Russia's Syria jet deal

From AFP, 3/9/09:

MOSCOW — A top Russian official confirmed the existence of a contract for the supply of MiG-31 fighter jets to Syria but said work on the planes had been frozen, the daily Kommersant reported on Thursday.

"A few years ago, two contracts were signed: one for (the supply to Syria of) MiG-29s and one for MiG-31s," the head of Russia's United Aircraft Corporation, Alexei Fedorov, told the paper. "Consultations on this contract are now ongoing, so its future is unclear."

Kommersant reported in May that Russia had halted work on the modernisation of the fighter jets at the Sokol aviation plant in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod. But Russia's state arms exporter has dismissed such reports as rumours.

The 400-500 million-dollar (280-350 million-euro) contract for the delivery of eight MiG-31s fighter jets was inked in early 2007, according to Kommersant. It cited sources close to the arms exporter in May saying the supplies of the planes had been frozen under pressure from Israel over fears the weapon sales could offset the balance of power in the region.

According to a a government official cited by Kommersant, the contract had been suspended after Damascus could no longer afford the planes.

In 2005, Moscow forgave 70 percent of Syria's total debt of 13.4 billion dollars.

United Aircraft chief Federov nevertheless told the paper the Russian planemaker was counting on completing contracts, as production at its factories has slumped amid the global financial crisis.

"Negotiations are ongoing, I hope that in the end the contracts will be realized. We put a lot of hope in it stabilizing the situation in Nizhny Novgorod," he was quoted as saying

Can A State Be Built On A Pack of Lies?

From Hudson New York, September 1, 2009, by Alan M. Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Harvard Law School:

The so-called “spiritual” leader of Hamas has ordered that the Holocaust not be taught to Palestinian children. Younis Al-Astal—who is about as spiritual as Al Capone—has declared that the United Nations’ proposal to include Holocaust education in a course on human rights would constitute a “war crime.” It would be “marketing a lie and spreading it.” Instead, he would have Palestinian children learn only about the so-called crimes of the Israeli occupation and the self-inflicted wound that Palestinians call the Nakba.

I am not so sure I would trust the United Nations and especially its Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to teach anything relating to Jews, Israel or the Holocaust. That agency has been part of the problem, not the solution, by perpetuating the refugee status of Palestinians who could have been integrated into the Palestinian mainstream over the past sixty years. By making an industry out of their permanent status as refugees, UNRWA has made peace more difficult and hatred more acceptable. The agency has turned a blind eye to Hamas terrorists who routinely used UNRWA facilities as launching sites for rockets. It has protected terrorists. It has sought to legitimate Hamas as a social service agency rather than as a fascist group of anti-Semites who employ violence in the false name of Mohammad.

Now, perhaps in an effort to appear balanced, UNRWA has agreed to provide basic information about the Holocaust to eighth grade students. These would be the only Palestinian students who learn about the murder of six million Jews at the hands of Hitler, since the Palestinian Authority has banned the teaching of the Holocaust to students on the West Bank. It is unlikely that the UNRWA educational unit would include factual information about the leader of the Palestinians during the Second World War, Haj Al-Husseini (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) and his active role in the Holocaust when he lived in Berlin as a guest of Adolph Hitler. But even a sanitized, watered down account of the Holocaust is too much for the Hamas leadership, which does not believe in history, but rather in propagandistic accounts that serve the terroristic goals of the organization.

In the end, UNRWA will buckle to Hamas, as it always does. Even if a compromise were to be reached, it might be worse than the current situation in which nothing is taught. There is absolutely no way in which Hamas would ever allow any kind of objective analysis of the Holocaust to be taught to their students. The essence of Hamas education is brainwashing and the shutting down of any marketplace of ideas. What Hamas fears most is truth, science, history and objectivity.

A state built on lies cannot long endure, unless it is an entirely totalitarian state such as North Korea, which denies its citizens access to any alternative information or point of view. Even Iran cannot stop ideas from filtering through its network of censors. Nor can China or Venezuela. But Hamas can and does impose total censorship over those it controls. If it were to become a state, its control over the minds and actions of its citizens would become even more total. The sad reality is that totalitarian censorship—provided it is completely totalitarian—really does work. The people of Gaza really believe that the Holocaust never occurred. They really believe that firing rockets at school children is God’s command. They really believe that Jews are a combination of the devil monkeys, pigs and vermin. They really believe that Jews control the world and that Barak Obama is a puppet whose strings are pulled by hook-nosed “Yids.” They really believe that Israel doesn’t want peace and seeks to destroy the Islamic world and its holy places.

