by Mitchell Plitnick
It may seem like US Secretary of State John Kerry is chasing his own tail with regard to the Israel-Palestine issue. But he is, intentionally or otherwise, raising some important questions. One is what the official Israeli position really is on the two-state solution. Perhaps the most [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
It may seem like US Secretary of State John Kerry is chasing his own tail with regard to the Israel-Palestine issue. But he is, intentionally or otherwise, raising some important questions. One is what the official Israeli position really is on the two-state solution. Perhaps the most important one is how foolish, inept and impotent will the United States allow Israel to make it appear? And of greatest concern to Americans, why is this President even less willing to confront Israel, at so dire a time, than any of his predecessors?
At some point during President Barack Obama’s and Kerry’s last trip to Israel earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to put a hold on issuing any new tenders for more settlement construction. To most, this means a settlement freeze, but it’s nothing of that kind.
Building continues at a fast pace, due to a very large number (some 1,500 residential units) of tenders approved between the Israeli elections and Obama’s visit. This was, of course, intentional, as Netanyahu knew he would probably need to make some kind of gesture to Obama. And another huge round of approvals is just waiting, held up in channels, and will probably be approved sometime in the next couple of months. In terms of construction work, there is likely to be almost no noticeable break.
But even this was not enough for Netanyahu. For much of the past months, the temporary hold on new tenders was only rumor. But a few days after Israel’s Army Radio announced it and the settlement watchdog group, Peace Now, confirmed it, Israel announced the approval of tenders for 296 units in the settlement of Beit El. Shortly after that, the Israeli government announced that it would declare four “settlement outposts” newly legal. The outposts are wildcat settlements set up without governmental approval (all settlements on territory captured by Israel in the 1967 war are illegal under international law). Sometimes Israel destroys them, sometimes it ignores them; in recent years, it has taken to legalizing some of them retroactively.
That Israel took these steps mere days before Kerry’s return to the region cannot be ignored. It was yet another direct slap in the face by Israel to its benefactor and the one country that stands behind it no matter how egregious Israeli behavior may be. This time, even Kerry took note.
He took the unusual step of summoning the Israeli ambassador for an explanation, and, from reports, at least some degree of dressing down. Which is all well and good, but Israel has no reason to worry about it. Apart from a perhaps unpleasant conversation for its Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, Israel will face no consequences for once again embarrassing the United States.
How do we know this? Well, despite these Israeli actions, the United States pushed the European Union into delaying a vote on labelling imports from Israeli settlements, distinguishing them from products made in Israel proper. Of course, the US is willing to do this in part because it feeds the illusion that there’s a peace process for Kerry to work on, one which would be hindered by an EU move of this sort.
The middle of June has been set as an arbitrary deadline for Kerry’s efforts. Not coincidentally, Iran’s presidential election is scheduled for June 14. At that point, we can expect the Palestinian issue, already pushed aside by first, the Iran war talk, and more recently by the escalating Israeli involvement in Syria, to be completely shunted. Mid-June is also the point at which the EU is now scheduled to vote on labelling settlement products.
This would seem to be a process of going through the motions for the Obama Administration. Obama himself subtly indicated to the Israeli public in his speech there that he was not going to stop them from committing national suicide if that was their chosen course. Meanwhile, he seems only too eager to please AIPAC and the rest of their lobbying cohorts. Meanwhile, his Secretary of State is becoming a laughingstock as a result.
The Palestinians have been cynical about Kerry’s efforts from the beginning. Before this latest trip, one unnamed Palestinian “senior official” expressed his pessimism, saying that the Palestinian position of insisting that Israel release Palestinian prisoners and cease all settlement activity has not changed and neither has the Israeli position. Israel, for its part, continues to mouth platitudes about supporting Kerry’s efforts while acting to thwart them on the ground at every turn.
But while the Israelis are making the right official statements, they are also sneering at Kerry. The Israeli journalist Barak Ravid sums up the view of Kerry, both in Israel and among more veteran diplomatic hands in the US: “A senior Israeli official who has met with Kerry several times said the secretary of state has a messianic enthusiasm for the Israeli-Palestinian issue and acts like someone who was sent to bring the redemption. A Western official familiar with Kerry’s activity agreed with this assessment. ‘Sometimes there’s a feeling that Kerry thinks the only reason his predecessors in the job didn’t bring about a peace agreement is that they weren’t John Kerry,’ he said.”
