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.

nbsp;http://peacenow.org supports Iran sanctions that can work.

Congress is now considering two pieces of legislation that will limit the Iranian regime’s ability to crack down on freedom of speech within Iran:

HR 4301 – the Iran Digital Enhancement Act (IDEA) – would help give the Iranian people the high-tech tools they need to communicate online. It would also make it harder for the Iranian government to monitor or block Internet communications.

HR 4303 – the Stand with the Iranian People Act (SWIPA) – would punish corporations that help the Iranian government stifle free speech. It would also allow American non-profits to provide humanitarian aid within Iran. And it would bar Iranian officials who have abused the human rights of the Iranian public from entering the United States.

Empowering the Iranian people must be a vital part of the American strategy to deal with the threat posed by Iran to Israel and to key American national security interests.

Now is the time for action.

What happens in Iran can have broad ramifications for Israel and for the future of the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Dear DHFC Supporter,

He warned us!

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama said he wouldn’t quit trying to thrust his radical transformation of America down your throat. Now he’s arrogantly fighting for a health care plan that you don’t want any part of, despite the loud-and-clear message from the voters in New Jersey, Virginia, and most of all Massachusetts, who have rejected his “transformation.”

But a genuine fight is taking place, and I’m proud to say that the Freedom Center is leading the charge! The Freedom Center has published and distributed more than 200,000 copies of two booklets designed to expose Obama and the radical left and empower Tea Party activists as they take to the streets.

The first booklet, Obama’s Rules for Revolution, reveals the links of radicalism from Saul Alinsky right up to today’s White House. Thanks in part to your steadfast support, Obama’s Rules is in the hands of 200,000 Americans! And the demand is still high! And our second booklet, The Art of Political War for Tea Parties, has become a basic text for men and women across the nation who have had enough and are ready to take to the streets to stop Obama’s radical agenda!

Both booklets are flying off the Center’s bookshelves. We need to produce and distribute more. It is precisely because you know who I am are and what the Freedom Center has done to defend our country and its traditions that I now ask you to make a contribution of $25, $50, $100 or more to the Freedom Center to help us print and distribute another 250,000 copies of these booklets.

The real hope on America’s horizon is not in the rhetoric of the President’s empty promises. It’s in the Tea Parties, the demonstrations in Washington, and the recent elections in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia. Your countrymen are learning all about Obama and the radical leftist machine, knowledge you’ve had for a long time by virtue of working beside me at the Freedom Center.

I have said it many times, the Freedom Center is not just another think tank; it is a battle tank. But we can only do this with your help. You have been the backbone of the Center, one of our most loyal supporters. Please make a tax deductible contribution to the Freedom Center that will allow us to complete the mission we have undertaken.

America stands at the precipice. Let’s act together to save our country, our liberty and our future by bringing it back from the brink. Thank you so much for helping me in the past, and I hope you are standing with me still.

Sincerely,

David Horowitz
President & Founder

P.S. I don’t have to tell you that the Freedom Center has been in the forefront of the fight against the left for the last 20 years. Now that it is Paul Revere time in America, we will be even more aggressive in telling it like it is, more active in warning our countrymen what they face, more determined in stopping the left’s advance. As we go to war with the leftists in the Obama administration, I ask you to reenlist one more time to serve with us. We will fight the battles, but we need you to pass the ammunition.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center
P.O. Box 55089
Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964
www.frontpagemag.com

from:    Ignacio Montero <im638@nyu.edu>

date :    Mon, Mar 1, 2010 a

Event: Middle East Lecture Series MONDAY, Mar. 8 with Daniel L. Byman

U.S. and Middle East Policy Lecture Series.

Mondays at 12:30pm at NYU Wagner

Monday, March 8 for – spring semester

Middle East and U.S. Strategy lecture series with Daniel L. Byman, Director, Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown University; and Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution.

Date: Monday, March 8 / 12:30-1:30pm
Location: NYU Wagner, Puck Building
295 Lafayette Street, Rudin Family Forum, 2nd floor
……………………………………………………….

Israeli Counterterrorism and its Implications for the United States
Daniel L. Byman, Director, Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown
University; and Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy,
Brookings Institution

Dr. Byman has written widely on a range of topics related to terrorism,
international security, and the Middle East. In this talk, Dr. Byman will
examine Israel’s counterterrorism efforts against Fatah, Hamas, Hezballah,
and other groups to draw lessons about counterterrorism for Israel and other
countries.

For the last decade, the Middle East has occupied a place of primacy in
debates over U.S. global aims and strategies. NYU Wagner will sponsor a
year-long lecture series that will bring to campus original thinkers from
academics, research centers and government.

RSVP for this event and others in the series (see below) by clicking on the
following link http://wagner.nyu.edu/events/

—————–

Monday, March 22 / 12:30-1:30pm
A Strategy of Tactics: Countintsurgency and the American Army
…with Colonel Gian Gentile, Professor, Department of History, U.S.
Military Academy

Monday, March 29 / 12:30pm – 1:30pm
The Strong Horse: Power, Politics and the Clash of Arab Civilizations
…with Lee Smith, Visiting Fellow, The Hudson Institute; and Middle East
correspondent, The Weekly Standard

Monday, April 5 / 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Why is Muslim Extremism Attractive? And How Do We Uproot It?
…with Ed Husain, co-director of the Quilliam Foundation, and author of The
Islamist

–
Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
New York University
295 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012
e:  yvette.white at nyu.edu
t: 212.992.9884
 http://wagner.nyu.edu

Uri Avnery

27.2.10

White Lie

THIS COMING Wednesday, the Supreme Court of Israel will consider an application by a group of Israeli citizens to compel the Interior Ministry to register them as belonging to the “Israeli nation”.

Odd? Indeed.

The Israeli Interior Ministry recognizes 126 nations, but not the Israeli nation. An Israeli citizen can be registered as belonging to the Assyrian, the Tatar or the Circassian nation. But the Israeli nation? Sorry, no such thing.
According to the official doctrine, the State of Israel cannot recognize an “Israeli” nation because it is the state of the “Jewish” nation. In other words, it belongs to the Jews of Brooklyn, Budapest and Buenos Aires, even though these consider themselves as belonging to the American, Hungarian or Argentine nations.
Messy? Indeed.

THIS MESS started 113 years ago, when the Viennese Journalist Theodor Herzl wrote his book “The State of the Jews”. (That’s the true translation. The generally used name “The Jewish State” is false and means something else.) For this purpose he had to perform an acrobatic exercise. One can say that he used a white lie.

Modern Zionism was born as a direct response to modern anti-Semitism. Not by accident, the term “Zionismus” came into being some 20 years after the term “Antisemitismus” was invented in Germany. They are twins.
In Europe and the Americas another modern term was flourishing: Nationalism. Peoples which had been living together for centuries under dynasties of Emperors and Kings wanted to belong to nation-states of their own. In Argentina, the USA, France and other countries, “national” revolutions took place. The idea infected almost all peoples, big, small and tiny, from Peru to Lithuania, from Colombia to Serbia. They felt a need to belong to the place and the people where they lived and died.

