Showing posts with label roger cohen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roger cohen. Show all posts

Friday, April 20, 2018

From Roger Cohen in the New York Times, referring to the weekly Gaza riots:
You know pornography when you see it. You know a disproportionate military response when you see it. It’s stomach turning.

Would Roger Cohen consider the killing of 16 civilians in order to silence an enemy TV station for a short time period to be "disproportionate?"

Because NATO doesn't.

In the  Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the case is reviewed. In short:

On 23 April 1999, at 0220, NATO intentionally bombed the central studio of the RTS (state-owned) broadcasting corporation at 1 Aberdareva Street in the centre of Belgrade. The missiles hit the entrance area, which caved in at the place where the Aberdareva Street building was connected to the Takovska Street building. While there is some doubt over exact casualty figures, between 10 and 17 people are estimated to have been killed.

 NATO intentionally bombed the Radio and TV station and the persons killed or injured were civilians. The questions are: was the station a legitimate military objective and; if it was, were the civilian casualties disproportionate to the military advantage gained by the attack? .... Insofar as the attack actually was aimed at disrupting the communications network, it was legally acceptable.

Assuming the station was a legitimate objective, the civilian casualties were unfortunately high but do not appear to be clearly disproportionate....

Assuming the RTS building to be a legitimate military target, it appeared that NATO realised that attacking the RTS building would only interrupt broadcasting for a brief period....

 On the basis of the above analysis and on the information currently available to it, the committee recommends that the OTP not commence an investigation related to the bombing of the Serbian TV and Radio Station.
The prosecutor said that there was no reason to prosecute this as a war crime, as the attack on a broadcasting station that killed 16 (according to later reports) was not disproportionate

So, Roger, do you really know a disproportionate military response when you see it? Or only when Israel somehow manages to kill people, a vast majority who are linked to terror groups hiding among tens of thousands of civlians - is that the case that you consider disproportionate?

I can't comment on how well Cohen knows pornography, but his knowledge of international law is sorely lacking.

Actually, there is a phrase to describe what it feels like to read an NYT column that assumes that Cohen's gut instincts against Israel are more accurate than international law. 

The phrase is "stomach-turning."





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Friday, February 17, 2017

Roger Cohen weighs in on this week's meeting between Netanyahu and Trump with his characteristic lack of knowing what he is talking about.

Here's the one example that proves that one simply cannot trust a New York Times columnist to say anything remotely true:

Netanyahu was explicit. He wants a Jewish state that retains “the overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River.” That, he claimed, was what he’s been saying for years. Wrong. When he first reluctantly admitted the possibility of two states in 2009, he insisted Palestine be “demilitarized.” That’s not the same as total Israeli security control.
Bibi's 2009 speech didn't mention the Jordan Valley  - but it didn't have to. That was part of Israeli demands way before Netanyahu. Yitzchak Rabin said it shortly before he was assassinated: " "The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term" Sharon also insisted on it. It was a well known position - for anyone who actually follows the news from Israel, unlike Roger Cohen who only pretends to.

In fact, Netanyahu said this explicitly in 2011 - not to the Israeli cabinet, but to a joint session of Congress!:

So it is therefore absolutely vital for Israel’s security that a Palestinian state be fully demilitarized. And it is absolutely vital that Israel maintain a long-term military presence along the Jordan River. Solid security arrangements on the ground are necessary not only to protect the peace, they are necessary to protect Israel in case the peace unravels. For in our unstable region, no one can guarantee that our peace partners today will be there tomorrow. 
So Netanyahu really has been saying it for years. Cohen just didn't bother to check his facts.

Because since he thinks he's an expert, he doesn't need to bother with such trivialities as truth.



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Friday, October 28, 2016

Roger Cohen writes in the New York Times about how awful Israel is for its policy of "occupation":

 There is agreement on very little in the fractious Holy Land, but on one issue there is near unanimity these days: A two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more distant than ever, so unimaginable that it appears little more than an illusion sustained by lazy thinking, interest in the status quo or plain exhaustion.

From Tel Aviv to Ramallah in the West Bank, from the largely Arab city of Nazareth to Jerusalem, I found virtually nobody on either side prepared to offer anything but a negative assessment of the two-state idea. Diagnoses ranged from moribund to clinically dead. Next year it will be a half-century since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank began. More than 370,000 settlers now live there, excluding in East Jerusalem. The incorporation of all the biblical Land of Israel has advanced too far, for too long, to be reversed now.

Greater Israel is what Israelis know; the smaller Israel west of the Green Line that emerged from the 1947-49 war of independence is a fading memory. The right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with its contempt for Palestinians and dissenting voices in general, prefers things that way, as the steady expansion of settlements demonstrates.

Cohen - and every liberal columnist in the world, plus the leaders of the EU and the US - are so sure that Israel's steady expansion of settlements is the  major problem in the region that they should be able to answer a simple question:

How much new land has been taken from Palestinians since the Clinton parameters in Taba in 2000?

You can answer in dunams or acres.

Everyone is so sure that Israel is expanding the settlements beyond the point of no return, but nobody is putting out any numbers in terms of land that has been given to Jewish Israelis.

Because it is minuscule.

The amount of land taken up by the settlements was less than 2% in 1993 and it remains less than 2% today, as of the latest information I can find. There are essentially no new facts on the ground that make a two-state solution any more difficult today than it was in 2000.

Now, I can tell you what has changed since the 2000 peace plan was rejected by Palestinians.

Palestinians started a terror war that killed thousands, using suicide bombing, shootings and other means. They raised a generation of children to hate Israel, teaching them that eventually and inevitably Israel will disappear. They encouraged knife attacks against Jewish grandmothers. Israel withdrew from Gaza and was rewarded with a terror statelet that shot thousands and thousands of rockets and mortars to civilian areas in Israel itself.

All of those facts tend to make Israelis a little less enthusiastic about peace. But that doesn't mean they don't desperately want it.

