From The Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2007 [emphasis added]...
The BBC's lavish state funding of more than £3 billion a year is usually justified by references to its role of serving the "public interest," which includes scrutinizing government. Now the Beeb is using taxpayers' money to hide its own work from scrutiny.
The issue is anti-Israel bias. The BBC refuses to publish a 2004 report by former BBC editor Malcolm Balen, which the BBC itself commissioned in 2003 after Jerusalem temporarily withdrew all official cooperation with the broadcaster over its perceived bias. The Beeb's shroud of secrecy around the Balen Report raised suspicions that it confirmed Israel's charges.
Steven Sugar, a lawyer, has been fighting a long legal battle to bring the document out into the open. He argues that Britain's Freedom of Information Act, which the Beeb has used itself numerous times to access government documents, obliges the public broadcaster to reveal the report. The BBC claims the law doesn't cover material dealing with the production of journalism. True, says Mr. Sugar, only the Balen Report isn't journalism but "a report about journalism itself." A High Court judge is expected to rule on the case shortly.
The BBC routinely rejects charges of anti-Israel bias, often by noting that it also gets complaints from Palestinians. If both sides are unhappy, the argument goes, the BBC must be getting the story right. This of course would assume that both sides are equally justified in complaining. To pretend that Hamas statements are as reliable as those from accountable Israeli government officials is bias masquerading as even-handedness.
Actually, some BBC journalists don't even pretend to be even-handed. Consider Middle East correspondent Fayad Abu Shamala, who addressed a Hamas rally in May 2001, saying journalists were "waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people." The Beeb claimed that Mr. Shamala made his rally remarks in "a private capacity" and that his reporting "always matched the best standards." When Mideast correspondent Barbara Plett said during an October 2004 radio show that the airlifting of Yasser Arafat to a French hospital moved her to tears, the BBC didn't admit that she "breached the requirements of due impartiality" until listeners complained repeatedly.
There are numerous other examples that point to a simplistic narrative that invariably portrays Israel as the aggressor and the Palestinians as mere victims. Emblematic of this mindset is Jeremy Bowen, who was recently appointed as Middle East editor. In January, Mr. Bowen sent what he called a "mini briefing" to BBC senior executives and editors. This email was leaked and provided a rare look into the worldview that informs BBC coverage of the Middle East.
Written during the height of the internecine fighting between Hamas and Fatah, Mr. Bowen explained that "What is new...is the way that Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting" (emphasis ours). Mr. Bowen seems to have internalized Palestinian propaganda, which likes to speak of "resistance" when what is really meant is terrorism. The word terrorism, by the way, is banned at the Beeb, ostensibly because it's a value judgment. Mr. Bowen continued to see the "death of hope, caused" -- no surprise here -- "by a cocktail of Israel's military activities, land expropriations and settlement building."
In other words, even when Palestinians were killing each other, it was Israel's fault. Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations: The Palestinians could not possibly be held accountable for their actions. There was no word in Mr. Bowen's "briefing" that Israel had evacuated Gaza and that Palestinians elected Hamas into government, which refuses both to accept Israel's right to exist and to abandon terror.
The BBC's power to influence foreign policy and shape public opinion is almost unparalleled among media organizations. Its radio shows alone attract more than 160 million listeners a week. Many news organizations in Europe follow the BBC's lead, seing it as the gold standard in journalism. Little wonder, then, that according to opinion polls, an increasing number of Europeans consider Israel a pariah state and anti-Jewish feelings are on the rise.
A British all-party parliamentary inquiry late last year into escalating anti-Semitism in the U.K. concluded that "a discussion needs to take place within the media on the impact of language and imagery in current discourse on Judaism, anti-Zionism and Israel."
By avoiding this discussion, the BBC is failing its public interest obligation.
Friday, April 13, 2007
‘You get your film and go home’ (that's show biz...)
From The Spectator, 7/4/07, by Rod Liddle ....
Hebron: ‘So, are you happy now?’ the young Israeli soldier with the machinegun and the sneer asked me, as the Palestinian kid was bundled into the back of a police paddy wagon .... We stood in the middle, not entirely sure what to do. The cameraman, Brian, stopped filming.
... Apparently, some Palestinians were building a large house on this hill when, late one night, some 200 settlers swooped down and took it over, evicting the Palestinians, who have since erected a tent to one side of the dwelling with the Israeli soldiers in between (although not of course, ideologically speaking, really in the middle). Both sides claim legal rights to the land and property, and I have had sufficient dealings with lawyers in the last four years not to delve too deeply into the rectitude of each claim. Just to say that in a normal world, when you buy a house, you exchange contracts and send round a removal van when the last people have left; you don’t creep along in the dead of night with 198 of your friends armed with baseball bats. Also, you usually move in when the house is finished, rather than when there’s no roof.
....What happened on this occasion was this: undoubtedly emboldened by our camera, one Palestinian kid — 15 years old — crosses a line he is not supposed to cross. He walks a bit nearer the house than he should. The cameras are rolling. The soldiers surround him and tell him to clear off, back to his tent. He refuses. He says something vainglorious and declamatory in Arabic about refusing ever to move, and then maybe throws in a few obscenities at one of the soldiers ....At which point, he gets kicked, hard, in the balls, punched in the stomach and shoved in the back of a van.
In the world league-table of atrocities this is small beer — and, for film crews used to operating in tense and dangerous parts of the globe, a familiar and perhaps minor ethical problem. The Israeli soldier was right, though, in his implication: if we had not been there, this would not have happened. If you build it, they will come, etc. The kid was grandstanding for the cameras and, as a result, will get a beating. If we — or some other TV monkeys — had not been there, it would not have happened. We were there to witness injustice; and also, if possible, exacerbate it for the benefit of the viewing public.
The Israeli government is rightly worried that the Palestinians have captured the moral high ground by precisely such tactics, if they are tactics. It is aware that the Palestinian PR machine wins hands down, as it has done since the first Intifada, back in the late 1980s — kids with rocks versus a professional army with heavy ordnance and, behind even that, the USA. And when the TV crews, or the international observers are around, the Palestinians play it up for all it is worth; they know how it will go down with an international audience.
....A little later the Israeli soldier who sneeringly asked if I was happy now returned to where I was standing, smoking and shuffling my feet and, very much off the record, spoke for a while. ...‘I never sleep,’ he said. ‘I just want everything to be quiet, for nobody to get hurt. You turn up and you show this...’ he gestured to Brian, with the camera, ‘but you don’t show the other side. And you know what will happen, when you turn up here with your camera. There will be trouble. And you get your film and you go home. I stay here.’
....I tried to tell him that I hadn’t wanted the kid to go berserk and end up in a police van, that this is journalism and it has to be done so that the world can see what’s going on and make up its own mind. ‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘it’s what you do, isn’t it? And this is what I do.’...
Hebron: ‘So, are you happy now?’ the young Israeli soldier with the machinegun and the sneer asked me, as the Palestinian kid was bundled into the back of a police paddy wagon .... We stood in the middle, not entirely sure what to do. The cameraman, Brian, stopped filming.
... Apparently, some Palestinians were building a large house on this hill when, late one night, some 200 settlers swooped down and took it over, evicting the Palestinians, who have since erected a tent to one side of the dwelling with the Israeli soldiers in between (although not of course, ideologically speaking, really in the middle). Both sides claim legal rights to the land and property, and I have had sufficient dealings with lawyers in the last four years not to delve too deeply into the rectitude of each claim. Just to say that in a normal world, when you buy a house, you exchange contracts and send round a removal van when the last people have left; you don’t creep along in the dead of night with 198 of your friends armed with baseball bats. Also, you usually move in when the house is finished, rather than when there’s no roof.
....What happened on this occasion was this: undoubtedly emboldened by our camera, one Palestinian kid — 15 years old — crosses a line he is not supposed to cross. He walks a bit nearer the house than he should. The cameras are rolling. The soldiers surround him and tell him to clear off, back to his tent. He refuses. He says something vainglorious and declamatory in Arabic about refusing ever to move, and then maybe throws in a few obscenities at one of the soldiers ....At which point, he gets kicked, hard, in the balls, punched in the stomach and shoved in the back of a van.
In the world league-table of atrocities this is small beer — and, for film crews used to operating in tense and dangerous parts of the globe, a familiar and perhaps minor ethical problem. The Israeli soldier was right, though, in his implication: if we had not been there, this would not have happened. If you build it, they will come, etc. The kid was grandstanding for the cameras and, as a result, will get a beating. If we — or some other TV monkeys — had not been there, it would not have happened. We were there to witness injustice; and also, if possible, exacerbate it for the benefit of the viewing public.
The Israeli government is rightly worried that the Palestinians have captured the moral high ground by precisely such tactics, if they are tactics. It is aware that the Palestinian PR machine wins hands down, as it has done since the first Intifada, back in the late 1980s — kids with rocks versus a professional army with heavy ordnance and, behind even that, the USA. And when the TV crews, or the international observers are around, the Palestinians play it up for all it is worth; they know how it will go down with an international audience.
....A little later the Israeli soldier who sneeringly asked if I was happy now returned to where I was standing, smoking and shuffling my feet and, very much off the record, spoke for a while. ...‘I never sleep,’ he said. ‘I just want everything to be quiet, for nobody to get hurt. You turn up and you show this...’ he gestured to Brian, with the camera, ‘but you don’t show the other side. And you know what will happen, when you turn up here with your camera. There will be trouble. And you get your film and you go home. I stay here.’
....I tried to tell him that I hadn’t wanted the kid to go berserk and end up in a police van, that this is journalism and it has to be done so that the world can see what’s going on and make up its own mind. ‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘it’s what you do, isn’t it? And this is what I do.’...
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
'In every generation, they rise up'
From THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 1, 2007, by Jonathan Tobin.....
...Despite the best intentions of a generation of would-be peacemakers and a host of concessions on the part of the Israelis, Arab and Muslim opinion seems even more set in its determination to depict Israel as an evil oppressor. Indeed, the long record of Israeli peace offers and withdrawals since the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993 has, if anything, seemed to encourage the demonization of both the Jews and their state.
The view of this lamentable drift toward further conflict from afar is - though it entails less personal sacrifice - just as dispiriting. For Jews in the Diaspora, even those who care deeply about Israel's welfare, the process by which nothing seems to deflect the Palestinian Arabs from a course set for violence is both perplexing and horrifying.
As the virus of anti-Zionism - a belief that is more often than not merely a thinly veiled New Age intellectual version of classical anti-Semitism - spreads from Europe to America's college campuses, the question of how to answer the challenge has left many Jews confused. A consistent pattern of Israeli peace offers and concessions answered by Palestinian rejection and terrorism ought to have ended serious discussion about American pressure on the Jewish state.
But it hasn't. If anything, the more Israel seeks to give in the name of peace, the worse it is treated.
