Delegitimizing the Jewish State

by name Bat Ye'or

In a move that caught the Israeli government and the Jewish world by complete surprise, on October 21, 2010, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Tomb of the Hebrew Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories," admonishing the Israeli decision to add these biblical shrines to the list of Jewish historical and archaeological sites as "a violation of international law."[1]

The United Nations has become a foremost purveyor of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement. Nowhere has this obsession been more starkly demonstrated than at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, held in September 2001 in the South African town of Durban.

What is less known, however, is that the driving force behind "the attempt to detach the Nation of Israel from its heritage" (to use Israeli prime minister Netanyahu's words)[2] was the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which pressured UNESCO to issue the declaration and drafted its initial version.[3] U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has recently described the OIC as "a strategic and important partner of the U.N."[4] In fact, it has been the OIC that has successfully exploited its marked preponderance at the U.N.—where it constitutes the largest single voting bloc—to turn the world organization and its specialized agencies into effective tools in the attempt to achieve its goals, two of which are to bring about Israel's eventual demise and to "galvanize the umma [Islamic world] into a unified body."[5]

The OIC's Israel Obsession

Established in September 1969 as the "collective voice of the Muslim world," the OIC has evolved into the second largest intergovernmental organization after the U.N., bringing together fifty-six Muslim and other states, as well as the Palestinian Authority.[6] Though boasting a global range of objectives from the "promotion of tolerance and moderation, modernization, [and] extensive reforms in all spheres of activities," to the cultivation of "good governance and promotion of human rights in the Muslim world,"[7] this body has constantly and disproportionately focused on Israel and its supposed misdeeds. It was established in response to an attempt by a deranged Australian to set fire to the al-Aqsa mosque, which was duly blamed on "the military occupation by Israel of Al-Quds—the Holy City of Jerusalem."[8] The "State of Palestine" (i.e., the then-five-year-old Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO, established as a tool for promoting the expansionist ambitions of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser) was among the OIC's original twenty-five founding members, and the pledge of "full support to the Palestinian people for the restitution of their rights, which were usurped"[9]—the standard Arab euphemism for Israel's destruction—has become a central plank of the organization's policy, reiterated in countless decisions and resolutions on issues that have nothing to do with questions concerning the Palestinians.[10]

The Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ISESCO), an OIC organ mandated "to strengthen cooperation among member states in the field of education, science, and culture,"[11] has occupied pride of place in the campaign to delegitimize Israel. Since its inception in 1982, it has run dozens of programs and symposia on the Jewish state's supposed desecration of Islamic and Christian holy sites and the attendant need to wrest them from the Israelis' control. The most important of these were the international conferences on the "Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine," held in Rabat in 1993 and 2002 and in Amman in November 2004 respectively under the patronage of the Moroccan and Jordanian monarchs. An examination of conference activities reveals a systematic effort to devise an anti-Israeli media strategy that was to be adopted not only by Arab and Muslim states but also by international groups and organizations, including some of the U.N.'s most powerful agencies.

Unifying the Umma, Bashing the Jews

In his address to the 2002 Rabat conference, King Muhammad VI of Morocco stated:

The acts of destruction and distortion committed by the occupation authorities to distort the facts and truths of history cause serious damage to the Islamic and Christian holy sites and violate their sanctity and the values they embody for all the believers of the different religions.[12]

For the Moroccan monarch, as president of the OIC's al-Quds Committee, such actions as archaeological excavations and the placement of artifacts in museums constituted an attack against all believers. In fact, Christian churches that had been reduced to ruins by centuries of Islamic occupation were restored by successive Israeli governments because, unlike Shari'a or Islamic law, the Jewish state has no laws prohibiting the restoration or construction of churches. The king could have also benefitted from a measure of introspection: Morocco, like the other Maghreb states, is a place where virtually no vestiges of pre-Islamic Christian history have survived.

Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, the Saudi-born, University of Oregon-educated ISESCO director-general, went a step further, asserting that "the crimes against humanity committed by Israel have reached an extent of oppression, injustice, and aggression that humanity has never witnessed, neither in this age nor in previous ages."[13] He amplified this diatribe at the Amman conference where he claimed that Muslim responsibilities toward the Islamic and Christian holy sites in the Palestinian territories sprang from ISESCO's commitment to the Palestinian cause, which in his opinion, constituted the essence of all issues and the supreme task of both the Muslim world and those Eastern Christian circles that were part of the Arab and Islamic civilization.[14]

The proceedings of the Rabat and the Amman conferences represent a monument to anti-Jewish hatred and incitement, featuring such assertions as "Jews are the enemies of Allah, the enemies of faith, and of the worship of Allah."[15] They also brim with denials of Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel and claims to its Arab (and later Muslim) character since the third millennium BCE. The Jews are accused of having "judaized" the biblical prophets who were in fact Muslim and of having usurped the antiquity of other peoples since they themselves have no history. In the words of Adnan Ibrahim Hassan al-Subah, president of the Jenin Information Center:

People familiar with the Torah, which we believe to have been distorted, know the extent of the evils they attribute to their prophets: corruption, treachery, fornication or approval of it. It is with these facts that we need to arm ourselves when we confront the Zionist propaganda in the world with tangible facts, as part of our defence of the faith and the faithful on earth, wherever they may be.[16]

These examples of incitement to religious hatred were on display at the U.N.'s Palais des Nations in Geneva at a reception given by the OIC on December 19, 2008, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And why not? After all, the OIC is not only "the collective voice of the Muslim world"[17] but also the U.N.'s largest single voting bloc and a prominent collaborator with many of its specialized agencies.

Influencing the U.N.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that these conferences did not content themselves with anti-Jewish diatribes but sought to devise a strategy to harness the international community to the anti-Israel campaign in general and the re-Islamization of Jerusalem (al-Quds) in particular. As one of the speakers explained, "Jerusalem is the cornerstone of the spiritual edifice and the Zionist Jewish entity. Were it to be dislodged, the whole edifice and the Zionist entity itself would crumble like a deck of cards."[18]

Action plans show a media strategy of employing an attractive style and scientific language and magnifying Palestinian suffering since the establishment of the "racist Zionist entity" in 1948. These plans would be effectively replicated by the U.N.'s Alliance of Civilizations' Report of the High Level Group (HLG), which would endeavor to "make it clear to the Palestinian people that the price of decades of occupation, misunderstanding, and stigmatization is being fully acknowledged," although this "story had been left untold or deliberately ignored by the community of nations."[19]

This assertion is not merely false but the inverse of the truth. The Palestinians have benefitted like no other nation from world indulgence. Europe, for one, has vigorously championed their cause since 1973, devising a string of political schemes on their behalf and pouring immeasurable sums of money into the bottomless Palestinian pit.

If anything, it was the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Arab countries during and after the 1948 war and the expropriation of their worldly possessions, that was entirely ignored by the Alliance of Civilizations, as was the history of the Jews in their ancestral homeland where they had suffered ethnic and religious oppression by a long succession of foreign occupiers.

While claiming to promote peace, the HLG report added yet another page to both the defamation of Israel and the perennial Palestinian sense of victimization. One wonders what prompted it to begin the historical survey with the establishment of the state of Israel, ignoring the millenarian Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel that had been acknowledged as early as 1920 by the U.N.'s predecessor—the League of Nations.