If the Palestinians would accept the Clinton plan today, along with true peace between the two states, the supposedly right-wing Israeli public would overwhelmingly support it.

Roger Cohen knows this. But he prefers to blame Israel for the bullheadedness of the Palestinian leadership.

Why are these facts so hard to understand?

Because of "good Jews" like Roger Cohen and Peace Now and J-Street and Tom Friedman, who give cover for Palestinian crimes and intransigence by always primarily blaming Israel and Likud for the lack of peace.

Open your eyes, Roger.




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Sunday, January 05, 2014

After my latest takedown of the NYT's Roger Cohen was published on Algmeiner, he sent out two tweets. One linked to Mondoweiss attacking him from the crazy Left:




And the next linked to mine:

He obviously doesn't understand why I say "Palestinian Arabs" instead of "Palestinians," which is something Menachem Begin used to be particular about. And I didn't do any real research for the piece beyond what I had already done for years. Which means that, in effect, Cohen is admitting that I posted stuff he was unaware of - as I wrote in the piece.

Also, by putting my post and Mondoweiss' next to each other, Cohen is being self-congratulatory that since he is being attacked from both sides the truth must be in the middle where he thinks he is, which is a rather poor assumption.

(h/t DE)



Wednesday, January 01, 2014

Once again, Roger Cohen blames Israel and Israel alone for his fearless prediction that current negotiations will fail:

But I am going to make one prediction for 2014. It is that, for all John Kerry’s efforts, this will be another year in which peace is not reached in the Middle East. ...

Plenty of bad things have happened between Israelis and Palestinians of late. There has been a steady uptick in violence. Israel’s freeing of 26 long-serving Palestinian prisoners was naturally greeted with joy in Ramallah, and by a wave of Israeli government tweets condemning the celebration of terrorists. Along with the release came word that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government will likely announce plans for 1,400 new housing units in the West Bank, just as Kerry arrives for his 10th peace-seeking visit. This has infuriated Palestinians. So, too, has an Israeli ministerial committee vote advancing legislation to annex settlements in the Jordan Valley. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the vote “finishes all that is called the peace process.” Such contemptuous characterization of a negotiation from a leading protagonist is ill-advised and bodes ill.

Then there is the rebounding Israel-is-a-Jewish-state bugbear: Netanyahu wants Palestinians to recognize his nation as such. He has recently called it “the real key to peace.” His argument is that this is the touchstone by which to judge whether Palestinians will accept “the Jewish state in any border” — whether, in other words, the Palestinian leadership would accept territorial compromise or is still set on reversal of 1948 and mass return to Haifa.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, says no; this “nyet” will endure. For Palestinians, such a form of recognition would amount to explicit acquiescence to second-class citizenship for the 1.6 million Arabs in Israel; undermine the rights of millions of Palestinian refugees; upend a national narrative of mass expulsion from land that was theirs; and demand of them something not demanded from Egypt or Jordan in peace agreements, nor of the Palestine Liberation Organization when, in 1993, Yasir Arafat wrote to Yitzhak Rabin that it “recognizes the right of Israel to live in peace and security.”

This issue is a waste of time, a complicating diversion when none is needed.

...Of course, any two-state peace agreement will have to be final and irreversible; it must ensure there are no further Palestinian claims on a secure Israel. It may well require some form of words saying the two states are the homelands of their respective peoples, a formula used by the Geneva Initiative. But that is for another day.

If Israel looks like a Jewish state and acts like a Jewish state, that is good enough for me — as long as it gets out of the corrosive business of occupation.
Cohen doesn't understand the basics of Israel's insistence that it be recognized as a Jewish state.

First of all, it is not Netanyahu who first came up with this formula - it was the liberal dream negotiating team of Livni and Olmert. As the Palestine Papers showed, the Palestinian Arabs refuse to, on principle even admit the existence of a Jewish people!

During the 2007 negotiations, Livni, rather passionately, argued about why such a formula is essential:

TL (Livni): I just want to say something. ...Our idea is to refer to two states for two peoples. Or two nation states, Palestine and Israel living side by side in peace and security with each state constituting the homeland for its people and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination...

AH (Akram Haniyeh): This refers to the Israeli people?

TL: [Visibly angered.] I think that we can use another session – about what it means to be a Jew and that it is more than just a religion. But if you want to take us back to 1947 -- it won’t help. Each state constituting the homeland for its people and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination in their own territory. Israel the state of the Jewish people -- and I would like to emphasize the meaning of “its people” is the Jewish people -- with Jerusalem the united and undivided capital of Israel and of the Jewish people for 3007 years... [The Palestinian team protests.] You asked for it. [AA: We said East Jerusalem!] …and Palestine for the Palestinian people. We did not want to say that there is a “Palestinian people” but we’ve accepted your right to self determination.

AA (Abu Alaa) : Why is it different?

TL: I didn’t ask for something that relates to my own self. I didn’t ask for recognizing something that is the internal decision of Israel. Israel can do so, it is a sovereign state. [We want you to recognize it.] The whole idea of the conflict is … the entire point is the establishment of the Jewish state. And yet we still have a conflict between us. We used to think it is because the Jews and the Arabs… but now the Palestinians… we used to say that we have no right to define the Palestinian people as a people. They can define it themselves. In 1947 it was between Jews and Arabs, and then [at that point the purpose] from the Israeli side to [was] say that the Palestinians are Arabs and not [Palestinians – it was an excuse not to create a Palestinian state. We'’ve passed that point in time and I'’m not going to raise it. The whole conflict between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is not the idea of creating a democratic state that is viable etc. It is to divide it into two.] For each state to create its own problem. Then we can ask ourselves is it viable, what is the nature of the two states. In order to end the conflict we have to say that this is the basis. I know that your problem is saying this is problematic because of the refugees. During the final status negotiations we will have an answer to the refugees. You know my position. Even having a Jewish state -- it doesn’t say anything about your demands. …. Without it, why should we create a Palestinian state?