This is not a negotiator who is inspiring confidence either at home or abroad. And he’s allowing Israel to make a fool of him. Even if this is, as one hopes, a strategy to move the United States out of the center of this conflict, which it is politically incapable of resolving, the cost is becoming very high. And while Israel laughs at Kerry, the only Israeli cabinet member who has shown any semblance of interest even in the failed Oslo process, Tzipi Livni, is isolated in that cabinet and fending off assaults from her left and right as she debates the governmental majority over whether Israel is even interested in a two-state solution. Likud and HaBayit HaYehudi, two of the four major coalition partners, both officially oppose it in their party platforms. The other two, Yesh Atid and Yisrael Beiteinu, both officially support some kind of two-state solution, but with conditions that are incompatible with any conceivable agreement.
Kerry’s credibility as Secretary of State is off to a shaky start, to say the least, and the lack of regard with which he is being held by not only the Israelis but also the Palestinians is going to hurt him throughout the world and especially in the Middle East. In the worst case scenario, that will severely handicap US diplomatic options, which would inevitably mean a focus on non-diplomatic means to secure perceived US interests.
In the article, Ravid mentions former US Secretary of State James Baker, who managed to get the ultra-right wing Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to the Madrid Conference, which ultimately led to the Oslo peace process. The surrounding circumstances have certainly changed in more than twenty years since Baker’s day. But while the circumstances that both forced and allowed Baker and his boss, George H.W. Bush, to push Shamir to Madrid are radically different, that’s not the greatest factor.
The real difference is that Baker and Bush were willing to exercise real pressure on Israel to get Shamir to acquiesce. That is something Obama has repeatedly shown he won’t do. No matter how insulting Netanyahu’s behavior, no matter how much Israel acts to counter the best interests of the United States, as well as of itself, Obama will do no more than make mild statements calling Israel “unhelpful.” And Israel couldn’t care less about that.
It’s easy, and certainly correct, to blame AIPAC for this state of affairs. But even AIPAC has its limits, and they cannot brazenly defy a second-term President who is determined to get something done. Bush the Elder did it. Bill Clinton did it at Wye River. Even Bush the Younger did it in 2003, when he reduced Israel’s loan guarantees after Israel refused to alter the route of its security fence according to US wishes.
Somehow, Obama can’t find the same backbone. And ultimately, even if Kerry’s efforts were far more sensible than they are, without that level of presidential backing — a level that all of Obama’s predecessors reached, despite their own one-sided and destructively myopic support of Israeli excesses — there is no chance for success.
]]>The drama never stops unfolding around the Clarion Fund, the operation behind a string of movies dubbed “anti-Muslim” by critics.
The group’s latest salvo is an hour-long documentary called “Iranium”, which more or less gives airtime to a gaggle of neoconservatives and their [...]]]>
The drama never stops unfolding around the Clarion Fund, the operation behind a string of movies dubbed “anti-Muslim” by critics.
The group’s latest salvo is an hour-long documentary called “Iranium”, which more or less gives airtime to a gaggle of neoconservatives and their allies on the Israeli right to advocate for a hawkish posture against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
While warning of an ideologically-driven, religiously-inspired Iran, however, the filmmaker behind the movie himself comes from among the religious extremes of another Middle Eastern state.
The writer and director of “Iranium”, Alex Traiman, hails from the Israeli West Bank settlement of Beit El, one of the ideological religious Jewish outposts in occupied Palestinian territory bedeviling U.S.-Israel relations.
I spoke to Traiman, who sported a black kippah and a bright red tie, after a screening of “Iranium” at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, where neoconservative don Richard Perle introduced the film.
“That’s where I live,” Traiman told me, after a deep breath, when I asked him if he lived in Beit El. “I just live there.”
Traiman worked for four years for the Beit El-based Arutz Sheva, or Channel Seven, also known as Israel National News, a former pirate radio station aligned with Israel’s religious settlers. He has in the past referred to Beit El as “a Jewish settlement… located in the Biblical province of Samaria, commonly referred to today as the West Bank.” Settlers refer to the West Bank by the Biblical “Judea and Samaria.”
On Tuesday at Heritage, Traiman, who has also written for a U.S.-based conspiracy website, called the World Net Daily, and presumably other occupied Palestinian territories, as “disputed territories in Israel.”
Beit El is a religious nationalist settlement near Ramallah in the West Bank, where some 5,500 settlers live, Founded in 1977, the settlement is built in land seized in 1970 by the military on what Israeli courts, according to Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, later deemed to be bogus security justifications.
Unlike their secular counterparts, who usually move into settlements to take advantage of government housing subsidies, the enclave of Beit El is a religious-nationalist settlement where residents think that God gave them the land that Palestinians lived on.
