Jesse Washington
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sekou Jackson is used to the questions: Why does he need to leave a work meeting to pray? Don't black Muslims convert to Islam in jail? Why would you even want to be Muslim? "It's kind of a double whammy to be African-American and Muslim," said Mr. Jackson, who studies the Navy at the National Academy of Science in Washington. "You're going to be judged."
Mr. Jackson's struggle may have gotten harder when the FBI on Wednesday raided a Detroit-area warehouse used by a Muslim group. The FBI said the group's leader preached hate against the government, trafficked in stolen goods and belonged to a radical group that wants to establish a Muslim state in America. The imam of the group's mosque, a black American named Luqman Ameen Abdullah, was killed in a shootout with agents. The FBI says he resisted arrest and fired a gun.
On Friday, the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, where Mr. Abdullah served as prayer leader, dismissed as "utterly preposterous" the FBI's allegations that Mr. Abdullah was part of a radical Islamic group. Mr. Abdullah was a "recognized and respected member of numerous mainstream Muslim organizations and leadership bodies," the mosque said.
"The slanderous allegations of his being a national leader of a radical Islamic sect is utterly preposterous. ... These allegations are contrary to what we as a community stand for," the mosque said.
Although the FBI was careful to say those arrested in Detroit were not mainstream Muslims, it has accused other black Muslims of similar crimes, most recently in May, when four men were charged with plotting to blow up New York synagogues and shoot down a military plane.
Yet the Muslim faith continues to convert many average black Americans, who say they are attracted by Islam's emphasis on equality, discipline and family.
"The unique history African-Americans have faced, we're primed for accepting Islam," said Mr. Jackson, 31, who grew up in a secular home and converted to Islam when he was about 18.
"When someone comes to you with a message that everyone is equal, that the only difference is the deeds that they do, of course people who have been oppressed will embrace that message," he said. "It's a message of fairness."
It was a message of black pride in the face of dehumanizing prejudice that launched Islam in America in the 1930s.
Created by a mysterious man named Wallace Fard, the "Lost-Found Nation of Islam" strayed far from the teachings of the prophet Muhammad, but its mixture of self-reliance, black supremacy and white demonization resonated with many blacks. Some 30 years later, Malcolm X began the black movement toward traditional Islam when he left the Nation of Islam, went on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and proclaimed that all whites were not evil.
In 1975, the Nation split into two factions: a larger group that embraced orthodox Sunni practices, and another, led by Louis Farrakhan, that maintained the Nation's separatist ideology.
Today, it is difficult to determine the number of Muslims in America. A 2007 Pew survey estimated 2.35 million, of whom 35 percent were black. Lawrence Mamiya, a Vassar College professor of religion and African studies and an expert on American Islam, said Muslim organizations count about 6 million members, a third of them black.
Most black Muslims are orthodox Sunnis who worship in about 300 mosques across the country, Mr. Mamiya said. The second-largest group follows Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, which has about 100 mosques in America, abroad and in U.S. prisons, Mr. Mamiya said.
He said the third-largest group is the Ummah, founded by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the black activist formerly known as H. Rap Brown. The group has about 40 or 50 mosques. The organization targeted in the raid near Detroit was part of the Ummah, the FBI said.
"The vast majority of African-American Muslims are using the religion to strengthen their spirituality," said Mr. Mamiya, who has interviewed many black Muslim leaders and congregants. He said the number of black Muslims is growing, but not as fast as before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Few white Americans convert to Islam "because the tendency is to view Islam as foreign," he said. "For African-Americans, it's part of their African heritage. There's a long tradition [in Africa]. ... It moves them away from the Christianity they saw as a slave religion, as the religion that legitimized their slavery."
http://eedition.washingtontimes.com/index.xml
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134138
(IsraelNN.com) Attorney Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, chairwoman of the Shurat Hadin legal advocacy organization, told Arutz Sheva Radio on Thursday who exactly is behind the effort to prosecute former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon and other IDF commanders. He is Daniel Machover - a British lawyer who is also a former Israeli. Machover, a co-founder of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, represents the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, based in the Hamas-run Gaza half of the Palestinian Authority. According to Leitner, Machover has dedicated his life to collecting evidence against IDF officers and political leaders in an effort to charge them with war crimes in Europe. He and the center he represents prepare legal ambushes for Israeli military and civilian leaders who visit European countries, hoping to bring about their arrest and prosecution.
"Attorney Daniel Machover is an expatriate Israeli, son of a Communist family that emigrated to England after the Six Day War," Leitner said. The family left Israel because of what they saw as "the suffering of the Palestinians and the Israeli occupation. The family distanced itself from anything related to Jews and Israel and became close to the Palestinians," Leitner continued.
According to the Shurat Hadin chairwoman, Machover has been trying to bring about the prosecution of Israeli officers long before the recent Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. "We have been following his activities for several years," Leitner said. "Thank God, thus far he has not seen the fruits of his efforts and we hope that it will continue to be possible to foil his despicable efforts."
The British Jewish lawyer Machover is one of a string of "former Israelis who hold hard Left opinions" who have set themselves up as enemies of Israel, Leitner explained. "The goal of people such as him is to undermine the Jewish identity and the Jewish people."
Last year, for example, Machover took part in the the International Jewish Solidarity (later, Anti-Zionist) Network's conference under the heading, "International Resistance to Zionism: In solidarity with 60-plus years of Palestinian resistance to the founding of Israel".
"I can only be saddened that that man calls himself an international human rights attorney, because he cares only for Palestinian human rights and doesn't care about Jewish blood [that is shed]. If human rights are important to him, then let him worry about the rights of both sides," Attorney Leitner added.
Leitner's organization is attempting to fight back against all the hostile elements currently active in the courts. "We are engaged on several fronts," she detailed. "First of all, in assisting with the filing of counterclaims of war crimes by Israel's enemies, despite the fact that in this way we are in effect recognizing the jurisdiction of foreign courts; however, if that is the field our enemies are playing in, then we too will compete in the same arena, with the same tools. And then we can perhaps prove who the real war criminals are."
Leitner told Arutz Sheva about several successes. "In Spain, they wanted to file charges against Israeli officers who were involved in the elimination of [Hamas mastermind] Saleh Shehadeh. We also turned to a Spanish attorney and requested to initiate a similar investigation of Javier Solana, who was the head of NATO forces during the war in Kosovo, responsible for the accidental bombing of a hospital, leading to the deaths of children. After a short time, it was decided in Spain to end the investigation of the Shehadeh incident and we were informed that our counter-investigation caused the Spanish legal system to understand that there is no place for investigations in Spain of actions carried out in other countries."
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134138
(IsraelNN.com) Attorney Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, chairwoman of the Shurat Hadin legal advocacy organization, told Arutz Sheva Radio on Thursday who exactly is behind the effort to prosecute former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon and other IDF commanders. He is Daniel Machover - a British lawyer who is also a former Israeli. Machover, a co-founder of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, represents the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, based in the Hamas-run Gaza half of the Palestinian Authority. According to Leitner, Machover has dedicated his life to collecting evidence against IDF officers and political leaders in an effort to charge them with war crimes in Europe. He and the center he represents prepare legal ambushes for Israeli military and civilian leaders who visit European countries, hoping to bring about their arrest and prosecution.
"Attorney Daniel Machover is an expatriate Israeli, son of a Communist family that emigrated to England after the Six Day War," Leitner said. The family left Israel because of what they saw as "the suffering of the Palestinians and the Israeli occupation. The family distanced itself from anything related to Jews and Israel and became close to the Palestinians," Leitner continued.
According to the Shurat Hadin chairwoman, Machover has been trying to bring about the prosecution of Israeli officers long before the recent Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. "We have been following his activities for several years," Leitner said. "Thank God, thus far he has not seen the fruits of his efforts and we hope that it will continue to be possible to foil his despicable efforts."
The British Jewish lawyer Machover is one of a string of "former Israelis who hold hard Left opinions" who have set themselves up as enemies of Israel, Leitner explained. "The goal of people such as him is to undermine the Jewish identity and the Jewish people."
Last year, for example, Machover took part in the the International Jewish Solidarity (later, Anti-Zionist) Network's conference under the heading, "International Resistance to Zionism: In solidarity with 60-plus years of Palestinian resistance to the founding of Israel".
"I can only be saddened that that man calls himself an international human rights attorney, because he cares only for Palestinian human rights and doesn't care about Jewish blood [that is shed]. If human rights are important to him, then let him worry about the rights of both sides," Attorney Leitner added.
Leitner's organization is attempting to fight back against all the hostile elements currently active in the courts. "We are engaged on several fronts," she detailed. "First of all, in assisting with the filing of counterclaims of war crimes by Israel's enemies, despite the fact that in this way we are in effect recognizing the jurisdiction of foreign courts; however, if that is the field our enemies are playing in, then we too will compete in the same arena, with the same tools. And then we can perhaps prove who the real war criminals are."
Leitner told Arutz Sheva about several successes. "In Spain, they wanted to file charges against Israeli officers who were involved in the elimination of [Hamas mastermind] Saleh Shehadeh. We also turned to a Spanish attorney and requested to initiate a similar investigation of Javier Solana, who was the head of NATO forces during the war in Kosovo, responsible for the accidental bombing of a hospital, leading to the deaths of children. After a short time, it was decided in Spain to end the investigation of the Shehadeh incident and we were informed that our counter-investigation caused the Spanish legal system to understand that there is no place for investigations in Spain of actions carried out in other countries."
Daily Show Duo Spread Lies About Israel
CAMERA
Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's ever-popular Daily Show, has won a wide audience for his skillful use of a satiric comedy to cut to the essence of serious political issues. But on October 27, 2009, he waded into a deeply contentious issue and got in over his head. In a segment dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Stewart hosted Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti and anti-Israel agitator Anna Baltzer . Barghouti presented a familiar narrative of Palestinian grievances of the kind often heard. But it was the pairing with Baltzer that sparked indignation among many viewers. Fortunately, the segment's producers edited out much of Baltzer's misinformation about Israel, making the version actually broadcast substantially less objectionable. Baltzer, a fellow traveler with extreme anti-Israel groups like the International Solidarity Movement, routinely invokes her Jewish heritage as a ploy to lend credibility to her defamatory anti-Israel message.
She portrays Israel as a criminal state, relying upon her audience's lack of familiarity with the facts. Immediately after the show's airing she sent out a call to flood the Daily Show with letters of support for her. A constant refrain of her supporters and sponsors is that she "has a right to be heard." Falsely portraying herself as a Jew who saw the light when she travelled to the West Bank, Baltzer's pretense to being an authentic voice does not give her the right to appear on major television shows to incite hatred of Israel.
In a rare occurrence, there was some outspoken negative audience reaction. A member shouted out "liar!" in response to Barghouti accusing Israel of "segregation." Later another disruption took place in reponse to Baltzer denying that Israeli measures were taken in self-defense.
One can only wonder whether Stewart was blindsided by his staff and bookers regarding the nature of his guests. There's little to indicate from other programming that he intentionally sought them out to help their campaign to smear the Jewish state as illegitimate and racist. In the brief time the two were offered, they delivered their talking points depicting Israel as similar to apartheid South Africa and cast the Palestinians as blameless victims, while accusing the Jewish state of being intransigent.
Stewart tried to challenge at times, but seemed to mostly resort to seeking some conciliatory, middle-ground position.
In the full, unedited version, Baltzer rolled out her usual themes — that the so-called "wall" and other Israeli measures to stop suicide bombers were not really defensive measures. She also raised the phony issue of Israel "denying Palestinians water" when in reality Israel is a net-exporter of fresh water to the West Bank and Gaza.
Both Barghouti and Baltzer use the tactic of moral inversion. Barghouti claimed that:
"Israel has tried the language of power for sixty years... the only road that was not tried fully was to have peace with the Palestinians."
Stewart let this gross inversion of reality pass by, failing to point out that it was the Arabs who for sixty years have refused to accept Israel's right to exist and have warred incessantly against the Jewish state.
Where Israel has had a partner for peace, as it did with Anwar Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan, peace has ensued.
Furthermore, to suggest in the wake of the 2000/2001 Camp David/Taba negotiations during which Israel proposed sweeping concessions for peace that Israel has not "tried" the road to peace is willful deceit. This effort was only the latest of many efforts.
In a telling moment, Stewart innocently asked: "You both believe in a state of Israel?" Neither Barghouti nor Baltzer answered.
Stewart's own knowledge of the conflict seems sparse. At one point, in an attempt to appear evenhanded he asserted: "Both cultures have gotten dysfunctional — so far away from believing in each other's humanity."
In reality, there is a sharp contrast between the cultures. Jews are depicted in bigoted ways as animalistic and blood-thirsty monsters in Palestinian media, mosques and political culture. In contrast, there is no such counterpart in Israel.
A further contrast between the two cultures was demonstrated in the reaction of the Palestinians to the Israeli decision to depart from Gaza. Palestinians responded by burning the greenhouses the Jewish settlers had left behind that might have become a source of livlihood and develpment for the community. They proceeded to elect Hamas, an avowed terrorist organization to govern them. Rather than build up Gaza's economy, Hamas decided to use Gaza as a launching pad for rocket attacks on Israel.
Stewart did make several attempts to challenge the guests, some of which were solid points. He, for example, noted Israel is confronted with the challenge of a nuclear Iran and he also noted that Arab nations have been prone to scapegoating Israel for their own shortcomings. He also attempted to raise the issue of anti-Semitic indoctrination in Palestinians children's television. However, he was unclear about the facts on this and most viewers who aren't familiar with "Farfur" (the anti-Semitic childrens' figure on PA TV) would not have understood his reference in this matter.
Immediately after Stewart raised the Iran issue, Barghouti blamed Israel for overreacting to the threat, suggesting the Jewish state might end up claiming Azerbaijan as the next threat. Stewart did not follow up on this outrageous comment.
The unedited version of the segment contains the second disruption by an audience member. Evidently uncomfortable, Stewart retorted, "you can certainly visit our seder." Baltzer and Barghouti laughed at this along with the audience as the protester was thrown out.
Thanks to Steve Stotsky-CAMERA
Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's ever-popular Daily Show, has won a wide audience for his skillful use of a satiric comedy to cut to the essence of serious political issues. But on October 27, 2009, he waded into a deeply contentious issue and got in over his head. In a segment dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Stewart hosted Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti and anti-Israel agitator Anna Baltzer . Barghouti presented a familiar narrative of Palestinian grievances of the kind often heard. But it was the pairing with Baltzer that sparked indignation among many viewers. Fortunately, the segment's producers edited out much of Baltzer's misinformation about Israel, making the version actually broadcast substantially less objectionable. Baltzer, a fellow traveler with extreme anti-Israel groups like the International Solidarity Movement, routinely invokes her Jewish heritage as a ploy to lend credibility to her defamatory anti-Israel message.
She portrays Israel as a criminal state, relying upon her audience's lack of familiarity with the facts. Immediately after the show's airing she sent out a call to flood the Daily Show with letters of support for her. A constant refrain of her supporters and sponsors is that she "has a right to be heard." Falsely portraying herself as a Jew who saw the light when she travelled to the West Bank, Baltzer's pretense to being an authentic voice does not give her the right to appear on major television shows to incite hatred of Israel.
In a rare occurrence, there was some outspoken negative audience reaction. A member shouted out "liar!" in response to Barghouti accusing Israel of "segregation." Later another disruption took place in reponse to Baltzer denying that Israeli measures were taken in self-defense.
One can only wonder whether Stewart was blindsided by his staff and bookers regarding the nature of his guests. There's little to indicate from other programming that he intentionally sought them out to help their campaign to smear the Jewish state as illegitimate and racist. In the brief time the two were offered, they delivered their talking points depicting Israel as similar to apartheid South Africa and cast the Palestinians as blameless victims, while accusing the Jewish state of being intransigent.
Stewart tried to challenge at times, but seemed to mostly resort to seeking some conciliatory, middle-ground position.
In the full, unedited version, Baltzer rolled out her usual themes — that the so-called "wall" and other Israeli measures to stop suicide bombers were not really defensive measures. She also raised the phony issue of Israel "denying Palestinians water" when in reality Israel is a net-exporter of fresh water to the West Bank and Gaza.
Both Barghouti and Baltzer use the tactic of moral inversion. Barghouti claimed that:
"Israel has tried the language of power for sixty years... the only road that was not tried fully was to have peace with the Palestinians."
Stewart let this gross inversion of reality pass by, failing to point out that it was the Arabs who for sixty years have refused to accept Israel's right to exist and have warred incessantly against the Jewish state.
