Middle East and Terrorism

Saturday, July 10, 2010

How to Support the Struggle for Iran's Soul Part II

by Ilan Berman

2^nd part of 2

Harnessing Iran's Blogosphere

With Internet penetration estimated at over 25 percent of Iran's population of seventy million, the Islamic Republic already ranks among the most "wired" nations in the Middle East.[29] This online community is both dynamic and vibrant; Iran is estimated to have some 60,000 or more active weblogs, making it the third largest blogosphere in the world (after the United States and China).[30] It is not by accident that telecommunications capabilities and the Internet have been routinely interrupted since the June 12 election. Simply put, Iran's leaders are deeply and justifiably afraid of the transformative power of the Internet. If harnessed effectively, Iran's blogosphere can serve as a potent tool to highlight the shortcomings of the Islamic Republic. It can also provide Western policymakers with far greater understanding of the internal dynamics at play within the Iranian political system.

An important first step in this regard is to facilitate the interaction between Iranian bloggers and Western media. Over the past year, a number of Western newspapers have provided forums for Iranian activists and dissidents to report and provide context on the events taking place within Iran.[31] Such contributions, however, have been sporadic and ad hoc, even after the outbreak of unrest in June. Nor have news blogs such as Tehran Bureau, which was influential in reporting the early stages of post-election protests, managed to sustain the West's attention over time.

Consistent input from these blogosphere sources is essential to informed policymaking. Simply put, without a good understanding of the evolving human terrain within Iran, Western capitals will find it impossible to formulate an accurate picture of the Iranian political scene and determine the most effective avenues to influence events there. To this end, Western media outlets should be encouraged to create a consortium of trusted Iranian bloggers to report regularly on events within Iran and to analyze their long-term implications. Such bloggers would not only serve to enrich Western reporting on events in Iran, they would provide policymakers and the general public alike much needed nuance and context as they attempt to navigate the rapidly changing Iranian political scene.

Helping the Opposition to Coordinate

During the summer of 2003, a resurgence of anti-regime protests rocked the Islamic Republic. Over the course of several weeks, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities in a sustained series of demonstrations—the largest since the student uprising of 1999, which was bloodily suppressed by the regime. Foreign broadcasting outlets such as the Los Angeles-based National Iranian Television aided Iranian opposition leaders by allowing them to use their airwaves to coordinate activities and seek support from Iranians inside and outside the country.

Unable to put an end to such foreign broadcasting itself, Iran turned to Fidel Castro's Cuba. Within days, Havana began using a Russian-built electronic warfare facility to jam both U.S. government and private broadcasts into the Islamic Republic.[32] The interference eliminated a crucial outlet for political information and organization for Iranian protesters, effectively neutralizing the nascent democratic protests at a critical time as they had begun to spread across the country.

Little has changed since. Although some in Congress have attempted to deter Iran's suppression of foreign broadcasts, these steps remain ineffective. A notable effort was the Iran Human Rights Act introduced by Sen. Sam Brownback (Republican of Kansas) in 2006. This piece of legislation outlined that the president "may impose diplomatic and, if necessary, economic sanctions on foreign governments or entities that assist the government of Iran in jamming, blocking, or otherwise preventing the free transmission of United States Government radio and television broadcasts into Iran." The Iran Human Rights Act, however, did not pass review by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was ultimately shelved by its sponsors. Iran's opposition, meanwhile, still lacks reliable, independent means for communicating and coordinating. But the West can help on this score. During the Cold War, the United States actively provided Soviet dissidents and opposition movements in the Soviet bloc with the technological tools to organize more efficiently.[33] The United States has the power to do much the same today. By discreetly supplying Iran's opposition with communications equipment such as satellite phones, Washington could provide them with a low-cost, resilient way to coordinate with each other and with supporters outside the country.

International Focus on Iranian Dissidents

Who are Iran's future leaders? Today, the Green Movement remains chaotic and unfocused. Its most recognizable figures—failed presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi—are hardly authentic champions of the opposition. On the contrary, both are establishment politicians: Mousavi served as prime minister from 1981 to 1989, the period during which the Islamic Republic established the Lebanese terrorist powerhouse Hezbollah and restarted the shah's nuclear program, this time with a military bent. Karroubi, for his part, served as speaker of Iran's parliament, the majles, from 1989 to 1992, and again from 2000 to 2004. Despite some reformist views, neither seeks to dismantle the Islamic Republic. Rather, both appear to be trying to preserve it, albeit in a form more palatable to the West.

