The Big Lie About the Israel "Delegitimization" Threat

Barry Rubin
GLORIA Center
13 June '10


Golda Meir, Israel's prime minister, once memorably said, "Better a bad press than a good epitaph." In the Western world, where a cushioned elite increasingly mistakes headlines or academic studies for the real world, the difference between the material world and words is often lost. At the same time, we are getting something along these lines: "Joe [Israel] is a stupid, lazy, dishonest, lying, no-good criminal who deserves to be punished. And you know what his main problem is? People saying stuff like that about him."

Let me give two examples and then point out why this tells us a great deal about the Western world's malaise and why Israel should ignore such advice. Keep reading because the last point is the most important of all.

One can always depend on Roger Cohen for a good quote since he never seems able to open his mouth without saying something stupid that he thinks his wisdom. Here's how he begins his latest column:

"I took a short break for my daughter's bat mitzvah, Israel killed nine activists on a Gaza-bound ship in international waters, and its bungled raid prompted international uproar and Jewish soul-searching."

He couldn't be more obvious. First, he lets us know that he's a Jew (bat mitzvah) and then he let's forth with no less than five anti-Israel points in 21 words:

Killed nine (no mention of the attack on the soldiers) activists (no mention of lots of evidence that they were radical Islamist Jihadists seeking martyrdom), international waters (implication this is some kind of piratical aggressive act and no mention that this is how blockades are conducted, international law experts point out it was legal, see Cuban Missile Crisis, British operation in the Falklands, etc.), bungled raid (it is Israel's fault that it went in without lethal force and faced greater violence than expected), Jewish soul-searching (Oy! Where have we gone wrong! We used to let people beat us up and murder us and now Israel-gasp!-defends itself).

There is an Arab proverb to the effect that the guy hits me and then runs off screaming that he was assaulted.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Europe Mulls Recognition of Palestinian State and Gangs up On Israel

Soeren Kern
Hudson New York
03 May '10

France and Spain are laying the political groundwork for the European Union to recognize a Palestinian state — possibly as early as October 2011 — even if negotiations for a permanent settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are not concluded.

The initiative is being spearheaded by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and his Spanish counterpart Miguel Ángel Moratinos, whose country currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union.

Palestinian Authority leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad have repeatedly said they intend to unilaterally declare Palestinian independence before the end of 2011, with or without a peace deal. Abbas and Fayyad have been visiting European capitals in recent months to drum up political and financial support for Palestinian statehood. Kouchner and Moratinos laid out their vision for Europe’s role in creating a Palestinian state in a recent opinion article titled “A Palestinian State: When?” The article, which was published in French by the center-left newspaper Le Monde, reminds readers that the European Union is the biggest single provider of financial aid to the Palestinians. Often described as a “payer but not a player” in the Middle East, the authors argue that the European Union must work more aggressively in bringing about Palestinian statehood.

The authors argue that time is of the essence and that the European Union “must not confine itself to the … outlines of the final settlement” and “should collectively recognize the Palestinian State.… There is no more time to lose. Europe must pave the way.” The authors say the upcoming twentieth anniversary of the Madrid peace conference, which was convened in October 1991, would be a good moment to recognize Palestinian independence.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Hapless French Foreign Minister unwittingly provides portrait of European weakness as he patronises and condemns Israel

(I translate here his interview today with a French newspaper)


Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
20 February '10

In an interview with the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche on Saturday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner outlines his views on the Dubai assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. He also talks about the desirability of Europe and the international community recognising a Palestinian state regardless of whether Israel gives its consent and even before agreement has been reached on the state’s borders.

I offer my translation from the original French of those parts of the interview which deal with Israel and make some comments of my own below it. I submit that both the questions and the answers provide stark illustration of many of the guiding assumptions of French policy in the Middle East.

Here is my translation with the headline and the questions in bold:


Kouchner: “A Palestinian state, quickly”

Is Israel a rogue state that uses the passports of friendly countries to execute its enemies?