...There is something that is shorter. I can read something with different wording:
That the ultimate goal is constituting the homeland for the Jewish people and the Palestinian people respectively, and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination in their own territory.
Linvi answers Cohen's objections. Cohen ignores this completely, and in all probability is not even aware of it, since his grasp of the Middle East is paper-thin.

Similarly, Cohen glosses over the Palestinian Arab demands of "return" as if that is not really a serious issue. In fact, the "Jewish state" formula is meant to eliminate this bogus "right" to destroy Israel demographically.

I suggest that Cohen read the Palestinian Basic Law of 2003, which describes "return" as the biggest issue: 

The birth of the Palestinian National Authority in the national homeland of Palestine, the land of their forefathers, comes within the context of continuous and vigorous struggle, during which the Palestinian people witnessed thousands of their precious children sacrificed as martyrs, injured persons and prisoners of war, all in order to achieve their people’s clear national rights, the foremost of which are the right of return, the right to self-determination and the right to establish an independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as a capital, under the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole, legitimate representative of the Arab Palestinian people wherever they exist.
Abbas repeats this practically every day.

Similarly, given that Cohen seems sympathetic to Palestinian arguments against Israel as a Jewish state, he must be unaware that the same Basic Law defines "Palestine" as an Arab state - and Islam is the official religion:
Palestine is part of the larger Arab world, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab nation. Arab unity is an objective that the Palestinian people shall work to achieve.

...Islam is the official religion in Palestine. Respect for the sanctity of all other divine religions shall be maintained.

The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation.
Then again, I shouldn't blame Cohen for his superficial understanding of the issues and his ignorance of the basic texts and words of the Palestinian Arabs. After all, he only gets his news from The New York Times.

See also My Right Word.


Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Predictably, Roger Cohen in the New York Times praises the Iran nuclear deal in  glowing terms:
Let us be clear. This is the best deal that could be had. Nothing, not even sustained Israeli bombardment, can reverse the nuclear know-how Iran possesses. The objective must be to ring-fence the acquired capability so its use can only be peaceful.
Given that the UN and the US had previously insisted that Iran doesn't have the right to enrich uranium, caving on that technical capability is far from "the best deal that could be had." Essentially, Cohen is saying that since Iran would never agree to anything beyond its red line, that must be accepted as gospel. Meanwhile, US and Israeli red lines are flexible.

But beyond that, Cohen tries to conflate Israel's position on Iran with its position on allowing a terror state sworn to its destruction to be set up next door:

Israel is the status-quo Middle Eastern power par excellence because the status quo cements its nuclear-armed domination. Any change is suspect, including popular Arab uprisings against despotism. As changes go, this U.S.-Iranian breakthrough is big, almost as big as an Israeli-Palestinian peace would be.

Just as the United States has had to adapt to a world where its power is unmatched but no longer determinant, Israel will have to do the same. With enlightened leadership this adaptation could strengthen the Jewish state, securing the nation through integration in its region rather than domination of it. For now Israel is some way from this mind-set. Its overriding prism is military.
Cohen obviously does not inhabit the same planet as the rest of us.

In the real world, Israel has sought for 65 years to be integrated into the Middle East. It sought peace with its neighbors; and its main goal after peace plans are signed is full normalization with its neighbors, with free travel and economic cooperation on both sides. Hell,  Israel even values and integrates Arab cuisine and culture in its own state, which Arabs consider "theft." Nothing would please Israel more than to be able to cooperate with Arab states on issues like water conservation and desalination, deforestation of deserts, medicine and a host of other common issues.

Who is against such integration? One guess.

Security is uppermost in Israeli minds, not its military. Cohen is obviously too obtuse to understand the difference.
Diplomacy involves compromise; risk is inherent to it. Iran is to be tested. Nobody can know the outcome. Things may unravel but at least there is hope. Perhaps this is what is most threatening to Netanyahu. He has never been willing to test the Palestinians in a serious way — test their good faith, test ending the humiliations of the occupation, test from strength the power of justice and peace. He has preferred domination, preferred the Palestinians down and under pressure.
During Netanyahu's first term, he signed the Wye River agreement with Arafat, that transferred land from Israeli control to PA rule. Imagine that.

However, it is true that Bibi wasn't in office when Israel offered a Palestinian Arab state in 2001, and the Palestinian Arabs responded with a wave of suicide bombings. He wasn't in office when Sharon withdrew from Gaza which led the way to unprecedented rocket attacks on Israeli communities. He wasn't in office when another state was offered in 2007 only to be rejected again.

One would have to be either blind or maliciously biased against Israel to think that the Palestinian Arab good faith wasn't tested these multiple times - and they failed every single time.

Cohen isn't blind.

(h/t PC)

Saturday, October 05, 2013

In what is perhaps his most remarkable feat, Roger Cohen's latest op-ed for the New York Times - where he critiques Binyamin Netanyahu's speech to the UN last week - gets everything wrong.

Even more remarkably, his main arguments are refuted by the contents of the speech itself. Which means that either Cohen didn't listen to or read the speech itself, or he consciously chose to lie about it.

Op-ed writers of course have more latitude than reporters do, but that latitude does not extend to simply making up facts.

Here we go:
Never has it been more difficult for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to convince the world that, as he put it in 2006: “It’s 1938. Iran is Germany.” He tried again at the United Nations this week. In a speech that strained for effect, he likened Iran to a 20th-century “radical regime” of “awesome power.” That would be the Third Reich.
Netanyahu:
The last century has taught us that when a radical regime with global ambitions gets awesome power, sooner or later, its appetite for aggression knows no bounds. That's the central lesson of the 20th century. Now, we cannot forget it.
Does Cohen disagree that Iran is a radical regime or does he disagree that that its acquisition of nuclear arms would give it "awesome power"?  Does he disagree that a nuclear-armed Iran would irrevocably alter the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East? Both of those facts are incontrovertible.

