What's the difference?

Click image for full Eric Lewis/DailyKos cartoon.

Not funny

... but true.

Click image for full Tony Auth cartoon. Don't expect funny.

Making a living instead of a dying

Could attacks on unpatched vulnerabilities of Internet Explorer include good news?

Microsoft noted the upswing in attacks on the company's Malware Protection Center blog late Saturday. "The trend for now is going upwards," said researchers Ziv Mador and Tareq Saadecom on the blog. "We saw a huge increase in the number of reports today compared to yesterday."

Jew and Arab working together on security. (O.K., I'm guessing from their names, but it's a plausible guess.) It's their job, nothing more noble.

It's not a coincidence that peace took root in Northern Ireland at a time when the economy was booming on the whole island. For a change, there was plenty to go around, so anti-Catholic job discrimination no longer appeared to make even short-run sense. Much of the demand was from overseas, and we didn't give a damn which side of the wall that lilting Irish broque lived on. Most of us couldn't even tell the quite distinct accents apart.

Duhbya and the neocons tried a broad-strokes military solution to the Middle East. It didn't work.

The solution I'd like to see tried in Israel and Palestine is bottom-up, start-small economics. People who have worked hard and have a lot to lose don't blow each other up. They're also sleeping at night for the next day's work instead of conspiring.

The radical Palestinians know this. That's why their people remain in refugee camps after sixty years.

The Israeli security forces know this. They cut off border crossing during security crises, in part to squeeze the working Palestinians. I don't blame them for securing their borders, but we all need to find a way to help the Palestinians make a living, instead of making a dying.

Legacy fluffing didn't work

Duh! Everyone with two brain cells to rub together knew that Duhbya's Israel/Palestine peace plan had zero chance from the moment it was announced.

Of course, Obama was just there, wasn't he? It must be his fault! Yeah, that's the ticket.

Settlements vs. settlement

If you were an Israeli, why would you want to build more settlements in the West Bank?

1. West Bank? Where's that? We're building our birthright in Judea and Samaria. This is the Zionist fanatic's answer. It assumes that YHWH granted the land in perpetuity to his chosen people. There is no prospect of peace down this path.
2. The settlers are an important coalition partner. This is the domestic politician's answer. It trades electoral success now for more difficulty in the future. In the long run - is there any other? - it condemns Israel and the Palestinians to perpetual conflict.
3. We're creating facts on the ground. This is the statesman's (Risk-player's) answer. What they're not saying is that these facts will eventually have to be traded away for the Palestinian right of return, which for Israel is a never-happen, non-starting method of slow suicide. But see #2.
4. It's our answer to terror. Settlement expansion provides a goad to the Palestinians to seek peace whenever they choose war ... or vote for Hamas. Uh, how's that working out so far?
5. What have I missed?
   

I used to think without any claim of particular insight that the shape of an eventual settlement between Israel and Palestine was obvious:

• Palestinians give up right of return.
• Israelis give up the settlements. They'd probably have to retrench the wall to the 1967 border, too, but I have no problem with the wall itself.
  
• Palestinians get the old Arab Quarter in Jerusalem for their capital.
• Palestinians commit to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
  
• Compensation and economic aid for both sides from the U.S., Europe, and Russia (yeah, sure). After all, we midwifed this problem by expiating our guilt over the Holocaust onto contested land.
• No heavy weapons for the Palestinians, but outside military guarantees, probably from Europe since neither the U.S. (too pro-Israeli) nor the U.N. (too pro-Palestinian) would be seen as an honest broker.

As time passes, though, I'm much less sure that a lasting Israeli majority or anyone on the Palestinian side would make any kind of deal other than the unconditional surrender of the other side. And that just isn't going to happen.

If Duhbya bought the PNAC program that intervening militarily in Middle East religious conflicts could solve the Israel-Palestine problem, and it appears he did, maybe he invaded the wrong place. Yeah, sure.

Maybe a solution has to bubble up from the bottom? How about two changes:

• A guaranteed job for every Palestinian male between 17 and 65. Help them have something to lose and keep most of them too tired for conspiracies.
• The end of blanket military deferments for all groups in Israel, notably the ultra-orthodox. Help them have something to lose, too.

Ideas? Anyone? Because what we've had so far sure as hell hasn't worked.

Update (6/24/2011) - minor editorial improvements.

Impunity

Does Duhbya even know what 'impunity' means? Of course he does! He's lived all his life without consequences.

I would think that at least he would be outraged that a parvenu like Osama bin Laden would have the same deal. Duhbya's granddaddy didn't give a shit about Jews before there even was a (modern) Israel. It's pretty rich that Duhbya gets to lecture the Knesset about how traitorous the Democrats are (h/t Eschaton), when Duhbya couldn't smoke Osama if he were a cigar.