Moreover, the report sought to rewrite, under U.N. aegis, the story of the nakba (the "catastrophe," as Palestinians and Arabs call their 1948 failure to destroy Israel at its birth) as a counterweight to the Holocaust, and to impose this narrative on Israel and the international community. In the words of the report, it is "essential for Palestinians as well as for the Arab-Muslim world and Muslims in general to understand and acknowledge the fact that we … now know and take responsibility for ensuring everyone knows the price and weight of these sixty years of misunderstanding, stigmatization, as well as veiled and abused truths."[20] Indeed, while the Alliance was established in 2005 with the specific goal "to explore the roots of polarization between societies and cultures today and to recommend a practical program of action to address this issue," it has quickly become an anti-Israel lobbying machine on a global scale. This is evidenced not only from its implementation plan, which places "a priority on addressing relations between Western and Muslim societies"[21] at the expense of other faiths and civilizations, but also by its close collaboration with numerous anti-Israel nongovernmental organizations and bodies, notably the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

The OIC's influence on the Alliance has been manifested in a wide range of historical and cultural issues, including the presentation of Islam as the source of modern Western civilization; the contrasting of Islamic tolerance with European culpability for the Crusades, imperialism and colonization; and the whitewashing of jihad's true nature and its misrepresentation as a struggle for individual self-improvement.[22]

The Alliance's views on social issues often echo OIC charges about the pervasive discrimination against Muslim migrants in the West and the Western media's deliberate dissemination of "Islamophobia." This state of affairs required, in the words, of the HLG report, that "American and European universities and research centers should expand research into the significant economic, cultural, and social contributions of immigrant communities to American and European life. Likewise, they should promote publications coming from the Muslim world on a range of subjects related to Islam and the Muslim world."[23]

Such recommendations follow the injunctions of the religious scholars (ulema) who attended the OIC's 2005 summit in Mecca.[24]

Plotting the Anti-Israel Campaign

Speakers at the OIC's Amman conference stressed the media's crucial role and importance in the fight against Israel. They recommended that the Islamic world should demonstrate its unwavering commitment to Arab and Palestinian rights, alongside the conviction that the re-Islamization of Jerusalem would restore the city's spiritual preeminence and peaceful religious coexistence, enable the flourishing of faith, and make Jerusalem a worldwide agent of culture and civilization.[25]

In fact, this picture in no way corresponds to the actual Islamic history of Jerusalem, which for most of the time was a sleepy and neglected backwater. Rather it is a usurpation of the Biblical vision of Jerusalem as "a light unto the nations," developed by generations of Hebrew prophets more than a millennium before Muhammad.

Abdullah Kan'an, secretary-general of the Royal Committee for al-Quds Affairs in Jordan—whose government signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994—presented a comprehensive plan for inculcating Islamic policy into all Western cultural and media sectors and delegitimizing the Jewish state, starting with turning the Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem into a central world problem. As a first step, he suggested publicizing the history of Jerusalem as he saw it—from the city's foundation by the "Canaanite Jebusites" to date—so as to negate "the Torah-based history." He also proposed to popularize Islamic and Christian holy sites in the same manner, starting with al-Aqsa Mosque, which "according to the noble Hadith, is only forty years older than the first shrine ever created for humanity, al-Haram Mosque in Makkah."[26]

In enumerating the themes of ISESCO's media war against Israel in the West, Kan'an evoked arguments repeated by many Western journalists, intellectuals, ministers, and heads of state. These included,

• Convincing the EU that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict was in its vital interest, thus helping Europeans (especially Germans) free themselves of their guilt complex vis-à-vis the Jews and the weight of history more generally.

• Persuading Western leaders that as long as the Palestinians did not have their own state, relations between the EU and the Arab world would remain unstable. Once this goal had been achieved, Europe could look forward to an expanded partnership with the Arab world and full access to its markets.

• Emphasizing that America's pro-Israel position was in contravention of international law, threatened U.S. vital interests as well as those of Europe, and jeopardized world peace and security. This argument, consistently inculcated in European leaders and journalists by the OIC, was hammered home by the Western media and became an important catalyst of European hostility toward the United States, especially during the George W. Bush administration.

• Underscoring the alleged threats to Western interests as a result of supporting Israel. This support had to be presented as one of the foremost causes of anti-Western violence, both in the Middle East and in the Western countries themselves, by individuals and groups who reacted emotionally to personal and collective tragedies. This argument was frequently used by Romano Prodi, then-president of the European Commission, and French president Jacques Chirac, among other European politicians, to explain away the resurgence of European anti-Semitism during 2000-05, and was also invoked by President Obama in March 2010 when he publicly humiliated Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[27]

• Convincing Westerners that peace was only possible through the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the entire territory occupied in 1967 with al-Quds as its capital, the "return" of Palestinian refugees, and the abandonment of Israel's "Zionist, racist character"—standard Arab and Muslim euphemisms for the destruction of the Jewish state.

• Persuading Westerners that their shared interests with Arabs and Muslims far exceeded those they shared with Israel.[28]

Kan'an then summarized the long-term objectives of the media plan, two of which are of special note:

• Persuading the EU to abandon its slavish trailing of Washington and to form its own independent vision and positions, which "would be more in harmony with the international will vis-à-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Israeli occupation of Arab territories, including Jerusalem, and the right of the Arab Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of its independent state with Al Quds as its capital."[29]

• Transforming the Palestinian question and the Arab-Israeli conflict from internal U.S. issues to external problems, primarily governed by the mutual interests of Americans, Muslims, and Arabs. This would break the immunity of the Israeli policies and force the Israeli government to bow to the will of the international community and adhere to all of the U.N. resolutions.[30]

To achieve these goals, Kan'an recommended obtaining the support of certain intellectuals, literary figures, and influential political movements that were capable of molding Western public opinion within the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict and especially with regard to the Jerusalem question. This campaign would refer to U.N. resolutions that formed the basis for the media plan. Here, too, EU support for the U.N.'s international law amounted to endorsement of the strategy and policies of the OIC, whose position as the U.N.'s largest single voting bloc gave it the unrivalled ability to predominate the world organization and its specialized agencies.

Another proposed tactic was to infiltrate the media as well as influential cultural, intellectual, and economic circles with a view to exposing them to the Arab perspective and convincing them that their countries' policies were subservient to "the interests of the Zionist movement with its various formations and bodies and not [to] the interests of their own countries"[31] Other themes included:

• Discreetly and indirectly encouraging trends critical of Zionism and the Israeli government's "judaization policies" in Jerusalem within Western circles, so as to make them effective opponents of the "Zionist lobby and the coalition of Jewish and Christian Zionists" and defenders of their countries' vital interests.

• Delegitimizing laws against anti-Semitism, such as France's 1990 Gayssot Act, which made it an offence to question the occurrence or scope of crimes against humanity,[32] and George W. Bush's 2004 law requiring the Department of State to monitor global anti-Semitism,[33] as laws that have no bearing on Western interests but are rather a part of a Zionist ploy to feed Westerners' guilt feelings so as to keep them subservient to Zionist machinations.

