What did I tell you?

We invite all organisations who are active in the struggle to join us this coming Sunday, 

April 3rd 2011, at 19:30, for a loud protest in front of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv

We will join the Palestinians in calling for a

No-Fly Zone Over Palestine

Together we will call upon the world: Ban Israeli planes from bombarding the besieged Gaza

Together we will demand: US and EU – end your support of Israeli crimes

A couple of weeks ago, the UN Security Council decided to implement a no-fly zone over Libya, aimed at protecting its citizens. Last week Israeli fighter jets bombed the besieged Gaza several times, killing helpless civilians and children. Israeli jets also Invaded the sovereign skies of Lebanon, as has routinely been done before, in violation of international law.

Palestinian civil society organizations are calling upon the Security Council and the international community to protect the Palestinian people and prohibit these deadly jets form flying over Palestine, as is being enforced over Libya. Similar calls were also voiced by Ismail Haniyeh and Salam Fayyad.

The different factions in Gaza have agreed to a ceasefire, given that Israel puts stops its aggression. Israeli authorities have also confirmed that Hamas is interested in a ceasefire. Nevertheless, Israeli forces continue in bombing civilians while the heads of the state prepare us for a weeks-long confrontation, stating that "Hamas no longer remembers Cast Lead". While Hamas and Fatah are discussing unity, the Israeli prime minister warns us that such a unity will put an end to negotiations. 

These are American weapons, American funding  and American backing

Without their military, economic and diplomatic aid, Israel could not possibly carry on the illegal siege of Gaza, the bombing of civilians, the blatant disregard of the International Law and world consensus, and maintain its illegal settlements project, oppression and apartheid.

The US presents itself as a defender of democracy and of human rights, while doing everything to financially, diplomatically and militarily support Israeli occupation and apartheid, imposing an illegal and inhumane siege on those who are in need of protection.

This action is part of R€FU$E – Western Supported Occupation & Apartheid. The campaign targets the EU-US complicity in Israeli occupation and aims at raising awareness to this critical issue. We demand that both the EU and the US join the international community, in deeds rather than words, and act in order to protect the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.

Join us on Sunday | April 3rd | at 19:30 in front of the US Embassy, 71 Hayarkon Street, Tel Aviv!

Details: 054-4740825, 050-4880969, 6994468

(h/t Yisrael Medad)

Those who ignore or forget the past are doomed to relive it

Consider the following:

1. An increasingly anti-Israel, anti-semitic West (the evidence is everywhere you look)
2. Israel's strategy of appeasing the West (instead of vanquishing its enemies -- see my earlier post about Caroline Glick's criticism)
3. The increasingly indifferent, critical, even hostile attitude of Diaspora Jews towards Israel. Here's JoshuaPundit ( A Message For The Tribe) on the subject:

   As Goldberg alludes to at the end of his article, a great many Jews living in the Diaspora no longer support Israel either financially, emotionally or in the voting booth, and the message they give out to the Jewish State is essentially: "Please don't embarrass me with my Leftist friends." … Many of them were ignorant of [Obama’s] background and history, or simply didn't want to know. But enough of them weren't so that his subsequent actions as head of the most anti-Israel administration in US history should have come as no surprise. And while I might personally consider it suicidal, they were and are certainly entitled to make that choice. What they're not entitled to is to feel they have a right to an active voice in how Israel conducts its affairs simply by virtue of the accident of having been born Jews, something many of them try and distance themselves from whenever possible anyway.

   It's hard to avoid concluding that neither the Jews -- both in Israel and in Diaspora -- nor the anti-semites have learned much from history and the Holocaust and the creation of Israel has changed neither.
   
   
   Israel strives to appease the gentiles just like Jews did when they did not have their own country.
   
   
   Diaspora Jews either ignore anti-semitism, or delude themselves that if they distance themselves from or criticize Israel, they will escape it. 
   
   
   And the new anti-semites simply extended their genocidal instincts to Israel. In Europe their predecessors got rid of the Jews. Today they have Muslims instead. Was this substitution a good deal, economically, socially and politically?
   
   UPDATE: The UK has bee and is today one of the most anti-semitic in Europe. So here's the poetic justice of the population substitution:
   
   
   Muslim Group Threatens to Disrupt William's Wedding
   
   
   'Game Over' 78% of British Muslims Want Limits On Free Speech When It Comes To Criticizing Religion
   
   
   UPDATE: And it's not working much better in France (that also got rid of many of its Jews) either:
   

   MUSLIM POLITICIAN CAUSES STIR IN FRANCE BY SUGGESTING MUSLIMS WEAR A FIVE POINTED STAR…….

   
   

   
    
   

R2P and Israel: I Told You So

I blogged earlier on the concern that the "humanitarian intervention" in Libya will not fail to be picked by Israel's enemies as a precedent to pressure the US, EU and UN to apply it to Israel's defensive actions. This was dismissed as nonsensical, even though the Turkish government had already suggested it. 

But as I already suggested, the risk grows as Hamas seems intent on forcing another war on Israel. And like clockwork, Tundra Tabloids reports:

It’s come to this. The junior partner in the Norwegian government, the Socialist Left Party of Kristin Halvorsen, (Sosialistisk Venstreparti), plans to vote on a measure calling for military action against Israel if it decides to act against the Hamas in Gaza.

