* “This article is not intended to cultivate the Jewish Nakba. The purpose is precisely the opposite. When the Arab world in general, and the Palestinians in particular, understand that suffering, expulsion, loss of property, the cost in lives, is not the monopoly of one side, they may, perhaps, have the sense to understand that this past is a matter for history lessons. Because if we start to perform a political accounting, they have an overdraft. The Jewish Nakba was far greater. The suffering was enormous.”
* This dispatch concerns the largely overlooked murder, persecution and suffering of Jews in Arab countries.
ADDITIONAL NOTE
I wanted to note the passing away of two distinguished Israelis, one of whom (Michael Fox) was a close friend of mine and a keen subscriber to this email list, and the other (Amos Elon) was someone with whom I have had many friendly contacts and invigorating political discussions.
Michael Fox died aged 75, in a Jerusalem hospital, after a long struggle with cancer. Michael, who was born in London, in 1972 founded what became Israel’s largest law firm with the late Israeli president Chaim Herzog and former Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman. In his later years, he also became a columnist and essayist for Ha’aretz and we often discussed the subject of his writings over our lunches at his favorite Tel Aviv restaurant. In 2003 he was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) by the Queen for services to relations between the United Kingdom and Israel. While he had many public and professional achievements to his credit, the range of his interests and his deeply civilized outlook made him even more impressive in private. In the words of Ha’aretz, he combined British humor and gentlemanliness with Israeli straightforwardness.
Israeli author Amos Elon died of leukemia yesterday in Italy aged 82. Also a former correspondent and columnist for Ha’aretz, the liberal Israeli daily newspaper, as well as being a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine and The New York Review of Books, Elon, who was born in Vienna and moved to Palestine in 1933, will probably be best remembered for his nine books. Among the two I particularly enjoyed are “Jerusalem” and his most recent book, “The Pity of It All,” about the incredible accomplishments against all odds of German and Austrian Jews, who in the century before Hitler arguably achieved more than any other comparable group in human history, and the dramatic and sudden destruction of their world.
CONTENTS
1. The Jewish Nakba: expulsions, massacres and forced conversions
2. Learning the truth for the purpose of reconciliation
3. Centuries of pogroms of Jews by Arabs
4. Video: The Nakba of Arabic Jews
5. “The Jewish Nakba” (By Ben-Dror Yemini, Ma’ariv, May 16, 2009)
THE JEWISH NAKBA: EXPULSIONS, MASSACRES AND FORCED CONVERSIONS
[Notes below by Tom Gross]
Every year, on May 14, the Palestinian Arabs commemorate what they call “Nakba Day”: the great catastrophe that befell them as a result of the partition of Palestine and the re-establishment of the State of Israel. Between 1948 and 1951, according to United Nations statistics, 711,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees. (Various independent historians put the numbers at less than this.) Some fled, some were deported.
There have been countless newspaper articles and BBC documentaries about Palestinian refugee suffering. Over time, the out-of-context myths around “The Palestinian Nakba” have grown to such enormous proportions that it is now a major obstacle in preventing a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
And yet an even greater tragedy befell the Jews of Arab countries. In terms of numbers of refugees, of people murdered and in terms of property and influence lost, the “Jewish nakba” of the 1940s and 50s was in many ways far worse than the Arab one.
Below I attach a lengthy essay from last week’s mass-circulation Israeli daily Ma’ariv, that focuses on the disaster which befell Jews from Arab countries, and was written to coincide with “Palestinian Nakba Day.” The essay has been translated into English and supplied to me by the author, Ben-Dror Yemini. (It can be read in the original Hebrew here.)
LEARNING THE TRUTH FOR THE PURPOSE OF RECONCILIATION
Ben-Dror Yemini, who is the former op-ed editor of Ma’ariv and now a senior columnist for the paper (as well as being a longtime subscriber to this email list) writes:
“This article is not intended to cultivate the Jewish Nakba, and it by no means includes all the cases of pogroms, property confiscations, forced conversions and other harassment. The purpose is precisely the opposite. When they understand, in the Arab world in general, and the Palestinians in particular, that suffering, expulsion, loss of property, the cost in lives, is not the monopoly of one side, they may, perhaps, have the sense to understand that this past is a matter for history lessons. Because if we start to perform a political accounting, they have an overdraft. The Jewish Nakba was far greater. The suffering was enormous. But it is the suffering of many nations, Jews and Arabs among them, who went through the experience as part of the creation of new nation states.
“It is therefore worth presenting the story of the Jewish Nakba. Not for the purpose of increasing the hostility, but for the purpose of presenting the truth, and for the purpose of reconciliation between the nations. Inshallah.”
CENTURIES OF POGROMS OF JEWS BY ARABS
Tom Gross continues: Even those who know the full truth of the Jewish nakba are sometimes taken in by the propaganda that there were no persecutions of Jews in the Arab world before the advent of modern Zionism.
This is, as Ben-Dror Yemini points out, a fairytale.
There were dozens and dozens of pogroms and massacres of Jews in Arab lands. From the 8th century, when whole communities were wiped out by Idris the First, to 1033, when 6,000 Jews were murdered by a Muslim mob in the city of Fez in Morocco, to 1785, when hundreds of Libyan Jews were murdered by Burza Pasha, to the massacres of the Jews of Algeria in 1805, 1815 and 1830, and so on.
Jews were second-class “dhimmis” under Islam. Under some rulers they flourished; under others they were taxed to the hilt and were vulnerable to outbreaks of popular violence. They achieved equal rights under colonial rule, but 20th century Arab nationalism and Islamism have all but destroyed their ancient communities.
Many countries, where tens of thousands of Jews lived, such as Libya are now totally “free of Jews.” Apart from Morocco and Tunisia, where about 4,000 Jews remain, no Arab state now has more than 200 Jews. In just a few years Jewish communities stretching back up to 3,000 years, well before the birth of Islam, have been “ethnically cleansed” from Arab countries. This contrasts sharply with Israel where the Arab population continues to increase greatly and is now much larger than it was in the British mandate period.
VIDEOS: THE NAKBA OF ARABIC JEWS
Below, I attach a seven minute video that was produced last year, also by subscribers to this email list.
Here is a very short clip from al-Jazeera on Arab Jewish refugees in Israel:
Here is Part 1 of the film “The Forgotten Refugees”:
For more information on the plight of Jews from Arab countries, the Point of No Return blog, run by another subscriber to this email list, is useful.
There is also some information in this Jerusalem Post supplement here, here and here.
[All notes above by Tom Gross]
FULL ARTICLE
THEY SAY THAT SHE WAS STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL
The Jewish Nakba
Expulsions, Massacres and Forced Conversions
By Ben-Dror Yemini
Ma’ariv
May 16, 2009
They say that she was stunningly beautiful. Sol (Suleika) Hatuel was 17 years old when she was beheaded. A Muslim friend claimed that she had succeeded in converting her. When Sol denied the claim, she was accused of renouncing Islam and was condemned to death. Her case reached the sultan.
In order to prevent her death, the community elders tried to persuade her to live as a Muslim. She refused and said, “I was born as a Jew, I will die as a Jew.” Her fate was sealed. It happened in 1834. She was from Tangier and was executed in Fez. Many make pilgrimages to her grave. Despite the fact that the incident was immortalized in eyewitness testimony, in a famous painting and in a play, her story has been forgotten. The following article is dedicated to her and to the victims of the Jewish Nakba.
***
Every year on the 15th of May, the Palestinians − and many others around the world along with them − “celebrate” Nakba Day. For them, this is the day that marks the great catastrophe that befell them as result of the establishment of the State of Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs became refugees. Some fled, some were deported. The Nakba grew to such enormous proportions that it is preventing a solution to the dispute.
We must remember that in the 1940s, population exchanges and deportations for the purpose of creating national states were the accepted norm. Tens of millions of people experienced it, but only the Palestinians (and they are not alone in this) have been inflating the myth of the Nakba.
However, there is another Nakba: the Jewish Nakba. During those same years, there was a long line of slaughters, pogroms, property confiscation of and deportations − against Jews in Islamic countries. This chapter of history has been left in the shadows. The Jewish Nakba was worse than the Palestinian Nakba. The only difference is that the Jews did not turn that Nakba into their founding ethos. To the contrary.
Like tens of millions of other refugees around the world, they preferred to heal the wound. Not to scratch it and not to open it and not to make it bleed even more. The Palestinians, in contrast, preferred bleeding to rehabilitation. And now they are also paying the price.
The industry of lies has intensified the myth of the Nakba and turned it into the ultimate crime. The Nakba has spawned innumerable publications and conferences, to the point of completely distorting the actual historical process. The Deir Yassin massacre has become one of the milestones in the Palestinian Nakba. There is no need to hide what occurred there (even though the issue of the massacre is in dispute). Innocent people were killed. There were a few other instances of behavior that should be exposed and condemned.
EXTERMINATION WAR AGAINST THE JEWS
A long series of massacres was perpetrated against the Jews in Arab countries. They did not declare war on the countries in which they lived. They were loyal citizens. That did not help them. Their suffering was erased. Their story is never told. The Palestinian narrative has taken over history. There is no need for a Palestinian narrative versus a Zionist narrative. We need to shake off narratives in favor of the truth. And the truth is the number of Jews murdered was greater, their dispossession was greater, and their suffering greater...
A stunning testimonial from those years, which actually comes from the Arab side, sheds light on the issue. In 1936, Alawite notables sent a letter to the French Foreign Minister in which they expressed their concern for the future of the region. They also referred to the Jewish question: “The Jews brought civilization and peace to the Arab Muslims, and they dispersed gold and prosperity over Palestine without damage to anyone or taking anything by force. Despite this, the Muslims declared holy war against them and didn’t hesitate to massacre their children and women … Thus, a black fate awaits the Jews in case the Mandates are cancelled and Muslim Syria united with Muslim Palestine”. The interesting thing is that one of the letter’s signatories was none other than the great grandfather of Bashar Al Assad, the president of Syria.
We must remember that Nakba Day is the date of the declaration of Israel’s independence, May 15th. We must remember what happened just a few hours after that declaration. The Secretary of the Arab League, Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzamaha, announced the declaration of war against Israel: “This war will be a war of annihilation and the story of the slaughter will be told like the campaigns of the Mongols and the Crusaders.”
The Mufti, Haj Amin Al Husseini, who was close to Hitler during the Second World War, added his own bit: “I am declaring a holy war. My brother Muslims! Slaughter the Jews! Kill them all!” The mini-Holocaust of the Jews in Arab countries.
Various documents, some of them discovered only in recent years, show that the declaration of war was far broader. It was actually a declaration of war on the Jews.
Research that was conducted, among others, by Prof. Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice of Canada, shows that the Arab League formulated a bill that would place a series of sanctions on the Jews, including confiscation of property, bank accounts and more. The preamble to the bill states that “All Jews will be considered members of the Jewish minority in the State of Palestine.” And if the fate of the Jews of Palestine was sealed, the fate of the Jews in Arab countries was clear.
The bill was indeed the background to the sanctions against the Jews in Arab countries − sometimes by way of legislation, as happened in Iraq and later in Egypt, and sometimes by taking those measures without the need for any legislation.
According to the industry of lies, the Jews in Arab countries lived peacefully in their environment, under the protection of the government, and it was only because of the Zionist movement and the harm done to the Arabs in Palestine that the Jews began to suffer.
This lie has been repeated innumerable times. Most of the Jews in Arab countries did not undergo the horrors of the Holocaust. But, even before the advent of Zionism, their situation was not any better. There were periods in which the Jews enjoyed relative peace under Muslim rule, but those periods were the exception. Throughout Jewish history in Muslim lands there were humiliations, expulsions, pogroms and a systematic deprivation of rights.
SERIES OF POGROMS
We can, of course, start with the conflict between Muhammad and the Jews. Muhammed undertook social reforms, bringing the Arabs out of the Jahaliya period, and borrowed the concept of monotheism - primarily, perhaps, from the Jews. Many motifs from the Jewish religion appear in the Koran, for example, circumcision and the prohibition on eating pork. But Muhammad wanted to convert the Jews, They, of course, refused. The result was a confrontation that ended in the expulsion and slaughter of hundreds.
The Jews, as the “People of the Book,” were given the right to live under the protection of Islam and to practice their religion. From time to time, from generation to generation, the conditions underwent changes. In many cases, the Jews lived under the covenant of Khalif Omar.
This covenant enabled them to live as protected people (“Dhimmis”), albeit with inferior status. But many times, under Muslim rule, they were not even allowed a life of inferior status.
THE GOLDEN AGE
One of the proofs of the coexistence of Jews and Muslims is Jewish prosperity under Muslim rule in Spain and the Golden Age. The reality, however, was different.
It encompassed continued violence against the Jews. In 1011 in Cordoba, Spain, under Muslim rule, there were pogroms in which, according to various estimates, from hundreds to thousands were murdered. In 1066 in Granada, Yosef Hanagid was executed, along with between 4,000 and 6,000 other Jews. One of the worst periods of all began in 1148, when the Almohad dynasty came to power (al Muwahhidūn), and ruled Spain and North Africa during the 12th and 13th centuries.
MOROCCO
Morocco was the Arab country that suffered from the worst series of massacres of Jews. In the 8th century whole communities were wiped out by Idris the First. In 1033, in the city of Fez, 6,000 Jews were murdered by a Muslim mob. The rise of the Almohad dynasty caused waves of mass murders. According to testimony from that time, 100,000 Jews were slaughtered in Fez and about 120,000 in Marrakesh (this testimony should be viewed with caution). In 1465, another massacre took place in Fez, which spread to other cities in Morocco.
There were pogroms in Tetuan in 1790 and 1792, in which children were murdered, women were raped and property was looted. Between 1864 and 1880, there were a series of pogroms against the Jews of Marrakesh, in which hundreds were slaughtered. In 1903, there were pogroms in two cities – Taza and Settat, in which over 40 Jews were killed.
In 1907, there was a pogrom in Casablanca in which 30 Jews were killed and many women were raped. In 1912, there was another massacre in Fez in which 60 Jews were killed and about 10,000 were left homeless. In 1948, another series of pogroms began against the Jews which led to the slaughter of 42 in the cities of Oujda and Jrada.
ALGERIA
A series of massacres occurred in Algeria in 1805, 1815 and 1830. The situation of the Jews improved with the start of the French conquest in 1830, but that did not prevent anti-Jewish outbursts in the 1880s. The situation deteriorated again with the rise of the Vichy government. Even before 1934, the country was permeated by Nazi influences, which led to the slaughter of 25 Jews in the city of Constantine. When it achieved independence in 1962, laws were passed against citizenship for anyone who was not a Muslim and their property was effectively confiscated. Most of the Jews left, usually completely penniless, together with the French (“pieds noirs”).
LIBYA
In 1785, hundreds of Libyan Jews were murdered by Burza Pasha. Under Nazi influence, harassment of the Jews intensified. Jewish property in Benghazi was plundered, thousands were sent to camps and about 500 Jews were killed. In 1945, at the end of World War II, a program against the Jews began and the number of murdered reached 140. The New York Times reported the horrible scenes of babies and old people who had been beaten to death. In the riots that broke out in 1948, the Jews were more prepared, so only 14 were killed. Following the Six Day War, riots broke out once again and 17 Jews were slaughtered.
IRAQ
A massacre occurred in Basra in 1776. The situation of the Iraqi Jews improved under British rule in 1917, but this improvement ended with Iraq’s independence in 1932. German influences increased and reached a peak in 1941 in the pogrom known as Farhud, in which 182 Jews were slaughtered (according to historian Elie Kedourie, 600 people were actually murdered) and thousands of houses were pillaged.
Those were the days of Haj Amin al Husseini, who preached violence against the Jews. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Iraqi parliament acted according to the Arab League bill and in 1950 and froze the assets of Jews. Sanctions were imposed on those who remained in Iraq. The Farhud massacre and the harassment from 1946 to 1949 to all intents and purposes turned the Iraqi Jews into exiles and refugees. The few thousand who remained in Iraq suffered from harsh edicts. In 1967, 14 Iraqis were sentenced to death on trumped up charges of espionage. Among them were 11 Jews. Radio Iraq invited the masses to the hanging festivities.
