The two most-asked questions: will Obama attack Israel, will Israel attack Iran?

by Barry Rubin

Of all the questions readers ask, there's no question about which are the two most frequent. First, is Israel about to attack Iran or when will this happen? Second, do President Barack Obama and his entourage hate Israel and will there be a major confrontation or some kind of sell-out.

The first two questions are pretty easy to answer, the third less so.

Israel and an attack on Iran: Israeli policy is quite clear. Its current emphasis is on supporting strong sanctions. There is, of course, skepticism as to whether strong sanctions will be applied and whether such a step would work, but that's not the determining factor. It is recognized that the West must thoroughly try diplomatic means to satisfy itself that everything short of an armed attack has failed.

Only when the sanctions have been seen to be ineffective at stopping Iran's march to nuclear weapons would Israel even begin to go into an attack phase but even then there are two major considerations.

One is that Israel will only attack when Iran is on the verge of getting weapons. Not only would that situation make the decision about responding an immediate task but also because that would be when Tehran has the maximum equipment installed and the most damage can be done. There is no sense bombing half-empty buildings.

The disadvantage is that this would give the regime more time to disperse the facilities. And that introduces the other problem. An Israeli cabinet meeting would be held to determine whether an attack could be carried out, whether the political and security costs would be acceptable, and whether an attack would succeed in setting back the Iranian program by a big margin.

Is Israel capable of launching an effective attack? Without going into all the complex details, the basic answer is "yes."

If destroying Iran's nuclear capability is an existential imperative could Israel weather the diplomatic criticism and terrorist or other attacks? Again, yes. Hamas and Hizballah would escalate and launch rockets but they could be deterred or defeated.

It is the last point, however, that is critical: Would an attack achieve considerable success in putting back Iran's nuclear program by years? That cannot be taken for granted. In military action lots can go wrong. Planes can crash; mechanical breakdowns or bad weather may cause failure. The distances involved are huge; the margin of error very fine.

What if the bombs miss and hit civilians? (Yes, Israel cares a lot about this despite all the slander and lies regarding its behavior.) Will dispersion of facilities mean that only a small portion of Iran's facilities will be damaged or destroyed?

In short, is it worth launching an attack that only inflames the situation further, costs lots of diplomatic capital, and doesn't do any good?

This is a question that can only be raised and decided in a cabinet meeting at the proper time. There is no determined choice already made and that is as it should be.

The second question relates to Obama and Israel. In my opinion, Obama has absolutely no warm feelings toward Israel at all and, if anything, his instincts are hostile. But previous American presidents—notably Richard Nixon—have followed pro-Israel policies despite being personally unfriendly. What is important is that Obama and his entourage have learned two things.

One of them is that bashing Israel is politically costly. American public opinion is very strongly pro-Israel. Congress is as friendly to Israel as ever. For an administration that is more conscious of its future reelection campaign than any previous one, holding onto Jewish voters and ensuring Jewish donations is very important. There will almost certainly not be a visit of Obama to Israel in 2010, he'll wait until it will do him some good at the polls (which is a good thing since the less attention he pays to this issue the less harm he'll do.)

The other point is that they have seen that bashing Israel doesn't get them anywhere. For one thing, the current Israeli government won't give in easily and is very adept at protecting its country's interests. This administration has a great deal of trouble being tough with anyone.

If in fact the Palestinians and Arabs were eager to make a deal and energetic about supporting other U.S. policies, the administration might well be tempted to press for an arrangement that largely ignored Israeli interests. But this is not in fact the case. It is the Palestinians who refuse even to come to the negotiating table—and that is unlikely to change quickly or easily. Arab states won't lift a finger to help the United States on Iran, Iraq, or Arab-Israeli issues. So why bother?

Moreover, no matter how much noise the administration makes about being engaged on the Israel-Palestinian front, it knows that not much is going to happen. Its envoy, Senator Mitchell, will run around and make plans but the top brass in Washington isn't going to devote all that much time to this issue.

The hostility to Israel of the administration's overall personnel can also be exaggerated. A couple of names come to mind of officials who are hostile, but there are also many—arguably more in number--who are reasonably friendly, including the secretaries of state and defense.

The idea that David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel constitute some anti-Israel cabal is misleading, too. If there were a serious peace process, they'd certainly push Israel harder to make more concessions than others would do but they are focused on domestic affairs and also know that this issue is a non-winner for them in terms of success, glory, or political advantage.

These two factors form the basic framework for understanding the Middle East in 2010. Putting down a smokescreen of diplomatic activity and proposals, the U.S. government is likely to place the "peace process," whose non-existence is too real to ignore, on the back burner. Meanwhile, Israel is doing the same thing with an attack on Iran. The next year's events in the region will come from other crises and issues.


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.

 

How the Left turned on Israel.

 

by Colin Shindler

 

TODAY’S ANTIPATHY TOWARDS THE JEWISH STATE UNITES LIBERALS, MARXISTS AND ISLAMISTS.

