EinBrera

The Narrative of Perpetual Palestinian Victimhood

2011-11-16T03:56:00.000-08:00

by Shelby Steele November 14, 2011 at 5:00 am

Shelby Steele, Robert J and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute, member of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.

The following is excerpted from a speech delivered September 22, 2011 in New York City at the conference "The Perils of Global Intolerance: The UN and Durban III," sponsored by the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and the Hudson Institute.

The Arab-Israeli conflict, is not really a conflict, it is a war – a war of the Arabs against the Jews. In many ways, this conflict has been a conflict between narratives. We who strongly support Israel have done a poor job in formulating a narrative which will combat the story spun by the other side. We can do better.

The Durban conferences, the request for UN recognition of a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood, and the general animus in the Middle East and elsewhere toward Israel and toward the Jews, what are they really about? Is the Durban conference and the claim that Israel is a racist nation really about reforming the people of Israel and curing them of their racism?

I think their real interest is to situate the Palestinian people within a narrative of victimization. This is their ulterior goal: to see themselves and to have others see them as victims of colonialism, as victims of white supremacy.

Listen to their language; it is the language of colonial oppression. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas claims that Palestinians have been occupied for 63 years. The word oppressed is constant, exploited. In this, there is a poetic truth; like poetic license, in a poetic truth a writer will bend the rules in order to be more effective.

I will give you one example of a poetic truth that comes from my group, black Americans. We make the following claims: America is a deeply, intractably racist society. It may not be as conspicuous today as it was before. Nevertheless, it is still there today structurally and systemically, and it still holds us back and keeps us from achieving the American dream.

To contradict this claim, one can come forward with evidence to suggest that racism in America today is about 25th on the list of problems facing black Americans. One can recount one of the great untold stories of America, namely, the moral growth and evolution away from that problem. This is not to say that racism is completely extinguished, but that it no longer prevents the forward progress of any black in the United States. There is no evidence to suggest that it does. Yet, this claim is still the centerpiece of black American identity – this idea that we are victimized by a fundamentally, incurably racist society.

Poetic truths like that are marvelous because no facts and no reason can ever penetrate. Supporters of Israel are up against a poetic truth. We keep hitting it with all the facts. We keep hitting it with obvious logic and reason. And we are so obvious and conspicuously right that we assume it is going to have an impact and it never does.

Why not? These narratives, these poetic truths, are the source of their power. Focusing on the case of the Palestinians, who would they be if they were not victims of white supremacy? They would just be poor people in the Middle East. They would be backwards. They would be behind Israel in every way. So this narrative is the source of their power. It is the source of their money. Money comes from around the world. It is the source of their self-esteem. Without it, would they be able to compete with Israeli society? They would have to confront in themselves a certain inferiority with regard to Israel – as most other Arab nations would have to confront an inferiority in themselves and be responsible for it.

The idea that the problem is Israel, that the problem is the Jews, protects Palestinians from having to confront that inferiority or do anything about it or overcome it. The idea among Palestinians that they are victims means more to them than anything else. It is everything. It is the centerpiece of their very identity and it is the way they define themselves as human beings in the world. It is not an idle thing. Our facts and our reason are not going to penetrate easily that definition or make any progress.

The question is, how do they get away with a poetic truth, based on such an obvious series of falsehoods? One reason why they get away with it in the Middle East is that the Western world lacks the moral authority to call them on it. The Western world has not said "your real problem is inferiority. Your real problem is underdevelopment." That has not been said, nor will ever be said – because the Western world was once colonial, was once racist, did practice white supremacy, and is so ashamed of itself and so vulnerable to those charges, that they are not going to say a word. They are not going to say what they really think and feel about what is so obvious about the circumstances among the Palestinians. So the poetic truth that Palestinians live by carries on.

International media also do not feel that they have the moral authority to report what they see. On the contrary, they feed this poetic truth and give it a kind of gravitas that it would never otherwise have.

Consequently, we need to develop a narrative that is not poetic, but literal and that is based on the truth. What would such a narrative look like?

It would begin with the presumption that the problem in the Middle East is not white supremacy but the end of white supremacy. After World War II, the empires began to contract, Britain went home, France went home, and the Arab world was left almost abandoned, and in a state of much greater freedom than they had ever known before.

Freedom is, however, a dicey thing to experience. When you come into freedom, you see yourself more accurately in the world. This is not unique to the Middle East. It was also the black American experience, when the Civil Rights bill was passed in 1964 and we came into much greater freedom. If you were a janitor in 1963 and you are still a janitor in 1965, you have all these freedoms and they are supported by the rule of law, then your actual experience of freedom is one of humiliation and one of shame. You see how far you have to go, how far behind you are, how little social capital you have with which to struggle forward. Even in freedom you see you are likely to be behind for a long time. In light of your inability to compete and your underdevelopment, freedom becomes something that you are very likely going to hate – because it carries this humiliation.

At that point formerly oppressed groups develop what I call bad faith. Bad faith is when you come into freedom, you are humiliated and you say, "Well you know the real truth is I am not free. Racism still exists. Zionism is my problem. The State of Israel is my problem. That is why I am so far behind and that is why I cannot get ahead."

You develop a culture grounded in bad faith where you insist that you are less free than you really are. Islamic extremism is the stunning example of this phenomenon. "I have to go on jihad because I am fighting for my freedom." Well you already have your freedom. You could stay home and study. You could do something constructive. But "No, I cannot do that because that makes me feel bad about myself." So I live in a world of extremism and dictators.

This is not unique to the Middle East. In black America we had exactly the same thing. After we got the civil rights bill and this greater degree of freedom, then all of a sudden we hear the words "black power." Then all of a sudden we have the Black Panthers. Then we have this militancy, this picking up of the gun because we feel bad about ourselves. We feel uncompetitive and this becomes our compensation. It is a common pattern among groups that felt abandoned when they became free.

This is the real story of the Palestinians and of the Middle East. They will never be reached by reason until they are somehow able to get beyond bad faith, to get beyond this sort of poetic truth that they are the perennial victims of an aggressive and racist Israeli nation.

Challenging their narrative with this explanation will enable us to be more effective. Until now, we have constantly used facts and reason and have not progressed.

Durban is a perfect example of bad faith because Durban is way of saying Israelis are racist and they are our problem. Durban really is a way of saying I am not free. I am still a victim. That is the real purpose of Durban. The Palestinian unilateral claim for recognition from the UN is also a perfect example of bad faith. If Palestinians proceed to the Security Council, they will very likely be turned down, and will respond by saying: "I told you we were victims. I told you the West is racist," and so on. It refuels the same sad identity.

The irony and the tragedy of all this is that it keeps these groups in a bubble where they never encounter or deal with the truth. This becomes a second oppression for all these groups. They have been oppressed once, now they are free and yet they create a poetic truth that then oppresses them all over again.

How are you going to have good faith if you are raised being told that the society in which you are trying to compete is against you, is racist? It is always the Palestinians who suffer, and will continue to suffer, because all of their energy is going into the avoidance of their situation rather than into being challenged by it and facing into it.

The strength of our argument is that it gives the Palestinians a way out. Development is the way out. The West can help you to compete. It may take a little while. But the alternative is a cycle of violence and hatred and poetic truths about constant victimhood.

The pattern of bad faith in certain places comes to embrace a kind of ethic of death. As Osama bin Laden claimed: in the West, you are all afraid of death, but we love death. Why would you love death? If you are not afraid of death then you are aggrandized; all of a sudden you are a big man. You are not a little, recently freed, inferior. Instead, you are somebody who manages, who conquers his world, who has power. For terrorism is power, the power of the gun. This poetic truth leads to a terrible, inconceivable fascination with death and violence and guns and bombs. It consumes a whole part of the world every single day – rather than the boring things that good faith requires, like going to school, raising your children, inventing software for instance, making money
This is the way the narrative must be retold.

The Trashing of the Middle East

2011-09-20T13:50:00.000-07:00

Posted by Lawrence W. White

There are few Middle East analysts as astute as Barry Rubin. Well informed, not prone to hyperbole, as events have played out he has become progressively more negative about President Obama’s performance on the Middle East stage. I have reprinted his latest essay below.

The Presidential election next year will be fought out largely on domestic issues, especially the prolonged recession, with high unemployment and underemployment. Yet just as we saw in the special Congressional election last week in Queens, foreign policy will loom large. Americans are tired of watching Barak Obama apologize for our nation, while he dangerously undermines our allies

Thus his failure to support our ally Israel, his failure to critique the Palestinians on their role in undermining negotiations, and his enabling of Israel’s old and new enemies, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, and now Egypt, Turkey, and Lebanon, will be issues that the American people will judge harshly.

And it will not be limited to Jews and Evangelical Christians. The emergence of media and pundits who speak to broader segments of the public have found Obama deficient in his handling of the Middle East. Current Presidential candidates, speaking to audiences with few if any Jews, point to his betrayal of Israel as a major failing. It appears that a majority of the American people has grown disgusted with the way that Obama has thrown our ally Israel under the bus.

There are many other examples of Obamas ineptness in the arena of foreign policy. I will highlight only two here.

One clear example of failure is Turkey, the remnant of the old and powerful Ottoman Empire. Not long ago, Turkey was a staunch ally of both the United States and Israel. As pointed out by Jack Rosen , under Prime Minister Erdogan Turkey has turned away from the West, and is now looking to be a leader of the more radical Islamist states. Erdogan is now firmly against America. He has demonized Israel, promised to send flotillas to Gaza accompanied by the Turkish navy, tried to prevent Israel from drilling for oil and gas off its own coast, insisted that Israel allow arms to freely enter Gaza, and increased repression of his own people. And all the while, Obama demanded nothing from Turkey in exchange for American support.

A second example is Obama’s handling of nuclear proliferation by rogue states. As John Bolton has pointed out, “Since his inauguration, … Obama has insisted that the nuclear-proliferation threat represented by Iran and North Korea could be defused through negotiation. Although he has never articulated the slightest reason to believe that either rogue state would voluntarily eliminate its weapons program, he has extended his “open hand,” waiting for Tehran and Pyongyang to unclench their fists. In both cases, gullibility and the fascination with negotiation as a process, or perhaps just Obama’s narcissism, have given the proliferators the precious assets of time and the cover of legitimacy, both of which they have unfortunately used all too productively.”

There are many more examples, some outlined by Barry Rubin. To quote Rubin, on Middle East issues Obama has failed dangerously and badly. American national interests require that he be defeated in the next election.

I accuse President Barack Obama of Destroying Western Interests in the Middle East, Helping Destabilize the Region, and Putting Millions of Lives in Jeopardy

by Barry Rubin

http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/09/19/i-accuse-president-barack-obama-of-destroying-western-interests-in-the-middle-east-helping-destabilize-the-region-and-putting-millions-of-lives-in-jeopardy/

Think of how outrageous my headline is:

Destroying Western Interests in the Middle East, Helping Destabilize the Region, and Putting Millions of Lives in Jeopardy

Do you think that’s extremist, crazy, can’t be true because you’re not seeing that stuff in the New York Times? You must be a right-wing Republican, you say?

No, just a serious Middle East analyst.

The tenth anniversary of September 11, almost three years after Obama’s election, is a suitable time to confront this issue honestly and fully. So consider fairly and honestly the list of points below.

Egypt: Obama supported a revolution overthrowing a U.S. ally — rather than a smooth transition replacing the dictator and instituting some reform without dropping the entire regime — disregarding State Department advice and not even consulting with Jordan, Israel, or Saudi Arabia! He also unilaterally announced his readiness to see the Muslim Brotherhood in power. His analysts denied that the Brotherhood is a radical, anti-American Islamist organization that supports terrorism. The resulting dangerous crisis, including Egypt becoming a new type of Iran, is now clear to all.

Israel-Palestinian Peace Process: By distancing himself from Israel, removing all pressure from the Palestinians, unilaterally proposing a freeze of Israeli construction on settlements, and repeatedly messing up the effort to restart negotiations, Obama made the peace process situation worse. His failure to handle properly the Palestinian UN unilateral independence bid has put U.S. policy in a terrible mess, with an American veto leading to large-scale anti-Americanism and probable violence both by Palestinians against Israel and by Muslims against the United States.

Israel: The damage the Obama Administration did to Israel was not in bilateral relations or even in the “peace process” but by its role in the deterioration of the regional situation to a dangerous extent. As a result, the two most powerful regional powers that had decent relations with Israel — Egypt and Turkey — turned around 180 degrees; Hamas rule was entrenched in the Gaza Strip; Hizballah’s rule in Lebanon. That’s four of Israel’s “neighbors” that became effectively hostile while the Obama Administration didn’t even notice. As the level of threat rose, U.S. political-diplomatic support for Israel declined.

Turkey: As Turkey continued to move toward being a repressive Islamist state allied with revolutionary Islamism, the U.S. government didn’t notice. Farcically, it promoted the ”Turkish model” and made Turkey its mediator over Syria’s future!

Lebanon: As Lebanon fell under Syria-Iran-Hizballah control, the Obama Administration did nothing. It failed to support the moderates and so they surrendered.

Syria: The Administration pursued the factually ridiculous effort to pull Syria away from Iran and engaged it even as Damascus escalated its support for terrorism, aggression toward Lebanon, killing Americans in Iraq, and then repressing its own people.

Gaza: The Administration gave Hamas indirect aid, made no serious effort to overthrow a radical, anti-American, genocidal-oriented regime, and pressed Israel to reduce sanctions to a minimum. This ensured the survival and strengthening of a pro-terrorist revolutionary Islamist state on the Mediterranean.

Saudi Arabia: Repeated slaps in the face and failure to confront advances by revolutionary Islamists — especially Iran and Syria, as well as abandonment of Mubarak — disgusted this ally. Seeing U.S. weakness, it concluded it has to take care of itself

Iran: After wasting a long time in engagement, the administration finally (at the slowest possible speed) did push sanctions. Yet it still has no strategy for opposing Iran’s non-nuclear methods of subverting neighbors and expanding its influence.

Danger: Obama failed to realize it or to define properly friends and enemies.

Leadership: Despite being begged by different allies, the Obama Administration failed to demonstrate leadership.

Empowering Islamism: In his Cairo speech and thereafter, Obama emphasized the Muslim identity of Middle Easterners thus undermining Arab identity and nationalism.

Endangering the lives of American soldiers and civilians: By refusing to allow a proper analysis of Islamism and terrorism. Consider, for example, the Fort Hood attack in which Americans were killed because military officers feared to do their job lest it hurt their promotions.

Libya: Obama entered a war without any strategy for what would happen after Qadhafi fell or any knowledge of who he was helping to promote as the new leadership.

Rejection of basic diplomatic principles: Supporting friends and punishing enemies; credibility; deterrence; coherent strategy.

What’s important is the result, not whether you think this has been caused by incompetence; arrogance; a thirst for popularity over responsibility; ideology; a personal antipathy toward Israel (it shouldn’t be exaggerated but it’s there); lack of experience; choosing advisors badly; or ignorance among them. I don’t think it’s been deliberate but what’s shocking is to have a policy so bad that many do.

There is nothing inevitably Democratic or liberal about these failings. No previous president or administration — even that of Jimmy Carter — comes close to having so many dangerous failures. Nor is it inevitably a product of Washington, as the State and Defense departments gave him some good intelligence and advice which, if followed, would have greatly reduced the extent of the problems.

You can cheer Obama’s continued strategic cooperation with Israel, sanctions on Iran, and engagement in Libya. You can place blame on Obama’s predecessor or chant, “Obama killed Osama” and not tireless American intelligence operatives or courageous Navy SEALs. But after all the rationalizations won’t you admit that the situation is still truly shocking?

The American people, Middle East allies, US. interests, and the world generally cannot afford another four years of misjudgment and reckless endangerment. Can Obama be trusted to deal with a nuclear-armed Iran; a radical Egypt supporting Hamas; a Turkish regime screaming about fighting Israel, a Palestinian movement that has thrown away any diplomatic alternative?

I leave jobs and the economy, medical care, and such to others. On Middle East issues, however, Obama has failed dangerously and badly. He has ignored chances to learn from experience. American national interests require that he be defeated in the next election.

The Case Against Rick Perry: Part One; the Execution of an Innocent Man

2011-08-17T21:46:00.000-07:00

Current Rasmussen polls show Texas Governor Rick Perry leading the Republican field with 29 % of the GOP vote, with second place Mitt Romney at 18%. As a newcomer who was vigorously courted prior to entering the race, Perry is likely at the peak of his popularity. I predict that as he becomes better known, and especially as some of his negatives become apparent, his support will fall off.

There are three major reasons not to hand the GOP nomination to Governor Perry. The first of these, the fact that he presided over a serious abuse of the justice system which resulted in the execution of a man who was almost certainly innocent, is discussed below.

On December 23, 1991, a fire at the Corsicana, Texas home of .Cameron Todd Willingham resulted in the deaths of his three daughters. Willingham himself escaped the home with only minor burns. Willingham's wife was not home at the time of the fire. Prosecutors charged that Willingham set the fire and killed the children in an attempt to cover up abuse of the girls. However, there was never any history or evidence of child abuse and Willingham's wife had told prosecutors that he had never abused the children. Willingham was convicted of murder, and after 12 years on death row, he was executed. for the murder of his three young children by arson.

In 2009, David Grann published an exhaustive essay in the New Yorker that documented the story of this crime in detail. The essay did not have the flavor of a propaganda piece, but presented the opinions and statements of all the participants .

The primary evidence leading to Willingham's arrest and conviction resulted from police inspections after the fire, based on forensic evidence that supposedly proved the fire was intentionally started using some form of liquid accelerant, thereby proving arson. However, as Grann shows, the evidence was, in fact, completely invalid.

Fire investigator Gerald L Hurst reviewed the case documents, including the trial transcriptions and an hour-long videotape of the aftermath of the fire scene. Hurst said in December 2004 that "There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire.” “The whole case was based on the purest form of junk science," Hurst later said. It became clear that the charge of arson was based on erroneous and invalid concepts, and this was shown to be the case prior to Willingham's execution.

In addition to the arson evidence, a jailhouse informant named Johnny Webb claimed that Willingham confessed to him that he set the fire to hide an injury or death of one of the girls, caused by his wife, although none of the girls at the time of death were found to have physical injuries still distinguishable after the effects of the fire. Webb later told a reporter for The New Yorker, "it's very possible I misunderstood what he said. Being locked up in that little cell makes you kind of crazy. My memory is in bits and pieces. I was on a lot of medication at the time. Everyone knew that.". At Willingham's trial, Webb offered an explanation for the individual, distinguishable burns that were found on the forehead and arm of one of the children, stating that Willingham confessed to burning her twice with a piece of "wadded up" paper in an effort to make it appear as though the children were "playing with fire" Webb was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Even the prosecutor described Webb as "an unreliable kind of guy", yet after Webb's testimony the prosecutor successfully got him released from prison early.

In addition to the invalid arson evidence, and the unreliable statements from the jailhouse informant, evidence was also presented that Willingham was an unsavory character with a large skull head tattoo, and a background that may or may not have included spousal abuse.

One of the prosecutors admitted that an "undeniably flawed forensic report" was used to convict Willingham, but claimed that other reasons established guilt.

After years on death row, Cameron Todd Willingham’s final recourse was to appeal to Rick Perry, the governor of Texas. In his final hours, Willingham and his attorneys tried frantically to show the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, a new scientific report proving his innocence. Governor Perry chose to ignore this evidence and refused to grant a stay of execution, saying through a spokesperson that "The Governor made his decision based on the facts of the case." Governor Perry said that the "supposed experts" were wrong, and setting up a straw man, claimed that the supposed contrary evidence was anti-death penalty "propaganda".

Willingham was executed on February 17, 2004. After reading Grann's report in the New Yorker, it seems clear that that none of the evidence used to convict Willingham was valid, and that an innocent man was executed.

Five years after Willingham was executed, the State of Texas ordered an unprecedented re-examination of the case. In August 2009, eighteen years after the fire and five years after Willingham's execution, a report conducted by Dr. Craig Beyler, hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission to review the case, said that investigators ignored the scientific method for analyzing fires described in NFPA 921, Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations and relied on "folklore" and "myths". The report found that "a finding of arson could not be sustained", and that key testimony from a fire marshal at Willingham's trial was "hardly consistent with a scientific mind-set and is more characteristic of mystics or psychics”.

As the commission prepared to hear testimony from Beyler, Governor Perry quickly fired and replaced three of the nine commission members in an apparent attempt to change the commission's findings. Perry denies these allegations. Rick Perry aide Mary Anne Wiley said the commission's $30,000 hiring of fire scientist Craig Beyler was a waste of taxpayer money.

The final report confirmed what five other leading arson experts had found -- what passed for arson analysis had no scientific basis. The report concluded that the original arson investigators relied on now-outdated science in concluding that the fire was intentionally set. This was a fire; it was not arson. In response to charges that he allowed the execution of an innocent man, Perry was quoted as stating "he was a wife beater."

There was one more piece of activity that smacks of a cover-up. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that the state's Forensic Science Commission (FSC) does not have authority to review evidence regarding the possible innocence of Willingham, because evidence that was tested or offered into evidence prior to September 1, 2005 is beyond the scope of the FSC's legal jurisdiction.

The execution of an innocent person has long been regarded as a nightmare by most persons including supporters of the death penalty.

John Stuart Mill was an eloquent defender of capital punishment, arguing that executing a murderer was proof of the value of life. However, for Mill, there was one clear exception, “that if by an error of justice an innocent person is put to death, the mistake can never be corrected.”

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has said that the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event.”

The process by which a governor may grant clemency is considered the last gatekeeper to the executioner, and has been called by the U.S. Supreme Court “the ‘fail safe’ in our criminal justice system.” This is a serious duty. With his cavalier attitude toward critical new evidence, his unwillingness to take his profound responsibility seriously, Rick Perry failed a critical test.

This can be contrasted with Illinois Governor George Ryan, an advocate of capital punishment who suspended the death penalty in 2000, after thirteen people on death row in Illinois were exonerated, declaring that he could no longer support a system that has “come so close to the ultimate nightmare—the state’s taking of innocent life.”

Choosing who shall live and who shall die is a serious matter, requiring an obligation to use restraint when there is doubt. We want leaders whom we can trust to exercise power responsibly. The Willingham case clearly shows that Rick Perry lacks the virtues of both charity and justice. His ethical shortcomings result in him not being the sort of man we want to select for President of the United States.

Michael Lerner Solves our Debt Ceiling Crisis

2011-07-31T21:35:00.000-07:00

Michael Lerner, a faux rabbi who never graduated from a theological rabbinic school, has done it again. In his latest emailing he has his own unique solution to the debt ceiling crisis.

Here is what he says;

“Instead of being such a wimp, Obama could even now simply announce the following plan for what will happen if the debt limit isn't reached: he will pay the social security, medicare and other benefits to those Congressional districts whose representatives voted to raise the debt limit and not to those which did not.”

Let me understand this. If a particular Congressman did not vote to raise the debt limit, Lerner would have all the seniors of his district thrown off the Medicare rolls, no matter how sick or in need of health care they were, and these people would also be denied their Social Security checks, meaning destitution for many. Talk about collective punishment!

Let me be clear. According to the First Amendment to the US Constitution, Lerner is entitled to say whatever he believes. But this sort of “solution” is what Lerner has been warning us would happen if the “right wing” is allowed to take over our nation. (Lerner always uses the term “right wing” pejoratively; in his demonization of the American voting public, it applies to all Americans who support Israel)

The hypocrisy and sanctimony should not be surprising. This is a man who ostentatiously trumpets his spirituality, and who claims to deplore the political game which he has played for his entire adult life. And yet he suggests playing hardball in a way that not even Chris Matthews would suggest.

There is a pattern here. A few years ago. Alan Dershowitz wrote a piece for the Jerusalem Post in which he pointed out that Michael Lerner had concurred in a call for his (Dershowitz’s) assassination.

Dershowitz recounted that Norman Finkelstein, a strong supporter of Hezbollah and an opponent of justice for Holocaust survivors, had published an article entitled "Should Alan Dershowitz Target Himself for Assassination?" In his article, Finkelstein justified Lerner’s assassination as a war criminal, based on his support for Israel.

Finkelstein's piece was accompanied by a cartoon showing Dershowitz masturbating while viewing images of dead Lebanese civilians with a Jewish Star of David prominently featured.

Michael Lerner then approvingly circulated the Finkelstein article from his Tikkun e-mail account and under the Tikkun letterhead. This is the rabbi who promotes himself as head of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, who claims to be devoted "to peace, justice, non-violence, generosity, caring, love and compassion." This is a man who purports to observe the Jewish values against evil words (lashon hara) and bearing false witness. This is a man who ardently opposes Israel's targeted assassination of Hamas terrorists, but supports the assassination of a pro-Israel academic.

Here are some of Dershowitz's comments in response:

“Why would a rabbi circulate an article by an anti-Semite suggesting that the assassination of a pro-Israel professor might be justified? Because the "rabbi" is himself an Israel-basher who has gotten into bed with Hezbollah supporters, advocates of divestment from Israel and other Jew-haters.

I'm describing, of course, Rabbi Michael Lerner, whose magazine Tikkun is quickly becoming the most virulently anti-Israel screed ever published under Jewish auspices.”

Lerner has never graduated from a theological rabbinic seminary, and many do not consider him a rabbi. After dropping out of the Jewish Theological Seminary, he prevailed on three buddies to “ordain” him, a so-called private ordination. Mainstream rabbinical leaders of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements have expressed concern that private ordinations, not granted by seminaries, can produce insufficiently educated or fraudulent rabbis.

Lerner’s response to this is boilerplate Lerner. He attacks seminaries for being "more interested in producing organizational men for Jewish life than spiritual leaders connected to the deepest spiritual and social-justice minds".(presumably and immodestly meaning himself)

In response to this, Rabbi Alan Lew, a genuine spiritual being, stated, "That is arrogant nonsense. I spent six years in extremely rigorous, round-the-clock study in the classic texts of our tradition. Authentic Jewish spirituality is in the texts, not in some fancy New Age ideas or watered-down kabbalah”.

Whether or not Lerner is a rabbi, whether or not he is devoted "to peace, justice, non-violence, generosity, caring, love and compassion.", whether or not he advocates assassinating a political rival, his latest screed makes one thing crystal clear. Lerner supports severe collective punishment for those who live in districts in which their representative takes positions different from those of Lerner. This has all the hallmarks of a tyrannical approach to policy making.

Whether liberal, conservative or centrist, this is not the way we solve problems in America. These are not the words of a spiritual, compassionate, above-the-political-fray person. Nor is this the language of a believer in democracy.

Israel and Palestine; The Two State Solution

2011-07-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

What is preventing a two state solution?

What does a two state solution mean?

When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean － neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." Lewis Carroll.

Here are two key questions;

A. ”Two states for two peoples” is the position of the majority of Jews, both in Israel and in America. Why isn’t it happening?

B. Why does the government of Israel insist that the Arabs recognize the existence of a Jewish state? Many persons, both Arab and Jew, believe that this is simply nit picking, possibly a deliberate stratagem designed to serve as a barrier to proceeding with negotiations.

The expression “two states for two peoples” has different meaning for the two parties to the conflict, meanings that are mutually exclusive. Here is a primer, with seven parts and a conclusion.

1. For the Israeli Jews, the two states will be a Palestinian Arab state, (to which any Palestinian may “return”, but no Jews will be allowed to live there, no matter how long they and their families have been there), and a Jewish state, in which the rights of all minorities will be safeguarded

2. For the Palestinian Arabs, there will also be two states. They agree with the Jews on one of those. There will be an Arab state, free of Jews. . However, the other state is to be a binational, not a Jewish state, and Palestinians Arabs may invoke the “right of return”, entering this state in large numbers.. Demographics are such that the binational state will eventually be a majority Arab state, and if democracy prevails will be controlled by Arabs. Palestinian Arabs will live in both states, Jews will only be permitted in the binational state, where they will eventually be a minority,.

3. For the Arabs, there can never be a Jewish state in the Middle East. This is fundamental, and is why there have been multiple wars. This principle has been reiterated by President Abbas (“we refuse to recognize a Jewish state”) and by all the key figures in both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. This intransigence by the Arabs makes peace most unlikely at the present time.

In 2000, in talks brokered by President Clinton, a two state plan was offered to the Palestinians by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. President Arafat said no, offered no alternate proposal, walked away, and started a deadly intifada. Similarly in 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered a deal that would have given the Palestinians the equivalent of 100% of the West Bank. This too was refused.

Why did the Palestinian Arabs shun these opportunities? Because for them preventing a Jewish state is more important than having their own state. If this were not so, a Palestinian state would have been established many years ago.

4. For the Jews, there must be a State of Israel , and it must be a Jewish state, meaning the end of subjugation as a people. This is the essence of the Zionist enterprise, a movement of national liberation for the Jewish people, who have survived 2000 years of persecution, pogroms, and mass murder.

In his recent speech to the US Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu stated “Our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state”

No agreement is possible when one side is committed to the other's destruction. Israeli Jews are not willing to watch their state be eliminated. This means a standoff with the Arabs..

5. J Street also claims to exist to promote a two state solution. However, their version of a two state solution is one that would exist after President Obama put pressure on Israel to give in to Arab demands, thereby facilitating the scenario desired by the Arabs described above. For J Street to claim they are pro-Israel is simply untrue. Unfortunately, many American Jews accept this simplistic and completely wrong argument. Similar groups, like Jewish Voice for Peace and Tikkun, encourage criticism of Israel, and utter meaningless and false slogans, statements that have no basis in history, logic, and current realities.

Many American Jews have been seduced by the easy promises of these groups (don’t we all want peace? Why won’t Israel get with the program?) They believe that J Street is simply presenting a way to achieve progress, and is doing the work that Israel should be doing. In other words, sitting in the safety of the US, and funded by the anti-Zionist George Soros, J Street claims to know what is needed for a permanent solution, and they claim that they know better than the government of Israel, elected by the people who are facing rocket attacks and suicide bombers,

Unfortunately the presence of this attitude by some American Jews has encouraged President Obama to put pressure on only one side in the conflict, pressure to do things that will promote the achievement of the Arab goals, while endangering the Jewish state Paradoxically, all this “peace making” by President Obama, by the Quartet, by the European Union, and by the United Nations, has resulted in making a real solution more remote.

6. For the Obama administration, desperate for a foreign policy “success”, pressure on Israel makes perfect sense. The words “two states” means exactly what they want them to mean. To achieve a deal that will make the Arabs happy has greater importance than to actually have a Jewish and Arab state living in peace side by side.

Most of Obama’s advisors recommend leaning on Israel. They believe that prior and current financial and diplomatic support for Israel by the US, will now provide the needed leverage to force Israel to bow to the demands of the US. (In the condescending attitude of Tom Friedman and the New York Times, how can Netanyahu dare to say “no” to the President of the US?).

The reality is that such pressure, perceived as suicidal, has no effect on Israel, and only makes the Arabs more recalcitrant, expecting that the US and the various international bodies will do their negotiation for them and force Israel to give in to the Arab version of the two state solution.

7. There was one more historical “Two State Solution”, that occurred in 1922. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War 1, the British were given a mandate over the Ottoman province known as Palestine. In 1917, The British Foreign Secretary, James Arthur Balfour, indicated by letter that Palestine was to be the homeland of the Jewish people. This was later incorporated into the “Mandate for Palestine”, in which the Allied Powers agreed that the Mandate would be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made in 1917, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

In 1922, Britain divided the Palestinian Mandate into two parts (two states). One part, consisting of the 74% of the Mandate, the area East of the Jordan, was made into an Arab state known as Transjordan (later Jordan), the remaining 26% was kept by the British and was intended to be the future Jewish state. This was the first two state solution, 90 years ago, designed to create an Arab state and a Jewish state.

Conclusion

Until the Arabs are willing to accept the existence of a Jewish state, there will be no solution to the conflict. The proposal of two states for two people, one Arab, one Jewish, is eminently fair. It has a long historical pedigree, including the recommendation of partition (into two states) by the UN in 1947, and achieves appropriate goals for both sides. The US Congress and the American people understand this; our Administration does not.

