• Circumcisions helps prevent the spread of HIV and are now, thanks to an Israeli company, as easily done and minimally painful as ever. [NYT]

• Contributing editor Jeff Goldberg adds a bit more room to the new one he tore for John J. Mearsheimer a few years ago. [Atlantic Goldblog]

• An OECD study pegs Israel the second most-educated country in the world (congratulations Canada, I guess). [Haaretz]

• Submit your embarrassing bat mitzvah photos to Gawker. Bar mitzvah photos are presumably banned to give the ladies a chance to win. [Gawker]

• The lost and new Jews of … Crown Heights! [NYT]

If you read Hebrew, you’ll recognize that this is Haaretz discussing Liel Leibovitz’s Scroll post yesterday.

• The guy who wrote that dumb op-ed resigned. [JTA]

• Tablet Magazine contributor Sohrab Ahmari reviews the new book by Trita Parsi, a Lee Smith profile subject. [WSJ]

• Wayne Barrett reports that Newt Gingrich has grown more hawkish on Israel ever since Sheldon Adelson started giving him lots of money. [The Daily Beast]

• The Judah L. Magnes Museum becomes the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the Bancroft Library. Still in the Bay Area, though! [NYT]

• Jewish Milwaukee Brewers slugger Ryan Braun classily accepted his Most Valuable Player honor in person despite recent allegations that he used illicit performance-enhancing substances. [NYT]

Word is that esteemed Israeli central banker Stanley Fischer wants to succeed Shimon Peres. “Mother, should I run for president?”

• The Arab League proposed an ambitious plan for Syria that would involve President Assad stepping down in a matter of weeks, to be replaced by a national unity government. [NYT]

• The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier, made a routine trip into the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz without incident—the first to do so since Iran’s threats. [DPA/Haaretz]

• Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, (Jewish) Democrat from Arizona, will resign to focus on her recovery from being shot in the head a year ago. [NYT The Caucus]

• Jackson Diehl argues that Turkey’s Islamist, anti-Israel government has also been an important U.S. ally and represents “the new normal” for the region that can’t be wished or denounced away. [WP]

• Reports have it that the United States is considering shutting down its embassy in Damascus, in part out of security concerns. Marc Lynch hopes it can be kept open and Ambassador Robert Ford on the job. [FP The Middle East Channel]

• The Arab League’s mandate to monitor Syria expired yesterday. Activists hope the U.N. Security Council will step in. [WP]

• Rabbi Dov Linzer reads the Talmud and shows that it is up to men to deal with sexual urges prompted by women rather than, as in Haredi communities, to force women to dress modestly to prevent such urges. [NYT]

• The Chinese premier finished his Gulf trip, signing new energy deals potentially in the hopes of avoiding future U.S. sanctions over buying oil from Iran. [WSJ]

• Hamas leader Khaled Meshal will reportedly not run for re-election. [Haaretz]

• The recent spate of anti-Semitic vandalism in Borough Park, Brooklyn, has traumatized the community. [NYT]

So what’s next? Here’s a rough discussion of possible outcomes. It’s not good.

Toward the end of the month, there are in theory supposed to be multilateral nuclear talks in Turkey. Laura Rozen reports that the U.S. and its allies plan, as a confidence-building measure, to ask Iran to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent and to hand over its existing supply in exchange for no further U.N. Security Council resolutions (the hope being that China and Russia can be brought around at least to back this threat). If Iran agrees, it could be seen as a starting point toward more substantive negotiations and a more comprehensive resolution; if Iran rejects this deal, it will raise tensions, and could lead to military conflict.

Within two to three months, the new U.S. sanctions against companies that deal with the Central Bank of Iran (including to buy oil) are expected to make a real, further dent in Iran’s economic situation, primarily by convincing oil importers to seek alternative sources. Iranian enemies such as Saudi Arabia are gearing up to provide more of the black stuff, but this could provoke Iran into closing the Strait of Hormuz, which much Saudi oil is dependent upon, and this would likely lead to military conflict.

Similarly, the sanctions, which have already done real damage, including by causing Iran’s currency to fall to a record low, could make for desperate times in Iran. Kenneth Pollack has a provocative article noting that the severity of the latest sanctions could be too much: they may do such a number on world energy markets that they (and even lesser sanctions) become diplomatically unfeasible, and the sanctions would be lifted; they may make Iran feel like they must take some sort of retaliatory measure, including perhaps a terrorist attack against a U.S. interest somewhere (or even in the U.S.), which would all but force military conflict.

In late June, Obama will probably have to start actually enforcing the sanctions against companies that continue to do business with Iran—including companies in friendly nations. This could lead to a lifting of sanctions or, alternatively, a more urgent hard line, which runs the risk of leading to military conflict.

Aren’t we leaving someone out? … Oh, right. Defense Minister Barak insisted yesterday that Israeli is “very far off” from deciding whether to launch a military strike against Iran’s program. Of course, he also insisted that his country and the U.S. “respect one another’s freedom of decision.” The Israelis are unconvinced by optimistic U.S. projections of the sanctions’ effects. They could get antsy or just determine that one too many red lines have been crossed and launch a military strike.

So, basically, hope something good happens in Turkey next week.

White House Disputes Iran Report Saying Obama Letter Offered Direct Talks [Yahoo! The Envoy]
U.S. Expects Iran Sanctions to Bear Results Within Two Months [JTA]
Are We Sliding Toward War With Iran? [TNR]
Barak Says Israeli Decision on Iran Remains ‘Far Off’ [WP]
U.S. Rejects Israeli Assessment That Iran Sanctions Are Ineffective [Haaretz]
Earlier: Iran Foes Try To Coax China

• Israel will tell U.S. officials later this week that, according to its intelligence, Iran has not yet decided to build a nuclear bomb but it greatly fears for its regime’s stability; a genuine opposition could win March’s parliamentary elections. [Haaretz]

• President Ahmadinejad has ordered extra security for scientists, five of whom have been assassinated in recent years. [NYT]

• Oil, oil, oil, and nary a drop to sell (if you’re Iran). [WP]

• After initially promising to extend the Tal Law, which allows yeshiva students to more easily avoid army service, by five years, some members of the Cabinet objected and now Prime Minister Netanyahu is postponing discussion. [Ynet]

• A hearing into Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s alleged financial misdeeds that could result in his indictment began yesterday. [NYT]

For this, as the New York Times’ Ethan Bronner explains, is really all about Jordan. King Abdullah II is on his fourth prime minister since the Arab Spring began, because he faces the dual threats of a native Islamist movement (kin to Hamas and Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood) and the majority of his subjects who are Palestinian (he is Hashemite). (Nicolas Pelham published an excellent primer on Abdullah II’s situation last month.) The king wants to be seen as central and important now that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who usually hosted such talks, is out of the picture; wants to empower the more moderate P.A. as compared to Hamas, whose success threatens him both insofar as it emboldens his homegrown Islamist movement and as it increases the chance of a Hamas-run West Bank sharing 60 miles of Jordan’s border; and wishes to advance a Palestinian state in the territories lest the notion that majority-Palestinian Jordan absorb all the Palestinians become more enticing.

So that’s Jordan. You could argue that Israel faces incentives to make this meeting lead to talks, on the theory that a re-elected President Obama will push it as never before, but more likely Prime Minister Netanyahu will wait to see if Obama is re-elected before considering new initiatives. For the same reason, the U.S. is likely to make small statements and take few new risks. The P.A. typically looks for big concessions—the thinking is that these would persuade the Palestinian people that its moderate path is more effective than Hamas’. But right now, the P.A. is also pursuing a more confrontational path, both by trying to establish a unity government with Hamas and, reportedly, going to the U.N. Security Council with complaints about Israeli settlements (it did this last year, too, and a resolution was vetoed by the U.S., as one certainly would be again) and referring Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza to the International Criminal Court. In fact, the P.A. had better not come away with anything big, as its rival and potential partner, Hamas, has called for a boycott of the talks. And Hamas has its own patrons: not only a prospective future democratically elected Egyptian government, which would have a heavy Muslim Brotherhood element, but also Prime Minister Erdogan’s Turkey, which over the weekend hosted the head of Hamas’ government in Gaza, who was able to tour the Mavi Marmara.

So, to sum up: all of the relevant players are hemmed in by their own domestic constituencies in ways that all but guarantee no real results and a continuation of the status quo. It must be the new year!

