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ISRANET DAILY BRIEFING ARCHIVE Volume IX, No. 2,223 • Monday, November 30, 2009
500,000 IRANIAN CENTRIFUGES Mohamed ElBaradei caps his contentious and ultimately failed 12-year stint as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency today, having spent many years enabling Iran's nuclear bids only to condemn them in his final days in office. Mr. ElBaradei combined his rebuke of Iran with his familiar calls for more negotiation, but we'll take his belated realism about Iran as his tacit admission that Dick Cheney and John Bolton have been right all along. Let's hope the education of the Obama Administration doesn't take as long. As if to underscore the point, yesterday the Iranian government ordered up 10 additional uranium enrichment plants on the scale of its already operational facility in Natanz, which has a planned capacity of 54,000 centrifuges. That could mean an eventual total of more than 500,000 centrifuges, or enough to enrich about 160 bombs worth of uranium each year. Whether it can ever do that is an open question, but it does give a sense of the scale of the regime's ambitions. The decision is also a reminder of how unchastened Iran has been by President Obama's revelation in September that Iran had been building a secret 3,000 centrifuge facility near the city of Qom. The IAEA's governing board finally got around on Friday to rebuking Iran for that deception, a vote the Administration trumpeted because both Russia and China voted with the United States. But perhaps only within the Obama Administration can a symbolic gesture by the IAEA be considered a diplomatic triumph. "Time is running out for Iran to address the international community's growing concerns about its nuclear program," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday, but the West has said this many times before. Earlier this year, Mr. Obama said Iran had a deadline of September. The regime scoffed at Mr. Obama after he delivered a conciliating message for the Persian New Year in March, scoffed again after he mildly criticized its post-election crackdown and killing spree in June (following days of silence), and scoffed a third time by rejecting the West's offer last month to enrich Iran's uranium for it. Yet the Administration insists the enrichment deal is still Iran's for the taking. "A few years ago [the West] said we had to completely stop all our nuclear activities," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last month. "Now look where we are today." Those are the words of a man who believes he has Mr. Obama's number. And until the President, his advisers and the Europeans realize that only punitive sanctions or military strikes will force it to reconsider its nuclear ambitions, an emboldened Islamic Republic will continue to march confidently toward a bomb over the wreckage of Mohamed ElBaradei's -- and Barack Obama's -- best intentions. SANCTIONS
AND STRATEGY The Iranian government has rejected, at least for the moment, a proposal from the P-5+1 to ship the majority of its low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment. The group is now considering the next step...a new round of sanctions, this time meant to be crippling. The only crippling sanction available is to cut off the supply of gasoline, since Iran imports 35 percent of its refined gasoline products. That would theoretically cripple the Iranian economy and compel the Iranians to comply with U.S. demands over the nuclear issue.... The Iranian government said last week that sanctions don't concern it because, historically, sanctions have not succeeded. This partly explains Iranian intransigence: The Iranians don't feel they have anything to fear from sanctions. The question is whether the Iranian view is correct and why they would believe it -- and if they are correct, why the P-5+1 would even consider imposing sanctions. The Assumptions of Sanctions We need to begin with a definition of sanctions. In general, sanctions are some sort of penalty imposed on a country designed to cause it sufficient pain to elicit a change in its behavior. Sanctions are intended as an alternative to war and therefore exclude violence. Thus, the entire point of sanctions, as opposed to war, is to compel changes of behavior in countries without resorting to force.... It is important to consider the underlying assumptions of the decision to impose sanctions. First, there is the assumption that the target country is economically dependent in some way on the country or countries issuing the sanctions. Second, it assumes that the target country has no alternative sources for the economic activity while under sanctions. Third, it assumes that the pain caused will be sufficient to compel change. The first is relatively easy to determine and act on. The next two are far more complex. Obviously, sanctions are an option of stronger powers toward weaker ones. It assumes that the imposition of sanctions will cause more pain to the target country than it will to the country or countries issuing sanctions, and that the target country cannot or will not use military action to counter economic sanctions.... One of the potential goals of placing sanctions on a country is to generate unrest and internal opposition, forcing regime change or at least policy change. This rarely happens. Instead, the imposition of sanctions creates a sense of embattlement within the country. Two things follow from this. First, there is frequently a boost in support for the regime that might otherwise not be there. The idea that economic pain takes precedence over patriotism or concern for maintaining national sovereignty is not a theory with a great deal of empirical support. Second, the sanctions allow a regime to legitimize declaring a state of emergency -- which is what sanctions intend to create -- and then use that state of emergency to increase repression and decrease the opportunity for an opposition to emerge. Consider an extreme example of sanctions during World War II, when both the Axis and Allies tried to use airpower as a means of imposing massive economic hardship on the population, thereby attempting to generate unrest and opposition to the regime. Obviously, strategic bombing is not sanctions, but it is instructive to consider them in this sense. When we look at the Battle of Britain and the strategic bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan, we find that countereconomic warfare did not produce internal opposition that the regime could not handle. Indeed, it could reasonably be argued that it increased support for the regime. It is assumed that economic hardship can generate regime change, yet even in some of the most extreme cases of economic hardship, that didn't happen. Imposing an effective sanctions regime on a country is difficult for two reasons. First, economic pain does not translate into political pressure. Second, creating effective economic pain normally requires a coalition. The United States is not in a position to unilaterally impose effective sanctions. In order to do that, it must act in concert with other countries that are prepared not only to announce sanctions but -- and this is far more important and difficult -- also to enforce them. This means that it must be in the political interest of all countries that deal with the target to impose the sanctions.... The difficulty of creating effective sanctions raises the question of why they are used. The primary answer is that they allow a nation to appear to be acting effectively without enduring significant risks. Invading a country, as the United States found in Iraq, poses substantial risks. The imposition of sanctions on relatively weaker countries without the ability to counter the sanctions is much less risky. The fact that it is also far less effective is compensated for by the lowered risk. In truth, many sanction regimes are enforced as political gestures, either for domestic political reasons, or to demonstrate serious intent on the international scene. In some cases, sanctions are a way of appearing to act so that military action can be deferred. No one expects the sanctions to change the regime or its policies, but the fact that sanctions are in place can be used as an argument against actions by other nations. This is very much the case with Iran. No one expects Russia or China (or even many of the European states) to fully comply with a sanctions regime on gasoline. Even if they did, no one expects the flow of gasoline to be decisively cut off. There will be too many people prepared to take the risk of smuggling gasoline to Iran for that to happen. Even if the U.S. blockaded Iranian ports, the Caucasus and Central Asia are far too disorderly and the monetary rewards of smuggling are too great of an incentive to make the gasoline sanctions effective. Additionally, the imposition of sanctions will both rally the population to the regime as well as provide justification for an intense crackdown. The probability of sanctions forcing policy changes or regime change in Iran is slim. Balancing Acquiescence and War But sanctions have one virtue: They delay or block military action. So long as sanctions are being considered or being imposed, the argument can be made to those who want military action that it is necessary to give the sanctions time to work. Therefore, in this case, sanctions allow the United States to block any potential military actions by Israel against Iran while appearing domestically to be taking action. Should the United States wish to act, the sanctions route gives the Europeans the option of arguing that military action is premature. Furthermore, if military action took place without Russian approval while Russia was cooperating in a sanctions regime, it would have increased room to maneuver against U.S. interests in the Middle East, portraying the United States as trigger-happy. The ultimate virtue of sanctions is that they provide a platform between acquiescence and war. The effectiveness of that platform is not nearly as important as the fact that it provides a buffer against charges of inaction and demands for further action. In Sudan, for example, no one expects sanctions to work, but their presence allows business to go on as usual while deflecting demands for more significant action. The P-5+1 is now shaping its response to Iran. They are not even committed to the idea of sanctions. But they will move to sanctions if it appears that Israel or the United States is prepared to move aggressively. Sanctions satisfy the need to appear to be acting while avoiding the risks of action. TEHRAN'S
LAST CHANCE If Iran were a normal country, the offer would have been handsome. Iran claims to want enriched uranium for medical treatments and research into civilian nuclear energy. But enriching uranium is a very costly process, and Iran is not a rich country. So last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency proposed a deal, based on a Russian proposal. Instead of enriching uranium itself, Iran would ship 80% of its known uranium stockpile to Russia. There, the uranium would be enriched up to the level appropriate to energy and medical purposes, at no charge to Iran. From Russia, the uranium would proceed to France where it would be refashioned into the form most useful for medical research, again at no charge. The uranium would then be returned to Iran to use for its stated purposes. The Iranian taxpayer would save money. Iranian cancer patients would get faster access to nuclear medicine. There was just one drawback to the deal: The returned uranium would be enriched nowhere near the level required for weapons purposes -- and Iran would be expected to cease and desist all enrichment activities of its own. On Oct. 22, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA indicated acceptance of the deal. Final approval, however, would have to await word from home. So the IAEA waited.... On Oct. 29, a week after the deal was pencilled in Geneva, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei was pronouncing himself "hopeful" that Iran would accept. In the following week, Iran relayed an objection to the IAEA proposal. Why do we have to wait for the return of our fuel? What if the Russians or French keep it? OK, answered the IAEA on Nov. 7, what about this: You Iranians ship your uranium to Turkey, a country with whom you have good relations, but also a NATO member. The Turks put that uranium into storage. Simultaneously with your release of your low-enriched uranium, you will receive more highly enriched (but not weapons grade) uranium from Russia. You don't have to trust anybody, and the cancer patients can have their treatments immediately!... Iran's answer: No. We're happy to accept enriched fuel from Russia. But our fuel we keep. And our enrichment activities continue.... The Iranians could not make their message clearer if they had sent a crayoned letter to the IAEA: "We're building a bomb -- and you don't dare stop us. Boom boom, suckers." There is only one last non-military stop on this train: President Obama's initiative to organize so-called "crippling" sanctions against Iran. These sanctions would penalize the firms that sell, carry and finance the half-million tons of gasoline that Iran must import every month.... To sustain sanctions over any length of time, however, will require international co-operation, especially from Russia, China and India. Will that co-operation be forthcoming? So far, the record is not promising. But if those countries understand that the final destination of the Iranian effort is an Israeli military strike on Iran, maybe they will rethink. For that reason, the whole world has an interest in enhancing the credibility of Israeli action. For that reason, the campaign to penalize and demonize Israel for its actions in Lebanon and Gaza is an affront to world peace. Only an effective Israel can believably threaten the strike that will incentivize Iran's trading partners to join the U.S. economic campaign. And so once again -- as with the Israeli strike on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, and the Israeli strike at Syria's nuclear reactor in 2007 -- the peace of the region and possibly the world will depend on Israeli strength and courage.
Volume IX, No. 2,222 • Friday, November 27, 2009
ADDRESS TO THE JEWISH FEDERATIONS My dear friends, leaders of the Jewish communities of North America, The history of the Jewish people has been marked by a paradox. We are at once both small and great. We are few in number but luminous in achievement. In the ancient world, the Jews were a small people on the foothills of Asia touching the Mediterranean. But in Alexandria some 2200 years ago, the Bible was translated into Greek, and the world has never been the same since. The Jews brought to civilization at least three big ideas: the idea of monotheism, the belief that all people have innate rights that transcend the power of kings, and a prophetic vision of universal peace. It is impossible to fully describe the revolutionary impact of these ideas throughout history, nor the poetic power of the Biblical stories that overshadowed much of the literature of the ancient world. As in antiquity so in modernity. Israel is one of the world's smallest countries. But our success in science and technology, agriculture, medicine, and the arts belies our size. And on this continent, the Jewish community accounts for less than 2% of the population, yet its creative accomplishments in every field are legend and legendary. In modern times, Jews everywhere have made extraordinary contributions to humanity. So, smallness and greatness have thus accompanied our people throughout nearly 4,000 years of our history. But our conspicuous achievements often masked our small size and the vulnerability that comes with being small. Being prominent but small, we often could not defend ourselves against larger foes who envied our achievements, despised the ideas we championed, and periodically sought to expel or even annihilate us outright. The rebirth of Israel did not eliminate such attacks. But it fundamentally changed our ability to repel them. In 1948, some 600,000 Jews, their backs against the sea, fended off the assault of much larger enemies sworn to our destruction. We were aided by many of our fellow American Jews. You gave money, arms, and most important, tremendous moral support. You helped Israel absorb waves of immigrants, you spearheaded the historic struggle to free Soviet Jewry and you have tirelessly worked to strengthen the American-Israeli alliance which is a cornerstone of Israel's security. Today, you support Birthright, Masa and Nefesh B'Nefesh -- these are programs that promote Aliyah and strengthen Jewish identity, thereby ensuring that our numbers are not further diminished and dwindled by the forces of assimilation. Strengthening Jewish identity can no longer be a task exclusively for the Diaspora. It is increasingly the responsibility of the Jewish state. Over a decade ago, I was proud to be the first Prime Minister to allocate state funds to bolster Jewish identity outside of Israel. And I assure you that in my second term, I intend to do even more. The result of our joint efforts has been a stronger Israel. And only a strong Israel can achieve peace. But even a strong Israel is still a small Israel. And a small Israel demands a secure peace. Peace in our land, the peace of Jerusalem, our eternal capital, is one of our oldest longings, expressed in our Psalms and our prayers. Peace between Israel and our Arab neighbors: the first and immediate result would spare our children the horrors of war. It would spare our children the horrors of war. It would spare our grandchildren the horrors of war. What a great gift. Peace could usher in a new age of economic progress for the benefit of all. We have already signed peace agreements, two of them, with Egypt and Jordan. And we are eager to achieve peace with all our other neighbors, especially with the Palestinians.... This past June at Bar-Ilan University, I put forward a vision of peace that has united the vast majority of Israelis. In this vision of two states for two peoples, a demilitarized Palestinian state would recognize the Jewish state. Now, what do I mean by a Jewish state? It is a state in which all individuals and all minorities have equal individual rights. Yet our national symbols, language and culture spring from the heritage of the Jewish people. And most important, any Jew from anywhere in the world has a right to immigrate to Israel and become a citizen. I want to make it clear: Any Jew, of any denomination, will always have the right to come home to the Jewish state. Religious pluralism and tolerance will always guide my policy. What does a Jewish state mean for the Palestinians? They must abandon the fantasy of flooding Israel with refugees, give up irredentist claims to the Negev and Galilee, and declare unequivocally that the conflict is finally over. Yet, even after we achieve peace it may take years for the spirit of peace to permeate most levels of Palestinian society. Therefore, any peace agreement we sign today must include ironclad security measures that will protect the State of Israel.... The UN report on Gaza, which falsely accuses Israel of war crimes for legitimately defending itself against real war criminals, in effect seeks to deprive us of the right of self-defense. This report must be firmly rejected. We are proud of the Israeli Defense Forces. We are proud of our sons and daughters who are defending our country every day. We know that our army, Israel's army, is as moral as any army on earth. In supporting the IDF and rejecting this report you're sending a message to terrorists that they cannot get away with firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians. And you do something else. You support peace. For only an Israel that can defend itself is an Israel that can take further risks for peace. I thank President Obama for resolutely opposing this twisted UN resolution. I applaud the overwhelming vote last week in the American Congress condemning this biased report. I know there are many Canadian friends with us here today. I wish to extend my thanks to Prime Minister Harper for his staunch support for Israel's right of self-defense.... My government is working to advance peace and we are not just talking. We have removed hundreds of security checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank. I personally extended the hours of operation on the Allenby Bridge and I've removed bureaucratic hurdles to Palestinian economic development. These efforts, along with measures taken by the Palestinian Authority to improve security, have spurred an unmatched boom in the West Bank and has made life better for ordinary Palestinians. For the first time in years, businesses, banks and industry are sprouting. Restaurants, theaters, and shopping malls are overflowing. Thousands and thousands of Palestinian jobs are being created. I think we can do a lot more to improve the reality on the ground, and we will. I intend to do a lot more. Prosperity can help advance peace -- but only so far. To truly resolve the outstanding issues between us, we must begin and complete peace negotiations.... Achieving peace is a great challenge facing Israel. At the United Nations in September, I spoke of another great challenge: preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability. The Iranian regime tyrannizes its own people, sponsors and supplies terrorism, and openly pledges to wipe Israel off the map. Imagine how much more dangerous this regime would be if it had atomic bombs. The responsible members of the international community must unite to prevent this grave threat to the peace of the entire world. I support President Obama's continued efforts toward these ends, and I appreciate the firm position taken by the leading European countries. We must not succumb to the Iranian regime's deceit and cunning. We must stand together to stop Tehran from realizing its nuclear ambitions.... I know that these...enormous challenges...seem daunting. But I want you to remember another mission whose success seemed completely implausible when Theodore Herzl embarked on it over a century ago. The challenges confronting Herzl's vision of a Jewish state were not less than overwhelming. Most of the world's Jews lived in Europe and had no intention of moving to the barren land of their forefathers. Few saw the clouds gathering on the horizon. Fewer still saw the need for action. But with a clear plan and a prophetic sense of urgency, Herzl helped the Jewish people overcome their tragic condition of powerlessness. His implausible idea gathered so much force that within a few decades our people emerged from the worst massacre in history to establish an independent state in our ancestral homeland. And then our small people then dedicated itself to the great task of building a modern Jewish state. In an understandable moment of frustration, Herzl lamented, "The tragedy of the Jewish people is that we do not believe in ourselves." But Herzl did not lose faith. He said, "We are strong enough to form a state." "We possess all the human and material resources for this purpose." "If we will it," he famously said, "it is no dream."... We have learned from history that if the Jewish people are united and determined, if we harness our hopes and our dreams, the hardest tasks are within our reach. We are a small people but a great people; a people generous enough to pave a path toward a lasting peace; a people brave enough to thwart the dangers that confront us; and a people creative enough to once again help steer humanity towards a better future for all. (Benjamin Netanyahu is the prime minister of Israel.) ISLAMIST
EXTREMISM AND THE MURDER OF DANIEL PEARL These are the remarks Sen. Joseph Lieberman delivered at the fourth annual Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at Stanford University on October 18: It has been nearly eight years since Ruth and Judea Pearl were confronted by the most unspeakable horror that any parent can contemplate. But rather than retreat into grief and anger, they have instead ensured that the flame of their son's memory, and everything he stood for, has continued to burn with undiminished urgency and relevance. Because of their work, and the work of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, Danny's life continues to illuminate our world. Daniel Pearl's legacy is a powerful one, precisely because he embodied so many of the best values and convictions of our country and of the Jewish faith and people, with which he courageously identified himself in the final moment of his life. They are the values that were taught to him by his parents -- the values that animate this great university in which he was educated -- and the values that informed his decision to pursue a career in journalism. I am speaking of the values of freedom of thought and expression, of curiosity and tolerance; and the conviction that people from different backgrounds, cultures, and faiths can not only live together and work together in peace and prosperity but that our world is made a richer, more meaningful place by virtue of doing so. It is the belief that the things that bind all of us together as human beings -- history, humor, music, love, and friendship -- are capable of transcending whatever differences divide us. Our responsibility in gathering tonight, I believe, is not only to celebrate the values that defined Danny's life -- but also to confront the terrible reality of his death, and the forces that were responsible for it.... What ended Danny's life was a deliberate and calculated act of evil. He was murdered by men who knew what they believed, and who knew what they were doing. What animated and inspired them was not terrorism, which is merely a tactic, but a specific worldview and ideology. It was the fanatical ideology of Islamist extremism that motivated Daniel Pearl's killers -- an ideology that not only justifies but glorifies and rejoices in shedding the blood of innocents, and that I believe represents the most direct and dangerous threat in the world today to the quintessentially liberal values that Danny Pearl stood for, and that America was founded to stand for.... It is a belief that the most brutal imaginable violence can eradicate personal freedom, political freedom, and religious freedom and bring about a society in which women are treated as chattel, homosexuals are stoned to death, and Christians, Jews, Hindus, and other religious faiths are marked for oppression if not extinction, and in which everyone is terrorized into conformity as it is defined by a deranged minority.... As a country that is founded on truths that we hold to be self-evident, about the fundamental equality and dignity of all people, it is difficult for us to grasp how significant numbers of our fellow human beings could fall prey to an ideology whose tenets are so self-evidently insane. Yet we know from history that such pathologies are not only capable of taking root but of inspiring millions of people in even the most civilized and developed nations to commit the most horrific crimes of mass murder. Part of the perversity of evil is that, the greater its depravity, the greater is our temptation to avert our eyes from it, to look away, to convince ourselves that we cannot possibly be seeing what we are in fact seeing. Indeed, that is one of the reasons such evil persists. Of course all of us would like to live in a world governed by reason. But the fact is, there are hatreds and pathologies so strong that they cannot be negotiated, or reasoned, or bribed, or loved out of existence. They must be confronted, fought, and defeated -- or else they will defeat us. And so it is with Islamist extremism.... There is nothing inevitable about the survival or persistence of the Islamist ideology we are fighting against. Far from it. It is the product of a particular set of historical events over the past several decades. It is the work of human beings. And human beings therefore also have the power to consign it to the dustbin of history where it belongs. For it is with innumerable acts of individual conviction and courage that history is written.... The notion of a future without Communism would have struck many people, even as late as the mid-1980s, as hopelessly naive. But it wasn't. Neither is the notion that the ideology of Islamist extremism will someday collapse under the weight of its own evil. I cannot tell you exactly how long it will take, in part because it will be our own actions and decisions that affect the answer to that question. But I am confident that the world can extinguish Islamist extremism, and that must be our goal.... [W]e must be unrelenting and unwavering in our determination to fight and defeat [terrorism], though the struggle will continually test our will, break our hearts, and cloud our hopefulness. But history provides us with the encouragement that evil can be overcome, because it has been overcome before. As in the past, defeating the ideology that is our enemy in this fight will require us to draw upon all of the sources of our strength as a nation and as a global community. It will also require patience on our part -- because, while this war will end, we must remain vigilant, focused, and committed in its prosecution until it does. And it will require us to keep faith with our own best values.... In the final moments of his life, Daniel Pearl showed true courage in the face of evil. His murderers knew what they believed -- but so did Danny. "I am Jewish," he said, and with those three simple, proud, and brave words, he made clear to his killers that his humanity, integrity, and decency were forever beyond the reach of their barbarism. For this reason, Daniel Pearl is not simply a victim of Islamist extremism. He is also a reminder of why this twisted and warped ideology will not prevail. I pray with you that Danny's memory and legacy will guide, strengthen, and inspire us until the era of Islamist terror comes to an end. (Joseph Lieberman is the junior U.S. senator from Connecticut.)
Shabbat Shalom to all our readers.
Dear Friends: I just had to make a comment about the article written by Robert Eisenman, received 11/20/2009, titled: "Remember, the Temple Was Built by Herod" [CIJR ISRANET Daily Briefing #2217]. This is not correct. The Temple was built by Solomon, later rebuilt by Ezra and others returning from the Babylon, and later added to by many others before Herod added even more. So whether he was a Jew or not, was good or not, etc., has no bearing on the Temple. The way this article reads it supports the Palestinian and Arab stand that the Temple was not there at all and we should not hold on to Yerushalayim. Another attempt to reinterpret history? Thanks, The story ("Remember the Temple was Built by Herod") of the Temple being built is ludicrous. The first Temple was destroyed in 587BCE and 70 years later some of the Jews left Babylon and returned to Jerusalem. At that time the 2nd Temple was rebuilt. We seem to have writers who have very wild imaginations and cannot accept history as it really was. Alfred Noodelman Dear Erudite Sirs, Very often whilst reading your illuminating articles I have to resort to my trusty Chambers English Dictionary to decipher the meaning of a word or two... But I am always amazed at the lucidity and pure logic of the points being made, sad at the fact that these beautifully constructed viewpoints are mainly falling upon deaf ears. Recently I caught the tail end of one of the BBC's Doha debates. The topic was whether Iran should be "allowed" to obtain nuclear weapons. Needless to say both debating teams were vehemently anti-Israel. Israel is the Big Bad Wolf of the Middle East, according to these luminaries, who see no difference between radical and oft repeated threats being made by Iran and Israel's right to protect itself, even if it has to resort to a preemptive strike to do so. As it has been forced to do before. Almost fifty percent of the audience at this particular Doha debate agreed that Iran's obtaining nuclear weapons would create "balance" in the Middle East, offsetting Israel's nuclear deterrent capabilities.... [T]he team opposing the motion of Iran with nuclear weapons believed that no one in the region should have nuclear capability and wanted to see Israel de-fanged as well. In a perfectly idealistic utopian world this might be possible. But realistically and practically this ridiculous notion of a nuclear weapon free world, also espoused by the very apologetic Mr. Obama, is so outlandish that one wonders how anyone can say it with a straight face.... Another seemingly logical argument was that Iran does not need permission from anyone in order to cultivate its nuclear ambitions. The unsaid fact that their intention is to gain nuclear warheads and thereby strengthen its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon was not an issue. And of course the issue regarding the Palestinians and the settlements was raised, and Israel was deemed solely responsible for their plight. Once during the heated discourse one of the anti-Iran-going-nuclear speakers stated that Israel was attacking Palestinians daily. At which time, even the moderator, who was full to the brim with anti-Israel sentiment, exasperatedly stated in Israel's defense that that was a "bit of an exaggeration." But it was a tiny blip at the end of a debate that proves that lies repeated often enough become truth in the minds of those opposed to Israel, and also proves what Shakespeare once said: "The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones." Israel can do nothing right it seems, except defend itself. But even that resolve is weakened and that is a topic for future discussion. Thank you once again CIJR. Keep up the excellent work.! Sincerely, The collapse or the diminishing of support from young American Jews for Israel is proof that history repeats itself. Ever since the time of Moses, each generation moved away from the principles and history of the preceding generation. Young American Jews no longer see or know Holocaust survivors just like young Americans don't know WWII heroes. Youth by nature lives in the present and looks to the future. Without struggle and suffering, young people see life as a moving process and do not want to hear...stories of old people. Young people want to create their own stories, and they will.... However, there is a solution. In...Exodus, Moses established the Passover feast when old stories are recounted, and God and old heroes are honored. Yes, there was one Passover, but there are new Passovers every year and these stories must be recounted by elders who lived these miracles and the recreation of Israel. The passing generation must mentor and teach the new generation what sacrifices were made to establish the State of Israel.... To accomplish this goal, the passing generation must believe in God, who created Israel, believe in the people who defend Israel, and believe that they can imbue those who follow with the same ideals and faith that has sustained the nation ever since its foundation centuries ago. Sincerely, Volume IX, No. 2,221 • Thursday, November 26, 2009
FIGHTING FOR LEGITIMACY -- AGAINST
FRIEND AND FOE In the middle of Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last January, the IDF decided to open a medical clinic at the Erez Crossing to treat wounded Palestinians. While the number of Palestinians who came to the facility was low, the option was available -- and utilized -- throughout the fighting. A visit to the Erez Crossing this week shows no sign that a clinic had ever been there, and yet the hall where the clinic used to be is one of the busiest parts of the terminal. But instead of being filled with doctors and patients, the rooms are now occupied by Military Police investigators tasked with securing testimonies from Palestinians in order to complete the 28 criminal probes of possible IDF war crimes committed during Cast Lead. The investigations are based on over 140 different cases that were submitted to the Military Advocate General's office for review by international aid organizations, NGOs and private Palestinians, some of which even appeared in the UNHRC report based on the findings of Justice Richard Goldstone. The cases chosen for criminal investigation include allegations that IDF troops opened fire on Palestinian civilians, abused Palestinian detainees and looted Palestinian property. Last month, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi appointed Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yuval Halamish, a former top Military Intelligence officer, to serve as the "project manager" for all IDF efforts to counter the damning report written by the Goldstone mission and recently approved by the United Nations General Assembly. One of the first decisions Halamish made was to speed up the investigations with the goal of completing them all in the coming weeks.... Ashkenazi wants to put together a report describing the investigations and their results to show the world that the IDF does not shy away from criticism and knows how to probe itself independently. Another integral part of the "counter-Goldstone" report that the IDF is compiling is the section on the humanitarian efforts made by the army during the three-week operation. In that regard, this week the head of the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration, Col. Moshe Levi, submitted a lengthy and detailed report to the General Staff listing the IDF humanitarian efforts during the operation. Parts are already well-known, like the 37,000 tons of supplies the army allowed into Gaza during the operation, and the three-hour daily breaks from fighting implemented by Israel to allow Palestinians to move freely to replenish supplies and repair damaged infrastructure. The report also sheds some new, positive light on the operation. Along with fighting against Hamas, IDF troops apparently found the time to feed abandoned livestock and animals, to arrange for fire trucks to enter areas that were closed off or under curfew, and, in a number of cases, even personally evacuated Palestinians in need of medical care.... In total, the report reveals that the IDF coordinated the evacuation of over 1,200 Palestinian families during the fighting from northern Gaza to the south, arranged for over 80 maintenance crews to reach areas where fighting was taking place to fix vital infrastructure, and allowed close to 200 ambulances to cross from the south to the north, despite the blockade that the military had imposed on the north where it was conducting most of its operations. The ambulances, the report reveals, were not always innocent. In one case, soldiers conducting surveillance from the Paratroopers Brigade spotted armed Hamas fighters getting into three different ambulances. The soldiers asked brigade commander Col. Herzi Levy what to do. His orders were to hold fire, even though the ambulances were legitimate targets. The official IDF orders during the operation stated clearly: "It is preferred to miss terrorists in order to minimize harm to civilians."... While some critics will argue that this report is too little, too late, the IDF hopes that together with the results of the criminal investigations, Israel will be able to show the world that it is capable of running its own investigations, and -- even more importantly -- that it fought fairly and with the correct level of proportionality. It remains unclear what the final outcome will be of the Goldstone report, but regardless, that is not the issue that is preventing the Palestinians from sitting down with Israel for peace negotiations.... A
BLIND EYE TO HAMAS ATROCITIES ...[F]rom the moment the UN Human Rights Council decided to establish a "fact finding" mission "to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression", it was obvious that [the Goldstone Report] was not intended to, nor would it be an impartial inquiry.... On October 16, 2009, when the UNHRC resolved, without the support of a single western democracy from among its 47 members, to refer the matter to the UN Security Council, the text of the resolution was directed exclusively at Israel and made no mention whatsoever of Hamas. It closely reflected the wording of the original mandate that Goldstone himself had rejected.... The actual evidence compiled against Israel in the 574-page Goldstone report is extraordinarily thin. None of the material contained in the statements of "witnesses" has been tested in any way. Much of it is second, third or fourth-hand hearsay. Palestinians who spoke to the commission knew that anything they said would ultimately get back to Hamas. Turning a blind eye, the Goldstone report merely notes that "those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian armed groups." Small wonder that Goldstone later conceded, "We had to do the best we could with the material we had." The Goldstone commission was at best a preliminary "fact finding" investigation, not a court of law. Goldstone himself has complained that his report is being treated as conclusive when it was never intended that way, stating, "If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven".... Yet Goldstone has only himself to blame for the widespread misapprehension that his report is determinative. Notwithstanding his attempts to suggest the contrary, many of the allegations against Israel are expressed as conclusive findings of fact. The allegations against Hamas, in contrast, are perfunctory. Punches have been pulled and contrary evidence ignored. For example, in condemning Israel for the many civilian deaths in Gaza, the Goldstone report ignores or dismisses without reason photographs and video footage taken by Israeli forces during the Gaza operation showing Hamas gunmen using civilians as human shields and concentrating their forces in civilian areas. Yet Hamas makes no secret of its policy of using Palestinian civilians as human shields. In 2008, Hamas spokesman Fathi Hamad went on the record to boast about his organisation's use of "human shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine". Incredibly, the Goldstone commission considered this public admission of a war crime by a Hamas leader to be "irrelevant".... [T]he report blamed Israel for an attack on an UNWRA school in Jabalya, a false accusation that went across the world inciting violence against Israel and Jews, before the UN itself admitted that it was entirely false and that the school had not been shelled at all. The Goldstone report repeated the false allegation and omitted the retraction.... Goldstone was probably sincere in intending to conduct an impartial legal investigation into the Gaza operation. But the report that bears his name has been perverted into a crude polemic, a blunt political weapon to be wielded solely against Israel, as the subsequent UNHRC resolution makes plain. As Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, told The Washington Post last month, "the fundamental problem with this particular report is it was hatched with a bias inherent in its mandate. It is as a consequence a product that largely reflects that imbalance". (Robert M. Goot SC is president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.) RIGHTS
WATCHDOG, LOST IN THE MIDEAST As the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group's critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state. At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them -- through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform. That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West and to encourage liberalization by drawing attention to dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and those in the Soviet gulag -- and the millions in China's laogai, or labor camps. When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies. Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region. Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world -- many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.... Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch's criticism. The organization is expressly concerned mainly with how wars are fought, not with motivations. To be sure, even victims of aggression are bound by the laws of war and must do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties. Nevertheless, there is a difference between wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally. But how does Human Rights Watch know that these laws have been violated? In Gaza and elsewhere where there is no access to the battlefield or to the military and political leaders who make strategic decisions, it is extremely difficult to make definitive judgments about war crimes. Reporting often relies on witnesses whose stories cannot be verified and who may testify for political advantage or because they fear retaliation from their own rulers. Significantly, Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and an expert on warfare, has said that the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza "did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare." Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world. If it fails to do that, its credibility will be seriously undermined and its important role in the world significantly diminished. (Robert L. Bernstein was the chairman of Human Rights Watch from 1978 to 1998.) CLAIMS
ISRAEL DEPRIVES PALESTINIANS The blitz continues: After the Human Rights Watch and Goldstone reports (which were only the two most prominent among many, including some homemade ones), Amnesty's rocket, "Troubled Waters," has landed. The gist: Israel is drying out the Palestinians. Any libel involving discrimination against Palestinians immediately makes headlines and is repeatedly broadcast in Israel more than anywhere, usually without fact-checking and sometimes without even a request for a comment from the authorities.... The motive for the Israeli media's extensive coverage of lies that besmirch their country is not very different from the motive of the foreign organizations themselves: undermining Israel's moral standing in its own eyes and those of the world. Since military efforts have failed to damage Israelis' motivation to sustain the Jewish state, those who want to destroy the country have focused recently on trying to demonize that state, to make life in it unbearable (by directing their lies at the Jews' soft underbelly or soft heart: sensitivity to injustice), and to shake the Zionist sense of justice.... Jews are among those gleefully jumping onto this bandwagon of anti-Israel psychological warfare, including many whose wages are paid by foreign governments and organizations like Amnesty. Amnesty's accusations on the water issue are groundless. Most of the settlements get their water piped in by the Mekorot water company from inside the Green Line not, as the organization claims, from wells in Judea and Samaria that belong to the Palestinians. And the Palestinians do not "have to make do" with 70 liters a day ("or less") per capita. According to the Oslo 2 accords they signed, they are entitled to 23.6 million cubic meters a year -- but in fact they pump, with Israeli consent, 70 million cubic meters. On top of this, the Israeli Civil Administration supplies, over and above the Oslo requirements, water to villages that really are suffering from a shortage.... Amnesty and the rest of the pro-Palestinians do not ask where the millions of dollars that flowed to the Palestinian Authority for the construction of an efficient and economical water system have vanished, or where the money is that the World Bank and other aid agencies have provided for a sewage system that would protect the environment and prevent the seepage of wastewater into the aquifers. Another Amnesty lie: On the Jewish side, the report says, agriculture is flourishing while the Palestinians' fields are dry. The truth is that Jewish agriculture only existed in the Gush Katif settlements in the Gaza Strip. Yields there reached world records and provided a handsome living for those who worked the soil, before the blade of the uprooting fell on them. Most Jews in Judea and Samaria -- and this is actually one of the arguments used against them -- work outside the settlements and return only at night. One reason for this is that apart from some orchards here and there that are irrigated by rainwater, there is no income-providing agriculture in Judea and Samaria in the classical sense because of the hilly terrain. These facts are certainly known to the Israelis who work as researchers for these organizations. But the end, or the wages, justify the means.
