How to Make Defeatism Look Good: Let’s Give Up and Cheer the Islamists.

by Barry Rubin

I'm not going to bash or rant about a Newsweek article about Turkey by Owen Matthews—shocking and dangerous as it is--but rather talk about what is wrong and inaccurate about it. That article is part of a new wave of defeatism sweeping the West, though it still remains subordinate to the more ostensibly attractive idea that there is no real conflict or at least one easy to fix by Western concessions.

Here's the title: "The Army Is Beaten: Why the U.S. should hail the Islamists." Yes, we should thank the Islamists for taking over Turkey. But wait a minute! The ruling AK party says it isn't Islamist. Indeed, I have been viciously attacked by them in the Turkish media for saying so. Up until now the line--including that from the regime itself--has been that we shouldn't be afraid of them because they are really just democrats. But now some are willing to face the truth and still sugarcoat it.

Matthews writes:

"The political logic should be simple. The arrest of a shadowy group of generals for allegedly plotting a bloody coup should be a victory for justice. The end of military meddling in politics should be a victory for democracy. And greater democracy should make a country more liberal and more pro-European."

Each of these sentences makes a false assumption and must be examined a bit.

Sentence one: Arresting military officers is only a victory for justice if they are guilty. Why does the author assume they are guilty? In fact, the claims are ludicrous. That a group of officers created a 5000 page plan for a coup that involved attacking mosques and massive attacks on civilians. It is one of a series of such accusations for which no real evidence has been presented, in which a widely disparate group of people have been arrested as alleged conspirators when their sole connection is that they are critics of the government.

This is ridiculously gullible. It's like the famous sentence by a newsweekly magazine that even if the Hitler diaries were forgeries (they were) that would tell us a great deal about the history of the time. If in fact the arrests were trumped-up to tame the army so that the current regime can impose a dictatorship in practice it was not a victory for justice but for injustice. Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, and Islamists in general lie a lot (and a lot more than democratic government) so why should they be taken at their word, especially when any serious examination of evidence shows the truth.

Sentence two: Of course, in general, keeping the army out of politics is a victory for democracy, but that ignores the specific history of Turkey. The army has viewed itself and been accepted there as the guardian of democracy. This history is certainly imperfect but when the country has been sliding into anarchy in the past or fallen into the hand of those who threatened to destroy the republic, the army has stepped in briefly, gotten civilians to reorganize things on a stable basis, and quickly gone back into the barracks.

The Turkish army is not like those of the Third World which hunger for power, destroy democracy, and unleash corrupt and repressive regimes. On the other hand, this article--and many others--show ignorance about the actual shifts in Turkey.

For example, there is no awareness that the regime is seizing control of the media; that the party leader (which means the prime minister for the ruling party) simply picks candidates for parliament as he pleases; that the reforms have strengthened the prime minister's power and not parliamentary democracy; and that women are being forced out of high positions. Merely weakening the army doesn't mean more democracy when in almost every other respect there is less.

Sentence three: If indeed—as is the case—the regime is systematically cracking down on the free media and imposing its control over all the institutions. This is not leading to greater but to less democracy. There should be a lot more reporting on what's happening within the country instead of just repeating the regime's claims.

Indeed, the author states:

"And with the last major obstacle to the ruling AK Party's power gone, Turkey's conservative prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will be free to implement his vision of a more Islamic Turkey. More democracy, then, doesn't necessarily lead to more liberalism, either."

The assumption here is that this is what the Turkish people want. Yet it should be noted there are some big problems for that claim. Turkey's electoral system is so weighted that the AK has received near-monopoly control on the basis of a vote that in most parliamentary democracies would have produced a coalition government.

Moreover, many or most Turks who voted for the AK weren't doing so because they wanted Islamism—as public opinion surveys clearly show--but because they thought (mistakenly, even according to this author) that it was a mildly conservative party.

And finally, the AK is seizing control over institutions so as to be sure that it will never lose another election. It is destroying Turkish democracy, a point made rather obvious by a long list of such actions over non-military institutions like the civil service, courts, and media. The author—and many others—are simply taking the regime's word for it and ignoring what the government is actually doing.

The author concludes by saying: "It's also clear that Turkey under the AK Party will remain a Western ally, and NATO will remain Ankara's most important strategic partner."

Then, this unusually candid if wrong author explains:

"How do we know? The AK Party says so, and it has no real options. There's no rival alliance, not with Iran, the Arab world, or Russia, which could possibly rival the clout Turkey has, with the second-largest Army in NATO."

Of course, Turkey has options. And here is the option the regime has chosen: To keep as much as possible the Western alliances while the content of its policy favors radical Islamist forces.

Incidentally, this "no option" argument is the root of a huge amount of confusion in the Middle East. Supposedly, Iran has "no option" but to become moderate; Syria has "no option" but to dump Iran; the Palestinian Authority has "no option" but to make peace.  Yet over and over again the local forces find an option that they are quite happy to pursue other than the one laid out for them by Western observers. They have their own view of the world, ideology, and goals (often the goal of the regime being to amass wealth and stay in power).

And one of the key factors in this process is that--rightly or wrongly--they think they are winning so why should they change course or make compromises? And certain other ideas are calculated into their list of options: soon Iran has nuclear weapons. And the divine being is on their side. And the West is weak, stupid, cowardly, and easily fooled.

Turkey is one of the main places they think they are winning, according to Syria and Iran.

