A Dangerous Silence.

 

by  Ed Koch

I weep as I witness outrageous verbal attacks on Israel. What makes these verbal assaults and distortions all the more painful is that they are being orchestrated by President Obama.

For me, the situation today recalls what occurred in 70 AD when the Roman emperor Vespasian launched a military campaign against the Jewish nation and its ancient capital of Jerusalem. Ultimately, Masada, a rock plateau in the Judean desert became the last refuge of the Jewish people against the Roman onslaught. I have been to Jerusalem and Masada. From the top of Masada, you can still see the remains of the Roman fortifications and garrisons, and the stones and earth of the Roman siege ramp that was used to reach Masada. The Jews of Masada committed suicide rather than let themselves be taken captive by the Romans.

In Rome itself, I have seen the Arch of Titus with the sculpture showing enslaved Jews and the treasures of the Jewish Temple of Solomon with the Menorah, the symbol of the Jewish state, being carted away as booty during the sacking of Jerusalem.

Oh, you may say, that is a far fetched analogy. Please hear me out.

The most recent sacking of the old city of Jerusalem - its Jewish quarter - took place under the Jordanians in 1948 in the first war between the Jews and the Arabs, with at least five Muslim states - Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq - seeking to destroy the Jewish state. At that time, Jordan conquered East Jerusalem and the West Bank and expelled every Jew living in the Jewish quarter of the old city, destroying every building, including the synagogues in the old quarter and expelling from every part of Judea and Samaria every Jew living there so that for the first time in thousands of years, the old walled city of Jerusalem and the adjacent West Bank were "Judenrein" -- a term used by the Nazis to indicate the forced removal or murder of all Jews..

Jews had lived for centuries in Hebron, the city where Abraham, the first Jew, pitched his tent and where he now lies buried, it is believed, in a tomb with his wife, Sarah, as well as other ancient Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs. I have visited that tomb and at the time asked an Israeli soldier guarding it - so that it was open to all pilgrims, Christians, Muslims and Jews -- "where is the seventh step leading to the tomb of Abraham and Sarah," which was the furthest entry for Jews when the Muslims were the authority controlling the holy place? He replied, "When we retook and reunited the whole city of Jerusalem and conquered the West Bank in 1967, we removed the steps, so now everyone can enter," whereas when Muslims were in charge of the tomb, no Jew could enter it. And I did.

I am not a religious person. I am comfortable in a synagogue, but generally attend only twice a year, on the high holidays. When I entered the tomb of Abraham and Sarah, as I recall, I felt connected with my past and the traditions of my people. One is a Jew first by birth and then by religion. Those who leave their religion, remain Jews forever by virtue of their birth. If they don't think so, let them ask their neighbors, who will remind them. I recall the words of the columnist Robert Novak, who was for most of his life hostile to the Jewish state of Israel in an interview with a reporter stating that while he had converted to Catholicism, he was still a cultural Jew. I remain with pride a Jew both by religion and culture.

My support for the Jewish state has been long and steadfast. Never have I thought that I would leave the U.S. to go and live in Israel. My loyalty and love is first to the U.S. which has given me, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants, so much. But, I have also long been cognizant of the fact that every night when I went to sleep in peace and safety, there were Jewish communities around the world in danger. And there was one country, Israel, that would give them sanctuary and would send its soldiers to fight for them and deliver them from evil, as Israel did at Entebbe in 1976.

I weep today because my president, Barack Obama, in a few weeks has changed the relationship between the U.S. and Israel from that of closest of allies to one in which there is an absence of trust on both sides. The contrast between how the president and his administration deals with Israel and how it has decided to deal with the Karzai administration in Afghanistan is striking.

The Karzai administration, which operates a corrupt and opium-producing state, refuses to change its corrupt ways - the president's own brother is believed by many to run the drug traffic taking place in Afghanistan - and shows the utmost contempt for the U.S. is being hailed by the Obama administration as an ally and publicly treated with dignity. Karzai recently even threatened to join the Taliban if we don't stop making demands on him. Nevertheless, Karzai is receiving a gracious thank-you letter from President Obama. The New York Times of April 10th reported, "...that Mr. Obama had sent Mr. Karzai a thank-you note expressing gratitude to the Afghan leader for dinner in Kabul. ‘It was a respectful letter,' General Jones said."

On the other hand, our closest ally - the one with the special relationship with the U.S., has been demeaned and slandered, held responsible by the administration for our problems in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. The plan I suspect is to so weaken the resolve of the Jewish state and its leaders that it will be much easier to impose on Israel an American plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, leaving Israel's needs for security and defensible borders in the lurch.

I believe President Obama's policy is to create a whole new relationship with the Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, and Iraq as a counter to Iran - The Tyrannosaurus Rex of the Muslim world which we are now prepared to see in possession of a nuclear weapon. If throwing Israel under the bus is needed to accomplish this alliance, so be it.

