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Even in the era of fast-flowing information that tickles curiosity, the failure of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 2008 did not arouse public discussion. But as the international diplomatic peace effort revives once again, it is vital to try and understand the reasons for this failure, based on the known facts.
Never had conditions been so conducive to the attainment of a permanent solution between the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority as in 2008. The Oslo agreements were defined from the outset as interim, and the blame for the failure of the permanent-status negotiations in 2000 could be put on Yasser Arafat, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who never changed his spots. However, in 2008 negotiations were held between PLO leaders known to be very moderate and an Israeli government known for its readiness to walk an extra mile on the road to peace. Indeed, Hamas took over Gaza in June 2007, but even this did not divert the negotiators from their goal; the decision was to try to reach an agreement between Israel and the PLO and to then shelve it until it was ripe for execution.
Since the failure of these negotiations... did not arouse public discourse or any attempt to deeply explore its reasons; only lately have some disturbing reports surfaced. The Washington Post on May 25 reported that according to PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), prime minister Olmert accepted the principle of the "right of return" for Arab refugees and offered to resettle thousands in Israel. Abbas also said that Olmert offered him 97% of Judea and Samaria... In addition, last week Newsweek reported that Olmert had told them that he proposed that Israel would give up its sovereignty in the "Holy Basin" in Jerusalem and suggested that it be jointly administered by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the PLO, Israel and the United States; this was confirmed by PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat.
Why, then, didn't the moderate PLO leadership embrace such an extreme Israeli offer? The answer given by Abbas to The Washington Post surprised many: "The gaps were wide." However, it is also quite surprising that a full month has elapsed since that interview was published and yet no public discussion has taken place attempting to explore the meaning of that statement and to understand what is left for Israel to do to fill those gaps and contribute to a successful outcome of the negotiations.
THE TRUTH IS, of course, that nothing more can be done on the part of Israel. Unintentionally, Olmert took the veil of moderation off the face of the PLO. ...Its refusal to accept Olmert's proposals proves that the PLO truly intends to apply the "right of return" of refugees to their original homes in Haifa and in Jaffa, in Lod and Beersheba. PLO leader Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala) explained lately to Haaretz that "it's not fair to demand that we recognize you [Israel] as the state of the Jewish people because that means... a predetermination of the refugees' future, before the negotiations are over. Our refusal is adamant." To prevent misunderstanding, Mahmoud Abbas, in his Washington Post interview, rejected the possibility that the PLO recognizes Israel as a Jewish state because it would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees.
Although the Arab Peace Initiative includes two articles explicitly dealing with the "right of return," it should be recognized that the resettlement of refugees in Israel is not the goal but the instrument. All signs indicate that the goal is the cancellation of Israel as a sovereign state in Palestine, and that this is the source of the PLO's adamant refusal to accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Hence, even Israel's withdrawal to the 1949 armistice demarcation line - even that which runs through Jerusalem - and even its agreement to assume responsibility for the plight of the refugees and resettle thousands of them in Israel, will not bring about the termination of the struggle, but will rather lead to the next chapter of prolonged hostility.
The real dispute does not concern the natural growth of Ariel (in Samaria) but the natural right of the Jewish people to sovereignty in Carmiel (in the Galilee).
...In the course of talks PLO negotiators were explicitly asked whether, after an agreement is reached to their satisfaction, they would agree to include in it a specific article stating that this puts an end to the dispute and terminates all further claims. The government did not bring to the public's attention the fact that to this simple question, the PLO leadership ominously answered in the negative.
The necessary conclusion therefore is that the moderate organization for the liberation of Palestine from Jewish sovereignty is not interested in the "two-state solution" but rather in a "two-stage solution." In the first stage, an Arab state is to be established alongside Israel and in the second stage, following the resettlement of refugees within Israel, one Arab state is to be established, stretching from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea.
In an attempt to test this conclusion to the utmost and to refute it, Israeli governments have resorted to all possible political experiments. All excuses have by now been used up. In other words..., the "two-state solution" cannot be realized....
Col Kemp has amplified his remarks in a speech at a conference in Israel:
It is worth watching or reading this remarkable speech in full -- because he says things that are as well-informed, obvious and decent as they are rare and poorly understood in the society that he has spent his life defending. He points out, for example, that Britain, America and Israel are up against the same type of enemy which operates under a new and very different set of rules:
Hezbollah and Hamas over here, Al Qaida, Jaish al Mahdi and a range of other militant groups in Iraq. Al Qaida, the Taliban and a diversity of associated fighting groups in Afghanistan. They are different but they are linked. They are linked by the pernicious influence, support and sometimes direction of Iran and/or by the international network of Islamist extremism. These groups, as well as others, have learnt and continue to learn from each others’ successes and failures. Tactics tried and tested on IDF soldiers in Lebanon have also killed British soldiers in Helmand Province and in Basra. These groups are trained and equipped for warfare fought from within the civilian population.
Do these Islamist fighting groups ignore the international laws of armed conflict? They do not. It would be a grave mistake to conclude that they do. Instead, they study it carefully and they understand it well. They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy’s main weaknesses.