Omri Ceren (European Left Applying Libya Precedent to Israel, Calling for Military Action) also sees what I see: 

... with due deference to Norway’s status as a particularly toxic cesspool of anti-Israel incitement, the idea won’t stay in Oslo. Ambassador Rice and President Obama have succeeded in linking the use of national force with a particularly flexible interpretation of international humanitarianism. Contemporary international humanitarianism, in turn, is a pretext seething activists and government officials use to obsess over Israel. With every juridical tool imaginable already being turned against the Jewish state, it’s inevitable that this newer and more expansive precedent will soon become very popular.

Omri has warned about the seriousness of this before (“Responsibility To Protect,” Not Remotely New):

Nothing’s better than when the UN shoehorns “new security and human rights norms” into Chapter VII resolutions:

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon also said on Thursday that the justification for the use of force was based on humanitarian grounds, and referred to the principle known as Responsibility to Protect (R2P), “a new international security and human rights norm to address the international community’s failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”

Once this kind of stuff gets stuffed into the UN, the probability of it being used against israel is 1. After all, what else does the UN do other than obsessing about and delegitimizing Israel?

Those who dismiss this concern underestimate the degree to which anti-Israel and anti-semitic sentiments bordering on the rabid have been instilled by the Western media and elites into their public. It's not the murderous barbarism of the Palestinians--incited by the PA and Hamas--that is conveye, but rather the "extremism" and "racism" of the Jews. 

Melanie Phillips, who  has been documenting and combating these crimes of omission and distortion by the UK media, was interviewed on Israel TV and pointed out how the UK media systematically presented the Itamar murders as the fault of the victims--extremist settlers who "asked for it". When she called the Palestinian spade the spade it was -- savagery -- she was investigated by police at the complaint of UK muslims (see previous post), who are obviously more concerned with her expressing the truth about the genocidal acts of their Palestinian co-religionists than with those acts themselves.

Given all this, is there any wonder that surveys present Israel as the most dangerous factor in the world, a higher risk to world peace than the Islamists, including Iran?  While Arab regimes in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Bahrein kill  demonstrators, the UN has, as usual, has accused Israel of misdeeds on the Golan Heights.

In such circumstances, does it make sense to doubt that the  Libyan precedent will, in some not too distant future, be applied to Israel? It is, for all practical purposes, made for Israel.  What is quite surprising is that it has not been applied already.

If the West still existed this (and much more) would not happen

I am going to post this as is (via Richard Landes) without comment (I have only bolded what I think is an important point. But do read the comments at the feed. 

Melanie Phillips being investigated by police for referring to Arab “savages” who murdered Jewish family

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 20th, 2011 at 10:19. You can follow any responses to this entry through my RSS feed.

http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/melanie-phillips-being-investigated-by-police-for-referring-to-arab-savages-who-murdered-jewish-family/

British understatement is a wonderful thing. Here is how Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, introduced a posting on the magazine’s website on Friday: “It’s a funny old world,” he said, “I have now been contacted by two journalists informing me that Bedfordshire Police are investigating The Spectator”. The reason? Because a group called, wait for it, “Muslims4UK” took exception to a piece by Melanie Phillips on her Spectator blog in which she referred to the Arabs who had murdered five members of a Jewish family in Itamar the week before as “savages”.

The story was reported in the media, but if you’d blinked you’d have missed it, and the slant of the reporting was that Israel was at least as much to blame for the killings — due to settlement policy — as the killers themselves. Melanie’s column was a typically robust effort to point out the moral depravity of news outlets such as the Guardian, the New York Times, CNN and the BBC who, if the situation had been reversed — if five Arabs including a three month old baby had been knifed to death in their beds in a lethal racist attack by Jewish “settlers”, for example — would have given it saturation coverage.

So not so much a “funny old world” as a “brave new world”: a prominent British columnist does what prominent British columnists are supposed to do — she attempts to shift the terms of the debate back on to a more rational and principled footing — and the net result is that the police have been called in, with the Guardian newspapercheerleading on the sidelines, because she has offended Muslim sensitivities.

As Nelson summed it up, the train of events went like this:

“1) Inayat Bunglawala, chair of Muslims4UK, gets angry about what he reads on Melanie’s blog.
2) Complains to the PCC [The Press Complaints Commission].
3) Complains to the police.
4) Phones up The Guardian and says “The PCC are investigating The Spectator!! Story!! Police too!!
5) The Guardian duly writes it all up, on its website.
6) The Independent follows up The Guardian.
7) An inverted pyramid of piffle is thus constructed.”

It isn’t yet clear on what grounds the investigation is being conducted, but you can bet your boots that it is the following paragraph from Melanie’s piece that they are salivating over:

“So to the New York Times, it’s not the Arab massacre of a Jewish family which has jeopardised ‘peace prospects’ — because the Israelis will quite rightly never trust any agreement with such savages — but instead Israeli policy on building more homes, on land to which it is legally and morally entitled, which is responsible instead for making peace elusive. Twisted, and sick”.

An “Arab massacre”? What, all of them? “Such savages”? So all Arabs are “savages”? Oh, come off it. It is quite clear that she is referring to the “savages” who slaughtered a family in their beds, and it is “such savages” and those who incite them with whom peace cannot be made. It is also clear that in this instance the thrust of the argument is against the New York Times, itself being used as a proxy for the liberal left media in the West, and not the killers as such.