If affirming their continued support for the right of Israel to defend itself against terror makes them stand out, then many American Jews simply opt out. The reaction from many Jews who don't wish to identify with the side that liberal intellectuals often brand these days as the bad guy of the Middle East is to abandon advocacy for Israel - or at least downplay it.
.....The Haggada speaks of the Divine promise of the redemption of the children of Israel in Egypt by reminding us that "this promise has sustained our fathers and us. For not only one enemy has risen against us, in every generation men rise against us to destroy us."
.... students of all ages, as well as their parents, must recall that the goal of contemporary anti-Semitism is specifically to detach us from our history and our connection to Israel.
The retelling of the story of the Exodus seems to inspire free people everywhere. Yet it also represents the aspirations of countless generations of Jews, who dreamed not merely of universal freedom but of the revival of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. We owe it to them - and even more, to ourselves - and to those who will come after us to never forget that.
Refocusing on that narrative is daunting when you consider the rising support for Palestinian dreams of eradicating Israel and the world's willingness to tolerate Iran's faith-based drive for nuclear weapons to help accomplish that horrifying goal. In the face of such hatred, it's possible to lose heart and to stand silent while an intellectual mob bays for Jewish blood.
But as difficult as the times may be, the words of the Haggada.... can still supply us with the courage that we need. It's a lesson we must teach again to our children and ourselves. Like each Jewish generation since the Exodus that preceded us.....
The writer is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
...Despite the best intentions of a generation of would-be peacemakers and a host of concessions on the part of the Israelis, Arab and Muslim opinion seems even more set in its determination to depict Israel as an evil oppressor. Indeed, the long record of Israeli peace offers and withdrawals since the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993 has, if anything, seemed to encourage the demonization of both the Jews and their state.
The view of this lamentable drift toward further conflict from afar is - though it entails less personal sacrifice - just as dispiriting. For Jews in the Diaspora, even those who care deeply about Israel's welfare, the process by which nothing seems to deflect the Palestinian Arabs from a course set for violence is both perplexing and horrifying.
As the virus of anti-Zionism - a belief that is more often than not merely a thinly veiled New Age intellectual version of classical anti-Semitism - spreads from Europe to America's college campuses, the question of how to answer the challenge has left many Jews confused. A consistent pattern of Israeli peace offers and concessions answered by Palestinian rejection and terrorism ought to have ended serious discussion about American pressure on the Jewish state.
But it hasn't. If anything, the more Israel seeks to give in the name of peace, the worse it is treated.
If affirming their continued support for the right of Israel to defend itself against terror makes them stand out, then many American Jews simply opt out. The reaction from many Jews who don't wish to identify with the side that liberal intellectuals often brand these days as the bad guy of the Middle East is to abandon advocacy for Israel - or at least downplay it.
.....The Haggada speaks of the Divine promise of the redemption of the children of Israel in Egypt by reminding us that "this promise has sustained our fathers and us. For not only one enemy has risen against us, in every generation men rise against us to destroy us."
.... students of all ages, as well as their parents, must recall that the goal of contemporary anti-Semitism is specifically to detach us from our history and our connection to Israel.
The retelling of the story of the Exodus seems to inspire free people everywhere. Yet it also represents the aspirations of countless generations of Jews, who dreamed not merely of universal freedom but of the revival of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. We owe it to them - and even more, to ourselves - and to those who will come after us to never forget that.
Refocusing on that narrative is daunting when you consider the rising support for Palestinian dreams of eradicating Israel and the world's willingness to tolerate Iran's faith-based drive for nuclear weapons to help accomplish that horrifying goal. In the face of such hatred, it's possible to lose heart and to stand silent while an intellectual mob bays for Jewish blood.
But as difficult as the times may be, the words of the Haggada.... can still supply us with the courage that we need. It's a lesson we must teach again to our children and ourselves. Like each Jewish generation since the Exodus that preceded us.....
The writer is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
Wrong road to peace
From Ynet News, 04.04.07, by Uzi Arad ....
Unilateral concessions have failed; different Israeli approach needed
On hearing the prime minister optimistically predict a peace agreement within a short timeframe, we would do well to prepare for further diplomatic flexibility on our part.
The two diplomatic formulas which were rejected by Sharon during his term in office - the Saudi Initiative and the Geneva Initiative – are now being renewed by Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni. If various clauses in these initiatives are adopted, they will join the series of Israeli concessions, withdrawals and flexibility of the last decade - almost all of them undertaken unilaterally and void of any benefit.
In the summer of 2000, then Prime Minister Ehud Barak tried for the first time to end the conflict all at once. The concessions he presented at Camp David went far beyond anything Israel was prepared to relinquish in the past, breaking what was termed "red lines."
Yasser Arafat rejected the proposals and didn't even bother to present counter proposals. Weeks later the Palestinians embarked on the Intifada. By the end of the year, in a desperate election eve attempt in Taba, the Barak cabinet proposed further concessions beyond those offered at Camp David – all in vain.
Even with the change in government and in the face of growing violence, Israel's principle positions continued to erode. In the Latroun address in 2003 Prime Minister Sharon stated that the Palestinian state is a "de facto" state.
His statement led to the Quartet's Road Map that allotted three years to a peace agreement and enabled the establishment of a Palestinian state prior to that – without any parallel compensation (such as right of return for refugees to areas under Palestinian rule only.)
Sharon ignored its drawbacks and preferred to highlight the fact that the first phase demanded that the Palestinians dismantle their terror infrastructure; he then forced the Road Map on his cabinet.
Yet just a few months later, he deviated from the Road Map and launched the "disengagement" initiative, which comprised new concessions: Dismantling the settlement bloc and full withdrawal to the 1967 borders before reaching a final-status agreement and without receiving anything in return.
Under pressure from Benjamin Netanyahu, Sharon managed to extract from the Americans several understandings relating to a future final-status agreement: American recognition that Israel is entitled to defensible borders; inclusion of the large settlement blocs under Israeli sovereignty; and a declaration that Palestinian refugees would not return to Israeli territory.
Leftist wishful thinking
When the "disengagement" was over, its architects, including Olmert and Livni, announced similar moves in Judea and Samaria within the framework of the "realignment." Mahmoud Abbas' helplessness, the rise of Hamas to power and the Second Lebanon War delayed the plan, and we could have expected that lessons would have been drawn, but now it appears that unilateral submission is likely to continue.
Since the "disengagement," dismantling of terror infrastructures is no longer a prerequisite for diplomatic talks, and Israel has come to terms with a Palestinian national unity government that includes Hamas, while it is also prepared to enter talks on a political horizon, namely, on the clauses of a final-status agreement. The renewal of the Saudi Initiative, whose key demand is withdrawal to the 1967 borders on all frontiers, also constitutes the relinquishment of understandings accepted from the time of US President Ford until George W. Bush.
How did it transpire that while the Arabs and Palestinians are sticking to their guns and even increasing their demands, Israel is skipping from one initiative to another while abandoning principles and positions that were deemed crucial only yesterday?
This has several explanations: According to the Leftist approach, for example, Palestinian demands are essentially justified; the Israeli occupation is the mother of all sins, and therefore, any concession or withdrawal is a blessing.
Another position is the enchantment of reconciliation – the belief that aggressive and demanding parties can be placated by giving in to their demands. There's also detachment from reality - ignoring the data and situation, as presented by the intelligence forces – and wishful thinking. Mistakes were also made due to absentmindedness and weakness.
Different approach needed
Another common error stems from ignorance when it comes to the rules of negotiation, and primarily from misunderstanding the difficulties entailed in unilateral moves: There are no free meals and there are no free concessions.
And finally, and this should not be concealed, since Taba, through to the "disengagement" and perhaps until today, the ineffective practice of concessions has been carried out for the sole purpose of political survival.
Will a downfall and a series of concessions satisfy the Palestinians to such an extent that they would end the conflict and cease making further demands on us?
It is doubtful whether this will happen, because historically the more Israel moderated its demands, the more the Palestinians hardened theirs. Moreover, it will not happen because unilateralism or the series of concessions were not subjected to mutual concessions, and also because Palestinians have not allowed closure in any former attempts.
The incumbent Palestinian government's positions are similar to those prevalent prior to Oslo, and gradually signs of Palestinian-Israeli demands are also becoming evident and joining external ones – this does not herald the end of the conflict, but rather, the demise of the Jewish State.
This is not the way to make peace. Right from the start we needed a different Israeli approach, void of the above failures and futile reconciliations and focused on the advancement of Israeli interests rather than sacrificing them.
Unilateral concessions have failed; different Israeli approach needed
On hearing the prime minister optimistically predict a peace agreement within a short timeframe, we would do well to prepare for further diplomatic flexibility on our part.
The two diplomatic formulas which were rejected by Sharon during his term in office - the Saudi Initiative and the Geneva Initiative – are now being renewed by Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni. If various clauses in these initiatives are adopted, they will join the series of Israeli concessions, withdrawals and flexibility of the last decade - almost all of them undertaken unilaterally and void of any benefit.
In the summer of 2000, then Prime Minister Ehud Barak tried for the first time to end the conflict all at once. The concessions he presented at Camp David went far beyond anything Israel was prepared to relinquish in the past, breaking what was termed "red lines."
Yasser Arafat rejected the proposals and didn't even bother to present counter proposals. Weeks later the Palestinians embarked on the Intifada. By the end of the year, in a desperate election eve attempt in Taba, the Barak cabinet proposed further concessions beyond those offered at Camp David – all in vain.
Even with the change in government and in the face of growing violence, Israel's principle positions continued to erode. In the Latroun address in 2003 Prime Minister Sharon stated that the Palestinian state is a "de facto" state.
His statement led to the Quartet's Road Map that allotted three years to a peace agreement and enabled the establishment of a Palestinian state prior to that – without any parallel compensation (such as right of return for refugees to areas under Palestinian rule only.)
Sharon ignored its drawbacks and preferred to highlight the fact that the first phase demanded that the Palestinians dismantle their terror infrastructure; he then forced the Road Map on his cabinet.
Yet just a few months later, he deviated from the Road Map and launched the "disengagement" initiative, which comprised new concessions: Dismantling the settlement bloc and full withdrawal to the 1967 borders before reaching a final-status agreement and without receiving anything in return.
Under pressure from Benjamin Netanyahu, Sharon managed to extract from the Americans several understandings relating to a future final-status agreement: American recognition that Israel is entitled to defensible borders; inclusion of the large settlement blocs under Israeli sovereignty; and a declaration that Palestinian refugees would not return to Israeli territory.
Leftist wishful thinking
When the "disengagement" was over, its architects, including Olmert and Livni, announced similar moves in Judea and Samaria within the framework of the "realignment." Mahmoud Abbas' helplessness, the rise of Hamas to power and the Second Lebanon War delayed the plan, and we could have expected that lessons would have been drawn, but now it appears that unilateral submission is likely to continue.
