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PAKISTAN AND ISRAEL: AN ANALYSIS

Pakistan and Israel
By Dr. Moshe Yegar
Jewish Political Studies Review (Fall 2007)

INTRODUCTION

Since Israel’s establishment in May 1948, Pakistan, being a Muslim country, has refused to establish diplomatic relations with it. The agreements that Israel signed with Egypt in 1978, the PLO in 1993, and Jordan in 1994 brought no change in Pakistan’s policy. However, Israeli and Pakistani officials maintained clandestine contacts over the years.

The main reasons for Pakistan’s policy toward Israel are: (1) religious solidarity with the Arab-Muslim countries; (2) fear of an adverse response by radical Islamist groups throughout the Muslim world; and (3) concern that establishing diplomatic relations with Israel may cause instability within Pakistan. Pakistan’s political and military leaders have always striven to get along with its radical clergy and likely will remain committed to the country’s Muslim identity. Only significant progress in relations between Israel and the Arab states could lead to a change in Pakistan’s position.

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The Muslim countries in Asia constitute a significant component of the continent’s population. These include Indonesia, the largest Muslim state in the world with 210 million people at the end of the twentieth century, more than all Arab countries combined; Pakistan and Bangladesh, each with a population of about 130 million; Malaysia, with 18 million inhabitants; and other, smaller countries such as Brunei and Maldives. Some Muslim countries in Asia are particularly hostile to Israel. In addition, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Thailand have Muslim minorities that exert a certain amount of influence over their country’s foreign policy, especially regarding diplomatic relations with Israel and sentiments toward the Arabs. Other Asian countries have Muslim minorities as well, but these lack significant influence over relations with Israel.

Hatred of Israel, and the refusal to recognize or establish diplomatic relations with it, are evident to some extent in all Muslim countries in Asia. This phenomenon is based on feelings of Islamic solidarity with Arab countries and a sense of religious belonging to the global Islamic community, the umma.[1] In recent decades, the atmosphere in most Muslim countries has become increasingly radical. Contributing to this trend is the belief that Jews, Zionism, and Israel are anti-Islam, anti-Arab, and pro-American. Radical Islamic circles exert pressure on governments to become involved in worldwide Islamic issues, above all the Palestinian problem and support for Arab countries’ struggle against Israel.[2]

Israel has signed peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, has normalized its relations beginning in early 1992 with China, India, and South Korea, and has significantly improved its relations with Japan. Nevertheless, Muslim countries in Asia-Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Brunei-still refuse to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. In 1992, after the aforementioned developments, there were hopes that those Muslim countries would be influenced. Indonesia and Pakistan gave hints in that direction. Representatives of Jewish organizations from the United States and Australia, as well as diplomats from countries friendly to Israel, were also involved in attempts to clarify the Muslim countries’ stance. However, internal developments in these countries and changes in government led to a cessation of contact.[3]

The twentieth century has ended and fifty-nine years have passed since Israel was established. But the Jewish state has never had diplomatic relations with the Asian Muslim countries, except tiny Maldives for a brief period. The agreements that were signed with Egypt in 1978, the PLO in 1993, and Jordan in 1994 brought no change in the Asian Muslim countries’ policies. There were, however, limited improvements in some areas, particularly tourism and trade, but not regarding diplomatic relations. Governments of the Asian Muslim countries were less concerned about Arab countries than about the increasingly radical Islamic atmosphere in their own societies, among circles that were not influenced by the agreements in the Middle East. These governments were not willing to risk confronting these groups. Israeli diplomacy was not effective here at all.

PAKISTAN’S ISLAMIC ALLEGIANCE

Pakistan was established on 15 August 1947 as a result of the division of the Indian subcontinent. In 1940, Indian Muslims had already started demanding India’s division, disengagement from Hindu nationalism, and the creation of an independent nationalist-Muslim country. Their leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), claimed that Indian Muslims possessed a unique and separate culture with their own language, religion, history, literature, art, architecture, laws, leaders, and traditions. Although leaders of the nationalist Hindu movement, the Congress Party, opposed the Muslims’ demands, in the end the Indian Muslims prevailed and India was divided.

Since Pakistan’s establishment, its foreign policy has been influenced by the fact that it is a Muslim country founded on an Islamic religious basis. Islamic solidarity has been a central component of Pakistan’s foreign policy in general and toward the Middle East in particular. Pakistan has staunchly and persistently supported Arab positions in the United Nations and other arenas. In return, Pakistan expected the support of Arab and Muslim countries in its ongoing conflict with India over Kashmir and other issues.

In 1947 Pakistan’s representative to the United Nations, Sir Zafrullah Khan, waged a struggle against the UN Partition Plan for Palestine (1947). Khan strove for the establishment of a federal state in Palestine. During Israel’s War of Independence (1947-1949), Israel’s diplomatic mission in Washington received information that Pakistan was trying to provide military assistance to the Arabs, including rumors that a Pakistani battalion would be sent to Palestine to fight alongside them. Pakistan bought 250,000 rifles in Czechoslovakia that apparently were meant for the Arabs. Also, it became known that Pakistan bought three planes in Italy for the Egyptians.[4]

EARLY ATTEMPTS AT CONTACTS

Nevertheless, when the battles had died down in 1949 and the ceasefire agreement had been signed, some in the Israeli Foreign Ministry believed it might be possible to open legations in Karachi, then the capital of Pakistan, or at least to conduct trade openly.[5] Initial contact between the ambassador (high commissioner) of Pakistan in London and representatives of Israel and Jewish organizations was made in early 1950. The Pakistani government was asked to issue passage permits to India for a few hundred Jews who had been forced to leave Afghanistan and wanted to emigrate to Israel. The Pakistani government refused to allow them to transit through Pakistan and the Jews left through Iran.[6]

In Cairo in March 1952, Zafrullah Khan, who had meanwhile been appointed Pakistan’s foreign minister, said he thought Israel and Arab countries ought to reach an agreement, though he emphasized that his country supported the Arabs’ demands. For example, the Arabs wanted Israel to alter borders, provide monetary compensation, and make assurances that it had no aggressive intentions.[7]

Consequently, a meeting was arranged in New York between Zafrullah Khan and Abba Eban, then Israel’s ambassador to the United States, on 14 January 1953. Regarding Israeli-Pakistani relations, Zafrullah Khan told Eban that his government would not be able to withstand the extremists’ opposition and that there was no chance for improved relations between the two countries in the near future “despite the fact that the Pakistani government does not bear any hatred toward Israel and understands that it is a factor in the Middle East that must be taken into consideration.” For the time being, he expressed his approval of mutual visits of experts, students, and professors. He added that when the Arabs exhibited willingness to meet with Israel to solve problems, Pakistan would try to influence the Arabs toward reaching an agreement.[8]

In March and April 1954, Zafrullah Khan stated on several occasions that his country did not recognize Israel and had no intention of doing so. Israel was a foreign wedge in the Middle East and posed a danger not only to surrounding Arab countries but to the entire Islamic world. Pakistan would aid the Arabs in protecting sites holy to Islam. The Pakistani prime minister, of Pakistan, told a visiting group of Palestinian Arab clergy that the issue of Palestine was not only an Arab one but also a Muslim one. He promised them his country’s loyalty on issues pertaining to “Muslims in Palestine.” He kept this promise at a conference of Asian heads of state, held in Colombo in 1954 in advance of the Bandung Conference, and during the Bandung Conference itself. For this he was praised by King Saud of Saudi Arabia.[9]

AN ONGOING HOSTILITY

Hostile Pakistani statements as well as the United States’ intention to supply weapons to Pakistan were worrisome to Israel. These concerns were raised in the Knesset.[10] In November 1956, following Egypt’s defeat in the Sinai Campaign, there were incidents of incitement and rioting against the approximately five hundred Jews remaining in Karachi. The Israeli Foreign Ministry suggested that the World Jewish Congress or other organizations should pressure Pakistan in Washington and in the UN General Assembly in New York to protect those Jews.[11]

Pakistan did not miss any opportunity to display its characteristically pro-Arab and anti-Israeli policy, which stemmed from a sense of Muslim identification but also from practical political considerations, and which was constantly becoming more extreme. Arab countries considered pro-Western in the 1950s, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, tended to side with Pakistan whereas those regarded as neutral, such as Egypt and Syria, showed a pro-Indian bent. Pakistan itself not only refrained from recognizing Israel or conducting any type of relations with it but also unconditionally supported the Arabs in the United Nations. Pakistan also refused to participate in sports events in which Israelis took part (except for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles), or to permit Israelis to attend international conferences held in Pakistan. Sometimes, but not always, the venues of international conferences were changed for this reason.

