Pi Mai, Pi Mai, Dok Tang Tu Jugak

Published: Wednesday July 8, 2009 MYT 2:42:00 PM
Updated: Wednesday July 8, 2009 MYT 3:55:24 PM

Math and Science back to Bahasa, mother tongues

KUALA LUMPUR: The Cabinet has decided that the medium of instruction for Maths and Science will revert to Bahasa Malaysia in national schools and mother-tongue languages in national-type schools from 2012 onwards.

The reversal of the Teaching of Math and Science in English (PPSMI) policy will be done in stages, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said on Wednesday.

He however added that there will be greater emphasis on learning the English language.

English literature will be re-introduced, as will subjects on grammar and composition.

Beginning 2012, students in Year One and Year Four in primary schools, and Form One and Form Four in secondary schools, will learn Math and Science in Bahasa Malaysia.

The change will not affect those in Form Six and Matriculation.

The two subjects will be taught in two languages until 2014 for other students, he said.

“The gap between rural and urban students has widened since PPSMI started.

“Only 19.2% of secondary teachers and 9.96% of primary teachers were sufficiently proficient in English,” he said, explaining the Government’s decision to revert to the old system.

On efforts to emphasise the learning of English, the number of English teachers would be increased by 13,933 -- retirees would be hired, as well as foreigners if need be.

Primary schools will also increase English classes by 90 minutes a week.

There have been calls from various groups for the policy to revert to before 2003, when the subjects were taught in Bahasa Malaysia in national schools, and either in Chinese or Tamil in national-type schools.

The issue has seen a rare alliance between Malay and Chinese educationists, who are against the switch, although there are also calls by many parents and entrepreneurs for English to be maintained.

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Well, this is indeed a sad day. Sad because obviously we don't have visionary leadership in this country, able to see far into the future and determined to do what is best for our children. Sad, because the leadership that we have do not have the spine to stand up to minority interests. Sad, because our children are sacrificed because the BN wants to win one by-election (which they will probably STILL lose anyway).

I have been crying for policies that are based on empirical evidence. So now they throw in some studies they have done on the implementation of the PPMSI and apparently it shows that rural children are not doing as well as urban children. But, when rural schools are not as well equipped as urban ones, is that not to be expected? If you look at performance overall, doesn't that hold true anyway? Why should English be made the excuse for inequal distribution of resources between rural and urban schools? Surely when you see poor results from rural schools, what needs to be done is to improve the teaching in those schools. Not reverse an entire policy and bring urban kids down along with everyone else.

What is this, policy of the lowest common denominator?

I think the Government is being very short-sighted. Reversals of policy are never a good idea, especially when you haven't really seen its final outcomes. If nothing else, it shows inconsistency and lack of commitment to the long run.

The main thing is this: children learn better when they are young. Even if now there is to be more emphasis on English, rural kids will still be disadvantaged because they will simply not have the resources to really learn the language. My older daughter did her primary schooling in a national school entirely in BM but it did not matter because at home we speak English and there are any number of English books for her to read. Now she is trilingual (along with French). But kids out in the rural areas are simply not going to have those resources at home. So if they are poorly taught at school, then there is no hope for them ever to compete with their urban counterparts. That urban-rural gap will persist.

And if they are going to hire 13,933 English teachers, why not make them teach Maths and Science especially in rural areas since proficiency is the language is not the issue with them?

An Indonesian friend of mine just got transfered to Belgium along with her two young children. The older child aged 10 started taking French lessons just before she left and is now fully immersed in a French-medium school in Brussels. Her French is getting better by the day. That is the only way to learn and she is immediately advantaged over my younger daughter of the same age because she has one extra language, besides Bahasa Indonesia and English.

Speaking English is necessary in today's world because it is the global language. Everywhere around the world, people are learning English because that is the only way they can take their place in the world, and communicate who they are. Would we even know what the Japanese are developing every day if someone didn't translate their inventions into English and we could read about them? How would we know what are the latest developments in medicine if we didn't understand English? Would we always have to rely on someone else to translate for us?

I'm not saying that our own languages are not important. Of course they are. But can they compete with English in the world today? Unless we commit to translating every bit of knowledge there is into our languages, then we are cutting ourselves off from knowledge. To what end?

