(h/t Israel matzav)
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Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Comments on Reads 5/31 III
Caroline Glick: Where Obama is leading Israel
SINCE THAT speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the sense that he is the most hostile US president Israel has ever faced. Indeed, when taken together, these steps raise concern that Obama may actually constitute a grave threat to Israel.
…
Obama reportedly was unconvinced. For him, it is unacceptable to be in a position of standing alone with Israel voting against the Palestinian resolution. Obama's distaste for standing with Israel was demonstrated in February when a visibly frustrated US Ambassador Susan Rice was forced by Congressional pressure to veto the Palestinians' Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel for refusing to prohibit Jews from building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
According to Yediot, Mitchell recommended that Obama work with the Europeans to draft a series of anti-Israel resolutions for the UN Security Council to pass. Among other things, these resolutions, which Mitchell said would be "painful for Israel," would include an assertion that Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is illegal.
That is, Mitchell recommended that Obama adopt as US policy at the Security Council past Palestinian demands that Congress forced Obama to reject just months ago at the Security Council. The notion is that by doing so, Obama could convince the Palestinians to water down the even more radically anti-Israel positions they are advancing today at the UN General Assembly that Congressional pressure prevents him from supporting.
Since General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight and Security Council resolutions do carry weight, Mitchell's policy represents the most anti-Israel policy ever raised by a senior US official. Unfortunately Obama's actions since last week suggest that he has adopted the gist of Mitchell's policy recommendations.
FP: It is now becoming obvious what I had been arguing much before everybody else: That Obama would withdraw support and create international conditions so adverse to Israel that it would scare it into capitulating to the Palestinians.
Zvi Mazel: Rifts in the Muslim Brotherhood Amid Growing Anarchy in Egypt
The economic, social, and political situation in Egypt is getting worse. Due to the security situation, civilians are buying weapons and hiring militias to protect themselves. Confrontations between Islamists and Copts, as well as Islamists and seculars, are increasing. The ruling Military Council is not coping with the many challenges, and there are voices claiming that Egypt is on the verge of a civil war.
During the first quarter of the year, the Egyptian economy shrunk by 7 percent. Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and candidate for the Egyptian presidency, recently told CNN that “Egypt is disintegrating socially; economically we are not in the best state. Politically it’s like a black hole. We do not know where we are heading.”
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), Saudi Arabia, and the United States have all promised financial support for Egypt. However, this assistance won’t be able to solve the structural problems of the Egyptian economy, which is based on agriculture and tourism, and lacks any serious industrial or high-tech component. Under current circumstances, further deterioration of the socio-economic situation can be expected, which no doubt will benefit the extremist elements, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood.
The leaders of the demonstrators and the secular opposition parties believe that the Military Council is not very keen on executing radical reforms, and purposely acts slowly. Consequently, on May 27, a second Friday of Anger was held across Egypt in order to pressure the Council, and especially its leader, General Mohamed Tantawi. The Muslim Brotherhood announced that it would not take part in the demonstrations, thus reinforcing the growing gap with the secular opposition. But to their great surprise, the young guard of their movement decided to participate, against the will of the supreme leader. This is the first sign of a rift within the Muslim Brotherhood, which is known for its intransigent hierarchy and for unquestioned obedience to its leaders since its establishment 83 years ago.
FP: This is the context in which to understand the opening of the Rafah border crossing. The junta, unable to resolve the economic problems is trying to appease the street by exploiting the single unifying factor of Egyptians: hatred of Israel. As Egypt comes close to failing as a state, the danger of a conflict with Israel as a distraction is increasing (see next).
Terrorists Shifting Operations to Sinai
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the new military government in Egypt is failing to limit the rise of international terror organizations in the Sinai Peninsula.
Citing the recent attacks on Egyptian pipelines carrying gas to Israel, Netanyahu said, "Egypt is having a hard time realizing its sovereignty in Sinai. International terror organizations are stirring in Sinai and their presence is increasing due to Sinai's connection to Gaza."
Netanyahu further cautioned that Hamas has moved some of its activities to Egypt, enabling the group to grow stronger and threatening Israel's future in the region, particularly with its peace partners Egypt and Jordan. Netanyahu also added that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is "not insignificant" and should not be overlooked.
Meanwhile, Egyptian security forces are pursuing 400 al-Qaida operatives who have been spotted in the Sinai, according to a senior Egyptian security source. These operatives, comprised of Bedouins, Palestinians, and foreign Arab nationals, allegedly attacked several security stations in the past in Sinai city of El Arish. According to a report on Egypt's Al-Hayat television channel, the al-Qaida members are now planning additional terrorist attacks in Egypt and in Sinai.
FP: Terrorists always exploit failing Arab states and Egypt is no exception. Increasing terrorism from Sinai may readily generate a conflict if Israel has no choice and takes Sinai security in its own hands.
Eliott Abrams: Bahrain: Bad To Worse
Not so long ago Bahrain was considered one of the more liberal Arab states. No longer.
The situation in Bahrain is deteriorating further, despite occasional government claims that things are stable and even improving. The most recent proof is the Bahraini treatment of the human rights officer at the U.S. Embassy, Ludovic Hood, who is being forced to leave the country after a vicious campaign against him. The story is told in a recent Miami Herald item entitled “U.S. Yanks Diplomat From Bahrain After He’s Threatened.” The U.S. diplomat was the target of anti-Semitic slurs and his address was published in a web site tied to the Bahraini government, a sure effort to intimidate.
The State Department has said little about the incident, but it is a mark of how bilateral relations have soured and should get more attention. This intimidation of an American official should be forcefully protested and condemned by the United States. It is the kind of incident that should have us thinking out loud about the future of the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.
FP: Bernard Lewis says that America is harmless to its enemies and treacherous to its friends. The number of friends the US has in the Middle East is approaching zero fast. As to the anti-semitic flavor of the Bahraini response, they're not different than other Arabs. As to moving the Fifth fleet, the US is running out of options.
Evelyn Gordon: Obsessed with Israel, Western Leaders Ignore Iran’s Nukes
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must be laughing his head off. As Abe noted yesterday, the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report unveiled evidence that Iran has been working on technology to arm its missiles with nuclear warheads. It also disclosed evidence of Tehran’s work “on a highly sophisticated nuclear triggering technology that experts said could be used for only one purpose: setting off a nuclear weapon.” If a smoking gun were needed, this is it.
Yet the “international community” hasn’t uttered a peep about the report. It’s too busy obsessing over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead.
Two days after the report’s publication, the G8 met in Deauville. Its concluding statement devoted six paragraphs to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, notable for both their specificity (“we express our strong support for the vision of Israeli-Palestinian peace outlined by President Obama on May 19, 2011”) and their urgency (“The time to resume the Peace Process is now.”)
In contrast, Iran’s nukes merited exactly one content-free paragraph: …At some unspecified future time, the G8 may—but then again it may not—decide on some unspecified new measures against Iran. But there’s no hurry, because it still hasn’t even concluded that Iran is pursuing nukes. The G8 is merely “unable to conclude” the opposite.
FP: The West deserves its fate of demise which it has been bringing on itself.
Brotherhood sheikh to run for president
Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Hazem Abu Ismail announced his intention to run in Egypt’s upcoming presidential elections. He said that if elected he would implement Islamic sharia law and cancel the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
The group announced earlier that it would not take part in the presidential elections and confirmed that it would compete for only half the seats in Parliament. But Ismail is the second Brotherhood member to have announced his intention to run for president in defiance of the group's leadership. The other Brotherhood candidate is Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh, a liberal-minded Islamist.
“We seek to apply Islamic law, but those who don’t want it prefer cabarets, alcohol, dancers and prostitution, as the implementation of Islamic law will prohibit women to appear naked in movies and on beaches,” Abu Ismail added.
FP: When Islamists smell power... BTW, liberal-minded Islamist is a contradiction in terms
Hamid Karzai Essentially Ends the Afghan War in Favor of Taliban?
The US and its coalition partners have frequently targeted compounds in Afghanistan where Taliban and al Qaeda are suspected of carrying on meetings or gathering. Some of those airstrikes have resulted in civilian casualties, but after the latest such incident, Afghan leader Hamid Karzai has called on the US and the ISAF to cease targeting housing compounds, according to USA Today:
FP: Two comments. One, serves NATO (US, really) right for undertaking a long term war in Afghanistan. Two, Israel asks: how does it feel when your ability to win the war is restricted?
Egyptian general admits 'virginity checks' conducted on protesters
A senior Egyptian general admits that "virginity checks" were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities.
The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks. At that time, Maj. Amr Imam said 17 women had been arrested but denied allegations of torture or "virginity tests."
But now a senior general who asked not to be identified said the virginity tests were conducted and defended the practice. "The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general said. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs)."
FP: MB, the army, what’s the difference? In fact, I argued that a large portion of the army is Islamist.
SINCE THAT speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the sense that he is the most hostile US president Israel has ever faced. Indeed, when taken together, these steps raise concern that Obama may actually constitute a grave threat to Israel.
…
Obama reportedly was unconvinced. For him, it is unacceptable to be in a position of standing alone with Israel voting against the Palestinian resolution. Obama's distaste for standing with Israel was demonstrated in February when a visibly frustrated US Ambassador Susan Rice was forced by Congressional pressure to veto the Palestinians' Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel for refusing to prohibit Jews from building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
According to Yediot, Mitchell recommended that Obama work with the Europeans to draft a series of anti-Israel resolutions for the UN Security Council to pass. Among other things, these resolutions, which Mitchell said would be "painful for Israel," would include an assertion that Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is illegal.
That is, Mitchell recommended that Obama adopt as US policy at the Security Council past Palestinian demands that Congress forced Obama to reject just months ago at the Security Council. The notion is that by doing so, Obama could convince the Palestinians to water down the even more radically anti-Israel positions they are advancing today at the UN General Assembly that Congressional pressure prevents him from supporting.
Since General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight and Security Council resolutions do carry weight, Mitchell's policy represents the most anti-Israel policy ever raised by a senior US official. Unfortunately Obama's actions since last week suggest that he has adopted the gist of Mitchell's policy recommendations.
FP: It is now becoming obvious what I had been arguing much before everybody else: That Obama would withdraw support and create international conditions so adverse to Israel that it would scare it into capitulating to the Palestinians.
Zvi Mazel: Rifts in the Muslim Brotherhood Amid Growing Anarchy in Egypt
The economic, social, and political situation in Egypt is getting worse. Due to the security situation, civilians are buying weapons and hiring militias to protect themselves. Confrontations between Islamists and Copts, as well as Islamists and seculars, are increasing. The ruling Military Council is not coping with the many challenges, and there are voices claiming that Egypt is on the verge of a civil war.
During the first quarter of the year, the Egyptian economy shrunk by 7 percent. Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and candidate for the Egyptian presidency, recently told CNN that “Egypt is disintegrating socially; economically we are not in the best state. Politically it’s like a black hole. We do not know where we are heading.”
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), Saudi Arabia, and the United States have all promised financial support for Egypt. However, this assistance won’t be able to solve the structural problems of the Egyptian economy, which is based on agriculture and tourism, and lacks any serious industrial or high-tech component. Under current circumstances, further deterioration of the socio-economic situation can be expected, which no doubt will benefit the extremist elements, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood.
The leaders of the demonstrators and the secular opposition parties believe that the Military Council is not very keen on executing radical reforms, and purposely acts slowly. Consequently, on May 27, a second Friday of Anger was held across Egypt in order to pressure the Council, and especially its leader, General Mohamed Tantawi. The Muslim Brotherhood announced that it would not take part in the demonstrations, thus reinforcing the growing gap with the secular opposition. But to their great surprise, the young guard of their movement decided to participate, against the will of the supreme leader. This is the first sign of a rift within the Muslim Brotherhood, which is known for its intransigent hierarchy and for unquestioned obedience to its leaders since its establishment 83 years ago.
FP: This is the context in which to understand the opening of the Rafah border crossing. The junta, unable to resolve the economic problems is trying to appease the street by exploiting the single unifying factor of Egyptians: hatred of Israel. As Egypt comes close to failing as a state, the danger of a conflict with Israel as a distraction is increasing (see next).
Terrorists Shifting Operations to Sinai
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the new military government in Egypt is failing to limit the rise of international terror organizations in the Sinai Peninsula.
Citing the recent attacks on Egyptian pipelines carrying gas to Israel, Netanyahu said, "Egypt is having a hard time realizing its sovereignty in Sinai. International terror organizations are stirring in Sinai and their presence is increasing due to Sinai's connection to Gaza."
Netanyahu further cautioned that Hamas has moved some of its activities to Egypt, enabling the group to grow stronger and threatening Israel's future in the region, particularly with its peace partners Egypt and Jordan. Netanyahu also added that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is "not insignificant" and should not be overlooked.
Meanwhile, Egyptian security forces are pursuing 400 al-Qaida operatives who have been spotted in the Sinai, according to a senior Egyptian security source. These operatives, comprised of Bedouins, Palestinians, and foreign Arab nationals, allegedly attacked several security stations in the past in Sinai city of El Arish. According to a report on Egypt's Al-Hayat television channel, the al-Qaida members are now planning additional terrorist attacks in Egypt and in Sinai.
FP: Terrorists always exploit failing Arab states and Egypt is no exception. Increasing terrorism from Sinai may readily generate a conflict if Israel has no choice and takes Sinai security in its own hands.
Eliott Abrams: Bahrain: Bad To Worse
Not so long ago Bahrain was considered one of the more liberal Arab states. No longer.
The situation in Bahrain is deteriorating further, despite occasional government claims that things are stable and even improving. The most recent proof is the Bahraini treatment of the human rights officer at the U.S. Embassy, Ludovic Hood, who is being forced to leave the country after a vicious campaign against him. The story is told in a recent Miami Herald item entitled “U.S. Yanks Diplomat From Bahrain After He’s Threatened.” The U.S. diplomat was the target of anti-Semitic slurs and his address was published in a web site tied to the Bahraini government, a sure effort to intimidate.
The State Department has said little about the incident, but it is a mark of how bilateral relations have soured and should get more attention. This intimidation of an American official should be forcefully protested and condemned by the United States. It is the kind of incident that should have us thinking out loud about the future of the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.
FP: Bernard Lewis says that America is harmless to its enemies and treacherous to its friends. The number of friends the US has in the Middle East is approaching zero fast. As to the anti-semitic flavor of the Bahraini response, they're not different than other Arabs. As to moving the Fifth fleet, the US is running out of options.
Evelyn Gordon: Obsessed with Israel, Western Leaders Ignore Iran’s Nukes
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must be laughing his head off. As Abe noted yesterday, the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report unveiled evidence that Iran has been working on technology to arm its missiles with nuclear warheads. It also disclosed evidence of Tehran’s work “on a highly sophisticated nuclear triggering technology that experts said could be used for only one purpose: setting off a nuclear weapon.” If a smoking gun were needed, this is it.
Yet the “international community” hasn’t uttered a peep about the report. It’s too busy obsessing over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead.
Two days after the report’s publication, the G8 met in Deauville. Its concluding statement devoted six paragraphs to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, notable for both their specificity (“we express our strong support for the vision of Israeli-Palestinian peace outlined by President Obama on May 19, 2011”) and their urgency (“The time to resume the Peace Process is now.”)
In contrast, Iran’s nukes merited exactly one content-free paragraph: …At some unspecified future time, the G8 may—but then again it may not—decide on some unspecified new measures against Iran. But there’s no hurry, because it still hasn’t even concluded that Iran is pursuing nukes. The G8 is merely “unable to conclude” the opposite.
FP: The West deserves its fate of demise which it has been bringing on itself.
Brotherhood sheikh to run for president
Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Hazem Abu Ismail announced his intention to run in Egypt’s upcoming presidential elections. He said that if elected he would implement Islamic sharia law and cancel the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
The group announced earlier that it would not take part in the presidential elections and confirmed that it would compete for only half the seats in Parliament. But Ismail is the second Brotherhood member to have announced his intention to run for president in defiance of the group's leadership. The other Brotherhood candidate is Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh, a liberal-minded Islamist.
