Realpolitik in Our Time.

 

by  J. E. Dyer

Jennifer’s dissection of the New York Times piece on the emerging Obama Doctrine is masterful. One thing I would observe about “realpolitik,” however, is that its self-conscious practitioners tend to leave big piles of unintended consequences in their wake. In that sense, Obama is indeed in the realpolitik mold. Invoking realpolitik has, moreover, become a form of shorthand for commentators who want to express approval of an essentially weak foreign policy without going to the trouble of explaining why weak is the new strong.

On the unintended-consequences front, Syria has now requited the Obama realpolitik approach with a transfer of Scud missiles to Hezbollah. Syria’s Scuds are old but retain the effectiveness to pose a serious threat to Israel’s population. They are, in fact, a population threat and not a military one: they aren’t accurate enough for precision targeting. They were originally designed to create havoc behind an enemy’s front lines in a theater-scale war. In the hands of a terrorist organization, they will be used to amplify the anti-population threat posed by shorter-range rockets. Scuds carry a significantly bigger payload than the Katyusha rockets frequently used by Hezbollah and can deliver chemical as well as conventional warheads. Syria is known to have a chemical weapons program, but I consider it unlikely that its leadership will supply chemical warheads to Hezbollah – at least for now.

News outlets are not overstating the matter in assessing that this move changes the military balance in the Middle East. It puts state-level military might in the hands of an unaccountable sub-national terrorist group. Israel is now faced with the dilemma of what and how much to do about it. The worst option is to do too little.

A quiescent geopolitical environment – one in which he doesn’t expect to face consequences – is what enables Bashar al-Assad to do this. The Scud transfer is the first of the threatening moves augured by the Arab League summit in March, where indignation over Israeli policy in Jerusalem was the unifying theme. And among Syria’s objectives with this weapons transfer is probing the U.S. reaction. American policy has set boundaries since 1945 on what other nations consider possible in the Middle East. Assad is calculating that the implications inherent in this weapons deployment do not exceed the tolerance limits of Obama’s America.

He seems to have good reason to do so. Whether this move is the harbinger of a missile attack or a means of positioning Hezbollah to negotiate concessions from Israel, it exploits a growing sense in the Middle East that the U.S. won’t intervene to avert latent threats before they become deadly peril for our allies. Too often that is the signal realpolitik sends. Obama has only amplified it with his disdain for our allies, his urgency about withdrawing our forces from the Middle East, his ineffective attempts to get around the Russian veto on our missile defenses, and his determined pursuit of a disadvantageous and unenforceable START treaty.

J. E. Dyer

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

 

Far Left Israeli paper manufactures spy scandal to harm Jewish State.

 

by Caroline B. Glick

 

Ha'aretz fancies itself as the Middle East's "newspaper of record". It champions those who seek an Israeli affirmation of their anti-Israel attitudes

Over the past two weeks Israel has been rocked by a major espionage scandal in which Ha'aretz newspaper plays a central role. To understand the significance of the scandal, it is worthwhile to preface a discussion of it with a look at a smaller story Ha'aretz developed this week.

On Sunday, Ha'aretz's Amira Hass reported that in January the IDF published a new military order that paves the way for the mass expulsion of illegal aliens from Judea and Samaria. The story sported the disturbing headline, "IDF order will enable mass deportation from West Bank."

In a follow-up on Monday, Hass reported that ten self-described human rights organizations, (all funded by the New Israel Fund), sent a joint letter to Defense Minister Ehud Barak asking him to rescind the orders. She noted too that, "the international media also has taken great interest in the story." And indeed, on Wednesday, a Google news search for, "IDF West Bank deportation order," drew nearly 20,000 results.

Also on Monday, Ha'aretz published an editorial based on Hass's stories. Entitled, "IDF bid to expel West Bank Palestinians is a step too far," the editorial asserted, "Implementing this new military order is not only likely to spark a new conflagration in the territories, it is liable to give the world clear-cut proof that Israel's aim is a mass deportation of Palestinians from the West Bank."

That is, Israel is fomenting a war and Israel deserves to lose that war because it is the villain.

Wednesday, Ha'aretz reported that Jordan had joined it in condemning Israel.

That's quite an accomplishment for an Israeli newspaper with a negligible share of the domestic market.

The only problem is that the order Hass reported on is 41 years old. After creating an international scandal, on Wednesday Ha'aretz acknowledged that the supposedly new order has been in place since 1969. What changed in January is that the IDF decided to expand the rights of illegal aliens in Judea and Samaria to pre-deportation hearings.

This was not a change for the worse in the status of illegal residents. It was a change for the better.

And still, due to Ha'aretz's misreporting, Israeli diplomats are being called into the chanceries of the world and raked over the coals for the country's alleged plot to conduct a mass expulsion of Palestinians.

Ha'aretz accomplished two things with this story. It weakened Israel abroad which clearly serves its ideological purposes. And it demonstrated its enormous power to damage Israel's international image at will which of course puts Israel's law enforcement and judicial arms on notice as they prosecute and adjudicate the Ha'aretz spy scandal.