Palestinians and Israelis Will Talk This Week [NYT]
Erekat: Peace Talks Require Settlement Halt [Haaretz/Forward]
Palestinians Plan Diplomatic Steps to Put Israel Under ‘International Siege’ [Haaretz]
Erdogan to Haniyeh: Talks Must Include Hamas [Ynet]
Related: Jordan Starts to Shake [NY Books]
Earlier: Reconciliation 2.0

• Speaking of: the Israelis and the Palestinians meet today in Amman. Keep expectations very low. More later. [NYT]

• Amid the latest tensions in Israel, ultra-Orthodox protesters marched in striped prison uniforms and yellow stars. And would you believe some folks found this tasteless? [NYT]

• Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which won a plurality of votes in two rounds of parliamentary voting and is the most popular of the Islamic parties that won majorities, said it will not recognize Israel and will try to cancel the peace treaty. [JPost]

• Hamas and Turkey grew closer as the head of Hamas’ Gaza government visited Istanbul. [NYT]

• Ilan Grapel, the Israeli-American law student, writes for the first time about his detention this summer in Egypt, and defends his trip. [WP]

• Prime Minister Netanyahu pledged that he would not negotiate with a Palestinian government that included Hamas, as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority currently plan. (Of course, he’s not negotiating with the Palestinian government that doesn’t include Hamas, either.) [Haaretz]

• Turkey may insist on poor relations with Israel as the Knesset debates whether to commemorate the Armenian genocide. (Of course, Turkey already insists on poor relations with Israel.) [NYT]

• Are policy-makers reckoning with the potential radioactive consequences of bombing Iranian reactors (and possibly seeing Israel’s bombed in retaliation)? [NYT]

• It’s being treated as a scoop, but it’s not really news that, as his former senior aide says, Rep. Ron Paul is genuinely anti-Israel. [Haaretz]

• Netanyahu appears to be forcing the closure of an independent television station that isn’t right-wing and has also reported embarrassing details about him and his family. [NYT]

• Do I need to tell you that Don Blanquito, Brazil’s newest funk sensation, is an L.A. Jewish kid named Alex Cutler? [NYT]

• Imagine if the White House had termites and no hot water. Israel is real estate. [JPost]

• A judge dismissed two students’ lawsuit alleging that Berkeley did not adequately protect them from anti-Semitism during a campus “Apartheid Week.” [JTA/Forward]

Matt Damon and (half-Jewish) Scarlett Johansson take a Hanukkah quiz. It gets very real a little after the two-minute mark.

• A children’s treasury of white supremacist, racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and bizarrely paranoid statements in Ron Paul’s old newsletters. [TNR]

• Israel will not prosecute Israelis who were involved in the 2010 flotilla. [AP/WP]

• Israel canceled a lucrative defense deal with Turkey given the status of relations. [AP/WP]

• Matisyahu attacked a photographer! [Paper]

• One of the guys Bernie Goetz shot on the subway was found dead—27 years to the day after the Goetz incident. Eerie. [NY Post]

Abbas and Meshal will meet next week to further hash out details—most germane are the holding of joint parliamentary and then presidential elections—and, as they have throughout this iteration of reconciliation and as they did earlier this year when they actually struck a deal, the meeting will be in Cairo, which post-Mubarak is newly hospitable to Hamas and generally to bolstering the Palestinian cause. However, I can’t help but wonder if the most logical meeting-place isn’t Cairo but … Ankara?

Hamas Prime Minsiter Ismail Haniyeh may soon visit Turkey as well as Qatar (to which Hamas, which is based in Damascus, is thought to be considering a move) and several other Arab states, which would be unprecedented. Somebody noted that on Twitter, Turkey’s ministry of foreign affairs referred to “Mahmoud Abbas, President of State of Palestine,” who was on a “working visit” to Turkey yesterday. “State,” eh? And what was he “working” on?

Isn’t this a move that makes sense for all sides? Erdogan’s Turkey continues to bolster its status as the prime regional power broker and stick its finger in Israel’s eye. Hamas and the P.A., together, receive the imprimatur not—or not only—of the shaky Cairo regime, with its divide between popularly elected Islamists and ruling military holdouts, but of an actually robust and actually Muslim democracy, which is also a major U.S. ally. Hamas uses the association as credibility with the European Union and others that it has indeed moderated; the P.A. is shielded from Washington’s wrath by Turkey’s friendship with Washington. How is this not the logical next step?

‘Meshal Agreed to Non-Violence, Pre-’67 Borders’ [JPost]
Hamas Moves Away from Violence in Deal With Palestinian Authority [Guardian]
Palestinian Parties Walk Out of Unity Talks in Cairo [JPost]

• After a first round of elections that handed big victories to Islamists, the Egyptian military is insisting that it will continue to handle constitutional and other big questions for some time. [NYT]

• Nicholas Kristof finds that support for and the agenda of the most popular Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, is driven mainly by the desire for basic services. [NYT]

• David Ignatius reports on the growing and actually useful alliance between the United States and Turkey, predicated above all on a wide array of mutual interests. [WP]

• The comments of Howard Gutman, the ambassador to Belgium, have been like manna for Republicans looking to paint the administration as anti-Israel. It’s almost as though they should have fired him by now. [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]

• Hamas set a condition on participation in a unity government: elections in East Jerusalem, which it is allowed to contest. The demand is in part intended to force Israel to deny the request and thereby be seen as torpedoing reconciliation. Nicely done. [Haaretz]

Lerner, now 34 and married with a child of her own, is a descendant of Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1579-1654), better known as the Tosfot Yom Tov (the title of his tract on the Mishnah), who was the chief rabbi of Prague and went on to head the rabbinical court of Krakow. According to Lerner family lore, he declared that turkeys were verboten and that none of his descendants should eat the animal. Lerner’s extended family continues to observe his edict, though they wholeheartedly embrace turkey kitsch when the fourth Thursday of November rolls around.

The debate over whether turkeys were kosher didn’t emerge until the birds, indigenous to the Americas, were introduced in Europe in the 16th century. Fish and animals must meet certain specifications in order to be deemed kosher (fins and scales; hoofed feet, chews its cud). For birds, by contrast, the Torah simply lists those that Jews are not allowed to eat, and these are mainly birds of prey. Turkeys were not on that list—they weren’t known at the time. But according to Gil Marks’ Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, the bird was ultimately accepted as kosher: a really big bird.

Yet the Tosfot Yom Tov refused to budge. Lerner admits she doesn’t actually think turkey is trayf. Rather, her refusal to eat comes out of respect and pride. “It’s a family thing far more than a Jewish thing,” she clarifies. And, she admits, it helps that her husband is a vegetarian.

• The United States, Canada, and Britain imposed further sanctions on Iran’s financial and energy industries yesterday, though they stopped short of completely isolating its crucial central bank. [NYT]

• Israel is still freezing the transfer of Palestinian Authority tax revenue in protest of the UNESCO membership. [Haaretz]

• In visiting the West Bank, Jordan’s King Abdullah meant to demonstrate that President Abbas is still the top Palestinian and that the Palestinians’ homeland is not Jordan. [NYT]

• Upholding a promise, Vice President Biden met with a handful of Jewish leaders, who lobbied him—almost certainly unsuccessfully—to lobby the president to free Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. [Ynet/Vos Iz Neias?]

• Much of the West Bank and Gaza is without cell phone and Internet access following what is said to have been an organized hack. [WP Blog Post]

After this punt return last night, many wondered if the New England Patriots’ Julian Edelman is Jewish. He is not. Great play, though.

It makes sense that we’d have this dish on both occasions. Thanksgiving is in part patterned after the Harvest Home, an English celebration after the fall harvest. And Harvest Home was, in turn, modeled on Sukkot, a holiday that typically falls in late September or early October.

The inspiration for including the recipe was simple: my mother. She is a first-generation American who grew up eating this sweet potato dish at every holiday—Jewish and secular. Her inclusion of this tsimmes at non-religious festivals is similar to what I’ve see happening around the country for ages—new immigrants and people who have been here for generations integrating ethnic and regional character into their Thanksgiving meals. What anchors all of these meals is, of course, the iconic turkey. But what surrounds that centerpiece differs from community to community and includes everything from Armenian stuffed grape leaves to Vietnamese spring rolls to matzoh ball soup, or even a traditional tsimmes of sweet potatoes and carrots. These dishes tell you who you are.

Though the turkey is the holiday’s commonality, its provenance tells different stories. Turkeys today can be heritage breed, kosher, organic, fresh, pasture raised, wild, or frozen Butterballs, the favorite of the late Julia Child. That range of choices is a relatively recent development; until the early 1990s almost everybody bought a factory-processed turkey.

Last month I spent a day on the tractor with Joel Salatin, immortalized by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, at his family’s farm, Polyface, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Salatin, a fundamentalist Christian, raises two kinds of free-range turkeys in his pasture and slaughters them humanely with a quick cut across the neck, “in the biblical way,” he explains—that is, according to Jewish dietary laws.

Across the country, many people are turning to farmers like Salatin, who thinks hard about the life and the death of his animals. Kosher producers like Wise Organic Pastures, Kosher Valley, and the two-year-old Grow and Behold Foods are following Salatin’s lead. “I feel like a turkey hunter before Thanksgiving,” said Naftali Hanau, Grow and Behold’s CEO and founder, who has been running around the country trying to find pasture-raised turkey, fed on non-GMO (genetically modified organism) feed. “Our customers have found that our turkeys have flavor and don’t dry out like conventional ones,” he says. Thanksgiving is a time when people who don’t generally eat meat indulge, Hanau says, and when they do, they want birds that are sustainably produced and slaughtered humanely.

