Arlene Kushner
Obama and company have been insisting, with enormous perversity, that "peace" between Israel and the PA was necessary in order to make the "moderate" Arab states happy, and that until these states were satisfied, they would not cooperate with the West. Thus, went the president's rationale, the onus was on us to make that "peace," as much depended upon it. If Israel got burned in the process, well, it would be for the greater good.
I have been maintaining that just the opposite was the case -- that, in point of fact, those Arab states were sorely irked by the US because of its weak stance. And I was hardly the only one to have been saying this: we heard it from analysts such as Jonathan Spyer and Barry Rubin, both of BESA. And now -- enter www.Wikileaks.org -- we see the reality beneath the US hype. WikiLeaks is a website self-identified as a "media organization" whose goal "is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists (our electronic drop box). One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth."
This "media organization" has the potential to do great damage in those instances in which diplomacy legitimately must be conducted outside the glare of public attention. I do not pretend to be altogether comfortable with its goals or its methods.
But in the instance at hand, WikiLeaks has released a huge cache of information that has the potential to be very enlightening and helpful indeed.
What has now been released by WikiLeaks are some 250,000 US State Department diplomatic cables -- the largest diplomatic leak in history -- that were made available first to five newspapers:The Guardian (London), The New York Times, Der Spiegel (Germany), Le Monde (France), and El Pais (Spain). They began releasing excerpts last night.
~~~~~~~~~~
In the days leading up to the posting of the leaks, the US was busy informing allies that secret matters were about to become public, and that they [the allies] might be embarrassed. But it is the US itself that should be most embarrassed by what has been leaked.
In a nutshell, Saudi Arabia in particular, as well as other Arab states -- notably Gulf states such as Bahrain and the UAE, and Jordan and Egypt -- have been expressing alarm about Iran and secretly lobbying the US to get tough.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who is crown prince of the United Arab Emirates and deputy commander of its armed forces, is on record as having referred to Iran as an "existential threat" and suggesting that the US send in ground forces to "take out" Iranian nuclear targets, should air strikes alone proved inadequate. He is cited as saying that, "Iran [is] a huge problem that goes far beyond nuclear capabilities....Iranian support for terrorism is broader than just Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran has influence in Afghanistan, Yemen, Kuwait, Bahrain, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and Africa."
Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, king of Saudi Arabia, is quoted as having told Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran's foreign minister, "You as Persians have no business meddling in Arab matters." He then declared, when addressing someone else, "May God prevent us from falling victim to their [Iranian] evil. We have had correct relations over the years, but the bottom line is that they cannot be trusted."
While the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, in reporting on a meeting King Abdullah had with U.S. Gen. David Petraeus in back in April 2008, explained, "He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake."
The picture is clear.
~~~~~~~~~~
A number of things follow from this exposure. It certainly vindicates our stand on Iran. Too often Israeli leaders have been accused of being too "alarmist" with regard to Iran, and using this issue to deflect from lack of progress on the "peace process."
At a press conference in Tel Aviv today, Netanyahu said:
"The greatest threat to peace is the Iranian regime's arming race, and what is most important is that many leaders and governments in the Middle East realize this threat. There is a gap between what is said publicly and what is said behind closed doors.
"Leaders realize there is a new threat and a new understanding. I don't remember [that] there was such understanding in the Middle East [previously]. I hope leaders will have the courage to tell their people what they said about Iran [privately]."
Our prime minister said that if these leaks will have the effect of inhibiting honest diplomatic talk in private (out of fear of later exposure), then there will be a real problem. "But if the leaders make the statements publicly there will be a significant change. When leaders are willing to tell their people the truth it promotes peace."
~~~~~~~~~~
Unfortunately, already Arab states -- with Jordan leading the way -- are beginning to deny they ever called for tough action against Iran. The motivating factor here, plain and simple, is fear. If Iran dominates in the area, it is unwise to be on the wrong side of the Iranian regime. How different it would be if the US were demonstrating deterrence power.
~~~~~~~~~~
At least in theory (I am mindful of the difference between theory and what actually happens), these leaks should take some of the pressure off of us with regard to the "necessity" for us to strike a deal with the Palestinian Arabs to make Arabs states more cooperative or to bring peace to the whole region. At any rate, it will be harder for members of the Obama administration to continue to make the claims they have been making.
~~~~~~~~~~
Obama's motivation, as he ignored Arab pleas to take on Iran, is somewhat of a puzzlement. So often his actions and policies are interpreted in terms of his tilting towards Muslim nations. But here he has been disregarding the urgent pleas of those very Muslim nations with which he should be the most closely allied. We might talk about his belief (expressed in various contexts) that the US is merely one nation in the world community of nations -- 245 in the world, 194 in the UN -- from which he draws the corollary that the US should not flex its muscles. Or it may simply be that Obama hasn't the fortitude, the inner strength or courage, to stand against an enemy. (Being tough with allies is something else.)
Will this public embarrassment motivate him to additional toughness with Iran before it's too late? The 64 million dollar question.
~~~~~~~~~~
Ahmadinejad has admitted publicly for the first time that the exceedingly complex Stuxnet cyberworm has done damage to Iran's computers.
Iran's enemies, he declared to reporters, “succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts. They did a bad thing. Fortunately our experts discovered that and today they are not able (to do that) anymore."
But Iran's problems are not over, with regard to this.
In addition, according to a businessman who travels to Iran frequently and was cited by WikiLeaks, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has terminal cancer. His departure would be expected to shift the dynamic of power inside of Iran.
As to WikiLeaks revelations, Ahmadinejad says they are"psychological warfare," part of a "satanic plot" to cause trouble between Iran and Arab states.
~~~~~~~~~~
Yet another fascinating piece of information released by WikiLeaks: Before Operation Cast Lead -- Israel's military operation into Gaza at the end of 2008 and into January 2009 -- Defense Minister Barak had approached both the Palestinian Authority and Egypt about taking over Gaza if Israel should defeat Hamas there. Both declined. Egypt's reluctance to assume responsibility for Gaza does not surprise me. But the PA? Its leaders refer frequently to the illegal coup by means of which Hamas wrested control of Gaza, and to the need to re-establish PA control there. The US assessment was that the PA was weak (is everyone paying attention here?).
I will suggest something else: Perhaps the PA wishes to remain weak, and to utilize the tension with Hamas as a reason for not concluding a peace accord.
~~~~~~~~~~
And the news on the "peace" front?
Yesterday I picked up my hard-copy of the JPost and read the headline -- "Fatah declares: No to Israel as Jewish state."
"Oh!" I thought to myself (I am not making this up), "I accidentally picked up an old edition of the paper." Then I checked the date and saw that it was the current edition.
This is news? Bold headline news? Perhaps it was fancied to be such because this time it was Fatah saying it, and not the PA or the PLO. As if there is truly a difference. Perhaps it's news because there is nothing else to say. For me it's rather ho hum.
What Fatah actually said was no to Israel as a Jewish state, no to interim borders, no to land swaps (i.e., Israel maintaining communities beyond the Green Line and giving the PLO land inside the Green Line).
Now, as we read a bit further, we find that the Fatah Revolutionary Council statement said that it "renews its refusal for the establishment of any racist state based on religion..." This is the same Fatah that looks to Mahmoud Abbas as its leader, Mahmoud Abbas who has declared he would have no Jews in his Palestinian state. It's a joke.
An Israeli government official responded with: "I would ask the Palestinians the following question: If the Jewish state is fundamentally illegitimate in your eyes, what sort of peace are you offering us?"
A rhetorical question.
~~~~~~~~~~
And speaking of PA president Mahmoud Abbas... He has just officially designated the Alashekeen Band as a Palestinian national band.
This group performs on PA-TV. See here, courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch, a video of their September performance, in which they praise "the revolution" and jihad via dance and the song: "Bracelets replaced with weapons, pull the trigger":
http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=475&fld_id=475&doc_id=3179
Our "peace partners."
~~~~~~~~~~
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Secret US Embassy Cables
Cablegate
Wikileaks began on Sunday November 28th publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities.
The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.
The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice. he cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in "client states"; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them.
This document release reveals the contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors – and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes.
Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington – the country’s first President – could not tell a lie. If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today’s document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the US Government has been warning governments -- even the most corrupt -- around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures.
The full set consists of 251,287 documents, comprising 261,276,536 words (seven times the size of "The Iraq War Logs", the world's previously largest classified information release).
The cables cover from 28th December 1966 to 28th February 2010 and originate from 274 embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions.
How to explore the data
Search for events that you remember that happened for example in your country. You can browse by date or search for an origin near you.
Pick out interesting events and tell others about them. Use twitter, reddit, mail whatever suits your audience best.
For twitter or other social networking services please use the #cablegate or unique reference ID (e.g. #66BUENOSAIRES2481) as hash tags.
Key figures:
* 15, 652 secret
* 101,748 confidential
* 133,887 unclassified
* Iraq most discussed country – 15,365 (Cables coming from Iraq – 6,677)
* Ankara, Turkey had most cables coming from it – 7,918
* From Secretary of State office - 8,017
According to the US State Departments labeling system, the most frequent subjects discussed are:
* External political relations – 145,451
* Internal government affairs – 122,896
* Human rights – 55,211
* Economic Conditions – 49,044
* Terrorists and terrorism – 28,801
* UN security council – 6,532
Graphics of the cablegate dataset
# Cables by origin and classification
# Cables by Subject
# Cables by Country
# Cables by Organization
# Cables by Program
# Cables by Topic
Wikileaks began on Sunday November 28th publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities.
The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.
The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice. he cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in "client states"; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them.
This document release reveals the contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors – and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes.
Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington – the country’s first President – could not tell a lie. If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today’s document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the US Government has been warning governments -- even the most corrupt -- around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures.
The full set consists of 251,287 documents, comprising 261,276,536 words (seven times the size of "The Iraq War Logs", the world's previously largest classified information release).
The cables cover from 28th December 1966 to 28th February 2010 and originate from 274 embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions.
How to explore the data
Search for events that you remember that happened for example in your country. You can browse by date or search for an origin near you.
Pick out interesting events and tell others about them. Use twitter, reddit, mail whatever suits your audience best.
For twitter or other social networking services please use the #cablegate or unique reference ID (e.g. #66BUENOSAIRES2481) as hash tags.
Key figures:
* 15, 652 secret
* 101,748 confidential
* 133,887 unclassified
* Iraq most discussed country – 15,365 (Cables coming from Iraq – 6,677)
* Ankara, Turkey had most cables coming from it – 7,918
* From Secretary of State office - 8,017
According to the US State Departments labeling system, the most frequent subjects discussed are:
* External political relations – 145,451
* Internal government affairs – 122,896
* Human rights – 55,211
* Economic Conditions – 49,044
* Terrorists and terrorism – 28,801
* UN security council – 6,532
Graphics of the cablegate dataset
# Cables by origin and classification
# Cables by Subject
# Cables by Country
# Cables by Organization
# Cables by Program
# Cables by Topic
Sunday, November 28, 2010
INTERNATIONAL LAW REGARDING THE LAND OF ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM
Elliott A. Green
International law is often cited as a pretext for the policies of Western governments and human rights agencies toward Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in general and Jerusalem in particular. A certain assumption or presumption about the international law status of these areas is the premise for claims that they are "occupied territory," that Israeli construction in formerly Jordanian-ruled parts of Jerusalem is "illegal," etc.
Given the centrality of allegations about international law in the diplomatic and political assaults on Israel made by such bodies as the European Union, the UN General Assembly, and others, there is a need to know, to understand and to expound the true international law concerning the Land of Israel as a matter of sheer political self-defense. What indeed has been the status of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza under the law of nations? International law has recognized Jewish rights to sovereignty over the Land of Israel and to settlement throughout the land. In April 1920, at the San Remo Conference (part of the post-World War I peace negotiations), the Principal Allied Powers, acting on behalf of the international community, recognized all the land between the Jordan River and the sea, including Jerusalem, as part of the Jewish National Home, based on the Jewish people's historic rights. On the same grounds, the Golan[1] and Transjordan too were within the National Home (albeit the eastern border of the National Home, though clearly east of the Jordan, was not yet fixed).
The San Remo decision meant also the juridical creation of "Palestine" as a political entity as well as the introduction of that name as the official geographic designation for the new entity. During the centuries of Ottoman rule, the country was divided among larger administrative entities with their capitals outside the country, the vilayets of Beirut and Damascus, although in the mid-nineteenth century, as a consequence of increasing influence by Christian powers on the Ottoman Empire and Jerusalem's political sensitivity due to the Christian powers' interest in the city, the Jerusalem area was made into an independent sanjaq (district). It was called "independent" because its governor reported directly to the Ottoman capital, Istanbul (then called Constantinople in the West), not to a provincial (vilayet) governor.
Furthermore, Arab-Muslims traditionally saw the land as an undifferentiated part of Bilad al-Sham, usually translated as Syria or Greater Syria, which comprised the Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan of today, roughly speaking. Before the Crusades, the Arab-Muslim conquerors had designated the southern part of Israel (roughly speaking) as the military district of Filastin, corresponding to the Roman-Byzantine district of Palaestina Prima (one of three parts of Palaestina). The Crusaders ordinarily called the country Holy Land (Terra Sancta). Use of the name Filastin was not resumed by Muslim rulers after the Crusades. Under the Mamluks and Ottomans, Bilad al-Sham underwent several administrative reorganizations, changes of internal borders, etc. But there was never a Muslim governmental unit of any name that corresponded geographically to the Jewish concept of Land of Israel or the Greco-Roman Judea (= IUDAEA, which included Samaria, Galilee, Golan, the coastal plain, the Jordan's eastern bank, etc., in addition to Judea in the narrow sense). Emperor Hadrian had renamed the Province of Judea (= Provincia Iudaea) "Palaestina" (ca. 135 CE) for imperialist reasons.
Hence, the Arab-Muslim geographic concept differed radically from that of Jews and Christians. Further, whereas both Jews and Christians saw the country as a distinct geographic concept, they tended to use different names for it. In Jewish tradition the land was long called the Land of Israel, while Christians, through the nineteenth century, were likely to call it Holy Land (according to their various languages, that is, Terre Sainte, etc.), with Palestine, Judea, Land of the Bible, etc., as alternate names.
The San Remo decision for the Jewish National Home was ratified by the the League of Nations in 1922 and endorsed by a joint resolution of the United States Congress that same year, with a more official US endorsement coming in the Anglo-American Convention on Palestine (proclaimed 1925).
This legal state of affairs was expounded in a legal memorandum drawn up in 1946 [2] by a group of distinguished American-Jewish jurists including Judge Simon Rifkind, Abraham Fortas (later appointed to the Supreme Court), and others.
To measure the extent of American commitment to the National Home at the beginning, we may quote from the terminology of the time: "RES. 52: Expressing satisfaction at the re-creation of Palestine as the national home of the Jewish race" (House Committee on Foreign Affairs). "Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people..." (1922).
Because the legal issue is once again very much alive, a brief survey of the matter is useful, with particular reference to Jerusalem.[3] By the time the League of Nations was replaced by the UN in 1945, Britain had illegally tried to revoke the Jewish National Home, violating the principles of the League's mandate. This attempt was embodied in the Palestine White Paper of 1939, on the eve of the Holocaust, and in various subsequent ordinances enacted by the British mandatory government, which made it very difficult for Jewish refugees to enter the country and forbidding any Jews to buy real estate in most of the country. Nevertheless, this British attempt to change the country's status was rejected as illegal by the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission in June 1939.
When the UN was founded in 1945, it reaffirmed through its Charter the existing territorial rights of peoples as they had been before the war (Article 80). This applied of course to the Jewish National Home. However, many or most people today are either not aware that the whole country constituted the Jewish National Home, or believe that the UN had somehow eliminated this status and, in any case, had fixed legal boundaries for Israel through the 1947 Partition Resolution. Yet the 1947 resolution was passed by the General Assembly. And all General Assembly resolutions on political issues are merely recommendations.
The UN Charter states, defining the powers of the various UN bodies: "The General Assembly may discuss any questions relating to the maintenance of international peace and security... and... may make recommendations with regard to any such question" (Article 11; also see Arts. 10, 12, 13, 14). Only the Security Council can make binding resolutions, according to the Charter.
Now the Partition Plan, in a not uncommon display of political irrealism, recommended two states in the former mandatory Palestine west of the Jordan, one Jewish and one Arab, plus a special status for Jerusalem (The British had separated Transjordan unilaterally from the Jewish National Home in 1922, although not de jure). The Holy City was to be an internationally governed corpus separatum. While the Jewish leadership accepted the Plan, the Arab governments and local Arab leadership universally rejected it. After the war had begun the UN made no effort to prevent the invasion of the country by Arab states, to prevent Arab attacks on Jews within the country or to eliminate the Arab siege of the Jews in Jerusalem, a city where Jews had been the majority at least since 1870. Thus Israel did not feel bound by the Partition recommendation. Professor Eugene Rostow, an authority on international law, has pointed out that the Arab war on Israel of 1947-49, "made the Partition Plan irrelevant."[4]
After the battles of the War of Independence had ended, Israel and four Arab states signed armistice agreements. The accord with Jordan (then called Transjordan) specifically stated that no political border with Israel was being recognized, merely an armistice line (the "green line"). And this at Arab insistence! Arab spokesmen repeated this on later occasions. For instance, the Jordanian delegate to the UN told the Security Council a few days before the Six Day War:
There is an Armistice Agreement. The Agreement did not fix boundaries; it fixed a demarcation line. The Agreement did not pass judgement on rights - political, military, or otherwise. Thus I know of no territory; I know of no boundary. (May 31, 1967)
Obviously, since no political border between Jordan and Israel was recognized, then the prior legal status prevailed - that is, the Jewish National Home recognized and constituted in 1920 at San Remo. Hence, the areas that Jordan called "West Bank," as well as east Jerusalem (which had thousands of Jewish residents before 1948), remained part of the National Home even during Jordanian occupation. The Assembly's repetitions of its Jerusalem recommendation (GA resolutions 194, 303, etc.) could not change this. Nor did the Security Council change the status of Jerusalem by its famous Resolution 242 after the Six Day War.
