Sage Advice for Obama: First Do No Harm on Middle East

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
22 April'10

From an unlikely publication (Huffington Post) and from unlikely sources (a Wharton professor and a negotiations “expert”) comes some generally sound advice for Obama on the Palestinian conflict. The article recommends that Obama:

1. Avoid proposing simple solutions to complex problems. Look for causal linkages, not just proximity. Stopping movie downloads won’t stop the rain, and stopping the construction of new settlements won’t end centuries of misunderstanding and grievances.

2. Work with these linkages and with the situation as it is, not as he would want it to be. For example, if the Palestinians think they can get all of Palestine just by waiting, President Obama needs to create a better option, either by making it clear that they cannot just wait, or by offering them something they cannot get just by waiting.

3. Understand the complexity of the problem as it is. Making a problem undiscussable does not make the problem go away. President Obama seems to believe that use of phrases like “radical Islam” suggests Americans view Islamic states as terrorists and that the phrase should be banished; actually, this phrase suggests that the United States does make important distinctions between violent terrorists and others who disagree with us strongly but express this through different means. But denying the existence of radicals does not make them or their grievances go away.

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Hamas and Fatah: What Are They Really Fighting About?

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
20 October 09

Hamas and Fatah have once again demonstrated that the power struggle that has been raging between the two parties for the past three years is not over who is going to bring democracy and prosperity to Palestine. Nor is it over who is going to build schools, universities and hospitals. They are not fighting over what is good for the Palestinians. They are fighting over money and power.

This power struggle is one of the main reasons why the Palestinians are still far from reaching their goals, first and foremost the establishment of an independent state.

The two sides despise one another so tremendously that some Palestinians have been arguing that Hamas and Fatah hate each other more than they hate Israel.

Had it not been for Israel’s physical presence between the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the Fatah-dominated West Bank, it is highly likely that these two entities would be dispatching rockets and suicide bombers against each other.

Ironically, it is Israel that is preventing Muslims from killing Muslims. In the summer of 2007, when Hamas launched its “military coup” in the Gaza Strip, it was Israel that saved the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of Fatah members and their families.

These Fatah operatives first tried to run away toward Egypt, but most were blocked by Egyptian security forces, which sent them to knock on Israel’s door for help. Israel was the only country that sent ships, ambulances and helicopters to save Muslims from being slaughtered by their Muslim brethren, to save Fatah from being destroyed by Hamas.

Today, it is Israel’s presence in the West Bank that is preventing the collapse of Fatah and a Hamas takeover. Ironically, if Israel carries out what Fatah is demanding in public - a withdrawal from the West Bank - Fatah will be the first to vanish.

Fatah is now demanding that the same IDF officers who are protecting it in the West Bank be put on trial for perpetrating “war crimes” during Operation Cast Lead. Fatah’s hypocrisy and insolence evidently know no limits.

During the war, Fatah did everything it could to help Israel end the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Fatah representatives provided Israel with vital intelligence about the location of Hamas figures and installations in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, they exerted pressure on Israel not to end the war without removing Hamas from power.

When Operation Cast Lead ended without achieving that goal, Fatah leaders privately expressed disappointment with Israel for failing to “finish the job.”

Fatah’s lies, corruption, incompetence, hypocrisy and failure to reform have severely undermined its standing among Palestinians. Yet this has not stopped Fatah from seeking new elections in the Palestinian territories.

Fatah will win the elections, when and if they are held, only if two things occur : if its leaders steal the vote, or if Hamas chooses to boycott the elections.

Although Hamas has also been a disaster for Palestinians, the Islamic movement is still regarded by many in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an “honest” and “clean” movement.

Now that the latest Egyptian attempt to force Hamas and Fatah to reconcile has failed, there is no point in talking about resuming the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Any agreement that Israel reaches with Fatah will be automatically rejected by Hamas and a large number of Palestinians.

Instead of focusing its attention and efforts on achieving peace between Jews and Arabs, the US Administration should first find a way to end the civil war that has been raging among Palestinians over the past three years. Peace between Palestinians and Palestinians could even pave the way for peace between Palestinians and Israel.

All Palestinians, particularly those living in the Gaza Strip, are continuing to pay a heavy price for the ongoing rift between Hamas and Fatah. Hundreds have been killed and injured in the fighting between the two groups over the past three years.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an Arab Muslim, is a veteran award-winning journalist who has been covering Palestinian affairs for nearly three decades.
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Lessons from the Palestinian 'War' against Israel

While not meant to be light reading this article is a good representation of Moshe Ya'alon's perspective and serious approach to a topic. I apologize to his recent critics who may not have the attention span to follow the entire presentation.