Volume IX, No. 2,220 • Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Weekly Quotes "There is still no deal, and I do not know if there will be one." -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, lowering expectations of an imminent deal with Hamas over the release of Gilad Schalit. Netanyahu has insisted that the mass prisoner release Hamas is demanding in exchange for Schalit will be done in consultation with the Israeli public: "We will not do it as a fait accompli. We will allow the cabinet ministers and the public in general to discuss the issue." Fatah Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti, speaking from the Israeli prison, where he is serving five life sentences for the murder of Israeli civilians, commented that "it appears that Israel has no choice but to yield to Hamas' list of prisoners." (Ha'aretz, Jerusalem Post, NY Times, Nov. 25) "It will enable us to show the world this simple truth: The Government of Israel wants to enter into negotiations with the Palestinians, is taking practical steps to enter into negotiations and is very serious in its intention to advance peace."--Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking ahead of the cabinet vote to implement a ten-month freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank . The security cabinet has approved the freeze, which now must be ratified by the rest of Netanyahu's cabinet. Shas party security cabinet members boycotted the vote, Interior Minister Eli Yishai saying that the party "will never agree to a freeze on settlement construction, even for one day." Meanwhile, Yossi Beilin, leader of the left-wing Meretz party, was highly pessimistic regarding the settlement freeze, saying that "the Palestinians will reject the offer and this move will in effect mark a backwards step that will lead to a political vacuum and the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority." (Jer. Post, Nov. 25) "They won't hold, not because any of us is going to kill them; their own people are getting tired of them. So if you want good relations with them, consider that they are passing passengers. It's a short-term relationship. So don't waste too much on them." -- Israeli President Shimon Peres, speaking at a forum in Argentina, commenting on the nature of the dictatorships in Iran and Venezuela, and predicting that the peoples of those nations will effect their own regime changes soon. Peres is on a tour of Latin America, shoring up support for Israel there amidst growing Iranian influence. (Associated Press, Nov. 18) "Our position is that we oppose all insubordination that impedes the IDF's mission of protecting the Jewish people. But in order for the IDF to be healthy and strong it needs to have a clear moral basis for everything it does and should never be used as an instrument of destruction against the Jewish people." -- Rabbi Mordechai Rabinovitch, spokesperson for a group of rabbis calling themselves "The Path of Faith", after a meeting of Zionist rabbis concerning the increasingly problematic declarations that some IDF soldiers would refuse to evacuate Jewish settlements. Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba said, "We educate our soldiers to serve and not to refuse. But we can not present them with such a clash [of ideals]." (Ha'aretz, Nov. 23, Jer. Post, Nov. 24) "Tim Gibbs of Vancouver was prompted to write [in] a letter to the National Post... 'Our Prime Minister is in India 'to reinvigorate Canada-India relations.' He visits the massive country of India for just three days, home to 1.15 billion people, 80+% of whom practise Hinduism (alongside millions of Sikhs, Christians, Muslims and Buddhists) yet he finds time to hob nob with Jewish rabbis on his first day....' [W]hat's remarkable is that in a murderous assault on Bombay and its most prominent landmarks the Islamic terrorists sought out members of the statistically insignificant Jewish population.... As I wrote... 'In a well-planned attack on iconic Bombay landmarks symbolizing great power and wealth, the 'militants' nevertheless found time to divert 20 percent of their manpower to torturing and killing a handful of obscure Jews helping the city's poor in a nondescript building.'... That's why the Canadian Prime Minister visited the Chabad House-because it symbolizes the peculiar obsessions of Islamic terror. What's 'remarkable' is that so many nice respectable types in Vancouver and elsewhere appear to share them." -- Mark Steyn, in his NRO blog, defending the constructive role Canadian PM Stephen Harper is playing in the war on terror during his recent diplomatic visit to India. (National Review Online, Nov. 18, National Post, Nov. 19) "There is a lot on hold right now as we await the decision. That and the long election process has really delayed everything." -- Afghan Minister of Defence Abdul Wardak, in an interview with the Globe and Mail, proclaiming that he is prepared to expand the Afghanistan National Army from 93,000 to 240,000 troops, as suggested by U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, if Obama would supply the troops required to train it and to combat the resurging Taliban. (Globe and Mail, Nov. 23) "The reality is that the international presence in Afghanistan has provided a significant influx of assistance dollars and contracts and so on. So it seems to me that the place for us to start is to deal with corruption that may be associated with contracts we're letting or work that we are having done, and development projects that we are undertaking in partnership with others, including with the Afghans. The place to start is the place where we have the greatest leverage, and that's where we're writing the checks." -- U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, at a joint media conference with Canadian Minister of Defence Peter MacKay, suggesting that the corrupt Afghan government could be held accountable if nations bankrolling its development withheld their funds. ( Boston Globe, Nov. 21) "You're giving people that aren't American citizens American rights. Why?" -- Firefighter Peter Regan, whose father Donald was killed in the 9/11 attacks, questioning Attorney General Eric Holder after his Senate hearing about his plan to put the accused terrorists on trial in Manhattan. Alice Hoagland, mother of Mark Bingham who was killed in the hijacking of Flight 93, criticized the Obama Administration: "I can't help thinking that it does make New York City a more dangerous place and a target and it will give these ugly people.... We are heartsick and weary of the delays and mechanizations of the courts, and the theatrics that are going to take over." (NY Post, Nov. 19) "I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him." -- U.S. President Barack Obama, responding to the criticism of his decision to try the main suspects in the 9/11 attacks in civil court. He neglected, however, to address the issues of attributing civil rights to these enemy non-combatants and allowing them to abuse the U.S. legal system. Scott L. Fenstermaker, legal council for suspect Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said, "He acknowledges that he helped plan the 9/11 attacks, and he says he [and his co-defendants are] looking forward to dying...to get their message out." (G&M, Nov. 19, NY Times, Nov. 22) Short Takes NEGOTIATIONS STALL, SCHALIT'S FREEDOM UNCERTAIN -- (Cairo) Talks between Hamas and Israel hit a snag over some of the top terrorists the Islamic group wants freed in return for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Schalit. Israel is objecting to some of the names demanded by Hamas, and a deal is unlikely in the coming days, Hamas officials have said. The German mediator has presented an alternative list of names provided by Israel , and Hamas leaders are studying it. If the deal goes through, hundreds of jailed Palestinians will be released in exchange for Schalit. (Nat. Post, Nov. 24; Ha'aretz, Nov. 25) CHARITY: $1.4M BOUNTY ON IDF SOLDIERS -- (Jerusalem) A Hamas-linked Gaza charity is offering $1.4 million to anybody who captures an Israeli soldier. The Waad group has called on people living in Israel to take soldiers hostage. Waad's director, Usama Kahlout, said the offer is in response to an Israeli group's offer to pay Gazans for information on the whereabouts of Gilad Shalit, held captive by Hamas for over three years. (Ha'aretz, Nov. 18) IDF HITS GAZA TUNNELS, WEAPONS -- (Jerusalem) The Israel Air Force struck smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, a day after Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip fired a Qassam rocket into the western Negev . IAF planes also attacked a weapons production facility near the Gaza town of Khan Younis . Palestinian sources said three people were hurt in the attack, which they claimed also targeted a military training compound. Fifteen rockets and mortar shells have been fired at Israel this month, and over 250 since Operation Cast Lead, according to the IDF. (Ha'aretz, Nov. 19) ISRAEL TO JOIN NATO ANTI-TERROR FORCE -- (Jerusalem) Marking an upgrade in defence ties, an Israeli missile ship will join NATO's Active Endeavour patrol, aimed at preventing the passage of terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, and providing security to the shipping industry. IDF commander Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and NATO Admiral Giampaolo Di Paoloa reached the important agreement despite criticism over the Goldstone Report and Turkey 's decision to ban Israel from joint military exercises. (Jer. Post, Nov. 19; Ha'aretz, Nov. 20) IRANIAN AIR DEFENCE DRILL BEGINS -- (Teheran) Amid mounting international pressure regarding its nuclear program, Iran began a five day air defence drill involving both its military and the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Mojtaba Zolnour, a senior Revolutionary Guard officer, warned Israel of retaliation should it target Iran . "If the enemy tries its luck and fires a missile into Iran , our ballistic missiles would zero in on Tel Aviv before the dust settles on the attack." (Wall Street Journal, Nov. 23) DOZENS KILLED IN PHILIPPINES -- (Manila) Gunmen in the Philippines hijacked a convoy carrying journalists, supporters and relatives of a candidate for provincial governor Monday. At least 21 were killed in the southern Philippines ' worst political violence in years. No one claimed responsibility for the attack in the predominantly Muslim region, which has been wracked by a Muslim rebel insurgency that has killed thousands since the 1970s. The candidate, Ismael Mangudadatu, who was not in the convoy, said his wife called him shortly before she was abducted. "She said...they were stopped by 100 uniformed armed men...then her line got cut off," he said. (Washington Post, Nov. 24) AUSTRIANS FORGET HATIKVA AT FENCING MATCH -- (Jerusalem) At an international fencing competition in Austria , two Israeli teens-Dana Stranlinkov and Alex Komarov-won the gold and bronze medals respectively. However, as the winners stood waiting at the podium to hear their national anthem, no music played. In response, the two teens, along with the entire Israeli delegation, burst into "Hatikva". An Austrian official later claimed that he could not find a recording of the Israeli anthem. (Jer. Post, Nov. 15, Israelity Blog, Nov. 16) AFGHAN VIOLENCE RISING -- (Kabul) Suicide bomb attacks killed 23 people in western Afghanistan, while a former warlord-turned parliament member narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Kabul. The attacks mark a deadly start to President Hamid Karzai's second term. Thirty five people have been murdered since his inauguration on Nov. 19. Meanwhile, the number of attacks on Afghan schools is increasing. Between January 2006 and December 2008, there were 1,153 attacks on schools, including decapitations and rocket attacks. According to the Ministry of Education, 103 teachers, principals and district staff were killed between January 2006 and April 2008, while 110 students were killed at school or on their way home. There were approximately 670 attacks in 2008, more than in the previous two years combined. (G & M, NY Times, Nov. 21; Nat. Post, Nov. 24) COURT OVERTURNS EINSATZKOMMANDO RULING -- (Ottawa) The Canadian Federal Court of Appeal has ordered the government to reconsider its decision to revoke the citizenship of Helmut Oberlander. Oberlander became a Canadian in 1960, concealing his membership in Einsatzkommando 10A, a Ukrainian-based death squad that was alleged to have murdered over 90,000 Jews in the USSR during WWII. The government revoked his citizenship two years ago, but the Appeal Court ruled that the government must take into account whether Oberlander was forced to join the unit. (Nat. Post, Nov. 19) INVESTIGATION FOCUSES ON MOSQUE -- (Killeen, Texas) The FBI's investigation into U.S. Army Major Nidal M. Hasan's alleged shooting spree at Fort Hood has led to the Islamic Center of Greater Killeen, the only mosque in the Texas military town. Duane Reasoner Jr. (18), a Muslim convert who prayed with Maj. Hasan, promoted jihadist views on the Internet, and has not been seen at the mosque since the attack. Reasoner told the BBC that "[the Fort Hood victims] were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims. I honestly have no pity for them." (Wash. Post, Nov. 24) IRAQI AND PAKISTANI DEATH TOLL RISES -- (Montreal ) Violent deaths in Iraq more than doubled in October compared to the previous month, with 410 people killed across the country. The death toll was higher because of twin suicide bombings in Baghdad that killed more than 150 people. In November, 53 civilians and policemen have thus far been killed. In Pakistan, the situation is even worse: about 160 have been killed in terror attacks since Nov. 1. (Iraq Body Count, Nov. 9, South Asia Terrorism Portal, Nov. 25, Agence France-Press, Nov. 2) GERMANS FEAR FOR LIVES OF 9/11 PLOTTERS -- (New York) The German government will send a team of observers to the 9/11 trials in New York to make sure that the evidence gathered by its own investigation does not lead to a death penalty conviction. Germany bans capital punishment, but it is unclear how its evidence could be distinguished from that which was gathered elsewhere. No trial date has been set for the five defendants, who are to be shipped from Guantanamo Bay to New York City . (NY Post, Nov. 22) COLUMBIA U. IN IRAN'S POCKETS -- (New York) The Alavi Foundation donated $100,000 to Colombia University several months before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a controversial appearance there in 2007. The donation became a matter of interest this month when federal prosecutors accused the foundation of illegally providing money and services to Iran. The Alavi Foundation has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Colombia and Rutgers Universities for their Middle Eastern and Persian studies programs. Federal law enforcement authorities are seizing $650 million in assets from the Foundation, which they charge funnels money to Iranian-supported Islamic schools in the U.S. and to Iranian spies in Europe . (NY Post, Nov. 22; NY Times, Nov. 24) CHANNEL 4: JEWS CONTROL UK -- (London) A television program purporting to expose the unknown power and influence of Britain 's pro-Israel lobby triggered a wave of condemnation by British Jews. The Nov. 16 report, "Inside Britain's Israel Lobby", aired on Channel 4's investigative program Dispatches. The Community Security Trust, an antisemitism watchdog, called the report "one hour of innuendo about 'pro-Israeli' moneybags controlling the Conservative and Labour parties; 'pro-Israeli' intimidation of British media; premeditated 'pro-Israeli' abuse of anti-Semitism; and sinister music accompanying photos of 'pro-Israelis' blurred across Israeli and British flags." (Ha'aretz, Nov. 19) Volume IX, No. 2,219 • Tuesday, November 24, 2009
THE SAD FATE OF ARAB MODERATES You have to feel sorry for those courageous enough to be Arab moderates. Most of their countrymen hate them, the government wants to crush them, the Islamists want to kill them and the West doesn't want to help them. I told this story in my book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East. Despite endless talk of finding moderates in the Arab world, the real ones -- few and far between -- generally get ignored while preening, posturing extremists are treated as romantic figures. So given all this pressure, the limited space permitted for free thought, the moderates have to talk like radicals to survive. In political terms, faced with the battle between the two giant movements of Islamism and Arab nationalism, they have to choose sides. Most liberals back their governments, even though they are repressive dictatorships, as the lesser of two evils to living under an Iran-, Gaza- or Taliban-type state. Except for some in Egypt, almost all the liberals pick the nationalists over the Islamists.... [Hala] Mustafa...is the editor of Egypt's state-controlled democracy journal Al-Demoqratiya who got in trouble because she actually spoke with Israel's ambassador for a few minutes in her office. The television interviewer asked her if that brief chat constituted "normalization" of relations with Israel. This is a real no-no, despite the fact that Egypt and Israel have been at peace for 30 years (happy anniversary!).... But the only line Mustafa can take -- whether she believes it or not is another matter -- is that the main reason Egypt must reform itself is to defeat Israel more effectively. She begins by saying (MEMRI translation): "As long as we are part of the international community, and as long as we strive to belong to the developed countries, we need to speak their language... Perhaps the reason that Israel was able to gain ground overseas, and that there is more recognition of Israel, its path and its culture than of Arab culture, is that Israel speaks of the language of the international community..." Interviewer: "They are better integrated in the international system?" Mustafa: "Absolutely. They speak the same language, and know how to talk to them and convince them." Interviewer: "They are more skillful in obtaining their material, political or moral support." Mustafa: "Definitely. Their greatest success is in portraying the other side -- the Arabs -- as extremists, who carry weapons, shout and make hysterical decisions. This image has become a stereotype, just like after 9/11, when the Muslims' image became stereotypical and negative." Now I am definitely not attacking Mustafa here but merely pointing out the almost incredibly small maneuvering room such people have. The usual response by mainstream Arab thinkers has been: You want us to talk or act like people in the West? That is a betrayal! We will not surrender an inch. Etc., etc. Read a speech, for example, by Syrian President Bashar Assad or by many Arab nationalist intellectuals, as well as of course by Islamists, to hear this kind of thing. And yet both they and Mustafa are missing a rather obvious and important point. The liberals tell both the regimes and the masses: You will never succeed in winning your battles or gaining international support without democracy and moderation. But the regimes and radicals have done precisely that, at least in the short run, by learning to speak the language of the modern international community. As a result, they are doing better -- contrary to what Mustafa warned -- in those battles than Israel. Old style (which most Islamists still use, though even them not all the time): The Jews are inferior. We will kill them all. We will never accept peace. We will wipe out Israel. New style: The Israelis say that we are inferior. They want to kill us all. They don't want peace. They violate our human rights. We are the victims. They want to wipe us out. And by this brilliant inversion, everything has changed. Leftist movements, humanitarian-oriented groups, huge sections of academia, large parts of the media and various European governments bash Israel and extol the poor victims of the war criminal, racist, war-mongering, intransigent Israelis.... In short, Arab governments and societies don't need Mustafa and the other liberals to bring a compromise triumph through real moderation. The extremists "know how to talk to them [the West and the world] and convince them." And, to use the interviewers words: "They [the radicals, not the moderates] are more skillful in obtaining [the West's] material, political, or moral support."... What a remarkable but horrible irony. The "progressive" and "humanitarian" forces of the West have helped make real democratic and social reform unnecessary for the Arabic-speaking world and delivered it into decades more of violence, dictatorship, repression, stagnation and failure. ONE
DAY THE WALL WILL FALL IN THE ARAB WORLD The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall Monday passed very quietly in the Arab world, because the meaning of the wall's fall -- the transition from total state control to human freedom -- also bypassed the Arab world. Not the Islamic world, or the Middle East, but the Arab world. For many reasons, the Arab world...is the sole exception to the global wave of liberalization and democratization that touched every other region of the planet.... It is difficult to predict how and when our region will change, liberalize, and democratize. The spark that sets off a chain reaction for freedom could happen in one country, and then spread to others -- like the Solidarity movement in Poland ultimately echoed throughout the Soviet bloc and resulted in its total transformation. The instruments of state control vary throughout the Arab world, and the intensity of autocracy also differs by country, but the net result everywhere...is the same: the average Arab citizen does not feel that he or she has the opportunity to express himself or herself honestly or fully, or is able to influence the policies of their government. Most Arabs feel strong and confident about their culture, religion and identity, but powerless and vulnerable as citizens of their state. Modern history in other parts of the world...indicates that people will accept to live in autocratic political systems for decades on end if their socio-economic standards of living continue to improve. After some years, though, they will demand the right to participate in the decisions their government makes. The Arab world passed through a long period of sustained national development and state-building from the 1930s to the 1980s, when calls for democracy were rare. In the past 20 years, though, economic growth has tended to skew toward benefiting a small minority of wealthy Arabs, while most nationals in this region feel the improvements in their social and economic wellbeing have stalled, and in some cases reversed. Citizens who simultaneously feel economically stressed and politically stunted find themselves transformed from productive assets for national developments to disruptive elements in a sea of discontent. Islamist and tribal movements in many parts of the Arab world in the past two decades reflected many citizens' determination to find a way to organize, mobilize and express themselves in political systems that structurally deprived them of real voice. Yet Islamist and tribal movements that enjoy power have not provided citizens with answers they seek, especially in the sphere of economic opportunity. The instruments of state autocracy -- security services, economic power, information and educational channels, political offices, the judiciary -- remain firmly in the hands of small groups of men in every Arab country. Representational institutions such as parliaments and consultative councils are subservient to and manipulated by executive authority.... The result is that the Arab world lacks governance systems based on the rights of citizens, checks and balances among the different branches of government, and civilian oversight of security services. Instead, governance and public service have become yet another arena where power, privilege and access to state services are negotiated on a daily basis among competing actors. The majority of Arab societies are relatively stable and daily life goes on normally for most people...because most Arabs have adapted well to competing for their share of state services in the absence of democratic systems. Our countries appear relatively stable, but beneath the surface calm is a sea of discontent and concern.... The existing political systems seem unable to generate the quality and volume of new jobs needed to absorb tens of millions of fresh graduates. The discontent exhibited by Arab youth today is similar to that which drove the liberation movements of the Soviet bloc a generation ago: educated men and women whose basic needs were met but whose potential for political expression, cultural creativity, and economic development were constrained by a top-heavy, militarized and closed political system that dehumanized them, and was beyond their reach. I would not be surprised to see young people lead the movement for change in the Arab world, when the moment comes for that movement to materialize and wash away the legacy of authoritarian or autocratic power structures that have reached the end of their useful days in our region. (Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large
of The Daily Star and director of the Issam Fares Institute SMALL
WAR OR BIG PROBLEM? Long-running tension between the government of Yemen and a rebellious clan in a remote border area has the potential to erupt into a major regional crisis, with media reports suggesting that the tension has the characteristics of a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. On November 10, the Iranian foreign minister Manoucher Motaki warned against foreign intervention, an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia. The prospect exists that Yemen, already a haven for al-Qaeda elements, could become a failed state. Handling this challenge looks to be an early test of the executive competence of a new generation of Saudi leadership.... The current fighting dates from this past August, when the government in Sana started an offensive, code-named Operation Scorched Earth, against fighters of the Houthi clan who...say they want increased local autonomy and a greater role for their Zaydi version of Islam, which is Shiite and typically regarded as moderate. The group has close links to local Sunnis, who are in the majority. Indeed, President Ali Saleh of Yemen is himself a Zaydi. Until the latest fighting, analysis based on discussion of a Sunni-Shiite divide, often a useful way to understand other parts of the Middle East, was usually inappropriate for Yemen. Now, however, the fighting in northern Yemen has the makings of a proxy war, with Iran (Shiite) supporting the Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia (Sunni) responding with support for President Saleh.... Although the Houthi forces lack aircraft and armored vehicles, they arguably have a tactical advantage in the confrontation owing to their numbers and training as well as their skillful use of land mines. Houthi websites show rallies with high attendance, along with disciplined training sequences reminiscent of Hizballah activities in Lebanon. Claims by the Sana government of Iranian involvement are bolstered by the slogans posted on one Houthi website: "Allah is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for Islam." Such language suggests aims that far exceed a quest for local autonomy. On November 4, the Saudi Air Force launched strikes...against rebels who, according to Riyadh, had crossed the border into Saudi Arabia and killed several Saudis. Media reports that the Saudi aircraft had struck targets across the border in Yemen were denied in both capitals.... The present story of possible Iranian involvement goes back into late October, when Yemen seized an Iranian ship loaded with weaponry that included antitank weapons.... The crisis in Yemen could have serious consequences for Gulf security. The most populous state in the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen is also the poorest -- as well as the poorest Arab country overall, as measured by gross domestic product per capita. The African continent lies just eighteen miles away, across the Bab al-Mandab Strait, through which more than three million barrels of oil pass daily en route to Europe. And across the Gulf of Aden -- a present-day cauldron of piracy and the site of a 2002 al-Qaeda attack on an oil tanker -- is the failed state of Somalia. Osama bin Laden's father also hails from Yemen, where, according to Sana officials, thousands of al-Qaeda fighters still find refuge.... In the current crisis, the Saudi council of ministers has pledged "zero tolerance for intruders," an apparent reference to Houthi rebels.... A particular challenge is that the kingdom feels obliged, despite the border tension, to allow Yemeni pilgrims to visit the holy city of Mecca during the current Hajj season. On November 8, Prince Mishal bin Abdullah instructed officials to keep border crossing points open.... For Washington, the border tension compounds an already complicated relationship. Ever since the USS Cole was blown up in Aden harbor by al-Qaeda in 2000, the United States has felt that Yemen has not acted strongly enough against al-Qaeda fighters. Even imprisoned fighters have often been released or apparently allowed to escape. This scenario complicates the Obama administration's efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where Yemenis form the largest residual national contingent. U.S. efforts to persuade President Saleh to allow these detainees to be sent to Saudi rehabilitation programs -- because Washington does not trust Yemen to look after the detainees sufficiently -- have failed so far. On the other hand, Washington has worked successfully with Sana to arrange for the emigration of members of Yemen's remaining Jewish community, which has been targeted by both the Houthis and al-Qaeda. The State Department has aired its view that the conflict between the Houthis and the Yemeni central government will not be resolved through military means. But, for their part, Yemeni officials warn privately that the state could be threatened if Sana is not helped with military supplies and given latitude to pursue its military campaign. On the diplomatic front, Sana hopes that it can sort out its relations with Iran while, for now, simply asking the Houthis, estimated at between 6,000 and 7,000 armed men, to give up their military positions. Sana fears that the Houthis -- encouraged by Tehran -- aim to undermine U.S. and Saudi interests in its corner of the Arabian Peninsula. Such a view will be tested during the coming winter months, which, in Yemen's mountains, unlike much of the rest of the world, are the best time for fighting. (Simon Henderson is the
Baker fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Volume IX, No. 2,218 • Monday, November 23, 2009
WHITHER AMERICAN JEWRY? During a recent speaking tour in Canada, MK Nahman Shai (Kadima) shocked some of his hosts when he said that his primary goal in politics today is to bring down the Netanyahu government. Although indelicate, Shai's comment was not surprising. Kadima is in the opposition. And like all opposition parties in all parliamentary democracies, the primary goal of its members is to bring down the government so that they can take power. Given that this is the case, it is unsurprising that until this week, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni tried to blame Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for US President Barack Obama's hostility towards Israel. Far more newsworthy than her criticism of Netanyahu was her public rebuke of Obama this week for his attempt to strong-arm Israel into barring Jewish construction in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood. On Wednesday Livni said, "Gilo is part of the Israeli consensus... and it is important to understand this for all discussions of borders in any future agreement." Indeed. There is an Israeli consensus. The Israeli consensus regarding Jerusalem is based among other things on the understanding that no nation can give up its capital city and survive. Livni wants to be prime minister one day. For that to happen, Israel must survive until she wins an election. And Israel will not long survive if it surrenders its right to its capital. One might have thought that American Jews could be counted on to stand by Israel on this issue. But then, one would be wrong. For the past six years, Republican Senator Sam Brownback has repeatedly submitted a bill to the US Senate that, if passed into law, would revoke the presidential waiver that has allowed successive presidents to refuse to implement the 1995 law requiring the State Department to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. This year Brownback co-sponsored his bill with Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman. As luck would have it, the Brownback-Lieberman bill was submitted two weeks before Obama launched his latest campaign against Jewish building in Jerusalem.... In response to the Brownback-Lieberman Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act of 2009, the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle published an editorial...condemned their retiring senator and called his bill, "a cheap, grandstanding move by a conservative Republican on his way out the door, playing to Jews and Christian Zionists while trying to throw a monkey wrench into President Obama's diplomatic spokes." According to Sen. Brownback's office, the paper never had any criticism of the same bill when he submitted it during president George W. Bush's tenure in office. But now, as Israel's government and opposition stand shoulder to shoulder protecting Israeli control over Jerusalem from assaults by Obama, Kansas City's Jewish newspaper's editorial board willingly bucked what it acknowledged are the wishes of "Jews and Christian Zionists," in order to stand by their man in the Oval Office. Some of Israel's most high-profile supporters in the US are conservative talk radio and television hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. But rather than thank them for their support, the Anti-Defamation League, which is supposed to be dedicated first and foremost to defending Jews from anti-Semitism, published a special report this week where...dubbed Beck the "fearmonger-in-chief," for his opposition to Obama's domestic and foreign policies.... Apparently, tribal loyalty to the Left trumps the institutional interests of the ADL. It certainly trumps the interests of New York University's Hillel director Rabbi Yehuda Sarna. As James Taranto reported on Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, this week Sarna called for NYU's Jewish community to join NYU Muslims at a rally that both commemorated the massacre at Ft. Hood and denounced NYU professor Tunku Varadarajan for writing a column in Forbes magazine. In his article, Varadarajan committed the crime of stating the obvious fact that Ft. Hood terrorist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was motivated by his Islamic beliefs when he shouted Allahu Akbar and shot some 40 people, killing 13.... But then, it is no longer strange to see Hillels on American university campuses behaving in a manner that is not in line with what might be considered the interests of either the American Jewish community or the Jewish people as a whole. Take UC Berkeley's Hillel center, for example. Since Ken Kramarz, Hillel's regional director for Northern California, started his job in June 2007, Berkeley's Hillel has adopted a hostile view towards Judaism and Israel. As pro-Israel community activist Natan Nestel notes, in the past year alone, Hillel held a dance party on Yom Hashoah, and it held a Cinco de Mayo barbecue on Remembrance Day for Fallen IDF Soldiers. It has also failed to hold community Seders for the past two years. Instead, last year, its members hung signs in the Hillel building declaring, "Matza sucks." Beyond its derogatory treatment of Jewish and Israeli holidays, Berkeley's Hillel has allowed an extremist group called Students for Justice for Palestine to participate in its organizational meetings. SJP calls for Israel's destruction through unlimited Arab immigration. It also advocates for UC Berkeley to divest from Israel.... No doubt owing in part to Berkeley Hillel's decision to permit SJP members to spread their propaganda at its organizational meetings, Hillel's student leaders and members participated in SJP's Israel Apartheid Week this past March.... This month, three Arab "civil society" groups supported to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars by the [New Israel Fund] published a poster depicting an IDF soldier touching the breast of an Arab woman with the caption, "Her husband needs a permit to touch her, the occupation penetrates her life every day." The poster was issued to publicize a conference in Haifa called "My Land, Space, Body and Sexuality: Palestinians in the Shadow of the Wall," whose purpose was to demonize Israel using post-modern jargon. Unlike Hillel, NIF is widely recognized as a far-left fringe group. But as Arab Israeli NGOs use the dollars of American Jewish NIF donors to advance their "civil society" programs aimed at delegitimizing Israel's right to exist, the Reform Movement-which is not a fringe group-decided unanimously two weeks ago to criticize and pressure Israel for what its leadership views as Israel's unfair treatment of its Arab citizens.... Kadima's interests as a political party place it at loggerheads with the government on almost every issue. But its leaders this week were rational enough to recognize that they must support Israel's sovereign rights in Jerusalem despite the fact that doing so placed it on the government's side. Their display of sanity is a clear indication that Israeli society today is healthy and capable of meeting the challenges it faces. It is clear that most American Jews believe that it is in their interests to support the Democratic Party and the Left. But...American Jews ought to realize that on issues like Israel's survival and their own survival as Jews they ought to stand by their interests even when they seem to clash with their leftist and Democratic loyalties. And they ought to stand by their friends on these issues, even when their friends are conservative Republicans.... LESSONS
NOT LEARNED The Obama administration keeps making big mistakes that have a devastating effect on its own goals and interests. What is most amazing is how the implications of its actions are just not understood. Already, the current US policy has destroyed any chance not only of progress on the Israel-Palestinian front but of even holding talks at all.... President Barack Obama came to office and made the [settlement] construction issue the centerpiece of his Middle East policy; sometimes it has appeared to be the keystone of his whole foreign policy.... So far, the administration has wasted almost ten months pursuing this. First, it shouted at Israel-as if it were some servant-to do it fast or else. Then when Israel didn't, the administration realized that perhaps Israel should get something in exchange for the concession. So it went to Arab states and asked-presuming, wrongly, that they are desperate for a peace agreement-for some compromise but got nothing. In fact, the Obama administration had destroyed its own policy because, as a result, the Palestinian Authority (PA) refused to negotiate until there was a complete construction freeze. How could it be less hardline than the president? But there was a solution; sort of. Israel agreed to stop all construction once the apartments currently being built are finished, except in Jerusalem. The United States accepted the deal, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exulting about what a huge concession Israel was making.... So what happened? The PA couldn't stand to see Israel being praised and doesn't want to negotiate peace anyway. So it threw a temper tantrum: riots in Jerusalem, threats by PA leader Mahmoud Abbas to resign, refusal to go to negotiations with Israel, and clamor for a unilateral declaration of independence.... It is based on their core strategy: Why make compromise peace with Israel when you can just claim everything you want, ensuring the door is kept open for a future struggle to wipe Israel off the map entirely? What did the administration do? It backed down on everything except the independence bid! Having made a deal with Israel, having gotten Netanyahu to take an enormous risk, it then pulled the rug out from under him. Now it said: Well, maybe it wasn't such a great deal after all. Those who always advocate Israeli concessions as the solution should take note: Once again, we've seen that a concession doesn't lead to a concession by the other side nor does it lead to progress. It just produces a demand for more concessions without giving any real credit to the last one. The latest act in the drama is that after an announcement of a plan to build apartments in the Gilo section of Jerusalem-which is quite within the US-Israel deal-the administration complained bitterly, showing not only that it wouldn't respect agreement others made with predecessors but it wouldn't even respect the agreements it made itself. Obama complained that the Gilo construction complicates administration efforts to relaunch peace talks, makes it harder to achieve peace and embitters the Palestinians. Funny, he never said this about: PA incitement to terrorism; failure to punish terrorists; negotiations with Hamas despite its hardline positions, genocidal goals, anti-Semitic views; refusal to return to talks with Israel despite Obama's express request to do so; breaking its promise on not using the Goldstone Report to punish Israel; and other such actions. Each of these individually is more dangerous than the Gilo construction. Moreover, having sabotaged negotiations by highlighting the construction-on-settlements issue, the administration has now escalated even higher: no construction in Jerusalem is the minimum demand. Of course, Arab states and the PA will echo this, refusing all talks unless that happens.... Obama has just guaranteed a dead peace process for his entire term in office.... The administration is making its own failure far more likely. If the United States gets angrier with Israel every time the Arab states and Palestinians sabotage negotiations, why shouldn't they do it? One final point: The same loss of US credibility and reliability that affects Israel also hits the relatively moderate Arab states in the administration's dealings with them. No doubt we will soon be hearing that if Israel stopped building apartments in Gilo there would be Arab-Israeli peace, no terrorism, Iran would give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and Obama would get the Nobel Peace Prize. Oops, that last event has already happened. How about giving him the Nobel Peace-Fumbling Prize? OBAMA'S
FAILURE, NETANYAHU'S OPPORTUNITY Once again, US President Barack Obama has demonstrated his intention of "putting light" between America and Israel. His hostility toward Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during the latter's visit to Washington this week was breathtaking. It isn't every day that you can see an American president leaving the prime minister of an allied government twisting in the wind for weeks before deciding to grant him an audience at the White House. It isn't every day that a visiting leader from a strategically vital US ally is brought into the White House in an unmarked van in the middle of the night rather than greeted like a friend at the front door; is forbidden to have his picture taken with the president; is forced to leave the White House alone, through a side exit; and is ordered to keep the contents of his meeting with the president secret. Ahead of Obama's meeting with Netanyahu, The Wall Street Journal reported that Obama was effectively attempting to blackmail the Israeli premier by conditioning the meeting on Netanyahu's willingness to make tangible concessions to the Palestinians during his speech before the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America. Although the report was denied by the Obama administration, if it was true, such a move by the White House would be without precedent in the history of US relations with Israel. And if untrue, the very fact that the story rings true is indicative of the wretched state of US relations with Israel since Obama entered office.... [A] report this week in The New York Times stated that the US's key Arab allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have been perilously weakened since Obama took office. Their diminished influence has been accompanied by the rapid rise of Iran and Syria. Both of these rogue states have been on the receiving end of continuous wooing by Obama administration officials who seem ready to do just about anything to appease them. In the meantime, Iran's Hezbollah proxy in Lebanon has again managed to regain control over Lebanon's government, despite its defeat in June's parliamentary election.... As for Hezbollah's Iranian bosses, far from convincing them to moderate their policies, the Obama administration's efforts to appease the ayatollahs have emboldened Iran's theocratic leaders to adopt ever-more radical positions against the US. ... The fact that Obama's policies have all failed so spectacularly presents a unique opportunity for Israel to move its policies in a bold new direction.... As Netanyahu knows, there is consensus support among Israelis for his plan to ensure that the country retains defensible borders in perpetuity. This involves establishing permanent Israeli control over the Jordan Valley and the large Jewish population blocs in Judea and Samaria. In light of the well-recognized failure of the two-state solution, Hamas's takeover of Gaza and the disintegration of Fatah accompanied by the shattering of the myth of Fatah moderation, Israel should strike out on a new course and work toward the integration of Judea and Samaria, including its Palestinian population, into Israeli society. In the first instance, this will require the implementation of Israeli law in the Jordan Valley and the large settlement blocs. Replacing the military government in these areas with Israel's more liberal legal code will also advance Netanyahu's economic peace plan, which envisions expanding the Palestinian economy in Judea and Samaria by among other things reintegrating it into Israel's booming economy. This plan would reward political moderation while marginalizing terrorists in Palestinian society. In so doing, it will advance the cause of peaceful coexistence over the long-term far better than the failed two-state solution.... Obama's disgraceful treatment of Israel and, for that matter, his atrocious treatment of the majority of America's allies in the Middle East and throughout the world, has strengthened the hands of America's worst enemies and made the world a much more dangerous place. But his obvious failures provide Israel with an opportunity to take control of events and change the situation for the betterment of Israel and the Palestinians alike. Applying Israeli law to the Jordan Valley and the major Israeli population blocs in Judea and Samaria will probably not win Netanyahu many friends in the Obama White House. But if we learned anything from Obama's insulting treatment of Netanyahu and American Jews this week, we learned that regardless of what Israel does, the Obama administration has no interest in being his friend.
