WASHINGTON, Mar1, 2011 (IPS) – J Street, the Washington-based “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” advocacy group, drew a large crowd to its annual conference this year despite criticism over its controversial calls for the Barack Obama administration not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction in [...]]]>
WASHINGTON, Mar1, 2011 (IPS) – J Street, the Washington-based “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” advocacy group, drew a large crowd to its annual conference this year despite criticism over its controversial calls for the Barack Obama administration not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank.
In the end, the administration vetoed the resolution, but the controversy appeared to have had no negative effect on the organisation’s turnout for the just-ended conference, which had 2,400 participants – 900 more than last year – and over 500 students participating.
Over 50 members of Congress were in attendance and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a surprise appearance to honour Kathleen Peratis, vice chair of the J Street Education Fund and the recipient of the group’s Tzedek V’Shalom award.
With pro-democracy revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya dominating the headlines over the past week, uncertainty about the shifting geopolitics in the region was a recurring theme in the remarks delivered by J Street leadership, panelists and an Obama administration senior Middle East adviser.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s president, told attendees, “We know in our hearts that it’s not just the status quo in the Arab world that is bound to change, it is the status quo between Israel and the Palestinian people that has to change as well,” at the conference’s kickoff on Saturday night.
“And the events of recent weeks only convince us more deeply that the time is now for a serious and sustained effort to secure an agreement that provides for a democratic homeland for the Jewish people living side by side in peace and security with a democratic homeland for the Palestinian people,” he continued.
Indeed the emphasis on taking immediate steps, with the leadership of the United States, to bring about a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian is central to J Street’s mission as Washington’s “political home for pro-Israel, pro- peace Americans”.
J Street has gained attention for its willingness to press harder than other pro-Israel organisations in Washington – particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – to pressure Israel to halt settlement construction and for its efforts to create a political space for American Jews who are increasingly critical of the Israeli government’s occupation of the West Bank and its siege on Gaza.
The organisation’s founding and the appearance, for the second year in a row, of a senior Obama administration official at the conference has found a mixed reception from other “pro-Israel” groups in Washington.
This year, senior White House Middle East adviser Dennis Ross was dispatched to address the conference, leading the right-wing Emergency Committee for Israel to call on Ross to take a critical tone in his remarks to the J Street audience.
“There are few moments when someone with your experience and credibility is invited into the anti-Israel echo chamber and provided an opportunity to dispel myths, combat falsehoods, deliver much-needed moral clarity – and state clearly that the United States stands with Israel,” said a Feb. 24 letter from the ECI’s Executive Director Noah Pollak.
“I trust that you will seize this moment to explain why the Jewish State is not just one of our closest allies, but a country that fully deserves the admiration and moral support of all Americans,” Pollak wrote.
Ross spoke on Sunday and delivered remarks which, while avoiding the harsh criticisms which Pollak called on him to make, fell short of the recurring call from J Street panelists for the Obama administration to take a more aggressive approach to bridging issues on which both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government have been unable to find common ground.
“We will continue to press both sides to engage seriously in negotiations – the only forum and the only mechanism that can resolve this historic conflict,” said Ross.
Ross deflected a question about the possibility for a new U.S. initiative to kickstart the peace process and repeated the administration’s position on Iran, stating, “While the door will always remain open for diplomacy, we remain determined to prevent Iran from acquiring the nuclear weapons and we won’t be deflected from this goal.”
The panel following Ross’s address was critical of the White House official’s position, leading New York Times columnist Roger Cohen to quip after Ross had left the room, “[Ross] sat in five administrations but couldn’t sit after the speech for the debate,” and, “When I hear the word process, I am dying inside, there is no process and there is no peace.”
The conference concluded with a keynote address from Naomi Chazan, president of the New Israel Fund and former deputy speaker of the Knesset, who told the audience, “The democratic wave spreading through the Middle East includes a free Palestine as an integral part of what is going on. And therefore, Israel as an occupying state cannot remain democratic while it rules over another people. It is antithetical to the winds of the time.”
Her speech repeated the calls heard throughout the three days of panels and discussions for the Obama administration to urgently assume greater leadership in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Neither Israel nor Palestine can [make peace] alone. Therefore, action requires that the U.S. and Europe and the international community take steps as well. The present administration in Washington must step forward now,” said Chazan.
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]]>Lieberman doesn’t appear too concerned about testing U.S.-China relations and calls for the U.S. to sanction Chinese companies that do business in Iran.
[Aggressive enforcement of sanctions] means American penalties against companies that continue to invest in Iran’s energy sector or sell refined petroleum to Iran—including Chinese companies.
Lieberman effectively shelves any hope for diplomatic outreach with Tehran– a contradiction of his stated support for the Obama administration’s Iran-policy.
Finally, we must also acknowledge the possibility that the current leaders of Iran are incapable of compromise on the nuclear program, no matter how much pressure is put on them, because opposition to America and the West is so integral to their very identity. If this is the case, our best hope to resolve this confrontation is not for the regime to change its behavior, but for the regime itself to be changed. In this respect, let us hope and pray that what has happened in Egypt will provide renewed inspiration and direction to the millions of Iranians who yearn for freedom.