Palestinians view settlements as gobbling up land on which they hope to eventually build their state. In a peace deal, the border between Israel and Palestine would likely be doctored to include large settlement blocks in Israel.
But at a recent Washington Institute forum on potential maps for a peace deal, Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl, a Middle East hawk, said Israeli annexation of Beit El is not realistic in a final peace deal: “Beit El dominates the road between the two major Palestinian towns of Ramallah and Nablus… This type of scenario is unacceptable to Palestinians.”
Last fall, a diplomatic row erupted when Israel refused a U.S. request for a three-month extension of a settlement construction freeze. The freeze extension was aimed at rescuing peace talks, and when Israel refused, with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu in the thrall of his pro-settler coalition members, the U.S.-sponsored talks collapsed.
The crumbling of the settlement freeze was celebrated in Israel’s settlements, whese construction boomed.
Other characters in and around “Iranium” come from the hardest of the hard-line ‘pro-Israel’ camp and the Israeli right, those who have long opposed Israel relinquishing control of the West Bank in any peace deal.
Not surprisingly, the Capitol Hill premiere in February is being hosted by a group, EMET, whose president and advisors worked together in the 1990s, behind the backs of Israeli and American leadership, to spike the Oslo process. Indeed, EMET’s Hill activism for a Greater Israel seems to be matched only by the efforts of key people from the Clarion Fund.
Ties between Clarion and Aish Hatorah, an evangelist Israeli ultra-orthodox group, are well know and long-established through Clarion’s founder and executive producer of its movies, Canadian-Israeli Raphael Shore, not to mention a host of registration and tax documents that make Clarion appear to be little more than an Aish off-shoot.
But Traiman, a former radio host and PR flak brought on board by Clarion to write and direct “Iranium,” appears is literally on the frontiers of the Israeli right.
According to social networking websites, Traiman worked at Arutz Sheva for four years, editing, writing, hosting a show, and acting as marketing director. In 2006, Traiman did a fundraising junket for the channel that brought him to New York and New Jersey, where he went to high school. (Arutz Sheva also raises money from U.S. Christian Zionists.)
Just two months before that trip, Traiman wrote an article for the U.S.-based conspiracy website World Net Daily (WND), where he gave space and sympathetic coverage to several Rabbis who theorized that the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war — then still raging — was caused by a gay pride parade in Jerusalem. At the end of the article, Traiman was listed as a writer for the Jerusalem bureau of WND, which has published articles about how Al Qaeda has 40 nukes (some already in the U.S.) and how “soy is making kids ‘gay’.”
The current chief WND‘s Jerusalem bureau is Aaron Klein, a birther and the New York Times best-selling author of “The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists”. (Klein also conducted the interview where Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf refused to condemn Hamas.)
Klein and Traiman co-edited their college paper when they were both at New York City’s Yeshiva University. “Following his completely secular education, Traiman decided to pursue a Jewish education at the only first tier university that could provide one,” says an article from the paper of the modern-orthodox Jewish university. If and how long Klein and Traiman worked together at WND is not clear.
Leaving WND aside, Arutz Sheva, where Traiman hosted a show, wrote and edited, and directed marketing efforts, has some conspiracy theory issues of its own. Last year, to celebrate the anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the “settler news organization,” as the New York Times labeled it, held a contest to find the best conspiracy theory providing a version of events different from the accepted history.
The accepted history, of course, is that religious Zionist Yigal Amir killed Rabin at a peace rally in 1995. In their 2009 book, “Jewish Terrorism in Israel”, Professors Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger wrote that Amir would have been inspired by the religious edicts from rabbis in West Bank settlements declaring Rabin din rodef, or a Jew who was willing to harm other Jews, a judgement punishable by death according to Jewish law. The professors also drop this nugget while recalling Amir’s machinations: “Only a fellow law school student, Margalit Har-Shefi—resident of one of the most prestige settlements, Beit El, and daughter of settler nobility—was let in on the finer details of the plan.” Har-Shefi even tried to break into the Beit El armory to get a weapon for the plot.
Arutz Sheva was founded by, according to various sources, either Beit El-based extremist Rabbi Zalman Melmand or Yaakov Katz, a politician from Israel’s National Union party, which has been accused of having ties to Israel’s banned extremist Kahanist political faction. Rabbi Meir Kahane was thought to be the “spiritual guide of those who allegedly conspired to kill Rabin.”
“There is a clear irony in having Israeli settler religious extremists urging the U.S. to bomb religious extremists in Iran,” said Lara Friedman, an expert on settlements and U.S. policy in the Middle East with American’s for Peace Now, in an interview.
