Imposing

Soccer Dad
07 April '10

Two weeks ago David Ignatius wrote:

In retrospect, it seems clear that the step-by-step approach was a mistake: Constructive ambiguity, in this case, proved destructive. It allowed the Israeli right wing to perpetuate the idea that it could have it all -- obtain a peace deal without making concessions on Jerusalem. And it allowed Netanyahu to continue his straddle.

Jerusalem is the hardest issue of all in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiation, and for that reason, would-be peacemakers have wanted to save it for last. But this month's crisis makes that strategic waffling impossible. Thanks to the Israeli right, the Jerusalem issue is joined.

What's needed now is for Obama to announce that when negotiations begin, the United States will state its views about Jerusalem and other key issues -- sketching the outlines of the deal that most Israelis and Palestinians want. If Netanyahu refuses to play, then we have a real crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations.

At the time Barry Rubin observed:

Has anyone else noticed that David Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist who always tries to echo what he's hearing from his administration contacts, has just called for an imposed settlement on Israel and the Palestinians?

On a hopeful note Meryl wrote yesterday:

I think that given the pushback of the last few weeks, the Obama administration will not be publicly calling out Netanyahu. It's all going to be behind the scenes now. And I don't think Obama is going to succeed in getting Israel to stop building apartments in Ramat Shlomo. Nor do I think that Israel will be agreeing to final status issues up front.

Obama may want to count an Israel-Palestinian peace deal among the accomplishments of his administration, but I don't think he can bully Israel into it. He has far too much trouble right here at home right now. The Tea Party movement is more popular than the president.

However, Ignatius has weighed in again. It would appear that the administration remains undaunted.

(Read full post)
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Moderation

J.E. Dyer
Contentions/Commentary
06 April '10

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has picked up on the April 4 – Easter Sunday – greeting to the Palestinian people of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. In it, Fayyad promised that next year, the people will hold the (Islamic) Holy Fire vigil in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, “capital” of the Palestinian state.

Fayyad, of course, has made his reputation over the last decade as a Western-friendly moderate, praised by Thomas Friedman for advocating that the Palestinian Arabs focus on building their institutions to prepare for viable statehood rather than on armed struggle against Israel. Friedman calls this approach “Fayyadism,” but as Jonathan Tobin pointed out in March, Fayyadism is a policy without a constituency among the Palestinian Arabs. It isn’t something that can be counted on or appealed to in the clutch.

Fayyad’s Easter Sunday greeting is a reminder that it could be more problematic if Fayyadism did have a constituency. The statehood proposal announced by Fayyad in August 2009 might de-emphasize armed resistance, but its provision for unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state with the June 4, 1967, border is hardly uncontroversial.

One element of such a declaration – to be made in 2011, according to Fayyad’s two-year timetable – would be unilaterally assuming Arab control of Jerusalem’s Old City, the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as well as the rest of East Jerusalem. The text of Fayyad’s April 4 greeting could hardly be more pointed regarding the import of that. His words are a reminder of the years 1948 to 1967, when Jordan’s occupation force destroyed dozens of synagogues in the Jewish Quarter and denied Jews access to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. More than half of Old Jerusalem’s Christian inhabitants left the city during that period because of religious restrictions and harassment.

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The Obama Administration and Sanctions on Iran: The Farce Deepens

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
07 April '10

For more than a year I have repeatedly pointed out that the Obama Administration's strategy of increasing the level of sanctions against Iran has been a mess. Deadlines set by the U.S. government for September and then December weren't met. Even afterward, the government had not even established publicly (and it seems not even privately) its basic position on what sanctions should be. Congressional proposals for a tougher stance were discouraged and ignored.

Over and over again we were assured, apparently without basis, that Russia and China were going to support increased sanctions. With the Obama Administration in office now for 14 months, Moscow and Beijing seem no closer to supporting such a policy than they were when the process began.

Now there is more news. It is April and there are no immediate prospect for sanctions. Indeed, the issue is not even on the agenda for the UN Security Council this month. In May, the rotating presidency goes to Lebanon, a country in which Hizballah, an Iranian client, has a veto power over every decision. The Lebanese government has already declared that it will be supportive of Tehran.

June, anyone?

I will repeat: It now seems to be a race between Iran getting nuclear weapons and inadequate increased sanctions being implemented, too little and too late.

This massive failure should be crystal clear. Whether or not strong sanctions would have had a chance to slow or undermine the Iranian drive for nuclear weapons can legitimately be debated. But we're not going to get a chance to find out.

(Read full article)
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Rosner's Domain: Lee Smith on why the US should not "hazard its human and financial resources on democracy promotion in the Middle East"

Lee Smith

Shmuel Rosner
Rosner's Domain/JPost
07 April '10

Lee Smith's The Strong Horse is a "clear-eyed analysis" in which "Smith explodes the many myths permeating Americans' understanding of the Arab world: colonialism spurred the region's ongoing turmoil; Arab liberalism is waiting for U.S. intervention; technology and democracy can be transforming. In response to these untruths, Smith offers what he terms the "Strong Horse Doctrine" - that Arabs want to align themselves with strength, power, and violence".

Smith is a Middle East correspondent for The Weekly Standard and also has written for Slate, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and a variety of Arab media outlets. I read his book (highly readable, entertaining, not too long, recommended!) and sent him a couple of questions:

1. You wrote that, "We took 9/11 too personally. The result is that we've come to see our multiple engagements in the Middle East - from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to our contentious relationship with Iran - in the framework of a clash between Western and Islamic civilization". Please explain to those readers who haven't yet read your book, how it is the "clash of Arab civilizations" that is the real cause for Middle East (and world) trouble?

Most of us are accustomed to looking at the region as a massive sea of some 300 million Arabs, and 9/11 suggested they were all squared off as one against the West. Thus, an Iraqi Shia and a Lebanese Christian presumably all share the same convictions, hopes and fears as a Sunni living in the Egyptian capital. This is not the case, a fact documented in the history of intra-Arab conflict: civil wars in Lebanon and Yemen; wars between regimes and their insurgent opponents in Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Jordan; sectarian conflict in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. And yet despite all the bloodshed, the Arabs are not a warlike people, as the Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi told me, but are rather a feuding people. What keeps the Arabs from making total war against each other is in effect a tribal covenant: the purpose of Arab nationalism is to bind the Arabs as one in order to keep them from destroying themselves while projecting their enmity on an alien tribe. The two most popular targets, as we know, are Israel, and America. And so, as I write in the book, "What was extraordinary about the attacks on lower Manhattan and the Pentagon was not the carnage - certainly not compared to some of the most vicious intra-Arab campaigns over the last several decades - but that the Arabs had shifted the field of battle to the continental United States." September 11, "is the day we woke up to find ourselves in the middle of a clash of Arab civilizations, a war that used American cities as yet another venue for the Arabs to fight each other."

2. You write that "the Americans had taken the wrong side" in the Middle East "war of ideas". How so?

Since the Muslim reform movement of the 19th century, the central question in the Middle East's war of ideas has been whether or not Arabs and Muslims should accept the cultural values of the West.

