by Marsha B. Cohen
In the European Parliamentary election, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front (FN) “stunned France’s political elite on Sunday by taking first place,” reported Reuters. “It was the first time the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party had won a nationwide election in its four-decade history.”
The shift of sentiment and political [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
In the European Parliamentary election, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front (FN) “stunned France’s political elite on Sunday by taking first place,” reported Reuters. “It was the first time the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party had won a nationwide election in its four-decade history.”
The shift of sentiment and political influence toward the right and far-right in Western Europe is being viewed by some in Israel as an opportunity to garner European sympathy for anti-Arab sentiment and policies. Right-wing European politicians hostile to the growing number of immigrants from Africa and Asia are expected to sympathize with Israel’s tough attitude toward illegal African immigration. Israel’s own political spectrum is dominated by right-wing and ultra-right wing parties. Nationalist fervor aimed at asserting Israel’s character as a “Jewish state” in which Arabs have been regarded as perpetual political and cultural outsiders — even within the “green line” that defined Israel’s boundaries between its War of Independence and the Six Day War — aligns well with growing European unease at the rising percentage of Muslims in Europe’s largest cities.
A photograph of Israel’s UN ambassador attending a Le Pen meeting by “mistake”. Credit: nationspresse.info
Le Pen has been courting Israeli politicians in the three years since she assumed leadership over her father’s National Front Party. During a visit she made to New York in November 2011, Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron Prosor attended a luncheon for Le Pen at UN Headquarters. Prosor claimed he hadn’t actually been invited but found himself there “by accident,” insisting he left immediately upon discovering his mistake. But Prosor was photographed with Le Pen, both of them smiling. As reported by Haaretz, French news agencies quoted Le Pen as insisting Prosor’s attendance was not an error, and there was no way he could have chatted with her for 20 minutes without knowing her identity. “There was nothing unclear or ambiguous about our meeting,” said Le Pen. As he was departing, Prosor told television cameras filming the event as he left, “We spoke about Europe and other topics and I very much enjoyed the conversation.”
Le Pen’s anti-Semitic, anti-Islamic views
The enactment and enforcement of legislation in European countries that restrict or deny Muslims the right to practice their faith, from the left and right, impact both European Jews and Muslims. Among the targeted practices are dietary laws, especially the ritual slaughter of animals; non-medically mandated circumcision; wearing religious symbols and veils in public places; and looking to religious courts as the ultimate governing authority over marriage and divorce.
Le Pen has branded herself as the woman who will restrict these practices. She has, for example, advocated the end to public subsidies for the construction of mosques. In 2012, she not only called for banning head scarves, worn by Muslim women, in public places, but also skull caps (kippot) worn by religiously observant Jewish men. “Obviously, if the veil is banned, the kippah [should be] banned in public as well,” Le Pen told the French daily Le Monde.
After her party fared well in last month’s local French elections, Le Pen said French schools would no longer provide Jewish and Muslim students with non-pork meals. According to Le Pen, the dietary laws of Judaism and Islam prohibiting the consumption of pork were an affront to the values of France as a Christian nation.
French Jews are deeply troubled by the rise of right-wing extremism in European politics. Roger Cukierman, head of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions (CRIF), an umbrella organization of Jewish communities in France, wrote last October an op-ed for Le Monde entitled, “Front National, My Nightmare for 2017.” Polls were already predicting a strong showing for Le Pen’s party in the EU parliamentary election, and suggesting Le Pen’s success might soon propel her to the presidency of France:
It is 8 P.M. on May 14, 2017. The face of [National Front leader] Marine Le Pen appears on the television screens of millions of Frenchmen on the second round of the presidential election, she becomes the Republic’s 8th president…I, who survived World War II as a child in hiding, tremble [at the thought of] our country sinking under a regime whose populism stifles minority views; sidelines those outside its norms and redefines rights and liberties as it pleases.”
Yet some Israelis see a bright side to the growing discomfort of European Jews in their Diaspora home countries. According to a recent report, 75% of Jews in France — whose Jewish population of 480,000 is the largest in Europe — are considering emigration to Israel.
Le Pen has also said she’ll also work with Geert Wilders’ populist, far-right Dutch Freedom Party, which lost one of its 5 seats in the European Parliamentary election. Last November, Wilders and Le Pen announced they would campaign together on an agenda opposed to immigration, Islam and the European Union. Wilders, who called Le Pen “the next French president,” said his party looked forward to working with her.
Wilders visited Israel in late 2010, expressed support for its policies in the West Bank settlements, and said Palestinians should move to Jordan. “Our culture is based on Christianity, Judaism and humanism and (the Israelis) are fighting our fight,” Wilders told Reuters. “If Jerusalem falls, Amsterdam and New York will be next.”
