U.S. State Department's Duplicity at the U.N. Human Rights Council

by Anne Bayevsky

As the American midterm election campaigns head to the finish line, the Obama administration is trying to convince Jewish voters that its treatment of Israel is not as hostile as it appears. In fact, it’s worse. The U.S. State Department has now adopted a practice honed by Israel’s Arab negotiating partners – saying different things to different audiences. The State Department is distributing for American consumption speeches that it claims were delivered in Israel’s defense at the recent session of the U.N. Human Rights Council. But the remarks American diplomats actually delivered to the U.N. audience, which President Obama so desperately seeks to impress, were strikingly different.

The foreign policy deception involves the U.N. Human Rights Council, which the president decided to join soon after taking office. At the beginning of October the Human Rights Council concluded its fifteenth session, marking the end of a full year of American membership on the U.N.’s lead human rights body. U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Eileen Donahoe marked the occasion by declaring that the Human Rights Council had “made historic progress…in advancing the rights of human rights defenders throughout the world.” But her claim turns on the virtue of legitimizing the demonization of Israel in favor of other people’s human rights.

At this latest session, the Human Rights Council had before it two extraordinarily ugly reports condemning Israel. One was aimed at keeping alive last year’s Goldstone Report, a modern-day blood libel alleging that the 2009 Gaza war was not fought in self-defense but was a deliberate move by Israel to murder Palestinian civilians. The new report, produced for this session, repeats the odious claim that Israel engaged in “violence against civilians as part of a deliberate policy” and goes on to criticize Israel’s legal system for failing to mount a witch hunt for “officials at the highest levels.” Referring to the Hamas internal “investigation,” which repeatedly exonerated itself from all wrongdoing, the U.N.’s team could only conclude that it “is not in a position to ascertain the veracity of any of these assertions.” It was produced by a committee chaired by German lawyer Christian Tomuschat, who once provided legal advice to Yasser Arafat’s PLO.

When it came time for the Human Rights Council to take up the report the Obama administration sought to manufacture a middle ground. Knowing that the committee’s mandate was to implement the infamous conclusions of the Goldstone Report, Ambassador Donahoe told the Human Rights Council on September 27: “We appreciate that the Tomuschat Committee did not jump to conclusions…” She also praised the committee on the grounds that it “did not recommend any further UN action,” despite the fact that the report was written so that it would guarantee the committee’s reappointment. Indeed, the Tomuschat committee was reappointed together “with all administrative, technical and logistic assistance” they could dream of, shortly thereafter.

Then Ambassador Donahoe varied her speech from the version now gracing the State Department website. She dropped these words: “Because Israel has the right and the demonstrated ability to conduct credible investigations and serious self-scrutiny, further follow-up of the Goldstone Report by UN bodies is unnecessary and unwarranted.”

This was not a one-off occurrence. The second Israel-bashing report before the Human Rights Council had been commissioned last June following the flotilla incident, in which 9 Turkish-backed extremists died after they tried to ram an Israeli blockade of Hamas-run Gaza. The Human Rights Council “investigation,” created within 48 hours of the incident, was carried out by a carefully selected three-person group that included one Desmond de Silva. De Silva had jointly headed a British law office with a Palestinian legal advisor, and their law practice had hosted the legal team supporting a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. De Silva was unabashed about his predilection to grease legal wheels for terrorists. He told the Human Rights Council on September 28: “[E]ven if Bin Laden himself was on board the Mavi Marmara” – the vessel on which the deaths occurred – “it wouldn’t have made the blockade legal.”

The flotilla investigative group that included de Silva said it couldn’t trust Israeli video evidence of the incident, and called the thugs who nearly murdered Israeli soldiers “persons genuinely committed to the spirit of humanitarianism.” These “experts” couldn’t think of a single “military advantage” for the Israeli blockade – a key test in determining whether Israel’s action was legal – though the blockade obviously prevents the creation of an Iranian weapons depot on the Mediterranean a few miles from Israeli population centers. Instead, they produced the usual U.N. laundry list of wild accusations and demands, such as prosecuting Israelis for torture. Hamas immediately "hailed the contents of the report…on the massacre perpetrated by the Zionist forces against international activists on board the fleet of freedom.”

When this despicable report came to the Human Rights Council for discussion, the State Department website claims Ambassador Donahoe delivered a speech, saying: “We have received the lengthy report of the fact-finding mission. We are concerned by the report’s unbalanced language, tone and conclusions.” But on September 28 what she actually said to the Council was this: “On an initial reading, we are concerned by the report’s unbalanced language, tone and conclusions.”

And again on September 27, the State Department gave the U.N. a Donahoe speech to post on the U.N. website which includes an important defense of Israel – all of which was omitted from her actual delivery:

In contrast to the unbalanced mechanisms adopted under this agenda item, Israel has been conducting its own process of credible investigations, and Israeli officials have been actively engaged in scrutinizing doctrinal issues. Israel has also established an independent public commission to examine the Israeli mechanism for investigating complaints and claims raised in relation to violations of the laws of armed conflict. This commission is headed by respected Israeli jurist Yaakov Turkel and includes two international observers: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lord David Trimble and former Canadian Judge Advocate General Kenneth Watkin. This commission, along with the ongoing inquiries and changes in combat doctrine demonstrate Israel's ability to conduct credible investigations and serious self-scrutiny, and we urge this Council to consider these factors as it deliberates.

A few days later, on September 29, the Human Rights Council voted to approve the Goldstone-Tomuschat and flotilla reports. Widespread repugnance in America and Israel over the Goldstone report made it impossible for the administration to support a report following it up. But on the flotilla episode, the administration rejected the Human Rights Council’s flotilla investigation only to bind Israel to an investigation created by the U.N. secretary general. The president pressured Israel to accept – for the first time in Israel’s history – oversight of the Israel Defense Forces by the U.N. The Turkel commission, Nobel laureates and all, were disposable. Of course, if President Obama were ever to agree to put the American armed forces under a similar knife, his presidency would be doomed.

As a result, some acrobatics were required at the Human Rights Council when the Obama administration had to explain its position for and against U.N. investigations of Israel. So on the Goldstone-Tomuschat resolution, Donahoe said: “…we did not support international oversight of domestic legal processes absent an indication that they are manifestly failing to deal seriously with alleged abuses…Extension of the committee of experts at this point is unnecessary and unhelpful.” And on the flotilla resolution Donahoe said: “the Secretary-General’s…panel is the primary method for the international community to review the incident.” Following these contradictory explanations, which inspired no support from the other Human Rights Council members, the U.S. voted against in both cases. The resolutions passed handily.

At the conclusion of this session, the Human Rights Council’s demonization of Israel stood at an all-time high. With the Goldstone-Tomuschat and flotilla resolutions, the Human Rights Council maintained its record of having adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than all other 191 U.N. states combined. The Human Rights Council had spent as much time attacking Israel than it did on its one agenda item for “human-rights situations that require the Council’s attention” anywhere else in the world.