Mobilizing Western Muslims

No less importantly, the ISESCO campaign envisaged the mobilization of members of Arab and Muslim communities in the West, especially in the United States, who were to be enticed into becoming politically active so as to end their marginalization and gain major political weight. This was believed to be feasible given that these communities comprised high quality populations, including important scientists, intellectuals, and politicians. Arab and Muslim thinkers, religious scholars, and intellectuals living in Western societies ought to recommend to Muslims to reject extremism, fanaticism and violence "as this tends to be detrimental and generates negative reactions to Arab and Islamic issues." [34]

Another step would involve blocking attempts in Europe and the United States to ban Islamist charitable societies, which according to Kan'an were purely humanitarian organizations but in fact were funneling funds for jihadist and terrorist groups.[35] Within this framework, he recommended:

• Encouraging the investment of Arab and Muslim capital in all forms of the media (written, audio, and visual), especially in the United States, thus paving the way for breaking the alleged Jewish monopoly in the field. Arab radio stations and satellite television channels such as al-Jazeera and al-Arabia should broadcast "weekly programs in English [about al-Quds], targeting Western public opinion, benefiting from media personalities knowledgeable about the Western mentality and capable of influencing it to the benefit of the issue of al-Quds with the help of U.N. resolutions." Programs about al-Quds in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and other languages should be created, and a multilingual satellite channel called al-Quds would be created, "staffed with a media, information, intellectual, and historical team knowledgeable about the question of al-Quds and its various dimensions."[36]

• Encouraging Muslim and Arab investments in modern information and communication technologies, notably the Internet, and the filming of television and cinema documentaries with a view to shaping Western public opinion, which is heavily reliant on this type of educational and media sources. A special emphasis should be placed on the possibilities of "utilizing modern communication technologies, especially the opening of websites dedicated to al-Quds, and encouraging Muslims to embark on an Internet-supported war for al-Quds to counterbalance the activities of the Zionist movement and its octopus-like formations, the most dangerous of which is Christian Zionism and its mastermind, the Neo-Conservatives."[37]

On a broader level, Kan'an advised Arab and Muslim communities "to integrate as much as possible within the societies where they live, in order to gain credibility," especially in universities and institutions of higher learning. "Friends of al-Quds" associations in U.S. and European universities, organizations, and working places were to be established to support those NGOs working for the cause of al-Quds. To this would be added the worldwide distribution of propaganda materials "issued by Americans, Europeans, and Jews against Israel, its policies, and Zionism," including specifically-produced films that "reveal the barbarity of Israel, the dangers inherent in the policy of demolishing houses, murder and massacre of the Arab Palestinian people, and distributing these films as widely as possible in the Islamic world."[38]

Finally, specialists and experts in Western affairs should be drawn into "the discussion of the broad lines of the media plan in order to enrich it and guarantee all conditions of its success." Such experts would specialize in Western media, politics, public opinion, psychology, religions, law and culture, as well as in history of al-Quds. In two notes that appear in the French text but are omitted from the English proceedings, the lecturer ridicules the "Zionist stories of alleged Nazi slaughters."[39]

The OIC's World Collaborators

These were by no means novel, let alone maverick ideas. The intention to extend the OIC's influence to Western countries through immigrant populations and their growing weight in the host societies had been insinuated on previous occasions, notably by OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at the European parliament in 2005,[40] and by the founders of the Euro-Arab Dialogue, which evolved from a French initiative in the late 1960s.[41]

According to unpublished sources from the Euro-Arab Dialogue movement,[42] in November 1973, Christopher Mayhew, a member of the British parliament, and Raymond Offroy, a member of the French national assembly, envisaged the creation of an association for improving Europe's relations with the Arab world.[43] Its launching coincided with the European Commission (EC)'s Brussels declaration that urged Israel to return to the pre-1967 lines and, for the first time, recognized the PLO.[44] Mayhew and Offroy, now supported by the EC, were the first to create a Euro-Arab network, the European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation (PAEAC), at a conference in Paris on March 23-25, 1975. Its secretary-general, Robert Swann, a former foreign office diplomat, had been a secretary-general of Amnesty International. The funds for PAEAC came from a Swiss foundation, ANAF, set up in 1969 and managed by an administrative committee consisting of European political personalities. PAEAC benefited from the financial aid and support of the EC and its networks, in liaison with the Council of Europe. The minutes of the PAEAC meetings were published over the years in the Documents d'Actualité Internationale by the French foreign office. These reveal the effective extension of OIC strategy to Europe, combining a policy of immigration with the cultural and political Islamization of Europe.[45]

Extensive U.N.-sponsored networks, bringing together the EU, the OIC, and ISESCO, would effectively implement this strategy in all Western countries. Europe, for example, has lavished millions of Euros on Palestinian NGOs and organs of "civil society," which advocate the economic, political, educational, and cultural boycotting of Israel and which have systematically demonized and delegitimized the Jewish state in schools, the media, Palestinian publications, and on the international scene.[46]

Since 2005, a "Palestinian Week against Israeli Apartheid" has become a regular feature on campuses and in major cities throughout Europe, Canada, and the United States, calling for divestments, sanctions, and boycotts against Israel. According to NGO Monitor, most speakers at these demonstrations belong to organizations financed by European governments, the European Commission, and the New Israel Fund, created following Obama's election.[47]

To these NGOs must be added "The Elders"—a newly-established "independent group of eminent global leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering, and promote the shared interests of humanity." [48] Generating much international influence and considerable funds, the group comprises twelve leaders and dignitaries, quite a few of whom—notably former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and former Irish president Mary Robinson of Durban conference infamy—are harsh critics of Israel. It is chaired by former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu—the spiritual instigator of the world campaign of cultural and economic apartheid against Israel.

Small wonder that the group, in line with the former policies of its members while in power, has consistently misrepresented the Israelis as the unjust and warlike party and the Palestinians as hapless victims of their predatory neighbor. For The Elders, the Palestinian denial of Israel's right to exist embodies natural justice (hence, for example, their advocacy of "engaging" Hamas) while Israel's attempts to protect its citizens from sustained terror attacks—from the erection of the security fence, to Operation Cast Lead, to the naval blockade of Hamas—are illegal and disproportionate uses of force. Tutu congratulated Turkey for having sent its flotilla of supposed humanitarians in May 2010 while the Elders condemned Israel's attempt to stop this effort on behalf of Hamas, a terror organization, whose constitution openly calls for Israel's destruction.[49] They also urged the U.N. Security Council "to debate the situation with a view to mandating action to end the closure of the Gaza Strip."[50]

In what had by now become an instinctive reaction, the European parliament joined the Elders and condemned Israel by a crushing majority, insinuating its massive support for Hamas. Catherine Ashton, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and vice president of the European Commission, argued that lifting the blockade would bring peace,[51] conveniently overlooking the fact that the blockade was a defensive response to Hamas' genocidal policies rather than their catalyst.

Exploiting the Palestinian Christians

Nor has the OIC, together with its willing international collaborators, shied away from exploiting West Bank and Gaza Christians—discriminated against and oppressed by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which have ruled over them for the past fifteen years—for its anti-Israel propaganda campaign.

