From First Things, Jun 26, 2009 by David P. Goldman, associate editor [a.k.a "Spengler" of the Asia Times Online]:
...What is the condition of being married, and what makes it possible to attain it?
Franz Rosenzweig’s anthropology—in which religion is a response to man’s sentience of death, and the sentience of death is not only an individual but also an communal characteristic—may help answer that question. Humankind fights mortality in two ways. The first is to raise children who will remember us, and the second is to seek eternal life through divine grace. The estate of marriage involves both.
“Why do men chase women?” asks Rose Castorini in Moonstruck. “Because they want to live forever.” The data suggest that we marry and have children for just that reason.
When we cease to hope in eternal life, we no longer marry and no longer have children. That is the terrible lesson that the triumph of secularism has taught us.
In industrial countries where atheism triumphed in the form of communism, fertility rates have fallen to levels barely half of replacement. The fertility of Eastern Europe in 2005 was only 1.25 children per woman, according to the United Nations Population Prospects. Japan stood at 1.3. In secular Western Europe it was 1.6. In industrial countries where most people profess some form of religious faith, however, fertility remains at replacement levels or above. America’s fertility in 2005 stood at 2.1, and Israel’s at 2.9.
The concentration of childbearing among people of faith is evident not only from international comparison but also within countries and religious denominations. The clearest data are available for the different Jewish currents. As Steven Bayme wrote March 24 in Jewish Week, “Orthodox Jews constitute at most ten percent of the total U.S. Jewish population. Yet twenty-three percent of Jewish children are Orthodox, according to a United Jewish Communities report. Among affiliated Jewish homes 197,000 children are Reform, 153,000 are Conservative, and 228,000 are Orthodox. The smallest of the movements (Orthodox) contains thirty-eight percent of the children of affiliated Jewish homes.”
... it is not the nature of homo sapiens to breed in the absence of the hope of eternal life.
... it is marriage as a sacred institution that makes possible the perpetuation of human life.
...It is because of the image of God planted in each human being that the perpetuation of humanity is possible. Each bridal pair recreates the bliss of the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden:
Blessing Four: “We bless you, God, for forming each person in your image. You have planted within us a vision of you and given us the means that we may flourish through time. Blessed are you, Creator of humanity.”
Blessing Five: “May Israel, once bereft of her children, now delight as they gather together in joy. Blessed are you, God, who lets Zion rejoice with her children.”
Blessing Six: “Let these loving friends taste of the bliss you gave to the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden in the days of old. Blessed are you, the Presence who dwells with bride and groom in delight.”
Blessing Seven: “Blessed are you, who lights the world with happiness and contentment, love and companionship, peace and friendship, bridegroom and bride. Let the mountains of Israel dance! Let the gates of Jerusalem ring with the sounds of joy, song, merriment, and delight—the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride, the happy shouts of their friends and companions. We bless you, God, who brings bride and groom together to rejoice in each other."
The human bride and bridegroom unite in mystical emulation of God’s espousal of Israel, and the very mountains of Israel dance in joy with each wedded pair.
Husband and wife join together as a microcosm of the union of God and his people. It is the union of God and his people that makes possible holy matrimony.
The pagans of the ancient world had marriages to ensure legitimacy and inheritance, and the reproductive relationships of wedded pairs stood under the sign of the civic gods. In that respect all societies have sanctified marriage after their own fashion. But only the passionate God of Israel by espousing his people makes possible the union of khesed and ahavah...the union of the biological erotic impulse and of the uniquely human desire for eternal life.
It is not the love of the bridal couple that defines marriage. Love comes in many forms, some of them pathological. It is the fact that the love of the bridal couple seeks to conform to the eternal image of covenantal love—between God and his people—that uniquely defines the estate of marriage.
Marriage is celebrated before a holy congregation; it is the entry of the bride and bridegroom into the holy congregation in their new condition as husband as wife that makes the marriage holy. Civil marriage never quite replaces marriage before a holy congregation, but it serves a similar purpose where the predominant religious culture makes civil marriage an imitation of sacred marriage.
This may be the first time in Western history in which the sacred foundation of society, whose irreducible fundamental unit is the family, faces explicit opposition.
If militant secularism succeeds in banishing the sacred from social life, we will lose heart and perish, as the tragic victims of communism are perishing. There is nothing to be done for the infertile, aging peoples of the former Soviet empire. The best thing one can do for them is not to be like them.
Secular Western Europe already has one foot in the demographic grave. If we lose the sacred in the United States, we will follow them into Sheol. We might as well make a stand now over the sacred character of marriage, because there is nowhere to fall back from here.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
And Spengler is ...
A brief excerpt only, from the Asia Times Online, Front Page, Apr 18, 2009, by Spengler*:
During the too-brief run of the Asia Times print edition in the 1990s, the newspaper asked me to write a humor column, and I chose the name "Spengler" as a joke - a columnist for an Asian daily using the name of the author of The Decline of the West....
... I argued [that]...The old and angry cultures of the world, fighting for room to breath against the onset of globalization, would not go quietly into the homogenizer. Many of them would fight to survive, but fight in vain, for the tide of modernity could not be rolled back.
As in the great extinction of the tribes in late antiquity, individuals might save themselves from the incurable necrosis of their own ethnicity through adoption into the eternal people, that is, Israel....
The end of the old ethnicities, I believed, would dominate the cultural and strategic agenda of the next several decades. ...The 300 or so essays that I have published in this space since 1999 all proceeded from the theme formulated by Rosenzweig: the mortality of nations and its causes, Western secularism, Asian anomie, and unadaptable Islam.
Why raise these issues under a pseudonym? There is a simple answer, and a less simple one. To inform a culture that it is going to die does not necessarily win friends, and what I needed to say would be hurtful to many readers.
I needed to tell the Europeans that their post-national, secular dystopia was a death-trap whence no-one would get out alive.
I needed to tell the Muslims that nothing would alleviate the unbearable sense of humiliation and loss that globalization inflicted on a civilization that once had pretensions to world dominance.
I needed to tell Asians that materialism leads only to despair. And I needed to tell the Americans that their smugness would be their undoing.
In this world of accelerated mortality, in which the prospect of national extinction hung visibly over most of the peoples of the world, Jew-hatred was stripped of its mask, and revealed as the jealousy of the merely undead toward living Israel. And it was not hard to show that the remnants of the tribal world lurking under the cover of Islam were not living, but only undead, incapable of withstanding the onslaught of modernity, throwing a tantrum against their inevitable end.
...G K Chesterton said that if you don't believe in God, you'll believe in anything, and I was living proof of that as a young man, wandering in the fever-swamps of left-wing politics. I found my way thanks to the first Ronald Reagan administration. The righting of America after it nearly capsized during the dark years of Jimmy Carter was a defining experience for me. I owe much to several mentors, starting with Dr Norman A. Bailey, special assistant to President Reagan and director of plans at the National Security Council from 1981-1984. My political education began in his lair at the old Executive Office Building in 1981, when he explained to me that the US would destroy the Soviet Empire by the end of the 1980s. I thought him a dangerous lunatic, and immediately signed on...
...My commitment to Judaism came relatively late in life, in my mid-thirties, but was all the more passionate for its tardiness. The things I had been raised to love were disappearing from the world, or changing beyond recognition.....
...Europe's high culture and its capacity to train universal minds had deteriorated beyond repair...
...Renewal could not come from music, nor literature, nor the social sciences. The wells of culture had run dry, because they derived from faith to begin with. I was raised in the Enlightenment pseudo-religion of art and beauty....
