“THE ROAD TO BAGHDAD DOES NOT PASS THROUGH TEHRAN, DAMASCUS, JERUSALEM OR GAZA”

Forget the Domino theories
By Robert Satloff
The Washington Post
December 19, 2006

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/18/AR2006121800941.html

The wise men (and woman) don’t know their history. In boldly suggesting that “all key issues in the Middle East are inextricably linked,” the authors of the Iraq Study Group report seem stunningly indifferent to the past 25 years of Middle East politics.

The basic proposition – linkage – is not new. President George H.W. Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker, tried 15 years ago to build an Arab-Israeli peace process on American success in the Persian Gulf War. In the current Bush administration, some advocates of toppling Saddam Hussein echoed that argument when they predicted that a change in Iraq would open new avenues for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Linkage also has its more ominous side. The most common is the fear that, left unresolved, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could explode into a Middle East-wide war. A second variation locates the epicenter of regional instability in the Persian Gulf. A generation ago the fear was that the export of Iran’s Islamic revolution would undermine pro-West Arab states. Today, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during his confirmation hearings, the fear is that Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq will spread like a contagion through the region, leaving ethnic bloodletting in its wake.

The problem with all these theories is that after a generation of theorizing about Middle East dominoes, the evidence is piling up: The linkages simply don’t exist.

First, military success in the Gulf does not translate into diplomatic success in the region. The Madrid process, a regional initiative, may have had a promising opening session, but once it got down to real bargaining, it ran up against the stark realities of the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian divides. And the idea of building on Saddam Hussein’s demise to promote change on the Israeli-Palestinian front may have hastened Yasser Arafat’s movement into irrelevance, but it ran aground on the dismal intra-Palestinian political realities of what followed him.

Second, local disasters do not translate into regional disasters. Despite Iran’s subversion, terrorism, bullying and threats, every Arab state survived the export of the Islamic revolution. And despite the near unanimity of received wisdom about the Middle East, there is no evidence to support the proposition that Israeli-Palestinian violence has substantial regional repercussions, let alone that it could lead to regional war.

The best evidence for this counterintuitive conclusion comes from the Palestinian uprising that began after the collapse of the Camp David summit in 2000. With more than 3,000 Palestinian and 1,000 Israeli fatalities, the bloodshed in the subsequent three years was the worst in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet the regional impact was virtually zero.

Not one Arab state threatened to fight alongside the Palestinians, and none even came to their aid militarily; indeed, only faraway Iran tried to send weapons. The Arab “street” did not rise in protest. Neither Jordan nor Egypt severed its peace treaty with Israel, and no Arab state faced significant protests. The conflict – certainly a horrible experience for Israelis and Palestinians – was contained.

The lesson of the past generation is that most states in the Arab Middle East have grown stronger, not weaker. Arab leaders are interested first and foremost in survival, which means protecting their national interests, not subscribing to romantic notions of ethnic or religious ideology. That is why, for example, Gates’s warning about Arab states intervening in Iraq to defend fellow Sunni Arabs from Shiite ethnic cleansing is far-fetched.

Will the vaunted Saudi armed forces invade Iraq? To the contrary, the Saudis are contemplating construction of an Israeli-style “security barrier” along the Iraqi border because they want to keep the Iraq problem inside Iraq. Will the fearsome Syrian military intervene? Hardly. The Alawites who run Damascus may enjoy seeing America squirm in Iraq, but there’s little chance they will fight on the side of the very people they fear most at home: Sunni extremists. And, of course, don’t expect the Kuwaitis to rush across the border to help out.

The sober reality is that if Shiite militias attempt an ethnic cleansing of Sunni Arabs, Washington should not expect Iraq’s Arab neighbors to do anything but man the barricades to prevent a massive flight of Iraqi refugees. Just as was the case when Muslims faced the carnage of war in Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo, the country most likely to come to the aid of Muslims in danger inside Iraq will be the United States.

Of course, the strengthening of Arab states is neither uniform – Syria is an exception – nor is it wholly good news. The most negative repercussion has been the rise of secret-police regimes: governments that cycle virtually every marginal dollar into all-encompassing intelligence services that in turn snuff out liberal dissent in the name of security. The bottom line is that for better or worse, these regimes know how to take care of themselves.

America needs to focus on a set of distinct problems in the Middle East – from the Arab-Israeli conflict to Iran’s nuclear ambitions – each important and worthy of attention in its own right. The road to Baghdad does not pass through Tehran, Damascus, Jerusalem or Gaza – it is a cul-de-sac that begins and ends in Iraq.

“YOU CANNOT USE OUR NAME”

Muslims mark solidarity with Jews
Event held days after Iranian meeting that denied genocide
By Mary Beth Sheridan
The Washington Post
December 21, 2006

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/20/AR2006122001718.html

Local Muslim leaders lit candles yesterday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to commemorate Jewish suffering under the Nazis, in a ceremony held just days after Iran had a conference denying the genocide.

American Muslims “believe we have to learn the lessons of history and commit ourselves: Never again,” said Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, standing before the eternal flame flickering from a black marble base that holds dirt from Nazi concentration camps.

Around the hexagonal room, candles glimmered under the engraved names of the death camps: Chelmno. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Majdanek.

“We stand here with three survivors of the Holocaust and my great Muslim friends to condemn this outrage in Iran,” said Sara J. Bloomfield, the museum’s director, addressing a bank of TV cameras in the room, known as the Hall of Remembrance.

The museum, she noted, holds “millions of pieces of evidence of this crime.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad organized last week’s conference after Western countries protested his comment last year that the slaughter of 6 million Jews was a myth. The two-day meeting drew historical revisionists and such people as David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Major American Muslim and Arab-American organizations have condemned the Iran conference. The Muslim speakers at yesterday’s ceremony did not mention that event but called for recognition of the suffering Jews experienced in the Holocaust and condemned religious hatred. Asked afterward why they did not single out Iran, the Muslim leaders said the problem was broader than the recent conference.

“The issue here is: There might be somebody from X and Y country, a Muslim, saying the same thing,” Magid said. If anyone wants to make Holocaust denial an Islamic cause, he said, “we want to say to them: You cannot use our name.”

Museum officials said a Muslim delegation had never before made such a public statement at the memorial building.

After the speeches yesterday, Bloomfield invited the visitors to light candles to remember the Holocaust victims and Muslims who rescued some of the besieged Jews. One by one, the guests silently shuffled along the wallside bank of candles: the tall imam in his round Muslim cap, known as a kufi; a woman in a Muslim head scarf; Muslim men in business suits; and three elderly women in pantsuits from the D.C. suburbs, survivors of the genocide.

One of them, Johanna Neumann, recounted at the ceremony how Muslims saved her Jewish family. Members of her family had fled from Germany to Albania, where Muslim families sheltered them and hid their identity during the Nazi occupation.

“Everybody knew who we were. Nobody would even have thought of denouncing us” to the Nazis, said the tiny 76-year-old Silver Spring resident. “These people deserve every respect anybody can give them.”

The idea for the ceremony originated with Magid, whose Sterling mosque has been active in interfaith efforts. After hearing radio reports about the Iranian meeting, “I said to myself, ‘We have to, as Muslim leaders... show solidarity with our fellow Jewish Americans,’” Magid recalled after the speeches.

He contacted Akbar Ahmed, an American University professor active in inter-religious dialogue, who asked the museum to hold the ceremony.

“It’s important that the world knows there are Muslims who don’t believe in this [Holocaust denial],” Ahmed said after the ceremony. Also in the delegation were representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Bloomfield, the museum director, noted that Magid delayed his trip to Mecca for the annual hajj pilgrimage by a day to attend the ceremony.

“That’s a pretty strong statement,” she said.

The Holocaust victims expressed gratitude for the gesture by the Muslims.

“We could live together in peace if only more of these things were happening,” said Halina Peabody, 74, a native of Poland who lives in Bethesda.

“WE SIMPLY DO NOT KNOW IT EVER HAPPENED BECAUSE WE WERE NEVER INFORMED OF IT”

Why they deny the Holocaust
On top of nearly constant anti-Semitic propaganda, much of the Muslim world hasn’t even heard of it.
By Ayaan Hirsi
The Los Angeles Times
December 16, 2006

www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ali16dec16,0,2351518.story?coll=la-home-commentary

One day in 1994, when I was living in Ede, a small town in Holland, I got a visit from my half-sister. She and I were both immigrants from Somalia and had both applied for asylum in Holland. I was granted it; she was denied. The fact that I got asylum gave me the opportunity to study. My half-sister couldn’t.