Where Israel has had a partner for peace, as it did with Anwar Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan, peace has ensued.
Furthermore, to suggest in the wake of the 2000/2001 Camp David/Taba negotiations during which Israel proposed sweeping concessions for peace that Israel has not "tried" the road to peace is willful deceit. This effort was only the latest of many efforts.
In a telling moment, Stewart innocently asked: "You both believe in a state of Israel?" Neither Barghouti nor Baltzer answered.
Stewart's own knowledge of the conflict seems sparse. At one point, in an attempt to appear evenhanded he asserted: "Both cultures have gotten dysfunctional — so far away from believing in each other's humanity."
In reality, there is a sharp contrast between the cultures. Jews are depicted in bigoted ways as animalistic and blood-thirsty monsters in Palestinian media, mosques and political culture. In contrast, there is no such counterpart in Israel.
A further contrast between the two cultures was demonstrated in the reaction of the Palestinians to the Israeli decision to depart from Gaza. Palestinians responded by burning the greenhouses the Jewish settlers had left behind that might have become a source of livlihood and develpment for the community. They proceeded to elect Hamas, an avowed terrorist organization to govern them. Rather than build up Gaza's economy, Hamas decided to use Gaza as a launching pad for rocket attacks on Israel.
Stewart did make several attempts to challenge the guests, some of which were solid points. He, for example, noted Israel is confronted with the challenge of a nuclear Iran and he also noted that Arab nations have been prone to scapegoating Israel for their own shortcomings. He also attempted to raise the issue of anti-Semitic indoctrination in Palestinians children's television. However, he was unclear about the facts on this and most viewers who aren't familiar with "Farfur" (the anti-Semitic childrens' figure on PA TV) would not have understood his reference in this matter.
Immediately after Stewart raised the Iran issue, Barghouti blamed Israel for overreacting to the threat, suggesting the Jewish state might end up claiming Azerbaijan as the next threat. Stewart did not follow up on this outrageous comment.
The unedited version of the segment contains the second disruption by an audience member. Evidently uncomfortable, Stewart retorted, "you can certainly visit our seder." Baltzer and Barghouti laughed at this along with the audience as the protester was thrown out.
Thanks to Steve Stotsky-CAMERA
Palestinians Admit Police Torture
IPT News
Senior Palestinian police officials are receiving immediate training from British counterparts on prisoner interrogation and care after it was disclosed this week that the Palestinians routinely tortured people in their custody. London's Mail on Sunday broke the torture story Sunday, quoting Palestinian officials acknowledging the mistreatment, "including beatings, being suspended from the ceiling and electric shocks." In addition, at least four people are thought to have been killed in Palestinian Authority.
Most of the victims are Hamas members suspected of trying to undermine PA governance in the West Bank.
The British are financing the program, which cost £100,000 just to launch. The government already contributes £20million a year to the agencies responsible for the torture cases.
The story has not received the attention it might have had the torturers been Western or Israeli police. At the National Review Online, Tom Gross points out that PA prisoner abuse dates back to the Authority's foundating under Yasser Arafat:
"Meanwhile, as Palestinian detainees are being tortured to death in Palestinian Authority jails, Palestinian prisoners (including convicted terrorists) in custody in Israel are studying for Israeli university degrees (at Israeli taxpayers' expense) and also given cable TV, IPods and dental treatment – but international human rights groups criticize Israel, whose deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to Washington Danny Ayalon narrowly escaped being arrested in Britain for "war crimes" yesterday."
It's at least a hopeful sign that the training is taking place and that the PA official quoted by the Mail didn't try to duck the issue. The Brits should do all they can to ensure their latest PA donations aren't wasted.
http://www.investigativeproject.org/blog/
Senior Palestinian police officials are receiving immediate training from British counterparts on prisoner interrogation and care after it was disclosed this week that the Palestinians routinely tortured people in their custody. London's Mail on Sunday broke the torture story Sunday, quoting Palestinian officials acknowledging the mistreatment, "including beatings, being suspended from the ceiling and electric shocks." In addition, at least four people are thought to have been killed in Palestinian Authority.
Most of the victims are Hamas members suspected of trying to undermine PA governance in the West Bank.
The British are financing the program, which cost £100,000 just to launch. The government already contributes £20million a year to the agencies responsible for the torture cases.
The story has not received the attention it might have had the torturers been Western or Israeli police. At the National Review Online, Tom Gross points out that PA prisoner abuse dates back to the Authority's foundating under Yasser Arafat:
"Meanwhile, as Palestinian detainees are being tortured to death in Palestinian Authority jails, Palestinian prisoners (including convicted terrorists) in custody in Israel are studying for Israeli university degrees (at Israeli taxpayers' expense) and also given cable TV, IPods and dental treatment – but international human rights groups criticize Israel, whose deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to Washington Danny Ayalon narrowly escaped being arrested in Britain for "war crimes" yesterday."
It's at least a hopeful sign that the training is taking place and that the PA official quoted by the Mail didn't try to duck the issue. The Brits should do all they can to ensure their latest PA donations aren't wasted.
http://www.investigativeproject.org/blog/
But when it comes to the Saudis, UN sings a different song...
Steven Emerson
Saudis Skate (Again) on Religious Freedom Sanctions
The State Department's annual report on religious freedom throughout the world is out. As it has since 2001, the State Department lists Saudi Arabia as a significant violator of international religious freedom. Since 2005, the State Department has identified Saudi Arabia as a "Country of Particular Concern" for engaging in violations of religious freedoms. Despite this, the State Department again has invoked a waiver of potential sanctions reserved for severe violators of religious freedom. Those sanctions can include denial of visas and entry into the United States or deportation of such foreign officials if already here.
The report is required each year under provisions in the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA). So is the waiver, which is supposed to apply in cases of "important national interest of the United States" or to "further the purposes of the Act." Seemingly, that "further the purposes of the Act" waiver would apply primarily in cases in which our government was convinced the offending foreign country was making genuine progress in no longer violating international religious freedom standards.
Saudi Arabia is a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim state. Its government adheres to an austere form of Islam. The public practice of other religion is prohibited. Even the private practice of other faiths, or of Shia or more moderate versions of Sunni Islam, can result in persecution. Draconian legal sanctions based on archaic Islamic religious precepts are frequently practiced. These include cases of women who are rape victims being convicted for consorting with unrelated males and sentenced to whipping. The primary basis for Saudi religious freedom violations stems from the country's strict and official adherence to radical Islam.
The 2009 report on Saudi Arabia notes "incremental improvements" in some areas, "including selective measures to combat extremist ideology," but still found cases in which the death penalty was administered for alleged witchcraft, non-Muslims were jailed for private worship and vice patrols continue harrassing women for being with a man or being clothed with insufficient modesty.
For a decade, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the State Department has rightfully branded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a notable violator of international religious freedom. State Department reports fully identify the Kingdom's practice of and adherence to radical Islam, and the pervasive legal and cultural persecution that emanate from there, as the primary causes of those violations. Yet, for that decade, our State Department has given the Saudis a "buy" on this critically important human rights issue by repeatedly invoking the waiver of sanctions under the law, ostensibly to "further the purposes of the Act" as if to suggest that further diplomatic consultation will somehow soften the Islamic radicalism entrenched in the mindset of the Kingdom's rulers and clerics.
For a decade, the carrot has not worked. Stick time?
http://www.investigativeproject.org/blog/
Saudis Skate (Again) on Religious Freedom Sanctions
The State Department's annual report on religious freedom throughout the world is out. As it has since 2001, the State Department lists Saudi Arabia as a significant violator of international religious freedom. Since 2005, the State Department has identified Saudi Arabia as a "Country of Particular Concern" for engaging in violations of religious freedoms. Despite this, the State Department again has invoked a waiver of potential sanctions reserved for severe violators of religious freedom. Those sanctions can include denial of visas and entry into the United States or deportation of such foreign officials if already here.
The report is required each year under provisions in the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA). So is the waiver, which is supposed to apply in cases of "important national interest of the United States" or to "further the purposes of the Act." Seemingly, that "further the purposes of the Act" waiver would apply primarily in cases in which our government was convinced the offending foreign country was making genuine progress in no longer violating international religious freedom standards.
Saudi Arabia is a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim state. Its government adheres to an austere form of Islam. The public practice of other religion is prohibited. Even the private practice of other faiths, or of Shia or more moderate versions of Sunni Islam, can result in persecution. Draconian legal sanctions based on archaic Islamic religious precepts are frequently practiced. These include cases of women who are rape victims being convicted for consorting with unrelated males and sentenced to whipping. The primary basis for Saudi religious freedom violations stems from the country's strict and official adherence to radical Islam.
The 2009 report on Saudi Arabia notes "incremental improvements" in some areas, "including selective measures to combat extremist ideology," but still found cases in which the death penalty was administered for alleged witchcraft, non-Muslims were jailed for private worship and vice patrols continue harrassing women for being with a man or being clothed with insufficient modesty.
For a decade, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the State Department has rightfully branded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a notable violator of international religious freedom. State Department reports fully identify the Kingdom's practice of and adherence to radical Islam, and the pervasive legal and cultural persecution that emanate from there, as the primary causes of those violations. Yet, for that decade, our State Department has given the Saudis a "buy" on this critically important human rights issue by repeatedly invoking the waiver of sanctions under the law, ostensibly to "further the purposes of the Act" as if to suggest that further diplomatic consultation will somehow soften the Islamic radicalism entrenched in the mindset of the Kingdom's rulers and clerics.
For a decade, the carrot has not worked. Stick time?
http://www.investigativeproject.org/blog/
UN Official Challenges US Drone Attacks
Steven Emerson
In a little noticed but critical piece of news, the BBC reports that Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, has warned the United States against striking terrorists from unmanned drones. He has gone so far as to state that such actions "may violate international human rights laws." Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, told the BBC: "My concern is that these drones, these Predators, are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law." He also stated, "The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons."
Alston, a professor at New York University, also has stated that the US government and the CIA need to explain how such measures are legal in the first place. The previous explanation from the US government clarified that the United States uses a framework to respond to unlawful killings (should they occur), and that it did not believe that the UN General Assembly and UN Human Rights Council had any role in relation to killings carried out during an armed conflict. Alston rejected these arguments, calling them "untenable," and demanded that the US furnish proof of the legality of its actions in wartime circumstances.
The weight of such a decision by a high-ranking UN official is astounding. Rather than evaluate the United States' wartime actions against a terrorist entity, which is oppressing millions of Afghanis and murdering thousands of civilians in indiscriminate bombings, the UN is forcing the United States to justify unmanned strikes against high ranking Al Qaeda leaders.
Some drone attacks have missed the marks and civilians tragically have been killed. However, they've also been among the most effective means of killing Al Qaeda leaders and keeping it off balance. It is difficult to see how this wouldn't give terrorists the upper hand, forcing the United States to pick between running afoul of the UN Human Rights Council, or endangering the lives of tens of thousands of troops and civilians.
In a little noticed but critical piece of news, the BBC reports that Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, has warned the United States against striking terrorists from unmanned drones. He has gone so far as to state that such actions "may violate international human rights laws." Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, told the BBC: "My concern is that these drones, these Predators, are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law." He also stated, "The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons."
Alston, a professor at New York University, also has stated that the US government and the CIA need to explain how such measures are legal in the first place. The previous explanation from the US government clarified that the United States uses a framework to respond to unlawful killings (should they occur), and that it did not believe that the UN General Assembly and UN Human Rights Council had any role in relation to killings carried out during an armed conflict. Alston rejected these arguments, calling them "untenable," and demanded that the US furnish proof of the legality of its actions in wartime circumstances.
The weight of such a decision by a high-ranking UN official is astounding. Rather than evaluate the United States' wartime actions against a terrorist entity, which is oppressing millions of Afghanis and murdering thousands of civilians in indiscriminate bombings, the UN is forcing the United States to justify unmanned strikes against high ranking Al Qaeda leaders.
Some drone attacks have missed the marks and civilians tragically have been killed. However, they've also been among the most effective means of killing Al Qaeda leaders and keeping it off balance. It is difficult to see how this wouldn't give terrorists the upper hand, forcing the United States to pick between running afoul of the UN Human Rights Council, or endangering the lives of tens of thousands of troops and civilians.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Can Islam reform from within?
Madeline Brooks
Is a movement to reform Islam from within already here and some of us don't even know it?
On October 27, 2009, the well-known Muslim peace activist from Bangladesh, Shoaib Choudhury, arrived in New York City to give talks on the problem of jihad at several prestigious institutions in the area. Shoaib, as he likes to be called, has gained the respect of much of the world, especially among Jews, for his heroic efforts to stop the Muslim persecution of Jews and other religious minorities in Muslim countries. For this he was accused of sedition, imprisoned, and tortured, and his life has been threatened several times since. He still is at risk of being hanged by the state for his supposed crimes Relaxing on a rainy evening after a long flight from his native Bangladesh, Shoaib met with several counter-jihad activists in midtown Manhattan. The plan was to see how mutual support and alliances could be developed.
However, that plan was aborted by the truculent attitude of some of the activists.
They tore into Shoaib as a supporter of Islamic intolerance regarding other religions, as a wife-abuser who forces his spouse to veil herself, and even as a liar. None of this was grounded in reality, but the "activists" deemed Shoaib untrustworthy. Why? Because he would not join them in publicly bashing Mohammed and the text of the Qu'ran.
No, Shoaib has chosen not to do that. Instead, he spends his time and uses his journalistic skills to dig out buried information about al Qaeda's infiltration of his country's government and schools. He publishes his findings in his online journal and in his publishing house. One new piece of information, for example, is the discovery of wide-spread sexual abuse of children in the madrassas, resulting in an epidemic of venereal diseases among these unfortunate children.
Shoaib's goal is to expose evil to the light of day so that public outcry can bring about needed reforms. He attacks the broad central branches of self-serving and sadistic Islamic practices rather than taking an axe to what the American counter-jihadists consider to be the main problem: the trunk of the tree, or Islam itself.
Why does Shoaib do this? He reasons that if he were to criticize Islam per se, he would lose all credibility in the Muslim world. He would be seen as an outsider, an apostate, somebody to be automatically despised -- and his voice would be lost. Since he is a native of his country and has taken life-threatening risks in it, why should he change his strategy to reflect the approach of his armchair counter-jihadist critics?
Moreover, Shoaib is not the only one disdained in this way. Other Muslim reformers work more or less undercover to bring Islam out of its convulsive cruelty and into a calmer, more peace-loving practice. In addition, there are some Muslim sects, like the Ahmadiyya movement, that make a point of turning their backs on all violence. They have been around for over 100 years.
The handful of critics noted here are part of a larger problem. Many American counter-jihadists become rigid, even fundamentalist, in their thinking. They demand a kind of theological purity from those they would describe as "not enemies." In a way, this is understandable, since fellow Americans not in the counter-jihad movement have proven so dense about the core issues of jihad that frustration is bound to grow. Having the deceiving phrase "Islam is a religion of peace" bandaged over the national consciousness by presidents adds rage to the frustration.
However, it is my opinion that giving in to that rage and frustration will not help defeat jihad. Instead, we must be flexible and committed to finding effective ways to drive back the twin devils of obvious terrorism and stealth infiltration. If that means emphasizing concrete practices of infiltration rather than the abstract theory/theology of Islam, so be it. We may be better understood by our countrymen who have so far been somnolent.
In the interest of promoting a worldwide partnership of resistance to global jihad, it would help if we honored the work of freedom fighters in other cultural contexts without jumping to conclusions.
Madeline Brooks is the head of a counter-jihad group in New York City. She writes occasionally about jihad and domestic politics, sometimes under the pen name of Brenda West.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/can_islam_reform_from_within.html at October 30, 2009 - 02:02:48 PM EDT
Is a movement to reform Islam from within already here and some of us don't even know it?
On October 27, 2009, the well-known Muslim peace activist from Bangladesh, Shoaib Choudhury, arrived in New York City to give talks on the problem of jihad at several prestigious institutions in the area. Shoaib, as he likes to be called, has gained the respect of much of the world, especially among Jews, for his heroic efforts to stop the Muslim persecution of Jews and other religious minorities in Muslim countries. For this he was accused of sedition, imprisoned, and tortured, and his life has been threatened several times since. He still is at risk of being hanged by the state for his supposed crimes Relaxing on a rainy evening after a long flight from his native Bangladesh, Shoaib met with several counter-jihad activists in midtown Manhattan. The plan was to see how mutual support and alliances could be developed.
However, that plan was aborted by the truculent attitude of some of the activists.