We condemn targeted assassinations and the use of forgeries. The agents [who killed al-Mabhouh] did not, contrary to the situation with the Brits, steal the identities of our nationals but they did use a false French passport and a false name. We condemn this unreservedly.

Where could this crisis between Europe and Israel lead?

What needs to happen to get beyond this crisis is to affirm the political role of Europe in quickly laying down the conditions for the peace process and the creation of a Palestinian state. To receive Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, with whom I will be dining on Sunday, is to support a man who holds the keys to the two state solution. The question of the moment is the construction of a new reality: France is training Palestinian police officers, enterprises are investing in the West Bank…Further, one could envisage the speedy proclamation of a Palestinian state and its immediate recognition by the international community even before negotiations on its borders. I would be glad to see this happen. However, I am not confident that other European countries would follow me on this, and I’m not even confident I’d be right. [NB: This last bit does not appear to make much sense in French either.]

Does this affair [the assassination in Dubai] tell us something about the kind of country Israel is becoming?

It tells us of the immediate necessity for peace and a Palestinian state. An Israel living in peace will fully rediscover the values on which it was founded and for the sake of which we support its security and its existence — for which we support Israel itself.
------------
The interview then trails off into other subjects. So, here are some thoughts on what Kouchner said:

(Read full article)
.

France FM:Hezbollah is Lebanon’s problem

YALIBNAN
22 January '10

Lebanon Prime Minister Saad Hariri met French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysee Palace. Following their meeting Hariri said :

- The French president expressed his country’s willingness to aid the army and Internal Security Forces with light and heavy equipment.
- Sarkozy expressed his full support for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and for achieving justice.
- Credited France for the role it played in improving the Lebanese-Syrian relations, and said what concerns us is a state-to-state relation which benefits both people.
- France wants to hold a peace conference in Paris and that he encouraged Sarkozy about this “because we can’t remain where we are now and because the whole region needs peace.”

France was reportedly worried that providing the Lebanese army with weapons, including missiles for the Gazelle helicopters, could end up in Hezbollah hands. This is exactly the same concern the US has and that is why the US has been very reluctant to provide the army with sophisticated weapons.

The Lebanese Air Force has reportedly used up all its missiles against Fatah al-Islam militants during the battle of Nahr el-Bared in 2007 and for this reason Hariri asked France to provide Lebanon with Gazelle missiles

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has reportedly told the Lebanese delegation that Hezbollah and not Israel is the main danger for Lebanon and that the concerns in Lebanon over an Israeli attack are unjustified .

“Israel is our friend, and if there was a threat to Lebanon, it will only come from a military adventure carried out by Hezbollah in the best interest of Iran,” Kouchner warned.
.

Call Abbas’s Bluff

Martin Krossel
FrumForum.com
11 November 09

At a Tel Aviv rally on Saturday night commemorating the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, the country’s president Shimon Peres called on the head of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas to reverse his decision to resign. Peres reminded Abbas, by name, that they together had signed the 1993 Oslo Accords,and he implored, “I turn to you, don’t let go.”

Peres was hardly alone among prominent politicians and statesmen who were calling on Abbas not to resign. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to comment on the resignation publicly, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that he told officials behind closed doors that it was in Israel’s interest to have a strong Abbas who could move negotiations forward. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner publicly expressed regret over Abbas’s planned resignation, calling it “a threat to peace.” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that Abbas had been a “true partner” of the United States. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted Abbas’s announced resignation at face value, but she expressed the hope that she would be able to work with Abbas “in any capacity.” She also told the press that when she had met with Abbas the previous weekend, “He reiterated his personal commitment to do whatever he can to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something that he’s actually been working on since 1972.”