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The Boycotters Real Intent

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
07 April '10

Cheap propaganda, but quite dangerous.

I was sent info of this UK campaign to boycott goods from the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. They call themselves part of War On Want. And here, you can read this:

Over the last 61 years Israel has continuously acted in defiance of UN resolutions, international law and global outrage. Through the continuing occupation, Israel has engaged in excessive and disproportionate force, house demolitions, targeted assassinations, detention of minors, detention without trial, attacks on water supplies, violation of the right to food and attacks on medical personnel and equipment...

Hullo.

61 years?

But, didn't "occupation" begin in 1967?

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Jews must be unified on critical issues

Fresnozionism.org
06 April '10

In my last post, I urged American Jews to take a firm pro-Israel position, because it is in their interest.

It is only very recently and only in Israel and the democratic West that Jews have been able to escape the condition of living by the sufferance of the majority, dependent upon the attitude of the rulers and the populace, upon how the wind is blowing on a given day. The presence of a strong state of Israel is at the same time a source of psychological strength and self-respect for those diaspora Jews, as well as a practical refuge — something which has been demonstrated clearly over and over since 1948, but which for some reason is often derided by ahistorical US Jews, who seem to think that the conditions of post-1945 America will continue in aeternum.

It is fascinating to watch Western anti-Zionists rationalize their opposition to the state, as opposed to the Arabs, who simply want to conquer it, kill the Jews and take their possessions; or the Iranians, who see it as a stumbling block to their hegemony. As they become more and more agitated, this anti-Zionism exposes itself simply as a need to put the Jews back in the ‘rightful’ place as marginal and despised creatures. But that’s another article.

What is becoming more and more clear to me, though, is that American Jews have a significant role to play in determining the future of Israel, and — since Israel really is the front line in the conflict with Islamic imperialism in the Mideast — possibly the West as a whole.

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A Nuclear Iran and the Futility of Sanctions

Graphic: Steve Hughes

Louis René Beres
Frontpagemag.com
07 April '10

In the matter of Iranian nuclearization, U.S. President Barack Obama still doesn’t get it. Economic sanctions will never work. In Tehran’s national decision-making circles, absolutely nothing can compare to the immense power and status that would come with membership in the Nuclear Club. Indeed, if President Ahmadinejad and his clerical masters truly believe in the Shiite apocalypse, the inevitable final battle against “unbelievers,” they would be most willing to accept even corollary military sanctions.

From the standpoint of the United States, a nuclear Iran would pose an unprecedented risk of mass-destruction terrorism. For much smaller Israel, of course, the security risk would be existential.

Legal issues are linked here to various strategic considerations. Supported by international law, specifically by the incontestable right of anticipatory self-defense, Prime Minister Netanyahu understands that any preemptive destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructures would involve enormous operational and political difficulties. True, Israel has deployed elements of the “Arrow” system of ballistic missile defense, but even the Arrow could not achieve a sufficiently high probability of intercept to protect civilian populations. Further, now that Obama has backed away from America’s previously-planned missile shield deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic, Israel has no good reason to place its security hopes in any combined systems of active defense.

Even a single incoming nuclear missile that would manage to penetrate Arrow defenses could kill very large numbers of Israelis. Iran, moreover, could decide to share its developing nuclear assets with assorted terror groups, sworn enemies of Israel that would launch using automobiles and ships rather than missiles. These very same groups might seek “soft” targets in selected American or European cities – schools, universities, hospitals, hotels, sports stadiums, subways, etc.

While Obama and the “international community” still fiddles, Iran is plainly augmenting its incendiary intent toward Israel with a corresponding military capacity. Left to violate non-proliferation treaty (NPT) rules with impunity, Iran’s leaders might ultimately be undeterred by any threats of an Israeli and/or American retaliation. Such a possible failure of nuclear deterrence could be the result of a presumed lack of threat credibility, or even of a genuine Iranian disregard for expected harms. In the worst-case scenario, Iran, animated by certain Shiite visions of inevitable conflict, could become the individual suicide bomber writ large. Such a dire prospect is improbable, but it is not unimaginable.

(Read full article)
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Is Israel Facing War with Hizbullah and Syria?

David Schenker
JCPA
Published April 2010
Vol. 9, No. 22

Concerns about Israeli hostilities with Hizbullah are nothing new, but based on recent pronouncements from Syria, if the situation degenerates, fighting could take on a regional dimension not seen since 1973.

On February 26, Syrian President Bashar Assad hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Damascus. Afterward, Hizbullah's online magazine Al Intiqad suggested that war with Israel was on the horizon.

Raising tensions further are reports that Syria has provided Hizbullah with the advanced, Russian-made, shoulder-fired, Igla-S anti-aircraft missile, which could inhibit Israeli air operations over Lebanon in a future conflict. The transfer of this equipment had previously been defined by Israeli officials as a "red line."

In the summer of 2006, Syria sat on the sidelines as Hizbullah fought Israel to a standstill. After the war, Assad, who during the fighting received public assurances from then-Prime Minister Olmert that Syria would not be targeted, took credit for the "divine victory."

Damascus' support for "resistance" was on full display at the Arab Summit in Libya in late March 2010, where Assad urged Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to abandon U.S.-supported negotiations and "take up arms against Israel."

After years of diplomatic isolation, Damascus has finally broken the code to Europe, and appears to be on the verge of doing so with the Obama administration as well. Currently, Syria appears to be in a position where it can cultivate its ties with the West without sacrificing its support for terrorism.

In February 2010, tensions spiked between Israel and its northern neighbors. First, Syrian and Israeli officials engaged in a war of words, complete with dueling threats of regime change and targeting civilian populations. Weeks later, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah pledged to go toe-to-toe with Israel in the next war.1 Then, toward the end of the month, Israel began military maneuvers in the north. Finally, on February 26, Syrian President Bashar Assad hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah for an unprecedented dinner meeting in Damascus.

Concerns about Israeli hostilities with Hizbullah are nothing new, but based on recent pronouncements from Damascus, if the situation degenerates, fighting could take on a regional dimension not seen since 1973. In January and February, Syrian officials indicated that, unlike during the 2006 fighting in Lebanon, Damascus would not "sit idly by" in the next war.2 While these statements may be bravado, it's not difficult to imagine Syria being drawn into the conflict.

(Read full report)
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A tale of Israeli “rapists” that has enraged the Palestinians but won’t make the BBC

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
06 April '10

Well there’s a headline that will have regular readers scratching their heads. So let me explain, and as I do consider why this particularly evocative story has been ignored by mainstream media across Europe.

The Jerusalem Post is reporting today that Palestinians are up in arms (not literally, I hasten to add) over a Turkish television series being broadcast across the Arab world which portrays IDF soldiers raping a Palestinian female prisoner in an Israeli jail.