Or perhaps, we should just admit one thing. We don't really want to compete with anyone else in the world. We just want to live in our little kampungs and speak to our neighbours who have to be exactly like us, and be content with that. We don't want to know what's going on in the world and if we need any new technology, well, we'll just take whatever someone else tells us is good for us. Oh, and we won't even go to any international meetings of, say, Muslim scholars, because even those meetings are held in English.

I want to know one thing: if someone suggested that we learn Maths and Science in Arabic, would everyone be falling all over themselves to change the policy again?

Armed Robber to Sweep Roads, Clean Toilets?

The Star Online > Nation

Published: Tuesday July 7, 2009 MYT 2:45:00 PM

Robber, spared the cane, to start community service next week

By M.MAGESWARI

KUALA LUMPUR: An armed robber, spared the cane, following a sentence revision by a High Court judge, will start his 200 hours of community service next week.

Sales promoter Muhammad Syafiq Abd Wahab, 20, would first undergo 20 hours of counselling and then 30 hours of motivational counselling, said welfare officer Muhd Razmee Abdul Razak.

This would be followed by 150 hours of skill-orientated programmes which would be done in joint-venture with the City Hall.

"We got the power from the City Hall to let those who were ordered by court to carry out the community service to do painting, cleaning parks, night markets and toilets and many other jobs," he said.

On holidays, he said the department would also aske the offender to carry out community service works at their own shelter home - Rumah Kanak-Kanak Tengku Budriah in Cheras.

"They will engage in programmes which will make the children at the shelter home happy," he said outside the courtroom after the case was called up for mention at the Sessions Court here on Tuesday.

He said he would prepare a progress report after a three-month period based on the community service done by Syafiq and submit it to the Sessions Court to look into his progress.

High Court judge Justice Mohamad Zabidin Mohd Diah had on Monday ordered Syafiq to only carry out 200 hours of community service for armed robbery.

Justice Mohamad Zabidin had ruled that the sentence of 10 strokes of light caning together with the community service order meted out by the Sessions Court on June 26 was illegal and that a judge was not supposed to be an executioner.

Sessions Court judge Zainal Abidin Kamarudin had earlier ruled that he would personally cane Syafiq 10 times in the presence of his parents.

Justice Mohamad Zabidin said the Sessions Court judge had erred when he made such an order on the youthful offender.

Justice Mohamad Zabidin remitted the case back to the Sessions Court judge Tuesday on grounds that the community service order was lacking in details.

He ruled that the court must address its mind on what type of community service is appropriate for the offender and specify it in the order.

At the outset of the Sessions Court proceedings Tuesday, Muhd Razmee told judge Zainal Abidin that his department would call Syafiq and his parents between July 13 and 15 to arrange for a meeting with a counsellor.

"The counsellor will observe Syafiq behaviour, whether it is aggressive or passive. We will arrange a schedule for the implementation of the community service order after the counselling sessions," he said.

Muhd Razmee said Syafiq would be punished to carry out the community service during his free time.

Upon hearing this, Judge Zainal Abidin said he would not interfere with the administration affairs and handed over to the welfare department to arrange an appropriate schedule for Syafiq to carry out community service as required under Section 293 (1) (e) of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Zainal Abidin also told Syafiq that "he was lucky".

His lawyer Nik Mohamed Ikhwan Nik Mahamud agreed that it would not be appropriate for Syafiq to carry out the community service before attending the counselling session.

Syafiq's father Abd Wahab Abdul Rahman, 66, told The Star that he would let his son pursue his interest to be a mechanic.

"He is embarassed over the whole thing after being teased by his friends and I believe he has learned his lessons. It is a blessing in disguise for him," said Abd Wahab, who came to court with Syafiq mother Rosnah Mahmud, 61, said.

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I am all for community service as penalty for those committing lesser crimes but ARMED robbery? What exactly was he armed with? A knife? A gun? Therefore the intention was to harm someone while he robbed?

For that, he gets to sweep roads, clean toilets and play with orphans?

People who get caught for khalwat or having peaceful protests have to spend time in jail if they can't pay the fine and this guy goes free, to perform his community service in his free time? And he's only embarrassed at getting caught ROBBING someone??? Not mortified??

What is the matter with these people??

Can (or Should) We Limit Freedom of Speech?

Freedom of Speech Can't be Unlimited

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent

We must define the boundaries of what is acceptable on the internet

Monday, 6 July 2009

Libertarians and free expression campaigners were jubilant last week. An obscenity case was due to be heard against Darryn Walker, a 35-year-old civil servant who had posted an essay on a website, titled Girls (scream) Aloud, imagining the sexual torture and mutilation of the each of the women who make up the pop group.