Why Won’t Israel make Peace?

2011-07-12T21:50:00.000-07:00

If one pays attention to J Street, or Michael Lerner, or the editorial writers of certain newspapers, or to any of the numerous persons who believe it their solemn responsibility to disparage, dishonor, and defame the Jewish state, it is the “right wing” government of Israel that stands in the way of a peaceful solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. As a lie, this one is a whopper.

As Joseph Goebbels said “ If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”. Lies about Israel certainly fall into this category. They are repeated often, and by persons who should know better, so that even the most fervent advocates of Israel begin to wonder whether there may not be some truth to it.

Recently one of my readers expressed annoyance with my criticism of President Obama for his recommendation that Israel begin negotiations by returning to the 1949 cease fire lines. His email to me read “Nothing so far has worked. Obama is trying something new. You could at least give him credit for that. Since you are critical of him, what are your alternative suggestions?”

Sounds reasonable, except that it is based on a false premise and lack of understanding of what is required to achieve peace in that conflict.

First, this is not “something new”. In fact, Obama’s suggestion means returning to the status quo that existed from 1949 to 1967. At that time the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem was in Arab hands. The Western Wall was off limits to Jews. But most importantly, there was no occupation that the Palestinians could point to. There were no Jewish settlements serving as “an impediment” to peace. And yet, for some reason, there was no peace.

The cease fire lines of 1949 set up suicidal and indefensible borders. Terrorists continually crossed these lines to kill Israelis. Syrians shot down on the farming communities of the Galilee from the Golan heights. , And Israel’s neighbors were emboldened to make war, with the single goal of extirpating the Jewish state. Is this what our President expects Israel to go back to?

Secondly, with respect to alternative recommendations. It is never possible to resolve a dispute between two parties if one of them does not want it resolved. The Palestinian Arabs have come up with a never-ending series of excuses to avoid a peace deal. They have made it clear that the only thing that will satisfy them will be a complete disappearance of the Jewish state. The only thing negotiable is whether this happens all at once or in stages.

Let’s look at the record. Attempts at peace have been made repeatedly. Recently Flame published an article outlining the many failed attempts to make peace, and outlining why intransigence by the Arabs has made peace impossible.

Even before the modern state of Israel was born, in 1947 the United Nations proposed a two state solution. The Jews accepted it, while the Arabs rejected it and started a war that resulted in the deaths of one of every 100 Israelis.

From 1949 to 1967, Egypt and Jordan controlled Gaza and the West Bank. There was absolutely no talk of a Palestinians state at that time, though the Palestine Liberation Organization came into being during this time.. (What were they planning to liberate?)
After Israel’s victory in the Six Day War of 1967, Israel offered peace to her neighbors. The Arabs responded; “No Peace, No Negotiation, and No Recognition of Israel”. Under the direction of President Bill Clinton, a series of negotiations occurred in 2000, in which Israel offered to withdraw from 97% of the West Bank and all of Gaza. Yassir Arafat turned this down, did not offer a counter proposal, but started a war. Further peace offers were made by Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, and in 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, turning it over to the Palestinians.
None of this led to peace. Why? Because the Arabs have stated repeatedly, right up to the present, that they will never accept a Jewish state in the Middle East. They fully expect to be able to destroy the existing “Zionist entity”, and will not enter an agreement that will forgo the possibility of continuing the conflict.

Over the last two year, matters have gotten worse. The Palestinians, encouraged by the behavior of the Obama administration, are demanding that the US force Israel into an untenable situation which they are hoping will lead to the destruction of the Jewish state. Unfortunately President Obama has obliged them, making demands on Israel, some of which are simply suicidal, while demanding nothing of the other side. This a formula that tells the Arabs they need not negotiate, the US will do it for them. In other words, no negotiated settlement can ever happen

Many well-meaning people have asked why Israel does not simply end the occupation, and remove the settlements as a way to achieve peace. Again, this has been tried.

First, in 2000 Israeli forces vacated their buffer zone in South Lebanon with the express purpose of ending any conflict with Hezbollah; six years later, they got a war with Hezbollah anyway, a war in which thousands of missiles were fired into Israel. And now Hezbollah, massively armed, controls all of Lebanon, and threatens Israel with another war.

Secondly, in 2005, hoping again for peace, Israel pulled all its forces and settlements out of Gaza, to allow the Palestinians to develop their own autonomous state. What was the result? A major war with Hamas in 2008-9. The kidnapping Of Gilad Shalit, held for over 5 years with no Red Cross visits in violation of international law. Numerous cross border raids. Thousands of rockets and mortars that have killed and maimed civilians. Recently an anti-tank missile was fired at a school bus killing a child. This is not the hoped for peace.

Not long ago, Israel had planned to vacate the West Bank. Now that it has seen Gaza and South Lebanon turned into heavily armed staging areas, filled with terrorists dedicated to killing Jews, withdrawal from the West Bank does not seem like a wise move.

So what should Israel do? Israel cannot bring about a solution of the conflict unless the other side wants it. Hopefully, over time, a new generation of Palestinian Arabs, exposed to the internet, well- educated, and economically advanced, will see the enormous advantages of peace with Israel. Until then, Israel must remain strong, must ignore those who tell her what she must do “for her own good”, and must not bend to the whims of the New York Times or Barack Obama, would-be experts who have no idea about the historic and current realities in that part of the world.

Barry Rubin Looks at U.S. Middle East Policy; He finds Insanity and Danger

2011-05-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

One of the clearest, coherent, and rational voices on events in the Islamic world is Barry Rubin. He has been commenting for some time on the insanity of US policy, as it relates to Egypt, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Lebanon, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel.

Below are two of his recent columns. In the first, he examines the pronouncements of the US Seretary of State in a press conference and uses her own words to clearly show a policy that is incoherent, ahistoric, and dangerous. In the second article, he discusses the roots of this insanity and how it might be cured. LWW

U.S. Middle East Policy Becomes Clinically Insane

By Barry Rubin

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's latest pronouncements are just plain horrifying. Consider what she said in this interview:

In Egypt:

"QUESTION: Should we fear the Muslim Brotherhood?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think we don’t know enough yet to understand exactly what they’re morphing into. And I’m – I mean, for me, the jury is out. There are some Islamist elements that are coming to the surface to Egypt that I think on just the face of it are --

QUESTION: Coming out of jails, in fact.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Coming out in jails, coming out of the shadows that are inimical to a democracy, to the kind of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience that was the aspiration in Tahrir Square."

"We don't know enough...."

Really? Read any speech or interview by the leader and deputy leader of the Brotherhood, full of Jihadist rhetoric, genocidal rage against Jews, insistence on making Egypt an Islamist state, and loathing of America. What's morphing?

Those people "coming out of jails"

They are openly holding joint meetings and demonstrations with the Muslim Brotherhood. I know it, why doesn't she know it?

"The jury is out"

And when will the U.S. government see the danger of the Brotherhood, after it takes power and starts down the road to war with Israel and open enmity to the United States?

The jury is as much out on the Muslim Brotherhood as it is on Usama bin Laden.

On Syria
And here's another equally horrifying interview:

Q: At this point, [Syria] is a country where they have killed most people in the street.

"CLINTON: Well, I don't have that comparison, but what I do know is that they have an opportunity still to bring about a reform agenda. Nobody believed [Libyan leader Muammar] Qadhafi would do that. People do believe there is a possible path forward with Syria."

So the U.S. government still hopes that President Bashar al-Assad will be a reformer? I won't bother to once again list all the evidence to the contrary both in his past performance and in understanding his interests.

But here is something remarkable. Clinton mentions Qadhafi. Yet Qadhafi did "reform" his foreign policy after he was scared, following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, that he'd be next on the list. So pressure showed successful results in Libya while the Obama Administration's appeasement of Syria failed totally--and will continue to fail totally.

3. Hamas

But apparently the "jury is still out" on Hamas, too. What, we don't have enough information to evaluate that group? Perhaps it is "morphing?" The Obama Administration strongly criticized Israel for withholding the transfer of tax revenue tothe Palestinian Authority. Of course, that money is only due to be handed over according to the Oslo agreement, which the PA no longer observes.

American officials said the administration, is, “Waiting to see what this reconciliation agreement looks like in practical terms, before we make any decisions about future assistance.”

Memo to Obama Administration: A country doesn't just watch and wait as others trash its interests. It does something. When one of your clients, who you are ceaselessly helping and to which you are giving large amounts of money, joins forces with an openly genocidal terrorist organization allied with your worst enemies, how long do you have to wait to see what's going to happen?

From Clinton's first interview:

We are losing the war of ideas because we are not in the arena the way we were in the Cold War."

Well, if you cannot define the Muslim Brotherhood and Syria as hostile you certainly are not in the arena. Imagine the Cold War in these terms! How long would the United States have been saying the "jury is out" on the nature of the Soviet Union?

But Clinton isn't that stupid. She's stuttering so much because she has to follow the president's political line, and that is very stupid indeed. And much worse, it is very dangerous.

The Roots of U.S. Policy Insanity in the Middle East and the Cure

This article is published in PajamasMedia.

By Barry Rubin

Why is U.S. and European policy toward the Middle East so off-base, and why do policymakers believe the strange things they think and the crazy things they do are good strategy?

I'll focus on the U.S. government but you can adapt, as appropriate, this analysis for various European countries.

They believe--partly due to White House ideology and partly to the CIA (I don't know why the Agency is pushing this idea) that al-Qaida and perhaps much--but not necessarily all!--the Taliban is a terrible enemy of America that must be combatted because it attacks America directly with terrorism.

But since Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Syria don't launch terrorist attacks on American soil and installations (I'd add sarcastically: on a regular basis) they can be reasoned with and either won over or neutralized as an anti-American force.

From a narrow counter-terrorist perspective this may make some sense. But as a strategic doctrine it is disastrous. What's worse: al-Qaida committing a few terrorist attacks or the fact that those revolutionary Islamist groups and their allies rule with more than 100 million people (Iran, 78 million; Syria, 23 million; Gaza Strip, 1 million plus); with billions of dollars in assets and Iran en route to getting nuclear weapons.

Revolutionary Islamists now have the prospect of adding another 86 million people through the control of Lebanon and potentially Egypt (4 million, Lebanon; 82 million, Egypt) and are also allied with the current regime in Turkey (78 million people) which is Islamist and seems headed toward reelection.

That means that as many as 265 million people live under regimes allied against the United States and promoting a revolutionary Islamist ideology.

I don't mean to exaggerate here so you can take the above figures as pretty shocking even if not one hundred percent fully indicative of the situation. Moreover, we don't know yet what will happen in Tunisia and--despite ample U.S. involvement--Libya.

That seems pretty serious and qualifies as the leading strategic threat to the United States and the world.

Over the last 30 years the region has seen:

Iran's Islamist revolution and the seizure of American diplomats as hostages; 1982 Israel war with the PLO and Syria; Iran-Iraq war; Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; civil wars in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, and Algeria; the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait; the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the ensuing war; the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban and ensuing war; the 2006 Israel-Hizballah war; two Palestinian intifadas coupled with rejection of a compromise peace agreement that would give them a state; popular revolutionary upheavals in Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Bahrain; and massive terrorism of which the September 11 attacks are only the largest single example of many.

I think even the above list isn't complete. Virtually all of these events have been generated by revolutionary Islamism or, to a lesser extent, radical Arab nationalism which is sometimes allied with Islamism.

In the face of these facts, to ignore revolutionary Islamism as the main threat to America, the West, and the world is a pretty phenomenal conclusion. To do things like helping destabilize regimes so that the Muslim Brotherhood threatens to take over, accepting a Hamas regime in Gaza and standing by and watching a Fatah-Hamas deal, and viewing Iran as only a direct military threat that can be dealt with by conventional deterrence is suicidal.

Yet this is the road the U.S. government and much of Europe is taking.

They seem to think that if they show how much they respect Muslims in general, distance themselves from Israel, and engage the radicals in dialogue while making concessions to them, this will defuse the problem.

Amazing.

How bizarre is the situation? I have to beg people to consider that the Muslim Brotherhood might be a radical group even though every single statement of its leadership in Arabic is full of jihad, anti-Americanism, threats to wipe out Israel, and calls to make Egypt an Islamist state.

I have to explain that Hamas has in fact not accepted a two-state solution but merely will accept a Palestinian state to use as a base to wipe Israel off the map. With this two-state strategy Hamas has now come up to the level of moderation shown by the PLO...in 1974.

We know from Wikileaks that the U.S. Embassy in Turkey warned about the pro-Islamist and anti-American policy of that government yet this had no effect on U.S. policy.

Even the obvious disastrous mistakes made in Egypt earlier this year has not turned around the White House and much of the mass media to understand what's going on.

If not for a valiant battle by wiser people in the State Department, the administration would have blithely cooperated in the overthrow of Bahrain's government and replacement by largely (though not wholly) pro-Iran forces. And all the Defense Department's efforts to talk sense to the White House didn't stop the Libyan intervention.

And so on.

Consider the Usama bin Ladin funeral. A whole elaborate scenario was devised to persuade Muslims that America respected Islam. (I suspect that the president's advisor on terrorism, John Brennan, who is responsible for a large amount of this idiocy, was the source of this idea.)

Yet what happened? The funeral and burial at sea was denounced by virtually all Islamists and even mainstream clerics as a moral crime and against Islam.

This strategy just doesn't work, yet when it fails the dominant policy elite doesn't even seem to notice. What's needed is to stop throwing allies under the bus; recognize the revolutionaries as enemies; and work with moderates who oppose the spread of revolutionary Islam.

Is this really so hard to understand?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org/. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

Jimmy Carter Welcomes Hamas-Fatah Union; Our ex-President has no Shame

2011-05-02T14:26:00.000-07:00

Representatives from Hamas and Fatah announced their intention to reconcile in Cairo last Wednesday. This follows a four-year-long violent rupture. The result of this rift is that Hamas now administers the Gaza Strip, while the Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah, administers the West Bank.

Former President Jimmy Carter issued a statement last Friday, hailing the reconciliation of bitter rivals Hamas and Fatah as a "historic intra-Palestinian reconciliation agreement".

The statement speaks approvingly of Hamas and Fatah for "having the vision to begin the process of reunifying the Palestinian people", claiming that the deal would help to resolve longstanding issues faced by the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Former President Carter said in the statement that "this agreement, and the promise of elections in the next twelve months, has the potential to arrest the spiral of intra-Palestinian human rights violations and preserve Palestinian democracy."

Carter stated that he was confident that "if handled creatively and flexibly by the international community, Hamas’ return to unified Palestinian governance can increase the likelihood of a two-state solution and a peaceful outcome." He urged the international community to "view (the reconciliation) as part of the larger democratic trend sweeping the region.”

So what is wrong with this?

Elsewhere, I have written about Jimmy Carter’s tarnished record on the subject of Israel, on his approving attitude to tyrannical regimes, and on his dependence on Arab oil money. His statement of support for the marriage of two tyrannical regimes is consistent with Carter’s philosophy and behavior in the past. His pronouncements and recommendations have been naïve at best, and dangerously reckless at worst.

The largest problem in Carters sunny and optimistic scenario is the unrelenting and murderous hostility of Hamas toward Israel. Hamas has stated clearly that it will never negotiate with Israel, and will never accept a Jewish state in the Middle East. Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and Hamas spokesmen repeatedly call for genocide of the Jewish people. The group is defined as a terrorist group, and has fired hundreds of rockets across the border at Israel. Last month, Hamas fired an anti-tank missile at a school bus, severely wounding an Israeli child who later died.

As a result, Israel has reluctantly accepted the simple fact that there can be no peace agreement that includes the involvement of Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that "the Palestinian Authority must choose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. There is no possibility for peace with both. Hamas aspires to destroy Israel and fires rockets at our cities ... at our children."

And now, we have additional confirmation of Hamas’ real agenda. Hamas’ prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, referring to the killing of Osama Bin Laden by the US, said that “We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior … We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.” He also stated that “we regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood.”

One more question. What does Jimmy Carter mean about “preserving” Palestinian democracy? Democracy is more than simply elections. Democracy includes the rule of law, independence of the courts, freedom of the media from government control, and most importantly respect for and protection of the rights of minorities. Neither party to this agreement qualifies as a democracy except in Carter’s narrow and misleading definition.

And so, what does one call a former President who considers Hamas to be an entity with “vision”, and who insists that its intentions are peaceful, while this same Hamas both praises and mourns Osama Bin Laden?

What do you call a former President who considers Hamas to be democratic, while Israel is an “apartheid” state.

And what do you call a former President who considers democratic and pro-American Israel to be immoral, but considers Hamas, Hafez al-Assad of Syria, Fidel Castro of Cuba, , and Kim il-Jong of North Korea, to be our friends?

I call the man a menace.

Jimmy Carter: Still Friending Tyrants

2011-04-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

If Jimmy Carter were on Facebrook, his friends would include Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Daniel Ortega, Fidel Castro, Hafez al-Assad, Kim Jong Il, Hugo Chavez, and the leadership of Hamas. These are all people he has embraced, legitimized, flattered, or in other ways “friended”. In fact, it is not possible to find a tyrant he does not like.
The same is not true for Israel. Carter’s best known book, a poison polemic entitled, “Palestine; Peace not Apartheid” is one of the bibles of those who seek to delegitimize Israel and represents a low point, even for Mr. Carter. (There is no shortage of lows; they include his praise of Hafez al-Assad, a man who massacred 25,000 of his own countrymen in Hama, his commendation of Kim Jong, repressive ruler of North Korea, his high marks for Fidel Castro, you get the idea)

As President, he served a single term, losing a re-election bid to Ronald Reagan. He presided over our nation during the turnover in Iran, in which one dictator, the pro-American Shah, was replaced by another, the anti-American and Islamist Ayatollah Khomeini. This represented a step back for the Iranian people, and especially for the role of women in that unfortunate country. And of course, he did nothing about the seizure of American hostages, an act of war by Iran.

It is often said that we grow wiser as we grow older. Something very different has happened with President Carter.
His latest adventure, again demonstrating a willingness to be used by America’s enemies, has been his recent trip to Cuba to lobby on behalf of Cuban spies. Mary Anastasia O’Grady has written about this in the Wall Street Journal. By way of background, five Cuban spies were arrested 13 years ago by the FBI, and were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder (four Americans were killed). They had also sought to infiltrate US military installations.
In Carter’s trip to Cuba, he went on television to argue for the release of the five spies. While in Havana, he expressed doubt about the trial that resulted in the conviction of the spies, and indicated that he would speak with Barack Obama about a pardon for them. So much for his opinion of our nation’s criminal justice system. For his efforts, he was praised by Fidel Castro as “brave and serious”.
It is difficult to imagine that Carter cares about the people of Cuba who have been living under the control of a dictatorship for 52 years. His only concern seems to be to ingratiate himself with the Castro brothers. According to Freedom House, more than half a million Cubans have suffered in the Castros’ various gulags, dungeons and torture chambers. The Castro regime’s total death toll - from torture, prison beatings, firing squads, machine-gunning of escapees, drownings, etc,- approaches 100,000.

In 2002, Carter opined that “the embargo of Cuba is the stupidest law ever passed in the U.S.”, And yet, as president, Mr. Carter imposed more economic sanctions against more nations than any other American president in modern history. These sanctions were only against U.S. allies. And so, it was not suprirising that as Carter was leaving Havana, Raul Castro enthused that “Jimmy Carter was the best of all U.S. presidents,”

To fully understand what makes Carter tick, one needs to “follow the money”. Alan Dershowitz has outlined Carter's extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia.
One example concerns the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think-tank funded by Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahayan, which gave money to both Carter and to the divinity school at Harvard. Harvard refused to be tainted and returned the money; Carter kept it. The Zayed Centre has hosted speakers who called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States' own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a "fable." (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) Carter has referred to Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, a known bigot, as his personal friend.

Carter and his Center have accepted millions of dollars from suspect sources, beginning with the bail-out of the Carter family peanut business in the late 1970s by BCCI, a now-defunct and virulently anti-Israeli bank indirectly controlled by the Saudi Royal family. One of the principal investors and founder of the bank is Carter's friend, Sheikh Zayed. Agha Hasan Abedi, who gave Carter "$500,000 to help the former president establish his center...[and] more than $10 million to Mr. Carter's different projects."
Saudi King Fahd contributed millions to the Carter Center "in 1993 alone...$7.6 million" as have other members of the Saudi Royal Family. Carter also received a million dollar pledge from the Saudi-based bin Laden family, as well as a personal $500,000 environmental award named for Sheikh Zayed, and paid for by the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. It's worth noting that, despite the influx of Saudi money funding the Carter Center, and despite the Saudi Arabian government's myriad human rights abuses, the Carter Center's Human Rights program has no activity whatever in Saudi Arabia.
So what do the Saudis and other benefactors get for their money? Lots of attention to alleged abuses by Israel, but virtually none by Iran or any of the Arab nations. The Saudis have apparently bought Carter’s selective outrage.
The Carter Center's mission statement claims that "the Center is nonpartisan and acts as a neutral party in dispute resolution activities." This is clearly not the case. What is clear is that Jimmy Carter is dependent on Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, and that he has necessarily been influenced in his thinking about the Middle East by such enormous sums.
A few questions. With all that we know about Jimmy Carter, is this episode in Havana a new low? What do you call a former President who considers the leaders of democratic and pro-American Israel to be immoral, but considers Hafez al-Assad, Fidel Castro, and Kim il-Jong to be our friends? And what do you call a former President who expresses such public contempt for our criminal justice system? And what do you call a former President who trades money from Saudi sources for selective outrage? While some, not knowing better, will praise him as a man of peace, his historical legacy will be forever tarnished.

Terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas may now have chemical weapons.

2011-04-17T20:04:00.000-07:00

Did Libyan rebels obtain chemical weapons from Qaddafi stockpile and sell them to Iran?

Since nuclear weapons were first used in 1945, any subsequent use has been deterred by the concept of “mutual assured destruction”. In the early nuclear confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union, this simply meant that both sides were constrained from using nuclear weapons by the assured knowledge that the other side would then also use them.
This doctrine presupposed a level of rationality on all those nations that possessed the ultimate weapon. As the number of nations that had nuclear weapons increased, the doctrine remained intact. This concept of deterrence has kept the world from seeing any repeat use of the nuclear bomb.

But what if one had a nation governed by irrational beings? What if the rulers were possessed of a religious doctrine such that the deaths of large numbers mattered little? For example, when Iran gets nuclear weapons, can it be deterred by fear of assured destruction? Or what if the weapons got into the hands of a terrorist group that had no constraints on use?
One of the fears that we live with is that a group like Al Qaeda or Hezbollah, groups whose members look forward to basking in the hereafter with 72 virgins, groups that have no difficulty lining up an unlimited supply of suicide bombers, might get hold of such weapons. What then? The big fear surrounding nuclear weapons has been the idea that some rogue group might obtain them, and would not hesitate to use them.

Such groups would not be subject to deterrence, not only because death is not necessarily a worrisome consequence for them, but also because there is no clear address to which to direct retaliation.

What is true for nuclear weapons is also true for biologic and chemical weapons, the other weapons of mass destruction. Now we have news of chemical weapons that have been stockpiled in the armories of Libyan ruler Moammar Qaddafi, that got into the hands of rebels who are fighting against Qadaffi.

According to this story, a large number of artillery shells containing deadly chemical agents came into rebel hands when they captured facilities in and around Benghazi. Apparently the rebels obtained at least 2,000 artillery shells carrying mustard gas and 1,200 nerve gas shells, and sold them “ for cash payment amounting to several million dollars”. The buyers? Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The destination? Gaza and Lebanon.

While I need to caution that I have only a single source for this story at this time, it needs to be taken seriously. According to this source, representatives of Iran met with rebel leaders in Benghazi because they recognized a unique opportunity to get hold of Qaddafi’s stock of poison gas. They saw a chance to supply Hezbollah and Hamas with chemical weapons without Iran being implicated. The weapons supposedly can be delivered by artillery or by drones, and it is known that Hezbollah has obtained drones from Iran.

The story is supported by testimony given by the commander of US NATO forces, Adm. James Stavridis, to a US Senate committee on March 29, in which he spoke of “telltale signs of the presence of Islamic insurgents led by Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah” on the rebel side of the Libyan war. One must wonder why these groups were there.

Centrality of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Agreement; Brent Scowcroft and Confirmation Bias

2011-04-15T11:07:00.000-07:00

Many foreign policy gurus who should know better swallow the nonsense that if we can only solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, all the other problems in the Middle East will magically disappear. The person most closely associated with this point of view is Brent Scowcroft.

Scowcroft made his reputation as the national security adviser to two Presidents, the elder George Bush and Gerald Ford, As Jonathan Tobin has pointed out, Scowcroft is “the quintessential Middle East realist.” For many years Scowcroft has advanced his belief that Israel must be forced to make concessions to the Palestinians in the hopeless conviction that this will achieve a solution to all the region’s problems. This was not true when Scowcroft was advising President Ford 35 years ago, and is not true today. It has been contradicted by events repeatedly.

Brent Scowcroft has a recent article in the Financial Times in which he restates all the same nostrums that should have been retired long ago. His article contains nothing new. Scowcroft repeats his two key beliefs. First, he restates his conviction that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is central to instability in the Middle East. Secondly, he again recommends, against all evidence, his belief that an Israeli-Palestinian agreement can be accomplished in the near future. He ignores the fact that the Palestinians have refused to sign any agreement that might recognize any of Israel’s needs, not to mention its legitimacy. He ignores the fact that no solution is possible if the Palestinians don’t want it.

His article is a classic example of confirmation bias. This term, frequently used by behavioral economists, refers to the tendency to favor information that confirms prior beliefs or existing positions, and to ignore or explain away contrary evidence. The result will often lead to an inability or unwillingness to change direction based on new evidence. This can lead to ineffective policies and disastrous decisions. Unfortunately, we are all susceptible to it.

Nowhere is this more true than in the fashionable belief that the Israeli-Palestinian problem is central in contributing to all the other problems in the Middle East. Though Scowcroft and his followers are often labeled “realists”, Lee Smith , writing in Tablet, points out that the urgency surrounding the Palestinian issue has little to do with reality. The various Muslim states, including Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and Iran, need to find a way to accomplish two things; divert attention from their own autocratic behavior, and win over the West to support their non-democratic governments. They do this essentially by changing the subject to Israel and the Palestinians.

The problem, in their formulation, is not their own internal dysfunction, but rather it is the “Zionist entity”. And many persons, including advisors to the President, nod their heads with sage understanding, firmly convinced that the problem is Israel and her supporters in the United States. When the oil-rich leaders of Saudi Arabia tell the leaders of the UK and the US that they must do something about the Palestinians, the game is on to pressure Israel.

A reasonable question is whether the progeny of Scowcroft, some of whom are advisors to the current American President, will change their tune. Not likely. Once stuck with an “explanation”, even the smartest people will tend to focus on those “facts” that support their theses, and ignore those realties that clash with their vision. These discredited beliefs about the Middle East have driven the approach of the West for over 40 years. Confirmation bias is not some academic term, but rather has severely distorted the Western approach to Israel, and made a solution to the conflict less likely.

It is difficult to believe that the takeover of Lebanon by Syria, the killing of the Lebanese Prime Minister by Bashar Assad, the massacre of 25,000 Syrians by Hafez Assad in Hama, the Iraq-Iran war, the attacks of Sept 11, 2001 against New York and Washington, or any of the dozens of other conflicts in the area, have anything to do with Israel.

And now we have a series of dramatic new realties, the phenomena in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, and elsewhere, in which Arab masses are rising up against autocratic leaders. And I have heard not one word about Israel. No one is claiming that they are revolting over the “plight of the Palestinians” (However, it is likely that years of anti-Israel incitement may yet have this effect)

The reality that a wave of uprisings has completely overturned all prior assumptions about Middle East politics, and that these same upheavals are unrelated to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, ought to give pause to prior beliefs about the supposed centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to Arab anger at the West. In addition, the failure of so many well-meaning attempts at achieving a settlement further discredits the notions put forth by Scowcroft.

The existence of these beliefs and their acceptance by so many media figures, by political leaders, and by policy makers, explains the need for President Obama to put pressure on Israel to freeze the building of new homes. It explains the irrational impulse to push for a settlement that will in fact settle nothing. And it explains the need for our President to consider imposing a solution on Israel, one that will force Israel to make "peace" with the Palestinians. It matters not that such a peace that will only be a way-station on the road to another terrorist state in that part of the world, a peace that the Palestinians don’t want, a peace that will be anything but peaceful.

In addition to the fallacy about the centrality of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, all prior attempts at a solution have been stillborn. The reason for this is that the Palestinians have rejected any recognition of a Jewish state, or any solution that does not contain within it the seeds for the destruction of Israel, and Israel has rejected suicide. Further, there are negative consequences to the insistence by the West of a quick and early solution. Repeated attempts to pressure the parties to achieve a solution has led to the belief by the Palestinians that they do not need to negotiate in good faith with Israel; the US will do their work, and provide them with excuses. .

A clear example of the problems of “making peace” can be seen in Israel’s peace treaty with the government of Egypt. That government has recently been overthrown, and the various candidates for leadership are openly talking about discarding the agreement. .

Another example, cited by Barry Rubin, has to do with Israel’s agreement to end the war with Hezbollah in 2006, based on a guarantee by the U.S. government, and a promise by the UN to keep Hezbollah from returning to southern Lebanon. However, Hezbollah has now moved back into southern Lebanon and has tens of thousands of rockets poised to strike Israeli cities.

.So now Israel is being asked to make a similar deal with the Palestinian Authority. How likely is it that the PA will not be overthrown? What about the wisdom of a treaty with an entity that controls only half of the territory it claims to represent? Consider that the other half is controlled by Hamas, a group that will never enter into any agreement with Israel, and is determined to annihilate the Jewish state.

in the title of one of his articles, “When Peace Treaty Fails, It’s Time to Sign Another One”, Barry Rubin points out the irony of repeatedly attempting to do the same thing that has never worked in the past. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

Israeli-Palestinian Peace Settlement; Why the Big Deal?

2011-04-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

Let us stipulate two facts;

There is but a single nation that is a democracy in the Middle East; that nation is Israel

There is but a single nation that can be relied on to be consistently pro-Western in the Middle East; that nation is Israel

So why the need for President Obama to put pressure on Israel to freeze the building of new homes?, And why the need for our President to force Israel to make "peace" with the Palestinians, a peace that will only be a way-station on the road to another terrorist state in that part of the world, a peace that the Palestinians don’t want, a peace that will be anything but peaceful?

The Israelis are correctly resisting the suicidal implications behind any imposed arrangement. But why is the impulse to achieve a settlement that will in fact settle nothing, there in the first place?

Lee Smith has an interesting article in Tablet in which he correctly points out that the urgency surrounding the Palestinian issue has little to do with reality. The various Muslim states, including Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and Iran, need to find a way to accomplish two things; divert attention from their own autocratic behavior, and win over the West to support their non-democratic governments. They do this essentially by changing the subject.

The problem, in their formulation, is not their own internal dysfunction, but rather it is the “Zionist entity”. And persons like James Baker in the senior Bush administration, persons like Samantha Powers in the current Obama administration, Europeans like Tony Blair, nod their heads with sage understanding, convinced in their hearts that the problem is Israel and the “Zionist lobby”.

Many American foreign policy gurus and most European diplomats, who should know better, swallow the nonsense that if we can only solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, all the other problems in the Middle East will magically disappear. When the attacks of Sept 11, 2001, against New York and Washington occurred, Al Qaeda talking little about Israel. Once they realized what a public relations bonanza that could be, the attacks took on an anti-Israel tint.