Volume IX, No. 2,217 • Friday, November 20, 2009 
THE ODYSSEY OF IDENTITY The Other Within: The Marranos,
Split Identity and Emerging Modernity Conventional wisdom holds that hyphenated identities are a result of the postmodern condition: we are no longer "Canadians of the Mosaic faith", to borrow a phrase, but rather "Jewish-Canadians." Current identity politics allow for a kaleidoscope of self-definitions. It is possible to collect identities, to discard identities, and to conceal one identity under other identities. This, conventional wisdom says, is the curse of the post-modern, and a sign of cultural malaise. It is however, in Renaissance Iberia that the notion of multiple identities first emerges, among the Marranos, those Jewish converts (forced or otherwise) to Catholicism who played a leading role in early modern Iberian culture. In The Other Within, Israeli scholar Yirmiyahu Yovel tells the story of the Marranos, or New Christians, as they struggle with the then-novel idea of being Christian, while still acknowledging, and being forced to acknowledge, that they are the descendants of Jews. Yovel's approach is fascinating. Not simply a history, The Other Within provides vignettes of individual Marranos, some famous, all compelling, who coped with their status as New Christians by maintaining their Judaism in secret, or by becoming zealous Catholics, ambivalent proto-atheists. Some, through sheer force of will, developed an emerging sense of a private, interior self, prefiguring secular modernity. All this is accompanied by a discussion of the psychological, cultural and theological impact of maintaining a split identity, secret or not. The historical narrative also serves as the foreground for a profound philosophical discussion of the nature of modern and postmodern identity. One of the leading scholars on the Enlightenment philosopher Spinoza (a Marrano), Yovel demonstrates a nuanced and sensitive approach to a topic which, he points out, has been the subject of many historical studies of a more nationalist bent. Instead of claiming the Marranos for the Jewish people or for the Spanish, Yovel maintains that while some might have been "secret Jews" and others proud Spaniards, the Marranos' unique split identity and place as the Other within Spanish Catholicism makes them an important topic for universal study. Yovel concludes that split identities must be seen as the normal state of much of modern and postmodern humanity, and that external, state-imposed identity is a form of oppression. He suggests that the autonomy of the internal self was prefigured and influenced, at least in part, by the Marranos. (Joshua Peters is Assistant Director of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.) OF
ETERNITY AND GRANDCHILDREN A few days before Yom Kippur, the Illinois State Supreme Court upheld the validity of the last will and testament of Dr. Max and Erla Feinberg, who sought to disinherit grandchildren who married non-Jewish partners. As reported in the article "Illinios Supreme Court upholds will that disinherits grandkids who marry non-Jews" in The Jerusalem Post, September 27, the executor, in accordance with the couple's wishes, was to distribute a significant amount of money to grandchildren who married within the Jewish faith. The one grandchild who had married a Jew received the inheritance, while the remaining four who had not, got nothing. Each year, at the close of Yom Kippur, when the lack of sustenance has taken its toll, the sense of "We, our days, are like a fleeting shadow -- while You and Your years are everlasting" is felt intensely. Yet men and women still yearn for eternity. Although natural reproduction does provide a form of eternal existence, by means of passing on genetic material, the quest does not end there. The human spirit strives for a more meaningful existence, beyond biological functions. Beyond that, for many, eternity can be reached only within tradition. The Feinbergs, married in 1934, apparently felt that way. The couple attempted to maintain an eternal tradition by employing the instrument of their last will and testament. However, the disinherited grandchildren thought otherwise. An argument presented against the validity of the so-called "beneficiary restriction clause" claimed that one cannot control another person's actions from beyond the grave. Ironically, Judaism seems to take the same position -- even to the extreme. According to Jewish tradition, there is no such concept as a "will" that instructs the dispensing of the deceased's material wealth after his death. For after death, there is no ownership of anything in this world. On the contrary, there is an established set of rules as to the disposition of property left behind. As the saying goes -- you can't take it with you! On the other hand, it is difficult to square that approach with the modern (particularly capitalist) sensibility -- "It's my money; I earned it; I can do with it whatever I want!" All would agree that during one's life, one can choose to whom one gives a gift. One can dispense one's wealth, whether meager or rich, in any manner one pleases. Similarly, a premise within Jewish law states that a man is proprietor of his monies. So Jewish tradition covers that as well. Or does it? According to Torah law, one can sell or grant one's property and pass it on to new owners -- up to a limit. An "estate," meaning land-holdings, must remain within the family. The land anchors the family, binds it together and is the physical manifestation of the otherworldly sense of eternity. Offspring will work the very land that gave physical sustenance and shelter to their forebears. The Torah instructs that in the Jubilee year, "you are to hallow the year, the 50th year, proclaiming freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants; it shall be Homebringing for you, you are to return, each-man to his holding, each-man to his clan you are to return." (Leviticus 25:10. Translation: Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses, 1995.) The family members return to the land, and the land is returned to the family. The family reverts to its fundamental state -- that of eternal bonds. Once the Jewish people was exiled from the land, the ties to the land were severed and family bonds became tenuous. Currency, such as precious metals and jewels, replaced land-holdings and became the bulk of an individual's "estate." The wandering Jew's wealth became portable at the same time that family connections became less grounded. Along with the rest of the modern world, Jews exited the agrarian society and traded it for a commercial social order. Nevertheless, the existential need to strengthen the family within tradition endured. This need became apparent on July 24 in Illinois . According to the will of Max Feinberg, any descendant who married outside the Jewish faith or whose non-Jewish spouse did not convert to Judaism within one year of marriage was "deemed deceased for all purposes of this instrument." In the words of the Illinois Supreme court, Erla Feinberg wished "to reward, at the time of her death, those grandchildren whose lives most closely embraced the values she and Max cherished." Both of these statements reflect two sides of the same coin -- the coin used to secure one's familial traditions. In their lifetime, the Feinbergs constructed a postmodern manifestation of ancient mores -- maintaining the estate within the family. In keeping with the ground rules the couple laid down, those who chose to bind themselves to the family preserved their foundations in the family's estate. Through these family members, the grandparents from Illinois found their eternity. (Rachel Levmore is a rabbinical court advocate and author of Minee Einayich Medima on prenuptial agreements for the prevention of get-refusal.) REMEMBER,
THE TEMPLE WAS BUILT BY HEROD The Temple , over which we now see such weekly struggles, was built by Herod who, for all intents and purposes, was not Jewish. He had not an ounce of Jewish blood in him -- if one can speak in such "racial" terms in this period -- his mother, according to Josephus, being an "Arab" from Petra, probably related to the royal family there; his grandfather, a Greco-Arab priest of Apollo from the Gaza/Ashkelon "Philistine"/Palestine Coast. On occasion, he might have simulated Jewish ways in line with his appointment as king of the Jews (which did not necessarily require being Jewish -- it was a Roman title and a tax-farming fiefdom). His father Antipater was the first Roman procurator of Judea (c. 60 BCE), who parlayed a Roman governorship into a family dynasty, in the process eliminating the Maccabees and garnering a Roman citizenship for himself and his family after him. Herod might have had a few Jewish wives among the 10 or so he allowed himself, including two high priests' daughters -- one the proverbial Maccabean princess Mariamme/Miriam, whom he actually had executed, as he did his children by her, due to his jealousy of their Maccabean blood and therefore their popularity among the masses. Almost all of his other wives were Greek or Arab. He also built a host of Greek temples -- in Sebaste ( Samaria ) in honor of the Emperor Augustus, at Caesarea and across the Mediterranean, as well as the Antonia fortress in the Temple in honor of Mark Anthony and Phasael (Feisal) after his brother was executed by one of his Maccabean wife's uncles. Herod used his building projects to magnify his own image and keep a disaffected population busy. The Temple itself, which he began early in his reign in the 20s BCE, was not finished until shortly before its fall in 70 CE. Herod in fact was a typical Arab potentate, combining the worst qualities of a latter-day Saddam Hussein and the harem aspects of the House of Saud. As Josephus tell us, Herod had spies everywhere, executed all the members of the previous Maccabean or nationalistic Sanhedrin except the two Pharisees "Pollio and Sameas" -- probably Hillel and Shammai -- and even went on the streets in disguise to search out malcontents. These he had taken to the fortresses Hyrcania and Machaerus (as John the Baptist was, by one of his Greco-Arab sons) to be tortured and ultimately put to death. He was hated by the Jewish people and, as noted, responsible for the extirpation of the whole Maccabean family root and stalk, including his own several grafts upon them; and there followed 110 years of struggle (37 BCE-73 CE) to be rid of him, his heirs and the Romans who imposed them on the Jews and supported them. Nor is the celebrated Western Wall anything but a part of this extravaganza he built to mollify Jews and busy unemployed priests. It was consecrated by their Roman overlords, after they destroyed the Temple, as a place Jews could go once a year (on the Ninth of Av) in humiliation to bewail their former glories -- therefore its traditional name, the Wailing Wall. So the Jews go today to worship at the remains of a stone edifice built by their arch-enemy, responsible more than anyone else for their destruction, who was himself certainly not native born and hardly Jewish at all except where convenient. (This is much like Paul, in 1 Corinthians 9:19-27. To paraphrase: "I am a Jew to the Jews, a Greek to the Greeks, a law-keeper to the law-keepers, a law-breaker to the law-breakers. I believe in winning. I will do whatever I have to do to win. That's how I fight, not beating the air." And Herod did "win," as did Paul, his probable descendant). But here's the rub. The Pharisees and the Herodian Sadducees whom they dominated were the only party willing to live with Herod and the Romans. In fact, Pollio and Sameas in 37 BCE recommended opening Jerusalem 's gates to Herod and the Roman army given him by Mark Anthony. This behavior was repeated over and over, including 130 years earlier, at the time of Judah Maccabee, when they were willing to support Alcimus, a high priest appointed by a foreign power (the Greek Seleucids in Syria) -- probably "the birth moment" of the Pharisee party. It happened again when Pompey stormed the Temple 100 years after that. According to Josephus, the Pharisees cooperated with the Romans in slaughtering the Temple 's pro-Maccabean defenders.... Predictably the nationalists were the popular party (as they usually are even today).... We all respect our rabbis, their durability, learning, and great venerability. We acknowledge their leadership in surviving 2,000 years of the Diaspora, that is, up to the Holocaust -- but they were not up to the Holocaust. They could not provide real leadership then. Only the pro-Zionist parties left or right and the worker's movements did. In the same manner, the rabbis, experts at non-territorial leadership, cannot provide -- almost by definition -- leadership in a territorial situation. Now, in the face of the seemingly miraculous Jewish regaining of the Temple Mount in 1967, their bans for or against walking on the Temple Mount smack of quaintness and out-of-touch or even self-serving unreality. One is not walking upon anything there except perhaps Herod's Temple (recently Herod's tomb seems to have been found under his pile of dirt Herodion, not surprisingly apparently smashed to bits by revolutionaries).... We need a new approach to religion if, for instance, we are to combat the J Streets, Goldstones or George Soroses of this world, not to mention appealing to the imagination of questioning disaffected youth; and the first step should have been to start rebuilding the Temple.... [N]ow, almost three generations after the Holocaust and with its memory beginning to fade, we have nothing positive to appeal to our young generations in Israel and abroad. It is poetry and the spirit that provide this. They are the positives, not humiliating renunciations. The reconstruction of a Temple -- any Temple -- should have begun 40 years ago and we would be well on our way toward achieving these things.... It took the Herodian Temple almost 90 years to be completed. Ours and even its early stage -- archeological investigation -- hasn't even begun. People need a positive historical Judaism to go forward and this does not mean a Roman/Herodian-sponsored Phariseeism. People need positive symbols to rally around. The time is late. There is plenty of room on the Mount for everyone. In no other manner can we gain the respect of the world and regain our own self-respect, and the world come to understand us -- and we come to understand ourselves. (Robert Eisenman is the
author of James the Brother of Jesus and FOR
ANNE FRANK'S TREE, 11 NEW PLACES TO BLOOM Through saplings descended from the majestic horse chestnut tree that gave her so much pleasure in her bleak hideout, Anne Frank will soon have her story joined with that of the Little Rock Nine -- the black students who integrated an Arkansas high school under the guard of 1,200 soldiers in 1957. The school, Little Rock Central High School, is one of 11 sites dedicated to fighting intolerance that have been chosen by the Anne Frank Center USA in Lower Manhattan as the destination for saplings that originated from the tree in Amsterdam, now 150 years old. Anne often marveled as it changed through the seasons, blooming flamboyantly, then slowly losing its leaves, outside the small office building at 263 Prinsengracht where she and her family were hidden during the Nazi occupation. It was one of the few things she could glimpse for those two years. "From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the sea gulls and other birds as they glide on the wind," she wrote in her diary on Feb. 23, 1944, six months before her hideout was discovered. "When I looked outside right into the depth of nature and God, then I was happy, really happy." She died of typhus at 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. With the horse chestnut reaching the end of its life, the Anne Frank Center announced in April that it would take applications from institutions that wanted a derivative sapling. Thirty-four applied, though three -- the White House, the World Trade Center site in New York and the Children's Museum of Indianapolis -- were chosen ahead of time.... The saplings are currently in a nursery outside Amsterdam and will be shipped to the United States before year's end, said Yvonne Simons, executive director of the Anne Frank Center . They will be quarantined for two years to make sure they do not carry certain plant diseases. Ms. Simons said the 11 sites were chosen largely because they showed "the consequences of intolerance -- and that includes racism, discrimination and hatred." Among the other sites are Holocaust centers in Seattle ; Farmington Hills , Mich. ; Sonoma State University in California , whose exhibit was created by an Auschwitz survivor who attended school with Anne; and Boise , Idaho , whose statue of Anne was vandalized by a white supremacist group. The other sites are: The William J. Clinton Foundation in Little Rock, home of the former president's library, which was chosen, the Anne Frank Center said, because of Mr. Clinton's and the foundation's commitment to social justice. Boston Common, which has monuments to liberty; an 11-year-old researching what project she might undertake for her bat mitzvah asked Boston's mayor, Thomas M. Menino, to ask for the sapling. The Southern Cayuga Central School District in upstate New York , which based its case on nearby landmarks like Seneca Falls , regarded as the birthplace of the women's rights movement. The White House, Ms. Simons said, has not yet made a firm decision about accepting the sapling, though the chief groundskeeper indicated that there should be no problem. Shabbat Shalom to all our readers.
Volume IX, No. 2,216 • Thursday, November 19, 2009
TAU HISTORIAN ACCUSED OF ANTI-SEMITISM An Israeli academic has been accused of contributing to anti-Semitic discourse and incidents following his book tour in London promoting the thesis that Jews never existed as a people and the Palestinian Arabs are the true heirs of the biblical Jews. Shlomo Sand, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University, spoke at a number of events in London last week to sell his book The Invention of the Jewish People, in which he writes that the Israelites were never exiled from the Promised Land and therefore have no right to return. Jewish community figures questioned Sand's work and noted that no opposing view or contextualization was offered at his events. "Sand's agenda is to sever the historic link between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel ," said Jonathan Hoffman, co-chairman of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland . "To promote that agenda his book ignores archeological and genetic evidence. At none of his three London appearances was there a historian or Jewish history expert on the platform to counter his distortions, evasions and sensationalism. The result will contribute to anti-Semitic discourse and incidents in the UK , already at a record level." A guest on BBC Radio Four last week, Sand told presenter Andrew Marr that he compares Israel 's birth to "rape." "I'm not a Zionist. I don't define myself as an anti-Zionist... but I'm not a Zionist... I don't put into question the existence of Israel. ... I compare when I am speaking before Arab students the birth of the Israeli state to an act of rape. But even the son that was born of the act of rape... you have to recognize him... the existence of Israel I don't put in question today, you understand me?" "Sand's book represents another step towards the mainstream for replacement ideologies," said Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. "Our history of exile and ghettoization has meant that the Jewish people are remarkably cohesive, genetically, culturally and religiously, and through the centuries the countries in which we have lived have had no compunction in designating us as Jews. It is Sand's theory that is the upstart, rootless and incredible, not the history and collective memory of the Jewish people and our connection to Israel ." The Community Security Trust, a charity that monitors anti-Semitism in the UK , also questioned how there was no dissenting voice at any of Sand's appearances. "The book was featured without dissent on BBC Radio on November 9, the 61st anniversary of Kristallnacht," said Mark Gardiner, the Community Security Trust's director of communications. Gardiner said there had also been no contextualization during the appearances. Evident, he said, when presenter Andrew Marr summarized the book on the BBC radio show with Sand saying: "There was a kind of [Zionist] master plan to present the history of the Jewish people in Europe which emerged in the 19th century and the modern world has rather swallowed whole... [The book says] actually the history of the Jewish people is not as you thought... The Old Testament is very, very inaccurate... Most of the story of the Jews as presented in the history of the Old Testament is fictitious, you think..." Gardiner added: "There are many ways, often subtle, in which anti-Israel or anti-Zionist debate can have an anti-Jewish impact. However, a new anti-Zionist book by Tel Aviv University Prof. Shlomo Sand remolds the paradigm: with notions of Jewish peoplehood now under attack in the service of anti-Zionism. The sense of common lineage, kinship and peoplehood that Jews around the world share and hold is a fundamental part of their identity, as perversely demonstrated by the splenetic accusations of 'self-hater' that are hurled by some Jews at others who do not toe the majority line. To deny this aspect of Jewish identity-perhaps more accurately to demand that for political reasons it be rejected -- is surely to deny or reject something that is essential to our perception of Jewishness itself." Gardiner said there was nothing wrong with genuine historical inquiry about Jews or any other facet of history. "However, that is neither the core purpose, nor the core impact of Sand's book. It can be summed up very simply as: No real Jews = no need for a really Jewish state."... TEL
AVIV STUDENTS AFRAID TO CHALLENGE LEFTIST PROFESSORS Tel Aviv University students are hesitant to express their political views in class, lest lecturers perceived to have left-wing political views penalize them with lower grades, the head of TAU's Department of Curriculum and Instruction wrote in an internal memorandum last month. Prof. Nira Hativa's comment in the faculty memo ignited controversy among professors, with some declaring that her sentiments should not be made public. Hativa wrote: "There are no small number of students of lecturers with left-wing views who complain bitterly that they are extremely offended by the presentation of materials that oppose their views, but are fearful of expressing contrary viewpoints in class, lest it harm their grades." In response to the uproar, Hativa...wrote that "the things I wrote in the context of an internal disagreement are based on intuition and my personal impressions." The chair of the university's students' union, Shahar Botzer, said his organization receives a number of complaints each year from students dissatisfied with what they view as lecturers' biased portrayal of material in favor of left-wing positions. He said that such complaints are the exception, however, rather than the rule. "If lecturers express their views in class in a way that makes it illegitimate to express contrary views-that is inappropriate and unacceptable to us," Botzer said. "This university is founded on pluralism and on the ability to express a variety of opinions."... "At the end of each semester, I read comments from several hundred students on the teaching they receive," Hativa wrote on October 23. "I have come across many complaints from students about a small number of lecturers in various fields, who express radical left-wing opinions in their classes -- that they are lashing out at the State of Israel, the army, the Zionist movement and worse." TAU said in response that "informal discussions are held frequently on controversial issues, and people feel 'at home' in expressing opinions based on their understanding and intuition. The university is an institution where pluralism is a guiding principle." JEW-HATRED
ON CAMPUS All forms of anti-Semitism are bad but some are more worrying than others. Universities should, in theory, be the last place where Jews in liberal democracies should feel ill at ease. Anti-Semitism on campus is now a serious problem. University teachers like Roger Faurison in France have used their academic posts to generate the hateful denial of the Holocuast, an insult to the millions of Jews around the world who live daily with the memory of family gassed and cremated to satisfy Hitler's anti-Semitic desires. American universities have long given tenure and shelter to academics who are careful never to criticize Jews outright but instead revert to old metaphors about networks of Jewish influence and, of course, relentless criticism of Israel. It is vital for the global anti-Semitism movement to win the hearts and minds of the young.... [T]he call of the Jew-haters is to win over as many young minds as possible to hatred of Israel and to a belief that Jews constitute a malign conspiracy of control. It is on university campuses that serious money is spent to export the Jewhating theo-ideology of Wahabism.... [Ed] Hussain had been attracted to Islamism as a school-boy. A poster in his bed room quoted the famous appeal of Hassan al-Banna, the grandfather of Tariq Ramadan and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood: "Allah is our Lord. Mohammed is our Leader. The Koran is Our Constitution. Jihad is Our Way. Martydom is Our Desire."... At his college, Hussain helped cover the college walls as well as those in the street outside with a poster reading "Islam: The Final Solution" because "deep down, we never really objected to the Holocaust... Without question we despised Jews and perceived a Jewish conspiraracy."... [T]he All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism reported that in December 2005, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK organized a debate under the title "Zionism: The Greatest Enemy of the Jews." Some of the listed speakers were known to have expressed anti-Semitic opinions on previous occasions and the university cancelled the event. MPACUK riposted on its website saying "Jewish Societies" were the same as "Zionist Socities." It accused Jewish students of working for Mossad and put up a picture of Spiderman using the classicial anti-Semitic motif of Jews spinning a web of control. In 2002, the University of Manchester Students' Union discussed a motion that anti-Zionism was not anti-Semitism. The General Union of Palestinian Students distributed a leaflet before the vote which repeated classic anti-Semitic propaganda including the Benjamin Franklin forgery circulated by the Nazis.... The motion was defeated. The response of the Jew-haters was to throw a brick through the window of a Jewish student residence and a poster with the words "Slaughter the Jews" was stuck on the front door.... In 2005...[a] Hizb[-utTahrir] spokesman admitted that the extremist organization was seeking to work "in Glasgow , Dundee and Edinburgh universities." Al Muhajiroun, the breakaway group from Hizb and arguably even more violent in its anti-Semitism, was also active in Dundee and other universities.... But...Hizb and Al Muharjiroun exist to snuff out free speech and replace democracy. They are not religious groups in the same sense as Quakers, or Buddhists, or Mormons, or Orthodox Christians who wish to share their views on faith with others. Hizb and its off-shoots are deeply political and refuse to join in campaigns to condemn attacks on Jews worldwide.... Jewish students, like Muslim students or students of any kind, should feel free in their universities from the hate that may confront them in wider society. The role of the liberal university tradition is to defend liberty, not to promote politics that reduce it. One would have thought that all adults who teach or administer our universities would subscribe to that vision.... (from Globalising Hatred: The New Anti-Semitism, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008) NAZIS
IN THE IVORY TOWER Over the past two decades we have witnessed the emergence of a mass movement of political extremism and support for totalitarianism on Western college campuses. Large numbers of university professors and administrators today advocate politically extremist positions that combine support for totalitarian Islamofascism and its terrorism with deep hatred of Israel and anti-Americanism. The dimensions of the phenomenon vary by campus and also by academic discipline. Middle East Studies is arguably the worst.... Campus radicalism, support for totalitarianism, and general political extremism are not new on Western campuses. Indeed some of the worst political extremism in academic history took the form of enthusiastic support on American campuses for Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. This is a disgraceful chapter in American academic history and one largely unknown. Its story is the topic of a new book, "The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower," by Stephen H. Norwood (Cambridge University Press, 2009).... Norwood 's book is a must-read, but also a sad and uncomfortable read. He details the reactions of America 's professors and universities to the rise of Hitler. The responses on American campuses ranged from complete indifference and refusal to join in campaigns against Nazi Germany to widespread support for German Nazism, including for German atrocities committed against Jews. This was not mere Yankee provincial ignorance of what was happening outside the country.... Some academics condemned those calling for a boycott of Germany in response to the atrocities committed against on Kristallnacht. They insisted it would be "hypocritical" on the part of those protesting the boycott of German Jews by Nazis to call for a boycott of Nazi Germany. This is worth noting because one hears the exact same claim today. Those today calling for boycotts of the anti-Israel academics that lead the "divestment" movement demonizing Israel are similarly denounced; they are accused of supposedly exhibiting "hypocrisy." In other words, one must not oppose the evil use of boycotts to achieve evil totalitarian aims, especially not through a campaign against them of boycotts to achieve just and democratic aims, lest one be guilty of "inconsistency."... Phony symmetry, the condemnation of fascism together with condemning Western democracies, is not the innovation of the past decade's campus campaign to defend Islamic terror. In the 1930s academics and university presidents signed statements that protested German behavior but at the same time gave it legitimacy. For example, in one attempt at "even-handedness," a petition claimed that Nazi actions were "in large part the result of the lack of fair play to Germany " on the part of Western countries and their "slighting of German rights and needs." It added that "minorities are suppressed and discriminated against to some degree in every land." They knew so well-at the time most Ivy League universities and many other colleges officially and openly discriminated against Jewish applicants. (They still do under affirmative action quotas.) Does all of the above sound familiar? It does to Norwood, who says he sees frightening similarities between what has been happening in American campuses since the early 1990s and what transpired in the 1930s.
