Futures of the Obama Administration:

Dan Rather says the President must show resolve and steel. This was echoed by Helene Cooper (He must start showing his accomplishments) and Joe Klein (people want to see him crack the whip). Despite this 11 said he must play to the center and only one said he must play to the left.

There is no contradiction here – all agreed that the Democratic base is a varied coalition while the Republican base is the Republican idiosyncratic right (a much less flattering word was used).

So what do the Democrats need now? The answer in the TV and Internet age is that you must be authentic and have a conversation with the broad constituency that is the country.

——–

Helene Cooper reminded us that in Foreign countries Obama did very well – now he will have a huge welcome in Indonesia and the Tea Party folks will say that this proves he is not from here. But they may overplay because again the President will show he can raise in the world the essence of an ideal. Indonesia is a poor country in recession and a probable breeding ground for Al Qaeda with a war going on in nearby Philippines.

Joe Klein kept repeating that even in the US people rank Obama’s foreign policy much more then his economic policy – so some will say that when he goes overseas to take of the news the needed US internal economic policy – he does not face the economy.

But above is not correct – he actually goes to the energy markets – Indonesia, then India, and probably after that South Africa. This follows the trip he made to China. So there is a pattern here.

Also – we were reminded that Iran has an operation to extract Uranium in a remote location in Venezuela – and yes – there is now a daily flight from Tehran to Caracas while there is only a weekly flight from Caracas to Bogota. AHA – is this not what we say all the time since Copenhagen? Obama needs to have in the White House a clear Western Hemisphere desk in order to be able to do all these other needed activities that are mainly Asia oriented.

We learned that Rahm Emanuel – the White House pragmatist – said all the time – the futures are ENERGY and JOBS. That should have been the laser guided policy from day one.

On the Israeli Palestinian issue, with the latest misery for all to see and a consensus building that the killing in Dubai and the slap to Vice President Biden, were “botched-on-purpose” events. Simply – they are so botched that they must have been on purpose and the purpose was that Israel wanted the world to know that they are ready to take responsibility for their future because they do not want to have to pay for complicated world policies that may treat them as collateral.

The two issues with most impact on the Middle East are clearly the global look into the maze of State-to State energy policies and what seems to emerge – a border set between Israel and the West Bank run by the Palestinian Authority. This as a “what-can-be-done” approach to get us out of this impasse. With the AIPAC meeting coming up in Washington – March 21-23, 2010, President Obama out of town, and Vice President Biden having been pushed aside by the Israelis, it remains now for Secretary Hillary Clinton to try to build such an approach for the only two direct factors in the dispute, and the Arab States the US has friendly relationship with. If this is not accepted by the two sides, the best the US can do is to drop this topic from its agenda all together, and wait the sides come back begging for new mediation.

Karl Rove is making the rounds of the TV stations in order to sell his book “Courage and Consequences.” It is him, former VP Cheney, the daughter Liz Cheney (Chris Matthews Calls Liz Cheney ‘Daughter of Dracula’), and pundist Bill Krystal that try to reinvent history. Of interest to US foreign policy is the mention now that the mismanagement of the war in Iraq under the Bush-Cheney Administration was the fault of Turkey – because of their reluctance to allow NATO overflights. Quite true – but did not one look into such things when planning a war?

Gillian Tett of the Financial Times, declared that  US President Obama is liked in the world but not feared. Russia and China are not going to allow greater restrictions on Iran. She also said that Israel is probably not as fearful of Iran as it is assumed because had they had Iran in mind they would not have turned against the US and the UK the way they did. She thinks the events in Dubai were a clear provocation to the UK. France and the UK will go along with the US grudgingly on Iran but others at the UN Security Council, like Lebanon and Brazil will not.

Candy Crowley’s program was underlined with the idea that the gridlock in Washington on health-care has signaled to the world that it also carries no power overseasand that Obama will now stress in his relations to Congress what he already said: “Ignore the Washington Eco Chamber!”

————-

Pakistan turns into a US Administration’s Show-case: At least something that showed some changes for the better.

On Farred Zakaria with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke – “Pakistan is looking up – A victory for Obama. It helped by dangling of showers of aid – so the Hakami faction of the Taliban that was previously tolerated by the military is now being attacked.

Holbrooke finds that the Afghans in Khandahar and Marja in general, want a conservative society but no corruption. They want education including for girls and are mad at the Taliban. The district leader in Marja is an Afghan who returned from Germany. There are returnees and the US encourages also afghans in the US to return and participate in the rebuilding.

———–

With Fareed – The Jeffrey Sachs, Amity Schlaes (conservative formerly with The Wall Street Journal and presently Council of Foreign Relations specialist), and Christa Freeland (global editor-at-large, The Financial Times – middle of the road, right leaning):

The underlying Jeff Sachs dictum: “EVERY DECENT SOCIETY ENSURES CITIZENS HAVE ACCESS TO HEALTH-CARE.” Without reforms of the health-care delivery system we will get nowhere – this was really not discussed yet he said.

The problem is that we have no cost controls so we use four times more Cat-Scans then Switzerland or France.

Freeland concurred  and said THE SYSTEM ENCOURAGES DOCTORS TO DO TOO MUCH! She had found that in the American system you have to fight excessive treatment more then anywhere else. She herself gave birth in Toronto, Paris, New York and the US was worse. She asked why all those Cesarean treatments for first birth in the US? She concluded that it was not only a problem of greed – which it is – but also a problem of the legal system, the high insurance of the profession, that makes doctors more worried and pushes them to prescribe unnecessary treatments. SO – WE ARE BACK TO THE INSURANCE AND TO THE HEALTH-CARE IMPASSE. She also pointed out that 80% of the health-care cost is in the last years of life and this should be something to be looked at also.

The two seemed to agree that with 10% unemployment it is wrong to tie-in health-care to a job – and Freeland suggested HELP RATHER PEOPLE TO BUY AN INSURANCE.

Talking about the economy at large, Jeff Sachs said we were in a panic situation last year – that was removed – but we are out of control with the budget and a burdened debt consumer is no consumer. We risk a downward spiral as for two and a half years we really did nothing on the economy. He predicts that the US is out for a double recession.

Amity Schlaes in all of this was a parody of the Wall Street Journal – “A person who gets a job – not the happy consumer that goes to the mall – is who saves the economy. Which she is obviously right but nowhere in the discussion did we see an indication of how to get there. Cut spending? From where? She brings up Indiana State tax cuts as an example, but Professor Sachs cuts her short by saying the US is already the lowest taxed country in the developed world and we are paralyzed because we cannot do what a civilized country must do. Can we have a value added tax Fareed asks Schlaes and she gives a clear NO!. We read her stuff in the WSJ many times and wonder now what she can do for the Council on Foreign Relations. We thank Fareed Zakaria for having brought her in to the panel so we understand better what US institutions of long-standing have done to split America.

With a 10% of GNP budget gap while the entitlement amount to a total of 15% for Social Security and existing Health-Care, there is just no way that the US can cut itself out of the coming recession without falling back into the ranks of a third world country – whatever the meaning of that term which we clearly do not accept as part of our own parlance. Clearly – Presidential leadership is needed here and plain conversation with the electorate is the way to honestly explain the situation to the public. Do not expect the media to be able to do this public relations job.

David Axelrod on all channels, kept saying that Illinois got 60% insurance increases this year and the President will speak in Ohio where a woman wrote to him that she had to chose between health insurance and her home – so she stopped her insurance. Then when cancer struck – now she will lose her home. This is the biggest driving force of the economy that the Federal Government must take into consideration first. We say power to him.

Further, on Fareed Zakaria’s program, we learned that March 9th was a year since the Wall Street Dow Index hit bottom from which it climbs up again. Banks have recapitalized with new $150 billion to a safe position, managers make fabulous pay again, Timothy Geithner who took the country on a middle road has shown success, refusing to nationalize the banks, but what did this do to the person on main street who will be voting in November?

———-

Intricacies of the Arab and Islamic world:

On the Amanpour program we started with Sheikh Dr. Tahir Ul-Qadri – an Islamic Theologian from London who started the JIHAD-AGAINST-JIHAD movement. He was a former special advisor on Islamic Law to the Pakistani Supreme Court.

He says – No ifs – No buts – Terrorism is Terrorism. Any good intentions cannot allow terrorism.

A terrorist does not reach Shihada (martyrdom) or in lay language – he does not go to heaven – he rather goes to hell!

He was questioned about “Khawarij” in the “Hadit” – the words of the Prophet as reported by men that wrote them down – “whoever fights against the people (that is the believers) has more rights to Allah then others.”

Sheikh Ul Qadri answered that the ideology that says those that are not Muslims – their blood is allowed – he does no accept. He fights for peace and when asked if his life is in danger he said he is not afraid “one has to live for truth and die for truth” – he is thus a jihadist-against jihad.

Elias Khouri is an Arab lawyer living on the West Bank near Jerusalem. Both – his father and his son were killed by other Palestinians as part of their war against Jews. The father back in the pre-Israel days, the son, George Khouri, who went to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in March 2004, when he was mistaken for a Jew.

Elias Khouri paid from his money for the translation into Arabic of the book “A Tale of Love and Darkness” by the famed Israeli author Amos Oz, and had it published in Beiruth so that Arab readers can learn something about the Israelis. This bereaved person wants to help remove prevailing stereotypes in the Middle East.

Amos Oz who can be defined as an Israeli who clearly wants to live in a Middle East mixed environment, depicted in this book the non-heroic ways of the first settlers who lead to the foundation of the State. Elias Khouri says that knowledge is needed to be able to understand if we want to fight them or go along. Since the offer to translate the book, the two families – the Khouri and the Oz families became close friends and visit each other. Amos Oz says that he tried always to put himself in the other’s shoes. Anyone in the Arab world who reads the book will understand the historical events better. Oz says – Imaging the other is a moral thing.

Sunday March 7, 2010, Fareed Zakaria took the measure of the Big Crescent that Stretches from Gaza via Jerusalm, Baghdad, Tehran, Kabul, to Islamabad. He had quite o few first line guests.

Turned out that it is unrealistic to expect democracy in Iraq – what we get at best will be a cross-sectarian coalition – maybe.

There is no certainty that the Iraqis will want to end up in a relationship with the US with less then 25,000 US and other NATO forces present.

The important question came up: “Do we have any economic influence in Iraq?” and the answers included pearls like “This is capitalism at work – there will be competition.” “With the money spent on the invasion the US could have bought all the Iraqi oil production for a decade.” We hope Mr. Cheney was watching the program wherever he is. We wonder if he will evr move finally to the headquarters of Haliburton in Dubai.

———

Regarding Iran – the main observation is that the Basij have had to turn inwards because of the stirring of a political opposition.

“Do you think that Dr. Ahmad Chalabi is an Iranian agent?”

“He was behind the de-Bathification – indeed the Iraqis believe so.”

——-

With Yossi Melman, now with Tel Aviv newspaper HAARETZ, and former Mossad operative and Fawaz A. Gerges, from the London School of economics and Political Science, author of Journey of the Jihadist” present, and Osama Hamdan on video in Damascus – we heard from Mosab Hassan Jousef Jr. how he was, and in many ways still is, a double or triple agent between the Hamas, Patach and the Israelis. His contention is that he saved his father’s life, Sheick Hassan, a founder of the Hamas, by telling his location to the Israelis, so he is now well and alive in Israeli prison with a six years term, while he would have been dead otherwise. That is another tid-bit of Middle East lore. Mosab did not seem to worry having exposed himself before the cameras – seemingly he is more interested in getting royalties from a book he published.

——

In this program we also learned – at least the first time I heard so – finally a religious Islamic leader, talking of the atrocities of 9/11, say the magic words I was waiting for these last 8 years: “COMMITTINGG A TERROR ATTACK LANDS THE PERPETRATORS IN HELL.” So, there is now a “JIHAD AGAINST JIHAD” among some Muslim leaders and they regard 9/11 as the “WAKE UP CALL.”

So far so good – but the announcement by the news-caster that the Pakistanis caught in the city of Karachi, among its 30 million people, American-turncoat Adam Gadahn, the Al Qaeda Spokesman – that was a bum announcement. The beaded man was not caught.

Despite Pundits, Netanyahu Wants Peace – writes Professor Efraim Inbar.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers No. 101, March 11, 2010
 http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/perspectiv…

EXECUTIVE SUMMERY: Israelis, as well as the current Netanyahu government, deeply desire peace. Netanyahu expressed a willingness to reach a territorial compromise through a two-state solution. Netanyahu’s readiness to compromise has been met by continued resistance from the Palestinians, who have displayed a lack of political pragmatism that is a prerequisite for reaching a compromise.  It is wrong to blame Netanyahu for the current political impasse, as it is the Palestinians who have displayed inflexibility in their approach to peace.

Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, wants peace and is interested in negotiations with the Palestinians. The Netanyahu government enjoys popular support because a large majority of Israelis agree with this view. All polls show that Israelis deeply desire peace and this issue influences their voting behavior. Indeed, every Israeli government must demonstrate to the electorate its seriousness in the peace process in order to be reelected. Moreover, preserving American support for Israel requires showing seriousness in the pursuit of peace.

True, what is required to convince Israelis about their government’s determination to pursue peace is not always enough to impress the outside world. This gap is the source of much of the criticism leveled against Israel. But the critical and/or hostile circles, which are heavily influenced by misguided notions propagated by the discredited Israeli left and Palestinian propaganda, are not in sync with regional realities and entertain unrealistic expectations.

In his June 2009 speech at the BESA Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Netanyahu successfully redefined the Israeli consensus and became a mainstream political leader. Despite the Jews’ ancient claim to their historical homeland, the Land of Israel, Netanyahu expressed a willingness to reach territorial compromise – a two-state solution – in order to satisfy the national needs of the Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s acceptance of a Palestinian state has been conditional, however. His insistence on a demilitarized state reflects ingrained Israeli fears of their dangerous neighbors. Netanyahu also demanded the long overdue recognition of Israel as the Jewish nation-state. The Palestinians still have to reciprocate the recognition of “Palestinian legitimate rights” of 1978 by Menachem Begin. In line with Israeli consensus, Netanyahu insisted on Jerusalem remaining the undivided capital of the Jewish state.

Over 70 percent of Israelis agreed with Netanyahu’s address – quite an achievement for any Israeli prime minister. The Israeli consensus revolves around the willingness to repartition the Land of Israel. There is enormous skepticism about the Palestinians’ ability to reach an historic compromise with the Zionist movement and subsequently implement the agreement. Israelis are most concerned about Palestinian compliance with Israel’s security requirements. Israelis want defensible borders, understanding that the peace process is predicated upon a strong Israel.