All these national movements were necessarily anti-Semitic, some more, some less, because the very existence of the Jewish Diaspora ran counter to their basic perceptions. A Diaspora without a homeland, dispersed over dozens of countries, could not be reconciled with the idea of a homeland-rooted nation seeking uniformity.
Herzl understood that the new reality was inherently dangerous for the Jews. In the beginning he cherished the idea of complete assimilation: all the Jews would be baptized and disappear in the new nations. As a professional writer for the theater, he even devised the scenario: all Viennese Jews would march together to St. Stephen’s cathedral and be baptized en masse.

When he realized that this scenario was a bit far-fetched, Herzl passed from the idea of individual assimilation to what may be called collective assimilation: if there is no place for the Jews in the new nations, then they should define themselves as a nation like all the others, rooted in a homeland of their own and living in a state of their own. This idea was called Zionism.

BUT THERE was a problem: a Jewish nation did not exist. The Jews were not a nation but a religious-ethnic community.

A nation exists on one level of human society, a religious-ethnic community on another. A “nation” is an entity living together in one country with a common political will. A “community” is a religious entity based on a common faith, which can live in different countries. A German, for example, can be Catholic or Protestant; a Catholic can be German or French.
These two types of entity have two different means of survival, much as different species in nature. When a lion is in danger, it fights, it attacks. For that purpose, nature has equipped it with teeth and claws. When a gazelle is in danger, it runs. Nature has given it quick legs. Every method is good, if it is effective. (If it were not effective, the species would not have survived to this day.)

When a nation is in danger, it stands and fights. When a religious community is in danger, it moves elsewhere. The Jews, more than any others, have perfected the art of escape. Even after the horrors of the Holocaust, the Jewish Diaspora has survived and now, two generations later, it is again flourishing.

IN ORDER to invent a Jewish nation, Herzl had to ignore this difference. He pretended that the Jewish ethnic-religious community was also a Jewish nation. In other words: contrary to all other peoples, the Jews were both a nation and a religious community; as far as Jews were concerned, the two were the same. The nation was a religion, the religion was a nation.

This was the “white lie”. There was no other way: without it, Zionism could not have come into being. The new movement took the Star of David from the synagogue, the candlestick from the Temple, the blue-and-white flag from the prayer shawl. The holy land became a homeland. Zionism filled the religious symbols with secular, national content.
The first to detect the falsification were the Orthodox Rabbis. Almost all of them damned Herzl and his Zionism in no uncertain terms. The most extreme was the Rabbi of Lubavitch, who accused Herzl of destroying Judaism. The Jews, he wrote, are united by their adherence to God’s commandments. Doctor Herzl wants to supplant this God-given bond with secular nationalism.

When Herzl originated the Zionist idea, he did not intend to found the “State of the Jews” in Palestine, but in Argentina. Even when writing his book, he devoted to the country only a few lines, under the headline “Palestine or Argentina?” However, the movement he created compelled him to divert his endeavors to the Land of Israel, and so the state came into being here.
When the State of Israel was founded and the Zionist dream realized, there was no further need for the “white lie”. After the building was finished, the scaffolding should have been removed. A real Israeli nation had come into being, there was no further need for an imaginary one.

THESE DAYS Israel’s largest newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, is running a TV ad showing selected past issues. The day the State of Israel was founded, the giant headline announced: “Hebrew State!”

“Hebrew”, not “Jewish”. And not by accident: at that time, the term “Jewish state” sounded decidedly strange. In the preceding years, people in this country had got used to making a clear distinction between “Jewish” and “Hebrew”, between matters that belonged to the Diaspora and those belonging to this country: Jewish Diaspora, Jewish language (Yiddish), Jewish Stetl, Jewish religion, Jewish tradition – but Hebrew language, Hebrew agriculture, Hebrew industries, Hebrew underground organizations, Hebrew policemen.

If so, why do the words “Jewish state” appear in our Declaration of Independence? There was a simple reason for that: the UN had adopted a resolution to partition the country between an “Arab state” and a “Jewish state”. That was the legal basis of the new state. The declaration, which was drafted in haste, said therefore that we were establishing “the Jewish state (according to the UN resolution), namely the State of Israel”.

The building was finished, but the scaffolding was not taken down. On the contrary: it became the most important part of the building and dominates its facade.

LIKE MOST of us at the time, David Ben-Gurion believed that Zionism had supplanted religion and that religion had become redundant. He was quite sure that it would shrivel and disappear by itself in the new secular state. He decided that we could afford to dispense with the military service of Yeshiva bochers (Talmud school students), believing that their number would dwindle from a few hundred to almost none. The same thought caused him to allow religious schools to continue in existence. Like Herzl, who promised to “keep our Rabbis in the synagogues and our army officers in the barracks”, Ben-Gurion was certain that the state would be entirely secular.

When Herzl wrote of the “state of the Jews” he did not dream that the Jewish Diaspora would continue to exist. In his view, only the citizens of the new state would henceforth be called “Jews”, all other Jews in the world would assimilate in their various nations and disappear from view.

BUT THE “white lie” of Herzl had results he did not dream of, as did the compromises of Ben-Gurion. Religion did not wither away in Israel, but on the contrary: it is gaining control of the state. The government of Israel does not speak of the nation-state of the Israelis who live here, but of the “nation-state of the Jews” – a state that belongs to the Jews all over the world, most of whom belong to other nations.

The religious schools are eating up the general education system and are going to overpower it, if we don’t become aware of the danger and assert our Israeli essence. Voting rights are about to be accorded to Israelis residing abroad, and this is a step towards giving the vote to all Jews around the world. And, most important: the ugly weeds growing in the national-religious field – the fanatical settlers – are pushing the state in a direction that may lead to its destruction.

TO SAFEGUARD the future of Israel one has to start by removing the scaffolding from the building. In other words: burying the “white lie” of religion-equals-nation. The Israeli nation has to be recognized as the basis of the state.
If this principle is accepted, what will the future shape of Israel – within the Green Line – be like?
There are two possible models, and many variations between them.

Model A: the multi-national one. Almost all the citizens of Israel belong to one of two nations: the majority belongs to the Hebrew nation and a minority to the Palestinian-Arab nation. Each nation will enjoy autonomy in certain areas, such as culture, education and religion. Autonomy will not be territorial, but cultural (as Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky proposed a hundred years ago for Czarist Russia). All will be united by Israeli citizenship and loyalty to the state. The inbuilt discrimination of the Arab minority will become a thing of the past, as well as the “demographic demon”.

Model B: the American one. The American nation is composed of all US citizens, and all US citizens constitute the American nation. An immigrant from Jamaica who acquires US citizenship automatically becomes a member of the American nation, an heir to George Washington and Abe Lincoln. All learn at school the same core program and the same history.

Which of the two models is preferable? In my view, Model B is much better. But it would depend on a dialogue between the Hebrew majority and the Arab minority. In the end, the Arab citizens will have to decide whether they prefer the status of equal partners in a general Israeli nation, or the status of a recognized, autonomous national minority in a state that acknowledges and cherishes their separate culture, side by side with the culture of the majority.

In four days, the Supreme Court will decide whether it is prepared to take the first step in this historic march.