 

Lenin was only interested in Jewish nationalism in so far as it related to the Russian workers’ movement

 

Since the beginning of the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000, an important feature in the debate on the Israel-Palestine imbroglio has been a questioning of the legitimacy of Israel as a nation-state by sections of the political Left and the liberal and cultural intelligentsia in Britain.

Such opinion has moved from passionately supporting the right of the Jews to self-determination in 1948 (by figures such as Aneurin Bevan, Bertrand Russell and Tony Benn) to questioning that right over 60 years later.

Today, Israel is often seen as troublesome on a good day and illegitimate on a bad one. Like many Israelis, many wish to roll the borders back to the 1967 boundaries, but there is also a growing number who wish to return to 1948.

This disillusionment with Israel began before the conquests of the Six-Day War and the settlement drive on the West Bank.

Whereas the Old Left had fought Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the East End with the Jews, and lived through the Holocaust and the rise of Israel, the New Left came of age during the era of decolonisation in the 1960s. While Jews disproportionately participated in those anti-colonial struggles, the Shoah and the rise of Israel was not simply another historical event. Even for those born long after the war, it was understood that all Jews are survivors. This level of consciousness separates a majority of the Jewish Left from the broader British Left.

In 2009, a state with a Jewish majority in the Middle East does not sit easily with Marxist doctrine, post-colonial theory and Islamist belief. It is this inability to define Zionism and to classify the Jews which has brought together liberals, social democrats, Trotskyists, Stalinists and the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood front organisations.

Together, they reaffirm the contention that “Everything must be refused to the Jews as a nation; everything must be granted to them as individuals.” Herzl’s chief associate, Max Nordau, understood this well when he remarked at the first Zionist Congress in 1897 that the great men of the French Revolution emancipated the Jews, not through a fraternal feeling for the Jews, but because logic demanded it.

It was not that Jews did not believe in social change or indeed in revolution; it was that they believed that the theory of emancipation did not reflect their own reality. Many regarded themselves as a nation with a culture, a literature, a history, a plethora of languages and a religion.

Much of current progressive thinking can be traced back to the success of the October Revolution in 1917. Lenin, of course, would have no truck with Jewish nationalism since it would divert Jewish workers from the primary task of class struggle and recommended the choice of assimilation for the Jewish future. The Jews had skipped the national stage in their historical development and became the pioneers of socialism by moving directly to assimilation.

On the one hand, the Jews were a national minority in the transitional process of assimilating which deserved protection against antisemitism, on the other they had to be denied the right to national recognition.

Moreover, Lenin wrote about the Jews in 1903 and 1913 when the question of Jewish nationality was related to larger issues confronting the Russian workers’ movement. He noticed only Jews under the control of Baron de Rothschild and not the Marxist Zionism of Ben-Gurion and Tabenkin of the second aliyah. Lenin’s analysis of Zionism was selective, partial and outdated. He never produced a general analysis of the Jewish question and never discussed the socialist Zionist experiment in Palestine.

He clearly knew little about Jews and Jewishness. Most of the Jews with whom he was acquainted in the revolutionary movement were assimilated and Russified. Their Jewishness was often defined by transcending Jewishness. The workers’ movement in capitalist Europe, he argued, would defend the Jews against antisemitism. He also believed that after a socialist revolution, workers’ states would automatically eradicate all forms of national prejudice. As history has cruelly demonstrated, on both counts, Lenin was wrong. Leninist theory did not reflect the reality in which the Jews found themselves.

There is a belief in this country that the Left has never been susceptible to antisemitic stereotypes. The spectacle of the wealth of the Rothschilds in the 19th century, however, merged with traditional anti-Jewish imagery, propagated by centuries of the Church’s teachings. JA Hobson, the well-known liberal economist, argued that the Boer war had been instigated by international Jewish bankers and East End Jews made good, such as Barney Barnato. Jews hiding behind English names were the true manipulators of the Boer War. The revered founder of the Social Democratic Federation, HM Hyndman, spoke of an “Imperialist Judaism in Africa” and the formation of an “Anglo-Hebraic Empire in the continent”. Significantly, the civilisations of the Zulus, Basutos and Matabele were spoken of in glowing terms, while the Jews were all merely greedy capitalists. The Jews were implicitly accused of the corruption of the innocent, a desecration of an unblemished utopia. The impoverished Jewish masses of Eastern Europe were invisible.

This imagery was further embellished by Jews who wished to demonstrate that their prime allegiance was to the cause of the revolution.

Many Jews fervently embraced the possibilities of destroying the old and building the new in Russia. They could escape antisemitism and the burden of Jewishness in an unsympathetic world. Many of those who worked for world revolution were former socialist Zionists who now looked upon the Zionist experiment as distant and utopian compared to the here and now of Bolshevik success.

The Jewish section of the party began to play on the suspicion and confusion about Zionism within the Bolshevik party. It argued that Zionism was one of the branches of the imperialist counter-revolution; that it was linked to the antisemitic Whites.