Ali Gharib is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn, NY. He’s a regular contributor to the LobeLog.
]]>The article is a look into the possible reasons that Israel has pushed back the nuclear timeline for Iran. I quote Tony Karon at length (which appears at TB) and list my own thoughts (some via Jim):
That notion — [...]]]>
The article is a look into the possible reasons that Israel has pushed back the nuclear timeline for Iran. I quote Tony Karon at length (which appears at TB) and list my own thoughts (some via Jim):
That notion — that you can’t whip up your own population into a fearful frenzy, then not do anything — tracks with comments made in the past by top Israeli officials casting aside the “existential threat” meme. Along with Barak, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy sounded a confident note in late 2009: “It is not within the power of Iran to destroy the state of Israel — at best it can cause Israel grievous damage. Israel is indestructible.”
But there are other possibilities to consider, most of them speculative. Perhaps Israel was merely gloating about its covert actions against Iran. Many mainstream commentators suggest Israel is behind the Stuxnet computer worm that damaged Iranian centrifuges as well as a campaign of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Maybe, as Jim Lobe suggested to me in a conversation, there was some kind of quid pro quo between the U.S. and Israel over the public extension of Israel’s nuclear clock.
There are certainly many pawns on the board to trade between Israel and the U.S. at the moment: an Israeli settlement freeze (whether including East Jerusalem or not), the fate of imprisoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. offer of an Israeli wish list of military hardware (as discussed in earlier failed talks on a freeze), or maybe even some sort of agreement for Israel to drop mounting preconditions for yet another round of direct talks. All are possibilities, though some quite unlikely.
It’s worth noting, that as a source close to high-ranking Israelis put it to LobeLog, Israel has shifted its focus from the threat of Iran to the threat of “delegitimizers.” The latter is an amorphous and misleading catchall phrase that the Israeli right and their Stateside defenders use to indict the motives of anyone who even comes near the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
I also add that Paul Pillar, writing on the website of the National Interest, has an interesting post listing some possibilities:
One is that they are more or less straightforward reflections of careful, straightforward analysis by Israeli experts of the actual state of the Iranian program. Not every statement by a public official needs to be a disingenuous manipulation of the facts in pursuit of a policy objective. Sometimes we need to resist the tendency to overanalyze someone else’s motives.
Given Israel’s track record, I’m skeptical of this lack of skepticism. But some of Pillar’s other possibilities track with the ones I enumerated, and all are well worth reading.
Matt Duss at The Wonk Room, meanwhile, picks up on an interesting Der Spiegel interview with new IAEA chief Yukiya Amano. Duss notes that Amano told the German daily, “Despite all unanswered questions, we cannot say that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.”
You’ll recall, of course, that Amano told U.S. officials that “he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision” — including Iran — according to U.S. diplomatic cables. As Duss points out, this aligns perfectly with the view Amano espoused in his Der Spiegel interview — because the “U.S. court” on this particular “key strategic issue” corresponds with a public acknowledgment by the CIA (PDF) that the U.S. does “not know whether Tehran will eventually decide to produce nuclear weapons.”
On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal‘s neoconservative editorial board recently declared (falsely) that Iran had already “announced its intention to build a nuclear bomb.”
As I wrote on Tehran Bureau, none of the recent developments seem to have had much impact on U.S.-based Iran hawks, who are perfectly content to keep beating the war drums. No matter what Iran does or how its nuclear program advances (if at all), the hawks want to attack it. No matter how effective sanctions are, they will never be enough.
]]>When a prominent ultra-orthodox Israeli spiritual and political leader agrees with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh that the fire destroying Israel’s Carmel Forest is a punishment from God, there’s silence.
Ovadia Yosef, a former Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, who remains a prominent spiritual and political leader of the Shas party, and Palestinian Prime Minister elect Haniyeh agree that the Deity has been venting His fury by means of the destructive blaze in Israel, but disagree about why.
The German press agency DPA, via Haaretz, reports that Haniyeh, during emergency prayers for rain held in Gaza on Sunday, stated that “those fires are divine strikes for what they [Israel] did.” According to the Jerusalem Post, Haniyeh told Reuters during a recorded interview: “These are plagues from God” and “Allah is punishing them [the Israelis] from a place they did not expect it.”
After Hamas’s overwhelming electoral victory on January 25, 2006 in the Palestinian parliamentary election, Haniyeh was chosen to be the Palestinian Prime Minister and he was sworn in on March 29, 2006. The U.S. then severed all contact with Hamas-led Palestinian government. Israel has refused to accord any political legitimacy to Hamas.