They tore into Shoaib as a supporter of Islamic intolerance regarding other religions, as a wife-abuser who forces his spouse to veil herself, and even as a liar. None of this was grounded in reality, but the "activists" deemed Shoaib untrustworthy. Why? Because he would not join them in publicly bashing Mohammed and the text of the Qu'ran.
No, Shoaib has chosen not to do that. Instead, he spends his time and uses his journalistic skills to dig out buried information about al Qaeda's infiltration of his country's government and schools. He publishes his findings in his online journal and in his publishing house. One new piece of information, for example, is the discovery of wide-spread sexual abuse of children in the madrassas, resulting in an epidemic of venereal diseases among these unfortunate children.
Shoaib's goal is to expose evil to the light of day so that public outcry can bring about needed reforms. He attacks the broad central branches of self-serving and sadistic Islamic practices rather than taking an axe to what the American counter-jihadists consider to be the main problem: the trunk of the tree, or Islam itself.
Why does Shoaib do this? He reasons that if he were to criticize Islam per se, he would lose all credibility in the Muslim world. He would be seen as an outsider, an apostate, somebody to be automatically despised -- and his voice would be lost. Since he is a native of his country and has taken life-threatening risks in it, why should he change his strategy to reflect the approach of his armchair counter-jihadist critics?
Moreover, Shoaib is not the only one disdained in this way. Other Muslim reformers work more or less undercover to bring Islam out of its convulsive cruelty and into a calmer, more peace-loving practice. In addition, there are some Muslim sects, like the Ahmadiyya movement, that make a point of turning their backs on all violence. They have been around for over 100 years.
The handful of critics noted here are part of a larger problem. Many American counter-jihadists become rigid, even fundamentalist, in their thinking. They demand a kind of theological purity from those they would describe as "not enemies." In a way, this is understandable, since fellow Americans not in the counter-jihad movement have proven so dense about the core issues of jihad that frustration is bound to grow. Having the deceiving phrase "Islam is a religion of peace" bandaged over the national consciousness by presidents adds rage to the frustration.
However, it is my opinion that giving in to that rage and frustration will not help defeat jihad. Instead, we must be flexible and committed to finding effective ways to drive back the twin devils of obvious terrorism and stealth infiltration. If that means emphasizing concrete practices of infiltration rather than the abstract theory/theology of Islam, so be it. We may be better understood by our countrymen who have so far been somnolent.
In the interest of promoting a worldwide partnership of resistance to global jihad, it would help if we honored the work of freedom fighters in other cultural contexts without jumping to conclusions.
Madeline Brooks is the head of a counter-jihad group in New York City. She writes occasionally about jihad and domestic politics, sometimes under the pen name of Brenda West.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/can_islam_reform_from_within.html at October 30, 2009 - 02:02:48 PM EDT
EC:‘Jobs Created or Saved’ Is White House Fantasy
Caroline Baum
Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Heresy, thy name is Christina Romer.
Last week, the chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers -- a position that carried the title “chief economist” until Larry Summers took up residence in the White House -- testified to the Joint Economic Committee on the economic crisis and the efficacy of the policy response. Here’s the executive summary in case you missed it:
The crisis: “Inherited.”
The economy: “In terrible shape” (the inherited one).
The shocks to the system: “Larger than those that precipitated the Great Depression.”
The policy response: “Strong and timely.”
The efficacy of the policy response: a 2 to 3 percentage point addition to second-quarter growth; 3 to 4 percentage points in the third; and 160,000 to 1.5 million “jobs saved or created,” a made-up metric if there ever was one. (More on that later.)
What was most puzzling about Romer’s Oct. 22 testimony was her comment on the waning effect of fiscal stimulus.
“Most analysts predict that the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the second and third quarters of 2009,” Romer said. “By mid-2010, fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to growth.”
At first it was just fringe elements, such as conservative blogs and the not-really-a-news-organization Fox News, that pounced on Romer’s statement. Then other news outlets started to question her statement, which seemed to fly in the face of White House assertions that only a small portion of the stimulus -- $120 billion, or 15 percent -- has actually been spent. Most of the criticism of the stimulus coming from the president’s own party has been, “too little, too late,” and here’s Romer saying it’s kaput.
Thanks for That
Instead of being banished to the woodshed, Romer was consigned to the White House blog, where she slipped into professorial mode to explain the arcane distinction between the effect of the stimulus on the change in gross domestic product and its effect on the level of GDP.
Stimulus has its biggest impact on the growth rate of GDP when it’s implemented, Romer said, using a car-and-driver analogy: Step on the accelerator, the car goes from zero to 60.
Stimulus will keep the level of GDP and employment higher than they would have been even after the growth-rate effect fades, she said.
Her logic is impeccable. It’s her premise that’s flawed.
Dispensing Lucre
When the government distributes lucre or loot, people spend it. If your interest is national income accounting, spending other people’s money is great. Spending is a back-door way for government statisticians to measure what matters, which is the real output of goods and services.
But the government has no money of its own to spend; only what it borrows or confiscates from us via taxation. Oops.
“Government job creation is an oxymoron,” said Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business. It is only by depriving the private sector of funds that government can hire or subsidize hiring.
That’s why “jobs created or saved” is such pure fiction. It ignores what’s unseen, as our old friend Frederic Bastiat explained so eloquently 160 years ago in an essay.
Econometric models synthesize all sorts of variables and spit out a GDP forecast. From there they derive the change in employment using something called Okun’s Law, named after the late economist Arthur Okun, which describes the relationship between the two.
Fiction Lags Reality
Actual hiring seems to be lagging behind the model’s land of make-believe. For small businesses, which are the source of most job creation in the U.S., the government’s increased and changing role in the economy isn’t a confidence builder. Businessmen have no idea what health-care reform will mean for their cost structure or what whimsical tax policies the government might impose when it realizes those short-term deficits are running into long-term unfunded liabilities.
No wonder capital spending plans were at an all-time low in the third quarter, according to the NFIB monthly survey.
Only 30,383 jobs were created or saved by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to Recovery.gov, the government’s once-transparent Web site that has become a complex blur of numbers, graphs and pie charts. These are only the jobs reported by federal contract recipients. The Obama administration will report the larger universe of ARRA-related jobs on Oct. 30.
An extrapolation of what would have happened without the fiscal stimulus isn’t much consolation to the 9.8 percent of the workforce that is unemployed. Nor is Romer’s prescription for the economy and labor market very comforting in light of the trillions of future tax dollars that have been spent, lent or promised by the federal government.
“If you take your foot off the gas, the car goes from 60 back down to a slow crawl,” Romer said in clarifying blog post.
Gentlemen, start your engines.
(Caroline Baum, author of “Just What I Said,” is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Caroline Baum in New York at cabaum@bloomberg.net.
Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Heresy, thy name is Christina Romer.
Last week, the chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers -- a position that carried the title “chief economist” until Larry Summers took up residence in the White House -- testified to the Joint Economic Committee on the economic crisis and the efficacy of the policy response. Here’s the executive summary in case you missed it:
The crisis: “Inherited.”
The economy: “In terrible shape” (the inherited one).
The shocks to the system: “Larger than those that precipitated the Great Depression.”
The policy response: “Strong and timely.”
The efficacy of the policy response: a 2 to 3 percentage point addition to second-quarter growth; 3 to 4 percentage points in the third; and 160,000 to 1.5 million “jobs saved or created,” a made-up metric if there ever was one. (More on that later.)
What was most puzzling about Romer’s Oct. 22 testimony was her comment on the waning effect of fiscal stimulus.
“Most analysts predict that the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the second and third quarters of 2009,” Romer said. “By mid-2010, fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to growth.”
At first it was just fringe elements, such as conservative blogs and the not-really-a-news-organization Fox News, that pounced on Romer’s statement. Then other news outlets started to question her statement, which seemed to fly in the face of White House assertions that only a small portion of the stimulus -- $120 billion, or 15 percent -- has actually been spent. Most of the criticism of the stimulus coming from the president’s own party has been, “too little, too late,” and here’s Romer saying it’s kaput.
Thanks for That
Instead of being banished to the woodshed, Romer was consigned to the White House blog, where she slipped into professorial mode to explain the arcane distinction between the effect of the stimulus on the change in gross domestic product and its effect on the level of GDP.
Stimulus has its biggest impact on the growth rate of GDP when it’s implemented, Romer said, using a car-and-driver analogy: Step on the accelerator, the car goes from zero to 60.
Stimulus will keep the level of GDP and employment higher than they would have been even after the growth-rate effect fades, she said.
Her logic is impeccable. It’s her premise that’s flawed.
Dispensing Lucre
When the government distributes lucre or loot, people spend it. If your interest is national income accounting, spending other people’s money is great. Spending is a back-door way for government statisticians to measure what matters, which is the real output of goods and services.
But the government has no money of its own to spend; only what it borrows or confiscates from us via taxation. Oops.
“Government job creation is an oxymoron,” said Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business. It is only by depriving the private sector of funds that government can hire or subsidize hiring.
That’s why “jobs created or saved” is such pure fiction. It ignores what’s unseen, as our old friend Frederic Bastiat explained so eloquently 160 years ago in an essay.
Econometric models synthesize all sorts of variables and spit out a GDP forecast. From there they derive the change in employment using something called Okun’s Law, named after the late economist Arthur Okun, which describes the relationship between the two.
Fiction Lags Reality
Actual hiring seems to be lagging behind the model’s land of make-believe. For small businesses, which are the source of most job creation in the U.S., the government’s increased and changing role in the economy isn’t a confidence builder. Businessmen have no idea what health-care reform will mean for their cost structure or what whimsical tax policies the government might impose when it realizes those short-term deficits are running into long-term unfunded liabilities.
No wonder capital spending plans were at an all-time low in the third quarter, according to the NFIB monthly survey.
Only 30,383 jobs were created or saved by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to Recovery.gov, the government’s once-transparent Web site that has become a complex blur of numbers, graphs and pie charts. These are only the jobs reported by federal contract recipients. The Obama administration will report the larger universe of ARRA-related jobs on Oct. 30.
An extrapolation of what would have happened without the fiscal stimulus isn’t much consolation to the 9.8 percent of the workforce that is unemployed. Nor is Romer’s prescription for the economy and labor market very comforting in light of the trillions of future tax dollars that have been spent, lent or promised by the federal government.
“If you take your foot off the gas, the car goes from 60 back down to a slow crawl,” Romer said in clarifying blog post.
Gentlemen, start your engines.
(Caroline Baum, author of “Just What I Said,” is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Caroline Baum in New York at cabaum@bloomberg.net.
Israel's Response to the Goldstone Report: Exposing a Politically Motivated Fraud
RubinReports
Barry Rubin
If you've been following the Goldstone Report controversy, you might be interested in the response done by Israel to specific points raised by the report. The Goldstone report bashes Israel regarding the Gaza war for alleged crimes and misdeeds based solely on the unchallenged testimony of almost totally pro-Hamas and universally anti-Israel Palestinians who live under an Islamist dictatorial regime. On close examination, a very large number of the accusations dissolve into nothingness.
Judge Goldstone keeps repeating in interviews--and the media lets him get away with it--that nobody has challenged the substance of his report. This is blatantly untrue as this response shows. He and the commission have not even attempted to respond to any part of these critiques.
Equally, much of the Western media has not reported on any of these detailed critiques, for example the demolition of the number of civilian casualties claimed, achieved by reclassifying Hamas gunmen as civilians.
Meanwhile, the report passed the UN Human Rights Council and is now being discussed in general debate. At some point, the UN will try to pass some sort of anti-Israel resolution--with or without material sanctions--and the United States and Europeans will have to decide how to vote or veto. The report will also be used in the coming years repeatedly to portray Israel as an evil and illegitimate state that should not be allowed to exist.
There are also broader implications, as the response shows. If the concepts used in the report are adopted, democratic countries facing terrorist attacks will be unable to respond without international political and perhaps legal condemnation. For example, the U.S. attack into Afghanistan after September 11 would be subjected to war crimes' charges.
Here's a sample from part of the response:
Selection of Incidents
Like the prescreened and selected witnesses permitted to appear in the Mission's public hearings, the incidents covered in the Report appear to have been carefully cherry-picked for political effect. For example:
Despite Israeli and independent sources confirming that the Southern Command Center of Ismail Haniyeh had been located in the Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the Report states that it did "not investigate the case of Al-Shifa hospital and is not in a position to make any finding with regard to these allegations"[¶ 466].
Similarly, despite widespread reports of the use of mosques to hide weaponry and terrorist activity, the Mission examined only one incident involving a mosque and found no evidence that this mosque was used for the storage of weapons or any military activity by Palestinian armed groups[7]. The Mission then absolves itself of any responsibility to examine allegations of the abuse of mosques elsewhere in any other instance:
"As far as this mosque is concerned, therefore, the Mission found no basis for such an allegation. However, the Mission is unable to make a determination regarding the allegation in general nor with respect to any other mosque" [¶ 463].
A troubling insight into the approach of the Mission in selecting the incidents it wished to address was provided in response by Justice Goldstone to an enquiry asking why the Mission had ignored requests to invite witnesses such as Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and an adviser to the UK cabinet, and a recognized expert in the field of warfare in conditions similar to that in Gaza[8]. In an open response dated 21 September 2009 explaining the refusal to invite Colonel Kemp to testify, Goldstone admitted that the Mission had deliberately selected incidents so as to evade the complex dilemmas of confronting threats in civilian areas:
"[t]here was no reliance on Col. Kemp mainly because in our Report we did not deal with the issues he raised regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding officers "in the fog of war". We avoided having to do so in the incidents we decided to investigate."[emphasis added]
Evidentiary double-standards
Hamas launched thousands of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel and admitted embedding itself within the civilian population of Gaza. But the Report strives mightily to avoid finding that Hamas bears any responsibility for deaths and destruction in the Gaza Strip. In contrast, the Report is quick to blame Israel, presuming guilt absent compelling evidence to the contrary. Throughout, the Report deems statements of Israeli officials inherently untrustworthy, except where it misuses them to support its ordained conclusions. By contrast, the Report regularly credits statements by the “Gaza authorities” - i.e., the Hamas terrorist organization - as legitimate evidence, except where such statements admit wrongdoing or justify Israeli actions. Moreover, despite overwhelming evidence that Hamas and other terrorist groups operated from densely populated areas and from within hospitals and mosques, booby-trapped civilian areas, and sought to blend in with Palestinian non-combatants, the Report fails to investigate the most egregious and publicly known examples of such conduct, and even goes so far as to raise doubts regarding the intentionality of Hamas’ tactics.
Presumption that Israeli military sources are untrustworthy. Routinely treating Israeli statements as inherently unreliable, the Mission discounts even the veracity of photographic and satellite image data supplied by the IDF, on no more basis than the fact that the Mission did not have a means to verify the data independently. (¶ 449) The Report also points to Israel’s reliance on newspaper reports rather than its own intelligence to explain its conduct of the operation as an admission that IDF sources are unreliable (¶ 612), failing to recognize that, in many circumstances, intelligence information -- no matter how compelling -- simply cannot be disclosed to the public. Perhaps most tellingly, the only circumstance in which the Report appears to accept and emphasize Israeli statements is where it finds such statements useful to condemn Israel.[9]
Refusal to accept even the most direct admissions by Hamas as evidence of guilt. The Report cites the admission[10] of a Hamas official that Hamas “created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen, against the Zionist bombing machines.” (¶ 475) The Report then states, incredibly, that it does not consider this confession “to constitute evidence that Hamas forced Palestinian civilians to shield military objectives against attack. ( ¶ 476) The Report cites the admission of a fighter for Islamic Jihad that “the most important thing is achieving our military goals. We stay away from the houses if we can, but that’s often impossible.” (¶ 451) The Report then states, incredibly, that this admission of using civilian homes where needed for military objectives, “suggests the absence of intent.” (¶ 451)
'Reinterpretation' of Hamas statements. In seeking to support its assertion that the Hamas police were not involved in terrorist activity, the Report prefers to gloss over has to deal with the admission of police spokesperson Islam Shahwan who that the police had been given orders "to face the [Israeli] enemy". The Mission unquestioningly accepted his explanation that the intention was that in the event of a ground invasion the police would continue ensuring the movement of foodstuffs and upholding public order(¶ 414). The Mission is similarly accepting of an interpretation given by the director of the Police that by "resistance fighters" his intention was that they would develop into a law enforcement force (¶ 416). At the same time, the Report dismisses posters and photographs of policemen praising their involvement as members of the terrorist groups, arguing that this does not mean that these individuals "were involved in resistance in any away" and suggesting that they had been "adopted" post-mortem by terrorist groups(¶ 421). Beyond these reinterpretations of the evidence, the Report claims that no other evidence has been presented against "the civilian nature of the police in Gaza" (¶ 417), quite simply ignoring numerous explicit statements in Israel's report: The Operation in Gaza – Factual and Legal Aspects, which it quotes on many other matters. Among the many statements cited, ignored by the Report, is the admission by Hamas police chief Jamal al-Jarrah that "the police took part in the fighting alongside the resistance".