The Bolsheviks believed that world revolution depended on revolution in the industrialised countries of the West. Yet this socialist internationalism was balanced by an opposing quasi-nationalist aim. A Bolshevik interest after 1917 was to stabilise the Soviet regime. Extending the appeal of revolution beyond Russia’s borders would therefore create domestic problems for the imperialists and divert political and military attention away from Russia.

The utilisation of the Arab world’s resentment of the British therefore assisted the early Bolshevik state in its war of survival. Thus in 1926 the coming to power of Ibn Saud and Wahhabi Islam in Saudi Arabia was welcomed by the Kremlin and seen as liberating and progressive. The Jews who had established the Communist Party of Palestine were ditched by Moscow in the hope of cultivating Arab nationalism. Jews were allowed to advance in all the Communist parties of the world, but were denied this in Palestine.

The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was, in Lenin’s eyes, one of the most important parties. It could promote the anti-imperialist struggle from the heart of the empire and assist by undermining Britain, the leading force in the array of anti-Soviet states.

Lenin’s dream attracted many from the colonies and especially from the Indian subcontinent. Like many British Jews, they found in the Communist party a home free of racism and colonial paternalism. Rajani Palme Dutt, the son of a middle-class Indian doctor and a Swedish mother, joined the newly founded CPGB and was regarded as the foremost ideologist of the party for the next half century. He was regarded by the Kremlin as the safest pair of hands in Britain.

Dutt was the party’s foremost expert on the colonial question. His view of Jewish nationalism was conditioned by the vested interests of the Soviet Union. Zionism, moreover, was fitted into the conventional perception of anti-colonialism. It was examined in the context of the Indian struggle. Zionism was regarded as wrong and not as different. Marxist Zionist efforts in establishing the kibbutz collective and forging a command economy, based on the Soviet model, were glossed over.

However, the rise of Hitler to power in January 1933 and the threatening presence of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists introduced a new ingredient into the CPGB’s approach.

The CPGB wanted a solid base within a working-class community — the Jews offered this because they appreciated the party’s principled stand against antisemitism and were deeply drawn to the idea of creating a better world. The influx of Jews into the party created a situation whereby Jews were now disproportionately represented and particularly in the party’s hierarchy and leadership.

In the spring of 1936, the CPGB demanded a halt to Jewish immigration into Palestine from Nazi Germany. However, many Jewish Communists, while often not identifying with Zionism per se, understood the attacks against Jews in Palestine in the context of attacks against Jews in Europe generally. It raised the question of differentiating between Jewish national interests and the Kremlin’s line. Why should attacks on Jews be fought in Britain but not in Palestine? The simplistic party line was that Arab and Jewish workers should fight Zionism, Arab feudalism and British imperialism. The CPGB’s fight against fascism and antisemitism in Britain thereby clashed with the Kremlin’s anti-Zionist policy.

The Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 was a bombshell for the Communist Party of Great Britain. For its Jewish members, it was a challenge to their faith in the cause of revolution.

Did Stalin sign to buy time? Was the annexation of the Baltic states and half of Poland a means to construct a buffer territory against a future German invasion? Did Stalin, on the other hand, believe that this conflict between imperialist rivals — Germany on one side, Britain and France on the other — would end in mutually assured destruction such that the hitherto neutral USSR could then fulfil Lenin’s dream by advancing into Western Europe and imposing Communism?

Large amounts of war material was shipped to Germany from the USSR and Stalin congratulated Hitler on entering Paris. In the midst of this swirling vortex with its annihilationist consequences, were Jews now expected to sacrifice themselves in the cause of the greater revolutionary good?

In the Labour party rank and file and within the unions, there was a real anti-war sentiment, a stop the war sentiment. There was a deep fear of a repetition of the carnage of the First World War when ordinary people perished in their millions in a futile war between empires. The Communist Party’s stand attracted the attention of many on the British Left when no one else was opposing the war.

This line of argument opened the way to the belief that there could be an “understanding” for national liberation movements in the developing world to working with the Nazis if it ousted the British imperialists and secured independence. After all, “the enemy of my enemy” is my friend.

The former president of the Indian National Congress, Subhas Chandra Bose, arrived in Berlin in March 1941 and enlisted German assistance in training an Indian military force. These Indian soldiers fought British troops in Italy.

If Mussolini’s forces had been successful in September 1940 and entered Cairo, they would have been welcomed as liberators by the Egyptians. Had it not been for the victory at El Alamein, SS Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff would have ordered his Einsatzkommando to liquidate the Jews of Palestine. Moreover, as in Eastern Europe, the Nazis expected local participation in their actions.

There was therefore a profound difference of choice for Jews and for anti-colonial freedom fighters. In both cases, vested interest overcame other considerations. For the Jews, it was often a matter of life and death, an escape from systematic extermination.

