Yesterday, Gary Samore, president of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), published a column on the website of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) arguing that even if talks between the P5+1 and Iran collapse, “Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons in the near term is severely constrained by political and technical factors.”
But Samore seems not to have contacted his office with that sensible sounding message. “It’s time to come down like a ton of bricks on this regime,” Gabriel Pedreira, communications director of UANI, told The Algemeiner, a US Jewish news outlet, on the same day. “We want an economic blockade if real change doesn’t come about. We haven’t seen a single concession from the Iranians, nor has even one centrifuge been destroyed,” said Pedreira.
That’s not what Samore, Pedreira’s boss, wrote. “Despite the impasse over the scale and scope of Iran’s enrichment program, the negotiators have made progress on several other issues, such as converting the Fordow enrichment facility to a research and development facility and converting the Arak heavy water research reactor to produce less plutonium,” said Samore.
And as for Pedreira’s argument that an “economic blockade” would be helpful? Samore acknowledged that a new interim agreement, presumably to be considered if the P5+1 and Iran are unable to meet the November 24 deadline for a comprehensive agreement, would be “resisted by some in Iran” if it is perceived that “it gives away too much nuclear capability without getting enough sanctions relief in return.”
In other words, an “economic blockade,” as Pedreira puts it, would give Iran’s hardliners ammunition to oppose a new interim agreement, which might be exactly what UANI wants.
The organization expressed “disappointment” with the November 2013 Joint Plan of Action, complaining that the agreement “provides disproportionate sanctions relief to Iran,” and has consistently opposed rollback of sanctions as part of an interim deal.
Indeed, both Mark Wallace, UANI’s CEO, and UANI’s mysterious benefactor, billionaire Thomas Kaplan, have expressed more hardline views than Samore, who served in the Obama administration as the president’s Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction until last year.
But the divergence between Samore’s column, in which he is ID’d with his Belfer Center affiliation instead of UANI, and UANI’s contradictory statements the same day, raises questions about how much leadership Samore is offering to the organization and whether his role is more than purely ceremonial. Either way, Samore should probably phone his (UANI) office.
This article was published by The Nation on Sept. 30 and was reprinted here with permission. Copyright The Nation.
]]>Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel took to the pages of the New York Times yesterday in a paid advertisement urging Congress to strengthen sanctions against Iran and, in apparent ignorance of the state of the current negotiations between Iran and P5+1, urged readers to “appeal to President Obama and Congress to [...]]]>
Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel took to the pages of the New York Times yesterday in a paid advertisement urging Congress to strengthen sanctions against Iran and, in apparent ignorance of the state of the current negotiations between Iran and P5+1, urged readers to “appeal to President Obama and Congress to demand, as a condition of continued talks, the total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and the regime’s public and complete repudiation of all genocidal intent against Israel.”
Never mind that Wiesel’s “demands” are supposed to be the goal of — rather than the preconditions for — the negotiations. Or that both the Obama administration and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have clearly stated that passing new sanctions legislation could kill the sensitive diplomacy occurring between Tehran, Washington and the other P5+1 members.
Indeed, other than Elie Wiesel using his well-regarded name to support a plan whose likely impact will be to scuttle a nuclear deal with Iran (a deal that most Middle East experts believe would make both Israel and Western countries more secure) perhaps the most interesting part of the ad is buried at the bottom.
It reads: “Sponsored by Michael Steinhardt, Board of Governors, This World: The Values Network; co-founder Birthright Israel.”
Despite his understandably pro-Israel political leanings, Wiesel has repeatedly expressed support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and supported Obama’s efforts to negotiate such a deal.
After a meeting with Obama in 2010, Wiesel said, “The president is convinced that the peace process must continue. And we all agree of course. There is no substitute to peace among nations. Each side must understand that there is no absolute justice in the world, nor absolute peace in the world. One side must understand the other’s need for assurance for respect.”
Wiesel’s position, however, is not shared with his funder, hedge fund mogul Michael Steinhardt.
