Mideast Chaos Finally Altering Views on Israel - by Evelyn Gordon

...Nobody likes admitting error, so perhaps it’s not surprising that it has taken so long for the current Mideast chaos to change anyone’s mind. But as Petraeus and Neophytou demonstrate, slowly but surely, that change is happening. It’s a small ray of light in what has otherwise been a gloomy start to 2016.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
14 January '16..

I once thought the ongoing Mideast meltdown would make it obvious to all that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the least of the region’s problems. As the years went by, I began to despair of this notion; both Obama Administration officials and their European counterparts remained fixated on Israel, seemingly undaunted by the new reality. But two remarkably frank avowals of error by two very different people over the past week have restored my faith that eventually, truth will prevail.

The first is former CIA director and four-star general David Petraeus, who made headlines back in 2010 by telling Congress that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict impedes America’s “ability to advance our interests” in the Mideast. Last week, he gave a wide-ranging interview to Haaretz in which he was asked how important solving the conflict was to overall Mideast stability. His response was unequivocal:

I think it is increasingly clear that the old notion that the path to peace and stability in the Middle East runs through a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is mistaken. (And I acknowledge that I was one of those who shared that notion until a few years ago.) There are multiple interlocking conflicts unfolding across the region right now – and to be blunt, the Israeli-Palestinian issue is peripheral to all of them. Those who suggest that, if peace were to break out tomorrow between Israelis and Palestinians, such a development would stabilize, say, Syria or Libya or Iraq, are simply detached from reality.

Moreover, he said, his new understanding of the situation led to an obvious conclusion:

In my view, at a time when civilization itself is under siege from forces that wish to tear down the world we have helped to build, we would be wise to take a step back and focus on the big picture. The simple reality is that Israel and the United States are long-standing friends and allies in an increasingly dangerous world – and we ought to treat each other as such.

From an American perspective, Israel has proven itself to be an exceptionally capable, resourceful and valuable ally to the United States in a very important and treacherous region. We share many fundamental interests, and we face enemies that wish to do both countries harm.

Just as importantly, we share core values and we therefore wrestle with many of the same questions – about how to keep our people safe from the forces of terrorism that seek our destruction while preserving our respective democratic freedoms, rule of law, and respect for fundamental and eternal human rights, which define who we are.

A few days later, the man who heads both the Cypriot parliament’s Foreign and European Affairs Committee and the country’s center-right ruling party made a similar avowal of error, and drew similar conclusions, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post. Cyprus, said Averof Neophytou, was once one of Israel’s harshest critics in Europe, viewing it as an aggressor against the Palestinians. But now, it realizes that Israel is “a country of eight million fighting a struggle for survival and having to face hundreds of millions of Muslims and Arabs, part of whom don’t even recognize the right of the existence of a Jewish state. So which side is strong, and which side is weak? Which side is fighting for survival?”

Moreover, he continued, “For decades Israel was blamed for creating the instability in the region, but can anyone credibly blame Israel for the instability in Syria, the threat of Islamic State, the Arab Spring that turned into an Arab winter, or the chaos in Libya and Iraq?”

Nobody wants to admit it but terrorism has existed for years

...The more surprising thing is that even Tzipi Livni has fallen prey to the same hallucination that Kerry suffered: “ISIS issue – she said – cannot be resolved without addressing the Palestinian problem”. What is the relevant problem for ISIS about this matter? The one about the disappearance of Israel and of all the Jews, I suppose. But not immediately: it is obvious that other ongoing battles are currently more relevant, there are heads to be severed, the Islamic State’s borders to be broadened, and there is the victory in Syria and Iraq.

Fiamma Nirenstein..
Times of Israel..
09 December '14..

First, John Kerry fantasized about the possible connection between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ISIS’ terror, and then he said he regretted it. And the fantasies of a US Undersecretary of State carry a considerable weight. In this case, Kerry made a very nice present to the terrorists, committing a foolish act with no logic and no reason.

He did not notice that ISIS’ terrorism goes from Syria to Iraq, from Afghanistan to Yemen, from Nigeria to Libya, that its program is the subjugation of the world under an Islamic caliphate, in which Israel is just a little part of the Islamic Ummah to be annexed to the caliphate.

Any normal mind would understand that this has nothing to do with the political problem of Israel and Palestine. If someone asks Abu Bakhr al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS’ beheaders, if he likes the “two states for two peoples” formula he would burst out laughing.

The more surprising thing is that even Tzipi Livni has fallen prey to the same hallucination that Kerry suffered: “ISIS issue – she said – cannot be resolved without addressing the Palestinian problem”. What is the relevant problem for ISIS about this matter? The one about the disappearance of Israel and of all the Jews, I suppose. But not immediately: it is obvious that other ongoing battles are currently more relevant, there are heads to be severed, the Islamic State’s borders to be broadened, and there is the victory in Syria and Iraq.