Confused? Palestinians actively opposed to gross and defamatory lies about Israel? Well, consider this extract from a protest letter to the Turkish dramatists from a group of female Palestinian prisoners:

“This film defames the female prisoners and their struggles in occupation prisons,” the Jerusalem Post quoted the letter as saying. “We call on the producer of this Turkish drama to apologize to the Palestinian people for the scene which shows Israeli soldiers raping a Palestinian female prisoner called Miriam.”

Part of the problem, the Palestinian women say, is that upon her release the victim is killed by her family due to the dishonour she has brought on them by having had the temerity to have been raped. Calling this a “public insult to the Palestinian people” they add that in any case, “Those who think that a Palestinian female prisoner is raped when she’s arrested are living in an illusion and are mistaken… There has never been such a case.”

The Jerusalem Post adds that the series is being broadcast across the Middle East by the Saudi-owned MBC network. The Palestinian authority has echoed the prisoners’ sentiments describing the programme as “offensive”.

(Read full post)

Related: Damned if you do and damned if you don't
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American Jews, take a stand

Fresnozionism.org
04 April '10

It’s time for Jewish Americans to stand up.

Does the state of Israel have special meaning for them, or is it just another foreign country? They should decide.

This is because the Jewish community in the US, for whatever reasons, has an influence that’s much greater than numbers (about 6.5 million) would indicate. And it’s become urgent to exert this influence in a positive direction and in a coordinated way.

It’s beginning to be clear that the relatively pro-Israel policy that the US has followed since 1967 — I say this even though I know that there have been ups and downs in this period, that some influential institutions (the State Department) have always been less than friendly, etc. — is coming to an end.

This isn’t surprising. Since before 1948, the proponents of a Jewish state have struggled against opposition from the Arabs and from antisemites, and the founding of the state didn’t make it go away — on the contrary. Israel’s history for the past 62 years can be seen as a series of attempts to eliminate it. Its enemies have tried various approaches, but in recent years have realized that a regional military confrontation alone won’t achieve their goal.

Israel’s enemies have come to understand that in order to win they must isolate Israel and remove the international support that has, over the years, allowed this small nation to prevail militarily over the much larger Arab armies. As everyone knows, the goal is to delegitimize Israel, to demonize her, and to split her supporters away from her. Their desired practical results are these:

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Splitting Alliances: Why the West will Fail with Syria as it once did with Italy

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
06 April '10

Reading history I realized a marvelous analogy for current Western attempts to pry Syria from its alliance with Iran. While few remember it today, there was a strenuous British and French campaign during the 1930s to lure Benito Mussolini’s Italy from aligning with Germany. They flattered the dictator and ignored his repression at home and aggression abroad--including his unprovoked assault on Ethiopia--in this effort.

Of course, they failed. One could say that failure was inevitable because of the similarity between the regimes in Berlin and Rome. Consider three additional factors.

First, there was no way the British and French were able to offer Mussolini more than Hitler did. They had neither the power nor the stomach to sell out more countries to Mussolini. Germany could always offer more because it was ruthless and wanted to destroy the status quo.

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Would Obama's nuclear engagement guideline end Israeli nuke deterrence against bio chemical Arab attacks?

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
06 April '10

[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

"Obama is rolling back the Bush administration's more hawkish policy set out in its 2002 review threatening the use of nuclear weapons to preempt or respond to chemical or biological attack, even from non-nuclear countries.

An exception under Obama's plan would allow an option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack if there is reason to believe the United States were vulnerable to a devastating attack."

So in Obama's playbook Israel cannot deter Arab chemical attacks with nukes?

And in Obama's playbook, Israel can only deter "devastating" Arab biological attacks - but biological attacks that might not be "devastating" could not be deterred by the threat of a nuclear response? Is it "devastating" to take out Ashdod? How about Petach Tikvah?, Is Raanana too small to matter? Or would Mr. Obama insist that we do complete a body count - perhaps under American monitoring - before establishing that an attack was, indeed, "devastating"?

It wasn't so long ago that tactical nuclear weapons were considered an obvious tool for NATO forces to use in the European theatre as the only possibly viable way to hold back a Russian invasion.

In Obama's playbook Israel cannot deter an overwhelming invasion with the threat of a nuclear response?

Finally: does stripping down deterrence encourage stability or lead to devastation.?]

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Obama to limit U.S. use of nuclear arms, but not on Iran
By Reuters Last update - 14:40 06/04/2010
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1161120.html

The Obama administration will formally unveil a new policy on Tuesday restricting U.S. use of nuclear arms, renouncing development of new atomic weapons and heralding further cuts in America's stockpile.

But even as President Barack Obama limits the conditions under which the United States would resort to a nuclear strike, he is making clear that nuclear-defiant states like Iran and North Korea will remain potential targets.

"I'm going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure," Obama told The New York Times in an interview that previewed his revamped nuclear strategy.

Obama insisted "outliers like Iran and North Korea" that have violated or renounced the treaty would not be protected.

The policy shift, calling for reduced U.S. reliance on its nuclear deterrent, could build momentum before Obama signs a landmark arms control treaty with Russia in Prague on Thursday and hosts a nuclear security summit in Washington next week.

But it is also likely to draw fire from conservative critics who say his approach is naive and compromises U.S. national security.

(Read full article)
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What Comes from Israel-Bashing

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
06 April '10

In the list of foreseeable consequences from the Obami’s assault on Israel is the radicalization of more moderate Arab leaders, who can’t be seen as less aggressive than the Obama team in insisting on unilateral concessions by Israel. As this report explains:

Jordan’s leader also delivered in an interview Monday with The Wall Street Journal a rebuke of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, charging that his policy of building homes for Jewish families in East Jerusalem has pushed Jordanian-Israeli relations to their lowest point since a 1994 peace treaty.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II said he will push the Obama administration next week to impose on Israel the terms and time-line for new peace talks with the Palestinians, as concerns mount inside his government that the stalled dialogue could fuel a new round of violence in the Middle East that targets moderate Arab states…

King Abdullah’s calls for Mr. Obama to essentially dictate the terms for Israeli-Palestinian talks is feeding into a policy debate in Washington over how hard to push Mr. Netanyahu.

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Obama’s Anti-Israel Jihad

Robert Spencer
Frontpagemag.com
06 April '10

Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor of The Australian, recently wrote that “Barack Obama’s anti-Israel jihad is one of the most irresponsible policy lurches by any modern American president.” This is true not solely because Israel has been a reliable and loyal American ally, and is the only free society in the Middle East. Obama’s animus toward Israel and bullying of our longtime ally is irresponsible because the President is simultaneously ignoring the steep rise in jihad activity by Muslims in the U.S. and U.S-born Muslims since he took office.

“Jihad is becoming as American as apple pie and as British as afternoon tea” – so said the American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi recently. Al-Awlaqi, who was in contact with Nidal Hasan, the jihadist who murdered thirteen Americans at Fort Hood in November 2009, and with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the jihadist who tried to bring down an airplane as it landed in Detroit on Christmas day, had plenty of reason to claim that “jihad is becoming as American as apple pie”: evidence of U.S. Muslims engaging in terrorism grows every day.