Pakistan and Britain were the only countries that recognized the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Jordan over the territory of Judea and Samaria that remained in Jordanian hands after the fighting had ended in 1949. In 1962, Pakistan officially announced to all Arab countries that the commercial, economic, and cultural boycott it had imposed on Israel was total and that Pakistan viewed Israel as a “thieving country.” It promised to act “alongside Arab countries for the purpose of returning the Holy Land to its lawful inhabitants.” On 4 July 1967, after the Six Day War, the UN General Assembly accepted a Pakistani resolution regarding the situation in Jerusalem, which expressed concern over the steps taken by Israel to change its status.[12] In late 1979, a severe flood occurred in Eastern Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in which approximately half a million people perished. Israel offered to send Pakistan medicine, food, and mobile clinics via the International Red Cross; Pakistan refused.[13]

AN ISLAMIC INTENSIFICATION

In the first years of its existence, Pakistan’s foreign policy focused on ties with the West, particularly the United States. In the early 1970s a change occurred; Pakistan’s foreign policy remained primarily supportive of the moderate Arabs, but it acquired a more Islamic orientation. This was caused by Pakistan’s disappointment with the West after being defeated in the 1971 war against India, and primarily by the mounting Islamic sentiments among the Pakistani public and the increase in Arab countries’ power. The strengthening of ties with Muslim countries in general, and with Arab countries in particular, stemmed from the following factors:

1. The need to garner support in the conflict with India

2. The desire to promote economic interests, such as importing cheap oil, ensuring a flow of income from Pakistani workers employed in Arab countries (in 1983 this came to about $3 billion), developing markets for Pakistani products, and receiving loans and grants

3. The need to obtain international political support in the face of the Soviet threat during the war with Afghanistan

4. The desire to exhibit international Islamic solidarity to internal religious circles

5. The need to prevent Iranian subversion in Pakistan

From this period onward, military cooperation between Pakistan and several Arab countries also increased. Thousands of Pakistani military advisers served in the armies of Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, and also aided in the maintenance of weapons and equipment provided by the United States. A Pakistani researcher even claimed that in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, Pakistani pilots flying Jordanian and Syrian planes downed some Israeli planes, whereas in the 1982 battle for Beirut between Israel and the PLO, fifty Pakistani volunteers serving in the PLO were taken prisoner by Israel. After the 1973 war, Pakistan and the PLO signed an agreement for training PLO officers in Pakistani military institutions.[14]

Pakistan and the PLO developed close ties. The PLO was first recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians at an Islamic summit in Lahore in February 1974. This was approved six months later at an Arab summit in Rabat. PLO missions in Karachi and Islamabad (Pakistan’s capital since 1960) received full diplomatic recognition in 1975. During the First Intifada that began in 1987, pro-PLO rallies were held in Pakistan and the government sent the organization food and medical supplies.

On the issue of Israel, Pakistan was careful not to take any stand that could jeopardize its relations with Arab countries or provoke Islamic elements within its borders. Pakistan’s aggressive statements toward Israel sometimes caused it to have friction with the United States. For example, in March 1984, Pakistan warned the United States not to transfer its embassy to Jerusalem, and that year Pakistan severed relations with Costa Rica for moving its embassy to Jerusalem in April.[15]

Pakistan’s hostility did not prevent the Israeli government from expressing, in 1961 and 1963, its willingness to sell Uzi submachine guns to Pakistan through the Belgian company FN, which produced these weapons under Israeli license. However, during the 1965 Indian-Pakistani war over Kashmir, an American expert on Pakistan advised the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Abe Harman, that Israel should display “military goodwill” (probably meaning increased military contacts) toward Pakistan, but Harman replied negatively.[16]

THE NUCLEAR ISSUE

In 1974, India succeeded to produce nuclear weapons. Pakistan immediately followed suit, ignoring the weak U.S. pressure to dissuade it from doing so. Pakistan received hundreds of millions of dollars from Libya and Saudi Arabia to aid its efforts to produce nuclear weapons. Israel had grave concerns about Pakistan’s “Islamic bomb” and monitored events closely. It was also believed that Iraq had acquired nuclear know-how from Pakistan, and Israel was worried that Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia would acquire this know-how as well. There was no doubt in Israel that Iraq intended to use its nuclear plant for military purposes.

In 1980, in Washington and other world capitals, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, and others tried to work against this threat. In a speech to the Senate on 2 April 1981, Senator Allan Cranston warned of the danger that Arab countries might pressure nuclear-armed Pakistan to intervene in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Notwithstanding Israel’s concerns, there was also information that Pakistan had asked for Israel’s help in influencing Washington to bring about demilitarization of the Indian subcontinent and a halting of the Indian-Pakistani nuclear race. The Pakistanis made assurances that they had no reason to become involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict.[17]

Israel did not wage a public relations war against the “Pakistani threat.” Pakistan was considered in Israel as a responsible country and not one that sponsored terror, such as Iran or Iraq. However, suspicions abounded in Pakistan, particularly in 1988, about a joint Israeli-Indian attack on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities in Kahuta not far from the border with Kashmir. Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif said in an interview to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn on 29 July 1991 that he feared Israel would attack Pakistani nuclear sites.

Various speculations on this matter were published in the London Observer on 28 March 1988 and were repeated in other media. Key Israeli officials denied that Israel had any intention of acting militarily against Pakistan. This was so despite the aid that Pakistan had provided to the Arabs in the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, and the promises it had made to Syria about greater Pakistani involvement in a possible future war.[18]

HOPES FOR A CHANGE

After establishing diplomatic relations with China and normalizing relations with India in January 1992, the Israeli Foreign Ministry started to closely monitor the large Muslim countries in Asia, including Pakistan. There were some indications that Pakistan’s attitude toward Israel was changing for the better. The first, and most explicit, was an interview to the press granted by the Pakistani ambassador in Washington, Sayyidah Abidah Hussein, on 31 January 1992 following the normalization of Israeli-Indian relations some days earlier. She said that with the Palestinians holding talks with Israel, and India establishing full relations with it, there was no reason Pakistan should not also have diplomatic ties with Israel. The spokesperson for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry denied this.

A representative of the World Jewish Congress in Melbourne said he had found out from businesspeople in Pakistan that the Pakistani foreign minister, Shahariyar Khan, was willing to start clandestine talks with Israel because he believed Pakistan would benefit from them. In June of that year, Congressman Stephen Solarz met with Pakistan’s foreign minister and its ambassador to the United States and was told that they did not rule out meeting with representatives of Jewish organizations in the United States.

During the year, some governments friendly to Israel addressed the issue with Pakistan. Spontaneous meetings also took place between Israeli and Pakistani diplomatic representatives. There was also an improvement during this period in Pakistan’s public position toward Israel and in Pakistani representatives’ rhetoric in international forums. It was believed that Pakistan’s difficult economic situation, shaky relations with the United States (primarily because of its nuclear program), and strong desire to improve its image were driving it toward improving its relations with Israel. Some Pakistani representatives clearly expressed these sentiments in meetings.[19]

On 16 December 1992, this author, then head of the Asia-Africa Department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry,[20] held a chance meeting with the respective entourages of Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and Pakistani prime minister Sharif. Both were visiting Japan and by coincidence were staying at the same hotel. Asked whether it would be possible to set up a meeting between Peres and Sharif, the director-general of the Pakistani Prime Minister’s Office, Akram Zaki, said it could not be done clandestinely and suggested trying to arrange a meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in late January 1993 when both men would be there.

