Love of the Land: Rubin: The West’s Foreign Policy Theme—Like Me Before You Kill Me—Applied to Israel

Rubin: The West’s Foreign Policy Theme—Like Me Before You Kill Me—Applied to Israel

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
18 May '11

http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/05/wests-foreign-policy-themelike-me.html

Recently, it was revealed that President Barack Obama had consulted Tom Friedman in formulating his Middle East policy. Here’s an example of where disastrous policy comes from.

Friedman writes:

“Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel is always wondering why his nation is losing support and what the world expects of a tiny country surrounded by implacable foes. I can’t speak for the world, but I can speak for myself. I have no idea whether Israel has a Palestinian or Syrian partner for a secure peace that Israel can live with. But I know this: With a more democratic and populist Arab world in Israel’s future, and with Israel facing the prospect of having a minority of Jews permanently ruling over a majority of Arabs — between Israel and the West Bank, which could lead to Israel being equated with apartheid South Africa all over the world — Israel needs to use every ounce of its creativity to explore ways to securely cede the West Bank to a Palestinian state.”

By the way, the picture of “a minority of Jews permanently ruling over a majority of Arabs” has not been accurate since 1994, that’s 17 years ago. The Palestinian Authority rules over the West Bank Arabs. Hamas, which has now merged with the Palestinian Authority, rules in the Gaza Strip. The only non-citizen Arabs that “Jews” are ruling over are those in east Jerusalem, according to an agreement that Israel made with the PLO.

So a big part of Israel's difficulty is that people like Friedman are perpetuating anti-Israel lies instead of attacking them.

In other words, if your enemies lie about you does that mean that you must take huge risks? There’s a clever bumper sticker that says: Never apologize. Your enemies don’t care and your friends don’t need it.

But leaving all of that aside, let’s start with Friedman’s opening sentence. I certainly don’t speak for Netanyahu and didn’t vote for him, but I really doubt he’s wondering why these things are happening. He knows the reasons, as do most Israelis, even those critical of his policy:

The greater international weight of the Arab world; oil money; well-intentioned but ill-placed sympathy for an apparent underdog; aspects of Islam rejecting ever accepting a Jewish state; Arab nationalist rejection of a Jewish state; a clever anti-Israel propaganda campaign; Western leftist sympathy for its enemies; the rejection of Zionism by some Jews; the honest belief that if you resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict by Israeli concessions the whole world will be stable and terrorism will disappear; antisemitism; and more.

There’s no mystery here.

But there is a problem. If you equate that hostility to one cause and one cause only: Israel is “permanently ruling” over a majority of Arabs. That’s it. Solve that problem and everything else will fall into place.

Yet what if you know that giving up the West Bank will not solve every problem—a viewpoint almost never aired in the Western mass media and universities nowadays? Then Friedman’s concept and that of most Western policies immediately collapses.

Israel has conducted extensive experiments with this concept, experiments that have cost about the same number of Israeli lives as September 11 took American lives. Since the population of the United States is approximately 40 times that of Israel you can calculate the impact of those costs.

After all, Israel already acted “to securely cede” (the split infinitive is Friedman’s) the Sinai to Egypt, with the result that this peace treaty is about to be abrogated. It tried to “securely cede” the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority, getting rockets and mortars and cross-border attacks in return. It also sought “to securely cede” southern Lebanon and got rockets and cross-border attacks. To see what would happen it acted “to securely cede” much of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority and then received in return incitement to violence, terrorist attacks, and intransigence.

Might there be a pattern here?

Yes, it would be better to have a stable, two-state solution that ended the conflict and made Israel’s neighbors friendly. But here’s where the gap is between Israel and much of the Western political elites today:

We tried it and it didn’t work.

That is not a “right-wing” statement. It is an Israeli consensus statement. And even if Israel tries and tries again, this doesn’t mean that people don’t know that.

Now, there are people in the Middle East—millions of people—who openly make my point every day. These include the governments of Iran, Syria, Turkey, and the Gaza Strip, as well as probably Egypt’s next government and those running Lebanon. Islamists openly proclaim that no matter how much territory Israel cedes they won’t be satisfied until it has ceded everything and gone out of existence altogether.