Although the Council's resolutions are said by the UN Charter to be binding, this resolution did not specify what territories were "occupied." Perhaps the Council was referring to the Sinai Peninsula, occupied by Israel in that just war of self-defense. Furthermore, the Council could not legislate ex post facto, after the fact, to take away the already existing rights of the Jewish people. According to Professor Rostow, "The withdrawal of Great Britain as administrator and trustee did not of course terminate the Mandate as a trust [for the Jewish people]."[5]
Jerusalem of course took a special place in the age-old yearning for a restored Jewish National Home. And in Jerusalem too this yearning ran into opposition not just from Arabs but from Western powers (and others following their lead). They have long refused to recognize any part of Jerusalem as part of Israel, nor do they recognize the Holy City as Israel's capital. Their pretext is the separate status provided for Jerusalem in the Partition Plan. Yet this Plan was merely an Assembly recommendation, whereas the San Remo decision of 1920 was law. Thus, the refusal of the powers to transfer their embassies to Jerusalem, which means refusal to accept the city as Israel's capital, has no foundation in law.
Obviously, the refusal has its reasons. It may stem from the same reasons that induced the British to allow Arab mobs in a series of pogroms (1920, 1929, 1936-38) to drive Jews away from the neighborhood of Jewish holy places, such as the Temple Mount and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. It may be related to Britain's reasons for appointing Arab mayors for Jerusalem throughout the whole mandatory period, despite the Jewish majority since at least 1870. Now the Ottoman Empire did the same up to 1917, but then the Ottoman Empire was an avowed Muslim state, whereas the British had accepted an international commitment (the Mandate) to foster development of the country as the Jewish National Home.
It is clear that according to the San Remo decision of 1920 and the League of Nations vote of 1922 for the Jewish National Home, Israel's extension of its jurisdiction over all Jerusalem since the Six Day War is legal and proper.
Nevertheless, self-serving interpretations of law are often made by interested parties. In the case of Israel, such interpretations provide pretexts for declarations by governments and groupings of governments - the Arab League, the European Union, the UN General Assembly - that are hostile to Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem (or indeed anywhere in the country). Such false and hostile interpretations remind us that we dare not place our trust in law or international accords. Yet, the outbursts in the form of declarations and resolutions based on these interpretations have more force and cause more damage than many friends of Israel seem to realize, although they may be less effective than their authors would like). And thus they need to be answered.
FOOTNOTES
1. The Golan was an original part of the Jewish National Home as decided at San Remo and had been populated and ruled by Jews in Second Temple times and afterwards. In 1923, the British authorities transferred the Golan to the French mandate of Syria without approval of the Zionist Organization.
2. Simon Rifkind, Abraham Fortas, et al., Basic Equities of the Palestine Problem: A Memorandum (1946) [reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1977].
3. We shall use the Rifkind-Fortas memorandum, our own study of the UN Charter and subsequent UN acts, writings of Prof. Julius Stone and Prof. Eugene Rostow, and various historical information. We have also benefited from conversations with Attorney Howard Grief of Jerusalem, a former advisor on international law to the Israeli Ministry of Energy, who has done research into the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Decision, the League of Nations Mandate, etc., up to the series of agreements going by the name of the Oslo Accords. The conclusions are my own.
4. Eugene Rostow, "Resolution 242 at Twenty," Jerusalem: Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, 1988, p 5.
5. Ibid.
The author is a researcher, writer and translator, living in Jerusalem.
This is a revised version of an article published in Midstream (New York) in February/March, 1999.
International law is often cited as a pretext for the policies of Western governments and human rights agencies toward Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in general and Jerusalem in particular. A certain assumption or presumption about the international law status of these areas is the premise for claims that they are "occupied territory," that Israeli construction in formerly Jordanian-ruled parts of Jerusalem is "illegal," etc.
Given the centrality of allegations about international law in the diplomatic and political assaults on Israel made by such bodies as the European Union, the UN General Assembly, and others, there is a need to know, to understand and to expound the true international law concerning the Land of Israel as a matter of sheer political self-defense. What indeed has been the status of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza under the law of nations? International law has recognized Jewish rights to sovereignty over the Land of Israel and to settlement throughout the land. In April 1920, at the San Remo Conference (part of the post-World War I peace negotiations), the Principal Allied Powers, acting on behalf of the international community, recognized all the land between the Jordan River and the sea, including Jerusalem, as part of the Jewish National Home, based on the Jewish people's historic rights. On the same grounds, the Golan[1] and Transjordan too were within the National Home (albeit the eastern border of the National Home, though clearly east of the Jordan, was not yet fixed).
The San Remo decision meant also the juridical creation of "Palestine" as a political entity as well as the introduction of that name as the official geographic designation for the new entity. During the centuries of Ottoman rule, the country was divided among larger administrative entities with their capitals outside the country, the vilayets of Beirut and Damascus, although in the mid-nineteenth century, as a consequence of increasing influence by Christian powers on the Ottoman Empire and Jerusalem's political sensitivity due to the Christian powers' interest in the city, the Jerusalem area was made into an independent sanjaq (district). It was called "independent" because its governor reported directly to the Ottoman capital, Istanbul (then called Constantinople in the West), not to a provincial (vilayet) governor.
Furthermore, Arab-Muslims traditionally saw the land as an undifferentiated part of Bilad al-Sham, usually translated as Syria or Greater Syria, which comprised the Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan of today, roughly speaking. Before the Crusades, the Arab-Muslim conquerors had designated the southern part of Israel (roughly speaking) as the military district of Filastin, corresponding to the Roman-Byzantine district of Palaestina Prima (one of three parts of Palaestina). The Crusaders ordinarily called the country Holy Land (Terra Sancta). Use of the name Filastin was not resumed by Muslim rulers after the Crusades. Under the Mamluks and Ottomans, Bilad al-Sham underwent several administrative reorganizations, changes of internal borders, etc. But there was never a Muslim governmental unit of any name that corresponded geographically to the Jewish concept of Land of Israel or the Greco-Roman Judea (= IUDAEA, which included Samaria, Galilee, Golan, the coastal plain, the Jordan's eastern bank, etc., in addition to Judea in the narrow sense). Emperor Hadrian had renamed the Province of Judea (= Provincia Iudaea) "Palaestina" (ca. 135 CE) for imperialist reasons.
Hence, the Arab-Muslim geographic concept differed radically from that of Jews and Christians. Further, whereas both Jews and Christians saw the country as a distinct geographic concept, they tended to use different names for it. In Jewish tradition the land was long called the Land of Israel, while Christians, through the nineteenth century, were likely to call it Holy Land (according to their various languages, that is, Terre Sainte, etc.), with Palestine, Judea, Land of the Bible, etc., as alternate names.
The San Remo decision for the Jewish National Home was ratified by the the League of Nations in 1922 and endorsed by a joint resolution of the United States Congress that same year, with a more official US endorsement coming in the Anglo-American Convention on Palestine (proclaimed 1925).
This legal state of affairs was expounded in a legal memorandum drawn up in 1946 [2] by a group of distinguished American-Jewish jurists including Judge Simon Rifkind, Abraham Fortas (later appointed to the Supreme Court), and others.
To measure the extent of American commitment to the National Home at the beginning, we may quote from the terminology of the time: "RES. 52: Expressing satisfaction at the re-creation of Palestine as the national home of the Jewish race" (House Committee on Foreign Affairs). "Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people..." (1922).
Because the legal issue is once again very much alive, a brief survey of the matter is useful, with particular reference to Jerusalem.[3] By the time the League of Nations was replaced by the UN in 1945, Britain had illegally tried to revoke the Jewish National Home, violating the principles of the League's mandate. This attempt was embodied in the Palestine White Paper of 1939, on the eve of the Holocaust, and in various subsequent ordinances enacted by the British mandatory government, which made it very difficult for Jewish refugees to enter the country and forbidding any Jews to buy real estate in most of the country. Nevertheless, this British attempt to change the country's status was rejected as illegal by the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission in June 1939.
When the UN was founded in 1945, it reaffirmed through its Charter the existing territorial rights of peoples as they had been before the war (Article 80). This applied of course to the Jewish National Home. However, many or most people today are either not aware that the whole country constituted the Jewish National Home, or believe that the UN had somehow eliminated this status and, in any case, had fixed legal boundaries for Israel through the 1947 Partition Resolution. Yet the 1947 resolution was passed by the General Assembly. And all General Assembly resolutions on political issues are merely recommendations.
The UN Charter states, defining the powers of the various UN bodies: "The General Assembly may discuss any questions relating to the maintenance of international peace and security... and... may make recommendations with regard to any such question" (Article 11; also see Arts. 10, 12, 13, 14). Only the Security Council can make binding resolutions, according to the Charter.
Now the Partition Plan, in a not uncommon display of political irrealism, recommended two states in the former mandatory Palestine west of the Jordan, one Jewish and one Arab, plus a special status for Jerusalem (The British had separated Transjordan unilaterally from the Jewish National Home in 1922, although not de jure). The Holy City was to be an internationally governed corpus separatum. While the Jewish leadership accepted the Plan, the Arab governments and local Arab leadership universally rejected it. After the war had begun the UN made no effort to prevent the invasion of the country by Arab states, to prevent Arab attacks on Jews within the country or to eliminate the Arab siege of the Jews in Jerusalem, a city where Jews had been the majority at least since 1870. Thus Israel did not feel bound by the Partition recommendation. Professor Eugene Rostow, an authority on international law, has pointed out that the Arab war on Israel of 1947-49, "made the Partition Plan irrelevant."[4]
After the battles of the War of Independence had ended, Israel and four Arab states signed armistice agreements. The accord with Jordan (then called Transjordan) specifically stated that no political border with Israel was being recognized, merely an armistice line (the "green line"). And this at Arab insistence! Arab spokesmen repeated this on later occasions. For instance, the Jordanian delegate to the UN told the Security Council a few days before the Six Day War:
There is an Armistice Agreement. The Agreement did not fix boundaries; it fixed a demarcation line. The Agreement did not pass judgement on rights - political, military, or otherwise. Thus I know of no territory; I know of no boundary. (May 31, 1967)
Obviously, since no political border between Jordan and Israel was recognized, then the prior legal status prevailed - that is, the Jewish National Home recognized and constituted in 1920 at San Remo. Hence, the areas that Jordan called "West Bank," as well as east Jerusalem (which had thousands of Jewish residents before 1948), remained part of the National Home even during Jordanian occupation. The Assembly's repetitions of its Jerusalem recommendation (GA resolutions 194, 303, etc.) could not change this. Nor did the Security Council change the status of Jerusalem by its famous Resolution 242 after the Six Day War.
Although the Council's resolutions are said by the UN Charter to be binding, this resolution did not specify what territories were "occupied." Perhaps the Council was referring to the Sinai Peninsula, occupied by Israel in that just war of self-defense. Furthermore, the Council could not legislate ex post facto, after the fact, to take away the already existing rights of the Jewish people. According to Professor Rostow, "The withdrawal of Great Britain as administrator and trustee did not of course terminate the Mandate as a trust [for the Jewish people]."[5]
Jerusalem of course took a special place in the age-old yearning for a restored Jewish National Home. And in Jerusalem too this yearning ran into opposition not just from Arabs but from Western powers (and others following their lead). They have long refused to recognize any part of Jerusalem as part of Israel, nor do they recognize the Holy City as Israel's capital. Their pretext is the separate status provided for Jerusalem in the Partition Plan. Yet this Plan was merely an Assembly recommendation, whereas the San Remo decision of 1920 was law. Thus, the refusal of the powers to transfer their embassies to Jerusalem, which means refusal to accept the city as Israel's capital, has no foundation in law.
Obviously, the refusal has its reasons. It may stem from the same reasons that induced the British to allow Arab mobs in a series of pogroms (1920, 1929, 1936-38) to drive Jews away from the neighborhood of Jewish holy places, such as the Temple Mount and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. It may be related to Britain's reasons for appointing Arab mayors for Jerusalem throughout the whole mandatory period, despite the Jewish majority since at least 1870. Now the Ottoman Empire did the same up to 1917, but then the Ottoman Empire was an avowed Muslim state, whereas the British had accepted an international commitment (the Mandate) to foster development of the country as the Jewish National Home.
It is clear that according to the San Remo decision of 1920 and the League of Nations vote of 1922 for the Jewish National Home, Israel's extension of its jurisdiction over all Jerusalem since the Six Day War is legal and proper.
Nevertheless, self-serving interpretations of law are often made by interested parties. In the case of Israel, such interpretations provide pretexts for declarations by governments and groupings of governments - the Arab League, the European Union, the UN General Assembly - that are hostile to Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem (or indeed anywhere in the country). Such false and hostile interpretations remind us that we dare not place our trust in law or international accords. Yet, the outbursts in the form of declarations and resolutions based on these interpretations have more force and cause more damage than many friends of Israel seem to realize, although they may be less effective than their authors would like). And thus they need to be answered.
FOOTNOTES
1. The Golan was an original part of the Jewish National Home as decided at San Remo and had been populated and ruled by Jews in Second Temple times and afterwards. In 1923, the British authorities transferred the Golan to the French mandate of Syria without approval of the Zionist Organization.
2. Simon Rifkind, Abraham Fortas, et al., Basic Equities of the Palestine Problem: A Memorandum (1946) [reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1977].
3. We shall use the Rifkind-Fortas memorandum, our own study of the UN Charter and subsequent UN acts, writings of Prof. Julius Stone and Prof. Eugene Rostow, and various historical information. We have also benefited from conversations with Attorney Howard Grief of Jerusalem, a former advisor on international law to the Israeli Ministry of Energy, who has done research into the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Decision, the League of Nations Mandate, etc., up to the series of agreements going by the name of the Oslo Accords. The conclusions are my own.
4. Eugene Rostow, "Resolution 242 at Twenty," Jerusalem: Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, 1988, p 5.
5. Ibid.
The author is a researcher, writer and translator, living in Jerusalem.
This is a revised version of an article published in Midstream (New York) in February/March, 1999.
'Resistance must be stirred'
Hamas politburo chief slams Palestinian Authority blaming it of selling off Palestinian people's rights. 'Peace talks became a process of daily humiliation,' he says. Meanwhile, Palestinian negotiator Erekat blames Israel of writing off agreements
Reuters and Ali Waked
Israel News
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said on Saturday that his group faced "huge challenges" in the West Bank as a force against Israel.
Survey
Poll: Most Palestinians view talks as precursor to 1 state / Yitzhak Benhorin
Disturbing US poll: Most Palestinians refuse to accept idea of Israel as Jewish state, view peace talks, two-state solution as first step towards creation of one Palestinian state in area; 58% support armed struggle
Full story
Armed struggle has a powerful appeal among the inhabitants of the occupied territory, where the rival Fatah faction has been extending influence since a civil war with Hamas in 2007, Mashaal told a conference in the Syrian capital.
"The resistance is facing huge challenges, especially in the West Bank," Mashaal told a meeting of leading pro-Hamas politicians, writers and thinkers opposed to the US-supervised peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.
"Our inalienable rights are threatened with extinction if the scene in the West Bank does not change by launching the resistance against the Israeli occupation and the settlements," he added.
The Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah, intensified a campaign of arrests against Hamas after its fighters killed four Jewish settlers in the West Bank on August 31.
The attack was on the eve of the launch of direct Middle East peace talks, which subsequently broke down over Israel's refusal to meet demands by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to freeze Israeli settlement building.
Dayton's forces
Mashaal, who lives in exile in Syria, said only armed resistance would keep the Palestinian cause alive, despite Western aid to Abbas and his forces.
"The Palestinian people will not be bribed. They will not be cowed by Dayton's forces," he said, referring to Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, US Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian territories, who heads training of 8,000 members at the core of the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus.
Mashaal said Hamas opposes the US-supervised Middle East talks as they would result in a selloff of Palestinian rights, including the territory that Israel has occupied since the 1967 War and the right of Palestinian refugees to return.
"We are not talking about a business deal or making a profit. Our only capital is the land, identity and dignity," Mashaal said.
"When there is such an imbalance of power (between Israel and the Palestinians) negotiations become a process of daily humiliation," he added.
Renewed Egyptian efforts in the last several months to narrow difference between Hamas and Fatah have failed.
'Abbas has Arafat's resolve'
Recently, there were failed attempts to reconcile between the Palestinian factions. On Friday, the Fatah Revolutionary Council convened in an attempt to demonstrate resolve opposite Israel. Council member Khatem Abd el-Kader said: "President Abbas has conducted himself with the same resolve that characterized Arafat. He pledged he would not return to the negotiating table without a complete cessation of settlement construction."
Meanwhile, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat met on Saturday with a line of foreign diplomats, including the UN secretary-general's envoy to the Middle East, the EU envoy and the British consul in Jerusalem. Erekat illustrated the dead end of the political process.
He demanded that the UN and the international community "intervene in order to stop Israel's attempt to create facts on the ground, particularly in Jerusalem and the attempt to define it as the Jewish people's capital."
Erekat claimed that the Israeli government's conduct shows it has written off the peace process and all signed agreements.