Policy Focus #64Moshe Yaalon Format: PDF, 35 Pages Published: January 2007 Price: Free Download File Size: 600 KB

Beginning in September 2000, Israel was confronted with an unprecedented wave of Palestinian violence in the form of suicide bombings, rocket attacks, and numerous other hostile acts. Since then, the conflict has undergone many evolutions, with both sides continuously changing their strategies and tactics. Although Palestinian attacks continue even during the current "lull" in the fighting, the relative calm provides an important opportunity to assess the war's many strategic and political lessons.

In this new Washington Institute Policy Focus, former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Moshe Yaalon offers an inside look at Israel's evolving response to Palestinian violence. Drawing from his nearly four decades of military service, he discusses Palestinian tactics, analyzes Israel's shift from defensive to offensive measures, and outlines key principles of counterterrorism to help guide policymakers in Israel and elsewhere. As the United States and its allies struggle to deal with the "global jihad," sharing the lessons of Israel's war on Palestinian terrorism is more important than ever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), joined The Washington Institute as a distinguished military fellow in November 2005. His thirty-seven-year career in the IDF included command positions in the IDF Paratroop Brigade, IDF Central Command, and an armored division. He is currently Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs.

Terror Training Grounds

Caroline Glick
31 July 09

From 1970 to 1980, Bernardine Dohrn was a terrorist fugitive on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. Now she's a law professor at Northwestern University Law School where she teaches a course on law and the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

During her time as co-commander of the Weather Underground terrorist organization with her husband, education professor William Ayres, the group committed some sixteen bombings. Among its targets were the State Department, the New York Queens Courthouse, military recruiting offices in Brooklyn and the home of New York Supreme Court Justice John Murtagh while Murtagh was asleep at home with his wife and children.

Dohrn, her husband and their colleagues emerged from hiding in 1980 when terror charges against them were dropped due to a technicality. None of them ever served hard time for their crimes. Neither Dohrn - whom FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once referred to as "the most dangerous woman in America" - nor Ayres ever expressed the slightest remorse for their actions.

Indeed, in a 1998 interview with ABC News, Dohrn said that looking back on her career as a terrorist, her only regret was that she hadn't committed more attacks. As she put it, "We'd do it again. I wish we had done more. I wish we had been more militant."

But then, those who cannot do, teach. And now Dohrn is passing on her knowledge of terrorism to a new generation of students through her seminar on Palestinian terrorists.

Dohrn is no newcomer to the subject. In 1974, together with her fellow Weather Underground terrorist colleagues, she published a book called Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism. As the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Discoverthenetworks.org website makes clear, Prairie Fire was the Weather Underground's declaration of war against the United States. Among other things, it asserts, "Our intention is to disrupt the empire, to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks, to make it hard to carry out its bloody functioning against the people of the world, to join the world struggle, to attack from the inside."

Dohrn and her co-authors dedicated their book to the Who's Who of the terrorist murderers club. Among their honorees was Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian terrorist who murdered Robert F. Kennedy. No doubt, for Dohrn the unapologetic terrorist, teaching a course on the Palestinian terror war against Israel is like closing a circle.

Dohrn's class is notable because it is likely the only current instance in a U.S. university where a formerly active terrorist is teaching a class about terrorists. But by paying someone like Dohrn to teach a course on terrorists, Northwestern is not pushing the envelope very far along.

In both major and minor universities throughout the U.S., supporters of Palestinian terrorists are teaching American students the history, sociology, politics, law and culture of the Arab and Islamic world's war against Israel. The fact that the narrative they teach has little to no connection to historic truth or to objective, measurable reality is of no interest to anyone.

ACTUALLY THAT is not true. In many cases, the professors who stir up the most controversy for their incendiary support for terrorists and condemnation of Israel and its supporters are of great interest to university administrators. Indeed, they arguably owe their careers to their hostile stance toward Israel.

Case in point is newly tenured Columbia professor Joseph Massad, a little-accomplished professor of Middle East studies whose resume includes no scholarly achievements. Massad rose to prominence with the David Project's 2005 release of its documentary "Columbia Unbecoming" in which Jewish students at Columbia related the intellectual intimidation they suffered in the classroom at the hands of Massad and his colleagues. A university panel formed to investigate the students' allegations found that Massad exceeded "commonly accepted bounds" of behavior in his treatment of one of his students.
(Full article)
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