In his fantasy, they are slashed and dismembered and, according to Don Grubin a consultant psychiatrist, the singers "are sexually aroused in spite of and, indeed, because of the humiliation, pain and domination". This apparently modern erotica known as "popslash". Cool, man.

The case was dropped and is celebrated as another important knock-back for censorship. Sadly I felt unable to join in with the good cheer. Something is deeply troubling about the validation given to Walker and those who think they have the right to say whatever they wish and excitedly share with others the thrills of extreme violence against women.

The formidable Geoffrey Robertson QC (who rose to fame fighting the case brought against Oz) is very pleased indeed. Jo Glanville, editor of Index Against Censorship (an organisation I support but not blindly) righteously asserts: "The prosecution should not have been brought in the first place. Since the landmark obscenity cases of the 1960s and 1970s, writers have been protected so they can explore the extremes of human behaviour. This case posed a serious threat to that freedom."

Hmmm. Is that so? So If Walker had written, say, the same fantasy but on the sexual torture of Anne Frank, would Index have backed him? Or if a wannabe Muslim fiction writer had done the same, would he have the right to "explore the extremes of human behaviour"? I hope the answer to both these hypothetical questions is No.

Freedom of speech is a precious right, fought for in Europe over many centuries, and still denied to billions of humans – as we have just witnessed in Iran and know to be true of China, African and Arab nations, Burma, and so on. Granted that in countries where the state oppresses and totally controls its populations, the people must find ways to subvert the controllers and criticise their oppressors.

Whistleblowers in institutions must also grab that freedom, so too family members thwarted by their own. But it is never an absolute entitlement, not unless you believe it is worth the resulting social discord and terrible individual wreckage.

We all exercise judgements on what we say or don't say in public. You stop yourself because you don't want to hurt people, or to instigate a street brawl. There are laws that sacrifice freedom of speech for a greater good- harmony between races, public safety, social gentility and so on. We accept libel and defamation laws (hated by hacks of course), national security injunctions and establishment secrets (loved by politicians) and underpinning all that is a general understanding of what would be inappropriate and hateful if expressed in public.

Not everybody agrees on where the lines should be, but most know there are lines. These restraints belong to a pre-internet era and cannot contain or temper the limitlessness of the web. And yet we must, over the next few years, define the boundaries of what is acceptable in this brazen new world.

It is all very well for Mr Walker to feel like a champion of human rights but what about the women in Girls Aloud, who are real, not imagined, and whose slow death can be enjoyed by pervs and killers? They have families, mums, perhaps, lovers, who too will be feeling caught in a web of horrors. The legal state is unsettled. Meanwhile the internet is exploding and explosive, having a real impact on real lives.

Last week I found myself being tailed through town by a weird bloke, who kept stopping me, once or twice seizing my elbow. Why, he demanded, did I want, British soldiers killed and hurt? This question has been coming at me via email for a few months. I couldn't understand why.

Someone told me my Wikipedia entry had quoted the NeoCon Doug Murray, who had attacked me in a book for writing: "There have been times when I have wanted more chaos, more shocks, more disorder to teach our side a lesson". To put this in context, what I actually wrote was: "The past months have been disquieting and challenging for many of us in the antiwar camp. I know and am ashamed to admit this that there have been times when I have wanted more chaos, more shocks, more disorder to teach our side a lesson ... The decent people of Iraq need optimism now not my distasteful ill-wishes for the only hope they have for the future." If this attack has stayed in Murray's book it would have passed but bloggers recently picked it up and it has been hell since.

Peter Tatchell tells me that lies are circulated about him and he receives constant threats. Polly Toynbee and others are subjected to mob fury for no good reason. Are we just supposed to put up with this behaviour because the web must be free?

Internet libel law is building up and internet service providers are put under pressure to remove sites where material is defamatory. Chatrooms and blogs are increasingly expected to be moderated. The defence of "innocent dissemination" may not survive.

In 2006, Ukip's Michael Keith won damages after joining a chatroom where anonymous postings smeared his character and in 2008 a CEO of a housing business got a large payout after a rival company carried out a malicious personal smear campaign against him. As the internet is transnational, awareness is growing that extraordinary care is needed to prevent legal action. Corporate liability, third party culpability are encouraging mechanisms for self-regulation. In my view some of this is necessary.