He described the Netanyahu administration as being based on "a policy of creating facts on the ground in an effort to solidify and deepen the occupation and settlements." He stressed that Abbas's stance opposes any temporary agreement or a state on temporary borders.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
'Mossad behind Egypt riots'
Following clashes in Cairo between Christian Copts and Muslims, chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee in Egypt's People's Assembly says Israel 'wants to undermine security and stability in country'
Roee Nahmias
Israel News
Who's responsible for this week's riots in Egypt, which left one man killed and dozens injured? Chairman of the Egypt People's Assembly' Foreign Affairs Committee Dr. Dr Mostafa El Feki on Thursday accused the Israeli Mossad of being behind the recent clashes between Christian Copts and Muslims.
Recently there have been a number of incidents between the Copts and the Muslims, which forced the involvement of Egyptian security forces. One man was killed and dozens were injured on Wednesday in clashes between the Copts and security forces in the Giza area of Cairo after he local governor revoked a construction permit for a building adjacent to the church which was meant to serve the community's needs.
At a conference in Ain Shams University El Feki said, "It is very clear that Western fingers are disrupting our nation's capabilities and taking advantage of the election period to carry out their plans, to agitate the security and stability in Egypt.
"It is almost certain that the Mossad is involved in these events. The State is dealing with dangerous events that could not have succeeded without external intervention with Israel at its head."
Christian Copts make up ten percent of Egypt's population of 79 million. They claim that the Egyptian regime discriminates against them and harasses them over their religious beliefs. They are protesting the fact that unlike the Muslims, they must request permission to construct any community buildings, whereas the Muslims are allowed to build freely.
Roee Nahmias
Israel News
Who's responsible for this week's riots in Egypt, which left one man killed and dozens injured? Chairman of the Egypt People's Assembly' Foreign Affairs Committee Dr. Dr Mostafa El Feki on Thursday accused the Israeli Mossad of being behind the recent clashes between Christian Copts and Muslims.
Recently there have been a number of incidents between the Copts and the Muslims, which forced the involvement of Egyptian security forces. One man was killed and dozens were injured on Wednesday in clashes between the Copts and security forces in the Giza area of Cairo after he local governor revoked a construction permit for a building adjacent to the church which was meant to serve the community's needs.
At a conference in Ain Shams University El Feki said, "It is very clear that Western fingers are disrupting our nation's capabilities and taking advantage of the election period to carry out their plans, to agitate the security and stability in Egypt.
"It is almost certain that the Mossad is involved in these events. The State is dealing with dangerous events that could not have succeeded without external intervention with Israel at its head."
Christian Copts make up ten percent of Egypt's population of 79 million. They claim that the Egyptian regime discriminates against them and harasses them over their religious beliefs. They are protesting the fact that unlike the Muslims, they must request permission to construct any community buildings, whereas the Muslims are allowed to build freely.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
"Is This for Real?"
Arlene Kushner
According to the JPost today, David Makovsky -- who is director of the Project on the Middle East Peace for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy -- says that Washington and Jerusalem have finalized a letter regarding the renewed building freeze.
Well-connected to the American administration though he may be, Makovsky has certain biases and does not represent an official source. Moreover, there is no news of an actual letter in our government's hands. Yet, what he says is worth taking a look at precisely because it evokes that "Is this for real?" response. According to Makovsky, the crux of the deal centers on the US providing Israel with advanced fighter jets in return for a three-month freeze that both the US and the Israeli government hope will get Palestinians back to the negotiating table.
That's it? Jets? What happened to promising that no further freeze would be requested by the US administration? What about wording that implies (although not explicitly stating) that Jerusalem is not included in the freeze? What about US security assurances such as backing our right to keep the IDF in the Jordan Valley? What about a promise that the US will not support PLO unilateral actions in the Security Council (even if for one paltry year)?
None of this is mentioned by Makovsky. And I'm inclined to accept this version precisely because that letter has been haggled over for so long now.
Many if not all of the items we might have expected to see included -- not asking for another freeze, etc. etc. -- have been sources of dissension. It's possible that the Obama administration backed off, in the face of vehement Arab objections, on what was promised by Clinton. And it's possible that Netanyahu misinterpreted or exaggerated what Clinton originally offered.
But there is also a third possibility. According to Arutz Sheva today, a "diplomatic official" says that Clinton deliberately misled Netanyahu. Her claim is that she wasn't speaking for the president, and he had final word.
~~~~~~~~~~
Explains Makovsky, even Obama's offer on the jets is not a sure thing, because the deal must be sanctioned by the House. Because of this, he says, Netanyahu is seeking some sort of "fall-back understanding" so that he can present the Security Cabinet with an iron-clad arrangement regarding the planes. What that might be -- how our prime minister could absolutely promise the Cabinet that we'd get our planes when relevant members of the House have not yet spoken -- is not explained. It would require some political doubletalk, methinks.
~~~~~~~~~~
On top of all of this, according to Makovsky, there has been a "verbal affirmation" from Netanyahu to Clinton that there would be "meaningful progress" on border issues during those 90 days.
Sickening, if true. But, of course, Netanyahu cannot really make such an affirmation, because "meaningful progress" depends on two sides.
As I have previously indicated, separating out this issue is greatly dangerous to Israel, for it might provide the PLO with the means to go to the Security Council and ask for recognition of a state based on borders that we had already agreed to.
~~~~~~~~~~
I'm going to try to adhere to my maxim, "Never say never," but it appears exceedingly unlikely that the Security Cabinet would approve this, as it is being discussed by the JPost according to Makovsky. I think Yishai has been too clear and public in his demands regarding no additional freeze and the exclusion of Jerusalem from the moratorium to buy into this for the sake of jets -- no matter what might be promised him and his Shas party under the table. I think he'd look too foolish, too corrupt, to do so.
~~~~~~~~~~
I'm not even certain if Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar, who is just starting to wax a bit ambivalent, would sit still for this. On Monday he said he would support the freeze if construction continued in Jerusalem and the US promised not to demand another freeze. Nu?
Likud Central Committee anti-freeze activists intend to focus on Sa'ar now.
~~~~~~~~~~
See the statement about the freeze by Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau (Yisrael Beitenu):
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=bdR0nShI4Lg&feature=email
~~~~~~~~~~
In any event, Abbas is not going to come to the table. Since the vote on the referendum bill passed Monday night, this is, predictably, more certain than ever.
Declared Abbas: "This law is aimed at placing obstacles in front of a peace settlement. The Israelis are telling the world that they won't withdraw from Jerusalem and the Golan."
The Arab League has gone him one better, calling this bill proof that Israel is "aggressive."
~~~~~~~~~~
As to that referendum bill, allow me to expand the understanding of what it's about. The talk is about Jerusalem and the Golan. But the bill alludes to everywhere that Israeli civil law applies, and that means all of Israel within the Green Line, as well. Were Netanyahu or any other prime minister to attempt to strike a deal in which we were to keep some communities beyond the Green Line, but give the Palestinian Arabs a commensurate area of land within the Green Line in exchange, this, too, would have to be submitted to a national referendum or be approved by a supermajority of the Knesset.
(With thanks to Jeff D. on this.)
~~~~~~~~~~
Damn. In spite of predictions that Durban III might not happen, it seems now that it will. The General Assembly voted, 121 to 19 (with 35 abstentions) to commemorate the anti-racism Durban conference of 2001 at next year’s opening General Assembly meeting in New York.
Anne Bayefsky explains:
"Late yesterday, the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee adopted a resolution which launches another global 'anti-racism' hatefest. It is intended to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the debacle held in Durban, South Africa in 2001. But this time, the UN has outdone itself: the celebration of a notorious prescription for intolerance, closely linked to Islamic extremism, is now scheduled for New York City just days after the 10th anniversary of 9/11...
"The plans for Durban III contained in the document are much more explicit than a usual UN resolution and contradict a very active misinformation campaign already underway by the UN and closely-related individuals and organizations.
"Most heads of government avoided Durban I and the only one to attend Durban II was the poster-boy for racism and xenophobia himself, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So for Durban III, the UN decided to ensnare most heads of state and government by scheduling the event to coincide with the annual opening of the UN General Assembly, when they are all present in New York anyway. The resolution sets the date as September 21, 2011 ('the second day of the General Debate'), and specifically designates it as a 'High-Level' meeting 'at the level of Heads of States and Governments.'
"Contrary to some suggestions, the event will not be a quiet commemoration with minimal political design. Amendments made to the resolution late in the day decide that the meeting should 'consist…of an opening plenary, consecutive round tables/thematic panels and a closing plenary meeting.' And then the meeting will adopt a final 'political declaration.'
"...In addition, in the resolution the UN puts out a call for help from the world of rabble-rousers who masquerade as human rights enthusiasts. Despite being fully aware of the violent extremism characterizing the NGO Forum at Durban I, the resolution asks 'civil society, including NGOs' 'to organize and support' 10th anniversary initiatives 'with high visibility.'
"The Obama administration is clearly worried about the effects of Durban III on its policy of embracing the UN and its human rights apparatus. U.S. representative John Sammis spelled out their concerns, lamenting to the UN committee that the event 'risks undermining the relationship we have worked hard to strengthen over the past few years between the United States and the UN.'
"Indeed it does.
"The question now is which countries will ensure that their heads of state and of government will not participate in such an outrage. The United States and Israel walked out of Durban I in disgust. Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, and the United States refused to participate in Durban II.
"With 19 votes against and another 35 democracies concerned enough to abstain, it is time to send an even more powerful and permanent message to the UN about Durban and its progeny.
"Last night U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called on the Obama administration to 'announce publicly, right now, that we will stay away from Durban III, deny it U.S. taxpayer dollars, and oppose all measures that seek to facilitate it. And we should encourage other responsible nations to do the same.'
"Unfortunately, comments made by U.S. representative Sammis last evening suggest that the Obama administration will again refuse to take a leadership role in denying legitimacy to the Durban agenda. At Durban II, President Obama pulled out less than 48 hours before the event, ruining chances of building a larger coalition of like-minded states..."
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/11/24/pours-salt-americas-wounds/
~~~~~~~~~~
We will have to return to this. A campaign is called for that will pressure the Obama administration on this matter.
~~~~~~~~~~
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
According to the JPost today, David Makovsky -- who is director of the Project on the Middle East Peace for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy -- says that Washington and Jerusalem have finalized a letter regarding the renewed building freeze.
Well-connected to the American administration though he may be, Makovsky has certain biases and does not represent an official source. Moreover, there is no news of an actual letter in our government's hands. Yet, what he says is worth taking a look at precisely because it evokes that "Is this for real?" response. According to Makovsky, the crux of the deal centers on the US providing Israel with advanced fighter jets in return for a three-month freeze that both the US and the Israeli government hope will get Palestinians back to the negotiating table.
That's it? Jets? What happened to promising that no further freeze would be requested by the US administration? What about wording that implies (although not explicitly stating) that Jerusalem is not included in the freeze? What about US security assurances such as backing our right to keep the IDF in the Jordan Valley? What about a promise that the US will not support PLO unilateral actions in the Security Council (even if for one paltry year)?
None of this is mentioned by Makovsky. And I'm inclined to accept this version precisely because that letter has been haggled over for so long now.
Many if not all of the items we might have expected to see included -- not asking for another freeze, etc. etc. -- have been sources of dissension. It's possible that the Obama administration backed off, in the face of vehement Arab objections, on what was promised by Clinton. And it's possible that Netanyahu misinterpreted or exaggerated what Clinton originally offered.
But there is also a third possibility. According to Arutz Sheva today, a "diplomatic official" says that Clinton deliberately misled Netanyahu. Her claim is that she wasn't speaking for the president, and he had final word.
~~~~~~~~~~
Explains Makovsky, even Obama's offer on the jets is not a sure thing, because the deal must be sanctioned by the House. Because of this, he says, Netanyahu is seeking some sort of "fall-back understanding" so that he can present the Security Cabinet with an iron-clad arrangement regarding the planes. What that might be -- how our prime minister could absolutely promise the Cabinet that we'd get our planes when relevant members of the House have not yet spoken -- is not explained. It would require some political doubletalk, methinks.
~~~~~~~~~~
On top of all of this, according to Makovsky, there has been a "verbal affirmation" from Netanyahu to Clinton that there would be "meaningful progress" on border issues during those 90 days.
Sickening, if true. But, of course, Netanyahu cannot really make such an affirmation, because "meaningful progress" depends on two sides.
As I have previously indicated, separating out this issue is greatly dangerous to Israel, for it might provide the PLO with the means to go to the Security Council and ask for recognition of a state based on borders that we had already agreed to.
~~~~~~~~~~
I'm going to try to adhere to my maxim, "Never say never," but it appears exceedingly unlikely that the Security Cabinet would approve this, as it is being discussed by the JPost according to Makovsky. I think Yishai has been too clear and public in his demands regarding no additional freeze and the exclusion of Jerusalem from the moratorium to buy into this for the sake of jets -- no matter what might be promised him and his Shas party under the table. I think he'd look too foolish, too corrupt, to do so.
~~~~~~~~~~
I'm not even certain if Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar, who is just starting to wax a bit ambivalent, would sit still for this. On Monday he said he would support the freeze if construction continued in Jerusalem and the US promised not to demand another freeze. Nu?
Likud Central Committee anti-freeze activists intend to focus on Sa'ar now.
~~~~~~~~~~
See the statement about the freeze by Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau (Yisrael Beitenu):
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=bdR0nShI4Lg&feature=email
~~~~~~~~~~
In any event, Abbas is not going to come to the table. Since the vote on the referendum bill passed Monday night, this is, predictably, more certain than ever.
Declared Abbas: "This law is aimed at placing obstacles in front of a peace settlement. The Israelis are telling the world that they won't withdraw from Jerusalem and the Golan."
The Arab League has gone him one better, calling this bill proof that Israel is "aggressive."
~~~~~~~~~~
As to that referendum bill, allow me to expand the understanding of what it's about. The talk is about Jerusalem and the Golan. But the bill alludes to everywhere that Israeli civil law applies, and that means all of Israel within the Green Line, as well. Were Netanyahu or any other prime minister to attempt to strike a deal in which we were to keep some communities beyond the Green Line, but give the Palestinian Arabs a commensurate area of land within the Green Line in exchange, this, too, would have to be submitted to a national referendum or be approved by a supermajority of the Knesset.
(With thanks to Jeff D. on this.)
~~~~~~~~~~
Damn. In spite of predictions that Durban III might not happen, it seems now that it will. The General Assembly voted, 121 to 19 (with 35 abstentions) to commemorate the anti-racism Durban conference of 2001 at next year’s opening General Assembly meeting in New York.
Anne Bayefsky explains:
"Late yesterday, the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee adopted a resolution which launches another global 'anti-racism' hatefest. It is intended to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the debacle held in Durban, South Africa in 2001. But this time, the UN has outdone itself: the celebration of a notorious prescription for intolerance, closely linked to Islamic extremism, is now scheduled for New York City just days after the 10th anniversary of 9/11...
"The plans for Durban III contained in the document are much more explicit than a usual UN resolution and contradict a very active misinformation campaign already underway by the UN and closely-related individuals and organizations.
"Most heads of government avoided Durban I and the only one to attend Durban II was the poster-boy for racism and xenophobia himself, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So for Durban III, the UN decided to ensnare most heads of state and government by scheduling the event to coincide with the annual opening of the UN General Assembly, when they are all present in New York anyway. The resolution sets the date as September 21, 2011 ('the second day of the General Debate'), and specifically designates it as a 'High-Level' meeting 'at the level of Heads of States and Governments.'
"Contrary to some suggestions, the event will not be a quiet commemoration with minimal political design. Amendments made to the resolution late in the day decide that the meeting should 'consist…of an opening plenary, consecutive round tables/thematic panels and a closing plenary meeting.' And then the meeting will adopt a final 'political declaration.'
"...In addition, in the resolution the UN puts out a call for help from the world of rabble-rousers who masquerade as human rights enthusiasts. Despite being fully aware of the violent extremism characterizing the NGO Forum at Durban I, the resolution asks 'civil society, including NGOs' 'to organize and support' 10th anniversary initiatives 'with high visibility.'
"The Obama administration is clearly worried about the effects of Durban III on its policy of embracing the UN and its human rights apparatus. U.S. representative John Sammis spelled out their concerns, lamenting to the UN committee that the event 'risks undermining the relationship we have worked hard to strengthen over the past few years between the United States and the UN.'
"Indeed it does.
"The question now is which countries will ensure that their heads of state and of government will not participate in such an outrage. The United States and Israel walked out of Durban I in disgust. Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, and the United States refused to participate in Durban II.
"With 19 votes against and another 35 democracies concerned enough to abstain, it is time to send an even more powerful and permanent message to the UN about Durban and its progeny.
"Last night U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called on the Obama administration to 'announce publicly, right now, that we will stay away from Durban III, deny it U.S. taxpayer dollars, and oppose all measures that seek to facilitate it. And we should encourage other responsible nations to do the same.'
"Unfortunately, comments made by U.S. representative Sammis last evening suggest that the Obama administration will again refuse to take a leadership role in denying legitimacy to the Durban agenda. At Durban II, President Obama pulled out less than 48 hours before the event, ruining chances of building a larger coalition of like-minded states..."
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/11/24/pours-salt-americas-wounds/
~~~~~~~~~~
We will have to return to this. A campaign is called for that will pressure the Obama administration on this matter.
~~~~~~~~~~
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Settlers buoyed by referendum legislation
TOVAH LAZAROFF
11/24/2010
“This is very good news, because we know that an overwhelming majority of Israelis oppose a Palestinian state,” says Naftali Bennet.
After years of feeling betrayed by the legislative process, settlers on Tuesday quietly celebrated the Knesset’s passage late the previous night of the National Referendum Law, which they believe will make it much harder to create a Palestinian state.
