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Arab League Prepares For United Front Against Israel If Peace Process Fails
From JPost
The chief of the Arab League warned Saturday that Israel’s actions could bring about a final end to the Middle East peace process.
Amr Moussa urged an Arab leadership summit in Libya on Saturday to forge a new strategy to pressure Israel, saying the peace process could not be “an open ended process.”
“We must prepare for the possibility that the peace process will be a complete failure,” Moussa said. “This is the time to stand up to Israel. We must find alternative options, because the situation appears to have reached a turning point.”
Speaking at the event, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said there would be no peace agreement without ending the occupation of Palestinian land, first and foremost east Jerusalem. He accused Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu’s government of trying to create a de facto situation in Jerusalem that would torpedo any future peace settlement.
Abbas added that conflict in Jerusalem was dangerous and could ignite the entire Middle East. He said the PA would not resume peace talks with Israel, including indirect talks, until Israel stops construction in the settlements.
Earlier this month, Arab nations opened the door for Abbas to enter four months of indirect, American-brokered peace talks with Israel. But they later threatened to withdraw support for the talks because of Israel’s announcement of new plans for construction in east Jerusalem.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a guest at the summit, said in his speech that the Israeli “violation” of peace in Jerusalem and Muslim holy sites was unacceptable.
Erdogan said that the Israeli position defining the whole of Jerusalem as its united capital was “madness.” Israeli construction in east Jerusalem was completely unjustified, he said.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, also a guest at the summit, called on Arab leaders to support indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority with a common aim of resolving all final issues within two years.
“There is no alternative to negotiations for a two-State solution,” Ban in his address.
“I am aware that regional confidence in the Israeli Government is very low, but there is no alternative to getting the parties to the negotiating table and testing their commitment.”
Ban called for the lifting of the blockade on the Gaza Strip which has created an “unacceptable and unsustainable” situation on the ground.
Ban reiterated his condemnation of settlement activity in east Jerusalem, describing the settlements as “illegal.”
“Like all of you, I was deeply dismayed when Israel advanced planning to build 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem. There are several other recent unilateral actions as well,” Ban said noting Israel”s recent announcement of plans to construct another 20 dwellings and tensions surrounding the Al-Aqsa mosque, among others.
Ban said that Netanyahu had made it personally clear to him that he is ready to discuss many of these issues.
“It is crucial for the international community and the Arab countries to help create a favorable atmosphere in which the talks can succeed. Let that be our common commitment.”
“Each time when bad things happen, if dialogue is halted or suspended, that will only help all the extremists gain power,” the Secretary-General told journalists.
Moussa also urged the 22-nation bloc to engage Iran directly over concerns about its growing influence and its nuclear activities, a proposal that could undermine US and Israeli efforts to isolate the Islamic Republic. Moussa’s engagement plan would involve a forum for regional cooperation and conflict resolution that would include non-Arab nations Iran and Turkey.
“I realize that some are worried about Iran but that is precisely why we need the dialogue,” Moussa said.
The push to engage Tehran seems to be at least partly fueled by Arab frustration over Washington’s failure to get Israel to back down on plans for more Jewish settlements on land the Palestinians want for a future state.
It also suggests that Arab nations are increasingly less likely to align with the US strategy on Iran if they feel they are getting nothing in return in Mideast peace efforts.
The Arab leaders called together for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons. Moussa was quoted by Egyptian newspaper Al-Mesryoon as saying that Arab states were facing a great threat in the form of Israel’s nuclear capability. He warned against a nuclear arms race in the region.
The summit registered a higher than usual number of no-shows from Arab leaders. Eight heads of state stayed away, including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
- From Prophecy News Watch
Netanyahu humiliated by Obama during visit
From Times on Line UK
For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.
After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.
“It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”.
Left to talk among themselves Mr Netanyahu and his aides retreated to the Roosevelt Room. He spent a further half-hour with Mr Obama and extended his stay for a day of emergency talks to try to restart peace negotiations. However, he left last night with no official statement from either side. He returned to Israel yesterday isolated after what Israeli media have called a White House ambush for which he is largely to blame.
Sources said that Mr Netanyahu failed to impress Mr Obama with a flow chart purporting to show that he was not responsible for the timing of announcements of new settlement projects in east Jerusalem. Mr Obama was said to be livid when such an announcement derailed the visit to Israel by Joe Biden, the Vice-President, this month and his anger towards Israel does not appear to have cooled.
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, cast doubt on minor details in Israeli accounts of the meeting but did not deny claims that it amounted to a dressing down for the Prime Minister, whose refusal to freeze settlements is seen in Washington as the main barrier to resuming peace talks.
The Likud leader has to try to square the rigorous demands of the Obama Administration with his nationalist, ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, who want him to stand up to Washington even though Israel needs US backing in confronting the threat of a nuclear Iran.
“The Prime Minister leaves America disgraced, isolated and altogether weaker than when he came,” the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz said.
In their meeting Mr Obama set out expectations that Israel was to satisfy if it wanted to end the crisis, Israeli sources said. These included an extension of the freeze on Jewish settlement growth beyond the ten-month deadline next September, an end to building projects in east Jerusalem and a withdrawal of Israeli forces to positions held before the second intifada in September 2000.
Newspaper reports recounted how Mr Netanyahu looked “excessively concerned and upset” when he pulled out a flow chart to show Mr Obama how Jerusalem planning permission worked and how he could not have known that the announcement that hundreds more homes were to be built would be made when Mr Biden arrived in Jerusalem.
Mr Obama then suggested that Mr Netanyahu and his staff stay at the White House to consider his proposals so that if he changed his mind he could inform the President right away. “I’m still around,” the daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot quoted Mr Obama as saying. “Let me know if there is anything new.”
With the atmosphere so soured by the end of the evening, the Israelis decided that they could not trust the telephone line they had been lent for their consultations. Mr Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, his Defence Minister, went to the Israeli Embassy to ensure that the Americans were not listening in.
- From Prophecy News Watch
Terrorists Could Use Explosives in Breast Implants to Crash Planes, Experts Warn
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From The Sun UK
Female suicide bombers are being fitted with exploding breast implants which are almost impossible to detect, British spies have reportedly discovered.