Since the "disengagement," dismantling of terror infrastructures is no longer a prerequisite for diplomatic talks, and Israel has come to terms with a Palestinian national unity government that includes Hamas, while it is also prepared to enter talks on a political horizon, namely, on the clauses of a final-status agreement. The renewal of the Saudi Initiative, whose key demand is withdrawal to the 1967 borders on all frontiers, also constitutes the relinquishment of understandings accepted from the time of US President Ford until George W. Bush.
How did it transpire that while the Arabs and Palestinians are sticking to their guns and even increasing their demands, Israel is skipping from one initiative to another while abandoning principles and positions that were deemed crucial only yesterday?
This has several explanations: According to the Leftist approach, for example, Palestinian demands are essentially justified; the Israeli occupation is the mother of all sins, and therefore, any concession or withdrawal is a blessing.
Another position is the enchantment of reconciliation – the belief that aggressive and demanding parties can be placated by giving in to their demands. There's also detachment from reality - ignoring the data and situation, as presented by the intelligence forces – and wishful thinking. Mistakes were also made due to absentmindedness and weakness.
Different approach needed
Another common error stems from ignorance when it comes to the rules of negotiation, and primarily from misunderstanding the difficulties entailed in unilateral moves: There are no free meals and there are no free concessions.
And finally, and this should not be concealed, since Taba, through to the "disengagement" and perhaps until today, the ineffective practice of concessions has been carried out for the sole purpose of political survival.
Will a downfall and a series of concessions satisfy the Palestinians to such an extent that they would end the conflict and cease making further demands on us?
It is doubtful whether this will happen, because historically the more Israel moderated its demands, the more the Palestinians hardened theirs. Moreover, it will not happen because unilateralism or the series of concessions were not subjected to mutual concessions, and also because Palestinians have not allowed closure in any former attempts.
The incumbent Palestinian government's positions are similar to those prevalent prior to Oslo, and gradually signs of Palestinian-Israeli demands are also becoming evident and joining external ones – this does not herald the end of the conflict, but rather, the demise of the Jewish State.
This is not the way to make peace. Right from the start we needed a different Israeli approach, void of the above failures and futile reconciliations and focused on the advancement of Israeli interests rather than sacrificing them.
The Trouble With Islam
From The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, April 3, 2007 BY TAWFIK HAMID ...
Sadly, mainstream Muslim teaching accepts and promotes violence.
... there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom. One would expect the orthodox Islamic establishment to evade or dismiss these complaints, but less happily, the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the West have come, actively and passively, to the Islamists' defense.
These "progressives" frequently cite the need to examine "root causes." In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological "rootlets" of Islamism, the main tap root has a name--Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.
It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong.
The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah. Unlike Salafism, more liberal branches of Islam, such as Sufism, typically do not provide the essential theological base to nullify the cruel proclamations of their Salafist counterparts. And so, for more than 20 years I have been developing and working to establish a theologically-rigorous Islam that teaches peace.
Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals--who unceasingly claim to support human rights--have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.
Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria--which happened in the last few decades--or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please.
The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods.
Western appeasement of their Muslim communities has exacerbated the problem. During the four-month period after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish magazine's formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The apology had been perceived by Islamists as weakness and concession.
Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners. It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to morally support America's enemies.
Progressives need to realize that radical Islam is based on an antiliberal system. They need to awaken to the inhumane policies and practices of Islamists around the world. They need to realize that Islamism spells the death of liberal values. And they must not take for granted the respect for human rights and dignity that we experience in America, and indeed, the West, today.
Well-meaning interfaith dialogues with Muslims have largely been fruitless. Participants must demand--but so far haven't--that Muslim organizations and scholars specifically and unambiguously denounce violent Salafi components in their mosques and in the media. Muslims who do not vocally oppose brutal Shariah decrees should not be considered "moderates."
All of this makes the efforts of Muslim reformers more difficult. When Westerners make politically-correct excuses for Islamism, it actually endangers the lives of reformers and in many cases has the effect of suppressing their voices.
Tolerance does not mean toleration of atrocities under the umbrella of relativism. It is time for all of us in the free world to face the reality of Salafi Islam or the reality of radical Islam will continue to face us.
Dr. Hamid, a onetime member of Jemaah Islamiya, an Islamist terrorist group, is a medical doctor and Muslim reformer living in the West.
Sadly, mainstream Muslim teaching accepts and promotes violence.
... there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom. One would expect the orthodox Islamic establishment to evade or dismiss these complaints, but less happily, the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the West have come, actively and passively, to the Islamists' defense.
These "progressives" frequently cite the need to examine "root causes." In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological "rootlets" of Islamism, the main tap root has a name--Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.
It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong.
The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah. Unlike Salafism, more liberal branches of Islam, such as Sufism, typically do not provide the essential theological base to nullify the cruel proclamations of their Salafist counterparts. And so, for more than 20 years I have been developing and working to establish a theologically-rigorous Islam that teaches peace.
Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals--who unceasingly claim to support human rights--have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.
Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria--which happened in the last few decades--or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please.
The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods.
Western appeasement of their Muslim communities has exacerbated the problem. During the four-month period after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish magazine's formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The apology had been perceived by Islamists as weakness and concession.
Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners. It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to morally support America's enemies.
Progressives need to realize that radical Islam is based on an antiliberal system. They need to awaken to the inhumane policies and practices of Islamists around the world. They need to realize that Islamism spells the death of liberal values. And they must not take for granted the respect for human rights and dignity that we experience in America, and indeed, the West, today.
Well-meaning interfaith dialogues with Muslims have largely been fruitless. Participants must demand--but so far haven't--that Muslim organizations and scholars specifically and unambiguously denounce violent Salafi components in their mosques and in the media. Muslims who do not vocally oppose brutal Shariah decrees should not be considered "moderates."
All of this makes the efforts of Muslim reformers more difficult. When Westerners make politically-correct excuses for Islamism, it actually endangers the lives of reformers and in many cases has the effect of suppressing their voices.
Tolerance does not mean toleration of atrocities under the umbrella of relativism. It is time for all of us in the free world to face the reality of Salafi Islam or the reality of radical Islam will continue to face us.
Dr. Hamid, a onetime member of Jemaah Islamiya, an Islamist terrorist group, is a medical doctor and Muslim reformer living in the West.
"we are about to see an inferno"
From the Arab Times (Kuwait), 4/1/07, by Ahmed Al-Jarallah Editor-in-Chief ....
NO one will believe the story that the 15 British Royal Navy personnel were ‘kidnapped’ for crossing into Iran’s territorial water. It is hard to believe the confessions of some of these soldiers on TV were not dictated by their kidnappers.
...We used to see such irrational behavior from Saddam Hussein before he was toppled by a devastating international storm. Iran cannot afford to follow in the footsteps of Saddam, especially when we consider the huge imbalance in power between Iran and the international community. Iran’s military parades may impress its poor people, but these will turn the tables on Tehran, which may face a fate similar to that of Saddam.
Iran should not live in an illusion and believe that the United States has been defeated in Iraq ...... Iran should be aware of the fact the US and its allies have liberated Iraq....America is not the loser. The real losers are the people of Iraq and Iran, which is facing international sanctions. Soon these sanctions will devastate the economy of Iran.The United States has not been defeated and it will not leave Iraq.
....If Iran’s calculations were rational and free of political theories, it will find out that it has lost the support and cooperation of other countries in the region. The money spent by Tehran on meaningless military parades and showoffs will only lead to hatred and animosity against Iran. Having failed to learn any worthwhile lesson from the bloody history of Saddam Hussein, Iran is repeating the mistakes of the former Iraqi President. By kidnapping British navy personnel and keeping them hostages Iran is attracting military action against itself.....
... we are about to see an inferno, which will engulf all countries in the region.
NO one will believe the story that the 15 British Royal Navy personnel were ‘kidnapped’ for crossing into Iran’s territorial water. It is hard to believe the confessions of some of these soldiers on TV were not dictated by their kidnappers.
...We used to see such irrational behavior from Saddam Hussein before he was toppled by a devastating international storm. Iran cannot afford to follow in the footsteps of Saddam, especially when we consider the huge imbalance in power between Iran and the international community. Iran’s military parades may impress its poor people, but these will turn the tables on Tehran, which may face a fate similar to that of Saddam.
Iran should not live in an illusion and believe that the United States has been defeated in Iraq ...... Iran should be aware of the fact the US and its allies have liberated Iraq....America is not the loser. The real losers are the people of Iraq and Iran, which is facing international sanctions. Soon these sanctions will devastate the economy of Iran.The United States has not been defeated and it will not leave Iraq.
....If Iran’s calculations were rational and free of political theories, it will find out that it has lost the support and cooperation of other countries in the region. The money spent by Tehran on meaningless military parades and showoffs will only lead to hatred and animosity against Iran. Having failed to learn any worthwhile lesson from the bloody history of Saddam Hussein, Iran is repeating the mistakes of the former Iraqi President. By kidnapping British navy personnel and keeping them hostages Iran is attracting military action against itself.....
... we are about to see an inferno, which will engulf all countries in the region.
UK: Shoah left out of history lessons
From JPost, Apr. 3, 2007 by JONNY PAUL, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT, LONDON ....
Some British schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim students, a government-sponsored survey has revealed.
Teachers are afraid to confront anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial among Muslim pupils, according to a Historical Association survey funded by the Department for Education and Skills, The Daily Mail reported..... Researchers gave an example of a high school in the north of England that dropped the Holocaust as a subject of study.
The report went on to say that in another department at the school, the Holocaust is taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among pupils. The same department, however, avoids teaching the Crusades for fear of "Muslim rage" since their "balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."
The report said some schools are using history "as a vehicle for promoting political correctness."
A different school found itself "strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the history of the State of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination," according to The Daily Mail report....
Friday, March 30, 2007
Gaza sewage sweeps through village
From The West Australian, 28th March 2007 by REUTERS ....
A sewage reservoir burst next to a village in the northern Gaza Strip, killing at least four people and injuring 20 in a torrent of putrid water and waste that buried their homes, officials say.
Two children, aged one and two, were among the dead in Gaza's small Bedouin Village when the sewage overflowed in what one resident called a man-made tsunami. At least 25 makeshift homes were destroyed or completely buried. As many as 96 were damaged.
It was not immediately clear what caused the sewage to erupt from the reservoir, but local residents blamed the municipal government for failing to address the mounting sewage problem.
....Palestinian Interior Minister Hani al-Qawasmi, who rushed to the village to survey the damage, was confronted by angry gunmen who fired shots in the air, local witnesses said. Qawasmi was whisked to safety in a police car.
....Hundreds of school children escaped unharmed because their school was on higher ground.
...but note this article from JPost, Mar. 4, 2007, by YAAKOV KATZ ...
Israeli metal used for Kassam rockets
It took seven years, but the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) has finally put a stop to one of the more ironic aspects on Israel's war on terror: Kassam rockets made of Israeli metal.
