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Terror Attack Near Hebron: Not An Incident But a Revelation About What’s Happening
Posted: 01 Sep 2010 02:40 PM PDT
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By Barry Rubin
An isolated fragment of news, a tragic story, or just another act of terrorism? What’s necessary, however, is to fit events into a broader picture and so it is with the latest attack by Hamas, killing four Israelis driving near Hebron.
What does this mean? What’s it all about? It’s a signal, timed for the restart of direct negotiations, that Hamas will subvert by terror any progress toward Israel-Palestinian peace. Hamas said so explicitly, calling the attack as also being against those “led astray by the illusion of negotiations” and reminding the PA that its “natural choice…is jihad and resistance.”
President Barack Obama called the attack “senseless slaughter” against which the United States would “push back.”
But terrorism is hardly “senseless.” On the contrary, it is part of a very sensible strategy that often works in its shorter-term goals.
And how can Obama say the U.S. government is going to “push back” since only a few weeks ago he handed a huge victory to the organizer of this attack, Hamas, by pressuring Israel into reducing sanctions on the Gaza Strip while himself granting about $300 million to pay salaries (through the PA) to civil servants in Gaza who implement Hamas’s policies?
The U.S. government also forgot its former policy of making things tough in the Gaza Strip so that the “moderation” of the West Bank looked better and more beneficial. Now the idea is to promote prosperity in the Gaza Strip so that for some reason–I can’t imagine why–the populace will turn against Hamas.
But here are scenes of Hamas supporters celebrating the attack. They have nothing to worry about, since they know that Western governments and other international forces will block Israeli retaliation against the terrorist group, while now there are no restrictions on non-military goods coming into the Gaza Strip. And if Hamas stages ten more attacks or twenty? If it fires rockets and mortars into Israel or launches cross-border attacks, is there any likelihood that the United States will “push back?”
And if not, then how can America policy have any credibility or leverage?
As mediators and media talk about how peace is in everyone’s interest, this attack reminds us that it is not so clearly in the interest of the Palestinian Authority (PA) which faces massive public opposition (which it has so often fomented) against compromise, internal opposition to making any compromises (among a majority of Fatah leaders), and also the determined opposition of Hamas.
The attack signals to the Palestinian public that “resistance” is an alternative accorded much more honor and respectability even in PA propaganda and ideology. It is Hamas’s counter-campaign to show that violence is preferable. And why not? Murdering Israelis is right in the dominant Palestinian political culture, is made to seem heroic, and doesn’t carry heavy penalties either for the groups doing it or individual terrorists carrying it out.
Here’s one more proof. The PA has just honored a Palestinian mother as a great role model. What is her claim to fame? Four sons in Israeli jails for having tried or succeeded in killing Israeli civilians. How many hundred examples would you like from the last year or two of this positive reinforcement for such deeds?
This Hebron attack also reminds Israel that the PA is unable (and in part unwilling) to stop terrorism. Thus, the creation of a Palestinian state at this time and in these circumstances would not necessarily be a solution ending the conflict but merely a new stage of cross-border attacks, official anti-Israel incitement, and growing power for Hamas and its radical allies within the Fatah group that rules the West Bank.
The radical side, both in Fatah and Hamas, will be aided by Iran, Syria, Hizballah, and revolutionary Islamist forces which this U.S. government has more often engaged than confronted. If that side appears to be winning, why shouldn’t Palestinians join or at least cheer for it?
Moreover, nowadays such acts of terrorism don’t generate real international support for Israel but often suggestions that it should make more concessions faster in order to “end” the violence. Indeed, the New York Times’s opening paragraph on the attack actually succeeded in blaming Israel as the culprit after four of its own innocent civilians are murdered:
“The killing of four Israeli settlers, including a pregnant woman, in the West Bank on Tuesday evening rattled Israeli and Palestinian leaders on the eve of peace talks in Washington and underscored the disruptive role that the issue of Jewish settlements could play in the already fragile negotiations.”
Not the disruptive role of Palestinian terrorism but of Jewish settlements! But guess what? there has been a freeze on building new settlements or geographically expanding existing ones now for 17 years. There has been a freeze on constructing new buildings on existing settlements for almost one year.
There is not now, nor apparently will there ever be, a freeze on Palestinian terrorism. Nor will the Western states demand one, by which I mean not stopping every attack but making a maximum effort to do so, truly punishing (not just for the sin of bad timing!) those involved in such attacks, and demeaning rather than extolling that behavior.
Instead, we are apparently going to see a repeat of the pattern that occurred during the 1993-2000 peace process era in which Hamas (and at times Fatah) terrorist attacks showed that negotiations heightened rather than reduced the level of violence. Peace is preferable but the idea of pressing for formal peace as a panacea is just flat wrong.
Does that mean talks, peace, or a two-state solution are bad? Not at all. But they must be conducted with eyes open, strategies clear, and policies suitably tough. Part of a proper approach would include a concerted effort to subvert Hamas and even overthrow the regime in the Gaza Strip. Instead, in recent months, Hamas has won a major victory: Western pressure on Israel to reduce sanctions to a level ensuring the long-term survival of a terrorist statelet in the Gaza Strip.
Equally, even if the PA cracks down and arrests Hamas activists on the West Bank, these people will soon be released and the organization knows that it suffers no huge or real costs for continued terrorism. The only recourse Israel has to ensuring the terrorists are punished or even properly interrogated is to launch a raid and capture them, an action impossible at present since it would be portrayed internationally as “endangering” the direct negotiations.