Most of the hawkish faction within Netanyahu’s Likud party feels comfortable with Netanyahu’s positions. This faction even supported the ten-month partial freeze on new housing construction in Judea and Samaria that was announced on November 25, 2009 – an unprecedented Israeli concession. Netanyahu’s government is strongly enforcing the moratorium.

Netanyahu believes that progress on the road to peace can only be achieved by a slow process of institution-building and economic growth beginning from the bottom-up. Indeed, his government has done its best to facilitate economic growth in the PA by removing dozens of roadblocks in the West Bank, thereby putting the lives of Jews at risk, and by supporting international and Palestinian economic activity. Moreover, the Israeli prime minister declared at every opportunity his willingness to enter into unconditional talks with the PA. He has even accepted proximity talks despite Israel’s traditional insistence on direct talks.

So far, those advocating great Israeli territorial concessions to the Palestinians in order to bring peace have been proven wrong. Two Israeli prime ministers offered to cede virtually all of the disputed territories. The offers of Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert were respectively rejected by Yasser Arafat in 2000 and ignored by his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, in 2008. Moreover, in 2000 the Palestinians launched a campaign of terror and recently they have threatened to renew it. Similarly, after the Sharon government unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and dismantled all settlements in 2005, the Gaza Strip was converted into a launching pad for intensified missile attacks.

The Palestinians seem to have a great territorial appetite. Historically, they have displayed a lack of political pragmatism that is a prerequisite for reaching a compromise. Unfortunately, the Palestinians have no Ben-Gurion-type leaders capable of making difficult decisions. The contrast to Israeli leadership is striking, particularly when history shows that Ben-Gurion was ready to accept the convoluted 1947 partition borders and a Jewish state without Jerusalem.

Blaming Netanyahu for the current impasse assumes that the insatiable Palestinians must be placated at the expense of vital Israeli security interests, such as demilitarization of the West Bank and maintaining Israeli control over the Jordan Valley and Greater Jerusalem. Ascribing responsibility to Netanyahu for the impasse with the Palestinians also wrongly assumes that the Palestinians have displayed flexibility in their approach to Israel. Yet it is the Palestinians who insist on preconditions for resuming the talks. Even Netanyahu’s decision for the ten-month freeze on building in the settlements was rejected by the PLO.

As a matter of fact, it is the Palestinians that are dragging their feet in the peace negotiations. Only after heavy American pressure did the West Bank leadership agree to negotiate with Israel, albeit “proximity talks,” refusing to sit in the same room with the Israeli interlocutors. Mahmoud Abbas in his May 2009 Washington Post interview emphasized that he is in no hurry to negotiate with Israel and that he expects the Americans to force Israel to accept the Palestinian conditions. His prime minister, Salam Fayyad, announced a plan to unilaterally establish a Palestinian state in two years instead of a state emerging from negotiations with Israel. Both “moderate” leaders honor suicide bombers as martyrs and provide their families with state pensions. They allow the PA-controlled media, education system and mosques to continue to promote rabid anti-Semitism. Both reject recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Noteworthy, the PA hardly represents all Palestinians as Gaza is ruled by Hamas and is partly discredited by corruption and ineptitude. Yet, all Palestinians are united by the belief that Israel is the source for all their troubles. Palestinian society in Gaza and in the West Bank is under the spell of Hamas, which has not accepted Israel’s right to exist. Consequently, the Palestinians are not moving in the direction of compromise and reconciliation.

Netanyahu’s government probably has no illusions about the ability of the Palestinians to reach an agreement with Israel and implement it in the near future, but Netanyahu keeps the option of negotiations open. In contrast, the Palestinians’ goal is to extract Israeli concessions without negotiations, hoping that Washington and/or the international community will pressure Israel into accepting Palestinian demands.

Efraim Inbar is professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies. This article is a revised version of a piece published in Bitterlemons on March 8, 2010.

Daniel Levy to PJ

Hope this note finds you well. I am writing to share with you a couple of my recent Ha’aretz op-eds.

From this weekend, a piece that explores the current debate inside Israel and in particular the disconnect between the urgency expressed by those advocating for the two-state solution and the steps that are being proposed to achieve it.

The second Ha’aretz op-ed, from a couple of weeks ago, takes stock of current efforts to re-launch Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and what’s at stake for regional players. Both pieces are pasted below.

In addition,there was a recent event that was jointly hosted as the New America Foundation’s Middle East Task Force with the Brookings Institution’s Wolfensohn Center for Development that featured James Wolfensohn and Strobe Talbott in conversation, followed by a panel that included Congressman Keith Ellison, Amjad Atallah, and myself.

—

A Retractionist-Retentionist Discourse.
Ha’aretz, Feb. 12, 2010

In his keynote address at last week’s Herzliya Conference, Ehud Barak summoned up the most dramatic case for changing the status quo:  “If, and as long as between the Jordan and the sea, there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or non-democratic… If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a binational state, and if they don’t, it is an apartheid state.”

This quote is particularly remarkable for the specific wording chosen by Israel’s defense minister: He (perhaps unintentionally) suggested that the existing situation could already be described as apartheid.

Considering the Labor Party’s collapse, one may dismiss its leader’s comments, but Barak’s speech does matter, not because of its author, but because it articulates the core narrative of the centrist-pragmatic trend in Israeli-Jewish politics – from Likud realists like ministers Dan Meridor and Michael Eitan, to Kadima and the remnants of Labor and Meretz. Let’s call it the “retractionist camp” – ready to support a withdrawal from the occupied territories that meets the minimum necessary requirement for the creation of a dignified and viable sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel, and therefore a sustainable two-state solution.
They show realist tendencies, but there is a powerful disconnect (one that was pervasive in Barak’s speech) between most of this camp’s diagnosis of the situation (an “end of the world as we know it” threat of apartheid or binationalism) and their prescription for addressing it: resume negotiations, blame the Palestinians, more of the same. It’s like telling someone they have life-threatening yet treatable cancer and prescribing two aspirins a day.

If the situation is so dire, then bolder steps are surely called for. There are any number of game-changing options to consider. Maybe it is possible to engage Hamas (as is happening in the ongoing Shalit negotiations), to lift the Gaza siege, and to accept Palestinian unity instead of vetoing it, so as to facilitate an empowered negotiating and implementing address. After all, Israel spoke to the PLO before its charter was amended, and the United States engaged Sunni ex-insurgents in Iraq and is encouraging dialogue with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Alternatively, Israel could encourage internationalization of the conflict, handing the territories over to an international protectorate and international forces, or could embrace Salam Fayyad’s two-year plan for statehood and scale back its Area C presence, or even withdraw to the 1967 lines while negotiating over a way settlers could reside under Palestinian sovereignty. Perhaps a Quartet-driven or imposed plan could be encouraged. Anything but business as usual.

Yet most of those in the camp that favors retracting Israel’s occupation – let’s call them “soft retractionists” – eschew such bold positions. Their opponents, the “retentionists,” support retaining all, most or at least enough control of the territories to render impossible a real two-state outcome (indeed, a commitment to retain all of Jerusalem under exclusive Israeli sovereignty is enough to negate a workable two-state option). Again, most retentionists belong in the “soft” category – they are ready to use the language of two states, and support negotiations, economic peace, even a partial easing of the West Bank internal closure. At the heart of both the retractionist and retentionist camps, in their “soft” manifestations, is a basic element of denial. Soft retentionists pretend that ongoing occupation can coexist with preservation of Israel’s democratic character, its security, international acceptance, and a consensus about it in the Jewish world. Making noise about peace and throwing money at public relations will do the trick. Soft retractionists pretend that the occupation can be undone without a fundamental change in approach, and in particular while maintaining existing incentive and disincentive structures (which produced and preserve the current realities).

But while the respective “soft” narratives are more pleasant to the ear, and easier to market, both are not only wrong but also increasingly irrelevant to Israel’s future. The real struggle for the country is between what are commonly labeled as the extremes.

Hard retentionists know they will have to rewrite the rules of democracy, and plead a special exemption clause for “Jewish democracy” and for the elevation of Jewish-only rights. Palestinians are to be dehumanized, human and civil rights groups and international humanitarian law excoriated and a vocabulary created for laundering and justifying an apartheid reality.

Hard retractionists will need to stand up for (long-ridiculed) Jewish values, ethics and morality, for the unloved “other” in society, hold up a mirror to the nations’ warts, and ultimately support international campaigns that distinguish between Israel proper and the occupied territories.

Both camps have a vision for the country’s future: the Jewish Republic of Israel – equal parts ethnocracy, theocracy and garrison state on the retentionist side, while for the retractionists, well, something that lives up to the words of Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

Retentionist cooperation with racist European Islamophobes and American dispensationalist evangelists (for whom Jews have a particularly unenticing role to play during the anticipated Rapture and Second Coming) is considered legitimate and necessary and is embraced by the mainstream. But when retractionists make common cause with the global civil and human rights community, they are vilified as traitors by the mainstream.

The dominant discourse in Israel massively stacks the odds against the hard retractionists. The soft retractionists continue to feed that discourse even though it undermines the very outcome they know is necessary. Their frequent silence, no less than the settlers’ noise, is drowning out Israeli democracy. The hard retentionists are very well represented in the Knesset, while the hard retractionists can barely rely on a tiny and shrinking number of Jewish MKs.

It is the human and civil rights community, the New Israel Fund, the demonstrators at Sheikh Jarrah and the few brave public figures who have joined them – including David Grossman, Moshe Halbertal and Ron Pundak – who are now the standard-bearers and source of hope in this decisive phase of the struggle for Israel’s future.

***

Failure to Re-launch.

Ha’aretz, Jan. 15, 2010

A peculiar if familiar ritual is currently playing itself out in Middle East diplomacy. A concerted push is under way to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, though none of the chief protagonists show any signs of believing they will change anything. We have all been here before, many times over.

If this is the case, then why the great hubbub of activity around such a redundant endeavor? The intentions and strategies behind the activity – in Israel, Egypt, the PLO and the United States – are not entirely on public display. So here is a brief guide to deciphering what they might be.

On the Israeli side, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands that absent the cloak of legitimacy bestowed by participation in an internationally endorsed peace process, all kinds of undesirable scenarios may start to play out. There may be more questions and recriminations abroad surrounding efforts to maintain, let alone entrench, the occupation, and various third-party actors may start to develop their own independent initiatives.
Ideally, Netanyahu would have preferred an exclusively bottom-up peace process, focused on improving conditions on the ground and postponing discussion of big-ticket items. However, when the Obama administration insisted that improving the daily environment begins with freezing settlements, the prime minister discovered that unanchored permanent-status negotiations might be a cozy comfort zone after all. If history repeats itself, Netanyahu could drag out talks indefinitely. Once negotiating, there is ample opportunity to create diversions, distractions and provocations, with escalating tensions on the border with Gaza being a recent favorite.

There is one caveat: The history of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is not preordained to repeat itself. The immediate future will largely depend on the Obama administration’s approach. For now at least, Netanyahu seems confident that the combination of Obama’s political clock (midterms, then reelection), more pressing American priorities, American timidity and internal Palestinian divisions will shield him from having to make hard political choices.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is a fervent advocate of resuming negotiations, an unpopular position at home and in the region. The Mubarak regime never gave much weight to its popular, democratic mandate, deploying variations on crude Egyptian nationalism as a legitimizing vehicle as and when necessary – most recently in its World Cup altercation with Algeria and the showdown with Hamas over protecting “national sovereignty” on Egypt’s Gaza border.

Increasingly, though, Egypt appears to be entering a new phase of regime-succession obsession. For Mubarak, playing the game of peace broker buys him cover against U.S. pressure for political reforms and freedoms, as well as American support in a future leadership transition. His embrace of Netanyahu’s Israel is a necessary part of this, and as a bonus, it buys Mubarak certain security and intelligence protections, which Israel is good at providing. Such is life for a sclerotic regime driven more by familial than national or even political self-interest.

Other regional states are watching or even assenting to Egypt’s efforts to pressure the PLO-Fatah leadership to restart talks, without themselves going out on a limb. The more grounded in democracy those states are, the weaker their enthusiasm for the Netanyahu-Mubarak negotiation groundhog day (Exhibit A: democratic Turkey).

The PLO-Fatah leadership, so far at least, has cast itself in the role of skeptical party pooper. Its members know the consequences of another meaningless negotiation process for their national – not to mention party-political – cause. Many outsiders have been surprised, and some impressed, by the determination displayed over the last several months by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in refusing unconditionally to resume talks. Yet that same leadership has not offered an alternative strategy to replace negotiations, nor has it reunified the Palestinian national movement. The PLO-Fatah leaders are viewed by all sides as the weakest link, hence the full-court press currently being applied to them. Should they succumb, they will no doubt have to justify such a move by clinging to whatever political fig leaf they are offered, but that will not shield them from what are likely to be harsh domestic political consequences.

The main wild card in this equation is the Obama administration. Year One combined early engagement and a strong declarative commitment to Israeli-Palestinian peace with a frustrating lack of new thinking or political daring from the George Mitchell team, while the president was not personally involved and did not take ownership of the issue. The United States may be satisfied with a convenient and showy re-launch of negotiations, followed by the plodding predictability of process over substance.

President Obama may, however, take seriously his own admonition that this issue matters to American strategic interests. That would translate into U.S. leadership in shaping a breakthrough, preferably with EU and Quartet support, creating real choices and deploying new incentives and disincentives with the parties, notably Israel.

Ultimately, for all the noise and speculation regarding their resumption, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are likely to prove rather inconsequential. Success or failure in achieving de-occupation and two states will depend primarily on the conversation between Obama and Netanyahu, their political calculations, priorities and persistence. And that conversation has barely begun.

================

George Mitchell – THE KANGAROO

Uri Avnery

30.1.10

The Kangaroo

GEORGE MITCHELL looks like a kangaroo hopping around with an empty pouch.

He hops here and he hops there. Hops to Jerusalem and hops to
Ramallah, Damascus, Beirut, Amman (but, God forbid, not to Gaza,
because somebody may not like it). Hops, hops, but doesn’t take
anything out of his pouch, because the pouch is empty.

So why does he do it? After all, he could stay at home, raise roses or
play with his grandchildren.

This compulsive traveling reveals a grain of chutzpah. If he has
nothing to offer, why waste the time of politicians and media people?
Why burn airplane fuel and damage the environment?