In order for me to be admitted to the university I wanted to attend, I needed to pass three courses: a language course, a civics course and a history course. It was in the preparatory history course that I, for the first time, heard of the Holocaust. I was 24 years old at that time, and my half-sister was 21.

In those days, the daily news was filled with the Rwandan genocide and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. On the day that my half-sister visited me, my head was reeling from what happened to 6 million Jews in Germany, Holland, France and Eastern Europe.

I learned that innocent men, women and children were separated from each other. Stars pinned to their shoulders, transported by train to camps, they were gassed for no other reason than for being Jewish.

I saw pictures of masses of skeletons, even of kids. I heard horrifying accounts of some of the people who had survived the terror of Auschwitz and Sobibor. I told my half-sister all this and showed her the pictures in my history book. What she said was as awful as the information in my book.

With great conviction, my half-sister cried: “It’s a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed.”

She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust.

Later, as a teenager in Kenya, when Saudi and other Persian Gulf philanthropy reached us, I remember that the building of mosques and donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of Jews. Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies and for epidemics such as AIDS, and they were believed to be the cause of wars. They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us Muslims. If we ever wanted to know peace and stability, and if we didn’t want to be wiped out, we would have to destroy the Jews. For those of us who were not in a position to take up arms against them, it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and pray to Allah to destroy them.

Western leaders today who say they are shocked by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s conference this week denying the Holocaust need to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world, the Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We simply do not know it ever happened because we were never informed of it.

The total number of Jews in the world today is estimated to be about 15 million, certainly no more than 20 million. On the other hand, the world’s Muslim population is estimated to be between 1.2 billion and 1.5 billion. And not only is this population rapidly growing, it is also very young.

What’s striking about Ahmadinejad’s conference is the (silent) acquiescence of mainstream Muslims. I cannot help but wonder: Why is there no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore, Khartoum or Jakarta condemning Ahmadinejad? Why are the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference silent on this?

Could the answer be as simple as it is horrifying: For generations, the leaders of these so-called Muslim countries have been spoon-feeding their populations a constant diet of propaganda similar to the one that generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed – that Jews are vermin and should be dealt with as such? In Europe, the logical conclusion was the Holocaust. If Ahmadinejad has his way, he shall not want for compliant Muslims ready to act on his wish.

The world needs to be informed again and again about the Holocaust – not only in the interest of the Jews who survived and their offspring but in the interest of humanity.

POLITE SOCIETY HELPED PAVE THE WAY FOR THE CONFERENCE

The Road to Tehran
Polite society helped pave the way for Iran’s Holocaust conference.
By Bret Stephens
The Wall Street Journal
December 16, 2006

www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009395

“Not acceptable,” says Ban Ki Moon, new Secretary-General of the United Nations. “Repulsive,” say the editors of Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “An insult... to the memory of millions of Jews,” says Hillary Rodham Clinton. Global polite society is in an uproar over the Holocaust conference organized this week in Tehran under the auspices of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Moral denunciation is what reasonable people do – what they must do – when a regime that avows the future extermination of six million Jews in Israel denies the past extermination of six million Jews in Europe. But let’s be frank: Global polite society has been blazing its own merry trail toward this occasion for decades.

The Australian Financial Review is not the Journal of Historical Review, the Holocaust-denying “scholarly” vehicle of some of the Tehran conferees. But in 2002 the AFR thought it fit to print the following by Joseph Wakim, at one point the country’s multicultural affairs commissioner: “Sharon’s war is not a war,” he wrote. “Genocide would be a more accurate description.” In Ireland Tom McGurk, a columnist in the very mainstream Sunday Business Post, noted that “the scenes at Jenin last week looked uncannily like the attack on the Warsaw Jewish ghetto in 1944.” Jose Saramago, Portugal’s Nobel Laureate in Literature, observed after a visit to Ramallah that the Israeli incursion into the city “is a crime that may be compared to Auschwitz.”

Never mind that the total number of Jews “dealt with” in the Warsaw ghetto, according to Nazi commandant Jürgen Stroop, was 56,065, whereas the number of Palestinians killed in Jenin was no more than 60. Never mind that at the time Mr. Saramago visited Ramallah a total of about 1,500 Palestinians had been killed in the Intifada, whereas Jews were murdered at Auschwitz at a rate of about 2,000 a day. Let’s concede that, for the sake of moral truth, strained comparisons may still serve useful rhetorical purposes. (Jews and Israelis also often make inapt Holocaust and Nazi comparisons.) Let’s concede, too, that the comments cited above amount to criticisms of Israeli policy, nothing more.

Yet once a country’s policies are deemed Nazi-like, it necessarily follows that its leaders are Nazi-like and – if it’s a popularly elected government – so are at least a plurality of its people. “As the dogma of intolerant, belligerent, self-righteous, God-fearing irridentists ... [Zionism] is well adapted to its locality,” wrote Tony Judt, head of New York University’s Remarque Institute, in the New York Review of Books. Ian Buruma of Bard College derided Israel’s “right-wing government supported by poor Oriental Jews and hard-nosed Russians.” And from British MP Gerald Kaufman, this: “If the United States is keen to invade countries that disrupt international standards of order, should not Israel, for example, be considered as a candidate?”

As it happens, Messrs. Judt, Buruma and Kaufman are all Jewish. So let’s also concede that it is not anti-Semitic to oppose Zionism. After all, among the Tehran conferees were rabbis from the ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta movement, who, like Mr. Ahmadinejad, actively call for the elimination of the state of Israel.

Yet simply because opposition to Zionism ideologically or Israel politically isn’t necessarily anti-Semitic, it doesn’t therefore follow that being anti-Zionist or anti-Israel are morally acceptable positions. There are more than six million Israelis who presumably wish to live in a sovereign country called Israel. Are their wishes irrelevant? Are their national rights conditional on their behavior – or rather, perceptions of their behavior – and if so, should such conditionality apply to all countries? It also should be obvious that simply because opposition to Zionism does not automatically make one guilty of anti-Semitism, neither does it automatically acquit one of it.

Such nuances, however, seem to go unnoticed by some of Israel’s more elevated critics. Michel Rocard said in 2004 that the creation of the Jewish state was a historic mistake, and that Israel was “an entity that continues to pose a threat to its neighbors until today.” Mr. Rocard is the former Prime Minister of France, an “entity” that itself posed a threat to its neighbors for the better part of its history.

Alternatively, Professors Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, whose paper on “The Israel Lobby” is now being turned into a book, have complained that “anyone who criticises Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy... stands a good chance of being labeled an anti-semite.” Maybe. But earlier this week, former Klansman David Duke took the opportunity to tell CNN that he does not hate Jews but merely opposes Israel and Israel’s influence in U.S. politics. He even cited Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer in his defense. Would they exonerate him of being an anti-Semite?

In fact, anti-Zionism has become for many anti-Semites a cloak of political convenience. But anti-Zionism has also become an ideological vehicle for an anti-Semitism that increasingly feels no need for disguise. In January 2002, the New Statesman magazine had a cover story on “The Kosher Conspiracy.” For art, they had a gold Star of David pointed like a blade at the Union Jack. This wasn’t anti-Zionism. It was anti-Zionism matured into unflinching anti-Semitism. And it was featured on the cover of Britain’s premiere magazine of “progressive” thought.

The scholar Gregory Stanton has observed that genocides happen in eight stages, beginning with classification, symbolization and dehumanization, and ending in extermination and denial. What has happened in Tehran – denial – may seem to have turned that order on its head. It hasn’t. The road to Tehran is a well-traveled one, and among those who denounce it now are some who have already walked some part of it.

“IS HE SO ANXIOUS TO SELL BOOKS THAT HE WILL SAY ANYTHING?”

Jimmy Carter trivializes Rwandan genocide
By Alan Dershowitz
The Huffington Post
December 8, 2006

www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/jimmy-carter-trivializes-_b_35880.html

Last Tuesday, Jimmy Carter, while promoting his new book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, went further in his anti-Israel rhetoric than even most hard-left extremists would go. Asked whether he believed that Israel’s “persecution” of Palestinians was “[e]ven worse ... than a place like Rwanda,” Carter answered, “Yes. I think – yes.”