But for the Obama administration this was an “historic” session advancing human rights. On October 1, Ambassador Donahoe pointed to the creation of a new investigator on the theme of freedom of association and assembly and a new working group to monitor “discrimination against women in law and practice.” The firm Obama storyline on the Council was articulated by Ambassador Donahoe in an op-ed in the New York Times on September 13: “I have been very pleased by several developments that confirm U.S. participation was the correct decision.”

So. as President Obama would say, let us be clear. This administration’s message is that demonizing Israelis is a price worth paying for the sake of other people’s human rights. “Several developments” for anybody else trump several losses for the Jewish state. Legitimizing the Human Rights Council with American membership and financial support is justified regardless of the threat that it poses to the safety and security of the Jewish people. The Obama administration ought to know better. Equality and human dignity cannot be built on the inequality of the few.

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.

The Latest From The Spanish, Roman Catholic And Democratic Kingdom Of Spain

by Eamonn McDonagh

El País is a leading liberal and progressive newspaper in the Spanish, Roman Catholic and Democratic Kingdom of Spain. It has long campaigned to put an end to Jewish self-determination and today’s contribution to that campaign comes in the form of an op-ed from M. Á. Bastenier, one of its most senior journalists.

The central point that it seeks to make is that Israel cannot be a state for Jews because it contains an Arab minority. There’s nothing necessarily anti-Jewish about this. All over the world national minorities are struggling to vindicate the collective rights history has denied them. There are now more nation states than ever and there are still plenty of minorities that want one of their own.

However, if you think the national rights of Jews are voided by the presence of the Arab minority in Israel and this view is a reflection of a broader political philosophy and not simply the expression of a prejudice, you need to make this clear. One way you can do so is to point out that there are plenty of other states that have restive national minorities too and that you regard them as equally illegitimate as Israel.

Furthermore, if your name was M.Á. Bastenier and you wrote for El País you wouldn’t have to look farther than your own country to find a good example of such a state. And given that you and your paper have been consistent supporters of its 1978 Constitution, which excludes the possibility of any of Spain’s national minorities deciding for themselves whether they wish to continue forming part of the Spanish, Roman Catholic and Democratic Kingdom of Spain, then it would be difficult to interpret your enthusiasm, and that of your paper, for extinguishing Jewish national rights as anything other than an example of hypocrisy and foul prejudice.

Eamonn McDonagh

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

CBS "60 Minutes" Joins the Arab Propaganda Bandwagon on Jerusalem

by Ricki Hollander

One of the main obstacles in previous peace-making efforts has been Arab unwillingness to accept Israel as a Jewish state and Muslim denial of Judaism's historical and religious ties to Jerusalem. U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross complained that during the July 2000 negotiations at Camp David, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat's only contribution was his refusal to acknowledge Jewish ties to Jerusalem, claiming the Jewish Temple never existed there. When talks resumed in Taba later that year, the Israelis agreed to full Palestinian sovereignty on the Temple Mount, but requested Palestinians acknowledge the sacredness of the place to Judaism. They refused. (See "The Battle Over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount") Moreover, Palestinian leaders not only deny the existence of Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem, they falsely allege that Jews are trying to takeover or destroy Muslim holy sites there. In that way, they follow the lead of Jerusalem Mufti and Nazi sympathizer Haj al Amin Husseini who so successfully incited anti-Jewish rioting in the1920's by making his battle cry "Defend Muslim Holy Sites."

The efforts to delegitimize Israel's claim to Jerusalem have generally been limited to Arab and Muslim leaders, but recently, international media outlets have jumped on board to support them. The latest one to join the fray is Lesley Stahl of CBS News's "60 Minutes" in an October 17^th segment entitled "Controversy in Jerusalem: The City Of David."

Ms. Stahl did not apparently bother to engage in serious journalism, the kind that involves research and fact-checking. She simply followed the playbook of Time Magazine, the Economist, and BBC's "Panorama" with a "paint-by-numbers" exercise calling on the same cast of characters, repeating the same distorted claims and reading from the same overall script. Echoing colleagues at the aforementioned media outlets, Ms. Stahl demonstrated how to promote Arab political propaganda with shoddy and partisan journalism:

1) Characterize as "controversial" Israel's publicizing of archeological findings of Israelite history in Jerusalem, discredit the field of biblical archeology and dismiss archeological excavations as something run by a "settler organization."

According to Ms. Stahl:

It's controversial that the City of David uses discoveries to try to confirm what's in the Bible, particularly from the time of David, the king who made Jerusalem his capital...

and

...But for all the talk of King David, one thing is glaringly missing here at the City of David. There`s actually no evidence of David, right?

Ms. Stahl dismisses the field of biblical archeology, especially the City of David enterprise, by throwing out a red herring — that there is no archeological proof of a King David himself. But, while it is impossible to uncover archeological evidence of any single individual, there is strong archeological evidence for the existence of a Davidic Kingdom. Stahl omits mention, for instance, that in 2005, archeologist Eilat Mazar uncovered remnants of a massive palace in the City of David dating to the 10th century BCE which is believed to be King David's palace.

It is unlikely that Ms. Stahl would ever challenge Palestinians about the existence of Mohammed, or whether she would question Christians about the existence of Jesus, based on lack of direct archeological proof of those individuals. Her approach, of course, supports attempts by Arab and Muslim leaders to erase any evidence of Jewish history in Jerusalem, whether through the Waqf's unsupervised construction and dumping of artifacts, or whether through the riots that are incited whenever Israel excavates, builds or discovers evidence of its Jewish roots in Jerusalem's holy basin.

Ms. Stahl studiously avoided mention of this issue. She also did not bother to note that City of David archeologists, who are respected internationally for their scholarly contributions to the field, carry out their work under the auspices of the well-regarded Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). Nor did she elaborate on the strict protocols which govern their work.

Excavations must be supervised by scholars associated with recognized institutes of archaeology, where there is an infrastructure for research, laboratory treatment, and processing. These scholars publish all of their finds (both Israelite and others) according to accepted scientific standards, and they conserve each uncovered layer of the excavated area as required by the Conservation Department of the IAA. But Ms. Stahl chose to smear the excavations as governed by a "settler organization." According to the CBS reporter:

While a government agency oversees the excavations, the dig and the site are largely funded and run by something called El`Ad...which claims they`re not a settlers` organization, though, people we spoke to say they are.

2) Call it political "indoctrination" to teach Jews about their historical roots in Jerusalem.

According to Ms. Stahl:

Half a million tourists visit the site every year, with guides who try to bring King David to life. There's an implicit message: that because David conquered the city for the Jews back then, Jerusalem belongs to the Jews today....

and

...So archeology is being used as a political tool. I mean, I hate to use the word, but indoctrination...