Their very modus operandi is built on the correct assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules. It is not simply that these insurgents do not adhere to the laws of war. It is that they employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law. Their entire operational doctrine is founded on this basis. In Gaza, as in Basra, as in the towns and villages of southern Afghanistan, civilians and their property are routinely exploited by these groups, in deliberate and flagrant violation of any international laws or reasonable norms of civilised behaviour for both tactical and strategic gain.
Stripped of any moral considerations, this policy operates simply and effectively at both levels. On the tactical level, protected buildings, mosques, schools and hospitals, are used as strongholds allowing the enemy the protection not only of stone walls but also of international law. On the strategic level, any mistake, or in some cases legal and proportional response, by a Western army will be deliberately exploited and manipulated in order to produce international outcry and condemnation. And in sophisticated groupings such as Hamas and Hezbollah, the media will be exploited also as a critical implement of their military strategy.
And of course the British and American media have done everything they can to act as the jihadis’ fifth column against the west – nowhere more so than in Israel, on which Col. Kemp had this to say:
What is the other challenge faced by the IDF that we British do not have to face to the same extent? It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.
So what did the IDF do in Gaza to meet their obligation to operate within the laws of war? When possible the IDF gave at least four hours’ notice to civilians to leave areas targeted for attack. Attack helicopter pilots, tasked with destroying Hamas mobile weapons platforms, had total discretion to abort a strike if there was too great a risk of civilian casualties in the area. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were cancelled because of this.
During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. This sort of task is regarded by military tacticians as risky and dangerous at the best of times. To mount such operations, to deliver aid virtually into your enemy’s hands, is to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.
In the latter stages of Cast Lead the IDF unilaterally announced a daily three-hour cease fire. The IDF dropped over 900,000 leaflets warning the population of impending attacks to allow them to leave designated areas. A complete air squadron was dedicated to this task alone. Leaflets also urged the people to phone in information to pinpoint Hamas fighters vital intelligence that could save innocent lives.
The IDF phoned over 30,000 Palestinian households in Gaza, urging them in Arabic to leave homes where Hamas might have stashed weapons or be preparing to fight. Similar messages were passed in Arabic on Israeli radio broadcasts warning the civilian population of forthcoming operations. Despite Israel’s extraordinary measures, of course innocent civilians were killed and wounded. That was due to the frictions of war that I have spoken about, and even more was an inevitable consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting.
By taking these actions and many other significant measures during Operation Cast Lead the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other Army in the history of warfare. But the IDF still did not win the war of opinions – especially in Europe.
Israel’s military therefore observes a high standard of ethical behaviour and concern for innocent life which is simply without parallel or precedent anywhere else in the world. And yet it is Israel which the west singles out for demonisation and delegitimisation for ‘war crimes’ -- so much so that the very same Israeli military eulogised by Col Kemp cannot set foot in Britain without a ‘human rights’ lawyer trying to arrest them for ‘crimes against humanity’ as soon as they step off the plane.
The Jerusalem Post's columnist Sarah Honig has written a commentary on the Israel's continuing self-debasement by its media and contrasting Prime Minister Netanyahu's restrained timidity with former Prime Minister Begin's bristling, unequivocal responses:
Sometime at the very start of 1982 I attended a function at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, which would have been entirely forgettable except that.... I came away revolted by the spectacle of my Israeli colleagues eagerly milling around ambassador Sam Lewis, seeking his attention and trying to outdo each other in heaping mockery and contempt on their own prime minister. Brutal jokes at Menachem Begin's expense came fast and furious. Lewis visibly appreciated them and laughed condescendingly.
It was one of the sorriest displays of Israeli self-debasement I had until then witnessed.
But in time I came to regard it as typical of the fawning eagerness to curry favor with foreign bigwigs. Kowtowing to the exceedingly well-connected and widely-courted Lewis wasn't merely ingratiating. It also served the local Left's visceral anti-Begin politics. Undisguised American displeasure with him seemed a serendipitous source of support.
It was after Begin had serially disobeyed Washington. First he dared destroy the Iraqi nuclear reactor. Though America should have thanked Israel for the service, secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger... was livid. Hence previously contracted delivery of fighters was "suspended." Later the IAF bombed the PLO's Beirut headquarters and more aircraft deliveries were put on hold. Then the bill extending Israeli law to the Golan Heights was enacted. The US responded by reassessing its strategic cooperation agreement.
Begin decided not to take his lumps. He summoned Lewis and subjected him to the most undiplomatic dressing-down any US diplomat probably ever received from an ally. Begin bristled at the very notion of American diktats. "Are we a vassal state?" he demanded, and went on to stress that Israel is neither a banana republic nor a bunch of "14-year-old boys who have to have their knuckles slapped" for misbehavior.
Begin was on a roll. He told Lewis that Israel wouldn't be intimidated by threats of punishment and that they would fall on deaf ears. He vowed not to allow "the sword of Damocles to hang over Israel's head... Jews had survived without a strategic cooperation memorandum with America for 3,700 years, and can live without it for another 3,700 years."
The Golan legislation, Begin stressed, wouldn't be annulled.