A Palestinian from the Gaza Strip who worked as a metal merchant at the Karni crossing between Israel and the Strip was arrested by the Shin Bet last month for allegedly selling pipes he bought in Israel to terrorist groups that used them to manufacture Kassams... During his interrogation, he confessed selling the pipes to Hamas and other terrorist organizations that manufactured Kassam rockets, fired almost daily at Israel.
The Shin Bet said Azk's activities began with the start of the second intifada in 2000 and were only brought to a halt by his arrest. The agency could not say how much metal Azk traded, except that it was "significant."
The pipes that were sold to Zak were intended for the construction of a sewage system in Gaza.The Shin Bet has been unable to determine the amount of metal that actually made its way to the terror organizations, and how much went to the sewage project.
....In 2006, 1,700 rockets were fired from Gaza.
....and from Cox & Forkum, March 27, 2007....
Cesspool
A sewage reservoir burst next to a village in the northern Gaza Strip, killing at least four people and injuring 20 in a torrent of putrid water and waste that buried their homes, officials say.
Two children, aged one and two, were among the dead in Gaza's small Bedouin Village when the sewage overflowed in what one resident called a man-made tsunami. At least 25 makeshift homes were destroyed or completely buried. As many as 96 were damaged.
It was not immediately clear what caused the sewage to erupt from the reservoir, but local residents blamed the municipal government for failing to address the mounting sewage problem.
....Palestinian Interior Minister Hani al-Qawasmi, who rushed to the village to survey the damage, was confronted by angry gunmen who fired shots in the air, local witnesses said. Qawasmi was whisked to safety in a police car.
....Hundreds of school children escaped unharmed because their school was on higher ground.
...but note this article from JPost, Mar. 4, 2007, by YAAKOV KATZ ...
Israeli metal used for Kassam rockets
It took seven years, but the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) has finally put a stop to one of the more ironic aspects on Israel's war on terror: Kassam rockets made of Israeli metal.
A Palestinian from the Gaza Strip who worked as a metal merchant at the Karni crossing between Israel and the Strip was arrested by the Shin Bet last month for allegedly selling pipes he bought in Israel to terrorist groups that used them to manufacture Kassams... During his interrogation, he confessed selling the pipes to Hamas and other terrorist organizations that manufactured Kassam rockets, fired almost daily at Israel.
The Shin Bet said Azk's activities began with the start of the second intifada in 2000 and were only brought to a halt by his arrest. The agency could not say how much metal Azk traded, except that it was "significant."
The pipes that were sold to Zak were intended for the construction of a sewage system in Gaza.The Shin Bet has been unable to determine the amount of metal that actually made its way to the terror organizations, and how much went to the sewage project.
....In 2006, 1,700 rockets were fired from Gaza.
....and from Cox & Forkum, March 27, 2007....
Cesspool
Passover Massacre
This Seder night, remember the victims of the Passover massacre (also known as the Netanya bombing), which occurred on Seder night 2002 at the Park Hotel in Netanya for its 250 guests, especially elderly Jews who didn't have family and relatives, in the ground-floor dining room.
A Palestinian suicide bomber passed a security guard at the hotel's entrance, walked through the lobby passing the reception desk and entered the hotel's dining room where he detonated an explosive device he carried in a suitcase. Twenty-eight people were immediately killed, and about 140 were injured, of whom 20 were seriously injured. Two of the injured later died from their wounds. Many of the victims were Holocaust survivors.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. The bomber was identified as Abdel-Basset Odeh, a 25-year-old from the nearby West Bank city of Tulkarem. Hamas would later claim that the attacks were specifically designed to derail momentum from a recently announced peace offer from the Saudi government at the Beirut Summit.
While in English language media, the Palestinian Authority condemned the attack ... in Arabic it glorified the "shahid": on January 21, 2003, the official PA daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida published a report saying "the Tulkarm Shahids Memorial Soccer Championship tournament of the Shahid Abd Al-Baset Odeh began with the participation of seven top teams, named after Shahids who gave their lives to redeem the homeland. Isam, the brother of the Shahid, will distribute the trophies."
Most of the victims were senior citizens (70+). The oldest victim was 90 and the youngest was 20 years old. A number of married couples were murdered as well as a father together with his daughter. One of the victims was a Jewish tourist from Sweden that visited Israel for the passover.
Victims
Name Age Hometown
Shula Abramovitch 70 Holon
David Anichovitch 70 Netanya
Avraham Beckerman (Sgt.-Maj.) 25 Ashdod
Shimon Ben-Aroya 42 Netanya
Frieda and Alter Britvich 86 and 88 Netanya
Idit and Andre Fried Both 47 Netanya
Miriam Gutenzgan 82 Ramat Gan
Amiram Hamami 44 Netanya
Perla Hermele 79 Stockholm, Sweden
Dvora and Michael Karim 73 and 78 Netanya
Yehudit and Eliezer Korman 70 and 74 Ramat HaSharon
Marianne Myriam Lehmann Zaoui 77 Netanya
Lola Levkovitch 70 Jerusalem
Sarah Levy-Hoffman 89 Tel-Aviv
Furuk Na'imi 62 Netanya
Eliahu Nakash 85 Tel-Aviv
Chanah Rogan 90 Netanya
Irit Rashel 45 Moshav Herev La'et
Clara Rosenberger 77 Jerusalem
Yulia Talmi 87 Tel-Aviv
Sivan (St.-Sgt.) and Ze'ev Vider 20 and 50 Moshav Bekaot
Eva and Ernest Weiss 75 and 80 Petah Tikva
Anna and George Yakobovitch 76 and 78 Holon
A Palestinian suicide bomber passed a security guard at the hotel's entrance, walked through the lobby passing the reception desk and entered the hotel's dining room where he detonated an explosive device he carried in a suitcase. Twenty-eight people were immediately killed, and about 140 were injured, of whom 20 were seriously injured. Two of the injured later died from their wounds. Many of the victims were Holocaust survivors.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. The bomber was identified as Abdel-Basset Odeh, a 25-year-old from the nearby West Bank city of Tulkarem. Hamas would later claim that the attacks were specifically designed to derail momentum from a recently announced peace offer from the Saudi government at the Beirut Summit.
While in English language media, the Palestinian Authority condemned the attack ... in Arabic it glorified the "shahid": on January 21, 2003, the official PA daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida published a report saying "the Tulkarm Shahids Memorial Soccer Championship tournament of the Shahid Abd Al-Baset Odeh began with the participation of seven top teams, named after Shahids who gave their lives to redeem the homeland. Isam, the brother of the Shahid, will distribute the trophies."
Most of the victims were senior citizens (70+). The oldest victim was 90 and the youngest was 20 years old. A number of married couples were murdered as well as a father together with his daughter. One of the victims was a Jewish tourist from Sweden that visited Israel for the passover.
Victims
Name Age Hometown
Shula Abramovitch 70 Holon
David Anichovitch 70 Netanya
Avraham Beckerman (Sgt.-Maj.) 25 Ashdod
Shimon Ben-Aroya 42 Netanya
Frieda and Alter Britvich 86 and 88 Netanya
Idit and Andre Fried Both 47 Netanya
Miriam Gutenzgan 82 Ramat Gan
Amiram Hamami 44 Netanya
Perla Hermele 79 Stockholm, Sweden
Dvora and Michael Karim 73 and 78 Netanya
Yehudit and Eliezer Korman 70 and 74 Ramat HaSharon
Marianne Myriam Lehmann Zaoui 77 Netanya
Lola Levkovitch 70 Jerusalem
Sarah Levy-Hoffman 89 Tel-Aviv
Furuk Na'imi 62 Netanya
Eliahu Nakash 85 Tel-Aviv
Chanah Rogan 90 Netanya
Irit Rashel 45 Moshav Herev La'et
Clara Rosenberger 77 Jerusalem
Yulia Talmi 87 Tel-Aviv
Sivan (St.-Sgt.) and Ze'ev Vider 20 and 50 Moshav Bekaot
Eva and Ernest Weiss 75 and 80 Petah Tikva
Anna and George Yakobovitch 76 and 78 Holon
The Saudi 'peace' plan ultimatum
From The Washington Post EDITORIAL March 29, 2007 ...
During her visit to the Middle East this week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been touting a peace plan advocated by Saudi Arabia as the basis for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations -- even though it has serious flaws that have raised well-founded concerns from a dovish Israeli government.
Parts of the Saudi plan, particularly the proposal for a peace agreement in which the Arab states agree to recognize Israel, are indeed laudable and deserve support. Other parts, particularly
During her visit to the Middle East this week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been touting a peace plan advocated by Saudi Arabia as the basis for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations -- even though it has serious flaws that have raised well-founded concerns from a dovish Israeli government.
Parts of the Saudi plan, particularly the proposal for a peace agreement in which the Arab states agree to recognize Israel, are indeed laudable and deserve support. Other parts, particularly
- provisions demanding that Israel yield all of the West Bank territory it captured in a defensive war and return to its precarious pre-1967 borders;
- requiring that it yield the Golan Heights to a Syrian Ba'athist regime that is aligned with Iran; and
- leaving open the possibility that Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants might be permitted to return to their former homesteads inside what is now Israel,
are unacceptable.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert quite sensibly has asked that these provisions at a minimum be significantly modified.
Mr. Olmert got his answer from Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal on Tuesday in the form of an ultimatum. Prince Saud said the proposal is non-negotiable, and suggested that Israel would be to blame if war broke out as a result of its failure to swallow it whole. "It has never been proven that reaching out to Israel achieves anything," he told the London Telegraph. If Israel does not agree to the offer, it will be putting its future "in the hands of the lords of war," he added. (This apparently was the royal response to the hopes of Miss Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that Saudi Arabia would make the plan the basis for future discussions with Israel, not a take-it-or-leave-it offer.)
Yesterday Saudi King Abdullah opened an Arab summit meeting in Riyadh by calling "illegitimate" the U.S. military presence in Iraq and denouncing as "oppressive" the embargo on the terrorist-dominated Palestinian Authority government.
The U.S. government has invested considerable political time and effort over the years in trying to advance the cause of peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Given the strategic importance of the Middle East to the United States, that is something this newspaper has strongly supported -- in particular, the Bush administration's work to bring about an Israeli-Palestinian settlement based on the creation of an independent Palestinian state living in peace with Israel.
But in the real world, advancing any plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace today would appear to face tremendous if not insurmountable obstacles -- so much so that it is difficult to understand why Miss Rice has seen fit to spend so much political capital in wartime on a diplomatic initiative with so little likelihood of success. Ever since Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat signed their Declaration of Principles in September 1993 while a beaming President Clinton looked on, efforts to create a "peace process" worthy of the name have been crippled by incitement and terror from Arafat, Hamas and others on the Palestinian side.