Trotsky had become sensitised to the prevalence and use of antisemitism in the USSR when he lost the power struggle to Stalin in the mid-1920s. Karl Radek, a strong supporter of Trotsky asked “What’s the difference between Moses and Stalin? Moses took the Jews out of Egypt; Stalin takes them out of the Communist Party.”

Rising antisemitism in Europe caused Trotsky to revise his attitude that assimilation was the answer to the Jewish problem and he became acutely aware of the Zionist answer. Trotsky used the term “Jewish nation” and was not seemingly opposed to the Jews moving en masse to Palestine once the victory of socialism had been achieved.

While Trotsky had predicted the Nazi-Soviet pact and condemned fascism, he also understood Stalin’s rationale for keeping the USSR out of any conflict for as long as possible. He too saw the war as a continuation of the First World War — a conflict between rival imperialisms.

There was little to choose in 1940 between the views of the Stalinist ideologue Rajani Palme Dutt and the sophisticated intellectual Leon Trotsky. This was the political dysfunction on the Left which faced the Jews on the eve of their greatest tragedy.

In the West, saving the Jews came to be seen as a consequence of winning the war. The question of what happens if there were no more Jews to save was addressed only marginally. In the East, saving the Soviet Union and exporting the revolution was paramount. Moreover, the international proletariat did not rise up against their masters. The circle of abandonment of the Jews was complete.

Soviet national interests ultimately trumped all other concerns including the meaning of socialism. Stalin’s desire to oust the British from the Middle East and to secure a Soviet presence there was a deciding factor in the Kremlin’s espousal of a Jewish state in the spring of 1947. Indeed without Stalin’s support, it is doubtful whether the UN would have voted by the mandatory two thirds majority for a two-state solution in November 1947. It is doubtful that without Stalin whether Israel would have come into existence in May 1948.

Yet Soviet Jews who applied to emigrate to Israel were quickly arrested and incarcerated for long years in the Gulag. The USSR’s external policy in Palestine dovetailed with Zionist interests. Its internal policies did not.

The Road to Utopia is paved with good intentions, but is accompanied by unexpected consequences. Today the Soviet Union no longer exists, consumed by its own contradictions.

Yet its legacy about Zionism lives on. These errors of history are carried on high while marching valiantly towards the new dawn of humanity. While the politics of virtue still attracts, many Jews remain idealists without illusions. It is this contradiction which both draws them near to and at the same time distances them from the British Left. The Road to Utopia remains open, everyone wishes to move forward, but the 20th century has taught that we do not all face in the same direction.

 

This article was based on Colin Shindler’s inaugural lecture at SOAS as the UK’s first Professor of Israeli Studies. His ‘The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right’ has just been published in paperback by IB Tauris

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

 

 

Wahab links Hezbollah arms to Palestinian naturalization.

by  Sami Haddad

(Nasrallah, supreme leader of Lebanon forever?)

All along Hezbollah has been linking its arms to the liberation of Lebanese territories occupied by Israel namely Shebaa farms and Kfar Shouba hills , but today former minister Wiam Wahhab linked the Hezbollah arms to the solution of Palestinian naturalization.

“The issue of the Resistance’s arms will only be resolved after the issue of Palestinian naturalization in Lebanon is settled.” He added : UN Security Council Resolution 1559 is disastrous for Lebanon.”

UN Security council resolution calls for disarming all the militia and the Palestinians outside the camps in Lebanon…in addition to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. Ever since Syria was forced to withdraw from Lebanon it has been pushing for the annulling of the resolution and for the dismissal of UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen who administers this resolution.

 

Since the Palestinians who are loyal to Syria continue to hold onto their arms in their bases that are located outside the camps (such as PFLP-GC, which is headed by former Syrian captain Ahmad Jibril) and since Hezbollah continues to hold onto its arms 1559 remains a very active resolution because it has not been implemented so far.

If Wahab’s statement is correct, then Hezbollah is holding onto its arms to make sure the Sunnis do not outnumber the Shiites in Lebanon …most of the Palestinians in Lebanon are Sunni Muslims and once naturalized the Sunnis will become the majority in Lebanon.

Wahab’s statement confirms why Hezbollah ally General Michel Aoun continues to bring out the issue of Palestinian naturalization .

In other words is Hezbollah using the liberation of south Lebanon just as an excuse ?

The Lebanese are dead against the naturalization of the Palestinians and the Palestinians don’t want to be naturalized either …they want to return to their homeland ..so what is the big fuss?

Everyone knows the issue of the return of the Palestinians to their homeland could take years to resolve …this means Hezbollah could hold onto its arms forever and Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah could continue to act as the supreme leader of Lebanon. (forever)

 

 

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

 

Double Edged.

 

by  Marc Prowisor

The US government has asked Israel to detail its operation in which Israeli Special Forces killed three terrorists who were responsible for the Thursday killing of a Jew near the community of Shavei Shomron in the Shomron region. This because the Arabs claim the terrorists killed were unarmed and of course, needless to say, completely innocent.