As a matter of fact, the trouble in untying both these knots, and not only them, is unfortunately connected to the phoenix of terrorism, and there is no another connection on the ground. It is a matter of resolving two examples of terrorism: one linked to a more religious theme, the other to a religious-territorial one.

Besides that, just thinking that the conquest of the caliphate worldwide is influenced by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, namely that if the latter found a solution then the black flags would stop fluttering, is somewhat pathetic.

However, we must admit that this trivial thesis provides an important intellectual stimulus: it is time to identify what terrorism is, to give it an international definition, to learn how to fight it. The West does not know, it cannot actually see terrorism. The Western mind gets lost when we see acts of terror, even though that terror has been infesting our territory, Europe, for centuries. It has not always had the same face, rather it has considerably changed starting from the Seventies.

Previously, in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, terrorism had a more focused, personalistic, even romantic character, although surely not for the poor victims. The Italian Red Brigades targeted people who were of course innocent, but also – because of their role, their profession, their socio-intellectual position – clearly tantamount to a system that the terrorists loathed. Judges, generals, bankers, cops, trade unionists, politicians, everyone was marked by their mad obsession, the destruction of capitalism.

In the past, also the Russian revolutionaries and the Irish patriots had targeted the people that they hated, and did not tend to indiscriminately terrorize bus passengers, journalists, customers. In their time, the Russians and the Irish could complain about the misery of their condition of oppressed people, the poverty of the masses that youths were saying they wanted to free through their acts of terrorism. They were not right-winged nor left-winged: the Russian terrorists were not followed by the Lenin-style revolutionaries, the left wing had more sympathy, as also recently, for the Irish, although a debate about the means they used remained open. Marx and Engels condemned the use of terror. Nevertheless, the young idealistic terrorists admired their courage, their purposes were clear. This has influenced the confusion about terrorism, even the Islamist and contemporary one.

The terrorists became “Comrades who are mistaken”. After World War Two, terrorism assumed several and different extremist traits: in 1922, Walter Rathenau’s killers were the forerunners of the Nazi movement, but at a much later stage we saw a lot of them from a communist background, like the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof gang.

During the last century, it became hard to understand if terrorism was left or right-winged, and the ethnic and religious terrorism soon overcame the communist, fascist or nationalist one, and broke all the molds. Indeed, nobody was able anymore to establish if at the root there was, as the terrorists were claiming, an intolerable human and social condition, if they were trying to lash out at a tyrant or just an enemy (there were very few attempts to kill Hitler and Mussolini, and none to kill Stalin).

The 14th century lives on in 21st century Washington

...In essence, blaming the blameless for what they have no involvement in, is as morally reprehensible as the mid-14th century scapegoating of Europe’s Jews during the Black Death. Right across the continent, the recommended remedy was to accuse Jews of poisoning the wells. With adaptations, this still remains the undisputed conventional wisdom.

Medieval manuscript showing Jews burned
at the stake in Flanders according to the
popular antidote to the Black Death

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
23 October '14..

In all fairness, it’s not just the Obama Administration which is fond of insinuating that somehow Israel is to blame for all that ails the Mideast. This has been the underlying theme of the US State Department since Israel’s birth in 1948.

The variations in the stance vis-à-vis Israel derive from the intensity of antipathy – the subtlety and sophistication of the tone in which it’s expressed. Given its strident hectoring, the Obama Administration is doubtless America’s least-subtle and least-sophisticated ever.

While past presidents and their secretaries of state took greater pains to pretend not to side with glaring Arab anti-Israel falsehoods, such niceties are all but absent from Barack Obama’s and John Kerry’s rhetoric. Anti-Israel idioms and calumnies are repeated by them as an obvious and infallible politically-correct gospel.

And thus Kerry had the colossal gall last week – significantly at a White House ceremony for the Muslim fest of Eid al-Adha – to claim no less that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (i.e. the Jewish state’s struggle for survival) bolsters the mass appeal of Islamic State radicalism.

Hardly knocking Israelis for a loop, the State Department’s spokeswoman later accused us of getting it all wrong. In deadpan delivery she insisted that Kerry “did not make a linkage between Israel and the growth of ISIL [Islamic State]. Period.”

But her boss’s words speak for themselves and belie her assertion.

Here, verbatim, is Kerry’s syntax-defying wisdom: “As I went around and met with people in the course of our discussions about the ISIL coalition, the truth is we – there wasn’t a leader I met with in the region who didn’t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation.”