Last week a Chicago-based Muslim, David Headley, a.k.a. Daood Gilani, pled guilty to going on a reconnaissance mission to find targets for the devastating 2008 jihad attacks in Mumbai, in which over 150 people were murdered. Gilani also participated in a plot to bomb a newspaper in Denmark that published cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Also last week, Sharif Mobley, a Muslim from New Jersey, was arrested in Yemen over his ties to Al-Qaeda and his murder of a guard in an escape attempt.

The week before that, two American Muslim women, both of whom are converts to Islam, were arrested for their involvement in a plot to murder the Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks for his cartoon of the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a dog. One has since been released, although her mother and stepfather have voiced concerns about how she is teaching her six-year-old son to hate Christians and believe that Muslims must wage war against them.

(Read full article)
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Turkey, Israel and the Armenians

Michael Weiss
Standpoint Magazine
April '10
H/T Just Journalism

It is fair to say that Britons have grown more familiar than they'd like with the real estate habits of ultra-Orthodox Jews in east Jerusalem. Judging by the coverage this hyperactive sectarian element garners in the British press, Israeli settler development is apparently better disposed to determine the course of events in today's Middle East than are the nuclear ambitions of Iran's mullahs, the parliamentary intrigues of Iraqi Shia, or the Turkish prime minister's threat of forced population transfers.

You'd be forgiven for not knowing about that last development-that is, if you're a regular reader of Britain's left-wing press, which has been eerily silent about the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's recent threat to expel 100,000 Armenians from Turkey. The threat was made in response to U.S. and Swedish resolutions recognizing as a genocide the Ottoman Empire's mass murder of over 1 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923. In an interview with the BBC's Turkish Service on March 17, Erdogan said that in light of international pressure to get his country to face up to the history of its last Islamic caliphate, out of whose ruins the modern Kemalist nation was born, he could turn very angry indeed. "In my country there are 170,000 Armenians; 70,000 of them are citizens," Erdogan said. "We tolerate 100,000 more. So, what am I going to do tomorrow? If necessary I will tell the 100,000: okay, time to go back to your country. Why? They are not my citizens. I am not obliged to keep them in my country."

There are three things to note about this thuggish statement. The first is that Erdogan's demographics are in dispute: a new study conducted last year suggest that only 10,000 Armenians reside in Turkey illegally, half of them having fled after a devastating 1988 earthquake hit Armenia; the other half having slowly trickled over the years as migrant workers seeking respite from the anemic post-Soviet Armenian economy.

(Read full article)
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The Last Night Of Passover: An Obama Postscript

Marty Peretz
The New Republic
06 April '10

(When Marty Peretz has something to say, he's real clear. The last couple of paragraphs are about as straightforward as one can get.)
I actually had no intention of writing again about President Obama and his Passover theology. I'd done it once, on the night before the night of the first seder and that, I said to myself, was enough. In any case, my quarrel with him is really about how he treats the idea of the Jewish people today (but not only the idea) and how his politics imperil Jews everywhere, in Israel, primarily, but certainly not only in Israel.

So what changed my mind? Well, I was catching up with Jonathan Chait's blog, a TNR feature that I greatly admire. Somehow, I had missed a posting of his called "How Obama Ruined Passover." Of course, I knew instantly that Obama had ruined nothing for Chait. Obama can't ruin anything for Chait.

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Bank of Israel: Palestinian labor hurts Israeli workers

Growing employment of Palestinians in recent years good for PA, hurts unskilled Israeli labor, report says


Tani Goldstein
Israeli Business/Ynet
04 April '10

(Two points. 1) How does the U.S. deal with importing cheaper labor from outside the U.S. when there are U.S. citizens to fill the jobs? 2)Recently the PA announced "PA to prohibit work in settlements". Is there a problem accommodating this?)

The low wages earned by Palestinians working in Israel may undermine the salaries of unskilled Israeli workers, the Bank of Israel says.

The bank's report, which looked into Palestinian employment in Israel, showed a roughly 20% increase in the employment of Palestinians in Israel in the years 2002-2008.

"The growth in Palestinian employment in Israel contributed to the Palestinian economy's recovery in Judea and Samaria and produced revenues of $649 million in 2008, which constituted more than 10% of Palestinian production," the report said.

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Damned if you do and damned if you don't

Joe Settler
06 April '10

Welcome back, I hope everyone had an enjoyable Pesach and is enjoying their Mimouna.

You probably all remember the Hebrew University study by the far-left Tal Nitzan that said IDF soldier simply don’t rape Palestinian women. Nitzan explained that this inexplicably absent war crime results from our racist society.

Turkish TV disagrees with Nitzan’s study. They ran a whole episode about IDF soldiers raping female Palestinian prisoners. Ever since Turkey joined the Axis of Evil, government sponsored TV shows like this have become the norm.

But this time, Turkey crossed a line.

You see it’s one thing to show IDF soldiers killing Palestinian babies. That makes them martyrs and heroes.

It’s another thing to claim that Palestinian women are raped in Israeli prisons.

You see, the Turkish government has now destroyed the honor of every female terrorist in Israeli jails – and worse, the honor of their families. What Palestinian will be able to say with pride that his dear wife Fatma, or his sweet daughter Miryam is sitting in an Israeli prison?

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When Israel Stood Up to Washington

Daniel Pipes
Frontpagemag.com
06 April '10

As U.S.-Israel tensions climb to unfamiliar heights, they recall a prior round of tensions nearly thirty years ago, when Menachem Begin and Ronald Reagan were in charge. In contrast to Binyamin Netanyahu’s repeated apologies, Begin adopted a quite different approach.

The sequence of events started with a statement from Syrian dictator Hafiz al-Asad that he would not make peace with Israel “even in a hundred years,” Begin responded by making the Golan Heights part of Israel, terminating the military administration that had been governing that territory from the time Israeli forces seized it from Syria in 1967. Legislation to this effect easily passed Israel’s parliament on Dec. 14, 1981.

This move came, however, just two weeks after the signing of a U.S.-Israel Strategic Cooperation Agreement, prompting much irritation in Washington. At the initiative of Secretary of State Alexander Haig, the U.S. government suspended that just-signed agreement. One day later, on Dec. 20, Begin summoned Samuel Lewis, the U.S. ambassador in Tel Aviv, for a dressing-down.

Yehuda Avner, a former aide to Begin, provides atmospherics and commentary on this episode at “When Washington bridled and Begin fumed.” As he retells it, “The prime minister invited Lewis to take a seat, stiffened, sat up, reached for the stack of papers on the table by his side, put them on his lap and [adopted] a face like stone and a voice like steel.” Begin began with “a thunderous recitation of the perfidies perpetrated by Syria over the decades.” He ended with what he called “a very personal and urgent message” to President Reagan (available at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website).