Rabbi Yosef, on the other hand, blames Israelis’ religious laxity–particularly their failure to properly observe the sabbath–for arousing Divine wrath, according to the Israeli news site Y-Net:
Shas’ spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef implied on Saturday night that the fire raging on Mount Carmel in northern Israel was a punishment from God for religious offenses committed by the area’s residents.
During his weekly sermon, the rabbi read a section from the Babylonian Talmud, which states that “the fire only exists in a place where Shabbat is desecrated.”
“A number of houses were destroyed, entire neighborhoods were lost – all under supervision,” the rabbi said. He recommended that people “study Torah, engage in good deeds, repent, observe Shabbat, and know the entire Halacha, and thanks to this God will apply a full recovery.”
This is not the first time Rabbi Yosef has publicly proffered a theological justification for a major disaster. In September of 2005, Yosef blamed the destructiveness of Hurricane Katrina on the residents of New Orleans and on U.S. President George W. Bush’s pressure on Israel to withdraw from northern Gaza and the West Bank:
Hurricane Katrina is a punishment meted out by God as a result of U.S. President George W. Bush’s support for the Gaza and northern West Bank disengagement… Notably, the rabbi chose to openly declare what many ultra-Orthodox believers have said for a while now, namely that recent naturally disasters in the U.S. are a direct result of American support for the pullout.
In his weekly sermon, the rabbi said: “There was a tsunami and there are terrible natural disasters, because there isn’t enough Torah study… black people reside there (in New Orleans). Blacks will study the Torah? (God said) let’s bring a tsunami and drown them.”
Yet Rabbi Ovadia was not done there, and proceeded to explain in detail why Americans deserved the Hurricane. “Bush was behind the (expulsion of) Gush Katif,” he said. “He encouraged Sharon to expel Gush Katif…we had 15,000 people expelled here, and there 150,000 (were expelled). It was God’s retribution ..God does not short-change anyone.”“He (Bush) perpetrated the expulsion. Now everyone is mad at him…this is his punishment for what he did to Gush Katif, and everyone else who did as he told them, their time will come, too,” the rabbi said.
A similar view of Hurricane Katrina as divine punishment was expressed by American televangelist John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), who said in a 1999 sermon, “ God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land.” Hagee, however, concurred with Iranian Hojatoleslam Kazim Sadeghi–the Iranian cleric who said earthquakes were Allah’s punishment for provocative dress and promiscuity–that God sends natural disasters to punish sexual licentiousness. Hagee told Terry Gross in an interview on WHYY radio on Sept. 18, 2006:
All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.
The newspaper carried the story in our local area, that was not carried nationally, that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any other gay pride parades.
Not long after Hagee’s Hitler/promised land sermon –Yosef asserted that the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust were “reincarnated sinners” who had been killed by the Nazis to atone for their misdeeds in their past lives.
In a more recent and much-criticized weekly radio sermon in the summer of 2007, the revered ultra-orthodox sage claimed that Israeli soldiers who “believe and pray” are protected by God, implying that only non-observant soldiers lose their lives:
“Is it any wonder if, heaven forbid, soldiers are killed in a war?” Rabbi Yosef said in the recording of his weekly Saturday night sermon…
“They don’t observe the Sabbath, they don’t observe the Torah, they don’t pray, they don’t put on phylacteries every day. Is it any wonder that they’re killed? It’s no wonder. May the Almighty have mercy on them and bring them back to religion.”
Yosef was once considered dovish — relative to other orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jewish rabbis and politicians — because he expressed the view in the late 1980s and early ’90s that halakha (Jewish religious law) prioritized the principle pikuach nefesh (saving a Jewish life) over that of yeshivat ha-aretz (settling all parts of the land promised by God to the Jews), and that negotiations with Arabs were religiously justifiable in order to preserve Jewish lives. Gerald Steinberg explained:
In a series of scholarly articles and public declarations, Rabbi Yosef stated that the positive commandment to settle the land is overridden by the commandment to avoid unnecessary loss of life. Thus, he declared that “If the heads of the army with the members of the government declare that lives will be endangered unless territories in the Land of Israel are relinquished, and there is the danger of an immediate declaration of war by the neighboring Arab [states],…and if territories are relinquished the danger of war will be removed, and that there are realistic chances of lasting peace, then it appears, according to all the opinions, that it is permissible to relinquish territories of the Land of Israel…[according to the principle of] pikuach nefesh. (In the same article, however, Rabbi Yosef also notes that military officers, government officials, and security experts are divided, and some have concluded that withdrawal from territories could increase the dangers, and that these views should also be considered.)
