BBC FEEDING DISGRACEFUL ANTI-SEMITIC LIES TO IRANIANS -- IN PERSIAN

[Note by Tom Gross]

This is a short dispatch, with two pieces, which are quite brief so I suggest you read them in full.

The first is something I published yesterday evening on the websites of The National Post (Canada) and The National Review (America).

To be clear: There was absolutely no harvesting of organs by Israel despite what the BBC and others are reporting. Organ harvesting is when you take organs for profit or to transplant them into someone else, and without permission. In Israel, this is against the law, and someone needs to expressly state that they want their organs removed for research after they die. By contrast in several Western countries, including Spain, Belgium, Austria, Finland, France, Norway and Singapore, doctors can “presume consent” for organ transplants of the deceased. See here, for example.

In any case what the BBC and other British media have reported in recent days, as I explain in the piece below, is an utter lie based on the traditional anti-Semitic blood libel (common historically in the run up to Easter or Christmas) of Jews mutilating non-Jews by removing organs or blood, a lie that made a crucial contribution to centuries of pogroms culminating in the Holocaust.

The Guardian has at least apologized for what it calls its “serious error” unlike the BBC.

A BARONESS AND HER WORDS OF UNWISDOM

The second item below is the editorial from today’s Wall Street Journal Europe.

The writers of this editorial are subscribers to my email list and they pick up on my points in Sunday’s dispatch about Baroness Catherine Ashton using her maiden speech as EU Foreign Policy chief in the European Parliament to trash Israel, and also on the point I made in the dispatch before that about the steel – yes, steel – wall that the Palestinians’ Arab brother nation, Egypt, is quietly building alongside Gaza.

In the sixth paragraph, the Journal highlights the photos of Gaza I found in Palestine Today, which I wrote about in my recent article for the paper.

-- Tom Gross

AN INTERVIEW IN PERSIAN

PS. For those on this list that read Persian, you can find an interview with me here about the situation in Iran and Obama’s approach to it, with Radio Farda, the leading pro-democracy radio and website broadcasting into Iran.

ARTICLES

“THE CAMPAIGN FOR LEGAL TARGETING OF ISRAELI LEADERS IS NOT MERELY FRIVOLOUS: IT IS REPUGNANT”

Abuse of process
The targeting of Israeli ministers by the courts is not justice, it is a disgrace
The Times (UK)
December 16, 2009

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6958044.ece

The application of law to warfare is among the greatest advances in Western civilisation over four centuries. In the name of human rights, that tradition is being traduced by a politicised campaign to harass the statesmen of a democracy. It is unlikely that you will have needed to read this far to learn that the targeted nation is Israel.

Tzipi Livni, the leader of the Israeli Kadima party, accepted an invitation to speak at an Anglo-Jewish event in London last weekend. It emerged in the meantime that British magistrates had issued an arrest warrant against Ms Livni for alleged war crimes committed during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza last winter, when she was Foreign Minister (see page 14). The warrant was the latest attempt by pressure groups to seek British court authority for the arrest of Israeli leaders. It was rescinded only when the court learnt that Ms Livni had cancelled her trip to Britain, apparently because of a scheduling clash. The Israeli Foreign Ministry nonetheless expressed fury.

The Israeli reaction is far from overwrought. Ms Livni’s is the second such case in recent months. Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister during the Gaza offensive, attended a meeting at the British Labour Party conference in September. Campaigners unsuccessfully sought an arrest warrant against him from the same court.

The difference between the cases appears to be that Mr Barak was still a serving minister, whereas Ms Livni is not. Lawyers acting for the campaigners cite the principle of “universal jurisdiction”. Under it, courts in England and Wales have jurisdiction over certain crimes regardless of where in the world they were committed.

Mr Barak, however, enjoyed immunity from prosecution as a representative of a state.

It is preposterous that so serious an issue is reduced to a legal technicality. It makes British justice look ridiculous. The least of the consequences of the warrant against Ms Livni will be a monumental waste of time. Any Israeli minister visiting the UK will seek a meeting with a British counterpart merely to insure against the risk of a frivolous legal case.

But the campaign for legal targeting of Israeli leaders is not merely frivolous: it is repugnant. It risks damaging Britain’s relations with an ally, undermines the Government’s moral authority in promoting a two-state settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and brings the legal system into disrepute.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is now looking urgently at ways to close the loophole. Universal jurisdiction has honourable intent. It seeks to protect the vulnerable by ensuring that war criminals can be tried even if they live in countries with weak legal systems. It is the rationale for the indictment of Radovan Karadzic before an international tribunal at The Hague. But Israel’s Gaza offensive was not the genocide at Srebrenica.

The Times reported the deaths and suffering in Gaza, and exposed Israel’s use of white phosphorus despite official denials. That campaign was not a crime against humanity. It was a chapter in Israel’s history of trying to stop violence against its own civilians, which is a prerequisite of achieving the two-state resolution that Mr Barak and Ms Livni have worked for. You cannot reasonably criticise Israel’s military tactics without understanding Israel’s security needs.

The legal campaign against Israel’s leaders is not justice but politics, and disreputable politics at that.

“IT’S TIME TO UNAMBIGUOUSLY REJECT UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION BEFORE ITS INFECTION SPREADS EVEN FURTHER”

Democracy under arrest
“Universal” human-rights law never seems to apply to the likes of Kim Jong Il
By John Bolton
Wall Street Journal
December 15, 2009

“Universal jurisdiction” sounds like a term plucked from obscure international law journals, but it has pernicious and profoundly antidemocratic consequences in the real world. A British arrest warrant, issued over the weekend in London for former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, shows precisely why.

The warrant charged Ms. Livni – the current leader of the Knesset opposition – with war crimes allegedly committed by Israeli forces during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last winter. Ms. Livni and other Israeli leaders have always staunchly defended their operation against Hamas, and the arrest warrant was withdrawn Monday when it became clear Ms. Livni would not be in Britain as previously scheduled. But the fallout from this misguided warrant will linger long after it fades from the headlines.

Universal jurisdiction originated centuries ago to deal with hostes humani generis (“the enemies of all mankind”) such as pirates or slavers, who were not under any state’s control but legitimately concerned them all. It has grown explosively in recent years, as self-styled human-rights advocates have pushed to criminalize national actions that they find offensive.

Today’s version of universal jurisdiction masquerades as a legal concept, but is in fact a form of political morality. It empowers prosecutions in states with little or even no connection to alleged offenses such as war crimes and gross abuses of human rights. And in many countries, as in Britain, the ability of private citizens to trigger the criminal process only adds to the danger of politicized prosecutions.

When leaders of constitutional, representative governments are targets, there is simply no argument for applying universal jurisdiction. Ms. Livni and her colleagues won free and fair Israeli elections, and were in fact defeated in subsequent free and fair elections. Israel’s laws have been adopted by democratically elected Knesset members and enforced by an independent judiciary. If crimes under Israeli law have been committed, they can be prosecuted by Israel’s courts. Same goes for the United States.

Augusto Pinochet’s 1999 arrest in Britain on a Spanish warrant for offenses committed while overthrowing Chile’s Salvadore Allende first brought universal jurisdiction global prominence. But Pinochet’s arrest was followed by Belgium’s toying with the idea of arresting Donald Rumsfeld for having the temerity to visit NATO headquarters in Brussels. Now Ms. Livni and other Israeli officials involved in recent regional conflicts are subject to potential arrest and trial if they travel beyond Israel’s borders.

