Mideast Dispatch Archive: November 2013 Archives

“This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup”

November 24, 2013

”Peace in our time”

* Winston Churchill (virtually alone, 75 years ago, warning of the follies of Munich): “We have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us in history. Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup …”

* Yair Lapid: “I don’t understand how the French Foreign Minister can call an agreement that doesn’t involve the dismantling of one centrifuge a ‘victory.’ I can’t understand the world’s failure to notice the nineteen thousand Iranian centrifuges. We may be the only child in the room saying the king has no clothes but that’s what we must do.”

* Republicans (and quite a number of Democrats): Obama has betrayed the Middle East’s only democracy, Israel.

* Tom Gross: One would, I think, have more confidence in the Geneva deal if the lead negotiator hadn’t been the unelected EU High Commissioner Baroness Ashton, a British diplomat whose shortcomings make her compatriot Neville Chamberlain look competent, and John Kerry, known as the lead appeaser in Washington of the Assad regime in Syria for the last two decades.

* The 30-year-old-song “There’s a man in Iran (Ayatollah Song)” from the British comedy “Not the Nine O'Clock News,” satirizing the useful idiots in the West enamored of the despotic mullahs, sung by Pamela Stephenson and Rowan Atkinson (who later became famous as “Mr Bean”) goes viral today. (Link below in item 8.)

* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.

CONTENTS

1. Will the west’s “Munich deal” bring war closer?
2. The New York Times’ front cover 75 years ago
3. “How can the French FM call an agreement that doesn’t involve the dismantling of one centrifuge a ‘victory’?”
4. Saudis: “The U.S. foreign policy is just complete chaos”
5. The unelected Ashton
6. Fars: Fordo and Natanz will also continue operation
7. The Plutonium Option
8. Spoof song: “There’s a man in Iran (Ayatollah Song)”
9. “Our ‘Sucker’s Deal’ with Iran” (By Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, Nov. 22, 2013)
10. “Lost cause in Geneva” (By Ari Shavit, Ha’aretz, Nov. 14, 2013)

WILL THE WEST’S “MUNICH DEAL” BRING WAR CLOSER?

[Note by Tom Gross]

(This is the latest in a long series of dispatches concerning Iran’s nuclear program, the most recent of which can be read here: Diplomacy is better than war but bad diplomacy can cause bad wars.)

Many people today have said that the agreement concluded in Geneva early this morning between the despotic regime in Iran and the Western democracies is reminiscent of the “Munich agreement” of 1938.

75 years ago, in October 1938, the same people who are excited today (the New York Times, BBC correspondents, highly regarded British diplomats) – telling us assuredly the Geneva accord is a positive step that will make war and a nuclear arms race less likely – were delighted following the Munich accords. “Peace in our time” proclaimed then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

While the Islamic dictatorship in Iran and the Nazi dictatorship in Germany are of course not the same, the appeasement by the west to these ruthless, expansionist idiotically driven powers does have similar elements.

And those who warned in 1938 that appeasement was not bringing the West closer to peace but to war, were dismissed as “hysterical” – the word the New York Times editorial board chose last week to describe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who today reiterated the view that the appeasement of Iran in Geneva is a “mistake of historic proportions”.

British politician Winston Churchill (who was then out of government) was also dismissed as hysterical following the speech he gave to the British House of Commons on October 5, 1938 following the Munich Agreement.

In it, he said: “I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat. ... People ... should know the truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defenses; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us … in our history ... Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom…”

Churchill’s full speech can be read here.

(Thank you to Bill Kristol for drawing my attention to this.)

***

(Churchill also famously said after the Munich agreement: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

Time will tell whether there are any similarities between today’s Geneva agreement and the 1938 Munich agreement.)

THE NEW YORK TIMES’ FRONT COVER 75 YEARS AGO

The front cover of the New York Times in 1938 following Munich agreement:

“HOW CAN THE FM CALL AN AGREEMENT THAT DOESN’T INVOLVE THE DISMANTLING OF ONE CENTRIFUGE A ‘VICTORY’?”

Tom Gross continues:

The BBC and other media have not made clear today that the Geneva Agreement fails to uphold the many U.N. Security Council resolutions that call on Iran to stop enriching uranium. i.e. that all five members of the UN Security Council have caved in on this key demand.

Across the Arab world, and across the Israeli political spectrum, and beyond there is anger, bewilderment and exasperation at the deal that the western powers have signed with Iran.

Israel’s Finance Minister, Yair Lapid, head of Israel’s secular centrist party, said bitterly this morning:

“We had a choice here between the plague and cholera. Israel was left alone explaining the truth, and all of our options were bad. I don’t understand how the French Foreign Minister can call an agreement that doesn’t involve the dismantling of one centrifuge a ‘victory.’ I can’t understand the world’s failure to notice the nineteen thousand Iranian centrifuges.”

