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PEACEMAKER BIBI

At the Mideast peace talks, a changed Netanyahu
By Aluf Benn
The Washington Post
September 5, 2010

He is usually depicted as a hard-liner, a hopeless ideologue burdened by a legacy of hawkish sound bites and shackled to a notoriously conservative coalition. But, contrary to popular wisdom, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is proving to be the most dovish leader that Israel has had in many years, one who is using military force cautiously and seeking, at long last, a diplomatic resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “I came here today to find an historic compromise that will enable both our peoples to live in peace and security and in dignity,” he said at last week’s Middle East peace summit at the White House. These are words that most Israelis never expected to hear “Bibi” utter.

Indeed, in one of the more intriguing political evolutions in recent memory, Netanyahu is starting to look a lot like another hard-liner who eventually engaged his longtime adversaries: Richard Nixon, on the occasion of his visit to China.

Like Nixon, Netanyahu has pulled off a political comeback, having returned to power a decade after losing a reelection bid. Much as Nixon was a poster boy for anti-communism, Netanyahu has ridden the wave of counterterrorism. Like Nixon, he has fought liberals and peaceniks throughout his career, and has relished the antagonism of a news media that he regards as hostile and left-leaning.

As a diplomat and a talking head on TV, Netanyahu made his fame defending Israel in the court of global public opinion. For years, he fought any two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict predicated on trading land for peace, arguing that territorial concessions by Israel would bring only violence and misery. Time and again, as Israeli withdrawals from occupied territory were followed by suicide bombings and rocket fire from Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, he was proved right. Last year, the Israeli public rewarded him by returning him to power.

And that is where the storyline shifts. After reentering the prime minister’s office last spring, Bibi changed his tune. The man who had spent his life chanting “No, no, PLO,” and explaining why a Palestinian state would mean the end of the Jewish one, has begun singing the old mantra of the Israeli left wing: “Two states for two peoples.” The standard-bearer for Israeli conservatism has jumped on the peace bandwagon. As unlikely sights go, it is up there with Nixon shaking Mao Zedong’s hand in 1972.

Ten months ago, Netanyahu told me in a phone interview for Ha’aretz, the liberal Israeli daily where I am a columnist and editor: “I want to promote a peace agreement with the Palestinians. I can bring a deal.” I wrote afterward that I believed him, only to receive mocking comments from many readers who called me naive. But I have not changed my mind – and neither has Netanyahu. Last week’s summit in Washington was largely his brainchild: It was he who insisted on direct talks, outmaneuvering Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who had agreed to indirect “proximity talks.”

In both his words and his deeds since he took office a year and a half ago, Netanyahu appears to have been reborn as a moderate, level-headed leader. His responses to cross-border attacks from Gaza and Lebanon have been calibrated to avoid escalation. In November, he imposed a 10-month moratorium on Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank. And despite his deep disagreements with Abbas over big-picture issues, Israeli security and economic cooperation with Abbas’s Palestinian Authority are stronger than ever. When Palestinian terrorists struck during the Washington summit, killing four Israeli settlers in the West Bank and wounding two, Netanyahu sounded nothing like the Bibi of old. “I will not let the terrorists block our path to peace,” he said.

What caused Netanyahu to rethink his long-held ideology? To be sure, he did not go through a midlife left-wing epiphany any more than Nixon did. Rather, he succumbed to American pressure, and this, too, speaks in his favor. Statecraft requires reading power relationships correctly and acting accordingly.

Past right-wing Israeli leaders went through similar about-faces. Menachem Begin gave the entire Sinai back to Egypt only weeks after he pledged to spend his retirement in an Israeli settlement there. Ariel Sharon demolished the settlements in Gaza shortly after declaring them as important as Tel Aviv. Yitzhak Shamir, the toughest of the breed, put aside his beliefs to attend the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference. All these leaders were said to have “reckoned with reality” – which, in Israeli political parlance, is a euphemism for “dependence on America.”

With no serious domestic challengers, Netanyahu knows that he is the strongest Israeli leader in a generation. Looking outside, however, he sees mostly trouble: His country is ever more isolated from an international community that increasingly rejects Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, its settlements and its excessive use of force. At the same time, he is deeply alarmed by Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, coupled with what he describes as its effort to “delegitimize” the Jewish state. He sees Israel’s sheer existence, not its controversial policies, as the matter at stake.