Now of course, the Turkish government doesn't have to say: America stinks and we're pulling out of NATO. It can keep the benefits of these relationships, having their cake and eating it, too. But in practice Turkey is moving closer to Iran and Syria, with the leaders of both of these two countries openly pointing out that fact. The question is what does it mean for Turkey to be a Western ally in a practical sense? If it supports Iran, Syria, Hizballah, and Hamas, just how does Ankara function as a Western ally? It's meaningless.

So, the article concludes, "The world would be wise to side with the AK Party, not seek a return of the discredited generals." I'm not sure why the generals are supposed to be discredited by ludicrous accusations orchestrated by an anti-American (in practice) government which needs to destroy them. Rather, it is the current regime in Turkey that should be discredited.

Still, it's a pretty neat trick when a regime repressing Turkish democracy and increasingly siding with the enemies of the West can convince people in the West that this is a good thing.

Incidentally, the New York Times has only a slightly more nuanced editorial than the Matthews article. Among other things, it take at face value that the story about the military planning a coup was broken by a small "independent" newspaper in Turkey. Actually, that publication is a front from the regime and is most unreliable--a point one might expect the Times to have discovered. The story was part of the regime's strategy, not some journalitic scoop.

As the theme song to the television show "MASH" put it:

"The game of life is hard to play,
I'm going to lose it anyway,
The losin' card I'll someday lay;
So this is all I have to say...

"That suicide is painless…
And I can take or leave it if I please."

The Western world should reject playing that particular card as its strategy.

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 and of Turkish Studies journal.

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

 

A rational article provokes bigoted frenzy at the FT.

 

by Melanie Phillips

 

 A few days ago, the historian Andrew Roberts wrote a piece in the Financial Times trenchantly defending the presumed assassination by Israel in Dubai of the Hamas terrorist Mahmoud Habhouh. In this article, which was itself a response to two examples of standard boilerplate bigotry that the paper had run about this, Roberts wrote:

 

All that the Dubai operation will do is remind the world that the security services of states at war – and Israel's struggle with Hamas, Fatah and Hizbollah certainly constitutes that – occasionally employ targeted assassination as one of the weapons in their armoury, and that this in no way weakens their legitimacy. As for the 'separation walls' and checkpoints that one sees in Israel, the 99 per cent drop in the number of suicide bombings since their erection justifies the policy. There is simply no parallel between apartheid South Africa – where the white minority wielded power over the black majority – and the occupied territories, taken by Israel only after it was invaded by its neighbours. To make such a link is not only inaccurate, but offensive.

 

Not nearly as offensive, however, as what then followed. For as Robin Shepherd points out, the readers' comments on Roberts's article constituted an outpouring of vicious hatred, lies and libels about Israel. Not for the first time, one has to wonder at the unique and profoundly unbalanced frenzy of this particular hatred, based on a startling ignorance of the history of the Middle East which is thus comprehensively inverted. Here's a taster, if you can stomach it:

 

Is it terrorism when a thief invades my house, kills my family and ends up complaining to the 'police' after I try defend my place against him and his criminal acts? Now transport yourselves to years and years and years of ethnic cleansing, bulldozing of homes, killing of unarmed civilians in filthy refugee camps and use of prohibited weapons. Add to that the stockpiling of illegally obtained and undeclared nuclear weapons, the official statement that a certain State is 'Jewish' (probably the most blatantly racist qualification ever to grace the constitutional texts of a single State) and HAS to preserve its 'jewishness', or the catastrophe brought about by a colonial power that was too incompetent and biased to ensure a home to the REAL inhabitants of Palestine.

 

Note, inter alia, the reversal of the historical fact that it was only the Jews for whom Israel was ever their national homeland, hundreds of years before the Arabs invaded and most certainly not the 'Palestinians' who did not then exist; and the vicious double standard by which a Jewish state which gives full civil rights to its Arab and other non-Jewish inhabitants is deemed to be 'racist', while a 'Muslim' or 'Arab' state which refuses to allow one single Jew to live there is not.

Shepherd notes:

 

Some clearly attempt to equate Israel with Nazi Germany by reference to the 'abused' having become 'the abusers'. Others are obsessed with the 'Jewish' character of Israel. One (in an irony that would certainly escape him) appears to allege a Jewish conspiracy with the notion that Mossad has taken over the FT newsroom since that is the only explanation for the appearance of a very rare piece of pro-Israeli writing. One refers obliquely to the 'chosen people'. Another describes as 'laughable' the ancient Jewish presence in the Middle East.

 

But as Shepherd observes, the really disturbing thing is not this tsunami of bigotry – alas, it is now all too common in Britain – but the fact that this filth has been up on the FT website for days without anyone there thinking that the FT should not be playing host to such incitement to hatred.

 

The FT is most certainly no longer the standard-bearer of cool and rational objectivity that it once was.

 

Melanie Phillips

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

 

Iranian Clocks, Tick Tock, Tick Tock.

 

by  Michael Ledeen

The failed Israeli ex-PM, Ehud Barak, gives us the benefit of his deep thinking about Iran.  It’s an Einsteinian metaphor about relative rates of the passage of time:

The clock for the Iranian regime’s downfall is ticking, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a lecture at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Friday. However, “it’s clear to me that the clock toward the collapse of this regime works much slower than the clock which ticks toward Iran becoming a nuclear military power,” Barak said.

How does he know that? — we  (or at least some of us) wonder.  I can imagine that the Israelis think they know the timetable for the Iranian atomic bomb, but I don’t think anyone has the schedule for the regime’s final days.  And anyway, this is a case where static analysis is totally inappropriate.  Any scenario has to include the likelihood of new variables being introduced.  There’s probably a big sabotage operation going on against the atomic project, and some day somebody in the so-called Western world might decide to help the Iranian opposition speed up the “downfall clock.”