In an interview earlier this year with journalist and author Max Blumenthal, Steinhardt offered his own understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Blumenthal: You know the occupation of Palestine has been going on for over 45 years and there are a lot of students organizing against it on campus?
Steinhardt: I think the idea of it being occupied isn’t exactly right either cause 45 years ago there was no Palestinian people.
Blumenthal: There’s no Palestinian people?
Steinhardt: There was none. So this is a new phenomenon.
Blumenthal: You’re saying they’re like an invented people.
Steinhardt: I think so.
Steinhardt is also a longstanding funder of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish think tank whose fellows frequently call for heightened sanctions against Iran and downplay the dangers of Israeli and/or U.S. military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The 1986 Norwegian Nobel Committee cited Wiesel’s “practical work in the cause of peace” and his message “of peace, atonement and human dignity” when awarding him the Peace Prize. But Wiesel’s decision to throw his considerable moral weight behind an initiative to derail diplomacy with Iran and join forces with a man who engages in historical revisionism and denies Palestinian peoplehood is an odd turn for a person dedicated to human rights.
]]>by Eli Clifton
Washington’s premiere hawkish think tank is funded by a small handful of Republican mega donors, according to a just-published tax filing. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which employs some of the most consistent advocates of crippling sanctions and hyping threats of military action against Iran, receives [...]]]>
by Eli Clifton
Washington’s premiere hawkish think tank is funded by a small handful of Republican mega donors, according to a just-published tax filing. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which employs some of the most consistent advocates of crippling sanctions and hyping threats of military action against Iran, receives the majority of its funding from Home Depot funder Bernard Marcus, hedge funder Paul Singer and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
FDD’s President Clifford May tells me his organization has “both Republicans and Democrats among its donors and we are proud of our work with policymakers on both sides of the aisle.”
That might be true. But the fact remains that as of 2011, the FDD has been highly dependent on some of the Republican party’s most committed donors.
My full write up on the FDD’s hyper-partisan underwriters can be read at Salon.com. The FDD’s 2011 “Schedule A”, which shows the organization’s largest donors from 2008 to 2011, can be viewed below.
]]>by Eli Clifton & Jim Lobe
The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) is having a rough six months. Last year, ECI and its chairman, Republican operative Bill Kristol, did all it could to portray Barack Obama as insufficiently supportive of Israel. The group’s efforts and considerable spending on television ad-buys did little [...]]]>
by Eli Clifton & Jim Lobe
The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) is having a rough six months. Last year, ECI and its chairman, Republican operative Bill Kristol, did all it could to portray Barack Obama as insufficiently supportive of Israel. The group’s efforts and considerable spending on television ad-buys did little to sway Jewish voters, 69% of whom voted for Obama.
Hot off their election losses, the group then sunk several hundred thousand dollars into a campaign to derail Obama’s nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) to head up the Pentagon. The campaign failed, and Hagel, despite being labeled “not a responsible option” in full-page newspaper ads bought by ECI, was sworn in as Secretary of Defense at the end of February.
Having thus shown themselves to be at best in the mainstream of an increasingly extremist and partisan Republican Party and lacking a scintilla of evidence that they represent the views of a majority of Jewish Americans, the group today took issue with a letter from the Israel Policy Forum (IPF), signed by 100 prominent Jewish Americans, calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “work closely with Secretary of State John Kerry to devise pragmatic initiatives, consistent with Israel’s security needs, which would represent Israel’s readiness to make painful territorial sacrifices for the sake of peace.”
Signatories included well-known donors to Jewish and Israeli charities and foundations, such as Charles Bronfman, Danny Abraham, Lester Crown, and Stanley Gold; former U.S. Defense Undersecretary Dov Zakheim; former Rep. Mel Levine, former AIPAC executive director Tom Dine; Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt; the current and immediate past presidents of United Reform Judaism; Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson; the former chairman of of the United Jewish Appeal, Marvin Lender; former chairman of the Jewish Agency, Richard Pearlstone; and the director of the influential Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Rabbi David Saperstein, among others.