“This is very good news, because we know that an overwhelming majority of Israelis oppose a Palestinian state and the evacuation of settlements,” said Naftali Bennett, the director- general of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip.
Some of those on the Left, who also believe the bill was designed as a stumbling block for any peace deal, have argued that the bill was improperly legislated and could possibly be overturned by the High Court of Justice. Peace Now is studying the feasibility of petitioning the court.
Until Monday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had to bring any peace deal that involved relinquishing sovereign Israeli territory to the Knesset, where it needed an absolute majority of 61 to pass.
But as of Monday night, according to the National Referendum Law, which Netanyahu himself supported, he would need 80 MKs to ratify any diplomatic agreement that involved giving away sovereign Israeli territory.
If the deal passed but failed to obtain 80 votes in the Knesset, under the new law the issue would go to a national referendum and would need the approval of a majority of voters to pass.
Media descriptions of the Referendum Law’s significance have focused on its impact on any agreement with the Palestinians or Syria with respect to territory that Israel has annexed, such as east Jerusalem, or where it has extended Israeli law, i.e the Golan Heights.
But settlers on Tuesday said they understood that the Referendum Law, which marks the first time the Knesset has approved the use of such a vote, had a much broader significance.
This means that almost any peace deal would have to come before the public for a vote, said Bennett, since it could be applied to any plans by the Israeli government to relinquish territory within sovereign Israel, such as swapping land in the Negev for settlement blocs.
“The passing of this law is an historic landmark event,” Bennett told The Jerusalem Post.
“We think that a decision of this magnitude has to be a decision of the people and not of local political maneuvering.”
This referendum would have to be applied to any final-status agreement and as a result it will become “an additional barrier” to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, settlers’ council head Dani Dayan said.
“It could prevent a disastrous decision by a weak government that has lost faith in its principles,” Dayan said.
For settlement supporters who watched two Likud prime ministers, first Ariel Sharon and now Binyamin Netanyahu, campaign on promises on which they later reneged, the Knesset vote was the first ray of light in an otherwise gloomy legislative tunnel.
News of the Referendum Law came as settlers are engaged in a fierce battle to prevent the government from approving a 90-day settlement freeze.
“It is a huge boost to morale and a practical boost to all supporters of the Land of Israel,” Bennett said.
But attorney Michael Sfard, who would represent Peace Now if it petitioned the High Court against the law, warned that the settlers were celebrating prematurely.
Any coalition that had the kind of parliamentary majority that allowed it to govern and to negotiate a peace deal with the Palestinians, “would also have the needed majority to erase this law,” Sfard said.
The law could be repealed by the Knesset in a simple majority vote, he said.
Bennett dismissed this possibility as unlikely. It would be met with tremendous public resistance, he said, because it would be tantamount to telling the voters in a democracy that they were irrelevant.
But Sfard said that there was a separate and more significant legal issue in that he believed the Knesset had overstepped its authority by passing the Referendum Law.
The Knesset has transmitted one of its most important powers to another organ, the voter, he said.
But the way to change the powers of the Knesset is not through a regular bill, but rather by amending a basic law, Sfard said.
Israel had only a partial constitution, composed of a series of basic laws, said Sfard. Those laws were set by the Knesset and have a higher normative value than regular legislation.
The Knesset could have chosen to create a basic law for a referendum that involved relinquishing territory, he said, but it opted not to do so; instead it passed the Referendum Law as a piece of regular legislation.
But in so doing, it violated Basic Law: The Knesset, which gives the legislature sole power to have final say on changing Israel’s territorial application of laws.
The notion of a referendum is “foreign to our political culture,” he said.
“The only reason it was passed was to put more barriers in front of any potential peace agreement. It was tailored to political considerations and not to constitutional ideas and ideals. This is not how constitutional work is done,” Sfard said.
11/24/2010
“This is very good news, because we know that an overwhelming majority of Israelis oppose a Palestinian state,” says Naftali Bennet.
After years of feeling betrayed by the legislative process, settlers on Tuesday quietly celebrated the Knesset’s passage late the previous night of the National Referendum Law, which they believe will make it much harder to create a Palestinian state.
“This is very good news, because we know that an overwhelming majority of Israelis oppose a Palestinian state and the evacuation of settlements,” said Naftali Bennett, the director- general of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip.
Some of those on the Left, who also believe the bill was designed as a stumbling block for any peace deal, have argued that the bill was improperly legislated and could possibly be overturned by the High Court of Justice. Peace Now is studying the feasibility of petitioning the court.
Until Monday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had to bring any peace deal that involved relinquishing sovereign Israeli territory to the Knesset, where it needed an absolute majority of 61 to pass.
But as of Monday night, according to the National Referendum Law, which Netanyahu himself supported, he would need 80 MKs to ratify any diplomatic agreement that involved giving away sovereign Israeli territory.
If the deal passed but failed to obtain 80 votes in the Knesset, under the new law the issue would go to a national referendum and would need the approval of a majority of voters to pass.
Media descriptions of the Referendum Law’s significance have focused on its impact on any agreement with the Palestinians or Syria with respect to territory that Israel has annexed, such as east Jerusalem, or where it has extended Israeli law, i.e the Golan Heights.
But settlers on Tuesday said they understood that the Referendum Law, which marks the first time the Knesset has approved the use of such a vote, had a much broader significance.
This means that almost any peace deal would have to come before the public for a vote, said Bennett, since it could be applied to any plans by the Israeli government to relinquish territory within sovereign Israel, such as swapping land in the Negev for settlement blocs.
“The passing of this law is an historic landmark event,” Bennett told The Jerusalem Post.
“We think that a decision of this magnitude has to be a decision of the people and not of local political maneuvering.”
This referendum would have to be applied to any final-status agreement and as a result it will become “an additional barrier” to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, settlers’ council head Dani Dayan said.
“It could prevent a disastrous decision by a weak government that has lost faith in its principles,” Dayan said.
For settlement supporters who watched two Likud prime ministers, first Ariel Sharon and now Binyamin Netanyahu, campaign on promises on which they later reneged, the Knesset vote was the first ray of light in an otherwise gloomy legislative tunnel.
News of the Referendum Law came as settlers are engaged in a fierce battle to prevent the government from approving a 90-day settlement freeze.
“It is a huge boost to morale and a practical boost to all supporters of the Land of Israel,” Bennett said.
But attorney Michael Sfard, who would represent Peace Now if it petitioned the High Court against the law, warned that the settlers were celebrating prematurely.
Any coalition that had the kind of parliamentary majority that allowed it to govern and to negotiate a peace deal with the Palestinians, “would also have the needed majority to erase this law,” Sfard said.
The law could be repealed by the Knesset in a simple majority vote, he said.
Bennett dismissed this possibility as unlikely. It would be met with tremendous public resistance, he said, because it would be tantamount to telling the voters in a democracy that they were irrelevant.
But Sfard said that there was a separate and more significant legal issue in that he believed the Knesset had overstepped its authority by passing the Referendum Law.
The Knesset has transmitted one of its most important powers to another organ, the voter, he said.
But the way to change the powers of the Knesset is not through a regular bill, but rather by amending a basic law, Sfard said.
Israel had only a partial constitution, composed of a series of basic laws, said Sfard. Those laws were set by the Knesset and have a higher normative value than regular legislation.
The Knesset could have chosen to create a basic law for a referendum that involved relinquishing territory, he said, but it opted not to do so; instead it passed the Referendum Law as a piece of regular legislation.
But in so doing, it violated Basic Law: The Knesset, which gives the legislature sole power to have final say on changing Israel’s territorial application of laws.
The notion of a referendum is “foreign to our political culture,” he said.
“The only reason it was passed was to put more barriers in front of any potential peace agreement. It was tailored to political considerations and not to constitutional ideas and ideals. This is not how constitutional work is done,” Sfard said.
Arming Israel’s Enemies
David Isaac
Critics Slam Obama Administration for ‘Hiding’ Massive Saudi Arms Deal,” read the headline Friday on ABC News’ Web site. The article reported that some members of Congress were upset by the administration’s “stealthy effort” to rush through a $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia by notifying Congress just as it was heading home for the November elections, more or less nullifying the 30-day review period Congress had to raise objections.
Unfortunately, Congress’s concerns came too late. It was a done deal as of midnight Friday. It appears that Obama, for whom sneaking around Congress has become a nervous political habit, can’t resist being underhanded even when it’s not necessary. There was little protest about the deal either from Congress, Israel or America’s pro-Israel lobby – despite the fact that this was the largest arms sale in U.S. history and to a country technically still at war with the Jewish state.
One gets the impression that AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest pro-Israel lobbying group, was just going through the motions. It acknowledged on its Web site simply that ‘Yes, the impact of the Saudi arms sale should be examined.’ From Congress came two letters protesting the sale and one resolution attempting to block it. From the Israelis – silence. Informed ahead of time, they acquiesced. They were also assuaged by U.S. officials, who promised that the Saudi F-15s would not be equipped with long-range offensive weaponry.
Those familiar with past Saudi arms deals have heard that one before. In 1978, the Senate approved a Carter administration sale of F-15s to the Saudis on condition that certain offensive components wouldn’t be included. The administration also promised that the Saudis wouldn’t receive AWACs (Airborne Warning and Control System) radar planes. Three years later, the Reagan administration was lobbying on behalf of the Saudis to get the additional F-15 equipment they’d earlier been denied along with the AWACs.
That added capability gave the already purchased F-15s “a dramatic five-fold offensive capacity against Israel,” Shmuel Katz noted at the time. And the AWACs enabled “the Saudis to spy upon every movement in Israel 24 hours a day — and to do so from within their own borders.” (“Closing The Circle”, The Jerusalem Post, April 30, 1981)
According to Mitchell Bard, Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, the U.S. also placates Israel by downplaying the Saudis’ ability to actually use the weapons. As he writes: “One irony is that administrations tell Israel the Saudis are too incompetent to use the weapons but then they tell Congress the Saudis need the arms to defend themselves vs first the Soviets, then Saddam and now Iran.”
Assuming for a moment that the Saudis are too incompetent (this writer can’t say one way or the other, but counting on your enemy to be clumsy with their weapons systems is no way to ensure national security), the fact is that technology has a way of advancing to the point where even the incompetent become competent. Think of that octogenarian who couldn’t figure out a VCR, but now programs that DVR like nobody’s business. At two buttons they were all thumbs. Get it down to one button and you’ve got a nation of Arabic-speaking Audie Murphys.
As AIPAC notes, “The F-15 fighter jet proposed for sale to Riyadh will be one of the most advanced combat aircraft in service outside the developed world, featuring a revolutionary new advanced radar system and other systems that could largely offset the difference in skill between Saudi and Israeli pilots. [italics added]”
This didn’t stop the administration from pooh-poohing concerns about Israel’s security. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro, during a briefing on the arms sale, was reassuring. “We have conducted an independent assessment of what the impact would be on Israel’s qualitative military edge and our assessment is this would not diminish Israel’s qualitative military edge and therefore we felt comfortable in going forward with the sale.”
Andrew Shapiro may have felt comfortable, but Israel sure didn’t. According to Politico.com, while Israel kept quiet publicly about the sale, “Privately, in August — a top Israeli official told POLITICO — they asked the Obama administration to match the Saudi sale with 20 F-35 jets for the Israeli air force, a move that would maintain the ‘qualitative military advantage’.…”
Assistant Secretary of State Shapiro came off poorly in comparison to another Jewish member of an American administration, in this case Mark Siegel, who served as liaison officer to the American-Jewish community under President Carter. He resigned in protest when that administration pushed through a Saudi arms deal.
The American-Jewish community couldn’t expect Shapiro to share a similarly heroic character. What it could have expected was that AIPAC do its utmost to block the sale. The reason most often cited for AIPAC’s failure to act now, as with previous arms sales, is the bruising it took in 1981 during the AWACs battle, a fight it nearly won, “Never again would AIPAC make a serious effort to stop an arms transfer to an Arab ally of the United States.”
In 1986, when yet another Saudi sale was in the offing, Shmuel wrote:
It is surely not possible that our government believes that America’s supplying large quantities of sophisticated arms to Saudi Arabia is a good thing for Israel, or that assurances that these arms would “never be used against Israel” can be taken seriously.
We know, after all, that the leaders of the country are not all deaf and blind – and suffering from amnesia.
The government is not actively opposing Washington’s current plan to add more weapons to the Saudi’s overflowing arsenals.
Nobody has even tried seriously to deny the abject reasoning behind this restraint: the government does not want to upset relations with the U.S. It has been cowed by experience. In 1981, for example, the opposition to the U.S. administration’s plan to supply AWACs spy-planes to the Saudis evoked not only harsh anti-Israeli comments, but some old-fashioned anti-Semitic code-words from within the administration.
The Saudis, it should be remembered, long ago proclaimed that the inordinately large quantities of arms they acquire are to serve all the Arab states for use against the Israeli enemy. (“Surrendering to Pressure”, The Jerusalem Post, April 11, 1986)
Early on, Shmuel observed the growing Saudi arsenal with concern. In 1978, he wrote:
Ever since the Yom Kippur War a variegated pattern of arms purchases has become evident in Saudi Arabia. These include hundreds of planes, fighting and transport, hundreds of tanks, thousands of missiles and bombs of different types, artillery and ships. The Saudis do not buy exclusively from the US. They are buying also from France, Italy and Britain. In the past it was widely assumed that Saudi Arabia is acquiring arms mainly as the financier of her sister Arab States and storing them until required. This no doubt is still true, but the accumulating facts point to a new direction and a new purpose: in case of war Saudi Arabia will open a front of her own against Israel.” (“Mark Siegel Opened A Window”, The Jerusalem Post, March 17, 1978)
Twenty-nine years is plenty of time for Israel and AIPAC to nurse their wounds. While our opponents may have convincing-sounding arguments, they pale in comparison to one simple truth: We arm people who spread radical Islam, finance terror, teach their children to hate Christians and Jews, and stone to death innocent women. We arm barbarians.
A few Congressmen, at the last minute, began to ask hard questions of the administration. They were joined by hundreds of their colleagues. Had Israel and AIPAC supported them, it would, at the very least, have raised public awareness of the dangers involved in arming not a friend, but an enemy.
Critics Slam Obama Administration for ‘Hiding’ Massive Saudi Arms Deal,” read the headline Friday on ABC News’ Web site. The article reported that some members of Congress were upset by the administration’s “stealthy effort” to rush through a $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia by notifying Congress just as it was heading home for the November elections, more or less nullifying the 30-day review period Congress had to raise objections.
Unfortunately, Congress’s concerns came too late. It was a done deal as of midnight Friday. It appears that Obama, for whom sneaking around Congress has become a nervous political habit, can’t resist being underhanded even when it’s not necessary. There was little protest about the deal either from Congress, Israel or America’s pro-Israel lobby – despite the fact that this was the largest arms sale in U.S. history and to a country technically still at war with the Jewish state.
One gets the impression that AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest pro-Israel lobbying group, was just going through the motions. It acknowledged on its Web site simply that ‘Yes, the impact of the Saudi arms sale should be examined.’ From Congress came two letters protesting the sale and one resolution attempting to block it. From the Israelis – silence. Informed ahead of time, they acquiesced. They were also assuaged by U.S. officials, who promised that the Saudi F-15s would not be equipped with long-range offensive weaponry.
Those familiar with past Saudi arms deals have heard that one before. In 1978, the Senate approved a Carter administration sale of F-15s to the Saudis on condition that certain offensive components wouldn’t be included. The administration also promised that the Saudis wouldn’t receive AWACs (Airborne Warning and Control System) radar planes. Three years later, the Reagan administration was lobbying on behalf of the Saudis to get the additional F-15 equipment they’d earlier been denied along with the AWACs.
That added capability gave the already purchased F-15s “a dramatic five-fold offensive capacity against Israel,” Shmuel Katz noted at the time. And the AWACs enabled “the Saudis to spy upon every movement in Israel 24 hours a day — and to do so from within their own borders.” (“Closing The Circle”, The Jerusalem Post, April 30, 1981)
According to Mitchell Bard, Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, the U.S. also placates Israel by downplaying the Saudis’ ability to actually use the weapons. As he writes: “One irony is that administrations tell Israel the Saudis are too incompetent to use the weapons but then they tell Congress the Saudis need the arms to defend themselves vs first the Soviets, then Saddam and now Iran.”
Assuming for a moment that the Saudis are too incompetent (this writer can’t say one way or the other, but counting on your enemy to be clumsy with their weapons systems is no way to ensure national security), the fact is that technology has a way of advancing to the point where even the incompetent become competent. Think of that octogenarian who couldn’t figure out a VCR, but now programs that DVR like nobody’s business. At two buttons they were all thumbs. Get it down to one button and you’ve got a nation of Arabic-speaking Audie Murphys.
As AIPAC notes, “The F-15 fighter jet proposed for sale to Riyadh will be one of the most advanced combat aircraft in service outside the developed world, featuring a revolutionary new advanced radar system and other systems that could largely offset the difference in skill between Saudi and Israeli pilots. [italics added]”
This didn’t stop the administration from pooh-poohing concerns about Israel’s security. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro, during a briefing on the arms sale, was reassuring. “We have conducted an independent assessment of what the impact would be on Israel’s qualitative military edge and our assessment is this would not diminish Israel’s qualitative military edge and therefore we felt comfortable in going forward with the sale.”