For its part, the PA has no interest in crushing the terrorists–who often come, after all, from its own ranks and payrolls–but in merely shutting them up for a short while to avoid blame for upsetting the talks. In the PA’s eyes, the terrorists are not guilty of a terrible crime but merely of bad timing. After all, when Fatah PA decides to launch a new intifada some day these men will be allies again.
It is revealing that the State Department’s background briefing on the direct negotiations by a senior administration official explained that Hamas will only be able to join the talks if it ceased terrorism and accepted Israel’s continued existence. There was not one word about pressures on Hamas for refusing to do so, nor on the PA for generating incitement to violence. All carrots, no sticks.
Regarding terrorism, we see the same thing. Some very nice words from Secretary of State Hilary Clinton about how terrible terrorism is and how, “The forces of terror and destruction cannot be allowed to continue.” But, in fact, U.S. policy is not doing much to stop them except arguing that diplomatic efforts toward peace will do so. And when she adds that the PA represents “those Palestinians who themselves have rejected a path of violence in favor of a path of peace.”
It is the fallacy of that statement that undermines her whole argument. The West Bank Palestinians and PA have not rejected the path of violence in principle, in fact the fact that they won’t walk down the path of peace is due both to their hopes of finding violence useful in the future and their fear that too much moderation will bring violence (from their own people whose anger and hatred they keep stoking, their more radical and rival colleagues, and Hamas) against themselves.
Again, I’m glad that the PA is far more negotiations-oriented than Hamas or the pre-1993 (Oslo agreement) PLO. Achieving a two-state outcome to the conflict is also clearly the diplomatic road to take. Yet the way this is being done and the ideas guiding the U.S. and European approach will ensure that the whole effort is a show, not a solution.
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). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
Flash: U.S. Government Briefing: What Will Happen in Israel-PA Direct Talks
Posted: 01 Sep 2010 02:40 AM PDT
Note: This article appears on Pajamas Media. I have added here a couple of relevant links as well.
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By Barry Rubin
Prior to the start of the new round of Israel-Palestinian Authority (PA) direct negotiations, a high-ranking administration official briefed the media today on what to expect. Having read the transcript prior to its official release, I will summarize here the most interesting points.
The basic structure of the talks is as follows: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas plan to meet every two weeks, starting on September 2. There will be more frequent meetings at a lower level on various issues. The United States will watch closely but the talks will be bilateral and the U.S. side will make no formal proposals.
In the words of the briefing:
“It does not mean that the United States will simply stand aside and not participate actively. We will operate in a manner that is reasonable and sensible in the circumstances which exist, but the guiding principle will be an active and sustained United States presence.” The word “presence” is an alternative to the word “involvement,” signaling a role as observer at this point.
Is the idea of solving this in a year realistic? The U.S. official insists it is a “window of opportunity” (heard that one before?), citing statements by both Netanyahu and Abbas (neither of whom believes this for a moment) to that effect. If they don’t make peace now, he added, they will face “”far greater difficulties and far greater problems in the future.”
It is noteworthy that making a deal is always deemed never to pose any greater problems in the future. To set as the two choices: continuation of a long, bloody conflict or its solution bringing about total peace and happiness obviously signals which is the preferred option. In this case, both leaders would love to make a deal, right?
Of course, this is not the real world. Netanyahu has to worry not so much about domestic reaction (a real but overstated factor) but about making such concessions that Israel would be in a worse, more dangerous situation, faced round two, escalated Arab demands, and a lack of Western support no matter how much he listened to Western advice. Netanyahu has to deal also with the details of borders, most notably pertaining to east Jerusalem, and retaining a limited number of settlements near the frontier.
Abbas has an even worse problem. First, he himself doesn’t want to give up certain demands, including the “right” of return for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants to live in Israel, which would consequently (as Abbas and Netanyahu both know) would not remain Israel for more than a few months.
Second, Abbas lacks the political power to offer any solution that would conceivably be acceptable to any Israeli leader since his colleagues almost unanimously oppose such an outcome.
Third, he has not prepared his own people for such a compromise deal. On the contrary, he and the PA have been telling them daily for 16 years that Israel is illegitimate and by waiting they will get everything.
Fourth, he has no control over Hamas which will do everything possible to destroy any such agreement and overthrow the PA.
Fifth, he cannot depend on real Arab support, even if the dying Egyptian president and weak Jordanian king are present.
Sixth, he can depend on the violent opposition of Iran, Syria, Hizballah, Muslim Brotherhoods, and huge portions of the Arab world’s population.
Seventh, he and his colleagues reject almost all the Israeli conditions: that a treaty end the conflict forever, that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state, that the Palestinian state have limits on its military and cannot invite in foreign troops, and that all Palestinian refugees be resettled in Palestine. He might be able to agree to minor border changes but even that is in question.
Finally, he has an alternative strategy: ensure the talks fail, blame Israel, and seek Western support for a unilateral declaration of independence without making any compromises or concessions to Israel.
Virtually none of these eight points is ever addressed by the U.S. government or the mass media. Well, the briefing did mention one: claiming that a recent poll showed that over 80 percent of the Arabs in the six most moderate countries are “still in principle open to the two-state solution.”