If every family has its traditional sides, each also adds personal flourishes to turkey preparation. Linda Schiffer, a cooking teacher who offers a course called “In Bubbie’s Kitchen” at Middlebury College in Vermont, and her husband, Ira, the Hillel rabbi there, are turkey aficionados and prepare their bird with an apple-cider brine. Before they even get to that stage, they take great care picking out their bird. “I look at Vermont turkeys from farms that are growing free-range turkeys sustainably, turkeys that don’t get overheated by being cooped up and are naturally nice and plump,” Linda told me a day after she went fishing for local salmon and trout on Lake Champlain.

In addition to using local apples and cider to make her turkey, Linda, also prepares a terrine of turkey, goose, and duck as a first course. When she has guests who observe kashrut, as she will next week, she buys a kosher bird at a supermarket in Burlington, 50 miles away. Otherwise, she buys local turkeys from Misty Knolls Farm just down the road from her house. “I used to have a kosher kitchen, but a few years ago when I read an article about Aaron’s chicken and how they were slaughtered, I went local,” she says, referring to the Agriprocessors’ owner, Aaron Rubashkin. Now, “I can see how they are raised, how they live their life and how they are slaughtered,” she says. “This is an extension of our commitment to local and sustainable.” Brining, even if she has a kosher turkey—which is salted in the kashering process—has become her custom as well. Linda brines “because kosher is just the salt,” she says, “and I am adding flavors like brown sugar, thyme, and cider.” She brines for only 24 hours. “Otherwise the meat gets mushy,” she advises. “Longer is not necessarily better.”

As I prepare for Thanksgiving this year, I am finally adopting the Schiffers’ brining tradition. It has always tempted me, as the reduced cider makes the skin aromatic and golden. And, as everyone in my family knows, the skin is the best part of the bird. But despite the appeal of every new sweet-potato dish in magazines this fall, we’ll still rely on our favorite tsimmes recipe, topped with the marshmallows and laced with pineapples, served in our traditional turquoise, oven-safe casserole dish.

Fortunately, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan—maybe the most crucial outside player in the Syrian drama, and not one ordinarily to exculpate the United States and Israel—disagrees with Massad. “Those who fire on their own people will go down in history as leaders who feed on blood,” he said today. Turkey has moved to further sanction Syria, though, unlike Jordan’s King Abdullah, Erdogan has yet to expressly call for Assad’s ouster. On a broader level, Russia (much more than China) is blocking U.N. Security Council action against a regime that, extraordinarily, has been suspended by the Arab League.

Massad is right about one thing: Israel wants Assad out. All the way back in June, Ambassador Michael Oren declared, “The violence [Assad] has unleashed on his own people demonstrating for freedoms confirms Israel’s fears that the devil we know in Syria is worse than the devil we don’t.”

The Struggle for Syria [Al Jazeera]
Turkish Leader to Syria’s Assad: ‘Don’t Feed on Blood’ [LAT World Now]
Can the Arabs Convince Russia Not To Block Syrian Condemnation? [FP Turtle Bay]
Related: Unwelcome [Tablet Magazine]
Qatar Wields an Outsize Influence in Arab Politics [NYT]
Earlier: Ambassador Ford Stands Up For Syrians

then the eastern Mediterranean is seething. There, claims to huge natural-gas reserves off the coast of Cyprus and Lebanon have raised tensions with Turkey, which occupies half of Cyprus, as well as with Israel. Cyprus and Israel are drilling for gas, angering Turkey. The militant Islamic group Hezbollah, in Lebanon, has threatened to attack Israeli gas rigs.

Further complicating this is the bitter rift between Turkey and Israel after the deadly Israeli commando interception of a Turkish flotilla trying to transport aid to Palestinians in Gaza last year.

“Part of it,” adds a regional expert, “is just the greater assertiveness of Turkey’s foreign policy everywhere.” similarly with Hezbollah—for which the mammoth offshore gas field Leviathan could be, as Tablet Magazine Mideast columnist Lee Smith put it, a new Sheba Farms. The pretext is kind of the whole point.

Meanwhile, the article notes that global warming has unfrozen parts of the Arctic Sea, leading to disputes over energy sources and shipping lanes. Israel has no polar ice caps to melt, but it does have disappearing water: In some places, the Dead Sea’s coastline has receded by as much as one-third of a mile. Less water means more land; and around the Jordan River, more land axiomatically means more conflict. The northern section of the sea is in the West Bank. Is the new land the military’s? Israel’s? The Palestinians’? (They didn’t have this issue the last time the Dead Sea lost water, about 120 millennia ago.)

Meanwhile, while the Dead Sea had made the Final Fourteen in voting for something called the New 7 Wonders of Nature, it failed to make the last cut. Part of the problem is that Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan all ran separate campaigns. The absence of peace claims one more casualty.

A New Era of Gunboat Diplomacy [NYT]
New Israeli-Palestinian Land Dispute Rises as Dead Sea Water Level Drops [Haaretz]
Dead Sea’s Bid As a New Wonder Is Dead [JTA]
Earlier: Israel-Lebanon Sea Border Dispute Heats Up

• A comprehensive list of what valuable U.N. agencies the United States may be eliminating aid to next. [FP Turtle Bay]

• Stupid Gilad Shalit, going to the beach on Shabbat. Doesn’t he know he’s a pure political pawn and not a human being now? [JTA]

• Was the 7 billionth baby a Jew born in Brooklyn? It’s more plausible than you think! Maybe! [Ditmas Park Blog]

• An Amy Winehouse-Nas duet has emerged. [6 Degrees No Bacon]

• A new biography conclusively shows that Reinhard Heydrich was not, in fact, history’s most self-loathing Jew. [TNR The Book]

Leaves are fallin’ all around.

• Zuccotti Park-related police barricades led to a drastic decline in business for a popular Lower Manhattan kosher eatery, which had to lay off one-third of its workforce. [Fox News]

• Turkey continues to toughen its stance against its neighbor and former ally Syria. [FT]

• After publishing an issue “guest edited” by the Prophet Muhammad, a satirical French weekly’s Paris offices were firebombed. [NYT]

• Since it’s how Rabbi David Nesenoff seems to define himself entirely, he shall heretofore be referred to as the Helenthomaser Rebbe. [Three Village Patch]

• Though officially unaffiliated, yesterday’s Occupy Wall Street-related “Statement Against Smears” was circulated by a senior J Street staffer. [Forward Thinking]

Dig this here now.

• Ruth Madoff revealed that soon after her husband’s Ponzi scheme was revealed, the two tried to commit suicide by taking copious amounts of Ambien. [NYT]

• Israeli earthquake aid has begun to arrive in Turkey. Turkish officials have assured the world that while they appreciate it, the two countries are still—don’t worry!—in a diplomatic chill. [NYT]

• In addition to the 25 Israeli prisoners, Egypt also scored an F-16 (for sale) from the United States as part of the deal for the Israeli-American alleged spy Ilan Grapel, who is set to be freed later today. [JPost]

• Information about secret peace talks in 2008, newly revealed in Condoleezza Rice’s memoir, show that a deal was close and that the Obama Administration screwed up by coming in and focusing on settlements, David Ignatius argues. [WP]

• The U.S. ambassador urged the Israelis to institute a partial settlement construction freeze in order to bolster U.S. moves against Palestinian U.N. membership. [Ynet]

972+ has it. The exclusion of IHH, the Turkish charity with ties to Hamas, from the flotilla that was set to launch this past June was an early victory for Israel against a mission that ultimately never left port; IHH was instrumental in organizing last year’s flotilla, in which 9 members were killed by Israeli soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara.

Unconfirmed reports have it that Turkish navy ships would accompany the flotilla, something Prime Minister Erdogan has at times threatened. “That would be perceived as a serious provocation by Israel,” 972+ reports. Er, actually, if Turkish ships were to deliberately attempt to run an Israeli blockade, it would inarguably be a serious provocation.

Gaza-Bound Flotilla Said Planning To Depart Turkey in Coming Days [972+]

• A whip-count of the new batch of non-permanent U.N. Security Council members finds it even more U.S.-friendly, and less likely to support Palestinian membership, than the prior one. [Haaretz]

• New video has emerged of the Buenos Aires Jewish community center, bombed 17 years ago allegedly by Iran-backed terrorists, before the police had even arrived. [TVPublicaArgentina/Vos Iz Neias?]

• The Ilan Grapel incident is not likely to repeated anytime soon. [JPost]

• After the earthquake in Turkey’s east, there is a backlash brewing against Prime Minister Erdogan’s ambitious foreign policy: Many Turks would rather he spend the bulk of his time focusing on his own country. [Reuters/Haaretz]

• Readers who enjoy, and readers who are infuriated by, Washington Post conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin will want to read Ben Smith’s profile. [Politico]

And quite a plan: Haaretz reports there will be 11 phases, a series of preordained moves in which the several sides (the Israelis, Hamas, the Egyptians) take various steps to reassure the others that they will follow through on their ends of a bargain that will ultimately see over 1,000 prisoners go free. For example, Israel releases a few dozen female prisoners; then Shalit is transferred, via the Rafah crossing, from Gaza to Egypt, only at which point will Israel begin releasing some of its male prisoners. (Upon transfer from Egypt to Israel, Shalit “will be given his old cell phone in order to telephone his mother.”) Prime Minister Netanyahu is playing an extensive, symbolic role in the latter part of the proceedings. After all, this was his decision, and his to own—for better and for worse. He was reportedly difficult to persuade throughout, right back to when chief negotiator (and former Mossad official) David Meidan first made informal contacts with Hamas.