The shocking new al-Qaeda tactic involves radical doctors inserting the explosives in women’s breasts during plastic surgery — making them “virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines”.
It is believed the doctors have been trained at some of Britain’s leading teaching hospitals before returning to their own countries to perform the surgical procedures.
MI5 has also discovered that extremists are inserting the explosives into the buttocks of some male suicide bombers.
Terrorist expert Joseph Farah claims: “Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaeda are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery.”
The lethal explosives called PETN are inserted inside plastic shapes during the operation, before the breast is then sewn up.
The discovery of these methods was made after London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came close to blowing up an airliner in the US on Christmas Day.
He had stuffed explosives inside his underpants.
Hours after he had failed, Britain’s intelligence services began to pick up “chatter” emanating from Pakistan and Yemen that alerted MI5 to the creation of the lethal implants.
A hand-picked team investigated the threat which was described as “one that can circumvent our defence”.
Top surgeons have confirmed the feasibility of the explosive implants.
One claimed: “Properly inserted the implant would be virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines.
“You would need to subject a suspect to a sophisticated X-ray.
“Given that the explosive would be inserted in a sealed plastic sachet, and would be a small amount, would make it all the more impossible to spot it with the usual body scanner.”
Explosive experts allegedly told MI5 that a sachet containing as little as five ounces of PETN could blow “a considerable hole” in an airline’s skin, causing it to crash.
- From Prophecy News Watch
2012 Debt Wall – A Disaster of A Different Kind
From NY Times
When the Mayans envisioned the world coming to an end in 2012 — at least in the Hollywood telling — they didn’t count junk bonds among the perils that would lead to worldwide disaster.
Maybe they should have, because 2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could overload the debt markets.
With huge bills about to hit corporations and the federal government around the same time, the worry is that some companies will have trouble getting new loans, spurring defaults and a wave of bankruptcies.
The United States government alone will need to borrow nearly $2 trillion in 2012, to bridge the projected budget deficit for that year and to refinance existing debt.
Indeed, worries about the growth of national, or sovereign, debt prompted Moody’s Investors Service to warn on Monday that the United States and other Western nations were moving “substantially” closer to losing their top-notch Aaa credit ratings.
Sovereign debt aside, the approaching scramble for corporate financing could strain the broader economy as jobs are cut, consumer spending is scaled back and credit is tightened for both consumers and businesses.
The apocalyptic talk is not limited to perpetual bears and the rest of the doom-and-gloom crowd.
Even Moody’s, which is known for its sober public statements, is sounding the alarm.
“An avalanche is brewing in 2012 and beyond if companies don’t get out in front of this,” said Kevin Cassidy, a senior credit officer at Moody’s.
Private equity firms and many nonfinancial companies were able to borrow on easy terms until the credit crisis hit in 2007, but not until 2012 does the long-delayed reckoning begin for a series of leveraged buyouts and other deals that preceded the crisis.
That is because the record number of bonds and loans that were issued to finance those transactions typically come due in five to seven years, said Diane Vazza, head of global fixed-income research at Standard & Poor’s.
In addition, she said, many companies whose debt matured in 2009 and 2010 have been able to extend their loans, but the extra breathing room is only adding to the bill for 2012 and after.
The result is a potential financial doomsday, or what bond analysts call a maturity wall. From $21 billion due this year, junk bonds are set to mature at a rate of $155 billion in 2012, $212 billion in 2013 and $338 billion in 2014.
The credit markets have gradually returned to normal since the financial crisis, particularly in recent months, making more loans available to companies and signaling confidence in the pace of economic recovery. But the issue is whether they can absorb the coming surge in demand for credit.
As was the case with the collapse of the subprime mortgage market three years ago, derivatives played a big role in the explosion of risky corporate debt. In this case the culprit was a financial instrument called a collateralized loan obligation, which helped issuers repackage corporate loans much as subprime mortgages were sliced, diced and then resold to other investors. That made many more risky loans available.
“The question is, ‘Should these deals have ever been financed in the first place?’ ” asked Anders J. Maxwell, a corporate restructuring specialist at Peter J. Solomon Company in New York.
The period from 2012 to 2014 represents payback time for a Who’s Who of private equity firms and the now highly leveraged companies they helped buy in the precrisis boom years.
The biggest include the hospital owner HCA, which was taken private in 2006 by a group led by Bain Capital and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts for $33 billion, and has $13.3 billion in debt payments coming due between 2012 and 2014. Another buyout led by Kohlberg Kravis, for the giant Texas utility TXU, has $20.9 billion that needs to be refinanced in the same period.
Realogy, which owns real estate franchises like Century 21 and Coldwell Banker, was taken private by Apollo in the spring of 2007 just as the housing market was beginning to unravel and as the first tremors of the subprime crisis were being felt.
Realogy was saddled with $8 to $9 of debt for every $1 in earnings, well above the “$5 to $6 level that is manageable for a company in a highly cyclical industry,” according to Emile Courtney, a credit analyst with Standard & Poor’s.
Realogy has survived — barely. “The company’s cash flow is still below what’s needed to cover the interest on its debt,” Mr. Courtney said.
Realogy said it ended 2009 with a substantial cushion on its financial covenants and over $200 million of available cash on its balance sheet. “The company generated over $340 million of net cash provided by operating activities in 2009 after paying interest on its debt,” the company said.
Not everyone is convinced that 2012 will spell catastrophe for the junk bond market, however.
Optimists like Martin Fridson, a veteran high-yield strategist, note that investors seeking high yields snapped up speculative-grade bonds last year and early this year, and he suggests that continued demand will allow companies to refinance before their loans come due.
“The companies have nearly two years to push out the 2012 maturity wall,” he said. “Of course, the ability to refinance will depend upon the state of the economy.”
That is still a wild card, but even if the economy improves, companies with a lot of debt will be competing with a raft of better-rated borrowers that are expected to seek buyers of their debt at around the same time.
Chief among those is the best-rated borrower of all: the United States government. The Treasury Department estimates that the federal budget deficit in 2012 will total $974 billion, down from this year’s $1.8 trillion, but still huge by historical standards.