Would Ms. Stahl similarly suggest that archeologists should avoid telling Arabs about their own history in the area? Should Americans not send their children to Washington to visit the Lincoln Memorial? By conveying the attitude that it is somehow sinister to strengthen Jewish knowledge about and connection to Jerusalem, Ms. Stahl reflects the Arab perspective where Muslim rights and connection to the Holy Basin are a given, while Jewish rights and connection to the area are considered dubious and an obstacle to peace.

Needless to say, Ms. Stahl does not mention anything about indoctrination by Arab leaders who deny that Jews have any history in the area.

3) Portray Silwan as an area that does or should belong to Arabs. Describe Jews as interlopers with no right to live or carry out excavations there and ignore "inconvenient" history – both of Jewish habitation there as well as Jordan's illegal and racist occupation that ended it.

According to Ms. Stahl:

Another problem is an inconvenient truth that biblical Jerusalem is not located in the western half of the city. It`s right under the densely-populated Arab neighborhood of Silwan. And according to the Clinton parameters, Silwan should be part of a Palestinian state...

and

...organizations that move Jewish settlers into Arab areas have infiltrated Silwan...

and

...El`Ad has raised tens of millions of dollars, half from the United States, and buys these homes on land the Palestinians claim for a future state......

What Ms. Stahl fails to report is that there was a community of Yemenite Jewish families in Silwan as early as 1882 in the neighborhood known as Kfar HaShiloach, and additional Jewish families from various countries joined them in the following years. In the early 1900's Baron de Rothschild bought several acres of land there for the Jewish community. Silwan's Jewish residents lived in the area until they were forced out by Arab attacks in the late 1920s. The City of David, situated in the Silwan valley, is still 60 percent Jewish-owned, including the area bought by Baron de Rothschild. And it is perfectly legal to continue to buy homes there.

The notion that this area must now be rendered Judenrein — free of Jewish habitation, with Jews prohibited from purchasing homes there — echoes the racist policies of Jordan's 19-year illegal occupation of the area, something that Ms. Stahl assiduously avoids mentioning.

4) Gloss over, minimize or ignore "inconvenient truths" that show Arabs as interlopers in the area.

Ms. Stahl discusses the plans to create a tourist park in King's Garden near the City of David, noting that this "requires demolishing twenty-two Arab homes in Silwan," something she suggests would be an "explosive" action.

Ms. Stahl attributes to the mayor the argument that the "Arab houses were built illegally," and that he plans to relocate them, but viewers are never informed that the land had been set aside as conservation parkland with residential building prohibited long before the Arab homes in question were illegally erected. Instead she concludes, "but the locals want to stay in their homes," as if describing them as "locals" is reason enough for them to be allowed to defy the law governing this archeologically-rich area.

The missing "inconvenient truth" can be found in an article by Ha'aretz journalist Nadav Shragai:

Progress has brought troubles along with it to the King's Valley. For hundreds of years floodwaters drained into the garden of the kings of Judea, east of the Shiloah Pool in Jerusalem. In winter it was a swamp, but in summer it became a blooming garden.

With a bit of imagination and with the help of varied historical sources it is possible to imagine King David strolling in the royal garden with its abundant greenery and water among the olive, fig, pomegranate and almond trees, singing Psalms.

According to one tradition, this is where the Book of Ecclesiastes was composed.

About 20 years ago, the Jerusalem municipality shored up the water runoff there, and in the open green area (al Bustan, in Arabic), which the Turks and the British took care to preserve for hundreds of years as a public area intended for preservation and development of parks and tourism, an illegal Palestinian outpost arose.

Within 18 years 88 buildings went up there, under the noses of mayors Teddy Kollek and now outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Under former mayor Uri Lupolianski, the construction was halted, after the municipality confiscated tractors and heavy machinery from the lawbreakers.

Last summer the director general of the Antiquities Authority, Shuka Dorfman, noted in a kind of "post mortem" that the construction in the King's Garden caused significant and irreversible damage to antiquities.

Representatives of the municipality and Dorfman admitted that they had no good explanation for what has happened in this lovely garden, which is described in the Books of Nechemiah and Ecclesiastes, in midrashim (rabbinic Biblical homiletics) and in many historical sources. Dorfman stressed that together with Tel David, the garden constitutes the only complete archaeological garden of first-rate importance.

5) Challenge Israeli statements with Palestinian accusations.

Ms. Stahl gave up all pretense of journalistic objectivity when she took on the role of court prosecutor with Israeli interviewees. She challenged them by echoing Palestinian allegations:

LESLEY STAHL: So El Ad is doing archaeology and settlements?

DORON SPIELMAN: We are doing archaeology, and we are buying homes and buying land.

LESLEY STAHL: But is it El Ad`s goal to ease the Arabs away from right where we are right now?

DORON SPIELMAN: Put it this way, if there`s a home that an Arab wants to sell and I have the money to buy it and I can move, enable a Jewish family to live there, and I can dig archaeologically underneath it, then I think that`s a wonderful thing to do.

LESLEY STAHL (voiceover): The Arabs say it`s a provocative thing to do.

......and

LESLEY STAHL: I heard you wanted to evict people. Where are-- where are those houses?

NIR BARKAT: That`s-- that`s just not true. To accept--

LESLEY STAHL (overlapping): Well, wait, but if you make a park, then those houses can`t be there anymore.

NIR BARKAT: They mustn`t have been there in the first place.

LESLEY STAHL: Yeah, but so-- so you will evict. You will evict.

NIR BARKAT: Not evict. When you improve their quality of life, the right word to say is that you`re dealing with improvement of quality of life.

LESLEY STAHL (voiceover): His park, he says, will upgrade the area, and he`ll allow the people who`ll be evicted to build new houses nearby. But locals tell us the only way to do that would be to build on top of other homes in Silwan...

...The European Union, the United Nations has criticized this plan to get rid of these twenty-two homes. Public opinion, especially while the peace talks are under way, is-- is looking at this and saying you`re trying to get rid- - move Arabs out of Jerusalem.

NIR BARKAT (overlapping): That`s not true.

LESLEY STAHL: But that`s the way it looks......

6) Do not challenge or fact-check any Palestinian statements. Instead accept, repeat and endorse them.

In sharp contrast to her prosecutorial attitude toward Israeli interviewees, Stahl accepts Palestinian statements without challenge.

LESLEY STAHL (voiceover): Palestinian Jawad Siyam was born in [Silwan] and says he can trace his roots here back nine hundred thirty years. He`s pessimistic about the Palestinians ever having their own state....

LESLEY STAHL (voiceover): Jawad says that El`Ad uses the dig`s archeological prestige to hide its aim of moving the locals out. And he believes that the tunneling is a way for El`Ad to extend its reach deeper into Silwan...

LESLEY STAHL (voiceover): There`s a feeling of encroachment. The Arabs feel it...