This earful was immediately released verbatim by the Prime Minister's Office for publication, so the populace would know its government drew red lines and stood by them.
However, Israel's left-dominated media never lost an opportunity to lay bare its obsequiousness.... It exploited Begin's candid indignation as yet another pretext to pillory him. National pride was already then perceived as reactionary and uncool, especially when it clashed with post-Zionist dogma.
HOW LIKE the reaction by most of our subservient scribblers and talking heads to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's unsolicited recommendation that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu kick out Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and replace him with Tzipi Livni. No matter whether we like or dislike Lieberman, it's at instances like these that no consideration ought to feature in our internal discourse other than national pride.
Put in the context of Sarkozy's infamous big mouth, his insolence toward Lieberman is no big deal.... The meek retort by Netanyahu - the ostensible heir to Begin's mantle - is of greater concern. Yet most disconcerting of all is the alacrity with which current Israeli commentators - fully in the footsteps of Sam Lewis's suck-ups of yesteryear - seize with alacrity any chance to further their agenda. In some cases the triumphant gloating at Lieberman's humiliation was tangible. To that end it was excusable to portray Sarkozy's scorn as gospel.
Such glee is nowadays frequently afforded our pundits, including many employees at the state's own broadcasting authority - the one involuntarily subsidized by you and me. Not a day goes by without some pronouncement from the Obama court about how Israel must comply with Washington's decree to cease all "construction in the settlements," including in much of Jerusalem.
Netanyahu's response - on those rare occasions when any at all is heard - is as wan as it was in Paris. He appears timid and wishy-washy.... He is too nervous to utter a fitting rejoinder. Trepidation may be embellished as signifying prudent restraint, as not breaching diplomatic protocol Begin-style, as keeping a cool head and, calculatingly, a tight lip. Ah, if it were only so.
Unfortunately there's too much cause to suspect that Netanyahu is irresolute. He may not quake in his boots, but he is too insecure vis-a-vis Obama's barefaced arrogance and Israel's own homegrown hecklers. Netanyahu's passivity would be bad enough were this a fixed nonfluctuating situation. The problem is that it isn't.
The more Netanyahu consents to taking it on the chin, the more audacious Obama gets and the more any head of government anywhere feels empowered to chime in and add his/her two cents' worth....
As the British government teeter-totters on the brink of collapse, its headliners appear united solely by their obsession with 50 housing units in the Jerusalem suburb of Geva Binyamin (a.k.a Adam), five kilometers northeast of Israel's capital. It boggles the mind to think that world stability hinges on the project not being completed.
....It is what the Israeli coterie of tendentious left-wing news purveyors unquestioningly chants.
....Israel earned the disdain it encounters everywhere. Foreign governments take liberties against Israeli sovereignty that would be inconceivable against any other independent country. It's doubtful any other state anywhere would be treated with similar disrespect, not just by inimical leaders like Obama, but even by emissaries like George Mitchell. Ours is to do their bidding even at our palpable peril.
The more Netanyahu delays forthrightly defying such international chutzpa, the more he invites it. There are times when seemly circumspection is contraindicated. Begin by now would have called the American ambassador to order and sent an unequivocal message to said ambassador's boss, even at the risk of local sycophants rushing to brownnose the latter-day Sam Lewis.
A startling and underreported admission has been made by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. As described by the Jerusalem Post's Sarah Honig, he confirmed that the Arabs of Safed (Tsfat) left voluntarily during the 1948 War of Independence. This dispels the propaganda myth that Israeli troops forcibly drove out the Arabs:
Scant attention was paid last week to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's revelations on Al-Palestinia TV. Abbas talked about his youth in Safed, from whence he routinely claims his family was forcibly driven out by Israeli troops in 1948. Abbas revels in his supposed refugee status. It's his stock-in-trade on the Arab scene and the international arena. The pitiable pose of an aggrieved victim confers ostensible moral authority upon his cause.
This pose, moreover, becomes a basic Arab tenet - the crucial claim for justifying terror against Israel and for refusing to relinquish the so-called "right of return" by refugees to what are described as homes robbed from them by violent... Jewish conquistadores. Biased world opinion willingly and gladly falls for the Palestinian freedom-fighter fable.
But foolhardy carelessness - or trust that nobody listens to intra-Arab discourse - occasionally pulls off the painstakingly fabricated mask. That's what happened to Abbas (a.k.a. Abu-Mazen) on July 6. Fatah's cofounder reminisced at length about his Safed origins and haphazardly let the truth slip out.
"Until the nakba" (calamity in Arabic - the loaded synonym for Israeli independence), he recounted, his family "was well-off in Safed." When Abbas was 13, "we left on foot at night to the Jordan River... Eventually we settled in Damascus... My father had money, and he spent his money methodically. After a year, when the money ran out, we began to work.
"People were motivated to run away... They feared retribution from Zionist terrorist organizations - particularly from the Safed ones. Those of us from Safed especially feared that the Jews harbored old desires to avenge what happened during the 1929 uprising.... They realized the balance of forces was shifting and therefore the whole town was abandoned on the basis of this rationale - saving our lives and our belongings."
