Train Wreck
27 February 07
Check out our previous posting on Iran's runaway train.
Ooops!
No Brakes?
Love of the Land: Train Wreck
Posts
8 hours ago
Monday, 21 September 2009
Love of the Land: Train Wreck
Check out our previous posting on Iran's runaway train.
Love of the Land: Train Wreck
Love of the Land: Holidays in Captivity and Letters to Jonathan Pollard
Holidays in Captivity and Letters to Jonathan Pollard
September 21, 2009
Our sages teach that captivity is the worst of all possible afflictions because it includes all the other afflictions:
"The sword is worse than death, famine is worse than the sword, captivity is worst of all"
(Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 8a)
The worst days in captivity for a Jewish captive are Shabbat and Jewish holidays. Even without a Jewish calendar, the neshama of the captive senses the extra Kedusha (holiness) of these days, and its suffering is increased exponentially, not only because of the afflictions it is enduring, but especially because of its inability to act upon the Kedusha.
There is little consolation for a soul that is fettered and deprived of the most basic Jewish expression at holiday times - how much more so during the Yamim HaNoraim - The High Holidays.
The letters that Jonathan is receiving at this time are his lifeline, his reassurance that people on the outside care very deeply. Jonathan often remarks to his wife, Esther, how very much he enjoys the letters and how varied they are. They run the gamut, he said, from one end of the spectrum to the other in terms of stories, anecdotes, prayers, and personal life experiences. Some people write of how they much are praying for Jonathan, others recount personal problems so severe that Jonathan is now praying for them (along with all of his prayers for Am Yisrael).
Most people express the hope that Jonathan will write back, but he simply is not able to. Why not? Because all of his out-going mail is routed via the National Security Agency in Washington where it is supposedly "vetted" to ensure that it does not contain classified information. In the process of being "vetted" somehow all of his out-going mail gets lost or destroyed. It does not reach its destination. This is an age-old vengeful technique that is intended to demoralize a prisoner.
Fortunately, Jonathan does receive all of his incoming mail. Incoming mail goes directly to the prison mailroom where it is checked to ensure that the letter is in English and does not contain any contraband. (No bubble gum, stamps, glitter, stickers, money etc permitted). Only letters and photos are permitted (Photos in modest quantity: up to 5). Letters in Hebrew are shown to Jonathan very briefly (not sufficient time for him to read) and then discarded; it is clearly preferable to write in English.
As soon as the mailroom staff checks the mail, it is distributed and Jonathan receives all of his letters, without exception.
Especially now at holiday time, please keep writing! Please know that all of your letters reach Jonathan as long as they are correctly addressed and contain no forbidden enclosures. Please know as well, how very much these letters mean to him.
Jonathan Pollard: 8705 days in prison
Here is Jonathan's address:
Jonathan Pollard #09185-016
c/o FCI Butner
P.O. Box 1000
Butner, NC
U.S.A 27509-1000
Feel free to send a copy of your letters to justice4jp@gmail.com.
With your permission we will share copies of some of the letters with our
readers.
Our sages teach that captivity is the worst of all possible afflictions because it includes all the other afflictions:
"The sword is worse than death, famine is worse than the sword, captivity is worst of all"
(Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 8a)
The worst days in captivity for a Jewish captive are Shabbat and Jewish holidays. Even without a Jewish calendar, the neshama of the captive senses the extra Kedusha (holiness) of these days, and its suffering is increased exponentially, not only because of the afflictions it is enduring, but especially because of its inability to act upon the Kedusha.
There is little consolation for a soul that is fettered and deprived of the most basic Jewish expression at holiday times - how much more so during the Yamim HaNoraim - The High Holidays.
The letters that Jonathan is receiving at this time are his lifeline, his reassurance that people on the outside care very deeply. Jonathan often remarks to his wife, Esther, how very much he enjoys the letters and how varied they are. They run the gamut, he said, from one end of the spectrum to the other in terms of stories, anecdotes, prayers, and personal life experiences. Some people write of how they much are praying for Jonathan, others recount personal problems so severe that Jonathan is now praying for them (along with all of his prayers for Am Yisrael).
Most people express the hope that Jonathan will write back, but he simply is not able to. Why not? Because all of his out-going mail is routed via the National Security Agency in Washington where it is supposedly "vetted" to ensure that it does not contain classified information. In the process of being "vetted" somehow all of his out-going mail gets lost or destroyed. It does not reach its destination. This is an age-old vengeful technique that is intended to demoralize a prisoner.
Fortunately, Jonathan does receive all of his incoming mail. Incoming mail goes directly to the prison mailroom where it is checked to ensure that the letter is in English and does not contain any contraband. (No bubble gum, stamps, glitter, stickers, money etc permitted). Only letters and photos are permitted (Photos in modest quantity: up to 5). Letters in Hebrew are shown to Jonathan very briefly (not sufficient time for him to read) and then discarded; it is clearly preferable to write in English.
As soon as the mailroom staff checks the mail, it is distributed and Jonathan receives all of his letters, without exception.
Especially now at holiday time, please keep writing! Please know that all of your letters reach Jonathan as long as they are correctly addressed and contain no forbidden enclosures. Please know as well, how very much these letters mean to him.
Jonathan Pollard: 8705 days in prison
Here is Jonathan's address:
Jonathan Pollard #09185-016
c/o FCI Butner
P.O. Box 1000
Butner, NC
U.S.A 27509-1000
Feel free to send a copy of your letters to justice4jp@gmail.com.
With your permission we will share copies of some of the letters with our
readers.
Love of the Land: Holidays in Captivity and Letters to Jonathan Pollard
Things You Can Find in Your Backyard
Things You Can Find in Your Backyard
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi was a disciple of Rebbi. Rebbi was the editor of the Msihna and of the last generation of the Tanaim, the scholars of the mishnaic era, and Yehoshua was of the first generation of Amoraim, the scholars of the Gemara; this means he lived in the third century. He is kown to have taught at the academy of Lod; late in life he moved north and taught at Tiberias.
Among his teachings is the poignant observation - given the horrible destruction of the previous two centuries - that empires come and go but the Jews are always here.
A few months ago Mitch Pilcer found him in his backyard.
If you're familiar with the bed&breakfast scene in Israel, you've probably come across Mitch and his Zippori Village cottages. If you're not, it's never too late to start. I warmly recommend. He's something of a character, is Mitch, all the more reason to drop by for a visit. He's been building his guest cottages for years, piece by piece, and while digging the foundations for an addition he stumbled across the burial cave of one Yehushua ben Levy.
Maariv has the story, which is as complex as you'd expect. The Haredi say it can't be since Yehoshua was one of ten righteous Jews who have over the centuries been transported straight to heaven and have no graves (the most famous was Elijah). The professors claim they've already identified the grave of Yehoshua his wife and his daughter, about 10 miles to the west of Zippori, so this fellow must have been merely a namesake. The archeology establishment says Mitch had no right to go digging on his own in such an unauthorized way, and how dare he; they've hauled him before the courts. Mitch himself says now he's going to have to pave a parking lot for all the awe-struck visitors, and this is going to be bad for business since he caters to people seeking nature and serenity.
Pretty awesome, if you stop to think about it.
Among his teachings is the poignant observation - given the horrible destruction of the previous two centuries - that empires come and go but the Jews are always here.
A few months ago Mitch Pilcer found him in his backyard.
If you're familiar with the bed&breakfast scene in Israel, you've probably come across Mitch and his Zippori Village cottages. If you're not, it's never too late to start. I warmly recommend. He's something of a character, is Mitch, all the more reason to drop by for a visit. He's been building his guest cottages for years, piece by piece, and while digging the foundations for an addition he stumbled across the burial cave of one Yehushua ben Levy.
Maariv has the story, which is as complex as you'd expect. The Haredi say it can't be since Yehoshua was one of ten righteous Jews who have over the centuries been transported straight to heaven and have no graves (the most famous was Elijah). The professors claim they've already identified the grave of Yehoshua his wife and his daughter, about 10 miles to the west of Zippori, so this fellow must have been merely a namesake. The archeology establishment says Mitch had no right to go digging on his own in such an unauthorized way, and how dare he; they've hauled him before the courts. Mitch himself says now he's going to have to pave a parking lot for all the awe-struck visitors, and this is going to be bad for business since he caters to people seeking nature and serenity.
Pretty awesome, if you stop to think about it.
Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
Strange Negotiating Methods
Strange Negotiating Methods
Avi Issacharoff explains why the three-way meeting of Obama-Abbas-Netanyahu, scheduled for tomorrow, is a sham:
The summit serves, first and foremost, to provide the Obama administration with a much sought photo-op: Three leaders shaking hands, seemingly getting back to negotiations. This would come against the backdrop of the White House's resounding failure to force Israel's agreement to a complete settlement freeze or to persuade Arab states to make even tentative steps toward normalization with Israel, so a picture of the three leaders together will look like an extraordinary achievement. It might even help Obama and his administration to get the stalled peace process moving, however slowly.
This is precisely the reason why the PA realized that although Abbas set the precondition of a complete settlement freeze, as the United States demanded, he must now, according to that demand, rescind his condition without getting anything in return. The talks Abbas held in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and in Jordan with King Abdullah II brought home to him just how desperately the Americans need this summit.
It seems to me worse than a sham. I could be wrong, since the general public isn't privy to each and every detail about the negotiations, but so far as I've been able to follow, the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were chugging merrily along for a couple of years, albeit without reaching agreement, until about a year ago when the Palestinians decided to wait and see who would win the elections in the US and Israel. When Obama won they hoped for greater American pressure on Israel, and when Netanyahu ended up as Israeli prime minister, these hopes rose more: Surely Obama would put pressure on Netanyahu to be more forthcoming to the Palestinians.
Obama obliged by requiring a settlement freeze, a position eagerly adopted by the Palestinians who now insist there can be no negotiations without one, even though such negotiations were previously the norm. The Americans thought they could simply change the terms of negotiations. We're big, we can dictate, they seemed to believe.
The world doesn't work that way, as you'd think everybody knows.
The Obama position meant pretending Bush-era committments had never happened - a blatant untruth; and it demanded of the Israelis a major change of policy regarding East Jerusalem. So far as I'm aware no Israeli government has ever accepted any curb on construction in East Jerusalem. It's conceivable that Israel might agree to some partition of Jerusalem as part of a full peace agreement with the Palestinians. It's not conceivable that Israel would accept such an outcome as a precondition for the resumption of talks.
Once the Americans staked their position, the Palestinians couldn't demand less, with the result that negotiations are now impossible; they haven't been happening since last September, and seem unlikely to happen anytime soon.
If this reading is true, it's mostly the doing of the American administration. Bravo!
Obama obliged by requiring a settlement freeze, a position eagerly adopted by the Palestinians who now insist there can be no negotiations without one, even though such negotiations were previously the norm. The Americans thought they could simply change the terms of negotiations. We're big, we can dictate, they seemed to believe.
The world doesn't work that way, as you'd think everybody knows.
The Obama position meant pretending Bush-era committments had never happened - a blatant untruth; and it demanded of the Israelis a major change of policy regarding East Jerusalem. So far as I'm aware no Israeli government has ever accepted any curb on construction in East Jerusalem. It's conceivable that Israel might agree to some partition of Jerusalem as part of a full peace agreement with the Palestinians. It's not conceivable that Israel would accept such an outcome as a precondition for the resumption of talks.
Once the Americans staked their position, the Palestinians couldn't demand less, with the result that negotiations are now impossible; they haven't been happening since last September, and seem unlikely to happen anytime soon.
If this reading is true, it's mostly the doing of the American administration. Bravo!
Originally published by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
DoubleTapper: Simpsons to Visit Israel in 2010.
Simpsons to Visit Israel in 2010.
The Simpsons are taking a trip to Israel in an upcoming episode of the popular animated series that will be screened in 2010, during the show's 21st season - and their tour guide is going to be none other than Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat).