Consider the document titled Kairos Palestine, drawn up by Palestinian theologians and published in Bethlehem on December 11, 2009, by the Geneva World Council of Churches.[52] In the name of love, peace, and justice, the paper portrays Israel as the epitome of evil and oppression, urging all Western churches to initiate a policy of economic strangulation and defamation of the Jewish state. This was followed by a letter from the Greek Catholic patriarch of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, Gregorios III, to Pope Benedict XVI,[53] in preparation for the October 2010 Synod, planned to bring together the Catholic churches of the Middle East to discuss the greater problems facing the local Christians and to devise ways and means for stopping their ongoing flight from the region.

Invoking his duty to inform the pope on the dangers in the region, the patriarch had no qualms about blaming Israeli actions for the surge of militant Islamism throughout the region and its adverse implications for the local Christian communities. He wrote:

There is a diffuse but sure rise of Islamic extremism, provoked by the threats of the Israeli government against Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, [and Iran], which is spreading throughout all the countries in the region. Even in Syria, where such extremism has been up to now very limited, its advance has become more and more evident, despite efforts from the government against it.

Gregorios lamented the widespread terror attacks by these Islamists on local Christians, especially in Iraq and Egypt. Yet rather than ask the pope to help restrain the perpetrators of this violence, he begged that

the Holy See's diplomacy redouble its efforts to persuade the Tel Aviv government, despite the views of its most intransigent wing—probably via the United States and those European countries which, having sponsored the birth of the State of Israel and supported it ever since, should be able to exert effective pressure on it—of the grave danger of this development which in the medium and perhaps short term, runs against the interests and future of the State of Israel itself, which needs peace in the region just as much as Arab countries, to be able eventually to live normally all together. [54]

Conclusion

Judging by Israel's growing international isolation, the OIC's sustained effort to delegitimize the Jewish state has borne substantial fruit. Not only is Israel's right to exist constantly debated and challenged in Western public opinion forums, but sixty-three years after establishing the Jewish state in an internationally recognized act of self-determination, the United Nations has become a foremost purveyor of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement.

Time and again, year after year, its Commission on Human Rights discusses Israel's supposed abuses while turning a blind eye to scores of actual atrocities around the globe. This world organization has 192 member nations, but its Security Council has devoted about a third of its activity and criticism to only one of those states—Israel. Nowhere has this obsession been more starkly demonstrated than in the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in September 2001 in the South African town of Durban where, for eight full days, delegates from numerous countries and thousands of nongovernmental organizations indulged in a xenophobic orgy of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement that made a mockery of the conference's original purpose.[55]

As UNESCO follows suit by denying the Jews some of their most cherished historical and religious symbols, the OIC scores yet another palpable hit in its ceaseless hate campaign.

[1] "Executive Board adopts five decisions concerning UNESCO's work in the occupied Palestinian and Arab Territories," UNESCO Media Services, Paris, Oct. 21, 2010.

[2] Jerusalem Post, Oct. 29, 2010.
[3] See, for example, International Islamic News Agency (Jeddah), Mar. 3, 2010; "Decisions Adopted by the Executive Board at its 184^th Session," UNESCO, executive board, Paris, May 14, 2010.
[4] World Bulletin (Istanbul), Sept. 28, 2010.
[5] "About OIC," Organization of the Islamic Conference, Jeddah, accessed Nov. 7, 2010.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] "Declaration of the First Rabat Islamic Conference," Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Rabat, Sept. 1969.
[9] Ibid.
[10] "Resolutions," Second Islamic Conference of the Ministers of Health, OIC, Tehran, Mar. 1-4, 2009.
[11] "Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO)," Specialized Institutions and Organs, OIC, Rabat, 2009, accessed, Nov. 7, 2010.
[12] "Message of His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco," June 6, 2002, Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine International Conference, Rabat, June 7-8, 2002 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2004), p. 11.
[13] "Address of Dr. Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri," Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, First International Conference, Rabat, June 7-8, 2002 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2004), p. 15.
[14] "Address by Dr. Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri," Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, Nov. 23-25, 2004, (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), p. 18.
[15] Adnan Ibrahim Hassan al-Subah, "Role of Palestinian Civil Society in the Protection of Holy Sites in Palestine," Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, Nov. 23-25, 2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), p. 253.
[16] Ibid., p. 254.
[17] "About OIC."
[18] Abdullah Kan'an, "Media Plan for Publicising the Cause of Al Quds, Al Sharif in the West and Mechanisms for Its Implementation," Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, Nov. 23-25, 2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), p. 195.
[19] "Report of the High Level Group," Alliance of Civilizations, United Nations, New York, Nov. 13, 2006, p.18, art. 5.7.
[20] Ibid., p. 53.
[21] "Implementation Plan, 2007-2009," Alliance of Civilizations, United Nations, New York, p. 2.
[22] "Report of the High Level Group," pp. 11, 15.
[23] Ibid., p. 39, italicized in the text.
[24] "Recommendations of the OIC Commission of Eminent Persons (CEP)," Makkah al-Mukarramah, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 7-8, 2005.
[25] Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, Nov. 23-25, 2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), p. 175.
[26] Kan'an, "Media Plan," p. 201.
[27] The Sunday Times (London), Mar. 26, 2010.
[28] Kan'an, "Media Plan," pp. 202-3.
[29] Ibid, p. 205.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid., p. 204.
[32] Tendant à réprimer tout acte raciste, antisémite ou xénophobe, République Française, Paris, July 13, 1990.
[33] Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004, PL 108-332, U.S. Congress, Oct. 16, 2004; BBC News, Oct. 20, 2004.
[34] Kan'an, "Media Plan," pp. 205-6.
[35] See for example, Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha, "CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2006, pp. 3-20.
[36] Kan'an, "Media Plan," pp. 206-7.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid., pp. 207-8.
[39] Ibid., p. 208.
[40] Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general, Organization of the Islamic Conference, address to Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe, Oct. 4, 2005.
[41] Roy H. Ginsberg, The European Union in International Politics. Baptism by Fire (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), pp. 112-3.
[42] 1974-1994 Association Parlementaire pour la Coopération Euro-Arabe, association archives, unpublished document in author's possession, pp. 6-12.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Joint statement, European Economic Community, Copenhagen, Nov. 6, 1973.
[45] Bat Ye'or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Cranbury, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005), pp. 93-5.
[46] Gerald M. Steinberg, "Europe's Hidden Hand. EU Funding for Political NGOs in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Analyzing Processes and Impact," NGO Monitor Monograph Series, Apr. 2008.
[47] "Israeli Apartheid Week 2010: NGO Involvement," NGO Monitor, updated Mar. 3, 2010.
[48] "About the Elders," The Elders website, accessed Oct. 13, 2010.
[49] "Hamas Covenant 1988," Yale Law School Avalon Project, Aug. 18, 1988.
[50] "The Elders Condemn Israeli Attack on Gaza relief Ships," The Elders, May 31, 2010.
[51] Catherine Ashton, speech to the European Parliament, Strasbourg, June 16, 2010.
[52] Kairos Palestine, Bethlehem, Dec. 11, 2009; Al-Jazeerah: Cross-Cultural Understanding (Dalton, Ga.), Dec. 15, 2009 .
[53] Gregorios III, Patriarch to Pope Benedict XVI, Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East of Alexandria and of Jerusalem, Mar. 1, 2010.
[54] Ibid.
[55] Gerald M. Steinberg "NGOs Make War on Israel," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004, pp. 13-25.