It is no accident that arrest warrants never seem to be issued for the likes of Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, since the real targets of universal jurisdiction these days are Western nations. Ultimately, what it targets is the very ideas of sovereign accountability and political independence. These goals largely motivated the 1998 Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court, itself a step toward constraining states’ abilities to police their own affairs, and an institution that the Obama administration yearns to join.

Transferring accountability for decisions from democratic politics to the criminal justice system understandably intimidates policy makers from making perfectly justifiable choices, such as defending against terrorist threats. Moreover, “command responsibility” has been transmogrified from liability for failing to stop known criminal activity, to liability when officials “should have known” their subordinates were committing crimes. This further ups the ante and explains why former foreign ministers like Ms. Livni or Henry Kissinger are at risk.

This deterrent impact is exactly what universal jurisdiction advocates seek – both to affect decisions at the highest national levels, and to discourage mid- and low-level officials from implementing disfavored policies. Some foreign critics hope to prosecute former President George W. Bush for enhanced interrogation techniques and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. While they likely won’t get to the former president, they’ll be at least somewhat content prosecuting the attorneys who wrote the underlying legal justifications. Incredibly, the Obama administration has yet to definitively reject the possibility of allowing such prosecutions overseas.

Universal jurisdiction against officials of authoritarian regimes sounds appealing. But in these cases, the real goal should be replacing such regimes with representative governments that undertake sovereign accountability for prior transgressions.

Nonetheless, human-rights activists who view their morality as higher than that of elected governments are satisfied by nothing less than prosecution. That is precisely why contemporary universal jurisdiction is so profoundly antidemocratic.

Undoubtedly, leaders of constitutional democracies make mistakes about whom they do and do not prosecute. But to substitute the judgments of self-designated international Platonic Guardians for representative governments and independent judiciaries is perilous at best, and authoritarian at worst. It’s the time to unambiguously reject universal jurisdiction before its infection spreads even further.

“GREAT. NOW I CAN BE ABSOLUTELY SURE I HAVEN’T ACCIDENTLY BOUGHT SOMETHING MADE BY A JEW”

Labelling as sop to boycotters
The only new settlement policy that will work will be one that stems from softened Arab attitudes
By Daniel Finkelstein
The Jewish Chronicle (UK)
December 17, 2009

“The British government is opposed to any kind of boycott of Israel” says a spokesman for the British Embassy in Israel. Yeah, right. What do you think I am mate, an idiot? (Don’t answer that.)

Last week, the British government helpfully clarified its position on labelling goods from the West Bank. It is already illegal to label a good that comes from the West Bank as having been made in Israel. But now further guidance has been forthcoming. Not a rule, you understand, simply a recommendation. Goods should be labelled to indicate whether they are made by Israeli settlers or by Palestinians.

Great. Now I can be absolutely sure I haven’t accidently bought something made by a Jew. I hate those guys.

There is a vast difference between the original rule – that goods from an area that is not internationally recognised as being in Israel should not be labelled as coming from Israel – and this new recommendation. The government is promoting the idea that the ethnic origin of the goods should be made clear on the label.

Anyone fancy: “These goods have been made in N. Ireland but by Roman Catholics”?

Anyone fancy: “These goods have been made in Northern Ireland but by people of Roman Catholic extraction”? “Made in Rwanda by Tutsis”? Don’t worry, though. This won’t happen. The new recommendation will start with Israel and stop there, too.

So the suggestion that the British Government does not support a boycott is disingenuous. Labelling goods as coming from the West Bank can be justified as a pedantic insistence upon international law. By contrast, labelling goods as coming from settlers is nakedly political — rather than administrative. It is intended to aid those organising boycotts of those goods. This labelling idea was initiated by boycotters and has been granted as a political concession to them. So, if this is a naked piece of politics, what ought we to think of it? Besides remarking that the singling out of Jewish-made goods for an ethnic labelling system is disgusting. Is it good politics?

Here is my view. The decision to settle in the land Israel conquered in the wars was a disastrous error – a wrong that will have to be reversed. Israel and supporters like me cannot complain about the huge international pressure to reverse the policy.

So I sympathise with the position of the Obama administration and its frustration that it cannot persuade the Israelis to back down on settlement building. So long as they don’t think a new Israeli policy on settlements will bring peace. Or even much advance it.

The Arab governments and the Palestinians were opposed to the state of Israel before there were settlements in the territories. They killed Jews before there were settlements in the territories. They launched wars before there were settlements in the territories. They will go on doing so after there are settlements.

How do we know this? Because when the Sharon government withdrew from Gaza, the situation got worse rather than better. And world opinion, which is so anxious for settlements to be dismantled, did not shift at all when Israel did exactly that.

Natan Sharansky has argued that instead of the dismantling of the settlements being required for peace, the opposite is the case. We will know that peace is possible when we believe that the settlers would be able to remain in a Palestinian state without being killed.

The diplomatic pressure being exerted on Israel to halt settlement building is understandable. It is also international displacement activity. If you insist on political labelling of food, why not put this: in the end, peace will only come when the Palestinians decide they are willing to live peacefully alongside Jews.

“SO WHY SHOULD ISRAEL BE EXPECTED TO BEHAVE ANY DIFFERENTLY?”

Andrew Roberts’ address at the annual dinner of the Anglo-Israel Association
December 8, 2009

Exclusively republished at TomGrossMedia.

My Lords, Ladies & Gentlemen,

It’s a great honour to be invited to address you, especially on this the 60th anniversary of AIA, and I’d like to take the opportunity of this anniversary to look at the overall story of the relationship between Britain and Israel, and to try to strip away some of the myths.

Because it seems to me that for all the undoubted statesmanship implicit in Arthur Balfour’s Declaration of November 1917, promising ‘a National Home for the Jewish People’, it doesn’t mean that Britain has ever been much more than a fair-weather friend to Jewish national aspirations. The Declaration itself was at least in part conceived to keep Eastern European and Russian Jews supporting the Great War after the Bolshevik Revolution, and Chaim Weizmann’s preferred wording of ‘a Jewish State’ was turned down by the British Foreign Office. As David Ben-Gurion wrote at the time: ‘Britain has made a magnificent gesture … But only the Hebrew people can transform this right into tangible fact: only they, with body and soul, with their strength and capital, must build their National Home and bring about their national redemption.’

Sure enough, at the Versailles Conference and its ancillary meetings up to 1922, although Britain was given the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, the Jewish National Home was not established. During the Mandate period there was an observable tension between the CO, which was responsible for administering Palestine and wanted to do so within the terms of the (admittedly self-contradictory) Balfour Declaration, and the FO, which feared that allowing the de facto creation of a Jewish State would alienate Arabs. In 1937 the Peel Commission recommended ending the Mandate and partitioning Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with population transfers of 225,000 Arabs from Galilee, an outcome Ben-Gurion said [quote] ‘could give us something which we have never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the First and Second Temples’. Nonetheless, both the Arabs and the 20th Zionist Congress rejected Peel’s recommendations, to the palpable relief of the Foreign Office, which concentrated its own opposition to it on the basis of its supposed impracticality.

Instead there was the notorious 1939 White Paper, which severely limited Jewish immigration into Palestine at precisely the period of their greatest need, during the Final Solution. A total upper limit of 75,000 Jewish immigrants was set for the fateful years 1940-44, a figure that was also intended to cover refugee emergencies. The White Paper was published on 9 November 1938 – the very same day as the Kristallnacht atrocities in Germany – and was approved by Parliament in May 1939, a full two months after Hitler’s occupation of the rump of Czechoslovakia. The Manchester Guardian described it as ‘a death sentence on tens of thousands of Central European Jews’, which in sheer numerical terms was probably an underestimation. Although the Labour Party Conference voted to repeal the White Paper in 1945, the Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin – a bitter enemy of Israel – persisted in it, and it was not to be repealed until the day after the State of Israel was proclaimed.