Most critics of deficit spending have focused on the budget gap alone, but Washington will actually have to borrow $1.8 trillion in 2012, because $859 billion in old bonds will come due and have to be refinanced in addition to the deficit. By 2013 and 2014, $1.4 trillion will have to be raised annually.
In the late 1990s, the federal government ran a surplus and actually paid down a small portion of the national debt. But with the huge deficits of the last few years, the national debt has grown to more than $12 trillion.
Next in line are companies with investment-grade credit ratings. They must refinance $1.2 trillion in loans between 2012 and 2014, including $526 billion in 2012. Finally, there is the looming rollover of commercial mortgage-backed securities, which will double in the next three years, hitting $59.7 billion in 2012.
Even if most of the debt does get refinanced, companies may have to pay more, if heavy government borrowing causes rates for all borrowers to rise.
“These are huge numbers,” said Tom Atteberry, who manages $5.6 billion in bonds for First Pacific Advisors, and is particularly alarmed by Washington’s borrowing. “Other players will get crowded out or have to pay significantly more, because the government is borrowing so much.”
- From Prophecy News Watch
US researchers postulate Israeli tactical nuclear strike on Iran
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From Debka
Scenarios of a potential Israeli attack on Iran – usually without Washington’s assent – abound in leading US media in the last 24 hours. They contrast sharply with the impression Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been trying to convey to the public that he and President Barack Obama were of one mind on the Iranian question when they talked at the White House last Tuesday, March 23, but the president wanted more Israeli concessions to get talks restarted with the Palestinians.
debkafile’s military sources point in particular to the work of two eminent experts on Iran’s nuclear program, Anthony Cordesman and American-Jordanian Abdullah Toqan for the Washington Institute for Strategic Affairs, who report the belief in some American military circles that “…nuclear weapons are the only weapons that can destroy targets deep underground or in tunnels…”
The quote was embodied in a 208-page report published Friday, March 26 under the heading: Options in Dealing with Iran’s Nuclear Program.They explain that because of the limited scale of its air and missile forces, Israel would resort to “using these [nuclear] warheads as a substitute for conventional weapons, given the difficulty its jets would face in reaching Iran for anything more than a one-off sortie.”
Our sources note that in July 2009, the two researchers (in a 114-page report) maintained that the Israeli Air Force possessed the aircraft and resources for striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. This view disputed the estimates generally current Washington at the time. Then, too, Cordesman and Toqan were of the opinion that it was not necessary to hit scores of targets to cripple Iran’s nuclear bomb program: Seven to nine sites would suffice.
Our Iranian sources report that Tehran ran off thousands of copies of that report for distribution among its intelligence and Revolutionary Guards commanders, who were told to study every word, photo and map. Iran’s rulers took the work as seriously as though they had scooped a top-secret Israeli plan of operation.
In their latest work, the two researchers find that “”Ballistic missiles or submarine-launched cruise missiles [such as those with which Israeli Dolphin submarines are armed] could serve for Israeli tactical nuclear strikes without interference from Iranian air defenses.”
Saturday, March 27, the day after the Cordesman-Toqan paper was published, The New York Times revealed:
“… international inspectors and Western intelligence agencies say they suspect that Tehran is preparing to build [two] more sites,” six months after its secret enrichment plant was discovered in Qom.The report goes on to say: “The most compelling circumstantial evidence… is that while Iran appears to be making new equipment to enrich uranium, that equipment is not showing up in the main plant that inspectors visit regularly [at Natanz or at Qom.]”
Small manufacturing factories spread around Iran to avoid detection and sabotage “are a particular target of American, Israeli and European intelligence agencies,” some of which have been penetrated,” the report says. Iran “has encountered difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges, the machines that spin at very high speeds to enrich uranium.”
Then, Sunday, March 28, The New York Times followed up with proposed scenario, captioned: “Imagining an Israeli Strike on Iran,” based on a simulation exercise conducted last December by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Its main point is that if Israel goes ahead with this attack, using a refueling base set up in the Saudi desert without Saudi knowledge, Washington will essentially tell its leaders they have “made a mess,” and instruct them “to sit in a corner while the United States tries to clean things up.”
The exercise does not indicate how the US will clean things up, whether diplomatically or militarily – or both – or just concentrate on keeping the Gulf oil nations safe from Iranian retaliation.
Iran next defies warnings and fires missiles at Israel, including its nuclear center at Dimona, with minimal damage and casualties – the strategy being “to mount low-level attacks on Israel while portraying the United States as a paper tiger…”
debkafile’s sources infer from this simulated war game that the Americans believe that, aside from the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear facilities, Israel and Iran will try and use their conflict to manipulate US policy.
The next stage would be for Hizballah to fire up to 100 rockets a day into northern Israel, following which Israel would launch a 48-hour campaign by air and special forces against Lebanon to destroy Hizbalah’s military strength.
The games simulators then predict an Iranian attack on the Saudi oil industry center at Dahran with conventional missiles, mining the Strait of Hormuz and damaging US oil shipping.
At that point, Washington will embark on a massive reinforcement of the Gulf region. It is clear that the US will then aim at destroying all Iranian, air, ground and sea targets in and around the Strait of Hormuz to inflict a “significant defeat” on Iran’s forces.
The game is projected to end eight days after the initial Israeli strike.
- From Prophecy News Watch
With U.S.-Israel ties strained, Obama may make bold move to push Middle East Peace Process
From McclatchyDC.Com
After 14 months of frustration over the moribund Mideast peace process and nearly three weeks of open confrontation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Barack Obama shows no sign of backing down — and may be about to double his bets.
The clash began when Vice President Joe Biden visited Jerusalem on March 9 and Israel announced construction of 1,600 new apartments for Jews in disputed East Jerusalem. Biden condemned the decision, and Obama’s top aides publicly dressed down Netanyahu for a step they called “insulting.”
Hoping to capitalize on Israel’s embarrassment, the administration sought concessions on Jewish settlements and other issues to set the stage for renewed talks with the Palestinians.
That, too, didn’t work. This past week, first Obama, then his aides held closed talks with Netanyahu at the White House for two days running. No reporter was allowed near the talks, no joint appearances were made and no statements were released afterward.
An Israeli newspaper commented that Netanyahu had been treated as if he were the leader of Equatorial Guinea.