Andrew Shapiro may have felt comfortable, but Israel sure didn’t. According to Politico.com, while Israel kept quiet publicly about the sale, “Privately, in August — a top Israeli official told POLITICO — they asked the Obama administration to match the Saudi sale with 20 F-35 jets for the Israeli air force, a move that would maintain the ‘qualitative military advantage’.…”
Assistant Secretary of State Shapiro came off poorly in comparison to another Jewish member of an American administration, in this case Mark Siegel, who served as liaison officer to the American-Jewish community under President Carter. He resigned in protest when that administration pushed through a Saudi arms deal.
The American-Jewish community couldn’t expect Shapiro to share a similarly heroic character. What it could have expected was that AIPAC do its utmost to block the sale. The reason most often cited for AIPAC’s failure to act now, as with previous arms sales, is the bruising it took in 1981 during the AWACs battle, a fight it nearly won, “Never again would AIPAC make a serious effort to stop an arms transfer to an Arab ally of the United States.”
In 1986, when yet another Saudi sale was in the offing, Shmuel wrote:
It is surely not possible that our government believes that America’s supplying large quantities of sophisticated arms to Saudi Arabia is a good thing for Israel, or that assurances that these arms would “never be used against Israel” can be taken seriously.
We know, after all, that the leaders of the country are not all deaf and blind – and suffering from amnesia.
The government is not actively opposing Washington’s current plan to add more weapons to the Saudi’s overflowing arsenals.
Nobody has even tried seriously to deny the abject reasoning behind this restraint: the government does not want to upset relations with the U.S. It has been cowed by experience. In 1981, for example, the opposition to the U.S. administration’s plan to supply AWACs spy-planes to the Saudis evoked not only harsh anti-Israeli comments, but some old-fashioned anti-Semitic code-words from within the administration.
The Saudis, it should be remembered, long ago proclaimed that the inordinately large quantities of arms they acquire are to serve all the Arab states for use against the Israeli enemy. (“Surrendering to Pressure”, The Jerusalem Post, April 11, 1986)
Early on, Shmuel observed the growing Saudi arsenal with concern. In 1978, he wrote:
Ever since the Yom Kippur War a variegated pattern of arms purchases has become evident in Saudi Arabia. These include hundreds of planes, fighting and transport, hundreds of tanks, thousands of missiles and bombs of different types, artillery and ships. The Saudis do not buy exclusively from the US. They are buying also from France, Italy and Britain. In the past it was widely assumed that Saudi Arabia is acquiring arms mainly as the financier of her sister Arab States and storing them until required. This no doubt is still true, but the accumulating facts point to a new direction and a new purpose: in case of war Saudi Arabia will open a front of her own against Israel.” (“Mark Siegel Opened A Window”, The Jerusalem Post, March 17, 1978)
Twenty-nine years is plenty of time for Israel and AIPAC to nurse their wounds. While our opponents may have convincing-sounding arguments, they pale in comparison to one simple truth: We arm people who spread radical Islam, finance terror, teach their children to hate Christians and Jews, and stone to death innocent women. We arm barbarians.
A few Congressmen, at the last minute, began to ask hard questions of the administration. They were joined by hundreds of their colleagues. Had Israel and AIPAC supported them, it would, at the very least, have raised public awareness of the dangers involved in arming not a friend, but an enemy.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
"Is It Time Yet?"
Arlene Kushner
Time, that is, to consider the new freeze deal dead? Officially, not quite. Although we are getting close.
Yesterday, PM Netanyahu called a meeting to lobby Likud MKs on supporting the freeze. He discussed his red lines regarding any additional freeze after the 90 days, securing a US promise to veto a Palestinian unilateral declaration of statehood at the UN, and other matters that we've heard about before. Of primary interest with regard to this meeting is that Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara, who was present, reported that, "[The prime minister] is not certain that the United States will receive our demands, and not certain that the Palestinian Authority will accept them."
Indeed? This is markedly different in tone from the public statements by the prime minister.
Coalition Chair Ze'ev Elkin (Likud) reiterated Kara's sentiment: "Of course, these things will not be agreed upon. I did not hear confidence from the prime minister that the Americans will give us a document that fully reflects the understandings that would enable him to bring the moratorium for a cabinet vote."
~~~~~~~~~~
For the first time now, there are hints that Minister of Education Gideon Sa'ar (Likud), who has been in the pro-freeze camp (because of political considerations) may be having second thoughts. And Shas is said to be angry at the prime minister for misrepresenting the situation and leading everyone to believe that US assurances would be forthcoming.
Reportedly, there is a new idea floating outside of government circles that advocates delaying any moratorium we might agree to until the Palestinian Arabs actually come to the table. No point in making the sacrifice, goes the logic, if the other side is not going to cooperate. The problem with this is that even if we ended up not actually instituting a freeze, we would have gone on record as being willing to do so in principle. And that's bad.
~~~~~~~~~~
With all that I've written above, there may be changes now, because of a vote just taken in the Knesset. I have actually been delaying the transmission of this posting, waiting through the hours of debate, so that I might learn of voting results.
What has been called the Golan Bill has just passed its second and third (and final) reading in the Knesset-- 65 to 33. This bill requires a national referendum or a vote by a supermajority of the Knesset (80 votes out of 120) before there can be any withdrawal from areas of Israel that are under civilian law. This applies specifically and most pertinently to the Golan Heights and Jerusalem (Judea and Samaria being under military law).
It is an exceedingly important law, as it would prevent the sort of thing former PM Ariel Sharon pulled with the withdrawal from Gaza. Only if there were a clear national consensus in favor of withdrawal could it happen -- no prime minister, not Netanyahu and not anyone else, is now able to proceed autonomously in approving a withdrawal from Jerusalem or the Golan. Not even with a Cabinet vote or a simple majority of the Knesset. And I think it's safe to say that the chances of a majority of the voters of this nation, or a supermajority of the Knesset voting to surrender part of Jerusalem (which is the issue on the agenda right now) is very slight indeed. There is no issue that garners as strong and passionate a consensus as this does.
And it's also safe to say that without a surrender of part of Jerusalem to the Arabs, there would be no deal.
~~~~~~~~~~
What fascinates me here is the efforts that have been expended by PM Netanyahu to push through this bill. Labor requested that it be postponed (would you believe: because it would threaten peace overtures with Syria?) and he declined to do so. He is saying that this vote prevents any "irresponsible" agreement from being forged and will guarantee that any action taken has strong public backing. What he will bring forward, he is suggesting, will respond to Israel's "security needs" and will get that strong backing.
This last sentence should be taken as spin that attempts to show that this measure is not meant to be obstructionist, but rather to guarantee that all deals have solid backing.
My reading, however, is that Netanyahu is eager to have measures in place that put the brakes on, so that he cannot be coerced into surrendering either Jerusalem or the Golan. This for me affirms my long held conviction that, while Netanyahu plays a very dangerous game, and is forever eager to appear cooperative in the extreme, he is not Ariel Sharon. Netanyahu is a tough (and I would say, dirty) fighter. If he didn't want this bill to proceed, he would have blocked it. But it appears that he does not want to be in a position in which he could unilaterally agree to surrender part of Jerusalem to the Arabs, and thus would be pushed to do so. This bill makes that impossible.
Rather than saying no himself, he now can rely on the process of the bill to cover his rear.
More on this bill will certainly follow.
~~~~~~~~~~
Will we hear from the Arabs, and from Obama, and from the EU on this? Oh, yes, indeed. We will be accused of obstructionist action and showing bad faith that hinders "peace." And worse. The fact that Israel is a democracy, and that this bill merely seeks to protect the will of the people from being thwarted will be totally ignored.
~~~~~~~~~~
For a taste of what we are in for:
An official paper -- referred to as a "study" -- prepared by Al-Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the PA Ministry of Information, was released today by the PA.
It maintains that Jews have no claim to the Western Wall, which is an integral part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Haram al-Sarif (Temple Mount).
This paper further claims that the Western Wall, (Al-Buraq Wall) is Waqf property owned by an Algerian-Moroccan Muslim family.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=196329
~~~~~~~~~~
I spoke yesterday about Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and his brave and honorable position.
Professor Efraim Inbar and David M. Weinberg have now written a piece for BESA -- "A Salute to Stephen Harper" -- in which they express praise for him:
"Our Biblical patriarch Abraham pleaded with God to rescind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, arguing that the virtues of just a few righteous people could suffice to save that world.
"In our modern world, that righteous person – whose voice of conscience, critique and courage may be the saving grace – is surely Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
"In his speech before a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism in Ottawa last week, Harper sounded the clearest and most courageous call of this century against modern anti-Semitism and hatred of the Jewish state. In fact, Harper’s entire political career has been punctuated by steadfast support for Israel and the Jewish People, with clarity of vision and intensity unparalleled in recent times..."
http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/perspectives122.html
~~~~~~~~~~
Please, take the time to hear PM Harper's marvelous statement on anti-Semitism in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfFdhIOoQM&feature=player_embedded
And then, I encourage you to write and thank him:
pm@pm.gc.ca
~~~~~~~~~~
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
Time, that is, to consider the new freeze deal dead? Officially, not quite. Although we are getting close.
Yesterday, PM Netanyahu called a meeting to lobby Likud MKs on supporting the freeze. He discussed his red lines regarding any additional freeze after the 90 days, securing a US promise to veto a Palestinian unilateral declaration of statehood at the UN, and other matters that we've heard about before. Of primary interest with regard to this meeting is that Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara, who was present, reported that, "[The prime minister] is not certain that the United States will receive our demands, and not certain that the Palestinian Authority will accept them."
Indeed? This is markedly different in tone from the public statements by the prime minister.
Coalition Chair Ze'ev Elkin (Likud) reiterated Kara's sentiment: "Of course, these things will not be agreed upon. I did not hear confidence from the prime minister that the Americans will give us a document that fully reflects the understandings that would enable him to bring the moratorium for a cabinet vote."
~~~~~~~~~~
For the first time now, there are hints that Minister of Education Gideon Sa'ar (Likud), who has been in the pro-freeze camp (because of political considerations) may be having second thoughts. And Shas is said to be angry at the prime minister for misrepresenting the situation and leading everyone to believe that US assurances would be forthcoming.
Reportedly, there is a new idea floating outside of government circles that advocates delaying any moratorium we might agree to until the Palestinian Arabs actually come to the table. No point in making the sacrifice, goes the logic, if the other side is not going to cooperate. The problem with this is that even if we ended up not actually instituting a freeze, we would have gone on record as being willing to do so in principle. And that's bad.
~~~~~~~~~~
With all that I've written above, there may be changes now, because of a vote just taken in the Knesset. I have actually been delaying the transmission of this posting, waiting through the hours of debate, so that I might learn of voting results.
What has been called the Golan Bill has just passed its second and third (and final) reading in the Knesset-- 65 to 33. This bill requires a national referendum or a vote by a supermajority of the Knesset (80 votes out of 120) before there can be any withdrawal from areas of Israel that are under civilian law. This applies specifically and most pertinently to the Golan Heights and Jerusalem (Judea and Samaria being under military law).
It is an exceedingly important law, as it would prevent the sort of thing former PM Ariel Sharon pulled with the withdrawal from Gaza. Only if there were a clear national consensus in favor of withdrawal could it happen -- no prime minister, not Netanyahu and not anyone else, is now able to proceed autonomously in approving a withdrawal from Jerusalem or the Golan. Not even with a Cabinet vote or a simple majority of the Knesset. And I think it's safe to say that the chances of a majority of the voters of this nation, or a supermajority of the Knesset voting to surrender part of Jerusalem (which is the issue on the agenda right now) is very slight indeed. There is no issue that garners as strong and passionate a consensus as this does.
And it's also safe to say that without a surrender of part of Jerusalem to the Arabs, there would be no deal.
~~~~~~~~~~
What fascinates me here is the efforts that have been expended by PM Netanyahu to push through this bill. Labor requested that it be postponed (would you believe: because it would threaten peace overtures with Syria?) and he declined to do so. He is saying that this vote prevents any "irresponsible" agreement from being forged and will guarantee that any action taken has strong public backing. What he will bring forward, he is suggesting, will respond to Israel's "security needs" and will get that strong backing.
This last sentence should be taken as spin that attempts to show that this measure is not meant to be obstructionist, but rather to guarantee that all deals have solid backing.
My reading, however, is that Netanyahu is eager to have measures in place that put the brakes on, so that he cannot be coerced into surrendering either Jerusalem or the Golan. This for me affirms my long held conviction that, while Netanyahu plays a very dangerous game, and is forever eager to appear cooperative in the extreme, he is not Ariel Sharon. Netanyahu is a tough (and I would say, dirty) fighter. If he didn't want this bill to proceed, he would have blocked it. But it appears that he does not want to be in a position in which he could unilaterally agree to surrender part of Jerusalem to the Arabs, and thus would be pushed to do so. This bill makes that impossible.
Rather than saying no himself, he now can rely on the process of the bill to cover his rear.
More on this bill will certainly follow.
~~~~~~~~~~
Will we hear from the Arabs, and from Obama, and from the EU on this? Oh, yes, indeed. We will be accused of obstructionist action and showing bad faith that hinders "peace." And worse. The fact that Israel is a democracy, and that this bill merely seeks to protect the will of the people from being thwarted will be totally ignored.
~~~~~~~~~~
For a taste of what we are in for:
An official paper -- referred to as a "study" -- prepared by Al-Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the PA Ministry of Information, was released today by the PA.
It maintains that Jews have no claim to the Western Wall, which is an integral part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Haram al-Sarif (Temple Mount).
This paper further claims that the Western Wall, (Al-Buraq Wall) is Waqf property owned by an Algerian-Moroccan Muslim family.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=196329
~~~~~~~~~~
I spoke yesterday about Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and his brave and honorable position.
Professor Efraim Inbar and David M. Weinberg have now written a piece for BESA -- "A Salute to Stephen Harper" -- in which they express praise for him:
"Our Biblical patriarch Abraham pleaded with God to rescind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, arguing that the virtues of just a few righteous people could suffice to save that world.
"In our modern world, that righteous person – whose voice of conscience, critique and courage may be the saving grace – is surely Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
"In his speech before a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism in Ottawa last week, Harper sounded the clearest and most courageous call of this century against modern anti-Semitism and hatred of the Jewish state. In fact, Harper’s entire political career has been punctuated by steadfast support for Israel and the Jewish People, with clarity of vision and intensity unparalleled in recent times..."
http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/perspectives122.html
~~~~~~~~~~
Please, take the time to hear PM Harper's marvelous statement on anti-Semitism in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfFdhIOoQM&feature=player_embedded
And then, I encourage you to write and thank him:
pm@pm.gc.ca
~~~~~~~~~~
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
"Is It Time Yet?"
Arlene Kushner
Time, that is, to consider the new freeze deal dead? Officially, not quite. Although we are getting close.
Yesterday, PM Netanyahu called a meeting to lobby Likud MKs on supporting the freeze. He discussed his red lines regarding any additional freeze after the 90 days, securing a US promise to veto a Palestinian unilateral declaration of statehood at the UN, and other matters that we've heard about before. Of primary interest with regard to this meeting is that Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara, who was present, reported that, "[The prime minister] is not certain that the United States will receive our demands, and not certain that the Palestinian Authority will accept them."
Indeed? This is markedly different in tone from the public statements by the prime minister.
Coalition Chair Ze'ev Elkin (Likud) reiterated Kara's sentiment: "Of course, these things will not be agreed upon. I did not hear confidence from the prime minister that the Americans will give us a document that fully reflects the understandings that would enable him to bring the moratorium for a cabinet vote."
~~~~~~~~~~
For the first time now, there are hints that Minister of Education Gideon Sa'ar (Likud), who has been in the pro-freeze camp (because of political considerations) may be having second thoughts. And Shas is said to be angry at the prime minister for misrepresenting the situation and leading everyone to believe that US assurances would be forthcoming.
Reportedly, there is a new idea floating outside of government circles that advocates delaying any moratorium we might agree to until the Palestinian Arabs actually come to the table. No point in making the sacrifice, goes the logic, if the other side is not going to cooperate. The problem with this is that even if we ended up not actually instituting a freeze, we would have gone on record as being willing to do so in principle. And that's bad.
~~~~~~~~~~
With all that I've written above, there may be changes now, because of a vote just taken in the Knesset. I have actually been delaying the transmission of this posting, waiting through the hours of debate, so that I might learn of voting results.
What has been called the Golan Bill has just passed its second and third (and final) reading in the Knesset-- 65 to 33. This bill requires a national referendum or a vote by a supermajority of the Knesset (80 votes out of 120) before there can be any withdrawal from areas of Israel that are under civilian law. This applies specifically and most pertinently to the Golan Heights and Jerusalem (Judea and Samaria being under military law).
It is an exceedingly important law, as it would prevent the sort of thing former PM Ariel Sharon pulled with the withdrawal from Gaza. Only if there were a clear national consensus in favor of withdrawal could it happen -- no prime minister, not Netanyahu and not anyone else, is now able to proceed autonomously in approving a withdrawal from Jerusalem or the Golan. Not even with a Cabinet vote or a simple majority of the Knesset. And I think it's safe to say that the chances of a majority of the voters of this nation, or a supermajority of the Knesset voting to surrender part of Jerusalem (which is the issue on the agenda right now) is very slight indeed. There is no issue that garners as strong and passionate a consensus as this does.
And it's also safe to say that without a surrender of part of Jerusalem to the Arabs, there would be no deal.
~~~~~~~~~~
What fascinates me here is the efforts that have been expended by PM Netanyahu to push through this bill. Labor requested that it be postponed (would you believe: because it would threaten peace overtures with Syria?) and he declined to do so. He is saying that this vote prevents any "irresponsible" agreement from being forged and will guarantee that any action taken has strong public backing. What he will bring forward, he is suggesting, will respond to Israel's "security needs" and will get that strong backing.