But in recent years, Yosef and his political party have taken a more hardline stance on territorial compromise, as Peter Beinart recently pointed out in the New York Review of Books:
At one point, Shas—like some of its Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox counterparts—was open to dismantling settlements. In recent years, however, ultra-Orthodox Israelis, anxious to find housing for their large families, have increasingly moved to the West Bank, where thanks to government subsidies it is far cheaper to live. Not coincidentally, their political parties have swung hard against territorial compromise. And they have done so with a virulence that reflects ultra-Orthodox Judaism’s profound hostility to liberal values. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Shas’s immensely powerful spiritual leader, has called Arabs “vipers,” “snakes,” and “ants.” In 2005, after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proposed dismantling settlements in the Gaza Strip, Yosef urged that “God strike him down.” The official Shas newspaper recently called President Obama “an Islamic extremist.”
Shas has been divided on extending the settlement freeze, with Yosef among those opposed.
Yosef’s reputation for dovishness is challenged in other ways. In a prayer for the Jewish new year this past August, Yosef appealed to the Almighty for a plague on Palestinians and their leaders (which he subsequently retracted). Two weeks ago, Yosef, who once called Palestinians “snakes despised by God,” opined in a sermon that non-Jews exist only to serve Jews, and that God preserves the lives of non-Jews in the State of Israel in order to protect those of Jews.
Fundamentalist Muslims, Christians and Jews seem to agree that the punitive but righteous hand of God is responsible for catastrophe.
The devil, as always, is in the details.
However, the home page is not where the AIPAC’s heart is. A behind-the-scenes statement being circulated by AIPAC publicist Josh Block, places all blame for the disdain shown for US peace efforts in general, and the contemptuous affront to Biden during his Israel visit last week in particular, exclusively on the Obama administration:
The Obama Administration’s recent statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel are a matter of serious concern. AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State.
Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East. The foundation of the U.S-Israel relationship is rooted in America’s fundamental strategic interest, shared democratic values, and a long-time commitment to peace in the region. Those strategic interests, which we share with Israel, extend to every facet of American life and our relationship with the Jewish State, which enjoys vast bipartisan support in Congress and among the American people.
The Administration should make a conscious effort to move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel, with whom the United States shares basic, fundamental, and strategic interests.
The escalated rhetoric of recent days only serves as a distraction from the substantive work that needs to be done with regard to the urgent issue of Iran’s rapid pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the pursuit of peace between Israel and all her Arab neighbors.
We strongly urge the Administration to work closely and privately with our partner Israel, in a manner befitting strategic allies, to address any issues between the two governments.
As Vice President Biden said last week in Israel, “The cornerstone of the relationship is our absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security. Bibi, you heard me say before, progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel. There is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security.”
In other words, according to AIPAC, all responsibility for the disharmony between Israel and the US lies with the misguided American administration, and none with any of the politicians on the Israeli side.
Ironically, as is so often the case, many Israeli journalists are much less reluctant than AIPAC to fault their own politicians for malfeasance and outright stupidity in their handling of Biden’s visit.
Here’s a fact check of AIPAC’s slam from various Israeli perspectives.
An analysis on March 11 by Jerusalem Post correspondent Hillary Leila Krieger (“Construction Freeze Fiasco a Test for Jerusalem, US“) pulled no punches, attributing what Ambassador Michael Oren claims is Israel’s worst crisis with the US since 1975,* to Israel’s own leadership:
To those who have doubted the sincerity of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s embrace of peace talks since his first visit to the Obama White House last May, the premier has said, “Test me.”
This week, before his American examiners, he failed his practical exam in spectacular fashion.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday evening said that the approval of 1,600 new housing”the approval of 1,600 new housing units in east Jerusalem during US Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel was “not intentional,” but stressed that it was an “undoubtedly superfluous and dangerous” move, and that it was now necessary to work to decrease the tension with the White House.
Today’s editorial on the English language site of Israeli news daily Haaretz, Netanyahu’s Rhetoric over Policy is Jeopardizing Israel, dares to bluntly state the obvious in a way that no American politician seeking AIPAC support could ever dare: “Israel is not America’s strategic asset, but America is the source of Israel’s strength, and it is essential to rein in the lunacy that threatens to shatter the link between the two countries. “ Calling the Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu a “strategic threat,” the editorial offers implicit dig not only at Netanyahu and his ministers, but, deliberate or not, at exactly the sort of “marketing” of the Israeli-American relationship in which AIPAC takes such pride:
… giving polished rhetoric precedence over policy and making winking a strategy are endangering the existence of the State of Israel, as is the collision course with Washington on which Netanyahu has put the country. It’s impossible to break American support for Israel down into sub-clauses such as mobilization against the Iranian threat, economic and military assistance, or cooperation in all spheres of life. Each of these is essential for the state’s survival; they are secondary to the foundation on which the culture of American support for Israel and the Jewish people relies – support from both the administration and the people.
