That’s the only thing one can conclude after reading things like this:

Ambassador Dan Carmon, head of Israel’s UN delegation, met with the commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Maj.-Gen. Claudio Graziano on Friday over the remarks he made about Israel.

On Thursday Graziano accused Israel of unilaterally violating United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, the cease-fire agreement that ended the 34-day Second Lebanon War between Israel and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. . . .

The Italian general, meanwhile, said that Hezbollah recognizes Resolution 1701, and that the militant Lebanese group and UNIFIL forces enjoy excellent cooperation with one another. He added that apart from UN and Lebanese soldiers and local hunters, no one is armed south of the Litani River.

When asked about the smuggling of weapons into Lebanon, Graziano said he could not ensure that the area under his jurisdiction would be impenetrable, though he said there is no evidence of arms smuggling nor has there been movement of armed gunmen.

This is, of course, fantasy-talk of a high order. Even Lebanese groups are exasperated with Graziano’s constant apologies for Hezbollah. But I don’t think such statements are caused by any special animus toward Israel. They are caused by pure fear — the fear that if UNIFIL should say or do anything to upset the delicate and self-preservational dance between blue helmets and yellow flags in Lebanon, peacekeepers will be killed, and UNIFIL’s failure and corruption will become front-page news.

UNIFIL has long been captive to the familiar bureaucratic imperative of ensuring, first and foremost, its own survival, both physical and institutional. UNIFIL’s mission thus becomes not the implementation of UN Resolution 1701, but the prevention of a Hezbollah attack on its forces. This requires UNIFIL’s commander to say that Hezbollah is complying just perfectly with 1701, whereas the Israelis, who do not express their dissatisfaction by slaughtering peacekeepers, are violating it every time they fly a plane over Lebanon to take pictures of . . . well, of Hezbollah’s violations of 1701.

Quentin Tarantino’s newest film, which starts filming momentarily, looks interesting:

Inglorious Bastards, in a nutshell, focuses on the escapades of eight Jewish-American soldiers who are parachuted behind enemy lines and ordered by their commanding officer to “git me 100 Nazi scalps”. It is not a Holocaust movie, as such. But it uses the death camps as a touchstone and therein lies the danger.

Of course, this would have to be made by a Gentile. A Jewish filmmaker would have the soldiers scalp some Nazis and then agonize over the moral implications of their actions for six hours, rather than getting on with the important business of scalping more Nazis.

The response of the West to Russia’s invasion has been to dress up in tough rhetoric a helpless message: What can we do? And there isn’t much the free world can do. The most aggressive proposals consist only of arming the Georgian army and throwing military and diplomatic support behind other nations which live in Russia’s crosshairs. One important reality narrows options and prevents serious consideration of a First Gulf War-style response: the fact that Russia is a nuclear power.

This is a lesson surely not lost on the Iranian regime, which like Russia has territorial designs on its neighbors, wishes to play an outsized role in its region, and views an American-allied democracy on its borders (Iraq) with about as much benevolence as Putin views such nations on his borders. Those who confidently predict a “containable and deterrable” nuclear Iran should consider the suddenly not-so-deterrable nuclear Russia and ask themselves whether such confidence is warranted.

David Frum asks, “Who’s behind the fraud?” — the fraud having first been Ron Suskind’s claim that the White House ordered the CIA to forge documents, and, in its latest version, the claim that Dick Cheney tapped a willing Doug Feith at the Pentagon to carry out the forgery.

The person who has dragged Feith’s name into the controversy is a contributor to the American Conservative magazine named Philip Giraldi, who posted the allegation on the magazine’s blog and sourced it to an “extremely reliable” contact in the “intelligence community.”

Should Philip Giraldi be trusted? No: He is a conspiracy theorist obsessed with Jews and Israel. In Giraldi’s world, scratching the surface of almost any event exposes the sinister machinations of international Jewry.

