Love of the Land: The Vision Thing

The Vision Thing

Emmanuel Navon
For The Sake Of Zion
03 March '10

The man whom George W. Bush used to dismissingly call “The Eye Doctor” seems to be doing fine without glasses. Bashar al-Assad, an ophthalmologist who inherited his father’s hereditary job only because his older brother was killed in a car accident, has turned the tables on the United States. Five years ago, he complied with the American injunction to pull his troops out of Lebanon. Today, he is publicly humiliating the United States.

In February 2005, the US withdrew its ambassador to Syria following the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Assad’s involvement in Hariri’s murder was so obvious that former French President Jacques Chirac, a personal friend of Hariri (and long-term guest in his Paris apartment), has been boycotting Assad ever since. By recalling its ambassador, the US was also expressing its discontent with the fact that Syria hosts and shields Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, transfers weapons from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, lets terrorists crossing into Iraq, supports Iran’s foreign policy goals, and cooperates with Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear capabilities (concerns about Syria’s suspected nuclear program were brought to the world’s attention by the Israeli bombing of an alleged nuclear facility in eastern Syria in 2007).

Last month, five years exactly after the scolding of the Bush Administration, President Obama nominated Robert Ford as the new US Ambassador to Syria. The rationale of the current US Administration is that Assad can be sweet-talked into trading his alliance with Iran for a deal with America. Obama’s gamble has produced immediate results, but not the expected ones. Shortly after the nomination of Ambassador Ford, Ahmadinejad paid an official and pompous visit to Damascus (where he also met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah). Baffled, Hillary Clinton asked Assad why he was doing the opposite of what her government’s policy was supposed to produce. Assad responded as follows: “We have a hard time understanding Clinton, either because of a translation problem or because of our limited capabilities.” Hillary Clinton is being pushed around by Middle Eastern machos and America is being ridiculed.

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Love of the Land: The Vision Thing

Love of the Land: The limits of American engagement with Iran

The limits of American engagement with Iran

Elie Fawaz
NOW Lebanon
12 February '10

There is nothing solid to the eloquent words US President Barack Obama uses to address the many crises his country is experiencing, especially in the Middle East. By now it has become obvious for enemies and allies of the United States alike that this American administration has no foreign policy at all, and this is a luxury that the United States cannot afford, especially when it comes to the Middle East – the home of 70% of the oil reserves in the world – unless it has decided to cease being the world super power and is instead gunning for the Miss Congeniality title.

Obviously the myriad envoys coming to the region with the mantra of engagement without coercion has sent the wrong message and has so far led the region to the edge of a destructive war. This became clear during the American presidential campaign, when America’s enemies and allies understood that an Obama victory would mean the undoing of everything George W. Bush did for the past eight years, regardless of the consequences.

The enemies of the United States had to be a little patient, the allies weary. Undoing Bush’s policies in the Middle East meant giving the region up to the next strongest power. It happened in the 1980s, when Iran and its allies decided to push America out of the region successfully, but with the small difference that at the time America’s allies were by far stronger, and Iran wasn’t going nuclear.

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Love of the Land: The limits of American engagement with Iran

Love of the Land: The chronologically-challenged Stephen Walt

The chronologically-challenged Stephen Walt

Martin Kramer
Inside the Middle East/JPost
11 February '10

In the past, I've demolished Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's claim that Israel and its friends drove the United States to war with Iraq. I did it when they published their article, and did it again when they published their book, The Israel Lobby. It's a conspiracy theory, pure and simple. And because Walt is a conspiracy theorist, he does what they all do: he rips evidence out of context.

Here's his latest grasp at a straw: his claim that Tony Blair has "revealed" that "Israel officials were involved in those discussions" on Iraq held between Blair and George Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002. Walt brings as evidence this quote from Blair's testimony to the UK commission investigating the Iraq war:

As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this."

Walt's conclusion: "Blair is acknowledging that concerns about Israel were part of the equation, and that the Israeli government was being actively consulted in the planning for the war." Walt goes on to declare that "more evidence of their influence [of Israel and the Israel lobby] on the decision for war will leak out," and that "Blair's testimony is evidence of that process at work."

When people who don't know much about the Middle East, like Stephen Walt, pose as experts, they make basic mistakes of chronology. So let me remind him of exactly what coincided with the Crawford meeting of April 6-7, 2002.

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Love of the Land: The chronologically-challenged Stephen Walt

Love of the Land: Ban Ki-Moon vs. George W. Bush

Ban Ki-Moon vs. George W. Bush

FresnoZionism.org
30 November 09

Could he be more wrong?

Palestinian statehood is a “vital” component necessary for regional peace, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said, in a message to mark Monday’s annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

I’ve only recently touched on the UN, so I won’t get off on that again. I do want to mention that the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” is held on November 29 for a reason. In the words of Our United Nations,

In 1977, the General Assembly called for the annual observance of 29 November as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (resolution 32/40 B). On that day, in 1947, the Assembly adopted the resolution on the partition of Palestine (resolution 181 (II)).

So I suppose this ’solidarity’ is their way of making up for what they must view as the terrible mistake of 1947!

Just two years before, on November 10, 1975, the UN had passed the notorious resolution 3379, which asserted that Zionism was a form of racism. The sponsors of that resolution also must have had a keen sense of the significance of dates, since November 10 was also the day, 37 years before, of Kristallnacht, the day that marked the beginning of the Nazi Final Solution.

Back to Ban Ki-Moon’s remarks. It’s obvious that Palestinian statehood, far from being vital to peace, would be a cause for war.

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Love of the Land: Ban Ki-Moon vs. George W. Bush