Elsewhere on the Haaretz site, Niva Lanir (“Sinking to the Depths“) writes, “No tongue-lashing from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right or Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s left can overshadow the government’s flagrant abuse of diplomatic protocol and law enforcement.” While recognizing the constraining role of US politics in an election year to the prevailing AIPAC-driven narrative, Akiva Eldar pleads with President Obama not to muffle his demand that Israel suspend further construction, such as the recently trumpeted plans for the settlement of Ramat Shlomo in once-Arab Jerusalem, whose announcement just happened to coincide with Biden’s visit. On the contrary, Eldar urges the US president to save Jerusalem from disaster by moving forward with a two-state solution:
Based on experience, Netanyahu can expect the issue of construction at Ramat Shlomo to die down, just as the issue of deadly car crashes dwindles with time. A day or two will pass and life (or death) goes back to normal. Washington’s politicians are concerned about the congressional elections that will take place in less than eight months. The election year is an open season for the pro-Israel lobby, whose influence on both parties, including Obama’s, is great. “United Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people” was always the Judgment Day weapon of the Israeli and Jewish right during its assaults on Capitol Hill.
The story of Ramat Shlomo reminds all those who truly love Jerusalem that this tough city is the cornerstone of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and between the city and the three monotheistic religions who believe that it is holy. The current crisis over the violation of the status quo in East Jerusalem underlines the risk inherent in the proposal to postpone a solution on sovereignty over this tinderbox until the end of final-status talks. As long as this powder keg remains open, some extremist and/or fool, Mayor Nir Barkat and/or the Islamic Movement’s Sheikh Raed Salah will light a match.
Jerusalem will burn. If it doesn’t happen tomorrow, then the day after. The crisis over the construction freeze is a last-minute cry of distress. There is no more room for proximity talks and more trips by presidential envoys, whatever their rank. This is the time for the leader of the greatest superpower to pull out the Obama plan for two states with Jerusalem as their capital.
Haaretz is frequently and loudly derided as “leftist” by Jewish neoconservatives and right-wing Israelis (and even by American media pundits who ought to know better), because it occasionally offers opinion pieces and analyses from both ends of the Israeli political spectrum, and not just the Israeli right. Nevertheless, Barak Ravid almost always provides the official hasbara (Israel government’s spin–hat tip to my Lobelog colleagues Ali Gharib for suggesting a link to Yonatan Mendel’s article Hasbara in the London Review of Books) of news events concerning US-Israeli relations. Ravid spoke with four consuls who were among the diplomats who participated in a conference call with Ambassador Oren on Saturday night:
Oren sounded extremely tense and pessimistic. Oren was quoted as saying that “the crisis was very serious and we are facing a very difficult period in relations [between the two countries].”
Oren told the consuls to lobby congressmen, Jewish community leaders and the media to convey Israel’s position. He said the message to be relayed was that Israel had no intention to cause offense to Vice President Biden and that the matter had stemmed from actions by junior bureaucrats in the Interior Ministry and was caused by a lack of coordination between government offices. “It should be stressed that [our] relations with the United States are very important to us,” Oren reportedly said.
Several of the consuls suggested waiting, but Oren hinted that his approach reflected Netanyahu’s wishes. “These instructions come from the highest level in Jerusalem,” he was quoted as saying, adding that the utmost must be done to calm matters.
At Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Ravid writes, Netanyahu said the matter had been blown out of proportion by the media, adding that “There was an unfortunate incident here that was innocently committed and was hurtful, and certainly should not have occurred.”
Nevertheless, when Block crafted and disseminated AIPAC’s release to the media, there was no mention of any error, innocent or intentional, hurtful or harmful, on the part of any Israeli, nor to any miscommunication or lack of coordination between Israeli government ministries and junior bureaucrats.
Instead, AIPAC;s accusing finger points solely at the White House, accusing the Obama administration for “escalated rhetoric,” even as AIPAC ducks for cover behind Biden’s own words. AIPAC’s release doesn’t pass the smell test, even–perhaps especially– for Israelis.