Picking and choosing its sources for political effect. At times even the same source is regarded by the Report as reliable insofar as its criticism of Israel is concerned but is discounted to the extent that it indicates wrongdoings by Hamas. The group of Israeli soldiers, "Breaking the Silence", for example, is quoted authoritatively throughout the report for its criticisms of Israel (¶ 457, 725, 800, 949, 996, 1022, 1088 – this last paragraph admitting "the soldier does not appear to have been a direct witness to the incident, but rather heard it from others ", 1089, 1183 and footnotes 362, 558), and yet the statements of the group are given no weight when they confirm that Hamas booby trapped civilian buildings[11]. (¶ 460)
Selective quotations regarding goals of the operation. The Report relies on uncited quotations in an NGO report as questionable support for its assertion that “[s]tatements by political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza leave little doubt that disproportionate destruction and violence against civilians were part of a deliberate policy.” (¶ 1211) Yet the Report ignores repeated statements of Israel's leaders emphasizing that, to the contrary, Israel's aim was to spare no effort to avoid or minimize civilian casualties.[12]
Misrepresentations of fact and law
Beyond the adoption of evidentiary double-standards, and the creative interpretation of inconvenient evidence, the Report frequently presents explicit misstatements of both facts and law. For example:
Misstatements of fact:
The Report accuses Israel of discriminating against its non-Jewish citizens by not providing shelters to protect Arab towns and villages from the rocket attacks. (¶ 1709, 1711(1)). In fact, the relevant decision[13] of the Government of Israel made no such discrimination, and provided all municipalities up to seven kilometers from the fence with a budget to cover the building of shelters. Municipalities located further away from the fence, which included non-Jewish villages as well as the Jewish cities of Be'er Sheva and Ashqelon, did not qualify for this funding.
The Report repeatedly misrepresents historical facts, particularly in the context of 'explaining' Israel military operations. It states that Operation "Hot Winter" was launched by Israel in February 2008 following a rocket attack towards the city of Ashkelon that caused 'light injuries' (¶ 196). In fact, Roni Yihye, aged 47, a student at Sapir College, was killed after sustaining massive wounds to his chest. Similarly it states that Operation "Days of Penitence" was launched in September-October of 2004, in retaliation for the firing of rockets against the town of Sderot and Israeli settlements, but fails to mention the deaths of Yuval Abebeh (aged 4) and Dorit (Masarat) Benisian (aged 2) of Sderot, killed by a Kassam rocket fired into Gaza while playing in the street. In both cases Hamas claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Misstatements of law:
The description of Israel's military courts system (¶1599-1600) contains numerous errors and inaccuracies. For example, its description of the appeals process relies on provisions which were amended in 2004 and are no longer in force today.
In support of its assertion that the Gaza Strip is to be regarded as occupied territory, even following the withdrawal of all Israeli forces and all 9000 Israeli civilians in the Disengagement Initiative in 2005, the Report cites as authority UN Security Council Resolution 1860 (footnote 163 to ¶277). But this resolution makes no such assertion. In fact, in the negotiations prior to the adoption of this resolution, a Libyan draft which sought to insist that Gaza was still occupied was specifically not adopted by the members of the Security Council.
Simplistic approaches to complex military challenges
The Report fails to consider the realities of the conflict and in particular the mode of operation of terrorist organizations which deliberately endanger civilians and make urban areas their battlefield of choice. It makes no reference to the recruitment and exploitation of children by Hamas and the smuggling of weapons and ammunition through tunnels, and ignores clear evidence of the abuse of mosques and hospitals. At the same time, it makes unfounded assumptions regarding military options and so places unrealistic and unworkable demands on any State seeking to protect its civilians from terrorist attacks.
The Report pays lip service to the established international law principle that the legality of military action must be assessed based on the information available to a “reasonable military commander” at the time of each individual targeting decision, and not based on hindsight. But the Report nonetheless repeatedly reaches sweeping conclusions about “war crimes” without ever examining such real-time information. The Report does not examine what information was available to the commanders in the field, how they might have perceived the immediate threats to themselves and their soldiers, what weapons were available at that moment on the ground, and what information was available about potential risks to civilians. Instead, time and time again, the Report substitutes its own hindsight judgment. For example:
Second-guessing choice of weapons and tactics without knowledge of available resources. The Report concludes that with respect to one particular incident, Israeli forces should have used different weapons to further limit the risk to civilians in the area, and is untroubled by the fact that it has no information regarding the available troops, weapons or intelligence. The Report observes that forces had 50 minutes in which to respond to a significant threat (the time used by the force to accurately identify the source of fire), and opines that given this time, “it is difficult to believe that mortars were the most accurate weapons available” (¶ 696). Displaying a troubling disconnect from the reality of urban fighting on many simultaneous fronts, it suggests that the forces in the field should used "helicopters and fighter jets", assuming that these are readily available to commanders in the field.[14]
Second-guessing what commanders should have anticipated. The Report concludes with respect to another incident that Israeli forces should not have been surprised that they were faced with anti-tank missile fire in the vicinity of a UNRWA installation, and therefore should have taken different steps to respond to this hostile fire, other than applying the commonly used technique of smoke screening (¶ 588). Again, the Report seeks to substitute its judgment for that of the commanders in the field, without any of the information necessary to conduct a proper analysis under the applicable law.
The Report also ignores Israel's extensive efforts, even in the midst of fighting, to maintain humanitarian standards and protect civilians. It makes no mention, for example, of IDF precautions such as cross-verification of intelligence prior to targeting or the numerous incidents in which operations were aborted due to concerns about disproportionate civilian harm[15]. And while the Report does, reluctantly, acknowledge Israel's "significant efforts" to issue warnings before attacks, it dismisses these as not having been effective (¶ 1717(2)).
Minimizing terrorist threats – and vindicating terrorist tactics
21. The Report adopts an approach that encourages armed terrorist groups worldwide to adopt the strategy of hiding behind civilians and civilian infrastructure. The Report strongly condemns as unlawful Israel’s attacks on terrorists - even those actively engaged in combat - when the latter were in the vicinity of civilians. Under the Report’s view of appropriate rules of engagement, any State would be virtually powerless to target a terrorist group that operates in densely populated areas and seeks to blend in with the civilian population. The Report also suggests that the members and infrastructure of a terrorist organization enjoy protected status under international law so long as the organization exercises de facto control over a civilian population. Presumably, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the FARC in Colombia, and other armed groups unlawfully controlling territory in any part of the world would enjoy similar protections under the Report authors’ worldview, which differs materially from the established principles of international law.
The following are examples of the Report’s logic:
Justification for terrorism. The Report supports the so-called "right" of Hamas to use force against Israel in the name of self-determination (¶ 269), while ignoring the consistent approach of Hamas – as evident in its Charter and the statements of its leaders - which not only rejects the peace process agreed by Israel and the PLO but explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel. The Report describes the rocket attacks from Gaza, including those which immediately followed Israel's withdrawal of all forces and civilians from the area, as “reprisals” (¶109, ¶1662-1665(2)), in clear contradiction to the decisive position of the international community that terrorist acts are "in any circumstances unjustifiable".[16] At the same time, the Report fails to acknowledge that stopping the rocket attacks was a valid objective and discusses the rocket attacks almost as an afterthought. (¶1212).
Minimizing the impact of terrorist attacks on Israel. The Report seeks to limit the scope of a State's response to terrorist threats by downplaying and minimizing the effects of such attacks. For example, describing rocket and mortar attacks on the Israeli town of Ashdod, the Report describes the impact as "a brief interruption to [its] economy brought about by the temporary displacement of some of their residents"(¶ 107), simply ignoring the death and injury to Ashdod's residents caused by missile attacks.
Finding that use of force against terrorists operating in proximity to civilians is unlawful.
The Report effectively suggests that Israel was not permitted to fire upon terrorists located in proximity to civilians (¶ 42, ¶ 520, and ¶ 698). In reaching this conclusion, the Report effectively validates the terrorist tactic of hiding behind the civilian population. Moreover, the Mission acknowledges that Hamas fighters mingled with the population (¶ 35), but then, disregarding the explicit admission of a Hamas officials of the use of human shields, and the overwhelming corroborative evidence, the Report concludes that the Mission “found no evidence to suggest that Palestinian armed groups either directed to civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or forced civilians to remain within the vicinity of attacks.” (¶ 492)
Legitimization of Hamas based on its de facto control over civilian activities in the Gaza Strip. The Report scarcely acknowledges that Hamas is a terrorist organization and instead refers to its leaders as “Gaza authorities” (e.g. ¶ 380-90)[17]. The Report states, that even if military components of Hamas are terrorist, the organization has “distinct political, military and social welfare components.” disregarding the determinations of the European Union and other countries drawing no such distinction. With regard to the targeting of Hamas infrastructure, the Report fails to investigate the multitude of military uses to which Hamas has put ostensibly civilian targets (¶ 384-389). Furthermore, the Report has refused to give any weight to the fact that the targeting of infrastructure by Israeli forces has been consistent with a number of engagements, such as those by NATO forces in Yugoslavia, that have been found to be lawful in the past. (¶¶ 1197-98).
Here's another detailed assessment done by Camera.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
Barry Rubin
If you've been following the Goldstone Report controversy, you might be interested in the response done by Israel to specific points raised by the report. The Goldstone report bashes Israel regarding the Gaza war for alleged crimes and misdeeds based solely on the unchallenged testimony of almost totally pro-Hamas and universally anti-Israel Palestinians who live under an Islamist dictatorial regime. On close examination, a very large number of the accusations dissolve into nothingness.
Judge Goldstone keeps repeating in interviews--and the media lets him get away with it--that nobody has challenged the substance of his report. This is blatantly untrue as this response shows. He and the commission have not even attempted to respond to any part of these critiques.
Equally, much of the Western media has not reported on any of these detailed critiques, for example the demolition of the number of civilian casualties claimed, achieved by reclassifying Hamas gunmen as civilians.
Meanwhile, the report passed the UN Human Rights Council and is now being discussed in general debate. At some point, the UN will try to pass some sort of anti-Israel resolution--with or without material sanctions--and the United States and Europeans will have to decide how to vote or veto. The report will also be used in the coming years repeatedly to portray Israel as an evil and illegitimate state that should not be allowed to exist.
There are also broader implications, as the response shows. If the concepts used in the report are adopted, democratic countries facing terrorist attacks will be unable to respond without international political and perhaps legal condemnation. For example, the U.S. attack into Afghanistan after September 11 would be subjected to war crimes' charges.
Here's a sample from part of the response:
Selection of Incidents
Like the prescreened and selected witnesses permitted to appear in the Mission's public hearings, the incidents covered in the Report appear to have been carefully cherry-picked for political effect. For example:
Despite Israeli and independent sources confirming that the Southern Command Center of Ismail Haniyeh had been located in the Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the Report states that it did "not investigate the case of Al-Shifa hospital and is not in a position to make any finding with regard to these allegations"[¶ 466].
Similarly, despite widespread reports of the use of mosques to hide weaponry and terrorist activity, the Mission examined only one incident involving a mosque and found no evidence that this mosque was used for the storage of weapons or any military activity by Palestinian armed groups[7]. The Mission then absolves itself of any responsibility to examine allegations of the abuse of mosques elsewhere in any other instance:
"As far as this mosque is concerned, therefore, the Mission found no basis for such an allegation. However, the Mission is unable to make a determination regarding the allegation in general nor with respect to any other mosque" [¶ 463].
A troubling insight into the approach of the Mission in selecting the incidents it wished to address was provided in response by Justice Goldstone to an enquiry asking why the Mission had ignored requests to invite witnesses such as Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and an adviser to the UK cabinet, and a recognized expert in the field of warfare in conditions similar to that in Gaza[8]. In an open response dated 21 September 2009 explaining the refusal to invite Colonel Kemp to testify, Goldstone admitted that the Mission had deliberately selected incidents so as to evade the complex dilemmas of confronting threats in civilian areas:
"[t]here was no reliance on Col. Kemp mainly because in our Report we did not deal with the issues he raised regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding officers "in the fog of war". We avoided having to do so in the incidents we decided to investigate."[emphasis added]
Evidentiary double-standards
Hamas launched thousands of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel and admitted embedding itself within the civilian population of Gaza. But the Report strives mightily to avoid finding that Hamas bears any responsibility for deaths and destruction in the Gaza Strip. In contrast, the Report is quick to blame Israel, presuming guilt absent compelling evidence to the contrary. Throughout, the Report deems statements of Israeli officials inherently untrustworthy, except where it misuses them to support its ordained conclusions. By contrast, the Report regularly credits statements by the “Gaza authorities” - i.e., the Hamas terrorist organization - as legitimate evidence, except where such statements admit wrongdoing or justify Israeli actions. Moreover, despite overwhelming evidence that Hamas and other terrorist groups operated from densely populated areas and from within hospitals and mosques, booby-trapped civilian areas, and sought to blend in with Palestinian non-combatants, the Report fails to investigate the most egregious and publicly known examples of such conduct, and even goes so far as to raise doubts regarding the intentionality of Hamas’ tactics.
Presumption that Israeli military sources are untrustworthy. Routinely treating Israeli statements as inherently unreliable, the Mission discounts even the veracity of photographic and satellite image data supplied by the IDF, on no more basis than the fact that the Mission did not have a means to verify the data independently. (¶ 449) The Report also points to Israel’s reliance on newspaper reports rather than its own intelligence to explain its conduct of the operation as an admission that IDF sources are unreliable (¶ 612), failing to recognize that, in many circumstances, intelligence information -- no matter how compelling -- simply cannot be disclosed to the public. Perhaps most tellingly, the only circumstance in which the Report appears to accept and emphasize Israeli statements is where it finds such statements useful to condemn Israel.[9]
Refusal to accept even the most direct admissions by Hamas as evidence of guilt. The Report cites the admission[10] of a Hamas official that Hamas “created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen, against the Zionist bombing machines.” (¶ 475) The Report then states, incredibly, that it does not consider this confession “to constitute evidence that Hamas forced Palestinian civilians to shield military objectives against attack. ( ¶ 476) The Report cites the admission of a fighter for Islamic Jihad that “the most important thing is achieving our military goals. We stay away from the houses if we can, but that’s often impossible.” (¶ 451) The Report then states, incredibly, that this admission of using civilian homes where needed for military objectives, “suggests the absence of intent.” (¶ 451)
'Reinterpretation' of Hamas statements. In seeking to support its assertion that the Hamas police were not involved in terrorist activity, the Report prefers to gloss over has to deal with the admission of police spokesperson Islam Shahwan who that the police had been given orders "to face the [Israeli] enemy". The Mission unquestioningly accepted his explanation that the intention was that in the event of a ground invasion the police would continue ensuring the movement of foodstuffs and upholding public order(¶ 414). The Mission is similarly accepting of an interpretation given by the director of the Police that by "resistance fighters" his intention was that they would develop into a law enforcement force (¶ 416). At the same time, the Report dismisses posters and photographs of policemen praising their involvement as members of the terrorist groups, arguing that this does not mean that these individuals "were involved in resistance in any away" and suggesting that they had been "adopted" post-mortem by terrorist groups(¶ 421). Beyond these reinterpretations of the evidence, the Report claims that no other evidence has been presented against "the civilian nature of the police in Gaza" (¶ 417), quite simply ignoring numerous explicit statements in Israel's report: The Operation in Gaza – Factual and Legal Aspects, which it quotes on many other matters. Among the many statements cited, ignored by the Report, is the admission by Hamas police chief Jamal al-Jarrah that "the police took part in the fighting alongside the resistance".