With regard to the atomic clock, I am told that the Iranian regime intends to announce two more hitherto-secret enrichment sites in early April.  One is near Mashad, over by the Afghan border.  The other is in the mountains east of Tehran.  In keeping with the regime’s constant use of deception and misdirection, you can be pretty sure that there are other secret sites as well.

Does this mean that the mullahs are close to putting a nuclear warhead on an accurate missile?  Beats me.  But while various “analysts” give us their theories about just when Bomb Day will arrive, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps continue to kill Americans, and nobody seems to care about that.

I made this point in last week’s debate with Flynt Leverett at the Atlantic Council in Washington, and to confirm my claim, neither Leverett, nor the moderator, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, nor any of the sizeable audience, responded to it.  This drives me crazy;  it’s why I wrote Accomplice to Evil.  We refuse to see our evil enemies for what they are, and we refuse to act in time to prevent massive catastrophe.

No doubt Barak knows this, and also knows that, unless things change (hard to imagine), Israel will eventually have to do something on its own.  What’s harder to understand is why Israel is doing nothing to help the opposition, which is the only policy that holds out a chance of real success, and would avoid the terrible train wreck we can all see arriving in slow motion.

As for the other clock, the one ticking off the lifespan of the Islamic Republic, the mullahs continue their murderous and sadistic campaign against the citizens of Iran, and the citizens search for new ways to show their contempt.  The regime relentlessly arrests dissidents and accuses them of actions that only a fanatical regime in crisis could concoct.  For example, they went after Mohammed Maliki, 76 yrs old, the first chancellor of Tehran U after the Revolution, and arrested him during treatment for prostate cancer.  Maliki said to his captors, “I was afraid you would let me die in my bed,” and has refused to “repent” or confess.  He’s accused of being a Mohareb, one who fights against God.  They execute such men in Iran nowadays for criticizing the regime.  I honor them, and wish my leaders would do the same, instead of pretending to have a serious Iran policy.

While we’re at it, let’s honor Omid Montazeri.  His father was one of the victims of the mass murder of political prisoners in 1988.  Omid is a blogger, journalist and a final year law student at Allameh University.  His articles on cultural issues have been published by many official newspapers.  His mother was arrested shortly after Christmas, and Omid went to the Intelligence Ministry to inquire about her, whereupon he was thrown into the hellhole, “tried” without access to a lawyer, and condemned to six years.

And let’s honor the Kurds, victims of mass brutality in which the Turks and the Syrians are surely complicit, and about which the usual Western accomplices to evil are typically silent.

Some of those pious people who bleed oceans of ink for the sweet “victims of Guantanamo” would be more convincing if they could spare a few harsh words for the monsters who govern Iran, and who seek our death and destruction.  Demands for civility in Iran might well have an effect, for the regime is very uncertain about its ability to repress the people.  In early February, they had to bus tens of thousands of thugs to Tehran, and the Basij have announced they will increase their operational “districts” in Tehran from 6 to 22 in the near future.  Headquarters for security forces, some of which are hidden in mosques, are scheduled to increase to over 700 later this year.  Khamenei recently forbade a memorial to Mohammad Mosadegh, the former prime minister overthrown, with American and British support, in 1953.  He was secular, and thus his memory threatens the anxious dreams of the supreme leader.  In like manner, the history of pre-Islamic Persia is being purged from school texts, and all teachers and professors deemed insufficiently loyal are being fired from schools and universities.

In the face of all this, and despite the feckless silence or tired euphemisms from our spokeswimps (as per expressions of “concern” from State), the opposition fights on.  All demonstrations are banned, and even some recent concerts have been cancelled for fear of a few hundred people gathering in one place.  But the Green leader and his wife continue to proclaim the thoughts of most Iranians.

Mousavi:

Our nation wants a progressive foreign policy and not a hostile, unfriendly foreign policy. Our nation wants that, under pretense of privatization, industries are not controlled by government entities and Sepah [Islamic Revolutionary Guards]. Our nation wants that our teachers and labor forces are not beaten or attacked for asking for their rights. Our nation wants that women don’t become subjects of accusations and attacks for wanting their equal rights. Our nation wants that the voices of all are heard from the national media and not only the voices of the few. Our nation does not like to be divided into two groups: “God’s Party” and “Devil’s Party”. Our nation does not like their letters, text messages and phone conversations to be monitored. Our nation does not like their freedom to be limited, their constitution to be ignored. Our nation does not like their newspapers to be banned. Our nation does not like daily instructions [by the government] of what is allowed to be written about, or talked about. The desires of our nation are also the desires of the Green Movement.

His wife:

In her statement, which was published today at the threshold of the International Women’s Day…she declared that the “family protection” bill is based on “hedonism” and will destroy the family unit.

Rahnavard added that the bill was “discriminatory and anti-woman” and the direct product of the Islamic Republic’s “dominant culture and made-up laws.”

Articles 23 and 25 of the “family protection” bill, which was prepared two years ago and is now under review at the parliament, have aroused great controversy in Iran.

According to article 23 of the bill, men are allowed to marry several women concurrently without obtaining the approval of their first wife so long as they obtain a legal permit by showing financial means.

Article 25 maintains that the prenuptial sum agreed upon to be paid to the wife in case of a divorce, referred to as mehrieh in Iran, is subject to government taxing.

These two articles were previously omitted from the bill under pressure from women’s rights activists, but were recently reintroduced back into the bill by the Cultural Commission of the parliament.

Zahra Rahnavard also condemns “inequality of men and women and laws pertaining to divorce and citizenship” as examples of “backward and discriminatory” laws against women.

