Roger Cohen reports on the West Bank's only brewery, Taybeh. It's a video piece- definitely worth your 3 minutes, and you won't even have to drudge through Cohen's stilted prose. Whoever can get this stuff distributed at SOAS would make a fortune.

An unsparing piece by Peter Beinart in the New York Review of Books exposes some of the problems in American Jewish debate on Israel. Money quote: 

In the American Jewish establishment today, the language of liberal Zionism—with its idioms of human rights, equal citizenship, and territorial compromise—has been drained of meaning. It remains the lingua franca in part for generational reasons, because many older American Zionists still see themselves as liberals of a sort. They vote Democratic; they are unmoved by biblical claims to the West Bank; they see average Palestinians as decent people betrayed by bad leaders; and they are secular. They don’t want Jewish organizations to criticize Israel from the left, but neither do they want them to be agents of the Israeli right.

These American Zionists are largely the product of a particular era. Many were shaped by the terrifying days leading up to the Six-Day War, when it appeared that Israel might be overrun, and by the bitter aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, when much of the world seemed to turn against the Jewish state. In that crucible, Israel became their Jewish identity, often in conjunction with the Holocaust, which the 1967 and 1973 wars helped make central to American Jewish life. These Jews embraced Zionism before the settler movement became a major force in Israeli politics, before the 1982 Lebanon war, before the first intifada. They fell in love with an Israel that was more secular, less divided, and less shaped by the culture, politics, and theology of occupation. And by downplaying the significance of Avigdor Lieberman, the settlers, and Shas, American Jewish groups allow these older Zionists to continue to identify with that more internally cohesive, more innocent Israel of their youth, an Israel that now only exists in their memories.

Akyol on the "Gulenist Conspiracy"

The truth is that with a few million followers, and lots of schools, media outlets and business networks, the Gülen movement is certainly powerful, but not all-dominant in any part of society. Within the Islamic camp, they are just one of the many different communities. For the secularists, all of these people can be the same - they all pray too often and their wives wear the hated headscarf. But there are actually various groups of Naqshbandis, Qadiris, "Süleymancıs," "Erbakancıs" or "Nurcus." The Gülenists are just one of the several offshoots of the latter tradition.

Led Zeppelin Did It: Sorokin on the Liberalizing Effects of 1970s Rock

For my generation, the Soviet pillows were thrown off by hard rock. The feathers, I must say, flew far: after Page, Gillen and Plant, the Soviet “VIA” (vocal-instrumental ensembles) became hopelessly covered by a shroud. It became impossible to take them seriously. They became the stuff of crass jokes, good for drunken dance floors where you could nuzzle a soft and unpretentious babe. [...] It’s fashionable now to say that the “sovok” — the Soviet era — was undermined by the fall of oil prices in the 1980s. I’m convinced that even before that there was a mass falling of corks from the ears of the young. Young Soviet brains were cleared by Western rock music. Jimi Hendrix, with his screaming Fender Stratocaster, unknowingly probably did more to demolish the Soviet mentality than even Solzhenitsyn and his “Archipelago.”

Goldberg Responds to Cole on Plans for Palestine

I can't speak for people like Goldberg, but Goldberg himself has stated publicly for years what he expects to happen to the Palestinians in the near and medium future. If Juan Cole has ever read anything I've written, in The Atlantic and elsewhere, he would know that: I'm for the creation of a Palestinian state on one hundred percent of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (or a Palestinian state that equals one hundred percent of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, through land swaps); a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem that mirrors the Israeli capital in West Jerusalem; an immediate end to all settlements; Israeli negotiations with Syria that would bring about peace and an end to Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights.

Walter Russell Mead is one of the most talented foreign affairs writers in America. His latest post on American public support for Israel is simply brilliant. It is incredible that he can actually “blog” at this level. Money quote:

Many of the arguments and perceptions that have weakened support for Israel on the left cut no ice with the populist right [this is true in America, and to a lesser extent is a developing pattern in Europe].  The argument that just war theory forbids the ‘disproportionate’ use of force has absolutely no weight in much of American opinion.  When somebody attacks you, especially in an underhanded terrorist way, you have a natural right to defend yourself using every weapon and every tactic that comes to hand.  This is the way most Americans think about war; American public opinion on the whole does not regret the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  Two-thirds of American respondents tell Pew pollsters that they favor the use of “torture” under some circumstances. 

Such people are not necessarily indifferent to Palestinian rights, and they may not feel that every Israeli action is well judged, but they strongly believe that as long as Palestinians engage in terrorism, Israel has an unlimited and absolute right of self defense.  It can and should do anything and everything it can to stop the attacks and many Americans consider international laws against such practices as pious hopes with no binding legal or even moral force. If the terrorists shield themselves behind civilians, that only shows how evil they are — and is an extra reason why you have both the right and the duty to eliminate them no matter what it takes.

…Being pro-Israel is a sign of being pro-American to a very large sector of American public opinion.  Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of that divide; the minute you start to look soft on this, you start to look soft and unreliable on everything.  Even when substantial numbers of Americans disapprove of some particular Israeli action, many politicians will rationally conclude that being seen as ‘too eager’ to attack Israel is a bad career move.  In most of the United States, it is almost always politically more beneficial to support Israel or at most to remain silent when Israeli behavior is particularly controversial.