Picking and choosing its sources for political effect. At times even the same source is regarded by the Report as reliable insofar as its criticism of Israel is concerned but is discounted to the extent that it indicates wrongdoings by Hamas. The group of Israeli soldiers, "Breaking the Silence", for example, is quoted authoritatively throughout the report for its criticisms of Israel (¶ 457, 725, 800, 949, 996, 1022, 1088 – this last paragraph admitting "the soldier does not appear to have been a direct witness to the incident, but rather heard it from others ", 1089, 1183 and footnotes 362, 558), and yet the statements of the group are given no weight when they confirm that Hamas booby trapped civilian buildings[11]. (¶ 460)
Selective quotations regarding goals of the operation. The Report relies on uncited quotations in an NGO report as questionable support for its assertion that “[s]tatements by political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza leave little doubt that disproportionate destruction and violence against civilians were part of a deliberate policy.” (¶ 1211) Yet the Report ignores repeated statements of Israel's leaders emphasizing that, to the contrary, Israel's aim was to spare no effort to avoid or minimize civilian casualties.[12]
Misrepresentations of fact and law
Beyond the adoption of evidentiary double-standards, and the creative interpretation of inconvenient evidence, the Report frequently presents explicit misstatements of both facts and law. For example:
Misstatements of fact:
The Report accuses Israel of discriminating against its non-Jewish citizens by not providing shelters to protect Arab towns and villages from the rocket attacks. (¶ 1709, 1711(1)). In fact, the relevant decision[13] of the Government of Israel made no such discrimination, and provided all municipalities up to seven kilometers from the fence with a budget to cover the building of shelters. Municipalities located further away from the fence, which included non-Jewish villages as well as the Jewish cities of Be'er Sheva and Ashqelon, did not qualify for this funding.
The Report repeatedly misrepresents historical facts, particularly in the context of 'explaining' Israel military operations. It states that Operation "Hot Winter" was launched by Israel in February 2008 following a rocket attack towards the city of Ashkelon that caused 'light injuries' (¶ 196). In fact, Roni Yihye, aged 47, a student at Sapir College, was killed after sustaining massive wounds to his chest. Similarly it states that Operation "Days of Penitence" was launched in September-October of 2004, in retaliation for the firing of rockets against the town of Sderot and Israeli settlements, but fails to mention the deaths of Yuval Abebeh (aged 4) and Dorit (Masarat) Benisian (aged 2) of Sderot, killed by a Kassam rocket fired into Gaza while playing in the street. In both cases Hamas claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Misstatements of law:
The description of Israel's military courts system (¶1599-1600) contains numerous errors and inaccuracies. For example, its description of the appeals process relies on provisions which were amended in 2004 and are no longer in force today.
In support of its assertion that the Gaza Strip is to be regarded as occupied territory, even following the withdrawal of all Israeli forces and all 9000 Israeli civilians in the Disengagement Initiative in 2005, the Report cites as authority UN Security Council Resolution 1860 (footnote 163 to ¶277). But this resolution makes no such assertion. In fact, in the negotiations prior to the adoption of this resolution, a Libyan draft which sought to insist that Gaza was still occupied was specifically not adopted by the members of the Security Council.
Simplistic approaches to complex military challenges
The Report fails to consider the realities of the conflict and in particular the mode of operation of terrorist organizations which deliberately endanger civilians and make urban areas their battlefield of choice. It makes no reference to the recruitment and exploitation of children by Hamas and the smuggling of weapons and ammunition through tunnels, and ignores clear evidence of the abuse of mosques and hospitals. At the same time, it makes unfounded assumptions regarding military options and so places unrealistic and unworkable demands on any State seeking to protect its civilians from terrorist attacks.
The Report pays lip service to the established international law principle that the legality of military action must be assessed based on the information available to a “reasonable military commander” at the time of each individual targeting decision, and not based on hindsight. But the Report nonetheless repeatedly reaches sweeping conclusions about “war crimes” without ever examining such real-time information. The Report does not examine what information was available to the commanders in the field, how they might have perceived the immediate threats to themselves and their soldiers, what weapons were available at that moment on the ground, and what information was available about potential risks to civilians. Instead, time and time again, the Report substitutes its own hindsight judgment. For example:
Second-guessing choice of weapons and tactics without knowledge of available resources. The Report concludes that with respect to one particular incident, Israeli forces should have used different weapons to further limit the risk to civilians in the area, and is untroubled by the fact that it has no information regarding the available troops, weapons or intelligence. The Report observes that forces had 50 minutes in which to respond to a significant threat (the time used by the force to accurately identify the source of fire), and opines that given this time, “it is difficult to believe that mortars were the most accurate weapons available” (¶ 696). Displaying a troubling disconnect from the reality of urban fighting on many simultaneous fronts, it suggests that the forces in the field should used "helicopters and fighter jets", assuming that these are readily available to commanders in the field.[14]
Second-guessing what commanders should have anticipated. The Report concludes with respect to another incident that Israeli forces should not have been surprised that they were faced with anti-tank missile fire in the vicinity of a UNRWA installation, and therefore should have taken different steps to respond to this hostile fire, other than applying the commonly used technique of smoke screening (¶ 588). Again, the Report seeks to substitute its judgment for that of the commanders in the field, without any of the information necessary to conduct a proper analysis under the applicable law.
The Report also ignores Israel's extensive efforts, even in the midst of fighting, to maintain humanitarian standards and protect civilians. It makes no mention, for example, of IDF precautions such as cross-verification of intelligence prior to targeting or the numerous incidents in which operations were aborted due to concerns about disproportionate civilian harm[15]. And while the Report does, reluctantly, acknowledge Israel's "significant efforts" to issue warnings before attacks, it dismisses these as not having been effective (¶ 1717(2)).
Minimizing terrorist threats – and vindicating terrorist tactics
21. The Report adopts an approach that encourages armed terrorist groups worldwide to adopt the strategy of hiding behind civilians and civilian infrastructure. The Report strongly condemns as unlawful Israel’s attacks on terrorists - even those actively engaged in combat - when the latter were in the vicinity of civilians. Under the Report’s view of appropriate rules of engagement, any State would be virtually powerless to target a terrorist group that operates in densely populated areas and seeks to blend in with the civilian population. The Report also suggests that the members and infrastructure of a terrorist organization enjoy protected status under international law so long as the organization exercises de facto control over a civilian population. Presumably, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the FARC in Colombia, and other armed groups unlawfully controlling territory in any part of the world would enjoy similar protections under the Report authors’ worldview, which differs materially from the established principles of international law.
The following are examples of the Report’s logic:
Justification for terrorism. The Report supports the so-called "right" of Hamas to use force against Israel in the name of self-determination (¶ 269), while ignoring the consistent approach of Hamas – as evident in its Charter and the statements of its leaders - which not only rejects the peace process agreed by Israel and the PLO but explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel. The Report describes the rocket attacks from Gaza, including those which immediately followed Israel's withdrawal of all forces and civilians from the area, as “reprisals” (¶109, ¶1662-1665(2)), in clear contradiction to the decisive position of the international community that terrorist acts are "in any circumstances unjustifiable".[16] At the same time, the Report fails to acknowledge that stopping the rocket attacks was a valid objective and discusses the rocket attacks almost as an afterthought. (¶1212).
Minimizing the impact of terrorist attacks on Israel. The Report seeks to limit the scope of a State's response to terrorist threats by downplaying and minimizing the effects of such attacks. For example, describing rocket and mortar attacks on the Israeli town of Ashdod, the Report describes the impact as "a brief interruption to [its] economy brought about by the temporary displacement of some of their residents"(¶ 107), simply ignoring the death and injury to Ashdod's residents caused by missile attacks.
Finding that use of force against terrorists operating in proximity to civilians is unlawful.
The Report effectively suggests that Israel was not permitted to fire upon terrorists located in proximity to civilians (¶ 42, ¶ 520, and ¶ 698). In reaching this conclusion, the Report effectively validates the terrorist tactic of hiding behind the civilian population. Moreover, the Mission acknowledges that Hamas fighters mingled with the population (¶ 35), but then, disregarding the explicit admission of a Hamas officials of the use of human shields, and the overwhelming corroborative evidence, the Report concludes that the Mission “found no evidence to suggest that Palestinian armed groups either directed to civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or forced civilians to remain within the vicinity of attacks.” (¶ 492)
Legitimization of Hamas based on its de facto control over civilian activities in the Gaza Strip. The Report scarcely acknowledges that Hamas is a terrorist organization and instead refers to its leaders as “Gaza authorities” (e.g. ¶ 380-90)[17]. The Report states, that even if military components of Hamas are terrorist, the organization has “distinct political, military and social welfare components.” disregarding the determinations of the European Union and other countries drawing no such distinction. With regard to the targeting of Hamas infrastructure, the Report fails to investigate the multitude of military uses to which Hamas has put ostensibly civilian targets (¶ 384-389). Furthermore, the Report has refused to give any weight to the fact that the targeting of infrastructure by Israeli forces has been consistent with a number of engagements, such as those by NATO forces in Yugoslavia, that have been found to be lawful in the past. (¶¶ 1197-98).
Here's another detailed assessment done by Camera.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
Silencing dissent in America
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST
Former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold should probably buy himself a flak jacket. Gold is scheduled to debate Richard Goldstone at Brandeis University next Thursday and the anti-Israel forces are organizing quite a reception for him Goldstone, who chaired the UN Human Rights Council's commission charged with accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, has become a darling of the anti-Israel Left in the weeks since his report accusing Israel of committing both war crimes and crimes against humanity was published last month. And anti-Israeli leftists don't like the idea of someone challenging his libelous attacks against Israel in a public debate at a university.
In an e-mail to a campus list-serve, Brandeis student and anti-Israel activist Jonathan Sussman called on his fellow anti-Zionists to disrupt the event that will pit the "neutral" Goldstone against Gold with his "wildly pro-Zionist message." Sussman invited his list-serve members to join him at a meeting to "discuss a possible response."
As the young community organizer sees it, "Possibilities include inviting Palestinian speakers to come participate, seeding the audience with people who can disrupt the Zionist narrative, protest and direct action." He closed his missive with a plaintive call to arms: "F**k the occupation."
Apparently the aspiring political organizer never considered another possibility: listening to what Gold has to say.
It seems rather unfair to pick on a small fry like Sussman. A brief Web search indicates that Gold's would-be silencer divides his time fairly equally between publishing rambling, Communist verses to paramours and calling for the overthrow of the US government.
The problem is that Sussman's planned "direct action" against Gold is not an isolated incident. On college campuses throughout the US, Israelis and supporters of Israel are regularly denied the right to speak by leftist activists claiming to act on behalf of Israel's "victims," or in the cause of "peace." In the name of the Palestinians or peace these radicals seek to coerce their fellow students into following their lead by demonizing and brutally silencing all voices of dissent.
This, by the way is true regardless of where the speaker fits on the pro-Israel spectrum. Earlier this month former prime minister Ehud Olmert - who during his tenure in office offered the Palestinians more than any of his predecessors - could barely get a word in edgewise above the clamor of students at the University of Chicago cursing him as a war criminal.
While many commentators claim that the situation on college campuses is unique, the fact is that the attempts of leftist activists on campuses to silence non-leftist dissenters regarding Israel and a host of other issues is simply an extreme version of what is increasingly becoming standard operating procedure for leftist activists throughout the US. Rather than participating in a battle of ideas with their ideological opponents on the Right, increasingly, leftist activists, groups and policy-makers seek to silence their opponents through slander, intimidation and misrepresentation of their own agenda.
CASE IN point is J Street. The 18-month old, multi-million dollar American Jewish political action committee held its inaugural convention this week in Washington. J Street seeks to present itself as the representative of a silent majority of American Jews. However, its signature positions - while in line with the Obama administration's policies - are deeply discordant with mainstream American Jewish views.
J Street asserts that Israel must freeze all Jewish construction beyond the 1949 armistice lines; that Israel should withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, including in Jerusalem and expel all Jews now living beyond the 1949 armistice lines; that the absence of peace is due to the absence of a Palestinian state; that Israel used excessive force in Operation Cast Lead and the Goldstone Report is legitimate. J Street also opposes both sanctions on Iran and military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.
Just how profoundly out of synch these positions are with the American Jewish community was made clear with last month's publication of the American Jewish Committee's 2009 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion.
According to the survey, a majority of US Jews oppose the Obama administration's call for the prohibition of Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Similarly, the vast majority of US Jews rejects the call for Israel to surrender parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians; believes the cause of the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the Arabs' desire to destroy Israel rather than the absence of a Palestinian state; and supports Israel's right to defend itself against Palestinian terror. A whopping 94 percent of American Jews believe the Palestinians should be required to accept Israel's right to exist as a precursor to any viable peace. Finally, a solid majority of American Jews supports either a US or an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear installations.
But no matter. Facts are no obstacle for J Street. Just as Sussman smears his opponents to discredit dissenting views, so J Street has not only misrepresented its own place on the American Jewish ideological spectrum. It has misrepresented the position of mainstream American Jewish groups on the ideological spectrum. Owing no doubt to the fact that most American Jews self-identify as liberals, J Street condemns organizations like AIPAC and the ADL as right-wing or conservative or hawkish to try to make American Jews feel uncomfortable supporting them.
At its conference this week J Street's radicalism was on full display. According to the JTA account, one panel discussion featured members of Congress debating the proposition that American Jewish money controls US foreign policy. Congressman Bob Filner (D-California) was reportedly the darling of the crowd for arguing that indeed, Jewish money exerts inordinate and destructive influence over US foreign policy.
Filner related how in 1994 he was one of the few members of Congress who refused to sign onto a resolution condemning an anti-Semitic speech given by Nation of Islam lieutenant Khalid Abdul Muhammad. Filner claimed that by refusing to condemn a public figure's calumny against the Jewish people he lost some $250,000 in electoral contributions in each subsequent election cycle. "That kind of money is an intimidating factor. I raised a lot less in succeeding years, but my conscious was cleared," he bragged.
Filner went on to condemn pro-Israel lobbyists in general. Indeed he insinuated that the act of lobbying on behalf of Israel is inherently treacherous. Filner argued that unlike labor lobbyists who provide some public benefit, pro-Israel lobbyists are dangerous because they convince legislators to take "positions that can lead to war."
Then there was the self-professed "pro-Israel, pro-peace" group's panel discussion on Iran's nuclear program. As James Kirchick reported in The New Republic, the panel included two of Iran's most outspoken apologists in Washington. Both former National Security Council staffer Hillary Mann Leverett and National Iranian-American Council head Trita Parsi asserted a moral and security equivalence between Iran, Israel and the US. Leverett accused opponents of Iran's nuclear program of racism. In her words, those calling for Iran to be denied nuclear weapons are "reinforcing stereotypes of Iranian duplicitousness," and their warnings are "fundamentally racist."
Here we see how just as Sussman seeks to demonize dissenting views, so J Street gives an open forum to radicals who castigate their opponents as illegitimate, racist and treacherous.
Perhaps the most outstanding feature of the far-left's behavior is its trenchant refusal to acknowledge that it is the far-left. Just as J Street fatuously claims to represent the American Jewish majority, so it claims to be the American Jewish equivalent of the Kadima Party. J Street's Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami told The Jerusalem Post, "The party and the viewpoint that we're closest to in Israeli politics is actually Kadima."
This of course is pure nonsense. Kadima - like every other Zionist political party in Israel - supports strong sanctions on Iran. Indeed, Kadima supports taking whatever steps are necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Beyond that, Kadima waged two wars while it was in office. Both Operation Cast Lead and the Second Lebanon War were opposed by the far-left. J Street was outspoken in its criticism of Cast Lead. Moreover, Kadima's leaders have emphatically opposed the Goldstone Report.
So other than its support for the rapid establishment of a Palestinian state, Kadima shares none of J Street's positions.
THE FACT that J Street represents neither mainstream Israeli thinking nor mainstream American Jewish thinking is of little concern to its leadership. J Street represents the Obama administration. In his keynote address before the conference, National Security Adviser James Jones told his cheering audience that J Street has a friend in the Obama White House. As he put it, "You can be sure that this administration will be represented at all other future J Street conferences."
In recent weeks we have discovered that like its agent J Street, and indeed like Sussman at Brandeis, the Obama White House is also dedicated to silencing opposing voices by marginalizing and demonizing dissent. In fact, the White House's modus operandi is startlingly similar to theirs.
There are six national television networks in the US. Five of them support President Barack Obama. One - Fox News - does not. Rather than rejoice in what is an overwhelmingly favorable state of affairs for it, in recent weeks, the Obama White House has gone to war against Fox News. Obama's senior advisers have castigated the network as "the research arm of the Republican Party," and claim daily that it is "not a news organization."
Obama as well as top administration officials boycott Fox programs and are seeking to intimidate friendly news organizations into joining them in isolating Fox. In a spate of recent statements on the subject, Obama's top advisers have warned the other networks not to follow Fox's lead on any of the stories it reports, lest they discover they have allowed themselves to become the tool of the Republicans.