He also told Reuters that he would organize an “international freedom alliance” to link grass-roots groups active in “the fight against Islam.” In an interview with Y-Net’s Eldad Beck, Wilders said he had a warm relationship with former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and considered him a role model. “He was also greatly demonized by the West, but was a great politician who serves as a role model for me,” he said. But Wilders, who has referred to the Prophet Muhammad as “the devil” and compared the Quran to Mein Kampf, has lost much of the cautious support of the minority of Dutch Jews he had been able to attract with his pro-Israel stance.
Unholy alliance
For all of her anti-immigrant and Islamophobic views, Le Pen isn’t everything that Israeli far-right politicians are hoping for in an EU politician. “She does not hide her opposition to the settlement policy or her support for recognition of Palestine at the United Nations,” according to Adar Primor of Haaretz, who met Marine Le Pen in 2004, when she was only the youngest daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the National Front in the 1970s. “She does not hide her opinion that the Iranian nuclear plan is ‘defensive’ and that she is opposed to attacking its nuclear facilities, an attack that she says would be ‘a flagrant violation of international law,’” wrote Primor.
This past February, Peter Martino of the Gatestone Institute accused Le Pen of being anti-US and pro-Iran, complaining that her anti-Islamist stance was misdirected at Saudi Arabia. He cited a January 22 foreign policy speech in which “Le Pen advocated that France should sever its links with Saudi Arabia, ‘America’s best ally’ and a ‘dangerous country ruled by extremist clans, who, since the origin of Wahhabism, have but one goal: to dominate global Islam and turn it into jihad against all other civilization.’”
In March, Haaretz reported that Ofir Akunis, a deputy minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, met with a delegation from the separatist Flemish Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party, an extremist right-wing party with a racist agenda and anti-Semitic elements during its visit to Israel. The delegation was headed by Filip Dewinter, a prominent member of the party whose moniker is “Belgium’s Jean-Marie Le Pen.”
The platform of the ethno-nationalist party advocates the separation of Flanders from Belgium, and calls for “Flemish identity and culture” as a requirement for everyone living in Flanders. Senior party members have a history of holocaust denial and identification with Nazi Germany. Opposed to the Islamicization of Europe, Vlaams Belang favors amnesty to Flemish Nazi collaborators and the repeal of laws that prohibit racism and Holocaust denial, on the grounds of freedom of expression. Akunis, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, was unapologetic about the hospitality shown to the Flemish separatist delegation.
The head and deputy head of the Samaria Regional Council, the settler group that organized the Flemish nationalists’ visit, claimed the Flemish Interest Party was “very friendly toward Israel and the Jewish community,” but neither Israel’s Foreign Ministry nor the Belgian Jewish community want to have any contact with the party. In 2010, the same Council leaders brought to Israel Heinz-Christian Strache, the leader of Austria’s Freedom Party — an extreme, right-wing, xenophobic and anti-Semitic organization that gained notoriety under Strache’s predecessor, Jorg Haider. Haider was killed in a car accident in 2008.
Zvi Bar’el writes in today’s Haaretz:
The dilemma facing Israel is clear. Should it condemn the rise of the extreme right and declare Europe to be a continent tainted with anti-Semitism, or should it continue to host representatives of these racist parties, some of whom have voiced their opposition to boycotts directed at Israel and have even forged close and friendly ties with leaders of the settler movement here? The Israeli way out of this dilemma is not complicated. Israel rejects the anti-Semitism but embraces the racism. It views the skinheads and their swastika tattoos with sincere concern, yet shares their opinions and understands their behavior toward foreigners.
From a right-wing Israeli perspective, the “right” sort of European politician would hold the line on Muslim immigration to Europe, thereby blocking Muslims from becoming an influential voting blocking. In other words, this leader would Islamophobic but not anti-Semitic. This person would also be unequivocally “pro-Israel,” permitting and even encouraging settlements in the West Bank and Gaza territory, and embracing Israel’s outright annexation of the settlement blocs and their adjacent security zones, as well as supporting Israel’s “right” to keep expanding the boundaries of “united Jerusalem.” Such a politician would be anti-Arab and harbor no sympathies for Palestinians wanting their own state in the Middle East or demanding civil and political rights under Israeli governance. They would also be opposed to any softening of the European stance toward Iran, and be a staunch supporter of sanctions and war at Israel’s whim.
That’s not Marine Le Pen, at least not yet. However, regardless of the dismay expressed by U.S. and European Jewish organizations, the growing number of European parliamentarians from what were once fringe parties may be, from the perspective of some Israeli politicians, a shift in the “right” direction.
Photo Credit: Blandine Le Cain
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
The ubiquitous smiling visage of Hassan Rouhani and his seemingly reasonable iterations of Iranian intentions are infuriating some Israelis.