Now we have a unique phenomenon. The Arab masses are rising up against their autocratic leaders. And not one word about Israel. No one is claiming they are revolting over the “plight of the Palestinians”

It is hard to understand how the takeover of Lebanon by Syria, the killing of the Lebanese prime minister by Bashar Assad, the murder of 25,000 Syrians by Hafez Assad, the Iraq-Iran war, the genocide in the Sudan, or any of the dozens of other problems of the area, have anything to do with Israel . And so the lie has been exposed. Here is a reasonable question: will the Arabists of the State Department, or those like Samantha Powers who surround Barack Obama, change their tune? Not likely. Once stuck with an “explanation”, even the smartest people will tend to focus on those “facts” that support their theses, and ignore those realties that clash with their vision, so-called confirmation bias.

Smith points out that “The fact that a wave of revolutions has shaken the foundations of Arab politics without the slightest apparent connection to popular outrage against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians should be surprising to most experts and politicians in the West. For over four decades, the driving idea behind the West’s approach to the Middle East has been the supposed centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to Arab popular anger at the West and its key to ensuring the stability of the West’s favored regimes.”

Why is President Obama still pushing for a peace based on old ideas, still pushing for a settlement “freeze”? America should know better. Our government keeps going back to the Middle East with the same proposals, ideas that have never worked. Why are these ideas stillborn? Because the Palestinians have rejected any recognition of a Jewish state, or any solution that does not contain within it the seeds for the destruction of Israel, and Israel has rejected suicide. The result over the decades has been thousands of Israeli casualties resulting from terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, who are doing the dirty work of Syria, Iran and others, and thousands of Arabs killed when Israel responded.

As Lee points out, “ this is no “meaningless” cycle of violence; rather, it is the product of a deliberate diplomatic process overseen by the world’s oldest democracy. It was the United States that kept going back to the well over and over”

The Goldstone Report Redux; The Greatest Blood Libel Against Israel

2011-04-10T19:43:00.000-07:00

Over the years, the Arab propaganda machine, aided and abetted by a hostile United Nations and by ill-informed and malevolent media, have engaged in a series of blood libels against the nation of Israel.

These include false charges of organ harvesting by Israelis, a massacre in Jenin that never happened, and the supposed murder of Muhammed al-Dura by Israeli soldiers. But the granddaddy of all blood libels was the Goldstone report, named after the South African jurist, Richard Goldstone, who agreed to be the water carrier for the UN Human Rights Commission.

The history of this tragic episode, a deliberate miscarriage of justice carried out by a man who was willing to be used and should have know better, is worth repeating.

Israel withdrew totally from Gaza in the summer of 2005. In a violent civil war between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, Hamas took control of Gaza in June 2006, and shortly thereafter began to fire rockets across the border into Israel. During 2006 and 2007, Hamas sent 697 rockets and 822 mortar bombs into Israel. During 2008, Hamas sent over 3000 rockets across the border.

Pleas were sent to the UN, but nothing was done. . Finally, at the end of December 2008, Israel launched a series of air strikes against Hamas, followed by a land war (Operation Cast Lead). Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the operation had three goals: "to hit Hamas hard, to change the situation radically, and to prevent the continuation of rocket fire at Israeli civilians” The war lasted 22 days, followed by a cease fire. Israel has maintained an arms blockade of Gaza since then.

Hamas claimed that most of the casualties were civilians. Israel claimed that these were really Hamas fighters. Hamas charged Israel with war crimes. Israel charged that Hamas used human shields, and fired rockets from the area of schools and hospitals. . The UN Human Rights Commission, an organization with a long history of anti-Israel bigotry, initiated an investigation, and appointed Richard Goldstone, a South African jurist, to lead the effort. Goldstone was used by the UN, but it is clear that at that time he was more than willing to be used.

At the end of the investigation, a report was written (by biased "experts," with a pre-determined result). The Human rights Commission had such nations as Libya as members, and had a long history of bias against Israel. Not surprisingly the commission concluded that Israel used the more than 8,000 rocket attacks on its civilians merely as a pretext, an excuse, a cover for the real purpose of Operation Cast Lead, which was to target innocent Palestinian civilians -- children, women, the elderly -- for death. According to the report, this criminal objective was explicitly decided upon by the highest levels of the Israeli government and military and constitutes a deliberate and willful war crime. The report found these serious charges "to be firmly based in fact" and had "no doubt" of their “truth”.

In contrast, the Commission decided that Hamas was not guilty of deliberately and willfully using the civilian population as human shields. It found "no evidence" that Hamas fighters "engaged in combat in civilian dress," "no evidence" that "Palestinian combatants mingled with the civilian population with the intention of shielding themselves from attack," and no support for the claim that mosques were used to store weapons.

Almost immediately prominent analysts were easily able to pick the report apart. Alan Dershowitz, among many others, published a number of articles, (see here and here) pointing out how scurrilous the report was.

The central and critical issue was that of intentionality. According to the report, the most serious accusation against Israel was that the killing of civilians, was intentional and planned at the highest levels. At the same time, the report claimed that the accusations made against Hamas, namely that their combatants wore civilian clothing to shield themselves from attack, mingled among the civilian populations and used civilians as human shields, was unintentional

Hard evidence conclusively proved the exact opposite of the report’s conclusions, specifically that Israel did not have a policy of targeting innocent civilians for death. (indeed the IDF went to unprecedented lengths to minimize civilian casualties) and that Hamas did have a deliberate policy of having its combatants dress in civilian clothing, fire their rockets from densely populated areas, use civilians as human shields, and store weapons in mosques. Dershowitz showed conclusively that the evidence relied on by the report, as well as the publicly available evidence it deliberately chose to ignore, disproved its own conclusions.

The report was seized on by Israel’s enemies, as well as by anti-Semites everywhere. Israeli military and political figures faced arrest and charges of war crimes if they travelled outside of Israel. The Goldstone report has been one of the most widely quoted documents by all those who seek to delegitimize Israel, and has done enormous damage to the Jewish state. Israel is faced with fighting a multifront war, but is also engaged in a deadly propaganda war.

On April 1, 2011, Judge Richard Goldstone unexpectedly and completely reversed himself on the findings of the Goldstone Report, and published a mea culpa in the Washington Post. He acknowledged that “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.” (This is absurd as pointed out by Ron Radosh. Numerous critics pointed out the flaws and errors as soon as the report was issued, including a detailed critique by Moshe Halbertal that appeared in The New Republic, or the many articles by Alan Dershowitz )

The most significant retraction was that of his original claim that Israel deliberately sought to target and kill Palestinian civilians.

Goldstone went on to say “that the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying – its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.” Regarding supposed crimes against civilians that resulted from Israeli defensive action, Goldstone writes that “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy” by Israel. And he added that Israel had a right to defend itself, just like any other sovereign nation.

Goldstone added that “I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the UN Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted,” He called on the UNHRC to condemn Hamas rocket attacks against Israel and the Itamar attack, in which an Israeli couple and three of their children were killed.

While Israel has investigated its actions, he said, Hamas has not. He said that he had hoped that his report would sway Hamas to halt its rocket attacks against Israel. Instead those attacks have continued, He also admitted that the number of Palestinian civilian casualties reported by Israel – which was far below the inflated numbers claimed by so-called human rights groups — was accurate. As it turns out the vast majority of Palestinians who died in the fighting were Hamas fighters, not civilians as his report had charged.

On the day following Goldstone’s retraction, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called on the United Nations to disavow the Goldstone Report. “The fact that Goldstone backtracked must lead to the shelving of this report once and for all,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak, said that Goldstone should send his new conclusions to the same international forums “in which he published his twisted and nonfactual report … Only that way can there be a partial correction of the damage that was caused.”

IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Avi Benayahu said that Goldstone should travel around the world and go country to country and newspaper to newspaper to try and repair the damage he caused Israel. “The same morals and Jewish conscience that led us during the operation and our subsequent investigations should lead Judge Goldstone to look in the mirror and realize that it is time to share his feelings with the world,” the IDF spokesman said.

The effect on bloggers, both pro and anti-Israel has been electric. Jonathan S. Tobin refers to the Human Rights Council as an organization that is singularly dedicated to besmirching and attacking Israel while ignoring serious crimes elsewhere (including those committed by the nations that makes up its membership),

He points out that “the report became the centerpiece of a new round of efforts aimed at both delegitimizing the Jewish state and its right of self-defense. His claims were taken up by anti-Zionists across the globe and in particular by those American left-wingers such as the J Street lobby and Michael Lerner’s Tikkun, which have both sought to establish themselves as Jewish critics of Israel and its defenders in this country”

In fact, Michael Lerner invited Goldstone to San Francisco, where he praised him and gave him a "human rights" award. And J Street went door to door in the US Congress trying to set up meetings between Goldstone and members of Congress. One can only wonder what Tikkun and J Street think now that Goldstone has had his Yom Kippur moment.

John Podhoretz, writing in Commentary Contentions, has stated “that Richard Goldstone did not know in 2009 that Hamas is a terrorist monstrosity which functions parasitically off civilian populaces while Israel is a beacon of war-fighting restraint in a manner practically unknown in the course of human history suggests even more plainly than the report itself that he is a dupe, a fool, a clown, and a worldwide embarrassment. Not to mention a special kind of reprehensible and appalling figure of inglorious, hideous shame to his own people through the delivery and promulgation of a false document that helped anti-Semites everywhere feel themselves justified. He was then, and is now, an entirely despicable public figure”

Tobin has specific recommendations. “The follow-up to Goldstone’s statement must not be limited to either its now somewhat penitent author or the vicious UN agency that promoted his flawed document. The Goldstone report was a pivotal moment in the growing effort to delegitimize Israel. What we must now hear are similar apologies from all those groups and individuals, from Human Rights Watch to J Street to mainstream bloggers like Andrew Sullivan and minor Palestinian mouthpieces like Hussein Ibish, that either defended Goldstone’s false allegations or sought to aid efforts to promote his scandalous charges. There must be an accounting from all of Goldstone’s previous champions. Like Goldstone’s report, their credibility on this issue is finished”

I hope he is correct. However, I fear that Michael Lerner, J Street, and others will simply explain all this away and continue their scurrilous attacks on Israel. The movement to delegitimize the Jewish state will not go away so easily.

Why do Reform Jewish leaders support J Street?

2011-03-30T18:25:00.000-07:00

Yaacov Lozowick is an historian, author of “Right to Exist; A Moral Defense of Israel’s Wars”, as well as other books, and the former Director of Archives at Yad Vashem. He has written a very clear and devastating account of J Street and why he opposes it. This is a man who is neither extreme right or left. He voted for Kadimah, a centrist party, in the last election. I have reproduced his article on J Street below.

Among other things, the J Street phenomenon raises for me the issue of the propriety of American Jews criticizing security arrangements for Israelis, when the critics will not have to live with the consequences of their recommendations.

J Street of course takes this one step further. In addition to being critics, they seek to exert pressure on President Obama to impose a solution on Israel. The solution that is likely to be imposed by the present U.S. administration is one that most Israelis consider to be suicidal.

Further, J Streeters seek to convince President Obama that they speak for most American Jews. And while they do this, they are also making the claim to both American Jews and non-Jews that they are are pro-Israel, and are simply a liberal version of AIPAC.

Their appeal to American Jews seeks to trade on the fact that most Jews are left-leaning. This has gotten them far, but they have recently been exposed because of their financial support from anti-Zionists, pro-Palestinians, and pro-Iranians, and because it has become clearer to many that they have never taken a pro-Israel position on anything.

A word about the Reform movement and J Street. I have long been concerned about the fact that there are some in the leadership of Reform Judaism who are affiliated with J Street. I have been an active member of three different Reform congregations (in three different cities), and so am not among those who are critical of the Reform movement.

But it is frustrating to me and to other Reform Jews that the new head of the UAHC, Rabbi Richard Jacobs, and Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center, both key leaders in the Reform movement, are adherents of J Street.

I believe that leaders of such a large segment of American Jewry should steer clear of partisan politics. For me, they need to be Jews and Americans, they need to be pro-Israel, but they should not publicly identify with any political party or ideology. None of this precludes their right to speak out on whatever issue they believe merits it, or to privately support, vote, and donate resources to the candidates and issues of their choice.

The central tenets of Judaism, which Reform Judaism has endorsed, are God, Torah, and Israel. J Street, despite its words, is unquestionably an anti-Israel organization. Do we still need to fight the battles of 1947, when the anti-Zionist group, the American Council for Judaism, received its sustenance from a large segment of the Reform movement? (Fortunately, there was another branch of the Reform movment, led by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland, who were actively pro-Zionist)

For Rabbis Jacobs and Saperstein to ally themselves with J Street is to declare that they are really anti-Israel. If they see it differently they need to go back and take a closer look at what J Street actually says, which Congressmen they ally with, which parties they support. (Hint; J Street staffers introduced Judge Richard Goldstone to members of Congress. This was the man who wrote the infamous Goldstone report, which is nothing less than a blood libel against Israel)

I have reproduced the article on J Street below; it should be must reading for anyone interested in this organization which has done so much harm. Yaacov's blog can be read here.
Lawrence W White

Checked Again: Still anti-J Street

By Yaacov Lozowick

A number of people, some quite thoughtful, disagreed with my position against J Street yesterday. Since I spent part of the day doing Pessach cleaning, I was able to listen to some of the sessions of the recent J Street conference. I heard Rabbi Saperstein, Jeremy Ben Ami, Peter Beinart, Bernard Avishai, Daniel Levy and Roger Cohen, and was also able to hear when the audience applauded for which statements.

Daniel Levy at one point made a statement about how if it were to be proven that the Arab world really isn't willing to live in peace alongside Israel "then Israel wasn't such a good idea, was it?" but then he went on to say that of course, the Arabs are willing. You'll pardon me if I don't feel compelled to regard Levy as a fellow Zionist in any form or way, even if he was once an aide to Yossie Beilin.

Apart from Levy, however, here's what I found.

These J Street speakers and guest speakers are more or less aligned with the positions of Meretz, perhaps a shade to its left. Meretz, of course, is a legitimate Zionist party, even though it has lost almost all its Israeli voters and hovers near extinction. Yet J Street isn't Meretz, it's something much more troubling, and worthy of our disdain.

First, Meretz positions sound different and more acceptable from Israelis. The reason the party has lost most of its voters is that we've empirically tested its proposals, and lots of people have died as a result - not once, but repeatedly, in 1993-6, in 2000 (twice, once in Lebanon and once with the Palestinians), in 2002, in 2005, and in 2006; arguably also in 2008. Having its basic assumptions serially disproved has discredited Meretz, but if after all that some Israelis still wish to hang on, that's their right; the rest of us don't take them seriously, and that's our right. It's actually surprising how very little animosity Meretz generates these days, especially when compared to their heyday. They're an oddity, and one doesn't get aggravated about oddities; one pities them, or suffers them for the color they add.

The J Street people seem not to have noticed any of this, which is either very peculiar or very disturbing. If they've simply not been watching, what gives them the right to have an opinion about life and death matters they can't make the effort to understand? If they've been watching and refuse to accept what is there to be seen, how exactly do they portray themselves as being on our side?

Second, there's a consistent tone of disdain of Israeli society coming from these people which I find arrogant and very distasteful. Americans left and right have lost their civility in political discourse; Israelis, admittedly, never had it. Yet there are codes in language, deeper than mere words, and the subtext of these J Street spokesmen when discussing Jews from Russia, religious Jews and centrist Jews, is ugly. I find no other word for it. Just as their compassion for Israel's Arabs (the citizens) is odd. There's a level of identification with them which is totally lacking when they talk about the majority of the Israeli Jews. I say this as someone who wishes only the best for Israel's Arabs.

Another widespread sentiment they've got about Israelis is moral superiority. We American Jews, we understand human rights, democracy, dignity and so on, not like our benighted Israeli cousins who need to learn from us because they've turned into an embarrassment. I"m not going to respond in detail to this, but it needs to be rejected vehemently. It's the opposite which is true. Israeli Jews, unlike American ones, live in a hard reality which beats down on those admirable human values and could easily smother them. Yet it doesn't. Israelis know more about raising children to be moral human beings at time of adversity, more about respecting one's enemy's dignity, more about respect for law under extreme duress, than most American Jews can even begin to imagine. How could they? When are they ever faced with true moral quandaries, or required to pay a price for preserving their values? Do Israelis sometimes fail? Of course. Are American Jews ever put in situations where they're ever even tried? Perhaps, but they don't spring to mind.

Then there's the matter of having enemies. Nothing I heard in all those speeches gave any cause to believe the speakers understand what an enemy is; they certainly can't imagine the Palestinians are such. To the best of my recollection, the word Hamas was never mentioned. The Palestinians, when they were talked about, are noble and suffering people who must be reached out to, must be embraced, must be comforted. I have Palestinian friends, and am seeking more of them; through them I try to understand how they see us and how they see themselves. Yet I never forget that so far, we're at war. I'm convinced the ones I know personally are all right, but there are many in their society who would gladly kill me, my family, and my society. There's a war on, it's not over, and it's not something that can be talked away with nice sentiments. War mean enemies: a concept - I repeat myself but it's a crucial distinction - the J-Street people seem quite oblivious of. So far as I can tell, they can't imagine an enemy, astonishing as that may sound.

All of this, serious as it is, perhaps still doesn't justify the distaste I have for these people. So they disagree with me and with most Israelis on many matters: so what? You know how many things there are I disagree on with various factions of Israelis? Heaps and heaps.

The difference between those disagreements and J Street is in the reason J Street exists: to put pressure on the American government. I'd add, to put pressure on the American government to harm Israel, but my Meretz friends will tell me it won't harm Israel. J Street isn't a talk club, it's a lobby, which intends to have an impact on policy.There's an extreme irony in this, since what J Street is essentially saying - quite openly and explicitly - is that the sovereign political decisions of the Jewish State need to be upended. True, the Jews didn't have the ability to make sovereign decisions until Zionism created Israel, but now that the Jews have Israel they're making the wrong decisions and need the outsiders to correct their mistakes for them. If this isn't anti-Zionism by Jews, I don't know what it would look like.

Finally, to sum it all up, there's the content of the pressure that needs to be put on Israel. All of the speakers I heard, and most of what I had previously heard and read about J Street, agree that the reason there's no peace between Israel and Palestinians is that Israel isn't interested, or isn't serious. At the moment they blame "Netanyahu and Lieberman", but Netanyahu and Lieberman were democratically elected (not by me - but they do represent a real majority). Should it be a different Israeli government, however, the J Streeters will say the same about them (since that government won't make any more peace than this one). So let me return to my paragraph yesterday about the Big Lie: I've marked the parts which the J Streeters clearly seem to accept, in bold; the parts in italics some of the J Streeters seem to accept.

The Big Lie of our day has a number or versions. The Jews are not a nation and deserve no state. The Jews have no historical rights to the land they call Israel, and even if they do, they're anachronistic and cannot justify harming the Palestinians. The Palestinians have been in their homeland for time immemorial, and were pushed out by the Jews. The Jews continue to aspire to ever more control of the land, and to ever more oppression of the Palestinians. The Jews' way in war is uniquely evil and cruel. The Palestinians yearn for peace, but the Israelis refuse to allow it, because they haven't finished taking Palestinian land, or because they don't recognize the Palestinians as equally human. The Jews protect their nefarious projects through sinister control of power-brokers, most importantly the United States.

I have no doubt many of the supporters of J Street mean well. Really and truly. But context is important, and when Jews say loudly that the Israelis are to blame for the lack of peace, or that they're immoral or becoming so, and that foreign powers must restrain them: well, that's anti Israel, and it plays into the lie of our day.

Posted by Yaacov at 12:09 AM

The Future of Egypt; A Modest Proposal

2011-02-02T15:48:00.000-08:00

by Lawrence W. White

There are many on the left who believe that an Islamist regime in Egypt will be a positive step.

There is only one way to tell. Let’s withdraw all support from the current regime (which is after all, authoritarian and pro-American.) Then we will let Mohamed ElBaradei, the leading opposition critic, take over. We will ignore the fact that he is a stand-in for the Muslim Brotherhood, arguably the largest Islamist movement in the world with close ties to Hamas. We will accept the fact that jihadists will be calling the shots. How bad can it be?

Wait, you say. We know from polls that 82% of Egyptians support stoning adulterers , 77% support amputating the hands of thieves, and 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion. What will this augur for a future Islamic fundamentalist society? What about human rights?

Well, isn’t this really their business?. Who are we to claim that our values are universal? And what right do we have to impose our preferences on the Egyptians?

Mohamed ElBaradei is an international figure and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, so he must be a good guy. So it’s probably OK that he is anti-Israel and pro-Iran. The international community, the American left, J Street, and the NY Times will be thrilled. It is true that Malcolm Hoenlein of the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations called him a "stooge of Iran", and that former Press secretary Ari Fleischer said "I don't trust Mohamed ElBaradei. For America, he would be bad news of a different kind." However, the Nation magazine dismisses all this as a "neoconservative smear campaign". And the NY Times praised him in a 2007 profile. What more do we need to know? To paraphrase Shakespeare by way of Mark Antony, ElBaradei is an honorable man.

After the Muslim Brotherhood/El Baradei take over, our President can again invoke hope and change. He can give another speech in Cairo (if they let him in) where he can tell the Egyptian Islamists that we are not their enemy, and that we can work together to bring peace and progress to the Middle East. He will apologize on behalf of America, explaining that we were wrong to support Mubarek (but it was Bush's fault). And he can continue to reach out to Syria, continue to "engage" Iran, and continue to use J Street to float a trail balloon to the effect that the US must impose a “solution" on Israel to advance the “peace process”. (The Israelis need to understand that they must start taking chances for peace). And if Tel Aviv is incinerated? Well, it could not be helped; we had the best minds in the State Department working on this problem. .

Worth a try? We must do something new in the Middle East. Well, maybe not so new; we did the same in 1979 when we got rid of the Shah. And we all know how that turned out. We knew then that it was a good move (again the geniuses in the State Department and that great humanitarian President Carter told us so). After all , the Shah was also authoritarian and also pro-American. The American left and the International community thought that was a good move. Of course, we then got the Ayatollahs, the abduction of American hostages, Ahmadinejad, nuclear weapons, and a promise to wipe out Israel. Hope and change, Jimmy Carter style. There is nothing new under the sun.

The wise Spanish philosopher, George Santayana, said that “progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. “

.

How to Win the War Against Radical Islam; Two Approaches

2011-01-27T14:24:00.000-08:00

We are now in a long war, though many do not realize it, in which the stakes are higher than any military conflict in the history of the US. How shall we approach it?

Approach One; The progressives in our midst (in an oversimplification, often called doves) believe that problems in foreign policy, including our conflict with the Muslim world, can be solved with good will. (This approach is the one that has been adopted by our President until recently) All we need do is reach out, promote dialogue, and avoid confrontation at all costs. (According to our doves, confrontation is counterproductive, uncivilized, and just plain wrong)

Approach Two: The conservatives and especially the neo-conservatives in our midst (often called hawks, another oversimplification) see pivotal events like 9/11, attacks on American embassies, domestic terrorist attacks such as the Fort Hood massacre, and other worldwide attacks on society, as simply evil. For them, this needs to be recognized as such and dealt with aggressively, including with military force wherever necessary

The choice of approach depends on how one reads history, morality, and human behavior. The approach of President Obama until now has been the first one, in effect to appease those who have made war on the US. This approach has always appealed to the "good people" in our midst. Too many liberal intellectuals, well educated and intelligent, fail to appreciate both history and human behavior. They honestly think that the rest of the world solves problems the same way that they do. For them, in the final analysis, it is better to talk than to make war. The errors in this belief are counterintuitive. The downside of this approach will not be obvious until it is too late, just as in the 1930s. (In fairness, there have been liberals such as Harry Truman, John F Kennedy, Henry Jackson, and Joe Lieberman, who have not been deluded)

The Jews who were trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto argued until near the end about the best way to deal with the Germans. The Germans had no such discussions among themselves; they knew exactly what they were going to do. Similarly the other side in the war against radical Islam does not see two options. They are still fighting against the Crusaders. They are still in Andalusia. We value life; for them life is expendable

So has our President learned from events? It is odd that he did not mention this issue in the State of the Union address, making it unlikely that he has reverted to the second approach. Further, he has recently rewarded Syria for continued hostile behavior, including its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon. The approach of the "hawks" would be to handle Syria not with rewards, but with isolation.

We now have several rogue states like Iran and Syria, who support terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Pakistan, a nuclear power, is badly split and unreliable. Al Qaeda, nourished by the Taliban and by segments within Pakistan, is now spreading its venom around the Middle East. Lebanon is sliding in the direction of becoming another terrorist outpost. Turkey has sided with its own terrorist group. The jury is out on Tunisia, which may yet go the way of Iran Should the opposition in Egypt depose Mubarak, the replacement will likely be the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic fundamentalist anti-American group. Will the dominoes extend to Saudi Arabia or Jordan? Will Israel, surrounded by unrelenting enemies in Gaza, Lebanon, and possibly Egypt, be the last outpost of sanity in the Middle East? Will Iran, absent a credible military threat, soon possess nuclear warheads?

The approach of the doves has been disastrous. The US has lost its role as a deterrent power. We are now living with the unintentional consequences of the policies of a deluded administration. Peace and coexistence with the Muslim world is further away than ever. Does our President understand that? This will be our main challenge over the next two years. And it may be this issue, not the economy, that will be at the core of the 2012 election.

At Long Last, Have You Left No Sense of Decency?

2011-01-12T20:48:00.000-08:00

By Lawrence W. White MD

In June 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy was investigating the US Army, claiming Communist infiltration of the Defense Department. Joseph Welch, a Boston attorney , was the lead counsel for the US Army. On the 30th day of the hearings, Senator McCarthy brought up the irrelevant fact that a junior associate at Welch's law firm had been a member of the National Lawyers Guild, an organization labeled by J. Edgar Hoover as a Communist front group.

Welch tried to stop McCarthy, but the Senator pressed on, continuing his shameful tirade against a young attorney in Welch’s firm. In the reruns on the late news we could see Roy Cohn, the lead counsel on the committee and no model of virtue, shaking his head at McCarthy, trying to stop him.

All of us of a certain age remember Welch's eloquent response. Welch implored "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

It was a pivotal moment, a turning point in the reckless career of Senator McCarthy. After that his star fell and he died of the effects of alcohol abuse a few years later.

We are in the midst of another such moment of indecency. Rep Gabriella Giffords, shot through the brain, lies in a coma in a Tucson hospital. Nineteen others have been shot by a 22 year old homicidal killer. Six have died, including a 9 year old girl and a Republican judge.

This is a tragedy that has no clear cause other than the deranged mind of Jared Loughner. Events like this are random, unpredictable and fortunately rare in the US, unlike other parts of the world. When President Kennedy was assassinated, there was talk of a climate of hate in Dallas. Yet the nation came together in mourning, and I do not recall any finger pointing. Likewise for the killings of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

Today an unseemly eagerness to use this calamity to score political points against their opponents has seized several pundits and news outlets. (Fortunately this does not include President Obama, nor the leadership of the Democratic party). Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the editorialists at the New York Times, and many others, insist that we hold Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, the Tea Party, and all those who criticized the Obama health care plan, responsible for this tragedy. This is despite the fact that there is not one shred of evidence pointing to speech uttered by political candidates or their acolytes as influencing this man.

Strong feelings and language are a normal part of political activity. Important business is at stake; issues like the Health Care Bill impact on peoples’ lives and citizens have a right to get angry,

Further, contrary to the conventional wisdom, this is nothing new. John Steele Gordon, writing in the Wall Street Journal, traces the history of hateful remarks by political adversaries, going back to the beginning of our Republic. Speech has not always been used in a genteel manner. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln were all either propagators or targets of speech every bit as vitriolic as that used today. But the critical point is that there is absolutely no evidence that any of this hate filled language has had any effect on political violence in this country.

In the beginnings of our nation, the founding fathers structured our government to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in the hands of any one man or group. As a result, those competing for pieces of power are unable to use the devices of tyranny, such as a personal police force or army. The happy result is that they appeal to their fellow citizens using language, and such language will often become vitriolic. And when it gets nasty, it can be labeled as wrong. But it sure beats the alternative that we see elsewhere in which tyranny prevails, and looking the wrong way at the man in power can land you in jail or worse. .

Many news organizations attributed the shooting spree to a target map issued by Sarah Palin's political committee. Yet, people use metaphors like this all the time, including in business and sports. Charles Krauthammer has pointed out that “Everyone uses warlike metaphors in describing politics. When Barack Obama said at a 2008 fundraiser in Philadelphia, ‘If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,’ he was hardly inciting violence. Why? Because fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power - military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents”.

So why the reaction? George Will explains it in part; "A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment. From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress. It actually is the crux of progressivism. And it is why there is a reflex to blame conservatives first."

Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard writes: “The resulting stories are often incoherent with reporters and commentators acknowledging that Loughner did not appear to have been driven primarily by politics but nonetheless offering vague indictments of political rhetoric on the right. So rather than actual reporting we have lots of "simmering" and "swirling" in "a climate of hatred and fear" or "today's inflamed political environment."

David Brooks, usually unflappable, has exhibited unusual anger over these charges. Writing in the New York Times, he refers to “ the accusations that political factors contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl -- are extremely grave. They were made despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that Loughner was part of these movements or a consumer of their literature. They were made despite the fact that the link between political rhetoric and actual violence is extremely murky. They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness. ………. the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.”

According to Charles Krauthammer “Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence. ….Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.”

And so we have another moment, 56 years later, in which we can ask of Krugman, of Olbermann, and of their fellow travelers who have sought political advantage over the bodies of the dead and wounded, at long last have you no sense of decency?

A Tragedy followed by Exploitation

2011-01-10T14:12:00.000-08:00

Posted by Lawrence W White MD

On Saturday, a 22 year old mentally unstable individual, set out to kill Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic Congresswoman from Tucson Arizona. In the melee that followed, twenty persons were shot, including six who were killed. This included a Republican judge, and nine year old Christina-Taylor Green.

The killer, Jared Loughner, was clearly paranoid and mentally ill. He has a long history of bizarre behavior, and has been described by a classmate as “left wing” and a fancier of conspiracy theories. He is linked to no coherent ideology, and has never been a Tea Party or any other kind of activist. He believes that the government is imposing “mind control” on the public via “grammar.” He is a fan of both "The Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx, and "Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler.

This is an unspeakable tragedy. Wise words have come from both sides of the political aisle. Both Democratic President Barak Obama and Republican Speaker John Boehner have expressed shock and sadness.

Unfortunately, there are two dark sides to this episode. The first is the attack itself, which is, simply stated, a tragedy. People were murdered, and others are struggling for their lives.

The second dark side, addressed here, is the response, an unfortunate rush to judgment. .

According to Abe Greenwald writing in Contentions,

“Less than 24 hours after the story of the Arizona shooting first broke, Americans woke up to Responsible-Rhetoric Sunday. Every newspaper and news-analysis show piously raised questions about the country’s overheated political rhetoric and its relationship to yesterday’s massacre. This was nothing short of the immediate and seamless political hijacking of a senseless tragedy”.

And who is to blame for this tragedy? If this were three years ago, it would have been blamed on George Bush. But this is 2011, so we now know that it is really the fault of Sarah Palin.

During the recent Congressional campaign, Sarah Palin posted a map showing locations in which Democrats were running for re-election. The New York Times solemnly informs us that

“Those Democrats were noted by crosshairs symbols like those seen through the scope of a gun. Ms. Giffords was among those on Ms. Palin’s map.”

(Never mind that far left Daily Kos publisher Markos Moulitsas also used the term "bull's-eye." in reference to Rep Giffords. Moulitsas stated “I'd argue that we can narrow the target list by looking at those Democrats who sold out the Constitution last week." According to Moulitsas, "This vote certainly puts a bull-s-eye on their district.")

Despite this equal opportunity use of the bulls-eye, this political action served to tie Palin to responsibility for creating a climate of hate.

The intended victim, Rep Giffords, is a Democrat who has been described as both a liberal and a conservative. None of this should matter. No one should be subjected to violence because of political beliefs.

Nonetheless, the usual suspects in the media and punditocracy swarmed forth to explain this event. According to left wing conventional wisdom, the Tea Party and many other critics of President Obama, are simply hate-filled crazed extremists rather than persons exercising their right of dissent.