LESLEY STAHL (voiceover): But as with the dig, the local Arabs see this as another attempt to gobble up their side of Jerusalem...

7) Avoid mention of anything that might portray Palestinians and Arab leaders in a poor light, or as an obstacle to peace.

There was no mention of Jordan's ethnic cleansing of Jews from the region or their Judenrein policy during their illegal occupation, no mention of attempts by Palestinian and Muslim leaders to erase – both mentally (with denials) and physically (by destroying archeological remnants) Jewish history here. There is no mention of the deadly attacks by eastern Jerusalem Arabs against Jews both in eastern and western Jerusalem — a contributing factor to why Israel does not want Jerusalem divided.

While she mentions "escalating confrontations" near Silwan, Ms. Stahl focuses on one incident which she says "became violent" when a car driven by an Israeli who turned out to be "of all people, the head of Elad," struck two masked Palestinian youths who had been throwing stones. Of course, the incident was violent from the start, as masked Palestinian youths and adults surrounded the car, hurling stones at it. Three people, two of them minors and one adult, were subsequently arrested for thowing stones and smashing the window of a car. There were also many questions about the incident itself, particularly, why so many photographers had converged at the site well before the Israeli driver had entered the scene. Had they been alerted in advance? Had they been told that there would be dramatic distubances or confrontations they might want to photograph? (See: "Silwan Distortions in the Israeli Press") Needless to say, Ms. Stahl did not explore any of this, as it did not support the story she was telling.

8) Suggest instead that it is Israeli actions – whether archeological excavations, purchasing of homes, or enforcing municipal laws – that obstruct the possibility of peace.

According to Ms. Stahl:

Settlements have been a stumbling block in peace negotiations of the past. And ...could become the stumbling block again.

A decade ago, Chairman President Mahmoud Abbas went on record challenging Jerusalem's Jewish heritage and the existence of a Jewish Temple, adding that even if there were one, "we do not accept it, because it is not logical for someone who wants a practical peace." (Kul Al-Arab, August 25, 2000; Translation: MEMRI) Today, he refuses to accept Israel as a Jewish state.

But to Ms. Stahl and CBS, the Palestinians' refusal to recognize Israel and the attempt to erase Jerusalem's Jewish heritage are not the story she wants to tell. To her, the only obstacle to peace is Israel's commitment to its Jewish roots in Jerusalem.

Ricki Hollander

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

Who Says Islam Is Totalitarian?

by Andrew McCarthy

Not long ago, Bernard Lewis sounded almost like Geert Wilders.

Who says Islam is a totalitarian doctrine? Well, Geert Wilders does, of course. As the editors point out in Monday’s superb National Review Online editorial, the Dutch parliamentarian has even had the temerity to compare Islam with Nazism. Strong stuff indeed, and for speaking it, Wilders has earned the disdain not just of the usual Muslim Brotherhood satellite organizations but even of many on the political right.

Though they support free-speech rights, and thus grudgingly concede that Wilders should be permitted to say such things, they want you to understand they find his sentiments deplorable. Taking the politically correct view, they assure you that Islam is not a problem at all — it’s just those bad extremists and Islamists who have, as the Bush-era refrain went, “hijacked one of the world’s great religions.”

Emblematic is the estimable Charles Krauthammer, who has described Wilders’s views as “extreme, radical, and wrong.” Dr. K.’s complaint, expressed on Fox News back in March (and published on the Corner), was that Wilders conflates “Islam and Islamism.” The latter, Krauthammer insists, is “an ideology of a small minority which holds that the essence of Islam is jihad, conquest, forcing people into accepting a certain very narrow interpretation [of Islam].”

As I take a backseat to no one in my admiration of Dr. K., I wonder what he’d make of Bernard Lewis’s take on this subject. Professor Lewis is the distinguished scholar widely and aptly admired, including by Wilders’s detractors, as the West’s preeminent authority on Islam. At Pajamas Media, Andrew Bostom has unearthed a 1954 International Affairs essay in which Professor Lewis quite matter-of-factly compared Islam with Communism. The essay, in fact, was called, “Communism and Islam.”

In it, Lewis considered “the very nature of Islamic society, tradition, and thought,” and concluded that its principal defining characteristic is the “authoritarianism, perhaps we may even say the totalitarianism, of the Islamic political tradition.” Expanding on this, he wrote:

There are no parliaments or representative assemblies of any kind, no councils or communes, no chambers of nobility or estates, no municipalities in the history of Islam; nothing but the sovereign power, to which the subject owed complete and unwavering obedience as a religious duty imposed by the Holy Law.#…#For the last thousand years, the political thinking of Islam has been dominated by such maxims as “tyranny is better than anarchy,” and “whose power is established, obedience to him is incumbent.”

But what about the conceit that undergirds current American foreign policy, the notion that Islam and Western democracy are perfectly compatible? Lewis dismissed the idea as so much elite wishful thinking:

Many attempts have been made to show that Islam and democracy are identical — attempts usually based on a misunderstanding of Islam or democracy or both. This sort of argument expresses a need of the uprooted Muslim intellectual who is no longer satisfied with or capable of understanding traditional Islamic values, and who tries to justify, or rather, restate, his inherited faith in terms of the fashionable ideology of the day. It is an example of the romantic and apologetic presentation of Islam that is a recognized phase in the reaction of Muslim thought to the impact of the West.

Clearly, the ensuing half-century has found Western intellectuals — regardless of political bent — joining romantic forces with their uprooted Muslim counterparts. Thus the accusation by Dr. Krauthammer, to take a prominent but by no means singular example, that Wilders fails to perceive the distinction — I’d call it a hoped-for distinction — between Islam and Islamism. Yet this accusation itself conflates Islam with Muslims, as well as Islamists with violent jihadists. This confusion leads Krauthammer to surmise both (a) that only a small minority of Muslims believe jihad is “the essence of Islam,” and (b) that because most Muslims in the West are not terrorists, it should be “obvious” that they are not Islamists.

This is wrong on several levels. First, as Robert Spencer explains, “Jihad#…#is a key element of the Islamic faith according to every single Islamic authority on the planet.” To deny that it is the “essence of Islam” — which is how the prophet Mohammed regarded it — is to deny a basic fact. And though, as Spencer acknowledges, jihad is subject to varying interpretations, Lewis is clear on the preponderant construction. As he has recounted several times, most recently in The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years,

“The overwhelming majority of early authorities#…#citing relevant passages in the Qur’an and in the tradition, discuss jihad in military terms.” This jibes, to quote Ibn Warraq, with “the celebrated Dictionary of Islam,” which describes jihad as an “incumbent religious duty,” and defines it as “a religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad.”

Spencer echoes Lewis when he elaborates that

“all the mainstream sects and schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach as a matter of faith that Islam is intrinsically political and that Muslims must wage war against unbelievers and subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law.”