And it is precisely because the multi-culturalist assumptions underpinning the western liberal left media lead consistently to a downplaying or sanitisation of crimes, however appalling, committed by non-white, third-world perpetrators designated as “victims” that Melanie Phillips employs such strong language to jolt western readers out of their dogmatic slumbers. Again, that’s what columnists are supposed to do, and in any other situation this affair would have passed off without notice.

But, as Nelson makes clear, changes are afoot in modern Britain that threaten to rip apart the fabric of one of the world’s most developed free societies: “Freedom of expression is under attack in Britain, from our notorious libel laws to this new phenomenon of police forces being asked to investigate what people put on their blogs,” he said.

And as we know from cases involving Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and others across the continent, all of this is starting to look like a depressingly common feature of the new European politics. To those who value freedom, merely sitting on one’s hands is no longer an option. We all hang together, or we all hang separately, as Benjamin Franklin is said to have averred at the signing of the American Declaration of Independence.

So write to Fraser Nelson at the Spectator, or Melanie Philllips on her blog, and tell them you support their right to be heard. Surely, that’s the least you can do.

Many in the West Are in Denial

(See my daily media Gleanings at the Augean Stables!!!)

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In my last post I amplified on Gaffney's concern that the West may at some point use the Libyan precedent to disable Israel's ability to defend itself in a future war imposed on it by Palestinian Iranian proxies (one of which seems to have just been started by Hamas from Ghaza) by imposing a no-fly zone on Israel.

Gaffney's concern was ridiculed and so was my reasoning that the concern should not be dismissed out of hand--at least one academic, who should know better, referred to my comments on Facebook to that effect "nonsense". This despite the sound reasoning and ample evidence behind my position; indeed, as the updates to the last post attest, at least two prominent Israeli analysts foresee that Israel will be made to pay a heavy price for the Western fiasco in Libya. Israel's enemies will push for that, as Turkey already did, and the Palestinians will demand it (as Fatah initiated that ball rolling).

This suggests that the dismissive treatment derives from an unwillingness to accept an inconvenient reality rather  than  rationality, namely what is building up to be a  Western  policy to put that "shitty little country" and those "controlling joos" (as Helen Thomas and Walt and Mearsheimer refer to them) supporting it in their place, even if it means the elimination of that "mistake" (as per J Street) or, to use Obama's terminology, that "wound" that is the source of all problems in the Middle-East, if not the world. There is nothing new about such denial, it is exactly the same as the one exhibited during the Holocaust, which could not have occurred without international cooperation and denial thereof.

I used the example of MediaMatters: it presented the veto at the UN as evidence that the US is supportive of Israel and, therefore, the notion of hostile acts against it is nonsense. This, of course, ignored the circumstances in which the veto was deployed and the US statements following it that, for all practical purposes, canceled it out, making it quite clear that no further vetoes will be forthcoming (see my earlier blog, where I stated exactly that).

And what do you know? Here's an interview with Israel's former UN representative (Ex-UN envoy: 'US may not veto Palestinian State'):

When asked if she believes that come September, the US will once again use its veto against establishing a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, Shalev said that there can be no certainty in such an outcome. She commented that the reluctance manifested when the previous veto was given seems to indicate towards a negative outcome in the future, and needless to say, the Obama-led America of today drastically differs from the America under the Bush administration.

But I don't think this was necessary, as the trend has been obvious from the first day of Obama's adminstration. And given its intent not to lead anymore, if the Europeans were able to drag the US into bombing Libya--given the almost universal agreement that no US interests are affected there--then how hard will it be to drag Obama, who is ideologically predisposed to it, to disable Israel from defending itself altogether?

It is important, in the context of US foreign policy dementia, Western self-demise and denial thereof to consider Barry Rubin's (No Excuse for Not Knowing U.S. Foreign Policy Is At the Iceberg ): 

… people around Secretary of State Hillary Clinton … are horrified … Guess what? They're saying that President Barack Obama and most of his team are dangerously incompetent and ideologically deluded--"amateur night" is one memorable phrase used. This is what I've been warning about since the summer of 2008 and pointing out in detail since January 20, 2009, on a daily basis what's happening; and they see a catastrophe they don't want to be associated with (read: blamed for) … The main reason I'm writing this article is to declare, solemnly and seriously, that as of now, March 2011, nobody can say that they didn't know the U.S. government is set on a disastrous course internationally, throwing away American credibility, subverting U.S. allies, and helping America's foes (and the enemies of democracy and freedom). 

I would guess there's a lot of denial about that too. But in such circumstances can the concern for Israel be dismissed out of hand?

UPDATE: Even the Israeli left--and they are a pretty rigid  bunch in face of contrary evidence--realizes the astounding incompetence of the Obama administration and its disastruous consequences. Here's Ari Shavit (Israel can say farewell to peace) in Haaretz:

U.S. President Barack Obama bears a share of the responsibility for this new situation. When he decided to play an active role in ousting Egypt's president, he didn't realize that as a result of this move, he would be forced within a month to fire Tomahawk missiles at Libya. He didn't understand that he was undermining the old Middle Eastern order without creating a new one. He didn't understand that he was dooming Israeli-Syrian peace and Israeli-Palestinian peace and endangering Israeli-Egyptian peace. It could be that Obama acted correctly. Perhaps he will be remembered in the end as the great liberator of the Arab peoples. Nonetheless, the U.S. president must acknowledge the consequences of his actions.