Zaki noted that over the past two years, meaning when Sharif had been prime minister, there had been less anti-Israeli rhetoric coming out of Pakistan. He explained that the Pakistanis thought any type of cooperation with Israel could be beneficial and would want Israel’s help in improving their weak standing in Washington. He also said they were being pressured about their nuclear development and were willing to guarantee to Israel that they would not transfer sensitive technology to “countries west of us,” meaning Iran and Arab countries. This assurance came despite the fact that “certain countries” had even offered Pakistan large sums of badly needed cash in exchange for this technology. Pakistan, Zaki wanted Israel to know, had made and kept such promises to the United States in the past.

His Israeli interlocutor responded that it would be difficult for Israel to act on Pakistan’s behalf so long as there was no progress in establishing relations between them. Israel was conducting dialogue with certain Arab countries and there was no reason for Pakistan to continue its traditional extremism. Zaki responded that the main deterrent to relations with Israel was the fear of a negative reaction by extremist circles within Pakistan. He was aware of recent meetings between Pakistani and Israel representatives in various capitals throughout the world and also knew about Ambassador Abidah Hussein’s positive statements about establishing ties with Israel. He added that the Pakistani government had had no choice but to reprimand her for them.[21]

CONTACTS AT THE UNITED NATIONS

In the early 1990s, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gad Yaacobi, had frequent contacts with Pakistani representatives. In 1992, the Israeli delegation to the United Nations had to decide whether to support Pakistan’s election to the Security Council. Yaacobi favored it, and after receiving permission from the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, the Israeli delegation voted affirmatively. This paved the way to a series of contacts between Yaacobi and the Pakistani UN ambassador, Jamshi Merkar, who thanked the Israeli representative for his support.

On 17 March 1993, Yaacobi held a meeting between Merkar and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. During it, Merkar said he thought progress toward Israeli-Pakistani diplomatic relations would only be possible when there was concrete progress toward Middle East peace.

Merkar once attended a reception held by Yaacobi. A Pakistani newspaper criticized him, saying that until a Palestinian state was established with Jerusalem as its capital, every Muslim or Pakistani patriot should regard contact with Israelis, developing diplomatic relations with them, or attending their receptions as conspiring against Pakistan and Muslims.

On 2 November 1995, Yaacobi also met with the new Pakistani UN ambassador, Ahmad Kamal. Yaacobi gave him an overview of the developments in Israel’s relations with various Islamic countries and suggested that Pakistan follow suit. Kamal said a change in his government’s position would depend on the situation in the Middle East and primarily on public opinion in Pakistan.[22]

During 1993, Jewish organizations tried to bring about normalized Pakistani-Israeli relations. In the United States, representatives of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League met with the Pakistani ambassadors to Washington and the United Nations. The vice-president of the World Jewish Congress, Isi Leibler, visited Islamabad on 12-16 February. This trip was coordinated with the foreign ministries of Israel and Australia (Leibler being an Australian citizen) and with the State Department. Again it was Pakistani ambassador Sayyidah Abidah Hussein who arranged a meeting for Leibler with Shahabaz Sharif, the brother of Prime Minister Sharif, who was considered influential in the prime minister’s close circles. Leibler told him that a change in approach toward Israel would help improve Pakistan’s deteriorated image in the United States.

Shahabaz Sharif responded that Pakistan had always supported its Arab allies against Israel. Pakistan was worried about Israeli commandos training Indian forces in Kashmir, and by Israel’s suspected intentions, in recent years, to bomb Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. Leibler responded that he was authorized to say that both of those concerns were totally baseless. As for establishing relations with Israel, Sharif explained that any initiative to do so would incite riots. At the end of the meeting, the two agreed that further contacts between them would be arranged via Pakistan’s ambassador (high commissioner) in London.

About two months later, on 19 April 1993, Leibler met with the Pakistani high commissioner in London, but it was ill-timed. One day earlier, political changes had taken place in Pakistan and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had been removed from office (see below).[23]

CONTINUING EFFORTS

The problem, however, was more fundamental. Earlier, at a meeting in New Delhi between a Pakistani and an Israeli diplomat on 12 March 1993, the former had said the internal situation in Pakistan would under no circumstances allow normalization of relations with Israel. If the idea was raised, religious leaders could cause turmoil that no political party could withstand.[24]

Meanwhile, contact was maintained with the abovementioned Akram Zaki, director-general of the Pakistani Prime Minister’s Office. On 11 March, a few weeks before Nawaz Sharif’s removal from office, Zaki met with Congressman Gary Ackerman in Washington. Ackerman brought up the issue of Pakistani-Israeli relations and said the United States would welcome normalization. Zaki responded that the time was not ripe.

A few days later, on 16 March, the two met again in New York, this time also with the Israeli vice-consul-general, Mark Sofer. Zaki told them about a meeting he had had a few months earlier in Tokyo with an Israeli diplomat, and about his desire to bring about normalization on the condition that all contacts would be kept secret. This was necessary because of the strong opposition in Pakistan by extremist Muslims. He repeated the promise that Pakistan would not pass along nuclear technology to other parties, particularly not Iran. He also explained that his plans to arrange a meeting in Davos between Nawaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Peres had fallen through because there were numerous Pakistani journalists in town at the time.[25]

Peres met with Pakistani journalists in 1994 and through them conveyed the message that Pakistan should abandon its illogical policy and establish diplomatic relations with Israel. By then Israel had already established diplomatic ties with a dozen other Muslim countries. Now that the Palestinians had ended, on 13 September 1993, their protracted conflict with Israel, there was no reason for Pakistan not to follow suit. Peres confirmed that Israeli and Pakistani representatives had had contacts. Pakistan did support the Israeli-PLO agreement of 13 September, but the following day the then prime minister, Muin Kureishi, stated that Pakistan’s position on recognizing Israel would not change until the question of Jerusalem was resolved.[26]

POLITICAL CHANGE IN PAKISTAN

On 24 April 1993, the president of Pakistan, Ghulam Is’hak Khan, had ousted Prime Minister Sharif. Sayyidah Abidah Hussein, the ambassador to the United States, resigned in protest. Sharif’s removal constituted a blow to Israel’s efforts to reach an agreement with Pakistan. Israel and its friends had no acquaintance with the president of Pakistan or with the new officials who had risen to power. However, access to them was achieved.