“We may be the only child in the room saying the king has no clothes but that’s what we must do.”

“Obviously a deal is better than a war, but not this deal,” Lapid continued. “Netanyahu did everything he could and we all across the Israeli political spectrum stand behind him on this issue.”

Israel’s Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said the Geneva deal was reminiscent of the “bad deal with North Korea” that allowed that country to develop nuclear weapons.

(Tom Gross adds: In truth the deal would have been even worse had Netanyahu not made such a fuss and threatened military action.)

Uzi Rabi, Director of the Dayan Center for Middle East studies at Tel Aviv University, said “This deal sacrifices the long term interests of the West in exchange for the short term gain of getting Iran to agree not to cross the nuclear threshold for a few months.”

Israel’s Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said: “If a nuclear suitcase blows up five years from now in New York or Madrid, it will be because of the deal that was signed this morning.”

***

American Jewish Leaders also criticized the nuclear deal.

“Nothing in the deceptive behavior of Iran and its leaders in recent years should make the world believe that they will honor this agreement,” World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement: “The sanctions had the Ayatollahs on the ropes and the U.S. and West let them win the round and perhaps the match.”

B’nai B’rith said, “The deal signed in Geneva does not go far enough in reversing Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon. The high speed centrifuges will still remain in place, and it remains unclear whether Tehran will permit full or only ‘managed’ access to all of its nuclear facilities. Its long history of deception on inspections is cause for much skepticism on this point.”

The American Jewish Committee’s David Harris said he was opposing President Obama’s calls not to oppose further sanctions: “We believe that existing sanctions should remain in place and new sanctions, whose trigger date would not necessarily be immediate, should be pursued to underscore the seriousness of America’s determination – and the consequences of an Iranian failure to act in good faith,”

SAUDIS: “THE U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IS JUST COMPLETE CHAOS”

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud expressed the despair of many in the Arab world when he said: “The U.S. has to have a foreign policy. Well-defined, well-structured. You don’t have it right now, unfortunately. It’s just complete chaos. Confusion. No policy. I mean, we feel it. We sense it, you know.”

THE UNELECTED ASHTON

One would, I think, have more confidence in the Geneva deal if the lead negotiator hadn’t been the unelected EU High Commissioner Baroness Ashton, a British diplomat whose shortcomings make her compatriot Neville Chamberlain look competent, and John Kerry, known as the lead appeaser in Washington of the Assad regime in Syria for the last two decades.

Among other things, the way Ashton has been giggling and hugging the representatives of this highly repressive Iranian regime – is very disconcerting.

FARS: FORDO AND NATANZ WILL ALSO CONTINUE OPERATION

Here’s how Iran’s official Fars news agency reports the Geneva deal:

“According to the agreement, the structure of Iran’s nuclear program will be fully preserved. There is no turning back in Iran’s uranium enrichment activities. Fordo and Natanz (nuclear sites) will also continue operation.”

Many in the U.S. Congress are making it clear that they will support Israel if she now decides she must act alone to stop the Iranian nuclear program, just as she previously defied the world to act alone to stop the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs.

There is speculation that Iran signed the six-month deal now because it wants to use the next six months to get the S-300 missile in place. An attempt to deploy the S-300 will likely prompt an Israeli attack.

THE PLUTONIUM OPTION

For those who want to understand the less-discussed second method Iran is suspected of using in attempts to acquire a nuclear arsenal, it is worth reading this new paper by Dr. Ephraim Asculai: “The Plutonium Option: Iran’s Parallel Route to a Military Nuclear Capability.”

SPOOF SONG: “THERE’S A MAN IN IRAN (AYATOLLAH SONG)”

This song “There’s a man in Iran (Ayatollah Song)” from the British comedy “Not the Nine O'Clock News,” satirizing the useful idiots in the West enamored of the Islamic dictators, sung by Pamela Stephenson and Rowan Atkinson (who later became famous as “Mr Bean”) has gone viral today.

***

Below are two articles written before this morning’s deal was signed. They sum up well the shortcomings of the deal: the first by Charles Krauthammer published in Friday’s Washington Post; the second by lead columnist for the Israeli liberal daily Ha’aretz, Ari Shavit.

-- Tom Gross

ARTICLES

“SOME JEWISH LIBERALS GOT A TERRIBLE SHOCK LAST WEEK”

Our ‘Sucker’s Deal’ with Iran
The so-called interim nuclear agreement is a rescue package for the mullahs.
By Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post
November 12, 2013

A president desperate to change the subject and a secretary of state desperate to make a name for himself are reportedly on the verge of an “interim” nuclear agreement with Iran. France called it a “sucker’s deal.” France was being charitable.

The only reason Iran has come to the table after a decade of contemptuous stonewalling is that economic sanctions have cut so deeply – Iran’s currency has collapsed, inflation is rampant – that the regime fears a threat to its very survival.