SYRIA
The first blood libel in a Muslim country occurred in Syria in 1840, and led to the kidnapping and torture of dozens of Jewish children, sometimes to the point of death, and a pogrom against the Jews. In 1986, the Syrian Minister of Defense, Mustafa Talas, published a book, “The Matzah of Zion,” in which he claims that the Jews did, indeed, use the blood of a Christian monk to bake matzah. Same old anti-Semitism, new edition. Other pogroms occurred in Aleppo in 1850 and in 1875, in Damascus in 1848 and in 1890, in Beirut in 1862 and in 1874, and in Dir al Kamar there was another blood libel which also led to a pogrom in 1847. That year, there was a pogrom against the Jews of Jerusalem, which was the result of that blood libel. In 1945, the Jews of Aleppo suffered severe pogroms. 75 Jews were murdered and the community was destroyed. There was a resurgence of the violence in 1947, which turned most of the Syrian Jews into refugees. Those who remained there lived for many years as hostages.
IRAN
There was a pogrom against the Jews of Mashhad in Iran in 1839. A mob was incited to attack Jews, and slaughtered almost 40. The rest were forced to convert. That is how the Marranos of Mashhad came into being. In 1910, there was a blood libel in Shiraz in which 30 Jews were murdered and all Jewish homes were pillaged.
YEMEN
There were fluctuations in relations in Yemen that ranged between tolerance and inferior subsistence, between harassment and pogroms. The Rambam’s Letter to Yemen was sent following a letter he received from the leader of the Yemeni Jews, describing edicts of forced conversion issued against the Jews (1173). There were further waves of apostasy edicts which cannot be detailed here for lack of space.
One of the worst milestones was the Mawza exile. Three years after Imam Al Mahdi took power in 1676, he drove the Jews into one of the most arid districts of Yemen. According to various accounts, 60 - 75% of the Jews died as a result of the exile. Many and varied edicts were imposed on the Jews, differing only in severity. One of the harshest was the Orphans’ Edict, which ordered the forced conversion of orphaned children to Islam. In nearby Aden, which was under British rule, pogroms occurred in 1947 which took the lives of 82 Jews. 106 of the 170 shops that were owned by Jews were completely destroyed. Hundreds of houses and all the community’s buildings were burned down.
EGYPT
As in the other Arab countries, the Jews of Egypt also suffered inferior status for hundreds of years. A significant improvement occurred when Muhammad Ali came to power in 1805. The testimony of French diplomat, Edmond Combes, leaves nothing in doubt: “To the Muslims, no race is more worthy of contempt than the Jewish race.” Another diplomat added, “The Muslims do not hate any other religion the way they hate that of the Jews.”
Following the blood libel in Damascus, similar libels began to spread in Egypt as well and incited mobs to carry out a series of attacks: in Cairo in 1844, 1890, and in 1901-1902; and Alexandria in 1870, 1882 and in 1901-1907. Similar attacks also occurred in Port Said and in Damanhur.
Later on, there were riots against the Jews at the end of World War II, in 1945, in which 10 were killed and hundreds were injured. In 1947, the Companies Law was passed, which severely damaged Jewish businesses and led to the confiscation of property. In 1948, following the UN resolution on partition, riots began in Cairo and Alexandria. The dead numbered between 80 and 180. Tens of thousands were forced to leave, many fleeing and abandoning their property. The lot of those who remained did not improve. In 1956, a law was passed in Egypt which effectively denied the Jews citizenship, forcing them to leave the country with no property. This was an act of pure expulsion and mass property confiscation.
***
The above is just a partial list out of a long series of massacres in Muslim countries. It happened before the Zionist endeavor. It continued with the Zionist endeavor. We are talking about a succession of events. Tens of thousands were murdered simply because they were Jewish. So the fairytale of coexistence and blaming Zionism for undermining that coexistence is yet another completely baseless myth.
Before the UN vote on partition in November 1947, Egypt’s ambassador to the UN, Heykal Pasha, warned that “The lives of a million Jews in Muslim countries will be in danger if the vote is for partition… if Arab blood is spilled in Palestine, Jewish blood will be spilled elsewhere in the world.”
Four days afterwards, the Iraqi foreign minister, Muhammad Fadil al Jamali said that “We will not be able to restrain the masses in the Arab countries, after the harmony in which Jews and Arabs lived together.” There was no harmony. There had been a massacre of Jews just a few years earlier. El Jamali lied, of course. The very same Iraqi government had encouraged the harassment of Jews and issued orders to confiscate all Jewish property.
Additionally, the Iraqi leader of the time, Nuri Said, had already presented a plan for expelling the Jews in 1949, even before the hasty − actually forced − exit of the Jews from Iraq. He also explained that “The Jews are a source of trouble in Iraq. They have no place among us. We must get rid of them as best we were able.” Said even presented a plan to lead the Jews via Jordan in order to coerce them into passage to Israel. Jordan objected, but the expulsion was implemented anyway. Said even admitted that this entailed a type of population exchange.
So the massacres, the pogroms and the great expulsion of the Jews was a continuation of their suffering under Muslim rule. There have always been Muslims who came out in defense of the Jews. They are also worthy of mention. That were also periods of prosperity, but it appears that most of the Jewish prosperity, as in Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s, in Algeria in the 19th and 20th centuries, in Iraq in the 1920s − was under colonial rule. In most cases, the situation of the Jews was bad before the European invasion and worsened once again with the end of the colonial era.
* * *
Throughout the relations between Jews and Arabs, in Arab countries or in the course of the Zionist enterprise, there was not one case of a pogrom against Muslims of the type committed by the Arabs against the Jews. Even in the worst cases, which must be condemned, such as Deir Yassin, they occurred as part of a military confrontation.
Those are cases that should be condemned, but we need to put things in perspective. The Arabs slaughtered the Jews without any hostilities and without any military excuse, just because they were Jews. And those few Arabs who were killed, were killed as part of a military campaign. Despite this, any injury inflicted on the Arab population resulted in innumerable investigations and references. The worst abuse of all, the abuse of Jews by Arabs, was erased and forgotten.
Let’s return to Deir Yassin, the ultimate symbol of the Nakba. We have called it an indecent act and we will repeat that. But we must note that it was preceded by a series of murderous terrorist attacks against the civilian population. Waves of incidents, which to all intents and purposes were actual pogroms, by an incited mob that attacked the civilian population. Thousands of Jews were slaughtered – women, children and the elderly. The Palestinians even murdered their own people. In the great Arab Revolt in the 1930s, 400 Jews and 5,000 Arabs were killed, most of them at the hands of their brethren.
The months before Deir Yassin were the worst of all. 39 workers were murdered at the Haifa refineries, 50 Jews were killed by car bombs in Jerusalem, and on and on. In total, in the four months between the vote on partition and the declaration of establishment of the State of Israel, 815 Jews were murdered, most of them before the Deir Yassin incident (on April 9, 1948), some afterwards (the slaughter of the Hadassah hospital convoy: 79 killed, April 13, 1948). Most were civilians. Most died in massacres and terrorist attacks. And that is the real background. Far more murdered Jews. But they have all been forgotten. They should be mentioned. That is the Jewish Nakba, whose victims, in Israel and around the world, are mentioned less and less.
The Palestinians paid the price: Close to a million Jews lived in Arab countries at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel. Just a few live there today. Most left because they suffered from pogroms and the threat to their lives. It was a crueler expulsion than the one suffered by the Arabs of Palestine, who paid the price for the declarations of war and annihilation made by their leaders. Even the Jewish property that was confiscated or abandoned as a result of the expulsion is more valuable than the Arab property that remained in Israel.
Various investigators have tried to estimate the value of the confiscated Jewish property following the forced departure of the Jews from Arab countries, compared with the Arab property left in Israel following the forced departure of the Arabs. Economist Sidney Zabludoff, an international expert in the field, estimates that the value of the Arab property is $3.9 billion, compared with the value of the Jewish property which is $6 billion (at 2007 values).
So even in this area, the Palestinians’ claims are refuted. They dragged the Arab countries into war. They paid the price. And they are the ones who caused the Jews to pay an even higher price. Both in property and in blood.
This article is not intended to cultivate the Jewish Nakba, and it by no means includes all the cases of pogroms, property confiscations, forced conversions and other harassment. The purpose is precisely the opposite. When they understand, in the Arab world in general, and the Palestinians in particular, that suffering, expulsion, loss of property, the cost in lives, is not the monopoly of one side, they may, perhaps, have the sense to understand that this past is a matter for history lessons. Because if we start to perform a political accounting, they have an overdraft. The Jewish Nakba was far greater. The suffering was enormous. But it is the suffering of many nations, Jews and Arabs among them, who went through the experience as part of the creation of new nation states.
It is therefore worth presenting the story of the Jewish Nakba. Not for the purpose of increasing the hostility, but for the purpose of presenting the truth, and for the purpose of reconciliation between the nations. Inshallah.
* IAEA chief: Mideast a “ticking bomb”
* Westerners may be stupid, but Hamas is not
* Leading Egyptian scholar: All pigs must die because they descend from Jews
* Saudi judge: Slapping your wife is ok
* Jewish-Arab pop duo fails to win Eurovision Song Contest
CONTENTS
1. IAEA chief: Mideast is a “ticking bomb”
2. Obama sends CIA chief to warn Netanyahu: Don’t surprise me with Iran strike
3. Some of the Mossad’s successes so far in slowing down Iran’s nuclear program
4. Leading Egyptian scholar: All pigs must die because they descend from Jews
5. “Israel is quietly expelling young settler couples from the West Bank”
6. “Netanyahu appoints ministerial committee on developing the Palestinian economy”
7. Palestinian ambassador: “With the two-state solution, in my opinion, Israel will collapse”
8. Israeli airforce practicing MIG-29/F-16 dogfights “for Iran run”
9. Did U.S. aid help Lebanon crack alleged Israeli spy rings?
10. Egypt finds massive Hamas arms cache along Israel border
11. Israeli media frustrated with apparent Obama policy on Middle East
12. Dershowitz to Obama: Don’t use nuclear blackmail on Israel
13. Westerners may be stupid, but Hamas is not
14. Dental sharia in Britain
15. Saudi judge says slapping wife for overspending is ok
16. Iran steps up persecution of Baha’is and Christians
17. Baha’i leaders may face death penalty
18. Fate of hundreds arrested on May Day unknown
19. Jewish-Arab pop duo fails to win Eurovision Song Contest
20. “Why the Obama administration has the Iran problem backwards” (By Alan Dershowitz)
21. “The Hamas ‘peace’ gambit” (By Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post)
22. “Israel’s secret war with Iran” (By Ronen Bergman, Wall Street Journal)
[All notes below by Tom Gross]
IAEA CHIEF: MIDEAST IS A “TICKING BOMB”
In an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Mohamed El Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has warned that between 10 and 20 countries will likely soon have the ability to construct nuclear weapons unless major powers intervene soon.
“This is the phenomenon we see now and what people worry about concerning Iran. And this phenomenon goes much beyond Iran,” El Baradei said.
Addressing the Middle East situation in particular, he described nuclear proliferation as a “ticking bomb”. The production of weapons-grade fissile material must be banned, he added.
Readers of this website have been repeatedly warned over recent years about the worldwide dangers posed by the almost complete lack of effective international diplomatic action to halt Iran’s nuclear program. I am glad readers of The Guardian have now finally been alerted to the issue.
El Baradei has presided over the IAEA for more than 11 years and is due to retire in November at the age of 67. A bitter diplomatic battle is under way over his successor.
El Baradei also predicted that the next wave of proliferation would involve “virtual nuclear weapons states,” who can produce plutonium or highly enriched uranium and possess the know-how to make warheads, but who stop just short of assembling a weapon. They would therefore remain technically compliant with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty while being within a couple of months of deploying and using a nuclear weapon at any time they wish to do so.
OBAMA SENDS CIA CHIEF TO WARN NETANYAHU: DON’T SURPRISE ME WITH IRAN STRIKE
U.S. President Barack Obama this month sent his new CIA chief, Leon Panetta, on a “secret” mission to Jerusalem (which is not secret anymore since the Obama administration quickly leaked it) to warn Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to surprise the U.S. by launching a military operation against Iran’s nuclear program.
The meeting took place two weeks ago in Jerusalem. Obama did not wait for his White House meeting with Netanyahu, scheduled for tomorrow, to deliver his message.
Obama fears that Israel will act soon to stop Iran’s nuclear program before it is too late. On Holocaust Memorial Day last month, Netanyahu again said: “We will not allow Holocaust-deniers to carry out another holocaust.”
Both Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak are not opposed to American dialogue with Tehran, but they believe it should be conducted within a limited timeframe, making it clear to Iran that if it does not halt its nuclear program, more forceful measures will be considered. The Israeli intelligence establishment is dismayed that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates again recently ruled out the use of force against Tehran.
The CIA doesn’t take Iran’s nuclear program as seriously as Israel, and some in Washington have already reconciled themselves to living with a nuclear Iran. On many occasions in the past, CIA analyses have been wrong, and the agency has failed to predict epoch-changing events, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks. Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would be an epoch-changing event of possibly even greater consequence.
One Israeli official told me: “Mr. Panetta’s time would be better spent in a ‘secret’ meeting with Iranian officials to warn them against continuing their nuclear program.”
SOME OF THE MOSSAD’S SUCCESSES SO FAR IN SLOWING DOWN IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM
In an article I attach in full at the end of this dispatch, which appears in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Ronen Bergman, the well-informed intelligence correspondent for the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, outlines some of the “successes” the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, has already had in slowing down the Iranian nuclear program. I have alluded to some of these in past dispatches on this list over recent years.
These include a series of apparent accidents: the disappearance of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the crash of two planes carrying cargo relating to the nuclear project; two labs that burst into flames; and the mysterious accident in July 2007 at the Al-Safir missile factory jointly operated by Iran and Syria.
The Mossad has greatly improved its operational successes since then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed his friend and former military colleague Meir Dagan to head the organization in 2002.
“The Mossad has stunning achievements to its credit, yet the mullahs remain a threat,” notes Bergman, correctly.
Most of the Mossad’s achievements remain a secret. But it is unlikely that Bergman’s piece would have appeared in a major American newspaper at this time, as Netanyahu flies to Washington for his crucial talks with President Obama, and in this form, without the approval of Bergman’s contacts in Israeli intelligence.
In addition to alerting people outside Israel, Bergman’s piece may well have the Israeli leadership in mind. In this respect it performs a similar function to a recent article in Ha’aretz by that paper’s intelligence correspondent Yossi Melman (who also has excellent contacts in Israeli intelligence). Both pieces serve as a warning from the Israeli intelligence community to Prime Minister Netanyahu, urging him not to give in to Obama’s pressure and back away from taking decisive action on the Iranian issue.
“The Israeli intelligence community,” says Bergman, “has penetrated enemies like Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Hizbullah and Hamas. Yet despite former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s willingness to authorize highly dangerous operations based on this intelligence, and despite the unquestionable success of the operations themselves, the overall security picture remains as grim as ever.”
“The bottom line is that excellent intelligence is very important, but it can only take you so far. In the end, it’s the tough diplomatic and military decisions made by Israeli leaders that ensure the security of the state.”
LEADING EGYPTIAN SCHOLAR: ALL PIGS MUST DIE BECAUSE THEY DESCEND FROM JEWS
In a sermon on swine flu last week, one of Egypt’s most senior clerics, Sheikh Ahmed Ali Othman, said that “All pigs alive today are descendants of the Jews who were turned into pigs by Allah, as related in the Koran.”
“If pigs were merely animals, they would not face destruction. It is their Jewish ancestry that condemns them to death,” he added.
Following the recent swine flu outbreak, the Egyptian government ordered a cull of the country’s 400,000 pigs, even though the disease is mainly transmitted human-to-human.
An Egyptian health official admitted “the authorities took advantage of the situation to resolve the question of disorderly pig rearing”: in other words to clamp down on the country’s large Christian Coptic minority that rears and eats the pigs. Egyptian Christians rioted following the swine flu cull.
“ISRAEL IS QUIETLY EXPELLING YOUNG SETTLER COUPLES FROM THE WEST BANK”
While international journalists and diplomats keep on asserting that Israel is increasing settlements on the West Bank*, the opposite is in fact true, according to a report last week in the leading Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz. “Israel is quietly expelling young settler couples from West Bank,” reported Ha’aretz.
“The near complete freeze on building in the territories has pushed some 1,600 young [Israeli] couples – out of the 2,100 couples who marry each year in the West Bank – to live in communities far from their parents and the towns in which they grew up,” the paper added.