The fact is that in one of the places 2 M-16s were found and that these guns have been proven to be the weapons involved in the murder, means nothing, after all we are talking about upstanding citizens of the “Palestinian Authority”, and security personnel also, who may have been trained and equipped by the US, you know Dayton’s Boys.

Using a double edge sword in dealing with problems has its advantages and disadvantages. Yes, if used properly, it is a far more efficient weapon, however, if used sloppily and carelessly, it will often hurt and injure the one who is wielding it. The US is “checking Israel’s Tzitzit”, or sticking their nose a bit too far in Israel’s personal business, regarding its protection of its citizens and how Israel deals with not just enemies in words, but enemies in actions. I haven’t heard a US reaction to the murder yet that “blasts” the PLO regarding the involvement of its own arm in this heinous crime. We read how the “Palestinian” Security or Army arrested over 120 suspects in this murder, much to the praise of the IDF, yet of course released them shortly after. It is quite obvious and understood that the new Arab Army would never arrest one of its own over the mere killing of a Jew. I really do understand this and agree with them, this would cause a major rift and dismay among the Arab population of Judea and Samaria. Imagine it to be considered a crime to kill Jews, this would go against everything they have learned, and are still learning in grammar school.

Lets get back to that Double Standard, sorry I mean Double Edged sword that the US is using regarding Israel. There they are, all the State Department cronies and President Obama’s advisors all in a tizzy over Israel eliminating some murdering terrorists, while they wont even look into their own actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know it’s a different story over there, so many are dying there anyway, who cares, the Arabs don’t, the Human Rights people don’t, so why should the State Department or Prez Obama, I mean he doesn’t even care enough about Darfur to act. But Jews killing their enemies…. whoa! This is not acceptable, after all who did these guys kill anyway, a settler, what was he doing there in the first place, the nerve!

What goes around comes around, and as long as the US plays this game using a double-edged sword, mark my words, they will be cut. The Arabs they think they are defending will turn around and bite them in the fleshy part of democracy, probably sooner than later. The rights they think they are defending will come around and will shout back at them from the rest of the world, probably from the jesters at the sitcom of the “World Court” and “United damNation”.

I am saddened that the US is making a mockery of itself, it can be a great nation and leader again. The snickers and sneers heard around the world regarding the US upset me, I guess they are filtered out from Washington DC, they probably can’t be heard over the shovels in State and the Defense Departments.

Never less, nothing new, nothing surprising in the US reaction over the killing of a Jew in Israel, just wait how they will come down on Israel when we have to defend ourselves again from Hizbulla in the North, and Hamas in the south. Until then, we will continue to do what we do, and hopefully will return to be the terror of anyone who harms a Jew, anywhere in the world.

 

Marc Prowisor

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

 

PTA Commander-in-Chief.

 

by  Caroline Glick

 

Unbeknownst to most Israelis, this week marked a critical shift for the worse in the regional balance of power. While IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi was busy demanding that the government pay a ransom of more than a thousand terrorists for captive soldier Gilad Schalit, few paid attention to Iran's newest strategic successes.

 

Over the past week Lebanon capitulated to the Iranian axis. Turkey solidified its full membership in the axis. And Egypt began to make its peace with the notion of Iran becoming the strongest state in the region.

 

Less than five years after former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated by Syria, his son Prime Minister Saad Hariri paid a visit to Damascus to express his fealty to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Days later, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki visited Beirut and began giving the Lebanese government its new marching orders.

 

On Wednesday, Hizbullah forces deployed openly to the border with Israel under the permissive eye of the US-armed Lebanese army. Lebanon announced that it was no longer bound by binding UN Security Council Resolution 1559 that requires Hizbullah to disarm. And Hariri announced that he will soon visit Teheran.

 

While Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his media echo chamber insist that Turkey has buried its hatchet with Israel, on Wednesday Prime Minister Recip Erdogan led a delegation with 10 cabinet ministers to Damascus. There, according to the Syrian and Turkish Foreign Ministries, they signed 47 trade agreements.

 

This Turkish-Syrian rapprochement is not limited to economic issues. It is a strategic realignment. As Assad's spokeswoman Buthaina Shaaban explained to Iran's Arabic-language al-Alam television channel, "We are working to establish close ties between Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq so these countries can act as one regional bloc in order to promote peace, security and stability in the Middle East, while keeping the West's dictates and lust for the region's natural and oil resources at bay."

 

For years Egypt has been the most outspoken Arab opponent of Iran's moves towards regional hegemony. This past summer Egypt did not hesitate to accuse Teheran of trying to overthrow the regime when it discovered a network of Iranian-commanded Hizbullah operatives planning a massive terror assault on the Suez Canal.

 

Yet on Sunday, Mubarak hosted Ali Larijani, Iran's former nuclear boss and current speaker of Iran's parliament in Cairo. Following their meeting Mubarak traveled to the Persian Gulf for consultations on Iran's nuclear program. Given Mubarak's poor health, the fact that his meetings with Larijani sent him flying to Saudi Arabia indicate that something of major importance has just occurred.