Nothing else could move it to negotiate. Regime survival is the only thing the mullahs value above nuclear weapons. And yet precisely at the point of maximum leverage, President Obama is offering relief in a deal that is absurdly asymmetric: The West would weaken sanctions in exchange for cosmetic changes that do absolutely nothing to weaken Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Don’t worry, we are assured. This is only an interim six-month agreement to “build confidence” until we reach a final one. But this makes no sense. If at this point of maximum economic pressure we can’t get Iran to accept a final deal that shuts down its nuclear program, how in God’s name do we expect to get such a deal when we have radically reduced that pressure?

A bizarre negotiating tactic. And the content of the deal is even worse. It’s a rescue package for the mullahs.

It widens permissible trade in oil, gold, and auto parts. It releases frozen Iranian assets, increasing Iran’s foreign-exchange reserves by 25 percent while doubling its fully accessible foreign-exchange reserves. Such a massive infusion of cash would be a godsend for its staggering economy, lowering inflation, reducing shortages, and halting the country’s growing demoralization. The prospective deal is already changing economic expectations. Foreign oil and other interests are reportedly preparing to reopen negotiations for a resumption of trade in anticipation of the full lifting of sanctions.

And for what? You’d offer such relief in return for Iran’s giving up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Isn’t that what the entire exercise is about?

And yet this deal does nothing of the sort. Nothing. It leaves Iran’s nuclear infrastructure intact. Iran keeps every one of its 19,000 centrifuges – yes, 19,000 – including 3,000 second-generation machines that produce enriched uranium at five times the rate of older models.

Not a single centrifuge is dismantled. Not a single facility that manufactures centrifuges is touched. In Syria, the first thing the weapons inspectors did was to destroy the machines that make the chemical weapons. Then they went after the stockpiles. It has to be that way. Otherwise, the whole operation is an exercise in futility. Take away just the chemical agents, and the weapons-making facilities can replace them at will.

Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing with Iran. The deal would deactivate its 20 percent enriched uranium, which, leaving aside the fact that deactivation is chemically reversible, is quickly replaceable because Iran retains its 3.5 percent uranium, which can be enriched to 20 percent in less than a month.

Result: Sanctions relief that leaves Iran’s nuclear infrastructure untouched, including – and this is where the French gagged – the plutonium facility at Arak, a defiant alternative path to a nuclear weapon.

The point is blindingly simple. Unless you dismantle the centrifuges and prevent the manufacture of new ones, Iran will be perpetually just a few months away from going nuclear. This agreement, which is now reportedly being drafted to allow Iran to interpret it as granting the “right” to enrich uranium, constitutes the West legitimizing Iran’s status as a threshold nuclear state.

Don’t worry, we are assured. The sanctions relief is reversible. Nonsense. It was extraordinarily difficult to cobble together the current sanctions. It took endless years of overcoming Russian, Chinese, and Indian recalcitrance, together with foot-dragging from Europeans making a pretty penny from Iran.

Once the relaxation begins, how do you reverse it? How do you reapply sanctions? There is absolutely no appetite for this among our allies. And adding back old sanctions will be denounced as a provocation that would drive Iran to a nuclear breakout – exactly as Obama is today denouncing congressional moves to increase sanctions as a deal-breaking provocation that might lead Iran to break off talks.

The mullahs are eager for this interim agreement with its immediate yield of political and economic relief. Once they get it, we will have removed their one incentive to conclude the only agreement that is worth anything to us – a verifiable giving up of their nuclear program.

Brilliant.

THE CENTRIFUGES ARE FASTER THAN THE SANCTIONS

Lost cause in Geneva
By Ari Shavit
Ha’aretz
November 14, 2013

When senior American officials spoke with senior Israeli officials this weekend, they insisted they weren’t stupid. We aren’t naïve, the Americans said. We know who we’re dealing with. We understand that the Iranians will try to get a lot while giving very little. But what we’re trying to do in Geneva is to create a short time frame in which the Iranians will be put to the test. During the six months in question, the Iranian nuclear program won’t advance and the sanctions regime won’t collapse. During those six months, intensive negotiations will be held, and by the end, we’ll know whether there is or isn’t a grand bargain to be had with Iran.

Therefore, there’s no reason for anxiety and no reason to panic. If Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei doesn’t supply the goods, next spring he’ll be facing an aggressive United States that will be willing to use force – if in fact there’s a need to use force. Trust us, the Americans said. We aren’t apprentices; we know what we’re doing. Our new Iranian diplomacy is calculated, measured diplomacy, which also serves Israel’s national interests.