The ECI blasted the IPF in its own letter to Netanyahu, which was signed by its three board members — Kristol, Gary Bauer, and ”Bad Rachel” Abrams – its executive director, Noah Pollak, and “adviser” Michael Goldfarb. The five signatories assured the Israeli leader that the IPF signatories — whom they call “oracles of bad advice” — “don’t speak for us or for a majority of Americans.”
We not only question the wisdom of their advice, we question their standing to issue such an admonition to a democratically-elected (sic) prime minister whose job is not to assuage the political longings of 100 American Jews, but to represent — and ensure the security of — the Israeli people.
The ECI letter goes on to assure Netanyahu that its five signers “affirm the words of Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, who recently asked an American Jewish audience to ‘respect the decisions made by the world’s most resilient democracy.’”
“We, too, have strong opinions on the peace process — but one thing we never presume to do is instruct our friends in Israel on the level of danger to which they should expose themselves.”
The letter concludes:
We trust, of course, that you are under no misapprehensions about any of this. But we felt it important that you heard from a mainstream voice in addition to the predictable calls from a certain cast of American activists for more Israeli concessions.
Indeed, there is little to reason to doubt that ECI’s board members, one of whom called on Palestinians to be thrown into the sea “to float there, food for sharks, stargazers and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose,” have “strong opinions about the peace process” or that they are strong supporters of Netanyahu (although, as individuals, they have offered no end of advice to other Israeli Prime Ministers, such as Ehud Olmert.)
But, as their short list of signatures suggests, US Jews, in any event, don’t agree with ECI’s extremist views.
The American Jewish Committee’s 2012 poll of Jewish public opinion found only 4.5% of Jewish voters listed US-Israel relations as their most important issue in November’s 2012 presidential election. A November 6, 2012 J Street poll found that 73% of Jewish voters agreed with Obama’s President’s policies in the Arab-Israeli conflict, while 76% supported the US playing an active role in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict “if it meant the United States putting forth a peace plan that proposes borders and security arrangements between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Such an agreement may well run afoul of Oren’s directive that Jewish Americans “respect” Israel’s decisions or ECI’s suggestion that it is inappropriate for American Jews “to demand ‘painful territorial sacrifices’ of Israelis.”
Thus, it seems safe to conclude that the views of IPF’s signatories are much closer to those of most US Jews than to ECI’s and its five signatories.
As for ECI’s claim that it speaks for “a majority of Americans,” that, too, seems in question. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (65%) in the latest of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’s quadrennial series of surveys, released last September, said they believed that Washington should not side with either party in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. That finding was broadly consistent with previous polling on the same or similar questions over many years.
]]>by Eli Clifton
While the Sunlight Foundation estimates the ad blitz by anti-Hagel astroturf at over $100,000, research by Lobe Log suggests that the actual total probably exceeds $1 million.
Sunlight based its conclusions on FCC-required disclosures on ad buys by two groups who hide their donors’ [...]]]>
by Eli Clifton
While the Sunlight Foundation estimates the ad blitz by anti-Hagel astroturf at over $100,000, research by Lobe Log suggests that the actual total probably exceeds $1 million.
Sunlight based its conclusions on FCC-required disclosures on ad buys by two groups who hide their donors’ identities: Americans for a Strong Defense and Use Your Mandate. But that barely scratches the surface of the anonymously funded media campaign aimed against Hagel’s nomination as the next secretary of defense.
Anti-Hagel advertising — including tv and newspaper ads, website banner ads, and direct mailing — paid for by the American Future Fund (AFF), the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), Log Cabin Republicans, and Use Your Mandate brings the estimated total to over $1 million, according to Lobe Log’s research.
This is how it breaks down so far:
FCC disclosures reveal that television ad buys by Use Your Mandate and Americans for a Strong Defense totaled $109,700.
The American Future Fund committed to $500,000 in anti-Hagel ad buys.
ECI’s television commercials in the Washington, DC area cost an estimated $20,000.
ECI’s January 15 full- page ad in the New York Times cost an estimated $140,000.
The Log Cabin Republican December 27 full-page ad in the New York Times cost an estimated $140,000.
The Log Cabin Republican’s January 7 ad in the Washington Post cost an estimated $70,000.