Translation: “peace between Israel and the Palestinians” means Israeli concessions of the sort that will critically compromise Israel’s self-preservation prospects. Only that and that alone will satisfy the “leaders” with whom the insightful Kerry met “in the region.” These were all Arab and/or Muslim and obviously they “spontaneously” gave voice to their enmity toward Israel – enmity which supersedes any discomfort arising from the hideous internecine Arab feuds.

These non-too-objective leaders are chronically prone to blaming any and all misfortunes on Israel (including the polio epidemic back in the day, followed by cancer, later by AIDS and most recently we’re told that Israel deliberately spreads Ebola). Is it then really any wonder that they would blame Israel for the Islamic fanaticism that overruns Iraq, Syria and threatens other domains?

Observation from IMRA - Blackmail of Israel over Iran Effectively Ended

...But America's willingness to go along with such a dangerous proposal with Iran raises such profound concerns that any suggestion that the Jewish State trade eastern Jerusalem for a halt to Iranian nukes sounds pathetically naive and silly.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA..
09 November '13..

In recent years supporters of the creation of a Palestinian state have hoped that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is known for his genuine concerns regarding Iran, could be blackmailed into sacrificing Israel's requirements vis-a-vis the Palestinians as "payment" for the prevention of a nuclear Iran.

The latest move by the United States, regardless of how it may ultimately end, effectively removes this argument from the table.

A blackmailer is only relevant to his prey if he can deliver the goods.

The terms that the United States was willing to accept now with Iran were so remote from any reasonable program that President Obama essentially demonstrated that he has no intention to deliver. (It appears that the French may yet save the day - no thanks to the Americans).

The Distraction of the Israeli-Palestinian “Distraction” Fallacy

...And if Arabs haven’t done this in 65 years, when so many other peoples have, there’s no reason to think a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would suddenly make them start. This failure is entirely a product of their own culture. And therefore, change can only come from within.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
18 October '13..

Of all the popular idiocies perennially spouted about the Middle East, the one I find most outrageous is the idea that Israeli-Palestinian peace would foment change in Arab societies by removing the “distraction” of Israel’s “oppression of the Palestinians.” Or as the New York Times’ columnist Roger Cohen put it this week, “If Arabs could see in Israel not a Zionist oppressor but the region’s most successful economy, a modern state built in 65 years, they would pose themselves the right questions about openness, innovation and progress.”

Like many Middle Eastern tropes, this one is simultaneously too insulting and too forgiving. It’s too insulting because it deems Arabs incapable of posing “the right questions” on their own, treating their ability to do so as wholly dependent on Israel’s actions. And it’s too forgiving because it views anger at the “Zionist oppressor” as a valid reason for their inability to pose these questions, ignoring the obvious historical fact that numerous non-Arab nations have proven quite capable of posing these questions despite similar or even greater obstacles.

Taiwan, for instance, was founded by refugees driven from their homeland after losing a civil war that erupted immediately after the end of one of the most brutal occupations in recent history – Japan’s occupation of China. Since mainland China never stopped wanting to regain its errant province, the Taiwanese lived in constant fear of invasion. And they had the anguish of watching helplessly as their countrymen on the mainland suffered under Mao’s brutal dictatorship, which killed over 45 million Chinese. Yet none of this stopped the Taiwanese from building a flourishing economy and, later, a flourishing democracy.

Similarly, Rwanda has rebuilt itself into one of Africa’s most successful countries less than two decades after a devastating genocide killed an estimated 800,000 people.

Israel, of course, was established just three years after the Holocaust, and absorbed hundreds of thousands of refugees. During its first 25 years of existence, Arab countries launched three wars aimed at wiping it off the map, and it has suffered nonstop terrorism since its establishment. Yet none of this stopped it from building a flourishing democracy and a flourishing economy.

The West's Favorite "Key Issue" Fizzles Out

The idea that solving the Israel/Palestinian question is the key to unlocking the problems of the region was what everyone who wanted to sound as if they knew what they were saying was most delighted to say: "What was that about Yemen? Well of course the real problem we need to solve is the Israel/Palestinian issue." Rarely in diplomatic history has so much been got so wrong by so many people for so long.

Douglas Murray..
Gatestone Institute..
22 September '13..

With the civil war in Syria grinding through its third year, Egypt descended into ethnic and inter-religious barbarism, and the American Secretary of State reduced to promising "unbelievably small" action by the world's only super-power, it is hard to find any chinks of light. But one, perhaps, exists. It is that we may finally have seen the explosion of one of the most embedded and central myths of our time: the idea that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is the "key" to sorting out the problems of the Middle East.

After seeing what has happened since the "Arab Spring" began, this might be an appropriate moment to ask whether or not every Western foreign minister deserves simply to be sacked and sent back to school. Rarely in diplomatic history has so much been got so wrong by so many people for so long.