![[simpsons+season+21.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9squfaBdzqvO0QnByud471oAYhNb5aTaAMQc8j8jX2_iGkoHOuxGuCuC4nO4ZmOjaNhFrUJwlsaTUrbs56olSurJpTI_uZyi0hdWjVdl5PLra-xy_r1EIMfkzXoRiOLmJawBMluOLdic9/s1600/simpsons+season+21.jpg)
The comedian behind Borat and Bruno will play an aggressive Israeli tour guide who leads the family around during their church group tour of the Holy Land, according to Entertainment Weekly magazine.
The show's executive producer Al Jean told the magazine that Cohen's character is "trying to get Marge to give him good grades on the comment card, and she goes, 'You people are pushy,' and he goes, 'What do you mean, you people? You try having Syria for a neighbor! What do you have - Canada?'"
Jean also disclosed that in the episode, titled "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed," Homer Simpson gets Jerusalem Syndrome and believes that he is the messiah.
The episode is scheduled to coincide with Palm Sunday.
"It'll be a show that all faiths can come together and be offended by," Jean quipped.
DoubleTapper: Simpsons to Visit Israel in 2010.
The show's executive producer Al Jean told the magazine that Cohen's character is "trying to get Marge to give him good grades on the comment card, and she goes, 'You people are pushy,' and he goes, 'What do you mean, you people? You try having Syria for a neighbor! What do you have - Canada?'"
Jean also disclosed that in the episode, titled "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed," Homer Simpson gets Jerusalem Syndrome and believes that he is the messiah.
The episode is scheduled to coincide with Palm Sunday.
"It'll be a show that all faiths can come together and be offended by," Jean quipped.
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Israel Matzav: Goldstone: Lazy, lying
Goldstone: Lazy, lying
CAMERA catches the Goldstone Commission in a bald-faced lie. In discussing that prior Israeli report on the Gaza conflict, The Operation in Gaza: Factual and Legal Aspects, Goldstone and his colleagues reproduce a passage that the Israeli report had quoted from the magazine Newsweek, which included this sentence:
In the Tal-al Hawa neighborhood nearby, however, Talal Safadi, an official in the leftist Palestinian People's Party, said that resistance fighters were firing from positions all around the hospital.
The Goldstone report then comments on this, questioning the evidence presented by Israel:
While the Israeli Government does not comment further on the specific attack, it would appear to invoke these comments to justify the strikes on the hospital and surrounding area.
612. The Mission understands that the Israeli Government may consider relying on journalists’ reporting as likely to be treated as more impartial than reliance on its own intelligence information. The Mission is nonetheless struck by the lack of any suggestion in Israel’s report of July 2009 that there were members of armed groups present in the hospital at the time.One should note first that, of course, Israel did have intelligence information that armed groups were present in the hospital. That’s why they fired back at them.
But more importantly, the UN’s claim here is a breathtaking distortion of what the Israeli report said, for immediately after the quote from Newsweek, the Israeli report presented exactly what the Goldstone report charged was lacking:174. A report from Corriere della Sera confirms that the grounds, ambulances and uniforms of the al-Quds hospital had been hijacked by terrorist operatives:
Magah al Rachmah, aged 25, residing a few dozen meters from the four large buildings of the now seriously damaged health complex, says about this fact: “The men of Hamas took refuge mainly in the building that houses the administrative offices of al Quds. They used the ambulances and forced ambulance drivers and nurses to take off their uniforms with the paramedic symbols, so they could blend in better and elude Israeli snipers.”
The Goldstone Commission had reached its conclusions before it started 'investigating' the facts. It then tried to distort the facts to fit its conclusions.
The question is whether that is obvious enough yet to convince the West to consign this report to the dustbin of history where it belongs.
The question is whether that is obvious enough yet to convince the West to consign this report to the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Israel Matzav: Goldstone: Lazy, lying
Israel Matzav: See no evil, hear no evil but speak evil
See no evil, hear no evil but speak evil
In the Jerusalem Post blogs, Alan Dershowitz rips the Goldstone Commission Report: The lowest blow and the worst canard contained in this lie-laden report is that the Israeli judicial system is incapable of conducting investigations and bringing about compliance with international law.
It claims that the Israeli judicial system "has major structural flaws that make the system inconsistent with international standards," and that "there is little potential for accountability for serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law through domestic institutions in Israel."
This is a direct attack on the Israeli Supreme Court by a lawyer who knows full well that there is no country in the world that has a judicial system that demands more accountability than the Israeli system does. There is no judicial system in the world - not in the United States, not in Great Britain, not in South Africa, not in France - that takes more seriously its responsibility to bring its military into compliance with international law.
The long-term president of the Israeli Supreme Court, Professor Aharon Barak, opened the Supreme Court of Israel to all claims of law violation. Cases that would be rejected by the courts of other nations have been pursued by the Israeli Supreme Court. This part of this infamous report has literally turned black to white and white to black. It has condemned the most responsive judicial system in the world, without even bothering to compare it to other systems. In doing so, they have made a mockery of international human rights and turned into a weapon that targets only Israel.
Another Orwellian "newspeak" conclusion is that "the international community has been largely silent" about alleged Israeli abuses in the Gaza and the West Bank. Didn't the investigators even read the reports of the Human Rights Council, as well as so many other organizations of the international community, that obsess over Israeli imperfections, to the exclusion of other real human rights abusers?
No country in the world has been subjected to more criticism than Israel. Yet on Planet Goldstone, "The international community has been largely silent" about Israel. This statement could only have been written by a variation of the three monkeys with hands covering their eyes and ears, but not their mouths. After reading these perverse falsities, I fully expected the report to end by parroting the Sweedish tabloid that accused Israeli soldiers of killing Palestinian children in order to sell their orgains. Shades of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion!
Every serious student of human rights should be appalled at this anti-human rights and highly politicized report. Judge Richard Goldstone should be ashamed of himself.
Israel Matzav: See no evil, hear no evil but speak evil
Love of the Land: The Biggest Jewish Settlement
Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
18 September 09
At the center of the recent controversy about the participation of Israeli artists at the Toronto Film Festival was the fact that the event highlighted the city of Tel Aviv’s centennial. To the signatories of a letter of protest, a group that included Danny Glover, Wallace Shawn, and Jane Fonda, it was the notion of celebrating Tel Aviv that was the real problem. It was, they said, founded on violence and the “suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants.”
The anti-Israel protesters have their facts wrong. Tel Aviv was founded not on the site of former homes of Palestinian Arabs who were dispossessed by the Jews but on empty sand dunes outside the city Jaffa. The village that was founded there a century ago grew large as a result of Jews fleeing anti-Jewish riots in Jaffa in 1921. The city has grown to be the nation’s largest city and is as cosmopolitan … and liberal as any in the world today.
So it is no small irony that those seeking to boycott Israel and brand it as illegitimate are willing to claim that Tel Aviv, of all places, is just another illegal Jewish settlement. As pressure grows on Israel to “freeze” building in the Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem, as well as in parts of that city itself, it is interesting to reflect on the fact that to those who wish to destroy the Jewish state, every house in every town in the country is an illegal settlement.
Many in Israel (especially in Tel Aviv), as well as many friends of Israel in the United States, like to think of the West Bank settlements as being bizarre places where crazy, violent people live and that have nothing to do with the “real” Israel inside the 1967 borders. What these anti–Tel Aviv protesters tell us is that for much of the rest of the world, this is a false distinction. And, in a sense, they are right—just as once Tel Aviv was another empty place where intrepid Jews bravely attempted to put down roots and build homes. Today it may be a booming, bustling city, but to Hamas and Fatah—as well as Glover, Shawn, and Fonda—it is just a part of hated Israel and no more legitimate than any hilltop settlement deep in the West Bank.
Those Americans who think there is nothing wrong with the Obama administration’s decision to press for more Israeli concessions and building freezes in Jerusalem and elsewhere should think about the significance of the Tel Aviv bashers. Some may argue that the settlements, even those in and around Jerusalem, must go to save Israel. But to those whom Obama wishes to appease by this pressure policy, there is no difference between them and the biggest Jewish settlement of them all in Tel Aviv.
Related: Fond Jane and Mr.Braun
Contentions/Commentary
18 September 09
At the center of the recent controversy about the participation of Israeli artists at the Toronto Film Festival was the fact that the event highlighted the city of Tel Aviv’s centennial. To the signatories of a letter of protest, a group that included Danny Glover, Wallace Shawn, and Jane Fonda, it was the notion of celebrating Tel Aviv that was the real problem. It was, they said, founded on violence and the “suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants.”
The anti-Israel protesters have their facts wrong. Tel Aviv was founded not on the site of former homes of Palestinian Arabs who were dispossessed by the Jews but on empty sand dunes outside the city Jaffa. The village that was founded there a century ago grew large as a result of Jews fleeing anti-Jewish riots in Jaffa in 1921. The city has grown to be the nation’s largest city and is as cosmopolitan … and liberal as any in the world today.
So it is no small irony that those seeking to boycott Israel and brand it as illegitimate are willing to claim that Tel Aviv, of all places, is just another illegal Jewish settlement. As pressure grows on Israel to “freeze” building in the Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem, as well as in parts of that city itself, it is interesting to reflect on the fact that to those who wish to destroy the Jewish state, every house in every town in the country is an illegal settlement.
Many in Israel (especially in Tel Aviv), as well as many friends of Israel in the United States, like to think of the West Bank settlements as being bizarre places where crazy, violent people live and that have nothing to do with the “real” Israel inside the 1967 borders. What these anti–Tel Aviv protesters tell us is that for much of the rest of the world, this is a false distinction. And, in a sense, they are right—just as once Tel Aviv was another empty place where intrepid Jews bravely attempted to put down roots and build homes. Today it may be a booming, bustling city, but to Hamas and Fatah—as well as Glover, Shawn, and Fonda—it is just a part of hated Israel and no more legitimate than any hilltop settlement deep in the West Bank.
Those Americans who think there is nothing wrong with the Obama administration’s decision to press for more Israeli concessions and building freezes in Jerusalem and elsewhere should think about the significance of the Tel Aviv bashers. Some may argue that the settlements, even those in and around Jerusalem, must go to save Israel. But to those whom Obama wishes to appease by this pressure policy, there is no difference between them and the biggest Jewish settlement of them all in Tel Aviv.
Related: Fond Jane and Mr.Braun
Love of the Land: The Biggest Jewish Settlement
Love of the Land: Another Tack: Fond Jane and Mr. Braun
Sarah Honig
JPost
17 September 09
We're all familiar with holier-than-thou anti-Semites whose much-touted "best friends" invariably are Jews. Well, the good news is that Jane Fonda is awfully fond of us. She says so in her blog. Given all that fondness, Fonda feels persecuted for no fault of her own. She cannot fathom why she must "wake up in the morning to a barrage of e-mails" about "a petition protesting the Toronto International Film Festival's decision to feature a celebratory 'spotlight' on Tel Aviv... By doing this the festival has become, whether knowingly or not, a participant in a cynical PR campaign to improve Israel's image, make her appear less warlike."
Fonda is so fond of us that she insists our face remain as dirty, demonic and denigrated as she and her avidly mud-slinging chums (like Danny Glover, presumably our friend by association) deem appropriate for us. Truth may be detrimental to their ends, which obviously justify any and all means.
FOR THESE ends Israel needs to remain besmirched and blackened. And that was why fond Fonda, comrade Glover and more than 50 other petition signatories (among them various indispensable useful-fool Israelis) had such a bone to pick with the Toronto festival, itself hardly a Lovers-of-Zion shindig by any measure.
It featured a bunch of films about Tel Aviv, many of which conform to the popular Israeli genre of self-deprecating, pro-Arab flicks scripted for the explicit purpose of winning acceptance and accolades from Fonda and her ideological likes overseas. Sucking up to the Fondas of this world, it's widely believed in our provincial backwoods, is the only way for an ambitious Israeli academic/artiste/author/moviemaker to carve out a career and bask in the ambiance of moneyed Israel-bashing liberal patrons.