1. He recently speculated that Israel would attempt to trigger war between the United States and Iran:

There are a number of possible “false flag” scenarios in which the Israelis could insert a commando team in the Persian Gulf or use some of their people inside Iraq to stage an incident that they will make to look Iranian, either by employing Iranian weapons or by leaving a communications footprint that points to Tehran’s involvement.

2. He thinks that someone is trying to frame Iran for American military casualties:

Iran has been on the receiving end of what appears to be an officially orchestrated but poorly executed disinformation campaign regarding its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

3. Giraldi finds Israeli agents everywhere. In a critique of a Benny Morris New York Times op-ed, he says that “Even the generally Israel-first readership of the Times appears to be unconvinced.” In Giraldi’s imagination, the number of Americans who are loyal to Israel, not America, apparently runs to the scores of millions.

4. It almost goes without saying that Giraldi thinks Doug Feith might be an Israeli agent:

Most others would consider his action illegal and even treasonous in that it may have involved collusion with a foreign government, Israel.

5. Senator Phil Gramm, too:

Is your constituency the American people and the high ideals we stand for or is it only the Israel lobby with its political and financial muscle? I hope AIPAC gives you a lot of money in your next re-election bid. It’s not worth selling out for only 30 pieces of silver.

6. One of Giraldi’s most frequent subjects is Jewish control of the media. In an American Conservative piece that ran a month after Israel’s September 2007 airstrike on Syria, he speculated that media coverage of the incident was part of an international Israeli disinformation campaign:

In the intelligence community, a disinformation operation is a calculated attempt to convince an audience that falsehoods about an adversary are true, either to discredit him or, in an extreme case, to justify military action. When such a campaign is properly conducted, information is leaked to numerous outlets over a period of time, creating the impression of a media consensus that the story is true, as each new report validates earlier ones. …

Now a new operation—brought to us by the old players—may be unfolding.

7. A similar claim of behind-the-scenes Jewish manipulation of the media can be found in a 2005 letter he wrote to the Washington Post:

Your lengthy coverage of the Sept. 24 peace march curiously failed to mention the open and widespread criticism of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. … Clearly, most participants in the march noted that U.S. policies largely driven by Israeli interests are the fons etorigo for what ails the Middle East, even if The Washington Post did not.

8. Then there is the plainly bizarre. In 1996, Giraldi wrote a letter to the New York Times assailing the paper for describing a group of seven New Yorkers as “diverse.” Why was this group not diverse? Let him explain:

It appears that five of the “diverse” seven are Jews.

9. And finally we arrive at the subject of the Holocaust, which caused Giraldi to co-author in 1999 a letter to his alumni magazine. I reprint it in full: “Holocaust as political industry.”

Peter Novick asserts that the Holocaust has desensitized us to other genocides, but stops short of asking who invented the Holocaust in the first place. Who decided to capitalize the noun “holocaust” and transform genocide into a political weapon and fund-raising tool?

In America, which had little to do with the event itself, there is an ever-growing Holocaust industry in academia. There is a Holocaust publishing industry and a Holocaust Hollywood. There are Holocaust museums and memorials trying to make concrete what might otherwise become dated and ephemeral. And there is the Holocaust-promoting chorus of wealthy and influential American Jews who make sure we never forget.

“Never forgetting” is the best way to intensify the collective guilt on the part of America’s Christian majority and boost the Holocaust industry’s favorite political cause—the state of Israel. Guilt, laced with liberally dispensed charges of anti-Semitism for opponents and sweetened with a heavy sprinkling of PAC money, has made the Israel-firsters masters of the executive and legislative branches. Easy and often exclusive access to the media shapes public opinion. And at the end there is a pot of gold: unlimited political and military support plus $6 billion in U.S. taxpayer–provided annual aid to a country that is one of the richest on earth.

Nazis killing Jews has become the paradigm for modern-day genocide, but the Holocaust is hardly unique in the 20th century, which affords numerous examples of mass killing. The politics of mass murder nowadays, as practiced by dictators and democrats alike, is all about killing people with words before you actually shoot them. Perversely, the Holocaust is used to justify killing yet more people; i.e., to “prevent another Holocaust.”

