Ted Belman
Yesterday, Abbas reformulated his terms for entering direct negotiations, namely Israel must agree to the idea of a third party guarding the borders of a future Palestinian state before direct peace talks can start and Israel must also agree in principle to a fair land swap that would compensate the Palestinians for West Bank land absorbed by Jewish settlements in any peace deal.
He can say what he wants, but what are the parameters based on past agreements?
While many people argue that we know what the ultimate deal will look like, namely the creation of an independent, viable, contiguous, Palestinian state with the ’67 borders with minor swaps, a divided Jerusalem and a just solution to the refugee problem. The truth is quite the opposite. The peace process began with UNSC Resolution 242 whose goal it was to achieve a “peaceful and accepted settlement.” Thus any settlement must be agreed upon and not imposed. The resolution required “Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” Thus not all territories must be withdrawn from. In fact Israel has already withdrawn from more than 90% of such territories by withdrawing from Sinai and Gaza. Little noticed is that this requirement requires no withdrawal from territories occupied in the ’48 war of independence.
This resolution also provided that such a settlement must include “termination of all claims or states of belligerency” and the recognition that “every State in the area” has the “right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.” This is the basis for Israel demanding an end-of-conflict agreement.
At the Rabat Conference in 1974, Jordan and all Arab countries recognized the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” with respect to Judea and Samaria. (West Bank)
Egypt signed such a peace treaty with Israel in 1980. Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994..
Pursuant to the Oslo Accords, Israel must now reach on agreement with the Palestinian Authority which replaced the PLO as the negotiating party. The Oslo Accords did not predetermine the disposition of Jerusalem, borders, Israel settlements and refugees other than to label them as final status issues to be negotiated. The Oslo Accords envisioned a settlement pursuant to the parameters of Res 242.
In 2003, the Roadmap was accepted by the PA and by Israel albeit subject to 14 reservations. Chief among the changes to the peace parameters of Oslo was the insertion of the Saudi Plan later adopted as the Arab League Initiative. This plan was at odds with Resolution 242 in that it required the withdrawal from all occupied territories subject to minor swaps of land of equal value, the division of Jerusalem and a just settlement of the refugee problem pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 194 which provided
“that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for property of those choosing not to return.”
This resolution, having being passed by the General Assembly, is not binding.
PM Sharon objected strenuously to the insertion of the Saudi Plan but Secretary Powell overcame his objections by ramming it down his throat arguing “the Roadmap is only a process”.
Sharon had one more bite at the apple when he was negotiating with Pres Bush for a letter of commitment and principles in conjunction with the proposed disengagement from Gaza. .
Dore Gold of the JCPA commented on the significance of this letter.
• President Bush’s April 14, 2004, letter to Prime Minister Sharon represents a significant shift in U.S. policy, as compared to the Clinton Parameters advanced by the former president after the failed Camp David Summit of July 2000 and in subsequent months.
• In his plan, Clinton provided conditional approval of settlement blocs, but insisted that there needed to be “territorial swaps” of land from pre-1967 Israel in exchange for any West Bank land Israel would retain. Bush does not insist on any land swaps involving Israeli territory.
• Clinton spoke of Palestinian refugees finding homes in other states including Israel, while Bush states that Palestinian refugees should be settled in a future Palestinian state “rather than Israel.”
• The Clinton Parameters dropped the idea of defensible borders and replaced them with “security guarantees” including a proposed “international presence” in the Jordan Valley. In contrast, Bush refers to “defensible borders” in the context of preserving and strengthening “Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself, by itself.”
• According to the Clinton Parameters, Israel’s security needs “need not and should not come at the expense of Palestinian sovereignty or interfere with Palestinian territorial integrity.” In contrast, Bush allows for Israel to continue to control airspace, territorial waters, and land passages in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank “pending agreements or other arrangements.”
• During the Clinton era, the signing of a peace treaty was supposed to produce security for Israelis. Under Bush, security must be achieved first, as a prerequisite for peace. Given the threats Israel still faces from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Yasser Arafat’s own Fatah Tanzim, the approach taken in the Bush letter represents a significant improvement for Israel and for the prospects of a lasting peace.
• The Clinton Parameters explicitly envisioned the re-division of sovereignty in Jerusalem according to a formula whereby “what is Arab should be Palestinian” and “what is Jewish should be Israeli.” Bush’s letter is silent on the issue of Jerusalem. While support for a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty is missing, at least there is no attempt to return to the Clinton formulations.
Thus the Clinton Parameters were much in line with the Saudi Plan and the Bush letter flew in the face of both of these and resorted to Res 242 which provided the original parameters of Oslo.
In June of last year Secretary Clinton disavowed the Bush letter saying it “did not become part of the official position of the United States government.” Israel begged to differ.
When Obama was interviewed by Yonit Levi for Israel TV on July 7th, he said at 40 seconds of Part 2, “our view on settlements is consistent with all the previous administrations” and continued “that view was always voiced not in the spirit of trying to undermine Israel’s security but to strengthen it”. He made it clear he was talking about the freeze which he called the “moratorium.”
Keep in mind that there are two separate but inter-connected issues here, namely where Israel can build in the interim and what lands she is expected to cede in the final agreement. Bush’s letter clearly referred to the parameters for final settlement but such parameters have implications for where he permitted Israel to build in the interim. Israel and the bush administration had agreed that Israel could build within the construction line of the settlements in Judea and Samaria and could build unabated in the settlement blocks. Obama is flat out wrong to say that his view on settlements is consistent with that of Bush.. It isn’t. By demanding the freeze, Obama was against Israel building anywhere east of the green line.
JPOST reported on July 5th,
“according to [an Israeli] proposal, Obama would publicly hint at acceptance of then-US president George W. Bush’s 2004 letter to then prime minister Ariel Sharon, and Netanyahu would say that while settlement construction would continue inside the large settlement blocks, it would not be restarted outside of those areas.
‘
The Washington Times reported the next day, on the significance of the Bush letter and reported that Dan Shapiro, the White House National Security Council’s senior director for the Middle East and North Africa, “declined to say whether the 2004 letter reflected the Obama administration’s understanding of the parameters or borders of a final settlement to the conflict.”
So this proposal is still out there. Pres Obama must accept the terms of the Bush letter for there to be any progress. Even then, there will be great debate on what blocs to be included. Negotiations will include whether Israel will cede Arab east Jerusalem, (where the Palestinians live) to the PA and whether it will allow a token return of refugees, both in line with Clinton. To my mind if Israel gets to retain more land and settlements it will be more flexible on accepting a token number of refugees. Thus all the issues are inter-related.
In the interview above referred to Obama was asked if he was still demanding a freeze and he replied that he now only sought direct negotiations. Make of that what you will.
Still to be debated are whether Israel will get defensible borders and whether Bush will be followed in placing Israel security needs above Palestinian sovereignty.
The fact that the PA doesn’t speak for Palestinians living in Gaza, is ignored. The fact that Hamas is dedicated to Israel’s destruction is also ignored. The fact that the PA continues to incite contrary to the Roadmap is also ignored.
Bottom line though is that all issues are to be negotiated and agreed upon. This requirement is in both Res 242 and The Roadmap. Failing agreement, which is likely, will Obama or the UN attempt to impose a plan, even though it is illegal to do so?
Friday, July 30, 2010
Iran – Delusion vs. Solution
Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought”
YnetNews, July 29, 2010
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3926519,00.html
Western policy-makers grow increasingly-reconciled to co-existence with a nuclear Iran. They assume that, notwithstanding the radical rhetoric, the Iranian leadership is pragmatic, cognizant of its limitations, unwilling to expose its people to devastating Western retaliation and considering nuclear capabilities as a tool of deterrence – and not as an offensive weapon – against the US, NATO and Israel. However, a nuclear Iran would constitute a clear and present danger to global security and peace, which must not be tolerated. In order to avert such peril, it is incumbent to disengage from illusions and engage with realism.
Unlike Western leaders, the Iranian revolutionary leadership is driven by ideological and religious conviction, bolstered by ancient imperialist ethos:
1. Jihad is the permanent state of relations between Moslems and non-Moslems, while peace and ceasefire accords are tenuous.
2. The Shihada commits every Shiite to kill and be killed, in order to advance Shiite Moslem strategy.
3. The strategic goal of Shiite Islam – which replaced illegitimate Judaism and Christianity – is to convert humanity to Islam.
The religious Shiite zeal is intensified by the Persian-Iranian ethos, shared by secular and religious Iranians, who believe Iran has been a regional and a global power for the last 2,600 years.
Iran’s religious/imperialistic strategy has guided Teheran’s tactical policy toward the US (the “Great Satan” and the key target for Iran’s terror and nuclear), Central & South America (an anti-US terror platform), Iraq (the chief Sunni rival in the Persian Gulf and an arena to weaken the US), Saudi Arabia (an apostate regime), the Gulf States (targeted for revolution and takeover), Afghanistan and Pakistan (arenas to erode the US’ image), international terror organizations and terror cells in the US and Europe (weakening Western societies), Syria, Lebanon, Hizballah and Hamas (threatening Israel and advancing regional hegemony) and Israel (the “Little Satan,” a Western outpost in the Abode of Islam, the source of Judea-Christian values).
Western leaders are top heavy on “pragmatism” and low on ideology and religion. Therefore, they are preoccupied with Iranian global tactical policy, minimizing the study of Iran’s strategic infrastructure of religion, ideology and history, which consider Shia, Jihad, Shihada and Persian imperialism as Teheran’s Pillars of Fire.
Western leaders believe in engagement – and not in confrontation – with Iran. However, Teheran’s revolutionaries regard such an attitude as a symptom of Western fatigue, of a tendency to “blink first” and of a modern version of the defeatist European slogan: “Better Red than Dead.” Moreover, Teheran considers the US a superpower in retirement and retreat, gradually adopting the European state-of-mind and losing its posture of endurance since the 1973 retreat from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the 1979 terrorist takeover of the US embassy in Teheran, the 1983 retreat from Lebanon following the blowing up of the US embassy and Marine headquarters in Beirut until the 2011 expected US withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, Iran demonstrated its willingness to pay a brutal price for its principles and interests, when sacrificing some 500,000 persons on the altar of the 1980-1988 war against Iraq, including approximately 100,000 children who were dispatched to clear minefields.
Teheran is encouraged by Western preoccupation with engagement and sanctions, which constitute a delusion and not a solution. For instance, Russia and China consider the US a rival and do not share the US assessment of Iran. They benefit from a weakened US and therefore they do not cooperate in the implementation of sanctions. Europe employs tough rhetoric, but displays frail action. And, the UN will not support a tough US policy toward Iran. The longer the sanctions and engagement process, the more time is available to Iran to develop and acquire nuclear capabilities.
Teheran benefits from Western adherence to a supposed linkage between the Palestinian issue and a successful campaign against Iran. However, there is no linkage between the Palestinian issue – or the Arab Israeli conflict or Israel’s existence – and the pillars of Iran’s strategy. The more entrenched the “Linkage Theory,” the heavier the pressure on Israel and the weaker the pressure on Iran.
In 1978, President Carter’s policy toward the Shah was perceived as the backstabbing of a US ally, providing a tailwind to the anti-Shah opposition and facilitating the Iranian Revolution. In 2010, Western policy toward Iran is perceived as an acknowledgment of the potency of the revolutionary leadership, thus serving as a headwind to a weakened domestic opposition and minimizing the possibility of a domestically-generated regime-change.
A sustained Western policy toward Iran would confront the Free World with a brutal dilemma: Accepting radical diplomatic, economic, military and religious demands presented by a nuclear Iran, or facing a series of vicious wars, including a rapidly escalated nuclear race among rogue regimes. In order to avoid such a dilemma, it is incumbent to disengage from the illusive options of deterrence and retaliation and engage with the realistic option of military-preemption/prevention. Furthermore, the cost of military inaction would dwarf the worst-case cost of a military preemptive action against Iran.
YnetNews, July 29, 2010
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3926519,00.html
Western policy-makers grow increasingly-reconciled to co-existence with a nuclear Iran. They assume that, notwithstanding the radical rhetoric, the Iranian leadership is pragmatic, cognizant of its limitations, unwilling to expose its people to devastating Western retaliation and considering nuclear capabilities as a tool of deterrence – and not as an offensive weapon – against the US, NATO and Israel. However, a nuclear Iran would constitute a clear and present danger to global security and peace, which must not be tolerated. In order to avert such peril, it is incumbent to disengage from illusions and engage with realism.
Unlike Western leaders, the Iranian revolutionary leadership is driven by ideological and religious conviction, bolstered by ancient imperialist ethos:
1. Jihad is the permanent state of relations between Moslems and non-Moslems, while peace and ceasefire accords are tenuous.
2. The Shihada commits every Shiite to kill and be killed, in order to advance Shiite Moslem strategy.
3. The strategic goal of Shiite Islam – which replaced illegitimate Judaism and Christianity – is to convert humanity to Islam.
The religious Shiite zeal is intensified by the Persian-Iranian ethos, shared by secular and religious Iranians, who believe Iran has been a regional and a global power for the last 2,600 years.
Iran’s religious/imperialistic strategy has guided Teheran’s tactical policy toward the US (the “Great Satan” and the key target for Iran’s terror and nuclear), Central & South America (an anti-US terror platform), Iraq (the chief Sunni rival in the Persian Gulf and an arena to weaken the US), Saudi Arabia (an apostate regime), the Gulf States (targeted for revolution and takeover), Afghanistan and Pakistan (arenas to erode the US’ image), international terror organizations and terror cells in the US and Europe (weakening Western societies), Syria, Lebanon, Hizballah and Hamas (threatening Israel and advancing regional hegemony) and Israel (the “Little Satan,” a Western outpost in the Abode of Islam, the source of Judea-Christian values).
Western leaders are top heavy on “pragmatism” and low on ideology and religion. Therefore, they are preoccupied with Iranian global tactical policy, minimizing the study of Iran’s strategic infrastructure of religion, ideology and history, which consider Shia, Jihad, Shihada and Persian imperialism as Teheran’s Pillars of Fire.
Western leaders believe in engagement – and not in confrontation – with Iran. However, Teheran’s revolutionaries regard such an attitude as a symptom of Western fatigue, of a tendency to “blink first” and of a modern version of the defeatist European slogan: “Better Red than Dead.” Moreover, Teheran considers the US a superpower in retirement and retreat, gradually adopting the European state-of-mind and losing its posture of endurance since the 1973 retreat from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the 1979 terrorist takeover of the US embassy in Teheran, the 1983 retreat from Lebanon following the blowing up of the US embassy and Marine headquarters in Beirut until the 2011 expected US withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, Iran demonstrated its willingness to pay a brutal price for its principles and interests, when sacrificing some 500,000 persons on the altar of the 1980-1988 war against Iraq, including approximately 100,000 children who were dispatched to clear minefields.