The head of the municipal council of West Bank settlements accused the Israeli government of quietly encouraging the “expulsion” of young Israelis from the territories.
Settler leaders have strongly criticized the Netanyahu government for not “putting an end to the settlement freeze policy of the Olmert and Sharon governments.”
(* In criticizing Israel, Western government officials and New York Times editorial writers tend to treat every report and statistic released by left-wing Israeli NGOs and activist groups as if they were true.)
NETANYAHU APPOINTS “MINISTERIAL COMMITTEE ON DEVELOPING THE PALESTINIAN ECONOMY”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formed “a ministerial committee on developing the Palestinian economy and improving the Palestinians’ quality of life.” Netanyahu requested that the committee, headed by former Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, help speed up the development of several economic projects in Jenin, Jericho and at the Qasr al-Yehud baptismal site, in coordination with the Middle East envoy Tony Blair.
Separately, Netanyahu has approved the transfer of NIS 50 million to banks in the Gaza Strip in order to help pay Palestinian Authority salaries – this despite his having severely criticized former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for similar actions in the past.
Many in Israel have opposed such cash transfers, asserting that Gaza’s Hamas rulers benefit from it, both directly and indirectly.
PALESTINIAN AMBASSADOR: “WITH THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION, IN MY OPINION, ISRAEL WILL COLLAPSE”
Mahmoud Abbas’s “moderate” Fatah ambassador to Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, said in a TV interview in Beirut last week:
“With the two-state solution, in my opinion, Israel will collapse... They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status... and Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward.”
These kinds of comments by senior Fatah officials are quite common, but most Western media refuse to report them.
ISRAELI AIRFORCE PRACTICING MIG-29/F-16 DOGFIGHTS “FOR IRAN RUN”
Israel Air Force (IAF) pilots are flying MIG 29 jets and conducting practice dogfights against the IAF’s F-16 fighters, Israel’s Channel 2 television revealed last week.
The MIG 29, developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s, is one of the best and most complex fighter jets used by various Arab states and by Iran. It was developed to counter American-made jets such the F-16 or F/A-18.
The jets were loaned to Israel by an unnamed foreign country. The experiment is meant to prepare IAF pilots for missions where they might have to fight a foreign airforce.
The leaked report is the latest of several to the media, which have also been reported on this website. They are believed to indicate Israeli preparedness to engage in any conflict with Iran, should that become necessary.
DID U.S. AID HELP LEBANON CRACK ALLEGED ISRAELI SPY RINGS?
The authorities in Beirut last week arrested another 11 Lebanese citizens suspected of belonging to intelligence cells transmitting information about the Iranian-controlled Islamic terrorist group Hizbullah to Israel. These were the most recent arrests in a two-month crackdown apparently aided by sophisticated equipment that America has supplied to the Lebanese army, according to Ha’aretz.
The United States has provided $1 billion in aid to Lebanon since 2006, including $410 million in security assistance to the Lebanese military and police.
Israel has expressed reservations about this American military aid, saying that much of it ultimately finds its way into Hizbullah hands.
U.S. officials have said they would review aid to Lebanon depending on the results of the June 7 election, which could oust the U.S.-backed government.
EGYPT FINDS MASSIVE HAMAS ARMS CACHE ALONG ISRAEL BORDER
Reuters reported on Friday that the Egyptian security forces have uncovered hundreds of weapons and explosive devices hidden along the Sinai Peninsula’s border with Israel. 266 rockets, 43 mines, 51 mortar shells, 21 hand grenades and at least three anti-aircraft missiles were found. They were believed to be destined for use by Hamas in Gaza. (Even though most Western news media subscribe to the Reuters News agency, few papers have reported on this enormous arms find.)
Last week, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Amos Yadlin, told a parliamentary committee that despite impressive efforts by the Egyptians, the smuggling of arms into Gaza is continuing.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Mustakbal reported on Friday that Egyptian forces arrested four members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard suspected of organizing an espionage ring on Egyptian territory. The ring was apparently headed by an Iranian intelligence official who entered Egypt using a forged Iraqi passport, according to the report.
***
The young Canadian-born Israeli army medic who was killed following a riot by Palestinians near Ramallah last week has been named as 20-year-old Noam Rechter-Levy. He is the first IDF casualty in the West Bank in 20 months, though several Israeli civilians and children have been murdered in the West Bank during that time, as well as traffic policemen.
ISRAELI MEDIA FRUSTRATED WITH APPARENT OBAMA POLICY ON MIDDLE EAST
A series of editorials in the Israeli media in recent days have been sharply critical of the Obama administration.
Yediot Ahronot says that “Obama’s slogan – two states for two peoples – repeats itself every few years like a broken record… The Palestinians are already divided into two states; one has a stable terrorist leadership, the other a leadership that is living on borrowed time… the Israeli Government should be prepared, to politely say ‘No, thank you,’ even if the American patron is disappointed.”
Ma’ariv says it is “troubled by the apparent assumption by the Obama administration that to counter Iran depends on progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front with an almost Messianic faith that ‘two states’ is the magic solution to that problem.”
The Jerusalem Post comments on what may be the U.S. administration’s seeming resignation to the inevitability of a nuclear-armed Iran, and insists that “Israel isn’t arbitrarily trying to ‘switch’ the discussion away from the Palestinians to Iran. It is warning that a nuclear-armed Iran is the overriding threat – to Israel, the Arabs and the West.”
DERSHOWITZ TO OBAMA: DON’T USE NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL ON ISRAEL
In an article (attached in full further down this dispatch), titled “Don’t blame Israel: why the Obama administration has the Iran problem backwards,” Alan Dershowitz says Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel are making a “dangerous” mistake linking Israeli efforts toward establishing a Palestinian state with efforts to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Favoring a two-state solution, which will take time since there have been few indications so far on the Palestinian side of willingness to compromise, should not be linked to the threat from a nuclear Iran, says Dershowitz, who is a longtime subscriber to this email list. The Iranian nuclear threat “is existential and immediate for Israel, and poses dangers to the entire region, as well as to the U.S.”
Dershowitz recalls what Hashemi Rafsanjani said to an American journalist: He boasted that an Iranian nuclear attack would kill as many as five million Jews [virtually the entire Jewish population of Israel], whereas even if Israel retaliated in kind, Iran would probably lose only fifteen million people, which Rafsanjani said would be “a small sacrifice from among the billion Muslims in the world.”
It would be far easier for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians if it did not have to worry about the threat of a nuclear attack or a dirty bomb. It would also be easier for Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank if Iran were not arming and inciting Hamas, Hizbullah and other enemies of Israel to terrorize its population with rockets and suicide bombers.
In this respect, the Obama administration has it exactly backwards. “There are other ways of encouraging Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. Nuclear blackmail is not one of them,” Dershowitz says.
WESTERNERS MAY BE STUPID, BUT HAMAS IS NOT
In the second full article below, Charles Krauthammer writes in The Washington Post:
“Westerners may be stupid, but Hamas is not. It sees the new American administration making overtures to Iran and Syria. It sees Europe, led by Britain, beginning to accept Hizbullah. It sees itself as next in line. And it knows what to do. Yasser Arafat wrote the playbook.
“With the 1993 Oslo accords, he showed what can be achieved with a fake peace treaty with Israel – universal diplomatic recognition, billions of dollars of aid, and control of Gaza and the West Bank, which Arafat turned into an armed camp. In return for a signature, he created in the Palestinian territories the capacity to carry on the war against Israel that the Arab states had begun in 1948 but had given up after the bloody hell of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
“… Netanyahu is reluctant to agree to a Palestinian state before he knows what kind of state it will be. The Palestinians already have a state, an independent territory with not an Israeli settler or soldier living on it. It’s called Gaza. And what is it? A terror base, Islamist in nature, Iranian-allied, militant and aggressive, that has fired more than 10,000 rockets and mortar rounds at Israeli civilians.
“If this is what a West Bank state is going to be, it would be madness for Israel or America or Jordan or Egypt or any other moderate Arab country to accept such a two-state solution. Which is why Netanyahu insists that the Palestinian Authority first build institutions – social, economic and military – to anchor a state that could actually carry out its responsibilities to keep the peace…”
DENTAL SHARIA IN BRITAIN
A Muslim dentist in Britain is refusing to treat female patients unless they wear traditional Islamic dress, the (London) Daily Mail reported last week.
Omer Butt, 32, said that unless non-Muslim women put on head scarves, he would not register them or their families at his government-funded National Health Service clinic, it was claimed.
At least two patients were left in pain after they declined to follow his self-imposed rules, according to complaints about Butt submitted to the British Dental Council.
SAUDI JUDGE SAYS SLAPPING WIFE FOR OVERSPENDING IS OK
Agence France-Presse reported from Riyadh last week that a Saudi judge told a seminar on domestic violence that it is okay for a man to slap or smack his wife if she has engaged in what he called “lavish spending”.
In his speech, Jeddah judge Hamad al-Razine said: “If a person gives 1,200 riyals ($424) to his wife and she spends 900 riyals ($318) to purchase an abaya [the head-to toe black shroud Saudi women have to wear in public] from a brand shop, and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment.”
IRAN STEPS UP PERSECUTION OF BAHA’IS AND CHRISTIANS
“The systematic persecution of Baha’is and Christians in Iran intensified last month,” reported the German daily Die Welt (May 4, 2009). The paper listed several specific cases of the arbitrary arrest and harassment of Baha’is and Christians, dozens of whom were arrested without charge last month and are being held in unknown locations.
On March 8, 2009, the Islamist Parliament passed a budget of $3 million for the country-wide fight against “Baha’i s, Sufis and devil worshippers”. By “devil worshippers” the Iranian government means youths who listen to Western pop music or dress in non-Islamic fashions.
“International Christian Concern” also reported that “Iranian officials have dramatically stepped up the persecution of Christians. Some of them are said to have been tortured, some to have died in prison as the result of this torture.”
For reports on the ongoing mistreatment of Baha’i and other minorities in Iran, please see previous dispatches on this email list/website. Senior editors at Die Welt are longtime subscribers to this email list.
BAHA’I LEADERS MAY FACE DEATH PENALTY
Radio Farda reported (May 12) that seven Baha’i leaders who have spent the last year in jail may soon face new charges of “spreading corruption on Earth” that could lead to the death penalty. [In Persian here, with photos of the charged Baha’is.]
Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon on Friday asked Iran to release the seven Baha’i leaders, who were originally arrested on trumped-up charges of spying for Israel. He also asked Iran to stop harassing the Baha’i minority.
FATE OF HUNDREDS ARRESTED ON MAY DAY UNKNOWN
An Iranian labor activist said on Friday that hundreds of demonstrators arrested on May Day are being held without charge in the infamous Section 209 of Tehran’s Evin Prison. They have been denied visits from their families and lawyers. [In Persian here.]
Meanwhile, the mother of Iranian trade union leader Mansour Osanlou said his health has severely deteriorated since he was jailed without charge in 2006, and he is now in critical condition. Western media have been virtually silent about his case, apart from various trade union publications.
By contrast, a great deal of Western political and media attention was devoted to the arrest, brief incarceration, and subsequent release this month of NPR and BBC journalist Roxana Saberi. This aids the Iranian regime in not focusing on the far greater numbers of people wrongly held in prison, tortured, and murdered in Iran, which the mainstream Western media does its best to avoid mentioning.
JEWISH-ARAB POP DUO FAILS TO WIN EUROVISION SONG CONTEST
The joint Jewish- and Arab-Israeli pop duo that reached the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow last night, came in 16th place. (There were 42 countries participating.)
Achinoam Nini (also known as Noa), an Israeli Jew, and Miri Awad, a Christian Israeli Arab, performed the song “There Must Be Another Way” in English, Hebrew and Arabic. This is the first time that an Arab and Jewish duo has ever performed together at Eurovision, one of the most-watched television events in the world.
The Russian television co-host described the entry as “the most politically correct in the history of Eurovision.” Israel has won the competition three times, the last time being Dana International’s victory in 1998.
Last night’s runaway winner, Norway, was the most popular song to win Eurovision since Swedish group Abba won the competition with “Waterloo” 25 years ago, catapulting Abba to international fame.
Abba’s Waterloo victory at Eurovision can be seen here:
Alexander Rybak’s victorious song for Norway at Eurovision last night, “Fairy Tale,” can be seen below. (Rybak was actually born in the Soviet Union, in Minsk, now the capital of Belarus and moved to Norway as a child.)
[All notes above by Tom Gross]
FULL ARTICLES
IRAN THREAT IS FIRST PRIORITY
Don’t blame Israel: why the Obama administration has the Iran problem backwards
By Alan Dershowitz
New York Post
May 9, 2009
“The task of forming an international coalition to thwart Iran’s nuclear program will be made easier if progress is made in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has said, according to sources in Washington. Israeli TV stations had reported Monday night that Emanuel had actually linked the two matters, saying that the efforts to stop Iran hinged on peace talks with the Palestinians.” – Jerusalem Post, May 4
Rahm Emanuel is a good man and a good friend of Israel, but in a highly publicized recent statement he linked American efforts to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons to Israeli efforts toward establishing a Palestinian state. This is dangerous.
I have long favored the two-state solution, as do most Israelis and American supporters of Israel. I have also long opposed civilian settlements deep into the West Bank. I hope that Israel does make efforts, as it has in the past, to establish a Palestinian state as part of an overall peace between the Jewish state and its Arab and Muslim neighbors.
Israel in 2000-2001 offered the Palestinians a state in the entire Gaza Strip and more than 95% of the West Bank, with its capital in Jerusalem and a $35 billion compensation package for the refugees. Yasser Arafat rejected the offer and instead began the second intifada in which nearly 5,000 people were killed. I hope that Israel once again offers the Palestinians a contiguous, economically-viable, politically independent state, in exchange for a real peace, with security, without terrorism and without any claim to “return” 4 million alleged refugees as a way of destroying Israel by demography rather than violence.
But the threat from a nuclear Iran is existential and immediate for Israel. It also poses dangers to the entire region, as well as to the US – not only from the possibility that a nation directed by suicidal leaders would order a nuclear attack on Israel or its allies, but from the likelihood that nuclear material could end up in the hands of Hezbollah, Hamas or even Al Qaeda. Recall what Hashemi Rafsanjani said to an American journalist:
[Rafsanjani] “boast[ed] that an Iranian [nuclear] attack would kill as many as five million Jews. Rafsanjani estimated that even if Israel retaliated by dropping its own nuclear bombs, Iran would probably lose only fifteen million people, which he said would be a small ‘sacrifice’ from among the billion Muslims in the world.”
Israel has the right, indeed the obligation, to take this threat seriously and to consider it as a first priority. It will be far easier for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians if it did not have to worry about the threat of a nuclear attack or a dirty bomb. It will also be easier for Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank if Iran were not arming and inciting Hamas, Hezbollah and other enemies of Israel to terrorize Israel with rockets and suicide bombers.
In this respect, Emanuel has it exactly backwards: if there is any linkage, it goes the other way – defanging Iran will promote the end of the occupation and the two-state solution. Threatening not to help Israel in relation to Iran unless it moves toward a two-state solution first is likely to backfire.
After all, Israel is a democracy and in the end the people decide. A recent poll published in Ha’aretz concluded that 66% of Israelis favored a preemptive military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, with 75% of those saying they would still favor such a strike even if the US were opposed.
Israel’s new government will accept a two-state solution if they are persuaded that it will really be a solution – that it will assure peace and an end to terrorist and nuclear threats to Israeli citizens. I have known Prime Minister Netanyahu for 35 years and I recently had occasion to spend some time with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. I am convinced that despite their occasional tough talk, both want to see an end to this conflict.
Israelis have been scarred by what happened in Gaza. Israel ended the occupation, removed all of the settlers, and left behind millions of dollars worth of agricultural and other facilities designed to make the Gaza into an economically-viable democracy. Land for peace is what they sought. Instead they got land for rocket attacks against their children, their women and their elderly. No one wants to see a repeat of this trade-off.
Emanuel’s statements were viewed with alarm in Israel because most Israelis, though they want to like President Obama, are nervous about his policies toward Israel. They are prepared to accept pressure regarding the settlements, but they worry that the Obama Administration may be ready to compromise, or at least threaten to compromise, Israel’s security, if its newly elected government does not submit to pressure on the settlements.