(Read full article)
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Clip and Save: Senior Fatah Official: IDF deployment prevents us from exercising our right to launch armed attacks against Israel

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
05 April '10

[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

Hat's off to Khaled Abu Toameh for providing the readers of The Jerusalem Post with what is probably the most stunning and significant report relating to the Palestinians this year.

Too bad the folks at the Post who wrote the headline that goes with the story seemed to miss the point.

Here we have none other than "moderate" senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath explaining that the "moderate" Palestinian Authority's "moderate" security forces have every right to launch an attack today against Israel (using, among other things, their American weapons) but that they can't because the deployment of IDF makes this unworkable.

Yes.

That's what he says.

Follow his words: "... he stressed that this does not mean that the Palestinians don't have the right to launch an armed intifada "against an armed occupation and an armed settlement on Palestinian lands...obviously, we have the right"

What's stopping the "moderate" PA from trying to slaughter Israelis?

Because it is not a nice thing to do to murder Israelis?

No.

Its because "According to Shaath, the option of an armed intifada under the current circumstances, where Israel "fully occupies the West Bank and is besieging the Gaza Strip, is impossible."

So we have some interesting policy question:

#1. President Obama is pushing PM Netanyahu to pull back the IDF from various locations in the West Bank as a gesture to the same "moderate" PA that is complaining that it would like to launch armed attacks against Israel but can't because the deployment of IDF forces makes it impossible.

#2. Would these redeployments make the "armed intifada" possible?]

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Fatah: We want a peaceful intifada
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH The Jerusalem Post
02/04/2010 02:32
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=172299

The new "popular intifada" that Fatah is planning in the West Bank won't be an armed one, Nabil Shaath, a senior Fatah official, said on Thursday.

Shaath's clarification came a day after he and some of his colleagues in Fatah called on Palestinians to escalate the "popular resistance" in protest against the settlements, the West Bank security barrier and the decision to build new homes in east Jerusalem.

"Apparently the Palestinian leaderships in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are in control of the situation to make sure that the intifada is not transformed into an armed confrontation," Shaath explained. "This was not the case during the second intifada."

(Read full article)
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A State in Need of a Spine

Marla Braverman
Azure no. 39
Winter 5770 / 2010

Last January, courtesy of YouTube, millions of viewers around the world watched Turkey’s prime minister lose his cool. Speaking on a panel on Gaza at the usually punctilious World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Recep Tayyip Erdogan capped a series of recent tirades against Israel—he had alternately decried its “inhumane” actions against innocent Palestinians during Operation Cast Lead and demanded its ejection from the United Nations—with an outraged response to Israeli President and co-panelist Shimon Peres’s defense of the military campaign in the Strip. When moderator David Ignatius of the Washington Post repeatedly cut short Erdogan’s attempts at a rebuttal, the Turkish premier stormed offstage, declaring this his last appearance in Davos. Israel quickly shifted into crisis-management mode, with Peres insisting to reporters afterward that the spat was “nothing personal.” Turkey, he claimed, remained an important ally of the Jewish state. Erdogan, by contrast, donned a kaftan of indignation. “My responsibility,” he proclaimed to flag-waving supporters upon his arrival in Ankara, “is to protect the honor of the Turkish nation.”

Unfortunately, the Turkish premier’s theatrics were merely another maneuver in a surprise offensive that left Israelis smarting at their treatment by a supposedly key partner in the region. Just weeks before Davos, Erdogan had openly snubbed prime minister Ehud Olmert’s conciliatory overtures, and refused foreign minister Tzipi Livni’s offer to fly to Ankara for a visit. In October of last year, Turkey barred Israel’s air force from participating in a routine nato exercise in what Erdogan admitted was an act of protest against Israel’s handling of the Gaza campaign. That same month, Turkey’s state television aired an inflammatory series showing IDF soldiers in Gaza killing Palestinian babies and lining up civilians before a firing squad. This past November, Erdogan remarked that he would rather host Omar al-Bashir, indicted for orchestrating crimes against humanity in Darfur, than meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

(Read full article)
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President Karzai's Mideast tutorial

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
04 April '10

A few weeks ago, Mark Perry, author of the book Talking to Terrorists and a former Arafat advisor, claimed that General Petraeus had come to the conclusion that US interests and security in the Middle East were gravely endangered by "Israeli intransigence". While few knowledgeable analysts bought Perry's story, there were plenty of pundits and bloggers who were all too happy to present it as the revelation of a long-hidden truth. The fact that General Petraeus himself soon rejected all the spin and set the record straight will probably dampen the enthusiasm of the "Blame-Israel" brigades only marginally.

Those who believed Perry's story seem to have a rather low opinion of General Petraeus, because they apparently assume that if he gets to hear complaints about "Israeli intransigence" from some Arab rulers, he will immediately conclude that America would be wildly popular in the Middle East if Arabs saw no reason to blame the US for "Israeli intransigence". But it is safe to assume that General Petraeus remembers very well that 9/11 happened - and was celebrated widely in the Middle East - not long after an American president and an Israeli prime minister had tried very hard to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, the proposals for a Palestinian state presented in Taba in January 2001 were so far-reaching that Yasser Arafat eventually regretted his failure to accept them.

But for those who find it too taxing to recall some major events that happened barely ten years ago, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan recently offered a reminder of the kind of intransigence that led to 9/11 - and that has nothing whatsoever to do with Israel. As The New York Times reported, Karzai decided to retaliate for a cancelled invitation to the White House by inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Afghanistan and allowing him to deliver one of his anti-American tirades from the presidential palace in Kabul.

Karzai also reportedly believes that "the Americans are in Afghanistan because they want to dominate his country and the region, and that they pose an obstacle to striking a peace deal with the Taliban." Needless to say - at least for anyone who knows the Middle East - Karzai presents himself as the courageous and clever leader who works hard to frustrate America's supposed ambitions.

(Read full post)
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If There's No Project to Engage Hizballah Why Do People Keep Telling Me They Were Contacted About It?

Thanassis Cambanis

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
05 April '10

Recently, I wrote an article about receiving a letter saying the Center for American Progress is running a project to advocate U.S. engagement with Hizballah and that high-ranking officials in the Obama administration were encouraging this as part of their own campaign to start talking with the Lebanese terrorist group that is a client for Iran and Syria in trying to take over Lebanon and destroy Israel.

The head of the project, Cambanis, a strong supporter of Hizballah, has denied it. Yes, he admitted. That's what my assistant wrote but he lied. The letter began, however, with the assistant saying the director asked him to write me. So one would think the director approved the letter.

Cambanis wrote last year

"The Islamist axis commands real power and is a force to be reckoned with. Israel has never stopped negotiating with Hamas and Hezbollah. European diplomats are quietly talking to Hezbollah officials, and looking for ways to initiate contacts with Hamas without violating European law. American intelligence services and diplomats find they have less and less leverage and understanding from their increasingly isolated stations and embassies; they’ll need to craft new channels through which to speak to groups in the Islamist axis."