This last sentence should be taken as spin that attempts to show that this measure is not meant to be obstructionist, but rather to guarantee that all deals have solid backing.
My reading, however, is that Netanyahu is eager to have measures in place that put the brakes on, so that he cannot be coerced into surrendering either Jerusalem or the Golan. This for me affirms my long held conviction that, while Netanyahu plays a very dangerous game, and is forever eager to appear cooperative in the extreme, he is not Ariel Sharon. Netanyahu is a tough (and I would say, dirty) fighter. If he didn't want this bill to proceed, he would have blocked it. But it appears that he does not want to be in a position in which he could unilaterally agree to surrender part of Jerusalem to the Arabs, and thus would be pushed to do so. This bill makes that impossible.
Rather than saying no himself, he now can rely on the process of the bill to cover his rear.
More on this bill will certainly follow.
~~~~~~~~~~
Will we hear from the Arabs, and from Obama, and from the EU on this? Oh, yes, indeed. We will be accused of obstructionist action and showing bad faith that hinders "peace." And worse. The fact that Israel is a democracy, and that this bill merely seeks to protect the will of the people from being thwarted will be totally ignored.
~~~~~~~~~~
For a taste of what we are in for:
An official paper -- referred to as a "study" -- prepared by Al-Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the PA Ministry of Information, was released today by the PA.
It maintains that Jews have no claim to the Western Wall, which is an integral part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Haram al-Sarif (Temple Mount).
This paper further claims that the Western Wall, (Al-Buraq Wall) is Waqf property owned by an Algerian-Moroccan Muslim family.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=196329
~~~~~~~~~~
I spoke yesterday about Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and his brave and honorable position.
Professor Efraim Inbar and David M. Weinberg have now written a piece for BESA -- "A Salute to Stephen Harper" -- in which they express praise for him:
"Our Biblical patriarch Abraham pleaded with God to rescind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, arguing that the virtues of just a few righteous people could suffice to save that world.
"In our modern world, that righteous person – whose voice of conscience, critique and courage may be the saving grace – is surely Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
"In his speech before a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism in Ottawa last week, Harper sounded the clearest and most courageous call of this century against modern anti-Semitism and hatred of the Jewish state. In fact, Harper’s entire political career has been punctuated by steadfast support for Israel and the Jewish People, with clarity of vision and intensity unparalleled in recent times..."
http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/perspectives122.html
~~~~~~~~~~
Please, take the time to hear PM Harper's marvelous statement on anti-Semitism in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfFdhIOoQM&feature=player_embedded
And then, I encourage you to write and thank him:
pm@pm.gc.ca
~~~~~~~~~~
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
Time, that is, to consider the new freeze deal dead? Officially, not quite. Although we are getting close.
Yesterday, PM Netanyahu called a meeting to lobby Likud MKs on supporting the freeze. He discussed his red lines regarding any additional freeze after the 90 days, securing a US promise to veto a Palestinian unilateral declaration of statehood at the UN, and other matters that we've heard about before. Of primary interest with regard to this meeting is that Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara, who was present, reported that, "[The prime minister] is not certain that the United States will receive our demands, and not certain that the Palestinian Authority will accept them."
Indeed? This is markedly different in tone from the public statements by the prime minister.
Coalition Chair Ze'ev Elkin (Likud) reiterated Kara's sentiment: "Of course, these things will not be agreed upon. I did not hear confidence from the prime minister that the Americans will give us a document that fully reflects the understandings that would enable him to bring the moratorium for a cabinet vote."
~~~~~~~~~~
For the first time now, there are hints that Minister of Education Gideon Sa'ar (Likud), who has been in the pro-freeze camp (because of political considerations) may be having second thoughts. And Shas is said to be angry at the prime minister for misrepresenting the situation and leading everyone to believe that US assurances would be forthcoming.
Reportedly, there is a new idea floating outside of government circles that advocates delaying any moratorium we might agree to until the Palestinian Arabs actually come to the table. No point in making the sacrifice, goes the logic, if the other side is not going to cooperate. The problem with this is that even if we ended up not actually instituting a freeze, we would have gone on record as being willing to do so in principle. And that's bad.
~~~~~~~~~~
With all that I've written above, there may be changes now, because of a vote just taken in the Knesset. I have actually been delaying the transmission of this posting, waiting through the hours of debate, so that I might learn of voting results.
What has been called the Golan Bill has just passed its second and third (and final) reading in the Knesset-- 65 to 33. This bill requires a national referendum or a vote by a supermajority of the Knesset (80 votes out of 120) before there can be any withdrawal from areas of Israel that are under civilian law. This applies specifically and most pertinently to the Golan Heights and Jerusalem (Judea and Samaria being under military law).
It is an exceedingly important law, as it would prevent the sort of thing former PM Ariel Sharon pulled with the withdrawal from Gaza. Only if there were a clear national consensus in favor of withdrawal could it happen -- no prime minister, not Netanyahu and not anyone else, is now able to proceed autonomously in approving a withdrawal from Jerusalem or the Golan. Not even with a Cabinet vote or a simple majority of the Knesset. And I think it's safe to say that the chances of a majority of the voters of this nation, or a supermajority of the Knesset voting to surrender part of Jerusalem (which is the issue on the agenda right now) is very slight indeed. There is no issue that garners as strong and passionate a consensus as this does.
And it's also safe to say that without a surrender of part of Jerusalem to the Arabs, there would be no deal.
~~~~~~~~~~
What fascinates me here is the efforts that have been expended by PM Netanyahu to push through this bill. Labor requested that it be postponed (would you believe: because it would threaten peace overtures with Syria?) and he declined to do so. He is saying that this vote prevents any "irresponsible" agreement from being forged and will guarantee that any action taken has strong public backing. What he will bring forward, he is suggesting, will respond to Israel's "security needs" and will get that strong backing.
This last sentence should be taken as spin that attempts to show that this measure is not meant to be obstructionist, but rather to guarantee that all deals have solid backing.
My reading, however, is that Netanyahu is eager to have measures in place that put the brakes on, so that he cannot be coerced into surrendering either Jerusalem or the Golan. This for me affirms my long held conviction that, while Netanyahu plays a very dangerous game, and is forever eager to appear cooperative in the extreme, he is not Ariel Sharon. Netanyahu is a tough (and I would say, dirty) fighter. If he didn't want this bill to proceed, he would have blocked it. But it appears that he does not want to be in a position in which he could unilaterally agree to surrender part of Jerusalem to the Arabs, and thus would be pushed to do so. This bill makes that impossible.
Rather than saying no himself, he now can rely on the process of the bill to cover his rear.
More on this bill will certainly follow.
~~~~~~~~~~
Will we hear from the Arabs, and from Obama, and from the EU on this? Oh, yes, indeed. We will be accused of obstructionist action and showing bad faith that hinders "peace." And worse. The fact that Israel is a democracy, and that this bill merely seeks to protect the will of the people from being thwarted will be totally ignored.
~~~~~~~~~~
For a taste of what we are in for:
An official paper -- referred to as a "study" -- prepared by Al-Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the PA Ministry of Information, was released today by the PA.
It maintains that Jews have no claim to the Western Wall, which is an integral part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Haram al-Sarif (Temple Mount).
This paper further claims that the Western Wall, (Al-Buraq Wall) is Waqf property owned by an Algerian-Moroccan Muslim family.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=196329
~~~~~~~~~~
I spoke yesterday about Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and his brave and honorable position.
Professor Efraim Inbar and David M. Weinberg have now written a piece for BESA -- "A Salute to Stephen Harper" -- in which they express praise for him:
"Our Biblical patriarch Abraham pleaded with God to rescind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, arguing that the virtues of just a few righteous people could suffice to save that world.
"In our modern world, that righteous person – whose voice of conscience, critique and courage may be the saving grace – is surely Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
"In his speech before a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism in Ottawa last week, Harper sounded the clearest and most courageous call of this century against modern anti-Semitism and hatred of the Jewish state. In fact, Harper’s entire political career has been punctuated by steadfast support for Israel and the Jewish People, with clarity of vision and intensity unparalleled in recent times..."
http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/perspectives122.html
~~~~~~~~~~
Please, take the time to hear PM Harper's marvelous statement on anti-Semitism in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfFdhIOoQM&feature=player_embedded
And then, I encourage you to write and thank him:
pm@pm.gc.ca
~~~~~~~~~~
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
Monday, November 22, 2010
Obama The Great
American Narcissus
The vanity of Barack Obama
BY JONATHAN V. LAST
The Weekly Standard
Why has Barack Obama failed so spectacularly? Is he too dogmatically liberal or too pragmatic? Is he a socialist, or an anticolonialist, or a philosopher-president? Or is it possible that Obama’s failures stem from something simpler: vanity. Politicians as a class are particularly susceptible to mirror-gazing. But Obama’s vanity is overwhelming. It defines him, his politics, and his presidency. It’s revealed in lots of little stories. There was the time he bragged about how one of his campaign volunteers, who had tragically died of breast cancer, “insisted she’s going to be buried in an Obama T-shirt.” There was the Nobel acceptance speech where he conceded, “I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war” (the emphasis is mine). There was the moment during the 2008 campaign when Obama appeared with a seal that was a mash-up of the Great Seal of the United States and his own campaign logo (with its motto Vero Possumus, “Yes we Can” in Latin). Just a few weeks ago, Obama was giving a speech when the actual presidential seal fell from the rostrum. “That’s all right,” he quipped. “All of you know who I am.” Oh yes, Mr. President, we certainly do.
My favorite is this line from page 160 of The Audacity of Hope:
I find comfort in the fact that the longer I’m in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for power and rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience.
So popularity and fame once nourished him, but now his ambition is richer and he’s answerable not, like some presidents, to the Almighty, but to the gaze of his personal conscience. Which is steady. The fact that this sentence appears in the second memoir of a man not yet 50 years old—and who had been in national politics for all of two years—is merely icing.
People have been noticing Obama’s vanity for a long time. In 2008, one of his Harvard Law classmates, the entertainment lawyer Jackie Fuchs, explained what Obama was like during his school days: “One of our classmates once famously noted that you could judge just how pretentious someone’s remarks in class were by how high they ranked on the ‘Obamanometer,’ a term that lasted far longer than our time at law school. Obama didn’t just share in class—he pontificated. He knew better than everyone else in the room, including the teachers. ”
The story of Obama’s writing career is an object lesson in how our president’s view of himself shapes his interactions with the world around him. In 1990, Obama was wrapping up his second year at Harvard Law when the New York Times ran a profile of him on the occasion of his becoming the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. A book agent in New York named Jane Dystel read the story and called up the young man, asking if he’d be interested in writing a book. Like any 29-year-old, he wasn’t about to turn down money. He promptly accepted a deal with Simon & Schuster’s Poseidon imprint—reportedly in the low six-figures—to write a book about race relations.
Obama missed his deadline. No matter. His agent quickly secured him another contract, this time with Times Books. And a $40,000 advance. Not bad for an unknown author who had already blown one deal, writing about a noncommercial subject.
By this point Obama had left law school, and academia was courting him. The University of Chicago Law School approached him; although they didn’t have any specific needs, they wanted to be in the Barack Obama business. As Douglas Baird, the head of Chicago’s appointments committee, would later explain, “You look at his background—Harvard Law Review president, magna cum laude, and he’s African American. This is a no-brainer hiring decision at the entry level of any law school in the country.” Chicago invited Obama to come in and teach just about anything he wanted. But Obama wasn’t interested in a professor’s life. Instead, he told them that he was writing a book—about voting rights. The university made him a fellow, giving him an office and a paycheck to keep him going while he worked on this important project.
In case you’re keeping score at home, there was some confusion as to what book young Obama was writing. His publisher thought he was writing about race relations. His employer thought he was writing about voting rights law. But Obama seems to have never seriously considered either subject. Instead, he decided that his subject would be himself. The 32-year-old was writing a memoir.
Obama came clean to the university first. He waited until his fellowship was halfway over—perhaps he was concerned that his employers might not like the bait-and-switch. He needn’t have worried. Baird still hoped that Obama would eventually join the university’s faculty (he had already begun teaching a small classload as a “senior lecturer”). “It was a good deal for us,” Baird explained, “because he was a good teaching prospect and we wanted him around.”
And it all worked out in the end. The book Obama eventually finished was Dreams from My Father. It didn’t do well initially, but nine years later, after his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention made him a star, it sold like gangbusters. Obama got rich. And famous. The book became the springboard for his career in national politics.
Only it didn’t quite work out for everybody. Obama left the University of Chicago, never succumbing to their offers of a permanent position in their hallowed halls. Simon & Schuster, which had taken a chance on an unproven young writer, got burned for a few thousand bucks. And Jane Dystel, who’d plucked him out of the pages of the New York Times and got him the deal to write the book that sped his political rise? As soon as Obama was ready to negotiate the contract for his second book—the big-money payday—he dumped her and replaced her with super-agent Robert Barnett.
We risk reading too much into these vignettes—after all, our president is a mansion with many rooms and it would be foolish to reduce him to pure ego. Yet the vignettes are so numerous. For instance, a few years ago Obama’s high school basketball coach told ABC News how, as a teenager, Obama always badgered him for more playing time, even though he wasn’t the best player on the team—or even as good as he thought he was. Everyone who has ever played team sports has encountered the kid with an inflated sense of self. That’s common. What’s rare is the kid who feels entitled enough to nag the coach about his minutes. Obama was that kid. His enthusiasm about his abilities and his playing time extended into his political life. In 2004, Obama explained to author David Mendell how he saw his future as a national political figure: “I’m LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game.” After just a couple of months in the Senate, Obama jumped the Democratic line and started asking voters to make him president.
Yet you don’t have to delve deep into armchair psychology to see how Obama’s vanity has shaped his presidency. In January 2009 he met with congressional leaders to discuss the stimulus package. The meeting was supposed to foster bipartisanship. Senator Jon Kyl questioned the plan’s mixture of spending and tax cuts. Obama’s response to him was, “I won.” A year later Obama held another meeting to foster bipartisanship for his health care reform plan. There was some technical back-and-forth about Republicans not having the chance to properly respond within the constraints of the format because President Obama had done some pontificating, as is his wont. Obama explained, “There was an imbalance on the opening statements because”—here he paused, self-satisfiedly—“I’m the president. And so I made, uh, I don’t count my time in terms of dividing it evenly.”
There are lots of times when you get the sense that Obama views the powers of the presidency as little more than a shadow of his own person. When he journeyed to Copenhagen in October 2009 to pitch Chicago’s bid for the Olympics, his speech to the IOC was about—you guessed it: “Nearly one year ago, on a clear November night,” he told the committee, “people from every corner of the world gathered in the city of Chicago or in front of their televisions to watch the results of . . . ” and away he went.
A short while later he was back in Copenhagen for the climate change summit. When things looked darkest, he personally commandeered the meeting to broker a “deal.” Which turned out to be worthless. In January 2010, Obama met with nervous Democratic congressmen to assure them that he wasn’t driving the party off a cliff. Confronted with worries that 2010 could be a worse off-year election than 1994, Obama explained to the professional politicians, “Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.”
In the midst of the BP oil spill last summer, Obama explained, “My job right now is just to make sure that everybody in the Gulf understands this is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about: the spill.” Read that again: The president thinks that the job of the president is to make certain the citizens correctly understand what’s on the president’s mind.
Obama’s vanity is even more jarring when paraded in the foreign arena. In April, Poland suffered a national tragedy when its president, first lady, and a good portion of the government were killed in a plane crash. Obama decided not to go to the funeral. He played golf instead. Though maybe it’s best that he didn’t make the trip. When he journeyed to Great Britain to meet with the queen he gave her an amazing gift: an iPod loaded with recordings of his speeches and pictures from his inauguration.
On November 9, 2009, Europe celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was kind of a big deal. They may not mention the Cold War in schools much these days, but it pitted the Western liberal order against a totalitarian ideology in a global struggle. In this the United States was the guarantor of liberty and peace for the West; had we faltered, no corner of the world would have been safe from Soviet domination.
President Obama has a somewhat different reading. He explains: “The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.” Pretty magnanimous of the Soviets to let the long twilight struggle end peacefully like that, especially after all we did to provoke them.
So Obama doesn’t know much about the Cold War. Which is probably why he didn’t think the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was all that important. When the leaders of Europe got together to commemorate it, he decided not to go to that, either. But he did find time to record a video message, which he graciously allowed the Europeans to air during the ceremony.
In his video, Obama ruminated for a few minutes on the grand events of the 20th century, the Cold War itself, and the great lesson we all should take from this historic passing: “Few would have foreseen . . . that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it.” The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, and the freedom of all humanity—it’s great stuff. Right up there with the election of Barack Obama.
All presidents are hostage to self-confidence. But not since Babe Ruth grabbed a bat and wagged his fat finger at Wrigley’s center-field wall has an American politician called his shot like Barack Obama. He announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, on the steps where Abraham Lincoln gave his “house divided” speech. He mentioned Lincoln continually during the 2008 campaign. After he vanquished John McCain he passed out copies of Team of Rivals, a book about Lincoln’s cabinet, to his senior staff. At his inauguration, he chose to be sworn into office using Lincoln’s Bible. At the inaugural luncheon following the ceremony, he requested that the food—each dish of which was selected as a “tribute” to Lincoln—be served on replicas of Lincoln’s china. At some point in January 2009 you wanted to grab Obama by the lapels and tell him—We get it! You’re the Rail Splitter! If we promise to play along, will you keep the log cabin out of the Rose Garden?