By any sane measure, Bibi is right and Cohen is wrong.
Among those who question this approach is David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee. Referring to the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, he wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz that, “Simply implying, for instance, that anyone who sits down with Rouhani is a modern-day Neville Chamberlain or Édouard Daladier won’t do the trick. To the contrary, it will only give offense and alienate.”

When Netanyahu’s staunchest supporters — the leaders of the American Jewish community — question his approach to Iran, the Israeli prime minister needs to stop calling Rouhani “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” his favored epithet, and start worrying about crying wolf.
At no point in Bibi's speech did he even imply that the world shouldn't talk with Iran. Here is exactly what he said:
So here's what the international community must do. First, keep up the sanctions. If Iran advances its nuclear weapons program during negotiations, strengthen the sanctions.

Second, don't agree to a partial deal. A partial deal would lift international sanctions that have taken years to put in place in exchange for cosmetic concessions that will take only weeks for Iran to reverse. Third, lift the sanctions only when Iran fully dismantles its nuclear weapons program.

My friends,
The international community has Iran on the ropes. If you want to knockout Iran's nuclear weapons program peacefully, don't let up the pressure. Keep it up.

We all want to give diplomacy with Iran a chance to succeed. But when it comes to Iran, the greater the pressure, the greater the chance.
It is Cohen's fantasy that Bibi called for no talks with Iran. Cohen is wrong.

Now, what about David Harris? Did he find Bibi's speech to be problematic, as Cohen implies?

Harris' article was written on September 27. Bibi's speech was October 1.He wasn't condemning Bibi's speech, he was saying his worries about Bibi's possible approach.

Hours after Bibi spoke, Harris enthusiastically praised Bibi's speech, days before Cohen's piece:
AJC Executive Director David Harris praised the Israeli leader’s speech.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered today a compelling clarion call for the entire world about Iran,” said Harris. “The stakes are very high, with no room for wishful or illusory thinking about Iran’s intentions. No one seeks confrontation for confrontation’s sake. But until the Iranian regime comes clean on its nuclear program and fully cooperates with the international community, maximum pressure is absolutely necessary. History’s lessons on this score could not be clearer.”
Cohen could have looked up Harris' comments before he wrote his column. Instead, he chose to misrepresent Harris' opinion written before the speech as if he was critiquing the speech. For this reason alone, Cohen should be fired.

Bibi and Harris are right, Cohen is wrong.
It is not just that the world has now heard from Netanyahu of the imminent danger of a nuclear-armed Iran for a very long time.
In Roger Cohen's world, apparently, getting sick of someone's warning about a threat than could affect literally billions of people gets old after a while. Best to ignore it. Cohen is wrong.
 It is not just that Israel has set countless “red lines” that proved permeable. 
Doing a New York Times search for the words "red line," "Netanyahu" "Iran" and "nuclear" finds nothing before Bibi's speech exactly one year ago. There has only been one red line. This speech showed that the entire reason Iran has not crossed the only red line Israel has set is because of sanctions. There have been no permeable "red lines." Cohen is lying.
 It is not just that the Islamic Republic has been an island of stability compared to its neighbors Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. 
Ruthless dictatorships with strong leaders are generally stable. Syria and Egypt were stable for decades before their respective revolutions. Does that make them desirable? Cohen is wrong.
It is not just that, as Rouhani’s election shows, Iran is no Nazi-like totalitarian state with a single authority but an authoritarian regime subject to liberalizing and repressive waves.
Bibi answered the ridiculous claim that Rouhani's election proves liberalism in the very speech Cohen is attacking:
Presidents of Iran have come and gone. Some presidents were considered moderates, others hardliners. But they've all served that same unforgiving creed, that same unforgetting regime – that creed that is espoused and enforced by the real power in Iran, the dictator known in Iran as the Supreme Leader, first Ayatollah Khomeini and now Ayatollah Khamenei. President Rouhani, like the presidents who came before him is a loyal servant of the regime. He was one of only six candidates the regime permitted to run for office. Nearly 700 other candidates were rejected.
All major decisions in Iran are made by Khamanei. The president reports to the "Supreme Leader." Cohen knows this, and yet he chooses to ignore it. Cohen is wrong.
No, Netanyahu’s credibility issue is rooted in the distorted priorities evident in a speech that was Iran-heavy and Palestine-lite. The real challenge to Israel as a Jewish and democratic nation is the failure to achieve a two-state peace with the Palestinians and the prolongation of a West Bank occupation that leaves Israel overseeing millions of disenfranchised Palestinians. ...Iran has long been an effective distraction from the core dilemma of the Jewish state: Palestine. But global impatience with this diversionary strategy is running high.
But Israel, even with the Palestinian issue, is also an "island of stability compared to its neighbors" Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. Isn't that important in Cohen's worldview? It sure seemed that way only one paragraph ago.

Additionally, the world is quite  impatient with Palestinian Arabs who have been given every chance for peace since Oslo. Arabs are far more interested in Iran than in their Palestinian brethren. Cohen's idea that the Palestinian Arab issue is more important to Israel's future than Iran is fantasy. In other words, Cohen is wrong.

Iran has much to answer for. Rouhani’s “Iran poses absolutely no threat to the world or the region” is a preposterous statement. It has hidden aspects of its enrichment program. It has taken American and Israeli lives and attacked U.S. interests, through the Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah and other arms of its security apparatus. It has placed odious Israel hatred and America-as-Satan at the core of its revolutionary ideology. President Obama is right to demand transparent, verifiable action for any deal.