It is difficult to build an enduring peace on such a structure of lies. That is why the Oslo Accords, and other peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, insisted that the Palestinians stop teaching their children to hate, stop teaching their teachers to lie and stop inciting violence against the Jews. In this respect, the Palestinian leadership, both in Gaza and the West Bank, has been an utter failure. Not much can be expected from the Hamas leadership, but even the Palestinian Authority has failed miserably in this regard. Abu Mazen received his PhD for a thesis that denied the Holocaust. He claims to have changed his views, but he is still unwilling to teach his students the true history of World War II.

Israel, on the other hand, has a free and open press in which the Palestinian narrative is presented honestly and fully—indeed sometimes more favorably to the Palestinians than is warranted by the facts. Israeli books present varying accounts of the conflict and teachers may supplement the texts. Some schools and teachers obviously present biased views, but students are free to subject their teacher’s biases to the open marketplace of ideas.

It should come as no surprise therefore that far more Israelis than Palestinians favor a compromise peace. The two-state solution cannot be built on lies. The truth, it turns out, is good for peace. The reality of the Holocaust is an important aspect of truth, regardless of what Hamas may say.

Iran’s offer of nuclear talks hinders Security Council talks on sanctions

From The Times September 3, 2009, by Roger Boyes in Berlin:

Western diplomats struggled yesterday to secure an agreement on imposing tougher sanctions on Iran in an attempt to end its nuclear programme.

The meeting of the five United Nations permanent Security Council members and Germany was complicated by a last-minute offer of talks from Saeed Jalili, the top nuclear negotiator in Iran.

Because no details of the offer were available, the delegates assumed that Mr Jalili planned to use his proposal to slow the progress of moves to impose sanctions. Russia and China used the prospect of a peace offering from Tehran, however vague, as an argument against punitive measures.

One of the diplomats said: “The point is to duck, dive, tease and confuse until they are more or less resistant to the kind of sanctions that we have been considering.”

One plan, currently before the US Congress, is to ban exports of refined petroleum products and tighten control over Iran’s activities in the financial and insurance markets. A ban on petrol would hit Iran since it imports about 40 per cent of its needs. Petrol shortages have, in the past, led to domestic protests.

But China is already helping Iran to build new oil refineries in the hope of doubling domestic capacity by 2012. By that time Iran will be immune to threats of cutting off petrol imports. It also intends to remove subsidies on domestic petrol, making it more expensive and throttling consumption.

China thus has no commercial interest in sharpening the sanctions weapon. The Russians too are sceptical. Before the permanent members’ session, Moscow talked down the prospect of swift progress.

“I believe nothing new should be expected as the six nations differ over which way they should follow to tackle Iran’s nuclear programme,” said Vladimir Sazhin, of the Russian Institute of Oriental Studies.

Moscow’s view is that Iran is softening its position somewhat and the Security Council five should wait and see how the power structures change in the light of the June 12 presidential election and subsequent unrest.

“Iran has allowed access to the previously classified nuclear facilities in Natanz,” Mr Sazhin said.

France and Germany called this week for harder-edged sanctions. Their concern is that if the West is not seen to be pushing Iran harder, Israel may consider a military strike. Critics of President Obama, such as John Bolton, the former US envoy to the United Nations, argue that sanctions are doomed to fail even if they could be linked directly to stopping Iranian nuclear plans.

“Adopting tougher economic sanctions is simply another detour away from hard decisions on whether to accept a nuclear Iran or support using force to prevent it,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal this week.

Neve Gordon oversteps the boundaries

From The LA Times, September 1, 2009, by Rivka Carmi, president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel:

Ben-Gurion University's president responds to one of her professor's call for a boycott of Israel.

As president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, I have always remained open and impartial to the wide diversity of opinions within our academic faculty and their right to free speech....

However, I strongly believe a call for a worldwide boycott of Israel written by a Ben-Gurion University faculty member, Neve Gordon, that appeared in The Times oversteps the boundaries of academic freedom... ... Gordon ...used his pulpit as a university faculty member to advocate a personal opinion, which is really demagoguery cloaked in academic theory.

Gordon argues that ..."a boycott would save Israel from itself."

But ...it would destroy the very fabric of the society that he claims to want to protect. ...this "call for a boycott" is already being used to isolate Israel.

...Like it or not, Gordon cannot be readily dismissed. The law in Israel is very clear, and the university is a law-abiding institution.