How deliciously ironic then that Fonda - albeit indirectly and inadvertently - punishes precisely those Israeli producers who obsequiously fawn to please just her sorts. Their radicalism and/or brownnosing make no difference. This effectively parallels two millennia of Jewish experience with assorted Judeophobes - including those who had cut no slack for urbane "Germans of the Mosaic persuasion."
Toronto's festival, according to the Jane-brand of spurious historiography, omitted to stress that "Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages, and that the city of Jaffa, Palestine's main cultural hub until 1948, was annexed to Tel Aviv after the mass exiling of the Palestinian population. This program ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps."
Uncool as it may be, according to George Orwell "speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." Fonda should appreciate revolutionary acts. In her younger years, when she bombastically boosted Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, she insisted that "revolution is an act of love. We are the children of revolution, born to be rebels. It runs in our blood."
So let's get on with the revolutionary act of telling the truth. Habitual knee-jerk detractors, who disdain historical references, please note that Fonda and crew were those who launched us on this foray into that past.
RECENTLY I wrote of almost forgotten Tel Aviv founder Yosef-Eliahu Chelouche, a native of Jaffa, scion of a Jewish family from North Africa (kosher presumably for Third World ennoblers) and a notable political dove till Arab bloodlust disillusioned him. In his 1931 memoirs, long before Tel Aviv became the vast Zionist empire's icon, Yosef-Eliahu described those 12 desolate windswept acres of wasteland purchased for a hefty sum in 1909 for Ahuzat Bayit (as the embryonic city was called). They were hardly occupied by Arab villages as Fonda and friends aver.
Yosef-Eliahu recalled them as "a sea of sand, a barren desert with powdery yellow mountains and hills, where jackals howled." Beyond Jaffa's decaying narrow alleyways stretched an undulating shadeless wilderness. It was a horrendous, almost impassable and seemingly interminable tract, without landmarks or signs of habitation.
From its inception Ahuzat Bayit was traversed by a boulevard - not because it was a preplanned aesthetic feature. Tel Aviv would rise on pyramidal mounds with unstable continuously shifting slipfaces. These were pronounced unsuitable for construction. To level off the area, teams of pioneers used wheelbarrows to move tons of sand from the highest points and deposit them in the gullies bellow. The deepest ditch cut across Ahuzat Bayit exactly where Sderot Rothschild now stretches. Filled with so much soft sand, it was judged unsafe to support structures. Instead it was covered with topsoil and lined with trees. If anything, Tel Aviv was reclaimed from an empty strip of desert.
Elementary intellectual integrity should oblige Fonda and her retinue of our "best friends" to recall that Jaffa was also a pivotal early 20th-century Jewish hub. If anyone was forcibly dislodged therefrom, Jaffa's Jews were; 1921's unprovoked five-day Jaffa-generated Arab riots, in which 49 Jews were massacred (among them leading Jewish literati, including left-wing Yosef Haim Brenner) and more than 150 wounded, effectively brought down the curtain on Jaffa's Jewish community and boosted adjacent Tel Aviv as a separate, independent, viable, modern and thriving alternative entity.
The carnage filled 12-year-old Tel Aviv with tents and makeshift sheds to shelter Jewish refugees fleeing the Jaffa bloodbath before even self-proclaimed anti-imperialists of the Fonda-mold could conjure up supposed Jewish provocation for Arab butchery.
As to the 1948 escapades of Jaffans on the eve of Israeli independence, I will summon my own mother's testimony. The minaret of Jaffa's Turkish-constructed Hassan Bek Mosque, for instance, was used by Arab snipers to take frequent potshots at passersby on the adjacent streets of Tel Aviv. For Jane's attention, that was before we could conceivably be accused of becoming conquistador ogres.
My mother often recalled the mortal risk entailed in crossing the street to the corner grocery. She was nearly shot on her way to the dentist. One afternoon, her landlord, Mr. Braun, buttonholed her at the entrance to his apartment house on 7 Rehov Aharonson. Standing in the doorway he lectured her sternly about the foolhardiness of her sorties outdoors. Just then a bullet whistled by. Mr. Braun fell dead at my mother's feet.
Odds are Jane doesn't know about Mr. Braun. But she should educate herself about Hassan Bek's snipers, who didn't care about the identity of their numerous random victims. It helps Jane's predatory propaganda not to mention them, to pretend that Jaffa didn't aggressively and continuously attack Tel Aviv, that peaceable Jaffans were dispossessed arbitrarily in villainous circumstances devoid of context.
In a world of cosmopolitan detachment, Jane's propaganda works. Toronto Festival codirector Cameron Bailey half-apologetically conceded "that Tel Aviv is not a simple choice and the city remains contested ground." But if even Tel Aviv is "contested ground," if even its legitimacy is questionable, what are we to say about Israel as a whole?
So much for all those insincerely avowed two-state syrupy sentiments.
JPost
17 September 09
We're all familiar with holier-than-thou anti-Semites whose much-touted "best friends" invariably are Jews. Well, the good news is that Jane Fonda is awfully fond of us. She says so in her blog. Given all that fondness, Fonda feels persecuted for no fault of her own. She cannot fathom why she must "wake up in the morning to a barrage of e-mails" about "a petition protesting the Toronto International Film Festival's decision to feature a celebratory 'spotlight' on Tel Aviv... By doing this the festival has become, whether knowingly or not, a participant in a cynical PR campaign to improve Israel's image, make her appear less warlike."
Fonda is so fond of us that she insists our face remain as dirty, demonic and denigrated as she and her avidly mud-slinging chums (like Danny Glover, presumably our friend by association) deem appropriate for us. Truth may be detrimental to their ends, which obviously justify any and all means.
FOR THESE ends Israel needs to remain besmirched and blackened. And that was why fond Fonda, comrade Glover and more than 50 other petition signatories (among them various indispensable useful-fool Israelis) had such a bone to pick with the Toronto festival, itself hardly a Lovers-of-Zion shindig by any measure.
It featured a bunch of films about Tel Aviv, many of which conform to the popular Israeli genre of self-deprecating, pro-Arab flicks scripted for the explicit purpose of winning acceptance and accolades from Fonda and her ideological likes overseas. Sucking up to the Fondas of this world, it's widely believed in our provincial backwoods, is the only way for an ambitious Israeli academic/artiste/author/moviemaker to carve out a career and bask in the ambiance of moneyed Israel-bashing liberal patrons.
How deliciously ironic then that Fonda - albeit indirectly and inadvertently - punishes precisely those Israeli producers who obsequiously fawn to please just her sorts. Their radicalism and/or brownnosing make no difference. This effectively parallels two millennia of Jewish experience with assorted Judeophobes - including those who had cut no slack for urbane "Germans of the Mosaic persuasion."
Toronto's festival, according to the Jane-brand of spurious historiography, omitted to stress that "Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages, and that the city of Jaffa, Palestine's main cultural hub until 1948, was annexed to Tel Aviv after the mass exiling of the Palestinian population. This program ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps."
Uncool as it may be, according to George Orwell "speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." Fonda should appreciate revolutionary acts. In her younger years, when she bombastically boosted Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, she insisted that "revolution is an act of love. We are the children of revolution, born to be rebels. It runs in our blood."
So let's get on with the revolutionary act of telling the truth. Habitual knee-jerk detractors, who disdain historical references, please note that Fonda and crew were those who launched us on this foray into that past.
RECENTLY I wrote of almost forgotten Tel Aviv founder Yosef-Eliahu Chelouche, a native of Jaffa, scion of a Jewish family from North Africa (kosher presumably for Third World ennoblers) and a notable political dove till Arab bloodlust disillusioned him. In his 1931 memoirs, long before Tel Aviv became the vast Zionist empire's icon, Yosef-Eliahu described those 12 desolate windswept acres of wasteland purchased for a hefty sum in 1909 for Ahuzat Bayit (as the embryonic city was called). They were hardly occupied by Arab villages as Fonda and friends aver.
Yosef-Eliahu recalled them as "a sea of sand, a barren desert with powdery yellow mountains and hills, where jackals howled." Beyond Jaffa's decaying narrow alleyways stretched an undulating shadeless wilderness. It was a horrendous, almost impassable and seemingly interminable tract, without landmarks or signs of habitation.
From its inception Ahuzat Bayit was traversed by a boulevard - not because it was a preplanned aesthetic feature. Tel Aviv would rise on pyramidal mounds with unstable continuously shifting slipfaces. These were pronounced unsuitable for construction. To level off the area, teams of pioneers used wheelbarrows to move tons of sand from the highest points and deposit them in the gullies bellow. The deepest ditch cut across Ahuzat Bayit exactly where Sderot Rothschild now stretches. Filled with so much soft sand, it was judged unsafe to support structures. Instead it was covered with topsoil and lined with trees. If anything, Tel Aviv was reclaimed from an empty strip of desert.
Elementary intellectual integrity should oblige Fonda and her retinue of our "best friends" to recall that Jaffa was also a pivotal early 20th-century Jewish hub. If anyone was forcibly dislodged therefrom, Jaffa's Jews were; 1921's unprovoked five-day Jaffa-generated Arab riots, in which 49 Jews were massacred (among them leading Jewish literati, including left-wing Yosef Haim Brenner) and more than 150 wounded, effectively brought down the curtain on Jaffa's Jewish community and boosted adjacent Tel Aviv as a separate, independent, viable, modern and thriving alternative entity.
The carnage filled 12-year-old Tel Aviv with tents and makeshift sheds to shelter Jewish refugees fleeing the Jaffa bloodbath before even self-proclaimed anti-imperialists of the Fonda-mold could conjure up supposed Jewish provocation for Arab butchery.
As to the 1948 escapades of Jaffans on the eve of Israeli independence, I will summon my own mother's testimony. The minaret of Jaffa's Turkish-constructed Hassan Bek Mosque, for instance, was used by Arab snipers to take frequent potshots at passersby on the adjacent streets of Tel Aviv. For Jane's attention, that was before we could conceivably be accused of becoming conquistador ogres.
My mother often recalled the mortal risk entailed in crossing the street to the corner grocery. She was nearly shot on her way to the dentist. One afternoon, her landlord, Mr. Braun, buttonholed her at the entrance to his apartment house on 7 Rehov Aharonson. Standing in the doorway he lectured her sternly about the foolhardiness of her sorties outdoors. Just then a bullet whistled by. Mr. Braun fell dead at my mother's feet.
Odds are Jane doesn't know about Mr. Braun. But she should educate herself about Hassan Bek's snipers, who didn't care about the identity of their numerous random victims. It helps Jane's predatory propaganda not to mention them, to pretend that Jaffa didn't aggressively and continuously attack Tel Aviv, that peaceable Jaffans were dispossessed arbitrarily in villainous circumstances devoid of context.
In a world of cosmopolitan detachment, Jane's propaganda works. Toronto Festival codirector Cameron Bailey half-apologetically conceded "that Tel Aviv is not a simple choice and the city remains contested ground." But if even Tel Aviv is "contested ground," if even its legitimacy is questionable, what are we to say about Israel as a whole?
So much for all those insincerely avowed two-state syrupy sentiments.
Love of the Land: Another Tack: Fond Jane and Mr. Braun
Love of the Land: The Syrian paradox: playing the spoiler to stay relevant
Michael Young
The National
16 September 09
It wasn’t a coincidence that the firing of two rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel last Friday was meant to coincide with the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Nor was it a coincidence that the unknown group claiming responsibility was named the Ziad al Jarrah division of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which is allegedly linked to al Qa’eda.
The point was to create a red herring. In all likelihood, and given the constraints on the ground in Lebanon’s border area, the party really behind the attack was Syria, employing pro-Syrian Palestinians. There are several reasons to presume so. Damascus has often used similar incidents in the south to get its messages across, despite the pro forma veneer of deniability it has put up. Only Syria has the latitude to set up rockets in an area tightly controlled by Hizbollah. And it has been a recurring feature of Syrian conduct to shift blame for its own breaches of security on to Sunni Islamists, both to tarnish its Sunni Lebanese foes, principally Saad Hariri, and to suggest that only Syria can contain “Sunni extremism”.