What Iran has not done is make a bomb or even, in the view of Western intelligence services, decide to do so.
Here is a time-worn method where columnists pretend to briefly acknowledge another side to the story while sweeping it under the rug. But Bibi's speech gave in great detail the evidence that Iran is hell-bent on creating a military nuclear device as well as how Rouhani bragged about hiding the nuclear program from the West. While Iran may not have greenlighted the building of an actual nuclear device, it is clearly doing everything that would be necessary to build one quickly should it decide to. As David Albright of ISIS testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week:
If Iran decided to produce nuclear explosive materials today, it could use its gas centrifuge program to produce weapon-grade uranium (WGU). However, Iran’s fear of military strikes likely deters it at this time from producing WGU or nuclear weapons. However, if its centrifuge plants expand as currently planned, by the middle of 2014 these plants could have enough centrifuges to allow Iran to break out so quickly, namely rapidly produce WGU from its stocks of low enriched uranium, that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would likely not detect this breakout until after Iran had produced enough WGU for one or two nuclear weapons. ISIS calls this a “critical capability.”

If the Arak reactor operates, Iran could also create a plutonium pathway to nuclear weapons. This reactor can produce enough plutonium each year for one or two nuclear 2 weapons, heightening concerns that Iran aims to build nuclear weapons. Its operation would needlessly complicate negotiations and increase the risk of military strikes.
If Iran creates the ability to build a bomb in two weeks (the time between IAEA inspections,) the fact that it has not made a decision to build one becomes moot. At that point, nothing can be done to stop it. Cohen's bizarre idea that the two can be decoupled is fantasy, not fact. Cohen is wrong.

(There is plenty of other evidence that Iran's nuclear program is military, but that is outside the scope of this post.)
It is not in Israel’s interest to be a spoiler. Limited, highly monitored Iranian enrichment — accepted in principle by Obama but rejected by Netanyahu — is a far better outcome for Israel than going to war with Tehran. But, of course, any deal with Iran would also have to involve a change in the Iranian-American relationship. Israel does not believe that is in its interest, hence some of the bluster.
So, according to Cohen, Israel is more afraid of warm US-Iran relations than of being blown up. This is projection on Cohen's part, as this op-ed proves that it is Cohen who cares more about appearances than truth, and is more prone to make decisions based on bias than on facts. Cohen is wrong.

In this essay, Cohen is criticizing a speech that was never made and he cannot counter a single point - not one - that was actually in the speech. Which is why he resorts to lies.

In any sane world, Cohen should be ashamed to go out in public after writing such a thoroughly embarrassing article. In any sane world, the Times would let him go because of the danger Cohen's columns bring to its own rapidly sinking reputation.

This piece is not just wrong-headed. It is not just showing that Cohen's opinions are wrong. No, this essay shows that Roger Cohen is guilty of editorial malpractice; he is someone who consciously and willingly ignores facts and makes up his own just to support an unsupportable thesis. A doctor or lawyer or teacher who acted this unprofessionally would be unceremoniously fired after a performance like this. Op-ed writers can and should push their opinions, but they should not have the right to make up their own facts.

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

  • Tuesday, September 06, 2011
  • Elder of Ziyon
Roger Cohen in the New York Times says that Israel's refusal to apologize to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara is terrible for Israel:

Overall, the panel finds that Israel should issue “an appropriate statement of regret” and “make payment for the benefit of the deceased and injured victims and their families.”

Yes, Israel, increasingly isolated, should do just that. An apology is the right course and the smart course. What’s good for Egypt — an apology over lost lives — is good for Turkey, too.

...[L]ocked in its siege mentality, led by the nose by Lieberman and his ilk — unable to grasp the change in the Middle East driven by the Arab demand for dignity and freedom, inflexible on expanding settlements, ignoring U.S. prodding that it apologize — Israel is losing one of its best friends in the Muslim world, Turkey. The expulsion last week of the Israeli ambassador was a debacle foretold.

Israeli society, as it has shown through civic protest, deserves much better.
First, let's get Cohen's usual sloppiness with the facts out of the way.

The Palmer Commission recommended that Israel express regret, not that Israel apologize. And Israel did just that - over a year ago.

Israel reiterated that regret on Friday when the report was released. So Cohen is claiming that Israel obstinately refuses to do what Palmer recommended - when Israel already did.

Moreover, Israel did give a full apology to Egypt after the deaths of soldiers in the Sinai as Israel was pursuing terrorists - and Egypt rejected that apology as insufficient. In other words, demands for apologies in the Muslim world are a political tool, not an actual reflection of national pride, and acceding to them just engender more demands.

But what do you expect from a prestigious New York Times columnist - actual facts?

Let's look at the larger context. Cohen is insisting that Israel spologize for killing Turkish citizens who were violently attacking IDF soldiers with clubs, knives and chains as well as throwing soldiers overboard.  The reason is that Israel's refusal to apologize hurts Israel-Turkish relations.

Last I checked, relations are a two way street. So it is equally accurate to say that Turkey's demand for an apology that it does not deserve is hurtful for Israel-Turkey relations. The Palmer Commission report, that I doubt Cohen actually read, blamed Turkey for not doing enough to stop the flotilla as violence was fairly likely.

To Cohen and his friends, however, Turkey's trumped up demand for dignity is inherently more important than Israel's dignity. Only Israel should bend its knee in abject apology (an apology that would probably also be deemed "insufficient") - in order to save the relationship. Israel must adhere to the demands of realpolitik while Islamist thugs are free to demand more and more to protect their own pride.

As usual, Israel is expected to act like the grownup, to look beyond intangibles like national pride and indeed the truth of what happened on the Mavi Marmara, while Muslim countries are expected to act like children that can make demands of apology from Western states whenever they want to - and then raise the stakes when the apologies aren't abject enough.

Cohen would never require any Muslim or Arab nation apologize for anything done to the West. That's just not how things are done in the Middle East. To him, only Arabs and Muslims have pride - Westerners don't.