This argument, by the way, is expressed with the most appalling distortions of the facts. For example, the briefer bragged that 39 percent said that a two-state solution would happen through negotiations as if this was some amazing fact. Of course that’s what they say (it’s amazing more don’t say it) because they certainly don’t think this would be the outcome of any war they won!
The briefer also said that the majority of those polled believe that if there is no two-state solution there will be conflict in the coming years. What this leaves out is: they probably believe that a two-state solution would also bring conflict and that they believe that if Israel doesn’t meet every Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim demand there can be no two-state (temporary) solution.
Moreover, the briefer left out the fact that the poll showed an astonishingly high level of support or revolutionary Islamist leaders (including Iran’s regime) and groups in the most moderate states. Here’s my analysis of the same poll.
But why go on? The ultimate argument, which really underlies all the others, is: Would you rather have us do nothing? Shouldn’t we try?
Sure, I respond. You must, however, act with a realistic and honest assessment of the situation and with the proper preparations. To stage negotiations, for example:
–Without ever pressuring the PA to stop the very incitement and radicalism that ensures there is no popular base for peace is to guarantee failure.
–To show you are ready to accept a Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip and protect it from being overthrown is to ensure there is no basis for peace.
–To fail to show strong backing for moderates—including the Lebanese independence forces—while coddling extremists is to ensure there is no strategic basis for peace.
Many more points can be added here. No, this is not the best that the United States of America could do. Yes, the talks will fail. Certainly, much of the media will pretend otherwise.
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). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
Muslims Who Don’t Want to Live Under Islamist Dictatorships Urge: Help Us By Telling The Truth
Posted: 31 Aug 2010 12:10 PM PDT
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By Barry Rubin
I constantly receive mail and contacts of various kinds from Arabs, Iranians, Pakistanis, and Turks–among others–about how much they like my writing. In fact, many of my ideas and inspiration comes from conversations with these people. You’d be surprised to hear some of the names, countries, and positions of those involved in these dialogues.
It’s a complex issue but to put it simply: those in the West may romanticize or refuse to criticize radical Islamists and Middle East dictatorships but that doesn’t exactly thrill those who live under these regimes or who fear seeing their countries being taken over by extremists who repress and maybe will kill them.
I wrote an entire book about this situation and these people, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, John Wiley Publishers (2005). That book, and other things I’ve written, explains both my tremendous sympathy for these liberals and reformers as well as why I didn’t advocate a policy based on the belief that the United States could democratize the region or solve the problems of these societies by overthrowing the ruling regimes.
During my last speaking trip, which usually focused on the battle between Islamists and nationalists, there were Arabs or Iranians present at each event who enthusiastically endorsed what I said. In one case, a Palestinian wearing a very large kafiyah sat in the front row nodding at my main points. Afterward, he explained that he was a Palestinian Authority supporter who hated Hamas and thought that group was ruining his people’s chance for ever getting their own independent state.
And don’t even get me started on Iran, where a large majority opposes the current regime, and Turkey, where an even larger majority opposes the current regime. These people, almost all of them Muslims, are anti-Islamist and prefer a democratic state. They may not be “moderate Muslims,” that is religious reformers, but they are Muslims who are moderates. They don’t respect Westerners smug in their “virtues” of being so Islamophilic, tolerant, and “pro-Arab” as to saddle the poor victimized Middle Easterners with horrible, repressive regimes and permanent violence.
Most of the people who hate and oppose revolutionary Islamism can be most accurately called conservative traditionalists. They prefer Islam as it was practiced before the age of Iran’s revolution and Usama bin Ladin. They don’t like Israel and have plenty of complaints about the West (though there are also things they like about both) but they don’t want to go to war or spend the next century seeking revenge either.
A minority of them are real democrats, courageous people who know what their countries need to do in order to get out of their current morass. The majority is just fed up with terrorism, ideology, dictatorship, economic impoverishment, social stagnation, and using Zionism or imperialism as excuses for all of the above. The Western “sympathizers” who endorse every reactionary cultural and political tendency as “authentic” do them no favors.
For example, in response to this article I wrote pointing out that the amount of hatred and incitement coming from the Muslim majority world far exceeds that in the West or Israel, I received two letters from Middle Eastern Muslim readers.
One, from an Iranian, noted: “Best article yet! keep it up!”
And another reader–presumably Iranian–writes to me as follows:
“I read your Rubin Reports with great pleasure and anticipation. I find you are among the very few Westerners who are not giving into political correctness vis-à-vis Islamic terrorism, the new fascism. The dance of appeasing Muslim radicals (or the rest) is most dangerous and will lead to diminished freedom and the end of the rule of rational law.
“I fear so much that my grandchildren will be subject to a totalitarian theocratic rule that I search for a way out of [this situation to live] in the West. There are majorities in some places in the Middle East—Iran, the prime example—who are fed up with the ideology of hate and of death and of darkness, and long for peace and freedom and happiness. We are fed up with antisemitic people and governments and we want to rescue reason from theocratic dogma.
“Thank you for what you do. I hope Westerners read your work and pay heed. The alternative is hatred, violence, and the rule of evil.”
Note the implications of those last three points;
Hatred by Islamists and radicals: Not only of the West and Israel, Christians, Jews, or Bahais, but also of Muslims who have a different interpretation of their religion or who are “too” secular, and also at times of various other groups who are Muslims (Berbers, Kurds, Shia, Sudanese Africans).