As Novick notes, George Bush didn’t really cite the Holocaust to “disabuse us of Enlightenment illusions about man.” He wanted to suggest that men can be evil to justify the bloodshed in the war against Iraq. Nor was George Will debunking the Renaissance illusion that “…man becomes better as he becomes more clever.”

George is a realist who appreciates the use of force majeure, as long as it is not used against him or his friends. And then there’s Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate high priest of the Holocaust. Never once has Wiesel spoken out against Israel’s deplorable treatment of the Palestinians. It’s okay to kick an Arab, but never a Jew, and if we keep on reminding the world that the Nazis killed a lot of Jews, we can continue to kick Arabs and no one will say anything.
Rwandans, Biafrans, and Somalis are even lower on the scale than Arabs, and there are fewer journalists standing around watching how you treat them. Why intervene to save them? The Third World is descending into chaos, and they’ll only be fighting again before the week is out.

In short, can anyone deny that most invocations of the Holocaust are cynical and bogus? The Holocaust promoters understand that if you keep saying the same thing over and over again everyone will eventually believe it; i.e., that the Holocaust is the greatest evil in history and justifies special breaks not only for its survivors, but also for their descendants and co-religionists.

Perhaps what is truly unique about the Holocaust is the ability of its exploiters to preemptively silence their critics. Surely within the University of Chicago community there must be many who recognize that the Holocaust industry has gone too far, that the Holocaust is far from being the central event of the century, and that its message of an exclusivity in suffering—serving to promote a Zionist agenda—is dubious at best. But the open expression of such views might be unwise. It is safer to remain silent.

Philip M. Giraldi, AB’68
Purcellville, Virginia
John K. Taylor, AB’69
Fort Worth, Texas

It’s not surprising that people such as Giraldi exist. What is surprising is that such a man is published regularly in the American Conservative, a magazine that wishes to be taken seriously, and that his blog posts are linked by Andrew Sullivan, a blogger who also wishes to be taken seriously.

After Iran submitted its post-modernist reply to the P5+1+Burns, the State Department, echoing the European countries, said that

“We are very disappointed that Iran has failed yet again to give Javier Solana a clear answer to the P5+1’s generous incentives package,” Acting State Department Spokesman Gonzo Gallegos said, calling Iran’s response sent Tuesday to the European Union a “stalling tactic.”

Gallegos said the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, known as the P5+1, “are agreed that we have no choice but to pursue further sanctions against Iran.”

Oh really? Here is the Russian response:

Russia on Wednesday contradicted the United States and Britain, saying there was no agreement among six major powers on whether to pursue new U.N. sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters: “There have been no firm agreements or understandings or any kind of concerted work in this regard.”

Far be it from me to accuse the State Department of wishing to promote a false portrait of international unity. But really — this is embarrassing.

The complaint we have been hearing for oh-so-long, from the lowliest bloggers of the “reality-based community” all the way up to Barack Obama, is that the missing ingredient to a diplomatic resolution of the Iranian nuclear standoff has been the absence of the United States at the negotiating table. Two weeks ago there was just such an American presence, in the form of William Burns, the third-highest ranking diplomat at the State Department.

And thanks to Le Monde, we now have a transcript of the words Burns spoke directly to Saeed Jalili, Iran’s nuclear “negotiator” (my translation):

I am happy to transmit a simple message. The United States is serious in its support of its offering of cooperation and a way forward. We are serious in the search for a diplomatic solution. The relations between our two countries have been based on profound mistrust for 30 years. I hope that my presence today is a step in a good direction and that you seize this opportunity.

We also now have a copy of Iran’s schizophrenic reply to the P5+1(+Burns), which reads as if its drafting was an assignment in a post-structuralist creative writing class at Tehran University:

Now the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to provide a ‘clear response’ to your proposal at the earliest opportunity while simultaneously expecting to receive your ‘clear response’ to our questions and ambiguities as well.

