A minor Israeli goodwill gesture or a new small step in a big glitch?

...Unlike any country, Israel is required to fight – if at all – according to asymmetrical pacifist rules. Israel may not resort to tactics tolerated or overlooked in the case of other states. All hell breaks loose if “collateral damage” is incurred in any Israeli action, although Israel faces enemies given to hiding behind their women’s skirts and tots’ T-shirts. Schools, hospitals and the like are used as rocket launching pads against Israeli civilians.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
08 November '13..
Posted before Shabbat

History-altering events don’t always burst dramatically onto our scene. Sometimes they sneak in surreptitiously and we barely detect that something significant has been kick-started.

Thus most of us hardly noticed the renewed buzz about convening a conference on creating a Middle East Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (MENWFZ). Yet again – the bloodshed of the misnamed Arab Spring notwithstanding – Arab regimes, with Egypt at the lead, are pushing hard for an international focus on Israel’s purported nuclear power.

This was amplified by reports that that representatives of several Arab states met with Israeli officials last month in Glion, Switzerland, to set the groundwork for a conference on Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Official Israel hadn’t confirmed that the Glion get-together indeed took place but, more notably, it hasn’t denied it either. If true, this overlooked event is a milestone one – the first time that Israeli and Arab delegates have consented to discuss WMDs. Is this a positive development?


It might be just a minor Israeli goodwill gesture or a new small step in a big glitch – the first Israeli retreat from decades of refusal to accede to Arab demands that the Jewish State, rather than its would-be annihilators, be denied nonconventional munitions.

In any case, the story is that American, Russian and British representatives oversaw a meeting between top Israeli diplomats and a number of Arab ambassadors to Switzerland, as well as representatives of Libya, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, far from glorious Glion, the Syrian slaughter continues and Iran pursues its nuclear ambitions with unabated ardor (never mind Tehran’s self-serving softer PR style). So it’s almost natural that Israel be singled out as the villain of the piece. MENWFZ, after all, is a UN brainchild.

The limits of wisdom?

Voices linking the proliferation situation with activities aimed at universal nuclear disarmament are disregarding reality.


Ephraim Asculai
Op-Ed/JPost
11 May "10

In honor of Yom Yerushalayim, a very special video - Jerusalem Day: Reflections by Rabbi Yisrael Ariel

The reemerging campaign to persuade/force Israel to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), although not new, is strange at best. One thing that can be said for Egypt, the initiator and real force behind this move, is that it has been consistent. Of all those joining the campaign one way or another, Egypt is probably best aware that Israel will not respond to these calls.

Israel would do so only if it were persuaded that joining the NPT was in its best interests. The multitude of letters, decisions and resolutions are not the best way to go about it. While Egypt may know this, at least some of the others give the impression that they really expect Israel to bow to their wishes.


On the formal side, the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties states that “...the principles of free consent and of good faith and the pacta sunt servanda [agreements must be kept] rule are universally recognized.”

Well, trying to force someone to join a treaty is certainly outside the requirement of “free consent.”

Shotgun weddings are not expected to last; they only serve to legalize the offspring. Asking Israel to demonstrate its “good faith” to those calling on it to join the NPT is ludicrous in today’s world, with Iran calling for the destruction of Israel, Syria amassing chemical weapons and trying to develop nuclear ones, and with rockets threatening almost every part of the country.

And “agreements must be kept” is a sham where the NPT is concerned. With North Korea, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran as (caught) violators, and the multitude of states, which the world tends to forget, that violate Articles I and II of the NPT that require them “...[Article I] not in any way to assist... and [Article II] not to seek or receive any assistance... to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons,” states that have not joined the treaty (India, Pakistan and Israel) would be naturally wary of it.

(Read full article)

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How Israel Was Disarmed

Bret Stephens
Wall St. Journal
06 October 09

Jan. 20, 2010

NEW YORK—When American diplomats sat down for the first in a series of face-to-face talks with their Iranian counterparts last October in Geneva, few would have predicted that what began as a negotiation over Tehran's nuclear programs would wind up in a stunning demand by the Security Council that Israel give up its atomic weapons.

Yet that's just what the U.N. body did this morning, in a resolution that was as striking for the way member states voted as it was for its substance. All 10 nonpermanent members voted for the resolution, along with permanent members Russia, China and the United Kingdom. France and the United States abstained. By U.N. rules, that means the resolution passes.

The U.S. abstention is sending shock waves through the international community, which has long been accustomed to the U.S. acting as Israel's de facto protector on the Council. It also appears to reverse a decades-old understanding between Washington and Tel Aviv that the U.S. would acquiesce in Israel's nuclear arsenal as long as that arsenal remained undeclared. The Jewish state is believed to possess as many as 200 weapons.

Tehran reacted positively to the U.S. abstention. "For a long time we have said about Mr. Obama that we see change but no improvement," said Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. "Now we can say there has been an improvement."

The resolution calls for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. It also demands that Israel sign the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and submit its nuclear facilities to international inspection. Two similar, albeit nonbinding, resolutions were approved last September by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

At the time, the U.S. opposed a resolution focused on Israel but abstained from a more general motion calling for regional disarmament. "We are very pleased with the agreed approach reflected here today," said then-U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA Glyn Davies.

Since then, however, relations between the Obama administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, never warm to begin with, have cooled dramatically. The administration accused Tel Aviv of using "disproportionate force" following a Nov. 13 Israeli aerial attack on an apparent munitions depot in Gaza City, in which more than a dozen young children were killed.

Mr. Netanyahu also provoked the administration's ire after he was inadvertently caught on an open microphone calling Mr. Obama "worse than Chamberlain." The comment followed the president's historic Dec. 21 summit meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Geneva, the first time leaders of the two countries have met since the Carter administration.

But the factors that chiefly seemed to drive the administration's decision to abstain from this morning's vote were more strategic than personal. Western negotiators have been pressing Iran to make good on its previous agreement in principle to ship its nuclear fuel to third countries so it could be rendered usable in Iran's civilian nuclear facilities. The Iranians, in turn, have been adamant that they would not do so unless progress were made on international disarmament.

"The Iranians have a point," said one senior administration official. "The U.S. can't forever be the enforcer of a double standard where Israel gets a nuclear free ride but Iran has to abide by every letter in the NPT. President Obama has put the issue of nuclear disarmament at the center of his foreign policy agenda. His credibility is at stake and so is U.S. credibility in the Muslim world. How can we tell Tehran that they're better off without nukes if we won't make the same point to our Israeli friends?"

Also factoring into the administration's thinking are reports that the Israelis are in the final stages of planning an attack on Iran's nuclear installations. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who met with his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak in Paris last week, has been outspoken in his opposition to such a strike. The Jerusalem Post has reported that Mr. Gates warned Mr. Barak that the U.S. would "actively stand in the way" of any Israeli strike.

"The Israelis need to look at this U.N. vote as a shot across their bow," said a senior Pentagon official. "If they want to start a shooting war with Iran, we won't have their backs on the Security Council."

An Israeli diplomat observed bitterly that Jan. 20 was the 68th anniversary of the Wannsee conference, which historians believe is where Nazi Germany planned the extermination of European Jewry. An administration spokesman said the timing of the vote was "purely coincidental."
Related: Ban Israel's bomb

Write to bstephens@wsj.com