Ha'aretz's manipulation of the deportation story bears a striking similarity to the way it manipulated its own spy scandal. That scandal was under a total court-issued gag order that barred the local media from reporting on it until last Thursday.

That gag order gave Ha'aretz the opportunity to manipulate the story to its advantage before the state authorities had a chance to explain what it was about. And so, early last week, Ha'aretz's editor Dov Alfon approached credulous foreign journalists and spun a tale for them. By Alfon's telling, Israel's draconian Shin Bet security agency had "disappeared" one reporter — Anat Kamm — and caused another — Uri Blau — to flee the country.

As Judith Miller put it in her write-up of Ha'aretz's version of events in "The Daily Beast" website, Blau was on the lam in London, "to avoid answering questions about how and from whom he obtained the confidential defense department documents that are said to have resulted in a spate of stories alleging personal and institutional misconduct on the part of the Israeli Defense Forces, the hallowed IDF, and some of its senior officials."

As for Kamm, Miller reported that she was suspected of stealing up to a thousand documents from the IDF during her military service and giving them to Blau. But Miller claimed, she denied the allegations.

Miller, like other journalists who spoke to Alfon, compared Israel to the likes of Cuba and Iran. Alfon and Ha'aretz were portrayed as the courageous defenders of freedom of speech and the true watchdogs of Israeli democracy, selflessly paying the expenses of their persecuted reporter hiding away in London.

All of this, of course, was reported abroad, before the actual story was published. And, like the deportation order story, all of it was hogwash.

When last Thursday the gag order was revoked, Israelis — and any foreigners who were interested— learned that Anat Kamm, a reporter at the Ha'aretz-owned Walla web portal had been under house arrest for four months. She is on trial for acts of espionage with the intent of harming national security that she committed not as a reporter, but during her service in the IDF. Not only did she not disappear, she continued reporting for Walla, while under house arrest until the end of March.

Ha'aretz's staff reporter Uri Blau fled the country not to protect a source, but to evade punishment for illegally possessing classified military documents in breach not only of the law but of a plea bargain agreement with the Shin Bet.

Kamm served in the IDF from 2005 to 2007 as a secretary in the office of the Commander of Central Command. In the weeks before her release from service, she copied some two thousand highly classified IDF documents onto two CDs and uploaded them to her home computer. After her release, she shopped the documents around to various military reporters and eventually gave them to Blau. The documents she stole included top secret information about IDF orders of battle, units, armaments and operational orders among other things. Such information in the hands of Israel's enemies could cause the death of thousands of Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Kamm refuses to return one of the CDs to authorities claiming that she lost it. And since until her arrest her home computer was connected to the Internet, the documents she downloaded to her hard drive were vulnerable to penetration by everyone and anyone.

The Shin Bet launched its investigation of stolen IDF documents which led it to Blau and then to Kamm after Blau published articles in November 2008 based on the documents he received from Kamm. At the time, the Shin Bet requested that Blau return all the classified documents in his possession. In return for his agreement to do so, the Shin Ben agreed not to prosecute him for illegally possessing classified materials. Blau returned fifty such documents and asserted that he had no more documents in his possession.

But then the Shin Bet found Kamm. And after confessing to stealing the 2,000 documents, she told them that she gave them all to Blau. When Blau found out that the Shin Bet knew he lied, and still illegally possesses thousands of classified documents, he decided not to return to Israel.

The gag order on the case until last Thursday was issued by the court at the Shin Bet's request not because it wished to stifle free speech but because authorities wanted to give Blau more time to agree to return the documents he still holds illegally. That is, publication of the story was barred in order to give Blau another opportunity to come clean and walk free.

And it was with the knowledge that their reporter lied to the Shin Bet and fled the country that Ha'aretz chose to pay his living expenses in London and his legal expenses in Israel. It was with the knowledge that Kamm committed treason that Ha'aretz hired her as a reporter for Walla and represented her as a persecuted journalist to the international press.

In her statements during her investigation published in court documents, Kamm revealed that she is a messianic leftist. She came to the army not to serve the country, but to transform it. It was only when she realized that she had failed to bend the IDF to her will that she decided to reveal its secrets.

As she put it, "I didn't succeed in changing enough things that it was important to me to change during my army service and I thought that I would bring about that change by exposing them. That's why it was important to me to inform the public about the IDF's policies in the territories."

Kamm's treachery is a deeply disturbing comment on the mindset of the radical Left in Israel. But her crimes are even more alarming when we realize that Kamm is not a lone renegade. In her treasonous activities, she enjoys the support of a massive organization.

By collaborating with Kamm first by publishing her stolen documents, hiring her as a reporter, and finally by covering up her crimes while suborning Blau's perjury, Ha'aretz has demonstrated that leftist traitors have a powerful sponsor capable of exacting painful revenge on the State of Israel for daring to prosecute them.

In facilitating and supporting treason, Ha'aretz itself can depend on a massive network of supporters in Israel and internationally. Reporters, self-proclaimed human rights groups, and the leftist blogosphere in Israel and throughout the world, as well as foreign governments happily swallow whole Ha'aretz's manufactured stories about Israel's purported venality.