We don't yet have a really effective way of restraining material promoting racism, sexism, violence (except against children), homophobia, and other group hatreds. It must come if we are to make the best use of this amazing technology and not let it pull us down to a barbarism posing as freedom. That, I fear, is what has happened with Mr Walker and his spurious victory.

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Those of us who live with substantially less freedom of speech than in the UK may chafe at some arguments to limit this freedom. But we need to agree on some values that go along with these freedoms. Racist or sexist speech should not be OK for anyone in whatever medium. There cannot be double standards where some people are let off and others not. Advocating violence is also a no-no, and that should not be limited to blowing up buildings or people but also things like rape or just beating up women. Unfortunately people differentiate between these, as if violence against women is OK but not against public figures.

The thing is if we have freedom of speech in every day life, society will find a way of regulating it by itself. We can all decide what is acceptable and what is not. But if we restrict this freedom, people will find anonymous ways of venting the hate where they will not be held unaccountable. And the Internet unfortunately provides that avenue. So in fact curtailing freedom of speech as we do today is what breeds the type of hate speech that we often see online.

An Impassioned Patriot

There are some people who believe that if you fight for your rights, somehow you aren't patriotic or love your country. That if you have a dissenting view, then you must be disloyal. Marjane Satrapi, who did that wonderful graphic novel 'Persepolis', captures here the passion of someone who truly loves her country even when she is forced to be in exile.

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July 4, 2009

Op-Ed Contributor


I MUST GO HOME TO IRAN AGAIN

By MARJANE SATRAPI

PARIS — Six years ago, I went to listen to a man, whom I will not name, in a café in Paris.

He said it had been 24 years since he had been back to Iran, that he had had to leave right after the revolution of 1979 for political reasons.

He talked of many things, and he ended by saying: “Once you leave your homeland, you can live anywhere, but I refuse to die anywhere other than Iran — or else my life will have had no meaning.”

His statement touched me very deeply. I’ve thought about what he said, not just understanding him intellectually but feeling his meaning with all my heart. I, too, was convinced that I must die nowhere other than in my country, Iran, or else my life will also be meaningless.

At the time I heard this man speak, it had already been four years since I had been home.

Yes, I call Iran home because no matter how long I live in France, and despite the fact that I feel also French after all these years, to me the word “home” has only one meaning: Iran.

I suppose it’s that way for everyone: Home is the place where one is born and raised.

No matter how much I am in love with Paris and its indescribable beauty, Tehran with all its ugliness will in my eyes forever be the “bride” of all cities around the world.

It’s a question of geography, of the smell of the rain, of the things we know without ever having to think why we know them.

It’s a question of the Alborz Mountains protecting my town. Where are they? Who will protect me now?

It’s a question of the unbearable smell of pollution, a smell I know so well.

It’s a question of wanting to walk under my own blue sky, of wanting my own sunshine to caress my back.

At the time I heard that man speak it had already been four years since I had been home. Today it has been more than 10 years. To be precise, 10 years, six months and three days.

During all that time, I believed I would live a few more decades without ever being able to walk in my mountains. But 18 days ago, June 12, 2009, something happened, something I never believed I would see in my lifetime: Iranians, crowding into an extremely tiny space of democracy, usually left just large enough for them to vote for a president whom the Guardian Council had already approved, truly voted.

The question much of the media asked before the election was: “Are Iranians ready for democracy?”

“YES!” came the answer, loud and oh, so clear.

With a voter turnout of 85 percent, they started to dream that change was possible.

They started to believe “Yes they can,” too.

It was not the first time Iranians showed how much they love freedom. Look only at the 20th century: They launched the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 (the first in Asia); nationalized the oil industry in 1951 (the first Middle Eastern country to do so); mounted the revolution of 1979; and engineered the student revolt of 1999. Which brings us to now, and that deafening cry for democracy.

Almost 20 years ago, when I started studying art in Tehran, the very idea of “politics” was so frightening that we didn’t even dare think about it.

To talk about it? Beyond belief!

To demonstrate in the streets against the president? Surreal!

Criticize the supreme leader? Apocalyptic!

Shouting “Down with Khamenei”? Death!

Death, torture and prison are part of daily life for the youth of Iran. They are not like us, my friends and I at their age; they are not scared. They are not what we were.

They hold hands and scream: “Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid! We are together!”

They understand that no one will give them their rights; they must go get them.