Green Reconstruction: UNIFIL Plants Trees in Southern Lebanon

The 2006 Lebanon War caused massive ecological damages, especially in the country’s Southern region: more than one thousand hectare of forests and olive groves have been destroyed by bomb explosions and bush fires—according to a study published in May 2007 by the Association for Forests, Development and Conservation (AFDC). The economic losses of this destruction hit especially farmers and the rural population in South Lebanon.

In January 2010, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) started an extensive reforestation project in the region around the village Sh’huur. Within about three months, the international troops want to plant 2 300 trees. The project is headed by the “Green Sh’huur” Committee, a local initiative consisting of community residents and their mayor. About 4 000 trees have already been planted by the initiative. At the end of the project the number is supposed to reach a total of 10 452 trees—a symbolic number that represents the total surface area of Lebanon (10 452 km2). UNIFIL also maintains two other reforestation projects in the Southern Lebanese towns of Khiam and Rachaya al-Foukhar.

The projects have several objectives: they prevent further loss of biodiversity in the region, provide natural spaces for recreation and leisure, and foster the economic development in the region by increasing its attractiveness for tourists. Another central objective of the initiative is to strengthen local people’s awareness for environmental issues.

UNIFIL has been based in Lebanon since 1978. It guarantees that there are no illegal weapons between the Litani River and the Blue Line, a zone that separates Lebanese and Israeli armed forces. Engaging Blue Helmets in reforestation projects is nothing unusual: they have already planted more than 30 000 saplings around the world, among others in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Georgia, and Timor-Leste. (Kerstin Fritzsche)

For more information, please visit: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?Ne…

—————–

But we have a problem with the above since back in 2006, when I was asking Mr. Ahmad Fawzi  who took over the Spokesperson’s job at the UN in order to give his one-sided view to the UN accredited Press of what was happening in the Israel-Lebanon and its Hezbollah war.

While the damage in Lebanon was caused by warfare, the damage on the Israeli side was caused by indiscriminate shelling with the unsophisticated rockets that had really no targets. In the process old growth forests in the Galilee were seriously damaged. I was asking as a point of information, to hear from him also on these damages, but he had no interest to hear such questions that went against his grain. Could not the UNIFIL officers realize now that impartiality calls for them doing reforestation work on both sides of the border?

From Eye on the UN
February 22, 2010
Contact:
 list at eyeontheun.org

What the IAEA Knew:  The U.N. agency charged with stopping nuclear proliferation enabled it.

This article, by Anne Bayefsky, originally appeared in Forbes.com.

The most important thing gleaned from the report by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) circulated on Feb. 18, which states that Iran may indeed be bent on developing a nuclear bomb, is not new information about Iran. It is that for years the United Nations apparatus lied about what they knew and actively stood in the way of efforts to prevent the world’s most dangerous regime from acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapon.

The “confidential” report leaked to every news agency on the planet, is quoted as stating that on the basis of “extensive” and “credible” information the IAEA now has “concerns about the possible existence in Iran of … current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile,” and “concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”

While Obama administration officials have attempted to spin the first report of IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, who took over last December, as a U.N. achievement, the implications of the evident U.N. deceit cannot be overstated. After all, the organization has a choke hold on global imaginations. In 2005 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the IAEA and its then Director General Mohammed ElBaradei “for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes.” It is now clear that this occurred at the very same time that ElBaradei was engaged in what may well prove to be the most lethal cover-up in human history.

For almost a decade, the IAEA and its director general stalled for time on behalf of Iran, with reports feigning ignorance of Iranian designs while leaving an escape hatch should the IAEA’s disguise as a non-proliferation agency be blown. In February 2006 ElBaradei reported: “Although the Agency has not seen any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, the Agency is not at this point in time in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran. The process of drawing such a conclusion … is a time consuming process.”

In August 2006 ElBaradei reported: “the Agency remains unable to make further progress in its efforts to verify the correctness and completeness of Iran’s declarations with a view to confirming the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme.” In January 2007, in the midst of growing calls for sanctions, ElBaradei suggested a “time-out.” In July 2007 ElBaradei concocted a deliberately nebulous deal between the IAEA and Iran “on the modality for resolving the remaining outstanding issues.” In September 2007, with stiffer sanctions on the horizon, ElBaradei again called for a “time-out.” In January 2008 the IAEA reported: “ElBaradei has repeatedly noted that … the IAEA has not seen any diversion of material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”p>

And on and on the reports and the carefully timed interviews went. The organization charged with stopping nuclear proliferation enabled it. This latest “revelation” should, therefore, be a shot heard round the world. Or at the very least, in the halls of Congress, where every year at least 5 billion American taxpayer dollars are directed to the United Nations in cash or in kind.

Last week’s report did not see the light of day because the U.N. has turned over a significant new leaf. Rather, this is a desperate attempt by Amano to save the organization’s hide. It is an indication that Iran’s breakout as a nuclear power is so close at hand that the “watchdog” agency can no longer keep a lid on it.

The development does cast a new light, however, on ElBaradei’s assessment of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. Over the course of his presidency, Obama has repeatedly taken the heat off Iran: muting criticism over the stolen elections, minimizing response to human rights violations, sidelining the plight of Iran’s American hostages and treading water on sanctions for over a year. One particularly treacherous strategy has been to equate the urgency of nuclear disarmament–including by the United States–with nuclear non-proliferation. This inevitably delays progress on the latter. In the name of some perverse concept of fairness, the peril of a nuclear-armed United States and like-minded democracies is set off against the craving of non-democratic developing states to be equally armed. ElBaradei agreed with this strategy–as did the Nobel Committee.

Fellow honoree ElBaradei was therefore “absolutely delighted” at Obama’s award. Perceiving the Obama-ElBaradei approach to have been applauded once again, he told reporters: “I could not have thought of any other person today that is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than Barack Obama … I think the [Nobel] committee understood fully, as they have done in 2005, that we really need to address the number one security threat we face in the world–which is to get rid of these inhumane weapons. And Obama has … managed to put nuclear disarmament on the top of the international agenda … That is something I think the committee, by giving him the prize today, has applauded and said ‘you are doing the right thing; keep doing what you are doing.’ Exactly the same message that they have sent to the IAEA in 2005 … and myself.”

Two Nobel Peace Prizes later, Iran is much closer to acquiring nuclear weapons and ElBaradei’s days as U.N. proliferator-in-chief may not quite be over. On Friday, Feb. 19, he returned to his native Egypt and declared his interest in replacing President Hosni Mubarak in next year’s elections. If he were to succeed, he will undoubtedly follow an Iranian bomb with a dash to achieve an Egyptian one, with the tried-and-true U.N. formula of non-discrimination and peace.
————————
For more United Nations coverage see www.EYEontheUN.org.

EYEontheUN monitors the UN direct from UN Headquarters in New York. EYEontheUN brings to light the real UN record on the key threats to democracy, human rights, and peace and security in our time.

ISRAEL
Israel Talks Solar With Egypt, Biofuel With Jordan
 http://planetark.org/wen/56819

JORDAN
Jordan Enlists Army In Climate Fight
 http://planetark.org/wen/56814

The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies
mourns the passing of former U.S. Secretary of State

General Alexander M. Haig Jr.

a founding member of the International Advisory Board

of the BESA Center

We salute his unyielding friendship for the State of Israel and his wise counsel to the BESA Center.

www.besacenter.org

Dr. ElBaradei was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1942, son of the late Mostafa ElBaradei, a lawyer and former President of the Egyptian Bar Association. His father often found himself at odds with the regime of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. ElBaradei’s father was also a supporter of democratic rights in Egypt, supporting a free press and a legal system that was independent.