Teheran is encouraged by Western preoccupation with engagement and sanctions, which constitute a delusion and not a solution. For instance, Russia and China consider the US a rival and do not share the US assessment of Iran. They benefit from a weakened US and therefore they do not cooperate in the implementation of sanctions. Europe employs tough rhetoric, but displays frail action. And, the UN will not support a tough US policy toward Iran. The longer the sanctions and engagement process, the more time is available to Iran to develop and acquire nuclear capabilities.
Teheran benefits from Western adherence to a supposed linkage between the Palestinian issue and a successful campaign against Iran. However, there is no linkage between the Palestinian issue – or the Arab Israeli conflict or Israel’s existence – and the pillars of Iran’s strategy. The more entrenched the “Linkage Theory,” the heavier the pressure on Israel and the weaker the pressure on Iran.
In 1978, President Carter’s policy toward the Shah was perceived as the backstabbing of a US ally, providing a tailwind to the anti-Shah opposition and facilitating the Iranian Revolution. In 2010, Western policy toward Iran is perceived as an acknowledgment of the potency of the revolutionary leadership, thus serving as a headwind to a weakened domestic opposition and minimizing the possibility of a domestically-generated regime-change.
A sustained Western policy toward Iran would confront the Free World with a brutal dilemma: Accepting radical diplomatic, economic, military and religious demands presented by a nuclear Iran, or facing a series of vicious wars, including a rapidly escalated nuclear race among rogue regimes. In order to avoid such a dilemma, it is incumbent to disengage from the illusive options of deterrence and retaliation and engage with the realistic option of military-preemption/prevention. Furthermore, the cost of military inaction would dwarf the worst-case cost of a military preemptive action against Iran.
How Not to Conduct Diplomacy: A Case Study: UK PM in Turkey
Barry Rubin
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s July 27 speech in Turkey will not live on in history. But it should, as an example of the decline of Western diplomacy, of suicide by Political Correctness, as a textbook example of how not to conduct international affairs.
It crossed my mind that the speech was written by the Foreign Office for the express purpose of making Cameron look foolish, but then I realized that he and his top advisors probably have no idea why it was such a disaster.
Suppose you are the British prime minister going to Turkey, or to just about any country, what should you say? The theme should be: We can cooperate and do mutually beneficial things. Here’s what I can do for you, here’s what I’d like you to do for me. And here’s what you must not do in order to reap the benefits of my friendship and favor. Obviously, you need to dress that up in appropriate language. But everything should be conditional. The message to be delivered is that it is in your interest to respect my interests.
Cameron did the precise and exact opposite. His message was: The UK needs Turkey. Turkey is wonderful. Its behavior has been perfect. We are desperate for your help.
What is the effect? A man goes into a bazaar, points to a carpet and says: That is the most beautiful carpet I have ever seen. I must have it no matter what the price! How much is it?
In addition, Cameron committed some other howling mistakes, several of which will amaze you. So please stick with me as I explain and document this. You won’t be disappointed. And remember this is not just a matter of one speech, it is a fitting symbol for the entire contemporary Western diplomatic approach to the Middle East and much more to the world as well. By the way, it is doomed to fail miserably.
Before we begin, remember that this is no longer the old Turkish Republic. Cameron is lavishing praise on an Islamist-oriented regime which has aligned itself with Iran and revolutionary Islamist groups. And all of Cameron’s pandering, as if he were a Western barbarian in the court of the all-powerful Ottoman sultan, is driving a knife into the heart of a Turkish opposition which is genuinely friendly toward the West and horrified by the current regime’s subversion of Turkish democracy.
Cameron began by saying:
“I’ve come to Ankara today to establish a new partnership between Britain and Turkey. I think this is a vital strategic relationship for our country.”
Note the cringing here. A proper prime minister might have said: “I think this is a vital strategic relationship for our countries.” In other words, the speaker would stress there is a mutual benefit. Instead, this polite approach makes it sound as if Turkey is doing the United Kingdom a favor by having a strategic relationship to it while Turkey doesn't need Britain at all.
And this is precisely the interpretation put on such things in the local context: The Turkish regime can take its Western alliances for granted while taking the side of the West's radical Islamist enemies.
And here it is again:
“People ask me why [I’m visiting] Turkey and why so soon. I’ll tell you why. Because Turkey is vital for our economy. Vital for our security. And vital for our politics and diplomacy.” So Turkey holds all the cards and the West can do nothing but give concessions in hope of winning favor in its eyes. One should remember that a major theme of Iran, Syria, and this Turkish regime is that nothing can be achieved without them and so the West must bow to their will and do everything they want. Cameron is feeding this monster.
According to him, there are no problems with Turkey on security:
“Turkey is a great NATO ally. And Turkey shares our determination to fight terrorism in all its forms – whether from Al Qaeda or the PKK. [But not, he fails to mention, from Hamas or Hizballah!] But perhaps more significant still is the fact that Turkey’s unique position at the meeting point of East and West gives it an unrivalled influence in helping us get to grips with some of the greatest threats to our collective security.”
Look, you don’t go to a country and criticize it (unless the country is Israel. Now why is that?) but you don’t tell them that everything they are doing is great because if that’s true they will keep on doing it and know there is no cost. Turkey under this regime is not a pro-Western state helping the West against its “Eastern” enemies—as Turkey was between, say, 1950 and 2000—or is it a neutral meeting ground. At present, Turkey is on the enemy side.
He continues:
“Which Muslim majority country has a long-established relationship with Israel while at the same time championing the rights of the Palestinian people? Which European country could have the greatest chance of persuading Iran to change course on its nuclear policy?”
Now this is after the Turkish regime trashed the relationship with Israel and stabbed the United States and UK in the back by cutting its own deal with Iran and even voting against sanctions at the UN. This is the policy Cameron praises! And then after all these things he adds:
“Whether in Afghanistan or the Middle East, Turkey has a credibility that others in the West just can’t hope to have. So I’ve come here to make the case for Turkey to use this credibility, to go further in enhancing our security and working for peace across our world.”
Does this include Turkish regime support for Hamas and Hizballah, alignment with Iran and Syria? He should be hinting gently that Turkey is losing its credibility because of the regime’s behavior. And therefore Turkey needs to change its behavior, a point that the opposition will be arguing in the next election. By this time I can see the opposition tearing it hair out as another Western leader heaps praise on the regime. And have no doubt the regime will use all this in next year’s elections:
Extremist? Transforming Turkey toward Islamism? What do you mean? The West loves us!
Cameron then goes on and makes it clear that Turkey would be doing the EU a favor by joining it, not the tiniest hint of leverage, that Turkish membership might depend on the regime’s behavior. He could have said:
While I, of course, support you, the path would be easier if…. Followed by some polite and proper hints done with full British charm.
But it gets worse. Cameron is about to insult several of Britain’s closest allies, including Germany and France, by making opposition to Turkey’s entrance into the EU as a form of racism and Islamophobia. For example, he says that opponents are:
“The prejudiced. Those who willfully misunderstand Islam. They see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version of the extremists. They think the problem is Islam itself. And they think the values of Islam can just never be compatible with the values of other religions, societies, or cultures.”
All these arguments are just plain wrong. The problem precisely is the version of Islam embodied in the current Turkish government. There could be other perfectly pious Muslims ruling Turkey (and Iran, Syria, or the Gaza Strip for that matter) who would interpret Islam in a way relatively compatible with the values of other religions. But not the Islamists!
He also complains of those who “see the history of our world as a clash of civilizations as a choice between East and West. They just don’t get the fact that Turkey can be a great unifier. Because instead of choosing between East and West, Turkey has chosen both.”
But he doesn’t comprehend that the current government of Turkey sees the world as a clash of civilizations. Its foreign minister even wrote a book to that effect, which has never been translated and which the regime is doing its best to conceal. This is not the Turkey of Kamal Ataturk and his successors but rather (at least temporarily) a country ruled by the successors of those who opposed Ataturk.
If I were a German or French journalist my headline would be: Cameron Calls German (or French) policy bigoted and anti-Islamic.
Yet Cameron sails on into even worse grounds. He actually praises a Turkish policy which has gone to the brink of war with Israel, sponsored a flotilla run by radical Islamists intending to create a violent confrontation, and is allied with a revolutionary terrorist group. One has to quote it to believe he actually said the following:
“Turkey’s relationships in the region, both with Israel and with the Arab world, are of incalculable value. No other country has the same potential to build understanding between Israel and the Arab world. I know that Gaza has led to real strains in Turkey’s relationship with Israel. But Turkey is a friend of Israel. And I urge Turkey, and Israel, not to give up on that friendship.
“Let me be clear. The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable. And I have told PM Netanyahu, we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous. Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.
“But as, hopefully, we move in the coming weeks to direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians so it’s Turkey that can make the case for peace and Turkey that can help to press the parties to come together, and point the way to a just and viable solution.”
In other words, Turkey is 100 percent right, I have no criticism of Hamas’s behavior, we should accept a permanent revolutionary Islamist, terrorist, genocidal, statelet on the Mediterranean. No problem. And we can ignore the Turkish regime's pro-Hamas policy and provocative behavior because without abandoning that approach Turkey can still play a productive role! This is the diplomatic equivalent of insane behavior on Cameron’s part.
And does Israel want this regime to mediate between it and the Palestinians? Even the Palestinian Authority doesn't want that: it knows that the Turkish regime is allied with its Hamas rivals, for goodness sakes! Doesn't Cameron know this?
I don’t want to take up too much of your time but I cannot let this next gem pass. True, Cameron urged Turkey to continue internal reforms (but there’s no hint of the anti-democratic nature of the regime’s manipulation of such reforms, for example, to seize control of the courts) and the massive repression of dissidents.
He suggests that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and he even criticizes the Turkey-Iran deal. But note the illogical leap:
“Even if Iran were to complete the deal proposed in their recent agreement with Turkey and Brazil, it would still retain around fifty percent of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. So we need Turkey’s help now in making it clear to Iran just how serious we are about engaging fully with the international community.
“We hope that the meeting held in Istanbul between the Turkish, Brazilian and Iranian Foreign Ministers will see Iran move in the right direction.”
That meeting is a conference of Iran’s supporters! Why would it lead Iran in the right direction? How about Turkey’s opposition to sanctions? And again note the beggar’s worldview: “We need Turkey’s help....” Why should Turkey help? What will you give the regime in exchange for its alleged help? What behavior will you overlook in exchange for its alleged help?
This regime wants to help Iran, not against Iran.
Finally, remember that Cameron is a Conservative, the successor of Winston Churchill. That's how deep the appeasement disease has penetrated the Western ruling class.
---
Andrew Sullivan Attacks Me Without Bothering to Consider What I Wrote
By Barry Rubin*
July 30, 2010
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/07/andrew-sullivan-attacks-me-without-bothering-to-consider
One of the amazing things about the intellectual scene today is that people attack you without any reference to what you actually say. It is as if you were talking to someone deaf who has his hearing aid turned off. You want to explain that there must be a misunderstanding only to find that the person doesn't care: he just wants to scream insults at you so that nobody actually considers whether you are making an accurate point.
When I was growing up, someone considered your actual arguments and responded to them with rational arguments of their own. Some of us still do that. I wrote a serious and sober analysis of what was wrong with the UK prime minister's speech in Turkey, focusing on the basic misunderstanding of proper diplomatic leverage.
Instead, Andrew Sullivan writes:
"Barry Rubin joins the chorus from the neocon right claiming that 'Turkey is on the enemy side.'"
Let's consider this sentence. First, rather than argue the facts he merely throws in two words intended to get people to demonize me and not listen to anything I say: neocon right. Hey, nothing more need be said! But the central question should be whether the original statement was true or not, right?
Then there's that word "joins." I've been studying Turkey now for 35 years. I've been there about 25 times. Regarding the direction of the regime, I've been saying the same thing for about two years, long before there was a collapse of Turkish-Israel relations.
If I've joined anyone it's the Turkish socialists and liberals. Here's one of many examples: a Turkish woman from the left who angrily told me, "We've been warning the West about these people for years and the West just won't listen."
In fact, though, I think I was the first person to say that the Turkish regime (NOT Turkey) has gone over to the other side. I have written literally dozens of articles proving it. I have quoted Iran's leader and Syria's government as having publicly stated it. Might Sullivan want to consult the evidence I have compiled? Of course not.
And then he makes a remarkably revealing illogical argument:
"It was once a given on the right that keeping Turkey close to the West was essential in defusing Islamism and winning the war on terror. But once Turkey took on Israel, that ended, because the war many neocons are waging is for Israel, right or wrong, not the West at large."
This has an implication of antisemitism, doesn't it? He's saying that people are only angry at Turkey's rulers because they have fallen out with Israel, referring mainly to the flotilla issue. This makes me think of the argument in the 1930s that people were only critical of Germany because they were Jews or only cared about Jewish interests.
Yes, it has been a given on both left, center, and right that keeping Turkey close to the West was essential. Yet what if the Turkish regime is no longer close to the West? Everyone's opinion is still the same, it's the situation that's changed. To ignore that change is incredibly dangerous. Indeed, I'd say that Turkey's change of sides (perhaps temporary) is the biggest defeat suffered by the West in the Middle East since the Iranian revolution.
So how to keep Turkey close to the West? Act to constrain the current regime and, in appropriate ways of course, to help the opposition win the elections a year from now. Cheering the current regime, letting it claim that the West accepts its policies, assists that increasingly dictatorial government to remain in power.
And if it does fall as I hope? Oh, dear! Then Turkey would have a socialist prime minister instead of a right-wing Islamist one. Seems to me that's what Western liberals and the left should prefer.
As for the claim that it's all about Israel, in fact, I have been talking for months about:
--Internal repression in Turkey, including the arrests of hundreds of peaceful dissidents on charges of attempting to overthrow the government with violence. Turks have been writing eloquently about this issue.
--The regime's campaign to bring the media and court system under government control. The regime and its supporters have bought up much of the media and intimidated the rest. It is now proposing constitutional changes to cripple the judiciary. People in Turkey are scared. Many say they no longer recognize their country.
--Turkish regime support for Iran and its nuclear weapons' program. This now includes cutting a separate deal with Tehran against U.S. wishes and voting against sanctions. The prime minister has stated that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons, therefore calling President Obama a liar.
--Close Turkish cooperation with Syria. The regime does not have a "pro-Arab" policy (ask the Egyptian, Jordan, or Saudi governments in private), it has a pro-Arabic-speaking Islamists policy.
--The regime's engagement with Hamas and Hizballah and support for these two revolutionary Islamist groups. As I have pointed out, the regime does NOT support the "Palestinian people" but merely Hamas, a fellow Islamist party.