SO HERE it is from the mouth of the PA's head honcho himself. He and no other verifies that nobody expelled Safed's Arabs. Their exile was voluntary, propelled by their extreme consciousness of guilt and expectation that Jews would be ruled by the same blood-feud conventions that prevail in Arab culture. ...They anticipated that Jews would do to them precisely what the Arabs had done to Safed's Jews....they indeed had cause to panic.
The "uprising" Abbas alluded to was one among the serial pogroms instigated by infamous Jerusalem mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who's still revered throughout the Arab world. He was a Berlin-resident avid Nazi collaborator during World War II and a wanted war criminal postwar.
In August 1929 Husseini rallied Arabs to slaughter Jews on trumped-up allegations of Jewish takeover attempts at the Temple Mount. Sixty-seven members of the ancient Jewish community of Hebron were hideously hacked to death. That was the most notorious massacre, but others were perpetrated throughout the country. In the equally ancient Jewish community of Safed, 21 were butchered no less gruesomely (a cat was stuffed into one old woman's disemboweled abdomen). A child and young woman, due to be married the next day, were cold-bloodedly shot dead by Arab constables whom British mandatory officers assigned to watch over the majority of Safed's Jews who sought safety in the police courtyard.
The British proposed that all Safed Jews be evacuated "for their own safety," as was the case in Hebron. The offer was vehemently refused. Thereafter, principally during the 1936-39 mufti-led rampages, the Hagana and Safed's own IZL cells protected the town's 2,000 Jews.
SUCH WAS the uprising for which Abbas's kinfolk assumed they deserved just reckoning. Ironically, Jews were alarmed by the Arab exodus, figuring it presaged a formidable onslaught by invading Arab armies (which indeed came). In many areas (Haifa, for instance) Jews begged and pleaded with local Arabs to stay. But Arabs in Safed and elsewhere - ...hounded by fears arising from their own vengeful traditions... - did what was prudent in light of their surmise that Jews would behave according to Arab codes.
On the eve of the April 16, 1948 British withdrawal from Safed, the mandatory authorities turned over the town's police facilities and Mount Canaan's military fort to the Arabs. They offered to escort all Jews out of town "for their own safety." As in 1929, the Jews refused unequivocally, though memories of the horrific carnage should have inspired more dread among them than among the fleeing Abbas'.
Why wasn't Abu-Mazen's pivotal testimony accorded due resonance in our press? Why did Israel's mainstream media largely ignore Abbas's own recollections? Perhaps most editors aren't interested in the ideological underpinnings of the war against their own people. Preserving the myth of Israeli fault is de rigueur, a hallmark of enlightenment.
The IDF released video footage taken from an Israeli aircraft, showing a home that had exploded on Tuesday in the village of Hirbet Selm... The roof is seen in the footage with dozens of holes, which IDF ballistic experts said were the size of 122-mm. Katyusha rockets.
UNIFIL said that storing the ammunition was a "serious violation" of the UN-brokered ceasefire that ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
The peace keeping force said that it considered the incident a "serious violation" of the UN resolution that ended the conflict, which specifies that there should be no presence of unauthorized assets or weapons in the area of operations.
Israeli defense officials had also accused Lebanon of violating United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701.
"This is a major violation of resolution 1701," one Israeli official said. "The weaponry was stored inside a village and is proof of our longstanding claim that Hezbollah uses civilian infrastructure to hide its weaponry."
Contrary to Lebanese media reports which claimed that the cache was hidden in the village before the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Israeli defense officials said that the weaponry was recently placed inside the storehouse.
According to the officials, the cache was hidden in a storehouse inside the village and contained dozens of 122mm Katyusha rockets as well as high-powered machine guns. Some of the rockets reportedly flew into the sky.
The blast took place at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, and for the first few hours, Hezbollah sealed off the area and refused to grant UNIFIL or the Lebanese army access. IDF sources said that the clearing of the home and the unexploded ordinance had taken over 24 hours.
The sources said the IDF had been aware prior to the explosion that the home was being used as a storehouse for weapons. Several months before the explosion, an IDF aircraft captured footage of several senior Hezbollah operatives entering an underground tunnel near the house and reappearing from an exit 700 m. away.
"This house was connected to an entire underground network that was built right under the noses of UNIFIL and the Lebanese army," one IDF officer said. "This is a major violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701."
The Katyusha rockets that went off in Hirbet Selm were being stored in a two-story home. It was unclear on which floor they were being stored, but the home was shown on Lebanese television in close proximity to other village buildings.
In addition to the 122-mm. rockets, IDF ballistic experts said it was likely that the home also contained mortar shells and additional types of ammunition.
As the row between the Obama Administration and the Israeli government over the settlements continues, Hamas is gradually turning the Gaza Strip into a Taliban-style Islamic entity that poses a threat not only to Israel, but also to the Americans, Europeans and moderate Arabs and Muslims.
Both Hamas and its rivals in the Palestinian Authority appear to be satisfied with the fact that the Obama Administration has turned the issue of the settlements into the major problem, shifting attention from the incompetence and corruption in the West Bank and the emergence of the new Islamic state in the Gaza Strip.