And he is adament about keeping the “military option” on the table.
I also agree with President Obama that the use of military force is not the “ideal way” to stop the Iranian nuclear program. But if a nuclear Iran is as unacceptable as we all say it is, we must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to prevent the unacceptable.
Lieberman concludes his remarks by managing to work a “reverse-linkage” argument into a reference to one of Theodor Herzl’s most famous Zionist slogans. He suggests that the path to peace for Israel and its neighbors is for Islamist and authoritarian leaders to be overthrown in favor of democratic and peaceful governments.
On the other hand, we must acknowledge that freedom’s range has spread remarkably in our time and we must have the vision to see the world as it can be. This is the alternative future we must also summon the imagination to envision for the Middle East, and the political will to help bring into being:
A Middle East in which a democratic Egypt and a democratic Iran assume their central positions as peaceful, prosperous regional powers and the modern heirs to two of the world’s great civilizations.
A Middle East in which Islamist extremism no longer inspires violence or loyalty, but joins other failed and inhumane ideologies among history’s losers.
And a Middle East in which Israel and its Arab and Persian neighbors live in peace with each other as fellow democracies that respect the human rights of their citizens—in a region where the notion of going to war against each other becomes as unthinkable and absurd as it is today in Europe among nations who fought each other for centuries.
I know this vision may seem like a naïve dream. But I also know, as a great man once said, if we will it, it is no dream!
Establishing a Palestinian state, an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, or ending the siege on Gaza don’t play prominently in Lieberman’s peace plan.
]]>The only problem with her outrage is that HSBC implied no such thing.
HSBC responded to Rubin in a restrained–given the charges that Rubin was laying against them–and cogent statement.
HSBC offers no opinion on the lives of artists in any country. This is not a topic that’s germane to an ad campaign for a global bank. The ad needs to be considered in the context of our “Unlocking the World’s Potential” campaign. As with our prior “Values” campaign, this campaign intentionally makes no judgment. The intent is only to emphasize surprising facts based on geographic diversity, as a way to facilitate a conversation about the world’s potential. Other surprising facts featured in this campaign: Holland earns more exporting soy than Japan; USA has more Spanish language newspaper readers than Latin America.
Rubin does have some dirt: she lists some recent letters citing HSBC by a pair of members of Congress, and quotes a September 24 cease and desist order from a U.S. regulator imposing more rigid risk management systems on the bank. HSBC tells Rubin it “continue(s) to follow the letter and spirit of laws, regulations and sanctions related to Iran, in all jurisdictions.”
“It is not clear precisely what business activity HSBC continues to conduct in Iran,” Rubin admits high up in her piece. She concludes by making an unsubstantiated claim that HSBC is “continuing to do business with a murderous regime.”
As Ali pointed out last week, neoconservative responses to the ad—it was first tweeted by the Emergency Committee for Israel’s Noah Pollak—are “intellectually dishonest, utterly lacking in empathy, short-sighted, sloppy and hypocritical.” Rubin’s response manages to incorporate all of these elements in her hard-charging—yet factually challenged–response.
HSBC did not imply that women in Iran are “better situated” than American women. Rubin’s willingness to distort the text of the ad shows a total lack of empathy for the challenges that Iranian female filmmakers have overcome to hold an astonishing 25% of the film-making market. And her inability to celebrate the accomplishments of female filmmakers in Iran shows a striking short-sightedness, sloppiness and hypocrisy considering her supposed concern for the conditions faced by women in Iran.
But then again, perhaps her concern for human rights is overshadowed by a deeply irrational hatred and fear of everything — and anyone — Iranian.
Rubin turns to former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spokesperson Josh Block, now a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, who validates her stance:
It defies logic and common decency that HSBC would engage in this outrageous pro-Iran, anti-American propaganda at a time when the regime in Tehran is the leading human rights violator and state sponsor of terror in the world.
So the cycle begins again. The ad (which HSBC has now pulled) was not “anti-American.” Given the apparent truth of the statistics reported, it was not propaganda. Nor was the ad defending Iran’s human rights violators. Rubin, Block and Pollak’s argument are sticking to a script that necessitates a mindset of intellectual dishonesty, a lack of empathy, short-sightedness, sloppiness and hypocrisy. These aren’t the limited faults with Rubin, Block and Pollak’s argument. They are the foundation of it.
*Ali Gharib contributed to this post
]]>AIPAC is circulating a letter (PDF), drafted by the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) and Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, that asks:
We would like you to explain the rationale for a sale of such magnitude. What U.S. policy goals and interest are advanced by this sale and have we placed any conditions on it? What is the threat or threats that this sale is intended to address? Do the Saudis share our assessment of those threats, and will they be amenable to, and capable of, carrying out these missions?
Much attention has already gone to the motivations behind the arms sale, with realists concluding it is a clear attempt by the Obama administration to prepare the ground for a containment and deterrence policy against a nuclear armed Iran.
AIPAC’s support of the questions on the arms sale may well signal the increased pressure the Obama administration’s Iran policy will face both inside and outside of Congress, especially with a House Foreign Affairs Committee chaired by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL).
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