THE DECLARED aim of Mitchell is to “get the peace process going
again”. How? “Get the two sides to return to the negotiating table”.
There is a naïve American belief that all the problems of the world
could be solved if only the parties would sit down at the table and
talk. When reasonable people talk to each other, they will eventually
arrive at a solution.
The trouble with this is that the people responsible for the fate of
nations are not, in general, reasonable people. They are politicians
with passions and prejudices and constituencies, who are driven by the
mood of the masses. When one is dealing with a 130-year old conflict,
the naïve belief in the value of talk borders on folly.

Decades of experience indicate that negotiations are useless if one of
the parties is not interested in an agreement. Worse: negotiations can
actually cause damage when one of the parties uses them to waste time
while creating a false impression of progress towards peace.
In our conflict, peace negotiations have become a substitute for
peace, a means to obstruct peace. They are an instrument used by
successive Israeli governments to gain time – time to enlarge the
settlements and entrench the occupation.

(In an interview with Haaretz published yesterday, Ehud Barak accused
the “left” in general, and Gush Shalom and Peace Now in particular, of
not supporting Netanyahu’s call for negotiations. He got close to
accusing us of treason.)
Anyone who now proposes negotiations “without prior conditions” is
collaborating with the Netanyahu-Barak-Lieberman government in a ploy
to sabotage the chances of peace. Indeed, Mitchell has become –
perhaps unwittingly – such a collaborator. When he exerts pressure on
Mahmoud Abbas “to come back to the negotiating table”, he is playing
the game of Netanyahu, who presents himself as the great peace-lover.
Abbas is being pictured as a man who has “climbed a high tree and
doesn’t know how to get down again”. There is no occupation, no
ongoing settlement activity, no Judaization of East Jerusalem. The
only problem is to get a ladder. A ladder for Abbas!
All this for what? What is the kangaroo hopping for? It’s all to help
Obama, who is thirsting for a political achievement like a man in the
desert thirsting for water. The start of negotiations, however
meaningless, would be presented as a great diplomatic success.

THE OTHER day, Obama himself made a rare gesture: the President of the
United States of America declared publicly that he had made a mistake
and apologized for it. He admitted that he had not properly understood
the difficulties involved in the restarting of the peace process.
Everybody praised the President. Such a courageous leader! Such nobility!

To which I would add: And such chutzpah!

Here comes the most powerful leader in the world and says: I was
wrong. I did not understand. I have failed. For a whole year I have
not achieved any progress at all towards a solution of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Look how honest I am! Look how ready I
am to admit mistakes!

That is chutzpah. That is chutzpah, because a whole year was lost due
to this “mistake”, a whole year in which 1.5 million human beings in
Gaza, men, women and children, have been suffering utter destitution,
many of them without sufficient food, many of them without shelter in
the cold and in rain. A whole year in which more than a hundred
Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem were demolished while new Jewish
housing projects sprang up at a crazy pace. A whole year in which
settlements in the West Bank were enlarged, apartheid roads were built
and pogroms, under the “price tag” slogan, were carried out.

So, with all due respect, Mr. President, the word “mistake” hardly suffices.

The Bible says: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but
whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Proverbs
28:13). Obama covereth not his “mistake”, and that is good. But it is
the second half of the verse that counts: “confesseth and forsaketh”.
No mercy for one who “confesseth” but not “forsaketh”. You have not
hinted with a single word that you are about to forsake your old ways.

It is chutzpah for another reason, too: You say that you have failed
because you did not properly appreciate the domestic problems of the
two leaders, Netanyahu and Abbas. Netanyahu, you say, has an extreme
right-wing coalition, and Abbas has Hamas.

Sorry, sorry, but what about your own “coalition”, which does not
allow you to move an inch in the right direction? What about the two
houses of Congress, which are completely subservient to the pro-Israel
lobbies, both the Jewish and the Christian-Evangelical? What about
your fear of your extreme right, which is supporting our own extreme
right? What about your inability – or unwillingness – to exercise your
leadership, invest political capital in a confrontation with the
lobbies and move forwards according to the real interests of the
United States (and Israel) – as did President Dwight D. Eisenhower in
his time, and even, for a short period, Secretary of State James
Baker?

THE TERRIBLE blow dealt to Obama in the Massachusetts by-election has
dumbfounded many people. It has changed the texture of American
politics and is endangering the health system reforms, the jewel in
the crown he has put on his head. It threatens to turn him into a lame
duck that may not only lose the midterm elections this year, but even
fail to be reelected less than three years from now.
Many ask: what happened to the shining candidate who enchanted the
entire United States and mobilized millions of enthusiastic new
voters? Where is the man with a vision who aroused the masses with the
battle-cry “Yes, We Can”?

How did the inspiring campaigner turn into a so-so president, one who
does not excite anyone?  How did the candidate, who always hit exactly
the right note, turn into a president who is unable to touch the
hearts of the people? How did the candidate, who made all the right
decisions, turn into a president who cannot make decisions? How did
the anti-Bush turn into another-Bush?
It seems to me that the answers lie in one of the fundamental
paradoxes of the democratic system. I have thought about this many a
time while sitting through boring speeches in the Knesset.
A democratic leader who has a vision and wants to realize it has to
pass two tests: to win an election and to govern a country. If he does
not get elected, he will not have a chance to realize his dream. If he
fails in governing, his election victory loses its meaning.

The trouble is that these two tasks are very different. Indeed, they
tend to contradict each other, because they demand very different
talents.

The candidate must make speeches, excite the imagination, make
promises and convince the voters that he is capable of fulfilling
them. These talents can indeed be of help to the ruler – but they do
not suffice to enable him to rule. The ruler must make hard decisions,
withstand extreme pressures, manage a huge apparatus with many
contradictory components, convince the public of his country and the
leaders of foreign countries. He cannot satisfy all sectors of the
public and all the interest groups, the way he tried to do as a
candidate.

The most inspiring candidates often turn out to be disastrous heads of
government. They are swept into power by the enthusiasm they evoke in
their voters, and then suddenly find out that their brilliant speeches
have no impact any more – not on the members of their parliament, not
on the public, not on foreign leaders. Their brightest talent has
become useless.

I have the impression that Obama’s numerous speeches are starting to
tire people and are losing their appeal. When he turns his face from
left to right and from right to left, from one teleprompter to the
other, he starts to look like a mechanical doll. The millions viewing
his speeches on TV see him turning to the left and turning to the
right, but never really looking them in the eyes.
The candidate is an actor on stage playing the role of a leader. After
the elections, when he actually becomes a leader, he can become
helpless. The man who plays Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play can be
a great actor – but if he were Caesar in real life, he would not have
a clue what to do. (When I put this to an actor, his retort was: “But
Caesar himself would not be able to play Caesar on the stage!”)
Barack Obama is no Caesar. Rather he is Hamlet, Prince of America.
Enchanting, attractive, full of good intentions – but feeble and
hesitant. To rule or not to rule, that is the question.

IT IS much too early to announce Obama’s political death. Contrary to
Mark Antony, who declares in the play “I come to bury Caesar, not to
praise him”, I am not yet ready to bury the great hope raised by him.

A year has passed since he entered the White House. A year wasted to a
large extent. Three more years are left until the next elections.
True, in the first year, after such a dramatic victory, it would have
been much easier for him to do things than in the following three
years, but Obama can still recover, draw the necessary conclusions
from the experience and manage a comeback.

One of the roads there leads through Jerusalem. Obama must keep his
kangaroo tied up at home and take the initiative into his own hands.
He must announce a clear peace program, the one about which there is
now a world-wide consensus (Two states for two peoples, a Palestinian
state in all the occupied territories with its capital in East
Jerusalem and the dismantling of the settlements in Palestinian
territory) and call upon the two sides to adopt it in theory and
practice – perhaps by a referendum on both sides. When the time is
ripe, he may come to Jerusalem and address the Israeli people from the
Knesset rostrum with a clear and unequivocal message.
In short: exit Hamlet, enter Julius Caesar.

How Washington Can Really Help the Greens in Tehran .

from: Trita Parsi.

With the February 11 demonstrations around the corner, Washington is increasingly torn on whether and how to support the Iranian pro-democracy movement. Reality is that Washington’s history of involvement in Iran’s political affairs is not a pretty one. But between doing everything and doing nothing, there is a safe, effective third way. Alireza Nader of RAND and I write about that third path in Foreign Policy Magazine today.

 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/20…

Trita Parsi, PhD
 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/20…

Ever since last June’s disputed presidential election, Iran has been in the throes of change, with the nascent “green movement” protesting against an ever-more-authoritarian state. For months, Washington has asked itself: Should the United States actively push for regime change? Torn between the fear of ending up on the wrong side of history by being too cautious and the fear of ending up undermining the pro-democracy movement by being too aggressive, Barack Obama’s administration is playing a difficult balancing act.

History shows that intervention is easier said than done. Past U.S. attempts to sway Iranian internal affairs — such as the CIA-fomented 1953 coup d’état against a democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh — have proven costly for U.S. interests. Most notably, Washington’s support for the shah fueled the 1979 Islamic Revolution, inspiring anti-Western movements in Pakistan, Egypt, and beyond.

To make matters worse, due to its absence from the scene during the last 30 years, the United States is not sufficiently equipped to understand and shape what appears to be a titanic struggle between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his opponents.

But between the extremes of doing nothing and doing everything, there is a middle ground: providing the Iranian pro-democracy movement with breathing space, rather than engaging in risky and imprecise exercises that would directly involve America as an actor on the Iranian scene. The United States can achieve this through a few simple steps:

First, the United States should tread carefully when it comes to issuing military threats. Under the shadow of a foreign military threat, the uphill battle of the Iranian pro-democracy movement becomes even steeper, as the Iranian regime is quite adept at exploiting foreign threats to stifle criticism at home. Moreover, the possibility of military conflict between Iran and the United States, or their respective “proxies,” might allow the Iranian regime to distract the population from the internal crisis.

Second, the United States should avoid sanctions that put a burden on the Iranian people, rather than the Iranian government. Broad-based sanctions that hit the entire economy hurt common citizens far more than the powerful elites. Any new sanctions should demonstrate not only international discontent with the conduct of the Tehran government, but also an effort by the United States to keep from harming average Iranians.

The shift toward targeted sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) — a 100,000-strong paramilitary and security force with significant business interests — is a welcome development. However, because the IRGC controls Iran’s official and underground economy, identifying sanctions that hurt only the IRGC while sparing the general population is difficult. Instead, U.S. and U.N. designation of specific individuals within the government and the IRGC responsible for the repression and human rights violations would make the sanctions both effective and truly targeted. Such designations would discourage foreign governments and companies from engaging with these individuals or conducting business with them and their affiliates, demonstrating to the regime that its domestic and foreign policies will have significant consequences.

Third, Washington should slow down the diplomatic process. Negotiation with Iran in and of itself is not the problem; engagement doesn’t legitimize the Iranian government, as only the people of Iran can do that. But in spite of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s latest offer to accept the International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear deal, Iran remains in political turmoil. It is questionable that Tehran can make enduring decisions on issues of this magnitude under these circumstances. Adopting unrealistic time frames for diplomacy is self-defeating, as time is needed to ascertain Tehran’s ability to come to an agreement as the Iranian political crisis unfolds. Avoiding an unhelpful and unnecessary rush toward an agreement also helps defuse demoralizing fears among the greens that their struggle for democracy is of no relevance to the United States.

Fourth, the international community, including the White House and U.S. State Department, should be vocal in excoriating Iran’s human rights abuses. Condemning abuses should not be confused with interfering in internal Iranian affairs. As a signatory of numerous international conventions, Iran has a legal obligation to uphold its people’s human rights. When it fails to do so, the United States and the world community has a responsibility to speak up. The Iranian government is, perhaps surprisingly, very sensitive in this area, due to its ambition to be perceived as a regional leader. This sensitivity should be utilized to make advances on the human rights front in Iran.

This would be helpful to the green movement in two ways. First, international focus on Iran’s human rights record makes it more difficult for Tehran to proceed with its abuses. For instance, the United States should support a special session on the human rights situation in Iran at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Second, it helps counter the Iranian government’s perception that the United States is willing to sacrifice the human rights and pro-democracy aspirations of the Iranian people for the sake of a nuclear deal.

Finally (Fifth), Washington should exercise patience and view Iran as a long-term factor in shaping U.S. national security interests across the Middle East. The green movement will not and cannot adjust its action plan to suit the U.S. political timetable. But if patience is granted — which includes avoiding a singular focus on the nuclear issue at the expense of all other considerations — Washington will access a far greater potential for change.

Ultimately, the Iranian opposition has shown tremendous strength and vitality without any material support from the United States. Iran’s people, not outsiders, will be the ones to achieve sustainable democracy. The Iranian opposition is not merely concerned about the June election, nor is it a simple creature of Iran’s factional politics. Rather, it represents a historic struggle for democracy and human rights. Between the all or nothing approaches, the United States can best help by providing Iran’s democrats with breathing room.

——————-
Alireza Nader is an international affairs analyst at the RAND Corporation and co-author of Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads: An Exploration of Iranian Leadership Dynamics.

Trita Parsi is president of the National Iranian American Council and the 2010 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

========================

UPDATED: Washington will do just that !!!

U.S. plans sanctions to hit Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
The U.S. is building a portfolio of sanctions against Iran that specifically targets the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in response to Iran’s announcement it will continue efforts to enrich uranium — a process that could contribute to a nuclear weapons development program. Russia joined the U.S. with an atypically harsh response, while China, which has said it opposed sanctions against Iran before, was mute on the announcement. The goal of the sanctions, which would affect a large number of companies that does business with the Revolutionary Guards, would be to drive a wedge between Iranians and the security forces by making it too expensive for companies to do business with Iran.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/world/middleeast/10sanctions.html

Monday, Feb. 8, 2010

Abbas begins Japan trip with visit to A-bomb museum.

HIROSHIMA (Kyodo) Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in Japan on Sunday for a four-day visit as part of his Asian tour and visited Hiroshima for the first time.

On the first day of his four-day visit to Japan, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas listens to an explanation of an exhibit at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

After offering flowers at the cenotaph for the victims of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the city, Abbas went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and wrote in a visitors’ book that his heart bleeds for the calamities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the other Japanese city to suffer an atomic bombing.

The Palestinian leader told reporters that the world should eliminate nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. He also said the Palestinians have been tormented by war and need support from other countries to achieve peace.

Abbas, who last visited Japan in May 2005, is scheduled to hold talks with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyamaon Monday and with Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada on Tuesday before heading for South Korea on Wednesday.

During the talks, the Japanese side is expected to formally notify the Palestinian leader of its intention to provide $20 million in aid and build a solar power plant in the West Bank town of Jericho.
Tokyo is also likely to commit to providing support for the resumption of the Middle East peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which remains in a stalemate.

In Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh – the news were the record snow. So, that keeps them busy – the need to dig out from under that snow.

So far as governing goes, the Village Voice – that is Greenwich Village in new York City – wrote that the Republicans won a 41-59 majority as a result from the Massachusetts avalanche.

The new weather predictions are that the President will set now the agenda and expect the Democrats to follow – AMEN!       That is leadership – for God’s sake with 59 still standing – what do they wait for?

Further – he – that is Obama – will try to brow-beat the Republicans to cooperate first. The American people say Washington is too partisan ? If that were true the 59 would be good enough – but really? Who are the Obstructionists?

If Obama invites the Republicans to come on board that would be very clever – it would tell the Democrats to stop being obstructionists.

But, politics might be such that the Republicans feel comfortable to project that they are THE PARTY OF NO!

How do you pull out a rabbit from your top-hat? How do you change unemployment rates with nothing happening in the economy? The Republicans might be happy to see the Administration collapse – the country collapse – so who cares about OSAMA!

Obama tells the Democrats – we will be losers together if you do not shape up and they returned – SHOW US THE WAY!

——————

Next topic:  How long can the World’s biggest borrower continue to be the World’s biggest power?

If we get to the point that we have a difficulty to sell our treasuries in the world we will cease to be a big power – that came from Greenspan – the former head of the Federal Reserve. Henry Paulson, the present holder of that job seemed less convincing.

David Walker, former US Controller General – head of the GAO – now head of te Peterson Foundation – wrote a book on the US deficit that has reached now $1.56 trillion and this is untenable.

—————–

Fareed Zakharia on China-US relations – a US – China economic war is MAD – that is Mutual Assured Destruction – he thinks that the two are symbiotically bound now. I think he is wrong. China has such a huge internal market that it can continue well by producing just for their own people without exports to the US. They may not want to do that because it would mean a too soon push at increasing China’s middle class and risking folks ask for a mellowing down of the political regime. But nevertheless, this does not assure an immediate rebellion. In the US rather – a rebellion is possible – or a call for some real war – internally or externally.

To the latest two skirmishes – the US sending $6.4 billion worth of weapons to Taiwan, and Obama hosting The Dalai Lama at the White House. Both topics are not new. The military hardware agreement with Taiwan was agreed in 2001, and the Dalai Lama has visited every single US previous President since he landed in India. Why did the Chinese get excited right now? That is before the April visit they will be making themselves to the White House? What about the Iran sanctions and the fact that Obama was left to wait outside that China conference room in Copenhagen? Are we going to see some muscle show here?

Christiane Amanpour, on her program had as guest Victor Gao, of the China National Association of International Studies.

He pointed out that the US sells weapons to Taiwan that it does not allow for sale to China. China is now the largest credit maker to the US. What if China buys less for several months? Is 2010 going to be the year that Obama gets tough and China gets nasty? Neither of them can afford a real trade war.

David Rothkopf affirmed that “we are interconnected” so we have to develop a different approach.

Victor Cha – he was on China desk at the National  Security Council. He said – This is a MUTUAL HOSTAGE GAME – both sides lose.

—————-

Fareed Zakharia in Davos, had in front of an audience a half hour interview with King Abdullah II of Jordan.

It started out with Fareed pointing out the two main problems he thinks are facing Jordan: Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the Islamic fighting movement, but he was brushed aside by the King who continued coming back to the Israeli – Palestinian problem.

Fareed said that no-one has yet lost money by betting against Peace in the Middle East, but the King countered that the credibility of the US is at stake. We desperately need the undivided attention of the US – he said. If God forbid we cross the line of the viability of the 2 State Solution, what are we left with – continuing warfare – or even worse – the One State solution that many Israelis dread?

Fareed wanted to know if there is a Jordan option and was told flatly by the King that it will not work – Jordan absolutely does not want the West Bank. Are we talking of a viable entity? A third of the UN do not recognize Israel now.  The building of the wall has made Israel safer Fareed said and he spoke with President Peres who believes in a two States solution for the future of Israel but because of the security threats they think only of today and not the future.

The King disagreed – the injustice felt towards the Palestinian people pushes all other issues. He thinks that if you solved the problem of the Palestinians why should Iran then want the nuclear power. It does not make any sense for them to continue on that path. For now, it is the Palestinian issue that propels Iran’s efforts. When asked if he thinks that if not for the Israeli – Palestinian issue, there would be no Islamic terrorism? The King retreated by saying that – for evil to succeed – is for good men to do nothing. Evil will always exist – the evil always will be evil. On November 9, 2005 we had our own 9/11 and proportionately we lost twice as many people as the US casualties. The Israeli-Palestinian issue is is incendiary that it drives everything else.

Fareed suggested that Professor Bernard Lewis explained that it was rather because of the lack of openness in the Muslim world that created the Al Qaeda – it was against Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We have 400 million young people in the Islamic world that need a direction. My role is to create a viable political Middle Class. If you want to move your country it is education – education – education. Bahrain speaks our language – so is a list of young countries that agree.

————-

Christiane Amanpour had a panel on security issues and wanted to know what are the real security problems today. Surely it was not what you would have expected to hear. She was told:

- Outer Space

- The Open Sea

- The Cyber Space

- The Polar Ice Caps.

So far as the conventional thinking she was told that Washington and Beijing have less to fear from each other then from failed States like Somalia.

When satellites become more crucial they become targets. Where are the National borders in cyber-space? Most governments cannot even define a cyber attack.

Zbigniew Brzezinski said that we have to define the nature of the threat. Today it is not as lethal as it was when within 6 hours we could have had 80 million casualties in the cold war. But today attacks are less predictable even though less lethal.

The US still has a higher sophisticated technology capability. The Google issue is a cyberthreat. Are the hackers from China government? Do they really come from China? We may have to retaliatete selectively and we must have a foreign policy that does not object to this.

The way the domestic policy goes now, will Obama continue the international engagement that he started out with so well? Now we have gridlock.

Brzezinski called for Presidential leadership. Also – the President should persevere with the Iran effort.

The other topic is the Israeli -Palestinian conflict. Rhetorically Obama gets an A, For Performance a B or B-

On space – we must avoid a nuclear race in space – we must have the capacity to shoot down satellites and space vehicles.

———————

From the Kathie Crowley show – her interview with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, I picked up one fleting issue – the names of the countries the Secretary mentioned as friends to work with in the present world. She clearly mentioned the big two China and India, but then she spoke also of other major economies – Brazil, South Africa and Turkey. I mention this here because it vindicates our recent decision to move Turkey to the Home-page of www.SustainabiliTank.info and it seems that we were right.

Clearly, there were no Europeans mentioned in that segment, neither Mexico nor Canada or Japan.

from Uri Avnery
6.2.10

Peace – A Four-Letter Word .

MANY IMPORTANT struggles in Israel are calling out to people of conscience. Among others (in random order):
The struggle for preserving the environment and the future of the planet.

The struggle for democracy against fascist trends.

The struggle for human rights and civil rights.

The feminist struggle.

The struggle for the rights of gays and lesbians.

The struggle for social justice and social solidarity.

The struggle for equal rights for Israel’s Arab citizens.

The struggle against the discrimination of Oriental Jews.

The struggle for the separation of religion and state.

The struggle for animal rights.

Etc. etc. etc.

What do all these causes have in common?

All of them belong to the liberal, “progressive” world view.

Each and every one of them deserves full-hearted devotion, especially of young people.

But after all, all of them serve today as substitutes for the main battle – the struggle for peace with the Palestinian people.

THERE IS a danger that all these struggles will become something like “cities of refuge” for young idealists, who desire to devote themselves to a noble cause, but have no desire to take part in the main struggle.

Since every one of these struggles is indeed important and is for a good cause, no one can argue with these activists. Scores of organizations are now active in these fields, and thousands of wonderful people – male and female, old and young – are devoting themselves to these causes. I, too, would willingly join every one of them, were it not – - -

Were it not for the fact that all of them – all together and each of them separately – are now draining the life out of the struggle for peace. As I see it, peace stands above all other aims, not least because the success of all other struggles depends on the outcome of this fight.

The unending war creates a reality of occupation and oppression, of death and destruction, brutality and cruelty, moral degeneration and general bestiality. Can any ideal be realized in this situation? Can feminism, for example, achieve its aims in a country that is in the throes of an unbridled chauvinist militarism? Can animals be saved from torture when the torture of human beings is routine? Can rivers and forests, birds and leopards be saved when residential quarters are bombed and shelled with white phosphorus?

THE MAIN question is, of course, why people of conscience are running away from the vision of peace.
This is a fact: peace has become a four-letter word. (In Hebrew, the word for peace, shalom, indeed consists of four letters.) A decent person does not want to be seen in its company. It should not be uttered in polite society.
People do verbal exercises, almost acrobatics, to explore the range of circumlocutions for the word. Politicians speak about “the end of the conflict”, “permanent status”, “political settlement”, just to avoid the taboo term.

Why?

First of all, the word “peace” has been exploited so many times that it has almost become meaningless. It has been misused so often that it has been worn out. To paraphrase the classic sentence of the British philosopher, Dr. Samuel Johnson: “Peace is the last refuge of a scoundrel”. Or, to repeat the slogan of the evil empire in George Orwell’s 1984: “War is Peace”.

The hope for peace has been raised and dashed to pieces so many times that the hope itself now arouses suspicion and fear. What has happened to the greatest hope of all, the Oslo agreement and the historic handshake of 1993? What has happened to the triumphal journey of Ehud Barak to Camp David in 2000? One cannot demand from ordinary people that they find out what really happened there, and who is to blame. They see only the plain facts: we hoped for peace, we got war.
Things have come to the point where even peace movements are afraid to mention the word in their political statements. They, too, look for synonyms.
It is now generally accepted that one should not approach young people with talk about peace. God forbid. They are convinced that war is a permanent condition, that peace is an illusion, nothing but an empty phrase of old. They believe that they are condemned, they and their children and their children’s children (if they remain here), to go to war again and again, till the end of time. They do not want to waste their energies on this peace nonsense. Better to save the last leopards in the Judean desert or the eagles on the Golan Heights than to search for the doves of peace, which they have never seen.

Leftists are proud that the solution of “Two States for Two peoples”, once the vision of a handful of crazies, has now become a worldwide consensus. A huge victory, indeed. But it is trumped by the success of the right in turning “We Have No Partner For Peace” into a national credo.
In modern language: peace is Out, all the rest is In.

THIS WEEK the journalist Gideon Levy remarked on a TV talk show that in the present Knesset there is no longer a single Jewish member for whom peace is the No. 1 objective.

Some people mention in this context the new member of the Meretz faction, Nitzan Horowitz. For years he served as a TV foreign affairs commentator and infected the viewers with his enthusiasm for every struggle for peace and freedom throughout the world. His emotional style and his tendency to identify with the underdog have earned him the love of the audience.

But since entering parliament, his flame seems to have gone out. Now he is conducting a noisy fight against the price war among the book stores. So what about peace? What about the occupation? Silence, please.

That is true for his entire Meretz faction, which, in its heyday, served as the vanguard of the Zionist peace camp in the Knesset. Since then, things have changed for the worse. In order to regain some of their strength, they ignore the matter of peace as far as humanly possible. When there is no way out, they mention it perfunctorily, like a Jew kissing the Mezuzah or a Christian crossing himself – and hurry on.

It’s an interesting story. When Shulamit Aloni founded the party in 1973, on the eve of the Yom Kippur war, she was known mainly as a civil rights activist. She was especially engaged in the struggle for women’s rights and against religious coercion. Peace was a secondary aim on her agenda. But as the leader of Meretz, she gradually became convinced that none of her aims could be realized in an atmosphere of war, and peace became central to her views. When the party grew, it became the leading Zionist peace faction.

In recent years, the process has gone backwards, like a video film in reverse. Peace was pushed from the center of the Meretz agenda and has almost disappeared. Meretz has become again a party for civil rights, while going down from 12 Knesset seats to a mere three.

THE ISRAELI right, which is financed by right-wing American billionaires, both Jews and Christian evangelicals, this week launched an all-out attack against the liberal New Israel Fund, which donates generously to all the struggles mentioned above.

Honest disclosure: Gush Shalom has never received a cent from it. The fund has avoided peace movements like the plague. But that has not saved it. The rightists persecute it. Even if one deals “only” with human rights, one cannot escape this lot. The city of refuge offers no safety.

THE CAUSE of peace will inevitably return to center stage because it will decide our destiny – as individuals and as a state. There is no escape.
Of course, none of the struggles for the other causes should be given up, even though the fight for ending the occupation and achieving peace must head all others.

I am looking forward to the day when the organizations engaged in all these struggles will unite their wonderful activists, their enthusiasm, talents and courage, and especially their ability to devote themselves to an idea – into one single force fighting for the Other Israel, whose spearhead is the fight for peace. In one great, united movement, the various causes will complement and feed each other.

Together they will conduct the decisive campaign: the struggle for the Second Israeli Republic.

IDF Haiti Mission: After two weeks, Israel team winds down Haiti mission.

By Amos Harel, HAARETZ, January 26, 2010

The Israel Defense Forces team in Haiti is finishing up its mission and will return home on Thursday.

The decision was based on the recommendation of the Home Front Command, whose senior officers feel hey have fulfilled their role in helping the earthquake victims. In view of the large number of personnel and resources the command is deploying in Haiti and the U.S., it is believed the time has come to wrap up the mission.

Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, the head of the Home Front Command, returned to Israel last Friday after spending a few days with the Israelis in Haiti, commanded by Brig. Gen. (res.) Shalom Ben-Aryeh.

The command and the IDF Medical Corps are now preparing for the next stages of their mission: closing up shop and leaving behind a large part of the equipment brought there as a final goodwill gesture to the people of Haiti.

The winding up of the mission involves assisting the members of the team in returning to normal life back home after the complex experiences they they had, as well as drawing the necessary professional conclusions from the Haiti operation.

On the professional level, the IDF learned much about running a field hospital under such difficult conditions and operating rescue teams; and about dealing with a mass disaster that thankfully Israel has never experienced. The up close experience of dealing with an earthquake and its aftermath – a number of aftershocks occurred while the Israel mission was there – increased awareness of the enormous danger of such a natural event, but the upper echelons of the Home Front Command believe the situation in Israel is very different. While the earthquake in Haiti reached a magnitude of 7 on the Richter scale, it seems the incredible destruction resulted more from the poor-quality construction there. Two similar strength earthquakes in California in recent decades resulted in only a few dozen killed in each quake.