Today, the Palestinian Authority that runs Gaza and aspires to run the West Bank is headed by a coalition government comprised of two organizations:
- Fatah, which includes terrorists such as the Iranian-backed al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, as well as ineffectual "moderates" such as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who make statements about nonviolence and "two-state solutions" when meeting with Miss Rice and Mr. Olmert, but do little or nothing of substance to make them a reality; and
- Hamas, which remains committed to Israel's destruction and reserves the right to continue "resistance" (terrorism and other acts of violence) against Israel.
Given these realities, any peace plan would face an uphill battle -- at best.
The Saudi plan had its origins at a March 2002 Arab summit meeting in Beirut -- a meeting which was overshadowed by one of the most deadly terrorist campaigns in Israel's history, culminating in the March 27, 2002, bombing by Hamas of a Passover seder at a hotel in Netanya, in which 30 people were killed. In response to these attacks, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield, sending the Israeli Army into the West Bank several days later to wipe out the terror cells Arafat had allowed to flourish there. As the fighting escalated, the Saudi initiative was largely forgotten until this year when the diplomats trotted it out in desperation for something they could plausibly call "progress."
If the Saudis want to be taken seriously as peacemakers, they need to stop issuing ultimatums to Israel and start issuing them to the Palestinian irredentists they continue to lavish money on.
Arab League ultimatum
I always try to keep these postings brief, but this lengthy posting from two articles in the Jerusalem Post, Mar. 29 is ESSENTIAL READING (my own emphasis added)...
...first from an article by HERB KEINON ...
Israel adopted a low-key, wait-and-see approach Wednesday night to the Arab League's unanimous decision to relaunch without changes its land-and-refugee-for-peace initiative from March 2002.
...According to an AFP report,.... in the resolution the Arab leaders "reaffirm the commitment of all Arab states to the Arab peace initiative as approved at the Beirut summit in 2002 in all its elements."
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa .... said the Middle East was at a "critical junction...If we don't move forward, we will witness an escalation (of violence) in the region....."
In recent weeks Israel had sent signals to the Arab League urging it to change two articles in the initiative viewed in Jerusalem as enshrining the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel. .....The initiative also calls for a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines and establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem in return for a peace agreement, an end to the conflict and normal relations.
...in a Daily Telegraph interview Wednesday, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud warned that the "lords of war" would decide Israel's future if it rejected a peace plan "crafted by the entire Arab world."
"What we have the power to do in the Arab world, we think we have done," he was quoted as saying, "so now it is up to the other side because if you want peace, it is not enough for one side only to want it. Both sides must want it equally.
"If Israel refuses, that means it doesn't want peace and it places everything back into the hands of fate. They will be putting their future not in the hands of the peacemakers but in the hands of the lords of war." The prince said there wouldn't be any further diplomatic overtures towards Israel.
....Vice Premier Shimon Peres, in a meeting he held with visiting British parliamentarians, responded to Saud's statements by saying that "there are disagreements between us on a number of issues. The question is how they are overcome - through attempts to dictate terms, or through negotiations. They will come with their positions, and we will come with ours. We will discuss them and reach an agreement as we did with Egypt and Jordan."
Jonny Paul and AP contributed to this report.
...and from the same issue of the Jerusalem Post, from an Analysis by DORE GOLD....
Are the Saudis seeking peace?
With the visit of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week and the special attention she gave to the revival of the 2002 Saudi-inspired Arab Peace Initiative, expectations had been elevated that yesterday's Riyadh Arab summit might provide a mechanism for restarting the Arab-Israeli peace process.
....But the Arab Peace Initiative got off to a bad start when Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal warned Israel that its rejection of the plan would leave its fate in the hands of the "lords of war."Rather than obtaining some flexibility, Israel was handed an ultimatum.
This was not the style of either President Anwar Sadat or King Hussein, but rather a grossly mismanaged way of launching any modus vivendi with Israel.
Moreover, if Israel thought Rice's optimistic diplomacy earlier in the week was based on some well-established US-Saudi coordination, it came as a total surprise when Jim Hoagland disclosed in The Washington Post yesterday that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah canceled a mid-April gala dinner with President George W. Bush in the White House.
Hoagland heard from administration sources that Riyadh had decided for now to seek common ground with Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah. It now becomes understandable why the Saudis chose to strengthen Hamas, with the Mecca Agreement, at the expense of Mahmoud Abbas, who just became politically even more sidelined.
If Saudi Arabia has decided to distance itself from the US at this time, then how could Washington expect that now the time was ripe for a Saudi-Israeli rapprochement under an American umbrella?
The last time the Saudi initiative was discussed during the 2002 Arab summit in Beirut, Hamas attacked the Park Hotel in Netanya during the first night of Pessah, killing 29 Israelis and wounding over 150. At that time, Saudi Arabia did not signal to Israel that it was serious about peace by cutting back its financial support of Hamas; in fact, it grew to over 50 percent of Hamas's total income in 2003.
Moreover, the Saudis did not approach Israel directly but chose to launch their initiative through the columns of Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. The medium was the message. The key figure making the press contacts for the Saudis was Adel al-Jubeir, who had been sent to Washington to coordinate the Saudis' efforts to improve their declining image in America. It was apparent that the Saudi initiative was not directed towards Israel but rather to post-9/11 American public opinion, which had been shocked to learn that 15 of the 19 hijackers that attacked New York and Washington were Saudi citizens.
The real problems with the Saudi peace initiative go well beyond the much-discussed issue of the "right of return." The Saudi plan demands "full withdrawal" from "all the territories" Israel captured 40 years ago in the 1967 Six Day War, thus negating the territorial flexibility contained in UN Security Council Resolution 242 that intentionally did not use this limiting language.
Adopting the Saudi plan as presented would lead to the redivision of Jerusalem. It would also strip Israel of the "defensible borders" that Bush said was Israel's right in his April 2004 letter to prime minister Ariel Sharon. In 2007, with al-Qaida jihadism pouring out of Western Iraq and Iran on the ascendency across the region, these security assurances have only grown in importance.
The assurances contained in the Bush letter are critical for Israel and had constituted the main quid pro quo that Israel had gained for the Gaza disengagement. Yet now the letter seems to have been forgotten. Indeed, there was a glaring contradiction between the Bush administration's new embrace of the Saudi initiative and the assurances it gave Sharon only three years ago.
Even the peace that the Saudi initiative presents is not what it might seem to be to the uninitiated. It promises "normal relations" with Israel, a Syrian diplomatic term from the 1990s which was intended to be a watered down alternative to European peace implied by the term "normalization" (tatbiyan in Arabic). Nonetheless, the Saudi initiative came to be known as a grand bargain between Israel and the Arab world: full withdrawal for full peace with the Arab world as a whole, even if there are serious questions as to whether that was the Saudis' real intent.
For even today, as in 2002, peace with Israel is not likely to be at the top of the Saudi agenda. The paramount problem of Saudi Arabia is not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite King Abdullah's strong ideological identification with the Palestinian cause in the past. What is shaping Saudi Arabia's new diplomatic activism is the rapidly expanding Iranian threat and the weakness of the Western response.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had committed himself to a second Iranian revolution: that means a revival of Iranian efforts to export revolutionary Shi'ism, wherever possible. In some Sunni-dominated countries, like Sudan and Syria, the Iranians hope to convert Sunnis to Shi'ism. In the Gulf, there are already substantial Shi'ite populations. Indeed, Saudi Arabia's main vulnerability is in its oil-rich Eastern Province, which has nearly a majority of Shi'ites.
Neighboring Bahrain, now connected to Saudi Arabia by a bridge, has an 80% Shi'ite majority.
The potential for revolutionary subversion is enormous. According to US court documents, already the 1996 attack on Khobar Towers in eastern Saudi Arabia was conducted by Hizballah al-Hijaz, a Shi'ite terrorist group under the direct control of Iranian officials.
What can the West do? It needs to assure its Gulf allies by being more assertive about countering Iranian power. Rice's instincts to seize the moment of a shared threat that both Israel and the Sunni Arab states perceive are essentially correct, but must be directed in totally different channels.
When Saudi Arabia is facing its own Sunni Islamist threat from within and a Shi'ite threat from without, it is not surprising that the last thing it needs are planeloads of Israeli negotiators and journalists in Riyadh. And with Hamas in power among the Palestinians and building its military strength daily in Gaza, Israel does not need to experiment with new withdrawals.
Under such circumstances, quiet contacts between Israel and its neighbors make far more sense than grandiose public diplomacy. In peacemaking, timing is everything.
What would those quiet contacts involve? First, finding ways of building on those Palestinians who are ready to distance themselves from Iran. And if no Palestinian leadership emerges, encouraging Egypt and Jordan to take a more constructive role in eliminating the present chaos by helping counter the growth of terrorist armies that are in the territories.
At present, there are no indications that anything like this is happening. But if Saudi Arabia seeks to present itself as a constructive force, it must use its political and financial clout behind the scenes to neutralize those groups seeking to undermine the stability of the Middle East at present. Only then will it be possible to explore building the foundations of the regional peace that was being spoken about earlier this week.
Dore Gold heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and is the author of The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West and the Future of the Holy City.
...first from an article by HERB KEINON ...
Israel adopted a low-key, wait-and-see approach Wednesday night to the Arab League's unanimous decision to relaunch without changes its land-and-refugee-for-peace initiative from March 2002.
...According to an AFP report,.... in the resolution the Arab leaders "reaffirm the commitment of all Arab states to the Arab peace initiative as approved at the Beirut summit in 2002 in all its elements."
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa .... said the Middle East was at a "critical junction...If we don't move forward, we will witness an escalation (of violence) in the region....."
In recent weeks Israel had sent signals to the Arab League urging it to change two articles in the initiative viewed in Jerusalem as enshrining the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel. .....The initiative also calls for a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines and establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem in return for a peace agreement, an end to the conflict and normal relations.
...in a Daily Telegraph interview Wednesday, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud warned that the "lords of war" would decide Israel's future if it rejected a peace plan "crafted by the entire Arab world."
"What we have the power to do in the Arab world, we think we have done," he was quoted as saying, "so now it is up to the other side because if you want peace, it is not enough for one side only to want it. Both sides must want it equally.
"If Israel refuses, that means it doesn't want peace and it places everything back into the hands of fate. They will be putting their future not in the hands of the peacemakers but in the hands of the lords of war." The prince said there wouldn't be any further diplomatic overtures towards Israel.
....Vice Premier Shimon Peres, in a meeting he held with visiting British parliamentarians, responded to Saud's statements by saying that "there are disagreements between us on a number of issues. The question is how they are overcome - through attempts to dictate terms, or through negotiations. They will come with their positions, and we will come with ours. We will discuss them and reach an agreement as we did with Egypt and Jordan."
Jonny Paul and AP contributed to this report.
...and from the same issue of the Jerusalem Post, from an Analysis by DORE GOLD....
Are the Saudis seeking peace?