The New York Times ran a headline "Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics.", and claimed that "it was hard to separate what had happened from the heated nature of the debate that has swirled around Mr. Obama and Democratic policies of the past two years."

The Times implied that conservative criticism of President Barack Obama and his policies may have been at the root of this weekend's violence, and they included tea party criticisms of Obama's healthcare plan. They also claimed that the fact that Palin's political action committee had targeted Giffords for defeat may have played a role. (Hello? Isn’t this the way that the political process works?)

Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva told us that “The Palin express better look at their tone and their tenor.”

Despite his own admission that his thoughts were premature, Paul Krugman opined “We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was …. And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list.”

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas "Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin."

The National Jewish Democratic Council asserted: “It is fair to say — in today’s political climate, and given today’s political rhetoric — that many have contributed to the building levels of vitriol in our political discourse that have surely contributed to the atmosphere in which this event transpired.”

The New Yorker’s George Packer, wrote that “It doesn’t matter why he did it.”

One of the first out of the starting gate, only a few hours after the tragedy, was the Bay area’s very own malignant narcissist, Michael Lerner, chair of the “Network of Spiritual Progressives”, with the identity of the perpetrators; none other than the “vast right wing conspiracy”. According to Lerner, this is clearly one more action by this conspiracy.

“Why does … the vast right-wing conspiracy get a free pass when its rhetoric can easily be seen to contribute to the climate of hate from which the actions of this "lone gunman" can be easily understood to have emerged? Isn't it time for us to demand that our government investigate the violence-generating discourse of the racist and the haters?” (Note that he puts the words “lone gunman” in quotes; no subtlety regarding a conspiracy here)

And less you miss his agenda, he spells it out clearly; “So don't think of this action as a mere "irrational event," because it fits very well with the agenda of those who want to give the country back 100% to the corporate powers and their Republican agents in Congress while scaring those who might wish to participate in helping build any kind of progressive alternative”.

And then Lerner deliberately twists the major sources of anti-Jewish bigotry in stating that “Right-wing haters particularly hate Jews”, when the great preponderance of anti-Semitism in the world today comes from the twin propaganda mills of the far left and of Islamic extremism. (Lerner has made excuses for both of these).

Clearly there is a double standard in play here. According to Jonathan Tobin,

“As the political left seeks to use the Arizona tragedy to tar all conservatives with the brush of the murderer, there is another point to remember here. In the past few years, there have been several shootings and terrorist attacks carried out or attempted by American Muslims who were clearly influenced by extremist Islam. Yet every time such a crime happens, liberals loudly warn us that an examination of the motives of those who carry out such attacks is beyond the pale, since such ruminations might be prejudicial to Muslims, even if the truth is that those crimes were influenced by Islam.”

Abe Greenwald points out that the New York Times, “has repeatedly refused even to report, let alone editorialize, about the links between Islamist beliefs and terror” The NY Times however, is blaming the Arizona attack on the Tea Party, on conservatives, and on anyone who has ever opposed President Obama on any issue.

But this is not new. Large segments of the media and talking heads have converted every tragedy into evidence of conservative’s evil. The hurricane in New Orleans, the Columbine shooting, a tornado in Greensburg, Kansas, the Duke lacrosse case, the BP oil spill, the earthquake in Haiti; all prove the iniquity of the right. And of course, President Clinton used the Oklahoma City bombing to arrack his critics, including Rush Limbaugh, even though Limbaugh and others critical of Clinton had nothing to do with the organizers of the Oklahoma bombing.

There is little question that the political rhetoric has been heated. But for every Glenn Beck there is a Keith Olbermann. And in recent years a great deal of maliciousness has been directed at bothPresident Obama and President Bush.

The attempt to attack critics of President Obama as violent haters is irrational and wrong. Simply stated, this tragedy can not be used to discredit any legitimate political activity, or as a club with which to halt political debate Such attempts cross all lines of decency.

Sarah Palin and 2012

2010-12-05T05:35:00.000-08:00

If one reads the mainstream press, one can be excused for believing that Sarah Palin is now the front runner for the GOP nomination for President in 2012. Whatever else one may think about her, she has two major failings. First, almost everyone I talk to, whether liberal or conservative, considers her to be unqualified. And of equal importance, while she can create unprecedented enthusiasm among her conservative followers, this will not be enough to win the election. She will need to capture independent voters, something that she will be unable to do.

From the viewpoint of Obama supporters, they would love to see her run. She may be the only Republican that Obama can easily beat. She reminds me of Barry Goldwater, who thrilled his base, but lost to Lyndon Johnson in a landslide. He was simply too far from the moderate center to be electable. (Of course, the same was said about Ronald Reagan).

Palin frightens not only the moderate centrists. A significant number of conservative Republicans voted for Obama in 2008 simply because Palin scared them.

Below, two articles. The first, by Jennifer Rubin, points out the reasons why Palin is not the front runner. The second, which appeared in Pajamas Media, is the type of “over the top piece” we will see from Palin enthusiasts.
Lawrence White

The myth of Palin's frontrunner status

By Jennifer Rubin Washington Post

Much of the punditocracy is obsessed with Sarah Palin. It's understandable on several levels. First, she makes for good copy and has a knack for coining catchy phrases ("death panels") and new words ("refudiate" -- it's now in the dictionary). She is controversial and opinionated, so given the choice between, say, a story on John Thune and one on Palin, it's a no-brainer to choose the best-selling author, TV reality show star and Tea Party darling. But conservatives suspect there's also some mischief-making afoot -- the desire by liberal-leaning members of the media and the White House to make Palin the symbol of the Republican Party, which they are convinced will translate into her presidential run, her nomination and a shellacking for the GOP at the polls in 2012.

You don't have to buy into a conspiracy to see that many in the media and on the left are convinced Palin will be the nominee. In fact, they seem to be in a bit of a time warp. Howard Kurtz recently praised her media savvy, an observation widely held by conservatives -- 18 months ago. Unlike conservatives who have had time to process the Palin phenomenon, non-conservatives are just beginning to evaluate her as more than a punchline or an object of ridicule. They suspect conservatives are oblivious to her shortcomings. But that's simply wrong.

For months now the real story on the right has been the search for new presidential contenders. There is far more awareness than many in the media imagine among conservative activists, Tea Partyers included, of Palin's limited appeal to independent voters. Her backing of questionable candidates in the Senate races, most especially Christine O'Donnell, rekindled concerns about her political judgment in a general election context. Is she admired for her ability to rally the base? Yes. Is she especially talented at throwing the White House off stride? Obviously. Does she give voice to populists' suspicion about media bias and liberal elites? Better than most anyone on the political scene. But the notion that she is a frontrunner is an eye-roller for most elected GOP officials (Chris Christie tipped his hand a bit on late-night TV) and even for many fans who furiously defended her against what conservatives saw as excessive and unfair criticism during the 2008 race.

Indeed, more Republicans -- on the Hill and around the country -- are beginning to suspect that she might not run. Why risk her fame and her rock-star status by running and possibly losing?

So political observers should watch the non-candidates and the maybe-candidates. There was for a time the Mitch Daniels buzz. However, he stumbled out of the gate, suggesting a truce on social issues that annoyed social conservatives and a penny-pinching approach to defense that alarmed hawks. There is the Chris Christie buzz. And now there's Mike Pence, a favorite of movement conservatives and Tea Partyers.

And then there is Paul Ryan, whose wonkishness excites conservative policymakers and whose devotion to limited government wins over Tea Partyers. A prominent conservative writer and think tank scholar told me, "He loves ideas; and he loves policy." Translation: he's not a celebrity candidate. And it's not every candidate who can write and hold forth on QE2.

Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, (whose magazine has featured a number of conservative contenders and defended Palin from an onslaught of attacks during the campaign) comes right out with it when I ask his take on the state of the presidential race: "Ryan-Odierno 2012!" He adds, "You can quote me on that -- a wish and a prediction." That would be Gen. Ray Odinero, commander of our forces in Iraq. This may come as a shock to Palin fans and to those who perceived her as the favorite of the most influential weekly conservative magazine. But it won't surprise many Republican activists.

Actually, there is no "frontrunner" -- just many candidates with serious issues. (For example, Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health-care plan bears an uncanny resemblance to ObamaCare, which conservatives vow to repeal. I've yet to find a plugged-in Republican or a Tea Party activist who thinks he will be the nominee.)

Talking heads and mainstream reporters who are certain that Palin will be the nominee may not be looking to make trouble for the GOP. They are just behind the curve. In six months, when the field is better defined, we'll see who might emerge from the pack. Right now the frontrunner is "none of the above."

Critics on Both Sides Be Damned: Run, Sarah

Let the people decide if she's qualified, not the elites.

by Pam Meister PajamasMedia

Love her or hate her, Sarah Palin has, within the past couple of years, become an American institution. All the former Alaskan governor has to do is post something on Facebook or give a “shout-out” on Twitter and both pundits and everyday Americans on both sides of the aisle are either singing her praises or talking about what a dumb hick she is who has no business breathing, let alone commenting on the news of the day.

The big question, of course, is whether Palin should run for president in 2012. Here are just a few reasons why a Palin run makes sense:

She is strong on defense. In a Facebook post on April 16, 2010, Palin noted that “it is in America’s and the world’s interests for our country to remain a dominant military superpower” and questioned President Obama’s statement to other world leaders that “whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.” This seems to mirror more and more Americans’ concern that our national defense is “not strong enough” and the fact that fewer of us believe our defense “is about right.”

She is unapologetically pro-Israel. Palin’s evangelical faith is at the core of her pro-Israel stance. It’s so refreshing to hear someone on the national stage supporting a sovereign nation’s right to defense, right to build houses within her own borders, and right to a united capital city — Jerusalem.

She has — er, cojones. With all of the talk about whether Obama has any of his own or needs to borrow from Hillary Clinton, Palin has shown time and again that she’s not one to be intimidated — a plus when dealing with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il. I, for one, believe her when she said that she stepped down as governor before her term was up because she felt that the numerous frivolous suits filed against her were affecting her ability to govern effectively.

And how many of us would be holding our heads as high as she is after being viciously attacked by friend and foe alike (and supposedly unbiased media) for well over two years now? Unless it’s about what kind of toilet paper she buys or what the fiber count on her bed sheets is, what else is anyone going to dig up on her or her family? Pretty much all her baggage is front and center. What you see is what you get.

She exemplifies a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Time and again, Palin’s elitist detractors — even those who are on the right side of the aisle — question whether or not she has enough experience to run for the highest office in the land, while ignoring the fact that she does actually have executive experience. Some also rant about her “mangling” of the English language (while ignoring Obama’s flubs like pronouncing corpsman “corpse-man”). Frankly, I’d much rather have someone in charge whose diction is imperfect but whose message is clear than someone who pronounces all (or most of) the words correctly but won’t say exactly what he means.

We also hear much about how Palin got her degree from a state school instead of a more “elite” institution — and was an average student who was “forgotten” by her professors. Many Americans have attended state universities (yours truly included) and haven’t had our intelligence questioned as a result. And why is it the kiss of death that her professors didn’t remember her? I’ll bet most of my former instructors would be hard put to remember me, considering the thousands of students they taught over the course of their careers. And Obama wasn’t exactly the most remembered student during his two years at Columbia.

Meghan McCain said she was “scared” by the fact that someone like Christine O’Donnell could just wake up one day and decide to run for national office. As I said at the time,

One does not have to be born into royalty or otherwise be part of the self-anointed elite to want to serve and represent one’s fellow citizens. Any ordinary schlub can run for office, making his case to the electorate, and letting it decide if he is suited for the job.

Ordinary Americans are sick and tired of being lectured by the self-anointed elites, the “intellectuals,” and the “ruling class,” and Sarah Palin’s growing popularity embodies this frustration and disgust.

I have a friend who wonders if Palin shouldn’t stay out of the race because she fears Palin and her family will be ripped even more by those on both sides who hate her. Palin knows better than anyone what lies ahead on the campaign trail. I say that if she wants to go for it, go for it — and the “stupid” American voter will ultimately decide if she is ready for the big time.

And if I had to place a bet on who wins in 2012, my money would be on Palin.

Pam Meister is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in a number of online publications including Big Hollywood, American Thinker, and Family Security

Destructive 'agnosticism'

2010-11-26T10:26:00.000-08:00

Missing from JVP pronouncements are any critiques of the BDS movement’s goal of dismantling Israel. Not only does JVP defend pro-BDS groups, it partners with them.

By Yitzhak Santis
Haaretz Nov 26, 2010

In his November 5 opinion piece in Haaretz English Edition, Matthew Taylor (“Just who is misguided?”), of the Jewish Voice for Peace, lodged a complaint against the “older [Jewish] establishment” for being “condescending” to young Jews. His protest included an attack on remarks made by Julie Bernstein, of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, who was a panelist in a workshop at the General Assembly earlier this month in New Orleans.

The irony of Bernstein being a young adult and part-time graduate student seems to have been lost on Taylor. The main target of his "j'accuse," though, was the recently launched plan of the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs to actively confront the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS ) campaign, a well-funded internationally coordinated movement to isolate and delegitimize Israel. To bolster his argument, Taylor could have tried to demonstrate that BDS does not strive to dismantle the State of Israel. He did not, nor could he had he wanted to - because Israel's demise is the BDS movement's aim.

The leaders of BDS certainly speak plainly about their goals. Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, spoke last March at a church in the San Francisco Bay area, and declared that for the BDS movement the 1967 occupation is "not the most important" issue. Instead, he said, the "foremost" demand of BDS is the right of return. The same Barghouti has also said, "If the refugees were to return you would not have a two-state solution; you'll have a Palestine next to a Palestine rather than a Palestine next to an Israel."

Other BDS advocates are equally explicit. "BDS represents three words that will help bring about the defeat of Zionist Israel and victory for Palestine," said Ronnie Kasrils, the veteran South African political figure and advocate for the Palestinian cause. And Palestinian-American journalist Ahmed Moor writes, "Ending the occupation doesn't mean anything if it doesn't mean upending the Jewish state itself ... BDS does mean the end of the Jewish state."

Some may try to dismiss these comments as merely individual opinions. But that is just more obfuscation. The sum of the BDS movement's central demands (as outlined in its manifesto, the "Palestinian United Call for BDS against Israel" ) - especially the demand for a "right of return" - make it clear that BDS seeks to disassemble the State of Israel. Or, as Barghouti envisions it, a "Palestine next to a Palestine" and no Israel.

While these BDS advocates are clear about their movement's goals, Taylor and Jewish Voice for Peace prefer murkiness. JVP's website declares: "Our mission statement endorses neither a one-state solution, nor a two-state solution ... we have members and supporters on both sides of this question, as well as many others who, like the organization as a whole, are agnostic about it."

In the face of the annihilationist and overtly anti-Semitic ideologies motivating Hamas, Hezbollah and their state sponsor Iran, this agnosticism coming from a Jewish group with respect to Israel's existence, and thus the safety of millions of Israeli Jews, represents a gross moral failure.

JVP's website also states, "JVP defends activists' right to use the full range of BDS tactics without being persecuted or demonized." Missing from this statement, and from any JVP public pronouncements, are any critiques of the BDS movement's explicit goal of dismantling Israel. Further, JVP not only defends pro-BDS groups, it also partners with them. Based in the San Francisco Bay area, JVP for years has repeatedly co-sponsored scores of events and demonstrations with anti-Israel and explicitly anti-Zionist organizations that overtly support the full range of BDS. These include the Al Awda Palestinian Right to Return Coalition, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Students for Justice in Palestine, Sabeel, Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid and the International Solidarity Movement, among many others.

It is important to draw a stark line between BDS supporters like the JVP and critics of specific Israeli government policies. In the American and Israeli Jewish communities, there is ample space for wide-ranging debate - from left to right - about specific policies. However, "agnosticism" on Israel's right to exist as an independent Jewish and democratic state within secure borders is, in fact, anti-Israel. Delegitimizing Israel and thereby promoting its isolation and destabilization is, in fact, anti-Israel. Applying harsher criteria for and imposing harsher punishment on Israel than are applied to any other country whose policies are considered objectionable, is, in fact, anti-Israel.

The time has come - particularly after JVP's behavior at the General Assembly and the subsequent gloating about its outbursts there - to remove the cloak of respectability that JVP has tried to place over its positions and ask all reasonable people to examine the organization's real record.

Yitzhak A. Santis is director of the Middle East Project of the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Relations Council. In January he and his family will be making aliyah.

Political Correctness Run Amok

2010-10-24T23:58:00.000-07:00

Where does political correctness (PC) come from? Who creates the rules and regulations?

The content, precepts, and attitudes of PC are set by the liberal media. Intellectual liberals of my acquaintance regularly read the New York Times, listen to National Public Radio (NPR), and then convey the perceived wisdom on the major issues of the day to their friends and colleagues. These opinions are then intensified and validated through agreement by their friends who are exposed to the same “groupthink”. Thus a set of beliefs and judgments become the product of a highly cohesive “in-group”, who read the same newspapers and magazines, watch the same television channels, and talk only to each other.

This method for deciding important issues has the virtue of successfully reaching consensus and minimizing conflict, but at the price of failing to critically analyze opinions and conclusion. As a result, the perceived wisdom put forth by these standard bearers is often wrong, and is frequently the exact converse of events unfolding in the real world.

There are currently two foreign policy areas where political correctness is most evident . First are judgments regarding Israel. It is not politically correct in intellectual circles today to be a strong advocate for the Jewish state. Secondly, it is not politically correct to express concern about the dangers of radical Islam. In the current climate, such concern is interpreted as both Islamophobia and bigotry. We have seen dramatic examples of both forms of political correctness in recent days.

The New York Times has long been a vocal critic of Israel, and have established a set of standards for political correctness regarding Israel. First, they claim that the responsibility for the failure of prior peace negotiations falls equally on the Israelis and the Palestinians. (The “plague on both their houses” formulation). This is despite the fact that Israel has repeatedly sought peace agreements and made generous and fair offers to their hostile neighbors, while the Arab states will settle for nothing less than the annihilation of the Jewish state. But it is difficult to argue with “even-handedness”, even though there is no actual symmetry.

Secondly, using the premise that the NY Times reflects the best-informed wisdom of those seeking peace, the Times assumes the responsibility of telling the Israelis what they must do, and further assumes that truly enlightened Americans will feel a similar obligation. (The “we really care about Israel, we know better, and therefore we must use tough love” formulation).

This is exemplified not only in editorial policy, but also in the commentary of columnists such as Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, and Nicolas Kristoff. There are few better examples of in-group cohesion that the musings of these commentators.

In a recent column (Just Knock It Off, Oct 20), Tom Friedman, exemplifies this too well In his “plague on both your houses” approach he starts out by criticizing Hamas and Hezbollah. He then quickly devolves into criticism of Israel, whom he claims “is behaving like a spoiled child”.

Employing the tone of a frustrated parent, he criticizes Israel for not continuing the building freeze “for as little as 60 days” in order to “take away any excuse from the Palestinians to avoid peace talks”. He ignores the fact that for the first nine months of the 10 month freeze, the Palestinians, with no excuses, still refused peace talks. Friedman simplistically makes the claim that extending the freeze would actually enhance Israel’s security. He ignores the real probability that repeated concessions by Israel with no reciprocity on the other side will continue a precedent that makes any ultimate peace agreement less, not more, likely .

Further, he fails to ask what might be accomplished in this 60 day extension of the freeze, that might save the “peace process”. The obvious link between this 60 day extension and the November 2 US elections is ignored.

Throughout, Friedman uses the impatient tone of someone who knows better, but has to deal with the stupidity of those who disagree (“please spare me the nonsense”, “what utter nonsense”), earning the chuckles and the earnest agreement of the PC crowd.

Friedman also shows us the “we know better” than the “spoiled child” tone, as he tells the Israelis what they must do. He calls on Israel to do things that she has already tried repeatedly and that have failed. These measures have failed for only one reason; the Palestinians would rather hold out for the destruction of Israel than have their own state, and until Arab intransigence toward a Jewish state ends, there can never be a deal. Freidman (along with the NY Times editorial board) ignores these realities, the better to bash Israel and once again reiterate conventional wisdom as determined by the NY Times

It is an axiom of the PC crowd that the Times is pro-Israel, which further justifies their lecturing Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth, as is evident to those well versed in Middle East realities. In fact, their positions are almost identical to those of J Street, who also falsely claim to be pro-Israel. Both believe that America must apply pressure on Israel; both claim that this is in Israel’s best interests, regardless of the judgments of the democratically elected leadership of Israel. As with J Street, assuming that the Times is pro-Israel serves to buttress support for their positions, and makes it possible for the politically correct crowd to make anti-Israel recommendations while believing that they are pro-Israel.

Recently, NPR also showed its deference to political correctness, in this case with respect to attitudes and statements regarding Islamic radicals.

Juan Williams, an NPR commentator, was a guest on the Fox News Channel. On the show, he made the following statement :

'I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

He later added,

"This is not a bigoted statement. It is a statement of my feelings."

NPR CEO Vivian Schiller promptly fired him, stating that Williams should have kept his feeling about Muslims between himself and "his psychiatrist”.

Now Juan Williams is a highly articulate, and intelligent man. His written record indicates a liberal approach to issues of race as well as many other matters. He has a clear grasp of events affecting our world. And he will have no difficulty finding another position. It seems likely that Williams’ comments reflect the anxiety of the majority of people who fly. Repeatedly, Muslim men associated with radical Islamist organizations have tried to kill Americans, and in some cases succeeded. On Sept 11, 2001, nineteen Muslim men succeeded in a quest to kill thousands in New York and Washington. The majority of Muslims are not suicide bombers, but it is also true that most of the world's terrorism today is committed by Muslims. Further, Osama Bin Laden issued a fatwa 12 years ago calling on Muslims to kill Americans. So is Juan Williams wrong to be worried? Not at all. His fears are shared by most Americans.

Now because most Muslims are not terrorists, Juan Williams’ statement is neither logical nor does it conform to critical thinking. But in the interchange in question he did not claim to be expressing facts or analysis, but clearly identified his statement as a feeling. And feelings are most definitely not facts. But in their politically correct desire to excuse the crimes of some Muslims, NPR went overboard, and counting on the prevailing conventional wisdom to support them, reacted in an extreme manner.

In bowing to political correctness, NPR is acting much like liberal intellectuals in 1930s Britain and the US. At that time, liberal opinion makers insisted that Hitler was not a threat, that he was a European problem, and it was imperative to avoid getting dragged into an unnecessary war. Many liberal intellectuals of that era joined the “America First” movement, spearheaded by the very illiberal Charles Lindbergh who believed that the US was being pushed into war by the Jews.

Since Sept 11, 2001, there have been repeated media assertions that a massive backlash against all Muslims took place, even though there is no evidence for that. It is claimed that Americans have been guilty of Islamophobia, despite the fact that any objective evaluation reveals that it is almost non-existent. Yes, people are fearful, as Juan Williams is fearful. But has Islamophobia taken over the country as some assert? Most definitely not. In fact our leaders have gone out of their way to make statements and enact policies that protect American Muslims. However, subscribers of political correctness believe otherwise, and so act in ill advised ways

Political correctness demands that we not hold any part of Islam responsible for anything negative.

• Our President asserts that we are in a war against Al Qaeda, not against radical Islam.

• Last week the statement by a guest on “The View” that Muslims attacked us on 9/11 led to a walkout of two panelists

• Excessive sensitivity to Islamic charges of disrespect over the use of cartoons of Mohammed leads our media to criticize publication of the cartoons, but not to criticize the riots that resulted.

• Our media will not criticize Muslim fundamentalists (and many Islamic states) for abuse of women and homosexuals

With the PC mentality that sees Islamophobia running wild, any criticism of Islamic individuals or organizations is equated with racism. We have recently seen this in action most clearly in the response to the debate around the Cordoba center in New York.

According to Jonathan Tobin, writing in Commentary, “many in America’s political and media elite had come to characterize virtually any opposition to the planned Islamic center, no matter how finely nuanced and devoid of prejudice against Islam, as more a product of bigotry than concern about the propriety of such a scheme”

Michael Bloomberg fanned the PC flames when he proclaimed that the real issue was the principle of religious liberty, that the critics “should be ashamed of themselves”, and that opposition to the mosque was the result of bigotry. Thus, as Tobin points out,

”the debate over this project turned from one about what seemed to many Americans an ill-considered provocation into one about the victimization of Muslims”

Some believe that with the NPR action, political correctness may have run its course. (I doubt it). However, significant numbers of both liberals and conservatives have supported Williams. Newsweek columnist Mickey Kaus wrote that "NPR officials seem to have a free-floating hair trigger oversensitivity, even about their own thoughts," Whoopy Goldberg, stated that "The firing of Juan was a total mistake and sends the wrong message”

Barry Rubin has pointed out that this is the first time the leftist media has gone after a liberal. Rubin argues that “Williams is one of America's most seasoned, respected, and articulate African-American journalists. So charges of racism are not going to stick here. He is also a powerful spokesman for reasonable, moderate, non-radical liberal viewpoints. If he has to go work for Fox to voice them, that's a message in itself.”

In the NPR imbroglio, we have a clear case in which our institutions have been taken over by the far left. Dishonesty and propaganda have replaced education. The term McCarthyism has been overused lately, but this is a clear example in which the chilling effect of loss of employment has been used against free speech and intellectual interchange. Rubin points out that “this is not mainly a liberals versus conservatives battle, it is the far left against both real liberals and non-extremist conservatives”

Jennifer Rubin, writing in Commentary, states that this episode “eliminates any pretense that NPR is providing some public service. We already have left-leaning news outlets giving voice to the liberals’ party line. There is no reason for the taxpayers to support NPR” With NPR now receiving $1.8 million form George Soros; is there any reason for them to received public funding also?

An enlightened citizenry needs to challenge false views, views based on wishful thinking and liberal platitudes. We are living in dangerous times and can afford no less than complete clarity.. Political correctness is a lazy man’s way of making sense of the world, and we should not use it in place of serious political and policy analysis.

President Obama and the Middle East Peace Talks

2010-10-04T16:32:00.000-07:00

Hoisted on his own petard?

By Lawrence W. White

President Obama has sent a letter to PM Netanyahu asking for a 2 month extension of the freeze. Why two months? Good question. The cynical answer is that two months will take us beyond the US elections. Further, in the same letter, Obama offered to allow the IDF to remain in the Jordan Valley, for security reasons, after a state is formed. But how can he make such an offer? The Palestinians will never allow it, and past actions indicate that Obama will not force the issue.

A parallel letter was sent by Obama to Mahmoud Abbas promising that if the Palestinians continued the peace talks, Obama would pledge to support the establishment of a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1949 armistice lines. Again, how can he make such a promise? Aren't agreements supposed to be between the two parties involved? Again the cynical answer is that Obama plans to pressure Israel to accept an imposed settlement (but not until after the US elections; hence the two months)

Netanyahu has refused Obama’s request. Why? Several reasons.

1. There were supposed to be reciprocal actions from the Palestinians to accompany the original 10 month freeze. These never happened.

2. The Palestinians wasted nine months after the freeze started, refusing to engage in talks; why should Israel now be required to extend this period?

3. The settlements are not the most important issue; many greater issues, such as final borders, must be dealt with. The request for a further freeze puts excessive emphasis on the settlement issue.

4. Netanyahu fears a breakdown of his coalition if he agrees to extend the freeze. (Whether this would happen is speculative)

5. To extend the freeze would mean that Netanyahu is breaking a pledge he made to the Israeli citizens.

6. The most important reason relates to Obama's lack of credibility. To entice Israel to extend the freeze, Obama made certain promises. However, Evelyn Gordon has pointed out that Obama’s earlier actions and statements have shown that he does not consider prior promises to Israel to be binding. Consequence? Promises made now will not be taken seriously.

According to Evelyn Gordon, writing in Commentary,

"Israel, after all, received its last presidential promise just six years ago, in exchange for leaving Gaza. In writing George W. Bush said the Palestinian Authority must end incitement and terror, voiced support for Israel “as a Jewish state,” vowed to 'strengthen Israel’s capability' to defend itself, and said any Israeli-Palestinian deal should leave Israel with the settlement blocs and 'defensible borders' and resettle Palestinian refugees in the Palestinian state rather than Israel. He also promised orally that Israel could continue building in the settlement blocs.

"But when Obama took office, he denied the oral pledge’s very existence, infuriating even Israeli leftists. As Haaretz’s Aluf Benn wrote, it was possible to argue the policy should change, 'but not to lie.'

"And while Obama hasn't denied the written document’s existence, he’s nullified it de facto through his every word and action: he’s never challenged PA incitement; he’s advocated the indefensible pre-1967 borders, including in East Jerusalem (where he bullied Israel into halting construction even in huge Jewish neighborhoods that will clearly remain Israeli under any deal); he hasn't publicly demanded that the PA recognize Israel as a Jewish state or said the refugees can't be resettled in Israel; and far from strengthening Israel’s defensive capabilities, he’s condemned Israel’s enforcement of an arms blockade on Hamas-run Gaza, bullied Israel into accepting a UN probe of its raid on a blockade-busting flotilla, imposed unprecedented restrictions on Israel’s purchase of F-35 fighters, and more..."

Barry Rubin has asked the critical question; why two months? Is it likely, given the long history of the conflict, that the parties will suddenly make a major breakthrough in two months? According to Rubin;

"Hmm, readers, what is happening within two months? The U.S. election! The implication is that the Obama Administration is offering Israel the following basic deal: Make us look good until the vote and we will give you a pay-off.

"The Obama Administration cannot bash Israel between now and the elections but it might seek to get revenge in 2011."

Moderate Muslims and the Ground Zero Mosque Controversy

2010-09-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

By Lawrence W. White

My recent post on the Mosque close to Ground Zero in New York stirred much commentary. Most people I know oppose building the mosque. But there are many who stand in opposition to the opposers.

Among those who support it, two issues stand out; The first is freedom of religion. The second is the claim that it is being manipulated by right wingers to create fear and Islamophobia. Thus bogyman names appear, persons like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and the usual suspects.

Huffington Post editors wonder "is the right exploiting the issue to demonize Muslims ahead of the midterms?”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huffingtonpost/ground-zero-mosque-debate_b_665789.html

Michael Bloomberg says "We would betray our values -- and play into our enemies' hands -- if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists. This is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetime - as important a test - and it is critically important that we get it right"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-bloomberg/mayor-bloomberg-on-the-ne_b_669338.html

And predictably, the anti-American radical Michael Lerner uses this as an opportunity to advance his personal agenda, as he states that opposition to the Mosque has been taken over by right wingers including the ADL.

“Underlying the ADL position is its references to the Holocaust and the need to respect the feelings of its survivors. Sadly, the memory the memory of Jewish suffering -- appropriated by right-wing forces to justify special privilege for Jews in general and Israel in particular -- now is to be extended to victims of 9/11 (but not, for example, to the survivors of US military assaults on civilians in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, El Salvador, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq, or Afghanistan)”.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-michael-lerner/shame-on-adl-for-opposing_b_669501.html

Now, what about the other side of the coin, as stated by one of the "extremists" who oppose the mosque? Here are the words of Sarah Palin:

“No one is disputing that America stands for – and should stand for – religious tolerance. It is a foundation of our republic. This is not an issue of religious tolerance but of common moral sense. To build a mosque at Ground Zero is a stab in the heart of the families of the innocent victims of those horrific attacks. Just days after 9/11, the spiritual leader of the organization that wants to build the mosque, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, suggested that blame be placed on the innocents when he stated that the “United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened” and that “in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.” Rauf refuses to recognize that Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of our ally, Israel, and refuses to provide information about the sources of funding for the $100 million mosque. Rauf also plays a key role in a group behind the flotilla designed to provoke Israel in its justifiable blockade of Gaza. These are just a few of the points Americans are realizing as New York considers the proposed mosque just a stone’s throw away from 9/11’s sacred ground.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/07/21/bloomberg-palin-agree-to-disagree-on-ground-zero-mosque-plans/

Three important points;

1. The issue of ethics.

This is not religious intolerance, but a fundamental moral principle that I was taught in medical school, the important injunction of Hippocrates: "First do no harm" I will not reiterate the immense harm done to survivors of the victims of 9/11.