The comparison is breathtaking and wrong. Here are the facts:

In April through July of 1994, Hutu militias slaughtered an estimated 800,000 Tutsis (and raped thousands) in an attempt to eradicate those people from the country. In just around 100 days, the Hutus killed at a rate faster than any previous or subsequent genocide in world history. During any comparable period, the number of Palestinian casualties has never exceeded the hundreds, and for the most part, they have been either combatants, human shields, or civilians inadvertently killed in efforts to kill combatants. These deaths have come in the course of Israel defending itself against three wars of annihilation in which the Palestinians openly and actively sided with the Arab invaders (1948, 1967, and 1973), two intifadas (both prompted by Israeli peace gestures), and a general war of terrorist attrition against Israeli citizens in the meantime.

The worst that one could accuse Israel of is occasionally employing too much aggression in its defensive tactics – a far cry from the willful genocide of nearly a million people. Further, the Tutsis never had a chance to prevent their slaughter, whereas the Palestinians initiated the violence against Israel and repeatedly refused – and continue to refuse – to recognize Israel’s legitimacy, let alone to agree to any sort of peace agreement, be it the Peel Commission, the UN Partition Plan, or the 2000 Camp David proposals.

The idea of uttering Israel and Rwanda in the same sentence – and citing Israel as the greater offender of human rights – is obscene. It is also deeply insulting to the memory of those Rwandans who were murdered, raped, and mutilated in what could only be characterized as genocide. This is precisely the sort of exaggeration that caused Congressman John Conyers, D-Mich. and founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, to take Carter to task for using the word “apartheid” in the title of his book, thereby belittling the horror of real racial discrimination and apartheid. As Conyers said, accusing Israel of apartheid “does not serve the cause of peace, and the use of it against the Jewish people in particular, who have been victims of the worst kind of discrimination, discrimination resulting in death, is offensive and wrong.”

Conyers’s logic should be extended beyond the realm of the rhetorical. There are real world consequences to Carter’s – and the far left’s – obsessive focus on Israel. What happens is that, when those entrusted with identifying and combating human rights violations around the world choose to focus largely or exclusively in on Israel, the real human rights violators, war criminals, and despots get away with murder. Indeed, the Rwandan genocide is a perfect example of what happens when the United Nations refuses to condemn any country but Israel, and the so-called international human rights organizations put so much of their energy and resources into a country with one tenth of one percent of the world’s population (6 million Israelis out of the world’s current population of 6 billion people) while ignoring the real and devastating atrocities happening elsewhere.

Carter’s comparison can be explained in only two ways: extraordinary ignorance or a bigotry so deep-seated that it blinds one to reality. The burden is on him to explain.

To be sure, Carter seems to have backed away from his comparison, just as he always does. He said he doesn’t want to go “back into ancient history about Rwanda.” But this is disingenuous. Rwanda, when invoked in the context of a human rights discussion, stands for genocide, just like apartheid stands for the oppressive discriminatory and segregationist practices in pre-1990 South Africa. Everyone understands these symbols, and Carter recklessly traffics in them, until someone calls him out and he’s forced to back-track. He also claims, despite his book’s title, that there is no apartheid in Israel, only in the Palestinian territories, but that is not the impression the reader gets, nor the one apparently intended by the author’s invocation of this powerful symbol of oppression.

At any rate, the important point is that Carter’s immediate answer - his true instinct - is to accuse Israel of crimes worse than those committed in Rwanda. Carter has become so unhinged in his campaign against the Jewish State that he is now parroting the campus activists who delight in calling Israel a genocidal terrorist state and comparing it to Nazi Germany.

Are these Jimmy Carter’s true colors? Or is he so anxious to sell books that he is prepared to say anything?

BORAT “GUEST OF HONOUR AT THE HOLOCAUST DENIAL CONFERENCE”

Borat in Iran at Holocaust event
Reuters
December 14, 2006

today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=peopleNews&storyID=2006-12-15T032152Z_01_N14413244_RTRIDST_0_PEOPLE-GOLDENGLOBES-BORAT-DC.XML&WTmodLoc=EntNewsPeople_C2_peopleNews-3

Intrepid Kazakhstan TV reporter Borat Sagdiyev was in Iran at a Holocaust denial conference, and accordingly unaware that the hit comedy about his exploits garnered two Golden Globe nominations Thursday.

Or so claimed a prepared statement from Sacha Baron Cohen, the British actor who plays the anti-semitic title character in “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”

Cohen was a best comic actor nominee, and the film a competitor in the best movie musical or comedy category, Globes organizer the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. announced.

“I am extremely honored,” said Cohen. “I’m very proud as well for my fellow writers as well as our director Larry Charles, and our producer Jay Roach, and am very thankful for the HFPA’s belief and acknowledgment of our film.”

But then the irrepressible comedian couldn’t resist adding, “I have been trying to let Borat know this great news but for the last four hours both of Kazakhstan’s telephones have been engaged. Eventually, Premier Nazarbayev answered and said he would pass on the message as soon as Borat returned from Iran, where he is guest of honor at the Holocaust Denial Conference.”

Roach and Charles, both first-time Golden Globe nominees, weren’t completely surprised by the recognition.

“Both Jay and I have witnessed these amazing audience reactions to the movie and we felt like we had something very special. This seems like a very organic byproduct of that,” said Charles. “It’s pretty rare for a comedy where people are laughing that hard to not get noticed,” Roach added.

Neither of Sacha Baron Cohen’s partners believe the lawsuits swirling around the film from its unwitting stars have hampered the film’s success. Quite the contrary. “I think the lawsuits are actually fueling the success,” said Charles. “They are silly and absurd and part of the comedy of the film.”

Added Roach, “Sacha is doing something so unusual. He’s a truthfinder and he’s out there doing this in a way that’s controversial. We’re not entirely surprised. He’s been doing it for 10 years so it’s kind of part of the territory.”

A SPADE IS NO LONGER CALLED A SPADE

An interview with Walter Laqueur
By Alexander H. Joffe
Covenant, The Global Jewish Magazine
November 2006

covenant.idc.ac.il/en/2006/issue1/laqueur.html

Question: You have commented on anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in a recent book (The Changing Face of Antisemtism, Oxford University Press, 2006), and a long article in The Times Literary Supplement. But let us begin on a personal note: You grew up in Nazi Germany; anti-Semitism has not been a purely academic issue in your life. Did you expect a resurgence of anti-Semitism after Hitler and the Holocaust?

Laqueur: Hitler gave anti-Semitism a bad name, but there had been anti-Semitism before and there was no reason to believe that it had come to an end in 1945. Prior to Hitler anti-Semites did not mind to be called anti-Semites, (there were some exceptions – the Nazis did not like the term and virtually banned it during the war because it was offensive to some of their allies such as Haj Amin al-Husayni, the Jerusalem mufti). Today this term has gone out of fashion and there is great indignation in some circles to if they are charged with anti-Semitism. In some countries it can lead to criminal prosecution. A spade is no longer called a spade but an agricultural implement. In any case the impact of the Nazi deterrent was limited to Europe and North America. There was closed season as far as the Jews were concerned; this lasted for several decades but was bound to come to an end. The surviving Jewish communities had been doing too well, moved into prominent positions in many fields and many people got impatient to be reminded constantly of the mass murder which had taken place. After all, they argued, there had been massacres on a massive scale in other places even in our time, how could one possibly maintain that the Holocaust was somehow unique?

CHOMSKY IS LUDICROUS

Question: But some critics such as Chomsky maintain that anti-Semitism has virtually disappeared...

Laqueur: I wish he were right, but it is a ludicrous statement. Do we really have to discuss this? I don’t think that upon further reflection even Chomsky will stick to this thesis. It is true that anti-Semitism is changing its manifestation and motivation, not for the first time in its long history. Racialist anti-Semitism has gone out of fashion after the Nazis, at least in Europe and America. But racialist anti-Semitism is a relatively recent (19th century) phenomenon, even though some antecedents can be found in 15th century Spain (the purity of the blood concept). Medieval anti-Semitism was largely religious-theological in inspiration. The Jews rejected the founders of two of the world’s major religions and this was bound to lead to great hostility. Some historians believe there was anti-Semitism in the ancient world prior to the rise of Christianity. Others think this was no more than part of general, free-floating xenophobia. This is a highly specialized field, I am not an expert but I tend to think the latter are right.