As for the State of Israel, depressingly, what the Ha'aretz spy scandal demonstrates is that the state is utterly unwilling to deal with this dangerous state of affairs. Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin stated that Israel will not change its screening process of candidates for military service. In the post-Kamm IDF, religious youths will continue to be grilled about their willingness to expel Jewish Israelis from their homes and radical leftist youths will not be questioned about their loyalty to the state and willingness to keep the IDF's secrets.

So too, Diskin admitted that the Shin Bet was loathe to aggressively pursue the investigation because its officers didn't want to be accused of impinging on freedom of the press. Because he was a journalist, Blau was not seriously investigated and was let off the hook even as he lied to investigators. And the Shin Bet gave Ha'aretz the rope with which to hang it by requesting a gag order in order to give Blau more time to do the right thing — in spite of the fact that he had already demonstrated his bad faith and flagrant contempt for the law.

Ma'ariv and Globes both reported that thousands of Israelis cancelled their subscriptions to Ha'aretz this week. Ha'aretz denied the reports. But really, it doesn't care. Ha'aretz's target audience is not Israeli. It is global. And there it remains the champion of those who seek an Israeli affirmation of their anti-Israel attitudes.

 

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.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Obama Backs Off "Imposed Settlement" Idea.

by Barry Rubin

Recent stories have reported serious consideration by the Obama Administration in a National Security Council meeting of trying to impose the terms of an Israel-Palestinian peace agreement. In his press conference following the nuclear summit, President Barack Obama backed off this possibility, returning to standard U.S. positions on the issue.

He stated:

"I think that the need for peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the Arab states remains as critical as ever. It is a very hard thing to do. And I know that even if we are applying all of our political capital to that issue, the Israeli people through their government, and the Palestinian people through the Palestinian Authority, as well as other Arab states, may say to themselves, we are not prepared to resolve this--these issues--no matter how much pressure the United States brings to bear.

"And the truth is, in some of these conflicts the United States can't impose solutions unless the participants in these conflicts are willing to break out of old patterns of antagonism. I think it was former Secretary of State Jim Baker who said, in the context of Middle East peace, we can't want it more than they do."

So he returned to the idea of the United States as "constantly present, constantly engaged," and making clear that the U.S. government supports a resolution.

Incidentally, that was followed by a strange phrase that is both shocking yet fully within this administration's worldview:

"It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them."

Now an American president can say that his country remains "a dominant military superpower" whether others like it or not, but to imply that there is some preference for the United States being much weaker is pretty remarkable. I don't want to twist his words but one cannot help but think that is the sub-text there.

Regarding the conflict he said that a solution will take time, "progress will be halting" and at times reversible. This suggests that the administration has learned it isn't going to make quick success here. And when a U.S. government understands that a big effort isn't going to yield results, it naturally reduces the effort being made.

What this suggests is that even in the current U.S.-initiated friction with Israel, the president wants to build an image of relative toughness on Israel, for his foreign Muslim and Arab audience, but has low expectations. In this context, the conflict is seen as an irritation to be swept to the sidelines as much as possible so it doesn't interfere with other issues such as Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. If this is so, the mini-crisis with Israel is going to fade away in the coming weeks.

 

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World.

 

by Jeffrey Herf

The impact of National Socialism in the Middle East used to appear brief and superficial. Unlike with Communism, whose local parties and outside influence through the Soviet bloc lasted over many decades, the Nazis' moment lasted about six years, 1939-45, and they had little regional presence beyond Rommel's armies in North Africa and a fleeting pro-Nazi regime in Iraq.

But two powerful, important books have set the record straight. Djihad und Judenhass (2002) by Matthias Küntzel, translated into English in 2007 as Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, shows the continuing influence of Nazi ideas on Islamists. Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World by Jeffrey Herf focuses on an earlier time, the 1930s-40s, and the major effort by Hitler and his minions to transmit their ideas to the Middle East. After reading Küntzel and Herf, I realize that my education about the modern Middle East was lacking a vital ingredient, the Nazi one.

A specialist in modern German history at the University of Maryland, Herf brings a new corpus of information to light: summary accounts of Nazi shortwave radio broadcasts in the Arabic language that were generated over three years by the U.S. embassy in Cairo. This cache reveals fully, for the first time, what Berlin told the Arabs (and to a lesser extent, the Iranians). As page after page of Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World establishes in mind-numbing but necessary detail, the Germans above all pursued two themes: stopping Zionism and promoting Islamism. Each deserves close consideration.

Nazi propaganda in Arabic portrayed World War II, history's largest and most destructive war, as focused primarily on the sliver of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. This interpretation both flattered Arabs and extended Hitler's grand theory that Jews wanted to take over the Arab countries and eventually the whole world, that the Allied powers were but pawns in this Zionist conspiracy, and that Germany was leading the resistance to them.

Palestine was the key, according to these broadcasts. If Zionists took it over, they would "control the three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. Thus they will be able to rule the whole world and spread Jewish capitalism." Such an eventuality would lead to Arabs oppressed and Islam defunct. "Should Bolshevism and Democracy be victorious," announced Nazi radio, "the Arabs will be dominated forever and all traces of Islam will be wiped out." To avoid this fate, Arabs had to join with the Axis.