Violence: Not only against Westerners and Israelis plus local Christians but also against all of the groups mentioned in the previous paragraph plus women who deviate from what the Islamists want, homosexuals, and others.
The Rule of Evil: Not over Westerners but over those Middle Easterners (again, mostly Muslim) who live under such regimes or will be drowned in revolutions in the uture.
So, if one supports Islamists like those who rule Iran and the Gaza Strip, pro-Islamist (abroad) dictatorships like that in Syria, those who are close to ruling Lebanon, and revolutionaries who want to impose Islamist totalitarian regimes, is this “pro-Muslim” or “pro-Arab?” Presumably, it is like saying that backing the Nazis made one a friend of the German people or supporting the Stalinists proved that one loved the Russian people and those in its satellite states.
Or perhaps everyone who doesn’t want to be ruled by Iran, the Taliban, Hamas, Hizballah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other assorted dictatorships are Islamophobic or racist?
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). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
Note for Israel-PA Talks: It Wasn’t The Luck of the Irish But Effective Counter-Terrorism That Brought Peace
Posted: 30 Aug 2010 06:29 PM PDT
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By Barry Rubin
As direct Israeli-Palestinian direct talks restart it is useful to recall the use and misuse of an analogy to the case of Northern Ireland.
In October 2001, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw visited Washington and held a press conference with his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell bubbled over about how the Irish agreement supposedly showed:
“An example of what can be achieved when people of good will come together, recognize they have strong differences, differences that they have fought over for years, but it’s time to put those differences aside in order to move forward and to provide a better life for the children of Northern Ireland.”
This is the sort of naive optimism (let’s all just get along, peace is the natural order of things, everybody is really moderate at heart) that Americans so often evince. As the great French intellectual Raymond Aron once explained, “The Americans always have the tendency to believe that wars result from misunderstanding or accidents and suppose that no one could possibly want a war.”
In this case, though, Straw dumped cold water on Powell’s world view.” What he said is worth quoting fully:
“Could I just add one thing to that, if I may? Of course, negotiation is far, far better–infinitely better — than military action. As far as Northern Ireland is concerned, we welcome hugely the progress that has been made following the Good Friday Agreement. It also has to be said that before that happened, there had to be a change of approach by those who saw terrorism as the answer. And that approach partly changed because of the firmness of the military and police response to that terrorism. And if there had not been that firm response by successive British governments and others to the terrorist threat that was posed on both sides, we would not have been able to get some of those people into negotiations. We would not be marking what is a satisfactory day in the history of Northern Ireland today.”
In other words, the terrorists were defeated by tough action, saw they couldn’t win, and thus had to change their approach. Of course, in the Israel-Palestinian case, there has been no such attitude toward terrorism internationally. Hamas has been saved as the Gaza Strip’s ruler thanks to Western action; the Palestinian side has not been forced to pay the price for violence and intransigence (rejecting Camp David and the Clinton plan, launching a second intifadah, continuing incitement, etc.) and thus has been had to give up the hope of total victory and belief that violence and intransigence could bring that about.
That’s a key reason why the current talks will fail.
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). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
What Threatens Peace: A Mountain of Hate or A Few Nasty Words?
Posted: 30 Aug 2010 09:05 AM PDT
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By Barry Rubin
About twenty-five years ago I had my great success in affecting mass media coverage of the Middle East in one newspaper for one day. I had been complaining to a New York Times correspondent, who was briefly covering the Middle East beat, about the incitement, hatred, and extremism that appeared daily in the Arabic media was never mentioned in its Western counterpart.
To his credit, he came over to my office. I took a big desk and spread over it a couple of dozen issues of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), a publication with which, in those pre-paperless days, I had filled whole bookcases. If you’ve never heard of FBIS it was a daily publication from the U.S. Department of Commerce that came out in different colored editions for each region of the world. All it did was translate radio and television programs along with some important speeches. Using or not using FBIS, for me, marked the difference between a serious researcher and a dilettante.
One after the other I showed him examples of the lies, the hatred, the calls for Israel’s destruction, the screams for blood and murder, the slanders against America that appeared in the most prestigious and widely circulated and official of Arabic-language publications. Impressed, he actually wrote an article on it that appeared on the front page.
That happened once. And this was in the days when journalistic standards meant something and newspapers actually focused on publishing the news rather than ideological guidance to direct people toward believing the proper things.
Day after day throughout the Arabic-speaking world, Iran, Pakistan, and beyond, in schools and mosques, in the speeches of leaders and oppositionists, in mass media, hatred of Jews and Christians, of the West and America, rises into the air. This structural hatred has consequences. The best single sentence I’ve heard on this comes from a Saudi woman who wrote that what the big Usama bin Ladin did, the little Usama bin Ladin learned in the Saudi schools.
This massive system of hatred and extremism—known to everyone who lives in the Middle East—is largely kept hidden from the West. Why?
One reason is fear of the Islamists. In editing the two-volume Guide to Islamist Movements–a study of Islamist movements, leaders, ideas, and activities in 55 countries—I often met with the refusal of scholars to write chapters due to fear. In one case, I appealed to a professor in a small European country that he was merely being asked to write an objective scholarly overview, not to take any political positions or make any recommendations. He responded: “The local Islamists don’t look at things that way.”
Another reason is fear of their colleagues. To report on the hatred of others leads to accusations of being oneself a hater.