(Read full post)
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The Repercussions of Obama's War of Words on Israel

Osama Hamdan of Hamas: Hillary's New Dance Partner?


Parrhesia
jstreetjive.com
02 April '10

We are approaching one month since Obama and his Vice President made the momentous decision to escalate the artificial "crisis" of settlements and turn it into a major policy shift of animus towards Israel while claiming-incredibly- that they stand stalwartly behind the Jewish State. One measure of how deep a rift the Obama policy has created are the reverberations within the U.S. and around the world. Within one week of the "condemnation" of Jewish building - building that had been announced and planned years in advance - the EU's President, Spanish Foreign Minister Angel Moratinos, echoed Obama's harsh words and demanded a total freeze on Jewish building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. At home, liberal media outlets have chimed in on the Obama line with unsparing words for Israel and its government: In its March 26th editorial the sages of the New York Times wrote:

"Many Israelis find Mr. Obama’s willingness to challenge Israel unsettling. We find it refreshing..."

Of course, BHO would never even consider "challenging" the Palestinians nor would the Times demand it.

A editorial in The Harvard Crimson on April 1 declared,

"We oppose the original construction of the settlements, and believe this incident provides an important opportunity for the U.S. to consider its relationship with Israel. It is time for the U.S. to reexamine its alliance with the country based on its national security and geopolitical realities. To do so, the U.S. should create diplomatic distance between the two nations. The U.S. should also make the degree of aid it provides to Israel contingent on Israel’s pursuit of the peace process. President Obama’s recent actions demonstrate that he is dedicated to the same careful reevaluation, and we applaud him in that regard."

(Read full article)
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Obami Pushing Israel to Act Unilaterally?

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
04 April '10

The Obami are promising another round of sanctions aimed at Iran. This will be the fourth round, and we should not, judging from press reports, expect them to be “crippling.” As Bill Kristol noted on Fox News Sunday:

The only things that can stop the Iranian nuclear program are — would be the success of the green movement in Iran, which the Obama administration has done nothing to help and remains incredibly indifferent to and standoffish to on the one hand, or military action on the other, which the Obama administration seems uninterested in doing and I’m afraid is setting up a situation where Israel will feel it has to act.

The abject lack of seriousness from the Obama administration — its disinclination to even suggest the use of force or to aid the Green Movement in any meaningful way — has not gone unnoticed either here or in Israel. At the AIPAC conference, the contrast between Hillary Clinton’s platitudinous “unacceptable” formulation and Tony Blair’s “whatever it takes” phraseology was hard to ignore. And, as Kristol points out, even doves in Israel like Ephraim Sneh, a former deputy defense minister, are talking about the need for an Israeli strike on Iran this year, absent the implementation of “crippling sanctions.” (”An Israeli military campaign against Iran’s nuclear installations is likely to cripple that country’s nuclear project for a number of years. The retaliation against Israel would be painful, but bearable.”)

We can speculate as to whether the Obami’s assault on Netanyahu over the Jerusalem housing permit was meant to stymie Israel’s plans for such action. If so, this is yet another gross error in judgment by the Obami, who have an exaggerated sense of their own ability to bully those who interfere with their plans. As fraught with peril as an Israeli military operation might be and as unseemly as it might be for the U.S. to stand idly by – ignoring its role as leader of the West and shrinking from its international responsibilities – Israel, if faced with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran and a recalcitrant U.S. administration, will have no choice but to act in its own defense. Netanyahu said it clearly last month, no doubt to put the administration as well as the mullahs on notice. (”The future of the Jewish state can never depend on the goodwill of even the greatest of men. Israel must always reserve the right to defend itself.”)

(Read full post)
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How the Western Pursuit of Muslim Moderates Actually Promotes Extremism

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
04 April '10

The term Moderate Muslim is a misnomer, because it is the equivalent of describing him as a Secular Catholic or a Liberal Conservative. Muslims who pride themselves on sticking to the Koran view extremism as a virtue, not a fault. Islam's reform movements that succeeded were not movements that made Islam more liberal, but that made it stricter, harsher and more unfeeling.

Aside from the original Sunni-Shiite schism, which has its basis more in power politics than in theology, the spectrum within Islam itself always runs to the more extreme. A new alternative mosque that succeeds is likely to be a place more conservative and more hostile to the outside world. A new Islamic movement is usually one that calls for more blood and guts, and a lot less women walking around on the street. A movement that fails to do that rarely survives or essentially is forced outside of Islam if it does.

And so what the West's pursuit of moderate Muslims really does is push them toward more extreme views. A Muslim ruler who develops closer ties with the West is forced to compensate for it by moving further to the extreme in order to avoid being vulnerable to domestic charges that he is a bad Muslim. It is no surprise then that Saudi Arabia, America's closest ally in the Muslim world, is also the most extremist Muslim country on the planet, that is behind the growing push to the extreme around the world.

The Saudi Royal Family's balancing act trades American support for them and their oil off by supporting the expansion and spread of increasingly radicalized mosques and imams. This is supposed to hold future Bin Ladens at bay. Meanwhile American politicians praise the country where women aren't allowed to drive and non-Muslims can't even set foot in Mecca for its commitment to moderate Islam.

The Western pursuit of moderate Muslims alone helps create more enthusiasm for pushing Islam further to the extreme. Once Western leaders define a Muslim group as moderate, new more extreme groups are quickly spawned in order to set a new bar for "True Islam", as opposed to the compromise variety that the infidels praise. For example when Israel and the US announced that they had successfully made a deal with Arafat, the rise of Hamas was all but assured. When the UK or the US tries to treat Islamists as mainstream, not only do the Islamists become more extreme, but they develop new and more extreme rival groups.

So the pursuit of Muslim moderates not only pushes them into even greater extremes, but it spawns a host of new more extreme groups looking to capitalize on setting an even more extreme standard that will be praised for its faithfulness to the Koran. While the West tries to pretend it is bringing Muslims in from the cold, in fact it is turning up the heat.

(Read full post)
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AIPAC’s Embrace of Hillary Clinton: Civility or Stupidity

By Matthew M. Hausman
04 April '10
H/T to Israpundit

When Hillary Clinton addressed AIPAC’s 2010 annual convention, she had the perfect opportunity to show that the United States still stands with Israel despite the manufactured crisis over Ramat Shlomo. She could have done so by conceding that Jerusalem neighborhoods are not “settlements” and were always excluded from the temporary building freeze. She also could have recognized Israel’s many concessions for peace and declared that the U.S. would no longer tolerate the Palestinian Authority’s antisemitic incitement and support for terrorism.

Instead, she glossed over the PA’s lack of commitment to real peace, equated Israeli civilian deaths with those of terrorists and the Arab civilians they put at risk, and subtly gave voice to Mr. Obama’s revisionist canards. But even more disturbing than her distortions were the applause and standing ovation she received from many of the convention delegates.