But there is something much more important that comes through in Shavit's screed, something which I have been arguing for quite a while and about which there is also a great deal of denial. I will discuss that next.

The West Screws Up -- Will Israel Pay?

(See my daily media Gleanings at the Augean Stables!!!)

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The cluelessness with which the US, dragged by the Europeans (striving to absolve themselves from the pathetic courting of the Libyan nutter, to the point of releasing a mass terrorist; and for domestic reasons), intervened in Libya was out in the open for all to see: Michael Walzer (The Case Against Our Attack on Libya), Ross Douthat (A Very Liberal Intervention), Massimo Calabresi (Why the U.S. Went to War: Inside the White House Debate on Libya), Patrick Cockburn (Gaddafi cannot hold out. But who will replace him?). 

One is compelled to agree with Caroline Glick (America's descent into strategic dementia):

The US's new war against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is the latest sign of its steady regional decline. In media interviews over the weekend, US military chief Adm. Michael Mullen was hard-pressed to explain either the goal of the military strikes in Libya or their strategic rationale. Mullen's difficulty explaining the purpose of this new war was indicative of the increasing irrationality of US foreign policy.

For quite a while the US decline has resembled that of Rome quite well, but the latest US actions make the two falls practically identical: incompetence, bankruptcy, overstretching abroad, corruption at home, complete with the President declaring a third war and leaving for golf and the Brazilian carnival.

The most worrisome potential implications of this suicidal US behavior is its potential impact on US's abandoned allies and Israel in particular. Quite perceptively Frank Gaffney (The Gaddafi Precedent) hypothesizes one possible effect:

What I find particularly concerning is the prospect that what we might call the Qaddafi Precedent will be used in the not-to-distant future to justify and threaten the use of U.S. military forces against an American ally: Israel. Here’s how such a seemingly impossible scenario might eventuate…

MediaMatters (Gaffney's Latest Nonsensical Theory: Obama May Use Libya Precedent To Order ) has dismissed it as absurd: 

What do you get when you combine the wits of ridiculous conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney and ridiculous conspiracy theorist Andrew Breitbart? You get a wild, obviously baseless theory that, using the precedent of the United Nations Security Council resolution to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, President Obama may one day order a military strike on Israel.

Now, I grant you that using pure logic, the notion may seem absurd. But is the world operating logically insofar as Israel is concerned? Does it require a conspiracy theory in an upside down world, where Israel is demonized as practicing racism, Nazism and genocide, where anti-semite, murderous, mysogynist, terrorist, jihadist regimes are appeased, their real genocidal behavior ignored or whitewashed, elected to human rights international bodies,and  where the media, academia and the UN are outright fabricating Israeli "crimes"? How farfetched is Gaffney's concern in such circumstances?

The one clear aspect of the series of wars Israel was forced to fight to defend itself was the campaign by the so-called "international community", including the US, to increasingly limit Israel's ability to defend itself. The full disabling of Israel in a future war--certain to be provoked by the two Iranian proxies, but likely to be blamed on Israel--via a no-fly zone is nothing but a logical conclusion to Western muslim-appeasing, anti-Israel policies. And following a recognized declaration of a Palestinian state, such an act may even be deemed obligatory.

MediaMatters brings the US veto on the settlements as evidence that the US defends Israel and will not resort to such hostile action against it. But given how that veto came about,  the US declarations that followed, Obama's ideological perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict and his treatment of Israel to-date, who in his right mind can count on US support to continue?

Consider now Obama's Libyan intervention: by all accounts he was dragged into it by the Europeans, a consequence of the US losing its leadership position due to both Obama's intention to bring that about, as well as the unavoidable consequence of the US self-destructive domestic and foreign behavior. Europeans are much more hostile to Israel than the US, having to do with anti-semitism, relief of historical guilt and the opportunity to put that "shitty little jewish state" in its place, as well as muslim appeasement. If they find themselves in a position where they can drag the US (and an Obama already predisposed against Israel) to do their bidding, it is not difficult to imagine Gaffney's concerns materializing.

Edward Luttwak (Libya: It's not our fight) suggests a trigger to bring that about: the Libyan 100 million boondogle that lacks a clear objective and exit strategy may not end well for the US and its allies:

Regardless of its good intentions, the U.S. intervention in Libya will be depicted once again as aggressive, predatory and anti-Muslim.

You think? Judging from the reactions by the Arab League, Iran and others, this has already begun. Should their expectation that muslims will be grateful for the intervention prove the illusion that it is, Obama and the Europeans will feel compelled to prove that they do not intervene only against muslims. And, based on experience to-date, what are they most likely to consider the easiest, indeed, the standard appeasement method?


And if you still think Gaffney's concern absurd: he probably did not realize when he  expressed it how quickly a government hostile to Israel, a NATO member not less, has recognized how the Libyan precedent can be used against Israel. Michael Rubin (Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Calls for Airstrikes on Israel) reports:

After assuring both Libyans and Turks that Turkey was not involved in airstrikes on Libya, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, of Turkey, said, “We wish that the United Nations had made such resolutions and countries had taken action in the face of incidents in Gaza, Palestine and the other regions.” While Namik Tan, Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, tries to assure Jewish groups that his government really isn’t anti-Semitic and anti-Israel, someone might want to ask him why his boss is calling for airstrikes on the Jewish state?

And perhaps Senators Levin and McCain on the Senate Armed Service Committee might finally want to ask some tough questions about why the United States plans to give Turkey the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter replete with its stealth technology?