Use Your Mandate’s direct mail campaign sent out 350,000 mailers at an estimated cost of $150,000.
Use Your Mandate’s advertising on Politico.com cost an estimated $5,000.
The total adds up to an estimated $1,134,700.
(An Excel table with more information can be downloaded here.)
Jim Rutenberg reported in the Sunday edition of the New York Times that the anti-Hagel campaign may have spent as much as “a few million dollars,” which may ultimately prove correct. But he didn’t explain how he reached that estimate.
The ads have criticized, and often mischaracterized, Hagel’s stance on gays in the military, Iran, Israel and cuts in defense spending. All of these issues have been debated ad nauseum and Hagel’s critics have certainly forced his defenders to address each of the charges.
But with Hagel’s confirmation hearing scheduled for tomorrow and, according to early whip counts, his nomination likely to be confirmed, questions linger about the ad campaign opposing his nomination, and particularly what individuals have funded it.
Specifically, while the groups paying for the advertising have sought to portray themselves as a grassroots opposition to Hagel’s nomination, not one has disclosed its donors.
To her credit, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow questioned whether the anonymous groups are simply astroturf organizations run by Bill Kristol, Elizabeth Cheney and other Republican and neo-conservative party operators.
While the groups that sponsored the ads have no legal obligation to disclose this information, knowing whose $1 million was spent over the past month would no doubt tell us a great deal about the motivations behind the most expensive smear campaign against a Cabinet nominee, certainly within living memory.
]]>A viral video calling on world leaders to a “set the red line” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon has garnered over 1.3 million YouTube views thanks to a savvy social media campaign on Facebook and Twitter.
It’s been promoted by conservative bloggers and Washington-based organizations like [...]]]>
A viral video calling on world leaders to a “set the red line” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon has garnered over 1.3 million YouTube views thanks to a savvy social media campaign on Facebook and Twitter.
It’s been promoted by conservative bloggers and Washington-based organizations like the Republican Jewish Coalition and The Israel Project. But the 15-minute-long film is leading some experts to question the filmmaker’s message.
The video is part of an “independent, not-for-profit project designed to harness the global voice of humanity for the purpose of a peaceful solution to prevent a nuclear Iran,” say the film’s two principals, Banafsheh Zand and Shraga Simmons, on their website, settheredline.com.
Zand, who narrates the film, was born in Iran and fled the country during the Iranian revolution in 1979.
Her father, Iranian journalist Siamak Pourzand, committed suicide in 2011 after having been imprisoned since 2001 for writing articles critical of Iran’s political leaders.
Set The Red Line’s narration offers a list of reasons why Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program must be stopped, including that “Iranian leaders are on a messianic warpath with the ultimate goal of hastening the Mahdi, the messianic Twelfth Imam, to usher in an era of global Islamic domination.”
“Iran has a plan to take over the world, and they view the United States as the ‘Great Satan,’ which must be destroyed,” Zand warns in the film.
“The Iranian regime will push war because that is [their] mandate and they’ve said it everyday and if westerners think that that regime can be deterred … then they will be in for a surprise because that regime has no intention of giving up its nukes,” Zand told The American Independent in an email.
The film endorses ongoing diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution to tensions over Iran’s nuclear program but urges viewers to support a “backup solution” should diplomacy fail.
“We must continue and even intensify the various diplomatic methods that world leaders have worked so hard to implement. But the reality is that Iran’s nuclear clock is ticking faster than the diplomatic clock,” says Zand in the film. “So we need an effective and reliable backup solution. It’s called the Red Line.”
Viewers are urged to participate in a social media campaign to push world leaders to lay down the “red line,” defined in the film as “world leaders make a pronouncement outlining a clear and unambiguous set of criteria that will serve as fair warning to Iran that crossing this line will trigger a devastating military response.”
“Pragmatically, the red line puts us in a much better position of going up against a non-nuclear Iran than having to face the certainty of war against a genocidal and nuclear Iran,” says Zand later in the film.