...The high culture of the West had its own Achilles' heel. Even its greatest cultivators often suffered from the sin of pride, and worshiped their own powers rather than the source of their powers. Painfully and slowly, I began to learn the classic Jewish sources. My guide back to Judaism was the great German-Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig, and my first essay on these subjects was published by the Jewish-Christian Relations website in 1999 under the title, "Has Franz Rosenzweig's Time Come?"
...As a returning religious Jew, I had less and less to discuss with the secular Zionists who shared my passion and partisanship for Israel, but could not see a divine dimension in Jewish nationhood. So-called cultural Judaism repelled me; most of what passes for Jewish culture comes down to the mud that stuck to our boots as we fled one country after another. The Hebrew Bible and its commentaries over the centuries are the core of Jewish culture...
...As First Things editor Joseph Bottum observed to me, "Spengler's" voice freed my style. Why not openly identify myself? Because my readers then would have jammed my thinking into the Procrustean bed of their prejudice.
In 2000, there was nothing to do but to cast my thoughts upon the waters. When the first of these essays appeared I had no expectation that they might interest a wide public. To my astonishment, they were read, and read extensively. Then came 9/11, and my tale of the existential angst of nations was borne up by the Zeitgeist. The Spengler forum at Asia Times Online grew to nearly five thousand registered members. The essays often reached a million readers a month.
*"Spengler" is channeled by David P Goldman, associate editor of First Things
Read the full article here, and other articles in The Asia Times by Spengler here.
See Goldman's biography in Wikipedia here.
During the too-brief run of the Asia Times print edition in the 1990s, the newspaper asked me to write a humor column, and I chose the name "Spengler" as a joke - a columnist for an Asian daily using the name of the author of The Decline of the West....
... I argued [that]...The old and angry cultures of the world, fighting for room to breath against the onset of globalization, would not go quietly into the homogenizer. Many of them would fight to survive, but fight in vain, for the tide of modernity could not be rolled back.
As in the great extinction of the tribes in late antiquity, individuals might save themselves from the incurable necrosis of their own ethnicity through adoption into the eternal people, that is, Israel....
The end of the old ethnicities, I believed, would dominate the cultural and strategic agenda of the next several decades. ...The 300 or so essays that I have published in this space since 1999 all proceeded from the theme formulated by Rosenzweig: the mortality of nations and its causes, Western secularism, Asian anomie, and unadaptable Islam.
Why raise these issues under a pseudonym? There is a simple answer, and a less simple one. To inform a culture that it is going to die does not necessarily win friends, and what I needed to say would be hurtful to many readers.
I needed to tell the Europeans that their post-national, secular dystopia was a death-trap whence no-one would get out alive.
I needed to tell the Muslims that nothing would alleviate the unbearable sense of humiliation and loss that globalization inflicted on a civilization that once had pretensions to world dominance.
I needed to tell Asians that materialism leads only to despair. And I needed to tell the Americans that their smugness would be their undoing.
In this world of accelerated mortality, in which the prospect of national extinction hung visibly over most of the peoples of the world, Jew-hatred was stripped of its mask, and revealed as the jealousy of the merely undead toward living Israel. And it was not hard to show that the remnants of the tribal world lurking under the cover of Islam were not living, but only undead, incapable of withstanding the onslaught of modernity, throwing a tantrum against their inevitable end.
...G K Chesterton said that if you don't believe in God, you'll believe in anything, and I was living proof of that as a young man, wandering in the fever-swamps of left-wing politics. I found my way thanks to the first Ronald Reagan administration. The righting of America after it nearly capsized during the dark years of Jimmy Carter was a defining experience for me. I owe much to several mentors, starting with Dr Norman A. Bailey, special assistant to President Reagan and director of plans at the National Security Council from 1981-1984. My political education began in his lair at the old Executive Office Building in 1981, when he explained to me that the US would destroy the Soviet Empire by the end of the 1980s. I thought him a dangerous lunatic, and immediately signed on...
...My commitment to Judaism came relatively late in life, in my mid-thirties, but was all the more passionate for its tardiness. The things I had been raised to love were disappearing from the world, or changing beyond recognition.....
...Europe's high culture and its capacity to train universal minds had deteriorated beyond repair...
...Renewal could not come from music, nor literature, nor the social sciences. The wells of culture had run dry, because they derived from faith to begin with. I was raised in the Enlightenment pseudo-religion of art and beauty....
...The high culture of the West had its own Achilles' heel. Even its greatest cultivators often suffered from the sin of pride, and worshiped their own powers rather than the source of their powers. Painfully and slowly, I began to learn the classic Jewish sources. My guide back to Judaism was the great German-Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig, and my first essay on these subjects was published by the Jewish-Christian Relations website in 1999 under the title, "Has Franz Rosenzweig's Time Come?"
...As a returning religious Jew, I had less and less to discuss with the secular Zionists who shared my passion and partisanship for Israel, but could not see a divine dimension in Jewish nationhood. So-called cultural Judaism repelled me; most of what passes for Jewish culture comes down to the mud that stuck to our boots as we fled one country after another. The Hebrew Bible and its commentaries over the centuries are the core of Jewish culture...
...As First Things editor Joseph Bottum observed to me, "Spengler's" voice freed my style. Why not openly identify myself? Because my readers then would have jammed my thinking into the Procrustean bed of their prejudice.
In 2000, there was nothing to do but to cast my thoughts upon the waters. When the first of these essays appeared I had no expectation that they might interest a wide public. To my astonishment, they were read, and read extensively. Then came 9/11, and my tale of the existential angst of nations was borne up by the Zeitgeist. The Spengler forum at Asia Times Online grew to nearly five thousand registered members. The essays often reached a million readers a month.
*"Spengler" is channeled by David P Goldman, associate editor of First Things
Read the full article here, and other articles in The Asia Times by Spengler here.
See Goldman's biography in Wikipedia here.
The Jordan Solution
THE JERUSALEM POST, Jul. 6, 2009, by Tilman Tarach* [my emphasis added - SL]:
Former MK and journalist Uri Avnery alleges that in 1981 defense minister Ariel Sharon had planned "to encourage the Palestinians to trigger off a revolution in Jordan and to dethrone King Hussein" so as to "transform Jordan into a Palestinian state under Yasser Arafat and to negotiate the future of the West Bank with the Palestinian government in Amman."
At that time, Avnery was still a member of the Knesset. He has since become rather popular as a Jewish anti-Zionist (and anticommunist, by the way), particularly in Germany. The plan, into which he claims to have been initiated by Sharon personally, outrages him today, as if he was a confessing monarchist to whom the throne of the king of Jordan is sacred.
What would, in fact, have been the arguments against the "Jordanian option"?
And what would be the arguments against it today?
Jordan, like the remaining Palestinian areas, was originally part of theMandated Territory of Palestine governed by the British Empire, an area that would have offered sufficient space for a Jewish and an Arab state. Jordan covers 78 percent of this area, and was separated by the British as "Transjordan" in 1922. The remaining Palestinian areas, however, which today comprise Israel plus the West Bank plus the Gaza Strip, and whose total area is not much larger than Kuwait, will hardly support two sovereign states, even less if these are hostile to each other.
LET US look at the facts: Jordan's territory is more than four times Israel's, and its population density is only one sixth of Israel's. The majority of the Palestinian refugees who fled during the wars of 1948 and 1967 live in Jordan, and about 60 percent of all Jordanians call themselves Palestinians. Until 1967, the West Bank was occupied by Jordan: it was actually formally annexed, and the Palestinian Arabs living there were considered Jordanians (and, even today, they often hold a Jordanian passport). But, tellingly, none of them called for an intifada against Jordan to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank, and none of the Palestinian Arabs ever fought against the Egyptians in Gaza, who had occupied the Gaza Strip since 1948. The fighting has always and exclusively been directed against Israel's existence.