As the war progressed, Berlin's incitement became ever more furious. "You must kill the Jews before they open fire on you. Kill the Jews" went a July 1942 broadcast. Herf notes the bitter irony: "At this moment of complete Jewish powerlessness, the Arabic broadcasts from Berlin skillfully adapted the general Nazi propaganda line about Jewish domination of the anti-Hitler coalition to a radical Arab and Islamic view."

At the same time, the Nazi regime developed an approach to Muslims that largely ignored the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf, and other European sources in favor of selected passages from the Koran.

Hitler's propagandists assured Muslims, first, that Axis countries "respect the Koran, sanctify the mosques, and glorify the prophet of Islam." It cited the respectful work of German Orientalists as an important sign of goodwill. Second, it argued for what Heinrich Himmler called the "shared goals and shared ideals" of Islam and National Socialism. These included monotheism, piety, obedience, discipline, self-sacrifice, courage, honor, generosity, community, unity, anti-capitalism, and a celebration of labor and warfare.

In addition, Muslims were told that they and the Nazis were purportedly both fighting a "great struggle for freedom" against the British, the most important colonial power in the Middle East. The regime drew a parallel between Muhammad and Hitler and presented the umma as roughly analogous to its own notion of a totalitarian Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community").

Nazis portrayed Islam as an ally and, accordingly, called for its revival while urging Muslims to act piously and emulate Muhammad. Radio Berlin in Arabic went so far as to declare "Allahu akbar! Glory to the Arabs, Glory to Islam." The Germans held that Muslims who were not righteous enough (i.e., not following the Nazi ideological model) were causing the umma to languish: "Muslims, you are now backward because you have not shown God the proper piety and do not fear him." And not just backward, but also "invaded by merciless tyrants." Specifically for Shi'ites, the Nazis hinted at Hitler being the awaited Twelfth Imam or the Muslim eschatological figure of Jesus, who will fight the anti-Christ (namely, the Jews) and bring on the end of days.

The Nazis noted the parallel between sayings from the Koran (Sura 5:82, "You will meet no greater enemy of the believers than the Jews") and the words of Hitler ("By resisting the Jews everywhere, I am fighting for the Lord's work") and turned the Koran into an anti-Semitic tract whose primary purpose was to call for eternal hatred of Jews. They even falsely claimed that Muhammad ordered Muslims to fight the Jews "until they are extinct."

In the Nazi telling, Jewish-Muslim enmity dated back to the 7^th century. "Since the days of Mohamed, the Jews have been hostile to Islam" went one broadcast. "Every Moslem knows that Jewish animosity to the Arabs dates back to the dawn of Islam" declared another. "Enmity has always existed between Arab and Jew since ancient times" insisted a third. The Nazis built on this premise to establish the basis for a Final Solution in the Middle East, instructing Arabs to "make every effort possible so that not a single Jew … remains in Arab countries."

Herf emphasizes the remarkable symbiosis of German and Middle Eastern elements: "As a result of their shared passions and interests, they produced texts and broadcasts that each group could not have produced on its own." Specifically, Arabs learned "the finer points of anti-Semitic conspiracy thinking," while Nazis learned the value of focusing on Palestine. He describes the coming together of Nazi and Islamic themes in Berlin as "one of the most important cultural exchanges of the twentieth century."

Having detailed Nazi propaganda in Arabic, Herf then traces its impact. He begins by documenting the great energy and expense devoted to these messages—the quality of the personnel devoted to it, their high-level Nazi patronage, the thousands of hours of radio transmissions, and the millions of pamphlets.

He then rounds up assessments of the Axis impact, all pointing to its success. Allied estimates from 1942, for example, found that "the people were saturated with Axis talk," that "upwards of three-fourths of the Moslem world are in favor of the Axis" and that "90% of the Egyptians, including their government, believe that the Jews are mainly responsible for shortages and high prices of essentials." A report from 1944 found that "practically all Arabs who have radios … listen to Berlin."

Allied reluctance to contradict Nazi propaganda also points to Axis success. Fearful of alienating Middle Easterners, the Allies stayed humiliatingly silent about the genocide taking place against the Jews; failed to refute allegations about Jews dominating London, Washington, and Moscow; did not dispute the distorted Koranic interpretations; and shied away from endorsing Zionism. Merely to dispute Nazi accusations, the Allies worried, would only confirm Nazi claims about Britain, America, and Russia being stooges of Jewish power. An internal U.S. directive in late 1942 acknowledged that "the subject of Zionist aspirations cannot be mentioned, inasmuch as … [this] would jeopardize our strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean."

Thus, when two leading U.S. senators, Robert Taft of Ohio and Robert Wagner of New York, proposed a resolution in 1944 endorsing a Jewish national home in Palestine, Berlin radio in Arabic called this an attempt "to erase Islamic civilization" and "to eradicate the Koran." Panicked, the entire weight of the Executive Branch came down on the senators, who felt compelled to withdraw their resolution. Clearly, Nazi offerings resonated deeply in the Middle East.