Another moral principle is that of autonomy and freedom. To express criticism of this particular Mosque is part of freedom of expression, and should not be buried by claims of Islamophobia, but rather debated on its own merits. No one of my acquaintance opposes the building of a Mosque. It is only the location that creates rancor.

Another principle, that of justice or fairness, comes into play. As stated by former CIA director Woolsey, we are engaged in World War 4 against radical Islamism. Is it just that political Islamism wants an expression of victory, and we Americans hand them that?..

2. One must consider the real agenda of Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, often presented as a moderate.. As indicated above, and in many other statements, Rauf is a defender of Hamas and Osama Bin Laden, a blamer of the US and Israel for the genesis of 9/11, and a master political manipulater who is concealing the financial backers of the Mosque

3. Are there ulterior motives in building the Mosque at this location and with the name Cordoba? It is no accident that this name has been chosen.

Here are the words of Shelomo Alfassa a scholar of Judaic life in Islamic Spain, former U.S. Director of 'Justice for Jews from Arab Countries and a rescue worker at Ground Zero

http://www.alfassa.com/jihad_victory2.html

The 'Cordoba Institute' Desires to Symbolize Jihad in America:

A Lesson for All Americans

“ Forget the political correctness and all the people who will not come out and directly say it: the New York based Arab-Islamic organization known as "The Cordoba Institute" wants to build a mosque at the site of the 9/11 attacks in order to establish a symbolic victory marker in the battle of jihad (holy war) against the United States. The name of their organization reveals their intention.

The historic city of Cordoba, Spain was originally Christian, but was overtaken by Islamic marauders and turned into an Islamic stronghold in the 8th century CE. The Islamic seizure of Cordoba began in the year 711 CE by Berber tribesmen who had recently converted to Islam. They crossed the 14 mile stretch of ocean between North Africa and Europe into what was then called Al-Andalus, which is now modern day Spain.

Grand Cordoba became home to what was known as the "Caliphate," an Islamic political paradigm wherein the leader is regarded as a direct successor of the founder of Islam, Muhammad (570 - 632 CE). Emir Abd ar-Rahman I--who arrived from Damascus, Syria--took control of Al-Andalus. It was under the rule of he and his descendants that the Caliphate reached its peak based at Cordoba. Under various successors, there was always a part of Spain which remained under Islamic control until the year 1492.

To radical Muslims of today, few symbols are as resonant as the downfall of the Caliphate at Cordoba, Al-Andalus. In the same way that Americans remember their defeat at the Alamo and use its name as a rallying cry in battle; Cordoba, Al-Andalus is a rallying cry for Islam.”

What is needed now are the expressions of Moderate Muslims. Here are four pieces, on this subject, two written by moderate Muslims,

Questions for Imam Rauf From an American Muslim

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704644404575481882969581708.html

He may not appear to the untrained eye to be an Islamist, but by making Ground Zero an Islamic rather than an American issue he shows his true allegiance.

By M. ZUHDI JASSER

Dr. Jasser, a medical doctor and a former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, is the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Ariz.

After a long absence while controversy over the mosque near Ground Zero smoldered, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf finally held forth this week both in the New York Times and on CNN.

Imam Rauf and his supporters are clearly more interested in making a political statement in relation to Islam than in the mosque's potential for causing community division and pain to those who lost loved ones on 9/11. That division is already bitterly obvious.

As someone who has been involved in building mosques around the country, and who has dealt with his fair share of unjustified opposition, I ask of Imam Rauf and all his supporters, "Where is your sense of fairness and common decency?" In relation to Ground Zero, I am an American first, a Muslim second, just as I would be at Concord, Gettysburg, Normandy Beach, Pearl Harbor or any other battlefield where my fellow countrymen lost their lives.

I must ask Imam Rauf: For what do you stand—what's best for Americans overall, or for what you think is best for Islam? What have you said and argued to Muslim-majority nations to address their need for reform? You have said that Islam does not need reform, despite the stoning of women in Muslim countries, death sentences for apostates, and oppression of reformist Muslims and non-Muslims.

You now lecture Americans that WTC mosque protests are "politically motivated" and "go against the American principle of church and state." Yet you ignore the wide global prevalence of far more dangerous theo-political groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and all of its violent and nonviolent offshoots.

In your book, "What's Right With Islam," you cite the Brotherhood's radical longtime spiritual leader Imam Yusuf Qaradawi as a "moderate." Reformist American Muslims are not afraid to name Mr. Qaradawi and his ilk as radical. We Muslims should first separate mosque and state before lecturing Americans about church and state.

Imam, tell me if you can look into the eyes of children who lost a parent on 9/11 and convince them that this immodest Islamic center benefits them. How will it in any way aid counterterrorism efforts or keep one American any safer? You willfully ignore what American Muslims most need—an open call for reformation that unravels the bigoted and shoddy framework of political Islam and separates mosque and state.

There are certainly those who are prejudiced against Muslims and who are against mosques being built anywhere, and even a few who wish to burn the Quran. But most voices in this case have been very clear that for every American freedom of religion is a right, but that it is not right to make one's religion a global political statement with a towering Islamic edifice that casts a shadow over the memorials of Ground Zero.

As an American Muslim, I look at that pit of devastation and contemplate the thousands of lives undone there within seconds. I pray for the ongoing strength to fight the fanatics who did this, and who continue their war against my country with both overt violence and covert strategies that aim to undo the very freedoms for which so many have fought and died.

Imam Rauf may not appear to the untrained eye to be an Islamist, but by making Ground Zero an Islamic rather than an American issue, and by failing to firmly condemn terrorist groups like Hamas, he shows his true allegiance.

Islamists in "moderate" disguise are still Islamists. In their own more subtle ways, the WTC mosque organizers end up serving the same aims of the separatist and supremacist wings of political Islam. In this epic struggle of the 21st century, we cannot afford to ignore the continuum between nonviolent political Islam and the militancy it ultimately fuels among the jihadists.

The Ball Is in Our Court

By Anwar Ibrahim

Mr. Ibrahim is Malaysia's opposition leader

Skeptics and cynics alike have said that the quest for the moderate Muslim in the 21st century is akin to the search for the Holy Grail. It's not hard to understand why. Terrorist attacks, suicide bombings and the jihadist call for Muslims "to rise up against the oppression of the West" are widespread.

The radical fringe carrying out such actions has sought to dominate the discourse between Islam and the West. In order to do so, they've set out to foment anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. They've also advocated indiscriminate violence as a political strategy. To cap their victory, this abysmal lot uses the cataclysm of 9/11 as a lesson for the so-called enemies of Islam.

These dastardly acts have not only been tragedies of untold proportions for those who have suffered or perished. They have also delivered a calamitous blow to followers of the Muslim faith.

These are the Muslims who go about their lives like ordinary people—earning their livings, raising their families, celebrating reunions and praying for security and peace. These are the Muslims who have never carried a pocketknife, let alone explosives intended to destroy buildings. These Muslims are there for us to see, if only we can lift the veil cast on them by the shadowy figures in bomb-laden jackets hell-bent on destruction.

These are mainstream Muslims—no different from the moderate Christians, Jews and those of other faiths—whose identities have been drowned by events beyond their control. The upshot is a composite picture of Muslims as inherently intolerant, antidemocratic, inward-looking and simply unable to coexist with other communities in the modern world. Some say there is only one solution: Discard your beliefs and your tradition, and embrace pluralism and modernity.

This prescription is deeply flawed. The vast majority of Muslims already see themselves as part of a civilization that is heir to a noble tradition of science, philosophy and spirituality that places paramount importance on the sanctity of human life. Holding fast to the principles of democracy, freedom and human rights, these hundreds of millions of Muslims fervently reject fanaticism in all its varied guises.

Yet Muslims must do more than just talk about their great intellectual and cultural heritage. We must be at the forefront of those who reject violence and terrorism. And our activism must not end there. The tyrants and oppressive regimes that have been the real impediment to peace and progress in the Muslim world must hear our unanimous condemnation. The ball is in our court.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703369704575461503431290986.html?KEYWORDS=Moderate+Muslim#U301211885653JSC

A History of Tolerance

By Bernard Lewis

Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford University Press, 2004).

A form of moderation has been a central part of Islam from the very beginning. True, Muslims are nowhere commanded to love their neighbors, as in the Old Testament, still less their enemies, as in the New Testament. But they are commanded to accept diversity, and this commandment was usually obeyed. The Prophet Muhammad's statement that "difference within my community is part of God's mercy" expressed one of Islam's central ideas, and it is enshrined both in law and usage from the earliest times.

This principle created a level of tolerance among Muslims and coexistence between Muslims and others that was unknown in Christendom until after the triumph of secularism. Diversity was legitimate and accepted. Different juristic schools coexisted, often with significant divergences.

Sectarian differences arose, and sometimes led to conflicts, but these were minor compared with the ferocious wars and persecutions of Christendom. Some events that were commonplace in medieval Europe— like the massacre and expulsion of Jews—were almost unknown in the Muslim world. That is, until modern times.

Occasionally more radical, more violent versions of Islam arose, but their impact was mostly limited. They did not become really important until the modern period when, thanks to a combination of circumstances, such versions of Islamic teachings obtained a massive following among both governments and peoples.

From the start, Muslims have always had a strong sense of their identity and history. Thanks to modern communication, they have become painfully aware of their present state. Some speak of defeat, some of failure. It is the latter who offer the best hope for change.

For the moment, there does not seem to be much prospect of a moderate Islam in the Muslim world. This is partly because in the prevailing atmosphere the expression of moderate ideas can be dangerous—even life-threatening. Radical groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban, the likes of which in earlier times were at most minor and marginal, have acquired a powerful and even a dominant position.

But for Muslims who seek it, the roots are there, both in the theory and practice of their faith and in their early sacred history.

August 25, Muslim Opposition to Ground Zero Mosque Grows

By Steven Emerson

Mr. Emerson is the director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism

Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2131/the-ground-zero-mosques-muslim-opponents

Defenders of the proposed ground zero mosque are quick to write off opponents as bigots simply out to stir up hatred of Muslims.

The blanket dismissal hides a more difficult challenge for mosque advocates: A growing number of Muslims openly oppose the project too.

Some agree it's the wrong place, while others are increasingly critical of what they see as tone-deaf and clumsy leadership from mosque planners.

The most recent, and perhaps most pointed, criticism comes from Mansoor Ijaz, who negotiated Sudan's offer of counterterrorism assistance to the FBI and CIA under the Clinton administration in 1996 and 1997.

In a Washington Post column on Aug. 25, Ijaz faulted both sides of the debate for its tenor. But he admonished Muslims to show their sensitivity toward the country's collective emotional wound from 9/11.

He argued they have done more to cast themselves as victims instead of joining forces to combat the radical Islamist ideology fueling terrorism: "Cordoba House is wrong because America's Muslims do not yet exemplify the time-honored commandments, philosophies and tenets of the great men and women who founded our country — and even more sadly, of the great religion they claim to follow . . . An American Muslim, one who believes in his or her American identity first, could not possibly hope to do that near the place where fellow citizens were murdered by Islamic mobsters seeking vanity and infamy for their crimes."

Even those who believe that, on principle, the project shouldn't be abandoned, acknowledge that they feel boxed in after Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan sprung the $100 million mosque project on them.

Hussein Rashid, an instructor at Hofstra University's Center for Spiritual Inquiry, faults organizers for failing to anticipate the controversy and getting caught flat-footed when it erupted.

That, he argues, places Muslims in an awkward position of being "forced to defend a project about which [they are] otherwise ambivalent." To fight for the project, "we need to believe in it," and organizers' actions have built little confidence. He said, "This project needs a strong hand at the helm, a true visionary, but should never be dependent on that person. Rauf's noticeable absence for the last several months speaks to the problems of relying on one individual, and the overall style of leadership."

Muslims outside the country have their own concerns. Al-Arabiya television general manager Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid called the mosque "the wrong battle," saying Muslims don't want "a mosque next to the 11 September cemetery."

He echoes the concern of many American opponents of the mosque, that it will be seen as a memorial to the 9/11 terrorists who acted in the name of Islam: "The fact is that building a mosque next to the site of the World Trade Center . . . is a strange story. This is because the mosque is not an issue for Muslims, and they have not heard of it until the shouting became loud between the supporters and the objectors, which is mostly an argument between non-Muslim U.S. citizens!

"Neither did the Muslims ask for a single building, nor do the angry Muslims want the mosque. Nevertheless, the dispute has escalated, and has reached the front pages of the press and the major television programs, demonstrations have been staged in the streets, and large posters have been hung on buses roaming the streets of New York calling for preventing the building of the mosque and reminding the people of the 11 September crime."

On that point, Abdur-Rahman Mohamed, a Muslim who renounced his previous radical preaching, blames organizers for triggering the backlash: "Let us remember that the project organizers themselves created this controversy by announcing that the groundbreaking would take place on the 10-year anniversary of the attack, and that the exact site was selected because of its proximity to ground zero. Given that fact, the current media meme that this is not a 'ground zero mosque' is dishonest spin."

The Muslim Canadian Congress wrote to Rauf directly urging him to reconsider the mosque's location: "Even if the intention of the mosque organizers was noble," the letter said, "the negative reaction by the American people has ensured that if built, the mosque will remain a permanent sore point and a lightning rod for anti-Muslim feelings. For this reason alone, the project must be abandoned."

Neda Bolourchi lost her mother on the flight that crashed into the Trade Center's North Tower. A secular Muslim from Iran, Bolourchi is among those who see the mosque proposal as just too close to the place that put a hole in her heart. "I fear it would become a symbol of victory for militant Muslims around the world," she wrote in a Washington Post column.

M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, also found fault with the proposal's lavish scale.

Mosques, he wrote, are normally humble places for worship, and they shouldn't be about making statements: "Religious freedom is central to our nation and that is why the location of this project is so misguided. Ground zero is purely about being American. It can never be about being Muslim."

Opposition to the mosque proposal comes in different forms and from many different voices. The fact that it is not uniform indicates that there's more going on here than rank bigotry.

Defenders of the proposed Ground Z mosque are quick to write off opponents as bigots simply out to stir up hatred of Muslims.

Israel as the Ram in the Thicket

2010-07-28T21:39:00.000-07:00

Message Offered by Mainline Protestant Churches

by Dexter Van Zile'

Quote: "what we are witnessing is an intellectual process by which people are preparing themselves to justify the re-abandonment of the Jewish people" Dexter Van Zile.

Below find an excellent piece regarding the de-legitimization of Israel by Dexter Van Zile. Mr. Van Zile is a Christian media analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. (CAMERA) His writings have appeared in numerous American Jewish newspapers as well as the Jerusalem Post, Ecumenical Trends, and the Boston Globe. He has a BA in politics and government from the University of Puget Sound and an MA in political science/environmental studies from Western Washington University. He is a Massachusetts native.

Piece appears here

In the course of my work, I have become increasingly worried about the message offered by mainline Protestant churches (and some quarters of the Roman Catholic Church) about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Not only is the narrative offered by these institutions distorted, it has a negative impact on the safety of Jews throughout the world.

My concerns, which are still coalescing, can currently be summarized as follows:

1. There is a continuum of anti-Israel rhetoric. One end of the continuum is marked by hate toward Israel and Jews rooted in deeply hostile beliefs about the nature of the Jewish people. The other end is marked by polite de-legitimization through an obsession with Israeli policies and silence about the behavior of its adversaries.

The hateful end of the continuum is occupied by anti-Israel extremists in the Middle East and their supporters in the West who portray Israel as a cancerous entity that prevents the Muslim and the Arab peoples in the region from reclaiming their rightful place in history. Under this logic, Israel must be destroyed. Jewish sovereignty is a bad thing because of the nature of the Jewish people.

This brand of anti-Zionism is largely fueled by Muslim teachings regarding the Jewish people and the land. Under these teachings, Jews are enemies of God and Islam who should be subject people. Muslim tradition also states that land previously governed by Muslim rulers should never be relinquished to non-Muslims.

Put these two teachings together and the very notion of a Jewish state is a humiliating violation of the Islamic nomos or sense of order rooted in Muslim scripture. Writers such as Sayyd Qutb have retrieved the notion of the Jews as enemies of God evident in the Koran and the Hadiths and applied them to the state of Israel with lethal effect.

Also at this end of the continuum is the hard left in the U.S. and Europe. These activists, who oftentimes co-operate with the Islamists described above, portray Israel as a unique and enduring threat to peace and human rights in the world. To these activists, Israel is guilty of genocide and its supporters in the West are enemies within. These activists regard violence directed at Israel and its supporters as justified. The logic is that only a monstrous people could defend such a monstrous nation. Jews who support Israel support genocide and apartheid and cannot be trusted. They are the enemy within.

In the middle of the continuum are activists who depict Israel and its status as a Jewish state as an obstacle to the causes of peace and the advancement of human rights in the Middle East. Under this narrative, Israel should not be destroyed but dismantled and converted into a bi-national state in which Jews would by definition, be a minority. It is the consequences of Jewish sovereignty that trouble this group.

Most of the time, adherents of this viewpoint speak in less hateful tones than the extremists I just described, but the implications of their narrative are the same: Minority status for Jews in an Arab and Muslim country. Adherents of this narrative regard violence against Israel as understandable and unavoidable. Ostensibly, they are motivated by the suffering of the Palestinian people. (As described below, adherents of this viewpoint oftentimes shift to the more hateful end of the spectrum.)

At the opposite end of the spectrum from those who call for Israel’s outright destruction and express contempt for Israel, are those who explicitly affirm Israel’s right to exist, while subjecting it actions, and in some instances its Jewish identity, to extremely harsh and unreasonable scrutiny. Adherents of this narrative point out Israel’s failings but are reluctant to point out the misdeeds of its adversaries. They acknowledge that indeed Jews were the victims of genocide in Europe, but fail to acknowledge the frankly genocidal hostility toward Jews and Israel in the Middle East. When they criticize Israel, they speak as if they are motivated by feelings of mournful sorrow about Israel’s failings and hope that someday, Israel will get its policies right and that Jews will come to a better self-understanding and be able to live in peace with its neighbors.

2. One’s presence at the more benign (and less hateful) end of the spectrum does not guarantee that one will stay there.

Activists and commentators who “hang out” so to speak at the softer, less hateful end of the anti-Zionist continuum can move toward more hateful territory. (They often do.) They do not embrace the Islamist narrative, but instead embrace secular notions of Jews as enemies to world peace and well being.

As time passes, they start to attack Israel’s Jewish supporters in the West as monsters whose mere presence represents a threat to human rights and democracy. People who obsess about the effects of Jewish sovereignty on the Middle East, (as if Palestinian suffering is singular and without parallel and caused solely by Israel) will eventually come to unreasonable conclusions about the nature of Jews and their state. Through this process, the people who are motivated by a legitimate concern about the Palestinians begin to mimic the anti-Zionist rhetoric offered by the people on the more extreme end of the continuum. And once they embrace anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism is just the next step down the road, so to speak.

3. Efforts to de-legitimize Israel contribute to insecurity for Jews throughout the world. (Israel gets attacked in the Middle East and Jews are threatened in the West).

Over the past few years, there has been a measurable and observable increase in hostility toward Jews throughout the world, particularly in Europe, South America and sadly enough, in some quarters of North America. This was particularly evident during Israel’s fight with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006. The Community Security Trust, (a Jewish group in Great Britain similar to the ADL in the United States), linked this hostility toward media coverage of the conflict. According to the CST, anti-Semitic attacks were down during the first six months of 2006 from the year before.

But anti-Semitic incidents rose sharply during the summer of 2006 largely as a consequence of “the war between Israel and Hizbollah in Lebanon that took place in July and August.” And once a ceasefire was instituted in mid-August, attacks declined. The European Jewish Congress reported similar findings in a report of its own about hostility in the rest of Europe.

A few other examples of this problem include:

• The atmosphere outside the United Nation’s “anti-racism” conference that took place in Durban South Africa in 2001. At this conference, Arab and Muslim extremists from the Middle East and their allies from the radical left in Europe and the U.S. were able to convince the gathered assembly to affirm an amalgam of ritualistic charges of genocide, racism and ethnic cleansing targeted at Israel. Jews were singularly denied the right to participate in the proceedings at the conference because they could not be "objective." Security officials told representatives of Jewish groups that their safety could not be guaranteed. Protesters carried signs stating that if Hitler had finished the job there were would be no state of Israel and no Palestinian suffering. During the conference a Jewish doctor was beaten by people wearing checkered keffiyehs – the symbol of the Palestinian cause – who said Jews were the cause of all the problems in the Middle East. Local Jewish leaders attributed the attack to the atmosphere at the UN Conference.

• The murder of a French Jew, Ilan Halimi in Paris in 2005. Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old French Jew, was kidnapped, tortured for three weeks, stabbed and left to die at a train station on the outskirts of Paris by Muslims who had anti-Israel literature in their apartments. His torture took place in the basement of a public housing project. People knew of his suffering and did not call the police.

• The murder of Pamela Waechter, an employee of the Jewish Federation in Seattle in 2006. Waechter was shot to death at the height of the Hezbollah War by a man describing himself as a Muslim-American “angry at Israel.” The killer was later discovered to be suffering from mental illness, but just as John Salvi who killed two women at an abortion clinic in Boston in 1994, was encouraged by the highly-charged atmosphere surrounding the debate over abortion in the U.S., the anti-Jewish fringe is energized by hostile rhetoric coming out of the Middle East.

• The plight of Jews in Malmo, Sweden. Jews are fleeing Sweden in droves as anti-Semitic attacks, perpetrated mostly by Muslim immigrants have increased substantially. Malmo’s mayor has failed to stop the attacks, stating they are merely a consequence of Israeli policies in the Middle East.

• The display of anti-Semitic imagery at anti-Israel rallies in the U.S. during Israel’s fight with Hamas in the Gaza Strip during the winter of 2008-09. Protesters carried signs equating the Star of David with the Nazi Swastika, a clear expression of anti-Semitism.

• The recent admission by a young Muslim woman at the University of California San Diego that she supports genocide against Jews in Israel.

• The recent stoning of a Jewish dance troupe in Hanover, Germany.

4. One’s presence at the “softer” end of the continuum described above makes it unlikely that one will challenge the extremism of people on the other, more hateful end of the continuum. People who root the continued existence of the Arab-Israeli conflict solely in Israeli policies have a difficult time seeing the motivation and actions of Israel’s adversaries for what they are.

Nowhere is this reality more evident in the activism about the Arab-Israeli conflict offered by mainline Protestant churches in the U.S. that have offered little if any criticism about the rising tide of hostility toward Jews and Israel throughout the world.

Since the Second Intifada, mainline Protestant churches (the Methodists, Lutherans, Congregationalists (also known as the UCC), Presbyterians and Episcopalians) have attacked Israel, portraying it as solely responsible for the conflict. The narrative told by these churches is that Israel can bring a unilateral end to the conflict through a magical combination of peace offers and territorial withdrawals. Israel’s failure to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve peace is depicted as a consequence of some flaw in Israel’s national character. Examples of this narrative abound:

a. In 2004, the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s General Assembly passed an anti-Israel divestment resolution stating the occupation was at the root of violence against innocents on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It made no mention of the ideological hostility toward Israel espoused by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

b. In 2005, the general synods of both United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ passed a resolution that called on Israel to take down the security barrier, without asking Palestinians to stop the terror attacks that preceded its construction.

c. Mainline Protestant denominations have published numerous books portraying Israel in an unfairly harsh light. Some of the language in these texts borders on the hateful. For example, one Presbyterian commentator has likened Zionist settlement in Palestine during the 20th century to a “killer-vine” that had attacked a prize rose bush in his back yard. (This is just one example.)

d. In embracing this narrative, mainline churches have demonstrated a fundamental inability to think clearly about the strategic and moral challenges Israel face in the Middle East. Instead encouraging their parishioners to embrace a comprehensive understanding of the ideological and physical threats faced by the Jewish people, these churches have encouraged people to embrace an understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict that places Israel under intense scrutiny and which gives its adversaries a pass. They offer little, if any, criticism of Hamas and Hezbollah while intensely interrogating Israeli policy and Israel's status as a Jewish state.

5. This is not the first time mainline Protestant institutions have engaged in this type of behavior. For example, in the 1930s, Christian Century, the house organ for mainline Protestantism in the U.S. exhibited a troublesome hostility toward Jews and their desire for a state of their own and to expressions of Jewish identity. The publication gave prominent and laudatory coverage to anti-Zionist Jews and attacked Rabbi Stephen Wise, a prominent Zionist in the U.S., for bringing the Holocaust to the attention of the American people in 1942.

Coverage like this was emblematic of a larger reality. Prior to World War II, Jews were regarded through the lens of potential conflict. As the first targets of Nazi hostility, Jews were regarded as the cause and not the victim of the violence and hostility directed at them. Nazi anti-Semitism was condemned in the abstract, but when it came time to speak about issues in concrete terms, anti-war commentators were much more willing to condemn Jews as opposed to their enemies.

In both the 1930s and today, the contempt for the Jewish people and indifference to the threats to their safety can be linked to a refusal to take threats by totalitarianism seriously. Just as it was more convenient to abandon the Jewish people to the threat posted by fascism in Europe the 1930s and 40s, it is easier to ignore the threat posed by fascism in the Middle East. Here a phrase used by Paul Berman to describe the anti-war socialists in 1930s France seems appropriate: “They were eager, they were desperate to find a description of reality that did not point to a new war in the future.” (Terror and Liberalism, page 124). This applies readily to the so-called peace activists in mainline churches. They desire peace. This desire is legitimate. But in the course of searching for peace, they have abandoned reality and the Jewish people as well.

6. Part of the problem is that many people in mainline churches have embraced a view of history that portrays Western civilization as the dominant, if not unique source of suffering in the world today. Given this understanding, and the self-hate it engenders, members of these churches feel as if they deserve punishment.

In this sense, the members of mainline churches are like Abraham’s son Isaac on the way to Mount Moriah. They see the wood and the fire and have a vague sense that an immolation is going to take place, but hope desperately that they will not be the victim of this sacrifice. They feel on one level that if it weren’t for their exquisite moral sense, that they would deserve to be immolated.

And how do they demonstrate and give voice to their exquisite moral sense?

By condemning Israel.

Israel, for these folks, is the ram in the thicket on Mount Moriah. Israel is the entity that they can thrust into the fire of moral judgment.

In sum, what we are witnessing is an intellectual process by which people are preparing themselves to justify the re-abandonment of the Jewish people. If we continue with this process, it will have great consequences for the Jewish people in particular and Western civilization in general.

Dexter Van Zile

Originally published at: http://mfnklst.blogspot.com/2010/07/israel-as-ram-in-thicket.html as Israel as the Ram in the Thicket. . All rights reserved to the author.

Will the United Nations Restrain Hezbollah?

2010-07-24T20:16:00.000-07:00

Posted by Lawrence W. White

In July of 2006, Hezbollah raided Israel from its sanctuary in Lebanon. Ten Israeli soldiers were killed in the initial attack and in a subsequent rescue attempt. In response the Israeli government headed by Ehud Olmert launched a major attack which lasted 34 days . Israel was criticized by much of the press for initially overreacting to the cross-border attack, for using disproportionate force, and for much damage to civilians. .

During the war, Hezbollah fired 4000 missiles, mostly short range, at Israeli civilians. About 160 Israeli civilians were killed. .

Foreign journalists in Lebanon reported (and showed video demonstrating) that Hezbollah fought from, and fired rockets from civilian areas. They also reported that Hezbollah had prevented Lebanese civilians from fleeing areas of conflict.
On 11 August 2006, the United Nations Security Council adopted UN Resolution 1701 designed to end the war. The hostilities ended with a cease fire on August 14. The resolution was approved by both Lebanese and Israeli governments. , and required the cessation of hostilities, the disarming of Hezbollah, full control of Lebanon by the government of Lebanon, and no paramilitary forces, including Hezbollah, permitted south of the Litani River

As we now know, none of the last three items has occurred. This throws into question what possible role the UN, or indeed any third party, can ever play in these kinds of conflicts, and highlights the need for Israel to be able to rely on its own forces for its security. .

Lebanon was not neutral in this conflict. The Lebanese government had failed to disarm Hezbollah, as required by UN Security Council Resolution 1559, adopted two years earlier. This was an important harbinger of future collaboration between Lebanon and Hezbollah, a terrorist group. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Siniora has cynically acknowledged Hezbollah for making "sacrifices for the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon”.

It is important to keep in mind that Hezbollah is not some political faction, nor is it a social service agency. Stated simply, it is a terrorist group. Hezbollah was responsible for blowing up a barracks in Beirut in 1983 which killed 241 American soldiers, the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima

Israel has accused Hezbollah of war crimes (verified by foreign correspondents and by video footage )for its intentional attacks on civilian populations, the use of human shields, the firing of rockets from densely populated areas, and for deliberately blending its soldiers in among civilians.

Several governments, including the United States, stated that Israel had the right to defend itself, and President Bush said that the conflict was part of the “War on Terrorism”

In the war in Gaza two years later, Hamas also used civilians as “human shields”. Israel went to great lengths to avoid the loss of civilian life and to minimize the damage to civilian property. Nonetheless the world’s reaction was to condemn Israel. The significance of this has not been lost on Hezbollah. According to Barry Rubin, the lessons of the war against Hamas will encourage more damaging use of civilian populations by totalitarian terror groups.

Rubin has pointed out that

“The Israeli army has released for the first time sensitive intelligence data on how Hezbollah is digging into southern Lebanon. The deliberate strategy is to store weapons and put defense positions right next to civilian houses. In the event of a war, Israel will have to choose between giving Hezbollah a tremendous advantage or killing civilians”.

According to Stephen P Cohen, writing in the Wall Street Journal,

“Israel recently embarked on an extraordinary form of deterrence against the possibility of a second Hezbollah war. Instead of engaging in a pre-emptive military strike, the Israeli military launched a public relations offensive. It broadcast and publicized highly detailed intelligence maps and aerial photographs depicting exactly where Hezbollah constructs and maintains missile and rocket caches, as well as command centers.

These maps show that Hezbollah's bases are located in villages in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border, in very close proximity to schools and hospitals. Its weapons are aimed at Israeli cities and civilian targets. If these missiles were to be launched, Israel would be required to defend its population by destroying the missile emplacements and depots”

The significance of this is that a missile attack on Israel’s civilian population by Hezbollah will result in an Israeli response that will necessarily lead to destruction of Lebanese villages and loss of civilian life. Thus Israel has made Hezbollah’s actions and the resultant Israeli response perfectly clear. The open questions are whether Lebanon and Syria will act on this information to prevent the loss of Arab lives, and whether the United Nations will honor its commitments of 2006 and move to deprive Hezbollah of its weapons.

So what are the take-away lessons?

1. The most important lesson is that Israel must never trust her security and survival to the UN or other third parties. No matter the promises made by the world community, including the US, Israel can only count on herself for her defense. And yes, Israel cannot afford to worry about the worlds condemnation; they may claim that Israel is “defying the international community”, but this is preferable to national suicide. Promises have been made and broken too many times.

2. The big nations, including the US, must insist that the UN honor its commitment, entered into with Security Council resolution 1701, to disarm Hezbollah, and to deny Hezbollah the maintenance of bases south of the Litani river. They must also insist that the government of Lebanon maintain full control of the nation, without the participation of Hezbollah. Anything less will call into further question the integrity and usefulness of the United Nations

3. Acknowledging that war is terrible, and to be avoided wherever possible, nonetheless there are circumstances, as with the two recent wars between Israel and the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, where the only way to stop murderous attacks on innocent citizens is through the use of armed action. Promises from totalitarians states or groups cannot be relied on.

4. Arab civilian deaths are to a large extent part of the strategy used by Hezbollah and Hamas. The reaction of the world communities and press should not be to condemn Israel, but don’t count on it.