The Americans really aren’t stupid. Therefore, they ought to know that their public explanation is nice-sounding but lame. The interim agreement taking shape in Geneva is extremely problematic. What has nevertheless caused sober, intelligent Americans to support this agreement isn’t delusion, but worry. According to the Obama administration’s in-depth analysis, the West’s position with regard to Iran isn’t anything to write home about.

You want the real truth? There is no military option. The Iranians have made too much progress, they’ve gotten too far, and there’s no way to make them not know what they already know.

You want the real truth? The centrifuges are faster than the sanctions. The economic sanctions are hurting Iran’s economy and causing problems for the regime, but they won’t make Natanz and Fordo disappear.

You want the real truth? We have to say that all options are on the table, but we also have to understand that for a long time now, there haven’t been any options and there hasn’t been any table. Going to Geneva is a miserable effort to postpone the end, so that a nuclear Iran doesn’t emerge now, on Barack Obama’s watch, but immediately afterward.

The Americans aren’t stupid, but they’re worn out. Therefore, their mood is that of Nixon going to China. They’re nurturing a genuine belief that, just as they made peace with Beijing in 1972 they’ll make peace with Tehran in 2014. They’re hoping that this historic American-Iranian reconciliation will be Obama’s international legacy, and will retroactively justify the Nobel Prize he received as a down payment four years ago.

But what the Americans haven’t taken into account is that while they are going to the new China, they are creating five or six new Taiwans: Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Israel. These countries now feel cheated, betrayed and threatened. And they are immeasurably stronger than the original Taiwan. Therefore, they will do everything in their power to thwart Obama’s journey toward Iranian President Hassan Rohani. Uncle Sam’s abandoned nephews will rise up against Uncle Sam and try to school him.

The big story of 2012 was the story of an Israeli preemptive attack, which in the end didn’t happen. Maybe this story will repeat itself in the spring or summer of 2014, and maybe it won’t. An interim agreement would make it hard for Israel to act and push it into a corner.

But the new big story of 2014 is liable to be the story of Saudi Arabia’s preemptive nuclearization. It’s not inconceivable that the first Islamic bomb in the Middle East won’t be Persian, but Arab. It’s also not inconceivable that while the American president is going to the new China, the Saudi king will be going to the real China.

It’ll be fun, my friends. The Sunnis and the Jews are boiling with anger. Therefore, they are now holding hands and launching a campaign against the Christians and Shi’ites who are closing a deal in Geneva.

English Literature Professor at Al-Quds: We have the right to kill Israelis (& Syracuse cuts ties)

November 22, 2013

ENGLISH LITERATURE PROFESSOR AT AL-QUDS: WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL ISRAELIS

Below is a comment that Rima Najjar, the Assistant Professor of English Literature at Al-Quds University, posted yesterday on her Facebook page. I attach it verbatim, complete with her spelling mistakes.

Rima Najjar

WHAT BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY DOES NOT UNDERSTAND: PALESTINIAN ARMED RESISTANCE TO ZIONIST COLONIZATION IS A PATH TO LIBERATION

Those of you following the story re: Brandeis University suspending its partnership with Al-Quds University might like to take another look at the campus rally that instigated the ruckus. The rally was meant to honor the martyrs of Islamic Jihad and specifically the father of martyr Mohammad Rabah ‘Asi. Regarding the salute at the Islamic Bloc rally that was likened to a nazi salute, it is done by extending the arm and pointing the index finger to indicate the basic “there is no Allah but Allah” Muslim religious” creed. Was there military zeal and a subtext of violence in the imagery used and the slogans chanted against the Jewish Zionist state as symbolized by the star of David that students were stepping on? Yes, of course, there was. It’s the right of the oppressed to use violence against the oppressor and no amount of “terrorist” labeling or Islamophobic ranting is going to change that.

As it happened, we had (by coincidence) three professors from Brandeis visiting us while all this was happening - in fact, they met with members of the English department to discuss course design and development, and they do not share the view of their administration that suspending the partnership between the two universities was the right action to take.

Islamic Block Rally on Campus Honors Palestinian Martyrs

***

And a screenshot of the above from her Facebook page:

ARTICLES

“SOME JEWISH LIBERALS GOT A TERRIBLE SHOCK LAST WEEK”

What Americans Don’t Know About Palestinian Culture
By Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary Magazine
November 20, 2013

www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/11/20/what-americans-dont-know-about-palestine-terror-brandeis-al-quds/

Some Jewish liberals got a terrible shock last week when British journalist Tom Gross broke a story about a fascist-style military rally held on the campus of Al Quds University. Al Quds is a Palestinian college located in Jerusalem and has had an academic partnership with both Brandeis University and Bard College in the United States. The rally was organized by the Al Quds branch of the Islamic Jihad group (though it was joined by much of the rest of the student body that joined the jihadi storm troopers in marching on an Israeli flag) and followed two other demonstrations sponsored by Hamas to honor suicide bombers at the school.