Much of my material has come from the Turkish opposition, mainly Kemalist secularists and democratic socialists.
Yet none of this matters, right? It's only all about Israel, we are supposed to believe, and talking about everything else is just an excuse!
Sullivan has, however, taught me something important: why such people must keep harping on Israel. Forget about the canary in the coal mine analogy. The Israel card's use is to make people blind, to shut them up, to throw out every other issue and piece of evidence.
They hope that anti-Israel passion (plus dark hints of a Jewish conspiracy) will keep people from actually looking at what's happening. In the phrase of Professor Richard Landes, Israel is a weapon of mass destruction. And the Jews have filled this function many times before in history.
On top of this, my article's theme and tone are quite different from his claims. Here are the key sentences from my article:
"Suppose you are the British prime minister going to Turkey, or to just about any country. What should you say? The theme should be: We can cooperate and do mutually beneficial things. Here's what I can do for you; here's what I'd like you to do for me. And here's what you must not do in order to reap the benefits of my friendship and favor.
"Obviously, you need to dress that up in appropriate language. But everything should be conditional. The message to be delivered is that it is in your interest to respect my interests....
"Cameron then goes on and makes it clear that Turkey would be doing the EU a favor by joining it, not the tiniest hint of leverage, that Turkish membership might depend on the regime's behavior. He could have said:
"While I, of course, support you, the path would be easier if.... Followed by some polite and proper hints done with full British charm."
Does that sound like a call for war?
Mr. Sullivan: There is something in diplomacy between war and appeasement. It is called carrots and sticks, costs and benefits, quid pro quo. Cameron's speech was a mess because he abandoned that principle and resorted only to simple-minded flattery. Middle Eastern peoples--Muslim or otherwise--know what that signals: weakness, which invites ridicule and aggressiveness.
Sullivan also ignores my point--which I think is rather significant--that Cameron foolishly insulted France and Germany by strongly implying that the only reason they oppose Turkey's EU membership is because they are bigots. If Sullivan had been Britain's prime minister I guess he would have called them "neocon rightists."
If Cameron had not mentioned Israel at all I would have written precisely the same article on all these points.
Sullivan continued:
"Keep it up, prime minister. Advance the interests of Britain, and resist the war of civilizations the far right wants to gin up. We will only defeat Islamism if we keep an open hand stretched to Islam. Isolating and demonizing Turkey's evolution as a regional Muslim power - prepared to be Israel's ally if Israel stops the persecution and colonization of the Palestinans - is about as dumb a geo-strategic move as one could imagine."
The issue is not a "war of civilizations" but a war of ideologies. Is Sullivan really so dense that he doesn't understand that the people most similar to him in Turkey hate and fear the current regime? Doesn't Sullivan understand that the governments of most Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East don't want the West to support the Islamists?
(Here's a list: Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. And even the Palestinian Authority and the democratic forces in Lebanon. These are almost all Muslims, too, aren't they? And then let's add the majority of Muslims in Turkey and in Iran as well!)
Turkey is not evolving into being a regional Muslim power as some kind of national project. This is in fact the policy of one party in Turkey which has less than 30 percent support according to recent public opinion polls, with probably twice as many Turks favoring non-Islamist opposition parties.
And what does deifying the current Turkish government have to do with keeping an "open hand stretched to Islam"? Almost all Turks are Muslims, they just aren't political Islamists. That's why the West gets along with Egypt, Jordan, and even Saudi Arabia, for example, who are all Muslims but not on the side of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah.
It was a Socialist leader who once said that antisemitism was the socialism of fools. Today, the insane use of Israel as the cause of all issues and problems is the tool used to make fools on the left support the most reactionary forces on the Middle Eastern extreme right. And then, to make it laughable, they do so in the name of fighting evil rightists!
Incidentally, don't think I didn't notice Sullivan's sleazy little trick: he didn't link to my article so those reading his blog item could easily check out what I actually said rather than what he claimed. That's the kind of behavior that tells a great deal about Sullivan's intellectual dishonesty.
Update: Sullivan apparently read this article and added the link. I hope he learned something.
*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), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s July 27 speech in Turkey will not live on in history. But it should, as an example of the decline of Western diplomacy, of suicide by Political Correctness, as a textbook example of how not to conduct international affairs.
It crossed my mind that the speech was written by the Foreign Office for the express purpose of making Cameron look foolish, but then I realized that he and his top advisors probably have no idea why it was such a disaster.
Suppose you are the British prime minister going to Turkey, or to just about any country, what should you say? The theme should be: We can cooperate and do mutually beneficial things. Here’s what I can do for you, here’s what I’d like you to do for me. And here’s what you must not do in order to reap the benefits of my friendship and favor. Obviously, you need to dress that up in appropriate language. But everything should be conditional. The message to be delivered is that it is in your interest to respect my interests.
Cameron did the precise and exact opposite. His message was: The UK needs Turkey. Turkey is wonderful. Its behavior has been perfect. We are desperate for your help.
What is the effect? A man goes into a bazaar, points to a carpet and says: That is the most beautiful carpet I have ever seen. I must have it no matter what the price! How much is it?
In addition, Cameron committed some other howling mistakes, several of which will amaze you. So please stick with me as I explain and document this. You won’t be disappointed. And remember this is not just a matter of one speech, it is a fitting symbol for the entire contemporary Western diplomatic approach to the Middle East and much more to the world as well. By the way, it is doomed to fail miserably.
Before we begin, remember that this is no longer the old Turkish Republic. Cameron is lavishing praise on an Islamist-oriented regime which has aligned itself with Iran and revolutionary Islamist groups. And all of Cameron’s pandering, as if he were a Western barbarian in the court of the all-powerful Ottoman sultan, is driving a knife into the heart of a Turkish opposition which is genuinely friendly toward the West and horrified by the current regime’s subversion of Turkish democracy.
Cameron began by saying:
“I’ve come to Ankara today to establish a new partnership between Britain and Turkey. I think this is a vital strategic relationship for our country.”
Note the cringing here. A proper prime minister might have said: “I think this is a vital strategic relationship for our countries.” In other words, the speaker would stress there is a mutual benefit. Instead, this polite approach makes it sound as if Turkey is doing the United Kingdom a favor by having a strategic relationship to it while Turkey doesn't need Britain at all.
And this is precisely the interpretation put on such things in the local context: The Turkish regime can take its Western alliances for granted while taking the side of the West's radical Islamist enemies.
And here it is again:
“People ask me why [I’m visiting] Turkey and why so soon. I’ll tell you why. Because Turkey is vital for our economy. Vital for our security. And vital for our politics and diplomacy.” So Turkey holds all the cards and the West can do nothing but give concessions in hope of winning favor in its eyes. One should remember that a major theme of Iran, Syria, and this Turkish regime is that nothing can be achieved without them and so the West must bow to their will and do everything they want. Cameron is feeding this monster.
According to him, there are no problems with Turkey on security:
“Turkey is a great NATO ally. And Turkey shares our determination to fight terrorism in all its forms – whether from Al Qaeda or the PKK. [But not, he fails to mention, from Hamas or Hizballah!] But perhaps more significant still is the fact that Turkey’s unique position at the meeting point of East and West gives it an unrivalled influence in helping us get to grips with some of the greatest threats to our collective security.”
Look, you don’t go to a country and criticize it (unless the country is Israel. Now why is that?) but you don’t tell them that everything they are doing is great because if that’s true they will keep on doing it and know there is no cost. Turkey under this regime is not a pro-Western state helping the West against its “Eastern” enemies—as Turkey was between, say, 1950 and 2000—or is it a neutral meeting ground. At present, Turkey is on the enemy side.
He continues:
“Which Muslim majority country has a long-established relationship with Israel while at the same time championing the rights of the Palestinian people? Which European country could have the greatest chance of persuading Iran to change course on its nuclear policy?”
Now this is after the Turkish regime trashed the relationship with Israel and stabbed the United States and UK in the back by cutting its own deal with Iran and even voting against sanctions at the UN. This is the policy Cameron praises! And then after all these things he adds:
“Whether in Afghanistan or the Middle East, Turkey has a credibility that others in the West just can’t hope to have. So I’ve come here to make the case for Turkey to use this credibility, to go further in enhancing our security and working for peace across our world.”
Does this include Turkish regime support for Hamas and Hizballah, alignment with Iran and Syria? He should be hinting gently that Turkey is losing its credibility because of the regime’s behavior. And therefore Turkey needs to change its behavior, a point that the opposition will be arguing in the next election. By this time I can see the opposition tearing it hair out as another Western leader heaps praise on the regime. And have no doubt the regime will use all this in next year’s elections:
Extremist? Transforming Turkey toward Islamism? What do you mean? The West loves us!
Cameron then goes on and makes it clear that Turkey would be doing the EU a favor by joining it, not the tiniest hint of leverage, that Turkish membership might depend on the regime’s behavior. He could have said:
While I, of course, support you, the path would be easier if…. Followed by some polite and proper hints done with full British charm.
But it gets worse. Cameron is about to insult several of Britain’s closest allies, including Germany and France, by making opposition to Turkey’s entrance into the EU as a form of racism and Islamophobia. For example, he says that opponents are:
“The prejudiced. Those who willfully misunderstand Islam. They see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version of the extremists. They think the problem is Islam itself. And they think the values of Islam can just never be compatible with the values of other religions, societies, or cultures.”
All these arguments are just plain wrong. The problem precisely is the version of Islam embodied in the current Turkish government. There could be other perfectly pious Muslims ruling Turkey (and Iran, Syria, or the Gaza Strip for that matter) who would interpret Islam in a way relatively compatible with the values of other religions. But not the Islamists!
He also complains of those who “see the history of our world as a clash of civilizations as a choice between East and West. They just don’t get the fact that Turkey can be a great unifier. Because instead of choosing between East and West, Turkey has chosen both.”
But he doesn’t comprehend that the current government of Turkey sees the world as a clash of civilizations. Its foreign minister even wrote a book to that effect, which has never been translated and which the regime is doing its best to conceal. This is not the Turkey of Kamal Ataturk and his successors but rather (at least temporarily) a country ruled by the successors of those who opposed Ataturk.
If I were a German or French journalist my headline would be: Cameron Calls German (or French) policy bigoted and anti-Islamic.
Yet Cameron sails on into even worse grounds. He actually praises a Turkish policy which has gone to the brink of war with Israel, sponsored a flotilla run by radical Islamists intending to create a violent confrontation, and is allied with a revolutionary terrorist group. One has to quote it to believe he actually said the following:
“Turkey’s relationships in the region, both with Israel and with the Arab world, are of incalculable value. No other country has the same potential to build understanding between Israel and the Arab world. I know that Gaza has led to real strains in Turkey’s relationship with Israel. But Turkey is a friend of Israel. And I urge Turkey, and Israel, not to give up on that friendship.
“Let me be clear. The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable. And I have told PM Netanyahu, we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous. Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.
“But as, hopefully, we move in the coming weeks to direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians so it’s Turkey that can make the case for peace and Turkey that can help to press the parties to come together, and point the way to a just and viable solution.”
In other words, Turkey is 100 percent right, I have no criticism of Hamas’s behavior, we should accept a permanent revolutionary Islamist, terrorist, genocidal, statelet on the Mediterranean. No problem. And we can ignore the Turkish regime's pro-Hamas policy and provocative behavior because without abandoning that approach Turkey can still play a productive role! This is the diplomatic equivalent of insane behavior on Cameron’s part.
And does Israel want this regime to mediate between it and the Palestinians? Even the Palestinian Authority doesn't want that: it knows that the Turkish regime is allied with its Hamas rivals, for goodness sakes! Doesn't Cameron know this?
I don’t want to take up too much of your time but I cannot let this next gem pass. True, Cameron urged Turkey to continue internal reforms (but there’s no hint of the anti-democratic nature of the regime’s manipulation of such reforms, for example, to seize control of the courts) and the massive repression of dissidents.
He suggests that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and he even criticizes the Turkey-Iran deal. But note the illogical leap:
“Even if Iran were to complete the deal proposed in their recent agreement with Turkey and Brazil, it would still retain around fifty percent of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. So we need Turkey’s help now in making it clear to Iran just how serious we are about engaging fully with the international community.
“We hope that the meeting held in Istanbul between the Turkish, Brazilian and Iranian Foreign Ministers will see Iran move in the right direction.”
That meeting is a conference of Iran’s supporters! Why would it lead Iran in the right direction? How about Turkey’s opposition to sanctions? And again note the beggar’s worldview: “We need Turkey’s help....” Why should Turkey help? What will you give the regime in exchange for its alleged help? What behavior will you overlook in exchange for its alleged help?
This regime wants to help Iran, not against Iran.
Finally, remember that Cameron is a Conservative, the successor of Winston Churchill. That's how deep the appeasement disease has penetrated the Western ruling class.
---
Andrew Sullivan Attacks Me Without Bothering to Consider What I Wrote
By Barry Rubin*
July 30, 2010
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/07/andrew-sullivan-attacks-me-without-bothering-to-consider
One of the amazing things about the intellectual scene today is that people attack you without any reference to what you actually say. It is as if you were talking to someone deaf who has his hearing aid turned off. You want to explain that there must be a misunderstanding only to find that the person doesn't care: he just wants to scream insults at you so that nobody actually considers whether you are making an accurate point.
When I was growing up, someone considered your actual arguments and responded to them with rational arguments of their own. Some of us still do that. I wrote a serious and sober analysis of what was wrong with the UK prime minister's speech in Turkey, focusing on the basic misunderstanding of proper diplomatic leverage.
Instead, Andrew Sullivan writes:
"Barry Rubin joins the chorus from the neocon right claiming that 'Turkey is on the enemy side.'"
Let's consider this sentence. First, rather than argue the facts he merely throws in two words intended to get people to demonize me and not listen to anything I say: neocon right. Hey, nothing more need be said! But the central question should be whether the original statement was true or not, right?
Then there's that word "joins." I've been studying Turkey now for 35 years. I've been there about 25 times. Regarding the direction of the regime, I've been saying the same thing for about two years, long before there was a collapse of Turkish-Israel relations.
If I've joined anyone it's the Turkish socialists and liberals. Here's one of many examples: a Turkish woman from the left who angrily told me, "We've been warning the West about these people for years and the West just won't listen."
In fact, though, I think I was the first person to say that the Turkish regime (NOT Turkey) has gone over to the other side. I have written literally dozens of articles proving it. I have quoted Iran's leader and Syria's government as having publicly stated it. Might Sullivan want to consult the evidence I have compiled? Of course not.
And then he makes a remarkably revealing illogical argument:
"It was once a given on the right that keeping Turkey close to the West was essential in defusing Islamism and winning the war on terror. But once Turkey took on Israel, that ended, because the war many neocons are waging is for Israel, right or wrong, not the West at large."