“The red line is specifically and only for the purpose of getting world leaders to pressure the Iranian regime to give up their nuclear weapons. I do not support any external military action on Iran,” Zand told TAI.
“Why would anyone attack a country whose people loath it?” Zand asked TAI. “Why would anyone attack a country with suicide bombers deployed around the world?”
“The Khomeinist regime totally intends to kill Westerners, Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs because they believe that they (the Shia Twelvers) are the ‘anointed’ ones and … they believe that it is the duty of all Muslims to die in the name of the Islamic pole that the Khomeinists have decided to head,” said Zand to TAI. “[T]hat regime openly says that it is Muslim duty to die, as collateral damage and that Sunnis have no say in the matter.”
Simmons told TAI that “military action should only be a last resort, when sanctions, diplomatic isolation and negotiations have failed to stop the regime.”
In interviews with TAI, experts questioned the approach outlined in the film.
“The video is conveniently vague so we never know to whom we’ll leave it to draw this red line. The US? Israel? The United Nations Security Council?” said Iran expert and author Barbara Slavin. “All we’re told is that it has to happen before Iran develops nuclear weapons. If Iran crosses this line it triggers a devastating response, say the filmmakers. This sounds more like an argument for war than an effort to prevent it.”
Matt Duss, a policy analyst at the liberal Center for American Progress, also criticized the film.
“Like most of the most hawkish arguments about Iran it’s plagued by a fundamental contradiction,” said Duss. “One is this claim, which is highly arguable, that Iran’s leaders are determined to destroy the west and this is a non-negotiable element of their extremist Muslim beliefs; and we must set a red line. These two things are contradictory. If Iran’s threat to destroy the west is nonnegotiable then why would they take a red line seriously?”
He added, “There’s this idea that Iran’s leaders are all apocalyptic crazies looking to trigger the return of the Shiite messiah, but there’s little evidence to suggest these beliefs drive Iranian policy.”
Zand, speaking in the film, says that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, the UAE, and Iraq “would all fall like dominoes” if faced with an aggressive, nuclear-armed Iran.
But, according to Slavin, “there is absolutely no indication that there would be regime change in any of these places.”
“If Iran got a nuclear weapon the Saudis and all the countries across the Persian Gulf would probably shore up their alliances with the US even more and there would be a vigilant effort to contain Iran,” Slavin went on to add.
Set The Red Line garnered over one million YouTube views thanks to an effective social media campaign, said the film’s director.
“It was very grassroots, which to me is a huge success,” said Simmons. “Thousands of individuals sent the film out to their private email lists and posted on Facebook. We also contacted approximately 1,000 ‘Facebook administrators’ whose groups deal with issues of foreign affairs. I know for certain that a number of very large Facebook groups (with a million followers) promoted it to their lists.”
The Israel Project, “a one-stop source for detailed and accurate information about Israel and the Middle East,” according to its website, promoted the film both on its website andon Twitter.
Twitter accounts belonging to the Republican Jewish Coalition and a Fox News Produceralso promoted the film.
Neither Simmons nor Zand is new to political activism.
Simmons is senior editor of Aish.com, the online outreach arm of the Orthodox Jewish organization Aish HaTorah. His blog posts frequently criticize what he sees as biased reporting by journalists covering Israel.
Simmons accused CBS’s 60 Minutes of “further demonizing Israel and eroding its support in the West” after the show aired a segment examining the treatment of Palestinian Christians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In a November 18, 2012, post — written during the Israel Defense Forces’ “Operation Pillar of Defense” in the Gaza Strip — Simmons criticized CNN’s Zain Verjee’s “horribly biased” interview of Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev. Verjee asked about reports of children wounded by Israeli airstrikes and questioned how the IDF’s actions help bring peace to the region.
Verjee “sounds like she’d be more comfortable on Hamas TV,” wrote Simmons.
Simmons emphasized that his work on Set The Red Line was conducted independently from his job at Aish HaTorah.
“It happens that I am employed as an editor at the Aish.com website,” said Simmons. “I knew that the credibility of the message required full independence, so I took a full leave of absence from that position to enable me to make the film independently, without any organizational involvements whatsoever.”