Debating Israel; Rules of Engagement and Michael Lerner

2010-07-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

by Lawrence W. White

Barry Rubin has published an important article in which he deconstructs all the methods used by anti-Israel folks to attack Israel's supporters. (His article is reproduced below). Rubin should be beyond suspicion. An academic who deals in facts, he is a life-long liberal and has been involved in the leadership of the Democratic party, as he outlines below.

I believe in critical thinking. Unfortunately, the basic rules of argument have been abandoned by most of the anti-Israel individuals and groups. Academics who would never dream of disregarding logic and facts in their own work have made exceptions here. Rubin explains how they have replaced critical thinking with ad hominem arguments, with lack of logic, and worse.

I have talked to many individuals on the left who are confused. They love Israel, but don’t want to discuss it because of the response they get from their friends, a response devoid of logic and facts.

Michael Lerner is a good example. He touts his Jewishness as a propaganda ploy, not because of any serious commitment to Jewish values. He uses spirituality as a weapon. He exemplifies three of the five methods cited by Barry Rubin.

For Lerner, every supporter of Israel is a "right-winger". For Lerner, Israel does not follow his recommendations because it has been taken over by right-wingers. (Never mind that the Labor party is part of the coalition government) .And American Jews who support Israel are members of the Neanderthal right. This right wing charge silences many Israel supporters, and converts others. Lerner claims to be pro-Israel, but this dishonest game is getting tired.

For Lerner, logic and facts are abandoned. A recent example is his attack on Israel over the flotilla incident. According to Lerner, Israel attacked an innocent humanitarian group. Israelis shot and killed these innocents. Actions from the other side were simply ignored. It provided an excellent opportunity to bash Israel, and logic and facts were nowhere in evidence.

For Lerner, Israelis are stupid, and are incapable of knowing what is in their best interests. So he will use "tough love" (all tough, no love), and tell them what they need to do.. Lerner is a man who went ballistic when someone put some stickers on the fence of his house, yet he calmly tells Israel to take measures that will result in death and destruction, measures that will be suicidal.

So many Israeli critics are simply ignorant of facts. But for journalists like Nicholas Kristof, who had a recent column entitled "Saving Israel from Itself", there is no attempt to learn the facts that underlie any responsible opinion. It is much easier to follow the crowd.

So here is a challenge. Next time you read a criticism of Israeli security policy, ask yourself; is this based on facts and logic, or does it use any of the five rhetorical devices outlined by Rubin? Is it filled with screaming and accusations? Or does it calmly, like J Street, play the right wing card, and claim it knows better than the democratically elected government of Israel? Or are facts absent, as with Michael Lerner, but pejorative language much in evidence. Is he, or are they smarter and know better than the Israelis, as to what they need to do to keep from being annihilated.

The stakes are high. Lerner simply has no right to make recommendations that would place the lives of innocent Israelis at risk in order to further his own megalomaniac ambitions. Malignant narcissism is not a Jewish value.

Debating Obama Policy Doesn’t Require Screaming But Logic and Honest Discussion

Posted: 15 Jul 2010 01:47 AM PDT

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By Barry Rubin

As I look at the occasional responses to the arguments I’m making by defenders of the Obama Administration, the arguments used to avoid thinking and talking about these issues seriously become increasingly apparent. They generally feature a refusal to discuss the substance of issues and put up instead a barrage of insults, characterizations, and non-logical or non-factual claims.

1. The right-wing argument. This says: you’re basically a right-wing person who is against a two-state solution and wants to do mean things to Arabs or Muslims. Therefore, we can ignore anything you say.

People who are conservative or right-wing have their own answers. For me, though, I need merely cite the following points. In American terms, I am not only a registered and life-long Democrat, but I worked for Democrats in both the Senate and House of Representatives; at one time worked at Democratic National Headquarters as a volunteer; worked on several presidential campaigns, was a consultant for a few Democratic senators, organized a Democratic group of foreign policy experts to prepare for the next presidency one of whose members (Madelyn Albright) became the secretary of state.

In Israel, I have always been active in the Labor Party or one of its offshoots, was an outspoken supporter of the Oslo effort, volunteered to teach courses for Palestinian institutions on the West Bank, was at the peace rally where Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered in November 1995, and have backed a two-state solution—under the right conditions, of course--for about 20 years.

And, believe me, I have a lot of contacts with Arabs, Turks, Iranians, and Muslims whose worries about Obama's policies are just as intense as my own.

The Turks feel the U.S. government is supporting or being very soft on a regime that wants to crush their democracy and turn their society into something else. The Iranians worry that the U.S. government has been playing into the hands of the dictatorship in Tehran and not helping the democratic-oriented opposition. Some Arabs--especially Lebanese--think U.S. policy is delivering their country into the hands of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. Others feel it won't protect them from Iran and domestic Islamist revolutionaries.

I recite this—and I could go on longer—not in a defensive mode but to point out once again the theme that radicals have tried to take over the label of liberalism (or moderate left) and reinterpret it. A key tactic here is to fool the much larger, honest and well-intended public into believing that anyone who disagrees with this political line is a right-wing extremist (or pro-Israel or both, depending on the situation) and hence to be ignored.

There is a parallel attempt to do this to Israel and its supporters: anyone who favors Israel or at least a policy of self-defense and not making dangerous concessions is a right-winger unfit for civilized discourse and thus should be fought against.

It should be a liberal cause to oppose the establishment of radical Islamist regimes that destroy individual rights, create ruthless dictatorships, and oppress women and Christians, among many other things. Moreover, it is very much in the national interest of the United States and of the West—including any liberal interpretation of that interest—to oppose a region dominated by Iran and its allies, the overthrow of relatively moderate Arab regimes, the destruction of Israel, and a situation of increased violence and crisis that would result.

It should be a liberal cause to support a country that is not only democratic and with an open, liberal society but which is also a U.S. ally; a bulwark against aggressive and repressive forces; and a country which had made considerable sacrifices and taken a high risk to achieve peace.

And if you want a graphic picture of that last point, imagine standing at the corner of Dizengoff and King George Streets in Tel Aviv—two blocks from your home and where you do your shopping--looking at the mutilated bodies of Israelis from a terrorist attack carried out by Hamas yet cheered by Arafat, and still support withdrawals, the peace process, and a two-state solution.

2. The “they don’t love Obama” argument. It is no secret that for many people Obama has become an icon above criticism. Thus, if one criticizes Obama or his administration, one is an evil person (hints of racism and xenophobia might be inserted) and should be ignored.

As someone who makes a living by analyzing and critiquing policies, I cannot help but call them as I see them. (An American baseball expression meaning: say what I think.) But, you know what? It isn’t exactly a mystery that the Obama Administration is failing badly in foreign policy. Some might refuse to say so today but they will be admitting it—after suffering, losses, and destruction—in a few years.

After talking to officials and diplomats from country after country and taken a look at Middle Eastern public opinion polls, the critic finds that he is not alone. I only wish I could give you names and positions of people who talk like this, and repeat some of the anecdotes they have told. And I include career people in the U.S. government, too. In fact, take a look at the American public opinion polls for more proof.

Obama must face the same criterion and analysis, and be judged by the same standards, as his predecessors. Many lives and the freedom of whole countries depend on this.

3. The abandonment of logic: People have always tried to sell their arguments by being unfair, leaving out or distorting what the other side says. One of the main points of academic training is to work against that human tendency. If I make a mistake, or someone points out something I’ve missed, I adjust what I’m saying accordingly. People know, and often remark, that I have no consistent ideological or political line over time. That’s precisely what a scholar, journalist, or academic should do: go where the facts indicate.

What we see lately, however, is a much higher level of non-rational argument. Some attribute it to people being told to give feelings, rather than logic, the higher priority. What a disaster! I won’t take your time here to cite specific examples but I do so frequently. But here’s just one that should settle an issue:

Obama said Israelis were distrustful of him because of his middle name, that is, a Muslim name but also implying to many people the issue of racism.

How to disprove this in one sentence? Simple. The original Israeli reaction to Obama, as shown by polls, was very favorable. But he still had the same face and name. On a celebrity level (as evinced by the kids in my son’s school), there is still something like this going on. Yet the polls and attitudes have shifted sharply. Why? Because of what Obama and his colleagues have done and said.

Everyone knows the story of the emperor who had no clothes. But there are many arguments strutting around today that have no clothes. Here are some of them:

Moderate Hamas or Hizballah? Pull Syria away from Iran? Israel-Palestinian peace is within reach? Engage revolutionary Islamists and even support their getting into power? There’s no real problem with Turkey’s government? Keep apologizing and refusing to take real leadership and believe that you will still have credibility with your friends and be able to deter your foes?

All of these claims are easily refutable, which is why they are surrounded by a bodyguard of shutting up contrary facts and demonizing those who point out that these arguments are quite naked.

4. Israelis are stupid

I admit that when people say they are going to save Israel for its own good it makes me mad. Here are people, by and large, who don’t really know the country well (I realize there are exceptions), make the biggest mistakes in talking about it, and have an image based on fantasy or at least badly out of date.

One specific problem is that many people in the West have forgotten the events of 1993-2000, though Israelis haven’t. We tried a process in which money was poured into the Palestinian Authority, many concessions (mostly unilateral) were made by Israel, territory was handed over and the result was massive violence by the other side and a refusal to make peace.

So tell me, are you going to save this person? Y comes from a left-wing family—his father was a famous leader of the left—and grew up on a kibbutz. In 2001, I asked him how he voted: Usually for Meretz (a left-wing party) but sometimes for the Communists. And who are you voting for this time? I asked. He replied “Ariel Sharon. Only Sharon can save the situation.” I know many people like this. Others have voted for continued to vote for the Labour Party.

Two friends, both Labour supporters, said to me yesterday in separate conversations that on most of the real issues of the day the Labour party leadership—which is part of the coalition—agrees with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The debate in Israel has moved. There is no serious discussion about annexing large amounts of territory or holding onto the West Bank forever. Nobody is proposing taking back the Gaza Strip. Israelis overwhelmingly want a two-state solution that provides long-term peace and security. They are right in being suspicious about taking steps that endanger their lives and correct in reading the Palestinian side skeptically, while accurately understanding the Islamists' intentions.

We are not in the 1990s now, much less the 1970s. Today, Israel’s options are narrower: there is a partner for talks and shorter-term cooperation (the Palestinian Authority) but no partner for full peace. Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah are not amenable to diplomacy. Israeli leaders are very much aware that this country has parallel interests with most Arab governments and try to figure out how to make use of that fact. Yet the actual cooperation possible is limited. Revolutionary Islamism is advancing and the United States given its current policy isn’t exactly a bulwark battling against it. People here in Israel know we are in 2010; those outside may not fully understand what this means.

Three quick additional examples. First, if you don’t understand Palestinian politics and ideology, you cannot talk about the conflict. I have just read a generally excellent article by a veteran U.S. official admitting—contrary to his previous views--that there isn’t going to be any Israel-Palestinian peace in the near future and that the fault cannot all (or even mainly) be put on Israel. Yet in listing the factors why there isn’t going to be any two-state solution for a long time, it never comes to grips with the factor of Palestinian Authority intransigence and the inability of Palestinian institutions, ideology, and society so far to accept a two-state solution and cease believing they are somehow going to destroy Israel.

Second, a much-discussed and very critical article on Israel recently posited that Israeli society was seeing increasing political polarization between left and right along with growing battles between secular and religious, with religious extremism a major problem. This might describe some aspects of Israel in the 1980s but has little or no relevance to the present. The author purports to give advice but doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Third, someone saying he wants to save Israel despite itself cites an alleged pro-Obama poll in Israel. It is well-known in Israel that the poll was very critical of Obama but that a newspaper with an ideological agenda (deliberately?) misinterpreted it. Even the man who did the poll protested that was a distortion.

So people who don’t follow the issues, understand the debate, or know the country want to play with our lives. One of the scariest things about Obama on this issue is his repeated statement that Israelis really support him, not their own government. I won’t take the time to talk about respecting the functioning of a democratic state with an elected government but keep that point in mind also. (No, Hamas did not gain power in an election. It won an election, made a coalition deal, then launched a coup and killed several hundred people to create a dictatorship.) For Israelis, though, Obama's argument seems to be a rationale for ignoring Israel's government in future based on the idea that he not only has a superior understanding of the issues and Middle East (he doesn't) but also on the basis that Israelis want him to impose things on them (they don't).

If you want to know about other countries, listen to what people say. BUT don’t go on what they say necessarily when speaking to Western reporters but what they say among themselves or what leaders say to their own people. I have often cited Arab, Iranian, and Turkish, as well as Israeli, sources on these issues. And on Obama, they tell quite a different picture than what Americans think who believe that Obama is very popular and that’s what counts.

5. Ignore criticism rather than use it to adjust your policy and behavior

Indeed, the White House should pay attention to the points I and many others are making because there are real problems with its policy. Aluf Benn pointed this out in a New York Times op-ed some months ago but little seems to have changed, except on the basis of short-term needs. Of course, people are naturally defensive, don’t want to be criticized, and reject it. But after that phase—and more quietly—they should assess whether there is something wrong in what they are doing. (And, yes, Israel does this on a daily basis though it must also take into account other factors. But note, for example, the recent adjustment of policy toward Gaza.)

Consider, for example, the need to get a proper system for containing Iran when (yes, I did not say “if”) it gets nuclear weapons. It is clear that the White House does not understand what is going to be required. Isn't it rather important for them to rethink their strategy? The same applies to the acceptance of a repressive revolutionary Islamist dictatorship in the Gaza Strip, a client of Iran and an advocate of genocide on the Mediterranean Sea.

The lives of millions of people and the world's future hang in the balance. That deserves a rather clear-headed discussion on the issues.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.

Obama, Netanyahu, and the “Peace Process”

2010-07-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

by Lawrence W. White

With respect to US-Israel relations, two major events are occurring simultaneously. . These are the so-called proximity talks, being facilitated by former Senator George Mitchell, and the recent visit by Israel’s Prime Minister to the White House.

To understand what has happened at the White House, it is important to put it in the context of earlier contacts between these two leaders, and to understand Obama’s reasoning. When Netanyahu visited last time, the meeting was frosty with no photographs taken, no joint statement or press conference, no State dinner, and apparently a list of demands from President Obama. While many commentators have emphasized the rudeness that Obama accorded the Prime Minister of Israel, some have gone so far as to label Obama anti-Semitic.

I believe that he is no such thing; rather, it is simply President Obama behaving badly, partly out of ignorance of the realities of the Arab-Israel conflict, partly emanating from bad advice by so-called experts many of whom are reflexly anti-Israel, and partly out of a punctured ego because he was failing to achieve one of the goals he had set (which he had assumed would be easy).

In his treatment of the Prime Minister, President Obama miscalculated at several levels. He failed to understand that crude treatment of Netanyahu would be seen by Israelis and by American Jews as crude treatment of Israel. His advisors did not adequately warn him of the backlash that rude treatment of the Israeli leader would create. And no one properly educated him about the history and the realities of the Middle East.

With respect to the Islamic states, Obama has believed that by using engaging language and behavior, including a change in attitude toward Israel, with more “daylight” between America and Israel, he would win them over. He would then be trusted by them enabling him to work out a “peace” deal. Further, he assumed that Netanyahu is a right wing ideologue who somehow snatched power without broad support, and that given the displeasure of the US President, Israelis would in desperation switch to Tsipi Livni and the Kadima centrists. This would then lead to a deal on Obama’s terms. Some of these ideas were influenced by the anti-Israel attitudes of J Street

There have been several problems and miscalculations with this assessment.

1. It failed to take into account any of the realities of the Middle East, including the irrational behavior of the Arab states.
2. Obama has pushed Israel to do things that threaten its security and that in some cases might be considered suicidal. Israel has resisted such measures.
3. With his actions not matching his rhetoric about the “unbreakable bond”, he has undermined any trust that the Israelis may have had.
4. Netanyahu, in fact, is not a right wing ideologue that can simply be replaced by Livni.
5. The Israeli people, including Livni, are supportive of what Netanyahu has done.
6. The Israelis have noticed that Israel has been forced by Obama to give concessions, without demands for reciprocity, from the Arab states.
7. The Palestinians have also noticed this, and so believe that they can continue to demand “concessions” without giving anything. MEMRI reports daily on messages coming from the Arab press that are hostile to Israel and include incitement to violence.
8. We are seven months into the ten month settlement building freeze, and none of the goals of the freeze in terms of winning over the Palestinians have been realized.

Obama’s strident language and various demands of Israel have resulted in deepened distrust by Israelis, a backlash by Israel’s supporters in America (including Congress). and have encouraged the Palestinians to increase their own demands.

Our President is clearly frustrated. Until recently, he has not seemed to learn anything about what has or has not worked. Further, he is still getting conflicting advice. The so called experts around him have little understanding about what will be effective or how hard they can push Israel. Most still subscribe to the linkage theory, whereby solving the Israel-Palestinian problem will lead to a resolution of all the other problems of the area. Many have a simplistic naiveté about the realities of the Middle East, including what makes the Arab states do what they do. So when the King of Saudi Arabia says Obama needs to push Israel more, Obama takes this as a reasonable position.

Obama’s rudeness to Netanyahu last time was not anti-Semitism. It was simply a combination of an eagerness to get a deal, seeing Israel as the party thwarting it (this view was encouraged by the Saudi King, by J Street, and by other anti-Israel individuals with access to Obama), frustration with the failure of the Arabs to come around, and wanting to salvage the situation by leaning some more on Israel. Isi Leibler takes it one step further, believing that Obama is simply indifferent to Israel and her existential concerns.

And now we have Obama and his advisors suddenly worried about the impact of the loss of Jewish support in the upcoming mid-term elections. He has watched several recent electoral defeats, and wants to stop the bleeding. As a result, Obama has turned on a dime, and is again advancing rhetoric about “the unbreakable bond”. Except this time it is different. Trust has eroded, and will not easily be restored.

Netanyahu, for his part, has taken several steps to induce the Palestinians to negotiate. He has endorsed implementation of a two-state solution, he has removed hundreds of roadblocks in order to ease Palestinian movement, and he has frozen all new construction in the settlements in the West Bank. These steps have displayed goodwill and a desire for progress, perhaps impressing the Americans but having little impact on the Palestinian’s desire to negotiate.

The recent meeting of Obama and Netanyahu has been described by the American President as “excellent” and “wonderful”. While Obama has turned on the charm and now appears to be sympathetic to Israel’s needs, it is fair to ask whether anything is fundamentally different. No one really knows what went on at the White House, though there is much speculation about what was discussed and what was agreed to.

And it is fair to speculate about what Obama will sound like after the November elections. Will Netanyahu still be praised? Will we still hear about the “unbreakable bond”? Will he still talk of Netanyahu being “willing to take risks for peace”? Or will we hear more about how American Jews need to engage in “self-reflection”, or the need for “daylight” between Israel and the US?

Given all this, what are the current positions of the three key participants?

Obama is aware that hostility to Israel has cost him support. He wants to fix this before the elections in November. According to Barry Rubin , this is the major reason for Obama’s sudden charm offensive, for his new-found love for Benjamin Netanyahu. At the same time, Obama wants to see the conclusion of a deal that will establish a Palestinian state. He needs to be able to claim that his emphasis on active diplomacy has worked, to continue to claim that he is advancing the “peace process”. Accordingly, anything that interferes with that is anathema. The Palestinians need to be coddled, the Israelis need to be pushed, the indirect talks need to be kept going. It was in this spirit that Obama won “concessions” from Israel including a total moratorium on new construction. Netanyahu had agreed to this on a temporary basis, but that expires in September and Obama would like to see it extended. Obama fears that if it is not, the chances of a deal with the Palestinians will collapse (And Netanyahu fears that if it is continued, several of his coalition partners will leave the government which will then collapse).

Obama also needs to claim that he has resolved the crisis in Gaza. He needs to deal with issues in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan without the complications of Arab-Israeli confrontation. And he needs to do all this while appearing to be a supporter of an “unbroken bond” with Israel.

According to Barry Rubin, Obama falls into the trap of believing that if the people of Gaza prosper and the middle class gets stronger, then the masses will demand moderation and the end of Hamas. This is a naïve view of fanatical Islam divorced from reality. According to Rubin, “It is the mindless idea that prosperity brings peace and moderation, and that a regime ready to torture, murder, and indoctrinate people will be easily removed.”

Netanyahu’s wish list is less nebulous. He wants a halt to incitement and provocations by the Palestinians. He wants a peace agreement that will enable Israel to attend to its security. He believes that economic development is the key to peaceful coexistence. After all, no one wants to kill their customers. He wants assurances that the West Bank will not become an area for the placement of missiles aimed at Israel, as is the case with Gaza and Lebanon. He wants to prevent the incursion of Iran into the West Bank

Above all, he needs something done to prevent Iran from further developing nuclear technology. He wants something potentially stronger than the current sanctions, including the possibility of military action.

Netanyahu does not want to extent the building freeze but may do so in exchange for an Obama commitment to reaffirm Bush’s acceptance of the retention of the settlement blocks by Israel.

Abbas still wants the usual Palestinian list, and has stated that he will not agree to direct negotiations until he gets much of what he wants on key issues. (In other words he wants the US to do his negotiating). He wants a Palestinian state on the whole of the West Bank and Gaza. Recognition of a binational Israel perhaps, but no recognition of a Jewish state. The right of return of the descendants of those Arabs who left Israel in 1948. No real commitment to halt incitement and provocation. He wants talks to begin where previous talks left off. These talks went nowhere, and nothing was signed; they represented maximum concessions by Israel, but Abbas wants them as a starting point.

One newspaper has reported that Abbas has given Mitchell a list of proposals, which include a land swap to permit Israel to keep the large settlement blocs. The Palestinians would control the old City but Israel would retain control over the Jewish quarter and the Western Wall. This seems to be a fair starting point. However, all of the major figures in the Palestine Authority have denied that this was ever offered.

Sovereignty over Jerusalem and the location of the Palestinian capital are points of divergence. And of course the Palestinians are not about to give up the right of return, which would be demographically suicidal for Israel

Here is the major issue; will the Palestinians accept any plan (I can hear Hamas already complaining) that allows Israel the capacity and geography to defend itself, gives up any land on the West Bank, and does not include the right of return (the right to destroy any democratic Jewish state). Given the divisions in the Palestinian community, and the implacable nature of Hamas, it seems impossible to find any solution that would satisfy them that Israel could also live with.

The fact remains that for Israelis, the President is a man who is not to be trusted. According to Israeli blogger Arlene Kushner, “genuine trust in Obama would be exceedingly naive in the face of this man's stated positions and acts to date”. Ayoub Kara, Deputy Minister for Negev and Galilee Development, has stated that "He doesn't sound evil now because he needs Jewish votes and money”

These attitudes are bolstered by looking at the White House "Readout of the President's Meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu”, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/readout-presidents-meeting-with-prime-minister-netanyahu-israel-0 In this, there is simply no reference to any requirements by the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, it is only about Israel, and want Israel needs to do.

Another issue that continually is raised is that Israel needs to do more for Gaza. However, it is clear that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Nonetheless, the international consensus insists that Israel needs to “do more” Using objective measures, the Palestinians in Gaza are better off than most Arabs in surrounding countries. The major problem Gazans now face is Hamas itself, a repressive group that acts as Iran’s proxy, not only in opposing Israel but also in imposing restrictive religious law on the people of Gaza.

The bottom line? Until the Palestinians accept the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East, there can never be a deal. As Jennifer Rubin has pointed out, “there is no peace partner for Israel to negotiate with and no territorial compromise that is currently feasible”.

Living with a Nuclear Iran

2010-07-01T12:43:00.000-07:00

Can Iran be contained?

Quotes of the Day

“Does President Obama really believe that both we and the Israelis can somehow live with a nuclear Iran? If he does, he should be reminded that a nuclear balance-of-terror in the Middle East could never replicate the earlier stability of U.S.-Soviet mutual deterrence. This would not be your father's Cold War.” Louis Rene Beres

“For all the world to see, Iran's military capacity, including its ballistic missile technology, only increases in strength. So far, every theory of how to deal with Iran has failed.” David Harris

As I examine what is happening regarding our relationship to Iran, here is my assessment of the current realities.

1. President Obama has accepted that we will (and can) live with a nuclear Iran.

2. The acceptance of a nuclear Iran is a nightmare prospect

3 . A policy of containment won’t work. The often used analogy of our containment policy toward the Soviet Union simply doesn’t apply.

4. Sanctions probably won’t work.

5. The belief that Iran is becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of the world is wishful thinking. Allies like Brazil, Venezuela, Turkey, Syria, China, Hezbollah, Hamas, are only the beginning.

6. We are rapidly running out of options before the nightmare hits .

7. The lack of a sense of urgency by our administration is reminiscent of England in 1938.

Below, a sampling of opinion from some of our most astute commentators

Obama: A nuclear Iran inevitable

yHERB KEINON AND JPOST.COM STAFF

06/04/2010 Jerusalem Post

US President said "current course would provide them with nuclear capabilities."

It is inevitable that Iran will produce nuclear weapons, as things stand, US President Barack Obama said on Monday, in an interview with The New York Times. Seeming to indicate his administration was now resigned to a future including a nuclear-armed Iran.

President Obama stated he was now convinced that “the current course they’re on would provide them with nuclear weapons capabilities,” though he gave no timeline.

He dodged when asked whether he shared Israel’s view that a “nuclear capable” Iran was as dangerous as one that actually possessed weapons.

“I’m not going to parse that right now,” he said. But he cited the example of North Korea, whose nuclear capabilities were unclear until it conducted a test in 2006, which it followed with a second shortly after Mr. Obama took office.

President Obama was speaking about revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons, with exceptions directed at “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated or renounced the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On March 28th former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton warned of the White House moving towards acceptance of a nuclearly capable Iran. “I very much worry the Obama administration is willing to accept a nuclear Iran, that's why there's this extraordinary pressure on Israel not to attack in Iran,” Bolton told Army Radio.

On Saturday night a Israel urged international action on Iran. In response to an announcement by Iran’s nuclear chief of plans to build new atomic facilities in the country, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s newest warning regarding Israel’s demise, a senior government official called for “determined and effective international action.” Ahmadinejad’s continuous outbursts of extremist rhetoric only prove to the entire international community the seriousness of the threat posed by the Iranian regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and heightens the need for determined and effective international action,” the official said.

Ahmadinejad, referring on Saturday to escalating tensions in the Gaza Strip, said IDF action would “cost” Israel “too much.”

“I say to the Zionists and their supporters that they have already committed enough crimes,” he told an Iranian crowd. “A new adventure in Gaza will not save you, but hasten your demise.”

Faced with the prospect of new sanctions because of Iran’s nuclear defiance, Ahmadinejad said that such penalties would only strengthen his country’s technological advancement and help it to become more self-sufficient.
“Don’t imagine that you can stop Iran’s progress,” Ahmadinejad said in remarks broadcast live on state television. “The more you reveal your animosity, the more it will increase our people’s motivation to double efforts for construction and progress of Iran.”

The Iranian president claimed US pressure on Iran had backfired and made Washington more isolated in the eyes of the world.

China, which has veto power in the UN Security Council and whose support would be key, has not confirmed US reports that it has dropped its opposition to new sanctions. Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, is in China in the hopes of winning assurances from Beijing that it will oppose such measures.

Iran’s economy has suffered over the past year, and parliament approved a cut in subsidies that keep fuel prices low, a further blow to Iranians already experiencing high unemployment and inflation.

The UN Security Council could consider new punishments on Iran, including increasing financial squeezes on the extensive holdings of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The US has also said it could seek to penalize companies that sell fuel to the oil-rich Islamic Republic, which imports about 40 percent of the fuel it needs because its refineries cannot keep pace.

Ahmadinejad added that the US has failed to isolate Iran. He said the fact that Obama’s recent visit to Afghanistan was not announced beforehand for security reasons was evidence of America’s own isolation.

“First, let’s see who is isolated. We think those who can’t show up publicly among the people and directly address them are isolated – those who fear nations. Gentlemen go to a country where they have 60,000 troops without any prior announcement. Who is isolated?” Ahmadinejad said.

The Iranian president noted that his own recent trip to Afghanistan was announced in advance and said he was warmly received.
“You are isolated yourself, but you are a hotheaded and don’t understand it,” he said.

The Bottom line

Iran And The Utter Futility Of Sanctions

Louis Rene Beres From Myths and Facts

lberes@purdue.edu http://www.mythsandfacts.com/article_view.asp?articleID=172

In the matter of Iranian nuclearization, U.S. President Barack Obama still doesn't get it. Economic sanctions will never work. In Tehran's national decision-making circles, absolutely nothing can compare to the immense power and status that would presumably come with membership in the Nuclear Club. Indeed, if President Ahmadinejad and his clerical masters truly believe in the Shiite apocalypse, an inevitable final battle against "unbelievers," they would likely be willing to accept even corollary military sanctions.

From the standpoint of the United States, a nuclear Iran would pose an unprecedented risk of mass-destruction terrorism. For much smaller Israel, of course, the security risk would be existential.

Legal issues are linked here to various strategic considerations. Supported by international law, specifically by the incontestable right of anticipatory self-defense, Prime Minister Netanyahu understands that any preemptive destruction of Iran's nuclear infrastructures would involve enormous operational and political difficulties. True, Israel has deployed elements of the "Arrow" system of ballistic missile defense, but even the Arrow could not achieve a sufficiently high probability of intercept to protect civilian populations. Further, now that Mr. Obama has backed away from America's previously-planned missile shield deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic, Israel has no good reason to place its security hopes in any combined systems of active defense.

Even a single incoming nuclear missile that would manage to penetrate Arrow defenses could kill very large numbers of Israelis. Iran, moreover, could decide to share its developing nuclear assets with assorted terror groups, sworn enemies of Israel that would launch using automobiles and ships rather than missiles. These very same groups might seek "soft" targets in selected American or European cities - schools; universities; hospitals; hotels; sports stadiums; subways; etc.

While Obama and the "international community" still fiddles, Iran is plainly augmenting its incendiary intent toward Israel with a corresponding military capacity. Left to violate non-proliferation treaty (NPT) rules with impunity, Iran's leaders might ultimately be undeterred by any threats of an Israeli and/or American retaliation. Such a possible failure of nuclear deterrence could be the result of a presumed lack of threat credibility, or even of a genuine Iranian disregard for expected harms. In the worst-case scenario, Iran, animated by certain Shiite visions of inevitable conflict, could become the individual suicide bomber writ large. Such a dire prospect is improbable, but it is not unimaginable.

Iran's illegal nuclearization has already started a perilous domino effect, especially among certain Sunni Arab states in the region. Not long ago, both Saudi Arabia and Egypt revealed possible plans to develop their own respective nuclear capabilities. But strategic stability in a proliferating Middle East could never resemble US-USSR deterrence during the Cold War. Here, the critical assumption of rationality, which always makes national survival the very highest decisional preference, simply might not hold.

If, somehow, Iran does become fully nuclear, Israel will have to promptly reassess its core policy of nuclear ambiguity, and also certain related questions of targeting. These urgent issues were discussed candidly in my own "Project Daniel" final report, first delivered by hand to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on January 16, 2003.

Israel's security from mass-destruction attacks will depend in part upon its intended targets in Iran, and on the precise extent to which these targets have been expressly identified. For Israel's survival, it is not enough to merely have The Bomb. Rather, the adequacy of Israel's nuclear deterrence and preemption policies will depend largely upon (1) the presumed destructiveness of these nuclear weapons; and, (2) on where these weapons are thought to be targeted.

Mr. Obama's "Road Map" notwithstanding, a nuclear war in the Middle East is not out of the question. Soon, Israel will need to choose prudently between "assured destruction" strategies, and "nuclear war-fighting" strategies. Assured destruction strategies are sometimes called "counter-value" strategies or "mutual assured destruction" (MAD). Drawn from the Cold War, these are strategies of deterrence in which a country primarily targets its strategic weapons on the other side's civilian populations, and/or on its supporting civilian infrastructures.

Nuclear war-fighting measures, on the other hand, are called "counterforce" strategies. These are systems of deterrence wherein a country primarily targets its strategic nuclear weapons on the other side's major weapon systems, and on that state's supporting military assets.