Skeptics have highlighted the resulting leadership vacuum in arguing against the Iranian opposition's chances of success.[34] These arguments, however, are ahistoric. It is useful to recall that, at its start, Poland's powerful Solidarity movement lacked clear and cohesive leadership. Figures such as Lech Walesa emerged over time, bringing with them the ideological cohesion and political power that helped Poland ultimately shrug off the communist yoke. At least some recent instances of grassroots revolution, such as the 2005 Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan and the Cedar Uprising in Lebanon the same year, have followed similar evolutionary paths (albeit with very different results).

Moreover, a cadre of activists capable of such leadership already exists within Iran. These nascent leaders come from all walks of life. They include union organizers such as Mansour Ossanlou,[35] now incarcerated in Tehran's Evin Prison for agitating on behalf of greater rights for Iran's bus drivers, and clerics such as Ayatollah Yusuf Sanei,[36] widely tipped to be the spiritual successor to recently deceased dissident Grand Ayatollah Ali Montazeri. These individuals may vary in their world-views and political agendas, but they share a common bond as enemies of the clerical state.

Currently, the international community has little familiarity with these voices, but it would be better if it did. During the Cold War, Western politicians were intimately familiar with the identities of political prisoners, dissident activists, and others persecuted for opposing Soviet rule and agitated regularly on their behalf during diplomatic parlays with their Soviet counterparts. A similar focus today could provide much needed international attention to Tehran's most potent adversaries, restraining the regime from dealing with them quite as ruthlessly and infusing regime opponents with a renewed sense of political direction.

The Future in the Balance

Today, Iranian politics are dominated by a deep divide. On one side is Iran's repressive theocratic regime—a clerical junta that ranks as the world's most active state sponsor of terrorism and which is hell-bent on acquiring a nuclear capability. On the other are the people of Iran—a vibrant constituency that holds the future of the country in its hands. The course of their confrontation will determine the nature of the Iranian state and its place in the world for years to come.

For the United States and its allies, this struggle carries enormous consequences. The emergence of a more accountable, pluralistic regime in Tehran would allay—if not eliminate—mounting concerns over Iran's emerging nuclear capability and regional adventurism. Such a regime could create the conditions necessary for the historic rapprochement between Washington and Tehran so sought after by the Obama administration. As it adapts its Iran policy, the White House should make every effort to support the forces of pluralism there in order to make such an outcome more likely.

Ilan Berman is vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C.