It’s troubling that a fellow whose electoral rationale was that he edited the Harvard Law Review and wrote a couple of memoirs was comparing himself to the man who saved the Union. But it tells you all you need to know about what Obama thinks of his political gifts and why he’s unperturbed about having led his party into political disaster in the midterms. He assumes that he’ll be able to reverse the political tide once he becomes the issue, in the presidential race in 2012. As he said to Harry Reid after the majority leader congratulated him on one particularly fine oration, “I have a gift, Harry.”
But Obama’s faith in his abilities extends beyond mere vote-getting. Buried in a 2008 New Yorker piece by Ryan Lizza about the Obama campaign was this gob-smacking passage:
Obama said that he liked being surrounded by people who expressed strong opinions, but he also said, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” After Obama’s first debate with McCain, on September 26th, [campaign political director Patrick] Gaspard sent him an e-mail. “You are more clutch than Michael Jordan,” he wrote. Obama replied, “Just give me the ball.”
In fairness to Obama, maybe he is a better speechwriter than his speechwriters. After all, his speechwriter was a 27-year-old, and the most affecting part of Obama’s big 2008 stump speech was recycled from Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, with whom he shared a campaign strategist. But it’s instructive that Obama thinks he knows “more about policies on any particular issue” than his policy directors. The rate of growth of the mohair subsidy? The replacement schedule for servers at the NORAD command center? The relationship between annual rainfall in northeast Nevada and water prices in Las Vegas?
What Scott Fitzgerald once said about Hollywood is true of the American government: It can be understood only dimly and in flashes; there are no more than a handful of men who have ever been able to keep the entire equation in their heads. Barack Obama had worked in the federal government for all of four years. He was not one of those men. More important, however, is that as president he shouldn’t be the chief wonk, speechwriter, and political director.
David Remnick delivers a number of insights about Obama in his book The Bridge. For instance, Valerie Jarrett—think of her as the president’s Karen Hughes—tells Remnick that Obama is often bored with the world around him. “I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually,” Jarrett says. “So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that they had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy.” Jarrett concludes, “He’s been bored to death his whole life.”
With one or two possible exceptions, that is. Remnick reports that “Jarrett was quite sure that one of the few things that truly engaged him fully before going to the White House was writing Dreams from My Father.” So the only job Barack Obama ever had that didn’t bore him was writing about Barack Obama. But wait, there’s more.
David Axelrod—he’s Obama’s Karl Rove—told Remnick that “Barack hated being a senator.” Remnick went on:
Washington was a grander stage than Springfield, but the frustrations of being a rookie in a minority party were familiar. Obama could barely conceal his frustration with the torpid pace of the Senate. His aides could sense his frustration and so could his colleagues. “He was so bored being a senator,” one Senate aide said.
Obama’s friend and law firm colleague Judd Miner agreed. “The reality,” Miner told Remnick, “was that during his first two years in the U.S. Senate, I think, he was struggling; it wasn’t nearly as stimulating as he expected.” But even during his long, desolate exile as a senator, Obama was able to find a task that satisfied him. Here’s Remnick again: “The one project that did engage Obama fully was work on The Audacity of Hope. He procrastinated for a long time and then, facing his deadline, wrote nearly a chapter a week.” Your tax dollars at work.
Looking at this American Narcissus, it’s easy to be hammered into a stupor by the accumulated acts of vanity. Oh look, we think to ourselves, there’s our new president accepting his Nobel Peace Prize. There’s the president likening his election to the West’s victory in the Cold War. There’s the commander in chief bragging about his March Madness picks.
Yet it’s important to remember that our presidents aren’t always this way. When he accepted command of the Revolutionary forces, George Washington said,
I feel great distress, from a consciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important Trust. . . . I beg it may be remembered, by every Gentleman in the room, that I, this day, declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the Command I am honored with.
Accepting the presidency, Washington was even more reticent. Being chosen to be president, he said, “could not but overwhelm with despondence one who, inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.”
In his biography of John Quincy Adams, Robert Remini noted that Adams was not an especially popular fellow. Yet on one of the rare occasions when he was met with adoring fans, “he told crowds that gathered to see and hear him to go home and attend to their private duties.”
And Obama? In light of the present state of his presidency, let’s look back at his most famous oration:
The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then =emocrI am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.
The speech was given on June 3, 2008, and the epoch-making historical event to which “this moment” refers throughout is Barack Obama’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the D
A senior writer at The Weekly Standard, Jonathan V. Last covered the Obama campaign in 2008.
atic primaries.
The vanity of Barack Obama
BY JONATHAN V. LAST
The Weekly Standard
Why has Barack Obama failed so spectacularly? Is he too dogmatically liberal or too pragmatic? Is he a socialist, or an anticolonialist, or a philosopher-president? Or is it possible that Obama’s failures stem from something simpler: vanity. Politicians as a class are particularly susceptible to mirror-gazing. But Obama’s vanity is overwhelming. It defines him, his politics, and his presidency. It’s revealed in lots of little stories. There was the time he bragged about how one of his campaign volunteers, who had tragically died of breast cancer, “insisted she’s going to be buried in an Obama T-shirt.” There was the Nobel acceptance speech where he conceded, “I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war” (the emphasis is mine). There was the moment during the 2008 campaign when Obama appeared with a seal that was a mash-up of the Great Seal of the United States and his own campaign logo (with its motto Vero Possumus, “Yes we Can” in Latin). Just a few weeks ago, Obama was giving a speech when the actual presidential seal fell from the rostrum. “That’s all right,” he quipped. “All of you know who I am.” Oh yes, Mr. President, we certainly do.
My favorite is this line from page 160 of The Audacity of Hope:
I find comfort in the fact that the longer I’m in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for power and rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience.
So popularity and fame once nourished him, but now his ambition is richer and he’s answerable not, like some presidents, to the Almighty, but to the gaze of his personal conscience. Which is steady. The fact that this sentence appears in the second memoir of a man not yet 50 years old—and who had been in national politics for all of two years—is merely icing.
People have been noticing Obama’s vanity for a long time. In 2008, one of his Harvard Law classmates, the entertainment lawyer Jackie Fuchs, explained what Obama was like during his school days: “One of our classmates once famously noted that you could judge just how pretentious someone’s remarks in class were by how high they ranked on the ‘Obamanometer,’ a term that lasted far longer than our time at law school. Obama didn’t just share in class—he pontificated. He knew better than everyone else in the room, including the teachers. ”
The story of Obama’s writing career is an object lesson in how our president’s view of himself shapes his interactions with the world around him. In 1990, Obama was wrapping up his second year at Harvard Law when the New York Times ran a profile of him on the occasion of his becoming the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. A book agent in New York named Jane Dystel read the story and called up the young man, asking if he’d be interested in writing a book. Like any 29-year-old, he wasn’t about to turn down money. He promptly accepted a deal with Simon & Schuster’s Poseidon imprint—reportedly in the low six-figures—to write a book about race relations.
Obama missed his deadline. No matter. His agent quickly secured him another contract, this time with Times Books. And a $40,000 advance. Not bad for an unknown author who had already blown one deal, writing about a noncommercial subject.
By this point Obama had left law school, and academia was courting him. The University of Chicago Law School approached him; although they didn’t have any specific needs, they wanted to be in the Barack Obama business. As Douglas Baird, the head of Chicago’s appointments committee, would later explain, “You look at his background—Harvard Law Review president, magna cum laude, and he’s African American. This is a no-brainer hiring decision at the entry level of any law school in the country.” Chicago invited Obama to come in and teach just about anything he wanted. But Obama wasn’t interested in a professor’s life. Instead, he told them that he was writing a book—about voting rights. The university made him a fellow, giving him an office and a paycheck to keep him going while he worked on this important project.
In case you’re keeping score at home, there was some confusion as to what book young Obama was writing. His publisher thought he was writing about race relations. His employer thought he was writing about voting rights law. But Obama seems to have never seriously considered either subject. Instead, he decided that his subject would be himself. The 32-year-old was writing a memoir.
Obama came clean to the university first. He waited until his fellowship was halfway over—perhaps he was concerned that his employers might not like the bait-and-switch. He needn’t have worried. Baird still hoped that Obama would eventually join the university’s faculty (he had already begun teaching a small classload as a “senior lecturer”). “It was a good deal for us,” Baird explained, “because he was a good teaching prospect and we wanted him around.”
And it all worked out in the end. The book Obama eventually finished was Dreams from My Father. It didn’t do well initially, but nine years later, after his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention made him a star, it sold like gangbusters. Obama got rich. And famous. The book became the springboard for his career in national politics.
Only it didn’t quite work out for everybody. Obama left the University of Chicago, never succumbing to their offers of a permanent position in their hallowed halls. Simon & Schuster, which had taken a chance on an unproven young writer, got burned for a few thousand bucks. And Jane Dystel, who’d plucked him out of the pages of the New York Times and got him the deal to write the book that sped his political rise? As soon as Obama was ready to negotiate the contract for his second book—the big-money payday—he dumped her and replaced her with super-agent Robert Barnett.
We risk reading too much into these vignettes—after all, our president is a mansion with many rooms and it would be foolish to reduce him to pure ego. Yet the vignettes are so numerous. For instance, a few years ago Obama’s high school basketball coach told ABC News how, as a teenager, Obama always badgered him for more playing time, even though he wasn’t the best player on the team—or even as good as he thought he was. Everyone who has ever played team sports has encountered the kid with an inflated sense of self. That’s common. What’s rare is the kid who feels entitled enough to nag the coach about his minutes. Obama was that kid. His enthusiasm about his abilities and his playing time extended into his political life. In 2004, Obama explained to author David Mendell how he saw his future as a national political figure: “I’m LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game.” After just a couple of months in the Senate, Obama jumped the Democratic line and started asking voters to make him president.
Yet you don’t have to delve deep into armchair psychology to see how Obama’s vanity has shaped his presidency. In January 2009 he met with congressional leaders to discuss the stimulus package. The meeting was supposed to foster bipartisanship. Senator Jon Kyl questioned the plan’s mixture of spending and tax cuts. Obama’s response to him was, “I won.” A year later Obama held another meeting to foster bipartisanship for his health care reform plan. There was some technical back-and-forth about Republicans not having the chance to properly respond within the constraints of the format because President Obama had done some pontificating, as is his wont. Obama explained, “There was an imbalance on the opening statements because”—here he paused, self-satisfiedly—“I’m the president. And so I made, uh, I don’t count my time in terms of dividing it evenly.”
There are lots of times when you get the sense that Obama views the powers of the presidency as little more than a shadow of his own person. When he journeyed to Copenhagen in October 2009 to pitch Chicago’s bid for the Olympics, his speech to the IOC was about—you guessed it: “Nearly one year ago, on a clear November night,” he told the committee, “people from every corner of the world gathered in the city of Chicago or in front of their televisions to watch the results of . . . ” and away he went.
A short while later he was back in Copenhagen for the climate change summit. When things looked darkest, he personally commandeered the meeting to broker a “deal.” Which turned out to be worthless. In January 2010, Obama met with nervous Democratic congressmen to assure them that he wasn’t driving the party off a cliff. Confronted with worries that 2010 could be a worse off-year election than 1994, Obama explained to the professional politicians, “Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.”
In the midst of the BP oil spill last summer, Obama explained, “My job right now is just to make sure that everybody in the Gulf understands this is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about: the spill.” Read that again: The president thinks that the job of the president is to make certain the citizens correctly understand what’s on the president’s mind.
Obama’s vanity is even more jarring when paraded in the foreign arena. In April, Poland suffered a national tragedy when its president, first lady, and a good portion of the government were killed in a plane crash. Obama decided not to go to the funeral. He played golf instead. Though maybe it’s best that he didn’t make the trip. When he journeyed to Great Britain to meet with the queen he gave her an amazing gift: an iPod loaded with recordings of his speeches and pictures from his inauguration.
On November 9, 2009, Europe celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was kind of a big deal. They may not mention the Cold War in schools much these days, but it pitted the Western liberal order against a totalitarian ideology in a global struggle. In this the United States was the guarantor of liberty and peace for the West; had we faltered, no corner of the world would have been safe from Soviet domination.
President Obama has a somewhat different reading. He explains: “The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.” Pretty magnanimous of the Soviets to let the long twilight struggle end peacefully like that, especially after all we did to provoke them.
So Obama doesn’t know much about the Cold War. Which is probably why he didn’t think the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was all that important. When the leaders of Europe got together to commemorate it, he decided not to go to that, either. But he did find time to record a video message, which he graciously allowed the Europeans to air during the ceremony.
In his video, Obama ruminated for a few minutes on the grand events of the 20th century, the Cold War itself, and the great lesson we all should take from this historic passing: “Few would have foreseen . . . that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it.” The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, and the freedom of all humanity—it’s great stuff. Right up there with the election of Barack Obama.
All presidents are hostage to self-confidence. But not since Babe Ruth grabbed a bat and wagged his fat finger at Wrigley’s center-field wall has an American politician called his shot like Barack Obama. He announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, on the steps where Abraham Lincoln gave his “house divided” speech. He mentioned Lincoln continually during the 2008 campaign. After he vanquished John McCain he passed out copies of Team of Rivals, a book about Lincoln’s cabinet, to his senior staff. At his inauguration, he chose to be sworn into office using Lincoln’s Bible. At the inaugural luncheon following the ceremony, he requested that the food—each dish of which was selected as a “tribute” to Lincoln—be served on replicas of Lincoln’s china. At some point in January 2009 you wanted to grab Obama by the lapels and tell him—We get it! You’re the Rail Splitter! If we promise to play along, will you keep the log cabin out of the Rose Garden?
It’s troubling that a fellow whose electoral rationale was that he edited the Harvard Law Review and wrote a couple of memoirs was comparing himself to the man who saved the Union. But it tells you all you need to know about what Obama thinks of his political gifts and why he’s unperturbed about having led his party into political disaster in the midterms. He assumes that he’ll be able to reverse the political tide once he becomes the issue, in the presidential race in 2012. As he said to Harry Reid after the majority leader congratulated him on one particularly fine oration, “I have a gift, Harry.”
But Obama’s faith in his abilities extends beyond mere vote-getting. Buried in a 2008 New Yorker piece by Ryan Lizza about the Obama campaign was this gob-smacking passage:
Obama said that he liked being surrounded by people who expressed strong opinions, but he also said, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” After Obama’s first debate with McCain, on September 26th, [campaign political director Patrick] Gaspard sent him an e-mail. “You are more clutch than Michael Jordan,” he wrote. Obama replied, “Just give me the ball.”
In fairness to Obama, maybe he is a better speechwriter than his speechwriters. After all, his speechwriter was a 27-year-old, and the most affecting part of Obama’s big 2008 stump speech was recycled from Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, with whom he shared a campaign strategist. But it’s instructive that Obama thinks he knows “more about policies on any particular issue” than his policy directors. The rate of growth of the mohair subsidy? The replacement schedule for servers at the NORAD command center? The relationship between annual rainfall in northeast Nevada and water prices in Las Vegas?
What Scott Fitzgerald once said about Hollywood is true of the American government: It can be understood only dimly and in flashes; there are no more than a handful of men who have ever been able to keep the entire equation in their heads. Barack Obama had worked in the federal government for all of four years. He was not one of those men. More important, however, is that as president he shouldn’t be the chief wonk, speechwriter, and political director.
David Remnick delivers a number of insights about Obama in his book The Bridge. For instance, Valerie Jarrett—think of her as the president’s Karen Hughes—tells Remnick that Obama is often bored with the world around him. “I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually,” Jarrett says. “So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that they had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy.” Jarrett concludes, “He’s been bored to death his whole life.”
With one or two possible exceptions, that is. Remnick reports that “Jarrett was quite sure that one of the few things that truly engaged him fully before going to the White House was writing Dreams from My Father.” So the only job Barack Obama ever had that didn’t bore him was writing about Barack Obama. But wait, there’s more.
David Axelrod—he’s Obama’s Karl Rove—told Remnick that “Barack hated being a senator.” Remnick went on:
Washington was a grander stage than Springfield, but the frustrations of being a rookie in a minority party were familiar. Obama could barely conceal his frustration with the torpid pace of the Senate. His aides could sense his frustration and so could his colleagues. “He was so bored being a senator,” one Senate aide said.
Obama’s friend and law firm colleague Judd Miner agreed. “The reality,” Miner told Remnick, “was that during his first two years in the U.S. Senate, I think, he was struggling; it wasn’t nearly as stimulating as he expected.” But even during his long, desolate exile as a senator, Obama was able to find a task that satisfied him. Here’s Remnick again: “The one project that did engage Obama fully was work on The Audacity of Hope. He procrastinated for a long time and then, facing his deadline, wrote nearly a chapter a week.” Your tax dollars at work.
Looking at this American Narcissus, it’s easy to be hammered into a stupor by the accumulated acts of vanity. Oh look, we think to ourselves, there’s our new president accepting his Nobel Peace Prize. There’s the president likening his election to the West’s victory in the Cold War. There’s the commander in chief bragging about his March Madness picks.
Yet it’s important to remember that our presidents aren’t always this way. When he accepted command of the Revolutionary forces, George Washington said,
I feel great distress, from a consciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important Trust. . . . I beg it may be remembered, by every Gentleman in the room, that I, this day, declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the Command I am honored with.
Accepting the presidency, Washington was even more reticent. Being chosen to be president, he said, “could not but overwhelm with despondence one who, inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.”
In his biography of John Quincy Adams, Robert Remini noted that Adams was not an especially popular fellow. Yet on one of the rare occasions when he was met with adoring fans, “he told crowds that gathered to see and hear him to go home and attend to their private duties.”
And Obama? In light of the present state of his presidency, let’s look back at his most famous oration:
The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then =emocrI am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.