There are distinctly serious survival consequences for choosing one strategy over the other. Israel could also opt for some sort of "mixed" strategy. Still, for Israel, any policy that might encourage nuclear war fighting should be rejected. This advice was an integral part of the once-confidential Project Daniel final report.

In choosing between the two basic strategic alternatives, Israel should always opt for nuclear deterrence based upon assured destruction. This seemingly insensitive recommendation might elicit opposition amid certain publics, but it is, in fact, more humane. A counterforce targeting doctrine would be less persuasive as a nuclear deterrent, especially to states whose leaders could willingly sacrifice entire armies as "martyrs."

If Israel were to opt for nuclear deterrence based upon counterforce capabilities, its enemies could also feel especially threatened. This condition could then enlarge the prospect of a nuclear aggression against Israel, and of a follow-on nuclear exchange.

Israel's decisions on counter-value versus counterforce doctrines will depend, in part, on prior investigations of enemy country inclinations to strike first; and on enemy country inclinations to strike all-at-once, or in stages. Should Israeli strategic planners assume that an enemy state in process of "going nuclear" is apt to strike first, and to strike with all of its nuclear weapons right away, Israeli counterforce-targeted warheads - used in retaliation - would hit only empty launchers. In such circumstances, Israel's only plausible application of counterforce doctrine would be to strike first itself, an option that Israel clearly and completely rejects. From the standpoint of intra-war deterrence, a counter-value strategy would prove vastly more appropriate to a fast peace.

Should Israeli planners assume that an enemy country "going nuclear" is apt to strike first, and to strike in a limited fashion, holding some measure of nuclear firepower in reserve, Israeli counterforce-targeted warheads could have some damage-limiting benefits. Here, counterforce operations could appear to serve both an Israeli non-nuclear preemption, or, should Israel decide not to preempt, an Israeli retaliatory strike. Nonetheless, the benefits to Israel of maintaining any counterforce targeting options are generally outweighed by the reasonably expected costs.

To protect itself against a relentlessly nuclearizing Iran, Israel's best course may still be to seize the conventional preemption option as soon as possible. (After all, a fully nuclear Iran that would actually welcome apocalyptic endings could bring incomparably higher costs to Israel.) Together with such a permissible option, Israel would have to reject any hint of a counterforce targeting doctrine. But if, as now seems clear, Iran is allowed to continue with its illegal nuclear weapons development, Mr. Netanyahu's correct response should be to quickly end Israel's historic policy of nuclear ambiguity.

Such a doctrinal termination could permit Israel to enhance its nuclear deterrence posture, but only in regard to a fully rational Iranian adversary. If, after all, Iran's leaders were to resemble the suicide bomber in macrocosm, they might not be deterred by any expected level of Israeli retaliation.

No country can be required to participate in its own annihilation. Without a prompt and major change in President Obama's persistently naive attitude toward Iran, a law-enforcing expression of anticipatory self-defense may still offer Israel its only remaining survival option. This will sound unconvincing to many, but rational decision-making - in all fields of human endeavor - is based upon informed comparisons of expected costs and expected benefits.

Does President Obama really believe that both we and the Israelis can somehow live with a nuclear Iran? If he does, he should be reminded that a nuclear balance-of-terror in the Middle East could never replicate the earlier stability of U.S.-Soviet mutual deterrence. This would not be your father's Cold War.

________________________________________

PROFESSOR LOUIS RENE BERES, Professor of Political Science at Purdue, was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971). Born in Zurich, Switzerland, at the end of World War II, he is the author of many major books, monographs and articles dealing with international law, strategic theory, Israeli nuclear policy, and regional nuclear war. In Israel, where he served as Chair of Project Daniel, his work is known to selected military and intelligence communities.

A Nuclear Iran Could Become

the First 'Suicide State'

President Obama's naive belief in rationality

could turn Israeli cities into cemeteries

President Barack Obama--this week launched a special nuclear security summit in Washington--finally acknowledges that Iranian threats to annihilate Israel are serious. Still, Obama fails to understand that applying so-called economic sanctions to Iran will be ineffectual. Somehow, despite very good reasons to the contrary, the president is now insisting that Israel learn to "live" with a nuclear Iran.

Obama confidently assumes that Tehran could be dealt with using the normally-compelling dynamics of nuclear deterrence. The problem with such threat-based optimism, however, is the always-underlying presumption of enemy rationality. Without rationality, deterrence will fail.

No system of nuclear deterrence can operate unless all of the involved countries value their own physical survival more highly than anything else. Significantly, Tehran's new nuclear status could coincide with an unshakable leadership belief in the Shi'ite apocalypse. Here, Israel would face not only more Palestinian suicide-bombers (President Obama's recycled Road Map toward a "Two-State Solution" will only encourage Palestinian terrorism), but also a "suicide state."

Barack Obama stubbornly fails to recognize something critical. This is the unspeakable goal of all Israel's Islamist enemies, which remains Jewish extermination. Oddly, this expressly genocidal goal is unhidden. In the bitterest of ironies, an ancient nation that was ingathered in 1948 precisely to prevent another Holocaust has become the fevered focus of another Final Solution.

The goal of all Israel's enemies, especially Iran and the soon-to-be-born (and Obama-favored) Palestinian state, is to be left standing while Israel is made to disappear. For these refractory enemies, there can be no coexistence with Israel. At the end of the day, this is because their own survival is believed to demand Israel's extinction.

Pressured by President Obama to exchange land for nothing, Israel is being pushed to collaborate in its own disappearance. Israel's prime minister should take notice. It would be a fatal mistake for Binyamin Netanyahu to embrace Obama's cheery belief that reason and rationality govern the world, a belief implicit, for example, in the president's hope for "a world free of nuclear weapons."

Barack Obama will not save Israel. Once Iran had decided to launch nuclear missiles at Israel, perhaps a plausible prospect in just a few years, Washington's best assistance would be confined to help bury the dead. Even for this "assistance," whole Israeli cities would first have to be converted into cemeteries.

Whether in Gaza, West Bank (Judea/Samaria) or Tehran, Israel's Jihadist enemies wish to kill Jews because every such homicide is a deeply felt and genuinely sacred obligation. For them, killing Jews remains a praiseworthy expression of religious sacrifice. President Obama should bear in mind that such killing is expected to confer upon the perpetrators immunity from personal death. Could there ever be a more compelling expectation?

In the Islamic Middle East, power over death always trumps all other forms of power. There is no greater power in the Dar al Islam (the World of Islam) than the religiously-authoritative promise of immortality, and this promise is always linked to total war against "unbelievers."

The core idea of death as a zero-sum commodity--"I kill you; I therefore remain alive forever"--has already been explained in certain literatures, and in psychology. It is captured perfectly in philosopher Ernest Becker's paraphrase of Nobel Laureate Elias Canetti: "Each organism raises its head over a field of corpses, smiles into the sun, and declares life good."

Just to stay alive, Israel must understand what Freud inner-circle member Otto Rank once called a general principle of psychology: "The death fear of the ego is lessened by the killing, the Sacrifice, of the other; through the death of the other one buys oneself free from the penalty of dying, of being killed."

Israel's enemies, to remain standing, and to prevent Israel from standing up, seek to sacrifice the Jewish state on a joyously bloodstained altar of protracted war and terror.

This planned destruction of Israel is not about geopolitics. It is integrally part of a system of religious worship that is directed toward the conquest of personal death.

True peace in the Middle East will never be brought about by political cliches and empty witticisms. Real wisdom is necessary, and this insight will need to be based upon a true awareness of jihadist goals and capabilities. For Barack Obama, this calls for a much deeper understanding of the interpenetrating and existential threats to Israel posed by Iran and "Palestine."

Iran Cannot Be Contained

Bret Stephens: Commentary July/August 2010

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/iran-cannot-be-contained-15462?page=all

Quietly within the foreign-policy machinery of the Obama administration—and quite openly in foreign-policy circles outside it—the idea is taking root that a nuclear Iran is probably inevitable and that the United States and its allies must begin to shift their attention from forestalling the outcome to preparing for its aftermath. According to this line of argument, the failure of the administration’s engagement efforts in 2009, followed by the likely failure of any effective sanctions efforts this year, allows for no other option but the long-term containment and deterrence of Iran, along the lines of the West’s policy toward the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. As for the possibility of a U.S. or an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, this is said to be no option at all: at best, say the advocates of containment, such strikes would merely delay the regime’s nuclear programs while giving it an alibi to consolidate its power at home and cause mayhem abroad.

Whatever else might be said of this analysis, it certainly does not lack for influential proponents. “Deterrence worked with madmen like Mao, and with thugs like Stalin, and it will work with the calculating autocrats of Tehran,” writes Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria. In a Foreign Affairs essay titled “After Iran Gets the Bomb,” analysts James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh echo that claim, saying that “even if Washington fails to prevent Iran from going nuclear, it can contain and mitigate the consequences.” Another believer is Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser, who argues that while Iran “may be dangerous, assertive and duplicitous... there is nothing in their history to suggest they are suicidal.”

As for the Obama administration, it insists, as Vice President Joseph Biden put it in March, that “the United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, period.” But it sings a different tune in off-the-record settings. “The administration appears to have all but eliminated the military option,” writes the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, while in the New York Times David Sanger reports that the administration “is deep in containment now.” In January, Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired off a confidential memo to the White House that, according to the Times, “calls for new thinking about how the United States might contain Iran’s power if it decided to produce a weapon.” If the Times’s reporting is accurate, it suggests how little faith the administration has that a fresh round of sanctions will persuade Tehran to alter its nuclear course.

But how sound, really, is the case for containment, and do its prospective benefits outweigh its probable risks? The matter deserves closer scrutiny before containment becomes the default choice of an administration that has foreclosed other options and run out of better ideas.

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Superficially, the case for containment looks remarkably good. The concept has a distinguished American pedigree; it has room for tactical, diplomatic, and strategic maneuver; it was practiced over many decades by Republican and Democratic administrations alike; it suggests a counsel of mature patience against naïve calls for accommodation and impetuous calls for military action. And, of course, it ultimately delivered the (mostly bloodless) surrender of the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

Perhaps the most convincing case put forward in favor of the containment of a nuclear Iran is that it is the best of a bad set of options. Many of containment’s current advocates are former supporters of engagement with Iran. Having invested their hopes in President Obama’s “outstretched hand,” they now understand that Iran’s hostility to the United States was not merely a reaction to the policies of the Bush administration but rather is fundamental to the regime’s identity. The Islamic republic, it turns out, really means what it says when it chants “Death to America.” It believes—and not unwisely—that more contacts with the U.S. and more openness at home will pave the way only to a kind of Iranian glasnost that is as dangerous to the regime as outright rebellion.

The failure of the administration’s engagement efforts, however, has by no means done anything to convince advocates of containment that preemptive military strikes offer a better course. They entertain grave doubts that a U.S. strike would set Iran’s programs back very far. That goes double for an Israeli attack, since Israel may not have the capacity for undertaking a sustained series of strikes. And any attack, American or Israeli, would be met by some sort of Iranian reprisal, the nature or severity of which nobody can predict. But several nightmare scenarios are often trotted out: that Iran mines the Straits of Hormuz or attacks shipping in the Persian Gulf, perhaps tripling the price of a barrel of oil overnight; that Iran redoubles its efforts to destabilize Iraq, undermining the gains we have made there, while increasing its support for the Taliban; that Iran launches ballistic missiles at Israel while seizing control of Lebanon through Hezbollah, and so on.

A larger worry about the wisdom of military strikes concerns the political consequences within Iran itself. It is a concern shared by at least some people traditionally identified with the neoconservative camp, such as historian Bernard Lewis and analyst Michael Ledeen. In this analysis, any attack would give the regime what Lewis has called “the gift of Iranian patriotism,” a gift they have never really possessed and have only further squandered since last year’s bloody post-election fracas. Yet many Iranians who despise the regime, including the most prominent figures of the Green movement, nonetheless support its nuclear program and would rally behind the leadership in the event of an attack. That deeply felt if knee-jerk nationalist impulse—traditionally powerful in Iranian society—could spell the death of the Greens and thus any hope that regime change could, over time, happen from within.

Advocates of containment also see a positive side to the policy. Containment has a way of locking in pro-U.S. alliances against a common enemy for the long haul. That was true during the Cold War—think of NATO, SEATO, and even CENTO, the Central Treaty Organization that for a few years brought together Britain, the U.S., Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and, briefly, Iraq. In the case of Iran, advocates of containment believe that the antipathy the Shiite regime elicits throughout the region could help smooth relations between Israel and such Sunni powers as Saudi Arabia, and thus perhaps also bring about more favorable conditions for an Israeli-Palestinian accord. The same goes, arguably, for Iraq in terms of its still-fraught relations with the rest of the Arab world.

Another alleged virtue of containment is that the policy is relatively stable and predictable. So long as certain expectations are fulfilled—defense pacts, diplomatic support, credible expectations of military action in case of war—friends and foes alike know where they stand. This also supposedly gives parties to a conflict a strong incentive to avoid outright confrontation and instead seek marginal advantages. At the same time, it allows internal developments to take their course, which in Iran’s case is presumed to be the evolution of the Green movement into a robust and broad-based opposition campaign that might, like Solidarity in Poland, wear the regime down.

But wouldn’t a nuclear Iran be able to break out of the containment “box”? Not at all, say the policy’s proponents. While a nuclear Iran might initially feel emboldened to throw its weight around its neighborhood, it would, they say, quickly discover that a nuclear arsenal is more of an insurance policy against foreign attack than it is the strategic equivalent of venture capital. “Paradoxically, a weapon that was designed to ensure Iran’s regional preeminence could further alienate it from its neighbors and prolong indefinitely the presence of U.S. troops on its periphery,” write Lindsay and Takeyh in their Foreign Affairs essay. “Nuclear empowerment could well thwart Iran’s hegemonic ambitions.”

As for the idea that Iran might actually use its weapons, containment advocates note that nuclear states—even ones as erratic as Maoist China or present-day North Korea—aren’t so crazy as to seek anything but political advantage from their bombs. Nor do the advocates believe that a nuclear Iran will necessarily set off a wave of nuclear proliferation among Middle Eastern states. “If Israel’s estimated arsenal of 200 warheads... has not prompted Egypt to develop its own nukes,” writes Zakaria, “it’s not clear that one Iranian bomb would do so.”

All this makes for a powerful case for containment. Yet it is far from being convincing.

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An Iran with nuclear weapons might behave as other nuclear powers have, but there are reasons to fear it would not. And the United States and its allies might succeed at containing it. But again, there are reasons to suspect they would not. No less important, it’s an open question whether even a policy of containment that did succeed—over many years and through various crises—would not exact a higher price on the U.S., its allies, and its interests than a series of military strikes that prevent Iran from going nuclear in the first place.

Today there is an odd tendency to think of the Cold War as a period during which containment served strategically as a stabilizing force abroad and politically as a clarifying one at home. In fact, containment exacted a staggering strategic, political, and human price. Nearly 100,000 Americans died in the Korean and Vietnam wars, both fought to enforce containment. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers stood guard in places like the Korean DMZ, Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie, and West Germany’s Fulda Gap. Trillions were spent on defense, intelligence, foreign aid, and prestige projects like the Apollo space program. And the U.S. repeatedly toed the nuclear brink during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the several crises over Berlin, and the Yom Kippur War.

Throughout all this, the U.S. was riven by intense domestic debates and public upheavals, not least during the Vietnam War. Containment was repeatedly attacked for its excessive reliance on nuclear deterrence and “brinksmanship” and its huge peacetime military expenditures, sometimes giving way to enfeebling periods of detente. Nor did containment prevent the Soviet Union from making steady geopolitical encroachments through the acquisition of client states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Western Europe was never entirely safe from Soviet political encroachments, either, given so-called Euro-Communist parties and a fellow-traveling “peace” movement.

That all this now seems to be largely forgotten is both remarkable and even amusing considering how often the same neoconservatives who are wary of a containment policy toward Iran are accused of being wistful for the Cold War. Of course Iran is not the Soviet Union, and the challenge it poses the U.S. is not on the global scale that was the USSR’s. But if comparisons with the Cold War are to be made, those comparisons must acknowledge what a complex, costly, and close-run thing containing the Soviet Union proved to be.

At the same time, it’s important to note the ways in which containing Iran would differ from the Cold War model. For starters, Soviet power was mostly symmetrical with America’s: “Regime change” against Stalin was never a serious option, nor did the U.S. have the means to stop Russia from developing nuclear weapons. Neither is necessarily the case with Iran today, where both military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities and a broader regime-change policy are feasible options—at least as long as Iran does not have nuclear weapons.

Then, too, the Soviet Union threatened the U.S. primarily and directly, a fact that did much to bolster American political will to persevere in the contest. By contrast, the threat a nuclear Iran would pose (at least until it acquires an ICBM capability) would be principally to countries other than the U.S., calling into question American readiness to sustain a containment policy for the long haul. “Why die for Danzig?” was the question advocates of accommodation with Hitler were fond of asking in the 1930s. Some Americans may soon be asking the same question about Doha or Dubai or Tel Aviv.

But the most important difference between the Soviet Union and Iran may be ideological. A credible case can be made that Communism is no less a faith than Islam and that Iran’s current leadership, like Soviet leaders of yore, knows how to temper true belief with pragmatic considerations. But Communism was also a materialist and (by its own lights) rationalist creed, with a belief in the inevitability of history but not in the afterlife. Marxist-Leninist regimes may be unmatched in their record of murderousness, but they were never great believers in the virtues of martyrdom.

That is not the case with Shiism, which has been decisively shaped by a cult of suffering and martyrdom dating to the murder of Imam Husayn—the Sayyed al-Shuhada, or Prince of Martyrs—in Karbala in the seventh century. The emphasis on martyrdom became all the more pronounced in Iran during its war with Iraq, when Tehran sent waves of child soldiers, some as young as 10, to clear out Iraqi minefields. As Hooman Majd writes in his book The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, the boys were often led by a soldier mounted on a white horse in imitation of Husayn: “the hero who would lead them into their fateful battle before they met their God.” Tens of thousands of children died this way.

The martyrdom mentality factors into Iran’s nuclear calculus as well. In December 2001, former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—a man often described as a moderate and a pragmatist in the Western press—noted in his Qods (Jerusalem) Day speech that “if one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists’ strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.”

Then there is the recent rise within Iran of an ultra-conservative sect that has sprung up around Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, an ayatollah who numbers Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad among his leading disciples. In 2005, Mesbah-Yazdi published a book openly calling for the acquisition of nuclear weapons. “Divine, messianic support has been the determining factor in the success of the Iranian regime during various trying periods,” he wrote. “We cannot be broken because of temporary difficulties.”

A year later, the influential cleric Mohsen Gharavian, another of Mesbah-Yazdi’s disciples, reportedly called for Iran not only to acquire but also to use nuclear weapons as a “countermeasure” against the U.S. and Israel. These are, of course, some of the more extreme voices in Iran, which are not necessarily authoritative. Still, Mesbah-Yazdi’s call to develop nuclear weapons is, in fact, precisely what the regime is doing for all its many denials, just as the increasingly repressive direction of Iranian politics squares with his long-held anti-reformist views.

All this suggests that a better comparison for Iran than the Soviet Union might be Japan of the 1930s and World War II—another martyrdom-obsessed, non-Western culture with global ambitions. It should call into question the view that for all its extremist rhetoric, Iran operates according to an essentially pragmatic estimate of its own interests. Ideology matters, not only on its terms but also in shaping the parameters within which the regime is prepared to exhibit flexibility and restraint. Ideology matters, too, in determining the kinds of gambles and sacrifices it is willing to make to achieve its aims. To suggest that there is some universal standard of “pragmatism” or “rationality” where Iran and the rest of the world can find common ground is a basic (if depressingly common) intellectual error. What Iran finds pragmatic and rational—support for militias and terrorist organizations abroad; a posture of unyielding hostility to the West; a nuclear program that flouts multiple UN resolutions—is rather different from the thinking that prevails in, say, the Netherlands.

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Put simply, Iran has demonstrated time and again that it is prepared to pay a steep price to realize its ambitions. The real questions are: What are those ambitions? What does the regime think it can afford? And how would the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal affect their calculus?

Advocates of containment generally believe that Iran’s ambitions are limited and regional. As Lindsay and Takeyh write,

the regime has survived because its rulers have recognized the limits of their power and have thus mixed revolutionary agitation with pragmatic adjustment. Although it has denounced the United States as the Great Satan and called for Israel’s obliteration, Iran has avoided direct military confrontation with either state. It has vociferously defended the Palestinians, but it has stood by as the Russians have slaughtered Chechens and the Chinese have suppressed Muslim Uighurs. Ideological purity, it seems, has been less important than seeking diplomatic cover from Russia and commercial activity with China. Despite their Islamist compulsions, the mullahs like power too much to be martyrs.

As for Iran’s nuclear bid, this too, Lindsay and Takeyh believe, is intended to serve limited aims:

During the presidencies of Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami, nuclear weapons were seen as tools of deterrence against the United States and Saddam Hussein’s regime, among others. The more conservative current ruling elite... sees them as a critical means of ensuring Iran’s preeminence in the region. ... And this may be all the more the case now that Iran is engulfed in the worst domestic turmoil it has known in years: these days, the regime seems to be viewing its quest for nuclear self-sufficiency as a way to revive its own political fortunes.

This analysis, however, omits a few key facts. Iran has been waging war against Israel for decades via Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran also had a direct operational role in the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and of the Jewish community center there in 1994. The man chiefly responsible for the last of those attacks, Ahmad Vahidi, is today Iran’s defense minister. Iran has also carried out high--profile assassinations of its enemies on European soil; taken British sailors hostage; put U.S., Canadian, and French nationals on trial (and in jail) on patently bogus charges; and, famously, imposed a death sentence on British novelist Salman Rushdie.

Moreover, Iran’s seizure of the U.S. Embassy in 1979 was a direct attack on sovereign U.S. territory and an act of war by any legal standard. Iran almost certainly had a hand in the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, in which 241 American servicemen perished, while the FBI has long believed that Iran was also responsible for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing that killed another 19 Americans. Then there was the war in Iraq, during which Iran did little to disguise the fact that it supplied Shiite militias, and perhaps also Sunni terrorist groups, with sophisticated, armor-piercing munitions responsible for the deaths of scores, perhaps hundreds, of U.S. soldiers.

Iran is thus very far from being the pragmatic and mostly circumspect power depicted by advocates of containment. On the contrary, the regime has stood out since its earliest days for its willingness to pick fights with powerful enemies, to undertake terrorist strikes at great range, to court international opprobrium and moral outrage, to test international diplomatic patience, and to raise the stakes every time the world seemed ready to come to terms. In short, it has pursued policies that have seemed almost calculated to enshrine its status as a global pariah.

Why has it done this? Much as containment advocates would discount the fact, Iran’s leadership remains faithful to the regime’s founding principles. “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah,” said the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1980. “For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam remains triumphant in the rest of the world.” More than a quarter-century later, Ahmadinejad would send a letter to President Bush that would sound a similar theme. “Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the Liberal democratic system,” he wrote. “We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point—that is the Almighty God. ... My question for you is: ‘Do you not want to join them?’”

These ideas may sound deranged to us, but it would be foolish not to give them their due. Like other revolutionary regimes—the Nazis, the Bolsheviks, and, let’s face it, the Americans—the Iranian regime makes a philosophical claim, a claim it believes has relevance not only for Iranians and Muslims but also for all mankind. In this sense Iran, as a country, amounts to little more than an accident of geography and culture. What matters to this regime, what sustains and motivates it, is a set of ideas about justice that is bound by neither geography nor culture.

No wonder the Obama administration and its allies in Europe have had such a difficult time trying to get the regime to see reason; by the regime’s lights, it is the rest of the world that fails to see reason, because the rest of the world is adhering to an inequitable and self-serving international system. No wonder, too, that the regime has pressed forward with its ideas for reordering that system by whatever means it has at its disposal; in the absence of those ideas, the revolution would be a failure even if the regime itself managed to survive. To desist from its efforts to seek Israel’s destruction, or maintain a confrontational stance toward the West, or build a bomb is not simply something the regime will not do. Rather, it cannot do it, lest it betray its deepest purposes.

It is for this reason that the regime has consistently been willing to take apparently reckless risks for the sake of its objectives—and would most likely take many more such risks if it had a nuclear arsenal at its disposal. Then again, it also has learned something from a 30-year experience of watching its enemies routinely back away from confrontation. This was true of the Carter administration vis-à-vis the embassy hostages, and of the Reagan administration vis-à-vis the hostages in Lebanon. It was true of Israel’s failure to deliver the coup de grace against Hezbollah in 2006, and of the failure of the Bush administration to avenge the murder of its soldiers in Iraq or greenlight an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2008.

Above all, it has been true of the West’s collective failure to stop Iran’s nuclear programs in their tracks. As of this writing, the U.S. can point to three UN Security Council resolutions that rebuke Iran for its nuclear deceptions and impose relatively trivial sanctions. But Iran can also note with satisfaction that it is mainly the West that has been in retreat, allowing Iran to cross one supposed red line after another without consequence. As Ahmadinejad noted last December: “A few years ago, they [the West] said we had to completely stop all our nuclear activities. Now look where we are today.”

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The combination of Iranian aggressiveness and Western diffidence has consequences for how a containment strategy would play out against a nuclear Iran. Behavior, after all, is largely a function of experience: why would a nuclear Iran, emboldened after successfully defying years of Western threats and sanctions, believe that the U.S. was seriously prepared to enforce this or that red line for the sake of containment? More likely, the U.S. would be at continual pains trying to restrain its allies, Israel above all, from responding too forcefully against Iranian provocations, lest they “destabilize” the region.

Consider also the red lines that Lindsay and Takeyh say would be essential for a policy of containment to work. Washington, they believe, would have to “publicly pledge to retaliate by any means it chooses if Iran used nuclear weapons against Israel”; it would have to tell Tehran that it “would strike preemptively, with whatever means it deems necessary, if Iran ever placed its nuclear forces on alert”; and it “should hold Tehran responsible for any nuclear transfer, whether authorized or not.”

Merely to list these conditions underscores the risks the U.S. would be required to run to enforce a containment policy. And given its habits of provocation, Iran would almost certainly be inclined to test America’s mettle at the earliest opportunity, probably by finding ambiguous ways to transgress America’s red lines. What would the U.S. do, for instance, if Iran found ways to transfer components of a nuclear program, perhaps of a dual-use variety, to Syria? Would that suffice as a casus belliagainst a nuclear Iran as far as the Obama administration was concerned? Or, as so often has been the case in the past, would the administration be content to express “grave concern” and perhaps refer the matter to the International Atomic Energy Agency?

One might also ask why Iran shouldn’t consider making wholesale nuclear-technology transfers to other parties if that suited its needs. After all, there is a precedent here: following North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006, President Bush warned that “the transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such action.” Yet when Pyongyang was exposed in 2007 as having made precisely that kind of transfer to Syria, it paid no price (other than the loss, at Israel’s hands, of its investment). On the contrary, thanks to a bit of diplomatic gamesmanship, North Korea was soon rewarded by the Bush administration by being removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Iran is well aware of this history, just as it is aware that the Bush administration had previously been adamant that a North Korean nuclear test would be “unacceptable.” For too long, every red line the U.S. has drawn for both Pyongyang and Tehran has been exposed as a bluff. Yet the essence of any successful containment strategy is that the red lines cannot be bluffs—and, what’s more, that the country being contained must be convinced of that. When America’s containment of the Soviet Union began in the late 1940s, the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was still fresh. By contrast, the U.S. would be moving toward a containment policy toward Iran following years of hollow threats and a perceptibly weakening will to thwart its ambitions. For an American president to pledge today that the U.S. would bear any burden, meet any hardship, or support any friend to contain Iran would simply not be taken seriously by the leadership of Tehran.

Nor would such a pledge carry much weight among America’s traditional allies in the region, who are already openly expressing doubts about U.S. seriousness. Speaking at a press conference alongside Hillary Clinton in February, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal cast doubt on the administration’s sanctions efforts and, by implication, the merits of a containment strategy: “Sanctions are a long-term solution,” he said. “They may work, we can’t judge. But we see the issue in the shorter term maybe because we are closer to the threat. ... So we need an immediate resolution rather than a gradual resolution.” Why would Saudi Arabia—or, for that matter, Egypt, Iraq, the Gulf emirates, or Israel—be more inclined to put its trust in U.S. security guarantees after America had failed to stop Iran from going nuclear than it is now?

The answer, say the advocates of containment, is that these countries wouldn’t have much choice: American power would remain their single best hedge against Iranian encroachments. But that may not be true, at least in the long term. Sunni states, both Arab and non-Arab, could also choose to compete with a nuclear Iran. Or they could seek to cooperate with it. Both possibilities would be ruinous for U.S. interests.

Competition with Iran would most likely take the form of Arab (or Sunni) states developing nuclear arsenals of their own. In recent years, Turkey, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and even Yemen have all expressed an interest in building nuclear power plants, ostensibly for civilian reasons, though with other purposes plainly in mind. Egypt, which has not had full diplomatic ties with Iran since it signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1979, and which more recently has tangled with the Islamic republic over its support of Hamas in Sinai and Gaza, has been even less circumspect in advertising its intentions. “We don’t want nuclear arms in the area but we are obligated to defend ourselves,” Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in 2007. “We will have to have the appropriate weapons. It is irrational that we sit and watch from the sidelines when we might be attacked at any moment.”

Then there is the cooperative approach. Turkey has mended its previously frayed relations with Iran (as it has with Syria), with the effect that it is now on the point of becoming a de facto enemy of Israel and a diplomatic thorn in America’s side (as Michael Rubin explains in his article, beginning on page 81). The rest of the Muslim states in the region hardly need Iran to persuade them to hate Israel. But they do need to be persuaded that a nuclear Iran would respect their sovereignty and that Iran would exercise its newfound regional pre-eminence with a light hand. Nothing prevents Iran from doing so. Over time, Iran could easily apply some combination of inducements and pressure to persuade Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain to shut down their U.S. military bases. Iran could also learn from its mistakes in Iraq—where its brazen and often violent tactics provoked a popular backlash—to mend relations with its neighbor while promoting the fortunes of its numerous and influential political sympathizers.

Additional scenarios come to mind, in various combinations. What happens, say, if Egypt develops an indigenous nuclear arsenal as a counterweight to Iran—and then its regime collapses, Iranian-style, to a Muslim Brotherhood–led Islamic revolution? What happens, too, if the Saudi monarchy falls to some of its most radical elements after it has purchased a nuclear arsenal from Pakistan? Such scenarios may be unlikely, but they are far from implausible—and there are many of them. And if any of them were to come to pass, they would almost certainly force America’s effective withdrawal from much of the Middle East, leaving Israel to fend for itself.

Still, the most frightening scenario of all would be a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran. Most advocates of containment believe the possibility is highly remote, since Iran would not risk its own annihilation by attacking the Jewish state. But as even Lindsay and Takeyh acknowledge, “Iran’s possession of a bomb would create an inherently unstable situation, in which both parties would have an incentive to strike first: Iran, to avoid losing its arsenal, and Israel, to keep Tehran from using it.” To manage that risk, the authors place great weight on Jerusalem’s “assessment of the United States’ willingness and ability to deter Iran.” Yet as with its Arab neighbors, Jerusalem’s assessment is unlikely to be positive following Washington’s failure to prevent Iran from going nuclear in the first place.

And yet the argument persists that for all its dangers and difficulties, containment is our only realistic option for dealing with the inevitability of a nuclear Iran. Better to start fine-tuning the concept now, the advocates say, than to try to make it up on the fly later.

In one sense, this analysis is right: should Iran acquire nuclear weapons, the U.S. will have little choice but to attempt to manage the consequences and contain the fallout. Yet containment would be a strategy resting on the rubble of a decade’s worth of failed diplomacy. That unsturdy foundation alone—a compound of indecision, cravenness, and squandered credibility—is one reason why the policy would be likely to fail.