Members of the rescue team who toured the area were surprised to discover there are almost no buildings built with reinforced concrete in Haiti. “You wander through the ruins and see no iron bars. Everything is made out of simple concrete, which turns into a brittle material in an earthquake of this magnitude. Everything collapses,” said one member of the Israeli mission.

In Israel, by way of comparison, a far stricter building code was adopted in the mid-1970s, making buildings far less vulnerable to earthquakes.

The main conclusion of the Haiti mission from an Israeli perspective, said one senior officer, concerns the “awareness of the citizens and local authorities of the possibility of an earthquake. It is possible that more exercises are needed, but if you prepare properly for a missile attack on the home front, then you have 95% of the tools [needed] at your disposal for dealing with an earthquake,” said the officer.

An analysis of the decision making process on sending the team once again shows that time is the critical factor. Israel moved quickly, in terms of making its decision and making the necessary preparations.

This provided effective help at a very early stage. In the case of Haiti, the rescue operations among the ruins – even though they drew huge media coverage – were downplayed. “It is very exciting to pull out survivors, but it’s a drop in the bucket. We rescued or aided in the rescue of four people, while all the rescue teams from all the countries saved 132 people altogether. It seems almost 200,000 people died in the earthquake,” said the senior officer.

Israel’s main accomplishment was in the quick deployment of the field hospital in Haiti. “For five critical days, it was the best hospital in Port-au-Prince,” said the officer. “We provided timely medical care to about 1,000 people, we conducted 300 operations and delivered 16 babies. In the past few days the Americans arrived and then you can put things in proportion and become more modest in the face of their airlift and the scope of their aid. You need to understand that those who will continue to treat the main suffering there are the Americans,” he added.

For Israel, this is further proof of the importance of field hospitals; the IDF closed the last one five years ago and only reopened them as part of the lessons learned from the Second Lebanon War.

Next week the Home Front Command and the Medical Corps will hold a two-day seminar, with the help of psychologists, for those returning from Haiti to prepare them for returning to their routine.

The IDF has praised the cooperation with the Foreign Ministry and El Al during the mission to Haiti.

The good public relations is seen as being of only secondary importance: “Our people went to Haiti to save lives, to provide the best medical care they can and to represent Israel. That is the proper order of priorities. They did not think constantly about the blue and white flag flying overhead,” said the senior officer.

—————–
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dersh…

Alan Dershowitz – Lawyer and author
Posted: January 24, 2010

As most objective observers throughout the world marvel at Israel’s efficiency and generosity in leading the medical aid efforts in Haiti, some bigots insist on using these efforts as an occasion to continue their attack on the Jewish state. Both the neo-Nazi hard right and the neo-Stalinist hard left cannot help but to demonize Israel, regardless of what Israel does.

The neo-Nazi website ReportersNotebook.com features a blog entitled “The Zionization of Disaster Relief.” It accuses Israel of “exploiting the suffering of poor, defenseless Haitians on behalf of Israeli Triumphalism.” It complains that Israel is rendering medical aid to Haiti only to deflect attention from its crimes against the Palestinians.

The hard left, even in Israel, complains that Israel should not be sending medical assistance to such a faraway place. Instead it should be sending it to nearby Gaza.

Even the New York Times, in an otherwise thoughtful analysis of the controversiality of the aid among some Israelis, failed to note the difference between Israel sending its limited resources to faraway Haiti and to nearby Gaza. Haiti is not at war with Israel. Haiti has not pledged itself to Israel’s destruction. Haiti has not fired 8,000 rockets at Israeli civilians. Gaza, on the other hand, has a popularly elected government that has done and continues to do all of the above. Moreover, there is no comparison between the tens of thousands of Haitians who have died from a natural disaster, and the people of Gaza who suffer far less from what is, essentially, a self-inflicted wound.

Nor do the perennial enemies of Israel emphasize the comparison between tiny and resource-poor Israel, on the one hand, and the enormous and resource-rich Arab and Muslim nations, on the other hand. While Israel digs deeply into its treasury and manpower to send medical assistance a quarter of the way around the world, Arab and Muslim nations are generally missing in action when it comes to relief efforts. This is true not only in Haiti, which is a Catholic nation, but it was equally true when tsunamis and other natural disasters have devastated Muslim nations.

For those who argue that Israel is sending this aid to Haiti for its own selfish reasons, there are two answers. First the realpolitik answer: All nations have interests; and all act, at least in part, out of self interest. When the United States government is asked by Americans to justify its multibillion dollar foreign aid grants, it generally responds by arguing that these grants are serving the interests of the United States. When it comes to Israel, however, a double standard is always applied. Israel must act only out of altruistic motives, while all other countries are entitled to leaven altruism with self interest. The second answer is that Israel is doing far more in Haiti than would be required to satisfy its self interests. It is sending more aid per capita than any country in the world. It is doing it with extraordinary efficiency and real impact. Isn’t it at least possible that the millennia-long Jewish tradition of tzadakah — that is, charity based on justice — is at least part of the explanation for Israel’s generosity?

The fact that so many Israelis are advocating medical and other assistance to Gaza certainly supports this latter theory. Has any other country in the history of the world ever provided medical and other assistance to a people with whom it is at war — to people who continue to support rocket attacks and other forms of terrorism against its own civilians? Again, a double standard. The reality is that Israel will be extremely generous to the people of Gaza if and when they stop supporting attacks on Israeli civilians, stop making martyrs of their suicide murderers, and stop encouraging their children to don suicide vests. Contrast Gaza with the West Bank, which today has an improving economy, better travel conditions and among the best health care available in any Arab or Muslim country in the area. The peace dividend the Palestinian people will reap from making peace with Israel is incalculable.

So continue to criticize Israel when it fails to live up to generally applicable international standards, but praise it when it exceeds those standards in rendering aid that has saved and will continue to save many lives. Israel will continue to send disaster relief regardless of how the world reacts to it because Israelis understand how it feels to be subject to disasters. But fairness requires that Israel not be condemned for its humanitarian efforts, and that its rendering of aid to Haiti not be used as yet another occasion for applying a double standard to its actions.

Middle East Institute and
Foundation for Middle East Peace

invite you to a presentation and discussion with

Sammy Smooha
Professor, University of Haifa

Asa’ad Ghanem
Professor, University of Haifa

The Status and Fate of the
Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel

Wednesday January 27, 1:00 – 3:00pm
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1st floor
1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

Sammy Smooha and As’ad Ghanem, both professors at the University of Haifa, have been polling Israel’s Arab citizens for years, examining their opinions of their current status and future in Israel. Mr. Ghanem and Mr. Smooha’s views diverge but they agree that Israel is a deeply divided society and the status of the Palestinian-Arab minority is one of the gravest problems facing Israel. Mr. Ghanem and  Mr. Smooha will discuss the relationship between Israel’s Arabs and the Israeli state and the prospect for their future.

Sammy Smooha is a professor of sociology at the University of Haifa. Mr. Smooha specializes in ethnic relations in Israel and elsewhere and in the social dynamics of Israeli society.  He has published widely on the internal divisions and conflicts in Israeli society, especially on the relations between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, and between Arab and Jewish citizens. He has authored several books including, Israel: Pluralism and Conflict and Arabs and Jews in Israel.  He is currently a senior research fellow at the United States Institute of Peace; he is working on a comparative study of Israel’s treatment of its Arab minority to the treatment of minority populations in N. Ireland, Estonia, Slovakia and Macedonia.

As’ad Ghanem is a researcher and lecturer at the School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa.  Mr. Ghanem’s theoretical work has explored the legal, institutional and political conditions in ethnic states. He is an expert on Palestinian political orientations, the political structure of the Palestinian Authority, and majority-minority politics.  He has initiated and designed several policy schemes and empowerment programs for Palestinian-Arabs in Israel. He has authored and edited numerous articles and books including Palestinian Politics After Arafat: A failed National Movement, and the forthcoming Ethnic Politics in Israel – The Margins and the Ashkenazi Centre.

Sandwiches will be served

Please RSVP to:  info at fmep.org
1761 N Street NW, Washington, DC 20036

Multifaith green writers unite in Madaba, Jordan.

December 29, 2009 news.

Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians hosted a cross-border workshop on environment blogging to spur Middle East change in response to a call from the United Nations (UN).
Since most countries in the Middle East have much to improve in all areas of environmental protection, UNEP, or as the information says – the UN – has called for more reporting on the environment in the Middle East to spur awareness and change.

Funded by the San Francisco-based United Religions Initiative, 19 prominent journalists and bloggers in Arabic, Hebrew and English met to brainstorm new ways to report on and instigate environmental change in areas of activism, design, urban health, religion and clean technologies. The bloggers plan on reporting their encounter on GreenProphet.com.

Green Prophet founder Karin Kloosterman says, “The environment is a leveler connecting Muslims, Jews and Christians in this part of the world. By focusing on our shared challenges like global warming, water and pollution, we hope to encourage the crucial conversations and work in the field for a cleaner, more rewarding and sustainable Middle East.”

IDN reports, January 3, 2010 – This first World March for Peace and Nonviolence concluded Jan. 2 in the mountains on the border between Chile and Argentina traversing 400 cities in 90 countries, covering about two thousand kilometers during 93 days (?? the mathematics does not fit – the editor!).

An initiative of World Without Wars and Without Violence, an international organization of the global Humanist Movement, the march on planetary scale was launched on Nov. 15 last year, during the first symposium of the International Centre of Humanist Studies on ‘Ethics in Knowledge’ in the Park of Study and Reflection Punta de Vacas where the March started.

Hundreds of thousands of people have participated in the March, as have more than three thousand organizations and a group of almost 100 Marchers, forming different base teams that carried out four distinct routes: intercontinental, Middle East, the Balkans, and Southeast Africa, the International Press Agency Pressenza reported.

In their journey through these countries, the Marchers were received by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Nobel Peace Laureates, national presidents, parliamentarians, and hundreds of mayors.

But the reception had also been popular: two examples were the 80,000 youth who greeted the international base team in a concert in Chile and 12,000 school children in the Philippines who formed a giant peace sign, among many other massive events.

Reporting on the daily lives of the Marchers, the International Press Agency Pressenza said, the accommodations were at times comfortable but other times austere: the Marchers slept in Buddhist monasteries, makeshift homes, and even in a fallout shelter. There were threats of a tsunami, earthquakes, and typhoons, and they marched in temperatures ranging from 40 degrees centigrade to below zero.

During the tour, they encountered people made homeless by typhoons in the Philippines, Hibakushas, or survivors of the Hiroshima bomb, and millions of families torn apart by wars in Korea and Palestine.

They visited memorials to the millions who died in wars in Europe and Asia, places where torture is still being carried out, and witnessed the border conflicts between India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, within the Balkans, and in Tijuana, at the border between the United States and Mexico.

The planetary Marchers saw children working in Asia, Africa and America, and battered women worldwide.

“On the journey, everything has happened to us, including moments of great meaning, where the demands of the past converged with the aspirations of the future. Moments of a connection with the people that allowed us to communicate with them, surpassing languages, cultures, races and beliefs,” said Rafael de la Rubia, the convener of the March and coordinator of the international association World Without Wars and Without Violence.

MEMORABLE

Gemma Suzara of the Philippines relayed her experience with the March: “I will remember it for the rest of my life …the giant peace sign created by thousands of school children makes me think that if we really work together as one body and we believe in ourselves, we can surpass any limit.”

Bhairavi Sagar, from India, who travelled with the team through Europe, Africa and the Americas, explained in her testimony in Punta de Vacas: “Being born in the country of the Father of Nonviolence, Mahatma Gandhi, a man, who dedicated his life so that our country achieved freedom and because of whom I am standing here today as a free unchained human being. Now, it is my turn to give now to the future generations — to put in my bit to leave a world worth living for them in dignity and happiness.”

Tony Robinson from  Britain who accompanied the March through 30 countries said: “In Japan we met the Hibakushas, the survivors of the atomic bomb. One of them said to us: ‘Thank you, thank you. This is so important!’ I was translating her words while I was trying not to break into tears because of the strong empathy I felt with the terrible suffering that this woman had lived through and with the feeling of not being worthy of her gratitude.”

Giorgio Schultze, European spokesperson of the World March and member of the Middle East and the Balkans teams, said: “We crossed the wall that divides Israel from Palestine and now more than 200 social leaders, veterans of Al Fatah, are asking us to help them build a nonviolent army that might communicate and open the doors towards reconciliation and start a new history of peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Jews.” (Because of this comment we decided to post the article – mathematics aside, mistake in name aside, the mentioning of the UNSG aside, if this march has moved one single member of the Fatah to embrace non-violance in his effort to win peace, we say – GO FOR IT! - the editor)

The event finished with the words of Tomas Hirsch, Latin-American spokesperson of the World March, who mainly spoke about the future of the Humanist Movement, the organization that propelled the World March.

Chile’s President Michelle Bachele ( that is Bachelet! – the editor )was the first among Heads of State who joined the World March for Peace and Non-Violence, offering encouragement with her television message from the very start of this initiative.

She sent her greeting from the balcony of the Palacio de La Moneda, along with Rafael de la Rubia, international coordinator of the World March, Tomás Hirsch, Latin American spokesperson for New Humanism, and Gloria Morrison, president of the organisation World without Wars, the main driving force of the initiative in the country.

The greeting was welcomed with jubilation by activists who were filling the Plaza de la Constitución from four different places in the capital where the columns of the Carnival for Peace set out in the early hours of the morning of Dec. 30 and spread out through Santiago to welcome this March.

Commenting the conclusion of the March, Juanjo Coscarelli, from Mendoza, a member of the commission of the Park Punta de Vacas, said: “This is an inspiring moment that came to its maximum potential, this is the first World March in the history of humanity and it is a part of the construction of the Universal Human Nation, for this reason I feel very happy and emotional”.

Abraham Lincoln, a youth who traveled to Mendoza from Ghana, commented “The World March is producing a fantastic connection between all the people who lent their support to the project.”

————–

(IDN-InDepthNews/03.01.10) – *This report is based on coverage of the World Peace March by PRESSENZA, an international press agency specializing in news about Peace and Nonviolence.

The original posting of November 28th, 2009:

Now this is a bombshell we got from a very unusual source!

Was that just a story to pep up the spirits of Palestinians that feel they are victims of plain depression?

“Guess which of President Obama’s uninvited gala guests is a big wig on the board of the American Task Force on Palestine – the Palestinian lobby? None other than the male half of the social climbing phonies who crashed the White House state dinner the other night: Tareq Salahi.