Obama, fresh from his legislative victory on health care, is planning an attempt to turn the current disaster into a diplomatic opportunity, according to U.S. officials, former officials and diplomats.
The administration is said to be preparing a major peace initiative that would be Obama’s most direct involvement in the conflict to date, and would go far beyond the tentative, indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks that were torpedoed earlier in the month.
“It is crystallizing that we have to do something now. That this can’t go on this way,” said one of the officials who, like the others, wouldn’t speak for the record because of the issue’s sensitivity.
Because of the U.S. political calendar, Obama has limited time to press Israel before it becomes a major domestic political issue during midterm elections. Netanyahu, who this weekend confered with his closest allies, has limited political space in which to operate, if he wants to stay in power.
His coalition at home is populated with Israeli politicians who support Jewish settlements in the West Bank, oppose any concessions on Jerusalem and are skeptical of an independent Palestinian state next door.
One irony of the current confrontation is that the administration, which had laboriously organized indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians, had planned to use Biden’s visit to provide “strategic reassurance” to Israel, in hopes of improving relations with the closest U.S. ally in the Middle East after a year of strains.
Now, trust between the two sides seems to be at a very low ebb.
“There’s not a great deal of trust that he believes deeply in the two-state solution,” a former senior U.S. official in touch with the White House said of Netanyahu. “There’s a belief that he’s a reluctant peacemaker here.”
The Obama administration is said to believe that Netanyahu has more control over Jewish settlements than he admits, and political flexibility to dump his right-wing partners and form a government with the moderate Kadima party if he chose.
“Fundamentally, he’s going to have to decide between his coalition and his relationship with the United States,” the former official said.
From the day of his inauguration and his first major appointment — former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine as his special Middle East envoy, efforts by Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mitchell have been a study in frustration.
Netanyahu turned aside a U.S. demand last year for a comprehensive settlement freeze, offering a 10-month moratorium that excluded East Jerusalem. Even under President George W. Bush, whose interest was episodic, Israeli and Palestinian leaders held direct talks. Obama has struggled just to start “proximity talks,” in which U.S. mediators would shuttle between the two sides.
So American anger was white-hot when the March 9 announcement left the proximity talks stillborn.
Mitchell, who labored for months during frequent Mideast shuttles “is a patient man. . . . but this has to be aggravating,” one State Department official said.
Senior U.S. officials are said to debate whether the unveiling of the 1,600 new apartments at Ramat Shlomo was a deliberate attempt by Netanyahu to avoid peace negotiations, or merely symptomatic of his tenuous control over his own government. The Interior Ministry is run by the ultra-orthodox Shas party.
Either conclusion bodes poorly for Obama’s attempts at diplomacy. Israeli officials say Netanyahu was as blindsided by the announcement as Biden was.
On Friday, March 12, Clinton and Netanyahu spoke by phone in a tense conservation, in which the secretary of state relayed U.S. anger at the move in Ramat Shlomo. She demanded that Israel take steps to revive hopes for peace.
The U.S. government has declined to list them, but they’re said to include an end to provocative moves in East Jerusalem; removing checkpoints and otherwise easing conditions on the West Bank; and agreeing to immediately negotiate core disputes with the Palestinians.
Clinton and Netanyahu were both keenly aware that they were scheduled to speak on March 22 in Washington at the annual conference of the powerful Jewish-American lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Netanyahu called Clinton, who was in Moscow, on March 18 and delivered his response to the American demands. Israeli officials say he insisted that the Palestinians had to make concessions too, not just Israel.
Publicly, the administration moved to tone down the rhetoric, and meetings were arranged with Clinton and Obama, who had canceled an Asia trip to be in Washington for the health care vote.
Netanyahu’s speech at AIPAC gave no ground. He declared: “Jerusalem is not a settlement; it’s our capital” and described a limited U.S. role in the peace talks. The next morning, he went to Capitol Hill, where Democrats and Republicans alike showered him with promises of support for Israel.
It looked for a moment like the Israeli prime minister had weathered the storm.
At the White House, however, distrust of Netanyahu ran deep. Maps were prepared, showing how Israel had all but encircled Jerusalem’s Old City with Jewish settlements and even religious theme parks — “facts on the ground” that would preclude a peace deal. Palestinians also claim the city as their capital.
By all accounts, the White House meetings went badly, both in substance and tone, as the Obama team pressed Netanyahu to make concessions on Jewish settlements and other issues. Netanyahu balked at some of the requests, which the administration hasn’t made public.
Now, the ball is in his court.
- From Prophecy News Watch
With U.S.-Israel ties strained, Obama may make bold move to push Middle East Peace Process
After 14 months of frustration over the moribund Mideast peace process and nearly three weeks of open confrontation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Barack Obama shows no sign of backing down — and may be about to double his bets.
The clash began when Vice President Joe Biden visited Jerusalem on March 9 and Israel announced construction of 1,600 new apartments for Jews in disputed East Jerusalem. Biden condemned the decision, and Obama’s top aides publicly dressed down Netanyahu for a step they called “insulting.”
Hoping to capitalize on Israel’s embarrassment, the administration sought concessions on Jewish settlements and other issues to set the stage for renewed talks with the Palestinians.
That, too, didn’t work. This past week, first Obama, then his aides held closed talks with Netanyahu at the White House for two days running. No reporter was allowed near the talks, no joint appearances were made and no statements were released afterward.
An Israeli newspaper commented that Netanyahu had been treated as if he were the leader of Equatorial Guinea.
Obama, fresh from his legislative victory on health care, is planning an attempt to turn the current disaster into a diplomatic opportunity, according to U.S. officials, former officials and diplomats.
The administration is said to be preparing a major peace initiative that would be Obama’s most direct involvement in the conflict to date, and would go far beyond the tentative, indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks that were torpedoed earlier in the month.
“It is crystallizing that we have to do something now. That this can’t go on this way,” said one of the officials who, like the others, wouldn’t speak for the record because of the issue’s sensitivity.
Because of the U.S. political calendar, Obama has limited time to press Israel before it becomes a major domestic political issue during midterm elections. Netanyahu, who this weekend confered with his closest allies, has limited political space in which to operate, if he wants to stay in power.