At the same time, by calling on other entities, including academic institutions, to boycott Israel -- and effectively, to boycott his own university -- Gordon has forfeited his ability to work effectively within the academic setting, with his colleagues in Israel and around the world. After his very public ...Op-Ed article...[and] his extreme description of Israel as an "apartheid" state, how can he, in good faith, create the collaborative atmosphere necessary for true academic research and teaching?

The primary effect of Gordon's Israel-bashing will be to detract from the work of his university....There are many more hopeful and pragmatic voices to be heard at our institution than Gordon's, and they are the ones who will ultimately guide us, and Israel, to a brighter future.

Israel - on the concert circuit

From Associated Press, 2/9/09, by KARIN LAUB:

TEL AVIV, Israel — Madonna brought her mix of provocative music and spirituality to the Holy Land with a concert Tuesday in front of 50,000 fans who had endured a 16-year wait since the pop icon's last gig in Israel.

..."I shouldn't have stayed so long away," she told the adoring crowd midway through the show, as she broke away from the script to express her affection for the country.

...Madonna's fans are happy she's in Israel. Her first show sold out quickly, and a second was added.

After years of concerns over political tensions and violence, more world artists are performing to Israel.

Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney performed a year ago...

David Brinn, a music critic for The Jerusalem Post, said Madonna's performances are a sign that Israel is becoming more attractive as a concert venue. The Pet Shop Boys played Israel in July, pop sensation Lady Gaga was here last month, the rock band Faith No More is playing Tel Aviv on Tuesday night, and the iconic songwriter Leonard Cohen is to perform later this month.

"For a long time, it was security-related, and artists and managers didn't want to take a chance," he said of the dry spell in concerts. "They realized it is safe in comparison to other countries, and it is viable for artists to come here."

Hamas Shoah Denial

From Associated press, 1/9/09, by DIAA HADID:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A Hamas "spiritual" leader on Monday called teaching Palestinian children about the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews a "war crime," rejecting a suggestion that the U.N. might include the Holocaust in Gaza's school curriculum.

A senior Israeli official said such statements should make the West think twice about ending its boycott of Hamas, in place since the group seized Gaza by force in 2007. Israeli officials called the comments as "obscene" and said they place Hamas in a pariah club of Holocaust deniers that includes Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Hamas spiritual leader Younis al-Astal lashed out after hearing that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the main U.N. body aiding Palestinian refugees, planned to introduce lessons about the Holocaust to Gaza students. Adding the Holocaust to the curriculum would amount to "marketing a lie and spreading it ...it serves the Zionist colonizers and deals with their hypocrisy and lies," he wrote.

...Many Palestinians are reluctant to acknowledge Jewish suffering, fearing it might diminish their own. Attitudes toward the Holocaust range from outright denial to challenging its scope.

...Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri also objected to including what he referred to as the "so-called Holocaust" in the lesson plan. "We think it's more important to teach Palestinians the crimes of the Israeli occupation," he said.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said countries contemplating ending their boycott of Hamas must "seriously reconsider" after the Hamas statements, which he described as "obscene."

The Holocaust is not taught in West Bank schools, said an education ministry official in Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas' government.

Israelis have long complained that Palestinian textbooks present Israel only as an enemy, despite a series of interim peace deals. Also, they charge that maps in the books do not show Israel at all...

...Some parents opposed the idea of their children learning about the Holocaust. "I don't want them teaching my children Jewish lies," Mohammed Silmi, 33, said Monday, after driving his son to a U.N. school in Gaza City on the back of a motorbike. "It will just be Zionist propaganda."

Hamas' founding charter calls for Israel's destruction, though senior Hamas officials have recently said they would accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel as an interim stage to full Islamic control of the region...

Shabbat, Iran, and all that stuff

Follow this link to download a copy (47MB) of an interview of Steve Lieblich, talking about Jewish customs, Iran, and various topics, by Trish Duke of Twin Cities FM, the community radio station for the cities of Joondalup and Wanneroo (north of Perth), on the 17th August 2009.

Building a Church is a "Sin" in Egypt

From The Assyrian International News Agency, 31/8/09, by Mary Abdelmassih:

A controversial Fatwa (Islamic edict) prohibiting the construction of new churches in Egypt has provoked considerable discussion and spiraled into a crisis, involving the Fatwa Council, Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh, Christian and Muslim religious personalities, and the media...