Zvi Bar’el of Haaretz explains that “Israel’s fear of losing its justification for an attack on Iran and the fear that the United States may yet “fall into the [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
The ubiquitous smiling visage of Hassan Rouhani and his seemingly reasonable iterations of Iranian intentions are infuriating some Israelis.
Zvi Bar’el of Haaretz explains that “Israel’s fear of losing its justification for an attack on Iran and the fear that the United States may yet “fall into the trap” set by the “smooth language” of the Iranian president is driving it crazy.”
“Where is Ahmadinejad when we really need him?” asks Chemi Shalev in Haaretz.
The attention, some of it fawning, that is already being bestowed on the so-called “moderate” Iranian president has confirmed the widespread assumption of most analysts following Rohani’s election in August as Iran’s 7th president: that it wouldn’t take long for Israel and other critics of Iran to sorely miss his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
After all, for the past 8 years, Israel’s efforts to convince the world and especially the U.S. to tackle Iran’s nuclear designs head on relied on two main figures: the relentless Netanyahu and the equally adamant, Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad. And with all due respect to Netanyahu’s formidable public relations prowess, it was Ahmadinejad who served as Israel’s number one talking point, its strategic propaganda asset, a poster boy who self-explained Tehran’s sinister designs.
And Y-Net‘s Ron Ben Yishai lays out the four conditions that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says should be met in order for the U.S. to ease sanctions against Iran:
Netanyahu specified them as “Halting all uranium enrichment; removing all enriched uranium; closing (the uranium enrichment facility at) Qom; and stopping the plutonium track,” which is being pursued at the Arak reactor. Netanyahu said that “until all four of these measures are achieved, the pressure on Iran must be increased and not relaxed.”
Netanyahu’s words were most likely meant for the ears of the members of Congress, so they will not let Obama get carried away by Rohani’s overtures and urge the president to increase the economic pressure on Iran and impose additional, more severe sanctions. The Israelis are also telling their American counterparts that just like in the case of the Syrian crisis, a credible military threat is needed in order to get results on the diplomatic track.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, characterized Rouhani on Friday as “a master of deceit who has been putting on an all-out charm offensive since he took office, replacing Ahmadinejad” and said any talks with Rouhani was “a fool’s errand.” The staunchly pro-Israel (and defender of the mujahadeen-e-khalq (MEK), even while it was on the State Dept. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations) also shared Israeli nostalgia for Rouhani’s predecessor in a statement that was given prominent coverage by Haviv Rettig Gur in the Times of Israel: “In many ways Rouhani is much more dangerous than [former Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. At least with Ahmadinejad you get what you see – his hatred for Israel and the United States is not disguised with rhetoric or spurious gestures of goodwill.”
Members of Congress notwithstanding, Raphael Ahrens, the diplomatic correspondent for the Times of Israel, opines that “right now Rouhani is singing a new tune, and Netanyahu risks sounding like a broken record, repeating a song people would much rather not listen to anymore.”
Meanwhile, Yuval Steinitz, a member of Israel’s parliament (Knesset) and of Netanyahu’s cabinet, has scored big time in laying claim to the meme that derisively characterizes Rouhani’s efforts to improve US-Iran relations as a “charm offensive,” which has gone viral since Sept. 8, when Yaakov Lappin of the Jerusalem Post reported:
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is about to launch a charm offensive aimed at calming Western fears over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and hopes to “laugh all the way to the bomb,” Yuval Steinitz, the international relations, intelligence and strategic affairs minister, said on Sunday.
Speaking at the Institute for Counter-terrorism’s 13th annual international conference, Steinitz said, “If I read Rouhani correctly, I predict that in [the] near future, maybe at the start of [the] UN General Assembly session next week, we’ll see an offensive of friendliness and moderation toward the West, to influence Western media, public opinion and leadership in Europe and the US and to calm fears over a nuclear Iran.”
Describing Rouhani as “more sophisticated and smarter than his predecessor [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad,” Steinitz warned that the Iranian president plans to deceive the international community to buy his country more time to develop its military nuclear program.
In a recent interview with the Sheldon Adelson-owned daily Israel Hayom, Steinitz reiterated, “Rouhani has launched a charm offensive on the West, but he plans to charm his way to a nuclear weapon.”
But it was Iranian-American Professor Mohsen Milani, writing in Foreign Policy way back in June, who casually used the phrase “charm offensive” in the body of a thoughtful article arguing that Iran’s foreign policy would likely start with a charm offensive toward all of Iran’s neighbors, particularly the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. Describing Rouhani as “someone with whom one could do business,” Milani offered numerous policy recommendations, among them that the U.S. invite Iranian engagement on Syria and Afghanistan, and “help the forces of moderation in Iran by trying to work with the new president.”