They understand that unlike the generation before them — my generation, for whom the dream was to leave Iran — the real dream is not to leave Iran but to fight for it, to free it, to love it and to reconstruct it.

They hold hands and scream: “We will fight! We will die! But we won’t be humiliated!”

They went out knowing that going to each demonstration meant signing their death warrants.

Today I read somewhere that “the velvet revolution” of Iran became the “velvet coup,” with a little note of irony, but let me tell you something: This generation, with its hopes, dreams, anger and revolt, has forever changed the course of history. Nothing is going to be the same.

From now on, nobody will judge Iranians by their so-called elected president.

From now on, Iranians are fearless. They have regained their self-confidence.

Despite all the dangers they said NO!

And I’m convinced this is just the beginning.

From now on, I will always say: Once you leave your homeland, you can live anywhere. But I refuse to only die in Iran. I will one day live in Iran...or else my life will have had no meaning.

MARJANE SATRAPI is a writer and filmmaker whose works include the book and film “Persepolis.” Her most recent graphic novel is “Chicken With Plums.”

You Know When...

...we have all really become dumb when The Star reports stuff like this...

The Star Online > Nation

Tuesday June 30, 2009

‘Floating mat’ a sign to people

By SHAHRIL CHE WAN

KUALA TERENGGANU: The Terengganu chief imam has attributed the unusual occurrences at the Crystal Mosque here as a sign of the people distancing themselves from the religion.

Ustaz Azizi Saidi Abdul Aziz described claims that a visitor had seen and photographed prayer mats floating in the mosque as “hardly phenomenal” and people should stop thinking that it was due to genies or ghosts. (so mats float a lot in Terengganu?)

Mystifying: This ‘floating mat’ phenomenon occurred at the Crystal Mosque in Kuala Terengganu. The imam says such occurrences have been reported in Saudi Arabia.

“Such mystifying occurrences have been reported in Saudi Arabia,” he said yesterday. (So it must be normal...)

A woman from Negri Sembilan who visited the mosque had photographed the phenomenon with a mobile phone camera early this month, triggering fear among locals.

Azizi Saidi said the phenomenon could be linked to the lackadaisical attitude of Muslims in the state in performing congregational prayers. (thought the mosques are always full in Terengganu, unlike in the sinful valley of Klang...)

“There is nothing to panic. This is a call to Muslims not to overlook their obligation towards performing prayers together.

“There are umpteen mosques in Terengganu but there is a lack of mosque-goers.

“Some of our mosques lack people even during Friday prayers,” he added. (Why?)

He said the occurrence was not “bizarre” but should be seen as a miracle that could be considered a sign from the Al-Mighty. (I would have thought the Al-Mighty would have used something a bit more dramatic than flying mats...)

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© 1995-2009 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd (Co No 10894-D)

A Week of Anger and Sadness

Hi folks, been another of those weeks where I don't get enough time in front of the computer to blog about anything worthwhile. But I have to say that I've been so appalled by the stuff being said about Indonesian domestic workers just because our Government finally wants to treat them like any other workers by giving them a day off. Honestly, why do so many people make it seem as if we are doing them a favour by giving them a job, when we just can't cope without them? It's mutual need and dependency.

And what is this business about taking off from the domestic worker's salary whatever payments people make to the agent? If you employ a headhunter to find an employee for you, their fees can be up to six times the salary of the employee you take on! You don't take it off the employee because that's the fee you pay for the service. Getting the domestic worker to work for free is known as slavery, that's all. And yet there are all these people who actually think that's OK.

If the Indonesians are incensed, even if it's just for their elections, we should understand. What if it were our people who were being treated like that overseas? Wouldn't we care? We're now trying to appease the Indonesians by saying that not all of us treat our domestics badly. But anyone would get the opposite impression just by reading the papers every day, especially when we have so-called leaders spouting off in the most vile way about foreigners in our midst.

There are some people who are suggesting that domestic workers should only be allowed to work for families of the same religion as them. As if this necessarily makes them less vulnerable to abuse! I have met any number of domestic workers who have had the misfortune to work for so-called 'religious' people who simply 'forget' to pay their salaries, sometimes up to two years at a time, or just ignore requests by their worker to send money home to their families for them. Or who promise to get them all the permits to work here but then don't, leaving their worker totally dependent on them, afraid to go anywhere and unable to complain to anyone. No physical abuse no doubt, but still slavery.