“We seek to apply Islamic law, but those who don’t want it prefer cabarets, alcohol, dancers and prostitution, as the implementation of Islamic law will prohibit women to appear naked in movies and on beaches,” Abu Ismail added.
FP: When Islamists smell power... BTW, liberal-minded Islamist is a contradiction in terms
Hamid Karzai Essentially Ends the Afghan War in Favor of Taliban?
The US and its coalition partners have frequently targeted compounds in Afghanistan where Taliban and al Qaeda are suspected of carrying on meetings or gathering. Some of those airstrikes have resulted in civilian casualties, but after the latest such incident, Afghan leader Hamid Karzai has called on the US and the ISAF to cease targeting housing compounds, according to USA Today:
"From this moment, airstrikes on the houses of people are not allowed," Karzai told reporters in Kabul.
…
That all but cedes the field of battle to the Taliban, who have no such interest in preserving civilian lives and who all too frequently target civilians and use civilians as human shields.
It makes going after the Taliban and al Qaeda increasingly difficult and means that further airstrikes against housing compounds would be bringing the US into a more direct conflict with Karzai and the Afghan government. This puts the US in an untenable situation of trying to deal with the Taliban, who not only use the Pakistani frontier provinces as a safe haven, but use housing compounds inside Afghanistan to further destabilize the US-backed Afghan government.
That all but cedes the field of battle to the Taliban, who have no such interest in preserving civilian lives and who all too frequently target civilians and use civilians as human shields.
It makes going after the Taliban and al Qaeda increasingly difficult and means that further airstrikes against housing compounds would be bringing the US into a more direct conflict with Karzai and the Afghan government. This puts the US in an untenable situation of trying to deal with the Taliban, who not only use the Pakistani frontier provinces as a safe haven, but use housing compounds inside Afghanistan to further destabilize the US-backed Afghan government.
FP: Two comments. One, serves NATO (US, really) right for undertaking a long term war in Afghanistan. Two, Israel asks: how does it feel when your ability to win the war is restricted?
Egyptian general admits 'virginity checks' conducted on protesters
A senior Egyptian general admits that "virginity checks" were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities.
The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks. At that time, Maj. Amr Imam said 17 women had been arrested but denied allegations of torture or "virginity tests."
But now a senior general who asked not to be identified said the virginity tests were conducted and defended the practice. "The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general said. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs)."
FP: MB, the army, what’s the difference? In fact, I argued that a large portion of the army is Islamist.
Comments on Reads 5/31 II
Caroline Glick: Where Obama is leading Israel
SINCE THAT speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the sense that he is the most hostile US president Israel has ever faced. Indeed, when taken together, these steps raise concern that Obama may actually constitute a grave threat to Israel.
Obama reportedly was unconvinced. For him, it is unacceptable to be in a position of standing alone with Israel voting against the Palestinian resolution. Obama's distaste for standing with Israel was demonstrated in February when a visibly frustrated US Ambassador Susan Rice was forced by Congressional pressure to veto the Palestinians' Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel for refusing to prohibit Jews from building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
According to Yediot, Mitchell recommended that Obama work with the Europeans to draft a series of anti-Israel resolutions for the UN Security Council to pass. Among other things, these resolutions, which Mitchell said would be "painful for Israel," would include an assertion that Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is illegal.
That is, Mitchell recommended that Obama adopt as US policy at the Security Council past Palestinian demands that Congress forced Obama to reject just months ago at the Security Council. The notion is that by doing so, Obama could convince the Palestinians to water down the even more radically anti-Israel positions they are advancing today at the UN General Assembly that Congressional pressure prevents him from supporting.
Since General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight and Security Council resolutions do carry weight, Mitchell's policy represents the most anti-Israel policy ever raised by a senior US official. Unfortunately Obama's actions since last week suggest that he has adopted the gist of Mitchell's policy recommendations.
FP: It is now becoming obvious what I had been arguing much before everybody else: That Obama would withdraw support and create conditions so adverse to Israel that it would scare it into capitulating to the Palestinians.
Zvi Mazel: Rifts in the Muslim Brotherhood Amid Growing Anarchy in Egypt
The economic, social, and political situation in Egypt is getting worse. Due to the security situation, civilians are buying weapons and hiring militias to protect themselves. Confrontations between Islamists and Copts, as well as Islamists and seculars, are increasing. The ruling Military Council is not coping with the many challenges, and there are voices claiming that Egypt is on the verge of a civil war.
During the first quarter of the year, the Egyptian economy shrunk by 7 percent. Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and candidate for the Egyptian presidency, recently told CNN that “Egypt is disintegrating socially; economically we are not in the best state. Politically it’s like a black hole. We do not know where we are heading.”
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), Saudi Arabia, and the United States have all promised financial support for Egypt. However, this assistance won’t be able to solve the structural problems of the Egyptian economy, which is based on agriculture and tourism, and lacks any serious industrial or high-tech component. Under current circumstances, further deterioration of the socio-economic situation can be expected, which no doubt will benefit the extremist elements, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood.
The leaders of the demonstrators and the secular opposition parties believe that the Military Council is not very keen on executing radical reforms, and purposely acts slowly. Consequently, on May 27, a second Friday of Anger was held across Egypt in order to pressure the Council, and especially its leader, General Mohamed Tantawi. The Muslim Brotherhood announced that it would not take part in the demonstrations, thus reinforcing the growing gap with the secular opposition. But to their great surprise, the young guard of their movement decided to participate, against the will of the supreme leader. This is the first sign of a rift within the Muslim Brotherhood, which is known for its intransigent hierarchy and for unquestioned obedience to its leaders since its establishment 83 years ago.
FP: This is the context in which to understand the opening of the Rafah border crossing. The junta, unable to resolve the economic problems is trying to appease the street by exploiting the single unifying factor of Egyptians: hatred of Israel. As Egypt comes close to failing as a state, the danger of a conflict with Israel as a distraction is increasing (see next). This is also a way for the junta to blackmail the West for aid: "without it we cannot guarantee stability".
Terrorists Shifting Operations to Sinai
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the new military government in Egypt is failing to limit the rise of international terror organizations in the Sinai Peninsula.
Citing the recent attacks on Egyptian pipelines carrying gas to Israel, Netanyahu said, "Egypt is having a hard time realizing its sovereignty in Sinai. International terror organizations are stirring in Sinai and their presence is increasing due to Sinai's connection to Gaza."
Netanyahu further cautioned that Hamas has moved some of its activities to Egypt, enabling the group to grow stronger and threatening Israel's future in the region, particularly with its peace partners Egypt and Jordan. Netanyahu also added that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is "not insignificant" and should not be overlooked.
…
Meanwhile, Egyptian security forces are pursuing 400 al-Qaida operatives who have been spotted in the Sinai, according to a senior Egyptian security source. These operatives, comprised of Bedouins, Palestinians, and foreign Arab nationals, allegedly attacked several security stations in the past in Sinai city of El Arish. According to a report on Egypt's Al-Hayat television channel, the al-Qaida members are now planning additional terrorist attacks in Egypt and in Sinai.
FP: Terrorists always exploit failing Arab states and Egypt is no exception. Increasing terrorism from Sinai may readily generate a conflict if Israel has no choice but taking Sinai security in its own hands.
Eliott Abrams: Bahrain: Bad To Worse
Not so long ago Bahrain was considered one of the more liberal Arab states. No longer.
The situation in Bahrain is deteriorating further, despite occasional government claims that things are stable and even improving. The most recent proof is the Bahraini treatment of the human rights officer at the U.S. Embassy, Ludovic Hood, who is being forced to leave the country after a vicious campaign against him. The story is told in a recent Miami Herald item entitled “U.S. Yanks Diplomat From Bahrain After He’s Threatened.” The U.S. diplomat was the target of anti-Semitic slurs and his address was published in a web site tied to the Bahraini government, a sure effort to intimidate.
The State Department has said little about the incident, but it is a mark of how bilateral relations have soured and should get more attention. This intimidation of an American official should be forcefully protested and condemned by the United States. It is the kind of incident that should have us thinking out loud about the future of the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.
FP: Bernard Lewis says that America is harmless to its enemies and treacherous to its friends. Obama’s Middle East policy validates this. Bahrain, threatened by Iran, has figured out that it cannot rely on the US for protection and it’s doing what rulers must do in Arab states to stay in power (it saw what happened to Mubarak who did not). Unfortunately, as an Arab state, it also involves anti-semitism. And it is probably more concerned with Iranian subversion than US condemnation.
SINCE THAT speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the sense that he is the most hostile US president Israel has ever faced. Indeed, when taken together, these steps raise concern that Obama may actually constitute a grave threat to Israel.
Obama reportedly was unconvinced. For him, it is unacceptable to be in a position of standing alone with Israel voting against the Palestinian resolution. Obama's distaste for standing with Israel was demonstrated in February when a visibly frustrated US Ambassador Susan Rice was forced by Congressional pressure to veto the Palestinians' Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel for refusing to prohibit Jews from building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
According to Yediot, Mitchell recommended that Obama work with the Europeans to draft a series of anti-Israel resolutions for the UN Security Council to pass. Among other things, these resolutions, which Mitchell said would be "painful for Israel," would include an assertion that Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is illegal.
That is, Mitchell recommended that Obama adopt as US policy at the Security Council past Palestinian demands that Congress forced Obama to reject just months ago at the Security Council. The notion is that by doing so, Obama could convince the Palestinians to water down the even more radically anti-Israel positions they are advancing today at the UN General Assembly that Congressional pressure prevents him from supporting.
Since General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight and Security Council resolutions do carry weight, Mitchell's policy represents the most anti-Israel policy ever raised by a senior US official. Unfortunately Obama's actions since last week suggest that he has adopted the gist of Mitchell's policy recommendations.
FP: It is now becoming obvious what I had been arguing much before everybody else: That Obama would withdraw support and create conditions so adverse to Israel that it would scare it into capitulating to the Palestinians.
Zvi Mazel: Rifts in the Muslim Brotherhood Amid Growing Anarchy in Egypt
The economic, social, and political situation in Egypt is getting worse. Due to the security situation, civilians are buying weapons and hiring militias to protect themselves. Confrontations between Islamists and Copts, as well as Islamists and seculars, are increasing. The ruling Military Council is not coping with the many challenges, and there are voices claiming that Egypt is on the verge of a civil war.
During the first quarter of the year, the Egyptian economy shrunk by 7 percent. Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and candidate for the Egyptian presidency, recently told CNN that “Egypt is disintegrating socially; economically we are not in the best state. Politically it’s like a black hole. We do not know where we are heading.”
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), Saudi Arabia, and the United States have all promised financial support for Egypt. However, this assistance won’t be able to solve the structural problems of the Egyptian economy, which is based on agriculture and tourism, and lacks any serious industrial or high-tech component. Under current circumstances, further deterioration of the socio-economic situation can be expected, which no doubt will benefit the extremist elements, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood.
The leaders of the demonstrators and the secular opposition parties believe that the Military Council is not very keen on executing radical reforms, and purposely acts slowly. Consequently, on May 27, a second Friday of Anger was held across Egypt in order to pressure the Council, and especially its leader, General Mohamed Tantawi. The Muslim Brotherhood announced that it would not take part in the demonstrations, thus reinforcing the growing gap with the secular opposition. But to their great surprise, the young guard of their movement decided to participate, against the will of the supreme leader. This is the first sign of a rift within the Muslim Brotherhood, which is known for its intransigent hierarchy and for unquestioned obedience to its leaders since its establishment 83 years ago.
FP: This is the context in which to understand the opening of the Rafah border crossing. The junta, unable to resolve the economic problems is trying to appease the street by exploiting the single unifying factor of Egyptians: hatred of Israel. As Egypt comes close to failing as a state, the danger of a conflict with Israel as a distraction is increasing (see next). This is also a way for the junta to blackmail the West for aid: "without it we cannot guarantee stability".
Terrorists Shifting Operations to Sinai
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the new military government in Egypt is failing to limit the rise of international terror organizations in the Sinai Peninsula.
Citing the recent attacks on Egyptian pipelines carrying gas to Israel, Netanyahu said, "Egypt is having a hard time realizing its sovereignty in Sinai. International terror organizations are stirring in Sinai and their presence is increasing due to Sinai's connection to Gaza."
Netanyahu further cautioned that Hamas has moved some of its activities to Egypt, enabling the group to grow stronger and threatening Israel's future in the region, particularly with its peace partners Egypt and Jordan. Netanyahu also added that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is "not insignificant" and should not be overlooked.
…
Meanwhile, Egyptian security forces are pursuing 400 al-Qaida operatives who have been spotted in the Sinai, according to a senior Egyptian security source. These operatives, comprised of Bedouins, Palestinians, and foreign Arab nationals, allegedly attacked several security stations in the past in Sinai city of El Arish. According to a report on Egypt's Al-Hayat television channel, the al-Qaida members are now planning additional terrorist attacks in Egypt and in Sinai.
FP: Terrorists always exploit failing Arab states and Egypt is no exception. Increasing terrorism from Sinai may readily generate a conflict if Israel has no choice but taking Sinai security in its own hands.
Eliott Abrams: Bahrain: Bad To Worse
Not so long ago Bahrain was considered one of the more liberal Arab states. No longer.
The situation in Bahrain is deteriorating further, despite occasional government claims that things are stable and even improving. The most recent proof is the Bahraini treatment of the human rights officer at the U.S. Embassy, Ludovic Hood, who is being forced to leave the country after a vicious campaign against him. The story is told in a recent Miami Herald item entitled “U.S. Yanks Diplomat From Bahrain After He’s Threatened.” The U.S. diplomat was the target of anti-Semitic slurs and his address was published in a web site tied to the Bahraini government, a sure effort to intimidate.
The State Department has said little about the incident, but it is a mark of how bilateral relations have soured and should get more attention. This intimidation of an American official should be forcefully protested and condemned by the United States. It is the kind of incident that should have us thinking out loud about the future of the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.
FP: Bernard Lewis says that America is harmless to its enemies and treacherous to its friends. Obama’s Middle East policy validates this. Bahrain, threatened by Iran, has figured out that it cannot rely on the US for protection and it’s doing what rulers must do in Arab states to stay in power (it saw what happened to Mubarak who did not). Unfortunately, as an Arab state, it also involves anti-semitism. And it is probably more concerned with Iranian subversion than US condemnation.
Comments on Reads 5/31 I
David Bernstein: Egypt Opens Border with Gaza
When asked why they leveled so much criticism at Israel for the blockade, but almost none at Egypt, which was also blockading Gaza, the only coherent answer that was forthcoming was that Israel was somehow making Egypt enforce the blockade. The sensible response was that Israel can’t “make” Egypt do anything, and that Egypt enforced the blockade because Egypt thought it was in its own interest to do so.
Now that Egypt has ended the blockade, we can definitively say that the sensible response was correct. The current Egyptian government has apparently decided that its strategic interest in containing Hamas is secondary to the public opinion brownie points it will receive for easing the Palestinians’ plight–not to mention that the policy wasn’t very effective at containing Hamas.
FP: The public opinion brownie points is one reason for the move. Another is Egypt interest in showing that it has the ability to destabilize the region. Both reasons have to do with extracting Western aid without which Egypt will collapse (see also next).
JOSHUAPUNDIT: Egypt Opens Rafah Crossing To Hamas, Begins Steps to Cut Off Gas Shipments To Israel
Over the weekend, the Egyptian junta formally reopened the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Hamas ruled Gaza Strip. This was done without coordinating anything with Israel, a violation of the 2005 Egyptian-Israeli accords on the Gaza crossings which call for them to be manned by European monitors and supervised by Israel. Those accords were part of the security assurances Israel was given when Israel agreed to retreat from Gaza and were signed on to by both the US and the EU. In response to Israeli concerns, Egyptian Chief of Staff General Sami Anan warned Israel not to interfere in Egypt’s internal affairs.