What Friedman calls “a more democratic and populist Arab world” means a more radical and Islamist Arab world. In fact, the radicals will remain radicals (Syria, Iran) while the formerly moderate become more extremist (Egypt). Why, then, should Israel make dangerous concessions when these will be taken advantage of to attack it more effectively? Why give things to people who want to kill you no matter what you do?

But there’s one point that is so overwhelming in Friedman’s piece, so symptomatic of everything wrong with the Western vision of Israel, the Middle East, and even the entire world (and especially with the Obama Administration’s policy), that it should resound with everyone who reads that article:

Friedman is telling us that a good public relations’ image is more important than material security. Israel will survive an infinite number of nasty articles or sneering professors without great difficulty. It would not survive concessions that make Israel weak and vulnerable, more than ever at a time when—let’s face it—American and European guarantees are worthless.

Golda Meir already dealt with Friedman’s idea decades ago: Better a bad press than a good epitaph.

That’s a principle which North America and European countries should think about adopting as their motto.

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

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Love of the Land: Rubin: The West’s Foreign Policy Theme—Like Me Before You Kill Me—Applied to Israel

Love of the Land: Little tommy's big plans

Little tommy's big plans

Soccer Dad
17 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

Thomas Friedman in 1996

Arafat, belatedly, came to understand that Israel could never keep up the momentum of peace without Palestinians making a 100 percent effort to guarantee Israeli security, and Mr. Peres came to understand that Mr. Arafat could never guarantee security unless the peace process continued its momentum. Because they agreed on the big issues, and had forged a strategic partnership, the little issues never led to massive blowups. The violence that did occur was the Israeli and Palestinian extremes against the Israeli and Palestinian mainstreams.

Thomas Friedman today:

Fayyad is the most interesting new force on the Arab political stage. A former World Bank economist, he is pursuing the exact opposite strategy from Yasir Arafat. Arafat espoused a blend of violence and politics; his plan was to first gain international recognition for a Palestinian state and then build its institutions. Fayyad calls for the opposite -- for a nonviolent struggle, for building noncorrupt transparent institutions and effective police and paramilitary units, which even the Israeli Army says are doing a good job; and then, once they are all up and running, declare a Palestinian state in the West Bank by 2011.

Is Friedman implicitly acknowledging that Arafat never truly gave up terror? All the years when he berated Israel, he never truly acknowledged that Arafat hadn't changed. Now is he acknowledging the truth only to foist another mirage on us.

Fayyad sounds great. Really. Here's more:

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Little tommy's big plans

Love of the Land: Obama Looks Weak in the Middle East

Obama Looks Weak in the Middle East

Why pick on our friends but not our enemies?


Lee Smith
Tabletmag.com
16 March '10

Foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead has joined Thomas Friedman and others in congratulating the Obama administration for condemning Israel over the announcement it was building 1600 apartment units in East Jerusalem.

“The Obama administration had no choice but to respond strongly,” Mead writes. “Otherwise the administration would have looked weak and irresolute and the repercussions throughout the world could well have been grave.”

But in the Middle East, nothing reeks of weakness more than lashing out publicly at an ally. The administration is well aware of this, because it has endured the insults of virtually every one of its Arab allies (all except for Egypt). Most recently, for example, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal criticized Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to her face, explaining that the United States’s proposed sanctions against Iran were too little, too late.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Obama Looks Weak in the Middle East

Love of the Land: This Land is Mined

This Land is Mined

Richard Fenandez
Belmont Club/Pajamas Media
14 March 2010

The recent exchange of testy words between Washington and Israel over the approval of new construction in East Jerusalem is ostensibly over the fate of the “peace process” now being shepherded by the US. VOA says that “for decades he United States has tried to act as a bridge between Israelis and Arabs. President Barack Obama, following in the footsteps of his predecessors, is looking for ways to end hostilities and bring about a long-elusive peace.”

The announcement of the East Jerusalem construction was said to have undermined Vice President Joe Biden’s diplomatic efforts. “This was supposed to be a period of heightened U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East, with U.S. envoy George Mitchell named as a go-between in indirect talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and Vice President Joe Biden making a high-profile trip this week to Jerusalem.” But what were the odds that Biden’s efforts were actually going anywhere? And if not, then why?