Clinton’s performance should have surprised no one. As Secretary of State with marching orders from her President, she was merely articulating Mr. Obama’s anti-Israel agenda despite her fuzzy claims of support. Obama’s true feelings regarding Israel were apparent from the early days of his campaign based on his personal, political and philosophical allegiances to the likes of Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Rashid Khalidi, Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Despite these troubling relationships, Obama kept a reasonably low profile on controversial Mideast issues during the campaign, and he was aided by liberal Jews who shamelessly vouched for his mythical pro-Israel and philo-semitic bona fides.

After his inauguration, Obama was swift to show his true colors, beginning with his solicitation of the Arab-Muslim world, his adoption of the revisionist Palestinian narrative, and his enabling of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. He never missed an opportunity to blame Israel for sabotaging the peace process, but never faulted the PA or even Hamas for continuing to call for Israel’s destruction or engaging in terrorism. Whenever his disdain for Israel became too obvious to ignore he would trot out Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, or proxies from J Street, to savage his critics and paint them as reactionaries. Not once did he recognize that only Israel had complied with its obligations under the moribund Oslo Process or the Roadmap.

This dynamic is sadly reminiscent of the Second World War, when Roosevelt used Jewish political allies, such as Rabbi Stephen Wise and the American Jewish Committee, to discredit Jews who publicized the Holocaust as it unfolded and criticized the administration for failing to act. Among their targets were the Bergson Group, the Aggudat Ha-Rabbonim, and all those who refused to be silenced by secular Jewish political elites who were more interested in being good New Dealers than in helping their own people in Europe. Although history has not judged Roosevelt’s political lackeys very kindly, their dubious acts in the name of progressive politics are being replayed today as Mr. Obama seeks to throw Israel to the wolves.

It was maddening to watch as convention delegates applauded, exuded warm emotion, and then rose to their feet as Clinton spouted nonsense. Without a trace of embarrassment, Clinton condemned Hamas, not Fatah, for dedicating a town square in Ramallah to a Fatah terrorist who killed dozens of Israeli civilians. Clinton knows, of course, that Ramallah is located in the Fatah-controlled “West Bank” – not Gaza – and that Fatah was honoring one of its own for an act of terror it had sponsored. But Clinton’s deception was consistent with Obama’s policy of portraying the PA as a moderate entity worthy of a state. With a nod and a wink, Obama and his foreign policy stooges ignore that Fatah remains a terrorist organization that continues to engage in anti-Israel and antisemitic incitement and whose charter still calls for the destruction of Israel and the extermination of her people.

(Read full article)
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Obama’s Two-State Delusion

Moshe Dann
Frontpagemag.com
02 April '10

Let there be no mistake: President Obama’s attack on Israel’s right to govern in eastern Jerusalem has nothing to do with American national interests, and nothing to do with a “peace process.” Other American leaders may have disagreed with Israeli policy, but none of them made it a casus belli.

No other prominent politician sought to impose the “two-state solution,” based on 60-year-old cease-fire lines with Jordan, instead of a negotiated agreement. Obama’s move leaps beyond all previous “accords,” plans and “road maps.” Never before has the United States sought to dictate the terms of Israeli surrender, thereby undermining its only reliable ally in the region.

Obama’s obsession with the establishment of a second Arab Palestinian state might be understandable if it were based on a realistic appraisal of conditions as they are, instead of what they might be. The warning signals are there.

Two dramatic shifts have made the “two-state solution” irrelevant: the stand-off victory of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the hegemony of Hamas in Gaza and many areas of the West Bank, nominally under the Palestinian Authority, controlled by Fatah. One has to be ignorant, and/or blind not to appreciate what these situations mean – especially given the threats from Iran.

The developments have led to the widespread recognition, especially among Israelis, that the so-called “Oslo process” (“land for peace”) has failed, that Israel has no “peace partner,” and, therefore, that a second Arab Palestinian state is no longer relevant.

Today, unilateral withdrawal from Yehuda and Shomron (“the West Bank”) and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state is a “clear and present danger,” not only to Israel, but to the entire region.

(Read full article)
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Financial Times Columnist Labels Israel a Rogue State

Steven Stotsky
CAMERA Media Analysis
29 March '10
Posted before Chag

The Financial Times of London is the British equivalent of the U.S.-based Wall Street Journal, focused primarily on business and financial news. Readers might expect that such a media outlet would present the Arab-Israeli conflict in a dispassionate manner. But this is hardly the case. The newspaper's editorials are relentless in their lopsided criticism of Israel, portraying Israel as a rogue state and urging the United States to withdraw its support from the Jewish state. This striking bias was quantified in a report by British media watchdog group Just Journalism.

In an eight day period from Nov. 18 through Nov. 26, three separate editorials called on the Obama administration to end its policy of defending Israel from UN resolutions condemning the Jewish state. Op-Eds during the four month period of November 2009 through February 2010 repeatedly urged the U.S. to pressure Israel into accepting severe Arab demands that it retreat to the 1949 armistice lines, which would leave Israel's main population center within a vulnerable 8-10 mile wide strip of land and forfeit any claim to a unified Jerusalem. The Financial Times' displeasure at Israel's refusal to consent to such demands is expressed in vindictive and accusatory opinion pieces.

A Dec. 15, 2009 piece by former European Union Commissioner Chris Patten expressed support for EU President Carl Bildt's pro-Palestinian policy — with the caveat that it did not go far enough. Patten wrote that "seemingly on instructions from Israel's foreign ministry Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania fought to dilute the original text." Evidently, there was no possibility, in Patten's view, that these nations simply held a view of events and issues related to Israel less negative than his. Rather they must be receiving "instructions." Nor was any proof provided for his insinuating a nefarious Jewish influence on European governments.

For Patten, the antagonism towards Israel is personal. As the official responsible for handing over billions of Euros to the notoriously corrupt Palestinian Authority, the lack of positive results clearly upsets him. Rather than admit this failure is due to endemic corruption among Palestinian officials, Patten instead shifts blame onto Israel, claiming: "The money I spent in Palestine.... has drained away into the blood-soaked sand." He further alleges the EU has become the "paymaster for [Israeli] intransigence and disproportionate force."

(Read full report)
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Is Netanyahu ‘Apologizing to the Obama Administration’?

Part II of a two-part interview with Moshe Arens — former Israeli defense minister, foreign minister, and ambassador to the U.S. (Read Part I here.)


Ruthie Blum Leibowitz
Pajamasmedia.com
04 April '10
Posted before Chag
The concluding half of Ruthie Blum Leibowitz’s interview with Moshe Arens — former Israeli defense minister, foreign minister, and ambassador to the U.S.

Q: Are the Obama administration’s policies towards Israel a total about-face from the position of the Bush administration, which maintained there was a global struggle going on between the West and radical Islam, and that the Palestinian conflict belonged to that struggle? The current administration seems to be asserting that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only a phenomenon in and of itself, but that solving it is necessary to dealing with the rest of the world.