His coalition at home is populated with Israeli politicians who support Jewish settlements in the West Bank, oppose any concessions on Jerusalem and are skeptical of an independent Palestinian state next door.
One irony of the current confrontation is that the administration, which had laboriously organized indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians, had planned to use Biden’s visit to provide “strategic reassurance” to Israel, in hopes of improving relations with the closest U.S. ally in the Middle East after a year of strains.
Now, trust between the two sides seems to be at a very low ebb.
“There’s not a great deal of trust that he believes deeply in the two-state solution,” a former senior U.S. official in touch with the White House said of Netanyahu. “There’s a belief that he’s a reluctant peacemaker here.”
The Obama administration is said to believe that Netanyahu has more control over Jewish settlements than he admits, and political flexibility to dump his right-wing partners and form a government with the moderate Kadima party if he chose.
“Fundamentally, he’s going to have to decide between his coalition and his relationship with the United States,” the former official said.
From the day of his inauguration and his first major appointment — former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine as his special Middle East envoy, efforts by Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mitchell have been a study in frustration.
Netanyahu turned aside a U.S. demand last year for a comprehensive settlement freeze, offering a 10-month moratorium that excluded East Jerusalem. Even under President George W. Bush, whose interest was episodic, Israeli and Palestinian leaders held direct talks. Obama has struggled just to start “proximity talks,” in which U.S. mediators would shuttle between the two sides.
So American anger was white-hot when the March 9 announcement left the proximity talks stillborn.
Mitchell, who labored for months during frequent Mideast shuttles “is a patient man. . . . but this has to be aggravating,” one State Department official said.
Senior U.S. officials are said to debate whether the unveiling of the 1,600 new apartments at Ramat Shlomo was a deliberate attempt by Netanyahu to avoid peace negotiations, or merely symptomatic of his tenuous control over his own government. The Interior Ministry is run by the ultra-orthodox Shas party.
Either conclusion bodes poorly for Obama’s attempts at diplomacy. Israeli officials say Netanyahu was as blindsided by the announcement as Biden was.
On Friday, March 12, Clinton and Netanyahu spoke by phone in a tense conservation, in which the secretary of state relayed U.S. anger at the move in Ramat Shlomo. She demanded that Israel take steps to revive hopes for peace.
The U.S. government has declined to list them, but they’re said to include an end to provocative moves in East Jerusalem; removing checkpoints and otherwise easing conditions on the West Bank; and agreeing to immediately negotiate core disputes with the Palestinians.
Clinton and Netanyahu were both keenly aware that they were scheduled to speak on March 22 in Washington at the annual conference of the powerful Jewish-American lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Netanyahu called Clinton, who was in Moscow, on March 18 and delivered his response to the American demands. Israeli officials say he insisted that the Palestinians had to make concessions too, not just Israel.
Publicly, the administration moved to tone down the rhetoric, and meetings were arranged with Clinton and Obama, who had canceled an Asia trip to be in Washington for the health care vote.
Netanyahu’s speech at AIPAC gave no ground. He declared: “Jerusalem is not a settlement; it’s our capital” and described a limited U.S. role in the peace talks. The next morning, he went to Capitol Hill, where Democrats and Republicans alike showered him with promises of support for Israel.
It looked for a moment like the Israeli prime minister had weathered the storm.
At the White House, however, distrust of Netanyahu ran deep. Maps were prepared, showing how Israel had all but encircled Jerusalem’s Old City with Jewish settlements and even religious theme parks — “facts on the ground” that would preclude a peace deal. Palestinians also claim the city as their capital.
By all accounts, the White House meetings went badly, both in substance and tone, as the Obama team pressed Netanyahu to make concessions on Jewish settlements and other issues. Netanyahu balked at some of the requests, which the administration hasn’t made public.
Now, the ball is in his court.
- From Prophecy News Watch
Some Truths About America’s Anti-Racist History: Portraying the Japanese in World War Two Films Posted: 27 Mar 2010 02:57 PM PDT
Some Truths About America’s Anti-Racist History: Portraying the Japanese in World War Two Films
Posted: 27 Mar 2010 02:57 PM PDT
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By Barry Rubin
This year, my son—who is attending the fourth grade at an American public school—has been subjected to an unending barrage of anti-Americanism, especially around the issue of racism. For some reason the main focus is alleged American racism toward the Japanese in World War Two. In addition, literally not a single positive word has been spoken about America during the entire school year.
At the same time, I have been watching a number of American films about the Pacific theatre during World War Two, not seeking them out but merely because they have been shown on television. The controversy over Tom Hanks’ statement and his new series on that war has added to the interest.
One thing very clear to me is that American films about the Pacific theatre are remarkably free of vicious or “racialist” incitement. On the contrary, it is remarkable how restrained they are. In many films that focus on combat—say, “Wake Island” or “They Were Expendable,” among them–there little talk about the Japanese at all, much less any demonizing of them. They are an enemy who is being fought and, if possible, killed, but there is no racialist message.
Another film, “Bataan,” (1943) showsout Americans and Filipinos fighting together in the early days of the war. The two allies are seen interacting on a basis of equality. Remember that Japanese are not a race and World War Two American stereotypes of other Asians—especially Filipinos and Chinese—are quite sympathetic. About the only characterization of the Japanese in this film is that while hated as foes the American soldiers describe them as very brave and skilled soldiers.
In “Thirty Seconds over Tokyo,” about the first American air raid on Japan, led by Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, there is one remarkable exchange in which a flier says that Americans should not be prejudiced against the Japanese people as a whole. He says that his family employed a Japanese gardener who was a pretty nice guy. While today this might be portrayed as patronizing, the context was that Japanese were human beings like everyone else.
Incidentally, when the plane crews crash land in China, their lives are saved by heroic Chinese, shown as defending themselves against Japanese aggression. They risk their own lives and give of their few possessions to help save Americans. Asians are thus portrayed very favorably.
If you want to see a film that expresses the American self-conception at the time, try “The Human Comedy” (1943), written by the Armenian-American Californian William Saroyan. Many now consider the film embarrassingly sentimental and corny. But it is actually quite noble. (I’d love to see this film being shown as representative of how Americans thought–or at least the standard they set for themselves–during those days.