 

Many IDF commanders are happy to leave the issue of Iran to the US, which they insist is capable and willing to deal with it. But the fact is that since Iran rejected President Barack Obama's diplomatic overtures, the US has shown clear signs of strategic dissonance.

 

While Israel clings to the hope that sanctions might prevent Iran from going nuclear, this week that notion was exposed as a fiction. Although Obama gave the House of Representatives a green light to vote on sanctions against Iran, he quickly demonstrated that Teheran had no reason to worry.

 

First Obama and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry blocked discussion of sanctions in the Senate. And now - with full White House backing - Kerry is trying again to appease the Iranians by begging them to let him visit Teheran. Clearly appeasement is the only play in Obama's book.

 

Furthermore, China's refusal to back sanctions in the UN Security Council coupled with Lebanon's and Brazil's ascension to the council next month obviate any possibility that a harsh international sanctions regime will be instituted against Iran any time soon.

 

FOR ISRAEL, Iran's successful moves to preempt American threats to isolate it should have been the top news story and the main issue on the government's and the General Staff's agendas. But it wasn't. Indeed, no one seemed to notice. They were otherwise occupied.

 

For the past week, the government's security cabinet and the IDF's top commanders have devoted themselves entirely to discussing how many terrorists Israel will give Hamas in exchange for captive soldier Gilad Schalit. For three days, the security cabinet met around the clock to discuss this issue alone. And the most insistent advocate for accepting Hamas's demand that Israel release over a thousand terrorists has been IDF Chief of General Staff Ashkenazi.

 

On Monday, Channel 2 reported that National Security Adviser Uzi Arad accused Ashkenazi of acting like the president of the IDF's parents' association rather than the chief of General Staff. Arad criticized Ashkenazi for demanding that Israel ransom the captive soldier while failing to supply the government with any option to use force to rescue Schalit.

 

The media pounced on the Arad-Ashkenazi story like hungry wolves. The national debate was dominated for two days by the burning questions of whether or not Arad would apologize, and whether Netanyahu can continue to retain Arad's services after he insulted Ashkenazi.

 

Conspicuously absent from the media's coverage of the spat was any discussion of the reasonableness of Arad's criticism. So, too, the media ignored the question of what - if anything - Ashkenazi's behavior tells us about the IDF mindset and disposition as Iran consolidates its regional power.

 

The fact is that Arad's criticism was on point. Schalit has been captive in Gaza for more than three years. At no point has the IDF provided the government with an option for rescuing him.

 

A year ago, Ashkenazi sent the IDF's best combat units into Gaza. During their stay, they were not ordered to rescue Schalit. And now, a year later, Ashkenazi is demanding that the government pay for the IDF's failure to rescue Schalit by accepting a deal that will imperil the country. And he is claiming that failure to do so will constitute nothing less than an abdication of Israel's moral responsibility to its soldiers.

 

Following the publication of Arad's attack on Ashkenazi, the IDF's Spokesman's Office issued a statement that army commanders are fulfilling their "professional duties" by insisting that Israel ransom Schalit.

 

This is untrue. It is not the professional duty of IDF commanders to opine on ransom demands. They have no professional qualifications to determine the reasonableness of ransom demands. In Jewish history, the role of ransoming captives has traditionally been the writ of rabbis, not military men. The writ of military men was to rescue them.

 

The professional responsibility of the IDF is to provide the government with military options for achieving its strategic objectives - including rescuing Schalit. By failing to provide such options, the IDF - with Ashkenazi at its helm - has failed to uphold its professional responsibilities. Worse still, by demanding that the government endanger the country to ransom Schalit, Ashkenazi and his generals are telling us something distressing about how they define their role as military commanders.

 

The IDF's apparent confusion about its role is not new. It was this confusion that led the army to fail to present the government with options for defeating Hizbullah in Lebanon in 2006 or for defeating Hamas in Gaza last year.

 

Whereas former prime minister Ehud Olmert properly received most of the blame for Israel's poor performance in the Second Lebanon War and in Operation Cast Lead, the fact is that it was the IDF that failed to deliver the goods. The operations the IDF designed, recommended and carried out in both campaigns were not meant to defeat Israel's enemies. All they were supposed to do was demonstrate Israel's firepower. And even this wasn't done particularly effectively.

 

In 2006, then-chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz rejected a ground invasion of south Lebanon in favor of an air campaign. When it became clear some 24 hours into the operation that an air campaign would be incapable of defeating Hizbullah or even degrading its ability to paralyze northern Israel with short-range rockets and missiles, Halutz and his deputies refused to conduct a ground assault. And, when after three weeks of failure they finally deployed ground forces in significant numbers, they didn't know what to tell them to do.