The son gained a Bachelor’s degree in Law in 1962 at the University of Cairo, and a Doctorate in International Law at the New York University School of Law in 1974. He began his career in the Egyptian Diplomatic Service in 1964, serving on two occasions in the Permanent Missions of Egypt to the United Nations in New York and Geneva, in charge of political, legal and arms control issues. From 1974 to 1978 he was a special assistant to the Foreign Minister of Egypt.

In 1980 he left the Egyptian Diplomatic Service for work at the United Nations, and became a senior fellow in charge of the International Law Program at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). From 1981 to 1987 he was also an Adjunct Professor of International Law at the New York University School of Law.

From 1984, Dr. ElBaradei has moved to a substantial senior staff member position of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Secretariat, in Vienna, holding a number of high-level policy positions, including Agency’s Legal Adviser and subsequently Assistant Director General for External Relations under  former Swedish Foreign Minister Hans Blix as Director General. The IAEA was set up by suggestions in 1953 from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower as the world´s sleepy “Atoms for Peace” organization in 1957. It was set up as a UN affiliate that eventually had to become the UN watchdog on nuclear proliferation matters. The first Director General was American, W. Sterling Cole, 1957–1961 – followed by two Swedes 1961-1997 as nuclear issues meant arbitrating between the US ans the Soviet Union.

ElBaradei under UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992-1996), another Egyptian, and it was assumed that this is an opening to what the UN called the Third World, he was then appointed to the office of the Director General of the IAEA effective 1 December 1997, and reappointed to a third term in September 2005 under UNSG Kofi Annan (1997-2006). In November 2009 he retired from that position after three terms of four years, and was succeeded by the Japanese Yukiya Amano defeating Abdul Samad Minty of South Africa and Luis E. Echávarri? of Spain.

Elbaradei’s tenure has been marked by high profile non-proliferation issues including the inspections in Iraq preceding the March 2003 invasion and tensions over the nuclear program of Iran – one could say that a main issue of the IAEA in his time was the ongoing activities to create an Islamic bomb.

In 2005, The United States initially voiced opposition to his election to a third four-year term. In a May 2005 interview with the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lawrence Wilkerson, the chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, charged former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton with an underhanded campaign to unseat ElBaradei. “Mr. Bolton overstepped his bounds in his moves and gyrations to try to keep [ElBaradei] from being reappointed as [IAEA] head,” Wilkerson said. The Washington Post reported in December 2004 that the Bush administration had intercepted dozens of ElBaradei’s phone calls with Iranian diplomats and was scrutinizing them for evidence they could use to force him out. IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said the agency worked on “the assumption that one or more entities may be listening to our conversations”. “It’s not how we would prefer to work, but it is the reality. At the end of the day, we have nothing to hide,” he said. Iran responded to the Washington Post reports by accusing the United States of violating international law in intercepting the communications. We guesthe deeds were illegal but iran’s actions were worse. What about ElBaradei?

The United States was the only country to oppose ElBaradei’s reappointment and eventually failed to win enough support from other countries to oust ElBaradei. On 9 June 2005, after a meeting between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and ElBaradei, the United States dropped its objections. Among countries that supported ElBaradei were China, Russia, Germany and France. China praised his leadership and objectivity and supported him for doing “substantial fruitful work, which has maintained the agency’s role and credit in international non-proliferation and promoted the development of peaceful use of nuclear energy.”  France, Germany, and some developing countries, have made clear their support for ElBaradei as well, Russia issued a strong statement in favor of re-electing him as soon as possible, and ElBaradei was unanimously re-appointed by the IAEA Board on 13 June 2005. In 2008 ElBaradei said he would not be seeking a fourth term as Director General. One could say that the squirmish with the US because of the US false alegation regarding the Iraqi bomb, had much to do with El Baradei and the IAEA under his leadership, getting the Nobel Prize for Peace. It seems that this was rather a reaction to US high-handedness. Whatever – not much love was lost between the US last two Administrations and ElBaradei.

The current Board members of the IAEA are: Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, China, Cuba, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Malaysia, Mongolia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Romania, Russian Federation, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the UK, and the USA, Uruguay, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Venezuela) 2009–2010).

ElBaradei’s two children live and work in London.

ElBaradei’s name has been circulated recently by opposition groups as a possible candidate to succeed President Hosny Mubarak to Egypt’s highest executive position. ElBaradei demanded that certain conditions have to be met to ensure fair elections accompanied by changes to the constitution that will allow more freedom for independent candidates before he would actually consider running for presidency. Several opposition groups and parties have endorsed him, considering him a neutral figure who could transition the country to greater democracy.

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Mr. Ahmad Fawzi, currently News and Media Division Director under the UN USG for Communications and Public Information, has held this position for quite a while and was thus able to shape also the roster of who is allowed to participate at UN Press conferences.

His activities at the UN Headquarters in New York started with his  serving as Deputy Spokesman for UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali from 1992 through 1996 or during the whole time that Mr. Boutros-Ghali held that job.It was thus Mr. Butros Ghali who brought him to the Headquarters.

Born in Cairo on 28 March 1948, Mr. Fawzi has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature and Language from Cairo University. He pursued post- graduate studies at the Newhouse School of Communications of Syracuse University, New York.

Before joining the United Nations, he worked for many years in broadcast journalism, as a news editor, reporter and regional news operations manager. Much of his work was in the Middle East and much of it with Reuters. We assume that his contacts with Mr. Boutros-Ghali started in the Middle East and Egypt – perhaps back to interviews at time Mr. Boutros Ghali was part of the Government of Egypt.

After the Boutros-Ghali years, during the Kofi Annan Years at the UN, and until now, Mr. Fawzi continued to work with the UN Department of Public Information and had various stints like his being spokesman for Lakhdar Brahimi the UN special envoy to Iraq.

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Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Born the 14 November 1922 in Cairo (Egypt) into a most distinguished Coptic Christian family, Mr Boutros-Ghali received a bachelor’s degree from Cairo University (1946) and a Ph.D. in international law from the University of Paris (1949). He then held a professorship at Cairo University and lectured in international law and international affairs at various universities and institutes in the United States, Europe, India, the Middle East.

From 1960 to about 1975, Boutros-Ghali founded, edited, and wrote for Al-Ahram Iqtisadi, where his beat was regional and international law, diplomacy and political science. He was a member of Parliament in Egypt, and helped negotiate the 1978 Camp David accords, bringing peace between Egypt and Israel. He worked with President Sadat’s foreign service, was known to oppose originally Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem but later was involved in furthering the succes of that mission. He was sort of an odd man in Cairo. His wife – the former Leia Maria Nadler was Jewish.

Hosni Mubarak was appointed Vice President in 1975, and assumed the presidency on 14 October 1981, following the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat. He really was not interested in keeping Mr. Boutros Ghali in Egypt, and was quite happy to volunteer his services to the UN when that opportunity arose. So he was instrumental in getting Mr. Boutros-Ghali elected UN Secretary- General in 1992 where he lasted till 1996.