In late April 1948, Bevin ordered that Arab positions in Jaffa needed to be protected from the Jews [quote] ‘at all costs’, and when Israeli independence came the next month, the departing British sometimes handed over vital military and strategic strongpoints to the five invading Arab armies, the most efficient of which, Transjordan’s Arab Legion, was actually commanded by a Briton, Sir John Glubb. And then on New Year’s Eve 1948 the British Government actually issued an ultimatum to Israel threatening war if Israel did not halt its counter-attacks on Egyptian forces in the Gaza Strip and Sinai. Britain was the only country in the UN that came to Egypt’s aid in this regard.

One can easily see, therefore, why when Brig-Gen Sir Wyndham Deedes set up the Anglo-Israeli Association only weeks after Israel was finally recognized by Britain in 1949 – months after America, Russia and several other states had already done so – it was much-needed. There was still massive resentment over the War of Independence; Israel was considered at best a headache by the FO; and worst of all, unlike her neighbours, she had no oil. Nor did the Suez Crisis much help matters seven years later: the way in which Israel fitted in neatly with British plans to crush Nasser ought to have endeared her to the Foreign Office, but of course it didn’t.

When in May 1967 Nasser announced the blockading of the Straits of Tiran, closing Israel’s commercial lifeline to the east, the guarantors of this international waterway – including Britain – failed to act quickly or decisively, and although Harold Wilson was proud of his pro-Israeli sentiments, his foreign secretary George Brown and the FO certainly did not reciprocate them. Britain compounded its generally lukewarm attitude during the Six Day War by sponsoring Resolution 242 at the end of it, which called on Israel to withdraw [quote] ‘from territories occupied’, in a resolution that was so badly worded by the FO that Arabs and Israelis have been able to argue over its proper meaning ever since.

The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 saw even worse bias by the FO in favour of the Arabs and against the Jews. Announcing an arms embargo ‘equally’ between the belligerents, the Heath Government effectively stopped Israel buying spare parts for the IDF’s Centurion tanks, whilst allowing them to be bought by Jordan, the only other country affected, because it was not (officially at least) a belligerent. Egyptian helicopter pilots continued to be trained in Britain, with the foreign secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home lamely telling the Israeli Ambassador that it was better for the pilots to be training in Britain than fighting at the front. Heath even refused to allow American cargo planes taking supplies to Israel to land and refuel at our bases on Cyprus.

In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher seemed to offer a new warmth to Anglo-Israeli relations. She sat for Finchley, her Methodism chimed well with Jewish values, and she was the most philo-Semitic PM since Churchill, yet even she was stymied by the FO, especially over Intelligence cooperation with Mossad. It’s true that John Major sent a special SAS unit to seek and destroy Iraqi Scud missile batteries targeting Israel during the First Gulf War, but that was largely to remove the danger of Israel retaliating, and thereby perhaps destroying the Arab coalition against Saddam.

After 9/11 Tony Blair seemed to appreciate how Israel was in the very front line in the War against Terror, and he thus bravely refused to condemn Israel’s acts of self-defence in Lebanon, but since then Britain’s contribution to the EU’s strand of negotiating over Iran’s nuclear ambitions has been, frankly, pathetic.

One area of policy over which the FO has traditionally held great sway is in the question of Royal Visits. It is no therefore coincidence that although HMQ has made over 250 official overseas visits to 129 different countries during her reign, neither she nor one single member of the British royal family has ever been to Israel on an official visit. Even though Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Greece, who was recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” for sheltering a Jewish family in her Athens home during the Holocaust, was buried on the Mount of Olives, the Duke of Edinburgh was not allowed by the FO to visit her grave until 1994, and then only on a private visit.

“Official visits are organized and taken on the advice of the Foreign and Commonwealth office,” a press officer for the royal family explained when Prince Edward visited Israel recently privately – and a spokesman for the Foreign Office replied that [quote] ‘Israel is not unique” in not having received an official royal visit, because [quote] ‘Many countries have not had an official visit.’ That might be true for Burkino Faso and Chad, but the FO has somehow managed to find the time over the years to send the Queen on State visits to Libya, Iran, Sudan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan & Turkey. So it can’t have been that she wasn’t in the area.

Perhaps Her Majesty hasn’t been on the throne long enough, at 57 years, for the Foreign Office to get round to allowing her to visit one of the only democracies in the Middle East. At least she could be certain of a warm welcome in Israel, unlike in Morocco where she was kept waiting by the King for three hours in 90 degree heat, or at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Uganda the time before last, where they hadn’t even finished building her hotel.

The true reason of course, is that the Foreign Office has a ban on official Royal visits to Israel, which is even more powerful for its being unwritten and unacknowledged. As an act of delegitimization of Israel, this effective boycott is quite as serious as other similar acts, such as the academic boycott, and is the direct fault of the FO Arabists. Which brings us on to Mr Oliver Miles.

One of the reasons I’m proud to be an historian is that there are scholars of the integrity and erudition of Prof Sir Martin Gilbert and Prof Sir Lawrence Freedman who also write history. If people as intelligent, wise and incorruptible as they choose to be historians, then it must be an honourable profession. Let me quote to you, therefore, word-for-word, what a former British Ambassador to Libya and Greece, Mr Oliver Miles, wrote in The Independent newspaper less than a fortnight ago, commenting on the composition of the present Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War:

“Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism. Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream British and American media. … All five members have outstanding reputations and records, but it is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available. Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced.”

Ladies and gentlemen, if that’s the way that FO Arabists are prepared to express themselves in public, can you imagine the way that they refer to such people as Professors Gilbert and Freedman in private? For the balance that Mr Miles is talking about here is clearly a racial balance, that only a certain quota of Jews should have been allowed on to the Inquiry.

Of course there’s a reason why “Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream media”, of course, and that is because it is a disgraceful and disgusting concept even to notice the racial background of such distinguished public servants, and one that wouldn’t have even occurred to most people had not Mr Miles made such a point of it.

Because there are 22 ambassadors to Arab countries, and only one to Israel, it is perhaps natural that the FO should tend to be more pro-Arab than pro-Israeli. On occasion there are remarkably good British Ambassadors to Israel – your president, Sir Andrew Burns, was one such in the early 1990s – just as there are on occasion remarkably good Israeli Ambassadors to Britain, indeed we are fortunate to have one at the Embassy today in Ron Prosor. Overall, however, such men are swimming against the tide of an FO assumption that Britain’s relations with Israel ought constantly to be subordinated to her relations with other Middle Eastern states, especially the oil-rich ones, however badly those states behave in terms of human rights abuses, the persecution of Christians, the oppression of women, medieval practices of punishment, and so on.

It seems to me that there is an implicit racism going on here. Jews are expected to behave better, goes the FO thinking, because they are like us. Arabs must not be chastised because they are not. So in warfare, we constantly expect Israel to behave far better than her neighbours, and chastise her quite hypocritically when occasionally under the exigencies of national struggle, she cannot. The problem crosses political parties today, just as it always has. William Hague called for Israel to adopt a proportionate response in its struggle with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2007, as though proportionate responses ever won any victories against fascists. In the Second World War, the Luftwaffe killed 50,000 Britons in the Blitz, and the Allied response was to kill 600,000 Germans – twelve times the number and hardly a proportionate response, but one that contributed mightily to victory. Who are we therefore to lecture the Israelis on how proportionate their responses should be?