With the visit of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week and the special attention she gave to the revival of the 2002 Saudi-inspired Arab Peace Initiative, expectations had been elevated that yesterday's Riyadh Arab summit might provide a mechanism for restarting the Arab-Israeli peace process.
....But the Arab Peace Initiative got off to a bad start when Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal warned Israel that its rejection of the plan would leave its fate in the hands of the "lords of war."Rather than obtaining some flexibility, Israel was handed an ultimatum.
This was not the style of either President Anwar Sadat or King Hussein, but rather a grossly mismanaged way of launching any modus vivendi with Israel.
Moreover, if Israel thought Rice's optimistic diplomacy earlier in the week was based on some well-established US-Saudi coordination, it came as a total surprise when Jim Hoagland disclosed in The Washington Post yesterday that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah canceled a mid-April gala dinner with President George W. Bush in the White House.
Hoagland heard from administration sources that Riyadh had decided for now to seek common ground with Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah. It now becomes understandable why the Saudis chose to strengthen Hamas, with the Mecca Agreement, at the expense of Mahmoud Abbas, who just became politically even more sidelined.
If Saudi Arabia has decided to distance itself from the US at this time, then how could Washington expect that now the time was ripe for a Saudi-Israeli rapprochement under an American umbrella?
The last time the Saudi initiative was discussed during the 2002 Arab summit in Beirut, Hamas attacked the Park Hotel in Netanya during the first night of Pessah, killing 29 Israelis and wounding over 150. At that time, Saudi Arabia did not signal to Israel that it was serious about peace by cutting back its financial support of Hamas; in fact, it grew to over 50 percent of Hamas's total income in 2003.
Moreover, the Saudis did not approach Israel directly but chose to launch their initiative through the columns of Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. The medium was the message. The key figure making the press contacts for the Saudis was Adel al-Jubeir, who had been sent to Washington to coordinate the Saudis' efforts to improve their declining image in America. It was apparent that the Saudi initiative was not directed towards Israel but rather to post-9/11 American public opinion, which had been shocked to learn that 15 of the 19 hijackers that attacked New York and Washington were Saudi citizens.
The real problems with the Saudi peace initiative go well beyond the much-discussed issue of the "right of return." The Saudi plan demands "full withdrawal" from "all the territories" Israel captured 40 years ago in the 1967 Six Day War, thus negating the territorial flexibility contained in UN Security Council Resolution 242 that intentionally did not use this limiting language.
Adopting the Saudi plan as presented would lead to the redivision of Jerusalem. It would also strip Israel of the "defensible borders" that Bush said was Israel's right in his April 2004 letter to prime minister Ariel Sharon. In 2007, with al-Qaida jihadism pouring out of Western Iraq and Iran on the ascendency across the region, these security assurances have only grown in importance.
The assurances contained in the Bush letter are critical for Israel and had constituted the main quid pro quo that Israel had gained for the Gaza disengagement. Yet now the letter seems to have been forgotten. Indeed, there was a glaring contradiction between the Bush administration's new embrace of the Saudi initiative and the assurances it gave Sharon only three years ago.
Even the peace that the Saudi initiative presents is not what it might seem to be to the uninitiated. It promises "normal relations" with Israel, a Syrian diplomatic term from the 1990s which was intended to be a watered down alternative to European peace implied by the term "normalization" (tatbiyan in Arabic). Nonetheless, the Saudi initiative came to be known as a grand bargain between Israel and the Arab world: full withdrawal for full peace with the Arab world as a whole, even if there are serious questions as to whether that was the Saudis' real intent.
For even today, as in 2002, peace with Israel is not likely to be at the top of the Saudi agenda. The paramount problem of Saudi Arabia is not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite King Abdullah's strong ideological identification with the Palestinian cause in the past. What is shaping Saudi Arabia's new diplomatic activism is the rapidly expanding Iranian threat and the weakness of the Western response.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had committed himself to a second Iranian revolution: that means a revival of Iranian efforts to export revolutionary Shi'ism, wherever possible. In some Sunni-dominated countries, like Sudan and Syria, the Iranians hope to convert Sunnis to Shi'ism. In the Gulf, there are already substantial Shi'ite populations. Indeed, Saudi Arabia's main vulnerability is in its oil-rich Eastern Province, which has nearly a majority of Shi'ites.
Neighboring Bahrain, now connected to Saudi Arabia by a bridge, has an 80% Shi'ite majority.
The potential for revolutionary subversion is enormous. According to US court documents, already the 1996 attack on Khobar Towers in eastern Saudi Arabia was conducted by Hizballah al-Hijaz, a Shi'ite terrorist group under the direct control of Iranian officials.
What can the West do? It needs to assure its Gulf allies by being more assertive about countering Iranian power. Rice's instincts to seize the moment of a shared threat that both Israel and the Sunni Arab states perceive are essentially correct, but must be directed in totally different channels.
When Saudi Arabia is facing its own Sunni Islamist threat from within and a Shi'ite threat from without, it is not surprising that the last thing it needs are planeloads of Israeli negotiators and journalists in Riyadh. And with Hamas in power among the Palestinians and building its military strength daily in Gaza, Israel does not need to experiment with new withdrawals.
Under such circumstances, quiet contacts between Israel and its neighbors make far more sense than grandiose public diplomacy. In peacemaking, timing is everything.
What would those quiet contacts involve? First, finding ways of building on those Palestinians who are ready to distance themselves from Iran. And if no Palestinian leadership emerges, encouraging Egypt and Jordan to take a more constructive role in eliminating the present chaos by helping counter the growth of terrorist armies that are in the territories.
At present, there are no indications that anything like this is happening. But if Saudi Arabia seeks to present itself as a constructive force, it must use its political and financial clout behind the scenes to neutralize those groups seeking to undermine the stability of the Middle East at present. Only then will it be possible to explore building the foundations of the regional peace that was being spoken about earlier this week.
Dore Gold heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and is the author of The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West and the Future of the Holy City.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Divest-Iran
From JPost, March 26 2007 Bibi's Blog: by Binyamin Netanyahu
After recent visits to Britain and France, I visited the United States last week as part of my continued efforts to focus the world’s attention on the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran and to explain the critical importance of increasing diplomatic and economic pressures on the regime in Teheran while there is still time.
In addition to numerous media appearances that enabled me to bring this message to a wider American audience, I had the opportunity to meet and speak to American leaders of both political parties, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams, leading Republican presidential candidates Rudy Guliani and Jon McCain, leading Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama, and prominent Democratic senators and congressman, including Joe Leiberman and Tom Lantos. In all my conversations, I found that these leaders not only expressed a clear recognition of the grave dangers posed by a nuclear-armed Iran, but also declared their willingness to act to thwart those dangers. Republicans and Democrats alike told me that a nuclear-armed Iran was not an option, and that economic pressures should be used to convince the regime to abandon its nuclear program, if not bring down the regime itself.
...I explained that the international community faces three options in dealing with Iran.
First, it can do nothing, in which case Iran will develop nuclear weapons. That is unacceptable. Second, it can use military means to confront Iran. While this option should never be taken off the table, it should only be used as a last resort.
Third, it can use non-military pressures, primarily economic ones.The regime in Teheran is extremely vulnerable to economic pressure. More than 80% of its government revenue comes from oil exports, the government heavily subsidizes gas for the population and the Iranian oil industry is badly in need of foreign investment and technology.
In applying economic pressure on the Iranian regime, the UN took a first step – a baby step - three months ago by placing extremely limited sanctions on Iran. Yet even these limited sanctions have exposed Iran’s economic vulnerability. Ahmadinejad has faced unprecedented criticism and his allies lost a recent round of voting for representative to Iran’s Supreme Council. The cost of some goods in Iran has increased sharply, as anticipation of further sanctions grows. Whether further UN sanctions remain possible is an open question, since Russia and China have been generally unhelpful in broadening and deepening the effort to isolate Iran. Still, the UN sanctions against Iran should be encouraged.
In addition, there is an effort, led by the US Treasury, to have the international banking system reassess the risks of doing business with Iran, and these efforts have met with some important successes.
But there is another tool, I explained, that could bring enormous economic pressure to bear on Iran: Divestment. Today, the American people are invested in Iran. Not directly, of course. That is against US law. Rather, through pensions, savings plans, and other diversified investments, American money is invested in companies - mostly European companies - that do business in Iran. By insisting that their investment dollars not be used in Iran, the American public can send a powerful and effective message. For pension funds and other savings investments, divesting from companies doing business in Iran will be relatively painless. In most cases, it will only entail substituting a few companies in a diversified portfolio. For some major European companies, a decision to pull the plug on investing in Iran will be more painful, but for most companies, Iran represents a tiny share of their revenues. These companies will adapt quickly to a divestment environment.
But for the regime in Teheran, the blow of divestment could prove fatal. Fewer and fewer companies will enter Iran. More and more will leave. Investment dollars and the technology it buys will dry up. The lifeline of the regime will be cut. Teheran will face a stark choice: Change its polices and win back investment, or maintain its policies and risk economic collapse. The effort to divest from Iran could quickly bear fruit. Few people today have any idea they are supporting a regime inciting to genocide. When they do, they will want to stop that support. There are efforts underway in a number of individual American states to divest state pension funds from Iran. Similar divestment initiatives are being pursued against Sudan, a country in which genocide is actually taking place in Darfur. I see no reason why they cannot be combined -- why those working to stop genocide and those working to stop a regime inciting to genocide cannot work together.
We in Israel must do our part as well. While the power of our investment dollars is infinitesimal compared to the US, if we hope to persuade the world to divest, we must lead by example. Therefore, I have submitted a bill in the Knesset that will outlaw investing in companies that invest in Iran and Sudan. I know that there are some who are afraid of mounting a divestment campaign since there have been attempts in the past to divest from Israel. Some are concerned that by supporting divestment, we will be establishing a precedent that will later be used against Israel.
But divestment against Israel is wrong not because divestment per se is wrong. It is wrong because it is directed against Israel -- a democratic state that yearns for peace with its neighbors. Divestment against Iran and Sudan is right for the same reason why divestment from Nazi Germany in the 30s and 40s would have been right. I said last year that it was 1938. But today, we have the lessons of the 1930s to guide us, and the power to choose a different course that will make all the difference. We must mobilize the power of the free world to confront the dangers in time. We must, as the old saying goes, put our money where our mouth is.
If we divest from Iran, we will be able to say what our parents and grandparents could not: That we acted in time, that we prevented genocide, that we preserved peace. In short, the message of my trip to the US was simple. Divest Iran. Divest Sudan. Invest in Peace.
After recent visits to Britain and France, I visited the United States last week as part of my continued efforts to focus the world’s attention on the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran and to explain the critical importance of increasing diplomatic and economic pressures on the regime in Teheran while there is still time.