Another sign that Egypt plans to abrogate the Israel-Egyptian Camp David Accords was decision by Egypt's Oil Minister Abdallah Ghorab to liquidate EMG (the East Mediterranean Gas Company), jointly owned by the Israeli company Merhav (25%), PTT (25%), EMI-EGI LP (12%), and Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (10%).EMG is under contract to deliver Egyptian gas to Israel and supplied 40 percent of its needs in 2010. As part of the treaty, Egypt had agreed to supply natural gas to Israel at slightly below market prices, and a the contract was just renewed in 2009. Deliveries were made via a pipeline that was jointly built by Israel and Egypt from El Arish in Sinai to the Israeli port of Ashkelon.
...but the real reason in the Egyptian junta's desire to appeal politically to the Egyptian street, a major portion of which wants all relations broken off with Israel...especially the Muslim Brotherhood contingent.
FP: From now on Israel should treat Egypt as hostile, as if the treaty does not exist, and plan and act accordingly. See also: Egypt, PLO Meet Islamic Jihad, Want Obama's Lines for Starters: In Cairo, Mahmoud Abbas met with Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi to plot diplomatic moves against Israel.
Moshe Arens: Netanyahu had the courage to stand up to Obama
Obama probably realizes by now that he made a mistake when he said the "1967 lines" should serve as the baseline for territorial negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Somebody should have told him that for most Israelis the "1967 lines," those that Abba Eban in his famous UN speech referred to as the "Auschwitz borders," are like a red rag to a bull.
Another person probably made a mistake on this occasion. The leader of the Israeli opposition, Tzipi Livni, without giving it a moment's thought, used the opportunity to criticize the prime minister, announcing that Netanyahu should have accepted Obama's proposal. She is likely to discover that withdrawal to the "1967 lines" is going to make for an unpopular Kadima platform in the next election.
FP: I bet Obama does not think he made a mistake; he already did the damage he intended to do by adjusting US policy to Palestinian demands. As to Livni, she suffers from a grave case of the Oslo syndrome and is dumb to boot. I mean, just look at the Lebanese border situation which she is responsible for creating. And she learned nothing from it.
PowerLine: When Kennedy blinked
In the 2008 presidential campaign Barack Obama served up President Kennedy's conference with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961 as support for his thought that it would be a good idea for the president to meet unconditionally with leaders of the Iranian regime. As is so often the case when it comes to history, however, Obama didn't know what he was talking about. By all accounts -- and I mean all accounts -- including Kennedy's own, the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit in Vienna was a disaster. Historians continue to add to the record, but the record has been clear on this point for a very long time.
The Kennedy-Khrushchev conference provides the backdrop to the division of Berlin by the wall put in place by the Communists that August. Frederick Kempe's new book, Berlin 1961, narrows the focus and explores the Berlin aspect of the story in depth. Yesterday Glenn Reynolds directed readers to this quote from Kempe:
David Thompson:
And Tim Worstall notes the credentials of the Guardian’s Lindsay Mackie:
FP: Today’s left: nepotism, hypocrisy and fascist instincts. And as I read Whittaker Chambers, not much different from the old left.
'Muslim Brothers using mosques as party branches'
Former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit warns Islamist group is gradually seeking to create a Shari'a state in Egypt.
FP: Those who discounted the “mostly secular” MB’s ability to gain power disregarded their best mechanism way to propagandize and indoctrinate, unequal to that of all other parties put together: the mosque.
When asked why they leveled so much criticism at Israel for the blockade, but almost none at Egypt, which was also blockading Gaza, the only coherent answer that was forthcoming was that Israel was somehow making Egypt enforce the blockade. The sensible response was that Israel can’t “make” Egypt do anything, and that Egypt enforced the blockade because Egypt thought it was in its own interest to do so.
Now that Egypt has ended the blockade, we can definitively say that the sensible response was correct. The current Egyptian government has apparently decided that its strategic interest in containing Hamas is secondary to the public opinion brownie points it will receive for easing the Palestinians’ plight–not to mention that the policy wasn’t very effective at containing Hamas.
FP: The public opinion brownie points is one reason for the move. Another is Egypt interest in showing that it has the ability to destabilize the region. Both reasons have to do with extracting Western aid without which Egypt will collapse (see also next).
JOSHUAPUNDIT: Egypt Opens Rafah Crossing To Hamas, Begins Steps to Cut Off Gas Shipments To Israel
Over the weekend, the Egyptian junta formally reopened the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Hamas ruled Gaza Strip. This was done without coordinating anything with Israel, a violation of the 2005 Egyptian-Israeli accords on the Gaza crossings which call for them to be manned by European monitors and supervised by Israel. Those accords were part of the security assurances Israel was given when Israel agreed to retreat from Gaza and were signed on to by both the US and the EU. In response to Israeli concerns, Egyptian Chief of Staff General Sami Anan warned Israel not to interfere in Egypt’s internal affairs.
Another sign that Egypt plans to abrogate the Israel-Egyptian Camp David Accords was decision by Egypt's Oil Minister Abdallah Ghorab to liquidate EMG (the East Mediterranean Gas Company), jointly owned by the Israeli company Merhav (25%), PTT (25%), EMI-EGI LP (12%), and Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (10%).EMG is under contract to deliver Egyptian gas to Israel and supplied 40 percent of its needs in 2010. As part of the treaty, Egypt had agreed to supply natural gas to Israel at slightly below market prices, and a the contract was just renewed in 2009. Deliveries were made via a pipeline that was jointly built by Israel and Egypt from El Arish in Sinai to the Israeli port of Ashkelon.
...but the real reason in the Egyptian junta's desire to appeal politically to the Egyptian street, a major portion of which wants all relations broken off with Israel...especially the Muslim Brotherhood contingent.
FP: From now on Israel should treat Egypt as hostile, as if the treaty does not exist, and plan and act accordingly. See also: Egypt, PLO Meet Islamic Jihad, Want Obama's Lines for Starters: In Cairo, Mahmoud Abbas met with Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi to plot diplomatic moves against Israel.
Moshe Arens: Netanyahu had the courage to stand up to Obama
Obama probably realizes by now that he made a mistake when he said the "1967 lines" should serve as the baseline for territorial negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Somebody should have told him that for most Israelis the "1967 lines," those that Abba Eban in his famous UN speech referred to as the "Auschwitz borders," are like a red rag to a bull.
Another person probably made a mistake on this occasion. The leader of the Israeli opposition, Tzipi Livni, without giving it a moment's thought, used the opportunity to criticize the prime minister, announcing that Netanyahu should have accepted Obama's proposal. She is likely to discover that withdrawal to the "1967 lines" is going to make for an unpopular Kadima platform in the next election.
FP: I bet Obama does not think he made a mistake; he already did the damage he intended to do by adjusting US policy to Palestinian demands. As to Livni, she suffers from a grave case of the Oslo syndrome and is dumb to boot. I mean, just look at the Lebanese border situation which she is responsible for creating. And she learned nothing from it.
PowerLine: When Kennedy blinked
In the 2008 presidential campaign Barack Obama served up President Kennedy's conference with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961 as support for his thought that it would be a good idea for the president to meet unconditionally with leaders of the Iranian regime. As is so often the case when it comes to history, however, Obama didn't know what he was talking about. By all accounts -- and I mean all accounts -- including Kennedy's own, the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit in Vienna was a disaster. Historians continue to add to the record, but the record has been clear on this point for a very long time.
The Kennedy-Khrushchev conference provides the backdrop to the division of Berlin by the wall put in place by the Communists that August. Frederick Kempe's new book, Berlin 1961, narrows the focus and explores the Berlin aspect of the story in depth. Yesterday Glenn Reynolds directed readers to this quote from Kempe:
I want Americans to understand how the decisions of their presidents -- then and now -- shape world history in ways we don't always understand at the time of a specific event. I want readers to know that Kennedy could have prevented the Berlin Wall, if he had wished, and that in acquiescing to the border closure he not only created a more dangerous situation -- but also contributed to mortgaging the future for tens of millions of Central and Eastern Europeans. The relatively small decisions that U.S. presidents make have huge, often global, consequences.FP: More evidence that all the claims of Obama being brilliant and knowledgeable are false: he is ignorant and not very bright either. Which was pretty clear both as a senator and while he ran for president.
David Thompson:
And Tim Worstall notes the credentials of the Guardian’s Lindsay Mackie:
Umm, right, so now we’ve an arts journalist informing us all how to reform the financial system. As we can see, decades of useful experience can be brought to bear here. So, err, why is one of the nation’s great newspapers offering column space to someone so woefully uninformed? Could it be because Ms Mackie is in fact the wife of the editor of the newspaper, a certain Alan Rusbridger?
When not sharing her expertise with readers of the Guardian, Ms Mackie is a consultant and campaigns co-ordinator for the New Economics Foundation, a leftwing think tank whose mind-shattering insights can be savoured here. Readers may recall that the NEF hopes to “heal the rifts in a divided Britain” and leave the population “satisfied” by fostering disdain for the “dispensable accoutrements of middle-class life,” including “cars, holidays, electronic equipment and multiple items of clothing.” No doubt Ms Mackie is already urging her husband to give away their £30,000 grand piano, along with one of their two large and agreeable houses and most of his £400,000 salary.
FP: Today’s left: nepotism, hypocrisy and fascist instincts. And as I read Whittaker Chambers, not much different from the old left.
'Muslim Brothers using mosques as party branches'
Former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit warns Islamist group is gradually seeking to create a Shari'a state in Egypt.
FP: Those who discounted the “mostly secular” MB’s ability to gain power disregarded their best mechanism way to propagandize and indoctrinate, unequal to that of all other parties put together: the mosque.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Comments on Reads 5/30 III
Palestinians prepare for ‘Naksa’ marches on Israel’s border
Hundreds of thousands join Facebook campaign to mark ‘setback’ of Six Day War; IDF to deploy larger forces along northern frontiers to avoid repeat of Nakba Day violence.
The website “Third Palestinian Intifada” and its Facebook page, “Countdown to the Third Palestinian Intifada,” have posted detailed plans for marches on Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Gaza, as well as processions to Jerusalem’s Al- Aksa Mosque, on three separate dates before and during the war’s anniversary. The group’s “plan of action” calls for mass rallies on June 3, 5 and 7 – the Friday leading up to the Six Day War anniversary, the date on which the war began and the date Israeli troops took Jerusalem, respectively.
…
This time, military officials said the IDF will deploy larger forces along Israel’s northern borders to avoid a repeat of the Nakba Day disturbances. The officials said they expect the rallies to be relatively peaceful, and that they hope an effective troop deployment can prevent border infiltrations altogether.
The current Facebook page, under a slightly different name, was created in early April, and by mid-May had been followed, or “liked,” by 100,000 people. Over the last two weeks the page’s following has grown to over 375,000.
Organizers wrote that the Nakba Day events prove historic Palestine can be “liberated” by mass unarmed marches, provided the “umma,” or Islamic nation, is willing to pay any price, including a million martyrs.
FP: I will be very surprised if this will prove non-violent. Israel cannot afford yet another blunder.
Turkey Mediates Fatah-Hamas Unity
Turkey hosts Hamas and Fatah leaders trying to reach a final unity pact by June 6, while Iran attempts to undermine the “Zionist pact.”
FP: The consequences of American decline.
Jerusalem Arabs to Israel: Don't Give Away Your Sovereignty
The Knesset Interior Committee to hear today from Jerusalem Arabs who do not want to come under PA control. Aryeh King has proof that it has begun.
“Signs of Israeli sovereignty are disappearing in parts of Jerusalem that are behind the partition fence,” say MKs Aryeh Eldad, Uri Ariel and others, “and their place is being taken by hostile elements. This, despite the lack of any decision by the Knesset or the government on the matter.”
“This purposeful impotence leads to the de facto division of Jerusalem,” the MKs continue, “which stands in direct contrast to the official policy of the Government of Israel – and is against the will of most of the Israeli citizens in these neighborhoods.”
King also said that many Arabs in Jerusalem look very askance at the government of Israel for giving up its sovereignty over their homes - and some of them have been invited to speak at the Knesset session. “This is the first time they’re coming out publicly in this way,” King said. “Yes, it’s dangerous for them, but they see that what’s happening will lead directly to their children and grandchildren growing up in a terrorist hothouse. They have been placed in a walled ghetto, and then a terrorist regime will control them. Who would ever agree to live like that?”
FP: Something you will not read in the Western press.
Hundreds of thousands join Facebook campaign to mark ‘setback’ of Six Day War; IDF to deploy larger forces along northern frontiers to avoid repeat of Nakba Day violence.
The website “Third Palestinian Intifada” and its Facebook page, “Countdown to the Third Palestinian Intifada,” have posted detailed plans for marches on Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Gaza, as well as processions to Jerusalem’s Al- Aksa Mosque, on three separate dates before and during the war’s anniversary. The group’s “plan of action” calls for mass rallies on June 3, 5 and 7 – the Friday leading up to the Six Day War anniversary, the date on which the war began and the date Israeli troops took Jerusalem, respectively.
…
This time, military officials said the IDF will deploy larger forces along Israel’s northern borders to avoid a repeat of the Nakba Day disturbances. The officials said they expect the rallies to be relatively peaceful, and that they hope an effective troop deployment can prevent border infiltrations altogether.
The current Facebook page, under a slightly different name, was created in early April, and by mid-May had been followed, or “liked,” by 100,000 people. Over the last two weeks the page’s following has grown to over 375,000.
Organizers wrote that the Nakba Day events prove historic Palestine can be “liberated” by mass unarmed marches, provided the “umma,” or Islamic nation, is willing to pay any price, including a million martyrs.
FP: I will be very surprised if this will prove non-violent. Israel cannot afford yet another blunder.
Turkey Mediates Fatah-Hamas Unity
Turkey hosts Hamas and Fatah leaders trying to reach a final unity pact by June 6, while Iran attempts to undermine the “Zionist pact.”
FP: The consequences of American decline.
Jerusalem Arabs to Israel: Don't Give Away Your Sovereignty
The Knesset Interior Committee to hear today from Jerusalem Arabs who do not want to come under PA control. Aryeh King has proof that it has begun.
“Signs of Israeli sovereignty are disappearing in parts of Jerusalem that are behind the partition fence,” say MKs Aryeh Eldad, Uri Ariel and others, “and their place is being taken by hostile elements. This, despite the lack of any decision by the Knesset or the government on the matter.”
“This purposeful impotence leads to the de facto division of Jerusalem,” the MKs continue, “which stands in direct contrast to the official policy of the Government of Israel – and is against the will of most of the Israeli citizens in these neighborhoods.”
King also said that many Arabs in Jerusalem look very askance at the government of Israel for giving up its sovereignty over their homes - and some of them have been invited to speak at the Knesset session. “This is the first time they’re coming out publicly in this way,” King said. “Yes, it’s dangerous for them, but they see that what’s happening will lead directly to their children and grandchildren growing up in a terrorist hothouse. They have been placed in a walled ghetto, and then a terrorist regime will control them. Who would ever agree to live like that?”
FP: Something you will not read in the Western press.
Comments on Reads 5/30 II
David Pryce-Jones: The Preemptive Cringe
This week I happened to meet one of the panjandrums of the British Foreign Office, a man who has been at the center of issues involving the Middle East and Afghanistan. What he had to say was a fine example of the FO’s persistent institutional personality. The invasion of Iraq, this man held, had been a mistake, and he was against it. The campaign in Afghanistan is an even more dire mistake. George W. Bush, he believed, had greatly over-reacted to 9/11. The Taliban were disposed at first to throw al-Qaeda out of the country, and a subtler president could have served the national interest better and at less cost by manipulating an open split between the two groups. In his view, fighting has achieved nothing, and never will. The only course of action now is to strike a deal that gives the Taliban what they want. You cannot put down an insurgency with military measures, he concluded as though this was the last word, and the Communist insurgency in Malaya, for instance, had not been defeated.
Just a glance round the room was enough, John Kelly told me, to reveal officials whose careers had been devoted to internalizing all the bad things ambitious foreigners charged them with, and consequently devising how best to haul down the flag. They were so long accustomed to appease and surrender to strength and violence that they couldn’t imagine anything else.
To come to terms with the Taliban now would expose Afghans and Pakistanis to tyranny, with many of them becoming refugees or corpses. In his recent pronouncements, President Obama is similarly pressuring Israelis to come to terms with Fatah-Hamas who would make refugees or corpses of them. The preemptive cringe is turning into policy, and it’s deadly.