He therefore wants President Obama to help neutralize the Iranian threat – and he understands that Obama’s price for that help will be Israeli concessions in the West Bank. And so, as Obama toughens his stance toward Iran and expands security cooperation with Israel, Netanyahu softens his tone vis-à-vis the Palestinians.

Nixon put aside his distaste for Chinese communists because he feared the Soviet Union even more. Netanyahu is, in effect, prioritizing the Iranian weapons facility at Natanz above the settlements.

Just how far can this diplomatic quid pro quo take the peace process? Certainly, there are still wide, seemingly unbridgeable gaps between Netanyahu and Abbas on key issues – including Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees – and the opponents of a deal are powerful and violent, as last week’s attacks showed.

Still, the political constellation supports an Israeli-Palestinian agreement like never before. Both previous attempts at reaching a final deal, in 2000 and 2008, stumbled on lame-duck leadership in Jerusalem and Washington. This is not the case with Netanyahu and Obama today.

The pre-Watergate Nixon, with his hawkish stance and his keen grasp of political realities, pulled off a visit to China that a politician with less serious anti-communist credentials would not have attempted. For similar reasons, Netanyahu may be better positioned to cut a deal on a Palestinian state than any predecessor or likely successor.

After all, the Israeli public loves it when a right-winger performs the left-wing script – just as the American public did when Nixon visited Mao, rewarding him with a landslide reelection.

 

IF STALIN WAS “GENGHIS KHAN WITH A TELEPHONE”…

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may end up as Genghis Khan with a nuclear bomb
Iran will not be shamed into abandoning stoning, or its nuclear ambitions
By Alasdair Palmer.
Sunday Telegraph (London)
September 5, 2010

Joseph Stalin was once described as “Genghis Khan with a telephone”. President Ahmadinejad may soon be Genghis Khan with a nuclear bomb. Admittedly, Ahmadinejad hasn’t yet committed mass murder on that scale, although when he promised to “wipe Israel off the map”, he showed that he would – if only he could. And he may treat his own people slightly better than Genghis Khan treated his. But as Dr Johnson said, “there is no settling orders of precedence between a louse and a flea”.

Ahmadinejad has imprisoned thousands for protesting against the brutality, incompetence and illegitimacy of his rule; he has condoned the imposition of the death penalty for any Muslim who converts to another faith; and he supports punishing adultery by stoning those involved to death.

There has been a global campaign to persuade Iran to end stoning, a disgustingly barbaric punishment which inflicts pain of the same order as impaling, Genghis Khan’s favourite method of execution, and may take even longer to cause death. It centres on the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 44-year-old mother and widow who was convicted of adultery in 2006 and punished with 99 lashes. She has been in prison ever since, as the judges decided that 99 lashes wasn’t a severe enough sentence for the crime of loving someone who isn’t your spouse: she deserved to be stoned to death.

When her lawyer (who fled Iran, after discovering that he was about to be arrested) alerted the world, the campaign began. A petition was created; more than 300,000 people signed it; several celebrities stated their disapproval in the strongest possible terms; and a number of Western governments made official protests.

And what happened? Far from condemning stoning, or reducing the punishment, Iran’s Supreme Court has just ruled that a couple who had both been convicted of adultery should also be stoned to death. The authorities seem impervious to attempts to shame – or at least to embarrass – them into disowning such a medieval practice (although to be fair to the Middle Ages, stoning wasn’t that common even then).

The reason is that a large portion of Iran’s leadership, and of its population, is not ashamed or embarrassed: they think stoning is entirely right and proper. It has divine sanction – so how can any mere human be entitled to question it?

This is the reality of multiculturalism: human rights are not universally recognised or accepted. Barbaric practices can be deeply embedded in the convictions of thousands, even millions, of people. That is why it is so hard to change them, and why the invasion of Afghanistan, for instance, has not had the results that were hoped for. In rural areas, the arrival of Western troops and aid has not transformed the locals into Westerners. They may not love the Taliban’s version of social care, but they prefer their own ways to ours, and those ways are a lot closer to the Taliban’s vision of the good society than to ours.