The fact that most Muslims do not engage in violent jihad, whether out of practicality, indifference, or what have you, does not change what Islamic doctrine says. Nor does it mean these Muslims are “rejecting” that mandate. They are ignoring it.

Moreover, as I’ve noted on several occasions, the point of jihad is to spread sharia, the Islamic legal system whose installation is the necessary precondition to creating an Islamic society. That need not be done by violent means. In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s most influential Islamist organization, maintains that America and Europe will be “conquered” not by violence but by dawa­ – the proselytism of Islam by non-violent (or, more accurate, pre-violent) means, such as infiltration of our institutions. Spencer calls this phenomenon “stealth jihad.”

Consequently, one can be an Islamist without engaging in violent jihad, which is precisely the case with the vast majority of Islamists. The fact that they are not terrorists does not mean — as we wish it would mean — that they are not extremists. While they abstain from the use of force (particularly against other Muslims), staggering majorities of Muslims throughout the world favor the implementation and strict application of sharia. Andrew Bostom’s essay demonstrates this, citing polling done in 2009 by World Public Opinion in conjunction with the University of Maryland.

Back in 1954, Lewis recalled “the political history of Islam” as “one of almost unrelieved autocracy” that was “authoritarian, often arbitrary, [and] sometimes tyrannical.” Besides this, the most interesting part of his essay is its focus on “certain uncomfortable resemblances” between “the Ulama of Islam” and “the Communist Party.” Though “very different” in some ways, the two, he stated, “profess a totalitarian doctrine, with complete and final answers to all questions on heaven and earth.”

Those answers, of course, are worlds apart in their particulars. Nonetheless, Lewis saw them as strikingly similar in their finality and completeness, and in the contrast they offer with the eternal questioning of Western man. Both groups offer to their members and followers the agreeable sensation of belonging to a community of believers, who are always right, as against an outer world of unbelievers, who are always wrong. Both offer an exhilarating feeling of mission, of purpose, of being engaged in a collective adventure to accelerate the historically inevitable victory of the true faith over the infidel evil-doers. The traditional Islamic division of the world into the House of Islam and the House of War, two necessarily opposed groups, of which the first has the collective obligation of perpetual struggle against the second, also has obvious parallels in the Communist view of world affairs. There again, the content of belief is utterly different, but the aggressive fanaticism of the believer is the same. The humorist who summed up the Communist creed as “There is no God and Karl Marx is his Prophet” was laying his finger on a real affinity. The call to a Communist Jihad, a Holy War for the faith — a new faith, but against the self-same Western Christian enemy — might well strike a responsive note.

In light of this scholarly comparison of Islam to Soviet totalitarianism, is it really so outrageous for Geert Wilders to compare Islam to Nazi totalitarianism? One needn’t agree with the analogy — and, agree or not, one needn’t think it a useful analogy — in order to understand why someone who is not intimidated by political correctness might employ it.

In thinking about how to argue the depth of terrorist depravity to the jury while prosecuting a 1995 terrorism trial, I must confess it crossed my mind that jihad literally means “struggle,” the same word found in the title of Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”). I quickly dismissed any thought of mentioning this as too explosive — nothing provokes a mistrial motion faster than a prosecutor’s comparison of defendants to Nazis, and when your evidence is damning, it’s always better to let it, rather than your rhetoric, do the talking. But I certainly didn’t think the point was beyond the pale. As noted by Daniel Pipes (who does not agree with Wilders’s analogy), no less a figure than Winston Churchill described Mein Kampf as “the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.”

In the middle of the 20th century, before suffocating political correctness took hold, it was not all that controversial to say such things. Note that in 1954, Bernard Lewis obviously felt no need to resort to such devices as “Islamism” — a device I adopt myself in The Grand Jihad — to conform to today’s obligatory but unproved assumption that there exists a moderate, tolerant Islam, scripturally based and doctrinally distinguishable from the Islam of the “extremists.”

In those bygone days, the term “Islamist” was usually used to identify a scholar of Islam — akin to a Sinologist or an Arabist. There was another usage, dating back to the 1920s. It was the one coined by Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna to denote a person who urged Islam as a complete way of life and favored installation of the sharia system. For Banna, there was no difference between Islam and Islamism.

That, by the way, is not only the Brotherhood’s view. It is the adamant opinion of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Islamist prime minister of Turkey who continues to be regarded by the U.S. government as a great moderate, just as he was during the Bush administration. “Very ugly” was his take on the term “moderate Islam” in a 2007 interview. As Erdogan fumed at the time, “It is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam, and that’s it.”

Islam is Islam. That is Erdogan’s position, it seems to have been the position of Bernard Lewis a half century ago, and it is Geert Wilders’s position today. Not that Muslims are bad, but that Islam is a dangerous ideology. Wilders summed up his views in a 2009 interview with Jeff Jacoby (also quoted in Andrew Bostom’s piece):

I have nothing against the people. I don’t hate Muslims. But Islam is a totalitarian ideology. It rules every aspect of life — economics, family law, whatever. It has religious symbols, it has a God, it has a book — but it’s not a religion. It can be compared with totalitarian ideologies like Communism or fascism. There is no country where Islam is dominant where you have a real democracy, a real separation between church and state.

These claims are materially indistinguishable from points Professor Lewis’s made in 1954 — other than, perhaps, Wilders’s assertion that Islam “is not a religion,” although by that, I take him to mean Islam is not merely a religion or a set of spiritual principles but a comprehensive system controlling all of life.

From those premises, Wilders concluded that “Islam is totally contrary to our values.” That is a bracing conclusion. I think the problem people have with Wilders is that he is bracing. He says out loud what they fear is the case, or what they refuse to examine for fear of discovering that it is the case. That makes him inconvenient. It doesn’t make him wrong.

Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

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Obama and Clinton's Betrayal of an Ally

by Adam Shaw

Hillary Clinton's admonishment of Great Britain's military spending cuts fails to take into account her significant role in Britain's defense woes.

Last week, in an interview with the BBC, Mrs. Clinton commented on reports that the British government is to cut defense spending as part of wider spending cuts designed to reduce Britain's Greece-like debt. Clinton's language was far from diplomatic and was essentially a lecture about Britain's responsibilities on the international stage. When asked if potential cuts worried the Obama administration, Clinton replied in the affirmative, stating,

The reason it does is because I think we do have to have an alliance where there is a commitment to the common defence. NATO has been the most successful alliance for defensive purposes in the history of the world, I guess, but it has to be maintained. Now each country has to be able to make its appropriate contributions.

In one sense, Mrs Clinton is quite correct. We conservatives in Great Britain were hoping that spending cuts would be made to the bloated welfare system, the almost unworkable National Health Service, the enormous government bureaucracy, and the quite useless international aid budget -- which includes giving large amounts of money to nuclear powers such as India.