The high-profile controversy over Israel's policy of building new homes for Jewish settlements has in fact facilitated Hamas's mission.
The foreign media is no longer interested in what's happening in the Gaza Strip. Nor are Western governments and international organizations dealing with the Israeli-Arab conflict.
As far as most decision-makers in the US and Europe are concerned, the "natural growth" of the settlements is much more dangerous that the rise of another radical Islamic state in the Middle East.
Hamas feels confident to do whatever it wishes in the Gaza Strip because the Obama Administration and its allies in France, Germany and Britain are too busy arguing with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu whether settlers should be permitted to build new homes or not.
So what if young women in the Gaza Strip are being harassed and arrested by Hamas's "morality police" for laughing in public or leaving their homes without hijabs?
...And so what if Hamas is now operating a secret police whose job is to separate males from females in public places?
A Palestinian journalist in the Gaza Strip remarked: "The Americans and Europeans are fighting against Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan while Hamas is building a new fundamentalist entity here. The settlements may be an obstacle to peace, but Hamastan will soon become a major threat to stability in the region."
The Palestinian Authority also appears to be happy about the West's obsessions with the settlements.
The Palestinian leadership's handling of the issue of the settlements is extremely hypocritical: Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, Salaam Fayad, insist on boycotting peace talks with Israel in protest against the ongoing construction in the settlements. But the two did not stay away from the talks when former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni were also building in the settlements...
Yasser Arafat negotiated with former Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon even while the bulldozers were continuing to build new homes in the settlements.
So what is behind the Palestinian Authority's decision to suspend peace talks with Israel? Have Abbas and Fayad suddenly discovered that the settlements are expanding? The two are waiting for the Obama Administration to deliver.
Tensions between Obama and Netanyahu have left many Palestinian Authority leaders very happy and hopeful. Their optimism is based on the hope that Obama will force Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders, including the eastern part of Jerusalem, and expel all the Jewish settlers...
Some Palestinian officials in Ramallah seriously believe that Israel will eventually succumb to Obama's demands. As such, they explain, why return to the negotiating table with Israel when the Obama Administration has actually endorsed the Palestinian position and is negotiating with the Netanyahu government on behalf of the Palestinian Authority?
...US President Barack Obama is a man of heartfelt, long-held principles.... His principles are divorced from reality and unresponsive to any facts that contradict them.
This much was made clear by a New York Times report on Sunday which discussed a recently "rediscovered" 1983 article Obama published in a student magazine on the subject of nuclear disarmament when he was an undergraduate at Columbia University.
Obama's article, "Breaking the war mentality," was ostensibly a feature story showcasing two student organizations that advocated a freeze in the US's nuclear arsenal. But the young Obama didn't hesitate to use his platform to make his own, even more radical views known to his readers. As he put it: "The narrow focus of the Freeze movement, as well as academic discussion of first- versus second-strike capabilities, suit the military-industrial interests, as they continue adding to their billion-dollar erector sets."
Citing a Rastafarian reggae musician as his foreign policy authority, Obama ruminated, "When Peter Tosh sings that 'everybody's asking for peace, but nobody's asking for justice,' one is forced to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem, instead of the disease itself."
As one of the freeze advocates explained gently, contending with "the disease itself" was an unachievable goal since "you're not going to get rid of the military in the near future."
THERE IS NOTHING shocking about Obama's embrace of radical politics as a college student. Particularly at Columbia, adopting such positions was the most conformist move a student could make. What is disturbing is that these views have endured over time, although they were overtaken by events 20 years ago.
Just six years after Obama penned his little manifesto, the Iron Curtain came crashing down. The Soviet empire fell not because radicals like Obama called for the US to destroy its nuclear arsenal, it fell because president Ronald Reagan ignored them and vastly expanded the US's nuclear arsenal while deploying short-range nuclear warheads in Europe and launching the US's missile defense program while renouncing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
The basic reality that the US is being led by a radical ideologue who clings to his views in the face of overwhelming proof of their falsity is the most fundamental fact that world leaders must reckon with today as they formulate policies to contend with the Obama administration. This is first and foremost the case for Israel.
Since the Netanyahu government took office three months ago, the Obama administration has placed inordinate pressure on Jerusalem in a bid to coerce it into making massive concessions to the Palestinians. These concessions are demanded not for peace, but simply for the sake of placing pressure on Israel. Obama wishes to pressure it to show his good intentions to the Arabs and Iran.
The Jerusalem Post has published an interview by Ruthie Blum Leibowitz with Israel Radio's Farsi broadcaster Menashe Amir where he states that "the revolution in Iran has only just begun":
'There were two days a couple of weeks ago when the call-ins stopped," says Menashe Amir, Israel Radio's Farsi broadcaster, whose shows have attracted millions of listeners in Iran for the past 50 years. "But then they resumed."
The going-on-70-year-old, who officially retired five years ago, yet continues to transmit on a daily basis, attributes this to the courage of his former countrymen (Amir made aliya in 1959).