Making peace with the Palestinians will be extremely complicated. It will take time. It may or may not succeed in the end, depending on whether the Palestinians will continue to want their own state less than they want to see the end of the Jewish state. Israel should not be held hostage to the Iranian nuclear threat by the difficulty of making peace with the Palestinians. Israel may be rebuffed again, especially if Palestinian radicals believe that such a rebuff will soften American action against Iran. In the meantime, Iran will continue in its efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
That cannot be allowed to happen, regardless of progress on the ground toward peace with the Palestinians. These two issues must be delinked if either is to succeed. There are other ways of encouraging Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. Nuclear blackmail is not one of them.
THE PEACE OF THE GRAVE?
The Hamas “peace” gambit
By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post
May 8, 2009
“Apart from the time restriction (a truce that lapses after 10 years) and the refusal to accept Israel’s existence, Mr. Meshal’s terms approximate the Arab League peace plan …”
-- Hamas peace plan, as explained by the New York Times
“Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”
-- Tom Lehrer, satirist
The Times conducted a five-hour interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal at his Damascus headquarters. Mirabile dictu, they’re offering a peace plan with a two-state solution. Except the offer is not a peace but a truce that expires after 10 years. Meaning that after Israel has fatally weakened itself by settling millions of hostile Arab refugees in its midst, and after a decade of Hamas arming itself within a Palestinian state that narrows Israel to eight miles wide – Hamas restarts the war against a country it remains pledged to eradicate.
There is a phrase for such a peace: the peace of the grave.
Westerners may be stupid, but Hamas is not. It sees the new American administration making overtures to Iran and Syria. It sees Europe, led by Britain, beginning to accept Hezbollah. It sees itself as next in line. And it knows what to do. Yasser Arafat wrote the playbook.
With the 1993 Oslo accords, he showed what can be achieved with a fake peace treaty with Israel – universal diplomatic recognition, billions of dollars of aid, and control of Gaza and the West Bank, which Arafat turned into an armed camp. In return for a signature, he created in the Palestinian territories the capacity to carry on the war against Israel that the Arab states had begun in 1948 but had given up after the bloody hell of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Meshal sees the opportunity. Not only is the Obama administration reaching out to its erstwhile enemies in the region, but it begins its term by wagging an angry finger at Israel over the Netanyahu government’s ostensible refusal to accept a two-state solution.
Of all the phony fights to pick with Israel. No Israeli government would turn down a two-state solution in which the Palestinians accepted territorial compromise and genuine peace with a Jewish state. (And any government that did would be voted out in a day.) Netanyahu’s own defense minister, Ehud Barak, offered precisely such a deal in 2000. He even offered to divide Jerusalem and expel every Jew from every settlement remaining in the new Palestine.
The Palestinian response (for those who have forgotten) was: No. And no counteroffer. Instead, nine weeks later, Arafat unleashed a savage terror war that killed 1,000 Israelis.
Netanyahu is reluctant to agree to a Palestinian state before he knows what kind of state it will be. That elementary prudence should be shared by anyone who’s been sentient the last three years. The Palestinians already have a state, an independent territory with not an Israeli settler or soldier living on it. It’s called Gaza. And what is it? A terror base, Islamist in nature, Iranian-allied, militant and aggressive, that has fired more than 10,000 rockets and mortar rounds at Israeli civilians.
If this is what a West Bank state is going to be, it would be madness for Israel or America or Jordan or Egypt or any other moderate Arab country to accept such a two-state solution. Which is why Netanyahu insists that the Palestinian Authority first build institutions – social, economic and military – to anchor a state that could actually carry out its responsibilities to keep the peace.
Apart from being reasonable, Netanyahu’s two-state skepticism is beside the point. His predecessor, Ehud Olmert, worshiped at the shrine of a two-state solution. He made endless offers of a two-state peace to the Palestinian Authority – and got nowhere.
Why? Because the Palestinians – going back to the U.N. partition resolution of 1947 – have never accepted the idea of living side by side with a Jewish state. Those like Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who might want to entertain such a solution, have no authority to do it. And those like Hamas’s Meshal, who have authority, have no intention of ever doing it.
Meshal’s gambit to dress up perpetual war as a two-state peace is yet another iteration of the Palestinian rejectionist tragedy. In its previous incarnation, Arafat lulled Israel and the Clinton administration with talk of peace while he methodically prepared his people for war.
Arafat waited seven years to tear up his phony peace. Meshal’s innovation? Ten – then blood.
THE MULLAHS REMAIN A THREAT
Israel’s secret war with Iran
The Mossad has stunning achievements to its credit, yet the mullahs remain a threat
By Ronen Bergman
The Wall Street Journal
May 16, 2009
Those who leaf through the secret files of any intelligence service know what grave mistakes bad intelligence can lead to. But they also know that sometimes even excellent intelligence doesn’t change a thing.
The Israeli intelligence community is now learning this lesson the hard way. It has penetrated enemies like Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Hezbollah and Hamas. Yet despite former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s willingness to authorize highly dangerous operations based on this intelligence, and despite the unquestionable success of the operations themselves, the overall security picture remains as grim as ever.
In 2002, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed his friend and former subordinate, Gen. Meir Dagan, director of the Mossad. Gen. Dagan found the organization lacking in imagination and shying away from operational risks. Mr. Sharon, who knew Gen. Dagan from his days as head of a secret assassinations unit that acted against Fatah in the Gaza Strip during the 1970s, told the general that he wanted “a Mossad with a knife between its teeth.”
Gen. Dagan transformed the Mossad from top to bottom and made the organization’s sole focus Iran’s nuclear project and its ties to jihadist organizations. He put tremendous pressure on his subordinates to execute as many operations as possible. Moreover, he built up ties with espionage services in Europe and the Middle East on top of Israel’s long-standing relationship with the CIA.
In tandem with Gen. Dagan’s Mossad revolution, other Israeli military intelligence has also made outstanding breakthroughs. The Shin-Bet (Israel’s internal intelligence service), in cooperation with the military, has made huge strides in its understanding of Palestinian guerilla organizations.
The results have been tremendous. During the last four years, the uranium enrichment project in Iran was delayed by a series of apparent accidents: the disappearance of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the crash of two planes carrying cargo relating to the project, and two labs that burst into flames. In addition, an Iranian opposition group in exile published highly credible information about the details of the project, which caused Iran much embarrassment and led to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.
On July 12, 2006, thanks to precise intelligence, the Israeli Air Force destroyed almost the entire stock of Hezbollah’s long-range rockets stored in underground warehouses. Hezbollah was shocked.
In July 2007, another mysterious accident occurred in a missile factory jointly operated by Iran and Syria at a Syrian site called Al-Safir. The production line – which armed Scud missiles with warheads – was shut down and many were killed.
In September 2007, Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor built by Syria and aided by North Korea in Dir A-Zur – despite Syria’s significant efforts to keep it a secret. With indirect authorization from a very high ranking Israeli official, the CIA published incriminating pictures obtained by Israel of the site before it was bombed. These photos convinced the world that the Syrians were indeed attempting to manufacture a nuclear bomb.
In February 2008, Hezbollah’s military leader, Imad Mughniyah, was killed in Damascus. In August of that year, Gen. Mohammed Suliman, a liaison to Hamas and Hezbollah who participated in the Syrian nuclear project, was assassinated by a sniper.
In December 2008, Israel initiated operation Cast Lead, which dealt Hamas a massive blow. Most of its weapons were destroyed within days by Israeli air strikes. (Israel also knew where the Hamas leadership was hiding, but since it was in a hospital Mr. Olmert refused to authorize the strike.) In January 2009, Israeli Hermes 450 drones attacked three convoys in Sudan that were smuggling weapons from Iran to the Gaza Strip.
These are all excellent achievements, but did they change reality? Mostly not.
The destruction of the Syrian nuclear reactor seems to have put a temporary end to President Bashar Assad’s ambitions of acquiring a nuclear weapon. However, the public humiliation caused by the site’s bombing did not sway him from supporting Hamas and Hezbollah and hosting terrorist organizations.
Even worse, the heads of Israeli intelligence are now losing sleep over recent information showing that attempts to delay the Iranian nuclear project have failed. Despite some technical difficulties, the Iranians are storming ahead and may possess a nuclear bomb as early as 2010. Hezbollah, although weakened by the 2006 war and Mughniyah’s assassination, has become the leading political force in Lebanon.
On the southern front, despite the convoy bombings in Sudan, the trafficking of weapons and ammunition into the Gaza Strip continues. Hamas’s standing among Palestinians has strengthened. And if a cease-fire is negotiated between Hamas and Israel it would be perceived as a victory for Hamas.
The bottom line is that excellent intelligence is very important, but it can only take you so far. In the end, it’s the tough diplomatic and military decisions made by Israeli leaders that ensure the security of the state.
* “The price Washington will exact [for not shooting down Israeli jets on their way to target Iran’s enriched uranium facilities] will be a Palestinian state, with all its inherent security risks to Israel. But a Palestinian state born as the result of Israeli weakness is a much greater danger to Israel than a state born out of Israeli strength.”
ADDITIONAL NOTE
Following up my previous references to the conflict in Sri Lanka, almost 400 Tamil civilians died in a single shell attack yesterday, and yet the online newspapers that I am emailed each morning – including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Times of London – do not even mention it in their main world news story headlines on their emails today.
Instead, The Times of London leads with yet another piece providing a distorted picture of Israel. Some U.N. officials say the civilian death toll in Sri Lanka yesterday was in excess of 1,000. More civilians have now died in Sri Lanka this year alone than in the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948.
-- Tom Gross
CONTENTS
1. Why Israel has no choice but to defy Obama, Biden and Gates on Iranian nukes
2. “The myth of meaningful Iranian retaliation”
3. Has Israel effectively become the hired army of the Sunni Arab states?
4. Israeli preparations
5. “Why Israel will bomb Iran” (By David Samuels, Slate magazine)
6. “Israel stands ready to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites” (The Times of London)
7. “Iran controls entire nuclear cycle, says Ahmadinejad” (The Associated Press)
WHY ISRAEL HAS NO CHOICE BUT TO DEFY OBAMA, BIDEN AND GATES ON IRANIAN NUKES
[Note by Tom Gross]
This is the second part of a two-part dispatch on Iran. You can read the first part, titled “Obama, and the world, in 2012, if he fails to deal with Iran,” here.
I attach three pieces below. In the first, David Samuels explains “why an Israeli attack on Iran makes sense.” I suggest you read his lengthy piece in full if you have time, but in case you don’t, here are a few of the points he makes:
* “The more Israeli leaders huff and puff about their determination to stop Iran’s nuclear program, the more analysts are inclined to believe that Israel is bluffing. After all, if George W. Bush refused to provide Israel with the bunker busters and refueling capacity to take out Iran’s nukes in 2008, the chance that Barack Obama will give Israel the green light anytime soon seems quite remote – this being the same President Obama who greeted North Korea’s recent missile launch with a speech outlining his plan to dismantle America’s nuclear arsenal on the way to realizing his dream of a nuclear-free world.”
* “The fact that U.S. and Israeli interests with regard to Iran may diverge in radical ways comes as a surprise to many because of the tendency among both supporters and opponents of America’s ‘special relationship’ with Israel to invoke various forms of mind-bending mumbo-jumbo – from dimwitted theories about an all-powerful Jewish conspiracy to childlike evocations of the community of democratic values that unites the two countries.”
“THE MYTH OF MEANINGFUL IRANIAN RETALIATION”
* “The idea that Iran can meaningfully retaliate against Israel through conventional means is more myth than fact. Even without using nuclear weapons, Israel has the capacity to flatten the Iranian economy by bombing a few strategic oil refineries, making a meaningful Iranian counterstroke much less likely than it first appears.”
* “Whether it resulted in delaying Iran’s march toward a nuclear bomb by two years, five years, or somewhere in between, the most important result of an Israeli bombing raid would be to puncture the myth of inevitability that has come to surround the Iranian nuclear project and that has fueled Iran’s rise as a regional hegemon.”
HAS ISRAEL EFFECTIVELY BECOME THE HIRED ARMY OF THE SUNNI ARAB STATES?
* “The idea of a mass public outcry against Israel in the Muslim world is probably also a fiction – given the public backing of the Gulf states and Egypt for Israel’s wars against Hizbullah and Hamas. As the only army in the region able to take on Iran and its clients, Israel has effectively become the hired army of the Sunni Arab states tasked by Washington with the job of protecting America’s favorite Middle Eastern tipple – oil.”
* “The only real downside for Israel of an attack on Iran is Washington’s likely response to appease Europe: a Palestinian state. It seems fair to say that both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak see the establishment of some kind of Palestinian state as inevitable and also as posing real security risks to Israel. Yet, in a perverse way, the idea that the price of an attack on Iran will be the establishment of a Palestinian state makes the logic of such an attack even clearer. Israel’s leaders know that the security threats inherent in giving up most of the West Bank will be greatly augmented or diminished depending on how a Palestinian state is born. A Palestinian state born as the result of Israeli weakness is a much greater danger to Israel than a state born out of Israeli strength.”
ISRAELI PREPARATIONS
The second article below, which was splashed across the front page of The Times (of London), states that: “The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government. Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words.”
The third brief item below, from the Associated Press, one of almost daily news agency reports which are not given the prominence they deserve in the mainstream Western media, details the strides Iran is taking in its effort to enrich uranium.
-- Tom Gross
FULL ARTICLES
WHO SAID PEACE WON’T HAVE A PRICE?
Why Israel will bomb Iran
By David Samuels
Slate
April 9, 2009
The more Israeli leaders huff and puff about their determination to stop Iran’s nuclear program, the more sophisticated analysts are inclined to believe that Israel is bluffing. After all, if George W. Bush refused to provide Israel with the bunker busters and refueling capacity to take out Iran’s nukes in 2008, the chance that Barack Obama will give Israel the green light anytime soon seems quite remote – this being the same President Obama who greeted North Korea’s recent missile launch with a speech outlining his plan to dismantle America’s nuclear arsenal on the way to realizing his dream of a nuclear-free world.
Israel’s performance in the 2006 war in Lebanon was widely depicted as catastrophic, and with Israel’s diplomatic standing hitting new lows after the stomach-turning images of destruction from Gaza, the diplomatic consequences of a successful attack on Iranian nuclear facilities might be worse than the prospect of military failure. There is also the fact that no one knows exactly where Iran’s nuclear assets are.
Many perfectly reasonable people chalk up the rhetorical excesses of both parties to the hot desert sun and assume that nothing particularly awful will happen whether Iran becomes a nuclear power or not. From a U.S. point of view, at least, there is little reason to doubt the analysis that a nuclear Iran with a few dozen bombs can be contained at relatively limited cost using the same strategies that successfully constrained an aggressive Soviet Empire armed with nearly 45,000 nuclear warheads at the height of the Cold War.
What the nuclear optimists miss is that it is not the United States that is directly threatened by the Iranian nuclear program but Israel – and the calculations that drive our Middle Eastern client state are very different from those that guide the behavior of its superpower patron.
Less sanguine types – who think that Israel isn’t bluffing – generally fall into two camps: those who think that the Israelis are crazy and require the firm hand of America to restrain them and those who think that the Iranian leadership lives on a different planet and will use nuclear weapons against Israel. Yet it is not necessary to stipulate that either party is crazy in order to see why an Israeli attack on Iran makes sense.
From the standpoint of international relations theory, the scariest thing about recent Israeli rhetoric is that an attack on Iran lines up quite well with Israel’s rational interests as a superpower client.
IRAN’S RECENT TECHNOLOGICAL TRIUMPHS
While Israeli bluster is clearly calculated to push America to take a more aggressive stance toward Iran, that doesn’t mean the Israelis won’t actually attack if President Obama decides on a policy of engagement that leaves the Iranians with a viable nuclear option. In fact, the more you consider the rationality of an Israeli attack on Iran in the context of Israel’s relationship with its superpower patron, the more likely an attack appears. Given Iran’s recent technological triumphs, like the launch of the Omid communications satellite earlier this year and the lack of ambiguity about the aims of the Iranian nuclear program, it is hardly apocalyptic to expect an attack within the next year – assuming that the Russians continue to dither about delivering S-300 surface-to-air missiles to protect Iranian nuclear sites. A stepped-up delivery date for large numbers of S-300 missiles could lead to an earlier attack.