I am shocked by the lack of outrage on the part of Israel's most ardent supporters. The members of AIPAC, the chief pro-Israel lobbying organization in Washington, gave Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a standing ovation after she had carried out the instructions of President Obama and, in a 43-minute telephone call, angrily hectored Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Members of Congress in both the House and Senate have made pitifully weak statements against Obama's mistreatment of Israel, if they made any at all. The Democratic members, in particular, are weak. They are simply afraid to criticize President Obama.

What bothers me most of all is the shameful silence and lack of action by community leaders - Jew and Christian. Where are they? If this were a civil rights matter, the Jews would be in the mall in Washington protesting with and on behalf of our fellow American citizens. I asked one prominent Jewish leader why no one is preparing a march on Washington similar to the one in 1963 at which I was present and Martin Luther King's memorable speech was given? His reply was "Fifty people might come." Remember the 1930s? Few stood up. They were silent. Remember the most insightful statement of one of our greatest teachers, Rabbi Hillel: "If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?"

We have indeed stood up for everyone else. When will we stand up for our brothers and sisters living in the Jewish state of Israel?

If Obama is seeking to build a siege ramp around Israel, the Jews of modern Israel will not commit suicide. They are willing to negotiate a settlement with the Palestinians, but they will not allow themselves to be bullied into following self-destructive policies.

To those who call me an alarmist, I reply that I'll be happy to apologize if I am proven wrong. But those who stand silently by and watch the Obama administration abandon Israel, to whom will they apologize?

 

 

Ed Koch

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

 

The Islamization of Jerusalem.

 

by Mordechai Kedar

Although the importance of Jerusalem for Christians and Jews is part of universal concepts of history and theology and beyond dispute, when it comes to modern politics, we hear over and over again Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims demanding that Jerusalem become the capital of the future Palestinian state, owing to its holiness in Islam.

The question is: When and how did this city became holy to Muslims?

When the Prophet Muhammad established Islam, he introduced a minimum of innovations. He employed the hallowed personages, historic legends and sacred sites of Judaism, Christianity, and even paganism, by Islamizing them.

According to Islam, Abraham was the first Muslim, and Jesus and St. John (the sons of Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron) were prophets and guardians of the second heaven.

Many Biblical legends ("asatir al-awwalin"), which were familiar to the pagan Arabs before the dawn of Islam, underwent an Islamic conversion; the Koran as well as the Hadith (the Islamic oral tradition), are replete with them.

Islamization was enforced on places as well as persons: Mecca and the holy stone -- al-Ka'bah -- were holy sites of the pre-Islamic pagan Arabs. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and the Great Mosque of Istanbul were erected on the sites of Christian-Byzantine churches -- two of the better known examples of how Islam treats sanctuaries of other faiths.

Jerusalem, too, underwent Islamization: At first Muhammad tried to convince the Jews near Medina to join his young community. By way of persuasion, he established the direction of prayer (kiblah) to be to the north, towards Jerusalem, in keeping with Jewish practice; but after he failed in this effort, he turned against the Jews, killed many of them, and directed the kiblah southward, towards Mecca.

Muhammad's abandonment of Jerusalem can explain why this city is not mentioned even once in the Koran. When Palestine was occupied by the Muslims, its capital was Ramlah, 30 miles to the west of Jerusalem, signifying that to them Jerusalem meant nothing.

Islam rediscovered Jerusalem 50 years after Muhammad's death. In 682 CE, 'Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr rebelled against the Islamic rulers in Damascus, conquered Mecca and prevented pilgrims from reaching Mecca for the Hajj. 'Abd al-Malik, the Umayyad Caliph, then needed an alternative site for the pilgrimage and settled on Jerusalem which was at that time under his control. To justify this choice, a verse from the Koran was chosen (17,1 = sura 17, verse 1) which states (trans. by Majid Fakhri):

"Glory to Him who caused His servant to travel by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose precincts We have blessed, in order to show him some of Our Signs, He is indeed the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing."

The meaning ascribed to this verse (see the commentary in al-Jallalayn) is that "the furthest mosque" (al-masgid al-aqsa) is in Jerusalem, and that Muhammad was conveyed there one night (although by camel the journey took three days), on the back of al-Buraq, a magical horse with the head of a woman, wings of an eagle, the tail of a peacock, and hoofs reaching to the horizon. He tethered the horse to the Western Wall of the Temple Mount and from there ascended to the seventh heaven together with the angel Gabriel. On his way, he met the prophets of other religions who are the guardians of the Seven Heavens: Adam, Jesus, St. John, Joseph, Idris (=Seth?), Aaron, Moses and Abraham -- who all accompanied him on his way to Allah and accepted him as their master.

Islam tries in this way to gain legitimacy over other, older religions: It creates a scene in which the former prophets agree to Muhammad's mastery, and make him Khatam al-Anbiya' ("the Seal of the Prophets").

According to this legend, Islam came to the world to replace Judaism and Christianity, not to live side by side with them.

Ironically, this miraculous account contradicts a number of the tenets of Islam: How can a living man of flesh and blood ascend to heaven? How can a mythical creature carry a mortal to a real destination? Questions such as these have caused orthodox Muslim thinkers to conclude that the nocturnal journey was a dream of Muhammad's. The journey and the ascent serve Islam to "go one better" than the Bible: Moses "only" went up to Mt. Sinai, in the middle of nowhere, and drew close to heaven, whereas Muhammad went all the way up to Allah from Jerusalem itself.