Very often in Britain, especially when faced with the overwhelmingly anti-Israeli bias that is endemic in our liberal media and the BBC, we fail to ask ourselves what we would not do placed in the same position? The population of the United Kingdom of 63 millions is nine times that of Israel. In July 2006, to take one example entirely at random, Hezbollah crossed the border of Lebanon into Israel and killed 8 patrolmen and kidnapped 2 others, and that summer fired 4,000 Katyusha rockets into Israel which killed a further 43 civilians. Now, if we multiply those numbers by nine to get the British equivalent, just imagine what we would not do if a terrorist organization based as close as Calais were to fire 36,000 rockets into Sussex and Kent, killing 387 British civilians, after killing 72 British servicemen in an ambush and capturing a further eighteen? I put it to you that there is absolutely no lengths to which our Government would not go to protect British subjects under those circumstances, and quite right too. So why should Israel be expected to behave any differently?

There has hardly been a single year since Brigadier-General Deedes established AIA in 1949 when a speaker has not been able to say that Israel faced a crisis, and on some occasions – in 1956, 1967, 1973 and especially in the face of the present Iranian nuclear programme today – these were existential. At a time when Barrack Obama appears to be least pro-Israeli president since Eisenhower, the dangers are even more obvious. For there is simply no way that Obama will prevent Ahmadinejad, perhaps Jewry’s most viciously outspoken and dangerous foe since the death of Adolf Hitler, to acquire a nuclear Bomb.

None of us can pretend to know what lies ahead for Israel, but if she decides preemptively to strike against such a threat – in the same way that Nelson preemptively sank the Danish Fleet at Copenhagen and Churchill preemptively sank the Vichy Fleet at Oran – then she can expect nothing but condemnation from the British Foreign Office. She should ignore such criticism, because for all the fine work done by this Association over the past six decades – work that’s clearly needed as much now as ever before – Britain has only ever really been at best a fairweather friend to Israel.

Although History does not repeat itself, its cadences do occasionally rhyme, and if the witness of History is testament to anything it is testament to this:

That in her hopes of averting the threat of a Second Holocaust, only Israel can be relied upon to act decisively in the best interests of the Jews.

HE BOASTED ON DATING WEBSITES OF BEING A “TERRORIST” WHO “LOVED” TO SEE JEWS KILLED

Al-Qaeda terrorist gets 100% mortgage
By Guy Patrick
The Sun (UK)
Dec. 16, 2009

www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2773537/Al-Qaeda-terrorist-gets-100-mortgage.html

A bank was blasted last night after giving a 100 per cent mortgage to an al-Qaeda terrorist who smuggled himself into the UK.

Albanian Krenar Lusha, 30, landed the NatWest loan after it failed to complete full checks on his UK status, a court heard. He used the £93,000 terraced house in Derby to keep bomb-making equipment and set up an al-Qaeda base.

Lusha got the loan with no deposit at the height of the credit crunch last year. He had opened a NatWest account after sneaking into the UK in a lorry in 2000. Despite failing to win asylum, he got a driving licence and an engineering job – and had declined another mortgage offer.

One mortgage adviser told Preston Crown Court: “He was just a pleasant-natured person.” But Lusha was yesterday jailed for seven years for possessing the bomb-making gear and manuals following a three-week trial.

He boasted on dating websites of being a “terrorist” who “loved” to see Jews killed. Footage on his PC showed beheadings. Mr Justice Butterfield said Lusha had a side that “revelled in violence”.

Tory MP David Davies said last night: “Can we assume hundreds of illegal immigrants have been given mortgages?” NatWest said it had “robust mortgage account opening procedures”.

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

This is the third of a three-part dispatch. It includes various articles, as well as some other short items.

The other two dispatches can be read here:
Ehud Olmert in his own words: What I offered President Abbas
“Let’s substitute Israel Apartheid Week with Palestine Democracy Week”

ISRAEL SHUNNED AT COPENHAGEN CLIMATE CONFERENCE

Israel’s official representatives have found themselves shunned at this week’s Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, according to reports in the Danish media. While many Israeli experts and scientists have been at the forefront of ways to improve the environment and foster clean tech energy, Israeli officials have been rejected in their attempts to join discussion groups at the various sessions in Copenhagen.

European Union countries clustered together, as did non-aligned countries, so Israel pulled all its diplomatic strings to join a group in which Mexico, South Korea and Switzerland were members, but it was rejected, the supposed reason given being “the war in Gaza” (one of the least deadly of the many wars from Yemen to Congo to Pakistan to Sri Lanka, that have occurred this year).

About 40 Israeli representatives attending the conference are finding it difficult to participate, according to reports. Among those participating is the Iranian regime, which this week continued brutally to crack down on pro-democracy demonstrators in several Iranian cities.

A NOBEL WOMAN

Today, Professor Ada Yonath of Israel’s Weizmann Institute will receive the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in Stockholm, the first woman to win a chemistry Nobel since 1964. As I pointed out two months ago when the prizes were announced, it ought to have been a big story, not least because the question of how much women achieve at the highest levels in science is still a controversial one. (One recalls the Larry Summers row at Harvard.) But, perhaps because it tells one something important and positive about Israel, the media have virtually ignored this story.

Yonath won the award for her research on ribosome, a key component of the cellular machinery that translates DNA sequences into protein chains. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said her work had been fundamental to the scientific understanding of life and has helped researchers develop antibiotic cures for various diseases.

FIRST MISS PALESTINE BEAUTY PAGEANT TO TAKE PLACE THIS MONTH

A swimsuit competition will not be included, but the first ever Miss Palestine beauty contest has been scheduled for December 26, 2009, in the West Bank. Organizers say that at least 58 young Arab women will participate, including 32 from the West Bank and 26 from Israel. There are no contestants expected from the Hamas-controlled and increasingly Islamic Gaza Strip.

The goal of the contest, organizers say, is to show a different, non-political face of Palestinian society. The winner will receive a new car, a 10-day trip to Turkey and $2,700 in cash.

DAD WOULD BE PROUD: THE THREENESS OF IT ALL

For the first time, three female triplets are serving in the Israeli Air Force. Aged 19, they are the daughters of the late Jerusalem Post columnist Sam Orbaum, whom I knew and was one of the first subscribers to this email list.

Orbaum passed away of cancer in 2002 at the age of 46. The title of his final column for The Jerusalem Post was “The threeness of it all,” to describe life as a father of identical triplets.

While all three are in khaki-colored air force uniforms, they don’t serve together. Odelia, the oldest (born a minute before her two sisters), serves as a control officer in the IAF’s underground command-and-control center in the Kirya in Tel Aviv; Nomi is an air traffic control officer at the IAF’s Palmahim Base; and Donna is currently in training for a different IAF position near Herzliya.

SHIMON PERES LAUNCHES HIS OWN YOUTUBE CHANNEL

On Tuesday, Israel’s youthful president, Shimon Peres (who is aged 86), launched his own YouTube channel at a joint press conference he held with YouTube Founder and CEO Chad Harley.

Harley, who was visiting from America, said that Israeli engineers and designers had played a key role in establishing and developing YouTube.