On 30 April 1993, the Israeli daily Maariv published an article about an Israeli journalist who was permitted to visit Pakistan and meet with some officials. She learned that there were indeed people in the new government who believed Pakistan should establish ties with Israel, and that there were also fears that the general public would not approve and that the opposition would exploit the situation. A delegation of the American Jewish Committee heard similar sentiments expressed when it met with a diplomat in the Pakistani embassy in Washington on 13 May 1993.[27]

Still, there was some positive movement. A Pakistani newspaper reported that postal connections between Pakistan and Israel had been established via a third country. Letters with Israeli stamps on them reached Karachi via Cairo. Arab residents of Pakistan received letters from their relatives in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. Letters from Pakistan to Israel and the territories were sent via London in two envelopes; the address of the postal manager in London appeared on the outer one, the address of the letter’s recipient on the inner one. On 27 August 1994, Pakistani newspapers reported that certain foreign policy experts were proposing an urgent reevaluation of Pakistan’s policy toward Israel, and that Muslim countries in the Middle East were building ties with Israel without consulting Pakistan. Why could not Pakistan develop relations with Israel when Egypt, Jordan, and the PLO had already done so?[28]

An incident then occurred that further exemplified Pakistan’s longstanding animosity toward Israel. Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Authority, invited Pakistan’s new prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, to visit Gaza. The visit was set for 4 September 1994. Pakistan’s ambassador to Egypt aimed to arrive in Gaza on 28 August to prepare for the visit. He came to the Rafah border crossing into Gaza, but was refused entry by Israel since this had not been prearranged. Pakistan refused to officially request permission for the ambassador to enter, stating that it did not recognize Israeli rule over Gaza and regarded the PLO as the legal authority there. Prime Minister Rabin ascribed “bad manners” to Bhutto for planning the visit without informing Israel.[29]

Another incident occurred sometime earlier when Israeli president Ezer Weizman met with Prime Minister Bhutto during a visit he made to South Africa. Bhutto told Weizman that before there could be a breakthrough in Israeli-Pakistani relations, progress in the peace process was required. The Pakistani media published an official denial that such a meeting even took place. The Pakistani government spokesman termed the press report a “fabrication” and said it was part of an Israeli disinformation campaign against Pakistan. A few years later, on 29 October 1998, Weizman met with Pakistani president Muhammad Rafiq Tarrar at a reception in Ankara marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of modern Turkey. According to press reports, Tarrar approached Weizman, shook his hand, and expressed his hope that “one day we will meet again.”[30]

On other occasions during the 1990s, Prime Minister Bhutto and other officials explained Pakistan’s stance on diplomatic relations with Israel. In an April 1995 visit to Washington, Bhutto was asked at the State Department about Pakistani-Israeli ties. She responded that she was interested in principle but would have to ensure that extremist groups would not use the issue against her. Earlier, on 17 November 1994, Pakistan’s foreign minister explained that there had been no change in Pakistan’s policy toward Israel, and Pakistan could not consider recognizing Israel before a lasting peace was achieved, including a solution to the question of Jerusalem. He added that the Palestinian issue not only affected the Arab countries but the entire Muslim world, and, moreover, that Israel’s cooperation with India worried Pakistan.

Bhutto also said on various occasions that Pakistan would recognize Israel only if the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) were to make a decision on this matter, and only after peace was achieved between Israel and its neighbors.[31] Despite these statements, a slight lessening of the Pakistani hostility was evident when, on 6 February 1996, eight Pakistani journalists arrived in Israel, the first such visit there by Pakistani media. Although the journalists did not come as an official delegation, behind the scenes there was a political actor that was very cautiously exhibiting interest in relations with Israel.[32]

At the same time, information came to light that Israeli businessman Yaakov Nimrodi had visited Pakistan and met with the foreign minister who encouraged him to launch commercial endeavors between the two countries. He expressed an interest in telecommunications, establishing a medical center, various agricultural issues, and encouraging religious-based tourism. The Pakistani minister showed particular interest in upgrading airplanes and the supply of replacement parts. On 4 November 1995, Nimrodi reported on the visit to Rabin, who responded positively to this contact.[33]

The lack of diplomatic progress between Pakistan and Israel spurred Jewish leaders from New York to protest to the Pakistani consul-general in that city in June 1998. During the meeting, at which a Pakistani banker was also present, the Jewish leaders told the consul-general that the American Jewish community could not understand Pakistan’s refusal to establish ties, especially after Israel had signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. The opposition of Pakistani extremist groups should not prevent gradual steps to build economic, cultural, and academic relations, as well as a change in Pakistan’s voting pattern at the United Nations. Such steps would be welcomed by the American Jewish community, the general American public, and perhaps the business community as well.

The Jewish leaders also expressed concern that Pakistani nuclear technology could fall into the hands of Iran or Iraq. They assured the Pakistanis that there was no nuclear cooperation between Israel and India aimed against Pakistan. The consul-general promised that Pakistan would not pass along any military technology, conventional or nuclear, to enemies of Israel or the West. He did not say anything about relations with Israel.[34]

THE MUSHARRAF ERA

After General Pervez Musharraf took power in Pakistan in an October 1999 military coup, he hastened to calm Israel on the nuclear issue but also announced that there would be no progress toward relations.[35] Pakistan was, however, worried about the security ties between India and Israel and, as reported in the press, even conveyed the message to Israel that it saw this as a threat to Pakistan. Israel replied that its ties with India were not aimed “against a third country.” Israel refused Pakistan’s request to reveal the components of the Israeli-Indian security ties and said that if Pakistan was worried, it could open diplomatic relations with Israel. Indeed, in June 2003, Musharraf said on several occasions before and after trips that month to the United States that Pakistan should seriously consider ties with Israel. This appeared, however, to be merely for public relations purposes.[36] Musharraf continued to make such gestures, and this benefited him in the United States.

On 1 September 2005, a public meeting was held in Istanbul between the then Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom and his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Kasuri. Shalom was euphoric and said the meeting was a “source of great encouragement and hope for the Israeli people and aids in strengthening the moderates on the Palestinian side.” The Israeli journalists present were also swept up in the exaggerated excitement and called it a “historic meeting.” They said it was a Pakistani “gift” to Israel for evacuating its settlements in Gaza, which was taking place at that time.

Soon after, during a visit to the United States, Musharraf agreed to be the guest of honor at an American Jewish Congress dinner held in New York on 17 September. Representatives of various Jewish organizations attended. Musharraf’s speech dealt with Islamic-Jewish relations throughout history. As for Israel, he repeated the familiar refrain that progress in relations depended on “progress in the peace process and the establishment of a Palestinian state.”[37]

CONCLUSION

The main factors preventing Pakistan from recognizing and establishing diplomatic relations with Israel are:

1. Solidarity with Muslim countries in general and with Arab countries in particular. This religiously based solidarity is part of Pakistan’s national identity and one of the mainsprings of its foreign policy.

2. Fear of an adverse response by influential Islamists. Pakistan could only cope with this risk if most other Arab and Muslim countries set up ties with Israel.

3. Internal instability, which has plagued Pakistan since its inception and often has led to military intervention in the political process. To stabilize their position, civilian politicians and military officials have always striven to get along with the clergy and have remained committed to Pakistan’s Muslim identity.[38]

All this would not prevent clandestine Pakistani-Israeli ties in various fields. A modest change could come about if Pakistan believed it would improve its standing in the United States, and perhaps in response to pressure from Jewish organizations and from Western statesmen who could pose a counterweight to the radical Muslims. Progress in relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors could also influence Pakistan. It is not likely that Pakistan would move on its own before that happens.

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Notes

[1]. On the umma, see, e.g., Encyclopedia of Islam, 1st ed., Vol. 8, 1015-16.

[2]. Israel State Archive (ISA), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), file 60/13 (“Israel and Asia,” March 1967) [the archival material is generally in Hebrew]; Fred R. Von der Mehden, Two Worlds of Islam: Interaction between Southeast Asia and the Middle East (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993), 44-46; N. Ganesan, “Islamic Responses within ASEAN to Singapore’s Foreign Policy,” Asian Thought and Society, May 1988, 126, 132; G. H. Jansen, Zionism, Israel and Asian Nationalism (Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1971), 290.

[3]. Central Zionist Archive (CZA), file A468 (Foreign Ministry deputy director-general for Asia and Africa to diplomatic missions in Washington, New York, London, The Hague, Rome, and Bonn, 2 February 1992; “The big Muslim countries in Asia,” memorandum by Foreign Ministry deputy director-general for Asia and Africa, 15 March 1993).

[4]. Weizmann Archives (WA), E. Epstein to K. M. Panikkav, 14 July 1948; David Ben-Gurion, War Diary: The War for Independence, 1948-1949, Vol. 3 (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1986), 762, 945. [Hebrew]

[5]. ISA/MFA file 2554 A (Y. Shimoni to Foreign Ministry director-general, 5 December 1949); ISA/MFA file 2559/10 (Research Division to M. Comay, “Contacts with Pakistan,” 27 September 1951); W. Norman Brown, ed., India, Pakistan, Ceylon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1950), 197-98.