It was not hard to see why Netanyahu, or any Israeli, might hesitate to make this deal, and the disclosure of the names of nearly 500—almost half—of the Palestinian prisoners whom Israel will release makes it even less hard. “These are not just prisoners with ‘blood on their hands,’” Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff (who wrote about the Shalit situation for Tablet Magazine) report. “Rather, the list includes some of the founders of the Hamas military wing, such as Zaher Jabarin and Yihya Sanawar, and prisoners involved in some of the most ignoble terror attacks in Israel, including the 1989 attack on bus 405 and the 1994 abduction of Israel Defense Forces soldier Nachshon Wachsman.” And the people behind the 2001 Tel Aviv night club attack. And the 2001 bombing of the Jerusalem Sbarro. And the Passover massacre at Netanya in 2002 (for me, the always-remember-where-I-was moment of the Second Intifada). More names, and the crimes they committed, are listed here.

It is therefore unsurprising that the deal has not been greeted with unanimous approval. Three cabinet members—Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the Yisrael Beiteinu head; Uzi Landau, the infrastructure minister, also of YB; and Moshe Ya’alon, of Netanyahu’s own Likud—voted against the deal outright. Interior Minister Eli Yishai, head of Shas, suggested freeing certain Jewish terrorists as part of the deal for the sake of “balances.” And speaking of: one entrepreneurial soul, an Israeli Jew who claimed he was related to terrorist victims, vandalized Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s grave in protest (click for ugly, important picture). Victims’ families have the opportunity to petition the High Court to overturn releases, but the court is expected to stare the government’s decisis on this one. In a touching article, the Times’ Ethan Bronner reports on two families of victims of prisoners who will be released—one of which opposes the deal, the other of which supports it. Two Jews, two opinions. (A new poll suggests that 79 percent of Israelis support the exchange.)

Is it a gift to terrorists? Plainly. Is it massively, just gargantuan-like, lopsided? Inarguably. The only consolation to be taken is that some of the terrorists Hamas has wanted these past five-plus years were not included (and nor is Marwan Barghouti, although he is a special case: it is far too complicated to try to parse whether Israel should truly wish him jailed, or Hamas truly wish him freed). It’s not even clear that Hamas will honor elements of the deal barring the return to the territories of some prisoners, who are being deported upon their releases. Is it going to lead to further kidnappings of Israeli soldiers in exchange for further prisoners? Well, why wouldn’t it? This is what happens when you literally negotiate with terrorists.

Meanwhile, is Israel getting much in return besides Shalit? Freeing Israeli-American Ilan Grapel will require more Israeli prisoners released. Turkey claims it aided the mediation, but Egypt disputes it, and certainly the deal is not suddenly going to repair Israeli-Turkish relations. Aaron David Miller is quite correct when he notes that this will have no effect on the peace process—in fact, in empowering Hamas and marginalizing the Palestinian Authority, it’s pretty sure to hurt it (further).

If the deal seems totally bewildering to non-Israeli readers, well, maybe it’s simply bewildering. Or maybe we don’t understand what it means to live in a society where one soldier can be everyone’s son, and everyone’s son can provide a reason for staying together, and engineering a major strategic defeat is worth it so that none of your citizens can claim they were never alive at a time that Gilad Shalit was a free man.

Shalit Swap: The Step-by-Step Guide [Haaretz]
Behind the Scenes of the Shalit Deal [Ynet]
Israel Releases Names of 477 Prisoners to be Freed in Trade [NYT]
In Shalit Deal, Israel Crossed Its Own Red Lines [Haaretz]
A Yearning for Solidarity Tangles Public Life [NYT]
Related: News of a Kidnapping [Tablet Magazine]
Everyone’s Son [Tablet Magazine]

Yesterday, European countries led by Germany, Britain, France, and Portugal—and backed by the United States, which has declared that Assad’s time is up—pushed for a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the regime and threatening sanctions. It was, however, vetoed by China and Russia (“a rare double veto,” according to ace U.N. beat reporter Colum Lynch). Notably, the resolution had already been watered down, and would have been the first Security Council recognition of the Syrian strife. Also notable was U.S. ambassador Susan Rice’s impassioned response: “The United States is outraged that this council has utterly failed to address an urgent moral challenge and a growing threat to regional peace and security,” she said. And her Twitter feed lit up with indignation: “This is a sad day. Most especially for the people of #Syria, but also for the UN Security Council”; “The UN Security Council has just utterly failed to address the Asad regime’s brutality. #Syria”; “The people of #Syria, who seek nothing more than their universal human rights, have been slapped in the face”; “Those who opposed the resolution and gave cover to a brutal regime will have to answer to the Syrian people.” For a diplomat, this wasn’t very diplomatic—probably a good thing, given the circumstances.

Neighboring Turkey, a crucial player, has started military maneuvers near the Syrian border, surprising even the Obama administration (pleasantly), and has gone ahead with its own sanctions. Joe Lieberman, Independent of Connecticut, became the first senator to call for the imposition of a no-fly zone to protect civilians. All this in addition, of course, to Monday’s Senate confirmation of the heroic Robert Ford as ambassador to Syria, a sign that the U.S. will not be cowed by attacks and intimidation. So clearly is the direction in which things are moving that even neighboring Lebanon’s new prime minister, necessarily backed by Assad ally Hezbollah, carefully began to distance himself from the regime, saying, “I wish for the Syrian people what Syrians wish for themselves.” He isn’t alone.

Facing Backlash, Syria Revokes Week-Old Ban on Imports of Consumer Goods [NYT]
Russia and China Veto Security Council Resolution Condemning Syria [FP Turtle Bay]
Syria Warns U.S. Ambassador Against Meddling in Internal Affairs [AP/Haaretz]
Lebanon Premier Sees Risk From Damascus [WSJ]
Earlier: The Brave Man Robert Ford

Oh, that wasn’t Atzmon, who is decidedly small potatoes (although he has written some very objectionable things). That was Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan on CNN this weekend. It’s the basis for the latest tiff between his country and Israel, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has angrily accused Erdogan of incitement. That’s the pattern: Erdogan provokes, to play to his base; Bibi bites, to play to his base; and all of a sudden, it’s another brouhaha between what were, not too long ago, two steadfast allies. If anything, the next to-do has already begun: yesterday, a Turkish paper, citing military sources, published names of Israeli soldiers and officials allegedly involved in the 2010 boarding of the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara. Erdogan also called for sanctions on Israel.

The Times’s Anthony Shadid explains Erdogan’s situation. He is the non-Arab hero of the Arab Spring, the real McCoy: a genuinely Islamist and genuinely democratic leader of a large, successful, and respected country, unafraid to play with the big boys and unembarrassed by more local causes—chiefly, that of the Palestinians. His Kissinger-esque foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has yet broader plans for regional cooperation. On a recent trip to Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt, Erdogan “brought his populism to the Arab world, where he displayed an intuitive sense of the resonance that the Palestinian issue still commands,” Shadid reports. “In speeches, he catered to the West and his domestic critics by embracing a secular state, even as he prayed in suit and tie in Tripoli, the Libyan capital.”

There are so many “material,” for lack of a better word, reasons why Turkey and Israel should be friends. Their interests align in worrying about Syria’s future; in securing energy supplies; in countering Iran; in letting their two robust economies trade with each other. But if the Arab Spring has taught us anything, it is that all leaders—and especially democratic ones, like Erdogan and Netanyahu—are beholden to their people. And each one’s people are demanding ideological brinksmanship. The big-minded politician who figures out how to make his or her constituents see where their true interests lie will merit the thanks of both sides.

Turkey PM Erdogan Says Israel ‘Shows No Mercy’ [CNN GPS]
Israeli PM Accuses Turkish Leader of Incitement [AP/WP]
Turkish Paper Lists Israelis It Said Were in Flotilla Raid [NYT]
In Riddle of Mideast Upheaval, Turkey Offers Itself as Answer [NYT]
Related: John Mearsheimer Ready for Rosh Hashanah in Style [NYMag Daily Intel]

• Diplomats are working to craft an apparatus whereby the Palestinian resolution would be postponed in the U.N. Security Council, in order to allow for direct talks to resume. [LAT]

• The remaining hikers in Iran were released. [Yahoo! The Envoy]

• The Obama campaign had a massive conference call yesterday in order to begin its efforts to shore up the Jewish vote. [WP The Plum Line]

• Iran’s ambassador hewed closer to the Hamas line on President Abbas’ plans, declaring U.N. recognition merely one step toward eliminating Israel. [Investigative Project on Terrorism via Ben Smith]

• Turkey has joined sanctions against Syria and is on the verge of erasing relations with its neighbor. [Ynet]

Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal’s New York Times editorial earlier this week, warning the White House that such a veto would mean losing Saudi Arabia as an ally, is only one part of the Middle Eastern campaign against the Americans. Even when Israel is the ostensible target of the region’s ire, it is the Obama Administration that led the Palestinians up a tree and kicked away the ladder, as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas put it.