Mickey Rooney plays a boy working at the telegraph office in a California town who watches his brother go off to war. But he has to deliver telegrams telling families that their sons are killed, wounded, or missing. There is a moving scene when he has to do so to a Mexican-American family (treated very sympathetically) and a truly remarkable one when his boss is driving through the park past all the different ethnic versions of July 4 celebrations, pointing them out as examples of American pluralism. I believe that in a scene of American soldiers heading east on a troop train, there are a couple of Asian-Americans in uniform, though no one remarks on the fact. This film should be mandatory viewing for public school students today to know that their ancestors weren’t neo-Nazi skinheads.
Especially interesting is the 1944 film, “Destination Tokyo.” It’s about an American submarine crew given a mission to sneak into Tokyo Bay with a Japanese-speaking American officer to gather intelligence for the raid mentioned above. So how did this wartime movie, chosen pretty much at random, deal with the Japanese? Is it an example of American racism and chauvinism, like schoolkids are taught nowadays?
There are two scenes in which the Japanese come up and they are both pretty remarkable. Remember the war was at its height when this film was made. In the first scene, the submarine is passing through the Aleutian islands when it is attacked by two Japanese planes. It shoots both of them down—perhaps an unreasonable amount of heroics but necessary to the plot since the mission would have to be cancelled if they are spotted.
One of the Japanese pilots parachutes and the captain orders him to be taken aboard for questioning. I think this is most unrealistic since they couldn’t go on a long mission with a Japanese officer on board. If it had happened in real life, they probably would have done nothing and he would have been dead of hypothermia in those icy waters within a few minutes.
But following orders, Mike, one of the most popular crew members, tries to pull him aboard. The pilot stabs him to death and is immediately machinegunned. This is not unrealistic since Japanese soldiers—especially officers—rarely surrendered and did use such tactics on many occasions.
At any rate, this could have been the basis for a real hate-Japanese diatribe. Instead, though, the speeches made by a crew member and by the captain (played by Cary Grant) to the crew are remarkable.
One crewman, who has earlier made clear his ethnic pride in being a Greek, to which he then proudly adds, “Greek American,” (in the kind of American pluralist statement so common in wartime films), doesn’t attend the funeral. The other crew members are angry at him but he explains that he doesn’t think he’s earned the right to do so because he hasn’t made any contribution to avenging those already dead. Back in Greece, he recounts, his uncle, a professor, was killed by the Nazis:
“Because he had brains. Because everybody’s got to be their slave and those who won’t, like my uncle, they kill….So I don’t forget my uncle. I read where an American flier gets killed and I think of my uncle. I see pictures of little Chinese kids getting bombed and I think of my uncle. I hear about a Russian guerrilla getting hanged and I think about my uncle. And I see Mike lying in there dead from a Jap killer and I think of my uncle.”
Again, many would see this as contrived and mawkish but it is hardly a chauvinistic American rant. His inclusion of the Chinese, who like the Japanese are Asians, makes it pretty PC by any standards. It also points out once again the very strong pro-Chinese feeling in the United States at the time. Overall, it wasn’t a bad way to explain the war in both terms of freedom and human connections.
A short time later, the captain says:
“Mike was with me on my first patrol. I was his friend. I know his family….I remember Mike’s pride when he bought his first roller skates for his little five-year-old boy….Well that Jap got a present, too, when he was five, a dagger….The Japs have a ceremony that goes with it….At thirteen he can put a machine-gun together blindfolded . So as I see it, that Jap was started on the road twenty years ago to putting a knife in Mike’s back. There are lots of Mikes dying now, and lots more will die. Until we put a stop to a system that puts knives in the hands of five-year-old children. You know, if Mike were here to put it into words right now that’s just about what he died for: more roller-skates in this world, including some for the next generation of Japanese kids because that’s the kind of a man Mike was.”
This isn’t a sophisticated lecture on the samurai class. The machine-gun part is silly, of course. But what does the speech say? That a terrible system in Japan has created people who inevitably act in a certain way and that this system must be democratized, not only for America’s sake but for that of the Japanese as well so that they can enjoy a better life.
This is a remarkable prophecy of the post-war American occupation policy and successful transformation of Japan. Such sentiments are the opposite of a racist interpretation, which sees such behavior as innate and certainly doesn’t care about the lives of the enemy. One can’t help thinking of parallels in a system which teaches children to become suicide bombers today, programming them to hate and to want to commit genocide.
Yet there is even more here. While racism–mainly against those of African descent–was long a terrible feature of American life, there are powerful counter-ideas also in American history. Americans believed that people were not merely the outcome of innate, genetic determinism. What better description of the American world view is there to say that a peasant, the descendant of generations of peasants, could get off the boat and become a prosperous and respected citizen? And there would be little or no prejudice against the children of those immigrants because of their background.
True, each new wave of immigrants was hazed, and those from Africa faced by far the longest and greatest mistreatment. Yet ultimately it was because racism was contrary to the American system and world view that it could not survive.
Returning to the film, in a later scene, the captain asks the intelligence officer about Japanese society. While the conversation may not be accurate, it is also explicitly anti-racialist. The officer explains that there was a democratic movement in Japan but the leaders were assassinated. The people have no power and are downtrodden, “No unions, no free press, nothing.” Most of them “believe what they’re told. They’ve been sold a swindle and they accept it.” it is explained that Japanese people live in appalling poverty in a way that stirs sympathy for them and that “females are useful there only to work and have children.”
Again, it is not that the Japanese are innately evil or inferior but merely that the people have been deprived of rights. They, too, are victims. There were heroic Japanese who wanted democracy but they were repressed. Note also that the oppression of women is an important issue, like today, in the mix which is said to make for an authoritarian society.
Of course, this is the Hollywood version of events, not what was going on in the field. But that’s precisely the point. This was the kind of thing Americans in their millions were being told: hate the Japanese as an enemy but not as a people or as a “race.” And, again, a very clear differentiation was being made among Asians based on nationality.