When the PLO was founded in 1964, it did not call for the liberation of the territories occupied by Jordan and Egypt, but for the destruction of Israel; nobody within the PLO talked about a Palestinian state at that time, not even Ahmed Shukeiri, until 1967 chairman of the PLO. In Article 24 of its 1964 Charter, the PLO still explicitly renounced any sovereignty claims to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The strategy did not change until after 1967, when these territories were no longer occupied by Jordan or Egypt but by Israel. As early as in 1965, the PLO boasted of having killed 35 Jews, and the number increased as the years went on.
This shows the dishonesty of the lamentation, repeated like a mantra, that the assaults on Jews are only a reaction to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which took place only in the course of the Six Day War.
As is well known, that very same year Israel offered to negotiate the return of all the occupied territories in exchange for genuine peace, but at the Khartoum Conference the Arab states answered with the famous triple "no": "no" to peace with Israel, "no" to recognition of Israel, "no" to negotiations with Israel. Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba was the only Arab leader who, as early as 1965, supported an agreement with Israel. The Khartoum Conference restated the old position of the notorious mufti of Jerusalem: Not an inch of sacred Muslim soil would be allowed to make up a sovereign Jewish state. In this context, it should be recalled that Jimmy Carter was the first to propose a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; not until then did the PLO seize this suggestion.
In reality, the only viable option, which not even the Palestinians can raise reasonable objections against, is the following: The West Bank (or large parts of it) is united with Jordan, and Gaza with Egypt. (When, in February 2008, the Palestinians overran the Egyptian border fortifications into Sinai, their rallying cry, addressed to the Egyptians, was: "We are one people.")
According to surveys, 30% of Palestinians living in the West Bank are in favor of such a solution. But it meets with resistance from the Hashemite dynasty of Jordan, which fears for the loss of the throne; it therefore renounced any territorial claims to the West Bank back in 1988. As reported by the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad, King Abdullah considered a confederation between Jordan and the West Bank a "conspiracy against his kingdom and against the Palestinians."
All the well-known Palestinian groups demonize such a plan: The creation of a second Palestinian state next to Jordan has always been just a pretense for them to conceal their anti-Israel policies, and the recognition of Jordan enlarged by the West Bank as the state of the Palestinians would deprive them of this pretense.
Their real objective has always been the destruction of Israel and, with their phony anger at the "Zionist arrogance," they would still pursue this goal even if the Jews of Israel retreated all the way to Masada or Tel Aviv.
*The writer is a lawyer in Germany and recently published 'The Eternal Scapegoat: Holy War', 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' and the 'Dishonesty of the So-Called Left in the Middle East Conflict'.
This article was recently printed in German in the monthly Konkret. (Translation: Dr. Margret Szymanski-Schikora)
Former MK and journalist Uri Avnery alleges that in 1981 defense minister Ariel Sharon had planned "to encourage the Palestinians to trigger off a revolution in Jordan and to dethrone King Hussein" so as to "transform Jordan into a Palestinian state under Yasser Arafat and to negotiate the future of the West Bank with the Palestinian government in Amman."
At that time, Avnery was still a member of the Knesset. He has since become rather popular as a Jewish anti-Zionist (and anticommunist, by the way), particularly in Germany. The plan, into which he claims to have been initiated by Sharon personally, outrages him today, as if he was a confessing monarchist to whom the throne of the king of Jordan is sacred.
What would, in fact, have been the arguments against the "Jordanian option"?
And what would be the arguments against it today?
Jordan, like the remaining Palestinian areas, was originally part of theMandated Territory of Palestine governed by the British Empire, an area that would have offered sufficient space for a Jewish and an Arab state. Jordan covers 78 percent of this area, and was separated by the British as "Transjordan" in 1922. The remaining Palestinian areas, however, which today comprise Israel plus the West Bank plus the Gaza Strip, and whose total area is not much larger than Kuwait, will hardly support two sovereign states, even less if these are hostile to each other.
LET US look at the facts: Jordan's territory is more than four times Israel's, and its population density is only one sixth of Israel's. The majority of the Palestinian refugees who fled during the wars of 1948 and 1967 live in Jordan, and about 60 percent of all Jordanians call themselves Palestinians. Until 1967, the West Bank was occupied by Jordan: it was actually formally annexed, and the Palestinian Arabs living there were considered Jordanians (and, even today, they often hold a Jordanian passport). But, tellingly, none of them called for an intifada against Jordan to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank, and none of the Palestinian Arabs ever fought against the Egyptians in Gaza, who had occupied the Gaza Strip since 1948. The fighting has always and exclusively been directed against Israel's existence.
When the PLO was founded in 1964, it did not call for the liberation of the territories occupied by Jordan and Egypt, but for the destruction of Israel; nobody within the PLO talked about a Palestinian state at that time, not even Ahmed Shukeiri, until 1967 chairman of the PLO. In Article 24 of its 1964 Charter, the PLO still explicitly renounced any sovereignty claims to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The strategy did not change until after 1967, when these territories were no longer occupied by Jordan or Egypt but by Israel. As early as in 1965, the PLO boasted of having killed 35 Jews, and the number increased as the years went on.
This shows the dishonesty of the lamentation, repeated like a mantra, that the assaults on Jews are only a reaction to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which took place only in the course of the Six Day War.
As is well known, that very same year Israel offered to negotiate the return of all the occupied territories in exchange for genuine peace, but at the Khartoum Conference the Arab states answered with the famous triple "no": "no" to peace with Israel, "no" to recognition of Israel, "no" to negotiations with Israel. Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba was the only Arab leader who, as early as 1965, supported an agreement with Israel. The Khartoum Conference restated the old position of the notorious mufti of Jerusalem: Not an inch of sacred Muslim soil would be allowed to make up a sovereign Jewish state. In this context, it should be recalled that Jimmy Carter was the first to propose a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; not until then did the PLO seize this suggestion.
In reality, the only viable option, which not even the Palestinians can raise reasonable objections against, is the following: The West Bank (or large parts of it) is united with Jordan, and Gaza with Egypt. (When, in February 2008, the Palestinians overran the Egyptian border fortifications into Sinai, their rallying cry, addressed to the Egyptians, was: "We are one people.")
According to surveys, 30% of Palestinians living in the West Bank are in favor of such a solution. But it meets with resistance from the Hashemite dynasty of Jordan, which fears for the loss of the throne; it therefore renounced any territorial claims to the West Bank back in 1988. As reported by the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad, King Abdullah considered a confederation between Jordan and the West Bank a "conspiracy against his kingdom and against the Palestinians."
All the well-known Palestinian groups demonize such a plan: The creation of a second Palestinian state next to Jordan has always been just a pretense for them to conceal their anti-Israel policies, and the recognition of Jordan enlarged by the West Bank as the state of the Palestinians would deprive them of this pretense.
Their real objective has always been the destruction of Israel and, with their phony anger at the "Zionist arrogance," they would still pursue this goal even if the Jews of Israel retreated all the way to Masada or Tel Aviv.
*The writer is a lawyer in Germany and recently published 'The Eternal Scapegoat: Holy War', 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' and the 'Dishonesty of the So-Called Left in the Middle East Conflict'.
This article was recently printed in German in the monthly Konkret. (Translation: Dr. Margret Szymanski-Schikora)
Israel Offers a Peace Plan that Can Work
From GLORIA, July 2, 2009, by Barry Rubin*
Israel has put forward a serious peace plan which deserves international support from anyone serious about solving the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflict.
The cabinet’s five-point proposal states:
Israel has put forward a serious peace plan which deserves international support from anyone serious about solving the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflict.