Looking back – Mr. Boutros Ghali was the former Secretary-General of the United Nations (1992-1996) and Secretary-General of the International Organization of Francophonie (1997-2002). Currently he is president of the National Council of Human Rights of Egypt, he also chairs the International Panel on Democracy and Development (IPDD), set up by UNESCO in 1998. He is also a member of the Support Committee of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. From his work at the UN – really nothing positive to be remembered. Basically, our present posting argues that his two appointments – those he made possible to Messrs. ElBaradei and Fawzi – perhapse were his longest lasting legacies he left behind at the UN. Also, some other people he introduced to the UN, including members of his wife’s family, turned up as reasons for the UN blunder that was discovered, under his successor’s time at the UN helm, in what becanme the oil-for-food scandal. The Paul Volker investigation of that affair has left stained both named UNSGs.

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Having introduced the actors – let us now look at the latest news:

Hosni Mubarak is now in his 30th year of his Presidency – that is he is ending his 5-th consecutive six year term. There will be elections, probably in a year – in 2011, but there are no candidates because of the way Mubarak kept out of site any budding opposition. Even what was supposed to be the opening for democratization – the 2005 constitutional amendment that established multi-candidate presidential elections in Egypt came with rules designed to ensure that no independents could easily enter  the race, helping to stifle challenges to Mr. Mubarak’s rule. In fact, even discussing who would replace Hosni Mubaraq was not tolerated. The feeling is that Hosni Mubaraq has full intent to stay on and then pass the mantle to his son – Gamal Mubarak – we think named so after Gamal Nasser – the previous big Chief that run Egypt as if it were still in  the Pharaohnic days – and the whole Arab world was just larger Egypt.

Anwar Sadat (Muhammad Anwar El Sadat, or Anwar El Sadat  was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by Islamists on 6 October 1981 – he was indeed different and he paid with his life for having tried to do something for his country. He also did not ask for a parliament’s permission but at least did not put himself at the center of is world.

And the press? That is all government owned – what is written is the word that comes from Mubarak – that is the kind of Journalism that conquered the UN thanks to Ahmad Fawzi – a good disciple of his Egyptian friends – you get a Press Release and don’t ask questions – you write it down because that is what you are there for. The notion that there is something like a Media Think-Tank, or Media Independent Thinking that does not serve a cause – is unheard off on the shores of the Nile.

But then, Egypt’s people are proud people indeed. They are proud that one of theirs has gotten the Nobel Prize, they also are tired of the face of the old Pharaoh – they are ready to induct ElBaredei to run for the Presidency. He is free and available – but what about those rules/ he asks Egypt to change the rules so that there is an open election and he is ready to run – he seems to be the kind of person that is saying up-front that he is not blind to the barriers that Mubarak encircled himself – something like the security wall of the Israelis.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the basic resistance that was connected in the past with those that Killed Anwar Sadat, or helped foot the Al Kaeda in its infancy, religious nationalistic fanatics that are afraid of nothing – they are still there and sort of tolerated by Mubarak who remembers that they made it all possible for him 30 year ago, they say now: “The question is, can ElBaradei, who lived most of his life – 30 years – working in Europe, can he lead a new Egyptian revolution for change?

El Baradei came for a 10 day visit last week and there were 1,000 people waiting for him at the airport for six hours. his Facebook numbers 60,000 Egyptians – they feel that for the first time there is a viable option besides Mubarak and his son – his actual persona is the symbol that there can be an alternative because some Egyptians speak up now and say – it is our right to chose the person who will represent us. Even the Muslim brotherhood agrees to see in El Baradei the transition to a new Egypt.

Considering the high level of corruption in Egypt, the fact that El Baradei came from outside, so he is not sullied by the home-grown stagnation of Egyptian politics, he has a terrific advantage of being that fresh face they would like to induct.

OK – that is ElBaradei – what about Fawzi? He is retiring next month and we suggest he can be available to be thrown into this new Egyptian brew. He is not a new face, but he knows how to look as media while backing a cause he has in mind. I really do not think that what he had in mind was Mubarak, I rather think he remembers Boutros-Ghali and other Arab interests – be it oil or culture. We do not think that ElBaradei either has fully absorbed Western liberalism and Egypt might not be ready for this either, what seems to be needed is the kind of spokesperson that knows to dress up the concerns of the Middle East environment, and Egypt,  with a good race-horse like ElBaradei, can concoct the public winning formula. So – here for a step of loosing up the frozen major States of the Middle East – Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

HIGH COURT IN TEL AVIV FLEXES ITS LIBERAL MUSCLES.
16 February 2010
BY CHRISTOPH SCHULT
Der Spiegel via The San Francisco Sentinel.

On many issues, from human rights to social mores, Israel’s high court is well out in front of society at large. Israeli politicians now want to clip the court’s wings.

Tel Aviv, an apartment building from the Ottoman era on the edge of the Karmel market. The Sabbath is about to end, and a casserole is baking in the oven in the apartment of the Berner-Kadisch family. The three sons are playing in their rooms, while the parents drink tea in the living room.

The parents are Nicole, 44, an attorney, and Ruti, 45, an academic with a doctorate in Middle Eastern studies. The two women alternated having children, with the help of a sperm bank and a reproduction clinic. Their first son, Matan, was born in 1995. Ruti was his biological mother and Nicole adopted him, which is permitted in some states of the United States.

Their problems began when they moved to Israel a year later. Both women had Israeli citizenship, but the consulate general in Los Angeles refused to recognize Nicole as the adoptive mother. The two women contested the decision in an Israeli court and, after 10 years, the Israeli Supreme Court recognized the adoption. The birth certificate of their youngest son, 6-year-old Segev, is lying on the coffee table in the living room. Nicole and Ruti are listed as his parents, under Israel’s national coat of arms. The Interior Ministry issued the document only recently.

Once again, the Supreme Court was more progressive than the country. The court’s ruling on the parenthood of Nicole and Ruti is only one of many sensational decisions in recent years. “If the Supreme Court didn’t exist, who would safeguard democracy in Israel?” asks Ruti Berner-Kadisch.

Insisting on Compliance

The court takes an interventionist approach. For instance, it prohibited the country’s attorney general from dropping rape charges against former President Moshe Katsav in return for a confession of other, lesser offences.

In the conflict with the Palestinians, the judges have resisted pressure from the military and the government and are insisting on compliance with human rights regulations.

Is it legal to use force on a Palestinian if he has information about an imminent terrorist attack? No, the high court ruled in 1999, when it imposed a torture ban on the military and the intelligence services. In 2006, the judges set narrow limits on the practice of preventive liquidation of presumed terrorists. Under the new rules, the targeted killings are only allowed if no civilians are harmed and there is no possibility of arrest. The Supreme Court has also issued several orders to move the security wall with which Israel protects itself against terrorists along its border with the West Bank. Arguing that there is no such thing as absolute security, the judges limited the Israeli government’s ability to seize land owned by Palestinians.

“In no other country in the world has a high court dealt with issues of international law as much as it has in our country,” says Aharon Barak, the former president of the Supreme Court. This is precisely why the judges have made so many enemies with their liberal administration of justice. For some rabbis, the court’s rulings are nothing short of blasphemy. Some generals consider the judges to be a security risk, and politicians see them as rivals.