The Fatwa (Arabic) in question was issued by the Al-Azhar affiliated "Dar el-Eftta" -- Fatwa Council for Islamic interpretations of laws in Islam. It stated "the will of a Muslim towards building a Church is a sin against God, just as if he left his inheritance towards building a nightclub, a gambling casino, or building a barn for rearing pigs, cats or dogs."

...To highlight the reason for this "sin" the Fatwa went on to state: "Salvation in the Christian religion is the belief in Jesus as Lord, where Muslims fundamentally disagree on it. Muslims believe that Issa [Jesus in Arabic] peace be upon him, is a slave of Allah and His Messenger, and that Allah is one. He begets not and He is not begotten and there is none like unto Him. So if it is seen that one sect has deviated from this absolute Monotheism, then according to that person's own religion he is forbidden to donate for the erection of buildings where Allah is not worshiped alone."

...Christians were angered and considered it a clear and explicit insult to all Christians. The renowned theologian Reverend Abdelmassih Bassit, Professor at the Coptic Orthodox Clerical Institute, called it "a shocking Fatwa."

...Most Muslim leaders ...supported the Fatwa "as being issued by people qualified in Islamic Shari'a law" or "a Muslim should not donate to the building of a church when Christians do not believe in the religion of Mohammed, or him being a prophet."

...Many Christians believe that this Fatwa has exposed the true stance of the religious authorities and the government towards churches, and the reason why it refrains from passing the long awaited bill on the "unified law for building places of worship," which would put an end to all problems related to building and restoring places of worship. It is also believed that since Islam views church building as a sin, passing this bill would therefore be in conflict with Shari'a Law -- which is the main source of legislation as stipulated in the Constitution -- and this would be something that the government would avoid at all costs.

Palestine problem hopeless, but not serious

From The Asia Times, 18 August 2009, by "Spengler" (David P Goldman, associate editor of First Things):

"The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable," declared United Sates President Barack Obama in his June 4 Cairo address.

Really? Compared to what? Things are tough all over. The Palestinians are one of many groups displaced by the population exchanges that followed World War II, and the only ones whose great-grandchildren still have the legal status of refugees. Why are they still there?

The simplest explanation is that they like it there, because they are much better off than people of similar capacities in other Arab countries. The standard tables of gross domestic product (GDP) per capital show the West Bank and Gaza at US$1,700, just below Egypt's $1,900 and significantly below Syria's $2,250 and Jordan's $3,000. GDP does not include foreign aid, however, which adds roughly 30% to spendable funds in the Palestinian territories.

Most important, the denominator of the GDP per capita equation - the number of people - is far lower than official data indicate. According to an authoritative study by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies [1], the West Bank and Gaza population in 2004 was only 2.5 million, rather than the 3.8 million claimed by the Palestinian authorities. The numbers are inflated to increase foreign aid.

Adjusting for the Begin-Sadat Center population count and adding in foreign aid, GDP per capita in the West Bank and Gaza comes to $3,380, much higher than in Egypt and significantly higher than in Syria or Jordan.

Why should any Palestinian refugee resettle in a neighboring Arab country? GDP per capita, moreover, does not reflect the spending power of ordinary people. Forty-four percent of Egyptians, for example, live on less than $2 a day, the United Nations estimates. The enormous state bureaucracy eats up a huge portion of national income. New immigrants to Egypt who do not have access to government jobs are likely to live far more poorly than per capita GDP would suggest. Other data confirm that Palestinians enjoy a higher living standard than their Arab neighbors.

A fail-safe gauge is life expectancy. The West Bank and Gaza show better numbers than most of the Muslim world:

Life Expectancy by Country in Years

• Oman 75.6
• Bahrain 75.6
• West Bank and Gaza 73.4
• Saudi Arabia 72.8
• Jordan 72.5
• Algeria 72.3
• Turkey 71.8
• Egypt 71.3
• Morocco 71.2
• Iran 71.0
• Pakistan 65.5
• Yemen 62.7
• Sudan 58.6
• Somalia 48.2

Source: United Nations

Literacy in the Palestinian Authority domain is 92.4%, equal to that of Singapore. That is far better than the 71.4% in Egypt, or 80.8% in Syria.

Without disputing Obama's claim that life for the Palestinians is intolerable, it is fair to ask: where is life not intolerable in the Arab world?

When the first UN Arab Development Report appeared in 2002, it elicited comments such as this one from the London Economist: "With barely an exception, its autocratic rulers, whether presidents or kings, give up their authority only when they die; its elections are a sick joke; half its people are treated as lesser legal and economic beings, and more than half its young, burdened by joblessness and stifled by conservative religious tradition, are said to want to get out of the place as soon as they can."