 

For his part, Ashkenazi sat on his hands for months as southern Israel was pummeled with rockets and mortars from Gaza and refused to offer the government a military option for protecting the South. When last December Hamas forced his hand by announcing that it was abrogating its cease-fire with Israel, Ashkenazi grudgingly agreed to let the IDF respond to its aggression. But even then, he opted for an operational concept that had no chance of defeating Hamas. Ashkenazi rejected the notion of retaking the Gaza-Egypt border. He refused to order IDF forces into Gaza's population centers. By opting not to do these things, Ashkenazi guaranteed that the IDF would accomplish little. Consequently, even top IDF commanders acknowledged this week that the army will be forced to return to Gaza in due course. There, thanks to Ashkenazi's refusal to defeat Hamas, Israel's soldiers will face a far more formidable foe than the one they were not allowed to defeat last year.

 

While refusing to fight Israel's enemies, under Ashkenazi, like under Halutz before him, the IDF has enthusiastically attacked religious Zionists. Since 2002, the only sustained operation the army has carried out successfully was the expulsion of all Israelis from Gaza and northern Samaria in 2005.

 

When Defense Minister Ehud Barak severed the IDF's ties with the Har Bracha Yeshiva last week, he was acting on Ashkenazi's advice. Ashkenazi has promoted anti-settler commanders like Col. Yitzhak Barr. As a brigade commander in Samaria, Barr has reportedly prohibited his soldiers from fraternizing with Israeli families on Shabbat and personally refused to visit IDF Chief Rabbi Brig.-Gen. Avichai Rontzky at his succa during Succot.

 

EVERY DAY the dangers to Israel's security and very survival mount. At this time, the government and the people of Israel need to be able to trust in the IDF's ability to defend the country. Rather than earning that trust, those tasked with our defense are spending their time berating the political leadership for their own failures. Moreover, they are expressing a disturbing desire to pass the buck on fighting Israel's enemies while aggressively hounding Israelis.

 

This situation is unacceptable. Either Ashkenazi and his generals should prove they are capable of performing their jobs, or they should be replaced.

 

 

Caroline Glick

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

 

Palestinian Affairs: Why is Abbas stonewalling?

 

by Khaled Abu Toameh  

Hardly a day passes when Mahmoud Abbas does not reiterate his refusal to return to the negotiating table with Israel unless certain conditions are fulfilled. This has been Abbas's position since US President Barack Obama entered office earlier this year.

By setting conditions for resuming the peace talks, Abbas appears to have climbed a very high tree - one that he finds too difficult to climb down from.

Abbas and his top aides point the finger of blame at Obama. They point out that almost immediately after he entered the White House, he demanded from Israel a freeze of settlement construction.

In an interview published this week in the London-based Asharq al-Awsat, Abbas explained that he could not afford a situation in which Obama appears more Palestinian than the Palestinians.

"Obama laid down the condition of halting the settlements completely," he noted. "What was I supposed to say to him? Should I say this is too much?"

Responding to criticism that he had never made such a demand before Obama was elected, Abbas said, "Halting the settlements is the second article of the road map and it's something I want. At the end they blame me, and they say that the condition of halting settlement construction was not on offer during the negotiations with former prime minister Ehud Olmert. Bear in mind that at every meeting with Olmert, the issue of the settlements was discussed."

ABBAS SEEMS to be more worried about his credibility than the construction in the settlements. In the past year, his standing among his constituents was severely undermined because of his policy of zigzagging.

First, Abbas told the Palestinians that he would never meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu unless he recognized the two-state solution and halted all settlement construction in the West Bank. However, under pressure from Obama, Abbas was forced to sit with Netanyahu at UN headquarters in New York.

Second, Abbas's failure to back a resolution endorsing the Goldstone report on Operation Cast Lead drew strong condemnations from many Palestinians, including some belonging to his Fatah faction. As the outcry in the PA territories and the Arab and Islamic countries intensified, Abbas rescinded his decision and decided to back the resolution that was brought before the UN Human Rights Council. But as far as his critics and enemies are concerned, it was too little and too late.

Third, Abbas's frequent threats to resign or not run in a new election are no longer taken seriously, not even by some of his top advisers. As one aide put it, "Abbas has threatened to resign at least 40 times in the past few months alone."

Abbas's empty threats and zigzagging have hurt his reputation so badly that now he's being forced to play tough with Israel and the US. To demonstrate this uncompromising approach, Abbas most recently came up with a new condition for resuming the talks: That Israel and the international community recognize beforehand the 1967 boundaries as the official and final borders of the future Palestinian state.

Abbas's aides in Ramallah say that he needs a "major concession" from Israel before he returns to the negotiations. "President Abbas does not want to repeat the mistakes of the past," explained one aide. "If he succumbs and resumes the talks with Israel unconditionally, our people will throw him out."

According to one of his advisers, Abbas has reached the conclusion that there's nothing to talk about with the Netanyahu government, especially when ministers like Avigdor Lieberman, Moshe Ya'alon and Bennie Begin are among the prime minister's inner circle. To support his argument that there's no peace partner in Israel, Abbas shows visitors a copy of an article written by journalist Gideon Levy in Haaretz, entitled: "Netanyahu should admit Israel doesn't want peace."