Haaretz‘s Washington correspondent, Natasha Mozgovaya, noted that both the Obama administration and the Israeli government had carefully avoided using the “c word”–crisis. Nonetheless,
The same settlements that grabbed attention when both the Obama administration and the Israeli government made their first steps, and later were swept under the rug, came back to haunt their relationship and the phantom peace process. Those in Washington dealing with the Middle East every now and then have a strong sense of dejavu, but the claim attributed to Netanyahu’s aides that the U.S. “initiated” this crisis will for sure drop some jaws in utter disbelief. Attack might be the best defense, but the way this incident develops will block any potential for meaningful negotiations – direct or mediated talks – for a long time.
Writing in Y-Net, the online English version of the popular Israeli daily Yediot Acharonot, Nahum Barnea faults Netanyahu for exuding the smell of fear:
For months now, Netanyahu’s representative attorney Yitzhak Molcho, has been engaged in quiet negotiations on the Jerusalem issue with Senator George Mitchell, President Obama’s envoy. Netanyahu was scared to anger the Right. Hence, Molcho told Mitchell that the PM would not be able to declare a construction freeze in east Jerusalem.
However, Netanyahu was also scared of angering the Americans. Hence, Molcho promised Mitchell there will be no announcements of new construction in east Jerusalem. The result exploded in the face of Vice President Joe Biden last week.
As result of his struggle not to quarrel with or anger others, Netanyahu angers everyone: The Americans, the Right, the Left, and eventually the haredim too. Everyone smells his fear. There is nothing more dangerous for a prime minister than this smell; the smell of fear.
An increasing number of Americans, particularly Jews, have been challenging the assertion that AIPAC speaks for them. The number of Israeli voices challenging the AIPAC narrative, including those not particularly “left wing” or “progressive,” is also growing–and becoming more audible. The notion that Israel’s leadership can do no wrong–especially in Israeli eyes–is coming under closer scrutiny just as AIPAC loyalists pack for next week’s annual orgy of what, from an Israeli perspective, are paeans to their own irrelevance.
UPDATES March 16:
Yoel Marcus writes in Haaretz Row with US Questions Netanyahu’s Fitness to Lead:
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares at a cabinet meeting that the media exaggerated in describing the grave crisis with the United States and throws in a few more phrases from the “it’ll all be fine” department, it is clear that he has neither learned nor forgotten anything. You didn’t have to read Thomas Friedman’s devastating column in The New York Times to know that there is a limit to the Americans’ patience and their willingness to let us pour mud on their heads and call it rain.
If Bibi genuinely did not know, as he foolishly claims, that 1,600 more homes were being planned for East Jerusalem, he does not deserve to be prime minister. If he did know, and permitted Interior Minister Eli Yishai to announce the plan exactly during the visit of Joe Biden, who is both U.S. vice president and a friend to Israel, then there are two possibilities, each worse than the other: either stupidity or fear of the extremists in his cabinet. Either way, he is playing with fire…
Today’s Briefing on AIPAC’s home page now features Josh Block’s March 14 release under the headline AIPAC Calls Recent Statements by the U.S. Government “A Matter of Serious Concern“.
Mozgovaya’s Haaretz piece, quoted from above, has been reheadlined U.S. finally calls Mideast diplomacy by name – Crisis, and her observation that no one is using the “c-word” has been deleted. (Haaretz not only “updates” numerous news articles to bring them into greater harmony with the hasbara narrative of the moment, but, more unfortunately for diligent researchers, has adopted a policy of removing dates from all articles. It is not at all unusual to pull up an article from the Haaretz website and find it impossible to determine either its original date of publication or the date of its most recent rewrite. Past articles are very difficult to locate through the Haaretz website’s archive, and sometimes vanish without a trace, unless they’ve been reproduced in their entirety somewhere in the blogosphere. Sometimes cached versions can be located by Googling, but not always.)
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*Note: In 1975, when Israel refused to sign a treaty with Egypt that required the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Sinai peninsula Israel had occupied since the October 1973 “Yom Kippur” war, US President Gerald Ford expressed his “profound disappointment” with the Israeli stance toward Egypt . According the Guardian Middle East editor Ian Black, “For six months the US refused to conclude new arms agreements with Israel. Rabin called it ‘one of the worst periods in American-Israeli relations’. Ford came under pressure from Jewish and pro-Israel groups at home and Israel eventually relented, allowing the pullback to take place. That paved the way for Anwar Sadat’s initiative in 1977, which culminated in the Camp David accords brokered by President Jimmy Carter, and the 1979 peace treaty.” Carter continues to be reviled as the most hostile US president toward Israel, and Obama is frequently and unflatteringly compared to Carter by Israeli opponents of negotiations with Palestinians and a “two state” solution.
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