I’m not saying that these films are great art necessarily or accurate about how the war was fought. But inasmuch as there is an ideological statement in them, it is something Americans today can be proud of and it is also evidence that the rewriting of American history into a series of hate crimes is a lie.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
NY Times Defends Obama, Not U.S. Interests; Blames Israel, Not White House or Palestinians For All Problems
NY Times Defends Obama, Not U.S. Interests; Blames Israel, Not White House or Palestinians For All Problems
Posted: 27 Mar 2010 11:56 PM PDT
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By Barry Rubin
The New York Times has now crossed the line from being a grossly slanted newspaper in its Middle East coverage to being one so partisan, blinkered, and defensive as to lose its value altogether. I do not write this lightly and have no wish to exaggerate. But the newspaper’s editorial of March 26 is so mendacious, so made up to suit the political purposes of the Obama administration without any reference to the facts that it is a work of politically tailored fiction.
Basically, the themes or omissions are as follows:
–Israeli policy is the result of extreme right-wing politicians.
–Most Israelis support Obama rather than their own government.
–The U.S.-Israel agreement of last October never existed.
–The Palestinians don’t exist and one doesn’t need to mention their actions or the administration’s total catering to them.
–Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done something so awful that it proves he doesn’t want peace. What did he do? Precisely what he told the U.S. government he was going to do five months ago and which they then called a major step toward peace!
The goal is to portray the issue as not being Obama versus Israel but rather Obama plus the Israeli majority against a relatively small number of extremists who have hijacked the country.
If only such tactics were used against America’s enemies.
Unfortunately, it is necessary to discuss this editorial in detail. It begins:
“After taking office last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel privately told many Americans and Europeans that he was committed to and capable of peacemaking, despite the hard-line positions that he had used to get elected for a second time. Trust me, he told them. We were skeptical when we first heard that, and we’re even more skeptical now.”
Netanyahu not only said this privately but also publicly, as is clear in the official Israeli government peace plan about which the Times has never even informed its readers. Here it is. Moreover, this government is not merely one of Netanyahu but also of Labour Party leader Ehud Barak and former-Labour leader Shimon Peres who was also in Kadima.
The story being set up is that the problem is that Netanyahu is neither committed nor capable of making peace. The Times is clearly never skeptical about the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership. But what has Netanyahu done to demonstrate such a thing? There was no problem before the recent crisis, set off by the announcement that a plan to build apartments in Jerusalem—still years off—had passed one more of seven stages toward approval.
It bears repeating over and over again that last October, Netanyahu reached a deal with the Obama Administration: No construction on the West Bank; construction to continue in Jerusalem. In addition, the White House agreed that this ban would be limited to nine months. The obvious concept was that the U.S. government was wagering that it could produce either enough progress on talks, benefits to Israel, or both that it could persuade Israel’s government to extend that freeze. Netanyahu never broke that agreement, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed as a great step toward peace.
So has Netanyahu done something horrible or is this a largely fabricated crisis?
“All this week, the Obama administration had hoped Mr. Netanyahu would give it something to work with, a way to resolve the poisonous contretemps over Jerusalem and to finally restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. It would have been a relief if they had succeeded. Serious negotiations on a two-state solution are in all their interests. And the challenges the United States and Israel face — especially Iran’s nuclear program — are too great for the leaders not to have a close working relationship.”
The Times was not dismayed by the fact that the PA refused to negotiate between January 2009 and February 2010, and then only indirectly agreed to do so. Unless I missed it, there hasn’t been one word of editorial criticism of the PA at all. In fact, the newspaper said not a single word regarding the PA’s sabotage of Obama’s call for negotiations last September.
What the second paragraph disguises is that the Obama Administration made a major new demand on Israel’s government: all construction to stop permanently after it had already accepted a compromise on the issue. This is not just “something to work with,” but rather a maximalist demand for something no Israeli government has ever given.
“But after a cabinet meeting on Friday, Mr. Netanyahu and his right-wing government still insisted that they would not change their policy of building homes in the city, including East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope to make the capital of an independent state.”
Again, there is no mention of the PA giving anything on any subject; this issue doesn’t even exist according to the Times. As noted above this is not merely a “right-wing government,” but the story is being set up to suggest that Obama is the true leader of Israel.
“President Obama made pursuing a peace deal a priority and has been understandably furious at Israel’s response. He correctly sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a factor in wider regional instability.”
In January, Obama announced that he felt it unlikely he could make serious progress on peace. Presumably this was a result of PA behavior as well. From that moment, it was clear that a peace deal was no longer a priority; again a point the Times does not even suggested.
“Mr. Netanyahu’s government provoked the controversy two weeks ago when it disclosed plans for 1,600 new housing units in an ultra-orthodox neighborhood in East Jerusalem just as Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. was on a fence-mending visit and Israeli-Palestinian “proximity talks” were to begin.”
It is interesting to note that the reason there were proximity talks only was that while Netanyahu called for direct negotiations (as had Obama last September), the PA rejected them. Moreover, Israelis know that it was not “Netanyahu’s government” but a low-level commission that announced the plans without clearing it with the prime minister. Even Israeli journalists who are strongly opposed to Netanyahu have made this point, which the Times ignores.
“Last year, Mr. Netanyahu rejected Mr. Obama’s call for a freeze on all settlement building. On Tuesday — just before Mr. Obama hosted Mr. Netanyahu at the White House — Israeli officials revealed plans to build 20 units in the Shepherd Hotel compound of East Jerusalem.”
While it is technically true that Netanyahu did not accept the freeze on all building—“settlement building” makes it sound (and no doubt many Times’ readers falsely believe—that new settlements are being constructed—it is also true that the Obama Administration accepted a compromise.
Let me give an analogy. You demand that I give you $100,000 to buy a property. I counter-offer $75,000. You accept it and publicly brag about what a great deal it is. A few months later you angrily announce that I rejected your proposal.
That is very close to the current situation.
“Palestinians are justifiably worried that these projects nibble away at the land available for their future state. The disputes with Israel have made Mr. Obama look weak and have given Palestinians and Arab leaders an excuse to walk away from the proximity talks (in which Mr. Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, would shuttle between Jerusalem and Ramallah) that Washington nurtured.”
Well, why should they worry if they can negotiate a deal? And if they are worried shouldn’t this make them more eager to reach a deal before ore is “nibbled” away. Remember, by the way, we are talking about a piece of land approximately four city blocks over the pre-1967 border in an uninhabited place.