I am willing to bet Turkey will get the planes.

Hamas has recently violated the cease-fire with an aggressive bombing campaign. They have something which the West and Israel totally lack: cunning. Like Turkey, they understand the West and play it like a violin. I would not deem it impossible that in provoking Israel they had something like Gaffney's hypothesis in mind. And now they have a NATO partner to rely on.

It may not happen tomorrow, but dismissing it out of hand would be the absurd thing to do.


UPDATE:  Herb Keinon (Analysis: Will Israel pick up tab for assault on Libya?)
also thinks that, if not a no-fly zone, Israel will still pay a price for the Western Libyan adventure:

But one can easily imagine the French and the British proposing hard lobbying inside the EU for a unilateral declaration after pulverizing Libya. This would be a relatively cost-free way of showing the Arab world and the Muslim public – both domestic and global – that those bombs were not a Western crusade against Islam. It’s a move that would earn wide applause among many Muslims worldwide ... With key EU countries flying sorties over Libya, it is not unimaginable that they will try to soften the impact, for example, by lobbying inside the EU for a tougher stand against Israel in the next Quartet statement expected in a couple of week’s time.
Calm will, of course, eventually follow the current Libyan storm. But during that calm, expect some of the countries in the newest “coalition of the willing” to ask Israel – without explicitly saying so – to pick up part of the tab for cleaning up the mess.

UPDATE: The PA is no less shrewd than Hamas. It has just requested international protection from settler violence. Those who refuse to or don't see where this is going have only themselves to blame.


UPDATE: Yehezkel Dror (Western action against Gadhafi has self-serving interests) in Haaretz:

Europe has self-serving interests to stabilize Libya, specifically to prevent undesired refugees from flooding their borders. Libya's vast oil reserves also play a role. Lastly, military intervention is "cheap," in terms of risk to Western soldiers, who are able to fight from the air.  The weight of realpolitik interests in deciding on intervention in Libya will not escape the eyes of Arab-Islamic observers. Even the participation of Arab forces won't quell the idea in large parts of the Arab-Islamic world that this is mainly neo-colonialist aggression.

Can anybody guess the West's knee-jerk reaction to counter such accusations, which already started flying? What does the West do to appease arabs/muslims?


Incidentally, Dror brings up another consequence of the Western intervention in Libya (one that Martin Kramer also did in response to a question on his Facebook page):

Even graver is the expected lesson Arab rulers will take from the Libya episode, that they need weapons to deter Western action. Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi surely regrets having abandoned his nuclear weapons program. If he had weapons of mass destruction, or at least the perception that he had them, the West would have backed off, no matter how despotic his regime, so long as he did not pose a serious threat to them.
Others will not repeat his mistake. The action against Gadhafi will harden the will of Iran to develop nuclear weapons. Other rulers too will learn from North Korea that nuclear weapons protect a tyrannical regime against forceful action from abroad.

Alas, he advocates a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Unfortunately, if the Palestinians rejected it to date, what is the likelihood that they will agree to it now when, as Dror himself argues, events don't go Israel's way.

Obama's Dumb ME Policy -- Another Interpretation

In his latest post (No Wonder Hillary Resigned! Mr. Burns Explains U.S. Middle East Policy) Barry Rubin is horrified by Obama's declared Middle-East policy: 

The United States will press for political reform and urge governments to talk to the opposition in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia. The United States will NOT press for political reform or urge governments to talk to the opposition in the Gaza Strip, Iran, Lebanon, Sudan, and Syria ... In other words, the policy is to pressure your friends (they become weaker); engage your enemies (they become stronger). It is the exact opposite of what U.S. policy should be at this time.

The following rational is given for it:

If relatively moderate countries open their political process (even if it gives Islamists a chance to take power), they will become stronger and less likely to have radical revolutions. Their success will then show that the radical regimes have failed and everyone will see democracy works better. So the radicals will all decide to become moderate or be overthrown by their own people.

If, indeed, that's the justification for this policy, then the administration is more incompetent than even  I imagined, as Rubin proceeds to demonstrate. 

But even if the administration presents it this way, there could be another rational for it, due to incompetence no less major, although of a different sort. In my first post for this blog I hypothesized:

...an attempt [by Obama) to realign the US with the strong horse in the Middle East, the islamists, in the aftermath of American self-inflicted decline, deluding himself that appeasement will save America’s influence in the Middle-East.

In other words, the intention is not to induce the islamists into moderation and democracy -- I would like to think that even Obama is not that stupid, but I would not bet on it. Rather, it could serve to gain their appreciation and  turn them from US enemies to friends if they gain power (if you can't beat them, join them).

Such a rationale could be understood in the context of Obama's ideology -- reducing the leadership profile of the US -- and US's real decline: we neither can nor want to be the leader, in which case we better associate with the strong rather than the weak. And the weak happen to be the current allies, in part precisely because the US has weakened them by its policy, while the strong are the Islamists, those who defy the US.

Even if this is not consciously underlying the policy, I can't help thinking that it must be a factor, the weak making nice to bullies.