The fact that U.S. and Israeli interests with regard to Iran may diverge in radical ways comes as a surprise to many mainstream analysts because of the tendency among both supporters and opponents of America’s “special relationship” with Israel to invoke various forms of mind-bending mumbo-jumbo – from dimwitted theories about an all-powerful Jewish conspiracy to childlike evocations of the community of democratic values that unites the two countries. While America’s embrace of Israel is partially motivated both by shared values and by the lobbying power of an influential minority group, neither Israel’s creaky democratic polity nor the hidden persuasive powers of AIPAC can claim much credit for the billions of dollars in American military credits that Israel enjoys – a vast corporate welfare program that benefits Pentagon defense contractors as much as it benefits Israel’s military.
The key fact of the American-Israeli alliance that most commentators seem eager to elide is that Israel is America’s leading ally in the Middle East because it is the most powerful country in the Middle East. Critics of the American-Israeli relationship love to conflate American support for Israel before 1967 with America’s support since then by citing statistics for tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military credits and aid given to Israel “since 1948,” when the Jewish State was founded. In fact, Israel’s rise to becoming a regional superpower was accomplished without any significant help from United States. Israel’s surreptitious program to build nuclear weapons was accomplished with the aid of the British and the French, who joined with Israel to seize the Suez Canal from Egypt’s rabble-rousing President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and who were then forced to give it back by Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Israeli air force pilots who destroyed the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces on the ground flew French-made Mystère jets – not American-made F-4 Phantoms. The U.S. Congress did not appropriate a single penny to help Israel accommodate an overwhelming influx of Holocaust survivors and poor Jewish refugees from Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, and other Arab countries until 1973–25 years after the founding of the state.
HOW ISRAEL BECAME THE MIDEAST’S PREMIER POWER
By shattering the old balance of power in the Middle East with its spectacular military victory in the Six Day War, Israel announced itself to America as the reigning military power in the region and as a profoundly destabilizing influence that needed to be contained. The parallels between Israel’s rise to superpower-client status in the 1950s and 1960s and the Iranian march toward regional hegemony over the past decade are quite striking. Both Israel circa 1967 and modern-day Iran are non-Arab states that utilized innovative military tactics to panic the Arabs. Yet where Iran is a non-Arab country with a population of more than 70 million, Israel was and is a tiny non-Arab, non-Muslim country whose small population and seat-of-the-pants style of leadership made even the country’s modest colonial ambitions seem like a stretch. In the absence of any fixed plan of expansion, or any long-term plan for dealing with its neighbors, Israel decided to use its excess military power and captured lands as a chit that it could exchange for resources provided from outside the region by its wealthy American patron.
Israel earned its role as an American client with a series of daring military victories won by a tiny embattled country with a shoestring budget and its back against the sea: the capture of the Suez Canal from Nasser in 1956, the audacious victory in 1967, and the development of a nuclear bomb. Yet the terms of the bargain that Israel struck would necessarily relegate such accomplishments to the history books. Israel traded its freedom to engage in high-risk, high-payoff exploits like the Suez Canal adventure or the Six Day War for the comfort of a military and diplomatic guarantee from the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. As a regional American client, Israel would draw on the military and diplomatic power of its distant patron in exchange for allowing America to use its control over Israel as leverage with neighboring Arab states.
With each American-brokered peace move – from Camp David to the Madrid Conference to Oslo and Annapolis – the United States has been able to hold up its leverage over Israel as both a carrot and a stick to the Arab world. Do what we want, and we will force the Israelis to behave. The client-patron relationship between the United States and Israel that allows Washington to control the politics of the Middle East is founded on two pillars: America’s ability to deliver concrete accomplishments, like the return of the Sinai to Egypt and the pledge to create a Palestinian state, along with the suggestion that Washington is manfully restraining wilder, more aggressive Israeli ambitions.
The success of the American-Israeli alliance demands that both parties be active partners in a complex dance that involves a lot of play-acting – America pretends to rebuke Israel, just as Israel pretends to be restrained by American intervention from bombing Damascus or seizing the banks of the Euphrates. The instability of the U.S.-Israel relationship is therefore inherent in the terms of a patron-client relationship that requires managing a careful balance of Israeli strength and Israeli weakness. An Israel that runs roughshod over its neighbors is a liability to the United States - just as an Israel that lost the capacity to project destabilizing power throughout the region would quickly become worthless as a client.
A corollary of this basic point is that the weaker and more dependent Israel becomes, the more Israeli interests and American interests are likely to diverge. Stripped of its ability to take independent military action, Israel’s value to the United States can be seen to reside in its ability to give the Golan Heights back to Syria and to carve out a Palestinian state from the remaining territories it captured in 1967 – after which it would be left with only the territories of the pre-1967 state to barter for a declining store of U.S. military credits, which Washington might prefer to spend on wooing Iran.
The untenable nature of this strategic calculus gives a cold-eyed academic analyst all the explanation she needs to explain Israel’s recent wars against Hizbullah and Hamas, its assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers, and its 2007 attack on the Syrian nuclear reactor. Israel’s attempts to restore its perceived capacity for game-changing independent military action are directed as much to its American patron as to its neighbors. Israel’s current strategic posture was established by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who alternated strong, unpredictable military actions like Operation Defensive Shield and the final isolation of Yasser Arafat with invocations of the importance of peace and surprising concessions, such as the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Sharon also took care to balance his close relationship with President Bush with a program of diplomatic outreach to second-tier powers like Russia and India.
MEANINGFUL RETALIATION?
An attack on Iran might be risky in dozens of ways, but it would certainly do wonders for restoring Israel’s capacity for game-changing military action. The idea that Iran can meaningfully retaliate against Israel through conventional means is more myth than fact. Even without using nuclear weapons, Israel has the capacity to flatten the Iranian economy by bombing a few strategic oil refineries, making a meaningful Iranian counterstroke much less likely than it first appears.
If the 2006 Lebanon war showed the holes in Israel’s ability to fight a conventional ground war, it also showed the ability of the Israeli air force to destroy long-range missiles on the ground. Israel’s response to fresh barrages of missiles from Hizbullah and Hamas while engaged in a shooting war with Iran would presumably be even less restrained than it has been in the past.
Short of an Iranian-hostage-rescue-mission-type debacle in which a small Israeli tactical force crashes in the Iranian desert, or a presidential order from Obama to shoot down Israeli planes on their way to Natanz, any Israeli air raid on Iran is likely to succeed in destroying masses of delicate equipment that the Iranians have spent a decade building at enormous cost in time and treasure. It is hard to believe that Iran could quickly or easily replace what it lost. Whether it resulted in delaying Iran’s march toward a nuclear bomb by two years, five years, or somewhere in between, the most important result of an Israeli bombing raid would be to puncture the myth of inevitability that has come to surround the Iranian nuclear project and that has fueled Iran’s rise as a regional hegemon.
The idea of a mass public outcry against Israel in the Muslim world is probably also a fiction – given the public backing of the Gulf states and Egypt for Israel’s wars against Hizbullah and Hamas. As the only army in the region able to take on Iran and its clients, Israel has effectively become the hired army of the Sunni Arab states tasked by Washington with the job of protecting America’s favorite Middle Eastern tipple – oil.
The parallels between Israel’s rise to superpower client status after 1967 and Iran’s recent rise offer another strong reason for Israel to act – and act fast. The current bidding for Iran’s favor is alarming to Israel not only because of the unfriendly proclamations of Iranian leaders but because of what an American rapprochement with Iran signals for the future of Israel’s status as an American client. While America would probably benefit by playing Israel and Iran against each other for a while to extract the maximum benefit from both relationships, it is hard to see how America would manage to please both clients simultaneously and quite easy to imagine a world in which Iran – with its influence in Afghanistan and Iraq, its control over Hizbullah and Hamas, and easy access to leading members of al-Qaeda – would be the partner worth pleasing.
RESTORING ISRAEL’S STRENGTH
Bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities is the surest way for Israel to restore the image of strength and unpredictability that made it valuable to the United States after 1967 while also eliminating Iran as a viable partner for America’s favor. The fact that this approach may be the international-relations equivalent of keeping your boyfriend by shooting the other cute girl he likes in the head is an indicator of the difference between high-school romance and alliances between states – and hardly an argument for why it won’t work. Shorn of its nuclear program and unable to retaliate against Israel through conventional military means, Iran would be shown to be a paper tiger – to the not-so-secret delight of America’s Sunni Arab allies in the Gulf. Iran’s local clients like Syria and Hamas would be likely to distance themselves from an over-leveraged Persian would-be hegemon whose ruined nuclear facilities would be visible on Google Earth.
The only real downside for Israel of an attack on Iran is Washington’s likely response to the anger of the Arab street and the European street, both of which are likely to express their fierce outrage against Israel and the United States. The price of an Israeli attack on Iran is therefore clear to anyone who reads Al Ahram or the Guardian: a Palestinian state. It seems fair to say that both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak see the establishment of some kind of Palestinian state as inevitable and also as posing real security risks to Israel.
Yet, in a perverse way, the idea that the price of an attack on Iran will be the establishment of a Palestinian state makes the logic of such an attack even clearer. Israel’s leaders know that the security threats inherent in giving up most of the West Bank will be greatly augmented or diminished depending on how a Palestinian state is born. A Palestinian state born as the result of Israeli weakness is a much greater danger to Israel than a state born out of Israeli strength. Ariel Sharon was able to withdraw from Gaza because he defeated Arafat and crushed the second intifada. Desperate to rid themselves of the bad PR and the demographic threat posed by maintaining Israel’s hold over the West Bank, Sharon’s successors have been unable to find a victory big enough to allow them to retreat. Nor are they able to reconcile themselves to the threat posed by images of a defeated Israel being forced to withdraw from Hebron and Nablus by triumphant Palestinian militias backed by Iran.
The inevitability of a future Palestinian state is the most powerful argument for the inevitability of an Israeli attack on Iran – unless the Iranian nuclear program is stopped by other means. Taking out the Iranian nuclear program is the one obvious avenue by which Israel can turn the debilitating drip-drip-drip of territorial giveaways and international condemnation into a convincing appearance of strength. Destroying a respectable number of Iranian centrifuges will end Iran’s march to regional hegemony and eliminate Israel’s chief rival for America’s affections while also allowing Israel to gain the legal and demographic benefits of a Palestinian state with a minimum of long-term risk.
Israel’s version of a nuclear grand bargain that brings peace to the Middle East may be messier and more violent than what the Obama administration imagines can be accomplished through sanctions, blandishments, and the invocation of Barack Obama’s magic middle name. But who can really argue with the idea of trading the Iranian nuclear bomb for a Palestinian state? Saudi Arabia would be happy. Egypt would be happy. Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates would be happy. Jordan would be happy. Iraq would be happy. Two-thirds of the Lebanese would be happy. The Palestinians would go about building their state, and Israel would buy itself another 40 years as the only nuclear-armed country in the Middle East. Iran would not be happy.
But who said peace won’t have a price?
ISRAEL STANDS READY TO BOMB IRAN’S NUCLEAR SITES
Israel stands ready to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites
By Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem
The Times (of London)
April 18, 2009
The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.
Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.
Two nationwide civil defence drills will help to prepare the public for the retaliation that Israel could face.
“Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words,” one senior defence official told The Times.
Officials believe that Israel could be required to hit more than a dozen targets, including moving convoys. The sites include Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges produce enriched uranium; Esfahan, where 250 tonnes of gas is stored in tunnels; and Arak, where a heavy water reactor produces plutonium.
The distance from Israel to at least one of the sites is more than 870 miles, a distance that the Israeli force practised covering in a training exercise last year that involved F15 and F16 jets, helicopters and refuelling tankers.
The possible Israeli strike on Iran has drawn comparisons to its attack on the Osirak nuclear facility near Baghdad in 1981. That strike, which destroyed the facility in under 100 seconds, was completed without Israeli losses and checked Iraqi ambitions for a nuclear weapons programme.
“We would not make the threat [against Iran] without the force to back it. There has been a recent move, a number of on-the-ground preparations, that indicate Israel’s willingness to act,” said another official from Israel’s intelligence community.
He added that it was unlikely that Israel would carry out the attack without receiving at least tacit approval from America, which has struck a more reconciliatory tone in dealing with Iran under its new administration.
An Israeli attack on Iran would entail flying over Jordanian and Iraqi airspace, where US forces have a strong presence.
Ephraim Kam, the deputy director of the Institute for National Security Studies, said it was unlikely that the Americans would approve an attack.
“The American defence establishment is unsure that the operation will be successful. And the results of the operation would only delay Iran’s programme by two to four years,” he said.
A visit by President Obama to Israel in June is expected to coincide with the national elections in Iran – timing that would allow the US Administration to re-evaluate diplomatic resolutions with Iran before hearing the Israeli position.
“Many of the leaks or statements made by Israeli leaders and military commanders are meant for deterrence. The message is that if [the international community] is unable to solve the problem they need to take into account that we will solve it our way,” Mr Kam said.
Among recent preparations by the airforce was the Israeli attack of a weapons convoy in Sudan bound for militants in the Gaza Strip.
“Sudan was practice for the Israeli forces on a long-range attack,” Ronen Bergman, the author of The Secret War with Iran, said. “They wanted to see how they handled the transfer of information, hitting a moving target ... In that sense it was a rehearsal.”
Israel has made public its intention to hold the largest-ever nationwide drill next month.
Colonel Hilik Sofer told Ha’aretz, a daily Israeli newspaper, that the drill would “train for a reality in which during war missiles can fall on any part of the country without warning ... We want the citizens to understand that war can happen tomorrow morning”.
Israel will conduct an exercise with US forces to test the ability of Arrow, its US-funded missile defence system. The exercise would test whether the system could intercept missiles launched at Israel.
“Israel has made it clear that it will not tolerate the threat of a nuclear Iran. According to Israeli Intelligence they will have the bomb within two years ... Once they have a bomb it will be too late, and Israel will have no choice to strike – with or without America,” an official from the Israeli Defence Ministry said.
MARCHING TOWARDS A NUCLEAR BOMB
Iran controls entire nuclear cycle, says Ahmadinejad
The Associated Press
12 April, 2009
TEHRAN (AP) – Iran now controls the entire cycle for producing nuclear fuel with the opening of a new facility to produce uranium fuel pellets, the Iranian president said Saturday.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the speech two days after the inauguration of the facility which produces uranium oxide pellets for a planned 40-megawatt heavy-water nuclear reactor near the town of Arak, central Iran.
Production of nuclear fuel pellets is the final step in the long, complicated chain of nuclear fuel cycle. The US and its allies have expressed concern over Iran developing nuclear programme for fear it masks a nuclear weapons programme – a charge Iran denies.
Heavy-water reactors use a different process than light-water ones, but have their own nuclear proliferation concerns. Iran has also been making strides in its effort to enrich uranium. On Thursday, officials said the number of centrifuges at Iran’s uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, central Iran, have increased to 7,000 – up from 6,000 announced in February – and that a new, more advanced type of centrifuge had been tested.
Highly enriched uranium, however, can also produce a nuclear bomb, something that has the West very concerned.
* “If only Obama could have made a different decision in the summer of 2009”
* Iran believes it is a rising superpower while the U.S. is a “sunset” power. The message is simple: “The Americans are going, and we are coming”
CONTENTS
1. Quite unlike other threats
2. Two clocks ticking
3. Iran wasted over a million lives without batting an eyelash
4. Iran targets U.S. allies Egypt, Lebanon, Bahrain, Morocco, Kuwait and Jordan
5. “Obama in 2012, after he fails to deal with Iran” (By Ari Shavit, Ha’aretz)
6. “As the U.S. retreats, Iran fills the void” (By Amir Taheri, Wall Street Journal)
QUITE UNLIKE OTHER THREATS
By Tom Gross
This dispatch, on the Iranian nuclear threat, is split into two for space reasons. The other part, titled “Why Israel will bomb Iran” (& “The myth of meaningful Iranian retaliation”), can be read here.
I have written and lectured extensively in recent years on this issue. Below I attach two articles by leading commentators in the field, but before that, here are a few more observations of my own to add to those I have made in previous dispatches:
* I stand by my previous assessment that the Islamic Iranian nuclear program (and the near inevitable nuclear arms race that will follow if the program is not stopped) remains the single biggest threat to world stability in the medium and long run, even greater – as I have previously explained – than the economic downturn or the Taliban advances in border regions of Pakistan.