Life sounds intolerable for the Arabs generally; their best poet, the Syrian "Adonis" - Ali Ahmad Said Asbar - calls them an "extinct people".

Palestinian Arabs are highly literate, richer and healthier than people in most other Arab countries, thanks to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the blackmail payments of Western as well as Arab governments. As refugees, they live longer and better than their counterparts in adjacent Arab countries. It is not surprising that they do not want to be absorbed into other Arab countries and cease to be refugees.

If the Palestinians ceased to be refugees, moreover, it is not clear how they would maintain their relatively advantaged position. They cannot return to farming; for all the tears about bulldozed olive groves, no one in the West Bank will ever make a living selling olive oil, except perhaps by selling "Holy Land" products to Christian tourists.

Apart from tourism, the only non-subsidy source of income the Palestinians had was day labor in Israel, but security concerns close that off. Light manufacturing never will compete with Asia, and surely not during a prolonged period of global overcapacity. An alternative is for the Palestinians to continue to live off subsidies. But why should they?

Why should Western taxpayers subsidize an Arab in Ramallah, when Arabs in Egypt are needier? The answer is that they represent a security concern for Western countries, who believe that they are paying to limit violence. That only makes sense if the threat of violence remains present in the background and flares up frequently enough to be credible. One cannot simply stage-manage such things. A sociology of violence in which a significant proportion of the population remains armed.

To contain the potential violence of an armed population, donors to the Palestinian authority hire a very large proportion of young men as policemen or paramilitaries. According to a February 10, 2008, report by Steven Stotsky [2]:

Overhauling the Palestinian security forces will cost $4.2 to $7 billion over the next five years. What's more, the recent aid package agreed on in Paris committing to $7.4 billion for the Palestinians doesn't contain any provision for the security services.

The Reuters report follows a piece in the Jordan Times announcing plans to train a 50,000-person police force for the West Bank. This translates to one police officer for every 42-70 citizens (depending on which population figures for the West Bank are accepted), an unprecedented concentration of police presence. Currently, there are only 7,000 Palestinian police officers in the West Bank (Reuters, January13, 2008), so the new plan calls for a seven-fold increase. The planned expansion would result in a density of police at least three to four times that of major American cities that have to contend with much higher crime rates than the West Bank.

Add to this bloated police force the numerous other state security organizations as well as private militias, and it is clear that security is the biggest business in the Palestinian territories and the largest employer of young men.

The number of armed Palestinian fighters is estimated at around 80,000 or more than six times the soldiers per capita in the United States. About one out of four Palestinian men between the ages of 20 and 40 makes a living carrying a gun. That is, the economic structure of "pre-state" Palestine is heavily skewed towards the sort of institutionalized means of violence that is supposed to disappear once a state has been established. This is absurd, and creates a double disincentive for the Palestinians to maintain a low boil of violence.

Just how this violence-centered society is supposed to make the transition to an ordinary civil society is an unanswerable question. Once the problem is diagnosed with this kind of clarity, the solution becomes obvious:

• Cut Western support to the Palestinians with the aim of reducing living standards in the West Bank to those prevailing in Egypt, as an incentive for emigration.
• Demilitarize Palestinian society: offer a reward for turning in weapons, seize them when necessary, and give newly-unemployed gunmen employment weaving baskets at half pay.

Like many obvious solutions, this one never will be put into practice. The problem all along has been the wrong set of expectations. Once Palestinian Arabs adjust their expectations to correspond to levels of income, education and health prevailing in other Arab countries in the region, they can either form a state similar to other Arab states in the region, or simply emigrate to those states as individuals.

The Palestinians cannot form a normal state. They cannot emigrate to Arab countries without accepting a catastrophic decline in living standards, and very few can emigrate to Western countries. The optimal solution for the Palestinians is to demand a state and blackmail Western and Arab donors with the threat of violence, but never actually get one. That is why the Palestinian issue is "hopeless, but not serious", in the words of my old mentor Norman A Bailey, a former national security official. As long as all concerned understand that the comedy is not supposed to have an ending, the Palestinians can persist quite tolerably in their "intolerable" predicament.

Notes

[1] The Million Person Gap: The Arab Population in the West Bank and Gaza, Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid and Michael L Wise, February 2006. The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-ilan University, Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 65. Click here.

[2] Plan for Palestinian Police Force Seven Times Larger than Current Force by Steven Stotsky, February 10, 2008.