However, the Conservative (Tory) Party, although in power, is led by the highly "centrist" Prime Minister David Cameron and is in coalition with the socialist, anti-war Liberal Democrats, led by the pro-EU, anti-American Nick Clegg, who is currently situated as Deputy Prime Minister. The big-government, high-tax Liberal Democrats have wailed continually for assurances that cuts would not "hurt the poor," instead calling for stronger cuts to the military, while conservatives have called for cuts to the big government quangocracy and fluffed-up welfare system currently in place.

The predictable result is compromise between the two. There have been cuts to government bureaucracies (causing the influential Trade Unions to threaten strikes), and the welfare system will be reformed, much to the horror of left-wingers who have predictably tried to portray minor welfare cuts as a return to Dickensian nightmares. However, the Liberal Democrats have managed to squeeze an 8% cut in defence spending out of David Cameron, causing much consternation on the Tory back benches. Watching their party engage in ridiculous cuts to the military at a time of crisis, cuts that mean that we will have aircraft carriers with no aircraft, is a crushing defeat for British conservatism and for Britain's security in the world.

Mrs. Clinton, along with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, used arguments that many of us on the British right have been using for a while to try to prevent these disastrous cuts. Clinton and Gates are correct -- cuts to defence will affect Britain's ability to contribute to NATO, it will make it harder for us to fight in the War on Terror, and it will make it harder for Britain to defend herself in the case of an attack.

However, as we on the British right lick our wounds and wonder how a supposedly conservative government is agreeing to defense cuts at such a time of international unrest, we might look to Mrs. Clinton and the Obama administration as one of the reasons we have fallen to the antiwar, pacifist sword of the Liberal Democrats.

It is not easy to be a pro-American Brit in contemporary British politics. The country as a whole is generally center-left, and there is a very strong left-wing movement, both from the Liberal Democrats and from the normally dominant Labour Party. Leaders of both parties have openly regretted the war in Iraq, and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is highly outspoken in his desire for Britain to separate herself from America and become closely united with the European Union. So for those of us arguing for a closer relationship with America, it can often be a tough sell with so many anti-American voices screeching in the background.

Consequently, when the Obama administration actively rejects Britain and works against British interests, a pro-American position becomes untenable -- and this is precisely what has happened in Britain since Obama took office in 2009. We have seen the "Special Relationship" between America and the U.K. destroyed. Whether it be due to Obama's own anti-British sentiments or simply due to the general left-wing flavor of the administration that regards the "Special Relationship" as an unfortunate hangover from the Bush era, the message is clear -- Britain is no longer needed. We Brits we have seen our nation described as "nothing special" by the administration and we saw the Obama family insult both our Prime Minister and our Monarch, along with the many policy decisions that include Obama's continual attacks on BP -- referred to incorrectly by Obama as "British Petroleum."

Worst of all, earlier this year, Secretary of State Clinton sided with Argentina in their battle to steal the British Sovereign territory of the Falkland Islands away from Britain. Britain's position is that we have held the islands since 1833, that the overwhelming majority of Falkland Islanders wish to remain British, and that the islands never belonged to Argentina anyway. Despite losing the Falklands War in 1982, Argentina still keep up their claim to the islands, based solely on the fact that the islands are near Argentina.

Britain see the issue as over, and yet Argentina wish to "discuss" the issue, knowing that formal discussions will give credence to their claims and possibly lead to some sort of compromise. Clinton, instead of supporting Britain's claim, has declared America neutral, and then she sided with Argentina by saying that the two nations should "sit down and talk."

Such a reckless attitude has shown not only the administration's contempt for their allies, but has caused Argentina to increase anti-British aggression, safe in the knowledge that America will not intervene should conflict break out. Such a conflict would not only lead to loss of British life, but also stretch our military resources farther.

With this, America has made it clear that Britain plays no significant role in issues abroad, that we are no longer in a "Special Relationship," and that our help will no longer be required. In consequence, it has proven impossible for British conservatives to enunciate why Britain needs to keep military spending at current levels. The British left have stated that Britain is an irrelevant country on the world stage, and Mrs. Clinton and the Obama administration have agreed fully. As a result, Britain has drastically reduced military spending.

However, it has backfired.

Obama et al. thought they didn't need Britain in their new world, a world in which Obama would woo the international community singlehandedly. However, having discovered Obama to be about as effective as a bowl of cold soup, it seems that the administration has found a use for its old ally. Now faced with Britain backing down militarily, Mrs. Clinton has panicked and started making noises about how important Britain is, with her talk about "responsibilities," but alas, it is too late.

I come to this conclusion with not one iota of satisfaction. Britain is extremely important in the international fight against tyranny and terror, and the cuts will make Britain, America, and the world significantly less safe than it would normally be, as they will damage Britain's ability to defend itself, it will prevent her from being able to support the U.S. in any unilateral action the latter takes, and it will reduce the force of NATO as a whole.

Mrs. Clinton is right to express concern. However, before she does so, she should recognize the role that she, and the Obama administration as a whole, has played in this worrying new development.

Adam Shaw is a British-born conservative writer. His blog is The Anglo-American Debate.

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NY Times goes to idiotic lengths to take a poke at Israel

by Leo Rennert

In monitoring New York Times coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I've served up numerous examples of how its correspondents spin, distort, bend and ignore the truth so as to paint Israel in a bad light.

But there are no polite adjectives for the idiotic lengths to which Times correspondent Isabel Kershner goes to take a poke at Israel in her Oct. 18 article about resumption of mediation efforts to negotiate release of Sgt. Gilad Shalit from his lengthy Hamas captivity in Gaza ("Israel Renews Bid to Free Soldier Held by Hamas" page A4). This bit of poisonous anti-Israel propaganda is sui generis.

Kershner starts her piece with a straightforward report on new efforts by a German mediator to arrange a prisoner swap that might end Shalit's four-year stint as a Hamas hostage. So far, so good.

But objectivity goers out the window when she injects the following paragraph, which I cite in full:

"Some Israeli commentators," she writes, "have made unfavorable comparisons in recent days between the Israeli government's efforts to win Sergeant Shalit's release and the more successful efforts of the Chilean government to rescue the 33 miners stuck underground."

Huh?

Where is there even the remotest basis to draw such a parallel?

Were the Chilean miners held captive by a terrorist group? Did their rescuers have to push into an area under terrorist control? Was the underground location of the miners kept secret by their captors?

I don't question the fact that among the Israeli commentariat, there is no lack of self-hating Jews to come up with such a baseless, nonsensical comparison. But what obliges a New York Times correspondent to regurgitate such idiocy, except her predisposition to seize on anything and everything that can be converted into an anti-Israel poison pill?

And where are the editors who are supposed to scrutinize her copy for accuracy and fairness before it gets into print?

This is not just a solitary reporter's mindless anti-Israel behavior. This is an institutional bias at the New York Times that allows such sophomoric anti-Israel games and inventions to infiltrate its news columns.