Obama’s supporters in the pro-Israel camp are eager to jump on any evidence that the president is a great friend of Jerusalem, even if he doesn’t afford the same love to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would to one headed by Netanyahu’s left-leaning rival, Tzipi Livni. Thus, those supporters have made much of Obama’s assistance in securing the safe escape of the Israeli Embassy’s staff from Cairo, assistance for which Netanyahu was rightly grateful.

But it’s worth noting that when Turkey sent an angry mob after Israeli security personnel, the White House took a very different approach. After Israeli forces boarded the Turkish-sponsored Mavi Marmara in May 2010 to prevent it from running the maritime blockade of Gaza, the commandos found themselves faced with armed passengers and killed nine on board. The United Nations’ Palmer Report recently cleared Israel of any illegality in the incident. But the White House still wanted Israel to apologize to Turkey for killing the terrorists on the ship.

The administration was apparently looking to give the Turks something in exchange for agreeing to host an early-warning radar system. Moreover, Obama is eager to make Turkey happy because in his strategic view, Ankara is a key player capable of exercising influence across the Middle East. It’s a skewed perspective that the Turks share.

The fact that Israel will be the only regional actor left standing by the administration after this upcoming diplomatic storm is, paradoxically, the result of how badly Obama has mishandled the Jewish State. Creating daylight between the United States and its only loyal regional ally has been an invitation to regional governments in trouble to distance themselves even further from Israel—and, therefore, from the United States. Since every government in the region is in trouble, the Obama Adminstration’s policy of “even-handedness” is not likely to result in peace but rather in turmoil, bloodshed, and a further reduction in American influence.

The Turks are making noise not just because of their genuinely anti-Israel disposition but because they want to position themselves as powerful advocates of the Palestinians. That’s why they expelled the Israeli ambassador to Turkey earlier this month instead of a year and a half ago. The issue, then, is not Israeli action on the high seas but U.S. diplomacy in overcompensation mode. Ankara doesn’t deserve a tit-for-tat from Washington for hosting a radar system: It’s part of the NATO membership fee. But instead of reining in the Turks, the White House turned on Jerusalem last week when it leaked a story claiming that former Defense Secretary Robert Gates thinks that Netanyahu is “ungrateful.” Some in official Israeli circles believe that the Gates story is payback to Netanyahu for not apologizing to Turkey. In any case, it sends a strange message on the eve of the U.N. vote: The Americans are backing Israel, but they’re holding their noses as they do so.

And so the pre-veto campaign against Israel has already begun. Saudi papers criticized the Israelis, as did Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Israel, said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “is the West’s spoiled child.” In Cairo, Erdogan explained how “a Palestinian child’s pain hurts the heart of mothers in Ankara.” The hurt of those Turkish hearts is hardly going to be salved if Washington’s U.N. Ambassador, Susan Rice, votes against a Palestinian state.

**
For almost 40 years the U.S. order for the region has been built on the back of its Israeli ally, whose wars, especially in 1967 and 1973, effectively secured American hegemony in the Middle East. With Israel positioned as the region’s reigning military power, the United States could accommodate its other regional clients by compelling Israel to sit with its adversaries and, from time to time, give up land in exchange for an uncertain peace. Meantime, its enemies were rewarded with advanced weapons systems. In other words, for the United States the peace process was important not because it necessarily brought about peace, but because it showed Washington to be a cunning grandmaster, able to control the movements of all the pieces on the chessboard.

From an American perspective, the problem with the Obama Administration is not that it lacks the natural warmth for the Jewish state that Bill Clinton and the second Bush White Houses radiated. Rather, it is that it does not understand the rules of the game it is playing—chess—and so is incapable of assessing the value of the queen, Israel.

Obama came to office with the idea that what mattered was not the game but real movement on the peace process, resulting in the establishment of a Palestinian state. He believed the experts when they said that he had to go hard on the Israelis. In reality, the sticking point for Netanyahu and the right was never really, or not only, that they couldn’t stop settlement construction, but rather that the Israeli electorate had lost patience with phony talk about peace and was no longer willing to indulge the fantasies of American politicians at the price of their own lives. The sentiments of Israeli voters may change in the short term, or it may take much longer. But right now their memories are still bright with the images of rockets being shot from the lands they voluntarily gave up in the vain hope of peace. Any Israeli leader who tried to give up the West Bank after the experiences with Lebanon and Gaza would be committing political suicide.

That doesn’t mean there’s no game. It just means that the chessboard looks entirely different now that it did five or 10 years ago. Once the White House cornered both Abbas and Netanyahu, leaving neither man any room to maneuver, the result was not a swift march toward peace. Rather, the Americans lost control of the board: Netanyahu balked. The Palestinians decided to go to the United Nations to declare their state. Post-Mubarak Egypt brokered a reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah. Turkey moved against Israel to advance its own position. And Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Jordan, which had been quietly praying that the storms of the Arab Spring might pass them over, came out to sound off against the Israelis.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, including the testimony of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and other regional leaders who wanted Obama to focus on Iran, the White House believed that the region’s central issue was the Arab-Israeli crisis and the obstacle was Israeli intransigence. With the arrival of the Arab Spring, Washington’s experts were proven decisively wrong. As the Arab Spring turns into a long, hot summer, shaken rulers like Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the mullahs in Iran, and their clients in Lebanon will also look to stir up trouble for Israel in the hopes of distracting their people from the problems at home.

The shakiness of these regimes suggests that a shooting war is in no one’s interest right now. At the same time, the larger political instability of the region may also encourage these countries to act in ways that might ordinarily seem reckless. The vacuum created by U.S. abandonment of the old order has encouraged an intense competition for influence and power that has fueled the most recent upsurge of provocations and violence against the Israelis—a pattern that is likely to grow more intense after the statehood vote and can easily spiral out of control. If that happens, the Israelis will either acquit themselves well or else they won’t. Either way, America’s remaining prestige in the region will go up in smoke.

• Christians United for Israel was unusually effusive in its praise for Obama’s pledge to veto a Palestinian statehood resolution in the U.N. Security Council. [JTA]

• Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government says it plans to respond to Turkish rhetoric with silence in an effort not to further exacerbate tensions. [Haaretz]

• Blogger Richard Silverstein: leftist ideologue, or one-man Mideast WikiLeaks? [Forward]

• Some Orthodox Jews were turned off by the official Democratic response to the Weprin loss, which was in part to, well, blame it on the Orthodox. [Ben Smith]

• The last interview Tony Judt ever gave makes me sad, because he is more unfair to Israel than I usually thought of him as being. Here, for the record, is an interview I did with him about a month prior. [The Atlantic]

Why did Israeli ambassador Michael Oren leave his speech at the University of California, Irvine, early last year? It wasn’t because of the pro-Palestinian protesters; it was because of tickets to the Los Angeles Lakers game. Doesn’t he know what happens when Jews go to Lakers games?

The embassy storming reflected a real undercurrent of Egyptian rage at Israel and, more directly, of official Egyptian complicity with Israel’s government (and existence); it is telling that Egypt’s Interior Ministry’s building was not spared riots, either. And, as both Shavit and his editor, Aluf Benn, argue, if these crises are not directly Prime Minister Netanyahu’s fault, we are setting the bar low if we simply excuse him there. Bibi has not done nearly enough to put Israel in a position such that more of the international community would be more sympathetic to Israel’s perspective on the Egyptian rage, the irresponsible Turkish brinksmanship, the Palestinian Authority’s flailing attempt to upgrade its U.N. status. Instead, he is pursuing what one senior official called a “porcupine policy”—pricking its sharp hairs out whenever trouble nears—meanwhile obstinately continuing to antagonize the U.S. and build more settlements.

Might I suggest that now is the time for Netanyahu and his government to strike back—diplomatically, that is—with firmness and creativity? Or, if not, that Obama—as a friend to Israel as well as someone keenly interested in maintaining Israel’s integrity and influence—should do it for him? That these undeniable crises might in fact be opportunities to advance Israeli interests? Already the embassy storming brought Israel and the actual Egyptian government closer: there will be a crackdown on violent (and, likely, nonviolent as well) dissent in Egypt, and some of the rioters will be tried; and it was Egyptian commandos who rescued six guards trapped at the embassy. These steps will cause initial blowback among protesters, and one wonders whether a future, more democratic Egyptian government would also take them. But they also bring home the fundamental shared interests between the two countries, which more democracy is not simply going to make evaporate. And indeed, the crisis is prompting prominent Egyptian voices—including Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who became the face, such as it was, of the Tahrir Square movement that ousted Hosni Mubarak—to question whether a country with actual pressing problems (widespread impoverishment, a lack of democracy, corruption) should be focused on its peaceful neighbor to the north.