FP: The fall of an empire has psychological consequences that linger for a long time. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as conducted, were, however, serious strategic blunders that are completing the loss of US world power. Nation building in the Arab/Muslim world is a fool’s errand and long asymmetric wars cannot be won consequentially, particularly on a bankrupt status. What the US should have done is bomb the hell out of them such that (a) they would not be a problem for a long time (b) everybody would think twice before going against the US. That would have cost less in resources and manpower (see next) and would have kept the US fit to take on Iran and its proxies and more than likely would have not lost its Arab allies. It would have gotten itself respect rather than contempt. This will also finalize the Hamas regime in Gaza, thus bringing it closer to dominating all of Palestine.
Barry Rubin: Where fear and blindness dominate
If judges call for violence and murder, invoking blood and treason, how might common people behave? What example is being offered to the national political culture? Obama and European leaders don’t get it. We are about to be projected back to the bad old days of radical Arab nationalist regimes competing with each other in militancy, anti-Americanism and hatred of Israel. Except this time they’re Islamists, and that’s worse.
When top judges yell for fire and vengeance, your society is in real trouble.
And so are its neighbors. No democratic state can be built on such a foundation.
Ignore all those soothing and ignorant “experts” on television and in the papers.
Here comes the judge. And he’s a hanging judge.
FP: Egypt show signs of becoming a failed state.
Max Boot: Jihadists Threaten to Seize Yemem
…in the short term this period of upheavals could create an opening for armed Islamists to seize power. While they are far from having majority support in the Muslim world, jihadists are just the kind of small, well-organized, well-armed, and ruthless clique that—like the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917—can seize power in a moment of revolutionary turmoil.
The latest evidence of the danger comes from Yemen, where a decrepit and unpopular strongman, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has been tottering on the brink for weeks. So serious was his situation that he even agreed to give up power—only to renege on his pledge. But Yemen has never been all that strongly governed to begin with, and now there are reports that Islamists are taking advantage of the moment to seize power in the city of Zinjibar. This is a worrisome development because Yemen is home to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Along with Somalia, it is the country where jihadists currently have the best chance of seizing power.
The U.S. has tried to head off this catastrophe by providing aid to the Saleh regime as well as conducting some Special Operations raids within Yemen. But President Obama not long ago called for Saleh to step down, a belated recognition of how how much legitimacy he has lost. The challenge now will be to work behind the scenes in a country where our influence is distinctly limited to try to bolster a transition to a regime capable of exerting some degree of influence over this chaotic country. Or else the radical jihadists, who had appeared irrelevant just a few weeks ago, could stage a worrisome comeback.
FP: The obvious incoherence of US policy that does the worst possible thing in the Middle East: the US first delusionally dumps money on a dictator, pumping up and already anti-American sentiment, then succumbs and betrays him, thus revealing weakness and inducing contempt by enemies and allies alike.
Mission: seemingly impossible - Dismantling war machine is final US campaign
“What would one do in America if they had to take a state the size of California, pack up hundreds of cities, place them into boxes, and send it across the ocean?’’ asks Army Major Angel Wallace, spokeswoman for the 103d Expeditionary Sustainment Command, which helped keep the Army fed, fueled, and functioning in much of Iraq.
All remaining US troops are scheduled to leave Iraq by Dec. 31. The mammoth job of collecting, counting, and removing the 1.52 million pieces of government equipment and 1.48 million US-owned “non-rolling stock,’’ such as gym equipment, tool sets, and office furniture, that remain in the country is being coordinated from this sprawling American base, the biggest in Iraq.
“We call it moving the mountain,’’ says Formy-Duval. “People know if we aren’t moving this stuff, we ain’t leaving.’’
FP: Was all this necessary for recreating an Iranian-influenced, Islamic state, just like the ones the waning colonial powers created? And likely to be just as successful?
Shlomo Avineri: Israel should thank Egypt for opening Gaza crossing
The fact that the Gaza Strip has another border - with Egypt - was forgotten and that country's cooperation with Israel in also closing its own border with the the Gaza Strip did not attract attention. Israel alone was perceived as responsible for their distress.
Now, upon the opening of the Egyptian border, the time has come to complete the disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Israel must lift the naval and air blockades and at the same time shut down entirely the land crossing points from Israel to Gaza. The Gaza Strip is enemy territory and from the moment it is open to the wider world through the Rafah crossing, all the remnants of the Israeli occupation as manifested in the naval and air blockade should be eliminated, thereby removing from us the responsibility for provisioning the Gaza Strip.
The border between Israel and Gaza should be like the border between Israel and Lebanon, and just as Israel is not imposing a naval blockade on Lebanon it should not be imposing one on Gaza.
If this policy is implemented, transferring provisions and humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip will be done through Egypt - or directly to Gaza. If the organizers of the flotilla to Gaza want to reach Gaza - you are welcome: This is none of our business. There is no Israeli blockade, and so-called human rights activists - whose only aim is to embarrass Israel - aren't bringing weapons there anyway.
Anyone who wants to bring weapons has been doing it for years via the tunnels and we haven't been able to stop that. A total disengagement could also decrease the motivation of some of the flotilla participants.
FP: I am all for disengagement. There are only three problems. First, the kind and volume of weapons that will enter Gaza will increase both qualitatively and quantitatively; the fact that Israel blundered in its second Lebanon war and ended up with 40,000 Hizballah missiles does not mean it must accept another such threat in the south as well. Second, the chance of the world won’t anymore hold only Israel responsible is nil; that stance is not rational and cannot be corrected by reality. And third, such action will be interpreted as weakness, just as was the leaving of Gaza, thus inviting more pouncing, not less; indeed the IHH has just declared (see last post) that the opening of the border crossing by Egypt won’t stop the next flotilla and that Israel won’t make the same mistake of trying to stop it again.
Nato issues apology for bungled Afghan airstrike
A senior Nato general has issued a “heartfelt apology” after helicopters killed women and children in a bungled airstrike in Helmand Province.
FP: Somehow I don’t expect any investigations and demonizations, even though these killings, unlike the Israeli ones, are real. The West has some nerve accusing Israel, which is actually defending itself. Nato is a real occupying force.
USC conference: A pseudo-academic Israel bash
The first two speakers certainly exposed these students to the kind of scholarship one expects at University-level events. Their scholarly discussion and theoretical models were based on their research into peacemaking in Northern Ireland. But with the subsequent four speakers, scholarly and analytic standards abruptly disintegrated, replaced by anti-Israel screeds, demagogic advocacy of anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions [BDS] and extremist positions that made a mockery of the concept of conflict resolution.
Andrew Manning, Director of USC’s “Peace and Conflict Studies” program and organizer of the conference, apparently had come under fire for the roster of speakers. He felt compelled to announce that Peace and Conflict Studies “is not pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian. The program I direct is pro-peace.” Then he declared that “if you have come here to hear ceaseless damnation of one side and celebration of the other, you have come to the wrong university and the wrong conference.”
Yet, damnation of Israel was all the audience heard. History, context, and analysis disappeared. All four speakers implicitly agreed that Israel is an illegitimate state, which they denounced as a European, racist, settler-colonialist project hell-bent on stealing land and water and ethnically cleansing Palestinians. All four denounced the peace process and negotiations as merely cover for Israel’s continued “settler colonialist expansion.”
FP: Today’s academia.
This week I happened to meet one of the panjandrums of the British Foreign Office, a man who has been at the center of issues involving the Middle East and Afghanistan. What he had to say was a fine example of the FO’s persistent institutional personality. The invasion of Iraq, this man held, had been a mistake, and he was against it. The campaign in Afghanistan is an even more dire mistake. George W. Bush, he believed, had greatly over-reacted to 9/11. The Taliban were disposed at first to throw al-Qaeda out of the country, and a subtler president could have served the national interest better and at less cost by manipulating an open split between the two groups. In his view, fighting has achieved nothing, and never will. The only course of action now is to strike a deal that gives the Taliban what they want. You cannot put down an insurgency with military measures, he concluded as though this was the last word, and the Communist insurgency in Malaya, for instance, had not been defeated.
Just a glance round the room was enough, John Kelly told me, to reveal officials whose careers had been devoted to internalizing all the bad things ambitious foreigners charged them with, and consequently devising how best to haul down the flag. They were so long accustomed to appease and surrender to strength and violence that they couldn’t imagine anything else.
To come to terms with the Taliban now would expose Afghans and Pakistanis to tyranny, with many of them becoming refugees or corpses. In his recent pronouncements, President Obama is similarly pressuring Israelis to come to terms with Fatah-Hamas who would make refugees or corpses of them. The preemptive cringe is turning into policy, and it’s deadly.
FP: The fall of an empire has psychological consequences that linger for a long time. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as conducted, were, however, serious strategic blunders that are completing the loss of US world power. Nation building in the Arab/Muslim world is a fool’s errand and long asymmetric wars cannot be won consequentially, particularly on a bankrupt status. What the US should have done is bomb the hell out of them such that (a) they would not be a problem for a long time (b) everybody would think twice before going against the US. That would have cost less in resources and manpower (see next) and would have kept the US fit to take on Iran and its proxies and more than likely would have not lost its Arab allies. It would have gotten itself respect rather than contempt. This will also finalize the Hamas regime in Gaza, thus bringing it closer to dominating all of Palestine.
Barry Rubin: Where fear and blindness dominate
If judges call for violence and murder, invoking blood and treason, how might common people behave? What example is being offered to the national political culture? Obama and European leaders don’t get it. We are about to be projected back to the bad old days of radical Arab nationalist regimes competing with each other in militancy, anti-Americanism and hatred of Israel. Except this time they’re Islamists, and that’s worse.
When top judges yell for fire and vengeance, your society is in real trouble.
And so are its neighbors. No democratic state can be built on such a foundation.
Ignore all those soothing and ignorant “experts” on television and in the papers.
Here comes the judge. And he’s a hanging judge.
FP: Egypt show signs of becoming a failed state.
Max Boot: Jihadists Threaten to Seize Yemem
…in the short term this period of upheavals could create an opening for armed Islamists to seize power. While they are far from having majority support in the Muslim world, jihadists are just the kind of small, well-organized, well-armed, and ruthless clique that—like the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917—can seize power in a moment of revolutionary turmoil.
The latest evidence of the danger comes from Yemen, where a decrepit and unpopular strongman, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has been tottering on the brink for weeks. So serious was his situation that he even agreed to give up power—only to renege on his pledge. But Yemen has never been all that strongly governed to begin with, and now there are reports that Islamists are taking advantage of the moment to seize power in the city of Zinjibar. This is a worrisome development because Yemen is home to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Along with Somalia, it is the country where jihadists currently have the best chance of seizing power.
The U.S. has tried to head off this catastrophe by providing aid to the Saleh regime as well as conducting some Special Operations raids within Yemen. But President Obama not long ago called for Saleh to step down, a belated recognition of how how much legitimacy he has lost. The challenge now will be to work behind the scenes in a country where our influence is distinctly limited to try to bolster a transition to a regime capable of exerting some degree of influence over this chaotic country. Or else the radical jihadists, who had appeared irrelevant just a few weeks ago, could stage a worrisome comeback.
FP: The obvious incoherence of US policy that does the worst possible thing in the Middle East: the US first delusionally dumps money on a dictator, pumping up and already anti-American sentiment, then succumbs and betrays him, thus revealing weakness and inducing contempt by enemies and allies alike.
Mission: seemingly impossible - Dismantling war machine is final US campaign
“What would one do in America if they had to take a state the size of California, pack up hundreds of cities, place them into boxes, and send it across the ocean?’’ asks Army Major Angel Wallace, spokeswoman for the 103d Expeditionary Sustainment Command, which helped keep the Army fed, fueled, and functioning in much of Iraq.
All remaining US troops are scheduled to leave Iraq by Dec. 31. The mammoth job of collecting, counting, and removing the 1.52 million pieces of government equipment and 1.48 million US-owned “non-rolling stock,’’ such as gym equipment, tool sets, and office furniture, that remain in the country is being coordinated from this sprawling American base, the biggest in Iraq.
“We call it moving the mountain,’’ says Formy-Duval. “People know if we aren’t moving this stuff, we ain’t leaving.’’
FP: Was all this necessary for recreating an Iranian-influenced, Islamic state, just like the ones the waning colonial powers created? And likely to be just as successful?
Shlomo Avineri: Israel should thank Egypt for opening Gaza crossing
The fact that the Gaza Strip has another border - with Egypt - was forgotten and that country's cooperation with Israel in also closing its own border with the the Gaza Strip did not attract attention. Israel alone was perceived as responsible for their distress.
Now, upon the opening of the Egyptian border, the time has come to complete the disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Israel must lift the naval and air blockades and at the same time shut down entirely the land crossing points from Israel to Gaza. The Gaza Strip is enemy territory and from the moment it is open to the wider world through the Rafah crossing, all the remnants of the Israeli occupation as manifested in the naval and air blockade should be eliminated, thereby removing from us the responsibility for provisioning the Gaza Strip.
The border between Israel and Gaza should be like the border between Israel and Lebanon, and just as Israel is not imposing a naval blockade on Lebanon it should not be imposing one on Gaza.
If this policy is implemented, transferring provisions and humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip will be done through Egypt - or directly to Gaza. If the organizers of the flotilla to Gaza want to reach Gaza - you are welcome: This is none of our business. There is no Israeli blockade, and so-called human rights activists - whose only aim is to embarrass Israel - aren't bringing weapons there anyway.
Anyone who wants to bring weapons has been doing it for years via the tunnels and we haven't been able to stop that. A total disengagement could also decrease the motivation of some of the flotilla participants.
FP: I am all for disengagement. There are only three problems. First, the kind and volume of weapons that will enter Gaza will increase both qualitatively and quantitatively; the fact that Israel blundered in its second Lebanon war and ended up with 40,000 Hizballah missiles does not mean it must accept another such threat in the south as well. Second, the chance of the world won’t anymore hold only Israel responsible is nil; that stance is not rational and cannot be corrected by reality. And third, such action will be interpreted as weakness, just as was the leaving of Gaza, thus inviting more pouncing, not less; indeed the IHH has just declared (see last post) that the opening of the border crossing by Egypt won’t stop the next flotilla and that Israel won’t make the same mistake of trying to stop it again.
Nato issues apology for bungled Afghan airstrike
A senior Nato general has issued a “heartfelt apology” after helicopters killed women and children in a bungled airstrike in Helmand Province.
FP: Somehow I don’t expect any investigations and demonizations, even though these killings, unlike the Israeli ones, are real. The West has some nerve accusing Israel, which is actually defending itself. Nato is a real occupying force.
USC conference: A pseudo-academic Israel bash
The first two speakers certainly exposed these students to the kind of scholarship one expects at University-level events. Their scholarly discussion and theoretical models were based on their research into peacemaking in Northern Ireland. But with the subsequent four speakers, scholarly and analytic standards abruptly disintegrated, replaced by anti-Israel screeds, demagogic advocacy of anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions [BDS] and extremist positions that made a mockery of the concept of conflict resolution.
Andrew Manning, Director of USC’s “Peace and Conflict Studies” program and organizer of the conference, apparently had come under fire for the roster of speakers. He felt compelled to announce that Peace and Conflict Studies “is not pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian. The program I direct is pro-peace.” Then he declared that “if you have come here to hear ceaseless damnation of one side and celebration of the other, you have come to the wrong university and the wrong conference.”
Yet, damnation of Israel was all the audience heard. History, context, and analysis disappeared. All four speakers implicitly agreed that Israel is an illegitimate state, which they denounced as a European, racist, settler-colonialist project hell-bent on stealing land and water and ethnically cleansing Palestinians. All four denounced the peace process and negotiations as merely cover for Israel’s continued “settler colonialist expansion.”
FP: Today’s academia.