The cabinet’s five-point proposal states:
- “The need for explicit Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people.
- “The demilitarization of a Palestinian state in such a manner that all of Israel's security needs will be met.
- “International backing of these security arrangements in the form of explicit international guarantees.
- “The problem of refugees must be resolved outside the borders of Israel.
- “The agreement be an end to the conflict. This is to say that the Palestinians will not be able to raise additional claims following the signing of a peace agreement.”
If these conditions are met, Israel will recognize an independent Palestinian state. Note that the plan claims no territory on the West Bank or even claims east Jerusalem.
This program should be quite uncontroversial and represents what Israel needs to get to justify taking risks, making concessions, and believing the result will be a real, lasting peace.
Why, then, is this plan so unacceptable to the Palestinian leadership? ...
- ...if they are giving up all claim on Israel why should they care how it is defined? The Palestinian Authority’s constitution defines Palestine as a Muslim, Arab state and their intention is to expel all Jews. If there are going to be two states for two peoples why not accept that Israel is for the Jewish people? The answer: because the Palestinian leadership certainly does not intend to let Israel live permanently as a Jewish state.
- Point two simply means that a Palestinian state would have military forces similar to what it has now. Since the PA already has the highest proportion of security forces to civilian population in the world, that should be sufficient. In addition, the Palestinian state wouldn’t invite in other armies—like Iran or Syria. But, after all, that’s in the interests of a peaceful, stable Palestine since such forces would threaten the government’s existence and provoke war with Israel.
- Point three says that despite the “international community’s” poor record of keeping promises made to Israel in exchange for its past concessions, Israel is ready to take a chance to achieve peace.
- As for point four, a real Palestinian nationalist movement would be demanding such a provision. Don’t Palestinian nationalists want Palestinians to live in Palestine to help create a strong, prosperous state? No. Instead, the PA demands that any Palestinian who ever lived or whose ancestors ever lived in what’s now Israel must be let in to live in that country. This is a formula for massive violence and Israel’s destruction which is why, of course, the PA insists on it.
- Point five is a no-brainer, right? Any peace agreement must be final. But, of course, almost all PA leaders regard getting a state as only a first step toward wiping out Israel. So they want to weasel out of even a two-state peace agreement ending the conflict.
With no mention of keeping east Jerusalem or settlements, it should be clear that Israel’s government has formulated a strategic stance far from being hardline.
...consider the June 22 policy speech of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, which proves my point.
First, Fayyad complains that Netanyahu presents an “Israeli narrative” of the conflict—isn’t that his job?--while Palestinians have their own “narrative.” But then Fayyad says he won’t talk about it!
Why won’t he present that narrative? Because doing so would reveal too much about Palestinian responsibility for making peace impossible.
Israel’s narrative is clear: Jews want and merit a state; the conflict is due to Arab refusal to accept that state’s existence. But if Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state, there’s no bar to a two-state solution. This Israeli narrative doesn’t block a two- state solution.
In contrast, the Palestinian narrative is that Jews have no right to a state and all the land is Palestinian, Arab, and (for most) Muslim. This Palestinian narrative prevents a two-state solution since the conflict could only be settled not by Palestine’s creation but by Israel’s extinction.
That’s what Fayyad cannot admit. For this same reason he can’t say Palestinians will resettle all refugees in Palestine, won’t try to build the biggest possible army or bring in foreign troops, or will end the conflict permanently.
Second, Fayyad says something amazing: the reason the peace process failed is the misconception “that it is always possible to exert pressure on the weaker side in the conflict as if there is no limit to the concessions that it could offer.” He believes that so far this has been the PA.
That’s nonsense. Israel withdrew from most of the territory, let the PA bring in tens of thousands of Palestinians, establish its rule, build security forces, receive billions of dollars in international subsidies, and more. In exchange what did the PA do? Say to foreigners--but not in its textbooks, mosque sermons, media, or speeches to its own people--that it accepted Israel’s existence. And also to stop some selected terror attacks.
But now Fayyad and his colleagues advocate precisely the approach against Israel he says blocks peace. They view Israel as the weaker side, in relation to the West, and want those countries to force it into unlimited concessions.
By feeding the PA’s false belief that the West will press Israel into giving them a state without restrictions, Palestinian concessions, or even PA implementation of past promises, Western governments help sabotage any chance for peace. Instead, they should think seriously about supporting Israel’s moderate, workable peace plan.
________________________________________
*Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.
Dershowitz doesn't get it
From Jewish World Review, July 6, 2009 , by Melanie Phillips:
A sobering view by one of Britain's most respected columnists
Alan Dershowitz is one of the most prolific, high-profile and indefatiguable defenders of Israel and the Jewish people against the tidal wave of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish feeling currently coursing through the west....
A sobering view by one of Britain's most respected columnists
Alan Dershowitz is one of the most prolific, high-profile and indefatiguable defenders of Israel and the Jewish people against the tidal wave of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish feeling currently coursing through the west....
...But just like the majority of American Jews ...he is a Democrat supporter who is incapable of acknowledging the truth about this President. ...they simply cannot see what is staring them in the face — that this Democratic President is lethal for both Israel and the free world. ...Dershowitz shows that he too is just as blind.
Acknowledging the anxiety among some American Jews about Obama's attitude to Israel, Dershowitz concludes uneasily that there isn't really a problem here because all Obama is doing is putting pressure on Israel over the settlements, which most American Jews don't support anyway. But this is totally to miss the point. The pressure over the settlements per se is not the reason for the intense concern.
It is instead, first and foremost, the fact that Obama is treating Israel as if it is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Obama thus inverts aggressor and victim, denying Israel's six-decade long victimisation and airbrushing out Arab aggression.
Acknowledging the anxiety among some American Jews about Obama's attitude to Israel, Dershowitz concludes uneasily that there isn't really a problem here because all Obama is doing is putting pressure on Israel over the settlements, which most American Jews don't support anyway. But this is totally to miss the point. The pressure over the settlements per se is not the reason for the intense concern.
It is instead, first and foremost, the fact that Obama is treating Israel as if it is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Obama thus inverts aggressor and victim, denying Israel's six-decade long victimisation and airbrushing out Arab aggression.
The question remains: why has Obama chosen to pick a fight with Israel while soft-soaping Iran which is threatening it with genocide? The answer is obvious: Israel is to be used to buy off Iran just as Czechoslovakia was used at Munich. Indeed, I would say this is worse even than that, since I suspect that Obama — coming as he does from a radical leftist milieu, with vicious Israel-haters amongst his closest friends — would be doing this to Israel even if Iran was not the problem that it is.
In any event, the double standard is egregious. Obama has torn up his previous understandings with Israel over the settlements while putting no pressure at all on the Palestinians, even though since they are the regional aggressor there can be no peace unless they end their aggression and certainly not until they accept Israel as a Jewish state, which they have said explicitly they will never do.
In any event, the double standard is egregious. Obama has torn up his previous understandings with Israel over the settlements while putting no pressure at all on the Palestinians, even though since they are the regional aggressor there can be no peace unless they end their aggression and certainly not until they accept Israel as a Jewish state, which they have said explicitly they will never do.
On this, Obama is totally silent. So too is Dershowitz. That's some omission.
Next, Obama is pressuring Israel to set up a Palestine state — within two years this will exist, swaggers Rahm Emanuel. But everyone knows that as soon as Israel leaves the West Bank, Hamas — or even worse — will take over. The only reason the (also appalling) Abbas is still in Ramallah, enabling Obama to pretend there is a Palestinian interlocutor for peace, is because the Israelis are keeping Hamas at bay.