For at least the twenty years since the Oslo Accords, the idea that the Israel-Palestinian conflict was the "key" to unlocking the problems of the Middle East was the leitmotif of any discussion about the Middle East and North Africa areas. So pervasive was it that people could refer to the "Middle East" problem as though everyone agreed that there was only one problem across that whole set of benighted lands.

While of course it would be nice if all disputes could be solved — Cyprus, Kashmir, Turkey, Morocco, Tibet -- what is worse is that the allegation came from every side of the political spectrum. Politicians of the left said it. Politicians of the right said it. The idea that solving the Israel/Palestinian question was the key to unlocking the problems of the region was what everyone who wanted to sound as if they knew what they were saying was most delighted to say: "What was that about Yemen? Well of course the real problem we need to solve is the Israel/Palestinian issue." "A bomb was planted in which Western city? Well what we really need to do is solve that border dispute issue of the Israelis."

Further, one of the oddest things about all this is that for some reason, when the alleged centrality of the issue should have been swept aside most completely, it became instead even more central.

R.I.P. - Reuters Kills the Mideast Domino Theory

The dubious domino theory is dead and the wire service finally acknowledges it.

Pesach Benson..
Honest Reporting/Backspin..
05 August '13..




Reuters broke with Big Media’s muddled mantra that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the region’s “core conflict.”

More than 100,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict and violence has flared again in Iraq, with over 1,000 killed there in July alone, many at the hands of al Qaeda. Tensions over Iran’s disputed nuclear program have also risen, while a struggle for power between Islamists and the military is playing out on the streets of predominantly Sunni Egypt.

Arguably, none of these crises will come any closer to being settled should, by some miracle, Israel and the Palestinians finally agree to divide the land where they live . . .

In public, Muslim leaders have traditionally railed against Israel, happy to fan ordinary Arabs’ sincere anger about the plight of the Palestinians – and perhaps deflect criticism of their own failure to make badly needed reforms.

Arab leaders can no longer get away with this.

Tobin - Iran Agreement as Obvious — and Unlikely — as Peace with the Palestinians

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
18 April '12..

For some in the foreign policy establishment, the solution to all the problems of the world are as obvious as the noses on our faces. Worried about Iranian nukes? Just cut a deal with them allowing the ayatollahs to develop nuclear power for peace purposes like medical research while theoretically denying them the ability to build a weapon. And make it all happen with “confidence-building” measures that will break down the barriers of distrust. David Ignatius’ column in the Washington Post outlining the deal with Iran that he thinks will ultimately come from the negotiating process begun last weekend in Istanbul is just one of many voices proclaiming that an end to the confrontation with Tehran is already well-understood, and all we have to do is stop listening to the alarmists and let the danger pass.

If the claim the blueprint for an Iran deal is apparent seems familiar it is because it is strikingly similar to the arguments about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. There, too, we are informed the outline of an accord is already well-known, and all that remains to be done is to force the parties to sign on the dotted line. But as is the case with the Palestinians, the chattering classes’ confidence in the diplomatic process tells us more about their own lack of understanding of the other side in the negotiations than it does about the actual prospects for a deal. Just as the Palestinians have no real interest in peace with Israel, Iran’s nuclear ambitions will always trump the seemingly sensible solutions proposed to get them off the hook with the international community.

Ignatius gives a fair summary of what is thought to be the easy way out of the Iran tangle:

The Death of an Illusion

Rich Lowry
www.nationalreview.com
18 March '11

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/262440/death-illusion-rich-lowry

It’s tempting to think the Middle East’s problems are all Israel’s fault.

In the great Middle East whodunit, the verdict is in: The Jews are innocent. They aren’t responsible for the violence, extremism, backwardness, discontent, or predatory government of their Arab neighbors.

The past few months should have finally shattered the persistent illusion that the Israeli-Palestinian question determines all in the Middle East. In an essay in Foreign Policy magazine titled “The False Religion of Mideast Peace,” former diplomat Aaron David Miller recounts the conventional wisdom running back through the Cold War: “An unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict would trigger ruinous war, increase Soviet influence, weaken Arab moderates, strengthen Arab radicals, jeopardize access to Middle East oil, and generally undermine U.S. influence from Rabat to Karachi.”

Behind these assumptions has long stood a deeply simplistic understanding of the Arabs. Professional naïf Jimmy Carter insists, “There is no doubt: The heart and mind of every Muslim is affected by whether or not the Israeli-Palestinian issue is dealt with fairly.” This is reductive to the point of insult. Carter thinks that Muslims have no interior lives of their own, but are all defined by a foreign-policy dispute that is unlikely to affect most of them directly in the least. He mistakes real people for participants in an endless Council on Foreign Relations seminar.