What will persuade Iran’s leaders, and many of its rural and impoverished voters, to respect human rights and to give up their attempts to acquire a nuclear bomb? No Western country is going to invade and occupy Iran: the experience in Iraq has put an end to our flirtation with the idea that we can transform countries for the better by invasion. But we cannot shame or embarrass Iranians into changing their ways when they are proud of stoning, and of their struggle to get nuclear weapons.

Probably the only thing capable of stopping Iran from getting the bomb is a successful raid by Israel or America on its centrifuges. But that would merely delay Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, rather than prevent it from happening.

So it looks as if it is inevitable that we will be confronted by Genghis Khan with a nuclear bomb. It is unquestionably a terrifying prospect, and one which may produce Armageddon. We need to work out a way to stop it, and fast.

 

THE KURDS OF NORTHERN IRAQ REACH OUT

Israel, our ally
By Ksenia Svetlova
The Jerusalem Post
August 31, 2010

Kurds in northern Iraq are reaching out to a group of people with whom they believe share a historic ethnic connection, and many common enemies. You guessed it, it’s us.

It’s early morning in Irbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. A few men gather around a small kiosk where dozens of newspapers and magazines in Arabic and Kurdish are carefully arranged on a piece of cloth on the ground.

The camera zooms in and concentrates on one of the men, who holds a glossy magazine with a large Magen David on the cover. This is not another illustration to an article about Israeli policies in Gaza and West Bank. The title is “Israel-Kurd” and the whole edition is dedicated to relations between the Kurdish nation and the State of Israel.

The anchor of American-funded Al-Hurra TV, who reads the introduction to the Israel-Kurd item, seems just as astonished as the customers at the newspaper stand in Irbil – it’s not every day that you see Israel’s name mentioned in a context other than the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In Iraq, publishing a magazine with the word Israel on its cover is a risky business, considering the generally negative attitude toward Israel and those in the Arab world who seek rapprochement with the Jewish state.

“During last year we were often intimidated and threatened by different elements who didn’t like what we do, but this year it seems that people are more understanding and interested in our product,” says Hawar Bazian, managing editor of the magazine. Bazian was born in Iran and fled the country with his family, finding refuge in Irbil. Although he has lived there for many years and completed his BA in English literature at Irbil University, he doesn’t have Iraqi citizenship and is not able to further pursue his education.

Bazian believes there are many similarities between Kurds and Israelis and says that his publication, which was established two years ago, is meant to build a cultural bridge between the two nations.

Obviously, not everybody in Irbil and beyond agrees with him and Mawlood Afand, the editor-in-chief and founder of the magazine. In addition to threats and intimidation, the Web site of the magazine has twice been hacked by Turkish users and the authorities have not given it a work permit.

“There are two approaches to Israel in Iraqi Kurdistan,” Bazian says. “There are those who are very interested in relations with Israel and eager to learn more about it, and those who hold quite a negative view of this country, being influenced by radical Islamic ideology.

They think that Israel is the enemy,” Bazian told The Jerusalem Post.

Since the Israel-Kurd association hasn’t received a permit from the Iraqi authorities, there are no offices, computers or faxes – the association exists on-line and publishes a monthly magazine in Kurdish. The Web site is also available in Arabic, English and Turkish.

Some articles are also available in Hebrew. The banner, “Let’s know Israel as itself,” promises an insight into Israeli society and history.

The Web site mainly offers news from the Kurdish world and Israel and op-eds and analysis on different developments in the Middle East by Kurdish, Israeli and American contributors.

“We are the result of the historical suffering done by the Persian, Arab and Turkish nations against the Kurds, who lost their national, religious and cultural rights. These enemies try to destroy our future as well as our past. The Israel-Kurd Institute tries to mention a historical relationship between Kurds and Jews and review this relation without any religious or ideological concerns.

So we have a clear message which talks about an honorable and great historic stage of the Kurdish nation that belongs to Kurdish-Jewish relations. We will use this for the Kurds’ sake and for the sake of their national question,” the “About Us” sections of the on-line magazine states.