Undoubtedly such mutual clarification can pave the way for a speedy and transparent negotiating process with a bright prospect and provide grounds for cooperation.

The second phase in negotiations can commence as early as possible if there is such willingness on your side.

This bizarre and completely worthless document is exactly in keeping with Iran’s previous offerings. The only difference this time was the presence of a high-ranking U.S. official at the negotiations. I think it can now be uncontroversially said that precisely the development that liberals have been clamoring for and insisting on has had a sum total effect of — zero.

So, did all those members of the “reality-based community” really believe that the appearance of a U.S. envoy would change Iranian behavior? I doubt it. Rather, I suspect that such assurances were made by people who are so deeply invested in the universal applicability of diplomacy that they are incapable of identifying the moment when diplomacy shifts from being part of the solution to part of the problem. The conclusion that the reality-based community will draw from the fruitlessness of Burns’ presence is not that the United States has nothing to offer Iran in exchange for the cessation of its nuclear program. It will simply be said that the U.S. got involved too late, or not passionately enough, or didn’t employ the right words, or that Bush has already forfeited any international credibility. Anything to keep the narrative going.

You can often tell who is on the rise in the Middle East by watching which groups suddenly become recipients of attention from Arab regimes. So we see two events in quick succession: King Abdullah of Jordan called Mahmoud Abbas yesterday and told him that he is “concerned” over the resurgence of Hamas-Fatah violence, which he said will “harm the Palestinian cause and endanger efforts aimed at setting up an independent Palestinian state.” Translation: you’re not keeping a lid on things, Abu Mazen, and I’m getting worried about Hamas’s influence on my border.

And then this story:

Jordanian officials have held talks with the militant Palestinian group Hamas for the first time since authorities arrested three of its members two years ago for planning attacks in the country.

Abdullah has his finger in the breeze, gauging the exact extent to which lines of communication should be opened with Hamas, to correspond with the group’s improving prospects. King Abdullah understands that the recipients of his phone calls might soon have to be Ismail Haniyah and Khaled Meshal — not Abu Mazen.

Andrew Sullivan said the other day what a lot of war-weary people must be thinking: “The world and the West can live, after all, with a deterred and contained nuclear Iran.” Jeffrey Goldberg offered a measured counter-argument, but I’d like to put the issue a little more bluntly.

Consider this illustrative exchange: the commander of the IRGC two days ago threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes. Here is the U.S. position:

Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff said during a press conference [in June] at the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain: “No one will close the Strait of Hormuz. They are not going to close it because they will not be allowed to.”

What will Vice Admiral Cosgriff be able to say when Iran has nuclear weapons?

The deadline for an Iranian response to the opulent package of incentives the regime was offered two weeks ago passed on Saturday, and was accompanied by three answers:

1. Iran will not give up “a single iota of its nuclear rights.” That is, Iran will never voluntarily abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

2. Iran says it tested a new anti-ship missile, and the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, said that “Enemies know that we are easily able to block the Straits of Hormuz for unlimited period.” (I am highly skeptical of both claims.)

3. According to the AP, Ahmadinejad yesterday said that “diplomacy is the only way out of his country’s standoff with the West over its disputed nuclear program and insisted he was serious about negotiations.”

It would seem obvious today — it’s been obvious for several years now, hasn’t it? — that there is not an incentive in existence that Iran would be willing to accept in exchange for the cessation of its nuclear program. So who is still working under the fantasy that fruitful “engagement” is still possible? Ahmadinejad’s calls for diplomacy must be intended to provide cover for someone, right?

One such person is the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, who was on the phone today with Iran’s nuclear “negotiator,” Saeed Jalili. What is the extent of Solana’s desire to keep the West in suspended animation? It appears unlimited:

Iranian state-run television reported that in the telephone conversation, “both sides agreed to continue talks.”

‘They also emphasised that preserving this path (talks) needs a positive and constructive atmosphere,’ the television report said without elaborating.