The Israeli-Palestinian issue certainly has great emotional charge, and most Arabs would prefer a world blissfully free of the Zionist entity. But the Israelis can’t be blamed — though cynical Arab governments certainly try — for unemployment and repression in Arab countries. Monumental events in recent decades — the Iranian revolution, the Iran–Iraq War, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait — were driven by internal Muslim confessional, ideological, and geo-political differences. Israel has nothing to do with the Sunnis hating the Shia, or the Saudis hating the Iranians, or everyone hating Moammar Qaddafi.

Adam Garfinkle muses in his book Jewcentricity: “Imagine, if you can, that one day Israelis decided to pack their bags and move away, giving the country to the Palestinians with a check for sixty years’ rent. Would the Arabs suddenly stop competing among themselves, and would America and the Arab world suddenly fall in love with each other?”

Yet the pull of the illusion is so powerful that even those who don’t profess to believe in it, like George W. Bush, eventually get sucked in. Barack Obama came into office ready to deploy his charm and fulfill the millennial promise of the peace process once and for all. He couldn’t even get the Palestinians to sit down to negotiate with the Israelis, in an unintended “reset” to the situation decades ago.

According to the illusion, the region should have exploded in rage at Jewish perfidy and American ineffectualness. It exploded for altogether different reasons. We witnessed revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt without a hint of upset at the Israeli settlements or America’s continued failure as a broker of peace. We’ve seen the Arab League petition the United States — whose sole function is supposed to be monitoring Israeli housing developments and paving the way for a Palestinian state — to undertake a military operation against another (recently suspended) member of the Arab League, Libya.

It’d be easier if the key to the Middle East really were sitting around a negotiating table with a couple of bottles of Evian, poring over a map adjudicating a dispute so familiar that people have built diplomatic, academic, and journalistic careers on it. The current terrain of the Middle East as it exists — not as we assume it should be — is hellishly disorienting by comparison: What to do when an ally invades another ally to knock around protesters in violation of our values? When a tin-pot dictator thumbs his nose at us and the rest of West and crushes his opponents with alacrity despite our earnest protestations? When popular uprisings threaten our allies more than our enemies?

It makes the old peace process seem alluringly comfortable and manageable. No, the illusion will never die.

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Israel-Centrists

Shoshana Bryen
Senior Director for Security Policy
JINSA Report #: 1,058
February 4, 2011

http://www.jinsa.org/node/2154

Several months ago, a blogger penned, "There was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel; that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises; that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region." The report went viral and the jackals called for American disengagement from Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state to encourage the Saudis and others to engage with us on halting the Iranian nuclear program. We wrote:

What the Arab countries... often call "the Israel problem" is a foil for their unwillingness to risk their internal stability by being seen as an overt U.S. ally or by confronting Iran. True is the notion that, according to the Arab states, "America (is) not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region (is) eroding." (But) Israel is not the object of their concern; Iran is. To the extent that U.S. power is eroding in the region, it is because the Obama administration spent more than a year "engaging" Iran while the mullahs spent the same year increasing their nuclear weapons development program and brutally suppressing election protesters.

WikiLeaks and the Egyptian revolution proved us right. This is not to gloat, but to understand that the jackals are out again. This time, instead of putting the anti-Israel sentiment in the mouths of the Arab leaders, these Americans say outright that our relationship with Israel costs American lives.

George Soros opined in The Washington Post, "The main stumbling block is Israel... But Israel is unlikely to recognize its own best interests... And some U.S. supporters of Israel are more rigid and ideological than Israelis themselves." His fear is that the administration "will not adjust its policies quickly enough to the suddenly changed reality." Ex-CIA intel officer Michael Scheuer, told Fox News, "Israel is an enormous detriment to the United States... it's going to become clear to Americans it's going to cost us blood and lives the longer we pursue this relationship with the Israelis."

Their prescription for the ills of the Arab and Muslim world is for the United States to abandon Israel and befriend Arab/Muslim governments regardless of their policies. How foolish they are.

As a practical matter, the last thing Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States want is the American abandonment of Israel, for two reasons. First, they know the American public and Congress support Israel as a democratic friend of the United States with which we share political, cultural and religious values and national security goals. If we would throw Israel over, how much faith could the Saudis have in our willingness to stand by them in their hour of trouble? After all, they share none of the fundamental values of the United States and few national security goals other than preventing Iranian hegemony - a goal they share with Israel above all. Second, Saudi Arabia - a fundamentalist Islamic state - faces its chief threat from those who are no less fundamentalist, but who seek the overthrow of the Saudi kings for their relationship with the United States and the West.

As a philosophical matter, the United States has to stand for something. We choose democracy or consensual government, human rights, economic freedom, limited government, liberty and tolerance. If that is us, Israel is our friend, partner and ally. In order for most of the Islamic/Muslim countries to be our friend and partner, they have to be more like us, not we more like them. If they can't change or don't want to, they may be clients, they may be trading partners, they may be there and we may notice them, but they won't be allies.