His Bio was on the ATSFP list of board members – but in the past day or so, it’s suddenly been almost impossible to find it. {Anyway – we found it and it was on ATFP}}

I did the other day – but to my knowledge, not one newspaper – including The New York Times – or TV station has ever mentioned it. Here’s a website where you can find it,”  writes Richard Z. Chesnoff.

 http://blogger.huffingtonpost.com/mt.cgi…

Interesting, no?

This comes from a very solid source – The Huffington Post !!
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-z-…

That is in:

OBAMA’S UNINVITED GUEST TAREQ SALAHI AND THE PALESTINIAN LOBBY?

{Read More: Obama White House, Tareq And Michaele Salahi, Tareq Salahi, Terrorism, War On Terror, White House, Politics News. – all links on the Huffington Post.}

By: Richard Z. Chesnoff, Veteran of more than 40 years of global news work
Posted: November 28, 2009 01:55 PM

———————-

further – the following information are excerpts from:
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

The Salahis staged a self-described “wedding of the century,” on Oct. 5, 2002, at the Cathedral of St. Matthew The Apostle in downtown Washington.

Tareq Salahi’s stake to local fame and wealth stems from the family winery, Oasis, in Fauquier County. It is one of Virginia’s oldest, founded in 1977 by Dirgham and Corinne Salahi. It was known for its sparkling blended wines, and it hosted large social events and provided an attractive tourist destination.

But it had fallen into debt in recent years. It became the subject of ugly local complaints about the disruption that the winery’s events caused on narrow back roads. And it devolved into a bitter family squabble pitting parents against son.

The family put it up for sale in 2007, and a year ago it was still on the market for $4.7 million. In February 2009, according to court records, the winery filed for bankruptcy. In a civil suit in Fauquier County Circuit Court last year, Dirgham and Corinne Salahi alleged that Tareq had interfered with the winery’s sale.

The bankruptcy papers for “Oasis Enterprises” describe the repossession last year of a 2004 Aston Martin valued at $150,000, and a Carver 350 Mariner boat valued at $90,000. The document lists $334,000 in assets and $965,000 in liabilities.

The couple’s latest listed address is in Mosby’s Overlook Estates in Front Royal. Travis Frantz, a neighbor and the president of the 28-property homeowners association, said he recently tried to put a lien on the Salahi home because they hadn’t paid dues since the first year they moved in. A settlement was reached in mediation, he said, adding that Tareq has not yet paid that amount.

The couple were not at home late this Friday. The two-story house, assessed at nearly $700,000, sits on a gravel road, near the top of a mountain overlooking Interstate 66. Parked in the driveway was a white stretch limo, with a vanity tag reading “VAWINE3.” Small stickers on both passenger doors advertise “America’s Polo Cup.”

Last year Michaele, now 44, told a Post reporter that she had been a Washington Redskins cheerleader, and she has been photographed at several alumni events. But the cheerleaders’ director of marketing, Melanie Coburn, wrote in an e-mail: “We have no record of her being a member of the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders.” Nor could the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders Alumni Association find any record of her, said Terri Crane-Lamb, president of the association.

One former cheerleader, Konnie McKee, said Michaele came to alumni events, but no one remembered her being on the squad. McKee and Crane-Lamb noticed Michaele attending WRCAA events. “I remember Terri and I talking: ‘What’s the deal? Does anyone remember her?’ “

Tareq Salahi launched America’s Polo Cup in 2007. He and the event were sued for more than $300,000 by Market Salamander, a high-profile catering operation in Middleburg in 2008, alleging nonpayment of services for a Polo Cup event that was widely panned. (The Salahis countersued.)

This spring, the organization hosted a United States-Italy polo match, with performances by Huey Lewis and the News and fireworks to benefit the Journey for the Cure Foundation, a Salahi-run charity that said it raised money for childhood diseases.
But the next week, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services sent out an official caution noting that the foundation had, as of three days after the event, “not registered with or been granted the appropriate exempt status by the Commissioner as required by law.” The organization’s Web site now lists a federal tax ID number.

——————-

The update is:

The couple was invited to testify before Congress today, December 3, 2009,  about how they gained admittance to a White House state dinner last week, but declined.

Our wonder is that in spite of all one can find on internet,  how nothing about the connection to a charity ball of the ATFP came to public attention as yet, a membership on a board at a politically active organization that does all sort of things to further Palestinian interests – different ways at different times. Now it seems that ATFP is actually working in hand with Jewish groups that want a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma. Whatever the truth behind the Salahi involvement, and the politics of this, even if the intrusion into the White House was all for show, but in light of precedents, and possibly justified hysteria, these connections better be studied by the Secret Service because we know that it could have ended differently.

At the request of “Yes We Can: Middle East Peace” we are pleased to forward the following announcement of a program YesMEP is sponsoring Sunday, December 6. – FMEP

“YES WE CAN: MIDDLE EAST PEACE”
invites you to an afternoon of

SAN FRANCISCO SPANISH CONSULATE PROTEST SLATED DECEMBER 2 – EXCLUSION OF ISRAELI STUDENTS FROM A SOLAR ENERGY COMPETITION.
30 November 2009

The U.S. Department of Energy created the first Solar Decathlon in 2002, and agreed in 2007 to have Spain host the competition in alternating years, and is co-sponsoring the 2010 event.

Spain is hosting the 2010 Solar Decathalon, a world solar energy research competition and has now announced that it is excluding students from Ariel University, one of 20 finalist teams.

Spain has capitulated to demands from those groups promoting BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel and will not allow the team from Ariel to participate.

The San Francisco Chronicle writes to us:

Join StandWithUs/San Francisco Voice for Israel will protest Spain’s exclusion of Israeli students from solar energy competition outside the Consulate of Spain December 2, 2009.

The 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. demonstration will be held at the Consulate General of Spain, 1405 Sutter Street at Franklin, San Francisco.

We will be part of a nationwide series of protests that will also be taking place at Spanish consulates in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Please see standwithus.com for further details and to sign the petition to the government of Spain as well as the US government which should now withdraw its sponsorship of this event.

Troubling Portrait of Suspect Emerges.
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE ,  AP

WASHINGTON (Nov. 5) - His name appears on radical Internet postings. A fellow officer says he fought his deployment to Iraq and argued with soldiers who supported U.S. wars. He required counseling as a medical student because of problems with patients.
There are many unknowns about Nidal Malik Hasan, the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base. Most of all, his motive. But details of his life and mindset, emerging from official sources and personal acquaintances, are troubling.
For six years before reporting for duty at Fort Hood, Texas, in July, the 39-year-old Army major worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center pursuing his career in psychiatry, as an intern, a resident and, last year, a fellow in disaster and preventive psychiatry. He received his medical degree from the military’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001.
While an intern at Walter Reed, Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.
Grieger said privacy laws prevented him from going into details but noted that the problems had to do with Hasan’s interactions with patients. He recalled Hasan as a “mostly very quiet” person who never spoke ill of the military or his country.
“He swore an oath of loyalty to the military,” Grieger said. “I didn’t hear anything contrary to those oaths.”
But, more recently, federal agents grew suspicious.
At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.
They had not determined for certain whether Hasan is the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, said law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the case.
One of the officials said late Thursday that federal search warrants were being drawn up to authorize the seizure of Hasan’s computer.
Retired Army Col. Terry Lee, who said he worked with Hasan, told Fox News that Hasan had hoped President Barack Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Lee said Hasan got into frequent arguments with others in the military who supported the wars, and had tried hard to prevent his pending deployment.
Hasan attended prayers regularly when he lived outside Washington, often in his Army uniform, said Faizul Khan, a former imam at a mosque Hasan attended in Silver Spring, Md. He said Hasan was a lifelong Muslim.
“I got the impression that he was a committed soldier,” Khan said. He spoke often with Hasan about Hasan’s desire for a wife.
On a form filled out by those seeking spouses through a program at the mosque, Hasan listed his birthplace as Arlington, Va., but his nationality as Palestinian, Khan said.
“I don’t know why he listed Palestinian,” Khan said, “He was not born in Palestine.”
Nothing stood out about Hasan as radical or extremist, Khan said.
“We hardly ever got to discussing politics,” Khan said. “Mostly we were discussing religious matters, nothing too controversial, nothing like an extremist.”
Hasan earned his rank of major in April 2008, according to a July 2008 Army Times article.
He served eight years as an enlisted soldier. He also served in the ROTC as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg. He received a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry there in 1997.
Associated Press writers Lara Jakes, Pam Hess, Lolita C. Baldor and Brett Zongker in Washington and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

—————-
Press Release from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee:
ADC Appalled by Attack on Fort Hood, Community Urged to Take Safety Precautions.

Washington, DC | November 5, 2009 | www.adc.org | The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is appalled by the attack that took place earlier today against soldiers and others at Fort Hood, Texas. Preliminary news reports have indicated that a rogue Army Major Malik Hasan and two others shot and killed at least 12 people and injured numerous others.

ADC President Mary Rose Oakar said, “This attack is absolutely deplorable. ADC has been consistent and on record in condemning any attacks aimed at innocents, no matter who the victims or the perpetrators may be.  Such violence is morally reprehensible and has nothing to do with any religion, race, ethnicity, or national origin.  ADC urges the FBI and law enforcement agencies to make every effort to see that justice is served.” Oakar continued, “ADC also calls upon law enforcement agencies to provide immediate protection for all Mosques, community centers, schools, and any locations that may be identified or misidentified with being Arab, Muslim, South Asian or Sikh as a clear backlash has already started.  The actions of a few should not invite a backlash on innocent members of any community and we urge law enforcement and others to keep that in mind.

Additionally, due to these tragic developments, ADC is releasing the following advisory statement to members of the Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh American communities. ADC feels it prudent to issue this advisory statement due to the potential of a backlash against these communities and given the historically documented acts of hate-motivated violence including vandalism against these communities.

ADC would like to emphasize that it is issuing this advisory based on experiences in the community in recent years, and purely as a precautionary measure. ADC presents these suggestions for the consideration of the Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh American communities, to be evaluated by each family and individual according to their own best judgment and in the context of their own situation and relationship with their local community. ADC urges everyone to exercise common sense and rely on their own best judgment, but offers the following as suggestions should the need arise:

1) IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS PLACED IN PHYSICAL DANGER BECAUSE OF YOUR ETHNICITY, RELIGION, OR NATIONAL ORIGIN:

Call the police (dial 911 in most communities)

Contact the local FBI office, It is the FBI’s job to investigate hate-motivated crimes and specific threats of violence. A list of FBI field offices is included on our website, please see: http://adc.org/fbi_field_office.htm

If the threat is imminent, go to a safe location such as a police station or church.

If you feel threatened in your home or community, move to a friend’s house, or a hotel for as long as necessary.

Contact ADC to file a complaint by emailing the ADC Legal Department at<  legal at adc.org > or by calling (202) 244-2990.

2) IF YOUR PLACE OF WORK, PLACE OF WORSHIP, OR SCHOOL IS IDENTIFIED OR CAN BE MISIDENTIFIED WITH ARABS AND/OR MUSLIMS:

Make sure the location has an open line of communication with law enforcement.

Make sure you know all the exits to your building.

Make sure the location has a current emergency plan that is defined and can be implemented should the need arise.

3) IF YOUR CHILD CAN BE IDENTIFIED AS ARAB OR MUSLIM, OR MAY BE CONFUSED FOR BEING OF MIDDLE-EASTERN ORIGIN:

Make sure you discuss the events with your children and that they feel comfortable speaking with an adult if they face harassment by others.

Make sure your children know what steps to take to avoid confrontation with other students.

Work with your children’s school to implement an anti-discriminatory policy.

Click on the following link for a list of the FBI Field Offices across the country: http://adc.org/fbi_field_office.htm

ADC would like to emphasize that it is issuing this advisory based on experiences in the community in recent years, and purely as a precautionary measure. ADC presents these suggestions for the consideration of the Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh American communities, to be evaluated by each family and individual according to their own best judgment and in the context of their own situation and relationship with their local community.
NOTE TO EDITORS: The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which is non sectarian and non partisan, is the largest Arab-American civil rights organization in the United States. It was founded in 1980, by former Senator James Abourezk to protect the civil rights of people of Arab descent in the United States and to promote the cultural heritage of the Arabs. ADC has 38 chapters nationwide, including chapters in every major city in the country, and members in all 50 states.

The ADC Research Institute (ADC-RI), which was founded in 1981, is a Section 501(c)(3) educational organization that sponsors a wide range of programs on behalf of Arab Americans and of importance to all Americans. ADC-RI programs include research studies, seminars, conferences and publications that document and analyze the discrimination faced by Arab Americans in the workplace, schools, media, and governmental agencies and institutions. ADC-RI also celebrates the rich cultural heritage of the Arabs.

I consider it a great honor, whenever in Israel,  to dine on Friday night at that wandering table. In effect for years, whenever I am visiting Tel Aviv, I insist on traveling to Israel on Thursdays, so I start gathering inputs on Friday from the Lords of that table.

That table is not round – but is made up by a set of tables arranged so that there is a hole in the middle. It has four sides and participants are given assigned seats. At the narrower side sits the Chairman – or discussion leader – Amikam Gurevitch whose 80th birthday we celebrated a month ago.

On his right side, at the longer stretch, sit Uri Avnery and his wife Rachel, and on Amikam’s left side longer stretch, in the middle, sits David Shaham who is usually called to speak first and recount the news of the week and his interpretation. He has a perfect memory and nothing escapes his criticism. I mention only those three because of their steady roles. I will add only that whenever Professor Ada Yonath is in Israel, she sits on the long left side close to Amikam’s narrow side. Whenever I happen to be in Israel I get to sit at the narrow side opposite Amikam. Nine days ago, I was in Israel with my wife, and introduced her too to the table. Ada Yonath was not in town, but my wife already met her at Columbia University in New York, at a black tie event, when Ada got a scientific prize there a couple of years ago. Uri Avnery’s 80th birthday we celebrated several years ago, and we wrote much more about him previously. All that can be found on our website.

Only addition – again something I just discovered last week, when visiting the Kreisky Foundation in Vienna – The Bruno Kreisky Forum For International Dialogue . I saw there Uri Avnery’s photo hanging on the wall and later got a copy of the 1994 KREISKY LECTURE that was given by Uri Avnery in the presence of the  then Austrian Federal Kanzler Franz Vranitzky which I am looking forward to get autographed. The topic was very appropriate – “PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST.”