A straight line connects Sussman's rants, J Street's lies and the Obama administration's attempt to destroy a news organization. In each case, actions aimed at silencing debate are falsely characterized as the brave moves of an underdog seeking to confront the evil powers that be. Sussman writes of the need to overthrow the "oligarchs." J Street claims to be breaking the "right-wing stranglehold" on US Israel policy. And Obama's adviser Valerie Jarrett claims that by attacking Fox News, the White House is "speaking truth to power."
Luckily, the falseness of all of these claims has not been lost on the American public. Despite the actions of the likes of Sussman, "wildly pro-Zionist" voices still resonate on college campuses just as they do throughout the US. J Street has been unable to convince American Jews that its anti-Israel positions are the true expression of American Jewish Zionism. And Obama's approval ratings now stand at a mere 51%.
But the fact that these views have not become dominant in America is no reason to be sanguine about the future. That opponents of free speech today occupy the top echelons of power in Washington and are represented at all levels of American society constitutes a critical challenge to the continued vibrancy of American democracy.
caroline@carolineglick.com
______________________________________________________________________________________
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Former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold should probably buy himself a flak jacket. Gold is scheduled to debate Richard Goldstone at Brandeis University next Thursday and the anti-Israel forces are organizing quite a reception for him Goldstone, who chaired the UN Human Rights Council's commission charged with accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, has become a darling of the anti-Israel Left in the weeks since his report accusing Israel of committing both war crimes and crimes against humanity was published last month. And anti-Israeli leftists don't like the idea of someone challenging his libelous attacks against Israel in a public debate at a university.
In an e-mail to a campus list-serve, Brandeis student and anti-Israel activist Jonathan Sussman called on his fellow anti-Zionists to disrupt the event that will pit the "neutral" Goldstone against Gold with his "wildly pro-Zionist message." Sussman invited his list-serve members to join him at a meeting to "discuss a possible response."
As the young community organizer sees it, "Possibilities include inviting Palestinian speakers to come participate, seeding the audience with people who can disrupt the Zionist narrative, protest and direct action." He closed his missive with a plaintive call to arms: "F**k the occupation."
Apparently the aspiring political organizer never considered another possibility: listening to what Gold has to say.
It seems rather unfair to pick on a small fry like Sussman. A brief Web search indicates that Gold's would-be silencer divides his time fairly equally between publishing rambling, Communist verses to paramours and calling for the overthrow of the US government.
The problem is that Sussman's planned "direct action" against Gold is not an isolated incident. On college campuses throughout the US, Israelis and supporters of Israel are regularly denied the right to speak by leftist activists claiming to act on behalf of Israel's "victims," or in the cause of "peace." In the name of the Palestinians or peace these radicals seek to coerce their fellow students into following their lead by demonizing and brutally silencing all voices of dissent.
This, by the way is true regardless of where the speaker fits on the pro-Israel spectrum. Earlier this month former prime minister Ehud Olmert - who during his tenure in office offered the Palestinians more than any of his predecessors - could barely get a word in edgewise above the clamor of students at the University of Chicago cursing him as a war criminal.
While many commentators claim that the situation on college campuses is unique, the fact is that the attempts of leftist activists on campuses to silence non-leftist dissenters regarding Israel and a host of other issues is simply an extreme version of what is increasingly becoming standard operating procedure for leftist activists throughout the US. Rather than participating in a battle of ideas with their ideological opponents on the Right, increasingly, leftist activists, groups and policy-makers seek to silence their opponents through slander, intimidation and misrepresentation of their own agenda.
CASE IN point is J Street. The 18-month old, multi-million dollar American Jewish political action committee held its inaugural convention this week in Washington. J Street seeks to present itself as the representative of a silent majority of American Jews. However, its signature positions - while in line with the Obama administration's policies - are deeply discordant with mainstream American Jewish views.
J Street asserts that Israel must freeze all Jewish construction beyond the 1949 armistice lines; that Israel should withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, including in Jerusalem and expel all Jews now living beyond the 1949 armistice lines; that the absence of peace is due to the absence of a Palestinian state; that Israel used excessive force in Operation Cast Lead and the Goldstone Report is legitimate. J Street also opposes both sanctions on Iran and military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.
Just how profoundly out of synch these positions are with the American Jewish community was made clear with last month's publication of the American Jewish Committee's 2009 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion.
According to the survey, a majority of US Jews oppose the Obama administration's call for the prohibition of Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Similarly, the vast majority of US Jews rejects the call for Israel to surrender parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians; believes the cause of the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the Arabs' desire to destroy Israel rather than the absence of a Palestinian state; and supports Israel's right to defend itself against Palestinian terror. A whopping 94 percent of American Jews believe the Palestinians should be required to accept Israel's right to exist as a precursor to any viable peace. Finally, a solid majority of American Jews supports either a US or an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear installations.
But no matter. Facts are no obstacle for J Street. Just as Sussman smears his opponents to discredit dissenting views, so J Street has not only misrepresented its own place on the American Jewish ideological spectrum. It has misrepresented the position of mainstream American Jewish groups on the ideological spectrum. Owing no doubt to the fact that most American Jews self-identify as liberals, J Street condemns organizations like AIPAC and the ADL as right-wing or conservative or hawkish to try to make American Jews feel uncomfortable supporting them.
At its conference this week J Street's radicalism was on full display. According to the JTA account, one panel discussion featured members of Congress debating the proposition that American Jewish money controls US foreign policy. Congressman Bob Filner (D-California) was reportedly the darling of the crowd for arguing that indeed, Jewish money exerts inordinate and destructive influence over US foreign policy.
Filner related how in 1994 he was one of the few members of Congress who refused to sign onto a resolution condemning an anti-Semitic speech given by Nation of Islam lieutenant Khalid Abdul Muhammad. Filner claimed that by refusing to condemn a public figure's calumny against the Jewish people he lost some $250,000 in electoral contributions in each subsequent election cycle. "That kind of money is an intimidating factor. I raised a lot less in succeeding years, but my conscious was cleared," he bragged.
Filner went on to condemn pro-Israel lobbyists in general. Indeed he insinuated that the act of lobbying on behalf of Israel is inherently treacherous. Filner argued that unlike labor lobbyists who provide some public benefit, pro-Israel lobbyists are dangerous because they convince legislators to take "positions that can lead to war."
Then there was the self-professed "pro-Israel, pro-peace" group's panel discussion on Iran's nuclear program. As James Kirchick reported in The New Republic, the panel included two of Iran's most outspoken apologists in Washington. Both former National Security Council staffer Hillary Mann Leverett and National Iranian-American Council head Trita Parsi asserted a moral and security equivalence between Iran, Israel and the US. Leverett accused opponents of Iran's nuclear program of racism. In her words, those calling for Iran to be denied nuclear weapons are "reinforcing stereotypes of Iranian duplicitousness," and their warnings are "fundamentally racist."
Here we see how just as Sussman seeks to demonize dissenting views, so J Street gives an open forum to radicals who castigate their opponents as illegitimate, racist and treacherous.
Perhaps the most outstanding feature of the far-left's behavior is its trenchant refusal to acknowledge that it is the far-left. Just as J Street fatuously claims to represent the American Jewish majority, so it claims to be the American Jewish equivalent of the Kadima Party. J Street's Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami told The Jerusalem Post, "The party and the viewpoint that we're closest to in Israeli politics is actually Kadima."
This of course is pure nonsense. Kadima - like every other Zionist political party in Israel - supports strong sanctions on Iran. Indeed, Kadima supports taking whatever steps are necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Beyond that, Kadima waged two wars while it was in office. Both Operation Cast Lead and the Second Lebanon War were opposed by the far-left. J Street was outspoken in its criticism of Cast Lead. Moreover, Kadima's leaders have emphatically opposed the Goldstone Report.
So other than its support for the rapid establishment of a Palestinian state, Kadima shares none of J Street's positions.
THE FACT that J Street represents neither mainstream Israeli thinking nor mainstream American Jewish thinking is of little concern to its leadership. J Street represents the Obama administration. In his keynote address before the conference, National Security Adviser James Jones told his cheering audience that J Street has a friend in the Obama White House. As he put it, "You can be sure that this administration will be represented at all other future J Street conferences."
In recent weeks we have discovered that like its agent J Street, and indeed like Sussman at Brandeis, the Obama White House is also dedicated to silencing opposing voices by marginalizing and demonizing dissent. In fact, the White House's modus operandi is startlingly similar to theirs.
There are six national television networks in the US. Five of them support President Barack Obama. One - Fox News - does not. Rather than rejoice in what is an overwhelmingly favorable state of affairs for it, in recent weeks, the Obama White House has gone to war against Fox News. Obama's senior advisers have castigated the network as "the research arm of the Republican Party," and claim daily that it is "not a news organization."
Obama as well as top administration officials boycott Fox programs and are seeking to intimidate friendly news organizations into joining them in isolating Fox. In a spate of recent statements on the subject, Obama's top advisers have warned the other networks not to follow Fox's lead on any of the stories it reports, lest they discover they have allowed themselves to become the tool of the Republicans.
A straight line connects Sussman's rants, J Street's lies and the Obama administration's attempt to destroy a news organization. In each case, actions aimed at silencing debate are falsely characterized as the brave moves of an underdog seeking to confront the evil powers that be. Sussman writes of the need to overthrow the "oligarchs." J Street claims to be breaking the "right-wing stranglehold" on US Israel policy. And Obama's adviser Valerie Jarrett claims that by attacking Fox News, the White House is "speaking truth to power."
Luckily, the falseness of all of these claims has not been lost on the American public. Despite the actions of the likes of Sussman, "wildly pro-Zionist" voices still resonate on college campuses just as they do throughout the US. J Street has been unable to convince American Jews that its anti-Israel positions are the true expression of American Jewish Zionism. And Obama's approval ratings now stand at a mere 51%.
But the fact that these views have not become dominant in America is no reason to be sanguine about the future. That opponents of free speech today occupy the top echelons of power in Washington and are represented at all levels of American society constitutes a critical challenge to the continued vibrancy of American democracy.
caroline@carolineglick.com
______________________________________________________________________________________
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HC: The Pelosi Blueprint for Government Run Health Care
Heritage Foundation
The new House health care bill (H.R. 3962) unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) yesterday clocks in at 1,990 pages and about 400,000 words. As written, the bill purports to cost only $1.05 trillion over the first ten years and is paid for by over $700 billion in tax increases and cuts to Medicare Advantage and Medicare prescription drug payments.But as troubling as those numbers are, the scariest thing about the bill is the solid foundation it lays for a complete government take over of the health care sector of our economy.
The Washington Post describes the bill as “creating an expensive new entitlement program (subsidies to purchase health insurance) and dramatically expanding an existing one (Medicaid).” This is true by itself, but the Post later dismissively adds: “If you’ve noticed that we haven’t talked about the public option in the House bill, that’s not an oversight. For all the fury over the issue, it doesn’t matter that much; the CBO estimates that the government-run plan would actually have slightly higher premiums.” This is a breathtakingly naive statement by the Post and demonstrates that they have not yet fully grasped how all the different elements of the bill are designed to interact to produce President Barack Obama’s desired outcome.
The Medicaid Expansion: Under current law the CBO projects that only 35 million Americans would be on Medicaid by 2019. The House bill massively expands the Medicaid program by raising the upper income cutoff to 150 percent of the federal poverty line (FPL). As a result, the CBO now estimates some 50 million Americans will be enrolled in the program at a ten year cost to the federal government of $425 billion. This does not include the $34 billion in increased Medicaid costs that state governments will have to spend.
The Insurance Subsidies: The House bill also creates a Health Insurance Exchange through which individuals without employer based coverage could purchase insurance. The bill also provides “affordability credits” to people who are below 400% FPL. However, the bill also denies access to the credit for all people who are “eligible” for Medicaid. In essence, therefore, the House bill forces all Americans below 150% FPL to enroll in Medicaid or pay the individual mandate fine. The CBO explains why the Democrats chose this route: “The estimated costs of providing subsidies through the new insurance exchanges are now lower for several reasons: the larger expansion of Medicaid means that fewer people would be eligible for coverage through the exchanges.” In other words, it’s cheaper to force people into Medicaid then to give them subsidies high enough to buy private insurance. Furthermore, individuals are only allowed to enroll in the cheapest (”basic”) plans for the first two years. After that, they can only choose more expensive plans or the government run plan.
The Employer Mandate: The bill imposes a new 8% payroll tax on employers who don’t cover specified percentages of their employees’ health insurance. In the short term this will only result in job losses and lower wages. But further down the road, the health plans would have to meet new requirements to be specified later by Obama’s new Health Czar (“Health Choices Commissioner”). If your employer’s health plan doesn’t meet those requirements (which are all but guaranteed to drive up the cost of your health plan), you couldn’t keep it.
The Public Option: As health insurance premiums keep rising thanks to all the new requirements in the current bill and the Health Czar’s future regulations, more and more people will have no choice but to depend on the government plan or face a fine. At first, only individuals and employers with 25 employees or fewer would be eligible for the government run plan. But in year two (2014) individuals and employers with 50 employees or fewer become eligible, in year three (2015) employers with at least 100 employees become eligible but starting that year, the Health Czar permitted from this year forward to expand employer participation as appropriate, “with the goal of allowing all employers access to the Exchange.” In effect, the bill makes larger sized employers explicitly eligible and still turns over authority to the Health Czar to further open it up. The goal has been, and still clearly is, to open the exchange and the public plan to everyone. As the Post notes, the CBO now projects that the government run premiums will actually be higher than private plans. The Democrats will not allow this to continue. History shows that entitlement programs like this quickly devolve into price control central planning. A less “robust” public option today will almost certainly be a more robust public option tomorrow. Look no further than the history of Medicare. Medicare was initially designed to pay private rates, but now the program has a complex formula for administered pricing.
So that’s the plan: force all Americans to buy health insurance, regulate the private plans till they are too expensive, and then slowly expand the power and size of the public option as Americans are left with no choice but to turn to government run health care. That is how Pelosi aims to achieve Obama’s goal of “Everybody in, Nobody out” government run health care. The costs are going to be staggering. Not only will health care quality and choice suffer as more and more Americans are forced onto a government plan that reimburses providers at low government set rates, but the price tag is guaranteed to skyrocket. The only way the House managed to keep their price tag as low as $1.05 trillion is by pretending that Congress would cut Medicare reimbursement rates by 20% in 2010. The full ten-year cost of being honest about the Medicare reimbursement rates would be $250 billion. Less choice, lower quality health care, and trillion dollar deficits for years to come: that is the House’s prescription for health reform.
QUICK HITS
An alleged member of the Hamburg, Germany terror cell linked to the Sept. 11 attacks is believed to be among al Qaeda leaders helping the Taliban in Pakistan.
According to leaked House Ethics Committee documents, more than 30 lawmakers, including nearly half of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, are being scrutinized about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling.
In a rejection of President Obama’s engagement strategy, Iran told the United Nations nuclear watchdog on Thursday that it would not accept a plan to send its stockpile of uranium out of the country.
According to U.S. military officials, two Russian attack submarines were detected patrolling the waters off the East Coast of the U.S.
Thanks to the fraud riddled homebuyers tax credit, and the $24,000 per car cost to taxpayers Cash for Clunkers program, the nation’s Gross Domestic Product grew 3.5% this summer.
Comment: The cost today is anticipated to be over 1 trillion dollars for this health care program-never, in the history of the USA has a government estimate been correct-there are always cost over runs. I'd like someone to do a brief analysis of this since the 1970's. The economy is not healing, the 3 plus percent GDP was in a large part due to the cash for clunkers and the limited loan money for mortgages. Beware!
The new House health care bill (H.R. 3962) unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) yesterday clocks in at 1,990 pages and about 400,000 words. As written, the bill purports to cost only $1.05 trillion over the first ten years and is paid for by over $700 billion in tax increases and cuts to Medicare Advantage and Medicare prescription drug payments.But as troubling as those numbers are, the scariest thing about the bill is the solid foundation it lays for a complete government take over of the health care sector of our economy.
The Washington Post describes the bill as “creating an expensive new entitlement program (subsidies to purchase health insurance) and dramatically expanding an existing one (Medicaid).” This is true by itself, but the Post later dismissively adds: “If you’ve noticed that we haven’t talked about the public option in the House bill, that’s not an oversight. For all the fury over the issue, it doesn’t matter that much; the CBO estimates that the government-run plan would actually have slightly higher premiums.” This is a breathtakingly naive statement by the Post and demonstrates that they have not yet fully grasped how all the different elements of the bill are designed to interact to produce President Barack Obama’s desired outcome.