One line of thought is that peace is within reach if only Israel would give way. Andrew Sullivan, for example, lectured Prime Minister Netanyahu about Israel’s aggressive past. Did Netanyahu know, he asks, how much land the Jews have grabbed? Did Netanyahu slaver, he asks, at the prospect of an apartheid state? The Economist points out that Sullivan’s arguments are nonsense, but it too is willing to concede the principle that if Israel gave something back then peace might be attained. Israel must still give; the only question is how much. Tom Friedman also seems to think that Israel has missed the party by “driving around drunk.” Friedman wrote:

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: This Land is Mined

Love of the Land: Abusing Israel: The Fashionable Thing to Do

Abusing Israel: The Fashionable Thing to Do

Israelis are being painted as peace refusers, terrorizers, killers, torturers, and recently, pilferers of internal organs.

P. David Hornik

pajamasmedia.com
24 November 09

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told France Inter radio recently:

What really hurts me, and this shocks us, is that before there used to be a great peace movement in Israel. There was a left that made itself heard and a real desire for peace. It seems to me, and I hope that I am completely wrong, that this desire has completely vanished, as though people no longer believe in it.

Just a couple of days earlier, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman had written:

[T]he only time America has been able to advance [Arab-Israeli] peace … has been when the parties felt enough pain for different reasons that they invited our diplomacy. … Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other. … If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it.

And it was just a few weeks earlier that Friedman’s colleague, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, claimed that in Israel:

The anxiety of the diaspora Jews has ceded not to tranquility but to another anxiety. … The annihilation psychosis has not disappeared but taken new form. … I worry when Israel makes a fetish of its exceptional status.

A people that does not want peace, is not suffering enough pain to desire peace, and has an exceptionality fetish — is this enough abuse of Israel for a short period? Obviously not. (Regarding the second of those charges, it should be noted that it was issued from the banks of the Hudson to a Middle Eastern statelet that has absorbed scores of suicide bombings and a total of over 12,000 Hamas and Hezbollah rockets, as well as regular threats and predictions of its annihilation from Tehran, in less than a decade.) All those charges and many others, of course, pale before the Goldstone report’s concluding section on “Actions by Israel in Gaza,” which states:

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Abusing Israel: The Fashionable Thing to Do

Love of the Land: Peace is not a must

Peace is not a must

Informal understandings only viable approach in our zero-sum conflict

Elyakim Haetzni
Ynet/Israel Opinion
17 November 09

In his recent New York Times op-ed, Thomas Friedman came up with the insight that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are interested in a peace process, and that American pressure on both sides merely hinders them from getting along on their own for lack of any other choice.

Well, welcome to the club. After all, this is what the rightist camp has been warning of all along: Impossible peace plans that exact thousands of “peace victims. However, let us hope that Friedman will not stop there and will proceed to go deeper, into the root of the problem – the reasons why the leftist peace perception was hopeless to begin with.

The deal offered to the Arabs by the “peace camp” is simple: 1948 in exchange for 1967. We will hand over to you everything we conquered in the Six Day War, and in exchange you will recognize the Jewish State’s existence and the Green Line as its lawful border. That is, you will give up much of the land of Palestine, your previous homes, and your dream of returning to them. You will give up everything you fought over through wars and terrorism.

The Arabs have rejected this deal from the outset, and the argument over it persists merely among the Jews. The Arabs, based on their religious, cultural, and national perceptions, cannot sign a deal that in their view would turn a Muslim state into a Jewish one; an Arab state into an Israeli one. Whoever does so, will pay with their life.

An authentic Arab leader will also not be giving up the right of return of Muslim Arabs to the heart of the “house of Islam.” Arafat in 2000 and Abbas in 2009 reached this obstacle and drew back. The blind Americans and Israelis failed to understand why.

A realistic position vis-à-vis the Arabs requires a different approach:

1. Don’t recognize our existence and certainly not our existence as a Jewish entity; as we already exist, we have no need for such recognition. It won’t give us anything. “Recognition” is not a type of merchandize and we offer nothing for it.

2. Don’t give up Haifa and Jaffa. Signing such deal would pain you while granting us no benefit. We know that should we become weaker one day, you will take back the 1948 Palestine even if you declare a thousand times that you renounced it. Hence, “renunciation” is not a type of merchandize either.