Volume IX, No. 2,215 • Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Weekly Quotes "Additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel 's security...I think it makes it harder for them to make peace with their neighbours, I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous." -- U.S. President Barack Obama, criticizing Israel 's plans to build 900 new homes in Jerusalem 's Gilo neighbourhood. Obama's comments were some of the harshest made by a U.S. president regarding Israeli construction over the 1967 borders. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to comment on Obama's statements, but Kadima leader Tzipi Livni has sided with the government on this issue, stating that "Gilo is part of the Israeli consensus. This understanding is important for any future talks on the final borders; in any final status agreement Gilo is part of Israel 's final borders." A Jerusalem military committee approved the Gilo construction project Tuesday, but it could be years before the building actually begins. (Bloomberg.com, November 18) "Israelis need to understand that there's going to be a huge drain on resources, attention and capital, and that will have implications.... We've got two wars. You've got to be bold to say, let's start a war against a third party, particularly when the third party can hit you in the first two fronts." -- Senior Brookings Institute and Obama administration advisor Bruce Riedel, addressing scholars and journalists at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, warning that the U.S. cannot support wars simultaneously in Afghanistan and Iraq, let alone consider a third in Iran. ( Jerusalem Post, Nov. 18) "Sand's agenda is to sever the historic link between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel . To promote that agenda his book ignores archeological and genetic evidence. At none of his three London appearances was there a historian or Jewish history expert on the platform to counter his distortions, evasions and sensationalism. The result will contribute to anti-Semitic discourse and incidents in the UK , already at a record level." -- Co-Chairman of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland Jonathan Hoffman, reacting to the recent book tour promoting The Invention of the Jewish People which claims there never was a Jewish People in the Promised Land, and Palestinian Arabs are the true heirs of the biblical Jews. Its author, Tel Aviv University History Professor Shlomo Sand, told BBC Radio Four, "I'm not a Zionist. I don't define myself as an anti-Zionist...but I'm not a Zionist.... I don't put into question the existence of Israel . I compare, when I am speaking before Arab students, the birth of the Israeli state to an act of rape. But even the son that was born of the act of rape...you have to recognize him.... The existence of Israel , I don't put in question today. You understand me?" (Jer. Post, Nov. 15) "What would we talk about, the menu or the return of land?Me, I say we would talk about returning land, and for this subject there is a framework. It is neither me nor Mr. Netanyahu. If Mr. Netanyahu is serious, he can send his teams of experts, we will send our teams of experts to Turkey . They can then talk, if they are really interested in peace." -- Syrian President Bashar Assad, in Paris to meet French Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy, voicing his scepticism regarding the outcome of future negotiations with PM Benjamin Netanyahu, after insisting last week that Turkey mend its relationship with Israel for that express purpose. (Jer. Post, Nov. 15) "We have to work with the politics we found in Israel just like we have to work with the politics we found with the Palestinians. This is the first time that any Israeli government has said we will not issue any new permits and not have any new settlements and that should be enough to open the door and start talking.... Take where we are and the reformulation of the settlement issue and find a way [to move forward]." -- Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, speaking to American and Israeli policy makers at the Saban Forum in Jerusalem , urging Palestinian leaders to return to the negotiation table. By refusing to talk with Israel , Clinton explained, they risked losing the support of the international community. (Jer. Post, Nov. 15) "What we see is absolute American commitment to Israeli interests, Israeli conditions, and Israeli security...while disregarding the dignity or feelings of the Arab and Muslims people and their nations and governments." -- Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, in a speech broadcast to tens of thousands of supporters in a southern Beirut suburb, criticizing U.S. support for Israeli military. (Jer. Post, Nov. 12) "I know some people are concerned that this is unilateral. But it seems to me that it is unilateral in a healthy sense of self-development." -- Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, implying that the Palestinians' declaration of a sovereign state is not meant to sound hostile. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nevertheless retorted, "There is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and any unilateral path will only unravel the framework of agreements between us and will only bring unilateral steps from Israel 's side." Hamas spokesperson Salah Bardeweel joined the fray suggesting that rather than a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, "why not declare a Palestinian state from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [ Jordan ] River?" (Ha'aretz, Nov. 15-16) "The trial will be more than just a soapbox for him. It will be a chance for him to indict the entire system. I'm sure he's been waiting for this for a very long time." -- Jarret Brachman, author of Global Jihadism, commenting on the decision to try the suspects in the 9/11 case in a civil court in Manhattan rather than a military commission. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani expressed his dissatisfaction with the Obama administration's decision on television, saying, "There seems to be an over-concern with the rights of terrorists and a lack of concern with the rights of the public," and noting that kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed initially "asked to be brought to New York . I didn't think we were in the business of granting the requests of terrorists." (New York Times, Nov. 15, New York Post, Nov. 16) "An Army investigator claimed he would have been 'crucified' if he blew the whistle on Fort Hood killer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's correspondence with a Yemeni jihadist. 'Had we launched an investigation of Hasan, we'd have been crucified,' one government investigator told Fox News. He said investigators feared that a probe into Hasan's embrace of militant Islam could be viewed as a violation of his First Amendment freedoms of religion and speech. Since Hasan's rampage against unarmed troops and civilians at the Fort Hood deployment center, which left 13 dead and 29 injured, the FBI and Pentagon have been pointing fingers over who should have seen it coming. An FBI counter-terrorism task force intercepted e-mails that Hasan, 39, wrote to Anwar Aulaqi, a Yemen-based imam who is a propagandist for al Qaeda. '[Hasan] appeared to be at a moral impasse, a moral dilemma [and] was reaching out for advice,' the investigator told Fox of the e-mails. The startling new revelation counters previous reports that Hasan's 10 to 20 e-mails to Aulaqi were merely for Hasan's research as a psychiatrist studying war stress." -- John Doyle and Chuck Bennett, reporting on the apparent Army culture of political correctness that prevented defence and law enforcement agencies from properly assessing Maj. Hasan as a risk. (NY Post, Nov. 12) "Some experts on terrorism say Major Hasan may be the latest example of an increasingly common type of terrorist, one who has been self-radicalized with the help of the Internet and who wreaks havoc without support from overseas networks and without having to cross a border to reach his target. Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University professor who studies terrorism, said such cases had appeared at a growing rate in the last year, most of them involving people with no direct ties to foreign terrorists. The trend of self-radicalization, which leaders and allies of Al Qaeda have encouraged with a steady stream of inflammatory messages on the Web, is gaining momentum, he said." -- Scott Shane and James Dao, warning of the difficulty in thwarting the growing threat of "self-radicalization". (NYT, Nov.15) "The visit to Israel and the fact that I was part of a fair dialogue made me rethink the whole issue." -- Swedish Aftonbladet journalist Donald Bostrom, after participating in a media conference in Dimona , Israel devoted to discussing openly the lack of evidence for his slanderous report earlier this year that members of the Israeli military were involved in trafficking the organs of Palestinian victims during the recent Gaza operation. (Ha'aretz, Nov. 12) "We want to restore the Shimshon Battalion to its days of glory and bravery. The involvement of the commanders and soldiers in recent months in political whims by destroying Homesh in the Shomron and chasing after Jews as if they were the greatest terrorists, causes us great shame." -- A letter, signed by 25 officers and soldiers of the Shimshon Battalion, sent to commanders of the Kfir Brigade and Shimshon Battalion, protesting the politicization of IDF missions to remove Jewish settlements. A spokesperson responded that "the IDF is subordinate to the government in Israel and fulfills its directives.... The IDF Spokesperson recommends that all sides leave the military, its commanders and soldiers out of the political debate." (Jer. Post, Nov. 12) Short Takes CHABAD-LUBAVITCH CONFERENCE A YEAR AFTER TRAGEDY -- (New York) 4,000 Lubavitch men have gathered in Crown Heights New York for the annual International Conference of Emissaries. The conference will pay tribute to Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, the Chabad emissaries who were killed in last year's terror attack in Mumbai. Rabbi Abraham Berkowitz, who went to Mumbai to rebuild the Chabad house, said that, "our focus is always on restoration, on moving ahead, so that not one day should go by during which those terrorists should prevail." Meanwhile, two Pakistani men are being investigated by Indian officials for having scouted out the targets in the Mumbai attacks. (NY Times, Nov. 14, Globe and Mail, Nov. 13) IRAN REJECTS NUCLEAR DEAL -- (Teheran) Iran 's foreign minister on Wednesday ruled out sending enriched uranium out of the country for further processing -- rejecting the latest UN plan aimed at preventing Teheran from building nuclear weapons. "We will definitely not send our 5.3-percent enriched uranium out of the country," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the Iranian news agency ISNA. Instead, he said Iran would consider a simultaneous swap of its nuclear fuel for other uranium. Last month the UN had offered a deal to take 70 percent of Iran 's low-enriched uranium for processing in Russia . It would then be returned to Tehran for use in a medical reactor. (AP, Nov. 18; NY Times, Nov. 19.) IDF BOOSTS ARROW MISSILE INTERCEPTOR PRODUCTION -- ( Jerusalem ) Israel plans to significantly increase production of Arrow missile interceptors, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday. The Arrows are, according to defence officials, capable of intercepting incoming Iranian and Syrian Shihab and Scud long-range missiles. The Air Force says it requires twice the number of Arrows currently deployed. The Israeli Navy is also interested in purchasing the Arrow for deployment at sea. (Jer. Post, Nov. 17) IDF TROOPS ANNOUNCE: WE WOULD REFUSE ORDERS -- (Jerusalem) A number of IDF soldiers from the Nachshon battalion of the Kfir Brigade have publically announced that they would refuse to evacuate Israelis from the West Bank. This comes a month after two Kfir Brigade soldiers waved a banner with the same message at a military ceremony. The soldiers have all been given jail time up to one month. Defense Minister Ehud Barak has stated that the IDF will not tolerate public insubordination. (Ha'aretz; Jer. Post; NY Times, Nov. 16-18) PREPAREDNESS UPDATE -- ( Jerusalem ) Israel held a joint search and rescue drill with Turkey and Jordan in Turkey earlier this month, somewhat easing tensions and concerns over a delayed military procurement schedule that was thought to have some influence on Turkey 's banning Israel from the NATO air force exercises in October. (Ha'aretz, Nov. 16) IRANIAN KANGAROO COURT SENTENCES FIVE TO DEATH -- (Teheran) Five people have been sentenced to death in Iran for their involvement in June's protests over the rigged election, Iranian state television reported Tuesday. The Justice Department claims they were all members of terrorist and armed opposition groups. Iran put more than 100 prominent opponents on trial in August. At least three other protestors have received death sentences. (NY Times, Nov.18) U.S. MOVES TO SEIZE IRANIAN-LINKED SITES -- ( New York ) In what could be one of the largest counterterrorism seizures in U.S. history, federal prosecutors seized property owned by the Alavi Foundation, suspected of being controlled by the Iranian government. U.S. justice department officials filed a civil complaint seeking the forfeiture of more than $500 million in assets. These include bank accounts, Islamic centres, schools and mosques in four states, and a 36-story Manhattan office tower. Prosecutors allege that the foundation was closely tied to the Iranian Bank Melli, which is involved in building Iran 's nuclear and missile programs. (Jer. Post, Nov. 13; N.Y.T., Nov. 13 & 15; N.P., Nov. 18) ITALY ARRESTS 17 LINKED TO TERROR CELL -- ( Milan ) Following a European-wide investigation, Italian police have arrested members of an Algerian cell accused of financing terrorism. Suspects were being held on charges of criminal association and falsifying documents, as the cell had the aim of sending an estimated $1.5 million to Algeria , raised through a series of burglaries and thefts. (Associated Press, Nov. 12) UNDERGRAD STUDENT NABS SS SUSPECT -- ( Jerusalem ) A former SS sergeant who worked unnoticed for decades as a train-station manager was charged with 58 counts of murder Tuesday. Adolf Storms, 90, was finally brought to government attention after U. of Vienna undergraduate student Andreas Forster discovered Storms' involvement in a massacre of Jewish forced labourers in Austria . Forster was working on a project about the 1945 atrocity when he stumbled across Storms' name. He then obtained files from archives in Berlin that linked Storms to the massacre. Storms has stressed repeatedly that he has no recollection of the killings, and the court must decide whether there is enough evidence to bring the case to trial. (Jer. Post, Nov. 17)
Volume IX, No. 2,214 • Tuesday, November 17, 2009
HOLDER'S AL QAEDA INCENTIVE
PLAN When it comes to terrorists, you would think that an al Qaeda operative who targets an American mom sitting in her office or a child on a flight back home is many degrees worse than a Taliban soldier picked up after a firefight with U.S. Army troops. Your instinct would be correct, because at the heart of terrorism is the monstrous idea that the former is as legitimate a target as the latter. Unfortunately, by dispatching Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other al Qaeda leaders to federal criminal court for trial, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will be undermining this distinction. And the perverse message that decision will send to terrorists all over this dangerous world is this: If you kill civilians on American soil you will have greater protections than if you attack our military overseas. "A fundamental purpose of rules such as the Geneva Conventions is to give those at war an incentive for more civilized behavior-and not targeting civilians is arguably the most sacred of these principles," says William Burck, a former federal prosecutor and Bush White House lawyer who dealt with national security issues.... [T]he whole idea of, say, Geneva rights is based on the idea of providing combatants with incentives to do things that help limit the bloodiness of battle. These include wearing a uniform, carrying arms openly, not targeting civilians, and so on. Terrorists recognize none of these things. They are best understood as associations of people plotting and carrying out war crimes, whether that means sowing fear with direct and indiscriminate attacks on marketplaces, offices and airlines-or by engaging enemy troops without distinguishing uniforms, so that the surrounding civilians essentially become used as human shields. Terrorists reject both the laws of war and the laws of American civil society. To put it another way, they reject both the authority and the obligations their legal rights imply. None of this seems to bother Mr. Holder. Since he dropped his bombshell on Friday, much commentary has focused on the possibility that KSM might be found not guilty. That, however, is unlikely: Mr. Holder is not a fool, and everyone in the Obama administration appreciates the backlash that would occur if a KSM trial results in an acquittal. Thus, the men he will send for trial will be those against whom he has the most evidence. The perversity here is that the overwhelming evidence of their war crimes gain them protections denied a soldier fighting in accord with the rules of war. It even gains them more protections than their associates who attack military targets. This double standard means that the perpetrators of the USS Cole bombing are sent to military tribunals while the perpetrators of 9/11 are sent to federal court. Andrew McCarthy has a unique perspective on the move to criminal trials. As an assistant U.S. attorney in 1993, he successfully prosecuted Omar Abdel Rahman (the "blind sheikh") for the first bombing of the World Trade Center. Even though the cases were somewhat different-that plot was conceived, plotted and carried out on U.S. soil-Mr. McCarthy says the experience persuaded him that federal trials are a bad way of handling terror. "At first, I was of the mind that a criminal prosecution would uphold all our high-falutin' rhetoric about the constitution and majesty of the law," says Mr. McCarthy. "But when you get down to the nitty gritty of a trial, you see one huge problem: The criminal justice system imposes limits on the government and gives the defendant all sorts of access to information, because we'd rather have the government lose than unfairly convict a man. You can't take that position with an enemy who is at war with you and trying to bring that government down."... Worst of all, he says, is turning the laws of war upside down: Why fight the Marines and risk getting killed yourself or locked up in Bagram forever when you can blow up American citizens on their own streets and gain the legal protections that give you a chance to go free? With this one step, Mr. Holder is giving al Qaeda a ghastly incentive: to focus more of their attacks on American civilians on American home soil. "It is foolish to think that al Qaeda does not train to our system and look for our vulnerabilities," says Mr. McCarthy. "Remember what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told his captors when we got him, 'I'll see you in New York with my lawyer.' It seems he knows our weaknesses better than our government does." A
LOSS FOR AMERICA Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees in civilian federal court in New York City is the latest in a long series of missteps in the war against radical Islamist terrorism. KSM-the notorious, self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks-and the other accused terrorists will no longer face trial in military commissions, which the US government has historically used for such cases. The administration's decision is a blatantly political one-intended to placate the ACLU and the radical Left-that jeopardizes the interests of the nation. The five main problems: 1 Military commissions are the appropriate venue for trials of unlawful combatant. The US military seized these terrorists on foreign battlefields-and so didn't read them Miranda rights. The evidence against them was collected by soldiers under war-fighting conditions-not with sterile gloves and clear plastic bags. And much of the best evidence against them is classified, because making it public would compromise the sources and methods of US intelligence gathering. In short, these cases do not fit the mold of a typical murder trial in a civilian court. Military commissions were designed for this purpose. They provide a secure environment that allows for the introduction of classified evidence without making it public. Yet the accused still enjoys the right to an attorney, the right to make his case in full and all of the fundamental rights of due process.... The last time the United States used military commissions in a comparable context was during the Second World War, for the trial of eight Nazi saboteurs transported here by German submarines under cover of darkness in 1942. They landed on US soil carrying explosives with the intent to engage in acts of sabotage. The Supreme Court ruled that the military commissions were an entirely fair and appropriate forum for their trial. They were "offenders against the law of war, subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals." The same is true of these five terrorists. 2 The administration is again blurring the line between ordinary crimes and acts of war. Likening terrorists at war with the United States to common shoplifters is wrongheaded. These are not members of our society who refuse to obey our laws: They are enemies of the United States, engaged in war against America and all that it stands for. 3 The administration has offered no clear criteria for deciding which terrorists will be charged as criminals in federal court and which ones will face military commissions. Attorney General Holder, in announcing the decision, suggested that the five cases were appropriate for civilian trial simply because the evidence against the terrorists is so strong that they'll surely be found guilty. Choosing which terrorists will get civilian trials on the basis of who you can convict is not a principled way to administer justice. It also fosters the false impression that military commissions are unfair tribunals, where the government can win with a weaker case. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, military commissions satisfy the Constitution's due-process requirements. The radical Left refuses to accept this fact-and now the Obama administration is giving them rhetorical ammunition. 4 A very real safety threat exists when a terrorist like KSM is tried in an urban area: The city becomes an enticing target for terrorists around the world.... During the trial, every building in Manhattan becomes a target for the jihadists. They don't need to specifically hit the courthouse to make their point to the world. 5 Finally, the trial will take many years to complete. Indeed it may not even start for five years or more. Once these terrorists are placed into the civilian justice system, an avalanche of motions from their lawyers will ensue. Military commissions can avoid these delays. It is often said that justice delayed is justice denied. For many who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks, those words ring painfully true. Obama's actions will only prolong their pain, for no good reason. Holder insists that the government will win in these civilian trials. I'm sure he's correct. But winning a trial and winning the approval of the ACLU means little when so much more is lost. (Kris W. Kobach, professor of
constitutional law at the University of Missouri, served TWO
GROUND ZEROES I have long thought it would be a good idea to bring 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his accomplices to lower Manhattan. In my concept, the men would be taken by helicopter to a height of about 1,000 feet over Ground Zero and pushed out the door, so that they, too, could experience what so many of their victims did in the awful final flickering seconds of their lives. And since al Qaeda intended the attacks as a spectacle for the benefit of its would-be recruits, I'd give al Jazeera the exclusive TV rights. This, however, is not Eric Holder's concept. In announcing his decision last week to send KSM and four other defendants to stand trial for their crimes in a federal courthouse just a few blocks from Ground Zero, the attorney general said the trial would offer the bereaved of 9/11 "the opportunity to see the alleged plotters of those attacks held accountable in court," adding that he was "confident" the legal system would "rise to that challenge." We'll see about that. There are a few ways to predict the course of the trials. One is to consult what al Qaeda itself advises its members to do in the event that they are brought before a judge. "At the beginning of the trial . . . the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by state security before the judge," goes a line in what is known as the Manchester Document, a 180-page al Qaeda how-to obtained by British police in 2000. This is, of course, a prescription for lying, though it shouldn't be a tough sell with the jury given that KSM was in fact waterboarded by the CIA some 183 times. If anything, it provides a perfect opening for him to turn the tables on his accusers and put the U.S. government on trial, while embellishing any which way he pleases. No small number of potential New York City jurors would find KSM a more credible witness than any number of Bush administration officials-think Alberto Gonzales or Dick Cheney-who might be called to the stand. A second way to predict how the trials might go is to look back at the trial of al Qaeda's Zacarias Moussaoui, often described as the "20th hijacker."... Moussaoui was arrested in August 2001, and indicted that December. It would take until May 2006 before a jury would sentence him to life in prison, a single juror having spared him a death sentence. Assuming a similar time frame for the KSM trials, that means we can expect verdicts in 2015. That's a long time to keep lower Manhattan in a perpetual state of red alert. Yet the Moussaoui trial wasn't merely interminable. It was also incompetent. Moussaoui did everything he could to turn it into a circus, at various times entering contradictory pleas on the view, as he put it, that "you're allowed to lie for jihad." Lawyers for the government were repeatedly accused of malfeasance, leading Judge Leonie Brinkema to observe at one point that "I have never seen such an egregious violation of a rule on witnesses." The judge herself came close to dismissing the entire case, even as the Fourth Circuit had to step in to reverse one of her rulings. And this was a comparatively clean case, unlike, say, those of El Sayyid Nosair, acquitted in 1991 of the murder of Jewish fanatic Meir Kahane; or of Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh.... The third way to consider the trials is to look at Ground Zero itself. After eight years of deliberation, planning, money and effort, what have we got?... After eight years in which the views and interests of, inter alia, the Port Authority, NYPD, MTA and EPA, the several governors of New York and New Jersey, lease-holder Larry Silverstein, various star architects, the insurance companies, contractors, unions and lawyers, the families of the bereaved, their self-appointed spokespersons, the residents of lower Manhattan and, yes, even the fish of the Hudson river have all been duly consulted and considered, this is what we've got: a site of mourning turned into a symbol of defiance turned into a metaphor of American incompetence-of things not going forward. It is, in short, the story of our decade. Barack Obama, energetic and smart, was elected largely to change all that. But the thrust of his presidency so far has been in the direction of bloated government, deficits and health-care bills; paralysis over Afghanistan and Iran; the convulsions over Gitmo and the CIA torture memos. And now this: An effort to demonstrate the purity of our methods and motives that is destined, as all these things have been, to wind up as the legal equivalent of Ground Zero. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for whom no real justice will ever be meted, understood his targets well.
Volume IX, No. 2,213 • Monday, November 16, 2009
MEDICALIZING MASS MURDER What a surprise-that someone who shouts "Allahu Akbar" (the "God is great" jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre playing down Nidal Hasan's religious beliefs. "I cringe that he's a Muslim. ... I think he's probably just a nut case," said Newsweek's Evan Thomas. Some were more adamant. Time's Joe Klein decried "odious attempts by Jewish extremists . . . to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs." While none could match Klein's peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif, the popular story line was of an Army psychiatrist driven over the edge by terrible stories he had heard from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. They suffered. He listened. He snapped. Really? What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?... It's been decades since I practiced psychiatry. Perhaps I missed the epidemic. But, of course, if the shooter is named Nidal Hasan, who National Public Radio reported had been trying to proselytize doctors and patients, then something must be found. Presto! Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, a handy invention to allow one to ignore the obvious. And the perfect moral finesse. Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one. After all, secondary PTSD, for those who believe in it (you won't find it in DSM-IV-TR, psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), is known as "compassion fatigue." The poor man-pushed over the edge by an excess of sensitivity. Have we totally lost our moral bearings? Nidal Hasan (allegedly) cold-bloodedly killed 13 innocent people. His business card had his name, his profession, his medical degrees and his occupational identity. U.S. Army? No. "SoA"-Soldier of Allah. In such cases, political correctness is not just an abomination. It's a danger, clear and present. Consider the Army's treatment of Hasan's previous behavior. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling interviewed a Hasan colleague at Walter Reed about a hair-raising grand rounds that Hasan had apparently given. Grand rounds are the most serious academic event at a teaching hospital-attending physicians, residents and students gather for a lecture on an instructive case history or therapeutic finding. I've been to dozens of these. In fact, I gave one myself on post-traumatic retrograde amnesia-as you can see, these lectures are fairly technical. Not Hasan's. His was an hour-long disquisition on what he called the Koranic view of military service, jihad and war. It included an allegedly authoritative elaboration of the punishments visited upon nonbelievers-consignment to hell, decapitation, having hot oil poured down your throat. This "really freaked a lot of doctors out," reported NPR. Nor was this the only incident. "The psychiatrist," reported Zwerdling, "said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway saying: Do you think he's a terrorist, or is he just weird?" Was anything done about this potential danger? Of course not. Who wants to be accused of Islamophobia and prejudice against a colleague's religion? One must not speak of such things. Not even now. Not even after we know that Hasan was in communication with a notorious Yemen-based jihad propagandist. As late as Tuesday, The New York Times was running a story on how returning soldiers at Fort Hood had a high level of violence. What does such violence have to do with Hasan? He was not a returning soldier. And the soldiers who returned home and shot their wives or fellow soldiers didn't cry "Allahu Akbar" as they squeezed the trigger. The delicacy about the religion in question-condescending, politically correct and deadly-is nothing new. A week after the first (1993) World Trade Center attack, the same New York Times ran the following front-page headline about the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh: "Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center." Ah yes, those Jersey men-so resentful of New York, so prone to violence. A
NEW KIND OF "DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL" News reports begin with whatever reporters regard as the key element of a story. "Barack Obama today joined calls from across America for calm amid fears of a backlash ..." starts a Nov. 6 report in London's The Guardian, followed by "... in the wake of the shooting spree by a Muslim soldier at Fort Hood that left 13 dead and 28 wounded." Hmm. My instinct would be to render this in reverse: "In the wake of the shooting spree by a Muslim soldier at Fort Hood that left 13 dead and 28 wounded, Barack Obama today joined calls from across America for calm amid fears of a backlash." To me, a shooting spree that happened would take precedence over a backlash that didn't, but I may be old-fashioned. The Guardian's emphasis is the opposite. Let's read on: "Obama, speaking in the White House Rose Garden after being briefed by the FBI, sought to dampen tensions, as did politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties, the military, Muslim associations and the family of the alleged shooter, Major Nadil Malik Hasan. "'I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we get all the facts,' Obama said. The risk of a witch hunt rose today when the commander at the Fort Hood base, Lieutenant-General Robert Cone, disclosed that wounded soldiers said Hasan had shouted 'Allahu Akbar' before opening fire on unarmed soldiers at the Texas base." Perhaps because I predate the age of political correctness, this part of The Guardian's report also seems to go backward. Using the same words, this is how I'd file the story: "U.S. Army Major Nadil Malik Hasan had shouted 'Allahu Akbar' before opening fire on unarmed soldiers at the Texas base of Fort Hood during a shooting spree that left 13 dead and 28 wounded, according to what survivors told Lieutenant-General Robert Cone, the commander at the Fort Hood base. "The risk of a witch hunt rose today amid fears of a backlash, as Barack Obama joined in calls for calm politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties, the military, Muslim associations and the family of the alleged shooter. Speaking in the White House Rose Garden after being briefed by the FBI, the president sought to dampen tensions across America. 'I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we get all the facts,' Obama said." Look before you leap is good advice-though perhaps shouting "Allahu Akbar" does offer "a little hint of the actual motive," as the Ottawa Citizen's David Warren put it. But journalists such as Warren who feel that a massacre in the hand is worth two witch hunts in the bush are rare birds. A favourite topic of the mainstream press these days is whether Maj. Hasan is a madman or a terrorist. Many in the media seem to believe the two are mutually exclusive. If Obama cautions against "jumping to conclusions" about the motives of someone who shouts "Allahu Akbar" before killing a dozen people, it's no surprise. The Obama presidency crowns half a century of wimpification. Even bellicose George W. Bush saw fit to visit a mosque right after 9/11, as if extreme acts of Muslim militancy had put the onus on America to assure Muslim-Americans of the country's continuing loyalty to Islam. Can you picture Franklin Delano Roosevelt wagging his tail in a Shinto shrine a day after Pearl Harbor? In Roosevelt's time, a president would have been considered barking mad for grovelling all over a mosque a day after Islamists incinerated 3,000 Americans in the heart of Manhattan. By 2001, it seemed a natural thing. It seemed similarly natural for the U.S. military to shield a Muslim fanatic who, say what you will about him, wasn't hiding his light under a bushel. In an institution whose official policy is "don't ask, don't tell," the major told. He told loud and clear. If he had said "Guess what, I'm gay" he might have been thrown out, but since he said "Guess what, I'm a jihadist," his superiors said, oh, zip it up, Hasan. We don't talk about such things. Okay. Can we talk about criminal negligence, about survivors suing the brass? It seems like a good topic to me. LET'S
ANALYZE FORT HOOD, NOT SANITIZE IT Only hours after news broke of a mass shooting at Fort Hood, the largest military base in the United States, I began receiving e-mails from agonized Americans. "What does it mean that the suspect has a Muslim name?" asked one. "Does it matter that he seems to be a Muslim?" asked another. Overnight, more such messages poured in, their tone being confused instead of confrontational. The fact that these Americans are posing questions rather than rushing to judgment is a sign they're not all bigots. They're genuinely wrestling with how to react beyond immediate shock and grief. The grappling surely intensified after reports that Major Nidal Malik Hasan visited radical Islamist websites, chatted approvingly of suicide bombers and shouted "Allahu akbar" as he let loose on comrades. Video of him roaming a convenience store in traditional Arab garb, days after having told the store clerk he didn't want to fight fellow Muslims, offers another reason to reflect on the role of religious affinity. Let's be clear: If an alleged criminal merely happens to be a Muslim, then religion may well be immaterial. But if his crime is committed in the name of Islam, then religion serves to motivate. In that case, the suspect's Muslim identity absolutely matters. Words, gestures and images should be analyzed-fully, openly and honestly. Not just in America. Three years ago, police arrested young Muslim Canadians for reportedly plotting to blow up Parliament and behead the PM. The Toronto 17, soon to number 18, dubbed their campaign Operation Badr. This refers to the Battle of Badr, the first decisive military victory achieved by the Prophet Mohammed and his ragtag followers, who were outmanned and outarmed by the other side.... [O]n arresting the Toronto 17, police didn't once refer to "Islam" or "Muslims" during a press briefing. At a second presser, police boasted about avoiding the words "Islam" and "Muslims." They characterized their omission as an exercise in sensitivity. I considered it an exercise in denial about the role of religion in the alleged plot. Later, when I raised my concern at an RCMP conference on communication, assorted staff and members of the force confided that their lawyers prevented them from mentioning the offending words. Of course, Canada is hardly alone in avoiding this most public of questions. Some European countries are electing ultra-right politicians precisely because mainstream elites fear touching the "Muslim problem," thereby creating a vacuum for vulgar populists to fill. Media are among the worst culprits. In the wake of the 2005 London transit bombings, respectable journalists repeatedly quoted ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan railing against British foreign policy. But, in the same video, he emphasized that "Islam is our religion" and "the Prophet is our role model." Tellingly, he made these statements before bringing up the invasion of Iraq.... The past few days have revealed much about the complex Major Hasan: a patriotic American dissenter, a brooding recluse, yet a kind neighbour, occasionally taunted by fellow soldiers but more frequently haunted by his conscience and the religious direction in which it turned. While we should be careful not to reduce the story to Islam, let us be equally alert not to erase Islam altogether. Understanding is served by analyzing, not sanitizing. (Irshad Manji, author
of The Trouble with Islam Today, is a scholar with New York
University HASAN'S
MOTIVES One reads and hears with increasing disbelief and anger that we don't know the motive or motives of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army major who fired over 100 shots at his fellow American soldiers in order to murder and maim as many as possible. Hasan ended up allegedly murdering 13 people, but government and Army spokesmen and the mainstream media claim they just can't figure out why he did this. They are, however, certain that it was not an act of terrorism. Sunday's New York Times "Week in Review" article about Nidal Hasan was titled "When Soldiers Snap." The gist of the article was that Maj. Hasan had snapped-even though he had never been in combat. He snapped in advance. Just two sentences in the article were devoted to the possibility that his motives were in any way relatable to his Muslim faith. As Chris Matthews put it, "it's unclear if religion was a factor in this shooting." To Matthews, not only was it unclear if Hasan's Islamic faith was "the" factor, it was unclear if it was even "a" factor. Likewise, on NPR, Tom Gjelten offered the novel explanation that Hasan, who has never been in combat, may have suffered from "pre-traumatic stress disorder" because he anticipated having traumatic distress. "Was he an example," Gjelten seriously asked, "of these soldiers who are literally freaked out by what they are likely to face when they are deployed?"... The deaths and maiming at Fort Hood are heartbreaking and angering. But ultimately far more injurious to America than the act of evil that caused those deaths and injuries is the massive self-deception American society engages in out of fear of being called bigoted, racist or "Islamaphobic." Any American who is not prepared to lie to himself has reason to believe that Hasan's religious views were prominent, if not exclusive, factors for why he slaughtered fellow American soldiers. The motives appear as clear as any could be. Chuck Medley, Fort Hood's director of Emergency Services, told Reuters that Hasan yelled "Allahu Akbar"-the Arabic incantation of "Allah is the greatest" yelled by Islamic terrorists before they slaughter people-just before the shooting, Dr. Val Finnell told The Associated Press that he and other classmates participating in a 2007-2008 master's program with Hasan at the Uniformed Services University had complained about his comments, including that the war on terror was "a war against Islam." Another classmate told the AP that he complained to five officers and two civilian faculty members at the university. He also wrote to Pentagon officials that fear in the military of being seen as politically incorrect prevented an "intellectually honest discussion of Islamic ideology" in the ranks. Other classmates who participated in a 2007-2008 master's program at a military college said they, too, had complained to superiors about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's anti-American views, which included his giving a presentation that justified suicide bombing and telling classmates that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution. And ABC News now reports that Hasan had attempted to contact al-Qaida. It is a given that the vast majority of American Muslims are loyal Americans. But that's not the only given. It is equally a given that a certain percentage of Muslims in and outside of the military are Islamists who want Americans dead and America Muslim. It does the majority of Muslims no favor to deny the existence of the minority. And Muslim Americans do themselves no favor by denying it. Unfortunately, Muslims are theoretically represented by groups like CAIR whose values are correctly seen by most Americans as suspect. Americans are worried by the fact that there are Muslim Americans whose beliefs compel them to murder non-Muslim Americans. But what is even more worrisome is that American Muslim groups (and their supporters on the left) deny this.