The following can also be understood in this light: David Ignatius (Obama weighs talking to the Taliban, Hezbollah)

One model for the administration, as it thinks about engagement of enemies, is the British process of dialogue during the 1990s with Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the terrorist Irish Republican Army. That outreach led to breakthrough peace talks and settlement of a conflict that had been raging for more than a century … This regional approach already has led to two U.S.-backed meetings on Afghanistan that included Iranian representatives — one in Rome last year and one in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on March 3, that was sponsored by the Islamic Conference … The political time bomb ticking away in the NIE is the question of whether the United States should seek some kind of direct or indirect engagement with Hezbollah — at least with its political wing. Officials who support this course argue that the organization is like the IRA or the PLO — with nonmilitary components that can be drawn into a dialogue.

This, of course, is still major incompetence. Hezballah (driven by Iran) is as similar to the IRA as the Muslim Brotherhood is to a secular organization. And the probability of such islamists losing their hostility towards the US is not much higher than that of them becoming democrats. By its policy the US has exhibited the very weakness that induces islamists to do the exact opposite.

The ignorance of this administration has no limits. And the price to be paid for it will be dire. One cannot but agree with Rubin's warning:

If the new secretary of state is Senator John Kerry then I recommend you buy a fallout shelter in New Zealand, lay in a supply of food, and hide there. Otherwise, disregard anyone else named as a candidate because nobody knows who it will be and when it will happen.

Well, perhaps not New Zealand  these days, but you get the drift.

UPDATE:  Speaking of the idiot Kerry: Kerry Calls For 'Realignment' of US Foreign Policy

UPDATE: Carefully read, Walter Russell Mead (Obama's War) makes similar arguments about Obama's foreign policy:

A certain pattern seems to be emerging in this President’s foreign policy process.  On the one hand, he is instinctively drawn to the cool logic of the Jeffersonian realists who believe that the safest and wisest course for the United States is to draw in our horns and make peace with decline.  If he could design the world from scratch, he would build one where the United States had a much smaller military budget and a much shorter list of strategic international interests.  No drone strikes, no confrontations with Iran, no troops in combat overseas and no prisoners at Guantanamo: just the peaceful construction of high speed rail, the implementation of the health legislation and a focus on education.

But when it is time to choose, this President consistently chooses a more active course.  He would rather not think about Iraq, but if he must, he will stick to George W. Bush’s withdrawal plans.  He would rather not have a war in Afghanistan, but since he has one he will escalate the drone strikes and step up troop levels.  He would very much have preferred the Libyan situation to resolve itself without American participation, but forced to choose between action and doing nothing, he acts.  He listens to the realists and makes them feel important — but at least since their ideas on how to handle Israel went so badly wrong, he doesn’t seem to take their advice.

Netanyahu the Appeaser?

In my previous post I referred to Caroline Glick's claim that Israel's strategy since Oslo, including that of Netanyahu, has been appeasement of the West by making concessions to the Palestinians. I subscribe to that argument, which I articulated as "Netanyahu is all talk and no action". By which I meant, of course, that he talks tough but where and when it counts, he caves in. Where I diverge from Glick is in my doubt that by reverting back to the pre-Oslo strategy, as she suggests, would make much difference at this stage. Once Israel had accepted the validity of a Palestinian nation and, therefore, implicitly, the Palestinian narrative and, therefore, a viable Palestinian state, it had opened itself to pressures that it cannot satisfy without endangering its own existence. Hence the chain of unreciprocated concessions by even Israel's more hawkish, nationalist prime-ministers, that have satisfied neither the Palestinians nor the West.

Even though I consider the evidence of appeasement overwhelming--certainly insofar as Netanyahu's dealings with the Obama administration are concerned--let's consider some more recent policies.

First, one of the recent media Gleanings that I regularly submit to Richard Landes' blog, Augean Stables (emphasis mine):

Aluf Benn reports in Ha’aretz that Benjamin Netanyahu, feeling international pressure and a domestic dead end, is planning an abrupt tack toward a two-state solution: Now he is saying in closed meetings that “a binational state would be disastrous for Israel” and suddenly Netanyahu sounds like former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who in an interview with Haaretz at the Annapolis Conference declared: Two states or Israel is finished. And this is the same Netanyahu who has always denied the demographic threat, regarding it as a scarecrow in the service of the left. If this is right, another way of saying it is this: Obama’s pressure on Israel appears, like it or not, to be paying off in forcing Netanyahu to the policy outcome Americans want. (Ben Smith: Obama Israel pressure working?)

I will reiterate, in passing, a no-win situation with respect to concessions to the Arabs. If self-initiated out of a position of strength, in their honor-shame world  they feel like humiliation and are rejected (remember the Khartoum three no's to Israel's proposed return of the territories for peace after the six day war?) And if offered under pressure, they are interpreted as weakness and invite at best demands for further concessions, at worst violence.

Then there is the following in Israel National News:

Long-time Jerusalem lands activist Aryeh King told the audience at the 8th Annual Jerusalem  Conference on Tuesday that eight Jerusalem neighborhoods are actually off-limits to Jews. The news, backed up by video clips showing soldiers refusing to allow Jews to enter while Arab cars entered freely, caused a stir not only in the audience, but also among the panel of speakers ... King, a familiar face on the Jerusalem activism scene and head of the Israel Land Fund, began his talk aggressively: "Bibi [Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu] has already divided Jerusalem! Not with words, but with actions…. There are seven neighborhoods - and now another one has just been added, Isawiya, very close to here – where Jews are not permitted to enter! … In addition, 7% of Jerusalem area has been transferred to the control of the IDF, in violation of the Basic Law: Jerusalem.