Notes

[1] The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: The White House, Sept. 2002).
[2] The New York Times, Dec. 21, 2002; CNN News, Dec. 21, 2002.
[3] "Iran All-Spigot Funding Chart," White House, Office of Management and Budget, July 18, 2008.
[4] Ibid.
[5] The New York Sun, Nov. 8, 2007.
[6] Bari Weiss and David Feith, "Denying the Green Revolution," The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 23, 2009.
[7] The Boston Globe, Oct. 6, 2009.
[8] Weiss and Feith, "Denying the Green Revolution."
[9] Mehdi Khalaji, Patrick Clawson, Michael Singh, and Mohsen Sazegara, "Iran's 'Election': What Happened? What Does It Mean?" Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washington, D.C., Policy Watch, no. 1537, June 18, 2009.
[10] Associated Press, Jan. 21, 2010.
[11] "Iran, Islamic Republic of: Background" United Nations Childrens' Fund (UNICEF), accessed Feb. 10, 2010.
[12] The Washington Post, Sept. 23, 2005.
[13] Press TV (Tehran), July 20, 2009; Evgeny Morozov, "Are Iranian Authorities More Sophisticated than We Think?" Foreign Policy, July 10, 2009.
[14] See, for example, "Iran: Stop 'Framing' Government Critics," Human Rights Watch, New York, July 21, 2009.
[15] The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 3, 2009.
[16] Reuters, Nov. 14, 2009; Associated Press, Nov. 26, 2009; The Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 6, 2010.
[17] "A Glance at Iran: Population," Statistical Centre of Iran, Vice-Presidency for Strategic Planning and Supervision, Islamic Republic of Iran, accessed Feb. 10, 2010.
[18] The Boston Globe, Nov. 4, 2009.
[19] The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 9, 2010.
[20] "Interview, Embassy-Hostage-Turned-U.S. Envoy Compares '79 to Iran Today," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Jan. 6, 2010.
[21] See, for example, Rep. Mark Kirk, remarks before the United States Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C., Nov. 4, 2009.
[22] "Trade, Countries, Iran," European Commission, Brussels, June 1, 2009.
[23] Final Act, Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, Helsinki, Aug. 1, 1975.
[24] Jeffrey Gedmin, "Our Iranian Colleagues Believe in Radio Farda's Mission," Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2008, pp. 53-6.
[25] "Broadcasting Board of Governors Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Request," Washington D.C., p. 25, accessed Feb. 12, 2010.
[26] "Draft: A Study of USG Broadcasting into Iran Prepared for the Iran Steering Committee," U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Sept. 14, 2006, p. 1.
[27] The Washington Times, Apr. 14, 2009.
[28] "Draft: A Study of USG Broadcasting into Iran," p. 1; J. Scott Carpenter, "Challenging Iran on Human Rights," The Journal of International Security Affairs, Spring 2010.
[29] Freedom on the Net: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media (Richmond, Va.: Freedom House, Apr. 1, 2009), p. 70.
[30] See, for example, Shawn Woodley, "Iran: On Blogs and Ballots," Diplomatic Courier, June 14, 2009.
[31] See, for example, Heshmat Tabarzadi, "What I See on the Frontline in Iran," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17, 2009.
[32] The Washington Times, July 16, 2003.
[33] "Memorandum for the 303 Committee," Nixon Intelligence Files, Subject Files, USSR. Secret. Eyes Only, National Security Council, Washington, D.C., Dec. 9, 1969.
[34] See, for example, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, "Another Iranian Revolution? Not Likely," The New York Times, Jan. 6, 2010.
[35] "Rights Crisis Escalates: Faces and Cases from Ahmadinejad's Crackdown," International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, New York, Sept. 20, 2008.
[36] The Christian Science Monitor (Boston), Jan. 6, 2010.

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Friday, July 9, 2010

Obama Uncorks Sharpest Criticism Yet of Mahmoud Abbas -- In Front Of Bibi

by Leo Rennert

The Obama-Netanyahu summit was expected to turn into a mutual charm offensive. And it didn't disappoint on that score. At the start of his remarks to the press, Obama gushed that he and Bibi had an "excellent discussion" and emphasized their "extraordinary friendship."

What was surprising were the sharp words Obama aimed at Mahmoud Abbas. Until now, Obama has been cautious to the point of reticence in taking Abbas to task -- mentioning only that the Palestinian leader had to do more to end anti-Israel incitement and to prevent terrorist attacks. But this time, Obama took the gloves off.

"It is very important that Palestinians not look for excuses for incitement, that they're not engaging in provocative language, that at the international level they are maintaining a constructive tone, as opposed to looking for opportunities to embarrass Israel," Obama declared.

That's not going to go down well in Ramallah and put a greater squeeze on Abbas to finally crack down on vile anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incitement in Palestinian media and mosques under his control. Obama's mention of Palestinian anti-Israel incitement on the international level was a direct rebuke to Abbas's failed campaign to prevent Israel's accession to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a prestigious club of the world's economic and financial heavyweights.

As for his discussions with Bibi, Obama touched on the most serious recent disagreement between the two sides -- U.S. acceptance of a resolution at the recent Nuclear Non-Proliferation conference that singled out Israel in demanding that it open its nuclear facilities to international inspections. Israel had counted on Obama to prevent such a move, but at the last minute the White House bowed to Arab threats to derail the entire conference if Obama didn't accept the offensive anti-Israel language. Israel -- and the U.S. for that matter -- have always adopted a policy of ambiguity -- "don't ask, don't tell" whether Israel has nuclear weapons. Israel's nuclear capabilities represent its last-resort deterrent against future existential attacks by the likes of Iran, which is racing to develop to develop its own nuclear arsenal.

So, Obama felt it advisable that, in regard to this touchy issue, he now recognizes that Israel has "unique security requirements" and he would "never ask Israel to undermine its security." To underscore the point, Obama said there has been "no change in U.S. policy" in terms of Israel maintaining its policy of ambiguity on nukes and that "Israel has got to be able to respond to threats or any combination of threats in the region."

On other issues, Obama praised Israel's liberalization of the Gaza blockade, declaring that movement of more goods into Gaza has taken place "more quickly and more effectively" than might have been expected.