But the best point of the paragraph is that the Times is shocked! Shocked! That this makes Obama look weak! How many things has Obama done in the Middle East to look weak? (To save space and because I know you can give a list, I won’t spend a page outlining them.) Yet on what single occasion has the Times been upset about this?
“Mr. Obama was right to demand that Mr. Netanyahu repair the damage. Details of their deliberately low-key White House meeting (no photos, no press, not even a joint statement afterward) have not been revealed. We hope Israel is being pressed to at least temporarily halt building in East Jerusalem as a sign of good faith. Jerusalem’s future must be decided in negotiations.”
Yes on the last sentence. But the announcement that in a few years Israel might start building some apartment buildings doesn’t decide Jerusalem’s future. If the PA offers a good deal then why should the presence of plans to build apartments—or even existing apartments—stop it? But that’s what this is mostly about: Trying to reach a deal which does not require the PA to give up anything it doesn’t want to, which means giving up nothing at all
“The administration should also insist that proximity talks, once begun, grapple immediately with core issues like borders and security, not incidentals. And it must ensure that the talks evolve quickly to direct negotiations — the only realistic format for an enduring agreement.”
This, too, is profoundly dishonest. Direct talks have been going along for most of the last 18 years. They were derailed first by the PA walk-out (over a war in Gaza begun by Hamas) and then by the Obama Administration’s own demand—beyond the PA’s demands—for the construction freeze.
There is no hint that the lack of talks doesn’t rest on Israel, with the possible exception of the last week though even this could have been finessed. Suppose Obama had said to Netanyahu: Please announce that there are no imminent plans to build these apartments and denounce the announcement as unauthorized by you. Things could have been worked out and indirect talks restarted.
Now the Administration’s explosion has put them off for months at least. After all, why should the PA, smiling as the U.S. government bashes Israel, relieve the pressure on Israel’s government? Especially since they don’t want to negotiate any way and they know the U.S. government won’t make them do so?
“Many Israelis find Mr. Obama’s willingness to challenge Israel unsettling. We find it refreshing that he has forced public debate on issues that must be debated publicly for a peace deal to happen. He must also press Palestinians and Arab leaders just as forcefully.”
Notice how the one sentence comes in at the end about how Obama must press Palestinians and Arabs. But there is not a single specific, nor any discussion of how the lack of balance in itself is damaging. Yet even the premise is flatly wrong: must there be a public debate now on a permanent end for Israel construction as the main and sole condition for reaching a peace deal? I could name a dozen other issues, including the PA’s failure to comply with its commitments on a daily basis.
Finally:
“Questions from Israeli hard-liners and others about his commitment to Israel’s security are misplaced. The question is whether Mr. Netanyahu is able or willing to lead his country to a peace deal. He grudgingly endorsed the two-state solution. Does he intend to get there?”
Notice that the editorial does not speak of questions from Israelis but from “hard-liners and others,” implying—while still covering itself in language—that only some kind of extremist might question Obama’s commitment. Again, a long list of reasons for questioning that commitment could be made.
But again what has happened to make the question Netanyahu’s ability or willingness to make a peace deal. Here are the total charges against him: The announcement of building a set of apartments, for which he apologized, and another regarding 20 additional apartments.
It’s not as if he and his colleagues daily broadcast incitement to murder people on the other side through schools, sermons, and speeches. It’s not as if they refused to negotiate at all month after month. It’s not as if they released or did not incarcerate extremists who murdered civilians on the other side. (Actually they did release prisoners who murdered civilians but they were Palestinian prisoners who murdered Israelis.) It’s not as if they don’t even control half the territory for which they purport to bargain.
Those are all characteristics of the PA, things the Times does not even mention. This editorial is not merely slanted; it is so profoundly dishonest, distorting both the Palestinian and the Obama Administration role, as to be suitable to that published in a state-controlled newspaper in a dictatorship.
Once–and perhaps again in the not-distant future–the U.S.-Israel link was called a “special relationship” because it was so close. Now it is still distinctive in a special way: Israel is the only country in the world–a list that includes none of those countries sponsoring anti-American terror or trying to destroy U.S. interests–that this administration, perhaps only temporarily, wants to intimidate and defeat.
But is this all about Israel or is it about the desperation to defend an administration which has failed so badly and acted so erratically in foreign policy?
By so misrepresenting the facts and situation, some media can go on defending Obama’s policies and actions. But that’s no way to defend America and its interests, quite the contrary
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Cultivation of Prayer Life – Daily Meditations for Prayer
From Daily Meditations for Prayer
“The cultivation of prayer life is one of the greatest essentials to highest spiritual development.
To know how to pray aright is one of the highest Christian attainments, and should be one of the dominating aims of every Christian heart.
The clearest knowledge of the nature and privilege and power of prayer will not be reached, however, without earnest special study of the subject, nor without the exercise of prayer according to this fuller knowledge. This book is intended to help the believer to a better understanding of the place God intended prayer to have among men, and to help make the believer’s prayer life a joy and a power. [Daily Meditations for Prayer].
The book is a compilation of the best thoughts on prayer collected from the writings of over sixty of the most eminent Christian men and women, – men and women who have been noted for their faith and consecration and power in prayer. These writers have recorded their own experiences, and the lessons they have themselves learned in the school of prayer, and what they have learned is here brought together in a daily text-book for the use of all who need just such help as these suggestive and instructive teachings afford.
The subject is a many-sided one, and in compiling these selections the aim has been to cover every phase of it. A single thought, which is usually a Scripture exposition, is presented for meditation for each day in the year. As far as possible there is a progressive development in the arrangement of the thoughts for each month, so that in the course of the year the various phases of this great subject are presented several times, and always from some new point of view.
A reference to the index will reveal how great is the variety of these practical portions for the prayer life, and how helpful the book may be to those who will use it as a daily text-book on prayer.
May God’s people everywhere come to a fuller realization and appreciation of the importance and inestimable privilege of prayer, and learn so to pray as to greatly increase the efficiency and usefulness of the church of Jesus Christ among men.” – Daily Meditations for Prayer.
See “Verse of the Day” for daily excerpts from the aforementioned book, and God willing, you too can partake from the Divine Table of God, and not merely eat of the crumbs which are dropped recklessly from the table.