A: The major difference, again, is that this administration is taking its disagreements with the Israeli government public. If we look back at the history of U.S.-Israel relations, the last time we can discern this kind of a breach in the discourse was during the Eisenhower years. That was right after the Sinai Campaign, when Secretary of State [John Foster] Dulles publicly pressured Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion into moving the Israeli army out of the Sinai and the Gaza Strip, though Ben-Gurion was initially hesitant. The Eisenhower administration made no bones about its views on that subject, and hinted at additional pressures that might be forthcoming if Israel did not accept. That was in 1957. Here we are 53 years later.

Q: Why didn’t you mention the Carter administration in this context, as so many commentators have been doing of late?

A: Well, I don’t think we had a serious rift with the Carter administration, though we certainly might have had one, had Prime Minister Menachem Begin not accepted the terms that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat insisted on during negotiations at Camp David. President Carter might very well have come down on Sadat’s side. But we never got to that point, and in the final analysis, Carter was quite happy with the fact that Begin, after some convincing and maybe a little bit of discrete pressure, accepted the condition that there be a total withdrawal of Israeli forces and removal of Israeli settlements from the Sinai.

Q: Can Netanyahu be compared to Begin in this respect? After all, at the time, Begin seemed to be the least likely prime minister to give away territory. Netanyahu, today, is considered by many to be “intransigent.” Will the upshot in this case be similar? Will Netanyahu ultimately agree to withdraw to the 1967 borders?

A: It’s very unlikely. And the analogy is not entirely apt. Begin was quite doctrinaire, and what made it possible for him to agree to a total withdrawal from the Sinai was his view that it was not really part of the land of Israel. The fact is that he was not prepared to give an inch of the Gaza Strip, because he said it was part of the land of Israel.

(Read full interview)
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Jewish string quartet drowned out by loony anti-Zionists

Douglas Murray
Telegraph.co.uk
01 April '10
Posted before Chag

Let’s say you have disagreements with a foreign government. How do you make your feelings clear? By writing to your MP? Engaging in peaceful and legitimate protest? Or do you decide to do what some people did earlier this week and… target a string quartet?

At lunchtime on Tuesday, the Jerusalem Quartet were doing a recital at the beautiful Wigmore Hall in London. It was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. The Jerusalem Quartet – who come from Israel and who have done national service like everyone else there – were performing string quartets by Mozart and Ravel. Nothing too controversial there, you would have thought. Ravel is pretty established repertoire, and it’s a while since anyone had a problem with Mozart.

But enter the great anti-string quartet alliance (for this was a joint operation by the “Brighton and Hove Palestinian Solidarity Campaign” and a group called “Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods” (J-Big) which has membership running into single digits).

A little way into the Mozart string quartet, a semi-trained, fully barking music teacher called Debbie Fink started braying a witless anti-Israeli song at the top of her voice to disrupt proceedings. The effectiveness of this tactic of hers can be judged from an earlier video available here. Once again, this time at the Wigmore Hall, she was led away. Then, in this carefully planned offensive, another member of the Wigmore Hall forward-operations unit stood up to denounce the quartet as having “blood on their hands”. This tactic of disruption was repeated, every ten minutes, by a few other planted members of the audience so that the concert was wrecked. Radio 3 cancelled their live broadcast.

(Read full story)
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Back to an old game with Syria

Michael Young
NOW Lebanon
02 April '10
Posted before Chag

By most accounts it was a confident Bashar al-Assad who received Walid Jumblatt in Damascus on Wednesday. When it comes to Damascus’ regional position, the Syrian president sees the stars aligned in his favor. Which means that, at worst, he can afford to do nothing at all, and, at best, negotiate to arrive at nothing at all.

John Kerry, the chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, returned to the Middle East this week, visiting both Lebanon and Syria, and it’s not difficult to see what he had in mind. With the prospect that the Palestinian-Israeli track will remain stalled, ambitious foreign policy players in Washington are looking to the Syrian-Israeli track for a possible breakthrough. And these days when Americans propose openings toward Syria, they come to Beirut first, as did Kerry, to insist that “anything we do with respect to the peace process in this region will not come at the expense of Lebanon.”

That’s good to hear, but also irrelevant since the Syrians have already managed to largely reimpose their writ in Beirut. And this they’ve done because of many factors, Lebanese divisions chief among them, but also because people like John Kerry have spent years feeding Assad political oxygen by lauding the advantages of engaging Syria, even when Syria was destabilizing its neighbors.

Kerry’s trip will likely yield few tangible results. But the senator already knows that. His primary aim is to register his political stake in a Syrian-Israeli negotiation process, if one eventually resumes.

That may sound familiar. The Syrian regime spent the decade of the ‘90s receiving buoyant Americans in Damascus wanting to talk about peace with Israel. And while it’s true that the Syrians were prepared at one stage to conclude a final settlement, which was rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, it was always essential to their approach that peace should not undermine the Assad regime. Peace had to be on Syrian terms and defined in such a way that it would preserve Syria’s complex security scaffolding propping up the regime.

(Read full article)
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Former New York Mayor Ed Koch: Obama is willing to 'throw Israel under a bus to please Muslims'

Stephanie Gutmann
Telegraph.co.uk
03 April '10
Posted before Chag

Last week saw Julian Kossoff blogging ebulliently about the strength of American Jewish support for Barack Obama. Not even “the unprecedented tension between the White House and Israel [can] break the bond,” he trilled.

Now I realize Julian seems to see his role in life as reassurer to the goyim that Jews are Kumbaya-singing liberals — nothing like what he calls “the noisy neo cons and the Commentary crowd” and especially those cheeky, pushy Israelis. So I’m almost a little sorry to rain on his parade, but, sorry JK… not so fast.

One of New York City’s most famous and influential Jews, former mayor Ed Koch, a longtime Democrat — and longtime mayor (he governed New York for eleven years) — is showing distinct signs of buyer’s remorse. And anecdotal evidence gathered by him — and me in my sojourns around New York and New Jersey — suggest that Hiz Honor’s emotional trajectory is fairly representative of a growing disenchantment among Jews who voted for Obama.

The “falling out of love,” the term Mayor Koch used in an August commentary where he began expressing doubts, has been gradual. First there was the handling of the health care bill. Then the President’s failure to extract quid pro quos from Russia and China, then the “underwear bomber” affair. But it was Obama’s recent treatment of Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House (refusing to allow photographs, sequestering the world leader in a room and then leaving him there while he went to have dinner with his family with the instruction “call me if anything changes”) that seems to have pushed the rambunctious former mayor over a kind of edge.



Several days ago Koch, who is still a practising lawyer, caused a media stir by publishing a commentary titled “Never Again Should We Be Silent”. The essay, which declares that “President Obama’s abysmal attitude toward the state of Israel and his humiliating treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu is shocking” was widely reproduced in other media. He received about 500 emails (overwhelmingly supportive of his point, he told me), and then there was the kicker, on April 1, (and, no it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke). He went on the Fox Business News network where he told host Neil Cavuto, “I believe the Obama administration is willing to throw Israel under the bus in order to please the Muslim nations.”

(Read full article)
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