Love of the Land: ElBaradei's failure

ElBaradei's failure

JPost Editorial
01 December 09

As of yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, has a new director-general, the understated Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano. Mr. Amano has his work cut out for him. His predecessor, 67-year-old Mohamed ElBaradei, stepped down after 12 years with what, by his deplorable standards, amounted to a bang rather than a whimper.

In the last few days, ElBaradei declared bitterly that the IAEA's probe of allegations that Iran has been trying to make nuclear arms is at "a dead end" because Teheran is not cooperating. He warned that confidence in Teheran had shrunk in the wake of its belated revelation of a previously secret nuclear facility at Qom.

He slammed Teheran for rejecting a proposal meant to delay its ability to make nuclear weapons. Iran would have had to ship out most of its stockpile of 1,500 kilograms of low-enriched uranium. Its demand to "dilute" the proposal, ElBaradei stressed firmly, "was unacceptable because it could mean Teheran retaining enough enriched uranium for use in a nuclear weapon."

Reflecting its outgoing director's frustrated assessments, the IAEA's board on Friday overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding that Iran stop construction at the Qom facility and stop uranium enrichment.

The US promptly warned that its "patience" on Iran might be exhausted by year's end. Britain, sounding increasingly irritated, urged Iran to "accept the hand that has been extended toward it." And the French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, spoke of "one last chance for dialogue" before "very harsh" sanctions.

"Why did Iran announce 10 new uranium enrichment sites when it has only one nuclear plant to burn this fuel?" Kouchner demanded, not unreasonably, referring to the defiant Iranian response to the IAEA's resolution.

THE ANSWER to Kouchner's question, and to the wider question of why Iran treats the IAEA with such contempt, is simple: because, under ElBaradei's blinkered watch, it has learned that it can.

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Love of the Land: ElBaradei's failure

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: The Show Needn't Go On

The Show Needn't Go On

Michael J. Totten
Commentary Magazine
13 November 09

This week the Israeli government announced it will resume negotiations with Syria without preconditions, and the Syrians responded in kind.

Peace talks, if they ever actually start, aren't going anywhere, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows it. He's going through the motions so Western diplomats don't throw him and his country out in the cold. Syria's Bashar Assad knows it too. He's going through the motions so that he and his country can come in from the cold.

It has been years since I spoke to a single person in the Middle East who thinks the Arab-Israeli conflict will be resolved any time soon. Last time I visited Jerusalem with a half-dozen American colleagues, Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh bluntly told us to stop asking "What's the solution?"

"I don't see a real peace emerging over here," he said. "We should stop talking about it."

Some Westerners, though, can't stop talking about it and get bent out of shape when they hear comments like Toameh's from either side. As Evelyn Gordon pointed out here a few days ago, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner can't see the difference between Israeli disillusionment about the prospects for peace and an abandonment of the desire for peace in the abstract.

“What really hurts me," Kouchner said, "and this shocks us, is that before there used to be a great peace movement in Israel. … 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.”

It's not that people over there no longer want it. They've learned the hard way, repeatedly, that the Arab-Israeli conflict is no more stoppable right now than are plate tectonics.

Because supposedly right-thinking Westerners are appalled, Israel and Syria will pretend to hold talks while the more seasoned Western diplomats will pretend the talks stand a chance. It's like the old Russian joke about Communism: "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: The Show Needn't Go On

Love of the Land: France, for sale as usual

France, for sale as usual

FresnoZionism.com
12 November 09

This is a couple of days old, but it illustrates something important:

France fears that Israel no longer desires a Middle East peace deal, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Tuesday, adding that Paris remained deeply opposed to settlement building in the West Bank…

Speaking on France Inter radio, Kouchner made clear he was not expecting any swift break through in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

“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,” Kouchner said.

“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,” he added. — Ha’aretz

I can only understand this in one of two ways: either Kouchner and his boss are really, truly idiots who are incapable of perceiving the simple facts of the conflict and recent events; or, they are deliberately presenting a completely false view in order to make political points with foreign and domestic anti-Zionists.

The remark is infuriating, particularly the statement that Israelis in general don’t want peace, and the implication that only the Left is capable of it. The lack of peace is war — does he think Israelis want more war, after 61 years of it? Look at the behavior of Hamas and Hezbollah and ask who wants war!

(Continue reading...)

Love of the Land: France, for sale as usual

Israel Matzav: Kouchner: Either we solve Iran or Israel will

Kouchner: Either we solve Iran or Israel will

As opposed to previous occasions, this time, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner actually seems to get it. In an interview with London's Daily Telegraph that was done in Beirut, Kouchner warns that if the P - 5+1 powers do not stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, Israel will.

"They [the Israelis] will not tolerate an Iranian bomb. We know that, all of us. So that is an additional risk and that is why we must decrease the tension and solve the problem. Hopefully we are going to stop this race to a confrontation," said Mr Kouchner.

"There is the time that Israel will offer us before reacting, because Israel will react as soon as they know clearly that there is a threat."

...

France, Britain and America have pledged to review their policy at the end of this year. If there is no agreement, they will probably urge the UN to impose more economic sanctions on Iran.

But Mr Kouchner made clear his personal scepticism. He fears that tightening the existing sanctions would simply impoverish ordinary Iranians, weaken the opposition and fail to influence the regime.

"Certainly, the upper people in the Iranian government, they will not suffer from sanctions. But the people of the bazaar and the people on the street, the women and the youngsters, they will certainly suffer from that," said Mr Kouchner.

"So this is a problem. It is not a discovery. I have witnessed sanctions all over the world and it's always targeting the poor people more than the rich people."

Kouchner missed something here. At this point, the Iranian people so hate Ahamdinejad that they may be willing to endure sanctions if they have a chance of forcing him out of office.

But he's right about Israel. Israel has far more at stake in stopping Iran than any other country. And if our government sees that the P - 5+1 isn't getting the job done, they are very likely to go on the offensive.

Iran is now due to give its answer on Wednesday to the latest P - 5+1 proposal for sending 80% of Iran's low enriched uranium to Russia and France for enrichment. That proposal may not satisfy Israel anyway, but if it is accepted, the US will probably put enormous pressure on Israel not to strike Iran.

Israel Matzav: Kouchner: Either we solve Iran or Israel will