There were regional and domestic implications to what happened. While many Lebanese focused on the latter – pointing out that the attack was linked to the political crisis in Beirut, particularly Mr Hariri’s inability to form a government – Syria’s calculations outside the country may have been more important. The president Bashar Assad is displeased with the fact that the Syrian track appears to be far less of an Obama administration priority than the Palestinian track, even as Washington wants Damascus to engage in direct negotiations with Israel when the Syrians would prefer to work through the Turkish government.
By ordering rockets to be fired into Israel, the Syrians reminded the Americans that their isolation by Washington could push them to provoke a conflict between Lebanon and Israel. Implicit was a warning that it is not Iran and Hizbollah alone who can raise tension in the border area. In some respects this is similar to the policy that Syria is pursuing in Iraq, where they have also tried to accumulate political capital by manipulating the security situation. But ultimately where does such an approach lead?
That question, or rather the absence of an obvious answer to the question, is at the heart of the structural difficulties plaguing the Syrian-American relationship. Syria has yet to resolve a paradox in its political behaviour. For it to engage the United States effectively, the Assad regime believes it must accumulate leverage regionally. But its only means of doing so is by destabilising its surroundings, adding to the obstacles preventing better ties with Washington. This is a recurring problem that Syria has faced with most of its interlocutors: it seeks political chips to remain politically relevant, but will rarely cash in these chips because it fears that doing so would only make it more irrelevant.
Take the situation in Iraq. The Obama administration has been eager in recent months to bring Syria into broader US efforts to pacify Iraq, as a preparatory step toward a military withdrawal from the country. Indeed, the Americans recently angered the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki by discussing border security with Syria when the Iraqis felt that this should be their own prerogative. Following the simultaneous bombings in Baghdad in late August, the US initially took an equivocal position towards the violence, arguing that Iraq and Syria should resolve their differences through dialogue, while sources in Washington leaked that it was not Iraqi Baathists run out of Syria, but al Qa’eda, that had carried out the bombings. Mr Maliki’s idea of setting up a United Nations tribunal to investigate the incident aroused no American sympathy.
And yet the United States seemed to be intentionally missing the point. The Assad regime continues to allow foreign jihadists to enter Iraq through its border. If such jihadists planned and executed the Baghdad bombings, there was a pretty good chance they travelled through Syria. However, as eager as some US officials are to make the relationship with Syria work in Iraq, the reality is that the Syrians have every intention of maintaining a spoiler role there, whether to strengthen themselves with respect to Washington in the future or with respect to Iraq and the Arab world.
That is not likely to change at a time when the United States, along with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, is preparing to begin a dialogue with Iran. Nothing worries Syria more than the prospect of a breakthrough in the Middle East between Washington and Tehran. And while the probability may not be high, the Syrians don’t like processes of which they are not a part. That will only make them more reluctant to be conciliatory – in Iraq, but also in Lebanon and on the Palestinian front. A more imaginative policy might be for Syria to initiate a serious process of its own, perhaps through negotiations with Israel, one that pushes it towards centre stage in diplomatic importance, but that’s not part of the Assad regime’s DNA, which naturally gravitates towards obstruction.
What Mr Assad does not realise is that the Obama administration is as close as he will get to a willing American partner. The US has decided to send an ambassador back to Damascus, to lift some sanctions on Syria, to engage it over Iraq and to avoid clashes over Syria’s support for Hamas and its actions in Lebanon, where Mr Assad’s intransigence is a major factor in blocking the formation of a new government. Despite all this, the Syrians are no closer to getting something tangible out of the relationship.
American tolerance has its limits: Syria has often succeeded in forcing other governments to take it to the river, before then refusing to drink. To finally get somewhere, Mr Assad may one day have to risk a sip.
Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon
The National
16 September 09
It wasn’t a coincidence that the firing of two rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel last Friday was meant to coincide with the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Nor was it a coincidence that the unknown group claiming responsibility was named the Ziad al Jarrah division of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which is allegedly linked to al Qa’eda.
The point was to create a red herring. In all likelihood, and given the constraints on the ground in Lebanon’s border area, the party really behind the attack was Syria, employing pro-Syrian Palestinians. There are several reasons to presume so. Damascus has often used similar incidents in the south to get its messages across, despite the pro forma veneer of deniability it has put up. Only Syria has the latitude to set up rockets in an area tightly controlled by Hizbollah. And it has been a recurring feature of Syrian conduct to shift blame for its own breaches of security on to Sunni Islamists, both to tarnish its Sunni Lebanese foes, principally Saad Hariri, and to suggest that only Syria can contain “Sunni extremism”.
There were regional and domestic implications to what happened. While many Lebanese focused on the latter – pointing out that the attack was linked to the political crisis in Beirut, particularly Mr Hariri’s inability to form a government – Syria’s calculations outside the country may have been more important. The president Bashar Assad is displeased with the fact that the Syrian track appears to be far less of an Obama administration priority than the Palestinian track, even as Washington wants Damascus to engage in direct negotiations with Israel when the Syrians would prefer to work through the Turkish government.
By ordering rockets to be fired into Israel, the Syrians reminded the Americans that their isolation by Washington could push them to provoke a conflict between Lebanon and Israel. Implicit was a warning that it is not Iran and Hizbollah alone who can raise tension in the border area. In some respects this is similar to the policy that Syria is pursuing in Iraq, where they have also tried to accumulate political capital by manipulating the security situation. But ultimately where does such an approach lead?
That question, or rather the absence of an obvious answer to the question, is at the heart of the structural difficulties plaguing the Syrian-American relationship. Syria has yet to resolve a paradox in its political behaviour. For it to engage the United States effectively, the Assad regime believes it must accumulate leverage regionally. But its only means of doing so is by destabilising its surroundings, adding to the obstacles preventing better ties with Washington. This is a recurring problem that Syria has faced with most of its interlocutors: it seeks political chips to remain politically relevant, but will rarely cash in these chips because it fears that doing so would only make it more irrelevant.
Take the situation in Iraq. The Obama administration has been eager in recent months to bring Syria into broader US efforts to pacify Iraq, as a preparatory step toward a military withdrawal from the country. Indeed, the Americans recently angered the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki by discussing border security with Syria when the Iraqis felt that this should be their own prerogative. Following the simultaneous bombings in Baghdad in late August, the US initially took an equivocal position towards the violence, arguing that Iraq and Syria should resolve their differences through dialogue, while sources in Washington leaked that it was not Iraqi Baathists run out of Syria, but al Qa’eda, that had carried out the bombings. Mr Maliki’s idea of setting up a United Nations tribunal to investigate the incident aroused no American sympathy.
And yet the United States seemed to be intentionally missing the point. The Assad regime continues to allow foreign jihadists to enter Iraq through its border. If such jihadists planned and executed the Baghdad bombings, there was a pretty good chance they travelled through Syria. However, as eager as some US officials are to make the relationship with Syria work in Iraq, the reality is that the Syrians have every intention of maintaining a spoiler role there, whether to strengthen themselves with respect to Washington in the future or with respect to Iraq and the Arab world.
That is not likely to change at a time when the United States, along with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, is preparing to begin a dialogue with Iran. Nothing worries Syria more than the prospect of a breakthrough in the Middle East between Washington and Tehran. And while the probability may not be high, the Syrians don’t like processes of which they are not a part. That will only make them more reluctant to be conciliatory – in Iraq, but also in Lebanon and on the Palestinian front. A more imaginative policy might be for Syria to initiate a serious process of its own, perhaps through negotiations with Israel, one that pushes it towards centre stage in diplomatic importance, but that’s not part of the Assad regime’s DNA, which naturally gravitates towards obstruction.
What Mr Assad does not realise is that the Obama administration is as close as he will get to a willing American partner. The US has decided to send an ambassador back to Damascus, to lift some sanctions on Syria, to engage it over Iraq and to avoid clashes over Syria’s support for Hamas and its actions in Lebanon, where Mr Assad’s intransigence is a major factor in blocking the formation of a new government. Despite all this, the Syrians are no closer to getting something tangible out of the relationship.
American tolerance has its limits: Syria has often succeeded in forcing other governments to take it to the river, before then refusing to drink. To finally get somewhere, Mr Assad may one day have to risk a sip.
Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon
Love of the Land: The Syrian paradox: playing the spoiler to stay relevant
Love of the Land: Celebrating 60 years of perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem:
World leaders pay tribute to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
Dr. Aaron Lerner
18 September 09
[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: The international community typically aids in
solving refugee problems on a humanitarian basis by assisting in absorbing the refugees in host countries. But the welfare of Palestinian refugees and their progeny of several generations has taken second place to their role as pawns in the ongoing struggle against the Zionist identity (aka Jewish state, aka Israel).
And that's where UNRWA comes in, helping to feed, cloth, educate, etc. these political pawns (with a payment system designed to encourage one of the highest birth rates in the world to help increase the number of Palestinian pawns) .
From an institutional standpoint its a win-win situation. After all, if the refugees, their children, grandchildren and now great grandchildren were formally absorbed then the folks making a career working for UNRWA would be unemployed.. ]
UNRWA
Press Release
UNRWA, New York
18 Sept 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
EMBARGOED UNTIL 14h30 GMT / 17h30 Jerusalem time
World leaders pay tribute
To the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
On its sixtieth anniversary
United Nations, 18 September 2009: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, has announced a week-long series of events beginning in New York next week to mark the 60th anniversary of its creation. These include the unveiling of a commemorative banner that will adorn the façade of the iconic UN General Assembly building by the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Deputy Secretary General, Asha-Rose Migiro.
The centrepiece of the week is a Ministerial Level Event on September 24 at which governments will pledge support for UNRWA and pay tribute to six decades of achievement and service to the world's largest and longest standing refugee population and to the Palestine refugees themselves.
In addition, there will be academic conferences at Columbia University and the Princeton Club on UNRWA's humanitarian role in current peace efforts and an assessment of the Agency's contribution to human capital in the Middle East.
The Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, commended UNRWA as a "symbol of the international community's determination to end the state of limbo the Palestine refugees endure", and praised the Agency's staff for its "dedication and courage". He is expected to warn of "painful" cuts in UNRWA services and call on the General Assembly to "look again" at its responsibilities and put the Agency on a firm financial foundation.
Looking forward to the High Level Event, UNRWA Commissioner-General, Karen AbuZayd said, "This is an occasion for reflection on why after sixty years of exile and dispossession, millions of Palestine refugees remains stateless. With increasing talk about an emerging peace deal, let us all recommit ourselves to finding a peaceful solution in which the tragic situation of the refugees will be resolved". "This week is also an opportunity for UNRWA to tell the world about its achievements. The war in
Gaza and our continued presence side by side with the people there may have raised some headlines. During this coming week we want to remind the world of the less-publicised work we do day in and day out for a refugee population larger than the populations of over a third of the UN's member states," said AbuZayd. "That is UNRWA's lasting contribution to peace".
UNRWA has published a commemorative book in which nearly one hundred statesmen and women pay tribute to its work. President Mahmoud Abbas praises the Agency for its role as a "stabilizing force" and commends UNRWA for "ameliorating the plight of the Palestine refugees by giving them "protection, hope and a sense of human dignity". The US Secretary of State, Hilary Rodham Clinton, gives her support to the Agency, which has been confronting "difficult and challenging circumstances", working "tirelessly to ensure the dignity and human development of those they serve". Her
Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan says, "We owe so much to UNRWA. Their selflessness and perseverance in the face of indescribable adversity have kept Palestine refugees alive for sixty years: healing their wounds, sustaining their bodies, nourishing their minds and giving them hope in their darkest hours".
UNRWA provides education to half a million children in approximately 650 schools across the Middle East and maintains 138 health centres in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In addition, it runs extensive relief, social services and microfinance programmes in the region.