In a September 2006 interview..., Amir asserted that a majority of Iranians opposed their regime, yet were helpless in the face of the repression under which they were living. Amir quoted Iranians who told him that if they had someone to lead them in their struggle, "it would be possible to topple the regime very quickly."
This week, in light of the popular uprising that began in the streets of Teheran after the results of the June 12 election were falsely called in favor of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - when the real victor was reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi - I asked Amir for his latest assessment.
Amir says opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi "is certain he won the election - and I can confirm that he did. According to all the information I have received, he garnered twice the amount of votes as Ahmadinejad....
The elections are a perfect example of how Ahmadinejad manipulated the system in order to declare himself the winner....Those who determine policy in Iran decided a year ago that Ahmadinejad was going to win the election."
As election day approached, they pulled a trick to raise voter turnout. Why? Because there is a new president in the White House, and he has to be shown that the Iranian regime enjoys the support of the people. So they set up a televised debate, in which each candidate freely raised issues and expressed criticism, thus creating the illusion that this time the elections in Iran would be free ones - something they have never been in Iran. This raised the expectations of the people, and brought a whopping 85 percent of the public to the polls. Well, the level of disappointment was as great as the level of expectation. This 85% of the public turned out to vote, and afterward felt the victory had been stolen from them. This is what caused the people to protest, en masse. And these people today have a leader in Mousavi.
With Iran's hard-line mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps unmistakably back in control, Israel's decision of whether to use military force against Tehran's nuclear weapons program is more urgent than ever.
...The post-election resistance raised the possibility of some sort of regime change. That prospect seems lost for the near future or for at least as long as it will take Iran to finalize a deliverable nuclear weapons capability.
Accordingly, with no other timely option, the already compelling logic for an Israeli strike is nearly inexorable. Israel is undoubtedly ratcheting forward its decision-making process. President Obama is almost certainly not.
He still wants "engagement" (a particularly evocative term now) with Iran's current regime. Last Thursday, the State Department confirmed that Secretary Hillary Clinton spoke to her Russian and Chinese counterparts about "getting Iran back to negotiating on some of these concerns that the international community has." This is precisely the view of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, reflected in the Group of Eight communique the next day. Sen. John Kerry thinks the recent election unpleasantness in Tehran will delay negotiations for only a few weeks.
Obama administration sources have opined (anonymously) that Iran will be more eager to negotiate than it was before its election in order to find "acceptance" by the "international community." Some leaks indicated that negotiations had to produce results by the U.N. General Assembly's opening in late September, while others projected that they had until the end of 2009 to show progress. These gauzy scenarios assume that the Tehran regime cares about "acceptance" or is somehow embarrassed by eliminating its enemies. Both propositions are dubious.
Obama will nonetheless attempt to jump-start bilateral negotiations with Iran, though time is running out even under the timetables leaked to the media. There are two problems with this approach. First, Tehran isn't going to negotiate in good faith. It hasn't for the past six years with the European Union as our surrogates, and it won't start now.... Second, given Iran's nuclear progress, even if the stronger sanctions Obama has threatened could be agreed upon, they would not prevent Iran from fabricating weapons and delivery systems when it chooses, as it has been striving to do for the past 20 years. Time is too short, and sanctions failed long ago.
Only those most theologically committed to negotiation still believe Iran will fully renounce its nuclear program. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has a "Plan B," which would allow Iran to have a "peaceful" civil nuclear power program while publicly "renouncing" the objective of nuclear weapons. Obama would define such an outcome as "success," even though in reality it would hardly be different from what Iran is doing and saying now. A "peaceful" uranium enrichment program, "peaceful" reactors such as Bushehr and "peaceful" heavy-water projects like that under construction at Arak leave Iran with an enormous breakout capability to produce nuclear weapons in very short order. And anyone who believes the Revolutionary Guard Corps will abandon its weaponization and ballistic missile programs probably believes that there was no fraud in Iran's June 12 election.
In short, the stolen election and its tumultuous aftermath have dramatically highlighted the strategic and tactical flaws in Obama's game plan. With regime change off the table for the coming critical period in Iran's nuclear program, Israel's decision on using force is both easier and more urgent. Since there is no likelihood that diplomacy will start or finish in time, or even progress far enough to make any real difference, there is no point waiting for negotiations to play out. In fact, given the near certainty of Obama changing his definition of "success," negotiations represent an even more dangerous trap for Israel.
Those who oppose Iran acquiring nuclear weapons are left in the near term with only the option of targeted military force against its weapons facilities. Significantly, the uprising in Iran also makes it more likely that an effective public diplomacy campaign could be waged in the country to explain to Iranians that such an attack is directed against the regime, not against the Iranian people. This was always true, but it has become even more important to make this case emphatically, when the gulf between the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the citizens of Iran has never been clearer or wider. Military action against Iran's nuclear program and the ultimate goal of regime change can be worked together consistently.
Otherwise, be prepared for an Iran with nuclear weapons, which some, including Obama advisers, believe could be contained and deterred. That is not a hypothesis we should seek to test in the real world. The cost of error could be fatal.