Next, Obama is pressuring Israel to set up a Palestine state — within two years this will exist, swaggers Rahm Emanuel. But everyone knows that as soon as Israel leaves the West Bank, Hamas — or even worse — will take over. The only reason the (also appalling) Abbas is still in Ramallah, enabling Obama to pretend there is a Palestinian interlocutor for peace, is because the Israelis are keeping Hamas at bay.
Yet Dershowitz writes: There is no evidence of any weakening of American support for Israel's right to defend its children from the kind of rocket attacks candidate Obama commented on during his visit to Sderot.
... If Obama has his way, Israel would not be able to defend its children or anyone else, because Obama would have removed its defences by putting its enemies in charge of them. It is astounding that Dershowitz can't see this.
...Dershowitz also grossly underplays the terrible harm Obama is doing to the security not just of Israel but the world through his reckless appeasement of Iran. In the last few weeks, this has actively undercut the Iranian democrats trying to oust their tyrannical regime, and has actually strengthened that regime. All the evidence suggests ever more strongly that Obama has decided America will 'live with' a nuclear Iran, whatever it does to its own people. Which leaves Israel hung out to dry.
But even here, where he is clearly most concerned, Dershowitz scuttles under his comfort blanket — Dennis Ross, who was originally supposed to have been the US special envoy to Iran but was recently announced senior director of the National Security Council and special assistant to the President for the region. It is not at all clear whether this ambiguous development represents a promotion or demotion for Ross. Either way, for Dershowitz to rest his optimism that Obama's Iran policy will be all right on the night entirely upon the figure of Dennis Ross is pathetic.
... If Obama has his way, Israel would not be able to defend its children or anyone else, because Obama would have removed its defences by putting its enemies in charge of them. It is astounding that Dershowitz can't see this.
...Dershowitz also grossly underplays the terrible harm Obama is doing to the security not just of Israel but the world through his reckless appeasement of Iran. In the last few weeks, this has actively undercut the Iranian democrats trying to oust their tyrannical regime, and has actually strengthened that regime. All the evidence suggests ever more strongly that Obama has decided America will 'live with' a nuclear Iran, whatever it does to its own people. Which leaves Israel hung out to dry.
But even here, where he is clearly most concerned, Dershowitz scuttles under his comfort blanket — Dennis Ross, who was originally supposed to have been the US special envoy to Iran but was recently announced senior director of the National Security Council and special assistant to the President for the region. It is not at all clear whether this ambiguous development represents a promotion or demotion for Ross. Either way, for Dershowitz to rest his optimism that Obama's Iran policy will be all right on the night entirely upon the figure of Dennis Ross is pathetic.
Ross, a Jew who played Mr Nice to Robert Malley's Mr Nasty towards Israel in the Camp David debacle under President Clinton, is clearly being used by Obama as a human shield behind which he can bully Israel with impunity. American Jews assume that his proximity to Obama means the President's intentions towards Israel are benign. Dazzled by this vision of Ross as the guarantor of Obama's good faith, they thus ignore altogether the terrible import of the actual words coming out of the President's mouth.
The fact is that many American Jews are so ignorant of the history of the Jewish people, the centrality of Israel in its history and the legality and justice of its position that they probably saw nothing wrong in Obama saying that the Jewish aspiration for Israel came out of the Holocaust because they think this too.
The fact is that many American Jews are so ignorant of the history of the Jewish people, the centrality of Israel in its history and the legality and justice of its position that they probably saw nothing wrong in Obama saying that the Jewish aspiration for Israel came out of the Holocaust because they think this too.
Nor do they see the appalling double standard in the bullying of Israel over the settlements and what that tells us about Obama's attitude towards Israel, because — as Dershowitz himself makes all too plain — they too think in much the same way, that the settlements are the principal obstacle to peace.
Many if not most American Jews have a highly sentimentalized view of Israel. They never go there, are deeply ignorant of its history and current realities, and are infinitely more concerned with their own view of themselves as social liberals, a view reflected back at themselves through voting for a Democrat President....
Many if not most American Jews have a highly sentimentalized view of Israel. They never go there, are deeply ignorant of its history and current realities, and are infinitely more concerned with their own view of themselves as social liberals, a view reflected back at themselves through voting for a Democrat President....
Monday, July 06, 2009
IAF to train overseas in coming months in face of Iranian threat
From THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 5, 2009, by Yaakov Katz and AP:
... the IAF plans to participate in aerial exercises in the US and Europe in the coming months with the aim of training its pilots for long-range flights.
Biden was asked on ABC's This Week whether the US would stand in the way militarily if the Israelis decided they needed to take out Iran's nuclear program.
The US "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do," he said. "Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said in an interview broadcast Sunday...
...Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government says it prefers to see Iran's nuclear program stopped through diplomacy, but has not ruled out a military strike.
Asked about Biden's comments, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US position on Iran and a military strike involved a "political decision. ...I'm one that thinks Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I think that is very destabilizing..." ....
IAF planes will take part this year in a joint aerial exercise with a NATO-member state that cannot be identified. In addition, later this month, the air force will send F-16C fighter jets to participate in the Red Flag exercise at the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. At the same time, several of the IAF's C-130 Hercules transport aircraft will participate in the Rodeo 2009 competition at the McChord Air Force Base in Washington state.
Defense officials said the overseas exercises would be used to drill long-range maneuvers. Last summer, more than 100 IAF jets flew over Greece in what was viewed as a test-run for a potential strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Israel has a number of defense pacts with countries under which the air force is allowed to fly in foreign airspace. In May, the French newsweekly L'Express reported that the IAF had staged military exercises over Gibraltar, some 4,000 km. away from Israel.
In 2006, then-defense minister Shaul Mofaz signed a five-year cooperation agreement allowing IDF forces to deploy in Romania for joint training exercises. In 1996, Israel and Turkey signed a bilateral defense alliance allowing their air forces to fly in each other's airspace.
...On Sunday, the London Sunday Times reported that Saudi Arabia would allow IAF jets to fly over the kingdom during any strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
According to the report, Mossad chief Meir Dagan held talks with Saudi officials earlier this year on the topic and recently conveyed news of the green light to Netanyahu. The Prime Minister's Office issued an official denial on Sunday morning, saying the report was "completely false and baseless."
...Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, who recently visited the Gulf, said it was "entirely logical" for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace. Bolton, who has talked recently to a number of Arab leaders, added: "None of them would say anything about it publicly, but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn't trumpet it as a big success."
Arab states would publicly condemn a raid when they spoke at the UN, but would be privately relieved to see the threat of an Iranian bomb removed, Bolton said.
While most experts are in agreement that there's a good chance Iran could have a usable nuclear bomb sometime during his presidency, President Barack Obama told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday, "I'm not reconciled with that."
A nuclear-armed Iran, Obama said, "probably would lead to an arms race in the volatile Mideast and that would be "a recipe for potential disaster."
He said opposing a nuclear weapons capacity for Iran was more than just "a US position" and that "the biggest concern is not simply that Iran can threaten us or our allies, like Israel or its neighbors."
... the IAF plans to participate in aerial exercises in the US and Europe in the coming months with the aim of training its pilots for long-range flights.
Biden was asked on ABC's This Week whether the US would stand in the way militarily if the Israelis decided they needed to take out Iran's nuclear program.
The US "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do," he said. "Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said in an interview broadcast Sunday...
...Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government says it prefers to see Iran's nuclear program stopped through diplomacy, but has not ruled out a military strike.
Asked about Biden's comments, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US position on Iran and a military strike involved a "political decision. ...I'm one that thinks Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I think that is very destabilizing..." ....
IAF planes will take part this year in a joint aerial exercise with a NATO-member state that cannot be identified. In addition, later this month, the air force will send F-16C fighter jets to participate in the Red Flag exercise at the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. At the same time, several of the IAF's C-130 Hercules transport aircraft will participate in the Rodeo 2009 competition at the McChord Air Force Base in Washington state.