Comments on News 5/30 I
PowerLine: Another Step in the Infantilization of Humanity
This is one of the dumbest, and yet most ominous, of recent headlines: Italian Seismologists Charged With Manslaughter for Not Predicting 2009 Quake. Of course, no one can predict earthquakes. No matter:
Enzo Boschi, the president of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), will face trial along with six other scientists and technicians, after failing to predict the future and the impending disaster.
Earthquakes are, of course, nearly impossible to predict, seismologists say. In fact, according to the website for the USGS, no major quake has ever been predicted successfully.
The linked Fox story quotes a spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey who says that Italy's criminal prosecution "has a medieval flavor to it." Actually, you would have to go back to a more primitive era to recapture the condition of childish dependence that this story reveals. Many Europeans, and a growing number of Americans, have abandoned any pretense of looking after themselves and believe that it is the duty of the authorities--whoever they may be in a particular instance--to protect them from all harm, if not all inconvenience.
This is, perhaps, the essence of the bargain that constitutes the welfare state. Ordinary citizens give up their freedom, their ambition and most of their wealth to a political class; such a heavy sacrifice demands a heavy price. If the authorities don't deliver, off with their heads! Logic, really, has nothing to do with it.
FP: More Western decline.
Activists tell Israel not to interfere in June flotilla
Speaking from 'Mavi Marmara', IHH spokesman says of IDF, "They will not attack. We don't believe they will repeat the same big mistake."
FP: Lost deterrence: How Israel tactical mistakes become strategic problems.
FP: Do you discern a trend?
British PM Quits as JNF Patron
British Prime Minister David Cameron has resigned as a patron of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), set up prior to the establishment of the state to purchase land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. Traditionally the leaders of Britain's three main political parties are patrons of the JNF.
Pro-Palestinian Authority campaigners are crowing that Cameron, who allegedly released a statement claiming he also stepped down from other charities as well, had buckled to pressure from their groups.
Cameron's resignation has meant that none of the top three UK political leaders are serving as patrons of the JNF at present
FP: Cameron’s notion of the unshakeable British support of Israel. Typical British.
This is one of the dumbest, and yet most ominous, of recent headlines: Italian Seismologists Charged With Manslaughter for Not Predicting 2009 Quake. Of course, no one can predict earthquakes. No matter:
Enzo Boschi, the president of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), will face trial along with six other scientists and technicians, after failing to predict the future and the impending disaster.
Earthquakes are, of course, nearly impossible to predict, seismologists say. In fact, according to the website for the USGS, no major quake has ever been predicted successfully.
The linked Fox story quotes a spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey who says that Italy's criminal prosecution "has a medieval flavor to it." Actually, you would have to go back to a more primitive era to recapture the condition of childish dependence that this story reveals. Many Europeans, and a growing number of Americans, have abandoned any pretense of looking after themselves and believe that it is the duty of the authorities--whoever they may be in a particular instance--to protect them from all harm, if not all inconvenience.
This is, perhaps, the essence of the bargain that constitutes the welfare state. Ordinary citizens give up their freedom, their ambition and most of their wealth to a political class; such a heavy sacrifice demands a heavy price. If the authorities don't deliver, off with their heads! Logic, really, has nothing to do with it.
FP: More Western decline.
Activists tell Israel not to interfere in June flotilla
Speaking from 'Mavi Marmara', IHH spokesman says of IDF, "They will not attack. We don't believe they will repeat the same big mistake."
FP: Lost deterrence: How Israel tactical mistakes become strategic problems.
- 'Abbas’s comment about a state without Jews was racist'
- Egyptian activists 'to form Nazi party', newspaper reports
- Jewish Student Allegedly Attacked On Australian Campus For Celebrating Israeli Independence Day
- The changes in the region are producing more extremism, not more moderation.
FP: Do you discern a trend?
British PM Quits as JNF Patron
British Prime Minister David Cameron has resigned as a patron of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), set up prior to the establishment of the state to purchase land in Palestine for Jewish settlement. Traditionally the leaders of Britain's three main political parties are patrons of the JNF.
Pro-Palestinian Authority campaigners are crowing that Cameron, who allegedly released a statement claiming he also stepped down from other charities as well, had buckled to pressure from their groups.
Cameron's resignation has meant that none of the top three UK political leaders are serving as patrons of the JNF at present
FP: Cameron’s notion of the unshakeable British support of Israel. Typical British.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Weekend Links
Stanley Kurtz: Pro-Palestinian-in-Chief
Richard Landes: Thank you, Edward Saïd: Wikileaks, Linkage, and the Appalling State of Western Understanding of the Arab World
Spengler:Israel as Middle Eastern hegemon
Mordechai Kedar: Home-Made Nakba
Sarah Honig: Israel's Self-Debasement by its Media, Current Government
Col. Richard Kemp speaks at the ‘We Believe in Israel’ Conference
Book Review: COURTING DISASTER: How the CIA Kept America Safe by Marc Thiessen
Barry Rubin: The Netanyahu-Abbas Exchange That Explains Why There's No Peace, Who's Responsible, and What Obama Doesn't Understand
Suleiman al-Khalidi: Witness: Shattered humanity inside Syria's security apparatus
Mordechai Kedar: Home-Made Nakba
Richard Landes: Thank you, Edward Saïd: Wikileaks, Linkage, and the Appalling State of Western Understanding of the Arab World
Spengler:Israel as Middle Eastern hegemon
Mordechai Kedar: Home-Made Nakba
Sarah Honig: Israel's Self-Debasement by its Media, Current Government
Col. Richard Kemp speaks at the ‘We Believe in Israel’ Conference
Book Review: COURTING DISASTER: How the CIA Kept America Safe by Marc Thiessen
Barry Rubin: The Netanyahu-Abbas Exchange That Explains Why There's No Peace, Who's Responsible, and What Obama Doesn't Understand
Suleiman al-Khalidi: Witness: Shattered humanity inside Syria's security apparatus
Mordechai Kedar: Home-Made Nakba
Comments on News 5/29 I
Arab League Goes for Broke, Officially Abandons ‘Talks’
The Arab League has snubbed U.S. President Barack Obama and officially abandoned the path of “negotiations” with Israel for creating a Palestinian Authority state and will ask the United Nations to do so. The 23-member League, which includes the Palestinian Authority, said on Saturday in Qatar that it backs PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' strategy for the United Nations to recognize the PA as a country based on its unilateral demands that it wants Israel to accept through “negotiations.” The League held out the option of not turning to the United Nations if Israel shows it is “ready” to accept a Palestinian Authority state based on the Saudi Initiative of 2002, which includes the immigration to Israel of several million Arabs living in foreign countries, which have refused to grant them citizenship.
FP: How are those engagement with the Muslim world and the Arab spring working for you, Mr. President?
Daniel Pipes: The Egypt-Israel "Peace" Treaty: Updates
Pew Global Attitudes opinion survey finds that 54 percent of Egyptians wish to annul the treaty with Israel and 36 percent wish to maintain it. Comment: Frankly, that's a higher number than I would have expected for keeping the status quo.
FP: I would not expect Egypt to annul the treaty in whole, but rather to slowly erode it,forcing Israel to tolerate each small incremental violation. This has already started with the opening of the Rafah cross, which is in violation of the treaty.
PowerLine: Unexpectedly!
Michael Barrone elaborates on Glenn Reynolds' theme: why is it that after two years, bad economic news is still "unexpected?"
…
Barone lays part of the blame, at least, on the fact that legacy media are cheerleading for the Obama administration:
I think that is correct. Nowadays, agenda-driven journalism is about the only kind we have.
…
Do you remember when Democrats accused Presidential candidate George W. Bush of "talking down the economy?" It was a silly charge then, and journalists' efforts to "talk up the economy" today are likely to be equally ineffective. Irrational exuberance is not as easy to generate as some journalists may have believed.
FP: Just like the agenda-driven journalism cannot accept that Obama has accelerated US international decline, it cannot accept that Obama accelerated US domestic decline.
IDF: Joseph's Tomb Shooting was Intentional
Palestinian Authority officers who opened fire on Jewish worshipers at Josephs' Tomb last month, killing one and wounding five, carried out the attack intentionally, IDF investigators told Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz on Sunday.
FP: The US should train more PA police.
Hamas Back to Normal, Attacks Western Negev with Missile
Hamas managed to hold its fire for a month before unleashing another missile attack on the western Negev Saturday night. No one was injured.
FP: The hope for peace that is the unity government.
Police preparing for wide-scale rioting in September
Danino says forces readying for possibility of civil struggle as Palestinians expected to unilaterally declare statehood; adds police facing "new reality" due to "calls on internet sites to violate Israel's sovereignty."
FP: The Palestinians received Tom Friedman’s memo, let’s see how nonviolent they’ll be.
The Arab League has snubbed U.S. President Barack Obama and officially abandoned the path of “negotiations” with Israel for creating a Palestinian Authority state and will ask the United Nations to do so. The 23-member League, which includes the Palestinian Authority, said on Saturday in Qatar that it backs PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' strategy for the United Nations to recognize the PA as a country based on its unilateral demands that it wants Israel to accept through “negotiations.” The League held out the option of not turning to the United Nations if Israel shows it is “ready” to accept a Palestinian Authority state based on the Saudi Initiative of 2002, which includes the immigration to Israel of several million Arabs living in foreign countries, which have refused to grant them citizenship.
FP: How are those engagement with the Muslim world and the Arab spring working for you, Mr. President?
Daniel Pipes: The Egypt-Israel "Peace" Treaty: Updates
Pew Global Attitudes opinion survey finds that 54 percent of Egyptians wish to annul the treaty with Israel and 36 percent wish to maintain it. Comment: Frankly, that's a higher number than I would have expected for keeping the status quo.
FP: I would not expect Egypt to annul the treaty in whole, but rather to slowly erode it,forcing Israel to tolerate each small incremental violation. This has already started with the opening of the Rafah cross, which is in violation of the treaty.
PowerLine: Unexpectedly!
Michael Barrone elaborates on Glenn Reynolds' theme: why is it that after two years, bad economic news is still "unexpected?"
…
Barone lays part of the blame, at least, on the fact that legacy media are cheerleading for the Obama administration:
It's obviously going to be hard to achieve the unacknowledged goal of many mainstream journalists -- the president's re-election -- if the economic slump continues. So they characterize economic setbacks as unexpected, with the implication that there's still every reason to believe that, in Herbert Hoover's phrase, prosperity is just around the corner.
I think that is correct. Nowadays, agenda-driven journalism is about the only kind we have.
…
Do you remember when Democrats accused Presidential candidate George W. Bush of "talking down the economy?" It was a silly charge then, and journalists' efforts to "talk up the economy" today are likely to be equally ineffective. Irrational exuberance is not as easy to generate as some journalists may have believed.
FP: Just like the agenda-driven journalism cannot accept that Obama has accelerated US international decline, it cannot accept that Obama accelerated US domestic decline.
IDF: Joseph's Tomb Shooting was Intentional
Palestinian Authority officers who opened fire on Jewish worshipers at Josephs' Tomb last month, killing one and wounding five, carried out the attack intentionally, IDF investigators told Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz on Sunday.
FP: The US should train more PA police.
Hamas Back to Normal, Attacks Western Negev with Missile
Hamas managed to hold its fire for a month before unleashing another missile attack on the western Negev Saturday night. No one was injured.
FP: The hope for peace that is the unity government.
Police preparing for wide-scale rioting in September
Danino says forces readying for possibility of civil struggle as Palestinians expected to unilaterally declare statehood; adds police facing "new reality" due to "calls on internet sites to violate Israel's sovereignty."
FP: The Palestinians received Tom Friedman’s memo, let’s see how nonviolent they’ll be.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Comments on Reads 5/28
Arab League panel to seek UN membership for 'Palestine'
During Doha meeting, League committee says it will request full membership for Palestinian state in Gaza and West Bank with e. Jerusalem as its capital; Abbas says he sees no hope for talks with Israel, firm on UN path.
FP: Take this, Obama! Ah, democracy in the Middle East. Let’s give them $12 billions.
Lawrence Solomon: Time is on Israel’s side (Part I)
‘We cannot afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades, to achieve peace,” President Barack Obama said Sunday, referring to the Arab-Israeli conflict. “The extraordinary challenges facing Israel would only grow. Delay will undermine Israel’s security and the peace that the Israeli people deserve.”
President Obama has it backwards. Time is very much on Israel’s side. In 10 years, the free world’s dependence on Israel’s enemies will likely have lessened immensely and the extraordinary challenges facing Israel will likely have diminished immensely. Peace will then have a chance.
Much of the world now sides with the Palestinians and not Israel. Some do so because they believe the United Nations was wrong to establish a Jewish state on what they viewed as Arab lands after the Second World War. Some do so out of sympathy for the millions of Palestinian refugees who remain homeless decades after Israel was established. Some believe Israel has treated Palestinians badly. Some sympathize with the underdog. Some simply are anti-Semitic.
And most, I submit, hold their views in good part because they are afraid. They believe the West must reach an accommodation with an often violent Islamic world. And they know that Islamic countries have an outsized influence over world energy markets and directly affect them whenever they fill their car up at the gas station.
FP: Solomon documents the historical circumstances that shifted the West from support of Israel to its anti-Israel stance. His account is correct as far as it goes, but he misses one major factor: even while it was publicly expressing admiration for and alliance with Israel it was funding UNRWA, contributing directly to the Arab strategy of exploiting its refugees as a long-term weapon against Israel. With that support the Arabs (which contributed almost nothing to UNRWA) were capable of keeping the refugees and their descendants in abhorrent conditions in the camps, without any rights. This, together with constant and systematic indoctrination of hatred against Israel is what ultimately made a success story out of the Arab strategy of delegitimizing Israel and sustaining sufficient hatred and hope for victory to prevent the Arabs from ending the conflict.
As to whether time is really on Israel’s side, I will comment on the Solomon next piece when it is published. For now I will say that the demise of the West (the fate of all dominant powers), argues against his thesis: native Europe and Russia are dying, muslim immigration into Europe, and so on. Incidentally, some of the growing challenges facing Israel that Obama claims to be concerned about are of his own doing.
U.S. Military, Citizen Disconnect Growing
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been making the rounds this spring with a message that echoes, in parts, the message our Jeff Shear recently presented in his recent three-part series on America’s era of persistent conflict. That message is that the professional American military — the all-volunteer force it’s been since 1969 — is less and less a cross-section of America as a whole.
As Shear phrased it, there’s been a “ghettoization” as fewer segments of the population and fewer geographic locations produce those volunteers. He quoted Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who said, “Warfare has become something for other people to do,” and, “With each passing decade fewer and fewer Americans know someone with military experience in their family or social circle.”
…
And there’s another fear, as expressed in Shear’s stories by Col. Lance Betros, who heads the history department at West Point: “The military is losing contact with the wider society. And those who make the decisions about military force really don’t have any skin in the fight. We’ve reached the point where you have to wonder how well policymakers understand the consequences of their actions when it comes to national deterrence.”
FP: Another sign of decline. Not sustainable.
David Ignatius: The whiff of revenge taints the Arab Spring
Sen. John Kerry had it right when he told a gathering of the trustees of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars last week that a vengeful legal assault on Mubarak would be an “enormous mistake.” The biggest cost, Kerry said, is that it would undermine the economic strategy of innovation, investment and entrepreneurship that was the overlooked centerpiece of President Obama’s big speech on the Middle East.
What’s needed in Egypt and the other Arab countries that have suffered from dictatorship is a sense that the rule of law will prevail, with safeguards against vindictive prosecution. This protective legal framework is as important as democracy itself, which as Alexander Hamilton and other American founders warned more than 200 years ago can be bent to become the tyrannical will of the mob.
Finding a post-revolutionary path to reconciliation is especially important in the Middle East, whose nations are mosaics of different religions, tribes and clans. Unless an inclusive spirit of “truth and reconciliation” can be nurtured, these countries will fracture into pre-modern loyalties, as happened in post-Hussein Iraq. …
For an example of how the blood feuds of the past can poison the present, one need look no further than the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Both sides are so embedded in their narratives that they can’t write the common document of a peace treaty. They could use a little truth and reconciliation, too.