There are difficulties, however, with the belief that the al-Aqsa mosque described in Islamic tradition is located in Jerusalem:

For one, the people of Mecca, who knew Muhammad well, did not believe this story. Only Abu Bakr (later the first Caliph), believed him and was therefore called al-Siddiq ("the Believer").

A second difficulty is that Islamic tradition tells us that the al-Aqsa mosque is near Mecca on the Arabian peninsula. This was unequivocally stated in "Kitab al-Maghazi" (Oxford University Press, 1966, vol. 3, pp. 958-9), a book by the Muslim historian and geographer al-Waqidi.

According to al-Waqidi, there were two "masjeds" (places of prayer) in al-Gi'irranah, a village between Mecca and Ta'if, one was "the closer mosque" (al-masjid al-adna) and the other was "the farther mosque" (al-masjid al-aqsa), where Muhammad would pray when he went out of town. This description by al-Waqidi, however, supported by a chain of authorities (isnad), was not "convenient" for the Islamic propaganda of the 7th century.

To establish a basis for the "holiness" of Jerusalem in Islam, the Caliphs of the Ummayad dynasty invented "traditions" upholding the value of Jerusalem (known as "fadha'il bayt al-Maqdis"), and which would justify a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the faithful Muslims. Thus was "the farther mosque," al-Masjid al-Aqsa, "transported" to Jerusalem.

Saladin also adopted the myth of al-Aqsa and these "traditions" to recruit and inflame the Muslim warriors against the Crusaders in the 12th century.

Another aim of the Islamization of Jerusalem was to undermine the legitimacy of the older religions, Judaism and Christianity, which consider Jerusalem to be a holy city. As Jews and Christians had changed and distorted ("ghyyarou wa-baddalou") the Word of God, each in their turn, Islam is presented as the only legitimate religion, destined to replace the other two.¹

Although Judaism and Christianity can exist side by side in Jerusalem, Islam regards both of them as betrayals of Allah and his teachings; it has always done -- and will continue to do -- all in its power to expel both of them from this city.

Moreover, this expulsion is retroactive: The Islamic broadcasters of the Palestinian radio stations consistently make it a point to claim that the Jews never had a temple on the Temple Mount and certainly not two temples. (Where, then, according to them, did Jesus preach?)

Arafat, a secular person (ask the Hamas), did exactly what the Caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty did 1300 years ago: He marshaled the holiness of Jerusalem to serve his political ends.

As, according to Islam, Jews are impure and the wrath of Allah is upon them, Arafat could not give control of Jerusalem to the Jews.²

According to the Koran, the Jews are those who distorted the holy writings which were revealed to Islam (2,73; 3,72), and who denied God's signs (3,63). As they violated the covenant with the Muslim God (4,154), He cursed them (5,16) and they are forever the inheritors of Hell (3,112). So how could Arafat ever have abandoned Jerusalem to the Jews?

The Palestinian media these days are full of messages of Jihad, calls to broaden the national-political war between the Palestinians and Israel into a religious-Islamic war between Muslims and Jews. For the Palestinian media, Christianity is no better than Judaism: Both "forfeited" their right to rule over Jerusalem.

Only Islam, Din al-Haqq ("the Religion of Truth"), has this right -- and has it forever.

This was, and still is, the leitmotiv in Friday sermons in Palestinian mosques and official media.

As the holiness of Jerusalem to Islam has always been -- and still is -- a politically motivated holiness, any Palestinian politician would be putting his political head on the block should he give it up.

Therefore, must Christianity and Judaism defer to myths in Islamic texts, or allegedly envisioned in Muhammad's dreams, long after Jerusalem was established as the center of these two religions which preceded Islam?

And should the world reshape the Middle East map because Muslims decided to recycle the political problems of the Umayyads 1250 years after the curtain came down on their role in history?

 

Mordechai Kedar

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

 

¹: On the alleged forgeries of the Holy Scriptures, made by Jews and Christians, see the third chapter of: M. J. Kister, "haddithu 'an bani isra'il wa-la haraja", IOS 2 (1972), pp. 215-239. Kister quotes dozens of Islamic sources.

²: "al-maghdhoub 'alayhim"; Koran 1,7, see al-Jalalayn and other commentaries; verse numbers may differ slightly in the various editions of the Koran). The Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs (5,60). (For the idea that Jews are related to pigs and monkeys see, for instance, Musnad al-Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, (Beirut 1969) vol. 3, p. 241. See also pages 348, 395, 397, 421, and vol. 6, p. 135.)

For more details about this subject, look, for example, at www.britannica.com/seo/m/miraj and the links provided in it. Searching for keywords such as miraj, isra, alburaq, alquds etc. could also be useful.

 

A Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations: Have We Been Here Before?