She writes: “I am certain that the liberated men of our country are also pained and ashamed by this discrimination.”

Zahra Rahnavard also addresses the continued arrest of women’s rights activists who have been repeatedly detained for trying to defend their rights by participating in gatherings and for their media activities. She writes: “The reputation and legitimacy of a system is tied with the respect it dons on its people and their demands, especially the level of its respect for its women.”

We now have our third female secretary of state.  Not one of them seems inclined to organize an ongoing condemnation of the brutal misogyny that governs Iran.

They are accomplices to evil.  A great evil.

 

Michael Ledeen

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

 

Pardon Me, Obama Administration, But Isn't Your Policy on Fire?

 

by Barry Rubin

The story of the U.S. engagement with Syria and the sanctions issue regarding Iran's nuclear program are fascinating. Each day there's some new development showing how the Obama Administration is acting like a deer standing in the middle of a busy highway admiring the pretty automobile headlights.

Or to put it a different way, it is like watching the monster sneak up behind someone. Even though you know he's not going to turn around, you can't help but watch in fascinated horror and yelling out: "Look out!" But he pays no attention.

So I'm not just writing about these two issues in isolation but as very appropriate symbols of everything wrong with Western perceptions of the Middle East (and everywhere else) and the debates over foreign policy (and everything else) nowadays.

On Syria, for the most recent episodes of the story see here and here but, briefly, the Syrian government keeps punching the United States in the face as Washington ignores it.

But now, on March 1, a new record is set. The place: State Department daily press conference; the main character, departmental spokesman Philip J. Crowley. A reporter wants to know how the administration views the fact that the moment the U.S. delegation left after urging Syrian President Bashar al-Asad to move away from Iran and stop supporting Hizballah, Syria's dictator invited in Iran's dictator along with Hizballah's leader and Damascus moved closer to Iran and Hizballah. Indeed, Asad said regarding Hizballah, "To support the resistance is a moral, patriotic and legal duty."



In other words, the exact opposite of what the United States requested. Is the government annoyed, does it want to express some anger or threat?so

Let's listen:

MR. CROWLEY: Well, I would point it in a slightly different direction. It came several days after an important visit to Damascus by Under Secretary Bill Burns….We want to see Syria play a more constructive role in the region. We also want – to the extent that it has the ability to talk to Iran directly, we want to make sure that Syria's communicating to Iran its concerns about its role in the region and the direction, the nature of its nuclear ambitions…."

In other words, I'm going to ignore the fact that the first thing that Asad did after Burns' visit was a love fest with Iran and Hizballah. But even more amazing, what Crowley said is that the U.S. government thinks Syria, Iran's partner and ally, is upset that Iran is being aggressive and expansionist. And it actually expects the Syrians to urge Iran not to build nuclear weapons!

One Lebanese observer called this approach, "Living in an alternate universe."

Meanwhile, as the administration congratulates itself on explaining to Syria that it should reduce support for Hizballah, Israeli military intelligence releases an assessment that Syria is giving Hizballah more and better arms than ever before.

Oh wait! Now it's March 3 so time for something new. The ófficial Syrian press agency reports that Syria's government opposed an Arab League proposal to support indirect Palestinian Authority-Israel negotiations. Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem asserted that Syria is "no way part" of the consensus supporting the plan.

But guess what? First, Senator John Kerry opened a meeting of his Senate Foreign Relations Committee by erroneously praising Syria as supporting the plan, giving this as an example of Damascus's  moderation. The New York Times quoted from the Syrian report, making it sound like Moallem is praising the United States, but left out the paragraphs attacking the U.S.-backed plan! And the State Department circulated the Times article as proof of its success in winning over Syria when in fact Syrian behavior proved the exact opposite!

Oh, and that's not all! Not only did Syria oppose the plan but it attacked the Arab states that supported the U.S. effort and blasted the Palestinian Authority for not following the path of resistance, that is urged it to carry out terrorist violence against Israel.

Hey, that's not all either. Syria also issued a statement accusing Israel of "framing" it by dropping uranium particles from the air to make it seem that Syria had been building a nuclear reactor for making nuclear weapons. Not exactly evidence of rational moderation I'd say.

Meanwhile, on the Iran front, it is now March 2010 and still—six months after the first administration deadline and three months after the second deadline—there are no additional sanctions on Iran yet. In fact, the process has barely started.

Even former Democratic presidential candidate and head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry has taken a stronger stance than the administration.

He supports the congressional call for tough sanctions to block Iran's energy industry which easily passed both houses. "I believe that the most biting and important sanctions would be those on the energy side." But the Obama administration wants far more limited sanctions focused on a small group in the regime elite.

Yet sanctions are getting further away rather than closer. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted at this by pulling back from her early prediction of sanctions by April, now saying it might be "some time in the next several months."

At the same time, we have endless evidence that the claim the Russians (and Chinese and others) are coming, to support sanctions, is nonsense. Just before meeting with Clinton to discuss the issue, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (or Lula for short) explained, "Peace in the world does not mean isolating someone." (Quick, invite him to explain this to the anti-Israel forces in Europe and elsewhere).

But it's outright amusing to see the efforts to spin the Russian and Chinese position. In this regard, the prize for this week should be won by an AP dispatch. The headline is: "Russia moves closer to Iran sanctions over nukes."

And what is the basis for this claim that there has just been "the strongest sign to date that the Kremlin was prepared to drop traditional opposition to such penalties if Tehran remain obstinate?" This statement from President Dmitry Medvedev:

"We believe that [engagement with Iran is] not over yet, that we can still reach an agreement," he said. "But if we don't succeed, Russia is ready — along with our partners…to consider the question of adopting sanctions."