Peres’s channel can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/peres

ISRAEL ARMY THWARTS POTENTIAL TERROR ATTACK YESTERDAY

The IDF and Israeli police thwarted a potential terror attack in Jerusalem yesterday afternoon, when they discovered six pipe bombs in a bag belonging to a 20-year-old Palestinian man. The man, who resides in the West Bank, was arrested. During a preliminary interrogation at the scene, he admitted planning to carry out an attack inside Jerusalem. Police sappers neutralized the bombs in a controlled explosion.

***

ISRAEL PRAISES TURKISH AUTHORITIES FOR PREVENTING HIZBULLAH ATTACK

Turkish forces prevented a Hizbullah attack on an undisclosed Israeli target in Turkey last month, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said yesterday, thanking Ankara for the successful operation and for its cooperation. Turkish media reports said Hizbullah had set up a network of Iranian agents posing as tourists in Istanbul. This action comes in the context of a highly critical approach to Israel by the Turkish government over recent months.

EXTRA NOTE

Because of spam and delivery problems some people did not receive my Wall Street Journal article last week: Building peace without Obama’s interference: A promising, independent Palestine is quietly being developed, with Israeli assistance. It can be read here.

Several other papers sought permission to republish the article. For example, it was published in The Australian (under the title “The West Bank is not Darfur”) on Tuesday.

One of the papers that asked to republish the piece was the British paper The Guardian, which occasionally publishes articles which are not against Israel, in an effort not to appear one-sided. The Guardian version is here (together with some unpleasant readers’ comments).

When I asked The Guardian editor to post one of the photos from Gaza (scroll down to the bottom part of the page here to see the ones I mean, or a similar photo from others I suggested) he said he couldn’t.

Yet the very next day, The Guardian published another article on Gaza accompanied by a large, distressing, and possibly – given past evidence of Palestinian fixers working with Reuters photographers – staged photo.

The title of that article was: “Who will save Gaza’s children? Never mind Copenhagen, an environmental catastrophe is going on right now – contaminated water is poisoning babies in Gaza”.

The author, Victoria Brittain, is a former associate foreign editor of The Guardian, and this goes a long way to explain The Guardian’s foreign news coverage.

In past years, as attempts to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist gain momentum, there have been many other “poisoning the wells” type stories in Western and Arab news media – Israel poisons candies, spreads AIDS among Palestinians, and so on.

NETANYAHU IS POSITIONING HIMSELF LEFT OF RABIN

I haven’t summarized this article because it is relatively short and I thought it best to let people read Ari Shavit’s analysis as a whole, including his prediction of a possible unilateral Israeli disengagement by Netanyahu from parts of the West Bank next year.

Shavit is one of Ha’aretz’s leading commentators. Significantly this article is in the same Ha’aretz that is usually so quick to criticize Netanyahu – and Israel. Two weeks ago it even published an article (via DPA) stating that the south-west mainly Jewish neighborhood of Gilo is “an East Jerusalem settlement.”

***

Netanyahu is positioning himself left of Rabin
By Ari Shavit
Ha’aretz
December 3, 2009

www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1132436.html

Benjamin Netanyahu made history twice. The first time was when he adopted the two-state solution in his Bar-Ilan speech, and the second was when he decided last week to freeze settlement construction. The Palestinians dismiss his steps and the Europeans say they’re not enough. The skeptics are skeptical and the cynics are cynical. But the truth is that Netanyahu circa 2009 is situating himself to the left of Yitzhak Rabin circa 1995.

Unlike Rabin, Netanyahu now accepts the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state. Unlike Rabin, he is issuing orders prohibiting construction throughout the Jewish West Bank. Netanyahu has crossed the Rubicon, on both ideological and practical levels, and reinvented himself as a centrist.

At the beginning of this decade, Ariel Sharon underwent a similar process, with the road map his equivalent of Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan speech. The road map expressed his support for the two-state concept, while insisting that essential basic conditions be fulfilled before the establishment of a Palestinian state.

But a short time after accepting the road map, Sharon revealed that its trails led to a dead end. No Palestinians met the basic conditions, no Palestinians were capable of signing a final-status agreement, no Palestinians had the power to implement peace. When the father of the settlements finally came out in favor of dividing the land, it turned out that there were no Palestinian leaders likewise committed to dividing the land.

Thus was the disengagement born. Although Sharon was aware of its flaws, he realized that disengagement was the only plan of action a centrist Israeli leader could advance without a real partner for real peace.

Six years later, Netanyahu has reached the exact same point. He accepts the principle of two states, and receives no response. He suspends construction in the settlements, and is rejected. He courts Mahmoud Abbas, and is disparaged. The son of Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s personal secretary wants a historic reconciliation with the Palestinians, and the Palestinians are slamming the door. He is offering the Palestinian national movement negotiations over the establishment of a Palestinian nation-state, and has found that there’s no one to talk to and nothing to talk about. Zilch. A brick wall.

Few people are close to the prime minister, but among the few who are, some say he has indeed undergone a turnabout. Israel’s might, not the settlements or the settlers, is his top priority. Therefore, had there been a proposal on the table assuring Israel’s security in exchange for a painful withdrawal, Netanyahu would not hesitate. The tragedy is that there is no such offer - and no such table. Negotiations haven’t even begun. Abbas isn’t giving Netanyahu anything he can use to put the centrist worldview he has adopted into action.

Under such circumstances, Netanyahu has two options. One is Shaul Mofaz’s plan: the establishment of a Palestinian state with temporary borders. The second is Disengagement II: the evacuation of about 20 West Bank settlements and their transfer to the Fayyad government. The Mofaz plan has major advantages, but it makes Netanyahu fear unlimited and unrestrained Palestinian sovereignty. This means he might be forced to seriously consider the other option. We can’t rule out that in 2010 Netanyahu will find himself pushing a limited withdrawal, just as Sharon did in 2004 and 2005.

Disengagement II will have to be completely different from its predecessor. It will have to be coordinated with the Palestinian Authority and granted European support, and it will have to turn the evacuated area into an economic prosperity zone. It will need to prevent Palestinians from smuggling in weapons and increasing their military might, and must assure Israel’s right to self-defense. Such a plan would have to be part of an overall strategic outlook that pushes both peoples toward peace through measured, circumspect and coordinated unilateral steps. A second disengagement would have to be an improved version of the first, a plan with a political dimension and an economic depth that would strengthen the moderates - Palestinians as well as Israelis.

If the prime minister dares to go forward with Disengagement II, things would be easier for Israel on all fronts. It would help Netanyahu in domestic politics, just as the first disengagement helped Sharon, and it would turn the prime minister into the new leader of the Israeli center.

“ONLY A SET OF DEMANDS TO REVERSE HISTORY”

Commenting on the above article, Rick Richman writes on the website of Commentary magazine:

Sometimes you get the impression that the Palestinian Arabs do not really want a Palestinian state. They could have had one in 1919 (the Weizmann-Feisel Agreement), 1937 (the Peel Commission), 1947 (UN Resolution 181), 2000 (the Camp David proposal), 2001 (the Clinton Parameters), or 2008 (the Annapolis Process offer). Six formal offers – each accepted by the Jews and rejected by the Arabs.

The peace-partner Palestinians do not really have a negotiating position – only a set of demands to reverse history. They demand that Israel withdraw to the 1967 lines to reverse the Six-Day War (a war the Arabs caused). They demand a “right of return” to reverse the 1948 war (a war the Arabs started). They demand all of East Jerusalem – not simply the Arab neighborhoods and Muslim religious sites – to control the historic portion of the city; they concede no Jewish connection to the Temple Mount or the Western Wall.