 

by Dore Gold

 

• As a result of the June 1967 Six-Day War, Israel entered the eastern parts of Jerusalem and the West Bank in a war of self-defense. It is very important to recall that Israel entered these areas after it was attacked, and after it requested that the Jordanians not join the Egyptian war effort. There were Jordanian artillery attacks throughout Jerusalem and all of Israel, as well as movement of Jordanian ground forces into areas that were previously no-man's land.

• There is presently a marked shift underway in U.S. policy on Jerusalem. True, no U.S. administration accepted Israel's annexation of Jerusalem in July 1967. Nonetheless, in the past we saw the U.S. and Israel coming to a modus vivendi with respect to Israeli policy in Jerusalem, when Israel built various neighborhoods in the eastern parts of the city, from Ramat Eshkol to Gilo to Ramot.

• A neighborhood called Har Homa in southeastern Jerusalem was established in 1997 during the Clinton administration to ease the considerable shortage of housing in the Jewish sector. On two occasions, the Arab bloc initiated a draft resolution in the UN Security Council to condemn Israel for constructing Har Homa. On both occasions, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Bill Richardson, vetoed those resolutions under instructions from the Clinton administration.

• The Oslo Agreements in 1993 do not require a freeze on construction in the neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Furthermore, under the Oslo Agreements, Jerusalem was treated as having a completely different status than the West Bank and the city was kept under Israeli control, while seen as an issue for permanent status negotiations in the future.

• It is possible to discern a growing view, which has been reported in the Washington Post, that the Obama administration intends to put on the table its own plan for Middle East peace, based on a nearly full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines, that most Israeli planners view as militarily indefensible. As the Palestinians see this scenario unfold, their incentive to re-enter negotiations will decline as they look forward to the prospect that an American peace plan will be imposed. If indeed there is such a plan being prepared, then the recent U.S.-Israel tensions over construction in east Jerusalem may only be Act I in a much longer drama that the two countries are about to face. 

 

We are in a period in which the U.S.-Israel relationship appears to be in flux, but it is hard for many observers to establish whether the policies of the Obama administration represent a sharp break in U.S. policy toward Israel or  a continuation of past U.S. policies. Will military ties between the two countries be affected? According to a charge that has been associated with officers in the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), Israel's disagreements with the Palestinians, or Israel's construction efforts, have a negative effect on the U.S. military posture in the Middle East, with some reports even going so far as to suggest that they risk the lives of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Finally, on the basis of past experience, is it likely that the U.S. and Israel will ultimately resolve their differences, or are the present gaps between the two countries so wide that their long-term relationship will change?

The Neighborhoods of Eastern Jerusalem Were Captured in a War of Self-Defense

The present tensions in U.S.-Israel relations appeared to erupt in response to an Israeli building project in the Jewish neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo in Jerusalem, where 1,600 new apartments were approved by a local zoning board. Ramat Shlomo is one of several Jerusalem neighborhoods that were established in Jerusalem in territories that were captured by Israel as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel formally extended Israeli law to these parts of its newly united capital. 

Formally the U.S. did not recognize the annexation by Israel of the eastern parts of Jerusalem in July 1967. And while past administrations did not support Israeli construction of new neighborhoods, they did not let this issue disrupt the overall U.S.-Israel relationship.  Much of the present discord in the relationship is partly attributable to the fact that the background of how Israel entered the eastern parts of Jerusalem has been forgotten. It is important to remember that Israel entered the eastern parts of Jerusalem and the West Bank in what it saw as a war of self-defense.

Factually, Israel only entered these areas after it was attacked, and after it requested that the Jordanians not join the Egyptian war effort. That didn't happen. There were Jordanian artillery attacks throughout Jerusalem and all of Israel. There was movement of Jordanian ground forces into areas that were previously no-man's land, and Israel responded and captured the eastern parts of Jerusalem.

The Soviet Union, which was an adversary of the State of Israel back in 1967, tried to have Israel branded as the aggressor in that war. The Soviets first went to the Security Council and failed. Then they went to the General Assembly, which is not exactly Israel's home territory, and also failed. The new situation produced a particular dilemma for U.S. policy about how to treat the issue of Jerusalem. On the one hand, Israel had now moved into territories which were previously not in its possession. But on the other hand, there were fundamental problems with the status quo ante. Jerusalem had originally been slated to be internationalized for ten years as a corpus separatum under Resolution 181, that the UN failed to implement, and the city was invaded in 1948 by an Arab war coalition that included the Arab Legion. The UN secretary general in 1948 called that invasion a war of aggression. And as a result of that war, the Jews were ethnically cleansed from the areas that came under Jordanian control, and were denied access to Jewish holy sites.

To call for a restoration of the status quo ante would mean that the U.S. backed the return of an illegal situation that was imposed in 1948, which also denied religious freedom. Ultimately, the international community decided not to restore the status quo ante that existed prior to the war, and sought some other kind of outcome, which was reflected in the resolutions and decisions taken with respect to Jerusalem. Following the war, UN Security Council Resolution 242 was adopted in November 1967, and did not call for Israel to return to the pre-1967 lines. It called for a withdrawal from territories but not from all the territories, which is what the Soviet Union was insisting upon. Resolution 242 did not mention Jerusalem. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time, Arthur Goldberg, wrote to the New York Times in 1980 that the Johnson administration kept Jerusalem out of 242 intentionally.