Another reason is that the tools the U.S. would have at its disposal to enforce a containment policy would have to be salvaged from a collapsed edifice. Yes, we would have allies. But they would be weaker, more hesitant to side with us, and more tempted to accommodate the cunning and willful regime next door. Yes, we would have our military might. But it would be confronted by a much more formidable adversary. Yes, Iran would still have all its own internal divisions and dissensions to deal with. But as Lindsay and Takeyh themselves acknowledge, the acquisition of a bomb would “revive [Iran’s] own political fortunes.” Yes, we would have a compelling national interest to contain Iran. But American leaders would also have to contend with a perennial political temptation to abandon the field.

Finally, it cannot be stressed enough that a nuclear Iran would be unlike any nuclear power the world has known. It would be dangerous and unpredictable in moments of strength as well as in those of weakness. While it could well be that the regime would not consider using its arsenal if it believed it could get its way through other means, the calculus could change if it felt threatened from within. Indeed, the closer the regime got to its deathbed, the more tempted it would be to bring its enemies along with it. The mullahs will not go gentle into that good night.

Thus to the extent that American policymakers indulge the notion that containment is a difficult but ultimately workable policy option, they also lull themselves into thinking that a failure to prevent Iran from going nuclear is anything but “unacceptable.” In doing so, of course, they only further undercut whatever feeble will is left within the administration to confront Iran, now and in the future.

This essay deals with policy options and scenarios that still lie over the horizon. But a few final words ought to be devoted to what is within America’s power to do now. Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons. It may yet be prevented from getting them. Recognizing that a nuclear Iran would be catastrophic to U.S. interests (to say nothing of Israel’s) is the first step on the road to prevention. Recognizing that neither diplomacy nor, in all likelihood, sanctions can stop Iran’s nuclear bids is the second step. The serious options that remain are military strikes or efforts to support regime change.

Advocates of the latter strategy often insist that nothing would harm their efforts more than military strikes. Maybe. But the recent apparent fizzling of the Green movement that arose after the stolen 2009 election offers little hope that it can mount a successful challenge to the regime before Iran crosses the nuclear threshold. It took the Solidarity movement in Poland 10 years to come to power. That is much longer than the world can afford to wait in Iran.

Regime-change advocates must also reckon that while military strikes on Iran could set their efforts back, so too would the regime’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon. A regime that has little to fear by way of external challenges to its power will have even greater scope to repress its own people. And a regime that can use its nuclear status to burnish its prestige and advance its interests abroad will also be able to make use of those assets for domestic political purposes.

It is also far from clear that military strikes would be the death knell to the reform movement that opponents claim. Whatever fits of nationalist, anti-Western fervor such strikes might induce among Iranians at large, they are likely to be short-lived. Defeat does not ultimately make for good politics. In 1982, the unpopular and repressive regime of Leopoldo Galtieri in Argentina also bought itself popular support by invading the Falklands. Yet Galtieri was ousted just days after the British took Port Stanley. Much the same went on in the Balkans, where Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic profited politically from his brutal policies in Kosovo and his defiance of NATO. Yet he, too, did not last long in office after losing the battle he had staked so much on.

As for the argument that military strikes would merely delay Iran’s nuclear programs, one can only ask: what’s wrong with delay? Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor was also, in its way, a delaying tactic, since Saddam Hussein moved aggressively to reconstitute his program under deeper cover. Yet had it not been for the raid on Osirak, the Iraq that invaded Kuwait in 1990 might well have been a nuclear power. In that case, no U.S. government would have dared risk a war with it for the sake of Kuwait’s liberation. As for Iran, a delay of several years to its nuclear programs would be no small thing if the regime fell to its internal opponents within that period. Far from being the end of the reform movement, military strikes could be their salvation. One must also ask what would prevent the U.S. from striking again in the event that Iran did attempt to reconstitute its program.

None of this is to say that strikes on Iran would not have unforeseen, unintended, and unhappy consequences. All military actions do. But the serious question that confronts policymakers today is whether the foreseeable consequences of an Iran with nuclear weapons are not considerably worse. They would be. And because they are foreseeable, they are preventable. Through action. Not through the inaction that, in this case, goes by the name of containment.

About the Author

Bret Stephens is a deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and the author of the paper’s Global View, a weekly column.

The myth of Iran's 'isolation'

By Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

In announcing the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran, President Obama stressed not once but twice Iran's increasing "isolation" from the world. This claim is not surprising considering that after 16 months of an "extended hand" policy, in response to which Iran accelerated its nuclear program -- more centrifuges, more enrichment sites, higher enrichment levels -- Iranian "isolation" is about the only achievement to which the administration can even plausibly lay claim.

"Isolation" may have failed to deflect Iran's nuclear ambitions, but it does enjoy incessant repetition by the administration. For example, in his State of the Union address, President Obama declared that "the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated." Two months later, Vice President Biden asserted that "since our administration has come to power, I would point out that Iran is more isolated -- internally, externally -- has fewer friends in the world." At the signing of the START treaty in April, Obama declared that "those nations that refuse to meet their obligations [to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, i.e., Iran] will be isolated."

Really? On Tuesday, one day before the president touted passage of a surpassingly weak U.N. resolution and declared Iran yet more isolated, the leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran gathered at a security summit in Istanbul "in a display of regional power that appeared to be calculated to test the United States," as the New York Times put it. I would add: And calculated to demonstrate the hollowness of U.S. claims of Iranian isolation, to flaunt Iran's growing ties with Russia and quasi-alliance with Turkey, a NATO member no less.

Apart from the fact that isolation is hardly an end in itself and is pointless if, regardless, Iran rushes headlong to become a nuclear power, the very claim of Iran's increasing isolation is increasingly implausible. Just last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted an ostentatious love fest in Tehran with the leaders of Turkey and Brazil. The three raised hands together and announced a uranium transfer deal that was designed to torpedo U.S. attempts to impose U.N. sanctions.

Six weeks ago, Iran was elected to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, a grotesque choice that mocked Obama's attempt to isolate and de-legitimize Iran in the very international institutions he treasures.

Increasing isolation? In the past year alone, Ahmadinejad has been welcomed in Kabul, Istanbul, Copenhagen, Caracas, Brasilia, La Paz, Senegal, Gambia and Uganda. Today, he is in China.

Three Iran sanctions resolutions passed in the Bush years. They were all passed without a single "no" vote. But after 16 months of laboring to produce a mouse, Obama garnered only 12 votes for his sorry sanctions, with Lebanon abstaining and Turkey and Brazil voting against.

From the beginning, the Obama strategy toward Iran and other rogue states had been to offer goodwill and concessions on the premise that this would lead to one of two outcomes: (a) the other side changes policy, or (b) if not, the world isolates the offending state and rallies around us -- now that we have demonstrated last-mile good intentions.

Hence, nearly a year and a half of peace overtures, negotiation, concessions, two New Year's messages to the Iranian people, a bit of groveling about U.S. involvement in the 1953 coup and a disgraceful silence when the regime's very stability was threatened by peaceful demonstrators.

Iran's response? Defiance, contempt and an acceleration of its nuclear program.

And the world's response? Did it rally behind us? The Russians and Chinese bargained furiously and successfully to hollow out the sanctions resolution. Turkey is openly choosing sides with the region's "strong horse" -- Iran and its clients (Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas) -- as it watches the United States flailingly try to placate Syria and appease Iran while it pressures Israel, neglects Lebanon and draws down its power in the region.

To say nothing of Brazil. Et tu, Lula?

This comes after 16 months of assiduously courting these powers with one conciliatory gesture after another: "resetting" relations with Russia, kowtowing to China, lavishing a two-day visit on Turkey highlighted by a speech to the Turkish parliament in Ankara, and elevating Brazil by supplanting the G-8 with the G-20. All this has been read as American weakness, evidence that Obama can be rolled.

The result is succinctly, if understatedly, captured in Wednesday's Post headline "U.S. alliance against Iran is showing new signs of vulnerability."

You think?

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Iran: we can have our (yellow) cake and eat it, too

David Harris; Jerusalem Post

You can practically hear the laughter from Teheran.

By a combination of weaving, bobbing, feinting, parrying, lying, deceiving, bribing, threatening, blustering, winking, delaying, hiding, flaunting and strutting, Iran's leaders believe they've run circles around the West.

Sad to say, they may not be entirely wrong.

Before our very eyes, they've gone from no nuclear program to a full-fledged effort. Sure, there have been fits and starts, but the general thrust is forward, and there's been no stopping them. From a few dozen spinning centrifuges to thousands, the capacity to enrich uranium has been growing.

And with it, for all the world to see, Iran's military capacity, including its ballistic missile technology, only increases in strength.

So far, every theory of how to deal with Iran has failed.

In the 1990s, the Europeans trumpeted "critical dialogue" with Iran. That proved a joke. The dialogue was about lucrative business. The criticism, such as it was, had no impact on commerce, so it meant nothing to Iran.

At the same time, the Clinton administration sought to improve ties with Teheran. Travel to Iran was encouraged in the belief that people-to-people contact could send a positive signal. Wrestlers went to a sports competition in Iran, hoping to replicate the US-China "ping-pong diplomacy" of another era. Iran, however, was unmoved by the gestures.

In 2002, Iran was found to have hidden nuclear enrichment facilities. The EU took on the challenge of negotiating with Teheran. Years passed and the EU had little to show for its efforts, other than countless flights, meetings, and empty declarations.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration kept Iran at arm's length, issuing warnings and threats. Then, for a brief moment, just after the American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iran must have been worried, wondering if it might be the next target.

But it wasn't long before the tables were turned. Not only had Iran lost all fear of American power, but it saw a historic chance to gain influence in Iraq through the majority Shi'a population and America's increasing post-invasion challenges.

Washington continued to sound tough, but Teheran saw through it. The US was already engaged on two fronts - Iraq and Afghanistan - and didn't have the appetite, much less the support, for a third.

One potential danger for Iran came from the US Treasury Department's determined efforts to cut it off from global financial markets and discourage major companies from doing business with it. That effort proved quite robust and chalked up major successes.

Still, from the Iranian viewpoint, the pressure could somehow be handled.

For every bank or multinational that pulled out of the Iranian arena, another presumably could be found to take its place. Greed is a powerful motivating force around the world, and the Iranians have been prepared to exploit it. So is solidarity, and Iran has found those who, for reasons of pro-Iranian or anti-Western thinking, have been ready to help it. And deception is yet another tool in the Iranian kit. It has developed a global network of front companies, dummy corporations and cooperative banks.

Israel has been another worrisome factor for Iran, perhaps the most consistent. Iranian leaders ascribe all kinds of (demonically) powerful attributes to Israel and the Jews. And indeed, from time to time, acts of sabotage, with no acknowledged authors, have complicated the Iranian nuclear program.

Yet, even President Bush, seen as a close friend of Israel, refused Israeli requests for bunker-busting bombs and the right to fly over US-controlled Iraq.

Lurking in the back of the Iranian mind surely must have been a fear that oil-importing nations would one day wake up and take steps to reduce their dependence on oil and gas. But, again, Teheran has been lucky.

The US had a unique opportunity to do exactly that after 9/11, when the nation would have followed an appeal from Washington. But alas, there was no appeal. Instead, Americans continued to drive their gas-guzzling Hummers, Escalades, Tahoes and Suburbans, seemingly indifferent to the geopolitical implications of their choices.Meanwhile, the Chinese and Indian economies took off, fueling still greater demand for energy resources. And as oil prices went through the roof, Iranian coffers were filled.

With the advent of the Obama administration in Washington, US policy on Iran took a different tack. The earlier American approach of isolation hadn't worked. The extended hand, alongside sanctions, became a new watchword. After 14 months, it's safe to say that's had no effect, either.

This sharp turn led to an ambitious offer to enrich Iranian uranium abroad and return it for use in the Teheran Research Reactor. That went nowhere, though valuable months passed as Iran choreographed its multi-phased response.

So now the focus is on ramping up sanctions.

Mind you, more than two years have passed since the third sanctions resolution was adopted by the UN Security Council. During those 24 months, Iran has thumbed its nose at the earlier sanctions resolutions, other UN measures calling for cooperation, various "firm" deadlines for action set by the West, and repeated criticism by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In the meantime, of course, Iran has pursued its nuclear program, announced construction of new enrichment facilities, declared it will enrich uranium to 20 percent (which is a quantum leap towards weapons-grade), been compelled to admit that it hid an enrichment facility near Qom, and cracked down ruthlessly on opposition forces after the fraudulent June elections.

And yet, the US today says it is only certain of seven of the 15 Security Council votes for a sanctions resolution. Again, Teheran must be laughing. It assumes that any eventual resolution will be watered down to attract the holdouts and, in any case, there will be ways around it.

The theory was that Iran would become more isolated over time. The world would conclude that, if Teheran didn't accept the extended hand, it would have only itself to blame for the consequences.

Sounds plausible, but it seems that no one counted on other critical factors.

First, China proved to be a much tougher nut to crack than anyone anticipated. It's not yet ready to walk away from its close ties with Iran. Beijing has yet to be moved by Washington's appeals to China's global responsibility, assurances of Saudi reserve capacity to make up for lost Iranian oil (countered by an Iranian offer of discounted prices), and portrayals of a Middle East in turmoil after an Israeli strike, if sanctions aren't implemented.

Second, Turkey was elected to the UN Security Council just as its foreign policy began moving in a pan-Islamic direction.

Third, Brazil also joined the UN Security Council. Brasilia has sought to strengthen links with Teheran. The Iranian president was in the Brazilian capital last November, and the Brazilian president is slated to reciprocate this spring.

And fourth, the perception of US power and influence has declined, making it still more difficult for Washington to achieve its diplomatic goals.

Right now, it seems, China isn't listening, and our plea for China to separate bilateral differences (arms sales to Taiwan, the visit of the Dalai Lama to the White House, pressure on the Chinese to revalue their currency, US tariffs on Chinese tires, etc.) from multilateral cooperation is falling on deaf ears.

Nor are Brazil and Turkey in any particular listening mode. And Russia is only half-listening, angered that Teheran rejected Russia's attempted mediating role, yet not eager to follow the US lead in a world where it appears possible to bring America down a few notches

The sanctions most likely to inflict real damage on Iran - imports of refined energy products, since Iran doesn't have sufficient domestic capacity - are unlikely to be adopted. First, the French foreign minister said last fall that such sanctions would hurt people in the street rather than the government. More recently, the Obama administration has opposed House and Senate bills calling for punishing energy companies that supply the Iranian market, fearing it will further complicate Washington's diplomatic efforts.

As for the military option, Teheran may be calculating that, in the end, it won't be used. For a variety of reasons, Washington would be reluctant to attack, and it appears to be trying to restrain Israel as well. Indeed, readers in Teheran of Foreign Affairs, the influential American magazine, will surely have been struck by the cover story in the current issue, which sets forth a US strategy for living with the fact of an Iranian bomb.

Thus, from Iran's viewpoint, things may not look so bad.

Sure, there's been internal unrest, but it's been handled ruthlessly and with strikingly little international outcry.

Sure, the economy is suffering from high unemployment, inflation and corruption, but what else is new? Anyway, oil prices are inching northward again, a good sign for Teheran.

Sure, there are attempts to isolate the country, but they haven't proven particularly effective. From Malaysia to Venezuela, from Brazil to Turkey, from China to Syria, interest in Iran remains high. And the Europeans are only slowly moving to ratchet down their extensive ties, while the gaping holes in the US boycott approach were revealed in a front-page New York Times story a few weeks ago.

Sure, there is always the danger of a military attack, but fear of repercussions - spiking oil prices sending the fragile global economic recovery into a tailspin; vulnerable US targets in neighboring Afghanistan, Iraq and the Gulf; heavily-armed Iranian proxies on three Israeli borders; and Iranian-backed Hizbullah sleeper cells around the world - are likely to temper the appetite for a strike, if there is any to begin with.

That's why Iran's leaders are laughing.

But is the laughter warranted? I wonder if there's a Farsi equivalent for the English expression, "He who laughs last, laughs loudest."

Missed Opportunities to Pressure Iran

by Laura Grossman inFocus, Jewish Policy Center

http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/1629/missed-opportunities-to-pressure-iran

President Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office on January 20, 2009, with new strategies to confront Iran's illicit nuclear activity. His bold offer to engage the Mullahs, however futile, should be appreciated as an effort to prevent conflict. However, Obama's reluctance to take definitive action during his first year has allowed Tehran to continue its nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, Iran continues to sponsor terrorism around the world, and its people continue to suffer at the hands of an oppressive regime.

Despite ample and clear manifestations of Tehran's intransigence, Obama has consistently failed to act on his campaign promise to increase the diplomatic pressure on Iran if it did not curb its nuclear ambitions. Adopting what can only be viewed as more of the same, his administration has opted to sanction the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) because it is the guardian of the regime's ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs. However, this is nothing new. During the Bush administration, the U.S. Treasury Department already decided to designate the IRGC as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" in 2007. These designations have little impact without support from America's international allies and the IRGC has become adept at skirting sanctions while operating on the black market.

Even with the president's missteps during his first year, he can still take steps to effectively pressure the Iranian regime. Notably, sanctions against Iran's refined petroleum supply could be an effective measure to stymie Iran's nuclear program. This is because Tehran does not have the ability to produce the gasoline it needs to operate its economy at full capacity. It imports roughly 40 percent of its gasoline from foreign refiners. The president can still exploit this vulnerability, forcing the regime to make difficult choices about the allocation of its limited financial resources, and perhaps even abandon its nuclear weapons activities.

The Candidate

While running for the presidency, Senator Barack Obama campaigned on the promise of a renewed and rehabilitated American image around the world based on policies of greater engagement to insure national security. Three months into his campaign, he introduced the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act that called for the Secretary of the Treasury to track investments valued over $20,000,000 in Iran's energy sector for potential targeting. The legislation also granted state and local governments the power to divest pension funds from public companies invested in Iran's energy sector. The bill clearly illustrated the candidate's desire to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions through economic pressure.

On the campaign trail in June 2008, Obama vowed to remain firm with Tehran while promising that his administration would open new lines of communication and diplomacy. "We will pursue this diplomacy with no illusions about the Iranian regime," he said. "Instead, we will present a clear choice. If you abandon your dangerous nuclear program, support for terror, and threats to Israel, there will be meaningful incentives –

including the lifting of sanctions, and political and economic integration with the international community. If you refuse, we will ratchet up the pressure." This policy stood in contrast to the Bush administration's singular policy to isolate the regime and it appeared to resonate with the American electorate.

The First 100 Days

After he won the presidency, President Obama's language of greater engagement piqued world interest, especially in light of his campaign promises regarding Iran. In March 2010, he boldly released a video message to the Iranian people amidst the celebrations of Nowruz, the Iranian new year. In the video, Obama told 66 million Iranians that his administration was "committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran, and the international community." He was quick to add, however, that the "process will not be advanced by threats." His message was clearly an opening for the Iranian regime to take steps to re-join the international community.

Predictably, Iran's leaders reacted quickly and coldly to Obama's statement. Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a close advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, "We welcome the wish of the U.S. President to put away past differences. But the way to do that is not Iran forgetting the previous hostile and aggressive attitude of the United States."

Two months later, Obama reiterated the choices that were before the Iranian regime, stressing that the current trajectory of Ahamdinejad's foreign policy would only lead to "increased isolation, international pressure, and a potential nuclear arms race in the region that will increase insecurity for all."

By April 2009, analysts assessing the president's first 100 days noted that while he was willing to negotiate with Iran, he appeared less eager to impose penalties against the Islamic Republic. In fact, the president rarely discussed what penalties might even be imposed.

A Nuclear Facility Revealed

During the summer, talk of the need for gasoline sanctions dominated Congress. The White House, for its part, remained quiet.

On September 25, the dangers of the Iranian nuclear program came into sharp focus. President Obama, flanked by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicholas Sarkozy, announced at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh that Iran "has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years." Sarkozy went further, issuing a December 31 deadline to Iran's leaders to halt their program or face sanctions.

Meanwhile, news reports indicated that President Obama had prior knowledge about the Qom facility, and curiously failed to denounce it a week earlier at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. Indeed, the president's omission forced Sarkozy to remove mention of the Qom site from his UN address.

Critics were also quick to point out that Obama chaired the Security Council meeting, where the announcement of Qom would have been appropriate. However, instead of using his position to constructively confront Iran's illicit activity, Obama articulated his dream of a nuclear-free world. This was a missed opportunity. Had he exposed Iran's covert nuclear facility, Obama could have ratcheted up the pressure on the regime and had a stronger case for sanctions, if the regime did not comply.

Less than a week after the G20 Summit, the P5+1 negotiations (US, Russia, China, France, UK + Germany) began with the goal of convincing Iran to send its nuclear fuel abroad to be processed and returned for Iran's medical reactor. However, it soon became apparent that Iran was dragging its feet – agreeing and then reneging.

Congress and Gasoline Sanctions

Congress had less patience for Iran's behavior. Notably, Representative Howard Berman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced in September 2009 that he was ready to push the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA) through the House. The measure called for economic sanctions against Iran's refined petroleum supply, specifically its gasoline suppliers and the insurance and reinsurance companies that support its supply chain.

IRPSA came to a vote in December 2009, and passed by an overwhelming vote of 412 to 12. The White House, for its part, appeared lukewarm to the legislation. Indeed, Obama could have pointed to this measure as an example to Iran of a penalty it would face if it did not act before the December 31 deadline. Instead, 2009 ended with another valuable opportunity missed by the president to leverage the threat of sanctions against the Iranian regime.

The State of the Union

Obama's first State of the Union address in January 2010 was another opportunity to rally Americans around the idea of sanctioning Iran. However, dogged by continued high levels of unemployment and a battle to pass his healthcare plan, the president dedicated the majority of his speech to domestic issues. When he did call attention to Iran, he articulated that "as Iran's leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: They, too, will face growing consequences. That is a promise." Yet, the threat rang empty in light of Obama's earlier pledges of action against Iran.

Congress, however, was still energized about the potential impact of sanctions. Shortly after the State of the Union, the Senate passed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act of 2009. In addition to levying sanctions against Iran's refined petroleum supply, the legislation granted states the power to divest assets from companies that invest in Iran, and included measures to prevent the transshipment of sensitive materials to Iran.

The passage of this legislation gave Obama yet another opportunity to endorse sanctions. But again his administration remained quiet. This was almost certainly a mistake. Put simply, even without implementation, sanctions can be a strong diplomatic tool.

It is also important to note that as Congress debated its gasoline sanctions legislation, a variety of companies abruptly ceased or announced that they would terminate their commercial ties to Iran. The Islamic Republic's gasoline suppliers BP, Reliance and Glencore have stopped shipping to Iran, while insurance companies Munich Re and Allianz have announced their intentions to cease writing policies with companies in Iran. Additionally, Lloyd's of London has stated that the company would stop insuring shipments to Iran if the U.S. enacts sanctions legislation.

Squeezing Iran

After Ahmadinejad defiantly announced in February that Iran had initiated a program to enrich uranium to 20 percent – a clear indication of Iran's weapons ambitions – the Obama administration began to speak more openly about "targeted sanctions." However, these have yet to be clearly enumerated, except for the aforementioned targeting of the IRGC. The president has made scant mention of the refined petroleum sanctions now sitting in conference committee on Capitol Hill.

Gasoline sanctions may be a critical tool in dissuading Iran from its nuclear weapons program. They should not be viewed as collective punishment against the Iranian people, but rather a part of Obama's strategy of engagement with Iran. The mere threat of sanctions has already encumbered the Islamic Republic's gasoline supply chain.

To be effective in statecraft, both carrots and sticks are used to reward and cajole. A dangerous regime like Iran will not cease its actions simply because it is asked. It is more likely to curtail its behavior if it knows there are immediate and significant consequences. As such, by adding gasoline sanctions to his arsenal, President Obama could move one step closer to derailing Iran's nuclear weapons program thereby increasing stability in the Middle East.

Laura Grossman is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Double Standard Watch; Israel and Russia

2010-06-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

A prominent story in today’s San Francisco Chronicle celebrates the docking in the SF port of a Russian warship with 16 cruise missiles. I looked in vain throughout this extensive story for any negative reaction. No editorials, nothing. And not a single protestor was on hand.

Two days earlier, a commercial ship owned by the Zim line based in Israel, docked in Oakland. On that occasion there were hundreds of demonstrators, organized to prevent the unloading of the cargo. These "humanitarians" were produced by the efforts of MECA (Middle East Children’s Alliance, a group that has no shame in its blatant use of children for their propaganda value), ISM(International Solidarity Movement, an anti-Israel group that supports suicide bombers) and Hamas award winner Paul Larudee . .

Ah, you say that I am ignoring the impact of Israel's actions in the "Flotilla incident". Not at all. The so-called Flotilla incident involved Israelis killing nine terrorists while striking back in self defense at those who were trying to kill them. Further the incident was the direct result of an attempt to break a blockade designed specifically to prevent the arming of Hamas, a recognized terrorist group that has declared its desire to annihilate Israel, and to kill Jews wherever they can find them. Do we really want an Iranian satellite adjacent to Israel and Egypt?

But the larger issue is that Russia has been cavalier about human rights and "humanitarianism", as it conducts ongoing genocide against the Chechnyans. See for instance,
http://www.freechechnya.org/ http://www.religioustolerance.org/geno_ch.htm

From the web site http://www.amina.com/article/ we learn that

"The Russian army maintained at least four major concentration camps which were used to detain Chechens. At least one, known as PAP-1, held up to 1,500 Chechens, many of whom were never seen again. A makeshift incinerator cremated four or five bodies at a time. "A central torture room inside the building still remains much as it was during the war, with a large metal rack with blood stained spikes and steel cables hanging from the walls. On one wall, it is still visible where a Chechen under detention wrote his name in blood. Blood stains on the floors and walls are highly visible throughout the facility."

And from Aaron Rhodes, the director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights.
http://www.ihf-hr.org/appeals/020723.htm we learn that

"According to documentation by Memorial Society and other organizations, the numbers of disappeared Chechens in recent months indicate a continuing assault against the Chechen people that borders on genocide...While the authorities will release no statistics, human rights groups are documenting that between 50 and 80 bodies are recovered in average months and in some months the figures are much higher, and they report a clear trend toward increasing overall numbers of the disappeared. Those dying are generally men in their productive years. The Russian forces are often beheading, burning, mutilating, and otherwise destroying bodies in an effort to conceal this process, which is claiming more lives than the bombings during the two military campaigns. But corpses are also often dumped alongside highways."

Of course, the situation is not simple. Both Russians and Chechen separatists have accused the other side of committing war crimes. Amnesty International, has criticized both sides for "blatant and sustained" violations of international humanitarian law.

So Russia has tortured, kidnapped, and killed hundreds of thousands of Chechens, most of them Muslims. Russia sends a military ship to the Bay area. No protests. Israel kills nine Turkish terrorists, and hundreds of screamers show up to protest against Israel and to establish a "picket line". These include adherents of radical Islam, supporters of the Arab states, as well as the lunatic left from the margins of American society.

Over the last few weeks, resolutions condemning Israel have been introduced throughout the Bay area, in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Richmond. No resolutions condemning Russia have surfaced. . And we have seen none condemning Sudan for the ongoing genocide in Darfur. And the good humanitarians of the Bay area have not referenced any of the other atrocities occurring around our globe.

Why the discrepancy? Could this be part of a resurgence of hatred against Jews, now being seen all over Europe? You say this is about Israel, not about Jews. Very well; then please explain the double standard.

A message to those Jewish sympathizers with the flotilla activists, to those who joined the "picket line", as well as to those Jews of J Street or Jewish Voice for Peace who insist that they need to instruct the Israelis about how best to defend themselves:

This is how it starts. How will it end? The lessons of the last 2000 years give us the answer .

J Street Does It Again

2010-06-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

Just when we thought J Street might be moderating, Jeremy Ben Ami, J Street President, is acting again to undermine the security of Israel.

We are in the midst of two major crises impacting the Jewish state. First, the US-Israel relationship has been (and continues to be ) imperiled by actions of the US administration. (Fortunately, the US Congress has been very supportive). Secondly, media and political reaction to the flotilla incident has had the effect of further delegitimizing and isolating Israel in the eyes of the world.
Simply stated, lies are being told by the media and by politicians in Europe and elsewhere. These lies have two main prongs.

First they distort or totally lie about the events that occurred on the Mavi Marmara. This was the lead ship in the flotilla, the ship that carried members of a Turkish radical Islamist organization determined to have a bloody altercation with Israel. (Some media reports claim that the Israelis landed on the ship and immediately began “shooting into a group of civilians who were sleeping” ) Rather than hold responsible the terrorists, the blame has devolved on Israel, a nation acting legally to prevent the smuggling of lethal weapons to Hamas

Secondly, the lies relate to the so-called humanitarian crisis in Gaza, a crisis which simply does not exist but which the enemies of Israel do not hesitate to use to appeal to understandable concerns of the poorly informed. .

Now, at a time of the greatest peril to Israel, comparable to the dark days preceding and following the declaration of a Jewish state in 1948, Israel’s enemies are ganging up to isolate Israel and undermine her security.

We know who the enemies are; a coalition of Islamic extremists with their political allies in the cities of Europe and America. Now we have Jewish organizations in the US, organizations with names like Jewish Voice for Peace, Tikkun, and J Street, further attempting to damage Israel

I have previously written about J Street, a group headed by Americans who claim to be pro-Israel while consistently acting contrary to Israel’s security needs. .

At this critical time, AIPAC is circulating letters in the House and Senate that call for U.S. support for Israel in the face of international condemnations of the flotilla incident . The letters point out that “Israeli forces used necessary force as an act of self-defense and of last resort,” The letters also urge the State Department to put IHH, the Turkish radical group behind the flotilla, on the official U.S. terrorist list.

The importance of Congressional support for this position cannot be exaggerated. So what does J Street do? It calls on members of Congress to change the letters before signing, or to write their own Their complaint? Among other things, Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s President, argues that the AIPAC letters do not sufficiently recognize the suffering In Gaza. .J Streets position is designed to undermine and minimize Congressional support for Israel.

Here is the beginning of the J Street letter;

The Honorable XXX
XXX House Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Representative XXX,

J Street – the pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby – is not supporting sign-on letters to the President now circulating in the [House/Senate] regarding the Gaza flotilla. As is far too often the case, these letters have been drafted primarily for domestic political consumption rather than to advance the U.S. interest in peace and security in the Middle East.

With tensions in the region already high and vital American and Israeli interests at stake, J Street urges members of Congress to seek changes to the letters currently circulating before signing – or to write their own.

The window of opportunity for a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is closing rapidly, and statements like those now circulating in Congress only push the window down harder. J Street fears that, in the years ahead, lawmakers will come to regret the failure of the United States to exercise real leadership toward ending the conflict. Failure now to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dooms the region to further violence and puts at risk the very Jewish and democratic home in the state of Israel that lawmakers are purporting to support so deeply.

We would ask lawmakers to demonstrate real courage and leadership at this critical moment to call on the President to turn crisis into opportunity and to make ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a central priority of his foreign policy. The test for Congressional statements should not be their acceptability to any one lobby group (including J Street) but whether they advance the American, Israeli and regional interest in ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and achieving a two-state solution before it is too late.

The sign-on letters now circulating in the House and Senate, while expressing strong American support for Israel – a position we endorse – fail to address the impact of the present closure of Gaza on the civilian population, the deep American interest in resolving this conflict diplomatically, or the urgency of moving forward with diplomacy before it is too late. By ignoring these critical issues in favor of a simplistic statement that supports Israeli policy and actions, Congress is serving neither the best interests of the United States or of Israel.

We urge Members of Congress to step back from the letters currently circulating and to express more nuanced views of the situation that emphasize the urgency of American leadership to end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “

The AIPAC letter is being supported by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, as well as all citizens genuinely concerned about the welfare of Israel. J Street has become a menace every bit as threatening to Israel’s security as the PR machines of Hamas. Behind polite language, and pseudo-logic, they attempt to use their “Jewish” credentials to undermine the genuine survival needs of Israel