Get it? When Russia decides that talking with Iran won't work, then at that point—how long from now would that be?—it will "consider" sanctions. Actually, he said the same thing last August, a statement trumpeted in September by the New York Times as proving Obama's policy was working.

There is more clarity with the Chinese, sort of, though the pretense is also made that they might do something. But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang put it this way: "We believe there is still room for diplomatic efforts and the parties concerned should intensify those efforts." At most, the optimists suggest, in the words of this Reuters dispatch:

"China will resist any proposed sanctions that threaten flows of oil and Chinese investments, but most believe it will accept a more narrowly cast resolution that has more symbolic than practical impact."

Yes, that's the kind of thing that already existed four years ago. Some progress.

Is it too much to ask policymakers to pay attention to what's going on occasionally?

So let's leave it to Ahmadinejad to sum up how things seem to Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, and lots of Arabs both pro- and anti-American:

The Americans, Ahmadinejad said, "not only have failed to gain any power, but also are forced to leave the region. They are leaving their reputation, image, and power behind in order to escape.…The [American] government has no influence [to stop].…the expansion of Iran-Syria ties, Syria-Turkey ties, and Iran-Turkey ties--God willing, Iraq too will join the circle...."

In other words, Obama Administration policy isn't making the radicals more moderate but rather--by feeding their arrogance and belief in American weakness--making them more aggressive.

 

 

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

 

Smoke and mirrors over 'lawfare'.

 

by   Melanie Phillips

 

The Israeli paper Ha'aretz , along with the Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, appear to have been taken in by Gordon Brown's noisy but misleading announcement in today's Daily Telegraph that he will change the law to prevent the abuse of 'universal jurisdiction' through threats to arrest visiting Israeli dignatories for 'war crimes', an abuse which has caused the cancellation of a number of high-profile visits by Israelis to the UK of which the latest was the planned visit by Livni. Brown wrote:

 

There is a case now, therefore, for the evidential basis on which arrest warrants can be allowed to be tougher and for restricting the right to prosecute the narrow range of crimes falling under universal jurisdiction to the Crown Prosecution Service alone.

 

Livni and Ha'aretz naively take this at face value to assume that the UK is to change the law. But this is not so. Brown has merely said he intends to change the law and will consult on the best way to do this. But with a general election to be held by June at the very latest, and with no legislation actually being tabled, there is clearly no time for any such change in the law to occur.

 

It is actually very easy to end this abuse, as Brown suggests; all that has to happen is for the consent of the Attorney-General or Director of Public Prosecutions to be required before any arrest warrant can be issued, just as is now required for any prosecution. This should be introduced not just in respect of visiting Israelis but to cover any other such vexatious and oppressive arrest stunts. But the reason Brown will not do this is that more than 100 Labour MPs have given notice they will revolt against any such infringement of 'ancient English liberties' – a cover for their actual motivation which is their hatred of Israel.

 

Brown's announcement today, and the fact that he personally associated himself with the case for a change in the law, are merely designed to camouflage the diplomatically embarrassing fact that he is in fact unable to take measures to prevent 'lawfare' in the UK against Britain's ally by extremist activists determined to delegitimise Israel over its defence against genocidal attack -- because so many of his own MPs share that same despicable objective.

 

 

 Melanie Phillips

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

 

 

 

Another Tack: An Arab land.

 

by Sarah Honig

Were Israelis to unconditionally submit to ever-mutating Arab historiography, all attachments to the Western Wall and Mount of Olives would have to be abjectly relinquished.

 

Who says we're not winning the war for the world's hearts and minds? Even Arabs seem swayed by the argument that the oldest ties to this land are the ones that bind.

Apparently they were converted to the view that everything boils down to who was here first, who left all the place names of all this country's towns and villages (including those which conquistador Arabs took over), who embedded this unlikely location in world consciousness and rendered it a cultural/religious byword in the farthest climes, whose national cradle this was, the hub of whose beliefs and aspirations this arid little territorial tract had been from time immemorial.

The Arabs, obviously, haven't become overnight lovers of Zion. But despite their unabated enmity to the Zionist project – Israel – they commandeer Zionism's logic and Zionism's case and put these to their own use with a set of preposterous counterclaims that go spectacularly unchallenged in our postmodern existence. With moral-relativists throwing history to the wind, any absurdity can be propagated with colossal impudence and impunity.

The latest example was just furnished in the Knesset by Israeli-Arab MK Taleb a-Sanaa (Ta'al-Ra'am). In a plenum debate he embraced the premise that the land belongs to its earliest claimants: "You say that Abraham purchased Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, but the man who sold it to him was a Palestinian Arab. Consequently, we were here first and Hebron is eternally ours."

Thereby a-Sanaa made a huge leap from traditional Arab portrayals of Abraham as an Arab. A-Sanaa now categorizes him as the Israelites' father and stakes Arab claims on real-estate vendor Ephron the Hittite (although the mosque which Arabs constructed over the second-holiest Jewish shrine is called the Ibrahimi Mosque – Ibrahim being the Arabic pronunciation for the Hebrew Avraham).

THIS ISN'T an irrelevant frivolous footnote. A-Sanaa isn't the first Arab to reinvent the past to suit current interests. Indeed, this is a long-established vogue. Way before the homicidal agitation of British-appointed Jerusalem mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, it was a widespread Arab sport to hurl human excrement from atop the Temple Mount at Jews praying below. But Husseini decided to usurp the wall's sanctity for Islam, decreeing it to be the hitching-post where Muhammad tethered his super-steed al-Buraq. That presumably overrode and erased all Jewish associations to the site.