“DISTRACTED BY THE CRUCIAL DEBATE OVER AFGHANISTAN…”

Israeli Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren, who is a subscriber to this email list, writes in The Wall Street Journal:

Distracted by the crucial debate over Afghanistan, many Americans may have missed a pivotal event in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. On Nov. 25, Israel’s government announced a 10-month construction freeze in Judea and Samaria – the areas generally known as the West Bank. Though some projects already begun will be completed and essential public buildings like medical clinics and schools will be approved, no new housing permits will be issued. “We hope that this decision will help launch meaningful peace negotiations,” declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “and finally end the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel.”

(Oren’s full article is below, followed by an article about Egypt’s new wall on its border with Gaza.)

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

[Note by Tom Gross]

Today’s dispatch is split into three for space reasons. It includes various articles I had planned to post last week but because of other work commitments I didn’t have time.

This is the second part of the dispatch and contains a single article: An interview with Ehud Olmert, who was prime minister of Israel until earlier this year, by Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of The Australian, one of Australia’s most important newspapers.

This is the longest interview Olmert has given to the media since leaving office in March after more than three years as prime minister. I have prepared a summary for those who don’t have time to read it in full.

In a separate interview on May 29, 2009 with The Washington Post, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed that Olmert did make such an offer, indeed he says that Olmert offered Abbas 97 percent of the West Bank, even more than Olmert claims here.

Today’s other dispatches can be read here:
“Let’s substitute Israel Apartheid Week with Palestine Democracy Week”
Leading Ha’aretz writer: “Netanyahu is positioning himself left of Rabin”

SUMMARY

OLMERT: “ABBAS WANTS PEACE. SO TOO DOES NETANYAHU.”

Greg Sheridan writes:

Ehud Olmert is a giant of contemporary Middle East politics. As Israel’s prime minister he made war – twice – in Lebanon in 2006, and in the Gaza Strip earlier this year. He’s also tried to make peace, offering the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, the most extensive concessions any Israeli leader has ever brought to the table in the search for a settlement.

Now Olmert’s out of office, not because he lost an election but because he is fighting corruption charges in the courts. Previous charges against him came to nothing and Olmert has always asserted his innocence.

In Sydney this week, I interviewed him at his hotel… Dressed in jeans and black T-shirt with a Red Bull logo, Olmert looked pretty chipper for a balding lawyer with a modest paunch in his early 60s who’d just flown 24 hours from Israel.

Olmert is straightforward and direct, and sometimes surprising. He believes that the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is a genuine partner in the peace process.

Olmert says: “I think he’s genuine in his desire to achieve a Palestinian state, and he recognizes the right of Israel to exist. And, while I can’t speak for him, even if he can’t say it publicly and formally, he recognizes that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people.”

This judgment by Olmert is critical because it means he still believes the peace process has a chance, while Abbas remains the Palestinians’ leader. And it’s not as if Olmert, who spent most of his life in the centre-right Likud party and was once the hardest of hardliners, is unwilling to pass a harsh judgment on a Palestinian leader.

… “Yasser Arafat never wanted to make peace with Israel. Arafat was a murderer and a terrorist and remained so until the last day of his life. Abbas wants peace. So, too, does Netanyahu, though naturally he is also worried about security.”

OBAMA’S INITIAL MISTAKES

… Olmert, like many Israelis, was critical of Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in Cairo: “I was not happy with this speech. There should not even be a tacit comparison of the Holocaust with the Palestinian situation. This mistake was not corrected by Obama later visiting Buchenwald. However, this does not mean that Obama is an enemy of the Israeli people, just that he made a mistake. I hope he realizes he made a mistake.”

But he has some advice for Obama on the search for an Arab-Israeli peace: “I don’t quite understand the American approach. Every new president believes they have to start from square one. If they’re lucky they last for eight years, and by the end there is almost peace. But the new administration then starts anew, because they always know best.”

Olmert believes Obama made a mistake by focusing initially on a demand for an Israeli building freeze in West Bank Jewish settlements: “I think the tactic of starting to argue about a building here or there is a tactical mistake and I expect the Americans to change their approach.”

OLMERT OUTLINES WHAT HE OFFERED ABBAS

Olmert explains this position to me in unprecedented detail. His offer to Abbas represents a historic watershed and poses a serious question. Can the Palestinian leadership ever accept any offer that an Israeli prime minister could ever reasonably make?

… Olmert says: “From the end of 2006 until the end of 2008 I think I met with Abu Mazen (Abbas) more often than any Israeli leader has ever met any Arab leader. I met him more than 35 times. They were intense, serious negotiations.”

… “On the 16th of September, 2008, I presented him with a comprehensive plan. It was based on the following principles. One, there would be a territorial solution to the conflict on the basis of the 1967 borders with minor modifications on both sides. Israel will claim part of the West Bank where there have been demographic changes over the last 40 years.”

… “Israel would claim all the Jewish areas of Jerusalem. All the lands that before 1967 were buffer zones between the two populations would have been split in half. In return there would be a swap of land (to the Palestinians) from Israel as it existed before 1967.”

“I showed Abu Mazen how this would work to maintain the contiguity of the Palestinian state. I also proposed a safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza. It would have been a tunnel fully controlled by the Palestinians but not under Palestinian sovereignty, otherwise it would have cut the State of Israel in two.”

SHARING JERUSALEM – OR DIVIDING IT?

Secondly, Olmert talks about Jerusalem: “While I firmly believed that historically, and emotionally, Jerusalem was always the capital of the Jewish people, I was ready that the city should be shared. Jewish neighborhoods would be under Jewish sovereignty, Arab neighborhoods would be under Palestinian sovereignty, so it could be the capital of a Palestinian state.”

“Then there was the question of the holy basin within Jerusalem, the sites that are holy to Jews and Muslims, but not only to them, to Christians as well. I would never agree to an exclusive Muslim sovereignty over areas that are religiously important to Jews and Christians. So there would be an area of no sovereignty, which would be jointly administered by five nations, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Palestinian state, Israel and the United States.”

Olmert’s third point was the issue of Palestinian refugees. “I think Abu Mazen understood there was no chance Israel would become the homeland of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian state was to be the homeland of the Palestinian people. So the question was how the claimed attachment of the Palestinian refugees to their original places could be recognized without bringing them in. I told him I would never agree to a right of return. Instead, we would agree on a humanitarian basis to accept a certain number every year for five years, on the basis that this would be the end of conflict and the end of claims... I think the Americans were entirely with me. In addition, we talked about creating an international fund that would compensate Palestinians for their suffering. I was the first Israeli prime minister to speak of Palestinian suffering and to say that we are not indifferent to that suffering.”

“And four, there were security issues.” Olmert says he showed Abbas a map which embodied all these plans. “I said ‘this is the offer. Sign it and we can immediately get support from America, from Europe, from all over the world.’ I told him he’d never get anything like this again from an Israeli leader for 50 years. I said to him, ‘do you want to keep floating forever – like an astronaut in space – or do you want a state?’ To this day we should ask Abu Mazen to respond to this plan. If they (the Palestinians) say no, there’s no point negotiating.”

BUT COULD OLMERT HAVE DELIVERED. COULD ABBAS?

(Greg Sheridan continues:) Olmert is right to paint this offer as embodying the most extensive concessions, and the best deal, ever offered to the Palestinians by an Israeli leader. But his very experience with this offer raises several questions. Could he have delivered its terms if the Palestinians had accepted it? Perhaps international momentum would have enabled him to do so, and, in fact, Olmert’s Kadima party did remarkably well in the election which followed his prime ministership. Could any Israeli government today realistically make such an offer? The answer would seem to be no.