“USURY” HAS BECOME “WALL STREET”

Question: How then would you define the new anti-Semitism?

Laqueur: It is post racialist and in many respects similar to the earlier religious anti-Semitism, except of course that certain ideologies have replaced religion. “Usury” has become “Wall Street”. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are no longer in fashion in the West, they have been replaced by the neo-Conservatives as the nefarious plotters and wire pullers and the all powerful Jewish lobby in Washington. In the 1920s and 30s one of the main accusations in the anti-Semitic arsenal concerned “Jewish Communism”; today it is Jewish globalism and capitalism. In Lessing’s “Nathan” – the classic 18th century play – there is a famous repetitive scene: “Tut nichts, der Jude wird verbrannt,” (“Never mind, the Jew is for burning”). Well, for the time being the Jew is not for burning, only for boycott.

The church (and Islam) believed that there was no salvation outside the church, but the moment the heretics desisted from their heresies and joined the fold (political correctness in modern parlance) they were no longer enemies but were treated as equals. This explains inter alia the presence of Jews (or lapsed Jews) in their ranks. Post racialist anti-Semitism (again I refer to Europe and the Americas – the situation elsewhere is not the same) does not aim at the expulsion of the Jews let alone their physical destruction. They want the Jews to desist from their erroneous belief that they have the right to have a state of their own and generally speaking take a lower profile.

Question: Which leads to the issue of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. To what extent (to pick just one example) is anti-Semitism involved in the appeals to boycott Israel?

Laqueur: Had Israel committed crimes more heinous than any other country it would be only natural that it should come in for such massive attack. But if it is singled out for sins, real or spurious, committed by many other countries and governments on a far larger scale, the reasons must be other than those adduced. According to the peace researchers 25 million people were killed in internal conflicts since the end of World War Two. 8,000 civilians were killed in the Arab-Israeli conflict, which ranks forty-sixth in the list of victims. Yet Israel has been condemned far more often than all other countries taken together by the United Nations. Israel has been condemned for its treatment of its Arab minority and I am sure there could be improvements. But the situation of the Palestinian Arabs has been and is infinitely better than that (to name but one example) of the Dalets (the Untouchables) in India of which there are about a hundred millions. But I have not heard of any protest demonstrations in this context in the streets of Europe or any other continent.

BUT WE BAN LUKASHENKO AND MUGABE

Question: Why this relentless focusing on Israel and who are its main protagonists?

Laqueur: This varies from country to country. In the UK the teachers’ unions have been very active, they were for many years under Communist influence, today the Trotskyites have key positions. But if there would be no willingness to follow their lead the boycott appeals would not be very successful. In the U.S. the influence of certain churches has been strong. Sometimes the naivete displayed on these occasions is disarming. I read somewhere: Why can’t we bar Ahmadinejad from coming to Europe on the occasion of the soccer world championship? After all we (meaning the European governments) decided not to let Lukashenko of White Russia [Belarus] and Mugabe of Zimbabwe enter. As if the answer was not known – if Lukashenko and Mugabe had substantial oilfields in their countries and if they were close to producing nuclear weapons, no one would dare to deny them entry.

Israel (and the Jews) have been singled out for attack because they were few and weak. Let us engage in a simple exercise in counterfactual history. If the Ottoman Empire had collapsed not in 1918 but at the time of the Crimean war, or after the Russian-Turkish war 1828/9. What if the great majority of European Jewry would have decided to migrate to Palestine, and what, if with a birthrate like the Gaza Strip, it would now have fifty million inhabitants or even more? Such a Greater Palestine extending from the Nile to the Euphrates with substantial oilfields would be a major force in world politics. It would live in peace with its neighbors, the refugee issue would be settled, just as it has been settled everywhere else, no one wants to trifle with a country this size. It would be an honored member of the United Nations, Muslim religious leaders would invoke quotations from the Koran and the Hadith stressing the closeness and friendship between Muslims and Jews, children of the same ancestor – Abraham-Ibrahim. The Norman Finkelsteins of this world would sing songs of praise concerning the miraculous renaissance of an old people its progressive, tolerant character – or legoyim – a shining beacon to the rest of the world.

These are of course mere fantasies that might have appealed to a visionary like Disraeli. The Ottoman empire did not collapse and the Jews did not emigrate and Israel is a small country without oilfields or other such resources. It is safe to attack Israel.

AMSTERDAM’S JEWISH MAYOR

Question: This may explain anti-Zionism and hostility towards Israel, but to what extent does it explain the new anti-Semitism? Where is the border line?

Laqueur: It goes without saying that not all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. We should not forget that up to the 1930s the great majority of Jews were either opposed to Zionism or indifferent – which did not make them anti-Semites. And there is room for legitimate criticism of Israeli policy; I for one have been more than uneasy since 1967 about Israeli policy vis-a-vis the West Bank and Gaza which I thought shortsighted and self-defeating. This explains why Israel lost a great deal of sympathy. But it does not explain why other countries, many of them not great and powerful, who have been responsible for gross violations of human rights have been immune to attack – no demonstrations, no UN resolutions, no boycott. In other words there is some specific animosity whenever Israel is concerned – whether to call this Judeophobia or post racial anti-Semitism or radical anti-Zionism is an interesting semantic question. But whatever terminology is used, there is some element involved which does not exist when the behavior of other people is judged. If Palestinian hostility can be explained as a consequence of the conflict, why should Israel and the Jews generate such strong passions among the likes of Mikis Theodorakis or Carlos the Jackal, people without a known personal stake in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who have not suffered from it physically or emotionally? Sympathy with the underdog? But if so why concentrate on one specific underdog and ignore all the others?

Question: To what extent is the situation of European Jewry affected by the new wave of hostility?

Laqueur: It has been affected for years; Jewish institutions such as schools all over Europe need special protection by police and other security forces; no other ethnic or religious group is in a similar position. Amsterdam has a Jewish mayor, but he cannot move a step without his bodyguards. I am less concerned about the countries in which anti-Semitism was rampant before World War Two, simply because the Jewish communities there are quite small. There is xenophobia and aggression against aliens, but the Jews are a very small part of these aliens and if dangers are perceived by, for instance, ultra nationalist Russians they are threatening from very different directions.

If there is a physical danger facing Jews in countries such as France it comes from among Muslim radicals. We all know that the ethnic composition of European countries is rapidly changing. About a third of the young generation in many West European cities (and this goes not only for France but also for Germany, the Netherlands, etc) is now of Muslim origin, and their birth rate is much higher than that of the local population. Since the Jewish communities are also concentrated in the big cities it means that soon they will live in a largely or even predominantly Muslim milieu. Some years ago a French left wing intellectual wrote in Le Monde that the political implication of the fact that there are ten times as many Arabs as Jews in France cannot be disregarded. The person was attacked, but he only articulated what many others were thinking. In less than a generation from now there will be more politicians such as a Ken Livingstone the mayor or London. He is not of course, an anti-Semite, some of his assistants are Jews, some are Muslims. But these Muslims hate the Jews, and the Jewish friends hate the Zionists, whatever that may mean. In brief, the situation of Jews in this new Europe will not be an easy one.

IF “ANTI-ZIONISM” IS THE ONLY KNOWN JEWISH ACTIVITY OF A JEWISH PERSON…

Question: What about Jewish self-hate, which is sometimes mentioned as a motive – and indignantly rejected?

Laqueur: In our time a great many people have been distancing themselves from religion and (to a lesser degree) from their ethnic origins. This is true a fortiori for the Jews among whom assimilation has been more widespread than among any other group. It has been in many ways a natural process and I find nothing reprehensible in it – there is no moral obligation to identify with the Jewish community or support Israel. But if “anti-Zionism” is the only known Jewish activity of such a person, the question of a deeper motive such as self-hate inevitably arises. Self-hate does exist. And it is not a Jewish monopoly, Pascal wrote “le moi is haissable”. This goes back among the Jewish left too for a long time, well before the existence of Israel. Rosa Luxemburg wrote in one of her letters from prison to Mathilde Wurm (I quote from memory) – “do not come to me with your specific Jewish concerns” (she had written about the pogroms in Eastern Europe). The fate of the Indians in Putamayo (Colombia) she wrote was closer to her. She felt, that she had to prove that she was a true internationalist. There was something (to put it very mildly) self-conscious in such utterances.