The Medicaid Expansion: Under current law the CBO projects that only 35 million Americans would be on Medicaid by 2019. The House bill massively expands the Medicaid program by raising the upper income cutoff to 150 percent of the federal poverty line (FPL). As a result, the CBO now estimates some 50 million Americans will be enrolled in the program at a ten year cost to the federal government of $425 billion. This does not include the $34 billion in increased Medicaid costs that state governments will have to spend.
The Insurance Subsidies: The House bill also creates a Health Insurance Exchange through which individuals without employer based coverage could purchase insurance. The bill also provides “affordability credits” to people who are below 400% FPL. However, the bill also denies access to the credit for all people who are “eligible” for Medicaid. In essence, therefore, the House bill forces all Americans below 150% FPL to enroll in Medicaid or pay the individual mandate fine. The CBO explains why the Democrats chose this route: “The estimated costs of providing subsidies through the new insurance exchanges are now lower for several reasons: the larger expansion of Medicaid means that fewer people would be eligible for coverage through the exchanges.” In other words, it’s cheaper to force people into Medicaid then to give them subsidies high enough to buy private insurance. Furthermore, individuals are only allowed to enroll in the cheapest (”basic”) plans for the first two years. After that, they can only choose more expensive plans or the government run plan.
The Employer Mandate: The bill imposes a new 8% payroll tax on employers who don’t cover specified percentages of their employees’ health insurance. In the short term this will only result in job losses and lower wages. But further down the road, the health plans would have to meet new requirements to be specified later by Obama’s new Health Czar (“Health Choices Commissioner”). If your employer’s health plan doesn’t meet those requirements (which are all but guaranteed to drive up the cost of your health plan), you couldn’t keep it.
The Public Option: As health insurance premiums keep rising thanks to all the new requirements in the current bill and the Health Czar’s future regulations, more and more people will have no choice but to depend on the government plan or face a fine. At first, only individuals and employers with 25 employees or fewer would be eligible for the government run plan. But in year two (2014) individuals and employers with 50 employees or fewer become eligible, in year three (2015) employers with at least 100 employees become eligible but starting that year, the Health Czar permitted from this year forward to expand employer participation as appropriate, “with the goal of allowing all employers access to the Exchange.” In effect, the bill makes larger sized employers explicitly eligible and still turns over authority to the Health Czar to further open it up. The goal has been, and still clearly is, to open the exchange and the public plan to everyone. As the Post notes, the CBO now projects that the government run premiums will actually be higher than private plans. The Democrats will not allow this to continue. History shows that entitlement programs like this quickly devolve into price control central planning. A less “robust” public option today will almost certainly be a more robust public option tomorrow. Look no further than the history of Medicare. Medicare was initially designed to pay private rates, but now the program has a complex formula for administered pricing.
So that’s the plan: force all Americans to buy health insurance, regulate the private plans till they are too expensive, and then slowly expand the power and size of the public option as Americans are left with no choice but to turn to government run health care. That is how Pelosi aims to achieve Obama’s goal of “Everybody in, Nobody out” government run health care. The costs are going to be staggering. Not only will health care quality and choice suffer as more and more Americans are forced onto a government plan that reimburses providers at low government set rates, but the price tag is guaranteed to skyrocket. The only way the House managed to keep their price tag as low as $1.05 trillion is by pretending that Congress would cut Medicare reimbursement rates by 20% in 2010. The full ten-year cost of being honest about the Medicare reimbursement rates would be $250 billion. Less choice, lower quality health care, and trillion dollar deficits for years to come: that is the House’s prescription for health reform.
QUICK HITS
An alleged member of the Hamburg, Germany terror cell linked to the Sept. 11 attacks is believed to be among al Qaeda leaders helping the Taliban in Pakistan.
According to leaked House Ethics Committee documents, more than 30 lawmakers, including nearly half of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, are being scrutinized about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling.
In a rejection of President Obama’s engagement strategy, Iran told the United Nations nuclear watchdog on Thursday that it would not accept a plan to send its stockpile of uranium out of the country.
According to U.S. military officials, two Russian attack submarines were detected patrolling the waters off the East Coast of the U.S.
Thanks to the fraud riddled homebuyers tax credit, and the $24,000 per car cost to taxpayers Cash for Clunkers program, the nation’s Gross Domestic Product grew 3.5% this summer.
Comment: The cost today is anticipated to be over 1 trillion dollars for this health care program-never, in the history of the USA has a government estimate been correct-there are always cost over runs. I'd like someone to do a brief analysis of this since the 1970's. The economy is not healing, the 3 plus percent GDP was in a large part due to the cash for clunkers and the limited loan money for mortgages. Beware!
Fatah: Don't Send Us Back to Gaza
Maayana Miskin
A7 News
Hundreds of Fatah terrorists from Gaza have been living in Yehudah and Shomron (Judea and Samaria) for more than two years after fleeing from Hamas during bloody fights for control of Gaza in 2007. The Palestinian Authority has now filed an official request asking Israel to allow Fatah members to stay where they are. The roughly 400 terrorists who fled Gaza are unable to move freely throughout Yehudah and Shomron for fear that they will be stopped at a checkpoint and forced to return to their place of residence – Gaza – where, they say, they could face revenge attacks.
A PA source said Israel has not refused the request outright, but has asked each of the 400 to submit an individual request for Yehudah and Shomron residency. Israel is generally cautious about granting Gaza residents permits to move to Yehudah and Shomron out of concern that terrorists could move from place to place in order to set up new terror cells and plan attacks.
Several dozen Fatah terrorists were killed in the 2007 battle for Gaza, and hundreds were wounded. Intermittent Fatah-Hamas clashes have been reported in Gaza, Yehudah and Shomron over the past two years as well, and hundreds have been killed or wounded.
Comment: Yet the international community insists we, Israel, must make peace, grant more supportive gestures to these people? Not for one moment would or has the USA ever done the same.
The Myth That Fuels Mideast Conflict
Bob Feferman
RealClearPolitics
Ever since Israel declared its independence in 1948, there has been a pervasive and dangerous myth in the Middle East that undermines any hope for peace. Israel's enemies claim that the Jewish state was created at the expense of the Arabs of Palestine in order to ease the conscience of the world over the tragedy of the Nazi Holocaust. Today, the main spokesman for this myth is none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, who will speak this month at the United Nations. Ahmadinejad adds an evil twist to this: he claims the Holocaust never happened. Through his perverse logic, Ahmadinejad believes that if you deny the Holocaust, you can deny Israel its legitimate right to exist and work for the destruction of Israel. It is this myth- that Israel was born in sin- which continues to fuel the fires of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In order to bring about peace, we must retell the story of Zionism to reaffirm Israel's legitimate right to exist.
After World War II, the British had tired of their role in governing Palestine. In 1947, they decided to turn the issue of Palestine over to the newly created United Nations. The committee created by the United Nations to investigate the issue was called UNSCOP, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, which had representatives from 11 countries.
While there is no doubt that the tragedy of the Holocaust had an influence on the members of UNSCOP, what they saw during their visit to Palestine in 1947 had a much more profound effect on their eventual decision to recommend partition: a well-organized Jewish community that had already created the institutions necessary for an independent state. As Professor Kenneth Stein of Emory University wrote, "... the United Nations decided to partition Palestine into an Arab and Jewish state because of the realities on the ground, not because of collective emotions of guilt". What were those realities, and how were they created?
During the 50 years of intense Zionist activity prior to 1947, the Jewish community of Palestine had created Hebrew-speaking schools, Hebrew newspapers, Hebrew theatre, agriculture, industry, a health care system and a Hebrew University in Jerusalem. All of these accomplishments were not done overnight.
The difficult process of nation building began with the creation of the Zionist organization in 1897 by Theodor Herzl. Its goal was to create a Jewish state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jewish people. Land that was legally purchased from Arab landowners by the Jewish National Fund- a creation of the Zionist organization- allowed for the building of Jewish farms and cities. Indeed, it is this year that we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the city of Tel Aviv. Other Jewish cities like Rishon L'Zion, founded in 1882, even pre-date the Zionist movement.
Israel's enemies need to be reminded that prior to the outbreak of World War II, and the Nazi Holocaust, the Jewish population of Palestine had already numbered 450,000.
When the members of UNSCOP made their decision in 1947 to recommend the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, they were simply validating a reality that already existed.
In November of 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to accept the partition of Palestine. Shortly after the historic vote, none other than the London Times published an extraordinary editorial on Dec. 1 that supported the decision of the United Nations with this short but very powerful argument: "It is hard to see how the Arab world, still less the Arabs of Palestine, will suffer from what is mere recognition of an accomplished fact- the presence in Palestine of a compact, well-organized, and virtually autonomous Jewish community".
There is no doubt that when the United Nations voted on partition in 1947, they did so with full knowledge that the Jewish people had earned the right to statehood through the hard labor and sweat of Jewish pioneers. Recognition of this fundamental truth will open the door to peace through the two-state solution.
When the president of Iran no longer attacks the legitimacy of Israel, and when the government of Iran no longer pursues nuclear weapons and sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah who seek to destroy Israel, then there will be peace.
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RealClearPolitics
Ever since Israel declared its independence in 1948, there has been a pervasive and dangerous myth in the Middle East that undermines any hope for peace. Israel's enemies claim that the Jewish state was created at the expense of the Arabs of Palestine in order to ease the conscience of the world over the tragedy of the Nazi Holocaust. Today, the main spokesman for this myth is none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, who will speak this month at the United Nations. Ahmadinejad adds an evil twist to this: he claims the Holocaust never happened. Through his perverse logic, Ahmadinejad believes that if you deny the Holocaust, you can deny Israel its legitimate right to exist and work for the destruction of Israel. It is this myth- that Israel was born in sin- which continues to fuel the fires of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In order to bring about peace, we must retell the story of Zionism to reaffirm Israel's legitimate right to exist.
After World War II, the British had tired of their role in governing Palestine. In 1947, they decided to turn the issue of Palestine over to the newly created United Nations. The committee created by the United Nations to investigate the issue was called UNSCOP, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, which had representatives from 11 countries.
While there is no doubt that the tragedy of the Holocaust had an influence on the members of UNSCOP, what they saw during their visit to Palestine in 1947 had a much more profound effect on their eventual decision to recommend partition: a well-organized Jewish community that had already created the institutions necessary for an independent state. As Professor Kenneth Stein of Emory University wrote, "... the United Nations decided to partition Palestine into an Arab and Jewish state because of the realities on the ground, not because of collective emotions of guilt". What were those realities, and how were they created?
During the 50 years of intense Zionist activity prior to 1947, the Jewish community of Palestine had created Hebrew-speaking schools, Hebrew newspapers, Hebrew theatre, agriculture, industry, a health care system and a Hebrew University in Jerusalem. All of these accomplishments were not done overnight.
The difficult process of nation building began with the creation of the Zionist organization in 1897 by Theodor Herzl. Its goal was to create a Jewish state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jewish people. Land that was legally purchased from Arab landowners by the Jewish National Fund- a creation of the Zionist organization- allowed for the building of Jewish farms and cities. Indeed, it is this year that we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the city of Tel Aviv. Other Jewish cities like Rishon L'Zion, founded in 1882, even pre-date the Zionist movement.
Israel's enemies need to be reminded that prior to the outbreak of World War II, and the Nazi Holocaust, the Jewish population of Palestine had already numbered 450,000.
When the members of UNSCOP made their decision in 1947 to recommend the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, they were simply validating a reality that already existed.
In November of 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to accept the partition of Palestine. Shortly after the historic vote, none other than the London Times published an extraordinary editorial on Dec. 1 that supported the decision of the United Nations with this short but very powerful argument: "It is hard to see how the Arab world, still less the Arabs of Palestine, will suffer from what is mere recognition of an accomplished fact- the presence in Palestine of a compact, well-organized, and virtually autonomous Jewish community".
There is no doubt that when the United Nations voted on partition in 1947, they did so with full knowledge that the Jewish people had earned the right to statehood through the hard labor and sweat of Jewish pioneers. Recognition of this fundamental truth will open the door to peace through the two-state solution.
When the president of Iran no longer attacks the legitimacy of Israel, and when the government of Iran no longer pursues nuclear weapons and sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah who seek to destroy Israel, then there will be peace.
checkTextResizerCookie('article_body');
Page Printed from: http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2009/09/19/the_myth_that_fuels_the_fire_of_mideast_conflict_97173.html at October 30, 2009 - 09:28:14 AM CDT
Pragmatists in Tehran
As the United States negotiates with Iran, it needs to jettison preconceptions about what negotiating with Iran means.
BY HILLARY MANN LEVERETT
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/
Direct U.S.-Iranian negotiations in Geneva and Vienna this month over Iran's nuclear program demonstrate something very positive about the prospects for U.S. diplomacy with Iran: When given the chance to engage directly with the United States, Iran will take that chance and pursue negotiations in an active and constructive way. This does not mean that Iran will automatically give the United States what it wants. But it does mean that Iran will approach negotiations with the United States in a rational manner grounded in Iranian national security interests. This should not come as a surprise: It is how Iran has approached previous episodes of engagement with the United States -- including two years of extremely constructive official talks between the U.S. and Iran over Afghanistan and al Qaeda, following the 9/11 attacks (talks in which I directly participated).
Now that Tehran has asked for an extension of the deadline for its response to a proposal to ship most of Iran's low enriched uranium out of the country for fabrication into fuel rods, it is important to remember Tehran's history of pragmatic cooperation and avoid distorting events or overreacting.
Many commentators in the United States and Israel are attributing the delay to political divisions in Tehran stemming from the June 12 presidential election. Others are describing the delay as "typical" Iranian negotiating behavior: like rug merchants haggling in the bazaar. But these characterizations are misleading.
Iran had originally proposed to refuel the Tehran research reactor through purchasing fuel assemblies from international providers, including the United States -- in fact, involving the United States was Iran's idea of a confidence-building measure. There was a clear consensus within the Iranian leadership in support of this proposal, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking about it publicly.
The United States responded with interest to Iran's initiative but proposed, instead, that Iran ship most of Iran's low enriched uranium stockpile outside the country for fabrication into fuel rods for the reactor in question. This proposed deal meets Iran's need for fuel at the Tehran research reactor but would also address, at least in the short run, international concerns about Tehran's accumulation of fissile material.
In some respects this might be a good deal from an Iranian perspective, and Tehran may yet agree to it. However, there are two potential flaws. First, Iran's experience of prior cooperation with international actors on its nuclear program has been disappointing. During the 1970s, Iran invested more than $1 billion to build a French reactor which was contractually supposed to guarantee Iran access to that reactor's fuel. But, when the Islamic Republic was established, France reneged. Now Iran is being called on to trust France, again, to return its fuel.
Second, at Iran's current production rate for low enriched uranium, it would take Tehran nine to 12 months to replenish the uranium that would be sent out of the country under this deal. For serious national security planners in Tehran, whether they like Ahmadinejad or not, this is potentially problematic as it leaves almost a year's window of increased vulnerability to an Israeli or U.S. military attack.
In Tehran, views are split, and it has nothing to do with reformists vs. hardliners, or the pro-Ahmadinejad camp vs. the anti-Ahmadinejad camp. It has to do with lack of confidence about U.S. and Israeli intentions toward the Islamic Republic as it is constituted, rather than as we wish it to be.
If the Iranian leadership believes that the United States is interested in a fundamental realignment of U.S.-Iranian relations and is prepared to live with the Islamic Republic as it stands, a consensus in favor of the reactor fuel deal could be forged in Tehran. Indeed, under those circumstances, consensus could be forged in Tehran on behalf of a broader strategic deal with the United States. But I am skeptical that the United States has provided the security guarantees that would be needed to assuage Iranian concerns about Washington's ultimate intentions.
Too often, Iran's security concerns are dismissed in the United States and Israel as false or manufactured, re-enforcing the stereotype of Iranians as chronically duplicitous and unprepared to keep any commitment they enter into. These stereotypes are unfortunate for two reasons. First, they are wrong and simply not supported by the historical record. Second, they are fundamentally racist. If someone were to criticize Israeli diplomacy by referring to rabbis lying and conspiring behind their beards -- as far too many commentators accuse Iran's "mullahs" as lying and conspiring behind their beards -- we would rightly denounce that as an anti-Semitic stereotype.
We should not approach negotiations with Iran on the basis of stereotypes. We should approach these negotiations with a serious understanding of our own interests and an informed appreciation for the interests of the other side.