As stupid and inaccurate as Cohen's piece was, he looks absolutely sane next to MJ Rosenberg, who used Cohen's piece as a springboard to come to the hilariously imbecilic conclusion that Turkey is Israel's best friend for demanding an apology and not acting like an "enabler."

Sunday, May 01, 2011

Another classic case of Cohen craziness:
So Qaddafi always thought this could happen, even 42 years into his rule. He feared someone might slice away the myths — Arab nationalist, African unifier, all-powerful non-president — and leave him, disrobed, a little man in a vast vault with nowhere left to go. In the twisted mind of the despot now derided here as “the man with the big hair,” his own demise was the tousle-coiffed specter that would not go away.

Strange, then, that the United States and Europe never thought this could happen — not to Qaddafi, or Mubarak, or Ben Ali, or any of the other murderous plunderers, some now gone, others slaughtering their own people, here in Libya, or in Syria, or Yemen. Policy was based on the mistaken belief that these leaders would last forever.

They were paranoid about their fates. We were convinced of their permanence.

Of course it was not just a conviction about their inevitability that drove U.S. policy toward these dictators. It was a cynical decision to place counterterrorism and security at the top of the agenda and human rights — in this case Arab rights — at the bottom. It was about Big Oil interests. And, to some degree, it was about the perception of what served the security of America’s closest regional ally, Israel.
I just looked through decades of Roger Cohen's columns, and he seems to have missed that Qaddafi might be in danger one day as well. How could he have missed it? Strange, then, that he never thought this could happen!

Equally strange is that he is not predicting that the same thing could happen to Mahmoud Abbas, or the Saudi royals, or Turkey's leadership, or Iran's. No, Cohen can blame the US for bowing to Zionist perceptions in their blindness, but his brilliance - where he can confidently predict what the US and Europe are too stupid and shortsighted to see - is still being obscured.

Come on, Roger - tell us who's next!

And why didn't you sound the alarm in, say, 2008? Wasn't it all so obvious to pundits who don't have the Zionist and counter-terrorist smoke in their eyes?

Monday, April 20, 2009

Roger Cohen's obsessiveness with idiocy continues unabated. Now he is trying to say that Israel's fears are irrational:
How frightened should an Israeli teenager really be, how inhabited by the old existential terror, the perennial victimhood, the Holocaust fear and vulnerability from which Israel was supposed to provide deliverance?

Yes, Israel is small — all the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea is scarcely bigger than Maryland — and its environment hostile. This, as former President Jimmy Carter notes in a fine new book, makes it vulnerable. But as Carter also writes in “We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land,” Israel has a “military force that is modern, highly trained and superior to the combined forces of all its potential adversaries.”
Cohen, and Carter, miss the point yet again.

Israel's concern isn't only for the nation to survive, but for its people to survive as well. Just because Qassam rockets and suicide bombings aren't an existential threat doesn't mean they are tolerable, because the quality of life is of paramount importance, not just "the state." The threat to Israel's people is an asymmetric threat from which the IDF's conventional strength becomes far less relevant. Ignoring that threat is rhetorical sophistry.

All the tanks in the world would not have saved the World Trade Center, and neither would have negotiations. Are annual 9/11's a manageable risk for the US? Are such fears irrational?

Cohen then papers over Israel's major legitimate existential fear:
Israel has the most dynamic and creative society in the region, one that does not convict American journalists in shameful secret trials, as Iran has just done with Roxana Saberi; it has never fought a war with Iran; and it knows — despite all the noise — that Persia, at more than 3,000 years and counting, is not in the business of hastening its own suicide through militarist folly.
Besides Iran's attempts to overthrow and take over the Middle East via Hezbollah, via influencing Syria, through agents in Egypt and by sending weapons to and training Hamas, they have a little thing called a nuclear program. Persia didn't pursue these policies - but the Islamic Republic does. And Islamic fundamentalists have the irrationality that makes the concept of suicide bombing desirable.

Perhaps Iran wouldn't directly shoot nuclear bombs to Israel, but how much of a mental leap does one need to imagine them smuggling nukes to Hezbollah or Hamas? How absurd is it to think that Islamists would happily destroy themselves and their people to hurt or destroy Israel? Isn't that their entire modus operandi today?

Cohen goes on to his familiar meme that the existence of Jews living in Biblical Israel is the real threat to the Jewish state, not Iran nor terror nor rockets nor the threat of an Islamist takeover of "moderate" Arab countries. To Cohen, the Jews should only worry about Jews who actually care about their land. Get rid of them, and the threat to Israel would magically disappear, according to Cohen.

In Cohen's bizarre mindset, the only irrational people are the Jews for being fearful that the much more pragmatic Islamists and Arabs will do something - irrational. Nah, that would never happen!

Monday, April 13, 2009

What can you say about someone who is so consistently wrongheaded and stubborn as to keep digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole of insanity?

Today, Roger Cohen, the self-appointed guru of realpolitik, unveils his Grand Plan for Peace, Sunshine and Unicorns!
Iran ceases military support for Hamas and Hezbollah; adopts a “Malaysian” approach to Israel (nonrecognition and noninterference); agrees to work for stability in Iraq and Afghanistan; accepts intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency verification of a limited nuclear program for peaceful ends only; promises to fight Qaeda terrorism; commits to improving its human rights record.

The United States commits itself to the Islamic Republic’s security and endorses its pivotal regional role; accepts Iran’s right to operate a limited enrichment facility with several hundred centrifuges for research purposes; agrees to Iran’s acquiring a new nuclear power reactor from the French; promises to back Iran’s entry into the World Trade Organization; returns seized Iranian assets; lifts all sanctions; and notes past Iranian statements that it will endorse a two-state solution acceptable to the Palestinians.

There is a fundamental flaw when trying to apply realpolitik to the Muslim world.

Realpolitik by definition is not ideological - and Islam by definition is.