They continued to do well after the Nazi collapse and the war's conclusion. The defeat of Nazi General Erwin Rommel's aggressive push into North Africa meant that Nazi ambitions in the Middle East, in particular the Final Solution to annihilate its million or so Jews, were never implemented. But years of hate from radio and pamphlets and the repetitive, grotesque, ambitious, anti-Semitic, and Islam-based message detailed by Herf had taken root. Not only did the Middle East's Nazis emerge nearly invulnerable to prosecution, but they also prospered and were feted. An example: in 1946, Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brethren, lavished praise on Hitler's favorite Arab, Haj Amin el-Husseini, calling him "a hero … a miracle of a man." Banna added for good measure: "Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin el-Husseini will continue the struggle." Acknowledging el-Husseini's exalted status, a British officer in 1948 described him as "the one hero in the Arab world."

Ideas the Nazis spread in the Middle East have had an enduring twofold legacy. First, as in Europe, they built on existing prejudices against Jews to transform that prejudice into something far more paranoid, aggressive, and murderous. One U.S. intelligence report from 1944 estimated that anti-Jewish materials constituted fully half of German propaganda directed to the Middle East. The Nazis saw virtually all developments in the region through the Jewish prism and exported this obsession.

The fruits of this effort are seen not only in decades of furious Muslim anti-Zionism, personified by Arafat and Ahmadinejad, but also in the persecution of ancient Jewish communities in countries like Egypt and Iraq, which have now shriveled to near-extinction, plus the employment of Nazis such as Johann van Leers and Aloïs Brunner in important government positions. Thus did the Nazi legacy oppress Jewry in the Middle East post-1945.

Second, Islamism took on a Nazi quality. As someone who has criticized the term Islamofascism on the grounds that it gratuitously conflates two distinct phenomena, I have to report that Herf's evidence now leads me to acknowledge deep fascist influences on Islamism. This includes the Islamist hatred of democracy and liberalism and its contempt for multiple political parties, preference for unity over division, cult of youth and militarism, authoritarian moralism, cultural repression, and illiberal economics.

Beyond specifics, that influence extends to what Herf calls an "ability to introduce a radical message in ways that resonated with, yet deepened and radicalized, already existing sentiments." Although a scholar of Europe by training, Herf's detective work in the U.S. archives has opened a new vista on the Arab-Israeli conflict and Islamism, as well as made a landmark contribution more broadly to an understanding of the modern Middle East.

 

Jeffrey Herf
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

U.S. Engages Syria; Syria Escalates Weapons' Supply to Hizballah.

 

by Barry Rubin

It's completely predictable. In fact, I predicted it. The more U.S. policy engages Syria and stifles criticism of that dictatorship, the more confident (arrogant is a better word) Syria's regime becomes. It continues to help terrorists kill Americans in Iraq; tightens its alliance with Iran; and now sends advanced Scud missiles to Lebanon. At the same time--according to the U.S. Defense Department--Iran is providing advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Hizballah which pass through Syrian hands. Human rights violation continue in Syria, too.

Israel is extremely concerned with the build-up which violates the UN resolution and promises made to Israel at the end of the 2006 war. But to raise the whole matter to the heights of satire, Lebanon--whose government includes Hizballah--is now on the UN Security Council and next month will be chairing the Security Council! This is just in time to run the meetings about efforts to put sanctions on Iran, which is of course Hizballah's patron.

So to summarize:

--Hizballah, a revolutionary terrorist group, violates a UN Security Council resolution but in essence is going to control the UN Security Council. (Sort of goes along nicely with Iran being so powerful on the Human Rights committee while Libya has chaired the General Assembly.)

--Syria keeps slapping the United States in the face but it has no apparent effect on U.S. policy. The more the Obama Administration engages Syria, the more Syria embraces Iran. Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--when I was working in the Senate he was regarded as a zero--is now energetically championing U.S.-Syria detente, advised by Robert Malley, friend of America's enemies, no less.

Where is Lewis Carroll now that we need him. (see note)
So, does the U.S. government draw any conclusions from this? Does it criticize Syria or reinstitute sanctions or postpone sending the U.S. ambassador back? Well, Congress is angry, but as for the White House, as I warned it won't criticize Syria or put pressure on it lest that interfere with engagement!

For the United States, engagement has become an end in itself. For Syria, taking over Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinians, and Israel, while driving U.S. influence out of the region  is an end in itself.

Note: Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland which, in the days before Middle East policy, was the greatest fantasy in the world.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Obami’s Latest Israel Gambit Flops.

 

by  Jennifer Rubin

Once again, the Obami's bullying has come to naught. Bibi Netanyahu and his government are not amused nor persuaded by the Obami onslaught over Jerusalem housing permits or the suggestion that an imposed peace deal might be in the offing. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government said it would reject any moves by the Obama administration to set its own timeline and benchmarks for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, potentially establishing a new fault line between the U.S. and Israel. … Senior White House officials, such as National Security Adviser James Jones, have also discussed recently the prospects of Washington proposing its own Mideast plan, though U.S. diplomats stressed this past week that such a move wasn't imminent or agreed upon.

