In midst of Gaza Conflict, Religious Dispatches Finds an Opportunity to Attack Sam Harris and Lie About Hamas

Atheist thinker Sam Harris has a new podcast with text and supplemental text, "Why I Don't Criticize Israel," in which he does in fact criticize Israel. To mention four specifics, he attacks the concept of a "Jewish" state, criticizes Jewish extremists (though underplays their significance and incorrectly assumes they are declining), calls for an end to funding of settlements, and says the Israelis have done things that amount to war crimes.

On the other hand, Harris correctly says that the Israelis have used restraint and then he says something true that was almost guaranteed to get him in trouble with certain people.

Here is the major point of Harris' article.

The discourse in the Muslim world about Jews is utterly shocking. Not only is there Holocaust denial—there’s Holocaust denial that then asserts that we will do it for real if given the chance. The only thing more obnoxious than denying the Holocaust is to say that it should have happened; it didn’t happen, but if we get the chance, we will accomplish it. There are children’s shows in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere that teach five-year-olds about the glories of martyrdom and about the necessity of killing Jews. 

As might be expected, the religious progressive site "Religious Dispatches" is up quickly with an attack on Harris. It's not RD's first attack on Harris.  Harris was denounced as an Homophobes (he responded here), attacked for criticizing the Quran, attacked for criticizing Obama's pick to head the National Institute of Health, and attacked him in an article urging Atheists to oppose Islamophobia, and naturally his book on morality was lambasted.

There's nothing some people like more than the opportunity to attack an atheist and promote a benign view of Islam. So it is not surprising that Religious Dispatches has an attack on Harris' views on the Gaza conflict.

Ussaid Siddiqui's article "In Gaza Siege, Atheist Author Sam Harris Finds Yet Another Opportunity to Disparage Islam " avoids confronting Harris's essential point with some intellectual flim-flam.

British Muslim activist Mehdi Hasan took a different tack recently when he wrote an honest and revealing article: "The sorry truth is that the virus of anti-Semitism has infected the British Muslim community".It's too bad Siddiqui didn't have the same intellectual courage to confront a real, urgent problem, instead of dishing up cheap Harris-bashing.

What we get instead is a confused and, at least in part, dishonest attack on Harris. Siddiqui writes that the Hamas Charter "allegedly" advocates the destruction of Israel and asserts, to refute Harris, "before the [2006] parliamentary elections, Hamas removed the call to destroy Israel from their charter." (emphasis added)

Siddiqui accuses Harris of "discount[ing]" this.  With good reason since it didn't happen.

The omission  was only in the Hamas electoral platform. Hamas has not altered, changed, or amended its charter.

Confusing the Hamas Charter and its election manifesto is a an elementary mistake that a competent journalist would not make and which a reputable website like Religious Dispatches should have caught.
 
The Hamas Charter is, in fact, one of the most hateful, antisemitic, and genocidal document around. To use "allegedly" as Siddiqui does is simple dishonet,

Chapter Seven of the Hamas Charter, for example, states "The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: 'The day of judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jews will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say 'O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."

And, Siddiqui would have us believe that there are no theological roots to Islamic antisemitism.

It should also be noted the Siddiqui writes that Christians make up nearly 20 percent of the Palestinian population. In fact, according to wikipedia, the figure is 6 percent.
  
A simple fact gone wrong, but perhaps not so simply.  Siddiqui doesn't want to confront the extremism of Hamas, so instead of discussing Harris' views and the present reality of Hamas and other Islamist groups, he presents a long digression about the non-golden and non-anti-golden age of Islamic tolerance.  Siddiqui imputes to Harris an essentialist view of Islamic hostility to Jews that Harris does not assert in this article.  Harris does not argue, at least in this podcast/article that Muslim anti-semitism goes back to the origins of Islam. The effort to refute views that Harris does not advance is really misplaced.

Just this week, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan, refused to disavow his assertion that Jews kill Christian children to use their blood in matzah. It might be nice if religious progressives paid attention to Hamas's antisemitism instead of engaging in Sam Harris-bashing.

BDS Factless Water Day Libel of Soda Stream

The BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) movement tried to make March 22 World Water Day an occasion to promote it's campaign to boycott Soda Stream.