The vapid assumption that ideologically motivated Muslims such as the Iranian leadership can violate their core principles for practical considerations is breathtakingly wrongheaded. The Islamic Republic of Iran styles itself as being based on moral and religious principles, and in reality they are not subject to compromise unless they are backed into a corner, when the principles may be downplayed but never changed.

Cohen's plan is fundamentally flawed in another way as well. It assumes that Iran's leaders are not only practical, but that they are trustworthy. For someone who thinks of himself as an expert on Iran, this betrays an unparalleled amount of self-deception on Cohen's part. In the past few years, how many times have we seen Iran flout the IAEA and UN? How many times have we seen them promise that they were only working towards a peaceful nuclear program, only to find out later about secret military nuclear programs that the IAEA has been banned from inspecting? Even Cohen agrees that Iran is working towards a "virtual nuclear power status" - even as Iran denies that today! If Cohen agrees that Iran is lying today about its aims, why on earth would he believe them if they would "agree" under his plan to stop funding and arming Hezbollah and Hamas? They are doing it covertly now!

Iran, however, would love this plan. It can easily lie and bifurcate about its "commitments" all the while happily accepting its increased prestige and power that would be given to it. To take an example, Iran would - and does - insist that it carefully respects the human rights of all its citizens even as it persecutes dissidents and executes minors.

One other point that Cohen makes that comes out of Neverland: the idea that Iran has endorsed a two-state solution "acceptable to the Palestinians." The only thing I can think of was an incident from last year where Iran's flag was placed on an advertisement by the PLO pushing the Arab peace plan. Iran's reaction was pretty explicit:
Iran condemns "any move taken by some Arab countries to push the recognition of the occupying Zionist regime in any manner, including in Islamic conferences."
How moderate! How practical!

Cohen is another of a long line of people who think that if they just shut their eyes tightly enough and believe, that when they can see again the world will be magically aligned with their fantasies.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Roger Cohen gifts us with his wisdom about the Middle East for the fourth consecutive week, in another op-ed to inform us of Iran's pragmatism and his insisting that the US match it:
From Egypt to Algeria to Afghanistan, Islamist movements are radicalized by dreams of establishing everlasting dominion; democracy is feared because it could prove to be their means to power. In Iran, by contrast, life is a daily exercise in compromises that temper Islam with the demands of modern life. Iran is emerging from extremist fervor as clerical absolutism and pluralism spar.

...Pragmatism is also one way of looking at Iran's nuclear program. A state facing a nuclear-armed Israel and Pakistan, American invasions in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, and noting that North Korea was not hit, might reasonably conclude that preserving the revolution requires nuclear resolve.
The blindness in these comments is mindboggling.

In one paragraph, he notes that most Islamist movements dream of world domination, but he claims Iran does not follow that model. Then, further down the page, he notes that indeed Iran is developing nuclear weapons and sees that as pragmatic as well.

Let's see. the Iranian revolution was the first successful modern Islamist takeover of an entire country; Iran is racing to join the nuclear club; they are now working furiously to increase the range of their ballistic missiles to threaten all of Europe and they now have a successful space program. Does this imply "pragmatism" or "an Islamist movement radicalized by dreams of establishing everlasting dominion?"

Cohen also defends his characterization of the Jewish community in Iran as proof that Iran is a tolerant society. Somehow, he doesn't seem to be aware of the Baha'is in Iran, who are facing persecution and whose faith has effectively become illegal under this pragmatic, modern regime:
A new embargo on freedom of expression has formally been announced. Iran’s Prosecutor General, Ayatollah Qorban-Ali Dorri-Najafabadi, has declared that the very expression of affiliation to the Bahá’í faith is illegal. This was communicated in a letter to the Minister of Intelligence, Ghulam-Husayn Ejeyee, who needs no encouragement to violate rights. Human Rights Watch named him one of Iran's 'Ministers of Murder' four years ago.

According to the Prosecutor General , everyone is free to have his own belief and faith. “However, no expression or declaration in order to disparage the thought of others, nor any attempt to teach them resulting in deception and agitation of minds is permitted.”

He goes on to determine that “the administration of the wayward Baha’i sect at all levels is illegal and forbidden … their danger to national security is documented and well-established.”

When you look at things from the perspective of a criminal, everything can be justified as "pragmatic." Most people don't do insane things in a vacuum; in their own worldview, things make sense. The problem is when their worldview is itself insane.

Roger Cohen, however, is very willing to accept the worldview of the Iranian mullahs as being just as valid as any Western viewpoint. This moral relativism can also only be described as insane - and one that Cohen is ill-equipped to notice himself, because, after all, this is his own worldview.

Monday, March 09, 2009

Roger Cohen, heady from all his newfound publicity and trying very hard to supplant Thomas Friedman as the NYT's wise man of the Middle East, decides that Hamas and Hezbollah need to be legitimized by the West:
The 1988 Hamas Charter is vile, but I think it’s wrong to get hung up on the prior recognition of Israel issue. Perhaps Hamas is sincere in its calls for Israel’s disappearance — although it has offered a decades-long truce — but then it’s also possible that Israel in reality has no desire to see a Palestinian state.
This paragraph is the perfect example of anti-Israel bias.

Hamas says explicitly, in many ways and at many times, that its goal is to destroy Israel. Israel, for better or worse, has explicitly accepted the idea of a Palestinian state for the past sixteen years.

Yet Cohen is willing to overlook Hamas' position - in fact, its entire raison d'etre - and assume that Hamas really wants to live in peace with Israel. His assumption, not borne out by even a wisp of a fact, is his basis for accepting Hamas.

But Israel really wanting peace? No, no, that's crazy! When Israelis says they want peace, they are lying! You can't trust those Israelis! They are much worse warmongers than Hamas terrorists are! As Cohen helpfully adds:
The Gaza war was a travesty; I have never previously felt so shamed by Israel’s actions.
Cohen, in a single paragraph, bends over backwards to exonerate Hamas for terror and implacable hate while at the same time accusing Israel of worse terror and implacable hate.