These developments have rankled Mr. Netanyahu's government, which is already at odds with Mr. Obama over the issue of Jewish building in disputed East Jerusalem.

"I don't believe this will be accepted by the administration because it will be a grave mistake. … The solution has to be homegrown," Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal late Sunday. …

"The longstanding Israeli position, not of this government only, but of successive Israeli governments, is that the Israelis and the Palestinians have to live together in peace and that an agreement has to be negotiated between them directly," said a senior Netanyahu administration official.

Of course this was entirely foreseeable. So once again one must ask of the Obami Israel policy: what is the point? Rather than absorb the lessons of 2009 — that the Israeli government cannot be strong-armed and that Bibi's government can't be toppled by the likes of Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and Obama — the Obami have repeated and intensified their efforts to squeeze our ally. Yes, maybe this time we can use Jerusalem to pry them loose! Ah, the threat of an imposed peace — that'll do it! But alas, all we've done, apparently is create a wedge between the U.S. and our ally, communicated to the Palestinians that they should just hold firm, and telegraphed to Israel's neighbors that we are flaky friends.

The Obami now have two options. First, as they did with the settlement gambit, they can simply fold up their tents and go back to endless, fruitless rounds of shuttle diplomacy. Alternatively, they can try out their latest, already rejected brainstorm and see if maybe, just maybe, the Israelis will finally cave. In all of this, the Obami have set themselves apart from every prior administration, both in the degree to which they would willingly damage the U.S.-Israel relationship and in the inanity of their diplomatic efforts. It is proof positive that dramatic, even "historic" change can be a very dangerous thing.

 

 Jennifer Rubin

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

A Tale of Two Cities.

 

by Anne Bayefsky

 

In New York, Islamic states try to carve out an exception for killing Israeli and American civilians. In DC, they smile.

 

At exactly the same time that President Obama's anti-terrorism theatrics are going on in Washington at the nuclear security summit, a pro-terrorism party is going on in New York at UN Headquarters. The trouble is that the states play-acting in D.C. are swinging in New York in the opposite direction.

 

In Washington, the summit advertisement reads as follows: "Dedicated to nuclear security and the threat of nuclear terrorism."  In New York, the UN's "ad-hoc committee on measures to eliminate international terrorism" is gathered to talk about drafting the world's first comprehensive convention against terrorism.  For the fourteenth time in ten years.

 

In Washington, the image is of President Obama sitting on a chair beaming like a Cheshire cat, opposite some lucky head of state.  The two are surrounded by smiling Obama appointees and everyone agrees that terrorism is bad. In New York, the very same states agree terrorism is naughty. It's just that "resistance," "armed struggle," and "liberation" are not terrorism.

 

The major stumbling-block to the conclusion of a draft comprehensive convention against terrorism at the UN has been a concerted effort by Islamic states to carve out an exception for murdering civilians of their choosing. Israelis top the list, but Americans are not far behind.

 

The terrorism convention of the Organization of the Islamic States accordingly creates an exception to its phony denunciation of terrorism.  Exempt from "terrorist crimes" are "peoples' struggle including armed struggle against foreign occupation, aggression, colonialism, and hegemony, aimed at liberation and self-determination."

 

So let's compare the simultaneous Washington and New York performances.  In Washington, the president invited many "anti-terrorism" invitees from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) – Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.  Presumably, he decided to showcase his close ties with Muslim nations.  In New York, OIC members chose Syria, nuclear arms wannabe and state sponsor of terrorism, to do their talking.  Speaking on behalf of the OIC, therefore, Syria declared yesterday: "The group reiterates once again the need to make a distinction…between terrorism and the struggle for the right of self-determination by people under foreign occupation, and colonial or alien domination."

 

 In Washington, the president invited many additional "anti-terrorism" invitees from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – such as China, India, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.  At the UN, the 117 NAM members selected as their spokesperson for the drafting of an anti-terrorism convention none other than Iran. Iranian UN Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee said the following on behalf of NAM states – almost half of Obama's invitees coming from this group:  "Terrorism should not be equated with the legitimate struggle of peoples under colonial or alien domination…for self-determination and national liberation."  (The issue of self-determination for the Iranian people was somehow not raised.)

 

Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani wallowed in Obama's attention in D.C. and declared that any nuclear terrorism fears arising from Pakistani actions or inactions were unjustified.  Meanwhile, his UN representative was saying in New York:  "My delegation aligns itself with the statements made by the distinguished representatives of Syria and Iran."

 

The government of Algeria was especially pleased by Obama's invitation. But a few hours before Foreign Affairs Minister Mourad Medelci dined in D.C. last night, his government told the UN:  "Algeria endorses the statements made by Syria and Iran…International law should make sure that we avoid generalizations that Algeria has always denounced between terrorism and the armed struggle of people in supporting their right to self-determination and their liberation…"

 

And then there was Obama's special friend Egypt, scene of the most obsequious speech ever delivered by a U.S. president to the Muslim world.  Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, together with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had planned to turn the international get-together in D.C. into another Israel-bashing session. 