Back in 1978, right there in the house where the Foundation is now, at that time the private home of Kanzler Bruno Kreisky, Kreisky said to Avnery – “I have smoothed the way for Anwar El Sadat to Europe; that led to Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem. I would like now, as last task for the Middle East, to do the same for Yassir Arafat – to make him ‘Salon-Acceptable’ in Europe in order to make it to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Do you know a wise Palestinian with whom one could discuss this?” (above is my translation from German)

Uri gave him the name of Issam Sartawi and arranged for the meeting that started the Arafat peace track. Eventually Sartawi was killed, but in the opening to Avnery’s lecture in 1994, Kanzler Vranitzky points at Bruno Kreisky friends Karl Kahane and Issam Sartawi, that made Kreisky’s involvement possible, as well as comments about later Shimon Peres, Boutros Boutros Ghali, and Jimmy Carter involvements. Seemingly the only non-complimentary  comment was about the Egyptian UN Secretary-General.

In so far as Uri Avnery himself, I strongly believe he himself is made of Nobel Peace Prize material. Further, as Professor Ada Yonath will be entitled to a certain number of guests she invites to the Stockholm December award-giving event, I hope that Uri Avnery will be one of her guests, and that Avnery will have the opportunity to meet President Obama and start a new Middle East dialogue in case this was not done already.

That is as far as I am ready to digress in this posting.

Now to the events of the last two days  October 8-9, 2009, as recounted by Uri Avnery:

————

Uri Avnery

10.10.09

                                                The Other Israel

YESTERDAY, OUR table celebrated with Ada Yonath.

This “table” just had its 50^th anniversary. It started by accident in “California”, the Café established at the time by Abie Nathan, who later became famous as the Peace Pilot. Afterwards, we met for many years at the legendary Artists’ Café Cassith. Since that place was closed down – like many other Tel Aviv landmarks – the table wandered to several other places and became known as the “Cassith exiles’ table”. The “House of Lords” one newspaper nicknamed it..

 The habitués of the table come from very different walks of life. There is a former director of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, several senior journalists, a linguist and Bible expert, a film producer, a professor of medicine, a psychiatrist, a town planner, an industrialist, a translator of literature, a radio program producer. And a scientist.

 The table is not political. But all its habitués tend, as it so happens, to lean towards the left.

 For years, Ada Yonath has been our candidate for the Nobel Prize. Nine years ago, she invited us to look at her historic discovery. As far as chemistry – or any other science, for that matter – is concerned, I am a total idiot. So I did not really understand what it is all about: the structure and function of the ribosome, one of the building blocks of life. Not by accident was this discovery made in Israel – Ada had a stroke of genius when she chose for her experiments a microbe found in the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, unique in the world.

 Throughout the years she has entertained us with amusing stories about the frequent scientific conferences she has attended all over the world, and also about the hair-raising intrigues at the very top of the scientific world. Some very senior scientists tried to expropriate her discovery for themselves. I learned that Ada’s discoveries are immensely significant, far more than many that have been crowned with the prize throughout the years. They concern the fundamentals of life and its creation and are as momentous as the unraveling of the human genome. They may open the door to completely new ways of healing diseases.

 I RECOUNT all this not only in order to boast about the fact that Ada “belongs to us”, and not only in order to take part in Ada’s joy, but in order to point to a fact that is often forgotten in the debates about our wars and the occupation: that there is another Israel.

 This year there were three Israelis among the acknowledged contenders for the Nobel Prizes who made it to the finals: besides Ada Yonath there were also the physicist Yakir Aharonov and the writer Amos Oz.

 For a small country like Israel, that is an impressive feat

Ada Yonath is as Israeli as can be: a Sabra (native of the country), born in Jerusalem, who received all her education in Israeli schools. Her character traits are those considered typical for Israelis: a direct approach, simple manners, a hatred of formality, a readiness to laugh at oneself. There is not an ounce of arrogance or vanity, but an incredible power of persistence.

 A stranger who follows the daily news about Israel could not even guess at the existence of this Israel, the Israel Ada belongs to. This week, too, the news was dominated by the occupation, the brutality, the coarseness of the official Israel.

 The news about Ada’s prize was like an oasis in the desert. Almost all the other news on TV and radio and in the newspapers dealt with blood and riots. The battle for the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif), the clashes between the police and protesters in the Arab quarters of Jerusalem, side by side with ordinary criminal news about murders, drunken youngsters stabbing each other to death, an old man killing his sleeping wife with a hammer, a group of boys robbing and raping a middle-aged women in broad daylight.

 And over everything there still hovers the Goldstone report about crimes committed during the Gaza War, which the Israeli government almost succeeded in squashing, with the generous assistance of Mahmoud Abbas.

THE SUBJECT dominating this week’s news was Jerusalem.

 Everything happened “suddenly”. Suddenly the flames broke out on the Temple Mount, after the month of Ramadan had passed relatively quietly. Suddenly the Islamic Movement in Israel called upon the Arab citizens to rush and save the al-Aqsa mosque. Suddenly, senior Islamic preachers all over the Muslim world urged the one and a half billion Muslims to rise to the defense of the holy shrines. (Nothing happened.)

 The police chief in Jerusalem has a ready explanation:  the Muslims are “ungrateful”. To wit: we have “allowed them” to pray safely all through Ramadan, and that is how they repay us. This colonial arrogance infuriated the Arabs even more.

 According to the Israeli authorities, nothing has happened that could justify this “sudden” upheaval. Meaning: it is an Arab provocation, a vile effort to create a conflict out of nothing.

 But in Arab – and not only Arab – eyes it looks very different. For years now, the Arab community in Jerusalem has been under siege. Since Binyamin Netanyahu became Prime Minister, and since Nir Barkat became mayor of Jerusalem, the sense of siege increased many fold. Both men belong to the radical Right, and both are leading towards ethnic cleansing.

 This finds its foremost expression in the systematic building of Jewish neighborhoods in the heart of the Arab quarters in the annexed Eastern part of the city, which is supposed to become the capital of the Palestinian state and whose final status is still to be decided by negotiation. The execution is entrusted to a group of extreme Rightists called Ateret Cohanim (“the crown of priests”), financed by the American Bingo king Irwin Moskowitz. After winning a resounding victory in shaving Jebel Abu-Ghneim (“Har Homa”) and building a fortress-like settlement there, they are now establishing Jewish neighborhoods in the heart of Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Ras al-Amud and Abu Dis, not to mention the Muslim Quarter of the Old City itself. At the same time, they are trying to fill up the E1 area between Jerusalem and the giant settlement Ma’aleh Adumim.

 Seemingly, these are all sporadic actions, initiated by respect-hungry billionaires and power-drunk settlers. But that is an illusion: behind all this feverish activity there lurks a government plan with a well defined strategic goal. It is enough to look at a map in order to understand its purpose: to encircle the Arab quarters and cut them off from the West Bank. And beyond: to enlarge Jerusalem to the East up to the approaches of Jericho, thus cutting the West Bank into two, with the Northern part (Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm) cut off from the Southern part (Hebron, Bethlehem).

 And, of course: to make the life of the Arab inhabitants of Jerusalem impossible, until they “voluntarily” leave the “United City, Israel’s Capital in all Eternity”.

 IN THIS strategy, a central role is played by the thing called “archeology”.

 For a hundred years, Jewish archeology has sought, in vain, to prove the existence of David’s kingdom, in order to establish once and for all our historic right to the city. Not a shred of evidence has been found to prove that King David ever existed, not to mention his huge empire stretching from Egypt to Hamath in Syria. There is no evidence for the Exodus from Egypt, the Conquest of Canaan, David and his son Solomon. On the contrary, there is no little evidence, especially in ancient Egyptian records, that seem to show that all this never happened.

 For this desperate search, archeological diggings took off the strata pertaining to the last 2000 years in the country’s life – the periods of the Byzantine empire, the Islamic conquest, the Mamelukes and the Ottomans. The search has a manifest political purpose, and most Israeli archeologists consider themselves soldiers in the service of the national struggle.

 The scandal that is taking place now at the foot of al-Aqsa is a part of this story. Something unprecedented is happening there: the digging in “David’s Town” (clearly a propaganda appellation) has been turned over to the same ultra-nationalist religious association, Ateret Cohanim, that is building the provocative Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem and around it. The Israeli government, quite officially, has entrusted this scientific task to a political group. Not just any political group, but an ultra-radical one. The digging itself is being conducted by archeologists who accept their authority.

 Israeli archeologists who care for the integrity of their profession (there still are some) protested this week that the digging is proceeding in a thoroughly unprofessional way: the work is done in an unscientific hurry, artifacts found are not examined properly and systematically, the sole aim is to uncover evidence as quickly as possible to support the Jewish claim to the Temple Mount.

 Many Arabs believe that the aim is even more sinister: to dig under the al-Aqsa mosque in order to bring about its collapse. These fears were reinforced by the disclosure in Haaretz this week, that the digging is undermining Arab houses and threatens to bring them down.

 Israeli spokesmen are upset. What vile slanders! Who can even imagine such things?! But it is no secret that in the eyes of many nationalist-religious fanatics, the very existence of the two mosques there – al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock – is an abomination. Years ago, members of a Jewish underground organization planned to blow up the Dome of the Rock, but were caught in time and sent to prison. Recently, a religious website wrote: ”Today there stands there an evil thing, a great witch that must be taken off. The Temple will stand in place of this pustule topped with yellow pus, and everybody knows what to do about a pustule, one has to empty it of the pus. That is our aim, and with God’s help we shall do it.” Already, sheep are being raised for sacrificial purposes in the Temple.

 One can ridicule these outpourings and assert, as always, that they come from the lunatic fringe. That is what they said about the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. But for Arabs, who see with their own eyes the daily effort to “Judaize” the Eastern city and to push them out, this is no joke. Their fear is genuine.

 Since the millions of inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have no access to the Temple Mount  – contrary to all the talk about “religious freedom” – the Islamic Movement in Israel proper has assumed the role of guardian of the two shrines. This week, the call went up to outlaw the movement and to put its leader, Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, in prison.

 Sheikh Ra’ed is a charismatic leader. I met him 16 years ago, when we both lived for 45 days and nights in a protest tent opposite the prime minister’s office, after Rabin had deported 415 Islamic activists to the Lebanese border. The sheikh was, at the time, a friendly person, pleasant to be with, full of humor, who treated Rachel, too, with utmost friendliness (but without taking her hand, much like our own Orthodox rabbis). I learned from him a lot about Islam, and answered as well as I could his questions about Judaism. Nowadays he is much more tough and uncompromising.

 THERE IS something symbolic about the proximity in time of the awarding of the Nobel Prize and the Temple Mount happenings. The two events represent the two options facing Israel.

 We have to decide what we are: the Israel of Ada Yonath or the Israel of Ateret Cohanim. An Israel that cherishes its culture, science, high-tech, literature, medicine and agriculture, which marches in the first row of progressive human society towards a better future, or an Israel of wars, occupation and settlements, a fundamentalist state that looks to the past.

 Contrary to the prophets of doom, I believe that this battle is not yet decided. Israel is far from being the monolithic body that appears in the caricatures. It is a varied, multifaceted society with many possibilities, one of which leads to war and the other towards peace and reconciliation.

 The winner of the Nobel peace prize, Barack Obama, can have a lot of influence on the choice. After all, wasn’t the prize awarded to him as a down payment for deeds to come?

The Israeli Analyst Explains To Israelis Ready To Listen The Binyamin Netanyahu – Barack Obama – Mahmoud Abbas Triangle of would be Gladiators in The World Arena, each one of whom have to worry of fighting dogs nipping at their heels.
Obama seems to come out as the most decent among the three, and Avnery explains that ISRAELIS THAT WERE BORN WITH A SYSTEM OF PUBLIC HEALTH CARE ARE INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING WHAT THE DOGS NIPPING AT OBAMA’S HEELS ARE DOING – but then Netanyahu takes advantage of their action in his own effort to wiggle among the members of the coalition government that he has established himself, while Abbas is the weakest of them all being indeed at the mercy of everyone else that left him a very narrow area to defend. We would like to add that we hope the gladiators will be kept busy by what they are doing in the arena and will not at the same time help train dogs nipping on the other fighting partner’s heels – as we saw some evidence that others in the three different lands do indeed participate in such long distance training efforts – as we pointed out in several past postings.
————–

Uri Avnery

12.9.09

Wobbly Stools

EVEN THE Romans never saw a game like this in their arena: three gladiators fighting against each other, while at the same time each of them has to defend himself against attackers from behind.

All three of them – Barack Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas – are fighting for their political life. The three battles are quite different from each other, yet interconnected.

OBAMA IS in big trouble. Big? Huge! The most important struggle concerns health insurance.

This has no connection with Israel. Moreover, for an Israeli it is difficult even to understand it.

For us it is hard – indeed impossible – to grasp how a modern, progressive country can function without health insurance for all. Our health system came into being long before the foundation of the State of Israel. Sick funds covered practically the whole Jewish population in Palestine. After the foundation of Israel, this became law for all citizens. Every Israeli is insured by one of four officially recognized sick funds. All of these are financed to a large extent by the government, which also decides what services they are obliged to provide.

In a progressive society, a person has a right to basic medical care, including hospital care, operations and medicines. So it seems very odd that in the richest nation in the world there are tens of millions of people who lack this essential protection. Especially in a country where medical expenditure – as a percentage of the gross national product – is far higher then in ours.

Along comes Obama and proposes a plan that offers these people an option of governmental medical insurance. What could be more natural? But in the US, powerful forces are out to prevent it, on behalf of Free Enterprise, the Market, the Right to Privacy and such high-sounding pretexts. They portray Obama as a Second Hitler or a Second Stalin, if not both, and his popularity is sinking dramatically.

Odd? Mad? Perhaps. But we have to take it seriously. It concerns us directly.

BECAUSE OBAMA is a central actor in our own play.

When he came to power, he understood that he must change the situation in the extended Middle East. Most Muslims in the world, including most Arabs, hate the United States. Even an imperial power cannot function effectively in an atmosphere of general hatred. The main reason for the hatred is the unlimited US support for the government of Israel, which oppresses the Palestinians.

For eight years, President Bill Clinton acted as an agent of the Jewish lobby for Israel. After that, for another eight years, President George W. Bush acted as an agent of the Christian fundamentalist lobby for Israel. President Obama understands that basic US interests demand an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is poisoning the entire region.

The war in Afghanistan makes it even worse. Obama got stuck in this quagmire by mistake: in the heat of the election campaign he announced that he would withdraw from Iraq. But in order not to be accused of defeatism, he added that he would intensify the American intervention in Afghanistan.

That was a rash promise. Afghanistan is far worse than even Iraq. It is a different war, in a different environment, against a different enemy. The US has no chance of “winning” this war, which has no clear aim and no clear enemy, against a population that since antiquity has been honing its expertise in expelling foreign invaders.

It is easy to walk into a swamp, difficult to get out of it. Obama has no exit strategy from Afghanistan. That, too, will endanger his popularity in the near future.

