movements, the work is muted; there is no joy, more a kind of desolation. There is hurrying and scurrying, but nothing pastoral, nothing sweet – rather a sense of anxiety. Figures dance into the foreground, as if defying the future,but they seem somehow unsure of themselves. The pastoral passages seem more personal, more reflective and inward.

This is a tragic Ninth. A weary plod through a countryside once loved, every step now taken in weariness and pain along a familiar road, a road which itself seems to reproach the conductor for travelling it. In the 3rd Movement, there is even a sense that Furtwangler’s heart has failed him, that he can no longer go on. As if he is playing in a kind of agony, numbly doing what the score demands, but no longer able to believe in it. Unlike in the other performances, one cannot wait for this desolate movement to come to an end.

In the Chorale, Furtwangler seems to be saying: can we rise above the burden of memory? There is tension and strain as the strings establish the great central melody. But, oddly, the quartet is not quite right – they sound at odds with the chorus. Hans Hopf, the tenor, is over-bright and over-confident, and the whole quartet sound as though they are in a different performance altogether. They are singing a morris dance, but Furtwangler is playing the auto-da-fe.

And then, in the last few minutes, Furtwangler finally shakes off his lethargy and cuts loose. Tears come to the eyes for the first time. Giving the lie to the quartet’s hollow boastfulness, Furtwangler unleashes the true greatness of these last choral passages as the chorus breathes and weeps the words of Schiller’s Ode. The quartet sound affected and self-conscious, and Furtwangler treats them considerately and well: but then he erases them with the final drumbeats and the ecstasy of the chorus – as if he had at last escaped his melancholy brooding and re-awakened to Beethoven and his message to the world.

Three years later, Furtwangler died, distraught at his growing deafness, but also, according to his widow, heart-broken at what the country to whose art he had given his whole life had found itself capable of at war.

…. myself not least, for normal service to be resumed, can I introduce visitors to one of the the finest offerings of the folk music revival of the 1960’s – Crazy Man Michael, by Fairport Convention?

For Hamas, it’s business as normal:

Rocket fire continues despite ceasefire: Palestinian gunmen fired six rockets into Israel on Sunday morning. One of the rockets hit the Sderot area, another rocket hit a henhouse in a kibbutz and a third one landed near another kibbutz.

The three other rockets also landed in open areas. There were no reports of injuries.