“Not only do Israel and the Kurds have mutual interests and historical ties between their peoples, but also many common enemies,” says Bazian and starts to count: Iran, Syria, Turkey, the Arabs – almost everyone in the Middle East. That is exactly why, he believes, the Kurds and the Jews, two ancient nations who endured enormous suffering and were stripped time and again of their natural rights, should join forces and cooperate.

Some Kurdish contributors go even further and suggest that Jews should come to Kurdistan and help build the national Kurdish home. “Kurdistan will be the second home for Jews after Israel,” believes Hamma Mirwaisi, author of Return of the Medes. “Kurds always have treated Jews as equal partners in Kurdistan since the Median Empire. It may be because Abraham, the forefather of the Jewish nation, was an Indo-European Kurd instead of an African Semite like the Jewish scholars have been claiming after Moses came back from Egypt. Or a large segment of the Kurdish populations are the descendants of the lost 10 Jewish tribes after they were exiled by the Assyrian Empire to Kurdistan. Whatever the reasons, the Kurds are treating Jews equally, even if Islamic clerics are encouraging them otherwise.

“Kurdistan can absorb millions of Jews, because it is a large territory and in need of the Jews’ knowledge. Jews and Kurds can be a blessing for one another and live in peace and prosperity for generations to come.”

Other articles and op-eds printed in the magazine discuss the recent deterioration in relations between Israel and Turkey. “Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan describes Israeli soldiers as ‘murderers’ or the Israelis as ‘barbarians,’” notes one writer. “I believe it’s the other way around; the Turkish soldiers are the true murderers, not the Israeli soldiers. Israelis are defending their ancient Holy Land of Israel, but Turkey occupied the Kurdish holy land of the Medes. They are occupiers and murderers.”

“Turkey should be held liable for all the damage that was caused to Israel during the Hamas-supported events, also for damage caused to the Kurds.

Turkey, with all the support that they get from the Israeli Government and Unites States, still cannot face the Kurdish Freedom Fighters. I wish that the Israeli Government from now on will be able to support the PKK Freedom Fighters against the Turkish Government in order to support human rights and stop the violence against innocent Kurdish people.”

Bazian shares this point of view and believes the way Israel dealt with the Turkish flotilla was appropriate and understandable. “We were watching carefully the developments around the Turkish flotilla, and we were amazed by the international reactions.

After all, Israel has every right to defend its borders. We would understand if some other state, such as Iran, which is known for its provocations, would do something like this, but Israel is a very normal country. So I think that it was legitimate what happened there.”

Bazian says he would love to visit Israel some day, but now it still seems a far off dream as there are no diplomatic relations between Iraq and Israel. But Kurds are used to being patient, he says, and good things come to those who wait, as the proverb has it. “Any diplomatic relations have their stages. In the beginning there is communication and establishing of cultural bridges, which is exactly what we are doing.

It might take time until things change, but Israel has to know it has a good friend in the Middle East, perhaps its only friend,” he concludes.

 

SAUDI RULES

The Arab lobby rules America
By Alan Dershowitz
The Daily Beast
August 24, 2010

Lost in all of the controversy over the mosque is the fact that the Arab lobby is one of the strongest in America – even stronger than Israel’s, says a controversial new book. Alan Dershowitz on how Arab governments influence U.S. politics.

While the media and politicians engage in frenzied debate about the virtues and vices of building – or preventing the building of – a Muslim community center (cum mosque) near the “sacred ground” of 9/11, Iran continues to build a nuclear weapon, as the Israelis and Palestinians take a tentative step toward building a peaceful resolution to their age-old conflict. Inevitably, whenever Middle East issues take center stage, the question of the role of lobbies, particularly those that advocate for foreign countries, becomes a hot topic. This book by longtime Middle East authority, Mitchell Bard, is a must read for anyone who cares – and who doesn’t? – about the role of lobbies in influencing American policy in the Middle East. Its thesis, which is sure to be controversial, is easily summarized:

“If the reputation then builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you’d be surprised how much better friends you have when they are just coming into office.”

Yes Virginia, there is a big bad lobby that distorts U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East way out of proportion to its actual support by the American public. Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, author of the screed, The Israel Lobby, are right about that. But the offending lobby is not AIPAC, which supports Israel, but rather the Arab lobby, which opposes the Jewish state.