Anyone who acts like a doormat when he visits one foreign ruler should not be surprised when other rulers come along and act as arrogantly as the first. From day one we have let the world understand that we are a country with no self-respect, that we can be insulted and punched and will respond, if at all, with restraint and meekness...
It isn't the Americans who formulated the belittling and trivializing formula "natural growth" at which the Obama administration is now chipping away in an arrogant and bullying manner. An Israeli government, headed by Ariel Sharon, was responsible for the trivializing. And instead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring, here at home, that no independent nation can agree to have "natural growth" dictate its rate of construction, Defense Minister Ehud Barak has gone off to the United States to plead for this poor little lamb.
And to whom has he gone? To the president? To the vice president? To the secretary of state? No. To an envoy, who holds the mere rank of ambassador. The State of Israel's defense minister has tried to extract an agreement to build kindergartens in Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. And since George Mitchell has apparently sent the defense minister away empty-handed, the prime minister himself is about to go to him hat in hand. Maybe he'll change his mind.
The British government is on the brink of collapse. And with what is the British foreign minister busy? He "completely deplores" an Israeli decision to build 50 housing units in the settlement Adam in Judea and Samaria. Foreign diplomats in Israel are speaking in a lordly way to Israeli statesmen, and foreign journalists are asking them questions that are often biased, intrusive and insolent. These correspondents would never allow themselves to behave so crudely in their own countries. And why shouldn't they? Here, after all, everyone including prime ministers feels obligated to justify himself to them and gratify them. Only rarely does someone put them in their place.
The scorn for Israeli sovereignty and dignity runs from the lowest to the highest. Israelis, in contact with foreigners, tend to be self-abasing and massively critical of their country and its leaders. Those who excel at this in particular are people from Israeli organizations who get their funding from foreign governments and foreign NGOs, and in return, wittingly or not, serve their interests.
Azerbaijan, a Muslim country, has a dangerous border with Iran. Many of its interests, especially economic interests, inevitably intersect with Iran's. About three weeks ago Iran's chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Hasan Firuzabadi, paid a surprise visit to Baku. The aim: to prevent a visit to the republic by Israeli President Shimon Peres. Although it was made clear to them that Iran would take a dim view should they refuse (and indeed while Peres was there, Iran recalled its ambassador), the Azerbaijanis rejected the demand outright. Azerbaijan is a country with self-respect. They made it clear to the bullying Iranians that no one was going to tell them which guests to receive, or to whom to export goods, or especially from whom to import. Only Israel fired the director general of its Defense Ministry, Amos Yaron, because that's what the Americans dictated.
When the norm is to submit to pressure, the pressures only increase. If right at the start of the pressure campaign Netanyahu has bowed down to the Americans and given up his most basic principle - opposition to a Palestinian state - what is left for him to give when the next wave of pressure comes along? This is weakness and this is its wage.
The leaders of the Palestinian Authority do not want the international community to hear anything about massive abuse of human rights and intimidation of journalists that its security forces are practicing almost on a daily basis in the West Bank.
They [the PA] want the U.S. and the rest of the world to continue believing that peace will prevail tomorrow morning only if Israel stops construction in the settlements.
The Palestinians do not need a dictatorship that harasses and terrorizes journalists, and that is responsible for the death of detainees in its prisons. In the Arab world we already have enough dictatorships.
The Palestinians do not need additional security forces, militias and armed gangs. In fact, there are too many of them, both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
American and European taxpayers' money should be invested in building hospitals, schools and housing projects. Investing billions of dollars in training thousands of policemen and establishing new security forces and prisons will not advance the cause of peace and coexistence.
There is no doubt that many Palestinians would love to abandon the culture of uniform and weapons in favor of improved infrastructure and medical care.
As for the international media, it's time to abandon the policy of double standards in covering the Israeli-Arab conflict. For many years, the mainstream media in the US and Europe turned a blind eye to stories about financial corruption under Yasser Arafat. The result was that Arafat and his cronies got away with stealing billions of dollars that had been donated to the Palestinians by the Americans and Europeans.
Recently, a Palestinian TV crew working for Al-Jazeera was stopped at a checkpoint in the West Bank, where soldiers confiscated a tape and erased its content.
This incident hardly received any coverage in the mainstream media in the U.S. and Europe. The reason? The perpetrators were not IDF soldiers, but PA security officers at a Palestinian checkpoint.
Walid Omari, the head of Al-Jazeera's operations in the West Bank, told Reporters Without Borders that his crew was preparing a report on the death of a detainee at the PA detention center in Hebron that might have been the result of torture.
More than 700 Palestinians are being held without trial in West Bank prisons run by security forces loyal to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas.
These security forces are referred to by many Palestinians as the "Dayton Forces," a reference to U.S. security coordinator Gen. Keith Dayton.
Speaking after Iran's top legislative body upheld the election victory of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sources in Iran told... in a telephone interview that the hangings took place in the holy city of Mashhad on Monday. There was no independent confirmation of the report.
Underlining the climate of fear among direct and even indirect supporters of Mousavi's campaign for the election to be annulled, the sources also reported that a prominent cleric gave a speech to opposition protesters in Teheran earlier this week in which he publicly acknowledged that the very act of speaking at the gathering would likely cost him his life.