The story about the event, illustrated by a much-circulated picture of the Islamic Jihad group in black uniforms and masks giving a Nazi-style salute, posed a dilemma for Brandeis. While no one in charge at Bard seemed particularly exercised about the fact that their partner held pep rallies for terrorism the way a typical American school does for football or basketball, Brandeis is an avowedly Jewish institution and when the Washington Free Beacon posed a question about what it was doing in a relationship with such a place, the university was initially flummoxed and hunkered down, offering no comment about the story even as many of their students and faculty expressed outrage. It took more than a week, but yesterday Brandeis extracted its head from the sand and President Frederick Lawrence announced that it was reevaluating its relationship with Al Quds. Lawrence’s move came after he called on Al Quds President Sari Nusseibeh to condemn the rally in Arabic and English. Instead, the renowned Palestine “moderate” rationalized the rally, defended the students, and blamed the controversy on “vilification campaigns by Jewish extremists” leaving Brandeis no choice but to back out of their relationship.

But there’s more to this story than just this distressing exchange. The problem here is not just that terror groups are as accepted at Palestinian universities – even those that are generally respected abroad as Al Quds is – as sports teams are at their American counterparts. It’s that most Americans, including American Jews like those who run Brandeis, haven’t a clue about why this is so or how pervasive this trend is in Palestinian society.

If much of the discussion about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians on college campuses and throughout the rest of the American liberal world seem so skewed it is not just because Israel is often unfairly smeared as an “apartheid state.” It is also because many Americans simply don’t know the first thing about contemporary Palestinian culture. Websites like Palestine Media Watch and Memri, which provide constant updates about what is broadcast and printed by Palestinian sources, could give them a quick lesson about how deeply hatred of Israel and the Jews is embedded in popular Palestinian culture as well as its politics. But those who bring up these unhappy facts are more often dismissed as biased extremists who don’t understand the Palestinians.

But the point about campus activities at Al Quds is that there is nothing exceptional about large groups of students demonstrating their hate for Israel and their devotion not to Palestinian nationalism but its extreme Islamist adherents such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad that call for the death of Jews. Such groups are not just welcome at Palestinian schools but an essential part of the fabric of student life as well as the general culture.

Thus, the shock here is not that Brandeis (if not Bard) has been alerted to the true nature of their partner and even a respected front man like Nusseibeh. Rather, it’s that it never occurred to anyone in authority at Brandeis that this was the inevitable result of any cooperation with Al Quds. If it had or if more American academics got their heads out of the sand and realized the cancer of hate that is still the dominating feature of Palestinian political culture, the assumption that Israel is the villain of the Middle East conflict might be challenged more often.

KEVIN QUINN, SYRACUSE’S SENIOR VP: WE ARE DISAPPOINTED WITH AL-QUDS

Syracuse follows Brandeis in halting ties with Al-Quds
By Henry Rome
Jerusalem Post
November 22, 2013

U.S. schools severed ties this week after Islamic Jihad held a Nazi-style demonstration on the Palestinian university’s campus. Sari Nusseibeh

www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Syracuse-follows-Brandeis-in-halting-ties-with-Al-Quds-332650

Syracuse University “indefinitely” suspended its relationship with Al-Quds University on Thursday, making it the second American university to sever ties this week after Islamic Jihad held a Nazi-style demonstration on the Palestinian university’s campus.

“We are very disappointed and saddened to have learned of these recent events at Al-Quds University,” said Kevin Quinn, Syracuse’s senior vice president for public affairs, in an email to The Jerusalem Post.

He said Syracuse’s Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism would end its ties with Al-Quds. The decision by Syracuse came three days after Brandeis University severed its relationship.

Meanwhile, the president of Al-Quds, Sari Nusseibeh, came under increasing pressure to respond to Brandeis President Frederick Lawrence’s demand to condemn “radical” behavior at the Islamic Jihad’s rally.

“We don’t believe in oppressing freedom of opinion, but respecting it.” Nusseibeh told The Media Line. “I said clearly about what happens in this rally that such manifestations are harmful to the university. The university will not allow the breaching of respect.”

It was a reversal from Nusseibeh’s previous public statement on the matter – he said the university was “often subjected to vilification campaigns by Jewish extremists” – but did not appear to be a sufficient apology for Brandeis officials.

“I think that Brandeis University leadership and faculty members who were previously involved in the partnership are very carefully monitoring the situation and I think we’re in wait-and- see mode,” Ellen de Graffenreid, Brandeis senior vice president for communications, told the Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

The event that sparked the uproar was a demonstration on November 5 at the Al- Quds campus, in which members of Islamic Jihad dressed in military uniforms, carried fake assault rifles and trampled on Israeli flags.

The event featured posters of suicide bombers and demonstrators raising their arms in a Nazi-style salute.