* Seeing the weakness of the entire world towards Iran, Sunni Arab countries have already begun exploring the possibility of developing nuclear programs of their own – the most recent indication of this being the revelation last week by IAEA inspectors that they had found traces of weapons-grade uranium northeast of Cairo.
* The threat of a nuclear arsenal in the hands of the only government in the world (Iran) that promotes suicide bombing as a matter of state policy (by its client militia in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere), and celebrates “martyrdom of its fellow Muslims” in such attacks, is a threat quite unlike any the world has ever seen. The combination of weapons of mass destruction and jihadist ideology poses a problem of much greater magnitude than that when secular dictatorships and semi-dictatorships, such as Russia, China and North Korea and Pakistan, possess nuclear bombs.
* Iran claims that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but as the father of Israel’s (alleged) atomic project, Ernst David Bergman, said: “There is no such thing as two distinct nuclear paths – one for peaceful purposes and another for military aims. It’s all the same path.”
TWO CLOCKS TICKING
* After the bombing of the Iraqi reactor in 1981, many critics of the attack claimed that Saddam Hussein would be able to rebuild his reactor in three to four years, but this never happened.
* Two clocks are ticking in regard to the Iranian nuclear threat, one in Jerusalem and one in Washington. To judge by what we know of Israeli and American intelligence outlooks, these clocks do not show the same time. Naturally, because of its geographical proximity, its small size, and repeated threats to wipe it off the map, Israel feels itself threatened by Iran in a more immediate way than America does.
* History teaches Jews that threats against their collective existence should always be taken seriously, and, if possible, preempted.
* The primary Iranian threat against Israel comes not from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but from the country’s supreme leader (and ultimate controller of the regime’s nuclear project), Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in March once again expressed his genocidal hatred of Israel, describing it as a “cancerous tumor that must be destroyed.”
“IRAN WASTED OVER A MILLION LIVES WITHOUT BATTING AN EYELASH”
* In addition to posing an existential threat to Israel, a nuclear Iran could mean the end of American influence in the Middle East. Tehran, not Washington would dominate oil in the region.
* During its eight-year war with Iraq, Iran (to quote Benjamin Netanyahu) “wasted over a million lives without batting an eyelash. It didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness. It wasn’t Britain after World War I, lapsing into pacifism because of the great tragedy of a loss of a generation. You see nothing of the kind.”
* A nuclear Iran would likely lead to a huge rise in the levels of support for radical Islamist movements throughout the Middle East, Asia and Western Europe. Muslims from London to Bali would conclude that the day of victory for Islam over the infidel world is now within reach. Acts of suicide terrorism, particularly in Europe, would probably increase.
-- Tom Gross
IRAN TARGETS U.S. ALLIES EGYPT, LEBANON, BAHRAIN, MOROCCO, KUWAIT AND JORDAN
In the first article attached below, Ari Shavit, one of the most respected commentators at Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, outlines just some of the nightmare short-term scenarios that might well occur if Iran is allowed to go nuclear. It is written as though surveying the scene at the end of Barack Obama’s first (and possibly) only term as president. I strongly suggest you read his article in full.
In the second article below, Amir Taheri, probably the leading exiled Iranian commentator in the world, warns of how the Iranian regime, convinced that the Obama administration is preparing to retreat from the Middle East, is intensifying its goal of regional domination. It has targeted six close American allies – Egypt, Lebanon, Bahrain, Morocco, Kuwait and Jordan – all of which are experiencing economic and/or political crises.
Among recent developments:
* Last month, Egypt announced it had crushed a major Iranian plot and arrested 68 people.
* In Bahrain, the government has arrested scores of pro-Iran militants as Tehran steps up its campaign of mass demonstrations and terrorist operations to try and take de facto control of the emirate. In March, in a speech at Masshad, Iran’s principal holy city, the senior aide to Supreme Leader Khamenei, again described Bahrain as “part of Iran.”
* Morocco has already severed diplomatic relations with Tehran, arresting pro-Iran militants for plotting acts of terrorism.
* Iranian-controlled groups have also been uncovered in Kuwait and Jordan. (Iranian strategists believe Jordan, where Palestinians constitute two-thirds of the population, is a colonial creation and should disappear from the map – opening the way for a single Islamic state covering the whole of Palestine.)
* But in its campaign for regional hegemony, Tehran expects to gain Lebanon as its first prize. Iran is spending massive amounts of cash in the run-up to June’s general election to try and influence the outcome.
Amir Taheri has a new book out on Iran “The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution,” as does Emanuele Ottolenghi (who like Taheri is a longtime subscriber to this email list). Ottolenghi’s new book is titled “Under a Mushroom Cloud: Europe, Iran and the Bomb.”
-- Tom Gross
FULL ARTICLES
“IF ONLY HE COULD HAVE MADE A DIFFERENT DECISION IN THE SUMMER OF 2009”
Obama in 2012, after he fails to deal with Iran
By Ari Shavit
Ha’aretz
May 1, 2009
Even now, in November 2012, it is hard not to think back with elation on Barack Obama’s first year as president of the United States. In his first 100 days in the White House, the energetic president took a series of daring steps that extricated the American economy from its worst crisis since the 1930s. Immediately after that he put an end to torture, indicted Dick Cheney, convened a Middle East peace conference and made historic reconciliation visits to Havana, Damascus and Tehran.
Obama’s economic and foreign policies were both based on a moral worldview that inspired Americans and non-Americans alike. After years of despair and cynicism, the 44th president proposed a new national and international agenda based on dialogue, demilitarization, justice and peace.
The first signs that something was wrong had already appeared at the end of that first year of grace. Nevertheless, Washington was astounded when, in the summer of 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that he was expelling international inspectors and galloping full-tilt toward the production of nuclear weapons. The shock turned to horror on the eve of Christmas 2010, when Iran’s spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, stated that his country had its first three nuclear warheads – aimed at Riyadh, Cairo and Tel Aviv.
Spring 2011 was dramatic. First a mutual defense treaty and an agreement to collaborate on oil exports were signed between Tehran and the fragile Baghdad government. Then Kuwait, Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai bowed their heads and signed treaties that made them protectorates of the rising Shi’ite state. Saudi Arabia took the opposite approach: In May 2011, it announced that it had purchased nuclear weapons from Pakistan both for itself and for its ally Egypt. But Egypt’s sudden nuclearization failed to appease the Muslim Brotherhood. Mass demonstrations forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign shortly after he suspended the peace agreement with Israel.
By Thanksgiving 2011, the situation was clear. Jordan’s King Abdullah left for exile in London. Hizbullah took control of Beirut and a bloody war of attrition erupted between Israel and the Palestinians. The unrest in western Asia had repercussions on the rest of the international arena: Afghanistan went up in flames, Pakistan collapsed and Russia raised its head. In view of Washington’s helplessness, some European states began to lean increasingly toward China. When the price of oil rose above $200 a barrel, the American economy plunged into another deep recession.
Obama had no chance in the snows of Iowa in 2012. So with Oprah Winfrey wiping a tear at his side, the most promising president ever announced he would not run for a second term.
What went wrong? Where did Obama go astray? In retrospect, the answer is clear and simple. In the summer of 2009, the president had to make the most courageous decision of his life: to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Granted, opting for confrontation would have been incompatible with the DNA of the liberal Democrat from Chicago. Ironically, however, only such a decision could have saved his legacy and advanced the noble values he believed in. Only that decision could have led to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. If Obama had decided three years ago to impose a political-economic siege on Tehran, he would have changed the course of history. The Roosevelt of the 21st century would have prevented regional chaos, a worldwide nuclear arms race and an American decline.
Yesterday, immediately after television networks announced the sweeping Republican victory of November 2012, close friends gathered around the outgoing president. They found him sad but sober. Obama had no doubts: Had he known at the beginning of his term what he knows now, he would have made a different strategic decision about Iran’s nuclear program. If only it were possible to go back, the pensive president told his humbled chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. If only he could have made a different decision in the summer of 2009.
TEHRAN PLAYS A PATIENT GAME
As the U.S. retreats, Iran fills the void
By Amir Taheri
The Wall Street Journal
May 4, 2009
Convinced that the Obama administration is preparing to retreat from the Middle East, Iran’s Khomeinist regime is intensifying its goal of regional domination. It has targeted six close allies of the U.S.: Egypt, Lebanon, Bahrain, Morocco, Kuwait and Jordan, all of which are experiencing economic and/or political crises.
Iranian strategists believe that Egypt is heading for a major crisis once President Hosni Mubarak, 81, departs from the political scene. He has failed to impose his eldest son Gamal as successor, while the military-security establishment, which traditionally chooses the president, is divided. Iran’s official Islamic News Agency has been conducting a campaign on that theme for months. This has triggered a counter-campaign against Iran by the Egyptian media.
Last month, Egypt announced it had crushed a major Iranian plot and arrested 68 people. According to Egyptian media, four are members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Tehran’s principal vehicle for exporting its revolution.
Seven were Palestinians linked to the radical Islamist movement Hamas; one was a Lebanese identified as “a political agent from Hizbullah” by the Egyptian Interior Ministry. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Hizbullah, claimed these men were shipping arms to Hamas in Gaza.
The arrests reportedly took place last December, during a crackdown against groups trying to convert Egyptians to Shiism. The Egyptian Interior Ministry claims this proselytizing has been going on for years. Thirty years ago, Egyptian Shiites numbered a few hundred. Various estimates put the number now at close to a million, but they are said to practice taqiyah (dissimulation), to hide their new faith.
But in its campaign for regional hegemony, Tehran expects Lebanon as its first prize. Iran is spending massive amounts of cash on June’s general election. It supports a coalition led by Hizbullah, and including the Christian ex-general Michel Aoun. Lebanon, now in the column of pro-U.S. countries, would shift to the pro-Iran column.
In Bahrain, Tehran hopes to see its allies sweep to power through mass demonstrations and terrorist operations. Bahrain’s ruling clan has arrested scores of pro-Iran militants but appears more vulnerable than ever. King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa has contacted Arab heads of states to appeal for “urgent support in the face of naked threats,” according to the Bahraini media.
The threats became sensationally public in March. In a speech at Masshad, Iran’s principal “holy city,” Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri, a senior aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described Bahrain as “part of Iran.” Morocco used the ensuing uproar as an excuse to severe diplomatic relations with Tehran. The rupture came after months of tension during which Moroccan security dismantled a network of pro-Iran militants allegedly plotting violent operations.
Iran-controlled groups have also been uncovered in Kuwait and Jordan. According to Kuwaiti media, more than 1,000 alleged Iranian agents were arrested and shipped back home last winter. According to the Tehran media, Kuwait is believed vulnerable because of chronic parliamentary disputes that have led to governmental paralysis.
As for Jordan, Iranian strategists believe the kingdom, where Palestinians are two-thirds of the population, is a colonial creation and should disappear from the map – opening the way for a single state covering the whole of Palestine. Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have both described the division of Palestine as “a crime and a tragedy.”
Arab states are especially concerned because Tehran has succeeded in transcending sectarian and ideological divides to create a coalition that includes Sunni movements such as Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, sections of the Muslim Brotherhood, and even Marxist-Leninist and other leftist outfits that share Iran’s anti-Americanism.
Information published by Egyptian and other Arab intelligence services, and reported in the Egyptian and other Arab media, reveal a sophisticated Iranian strategy operating at various levels. The outer circle consists of a number of commercial companies, banks and businesses active in various fields and employing thousands of locals in each targeted country. In Egypt, for example, police have uncovered more than 30 such Iranian “front” companies, according to the pan-Arab daily newspaper Asharq Alawsat. In Syria and Lebanon, the numbers reportedly run into hundreds.
In the next circle, Iranian-financed charities offer a range of social and medical services and scholarships that governments often fail to provide. Another circle consists of “cultural” centers often called Ahl e Beit (People of the House) supervised by the offices of the supreme leader. These centers offer language classes in Persian, English and Arabic, Islamic theology, Koranic commentaries, and traditional philosophy – alongside courses in information technology, media studies, photography and filmmaking.
Wherever possible, the fourth circle is represented by branches of Hizbullah operating openly. Where that’s not possible, clandestine organizations do the job, either alone or in conjunction with Sunni radical groups.
The Khomeinist public diplomacy network includes a half-dozen satellite television and radio networks in several languages, more than 100 newspapers and magazines, a dozen publishing houses, and thousands of Web sites and blogs controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The network controls thousands of mosques throughout the region where preachers from Iran, or trained by Iranians, disseminate the Khomeinist revolutionary message.
Tehran has also created a vast network of non-Shiite fellow travelers within the region’s political and cultural elites. These politicians and intellectuals may be hostile to Khomeinism on ideological grounds – but they regard it as a powerful ally in a common struggle against the American “Great Satan.”
Khomeinist propaganda is trying to portray Iran as a rising “superpower” in the making while the United States is presented as the “sunset” power. The message is simple: The Americans are going, and we are coming.
Tehran plays a patient game. Wherever possible, it is determined to pursue its goals through open political means, including elections. With pro-American and other democratic groups disheartened by the perceived weakness of the Obama administration, Tehran hopes its allies will win all the elections planned for this year in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
“There is this perception that the new U.S. administration is not interested in the democratization strategy,” a senior Lebanese political leader told me. That perception only grows as President Obama calls for an “exit strategy” from Afghanistan and Iraq. Power abhors a vacuum, which the Islamic Republic of Iran is only too happy to fill.
* Belgian opera accused of whipping up anti-Semitism. Concocted scene shows “Israeli soldiers” raping a woman and stroking their weapons while placing them horizontally against their crotches
* Lebanese authorities ban books by Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and other Jewish writers
* All of Jane Fonda’s films are also banned in Lebanon, “since she visited Israel in the 1980s”
* Slumdog Millionaire stars spotted making out in Tel Aviv restaurant
* Making a horrible business even uglier, one of the lawyers of the leader of the gang that slaughtered Ilan Halimi in Paris, reportedly represented Saddam Hussein and the other is married to the terrorist Carlos
***
This dispatch primarily concerns Israel and anti-Semitism. I also attach one item on an unrelated topic at the end of this dispatch, which I first posted on The National Review website yesterday morning: Israeli jets practiced a long-distance strike against Iranian nuclear targets over Gibraltar.
CONTENTS
1. UNESCO makes Beirut “World Book Capital” as it bans The Diary of Anne Frank
2. Belgian opera shows Jew raping woman in anti-Israel piece
3. American Jewish professor probed after comparing Israel to Nazis
4. Trial of anti-Semitic torture and murder that shocked France begins
5. Pat Buchanan compares John Demjanjuk with Jesus
6. Klinghoffer killer freed in Italy; fights deportation
7. UK politician rejected as candidate for being Jewish
8. British airline wipes Israel off the map
9. “Trade Unions linking Israel and Palestine”
10. Austrian Holocaust denier jailed for five years
11. Czechs expel ex-KKK leader on Holocaust denial charges
12. Two Israelis make Time’s 100 most influential people list
13. “Slumdog Millionaire” stars find love in Israel
14. “Don’t have sex and drive”
15. “Why Jane Fonda is banned in Beirut” (Wall St. Journal, May 1, 2009)
16. “A Loud and Promised Land” (By David Brooks, New York Times)
17. “Israel practiced Iran strike over Gibraltar” (By Tom Gross, NRO, May 3, 2009)
[Notes by Tom Gross]
UNESCO MAKES BEIRUT “WORLD BOOK CAPITAL” AS IT BANS THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK
William Marling, a visiting professor at the American University of Beirut, writes in The Wall Street Journal:
A professor at the American University here recently ordered copies of “The Diary of Anne Frank” for his classes, only to learn that the book is banned. Inquiring further, he discovered a long list of prohibited books, films and music.
This is perplexing – and deeply ironic – because Beirut has been named UNESCO’s 2009 “World Book Capital City.” Just last week “World Book and Copyright Day” was kicked off with a variety of readings and exhibits that honor “conformity to the principles of freedom of expression [and] freedom to publish,” as stated by the UNESCO Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
… Even a partial list of books banned in Lebanon gives pause: Thomas Keneally’s “Schindler’s List”; Thomas Friedman’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem”; books by Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Isaac Bashevis Singer. In fact, all books that portray Jews, Israel or Zionism favorably are banned.