Both the pro-Israel and pro-Arab lobby (really lobbies because there are several for each) are indeed powerful but there is a big difference – a difference that goes to the heart of the role of lobbying in a democracy. Bard puts it this way:

“One of the most important distinguishing characteristics of the Arab lobby is that it has no popular support. While the Israeli lobby has hundreds of thousands of grass root members and public opinion polls consistently reveal a huge gap between support for Israel and the Arab nations/Palestinians, the Arab lobby has almost no foot soldiers or public sympathy. It’s most powerful elements tend to be bureaucrats who represent only their personal views or what they believe are their institutional interests, and foreign governments that care only about their national interests, not those of the United States. What they lack in human capital in terms of American advocates, they make up for with almost unlimited resources to try to buy what they usually cannot win on the merits of their arguments.”

This is a critical distinction for a democracy. The case for Israel (though not for all of its policies) is an easy sell for pro-Israel lobbyists, especially elected representatives. Voting in favor of Israel is popular not only in areas with a large concentration of Jewish voters, but throughout the country, because Israel is popular with Evangelical Christians in particular and with much, though certainly not all, of the public in general. Lobbies that reflect the will of the people are an important part of the democratic process. Thus, the American Association of Retired People (AARP), the principal lobbying group for the elderly, is extremely powerful because there are so many elderly people in this country who want to protect social security, Medicaid, and other benefits. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is a powerful lobby precisely because so many Americans, for better or worse, love their guns. And The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a powerful lobby because Americans, in general, support the Middle East’s only democracy and reliable American ally.

But why is the Arab lobby, and most particularly the Saudi lobby, also powerful? Saudi Arabia has virtually no support among Americans. Indeed, it is widely reviled for its export of terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, its manipulation of oil prices, its anti-Christian and anti-Semitic policies, its total deprivation of any semblance of freedom of speech or dissent, and its primitive forms of punishment that include stoning and amputation. Yet, as Bard demonstrates, the Saudi lobby has beaten the pro-Israel lobby over and over again in head-to-head conflicts, such as the sale of sophisticated weapons to a regime that doesn’t even have the technical skills to use them, and the conflict over whether to move the United States’ embassy to Jerusalem. Even now, Saudi Arabia is lobbying to obtain a multibillion-dollar arms deal, and it is likely to succeed over the objections of Israel.

How then does a lobby with no popular support manage to exert influence in a democratic country? The secret is very simple. The Arab lobby in general and the Saudis in particular make little effort to influence popularly elected public officials, particularly legislators. Again, listen to Bard:

“The Saudis have taken a different tact from the Israeli lobby, focusing a top-down rather than bottom-up approach to lobbying. As hired gun, J. Crawford Cook, wrote in laying out his proposed strategy for the kingdom, ‘Saudi Arabia has a need to influence the few that influence the many, rather than the need to influence the many to whom the few must respond.’”

The primary means by which the Saudis exercise this influence is money. They spend enormous amounts of lucre to buy (or rent) former state department officials, diplomats, White House aides, and legislative leaders who become their elite lobbying corps. Far more insidiously, the Saudis let it be known that if current government officials want to be hired following their retirement from government service, they had better hew to the Saudi line while they are serving in our government. The former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, who was so close to the President George H.W. Bush that he referred to himself as “Bandar Bush,” acknowledged the relationship between how a government official behaves while in office and how well he will be rewarded when he leaves office. “If the reputation then builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you’d be surprised how much better friends you have when they are just coming into office.”

Bard concludes from this well known quid pro quo that: “given the potential of these post-retirement opportunities, it would not be surprising if officials adopted positions while in government to make themselves marketable to the Arab lobby.”

The methodology employed by the Arab lobby is thus totally inconsistent with democratic governance, because it does not reflect the will of the people but rather the corruption of the elite, while the Israeli lobby seems to operate within the parameters of democratic processes. Yet so much has been written about the allegedly corrosive nature of the Israeli lobby, while the powerful Arab lobby has widely escaped scrutiny and criticism. This important book thus contributes to the open marketplace of ideas by illuminating the dark side of the massive and largely undemocratic Arab lobbying efforts to influence American policy with regard to the Middle East.