As for his personal relations with Bibi, the president said he's convinced that Netanyahu is "prepared to take risks for peace" agrees with him that the two sides should move to direct negotiations, complimented Bibi on showing restraint on settlement construction, and told reporters that he has trusted Netanyahu since "I met him before I was elected president."

In turn, Netanyahu thanked Obama for going beyond a UN Security Council resolution in imposing more stringent sanctions on Iran.

The prime minister ended by inviting the president and First Lady to visit Israel and got a positive response. "We look forward to it," said Obama.

Leo Rennert

Trash reporting scribes whose poisoned pens conveniently go dry

by Caroline B. Glick

What the media refuses to inform you of, is often more important than what it reports. This is especially so if you are a believing Christian or religious Jew

Two important statements this week shed a light on the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Both were barely noted by the media.

On Saturday the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas gave US mediator George Mitchell a letter detailing a number of concessions that he would make towards Israel in a final peace treaty. These included a willingness to accept permanent Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City and over the Western Wall. The Al Hayat report received enthusiastic and expansive coverage in the Israeli media and in media outlets throughout the world.

What was barely noted was that just hours after the report hit the airwaves, Abbas's chief negotiator Saeb Erekat categorically denied the story. In an interview with Israel Radio, Saeb Erekat said the story was untrue.

Abbas has been the recipient of adulatory press coverage in Israel over the past several days. Last week he thrilled the Hebrew-language media when he invited Israeli reporters to a sumptuous feast at his Ramallah headquarters. And then the Al Hayat story came out. Lost in the excitement was Abbas's eulogy for arch terrorist Muhammad Daoud Oudeh who died over the weekend. Oudeh was the mastermind of the PLO's massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. Abbas himself served the operation's paymaster.

As Palestinian Media Watch reported, in a condolence telegram quoted in the Abbas-controlled Al-Hayat al Jadida newspaper, Abbas touted Oudeh as, "a wonderful brother, companion, tough and stubborn, relentless fighter," and described him as "one of the prominent leaders of the Fatah movement."

So while the local and international media pounced on the Al Hayat story as proof that the Palestinians are serious about peace, they failed to mention that their hope was based on a story that the Palestinians themselves deny. So too, in their rush to embrace Abbas, they failed to mention his glorification of an unrepentant mass murderer who commanded the terror squad that massacred Israel's Olympic athletes.

These statements by Palestinian officials the media routinely characterize as moderates, demonstrate how deeply distorted and largely irrelevant the discourse on the Middle East has become. As the "moderate" Palestinians insist they are uninterested in peaceful coexistence and territorial compromise with Israel, news coverage in Israel and throughout the Western world is dominated by other issues. Specifically, discussion of prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is dominated by an endless discussion of Israel's Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and Jewish neighborhoods in eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem.

The most egregious recent example of this distortion was a 5,000 word article in Tuesday's New York Times regarding US charitable contributions to these Jewish communities. Titled, "Tax Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in the West Bank," the report was co-authored by five Times reporters. It was the product of weeks of research. And notably, the Times chose to publish it on its front page above the fold on the very day that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited the White House.

The Times article is a textbook case of the media's ideologically motivated aggression against Middle East reality. Any way you look at it, it is a premeditated affront to the very notion that the role of a newspaper is the report facts rather manufacture news aimed at shaping perceptions and skewing debate.

The article goes to great lengths to discredit the American citizens who make charitable, tax deductible donations to organizations that provide lawful support to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and Jewish neighborhoods in southern, northern and eastern Jerusalem. It paints a sinister picture of such contributions and contributors and accuses them of actively undermining US foreign policy.

The contributors, we are told in the opening lines of the report are the Left's bogeyman — Evangelical Christians and religious Jews. They are unacceptable actors in the Middle East because they both believe that Jewish control of Judea and Samaria is a precursor to the coming of the messiah.

Reacting to the Times' report, on Wednesday Honest Reporting noted that the article appears to be the product of active collusion between the Times and the radical, anti-Zionist, tax exempt Gush Shalom organization. As Honest Reporting relays, in July 2009, Gush Shalom sent out a communiqu� to its supporters calling for the initiation of a campaign that, "includes a combination of legal action and public advocacy aimed at denying federal tax exempt (501c3) status to US charities supporting settlement activity."