This has an implication of antisemitism, doesn't it? He's saying that people are only angry at Turkey's rulers because they have fallen out with Israel, referring mainly to the flotilla issue. This makes me think of the argument in the 1930s that people were only critical of Germany because they were Jews or only cared about Jewish interests.
Yes, it has been a given on both left, center, and right that keeping Turkey close to the West was essential. Yet what if the Turkish regime is no longer close to the West? Everyone's opinion is still the same, it's the situation that's changed. To ignore that change is incredibly dangerous. Indeed, I'd say that Turkey's change of sides (perhaps temporary) is the biggest defeat suffered by the West in the Middle East since the Iranian revolution.
So how to keep Turkey close to the West? Act to constrain the current regime and, in appropriate ways of course, to help the opposition win the elections a year from now. Cheering the current regime, letting it claim that the West accepts its policies, assists that increasingly dictatorial government to remain in power.
And if it does fall as I hope? Oh, dear! Then Turkey would have a socialist prime minister instead of a right-wing Islamist one. Seems to me that's what Western liberals and the left should prefer.
As for the claim that it's all about Israel, in fact, I have been talking for months about:
--Internal repression in Turkey, including the arrests of hundreds of peaceful dissidents on charges of attempting to overthrow the government with violence. Turks have been writing eloquently about this issue.
--The regime's campaign to bring the media and court system under government control. The regime and its supporters have bought up much of the media and intimidated the rest. It is now proposing constitutional changes to cripple the judiciary. People in Turkey are scared. Many say they no longer recognize their country.
--Turkish regime support for Iran and its nuclear weapons' program. This now includes cutting a separate deal with Tehran against U.S. wishes and voting against sanctions. The prime minister has stated that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons, therefore calling President Obama a liar.
--Close Turkish cooperation with Syria. The regime does not have a "pro-Arab" policy (ask the Egyptian, Jordan, or Saudi governments in private), it has a pro-Arabic-speaking Islamists policy.
--The regime's engagement with Hamas and Hizballah and support for these two revolutionary Islamist groups. As I have pointed out, the regime does NOT support the "Palestinian people" but merely Hamas, a fellow Islamist party.
Much of my material has come from the Turkish opposition, mainly Kemalist secularists and democratic socialists.
Yet none of this matters, right? It's only all about Israel, we are supposed to believe, and talking about everything else is just an excuse!
Sullivan has, however, taught me something important: why such people must keep harping on Israel. Forget about the canary in the coal mine analogy. The Israel card's use is to make people blind, to shut them up, to throw out every other issue and piece of evidence.
They hope that anti-Israel passion (plus dark hints of a Jewish conspiracy) will keep people from actually looking at what's happening. In the phrase of Professor Richard Landes, Israel is a weapon of mass destruction. And the Jews have filled this function many times before in history.
On top of this, my article's theme and tone are quite different from his claims. Here are the key sentences from my article:
"Suppose you are the British prime minister going to Turkey, or to just about any country. What should you say? The theme should be: We can cooperate and do mutually beneficial things. Here's what I can do for you; here's what I'd like you to do for me. And here's what you must not do in order to reap the benefits of my friendship and favor.
"Obviously, you need to dress that up in appropriate language. But everything should be conditional. The message to be delivered is that it is in your interest to respect my interests....
"Cameron then goes on and makes it clear that Turkey would be doing the EU a favor by joining it, not the tiniest hint of leverage, that Turkish membership might depend on the regime's behavior. He could have said:
"While I, of course, support you, the path would be easier if.... Followed by some polite and proper hints done with full British charm."
Does that sound like a call for war?
Mr. Sullivan: There is something in diplomacy between war and appeasement. It is called carrots and sticks, costs and benefits, quid pro quo. Cameron's speech was a mess because he abandoned that principle and resorted only to simple-minded flattery. Middle Eastern peoples--Muslim or otherwise--know what that signals: weakness, which invites ridicule and aggressiveness.
Sullivan also ignores my point--which I think is rather significant--that Cameron foolishly insulted France and Germany by strongly implying that the only reason they oppose Turkey's EU membership is because they are bigots. If Sullivan had been Britain's prime minister I guess he would have called them "neocon rightists."
If Cameron had not mentioned Israel at all I would have written precisely the same article on all these points.
Sullivan continued:
"Keep it up, prime minister. Advance the interests of Britain, and resist the war of civilizations the far right wants to gin up. We will only defeat Islamism if we keep an open hand stretched to Islam. Isolating and demonizing Turkey's evolution as a regional Muslim power - prepared to be Israel's ally if Israel stops the persecution and colonization of the Palestinans - is about as dumb a geo-strategic move as one could imagine."
The issue is not a "war of civilizations" but a war of ideologies. Is Sullivan really so dense that he doesn't understand that the people most similar to him in Turkey hate and fear the current regime? Doesn't Sullivan understand that the governments of most Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East don't want the West to support the Islamists?
(Here's a list: Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. And even the Palestinian Authority and the democratic forces in Lebanon. These are almost all Muslims, too, aren't they? And then let's add the majority of Muslims in Turkey and in Iran as well!)
Turkey is not evolving into being a regional Muslim power as some kind of national project. This is in fact the policy of one party in Turkey which has less than 30 percent support according to recent public opinion polls, with probably twice as many Turks favoring non-Islamist opposition parties.
And what does deifying the current Turkish government have to do with keeping an "open hand stretched to Islam"? Almost all Turks are Muslims, they just aren't political Islamists. That's why the West gets along with Egypt, Jordan, and even Saudi Arabia, for example, who are all Muslims but not on the side of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah.
It was a Socialist leader who once said that antisemitism was the socialism of fools. Today, the insane use of Israel as the cause of all issues and problems is the tool used to make fools on the left support the most reactionary forces on the Middle Eastern extreme right. And then, to make it laughable, they do so in the name of fighting evil rightists!
Incidentally, don't think I didn't notice Sullivan's sleazy little trick: he didn't link to my article so those reading his blog item could easily check out what I actually said rather than what he claimed. That's the kind of behavior that tells a great deal about Sullivan's intellectual dishonesty.
Update: Sullivan apparently read this article and added the link. I hope he learned something.
*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), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).
Arab League endorses direct talks between PA and Israel
KHALED ABU TOAMEH AND HERB KEINON
07/29/2010 22:24
Israeli officials say US pressure bears fruit, Israel ready to negotiate; Hamas rejects League's conditions as "cover for Zionist occupation."
Arab League foreign ministers on Thursday authorized the Palestinian Authority to enter into direct negotiations with Israel, but left it up to PA President Mahmoud Abbas to decide on the timing.
Jerusalem immediately welcomed the decision, taken at a special meeting in Cairo, with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issuing a statement saying he was “prepared to begin direct and honest discussions with the Palestinian Authority in the coming days.” The US, which has been urging Abbas to switch from the current “proximity” talks to direct talks, also praised the move, and said it would seek to convene the direct talks “as soon as possible.”
Netanyahu added that it would be possible through direct negotiations to soon reach an accord “between the two peoples.”
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, currently in Washington, also praised the move, saying that only direct negotiations would lead to two states for two peoples. He added that the negotiations would require “difficult and courageous” decisions from both sides, and that he hoped the Palestinians “also realize that.”
Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani said the Arab foreign ministers decided to send a letter to US President Barack Obama explaining the Arab position vis-a-vis the entire peace process in the Middle East.
Abbas told the foreign ministers that Obama had been exerting heavy pressure on him to enter direct negotiations, a PA official in Ramallah said. Abbas told the ministers he saw no reason why he should succumb to the American pressure in light of the fact that no progress has been achieved during the current US-brokered proximity talks.
The US pressure, according to Israeli officials, was leveled not only at the PA, but also at the Arab League to ensure that it not “handcuff” Abbas.
One senior Israeli official said that the League’s decision could have been “much worse,” and that it could have piled on a number of conditions for Abbas before enabling him to enter the talks.
“Abbas now has the backing to go into the talks,” the official said, adding that the Arab League gave him the ball to do with it what he wanted.
The official said Jerusalem made no commitments to ensure the Arab League green light. Israel’s position is that it would not institute new confidence building measures toward the PA to get it into direct talks, but that once the talks began both sides would be expected to take steps to improve the atmosphere and ensure the talks succeed.
The official, who said he was fairly optimistic that direct talks would resume, gave no indication of where the negotiations would be held, or in what format.
In Washington, meanwhile, a State Department official said the US was “encouraged by reports that Arab states meeting in Cairo agree on the need to resume direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to reach a final-status agreement. In the days ahead, we will continue to work with the parties, Arab countries, and our international partners to launch these negotiations as soon as possible.”
The Qatari minister said that Thursday’s meeting did not discuss when and how the direct talks would take place. “The Palestinians will decide when conditions are suitable for the negotiations,” he said.
“We are sure that Israel is not serious about the peace process,” the minister said. “Israel just wants to waste time. On the other hand, we are confident that the US is serious and we are sure of Obama’s intentions to achieve peace.”
He said that the Arab ministers were originally opposed to direct talks with Israel, but changed their mind due to the “situation in the Arab world.”
He added: “Whether we hold indirect or direct talks with Israel, there will be no progress as long as [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu is around. But we want to prove to the world that we want peace, without giving up our principles, and that there’s a price for peace.”
Asked if the US administration had given the Arab League any “assurances,” the Qatari minister said: “The Arabs don’t have guarantees; we only have hopes and fears.”
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, however, told reporters after the meeting that Obama’s message to Abbas, which included a pledge to work toward achieving a two-state solution, was tantamount to assurances.
“We don’t want lengthy talks that would allow the continuation of settlement construction and Israeli practices [on the ground],” Moussa stressed. “We know that Netanyahu is not serious. But we are addressing the US because the Americans are addressing us. We won’t enter negotiations without a time limit or a reference, as was the case in the past. The Israelis are playing a political game by winning time. This is what we are trying to prevent by proving that they are not serious.”
Muhammad Dahlan, a senior Fatah official, said in response to the Arab ministers’ decision that the PA’s position has not changed.
“We continue to insist on receiving assurances before moving to direct talks that would serve as a reference for the peace process and would be based on the two-state solution,” Dahlan said. “It’s clear to us that the US administration has failed to get any assurances from Israel. Nor has it managed to change the Israeli government’s position. Therefore we declare that we won’t move to direct negotiations until the conditions set by Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are fulfilled.”
Hilary Leila Krieger contributed to this report from Washington.
Kissinger’s Guilt
David Isaac
Recently declassified White House transcripts (featured in an editorial in the Israeli daily Haaretz) show former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger blaming Israel for the problems in the region, accusing Israel of being “deliberately provocative” and attempting “to create maximum commotion in the Middle East. In the newly released documents Kissinger refers to the Golan Heights as “Syrian territory” and the Syrians as “my friends.” He confides to an Algerian diplomat that “a (new Arab-Israeli) war wouldn’t be so bad for us. … We could show (Israel) we are tough.” Us? This strongly suggests Kissinger identified with the Arab side in the Arab-Israel conflict.
While these documents do not cover the period of the 1973 war (they cover the end of the Nixon administration and eighteen months of the subsequent Ford administration), they bear out Shmuel Katz’s devastating assessment of Kissinger’s role during the war as crucial in turning Israel’s military victory into a bitter strategic defeat. Just a year after the Yom Kippur War, in his 1974 pamphlet, “The Crisis of Israel and the West” Katz described Kissinger’s actions and their repercussions.
When Israel had recovered from her initial, nearly disastrous setback, the resourcefulness, and courage and qualitative superiority of her solders so succeeded that – in view of all the responsible military analysts – she was on the brink of achieving the greatest victory in her history. … [T]he Israel army had created an excellent bargaining position for whatever negotiations might ensue after the Cease Fire had been formalized in a resolution by the UN Security Council. It held firmly a wide salient deep into Egyptian territory proper with the road to Cairo open. The Egyptian Third Army, one of the two Egyptian forces that had crossed over the east bank of the Suez Canal, was encircled and its supplies completely cut off. …
But in two further decisive steps the U.S. Secretary of State dictated the conversion of Israel’s advantageous position into a posture of defeat. He insisted on the unconditional lifting of the siege of the Third Army. Brief Israeli resistance (by the Minister of Defense in a telephone conversation) was brusquely rejected….By February 1974 Israel had by diplomatic negotiation lost the Yom Kippur War, and the aggressor had been awarded the beginnings of a retrospective victory in the Six Day War. The Egyptians moreover made no secret of their confidence that this was only the first step to Israel’s being forced out of all of Sinai. The Egyptian President in particular repeatedly gave expression to this confidence, indicating without inhibition that this is what he had been promised by the U.S. Secretary of State whom he trusted absolutely in view of what he had already done for the Arab cause.
Twenty seven years later, in 2001, in a column “In Politics: No Friendships, Only Interests” Shmuel Katz returned to the theme of Kissinger’s 1973 game plan, this time with Kissinger’s own memoirs as evidence. Kissinger was determined, Katz wrote “on a diplomacy that would result in Egypt’s moving over from the Soviet orbit to the American. The price, as became evident, was to be a sacrifice of Israel….That is why the Egyptians to this day celebrate what they claim was a military victory over Israel. That is why, in Israel, the Yom Kippur War is remembered and felt as a bitter defeat. The harm done to Israel was and remains incalculable, not least in that sense of having been defeated.”
Moreover, Kissinger accomplished his goals through deception. As Katz details in “The Man with A Plan” (Oct. 23, 2003), with Israel facing a “dangerous shortage of materiel” Kissinger held up the arms shipments to Israel, claiming falsely it was Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger’s doing. Kissinger then used Israel’s predicament to pressure American Jewish leaders to abandon their efforts on behalf of Soviet Jewry in return for his support in expediting the delivery of the sorely needed materiel – arms and supplies which he was responsible for holding up in the first place.
Kissinger also hinted to Defense Minister Moshe Dayan of a Soviet atomic threat if Israel didn’t comply with his demands. Katz says this was a bald-faced lie. The Soviets had made no such threat. Katz writes: “Dayan later realized that he had been hoodwinked, and indeed, on examination of Kissinger’s blow-by-blow negotiations with the Russians, there is not a smidgen of a hint of an atomic threat by the Russians. In a public lecture in May 1974, Dayan declared:
‘The Americans denied us the fruits of victory. It was an ultimatum. Had the US not pressed us, the Third Army and Suez City would have had to surrender. We would have captured 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers and Sadat would have had to admit it to his people. We might have held them only for a day and let them walk out without their arms, but it would have changed the whole Egyptian attitude about whether they won the war or not.’”