Original URL:http://www.meforum.org/2813/delegitimizing-the-jewish-state

Bat Ye'or is the author, most recently, of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005). This article contains extracts from her forthcoming book Europe, Globalization and the Coming Universal Caliphate (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011).

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

The War in Afghanistan Is Part of the Larger Struggle Against Global Terrorism

by Max Boot

When I recently participated in an Intelligence Squared US debate about Afghanistan, my debate partner, terrorism expert Peter Bergen (who, like me, argued that it’s not a lost cause), was practically hooted off the stage by a skeptical audience when he said there was not much difference between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. Now his insight is confirmed by U.S. intelligence reporting.

As described in the New York Times, “New intelligence assessments from the region assert that insurgent factions now are setting aside their historic rivalries to behave like ‘a syndicate,’ joining forces in ways not seen before.” The elements of the “syndicate” cited are the Quetta Shura Taliban led by Mullah Omar, the Haqqani Network, and HiG (Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin), which are increasingly cooperating to stage attacks in Afghanistan from their safe havens in Pakistan. But all three have close links to other jihadist groups based in Pakistan, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, Tehrik-i-Taliban (aka the Pakistan Taliban), and, lest we forget, al-Qaeda. An American officer quoted by the Times does a good job of summing up the state of play among the jihadists:

“This is actually a syndicate of related and associated militant groups and networks, Trying to parse them, as if they have firewalls in between them, is really kind of silly. They cooperate with each other. They franchise work with each other.”

If that’s the case — and the preponderance of intelligence reporting certainly points in that direction — then it’s silly to disassociate the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, as so many critics of the war effort do, from the broader struggle against jihadist groups bent on inflicting serious harm on America and on our allies. There are real differences among the jihadist groups, but there is also a growing commonality of tactics and purpose. The war in Afghanistan is part of a broader struggle — a global war — that we must win not only to safeguard distant allies but also our own territory.

Original URL: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/category/contentions

Max Boot

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The 2011 Economy and Obama’s Political Fate

by Peter Wehner

Newly released data show that home prices across 20 major metropolitan areas fell 1.3 percent in October from September, the third straight month-over-month drop. Many economists expect the decline to continue into at least next spring, erasing most of the gains made since prices bottomed out in early 2008. “This looks like a double-dip [in housing],” according to David Blitzter, chairman of the Standard & Poor’s index committee. “Somebody who thought last year that it’s going to be straight up from here was wrong.”

For every dollar decline in housing wealth, consumers reduce spending by about a nickel in the subsequent 18 months, according to Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com.

Falling housing prices, then, while not necessarily derailing a recovery, can mitigate one.

Whether the housing market will recover by 2012 is unclear. But we do know this: objective economic conditions will largely determine Mr. Obama’s political fate. If the economy continues to struggle and stagger — if housing prices continue to fall, if unemployment continues to remain high, and if growth continues to be sluggish — the president will find himself in a perilous situation. And all the talk about his “comeback” and how successful he was during the lame-duck session of Congress will evaporate like the morning mist.

Many people forget that when unemployment was above 10 percent, Ronald Reagan — the Great Communicator — was deeply unpopular and considered by many Americans to be out of touch, dogmatic, and easily defeatable. He won a landslide re-election in 1984 because in 1983 the economy took off like a rocket. If it hadn’t, the Morning in America theme would have been a bust.

This doesn’t mean that other factors beyond the economy won’t come into play in 2012. Presidential elections are decided by a cluster of things; some of them are objective conditions, while others have to do with subjective impressions. ObamaCare will continue to be a focal point of attention. And events we cannot now anticipate will arise; how the president responds will matter a great deal.

Still, the optics of how the president ended 2010 — whether he has regained political momentum or not — will matter hardly at all. The political narrative will shift dozens of times between now and the 2012 election. And as almost every president before him has discovered, Mr. Obama will find that the state of the American economy will play a significant, and perhaps a decisive, role in his re-election prospects.

Original URL: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/category/contentions

Peter Wehner

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Everyone Does Not Know What Everyone Supposedly Knows

by Rick Richman

For more than a decade, the guiding principle of the peace process has been that “everyone knows” what peace will look like: a Palestinian state on roughly the 1967 lines, with land swaps for the major Israeli settlement blocs, a shared Jerusalem, international compensation for the Palestinian refugees, and a “right of return” to the new Palestinian state rather than Israel.

A new poll conducted jointly by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace shows that the Palestinian public opposes such a solution by a lopsided majority.

The poll presented a package modeled on the Clinton Parameters: (1) an Israeli withdrawal from more than 97 percent of the West Bank and a land swap for the remaining 2-3 percent; (2) a Palestinian state with a “strong security force” but no army, with a multinational force to ensure security; (3) Palestinian sovereignty over land, water, and airspace, but an Israeli right to use the airspace for training purposes and to maintain two West Bank early-warning stations for 15 years; (4) a capital in East Jerusalem and sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods and the Old City (other than the Jewish Quarter and the “Wailing Wall”); and (5) a “right of return” for refugees to the new state and compensation for their “refugeehood” and loss of property.

The package was opposed by 58 percent of the Palestinians, with only 40 percent favoring it.

It was not a case of one or more individual elements in the package causing a problem. Each of the five elements was polled separately; not one of them commanded majority support.

Writing today in Yediot Aharonot, Sever Plocker asserts that while most Israelis are prepared to support a Palestinian state, they have in mind a state “not much different from the Palestinian Authority that exists today.”

Ask now in a poll how many Israelis are ready for the evacuation of 150-200,000 settlers from Judea and Samaria, an IDF withdrawal from bases in the Jordan Valley, the deployment of Palestinian border police between Kalkilya and Kfar Saba, a new border in Jerusalem and turning the territories into a foreign country that will absorb hundreds of thousands of militant refugees from the camps in Lebanon – and see how the numbers of those who support a “two-state solution” drop to near zero.

Interestingly, the new poll showed that Israelis supported the hypothetical package by 52 percent to 39 percent, demonstrating that a majority or plurality of Israelis (the poll has a 4.5 percent margin of error) would support a demilitarized Palestinian state, as long as the IDF is empowered to keep it that way, the state does not assert a “right of return” to Israel, and there is a land swap that does not require the mass uprooting of Israelis from their homes. Plocker’s assertion may show, however, that a lot depends on how polling questions are framed, and the implications of flooding the West Bank with refugees (as opposed to resettling them where most have lived all their lives) deserve further study.

But all this is hypothetical. The Palestinians rejected the Clinton Parameters in 2000 and effectively rejected them again in 2008 in the Annapolis Process. The new poll makes it clear they would reject them a third time, despite what “everyone knows.”

Original URL: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/category/contentions

Rick Richman

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Cuddling With Cuba

by Ryan Mauro

Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks reveal ^[1] an unsettling betrayal of those fighting for democracy in Cuba. Apparently, fancy dinners and high-level access are more important than challenging a Castro regime that supports narco-terrorism and is spreading neo-Marxist tyranny in Latin America.