Love of the Land: Celebrating 60 years of perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem:
Israel Matzav: A smoking gun on Iranian terror in Argentina
A smoking gun on Iranian terror in Argentina
This is a description of a book called To Kill Without a Trace. The book (pictured) has been published in Spanish and shows how Iran was behind the suicide bombing at the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Argentina in 1994. On July 18, 1994, the worst anti-Jewish attack in the post world war era occurred: the site of the center of the Jewish community in Buenos Aires was obliterated, leaving 85 dead and hundreds injured.Read the whole thing.
A short time later, a web was spun to provide cover for those responsible for the attack, which included red herrings, blackmailing, bribery, intimidation of witnesses and diverse methods of obstructing the investigation.
This cover-up network was instigated by government functionaries, intelligence agents, judges and leaders of the Jewish community. It would have succeeded had it not been for the herculean work of Alberto Nisman, who in 1997 was nominated to be a State Prosecutor of the AMIA case with the intention of rubber stamping this network of falsifications.
At the heart of this novel is the gradual unraveling of this web of lies.
I find it especially curious to hear that the Jewish community was involved in the coverup, and look forward to the book being published in English
Israel Matzav: A smoking gun on Iranian terror in Argentina
Israel Matzav: UN should hold Obama to same standard as Israel
UN should hold Obama to same standard as Israel
Writing in Haaretz, Ari Shavit has a clever idea. Some two weeks ago American airplanes fired on two oil tankers in northern Afghanistan. It was a German officer who'd asked the U.S. air force to attack the tankers in the middle of the night, in a populated area. The attack was successful - the two tankers were hit, went up in flames and were destroyed. But the overwhelming American-German air attack killed some 70 people. Some of those brought to hospitals were severely injured - with mutilated faces, burned hands and charred bodies.Continue reading here.
It is not clear to this day if most of those who burned to death were Taliban warriors, as NATO first claimed, or innocent civilians who wanted to bring home a bit of oil. One way or another, it's clear that the United States and Germany are responsible for an extremely brutal attack. Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway also bear responsibility for the massacre as NATO members.
If the international community is committed to international law and universal ethics - which do not discriminate between one sort of killing and another - then it should investigate this villainous assault. If the United States, Germany and NATO refuse to cooperate with investigators, the UN should consider transferring the case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It is possible that at the end of the process it would be necessary to put U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway on trial for their role in committing a severe war crime that did not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Obama would probably be the principal defendant in this case. He was the one who believed in the war in Afghanistan and intensified it. As U.S. commander-in-chief, he bears direct responsibility not only for the deaths of those who were burned with the tankers, but the death of many hundreds of innocent Afghan civilians.
If there are is such a thing as an international community, international law and universal ethics, they must seriously consider putting Obama on trial for his responsibility for severe war crimes.
Absurd?
Yes, of course it's absurd. But so is the Goldstone Report and the standards to which the World is attempting to hold Israel.
Israel Matzav: Obama to host Netanyahu and Abu Mazen in New York this week
Obama to host Netanyahu and Abu Mazen in New York this week
President Obama will host a 'summit' with Prime Minister Netanyahu and 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Nir Hefetz, who heads the public relations desk in the Prime Minister's Office, said in response to the announcement that, "Prime Minister Netanyahu warmly accepts the invitation extended by the U.S. administration for a meeting with the U.S. president, and for a trilateral meeting with the president and with the president of the Palestinian Authority."The meeting will follow individual meetings between Obama and each of Netanyahu and Abu Mazen. Expectations are apparently quite low.
A senior Netanyahu aide added: "The meeting will be held without preconditions, as the prime minister had always wanted."
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat confirmed Abbas would attend the meeting and said he hopes the meeting will renew talks.
The Palestinian leader held talks with Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, for over a year without achieving an agreement.
On Friday, the possibility of a three-way meeting had been in doubt because Mitchell failed to bridge wide gaps between Israelis and Palestinians.
Obama has set the renewal of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks as a major goal of his young presidency, and dispatched Mitchell as a White House envoy to soften the ground on both sides.
Over four days, Mitchell met twice with Abbas and four times with Netanyahu, including twice on Friday before Mitchell left the Middle East.
The reality is that there isn't going to be a deal because the 'Palestinians' and their Arab Muslim patrons aren't willing to accept the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East, and most Israelis have woken up and smelled the coffee in time to avoid committing suicide.
Israel Matzav: Obama to host Netanyahu and Abu Mazen in New York this week
Saturday, 19 September 2009
Israel Matzav: Golda and the terrorists
Golda and the terrorists
Mrs. Carl sent me this article which is somewhat political.You must go to the link and read the article to the end or you will miss the entire point of it. I'm going to start you off.
To my consternation Golda never enunciated a single one of these words. Instead, she scanned the assembly from end to end, jaw jutting, her expression defiant, and after combing back her hair with the fingers of both hands, brandished the written speech, and in a caustic tone said, "I have here my prepared address, a copy of which I believe you have before you. But I have decided at the last minute not to place between you and me the paper on which my speech is written. Instead, you will forgive me if I break with protocol and speak in an impromptu fashion. I say this in light of what has occurred in Austria during the last few days."
Clearly, the woman had decided it was idiotic to read her formal address after the devastating news which had reached her just before leaving Israel for Strasbourg:
A train carrying Jews from communist Russia en route to Israel via Vienna was hijacked by two Arab terrorists at a railway crossing on the Austrian frontier. Seven Jews were taken hostage, among them a 73 year-old man, an ailing woman, and a three-year old child. The terrorists issued an ultimatum that unless the Austrian government instantly closed down Schoenau, the Jewish Agency's layover near Vienna where the émigrés were processed before being flown on to Israel, not only would the hostages be killed, but Austria itself would become the target of violent retaliation.
The Austrian cabinet hastily met and, led by Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, capitulated. Kreisky announced that Schoenau would be closed forthwith, and the terrorists were hustled to the airport for safe passage to Libya.
The entire Arab world could hardly contain its glee, and a fuming Golda Meir instructed her aides to arrange for an early flight from Strasbourg to Vienna where she intended to confront her fellow prime minister, her fellow socialist, and her fellow Jew, Bruno Kreisky, herself.
To the European Council she said, "Since the Arab terrorists have failed in their ghastly efforts to wreak havoc in Israel they have, of late, taken their atrocities against Israeli and Jewish targets into Europe, aided and abetted by Arab governments."
This remark caused a fidgety buzz to drone around the packed chamber, and it seemed to deepen when she spoke bitterly about the eleven Israeli athletes kidnapped and murdered at the Munich Olympics the summer before, an outrage compounded by the German government's subsequent release of the surviving killers in return for the freeing of a hijacked Lufthansa plane and its passengers.
"Oh yes, I fully understand your feelings," said Golda cynically, arms folded as tight as a drawbridge. "I fully understand the feelings of a European prime minister saying, 'For God's sake, leave us out of this! Fight your own wars on your own turf. What do your enmities have to do with us? Leave us be!' And I can even understand" -- this in a voice that had gone grimmer than ever -- "why some governments might even decide that the only way to rid themselves of this insidious threat is to declare their countries out of bounds, if not to Jews generally then certainly to Israeli Jews, or Jews en-route to Israel. It seems to me this is the moral choice which every European government has to make these days."
And then, chopping the air with balled fists, her face as granite as her eyes, she thundered, "European governments have no alternative but to decide what they are going to do. To every one which upholds the rule of law I suggest there is but only one answer — no deals with terrorists; no truck with terrorism. Any government which strikes a deal with these killers does so at its own peril. What happened in Vienna is that a democratic government, a European government, came to an agreement with terrorists. In so doing it has brought shame upon itself. In so doing it has breached a basic principle of the rule of law, the basic principle of the freedom of the movement of peoples -- or should I just say the basic freedom of the movement of Jews fleeing Russia? Oh, what a victory for terrorism this is!"
The ensuing applause told Golda Meir that she had gotten her message across to a goodly portion of the European Council, so off she flew to Vienna.
Israel Matzav: Golda and the terrorists
RubinReports: Canceling American Missiles in Europe: A Balanced Assessment
Canceling American Missiles in Europe: A Balanced Assessment
By Barry Rubin
The Obama Administration has now announced a policy shift expected ever since it took office: the cancellation of U.S. plans to put missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. There are two good arguments that can be made for this step, but there’s a counter-argument that makes it most worrisome.
Nominally, the missile defenses were planned to counter a possible Iranian missile attack on Europe. As such, and as the administration points out, they were dealing with a rather low-likelihood scenario. When President Barack Obama said, "Our new missile defense architecture in Europe will provide stronger, smarter and swifter defenses of American forces and America's allies," that is probably true in the strict sense of the word.
(By the way, one of the systems being used is the U.S.-Israel Arrow, a good example of the value of the strategic partnership between the two countries).
The second argument for the policy shift is that it will make Russia happy. The Russians view Central Europe, and countries like Poland and the Czech Republic as well as all the other states which once made up the Soviet Union or its satellite states, as their sphere of influence. For the United States to put missiles in two of those countries, even with the eager agreement of their governments, was seen as trespassing.
Here, though, questions can be raised. The most immediate reason why the United States would want to make the Russians happy is to get their cooperation on increased sanctions against Iran. With some other administration, one might suspect there is a secret deal to do so: a missiles for sanctions trade.
With the Obama Administration, however, unilateral concessions (we give now, show we are nice guys, and so you may give us something in future) seem to prevail and I doubt if there is any such arrangement. Indeed, I’ll bet that after swallowing this gift, Moscow will continue to oppose higher sanctions against Iran and will sabotage any that are put into place.
Governments are ill advised to give something for nothing.
The third issue is the effect on Central Europe itself. The Poles and Czechs took a real risk in agreeing to host the missiles. (Secretary of Defense Robert Gates say they will get missiles some time after 2015 under the new plan but the Russians don’t seem worried this will ever happen.)
The suspicion in places like Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as those like Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, and a dozen other countries, is that the United States (or at least this president) won’t protect them from the Russian bear. To some extent, at least, they saw this small American military presence as insurance against Russian threats and see losing it as making them more vulnerable.
Republican critics of the administration stressed this aspect. For example, former presidential candidate Senator John McCain responded that this step "has the potential to undermine perceived American leadership in Eastern Europe." Senator Jon Kyl added: "The message the administration sends today is clear: The United States will not stand behind its friends and views 're-setting' relations with Russia more important."
This, too, is correct. The problem is not so much this specific decision but the context of the administration’s overall philosophy and behavior.
In addition, the Russians are putting a lot of pressure on neighbors that is rarely reported in the Western media: using energy supply leverage as blackmail, buying up strategic industries, making threats, interpreting history to say these countries should be part of Russia or under its sway, backing subversive forces, acting as protector of ethnic Russians in other countries, and making territorial claims.
A number of top Central European former policymakers thus addressed an open letter to Obama asking for his help in July and expressing their fear of Russian expansionism. To my knowledge, there has been no private response or public reassurance by the White House.
The Russians are not impressed at all by Obama and view him as a weak leader who can be stepped on. What the Obama Administration doesn’t understand regarding this point is that if Moscow views him as someone ready to give in on European issues they will also disregard his wishes on the Iranian problem.
So here’s a question: If the Russians continue to reject higher sanctions against Iran, how will the administration respond?
The White House may be right on the missile defense in terms of its technical merits but the Republican critics may be right on the political and psychological effect for Russia’s neighbors of this decision to cancel the missile deployment.
Oh, by the way, Central Europeans will notice--even if Americans don't--that this step comes precisely on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, the act of aggression which most truly symbollizes the Russian claim to their countries as slaves or satellites. The Russian government is justifying this deed today, an action integrally linked to its continuing view of Central Europe as its property. This was a major public relations' mistake by the Obama Adminitration which adds insult to injury for the Poles and Czechs.