Israel didn't create the region's problems, although many of them have Israel as their focus because for more than 60 years Arab governments have hung their legitimacy on political and military opposition to Israel and can't acknowledge that both are losing causes. Emergency decrees, military rule, single-party states, censorship, economic regulation, failure to reach political maturity are blamed by Arab leaders on the "threat" posed by Israel. Today, the blame-Israel mantra is increasingly irrelevant to people in the streets or Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Jordan and elsewhere.

The United States might do better in the region if the Administration concentrates on bringing Arab and Muslim countries to the realization that there are two paths - American-supported economic and social advancement (not to be confused with the imposition of American-style democracy), which requires losing the baggage of Israel-centrism; or Islamism in some form, which will guarantee years or decades of bloody intolerance and the further beggaring of their people.

It is a different choice, and a better choice, than Soros, Scheuer and the like offer them.

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The Folly of Linkage

Michael Weiss
The Weekly Standard
16 December '10

The theory of linkage holds that by resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict most other problems will be resolved. The end of the Arab-Israeli will contribute to the fight against terrorism as well as improve the prospects for Arab democracy and women’s rights. The conflict, linkage advocates argue, is a “lightning rod” for the recruitment of new al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention a handy propaganda foil for Iran to distract us from its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

And after the recent revelation of secret State Department cables by WikiLeaks, the linkage debate has been revived. Detractors are emboldened by evidence that shows Arab statesmen mortally terrified by the prospect of atomic Iranian mullahs. “Cut off the head of the snake,” said the Saudi king Abdullah to his American interlocutors. Beware of the “Iranian tentacles,” warned Jordanian officials, who added that the Obama administration’s policy of engagement would fail because Iran’s favorite tactic was waiting out the clock with negotiations. The United Arab Emirates’s foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan sounded more hawkish than his Israeli counterpart in terming the Islamic Republic an “existential threat” and suggesting a U.S. ground invasion if aerial bombardment failed. Abu Dhabi crown prince Muhamad bin Zayed said “Ahmadinejad is Hitler.” Indeed, a wide swath of Arab government opinion seemed united in recommending a preemptive American strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

(Read full "The Folly of Linkage")

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To Get Arab Support on Iran, Take a Leaf from Bush Sr.

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
01 December '10

As Jennifer noted yesterday, the latest WikiLeaks revelations definitively refute Barack Obama’s “linkage” theory: that Israeli concessions to the Palestinians were necessary to persuade Arab states to oppose Iran’s nuclear program. But what the documents reveal about the profound strategic misconception behind this theory is frightening.

The list of Arab states urging America to bomb Iran, and the forcefulness with which they urged it, is astonishing. It includes Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates; virtually the only exception was Qatar. Clearly, no Israeli concessions were needed to persuade these countries that strong action against Iran was desirable.

But both Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush insisted that this behind-the-scenes urging wasn’t enough; they needed Arab states to go public with it. As CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid told UAE officials in 2007, “we need our friends to say that they stand with the Americans.”

If Bush had any strategy for achieving this goal, it doesn’t emerge from the reports I’ve seen. But Obama did: linkage. If America showed that it’s on the Arabs’ side by extracting Israeli concessions, the theory went, then Arab states would no longer be reluctant to stand publicly beside the U.S.

But the idea that “soft power” could solve a quintessentially hard-power problem is a profound misconception, because the issue wasn’t the Arabs’ view of Washington as too pro-Israel; that never stopped them from supporting America if it served their interests before.

(Read full post)

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Editor's Notes: Exposed by WikiLeaks

Obama, we now know, had the diplomatic cables to prove that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was no obstacle to wide Arab backing for the toughest possible measures against Iran.

David Horovitz
Editor: JPost Op-Ed
01 December '10

After the first meeting between newish President Barack Obama and new Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in May of 2009, I wrote in these pages about the “acutely uncomfortable clash of divergent outlooks” so readily evident at their media conference.

I noted that while the Netanyahu camp had “rushed to talk up a purported meeting of minds over Iran,” it was plain that there was a gulf between the two men on the issue. Specially, I wrote, it had been Netanyahu’s hope that he would persuade Obama of the imperative to halt the Iranian nuclear drive “as a precondition for encouraging Arab moderation and thus enabling progress with the Palestinians, and on this he failed.”

Instead, I pointed out, “Obama insistently placed tackling the Palestinian issue – which has defeated even the most generous and flexible Israeli governments – on the road to fixing Iran.”

While Israel had argued internationally that stopping Iran would enable headway with the Palestinians, and other foreign heads of state, senior ministers and diplomats had politely suggested it was best to try to chivvy both processes along simultaneously, Obama, I observed, “has gone all the way over to the other side, and done so in public.”