[6]. CZA files Z6/334 and S71/648 (Ha’Boker, 10 January 1950, 13 April 1950; Herut, 3 November 1950).

[7]. ISA/MFA file 2414/6 (Israeli foreign minister to ministry’s division and selected diplomatic missions, 28 August 1952); W. Norman Brown, The United States and India and Pakistan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), 249, 256, 276.

[8]. ISA/MFA file 2414/11 (G. Refael to director-general: “A conversation with Sir Zafrullah Khan, foreign minister of Pakistan,” 16 January 1953).

[9]. ISA/MFA file 2559/10 (Research Division: “Zafrullah Khan to the press in Karachi,” 9 April 1954); ISA/MFA file 2556/5 (“Press clippings”); Moshe Sharett, Personal Diary, Vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Maariv Library, 1978), 380-81. [Hebrew]

[10]. Divrei Ha’Knesset, 8 March 1954, 1083, 1085; 10 May 1954, 1619. [Hebrew]

[11]. CZA file Z6/1090 (Telegram from the representative of the Aliyah Division, Bombay, 12 November 1956; memorandum by Aryeh Eshel of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, 13 November 1956).

[12]. ISA/MFA file 230/9 (“Israel in Asia,” 1 July 1955); ISA/MFA file 3432/40 (Research Division: “Pakistan supports Arab boycott against Israel,” 31 July 1962); Israeli Foreign Ministry, Official Documents Annual, 1979, 211; Meron Medzini, ed., Israel’s Foreign Relations: Selected Documents, 1947-1974, Vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1976), 247-48.

[13]. Divrei Ha’Knesset, 23 December 1970, 650.

[14]. Mushahid Hussain, “How Pakistan Views Israel and the Palestinians,” Middle East International, September 1988, 21; P. R. Kumaraswamy, Beyond the Veil: Israel-Pakistan Relations (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, 2000), 34.

[15]. Hussain, ibid., 20-21.

[16]. ISA/MFA file 3337/62 (A. Ben-Natan to Ch. Yahil: “Selling ‘Uzi’ to Pakistan,” 18 September 1961; reply of the director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, 21 September 1961); ISA/MFA file 3432/41 (Maimon to Ch. Yahil: “Selling ‘Uzi’ to Pakistan,” 19 May 1963; reply of the director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, 23 May 1963); ISA/MFA file 4056/29 (Israeli ambassador in Washington to M. Gazit, 31 January 1967).

[17]. Shlomo Nakdimon, Tammuz in Flames: The Bombing of the Iraqi Nuclear Reactor (Tel Aviv: Idanim, 1993), 139-40, 143-44, 173, 185, 190, 207, 391-92, 437 [Hebrew]; Daniel Pipes, “International Influences in South Asia,” International Insight, May-June 1986, 9; Gerald M. Steinberg, “Assessing the Impact of the Indian and Pakistani Nuclear Test on the Middle East,” Jerusalem Letter/Viewpoints, 15 July 1998, 3-6.

[18]. Michael Weiss, “The Reactor That Was Not Bombed,” Kol Hair, 31 January 1988 [Hebrew]; Semadar Peri, “Why Did Israel Not React against the Pakistani Bomb?” Yediot Aharonot, 5 June 1998 [Hebrew]; Shlomo Nakdimon, “Khan Theater,” Makor Rishon, 20 February 2004 [Hebrew]. It is difficult to asses the reliability of these reports until researchers are granted unfettered access to state archives. Juan Romero, “Charting Reactions to the Islamic Bomb,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1999): 32; Moonis Ahmar, “Pakistan and Israel: Distant Adversaries or Neighbors?” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1996): 21, 25, 29.

[19]. CZA file A468 (I. Leibler to M. Yegar, 24 July 1992; Mark Sofer to M. Yegar, 1 June 1992; I. Leibler to M. Yegar, 11 August 1992; I. Shelef to M. Yegar, 25 August 1992; M. Yegar to selected diplomatic missions, 8 October 1992, 15 March 1993.)

[20]. A posting that lasted from November 1990 to September 1993.

[21]. CZA file A468, 20 December 1992 (M. Yegar to the Israeli foreign minister).

[22]. Gad Yaacobi, New York Diary: The Story of Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot and Hemed, 1997), 33-34, 78-79, 103, 392 [Hebrew]; P. R. Kumaraswamy, “The Strangely Parallel Careers of Israel and Pakistan,” Middle East Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1997): 39.

[23]. Isi Leibler and Bruce Wolpe, “Report on World Jewish Congress Mission to Pakistan, February 12-16, 1993,” Melbourne, 1993, 2, 6-7, 11-22; CZA file A468 (A. Foxman, national director of the ADL, to the foreign minister of Pakistan and to Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, 25 August 1992; M. Yegar to M. Hoenlein, executive vice-president of the Presidents’ Conference, New York, 5 February 1993).

[24]. CZA file A468 (Yaacov Rosen, New Delhi, to Israeli Foreign Ministry deputy director-general for Asia and Africa, 12 March 1993).

[25]. CZA file A468 (H. Mandel: “On Ackerman’s meeting with the permanent secretary of Pakistan’s foreign office,” 16 March 1993; Mark Sofer, New York: “A meeting with Akram Zaki, permanent secretary of Pakistan’s foreign office,” 17 March 1993).

[26]. Ahmar, “Pakistan and Israel,” 36, 40.

[27]. Maariv, 30 April 1993; CZA file A468 (M. Yegar to M. Sofer, 25 April 1993).

[28]. Ahmar Mustikhan, “Pak-Israel Postal Links?” The News International, 11 May 1994; Ahmar, “Pakistan and Israel,” 25, 37, 39.

[29]. Official Documents Annual, 1994, 49; Peri, “Why Did Israel Not React?”; Alon Pinkas, “Beilin: Bhutto Needs Israel’s Permission to Enter Gaza Strip,” Jerusalem Post, 26 August 1994; Ahmar, ibid., 31-33; Kumaraswamy, Beyond the Veil, 35-36.

[30]. CZA file A468 (“A survey by the Asia and Africa Department,” 21 April-19 May 1994); Peri, ibid.; Itamar Eichner, “First Meeting between the Presidents of Pakistan and Israel,” Yediot Aharonot, 30 October 1998. [Hebrew]

[31]. CZA file A468 (surveys by the Asia and Africa Department, 13-17 November 1994, 13-27 April 1995); Kumaraswamy, Beyond the Veil, 890; Ahmar, “Pakistan and Israel,” 40-42.

[32]. Ben Caspit, “Reporters from Pakistan in Israel,” Maariv, 7 February 1996. [Hebrew]

[33]. Gidi Weitz, “Ya’acov Nimrodi Conducted Contacts with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan with Yitzhak Rabin’s Blessing,” Kol Hair, 19 April 2000. [Hebrew]

[34]. Jewish Community Relations Council/New York (JCRC/NY), archive, correspondence with Pakistani officials, June-July 1998 (copies in CZA file A468).