 

With Netanyahu choosing to stay away rather than trust President Obama to keep the meeting on message, Egypt simply shifted gears. The Egyptian delegate urged UN members in New York on Monday "to emphasize the distinction between a terrorist act and the legal acts…carried out by national liberation movements…" He also "emphasized" Egypt's primary interest in addressing terrorism's "root causes" – not hate and intolerance, mind you – but "feelings of injustice and frustration."

 

President Obama's security summit takes grandstanding to a whole new level. The White House calls it "the largest gathering of countries hosted by an American President…since the conference in San Francisco around the United Nations" in 1945. Of course, back then the number meant most of the world's states, while today it is less than a quarter.

 

True friends of America like the British and Israeli prime ministers have stayed away, while double-talking and double-dealing non-democrats have their run of the place.  Shutting down Iran – the leading threat to nuclear security and state sponsor of terrorism – is not even on the table.

 

And half of the attendees at this anti-terrorism extravaganza can't recognize terrorism when it stares them in the face.

 

 

Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Peace talks, Bashar’s war by other means.

 

by Tony Badran

 

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is known to have a penchant for brinksmanship. Calculating that he has nothing to fear from a timid Obama administration, he is upping the ante in his direct military support to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The latest brazen act may involve the shipment of Syrian Scud D missiles to his Shia allies.

Assad's move appears to have followed his recent tripartite summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. It also comes after numerous reports in recent months about a steady increase in the quantity and quality of Syrian-supplied weapons to Hezbollah – from anti-aircraft systems (outdated models, like the SA-2, but possibly also the man-portable SA-18 and SA-24 Igla) to longer-range, Syrian-made surface-to-surface missiles (the M-600/Fateh-110). It is unclear whether Israel views items on this list as strategic game changers.

This development has quietly set off a seemingly heated discussion in Washington. Capitol Hill is not amused, and according to two reports, the confirmation of Robert Ford as ambassador to Syria has been placed on hold. The incident reportedly has led to the State Department's summoning of Syria's ambassador, Imad Mustapha, to relay to him a message about the severity of the situation. Reportedly, the Israeli government warned the United States that the transfer of such weaponry could lead to conflict with Syria.

Through such behavior, Assad has confused those who had high hopes for "engagement" of Syria. The believers only have themselves to blame. Assad's determination to increase the weapons supply to Hezbollah is a strategic decision. As one Syrian official put it to the Qatari daily Al-Watan, "a strategic decision has been taken not to allow Israel to defeat the resistance movements." Assad himself affirmed this principle on Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV a few weeks ago.

Assad has been doubling down on "resistance" both in his rhetoric and in Syrian material support – exceedingly so ever since the US voiced its desire to improve relations with Syria in the hope of prying it away from Iran and ending Syrian backing for Hezbollah and Hamas.

The Syrian president made a telling remark at the last Arab League summit to the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas. He observed that "the price of resistance is not higher than the price of peace." And therein lays the problem. Assad has not been made to feel that the costs of continued destabilization can be prohibitive. Instead, all he gets from Washington are weak statements in response to his actions, and rarely from high-ranking administration officials.

The Israelis may currently be unwilling to divert attention from their primary concern, which is blocking the Iranian nuclear program. As a result they might be leaving Syria for the United States to handle directly. Depending on how the Obama administration deals with the situation, the risk is that Assad will draw the lesson that he enjoys impunity – especially if Washington's impulse is to address the problem by calling for resumed peace talks between Syria and Israel.
Furthermore, the Syrian president may calculate that, in the event of a conflict, the administration will ultimately prevent the Israelis from going all the way with Syria and, instead, pressure them into entering negotiations. If Assad senses that he is protected, expect him to push the envelope even further – at Lebanon's expense, of course.

Assad's mantra is that "peace and resistance are two sides of the same coin." As he sees things, it's not either peace or resistance. For him the two are simultaneous tools of attrition, with peace talks providing Syria with impunity as Assad pursues "resistance." In his conceptual framework, the peace process is just warfare by other means.

Some have tried to paint Assad as a victim of Iranian entrapment. But this is simply wrong. By making Hezbollah's arming a Syrian, as opposed to an Iranian, issue, Assad hopes to increase his leverage in Lebanon in order to bargain over Syrian control there with the US and Israel. Recalling the "red lines" agreement of 1976 and the April understanding of 1996, the Syrian president may be trying to gain US legitimization for a new such framework in Lebanon.

The Syrian wager always was that Israel would much prefer dealing with Syria than Hezbollah in Lebanon. Indeed, the whole logic of the so-called "strategic realignment" theory for Syria leads in that direction. Therefore, escalating and pushing toward conflict in Lebanon would serve to set in motion Assad's scheme.

However, this could end up being a bad miscalculation for Syria.

PLO official Bassam Abu Sharif once recounted how, in 1982, ahead of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, he traveled to Arab capitals in order to ask for long-range weapons to deter Israel. The response he received is instructive today: "Seek the approval of your Syrian brothers. Because this type of weaponry carries responsibility, and the repercussions would be against Syria, and not you."