Zand explained to TAI that she and Simmons spoke on Skype about making the film and shortly thereafter she was flown to Israel to narrate the film.
“I don’t even know what Aish HaTorah is,” said Zand. “We both agree Iran is out of order and intends to kills westerners and Israelis. Neither one of us want war.”
Tax disclosures show that from 2005 to 2010, Simmons served as secretary of Honest Reporting, a group that characterizes itself as “monitor[ing] the news for bias, inaccuracy, or other breach of journalistic standards in coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
Honest Reporting apparently participated in the release of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against The West, a 2005 film that compared the rise of radical Islam to the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.
The film’s website warns, “As we sleep in the comfort of our homes, a new evil rises against us. A new menace is threatening, with all the means at its disposal, to bow Western Civilization under the yoke of its values. That enemy is Radical Islam.”
“[Honest Reporting] now denies any involvement in the production of ‘Obsession.’ But its website promoted it as an Honest Reporting project in 2005, the year it was first released,” reported Sara Posner in a 2008 Jewish Week article.
As Posner reported, an archived version of the Honest Reporting website from June 14, 2006, shows Obsession listed as an “affiliate” project. The site also declared at the time: “HonestReporting’s ‘Obsession’ Wins Award at WorldFest Independent Film Festival.”
The film gained mainstream attention after 28 million DVDs were distributed to swing-state voters via newspaper inserts and bulk mailings before the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
Set The Red Line was Zand’s first collaboration with Simmons but not her first foray into political advocacy.
Her LinkedIn profile states that from February 2010 to October 2012, the month Set The Red Line was released, she worked as a consultant at Iran180, a group that “demand[s] a 180 by the Iranian government on their pursuit of nuclear weapons and the treatment of their citizens,” according to its website. Iran180’s outreach director, Chris DeVito, told TAI that Zand no longer works with the organization.
DeVito declined to offer a detailed opinion on the film but stated, “There are elements of the narrative that are extremely important and entirely valid.”
The House of Representatives, the State Department, and various pro-Israel organizations in Washington have all issued statements expressing support for Israel’s recent actions in the Gaza Strip and reaffirmed Israel’s right to act in “self-defense.”
Indeed, Israel’s right to self-defense is important to remember and [...]]]>
The House of Representatives, the State Department, and various pro-Israel organizations in Washington have all issued statements expressing support for Israel’s recent actions in the Gaza Strip and reaffirmed Israel’s right to act in “self-defense.”
Indeed, Israel’s right to self-defense is important to remember and every missile fired from Gaza is one-too-many. But while Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas’ aggression is reaffirmed on a daily, if not hourly basis, another incontrovertible fact gets little mention or discussion.
Over the past ten years of on-again-off-again fighting, the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths has been dramatically one-sided. According to the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, 4,858 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security services in between the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000 and the beginning of operation “Cast Lead” in December 2008. During this period 1,063 Israelis were killed by Palestinian attacks, resulting in approximately 4.5 Palestinian deaths for every Israeli casualty.
During Operation Cast Lead, in less than one month of fighting, 1,397 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces and nine Israelis were killed by Palestinian attacks. The ratio grew to 155 Palestinian deaths for each Israeli casualty.
In the past six days of violence the ratio has remained one-sided. Reports from Gaza indicate an overall death toll reaching 100. Three Israelis have died. The current ratio of Palestinian to Israeli casualties is 33.3 to one.
Obviously the numbers don’t tell the full story of the conflict. The numbers of civilian vs. military casualties matter as do troubling reports of Hamas using civilians as human shields. And both parties in the conflict receive little assistance from regional partners in imposing a meaningful peace process.
But the numbers also tell an undeniable truth and raise an important question. Maintaining Israel’s security is coming at a vastly higher cost in Palestinian deaths. At what point does Israel’s response become disproportionate?
The 33-to-one ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths in the past week means that Israel’s most staunch defenders, both in Israel and abroad, accept the disproportionate loss of life as an acceptable, if not wholly necessary, cost.