3. Don’t engage in negotiations with us and don’t sign an agreement whereby you cannot get more than 1967 in exchange for 1948. This will merely create frustration and disappointment and bring catastrophe to both sides. We will maintain ties, understandings, and even friendship “under the table” – de facto and not de jure. We will have a modus vivendi rather than a formal “peace.”

Our official ties with Jordan have been characterized by King Abdullah as a “cold peace.” It appears that the secret ties that prevailed previously were better. When it comes to give and take, Jews and Arabs get along very well – ranging from commerce to health and from matters of garbage collection to knowledge-sharing and joint projects.

Whatever it is that is deemed worthy for both sides because of neighborly needs goes well, as long as it is managed far away from the watchful eye of the media and public opinion; that is, far away from politics and the agreed-upon lies.

Salam Fayyad’s plan to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state stems from the inability to sign agreements. It is preferable for him to have a de-facto state in so-called Area A, rather than being perceived as a person who renounced sacred demands and rights.

It is difficult for us to internalize the fact that the conflict with the Palestinians is a zero-sum game: Each side feels deep in its soul that this is its land, and this is the only conflict in history where both nations demand the same city as their capital. Only a fool or a swindler would be seeking a “solution,” a term taken from the math realm, just like “peace process” is reminiscent of chemistry, as if we are dealing with exact science here. In life, not everything is resolvable.

Love of the Land: Peace is not a must

Love of the Land: The Real Problem with U.S. Involvement

The Real Problem with U.S. Involvement

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
15 November 09

Writing in today’s Jerusalem Post, Liat Collins offers a pertinent observation on Thomas Friedman’s proposal that America stop pushing Israeli-Palestinian peace. Friedman argued that American intervention functions as “Novocain” for the parties: “We relieve all the political pain from the Arab and Israeli decision-makers by creating the impression in the minds of their publics that something serious is happening.”

But as Collins noted, “the pain, however, has tended to come with the peace process itself. … No Israeli — Left, Right or Center — can forget the exploding buses and cafes causing the sort of pain that Novocaine can never cure. … And the consequences of pulling out from Gaza and the security zone in Lebanon can, of course, still be felt today: No other country has had to resort to creating a rocket-proof indoor playground a la Sderot or a missile-proof emergency room such as was recently inaugurated at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital.”

And that is the real problem with U.S. involvement in the “peace process”: not only, as Friedman correctly noted, has it wasted time, energy, and diplomatic capital that could have been better employed elsewhere; it has actually made peace less likely.

Clearly, the terror produced by every territorial concession since 1993 has decreased the Israelis’ appetite for such concessions. But even more important, U.S. involvement has reduced Palestinian willingness to make necessary concessions.

Over the past 16 years, “U.S. involvement” has largely become synonymous with pressing Israel for more concessions — both because Israel is seen as “the stronger party,” with more to give, and because it is far more vulnerable than are the Palestinians to U.S. pressure, given America’s status as Israel’s only ally. Palestinians have thus become convinced that they don’t need to make concessions; they can wait for Washington to deliver Israel on a platter.

For instance, Palestinians would be more likely to fight terror if they thought future withdrawals depended on it. But they don’t, and for good reason: the world has never demanded an end to terror as the price of further withdrawals; instead, it has consistently pressed Israel to keep withdrawing despite the terror. Under those circumstances, why bother fighting terror?

Similarly, Israel is routinely pressed to make upfront negotiating concessions: just last week, for instance, Hillary Clinton reportedly demanded that guidelines for renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks promise “a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and in Jerusalem,” meaning that Israel would have to fully concede two of the three core issues before talks can even begin (Jerusalem declined). But Washington has never demanded that Palestinians cede even an obvious deal breaker like the “right of return” upfront; this is always left to future negotiations.

As long as the Palestinians think they can rely on Washington to “deliver” Israel, they will never feel a need to make concessions themselves. And until they do, no deal will be possible.

Barack Obama isn’t likely to heed Friedman’s advice, but perhaps his successor will be wiser. The “peace process” will undoubtedly still be around.

Love of the Land: The Real Problem with U.S. Involvement