ISRAEL “WILL NOT BE INVITED TO BAKER’S REGIONAL CONFERENCE”

Baker wants Israel excluded from regional conference
Insight Magazine
December 5-11, 2006

www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Baker_1.htm

The White House has been examining a proposal by James Baker to launch a Middle East peace effort without Israel.

The peace effort would begin with a U.S.-organized conference, dubbed Madrid-2, and contain such U.S. adversaries as Iran and Syria. Officials said Madrid-2 would be promoted as a forum to discuss Iraq’s future, but actually focus on Arab demands for Israel to withdraw from territories captured in the 1967 war. They said Israel would not be invited to the conference.

“As Baker sees this, the conference would provide a unique opportunity for the United States to strike a deal without Jewish pressure,” an official said. “This has become the most hottest proposal examined by the foreign policy people over the last month.”

Officials said Mr. Baker’s proposal, reflected in the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, has been supported by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and National Intelligence Director John Negroponte. The most controversial element in the proposal, they said, was Mr. Baker’s recommendation for the United States to woo Iran and Syria.

“Here is Syria, which is clearly putting pressure on the Lebanese democracy, is a supporter of terror, is both provisioning and supporting Hezbollah and facilitating Iran in its efforts to support Hezbollah, is supporting the activities of Hamas,” National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley told a briefing last week. “This is not a Syria that is on an agenda to bring peace and stability to the region.”

Officials said the Baker proposal to exclude Israel from a Middle East peace conference garnered support in the wake of Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 25. They said Mr. Cheney spent most of his meetings listening to Saudi warnings that Israel, rather than Iran, is the leading cause of instability in the Middle East.

“He [Cheney] didn’t even get the opportunity to seriously discuss the purpose of his visit-that the Saudis help the Iraqi government and persuade the Sunnis to stop their attacks,” another official familiar with Mr. Cheney’s visit said. “Instead, the Saudis kept saying that they wanted a U.S. initiative to stop the Israelis’ attack in Gaza and Cheney just agreed.”

Under the Baker proposal, the Bush administration would arrange a Middle East conference that would discuss the future of Iraq and other Middle East issues. Officials said the conference would seek to win Arab support on Iraq in exchange for a U.S. pledge to renew efforts to press Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Golan Heights.

“Baker sees his plan as containing something for everybody, except perhaps the Israelis,” the official said. “The Syrians would get back the Golan, the Iranians would get U.S. recognition and the Saudis would regain their influence, particularly with the Palestinians.”

Officials said Mr. Baker’s influence within the administration and the Republican Party’s leadership stems from support by the president’s father as well as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Throughout the current Bush administration, such senior officials as Mr. Hadley and Ms. Rice were said to have been consulting with Brent Scowcroft, the former president’s national security advisor, regarded as close to Mr. Baker.

“Everybody has fallen in line,” the official said. “Bush is not in the daily loop. He is shocked by the elections and he’s hoping for a miracle on Iraq.”

For his part, Mr. Bush has expressed unease in negotiating with Iran. At a Nov. 30 news conference in Amman, Jordan, the president cited Iran’s interference in the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki.

“We respect their heritage, we respect their history, we respect their traditions,” Mr. Bush said. “I just have a problem with a government that is isolating its people, denying its people benefits that could be had from engagement with the world.”

Mr. Baker’s recommendation to woo Iran and Syria has also received support from some in the conservative wing of the GOP. Over the last week, former and current Republican leaders in Congress-convinced of the need for a U.S. withdrawal before the 2008 presidential elections-have called for Iranian and Syrian participation in an effort to stabilize Iraq.

“I would look at an entirely new strategy,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said. “We have clearly failed in the last three years to achieve the kind of outcome we want.”

In contrast, Defense Department officials have warned against granting a role to Iran and Syria at Israel’s expense. They said such a strategy would also end up undermining Arab allies of the United States such as Egypt, Jordan and Morocco.

“The regional strategy is a euphemism for throwing Free Iraq to the wolves in its neighborhood: Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia,” said the Center for Security Policy, regarded as being close to the Pentagon. “If the Baker regional strategy is adopted, we will prove to all the world that it is better to be America’s enemy than its friend. Jim Baker’s hostility towards the Jews is a matter of record and has endeared him to Israel’s foes in the region.”

But Defense Secretary-designate Robert Gates, a former colleague of Mr. Baker on the Iraq Study Group, has expressed support for U.S. negotiations with Iran and Syria. In response to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee, which begins confirmation hearings this week, Mr. Gates compared the two U.S. adversaries to the Soviet Union.

“Even in the worst days of the Cold War, the U.S. maintained a dialogue with the Soviet Union and China, and I believe those channels of communication helped us manage many potentially difficult situations,” Mr. Gates said. “Our engagement with Syria need not be unilateral. It could, for instance, take the form of Syrian participation in a regional conference.”

JAMES BAKER, MEET MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD

ISG must stand for, uh, Inane Strategy Guesswork
By Mark Steyn
Chicago Sun-Times
December 10, 2006

www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/166078,CST-EDT-steyn10.article

Well, the ISG – the Illustrious Seniors’ Group – has released its 79-point plan. How unprecedented is it? Well, it seems Iraq is to come under something called the “Iraq International Support Group.” If only Neville Chamberlain had thought to propose a “support group” for Czechoslovakia, he might still be in office. Or guest-hosting for Oprah.

But, alas, such flashes of originality are few and far between in what’s otherwise a testament to conventional wisdom. How conventional is the ISG’s conventional wisdom? Try page 49:

“RECOMMENDATION 5: The Support Group should consist of Iraq and all the states bordering Iraq, including Iran and Syria...”

Er, OK. I suppose that’s what you famously hardheaded “realists” mean by realism. But wait, we’re not done yet. For this “Support Group,” we need the extra-large function room. Aside from Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait, the ISG – the Iraq Surrender Gran’pas – want also to invite:

“... the key regional states, including Egypt and the Gulf States...”

Er, OK. So it’s basically an Arab League meeting. Not a “Support Group” I’d want to look for support from, but each to his own. But wait, Secretary Baker’s still warming up:

“... the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council...”

That would be America, Britain, France, Russia, China. A diverse quintet, representing many distinctive approaches to international affairs from stylish hauteur to polonium-210. Anybody else?

“... the European Union...”

Hey, why not? It’s not really multilateral unless there’s a Belgian on board, right? Oh, and let’s not forget:

“... the Support Group should call on the participation of the United Nations Secretary-General in its work. The United Nations Secretary-General should designate a Special Envoy as his representative...”

Indeed. But it needs to be someone with real clout, like Benon Sevan, the former head of the Oil for Food Program, who recently, ah, stepped down; or Maurice Strong, the Under-Secretary-General for U.N. Reform and godfather of Kyoto, who for one reason or another is presently on a, shall we say, leave of absence; or Alexander Yakovlev, the senior procurement officer for U.N. peacekeeping, who also finds himself under indictment – er, I mean under-employed. There’s no end of top-class talent at the U.N., now that John Bolton’s been expelled from its precincts.

So there you have it: an Iraq “Support Group” that brings together the Arab League, the European Union, Iran, Russia, China and the U.N. And with support like that who needs lack of support? It worked in Darfur, where the international community reached unanimous agreement on the urgent need to rent a zeppelin to fly over the beleaguered region trailing a big banner emblazoned “YOU’RE SCREWED.” For Dar4.1, they can just divert it to Baghdad.

Oh, but lest you think there are no minimum admission criteria to James Baker’s “Support Group,” relax, it’s a very restricted membership: Arabs, Persians, Chinese commies, French obstructionists, Russian assassination squads. But no Jews. Even though Israel is the only country to be required to make specific concessions – return the Golan Heights, etc. Indeed, insofar as this document has any novelty value, it’s in the Frankenstein-meets-the-Wolfman sense of a boffo convergence of hit franchises: a Vietnam bug-out, but with the Jews as the designated fall guys. Wow. That’s what Hollywood would call “high concept.”