The insistence of Jews to keep praying at the remnant of their Holiest of Holies, despite mounting Arab violence, eventually gave birth to Husseini's hysterical incitement charging Jewish takeover attempts of al-Aksa Mosque. His shrill provocation culminated in the 1929 countrywide "slaughter-the-Jews" campaign, most notorious for the Hebron massacre that disrupted many centuries of continuous Jewish presence in town.

It's there that Arabs now riot because updated incitement tells them that the inclusion of the Cave of the Patriarchs in the list of to-be-preserved Jewish national heritage sites will compromise their freedom of worship.

The irony is that Arab notions of freedom don't extend to others. Exactly a hundred years ago Izhak Ben-Zvi (in time Israel's second president) and his wife Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi hiked to Hebron. Each described, in separate books, how they were barred from the cave.

Ben-Zvi wrote: "The entrance to the Patriarchs' Cave was prohibited to non-Muslims... Jews were allowed to climb no higher than the seventh step in the courtyard. Only brave-hearted Jewish women dared enter, masquerading in Arab garb and their faces veiled according to Arab custom."

Rachel recalled: "Hebron's Jewish women would sometimes infiltrate the cave veiled and costumed like Arabs. Only by stealth could they pray at our forefathers' tombs. When Hebron's Arab fanaticism escalated, Jews were forbidden even to glance into the cave... Hate spewed from the Arab guards' eyes and from Arab worshipers who brushed against us on their way in. We arrived at the steps and stood silent. I refused to climb the seven permitted stairs. The insult was too searing."

So much for Arab pluralism and tolerance. Actually, the Arabs don't demand liberality of us. They want it all and they want us out, as they did when their forebears descended on hapless Jews' homes over 80 years ago and hideously hacked innocents to death.

WERE ISRAELIS to unconditionally submit to ever-mutating Arab historiography, then all attachments to the Western Wall and Mount of Olives would have to be abjectly relinquished. By the wisdom of revised Arab chronicles, the Obama administration's penchant for appeasement, UNESCO and other UN organs, it behooves us to obey. Hence Jerusalem isn't one whit different from Hebron or Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, another designated heritage site.

The latest Arab attempt to expunge Jewish connections is the contention that rather than Rachel's, the tomb is of Bilal Ibn-Rabah, an African slave and Muhammad's muezzin. The problem is that Damascus's Bab Saghir Cemetery has dibs on what's said to be Bilal's grave.

All this underscores two simultaneous trends: the confiscation of Jewish history and the adoption of counterfeit pre-Abrahamic Canaanite identities. Under Yasser Arafat it became fashionable to fabricate supposed Canaanite ceremonies and ordain Canaanites as Palestinians (though, already by biblical testimony, Canaanites assimilated among Israelites, while the Palestine moniker was minted by Romans over a millennium thereafter).

Arafat insisted to Bill Clinton at Camp David that no Jewish temple ever existed. This is now official PA mantra. PA headliner cleric Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi proclaims repeatedly that "Jerusalem had always only been an Arab and Islamic city." The Cave of the Patriarchs, he declared, "is a pure mosque, which Jewish presence defiles. Jews have no right to pray there, much less claim any bond to Hebron – an Arab city for 5,000 years... All Palestine is holy Muslim soil. Jews are foreign interlopers."

Back in 1950 poet Natan Alterman penned a tongue-in-cheek reply to a near-identical proclamation ("Palestine is an Arab country and always was. Foreigners have no part in it.") Entitled "An Arab Land," Alterman's verses appeared on the Labor daily Davar's front page. By replacing biblical Hebrew names with Arabic adaptations, Alterman appeared to amplify the spirit of progressive Arab scholarship. I translated it two decades ago:

A clear night. Treetops shiver,
Vibrating the view with an airy whisper.
From above, Arab evening stars
Sparkle over an Arab land.

The stars wink and flicker
And bestow their quivering glitter
Upon the tranquil city Al-Kuds
In which once reigned King Daoud.

And from there they gaze and witness
The city of El Halil in the distance.
The city of Father Ibrahim's tomb,
Ibrahim who begat Is'hak.

And then the clever rays so fast
Rush the golden glow to cast
Where the waters of the river El Urdun flow,
Where Ya'acub once did go.

A clear night. With an airy wink
The stars legitimately blink
Over the mountains of an Arab land
Which Mussa from afar beheld.

 

 

Sarah Honig
was The Jerusalem Post's long-time political correspondent (as well as for years of the now-defunct Davar). She headed the Post's Tel Aviv bureau, wrote daily analyses of the political scene as well as in-depth features.

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

Heralding Israel's heritage.

 

by  Aron U. Raskas

 

The nation must defend its historical ties to the land against those who deny them

 

Jerusalem - JERUSALEM--The Israeli government adds two culturally rich, millennium-old historic sites to a list of national treasures, and riots break out, followed by international condemnation. Yet, it is precisely this cynical, albeit predictable, response that demonstrates why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was right to add the Tomb of Rachel and the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs to Israel's National Heritage Sites.

 

There is no nation with firmer roots in a land than the Jewish people in the greater land of Israel. Yet, that great heritage has been under assault by Arab protagonists and their pusillanimous patrons for the longest time, and this has intensified in recent years.

 

As the Arab people began to recognize their inability to defeat the Jewish people on the battlefield, they began to cleverly craft a strategy of burying Israel's legacy in the arena of world opinion. This strategy seeks to eradicate the Jewish connection to the land and erode the support for Israel's legitimacy and very existence. Indeed, the increasingly global campaign to delegitimize Israel has been bolstered significantly by the reticence of past Israeli governments and other Jewish opinion leaders to assert the great Jewish legacy in this land.