Now, I am well aware of the source--both the medium and the person--and the bias, but nevertheless I am inclined not to doubt the de-facto policies that King documents, because they are consistent with Netanyahu's record. Indeed, there had been a de-facto freezing of building in the West Bank and Jerusalem, which Netanyahu felt confident enough to de-freeze with a 500 quota only after the Itamar murders.

Israel is not in a good position to offer any new concessionary initiative right now. If it does it'll come back to bite it.

Left, Right and Forward to the Past: Israel's Flawed Strategy

Haaretz's Ari Shavit has long been warning that unless Israel caves in to the US and EU demands to satisfy the Palestinians, Israel will be abandoned. And in his latest article (U.S. has had enough of Netanyahu's babbling) he thinks that events prove him right. 

Bibi believes that words replace deeds, and he puts what we say ahead of what we do. His attempts to mitigate international pressure on Israel by promising a "path-breaking" speech in a few weeks, either before the U.S. Congress, or at the annual AIPAC conference ... [but i]n view of the Americans' disappointment after Netanyahu's Bar-Ilan speech, only acts of substance will impress them and the rest of the world. They've heard enough speeches ... 

As far as it goes this is true: I always considered Netanyahu all talk and no action where it counts.The real question, however is precisely what are the "acts of substance" that will satisfy the Palestinians. Predictably for Shavit:

Whoever has his feet on the ground, and understands how deep is the crisis of confidence marring our relations with Washington, not to mention the economic stagnation gripping America, knows that prospects of receiving additional assistance depend entirely on genuine progress in the peace process - taking risks, such as (for example ) the return of the Golan Heights, or the designation of borders so the Palestinians can feel, at long last, that they have a state of their own. Even in this scenario, an American government well-versed in dealings with us will tread carefully. Obama cannot afford to come out looking like a sucker.I 

In other words, having pushed Israel to concessions without any reciprocation from the Palestinians and having given the latter a pretext--settlements--for intransigence, to avoid looking like the sucker that he is, Obama requires that Netanyahu give the Iran-Syria-Hizb'allah-Hamas axis a third border with Israel and accept the "Auschwitz borders" with the Palestinians without any commitments on their part.

Shavit is nostalgic for leaders like Ben Gurion and, ironically, Ariel Sharon:

Nor are there Ben-Gurions in these parts; a Ben-Gurion is a leader who knows where he's headed, and who has the strength to tell the truth to his countrymen. Ariel Sharon did not deliver speeches in Congress or the UN; instead, he spoke to his people via an interview in Haaretz, and before he evacuated Gaza, he spoke historic words: "The time has come to end our addiction to the dream of Greater Israel."

It is, indeed, likely that Ben Gurion would not have brought Israel to its current predicament but, I suspect, by not heading where Shavit wants Bibi to go. As to Ariel Sharon, does Shavit really wants to persuade us that evacuating Gaza is the example to follow? Hard to believe.

In a previous post I referred to Caroline Glick's criticism of the flawed strategy of "getting the West to be nice to Israel" by appeasing the Palestinians, while the Palestinians focused on de-legitimizing of Israel and on getting from the West what they could not get via war and terror. This appeasement strategy started with Oslo and Netanyahu's intention to present his new initiative abroad is evidence that it is still active.

It is this flawed strategy that brought the predictable circumstances Israel is finding itself in today. And, to reiterate, strategic mistakes are difficult to correct, particularly after such a long time.

Israel's left, of which Shavit is a member, deems further concessions to be the solution, which is counterintuitive because it is inconsistent with reality: concessions always brought demands for further concessions. In her latest column (A win-win plan for Netanyahu) Glick documents this very process:

For the past year and a half Netanyahu's policy for dealing with Obama's animosity has been to try to appease him by making incremental concessions ... [yet] Obama's newest threat is that through the so-called Middle East Quartet, (Russia, the UN, the EU and the US), the administration will move towards supporting the Palestinian plan to declare Palestinian statehood ... and since its leaders reject Israel's right to exist, "Palestine" would be born in a de facto state of war with Israel ...To credit this threat, Obama has empowered the Quartet to supplant the US as the mediator between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Buoyed by Obama, Quartet representatives and American and European officials have beaten a steady path to Netanyahu's door over the past several weeks. Their message is always the same: If Israel does not prove that it is serious about peace by giving massive unreciprocated concessions to the Palestinians then they will abandon all remaining pretense of support for Israel and throw their lot in completely with the Palestinians.

Glick suggests a strategic correction in the opposite direction to that pushed by the left. And what do you know: it is the strategy that Israel employed prior to Oslo and from which it deviated at its peril (Yehuda Avner's book THE PRIME-MINISTERS documents the pre-Oslo strategy and its effectiveness, particularly during the premiership of Menachem Begin, who was vilified but proved prophetic).

The only way to stop Obama from moving forward on his anti-Israel policy course is to work through Congress.And the most effective way to work through Congress is for Netanyahu to abandon his current course and tell the truth about the nature of the Palestinians, their rejection of Israel, their anti-Americanism and their support for jihadist terror. At the same time, Netanyahu must speak unambiguously about Israel's national rights to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, our required security borders, and about why US national security requires a strong Israel.

Glick also recommends that in his speech Netanyahu should announce the following acts of substance:

... a plan to apply Israeli law to the Jordan Valley and the major blocs of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria ... a plan to wean Israel off of US military aid within three years ... and [firing] Barak and replac[ing] him with Moshe Ya'alon.