Why would anyone – even a short-sighted incompetent political fixer whose brilliant advice includes telling the first Bush that no one would care if he abandoned the “Read my lips” pledge – why would even he think it a smart move to mortgage Iraq’s future to anything as intractable as the Palestinian “right of return”? And, incidentally, how did that phrase – “the right of return” – get so carelessly inserted into a document signed by two former secretaries of state, two former senators, a former attorney general, Supreme Court judge, defense secretary, congressman, etc. These are by far the most prominent Americans ever to legitimize a concept whose very purpose is to render any Zionist entity impossible. I’m not one of those who assumes that just because much of James Baker’s post-government career has been so lavishly endowed by the Saudis that he must necessarily be a wholly owned subsidiary of King Abdullah, but it’s striking how this document frames all the issues within the pathologies of the enemy.

And that’s before we get to Iran and Syria. So tough-minded and specific when it comes to the Israelis, Baker turns to mush when it comes to Assad assassinating his way through Lebanon’s shrinking Christian community or Ahmadinejad and the mullahs painting the finish trim on the Iranian nukes. Syria, declare the Surrender Gran’pas, “should control its border with Iraq.” Gee, who’dda thunk o’ that other than these geniuses?

Actually, Syria doesn’t need to “control its border with Iraq.” Iraq needs to control its border with Syria. And, as long as the traffic’s all one way (because Syria’s been allowed to subvert Iraq with impunity for three years), that suits Assad just fine. The Surrender Gran’pas assert that Iran and Syria have “an interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq.” This, to put it mildly, is news to the Iranians and Syrians, who have concluded that what’s in their interest is much more chaos in Iraq. For a start, the Americans get blamed for it, which reduces America’s influence in the broader Middle East, not least among Iran and Syria’s opposition movements. Furthermore, the fact that they’re known to be fomenting the chaos gives the mullahs, Assad and their proxies tremendous credibility in the rest of the Muslim world. James Baker has achieved the perfect reductio ad absurdum of diplomatic self-adulation: he’s less rational than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

If they’re lucky, this document will be tossed in the trash and these men and women will be the laughingstocks of posterity. But, if it’s not shredded and we embark down this path, then the Baker group will be emblematic of something far worse. The “Support Group” is a “peace conference,” and Baker wants Washington to sue for terms. No wonder Syria is already demanding concessions from America. Which is the superpower and which is the third-rate basket-case state? From the Middle Eastern and European press coverage of the Baker group, it’s kinda hard to tell.

GIULIANI: NO CONNECTION BETWEEN ISRAEL AND IRAQ

Giuliani calls idea of quitting Iraq ‘terrible mistake’
By Eli Lake
The New York Sun
December 7, 2006

www.nysun.com/article/44742

Mayor Giuliani resigned from the Iraq Study Group when it became clear that signing the group’s report would politicize its findings and conflict with his likely presidential run in 2008.

When asked yesterday by The New York Sun, the mayor said he had not read the report’s recommendations but that some of those he had heard about on television sounded “useful.”

Nonetheless, Mr. Giuliani’s views on the war are in contrast to the Iraq Study Group’s conclusions. The extent of Mr. Giuliani’s disagreement with the bipartisan group’s Iraq policy recommendations, published yesterday, was made clear in remarks he made to a talk-show host, Dennis Prager, on Tuesday.

“The idea of leaving Iraq, I think, is a terrible mistake,” the former mayor said. The group’s report, however, stresses that America should not make an “open-ended” commitment of troops and links the presence of troops to milestones met by the Iraqi government.

Mr. Giuliani also rejected the panel’s recommendation that America tie the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict to stabilizing Iraq. When asked about this linkage on Mr. Prager’s radio show, Mr. Giuliani said, “Israel and Palestine is an important issue. Sometimes it’s used as an excuse to deal with underlying issues. But the reality here is that the Islamo-fundamentalist terrorists are at war with our way of life, with our modern world, with rights for women, religious freedom, societies that have religious freedom. And all of that would still exist, no matter what happens in Israel and Palestine.”

The stark difference between the position of Mr. Giuliani, who left the Iraq Study Group this summer, and that of the rest of the group – which is headed by a former secretary of state, James Baker, and a former congressman, Lee Hamilton – indicates that the greater political world is less agreed on the group’s 79 recommendations than are the group’s five Republicans and five Democrats.

Indeed, Mr. Giuliani is not the only potential presidential candidate who is dissenting from the report, which was released yesterday. In a conference call yesterday, the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a possible 2008 presidential contender, Senator Biden, a Democrat of Delaware, said that while the panel got some big questions right, he would nonetheless hold bipartisan hearings in the next Congress to “complete the work of the Baker-Hamilton commission.”

The report rejected Mr. Biden’s proposal to allow Iraq to devolve into a federalist system of three states for Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, and Kurds.

“It is no longer a question of whether we stay in Iraq, but when and how we leave,” Mr. Biden added yesterday.

Senator McCain, a Republican of Arizona, also offered a critical assessment of some of the group’s recommendations. He called the linkage of the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict to the violence in Iraq “tenuous at best.”

Mr. McCain also rejected the panel’s call for a regional diplomatic conference on Iraq involving Iran and Syria. “Our interests in Iraq diverge significantly from those of Damascus and Tehran, and this is unlikely to change under the current regimes,” he said.

In the report, the group said one of the inducements America should offer Iran is to drop its policy of regime change.

But Mr. McCain appeared most concerned about the panel’s placing of a time line of early 2008 to begin redeploying American combat troops stationed in Iraq. “By placing a limited timeframe on our military commitments, we would only induce Iraqis to side with militias that will stay indefinitely, rather than with the U.S. and government of Iraq,” he said. “Such a step would only complicate our considerable difficulties.”

For his part, Mr. Giuliani told the Sun that he had not read the group’s final report. He did say, however, that he thought some of the recommendations were “useful.”

“The goal has to be an accountable, responsible government in Iraq that diffuses terrorism rather than promotes it, and if the president keeps that goal the same, then I think maybe not all of these recommendations – I can’t imagine all of them will be implemented – but some of them will be very, very useful,” Mr. Giuliani told the Sun.

That last point is likely to chafe his former colleagues in the study group, who yesterday urged President Bush to adopt their recommendations in full, stressing that theirs was the only bipartisan set of recommendations he was likely to receive.

Nonetheless, Mr. Baker made clear that the report only represents suggestions that, at the end of the day, are not binding. “This is not legislation or an executive order,” he said. “This does not bind leadership on the hill or the president. But it is the only recommended approach that will enjoy complete bipartisan support.”

Another important voice yesterday seemed to be backing away from adopting the report’s recommendations completely – that of Mr. Bush. Before a meeting with congressional leaders, he praised the seriousness of the report and its bipartisan process. But he added a caveat: “Not all of us around the table agree with every idea. But we do agree that it shows that bipartisan consensus on important issues is possible.”

CARTER IS GUILTY OF MISLEADING THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION

The world according to Carter
By Alan Dershowitz
The New York Sun
November 22, 2006

www.nysun.com/article/43958

Sometimes you really can tell a book by its cover. President Jimmy Carter’s decision to title his new anti-Israel screed “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” (Simon & Schuster, 288 pages, $27) tells it all. His use of the loaded word “apartheid,” suggesting an analogy to the hated policies of South Africa, is especially outrageous, considering his acknowledgment buried near the end of his shallow and superficial book that what is going on in Israel today “is unlike that in South Africa – not racism, but the acquisition of land.” Nor does he explain that Israel’s motivation for holding on to land it captured in a defensive war is the prevention of terrorism. Israel has tried, on several occasions, to exchange land for peace, and what it got instead was terrorism, rockets, and kidnappings launched from the returned land.

In fact, Palestinian-Arab terrorism is virtually missing from Mr. Carter’s entire historical account, which blames nearly everything on Israel and almost nothing on the Palestinians. Incredibly, he asserts that the initial violence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict occurred when “Jewish militants” attacked Arabs in 1939. The long history of Palestinian terrorism against Jews – which began in 1929, when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem ordered the slaughter of more than 100 rabbis, students, and non-Zionist Sephardim whose families had lived in Hebron and other ancient Jewish cities for millennia – was motivated by religious bigotry. The Jews responded to this racist violence by establishing a defense force. There is no mention of the long history of Palestinian terrorism before the occupation, or of the Munich massacre and others inspired by Yasser Arafat. There is not even a reference to the Karine A, the boatful of terrorist weapons ordered by Arafat in January 2002.