What does the devaluation of Palestinian life mean for the future of the peace process? What does it mean for Israel’s future capability to live at peace with its neighbors? What does it say about Israel’s future as a liberal democracy if its security relies on killing a vastly disproportionate number of Palestinians in every recent conflict with Palestinian militants?
A statement from J Street, Washington’s “Pro-Israel, Pro-peace” lobby, reveals a growing awareness of the unsustainable direction of Israel’s policies.
Yesterday, while emphasizing Israel’s “right and obligation to defend itself against rocket fire”, J Street urged a halt to the violence. “Today, rockets are more numerous and powerful. Israel is more isolated in its region and more ostracized around the world.”
The statement continued:
]]>Military action may stop the rockets for a while at a cost of hundreds or even thousands injured or dead. But military force alone is inadequate as a response to the broader strategic challenge Israel faces. Only a political resolution to the century-old conflict with the Palestinians resulting in two states living side by side can end the conflict.
Robert Wright has an excellent piece at the Atlantic exploring the “hidden causes” of the protests against the United States across the Muslim world. The violence, which it’s important to emphasize is never excusable, is receiving little serious analysis in the mainstream media.
Robert Wright has an excellent piece at the Atlantic exploring the “hidden causes” of the protests against the United States across the Muslim world. The violence, which it’s important to emphasize is never excusable, is receiving little serious analysis in the mainstream media.
The American Enterprise Institute’s Ayaan Hirsi Ali – who sympathized with Norwegian anti-Muslim terrorist Anders Breivik back in May – published a cover story in this week’s Newsweek titled, “Muslim Rage & The Last Gasp of Islamic Hate.” She wrote:
The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support — whether actively or passively — the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group. On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam.
That type of simplistic analysis, says Wright, fails to ask or answer the real questions about why parts of the Muslim world hold deep-seated resentment towards the US. Wright blogs:
[W]hen a single offensive remark from someone you’ve long disliked can make you go ballistic, the explanation for this explosion goes deeper than the precipitating event. What are the sources of simmering hostility toward America that helped fuel these protests? Here is where you get to answers that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney wants to talk about and that, therefore, hardly anybody else talks about.
Wright goes on to list drone strikes, the US’s unconditional support of Israel (sometimes at the expense of progress in the peace process), and American troops in Muslim countries as some of the explanations for the eruption of anger. “…[W]hen American policies have bad side effects, Americans need to talk about them,” he writes.
Indeed, reflecting on US policies in the Middle East is a verboten topic during the presidential election. Mitt Romney, in comments surreptitiously recorded at a fundraiser and released this morning, quipped:
I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say, “There’s just no way.” And so what you do is you say, “You move things along the best way you can.” You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem… All right, we have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it. We don’t go to war to try and resolve it imminently.
But the media and Obama and Romney’s unwillingness to publicly acknowledge the geopolitical dangers for the US in the Middle East does come at a a very human cost. Back in March 2010, Gen. David Petraeus set off a firestorm when his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee linked the lack of progress in the peace process with security risks for the US. Petraeus said:
Insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace. The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.
Petraeus’ comments, later echoed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CENTCOM commander Gen. James Matthis, were met with denunciations by Israel hawks. The Anti-Defamation League event went so far as to label Petraeus’ views as “dangerous and counterproductive.”
With anger in the Muslim world towards the US erupting over the past week, observers are left with two options: Accept an Islamophobic, if not outright racist, narrative of irrational Arab and Muslim anger towards the US or start asking tough questions about US policy, as well as US strategic interests, in the Middle East.
Some of the US’s most prominent strategic thinkers have already warned about the geopolitical and security dangers facing the US as a result of failed policies in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the TV news cycle and the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney appear to have little bandwidth to openly discuss the strategic challenges facing Americans in the Middle East, even while US diplomats are finding themselves in harms way.