The Times' article bears all the markings of a political campaign. First, despite the valiant efforts of five Times reporters, the article exposes no illegal activity. At best, its investigation of more than forty organizations that contribute funds to the hated Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria indicated that less than a handful of them are guilty of poor accounting practices.

Assuming that Honest Reporting's eminently reasonable conclusion that the Times report is the product of collaboration between the newspaper and radical anti-Zionist groups, the report is shockingly hypocritical. By publishing it, the Times is engaging the precise behavior it argues the organizations it investigated should be punished for purportedly engaging in. To wit, in the service of radical, tax-deductible organizations, the Times seeks to undermine US foreign policy. For the past four decades, it has been the foreign policy of the United States to maintain a strategic alliance with Israel. The goal of Times'-aligned groups like Gush Shalom is to undermine that alliance by discrediting and criminalizing those who wish to strengthen and maintain it.

The Times' article uses dark language and innuendo to create the impression that there is something treacherous and evil about contributions to Jewish communities and neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. For instance, the article argues, "The donations to the settler movement stand out [from other charitable contributions that promote US foreign policy goals] because of the centrality of the settlement issue in the current talks and the fact that Washington has consistently refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid in the settlements. Tax breaks for the donations remain largely unchallenged, and unexamined by the American government."

What the Times' fails to acknowledge is that the reason these donations are "largely unchallenged, and unexamined," is because it is the constitutional right of American citizens to contribute to charities that promote policy goals even when those goals — like those of Gush Shalom — are antithetical to US policy as determined by the US government.

The Times' alleges that these communities are illegal. Its authority for this allegation is none other than Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. Erekat opined to the paper, "Settlements violate international law."

The truth is that Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines are legal. But even if one were to accept the argument that they are unlawful, one would be accepting an argument based on the language of the 4th Geneva Convention from 1949 which prevents occupying powers from transferring their population to the areas under occupation.

There is no possible reading of the convention that would prohibit the voluntary movement of Israelis to Judea, Samaria and post-1967 neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Likewise, there is no possible reading of the convention that would prohibit the provision of financial support to Israelis who voluntarily move to the areas in question. Yet it is precisely this indisputably lawful, voluntary movement of Jews to these areas — which the Times acknowledges is often done against the wishes of Israel's governments — that the Times' article attacks.

In short, both the Times' contention that there is something legally problematic about these donations is preposterous both as it relates to US law and as it relates to international law. From a journalistic perspective, worse than the Times' decision to engage in precisely the behavior it seeks to criminalize when carried out by its political nemeses on the Christian and Jewish Right, and worse even than the article's false characterization of law, is the article's clear attempt to obfuscate the main problem with land issues in Judea and Samaria in the interest of manufacturing a false but ideologically sympathetic picture of the situation on the ground.

The Times only gets around to alluding to — and obfuscating -- the real problem with land issues in the 58th paragraph of the article. The Times reports, "Islamic judicial panels have threatened death to Palestinians who sell property in the occupied territories to Jews." Actually, while this may be true, it is not the problem. The problem is that the second law promulgated by the PA -- just weeks after it was established in 1994 — criminalized all Arab land sales to Jews as a capital crime. Since 1994 scores of Arabs have been killed in both judicial and extrajudicial executions for selling land to Jews.

This open move to hide the fact that since 1994 the PA has dispatched death squads to murder both Palestinians and Israeli Arabs suspected of selling land to Jews is a shocking miscarriage of journalistic standards. Whereas the Times required five reporters to work for weeks to come up with exactly nothing illegal in the operations of US charitable groups that support Jewish communities the Times wishes to destroy, the Times would have needed to invest no resources whatsoever to discover that the PA kills any Arab who sells land to Jews. The PA has made no effort to hide this policy. It is in the public sphere for anyone willing to look at reality.

And that is of course the real issue here. The entire Times' "investigation" of American charitable groups that support Jewish communities and neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem is a blatant attempt by a major newspaper to hide the real issues prolonging the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Those issues — exposed by Abbas's praise for a terrorist mass murderer, Erekat's denial that Abbas has any interest in compromising with Israel, as well as by the PA's policy of killing all Arabs who sell land to Jews — do not serve the Times' purpose of blaming the absence of peace on Israel generally and on the Israeli Right and its supporters in the US in particular.