The Obama Administration has now announced a policy shift expected ever since it took office: the cancellation of U.S. plans to put missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. There are two good arguments that can be made for this step, but there’s a counter-argument that makes it most worrisome.
Nominally, the missile defenses were planned to counter a possible Iranian missile attack on Europe. As such, and as the administration points out, they were dealing with a rather low-likelihood scenario. When President Barack Obama said, "Our new missile defense architecture in Europe will provide stronger, smarter and swifter defenses of American forces and America's allies," that is probably true in the strict sense of the word.
(By the way, one of the systems being used is the U.S.-Israel Arrow, a good example of the value of the strategic partnership between the two countries).
The second argument for the policy shift is that it will make Russia happy. The Russians view Central Europe, and countries like Poland and the Czech Republic as well as all the other states which once made up the Soviet Union or its satellite states, as their sphere of influence. For the United States to put missiles in two of those countries, even with the eager agreement of their governments, was seen as trespassing.
Here, though, questions can be raised. The most immediate reason why the United States would want to make the Russians happy is to get their cooperation on increased sanctions against Iran. With some other administration, one might suspect there is a secret deal to do so: a missiles for sanctions trade.
With the Obama Administration, however, unilateral concessions (we give now, show we are nice guys, and so you may give us something in future) seem to prevail and I doubt if there is any such arrangement. Indeed, I’ll bet that after swallowing this gift, Moscow will continue to oppose higher sanctions against Iran and will sabotage any that are put into place.
Governments are ill advised to give something for nothing.
The third issue is the effect on Central Europe itself. The Poles and Czechs took a real risk in agreeing to host the missiles. (Secretary of Defense Robert Gates say they will get missiles some time after 2015 under the new plan but the Russians don’t seem worried this will ever happen.)
The suspicion in places like Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as those like Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, and a dozen other countries, is that the United States (or at least this president) won’t protect them from the Russian bear. To some extent, at least, they saw this small American military presence as insurance against Russian threats and see losing it as making them more vulnerable.
Republican critics of the administration stressed this aspect. For example, former presidential candidate Senator John McCain responded that this step "has the potential to undermine perceived American leadership in Eastern Europe." Senator Jon Kyl added: "The message the administration sends today is clear: The United States will not stand behind its friends and views 're-setting' relations with Russia more important."
This, too, is correct. The problem is not so much this specific decision but the context of the administration’s overall philosophy and behavior.
In addition, the Russians are putting a lot of pressure on neighbors that is rarely reported in the Western media: using energy supply leverage as blackmail, buying up strategic industries, making threats, interpreting history to say these countries should be part of Russia or under its sway, backing subversive forces, acting as protector of ethnic Russians in other countries, and making territorial claims.
A number of top Central European former policymakers thus addressed an open letter to Obama asking for his help in July and expressing their fear of Russian expansionism. To my knowledge, there has been no private response or public reassurance by the White House.
The Russians are not impressed at all by Obama and view him as a weak leader who can be stepped on. What the Obama Administration doesn’t understand regarding this point is that if Moscow views him as someone ready to give in on European issues they will also disregard his wishes on the Iranian problem.
So here’s a question: If the Russians continue to reject higher sanctions against Iran, how will the administration respond?
The White House may be right on the missile defense in terms of its technical merits but the Republican critics may be right on the political and psychological effect for Russia’s neighbors of this decision to cancel the missile deployment.
Oh, by the way, Central Europeans will notice--even if Americans don't--that this step comes precisely on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, the act of aggression which most truly symbollizes the Russian claim to their countries as slaves or satellites. The Russian government is justifying this deed today, an action integrally linked to its continuing view of Central Europe as its property. This was a major public relations' mistake by the Obama Adminitration which adds insult to injury for the Poles and Czechs.
RubinReports: Canceling American Missiles in Europe: A Balanced Assessment
RubinReports: Gratitude? Soft Power? Popularity? Apologizing? Hey, We’re Talking About International Relations Here!
Gratitude? Soft Power? Popularity? Apologizing? Hey, We’re Talking About International Relations Here!
By Barry Rubin
Today, U.S. foreign policy is full of the notions of “soft power,” confidence-building measures, popularity, apologizing and showing empathy in order to win the respect of other counties. The idea that there is gratitude in international relations is a very powerful one in Washington, perhaps in the West generally.
And so I thought of the fragility and fantasy involved in these worthy sentiments when I came across the following passage by another country’s most famous writer of the day, a close personal friend of his country’s leader, as a response to a massive American aid effort which saved the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen while asking for nothing in return except good will:
“In all the history of human suffering, I know of no accomplishment which can be compared in magnitude and generosity with the relief that you have accomplished….The generosity of the American people resuscitates the dream of fraternity….It will be inscribed in the pages of history as unique, gigantic, and glorious…and will long remain in the memory of millions you have saved from death….”
Who was the author and what the occasion for this outpouring of eternal gratitude?
The leading Soviet novelist Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Lenin’s favorite writer, wrote this in 1921 at Lenin’s request, thanking the U.S. campaign that not only saved so many lives but also probably prevented the USSR’s collapse. Of course, this debt was repaid by seventy years of Soviet Communism which did everything possible to destroy U.S. interests and credibility.
By the way, the Soviet government never let the letter be published in the country. When reference was later made to it in Soviet publications—with no hint of the letter’s contents--the title given turned the gratitude into hatred and suspicion: “The Greek Hoover and His Gifts. “ Herbert Hoover headed the program. The implication was taken from the Greek story of the Trojan Horse, that is the treachery implicit in phony generosity. The concept is best known today from the phrase, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”
It is hard to think of a single instance, certainly in the Middle East (outside of Israel) at least, when U.S. humanitarian or economic aid, material support, military liberation (Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait), support for statehood plus massive funding (Palestinian Authority), or diplomatic support have ever brought cooperation or warm feelings toward America. Any hope of appealing by such methods to the regimes of countries like Bolivia, China, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, or any others you care to add is not going to work.
Today, U.S. foreign policy is full of the notions of “soft power,” confidence-building measures, popularity, apologizing and showing empathy in order to win the respect of other counties. The idea that there is gratitude in international relations is a very powerful one in Washington, perhaps in the West generally.
And so I thought of the fragility and fantasy involved in these worthy sentiments when I came across the following passage by another country’s most famous writer of the day, a close personal friend of his country’s leader, as a response to a massive American aid effort which saved the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen while asking for nothing in return except good will:
“In all the history of human suffering, I know of no accomplishment which can be compared in magnitude and generosity with the relief that you have accomplished….The generosity of the American people resuscitates the dream of fraternity….It will be inscribed in the pages of history as unique, gigantic, and glorious…and will long remain in the memory of millions you have saved from death….”
Who was the author and what the occasion for this outpouring of eternal gratitude?
The leading Soviet novelist Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Lenin’s favorite writer, wrote this in 1921 at Lenin’s request, thanking the U.S. campaign that not only saved so many lives but also probably prevented the USSR’s collapse. Of course, this debt was repaid by seventy years of Soviet Communism which did everything possible to destroy U.S. interests and credibility.
By the way, the Soviet government never let the letter be published in the country. When reference was later made to it in Soviet publications—with no hint of the letter’s contents--the title given turned the gratitude into hatred and suspicion: “The Greek Hoover and His Gifts. “ Herbert Hoover headed the program. The implication was taken from the Greek story of the Trojan Horse, that is the treachery implicit in phony generosity. The concept is best known today from the phrase, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”
It is hard to think of a single instance, certainly in the Middle East (outside of Israel) at least, when U.S. humanitarian or economic aid, material support, military liberation (Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait), support for statehood plus massive funding (Palestinian Authority), or diplomatic support have ever brought cooperation or warm feelings toward America. Any hope of appealing by such methods to the regimes of countries like Bolivia, China, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, or any others you care to add is not going to work.
RubinReports: Gratitude? Soft Power? Popularity? Apologizing? Hey, We’re Talking About International Relations Here!
RubinReports: Steve Rosen explains U.S. Middle East policy brilliantly
Steve Rosen explains U.S. Middle East policy brilliantly
This is so good I can only reprint it. I will just add a few details in brackets. Ignore the mass media and just listen to what this article says if you want to understand the issue.
Stuck in the Middle East: Obama's go get-'em diplomacy with Israel and Iran is on a collision course with failure.
BY STEVEN J. ROSEN, Foreign Policy, SEPTEMBER 17, 2009
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/09/17/stuck_in_the_middle_east
Eight months into his presidency, Barack Obama is fast approaching his first real moment of truth on the Middle East. At the opening of the U.N. General Assembly session next week, the U.S. president will host a ceremonial summit between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in hopes of launching talks to achieve a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Then, a week later on Oct. 1, Undersecretary of State William Burns will join representatives of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China for the first talks with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator to see whether an agreement can be reached to curtail President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuclear weapons program.
This is the diplomatic offensive that Obama promised the U.S. public last year -- the investment in "soft power" that the president's supporters deemed lacking during the George W. Bush administration. But the White House is facing tough prospects on both fronts. All that fantastical thinking about the transformative power of diplomacy is now headed straight for the iceberg that is the Middle East.
One immovable object is Abbas, who has participated in hundreds of peace negotiations over 15 years with six previous Israeli governments -- all while Israeli settlement construction was proceeding at a brisk pace. Now, Abbas says that he won't accept the partial freeze that Netanyahu has declared; he'll wait to join peace talks until Israel bows to Washington's unprecedented demand for a total freeze on construction, including in Jerusalem. But that is a condition that no Israeli government is going to accept. Even if Abbas softens his stand and agrees to begin talks, negotiations will still be in their throat-clearing phase when the Palestinian president's term ends Jan. 10. [Barry's note: The election has already been postponed] With Hamas controlling Gaza there is no agreed electoral mechanism to empower a successor Palestinian president to make concessions on behalf of the Palestinians. Far from achieving transformative success, Obama will be lucky if he can just keep negotiations alive for more than a few weeks. [Barry note: He might keep them going for months. What is important is they won't be going anywhere.]
The Iranian talks look even more likely to end without resolution. On what seems like a daily basis, Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reaffirm their determination to accelerate Iran's nuclear program and add to the rapidly growing stockpiles of low-enriched uranium. The talks are not likely to throw them off this path.
When both of these diplomatic initiatives grind down, then, and hopes for change fade, the U.S.-Israel relationship will face new strains. Obama can tolerate an impasse on the Iranian front for some time, but Netanyahu cannot. Although Obama and his advisors certainly do not want to see a nuclear-armed Iran, some find the prospect of an attack against the Islamic Republic even more frightening. As the countdown to a nuclear Iran draws ever near, many top Netanyahu advisors have a different view.
[I think any Israeli move on Iran is a year or more off so that won't be a factor in the shorter run.]
On the Palestinian file, the opposite is true: It is Obama who cannot live with an impasse and the Israelis who can. Since 2005, when Israel withdrew every soldier and 8,000 settlers from Gaza, only to be rewarded by a Hamas coup and thousands of Qassam rockets, Israelis have been skeptical that further Oslo Accords-type agreements can enhance their security. The idea of negotiating with the Palestinians to pull the Israeli army out of the West Bank, for example, doesn't inspire much public enthusiasm. Trouble is, many Americans do still believe in the Oslo idea. And a breakdown of Israeli-Palestinian talks would put enormous strains on Washington's relations with Arab countries like Saudi Arabia that need diplomatic movement to quiet domestic tensions. Allowing the talks to fail would also be unacceptable to the European Union and profoundly unsettling to important parts of Obama's own political coalition. Without a peace process, there will be more pressure for anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, leaving Obama with a bitter choice between using the U.S. veto to prevent them or allowing them to pass, imperiling an ally and inflaming demands for U.S. sanctions against Israel.
[Barry note: I think Obama will veto these resolutions or negotiate them into softer texts and will not press Israel more because what he most wants is the appearance of success so he will proclaim how great everyone is cooperating together, including Netanyahu. Also, this Administration is crisis-averse, especially in foreign policy. The Obama people will be aware that if they push too hard to achieve a peace agreement they will fail and look stupid. They would rather look successful with more moest achievements.]