Middle East observers of all political stripes agree on why Abbas is threatening to resign. In light of his popularity with American presidents and other world leaders, Abbas reasons that his threat will spur the Obama Administration and other governments to pressure Israel to freeze settlement growth. Presumably, once this happens, then somewhere further down the road, Abbas will re-issue his threat in order to get the international community to force Israel to dismantle the settlements and eventually to retreat entirely from the territories captured in the 1967 war. What is much less obvious is why Abbas is so popular internationally and consequently why such gambits have even a chance of working.

In the past few weeks, I have been struck by the difference in the way that the Obama Administration, other national leaders, and much of the press look at Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai and Abbas. The Palestinian government under Yasser Arafat and Abbas has proven to be every bit as corrupt and ineffective as Afghanistan’s. But the Karzai government is at least clearly superior to its Taliban alternative. There is little such difference between Abbas and his political rivals. The Jerusalem Post’s Evelyn Gordon noted this weekend on Commentary magazine’s Contentions blog that:

in 2005, his one year in sole control over the PA before Hamas’s electoral victory, Palestinians killed 54 Israelis and wounded 484 while 1,059 rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza. Yet not only did Abbas never order his forces to combat this terror; he explicitly and repeatedly refusedto do so. He first cracked down on Hamas only in 2007, after its violent takeover of Gaza convinced him that Hamas threatened him, not just Israel.

But the problem with America’s and the rest of the world’s approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict goes far deeper than Abbas, and their never-ending delusional attempts to identify a Palestinian “peace partner” for Israel. International efforts to resolve the conflict have always focused on getting Israel to make concessions to Arabs, which would supposedly encourage Arabs to make peace. Yet the source of the trouble has always been found on the other side of the line: the refusal of Israel’s neighbors to accept a Jewish state in their midst.

Until that happens, all efforts to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict will be futile.

.

Don’t Confuse Him with the Facts

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
11 November 09

Bernard Kouchner is “hurt” and “shocked” by Israelis’ “vanished” desire for peace. Israelis of all political stripes would undoubtedly be equally shocked at the French foreign minister’s ignorance — and at his willingness to hurl false accusations without even a minimal effort to check his facts.

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

Kouchner is, of course, half right: even most Israeli leftists have stopped believing peace is possible in the foreseeable future, which is precisely why the peace movement and the political Left have largely collapsed. But that is a far cry from saying that Israelis have stopped wanting peace. The desire remains as strong as ever; it’s just that most Israelis currently see no way of fulfilling it.

Nor is it really hard to see why Israelis have stopped believing. First, every territorial concession since the 1993 Oslo Accord has produced only more terror. Palestinians killed more Israelis in the first two and a half years after Oslo than in the entire preceding decade, and in 2000-04 (the height of the second intifada), Israel’s terror-related casualties exceeded those of the entire preceding 53 years. The withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 led to the Second Lebanon War, and the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 produced daily rocket barrages on southern Israel. To most Israelis, bombs and rockets exploding in their cities don’t look much like peace.

This has been compounded by the complete lack of movement in Palestinian positions since 1993, even as Israeli leaders offered ever-increasing concessions. Israeli leaders routinely tell their people that peace will require “painful concessions.” Palestinian leaders are still telling their people that peace will enable 4.7 million descendants of Palestinian refugees to resettle in pre-1967 Israel, thus destroying the Jewish state demographically. And Israelis find it hard to believe in a peace whose price, according to their supposed “peace partner,” is Israel’s eradication.

None of this is news; a simple Web search would produce thousands of articles by Israelis explaining why they have despaired. Or if Kouchner doesn’t like the Web, he could have picked up a phone: most Israelis would probably have been happy to enlighten him.

But Kouchner couldn’t be bothered with the facts; he preferred to simply accuse Israelis of not wanting peace. Perhaps it’s his background as a human-rights activist showing: hurling accusations at Israel without checking the facts is practically de rigueur among human-rights organizations these days.

Nevertheless, one would expect better of a foreign minister. After all, he has actual responsibility for setting policy. And policy works better when it’s based on fact rather than fantasy.