Volume IX, No. 2,212 • Friday, November 13, 2009
HISTORIC PAGES OF PRAYER It weighs 26 kilograms and is roughly 700 years old. It was left behind (maybe because of its bulk?) when the local Jewish community was expelled from their homes in Germany, then housed in the library of the city that much later would become the setting for one of the direst set of decrees of the Nazis. And even before that, it was physically assaulted and damaged during the Napoleonic War. And yet the Nuremberg Mahzor survived even those horrendous times. Transferred from the library in Nuremberg to the newly established State of Israel in the early 1950s, for the past 50 years it lay in one of Jerusalem 's less visited, private libraries, almost unseen by the general public. Only with the dispersion of the library's rare collection, did the Nuremberg Mahzor find a location where it is now finally revealed to the public in nearly all its pristine glory, in the prestigious setting of the Israel Museum's Shrine of the Book. "I had heard of the Mahzor," recounts Michael Magen, head of restoration and conservation at the museum. "It had featured in the Jewish art historian Bezalel Narkiss's book on Jewish manuscripts. I remember that he had a wonderful photograph of the illuminated opening page. But until it was brought to the museum for restoration, I had no idea how extraordinary it was. Only when I saw it in front of me did I realize what a rich find we were dealing with.... It is fairly clear that the massive tome -- with its 528 leaves of parchment (of which 521 are intact) -- was written and illuminated in the Rhineland of Germany. Like most handwritten books, even today, the Mahzor includes a colophon, a closing page containing details of the book's provenance. From this it is possible to glean that it was completed on August 8, 1331 (corresponding to 4th of Elul of the Hebrew year). We know, too, for whom it was written, since the name of the patron, Joshua ben Isaac, also appears here. But the identity of the calligrapher of this monumental undertaking remains a question of speculation. Although no such attribution is given in the colophon, there are places in the book where the names Mattanyah and Jacob are marked -- a common practice among medieval scribes to indicate who was doing the writing. The illuminated pages -- there are 22 -- are the work of German Christian artists, which was also very common, since Jews had little or no tradition of graphic arts. The graphic style is very conventional and, in accordance with the strict reading of the Biblical command against "graven images," no human figures are depicted. But numerous real and parabolic animals race across these pages -- deer, lions, birds and dogs, as well as a scene of what appears to be a fox chasing after a rabbit or hare. Alongside these creatures are those from mythology: dragons, gryphons and two-legged creatures with wings.... Today, we are used to mahzorim that are especially printed for each festival, most commonly, for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, as well as Passover and the other holidays. But until not so long ago, it was still quite usual for the mahzor to be true to the meaning of its name -- a "cycle" -- containing within it prayers and supplications from the entire yearly cycle of the Hebrew calendar. In addition to the regular cycle of known prayers, the five megillot, and selihot (supplication prayers), the Nuremberg Mahzor also contains an unparalleled collection of piyyutim (liturgical poems) with commentaries. There are some 1,000 piyyutim in this Mahzor, about 100 of them have never been seen before. In addition, the collection also completes other known piyyutim by adding extra verses. This new material has become the subject of research (some of which has already been published and is available in Hebrew online), as have the commentaries, only some of which (such as "the Arugot Habosem") are known. The fate of this seven-century-old manuscript is also part of its appeal. Produced in Germany , it served the Jewish community in Nuremberg until 1499, when the Jews were expelled (for alleged usury), not to return until 1850. For all these years, the local municipal library, presumably overawed by the beauty of the mahzor, held it as part of its collection. In the early 19th century, the Napoleonic wars reached Nuremberg and it is possible that it was French soldiers who cut out eleven of the book's pages, yet left the rest of the book intact. Even more amazingly, the Mahzor survived the pillaging of Nuremberg 's massive Jewish book collection -- some 10,000 volumes of which were destroyed by the Nazis. Five of the eleven pages reappeared some hundred years later in the collection of Mayer Selig Goldschmidt of Frankfurt . One of the pages became the property of Heinrich Eiseman of London who, in 1937, presented it to Salman Schocken on the occasion of the latter's 60th birthday. Thus began the final scenes in the saga of the Mahzor. Schocken (1877-1958) was a man of many roles -- businessman, Zionist, publisher and book collector. He helped to finance Nobel-laureate Israeli author S.Y. Agnon while he was still in Berlin and published works by Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Franz Kafka. When he received this birthday gift of a loose page of the Mahzor, he was sufficiently intrigued to search out the rest of the manuscript. Eventually, he acquired the other four loose pages, but still dreamed of owning the whole book. The opportunity came in 1951, when Schocken, who had himself left behind considerable properties in Germany when he fled the Nazis in 1938, was permitted to purchase the book as part of the port-war restitution deals.... Schocken brought the Mahzor to his library in Jerusalem , where it rested for the next 50 years. Schocken's library, on a quiet street in Jerusalem , housed a unique collection of rare Jewish books and had been built at Schocken's instigation in the 1930s by the famous German Jewish architect Erich Mendelsohn. But apart from scholars, few people visited it or even knew of its existence. When the library's collection came up for sale a few years ago, another well-known collector, Dr. David and Mrs. Jemima Jeselsohn of Zurich , purchased it. Soon after, they loaned it to the Israel Museum . "It is fortunate," says Magen, "that Dr. Jeselson is not just and enthusiastic and knowledgeable collector, but that he also undersands many of the intricacies of the conservation process." The conservation of the Mahzor took nearly half a year...of its 67 sections [the parts that are sewn together], only the first and last three were in need of major conservation work. This was to be expected since these parts of the book are the most handled."... "All told, it is remarkable that the work has come to us so well preserved. On reflection, too, the fact that it lay undisturbed in the Schocken library is no bad thing!" (The Nuremberg Mahzor
is on display at the Israel Museum 's Shrine DECLINE
IS A CHOICE The weathervanes of conventional wisdom are engaged in another round of angst about America in decline. New theories, old slogans: Imperial overstretch. The Asian awakening. The post-American world. Inexorable forces beyond our control bringing the inevitable humbling of the world hegemon. On the other side of this debate are a few--notably Josef Joffe in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs--who resist the current fashion and insist that America remains the indispensable power. They note that declinist predictions are cyclical, that the rise of China (and perhaps India) are just the current version of the Japan panic of the late 1980s or of the earlier pessimism best captured by Jean-François Revel's How Democracies Perish.... Among these crosscurrents, my thesis is simple: The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption that somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable external forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline--or continued ascendancy--is in our hands.... Which leads to my second proposition: Facing the choice of whether to maintain our dominance or to gradually, deliberately, willingly, and indeed relievedly give it up, we are currently on a course towards the latter. The current liberal ascendancy in the United States --controlling the executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture--has set us on a course for decline. And this is true for both foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, they work synergistically to ensure that outcome. The current foreign policy of the United States is an exercise in contraction. It begins with the demolition of the moral foundation of American dominance. In Strasbourg , President Obama was asked about American exceptionalism. His answer? "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." Interesting response. Because if everyone is exceptional, no one is. Indeed, as he made his hajj from Strasbourg to Prague to Ankara to Istanbul to Cairo and finally to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama drew the picture of an America quite exceptional--exceptional in moral culpability and heavy-handedness, exceptional in guilt for its treatment of other nations and peoples. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own country for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness (toward Europe), for maltreatment of natives, for torture, for Hiroshima , for Guantánamo, for unilateralism, and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world. Quite an indictment, the fundamental consequence of which is to effectively undermine any moral claim that America might have to world leadership, as well as the moral confidence that any nation needs to have in order to justify to itself and to others its position of leadership.... But that leads to the question: How does this new world govern itself? How is the international system to function? Henry Kissinger once said that the only way to achieve peace is through hegemony or balance of power. Well, hegemony is out. As Obama said in his General Assembly address, "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation." (The "can" in that declaration is priceless.) And if hegemony is out, so is balance of power: "No balance of power among nations will hold." The president then denounced the idea of elevating any group of nations above others--which takes care, I suppose, of the Security Council, the G-20, and the Western alliance. And just to make the point unmistakable, he denounced "alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War" as making "no sense in an interconnected world." What does that say about NATO? Of our alliances with Japan and South Korea ? Or even of the European Union? This is nonsense. But it is not harmless nonsense. It's nonsense with a point. It reflects a fundamental view that the only legitimate authority in the international system is that which emanates from "the community of nations" as a whole. Which means, I suppose, acting through its most universal organs such as, again I suppose, the U.N. and its various agencies.... Of course, the idea of the "international community" acting through the U.N.--a fiction and a farce respectively--to enforce norms and maintain stability is absurd. So absurd that I suspect it's really just a metaphor for a world run by a kind of multipolar arrangement not of nation-states but of groups of states acting through multilateral bodies, whether institutional (like the International Atomic Energy Agency) or ad hoc (like the P5+1 Iran negotiators). But whatever bizarre form of multilateral or universal structures is envisioned for keeping world order, certainly hegemony--and specifically American hegemony--is to be retired.... For the New Liberalism, it is not just that power corrupts. It is that America itself is corrupt--in the sense of being deeply flawed, and with the history to prove it. An imperfect union, the theme of Obama's famous Philadelphia race speech, has been carried to and amplified in his every major foreign-policy address, particularly those delivered on foreign soil. (Not surprisingly, since it earns greater applause over there.) And because we remain so imperfect a nation, we are in no position to dictate our professed values to others around the world. Demonstrators are shot in the streets of Tehran seeking nothing but freedom, but our president holds his tongue because, he says openly, of our own alleged transgressions towards Iran (presumably involvement in the 1953 coup). Our shortcomings are so grave, and our offenses both domestic and international so serious, that we lack the moral ground on which to justify hegemony. These fundamental tenets of the New Liberalism are not just theory. They have strategic consequences. If we have been illegitimately playing the role of world hegemon, then for us to regain a legitimate place in the international system we must regain our moral authority. And recovering moral space means renouncing ill-gotten or ill-conceived strategic space.... The operational consequences of that new view are already manifest. In our reversion to pre-9/11 normalcy--the pretense of pre-9/11 normalcy--antiterrorism has reverted from war fighting to law enforcement. High-level al Qaeda prisoners, for example, will henceforth be interrogated not by the CIA but by the FBI, just as our response to the attack on the USS Cole pre-9/11--an act of war--was to send FBI agents to Yemen . The operational consequences of voluntary contraction are already evident:
The New Liberalism will protest that despite its rhetoric, it is not engaging in moral reparations, but seeking real strategic advantage for the United States on the assumption that the reason we have not gotten cooperation from, say, the Russians, Iranians, North Koreans, or even our European allies on various urgent agendas is American arrogance, unilateralism, and dismissiveness.... [But] with all the bowing and scraping and apologizing and renouncing, we couldn't even sway the International Olympic Committee. Given the humiliation incurred there in pursuit of a trinket, it is no surprise how little our new international posture has yielded in the coin of real strategic goods. Unilateral American concessions and offers of unconditional engagement have moved neither Iran nor Russia nor North Korea to accommodate us. Nor have the Arab states--or even the powerless Palestinian Authority--offered so much as a gesture of accommodation in response to heavy and gratuitous American pressure on Israel . Nor have even our European allies responded: They have anted up essentially nothing in response to our pleas for more assistance in Afghanistan . The very expectation that these concessions would yield results is puzzling. Thus, for example, the president is proposing radical reductions in nuclear weapons and presided over a Security Council meeting passing a resolution whose goal is universal nuclear disarmament, on the theory that unless the existing nuclear powers reduce their weaponry, they can never have the moral standing to demand that other states not go nuclear. But whatever the merits of unilateral or even bilateral U.S.-Russian disarmament, the notion that it will lead to reciprocal gestures from the likes of Iran and North Korea is simply childish. They are seeking the bomb for reasons of power, prestige, intimidation, blackmail, and regime preservation. They don't give a whit about the level of nuclear arms among the great powers.... [Obama's] foreign policy designed to produce American decline--to make America essentially one nation among many. And for that purpose, its domestic policies are perfectly complementary. Domestic policy, of course, is not designed to curb our power abroad. But what it lacks in intent, it makes up in effect. Decline will be an unintended, but powerful, side effect of the New Liberalism's ambition of moving America from its traditional dynamic individualism to the more equitable but static model of European social democracy.... They made the choice long ago to devote their resources to a vast welfare state. Their expenditures on defense are minimal, as are their consequent military capacities. They rely on the U.S. Navy for open seas and on the U.S. Air Force for airlift. It's the U.S. Marines who go ashore, not just in battle, but for such global social services as tsunami relief. The United States can do all of this because we spend infinitely more on defense--more than the next nine countries combined. Those are the conditions today. But they are not static or permanent. They require constant renewal. The express agenda of the New Liberalism is a vast expansion of social services--massive intervention and expenditures in energy, health care, and education--that will necessarily, as in Europe , take away from defense spending. This shift in resources is not hypothetical. It has already begun. At a time when hundreds of billions of dollars are being lavished on stimulus and other appropriations in an endless array of domestic programs, the defense budget is practically frozen. Almost every other department is expanding, and the Defense Department is singled out for making "hard choices"--forced to look everywhere for cuts, to abandon highly advanced weapons systems, to choose between readiness and research, between today's urgencies and tomorrow's looming threats. Take, for example, missile defense, in which the United States has a great technological edge and one perfectly designed to maintain American preeminence in a century that will be dominated by the ballistic missile. Missile defense is actually being cut. The number of interceptors in Alaska to defend against a North Korean attack has been reduced, and the airborne laser program (the most promising technology for a boost-phase antiballistic missile) has been cut back--at the same time that the federal education budget has been increased 100 percent in one year.... Nor are these the only trade-offs. Primacy in space--a galvanizing symbol of American greatness, so deeply understood and openly championed by John Kennedy--is gradually being relinquished. In the current reconsideration of all things Bush, the idea of returning to the moon in the next decade is being jettisoned. After next September, the space shuttle will never fly again, and its replacement is being reconsidered and delayed.... Of symbolic but also more concrete importance is the status of the dollar. The social democratic vision necessarily involves huge increases in domestic expenditures, most immediately for expanded health care.... The effect on the dollar is already being felt and could ultimately lead to a catastrophic collapse and/or hyperinflation.... [W]ith every new and growing estimate of the explosion of the national debt, there are more voices calling for replacement of the dollar as the world currency--not just adversaries like Russia and China, Iran and Venezuela, which one would expect, but just last month the head of the World Bank. There is no free lunch. Social democracy and its attendant goods may be highly desirable, but they have their price--a price that will be exacted on the dollar, on our primacy in space, on missile defense, on energy security, and on our military capacities and future power projection.... To put it in the language of the 1990s, the expanded domestic agenda is fed by a peace dividend--except that in the absence of peace, it is a retreat dividend. And there's the rub. For the Europeans there really is a peace dividend, because we provide the peace. They can afford social democracy without the capacity to defend themselves because they can always depend on the United States . So why not us as well? Because what for Europe is decadence--decline, in both comfort and relative safety--is for us mere denial. Europe can eat, drink, and be merry for America protects her. But for America it's different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us?... The international arena remains a Hobbesian state of nature in which countries naturally strive for power. If we voluntarily renounce much of ours, others will not follow suit. They will fill the vacuum. Inevitably, an inversion of power relations will occur. Do we really want to live under unknown, untested, shifting multipolarity? Or even worse, under the gauzy internationalism of the New Liberalism with its magically self-enforcing norms? This is sometimes passed off as "realism." In fact, it is the worst of utopianisms, a fiction that can lead only to chaos. Indeed, in an age on the threshold of hyper-proliferation, it is a prescription for catastrophe.... Decline is a choice. More than a choice, a temptation. How to resist it? First, accept our role as hegemon. And reject those who deny its essential benignity. There is a reason that we are the only hegemon in modern history to have not immediately catalyzed the creation of a massive counter-hegemonic alliance--as occurred, for example, against Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany. There is a reason so many countries of the Pacific Rim and the Middle East and Eastern Europe and Latin America welcome our presence as balancer of power and guarantor of their freedom. And that reason is simple: We are as benign a hegemon as the world has ever seen. So, resistance to decline begins with moral self-confidence and will.... We have a choice. We have it in our power, for example, to reverse the absurd de facto 30-year ban on new nuclear power plants. We have it in our power to release huge domestic petroleum reserves by dropping the ban on offshore and Arctic drilling.... Nothing is written. Nothing is predetermined. We can reverse the slide, we can undo dependence if we will it....There are things to be done. Resist retreat as a matter of strategy and principle. And provide the means to continue our dominant role in the world by keeping our economic house in order. And finally, we can follow the advice of Demosthenes when asked what was to be done about the decline of Athens . His reply? "I will give what I believe is the fairest and truest answer: Don't do what you are doing now." (This essay is adapted from Charles Krauthammer's 2009 Wriston Lecture delivered for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in New York on October 5. For the complete text, please follow this link.) Shabbat Shalom to all our readers.
Volume IX, No. 2,211 • Thursday, November 12, 2009
IRAN'S NUCLEAR
PROGRAM: DECIPHERING ISRAEL'S SIGNALS Israel's options vis-a-vis Iran's nuclear ambitions are frequently discussed by experts and analysts abroad. A vast body of literature already has been produced by U.S. scholars debating whether Israel should, could, or finally would choose to mount a preemptive strike against Iran's key nuclear installations in an effort to disrupt the Islamic Republic's pursuit of atomic weapons. However, in Israel itself there is surprisingly little public discussion of this issue. Little Public Debate The Israeli political leadership -- in government as well as in the opposition -- refrains from addressing this very complex dilemma except by making brief vague statements. The military and intelligence communities are under strict instructions to avoid making remarks except to affirm that Israel is preparing itself for "any eventuality." They also refuse to take part in off-the-record briefings related to Israel's possible response to the challenge. The Israeli media has not generated a public debate on the pros and cons of military action -- partly in view of censorship restrictions. Even members of local think tanks and academic circles prove reluctant to venture into this domain. Therefore, the nature of the quiet deliberations within Israel's top echelons -- and the different positions expressed by the participants in these sessions -- remains largely unreported and so far removed from public scrutiny. There is no doubt, of course, that an intense discussion of the Iranian threat is taking place and that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are updated constantly concerning various military options as well as strategies relying on deterrence and upgrading of the country's antiballistic defenses. Assessing Israel's Stance Israel has no great appetite for taking on Iran on its own, recognizing the difficulties involved in an attack as well as the potential that Iran could retaliate either with its Shehab-3 missiles, already operational, by embarking upon a large-scale terrorism campaign, or by having Hizballah ignite a conflict on the Lebanese front. Many view the military option as the "worst possible course" other than tolerating an Iran equipped with nuclear warheads. The Israeli leadership would, therefore, prefer action by the United States to stop Iran from acquiring a bomb either through diplomatic dialogue, effective sanctions, or -- if it came to it -- military strikes. Needless to say, a U.S. attack is bound to be much wider in scope and more devastating than any blow delivered by the Israel Defense Forces. At the same time, many in Israel feel strongly that the country does possess the military capability to launch a successful strike against a limited number of Iranian nuclear installations to delay the pace of Iran's nuclear program by at least a couple of years. At least some in Israel believe that Iranian reprisals would be more restrained than public warnings from Tehran might indicate, and that Hizballah may attempt to employ its long-range Iranian missiles in a manner that would not necessarily lead to full-scale war. The argument would be that although the organization's long-range missiles are effectively under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Qods Force, Hizballah's leader Hassan Nasrallah would hesitate to provoke the Israelis into undertaking an all-out counteroffensive. Some Israelis argue that Iran would not necessarily retaliate against the United States and its Arab allies in the Gulf or Iraq for fear of compelling President Obama to strike back. The Israelis are well aware that they would not be able to completely eliminate Iran's nuclear capabilities or deny the Islamic Republic the possibility of doubling its efforts in the future. But Israel feels it could gain time for additional efforts by the United States and others to persuade the Iranians to give up their nuclear ambitions. Israelis remember that their 1981 attack on the Iraqi reactor only led Saddam Hussein to speed up his plans to achieve nuclear capability. They are not yet sure that Syrian leader Bashar al-Asad has given up his own nuclear ambitions following the air attack on al-Kibar in September 2007. Still, from an Israeli point of view, delaying the threat by a few years is a worthy goal. Assessing Iranian missile power, Israelis tend to believe that as time passes Iran's ability to launch more missiles simultaneously will grow considerably. In the near term, they feel Iranian retaliation would essentially entail a repeat of the first Gulf war experience in 1991, when Israel had to absorb forty Iraqi Scuds -- mainly directed against Tel Aviv and Haifa -- with minimal casualties. The Iranian air force simply does not have the ability to reach Israel, and a naval attack of any sort is a remote possibility. The majority view at this point is that Hamas may violate the present de facto truce along the Gaza Strip with a few rocket salvos in solidarity with Iran -- perhaps in an attempt to hit the outskirts of Tel Aviv -- but that the group seeks to avoid a repetition of Operation Cast Lead, even if it were promised that Israel would also be engaged on the Lebanese front and exchanging blows with Iran itself. Hamas is quite eager not to appear as an Iranian proxy, and its leader, Khaled Mashal, has already quietly warned his Iranian sponsors that any nuclear attack against Israel is bound to hit many Palestinians. The current assessment in Israel is that although the Iranian regime long ago decided to get "within reach" of a bomb and is doing its utmost to move toward this objective, no decision has yet been made to go for a "breakout." The reason is that Iran would not risk the consequences of a breakout for a bomb or two but rather would only contemplate such a dramatic step when it had enough low-enriched uranium for a modest "arsenal" of about a half dozen bombs. In effect, Israel shares the assumption that very limited time still remains, though without much hope, for attempts to persuade Iran to halt its pursuit of atomic weapons. Yet, for Israel, not only the purely nuclear clock is ticking. Aside from watching the speed with which the Iranians assemble a "mini arsenal," Israeli strategic planners have their eyes on another ticking clock: that marking the pace of Iranian efforts to improve defenses for their most sensitive targets, whether by burying them underground or by trying to make them otherwise immune to attack by air forces or by Israel's missile force. Israel's decision on whether to go it alone will depend greatly on its estimation of the likelihood that a strike would succeed. Thus, a concern may be Iran's successful protection of its installations, which could force Israel to make an early decision. Israelis are concerned that a nuclear Iran will trigger an arms race among neighboring Arab states. They suspect Saudi Arabia may already have tacit understandings with Pakistan regarding some form of nuclear assistance, and the Israeli intelligence agencies are closely watching moves by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and others to develop nuclear programs for so-called peaceful purposes. The Arab media is rich with calls to have a "Sunni Arab bomb" to counter Iran's quest for hegemony with a "Persian Shiite bomb." One scenario advanced by Israelis assumes that the Iranian leadership may resolve to "hang in" for a considerable period just below the weaponization red line, while upgrading and broadening its technical capabilities and enjoying the political clout associated with being an "almost" nuclear power. One good reason for the Iranians to "hang in" would be to wait for the development of future generations of long-range missiles. This scenario would translate into an extended period of regional tension and uncertainty. No Expectation of Deal As Israelis monitor the ups and certainly the downs of the current negotiations of the so-called P-5 + 1 with Iran, they will not rush their decisions. Those Israelis charged with following Iran are convinced that, at present, a deal could prove elusive. This means the time for Israel to determine its course may come by around mid-2010. (Ehud Yaari is a Washington
Institute Lafer international fellow OBAMA
IS LEARNING FROM THE IDF Israel's critics in the United States portray it as a strategic burden. They argue that during the Cold War there was value in cooperating with the Israel Defense Forces, which gave the Americans useful information on Soviet weapons systems used by Arab armies. But the Soviet Union collapsed and all the value Israel offered to U.S. national security evaporated with it. These critics are wrong in a big way: The U.S. military effort against Al-Qaida and the Taliban is based on a doctrine developed by Israel. The IDF was a global leader in targeting terrorists from the air. When Israel embarked on its assassinations policy in the summer of 2001, the United States condemned it. Several weeks later the Twin Towers were brought down in a terrorist attack and Washington's approach changed. Instead of condemning Israel, the Americans simply copied its methods, foreign sources say. Unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs), armed with missiles, started being used to kill terrorists, first in Yemen and later in Afghanistan and Pakistan. U.S. President Barack Obama has proved to be an enthusiastic student of the doctrine of targeted killings, even more than his predecessor George W. Bush. According to the New America Foundation, between taking office in January and early October, the Obama administration authorized 42 UCAV strikes. Bush authorized 40 such attacks during his three final years in office. Six senior Taliban and Al-Qaida figures were killed in Obama-ordered operations, as were some 450 others. Judge Richard Goldstone would be advised to note that a quarter of those killed were civilians, while the rest were low-grade fighters. The assassination three months ago of Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, also killed 11 civilians, including his sister and father-in-law, much like the Israeli bombing that killed Salah Shehadeh along with his relatives and neighbors in 2002. Human rights groups have warned that the United States is violating international law, but the Obama administration is not particularly moved by this. According to The New Yorker, CIA chief Leon Panetta has described the UCAV attacks as "the only game in town." American antiterrorist experts with close ties to the administration told Jane Mayer, who wrote the article in The New Yorker, that the United States has no more-efficient weapon against Al-Qaida. The Pentagon has been accelerating its procurement of UCAVs and is cutting down on its development of manned fighters. Palestinian eyewitnesses and human rights groups have claimed for several years now that the IDF has been using UCAVs in its aerial operations in the Gaza Strip. The UCAV is the West's response to suicide bombings and terrorist rocket attacks by Islamist groups. It can be described as the Jewish mother's aircraft: the operator sits far from the front and combat is sterile. There are no sirens, no blood, no smell of gunpowder and corpses, and most of all, no risk to the attacker and no casualties on that side. A debate has been raging in the United States on whether it is appropriate to use a weapons system that does not expose its user to the horrors of battle. There are also concerns about the inherent appeal of robot warfare; at first the attacks are only against senior terrorist figures. Success encourages the lowering of standards to include lesser-grade targets until UCAVs are used every time there is a sign of the enemy or information about the presence of a wanted terrorist on the ground. The number of sorties has risen, and with it the number of civilian casualties. It would be interesting to know if Obama, who is due to decide on the future of the war in Afghanistan, knows from whom the Americans have learned the modern doctrine of antiterrorism warfare, and whether he is grateful to the IDF. HOW
FLOTILLA 13 SEIZED THE "FRANCOP" The seizure of the Francop cargo ship on Tuesday night joins a long and mostly secret list of missions credited to the Israel Navy's elite commandos from Flotilla 13. While most of their operations are hidden from the public, navy commandos have played a key role in all of Israel's recent conflicts, including the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last winter. On Tuesday night, the commando teams waited on a small, fast patrol boast as the INS Eilat, one of the navy's Sa'ar 5-class corvettes, blocked the Francop's course as it made its way toward Lebanon filled with hundreds of tons of weaponry en route from Iran to Hizbullah. After Cmdr. Ziv, commander of the Eilat, received permission from the Francop's captain to board the freighter, he radioed the commandos and gave them the green light to close in. A senior IDF officer said on Thursday that two ships were used since the navy was not absolutely certain that there were not armed men aboard the Francop. For this reason, the Sa'ar 5-class ship was deployed; it has greater firepower than some of the navy's smaller vessels. The commandos scaled ropes and climbed aboard the ship without encountering any resistance. They lined up the crew and, while several sailors kept an eye on them, others searched the cargo containers until they discovered the weaponry. The last operation in which Flotilla 13 is known to have participated was during the 2006 war, when a team entered the Lebanese coastal town of Tyre in an attempt to capture a senior Hizbullah operative and take out some of the group's long-range missile capability. The flotilla was also behind the capture of the Karine A arms ship in the Red Sea in 2002, as its made its way to bring weaponry to terrorists in the Gaza Strip. During the second intifada, the elite unit participated in ground operations as well, and was credited with the capture and killing of several senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists. One of the concerns during the Tuesday night interception and seizure was the possibility that some of the containers were booby-trapped. "We took all the necessary precautions," said Ziv.