Shifting U.S. Policies on Jerusalem

U.S. policy on Jerusalem went through different shifts. Back in 1948, the U.S. was originally committed to the failed internationalization proposals in UN General Assembly Resolution 181. This original position was quickly replaced in the 1950s by acceptance of the 1949 armistice agreements. 

When President Richard Nixon came to the White House in 1969, there was a definite hardening of the U.S. position on the issue of Jerusalem. For the first time, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Charles Yost, described Jerusalem as "occupied territory," terminology that had not been used by Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, who served under President Johnson. Under Nixon, the United States did not veto or even abstain from resolutions that disagreed with Israeli policy on Jerusalem in 1969, 1970, and 1971.

In successive administrations, we see that the U.S. did not want the issue of Jerusalem addressed by the UN Security Council, and we see a movement of U.S. policy much closer to the Israeli position. No U.S. administration formally recognized Israel's annexation of Jerusalem in July 1967. Nonetheless, in the past we saw the U.S. and Israel coming to a modus vivendi with respect to Israeli policy in Jerusalem, when Israel built various neighborhoods in the eastern parts of the city.

For example, Gilo, in southern Jerusalem, with nearly 30,000 residents, was founded in 1971 at the time of the Nixon administration. Though Israel had differences with the U.S., those differences did not lead to a crisis in relations between the two countries. In 1973 the Neve Yaakov neighborhood was reestablished. It was originally established in 1924, but was overrun by the Arab Legion in 1948. The Ramat Eshkol neighborhood was established in 1969 at the very beginning of the Nixon administration. The Ramot neighborhood, established in 1974, has over 40,000 people living there today.

A neighborhood called Har Homa in southeastern Jerusalem, next to Gilo, was established in 1997 during the Clinton administration. Israel had just completed negotiations with the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat over the Hebron agreement. At that time, the Israeli government informed the Clinton administration that after completing the deal on Hebron, it would be taking some initiatives in Jerusalem that were necessary because of the considerable shortage of housing in both the Jewish sector and even to some extent in the Arab sector. The Clinton administration was informed when Israel decided to approve the Har Homa project, which the Israeli government saw as compensation for the big initiative it took in signing the Hebron agreement. Now the Clinton administration did not say it welcomed this initiative, but it basically accepted that Israel was going to go ahead and build Har Homa.

On two occasions in 1997, the Arab bloc, together with some other countries, initiated a draft resolution in the UN Security Council that would have condemned Israel for constructing Har Homa. And on those two occasions the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Bill Richardson, vetoed those resolutions under instructions from the Clinton administration. So even though we didn't always agree on the details of the legal status of the territory, we were able to cooperate, we were able to work together, and again a modus vivendi was worked out.

Ramat Shlomo, the current Jerusalem neighborhood being discussed, was originally begun in 1995 during the period when President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin were in office. So again, in the past, the U.S. did not actively oppose Israeli efforts to construct housing for both the Jewish sector and the Arab sector in the eastern parts of Jerusalem.

The policies of the Obama administration definitely represent a shift in U.S. policy towards Israel and Jerusalem because of the efforts to have Israel freeze all construction in the eastern parts of the city. The original Oslo Agreements in 1993 do not require a freeze of any kind on construction in Jerusalem. Furthermore, under the Oslo Agreements, Jerusalem was treated as having a completely different status than the West Bank and the city was kept under Israeli control, while seen as an issue for permanent status negotiations in the future. Israel kept building for its residents, just as Palestinian Arabs built for their needs in the areas under their control and elsewhere.

The relationship between the United States and Israel is not confined to their governments. It involves the people of the United States, who overwhelmingly support the State of Israel, and it also involves the U.S. Congress which reflects the will of the people. While U.S. administrations have not formally recognized Israel's unification of Jerusalem, back in 1995 the U.S. Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act by a massive bipartisan majority. It called for the movement of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Equally important, it also acknowledged that Jerusalem must remain united under Israeli sovereignty.



Does Construction in Jerusalem Affect the U.S. Military Posture?

Israel is not within the area of responsibility of CENTCOM, the U.S. Central Command. U.S. military planners kept Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey within the responsibility of EUCOM, the U.S. European command, while in 1983, Jordan, Egypt, and the Gulf States were put under the responsibility of CENTCOM. The statement by CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on March 10, 2010, says the whole issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict fits into a category called "Cross-Cutting Challenges to Security and Stability." It doesn't fit into the more severe category of "Significant Threats." General Petraeus' written statement says that the enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to the U.S. ability to advance its interests. But he did not specifically make this point in his oral remarks, and in neither his oral or written remarks did he suggest that Israel had become a strategic burden because its policies threatened U.S. soldiers, as some have tried to suggest. 