Mr. Carter’s book is so filled with simple mistakes of fact and deliberate omissions that were it a brief filed in a court of law, it would be struck and its author sanctioned for misleading the court. Mr. Carter too is guilty of misleading the court of public opinion. A mere listing of all of Mr. Carter’s mistakes and omissions would fill a volume the size of his book. Here are just a few of the most egregious:

Mr. Carter emphasizes that “Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued to live in this same land since Roman times,” but he ignores the fact that Jews have lived in Hebron, Tzfat, Jerusalem, and other cities for even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948.

Mr. Carter repeatedly claims that the Palestinian Arabs have long supported a two-state solution and the Israelis have always opposed it. Yet he makes no mention of the fact that in 1938 the Peel Commission proposed a two-state solution, with Israel receiving a mere sliver of its ancient homeland and the Palestinians receiving the bulk of the land. The Jews accepted and the Palestinians rejected this proposal because Arab leaders cared more about there being no Jewish state on Muslim holy land than about having a Palestinian state of their own.

He barely mentions Israel’s acceptance, and the Palestinian rejection, of the United Nation’s division of the mandate in 1948.

He claims that in 1967 Israel launched a preemptive attack against Jordan. The fact is that Jordan attacked Israel first, Israel tried desperately to persuade Jordan to remain out of the war, and Israel counterattacked after the Jordanian army surrounded Jerusalem, firing missiles into the center of the city. Only then did Israel capture the West Bank, which it was willing to return in exchange for peace and recognition from Jordan.

Mr. Carter repeatedly mentions Security Council Resolution 242, which called for return of captured territories in exchange for peace, recognition, and secure boundaries, but he ignores that Israel accepted and all the Arab nations and the Palestinians rejected this resolution. The Arabs met in Khartum and issued their three famous “no’s”: “No peace, no recognition, no negotiation.” But you wouldn’t know that from reading the history according to Mr. Carter.

Mr. Carter faults Israel for its “air strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor” without mentioning that Iraq had threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons if Iraq succeeded in building a bomb.

Mr. Carter faults Israel for its administration of Christian and Muslim religious sites, when in fact Israel is scrupulous about ensuring those of every religion the right to worship as they please – consistent, of course, with security needs. He fails to mention that between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Hashemites destroyed and desecrated Jewish religious sites and prevented Jews from praying at the Western Wall. He also never mentions Egypt’s brutal occupation of Gaza between 1949 and 1967.

Mr. Carter blames Israel, and exonerates Arafat, for the Palestinian refusal to accept statehood on 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza pursuant to the Clinton-Barak offers at Camp David and Taba in 2000–2001. He accepts the Palestinian revisionist history, rejects the eyewitness accounts of President Clinton and Dennis Ross, and ignores Saudi Prince Bandar’s accusation that Arafat’s rejection of the proposal was “a crime” and that Arafat’s account “was not truthful” – except, apparently, to Mr. Carter. The fact that Mr. Carter chooses to believe Arafat over Mr. Clinton speaks volumes.

Mr. Carter’s description of the recent Lebanon war is misleading. He begins by asserting that Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. “Captured” suggests a military apprehension subject to the usual prisoner of war status. The soldiers were kidnapped, and have not been heard from – not even a sign of life. The rocket attacks that preceded Israel’s invasion are largely ignored, as is the fact that Hezbollah fired its rockets from civilian population centers.

Mr. Carter gives virtually no credit to Israel’s superb legal system, falsely asserting (without any citation) that “confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli courts,” that prisoners are “executed,” and that the “accusers” act “as judges.” Even Israel’s most severe critics acknowledge the fairness of the Israeli Supreme Court, but not Mr. Carter.

Mr. Carter even blames Israel for the “exodus of Christians from the Holy Land,” totally ignoring the Islamization of the area by Hamas and the comparable exodus of Christian Arabs from Lebanon as a result of the increasing influence of Hezbollah and the repeated assassination of Christian leaders by Syria.

Mr. Carter also blames every American administration but his own for the Mideast stalemate with particular emphasis on “a submissive White House and U.S. Congress in recent years.” He employs hyperbole and overstatement when he says that “dialogue on controversial issues is a privilege to be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and withheld from those who reject U.S. demands.” He confuses terrorist states, such as Iran and Syria, to which we do not extend dialogue, with states with whom we strongly disagree, such as France and China, but with whom we have constant dialogue.

And it’s not just the facts; it’s the tone as well. It’s obvious that Mr. Carter just doesn’t like Israel or Israelis. He lectured Golda Meir on Israeli’s “secular” nature, warning her that “Israel was punished whenever its leaders turned away from devout worship of God.” He admits that he did not like Menachem Begin. He has little good to say about any Israelis – except those few who agree with him. But he apparently got along swimmingly with the very secular Syrian mass-murderer Hafez al-Assad. Mr. Carter and his wife Rosalynn also had a fine time with the equally secular Arafat – a man who has the blood of hundreds of Americans and Israelis on his hands:

Rosalynn and I met with Yasir Arafat in Gaza City, where he was staying with his wife, Suha, and their little daughter. The baby, dressed in a beautiful pink suit, came readily to sit on my lap, where I practiced the same wiles that had been successful with our children and grandchildren. A lot of photographs were taken, and then the photographers asked that Arafat hold his daughter for a while. When he took her, the child screamed loudly and reached out her hands to me, bringing jovial admonitions to the presidential candidate to stay at home enough to become acquainted with is own child.

There is something quite disturbing about these pictures.

“Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” is so biased that it inevitably raises the question of what would motivate a decent man like Jimmy Carter to write such an indecent book. Whatever Mr. Carter’s motives may be, his authorship of this ahistorical, one-sided, and simplistic brief against Israel forever disqualifies him from playing any positive role in fairly resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. That is a tragedy because the Carter Center, which has done much good in the world, could have been a force for peace if Jimmy Carter were as generous in spirit to the Israelis as he is to the Palestinians.

NUMEROUS HISTORICAL ERRORS

From: Benny Morris
To: Letters@independent.co.uk
Sent: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 12:45:09 +0200
Subject: Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

Johann Hari (‘Ethnic Cleansing Returns to Israel’s Agenda’, 13 Nov) misrepresents my views, while peddling numerous historical errors.

I have not moved to the Right. I still believe (as I believed 30 years ago) that a two-state settlement – a Palestinian state alongside and living in peace with Israel more or less along the pre-1967 borders – is the optimal solution to the conflict. It would not give either side the full ‘justice’ they would like, but in the circumstances (demographic, geographic, political, military) it is the best to be hoped for.

What has changed is that in the 1990s I was guardedly hopeful that the Palestinians – who had previously always demanded all of Palestine for themselves – were moving toward acceptance of a two-state solution. But I was wrong. Yasser Arafat, the previous Palestinian leader, rejected such a solution when it was offered by Israeli and American leaders (Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton) in the year 2000. And in January 2006, to emphasize their rejectionism, the Palestinians voted the Hamas into power in free, orderly general elections. The Hamas, a deeply anti-Semitic movement (it describes Jews as ‘sons of pigs and monkeys’), continues to reject the legitimacy of Zionism and Israel and to call for Israel’s destruction. The election, unfortunately, represented the will of the Palestinian people.

I am no supporter of Avigdor Lieberman, the head of the Right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, recently co-opted into the Israeli government. But he has a point: Israel’s 1.3 million (not ‘two million’) Arab citizens identify with the Palestinian cause (and, at times, with the Lebanese fundamentalist Islamic militia, the Hizbullah), and are potentially a dangerous Fifth Column, who do not want to live in a Jewish state. This may be unfortunate – but one should face reality. Contrary to liberal opinion, not all minorities are well-intentioned and loyal.

Lieberman, whatever his formal title, is not ‘in charge of’ the Israeli response to the Iranian nuclear threat (and it is a frightening, existential threat – a mad president, who denies the Holocaust and posits Israel’s destruction, surrounded by a coterie of mullahs who live in the Middle Ages). The response will be devised by the Israeli prime minister, defense minister and army chief of staff, and endorsed by the full cabinet, when and if it is decided upon. And let me add: If Israel is faced with a choice between its own imminent destruction and the destruction of Iran, and, given the weakness of the international community in face of the Iranian challenge, it may well boil down to that – I hope Israel’s leaders have the sense and courage to choose the latter.