Last week, Israelis hosted their annual national security gathering in Herzliya- a big conference open to the press that is usually a very frank examination of Israel's long-term national security situation. Apparently, Netanyahu was a flop, but Salaam Fayad and Ehud Barak made headlines. Money Quote from Tablet Magazine:

In an appearance many called courageous, Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad, surrounded by a phalanx of Israeli and Palestinian bodyguards, accepted an invitation to be a keynote speaker at the annual gathering of Israel’s establishment, where he appealed for peace. Ignoring threats and condemnations by his rivals in Hamas for his decision to appear here in the packed auditorium, Fayyad called upon Israel to stop expanding settlements on the land of the future Palestinian state.

His message was not particularly new. Nor was that of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who also appeared to restate Israel’s official position. But both men made gestures that went beyond what the stalled peace process would seem to allow. Fayyad did that simply by showing up on Tuesday night, rather than canceling, as he has done before. And Barak delivered a shot across the bow of his fractious coalition government by warning that unless progress on the peace front occurred now, Israel would either become a “bi-national” or an “apartheid state” headed inexorably into global isolation. 

A few participants gasped to hear the defense minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government use the language of Israel’s most virulent critics. Apartheid state? One of the panels here at Herzliya had described the effort to paint Israel’s occupation policies in the West Bank as analogous to South African apartheid as part of a “soft war” against the Jewish state.

One veteran European diplomat called the dueling appearances by Barak and Fayyad at the highly charged conference a “mood-changing moment.” “Both sides were signaling what they really wanted to do,” the diplomat said. Now they just have to figure out how to do it.

More than a few were shocked that Barak dropped the "a" word. People forget that despite leading Operation Cast Lead, Barak has traditionally been one of Israel's leading peaceniks. Daniel Levy offers analysis here. 

Reports are that Obama's recent meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu lasted twice as long as expected. This meeting was after the Obama administration took a stand on stopping all new Israeli settlements, and Bibi basically said no.

Hillary then went to Israel and praised Bibi's decision as unprecedented (he said that he would not plan new settlements, but would still construct those that were planned). Arab public opinion roared in frustration and Obama looked spineless. Mahmoud Abbas, the unsung Palestinian president, can't take any more blows, and protests that he is stepping down. 

Now it seems that Obama is doing whatever he can do to backtrack on Clinton's statements and wrest concessions from Bibi in order to save Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, which could collapse if Abbas leaves. But Bibi's hardline stances keep his right-wing coalition together, so it will be hard to make him change position.

If you are a sick person and want to feel really depressed, curl up on the couch and read Lawrence Wright's excellent post-2006 history of Gaza, which is peppered with personal reporting. If you prefer a lighter dose, have a look at the Economist's take on Wright's piece.

Lawrence Wright is the opposite of the "microwave columnist," he's in his fifties but still out in the field trying to rub two sticks together. As far as I'm concerned, there is no better American reporter on the Arab world. And if you've never read anything by Lawrence Wright, get his book on Al-Qaeda in the lead up to 9/11. Otherwise, you don't know what you're missing.

If you ever wonder why Tom Friedman still has his Sunday column, it's for instant classics like these: 

"...the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has left the realm of diplomacy. It is now more of a calisthenic, like weight-lifting or sit-ups, something diplomats do to stay in shape..."

Ditto for the North Korea nuclear talks. Please, let's not also make Iranian nuclear talks the next semi-permanent addition to the diplomatic olympics.

Friedman then goes on to call for the U.S. to just pull out of the peace process, which does have a cathartic appeal to it at the moment:

"If we are still begging Israel to stop building settlements, which is so manifestly idiotic, and the Palestinians to come to negotiations, which is so manifestly in their interest, and the Saudis to just give Israel a wink, which is so manifestly pathetic, we are in the wrong place. It’s time to call a halt to this dysfunctional “peace process,” which is only damaging the Obama team’s credibility."

But then flashback to 2007, when Friedman was chastising Bush for taking such a "realistic" approach and not engaging:

You can make fun all you want of Bill Clinton’s “naïve” Middle East peace passion, notes Mr. Clinton’s top negotiator, Dennis Ross, but the fact is four times more Israelis and Palestinians died fighting each other during the “realistic,” “pro-Israel,” sideline-sitting Bush years of 2001 to 2005 than in the “naïve” decade of intense U.S. peacemaking — dominated by President Clinton — from Madrid to Oslo, 1991 to 2000.

This is, of course, the advantage of being a columnist rather than a politician.

Back to Obama, not engaging would also have hurt his credibility- he raised the stakes with his Cairo speech. But what really hurt his credibility was that the Administration tried to do what every common sense person agrees on- stop the settlement building, and then backtracked when it ran up against Netanyahu's obstinacy. At the same time, the stars might just not be aligned--Netanyahu is too conservative and Abbas is too weak for any progress to be possible at the moment.