"Ayatollah Hadi Gafouri said that the Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] never wanted [current supreme Leader] Ali Khamenei to succeed him. He even went to say that the Islamic republic died the day the Imam did," one source said.
Other criticisms from senior clerics over the regime's handling of the elections and subsequent protests included a report from a Persian news agency, which on Tuesday quoted a senior cleric from the city of Esfahan, Ayatollah Seyyed Jalaleddin Taheri-Esfahani, defending Mousavi against the regime's criticisms.
The ayatollah was quoted as saying: "Is it a case of justice to see that an honorable and modest Seyyed [a descendant of the household of the prophet Muhammad], who until the last moments of Khomeini's life was a dear and close companion of that grand leader, is now considered to be a rioter and an agent of arrogance who must be punished?"
An Israeli daily Haaretz report cites a Jerusalem political source who states that 3 Netanyahu government ministers, Lieberman, Begin and Ya'alon have countered defense minister Ehud Barak's possible offer of a "a temporary freeze" of construction in Yehuda and the Shomron arguing that a temporary construction freeze would set a precedent which could become permanent. But the real problem is that by negotiating how much Israel is to be allowed to build, Israel has already accepted the nonsensical idea that outside forces can determine where Jews can and can not build in the Jewish heartland:
Defense Minister Ehud Barak will meet in New York today with U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell in an effort to agree on a compromise formula on settlement construction. The meeting takes place in light of a recent disagreement among the "forum of six" ministers over this issue.
A political source in Jerusalem said Monday that a "temporary freeze" of construction in the settlements was met with objections by three of the six senior ministers in the forum.
Monday morning the forum, which includes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and ministers Dan Meridor, Benny Begin and Moshe Ya'alon, met to agree on a position that Barak would then present to Mitchell.
Barak supported a formula according to which Israel would freeze settlement construction completely, except for projects that have already started, and would require U.S. guarantees on the future of the peace process.
A political source in Jerusalem said that Barak's position was countered by Lieberman, Begin and Ya'alon, who opposed his proposal. The three argued that "a temporary freeze" of settlement construction will create a precedent and may become permanent. "If we start it will be difficult to go back," the three said.
It is unclear what the positions of Netanyahu and Meridor were.
According to the three ministers opposing Barak, Israel must not propose a "temporary freeze" without a commitment for similar and equal concessions by Arab states and the Palestinian Authority, and as part of a broader package deal...
...Israel should offer to temporarily freeze construction if this helped peace talks get underway. He said willingness to do so would alter Israel's "refusing" reputation.
Israel might try instead to enhance its refusing reputation by firmly saying no to this kind of thing. One firm "no" might actually save the need to say "no" later on subsequent demands, as any good negotiator knows. Is it superfluous to add that the Palestinians have refused to budge an inch in their core demands ever since 1993? This intrangience has been amply rewarded, as Israel has been made to split the difference each time, until finally offering close to 100% of the territories in negotiations.
The Haaretz report continues:
"We must explain to the Americans that we, too, have red lines," Deputy Prime Minister Ya'alon said during the meeting.
A novel idea indeed. But first Israel must develop some red lines that it is really not willing to cross.
During the meeting with Mitchell, Barak intends to present a more watered-down proposal, which will include a declared wish to resolve the settlements issue during negotiations with the Palestinian Authority over a final settlement agreement. Moreover, the proposal will be to limit new construction to the addition of stories to existing structures in the settlements, except for projects that have already begun.
As George Bernard Shaw would say, by haggling over the price Israel has already given in on the principle.
The real problem is that Israel, as a nation, has yet to decide for itself what the real future of the territories will be. As a symptom, the pace of building in the settlements is always open to internal debate, and that leads to external forces joining in on that debate. While it is certainly true that outsiders should butt out of Israel's internal affairs, it is incumbent upon Israel to make a decision, the right decision, on this matter once and for all.
Once again, the world is amazed. The massive revolt of Iranian citizens has elicited the unmitigated surprise of the free world's army of experts, pundits and commentators. And yet, just like their predecessors in the Soviet Union, Iran's democratic dissidents were right. Every totalitarian society consists of three groups: true believers, double-thinkers and dissidents. In every totalitarian regime, no matter its cultural or geographical circumstances, the majority undergo a conversion over time from true belief in the revolutionary message into double-thinking. They no longer believe in the regime but are too scared to say so. Then there are the dissidents - pioneers who articulate and finally act on the innermost feelings of the nation. More than once in recent years, former Soviet citizens returning from a visit to Iran have told me how much Iranian society reminded them of the final stages of Soviet communism.
Western governments are fearful of imperiling actual or hoped-for relations with the world's ayatollahs, generals, general secretaries and other types of dictators - partners, so it is thought, in maintaining political stability. But this is a fallacy. Democracy's allies in the struggle for peace and security are the demonstrators in the streets of Tehran who, with consummate bravery, have crossed the line between the world of double-think and the world of free men and women. Listen to them, and you will hear what you yourself know to be the true hope of every human being on Earth.
Natan Sharansky spent nine years in the Soviet gulag. He is chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.