Hari quotes David Ben-Gurion as saying in 1937: ‘I support compulsory transfer ... The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.’ The first part of the quote (‘I support compulsory transfer’) is genuine; the rest (‘The Arabs will have to go ... such as a war’) is an invention, pure and simple, either by Hari or by whomever he is quoting (Ilan Pappe?) It is true that Ben-Gurion in 1937-38 supported the transfer of the Arabs out of the area of the Jewish state-to-be – which was precisely the recommendation of the British Royal (Peel) Commission from July 1937, which investigated the Palestine problem. The commission concluded that the only fair settlement was by way of partition, with the Jews receiving less than 20 per cent of Palestine, but that, for it to be viable, the 20 per cent should be cleared of potentially hostile, disloyal Arabs. (Britain, incidentally, at the end of World War II supported the expulsion to Germany of the German Sudeten minority, which had helped Hitler destroy and occupy Czechoslovakia – for precisely the same reasons.) The Arabs, then and later, rejected the principle of partition as well as the specific Peel proposals.

Neither Ben-Gurion nor the Zionist movement ‘planned’ the displacement of the 700,000-odd Arabs who moved or were removed from their homes in 1948. There was no such plan or blanket policy. Transfer was never adopted by the Zionist movement as part of its platform; on the contrary, the movement always accepted that the Jewish state that arose would contain a sizeable Arab minority.

But in 1947-48 the Palestinian Arabs, joined by invading Arab states’ armies from outside, launched a war whose aim – which they (and even Pappe, Israel’s Lord Haw-Haw) have never denied – was to destroy the nascent state of Israel (and quite probably its inhabitants as well). But – what can you do? – the Arabs were beaten. And in the course of beating them, the Israelis drove out the Palestinians, who were not ‘totally innocent ... peasants’ (a ludicrous phrase). Their villages and towns served as the bases from which their militiamen and armies attacked Jewish communities and convoys.

The ‘innocent’ Palestinians were the aggressors – and dispossession was the price they paid for their aggression. In the circumstances, had the Jews not driven them out, Israel would not have arisen and its (Jewish) population would have been slaughtered – or, at the least, the Jewish state would have been established with a considerable Fifth Column in its midst and rendered mortally unstable. (Conversely, had the Arabs accepted the 1947 UN Partition Resolution, refrained from violence, and gone on with their lives as loyal Israeli citizens, nothing would have happened to them.)

Nonetheless, Israel emerged from the 1948 War with a 160,000-strong Arab minority (alongside 700,000 Jews) – a fact that tends to undermine the charge that there was a blanket policy of ethnic cleansing.

Lastly, Hari refers at one point to ‘the sands of Lebanon’. Perhaps it is time he visited the Middle East: The only sands in Lebanon are in children’s playgrounds or on the beaches of southern Beirut.

Yours,

Benny Morris,
[Address and email removed]

“NOW IS THE TIME FOR THE WORLD TO JOLT ISRAEL”

Ethnic cleansing returns to Israel’s agenda
The silence over Lieberman’s appointment is a bleak sign of how far Israel has drifted to the right
By Johann Hari
The Independent
November 13, 2006

comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/johann_hari/article1963583.ece

When Jorg Haider’s far-right Freedom Party joined the governing coalition in Austria in 2000, the world offered a collective retch and moved to isolate the country. In the past fortnight, a startlingly similar far-right politician named Avigdor Lieberman has joined the governing coalition in Israel – in the lofty position of Deputy Prime Minister – but the world’s gagging reflex has yet to respond.

Lieberman is an ex-nightclub bouncer, once arrested for attacking a boy who he suspected of insulting his son. His party, Yisrael Beytenu (Israel, Our Home), has campaigned on two ugly issues. The first is the claim that Israel’s two million Arab citizens are “a danger to the country”, to be dispensed with, in part, by ethnic cleansing. Lieberman wanted to bus thousands of released Palestinian prisoners to the Dead Sea and drown them.

Today, he has moderated his stance and merely wants to “transfer” many hundreds of thousands of Israeli Arabs – inevitably by force – to the scraps of remaining land that will be labelled Palestine after Israel has annexed the major illegal settlement blocks. If your name’s not on the list, you’re not staying in.

His model is Cyprus in the 1970s, where the mixed Turkish and Greek populations were separated out at gunpoint. “The final result was better,” he sighs. “Minorities are the biggest problem in the world.” He would like to begin these racist expulsions with a simple, swift move: executing Israeli Arab members of the Knesset. Since they have spoken to the democratically elected Palestinian leadership, they are “traitors”, Lieberman argues.

His second issue has been an attempt to streamline and centralise power into the hands of one Strong Man. Lieberman grew up in the Soviet Union. His support base is overwhelmingly among the one million Jews who emigrated to Israel after the fall of Communism. Much as they despised Soviet anti-Semitism, many have imbibed Soviet habits of mind and do not see why faffing about with coalitions and supreme courts should be allowed to get in the way of the Great Leader vanquishing the Great Enemy.

It is important to stress that Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister, says he rejects Lieberman’s views, and will not carry out his policies. But he has placed Lieberman in charge of the largest single issue in Israeli politics – how to respond to Iran’s imminent nuclear bomb. We already know his views on this: Lieberman was calling for bombing of Iran as long ago as 2001, and says Israel is “on the frontline of the clash of religions”.

The silence that has greeted Lieberman’s appointment is a bleak sign of how far Israel has drifted to the right. In the 1980s, a fascist called Rabbi Meir Kahane emerged calling for a Lieberman-style “pure Jewish state” that was “cleansed of Arab contaminants” and “stripped of liberal democratic illusions”. He was execrated by everyone and banned by the Supreme Court from sitting in the Knesset even as a fringe member. Yet today, only a handful of heroic Israelis have spoken out at the appointment of Lieberman to the deputy premiership. One Labour cabinet minister – one – resigned, saying it would be a betrayal of everything the Jews have learned to sit alongside “a racist”.

It is revealing that ethnic cleansing would re-emerge as a mainstream issue in Israel politics now, as the country undergoes a national nervous breakdown. This summer, in the sands of Lebanon, Israel effectively lost a war for the first time. (In his testimony before a Knesset committee last month, Olmert was reduced to defiantly bragging, “Half of Lebanon was destroyed – is that a loss?”). The country’s political class is on life support just as surely as Ariel Sharon, with the President facing rape charges and Olmert facing a battery of corruption allegations.

In the midst of all this, a national taboo has melted away. Anybody who studies the history with open eyes can now see that ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s indigenous population was Israel’s original sin, a prerequisite for the state to come into existence. Today the Israeli people feel their existence is threatened once more, so they are returning in their minds – via Lieberman – to those birth crimes in the search for solutions.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father, wrote in 1937, “I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral ... The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.” The brave Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s new book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, documents in detail how Ben Gurion’s plan was carried out, village by village, town by town, in 1948. The Jewish soldiers who carried out this crime were often still emaciated from the Nazi concentration camps, trying desperately to convince themselves that these totally innocent Arab peasants were somehow akin to Nazis – that Adolf Hitler was hiding in Ramallah, or Bethlehem, or Nablus.

Lieberman’s argument is, in essence, that the ethnic cleansing of 1948 did not go far enough. Yes, 800,000 were driven out – but almost as many were left behind, a “fifth column” within Israel, who must now be dealt with.

The best symbol of how Israeli thinking has cracked and reverted to an earlier, base impulse is the historian Benny Morris, who I met up with last time he was in London. In the 1980s, Morris became a hero to the Israeli and international left because he was the first man brave enough to pore into the declassified Israeli military archives from the 1940s and show how Israel’s founders carried out the expulsion of the Palestinians.

But then at the height of the second intifada, he gave an interview in which he said he had been misunderstood all these years. All this time he was talking about ethnic cleansing, he didn’t mean it was a bad thing. No – “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands,” he said. It would have been “much better” if they had driven out all the Arabs, he declared.

The ugliest strains in Israeli political thought are rising to the surface. There have always been some anti-democratic forces in the country – Sharon considered mounting a military coup in 1967, for example. There have always been ethnic cleansers, from Ben Gurion to the politicians who today authorise the blowing up of “unpermitted” Arab (never Jewish) houses in East Jerusalem, a process I have witnessed myself.

But Avigdor Lieberman is a logo for all this at its most extreme, and today he is only a few bullets away from the Premiership. For the sake of the Palestinians, for the sake of Israel itself, now is the time for the world to jolt Israel, just as we jolted Austria back from its dark dance with the far right.