FP: I wish there was a nicer way of putting it, but Ignatius, like many of his ilk (Zakaria, Friedman, Roger Cohen) are idiots. All Arab societies have been dictatorships precisely because otherwise there would not have been countries with law and order. All the expectations that removing the dictators would bring “Arab spring” were based on willful ignorance and wishful thinking: the law and order crumbled.
In the Israeli-Palestinian dispute only one side is embedded in its narrative and will not write a peace treaty—the side that has the same problems as Egypt, Syria and the rest: the Arab side.
Terrorist 'pre-crime' detector field tested in United States
Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned.
Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person's gaze, to judge a subject's state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.
…
According to a privacy-impact statement previously released by the DHS, tests of FAST involve instructing some people passing through the system to carry out a "disruptive act". Ormerod questions whether such role-playing is representative of real terrorists, and also worries that both passengers and screeners will react differently when they know they're being tested. "Fill the place with machines that go ping, and both screeners and passengers start doing things differently."
…
Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a think-tank based in Washington DC that promotes the use of science in policy-making, is pessimistic about the FAST tests. He thinks that they will produce a large proportion of false positives, frequently tagging innocent people as potential terrorists and making the system unworkable in a busy airport. "I believe that the premise of this approach — that there is an identifiable physiological signature uniquely associated with malicious intent — is mistaken. To my knowledge, it has not been demonstrated," he says. "Without it, the whole thing seems like a charade."
FP: The more America declines, the less free it will be.
During Doha meeting, League committee says it will request full membership for Palestinian state in Gaza and West Bank with e. Jerusalem as its capital; Abbas says he sees no hope for talks with Israel, firm on UN path.
FP: Take this, Obama! Ah, democracy in the Middle East. Let’s give them $12 billions.
Lawrence Solomon: Time is on Israel’s side (Part I)
‘We cannot afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades, to achieve peace,” President Barack Obama said Sunday, referring to the Arab-Israeli conflict. “The extraordinary challenges facing Israel would only grow. Delay will undermine Israel’s security and the peace that the Israeli people deserve.”
President Obama has it backwards. Time is very much on Israel’s side. In 10 years, the free world’s dependence on Israel’s enemies will likely have lessened immensely and the extraordinary challenges facing Israel will likely have diminished immensely. Peace will then have a chance.
Much of the world now sides with the Palestinians and not Israel. Some do so because they believe the United Nations was wrong to establish a Jewish state on what they viewed as Arab lands after the Second World War. Some do so out of sympathy for the millions of Palestinian refugees who remain homeless decades after Israel was established. Some believe Israel has treated Palestinians badly. Some sympathize with the underdog. Some simply are anti-Semitic.
And most, I submit, hold their views in good part because they are afraid. They believe the West must reach an accommodation with an often violent Islamic world. And they know that Islamic countries have an outsized influence over world energy markets and directly affect them whenever they fill their car up at the gas station.
FP: Solomon documents the historical circumstances that shifted the West from support of Israel to its anti-Israel stance. His account is correct as far as it goes, but he misses one major factor: even while it was publicly expressing admiration for and alliance with Israel it was funding UNRWA, contributing directly to the Arab strategy of exploiting its refugees as a long-term weapon against Israel. With that support the Arabs (which contributed almost nothing to UNRWA) were capable of keeping the refugees and their descendants in abhorrent conditions in the camps, without any rights. This, together with constant and systematic indoctrination of hatred against Israel is what ultimately made a success story out of the Arab strategy of delegitimizing Israel and sustaining sufficient hatred and hope for victory to prevent the Arabs from ending the conflict.
As to whether time is really on Israel’s side, I will comment on the Solomon next piece when it is published. For now I will say that the demise of the West (the fate of all dominant powers), argues against his thesis: native Europe and Russia are dying, muslim immigration into Europe, and so on. Incidentally, some of the growing challenges facing Israel that Obama claims to be concerned about are of his own doing.
U.S. Military, Citizen Disconnect Growing
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been making the rounds this spring with a message that echoes, in parts, the message our Jeff Shear recently presented in his recent three-part series on America’s era of persistent conflict. That message is that the professional American military — the all-volunteer force it’s been since 1969 — is less and less a cross-section of America as a whole.
As Shear phrased it, there’s been a “ghettoization” as fewer segments of the population and fewer geographic locations produce those volunteers. He quoted Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who said, “Warfare has become something for other people to do,” and, “With each passing decade fewer and fewer Americans know someone with military experience in their family or social circle.”
…
And there’s another fear, as expressed in Shear’s stories by Col. Lance Betros, who heads the history department at West Point: “The military is losing contact with the wider society. And those who make the decisions about military force really don’t have any skin in the fight. We’ve reached the point where you have to wonder how well policymakers understand the consequences of their actions when it comes to national deterrence.”
FP: Another sign of decline. Not sustainable.
David Ignatius: The whiff of revenge taints the Arab Spring
Sen. John Kerry had it right when he told a gathering of the trustees of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars last week that a vengeful legal assault on Mubarak would be an “enormous mistake.” The biggest cost, Kerry said, is that it would undermine the economic strategy of innovation, investment and entrepreneurship that was the overlooked centerpiece of President Obama’s big speech on the Middle East.
What’s needed in Egypt and the other Arab countries that have suffered from dictatorship is a sense that the rule of law will prevail, with safeguards against vindictive prosecution. This protective legal framework is as important as democracy itself, which as Alexander Hamilton and other American founders warned more than 200 years ago can be bent to become the tyrannical will of the mob.
Finding a post-revolutionary path to reconciliation is especially important in the Middle East, whose nations are mosaics of different religions, tribes and clans. Unless an inclusive spirit of “truth and reconciliation” can be nurtured, these countries will fracture into pre-modern loyalties, as happened in post-Hussein Iraq. …
For an example of how the blood feuds of the past can poison the present, one need look no further than the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Both sides are so embedded in their narratives that they can’t write the common document of a peace treaty. They could use a little truth and reconciliation, too.
FP: I wish there was a nicer way of putting it, but Ignatius, like many of his ilk (Zakaria, Friedman, Roger Cohen) are idiots. All Arab societies have been dictatorships precisely because otherwise there would not have been countries with law and order. All the expectations that removing the dictators would bring “Arab spring” were based on willful ignorance and wishful thinking: the law and order crumbled.
In the Israeli-Palestinian dispute only one side is embedded in its narrative and will not write a peace treaty—the side that has the same problems as Egypt, Syria and the rest: the Arab side.
Terrorist 'pre-crime' detector field tested in United States
Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned.
Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person's gaze, to judge a subject's state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.
…
According to a privacy-impact statement previously released by the DHS, tests of FAST involve instructing some people passing through the system to carry out a "disruptive act". Ormerod questions whether such role-playing is representative of real terrorists, and also worries that both passengers and screeners will react differently when they know they're being tested. "Fill the place with machines that go ping, and both screeners and passengers start doing things differently."
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Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a think-tank based in Washington DC that promotes the use of science in policy-making, is pessimistic about the FAST tests. He thinks that they will produce a large proportion of false positives, frequently tagging innocent people as potential terrorists and making the system unworkable in a busy airport. "I believe that the premise of this approach — that there is an identifiable physiological signature uniquely associated with malicious intent — is mistaken. To my knowledge, it has not been demonstrated," he says. "Without it, the whole thing seems like a charade."
FP: The more America declines, the less free it will be.
Herb Keinon on Obama-Netanyahu Decisions (UPDATES)
Herb Keinon (Diplomacy: Netanyahu and ‘The Book of Why’) gives an excellent explanation of what led Obama and Netanyahu to decide how to handle each other which is worth reading in whole. Here are my brief comments.
One important flaw is his failure to realize that no Palestinian leader has the will or the power to make peace because the Palestinian public does not want him to!! In other words, like the Europeans, he is in willful denial of the core of the conflict: the objective of the vast majority of the Palestinian public (not to mention the Arab states) to dismantle Israel. Therefore, all Obama’s efforts to give Abbas the power are in vain. What they do, essentially, is to harden his position: if Obama forces the 1967 borders without rejecting the right of return and the Hamas-Fatah unity government, why should Abbas compromise on these issues when he knows that this public won’t accept it?
The other flaw is Obama’s failure to understand the Israeli recognition (net of leftist useful idiots), since Oslo, of the Arab “phases plan”. By constantly pressing Netanyahu for concessions Obama is triggering the survival instinct of the Israelis, their security concerns, and their distrust of US as an ally.
In other words, he is doing the exact opposite to what he should be doing to bring peace closer.With predictable consequences.
Had the West comprehended the reality and its interests and had it still been committed to defending its core values, it would have withheld resources from the Middle East and the Arab culture and 7th century Islam would have taken care of the rest. But while experience of waning colonial powers in creating failed states in the Middle East should have given the West pause in creating yet another one and stop the delusion that money can lead to democracy, it has just decided to pump 12 billions into the Middle East likely to become Islamist and will probably recognize the non-viable, corrupt and terrorist state of Palestine.
UPDATE: Elliott Abrams (The Third Man) adds the calculus of Abbas to the mix and argues that Obama's failures have caused Abbas to dump the US and move to unity with Hamas and UN statehood, leaving Obama incoherent. Must read.
UPDATE II: David Frum (Obama Falls for Abbas’ Bluff) reminds us that US has the leverage on Abbas, but Obama behaves as if it's the other way around. And, of course, that's because Obama acts ideologically rather than per US interests.
According to one senior diplomatic source, the White House views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the following prism: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has the will to make peace, but not the power; Netanyahu has the power, but not the will.This validates, of course, Obama’s uninformed, ideological pro-Palestinian perception of the conflict.
The presidential tactics, therefore, are informed by that overall assumption. How to give Abbas the power, and Netanyahu the will.
Well, one way to give Abbas the power is not to undercut him in the eyes of his public – which an unequivocal “no” to the refugee issue would have done. Another way is not to completely rule out Hamas, especially when the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation is so popular on the Palestinian street.
A third way to give Abbas power is to raise his stature among his people – something that is done by adopting a position he has put forward for months: a return to the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed swaps, as the basis for negotiations.
And how, if you are Obama, do you give Netanyahu the will to make peace? Show him where the US stands; box him into a corner, force his hand.
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Netanyahu went to the US wanting to stand up to the president – feeling that following the pictures last Sunday of hundreds of Palestinians rushing the country’s northern borders, there would be huge public backing for saying clearly to the president that Israel could not return to the 1967 lines or tolerate any wishy-washy language on Hamas or the refugee issue.
Obama, the aide said, simply does not understand the Israeli psyche, and his failure to address the refugees – saying this would be dealt with later – just a few days after refugees rushed the Israeli borders, showed the degree to which he is tone deaf to the Israeli public.
One important flaw is his failure to realize that no Palestinian leader has the will or the power to make peace because the Palestinian public does not want him to!! In other words, like the Europeans, he is in willful denial of the core of the conflict: the objective of the vast majority of the Palestinian public (not to mention the Arab states) to dismantle Israel. Therefore, all Obama’s efforts to give Abbas the power are in vain. What they do, essentially, is to harden his position: if Obama forces the 1967 borders without rejecting the right of return and the Hamas-Fatah unity government, why should Abbas compromise on these issues when he knows that this public won’t accept it?
The other flaw is Obama’s failure to understand the Israeli recognition (net of leftist useful idiots), since Oslo, of the Arab “phases plan”. By constantly pressing Netanyahu for concessions Obama is triggering the survival instinct of the Israelis, their security concerns, and their distrust of US as an ally.
In other words, he is doing the exact opposite to what he should be doing to bring peace closer.With predictable consequences.
…A pattern is emerging: Deliver a speech to the world that is difficult to Israeli ears in one forum, and follow up with a speech geared toward American Jews in another, seemingly designed to reduce the fallout.Obama is exploiting here a disadvantage of Israel: the American Jews’ overwhelming liberalism, Democratic vote and, sadly, their failure to learn from their history, culminating in the Holocaust. Even though it has not reached the scope in Europe, there is an unmistakable increase in anti-semitism and anti-Zionism in the US, one that would have been unimaginable 10-15 years ago. Jews tend to respond to such by trying to prove themselves “good Jews”, more patriotic than everybody else, not like those bad Israelis. Unlike Israelis (1) they and particularly their elite are intimidated by accusations of "control" and "blind support of Israel against American interests", and (2) are more likely to fall for nice speeches even when actions defy them. Hence Obama’s one-two approach.
While Obama’s visit to Buchenwald in 2009 resonated with American Jews who were touched by the symbolism of an American president visiting the concentration camp, it did not strike any chord with Israelis.
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Obama, for all his bluster during the speech about not taking the easy path and avoiding controversy, knows that he is going to need Jewish support in the next elections: both financial support and the votes. He also knows that with his Israel policy, he risks losing a few percentage points of the 78% of the Jewish vote he garnered in 2008, and that those percentage points, in key battleground states like Florida and Ohio, could be critical in a close presidential race.
Although these points are significant, they don’t give the speech its importance. That comes from the reception the address received. That Israel’s prime minister received a rock-star ovation from both sides of the aisle of both houses of Congress sends an important message of support to both friend and foe alike. Netanyahu knows this, and he knew it before walking into the House chamber. He knew the symbolic value of a speech by a foreign leader to a joint meeting of Congress, something that only happens about four times a year. He knew that he had the rhetorical abilities to get the congressmen on their feet repeatedly.I would urge all who are pro-Israel to resist the temptation of being overly impressed with and reliant on the Congressional response to a speech, particularly in a pre-election period. The US Congress has become an extremely flawed version of what it was in preceding times. It is riddled with incompetence and corruption and is quite flaky. The US is in steep decline and is not used to and does not know how to handle demise. So even if the Congressional support of Israel is genuine and will persist, it is not clear how exactly it will materialize in practice in a Middle East in which the Islamists are the strong horse. Indeed, that Obama has been able to do so much damage in the presence of such strong domestic support for Israel does not bode well.
Had the West comprehended the reality and its interests and had it still been committed to defending its core values, it would have withheld resources from the Middle East and the Arab culture and 7th century Islam would have taken care of the rest. But while experience of waning colonial powers in creating failed states in the Middle East should have given the West pause in creating yet another one and stop the delusion that money can lead to democracy, it has just decided to pump 12 billions into the Middle East likely to become Islamist and will probably recognize the non-viable, corrupt and terrorist state of Palestine.
UPDATE: Elliott Abrams (The Third Man) adds the calculus of Abbas to the mix and argues that Obama's failures have caused Abbas to dump the US and move to unity with Hamas and UN statehood, leaving Obama incoherent. Must read.
UPDATE II: David Frum (Obama Falls for Abbas’ Bluff) reminds us that US has the leverage on Abbas, but Obama behaves as if it's the other way around. And, of course, that's because Obama acts ideologically rather than per US interests.
Lee Smith & Martin Kramer on PostWest Middle East
Lee Smith with Martin Kramer are now trying to envision the shape of what I have argued for years—the PostWest world—particularly in the Middle East. Those in the West who did not like American dominance, now including Obama, let’s see how much they’ll like the Islamist dominance, be it Iran’s Shia or Saudi Sunni. I’m afraid the West will get what it deserves.
A Coming Arab Winter?
The Fatah-Hamas deal may presage a new Iranian approach to the Middle East
A Coming Arab Winter?
The Fatah-Hamas deal may presage a new Iranian approach to the Middle East
The fact that an Israeli leader makes the case for American exceptionalism and U.S. power better than Barack Obama is a signal that Washington has forsaken its traditional role in the Middle East at a dangerous time.Read it all.
Netanyahu was only the first to state the obvious in public, but other U.S. allies, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, convinced that the Americans are living in a fantasy world, are also starting to strike out on their own. If no one knows yet what new architectures and anatomies the Arab Spring will engender, putative U.S. allies and genuine adversaries, states, and even non-state actors like the Muslim Brotherhood are scrambling for position.
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“If Obama says the status quo is unsustainable,” says Martin Kramer of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “and won’t do anything to sustain it, then Washington, like Iran, is an anti-status quo power. Others have to take it upon themselves to defend the status quo.”