When Cohen calls for negotiations, he is asking for a process to begin where people's words have meaning; where the representatives of each side are assumed to be telling the truth and are putting their positions forth in good faith. Negotiations without the ability to trust the words of one of the sides is worthless. Cohen, however, calls Hamas leaders liars for saying they want to destroy Israel and calls Israeli leaders liars for saying they want to live in peace with Palestinian Arabs.

And he wants both sets of liars to negotiate!

This must be an example of that nuance that we keep hearing about from enlightened liberals - it means that they can read minds and extract the real, deeper truth that is at odds with all facts and explicit statements.

There's lots more to find disgusting about this piece; see Soccer Dad.


Thursday, March 05, 2009

If the examples I have given weren't enough, here's a letter to the New York Times concerning Cohen's belief that Iranian Jews are patriotic and free:
To the Editor:

As a Persian Jew whose family was sentenced to death by the Islamic Republic of Iran as “corrupters on earth” and “agents of Zionism,” I was amused by Roger Cohen’s vision of Iranian treatment of its Jewish population.

Perhaps Mr. Cohen should have interviewed the Persian Jews living in exile in Los Angeles, who would have told him not to assume that the Jews left in Iran can honestly complain about their status. If Iran is such a haven, why has the Jewish population of Iran only declined from the Safavid period, to 100,000 at the time of the Islamic Revolution to only 25,000 today?

Mr. Cohen could have asked my dad why Jews were called “ritually unclean” (a comment also reserved for stray dogs). He could talk to my grandfather about the pogroms that took place in Tehran and other cities when Jews walked on the same side of the street as a Muslim, or talk to the Jews of the city of Mashad who had to remain hidden as Jews for decades after being forced to convert to Islam.

Just because the Persians were not as efficient in killing or exiling their Jews as others were or just because there are a few synagogues left in Iran doesn’t mean that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not mean it when he says that Israel should be wiped off the map, or that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei didn’t mean it when he said that Israel is a “cancerous tumor of a state” that “should be removed from the region.”

David Simantob
Los Angeles, March 2, 2009
In Iran, as in all Muslim states, the tolerance of other religions only extends to the point at which they are perceived to be slightly threatening. There are a few Jews left over in Egypt and Syria and Yemen, and as in Iran their governments like to point to them as proof of their tolerance. But they will only tolerate those who toe the line, who publicly agree with their totalitarian masters and who submit to second-class citizen status.

Proof that this is anti-semitism and not only anti-Zionism could be seen from a simple thought experiment:

Imagine how these tolerant governments would react if a Jewish community wanted to build a single synagogue that is taller than the surrounding mosques.

Monday, March 02, 2009

by Michael Rubin in NRO:
I came across this column by the New York Times's Roger Cohen entitled "What Iran's Jews Say" and his defense of it, here. What to say? I'm familiar with the synagogue and attended it when I lived in Isfahan. I chatted with some of the university-aged students who had taken shelter in an attached guesthouse because, as Jews, they were beat up in the university dormitories. Men and women both referred to the Jews' representative in the Parliament as a flunky for the regime, and would not discuss problems or issues when he was around. Several would say one thing in the synagogue, but when we went to parks on took walks through the city, they would bend over backwards to make clear that they cannot talk freely in the synagogue since the walls have ears. The same sentiment was expressed at synagogues in Tehran and Shiraz. Cohen, however, talks to him as the authority and takes his word that he is not a quisling. True, Jews are better of in Iran than in many neighboring countries, but there is a reason why their number has dropped by 80% over the last three decades. Cohen simply appears on a propaganda tour; parachuting in, an eager receptacle for his regime minders. It should not surprise that his column now graces the pages of the regime's mouth piece, The Tehran Times.
As others have noted, this is a lot like Walter Duranty, Herbert Matthews and Mike Wallace credulously believing the words of dictators and their quislings.

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Nuance is wonderful - when you get to choose what is nuanced and what is absolute.

Roger Cohen responds to critics of his column about how wonderful life is for the Jews of Iran. (I can't say he actually answers any of the questions those critics brought up, but he has plenty of indignation for them.) He lets us know that it is wrong, very wrong, to see things as being black and white:
But the equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic. Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel over-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures.

I return to this subject because behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one - the U.S. propensity to fixate on and demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens, with a sometimes disastrous chain of results.
Does anyone find it the slightest bit disingenuous to see Cohen blaming the US for being "one dimensional" on Iran, when Iranian newspapers and officials openly wish for the destruction of America?

But Cohen's clear lens to the world, of moral relativism and shades of grey, gets strangely distorted when the topic comes up of whom he considers truly evil:
It's worth recalling that hateful, ultra-nationalist rhetoric is no Iranian preserve. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's race-baiting anti-Arab firebrand, may find a place in a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Funny how all the nuance so suddenly disappears!

Cohen doesn't manage in his column to find an answer to this letter in the NYT:
To the Editor:

I was a 9-year-old girl living in Tehran when my family fled to America as a result of the Islamic Revolution. We didn’t leave Iran because of the weather, but because of a second-class existence transformed into a nightmare of religious persecution, which the few remaining Jews that Roger Cohen found have sadly internalized and accepted.

For Mr. Cohen to suggest that Iranian Jews have anything close to religious freedom or free expression in Iran is to discredit the long history of Muslim oppression and to deny the experience of generations of Jews who locked themselves in their homes during the Ashura holidays lest they become the target of the frenzied Shiite masses who filled the streets, or who cringed when they were called a word meaning dirty and impure and told to wait at the end of the line to draw water.

What about the Jewish schools and institutions that were systematically shut down after the Islamic Revolution? Or the fact that while Palestinians and Israeli Arabs are free to shout “Death to Israel,” Iranian Jews are forced to?

We must never forget the true history of Jews under Muslim regimes — my history.

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