There may well be a water crisis on the West Bank and there may be a case for boycotting Soda Stream.  But is there a real causal connection between Soda Stream and water problems on the West Bank?  Or is is just a convenient excuse to attack Soda Stream and demonize Israel?

You might have seen this tweet  on your timeline.

 

Not  surprising, since it was a part of an organized tweetstorm by the U.S. Committee to the End the Occupation.

 

 

I got to wondering about this claim. If one Soda Stream device "helps deny 71,622" Palestinians, things must be pretty dire since there are thousands and thousands of Soda Stream dispensers made at the factory.  And what exactly I wondered was the factual nexus between the production of Soda Stream devices and the lack of running water access.  Since Soda Stream production has been growing, there must be a growing number of Palestinians without access to water.

So I clicked on the link to see what the promised "more information" provided.  It took me to a page from the respected Israeli watchdog group B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Funny thing, there was no mention of Soda Stream on the page of statistics about the Palestinian Water Crisis.

It turns out the number of West Bank Palestinians in 2011 who lacked access to running water was 71,622 or 2.6 percent of the West Bank population.  But in 2008, the figures were much larger: 188,922 residents without access to running water or 10.4 percent.  

That's a reduction of over 117,000 and 7.8 percent.

(Incidentally, before the 1967 war, only 10 percent of West Bankers were connected to running water.)

There is another thing that stands out in the statistics.  About 30 percent of the water on the West Bank is wasted due to defective pipes or theft.  This is a failure of the Palestinian Authority.

 

Partners for Progressive Israel on Violence in Israel and Gaza

I find a lot to agree with in this statement from Partners for a Progressive Israel, a group of Americans who support Israel's Meretz, a left wing Zionist social democratic, pro-peace party with roots in Mapam.

 Statement on the latest violence in Israel and Gaza
 

November 16, 2012

Partners for Progressive Israel is deeply dismayed by the killing and destruction in Israel and the Gaza Strip over these last days, and we urge all sides to refrain from further escalation and reach a negotiated cease-fire with all due speed.  In the last day, Palestinian rockets from Gaza have claimed their first three Israeli lives in the latest round of violence, and the shelling has now reached the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem areas.  Over a dozen Palestinian civilians, including children, have been killed by Israeli bombing.  We mourn the loss of all innocent life.

As we learned four years ago, massive Israeli military action, divorced from diplomatic progress, does not deliver long-term results. Precious human lives are wasted for short-term gains, or no gains at all. And sometimes the use of force inadvertently creates worse scenarios, as we have witnessed repeatedly throughout the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While Israel clearly has the right to, and must, defend itself from Hamas and the rockets fired from Gaza, Israel has an obligation to use this right and its overwhelming firepower prudently: to seek negotiation first to defuse tensions, to respect the lives of innocent Palestinians, and to recognize that, ultimately, the conflict can be fully resolved only through diplomacy.  Unfortunately, Israel’s current government has not always fulfilled these basic obligations to its citizens.

Hamas is an unsavory neighbor which shoulders a very large degree of responsibility for the current escalation and the ongoing conflict, due to its unwillingness to accept Israel’s fundamental legitimacy. Yet Israel has no choice but to find a way to live alongside the Hamas government for the foreseeable future.  Reports that Israel’s government did not pursue promising third-party efforts to mediate an extended truce with Hamas are therefore a cause for deep concern.

To quote the group of Israelis living in Sderot and nearby communities who have created the organization, “Another Voice”:

“We call on the Israeli government to immediately launch negotiations with the Hamas government.  Rockets and bombs don’t protect us.  We have tried warfare long enough, and both sides have paid, and are still paying, a high price of suffering and loss.  The time has come to talk and seek long-term solutions that will allow citizens on both sides of the border to lead normal lives.”

Above all, at a time when Israel has potential partners in President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Palestinian leaders who are keeping alive the flagging hopes for peace by reaffirming their commitment to a two-state solution, rejecting violence and terrorism, and preparing their people for necessary concessions regarding the ‘right of return’, it is unconscionable for the current Israeli government to continue to rely on military action alone and to resist ending the occupation.

For the long term, a political solution is the only way out of violence and despair, and the only hope for the peace which so many Israelis and Palestinians yearn for and deserve.