A cable from November 2009 shows how some Western countries have given up on pressing Cuba on human rights issues, with diplomats agreeing not to meet with opposition figures fighting for freedom while visiting the island. The European Union, Canada, Australia, Switzerland and Spain, among others, are described as countries whose officials have decided that Cuba’s political oppression is not worth fighting. Unbelievably, this catering to the Castros has no benefit beyond “pomp-full dinners and meetings, and for the most pliant, a photo-op with one of the Castro brothers.” There was no economic agreement behind this, only greed.

The United Kingdom, Germany and the Czech Republic are depicted as being more honorable, deciding it is better to not hold high-level meetings in Cuba than to submit to the regime’s rules about who they can meet with. A representative of the Vatican, Archbishop Claudio Celli, is especially principled and angers the officials he met with by complimenting Cuban bloggers and asking for freer Internet access for the population.

Another 2009 cable shows that the U.S. has little hope invested in Cuban dissidents. “We see very little evidence that the mainline dissident organizations have much resonance among Cubans,” it reads. The document claims that the opposition leaders are old, divided amongst themselves and their ranks have been infiltrated by Cuban intelligence. The cable is pessimistic about change in the near term, stating that “We do not believe the announcement of Fidel’s death would spark either violent demonstrations or a quick surge in migration.”

However, the cables do show an opportunity available for Cuban dissidents. One predicts ^[2] the declining economy of Cuba could become “fatal” in two to three years, with Italian officials reporting that sources in the Cuban government as saying the country “would become insolvent as early as 2011.” It appears that President Raul Castro does not have his head in the sand regarding this impending disaster, as he has announced ^[3] plans to reduce the government workforce by 500,000, decrease subsidies and allow some limited free market reforms to stimulate the economy.

Cuban-American author Humberto Fontova ^[4] told FrontPage that part of the reason for complacency towards the Castro regime is a belief among some in the West that “if Castro brought ‘fabulous health and education to some pesthole banana republic, then a few human rights abuses are a small price to pay.’” The reality, Fontova says, is that Castro turned a country with a higher per capita income than half of Europe “into a pesthole that repels Haitians.”

The rise of radical Islam is also distracting the West’s attention away from Cuba and its allies in Venezuela. He says this is a mistake because the Castro regime’s activity threatens the West.

“Cuba is still sponsoring terrorism big time—something apartheid South Africa and Pinochet’s Chile never did. Yet the entire world agonized and wailed over South Africa and Chile’s human rights abuses, which were a tiny fraction of Castro’s,” Fontova said to FrontPage.

Despite the State Department’s assurance ^[5] in 2009 that “Cuba no longer actively supports armed struggle in Latin America and other parts of the world,” the government of Colombia says ^[6] that the FARC narco-terrorists consult with Cuban intelligence and receive Cuban funding through Venezuela. The Castro regime’s intelligence service has thoroughly infiltrated and compromised ^[7] U.S. intelligence efforts against Cuba, which may help explain the lax attitude towards Cuba.

Other cables released by WikiLeaks expose Cuba’s subversive role in Latin America in places other than Venezuela and Colombia. In June 2009, the Obama Administration and other Western countries condemned the removal of Honduran President Zelaya from power by the military, despite the fact that Zelaya had repeatedly violated the country’s constitution and refused to abide by Supreme Court rulings. In accordance with the constitution, the Congress began impeaching him and the Supreme Court authorized the military’s intervention to prevent Zelaya from establishing a dictatorship. ^[8]

Released cables report that some of Zelaya’s closest advisors were connected to Cuba, Venezuela and organized crime. It also confirmed ^[9] his dictatorial ambitions, saying he “resents the very existence of the Congress, the Attorney General and Supreme Court.” Although the cables maintain that the coup was illegal, it shows that the military’s action stopped the expansion of the Cuban-Venezuelan alliance to include Honduras.

Another cable shows how Chavez, whose regime is propped up by Cuba, has come to the aid ^[10] of President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, who is described as a “Chavez ‘Mini-Me’” by one American diplomat. The cables show that Ortega’s top officials are given “suitcases full of cash” when they visit Venezuela and release drug traffickers from prison in return for funding. This drug money along with oil cash from Venezuela was put into secret accounts, amounting up to $500 million in 2008 when municipal elections marred with fraud ^[11] resulted in a major Sandinista victory.

The West may be engaged in a battle with radical Islam, but it cannot forget about the spread of neo-Marxism in Latin America of the Castro-Chavez ilk. The Castro regime is one that deserves to be challenged, not wined and dined.

URLs in this post:

[1] reveal: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/world/americas/18wikileaks-cuba.html

[2] predicts: http://www.valleynewslive.com/Global/story.asp?S=13652223

[3] announced: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-cb-cuba-raul-castro,0,1512384.story

[4] Humberto Fontova: http://www.hfontova.com/

[5] assurance: http://justf.org/blog/2009/05/06/state-departments-country-reports-terrorism-2008

[6] says: http://www.capitolhillcubans.com/2010/05/farcs-geopolitical-base.html

[7] infiltrated and compromised: http://bigpeace.com/hfontova/2010/07/12/u-s-intelligence-on-cuba-consistently-wrong/

[8] prevent Zelaya from establishing a dictatorship.: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35426

[9] confirmed: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395204576023843828913256.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[10] come to the aid: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B60RU20101207

[11] marred with fraud: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122748875503551983.html

Original URL:http://frontpagemag.com/2010/12/29/cuddling-with-cuba/

Ryan Mauro

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

The Top “Big Nannies” of 2010

by Michelle Malkin

It was a nefarious year for nettlesome nosy-bodies employed by the Nanny State. Here are the top power-grabbers of 2010 who just can’t leave us alone:

— New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Two feet of snow paralyzed trains, buses, plows and emergency vehicles ^[1] in the Big Apple this week. Perhaps if Bloomberg — the nation’s top self-appointed municipal food cop — spent more of his time on core government duties instead of waging incessant war on taxpayers’ salt, soda, trans-fat and sugar intakes, his battered bailiwick would have been better equipped to weather the storm.

— Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. He proposed meddling mileage ^[1] taxes, mused about a system to track drivers’ routes, lobbied for high-speed rail boondoggles and promoted a “livability initiative” to limit suburban growth and force dwellers into public transportation. Then America’s driving czar floated a plan earlier this fall to disable cell phones through some kind of centralized government mechanism. LaHood backed off that creepy crusade, but he is still intent on waging war against drivers who choose to use cell phones, entertainment systems and GPS devices on the road. Just last week, the unstoppable control freak proposed a new rule banning truck and bus drivers from any use of cell phones while driving — including emergency calls on hands-free devices. His anti-car agenda is stuck in overdrive.

— The city of Cleveland. The green police in this Midwestern metropolis made headlines in February with an intrusive plan to roll out electronic snooping trash cans — “smart” rubbish bins bugged with radio frequency identification chips and bar codes to monitor residents’ recycling ^[1] habits. Violators can be fined $100. Federal stimulus money has gone to fund similar programs in Dayton, Ohio. The technology originated in Germany, was adopted by eco-authoritarians in England (where at least 500,000 trash cans are now embedded with snitch chips) and has spread across Europe. Welcome to the age of Bin Brother.