And so it is that 17 years after the start of the so-called peace process between Israel and the PLO, and ten years after the PLO destroyed that process by launching a terror war against Israel, and four and a half years after the Palestinians elected Hamas to lead them, we are still stuck in a distorted, irrelevant discourse about the Middle East. We are stuck in a rut because politically and ideologically motivated media organs operate hand in globe with radical groups seeking to undermine Israel's national sovereignty and end its alliance with the US. Together they manufacture news that bears no relation with reality or the true challenges facing those who seek peace in the Middle East. But obviously for the New York Times, that is what makes it fit to print.

Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

How the United States has benefited from its alliance with Israel Part I

by Gil Ehrenkranz

1^st part of 4

This article reviews Israel's value as an American ally since 1967. It highlights the actions taken by Israel on behalf of the United States, including accommodating U.S. national interests at the expense of Israeli interests. The article explores the myth of Holocaust guilt as the primary reason for Israel's creation and contrasts the actions of other regional U.S. allies with those of Israel. The steadily declining tangible support for U.S. policies by American allies in the twenty-first century has served to magnify Israel's importance to the United States.

Amidst a budding nuclear arms race in the Middle East, the Obama administration is seen by many as "resetting" the relationship between the United States and its long-time ally, Israel. This recalibration of the U.S.-Israel alliance is occurring while Israel is facing the first genuine threat to its existence since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The threat emanates from the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Iranian quest for nuclear arms production capability is nearly complete as most analysts estimate that Iran will have mastered the ability to produce nuclear weapons by 2013.

[i][1] Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated pronouncements of his hope that Israel will disappear are simply a more bellicose statement of the policy Iran has had towards Israel since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.[ii][2] Yet with Iran on the verge of acquiring an ability to produce nuclear weapons, Israel can no longer afford to ignore Iranian intentions. This article will focus on the history of Israel as a partner in its alliance with the United States.

OCCASIONAL FRICTION IN U.S.-ISRAEL RELATIONS

Tensions in the relationship between the United States and Israel are nothing new. While Ronald Reagan's tenure as president is remembered as being very pro-Israel, few remember that his first two years in office were filled with serious disagreements with Israel. In 1981, he embargoed the delivery of F-16 aircraft to Israel in response to Israel's raid on the Osirak reactor in Iraq.[iii][3] A year later, his administration unveiled a unilateral blueprint for Middle East peace without consulting Israel. When it was finally presented simultaneously to Israel and its Arab neighbors, Prime Minister Begin was livid at Reagan's failure to consult with Israel. Reagan also suspended diplomatic agreements with Israel following the Israeli Knesset vote to extend Israeli law to the Golan Heights. The Reagan approach to Israel began to change, however, following the almost universal rejection of his peace plan among Arab states as well as Hizballah's attack, which killed hundreds of U.S. Marines in Beirut in 1983. Thus, Reagan's preconceived notions about the causes of Middle Eastern instability and the lack of peace did not survive his experience. To his credit, Reagan recognized this and was able to shift U.S. policy from confrontation with Israel to one of cooperation.

The Clinton administration went through a similar learning curve, albeit a much slower one. Between 1993 and 2001, no world leader was invited to the White House as often as Yasir Arafat.[iv][4] Clinton and Secretary of State Albright clung to the belief that Arafat was interested in peaceful coexistence with Israel. This belief even survived Arafat's continued refusal to rein in terrorist groups and his initiation of the Second Intifada. Unfortunately for Israel, Clinton did not recognize until late in 2000 that Arafat was an unreconstructed terrorist at heart.

President Obama has hinted that he would like to redefine the terms of the U.S. relationship with Israel. This is not mere speculation. While the Obama administration has reacted tepidly to serious policy challenges such as North Korean threats to use its atomic weapons and to the remarkable protests in Iran following a rigged election,[v][5] Obama has focused vigorously on forcing Israel to cease any construction in the West Bank, even going so far as to condemn Israel for announcing a new housing project in Jerusalem. The cessation demanded by the Obama administration has not even been balanced with any request whatsoever from the Palestinian side. Presumably, by exerting pressure solely on Israel, he hopes to encourage the Palestinians and Arab states to embrace peace with Israel. Thus far, the only effect of his policy change toward Israel has been to retard any progress toward peace, as the Palestinians and Arab states have hardened their positions. They hope that Obama can deliver Israel solely on Arab terms.