Writers in Arabic are not exempt. Syria’s Sadiq Jalal al-Azm was prosecuted for his “Critique of Religious Thinking.”
… All of Jane Fonda’s films are banned, since she visited Israel in 1982. “Torn Curtain” is banned: Paul Newman starred in “Exodus.” And the television series “The Nanny” is banned because of Fran Drescher…
(Full article below.)
BELGIAN OPERA SHOWS JEW RAPING WOMAN IN ANTI-ISRAEL PIECE
Leading members of Belgium’s Jewish community last week accused the producers of a new production at the state-funded Flanders Opera of whipping up anti-Semitism by portraying a religious Jew raping a woman in a show about Israel.
The highly-controversial scene appeared in the premiere of a new production (and horrible distortion) of Saint-Saens’ nineteenth-century opera “Samson and Delilah” in Antwerp on Tuesday evening. The production was created by two extreme leftist Israelis, who turned the biblical tale of Samson into what they said was “a reverse-role protest against Israel’s treatment Palestinians.”
Almost uniquely among armies, the Israeli army has never been accused of rape. There have been several anti-Semitic attacks in Belgium in recent years.
Belgium’s Jewish community has condemned the opera and the two “self-hating” Israelis who directed it, Omri Nitzan and Amir Nizar Zuabi, of deliberately trying to encourage anti-Semitism.
Another scene in the opera showed “Israeli soldiers” clad in black combat suits and armed with M-16 assault rifles stroking their weapons while placing them horizontally against their crotches.
AMERICAN JEWISH PROFESSOR PROBED AFTER COMPARING ISRAEL TO NAZIS
A Jewish professor from The University of California, Santa Barbara is under review for disseminating material that equates Israelis to Nazis.
The university is investigating allegations of improper conduct and anti-Semitism against tenured sociology professor William I. Robinson for sending an e-mail to 80 of his students that contained photos of Jews killed by the Nazis and similar photos of Palestinians killed in the recent Israeli offensive in Gaza.
Robinson added a personal note to his students at the top of his email saying that Gaza was a “concentration camp” and Israel was committing “genocide”.
Jewish groups said that besides the fact that Professor Robinson’s email contained blatant anti-Semitic lies, “the bylaws of the school forbid using classrooms as platforms for dogmas that have nothing whatsoever to do with the material being studied.” The complaint against Robinson was filed by two of his Jewish students.
The same email that Robinson sent already roused controversy in January, after a Norwegian diplomat serving in Saudi Arabia used her official mail from the Norwegian foreign ministry to spread it to recipients (as reported on this website at the time).
SELF-LOATHING
Robinson, 50, is one of a small but vociferous band of American Jewish academics and “intellectuals” who have been accused of being the latest in a 2,000 year line of self-loathing Jewish anti-Semites.
Robinson said he “regularly sends his students voluntary reading material about current events for the global affairs course, and didn’t see what the problem was.”
According to The Los Angeles Times, letters of support for Robinson have arrived from academics across America, including one from California Scholars for Academic Freedom, which says it represents 100 professors at 20 college campuses. The group argues that the allegations have been raised against Robinson to “silence criticism of Israeli policies and practices.”
TRIAL OF ANTI-SEMITIC TORTURE AND MURDER THAT SHOCKED FRANCE BEGINS
Twenty-seven people have gone on trial in Paris for the kidnapping, torture and sadistic murder of a young Jewish man that shocked France three years ago.
Ilan Halimi, 23, was randomly chosen as a Jew, kidnapped, and brutally tortured for more than three weeks before he was found naked and tied to a tree near a railway track in the suburbs south of Paris. He had been stabbed in many places, including his throat, doused in alcohol and set alight. He died on the way to hospital.
During the 24-day torture, he had acid thrown on him, was repeatedly burned with cigarettes, had his skin cut open, his mouth bound with tape, and his eyes Sellotaped shut. Tens of thousands took to the streets of Paris to march against anti-Semitism after the brutal crime
Youssouf Fofana, the leader of a Paris gang known as The Barbarians, shouted “Allah Akbar” in Arabic and anti-Semitic slogans at Halimi’s family as he entered court last week. He is alleged to have instructed gang members to target Jews and to kidnap them until their families paid a ransom.
During the kidnap ordeal, Fofana phoned Halimi’s family and made them listen to their son scream while he insulted Jews and sang verses from the Koran in between ransom demands over the phone.
“My son died like millions of Jews before him, because of anti-Semitism,” wrote Ruth Halimi in a recent book about the ordeal in which she compared the kidnapping with that of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist beheaded by Muslim extremists in 2002.
BODY MOVED TO JERUSALEM
Writing in The Wall Street Journal from Paris, Nidra Poller said: “One of the most troubling aspects of this affair is the probable involvement of relatives and neighbors, beyond the immediate circle of the gang, who were told about the Jewish hostage and dropped in to participate in the torture.”
Ruth Halimi has had her son’s body disinterred and his remains reburied in Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem. “You will never be able to hurt him any more,” she wrote in her book, addressing the killers. “I took him away from here because one day you will be free and you would have been able to come and spit on his tomb.”
The desecration of Jewish graveyards has become a common crime in France. Halimi’s family said they hoped that the trial will focus attention on rising attacks on French Jews over the past few years, during which time thousands have immigrated to Israel.
One of Fofana’s lawyers also reportedly represented Saddam Hussein and the other is married to the terrorist Carlos.
* I have written extensively about the Halimi case here in an op-ed for The National Post (Canada) and The Jerusalem Post (Israel).
PAT BUCHANAN COMPARES JOHN DEMJANJUK WITH JESUS
While much anti-Semitism today comes from left-wing commentators and intellectuals, some far rightists also still engage in it.
In his latest outburst, American politician and broadcaster Pat Buchanan has compared suspected Nazi mass murderer John Demjanjuk with Jesus.
Demjanjuk was last month sentenced to be deported by the United States to stand trial in Germany for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
“The spirit behind this un-American persecution has never been that of justice tempered by mercy,” Buchanan said last week. “It is the same satanic brew of hate and revenge that drove another innocent Man up Calvary that first Good Friday 2,000 years ago.”
Both Jewish and Catholic commentators have condemned Buchanan, a Catholic, for his “obscene and anti-Semitic comparison between Demjanjuk and Jesus.”
Buchanan continues to be employed as a political commentator on the MSNBC cable network. He has made many statements in the past which have been condemned as anti-Semitic. For example, he compared the 2002 Battle of Jenin to the Auschwitz extermination camp.
KLINGHOFFER KILLER FREED IN ITALY; FIGHTS DEPORTATION
Italian authorities last week freed one of the four terrorists that hijacked the passenger ship Achille Lauro in 1985, and shot elderly wheelchair-bound American Jewish passenger Leon Klinghoffer and tossed him overboard in his wheelchair, still alive, where he drowned.
Yusuf Magid Al-Mulqi was transferred to a holding facility where he is fighting deportation claiming that he should be allowed to remain in Italy because he has married an Italian citizen. Another member of the terror squad was released last year and pleaded for asylum in Italy, but was turned down by Italian officials.
UK POLITICIAN REJECTED AS CANDIDATE FOR BEING JEWISH
The British Labor Party has become embroiled in a race row after a woman claimed she had been told that she was “too white and Jewish” to be selected as a candidate for local elections.
Labor councilor Mahmood Hussain said he would not support Elaina Cohen’s application for a seat on Birmingham city council. “My Muslim members don’t want you because you are Jewish,” he reportedly told her.
Cohen filed a complaint against Hussain, who is a former lord mayor of Birmingham. “I am shocked and upset that a member of the Labor Party in this day and age could even think something like that, let alone say it. I feel particularly aggrieved because I have worked across all sections of the community, particularly with the Muslim section, and have been on official visits to Pakistan,” she told The Daily Mail newspaper.
Hussain, who served as Birmingham’s first Muslim Lord Mayor seven years ago, is alleged to have made the comment to Cohen who wanted to stand in the East Handsworth and Lozells by-election.
BRITISH AIRLINE WIPES ISRAEL OFF THE MAP
Complaints have been brought against the British airline BMI regarding a digital in-flight map that omitted Israel. The map was even used by BMI on its flights to Tel Aviv. The only Israeli city, Haifa, is noted as “Khefa,” an Arabic name for the city used by Hamas.
BMI apologized and insisted that the map had not been drawn with an anti-Israel agenda in mind – rather the aircraft in question were recently bought from a bankrupt charter company that largely flew to Arab countries. BMI said the map would be changed immediately.
“If BMI had any political agenda in order not to anger neighboring countries, it would not have invested so much in our Tel Aviv air route,” a BMI spokesperson told The Times of London. BMI operates daily flights between London Heathrow and Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport.
BMI said the map had been created by British airline BMED (British Mediterranean Airways), from which BMI acquired the planes two years ago. BMED, formerly a franchise of British Airways, was absorbed into BMI in October 2007.
BENDING TO SAUDI SEXISM
BMI also made headlines recently after it fired a staff member for refusing to fly to Saudi Arabia. Flight attendant Lisa Ashton was told to wear an abaya, a black robe which covers everything but the face, feet and hands in public places in Saudi Arabia. She was also instructed to walk behind her male colleagues, irrespective of rank.
Ashton, a practicing Christian, filed for unfair dismissal at a UK employment tribunal earlier this year. The court dismissed the case, stating that BMI was justified in imposing “rules of a different culture” on staff.
“TRADE UNIONS LINKING ISRAEL AND PALESTINE”
Trade union leaders from three continents have announced the launch of a new global movement “to challenge the apologists for Hamas and Hizbullah in the labor movement” and to fight against attempts to boycott Israel, which they said are counterproductive for those who want a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The movement is called “Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine,” or TULIP (www.tuliponline.org). The organizers come from the Australian Workers Union, The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union of America, and from Community, a British trade union.
AUSTRIAN HOLOCAUST DENIER JAILED FOR FIVE YEARS
An Austrian court last week sentenced extreme-right wing writer and poet Gerd Honsik to five years in prison for denying the Holocaust and promoting Nazi ideology. Honsik is author of the book “Acquittal for Hitler?” and various texts denying the Holocaust.
The prosecutor called Honsik “one of the ideological leaders of neo-Nazism in Europe” and noted that he had distributed his “anti-Semitic hate magazine” at schools. Honsik called himself a Social Democrat and said he had merely “rejected the textbook wisdom that demonizes National Socialism.”
CZECH EXPELS EX-KKK LEADER ON HOLOCAUST DENIAL CHARGES
The former leader of America’s Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, was arrested by a team of at least 30 masked policemen in a restaurant in Prague last week on suspicion of denying the Holocaust, and was deported from the Czech Republic. Duke had been guarded at the restaurant’s entrance by far right extremists belonging to a Czech group called “Narodni Odpor” (National Resistance).
Duke’s latest book has just been published in Czech and he was due to deliver two lectures in Prague. The Czech interior minister said the government would not tolerate neo-Nazism. Denying the Holocaust is punishable by up to three years in prison in the Czech Republic.
TWO ISRAELIS MAKE TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE LIST
Two Israelis have been included in Time Magazine’s annual “100 most influential people in the world” issue for 2009 – Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi.
The foreign minister appears on the list under the category “Leaders and Revolutionaries” alongside U.S. President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“The new Israeli and American administrations may be on a collision course,” writes Time, “and the co-navigator of the Israeli ship of state is Avigdor Lieberman, the Foreign Minister.”
The other Israeli on the list, Agassi, appears in the category of “Scientists and Thinkers” for his contribution to the development of the electric car. Time notes he is “helping the world end its addiction to oil by transforming cars from their climate-changing, lung-polluting, gas-guzzling design to one that’s clean, affordable and all-electric.”
“SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE” STARS FIND LOVE IN ISRAEL
Rumors of a romance between the two stars of the hit film “Slumdog Millionaire” have been circulating for some time, but now their love affair seems to have been confirmed, following a secret rendezvous in Israel.
The mother of Dev Patel, who plays Jamal in the Oscar-winning movie, has confirmed that her son flew out to Israel to join former co-star Freida Pinto, where she is filming for Julian Schnabel’s latest film “Miral”. (“Slumdog Millionaire” won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2009.)
The British tabloid The Daily Mirror printed photos of 19-year-old Patel and 24-year-old Pinto enjoying an intimate meeting together in Tel Aviv as Pinto took time off from filming her latest movie in Jerusalem.
“Miral” is the story of an Arab man who tries to open an orphanage in Jerusalem following Israel’s war of independence in 1948.
The Indian model-turned-actress is also now being talked of as a possible future Bond Girl opposite 007 star Daniel Craig.
“DON’T HAVE SEX AND DRIVE”
It is not all news about politics, economics and swine flu in the Israeli press.
The headline and sub-heading in an edition of the Israeli daily Yisrael Hayom last week read:
“Don’t have sex and drive: Policemen couldn’t believe it: In the zigzagging car they stopped were the driver – and a nude young woman sitting on him.”
[All notes above by Tom Gross]
FULL ARTICLES
ANOTHER OWN GOAL FOR UNESCO
Why Jane Fonda is banned in Beirut
Anti-Semitism leads to startling censorship in Lebanon
By William Marling
The Wall Street Journal
May 1, 2009
Beirut -- A professor at the American University here recently ordered copies of “The Diary of Anne Frank” for his classes, only to learn that the book is banned. Inquiring further, he discovered a long list of prohibited books, films and music.
This is perplexing – and deeply ironic – because Beirut has been named UNESCO’s 2009 “World Book Capital City.” Just last week “World Book and Copyright Day” was kicked off with a variety of readings and exhibits that honor “conformity to the principles of freedom of expression [and] freedom to publish,” as stated by the UNESCO Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the UNESCO’s “Florence Agreement.” The catch is that Lebanon has not signed the Florence Agreement, which focuses on the free circulation of print and audio-visual material.
Even a partial list of books banned in Lebanon gives pause: William Styron’s “Sophie’s Choice”; Thomas Keneally’s “Schindler’s List”; Thomas Friedman’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem”; books by Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Isaac Bashevis Singer. In fact, all books that portray Jews, Israel or Zionism favorably are banned.
Writers in Arabic are not exempt. Abdo Wazen’s “The Garden of the Senses” and Layla Baalbaki’s “Hana’s Voyage to the Moon” were taken to court. Syria’s Sadiq Jalal al-Azm was prosecuted for his “Critique of Religious Thinking.”
Censorship is carried out by the Sûreté General, which combines the functions of the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security. It does not post a list of banned works, much less answer questions. However a major book importer, in an email, provided a list of banned films and the reasons given by the Sûreté. Here are some: “A Voice From Heaven” (verses of Koran recited during dance scenes); “Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” (homosexuality); “Barfly” (blacklisted company Canon); and “Daniel Deronda” (shot in Israel).
All of Jane Fonda’s films are banned, since she visited Israel in 1982 to court votes for Tom Hayden’s Senate run. “Torn Curtain” is banned: Paul Newman starred in “Exodus.” And the television series “The Nanny” is banned because of Fran Drescher.
According to Beirut newspaper L’Orient, any one of the recognized religions (a system known as “confessionalism”) can ask the Sûreté to ban any book unilaterally. The Muslim Dar al-Fatwa and the Catholic Information Center are the most active and effective. (The latter got Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” banned.) Even works by self-proclaimed Islamists such as Assadeq al-Nayhoum’s “Islam Held Hostage,” have been banned, and issued only when re-edited in sympathetic editions (in Syria).
Censorship is a problem throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Though a signatory of the Florence Agreement, the Academy of Islamic Research in Egypt, through its censorship board al-Azhar, decides what may not be printed: Nobel Prize winner Naghib Mahfouz’s “Awlad Haratina” (The Sons of the Medina) was found sacrilegious and only printed in bowdlerized form in Egypt in 2006. Saudi Arabia sponsors international book fairs in Riyadh, but Katia Ghosn reported in L’Orient that it sends undercover agents into book stores regularly.
Works that could stimulate dialogue in Lebanon are perfunctorily banned. “Waltz with Bashir,” an Israeli film of 2008, is banned – even though it alleges that Ariel Sharon was complicit in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres. According to the Web site Monstersandcritics, however, “Waltz with Bashir” became an instant classic in the very Palestinian camps it depicts, because it is the only history the younger generation has. But how did those copies get there?