It is painful to think that someone who fled Nazi persecution as a young boy in 1938 should do so much damage to the Jewish State. Yet, a closer look shows that Kissinger has, at best, a tenuous connection with his Judaism. Rabbi Norman Lamm, former chancellor of Yeshiva University, spotted this early. In his article “Kissinger and the Jews” (Dec. 20, 1975), a devastating critique, he writes, “Dr. Kissinger is an illustration of how high an assimilated Jew can rise in the United States, and how low he can fall in the esteem of his fellow Jews.”
Lamm referred to a recent visit by Henry Kissinger and his parents to Furth, their hometown in Bavaria which they escaped before the war. They had only kind words for their native city, “but nary a word about the Holocaust, not a word about the Nazis who drove them out of that city!” On top of this, Lamm reveals that Kissinger didn’t want to visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial, during his first trip to Israel, and had to be “persuaded.” He “accepted only when he was told that every other foreign minister visiting Israel had done so.”
This hasn’t stopped Kissinger from portraying himself as one with the Jewish community, accepting awards from the Anti-Defamation League and bestowing awards on behalf of Jewish organizations like the United Jewish Appeal.
Kissinger’s guilt runs deep. Whether or not he feels it is another matter. Zionist writer William Mehlman offers a remarkable footnote involving Kissinger and Katz sometime after the Yom Kippur War. Kissinger got wind of a rumor – unfounded – that Shmuel had taken out a contract on his life (a fantasy Kissinger apparently believed based on the allegations about his role in delaying the resupply of munitions to Israel during the war).
“Shmuel, informed of what had transpired and anxious to put the rumor to rest, arranged a face-to-face meeting with Kissinger at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. ‘From the moment I entered his suite until I left three minutes later,’ Katz related to a small circle of friends in Tel Aviv, ‘he did not stop shouting at me. He never gave me a chance to refute the rumor. In fact I never got a chance to say a word. Finally, I just turned around and walked out.’”
Mehlman writes, “Whatever debt Henry Kissinger may or may not have felt he owed his conscience, he must surely have learned by now that it wasn’t Shmuel Katz who had come to collect.”
Kissinger is 87. It doesn’t look as if he will make amends in this world. Perhaps in the next.
This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 1:37 am and is filed under Shmuel Katz.
Palestinian summer camp for "young leaders" named after terrorist Dalal Mughrabi
http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=2678
by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
A summer camp in Bethlehem is the latest institution in the Palestinian Authority to be named after the leader of the worst terror attack in Israel's history. According to the official PA daily newspaper, the new camp is named after Dalal Mughrabi, who led a 1978 bus hijacking in which 37 civilians, 12 of them children, were killed. The newspaper reports that the camp "aims at training young leaders" in the Bethlehem area:
"The Ministry of Social Affairs in Ramallah opened yesterday in El Bireh the fourth integration camp for people with special needs, and in Bethlehem the second Shahida (Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi camp [opened]... The second Dalal Mughrabi summer camp was opened in the headquarters of Light of Generations' youth association in Bethlehem, with support from the National Committee for Summer Camps and the One Voice Palestine organization in Ramallah. It aims at training young leaders in the eastern countryside of Bethlehem District. Present [at the opening] were... the Secretary of Fatah's Bethlehem branch, Yusuf Al-Aref, ..., Chairman of the [Light of Generations' youth] association, Ibrahim Mubarak, Muhammad Khalil - camp director... 70 young girls from the Dar Salah village and neighboring villages participated."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 29, 2010]
As PMW has documented, the PA has turned Mughrabi into a celebrated hero and role model. Schools, summer camps, landmarks and centers for youth and education have been named after her.
Click here to see the section of PMW's website about Mughrabi's elevation from terrorist to hero.
The camp has received support from the National Committee for Summer Camps, which is under the supervision of the PA's Ministry of Youth and Sports, according to the ministry's website. The general coordinator of the camps committee, Mousa Abu Zaid, is also the PA's Deputy Minister for Youth and Sports.
In a recent article, Zaid wrote that Palestinian summer camps teach children "through precept and example about the importance of dialogue and tolerance in life." [http://thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3134&ed=183&edid=183]
The other supporter cited in the article about the Mughrabi camp is One Voice Palestine. According to its website, the members of this international movement are "fed up with the ongoing conflict" and "ready and eager to support a serious process" leading to a peace agreement. [http://www.onevoice.ps/en/faqdes.php?id=1]
In March this year, the PA and Fatah named a square near Ramallah after Mughrabi, and her attack has been celebrated by a spokesman for PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction as "the most glorified sacrifice action in the history of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle" [Al-Ayyam, July 13, 2008]. The PA celebrated the 31st anniversary of her killings with an hour-long TV special that opened with the narrator glorifying the attack.
by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
A summer camp in Bethlehem is the latest institution in the Palestinian Authority to be named after the leader of the worst terror attack in Israel's history. According to the official PA daily newspaper, the new camp is named after Dalal Mughrabi, who led a 1978 bus hijacking in which 37 civilians, 12 of them children, were killed. The newspaper reports that the camp "aims at training young leaders" in the Bethlehem area:
"The Ministry of Social Affairs in Ramallah opened yesterday in El Bireh the fourth integration camp for people with special needs, and in Bethlehem the second Shahida (Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi camp [opened]... The second Dalal Mughrabi summer camp was opened in the headquarters of Light of Generations' youth association in Bethlehem, with support from the National Committee for Summer Camps and the One Voice Palestine organization in Ramallah. It aims at training young leaders in the eastern countryside of Bethlehem District. Present [at the opening] were... the Secretary of Fatah's Bethlehem branch, Yusuf Al-Aref, ..., Chairman of the [Light of Generations' youth] association, Ibrahim Mubarak, Muhammad Khalil - camp director... 70 young girls from the Dar Salah village and neighboring villages participated."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 29, 2010]
As PMW has documented, the PA has turned Mughrabi into a celebrated hero and role model. Schools, summer camps, landmarks and centers for youth and education have been named after her.
Click here to see the section of PMW's website about Mughrabi's elevation from terrorist to hero.
The camp has received support from the National Committee for Summer Camps, which is under the supervision of the PA's Ministry of Youth and Sports, according to the ministry's website. The general coordinator of the camps committee, Mousa Abu Zaid, is also the PA's Deputy Minister for Youth and Sports.
In a recent article, Zaid wrote that Palestinian summer camps teach children "through precept and example about the importance of dialogue and tolerance in life." [http://thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3134&ed=183&edid=183]
The other supporter cited in the article about the Mughrabi camp is One Voice Palestine. According to its website, the members of this international movement are "fed up with the ongoing conflict" and "ready and eager to support a serious process" leading to a peace agreement. [http://www.onevoice.ps/en/faqdes.php?id=1]
In March this year, the PA and Fatah named a square near Ramallah after Mughrabi, and her attack has been celebrated by a spokesman for PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction as "the most glorified sacrifice action in the history of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle" [Al-Ayyam, July 13, 2008]. The PA celebrated the 31st anniversary of her killings with an hour-long TV special that opened with the narrator glorifying the attack.
Campus Watch "Setting The Record Straight" 2010 Update
Cinnamon Stillwell
http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2010/07/campus-watch-setting-the-record-straight-2010
Since our last update, the number of corrections in Campus Watch's "Setting The Record Straight" section has grown exponentially. Hardly a day goes by when Campus Watch (CW)'s opponents aren't hard at work hurling false accusations, smears, and paranoia in our direction. The nature of the fabrications generated by CW's critics over the years has remained predictably static, and they tend to fall into just a few categories. The most ubiquitous are the histrionic allegations that we "silence," "censor," "harass," or "intimidate" academics; that we engage in "blacklisting"; that we interfere in tenure decisions; that we represent a threat to "academic freedom"; and that most hackneyed cliché of the Left's vocabulary—that we practice "McCarthyism." Only in the insulated world of academia would mere criticism and accountability be likened to state-sponsored repression. Moreover, the irony seems to be lost that eight years after CW's 2002 launch, such academics are still busy talking—about being silenced.
Nonetheless, the hysteria continues. For example:
Dorit Naaman, Alliance Atlantis Professor of Film and Media at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, writing in the Canadian Association of University Teachers Bulletin, demonstrates an active imagination when she sucks Campus Watch into the vortex of a vast conspiracy theory involving a conference to which we had no connection--an error she follows with the unimaginative claim that we "employ the tactics of McCarthyism."
At his blog, Informed Comment, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole devises a brilliant new method for smearing Campus Watch: accusing us of being "a neo-McCarthyite organization." Well, at least it's a step up from McCarthyite.
In another new twist on the same old, same old, St. Xavier University history professor Peter Kirstein, writing at his blog, describes Campus Watch as "one of the New McCarthyism's most egregious excesses."
Nora Barrows-Friedman, writing for the Electronic Intifada, misunderstands CW archives—they are divided into material we produce ourselves, and material we merely archive—and concludes that we've launched "smear campaigns" against one professor about whom we've never written and another who was the subject of exactly one article. She made only two errors: there was no smear and no campaign.
Others fall back on that most banal of tactics—playing the race card:
After falsely accusing Campus Watch of intervening in tenure decisions (the "CW Positions on Speakers and Tenure" page at our website explicitly states otherwise) and making "overtly racist complaint[s]" in our "initial mission statement" about professors of Middle Eastern background, Hussein Ibish, writing at his blog, concludes that CW "should admit failure and be gone forever." In light of all these mistakes, Ibish might want to take his own advice.
In the course of criticizing a Sunny Hundal Guardian piece that misrepresented Campus Watch [more about which below], an anonymous blogger writing for the Spittoon misrepresents CW by claiming that we "vilify Muslim academics." Wrong, again.
Another fictitious indictment that arises with depressing regularity is fueled by the belief that Campus Watch is part of an omnipotent and interconnected cabal of individuals and organizations that make up what is commonly labeled the "Israel Lobby." As we've noted repeatedly, CW is a project of the Middle East Forum, a nonprofit 501 (c) 3 organization founded and directed by Daniel Pipes, and is not affiliated with any other individuals, organizations, or government entities.
Daniel Pipes has challenged "Israel Lobby" conspiracy theory peddlers such as John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt (co-authors of the infamous The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy) on numerous occasions to provide documentation proving that CW receives marching orders from on high, but to no avail. Instead, they claim that this "Leninist caricature of the lobby" is not to be taken literally—even as they continue to spout the same nonsense.
Similarly undeterred by facts, our critics press on:
South African-Dutch journalist Adriana Stuijt, writing for Digital Journal, recycles the myth that David Horowitz is affiliated with Campus Watch.
In a paranoid diatribe about the "Israel Lobby" in the Palestine Chronicle, Franklin Lamb erroneously describes an organization called the Zionist Freedom Alliance (ZFA) as "a spin-off of Campus Watch." That's news to us.
Writing for the journal Social Research, Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor of political science Itzhak Galnoor incorrectly alleges that the organization Israeli-Academic-Monitor.com is connected to Campus Watch. Is there any group to which CW isn't supposedly connected?
Sergio Yahni, writing for the Alternative Information Center, distorts the words of Middle East Forum adjunct scholar Asaf Romirowsky (from his August 2008 article, "In Academia, Hiring Token Jews") and accuses Campus Watch of aiding "Israeli attacks on dissenting voices." CW director Winfield Myers put it best: "I've yet to take an order from anyone in Israel—or anyone connected with the so-called Israel lobby in America."
Many of CW's detractors either ignore or willfully misconstrue our mission statement to suit their own preconceived notions. Our interest in improving Middle East studies is not, as is often charged, for the purpose of promoting "pro-Israel" or politicized scholarship, but for promoting rigorous, objective scholarship untainted by political, ethnic, or religious agendas. Yet, the mischaracterizations keep on coming:
Sharmila Devi, writing for the National (Abu Dhabi), claims that Campus Watch "target[s] professors" for being "anti-Israel and pro-Islam." In fact, we critique professors for being anti-objectivity and pro-politicization.
After correctly diagnosing the field of Middle East studies as suffering from "high levels of politicization," the anonymous author of the "Road to Academia" blog charges Campus Watch with "trying to politicize ME Studies," when, in fact, one of our goals—per our mission statement—is to combat the "mixing of politics with scholarship" in Middle East studies. Talk about confusion!
In a Tikkun Magazine article bemoaning the alleged trials and tribulations of "Israel's Campus Critics," David Theo Goldberg and UCLA English professor Saree Makdisi declare that CW was started by "pro-Israel activists" whose goal is to "harry academic scholars for their criticisms of Israeli policy." And the inaccuracies don't end there.
Writing for the Socialist Worker, Brian Napoletano claims that CW "attacks" (i.e. critiques) scholars who criticize Israel and routinely accuses them of anti-Semitism. Neither is true, but why let that stand in the way of a good propaganda opportunity? Napoletano's comrades would be proud.
Then there are the repeat offenders, who, obviously, haven't learned any lessons from past mistakes:
Harvard University international affairs professor (and co-author of the aforementioned The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy) Stephen Walt takes his fourth swipe at Campus Watch and has no better luck getting his facts straight than before.
Ben-Gurion University political geography professor David Newman makes the first of two (so far) appearances in our corrections department with a rambling rant in the Jerusalem Post in which he calls Campus Watch a "disgrace for anyone who believes in the concept of freedom of speech"—for practicing free speech.
Writing again for the Jerusalem Post, David Newman rears his histrionic head for the second time to accuse Campus Watch of—yawn—McCarthyism. As proof of this tiresome canard, he accuses us of "turn[ing] students into spies" because some have had the gall to report their classroom experiences to the outside world via CW. He figured out our dastardly plan!
Others substitute scary, buzzwords for facts:
In an article for the National (Abu Dhabi), Jonathan Cook associates Campus Watch with the terms "neoconservative," "right-wing groups," "climate of fear," and "witch-hunt." Oh, my!
Some of CW's critics either suffer from a lack of journalistic or academic ethics, are merely lazy, or are greatly in need of a fact-checker:
Delivering the August 2007 convocation address at Whitman College, Shampa Biswas—Global Studies director and associate professor of politics—couldn't seem to get her facts straight about Campus Watch, so, instead, she just made stuff up. Now there's a nifty lesson for college grads.
In an article on the retirement of Central Connecticut State University history professor Norton Mezvinksy, Bristol Press staff writer Scott Whipple erroneously describes Campus Watch as an "on-campus group."
Guardian blogger Sunny Hundal relies on the old "according to one critic" trick to make all manner of untrue and nonsensical accusations against Campus Watch. We're still waiting for Hundal to disclose the mysterious identity of his unnamed source; Deep Throat, perhaps?
It would be nice to think that these corrections will someday no longer be required, but as long as Campus Watch's critics prefer name calling, demonization, and conspiratorial thinking to substantive rebuttal, there will be a need to correct their errors.