The next day, the hawkish news aggregation site Real Clear World emblazoned the headline “Get Ready for Rouhani’s Charm Offensive.”
“In my articles and in a number of interviews I have done since June, I have consistently talked about the “charm offensive” by the IRI [Islamic Republic of Iran] in the context of Iran’s strategic decision to settle its nuclear dispute with the West and explore the possibility of normalizing its relations with the US,” Milani explained in an e-mail to Lobe Log. “If we only emphasize the ‘charm offensive’ without talking about the key strategic decision Iran seems to have made, then we could create the impression that what has been taking place is devoid of any substance and is but a sophisticated and sinister public relations scheme.”
In the past two weeks and particularly in the past few days, the meme of Rouhani’s “charm offensive” has been dominating many U.S. news sources. With some exceptions, these pieces have mostly ignored the possibility that the U.S. and Iran have shared interests, and approached the “Rouhani charm offensive” as a tactic for evading progress rather than evidence of a strategic decision made and supported by major players within the Iranian government. Here’s a sampling of major and minor sites: Associated Press; CBS; Center for Security Policy; Christian Science Monitor; CNN; Financial Times; Fiscal Times; Front Page Magazine; Fox News; France 24; Guardian; National Public Radio; PBS News Hour; Time; Washington Free Beacon and the Washington Post.
Rouhani, who left Iran for New York on Sunday, will attend the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24, and deliver a speech before the UNGA that afternoon. The following day he is scheduled to address the special session of the Nuclear Disarmament Conference as the current chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), of which nearly two thirds of the members of the UN are members. Rouhani will also address foreign ministers of the NAM, and is expected to meet and hold talks with world leaders on the sidelines of the UNGA. He has “not ruled out” the possibility of meeting with President Obama.
According to the Times of Israel, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Friday night that “administration officials have had several conversations with their Israeli counterparts recently to assure them that Rouhani’s outreach — which has seen the new Iranian president give a US TV interview, pen an op-ed in the Washington Post, and send other conciliatory messages to the US — will not prompt a reduction in sanctions pressure designed to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive.”
If that is all that comes of Rouhani’s so-called “charm offensive,” somewhere in Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be smiling.
]]>- Foreign Policy: Harvard International Relations Professor Stephen Walt blogs the revelations that Hamid Karzai receives money from Iran should come as no surprise. Far from being a “dastardly Iranian plot to control Afghanistan,” Walt points out “given that the two states share a lengthy border, Iran has a considerable interest in Afghanistan’s future course. In fact, it would be surprising if they weren’t trying to buy a little influence in Kabul.” While some pundits have expressed concern about growing Iranian influence in Afghanistan, Walt responds that they should be glad that Iran is sending money to Karzai instead of using it to buy weapons for Hezbollah.
- Wall Street Journal: John Hopkins professor Fouad Ajami opines that Karzai, in accepting money from Iran, is “taking the coin of our enemies and scoffing at our purposes.” Ajami attributes the willingness of Karzai to take the money and the Iranian decision to offer it as: “This is the East, and basksheesh is the way of the world.” As for the Iranians, they “…are of the neighborhood, they know the ways of the bazaar.” Ajami, who is quick to defend the Iraq war, says that while Iraq had the possibility of transforming Iraq into a democracy in the midst of “a despotic Arab world” whereas Afghanistan is a “broken country” and a “land of banditry” whose president has no interest in partnering with the United States.
- Haaretz: Zvi Bar’el writes that Saudi Arabia sees the recent U.S.-Saudi arms deal as an attempt to deter Israel, not Iran. He argues that the two countries are busily negotiating over key issues regarding their spheres of influence in Iraq and Lebanon. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia share an interest in stopping the special international tribunal investigating Rafik Hariri’s assassination. Stopping the investigation, says Bar’el, would prevent the collapse of the Lebanese government, a scenario which neither country wants. In Iraq, Iran may needs Saudi Arabia’s assistance to convince Ayad Allawi, who has received Saudi support, to join a coalition with Nouri al-Maliki, who has received the support of Muqtada al-Sadr. He concludes, “Meanwhile, it seems the Americans are aiming too high. The real game is in the hands of local forces that are sketching the strategic map, which will be presented to Washington as a fait accompli.”
- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Jamie Kirchick writes that the latest WikiLeaks release of Iraq war documents show, beyond a doubt, that Iran “clearly sees itself as engaged in a war against the United States and those attempting to forge and independent and democratic Iraq.” Kirchick opines that the WikiLeaks release provides evidence of an Iranian “training camp for terrorists” who attack U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He concludes that the WikiLeaks release has served to, “… reveal the true nature of Al-Qaeda and the Iranian regime, and to open a window into what the region will look like should their efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq prove successful.”