This is unsurprising. Javier Solana has always had only one weapon in his arsenal — phone calls — and his interlocutors know it. It has also long been evident that Solana’s actual goal in his talks is not the prevention of Iranian nuclear weapons, but the prevention of the cessation of talks about Iranian nuclear weapons. This is tautological diplomacy at its finest, in which the maintenance of talks has itself become the purpose of diplomacy.

I can think of another important person who remains unmoved by the failure of diplomacy, and who insists that if talking was employed just a little bit differently, perhaps at a higher level of representation, and if the diplomacy was also both “tough” and “smart,” the Iranian nuclear bomb could be defused. That person of course is Barack Obama. In terms of his stubborn unwillingness to allow plain facts to interfere with his foreign policy prescriptions, the failure of diplomacy with Iran should be added to Obama’s refusal to acknowledge the success of the surge as reason for skepticism about his suitability for the presidency.

Puzzlingly, this story has flown completely under the radar, despite its importance. Two days ago, a brigadier general named Mohammad Suleiman was shot in the head at a seaside resort in Syria. Suleiman was the Syrian government’s liaison with Hezbollah:

A Syrian opposition Web site said Suleiman, a confidant of President Bashar al-Assad, had been shot in the head in his seaside villa. Another site said the shots had been fired by a sniper from a boat. The resort was cordoned off for hours and local media did not report the killing.

Assad was visiting Iran on Saturday. His brother Maher al-Assad, head of the Republican Guards, and other senior officers were at Suleiman’s funeral in the town of Dreikish, east of Tartous, sources said.

The presence of Maher al-Assad, one of the most powerful figures in Syria, indicated Suleiman’s pivotal role in the Syrian hierarchy and the high regard he enjoyed among members of the ruling class.

“This is earth-shattering. Since when do we hear of assassinations taking place like this in Syria? Suleiman was privy to many things,” one of the sources told Reuters.

Arab media, including Lebanon’s Future television station, had earlier reported the killing. There was no comment from the Syrian authorities, who pride themselves on maintaining stability in the country of 19 million people.

Bashar Assad has now absorbed three unanswered blows which have been struck either by Israel, or which are perceived as having been struck by Israel: the airstrike in September, 2007; the assassination of Imad Mughniyah in February of this year; and now the assassination of the government’s point man on Hezbollah. Whether the two recent killings were in fact Israeli operations is more or less irrelevant. What’s important is that they reveal the true nature of the Syrian regime. Regardless of his ability to convince many people to the contrary, Bashar Assad is demonstrably weak and vulnerable.

The Israeli post office issued a stamp commemorating the Gush Katif settlement in Gaza, which was evacuated in 2005. The stamp has a picture of tomatoes on it, and kids jumping rope. Gorenberg’s reaction:

What’s next? A U.S. commemorative stamp for the KKK?

I always enjoy these moments of clarity.

An amazing story from Avi Issacharov, one of Haaretz’s best reporters: The son of one of the West Bank’s most notorious Hamas leaders has converted to Christianity. And he rejects his previous life with a vengeance:

“Send regards to Israel, I miss it. I respect Israel and admire it as a country,” he says.

“You Jews should be aware: You will never, but never have peace with Hamas. Islam, as the ideology that guides them, will not allow them to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews. They believe that tradition says that the Prophet Mohammed fought against the Jews and that therefore they must continue to fight them to the death.”

That would appear to be an accurate rendering of the prospects of peace with Hamas. In Gaza, the kids are being trained at terrorist summer camps.

The peace process has now been rendered even more of an abstraction than it was before Ehud Olmert’s press conference yesterday. Over the past several months, the Bush administration has been scaling back its expectations to the point where the hope is simply for an Israeli-Palestinian joint declaration of the parameters of a resolution, saving its implementation for some point in the hazy future.