Defense officials said the overseas exercises would be used to drill long-range maneuvers. Last summer, more than 100 IAF jets flew over Greece in what was viewed as a test-run for a potential strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Israel has a number of defense pacts with countries under which the air force is allowed to fly in foreign airspace. In May, the French newsweekly L'Express reported that the IAF had staged military exercises over Gibraltar, some 4,000 km. away from Israel.
In 2006, then-defense minister Shaul Mofaz signed a five-year cooperation agreement allowing IDF forces to deploy in Romania for joint training exercises. In 1996, Israel and Turkey signed a bilateral defense alliance allowing their air forces to fly in each other's airspace.
...On Sunday, the London Sunday Times reported that Saudi Arabia would allow IAF jets to fly over the kingdom during any strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
According to the report, Mossad chief Meir Dagan held talks with Saudi officials earlier this year on the topic and recently conveyed news of the green light to Netanyahu. The Prime Minister's Office issued an official denial on Sunday morning, saying the report was "completely false and baseless."
...Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, who recently visited the Gulf, said it was "entirely logical" for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace. Bolton, who has talked recently to a number of Arab leaders, added: "None of them would say anything about it publicly, but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn't trumpet it as a big success."
Arab states would publicly condemn a raid when they spoke at the UN, but would be privately relieved to see the threat of an Iranian bomb removed, Bolton said.
While most experts are in agreement that there's a good chance Iran could have a usable nuclear bomb sometime during his presidency, President Barack Obama told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday, "I'm not reconciled with that."
A nuclear-armed Iran, Obama said, "probably would lead to an arms race in the volatile Mideast and that would be "a recipe for potential disaster."
He said opposing a nuclear weapons capacity for Iran was more than just "a US position" and that "the biggest concern is not simply that Iran can threaten us or our allies, like Israel or its neighbors."
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
A willing ally to Hamas's hatred
From The Australian, July 01, 2009, by Ilan Grapel, researcher with the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council:
THE Green Left Weekly is probably Australia's best-known radical-left newspaper. While nominally independent, it is affiliated with the Socialist Alliance party and its youth movement Resistance! Like most radical socialist groups, it invariably aligns with the anti-Israel movement.
For some time it has been apparent that an unholy alliance is growing between extreme left-wing groups and Arab and Islamic extremists, despite completely different visions for society. This alliance has been on show in much of the anti-war movement in Britain and other places.
For instance, Britain's "Respect" party is basically an alliance of radical Muslims and old hard-line Marxists such as former Labour MP George Galloway. Galloway was pro-Saddam Hussein before the 2003 Iraq war. Today, he works for the Iranian government mouthpiece television station, Press TV.
But what isn't widely known is that the Green Left Weekly is openly promoting extremism among Arabic speakers in Australia through a monthly Arabic-language insert called the Flame. This support is not limited to Green Left Weekly's own far-left agenda. It supports terrorist groups and promotes violence as the solution to the existence of the "Zionist state."
You would think GLW's declared pursuit of the advancement of "anti-racist, feminist, student, trade union, environment, gay and lesbian, civil liberties" would rule out the promotion of radical Islamist groups such as Hamas, which are deeply hostile to all the above.
Yet alongside content promoting the PFLP, a tiny left-wing and currently marginal Palestinian terror group, Hamas is also promoted by GLW as a positive model of "resistance"; that is to say, terrorism. Those killed as a result of the violence Hamas sparks are "martyrs", terminology Flame shares with Hamas. Further, the terminology of the Flame is openly hostile to the more moderate governments of the region and repeatedly demands all-out war on the "Zionist entity".
The January edition of the Flame was devoted to the conflict in Gaza. The cover page is a compilation of statements from various communist parties in the Arab world. Predictably, the communiques incited its Arabic readers with imagery of "slaughter," and a "waterfall of Palestinian blood washing the streets". More surprisingly, there are implicit calls for other Arab states to expand the Gaza war.
In "Hunt of a people", the paper refers to the 1982 Lebanon war, indignant "Arab capitals stood watching, exactly as is happening now."
The paper targets American-allied Arab governments for their moderation in the war, which it terms "collusion". The front-page article from the Iraqi Communist Party rebukes the Saudi government, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, which it disparagingly dubs the "Oslo Authority". The Mubarak government is condemned for being "a loyal accomplice to Israel and the Oslo Authority in their attempt to shut Hamas out". It also accuses the Saudi monarchy of having covert dealings with "the Zionists" stretching back decades. Any non-violent interaction with Israel, whether actual or imagined, is scorned.
In the March edition the Flame was aghast at Egypt for co-operating with the US against Hamas. Its expose was titled "Egypt uses American soldiers to prevent weapons smuggling to the resistance!" In the Arabic, "the resistance" is euphemism for terrorist violence and for Hamas itself.
Another article, "A return to principles is necessary after the Israeli aggression", is more virulent. An illustration shows a Palestinian imprisoned behind barbed wire shaped as a partial Jewish star. The article condemns those calling the Gaza war a victory for the "resistance", given the large proportion of "martyrs" from the Palestinian people in comparison to the "slim" number killed among "soldiers of the Israeli occupation army". The rest of the article is critical of the Palestinian factions for their internecine fight.
It criticises Hamas for abandoning its traditional position as the "resistance" against "the enemy" to fight the PA and calls for a "united Palestinian resistance" which will "return the benefit to the Palestinian people". It is clear that this unity will not negotiate peace with Israel, with the paper stating "this unity in battle must not fall into the trap of dialogue that the decrepit Arab regimes of the region are producing." The Flame defines Israel as "the enemy" and demands violent "resistance" while pouring scorn on negotiations or dialogue, It praises the assassination of a "Zionist minister" as "courageous."
The radical anti-Israel stance of Green Left Weekly is no secret. However, the message it pitches to the Arabic-speaking community of Australia is far more inflammatory. Unbeknown to its English readers, it supports terrorist groups such as Hamas whose goal is to create a state where there would be no place for the gays, lesbians, feminists and trade unionists who read the English-language edition of the paper.
THE Green Left Weekly is probably Australia's best-known radical-left newspaper. While nominally independent, it is affiliated with the Socialist Alliance party and its youth movement Resistance! Like most radical socialist groups, it invariably aligns with the anti-Israel movement.
For some time it has been apparent that an unholy alliance is growing between extreme left-wing groups and Arab and Islamic extremists, despite completely different visions for society. This alliance has been on show in much of the anti-war movement in Britain and other places.
For instance, Britain's "Respect" party is basically an alliance of radical Muslims and old hard-line Marxists such as former Labour MP George Galloway. Galloway was pro-Saddam Hussein before the 2003 Iraq war. Today, he works for the Iranian government mouthpiece television station, Press TV.
But what isn't widely known is that the Green Left Weekly is openly promoting extremism among Arabic speakers in Australia through a monthly Arabic-language insert called the Flame. This support is not limited to Green Left Weekly's own far-left agenda. It supports terrorist groups and promotes violence as the solution to the existence of the "Zionist state."
You would think GLW's declared pursuit of the advancement of "anti-racist, feminist, student, trade union, environment, gay and lesbian, civil liberties" would rule out the promotion of radical Islamist groups such as Hamas, which are deeply hostile to all the above.
Yet alongside content promoting the PFLP, a tiny left-wing and currently marginal Palestinian terror group, Hamas is also promoted by GLW as a positive model of "resistance"; that is to say, terrorism. Those killed as a result of the violence Hamas sparks are "martyrs", terminology Flame shares with Hamas. Further, the terminology of the Flame is openly hostile to the more moderate governments of the region and repeatedly demands all-out war on the "Zionist entity".