AL QUDS UNIVERSITY HAS PARTNERSHIPS WITH MANY OTHER UNIVERSITIES WORLDWIDE

Al Quds University has partnerships with MANY other universities worldwide
From the Elder of Ziyon blog
November 20, 2013

elderofziyon.blogspot.cz/2013/11/al-quds-university-has-partnerships.html#.Uo9zHWTk8o8

As I reported on Monday, Brandeis University cut ties with Al Quds University over its shameful tolerance of hate on campus and its blaming “extremist Jews” for bringing it to light.

The question is, what other universities does Al Quds partner with?

In its 2006 annual report, Al Quds wrote:

www.alquds.edu/images/stories/annual-reports/annual_report_0506.pdf

In the field of academic cooperation and scientific research, the (Al-Quds) university continued to open new horizons of cooperation with numerous international universities in the US. These include: Columbia, Brandeis, Dearborn, Wayne State University, MIT, Tufts, George Mason, and Leslley. The (Al-Quds) university has excellent ties with numerous German universities like Heidelberg, Hohenheim, Karlsruhe and the Berlin Free University. The same is true regarding French universities like Paris 4, Paris 8, Bordeaux University and Lille University. We also have agreements with the Ricardo Palma University in South America, and more.

www.umd.umich.edu/univ/ur/press_releases/nov04/alogrant_pr.html

prognosis.med.wayne.edu/article/wayne-state-delegation-reaches-out-in-the-middle-east

***

Al Quds 2011 annual report mentions Syracuse U, Montana U, Tufts U, Drexel U, Berkeley U and Babson College in the US; Western Ontario U, British Columbia U, McGill U and Toronto U in Canada, and many European universities including and Napoli University, Santa Anna University, Turin U, Ferrara U, Verona U, Antwerp U, Marie Curie U, University of Rennes, and Bordeaux U.

www.alquds.edu/images/stories/annual-reports/annual-2011-2010.pdf

***

With regard to Canadian universities, especially Toronto and McGill and other universities, the (Al-Quds) university has had good ties with them for some time.

In addition, Al Quds has a partnership with Bard College, written up in the New York Times and funded by USAID and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

USAID seems to do a lot with Al Quds.

www.qou.edu/english/index.jsp?pageId=222

York University in Ontario has expanded agreements with Al Quds.

alumni.news.yorku.ca/2011/07/27/new-agreement-extends-yorks-collaboration-with-al-quds-university/

George Washington University Medical school has a joint program with Al Quds.

passport.gwu.edu/index.cfm?FuseAction=programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=2205

Rutgers worked on a joint brain research study with Al Quds funded by National Institutes of Health..

www.gluck.edu/alquds/donate.html

Harvard has jointly published an anti-Israel report with Al Quds.

www.alquds.edu/images/stories/AQHRC/projects/JerusalemAdvocacy/StopRightRoad/PressReleaseRingRoadReportEnglish.pdf

Oberlin created a joint program with Al Quds and Tel Aviv University.

new.oberlin.edu/details/photo_gallery.dot?id=2424542

Purdue has a water resource management program with a number of schools, including Al Quds and Technion.

engineering.purdue.edu/~h2o/partners.html

American Universiy Law School partners with Al Quds.

www.wcl.american.edu/international/partners.cfm

The New School has a “co-existence initiative” with Al Quds.

www.newschool.edu/public-engagement/civic-engagement-projects-partnerships/

Smith College.

www.smith.edu/mes/summer.php

Loughborough University in the United Kingdom, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden and the National Technical University of Athens in Greece partner with Al Quds and two other Palestinian Arab universities on environmental issues.

AL-QUDS PRESIDENT SAYS BRANDEIS COUNTERPART ‘GONE OVERBOARD’ IN ROW OVER RALLY

Al-Quds president says Brandeis counterpart ‘gone overboard’ in row over rally
By David Horovitz
Times of Israel
November 22, 2013

www.timesofisrael.com/al-quds-president-says-brandeis-counterpart-gone-overboard-in-row-over-rally/

Sari Nusseibeh, the president of the Palestinian al-Quds University, on Friday charged that the president of Brandeis University, Frederick Lawrence, had “gone overboard” in an escalating dispute between the two universities stemming from an Islamic Jihad rally held on the al-Quds main campus earlier this month.

During the demonstration two weeks ago, JTA reported, protesters marched in black military gear with fake automatic weapons while waving flags and offering Nazi-style salutes. Banners with images of Palestinian suicide bombers decorated the campus’s main square, according to a statement from Brandeis. Several students also portrayed dead Israeli soldiers.

Lawrence called on Nusseibeh to issue in Arabic and English a condemnation of the demonstration. Unsatisfied with a statement subsequently issued by Nusseibeh in English and Arabic, which Brandeis called “unacceptable and inflammatory,” the Waltham, Mass. university on Monday suspended its partnership with al-Quds, which had been in place since 1998. Lawrence said the university would reevaluate the relationship in the future.