Leo Rennert

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‘Why Saigon Fell and Jerusalem Hasn’t’

by Evelyn Gordon

In yesterday’s post, I described how newly declassified documents from the Vietnam War reveal the enormous strategic impact that America’s perceived credibility as an ally (or lack thereof) has on the Middle East. But the documents also teach another important lesson about the modern Middle East — the importance of Congress.

In 1973, the Yom Kippur War erupted even as the Vietnam War still raged. Thus Israel and South Vietnam wound up submitting very similar requests for military aid to Washington. As then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer noted in one internal discussion, “Many of the things [South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu] wants, Israel wants too. We have to make some decisions.”

Ultimately, those decisions heavily favored Israel: Jerusalem got most of what it wanted; Saigon did not. But that was not because either the Nixon administration or the subsequent Ford administration preferred Israel to South Vietnam. It was because Congress did.

In 1974, then-president Gerald Ford explained this bluntly to South Vietnam’s foreign minister, Vuong Van Bac. After pledging the administration’s full support, he qualified, “Our problem is not us, but on the Hill.”

Then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger echoed this in an internal discussion in 1975. Congress, he complained, had told him:

“You’ve got to give aid to Israel because they win their wars, but we can’t give aid to other countries that are losing their wars.” Well, on that goddamn theory it’s a wonder that the Soviets are not in Bonn already. On that theory the Nazis would have taken over the world.

Haaretz journalist Amir Oren summed the lesson up nicely:

Fortunately for Israel, Washington does not only consist of the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department, but also Congress. Thanks to Israel’s power in Congress, it has fared better than other, smaller allies, like South Vietnam. In the absence of congressional support, they did not win the administration’s affection; this is why Saigon fell and Jerusalem hasn’t.

Unfortunately, it’s a lesson few Israeli prime ministers seem to have learned. Because Israel’s Knesset has virtually no power over foreign affairs, Israeli leaders often fail to understand the crucial role that congressional support, or opposition, plays in American foreign affairs. They therefore focus exclusively on good relations with the administration, while ignoring Congress entirely.

That would be a bad mistake for any country. But it’s a particularly egregious mistake for a country that has traditionally enjoyed far more support in Congress than it has from even the friendliest administration.

Yet it isn’t only Israeli leaders who could benefit from studying this lesson: the newly released documents also provide a crucial reminder for American voters. Americans, of course, do understand the role of Congress. Nevertheless, there is sometimes a tendency to think that since foreign policy is primarily in the president’s domain, congressional votes should focus on domestic concerns.

But, in fact, as these documents show, Congress plays a vital role in foreign policy as well. The lesson is clear: if voters want a pro-Israel foreign policy, they must keep electing pro-Israel congressmen.

Evelyn Gordon

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Is Jerusalem Sacred for Muslims?

by Hagai Mazuz and Harold Rhode

Israel and the Palestinians are once again negotiating their future relationship. One of the most difficult issues they confront is the status of Jerusalem.

On September 22, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton congratulated Saudi King Abdullah on the occasion of his country's national day. She reserved special praise for Abdullah's support of the Arab Peace Initiative (API), which calls for an Israeli withdrawal from all territories gained in 1967 and for East Jerusalem to be the capital of a Palestinian state. She suggested that this plan would serve as a philosophical basis for the ongoing talks. "As we continue working to support direct talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the principles enshrined in the Arab Peace Initiative are more important than ever," Clinton wrote.

Jews and Christians know that Israel's claim to Jerusalem is rooted in the ancient Jewish connection to that city. Israel's declaration of independence speaks of both "natural and historic right." Jerusalem is the centerpiece of that historic right.

What about the Muslim claim?

For Muslims, Jerusalem is thought to be sacred for two reasons: First, Muslims were initially commanded to pray toward Jerusalem. But when the Jews refused to convert to Islam, Muhammad changed the prayer direction toward Mecca. Second, Muslims believe that Muhammad ascended to heaven and back from "the Rock" which much later after his death was interpreted to mean what is today the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

Interestingly, Islamic sources from the first 50 years or so after Muhammad's death make clear that Jerusalem had absolutely no holy status for Muslims.

Some centuries later, Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) another important Muslim cleric with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Koran and Hadith, wrote extensively about Jerusalem, and how there were only two holy cities in Islam – Mecca and Medina. He eventually became the intellectual godfather of Wahhabism, the dominant Islamic doctrine of the Saudi government. He claimed that Muslims must rid themselves of all non-Muslim innovations and return to the early Islam of Muhammad and the first four caliphs. The rulers of Ibn Taymiyya's time saw him as a threat and imprisoned him. Even so, he did not recant.

Ibn Taymiyya went to great lengths to explain that the veneration of Jerusalem in nothing more than the "Judaization" of Islam. He wrote that after the second caliph 'Umar conquered Jerusalem in 637 he and his aide Ka'b al-Aḥbār [a Jewish convert to Islam], went up to view the Temple Mount. 'Umar asked his aide: "Where do you think I should build a place of prayer for Muslims?" Ka'b replied: "Build it behind (i.e., north of) the Rock." Angrily, Umar said to Ka'b: "Oh you son of a Jew, is your Jewishness dominating your view?" 'Umar was accusing Ka'b of Judaizing Islam by saying that they should build a place to pray north of the Rock where the Jewish Temple had once stood. If they had done so, they would have been bowing down both towards the Rock and Mecca. That is why 'Umar decided to build the place to pray on the southern part of the Temple Mount – the place today known as the Aqsa Mosque. 'Umar's choice of location meant that the Muslims bowed down only to Mecca and that their backs (rear ends) were facing the Rock.

Ibn Taymiyya wondered how Muslim clerics could have accepted Ka'b's attempts to incorporate Jewish traditions into Islam, because Ka'b did not cite any of Muhammad's companions as the source of his claim.

Ibn Taymiyya also accused Ka'b of fabricating Muslim traditions and incorporating Jewish writings, i.e., the Bible, Talmud, etc., into Islam. Ibn Taymiyya admitted that the original prayer direction was Jerusalem but he emphasized that Muhammad and the Muslims abandoned that tradition in order to differentiate themselves from the Jews.

Later, Ibn Taymiyya discussed the first caliphs and showed that when they ruled over today's Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel, neither they nor any of the early governors nor any clerics made any attempt to build any structure over the Rock on the Temple Mount. This demonstrated, according to Ibn Taymiyya, that they did not attach any importance to it; as the early rulers and companions of Muhammad knew his views and his religion better than later generations of Muslims, no later scholar could disagree with them nor with the traditions they observed. They clearly did not attach any Islamic significance to today's Aqsa Mosque nor to the Temple Mount in general. How then, Ibn Taymiyya reasoned, could we who never knew them nor Muhammad have the right to disagree? There is no way we could know more about Islam than they. We therefore have no right to sanctity al-Aqsa because they did not do so.