Doris Beinisch, 67, an elegant woman wearing gold earrings and a scarf draped over her shoulders, has been the president of the Supreme Court for more than three years. From her office, she has a view of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, while the prime minister’s office is on the other side. Beinisch points out that her office sits right in the middle, both physically and symbolically, between the legislative and the executive branches of government.

No Constitution

The families of Palestinian terror attack victims recently appealed to the Supreme Court to force the government to release the names of the Palestinian prisoners it intends to set free in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier abducted by Hamas in 2006. Beinisch rejected the appeal.

It is only one of 12,000 cases the Supreme Court hears each year (by comparison, the US Supreme Court hears fewer than 100 cases a year). Every Israeli citizen can appeal to the court to raise doubts about government decisions or laws enacted by the Knesset. The “High Court of Justice” (known by the Hebrew acronym “Bagaz”) also serves as a court of appeal for the lower courts.

The central problem, says Beinisch, is that Israel doesn’t have a constitution. Although the 1948 declaration of independence expressly stipulates the creation of a written constitution, it hasn’t been formulated yet — in deference to the ultra-orthodox Jews, who refuse to recognize any constitution other than the Torah. This frequently gives the government and members of parliament an excuse to question the sovereignty of the highest court — for political expediency, of course.

In addition, because there is no constitution, there is nothing that clearly states whether each citizen has certain inalienable rights. The country only has its so-called basic laws, which, like any other laws, can be amended with a simple majority. According to the basic law on “human dignity and freedom,” Israel aims to be a Jewish state and a democracy at the same time. But what does this mean for its roughly 1.3 million Arab citizens?

Not Allowed for Arabs

Adel Kaadan, 54, lives in Baka al-Gharbiya, a small Arab city of 30,000 people halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. He wanted to move away years ago, he says, citing problems like bad roads, a lack of waste disposal services and asbestos in schools. He saw an advertisement for a new community, Kazir, which was being planned a few kilometers north of Baka al-Gharbiya. It sounded appealing: new roads, inexpensive land, his own house. But when Kaadan went to see the town council, he was told that Arabs were not allowed to move to Kazir.

“I thought I was a citizen of Israel,” says Kaadan, who works as a nurse in a hospital. “In school, we were taught that discrimination on the basis of race, gender or religion was not allowed.”

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel took on Kaadan’s case. Eleven years and two trials later, Kaadan finally won the case, when the town of Kazir was ordered to sell him a piece of land. Meanwhile, the house is almost finished, and in six months Kaadan plans to move in, together with his wife and their five children. “It’s good that the court exists,” says Kaadan, “but why do you have to go through the trouble of going to court just to assert your rights?”

Even when it comes to the major conflict in the region, between the Palestinians and Israelis, the judges insist on compliance with human rights laws. In Nilin, for example, a small town in the West Bank. The security wall separates the village from the Israeli settlement of Hashmonaim — and Palestinian farmers from their olive plantations. Every morning, the residents of Nilin protest against the wall, usually peacefully. On July 7, 2008, the military stopped the protestors and a few activists were arrested, including Ashraf Abu Rahma. The soldiers blindfolded him, tied his hands behind his back and let him sit in the sun for one-and-a-half hours.

Then He Shoots

“Suddenly something hit my right foot,” says Abu Rahma. “I had the feeling that my leg was flying away from my body.” He is sitting, smoking a cigarette, in the courtyard of the Amira family’s house, at the entrance to Nilin. Journalism student Salam Amira, 18, is sitting next to him. She filmed the events of the day from her window, using a digital camera.

On the video, the Israeli commander holds down Abu Rahma while one of his soldiers points his gun at the Palestinian’s feet. Then he shoots.

The Israel human rights organization Betselem published the video. A military judge merely reprimanded the soldiers for their “improper behavior” and suspended the commander from duty for 10 days. Betselem took the case to the Supreme Court, which ordered that both soldiers be punished more severely. The incident, the court argued, was a “serious deviation from the moral norms incumbent upon all soldiers in the Israeli army, particularly senior commanders.”

“Although it is a Jewish court, it issued a fair verdict,” says Abu Rahma. These words of praise don’t come easy for Rahma, whose brother was killed when he was shot in the chest during a demonstration a few months ago. Journalism student Amira says that she was positively surprised by the verdict. Palestinian judges, she says, rarely demonstrate such independence.

‘Illegal to Attack the Courts’

Israeli politicians, particularly the conservatives, feel that the court is too independent. To address this concern, the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to propose a law that would limit the power of the judges on Jerusalem’s high court in an important way: The court would no longer have the power to invalidate laws enacted by the parliament. The government also wants to supervise the selection of judges more strictly in the future.

The court’s decisions often go too far for many Israelis, as well. Judge Beinisch has become a target of their indignation, so much so that she now has several bodyguards. In a hearing at the end of January, an older, balding man stood up and threw his shoe at the judge. Beinisch was hit in the head and fell, unconscious, from her chair. Although the man who had thrown the shoe was only expressing his dissatisfaction over his divorce decree, the opposition in the parliament claimed that the right wing, with its many reproaches of judges, had made the attack possible in the first place.

Ironically, this left Prime Minister Netanyahu with no choice but to express his solidarity with the judge. He called Beinisch and confirmed publicly: “It is illegal to attack the courts.”

We believe that America was not created by God and that Theocrats have no place among its bureaucrats. America was incorporated by groups of free people – not Peoples – but men and women.

We believe that the EU should take the America as intended – as its example; and we believe that the UN will eventually also be replaced by this sort of incorporation that is based on the concept that all people were created with the intention to live as equals.

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The New York Society for Ethical Culture Believes in Secular Humanism as the driving Force In The American Constitution.

Sunday Meeting, February 21, 2010
Sunday Meeting – 11:15 a.m. – Auditorium

“One Nation Under the Constitution: Moral Values through Humanistic Government”
Sean Faircloth, Executive Director of Secular Coalition for America
The Secular Coalition for America is a leader of what The Nation magazine recently called the newly “visible, assertive, and respected” secular movement. Executive Director Sean Faircloth, will discuss how the values of our nation’s founders directly connect to the values of the secular movement.

Faircloth served for 10 years in the Maine legislature, and was elected to the post of Majority Whip of the Maine House of Representatives by his colleagues. An attorney whose duties include lobbying in Washington on behalf of the Secular Coalition’s 10 member organizations, he will show how injustices in American law based on religion are not a historical artifact but a stark current reality. He argues that all Americans have a moral obligation to address these injustices through rejuvenation of our government’s secular heritage and legal system. Faircloth is a strong advocate of the separation of church and state and has received many awards for his work, including the 2006 Legislator of the Year Award from the Maine People’s Alliance.

If not for Stepping up as Guardians of Human Rights – What Else Is The UN There For?

Human Rights Watch at the UN – HRW Press

UN: Council Review Highlights Iran’s Poor Record – Members Should Recommend Reforms for Tehran.