This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2010/07/campus-watch-setting-the-record-straight-2010
Since our last update, the number of corrections in Campus Watch's "Setting The Record Straight" section has grown exponentially. Hardly a day goes by when Campus Watch (CW)'s opponents aren't hard at work hurling false accusations, smears, and paranoia in our direction. The nature of the fabrications generated by CW's critics over the years has remained predictably static, and they tend to fall into just a few categories. The most ubiquitous are the histrionic allegations that we "silence," "censor," "harass," or "intimidate" academics; that we engage in "blacklisting"; that we interfere in tenure decisions; that we represent a threat to "academic freedom"; and that most hackneyed cliché of the Left's vocabulary—that we practice "McCarthyism." Only in the insulated world of academia would mere criticism and accountability be likened to state-sponsored repression. Moreover, the irony seems to be lost that eight years after CW's 2002 launch, such academics are still busy talking—about being silenced.
Nonetheless, the hysteria continues. For example:
Dorit Naaman, Alliance Atlantis Professor of Film and Media at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, writing in the Canadian Association of University Teachers Bulletin, demonstrates an active imagination when she sucks Campus Watch into the vortex of a vast conspiracy theory involving a conference to which we had no connection--an error she follows with the unimaginative claim that we "employ the tactics of McCarthyism."
At his blog, Informed Comment, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole devises a brilliant new method for smearing Campus Watch: accusing us of being "a neo-McCarthyite organization." Well, at least it's a step up from McCarthyite.
In another new twist on the same old, same old, St. Xavier University history professor Peter Kirstein, writing at his blog, describes Campus Watch as "one of the New McCarthyism's most egregious excesses."
Nora Barrows-Friedman, writing for the Electronic Intifada, misunderstands CW archives—they are divided into material we produce ourselves, and material we merely archive—and concludes that we've launched "smear campaigns" against one professor about whom we've never written and another who was the subject of exactly one article. She made only two errors: there was no smear and no campaign.
Others fall back on that most banal of tactics—playing the race card:
After falsely accusing Campus Watch of intervening in tenure decisions (the "CW Positions on Speakers and Tenure" page at our website explicitly states otherwise) and making "overtly racist complaint[s]" in our "initial mission statement" about professors of Middle Eastern background, Hussein Ibish, writing at his blog, concludes that CW "should admit failure and be gone forever." In light of all these mistakes, Ibish might want to take his own advice.
In the course of criticizing a Sunny Hundal Guardian piece that misrepresented Campus Watch [more about which below], an anonymous blogger writing for the Spittoon misrepresents CW by claiming that we "vilify Muslim academics." Wrong, again.
Another fictitious indictment that arises with depressing regularity is fueled by the belief that Campus Watch is part of an omnipotent and interconnected cabal of individuals and organizations that make up what is commonly labeled the "Israel Lobby." As we've noted repeatedly, CW is a project of the Middle East Forum, a nonprofit 501 (c) 3 organization founded and directed by Daniel Pipes, and is not affiliated with any other individuals, organizations, or government entities.
Daniel Pipes has challenged "Israel Lobby" conspiracy theory peddlers such as John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt (co-authors of the infamous The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy) on numerous occasions to provide documentation proving that CW receives marching orders from on high, but to no avail. Instead, they claim that this "Leninist caricature of the lobby" is not to be taken literally—even as they continue to spout the same nonsense.
Similarly undeterred by facts, our critics press on:
South African-Dutch journalist Adriana Stuijt, writing for Digital Journal, recycles the myth that David Horowitz is affiliated with Campus Watch.
In a paranoid diatribe about the "Israel Lobby" in the Palestine Chronicle, Franklin Lamb erroneously describes an organization called the Zionist Freedom Alliance (ZFA) as "a spin-off of Campus Watch." That's news to us.
Writing for the journal Social Research, Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor of political science Itzhak Galnoor incorrectly alleges that the organization Israeli-Academic-Monitor.com is connected to Campus Watch. Is there any group to which CW isn't supposedly connected?
Sergio Yahni, writing for the Alternative Information Center, distorts the words of Middle East Forum adjunct scholar Asaf Romirowsky (from his August 2008 article, "In Academia, Hiring Token Jews") and accuses Campus Watch of aiding "Israeli attacks on dissenting voices." CW director Winfield Myers put it best: "I've yet to take an order from anyone in Israel—or anyone connected with the so-called Israel lobby in America."
Many of CW's detractors either ignore or willfully misconstrue our mission statement to suit their own preconceived notions. Our interest in improving Middle East studies is not, as is often charged, for the purpose of promoting "pro-Israel" or politicized scholarship, but for promoting rigorous, objective scholarship untainted by political, ethnic, or religious agendas. Yet, the mischaracterizations keep on coming:
Sharmila Devi, writing for the National (Abu Dhabi), claims that Campus Watch "target[s] professors" for being "anti-Israel and pro-Islam." In fact, we critique professors for being anti-objectivity and pro-politicization.
After correctly diagnosing the field of Middle East studies as suffering from "high levels of politicization," the anonymous author of the "Road to Academia" blog charges Campus Watch with "trying to politicize ME Studies," when, in fact, one of our goals—per our mission statement—is to combat the "mixing of politics with scholarship" in Middle East studies. Talk about confusion!
In a Tikkun Magazine article bemoaning the alleged trials and tribulations of "Israel's Campus Critics," David Theo Goldberg and UCLA English professor Saree Makdisi declare that CW was started by "pro-Israel activists" whose goal is to "harry academic scholars for their criticisms of Israeli policy." And the inaccuracies don't end there.
Writing for the Socialist Worker, Brian Napoletano claims that CW "attacks" (i.e. critiques) scholars who criticize Israel and routinely accuses them of anti-Semitism. Neither is true, but why let that stand in the way of a good propaganda opportunity? Napoletano's comrades would be proud.
Then there are the repeat offenders, who, obviously, haven't learned any lessons from past mistakes:
Harvard University international affairs professor (and co-author of the aforementioned The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy) Stephen Walt takes his fourth swipe at Campus Watch and has no better luck getting his facts straight than before.
Ben-Gurion University political geography professor David Newman makes the first of two (so far) appearances in our corrections department with a rambling rant in the Jerusalem Post in which he calls Campus Watch a "disgrace for anyone who believes in the concept of freedom of speech"—for practicing free speech.
Writing again for the Jerusalem Post, David Newman rears his histrionic head for the second time to accuse Campus Watch of—yawn—McCarthyism. As proof of this tiresome canard, he accuses us of "turn[ing] students into spies" because some have had the gall to report their classroom experiences to the outside world via CW. He figured out our dastardly plan!
Others substitute scary, buzzwords for facts:
In an article for the National (Abu Dhabi), Jonathan Cook associates Campus Watch with the terms "neoconservative," "right-wing groups," "climate of fear," and "witch-hunt." Oh, my!
Some of CW's critics either suffer from a lack of journalistic or academic ethics, are merely lazy, or are greatly in need of a fact-checker:
Delivering the August 2007 convocation address at Whitman College, Shampa Biswas—Global Studies director and associate professor of politics—couldn't seem to get her facts straight about Campus Watch, so, instead, she just made stuff up. Now there's a nifty lesson for college grads.
In an article on the retirement of Central Connecticut State University history professor Norton Mezvinksy, Bristol Press staff writer Scott Whipple erroneously describes Campus Watch as an "on-campus group."
Guardian blogger Sunny Hundal relies on the old "according to one critic" trick to make all manner of untrue and nonsensical accusations against Campus Watch. We're still waiting for Hundal to disclose the mysterious identity of his unnamed source; Deep Throat, perhaps?
It would be nice to think that these corrections will someday no longer be required, but as long as Campus Watch's critics prefer name calling, demonization, and conspiratorial thinking to substantive rebuttal, there will be a need to correct their errors.
This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Israel's ruling class
CAROLINE GLICK
In a much discussed article in the current issue of the American Spectator titled "America's Ruling Class," Prof. Angelo Codevilla describes the divide between those who run the US - the politicians, bureaucrats and policy establishment - and the rest of the country.
He laments, "Never has there been so little diversity within America's upper crust." In his view, the American ruling class "was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the 'in' language -- serves as a badge of identity."
The main unifying characteristic of the American "ruling class" as Codevilla describes it is inexhaustible contempt for the majority of their countrymen who are not part of their clique. In his words, "our ruling class does not like the rest of America. Most of all does it dislikes that so many Americans think America is substantially different from the rest of the world and like it that way."
Codevilla's article focuses on US domestic policy. He accuses the ruling class of purposely spending the US into insolvency. He claims that their goal is to aggregate power. The more Americans depend on governmental largesse for their livelihoods, the greater the power of the government to dictate norms of social and political behavior and the greater the governing class's hold on power.
Codevilla claims that the Republicans are the permanent minority in the ruling class which is naturally aligned with the Democrats. When they are in power, the Republicans, he claims repress populist and conservative voices within their ranks calling for small government and do so to maintain their good relations with their colleagues in Democratic ruling circles. His prime example of a ruling class Republican is the first president George Bush.
Codevilla quotes former Soviet ruler Mikhail Gorbachev's retelling of a conversation he reportedly had with the vice president Bush about then president Ronald Reagan. Gorbachev claimed that Bush told him not to take Reagan seriously because, "Reagan is a conservative, an extreme conservative. All the dummies and blockheads are with him."
THERE IS A clear foreign policy corollary to Codevilla's discussion. Just as US bureaucrats, journalists, politicians and domestic policy wonks tend to combine forces to perpetuate and expand the sclerotic and increasingly bankrupt welfare state, so their foreign policy counterparts tend to collaborate to perpetuate failed foreign policy paradigms that have become writs of faith for American and Western elites.
A prime example of this is US Middle East policy. Regardless of its repeated failure over the course of four decades, since 1970, and with ever-increasing urgency since 1988, the consensus view of the US foreign policy elite has been that Israel's size is the cause of violence and instability in the Middle East. If Israel would just contract into the indefensible 1949 armistice lines, everything would be wonderful. The so-called "extremists" in the Arab and Islamic worlds will become moderates. Iran, Syria, the Saudis, the Palestinians, al Qaida, Hizbullah and the rest would abandon terror and beat their suicide belts and ballistic missiles into ploughshares.
An outstanding example of this sort of cross-partisan nonsense was the 2006 bipartisan Iraq Study Group's recommendations to then president George W. Bush. The war in Iraq was going nowhere and the considered view of esteemed Republican and Democratic policy hands was to stick it to Israel.
In the considered view of these wise men, for the US to emerge from Iraq with honor, it didn't actually have to defeat its enemies. Instead, according to Republicans like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft and Democrats like Lee Hamilton and Zbigniew Brzezinski all Bush needed to do was force Israel to cough up the Golan Heights, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Then al Qaida in Iraq, the Shiite militias and all the rest would shrivel up or - at a minimum - allow the US to withdraw its military forces from the country without being humiliated.
The likes of Baker, Scowcroft, Brzezinski and Hamilton and their students comprise a permanent Middle East policy ruling class that endures regardless of who is in power and what their actual views about Middle Eastern realities happen to be.
But they couldn't survive if they didn't receive help from Israel. Given that most Americans support a strong Israel and view Israel as a vital US ally in the Middle East, they would be hard-pressed to maintain their failed and unpopular policies if they weren't amply assisted by their counterparts in the Israeli ruling class.
This week Ha'aretz - the trumpet of Israel's ruling class - gave us all a primer in how this sort of thing works. In an article titled, "Obama has ways and means to check on Netanyahu," military commentator Amir Oren disclosed the close collaboration between the Obama administration and a handful of hard-left retired IDF officers against the Netanyahu government.
Oren reported that ahead of Obama's meeting this month with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, retired IDF brigadier generals Shlomo Brom, Udi Dekel and Baruch Spiegel met secretly in Rome with retired US rear admiral John Sigler who heads the Middle East research institute at the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. The purpose of their meeting was twofold.
First, as Oren put it, they were asked to "clarify whether in the dispute between [the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government] Netanyahu truly represent the majority in Israel." That is, they were supposed to tell Sigler how to drive a wedge between the democratically elected government and the Israel voters who elected it.
And second, they were supposed to furnish Obama with arguments to reject Netanyahu's arguments for why Israel cannot retreat to the 1949 armistice lines. As Oren put it, "When Netanyahu tells Obama there is something he can't do because it would be the death of him, experts like the three brigadiers general can map out Israel's ranges of flexibility to Sigler, and through him pass them along... to Obama."
Activities like those Oren reports are a permanent feature in Israelpolicy circles. Regardless of who is in office, the likes of Brom, Dekel and Spiegel and their leader Yossi Beilin are always working with the Americans and Europeans to force Israel to maintain allegiance to the failed land for peace paradigm. Year in and year out, these anti-democratic and strategically demented but well paid former officials maintain what they euphemistically refer to as "track two," contacts with their counterparts in the European and American ruling class to force the majority of Israelis who don't share their derangement to accept their policy dictates.
Codevilla predicts that a clash between the ruling class and the ruled in the US is just a matter of time, although he makes scant predictions or recommendations for how that clash will play itself out. Just so, the time has come for Israelis to confront our own ruling class and develop methods for weakening its chokehold on Israel's domestic and foreign policy.
For too long and to our unmitigated detriment Israelis have allowed a small unelected minority to dictate our national policies. The views and loyalties of this minority - like their counterparts in the US - are opposed to those of the majority of Israelis.
If our democracy is to have meaning and if our lives and country are to be defended, we need to empower our elected leaders to stand up to those - like Brom, Speigel and Dekel -who work actively to subvert the principle of government by consent of the governed.
In a much discussed article in the current issue of the American Spectator titled "America's Ruling Class," Prof. Angelo Codevilla describes the divide between those who run the US - the politicians, bureaucrats and policy establishment - and the rest of the country.
He laments, "Never has there been so little diversity within America's upper crust." In his view, the American ruling class "was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the 'in' language -- serves as a badge of identity."
The main unifying characteristic of the American "ruling class" as Codevilla describes it is inexhaustible contempt for the majority of their countrymen who are not part of their clique. In his words, "our ruling class does not like the rest of America. Most of all does it dislikes that so many Americans think America is substantially different from the rest of the world and like it that way."
Codevilla's article focuses on US domestic policy. He accuses the ruling class of purposely spending the US into insolvency. He claims that their goal is to aggregate power. The more Americans depend on governmental largesse for their livelihoods, the greater the power of the government to dictate norms of social and political behavior and the greater the governing class's hold on power.
Codevilla claims that the Republicans are the permanent minority in the ruling class which is naturally aligned with the Democrats. When they are in power, the Republicans, he claims repress populist and conservative voices within their ranks calling for small government and do so to maintain their good relations with their colleagues in Democratic ruling circles. His prime example of a ruling class Republican is the first president George Bush.