It’s hard to envision how even that low standard can now be met. There is terminal disagreement on the status of Jerusalem, and after Olmert’s announcement yesterday, the Israeli governing coalition itself teeters on the edge of collapse. If one of the coalition’s members decides — or can be convinced — that its fortunes would improve in a new government, national elections could be forced and Bibi Netanyahu would be returned to the premiership. Even if the current coalition survives until the Kadima primary, it is difficult to imagine why Kadima’s leading contenders, Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz, would find it politically advantageous to heavily invest themselves in the peace process either during the primary race or the post-primary period of government formation. Mofaz has already said that “At this time of change in the government, we must not reach agreements on the core issues in negotiations with the Palestinians.”

Compounding the problem is the limited ability of Kadima’s two frontrunners to be seen taking risks for peace. They both carry recent security-related baggage into the election: Mofaz, despite an impressive military resume, was defense minister during the Gaza withdrawal, and also approved of Israel’s pullout from the Philadelphi corridor, the border region between Egypt and Gaza under which Hamas’ weapons have been smuggled since the disengagement. Livni helped broker U.N. Resolution 1701, under which Hezbollah has tripled its pre-2006 missile arsenal.

In a way, this is not too tragic an end to the Annapolis process. It goes out not with a bang, but a whimper, with various diplomatic structures left in place so that the next Israeli and American governments can resume this perfunctory exercise without all the foolish fanfare that has marked the commencement of past efforts. Maintaining the drip-drip-drip of the peace process seems to have become a diplomatic necessity for American administrations. This iteration of it seems likely to fade into the background without the violence and death of its predecessors.

The Israeli prime minister just concluded a surprise press conference in which he announced that he will not run in the September Kadima primary. Carl in Jerusalem liveblogged Olmert’s appearance and provides a rough English translation.

The headline of the Agence France Presse story: “Israeli foreign minister admits she was Mossad agent.” A confession! But this has never been a secret: it was discussed at length, for example, by Livni herself more than a year ago in the cover story of an obscure publication called the New York Times Magazine.

In other news, the AFP has uncovered evidence that Senator John McCain was a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War. Details remain sketchy, but he apparently was shot down and spent several years in captivity. The AFP hopes to have more information soon.

Over at the outstanding MESH blog, Martin Kramer is keeping tabs on examples of the myth of linkage. Part of his latest entry:

What does the present surge of linkage oversell tell us? As Americans increasingly experience the Middle East up close, they learn the region’s complexities, its histories, its many fault lines. And the more they know, the less they believe in the supposed magical power of the “peace process” to help fix anything else. The “peace process” junkies can only hope that an inexperienced president, who knows too little of the world, might give them another shot if he thought it would help to solve other conflicts, where America has troops on the line.

Aussie Dave notes that the “military wing” of Hamas, the Al-Qassam Brigades, has suffered the indignity of being cashiered by its Russian web host. Al-Qassam’s homepage now features a press release alerting visitors to this latest instance of Zionist usurpation.

But don’t let the hackneyed rhetoric distract you from noticing that the press release says something very important about how Hamas views its campaign against Israel:

Our engineers are working for re-opening Al Qassam website to the World Wide Web soon and we would say that these attacks and harassments will not deter us from continuing our electronic resistance and delivering the voice and the Palestinian resistance, which defends the Palestinian people, and it is striving to recover the usurped rights, because we are aware that the battle media battle is as important as the battle field with the Zionist occupation.

You have to give Hamas credit for understanding this point far better than the Israeli government does.

On Meet the Press yesterday, Barack Obama summarized the lessons of his Middle East tour:

I think King, King Abdullah [of Jordan] is as savvy an analyst of the region and player in the region as, as there is, one of the points that he made and I think a lot of people made, is that we’ve got to have an overarching strategy recognizing that all these issues are connected. If we can solve the Israeli-Palestinian process, then that will make it easier for Arab states and the Gulf states to support us when it comes to issues like Iraq and Afghanistan.

It will also weaken Iran, which has been using Hamas and Hezbollah as a way to stir up mischief in the region. If we’ve gotten an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, maybe at the same time peeling Syria out of the Iranian orbit, that makes it easier to isolate Iran so that they have a tougher time developing a nuclear weapon.

Here we have a crystalline example