The January edition of the Flame was devoted to the conflict in Gaza. The cover page is a compilation of statements from various communist parties in the Arab world. Predictably, the communiques incited its Arabic readers with imagery of "slaughter," and a "waterfall of Palestinian blood washing the streets". More surprisingly, there are implicit calls for other Arab states to expand the Gaza war.
In "Hunt of a people", the paper refers to the 1982 Lebanon war, indignant "Arab capitals stood watching, exactly as is happening now."
The paper targets American-allied Arab governments for their moderation in the war, which it terms "collusion". The front-page article from the Iraqi Communist Party rebukes the Saudi government, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, which it disparagingly dubs the "Oslo Authority". The Mubarak government is condemned for being "a loyal accomplice to Israel and the Oslo Authority in their attempt to shut Hamas out". It also accuses the Saudi monarchy of having covert dealings with "the Zionists" stretching back decades. Any non-violent interaction with Israel, whether actual or imagined, is scorned.
In the March edition the Flame was aghast at Egypt for co-operating with the US against Hamas. Its expose was titled "Egypt uses American soldiers to prevent weapons smuggling to the resistance!" In the Arabic, "the resistance" is euphemism for terrorist violence and for Hamas itself.
Another article, "A return to principles is necessary after the Israeli aggression", is more virulent. An illustration shows a Palestinian imprisoned behind barbed wire shaped as a partial Jewish star. The article condemns those calling the Gaza war a victory for the "resistance", given the large proportion of "martyrs" from the Palestinian people in comparison to the "slim" number killed among "soldiers of the Israeli occupation army". The rest of the article is critical of the Palestinian factions for their internecine fight.
It criticises Hamas for abandoning its traditional position as the "resistance" against "the enemy" to fight the PA and calls for a "united Palestinian resistance" which will "return the benefit to the Palestinian people". It is clear that this unity will not negotiate peace with Israel, with the paper stating "this unity in battle must not fall into the trap of dialogue that the decrepit Arab regimes of the region are producing." The Flame defines Israel as "the enemy" and demands violent "resistance" while pouring scorn on negotiations or dialogue, It praises the assassination of a "Zionist minister" as "courageous."
The radical anti-Israel stance of Green Left Weekly is no secret. However, the message it pitches to the Arabic-speaking community of Australia is far more inflammatory. Unbeknown to its English readers, it supports terrorist groups such as Hamas whose goal is to create a state where there would be no place for the gays, lesbians, feminists and trade unionists who read the English-language edition of the paper.
What are the chances for peace?
From THE JERUSALEM POST , Jun. 30, 2009, by Yossi Alpher, former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University [my emphasis added - SL]:
The Israeli-Palestinian final status negotiations launched by the Annapolis meeting of late 2007 never seemed to have a serious chance of success. The leaders on all sides - Israeli, Palestinian and American - were either too weak or too disinterested. Some supporters of the negotiations, which lasted throughout most of 2008, went so far as to argue that even hopeless talks were important as a means of underpinning the security and economic confidence-building measures being implemented simultaneously in the West Bank. And if the talks did somehow succeed, their outcome was in any case destined by Annapolis to become a "shelf agreement" that awaits completion of phase 1 of the road map and the restoration of PLO rule in the Gaza Strip.
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently discussed with the American press (in interviews in The Washington Post on May 29 and Newsweek of June 13, respectively) the extent to which they actually reached agreement in their 2008 negotiations. The "product" they describe is roughly similar to the Clinton parameters of 2000, the Taba agreements of early 2001 and the unofficial Geneva Initiative of 2003. Bearing in mind the two leaders' apparent inability to even contemplate implementing an agreement, these appear to be the not-so-original details of yet another virtual exercise in peacemaking.
PERHAPS THE PROTOCOLS the leaders left behind will prove useful for future peacemakers. But we also have to hope that the ultimate failure of their negotiations will not negatively affect the willingness of the next generation of leaders to try again. Personally, this is why I opposed the Annapolis process: To engage in negotiations that have no chance of reaching fruition and success is liable to mean adding yet another layer of failure to the increasingly depressing structure of abortive Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking enterprises. That is liable to deter rather than assist the next set of negotiators. How many more times will Israeli and Palestinian leaders agree to risk their political careers and perhaps their lives and reinvent the very same peace wheel, only to see it fall off its axle?
Olmert says he offered Abbas 93.5 percent to 93.7% of the West Bank, along with 5.8% in land swaps and a Gaza-West Bank safe passage corridor. Abbas recalls the offer as 97%. Both agree that Israel agreed to accept a small number of Palestinian refugees, with Olmert adding that he rejected the right of return and offered limited return to Israel as a "humanitarian gesture." Olmert also offered to, in effect, internationalize the Jerusalem Holy Basin.
Olmert's interviewer reports that Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat "confirmed that Olmert had made the offer... [Olmert] was serious." Erekat claims the Palestinians needed time to study Olmert's offer and prepare a reply and that time ran out when Olmert resigned and Israel invaded the Gaza Strip. But that's not what Abbas says (nor has anyone in his entourage denied what he told The Washington Post's Jackson Diehl) - and this is the troublesome part for anyone examining this negotiating experience for clues as to future chances of success.
Every so often, a national leader makes statements in an interview that redefine his position on the world stage. Abbas appears to have done this. Abbas chose to interpret whatever statement of empathy Olmert made about the refugees - the effort he apparently undertook to offer the Palestinians some sort of psychological closure regarding the events of 1948 - as acceptance of the right of return, while Olmert understood he was saying the opposite and rejecting the right of return. Abbas looks at an offer of virtually the entire territory of the West Bank, internationalization of the disputed holy sites in Jerusalem and (according to him) the right of return, turns it down and says "the gaps were wide."
CAN WE be blamed for suspecting that we really do not have a partner for a two-state deal?
This is very bad news indeed. Abbas is about as moderate as the Palestinian leadership gets. Olmert proved to be about as moderate as the Israeli leadership gets, placing himself on a par with Yossi Beilin, the chief Israeli architect of the Geneva Initiative. I know of no other Israeli leader who would wish to offer the Palestinians even more in order to close the gap. I myself would not have offered as much: I believe Palestinians must accept an unequivocal Israeli position that the right of return contradicts the very spirit of a two-state solution. I also would argue that the West Bank-Gaza safe passage corridor is "worth" a lot more than around 1% of the "swaps" calculation, if only because a Palestinian state cannot survive without it.
Be that as it may, I can only hope that somewhere, waiting in the wings, is the Palestinian leader capable of broadly accepting at least Olmert's offer - and without distorting it. Or that some sort of international leadership, Arab or American, will prove ready and able to persuade the Palestinian leadership and public to make the necessary concessions. Otherwise, the chances of a successful two-state breakthrough in the near future were definitely reduced by Abbas' statements.
The Israeli-Palestinian final status negotiations launched by the Annapolis meeting of late 2007 never seemed to have a serious chance of success. The leaders on all sides - Israeli, Palestinian and American - were either too weak or too disinterested. Some supporters of the negotiations, which lasted throughout most of 2008, went so far as to argue that even hopeless talks were important as a means of underpinning the security and economic confidence-building measures being implemented simultaneously in the West Bank. And if the talks did somehow succeed, their outcome was in any case destined by Annapolis to become a "shelf agreement" that awaits completion of phase 1 of the road map and the restoration of PLO rule in the Gaza Strip.