(New York, February 16, 2010) – The Iranian government’s dismissal of international criticism of its human rights record underscores the need for the UN Human Rights Council to closely monitor Iran, Human Rights Watch said today. On February 15, 2010, council members in Geneva considered Iran’s record during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of human rights to which all UN members are subject.

Human Rights Watch pointed to numerous recommendations made by other states during the review, many of which addressed the Iranian government’s crackdown against peaceful protesters and members of Iran’s civil society following the country’s disputed June 12 presidential elections. Human Rights Watch called on Iranian officials to immediately accept these recommendations to end the current human rights crisis.

“The Human Rights Council should insist that Tehran tells us what actually happened during and after the crackdown,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “How many people were killed or arrested, what are their names, and where are the detainees? The council should demand the government holds officials to account for their abuses instead of just denying everything.”

During the UPR, council members raised numerous concerns regarding the Iranian authorities’ violent and systematic attacks against demonstrators and opposition members during the past eight months, including the lack of accountability for abuses. In response, an Iranian government representative said that “all cases were duly addressed in competent courts openly and the defendants had access to their chosen lawyers,” and claimed that the Iranian Judiciary “meticulously examined all allegations pertaining to the breach of citizenry rights and most scrupulously heard the complaints lodged with them for even the alleged minor illegal treatments against the detainees.”

In fact, these statements are wholly inconsistent with evidence of thousands of arbitrary arrests, prolonged detentions, torture of detainees, and mass show trials conducted by the Iranian Judiciary during the past eight months. These have resulted in little or no official investigations or accountability for the alleged abuses. The remarks were made days after security forces violently suppressed peaceful demonstrators on February 11, the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Despite numerous warnings by high-ranking members of Iran’s military and security forces designed to intimidate citizens and discourage them from joining street protests, thousands of Iranians participated last week in largely peaceful demonstrations in Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz, Ahvaz, and other urban centers. Numerous media reports indicate that demonstrators were met by anti-riot police using tear gas, clubs, and other hand-held weapons used to attack and disperse crowds. Media reports also indicate that many peaceful demonstrators have been arrested.

“Tehran’s response to the UPR session contradicts the reality facing thousands of Iranians wishing to exercise their fundamental rights,” said Whitson. “The government’s denials show that without strong international pressure on Tehran, human rights abuses will continue.”

On February 17, the Human Rights Council’s UPR Working Group will submit its report to Iran, including a list of recommendations put forth by various delegations during the February 15 plenary session. The Iranian government will have an opportunity to accept or reject some or all of the recommendations submitted by the UPR Working Group, or offer to provide an answer before the council’s general session in June.

Human Rights Watch, which submitted a report on Iran to the UPR process, urged the council to call on the government to conduct an impartial, transparent, and comprehensive investigation into the killings, arrests, and detentions of thousands of demonstrators and civil society advocates affected by the post-election crisis in Iran; to investigate, prosecute, and punish government officials involved in the unlawful killing, arrest, detention, and abuse of thousands of demonstrators, opposition members, and civil society advocates; and to provide due process protections, including prompt charge under the law, access to a lawyer, and a hearing before a judge, for all detained individuals.

Human Rights Watch also called on Tehran to immediately accept these recommendations instead of waiting to respond to them before the June session.

Background
The UPR Review of Iran’s human rights record during the past four years comes only days after security forces violently suppressed peaceful demonstrators on February 11, the 31st anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. According to media reports, leading opposition figures and presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi were among those attacked by pro-government forces and prevented from joining demonstrators in Tehran. Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi’s wife, also sustained injuries as a result of an attack by pro-government militia, and one of Karrubi’s sons was arrested and taken to an unknown location. He was released a day later, with his body showing signs of physical abuse at the hands of pro-government forces. Former President Mohamed Khatami’s convoy was similarly attacked, and his brother, and sister-in-law were briefly detained by security forces before being released later in the day.

On February 14, Ali Karrubi’s mother, Fatemeh Karrubi, published an open letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei requesting that he order an end to physical and psychological abuses carried out against those detained by Iran’s security forces during the past eight months.

The government’s February 11 crackdown follows weeks of devastating raids, many of them conducted at night, targeting journalists, human rights defenders, students, and political dissidents. This month, the Committee to Protect Journalists announced that Iran had detained 47 journalists since June 2009, more than any other country. Security forces have supplemented their campaign of arrests with cyber attacks on news and information websites, stepped up blocking of email accounts, and slowed internet access. These measures are designed to stifle the free flow of information and block the few remaining channels of communication available to the Iranian people.

To read a June 19 press release about the government crackdown on protesters in Iran, please visit:
 http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/06/19/ir…

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Iran, please visit:
 http://www.hrw.org/en/middle-eastn-afric…

For more information, please contact:
In New York, Sarah Leah Whitson (English): +1-718-362-0172 (mobile)
In Washington D.C., Joe Stork (English): +1-202-209-2945 (mobile)
In New York, Faraz Sanei (English, Farsi): +1-212-216-1290

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.

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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.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: BESA Center
Date: Wed, Feb 10, 2010
Subject: BESA Lecture: “Turkey and the Caucasus,” Dr. Alexander Murinson, February 14, 2010

You are kindly invited to a lecture on

Turkey and the Caucasus

Dr. Alexander Murinson
University of London

Sunday, February 14, 2010, 17:00
BESA Seminar Room (Building 203), Room 131
Bar-Ilan University

Faculty of Social Sciences

Dept. of Political Studies

Iran to shut down Google email service: report.

Wed Feb 10, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The Iranian government plans to permanently suspend Google Inc’s email service in the country, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website on Wednesday.

Google said it experienced a sharp drop in email traffic in Iran, and that some users in the country were having trouble accessing Gmail, but said its networks were working properly.

The report comes as Iran braces for new opposition protests on Thursday during rallies marking the 1979 Islamic revolution. Protesters made use of modern networking tools such as Twitter and Gmail instant messaging last June after a disputed election plunged Iran into crisis.

Google is already at loggerheads with China’s government after it threatened to withdraw from the country last month over claims of online attacks and issues over censorship.

Iran’s telecommunications agency announced the suspension and said a national email service for Iranian citizens would soon be rolled out, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Google reported a drop in email traffic, but did not confirm the Journal report.

“We have heard from users in Iran that they are having trouble accessing Gmail,” a Google spokesman wrote in an e-mail to Reuters. “We can confirm a sharp drop in traffic, and we have looked at our own networks and found that they are working properly.”

He added that Google supported free online communication, but “sometimes it is not within our control.”

There was no immediate comment from Tehran, where it was after midnight when the news broke. Opposition leaders have called on supporters to take to the streets on Thursday, raising the risk of renewed violence.

The U.S. State Department could not confirm the report, but said any efforts to keep information from Iranians would fail. “While information technologies are enabling people around the world to communicate … like never before, the Iranian government seems determined to deny its citizens access to information, the ability to express themselves freely, network and share ideas,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

“Virtual walls won’t work in the 21st century any better than physical walls worked in the 20th century.”

Israel’s top ten water technology companies that help keep the world liquid.

By Karin Kloosterman
February 04, 2010
 http://www.israel21c.org/environment/isr…

A serious lack of potable water has forced Israel to create a flourishing water technology industry. ISRAEL21c brings you the country’s top 10 water companies.