And most important, if the Palestinian leadership cannot accept that offer, can they accept any realistic offer? Do they have the machinery to run a state? Is their society too dysfunctional and filled with anti-Semitic propaganda to live in peace next to the Jewish state? Could they ever deliver on any security guarantees?

I put these questions to Olmert and his response to them is perhaps the most lukewarm part of our interview: “It’s certainly a legitimate concern, since I never received a positive response from them. I think it’s up to them (the Palestinians) to prove the point. I hope they will rise to this.”

***

A SETBACK FOR SYRIA’S NUKES

Tom Gross adds:

See below for the rest of Olmert’s interview, including his defense of the 2006 Israeli campaign against Hizbullah in Lebanon, and the more recent campaign against Hamas in Gaza, his efforts to reach peace with Syria, and his thoughts on Iran’s nuclear program.

“The military operation in Lebanon was the most successful military operation in recent Israeli history. Many in Israel don’t recognize that,” says Olmert.

Not surprisingly, Olmert rejects the Goldstone report that accuses Israel of war crimes in Gaza.

Although Sheridan says that Olmert’s peace offer to Abbas was the most important thing he did, I would say that his bombing of the Syrian regime’s nascent nuclear bomb program was probably more important. Olmert is wisely silent on this issue.

(See previous dispatches on this weblist for more about Israel’s 2007 strike on Syria’s nuclear program.)

THREE IMPORTANT ARTICLES

[Note by Tom Gross]

Today’s dispatch is split into three for space reasons.

It includes various articles I had planned to post last week but I didn’t have time.

I have prepared summaries for those who don’t have time to read these articles in full.

Today’s other dispatches can be read here:
Ehud Olmert in his own words: What I offered President Abbas
Leading Ha’aretz writer: “Netanyahu is positioning himself left of Rabin”

SUMMARIES

A PALESTINIAN PLEADS WITH “PRO-PALESTINIANS” ON WESTERN COLLEGE CAMPUSES

I attach three important articles below. The first is by leading Palestinian journalist, Khaled Abu Toameh, who is from the West Bank and is a longtime subscriber to this email list.

In summary, he says:

In recent years there has been a significant rise in the number of non-Arabs and non-Muslims who describe themselves as “pro-Palestinian” activists. These people can be found mostly on university campuses in North America and Europe. Many of these activists have never been to the Middle East. What these folks have not realized is that their actions and words often do little to advance the interests of the Palestinians, and in many instances are even counterproductive.

Being anti-Israel does not necessarily turn one into “pro-Palestinian.” It is hard to see how organizing an “Israel Apartheid Week” on a university campus could help the cause of the Palestinians. Isn’t there already enough anti-Israel incitement and propaganda already on Arab and Islamic media outlets?

If anyone is entitled to be called “pro-Palestinian,” it is those who are publicly campaigning against financial corruption and abuse of human rights by Fatah and Hamas. Those who are trying to change the system from within belong to the real “pro-Palestinian” camp. These are the brave people who are standing up to both Fatah and Hamas and calling on them to stop killing each other and start doing something that would improve the living conditions of their constituents.

TEACHING

Instead of investing money and efforts in organizing Israel Apartheid Week, for example, self-described “pro-Palestinians” could dispatch teachers to teach young Palestinians English. Or they could send a delegation to Gaza to monitor human rights violations by Hamas and help Palestinian women confront Muslim fundamentalists who are trying to limit their role to cooking, raising children and looking after the needs of their husbands.

Let’s substitute Israel Apartheid Week with Palestine Democracy Week. Or is delegitimizing Israel and inciting against “Zionists” much more important that pushing for an end to financial corruption and violence in Palestinian society? It is time for the “pro-Palestinian” camp in the West to listen to the authentic voices of the Palestinians.

THE HOLLOWNESS OF THE ARAB STATES’ PRO-PALESTINIAN PRONOUNCEMENTS

In the second article below, Michael Freund, who is also a longtime subscriber to this email list, writes in The Jerusalem Post:

For all their talk of standing by the Palestinians, the Arab regimes sure have a strange way of showing it. Despite reaping an oil-driven windfall last year of unprecedented proportions, few Arab states seem willing to help.

… The hollowness of their pro-Palestinian pronouncements was unambiguously on display last month in Amman, at a meeting of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which relies on voluntary contributions from governments to fund its activities on behalf of Palestinian refugees.

… UNRWA is facing a deficit of $84 million this year… Indeed, two weeks ago, the group’s 16,000 employees in Judea, Samaria and Gaza held a one-day strike to demand better pay.

Why, you might be wondering, have the UN agency’s troubles been mounting of late? After all, fuel prices surged last year, with oil peaking in July 2008 at a high of $150 a barrel.

… And yet, in 2008, 19 of the top 20 donors to UNRWA’s general fund were from the West, with the EU contributing over $116m., and the U.S. more than $94m. Others, such as Sweden and the UK, each gave over $35m.

“GENEROUS” KUWAIT

Just one Arab country – Kuwait – appeared among UNRWA’s top 20 benefactors. The Kuwaitis came in last on the list, having given just $2.5m.

Given that Kuwait’s oil revenues last year surged by 44 percent to nearly $78 billion, you would think that if they truly cared about the Palestinians, this would have been reflected in the size of their donation to UNRWA.

Nonetheless, when compared to the other five Arab states that comprise the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – the Kuwaitis come out looking generous.

THE SAUDIS GAVE NOTHING

In 2008, the combined revenues of the GCC states from oil production amounted to a whopping $575b. Yet their joint contribution to UNRWA’s regular budget was a little more than $3.6m., signifying less than one one-thousandth of a percent of their total petroleum income! Bahrain gave a miserly $50,000, Oman forked out just over $25,000, while Saudi Arabia gave zero.

… Not that I am shedding any tears over UNRWA’s difficulties. The organization has long been a vehicle for perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem as a lever for pressuring Israel, and it has not shied away from working closely with Hamas in Gaza, or serving as a vehicle for anti-Israel and anti-Western indoctrination.

But UNRWA’s woes lay bare the breathtaking hypocrisy of the Arab states. They lambaste Israel at every opportunity over the condition of the Palestinians, even as they themselves do very little to alleviate the problem…

(Please see previous dispatches on this website for more on UNRWA.)

“A FOREIGN POLICY OF PENANCE BY OBAMA HAS WON AMERICA NO FRIENDS”

In the third and final article below, Fouad Ajami writes in The Wall Street Journal that “the Arabs have stopped applauding Obama.”

Professor Ajami says:

In the endless chatter of this region, and in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment. In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth.

He has not made the world anew, history did not bend to his will, the Indians and Pakistanis have been told that the matter of Kashmir is theirs to resolve, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the same intractable clash of two irreconcilable nationalisms, and the theocrats in Iran have not “unclenched their fist,” nor have they abandoned their nuclear quest.

There is little Obama can do about this disenchantment. He can’t journey to Turkey to tell its Islamist leaders and political class that a decade of anti-American scapegoating is all forgiven and was the product of American policies – he has already done that. He can’t journey to Cairo to tell the fabled “Arab street” that the Iraq war was a wasted war, and that America earned the malice that came its way from Arab lands – he has already done that as well. He can’t tell Muslims that America is not at war with Islam – he, like his predecessor, has said that time and again.