In addition to numerous media appearances that enabled me to bring this message to a wider American audience, I had the opportunity to meet and speak to American leaders of both political parties, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams, leading Republican presidential candidates Rudy Guliani and Jon McCain, leading Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama, and prominent Democratic senators and congressman, including Joe Leiberman and Tom Lantos. In all my conversations, I found that these leaders not only expressed a clear recognition of the grave dangers posed by a nuclear-armed Iran, but also declared their willingness to act to thwart those dangers. Republicans and Democrats alike told me that a nuclear-armed Iran was not an option, and that economic pressures should be used to convince the regime to abandon its nuclear program, if not bring down the regime itself.
...I explained that the international community faces three options in dealing with Iran.
First, it can do nothing, in which case Iran will develop nuclear weapons. That is unacceptable. Second, it can use military means to confront Iran. While this option should never be taken off the table, it should only be used as a last resort.
Third, it can use non-military pressures, primarily economic ones.The regime in Teheran is extremely vulnerable to economic pressure. More than 80% of its government revenue comes from oil exports, the government heavily subsidizes gas for the population and the Iranian oil industry is badly in need of foreign investment and technology.
In applying economic pressure on the Iranian regime, the UN took a first step – a baby step - three months ago by placing extremely limited sanctions on Iran. Yet even these limited sanctions have exposed Iran’s economic vulnerability. Ahmadinejad has faced unprecedented criticism and his allies lost a recent round of voting for representative to Iran’s Supreme Council. The cost of some goods in Iran has increased sharply, as anticipation of further sanctions grows. Whether further UN sanctions remain possible is an open question, since Russia and China have been generally unhelpful in broadening and deepening the effort to isolate Iran. Still, the UN sanctions against Iran should be encouraged.
In addition, there is an effort, led by the US Treasury, to have the international banking system reassess the risks of doing business with Iran, and these efforts have met with some important successes.
But there is another tool, I explained, that could bring enormous economic pressure to bear on Iran: Divestment. Today, the American people are invested in Iran. Not directly, of course. That is against US law. Rather, through pensions, savings plans, and other diversified investments, American money is invested in companies - mostly European companies - that do business in Iran. By insisting that their investment dollars not be used in Iran, the American public can send a powerful and effective message. For pension funds and other savings investments, divesting from companies doing business in Iran will be relatively painless. In most cases, it will only entail substituting a few companies in a diversified portfolio. For some major European companies, a decision to pull the plug on investing in Iran will be more painful, but for most companies, Iran represents a tiny share of their revenues. These companies will adapt quickly to a divestment environment.
But for the regime in Teheran, the blow of divestment could prove fatal. Fewer and fewer companies will enter Iran. More and more will leave. Investment dollars and the technology it buys will dry up. The lifeline of the regime will be cut. Teheran will face a stark choice: Change its polices and win back investment, or maintain its policies and risk economic collapse. The effort to divest from Iran could quickly bear fruit. Few people today have any idea they are supporting a regime inciting to genocide. When they do, they will want to stop that support. There are efforts underway in a number of individual American states to divest state pension funds from Iran. Similar divestment initiatives are being pursued against Sudan, a country in which genocide is actually taking place in Darfur. I see no reason why they cannot be combined -- why those working to stop genocide and those working to stop a regime inciting to genocide cannot work together.
We in Israel must do our part as well. While the power of our investment dollars is infinitesimal compared to the US, if we hope to persuade the world to divest, we must lead by example. Therefore, I have submitted a bill in the Knesset that will outlaw investing in companies that invest in Iran and Sudan. I know that there are some who are afraid of mounting a divestment campaign since there have been attempts in the past to divest from Israel. Some are concerned that by supporting divestment, we will be establishing a precedent that will later be used against Israel.
But divestment against Israel is wrong not because divestment per se is wrong. It is wrong because it is directed against Israel -- a democratic state that yearns for peace with its neighbors. Divestment against Iran and Sudan is right for the same reason why divestment from Nazi Germany in the 30s and 40s would have been right. I said last year that it was 1938. But today, we have the lessons of the 1930s to guide us, and the power to choose a different course that will make all the difference. We must mobilize the power of the free world to confront the dangers in time. We must, as the old saying goes, put our money where our mouth is.
If we divest from Iran, we will be able to say what our parents and grandparents could not: That we acted in time, that we prevented genocide, that we preserved peace. In short, the message of my trip to the US was simple. Divest Iran. Divest Sudan. Invest in Peace.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
UN tightens sanctions on Iran
From Ynet News, 24/3/07, by Yitzhak Benhorin ...
UN Security Council agrees on further sanctions aimed at curbing Iran nuclear program; new sanctions target arms exports, state-owned bank and Revolutionary Guards. Iranian FM says Iran will not change nuclear policy
...The package of sanctions, aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear program, targets the country's arms exports, its state-owned Bank Sepah and the elite Revolutionary Guards.
Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem expressed satisfaction at the UN Security Council's resolution. "These sanctions are an appropriate response to the Iranian refusal to honor past resolutions, including Security Council resolution 1737," said sources.
Another diplomatic source said that the resolution was partly a result of Israel's activity around the world.
Diplomatic officials in New York told Ynet that the resolution deals a harsh blow to Iran because it expands the list of boycotted Iranian organizations, and for the first time imposes sanctions on conventional arms deals with Iran.
It also issues a warning to all nations and financial bodies against doing business with Tehran.....The 15-nation body unanimously voted for tightening the sanctions....
The sanctions
The new measures are a follow-up to a resolution adopted on December 23 banning trade in sensitive nuclear materials and ballistic missiles, as well as freezing assets of individuals and institutions associated with atomic programs.
It will impose an embargo on all conventional weapons Iran can sell and freeze the assets abroad of Bank Sepah, as the United States has already done, isolating it from international financing.
The text does not order but calls on nations and international financial institutions to restrict new grants, credits and loans to Iran, which the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund are unlikely to issue.
The resolution also calls for a voluntary travel embargo on Iranian officials and Revolutionary Guard commanders listed in the text and urges restrictions on the import of heavy weapons to Iran....
Go to a special report in The Jerusalem Post to see key elements of UN resolutions (this latest one and the 23 December resolution).
UN Security Council agrees on further sanctions aimed at curbing Iran nuclear program; new sanctions target arms exports, state-owned bank and Revolutionary Guards. Iranian FM says Iran will not change nuclear policy
...The package of sanctions, aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear program, targets the country's arms exports, its state-owned Bank Sepah and the elite Revolutionary Guards.
Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem expressed satisfaction at the UN Security Council's resolution. "These sanctions are an appropriate response to the Iranian refusal to honor past resolutions, including Security Council resolution 1737," said sources.
Another diplomatic source said that the resolution was partly a result of Israel's activity around the world.
Diplomatic officials in New York told Ynet that the resolution deals a harsh blow to Iran because it expands the list of boycotted Iranian organizations, and for the first time imposes sanctions on conventional arms deals with Iran.
It also issues a warning to all nations and financial bodies against doing business with Tehran.....The 15-nation body unanimously voted for tightening the sanctions....
The sanctions
The new measures are a follow-up to a resolution adopted on December 23 banning trade in sensitive nuclear materials and ballistic missiles, as well as freezing assets of individuals and institutions associated with atomic programs.
It will impose an embargo on all conventional weapons Iran can sell and freeze the assets abroad of Bank Sepah, as the United States has already done, isolating it from international financing.
The text does not order but calls on nations and international financial institutions to restrict new grants, credits and loans to Iran, which the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund are unlikely to issue.
The resolution also calls for a voluntary travel embargo on Iranian officials and Revolutionary Guard commanders listed in the text and urges restrictions on the import of heavy weapons to Iran....
Go to a special report in The Jerusalem Post to see key elements of UN resolutions (this latest one and the 23 December resolution).
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Iran seizes up to 15 British troops in the Persian Gulf
From JPost, Mar. 23, 2007, by AP AND JPOST STAFF ...
Iranian naval vessels seized 15 British sailors and marines Friday in Iraqi waters, the Ministry of Defense said. The British personnel from the frigate HMS Cornwall were "engaged in routine boarding operations of merchant shipping in Iraqi territorial waters," and had completed their inspection of a merchant ship when they were accosted by Iranian vessels, the ministry said in a statement.
"We are urgently pursuing this matter with the Iranian authorities at the highest level and ... the Iranian ambassador has been summoned to the Foreign Office," the ministry said.
"The British government is demanding the immediate and safe return of our people and equipment."
A fisherman who said he was with a group of Iraqis from Basra in the northern area of the Gulf said he witnessed the event. The fisherman declined to be identified because of security concerns. "Two boats, each with a crew of six to eight multinational forces, were searching Iraqi and Iranian boats Friday morning in Ras al-Beesha area in the northern entrance of the Arab Gulf, but big Iranian boats came and took the two boats with their crews to the Iranian waters," said the fisherman.
...BBC reporter Ian Pannell on HMS Cornwall said the sailors had just boarded a dhow when they were accosted. "While they were on board, a number of Iranian boats approached the waters in which they were operating - the Royal Navy are insistent that they were operating in Iraqi waters and not Iranian waters - and essentially captured the Royal Navy and Royal Marine personnel at gunpoint," Pannell said....
meanwhile, also from JPost, 23/3/07, by AMIR MIZROCH ...
Embassies in Teheran prepare escape plans
Several foreign embassies in Teheran are updating their emergency evacuation plans should a Western or Israeli attack on Iran occur. According to foreign sources, foreign diplomats believe a possible attack would take place before the end of 2007. By that time, Iran might have enough enriched uranium to cause a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe from radioactive fallout should its nuclear facilities be damaged or destroyed in an attack.
... foreign sources describe the general atmosphere in Iran as one of heightened preparedness. Recently, several diplomatic missions based in Teheran have begun to reassess their plans, and embassies without permanent security officers have requested them. Embassy experts reportedly are testing various evacuation options and logistics, such as timing routes to different destinations by different types of vehicles. The plans include evacuation for all staff.
Foreign sources say both the United States and Israel, who accuse Iran of wanting to develop nuclear weapons, want to give diplomatic efforts aimed at stopping Iran's nuclear drive the best possible chance to succeed.
But according to these sources, should the West or Israel feel that the time needed for diplomatic efforts is longer than the time it would take for Iran to obtain nuclear independence, they are likely to strike at Iran's main nuclear facilities before the damage done by such an attack would cause serious radiation fallout. Such fallout would likely kill many civilians and render some parts of Iran uninhabitable for an undetermined period of time.
According to this logic, the timing of such an attack would take place just before Iran has enriched an amount of weapons-grade material that, if damaged, would cause such a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe, it could be construed as a nuclear attack.
The assessments posit that Israel and the US will try to delay an attack until the last moment due to the expected Iranian counterattack and regional deterioration.
....In the current standoff with Iran, US pressure on many countries and multinational corporations to divest from Teheran is bearing fruit. But in the final analysis, Iran is not seen likely to stop its nuclear program, and UN sanctions are regarded as likely to take too long to have an effect.