Speaking to The Times of Israel in his office at al-Quds’s Beit Hanina campus on Wednesday, Nusseibeh said he hoped Brandeis would reconsider its position. But on Friday [today], in the latest round of the dispute, Nusseibeh sent a bitter email to The Times of Israel.

Nusseibeh was responding to a follow-up query in which The Times of Israel asked him whether he had condemned the rally – and any lauding of suicide bombers that may have taken place there – in Arabic to the students of al-Quds. Nusseibeh replied with a lengthy critique of Lawrence’s role in the affair and a defense of his own actions in the wake of the rally.

“I think president Lawrence has gone overboard in his reactions – the last being his decision to expel me from the Board of Ethics, justice and public life, with which I have been associated since its inception, and from many years before I forged a partnership between the two universities,” Nusseibeh charged. Brandeis maintains an International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life, and Nusseibeh was a member of its international advisory board. (That board, incidentally, is headed by the South African judge Richard Goldstone, author of the Goldstone Report into the 2008-9 Operation Cast Lead, which accused the Israeli army of deliberately killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza – a charge Goldstone personally later retracted.) The website of the Board now states that Nusseibeh is “currently suspended” from membership.

Nusseibeh continued, in his email, by protesting that Brandeis President Lawrence had “chosen to read my letters to students as ‘inflammatory’ – partly I understood because he will not accept that there are such people as ‘Jewish extremists’, and partly also because of my use of the Arabic term ‘majzara’ – which was translated into English as ‘massacre’ – to refer to the holocaust (sic). This, in spite of there being no Arabic term to refer to the holocaust by, and in spite of the literal translation of majzara as slaughter.”

He criticized Lawrence for never bothering “to express any sympathy for the continued plight of my university – the latest being yet another vicious incursion by the army into the campus just a day after the rally, as a result of which more than 30 students were hospitalized from various gas-related effects.” Nusseibeh may have been referring to an incident last week reported by the Palestinian Ma’an news agency. “Nor has he shown any sympathy for the fact that my graduates continue to suffer from not having their degrees accredited in the Israeli system. In other words, nothing that he has done has shown any feeling for our plight under occupation. Yet he demands immediate reaction just based on a picture and comment circulated by someone who clearly wishes to inflame the political climate between Israelis (and Jews more generally) and Palestinians.”

Turning to the November 5 rally itself, Nusseibeh said he first learned of it “when someone sent me the blogger’s picture and comment. I reacted immediately by giving instructions to issue an official statement saying such manifestations of militarism are unacceptable (remember, I still had no information on exactly what all this was about).

“Secondly, I issued instructions to set up an investigation into the event: its nature, the people behind it, the occasion, the procedures employed to get permission for holding it, and so on. Thirdly, I received the call from president Lawrence expressing anger, and calling for a condemnation of nazi-style militarism. He said he was being pressured by his trustees and other members of the Jewish community. I assured him of our mutual agreement that I will act promptly to express our official rejection of such manifestations and that I will do whatever I can that such matters will not be repeated. I asked him to send a draft statement of what he needed.

“Fourthly, president Lawrence sent me a draft statement that expressed more his immediate needs than my needs as a university president having to handle a culture rather than a one-time event. I therefore preferred to draft my own statement, wishing to address the problem at its roots: so far ‘the problem’ as I knew was simply that of holding nazi-style militarist manifestations. What I had to address was therefore the matter of what free speech meant, its limits, and the values that go with it.

“Fifthly, I had to begin reacting to President Lawrence’s reactions. I and other colleagues were in close consultation about the matter with three Brandeis faculty who happened to be visiting us, trying to contain the fallout. These three were invited to attend an initial briefing by the investigation committee we had set up.

“Sixthly, and only yesterday, I learnt (still informally) from one of the people on the investigation committee what the occasion was: the jihad faction was protesting the manner of killing by the Israeli army a few days ago of the suicide bomber from three years ago: they had invited the parents of the person bombed inside the cave where he was hiding by way of ‘paying respects’ to them.”

Nusseibeh may have been referring to the late-October killing by the IDF of Islamic Jihad’s Muhammed Aazi, who was allegedly among the planners of a bus bombing in Tel Aviv last November in which 29 people were injured. Aazi, who was said by the IDF to be planning another attack, was shot in a clash in the cave where he was hiding out west of Ramallah.

Nusseibeh’s email continued: “Having said all that, I can now tell you that for me, there was neither a suicide bombing I was called upon to laud or condemn. What I was first called upon to do was to express the university’s rejection of militaristic parades. And my role here was not simply to express displeasure or condemnation, but to give students a message about what freedom of opinion meant. And I think that, judging by the number of comments (positive and negative or none) I received from students, I can say the message had the effect desired by all of us who hope to contain extremism and to create a climate conducive to peace (my own objective, if not that of others).