 

The arrogation to itself of the "Palestinian" mantle was the first formidable success for the Arab population that shared with the Jewish people the land that came to be known as Palestine. Likewise, 50 years ago, there was nary a reference to a "West Bank" until that term was introduced by Palestinian Arab propagandists to eliminate further references to the time-honored titles of Judea and Samaria, as the land had been routinely referred to in maps, travel guides, newspapers and even U.N. resolutions.

 

The continuing threats and acts of violence each time Israel seeks to take a step that reflects its great historic ties to the land are specifically calculated to deter just such steps. Thus, the true reason for the 1996 Arab riots was to prevent Israel from opening a Herodian Tunnel that demonstrated to the world that the Jewish Temple reached well into what has only in more modern times been referred to as the Muslim Quarter. This too was the basis for riots in 2000, when Ariel Sharon dared to walk on the Temple Mount, also known as the Haram al-Sharif, and assert the inalienable right of Jewish people to cleave to that holiest of sites.

 

In a similar fashion, Palestinian Arabs have sought to eradicate signs of Jewish heritage throughout the land. Brutal excavations on the Temple Mount by the Islamic Waqf destroyed Jewish archaeological treasures of great significance. Likewise, as Israel relinquished control of territories to the Palestinian Authority in 2000, Palestinians savagely destroyed Joseph's Tomb in Nablus and a 1,500-year-old synagogue in Jericho under the watchful eyes of Palestinian police. The most recent hysterical protest over Israel simply naming two ancient sites as significant to the Jewish people is simply the thin end of a wedge designed to create yet another chasm between the Jewish people and their historic ties to the land.

 

Mr. Netanyahu was correct when he observed that for "a people that doesn't remember its past, its present is uncertain and its future is unclear." Yet, the far more troubling paradigm is that a world disabused of a nation's rich historic past might ultimately deny that nation's claims to its land.

 

A nation that declines to assert its historic truths does not deserve its place among the community of nations. And a government that cowers in the face of its enemies' condemnations and muzzles its historic claims in response has abdicated its basic obligation to defend the rights of its people.

 

Mr. Netanyahu -- beginning with his decision to open the Herodian tunnel in 1996 and continuing with his recent emphasis on teaching Jewish values and history, and the public assertion of Jewish ties to important historic sites -- has correctly recognized the critical need to trumpet the historical narrative of the Jewish people in their land. The raw nerve that he exposed in doing so only demonstrates just how important this is.

 

For Israel to survive, it must continue to carry this message to the world at large, precisely because its enemies seek to prevent it from doing so.

 

 

Aron U. Raskas, a Baltimore attorney currently residing in Jerusalem, has held leadership positions in several prominent U.S. Jewish organizations.

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

 

 

Why the Palestinians Don't Want a State.

 

by David Gutmann

President Barack Obama will soon be entering the lion's den of Middle East politics with the same conviction that has guided all his predecessors -- that the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict lies in the Two-State Solution, leading to the early establishment of a Palestinian state.

The received wisdom has it that the Palestinians wish above all things to have a state of their own, but that their fervent wishes are frustrated by Israeli delaying tactics, such as endless arguments over West Bank settlements, security fences, water rights, and the like.

While the Israelis probably do not want a Palestinian state on their borders, an entity that could easily become Hamastan II (and yet another missile launching platform), there is increasing evidence that the Palestinians themselves are of two minds about the prospect of their own statehood.

The first piece of evidence is the unchallenged observation that Palestinian leaders have rejected or sabotaged every proposal for statehood since 1947. In that year the Palestinians rejected the UN-sponsored division of the former British mandate into Jewish and Arab states on the grounds that they did not want to share Palestine with the infidel Jews. Instead of developing trheir own state, they tried through armed conflict to eradicate the nascent Jewish state. Their leaders took this big step just two years after the end of the Holocaust; and, guided by Hitler's associate Haj Amin Al-Husseini, their implicit goal was to continue the slaughter. But if you start a war of politicide plus extermination you had better win it; otherwise, like Hitler, or Tojo, or the Palestinians of 1948, you will very likely end up with a bombed-out wasteland, or -- in the Palestinian case -- as a defeated rabble of landless refugees.

The Palestinian leaders did not draw the obvious conclusions from what they call their "Naqba," their catastrophe. Instead, the next time a state was practically handed to them, they again turned it down, in favor of war with the Jews. Thus, when Clinton and Barak, reviving the stalled Oslo Accords of 1994, made Arafat an offer he couldn't refuse -- 95% of the West Bank, control of the Temple Mount, border adjustments, etc. -- he refused it, while giving an ultimatum that only a thoroughly defeated Israel could accept: the resettlement of some five million "refugees" within the boundaries of the Jewish State. No diplomatic pause to negotiate this new demarche: just "take it or leave it," and Arafat flounced out, to fire up the second, soon to be crushed, Intifada.

Why don't the Palestinians learn their lesson? Why won't they accept the grant of statehood? To repeat, perhaps because they don't really want their own country? There are, after all, many bounties attached to their current status, perks that would disappear under the condition of statehood.