The indicia of the changing relationship with Israel can be found in Obama's insistence on a complete halt to settlement construction and his Cairo speech to the Islamic world. Prior to the Cairo speech, even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas never predicated the resumption of peace negotiations on a complete construction freeze and natural growth of existing settlements had imposed no impediment to engaging in discussions with Israel. Yet with Obama's call for a complete settlement freeze without any corresponding gesture on the Palestinians' part, Abbas has decided to "pocket" this Israeli concession prior to engaging in any meaningful discussions about peace. The effect of Obama's insistence of a settlement freeze on the Palestinians has served only to make the resumption of negotiations more difficult. But he has accomplished something that no Israeli politician has been able to do since the early 1970s. Obama has united both the Israeli left and right wings in support of Prime Minister Netanyahu's opposition to a construction halt. This unity has as much to do with Obama's June 2009 speech in Cairo as with his demand for unilateral Israeli concessions prior to commencing negotiations.

OBAMA'S CAIRO SPEECH & THE MYTH OF HOLOCAUST GUILT

Obama's Cairo speech returned American policy back to the Clinton administration approach of assuming moral equivalence between the parties. Thus, each statement seeming to castigate the Arab countries for terrorist acts was balanced by a criticism of Israel. The fact that Obama was equating the targeting and murder of more than a thousand Israeli civilians since 2000 with Israeli construction of settlements was jarring to Israelis. Yet this alone would not have been enough to unite the wide range of political parties in Israel. After all, moral equivalence was part of both the Carter and Clinton administrations' mantra, and Israel had survived those. It was Obama's complete acceptance of Palestinian propaganda concerning Israel's creation that alarmed Israelis most. For more than half a century, the Palestinians sought to convince the world that Israel's creation was an act of usurpation of Palestinian land and that Israel owed its existence solely to European guilt over the Holocaust. Given that Obama's only statement concerning Israel's creation was in connection with the Holocaust, the Palestinians may well count Obama as their most important convert. What Obama (and those who vetted his speech beforehand) failed to realize was that Israeli independence owed far more to the fact that Jews had successfully revolted against British colonial occupation than to presumed multinational guilt over the Holocaust. Even Winston Churchill understood this point and said, "It was the Irgun Zvai Leumi that caused the British evacuation from Palestine. Members of the Irgun caused us so much trouble that we had to station eighty thousand troops in the country to cope with the situation. The military costs were too high for our economy to bear, and the Irgun was responsible for driving the costs to such a high level."[vi][6] Had European guilt over the Holocaust been the deciding factor, Israel would have been created immediately after August 1945. Instead, it was more than two years before a final partition plan was approved that Israel came into being in 1948. Moreover, during Israel's War of Independence (1948-1949), no country sent troops to help protect Israel from annihilation. For its part, the United States refused to sell any weapons to Israel.

The reality was that World War II delayed the creation of a Jewish State much as it had placed India's drive for independence in a state of suspended animation. As soon as the war ended and no progress was made concerning Britain's departure from Palestine, the Jews of Mandate Palestine began their revolt against British rule in earnest. It should be noted that whatever guilt Britain may have experienced in the post-war environment, such guilt did not even motivate it to lift the restrictions on the immigration of Holocaust survivors to Israel. In fact, soon after the war's end in 1945, Britain rejected an appeal from President Truman to admit 100,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors into Palestine immediately.[vii][7]

In 1946, when death camp survivors attempted to reoccupy their own homes in Kielce, Poland, more than 39 of them were slaughtered by local residents. Before the year's end, more than 2,000 additional Jews were killed by Poles;[viii][8] and for those Jews who had been prescient enough to open Swiss bank accounts in the 1930s, they found the Swiss banks uncooperative in releasing funds to account holders (or their heirs) after the war.[ix][9] To the extent that any post-war European guilt existed at all, it is unclear that such guilt motivated many European countries to make amends to the Jewish people, including the 1947 vote to partition Palestine. Furthermore, what is often overlooked is that the 1947 UN vote was an attempt to create two separate countries only one of which was the State of Israel. Obama's Cairo speech distortion of the historical record regarding Israel's creation is what most disturbed Israelis. For if Obama's and the Palestinians' position is correct, then what follows logically is that Israel's very creation was an act of aggression against the Palestinian Arabs and reflects a permanent moral stain for which Israel should now be forced to make amends. Furthermore, if Obama believes what he said in Cairo, how can he continue the American policy of allying itself with Israel? Israelis are wondering whether the current tensions with the Obama administration are a mere replay of past stresses with the United States or whether the alliance is in danger of fraying. It is the first time since President Eisenhower forced Israel to vacate the gains it had won in its 1956 war against Egypt that Israelis are facing the question of whether the United States will continue to be a friend. Exacerbating their unease is the steady progress in the Iranian nuclear program coupled with the inaction of the international community. While the question of whether the United States is preparing to lessen its support of Israel is pending, what of the role Israel has played as an ally over the years?