Because Riyadh no longer trusts the Americans to take on Iran, a Saudi initiative led by Prince Bandar, the Wall Street Journal reports, is putting together a large alliance, including Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Central Asian states, to stand against the Islamic Republic. In the Arabic-speaking states, there’s also a proposed expansion of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council to include one North African nation, Morocco, and another from the Levant, Jordan (which would gather all of the region’s hereditary rulers—sheikhs and kings and sultans and emirs—under one umbrella). The Arab press is awash with rumors that the GCC’s leading member, Saudi Arabia, has promised Rabat and Amman large influxes of cash so long as they resist Washington’s entreaties to reform—reform that, in the Saudi view, would pave the way for their own demise and eventually the fall of the House of Saud.
In any case, this onetime regional organization has now become a de facto alliance of pro-U.S. states that no longer believes it can count on the Americans to advance their interests. The major Sunni Arab players outside the enlarged GCC would be Fatah, now reconciled with Hamas, and Egypt, formerly the central pillar of Washington’s Middle East policy, and now after thirty years once again up for grab
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The Iranians want to protect their investment in Syria, but at some point Tehran may come to feel that the Alawite regime’s sectarian cleansing of Sunnis is bad for business. The Obama administration has believed, not incorrectly, that turmoil in Syria might prove a setback to the Iranians—but that could happen only if Washington actually moved to tilt the regional balance against Assad. By passively observing the situation unfolding in Syria, the White House has given Tehran time to consider its options. Presumably, Tehran is watching the new Palestinian concord with great interest, and may be learning from its client there, Hamas.
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Washington is starting to realize that one of the values of the late Mubarak regime was its implacable hatred of Hamas. Cairo’s present rulers, however, can no longer afford such an ideological luxury; the Egyptians need to raise money quickly or they will starve. The way to do that is by presenting themselves as the antithesis of Mubarak’s stable, or static, Egypt, an Egypt that may well spin out of the American orbit—unless Washington antes up. The concern is not that Egypt will jump sides entirely and join the resistance bloc, but rather make trouble by flirting with Iran, like with its decision to end the blockade of Gaza.
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“The key to winning the Middle East is in stringing together unnatural allies,” says Kramer. “The American circle was a coalition of unnatural allies, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states. Everyone knew the U.S. was strong, so they were prepared to put up with quite a bit, even though they didn’t like the company. The circle started to come undone when Turkey and Israel had their problems, but now Egypt and Saudi Arabia are starting to move.”
Iran can profit from the upheavals, according to Kramer, “by building linkage with the Muslim Brotherhood.” In other words, with Syria’s problems and the possible fallout for Hezbollah, Tehran would supplement or substitute its Shia crescent with a Muslim Brotherhood crescent—a coalition stretching from Turkey’s AKP to Hamas and Egypt’s newly empowered Islamists.
“The fewer Shia there are in the immediate surroundings, and there are virtually none in Egypt and the Palestinian territories, the easier that is to do,” says Kramer. “The Muslim Brotherhood has their usual reservations about Shia, but they’re not anti-Shia like al Qaeda. The landscape of the Middle East is too broken for coalitions to have only the like-minded. If Saudi Arabia and Israel could be in the American circle, the Brotherhood could be in the Iranian crescent. The Iranians and the Muslim Brotherhood both have an interest in reconstituting an arc of resistance.”
Given the Obama administration’s ambiguous statements regarding the Muslim Brotherhood and other regional Islamist movements, it seems Washington is preparing for the likelihood of a region entirely remade in the image of political Islam, its Shia as well as its Sunni versions. Whether the White House is prepared to do anything to protect American interests and allies against a political current that is anti-American at its core is another question. Netanyahu’s speeches, Saudi diplomacy, and Egyptian brinksmanship are evidence that traditional U.S. allies do not believe Obama is up to the task.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Comments on Reads 5/27 III
JOSHUAPUNDIT: Dennis Ross Bends All The Way Over For Obama
Don't get me wrong. I understand we all have our bills to pay and that senior White Adviser on the Middle East Dennis Ross keeping his job depends on shilling for President Obama and his execrable policies towards Israel. But how far do you bend over?
Ross' gig right now involves heavy damage control, and can you believe what his line is to American Jewish leaders and opinion makers? That President Obama's policies are 'good for Israel' because the Europeans love it!
FP: Do you remember that has recently been “outed” by the NYT as an obstacle to Obama’s anti-Israel policies? Well, these are the consequences: Ross rushes to prove he’s a team player. He’s smart enough to realize the post-election hostility, which is probably why he’s striving to protect himself. The concept of people resigning when the job is becoming ridiculous has disappeared a long time ago.
Elder of Ziyon:>
Egypt strips citizenship from Coptic Christian man. "According to the lawyer handling the case against him, Sadek is guilty of insulting Islam, supporting Judaism and “calling for the killing of Arabs.” Additionally, the Egyptian court is upset over his call for the United States and Israel to get involved in the nation’s internal affairs.
FP: Arab spring: freedom and democracy. Let’s give them 12 billion.
Israel Matzav: Davutoglu's new demand
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has issued a new demand if Israel wants to 'avoid' a new flotilla to Gaza:Accept the Hamas - Fatah reconciliation.
FP: Let’s make them a member of EU.
Don't get me wrong. I understand we all have our bills to pay and that senior White Adviser on the Middle East Dennis Ross keeping his job depends on shilling for President Obama and his execrable policies towards Israel. But how far do you bend over?
Ross' gig right now involves heavy damage control, and can you believe what his line is to American Jewish leaders and opinion makers? That President Obama's policies are 'good for Israel' because the Europeans love it!
“It gives us an ability with the Europeans to say this is not the right way to go. You should be opposing any effort to go to the UN.”
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Can he actually believe that the Brits, who are almost reflexively anti-Israel and the French, with hundreds of thousands of restive Muslims living among them are going to be swayed by that kind of nonsense? That an oil and trade hungry Europe is going to go against the Muslim bloc in the UN when in fact they rarely have in decades?
Anyone even thinking of buying what self loathing and self serving Jews like Dennis Ross have to sell should ask themselves a question: if President Obama is this hostile towards Israel now, can you imagine how hostile he'll be if he happens to get re-elected? The image of the Judas Goat comes to mind. It just remains to be seen how many sheep follow people like Ross into the slaughterhouse.
Can he actually believe that the Brits, who are almost reflexively anti-Israel and the French, with hundreds of thousands of restive Muslims living among them are going to be swayed by that kind of nonsense? That an oil and trade hungry Europe is going to go against the Muslim bloc in the UN when in fact they rarely have in decades?
Anyone even thinking of buying what self loathing and self serving Jews like Dennis Ross have to sell should ask themselves a question: if President Obama is this hostile towards Israel now, can you imagine how hostile he'll be if he happens to get re-elected? The image of the Judas Goat comes to mind. It just remains to be seen how many sheep follow people like Ross into the slaughterhouse.
FP: Do you remember that has recently been “outed” by the NYT as an obstacle to Obama’s anti-Israel policies? Well, these are the consequences: Ross rushes to prove he’s a team player. He’s smart enough to realize the post-election hostility, which is probably why he’s striving to protect himself. The concept of people resigning when the job is becoming ridiculous has disappeared a long time ago.
Elder of Ziyon:>
Egypt strips citizenship from Coptic Christian man. "According to the lawyer handling the case against him, Sadek is guilty of insulting Islam, supporting Judaism and “calling for the killing of Arabs.” Additionally, the Egyptian court is upset over his call for the United States and Israel to get involved in the nation’s internal affairs.
FP: Arab spring: freedom and democracy. Let’s give them 12 billion.
Israel Matzav: Davutoglu's new demand
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has issued a new demand if Israel wants to 'avoid' a new flotilla to Gaza:Accept the Hamas - Fatah reconciliation.
In televised remarks on Thursday night, Davutoğlu said Israel should also lift the blockade of Gaza. “If Israel does not want new aid convoys, it should recognize the new Palestinian administration and lift the blockade of Gaza. Then there will be no grounds for new aid convoys to Gaza,” he told private Ülke TV. “But instead of doing this Israel refuses to recognize the reconciliation deal in Palestine and insists on keeping Gaza under embargo.”
Davutoğlu's remarks came as organizers of an international flotilla prepare to send a new convoy of aid ships to Gaza in June. Last year, Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish ship in a similar flotilla, killing eight Turks and one Turkish American on May 31.
Asked how Turkey would react if a similar tragedy repeats this year, Davutoğlu said the government was assessing every possibility, including the worst-case scenario. “We hope there will be no such situation. We think Israel has enough experience not to repeat a mistake like that,” he said.
FP: Let’s make them a member of EU.
Comments on News 5/27 II
If you want a picture of how atrocious the PostWest looks, here it is (Canada’s Harper refuses to join):
Clinton exonerates Pakistan over Osama Bin Laden
G8 summit to pledge £12bn for Arab spring states
Instead of saving itself from bankruptcy, the West is saving emerging Islamist regimes from their bankruptcy so that they can live another day and Jihad the West. Islam would have gone nowhere without the West.
On Israel, Harper stands alone at G8 summit
And here’s more evidence for Kurtz’s claim of Obama’s stealth objectives and Glick’s claim of his “subversive model of politics:
Mideast Quartet envoy Tony Blair: Obama anxious about Israel's fate
If you believe that—as obviously Haaretz does – I have a bridge in Brooklyn and a tower in Paris to sell you.
And by the way, consider the following:
Israel hopes EU will back other parts of Obama vision
Shaath: Unity Makes Liberation of Palestine Possible
Apparently Sarkozy’s notion of peace is the “liberation of Palestine”.
Clinton exonerates Pakistan over Osama Bin Laden
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said there is no evidence senior people in Pakistan knew that Osama Bin Laden lived so close to Islamabad.
G8 summit to pledge £12bn for Arab spring states
Aid being compiled in Deauville aims to foster democracy and economic growth in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia.
Instead of saving itself from bankruptcy, the West is saving emerging Islamist regimes from their bankruptcy so that they can live another day and Jihad the West. Islam would have gone nowhere without the West.
On Israel, Harper stands alone at G8 summit
And here’s more evidence for Kurtz’s claim of Obama’s stealth objectives and Glick’s claim of his “subversive model of politics:
Mideast Quartet envoy Tony Blair: Obama anxious about Israel's fate
Former U.K. prime minister says Obama offered new Mideast peace initiative since he sees the current situation as 'particularly dangerous' ahead of a Palestinian state vote in September.
If you believe that—as obviously Haaretz does – I have a bridge in Brooklyn and a tower in Paris to sell you.
And by the way, consider the following:
Israel hopes EU will back other parts of Obama vision
Elements of AIPAC speech left not unsupported by Europe; Sarkozy at G8 summit says Hamas-Fatah unity "a good sign for peace."
Shaath: Unity Makes Liberation of Palestine Possible
Fatah Central Committee member and PA negotiator Dr. Nabil Shaath said Thursday the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement was essential to the "liberation of Palestine," the PA-run Maan News Agency reports.
Apparently Sarkozy’s notion of peace is the “liberation of Palestine”.
Comments on Reads 5/27 I
Caroline Glick: Lessons of Netanyahu's Triumph
It seems that everywhere we look we are told that we have no right to exist. From Ramallah to Gaza, to Egypt, to Scotland, Norway, and San Francisco, we are told that we are evil and had better give up the store. And then Obama took to the stage on Thursday and told us that we have to surrender our ability to defend ourselves in order to make room for a Palestinian state run by terrorists committed to our destruction.
But then Netanyahu arrived in Washington and said, "Enough already.We've had quite enough of this dangerous nonsense."
Since he assumed office, Obama has been traveling the world apologizing for America's world leadership. He has been lecturing the American people about the need to subordinate America's national interests to global organizations like the United Nations that are controlled by dictatorships which despise them.
Suddenly, here was an allied leader reminding them of why America is a great nation that leads the world by right, not by historical coincidence.
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Obama's leadership model is the model of subversive leadership. Subversive leaders in democracies do not tell their citizens where they wish to lead their societies. They hide their goals from their citizens, because they understand that their citizens do not share their goals. Then once they achieve their unspoken goals, they present their people with a fait accompli and announce that only they are competent to shepherd their societies through the radical shift they undertook behind the public's back.
Before Obama, the clearest example of subversive leadership was Shimon Peres. As foreign minister under Yitzhak Rabin, Peres negotiated his deal with the PLO behind the public's back, and behind Rabin's back - and against their clear opposition. Then he presented the deal that no one supported as a fait accompli.
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Today, Obama recognizes that the American public doesn't share his antipathy towards Israel. So as he adopts policies antithetical to Israel's security, he waxes poetic about his commitment to Israel's security. So far his policies have led to the near disintegration of Israel's peace with Egypt, the establishment of a Fatah-Hamas unity government in the Palestinian Authority, and to Iran's steady, all but unimpeded progress towards the atom bomb.
FP: In his book RADICAL IN CHIEF, which I strongly recommended earlier, Stanley Kurtz explains the Obama background which gave rise to exactly what Glick calls his “subversive model”: the US socialist movement in which Obama developed his political ideology had to adopt stealthy objectives, because they are anathema to American values. This is why Obama is so dangerous both domestically and internationally and should not be trusted. We can already see today the adverse consequences of his policies, whose objectives were never announced as such. As to Peres, see next
Peres holds Secret Meeting with Abbas
President Shimon Peres held a clandestine meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas recently in London, Maariv reported Friday. According to the report, the two continue to exchange telephone calls and messages, and their close associates have held discussions as well.
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Following his alleged meeting with Abbas, Peres proceeded to the United States, where he held a one-on-one meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama. Sources in both Israel and America have suggested that Obama's recent Middle East policy speech included ideas heard from Peres in that meeting.
Obama's mention of the “1967 lines” echoed statements made by Peres on Independence Day. Peres expressed support for the “1967 territory” and suggested that Israelis living in Judea and Samaria “return home” to pre-67 Israel.
It remains unclear if Peres met with Abbas independently, or with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's approval. While Israel's president normally serves a mainly ceremonial task, Peres has continued his involvement in foreign policy as president and has made statements reflecting his own views and not those of the Likud-led government.
FP: I have already labeled Peres the Jimmy Carter of Israel: the old idiot, who is not only responsible for the catastrophe that is Oslo, but also walked on the beach hand in hand with Arafat, just won’t go away and keeps interfering and subverting consistent with career record, for which reason he was never elected to anything and he was hated by all politicians. He was finally elected president only in a second run and because the public took pity on him. Now it looks like the Oslo failure was not enough, he is responsible for tilting Obama to the 1967 lines. If true, he should be impeached.
Phyllis Chesler: NYT’s Tom Friedman Wants to Bring Tahrir Square to Jerusalem
First, Friedman calls for a “Tahrir Square alternative” in terms of the 'Israel-Palestine'” impasse. Tahrir Square? Did the man sleep through journalist Lara Logan’s gang rape there? Does he view such a mob as “peaceful” or “non-violent?” Does he not understand that the young Egyptian Wael Gonim has, perhaps unintentionally, paved the way for the far more organized Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists to assume power? Does Friedman actually believe that the Islamist factions at war with each other and with their overlords, chieftains, and dictators, are all engaged in “non-violent” social change?
Friedman does not focus on Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi or Bahrain’s King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa —all of whom have been shooting down their own people in cold blood in the streets. He does not call for people of good will to “nonviolently” go and face these evil men down. No.
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Why doesn’t Friedman call for Western supporters of the Arab Spring to swarm over Syria’s or Libya’s borders holding signs calling for Assad’s and Qaddafi’s ouster? Thomas Friedman and Hosni Mubarak both came to power in 1981 (Friedman joined the Times that year).
What is Friedman really doing? Like Tony Kushner and many other Jews, Friedman also wants to be ahead of the curve when they come for the Jews. He wants to be the Jew who is spared because he is known for having condemned “Israeli apartheid” and the “Jewish apartheid state.” The burden of defending Israel merely by telling the truth is simply too much for the Friedmans and the Kushners to bear.