This is the age of the sanctified victim; and any person or group who can claim that title is automatically in a state of grace. Nobody is allowed to "blame the victim," and so these lucky unfortunates can follow any course, however bloody, so long as they can blame their violence on their victimized condition. Convincing much of the world -- including too many Jews -- that they were the embodiment of the new Christ, the latest targets of Jewish savagery in the holy land, the Palestinians year ago captured the victim's high-ground, and have since worked their claim for great profit. They are the darlings of the UN and of European elites: The West Bank hums with idealistic foreign youth eager to interpose their bodies between Palestinian flesh and Israeli tanks, as well as with foreign NGOs eager to drip healing valuta over the physical, psychological and financial wounds of this martyred folk. Unable to beat the Jews militarily, the Palestinians are winning the moral victories, and these are leading to decisive political victories as an outraged world threatens to sanction and boycott Israel.

But under statehood, the Palestinians will no longer have their special charisma as the world's premier victims, innocent agrarians suffering under a harsh occupation. When the fickle world turns its attention to the latest victim du jour, their welfare benefits are likely to be sharply cut,

Then too, the wiser Palestinians, who remember Arafat and his predatory crew, have their own good reasons for quietly resisting statehood. They realize that, should they gain their own country, externally imposed Israeli rule would be replaced by internally based oppression, by the corrupt or fanatic leaders who -- via factional warfare and the Arab politics of assassination -- typically reach the top in their societies.

Thus far, we have been looking at the Palestinians' practical reasons for avoiding statehood. They don't want to lose their world-celebrity status, nor the funding that goes with it, and they don't want either the likes of Hamas forcing Sharia law on them, or the likes of Arafat robbing them blind. But the Palestinian resistance to statehood has also less rational but equally compelling bases.

Foremost among these is the legacy of collective shame. With the possible exception of the Japanese, no culture is so vulnerable to a sense of shame and humiliation as the Arab world. Even in the 21st century, Arabs continue daily to lament Crusades that occurred nearly a thousand years ago. They still feel shame over the loss of Spanish Andalusia ("Andaluz" to the Arabs), their last European redoubt, evacuated in the 15th century. More recently, Palestinian Arabs have been exposed to traumatic humiliation by their defeat during the Israeli War of Independence. I remember how they initiated that war with febrile enthusiasm, confident that their magnificent Islamic warriors would sweep away the puny, cowardly Jewish opposition, certain that the Palestinians would inherit all of the Holy Land. But when push came to shove, instead of chasing the Jews into the sea, it was the majority of Arabs who ran away from the poorly armed Israeli Hagana (a militia that added insult to Arab injury by fielding women).

For example, the local Arabs had cleared out of Sidn'a Ali, a fairly prosperous village on the Sharon Plain, before our Palmach contingent had even arrived in their neighborhood. They ran on the rumor of our coming, and before our sparsely armed troops could have evicted them. The same drama was enacted across Palestine. A vast Palestinian and leftist PR apparatus has been developed to deny this truth, but the Naqba was largely self-inflicted.

The refugees' reluctant hosts in neighboring Arab states were not as sympathetic as Europe's Leftists: "You Palestinian whores! You sold your land to the Jews, and then ran away!!" The refugees, who had shamed not only themselves but also the whole Arab nation, were not generally accepted as citizens of the Arab countries to which they fled. Instead, they were penned up in fetid camps, where many remain to this day.

The calculus of Shame dictates that the Palestinian stigma of defeat can only be removed by a bloody victory over the Jews who inflicted it. By the same token, their state cannot be handed to the Palestinians by some benign international arbiter, or by a generous Israeli government. These are people who elect Hamas, who celebrate the "Victories" of Hezbollah, and who dance in the street when Israeli teenagers are blown up in a pizza parlor. The gift of a state that was not won in battle would only increase Palestinian shame. The Israelis tore their state out of the heart of Palestine; in order to get the Palestinians dancing again, their shame must be exported, to become Israeli shame. The Palestinian state must -- in an act of bloody reparation -- be torn out of the heart of Israel. Until a defeated Israel begs for terms, or better yet, is utterly destroyed, no final peace is possible, and no state otherwise gained can be acceptable to the Palestinians.

President Obama should realize that his dream of a Palestinian state can only be realized after a new, hi-tech Holocaust of Jews. These unfortunates would most likely die under a cloud of missiles from Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Gaza, even as Obama counsels them earnestly against any "disproportionate reaction."

 

David Gutmann

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

 

Obama Talks, Syria Mocks.

by Elliot Abrams

The Obama administration has from the start seen Syria as a leading case for engagement. Barack Obama said so during his presidential campaign (announcing he would meet Bashar al Assad without preconditions) and repeated this policy view again last summer:

We’ve started to see some diplomatic contacts between the United States and Syria. There are aspects of Syrian behavior that trouble us, and we think that there is a way that Syria can be much more constructive on a whole host of these issues. But, as you know, I’m a believer in engagement and my hope is that we can continue to see progress on that front.

The engagement with Syria continues apace. Here are the key elements.

* High level envoys have been sent to Damascus: Under Secretary of State William Burns visited Syria in mid-February, the highest ranking U.S. official to set foot there in more than five years, and Middle East envoy George Mitchell has visited three times. High-ranking Central Command officers have been sent to Damascus to discuss cooperation against terrorism.

* President Obama has now nominated an ambassador to Damascus, the first since Margaret Scobey was withdrawn in 2005 after the murder of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in Lebanon (which was widely blamed on the Assad regime).

* The president has also removed the American block to Syria’s attempt to join the World Trade Organization.

* The United States has eased some export licenses for Syria, mostly in the area of aircraft.

* Syria’s deputy foreign minister was invited to Washington in October, the first such visit in several years.

So there is certainly “progress on that front,” to use the president’s words. But when does “engagement” become “appeasement”? The case of U.S. policy toward Syria suggests that, here at least, the two approaches may not be far apart.

 

 

Elliot Abrams
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