The answer is also embarrassing. Just as it ignores freedom of circulation, Lebanon also ignores international copyright laws. Books of all types are routinely photocopied for use in high schools and universities. As for DVDs, you have only to mention a title and a pirated copy appears. “Slumdog Millionaire” was available in video shops before it opened in the U.S.
SMILES AND WARMTH AND FEROCIOUS SCREAMING
A Loud and Promised Land
By David Brooks
The New York Times
April 17, 2009
TEL AVIV – On my 12th visit to Israel, I finally had my baptism by traffic accident. I was sitting at a red light, when a bus turning the corner honked at me to back up. When I did, I scraped the fender of the car behind me.
The driver – a young, hip-looking, alt-rocker dude – came running out of the car in a fury. He ran up to the bus driver and got into a ferocious screaming match. Then he came up to me graciously and kindly. We were brothers in the war against bus drivers. Then, as we were filling out our paperwork, another bus happened by and honked. The rocker ran out into the street and got into another ferocious screaming match with this driver. Then he came back to me all smiles and warmth.
Israel is a country held together by argument. Public culture is one long cacophony of criticism. The politicians go at each other with a fury we can’t even fathom in the U.S. At news conferences, Israeli journalists ridicule and abuse their national leaders. Subordinates in companies feel free to correct their superiors. People who move here from Britain or the States talk about going through a period of adjustment as they learn to toughen up and talk back.
Ethan Bronner, The New York Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, notes that Israelis don’t observe the distinction between the public and private realms. They treat strangers as if they were their brothers-in-law and feel perfectly comfortable giving them advice on how to live.
One Israeli acquaintance recounts the time he was depositing money into his savings account and everybody else behind him in line got into an argument about whether he should really be putting his money somewhere else. Another friend tells of the time he called directory assistance to get a phone number for a restaurant. The operator responded, “You don’t want to eat there,” and proceeded to give him the numbers of some other restaurants she thought were better.
We can all think of reasons that Israeli culture should have evolved into a reticence-free zone, and that the average behavior should be different here. This is a tough, scrappy country, perpetually fighting for survival. The most emotionally intense experiences are national ones, so the public-private distinction was bound to erode. Moreover, the status system doesn’t really revolve around money. It consists of trying to prove you are savvier than everybody else, that above all you are nobody’s patsy.
As an American Jew, I was taught to go all gooey-eyed at the thought of Israel, but I have to confess, I find the place by turns exhausting, admirable, annoying, impressive and foreign. Israel’s enemies claim the country is an outpost of Western colonialism. That’s not true. Israel is, in large measure, a Middle Eastern country, and the Israeli-Arab dispute is in part an intra-Mideast conflict.
This culture of disputatiousness does yield some essential fruits. First, it gives the country a special vividness. There is no bar on earth quite so vibrant as a bar filled with Israelis.
Second, it explains the genuine national unity. Israel is the most diverse small country imaginable. Nonetheless, I may be interviewing a left-wing artist in Tel Aviv or a right-wing settler in Hebron, and I can be highly confident that they will have a few things in common: an intense sense of national mission, a hunger for emotionally significant moments, an inability to read social signals when I try to suggest that I really don’t want them to harangue me about moving here and adopting their lifestyle.
Most important, this argumentative culture nurtures a sense of responsibility. The other countries in this region are more gracious, but often there is a communal unwillingness to accept responsibility for national problems. The Israelis, on the other hand, blame themselves for everything and work hard to get the most out of each person. From that wail of criticism things really do change. I come here nearly annually, and while the peace process is always the same, there is always something unrecognizable about the national scene – whether it is the structure of the political parties, the absorption of immigrants or the new engines of economic growth.
Today, Israel is stuck in a period of frustrating stasis. Iran poses an existential threat that is too big for Israel to deal with alone. Hamas and Hezbollah will frustrate peace plans, even if the Israelis magically do everything right.
This conflict will go on for a generation or more. Israelis will keep up their insufferable and necessary barrage of self-assertion. And yet we still dream of peace and the day when I am standing in line at an Israeli cash register and an Israeli shopper sees a chance to butt in front of me, and – miracle of miracles – she will not try to take it.
ISRAELI JETS PRACTICED A LONG-DISTANCE STRIKE AGAINST IRANIAN NUCLEAR TARGETS OVER GIBRALTAR
French Magazine: Israel practiced Iran strike over Gibraltar
By Tom Gross
National Review
Sunday, May 3, 2009
The French magazine L’Express today reports that Israeli jets practiced a long-distance strike against Iranian nuclear targets over Gibraltar. If accurate, the report means the Israelis rehearsed a strike some 2,600 miles from home – a distance sufficient to simulate a strike on Iranian territory.
The report in L’Express is the latest to suggest that the Israeli air force (IAF) has decided to be ready to launch a mission at a moment’s notice should Israel’s political leaders give the go-ahead.
Israeli strategists believe that the leaking of such Israeli preparations serve as an important element of deterrence regardless of whether or not Israel has actually decided to strike if it determines that a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear program has become impossible.
Also today, The Jerusalem Post reveals that Israeli air force reservists who operate the Arrow and Patriot missile defense systems have recently begun spending one day a week on duty to sharpen their skills, amid fears that in a conflict with Iran, dozens of long-range missiles would be fired at Israel.
Later this year, the IAF will hold an unprecedented and massive exercise with the U.S. military to jointly test three different ballistic missile defense systems, including the Israeli-made Arrow and the American THAAD and Aegis, which will be brought specially to Israel for the exercise.
The high-powered American X-Band radar, deployed in the Negev Desert in late 2008* as a farewell gift from former President George W. Bush, participated in the recent Arrow test and tracked the incoming target. (* See item 3 here.)
* Because there are a very large number of journalists on this email list, I occasionally include a dispatch not specifically about the Middle East, but relating to developments in the news media in general. The following are all items I have posted on The National Review’s Media Blog in recent days. Another dispatch concerning Middle East politics will follow in a few days.
CONTENTS
1. Happy Birthday, YouTube!
2. New Guinea tribe sues New Yorker magazine for $10 million
3. Murdoch’s Wall St. Journal set to regain No. 1 circulation spot
4. China launches new English-language daily paper
5. Ship’s Israeli security fends off pirates – BBC has the not-so-full story
6. With print edition gone, Seattle P-I web traffic sinks
7. Newsroom employment drops to lowest level since early 1980s – but online jobs up
8. Newscasts cover Obama more than Bush & Clinton combined
9. The Media and the President: A cartoon
10. Why we should get rid of the White House Press Corps
11. U.S. reporters detained in North Korea face up to 10 years forced labor
12. Another Russian journalist in coma after severe beating
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOUTUBE!
(By Tom Gross, April 23, 2009)
YouTube must be the fastest growing media in history. It celebrates its fourth birthday today.
This was YouTube’s very first video, uploaded at 8.27 pm on Saturday April 23rd, 2005. The video was shot by Yakov Lapitsky at the San Diego Zoo in California:
Since then hundreds of millions of people in every corner of the world have watched tens of millions of videos uploaded to YouTube, which was bought by Google from its founders for a large sum of money.
NEW GUINEA TRIBE SUES NEW YORKER MAGAZINE FOR $10 MILLION
(By Tom Gross, April 22, 2009)
In an April 21, 2008, New Yorker story, “Vengeance Is Ours,” Pulitzer Prize-winning geology scholar Jared Diamond described blood feuds that allegedly rage for decades among tribes in New Guinea.
Now one of the tribes is suing him and the magazine for libel. They are demanding compensation after the magazine depicted them as rapists, murderers, and pig thieves.
A two-page complaint filed in New York State Supreme Court on Monday seeks $10 million from The New Yorker’s publisher, Advance Publications.
MURDOCH’S WALL ST. JOURNAL SET TO REGAIN NO. 1 CIRCULATION SPOT
(By Tom Gross, April 29, 2009)
The Wall Street Journal is set to reclaim its weekday circulation crown from USA Today for the first time since September 1999, according to a new Audit Bureau of Circulations report.
USA Today still has America’s biggest Monday-through-Friday circulation, averaging 2,113,725 over the six months ended in March. But USA Today plunged 7.5% from the period a year earlier, whereas The Wall Street Journal posted the only increase among the top 25 weekday papers, a 0.6% bump that lifted it to 2,082,189.
If USA Today falls another two percentage points while The Journal holds steady, The Journal will once again claim the largest paid weekday circulation in the U.S.
The New York Times remains far behind in third spot.
CHINA LAUNCHES NEW ENGLISH-LANGUAGE DAILY PAPER
(By Tom Gross, April 26, 2009)
This may be an era of cuts and closures for the media elsewhere around the world, but this week China launched a new daily newspaper: an English-language version of the state tabloid Global Times. The costly enterprise is part of Beijing’s drive to promote its views to foreigners.
China already has an English language paper: the staid official broadsheet The China Daily. In comparison, the Chinese edition of the Global Times is seen as a lively and popular (though nationalist) tabloid despite being a subsidiary of The People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist party. The initial print-run of the English-language edition of Global Times is 100,000 copies a day.
You can read the online edition here.
SHIP’S ISRAELI SECURITY FENDS OFF PIRATES – BBC HAS THE NOT-SO-FULL STORY
(By Tom Gross, April 27, 2009)
Israeli private security guards have fought off pirates north of the coast of Somalia, saving 1,500 Italian cruise-ship passengers from potential harm. The Italian crew provided stirring accounts of the efficiency and bravery of the Israeli security guards, who exchanged fire with the heavily armed pirates. This was noted in many media reports, for example here by the Associated Press.
PIRATES AND ISRAELIS
But one organization – and no surprise, it is the BBC – despite running a 23-paragraph story about the incident, went out of its way not to mention that the saviors of the ship and its 1,500 passengers were Israelis. Is the BBC ever willing to portray Israelis in a positive light?
UPDATE: Following criticism by myself and others, on Monday night the BBC subtly added the word “Israeli” into the eleventh paragraph of their article – but its time stamp remains unchanged, despite the update. This is not the first time the BBC has subtly updated pieces without telling readers. See, for example, here and here.
WITH PRINT EDITION GONE, SEATTLE P-I WEBTRAFFIC SINKS
(By Tom Gross, April 28, 2009)
It seems that print editions of newspapers really do drive online readership after all.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which published its last edition on March 17, was knocked off the list of top 30 newspaper websites in March, according to the latest Nielsen figures.
Seattlepi.com fell to No. 32 with 1.4 million unique users, down 23 percent compared to March 2008, when it had 1.8 million unique users. It had 1.5 million in February.
Online-only newspaper readership is still very low in the United States. According to Scarborough Research, the number of adults who read newspapers online-only during the week is a mere 4 percent.
***
Below is the list of top 20 newspaper websites ranked by unique audience for March, according to The Editor and Publisher.
NYTimes.com – 20,118,000
USAToday.com – 9,961,000
washingtonpost.com – 9,367,000
Wall Street Journal Online – 9,192,000
LA Times – 8,643,000
Boston.com – 5,742,000
New York Daily News – 5,658,000
Chicago Tribune – 5,270,000
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle – 4,227,000
New York Post – 3,827,000
DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News – 3,536,000
The Houston Chronicle – 3,095,000
Newsday – 3,065,000
Atlanta Journal-Constitution – 3,041,000
Politico – 3,033,000
Chicago Sun-Times – 2,737,000
MiamiHerald.com – 2,686,000
Star Tribune – 2,360,000
The Seattle Times – 2,262,000
International Herald Tribune – 1,984,000
NEWSROOM EMPLOYMENT DROPS TO LOWEST LEVEL SINCE EARLY 1980S – BUT ONLINE JOBS UP
(By Tom Gross, April 20, 2009)
Newsroom employment dropped by 11.3 percent in 2008, with the industry losing some 5,900 jobs, according to the American Society of News Editors.
It’s the biggest drop the organization has recorded since it first started conducting its employment surveys in 1978. The number of newsroom jobs is now at a level last seen in the early 1980s, it said.
However, other findings from the survey reveal that there was a significant 21 percent rise in the number of online-only journalists last year to 2,300.
NEWSCASTS COVER OBAMA MORE THAN BUSH & CLINTON COMBINED
(By Tom Gross, April 29, 2009)
The nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs has released a study that found that the nightly newscasts devoted 27 hours, 44 minutes to President Obama’s presidency during his first 50 days. Not only has Obama received more coverage than his predecessors, but that coverage has been much more positive, the study found.
At 7 hours, 42 minutes, George W. Bush received about only a quarter of Obama’s coverage, and at 15 hours, two minutes, Bill Clinton received about half Obama’s coverage in his first 50 days in office.
On the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts, 58 percent of all evaluations of the president and his policies have been favorable, the study found. That compares with 33 percent of stories being positive in the comparable period of Bush’s tenure, and 44 percent positive for Clinton.
The study found that only one channel – Fox News – asked probing questions of Obama and his policies.
THE MEDIA AND THE PRESIDENT
(By Tom Gross, April 22, 2009)
WHY WE SHOULD GET RID OF THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS
(By Tom Gross, April 20, 2009)
Ana Marie Cox writes in The Washington Post:
“Too often, the White House briefing room is where news goes to die. It’s not that the reporters covering the president are bad at their jobs. Most are experienced journalists at the top of their game – and they’re wasted at the White House, where scoops are doled out, not uncovered.”
I’d second that.
U.S. REPORTERS DETAINED IN NORTH KOREA FACE UP TO 10 YEARS FORCED LABOR
(By Tom Gross, April 4, 2009)
An international media rights group has urged North Korea to drop plans to put two detained U.S. reporters on trial, saying they face up to 10 years of forced labor in a prison camp if convicted. Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF, Reporters Without Borders) also said, according to the Associated Press, that it was “by no means clear” that the two women from California were on North Korean territory when they were detained by the North’s border guards on March 17.
The Paris-based group said it was the first time foreign journalists have been held in the North for any length of time since the detention of Japanese reporter Takashi Sugishima from December 1999 to February 2002.
In Washington, the State Department said Tuesday it is still working with Sweden, which represents U.S. interests in Pyongyang, in a bid to win their release.
ANOTHER RUSSIAN JOURNALIST IN COMA AFTER SEVERE BEATING
(By Tom Gross, May 1, 2009)
The editor-in-chief of a weekly newspaper in the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-na-Donu is in a coma after he was severely beaten on Wednesday by unknown assailants.
Vyacheslav Yaroshenko suffered extensive head injuries and was operated on through the night. Doctors said his life hangs in the balance.
This is only the latest in a whole series of brutal attacks on Russian journalists in recent months – attacks which are not receiving the media attention they should in the West, but some of which I documented in the item below.
WEEKS AFTER ATTACK, RUSSIAN MEDIA OWNER COMES OUT OF COMA
(By Tom Gross, NRO, April 6, 2009)
Vadim Rogozhin, the owner of Russian media group Vzglyad Media, has woken from his coma nearly a month after he was brutally attack by unknown assailants in the southern Russian city of Saratov. He is still said to be in a serious condition. Staff said he was targeted because his media had been critical of the authorities.
Meanwhile, preliminary results of the investigation into the death last week of journalist Sergei Protazanov in the Moscow suburb of Khimki indicate that he was poisoned. Colleagues said that he was killed as part of an ongoing assault against the newspaper where he worked, Grazhdanskoye Soglasiye.
Grazhdanskoye Soglasiye is the only opposition newspaper in Khimki, a city of about 180,000 located just northwest of Moscow. Protazanov was one of several local journalists in the area to be attacked in recent months. Grazhdanskoye Soglasiye’s editor-in-chief was stabbed 10 times outside his home in February 2008.
LEG AMPUTATED
Last November, Mikhail Beketov, editor-in-chief of Khimkinskaya Pravda, was severely beaten. He remained in a coma for weeks and had to have his leg amputated as a result of the attack.
On February 3, the editor-in-chief of Solnechnegorsky Forum, a newspaper in the nearby city of Solnechnogorsk, was assaulted.
On March 12, the managing editor of Molva Yuzhnoye Podmoskove was beaten in the city of Serpukhov.
Meanwhile, prominent Russian human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov, 67, was attacked last week by three unidentified men outside his Moscow apartment.
It is regrettable that these crimes are not receiving more media attention in the West. Many European newspapers are too obsessed with attacking Israel to notice what is going on in the east of their own continent. Russia’s path towards authoritarianism has potentially grave implications for the continent.