— The city of San Francisco. The city board of supervisors recently took the “Happy” out of McDonald’s ^[1] Happy Meals by banning all restaurants from serving toys with children’s meals that exceed arbitrary limits on calories, fat, salt and sugar. Even the mayor of the People’s Republic of San Francisco opposes the latest food-control scheme. But the bossy City by the Bay continues to assault consumer freedom with bans on everything from plastic bags to pet sales and soda pop. By executive order this summer, Mayor Gavin Newsom outlawed Coke, Pepsi and Fanta Orange drinks from vending machines on city property.

The decree dictates that “ample choices” of water, “soy milk, rice milk and other similar dairy or non dairy milk” must instead be offered. It’s not clear how vendors will be able to circumvent the city’s hostility toward plastic bottles. Maybe beverages will be served straight out of those noxiously trendy reusable cloth bags?

— The architects of Obamacare. After ramming a trillion-dollar package of unconstitutional federal health mandates down our throats, they said children and seniors would be saved, we could keep our doctors, costs would go down, and the economy would be boosted. Reality: Premiums have continued to skyrocket. Insurers nationwide have dropped child-only plans in the individual market. Obamacare taxes forced the AARP to raise its members’ rates. Hospitals have stepped up layoffs and shutdowns. And millions of Americans have only been able to keep their doctors and coverage after their employers, unions or health providers begged the feds for special waivers. Heckuva job, health bureaucrats.

— First lady Michelle Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee. Mrs. Obama first played the anti-childhood obesity card in September 2009, as a rationale for using her office to crusade for taxpayer subsidies supporting her hometown Chicago’s failed Olympics bid. Her argument: Kids would stay fat, lazy and uninspired if the Daley machine didn’t get its share of massive sports corporate welfare.

Next came Mrs. O’s push for the $5 billion expansion of federal child nutrition programs. As I first reported in February 2010, the legislation was a pet project of the Service Employees International Union, which seeks to swell the ranks of dawn-to-dusk year-round public school food service workers who organize under the progressive activist slogan “serving justice, and serving lunch.” In addition to school breakfast and lunch, the kiddie food patrol is now pushing subsidized dinner plans and summer food service to create a “stronger nutrition safety ^[1] net.”

Nanny State Republican Mike Huckabee, who used his bully pulpit position as Arkansas governor to campaign for Big Government-endorsed “healthier living” in public schools and private life, naturally sided with Mrs. Obama — and took a swipe at Sarah Palin last week for criticizing the White House usurpation of parental responsibility and rights. Huckabee scoffed at the idea that the feds are “trying to force the government’s desires on people.” But school bake sales are already under siege, and Mrs. Obama’s childhood obesity task force has already called for new and dramatic controls on the marketing of unhealthy foods. Did Huckabee miss (or does he agree with) Mrs. Obama’s officious rallying cry on child nutrition: “We can’t just leave it up to parents”?

God save us from more busybody bipartisanship in 2011.

URLs in this post:

[1] vehicles: http://www.creators.com/opinion/michelle-malkin.html#

Original URL:http://frontpagemag.com/2010/12/29/the-top-big-nannies-of-2010/

Michelle Malkin

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

Obama Bypasses Senate, Appoints Envoy to Syria

by AP


WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama has bypassed the US Senate and directly appointed four new ambassadors, including Robert Ford, who will become the first US envoy to Syria since 2005.

Specific senators had blocked or refused to consider the confirmations of the nominees for various reasons, including questions about their qualifications. But in the most high-profile case, that of the new envoy to Syria, a number of senators objected because they believed sending an ambassador to the country would reward it for bad behavior.

"Making undeserved concessions to Syria tells the regime in Damascus that it can continue to pursue its dangerous agenda and not face any consequences from the US," Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. "That is the wrong message to be sending to a regime which continues to harm and threaten US interests and those of such critical allies as Israel."

The administration had argued that returning an ambassador to Syria after a five-year absence would help persuade Syria to change its policies regarding Israel, Lebanon and Iraq as well as its willingness to support extremist groups. Syria is designated a "state sponsor of terrorism" by the State Department.

Former President George W. Bush's administration withdrew a full-time ambassador from Syria in 2005 after terrorism accusations and to protest the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, killed in a Beirut truck bombing that his supporters blamed on Syria. Syria denied involvement.

Obama nominated Ford, a career diplomat and a former ambassador to Algeria, to the post in February but his nomination stalled after his confirmation hearings and was never voted on.

The White House announced Wednesday that Obama would use his power to make recess appointments to fill envoy posts to Azerbaijan, Syria and NATO allies Turkey and the Czech Republic.

Recess appointments are made when the Senate is not in session and last only until the end of the next session of Congress. They are frequently used when Senate confirmation is not possible.

The other Obama nominees announced Wednesday are Matthew Bryza for Azerbaijan, Norman Eisen for the Czech Republic and Francis Ricciardone for Turkey.

Original URL:http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=201497

AP

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US Against Anti-Settlement Resolution in Security Council

by Herb Keinon, Khaled Abu Toameh and Hilary Leila


The US is against efforts to bring the settlement issue to the UN Security Council, a State Department spokesman said Wednesday, soon after PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Palestinians intended to ask the Security Council to condemn the settlements as “illegal.”

“We have consistently opposed taking these kinds of issues to the UN Security Council,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at a press briefing, though he declined to specify whether the US would actually veto a resolution should it be voted on.

Israeli officials said various draft resolutions on the matter were currently being discussed in New York, and the degree to which a resolution would run into US opposition would depend on its final language, and whether it called for operative steps such as sanctions.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of a draft on Wednesday calling settlements a “major obstacle to the achievement of peace.” It does not, however, call for sanctions, and urges both sides to continue negotiations toward a final peace agreement.

The draft resolution reaffirms Palestinian claims that “Israeli settlements established in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including east Jerusalem, are illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.”

Additionally, the document demands that Israel “immediately and completely ceases all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and that it fully respects all of its legal obligations in this regard.”

Israeli officials said the more watered-down the resolution, the less likely that the US would use its veto to block it.

While the Europeans consistently say that settlements are illegal under international law, the US – with the exception of the Jimmy Carter administration – has generally refrained from adopting that language, instead characterizing the settlements as “illegitimate.”

Toner emphasized that “final-status issues can only be resolved” through direct negotiations rather than a UN vote, a long-standing US position.

However, he also reiterated America’s continued opposition to Israeli settlements.

“We don’t accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity,” Toner stated, labeling such continued construction “corrosive to our peace efforts,” as well as to Israel’s future.

Erekat, meanwhile, denied earlier reports that claimed the Palestinians were planning to ask the UN Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state early next year.

He said that the Palestinians had no intention of making such a request in the near future.

The PA also rejected on Wednesday any talk about an interim solution with Israel. The announcement came in response to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s remarks in an interview with Channel 10 on Tuesday.

Netanyahu, in that interview, said that if direct negotiations with the Palestinians “hit a wall” over core issues such as security, Jerusalem or refugees, it may be necessary to aim for a long-term interim agreement. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, however, said this week that a long-term interim agreement should be the goal from the outset.

Nabil Abu Rudaineh, a spokesman for PA President Mahmoud Abbas, said that the Palestinians were opposed to an interim agreement because it would exclude the issues of Jerusalem and the refugees.