“IN ARAB EYES, IT IS A GREAT MISTAKE TO SPEAK ILL OF ONE’S OWN TRIBE”

… Obama’s election has not drained the swamps of anti-Americanism. That anti-Americanism is endemic in the greater Middle East region, an alibi … for nations, and their rulers, unwilling to break out of the grip of political autocracy and economic failure. It predated the presidency of George W. Bush and rages on during the Obama presidency…

[America previously argued the cause of liberty and justice in other countries]. The Obama approach is different. Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine of American penance. No one told Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and so dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, nay a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one’s own tribe when in the midst, and in the lands, of others.

… Obama could not make up his mind: He was at one with the people and with the rulers who held them in subjugation. The people of Iran who took to the streets this past summer were betrayed by this hapless diplomacy – Obama wished instead to engage the terrible rulers that millions of Iranians were determined to be rid of.

“IT WASN’T ONE OF AMERICAN DIPLOMACY’S FINEST MOMENTS”

On Nov. 4, on the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran, the embattled reformers … posed an embarrassing dilemma for American diplomacy: “Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them,” they chanted. By not responding to these cries and continuing to engage Tehran’s murderous regime, his choice was made clear. It wasn’t one of American diplomacy’s finest moments.

… Where Bush offered the Palestinians the gift of clarity – statehood but only after the renunciation of terror and the break with maximalism – Obama signaled a return to the dead ways of the past: a peace process where America itself is broker and arbiter…

WELCOME TO PALESTINE

Building peace without Obama’s interference
A promising, independent Palestine is quietly being developed, with Israeli assistance.
By Tom Gross
The Wall Street Journal
December 3, 2009

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574571491401847518.html

It is difficult to turn on a TV or radio or pick up a newspaper these days, without finding some pundit or other deploring the dismal prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace or the dreadful living conditions of the Palestinians. Even supposedly neutral news reporters regularly repeat this sad tale. “Very little is changing for the Palestinian people on the ground,” I heard BBC World Service Cairo correspondent Christian Fraser tell listeners three times in a 45 minute period the other evening.

In fact nothing could be further from the truth. I had spent that day in the West Bank’s largest city, Nablus. The city is bursting with energy, life and signs of prosperity, in a way I have not previously seen in many years of covering the region.

As I sat in the plush office of Ahmad Aweidah, the suave British-educated banker who heads the Palestinian Securities Exchange, he told me that the Nablus stock market was the second best-performing in the world so far in 2009, after Shanghai. (Aweidah’s office looks directly across from the palatial residence of Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri, the wealthiest man in the West Bank.)

Later I met Bashir al-Shakah, director of Nablus’s gleaming new cinema, where four of the latest Hollywood hits were playing that day. Most movies were sold out, he noted, proudly adding that the venue had already hosted a film festival since it opened in June.

MORE MERCEDES THAN IN TEL AVIV

Wandering around downtown Nablus the shops and restaurants I saw were full. There were plenty of expensive cars on the streets. Indeed I counted considerably more BMWs and Mercedes than I’ve seen, for example, in downtown Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

And perhaps most importantly of all, we had driven from Jerusalem to Nablus without going through any Israeli checkpoints. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has removed them all since the Israeli security services (with the encouragement and support of President George W. Bush) were allowed, over recent years, to crush the intifada, restore security to the West Bank and set up the conditions for the economic boom that is now occurring. (There was one border post on the return leg of the journey, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but the young female guard just waved me and the two Palestinians I was traveling with, through.)

The shops and restaurants were also full when I visited Hebron recently, and I was surprised to see villas comparable in size to those on the Cote d’Azur or Bel Air had sprung up on the hills around the city. Life is even better in Ramallah, where it is difficult to get a table in a good restaurant. New apartment buildings, banks, brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships and health clubs are to be seen. In Qalqilya, another West Bank city that was previously a hotbed of terrorists and bomb-makers, the first ever strawberry crop is being harvested in time to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe. Local Palestinian farmers have been trained by Israeli agriculture experts and Israel supplied them with irrigation equipment and pesticides.

A NEW PLANNED CITY

A new Palestinian city, Ruwabi, is to be built soon north of Ramallah. Two weeks ago, the Jewish National Fund, an Israeli charity, helped plant 3,000 tree seedlings for a forested area the Palestinian planners say they would like to develop on the edge of the new city. Israeli experts are also helping the Palestinians plan public parks and other civic amenities.

Outsiders are beginning to take note of the turnaround too. The official PLO Wafa news agency reported last week that the 3rd quarter of 2009 witnessed near record tourism in the Palestinian Authority, with 135,939 overnight hotel stays in 89 hotels that are now open. Almost half the guests come from the U.S or Europe.

Palestinian economic growth so far this year – in a year dominated by economic crisis elsewhere – has been an impressive 7 percent according to the IMF, though Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad, himself a former World Bank and IMF employee, says it is in fact 11 percent, partly helped along by strong economic performances in neighboring Israel.

NO, NOT A CONCENTRATION CAMP

In Gaza too, the shops and markets are crammed with food and goods – see for example, these photos from last Friday’s Palestine Today newspaper about the Eid celebrations in Gaza. These are not the pictures you are ever likely to see on the BBC or Le Monde or The New York Times. No, Gaza is not like a “concentration camp,” nor is the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza is on the scale of Darfur,” as British journalist Lauren Booth (who is also Tony Blair’s sister-in-law) has said.

In June, The Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl related how Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had told him why he had turned down Ehud Olmert’s offer last year to create a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank (with three percent of pre-1967 Israeli land being added to make up the shortfall). “In the West Bank we have a good reality,” Abbas told Diehl. “The people are living a normal life,” he added with a candor he rarely employs when addressing Western journalists

Nablus stock exchange head Ahmad Aweidah went further in explaining to me why there is no rush to declare statehood, saying ordinary Palestinians need the IDF to help protect them from Hamas, as their own security forces aren’t ready to do so by themselves yet.

BORDER DISPUTES ALL OVER THE WORLD

The truth is that an independent Palestine is now quietly being built, with Israeli assistance. So long as the Obama administration and European politicians don’t clumsily meddle as they have in the past and make unrealistic demands for the process to be completed more quickly than it can be, I am confident the outcome will be a positive one. (The last time an American president – Bill Clinton in 2000 – tried to hurry things along unrealistically, it merely resulted in blowing up in everybody’s faces – literally – and set back hopes for peace by some years.)

Israelis and Palestinians may never agree on borders that will satisfy everyone. But that doesn’t mean they won’t live in peace. Not all Germans and French agree who should control Alsace Lorraine. Poles and Russians, Slovenes and Croats, Britons and Irish, and peoples all over the world, have border disputes. But that doesn’t keep them from coexisting with one another. Nor – so long as partisan journalists and human rights groups don’t mislead Western politicians into making bad decisions – will it prevent Israelis and Palestinians from doing so.

(Tom Gross is the former Jerusalem correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph.)

The piece has been highlighted by writers on the websites of various publications, for example by Rachel Abrams at The Weekly Standard in Washington and by Melanie Phillips at The Spectator in London. Haviv Rettig Gur, a leading journalist at The Jerusalem Post, writes about it here. There are also various comments on The Wall Street Journal website.

PHOTOS FROM “PALESTINE TODAY” (GAZA)

Images from Gaza.

From the November 26, 2009 edition of the Gazan newspaper, Palestine Today:

Fruit and vegetable markets

Sweets on sale in an outdoor market

Toys on sale in an indoor market

A cake shop and a bakery

A Barber shop

A children’s clothing store

An adult’s clothing store

A market in the evening

Bags of nuts and other produce

A cow, believed to be an Angus, one of the finest breeds