The answer is not to look at other countries for domestic workers either. We will eventually have to reduce our dependency on domestic workers while at the same time improving working conditions for all women, including better childcare facilities and flexible hours.
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The shocker of the week was of course the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. The passing of the former was overwhelmingly overshadowed by the latter's but here's one tribute worth reading.

I'm sure you've read every single tribute to Michael Jackson there is out there. For me, what was most special about him was his dancing, which I rank alongside Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and the great tap dancer Gregory Hines. Here's my favourite music video by Michael which I like better than Thriller. Nobody makes videos like this anymore with a storyline, a lot of detail, great costumes and of course, just spectacular dancing. Enjoy!



RIP Farrah and Michael!

What Israeli Settlements Really Mean

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June 22, 2009

Op-Ed Contributor

FICTIONS ON THE GROUND

By TONY JUDT

I am old enough to remember when Israeli kibbutzim looked like settlements (“a small village or collection of houses” or “the act of peopling or colonizing a new country,” Oxford English Dictionary).

In the early 1960s, I spent time on Kibbutz Hakuk, a small community founded by the Palmah unit of the Haganah, the pre-state Jewish militia. Begun in 1945, Hakuk was just 18 years old when I first saw it, and was still raw at the edges. The few dozen families living there had built themselves a dining hall, farm sheds, homes and a “baby house” where the children were cared for during the workday. But where the residential buildings ended there were nothing but rock-covered hillsides and half-cleared fields.

The community’s members still dressed in blue work shirts, khaki shorts and triangular hats, consciously cultivating a pioneering image and ethos already at odds with the hectic urban atmosphere of Tel Aviv. Ours, they seemed to say to bright-eyed visitors and volunteers, is the real Israel; come and help us clear the boulders and grow bananas — and tell your friends in Europe and America to do likewise.

Hakuk is still there. But today it relies on a plastics factory and the tourists who flock to the nearby Sea of Galilee. The original farm, built around a fort, has been turned into a tourist attraction. To speak of this kibbutz as a settlement would be bizarre.

However, Israel needs “settlements.” They are intrinsic to the image it has long sought to convey to overseas admirers and fund-raisers: a struggling little country securing its rightful place in a hostile environment by the hard moral work of land clearance, irrigation, agrarian self-sufficiency, industrious productivity, legitimate self-defense and the building of Jewish communities. But this neo-collectivist frontier narrative rings false in modern, high-tech Israel. And so the settler myth has been transposed somewhere else — to the Palestinian lands seized in war in 1967 and occupied illegally ever since.

It is thus not by chance that the international press is encouraged to speak and write of Jewish “settlers” and “settlements” in the West Bank. But this image is profoundly misleading. The largest of these controversial communities in geographic terms is Maale Adumim. It has a population in excess of 35,000, demographically comparable to Montclair, N.J., or Winchester, England. What is most striking, however, about Maale Adumim is its territorial extent. This “settlement” comprises more than 30 square miles — making it one and a half times the size of Manhattan and nearly half as big as the borough and city of Manchester, England. Some “settlement.”

There are about 120 official Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank. In addition, there are “unofficial” settlements whose number is estimated variously from 80 to 100. Under international law, there is no difference between these two categories; both are contraventions of Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which explicitly prohibits the annexation of land consequent to the use of force, a principle re-stated in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter.

Thus the distinction so often made in Israeli pronouncements between “authorized” and “unauthorized” settlements is specious — all are illegal, whether or not they have been officially approved and whether or not their expansion has been “frozen” or continues apace. (It is a matter of note that Israel’s new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, belongs to the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, established in 1982 and illegally expanded since.)

The blatant cynicism of the present Israeli government should not blind us to the responsibility of its more respectable-looking predecessors. The settler population has grown consistently at a rate of 5 percent annually over the past two decades, three times the rate of increase of the Israeli population as a whole. Together with the Jewish population of East Jerusalem (itself illegally annexed to Israel), the settlers today number more than half a million people: just over 10 percent of the Jewish population of so-called Greater Israel. This is one reason why settlers count for so much in Israeli elections, where proportional representation gives undue political leverage to even the smallest constituency.

But the settlers are no mere marginal interest group. To appreciate their significance, spread as they are over a dispersed archipelago of urban installations protected from Arab intrusion by 600 checkpoints and barriers, consider the following: taken together, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights constitute a homogenous demographic bloc nearly the size of the District of Columbia. It exceeds the population of Tel Aviv itself by almost one third. Some “settlement.”