]]>Military contractors are in a full court press to prevent the automatic military spending cuts that will come into effect on January 2, 2013, an estimated $55 billion per year, if policymakers fail to avert a budget “sequester.” But while contractors are waving a defense industry funded report [...]]]>
Military contractors are in a full court press to prevent the automatic military spending cuts that will come into effect on January 2, 2013, an estimated $55 billion per year, if policymakers fail to avert a budget “sequester.” But while contractors are waving a defense industry funded report warning of 1 million defense industry jobs to be lost if sequestration occurs and the potential to push the U.S. into a new recession, experts are calling into question the veracity of the findings and the underlying assumptions about military spending’s benefits to the U.S. economy.
“The reality is that sequestration not only undermines our national security, it will hurt our economy and could fundamentally tear our defense industrial base,” New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) told a Brookings Institution forum Tuesday. But skeptics warn that such dire predictions are intentionally misleading.
Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb took issue with those assumption in a column last November:
It is like arguing that defense is entitled to a specific share of the federal budget or gross domestic product. The federal government should base its defense spending on the strategy it develops to deal with the threats it faces— not on how many jobs it will create or the condition of our economy.
The [defense industry funded] study, which was briefed to Congress last month, analyzed the impact of potential defense cuts on employment. This is not only inappropriate and conceptually flawed, it seems self-serving.
Military spending hawks routinely fail to acknowledge that funding domestic priorities such as education, health care and clean energy create at least 50 percent more jobs than military spending.
Korb added that sequestration cuts would more likely results in 600,000 contractor jobs lost, not one million.
And defense cuts are not an across-the-board loss for American workers. “The $55 billion wouldn’t just disappear into the ether,” said Gordon Adams, who oversaw defense budgeting for the Clinton administration. “There would be other economic benefits from borrowing $55 billion for defense.” Adams says portions of the military spending cuts will be directed elsewhere, thereby creating jobs and helping the economy in communities across the country.
Questions are being raised about defense contractor Lockheed Martin’s dire threats to cut 123,000 jobs if sequestration occurs. “The timing of it is really suspicious,” Democratic strategist Garry South told The Daily Beast, adding that Lockheed appears to be “throw[ing] itself around in the political process.”
Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments finds Lockheed’s warnings highly suspicious. “Will they have to lay some people off down the road, within a few months [or] in the next year or two? Absolutely,” Harrison told NPR. “But [as for] the timing of this — are they going to have to do that starting exactly on Jan. 3? I think that’s highly suspect.”
]]>The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today released their “Torture Database”website, making over 100,000 pages of government documents on the George W. Bush administration’s interrogation policies, primarily obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the ACLU, searchable by the general public.
Alexander Abdo, a Staff Attorney with the [...]]]>
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today released their “Torture Database”website, making over 100,000 pages of government documents on the George W. Bush administration’s interrogation policies, primarily obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the ACLU, searchable by the general public.
Alexander Abdo, a Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, announced the new database in a Guardian column today. Abdo wrote:
…[T]the government has yet to create a single, official report documenting the post 9/11 abuses. There is hope that the Senate Intelligence Committee will fill the void when it completes its long-expected report on the CIA’s program later this year. In the meantime, the ACLU today is launching the Torture Database to help fill the transparency gap. Our database allows researchers and the public to conduct sophisticated searches of thousands of documents relating to the Bush administration’s policies on rendition, detention, and interrogation.
Abdo and the ACLU hope the database will put pressure on the Obama administration to release more information about torture and other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) authorized during the Bush administration. “[The Obama administration] continues to withhold hundreds of CIA cables describing the use of waterboarding and other harsh techniques, hundreds of photographs of detainee abuse throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, and the presidential memorandum that authorized the CIA to establish its secret prisons overseas,” writes Abdo.
The database includes: Justice Department legal memos authorizing torture; autopsy reports completed by Army medical examiners after detainees died in U.S. custody; reports documenting and evaluating the interrogation practices of the military and CIA; and a series of email and correspondences “linking the CIA’s and military’s interrogation policies to officials at the highest levels of our government.”
While much of the database is dedicated to documents outlining torture and EITs, the ACLU emphasizes that the site also offers “inspiring and heroic stories” in the form of written dissents from soldiers, lawyers, officials and others as they resisted the interrogation policies approved by senior political leaders.