I was referring to the president’s assertion, publicly contradicting Netanyahu, that, “If there is a linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I personally believe it actually runs the other way. To the extent that we can make peace with the Palestinians – between the Palestinians and the Israelis – then I actually think it strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with a potential Iranian threat.”

(Read full editorial)


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Cables Tell Us: Linkage Was Nonsense

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
29 November '10

The WikiLeaks documents have multiple ramifications, but I will focus on one: the confirmation that the Obama “linkage” argument was pure bunk. Recall that the Obama team over and over again has made the argument that progress on the Palestinian conflict was essential to obtaining the help of the Arab states in confronting Iran’s nuclear threat. We know that this is simply and completely false.

The documents show that the Arab states were hounding the administration to take action against Iran. The King of Bahrain urged Obama to rec0gnize that the danger of letting the Iranian nuclear program come to fruition was worse than the fallout from stopping it. He wasn’t alone: there was also “King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who according to another cable repeatedly implored Washington to ‘cut off the head of the snake’ while there was still time.” The New York Times connects some of the dots:

At the same time, the cables reveal how Iran’s ascent has unified Israel and many longtime Arab adversaries — notably the Saudis — in a common cause. Publicly, these Arab states held their tongues, for fear of a domestic uproar and the retributions of a powerful neighbor. Privately, they clamored for strong action — by someone else. …

Crown Prince bin Zayed [of Abu Dhabi], predicting in July 2009 that an Israeli attack could come by year’s end, suggested the danger of appeasing Iran. “Ahmadinejad is Hitler,” he declared.

Seemingly taken aback, a State Department official replied, “We do not anticipate military confrontation with Iran before the end of 2009.”

Obama’s outreach efforts only increased the Arab states’ panic:

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Obama's Peace Process to Nowhere

The president's new proposal to Israel is a step backward in the effort to establish an enduring peace in the Middle East.

Elliott Abrams, Michael Singh
Foreign Policy
20 November '10

Barack Obama's latest offer to Israel in his quixotic quest for a total construction freeze in West Bank settlements seems at first glance to be a sweetheart deal for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. In exchange for a 90-day extension of the freeze, Israel reportedly would receive 20 additional F-35 fighter jets worth $3 billion, a guarantee that the United States will veto any unilateral Palestinian initiative at the United Nations meant to achieve international recognition of a Palestinian state, and a promise that Obama will not request any further extensions of the construction moratorium.

This proposed deal, however, masks an unwelcome shift in U.S. mediation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the troubling precedents set by this package will serve to dim rather than enhance prospects for a breakthrough in peace negotiations.

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Why the Silly Deal Is a Bad Deal

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
18 November '10

Some genuine friends of Israel have shrugged their shoulders over the latest foolish attempt by the Obami to lure the parties back to the non-peace talks. OK, they concede, it won’t work and is absurd (another 90 days won’t matter), but what is the harm? Besides, Israel gets those planes (but what if after 90 days the talks end?). Elliott Abrams succinctly explains in a Voice of America interview why the deal is not just ludicrous but also dangerous:

“They have been negotiating for a very long time and they have not been able to overcome the differences on some critical issues like Jerusalem or security arrangements,” said the former foreign policy advisor to U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. “It may be too optimistic to expect the Israelis and Palestinians to come to an agreement by 2011 on all issues which separate them when they have not yet started negotiations.” …

“It is the linkage.” he says. “The Israeli agreement to extend their construction freeze in the West Bank by 90 days is now linked to a squadron of jets and to U.S. vetoes in the U.N. Security Council.”

Abrams believes neither of these linkages should be connected with the issue of a West Bank construction freeze by the Israelis. He said the U.S. should be making decisions in the Security Council on the basis of principle.

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The Real Middle East Linkage

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
18 October '10

Barack Obama’s administration is a big fan of “linkage” — the theory that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would, in his words, “change the strategic landscape of the Middle East” and “help us deal with terrorist organizations in the region.” And actually, he’s half right: America’s handling of this conflict does affect the Middle East’s strategic landscape. But the link, as newly declassified documents from the Vietnam War make clear, isn’t what Obama thinks it is. And therefore, his policies are making war more likely, not less.

Obama believes Palestinian suffering is a top Muslim concern that contributes greatly to radicalizing Muslim extremists. Thus, if America forced Israel to capitulate to Palestinian demands, not only would Muslims like America better, but all the Muslim world’s other problems would be easier to solve, because a key source of radicalization would be gone.

That version of linkage is clearly delusional. Just consider last month’s deadly bombing by Sunni extremists of a Shiite march in Pakistan. The march was one of several nationwide to “observe Al Quds Day, an annual protest to express solidarity with Palestinians and condemn Israel.” Yet solidarity with the Palestinians evidently ranks so low on the Muslim agenda that Sunnis and Shiites couldn’t suspend their mutual bloodletting for one day to unite around this issue. So how would a Palestinian state ease this Sunni-Shiite divide?