In order to further strengthen his argument against Jerusalem's sanctity, Ibn Taymiyya wrote that during Muhammad's night journey to heaven from Jerusalem, there is no mention of the (Temple) Rock in the story. Therefore, since the Rock is not even mentioned, it has no importance in Islamic tradition.

So we see that according to the intellectual godfather of the Saudis, the Aqsa Mosque and the Temple Rock have absolutely no Islamic religious significance. As he proved, these are nothing more than Judaic traditions that have penetrated Islam, and, as non-Muslim innovations, must be expunged from Islam.

So how did Jerusalem become holy in Islam? In the 680s, a civil war erupted among the Muslims. The caliph who ruled from Damascus wanted to put down a revolt by the people who controlled Mecca, the place of pilgrimage. In order to weaken them, he decided to build a counter-pilgrimage site and at the very least siphon off people who during the pilgrimage might have decided to take up the rebel's cause. He therefore chose to build a dome over the Rock in Jerusalem and to encourage people to make pilgrimages there instead of to Mecca. That is when Jerusalem became holy in Islam. So in essence, Jerusalem's sanctity to Muslims stems from a local revolt which occurred some 50-plus years after Muhammad's death.

The Saudi regime follows Ibn Taymiyya to a tee. Those who disagree with his philosophy do so at their own peril. When a Saudi editor published an article questioning something that Ibn Taymiyya had written, he was quickly fired on the orders of the information minister. So it is rather curious that the Saudis have included, as one of the basic principles of their plan for peace between Israel and the Arabs, the idea that East Jerusalem must be the capital of a Palestinian state. Why have they rejected their godfather's stance on Jerusalem? Ibn Taymiyya must be turning over in the grave.

Hagai Mazuz and Harold Rhode

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New Challenges for Pro-Israel Activists

by Jennifer Rubin

Former UN ambassador John Bolton, as he is wont to do, sounds a warning:

Once past Nov. 2 and faced with the impending and embarrassing collapse of direct talks, President Obama may well be moved to punish Israel or at least fashion a teachable moment out of his diplomatic failure.

The Obama administration has a jaundiced view of Israel, but actual U.S. recognition of “Palestine” seems a remote prospect in the near term. The domestic political firestorm for the president—already likely to be badly wounded in midterm elections and deeply concerned about his own prospects in two years—would simply be too much.

A more indirect but still effective course is to let statehood emerge through a Security Council resolution. Prior U.S. administrations would unquestionably have voted “no,” thus vetoing such a proposal, but Mr. Obama’s penchant for publicly pressuring Israel is a foreshadow that Washington may decide not to play its traditional role. While even Mr. Obama is unlikely to instruct a “yes” vote on a Security Council resolution affirming a Palestinian state and subsequent U.N. membership, one could readily envision the administration abstaining. That would allow a near-certain majority, perhaps 14-0, to adopt the resolution.

In any other administration, this would be inconceivable; however, this administration is like no other. Yes, this would be a major step forward for the delegitimizers. (”By defining ‘Palestine’ to include territory Israel considers its own, such a resolution would delegitimize both Israel’s authority and settlements beyond the 1967 lines, and its goal of an undivided Jerusalem as its capital.”) Yes, it would be politically unpopular, given the country’s pro-Israel orientation. And yes, it would send a dangerous signal to Iran that Israel’s fate is not tied to our own, and that Israel’s existential threat is Israel’s problem alone.

But the possibility is real given Obama’s track record, the leaks about an imposed peace deal, and the president’s own rhetoric. (”In his September 2009 speech at the U.N., for example, he supported a Palestinian state ‘with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967.’”) So what should pro-Israel groups and lawmakers do?

Well, come January, one or both houses of Congress will be in GOP hands. It is time to start using the power of the bully pulpit (in the form of resolutions) and the purse (to defund the UN Human Rights Council, for example) to push back on the Obama assault on Israel. A shot across the bow of the White House — a resolution condemning any effort to impose a deal or divide territory that does not arise from direct negotiations — would be a good start.

But as frightening a prospect as all this is, it pales in comparison to the threat to which Obama turns a blind eye: a nuclear-armed revolutionary Islamic state. This is quite a bit more difficult. The Congress can’t order a military strike if needed. But here, too, pro-Israel advocates and lawmakers should not dally. A declaration of support for Israel, oversight hearings on the paltry results from sanctions, and a robust effort to inform and rally the American people are all needed. Mainstream Jewish pro-Israel groups have been befuddled by the administration, falling prey to the same non-direct, non-peace-talk obsession that has snared the Obami. They should reorient themselves to dual missions: heading off any scheme to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state and encouraging the administration to stand by its declaration that a nuclear-armed Iran is truly “unacceptable.”

Jennifer Rubin

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Thomas Friedman’s Additional Test

by Rick Moran

Thomas Friedman unloads on Israel, asserting that it is “behaving like a spoiled child” because Netanyahu will not agree to a new settlement-construction moratorium without additional assurances:

Just one time you would like Israel to say, “You know, Mr. President, we’re dubious that a continued settlement freeze will have an impact. But you think it will, so, let’s test it. This one’s for you.”

I think he means that just two times he would like Israel to say it.

Last year, Obama demanded a settlement freeze — after reneging on agreements about such a freeze that had governed the peace process for the prior six years and refusing to endorse the presidential letter given to Israel in exchange for the dismantlement of every settlement in Gaza. The proposed deal was a construction freeze in exchange for small steps toward normalization with Israel that the U.S. would obtain from Arab states. Obama failed to get anything from the Arab states, but Israel announced a 10-month moratorium anyway. It had no impact at all.

Friedman writes that he has “no idea whether the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has the will and the guts to make peace with Israel” but thinks Abbas should be tested with another moratorium. No idea?

He knows that Abbas’s term of office expired nearly two years ago and that Abbas is “President Abbas” only in the sense that George Mitchell is “Senator Mitchell.” He knows Abbas declined an offer of a state on 100 percent of the West Bank (after land swaps) with a shared Jerusalem. He knows Abbas has stated he will “never” recognize Israel as a Jewish state nor negotiate any land swap. He knows Abbas cannot make peace even with Hamas, which controls half the putative Palestinian state. He knows Abbas has repeatedly canceled elections and that the idea of the Palestinian Authority as a stable democratic entity is a joke. He knows Abbas has declared he will never waive the “right of return,” which makes a peace agreement impossible even if every other issue could be resolved. He knows Abbas has taken no steps to prepare his public for any of the compromises that would be necessary for a peace agreement. How many tests does Abbas have to fail before Thomas Friedman has an idea?

Would it be too much to ask that Abbas first give his Bir Zeit speech? Or that Obama commit to veto any Palestinian state that does not result from direct negotiations that provide Israel with defensible borders? Or would that be acting like a spoiled child?

Rick Moran

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