All of this ignores the posture statements and other testimony given by EUCOM commanders, which actually give Israel a lot of praise. Israel appears as an asset. General Bantz Craddock was the EUCOM commander in 2007 and spoke extensively about Israel in his appearance that year before the House Armed Services Committee. He specifically described Israel as the closest ally of the United States in the Middle East. Moreover, the U.S. ambassador to Israel at the time, Richard Jones, spoke about Israeli research and development on countermeasures against IEDs, those highly lethal roadside bombs used by insurgents that had become the single largest cause of U.S. casualties. Jones disclosed that Israel was helping the United States Army in Iraq in this area. In short, Israeli efforts were saving American lives, and not putting them at risk, as some irresponsible pundits contended.



Will the Relationship Recover?

Is it possible for the U.S.-Israel relationship to recover from the recent tensions? If history is any guide, we have had such problems at different times in the past and we have recovered each time. At the very beginning of the Reagan administration, in 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin decided that it was necessary for the future of Israel to destroy Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear reactor in Baghdad. Israel took upon itself to do that and U.S.-Israel relations went into a period of extreme tension. Yet by 1983, the United States and Israel reached the first of a series of strategic cooperation agreements that brought their military relationship to unprecedented heights. So there was a crisis for about two years, which basically ended as the U.S. and Israel pulled together because they had paramount strategic interests and reasons to cooperate. Ultimately, the strategic challenges that both countries faced and saw in a similar light trumped the differences that existed in the background of the destruction of the Iraqi reactor.

The period of 1989 to 1990 was another one of unusual tension in the U.S.-Israel relationship, when President Bush and his Secretary of State, James Baker, got into direct conflict with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir over the question of settlement construction. We remember Secretary Baker saying to Israel: "When you're serious about peace, here's the White House phone number." Then in 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the Middle East changed entirely, and in the First Gulf War the military cooperation between the U.S. and Israel reached new heights. Strategic circumstances led both countries to realize their mutual interests and overcome their differences.

The United States and Israel have been tied by mutual strategic interests for many years, and those interests will eventually trump the differences that we're seeing today. The major strategic interest that both countries share is the threat of Iran. The Iranian nuclear program is advancing steadily towards a point where it will cross the nuclear threshold in a military sense. Therefore, the restoration of U.S.-Israel cooperation and understanding is probably a greater imperative today than it ever was in the past. It is extremely important for both countries to bury their differences because the only ones who are smiling during this entire episode are the leadership in Iran, who are continuing to move toward a military nuclear program.

There is one caveat to the idea that U.S.-Israel relations will get back on track in the near future. It is possible to discern a growing view, which has been reported in the Washington Post, that the Obama administration intends to put on the table its own plan for Middle East peace, based on a nearly full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines, that most Israeli planners view as militarily indefensible. As the Palestinians see this scenario unfold, their incentive to re-enter negotiations will decline as they look forward to the prospect that an American peace plan will be imposed. An Obama plan for a complete Israeli retreat of this sort would not only deny the Jewish state "defensible borders," but would also divide Jerusalem, placing the Old City and its holy sites within Palestinian jurisdiction. 

If indeed there is such a plan being prepared, then the recent U.S.-Israel tensions over construction in east Jerusalem may only be Act I in a much longer drama that the two countries are about to face. Undoubtedly there are sober voices in the U.S. government today that would advise against the President taking such a course of action. But should he indeed advance a new division of Jerusalem, then in the months ahead the U.S. and Israel will be facing a serious crisis in their relationship, just as the military threats from Iran can be expected to worsen.    

 

 

Ambassador Dore Gold, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was the eleventh Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations (1997-1999). Dr. Gold served as foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his first government and has advised Israeli governments since that time on U.S.-Israel relations. 

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

 

Hillary's Disproportionate Response.

 

by  Jack L. Schwartzwald

 

When Israel imposed a ten-month ban on West Bank settlement construction last November, Hillary Clinton knew full well that the ban did not apply to Jewish neighborhoods in the eastern half of Jerusalem.  Nevertheless, she described the step as a helpful "move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." 

Now, despite the fact that Israel has apologized for its putative misstep in announcing new housing construction in these neighborhoods during Joe Biden's recent visit, Hillary has demanded total cessation of such activity, saying in an address to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that, "New construction in East Jerusalem or the West Bank...exposes daylight between Israel and the United States."

 

On March 11^th, the very day of Mr. Biden's departure from Israel, Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah organization proceeded (albeit "unofficially") with the dedication of a public square in el Bireh to Dalal Mughrabi, the female leader of the deadliest-ever terrorist attack against Israel.  This was followed by a four-day seminar, under Palestinian Authority auspices, entitled, "Martyr Dalal Mughrabi Camp."  

 

Ironically, these actions do not seem to have exposed much daylight between the Palestinian Authority and the United States.  The explanation for the incongruity may be found in the fact that, during her AIPAC address, Hillary misattributed the Mughrabi celebrations to Hamas, thereby granting undeserved absolution to Israel's theoretical peace partners, Abbas and the PA.  (Pity America's ally, Israel, wasn't the beneficiary of such largesse.) 