There is yet one more wild card in all of this: Obama's door is open to advisors who want to break with Israel. Many on the left of the Democratic Party believe that Israel is the obstacle to peace and that a breakthrough could be achieved if Obama just twisted Israel's arm. Of course, this was always the view of some of the storied Arabists in the State Department, but today, it comes more influentially from Jewish American critics of Israeli policy who depict themselves as pro-Israel and pro-peace. Faced with the reality that only the 3 percent of Israelis who vote Meretz share such views, and that the dovish camp led by Yossi Beilin has no prospect of winning an election in the actual Jewish state, the Beilinist Israeli left has moved to Washington. Their goal is to lobby the U.S. president to "save Israel from herself" by imposing terms on Israel that the great majority of Israelis would reject.
[I don't think this will result in much. I believe the most "confrontational" period of U.S.-Israel relations is already behind us.]
Obama is poorly positioned to reach over Netanyahu's head to persuade the Israeli people to embrace this agenda. A Sept. 12 poll put Bibi's approval rating at 65 percent, while similar polls by Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post found that only 12 and 6 percent of Israelis, respectively, think that Obama is pro-Israel. If elections were held today, Likud would gain five additional seats, and Bibi's coalition would grow at the expense of the left, which has already been decimated by a public rebuff.
Some Netanyahu advisors think that Obama is himself a man of the left and that top aides like Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are closet J-Streeters in the White House. Instead, however, Obama and his top advisors are instinctively drawn to the center-left, like Bill and Hillary Clinton. He is more likely to take advice from the National Security Council's Dennis Ross than from more-leftist deputy Mideast peace envoy Mara Rudman or the ubiquitous peace pundit Daniel Levy.
[Right, I agree.]
In short, all that is clear is that Obama's big Mideast moment is coming. Now the world waits to see what kind of U.S. president he wants to be.
Steven J. Rosen served for 23 years as foreign-policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and was a defendant in the recently dismissed AIPAC case. He is now director of the Washington Project at the Middle East Forum.
Stuck in the Middle East: Obama's go get-'em diplomacy with Israel and Iran is on a collision course with failure.
BY STEVEN J. ROSEN, Foreign Policy, SEPTEMBER 17, 2009
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/09/17/stuck_in_the_middle_east
Eight months into his presidency, Barack Obama is fast approaching his first real moment of truth on the Middle East. At the opening of the U.N. General Assembly session next week, the U.S. president will host a ceremonial summit between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in hopes of launching talks to achieve a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Then, a week later on Oct. 1, Undersecretary of State William Burns will join representatives of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China for the first talks with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator to see whether an agreement can be reached to curtail President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuclear weapons program.
This is the diplomatic offensive that Obama promised the U.S. public last year -- the investment in "soft power" that the president's supporters deemed lacking during the George W. Bush administration. But the White House is facing tough prospects on both fronts. All that fantastical thinking about the transformative power of diplomacy is now headed straight for the iceberg that is the Middle East.
One immovable object is Abbas, who has participated in hundreds of peace negotiations over 15 years with six previous Israeli governments -- all while Israeli settlement construction was proceeding at a brisk pace. Now, Abbas says that he won't accept the partial freeze that Netanyahu has declared; he'll wait to join peace talks until Israel bows to Washington's unprecedented demand for a total freeze on construction, including in Jerusalem. But that is a condition that no Israeli government is going to accept. Even if Abbas softens his stand and agrees to begin talks, negotiations will still be in their throat-clearing phase when the Palestinian president's term ends Jan. 10. [Barry's note: The election has already been postponed] With Hamas controlling Gaza there is no agreed electoral mechanism to empower a successor Palestinian president to make concessions on behalf of the Palestinians. Far from achieving transformative success, Obama will be lucky if he can just keep negotiations alive for more than a few weeks. [Barry note: He might keep them going for months. What is important is they won't be going anywhere.]
The Iranian talks look even more likely to end without resolution. On what seems like a daily basis, Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reaffirm their determination to accelerate Iran's nuclear program and add to the rapidly growing stockpiles of low-enriched uranium. The talks are not likely to throw them off this path.
When both of these diplomatic initiatives grind down, then, and hopes for change fade, the U.S.-Israel relationship will face new strains. Obama can tolerate an impasse on the Iranian front for some time, but Netanyahu cannot. Although Obama and his advisors certainly do not want to see a nuclear-armed Iran, some find the prospect of an attack against the Islamic Republic even more frightening. As the countdown to a nuclear Iran draws ever near, many top Netanyahu advisors have a different view.
[I think any Israeli move on Iran is a year or more off so that won't be a factor in the shorter run.]
On the Palestinian file, the opposite is true: It is Obama who cannot live with an impasse and the Israelis who can. Since 2005, when Israel withdrew every soldier and 8,000 settlers from Gaza, only to be rewarded by a Hamas coup and thousands of Qassam rockets, Israelis have been skeptical that further Oslo Accords-type agreements can enhance their security. The idea of negotiating with the Palestinians to pull the Israeli army out of the West Bank, for example, doesn't inspire much public enthusiasm. Trouble is, many Americans do still believe in the Oslo idea. And a breakdown of Israeli-Palestinian talks would put enormous strains on Washington's relations with Arab countries like Saudi Arabia that need diplomatic movement to quiet domestic tensions. Allowing the talks to fail would also be unacceptable to the European Union and profoundly unsettling to important parts of Obama's own political coalition. Without a peace process, there will be more pressure for anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, leaving Obama with a bitter choice between using the U.S. veto to prevent them or allowing them to pass, imperiling an ally and inflaming demands for U.S. sanctions against Israel.
[Barry note: I think Obama will veto these resolutions or negotiate them into softer texts and will not press Israel more because what he most wants is the appearance of success so he will proclaim how great everyone is cooperating together, including Netanyahu. Also, this Administration is crisis-averse, especially in foreign policy. The Obama people will be aware that if they push too hard to achieve a peace agreement they will fail and look stupid. They would rather look successful with more moest achievements.]
There is yet one more wild card in all of this: Obama's door is open to advisors who want to break with Israel. Many on the left of the Democratic Party believe that Israel is the obstacle to peace and that a breakthrough could be achieved if Obama just twisted Israel's arm. Of course, this was always the view of some of the storied Arabists in the State Department, but today, it comes more influentially from Jewish American critics of Israeli policy who depict themselves as pro-Israel and pro-peace. Faced with the reality that only the 3 percent of Israelis who vote Meretz share such views, and that the dovish camp led by Yossi Beilin has no prospect of winning an election in the actual Jewish state, the Beilinist Israeli left has moved to Washington. Their goal is to lobby the U.S. president to "save Israel from herself" by imposing terms on Israel that the great majority of Israelis would reject.
[I don't think this will result in much. I believe the most "confrontational" period of U.S.-Israel relations is already behind us.]
Obama is poorly positioned to reach over Netanyahu's head to persuade the Israeli people to embrace this agenda. A Sept. 12 poll put Bibi's approval rating at 65 percent, while similar polls by Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post found that only 12 and 6 percent of Israelis, respectively, think that Obama is pro-Israel. If elections were held today, Likud would gain five additional seats, and Bibi's coalition would grow at the expense of the left, which has already been decimated by a public rebuff.
Some Netanyahu advisors think that Obama is himself a man of the left and that top aides like Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are closet J-Streeters in the White House. Instead, however, Obama and his top advisors are instinctively drawn to the center-left, like Bill and Hillary Clinton. He is more likely to take advice from the National Security Council's Dennis Ross than from more-leftist deputy Mideast peace envoy Mara Rudman or the ubiquitous peace pundit Daniel Levy.
[Right, I agree.]
In short, all that is clear is that Obama's big Mideast moment is coming. Now the world waits to see what kind of U.S. president he wants to be.
Steven J. Rosen served for 23 years as foreign-policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and was a defendant in the recently dismissed AIPAC case. He is now director of the Washington Project at the Middle East Forum.
RubinReports: Steve Rosen explains U.S. Middle East policy brilliantly
RubinReports: The UN Goldstone's Report: A Victory for Terrorists and War Criminals
The UN Goldstone's Report: A Victory for Terrorists and War Criminals
By Barry Rubin
There will be many detailed critiques of the UN’s Goldstone report, created for the purpose of bashing Israel over the Gaza war with phony claims of “war crimes.” Some brief overview, however, is required.
Imagine there's a war going on in which one side has openly declared it will commit genocide on the other, wiping if off the face of the earth. Imagine that the regime ruling this place has openly, daily, and officially referred to its enemies as sub-humans who conspire to rule the world and are responsible for everything evil in history. Imagine that this regime is a dictatorship that wins over some as passionate adherents and intimidates others in a society where conformity already reigns.
Now imagine that an outside group composed of some who are naïve and some who are dedicated collaborators with that regime’s cause come into that place and ask: Tell us how evil and terrible your enemy (i.e., would-be victim) is and we will write it all down and use it to isolate, demonize, and put on sanctions against that enemy.
What do you expect the result will be?
This is precisely what happened in the Gaza Strip. The witnesses made propaganda against Israel; the UN collated, endorsed, and broadcast it. Yet amazingly little hard evidence was presented and generally the more the specific the allegations, the easier it is to refute.
I have deliberately chosen here the man who was almost certainly the most moderate, rational and even liberal Palestinian witness who appeared before the commission. I do not say this lightly. Dr. Iyyad El-Sarraji [I use the report's transliteration, which is terrible] has been celebrated in the New York Times, he was critical of Yasir Arafat, and he is from the left, not an Islamist or even an Arafat follower.
But what is not reported in the Western media about Sarraji is that he has publicly spoken out against the 1993 Oslo Accords and argued that the Palestinians should never have abandoned armed struggle which, to put it most charitably, has always included—and Sarraji knows this—a huge component of anti-civilian terrorism.
[I will bet that virtually not a single Palestinian interviewed in the investigation supports a two-state solution. Virtually every single one of them wants Israel destroyed and saw this commission as a wonderful opportunity to further that goal.]
Here’s a sample of Sarraji’s testimony and to give you the flavor I must quote at some length:
“The Palestinian in the eyes of the Israeli soldier is not an equal human being. Sometimes this Palestinian even becomes a demon in their eyes. Therefore it is a state of demonization. This is unfortunately, uh, what can be seen in the behavior of the Israeli soldier not only killing children or fathers before the eyes of children….This is the base of everything and then there is the fact that there is no restraint, no discipline within the army and, uh, uh, even there’s an encouragement. This is part of the Israeli military institution and previously we have seen many stories of how the Palestinians are being killed either at the hand of soldiers or settlers and then the accused or the, uh, responsible is, uh, found innocent, sometimes even a statute is put up for him as a hero.”
Each point of this testimony is demonstrably a lie. The reference to a statue has a grain of truth that demonstrated my point. Some settlers put up a statue of the Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein. It was torn down by the Israeli army within 24 hours.
Goldstone asked Sarraji don’t the Palestinians demonize Israelis?
After two sentences of agreement that the Palestinians also demonize Israelis, Sarraji continues:
“But we, the Palestinians have a greater capacity, in my view, to deal with the Israelis as equal human beings, as a whole human being…. Inside Israel there is an identification with the aggressor, the Nazi. Once a mayor of one of the settlements, he said, `I do not want the Palestinians in my farm and if they come we must put signs on their shoulders.’ This is what was done by the Nazis to the Jews. Chief of Staff Eitan in Israel, he also once said, `The Palestinians are cockroaches, grasshoppers. We must put them in a bottle close the bottle and throw them away.’ This was his view of the Palestinians. These were some Nazi expressions used against the Jews. Some of the Israeli generals had the same uniforms as the Nazis.”