These are, of course, two major reasons why the Western media and politicians so downplay the issue of incitement and extremism among Muslims. But there is one more: the belief that their own people are so stupid and bigoted that they will respond to being told the truth by massive anti-Muslim pogroms. These elites believe that a public that accepts without murmur the construction of thousands of mosques is horribly intolerant because it objects to one being built at the site of the World Trade Center attack by a radical group with shadowy financing.
We don’t have reliable studies of what goes on in North American mosques because academics and journalists won’t do much beyond repeating what Muslim groups say. But we do know from infiltrators (sometimes with video tapes) or moderate Muslims that the incidence of radicalism and antisemitism among imams and activists is high. Recently, an outspoken moderate Muslim told me that he was unwelcome in all of his cities mosques. Asked to name mosques dominated by a moderate viewpoint, he could only come up with one, in a city hundreds of miles away from him.
A few years ago, I was at a secret conference on a tiny Mediterranean island. When I brought up the issue of incitement to murder Israelis in a conference, a high-ranking Palestinian (today a member of the Palestinian Authority cabinet) made a speech about how incitement was a terrible problem on both sides (not true, of course) and how he proposed a joint commission to investigate this issue. The audience applauded.
Immediately afterward, without illusions but because it seemed a neat thing to do, I went up to him and proposed that he and I form such a commission. He laughed in my face. Of course, there was not the slightest interest in doing so.
There is remarkably little hatred and bigotry in Israeli society. Of course, one can find it without doubt, but given what this country has been through it is, I repeat, remarkably small. It is not sanctioned in the mass media or the schools or in the overwhelmingly vast majority of religious institutions.
This brings us to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. A few days ago, in a sermon, Yosef reportedly said that Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas, “and all these evil people should perish from this world….God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians.”
This statement instantly became a global story. It will no doubt be used to delegitimize Israel. Yosef’s statement was also quickly condemned by the U.S. State Department in words that invite derision: “These remarks are not only deeply offensive, but incitement such as this hurts the cause of peace.”
Of course, Yosef’s statement should be condemned and no one in Israel will do anything other than condemn it. Yet as a left-of-center Israeli intellectual once put it, we have our Kahanes–referring to the extremist hater Meir Kahane–but most of the other side’s leaders are Kahanes.
What Yosef uttered, however, is a curse, not a political program. It is a call for the divine being to act, not for humans to commit terrorism. No one will praise what he said; no one will take up this as instructions to carry out violence. Ten years ago, in the midst of a massive wave of terrorism, Yosef made a parallel statement.
It is worth mentioning, which the news reports didn’t, that Yosef is currently 90 years old. The progress of senility has been clear for him during the last decade. His role in Israel has been a fascinating one. He led Sephardic Jewry to demand religious equality. He practically created a whole new Sephardic system of worship and worldview. Sadly and ironically, it imitated the more rigid Ashkenazic Haredim (European-origin Orthodox) rather than the traditionally more flexible Sephardic religious style.
Yosef also created Shas, a party which might be best thought of as a patronage group for the poorest and mainly Moroccan-origin Sephardim. Think of it as being like an old, corrupt Democratic big-city machine that provides goods and services for its constituents in return for their votes and a cut of the money. By putting them into a very bad educational system which downplays worldly skills in favor of religious ones, Shas is not doing its followers a big favor.
But Shas cannot be classified as much of the Western media portrays it, as merely a “right-wing” party. During the 1990s’ peace process, for example, Shas and Yosef advocated trading territory for peace on the religious basis of saving lives. Even now, the Shas position, for example, is that buildings should only be constructed in the limited number of settlements just across the pre-1967 border that Israel wants to claim. The party is thus supporting turning over the vast majority of the West Bank to a Palestinian state, presuming (which is doubtful) that the PA ever make Israel a good and serious offer in exchange.
What makes Crowley’s statement a joke, of course, is that the U.S. government ignores the avalanche, tsunami, tidal wave, or whatever weather-related metaphor you want, of hatred, incitement to murder, delegitimization with an aim toward genocide, and actual terrorist violence that daily spews out against Israel, and also against America itself and the Western world.
During the dozen years since the signing of the Israel-PLO agreement in 1993, it is virtually impossible to find a single–and I do mean, even just one–statement in Arabic by a PA, PLO, or Fatah leader (don’t even mention Hamas) calling for peace, recognition, conciliation, or empathy wit Israel. In contrast, there are thousands of statements rejecting Israel’s existence, calling for armed struggle, urging children to become terrorists, insisting that one day the Palestinians will achieve total victory and eradicate Israel, and demonizing Israelis. Here’s just one rather typical example.
Consider the above paragraph. That is not a statement of my politics but of unfortunate facts. And notice I said Arabic directed to their own people, not English directed to the Western suckers.
These words and the organizing efforts designed to implement them have immense consequences. They explain why millions of Muslims take such extreme stances in supporting revolutionary Islamism. They explain September 11 and the London subway bombing; thousands of acts of terrorism; the PA’s political inability and refusal to make peace; the transformation of the Gaza Strip into a mini-state with a genocidal agenda; the seizure of Lebanon by Islamist forces that will once again carry that country into war; and the horrors in Iraq; and the expansion of Iranian influence; and the driving of Christians out of Iraq and Gaza; and the murder of tens of thousands of Muslims by radical Islamists in Algeria and elsewhere; and the decapitation of Buddhist peasants in southern Thailand, and the murder of Christians in the Philippines, Nigeria, and Indonesia; and far more.