When Assad's father, Hafez, crossed Israel's "red lines" back then, his army was battered in Lebanon. Bashar, perpetually seeking to deploy his army across the border, may also face Israeli military strikes against his smuggling convoys, or worse. Either way, Lebanon is likely to suffer massive Israeli devastation on the one hand, or a dangerous Syrian gambit to restore its military presence on the other. Keeping Lebanon was always Syria's aim when embarking in peace talks.

 

Tony Badran is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.      

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

 

How Has President Obama Been Weak and Lost Credibility Over Iran: Answering a Reader’s Question

by Barry Rubin

A reader asks [my summary]: Why do you and so many people in the Arabic-speaking world view President Barack Obama as weak regarding Iran. After all, he doesn't want to go to war with Iran or support an Israeli attack. And isn't the fault due mainly to the Europeans, Russia and China?

My response: There are a number of reasons for this but let me focus on three, which makes one think that the president is doing a Titanic job (not titanic, Titanic, see note below).

First, Obama's total failure to implement increased sanctions on Iran--whether or not they were effective—after 15 months in office is a huge failure. If the media would be treating Obama as a normal president he would be criticized and ridiculed for this on a daily basis.

Remember, the president first said he would increase sanctions last September and failed to do so. He then set a December deadline and again did not act. Now in April 2010 the prospects for sanctions still seem poor.

Indeed, the administration has not even announced its plan. What we do know is that the administration has announced in advance that it will not propose sanctions that might hurt Iran's economy which means they—that is, targeted sanctions on a small number of rulers and regime institutions--will be a joke.

Aside from this, congressional proposals for reasonable sanctions on Iranian energy imports were ignored by the administration. The White House discouraged Congress from acting, too.

True, traditionally the Europeans have been very wimpy about such actions. But in this particular case, Britain, France, and Germany are ahead of the United States. Obama is holding them back rather than vice-versa. The EU as a whole is a problem since a country like Sweden can paralyze action. But it was Obama's choice to seek backing from the entire EU rather than take the lead along with the three main European allies.

This problem arises partly from Obama's philosophy of refusing to be a world leader but just "one of the guys" going along with a sanction. While the world doesn't want the United States to be too unilateral—their criticism of George W. Bush—Obama has gone too far in the opposite direction, which is equally bad.

As for Russia and China, Obama is responsible for misleading the country and making a serious error by continuing to insist that he will win them over when it was clear a year ago that they are never going to support serious sanctions. Having seen that, U.S. policy should have adjusted either to create a coalition of the willing or to ram through the UN a reasonable plan.

Another reader just send me two headlines, one of which says China won't support sanctions and the other saying it will. He asks: These articles can't both be right? Actually, the texts of the articles are both right. They simply say this: The Obama Administration has won a big victory because China now agrees to discuss sanctions. They just won't support or implement them. As of today, Russian leaders are still openly stating that they won't support sanctions.

Second, Obama has openly preferred engagement and concessions to America's enemies—notably Iran and Syria in this case—rather than to support its friends. The Middle East is often presented as if this only applies to Israel, but when Arabs complain about Obama's weakness and unreliability they are talking about a lack of backing for Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, the liberal forces in Lebanon, and others.

To cite only one example, when Iraq wanted U.S. help in pressing Syria to stop supporting terrorists who are killing hundreds of Iraqis, as well as U.S. troops, the Obama Administration refused. This is genuinely shocking. Many other cases could be cited.

Third, when the regime in Iran stole the election, the administration's refusal to speak out and support the opposition was disgraceful, particularly from a government, which describes itself as liberal and claims to support human rights.

No one serious is advocating that the United States go to war with Iran or attack Iran. As for Israel, there has never been any intention of attacking Iran in 2010 at all. Israeli policy has been to urge the world to try sanctions and to wait until Iran was on the verge of actually getting nuclear weapons to decide what to do.

Whether or not sanctions would work is another question but the failure to show leadership effectively and try has two implications. It is a test that the administration has failed, which indicates how it would probably perform in a future crisis. In addition, this failure has left the United States less well situated to manage this problem in the future.

Failing to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons through diplomatic means, and instead eroding U.S. credibility, actually makes a war more possible in future. And I'm not referring here to an Israeli attack but to a conflict arising from Iranian support for revolutionary Islamist subversion of Arabic-speaking countries. If Iran gets too confident and aggressive, it might miscalculate and set off a U.S.-Iran war over some incident in the Persian Gulf with U.S. ships or oil tankers; a terrorist incident in which Iran's regime was too obviously involved in killing Ameircans; or friction over unrest in an Arabic-speaking state.

When we look back at the present day from a decade or two hence, the issues pointed out in this article may be the most important and fateful events in contemporary history.

Note: If I had said titanic (with a small "t") that would have implied a really big job. In contrast, the Titanic was a luxury liner which hit an iceberg in 1912. To show how far back I go, my father introduced me to a friend of his when I was a boy who had survived the shipwreck. Incidentally, you will have to make up your own melting iceberg jokes since I am going to avoid getting involved in this issue.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.