THIS IS the situation in which he enters the struggle with Binyamin Netanyahu.

There no question anymore that the only recipe for healing the Israeli-Palestinian wound is the termination of the occupation and the establishment of peace between the State of Israel and the new State of Palestine beside it. This demands meaningful and intense negotiations, within a fixed time span. That is impossible if at the same time settlements continue to expand. As the Palestinian lawyer Michael Tarasi aptly put it: “We are negotiating about the division of a pizza and in the meantime Israel is eating the pizza.”

That’s why Obama has presented the Israeli government with an unequivocal demand: an immediate stop to all building in the settlements, including East Jerusalem. A clear and logical demand. But while pressuring Netanyahu, he himself is exposed to heavy pressure at home over the health insurance system and the Afghan war.

NETANYAHU’S SITUATION is no less complex.

His government is based on a coalition of five different parties. The settlers and their supporters constitute a majority. The “leftist” in this coalition, Ehud Barak, has been responsible for setting up more settlements than Netanyahu himself ever has.

Netanyahu is dancing on a thin tightrope at the Israeli fair, high above the heads of the audience, without a safety net. He must avoid a head on clash with Obama, while satisfying the nationalists in his own party and his coalition.

How to do this? One has to convince Obama to allow a small amount of building in the settlements, just another tiny bit, in order to appease the settlers. One has to convince the settlers that the promise to freeze building is just window dressing, and that in reality building will continue at full speed.

The Americans recognize, of course, that our government is trying to deceive them. If they allow the building of just another 500 houses in the settlement blocks, and the completion of just another 2500 houses whose construction has already begun, and just a few more in East Jerusalem, in practice the building will go on unchecked.

The settlers know perfectly well that their whole enterprise has been based on deceit and trickery, house after house and neighborhood after neighborhood, and they are happy to allow Netanyahu to continue with this method. For the time being, they do not cry out, they are not worried, the more so as no large Israeli public movement has yet arisen in support of Obama’s peace efforts.

Obama’s troubles concerning the health issue look to Netanyahu like the answer to a prayer. Perhaps he is not satisfied with divine help alone, and the pro-Israel lobby is quietly helping the enemies of reform. If Obama’s people decide that the time is not ripe for a confrontation with Netanyahu and that it is worth giving in about small matters – some houses here, some houses there – that would be a huge victory for Netanyahu. Every Israeli will see it this way: Netanyahu stood up like a man, Obama blinked first. But thereafter, in the second and third battle, when Obama insists and does not give in, neither in word nor in deed, Netanyahu will be in trouble.

MAHMOUD ABBAS is the weakest of the three gladiators. His situation is the most precarious.

He is on a slippery slope and has to rely on support from Obama, who himself stands atop a tower that may collapse. He has already learned that Netanyahu does not intend to conduct real negotiations with him. And Hamas accuses him of collaboration with the occupation.

West Bank public opinion polls seem to show that the popularity of Fatah there is on the rise and that Hamas is losing. But polls in Palestine can almost be counted on to be wrong (as on the eve of the last elections, when they forecast a huge Fatah victory). More than a thousand Hamas militants are in the prisons of the Palestinian Authority. The Authority’s security services, which are being trained by the American general Keith Dayton, are working in close cooperation with the occupation forces and serve, quite openly, as their sub-contractors. What does the ordinary Palestinian in the street think about that?

Life in the occupied West Bank is built on an illusion. Commentators praise the success of the PA’s Prime Minister, Salaam Fayad, in reconstructing the Palestinian economy. Ramallah is flowering. New businesses are being opened. Netanyahu’s “economic peace” is becoming a reality. But that is, of course, a delicate bubble: the Israeli army can eradicate all this in half an hour, as it did in the 2002 “Defensive Shield” operation.

If Abbas does not succeed in achieving impressive progress towards peace within a few months, the whole structure may come crashing down. General Dayton has already warned that if peace is not achieved “within two years”, the forces now being trained by him may rise up against the Israeli occupation (and against Abbas, of course). Hamas is breathing heavily down their necks.

IN A FEW days, the three – Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas – are supposed to hold a summit conference in New York and to launch the Ship of Peace.

It will be an interesting meeting – if it takes place – because each of the three will be sitting on a wobbly stool, with unequal legs. While talking with his two colleagues, each will be preoccupied with his enemies at home.

That is not, of course, an unusual situation. Henry Kissinger once said that Israel has no foreign policy, only a domestic policy. But that is more or less true for every country. The United States, Israel and Palestine are not unique in this respect.

Commentators in ivory towers, who are used to handling out gratuitous advice to political leaders and telling them what to do, frequently miss this dimension. A person who has never experienced the heat of an election campaign cannot come near to understanding the full depths of a politician’s motives. In the words of Otto von Bismarck, a politician through and through: “Politics is the art of the possible”.

How to move the peace efforts back from the realm of the impossible? In this campaign, the Israeli peace camp has a double task: first, to expose the policy of evasion and deceit of our government; and, second, to strengthen Obama’s hand in his endeavor to bring peace to this region. It is important that a strong and authentic Israeli camp express support for his efforts. Our friends in the US, in Europe and throughout the entire world have a similar task.

This three-sided struggle is not taking place in a Roman arena, and we are not just spectators looking on from the terraces. At stake in this game is nothing less than our lives.

From Uri Avnery

29.8.09 

                        titled: Tutu’s Prayer 

HOW MUCH did the boycott of South Africa actually contribute to the fall of the racist regime? This week I talked with Desmond Tutu about this question, which has been on my mind for a long time. 

No one is better qualified to answer this question than he. Tutu, the South African Anglican archbishop and Nobel prize laureate, was one of the leaders of the fight against apartheid and, later, the chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which investigated the crimes of the regime. This week he visited Israel with the “Elders”, an organization of elder statesmen from all over the world set up by Nelson Mandela. 

The matter of the boycott came up again this week after an article by Dr. Neve Gordon appeared in the Los Angeles Times, calling for a world-wide boycott of Israel. He cited the example of South Africa to show how a world-wide boycott could compel Israel to put an end to the occupation, which he compared to the apartheid regime. 

I have known and respected Neve Gordon for many years. Before becoming a lecturer at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, he organized many demonstrations against the Separation Wall in the Jerusalem area, in which I, too, took part. 

I am sorry that I cannot agree with him this time – neither about the similarity with South Africa nor about the efficacy of a boycott of Israel. 

There are several opinions about the contribution of the boycott to the success of the anti-apartheid struggle. According to one view, it was decisive. Another view claims its impact was marginal. Some believe that it was the collapse of the Soviet Union that was the decisive factor. After that, the US and its allies no longer had any reason for support the regime in South Africa, which until then had been viewed as a pillar of the world-wide struggle against Communism. 
 

“THE BOYCOTT was immensely important,” Tutu told me. “Much more than the armed struggle.”  

It should be remembered that, unlike Mandela, Tutu was an advocate of non-violent struggle. During the 28 years Mandela languished in prison, he could have walked free at any moment, if he had only agreed to sign a statement condemning “terrorism”. He refused. 

“The importance of the boycott was not only economic,” the archbishop explained, “but also moral. South Africans are, for example, crazy about sports. The boycott, which prevented their teams from competing abroad, hit them very hard. But the main thing was that it gave us the feeling that we are not alone, that the whole world is with us. That gave us the strength to continue.” 

To show the importance of the boycott he told me the following story: In 1989, the moderate white leader, Frederic Willem de Klerk, was elected President of South Africa. Upon assuming office he declared his intention to set up a multiracial regime. “I called to congratulate him, and the first thing he said was: Will you now call off the boycott?” 
 

IT SEEMS to me that Tutu’s answer emphasizes the huge difference between the South African reality at the time and ours today. 

The South African struggle was between a large majority and a small minority. Among a general population of almost 50 million, the Whites amounted to less than 10%. That means that more than 90% of the country’s inhabitants supported the boycott, in spite of the argument that it hurt them, too. 

In Israel, the situation is the very opposite. The Jews amount to more than 80% of Israel’s citizens, and constitute a majority of some 60% throughout the country between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. 99.9% of the Jews oppose a boycott on Israel. 

They will not feel the “the whole world is with us”, but rather that “the whole world is against us”.  

In South Africa, the world-wide boycott helped in strengthening the majority and steeling it for the struggle. The impact of a boycott on Israel would be the exact opposite: it would push the large majority into the arms of the extreme right and create a fortress mentality against the “anti-Semitic world”. (The boycott would, of course, have a different impact on the Palestinians, but that is not the aim of those who advocate it.) 

Peoples are not the same everywhere. It seems that the Blacks in South Africa are very different from the Israelis, and from the Palestinians, too. The collapse of the oppressive racist regime did not lead to a bloodbath, as could have been predicted, but on the contrary: to the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Instead of revenge, forgiveness.

Those who appeared before the commission and admitted their misdeeds were pardoned. That was in tune with Christian belief, and that was also in tune with the Jewish Biblical promise: “Whoso confesseth and forsaketh [his sins] shall have mercy.” (Proverbs 28:13)  

I told the bishop that I admire not only the leaders who chose this path but also the people who accepted it. 
 

ONE OF the profound differences between the two conflicts concerns the Holocaust. 

Centuries of pogroms have imprinted on the consciousness of the Jews the conviction that the whole world is out to get them. This belief was reinforced a hundredfold by the Holocaust.

Every Jewish Israeli child learns in school that “the entire world was silent” when the six million were murdered. This belief is anchored in the deepest recesses of the Jewish soul. Even when it is dormant, it is easy to arouse it. 

(That is the conviction which made it possible for Avigdor Lieberman, last week, to accuse the entire Swedish nation of cooperating with the Nazis, because of one idiotic article in a Swedish tabloid.) 

It may well be that the Jewish conviction that “the whole world is against us” is irrational. But in the life of nations, as indeed in the life of individuals, it is irrational to ignore the irrational. 

The Holocaust will have a decisive impact on any call for a boycott of Israel. The leaders of the racist regime in South Africa openly sympathized with the Nazis and were even interned for this in World War II. Apartheid was based on the same racist theories as inspired Adolf Hitler. It was easy to get the civilized world to boycott such a disgusting regime. The Israelis, on the other hand, are seen as the victims of Nazism. The call for a boycott will remind many people around the world of the Nazi slogan “Kauft nicht bei Juden!” – don’t buy from Jews. 

That does not apply to every kind of boycott. Some 11 years ago, the Gush Shalom movement, in which I am active, called for a boycott of the product of the settlements. Its intention was to separate the settlers from the Israeli public, and to show that there are two kinds of Israelis. The boycott was designed to strengthen those Israelis who oppose the occupation, without becoming anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic. Since then, the European Union has been working hard to close the gates of the EU to the products of the settlers, and almost nobody has accused it of anti-Semitism. 
 

ONE OF the main battlefields in our fight for peace is Israeli public opinion. Most Israelis believe nowadays that peace is desirable but impossible (because of the Arabs, of course.) We must convince them not that peace would be good for Israel, but that it is realistically achievable.  

When the archbishop asked what we, the Israeli peace activists, are hoping for, I told him: We hope for Barack Obama to publish a comprehensive and detailed peace plan and to use the full persuasive power of the United States to convince the parties to accept it. We hope that the entire world will rally behind this endeavor. And we hope that this will help to set the Israeli peace movement back on its feet and convince our public that it is both possible and worthwhile to follow the path of peace with Palestine. 

No one who entertains this hope can support the call for boycotting Israel. Those who call for a boycott act out of despair. And that is the root of the matter. 

Neve Gordon and his partners in this effort have despaired of the Israelis. They have reached the conclusion that there is no chance of changing Israeli public opinion. According to them, no salvation will come from within. One must ignore the Israeli public and concentrate on mobilizing the world against the State of Israel. (Some of them believe anyhow that the State of Israel should be dismantled and replaced by a bi-national state.) 

I do not share either view – neither the despair of the Israeli people, to which I belong, nor the hope that the world will stand up and compel Israel to change its ways against its will. For this to happen, the boycott must gather world-wide momentum, the US must join it, the Israeli economy must collapse and the morale of the Israeli public must break. 

How long will this take? Twenty Years? Fifty years? Forever? 
 

I AM afraid that this is an example of a faulty diagnosis leading to faulty treatment. To be precise: the mistaken assumption that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resembles the South African experience leads to a mistaken choice of strategy. 

True, the Israeli occupation and the South African apartheid system have certain similar characteristics. In the West Bank, there are roads “for Israelis only”. But the Israeli policy is not based on race theories, but on a national conflict. A small but significant example: in South Africa, a white man and a black woman (or the other way round) could not marry, and sexual relations between them were a crime. In Israel there is no such prohibition. On the other hand, an Arab Israeli citizen who marries an Arab woman from the occupied territories (or the other way round) cannot bring his or her spouse to Israel. The reason: safeguarding the Jewish majority in Israel. Both cases are reprehensible, but basically different. 

In South Africa there was total agreement between the two sides about the unity of the country. The struggle was about the regime. Both Whites and Blacks considered themselves South Africans and were determined to keep the country intact. The Whites did not want partition, and indeed could not want it, because their economy was based on the labor of the Blacks. 

In this country, Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have nothing in common – not a common national feeling, not a common religion, not a common culture and not a common language. The vast majority of the Israelis want a Jewish (or Hebrew) state. The vast majority of the Palestinians want a Palestinian (or Islamic) state. Israel is not dependent on Palestinian workers – on the contrary, it drives the Palestinians out of the working place. Because of this, there is now a world-wide consensus that the solution lies in the creation of the Palestinian state next to Israel.     

In short: the two conflicts are fundamentally different. Therefore, the methods of struggle, too, must necessarily be different. 
 

BACK TO the archbishop, an attractive person whom it is impossible not to like on sight. He told me that he prays frequently, and that his favorite prayer goes like this (I quote from memory): 

“Dear God, when I am wrong, please make me willing to see my mistake. And when I am right – please make me tolerable to live with.” 
 

————–

To the above excellent review, and clear rejection of the idea that an international boycott will achieve anything beyond making it more difficult to obtain eventually a solution in the Arab-Israeli conflict, I would like to add that among the group of ELDERS that came to Israel was also the Former President of Ireland  (1990-1997) Mary Robinson,  who said according to reports in the media, that if Israel misses the opportunity to reach out for a two-states solution, the alternative is then a one-state solution, and this alternative will hurt the future of Israel much more.

Even though many Israelis do not regard her as a friend of Israel, this because of positions she took as the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (1997-2002), nevertheless, her comments here must be taken seriously by Israelis with the country’s real self interest at heart.