They refuse to condemn real apartheid—as it is practiced among Muslims and in Arab lands. It is far safer to condemn the Jewish State and to call for activists to “nonviolently” march against it. These marchers can be certain that Jewish soldiers will not shoot them down like dogs. They can be sure that the world and the wind will be at their backs. Were they to surge into Syria or Libya, they would be dead.
This way, they hope to avoid being beheaded, and in fact, decorated as heroes. They are not self-hating Jews. They are rank opportunists, mere conformists, extreme cowards.
FP: Phyllis has answered her own question. Until now Friedman was just an idiot. Now he has chosen to be a kapo of his own free will. Too bad Palestinians cannot march towards Friedman’s palace and demonstrate their non-violence to him.
Michael Young: Liberation, except if you’re Syrian
He remarked that when Netanyahu, in his speech before the US Congress this week, raised the issue of the rockets in Lebanon and Gaza, there “was fear in his eyes.” Perhaps there was, but I also see quite a lot of fear in Nasrallah’s eyes these days as the situation in the Middle East goes through radical transformation. And there are primarily three reasons for this.
First, as hard as Nasrallah tries, he just cannot seem to convince Arabs anymore that “resistance” must be given priority over most other aspects of their lives. In Egypt, Tunisia and Syria, people have talked about emancipation, democracy and liberty, with the targets of their opprobrium almost exclusively domestic. Protestors may dislike America and Israel, but for now their aim is to rewrite failed social contracts, impose states that reflect their needs, and be rid of leaders and their families who have suffocated and robbed them for decades.
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Nasrallah’s second cause of fear is that he’s on the wrong side of the revolt in Syria. Hezbollah, which has always claimed to be the champion of the downtrodden, is defending a leadership crushing its own people. Nasrallah is covering for the soldiers, security officers and gang members who have fired live ammunition at unarmed civilians, killing an estimated 1,100 people in the last two months. He is covering for the unit in Daraa that placed a prisoner under a tank tread before running him over twice, tearing him to shreds.
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A third headache for Nasrallah is that he now finds himself at the epicenter of a sectarian confrontation in the Middle East. For a long time Hezbollah managed to transcend Sunni-Shia differences thanks to its accomplishments on an issue that most Arabs sympathize with, namely the battle against Israel. But much has changed since then. To a great extent Iran’s Arab enemies have made headway in portraying the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah as pursuing a project of Shia hegemony, regardless of the merits of such an accusation.
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Hassan Nasrallah is behind the curve on what is going on around us in the Middle East. The Hezbollah leader is employing both rhetoric and imagery that are anachronistic in these transformative times. The future, we hope, will bring a promise of free societies, the reflexes of compromise and greater pluralism. If that fails, as it may, Nasrallah will have saved himself; but at the expense of many innocents.
FP: Perhaps, but there is one thing in the Arab world that current developments did not and will not change: hatred of Jews and Israel. And as the new regimes fail to cope with the huge economic and social problems and the high expectations turn to frustration, the instinct is to turn to violence and against Israel, as we have seen in Egypt. Iran and Hizb’allah may well be able to use the opportunity to start something and drag Arabs into it—they are more dangerous when they feel insecure.
George Jonas: Obama doesn’t get the arithmetic of the Israel-Palestine situation
The Middle East continues to be the Middle East, and the West continues to be the West.
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Just how much of a charade is illustrated by one-time Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky’s anecdote about an earlier round of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations at Wye River in which he participated as an Israeli delegate. Apparently a moment came when Sharansky and his colleagues managed to extract a promise from Arafat to delete from the Palestinian Charter the sections calling for the destruction of Israel. “Upon leaving the conference room,” Sharansky recalled in a nostalgia-piece he wrote for Ha’Aretz newspaper some years ago, “we saw one of the closest advisors of president Bill Clinton and proudly told him about our achievement. ‘Are you out of your minds?’ he shouted. ‘[Arafat] is going to be killed because of that. He is too weak for dramatic steps like that. First, he has to be strengthened!’”
This sums up the sham peace initiatives of the last 20 years. Arafat probably had no intention of excising any section calling for Israel’s destruction from the Palestinian Charter. He had made half-hearted promises to do so long before Wye River and nothing came of them. He knew that understanding souls in the U.S. State Department would exempt him from having to go out on any such limb until he was suitably “strengthened.” But — and here’s the point — in the unlikely event that Arafat had actually made an attempt to remove the clause, he might well have been killed, just like Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.
A con artist of some accomplishment, Arafat was prepared to accept down payments from Sharansky and colleagues on the Brooklyn Bridge: A package called “peace” that he had no intention of delivering, and that wasn’t his to deliver anyway. Arafat had no title to peace — and Israel’s current negotiating partner, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud “Abu Mazen” Abbas, has even less.
A lot of water had flown down Wye River since the last round of negotiations, and things have changed “not necessarily to Israel’s advantage” (to paraphrase the immortal words of the Japanese Emperor after Hiroshima and Nagasaki). At Wye River, Hamas was an outlaw; now it’s Abbas’ in-law. Then, the U.S. President was Israel’s ally; now it’s Barack Obama.
The President’s suggestion that the two-state solution be based on Israel’s 1967 borders made Israel’s Prime Minister lose his cool. Having turned “Bibi” Netanyahu into “Booboo” Netanyahu, Obama addressed AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) to suggest that he never suggested what he suggested. This caused AIPAC director Howard Kohr to suggest this week that “If Israel’s foes come to believe that there is diplomatic daylight between the United States and Israel, they will have every incentive to try to exploit those differences and shun peace with the Jewish state.” Right. And closing the barn door after the horse has bolted beats never closing it, I guess.
FP: Quite right. The West’s enemies have cunning, which the West lacks, and will be much more effective to exploit Western differences than the West exploiting Arab differences.
It seems that everywhere we look we are told that we have no right to exist. From Ramallah to Gaza, to Egypt, to Scotland, Norway, and San Francisco, we are told that we are evil and had better give up the store. And then Obama took to the stage on Thursday and told us that we have to surrender our ability to defend ourselves in order to make room for a Palestinian state run by terrorists committed to our destruction.
But then Netanyahu arrived in Washington and said, "Enough already.We've had quite enough of this dangerous nonsense."
Since he assumed office, Obama has been traveling the world apologizing for America's world leadership. He has been lecturing the American people about the need to subordinate America's national interests to global organizations like the United Nations that are controlled by dictatorships which despise them.
Suddenly, here was an allied leader reminding them of why America is a great nation that leads the world by right, not by historical coincidence.
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Obama's leadership model is the model of subversive leadership. Subversive leaders in democracies do not tell their citizens where they wish to lead their societies. They hide their goals from their citizens, because they understand that their citizens do not share their goals. Then once they achieve their unspoken goals, they present their people with a fait accompli and announce that only they are competent to shepherd their societies through the radical shift they undertook behind the public's back.
Before Obama, the clearest example of subversive leadership was Shimon Peres. As foreign minister under Yitzhak Rabin, Peres negotiated his deal with the PLO behind the public's back, and behind Rabin's back - and against their clear opposition. Then he presented the deal that no one supported as a fait accompli.
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Today, Obama recognizes that the American public doesn't share his antipathy towards Israel. So as he adopts policies antithetical to Israel's security, he waxes poetic about his commitment to Israel's security. So far his policies have led to the near disintegration of Israel's peace with Egypt, the establishment of a Fatah-Hamas unity government in the Palestinian Authority, and to Iran's steady, all but unimpeded progress towards the atom bomb.
FP: In his book RADICAL IN CHIEF, which I strongly recommended earlier, Stanley Kurtz explains the Obama background which gave rise to exactly what Glick calls his “subversive model”: the US socialist movement in which Obama developed his political ideology had to adopt stealthy objectives, because they are anathema to American values. This is why Obama is so dangerous both domestically and internationally and should not be trusted. We can already see today the adverse consequences of his policies, whose objectives were never announced as such. As to Peres, see next
Peres holds Secret Meeting with Abbas
President Shimon Peres held a clandestine meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas recently in London, Maariv reported Friday. According to the report, the two continue to exchange telephone calls and messages, and their close associates have held discussions as well.
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Following his alleged meeting with Abbas, Peres proceeded to the United States, where he held a one-on-one meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama. Sources in both Israel and America have suggested that Obama's recent Middle East policy speech included ideas heard from Peres in that meeting.
Obama's mention of the “1967 lines” echoed statements made by Peres on Independence Day. Peres expressed support for the “1967 territory” and suggested that Israelis living in Judea and Samaria “return home” to pre-67 Israel.
It remains unclear if Peres met with Abbas independently, or with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's approval. While Israel's president normally serves a mainly ceremonial task, Peres has continued his involvement in foreign policy as president and has made statements reflecting his own views and not those of the Likud-led government.
FP: I have already labeled Peres the Jimmy Carter of Israel: the old idiot, who is not only responsible for the catastrophe that is Oslo, but also walked on the beach hand in hand with Arafat, just won’t go away and keeps interfering and subverting consistent with career record, for which reason he was never elected to anything and he was hated by all politicians. He was finally elected president only in a second run and because the public took pity on him. Now it looks like the Oslo failure was not enough, he is responsible for tilting Obama to the 1967 lines. If true, he should be impeached.
Phyllis Chesler: NYT’s Tom Friedman Wants to Bring Tahrir Square to Jerusalem
First, Friedman calls for a “Tahrir Square alternative” in terms of the 'Israel-Palestine'” impasse. Tahrir Square? Did the man sleep through journalist Lara Logan’s gang rape there? Does he view such a mob as “peaceful” or “non-violent?” Does he not understand that the young Egyptian Wael Gonim has, perhaps unintentionally, paved the way for the far more organized Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists to assume power? Does Friedman actually believe that the Islamist factions at war with each other and with their overlords, chieftains, and dictators, are all engaged in “non-violent” social change?
Friedman does not focus on Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi or Bahrain’s King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa —all of whom have been shooting down their own people in cold blood in the streets. He does not call for people of good will to “nonviolently” go and face these evil men down. No.
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Why doesn’t Friedman call for Western supporters of the Arab Spring to swarm over Syria’s or Libya’s borders holding signs calling for Assad’s and Qaddafi’s ouster? Thomas Friedman and Hosni Mubarak both came to power in 1981 (Friedman joined the Times that year).
What is Friedman really doing? Like Tony Kushner and many other Jews, Friedman also wants to be ahead of the curve when they come for the Jews. He wants to be the Jew who is spared because he is known for having condemned “Israeli apartheid” and the “Jewish apartheid state.” The burden of defending Israel merely by telling the truth is simply too much for the Friedmans and the Kushners to bear.
They refuse to condemn real apartheid—as it is practiced among Muslims and in Arab lands. It is far safer to condemn the Jewish State and to call for activists to “nonviolently” march against it. These marchers can be certain that Jewish soldiers will not shoot them down like dogs. They can be sure that the world and the wind will be at their backs. Were they to surge into Syria or Libya, they would be dead.
This way, they hope to avoid being beheaded, and in fact, decorated as heroes. They are not self-hating Jews. They are rank opportunists, mere conformists, extreme cowards.
FP: Phyllis has answered her own question. Until now Friedman was just an idiot. Now he has chosen to be a kapo of his own free will. Too bad Palestinians cannot march towards Friedman’s palace and demonstrate their non-violence to him.
Michael Young: Liberation, except if you’re Syrian
He remarked that when Netanyahu, in his speech before the US Congress this week, raised the issue of the rockets in Lebanon and Gaza, there “was fear in his eyes.” Perhaps there was, but I also see quite a lot of fear in Nasrallah’s eyes these days as the situation in the Middle East goes through radical transformation. And there are primarily three reasons for this.
First, as hard as Nasrallah tries, he just cannot seem to convince Arabs anymore that “resistance” must be given priority over most other aspects of their lives. In Egypt, Tunisia and Syria, people have talked about emancipation, democracy and liberty, with the targets of their opprobrium almost exclusively domestic. Protestors may dislike America and Israel, but for now their aim is to rewrite failed social contracts, impose states that reflect their needs, and be rid of leaders and their families who have suffocated and robbed them for decades.
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Nasrallah’s second cause of fear is that he’s on the wrong side of the revolt in Syria. Hezbollah, which has always claimed to be the champion of the downtrodden, is defending a leadership crushing its own people. Nasrallah is covering for the soldiers, security officers and gang members who have fired live ammunition at unarmed civilians, killing an estimated 1,100 people in the last two months. He is covering for the unit in Daraa that placed a prisoner under a tank tread before running him over twice, tearing him to shreds.
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A third headache for Nasrallah is that he now finds himself at the epicenter of a sectarian confrontation in the Middle East. For a long time Hezbollah managed to transcend Sunni-Shia differences thanks to its accomplishments on an issue that most Arabs sympathize with, namely the battle against Israel. But much has changed since then. To a great extent Iran’s Arab enemies have made headway in portraying the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah as pursuing a project of Shia hegemony, regardless of the merits of such an accusation.
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Hassan Nasrallah is behind the curve on what is going on around us in the Middle East. The Hezbollah leader is employing both rhetoric and imagery that are anachronistic in these transformative times. The future, we hope, will bring a promise of free societies, the reflexes of compromise and greater pluralism. If that fails, as it may, Nasrallah will have saved himself; but at the expense of many innocents.
FP: Perhaps, but there is one thing in the Arab world that current developments did not and will not change: hatred of Jews and Israel. And as the new regimes fail to cope with the huge economic and social problems and the high expectations turn to frustration, the instinct is to turn to violence and against Israel, as we have seen in Egypt. Iran and Hizb’allah may well be able to use the opportunity to start something and drag Arabs into it—they are more dangerous when they feel insecure.
George Jonas: Obama doesn’t get the arithmetic of the Israel-Palestine situation
The Middle East continues to be the Middle East, and the West continues to be the West.
...
Just how much of a charade is illustrated by one-time Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky’s anecdote about an earlier round of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations at Wye River in which he participated as an Israeli delegate. Apparently a moment came when Sharansky and his colleagues managed to extract a promise from Arafat to delete from the Palestinian Charter the sections calling for the destruction of Israel. “Upon leaving the conference room,” Sharansky recalled in a nostalgia-piece he wrote for Ha’Aretz newspaper some years ago, “we saw one of the closest advisors of president Bill Clinton and proudly told him about our achievement. ‘Are you out of your minds?’ he shouted. ‘[Arafat] is going to be killed because of that. He is too weak for dramatic steps like that. First, he has to be strengthened!’”
This sums up the sham peace initiatives of the last 20 years. Arafat probably had no intention of excising any section calling for Israel’s destruction from the Palestinian Charter. He had made half-hearted promises to do so long before Wye River and nothing came of them. He knew that understanding souls in the U.S. State Department would exempt him from having to go out on any such limb until he was suitably “strengthened.” But — and here’s the point — in the unlikely event that Arafat had actually made an attempt to remove the clause, he might well have been killed, just like Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.
A con artist of some accomplishment, Arafat was prepared to accept down payments from Sharansky and colleagues on the Brooklyn Bridge: A package called “peace” that he had no intention of delivering, and that wasn’t his to deliver anyway. Arafat had no title to peace — and Israel’s current negotiating partner, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud “Abu Mazen” Abbas, has even less.
A lot of water had flown down Wye River since the last round of negotiations, and things have changed “not necessarily to Israel’s advantage” (to paraphrase the immortal words of the Japanese Emperor after Hiroshima and Nagasaki). At Wye River, Hamas was an outlaw; now it’s Abbas’ in-law. Then, the U.S. President was Israel’s ally; now it’s Barack Obama.
The President’s suggestion that the two-state solution be based on Israel’s 1967 borders made Israel’s Prime Minister lose his cool. Having turned “Bibi” Netanyahu into “Booboo” Netanyahu, Obama addressed AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) to suggest that he never suggested what he suggested. This caused AIPAC director Howard Kohr to suggest this week that “If Israel’s foes come to believe that there is diplomatic daylight between the United States and Israel, they will have every incentive to try to exploit those differences and shun peace with the Jewish state.” Right. And closing the barn door after the horse has bolted beats never closing it, I guess.
FP: Quite right. The West’s enemies have cunning, which the West lacks, and will be much more effective to exploit Western differences than the West exploiting Arab differences.
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