All of these things hurt the cause of peace–Let me put it plainly: They make peace impossible–but are not fully taken into account by Western policy or spoken of in the universities because their power requires real courage to do so. Yet it is precisely because of their power and thus the threat they pose that they must be exposed and fought against.
Abraham talked the divine being into sparing Sodom and Gomorrah if only he could find ten righteous people there. Today, Israel and Western societies are condemned as evil when one finds only a handful of non-righteous there. What of the societies where there are millions of bigots and haters calling for blood and murder? Millions who, by current Western definitions, are racists? That is the difference between individual evil, which will never vanish from this earth, and structurally approved evil maintained by political and ideological systems that must be changed.
What we need to do is to proclaim that all men are created equal but that some societies and world views are proven to be more stable, free, materially successful , and all-around preferable to others. True, one attribute of such societies is that they have a much higher level of tolerance toward others. But if that’s so then it is clear that these societies–even if marching under the banners of preserving multiculturalism and Political Correcntess!–must combat the threat from those states, movements, and ideologies that extoll the destruction of liberty, preach intolerance, and are full of violently implemented hatred and lies.
PS: In response to readers’ requests for the reasons why such “double standards” are so prevelant, here’s a brief summary in no particular order:
a. Fear of Islamist violence;
b. Fear of colleagues’ or the elite’s ridicule as being racist, Islamophobic, etc, with a negative effect on their career and reputation. They can thus shiver with fright (this also applies to point a) but portray themselves as courageous simultaneously;
c. Hope for profit (financial, electoral);
d. Belief that national interests are best met by flattering those who might otherwise (that’s the theory any way) enemies who will then become friends or at least not attack them;
e. Fear of their own people who they think are bigoted yahoos who if not held back would massacre all the Muslims around. Thus, the crazed racists must be lied to in order to soothe them into unconsciousness.
f. Dislike of their own societies and systems which they view them as inferior to those of others. this includes an element of romanticism and masochism. A belief that attacking your own people, nation, religion, system is noble but to do so to any other is an unforgiveable sin.
g. Hope (wrong) that if they feed the Islamists other victims (Israel, Lebanon) that will satisfy the appetite for conquest.
h. The following definition of racism: If you criticize anyone of any other nationality for any reason whatsoever, that makes you a racist.
i. The following definition of Islamophobia: If you criticize anyone who is a Muslim or any Muslim belief or action this makes you a dreadful bigot.
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). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
The decision by Norway’s oil fund to withdraw its investment from Africa-Israel and Danya Cebus citing their involvement in settlement construction is the latest step in an ever expanding list of European private and governmental companies boycotting Israeli firms for political reasons.
Most of the cases pertain to claims of products being manufactured outside the Green Line and therefore in “occupied territory.” Some of the cases serve as political protest against Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians.
Yet, one point is uncontested: Recent months have seen a climb in the scope of the boycott of Israeli products imposed for political reasons.
“Since the Palestinians declared a boycott of settlement goods, there has been a 40% drop in production,” Avi Ben Zvi, owner of the Plastco glass factory in Ariel said. “Export to Europe has ceased in its entirety and traders from the territories have stopped working with us. The damage is huge,” he added.
According to Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman, the region’s factories have taken a massive hit. “We need to initiate a wide-scale governmental campaign threatening the boycotting countries they will not participate in the political process,” he said.
Last March, a large Swedish pension fund decided to boycott Elbit Systems for its part in the construction of the separation fence. The fund declared it had sold its Elbit holdings after its ethics committee recommended pulling out investment from companies involved in a violation of international treaties.
In September, Norway’s governmental pension fund made a similiar move and divested from Elbit.
Last May, Germany’s Deutsche Bank announced it had sold all its Elbit stocks, apparently after being pressured by anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian organizations.
Two years ago, Swedish giant Assa Abloy, owner of the Israeli company Mul-T-Lock Ltd., issued an apology for the fact that its factory in the Barkan Industrial Park was located outside the Green Line. The company promised to move the plant into “Israeli territory” following pressure from a Swedish-Christian human rights group.
Shraga Brosh, president of the Manufacturers Association, said Tuesday that “from time to time, organizations, mainly Scandinavian, boycott certain Israeli bodies. At the end of the day, these are isolated occurrences which do not affect the whole trade with Israel.”
Soda Club was also hit by boycott: The city of Paris was forced to deny the Israeli company’s participation in a large-scale fair for the promotion of tap water after receiving threats from pro-Palestinian elements.
On July, it was reported that the French transport firm Veolia, which operated the light rail project in Jerusalem had decided to sell its shares in the project without citing any motives. The decision may well be connected to the fact that several months earlier a French court agreed to discuss a lawsuit against Veolia and its involvement in the rail’s construction in east Jerusalem.
- Prophecy News Watch
France wants the European Union to have a seat at the table during next week’s start of US-backed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Washington.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says it would be “too bad” if the EU were locked out - noting the bloc’s political involvement in the region and its role as a top contributor of financial aid to the Palestinians.
Kouchner said in a speech Friday to French ambassadors that he has written a letter to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton expressing his concern.
The talks were shelved two years ago, but the US administration is hoping for a breakthrough during the new rounds of negotiations set to begin September 2.