If Israel is drunk on settlements, the United States has long been its enabler. Were Israel not the leading beneficiary of American foreign aid — averaging $2.8 billion a year from 2003 to 2007, and scheduled to reach $3.1 billion by 2013 — houses in West Bank settlements would not be so cheap: often less than half the price of equivalent homes in Israel proper.

Many of the people who move to these houses don’t even think of themselves as settlers. Newly arrived from Russia and elsewhere, they simply take up the offer of subsidized accommodation, move into the occupied areas and become — like peasants in southern Italy freshly supplied with roads and electricity — the grateful clients of their political patrons. Like American settlers heading west, Israeli colonists in the West Bank are the beneficiaries of their very own Homestead Act, and they will be equally difficult to uproot.

Despite all the diplomatic talk of disbanding the settlements as a condition for peace, no one seriously believes that these communities — with their half a million residents, their urban installations, their privileged access to fertile land and water — will ever be removed. The Israeli authorities, whether left, right or center, have no intention of removing them, and neither Palestinians nor informed Americans harbor illusions on this score.

To be sure, it suits almost everyone to pretend otherwise — to point to the 2003 “road map” and speak of a final accord based on the 1967 frontiers. But such feigned obliviousness is the small change of political hypocrisy, the lubricant of diplomatic exchange that facilitates communication and compromise.

There are occasions, however, when political hypocrisy is its own nemesis, and this is one of them. Because the settlements will never go, and yet almost everyone likes to pretend otherwise, we have resolutely ignored the implications of what Israelis have long been proud to call “the facts on the ground.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, knows this better than most. On June 14 he gave a much-anticipated speech in which he artfully blew smoke in the eyes of his American interlocutors. While offering to acknowledge the hypothetical existence of an eventual Palestinian state — on the explicit understanding that it exercise no control over its airspace and have no means of defending itself against aggression — he reiterated the only Israeli position that really matters: we won’t build illegal settlements but we reserve the right to expand “legal” ones according to their natural rate of growth. (It is not by chance that he chose to deliver this speech at Bar-Ilan University, the heartland of rabbinical intransigence where Yigal Amir learned to hate Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before heading off to assassinate him in 2005.)

THE reassurances Mr. Netanyahu offered the settlers and their political constituency were as well received as ever, despite being couched in honeyed clichés directed at nervous American listeners. And the American news media, predictably, took the bait — uniformly emphasizing Mr. Netanyahu’s “support” for a Palestinian state and playing down everything else.

However, the real question now is whether President Obama will respond in a similar vein. He surely wants to. Nothing could better please the American president and his advisors than to be able to assert that, in the wake of his Cairo speech, even Mr. Netanyahu had shifted ground and was open to compromise. Thus Washington avoids a confrontation, for now, with its closest ally. But the uncomfortable reality is that the prime minister restated the unvarnished truth: His government has no intention of recognizing international law or opinion with respect to Israel’s land-grab in “Judea and Samaria.”

Thus President Obama faces a choice. He can play along with the Israelis, pretending to believe their promises of good intentions and the significance of the distinctions they offer him. Such a pretense would buy him time and favor with Congress. But the Israelis would be playing him for a fool, and he would be seen as one in the Mideast and beyond.

Alternatively, the president could break with two decades of American compliance, acknowledge publicly that the emperor is indeed naked, dismiss Mr. Netanyahu for the cynic he is and remind Israelis that all their settlements are hostage to American goodwill. He could also remind Israelis that the illegal communities have nothing to do with Israel’s defense, much less its founding ideals of agrarian self-sufficiency and Jewish autonomy. They are nothing but a colonial takeover that the United States has no business subsidizing.

But if I am right, and there is no realistic prospect of removing Israel’s settlements, then for the American government to agree that the mere nonexpansion of “authorized” settlements is a genuine step toward peace would be the worst possible outcome of the present diplomatic dance. No one else in the world believes this fairy tale; why should we? Israel’s political elite would breathe an unmerited sigh of relief, having once again pulled the wool over the eyes of its paymaster. The United States would be humiliated in the eyes of its friends, not to speak of its foes. If America cannot stand up for its own interests in the region, at least let it not be played yet again for a patsy.

Tony Judt is the director of the Remarque Institute at New York University and the author of “Postwar” and “Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century.”