In beginning this process, the United States has two choices. One is continuing to insist on strict quantitative limits on the further expansion of Iran's fuel cycle infrastructure as the price Iran must pay to continue talks, and on the complete suspension of Iran's uranium enrichment activities as the price Iran would have to pay for a longer-term deal.
This is clearly the approach preferred by some in Washington, some of Israel's supporters here, and the current Israeli government. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear, publicly, that full suspension of Iran's fuel-cycle development is the only acceptable outcome to nuclear dialogue with the Islamic Republic. But it is dangerous and delusionary. If, in the near term, the United States insists on strict quantitative limits on further development of Iran's fuel cycle infrastructure, and, in the longer term, on zero enrichment in Iran, the negotiating process started in Geneva on October 1 will implode.
That implosion will put the United States on the path to policy failure as it seeks to impose what Sec Clinton likes to call "crippling" sanctions on Iran. And when the U.S. is unable to get Chinese or Russia, or even French, support for anything approaching "crippling" sanctions, that policy failure will increase the chances for military confrontation over Iran's nuclear activities with all of the predictably profound consequences such a confrontation would have for the Middle East, especially for Israel.
The other, far more preferable, approach would entail the United States pursuing a genuinely workable diplomatic strategy towards Iran. With regard to the nuclear issue, this would mean stepping back from a quixotic quest for zero enrichment in Iran and, instead, seeking to identify monitoring arrangements for Iran's nuclear program so that the proliferation risks associated with Iran's program were tightly controlled.
Pursuing this strategy would also require embedding diplomatic efforts on the nuclear issue in a broader, comprehensive, strategic framework for U.S.-Iranian discussions. Such discussions would deal with the full range of bilateral differences between Washington and Tehran, with the aim of reaching what I have often described as a U.S.-Iranian Grand Bargain. This is something which Iran very much wants. It is also something that would be very strongly in the interests of the United States and Israel.
The idea of a U.S.-Iranian "grand bargain" starts from the premise that Iran is not just a problem to be managed. In much the same way that President Richard Nixon understood that strategic rapprochement with the People's Republic of China was imperative for American interests in the early 1970s, strategic rapprochement with the Islamic Republic is now truly imperative for American interests in the Middle East.
At this point, the United States cannot achieve any of its high-priority objectives in the greater Middle East -- in the Arab-Israeli arena, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, with regard to energy security, etc. -- without a more productive relationship with the Islamic Republic.
Of course, the opening to China had important implications for America's established allies in Asia -- most notably, Japan -- in much the same the way some fear an American opening to Iran would have negative implications for Israel. But the U.S.-Japan alliance not only survived America's rapprochement with China -- in fact, the consolidation of a largely cooperative Sino-American relationship profoundly reduced the security threat to Japan emanating from China.
For those in Israel and her supporters here who believe that a U.S.-Iranian "grand bargain" would inevitably be struck at the expense of Israel's interests, I would say two things: First, Israel's interest would also be profoundly well served by a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement that helped to settle the unresolved tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict, put Iraq and Afghanistan on more stable trajectories, and effectively eliminated the risk of U.S.-Iranian (or Israeli-Iranian) military confrontation.
Second, without U.S.-Iranian rapprochement, the United States will not be able to achieve any of its high-priority goals in the Middle East. This would be bad for Israel, which needs credible and effective American leadership in the region to maintain a stable balance of power, address serious threats, and ensure its safety and survival. We should think hard about what Israel's strategic situation would be like if the United States is seen, to a much greater extent than is already the case, as a declining power, unable to deliver.
Hillary Mann Leverett is the chief executive officer of Stratega, a consulting firm, and the editor of the blog theraceforiran.com.
Groundhog Day
Ten stories that appear in the papers again and again, but never seem to actually happen.
BY JOSHUA KEATING | OCTOBER 27, 2009
“Hamas in talks over releasing Gilad Shalit”
Ever since Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit was taken prisoner in 2006, the militant group Hamas has seemed to delight in dangling the prospect of his release before an anxious Israeli public. Negotiations over Shalit began almost immediately after he was taken. In October 2006, one of the factions holding Shalit reported that they had agreed to Israel's term and were preparing to release Shalit "within days." Similar reports of "progress" in freeing Shalit have popped up in the Israeli media ever since. Things seemed particularly promising in March 2009 when Israeli negotiators seemed close to a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas at Egyptian-moderated talks, but those too broke down. In September 2009, Israel settled for a video of Shalit in exchange for 20 Palestinian prisoners. Hamas seems in no hurry to give up its most valuable prisoner any time soon.
“North Korea to return to negotiating table”
GREG BAKER/Pool/Getty Images
Since withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1993, and particularly since the first round of "six-party talks" 10 years later, North Korea has excelled at the art of nuclear brinksmanship -- withdrawing from international negotiations and provoking its enemies through missile tests and hostile rhetoric -- then eventually returning to the table, usually in exchange for concessions and aid.
The sixth round of talks appeared to lead to an agreement in 2007, but North Korea failed to follow through on delivering a full accounting of its nuclear stockpile. Since then, Kim Jong Il has at various points promised to return to the negotiating table. Most recently, Kim told visiting Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao that he would consider returning to multilateral talks in October.
"Pakistan finally getting tough with Taliban"
AMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images
It has long been global conventional wisdom that Pakistan's military is far more preoccupied with its security concerns in Kashmir than in routing the country's Islamist insurgency. But dating back to at least the raid on the Lal Masjid mosque in 2007, U.S. observers have sought out reasons to declare that Pakistan was finally "getting tough," or "getting serious" on terror.
President Obama has welcomed Pakistan's apparent growing recognition that "their biggest threat right now comes internally," and journalists like the Washington Post's David Ignatius have praised Pakistan's "savvy" offensives in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan. Trouble is, the insurgency shows no signs of letting up and the Pakistani military is not exactly falling in line with U.S. security goals.
"Israel preparing military strike against Iran"
ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
In December 2005, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered his military to prepare for the possibility of a strike on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities, saying, "We have the ability to deal with this and we're making all the necessary preparations to be ready for such a situation."
Since then it's been regularly reported that Israel was preparing an "imminent" military strike against Iranian facilities, along the lines of its 1981 attack against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. Many thought such a strike would occur while Israel still had the "green light" from the Bush administration but the Israeli government's warnings have disappeared away with Obama in office. "Under no circumstances should any option be removed from the table," Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned last week.
"Honduras rivals appear close to deal"
Win McNamee/Getty Images
This is a newcomer on the list, but seems to have the potential for endless repetition. Since the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, in June, his supporters have been "close to a deal" a number of times, according to mediators from the United Nations and Organization of American States.
On Oct. 14, it was reported that the two sides agreed on "nearly everything". Everything that is, except the main thing that they're negotiating in the first place: whether or not Zelaya will return to the presidency. Neither Zelaya nor interim President Roberto Micheletti appears willing to compromise, so it seems a safe bet the standoff will continue into the foreseeable future.
"Dollar to be replaced as global reserve currency"
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
The greenback has had a tough couple of years, no doubt about it. But some seem inordinately fixated on the possibility that the dollar will be replaced as the global reserve currency. China's Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan set off the speculation in March by remarking that it was dangerous for the world to rely on one reserve currency.
Now it seems that every G-8, G-20, or OPEC meeting is another occasion for speculation about the dollar's imminent demise. Proto-blogger Matt Drudge seems particularly fixated on the story. Unfortunately for the dollar fatalists, there's little evidence to suggest that the dollar will be dumped any time soon and it's not even clear that it would be such a bad thing if it did happen.
"New Russian president proposing liberal reforms"
DMITRY ASTAKHOV/AFP/Getty Images
Like his predecessor and benefactor Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev came into office as a mystery. Reformers in Russia and the West hoped that the easygoing lawyer would prove to be a more moderate leader than Putin, now the prime minister, proved to be.
While few doubt Putin's ultimate influence, observers continue to speculate that Medvedev will become "his own man", and thanks to a few speeches declaring the need for liberal reforms and speculating about his own future presidential intentions, Kremlinologists have been quick to declare that the two are not so chummy anymore. But apart from a few token gestures -- meeting with friends of murdered human rights activists instead of dismissing them -- there's little evidence to date that Medvedev's liberal program is anything but cheap talk.
"Fidel Castro is dying"
ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images
Sooner or later, retired Cuban dictator Fidel Castro will die. But the leader who has outlived the terms of 11 U.S. presidents also seems to constantly overcome predictions of his imminent death.
The aging leader was first rushed to a hospital in July 2006 with internal bleeding and missed some time at the office but eventually returned (rumors that the leader was on death's door had Cuban Americans dancing in the streets in Miami's Little Havana). Since he stepped down in 2008, rumors about Fidel's health have continued to circulate, but the regime still regularly releases photos of the perpetually tracksuit-clad leader meeting visiting dignitaries and looking -- if a bit worn out -- very much alive.
"Momentum on Doha Round"
JORGE UZON/AFP/Getty Images
In 2001, WTO countries committed to a series of measures to open up their agricultural markets to international trade. Since then, however, progress on implementing the Doha reforms has been hard to find.
Dating back to 2003, talks have fallen apart or stalled every year due to the unwillingness of developing countries to cut their tariffs and the reluctance of rich countries to cut their subsidies. Nonetheless, efforts to salvage the Doha dream continue. At nearly every major international summit, world leaders pledge to make the necessary concessions soon. Most recently, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk predicted "significant breakthroughs in the next few weeks and months." Believe it when you see it.
"Israel and Palestinians reach peace deal"
AHMED JADALLAH/AFP/Getty Images
Perhaps the greatest and saddest of all Groundhog Day headlines. In 1994 Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were jointly awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Oslo peace accords and courageously shaking hands on the White House lawn.
Since then, thousands have died on both sides in Israeli military strikes and Palestinian bombings and rocket attacks. Countless summits have taken place during this period, notably the Camp David Summit and the Annapolis Conference. Each time, both sides made bold claims and negotiators -- typically from the United States -- made optimistic predictions. But with the Israelis and Palestinians as far apart as ever, the conflict seems destined to grind on.
Save over 50% when you subscribe to FP.
Joshua Keating is deputy Web editor at Foreign Policy.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/27/groundhog_day?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full
BY JOSHUA KEATING | OCTOBER 27, 2009
“Hamas in talks over releasing Gilad Shalit”
Ever since Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit was taken prisoner in 2006, the militant group Hamas has seemed to delight in dangling the prospect of his release before an anxious Israeli public. Negotiations over Shalit began almost immediately after he was taken. In October 2006, one of the factions holding Shalit reported that they had agreed to Israel's term and were preparing to release Shalit "within days." Similar reports of "progress" in freeing Shalit have popped up in the Israeli media ever since. Things seemed particularly promising in March 2009 when Israeli negotiators seemed close to a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas at Egyptian-moderated talks, but those too broke down. In September 2009, Israel settled for a video of Shalit in exchange for 20 Palestinian prisoners. Hamas seems in no hurry to give up its most valuable prisoner any time soon.
“North Korea to return to negotiating table”
GREG BAKER/Pool/Getty Images
Since withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1993, and particularly since the first round of "six-party talks" 10 years later, North Korea has excelled at the art of nuclear brinksmanship -- withdrawing from international negotiations and provoking its enemies through missile tests and hostile rhetoric -- then eventually returning to the table, usually in exchange for concessions and aid.
The sixth round of talks appeared to lead to an agreement in 2007, but North Korea failed to follow through on delivering a full accounting of its nuclear stockpile. Since then, Kim Jong Il has at various points promised to return to the negotiating table. Most recently, Kim told visiting Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao that he would consider returning to multilateral talks in October.
"Pakistan finally getting tough with Taliban"
AMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images
It has long been global conventional wisdom that Pakistan's military is far more preoccupied with its security concerns in Kashmir than in routing the country's Islamist insurgency. But dating back to at least the raid on the Lal Masjid mosque in 2007, U.S. observers have sought out reasons to declare that Pakistan was finally "getting tough," or "getting serious" on terror.
President Obama has welcomed Pakistan's apparent growing recognition that "their biggest threat right now comes internally," and journalists like the Washington Post's David Ignatius have praised Pakistan's "savvy" offensives in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan. Trouble is, the insurgency shows no signs of letting up and the Pakistani military is not exactly falling in line with U.S. security goals.
"Israel preparing military strike against Iran"
ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
In December 2005, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered his military to prepare for the possibility of a strike on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities, saying, "We have the ability to deal with this and we're making all the necessary preparations to be ready for such a situation."
Since then it's been regularly reported that Israel was preparing an "imminent" military strike against Iranian facilities, along the lines of its 1981 attack against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. Many thought such a strike would occur while Israel still had the "green light" from the Bush administration but the Israeli government's warnings have disappeared away with Obama in office. "Under no circumstances should any option be removed from the table," Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned last week.
"Honduras rivals appear close to deal"
Win McNamee/Getty Images
This is a newcomer on the list, but seems to have the potential for endless repetition. Since the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, in June, his supporters have been "close to a deal" a number of times, according to mediators from the United Nations and Organization of American States.
On Oct. 14, it was reported that the two sides agreed on "nearly everything". Everything that is, except the main thing that they're negotiating in the first place: whether or not Zelaya will return to the presidency. Neither Zelaya nor interim President Roberto Micheletti appears willing to compromise, so it seems a safe bet the standoff will continue into the foreseeable future.
"Dollar to be replaced as global reserve currency"
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
The greenback has had a tough couple of years, no doubt about it. But some seem inordinately fixated on the possibility that the dollar will be replaced as the global reserve currency. China's Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan set off the speculation in March by remarking that it was dangerous for the world to rely on one reserve currency.
Now it seems that every G-8, G-20, or OPEC meeting is another occasion for speculation about the dollar's imminent demise. Proto-blogger Matt Drudge seems particularly fixated on the story. Unfortunately for the dollar fatalists, there's little evidence to suggest that the dollar will be dumped any time soon and it's not even clear that it would be such a bad thing if it did happen.
"New Russian president proposing liberal reforms"
DMITRY ASTAKHOV/AFP/Getty Images
Like his predecessor and benefactor Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev came into office as a mystery. Reformers in Russia and the West hoped that the easygoing lawyer would prove to be a more moderate leader than Putin, now the prime minister, proved to be.
While few doubt Putin's ultimate influence, observers continue to speculate that Medvedev will become "his own man", and thanks to a few speeches declaring the need for liberal reforms and speculating about his own future presidential intentions, Kremlinologists have been quick to declare that the two are not so chummy anymore. But apart from a few token gestures -- meeting with friends of murdered human rights activists instead of dismissing them -- there's little evidence to date that Medvedev's liberal program is anything but cheap talk.
"Fidel Castro is dying"
ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images
Sooner or later, retired Cuban dictator Fidel Castro will die. But the leader who has outlived the terms of 11 U.S. presidents also seems to constantly overcome predictions of his imminent death.
The aging leader was first rushed to a hospital in July 2006 with internal bleeding and missed some time at the office but eventually returned (rumors that the leader was on death's door had Cuban Americans dancing in the streets in Miami's Little Havana). Since he stepped down in 2008, rumors about Fidel's health have continued to circulate, but the regime still regularly releases photos of the perpetually tracksuit-clad leader meeting visiting dignitaries and looking -- if a bit worn out -- very much alive.
"Momentum on Doha Round"
JORGE UZON/AFP/Getty Images
In 2001, WTO countries committed to a series of measures to open up their agricultural markets to international trade. Since then, however, progress on implementing the Doha reforms has been hard to find.
Dating back to 2003, talks have fallen apart or stalled every year due to the unwillingness of developing countries to cut their tariffs and the reluctance of rich countries to cut their subsidies. Nonetheless, efforts to salvage the Doha dream continue. At nearly every major international summit, world leaders pledge to make the necessary concessions soon. Most recently, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk predicted "significant breakthroughs in the next few weeks and months." Believe it when you see it.
"Israel and Palestinians reach peace deal"
AHMED JADALLAH/AFP/Getty Images
Perhaps the greatest and saddest of all Groundhog Day headlines. In 1994 Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were jointly awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Oslo peace accords and courageously shaking hands on the White House lawn.
Since then, thousands have died on both sides in Israeli military strikes and Palestinian bombings and rocket attacks. Countless summits have taken place during this period, notably the Camp David Summit and the Annapolis Conference. Each time, both sides made bold claims and negotiators -- typically from the United States -- made optimistic predictions. But with the Israelis and Palestinians as far apart as ever, the conflict seems destined to grind on.
Save over 50% when you subscribe to FP.
Joshua Keating is deputy Web editor at Foreign Policy.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/27/groundhog_day?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full
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