It makes you think of the famous line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” – Israel is bordered by the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea; is home to the freshwater Sea of Galilee and the saltiest sea on earth, the Dead Sea. Rivers and springs run through the country.

And yet, despite all this water, Israel has been battling a severe shortage of potable water since its inception in 1948. To survive, policy and government incentives have contributed to the creation of a new and flourishing industry of water technologies.

From drip irrigation, to water recycling, reclamation, wastewater reuse and desalination, Israel has become a pioneering force worldwide, nicknamed by some as the ‘Silicon Valley’ of water technologies. As more and more countries around the world face similar water shortages, Israel’s expertise and industry are growing fast.

While young companies like Aqwise, which treats wastewater, and Atlantium, which uses ultraviolet to clean water, enhance Israel’s impressive water reputation and are on investors’ hit lists, ISRAEL21c brings you a list of the companies that form the backbone of the country’s water industry – tried, tested and true, these companies are the source of the local water technology industry’s claim to fame and were responsible for a large chunk of the country’s $1.4 billion in exports in 2008.

1. Mekorot Group

Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, is responsible for today’s thriving water export market. It is wholly owned by the government and for the past 70 years has managed the country’s environmental and security challenges in the area of water.

A powerhouse in desalination, water reclamation, water project engineering, cloud seeding, water safety and water quality, Mekorot supplies 90 percent of Israel’s drinking water and manages about 80% of its water supplies. Its subsidiary EMS Mekorot Projects supplies solutions in water works planning, installation, testing, sewage treatment, desalination, rain enhancement and more.

Mekorot’s second subsidiary Mekorot Development and Enterprise offers water solutions in design, feasibility studies, project management, and construction, operation and maintenance of treatment facilities. It recently signed an MOU agreement with a company in California and plans to provide desalination solutions for southern California.

2. Netafim

When every drop counts, why not deliver water straight to the roots where the water is needed; nothing more and nothing less? Israeli company Netafim invented drip irrigation – possibly one of the most significant developments in agrotechnology today – when an engineer discovered that an abnormally large tree growing in the desert was fed by a drip in a water pipe.

The company is a global leader in drip irrigation, supplying both low and high tech solutions in developed and developing nations. The company is also looking to new sustainable solutions to help to grow biofuel crops more efficiently.

3. Arad Group

If you live in the US or Canada, there’s a good chance that your water meter was made by Arad Group. The kibbutz-owned company specializes in the design, development and manufacture of precision water meters for domestic use, waterworks, irrigation and water management companies around the world.

The company just purchased a Spanish water meter company for about $10 million, and it recently developed a new drone plane aims to pinpoint water leaks on the ground from up in the sky.

4. IDE Technologies

IDE is the company that makes Israel a world leader in desalination technology, having built some 400 desalination plants around the world. It runs one of the world’s largest desalination facilities off Israel’s coast in the town of Ashkelon, and also at Hadera. Recently, the company also won a tender to build and operate a new desalination plant in Soreq, which will be the largest of its kind in the world.

The industrial company has been in business since 1965 when it was founded by the government. Today it specializes in more than desalination, also working with wastewater treatment, heat pumps and in producing ice and snow machines. IDE is now privately owned by Israel Chemical and the Delek Group.

5. Tahal Consulting Engineers

Israel’s largest firm of water engineering consultants, Tahal Consulting Engineers is ranked as the top of its kind in the world. In the business since 1961, Tahal runs projects with private and municipal clients both locally and abroad.

The company maintains close ties with leading international institutions including the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and United Nations agencies. Tahal specializes in water resource management, agricultural development, sewage and sanitation, environmental protection, roads and highways, marine engineering, industrial parks and more.

6. Amiad Filtration Systems

A company that specializes in drinking water filtration, Amiad Filtration Systems prides itself on using no chemicals and no polymers in an efficient process.

Founded in 1962, the company maintains a North American office in California and provides environmentally sound water filtration technologies on every continent from Antarctica to Australia. It also provides special solutions for offshore installations and the automotive industry.

7. Bermad

Bermad specializes in pipes, valves and how to control them. Serving its customers globally, the company offers a number of solutions for the control and management of water supplies anywhere, based on its control-valve technology.

Working in high-rise buildings, water works plants in municipalities, at power stations and in the private sector, Bermad’s impressive range of activity includes drip irrigation technology, sprinklers, micro-jets and greenhouse irrigation, as well as tools for commercial and residential gardening irrigation needs. The company also applies itself to fire protection and water metering and was instrumental in creating snow for the 2006 Winter Olympics.

8. Arkal

Efficient cleaning and filtering of water is the name of the game in water management and Arkal is fast becoming a world leader in the field, working with countries like Argentina, Turkey and Spain.

The company is active in plastics plants and in aquaculture and fisheries industries, and is providing sprinkler solutions to increase the effectiveness of irrigation.

9. Global Environmental Solutions (GES)

GES designs water and wastewater plants and can also build and operate them in industrial areas, in cities and for agriculture.
GES was created by a merger of three veteran Israeli water companies: Italchem Ayalon, Aniam, and Chemitaas. The company acquired Texma, a firm specializing in industrial adhesives, lubricants and chemicals for treating metals and Argad, a wastewater treatment company.

The super-company GES offers a full repertoire of water solutions for chemical companies, factories and municipalities and specializes in the food, beverage and hospitality industries.

10. Miya

While it has yet to prove itself, Miya is an ambitious business venture founded by Israeli billionaire Shari Arison.

The $100 million initiative, which was set up in 2006, aims to tackle the problem of urban water loss around the world. Miya is acquiring a base of companies and consultants to offer turnkey solutions, services and consulting to manage and fix leaky pipes and save billions of dollars annually.

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.

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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.

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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

Arava Power Gets Deals For 15 Mid-Size Solar Fields

Date: 08-Feb-10
Country: ISRAEL
Author: Tova Cohen, Reuthers

TEL AVIV – Israeli solar energy developer Arava Power said on Sunday it signed long-term contracts with 15 agricultural cooperatives to build mid-size solar fields at an investment of 2 billion shekels ($533 million).

The fields will produce a total of 100 megawatts of solar energy using photovoltaics, for an average of 6.5 megawatts per field.

Arava said it is advancing rooftop solar installations on cowsheds and factories in the signatory cooperatives.

Last year German conglomerate Siemens invested $15 million in Arava Power to build 10 five-megawatt solar fields.

In December the Public Utilities Authority decided to allow mid-size solar fields at a nationwide capacity of 300 megawatts but many in the industry believe this cap will be filled quickly.

“The goal to produce 300 solar megawatts is an important step toward implementing the government’s decision to produce 5 percent of Israel’s energy consumption from renewable sources by 2014, but it’s not enough,” Arava Power Chief Executive Jon Cohen said.

“In order to achieve this goal, at least 1,000 megawatts are needed, and the market indicates that … mid-size solar fields can fill the gap faster than any other source.”

Arava Power President Yosef Abramowitz said that in each of the 15 mid-size field locations the company plans to build a large-size field, adding another 500 megawatts to its pipeline.

“Together with our partners from Siemens, we are weighing additional proposals from investors,” he said, without providing further details.

Siemens also acquired Israel’s Solel Solar Systems in October for $418 million.