AIPAC'S OVERESTIMATED INFLUENCE ON U.S. POLICY

The existence of the informal alliance between Israel and the United States has sometimes been explained as being the result of domestic political pressure in the United States and the undue influence of The America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).[x][10] Yet as David Verbeeten notes in his 2006 article, "How Important Is the Israel Lobby?" the myth of the all-powerful Israel lobby is, "a useful illusion."[xi][11] For pro-Israel lobbyists, the specter of a powerful AIPAC represents a significant political resource while opponents of the Israel lobby use the myth of the invincible Israeli lobby to excuse U.S. support for Israel as merely the product of this all-powerful domestic lobby and not as the result of broad-based support within the United States for Israel. Within the Arab world, the latter explanation makes more palatable U.S. support for Israel. While AIPAC may be effective, it is hardly invincible. In fact, on some very high profile issues of concern to Israel, AIPAC has either suffered defeat or been proven ineffectual. For example, in 1981, AIPAC lobbied hard to prevent the planned sale of advanced AWACs to Saudi Arabia. The sale went through as planned. In fact, no major sale of arms to a country in a state of war with Israel has ever been defeated by the pro-Israel lobby. Indeed, AIPAC's impotence on this issue has apparently resulted in a tactical change, as AIPAC appears to have given up the idea of opposing such sales altogether.

During the Bush administration, AIPAC lobbied for U.S. loan guarantees to house the hundreds of thousands of Jewish émigrés from Russia. George Bush opposed the loan guarantees and such guarantees were not granted until a more pliable Israeli prime minister (Yitzchak Rabin) was elected. AIPAC has been unable to convince either the Bush or Obama administrations to take forceful action to forestall Iranian nuclear ambitions or to permit the IAF to flyover Iraq for an attack on Iranian nuclear sites. The reality is that broad-based support for Israel among Americans has been rather constant over the past 40 years. In fact, a February 2008 Gallup Poll showed that 71 percent of those polled had either a very favorable or mostly favorable opinion of Israel. Israel outranked India, France, and Egypt in this survey. Only 14 percent of respondents characterized the Palestinian Authority with a very/mostly favorable rating.[xii][12] Other commentators explain the foundation of the close Israeli-American relationship as based upon "shared values." These values include a fundamental respect for human rights, an independent judicial system, a stable democratic form of government, and mutual admiration of the pioneering spirit manifest in both country's histories. While these shared values played an important part in President Truman's decision to recognize the State of Israel in 1948, they do not adequately explain how the United States came to regard Israel as a valuable ally or the depth of the alliance.

Gil Ehrenkranz

Notes

[i][1] "U.S. Juggles Two Iran Timetables," The Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2009, p. A2.

[ii][2] "Iranian's Oratoroy Reflects Devotion to '79 Revolution," The New York Times, December 20, 2005, p. A3.

[iii][3] "Israel Hits New U.S. Plane Suspension," The Boston Globe, August 12, 1981, p. 1.

[iv][4] "Bush to Meet with Sharon, Keeping Arafat at Arm's Length," The New York Times, June 20, 2001, p. A3.

[v][5] "Obama Warns Against Direct Involvement by the U.S. in Iran," The New York Times, June 16, 2009.

[vi][6] Ben Hecht, Perfidy (New York: Messner, 1961), p. 40.

[vii][7] Chaim Herzog, The Arab-Israeli Wars (New York: Random House, 1982), p. 12.

[viii][8] "50 Years After Pogrom, City Shrinks at Memory," The New York Times, July 6, 1996.

[ix][9] "Saving History from the Shredder: Swiss Bank Guard Christoph Meili, No Hero at Home, Now Lives in California," The Nation, September 6, 1999.

[x][10] John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007).

[xi][11] "How Important Is the Israel Lobby?," Middle East Quarterly (Fall 2006).

[xii][12] Lydia Saad, "Americans' Most and Least Favored Nations," Gallup.com, March 3, 2008.