[35]. Aluf Benn, “One Handshake with Arafat Is Worth a Thousand Speeches at the UN,” Haaretz, 25 April 2000. [Hebrew]

[36]. Itamar Eichner, “Israel-India Relations Threaten Pakistan,” Yediot Aharonot, 24 January 2002 [H.ebrew]; Yossi Melman, various articles on Pakistan, Haaretz, 18, 30 June, 9 July 2003, 10 March 2004. [Hebrew]

[37]. Daniel Pipes, “Musharraf’s Historic Speech,” New York Sun, 20 September 2005; see also reports in Haaretz, 2, 18 September 2005. [Hebrew]

[38]. P. R. Kumaraswamy, “Israel and Pakistan: Public Rhetoric versus Political Pragmatism,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2006): 123-35; Kumaraswamy, Beyond the Veil, 64-65; Yossi Melman, reports in Haaretz, 18, 30 July 2003. [Hebrew}

 

A DIFFERENT VIEW OF BENAZIR BHUTTO

Book review of:
Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West, by Benazir Bhutto
Reviewed by Patrick French
The Sunday Times (London)
February 17, 2008

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article3365143.ece

How will Benazir Bhutto be remembered? Discussing Reconciliation on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week, the presenter Andrew Marr got so excited by her legacy and achievement that he said, “At the risk of straying across lines of neutrality, I think the more people that read this book, the better.” The book comes garlanded with acclaim from the likes of Senator Edward Kennedy and Madeleine Albright. But does the praise lavished on Benazir since her assassination bear any relation to what she actually did during her life?

Let me tell you about the former Pakistani prime minister, Mohammed Mohammed, an ugly man with a thick beard.

During his first term in office he failed to pass a single piece of legislation, and when he returned to government he and his family became extremely rich from kickbacks on official contracts. He bugged and harassed independent journalists. In the mid1990s, his paramilitary death squads eliminated activists from the rival MQM in Karachi and he was implicated in the murder of his own brother, as well as the deaths of three family retainers in his mother’s entourage. He funded a proxy war against India in Kashmir using Arab jihadis, and backed the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan; indeed, if he had not given cash, fuel, training and military spare parts to the Taliban, it would not have been able to rise to power.

Mohammed Mohammed never, of course, existed: I am talking here about Benazir Bhutto. She was brave, glamorous, feisty and articulate – and the midwife of the Taliban. To a western audience (which she always handled impeccably, flattering reporters with access) she came across as a secular democrat and a committed campaigner for women’s rights. On David Frost’s sofa, Benazir could change from cute to solemn in a moment. As the first woman elected to lead a Muslim country, she offered huge symbolic hope. Since her death, she has been praised extensively: a television anchor even wrote an article about introducing Benazir to the joys of buying lingerie from Victoria’s Secret. Ironically, it was left to the socialite Jemima Khan to puncture the balloon. Khan concluded from her own years of living in Pakistan – as the wife of Imran Khan, Benazir’s political rival – that Benazir was “as ruthless and conniving as they come – a kleptocrat in a Hermès headscarf”.

Reconciliation is an odd book. It seems to have been put together by a variety of people. Parts of it are readable and well argued, and deserve to be remembered as Benazir’s last testament, a statement of the ideals she aspired to but did not always fulfil. Other bits are tendentious and irrelevant. The first chapter is vintage Benazir, written in the same tone as her autobiography, Daughter of the East. She describes her return to Pakistan from exile at the end of last year, and her triumphal homecoming procession: “I must confess I felt safe in the enormous sea of love and support that surrounded me,” she wrote.

It was obvious to anyone in Pakistan at the time that she would be targeted as an American stooge, but she went ahead with the procession. A suicide bomber struck, leaving nearly 200 people dead, but Benazir survived. She made much in the book of the fact that the dictator General Pervez Musharraf did not provide her with sufficient security, asserting: “Had the jammers worked, the bombs could not have gone off.” But suicide bombers use toggle switches, which are not blocked by jammers. Either way, another terrorist killed Benazir only weeks later on December 27, 2007.

The next section of Reconciliation deals with the internal disputes within Islam. It is frank about the sectarian splits between Sunnis and Shias, and about the failure of the leaders of some Muslim countries to face down the distortions of Osama Bin Laden. Benazir noted the lack of interest on Arab television channels in the genocide of a Muslim population in Darfur, and the “unwillingness within the Muslim world to look inward and to identify where we may be going wrong ourselves”.

Using verses from the Koran, she has made a careful and reasonable case for seeing the ideology of Al-Qaeda as a profound distortion of original Islam, and has presented an alternative argument for believing in a reformist, pluralistic and modern Islamic society, and seeing it as closer to the real wishes of most of the world’s Muslims.

At this point, the tone of the book changes again, and the reader is treated to a brisk and baffling examination of the history of assorted countries including Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Mali and Congo; even Kazakhstan is mentioned. India (the elephant in the room when it came to Benazir’s view of the world) gets only a brief mention. The history of Pakistan that follows is like something out of a primary-school textbook, crossed with a party political broadcast. The achievements of the Bhutto family are exaggerated and lauded and their mistakes and hypocrisies are ignored. Benazir’s grandfather, Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, a feudal landowner and a pro-British politician of no great importance, is presented as a seminal figure in the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Benazir’s own backing of the Taliban is blamed on her successor, Nawaz Sharif.

The book ends with a prescription for a happier world, involving an equivalent of the Marshall Plan being applied to the poorer Muslim nations by rich countries, and a nuanced analysis of Samuel P Huntington’s The Clash of Civilisations, an essay published in 1993 in the journal Foreign Affairs.

What are we to make of this strange book? I contacted Mark Siegel, Benazir’s point man in Washington, who helped her to research and write it. I asked him how it had been created, and he said that Benazir had been troubled by the way that extremists had hijacked the message of Islam. “She wanted me to compile all the assertions of extremist clerics and terrorists on democracy, pluralism, tolerance ... Then she wanted me to confer with Islamic scholars and compile the Koranic references to the same subjects and line them out in an array, almost a spreadsheet, against the extremists.” He did his job well, and Benazir wrote a draft of the narrative.

Benazir was, by all accounts, a devoted patriot, a loyal friend and a loving mother. As a young woman at Harvard and Oxford universities, she imbibed idealistic ideas about democracy and feminism. But during the early 1980s she was to be cruelly mistreated by the dictator General Zia, taken from prison to prison and held for a time in a cage at a desert jail in Sindh, where temperatures would reach above 50C. This – and her father’s judicial execution – formed her political personality. Benazir was duplicitous to the point of being delusional, playing a constant multiple game, saying one thing to her supporters, another to the Pakistani army, another to the intelligence services, another to London and Washington, and something else again to the western media. She was a complex and brave woman, but she was no Joan of Arc, let alone a Margaret Thatcher, an Indira Gandhi or a Golda Meir.

FULL ARTICLES

THE CIA TRIES TO WALK BACK THE CAT

Iranian Nuclear Rewrite
The Wall Street Journal (Editorial)
February 8, 2008

Give Admiral Michael McConnell credit for trying to walk back the cat. Questioned this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Director of National Intelligence defended the “integrity and the professionalism” of the process that produced last December’s stunning National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear program. Yet his testimony amounts to a reversal of the previous judgment.

The December NIE made headlines the world over for its “key judgment” that in 2003 “Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programs” – programs that previously had been conducted in secret and in violation of Iran’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligations.

This was a “high confidence” judgment, though the intelligence community had only “moderate confidence” that the program hasn’t since been restarted. The NIE also waded into speculative political and policy judgments, such as that “Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs.”

So it was little wonder that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad quickly called the NIE a “declaration of victory” for Iran’s nuclear programs. Diplomatic efforts to pass a third round of U.N. economic sanctions ground to a crawl, though another weak draft resolution is currently making the rounds. Russia decided to ship nuclear fuel to the reactor it has built for Iran at Bushehr, a move it had previously postponed for months and which has worrisome proliferation risks.

Elsewhere, the NIE complicated U.S. efforts to deploy an antiballistic-missile shield in Central Europe. The Israelis worried that the report signaled the death of American seriousness on Iran, possibly requiring them to act alone. At home, Democrats used the NIE to accuse the Administration of hyping intelligence. “It’s absolutely clear and eerily similar to what we saw with Iraq,” said John Edwards.

Now Admiral McConnell is clearly trying to repair the damage, even if he can’t say so directly. “I think I would change the way that we described [the] nuclear program,” he admitted to Evan Bayh (D., Ind.) during the hearing, adding that weapon design and weaponization were “the least significant portion” of a nuclear weapons program.