Volume IX, No. 2,210 • Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Weekly Quotes "It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know. No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favour.... And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice, in this world, and the next.... "These soldiers' life's work is our security, and the freedom that we too often take for granted. Every evening that the sun sets on a tranquil town; every dawn that a flag is unfurled; every moment that an American enjoys life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- that is their legacy...." -- U.S. President Barack Obama, eulogizing at the memorial service for the victims of alleged shooter Major Nidal Hassan, in Fort Hood, Texas. (National Post, November 10) "I put forward a vision of peace that has united the vast majority of Israelis. In this vision of two states for two peoples, a demilitarized Palestinian state would recognize the Jewish state. Now, what do I mean by a Jewish state? It is a state in which all individuals and all minorities have equal individual rights. Yet our national symbols, language and culture spring from the heritage of the Jewish people. And most important, any Jew from anywhere in the world has a right to immigrate to Israel and become a citizen. "I want to make it clear: Any Jew, of any denomination, will always have the right to come home to the Jewish state. Religious pluralism and tolerance will always guide my policy. "Yet, even after we achieve peace it may take years for the spirit of peace to permeate most levels of Palestinian society. Therefore, any peace agreement we sign today must include ironclad security measures that will protect the State of Israel.... "Small countries are not necessarily insecure. Belgium and Luxemburg are small but they today are not insecure. Yet if their neighbors included radical regimes bent on their conquest and destruction with terror proxies firing thousands of missiles on their people, believe me, they would feel insecure. Anyone would." -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at the General Assembly of Jewish Federations of North America. Netanyahu's trip to the U.S. also included a closed-doors meeting with President Barack Obama, who was slated to address the General Assembly until the Fort Hood massacre necessitated his cancellation. (Ha'aretz, Nov. 9) "Did Hamas militants not wear their uniforms because they were inconveniently at the laundry? What other reasons for wearing civilian clothes could they have had, if not for deliberately sheltering themselves among the civilians?... What reason could there possibly be for launching rockets from urban centers, if not shielding those rockets from counterattack? And what is the moral distinction that is purportedly being established here?... By disguising themselves as civilians and by attacking civilians with no uniforms and with no front, these paramilitary terrorist organizations attempt nothing less than to erase the distinction between combatants and noncombatants on both sides of the struggle. "So the war had no defined place and was waged by unidentified murderers. It justifiably felt like a change in the very nature of warfare. The goal of this momentous transformation was to create a war of all against all and everywhere." -- Professor of Philosophy Moshe Halbertal, one of the authors of the IDF's code of ethics, responding to the fundamental flaws of the Goldstone report in an article in The New Republic. Halbertal calls on Israel to "establish an independent investigation into the concrete allegations that the report makes," but he also concludes that the "Goldstone Report as a whole is a terrible document," and that "the claim that Israel intentionally targeted civilians as a policy of war is false and slanderous." (The New Republic, Nov. 6) "There's no guarantee that your grandchildren will remain Jewish." -- Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, addressing members of the Jewish Agency's Taskforce on Antisemitism in Jerusalem. Sharansky's comments come on the heels of the UN's Goldstone report which accuses Israel of war crimes. Sharansky explained that unless Jewish communities unite to fight these accusations, many Jewish university students will be shamed out of identifying as Jews. Sharansky further explained that Jewish communities must be prepared for an antisemitic backlash from the Goldstone report and should take action to support Israel's position. (Jewish Tribune, Nov. 5) "I have told our brethren in the PLO...that I have no desire to run in the forthcoming election. This decision is not a kind of compromise or a manoeuvre.... We've pledged with Israel to reach a two-state solution but month after month we've seen nothing but complacency and procrastination." -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in a televised speech last week, before instructing the Palestine Central Elections Committee to continue preparations for the January 24 presidential and parliamentary elections. In his speech, he threatened to dismantle the PA in order to protest Washington's reluctance to insist that a complete Israeli settlement freeze precede negotiations (Al Jazeera, Nov. 6; Jerusalem Post, Nov. 9) "I cannot discuss this with Netanyahu but I can easily discuss such issues with Omar al-Bashir. I can say to his face: What you are doing is wrong." -- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accusing Israel of greater crimes during Operation Cast Lead than Sudan committed in Darfur. Prior to the operation, Turkey was mediating indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria. This week, the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News published an interview in which Syrian President Bashar Assad insisted that Turkey must mend its relationship with Israel. He said (referring to the Golan Heights) that Syria "is constantly occupied" and that "people will react to it", expressing solidarity for Palestinian resistance. (Jer. Post, Nov. 8) "...if [Nidal Hasan's Islamic fundamentalist motivation for the attack] is true, the murder of these 13 people was a terrorist act and, in fact, it was the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11." -- U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, commenting on the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. (Globe and Mail, Nov. 10) "Can it really be that anybody seriously believed a career Army psychiatrist would deal with the 'stress' of his own deployment to a war he opposes by opening fire and shooting 43 people? Evidently, the answer is yes, as Noah Pollak and others have noted. This is a particular American madness, as far as I can tell, the invocation of ludicrous pop psychology to explain acts that can only properly be described as evil. "The 'stress did it' claim has nothing to do with Hasan anyway; it's a cover for implicit attacks on the McChrystal strategy for deploying significant additional troops to Afghanistan. That's the true purpose of the pop-psych analysis anyway; it's a way of removing the singular meaning from an event and converting into something more all-purpose. "[I]f three-quarters of the stories we've been reading are true, then it's clear Hasan was an Islamist ideologue of some sort and that the Army may have failed to police its ranks properly out of a fear of appearing anti-Muslim. Those aren't impressionistic conclusions; they will either be proved true or false. And if true, something that could have been prevented wasn't." -- Commentary editor Jonathan Podhoretz, calling for a clear-headed analysis of why U.S. Army Major Nidal Hassan allegedly attacked and killed thirteen U.S. soldiers and wounded over thirty more at the Fort Hood military base. (Contentions Blog, Nov. 9) "The international community is going to demand honesty, integrity and good performance from all levels of government or we won't stay.... We have lost too many soldiers and spent too much of our people's money to stay if there is not honest co-operation.... Our public accepts us here and is deciding right now whether we will stay. Canadians, Americans, the British -- everyone is wondering whether it is worth it to stay." -- Top Canadian commander in Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Jonathan Vance, issuing a warning to Afghanistan's political class that coalition forces might leave in the face of mounting governmental corruption. Vance has already chastised Afghani leaders before in the face of mounting Canadian casualties, but contends that he is "not frustrated at all. But it is a challenge. I think we have achieved everything, tactically, that we set out to. I feel that the coalition is going to achieve great things. More Afghans are going to be safe and the country is going to begin to recover." (Nat. Post, Nov. 9) Short Takes WHO IS A JEW? BRITISH COURT RULING RAISES QUESTION -- (London) Publicly funded Jewish schools in Britain want to decide which children get priority for registration and attendance based on their Orthodoxy. While British law allows religious schools to prioritize based on their faith, the school in question has rejected a student because the child's mother's conversion was not Orthodox. The British Court of appeal has ruled the distinction discriminatory, and in the process created divisions within the Jewish community over whether the State has the right to determine Jewish identity. (New York Times, Nov. 8) M.E. MILITARY PREPAREDNESS -- (Jerusalem) The IDF and the U.S. concluded their fifth, and largest, joint air defence exercise, encompassing approximately 1,400 personnel from each country. Israel and Jordan held a joint army drill which simulated the evacuation and emergency medical response to an earthquake in the Beit She'an Valley. Plus, India has agreed to purchase the upgraded Barak-8 air defence missile system from Israel for $1.1 billion. Finally, Israel is negotiating the purchase of 25 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft from the U.S. in the largest defence deal in Israeli history. Deliveries are expected to begin in 2014. (Ha'aretz, Nov. 9, Nov. 10; Jer. Post, Nov. 10; Israel Government Press Office, Nov. 11) CANADIAN LAWYER EVICTED FROM U.N. -- (New York) Guards ejected an accredited Canadian commentator from the UN after she denounced a controversial report that focuses heavily on alleged Israeli war crimes. Anne Bayefsky, a York University political science professor, offered the only pro-Israel commentary Nov. 6 at a microphone outside the General Assembly hall. She spoke right after Arab and Muslim countries had overcome Western opposition in adopting the Goldstone report. Bayefsky said four guards confiscated two UN passes the organization had issued to her as director of Touro Law Center's Institute on Human Rights and The Holocaust, questioned her and removed her from the building. (Nat. Post, Nov. 7) FATAH: FAYAD PLOTTING TO REPLACE ABBAS -- (Jerusalem) Fatah officials in the West Bank have accused Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad of quietly staging a "bloodless coup" against P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas. The Fatah officials claimed that Fayad was seeking to replace Abbas, with the help of the U.S. and some E.U. and Arab countries. Fatah's Central Committee and Revolutionary Council, the faction's two most significant bodies, have been holding daily meetings in Ramallah since Thursday, when Abbas announced that he had "no desire" to run again for president. (Jer. Post, Nov. 11) HEZBOLLAH REARMING FOR CONFLICT WITH ISRAEL -- (Jerusalem) Hezbollah is rapidly rearming and reinforcing positions in southern Lebanon in preparation for a new conflict with Israel. According to a Hezbollah commander speaking on condition of anonymity, the group has far more rockets and missiles than during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Also, Israeli commandoes seized the Francop on Nov. 4. Defense officials said it was carrying hundreds of tons of weapons from Iran bound for Hezbollah guerrillas -- the largest arms shipment Israel has ever commandeered. The U.S. informed Israel of the ship but vetoed plans to attack. Instead, Israel raided off Cyprus and redirected it to the Ashdod port, where it unloaded 320 tons of weapons and sent the ship on its way. Hezbollah vehemently denied any link to the weapons and denounced "Israeli piracy" in international waters. (Ha'aretz, Nov. 6 & 8.) HEZBOLLAH IN NEW LEBANON CABINET -- (Beirut) More than five months after holding parliamentary elections, Lebanon formed a new cabinet on Monday, ending a long period of gridlock. The June elections yielded a clear victory for the Western-aligned bloc led by Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri, and a loss for the alliance led by Hezbollah. But shifting regional realities, local power struggles, and the imperative of a coalition government prevented the parties from agreeing on a cabinet until now. The new cabinet includes 15 seats for Hariri's majority, 10 for the Hezbollah-led opposition, and five for President Michael Suleiman, who has struggled to maintain neutrality. (NY Times, Nov. 10) SAUDI RAIDS TARGET YEMENI REBELS -- (Riyadh) Saudi Arabia's air force pounded Yemeni rebels along the two countries' border for a second day on Nov. 7, pledging to continue the operation until alleged infiltrators had been pushed out of the kingdom. Fighters roared toward the Saudi-Yemen border on Nov. 6, and Saudi ground patrols were seen heading south toward the border. The Saudi government, disclosing little about the operation, confirmed the first aerial attacks only after a full day of bombing. Forces from the Houthi rebel group in northern Yemen, who have battled the central government since 2004, have long claimed that Saudi Arabia was helping Yemen suppress their insurgency. (Wall Street Journal, Nov. 7-8) MEDVEDEV SAYS RUSSIA MAY BACK IRAN SANCTIONS -- (Moscow) President Dmitri Medvedev said Russia might back sanctions against Iran if the Iranians did not take a "constructive position" on an international plan to temporarily diminish their stockpile of enriched uranium. The statement, resembling one Medvedev made in September after meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in New York, takes on added significance now because Iran has equivocated on the agreement to ship its low-enriched uranium out of the country for processing. Russia has traditionally opposed sanctions against Iran, which it considers an important regional ally. (NY Times, Nov. 8) THREE U.S. HIKERS CHARGED WITH SPYING IN IRAN -- (Beirut) Iran has charged three American hikers with espionage, a top Iranian prosecutor said Monday. Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi said that a "final decision" about their case would be announced soon. It is unclear whether Iran would go ahead with a formal trial on spying charges, which carry the death penalty. Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal were hiking in the mountains of Iraq's northern Kurdish region on July 31, when -- according to their families and U.S. officials -- they mistakenly crossed the border into Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday the hikers were innocent and called for their release. (Wash. Post, Nat. Post. Nov. 10) D.C. BELTWAY SNIPER EXECUTED -- (New York) Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad was executed by lethal injection in Richmond, Virginia, Tuesday night. Muhammad, a Muslim convert and member of the Nation of Islam, was sentenced to death for murdering ten during a three-week killing spree in 2002. His teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, testified at Muhammad's trial that his goal was to terrify the area by killing six white people a day for 30 days. Muhammad, a U.S. Army veteran, was suspected of throwing a thermite grenade into a tent housing 16 of his fellow soldiers as they slept in 1991. Despite this, he was honourably discharged from the army in 1994. (NY Post, Nov. 10 & 11) Volume IX, No. 2,209 • Tuesday, November 10, 2009
THE "WAIT
AND BLAME" GAME The Obama administration has no idea what is about to happen. After all, it has won hasn't it and done something positive for the Palestinians, right? It demanded that Israel freeze all construction on West Bank settlements. Israel agreed, save only that it finish the approximately 3,000 units already begun. So the US government can deem itself successful, having delivered something along the lines of what it originally promised the Palestinians. Moreover, this agreement was ultimately gained without any corresponding Palestinian or Arab concessions. It will be remembered that for some months the US tried to get the Arab side to budge. It failed. Nor did the US government give anything to Israel in exchange for the freeze. So objectively, what happened? Israel made a big concession; Israel got nothing; the Arab side gave nothing. Isn't this a sort of Palestinian or Arab victory, proof of President Barack Obama's leverage with Israel, an example of Israeli flexibility?... The Palestinians and the Arab states "should" be happy. But this is the Middle East, a place where even if all Arab or Iranian demands are met, this only triggers anger, blame, complaint and still more demands.... Hillary Clinton, stung by Arab criticism that she praised Israel's plan too highly, did a bit of a turnaround two days after proclaiming Israel's concession to be amazing: "This offer falls far short of what we would characterize as our position or what our preference would be. But if it is acted upon, it will be an unprecedented restriction on settlements and would have a significant and meaningful effect on restraining their growth."... That isn't how things work here. In the eyes of the Palestinian and Arab leadership Israel cannot ever do anything good. You can praise Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs every day of the week but you aren't allowed to ever say anything positive about Israel or do anything for that country.... Israel can make endless concessions and show infinite flexibility but this can never be accepted as such. Each step is portrayed as a trick since not everything is surrendered at once. Every concession is just a reminder that not everything has been handed over.... If you want to understand how things work in the Middle East consider this scenario. Suppose someone says that they want to sell you a house. They demand $500,000. You offer $400,000. They say, "No." You offer $450,000, saying that if both sides give some that a mutually beneficial deal can be reached. Again they say, "No." Finally you offer $500,000, smug in the belief that you've made a purchase. And then they say once again: "No! How dare you! What a cheat! How about changing the financing to my benefit, putting the full amount down in cash, and buying me another house?" You are incredulous. How could your reasonable, apologetic, empathetic, confidence-building, flexible strategy have failed? Answer: They never intended to sell. For them, Palestine is Arab or Muslim or both forever. It's not for sale at any price. Anyone who indicates a real interest in selling will be disgraced, or fired, or even killed. To sell your land is to be a sell-out. And the fact that their title is questionable and they never actually had national ownership, that someone else who has a previous claim has long ago returned and built it up with all sorts of additions and improvements is irrelevant to this thinking. So instead they...wait for the other side, Israel, to collapse. Or for the West to throw Israel to the wolves, persuading themselves that this is happening. Or they wait for all Arabs -- more recently the favored formulation is all Muslims -- to unite and wipe out the evil usurper. Or perhaps when Iran gets the bomb or the mahdi, the Islamic messiah, comes, or something will happen and then total victory will be theirs.... And even if part of their brains say something different -- Israel is strong, Israel won't go away, Arabs and Muslims always bicker among themselves, why continue following a strategy that always fails, wouldn't it be nicer to have higher living standards -- the siren song of militancy overrides it. At least that's true in public, no matter how much in private many deride these notions as pure foolishness, and no matter how much a few brave souls reject the whole mess publicly and point out how it has in the past and will in future lead the Arabs to disaster.... For they -- the Arab dictatorships that need the conflict to stay in power, the Palestinian leadership that still believes in total victory, the Islamist opposition that wants to use the conflict to prove its enemies to be Western puppets and to use the Palestinian issue to seize state power -- can never blame themselves. To blame yourself a bit is the first step to fixing one's worldview and policy. Unfortunately, this possibility is rejected and there is no glimmer of hope that it will change over the next few years, dare I say decade or decades?... Does that sound bleak? Well, sorry, reality is bleak, bleakest of all for the Arabs themselves -- and pity for the victims of this system -- who follow that path. Why do you think there is so much hatred, violence, miscomprehension, tyranny and pure stagnation in this region? Meanwhile, Israel goes on developing its society, pioneering in technology and science, maintaining democracy, showing flexibility and surviving the hatred and slander that's all-too-common in today's world. NEXT,
LOCUSTS? Can anything else possibly go wrong for the Obama administration's Middle East policy? In the past ten days, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has twice reversed herself publicly on her attitude toward the Israeli settlements. Palestinians have refused her direct request to rejoin peace talks with Israel, and Palestinian Authority president Abbas has said he will not run for reelection. U.S.-Israel relations are in a state of frozen mistrust. The New York Times and Washington Post, among others, are calling Obama's policy a complete failure -- in news stories as well as editorials. The only thing missing is a plague of locusts.... George Mitchell's trips to the region are increasingly reminiscent of the Colin Powell visits in 2002 and 2003 -- producing little but embarrassment. The Israeli "100 percent settlement freeze" and the Arab outreach to Israel, early goals of the Obama team, are now forgotten, as is an early resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. These disasters are mostly the product of an ignorant and belligerent attitude toward Israel and especially its prime minister. The ignorance was most evident in the administration's view that a total construction freeze could be imposed not only in every settlement but in Jerusalem itself. But the U.S. policy was worse: We demanded a freeze that would apply to construction by Jews, but not by Arabs; could any Israeli leader be expected to support such a position? One does not need to be a member of the Knesset to understand that such a freeze was impossible for Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition as it would have been for any Israeli prime minister -- but apparently this fact was beyond the understanding of Mitchell, Rahm Emanuel, and all the other "experts" on the Obama team. The belligerence toward Netanyahu has been evident all along, but is best shown by the refusal to tell Israel's prime minister whether or not the president will see him this coming week when Netanyahu (like the president) addresses the United Jewish Communities annual general assembly in Washington. The Israelis gave the White House weeks of notice that Netanyahu had agreed to speak, would be in town, and hoped to see Obama. The White House reaction has been to keep him twisting in the wind, with news stories several days before his arrival saying the president had not decided yet whether to see Netanyahu. Think of it: Our closest ally in the region, critical issues at stake (from Iran's nuclear program and the recent Israeli seizure of an Iranian arms shipment meant for Hezbollah to Abbas's announcement), yet the Israelis get no answer. Obama and his "experts" may think they are reminding Netanyahu who is boss, but they are in fact reminding all of us why Israelis no longer trust Obama -- and making closer cooperation between the two governments that much harder. The problems Netanyahu has with Obama pale in comparison with those of the Palestinians, and Abbas's announcement reflects their frustrations.... Abbas has threatened to leave many times before, and it's worth noting that he did not resign. He said he would not seek reelection next year, in elections scheduled for January 24 but highly unlikely to take place then -- if ever.... Israelis and Palestinians when I visited in October had two main questions: Who is making this Middle East policy, and do they not realize by now that it is a disaster? At least in this, one can say the administration has produced Israeli-Palestinian unity. They are also united in watching warily as the president seems unable to make a decision about Afghanistan. For the Palestinians, this suggests he'll never really take on the Israelis for them, as they thought he might back in January. For the Israelis, it means he'll never take on Iran, and that they may in the end face the Iranian nuclear threat on their own.... [T]he answers to their questions seem obvious: It is the president's policy, and no, he does not seem to be aware that it has already failed.... And this is the fundamental problem with Obama's policy: Like too many of his predecessors he believes that a solution is at hand if only he can force the parties to the table. There, presumably under American tutelage, they will reach American-style compromises (pragmatic, sensible, realistic) and resolve the dispute, with Nobel Peace Prizes for all. The only question is where the table is: Camp David, Taba, Annapolis, Oslo, perhaps this time Chicago.... The way forward does not lie through fancy international conferences, and one idea still mentioned as an Obama option -- proposing a final status plan -- would be disastrous and unsuccessful. The way for the Palestinians to get a state is to go ahead and build it. If and when the institutions are there and functioning, from police and courts to a parliament, negotiations will reflect that fact. But the argument that settling the borders and removing the Israeli troops must come first is a path to failure. For one thing, Israel will not and should not leave until it is clear that the West Bank can be policed by Palestinians and that the region will not be a source of terrorism against Israel, as Gaza and South Lebanon became when Israel left there. No conference and no treaty can provide such a guarantee; only functioning Palestinian police forces that are already fighting and defeating terror can do so.... But thus far, the anniversary of Obama's election appears to have passed with no rethinking of policy. Instead the administration slogs forward, judging itself by its elevated intentions rather than its performance. Clinton's pronouncements -- demand a total construction freeze one day, accept Netanyahu's more modest offer the next, then back to the wider demands two days later in Morocco -- are increasingly reminiscent of World War I trench warfare: gain a few yards, lose a few more, while the casualties pile up. There will be no progress this way, and the practical efforts that should be at the heart of U.S. policy will instead be undermined as we poison Israeli-Palestinian relations and degrade the trust both parties have in us. (Elliott Abrams is a senior
fellow for Middle Eastern studies MR.
PRESIDENT, WELCOME TO THE REAL MIDDLE EAST. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to be the keynote speaker this morning at the UJC/Jewish Federations of North America 2009 General Assembly. As Netanyahu made his way to Washington, there were those bent on exacerbating tensions between our premier and President Barack Obama. The Economist, for instance, taunted: "Is Israel too strong for Barack Obama?" illustrating its story with a cartoon depicting Netanyahu driving a bulldozer straight at the American leader. Much was made of the fact that even as he embarked on his journey Netanyahu still did not have a firm appointment to see the president. One US Jewish leader described Obama as leaving Netanyahu to "twist in the wind." We do not know if ineptitude in Netanyahu's bureau or political machinations in the White House precipitated this unnecessary storm. The president's schedule was anyway torn asunder in the aftermath of the terror attack at Fort Hood, Texas. His appearance at the GA was canceled so that he could attend a memorial service in Texas tomorrow. Comings and goings aside, the administration has been fundamentally misreading the situation here on the ground, allowing its own initial poor judgment to be reinforced by unrepresentative voices in Israel and on the margins of the American Jewish community. Thus the White House insisted on an unconditional settlement freeze everywhere over the Green Line -- a demand with which Israel could not possibly comply. This trapped Mahmoud Abbas in an untenable position: he could not resume talks with Israel without appearing "softer" than Obama. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to reverse out of this dead end, asserting the US remained opposed to all settlement activity, but that a freeze should not be a precondition for resumption of talks, Abbas was left aggrieved. Now he's bogged down by his own bluster and Obama's miscalculations.... Arab sources, with a little help in Europe, are now engaged in a disinformation campaign claiming Obama is party to a "secret deal" that would see the US recognize a new declaration of Palestinian independence and jettison Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. In other words, rather than negotiate with Israel, the Palestinians are still fantasizing that Obama will impose a solution and deliver Israel on bended knee. Another obstacle to peace is the mendacious Goldstone Report, which poisons the political environment. On Friday, only 17 out of 192 countries stood with the Jewish state in the UN General Assembly as it essentially codified robbing Israel of its practical right to self-defense. While the US did not abandon Israel, neither did it offer overwhelming moral support. US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice did not even attend. Which brings us to the doors of the White House. From Eisenhower to Bush II, past administrations have intermittently cold-shouldered Israel or sought to drive a wedge between the Jewish state and its supporters in the United States. In this regard, the Obama administration is breaking no new ground. Nevertheless, if Obama buys into the insidious canard, as Thomas Friedman promotes it, that the Palestinian leadership "wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations" while Israel's leadership "wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal," he will invariably spend the remainder of his term veering from one dead end to another. Through a multitude of blunders -- failure to dismantle illegal outposts among them -- successive Israeli governments have empowered the West Bank Palestinian leadership to frame the current stalemate as resulting from Israel's preference for settlements over peace. In reality, it is persistent Palestinian intransigence combined with the fragmentation of their polity that has made progress impossible. No one wants peace more than Israel. Most Israelis support a demilitarized Palestine living side-by-side with the Jewish state of Israel -- the very vision articulated by Netanyahu in his seminal June 14 Bar-Ilan address. Rather than giving Netanyahu a cold shoulder, Obama should warmly embrace this viable blueprint for peace Volume IX, No. 2,208 • Monday, November 9, 2009
A PUBLIC DEGREDATION
RITUAL: In loving memory of Malca z"l [T]he plague bacillus never
dies or disappears for good.... [I]t The official German view, that Kristallnacht represented a spontaneous response by angry Germans to a Jewish "crime" -- the word sounds familiar, see Goldstone's "report" -- was so fanciful that nobody believed it. The Manchester Guardian, the most consistent voice for decency in a world that generally kept quiet, wrote with complete accuracy "of a total brutal expulsion", that was only a beginning. The origin of Kristallnacht lay in Munich. On June 9, 1938, in an ominous development, the main synagogue of Munich was burned down. Munich marked the location of Hitler's most important speeches. Then, on November 9, 1938, the Munich city fire department received its first alarm call. Officially, Kristallnacht started on November 9, 1938, following the killing of Ernst von Rath, legation secretary at the German embassy in Paris. Von Rath was shot on November 7 by a young Jewish boy distraught over the fate of his Polish-Jewish parents, who were mercilessly deported along with thousands of other Polish Jews, from Hanover, Germany. For the German people, Kristallnacht proved that the criminal Nazi regime was willing and able to use any level of terror necessary to achieve its infamous racial goals. As historian Martin Gilbert explains, the Jewish community in Germany had existed for over 1000 years. Yet despite their patriotism, the Jews were cast by the Nazi government as disloyal parasites living on the German national body. And yet the world was silent! The most important feature of the pogrom of 1938 is the systematic public humiliation and abuse of Jews. Today, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for the destruction of the State of Israel, for wiping out the people of Israel, was stated in clear, unambiguous language from the high podium of the prestigious United Nations! And again the world is silent! The United Nations has been a discredited institution for a long time. Along with the hypocrisy of the European countries, it shows a disgraceful lack of dignity by allowing a new Hitler, Iran's Ahmadinejad, to spread incitement, and to menace the State of Israel and the Jewish people, with global terror. If we look closely, we all should see his message, written in blood: the call is clear: a new Kristallnacht! And again the world is silent! Terrorism and antisemitism continue unabated. But today, unlike 1938, Israel is a sovereign country, and has the right to defend itself against an enemy sworn to its destruction. No more Kristallnachts! Remember Kristallnacht! The appalling resurgence of global antisemitism must be met with a strong call for vigilance and unity to expose and to defeat this monstrous plague, this ugly infectious force. We Jews, remembering Kristallnacht and all that followed it, must ensure that there will never be another Night of Shattered Glass. Only a strong, united front behind the ideals of democracy, freedom, justice and peace, led by the small, and brave, powerful and implacable State of Israel, can ensure that another Kristallnacht will never occur again, ever! (Baruch Cohen is Research Chair of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.) NOVEMBER
9 IS TOO MOMENTOUS TO REMEMBER IN FULL ... Contemporary Germany has evolved into a nation that will not wage war. A year ago, I visited a German post in northern Afghanistan, near the city of Kunduz. The post housed a "provincial reconstruction team," a joint military and civilian operation. The German post was the most pleasant place I'd visited in Afghanistan.... As we talked, I heard a small bang. Somebody had fired a badly aimed rocket toward the base. The commandant shrugged off the attack. What could he do? Unless he detected an assailant in the act, any use of firepower had to be authorized by Berlin -- and if that authorization arrived at all, it would arrive too late. The mission of the forces in Kunduz was to provide security to German aid workers, not to fight Taliban. I later told the story to a German friend. "Don't complain," he grinned. "It was your idea for us to become pacifists!" For half a century after 1945, the central front of world conflict ran through the middle of Berlin. Those days of crisis have faded into memory. Normality has been restored. No American president will ever again declare, "Ich bein ein Berliner." President Obama could not even be bothered to attend this week's anniversary ceremonies. But it's not only the cessation of conflict that has edged Germany away from the centre of world history. The German-born historian Fritz Stern tells this story in his memoirs. He is invited in 1981 to a lavishly funded conference on the past and future of German science. "It was soon apparent that the conclave was meant to ponder why Germans were no longer at the top of the scientific heap." Fritz was amazed by his fellow conferees' bafflement. "Couldn't the Germans see the one quite obvious cause of their nation's decline? ... Perhaps the subject was too embarrassing to mention, the point too obvious to make?" Perhaps the point is obvious, and yet it still needs to be said. Nov. 9 is not only the anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. It is also the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the organized attack upon German Jews in 1938, and of Hitler's Beer Hall putsch in 1923. Some kind dispensation of fate has arranged for this grim anniversary now to be tinctured with the joy of 1989. Yet there is a reason that the new reunified German state has chosen to set its national day not on Nov. 9, but on Oct. 3: the anniversary of the formal merger of the two Germanies in 1990. Nov. 9 is the more momentous date, but like so many German dates, it is perhaps too momentous to be remembered in full. On this particular Nov. 9, the Germans will want to remember only what is joyous. Even the day's anthem is Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". Let's join with them. They have built a good society and a solid democracy. They have earned the right to a little forgetting. THE
ENEMY AT HOME Thirteen dead and 31 wounded would be a bad day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan and a great victory for the Taliban. When it happens in Texas, in the heart of the biggest military base in the nation, at a processing center for soldiers either returning from or deploying to combat overseas, it is not merely a tragedy, as too many people called it, but a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since Sept. 11, 2001, the "war on terror." Brave soldiers trained to hunt down and kill America's enemy abroad were killed in the safety and security of home by, in essence, the same enemy -- a man who believes in and supports everything the enemy does. He's a U.S. Army major. His superior officers and other authorities knew about his beliefs but seemed to think that was just a bit of harmless multicultural diversity -- as if believing that "the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor" (i.e., his fellow American soldiers) and writing Internet paeans to the "noble" "heroism" of suicide bombers and, indeed, objectively supporting the other side in an active war is to be regarded as just some kind of alternative lifestyle that adds to the general vibrancy of the base. When it emerged early on Thursday afternoon that the shooter was Nidal Malik Hasan, there appeared shortly thereafter on Twitter a flurry of posts with the striking formulation: "Please judge Major Malik Nadal [sic] by his actions and not by his name." Concerned Twitterers can relax. There was never really any danger of that -- and not just in the sense that the New York Times' first report on Maj. Hasan never mentioned the words Muslim or Islam, or that ABC's Martha Raddatz's only observation on his name was that "as for the suspect, Nidal Hasan, as one officer's wife told me, 'I wish his name was Smith.'"... Since Sept. 11, we have, as the Twitterers recommend, judged people by their actions -- flying planes into skyscrapers, blowing themselves up in Bali nightclubs or London Tube trains, planting improvised explosive devices by the roadside in Baghdad or Tikrit. On the whole, we're effective at responding with action of our own -- taking out training camps in Afghanistan, rolling up insurgency networks in Fallujah and Ramadi, intercepting terror plots in London and Toronto and Dearborn, Mich. However, we're scrupulously nonjudgmental about the ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy.... [W]e never make any effort to delineate the line that separates "radical Islam" from nonradical Islam. Indeed, we go to great lengths to make it even fuzzier. And somewhere in that woozy blur, the pathologies of a Nidal Malik Hasan incubate.... In the New York Times, Maria Newman touched on Maj. Hasan's faith only obliquely: "He was single, according to the records, and he listed no religious preference." Thank goodness for that, eh? A neighbor in Texas says the major had "Allah" and "another word" pinned up in Arabic on his door. "Akbar" maybe? On Thursday morning, he is said to have passed out copies of the Koran to his neighbors. He shouted in Arabic as he fired. But don't worry: As the FBI spokesman assured us in nothing flat, there's no terrorism angle. That's true, in a very narrow sense.... Yet the same pathologies that drive al Qaeda beat within Maj. Hasan, too, and in the end his Islamic impulses trumped his...Western education, his psychiatric training, his military discipline -- his entire American identity. One might say the same about Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale, Ariz., arrested last week after fatally running over his "too Westernized" daughter Noor in the latest American honor killing.... But Noor Almaleki's brother says with a shrug that that's just the way it is. "One thing to one culture doesn't make sense to another culture," he says. Indeed. To infidels, Islam is in a certain sense unknowable, and most of us are content to leave it at that. The vast majority of Muslims don't...murder their daughters or shoot dozens of their fellow soldiers. But Islam inspires enough of this behavior to make it a legitimate topic of analysis. Don't hold your breath. We'd rather talk about anything else -- even in the Army. What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best-trained, best-equipped fighting force on the planet were gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. That's the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy -- in Afghanistan and in Texas. (Mark Steyn is the author of the New York Times best-seller America Alone.) MUSLIM