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently discussed with the American press (in interviews in The Washington Post on May 29 and Newsweek of June 13, respectively) the extent to which they actually reached agreement in their 2008 negotiations. The "product" they describe is roughly similar to the Clinton parameters of 2000, the Taba agreements of early 2001 and the unofficial Geneva Initiative of 2003. Bearing in mind the two leaders' apparent inability to even contemplate implementing an agreement, these appear to be the not-so-original details of yet another virtual exercise in peacemaking.
PERHAPS THE PROTOCOLS the leaders left behind will prove useful for future peacemakers. But we also have to hope that the ultimate failure of their negotiations will not negatively affect the willingness of the next generation of leaders to try again. Personally, this is why I opposed the Annapolis process: To engage in negotiations that have no chance of reaching fruition and success is liable to mean adding yet another layer of failure to the increasingly depressing structure of abortive Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking enterprises. That is liable to deter rather than assist the next set of negotiators. How many more times will Israeli and Palestinian leaders agree to risk their political careers and perhaps their lives and reinvent the very same peace wheel, only to see it fall off its axle?
Olmert says he offered Abbas 93.5 percent to 93.7% of the West Bank, along with 5.8% in land swaps and a Gaza-West Bank safe passage corridor. Abbas recalls the offer as 97%. Both agree that Israel agreed to accept a small number of Palestinian refugees, with Olmert adding that he rejected the right of return and offered limited return to Israel as a "humanitarian gesture." Olmert also offered to, in effect, internationalize the Jerusalem Holy Basin.
Olmert's interviewer reports that Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat "confirmed that Olmert had made the offer... [Olmert] was serious." Erekat claims the Palestinians needed time to study Olmert's offer and prepare a reply and that time ran out when Olmert resigned and Israel invaded the Gaza Strip. But that's not what Abbas says (nor has anyone in his entourage denied what he told The Washington Post's Jackson Diehl) - and this is the troublesome part for anyone examining this negotiating experience for clues as to future chances of success.
Every so often, a national leader makes statements in an interview that redefine his position on the world stage. Abbas appears to have done this. Abbas chose to interpret whatever statement of empathy Olmert made about the refugees - the effort he apparently undertook to offer the Palestinians some sort of psychological closure regarding the events of 1948 - as acceptance of the right of return, while Olmert understood he was saying the opposite and rejecting the right of return. Abbas looks at an offer of virtually the entire territory of the West Bank, internationalization of the disputed holy sites in Jerusalem and (according to him) the right of return, turns it down and says "the gaps were wide."
CAN WE be blamed for suspecting that we really do not have a partner for a two-state deal?
This is very bad news indeed. Abbas is about as moderate as the Palestinian leadership gets. Olmert proved to be about as moderate as the Israeli leadership gets, placing himself on a par with Yossi Beilin, the chief Israeli architect of the Geneva Initiative. I know of no other Israeli leader who would wish to offer the Palestinians even more in order to close the gap. I myself would not have offered as much: I believe Palestinians must accept an unequivocal Israeli position that the right of return contradicts the very spirit of a two-state solution. I also would argue that the West Bank-Gaza safe passage corridor is "worth" a lot more than around 1% of the "swaps" calculation, if only because a Palestinian state cannot survive without it.
Be that as it may, I can only hope that somewhere, waiting in the wings, is the Palestinian leader capable of broadly accepting at least Olmert's offer - and without distorting it. Or that some sort of international leadership, Arab or American, will prove ready and able to persuade the Palestinian leadership and public to make the necessary concessions. Otherwise, the chances of a successful two-state breakthrough in the near future were definitely reduced by Abbas' statements.
Todd Harrison's Memoirs of a Minyan
From The Wall Street Journal, Jun 10, 2009, Chapter 1: "Inmates in the asylum" by Todd Harrison (This e-book, which is published each Wednesday over 18 weeks, is now up to Chapter 4):
How a high-flying trader learned the secret of money
Todd Harrison spent a number of years in the belly of the Wall Street beast and lived to tell about it. In this 18-part series, he relives his days as a highflying trader and what he learned about money.
(WSJ Editor's note: "Memoirs of a Minyan" is a first-person account that follows Minyanville founder Todd Harrison through a Wall Street trading career to the Internet media business, with some important lessons about the nature of money along the way....).
...I struggled whether to share this story because I didn't know if anyone would be interested in my lot in life. As I weaved my way through the many mazes in my mind, I decided to put pen to paper and recount my steps.
If not for you, for me, but with a larger lens on the immediate-gratification, conspicuously consumptive society in which we live. Some might say I bowed to the false idolatry of money, and perhaps I did. I was conditioned to believe that success was measured by a bottom line, and validation could be found in a bank account.
Everything you'll read in this series is true, as seen through my eyes. I share it without vice or virtue, and with all due humility. Lou Mannheim said in the movie "Wall Street": "Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss."
I've stared into a few black holes during my career and emerged each time with newfound passion and incremental resolve. The ability to turn obstacles into opportunities is one of life's best-kept secrets, and the greatest wisdom is bred as a function of pain.
As with any journey, the path we take is more important than the destination. My particular route included climbing the corporate ladder and chasing the trappings of success. Once I got to where I thought I wanted to be, I realized net worth and self-worth were entirely different dynamics.
That was distinctly different from what I was programmed to believe as a child, and it facilitated a professional and spiritual rebirthing....
...At the age of 13, I began working at the local bagel shop. I awoke at 5 a.m. on Saturdays to prepare for the mad rush of customers, many of whom were the families I aspired to emulate.
I never forgot the symbolism of that counter, a divide representing the chasm between the "haves" and "have nots," as money changed hands for goods and services. Little did I know that I would experience life on both sides of that cash register....
To read the original, follow these links:
• Chapter 1: Inmates in the asylum
• Chapter 2: Animal house
• Chapter 3: Let the games begin
• Chapter 4: War stories
How a high-flying trader learned the secret of money
Todd Harrison spent a number of years in the belly of the Wall Street beast and lived to tell about it. In this 18-part series, he relives his days as a highflying trader and what he learned about money.
(WSJ Editor's note: "Memoirs of a Minyan" is a first-person account that follows Minyanville founder Todd Harrison through a Wall Street trading career to the Internet media business, with some important lessons about the nature of money along the way....).
...I struggled whether to share this story because I didn't know if anyone would be interested in my lot in life. As I weaved my way through the many mazes in my mind, I decided to put pen to paper and recount my steps.
If not for you, for me, but with a larger lens on the immediate-gratification, conspicuously consumptive society in which we live. Some might say I bowed to the false idolatry of money, and perhaps I did. I was conditioned to believe that success was measured by a bottom line, and validation could be found in a bank account.
Everything you'll read in this series is true, as seen through my eyes. I share it without vice or virtue, and with all due humility. Lou Mannheim said in the movie "Wall Street": "Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss."
I've stared into a few black holes during my career and emerged each time with newfound passion and incremental resolve. The ability to turn obstacles into opportunities is one of life's best-kept secrets, and the greatest wisdom is bred as a function of pain.
As with any journey, the path we take is more important than the destination. My particular route included climbing the corporate ladder and chasing the trappings of success. Once I got to where I thought I wanted to be, I realized net worth and self-worth were entirely different dynamics.
That was distinctly different from what I was programmed to believe as a child, and it facilitated a professional and spiritual rebirthing....
...At the age of 13, I began working at the local bagel shop. I awoke at 5 a.m. on Saturdays to prepare for the mad rush of customers, many of whom were the families I aspired to emulate.
I never forgot the symbolism of that counter, a divide representing the chasm between the "haves" and "have nots," as money changed hands for goods and services. Little did I know that I would experience life on both sides of that cash register....
To read the original, follow these links:
• Chapter 1: Inmates in the asylum
• Chapter 2: Animal house
• Chapter 3: Let the games begin
• Chapter 4: War stories
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