 

Hillary then went on to explain that the dedication of the square "insults the families on both sides who have lost loved ones...in this conflict."  To accept this last thesis, one would have to borrow a phrase from Secretary Clinton and "suspend disbelief."  While the dedication of the square was, indeed, an insult to Israelis, it cannot be construed as such to the Palestinians who came out to celebrate the square's dedication or to a society that routinely glorifies blood-soaked terrorists as "martyrs."

 

Hillary enthusiasts may recall a statement she issued during her 2007-08 presidential campaign saying, "Hillary Clinton believes that Israel's right to exist in safety as a Jewish state, with defensible borders and an undivided Jerusalem as its capital, secure from violence and terrorism, must never be questioned."  Her present stance on Jerusalem may seem like an about-face, but in fairness to her, she didn't say anything about Jews building houses in their undivided capital.  Moreover, she isn't asking questions.  She's making statements -- just as she did in June 2009, when she declared, "there is no agreement." (She was referring to George Bush's April 14, 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon assuring Israel that any final status agreement with the Palestinians would leave Israel with defensible borders encompassing the main West Bank settlement blocks).  Of course, in making that declaration, Hillary was technically correct.  There was no official "agreement" -- only a letter from then President Bush containing assurances that were ratified by overwhelming majorities in both Houses of Congress in June of the same year.  

 

Hillary's demand that Israel cease all housing construction in the eastern portion of Jerusalem will prove a bitter -- if not fatal -- pill for the Netanyahu government to swallow.  More importantly, however, the Secretary of State's Orwellian approach to diplomacy will make it difficult for Israel to place stock in American assurances the next time Hillary publicly calls upon the Jewish state to take patently dangerous risks for peace.  Indeed, it may be her own shrinking stock rather than Israel's construction planning that has exposed the ominous "daylight" about which she expressed such concern to AIPAC.

 

Jack Schwartzwald, MD, Brown University. 

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

 

Why Didn’t Obama Call Off the Ambush?

 

by  Noah Pollak

There is an obvious reason why the Israeli prime minister canceled his attendance at President Obama's nuclear security summit: he sought to avoid a combined Egyptian and Turkish attack on Israel's nuclear program.

But there is an important follow-up question that is of far greater consequence: why do Egypt and Turkey, both American allies, feel at liberty to show up in Washington D.C. at a conference organized by the U.S. president and dump on one of America's closest allies?

This latest incident is not really about Israel's relations with Egypt and Turkey; both countries can be counted on to take cheap shots at Israel whenever they can, especially the increasingly Islamist Turkey. The critical issue is why they believed they had a green light to engage in such theatrics. Upon hearing of the ambush they were planning, Obama or Clinton could have sent a very clear message to the Turkish prime minister and the Egyptian dictator: "You either come to Washington and behave yourselves, or stay home. This is a respectable conference, not a platform for anti-Israel grandstanding."

But clearly, Obama made no such call, and clearly he did not instruct the secretary of state to deliver a 43-minute tongue-lashing to the leaders of either country, as she has recently shown herself capable of doing. There are two possible explanations, and I'm not sure which is more disturbing. Obama either welcomed the prospect of another humiliation of Netanyahu, or he was afraid to stand up to two Muslim leaders. Perhaps both are true.

In his pettiness, Obama has once again lost perspective on what really matters. What could have been a useful opportunity to present a unified front against Iran's nuclear ambitions has now descended into a spectacle of pointless drama not terribly dissimilar from a meeting of the Arab League. In his decision to indulge Middle East leaders in their obsessive desire to castigate Israel, Obama has once again shown his utter lack of interest in confronting the real threat to America's national security.

 

Noah Pollak

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

 

Listen to the Two Best Arab Journalists Warning What A Nuclear-Armed Iran Means.

 

by Barry Rubin

The two Arab journalists I most respect have written of the fear in Arabic-speaking countries about Iran's having nuclear weapons. They explain persuasively why a U.S. containment policy of reassuring Arab states and Israel against direct nuclear attack is totally inadequate.

 

Listen to what they're saying as it is much more accurate in warning about the coming strategic shift in the region than what's being written in the West.

Both Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid and Ahmad al-Jarallah are close to elements in the Saudi regime yet also maintain personal independence and support liberal reform. Rashid (often transliterated, Rashed) is a Saudi who is former editor of al-Sharq al-Awsat, probably the best Arabic newspaper, and is now director-general of the al-Arabiya network, possibly the best satellite television network. Writing in al-Sharq al-Awsat on February 21 (translated by MEMRI) he explained:

"An Iranian bomb…will not be put to military use; it will be used as a way to change the rules of the game. What we are afraid of is Iran's policy, that uses all means to force its existence [as a regional power], and nuclear weapons is only [one of these] means." For example, if pro-Iranian militias "take over southern Iraq, no superpower will dare to use military means to stop it."

"We fear the logic of the current regime in Tehran, which spent the country's funds on Hizbullah, Hamas, the extremist movements in Bahrain, Iraq and Yemen, and the Muslim Brotherhood, and supported every extremist in the region. The Ahmadinejad regime aspires to expansion, hegemony, and a clear takeover on the ground, and to do this he needs a nuclear umbrella to protect him from deterrence by [any] superpower.