“Renewed talk about a Palestinian state with temporary borders is completely unacceptable and wouldn’t lead to real peace,” Abu Rudaineh said. “The time has come for decisions on final-status issues and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 borders, including east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

Erekat, in discussing the PA move to take the settlement issue to the UN, was quoted by the German press agency DPA as saying that “the Israeli government is witnessing an international isolation that it hasn’t witnessed before.”

He said this was “due to the efforts exerted by the Palestinian leadership” and by Abbas.

But Palestinian boasts that its policies were successfully isolating Israel were dismissed in Jerusalem, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor saying that for all the “isolation” talk, “patients from the Arab world seeking treatment for their ailments were coming to Israel.”

Palmor said that “isolation was very much in the eye of the beholder.”

Wealthy patients from countries such as Iraq, Jordan and the Persian Gulf come to Israel to take advantage of its advanced medicine, government officials said Wednesday, unwilling to provide numbers or indicate whether this included political elites.

Palmor said that even as Erekat talked about an isolated Israel, it was attracting more investment than the financial support the Palestinian Authority was getting from the Arab world.

One diplomatic official cautioned the Palestinians against becoming “intoxicated” by the fact that four South American countries had either recognized a Palestinian state, or declared their intention to do so in the near future.

“Diplomatic fireworks will not bring about a state,” the official said. “Fireworks look spectacular momentarily in the sky, but then disappear.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said in response to Erekat’s threat to take a resolution to the Security Council that “desperate attempts by the Palestinians are the result of a dead end that they led into because of their preconditions. A real Palestinian state, and not a virtual one, will be established only through negotiations with the elected government of Israel.”

Ayalon called on the international community to “show responsibility” and not create illusions for the Palestinians.

Original URL:http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=201488

Herb Keinon, Khaled Abu Toameh and Hilary Leila

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

US Losing Its Ability to Dominate the Skies (and Save Jobs)

by Taylor Dinerman

A few years ago a US Air Force pilot bragged that since 1943 no American ground soldier has had to fight under enemy air superiority. Strong fighter squadrons equipped with state of the art aircraft flown by well-trained pilots have long been a unique US strength. Ever since the end of World War Two no enemy has been able to dispute US air supremacy over the battlefield. The US Air Force has occasionally been challenged over the enemy homeland, as it was in the early days of the Korean and Vietnam wars, but in the end the US dominated the skies over their capital cites, Pyongyang and Hanoi.

Until recently the US commitment to making sure that the Air Force was the best in the world has been unmistakeable. In 2002, the 71st Fighter Squadron was equipped with 24 F-15Cs, which, before the F-22A, was America's premier air superiority fighter. The 71st was one of three squadrons of the elite 1st Fighter Wing based at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Even after the post Cold War reductions, the Defense Department deliberately chose too keep this Fighter wing at full strength and fully trained.Then, in September of this year, the 71st Fighter Squadron was disbanded. This leaves the 1st Fighter wing with just two weak squadrons of F-22As. For any administration to put our critical US advantage in air superiority fighters at risk is an act of extreme recklessness.

Now the top leaders at the Pentagon are beginning to wonder if they have not been a bit hasty in their drive to shut down the production of the F-22A air superiority fighter. They recently gave orders to preserve the tool needed to build the aircraft and to make an extraordinary video record of the skills and methods used by the man and women who actually work on the assembly line -- a sign that the administration may realize that they will need to restart F-22A production at some future point.

If the White House and the Defense Department choose to do so, they will have plenty of political cover. The original decision to cut F-22A production was made by George W. Bush's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and has been supported over the years by Senator John Mac Cain (R Arizona) -- so the decision to cancel the aircraft can be easily presented as a bipartisan mistake. Everyone involved in saving the F-22A is acutely aware that they will be saving tens of thousands of jobs. They will also find that keeping the production line going will send a message of renewed strength and determination to America's adversaries overseas. Making this move now instead of waiting for a dangerous foreign crisis to erupt would be in stark contrast to President Jimmy Carter's dismal final years in office. In 1979-1980 the hostage crisis in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan pushed Carter into announcing a major increase in the Defense budget. By then it was far too late for him to change the perception of wimpiness that he had projected during the first part of his term.

In its time the F-15 was an awesome flying and fighting machine with an outstanding combat record in the hands of mostly American and Israeli pilots, Yet it was designed more than 40 years ago. It has been updated with better electronics, engines and weapons, but it remains the same basic aircraft it was when it was first deployed, as the F-15A ,in 1975.

The Air Force planned to replace the F-15C with the F-22A, a superior aircraft whose capabilities are only now being understood. The F-22A is the first true air-to-air stealth fighter, and one of the very few planes ever that can fly supersonically without rapidly running out of fuel. Most importantly, it is one of the very few planes in the US arsenal that can be counted on to survive attacks by the latest generation of Surface-to-Air-Missiles. In the hands of well-trained pilots, it should be able to dominate the skies in the same way as the F-15.

The key to the F-15's success was not only that it was a superior aircraft, but also that it was available in adequate numbers. Its replacement, the F-22, no matter how good a fighter, cannot succeed if it is purchased in minimal numbers. According to current plans, only 187 F-22As are being built. These may be the best fighters in the world, but they cannot be in two places at the same time.

The Air Force originally wanted more and 700 F-22As, but during the budget fights of the early years of the Bush administration the number was cut to fewer than 400 -- just barely enough to create 10 strong squadrons, one for each of the 10 Air Expeditionary Forces, and extras for training, maintenance and reserves. In 2005, however, this was cut by OMB to just 180.

The dramatic reduction in US air superiority forces was challenged by the Air Force's leaders. In 2008, fed up with their constant lobbying for more F-22As Secretary of Defense Bob Gates fired both Michael Wynne the Secretary of the Air Force, and General Michael Mosley the Air Force Chief of Staff. The rest of the Air Force leadership got the message and quieted down.

Meanwhile, Secretary Gates and his team promised that the Ar Force would soon receive the new F-35A previously known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The JSF program, begun by Bill Clinton's first Defense Secretary, Les Aspin was supposed to be the ultimate affordable aircraft; versions of it are planned for the Marines and the Navy, as well as for many of our NATO allies, Israel and others.Like many complex programs with an international component, however, the price has gone up dramatically, and the the first operational units will not be available until at least 2016. Another problem that will undoubtedly add to the overall cost of the program is that many nations which had planned to buy a large number of F-35s in various versions are now cutting back. The UK, for example, has just announced a major cut in their plans to buy F-35, and it appears that Italy may follow suit.

Given the delays in F-35 development and production, a decision to continue building F-22As would not only make sense, but would send a strong signal that the US is determined to keep its ability to establish air superiority over just about any battlefield on the planet. The sooner the decision is made, the less it will cost to restart production of those F-22 components whose production has already stopped: the more aircraft built ,the lower the cost per plane.

There is a story that a few weeks after D Day, when General Eisenhower was visiting the beachhead with his son, who had just graduated from West Point, the young lieutenant turned to his father and said "Without air superiority you'd never have been able to do this." His father replied "Hell, without air superiority we wouldn't be here." Years later it is still true: without air superiority, American victory is not possible.

Original URL:http://www.hudson-ny.org/1752/us-losing-ability-to-dominate-skies

Taylor Dinerman

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