Earlier Friday, it was also reported that the Israeli Foreign Ministry would have representatives at the talks: Head of the ministry’s Mideast department, Yaakov Hadas, and a member of its legal department Daniel Taub. “This is a small professional team, that will work seriously, and cooperate with maximum discretion,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday.
On Thursday, Netanyahu convened his advisors for a preparation discussion ahead of the restart of direct talks with.
Thursday evening’s meeting was attended by the prime minister’s special delegate to the negotiations, Attorney Yitzhak Molcho, National Security Advisor Uzi Arad, Chief of Staff Natan Eshel, Director of Policy Planning Ron Dremer, and National Information Directorate head Nir Hefetz.
Netanyahu informed his advisors that Attorney Molcho would be his chief negotiator. He offered the Americans to lead the peace process himself in the format of “direct talks between leaders every two weeks.”
According to the prime minister’s suggestion, he would meet with Abbas every fortnight, and together they would try to reach quiet understandings on fundamental issues. The parties’ teams would discuss the details later on.
- Prophecy News Watch
Israel is planning to attack Hezbollah arms depots and weapons manufacturing plants in Syria, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai reported on Saturday.
The report is based on Western sources who asserted that Israel has increased its military force level along the northern border in the Golan Heights and Mount Dov areas.
The report cited European sources who claimed that recent Israeli unmanned aerial drone flights over Lebanon and Syria signal Israel’s intentions to carry out operations in the area.
According to the report, Israel plans to attack Hezbollah weapons depots, including ones deep inside Syria that store long-range rockets.
The Al Rai report said that the situation on the Israel-Syria border is tense and that Syria could respond immediately to any Israeli attack and not demonstrate the restraint that it did after the Israeli Air Force bombed a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria in the fall of 2007.
According to the report, Syria’s military is on high alert and is strengthening its anti-aircraft defenses along the border with Israel and at strategic sites within Syria.
Western diplomats to Assad: Don’t interfere in Israel-PA talks
Also on Saturday, the Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper reported that western nations, including the United States, have in recent days asked Syria to refrain from negatively interfering with the upcoming direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, set to open next week in Washington.
According to the report, American officials expressed their firm opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad taking any position or exerting any influence on the talks, as they fear that another failure of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians could lead to even graver consequences than did past failed talks.
The report said that Assad was also asked to restrain Palestinian militant organizations that operate on Syrian territory, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
- Prophecy News Watch
A chilling article on the opinion page of the prestigious daily Ha’aretz caught Israel’s attention this week.
“There is an 80 per cent probability that within nine months to two years from now the Israeli home front will absorb 1000 to 20,000 losses,” it began. The fatalities would be inflicted, according to the writer, by Iranian missile strikes in retaliation for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Israeli attack itself was described as inevitable.
The author, Udi Pridan, is co-director of one of Israel’s leading advertising agencies. In a country where numerous executives are former high-ranking military officers, his background is unclear but the authoritative tone of his article and the prominence given it by Ha’aretz suggest someone with solid security credentials.
The article’s publication came less than a week after The New York Times revealed that the Obama administration had persuaded Israel that Iran was at least a year away from the point where it could make a “dash” to assemble a nuclear device before Israel or Washington could react. The object of the assurance was to keep an Israeli pre-emptive attack off the table for at least another year. The question of a pre-emptive attack against Iran is the most agonising security dilemma Israel has faced since its foundation. The arguments against a strike are formidable. Iran would clearly retaliate with missiles with large warheads against Israel’s cities and be joined by its Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon firing the tens of thousands of rockets in their possession. Although Saddam Hussein fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, mostly against Tel Aviv, there was only one direct fatality. In the war against Hezbollah four years ago, Israel suffered about 40 fatalities from 4000 rockets. The Iranian missiles, with half-tonne warheads and accurate guidance systems, can be expected to reap a much more significant toll. “If there will be thousands of dead, we will lick our wounds,” writes Pridan. “Five-thousand would be a national trauma. At 20,000 we will use the doomsday weapon against Iran, and then there will really be a new Middle East.”
Pridan’s article, headlined “Wake Up”, was not an argument against an Israeli attack but a call for the government to swiftly beef up the emergency and rescue services needed to deal with massive casualties and damage inflicted by Iran’s response. “Israel will act against the Iranian nuclear program, with or without the Americans,” he wrote.
Even short of this worst-case scenario in the event of an Israeli attack, Jerusalem anticipates an ongoing campaign of terror attacks against Israeli legations and citizens around the world as Iran and its supporters lash back. In addition, the likely global economic crisis that would follow Iran’s closing of the Hormuz Straits to oil shipments would be laid by the international community at Israel’s door. An Israeli attack may well undermine the growing liberal movement in Iran, which is the best bet for eventually unseating Tehran’s radical regime. And, not least, Iran would probably be able to restore its facilities within a few years at most, given Israel’s inability to mount sustained conventional attacks at such a distance.
Against all this, advocates of an attack offer only one argument. Although it is illogical that Iran would actually use a nuclear weapon against Israel if it goes nuclear, if only for fear that Israel in its death throes would be able to launch a nuclear counter-strike, Tehran cannot be given the possibility of acting illogically.