So this is the statement of the most moderate person who testified on the Palestinian side. Any honest person who heard this would conclude:
Such individuals as this are incapable of representing the situation fairly. They make up things and are unreliable witnesses intent only on further their side’s interests without any limit. The quote from Eitan and the remarks on the statue, lack of punishment for Israeli soldiers who act wrongly, the claim Israeli soldiers are encouraged to murder Palestinians, and the uniforms is false, t the alleged statement of the mayor is undocumented (indeed, on many settlements Palestinians have been employed to do much of the construction and agricultural work).
Instead, the commission concluded that everything the witnesses said was true, and on that basis they have condemned an entire nation.
Aside from a campaign to put sanctions on Israel, what will be the effect of this report?
First, damage to the cause of peace.
--If Israelis are such monsters why should the Arabs or Palestinians make peace with them?
--If Israel is being portrayed as such monsters why shouldn’t the Arab and Palestinian side deliberately avoid peace since the tide is on their side? Just do nothing and wait for the world to force Israel to give up everything, even to assist in the destruction of the state of Israel?
--If attacks from Hamas, no matter how much material damage it inflicts on Palestinians, bring material advantages to it, isn't this the strategy to follow?
Second, it encourages of repression, aggression, and real war crimes.
--If the Hamas strategy of attacking Israel with rockets, mortars, and cross-border raids along with tearing up a ceasefire and then make gains by portraying itself as a victim works, why not attack Israel and others in similar conflicts?
--If antisemitic propaganda and genocidal goals bring no negative reaction from the world, why should one not use these themes and seek this outcome?
--If Hamas can use civilians as human shields, intimidate people into supporting its line, use hospitals or mosques or schools as military positions and then turn this into a political victory by having their enemy branded as a war criminal for attacking these places even a few times, this is a splendid strategy that others should use. We will be seeing more of it in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and many other places in the world.
Completely aside from the individual lies and nonsense—for example, counting Hamas police and hundreds of men whose obituaries praised them for being brave militia fighters as civilians—this report is a disaster for human rights and peace.
It will legitimate one of the world’s most war-provoking, repressive regimes and validate a strategy that uses civilian suffering and war crimes as central features.
There will be many detailed critiques of the UN’s Goldstone report, created for the purpose of bashing Israel over the Gaza war with phony claims of “war crimes.” Some brief overview, however, is required.
Imagine there's a war going on in which one side has openly declared it will commit genocide on the other, wiping if off the face of the earth. Imagine that the regime ruling this place has openly, daily, and officially referred to its enemies as sub-humans who conspire to rule the world and are responsible for everything evil in history. Imagine that this regime is a dictatorship that wins over some as passionate adherents and intimidates others in a society where conformity already reigns.
Now imagine that an outside group composed of some who are naïve and some who are dedicated collaborators with that regime’s cause come into that place and ask: Tell us how evil and terrible your enemy (i.e., would-be victim) is and we will write it all down and use it to isolate, demonize, and put on sanctions against that enemy.
What do you expect the result will be?
This is precisely what happened in the Gaza Strip. The witnesses made propaganda against Israel; the UN collated, endorsed, and broadcast it. Yet amazingly little hard evidence was presented and generally the more the specific the allegations, the easier it is to refute.
I have deliberately chosen here the man who was almost certainly the most moderate, rational and even liberal Palestinian witness who appeared before the commission. I do not say this lightly. Dr. Iyyad El-Sarraji [I use the report's transliteration, which is terrible] has been celebrated in the New York Times, he was critical of Yasir Arafat, and he is from the left, not an Islamist or even an Arafat follower.
But what is not reported in the Western media about Sarraji is that he has publicly spoken out against the 1993 Oslo Accords and argued that the Palestinians should never have abandoned armed struggle which, to put it most charitably, has always included—and Sarraji knows this—a huge component of anti-civilian terrorism.
[I will bet that virtually not a single Palestinian interviewed in the investigation supports a two-state solution. Virtually every single one of them wants Israel destroyed and saw this commission as a wonderful opportunity to further that goal.]
Here’s a sample of Sarraji’s testimony and to give you the flavor I must quote at some length:
“The Palestinian in the eyes of the Israeli soldier is not an equal human being. Sometimes this Palestinian even becomes a demon in their eyes. Therefore it is a state of demonization. This is unfortunately, uh, what can be seen in the behavior of the Israeli soldier not only killing children or fathers before the eyes of children….This is the base of everything and then there is the fact that there is no restraint, no discipline within the army and, uh, uh, even there’s an encouragement. This is part of the Israeli military institution and previously we have seen many stories of how the Palestinians are being killed either at the hand of soldiers or settlers and then the accused or the, uh, responsible is, uh, found innocent, sometimes even a statute is put up for him as a hero.”
Each point of this testimony is demonstrably a lie. The reference to a statue has a grain of truth that demonstrated my point. Some settlers put up a statue of the Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein. It was torn down by the Israeli army within 24 hours.
Goldstone asked Sarraji don’t the Palestinians demonize Israelis?
After two sentences of agreement that the Palestinians also demonize Israelis, Sarraji continues:
“But we, the Palestinians have a greater capacity, in my view, to deal with the Israelis as equal human beings, as a whole human being…. Inside Israel there is an identification with the aggressor, the Nazi. Once a mayor of one of the settlements, he said, `I do not want the Palestinians in my farm and if they come we must put signs on their shoulders.’ This is what was done by the Nazis to the Jews. Chief of Staff Eitan in Israel, he also once said, `The Palestinians are cockroaches, grasshoppers. We must put them in a bottle close the bottle and throw them away.’ This was his view of the Palestinians. These were some Nazi expressions used against the Jews. Some of the Israeli generals had the same uniforms as the Nazis.”
So this is the statement of the most moderate person who testified on the Palestinian side. Any honest person who heard this would conclude:
Such individuals as this are incapable of representing the situation fairly. They make up things and are unreliable witnesses intent only on further their side’s interests without any limit. The quote from Eitan and the remarks on the statue, lack of punishment for Israeli soldiers who act wrongly, the claim Israeli soldiers are encouraged to murder Palestinians, and the uniforms is false, t the alleged statement of the mayor is undocumented (indeed, on many settlements Palestinians have been employed to do much of the construction and agricultural work).
Instead, the commission concluded that everything the witnesses said was true, and on that basis they have condemned an entire nation.
Aside from a campaign to put sanctions on Israel, what will be the effect of this report?
First, damage to the cause of peace.
--If Israelis are such monsters why should the Arabs or Palestinians make peace with them?
--If Israel is being portrayed as such monsters why shouldn’t the Arab and Palestinian side deliberately avoid peace since the tide is on their side? Just do nothing and wait for the world to force Israel to give up everything, even to assist in the destruction of the state of Israel?
--If attacks from Hamas, no matter how much material damage it inflicts on Palestinians, bring material advantages to it, isn't this the strategy to follow?
Second, it encourages of repression, aggression, and real war crimes.
--If the Hamas strategy of attacking Israel with rockets, mortars, and cross-border raids along with tearing up a ceasefire and then make gains by portraying itself as a victim works, why not attack Israel and others in similar conflicts?
--If antisemitic propaganda and genocidal goals bring no negative reaction from the world, why should one not use these themes and seek this outcome?
--If Hamas can use civilians as human shields, intimidate people into supporting its line, use hospitals or mosques or schools as military positions and then turn this into a political victory by having their enemy branded as a war criminal for attacking these places even a few times, this is a splendid strategy that others should use. We will be seeing more of it in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and many other places in the world.
Completely aside from the individual lies and nonsense—for example, counting Hamas police and hundreds of men whose obituaries praised them for being brave militia fighters as civilians—this report is a disaster for human rights and peace.
It will legitimate one of the world’s most war-provoking, repressive regimes and validate a strategy that uses civilian suffering and war crimes as central features.
RubinReports: The UN Goldstone's Report: A Victory for Terrorists and War Criminals
RubinReports: Advice for the Advisors: A Roman General Chides Would-Be Pundits (Very Applicable to Contemporary Middle East and Other Issues)
Advice for the Advisors: A Roman General Chides Would-Be Pundits (Very Applicable to Contemporary Middle East and Other Issues)
By Barry Rubin
Though remembered today by only a few specialists, Aemilius Paullus was a brilliant general and seems like an impressive fellow all around. In 168 BCE he was appointed to run the Romans' failing campaign in Macedonia. Three previous generals, who owed more to political connections than to strategic genius, had failed miserably.
On his way to the front, he addressed the assembled citizens of Rome in front of the Senate, his words preserved by the historian Livy:
“In every circle and, truly, at every table [in Rome], there are people who lead armies into Macedonia, who know where the camp ought to be placed; what posts ought to be occupied by troops; when and through what [mountain] pass Macedonia should be entered…and when it is proper to engage the enemy, when to lie quiet. And they not only determine what is best to be done, but if anything is done in any other manner than what they have pointed out, they [criticize] the [commander] as if he were on trial….”
I am not, he continued, “one of those who think commanders ought never to receive advice” as long as it is given by those “skilled in the art of war, or [who] are present in the field.”
And so, he concluded:
“If, therefore, anyone thinks himself qualified to give advice respecting the war which I am to conduct, which may prove advantageous to the public…let him come with me to Macedonia. He shall be furnished by me with a ship, a horse, a tent; and even with his [travel expenses]. But if he thinks this is too much trouble, and prefers the repose of city life to the toils of war, let him not, on land, assume the office of a [harbor] pilot. The city furnished enough other topics for conversation; let [him] confine [his] passion for talking, and rest assured that we shall be content with such councils as shall be found within our camp.”
It is not recorded whether anyone took him up on the offer but he won a brilliant, total victory which produced the Roman conquest of Greece and of West Asia generally.
Every academic, researcher, journalist, and pundit of any description—especially those with a preformed ideological catechism--should always bear in mind this story, take it seriously, and preserve within himself a strong element of humility. And this is especially true for those who are all too numerous in this sorry era where we dwell at present yet are all too free with their uninformed opinions.
Needless to say, there is no subject more than the contemporary Middle East--here's a good example--about which this advice holds true.
Though remembered today by only a few specialists, Aemilius Paullus was a brilliant general and seems like an impressive fellow all around. In 168 BCE he was appointed to run the Romans' failing campaign in Macedonia. Three previous generals, who owed more to political connections than to strategic genius, had failed miserably.
On his way to the front, he addressed the assembled citizens of Rome in front of the Senate, his words preserved by the historian Livy:
“In every circle and, truly, at every table [in Rome], there are people who lead armies into Macedonia, who know where the camp ought to be placed; what posts ought to be occupied by troops; when and through what [mountain] pass Macedonia should be entered…and when it is proper to engage the enemy, when to lie quiet. And they not only determine what is best to be done, but if anything is done in any other manner than what they have pointed out, they [criticize] the [commander] as if he were on trial….”
I am not, he continued, “one of those who think commanders ought never to receive advice” as long as it is given by those “skilled in the art of war, or [who] are present in the field.”
And so, he concluded:
“If, therefore, anyone thinks himself qualified to give advice respecting the war which I am to conduct, which may prove advantageous to the public…let him come with me to Macedonia. He shall be furnished by me with a ship, a horse, a tent; and even with his [travel expenses]. But if he thinks this is too much trouble, and prefers the repose of city life to the toils of war, let him not, on land, assume the office of a [harbor] pilot. The city furnished enough other topics for conversation; let [him] confine [his] passion for talking, and rest assured that we shall be content with such councils as shall be found within our camp.”
It is not recorded whether anyone took him up on the offer but he won a brilliant, total victory which produced the Roman conquest of Greece and of West Asia generally.
Every academic, researcher, journalist, and pundit of any description—especially those with a preformed ideological catechism--should always bear in mind this story, take it seriously, and preserve within himself a strong element of humility. And this is especially true for those who are all too numerous in this sorry era where we dwell at present yet are all too free with their uninformed opinions.
Needless to say, there is no subject more than the contemporary Middle East--here's a good example--about which this advice holds true.
RubinReports: Advice for the Advisors: A Roman General Chides Would-Be Pundits (Very Applicable to Contemporary Middle East and Other Issues)
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