Codevilla quotes former Soviet ruler Mikhail Gorbachev's retelling of a conversation he reportedly had with the vice president Bush about then president Ronald Reagan. Gorbachev claimed that Bush told him not to take Reagan seriously because, "Reagan is a conservative, an extreme conservative. All the dummies and blockheads are with him."
THERE IS A clear foreign policy corollary to Codevilla's discussion. Just as US bureaucrats, journalists, politicians and domestic policy wonks tend to combine forces to perpetuate and expand the sclerotic and increasingly bankrupt welfare state, so their foreign policy counterparts tend to collaborate to perpetuate failed foreign policy paradigms that have become writs of faith for American and Western elites.
A prime example of this is US Middle East policy. Regardless of its repeated failure over the course of four decades, since 1970, and with ever-increasing urgency since 1988, the consensus view of the US foreign policy elite has been that Israel's size is the cause of violence and instability in the Middle East. If Israel would just contract into the indefensible 1949 armistice lines, everything would be wonderful. The so-called "extremists" in the Arab and Islamic worlds will become moderates. Iran, Syria, the Saudis, the Palestinians, al Qaida, Hizbullah and the rest would abandon terror and beat their suicide belts and ballistic missiles into ploughshares.
An outstanding example of this sort of cross-partisan nonsense was the 2006 bipartisan Iraq Study Group's recommendations to then president George W. Bush. The war in Iraq was going nowhere and the considered view of esteemed Republican and Democratic policy hands was to stick it to Israel.
In the considered view of these wise men, for the US to emerge from Iraq with honor, it didn't actually have to defeat its enemies. Instead, according to Republicans like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft and Democrats like Lee Hamilton and Zbigniew Brzezinski all Bush needed to do was force Israel to cough up the Golan Heights, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Then al Qaida in Iraq, the Shiite militias and all the rest would shrivel up or - at a minimum - allow the US to withdraw its military forces from the country without being humiliated.
The likes of Baker, Scowcroft, Brzezinski and Hamilton and their students comprise a permanent Middle East policy ruling class that endures regardless of who is in power and what their actual views about Middle Eastern realities happen to be.
But they couldn't survive if they didn't receive help from Israel. Given that most Americans support a strong Israel and view Israel as a vital US ally in the Middle East, they would be hard-pressed to maintain their failed and unpopular policies if they weren't amply assisted by their counterparts in the Israeli ruling class.
This week Ha'aretz - the trumpet of Israel's ruling class - gave us all a primer in how this sort of thing works. In an article titled, "Obama has ways and means to check on Netanyahu," military commentator Amir Oren disclosed the close collaboration between the Obama administration and a handful of hard-left retired IDF officers against the Netanyahu government.
Oren reported that ahead of Obama's meeting this month with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, retired IDF brigadier generals Shlomo Brom, Udi Dekel and Baruch Spiegel met secretly in Rome with retired US rear admiral John Sigler who heads the Middle East research institute at the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. The purpose of their meeting was twofold.
First, as Oren put it, they were asked to "clarify whether in the dispute between [the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government] Netanyahu truly represent the majority in Israel." That is, they were supposed to tell Sigler how to drive a wedge between the democratically elected government and the Israel voters who elected it.
And second, they were supposed to furnish Obama with arguments to reject Netanyahu's arguments for why Israel cannot retreat to the 1949 armistice lines. As Oren put it, "When Netanyahu tells Obama there is something he can't do because it would be the death of him, experts like the three brigadiers general can map out Israel's ranges of flexibility to Sigler, and through him pass them along... to Obama."
Activities like those Oren reports are a permanent feature in Israelpolicy circles. Regardless of who is in office, the likes of Brom, Dekel and Spiegel and their leader Yossi Beilin are always working with the Americans and Europeans to force Israel to maintain allegiance to the failed land for peace paradigm. Year in and year out, these anti-democratic and strategically demented but well paid former officials maintain what they euphemistically refer to as "track two," contacts with their counterparts in the European and American ruling class to force the majority of Israelis who don't share their derangement to accept their policy dictates.
Codevilla predicts that a clash between the ruling class and the ruled in the US is just a matter of time, although he makes scant predictions or recommendations for how that clash will play itself out. Just so, the time has come for Israelis to confront our own ruling class and develop methods for weakening its chokehold on Israel's domestic and foreign policy.
For too long and to our unmitigated detriment Israelis have allowed a small unelected minority to dictate our national policies. The views and loyalties of this minority - like their counterparts in the US - are opposed to those of the majority of Israelis.
If our democracy is to have meaning and if our lives and country are to be defended, we need to empower our elected leaders to stand up to those - like Brom, Speigel and Dekel -who work actively to subvert the principle of government by consent of the governed.
Abbas resists push for direct talks with Israel
SALAH NASRAWI (AP)
CAIRO — The Palestinian president is refusing to move to direct peace negotiations with Israel, as the Arab League meets Thursday to decide whether to add its weight to U.S. and Israeli pressure for face-to-face talks. Mahmoud Abbas is under strong U.S. and European pressure to restart direct talks that were frozen in 2008. But the Palestinian leader said he would only do so if Israel agrees to a complete halt in settlement construction and accepts a Palestinian state in territories seized in the 1967 Middle East war — the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.
"When I receive written assurances (about) accepting the 1967 border and halting the settlement (building), I will go immediately to the direct talks," Abbas was quoted as saying in remarks reported by Egypt's state-owned news agency Thursday.
Abbas said he would take assurances either directly from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or indirectly from the United States or the leaders of Egypt and Jordan, two Arab nations that have also acted as mediators between the two sides.
Egypt said Wednesday it has received U.S. assurances that may help in restarting direct talks but refused to make the details public.
"I am under a kind of pressure I haven't been through all my life," Abbas said.
This week The Associated Press obtained a Palestinian document that revealed that U.S. peace envoy George Mitchell warned Abbas that if he does not agree to direct talks, President Barack Obama will not be able to help the Palestinians achieve a state of their own.
But the Palestinian president said he first wants to see progress in indirect talks that have been taking place since May under U.S. mediation.
Specifically, he wants to see movement on the issue of borders for a future Palestinian state.
The internal Palestinian document warned Abbas that to give up on those demands would be "political suicide."
Netanyahu, who has appealed for direct talks, has refused to be pinned down on a framework for negotiations. The Israeli prime minister has accepted the idea of Palestinian statehood with conditions but has ruled out giving up control of east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their capital.
On settlements, Israel has instituted a 10-month slowdown in construction in areas the Palestinians want for a future state. That is due to expire in September and Netanyahu this week strongly indicated it would not be extended.
Asked what he would do if the indirect talks, which are also scheduled to end in September, bog down, Abbas said: "I will step down." As a joke, he added, "I will work as a reporter then."
The Arab League was to set out its position on direct talks on Thursday at a meeting of foreign ministers from 10 key League members in Cairo. A final decision would then be endorsed in September by all 22 foreign ministers from the bloc. That left open the possibility that strong objections from Abbas on Thursday could delay any decision.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
CAIRO — The Palestinian president is refusing to move to direct peace negotiations with Israel, as the Arab League meets Thursday to decide whether to add its weight to U.S. and Israeli pressure for face-to-face talks. Mahmoud Abbas is under strong U.S. and European pressure to restart direct talks that were frozen in 2008. But the Palestinian leader said he would only do so if Israel agrees to a complete halt in settlement construction and accepts a Palestinian state in territories seized in the 1967 Middle East war — the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.
"When I receive written assurances (about) accepting the 1967 border and halting the settlement (building), I will go immediately to the direct talks," Abbas was quoted as saying in remarks reported by Egypt's state-owned news agency Thursday.
Abbas said he would take assurances either directly from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or indirectly from the United States or the leaders of Egypt and Jordan, two Arab nations that have also acted as mediators between the two sides.
Egypt said Wednesday it has received U.S. assurances that may help in restarting direct talks but refused to make the details public.
"I am under a kind of pressure I haven't been through all my life," Abbas said.
This week The Associated Press obtained a Palestinian document that revealed that U.S. peace envoy George Mitchell warned Abbas that if he does not agree to direct talks, President Barack Obama will not be able to help the Palestinians achieve a state of their own.
But the Palestinian president said he first wants to see progress in indirect talks that have been taking place since May under U.S. mediation.
Specifically, he wants to see movement on the issue of borders for a future Palestinian state.
The internal Palestinian document warned Abbas that to give up on those demands would be "political suicide."
Netanyahu, who has appealed for direct talks, has refused to be pinned down on a framework for negotiations. The Israeli prime minister has accepted the idea of Palestinian statehood with conditions but has ruled out giving up control of east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their capital.
On settlements, Israel has instituted a 10-month slowdown in construction in areas the Palestinians want for a future state. That is due to expire in September and Netanyahu this week strongly indicated it would not be extended.
Asked what he would do if the indirect talks, which are also scheduled to end in September, bog down, Abbas said: "I will step down." As a joke, he added, "I will work as a reporter then."
The Arab League was to set out its position on direct talks on Thursday at a meeting of foreign ministers from 10 key League members in Cairo. A final decision would then be endorsed in September by all 22 foreign ministers from the bloc. That left open the possibility that strong objections from Abbas on Thursday could delay any decision.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
How much agricultural Gaza land does Israel's buffer zone take?
Elder of Ziyon
One of the oft-repeated claims about Gaza is that about 30% of its farmland is eaten up by Israel's buffer zone. This claim has been made by many, including the UN, as in this quote from 2009:
"Bear in mind that 30% of Gaza's most productive land is within that buffer zone."
More often, the figure given is as a percentage of "arable land" - for example, this UN document says that "The area inside the Buffer Zone along the northern and eastern borders with Israel contains nearly a third (29%) of the Gaza Strip's arable land, and is inaccessible to farmers." However, a recent conference in Gaza by the hardly impartial "Palestinian International Campaign To End The Siege On Gaza" claims that Israel's buffer zone takes up 22.5 km2, or 6.25% of Gaza's total land, and that it takes up 20% of Gaza's arable land.
Both these claims are absurd.
The second, smaller claim is easy to demolish. According to the CIA World Factbook, Gaza has 29% arable land, or 104.4 km2. Gaza's total area is 360 km2. If the buffer zone takes up 22.5 km2 - a debatable point itself - then that means that 100% of Israel's buffer zone is arable land, and zero percent is desert or unusable.
A quick glance at Google Satellite images shows that while there are many strips of green land at the border,
much of the southern half of Gaza has no such usable land (here is near the Gaza airport:)
Similarly, much of the northern border with Israel does not appear to be usable for agriculture, as parts are urban.
So even the claim that Israel takes up 20% of the arable land is nonsense, according to their own figures.
Now, how about the claim that Israel's buffer zone is 22.5 km2 to begin with?
Israel officially sets the buffer zone at 300 meters. Israel's border with Gaza is 51 km, so that multiplied by the 300 meters comes out to 15.3 km2, not 22.5. This is a little harder to argue because Israel's attackers claim that the buffer zone in reality extends as much as a full kilometer into Gaza at certain points, but without bringing too much hard evidence for this claim. Without seeing a map of the supposed real buffer zone I cannot check those claims.
There is another important fact to point out, however: Most people don't know what "arable land" means, and think that it is identical with "farmland." However, that is not the definition at all. The UN defines two important terms:
Arable land is the land under temporary crops, temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, land under market and kitchen gardens and land temporarily fallow (for less than five years).
Land under permanent crops is the land cultivated with crops that occupy the land for long periods and need not be replanted after each harvest.
For the purposes of calculating the amount of land available for agriculture, both those types of land must be included.
Guess what? While Gaza has 104 km2 of arable land, it also has over 75 km2 of land under permanent crops!
So, contrary to the UN quote above, Israel isn't taking up 30% of Gaza's "most productive land". It is, at most, using up loser to 12% - even assuming that 100% of that buffer zone land is arable. In fact, the percentage is probably one third less, from eyeballing the map, or perhaps 9% assuming the figure of 22.5 km2 is accurate.
If Israel's figures of 15.3 km2 is closer to the truth, again assuming that one third of that land is unusable, then Israel's buffer zone might be taking up closer to 5% of Gaza's potential and real agricultural land.
There is a big gap between the 30% quoted by the UN above and the reality of 5%-10%.
Surviving the Obama Assault on the Rule of Law
Heritage Foundation
Hours after yesterday's decision by President Bill Clinton judicial appointee Susan Bolton to preemptively stop enforcement of Arizona's immigration enforcement law, Thomas A. Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), told The New York Times: "This is a warning to any other jurisdiction." Just in case the message from the Obama administration and its leftist allies was not clear, Obama appointee U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke told The Associated Press: "Surely it's going to make states pause and consider how they're drafting legislation and how it fits in a constitutional framework." But no amount of pause by states and localities could ever possibly satisfy the Obama administration, its amnesty allies, and activist judges like Bolton. In a textbook case of judicial activism, Judge Bolton rewrote the Arizona law to her own needs, invented her own facts and ignored clear federal law. President Jimmy Carter appointee and immigration law professor at Yale Law School Peter Schuck told The New York Times: "She rushed to judgment in a way I can only assume reflects a lot of pressure from the federal government to get this case resolved quickly."
The Obama administration's case against Arizona sought to preemptively stop enforcement of Arizona's new immigration law. The legal term for this is a "facial challenge," and federal precedent is clear that facial challenges "must be careful not to go beyond the statute's facial requirements and speculate about 'hypothetical' or imaginary cases." But that is exactly what Judge Bolton did. First, she ignored Section 2(B) of the law as written and completely ignored the section's first sentence that required an officer to have "reasonable suspicion" that a person was in the country illegally before their immigration status should be checked. Then, she invented a completely hypothetical case about a Chilean dog walker detained by a completely fictional Sheriff Smith. Finally, despite the fact that 8 U.S.C. §1373 clearly requires the federal government to "respond to an inquiry by a…State, or local government agency, seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual," Judge Bolton concluded that the Obama administration's decision not to enforce this provision was as good as rewriting the law itself.
Taken alone, the White House's behavior on this issue is troubling enough. But put into the broader context of the first 18 months of this Administration, a truly pernicious pattern emerges. First, there was the Obama Justice Department's decision to dismiss voter intimidation charges against the New Black Panther Party. Then there was the Obama administration's use of TARP to bail out its union allies in what bankruptcy law scholars have called "so outrageous and illegal that until March of this year [2009], nobody even conceptualized it." Then there was the Obama administration's shakedown of BP in the White House's Roosevelt Room. Less than a week later after a federal court found its first oil drilling ban to be "arbitrary and capricious," the Obama administration issued a second oil drilling ban that was wider and killed even more jobs than the first.