He expressed some regret that the authors of the NIE had left it to a footnote to explain that the NIE’s definition of “nuclear weapons program” meant only its design and weaponization and excluded its uranium enrichment. And he agreed with Mr. Bayh’s statement that it would be “very difficult” for the U.S. to know if Iran had recommenced weaponization work, and that “given their industrial and technological capabilities, they are likely to be successful” in building a bomb.

The Admiral went even further in his written statement. Gone is the NIE’s palaver about the cost-benefit approach or the sticks-and-carrots by which the mullahs may be induced to behave. Instead, the new assessment stresses that Iran continues to press ahead on enrichment, “the most difficult challenge in nuclear production.” It notes that “Iran’s efforts to perfect ballistic missiles that can reach North Africa and Europe also continue” – a key component of a nuclear weapons capability.

Then there is the other side of WMD: “We assess that Tehran maintains dual-use facilities intended to produce CW [Chemical Warfare] agent in times of need and conducts research that may have offensive applications.” Ditto for biological weapons, where “Iran has previously conducted offensive BW agent research and development,” and “continues to seek dual-use technologies that could be used for biological warfare.”

All this merely confirms what has long been obvious about Iran’s intentions. No less importantly, his testimony underscores the extent to which the first NIE was at best a PR fiasco, at worst a revolt by intelligence analysts seeking to undermine current U.S. policy. As we reported at the time, the NIE was largely the work of State Department alumni with track records as “hyperpartisan anti-Bush officials,” according to an intelligence source. They did their job too well. As Senator Bayh pointed out at the hearing, the NIE “had unintended consequences that, in my own view, are damaging to the national security interests of our country.” Mr. Bayh is not a neocon.

Admiral McConnell’s belated damage repair ought to refocus world attention on Iran’s very real nuclear threat. Too bad his NIE rewrite won’t get anywhere near the media attention that the first draft did.

 

WHAT A DIFFERENCE TWO MONTHS MAKE

Correcting the CIA
The New York Sun (Editorial)
February 7, 2008

What a difference two months make. On December 3, when the director of national intelligence released an estimate of Iran’s nuclear program that said the Mullahs had suspended its bomb making in 2003, the left could barely contain its glee. The New York Times featured a front page analysis that said, “Rarely, if ever, has a single intelligence report so completely, so suddenly, and so surprisingly altered a foreign policy debate here.” The Majority Leader, Senator Reid took the opportunity of its release to call again for a “surge of diplomacy with Iran.” Senator Obama said, “The juxtaposition of this NIE with the president’s suggestion of World War III serves as an important reminder of what we learned with the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq: members of Congress must carefully read the intelligence before giving the President any justification to use military force.”

Careful, indeed. It turns out that on Tuesday, as our Eli Lake reported on page one of yesterday’s Sun, the director of national intelligence, Mr. McConnell says he now regrets the phrasing of the unclassified estimate that so stirred America’s enthusiasts of diplomacy. In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Mr. McConnell went further. He noted that Iran is developing both the long range ballistic missiles and the nuclear fuel for a potential weapon. What had halted, it turns out, was work to design the actual warhead and secret enrichment activity. The Iranians continued to enrich uranium in the open in Natanz in defiance of two Security Council resolutions.

As for the secret enrichment and weapons design, Mr. McConnell is not even sure as of mid-2007 whether the Iranians have restarted this work. “We assess with moderate confidence that Tehran had not restarted these activities as of mid-2007, but since they comprised an unannounced secret effort which Iran attempted to hide, we do not know if these activities have been restarted,” he told the assembled senators. So why then did the opening sentence of the December 3 assessment state with no equivocation, “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program”? Mr. McConnell said that it was because he had to assemble quickly a declassified estimate in late November and that it did not occur to him that this kind of declarative statement would confuse the issue.

For the unelected intelligence bureaucrats who pushed through December’s distortion and the newspapers that cheered them on, the walk back from the director is a serious blow. It’s hard to recall a situation quite like it. Only a few lines about Mr. McConnell’s testimony on this point appeared in yesterday’s New York Times, and that was buried in a story that focused on the improvements Al Qaeda has been making in its ability to strike the home front. Yet for a brief moment the unclassified assessment about which Mr. McConnell now has regrets ended political debate about the urgency of stopping the world’s leading sponsor of Islamic terror from obtaining an apocalyptic arsenal.

It’s a lesson to remember. Mr. McConnell’s regrets came in questioning from Senator Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana who once harbored hopes of running for president before his party was taken over by the likes of moveon.org. Mr. Bayh cited an article about the estimate that was issued Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal and written by John Bolton, the man accused three years ago, when President Bush nominated him to be ambassador to the United Nations, of intimidating all those intelligence professionals. We’d like to think Mr. McConnell’s correction will steer the American debate on how best to counter the threat from the Iranians away from the aspirations of our professional diplomats and spies to appease them and back toward an unvarnished view of the danger that is building in Iran.

 

“WE SHUDDER TO THINK”

Explosive Recipe
Investor’s Business Daily (Editorial)
February 5, 2008

Nuclear Terrorism: What happens when an Islamofascist state gets the bomb and the White House falls into the hands of a president who thinks such enemies can be defeated with diplomacy? We shudder to think.

The director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency on Monday reported that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon within three years. So without military action from the U.S. or Israel against Tehran’s nuclear facilities, whoever is elected president later this year will be left with solving the global problem of an atomic terrorist state in the Middle East.

If that person is either of the two front-runners for the Democratic nomination, it could spell unprecedented danger. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seem committed to the magic powers of negotiating a deal with Iran’s fanatical mullahs — and surrounding them are “experts” who agree.

Both candidates favor direct negotiations at once. Sen. Obama’s foreign policy adviser, Susan Rice of the Brookings Institution, an assistant secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, gave a possible preview in a 2004 article in the Washington Post.

“At the bargaining table,” she wrote, “the United States could dangle various incentives the Iranians might find attractive. For instance, in exchange for a full and verifiable halt to Iran’s nuclear program as well as termination of its support for terrorism and anti-U.S. elements in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States could offer to lift U.S. sanctions, normalize relations, pay some Iranian claims against the United States, promote new trade and investment flows, allow Iranian membership in the World Trade Organization, guarantee access to civilian nuclear power or provide regional security guarantees.”

Another Obama foreign consultant, Samantha Power of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, recently advised “refraining from redundant reminders that military force is still ‘on the table,’ which only strengthen the hand of hard-line Islamists and nationalists.”

Instead, she recommended “trying high-level political negotiations.” It’s true, Power allows, “that earlier attempts at engagement have produced few dividends. But what negotiations can do is diminish perceptions of U.S. arrogance.”

Sen. Clinton may be viewed as more hawkish than Obama, but how true is that perception? Her Iran experts, Ray Takeyh and Vali Nasr, recommend “engagement as a means of achieving a more pluralistic and responsible government in Tehran.”

They have written that “to liberalize the theocratic state, the United States would do better to ... embark on a policy of unconditional dialogue and sanctions relief. A reduced American threat would deprive the hard-liners of the conflict they need to justify their concentration of power.”

Often mentioned as possible secretary of state in a Hillary Clinton administration is Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a supposed hawk who has done his share of huffing and puffing about the Iran threat.

But after last December’s National Intelligence Estimate downplaying that threat, Ari Berman of the leftist Nation magazine elicited a telling comment from the veteran of the Carter State Department. “I thought even pre-NIE,” Holbrooke told Berman, “that there was no justification for a military strike.”

Americans have a lot to consider when they cast their votes this year. Nothing, however, is more important than what man or woman sitting in the Oval Office is more likely to prevent an atomic war in the Mideast or the incineration of a U.S. city by a terrorist sleeper cell.

This year a president could be elected who thinks talk can conquer that threat.