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Obama's Misguided Approach to Peacemaking

Matthew Brooks/Matthew R.J. Brodsky
American Thinker
11 May '10

In recent days, President Obama stated that resolving the Middle East conflict was "a vital national security interest of the United States" and explained that the conflict is "costing us significantly in terms of blood and treasure," thus drawing a direct link among the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, the safety of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and U.S. efforts to gain international support for sanctions on Iran. The apparent shift as described by administration officials is behind the White House's urgent push to broker a Middle East peace deal and increases the likelihood that Obama will offer his own plan for a proposed Palestinian state.

The president's current approach to the peace process and his embrace of the linkage theory is problematic on many levels. On several occasions, Team Obama has put the onus squarely on Israel not only to prove that it is committed to peace and negotiations with the Palestinians, but also to demonstrate that it is committed to its relationship with the United States. Yet it is the Palestinian Authority that refuses to negotiate. Palestinian politics are divided between the Hamas rulers pledged to Israel's destruction in Gaza and the PA dominated by the Fatah party in the West Bank. Such political paralysis is hardly conducive to peacemaking.

Peace will come only when the Palestinian leadership accepts Israel's right to exist. But there are precious few signs of a rethinking of the PA's basic narrative and red lines. The main issue today remains not whether the Palestinian leadership will recognize Israel as a Jewish state, but whether it will recognize Israel's right to exist in any form whatsoever.

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Either way, you’re dead!

We can avoid Iranian nukes by opting for the Auschwitz borders or we can avoid the Auschwitz borders but be bullied by Iranian nukes.


Sarah Honig
Another Tack/JPost
07 May '10

Time to quit quibbling. No pedantic hairsplitting can mitigate the evidence: The Obama administration cynically links Iran to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The premise is simple and chilling. If Israel wants a last-minute, last-ditch, quasi-credible American move to keep Iran from obtaining nukes, it must pay the piper by making hefty concessions to the sham paraded as the Palestinian Authority. Boiled down to its bare essence, the White House diktat means that Israel can maybe extricate itself from existential Iranian threats by submitting itself to existential Iranian-proxy threats.

Had Barack Obama ever read Shalom Aleichem’s autobiography he’d have encountered the author’s harrowing recollection of the story his grandfather told him about “the bird-Jew.” That was how the grandfather referred to Noah, a pious innkeeper who lived in constant dread of the gentile village squire. Trembling, Noah headed for the manor to renew his lease. His timing was off, because the courtyard was full of festive guests ready to go hunting.

The squire, in a jovial mood, agreed to renew the lease if Noah would climb the stable roof and pretend to be a bird, so he could shoot him. Fearful of angering the nobleman, the worst consequence the Jew could imagine, Noah obsequiously did his bidding. He went up and, as ordered, bent forward, flung his arms sideways and assumed a birdlike pose. At that point the squire fired and Noah fell, as any slain bird would.

Although realizing he was about to be put to death anyway, the bird-Jew played along with his executioner, still absurdly terrified of what might happen if he didn’t. Obama is the proverbial squire in our own tale, casting Israel as the latter-day bird-Jew.

Israel is now squarely in Obama’s gun sights. It’s blamed for all Mideast ills. Obama, after all, is the high priest of the political theology of American/Western guilt. Israel embodies Western culpability. If Obama preaches American penance vis-à-vis Arabs/Muslims, Israel obviously must atone in more than words for the sins he ascribes to it.

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Dennis Ross Joins the Obama Cult of Linkage

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
06 May '10

Prior to this administration, Dennis Ross was an experienced negotiator who tried valiantly to reach a comprehensive peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians at Camp David. Watching the Palestinians reject the offer of their own state and embark on the intifada impressed upon Ross, or so he wrote repeatedly, the need for Palestinians to develop institutions that would support a peace deal and to lay the groundwork with Arab states and the Palestinian public before future negotiations could succeed. He was also regarded as tough-minded on Iran, ready to impose tough sanctions and do what was necessary to prevent the regime from acquiring nuclear weapons.

He also wrote a book with David Makovsky entitled Myths, illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East, which came out in 2009:

Contrary to the position of the president and other advisers, Ross writes that efforts to advance dialogue with Iran should not be connected to the renewal of talks between Israel and the Palestinians. … In the second chapter, entitled “Linkage: The Mother of All Myths,” Ross writes: “Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East, one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away. This is the argument of ‘linkage.’”

Well, that’s old hat. He’s thrown in his lot with the Obama crew. Josh Rogin documents Ross’s ingestion of the Obama Kool Aid:

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