She argues that:

...not only would he blunt Obama's power to threaten Israel. He would secure popular US support for Israel for years to come. And if he did that, he would restore the Israeli voters' support for his leadership and stabilize his government through the next elections. 

To be honest, I am highly skeptical about the effectiveness of the old strategy at this stage of the game. Had it not been abandoned, chances are Israel would have been better off.
 
What I am certain of is that what the left pushes in defiance of reality has already proved delusional and suicidal. They refuse to recognize that Israel finds itself today in the hole precisely because ever since Oslo Israeli governments, including Netanyahu, followed their strategy. Which would explain their denial.

Yet if I were to guess, I would bet that Netanyahu will follow Sharon and Olmert and stick to it.

Israel's Suicidal Strategic Mistake

Finally somebody  (Martin Sherman: The price of moderation)  has expressed accurately and succinctly the core problem at the root of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a problem that I (and only a few others) have argued for years. It is simply this: A viable Palestinian state means an indefensible Israel and a defensible Israel means a non-viable Palestinian state.  The rest is conversation.

Consequently, Israel committed a suicidal strategic mistake when it went for the Oslo accords.

The point that many well-intentioned pro-Israeli advocates seem be to missing is that it is precisely "moderate supporters of the two-state solution" that have in large measure sown the seeds for the de-legitimization of Israel. While initially this contention may appear somewhat counter-intuitive, the logic behind it is unassailable. For, once the legitimacy of a Palestinian state is conceded, the de-legitimization of Israel cannot be avoided. The chain of reasoning for this is clear: If the legitimacy of a Palestinian state is accepted, then necessarily any measures incompatible with its viability are illegitimate. However, Israel's minimum security requirements necessarily obviate the viability of Palestinian state. 

But it is not clear how Israel can correct that mistake now, even if the Jews do realize it, which is not likely to happen any time soon; on the contrary, they seem to intensify their insistence on it.  It's the nature of strategic mistakes that they are extremely difficult to correct.

So while Sherman argues that:

Accordingly for Israel to regain legitimacy, the notion of a Palestinian state must be discredited and removed from the discourse over the resolution of the Israel-Arab conflict. 

he recognizes this is critical but not feasible:

This of course easier said than done. For rolling back the accumulated decades of distortion, deception and delusion that have become entrenched in the collective international consciousness will be a Herculean task. But the immense scale of the task cannot diminish the imperative of its implementation.

Sherman argues what I have been arguing for a long time:

The side that will prevail is the side whose political acumen is the sharper and whose political will is the stronger. Indeed, never has the biblical wisdom of Solomon been more apt: Whoever agrees to divide that which is dear to him, will – at the end of the day- lose all of it. The Jews must realize that they can either be master of all the land west of the Jordan or none of it – and sooner that the better.

In fact I put it in much stronger terms: based on the two sides' policies to date I'm afraid one would have to conclude that the Palestinians will win because their political acumen is sharper and their political will is stronger.

Underlying this argument is a powerful scientific foundation. Here's how the Nobel laureat Professor Robert Aumann (Game Theory and negotiations with Arab countries) has put it:

This case in Game Theory is called the “Blackmailer Paradox." The paradox emerging from this case is that the rational Reuben is eventually forced to act clearly irrationally, in order to gain the maximum available to him. The logic behind this bizarre result is that Shimon broadcast total faith and confidence in his excessive demands, and he is able to convince Reuben to yield to his blackmail in order for him to receive the minimum benefit.

The Palestinians consistently and effectively played Shimon's blackmailer role while Reuven's Israel ignored the rules of the game.

Like all science, Game Theory does not presume to express an opinion on moral values, but rather seeks to analyze the strategic behaviors of rival parties in a common game. The State of Israel plays such a game with its enemies. Like every game, in the Arab-Israeli game there are particular interests that shape and frame the game and its rules. Unfortunately, Israel ignores the basic principles that arise in Game Theory.

In fact, Israel has played a different game altogether (Caroline Glick: Playing Israel's good hand).

The Palestinians understand the rules of diplomacy far better than Israel does. Israel believes that diplomacy is about getting other governments to be nice to us. Palestinians understand that diplomacy is a nonviolent means of weakening your enemies and expanding your own power. They also understand that the starting point for any effective diplomatic strategy is a reality-based assessment of other government's interests.

Game theory is defined as the rules of strategic behavior. Israel is in existential peril for ignoring them.

UPDATE: I barely posted this when I came across Elder of Zion's post (No Appeasement: 11 Reasons Why Israeli Concessions Will Not Bring Peace). He states:

The Europeans are frustrated, because they think they know what the major obstacle to peace is. Of course, it is Israeli intransigence. It is the existence of Jews wanting to live in the so-called West Bank, it is the hardheadedness of the Israeli government (especially the Likud,) it is “occupation,” it is Israeli refusal to negotiate on water, and Jerusalem, and descendants of refugees. it is a whole host of seeming issues. Once Israel sees the light and gives a few more concessions, the thinking goes, then the Arab world will welcome Israel with open arms as a full member of the Middle East. Terrorism will stop, Westerners will no longer need to go through security checks on airplanes, birds will sing Bach concertos in harmony and the lion will lie down with the lamb. 

Even though it's the Palestinians who play the blackmailer's role, it's Israel that is perceived to be intransigent. Such are the fruit of poor strategy.