Americans cannot be cowed by the Obama administration and its La Raza and MALDEF allies. Giving into bullies only encourages their behavior. Finally this lawsuit should be a permanent reminder to everyone who wants to call themselves a conservative that any and all claims about an amnesty deal are complete fiction. La Raza and MALDEF will fight every enforcement measure in any such deal tooth and nail while administrations like this one will simply choose not to enforce them. Meanwhile, the amnesty provisions would be instantaneous and permanent. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has vowed to fight this decision all the way to the Supreme Court, and she deserves support.
Hours after yesterday's decision by President Bill Clinton judicial appointee Susan Bolton to preemptively stop enforcement of Arizona's immigration enforcement law, Thomas A. Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), told The New York Times: "This is a warning to any other jurisdiction." Just in case the message from the Obama administration and its leftist allies was not clear, Obama appointee U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke told The Associated Press: "Surely it's going to make states pause and consider how they're drafting legislation and how it fits in a constitutional framework." But no amount of pause by states and localities could ever possibly satisfy the Obama administration, its amnesty allies, and activist judges like Bolton. In a textbook case of judicial activism, Judge Bolton rewrote the Arizona law to her own needs, invented her own facts and ignored clear federal law. President Jimmy Carter appointee and immigration law professor at Yale Law School Peter Schuck told The New York Times: "She rushed to judgment in a way I can only assume reflects a lot of pressure from the federal government to get this case resolved quickly."
The Obama administration's case against Arizona sought to preemptively stop enforcement of Arizona's new immigration law. The legal term for this is a "facial challenge," and federal precedent is clear that facial challenges "must be careful not to go beyond the statute's facial requirements and speculate about 'hypothetical' or imaginary cases." But that is exactly what Judge Bolton did. First, she ignored Section 2(B) of the law as written and completely ignored the section's first sentence that required an officer to have "reasonable suspicion" that a person was in the country illegally before their immigration status should be checked. Then, she invented a completely hypothetical case about a Chilean dog walker detained by a completely fictional Sheriff Smith. Finally, despite the fact that 8 U.S.C. §1373 clearly requires the federal government to "respond to an inquiry by a…State, or local government agency, seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual," Judge Bolton concluded that the Obama administration's decision not to enforce this provision was as good as rewriting the law itself.
Taken alone, the White House's behavior on this issue is troubling enough. But put into the broader context of the first 18 months of this Administration, a truly pernicious pattern emerges. First, there was the Obama Justice Department's decision to dismiss voter intimidation charges against the New Black Panther Party. Then there was the Obama administration's use of TARP to bail out its union allies in what bankruptcy law scholars have called "so outrageous and illegal that until March of this year [2009], nobody even conceptualized it." Then there was the Obama administration's shakedown of BP in the White House's Roosevelt Room. Less than a week later after a federal court found its first oil drilling ban to be "arbitrary and capricious," the Obama administration issued a second oil drilling ban that was wider and killed even more jobs than the first.
Americans cannot be cowed by the Obama administration and its La Raza and MALDEF allies. Giving into bullies only encourages their behavior. Finally this lawsuit should be a permanent reminder to everyone who wants to call themselves a conservative that any and all claims about an amnesty deal are complete fiction. La Raza and MALDEF will fight every enforcement measure in any such deal tooth and nail while administrations like this one will simply choose not to enforce them. Meanwhile, the amnesty provisions would be instantaneous and permanent. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has vowed to fight this decision all the way to the Supreme Court, and she deserves support.
The Mosque On American Sacred Ground
Herbert London
September 11 lives for downtown residents of New York. The World Trade Center site is a constant reminder of human malevolence. It also speaks to political incompetence, of politicians compromised by double dealing and arrogance. While the site shows signs of rebirth and a tribute will be built to remind Americans of the 2800 innocent people who lost their lives one crystal clear morning in September, an insult deep and penetrating is being launched two blocks away on Park Place with the building of a mosque that will overlook the World Trade Center site.
Mayor Bloomberg and the Downtown Community Board (by a vote of 29 to 1) approved of this religious center citing freedom of religion arguments. What they overlook, however, is far more persuasive then First Amendment defenses.
Freedom of religion like any freedom is not absolute; freedom is defined by limitations. Indians are not free to use peyote indiscriminately in religious services since drug use violates the law of the land. And religion that promotes hate or is an incitement to violence should be and can be curbed.
In the case of the downtown mosque several questions remain unanswered. If a mosque can be built anywhere, why is it being constructed adjacent to the former World Trade Center? Although denials abound, the title of the mosque, Cordoba House reveals a great deal. In Cordoba, Muslims built a mosque on a Catholic church as a symbol of their triumph in Spain. That symbolism may be evident at the New York site as well.
It is also instructive that the provenance of the $100 million for the project remains unknown. My guess – based on many global examples – is that Saudi petro dollars are behind the underwriting. If true, this mosque is likely to promote Wahhabist beliefs – the most radical brand of Islam.
The promoters of the mosque contend they are Americans who love their country and eschew violence of any kind. Yet they refuse to condemn Hamas and refuse to recognize it as a terrorist organization.
What this episode demonstrates is a form of liberal myopia, an unwillingness to recognize the optics in this situation. For Muslims around the world who deplore the West, specifically the “Great U.S. Demon,” this mosque is the symbol of victory. It shows that America doesn’t have the intestinal fortitude to resist its enemies. It is as if a Shinto temple were to be constructed at the Arizona Memorial or a Nazi cultural center were built at Auschwitz. There are lines to be drawn on the matter of taste, patriotism and appropriateness that transcend reflexive adherence to the First Amendment.
As far as I know, no one is arguing against the construction of mosques albeit when a religion promotes hate against other faiths, believes apostates and other believers are less than human, argues against the separation of church and state, and is eager to undermine the Constitution, an argument can be made that this religion engages in sedition and should be banned or, at least, censured.
At this point, the pols have spoken. The mosque most likely will be built. But for those of us who reside downtown that building will not be an expression of tolerance, but rather a wound on the city and the nation. It will represent despair; it will serve as a permanent insult to those New Yorkers who lost their lives a decade ago.
In the midst of sacred territory there will be a constant reminder that those who despise our way of life and everything this republic stands for can use our hard fought liberties to desecrate this land. No matter what Bloomberg says, this is what New Yorkers will be reminded of whenever they pass the mosque on Park Place. As significantly, this is also what radical Muslims will see whenever television cameras pan to this religious edifice. What a shame; alas, what a disgrace.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Herbert London is president of Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New York University. He is the author of Decade of Denial (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001) and America's Secular Challenge (Encounter Books).
Egyptian Journalist: In Actual Terms, Gaza Is Not Under Siege
MEMRI
July 28, 2010
Special Dispatch No. 3126
In an article in the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram on the economic situation in the Gaza Strip, journalist Ashraf Abu Al-Houl wrote about the burgeoning recreation industry and of the low merchandise prices.
Also as part of the interest in the economic situation in Gaza, the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida published articles describing the expensive resorts that have been established for Gaza's newly rich, and a Palestinian website reported on the new mall recently opened in the city. The following are excerpts from the articles:
Stores Overflow with Goods
Journalist Ashraf Abu Al-Houl wrote in Al-Ahram: "I was last in Gaza in mid-February. Returning three weeks ago, I found it almost unrecognizable... and the greatest surprise was the nature of that change. I would have expected a change for the worse, considering the blockade – but the opposite was the case; it seemed as if it had emerged from the blockade.
"A sense of absolute prosperity prevails, as manifested by the grand resorts along and near Gaza's coast. Further, the sight of the merchandise and luxuries filling the Gaza shops amazed me. Merchandise is sold more cheaply than in Egypt, although most of it is from the Egyptian market, and there are added shipping costs and costs for smuggling it via the tunnels – so that it could be expected to be more expensive.
"Before I judge by appearances, which can be misleading... [I would like to point out that] I toured the new resorts, most of which are quite grand, as well as the commercial markets, to verify my hypothesis. The resorts and markets have come to symbolize prosperity, and prove that the siege is formal or political, not economic. The reality [in Gaza] proves that the siege was broken even before Israel's crime against the ships of the Freedom Flotilla in late May; everything already was coming into the Gaza Strip from Egypt. If this weren't the case, businessmen would not have been able to build so many resorts in under four months."
Significantly Lower Prices
"[I] began my search for the truth regarding the siege in Rafah, at the Saturday market, which was loaded with large quantities of merchandise and products of various kinds – at prices mostly lower than in Egypt, particularly for food products. Nevertheless, there weren't many customers, and this for two reasons: One, supply is much greater than demand, and two, the workers were all waiting to get paid their wages.
"Business owner Abu Yousuf stood at his shop surrounded by hundreds of cans of food. Their price had dropped significantly in the past two months; in some cases by as much as 50%. Clothing vendor Abu Muhammad Al-Masri noted that there was an unprecedented glut on the clothing market in the Gaza Strip. Clothing comes into Gaza from two sources: the tunnels, which provide large quantities, and the border crossings to Israel, via which even more goods arrive, most of which piled up at Ashdod port [and are now coming into the Strip]. He clarified that the merchants wanted to sell [lots of] goods to get back some of their money... and so had increased the supply in the markets, leading to lower prices.
"During my tour of the Rafah and Khan Younis markets, I noticed that the merchants were drastically marking down their merchandise, so as to get rid of goods smuggled in through the tunnels, and to prevent heavy losses... after Israel has decided to allow in Israeli and imported goods, as part of Israeli government measures to ease the blockade following the Freedom Flotilla massacre.
"Despite the drop in price due to the plethora of goods in the Gaza markets, the residents sense that even lower prices are on the way, due to the easing of the Israeli blockade. The consumers are carefully watching prices, [particularly for] smuggled electrical appliances and cars, and refrain from buying, expecting that merchandise will arrive via the border crossings [leading to a further drop in prices].
"A Gaza car showroom salesman said that he hoped to sell off his inventory and that he was not bringing in any new vehicles for fear of heavy losses, because Israel had decided to allow vehicles into Gaza for the first time since 2006. Anyone walking in the Gaza streets will see hundreds, if not thousands, of cars that entered Gaza from Egypt via the tunnels, and some of them are stolen. At the home and kitchen appliance dealers, there is a tempting array of all kinds of smuggled goods that sellers want to get rid of, due to the ongoing information about new products that Israel has decided to allow into to the city... "
Resorts for the Nouveau Riche
"The Gaza resorts paint a picture of prosperity enjoyed by only a few groups, most of which have become rich from the blockade, because they either own tunnels or else work for the many international organizations in Gaza, headed by UNRWA.
"The Gaza resorts are divided into several [categories], each of which has its own price range. This is not like it used to be, when all the tables on the beach were for the use of all the residents... I noticed that most of the resorts set a certain price for the tables near the sea, and a different price for tables farther away. This is in addition to high fees to enter the resort – no less than NIS 20 – and each activity within the [grounds] has its own fee. In short, a family visit, with a sandwich for each child, can cost up to NIS 500.
"Several months ago, Gaza had only one luxury resort, Zahrat Al-Madain. Today, another one opens up every day, such as Crazy Water, Aqua Park, and Al-Bustan. Most of them are owned by members, or associates, of Hamas. In addition, the Hamas municipalities [also] charge high fees, in Gaza terms, for the use of public beaches."
"'Aed Yaghi, senior official of the Al-Mubadara Al-Wataniyya party, which is headed by Palestinian Legislative Council member Mustafa Al-Barghouti, said, 'These resorts make you wonder. It is logical to invest when times are good – but when Gaza is suffering under siege and there is a possibility of renewed aggression [by Israel], no one knows what profitability there is in building resorts.'
"Walid Al-'Awwad, a member of the Palestinian People's Party political bureau, said, 'In the past two years, money-laundering has flourished in Gaza, as reflected by the construction of numerous resorts – all of which belong to influential individuals who participate in trafficking via the tunnels. Compared to the tunnel owners' increasing wealth, the [status] of the [established] wealthy families has waned... The spread of the grand resorts reflects the emergence of a bourgeoisie. Some of the fluidity in the Gaza market stems from the activity of clandestine elements – distributors of drugs, arms, and tunnel merchandise.'
"Human rights activist and political correspondent Mustafa Ibrahim said, 'Building resorts in the north [of the Strip]is contrary to the most fundamental principles of investment, because they are in regions exposed to shelling and destruction, due to the unceasing Israeli threats. Thus, veteran investors don't dare invest in this area. The elements behind the investment [in the north], who are sometimes hasty, rely on profits from trafficking via the tunnels for funding... This huge investment in the leisure industry is taking place today in Gaza at a time when 80% of the residents depend on aid from UNRWA and other organizations, and unemployment is at 45%. This creates a distorted picture, particularly when merchandise is piling up in the shops in a way that does not reflect the economic situation. Perhaps the current government created this distorted situation in order to show that it had succeeded in breaking the siege..." [1]
Photos: Al-Ahram, Egypt, July 17, 2010
The Al-Bustan Resort and Bisan Tourism City
The PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida stated: "The Al-Bustan resort, on the coast, belongs to an Islamic association linked to Hamas. It offers a cafeteria, a restaurant, and fish ponds; it gets 1,000 visitors a day, and about 2,000 during the weekend, says manager Ahmad Qadoura. A Gaza resident whose home was destroyed in the Gaza war, Abu Kamal Al-Awajeh, expressed his resentment over the resorts' high entry fee of NIS 35... He says, 'priority should be given to rehabilitating Gaza and building housing for those whose homes were destroyed by the occupation in the war.' Nearby, the Wa'ed prisoners' association, which is close to Hamas, has built the Al-Hurriya ["Freedom"] Resort.
"In May, Bisan Tourism City was established in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip. Previously a garbage dump, the 270-dunam [site], which belongs to the Hamas government, provides a leisure and vacation [destination] for Gaza residents... It cost $1.5 million, under the oversight of Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hammad. The city includes an 86-dunam park and a small zoo, and two Olympic-size swimming pools for children and adults. According to its administration, on weekends it hosts some 6,000 visitors... The administration bans hookah smoking and card games, and three religious conventions are held there every week."[2]
Mall Opens in Gaza
The Palestinian website Firas Press reported: "This week, Gaza's first mall opened. The inaugural ceremony was attended by Hamas ministers and officials, along with merchants and investors. Hamas Welfare Minister Ahmad Al-Kurd said, "The mall will participate in meeting the basic needs of the population, against the backdrop of the siege, with merchants bringing in [goods] via the border crossings and the tunnels."[3]
Photo: Fpnp.net, July 21, 2010
Endnotes:
[1] Al-Ahram (Egypt), July 18, 2010
[2] Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (Palestinian Authority), July 22, 2010
[3] www.fpnp.net, July 21, 2010
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