The crisis also brought Israel and its paramount ally, the U.S., closer: it was to President Obama whom Bibi turned at the embassy’s darkest moment, and Obama who came through, applying hard pressure (threatening “consequences,” reportedly) to the Egyptian government to resolve the situation (apparently Field Marshal Tantawi, essentially the Egyptian leader, at first didn’t return his calls, but soon got the message that he had better do so). Netanyahu thanked both Egypt and the U.S. afterward. Top leaders from Britain and Germany condemned the embassy assault. (Iran’s government praised it, so there’s that.)

There are even signs that Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey—who, as a more equal U.S. ally and a hugely popular (and popularly elected) leader, has a much wider range of action than Egypt’s government—is pulling back from last week’s tantrum. That pledge to offer Turkish ships to accompany humanitarian aid to Gaza? Oh, Erdogan was just misquoted about that, you see. Erdogan’s threat that he would try to visit Gaza during an upcoming trip to Cairo? Nah, he won’t really, according to Turkey’s foreign minister.

We still need to see how things play out with the P.A., but reports that it won’t go to the Security Council are evidence that it respects the continued resilience of the Israeli-American alliance, despite everything.

Things are not hunky-dory. But transcendently talented politicians know that the literal definition of a “crisis” is a moment where things could radically break in either direction. They translate Warren Buffett’s famous axiom, “Be greedy when others are scared,” into politics. At this point, it honestly seems too much to expect this of Netanyahu. But we do know he has a penchant for doing whatever his personal survival ensures. It falls, rather, to Obama—who some have believed to have been transcendently talented, and who has shown flashes of a certain genius before—to come up with a way to turn this crisis to Israel’s, and therefore his own country’s, advantage. An Arab Fall after the Arab Spring that doesn’t turn on Israel and America: that would be something.

Timeline of Israel Embassy Attack in Cairo [JPost]
Arab Spring Showed Its Real Face in Attack on Israeli Embassy in Egypt [Haaretz]
Crises With Turkey and Egypt Represent a Political Tsunami for Israel [Haaretz]
After Attack on Embassy, Egypt Vows Tougher Stance on Protests [NYT]
In Egypt, Critics Question Focus on Israel [WP]
U.S. Told Egypt It Must Rescue Embassy Staffers or Suffer ‘Consequences,’ Sources Say [Haaretz]
Erdogan Says Misquoted on Warships [Ynet]
‘Turkish Foreign Minister: Erdogan Will Not Visit Gaza’ [JPost]
European Diplomats: Abbas Won’t Turn to U.N. Security Council for Palestinian Statehood [Haaretz]

Next week, Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv is scheduled to fly to Istanbul and play a local team, Besiktas, in the Europa League, one of the most prestigious international tournaments in soccer. The recent tensions between the two countries, however, will take a toll on the team: Three members of Maccabi’s squad are soldiers in active military duty, and are forbidden (Hebrew-only) by the Israel Defense Forces, given the delicate situation with Turkey, from flying to what might soon become enemy territory.

And you thought football was warlike.

Earlier: The Turkish Rivalry Heats Up

Nobody could argue this is Israel’s ideal state of affairs. The country’s extremely respected central banker, Stanley Fischer, warned of the dire economic impact of restricted trade with Turkey, which in normal years is worth billions of dollars. And the United States, of course, is not at all pleased.

And yet analyses, like that of columnist Roger Cohen, that pin most if not all of the blame on Israel for the diplomatic fallout (“Israel Isolates Itself” is the headline) are missing that this is almost entirely a Turkey-created crisis.

Cohen summarizes the U.N. conclusion on the flotilla deaths accurately, addressing Israel: “You had the right to do it but what you did was way over the top and just plain dumb.” He doesn’t note that Israel essentially agrees with that, while Turkey vehemently disputes it. Then, he confuses a crucial, diplospeak nuance: He notes that the U.N. recommended a statement of regret and compensation in exchange for the resumption of full diplomatic relations, and concludes, “An apology is the right course and the smart course.” But an apology is actually not the same as a statement of regret; and indeed Israel has offered a statement of regret, and it is a statement of regret that the U.N. recommends. Turkey, however, insists on an apology, as well as on Israel’s lifting the blockade.

So for Israel, the decision is no longer primarily about diplomatic isolation, or the economy, or even the morality of what happened onboard the Mavi Marmara and how to atone for it. At this point, it comes down to the crucial question of whether Israel will allow Turkey to force Israel to go beyond even a U.N. report with which it cooperated—of whether Israel will give in to blackmail. It can be very tempting, I know, to chalk Israeli stubbornness up to hawkish machismo or even to a lack of regret at the deaths of the nine flotilla members. But really, Israel is following a very standard realpolitik playbook; it is Turkey—hyper-ideological and flailing at the gap between the power it thinks it deserves and the power it has—that is acting recklessly.

And the pressure is not only on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government. Germany has already called on Turkey to accept the U.N. report’s findings. And Turkey’s opposition leader, representing the secular old older that Erdogan’s Islamist AKP has supplanted, slammed Erdogan’s brinksmanship: “No good can come of it,” he said, “and there is no need for us to risk our interest with petty actions.”

Amid Tensions With Israel, Turkey Threatens Increased Naval Presence [NYT]
‘Turkey’s Erdogan to Visit Egypt, and May Cross In to Gaza’ [JPost]
Fischer: Impact of Damaged Trade Ties with Turkey Will Be Severe [Ynet]
Israel Isolates Itself [NYT]
‘Erdogan Painted Himself Into a Corner’ [Ynet]
Earlier: U.N. Flotilla Report Affirms Israeli Stance

• Turkey pledged to up its naval presence in response to new tensions with Israel. [NYT]

• Meanwhile, Secretary of State Clinton’s team is hard at work trying to defuse Israeli-Turkish tensions. [Ynet]

• Why allowing more Egyptian troops into Sinai is good for Israel but also, potentially, bad for it. [LAT/JI Daily]

• A senior Palestinian official accused the United States of showing “disdain” for Arabs in refusing to support the statehood initiative. Here I thought it was because we weren’t doing enough to halt the mass murder of Syrian civilians. [Ynet]

• A member of the Gaza-based Palestinian Resistance Committees, which Israel says helped plot the deadly attacks in the south last month, was killed by helicopter attack. [NYT]

• Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government still hopes to restore ties with Turkey, but not at the expense of apologizing for the treatment of the flotilla, after a U.N. panel stopped short of suggesting one. [Haaretz]

• Not that Israel is holding its breath. “This is part of the Islamization spreading there,” said one official. “Therefore, unfortunately, we won’t be returning to the golden era of our relations with the Turks in the near future.” [Ynet]

• The first rule of doing drugs during a Birthright trip is: don’t. But there are other rules should you choose to ignore that one. [Jewlicious]

• Judith Butler on Hannah Arendt on Adolf Eichmann. Surely this is of interest to some of you. [Guardian]

• One-time NBA baller Kenny Anderson will coach the team at a Jewish day school in Florida. [JTA/Jewish Journal]

Oh my God you can be Maccabi Tel Aviv in a video game!

• Iran is moving some of its most important nuclear fuel-making to a secret underground bunker. It also declared that its production would exceed its needs for a small research reactor, which sounds ominous. [NYT]

• The European Union plans to place an embargo on all Syrian oil exports. [AP/WP]

• An Iranian lawmaker spoke up against his country’s continued backing of the Assad regime, in a sign that even that regime’s strongest, most important supporter may be waning. [LAT]

• Many younger Israelis, faced with some degree of uncertainty about their country’s future, are seeking EU passports. Bogus trend story of the week, or for-real? [AP/WP]

• Turkey will station a U.S. radar as part of an anti-Iran missile defense system. [WSJ]

At first glance, these seem like a balanced, “on the one hand, on the other” set of conclusions. In fact, though, they are a clear—even resounding—vindication of Israel and a diplomatic defeat of Turkey. Recall that Israel itself has essentially admitted that it should have handled the flotilla differently so as not to have caused the deaths, and that it has offered to express regret and compensation, and resume full diplomatic relations. Turkey, by contrast, has insisted on an apology (as the U.N. does not), has deemed the blockade illegal (as the U.N. does not), and has called on the blockade to be lifted (as the U.N. does not).

It’s also worth noting, for those stubborn stragglers who still insist Israel murdered nine civilians in cold blood, a few other things the panel finds: that while “the majority of the flotilla participants had no violent intentions,” nonetheless “there exist serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly IHH. The actions of the flotilla needlessly carried the potential for escalation.” And: “Israeli Defense Forces personnel faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for their own protection. Three soldiers were captured, mistreated, and placed at risk by those passengers. Several others were wounded.”