FULL ARTICLE

NOT EVEN PRETENDING TO BE FAIR: THE NEW YORK TIMES ON GAZA

Not Even Pretending to be Fair: The New York Times On Gaza
By Barry Rubin
January 31, 2008

The New York Times coverage of the Middle East, especially Steven Erlanger (who will soon be leaving) has often been terrible. Naturally, the Times and Mr. Erlanger will dispute this, but they will not do so by examining the specific stories filed and what these articles do – and do not – say.

Anyone who analyzes the articles themselves will find many points which seem slanted, and all the slants seem to lean in the same way.

Consider, for example, the January 28 article, “Israel Vows Not to Block Supplies to Gaza.” By presenting this decision as a negative rather than a positive (Israel will let supplies flow; Israel wants to avoid any humanitarian crisis in Gaza, etc) it seems as if the newspaper is grudgingly admitting that Israel is doing something good but trying to minimize it.

Then comes a spin slanted against Israel: “Israel would no longer disrupt the supply of food, medicine and necessary energy into the Gaza Strip and intended to prevent a ‘humanitarian disaster’ there.”

The obvious and intended implication here is that Israel has been blocking three things, thus threatening to unleash a humanitarian disaster.

In fact, Israel has never blocked food and medicine, and while it has reduced energy supplies slightly – to a level reducing the Gaza electricity by no more than 20 percent – it has not blocked “necessary” energy but only made a marginal reduction.

Thus, in a masterfully crafted but factually inaccurate sentence, the newspaper accuses Israel of something it has never done and implies that it has committed inhuman crimes. (Or to put it another way, Congratulations, you have stopped beating your wife.)

Oh, we’re just getting started as Mr. Erlanger is a master of bias. Dig this sentence:

“Last Wednesday, the Hamas rulers of Gaza broke open the border to Egypt, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to seek goods that Israel had restricted in its clampdown on the region.”

Now it would be fair to say that Palestinians went to Egypt to buy lots of things and not just goods Israel has restricted – which, remember, we have been just falsely told include food and medicine. In addition, as other reporters have noted, it is not just availability but the fact that many things are cheaper in Egypt than in Gaza, a fact that was also true before the restrictions.

Speaking about restrictions, it might be worth mentioning that there are no such Israeli restrictions on the West Bank. Why is that? It is because the Palestinian Authority regime there doesn’t systematically encourage and facilitate terrorist and rocket and mortar attacks on Israel. This, then, is the central issue pertaining to the Gaza Strip, and not the apparently motiveless meanness that much media coverage makes it seem to be Israel’s reason for so acting.

There are 16 paragraphs remaining in the New York Times article. Do you think that we will be told that some of the restricted goods Palestinians bought in Egypt are guns, ammunition, explosives, and material for making rockets? Of course not.

Every paragraph is a gem. Here’s the next one:

“As an indication of the altered Israeli attitude the government told the Supreme Court, which was meeting to hear a petition against Israeli efforts to cut electricity and fuel to Gaza, that industrial diesel fuel needed to run Gaza’s main power station would be supplied regularly, although in amounts that would not meet Gaza’s needs for uninterrupted electricity.”

This, too, is a well-crafted lie. For even if the proposed Israeli cuts were implemented, any blackouts would be minimal at most. It would be fair to say that Gaza’s total electricity supply would be reduced but certainly not far short of what is required for “uninterrupted electricity.”

Moreover, in a further flaunting of bias we are never told that Israel supplies directly 70 percent of Gaza electricity. After all, a reader might think that is pretty humane to give power to an entity next door whose leadership openly states its intention of destroying Israel and killing its people, while that same leadership permits daily attacks on Israel.

The author goes out of his way not to tell us about Israel’s direct supply. Consider for example the next paragraph:

“The government also said that supplies of gasoline and regular diesel fuel to Gaza would be resumed although in diminished amounts.” But no mention of direct electrical supply which is almost four times larger than the total amount made using fuel.

There follows several paragraphs about the meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas and some material about the situation on the Egypt-Gaza border. What ensues, far down in the article, is the closest thing to explaining why Israel is acting:

“Israeli has restricted supplies into Gaza, which it has labelled a ‘hostile entity,’ to try to push Hamas to stop any militant group from firing into Israel. But the move backfired when Hamas breached the border, letting Gazans cross to buy supplies.”

Two points on the above paragraph. First, it is amusing that the reporter doesn’t say what Hamas has been firing – rockets and mortar shells in large numbers – so the reader could be forgiven for thinking it might be an occasional burst of automatic weapons’ fire.

Second, it is not clear that “backfired” is the right word here. But the reason for the phrase becomes clear in the next paragraph:

“The Israeli statement to the court on Sunday was a kind of concession that the policy had failed, but it made clear that Israel would continue restrictions to keep Gazans uncomfortable.”

The problem here is that Israel had been backing off the limited restrictions before the border breakthrough took place. Moreover, if the reporter is going to be balanced he would say that if the policy had “backfired” it was because Hamas was left in a position in which it could continue to incite and implement attacks against Israel; gain some international popular sympathy (thanks to misleading media coverage like this one); maintain a policy of seeking Israel’s extermination; and still get everything required to conduct that military campaign and avoid pressures that might turn Gaza’s population against it.

The author will not do this, however, because he wants to minimize the reasons why Israel needs to make Gazans “uncomfortable.” After all, at a time when there were no restrictions on supplies the Gazans were making Israeli civilians “uncomfortable.” But only the Palestinians are permitted to be portrayed as having a reason to be aggrieved and to be victims.

Naturally, only one side within Israel is quoted on this issue:

“Sari Bashi, director of an Israeli advocacy group, Gisha, which was part of the court case, said, ‘This is part of a stop-start game that continually pushes Gazan residents to the brink, pushing them over, then pulling them back temporarily.” She said that ‘for the last seven months, Israel has been slowly reducing Gaza residents to desperation.’”

No one is quoted from Israel saying that residents of Sderot and the region are being hit by rockets, that their children are being terrified, that Hamas is holding an Israeli soldier as hostage, etc. (Yes, Erlanger has covered this occasionally in other articles but it also belongs here as a balancing quote.) It is fairly typical, of course, that Israelis are usually only quoted when they are being critical of Israel and supportive of the Palestinians.

Ah, but there is an Israeli quoted in the next paragraph which goes like this:

“Separately, as expected, the Israeli attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, said he would not indict police officers involved in the deaths of 13 Arab civilians in 10 days of Arab-Israeli demonstrations in October 2000. In a legal opinion, he upheld a decision by the Justice Ministry in September 2005 to close the investigation of the case.”

The reader would be left to think that this is a whitewash and that people who murdered Arabs are being let off the hook. The reader is not told that the report on the demonstrations (whose violence also goes unmentioned) said that the police acted reasonably given the difficult situation they faced at the time.

A detailed examination of this one article shows a pattern of one-sidedness that can be repeated in hundreds of others, showing clearly the bias in certain specific media outlets and by certain reporters.

To cite only one example, the Los Angeles Times ran an article simply transmitting false Hamas propaganda about the horrors of Israeli cutbacks. And this, to take the cake, was published – with no mention of this fact, after the far more limited reductions had been rescinded.

Speaking of cakes, a Boston Globe op-ed piece lambasted Israel for starving Gaza of flour – though its estimate was somewhat skewed by the fact that the deprivation was based on the provision of a half-ton of flour daily for each Gaza resident. At any rate, there have never been any food shortages in Gaza that would lead to deprivation, as is admitted even by international institutions.

Naturally, none of this critique is ever going to appear in the mainstream media which will, at most carry pieces ridiculing this critique and proclaiming what a great job they are doing. This doesn’t mean that many newspapers and other media aren’t doing a good job – they are – but the ones that aren’t will not engage in honest self-criticism or work hard to root out the bias they are showing.