Should it be attacked, Iran is expected to launch missiles against Israel and an offensive against US forces in the Middle East. Teheran is also expected to activate Hizbullah in a full assault against Israel. Israeli security services also expect attacks on Jewish interests and institutions worldwide.
Syria is still deciding if it will go "all the way" with Iran, or abandon its one friend in the world and return to the international fold. Syria's potential role in such a regional conflagration is undetermined. Saudi Arabia has been exerting consistent and mounting pressure on both Syria and Iran to change course.
Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is making political moves within Iran's Supreme Council to limit the power of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who many in Iran feel is out of the control of the ruling elite.
At first, the ayatollahs acquiesced to Ahmadinejad's foreign policy line - which has at its core the drive for nuclear power, the ambition to replace Saudi Arabia as Islam's "core state," and the stated aim to destroy Israel - because of the former mayor of Teheran's wide popular support. For approximately the past year, there has been a noticeable growing concern among the ruling elite that Ahmadinejad is slipping out of their control, even though there is little chance he could take over supreme power and authority.
Iranian naval vessels seized 15 British sailors and marines Friday in Iraqi waters, the Ministry of Defense said. The British personnel from the frigate HMS Cornwall were "engaged in routine boarding operations of merchant shipping in Iraqi territorial waters," and had completed their inspection of a merchant ship when they were accosted by Iranian vessels, the ministry said in a statement.
"We are urgently pursuing this matter with the Iranian authorities at the highest level and ... the Iranian ambassador has been summoned to the Foreign Office," the ministry said.
"The British government is demanding the immediate and safe return of our people and equipment."
A fisherman who said he was with a group of Iraqis from Basra in the northern area of the Gulf said he witnessed the event. The fisherman declined to be identified because of security concerns. "Two boats, each with a crew of six to eight multinational forces, were searching Iraqi and Iranian boats Friday morning in Ras al-Beesha area in the northern entrance of the Arab Gulf, but big Iranian boats came and took the two boats with their crews to the Iranian waters," said the fisherman.
...BBC reporter Ian Pannell on HMS Cornwall said the sailors had just boarded a dhow when they were accosted. "While they were on board, a number of Iranian boats approached the waters in which they were operating - the Royal Navy are insistent that they were operating in Iraqi waters and not Iranian waters - and essentially captured the Royal Navy and Royal Marine personnel at gunpoint," Pannell said....
meanwhile, also from JPost, 23/3/07, by AMIR MIZROCH ...
Embassies in Teheran prepare escape plans
Several foreign embassies in Teheran are updating their emergency evacuation plans should a Western or Israeli attack on Iran occur. According to foreign sources, foreign diplomats believe a possible attack would take place before the end of 2007. By that time, Iran might have enough enriched uranium to cause a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe from radioactive fallout should its nuclear facilities be damaged or destroyed in an attack.
... foreign sources describe the general atmosphere in Iran as one of heightened preparedness. Recently, several diplomatic missions based in Teheran have begun to reassess their plans, and embassies without permanent security officers have requested them. Embassy experts reportedly are testing various evacuation options and logistics, such as timing routes to different destinations by different types of vehicles. The plans include evacuation for all staff.
Foreign sources say both the United States and Israel, who accuse Iran of wanting to develop nuclear weapons, want to give diplomatic efforts aimed at stopping Iran's nuclear drive the best possible chance to succeed.
But according to these sources, should the West or Israel feel that the time needed for diplomatic efforts is longer than the time it would take for Iran to obtain nuclear independence, they are likely to strike at Iran's main nuclear facilities before the damage done by such an attack would cause serious radiation fallout. Such fallout would likely kill many civilians and render some parts of Iran uninhabitable for an undetermined period of time.
According to this logic, the timing of such an attack would take place just before Iran has enriched an amount of weapons-grade material that, if damaged, would cause such a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe, it could be construed as a nuclear attack.
The assessments posit that Israel and the US will try to delay an attack until the last moment due to the expected Iranian counterattack and regional deterioration.
....In the current standoff with Iran, US pressure on many countries and multinational corporations to divest from Teheran is bearing fruit. But in the final analysis, Iran is not seen likely to stop its nuclear program, and UN sanctions are regarded as likely to take too long to have an effect.
Should it be attacked, Iran is expected to launch missiles against Israel and an offensive against US forces in the Middle East. Teheran is also expected to activate Hizbullah in a full assault against Israel. Israeli security services also expect attacks on Jewish interests and institutions worldwide.
Syria is still deciding if it will go "all the way" with Iran, or abandon its one friend in the world and return to the international fold. Syria's potential role in such a regional conflagration is undetermined. Saudi Arabia has been exerting consistent and mounting pressure on both Syria and Iran to change course.
Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is making political moves within Iran's Supreme Council to limit the power of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who many in Iran feel is out of the control of the ruling elite.
At first, the ayatollahs acquiesced to Ahmadinejad's foreign policy line - which has at its core the drive for nuclear power, the ambition to replace Saudi Arabia as Islam's "core state," and the stated aim to destroy Israel - because of the former mayor of Teheran's wide popular support. For approximately the past year, there has been a noticeable growing concern among the ruling elite that Ahmadinejad is slipping out of their control, even though there is little chance he could take over supreme power and authority.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Norway's new Quisling
From THE JERUSALEM POST Mar. 21, 2007, by ALEXANDER ZVIELLI ...
Why was Raymond Johansen, the Norwegian deputy foreign minister, in such a hurry to be the first European representative to meet Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the new Palestinian unity government in Gaza?
What was the hurry? He certainly read Haniyeh's March 17 speech in which the Hamas chief outlined the Fatah/Hamas government program. Haniyeh said: "The government affirms that resistance is a legitimate right of the Palestinian people." And he knows what Haniyeh means by "resistance" - suicide bombings of cafes and buses, drive-by shootings, rocket launchings.
He knows the new government demands the "right of return" to pre-1967 Israel for millions of Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendents. He knows that that means killing Israel demographically.
Johansen knows that the Fatah/Hamas government does not renounce violence; that it will not honor previous agreements signed by the PLO, and that it will never recognize the right of a sovereign Jewish state to exist anywhere in the Middle East.
So, I asked myself, again, just what was Johansen's rush? Now, I recall that Johansen was quoted back in March 2001 (by the Norwegian news agency NTB) as saying that international law gave the Palestinians the right to fight an "occupier," but he later said that he'd been misquoted....
...It was Norway that, during World War II, produced the original Quisling - Vidkun Quisling. When Germany invaded Norway on April 9, 1940, Quisling announced a pro-Nazi coup. He thus betrayed his king and his country to collaborate with the invading German forces. The very name "Quisling" still stands for a betrayal.
...after World War II was over, the Norwegian government announced that it would agree to re-absorb, within its great land, precisely the same number of Jews as had been living in Norway before 1939 and had been murdered in the Holocaust. But not a single Jew more....
...in 1993, it was the Norwegian government that helped foist the Oslo agreement on us.
Now, after over 2,000 Israelis perished or were maimed by the Palestinian terror which came in the wake of Oslo, the very name "Oslo" has became anathema to most Israelis. ....thanks to Oslo, we turned over most of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinian Authority. We brought Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas and the entire enemy command and control from exile in Tunis and set them up in Ramallah.
More recently, we even pulled out entirely the small Jewish communities from Gaza.
Still, our Arab enemies lost no opportunity to work hard, not for for the sake of two independent states, Israel and Palestine, as envisaged in the agreements signed so far, but for a single country, where only those Jews who lived in Palestine before 1918 would be eligible for citizenship.
The whole problem can today be summarized in a few words: There will be no peace as long as the Arabs believe that Israel can be destroyed - and sitting with Hamas reinforces this belief.
As long as Europe allows the Arabs to fantasize about "the right of return" there can be no end to this conflict.
But this message has failed to reach the consciences of the Norwegian government.
So let me appeal to the people of Norway: Tell your government that Israel has a right to live in peace and security. And that to do so, the Palestinian government must recognize the agreements signed between Israel and the PLO; must renounce the threat and use of terrorism against Israelis; and must recognize the right of the Jewish people to live as a sovereign nation in the Middle East.
Why was Raymond Johansen, the Norwegian deputy foreign minister, in such a hurry to be the first European representative to meet Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the new Palestinian unity government in Gaza?
What was the hurry? He certainly read Haniyeh's March 17 speech in which the Hamas chief outlined the Fatah/Hamas government program. Haniyeh said: "The government affirms that resistance is a legitimate right of the Palestinian people." And he knows what Haniyeh means by "resistance" - suicide bombings of cafes and buses, drive-by shootings, rocket launchings.
He knows the new government demands the "right of return" to pre-1967 Israel for millions of Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendents. He knows that that means killing Israel demographically.
Johansen knows that the Fatah/Hamas government does not renounce violence; that it will not honor previous agreements signed by the PLO, and that it will never recognize the right of a sovereign Jewish state to exist anywhere in the Middle East.
So, I asked myself, again, just what was Johansen's rush? Now, I recall that Johansen was quoted back in March 2001 (by the Norwegian news agency NTB) as saying that international law gave the Palestinians the right to fight an "occupier," but he later said that he'd been misquoted....
...It was Norway that, during World War II, produced the original Quisling - Vidkun Quisling. When Germany invaded Norway on April 9, 1940, Quisling announced a pro-Nazi coup. He thus betrayed his king and his country to collaborate with the invading German forces. The very name "Quisling" still stands for a betrayal.
...after World War II was over, the Norwegian government announced that it would agree to re-absorb, within its great land, precisely the same number of Jews as had been living in Norway before 1939 and had been murdered in the Holocaust. But not a single Jew more....
...in 1993, it was the Norwegian government that helped foist the Oslo agreement on us.
Now, after over 2,000 Israelis perished or were maimed by the Palestinian terror which came in the wake of Oslo, the very name "Oslo" has became anathema to most Israelis. ....thanks to Oslo, we turned over most of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinian Authority. We brought Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas and the entire enemy command and control from exile in Tunis and set them up in Ramallah.
More recently, we even pulled out entirely the small Jewish communities from Gaza.
Still, our Arab enemies lost no opportunity to work hard, not for for the sake of two independent states, Israel and Palestine, as envisaged in the agreements signed so far, but for a single country, where only those Jews who lived in Palestine before 1918 would be eligible for citizenship.
The whole problem can today be summarized in a few words: There will be no peace as long as the Arabs believe that Israel can be destroyed - and sitting with Hamas reinforces this belief.
As long as Europe allows the Arabs to fantasize about "the right of return" there can be no end to this conflict.
But this message has failed to reach the consciences of the Norwegian government.
So let me appeal to the people of Norway: Tell your government that Israel has a right to live in peace and security. And that to do so, the Palestinian government must recognize the agreements signed between Israel and the PLO; must renounce the threat and use of terrorism against Israelis; and must recognize the right of the Jewish people to live as a sovereign nation in the Middle East.
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