It seems to me that Prime Minister Netanyahu made the right call in not apologizing. Turkey was banking on a U.N. report that forced Israel to beg for a rapprochement; when it didn’t get that, all that was left was for it to throw a fit and hope Israel fell for it, which it didn’t. Now it is threatening to sanction Israel. If (when?) Turkey follows through, the broader international community will see Turkey contradicting the U.N. report and Israel simply, compliantly toeing its line. Turkey is nothing if not the France of De Gaulle: chafing at no longer having the power it once had and alienating traditional allies in elaborate, emotional, and vain attempts to regain it. Like France, it will fail.

U.N. Report Finds Blockade by Israel Legal but Faults Raid [NYT]
Earlier: Should Israel Apologize to Turkey?

• In planning for protests next month, the IDF has established an inner “red line” for every West Bank settlement inside of which soldiers may shoot at protesters’ legs; in some cases, the army has armed settlers with stun grenades and tear gas. [Haaretz]

• Prominent Likud politician Danny Danon is in the nascent state of South Sudan, where the president told him the country would uphold ties with Israel and maybe even station its embassy in Jerusalem. [JPost]

• Prime Minister Erdogan announced that Turkey would return or compensate for religious properties—chiefly those of Christians and Jews—that the state had expropriated over the past several decades. [NYT]

• The Libyan civil war has meant a small boon for Gaza weapons supplies. [JPost]

• A second man claims to have aided Flagman—the guy who to much applause yanked the Israeli flag off the embassy in Cairo—but Flagman denies it. There is a grassy knoll joke to be made here somewhere. [NYT]

• The father of Leiby Kletzky sued Levi Aron, who has confessed to murdering the eight-year-old Hasidic boy, for $100 million. [Daily News/Failed Messiah]

• Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted the U.N.’s flotilla report to be postponed six months. Instead, it’s due to drop Friday. [Haaretz]

• Eli Valley has a tremendous, personal comic about growing up with a single mother’s cooking (or lack thereof). [Saveur]

• Mel Brooks frets about the preponderance of non-Jewish comedians. “We’ll go back to prizefighting.” [The Daily Beast]

• Israel wants to be a prime location for Hollywood shoots, and it is enacting the tax incentives to get it done. [AP/Haaretz]

• Significantly, Iran has granted a U.N. inspector access to a site with advanced centrifuges for uranium enrichment. [AP/WP]

• Jonathan Tobin explains why Israel is right to have refrained from apologizing to Turkey over last year’s flotilla. [Contentions]

• This is what I meant: people outside the shtetl—I’m looking at you, Katy Perry!—frequently step in it without meaning to when they discuss Israel. (No but actually this is crazy.) [Michelle Malkin]

• Joe Lieberman on his sex life (that got your attention!). [Moment]

• A lawsuit over three George Grosz paintings that the Supreme Court will likely not consider brings up questions of whether Holocaust-related art cases should be decided on the basis of legal technicalities or the spirit of the law. [NYT]

Easy.

• In a television interview yesterday, Syrian President Bashar Assad was defiant about U.S. and European calls for him to relinquish power. [NYT]

• Rebel fighters took Tripoli, though Col. Muammar Gaddafi remains at large. [WP]

• The United Nations report on the Gaza flotilla will be delayed yet again in the absence of an Israeli-Turkish rapprochement, this time primarily at Turkey’s request. [Haaretz]

• Several Israeli politicians, including in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cabinet, called for an escalation of the weekend’s Gaza conflict, but Israel here is hemmed in by the Egyptian regime as it was not before. [LAT]

• The two remaining American hikers (“hikers”?) in Iran were each sentenced to eight years in prison, unexpectedly harsh terms. [AP/WP]

• The weekend’s violence proved a major distraction (a welcome one, for Bibi, one imagines) from the domestic social-justice protests that have roiled Israel over the past few weeks. [AP/WP]

• Will Syria allow U.N. inspectors an unadulterated look at the shelled Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia? [LAT]

I sense a bluff. Recall that the U.N. report is apparently shockingly friendly to Israel: assigning it some blame but also assigning Turkey plenty; praising Israel’s internal investigation while faulting Turkey’s for being biased; and demanding neither an apology nor compensation from Israel. Recall further that Israel had arranged for the report’s release to be postponed precisely so that it and Turkey could reach a formal rapprochement before its publication. Recall that Turkey could use Israel’s cooperation in dealing with its extremely restive neighbor Syria, which poses far more of a threat to its own stability than to Israel’s. And note finally the reports, un-denied by Turkey, that Turkish negotiators had issued an increasing cascade of demands: an apology; and compensation; and then the shelving of the report (which should probably have been the final quo, though one wonders if even that would be worth it to Israel); and then, finally, the lifting of the Gaza blockade, which in addition to being something that isn’t particularly Turkey’s business is something that the U.N. probe explicitly finds to be legal, according to advance reports. So “I’m sorry” doesn’t translate into Hebrew. Does “chutzpah” translate into Turkish?

The country that really wants this deal is the United States. But instead, Turkey and Israel will likely continue to have a prickly relationship, even as Turkey could use all the regional friends it can get given that it is sounding warnings that Syria is turning into Libya-in-the-Levant. This outcome is worse for Turkey.

Israel Says It Won’t Apologize to Turkey for Deadly Flotilla Raid [NYT]
Turkey Plans Diplomatic Assault on Israel After Its Refusal to Apologize for Gaza Flotilla Raid [Haaretz]
Turkey: Syria Situation May Become Libya-Style Civil War [JPost]
Earlier: Should Israel Apologize to Turkey?
Israel Enjoys Victory with U.N. Flotilla Probe
‘I’m Semi-Sorry’
Have Israel and Turkey Reached Détente?

• Prime Minister Netanyahu refused an entreaty from Secretary of State Clinton to apologize to Turkey. [Haaretz]

• Hosni Mubarak opined that Syrian President Assad should quit. Well, he would know! [Ynet]

• The young Israeli protesters think the cost of living should be lower. How expensive is it to live in Israel? [JTA]

• The semi-lost semi-Jews … of Kaifeng! (Ahem.) [WSJ]

• So Ralph Branca, the sorta-Jew. Is he Jewish? Alan Dershowitz, among others, weighs in, and further notes Sandy Koufax’s distinctively Jewish pitching style. [NYT]

Marv Levy, the only NFL coach to reach four straight Super Bowls (he lost all four), is now a novelist. Here’s some highlights from the second Super Bowl he lost:

In fact, though, it is likely not mere semantics; rather, elements of Prime Minister Erdogan’s government probably still believe Assad is a reformer. A U.S. diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks revealed that, several years ago, such was the Turkish administration’s thinking: “the Turkish Embassy in Damascus views Assad as trying to reform Syria, especially economically, against an older generation of Baathists,” it reported. “The Embassy views Assad’s control as fragile; too delicate, added [an adviser], to enable him to engage in political reform.” Sucks to be him, I guess.

And yet isn’t this what the United States thinks, too—that there is yet the possibility of refom? Isn’t that why the Obama administration sent Ambassador Robert Ford back even after the regime threatened its embassy and laid waste to Hama, where Ford had visited? (Here is an incredible report from that sorry city.) Isn’t that why President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron yet again called on Assad over the weekend to end the violence but not necessarily to step down? This as Syria sent its navy to shell—shell—its main port city? Thousands of civilians have been reported killed, thousands more disappeared; the United Nations says privately that military officers have ordered the execution of soldiers who disobey orders to fire on civilians.

In the HBO series The Wire, a corrupt mayor running for re-election repeatedly swears, “Reform is not just a watchword in my administration.” Yesterday, Syria confiscated the cellphones and ID cards of thousands of residents of that port city, Latakia, and forced them into a stadium, for God only imagines what purpose. Syria is not even pretending to reform anymore. So why do we still go along with the conceit?

Turkey Warns Syria to Stop Crackdown [NYT]
Turkish PM Erdogan’s Visit to Syria [WikiLeaks]
Hama’s Ghosts [New Yorker News Desk]
Obama, Other Leaders Again Tell Syria to End ‘Brutal Campaign’ [LAT]
U.N. Report Cites Reports of Syrian Army Killing Defectors [Turtle Bay]
Related: Mad Men [Tablet Magazine]
Earlier: U.S. Re-Upping Syrian Ambassador

To grasp why this is so remarkable—since certainly the notion of civilian authority over the military is de rigeur in, say, the United States—you have to know about Turkey and about Erdogan, and Christopher Hitchens does a nice job with the particulars. The modern state of Turkey was founded in 1923 by the resolutely secular and thoroughly military Kemal Mustafa Atatürk, and for the next 80 years existed with a military at least as powerful as the civilian authorities (sometimes more powerful, as when one prime minister was hanged) and with a French-like commitment to laïcité in public life. That started to change last decade, when Erdogan’s AKP—ideologically Islamist, but moderately so—came to power, the first of three straight national elections they won. Erdogan “now enjoys more power than any Turkish leader since Kemal Atatürk,” Stephen Kinzer wrote two weeks ago. “Politically Turkey has changed more in the last ten years than it did in the previous eighty. For generations the army was able to enforce strict secularism in the tradition of Atatürk, but a new ethos, more open to religious influence, has changed the terms of politics and public life.” So in Turkey, the military correlates to secularism, while Islamists correlate to democracy. Pakistan it ain’t.