Israel faced a somewhat similar existential situation once before. In the 1973 Yom Kippur war, it was caught by a surprise attack on two fronts, with the bulk of its army still unmobilised. The Egyptian army succeeded in driving Israeli forces back from the Suez Canal, while on the Golan Heights, Syrian armoured divisions broke through the Israeli defences and appeared on the verge of descending into Israel proper. So desperate was the situation that defence minister Moshe Dayan warned that Israel’s existence was in danger. At a grim meeting in the underground war room of the High Command in Tel Aviv with chief of staff David Elazar, two generals proposed using “special means” against Syria in order to end the threat on the northern front and enable the army to focus its attention on the main, Egyptian, front. The term “special means” has never been publicly spelled out but it is believed to include nuclear weapons. Two other generals, including the deputy chief of staff, argued forcefully against it and Elazar let the suggestion drop. One of the participants in the meeting reportedly appealed to the generals opposing the suggestion to “stop those madmen” who had suggested it.
The High Command decided instead to warn the Syrians against going too far by attacking Syrian military headquarters in Damascus. On the Golan itself, the Israeli army found its footing with the arrival of reserves and began driving the Syrians back.
That episode suggests that if Israel attacks Iran it would avoid using nuclear weapons against the nuclear sites, even though that would be the only way to ensure their complete destruction. As long as Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons, doomsday lies beyond the horizon.
- Prophecy News Watch
The US warned Lebanon that if it did not prevent any recurrence of the border-fire incident that occurred earlier this month, the IDF would destroy the Lebanese Armed Forces within four hours, Israel Radio cited a report by Lebanese newspaper A-Liwaa on Friday.
According to the report, Frederick Hoff, assistant to US Middle East Peace Envoy George Mitchell, told Lebanese Army chief of staff Jean Kahwaji that Israel was ready to implement a plan to destroy within four hours all Lebanese military infrastructure, including army bases and offices, should a similar confrontation occur in the future.
IDF Lt.-Col. (res.) Dov Harari, 45, was killed and Capt. (res.) Ezra Lakia was seriously wounded, as well three LAF soldiers and one Lebanese journalist killed, when both sides exchanged fire after IDF soldiers attempted to cut down a tree on the Israeli side of the border.
The IDF had informed the UNIFIL peacekeeping force along the border ahead of time of the intended tree-clearing operation.
UNIFIL later confirmed that the IDF troops were on the Israeli side of the border when the incident occurred, contradicting LAF claims that Lebanese sniper fire directed at the Israeli troops had been justified by an incursion upon Lebanese territory.
- Prophecy News Watch
The belligerent speech delivered by Hamas’ Damascus-based political leader Khaled Meshaal Tuesday, Aug. 24 only confirmed the information reaching Israel and the Palestinian Authority intelligence services that the extremist Palestinian group is set for large-scale terror attacks against Israeli and Palestinian West Bank targets. debkafile’s intelligence and counter-terror sources report Hamas is setting its sights on torpedoing the direct Israel-Palestinian negotiations Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas are to launch in Washington on Sept. 2.
Hamas is said by our sources to be preparing to activate its West Bank networks for coordinated strikes against a major target inside Israel and another associated with Abbas’ power base or the US- and British-trained Palestinian security forces. However, if those networks are thwarted by the preventive measures set in motion meanwhile, Hamas will resort to attacks from the Gaza Strip which it controls or further South from Sinai, across the leaky Egyptian-Israeli border.
Hamas last attacked Israel on Aug. 2, sending a cell from its military wing, the Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades, to infiltrate Sinai through the arms tunnels running under the Gaza-Sinai border for a rocket attack on the twin Red Sea towns of Israeli Eilat and Jordanian Aqaba. This attack was more extensive than admitted at the time. Our military sources report that seven Iranian-made Grade missiles were fired, hitting the two towns. Two also knocked over two Egyptian military observation towers on the Israeli border and left casualties.
Israeli and Palestinian security officials do not rule out a Hamas strike from Lebanon or even from the Mediterranean Sea.
Meshaal’s speech Tuesday, shortly before the iftar meal breaking the Ramadan fast, was exceptionally vicious. Never before, had he dared vent his fury on Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah. For the first time, Khaled Meshal not only openly criticized Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah but threatened them: Should they refuse to boycott the US-sponsored Israel-Palestinian negotiations, he said, “The results… will be catastrophic for the interests and the security of Jordan and Egypt.”
The Hamas leader showed he was even prepared to jeopardize the lifelines given his organization by both Arab governments: Egypt provides Hamas officials and military leaders with their only exit route from Gaza, while Jordan tolerates Hamas’ extensive political organization, which has always been careful not to upset its delicate ties with the royal family and risk its freedom of action there.
Meshaal had only venom to pour on Mahmoud Abbas, who he predicted would end up like Yasser Arafat (a reference to Hamas’ allegations that foreign parties including Israel poisoned him in 2004). He depicted the PA Chairman as an enemy of Islam, accusing him of setting loose Palestinian security forces on mosques, Islamic charitable associations, cultural centers and Koran study groups.
Allowing the Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin to visit Jenin -”the city of martyrs - was unconscionable, Meshaal said, and so was permitting Israeli officers to be present at training courses for Palestinian security officers.
The direct talks with Israel, he said, aimed at “liquidating” the Palestinian cause.
Meshaal’s speech was the last straw, Palestinian and other Arab intelligence officials said Wednesday: The breach between him and Mahmoud Abbas must be seen as final and irrevocable.
- Prophecy News Watch
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