"The Gulf states, that built giant cities and factories all along the coast, will, when Iran possesses nuclear weapons, become hostage to the caprices of Ahmadinejad and his extremist government.…"

Precisely right. Iran's bomb will change the strategic balance, inspire revolutionary Islamist movements, lead Arab and Western states toward appeasement, and thus shift power in the region decisively toward Tehran.

Jarallah, editor of the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa, has survived several assassination attempts which he attributes to Syria. He wrote on February 7:

"The entire region has become hostage to fears of [possible] rash actions by Iran that could cause nuclear catastrophes that neither Iran nor the world will be able to bear. After all, examples of such catastrophes, some of which were the result of unexpected events, are still etched in memory, and the world continues to pay for them."

He adds, "The current Iranian position is reminiscent of the stands taken by Saddam [Hussein], the Iraqi dictator who was the last regional leader who sought hegemony in the area. Clearly, the political path taken by the Tehran regime is controlled by imperialist aspirations; this inspires much fear...not only due to [Iran's] support for several extremist groups of various kinds, but also due to the nuclear issue and the real intentions that the Iranian leadership is concealing….

"Now more than ever, the entire international community must stop Iran's rashness and bring it back to the right path – particularly in light of the obvious signs of the beginning of a nuclear arms race in the region. Beyond the economic cost, this race will affect all areas of life, and will drown the region in a quagmire of chaos and [evoke] reactions that none can predict."

 

As an extra bonus, take a look at Fouad Ajami's piece on Afghanistan in the Wall Street Journal. It is a brilliant analysis--ok, it sounds like what I've been saying but it's still brilliant--about how as Obama shows his weakness and unreliability U.S. allies are running for cover. Isn't it funny how people who really know or live in the region understand this perfectly.

Yes, bland assurances that all will be ok because the United States will stop Iran from firing off nuclear missiles at its neighbors are very much beside the point.

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

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

 

Everyone knows.

 

by Melanie Phillips

 

According to David Ignatius, the Obama administration is preparing to impose a 'solution' to the Middle East impasse between Israel and the Arabs "Palestinians".

 

Apparently, everyone knows what such a 'peace deal' would look like.

 

Well if everyone knows, why hasn't it been achieved?

 

Apparently it's much like the agreement that was nearly reached at Camp David in 2000 and in subsequent negotiations.

 

Ah yes, 'nearly'. Only problem was the Palestinians wouldn't have it, even though it offered them more than 90 per cent of the disputed territories and half of Jerusalem. Why didn't they accept it? Because they wanted more. Everyone who has read the history knows what a peace deal would look like because it was offered in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1960s and 2000; only problem is that the Arabs rejected it.

 

The Palestinians 'know' what a peace deal that they would agree to would look like. It would consist of peace without Israel existing at all. They've said so many times. For some inexplicable reason, not everyone in the Obama administration 'knows' this fact. Indeed, none of them seems to. Or if they do, they're not telling us.

 

An anonymous American official told Ignatius:

 

...an American plan, if launched, would build upon past progress on such issues as borders, the 'right of return' for Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.

 

Fascinating! The Obama administration knows what everyone else doesn't know they know. What Israeli borders does 'everyone know'? The 1967 borders, aka the 1947 'Auschwitz borders'? Or the borders proposed in 2000, which included some of the settlements and the Jewish areas of Jerusalem beyond the Green Line which everyone but the Obama administration has known for the past several decades will always remain part of Israel?

 

Why should there be a 'right of return' to Israel for Palestinian immigrants when the point of this imposed 'peace deal' is the establishment of a state of their own? Since when did 'everyone know' that a key aspect of the Palestinians' 'right to a state of their own' is also apparently their right to someone else's state?

 

And precisely what does 'everyone know' is to be the final status of Jerusalem, the most difficult issue of all?

 

'Incrementalism hasn't worked,' continued the second official, explaining that the U.S. cannot simply allow the Palestinian problem to keep festering — providing fodder for Iran and other extremists.

 

And everyone knows that the way to stop the Palestinian problem festering – a problem which festers solely because of the refusal of the Palestinians to abjure for ever their existential war against the state of Israel, or even currently to negotiate with Israel – is not to force the Palestinians thus to abjure their belligerency or to negotiate but to force Israel instead to make it easier for them to attack and destroy it.

 

It is blindingly obvious what, to the Obama administration, 'everyone knows' . Everyone knows that everything the Palestinians demand will be given to them; everyone knows that Israel alone will be expected to make yet more 'painful concessions' which will jeopardise its security and identity; everyone knows that the Palestinian aggressors will be expected to make no such painful concessions, such as agreeing to allow the State of Israel to exist in peace; everyone knows that aggression will thus be rewarded and its victims further bullied; and everyone now knows that this monstrous injustice will be imposed by Obama upon a sovereign state like an imperialist boot stamped upon its face.

 

And what everyone in the Palestinian camp knows is that Obama has now given them a green light for further intransigence and violence; and what everyone in the Iranian regime knows is that Obama is delivering the western world to it on a plate.

 

 

Melanie Phillips

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