Israel currently has two major concerns with Turkey: its own bilateral relations, which dipped severely last year, and their mutual neighbor, Syria. On the latter front, the Assad regime’s instability has clearly brought the two countries closer. And the two sides seem to be circling around some sort of U.S.-backed rapprochement wherein Israel apologizes but does not take responsibility for last year’s raid on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara.

Israeli officials are concerned about Erdogan’s consolidation. I’m not sure I agree? If the lesson of the Arab Spring is that in the long run cooperative authoritarian rulers are poor guarantors of stability, then the much more modified Turkish Spring offers a much lower-stakes exchange: While in Egypt there is fear that genuinely scary Islamist elements could take over in the military’s wake, here the popular Islamists are avowed moderates who on the international stage are rational actors who can be made to see where their interests align with Israel’s. The Turkish model is probably the best to hope for Egypt to emulate. (Sure beats the Pakistani one.) I mean, an ostensibly secular republic that is nonetheless also the result of an early-20th-century nationalist movement, with a democratically elected government that includes overtly religious elements? Turkey and Israel should probably be friends. Meanwhile, hopefully Erdogan will remember what great powers come with.

Turkish Prime Minister Climbs a Higher Perch in Wake of Resignation [NYT]
Turkey: Flanked by Generals, the Prime Minister Sits at Head of Table on a Day of Symbolism [AP/WP]
The End of the Kemalist Affair [Slate]
Triumphant Turkey? [NYRB]
Barak: U.S. Advises Qualified Apology to Turkey [JTA]
Officials: Israel Concerned Over Turmoil in Turkish Army [Ynet]
Earlier: Should Israel Apologize to Turkey?
Have Israel and Turkey Reached Détente?

• A routine incursion to make arrests in a refugee camp outside Ramallah led to a firefight that caused two Palestinian deaths and five IDF injuries. [DPA/Haaretz]

• There was also a brief exchange of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border, though no one was injured. Each side blames the other for starting it. [AP/WP]

• The housing protests in Jerusalem have shaken society, galvanized the left, and depending on your point of view revealed either how well the question of security has been taken care of for Israelis or how poorly it has been swept under the rug. [NYT]

• Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan sat alone at the table—usually he is flanked by generals—following last week’s military resignations, in a symbol of his new authority over his country’s armed forces. [AP/WP]

• The guy who basically started the anti-sharia meme, many years ago, is a Hasidic lawyer named David Yerushalmi. [NYT]

It is likewise unclear whether Turkey’s Erdogan is making serious threats or merely posturing when he insists on an apology. If Erdogan holds fast to this demand, he has sticks at his disposal: He could further downgrade diplomatic ties, and he has even made noises about attempting to visit Gaza, which is not a spectacle Israel wants. On the other hand, if Erdogan refuses to play ball, he would be denying himself the carrot of a U.N. report less harsh on Turkey than the current one. The implication of Israel’s request to delay the release of a favorable report, after all, is that Israel would be willing to make that report less favorable in exchange for a deal.

Which is why I must (sigh) agree with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and others and oppose this apology. There is the principled reason: an apology undercuts the blockade and Israel’s soldiers ability to act in self-defense. And there are realpolitik reasons: an apology proves that bullying works, and that Turkey has the power and can dictate the terms of whatever new Turkish-Israeli alliance results. By contrast, the Syria situation as well as the U.N. report reveal that Turkey needs Israel as much as the other way around. “So what should Israel do?” asks Amir Mizroch, former executive editor of The Jerusalem Post. “Fuck’em. Seriously. Apologizing would be a massive, historic capitulation we’ll end up paying for on a much larger scale.” I don’t share his hyperbole, but the sentiment makes sense.

U.N. Report on Gaza Flotilla Delayed Due to Israel Request to Continue Turkish Talks [Haaretz]
Turkish PM Insists Israel Must Apologize If It Wants to Repair Ties [AP/WP]
Apologizing to Turkey Would Undermine Israel’s Interests Twice Over [Contentions]
Earlier: Israel Enjoys Victory With Gaza Flotilla Probe
‘I’m Semi-Sorry’
Have Israel and Turkey Reached Détente?

• Lawyers for Levi Aron, accused of killing eight-year-old Leiby Kletzky, are hinting that they will employ an insanity defense. [Forward]

• Iran is installing uranium centrifuges of a “better quality and speed.” [Ynet]

• While in Istanbul, Secretary of State Clinton relayed that the United States wishes to see rapprochement between Turkey and Israel. [Haaretz]

• The outspoken former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley is getting attention for arguing that the strategic calculus still disfavors an Israeli military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. [JPost]

• The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s most-wanted war criminal, Sandor Kepiro, 97, was acquitted by a Hungary court in connection with a 1942 massacre in Serbia that killed 1200, mostly Jews, for which he has been convicted twice before. [NYT]

• A lone ship from the original, thwarted flotilla—a vessel called the Dignity al-Karama carrying French, Swedish, and German citizens, as well as Arab and Israeli journalists—has left Greece and could reach Gaza today. [AP/WP]

• There is increasing willingness in the IDF and Justice Ministry to offer an actual apology to Turkey in order to resolve Israeli-Turkish enmity. [Haaretz]

• Although Prime Minister Netanyahu opposes it and it will (therefore) likely fail, supporters of a bill that would investigate left-wing human rights groups will try to push it through the Knesset this week. [Haaretz]

• Secretary of State Clinton chastised Turkey following reports that it has regressed on human rights and secularism. [AP/WP]

• A May bombing in Istanbul attributed to a Kurdish terrorist group was in fact, according to a new report, a Hezbollah attack directed against an Israeli envoy. [Haaretz]

•Four Jewish summer camps in the Poconos have signed contracts with gas companies licensing the environmentally destructive practice known as “fracking.” [Forward]

• Maybe Israel and Turkey can make up over their shared love of circumcision. [JPost]

• The World Conference of Science Journalists was held in Doha, Qatar. So clearly there had to be controversy about a U.S.-Israeli citizen appearing on a panel. [Science Insider]

• Andrew Silow-Carroll takes up one of my biggest pet peeves: Namely, writers who turn the nouns bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah into verbs. We don’t do that, thank you (and yes I’m sure I have at some point). [Just ASC]

• Ten Bastille Day articles from the Forverts. My favorite is Abraham Cahan’s. [Forward]

A Tennessee-based sculptor wants part of the fallen Anne Frank tree. He hopes to use it to create the second-most beautiful artistic monument to Anne Frank ever.

• Yet Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan insisted that Israel must not only express regret but actually apologize for last year’s flotilla raid. That will make Israel and Turkey’s negotiations toward formal diplomatic rapprochement more difficult. [Reuters/Haaretz]

• At least 12 died in anti-regime protests in Syria today, bolstered by U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford’s surprise visit yesterday to the dissident stronghold of Hama. [WSJ]

• Your weekend reading is this amazing profile of Joe Levin, the foremost private investigator specializing in the Hasidic world, courtesy the other daily magazine of Jewish life and culture. [NYT]

• China and Russia have reportedly been aiding Iran with its nuclear program since the 1990s. Thanks, guys. [Washington Times]

• Super-brief primer on next Monday’s Quartet talks from Aaron David Miller. [Wilson Center]

• Note the mutual useless stereotypes of Manhattan and Florida. [NYT Magazine]

• If you think of Lebanese politics as the English Premier League—“all about the relaxed rules about foreign ownership and player transfers—it becomes easier to understand (mainly if you already understand the EPL). [Karl reMarks]

• Francophilic intellectual Arthur Goldhammer blogs a review by Sylvie Kauffmann of an autobiographical book by Dominique Moïsi called Un Juif Improbable. But I’m sure there are plenty of non-Jewish French intellectuals. [French Politics]

• Influential film historian Robert Sklar died at 74. [NYT]

Viggo Mortensen as Freud? David Cronenberg directing? Keira Knightley receiving spank-therapy? Sign me up!

• How Jordan, while not without some unrest, has managed to avoid the upheaval characteristic of much of the rest of the Arab world. [AP/WP]

• Thirty-five years to the week after the raid at Entebbe, the one Israeli soldier slain, Yonatan Netanyahu (the prime minister’s brother), is remembered by people he knew at Harvard. [Harvard Crimson/JPost]

• For the first time, China has awarded a foreign ambassador honorary citizenship. The ambassador in question is Amos Nadai, of Israel. [The Schmooze]

• A new poll found that President Obama would win only 56 percent of the Jewish vote against a generic Republican candidate today. The problem is that the poll is a load of partisan crap. [Washington Jewish Week]

• Andrew Silow-Carroll has some other ideas for leads in the vein of “The following may cheer those who complain that Jews exercise too much influence in the American political system.” [JustASC]

Fact I learned today: Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man in Paris” is based on David Geffen.