The speech was given on June 3, 2008, and the epoch-making historical event to which “this moment” refers throughout is Barack Obama’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the D
A senior writer at The Weekly Standard, Jonathan V. Last covered the Obama campaign in 2008.
atic primaries.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Seeking intellectual integrity
Op-ed: Israeli academia must engage in some searing soul-searching without delay
Martin Sherman
“Had such professional misconduct occurred in the natural or physical sciences there would have doubtless been serious consequences: e.g. the collapse of a bridge following phony engineering calculations… Yet it would seem that when it comes to the social sciences or the humanities… the researcher can escape punishment for the worst kind of malpractice.” Prof. Efraim Karsh in "Fabricating Israeli History"
The furor over allegations of post/anti-Zionist bias in the Israeli academe refuses to subside. Last week a heated debate on the topic was held in the Knesset's Education Committee with the participation of Education Minister Gideon Saar. Clearly the charges as to deliberate ideological imbalance were not directed at the faculties of the natural or exact sciences but focused on the social sciences and the humanities.
Unsurprisingly, the representatives of the institutes of higher learning rejected the accusations of intentional exclusion of pro-Zionist perspectives, opposed any discussion of the issue, and questioned the very legitimacy of debate on the subject, warning that it constituted a grave threat to academic freedom which could undermine democratic governance in the country. As to bias in the appointment of faculty, and in promotion criteria, they endeavored to reassure the participants that these were based solely on academic achievement and professional excellence.
However their protestations raised at least two trenchant questions. First, With regard to academic freedom and its limitations: As early as 1919, the US Supreme Court handed down a seminal ruling that false statements which could inflict harm on others were not protected as "free speech" under the Constitution. Although there might be a discernable distinction between "free speech" and "academic freedom", it is still difficult to accept the somewhat convoluted claim by the senior representatives of the nation's universities that any public debate on academic freedom endangers its future.
Surely few would contest that the very raison d'etre of academic freedom is to facilitate the pursuit of truth and not the propagation of falsehoods. For example, it is highly implausible that a geography professor would win the support of his colleagues were he to promote a theory that the earth is flat. Similarly it would be difficult to imagine that an aeronautical engineer could mobilize much backing for his right to disseminate a thesis casting doubt on the existence of gravity - despite being able to present irrefutable evidence of leaves being wafted aloft by updrafts of air.
Absurd examples? Ludicrous comparisons? How about the claims that Israel is an "apartheid state", implementing a policy of racial discrimination like that of South Africa, alleged proven by the different legal systems applied to Israeli citizens - whether Jewish or not - and to Palestinians without Israeli citizenship? After all, any informed observer must be aware that this disparity is not rooted in any doctrine of racial superiority, but in exigencies of security.
There is an enormous difference between legitimate disagreement on the prudence and/or efficacy of measures taken to defend one's civilian population, and the baseless accusation that a country - in which non-Jews are elected to parliament, appointed to senior positions in the judiciary and the diplomatic corps, and serve as ministers in the government - is in any way similar to the apartheid-era South Africa.
So if academic freedom does not apply to theories of a flat earth and non-existence of gravity, why should it be invoked to cover equally ridiculous social theories?
Real-time reality check
Secondly, with regard to the significance of academic excellence in social sciences and humanities: There is indeed a manifest difficulty in ascertaining the validity of theories in these fields. So how can their quality be assessed? Do they need to be subjected to some form of testing or verification? Or is it sufficient for them to conform to prevailing fashions and norms of a closed professional clique whose members exchange mutual accolades and flattering reviews of each other's work, while excluding any dissenting perspective, no matter how well founded?
Alternatively if mere eloquence and originality are the definitive criteria, what is to differentiate between "excellence" in these fields and a work of literary fiction, devoid of any claims to "academic research?”
In the field of social science and the humanities, it is rare that an opportunity presents itself to allow a theory to be subjected to an almost real-time reality check. Fortunately the political developments in recent decades have afforded just such an opportunity.
With the commencement of the "peace process", the virtually entire cadre of social scientists and their colleagues in the humanities endorsed a policy previously eschewed by all Israeli government; a policy whose major thrust was wide-scale withdrawal from Judea, Samaria and Gaza and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the evacuated areas. Policy papers were written, research conducted, articles published, public declarations of support signed, all expressing professional optimism as to the rosy future this bold new vision heralded for the region. There was hardly a dissenting voice to be heard.
However, beyond the confines of the "ivory tower," many expressed their concern, warning that the noble vision was in fact a dangerous fantasy. Then came bitter reality. And alas, the assessments of the greengrocers, the cabdrivers, the market vendors proved correct; the forecasts of the academic experts and the learned scholars, totally baseless.
Now imagine that a group of civil engineering professors were to endorse a new revolutionary system for the construction of bridges, which departed considerably from accepted principles. Suppose the new system aroused much interest at home and abroad and brought much praise to its instigators and their disciples. Unfortunately however, all the bridges actually built by this method collapsed catastrophically, causing widespread loss of life and limb. Under such circumstances, surely these "new architects" would not be showered with professional commendation; surely their work would not be branded as reflecting "excellence" and surely they would not be invited to appear as experts on bridge construction at conferences and in media-interviews - as is the case with those who endorsed the failed Oslowian "architecture" of the peace process.
The Israeli academic establishment needs to muster much intellectual integrity to scrutinize what is taking place under its alleged auspices: the propagation of baseless allegations which fly in the face of both fact and logic; misleading research whose grounding in reality is at best tenuous; almost total exclusion of faculty members who foretold the calamitous failure of the "peace process," relative to a glut of those who did not….
The Israeli academia must indeed engage in some searing soul-searching without delay. In fact, if those responsible for its future do not initiate such a process, others will soon impose it on them.
Martin Sherman
“Had such professional misconduct occurred in the natural or physical sciences there would have doubtless been serious consequences: e.g. the collapse of a bridge following phony engineering calculations… Yet it would seem that when it comes to the social sciences or the humanities… the researcher can escape punishment for the worst kind of malpractice.” Prof. Efraim Karsh in "Fabricating Israeli History"
The furor over allegations of post/anti-Zionist bias in the Israeli academe refuses to subside. Last week a heated debate on the topic was held in the Knesset's Education Committee with the participation of Education Minister Gideon Saar. Clearly the charges as to deliberate ideological imbalance were not directed at the faculties of the natural or exact sciences but focused on the social sciences and the humanities.
Unsurprisingly, the representatives of the institutes of higher learning rejected the accusations of intentional exclusion of pro-Zionist perspectives, opposed any discussion of the issue, and questioned the very legitimacy of debate on the subject, warning that it constituted a grave threat to academic freedom which could undermine democratic governance in the country. As to bias in the appointment of faculty, and in promotion criteria, they endeavored to reassure the participants that these were based solely on academic achievement and professional excellence.
However their protestations raised at least two trenchant questions. First, With regard to academic freedom and its limitations: As early as 1919, the US Supreme Court handed down a seminal ruling that false statements which could inflict harm on others were not protected as "free speech" under the Constitution. Although there might be a discernable distinction between "free speech" and "academic freedom", it is still difficult to accept the somewhat convoluted claim by the senior representatives of the nation's universities that any public debate on academic freedom endangers its future.
Surely few would contest that the very raison d'etre of academic freedom is to facilitate the pursuit of truth and not the propagation of falsehoods. For example, it is highly implausible that a geography professor would win the support of his colleagues were he to promote a theory that the earth is flat. Similarly it would be difficult to imagine that an aeronautical engineer could mobilize much backing for his right to disseminate a thesis casting doubt on the existence of gravity - despite being able to present irrefutable evidence of leaves being wafted aloft by updrafts of air.
Absurd examples? Ludicrous comparisons? How about the claims that Israel is an "apartheid state", implementing a policy of racial discrimination like that of South Africa, alleged proven by the different legal systems applied to Israeli citizens - whether Jewish or not - and to Palestinians without Israeli citizenship? After all, any informed observer must be aware that this disparity is not rooted in any doctrine of racial superiority, but in exigencies of security.
There is an enormous difference between legitimate disagreement on the prudence and/or efficacy of measures taken to defend one's civilian population, and the baseless accusation that a country - in which non-Jews are elected to parliament, appointed to senior positions in the judiciary and the diplomatic corps, and serve as ministers in the government - is in any way similar to the apartheid-era South Africa.
So if academic freedom does not apply to theories of a flat earth and non-existence of gravity, why should it be invoked to cover equally ridiculous social theories?
Real-time reality check
Secondly, with regard to the significance of academic excellence in social sciences and humanities: There is indeed a manifest difficulty in ascertaining the validity of theories in these fields. So how can their quality be assessed? Do they need to be subjected to some form of testing or verification? Or is it sufficient for them to conform to prevailing fashions and norms of a closed professional clique whose members exchange mutual accolades and flattering reviews of each other's work, while excluding any dissenting perspective, no matter how well founded?
Alternatively if mere eloquence and originality are the definitive criteria, what is to differentiate between "excellence" in these fields and a work of literary fiction, devoid of any claims to "academic research?”
In the field of social science and the humanities, it is rare that an opportunity presents itself to allow a theory to be subjected to an almost real-time reality check. Fortunately the political developments in recent decades have afforded just such an opportunity.
With the commencement of the "peace process", the virtually entire cadre of social scientists and their colleagues in the humanities endorsed a policy previously eschewed by all Israeli government; a policy whose major thrust was wide-scale withdrawal from Judea, Samaria and Gaza and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the evacuated areas. Policy papers were written, research conducted, articles published, public declarations of support signed, all expressing professional optimism as to the rosy future this bold new vision heralded for the region. There was hardly a dissenting voice to be heard.
However, beyond the confines of the "ivory tower," many expressed their concern, warning that the noble vision was in fact a dangerous fantasy. Then came bitter reality. And alas, the assessments of the greengrocers, the cabdrivers, the market vendors proved correct; the forecasts of the academic experts and the learned scholars, totally baseless.
Now imagine that a group of civil engineering professors were to endorse a new revolutionary system for the construction of bridges, which departed considerably from accepted principles. Suppose the new system aroused much interest at home and abroad and brought much praise to its instigators and their disciples. Unfortunately however, all the bridges actually built by this method collapsed catastrophically, causing widespread loss of life and limb. Under such circumstances, surely these "new architects" would not be showered with professional commendation; surely their work would not be branded as reflecting "excellence" and surely they would not be invited to appear as experts on bridge construction at conferences and in media-interviews - as is the case with those who endorsed the failed Oslowian "architecture" of the peace process.
The Israeli academic establishment needs to muster much intellectual integrity to scrutinize what is taking place under its alleged auspices: the propagation of baseless allegations which fly in the face of both fact and logic; misleading research whose grounding in reality is at best tenuous; almost total exclusion of faculty members who foretold the calamitous failure of the "peace process," relative to a glut of those who did not….
The Israeli academia must indeed engage in some searing soul-searching without delay. In fact, if those responsible for its future do not initiate such a process, others will soon impose it on them.
U.S. to demand halt to East Jerusalem building as part of freeze
U.S. administration not demanding a formal construction freeze, but expecting a halt to construction in practice.
By Barak Ravid
The United States will demand that Israel refrain from undertaking construction in East Jerusalem and from demolishing Palestinian homes there for the duration of a new 90-day West Bank building freeze if another construction moratorium is approved by the inner cabinet, a senior American official has told Haaretz.
The U.S. administration is not demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declare a formal construction freeze in East Jerusalem, but it expects a halt to Israeli construction in practice, and that Israel will not carry out any other provocative activity. The U.S. official said that if a new settlement freeze takes effect, the American administration will continue to pressure Israel to keep things quiet in East Jerusalem during the 90-day period.
The official added that in April President Barack Obama conveyed a verbal message to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the U.S. expected both Israel and the Palestinians to refrain from acts that would undermine trust, including actions in East Jerusalem, and the Americans would respond to such provocations with steps of its own or "adjustments in policy" while negotiations were underway.
Over the past year the Obama administration has spelled out examples of steps that it viewed as undermining trust, including announcements of major building plans in East Jerusalem, eviction of Palestinian residents from their homes and demolition of Palestinian homes.
The administration said it made no distinction between Arab and Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. "This policy will continue if the negotiations resume under a 90-day moratorium," the U.S. official said, "and the Israelis know it ... So whatever Bibi is telling Shas to reassure them about U.S. policy on East Jerusalem is not true."
A source in the Prime Minister's Office responded to the U.S. official's remarks as follows: "There is no American commitment on the subject of Jerusalem, however Israel has made it clear that there will not be a freeze in Jerusalem and this is a unilateral Israeli position.
The subject of Jerusalem was not discussed at all in New York [at Netanyahu's meeting last week with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton]. Jerusalem is outside the discussions and construction in Jerusalem will take place continuously, as in the past."
Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak met Wednesday night with Shas chairman Eli Yishai and attempted to convince him not to oppose a resumption of the construction freeze. Yishai responded that he wished to know precisely what U.S. policy was on East Jerusalem, to ensure that the Americans would not be surprised by construction in East Jerusalem during the West Bank building moratorium. The Shas leader also demanded that Barak permit massive building in the major settlement blocs at the end of the freeze. The meeting ended without agreement and the inner cabinet was not convened yesterday to vote on the proposal.
Senior figures in the Shas party have said they are very concerned that they have yet to receive clarification from Netanyahu on the issue of construction in East Jerusalem. They point out that the matter is of critical importance to Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Yishai and Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Atias.
They said they had given Netanyahu substantial leeway despite their reservations, but would be forced to vote against the freeze in the inner cabinet unless there are assurances that the U.S. will not be surprised if construction in East Jerusalem continues. The Shas officials added that they proposed a variety of flexible formulas on the subject, but have not received a definitive response.
Netanyahu is devoting most of his schedule to contacts with the Obama administration on the letter of assurances, which must be finalized before an inner cabinet vote.
Burning the midnight oil
The prime minister has remained in his office late into the night with his adviser Isaac Molho, in discussions with senior U.S. officials. Wednesday night they were joined for the contacts with the U.S. by Barak and Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor.
A member of the inner cabinet has said that almost all the issues involving the letter of assurances have been wrapped up, but one unresolved issue is the delivery by the U.S. of 20 advanced F-35 fighter jets to Israel.
The Americans do not wish to commit in the letter that the jets would be provided at no cost. The U.S. would like the letter to state that the Americans would take additional steps to preserve the Israel Defense Force's qualitative advantage.
By Barak Ravid
The United States will demand that Israel refrain from undertaking construction in East Jerusalem and from demolishing Palestinian homes there for the duration of a new 90-day West Bank building freeze if another construction moratorium is approved by the inner cabinet, a senior American official has told Haaretz.
The U.S. administration is not demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declare a formal construction freeze in East Jerusalem, but it expects a halt to Israeli construction in practice, and that Israel will not carry out any other provocative activity. The U.S. official said that if a new settlement freeze takes effect, the American administration will continue to pressure Israel to keep things quiet in East Jerusalem during the 90-day period.
The official added that in April President Barack Obama conveyed a verbal message to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the U.S. expected both Israel and the Palestinians to refrain from acts that would undermine trust, including actions in East Jerusalem, and the Americans would respond to such provocations with steps of its own or "adjustments in policy" while negotiations were underway.
Over the past year the Obama administration has spelled out examples of steps that it viewed as undermining trust, including announcements of major building plans in East Jerusalem, eviction of Palestinian residents from their homes and demolition of Palestinian homes.
The administration said it made no distinction between Arab and Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. "This policy will continue if the negotiations resume under a 90-day moratorium," the U.S. official said, "and the Israelis know it ... So whatever Bibi is telling Shas to reassure them about U.S. policy on East Jerusalem is not true."
A source in the Prime Minister's Office responded to the U.S. official's remarks as follows: "There is no American commitment on the subject of Jerusalem, however Israel has made it clear that there will not be a freeze in Jerusalem and this is a unilateral Israeli position.
The subject of Jerusalem was not discussed at all in New York [at Netanyahu's meeting last week with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton]. Jerusalem is outside the discussions and construction in Jerusalem will take place continuously, as in the past."
Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak met Wednesday night with Shas chairman Eli Yishai and attempted to convince him not to oppose a resumption of the construction freeze. Yishai responded that he wished to know precisely what U.S. policy was on East Jerusalem, to ensure that the Americans would not be surprised by construction in East Jerusalem during the West Bank building moratorium. The Shas leader also demanded that Barak permit massive building in the major settlement blocs at the end of the freeze. The meeting ended without agreement and the inner cabinet was not convened yesterday to vote on the proposal.
Senior figures in the Shas party have said they are very concerned that they have yet to receive clarification from Netanyahu on the issue of construction in East Jerusalem. They point out that the matter is of critical importance to Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Yishai and Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Atias.
They said they had given Netanyahu substantial leeway despite their reservations, but would be forced to vote against the freeze in the inner cabinet unless there are assurances that the U.S. will not be surprised if construction in East Jerusalem continues. The Shas officials added that they proposed a variety of flexible formulas on the subject, but have not received a definitive response.
Netanyahu is devoting most of his schedule to contacts with the Obama administration on the letter of assurances, which must be finalized before an inner cabinet vote.
Burning the midnight oil
The prime minister has remained in his office late into the night with his adviser Isaac Molho, in discussions with senior U.S. officials. Wednesday night they were joined for the contacts with the U.S. by Barak and Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor.
A member of the inner cabinet has said that almost all the issues involving the letter of assurances have been wrapped up, but one unresolved issue is the delivery by the U.S. of 20 advanced F-35 fighter jets to Israel.
The Americans do not wish to commit in the letter that the jets would be provided at no cost. The U.S. would like the letter to state that the Americans would take additional steps to preserve the Israel Defense Force's qualitative advantage.
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