Abbas also appears to be very disappointed with the Obama administration, on which he was pinning high hopes in the beginning. The Palestinian leadership in Ramallah was seriously hoping that Obama would force Israel not only to freeze settlement construction, but to pull back to the pre-1967 borders, including the entire eastern part of Jerusalem. But now Abbas and his officials are accusing Obama of "caving in to pressure from the Jewish lobby" by endorsing Netanyahu's stance. In this regard, the PA officials say, Obama has shown that his policy toward the Middle East is almost the same as that of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Abbas is now hoping that the Europeans will counterbalance the US "bias" in favor of Israel by supporting the Palestinian leadership's demands. As one official put it, "The Americans can be on Israel's side, while the Europeans will be on our side. Let's turn it into a conflict between the Europeans and Americans."

It's hard to predict Abbas's next move as the man has been anything but consistent in his statements. Yet the question that many Palestinians have been asking themselves is not whether the talks with Israel would be resumed or not, but if there's anything left to negotiate about. And a growing number of Palestinians have long been wondering whether the man who is often referred to as the "governor of the West Bank," and whose term in office expired about a year ago, really has a mandate to negotiate on their behalf.

 

Khaled Abu Toameh  

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

 

The Arabic-Speaking World in 2010 .

 

by Barry Rubin

The politics of the Arabic-speaking world are going to face some serious challenges during 2010. Probably none of them, however, will have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli issue, despite the overwhelming attention and exaggerated importance usually given to that question by outside observers.

Unquestionably, the leading problem will be dealing with an increasingly powerful Iran and its sidekick Syria which aren't being contained by the United States. The Arabs, after all, live in the neighborhood and if they conclude that America can't or won't protect them, they'll have to cut their own deal combined with finding some way to defend themselves better.

Already we've seen huge gains for Iran in 2009 which U.S. policymakers seem largely to ignore:

--The Saudis have reduced their level of confrontation with Iran and Syria, especially abandoning their attempt to block Tehran's influence in Lebanon.

--The Lebanese moderate May 14 movement has bowed to Iranian-backed Hizballah in setting up a government which won't do anything Tehran doesn't like.

--While the full extent of Iranian intervention in Yemen is not clear, it seems like Tehran is backing a tribal revolt which is extending its influence into a new area.

--Western reluctance to raise sanctions and the ease with which Iran fooled and made fools of the West over the nuclear weapons' issue seems to show that Iran holds the stronger hand. Russia and China are basically defending Iran's interests in avoiding international pressure. Despite the Obama Administration having set dedlines of September and December, as 2010 begins, the implementation of higher sanctions is still months away.

--While many think that opposition demonstrations and protests have weakened the regime, in a real sense it emerged as stronger. Other factions were forced out of the leadership; Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders occupied more positions of importance. The spiritual guide accepted both the IRGC role and the reelection of President Ahmadinejad, despite his past economic mismanagement and the supposed international or domestic costs. In other words, the regime proved how tough it was which in that part of the world is a major asset.

--Iran seems to have stepped up efforts to extend its influence in southwestern Afghanistan, despite the U.S. military presence there.

Will this march continue in 2010? One of the things that the Obama Administration doesn't realize is that it's obvious unwillingness to confront Iran is demoralizing its allies in the Arabic-speaking world whose lives are on the line. If the United States won't even use tough rhetoric or sanctions how could it be possibly counted on if things get really rough?

Consequently, it's hard to see Arab states taking a tougher stand during 2010, though if Iran provokes them by getting caught doing internal subversion in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, for example, they could feel forced to take a stand.

A potential crisis is succession in Egypt. Will this be the year that President Husni Mubarak has to stand down? If so, there would be the long-awaited transition, forcing a final decision on whether or not the ill-prepared Gamal Mubarak is going to become president. Gamal is in many ways the West's dream of an Arab president, Westernized and a technocrat, but could that mean he lacks the skills to keep Egypt stable?

Another issue to watch is the power balance in Lebanon, a delicate mechanism to say the least. Will Hizballah be content to get a long list of things it wants: a free hand for its militia, unlimited weapons' imports, the country's servility to Syria, a green light to attack Israel whenever it wants (though it is unlikely to do so this year), and an end to investigations about its own (and Syria's) involvement in terrorism and murders within Lebanon? Or will it push harder to seize hegemony in the country?

Finally, there is Iraq, whose government is still fighting a terrorist war sponsored by Syria and Iran. As the American withdrawal proceeds will those two countries step up the violence in order to make it look as if the United States is running away in defeat? Here, the Obama Administration has not backed Iraq's complaints about Syrian involvement in terrorism, thus undermining another ally. Baghdad's current policy is, however, to remain on good terms with both Washington and Tehran if possible.

If this list makes it sound like nothing good is going to happen in the Arabic-speaking world in2010 then you've read it correctly.

 

 

Barry Rubin

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