POPULATION IN THE MILITARY RAISES DIFFICULT ISSUES The deadly rampage at Fort Hood is forcing Pentagon officials to confront difficult questions about the military's growing Muslim population. The military has worked hard to recruit more Muslims since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the number of Muslim troops, while still small, has been increasing. There were 3,409 Muslims in the active-duty military as of April 2008, according to Pentagon statistics. Military personnel don't have to disclose their religions, and many officials believe the actual number of Muslim soldiers may be at least 10,000 higher than the Pentagon statistics. For instance, the military "Officer Record Brief" of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspect in the Fort Hood shootings, said he had "no religious preference" and didn't identify him as a Muslim.... The push to boost Muslim representation has proven to be a double-edged sword for the military, which desperately needs the Muslim soldiers for their language skills and cultural knowledge, but also worries that a small percentage of those soldiers might harbor extremist ideologies or choose to turn their guns on their fellow soldiers. In one of the military's most notorious cases of fratricide since Vietnam, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, a convert to Islam, rolled a grenade into a tent filled with other soldiers in April 2003. The attack killed two officers and wounded 14 others.... Muslim soldiers also face challenges stemming from their dual identities as adherents of the Islamic faith and as members of the U.S. military. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Muslims serving in the U.S. military often use fake last names to avoid being singled out by insurgents as traitors and to prevent reprisals against their families elsewhere in the world. The Pentagon's outreach to the Muslim community has expanded significantly in recent years. Today, recruiting more Muslims is a top priority for many branches of the military. Under the Army's "09 Lima" program, Muslims willing to enlist and serve in Iraq and Afghanistan as military translators and cultural advisers receive hefty signing bonuses and expedited paths to citizenship. The Army recently established its first full unit of Muslim personnel recruited under the program, the 51st Translator Interpreter Company at California's Fort Irwin. The unit has more than 120 soldiers who are native speakers of Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and Dari.... Army officials at the Pentagon said that Muslim soldiers who felt their religion prevented them from fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan could claim conscientious objector status and seek noncombat assignments in the U.S. But they weren't aware of any Muslim soldiers who had done so. CALL
THIS HORROR BY ITS NAME: ISLAMIST TERROR On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting, "Allahu akbar!" ("God is great!") committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam. What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Fort Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of nondenominational shoplifting. This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it's an act of terror. Period. When the terrorist posts anti-American hate speech on the Web; apparently praises suicide bombers and uses his own name; loudly criticizes US policies; argues (as a psychiatrist, no less) with his military patients over the worth of their sacrifices; refuses, in the name of Islam, to be photographed with female colleagues; lists his nationality as "Palestinian" in a Muslim spouse-matching program and parades around central Texas in a fundamentalist playsuit -- well, it only seems fair to call this terrorist an "Islamist terrorist." But the president won't. Despite his promise to get to all the facts. Because there's no such thing as "Islamist terrorism" in ObamaWorld. And the Army won't. Because its senior leaders are so sick with political correctness that pandering to America haters is safer than calling terrorism "terrorism." And the media won't. Because they have more interest in the shooter than in our troops -- despite their crocodile tears.... But Hasan isn't the sole guilty party. The US Army's unforgivable political correctness is also to blame for the casualties at Fort Hood. Given the myriad warning signs, it's appalling that no action was taken against a man apparently known to praise suicide bombers and openly damn US policy. But no officer in his chain of command, either at Walter Reed Army Medical Center or at Fort Hood, had the guts to take meaningful action against a dysfunctional soldier and an incompetent doctor. Had Hasan been a Lutheran or a Methodist, he would've been gone with the simoom. But officers fear charges of discrimination when faced with misconduct among protected minorities. Now 12 soldiers and a security guard lie dead. At least 38 people were wounded, 28 of them seriously. If heads don't roll in this maggot's chain of command, the Army will have shamed itself beyond moral redemption. There's another important issue, too. How could the Army allow an obviously incompetent and dysfunctional psychiatrist to treat our troubled soldiers returning from war? An Islamist wacko is counseled for arguing with veterans who've been assigned to his care? And he's not removed from duty? What planet does the Army live on? For the first time since I joined the Army in 1976, I'm ashamed of its dereliction of duty. The chain of command protected a budding terrorist who was waving one red flag after another. Because it was safer for careers than doing something about him. Get ready for the apologias. We've already heard from the terrorist's family that "he's a good American." In their world, maybe he is. But when do we, the American public, knock off the PC nonsense?... Muslim terrorist wannabes are busted again and again. And we're assured that "Islam's a religion of peace." I guarantee you that the Obama administration's nonresponse to the Fort Hood attack will mock the memory of our dead. (Ralph Peters' latest novel is The War After Armageddon.) Volume IX, No. 2,207 • Friday, November 6, 2009
THE I'S HAVE
IT About one thing, at least, the world seems to be in agreement: Israel is the primary culprit in the Middle East conflict, the cause of relentless Palestinian suffering and the primary obstacle blocking the way to regional peace. The international chorus of opprobrium is growing by the day. The Hollywood crowd lashes out at the Toronto International Film Festival for its (oh, so sinful) focus on Tel Aviv. The Swedish press breathes new life into the old blood libel. The Norwegians divest from an Israeli firm because it supplies technology to the separation fence. The Turks refuse to participate in joint air exercises with Israel. The Americans peddle the notion that at its core, the Mideast conflict is really about the settlements. It's relentless, this ganging up, but it's also not terribly new. The momentum has been building for years, and though we may not like it, we cannot honestly claim to be surprised. What is surprising, however, is a recent -- and possibly more ominous -- addition to this chorus. A growing segment of the American Jewish community is abandoning Israel. Here, too, examples abound: Two American Jewish sociologists, Steven Cohen and Ari Kelman, wrote that among American Jews aged 35 and younger, a full 50% said that the destruction of the State of Israel would not be a personal tragedy for them. In San Francisco, Jewish communal funds were used to support the SF Jewish Film Festival's screening of Rachel, an Israel-bashing "documentary" about Rachel Corrie of International Solidarity Movement fame. Noting that the SFJFF was now effectively in partnership with Jewish Voices for Peace, a well known anti-Israel, pro-boycott organization, many prominent Jews vehemently protested. But the film was shown, anyway. There's Fast For Gaza, that group of rabbis encouraging us to fast in protest against the injustices in Gaza. But if you search their Web site (www.fastforgaza.net) for mention of Sderot or Gilad Schalit, your search will be in vain. Those issues, apparently, are irrelevant to justice for Gaza. Finally, for now, there's Jay Michaelson's column in The Forward, entitled "How I'm Losing My Love for Israel" (September 25). Michaelson, a spokesman for much of the generation that Cohen and Kelman described, wrote that "I understand why many Israelis feel fed up with the Palestinian problem.... But as an outsider, I no longer want to feel entangled by their decisions and implicated in their consequences. B'seder: It's your choice to make... but count me out." "Count me out" is pretty strong stuff. But if Michaelson is different from most American Jews of his generation, it's mostly because he's more articulate. Which leads to the real issue: Why are American Jews abandoning Israel? That question is the title of a recent column in Ha'aretz by Prof. Jonathan Sarna, perhaps the greatest living analyst of American Jewish life. The problem, suggests Sarna, is that American Jews have been raised on an idealized image of Israel, and that "in place of the utopia that we had hoped Israel might become, young Jews today often view Israel through the eyes of contemporary media: They fixate upon its unloveliest warts." But that, says Sarna, is actually good news, for the "fix" is clear. "By focusing upon all that they nevertheless share in common, and all that they might yet accomplish together in the future, American Jews and Israelis can move past this crisis in their relationship and settle in, as partners, for the long haul ahead." I wish I were convinced, but I'm not. The loss of American Jewish love for Israel, I fear, is actually much more deeply rooted. The issue isn't Israel, or utopia. It's America, and the "I" at the core of American sensibilities. Another profound observer of American Jewish life, Rabbi Morris Allen of Mendota Heights, Minnesota, recently wrote with sadness that for contemporary American Jews, life-cycle rituals have become infinitely more significant than the holiday cycle. Both Sarna and Allen are actually pointing to a shared challenge. Most American Jews are first and foremost Americans. And today's America is about the celebration of individuality and a future unfettered by ethnic loyalties. In America, the narratives of immigrant groups are eroded, year by year, generation after generation. In America, we are oriented to the future, not to the past, and if we cling to some larger grouping, it is to a human collective whole rather than to some "narrow" ethnic clan. That's the cause for what Rabbi Allen has observed. Because Jewish holidays celebrate peoplehood, a collective embrace of a shared mythical past, they are less compelling for typical American Jews than are life-cycle ceremonies, which focus on the future, my family -- and me. Similarly, the recreation of the State of Israel is truly powerful only against a backdrop of centuries of Jewish experience, and is spine-tingling only if my sense of self is inseparable from my belonging to a nation with a past and a people with a purpose. In today's individualistic America, the drama of the rebirth of the Jewish people creates no goose bumps and evokes no sense of duty or obligation. Add the issue of Palestinian suffering, and Israel seems worse than irrelevant -- it's actually a source of shame. We're not terribly alarmed, but we should be. These young American Jews, after all, will soon control the coffers of the federations, and will sit on the boards of synagogues. Their generation will either strengthen or abandon AIPAC, the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), and the American Jewish Committee (AJC). They will be the ones allocating funding to schools, setting curricula and communal priorities. "Who is wise?" asks the Talmud. "He who can see what is about to happen." Deep down, we know what's about to happen. A gaping chasm threatens the American-Israeli relationship, and we're basically doing nothing. Try to list the serious Jewish educational enterprises addressing this challenge, asking how American Jewish education can counter America's unfettered individualism, or what Israel could do to help. Can you name even one? Neither can I. (Daniel Gordis, Senior
Vice President of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, AFTER
UTOPIA, LOVING ISRAEL Why are American Jews abandoning us? Why do American Jews hold Israel to a higher standard than they do any other country in the world -- including the one they so proudly call home? As an American professor on sabbatical in Israel, I field questions like these on a regular basis. The "waning American Jewish love affair with Israel" -- as the subtitle of Steven Rosenthal's 2001 book "Irreconcilable Differences?" put it -- is big news here. Israelis, living as they do in a highly dangerous neighborhood, know that they can scarcely afford to lose friends. It is no secret that well-armed terrorists committed to Israel's total destruction lie just over the border in Gaza and Lebanon. Israel is also within Iran's missile range. The specter of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fingering a nuclear trigger and calculating how many Israelis he can kill in a "first strike" reminds even the most stubbornly self-reliant of Israelis why friends abroad are so vital. So when the Hebrew Union College sociologist Steven M. Cohen warns of "a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews... most pronounced among younger Jews," Israelis take notice. And well they should. When someone as passionate as Forward columnist Jay Michaelson, who speaks Hebrew and lived for a time in Jerusalem, writes, as he did in a recent essay, of his "waning love of Israel," they know that they face a problem. To be sure, this is not an Orthodox problem. The young Jews whom Cohen surveyed were almost entirely non-Orthodox. Michaelson and his social circle (where "supporting Israel is like supporting segregation, apartheid or worse") are not Orthodox either. Young Jews who do identify as Orthodox -- between 10% and 20% of their age cohort -- generally support Israel ardently. As for other young Jews, Brandeis University researcher Ted Sasson reminds us that young people have for years been more critical than their elders of Israel. Even decades ago, youthful organizations like the New Jewish Agenda and Breira dissented from Israel's policies. Support for Israel, he argues, generally increases with age and experience. There is, nevertheless, a critical difference between support for Israel in the past and today. For much of the 20th century, the Israel of American Jews -- the Zion that they imagined in their minds, wrote about and worked to realize -- was a mythical Zion, a utopian extension of the American dream. Proponents conjured up a Zion that they described as a "social commonwealth." They conceived of it both as an "outpost of democracy," spreading America's ideals eastward, and as a Jewish refuge where freedom, liberty and social justice would someday reign supreme.... My generation of American Jews was raised to view the Zionist project through similarly rose-colored glasses. Now, though, that dream, which had more to do with the lofty visions of American Jews than with the sordid realities of the Middle East, lies shattered beyond repair. In place of the utopia that we had hoped Israel might become, young Jews today often view Israel through the eyes of contemporary media: They fixate upon its unloveliest warts.... When the bloom falls off of young love, there are always those who announce that their relationship is in trouble and prepare for divorce. So it is today with too many American Jews and their "waning love" for Israel. The deepest and most meaningful of relationships, however, survive disappointments. By focusing upon all that they nevertheless share in common, and all that they might yet accomplish together in the future, American Jews and Israelis can move past this crisis in their relationship and settle in, as partners, for the long haul ahead. (Jonathan D. Sarna is
the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History
at Brandeis University. He is currently spending a sabbatical as senior
scholar at the YOUNG
US JEWS -- SELF-CENTERED AND INDIVIDUALISTIC? In his recent column in The Jerusalem Post Magazine ("The I's have it," October 16), Daniel Gordis informs us that out of all the challenges facing Israel and the Jewish world today, this is the real crisis: America's "unfettered individualism" is corrupting the minds and souls of young American Jews, leading them to abandon Israel. To try to prove this epidemic of selfishness and individualism, Gordis cites several examples of young American Jews, challenged by their relationship to the State of Israel, who seek to hear a multitude of voices and perspectives on the situation, or act on deeply held values and principles to try to create change. Gordis may find some of those values and principles misguided, counterproductive or even dangerous. But self-centered and individualistic? Since when did challenging ideas and community norms become pampered, selfish behavior? Given my experiences as a member of the exact generation Gordis takes such issue with, I tried to think about who exactly these young "me" Jews might be. Maybe they are the thousands of young American Jews answering the Jewish call to pursue justice by teaching in inner city schools, advocating for the rights of prisoners or providing health care in the Third World? Perhaps they are the Jews who care so deeply about God's creation that they bicycle to work, compost their waste and meticulously track their carbon outputs.... Gordis may wish that more of this tremendous energy and acting beyond oneself was directed toward helping Jews in Israel. That might have been a valid critique, and one that I struggle with personally in thinking about my own activism. He failed to do so, and instead attacked the character and motives of thousands of Jews he does not know. When Gordis asks, "Why are American Jews abandoning Israel?" he needs to understand the following cognitive and emotional dissonance facing many young, talented, passionate and inspired American Jews: These Jews have dedicated themselves to working on fixing the suffering and oppression in their communities at home and abroad. It is a vital part of their Jewish identities. In turn, they are very uncomfortable with the feeling that a Jewish state is responsible for the suffering and oppression of another people, directly or indirectly. If Gordis wishes to reach these people, he needs to openly and honestly deal with that disconnect instead of attacking them for being selfish. Unfortunately, the perception of many young Jews is that Jewish institutions are not interested in seriously dealing with that dissonance, and that communal Jewish life is not a safe space for engaging in some of the Jewish questions that matter to them most. The perception among many young, progressive Jews is that Jewish institutions push an oversimplified, heavy-handed, us-or-them approach to Israel and Jewish identity. That's one reason why many young Jews who live to make the world better for others often turn outside the Jewish community to do so.... The Jewish values I hold dear -- pursuing justice, loving the stranger, fighting for the poor and underprivileged -- do not always appear to be prioritized by the State of Israel in policy or culture. And that disconnect causes me great, great pain. Mr. Gordis, I am training to be an Orthodox rabbi. It is my professional and personal goal to serve the Jewish people for the rest of my life. Few things give me greater joy than learning a page of Gemara with someone for the first time, reaching out to bring others to my Shabbat table, distributing gifts to the poor on Purim or spending the holidays in Jerusalem. However, if I see a film you don't approve of, oppose particular policies of the State of Israel or identify as an American, does that mean that I've "given up on Israel?" Couldn't one even argue that critique and challenge are fundamental Jewish values and might actually help to preserve and strengthen the Jewish people as we move into more and complicated moral and ethical terrain?... (Ari Hart is the cofounder of Uri L'Tzedek and a rabbinical student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah.) ISRAELI
'EXCEPTIONALISM' IS NOTHING TO APOLOGIZE FOR In The New York Times this week, Roger Cohen claimed that Israel lives in a perpetual state of exceptionalism. Apparently, it does not see itself as "normal" and the "never again" mantra (which he admits is necessary) is an inadequate way of dealing with the modern world. In other words, the Holocaust occurred 65 years ago, get over it. Yes, the prime minister spent a good deal of his UN time lecturing an apathetic audience about the horrors of the Holocaust. But understand that the "never again" theme does not only apply to last century's evil perpetuated against Jews. It is about centuries worth of persecution, of pogroms, of discrimination, of being perceived as a persistent thorn in the side of society. Israel stands now as a permanent safe haven for Jews. It was not so long ago that Ethiopians, Russians and even the French came here to escape the discrimination and persecution. Israel has not asked for, nor should it be granted the status of "exceptionalism" simply because our statehood came after our systematic annihilation in plain sight of the civilized world. No, we are not exceptional for that reason alone. We are exceptional because the cards have been stacked against us for so long, yet we have survived and indeed thrived. We are exceptional because, despite all of the wars and terrorism that plague us, we have seen steady economic growth since our birth. We are exceptional because we open our doors wide to all Jews who seek to come here, even though we don't have enough jobs, enough land or enough water for those that live here already.... We have averaged a war every decade since the creation of the state, with brutalizing intifadas in between that solely target civilians. And so, for decades, we have had to prove ourselves, over and over again, begging for the right to be recognized, to prove that we have a right to be here too. Constantly having to prove yourself is very tiring indeed and that we are still here is exceptional. We'd be quite satisfied with less exceptional and more normal. Normal means we can plan for university when a child is in high school rather than praying that our boy-soldiers come home alive. Normal means that we can stop thinking about the fact that our daughter's bus line blew up not once, but twice, just around the corner. Normal means that you can actually try to plan past tomorrow. No one here does that because you can't plan tomorrow when you are still fighting today. Israel would like nothing more than to wake up one day and find itself an ordinary nation, at peace internally and externally, with the Palestinians and with the Arab world.... That day won't come easily, or without sacrifice, but the fact that we continue to yearn for it is exceptional too. (Ariella Bernstein, a new olah, was the deputy director for public affairs at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service from 2003 through 2007. She served at the National Labor Relations Board from 1990 through 2003.) Please see our "Picks of the Week" for A. O. Scott's "Jewish History, Popcorn Included". Shabbat Shalom to all our readers. Volume IX, No. 2,206 • Thursday, November 5, 2009
FIVE YEARS
OF DITHERING An episode earlier this year from the unusually thought-provoking Fox TV drama Lie To Me, in which psychologist Dr. Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth) analyzes microexpressions and body language to reveal people's hidden truths and expose their lies, featured a news clip from Camp David 2000 and that telling, embarrassing moment when prime minister Ehud Barak wrestled a reluctant Yasser Arafat through the door ahead of him into their first meeting.... Arafat's reluctance to enter ahead of Barak at Camp David, only partly explained on Lie To Me...vouchsafed the deeper truth that would soon become all too clear: The Palestinian leader wasn't merely unhappy to be forced into the room first, he didn't want to be there at all. He didn't want to negotiate a peace accord, to lead his people to statehood alongside Israel, to make the transition from terrorist leader. And so, after Camp David came the terror war of the second intifada, and Arafat went to his grave having proved incapable of setting down the gun in favor of the olive branch. Despite the Holocaust-denying doctorate and the long years spent at Arafat's side, Mahmoud Abbas was supposed to be different. The body-language of his meetings with Israeli leaders, most notably prime minister Ehud Olmert, was relaxed and open.... But whether or not Abbas genuinely had the desire, it must now be definitively accepted that he has lacked the courage. He lacked the courage to tell his people the truth about Israel: that our historical legitimacy, precisely here between the river and the sea, is indisputable; that our presence is not an injustice wrought upon the Palestinians by a Holocaust-guilty Europe, but rather the belated correction of a historical injustice done to the exiled Jews; that both peoples need to find enlightened compromise and seek to live peacefully side by side. Abbas lacked the courage to seize the opportunity of a deal with the desperate Olmert -- an Israeli prime minister who, late in his political life, had become persuaded that a two-state solution was an urgent imperative for Israel, and who belied the claim that no Israeli prime minister would give more to the Palestinians than Barak offered in vain to Arafat. The gaps were too wide, Abbas complained, even as he cited a purported Olmert offer of 97 percent of the West Bank and recognition in principle (denied by Olmert) of a Palestinian "right of return." He preferred, as he told The Washington Post this past May, to bide his time. "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said, in an article headlined "Abbas's Waiting Game." "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality." Well, the waiting is almost over now for Mahmoud Abbas, but there's no "good reality" in store for him. Abbas's tenure as Arafat's successor has proved an unmitigated disaster. He lost the Palestinian parliamentary elections to Hamas in 2006. He lost Gaza physically to Hamas in the coup of 2007. He lost much of Israel in spurning Olmert, and even more of Israel, right now, in leading the calls for the Goldstone-facilitated international prosecution of Israel over Operation Cast Lead. And with quite spectacular ineptitude, he has managed to simultaneously doom himself among the Palestinians over the self-same issue, for the "crime" of initially agreeing not to champion Goldstone's viciously skewed indictment.... Here, now, there are some on the fringes who believe Israel must bite the bullet (to use a particularly apt phrase) and talk directly to Hamas. The Islamists, they argue, constitute the only resolute, credible Palestinian leadership, and it is worth examining whether viable long-term accommodations can be reached with them. But those around Netanyahu disagree. They insist that so long as Hamas avowedly seeks Israel's demise, it must not be legitimized. And they believe, correctly, that Hamas, guided by perceived religious imperative, will never condone Jewish sovereignty. So, they argue, Israel has no choice but to wait, again, for a truly moderate and courageous Palestinian leader to emerge. Not Hamas, that is. But not Abbas either. Next month marks the fifth anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death. Abbas's ineffectuality over those five years -- helpless before Hamas, and hopeless before Israeli governments that were determined to achieve a viable accommodation -- constitutes a tragedy for his people. But it is also a tragedy for our country, governed, unprecedentedly, by a Likud prime minister who has internalized our need to separate from the Palestinians and to work with them toward an independence that does not physically or demographically threaten Israel. However stable his coalition, Netanyahu knows better than to take comfort in the status quo. There is a photograph of Abbas at Arafat's graveside, taken at a second anniversary memorial ceremony on November 11, 2006, and distributed by the PA's press office. It shows the Palestinian leader standing not quite erect, with his feet apart, shoulders slightly slumped, hands loosely at his sides and mouth turned down a little, wearing an expression somewhere between blank and unhappy as he gazes at his predecessor's burial place.... [I]t smacks of nothing so much as ambivalence. Crippling, paralyzing, hopeless ambivalence. ARAB
STATES' CRIMES AGAINST PALESTINIANS: For decades, Arab governments have justified their decision to maintain millions of stateless Palestinians as refugees in squalid camps as a way of pressuring Israel. The refugee problem will be solved, they say, when Israel agrees to let the Palestinians have their own state. Yet after years spent in terrible conditions, not a single Palestinian refugee has been returned to Israel, and a few aging apparatchiks have made it back to the West Bank or Gaza. Instead, failed peace plans and shifting political winds have resulted in a second Palestinian nakba, or catastrophe -- this one at hands of the Arab governments. The fact that the divided Palestinian political leadership is silent about the mistreatment of these refugees by Arab states does not make such behavior any less reprehensible -- or less dangerous. "Marginalized, deprived of basic political and economic rights, trapped in the camps, bereft of realistic prospects, heavily armed and standing atop multiple fault lines," a recent report by the International Crisis Group in Lebanon observed, "the refugee population constitutes a time bomb." After the Persian Gulf War of 1991, some 250,000 Palestinians were chased out of Kuwait and other gulf states to punish the Palestinian political leadership for supporting Saddam Hussein. Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Iraq were similarly dispossessed in the Iraq war. Today, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are most at risk. In 2001, the estimated 250,000 Palestinians then in Lebanon were stripped by parliament of the right to own property or pass on property to their children -- even as they are banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other major professions. Along with this marginalization has come a new and frightening turn toward the radical Pan-Islamic ideology of Al Qaeda in refugee camps like Ain al-Hilweh, where more than 70,000 Palestinians live outside the legal framework of the state.... Even in Jordan, the only Arab nation that has integrated large numbers of refugees as full-fledged citizens, insecurity is growing. Speaking to the Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat, Jordanian Interior Minister Nayef al-Kadi recently suggested that some Palestinians might be stripped of their citizenship to counter a supposed Israeli plan to turn Jordan into Palestine. While Jordanian officials have sought to quell such fears, many of the people we spoke to recently in the Baqa'a refugee camp there claimed they knew someone whose card had been revoked, or whose status had inexplicably been changed. The refusal of most Arab governments to grant basic legal rights to Palestinian residents who are born in and die in their countries, combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities, eerily parallels the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe. According to the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, states "shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of refugees" and "make every effort to expedite naturalization proceedings." After 60 years of failed wars and failed peace, Arab governments should allow Palestinians to keep their national dream alive, while also enjoying the basic freedoms to work, vote and own property. (Judith Miller is an adjunct
fellow at the Manhattan Institute. LET
PALESTINIANS CHALLENGE THEIR LEADERSHIP Can it be that we won't have Mahmoud Abbas to "kick around" much longer? Abbas is fed up -- with Israel, with Hamas, and with the Obama administration for not delivering Binyamin Netanyahu prostrate. Abbas reportedly told President Barack Obama that he would not be a candidate in the next Palestinian elections he's called for on January 24 unless Israel capitulated to his demands. He supposedly told aides: "Let the Palestinian people go to elections. If it wants to elect Hamas, let it. If it wants to elect Fatah, let it. What will be is what will be, that's not my business any more."... Abbas has certainly done little to extricate himself from an admittedly difficult set of circumstances. Egged on by the White House -- which has now apparently reversed course -- he refused to negotiate with Israel absent a settlement freeze everywhere over the Green Line.... Abbas also insists that negotiations pick up from the point where he rejected Ehud Olmert's final, unprecedentedly generous offer. That is not the way of give-and-take. He should have thought harder before walking away from the best offer the Palestinians ever got from an Israeli prime minister. Even if negotiations resumed, Abbas's intransigence would obstruct progress. He insists on an Israeli pullback to the hard-to-defend 1949 Armistice Lines. He says that after a Palestinian state is founded, millions of Palestinians, descendants of the 700,000 original 1948 refugees, should have a right to return to Israel proper. He would insist on creating a militarized state with the power, for example, to invite Iran to set up military bases just a few miles from Tel Aviv. And he has refused to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.... It is simply undeniable: Neither Fatah's crooked, dead hand nor Hamas's firm grasp of belligerent medievalism is going to lay the groundwork for a viable Palestinian state.... One way forward is to let the Palestinian Authority die a natural death and encourage its replacement with a completely new, apolitical and technocratic provisional Palestinian government. Its task, with Europeans playing a trusteeship role, would be political institution-building, socialization toward tolerance, the development of transparent government, and day-to-day administration of Palestinian affairs.... A recent New York Times dispatch from Gaza revealed just how fed up modernizing Palestinian elites are with both Fatah and Hamas -- while pointing out that they had no mechanism for effecting change. A referendum that proposes to replace the Fatah-dominated PA and Gaza's Hamas government with an apolitical provisional regime could at least offer Palestinians a means to choose between more Fatah and Hamas, or something far better. If Abbas is really fed up and ready to go, his departure could presage a revolutionary opportunity. WHAT
TO DO WITH HAMAS? In the two years since it seized power here, the militant Hamas movement has undercut the influence of the Gaza Strip's major clans, brought competing paramilitary groups under its control, put down an uprising by a rival Islamist group, weathered a three-week war with Israel, worked around a strict economic embargo -- and through it all refused a set of international demands that could begin Gaza's rehabilitation. That combination of durability and unwillingness to compromise has created a deep-seated stalemate that has left top Israeli intelligence and political officials perplexed about what to do, and it has posed a steep obstacle for U.S. peace envoy George J. Mitchell.... [H]is eight months of talks about Israeli-Palestinian peace...have been conducted, in effect, with only one half of the Palestinian political leadership. A separate Egyptian effort aims to reconcile Hamas and the pro-U.S., West Bank-based government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, create a joint security force and pave the way for elections next year that could bring Palestinian society under a single political leadership. But Palestinian, Israeli and international diplomats and analysts give the process only a slim chance of success and see little sign that Hamas is ready to trade its clear control of the Gaza Strip for a seat at the negotiating table. Barack Obama's election as U.S. president and his June speech in Cairo raised expectations among Hamas officials of a dialogue with the United States, but "people are starting to lose hope. There was a glimmer, but it is fading away," said Hamas deputy foreign minister Ahmed Yousef, adding that Mitchell's work has produced "no solution and no breakthrough."... How, when and whether Hamas might tip back toward fighting is uncertain. When diplomats, outside negotiators and others ask for ideas about how to cope with Hamas in the long term, [an] Israeli official said, the answer is: "We don't know. Good luck." Hamas, which was founded as an Islamist alternative to the Palestine Liberation Organization and whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, is considered a terrorist group by the United States for its sponsorship of suicide attacks and the launching of thousands of missiles and mortar shells from Gaza into Israel. The group draws financial and material support from Iran and Syria. Hamas says its attacks on Israel are defensive and a legitimate tactic in Palestinian efforts to establish a homeland.... [T]here has been a standing offer from the United States and other nations to reopen talks with Hamas if the group meets certain conditions, including a renunciation of violence, adherence to prior agreements made on behalf of the Palestinians and a recognition of Israel. According to officials from Hamas and analysts of the group, those conditions are unlikely to be accepted, cutting as they do to the core of the group's ideology and strategy. Just as there is no sense that the language of Hamas leaders has come close to meeting those requirements, despite talk of a possible compromise, there has been no obvious effort by Mitchell's team to try to reshape the conditions. "Nobody has really grabbed hold of the issue of what we do with Hamas," one Western diplomat said.... The assumption of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is that deteriorated conditions in Gaza will undercut Hamas's popularity, particularly as people learn of improvements in the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank. Gazans are isolated in a subsistence economy with large-scale unemployment. Membership in Hamas is considered a prerequisite for public jobs. The group's armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, proved ineffectual in last winter's Gaza war, unable to either protect the population or inflict enough Israeli casualties to score a propaganda victory. Disenchanted residents speak of "cutting off their thumb" -- a reference to the ink applied on voters' fingers to indicate they had cast ballots in the 2006 elections, in which Hamas trounced Abbas's Fatah party. Still, there is little expectation that any sort of popular uprising will challenge Hamas, and recent events hint at why the group is biding its time. "Yes, people are not satisfied because of the division. The economic situation is bad. They are looking for change," said Yousef, the Hamas official. But "they also understand why we are suffering."... It has been long-standing Hamas policy to consider a long-term ceasefire with Israel in return for establishment of a Palestinian state on the Gaza and West Bank land occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. But that "is only a way to kick the occupation out," Taha said. "It is a staged or phased solution, which is the 1967 borders, and a strategic objective to bring back all the territory occupied in 1948," when the state of Israel was created. "If the international community agrees to a full state on the borders of '67, then we will decide what to say at that point," he said. "It is still early." Please see our "Picks of the Week" for a lecture by Danny Ayalon and pieces by Jonathan Rosemblum, Yossi Alpher, and Ron Pundak on Israeli-Palestinian relations. Volume IX, No. 2,205 • Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Weekly Quotes "What the prime minister has offered...a restraint on the policy of settlements, which he has just described, no new starts, for example, is unprecedented in the context of prior negotiations."-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the issue of the West Bank settlements freeze and Washington's position that the settlement freeze has "never been a precondition, it has always been an issue within the negotiations [with the Palestinian Authority]." In the face of harsh Arab criticism over her comments, Clinton backpedalled, stating at a meeting with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak that "we do not accept the legitimacy of settlement activity. Ending all settlement activity...would be preferable...we would like to see everything ended forever." (Jerusalem Post, Nov. 2; Ha'aretz, Nov. 4) "The fact that the United States and Israel are harnessing the best minds and soldiers to find solutions to these problems is new, just like as the threat is new. My impression is that we have started on the right foot and I hope for both Israel and the US that the cooperation continues successfully."-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting a joint military exercise between IDF, and U.S. troops at an air base in central Israel, welcoming the cooperation and assistance of the United States. (Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson, Nov. 3) "The defense establishment will not allow such behaviour. The IDF must not be involved in political controversy, including the evacuation of settlements."-Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, during a meeting of the Knesset plenum, chastising the soldiers who recently protested the IDF's role in evacuating illegal outposts in Samaria. The soldiers were sentenced to 20 days in military prison and were permanently expelled from their division. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 28) "UNIFIL doesn't have means to go into the villages. They don't look for arms aggressively. They are a supervising force carrying out passive enforcement. If an incident occurs on the ground and Hizbullah seals off the area for four to five hours, UNIFIL will wait before moving in."-Yoram Schweitzer, Director of Tel Aviv University's National Security Studies Program on Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict commenting on the UN's peacekeeping effort in southern Lebanon, and criticizing its futile performance in enforcing UN Resolution 1701 banning Hizbullah from maintaining weapons. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 29) "What distinguishes one terrorist from another? Answer: the reaction of their communities. There's a world of difference between the settler milieu Teitel called home, and the society that spawned Dwayat, Tir and Dhein."-Jerusalem Post Editors, commenting on the recent reports of the arrest of Ya'acov Teitel, setting him apart from the Palestinian terrorists who were venerated by their communities for their attacks in Israel. (Jerusalem Post, Nov. 2) "Any person of conscience in Israel must rise up in indignation against such acts, as well as against any despicable attempt to use them to gain political capital by blaming an entire community that is not connected-and is in fact vehemently opposed-to such actions."-Chairman of the Yesha Council of Settlements Danny Dayan, in a statement condemning the terrorist acts of Yaakov Teitel and criticizing his radical right-wing violence as unrepresentative of most settlers. (Ha'aretz, Nov. 2) "We're going to deal with the [Afghan] government that is there and obviously there are issues we need to discuss, such as reducing the high level of corruption there."-Senior Obama Administration advisor David Axelrod, on Face the Nation, claiming that the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has not been complicated by the withdrawal of Dr. Abdullah Abdullah from the proposed run-off election with incumbent Pres. Hamid Karzai. (Reuters, Nov. 1) "Let's not let perfection become the enemy of progress. Given Afghanistan's brutal history, two elections in eight years-even with the taint of corruption-is a forward step. And the allies need the U.S. surge to secure the extraordinary effort and underreported success of our military and civilian volunteers so far. All the more troubling then that, at this crucial moment, we have some calling for Canada to cut and run-to retreat.... [R]etreat would mean a much more costly and constantly expanding frontline here at home. I am not only embarrassed but angry with such ill-considered rhetoric. Soldiers have spilled blood for the cause we said we believed in when we sent them into battle. Let's remember we are in Afghanistan because we chose to be there. We responded to the attacks of 9/11 that killed our citizens, and joined our allies in the American-led Operation Enduring Freedom. And it is simply not good enough to claim that we can somehow 'support our troops,' but not the mission."-Canadian Senator Pamela Wallin, in an opinion for the National Post, affirming Canada's ongoing role in Afghanistan and rebuking dissenters for hurting our troops' progress. (National Post, Nov. 2) "I suspect the Iranians. I think we have to realize what is going on here. The demand of the U.S. and the European countries, for years, was not just that Iran let in inspectors to their installations, but that Iran immediately stop the uranium enrichment. This agreement, however, permits Iran to continue to enrich uranium on a low level."-former Mossad director Danny Yatom, in a statement on Israel Radio, expressing his concerns about the UN-brokered uranium enrichment deal for Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, for the meantime, endorsed American diplomatic efforts. (New York Times, Oct. 31) "On the day after election day, certain people described this great election as 'a lie without proof': is that a minor offense?"-Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warning the Iranian Reformist opposition in a public meeting on October 28 with university students and instructors in Tehran. Khamenei added that questioning the June vote is the "biggest crime." It is unknown if this marks the beginning of a harsher policy against the opposition movement in Iran. (Associated Press, Oct. 28) "This is not a reverse honor-killing-it's martyrdom. It's a ticket for heaven for her, to clear her books. The only exception that's made for a wife or daughter to disobey her husband or father is if he forces her to do something that's un-Islamic. This is a message to other Muslims: 'This man is defying God. What am I supposed to do?'"-Islamic apostate and human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, commenting on Rabia Sarwar, the-37-year old Pakistani immigrant to the U.S. who allegedly attempted to slit her husband's throat because he encouraged her to drink alcohol, eat pork and wear revealing clothing. Hirsi Ali warns that the threat is greater than most Americans know: "The kind of American Muslim you're seeing now is changing-not because America is changing, but because the world is. Someone from Pakistan is coming here not for freedom, but to escape a horrible situation. [Once here], they are being radicalized." (New York Post, Nov. 1) "Today, at the United Nations General Assembly, Canada will table the toughest resolution on the human rights situation in Iran. For the first time, under this government, we are calling on the investigators to focus on Iran's appalling human rights record."-Canadian Foreign Affairs minister Lawrence Cannon, announcing in Parliament that Canada deposited a draft resolution at the UN that criticizes UN human rights investigators. The draft resolution calls on investigators of extra-judicial executions, torture, free speech suppression, persecution of human rights activists, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances to focus on Iran. It notes that Iran has "not fulfilled any requests from [UN human rights investigators] to visit the country in four years." (National Post, Oct. 30) Short Takes ISRAELI COMMANDOS SEIZE HEZBOLLAH-BOUND ARMS-(Jerusalem) Israeli naval commandos seized an Iranian vessel carrying arms intended for Hezbollah and Syria in a pre-dawn raid off the coast of Cyprus this morning. Hundreds of tons of weaponry were disguised as humanitarian aid and commercial goods aboard the Francop, which picked up the cargo in Diametta, Egypt. The Francop has been taken to the Israel port of Ashdod for further inspection. Israeli defence officials say that they have uncovered documents pointing to Iran as the source of the shipping containers in which the weapons were found. (Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 4) IDF: HAMAS ROCKETS CAN NOW REACH TEL AVIV-(Jerusalem) According to Maj. General Amos Yadlin, head of IDF intelligence, Hamas has successfully test-fired a rocket with a 60 km range, capable of bombarding Tel Aviv. The rocket was fired into the Mediterranean Sea and recovered by the IDF. Hamas has fired 250 missiles and mortars into Israel since the end of Operation Cast Lead earlier this year; Yadlin testified that the terror group had, in order to rebuild its forces and consolidate its control of civil society in Gaza, not seriously escalated tensions with Israel. (Jerusalem Post, Washington Post, Nov. 3) JEWISH TERRORIST ARRESTED IN ISRAEL-(Jerusalem) Yaakov Teitel, of the West Bank town of Shvut Rachel, was arrested three weeks ago on suspicion of murder and a string of murder plots. A gag order was placed on the media by the Shin Bet immediately following the arrest, and Teitel was not allowed legal council for two weeks. According to police, Teitel has confessed to the murder of two Palestinians, the maiming of a Messianic Jewish child, and the attempted murder of leftist professor Ze'ev Sternhell. Teitel admitted to coming to Israel to carry out attacks against Palestinians as revenge for suicide bombings. (Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz, Nov. 1) IRANIAN LAWMAKERS REJECT NUCLEAR DEAL-(Teheran) The UN-brokered plan to ship most of Iran's stockpile of uranium to Russia for enrichment has been rejected by senior Iranian lawmakers of the Iranian National Security Committee. Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Iranian NSC, was quoted on the government INSA news agency, saying that "We are totally opposed to the proposal... We can't trust the West." Iran wants to buy nuclear fuel first before shipping its uranium stocks abroad. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 30) PROTESTERS CLASH WITH IRANIAN POLICE-(Teheran) Police clashed with supporters of Reformist leader Mirhossein Mousavi in Teheran on the 30-year anniversary of the storming of the U.S. embassy. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards had warned the Reformists not to try to hijack the annual anti-U.S. rally. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Guards, already a dominant economic, military and political power, will extend its influence by launching a news agency modeled after the Associated Press and BBC. Analysts say that the Guards aim to counter reports from Reformist and foreign media sources. (Wall Street Journal, Nov. 4) NORTH KOREA RAISES STAKES IN NUCLEAR THREAT-North Korea announced that it has completed reprocessing thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods to extract plutonium to bolster its atomic stockpile. This comes after North Korea's Foreign Ministry pressured Washington to accept its demand for direct nuclear talks. According to a dispatch from the North's official Korean Central News Agency, the country finished reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods, which will yield enough plutonium for at least one atomic bomb. The North is believed to already be in possession of enough plutonium to make at least six nuclear weapons. (Jerusalem Post, Nov. 3) IDF EXECUTES LARGEST-EVER TERROR ATTACK SIMULATION-(Jerusalem) The Israeli Home Front Command performed a simulation of a multiple casualty terror attack on Tuesday, the largest drill of its kind to ever take place in Israel. The exercise simulated a massive explosion in a mall in Haifa, which would cause around 600 casualties. (Ha'aretz, Nov. 3) SAUDI POLICE DISCOVER AL-QAEDA WEAPONS CACHE-(Riyadh) Saudi authorities have discovered large quantities of weapons, belonging to the al-Qaeda terror network, in the capital city of Riyadh. Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said the discovery included 281 assault rifles and 51 ammunition boxes, found buried in a vacant house in the capital. He added that police learned about the cache after investigating a group of al-Qaida suspects arrested in August. (Washington Post, Nov. 2) YORK FACULTY MEMBERS PAY STUDENTS' $1000 FINE-(Toronto) Forty faculty members at York University in Toronto contributed personal funds to defray a $1,000 fine issued to Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) last month. SAIA was fined for staging an illegal and violent demonstration on campus last February, which led to Jewish students barricading themselves inside Hillel office, because of a mob of anti-Israel students surrounding the premises. The group Concerned Faculty For Palestinian Human Rights decided to pay SAIA's fine because they claim it is "part of a larger pattern of repression of free speech in defence of Palestinian human rights." (Jewish Tribune, Oct. 22) SYNAGOGUE SHOOTING IN LOS ANGELES-(Los Angeles) A gunman shot and wounded two men in the parking garage of a North Hollywood synagogue early Oct. 29. Police initially listed the shooting as a hate crime, and Jewish schools and temples were put on alert in case it was not an isolated attack. But police are now looking into the possibility that it was related to a business or personal dispute. They said one victim may have been the target and the other was shot because he witnessed the attack. Maor Ben-Nissan, 53, and Allen Lasry were both shot in the legs. They were rushed to a hospital and underwent surgery, and were reported in good condition. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 29; Los Angeles Times, Oct. 30; JTA, Nov. 1) WAQF QUIETLY PLEASED AT SALAH`S ARREST-(Jerusalem) Heads of the Waqf, the Muslim religious authorities that supervise the Temple Mount, have quietly expressed their satisfaction with the Israeli authorities' recent measures against Sheikh Raed Salah and Hatem Abdel Qader. Salah, leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, and Abdel Qader, a top Fatah operative, have each been arrested by the Jerusalem Police for their role in instigating the latest wave of violent protests at the Temple Mount. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 29) TRIAL OPENS FOR 88-YEAR OLD FORMER NAZI-(Aachen) Decades after he confessed to shooting three Dutch civilians, a former Nazi death squad member went on trial Oct. 28 for their killings in 1944. Heinrich Boere, 88, was able to evade prosecution for years, first by fleeing the Netherlands and then because German courts ruled he could not be extradited. He was sixth on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most-wanted list. (New York Times, Oct. 29) SUICIDE BOMBING KILLS 35 IN PAKISTAN-(Islamabad) A suicide bomber killed at least 35 people and injured dozens of others near a government bank in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Monday. The attack came as the Pakistani army pressed an offensive against Taliban terrorists in a lawless tribal region bordering Afghanistan. Hours later, another bomb exploded in the eastern city of Lahore as police were inspecting a vehicle at a checkpoint. Two suspected suicide bombers in the vehicle were killed and 15 people were wounded. (Washington Post, Nov. 2) PAKISTAN FINDS 9/11 DOCUMENTS-(Lahore) Pakistani forces pushing toward a lair of hard-core Taliban fighters found documents last week linked to a member of the Hamburg cell of Al Qaeda that is believed to have planned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Soldiers found a German passport belonging to Said Bahaji-a German citizen and alleged associate of Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers. His presence in Pakistan is a clear indication that al-Qaeda members have taken refuge here, as the United States has maintained. (New York Times, Oct. 30) Volume IX, No. 2,204 • Tuesday, November 3, 2009
WHY DOES THE US INSIST ON PLAYING
IRAN'S GAME? The great experiment of engaging Iran seems to be over but the Obama administration refuses to admit it. This shouldn't come as a surprise. As the Iranian regime's record shows, it stalls, maneuvers, gives vague promises and then doesn't deliver, but only after it's taken your concessions. Do you know how many years the talks with Iran have gone on without yielding fruit and letting Teheran develop nuclear weapons every day? Answer: Seven. Do you know when the "deadline" originally was for Iran to stop its nuclear program "or else"? Answer: Approximately September 2007. But the Obama administration doesn't want to admit that the new Iranian counteroffer is unacceptable because it would have to give up its dreams of a deal and actually do something in response.... The issue concerns Iran 's response to a proposal that it would transfer two-thirds of its enriched uranium outside the country to make into a special non-weapons material that can only be used for medical purposes. Of course, even the deal offered to Iran is not so great from the standpoint of those likely to be the targets of Iranian weapons or enhanced international influence for Teheran if it possesses nuclear arms. For example, "neutralized" uranium can be changed back into weapons-usable uranium in about four months or so. Moreover, Iran 's concealed enriched uranium could still be used to build nuclear weapons. After interviewing officials, the Financial Times reports that the Europeans are ready to reject Iran's demands now as "unacceptable" but the United States is, "more willing to show patience than either Britain [or] France." Why is the US government so eager to keep playing Teheran's game? Here are two answers: · President Barack Obama's worldview insists that all problems are resolvable by talking and making concessions. He also fears confrontation. · The desire to keep Russia on board. But we know Russia won't support sanctions and serious pressure on Iran . Moscow wants America to fail internationally and views Iran as an ally. So America's policy is being held hostage by a president with no experience and little understanding of international affairs, a set of ideas making failure inevitable, trying to please a country which is an ally of the adversary and misestimating a dictatorial regime with boundless ambitions and tremendous self-confidence.... The US government fallback position once Iran gets nuclear weapons, "containment," also poses significant problems. A typical explication comes from Gen. John Abizaid who commanded US forces in the region between 2003 and 2007: "The historical evidence would suggest that Iran is not a suicide state. So it's my military belief that Iran can be deterred." There are three problems with this overall strategy. First, containment requires high levels of US credibility. That means Iran 's regime must believe that aggression will bring US retaliation up to using nuclear weapons itself. Will President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime tremble before Obama? Equally important, Arab states must believe very firmly that the US is a reliable protector. Can they think this of Obama's administration?... Second, while on balance it seems Iran won't commit suicide, would you bet your life on it? This regime is the closest thing to a non-rational state you're going to see. And suppose Iran's rulers believe they have a way around the "suicide" problem by handing weapons to a "deniable" terrorist group or just using them for blackmail, or if a faction within the regime is willing to take greater risks than the consensus in Teheran?... Remember that the nuclear weapons will be controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most fanatical elements and those who work with terrorist groups. And then there's Iran 's minister of defense, a wanted terrorist in his own right. Third, and perhaps ultimately most important, Iran 's increased power in having nuclear weapons will not consist merely of firing them off. Aside from far higher levels of Arab and European appeasement will be the huge leap in the appeal of a seemingly mighty Iran and victorious Islamism to millions of Muslims who will join or support radical Islamist groups. Instability in the Arab world and terrorism in Europe can be expected to skyrocket as a result. To pretend then that Iran 's possession of nuclear weapons will be neutralized by US guarantees is a fantasy. That's why it is so important to stop Iran from ever obtaining nuclear weapons. If this does not happen, as appears likely, the entire strategic balance will change against Western interests. Remember that the original containment strategy was developed by the US based on the premise that the USSR would dominate an entire region: Eastern Europe . In the late 1940s there wasn't a choice. Today, there still is. But nothing can even begin to happen until the US concludes that the Iranian regime has just shown that it doesn't want any real deal that precludes it from becoming a nuclear power. THE
NUCLEAR FUEL DEAL WITH IRAN: The emerging nuclear fuel deal between the US, Russia, France, and Iran-whether it is actually implemented or not-is shaping up as another point Iran has scored to fend off international efforts that would cease its uranium enrichment activities. Although this agreement would deplete the Iranian stocks of low enriched uranium (LEU), it would also provide Iran with fresh nuclear fuel for its nuclear research reactor. Moreover, Iran has made it absolutely clear that it has no intention of giving up either its present capabilities or its nuclear activities in Natanz, Arak, and any other facility it may have in return for this deal. The facts are these: the Tehran Nuclear Research Center contains a small aging nuclear research reactor, fueled by 20 percent enriched uranium. This reactor is used for nuclear research, particularly the production of isotopes for medical and industrial uses. Yet despite being under IAEA safeguards, the reactor has also been used in the past for weapons-related research-the production of minute quantities of plutonium. The fuel for this reactor is running low, and Iran has been at a loss how to procure a fresh supply, doubting whether anyone would agree to re-supply Iran in light of the ongoing nuclear crisis. Several months ago Iran turned to the IAEA for help. Advised of this situation, the US drafted and then discussed the contours of a deal with Russia, France, and Iran prior to the P5+1 meeting that convened on October 1, 2009 in Geneva. From the perspective of the P5+1, the express purpose of the meeting was to bring about the suspension of all uranium enrichment activities in Iran , to be followed by a solution to the broader issue of nuclear weapons development. During the meeting, however, the idea of Iran devoting a portion of its LEU in order to produce fuel for its reactor was discussed: namely, enriching Iran 's existing LEU to 20 percent in Russia , and then producing the specialized fuel rods for the reactor in France . By doing so, Iran 's stocks of LEU would be depleted by an estimated 75 percent. This would reduce the available stocks to much less than is needed for the production of one nuclear explosive device.... Although not all details of the agreement are public, if Iran continues its uranium enrichment activities (as it avows it will), it would be able to replenish its LEU stocks in less than a year. It would be able to achieve the quantity needed for the further enrichment to one nuclear core within far less of that time, since it will have accumulated more than that quantity before the amount needed for the reactor fuel is actually shipped out (this would reportedly occur in mid-January 2010). What then is the US trying to achieve with this deal? The deal will obviously not in itself stop Iran 's nuclear program, and it even implicitly legitimizes Iran 's uranium enrichment activities, because the subject of the deal is uranium that was enriched by Iran in direct violation of five UN Security Council Resolutions. Moreover, the deal was not conceived as part of a grand US strategy for dealing with Iran 's nuclear ambitions, but was rather the outgrowth of the specific Iranian request to the IAEA.... When Obama learned of Iran 's request for more reactor fuel, he saw an opportunity to test Iranian intentions while significantly reducing Iran 's stockpile of LEU.... How can the proposed deal be a test of Iran 's intentions? The logic is most likely that if Iran is willing to submit a good portion of its LEU stockpile for peaceful purposes, this indicates that its intentions are probably peaceful, or at least not immediately military. Conversely, if Iran does not agree to the deal, this provides a strong indication that its intentions are not entirely peaceful: namely, that it is saving the enriched uranium for something else. This test, however, is flawed.... Even if Iran ultimately agrees to the deal, this by no means "proves" that its intentions are peaceful, because it may calculate that it can replenish the stocks in Natanz relatively quickly and perhaps use other secret facilities for this purpose as well. Moreover, it is working on the plutonium route in Arak . Similarly, if Iran does not agree to the draft, this in itself would not be "proof" that its intentions are necessarily military. The second flaw is the very need to test Iran 's intentions. In fact, there are enough indications already that Iran 's intentions are not peaceful. One needs to look no further than the IAEA itself-not at the positions of its director-general, ElBaradei, rather those of his deputy, Olli Heinonen. Heinonen indicated already in February 2008 that the IAEA possesses evidence that is not consistent with any explanation other than that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability. The existence of the second enrichment plant at Qom also points in this direction. As such, these tests of Iran 's intentions add nothing, but more problematic, they can be dangerous.... The international community cannot afford to allow this deal to distract it from the broader goal that it has set for itself, which is to stop Iran from advancing toward nuclear weapons.... [I]f Iran rejects the deal, the international community will be left in an awkward position, but at least its determination to stop Iran will likely remain strong. IRAN...DECEPTION
IN QOM After the Iranian regime revealed that it was building new nuclear facilities in Iran , the international community entered a new, more complex chapter in dealing with the Tehran regime. The Iranian technique of dissimulation [Taqqiya] reached unprecedented levels when Tehran embarked upon deceiving the international community and building a new nuclear facility on a military base in Qom. Of course, this is of clear significance, as it shows the extent to which Tehran exploits religion.... This development means that it is now difficult to believe the Iranian regime, or trust its intentions whether on the international or regional level. The lack of credibility of the Iranian regime means that the Israelis now have a better chance at influencing America or Western states. From day one Israel has been saying that negotiating with Tehran is nothing but a waste of time and this is what some Western leaders said in their speeches [in September during the G20 summit]. As a result, we are facing dangerous escalation of the Iranian nuclear file and this means anything could happen, including a military strike. The danger, and what's important here regarding Iranian deception this time, is that the new nuclear facility is located in Qom, and as mentioned before, this will have serious implications, as this means that the Iranian regime wants to exploit the [religious] status of that city amongst members of the Shia sect. If any military strike is carried out against Iranian nuclear facilities by Israel or anybody else for that matter then that would add a religious dimension to the attack. From here we are able to understand the extent to which Iran is exercising sectarian mobilization in our region, the Arab world and the Islamic world as a whole, as it seeks to play on the religious dimension and political Shiafication. This means that Tehran is trying to exploit [religious] sentiment and use it for its personal battle to control the region. This is not only on the basis of a religious logic but also because of a political motive that it is exploiting to harm Arab and Islamic countries. The new Iranian nuclear facility is further evidence that it is difficult to trust the Iranian regime. Moreover, it is yet another reminder to regional states of the danger of the Iranian project in its entirety and the need for caution with regards to the aspirations and actions of Iran in the region. WHEN
NO MEANS NO I once overhead a guy try to make a date over the phone. His end of the conversation went roughly as follows: "How about Friday?" (Pause.) "Not Friday? Because I'm free most of the weekend." (Pause.) "Not this weekend? What about next Saturday?" (Pause.) "Are you free at all next week?" (Long pause.) "Well, are you ever free?" Apparently she was not, at least as far as he was concerned. Now it's the turn of the Obama administration to play the guy who won't take a hint. And it falls to the Islamic Republic of Iran to be the girl who's hard-actually, impossible-to get.... "The key issue is that Iran does not agree to export its lightly enriched uranium," an unnamed senior European official told the New York Times. "That's not a minor detail. That's the whole point of the deal." Perhaps this is merely some tactical posturing by Iran ; as of this writing, its foreign minister hasn't yet categorically ruled a deal out. Then again, it's probably worth rehashing the history of the West's nuclear negotiations with Tehran to see where things are likely to go from here. In October 2003, the European diplomatic troika of France , Germany and Britain extracted a promise from Iran to suspend most of its nuclear work and promise "full transparency" in its dealings with the International Atomic Energy Agency. In exchange, the EU3 offered a menu of commercial and technological incentives.... It soon became apparent that Iran had no intention of becoming transparent, as repeated IAEA reports made abundantly clear. As for the idea that Iran could be made to abandon its nuclear ambitions, then-Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was unequivocal: "We won't accept any new obligations. Iran has a high technical capability and has to be recognized by the international community as a member of the nuclear club," he said. "This is an irreversible path." So there was the first Iranian "No." In November 2004, however, Tehran made a second deal with the EU3, this time with an even sweeter package of incentives for Iran . The so-called Paris Agreement lasted a few months, until Iran again spurned the Europeans. "Definitely we can't stop our nuclear program and won't stop it," former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani said in March 2005-a second resounding "No." Still, the wheels of diplomacy kept spinning, thanks to a Russian offer to enrich Iran 's uranium for it. The Iranians "studied" the proposal and even reached what an Iranian diplomat called a "basic agreement" with Moscow . But again they turned it down.... Call that the third "No." Four months later, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Iran had successfully enriched uranium. Over the course of the next two years the Security Council approved four successive resolutions demanding that Iran cease enriching and imposing some mild sanctions. Ahmadinejad replied by insisting that all the Security Council resolutions in the world couldn't do a "damn thing" to stop Iran from developing its nuclear programs. That would be the fourth and clearest "No." Yet even as Tehran 's rejections piled up, a view developed that all would be well if only the U.S. would drop the harsh rhetoric and meet with the Iranians face-to-face. So President Obama began making one overture after another to Iran , including a videotaped message praising its "great civilization." Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei replied that Mr. Obama had "insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day." Now American negotiators are dealing directly with their Iranian counterparts, which is just fine with Ahmadinejad. "As long as this government is in power, it will not retreat one iota on the undeniable rights of the Iranian nation," he said last week. "A few years ago, they said we had to completely stop all our nuclear activities. Now look where we are today." It's hard to deny the truth of that statement. It's also hard to deny that for all of Iran 's stalling and cheating, the regime has been crystal clear about where it means to go. It bespeaks a degree of self-respect-the kind that tends to grow stronger the more the opposite party abases itself. Here's hoping someone in the administration can explain to her colleagues that, in matters of diplomacy no less than in matters of the heart, No means nothing else but No. Please see our "Picks of the Week" for analyses of a nuclear Iran 's effects on the region by Michael Slackman and Larry Franklin. Volume IX, No. 2,203 • Monday, November 2, 2009
THE RETURN OF ISRAEL'S EXISTENTIAL
DREAD The postcard from the Home Front Command that recently arrived in my mailbox looks like an ad from the Ministry of Tourism. A map of Israel is divided by color into six regions, each symbolized by an upbeat drawing: a smiling camel in the Negev desert, a skier in the Golan Heights. In fact, each region signifies the amount of time residents will have to seek shelter from an impending missile attack. If you live along the Gaza border, you have 15 seconds after the siren sounds. Jerusalemites get a full three minutes. But as the regions move farther north, the time drops again, until finally, along the Lebanese and Syrian borders, the color red designates "immediate entry into a shelter." In other words, if you're not already inside a shelter don't bother looking for one. The invisible but all-pervasive presence on that cheerful map of existential dread is Iran. If Israel were to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, Tehran's two terrorist allies on our borders -- Hezbollah and Hamas -- would almost certainly renew attacks against the Israeli home front. And Tel Aviv would be hit by Iranian long-range missiles. On the other hand, if Israel refrains from attacking Iran and international efforts to stop its nuclearization fail, the results along our border would likely be even more catastrophic. Hezbollah and Hamas would be emboldened politically and psychologically. The threat of a nuclear attack on Tel Aviv would become a permanent part of Israeli reality. This would do incalculable damage to Israel's sense of security. Given these dreadful options, one might assume that the Israeli public would respond with relief to reports that Iran is now considering the International Atomic Energy Agency's proposal to transfer 70% of its known, low-enriched uranium to Russia for treatment that would seriously reduce its potential for military application. In fact, Israelis from the right and the left have reacted with heightened anxiety. "Kosher Uranium," read the mocking headline of Israel's largest daily, Yediot Aharonot. Media commentators noted that easing world pressure on Iran will simply enable it to cheat more easily. If Iranian leaders are prepared to sign an agreement, Israelis argue, that's because they know something the rest of us don't. In the last few years, Israelis have been asking themselves two questions with increasing urgency: Should we attack Iran if all other options fail? And can we inflict sufficient damage to justify the consequences? As sanctions efforts faltered, most Israelis came to answer the first question affirmatively. A key moment in coalescing that resolve occurred in December 2006, when the Iranian regime sponsored an "International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust," a two day meeting of Holocaust deniers. For Israelis, that event ended the debate over whether a nuclear Iran could be deterred by the threat of counter-force. A regime that assembles the world's crackpots to deny the most documented atrocity in history -- at the very moment it is trying to fend off sanctions and convince the international community of its sanity -- may well be immune to rational self-interest. Opinion here has been divided about the ability of an Israeli strike to significantly delay Iran's nuclear program. But Israelis have dealt with their doubts by resurrecting a phrase from the country's early years: Ein breira, there's no choice. Besides, as one leading Israeli security official who has been involved in the Iranian issue for many years put it to me, "Technical problems have technical solutions." Israelis tend to trust their strategic planners to find those solutions. In the past few months, Israelis have begun asking themselves a new question: Has the Obama administration's engagement with Iran effectively ended the possibility of a military strike? Few Israelis took seriously the recent call by former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to shoot down Israeli planes if they take off for Iran. But American attempts to reassure the Israeli public of its commitment to Israel's security have largely backfired. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent threat to "obliterate" Iran if it launched a nuclear attack against Israel only reinforced Israeli fears that the U.S. would prefer to contain a nuclear Iran rather than pre-empt it militarily.... A recent cartoon in the newspaper Ma'ariv showed a drawing of a sukkah, the booth covered with palm branches that Jews build for the autumn festival of Tabernacles. A voice from inside the booth asked, "Will these palm branches protect us from Iranian missiles?" Israelis still believe in their ability to protect themselves -- and many believe too in the divine protection that is said to hover over the fragile booths. Both are expressions of faith from a people that fear they may once again face the unthinkable alone. (Yossi Klein Halevi is
a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies INTERVIEW
WITH CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER In a SPIEGEL interview, Charles Krauthammer, the leading voice of America's conservative intellectuals, discusses Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, the president's failures and the state of the United Nations and the international community. SPIEGEL: Mr. Krauthammer, did the Nobel Commitee in Oslo honor or doom the Obama presidency by awarding him the Peace Prize? Charles Krauthammer: It is so comical. Absurd. Any prize that goes to Kellogg and Briand, Le Duc Tho and Arafat, and Rigoberta Menchú, and ends up with Obama, tells you all you need to know. For Obama it's not very good because it reaffirms the stereotypes about him as the empty celebrity. SPIEGEL: Why does it? Krauthammer: He is a man of perpetual promise. There used to be a cruel joke that said Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be; Obama is the Brazil of today's politicians. He has obviously achieved nothing. And in the American context, to be the hero of five Norwegian leftists, is not exactly politically positive.... SPIEGEL: Should he have turned down the prize? Krauthammer: He would never turn that down. The presidency is all about him. Just think about the speech he gave in Berlin. There is something so preposterous about a presidential candidate speaking in Berlin. And it was replete with all these universalist clichés, which is basically what he's been giving us for nine months. SPIEGEL: Why do Europeans react so positively to him? Krauthammer: Because Europe, for very understandable reasons, has been chaffing for 60 years under the protection, but also the subtle or not so subtle domination of America. Europeans like to see the big guy cut down to size, it's a natural reaction. You know, Europe ran the world for 400 or 500 years until the civilizational suicide of the two World Wars. And then America emerged as the world hegemon, with no competition and unchallenged. The irony is America is the only hegemonic power that never sought hegemony, unlike, for example, Napoleonic France.... Of course Europeans like to see the hegemon diminished, and Obama is the perfect man to do that.... Look at Obama's speech at the UN General Assembly: "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation." Take the first half of that sentence: No nation can dominate another. There is no eight year old who would say that -- it's so absurd. And the second half? That is adolescent utopianism. Obama talks in platitudes, but offers a vision to the world of America diminished or constrained, and willing to share leadership in a way that no other presidency and no other great power would. Could you imagine if the Russians were hegemonic, or the Chinese, or the Germans -- that they would speak like this?... SPIEGEL: Do you really believe that Obama deliberately wants to weaken the US? Krauthammer: The liberal vision of America is that it should be less arrogant, less unilateral, more internationalist. In Obama's view, America would subsume itself under a fuzzy internationalism in which the international community, which I think is a fiction, governs itself through the UN. SPIEGEL: A nightmare? Krauthammer: Worse than that: an absurdity. I can't even imagine serious people would believe it, but I think Obama does. There is a way America will decline -- if we choose first to wreck our economy and then to constrain our freedom of action through subordinating ourselves to international institutions which are 90 percent worthless and 10 percent harmful. SPIEGEL: And there is not even 1 percent that is constructive? Krauthammer: No. The UN is worse than disaster. The UN creates conflicts. Look at the disgraceful UN Human Rights Council: It transmits norms which are harmful, anti-liberty, and anti-Semitic among other things. The world would be better off in its absence. SPIEGEL: And Obama is, in your eyes, ... Krauthammer: He's becoming ordinary. In the course of his presidency, Obama has gone from an almost magical charismatic figure to an ordinary politician. Ordinary. Average. His approval ratings are roughly equal to what the last five presidents' were at the same time in their first term.... SPIEGEL: What major mistakes has Obama made? Krauthammer: I don't know whether I should call it a mistake, but it turns out he is a left-liberal, not center-right the way Bill Clinton was. The analogy I give is that in America we play the game between the 40-yard lines, in Europe you go all the way from goal line to goal line. You have communist parties, you have fascist parties, we don't have that, we have very centrist parties. So Obama wants to push us to the 30-yard line, which for America is pretty far.... All this would move America toward a social democratic European-style state. It is outside of the norm of America.... SPIEGEL: So he didn't see the massive resistance coming? Krauthammer: Obama misread his mandate. He was elected six weeks after a financial collapse unlike any seen in 60 years; after eight years of a presidency which had tired the country; in the middle of two wars that made the country opposed to the Republican government that involved us in the wars; and against a completely inept opponent, John McCain. Nevertheless, Obama still only won by 7 points. But he thought it was a great sweeping mandate and he could implement his social democratic agenda.... |
and Before and After by Gisela Tamlerz