“As to suicide bombings,” he concluded, “I have never lauded them, and have always condemned them. And as to nazism, I should just add here that I was informed by the investigation committee member I mentioned above that no nazi or fascist sentiments were expressed. However, to my mind, fascism and anti/demur ism can be expressed in more than one way, and it is a duty to condemn and suppress it wherever it reveals itself.

“I am sorry for a long answer to a simple query, but simple questions can sometimes only elicit very shallow and incomplete answers,” Nusseibeh signed off.

Meanwhile, journalist and commentator Tom Gross, who first publicized news and photos of the rally, told The Times of Israel that he “and others writing about this absolutely resent being called Jewish extremists since I have for over 20 years supported an independent Palestine state and still do – and all I and others want is for the Palestinians and Israelis to both engage in responsible governance so that the Palestinian state in formation will live at peace with Israel.”

In his statement issued to al-Quds students Sunday, Nusseibeh had said that “Jewish extremists” were using the demonstration to “capitalize on events in ways that misrepresent the university as promoting inhumane, anti-Semitic, fascist, and Nazi ideologies.”

***

For those interested, see also:

Brandeis Removes Al Quds’ Nusseibeh From Ethics Center

www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/brandeis-removes-al-quds-nusseibeh-from-ethics-center/2013/11/21/

STATEMENT FROM BRANDEIS PRESIDENT FREDERICK LAWRENCE

Statement from Brandeis President Frederick Lawrence
November 22, 2013 (12 noon EST)

www.brandeis.edu/now

Al-Quds University President Sari Nusseibeh has made a number of remarks to the media that have not been conveyed to me personally or through my staff. I am reaching out to President Nusseibeh today and hope that he will be open to a personal discussion.

As I have indicated to him directly, this decision by Brandeis University was taken deliberatively and with broad input. The partnership was suspended – not terminated – pending the receipt of additional information including input from our faculty members.

My position on the issue of free speech and hate speech, a subject that I have studied for my entire professional and academic career, can be read on my blog at: http://blogs.brandeis.edu/president/2013/11/15/confronting-hate-speech/.

I am dedicated to keeping the lines of communication open between our institutions, but I will not respond to specific issues raised in the public media.

USA TODAY / AP: BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY CUTS TIES WITH PALESTINIAN SCHOOL

www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/21/brandeis-palestinian-university/3660975/

Brandeis University cuts ties with Palestinian school
USA Today / Associated Press
November 21, 2013

WALTHAM, Mass. (AP) – Brandeis University has decided to end its relationship with a Palestinian university over what it calls a failure by leadership to condemn an on-campus demonstration in which marchers reportedly made what Brandeis officials said looked like Nazi salutes.

Brandeis, based in suburban Boston, is a nonsectarian university founded by the American Jewish community. Its president, Frederick Lawrence, formally ended the partnership with Al-Quds University on Monday.

But Al-Quds in a statement Wednesday urged Brandeis to reconsider. The university said it launched an investigation immediately after the Nov. 5 rally and informed all political factions on campus not to hold such activities. The university said the campus political wing of Islamic Jihad responsible for the rally has a small number of students who violated their agreements with the university.

The faction’s activities are unacceptable and contrary to the university’s “liberal policy and the human values we are trying to promote,” the statement said.

The military wing of Islamic Jihad is a violent militant group committed to Israel’s destruction. It has killed scores of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks.

Al-Quds said in its statement that the partnership between the universities has shielded students from extremist influences.

“Our arms are always open for peace,” it said. “This has been and will always be our stance, despite the repeated attacks by the Israeli military on our campus and students.”

The demonstration on the Al-Quds campus included masked demonstrators “wearing black military gear, armed with fake automatic weapons, and who marched while waving flags and raising the traditional Nazi salute,” according to a statement from Brandeis. The demonstration included banners depicting images of martyred suicide bombers.

Lawrence contacted Al-Quds President Sari Nusseibeh and requested that he issue an unequivocal condemnation in Arabic and English.

But Brandeis deemed the resulting statement issued Sunday “unacceptable and inflammatory.”

The original Al-Quds statement said “extreme elements” often try to capitalize on campus events that “misrepresent the university as promoting inhumane, anti-Semitic, fascist, and Nazi ideologies.”

“As occurred recently, these opportunists are quick to describe the Palestinians as a people undeserving of freedom and independence, and as a people who must be kept under coercive control and occupation,” the statement continued. “They cite these events as evidence justifying their efforts to muster broad Jewish and western opinion to support their position.”

Nusseibeh is considered a leading Palestinian intellectual and advocate of non-violence who worked with an Israeli peace activist and former security official on peace initiatives.

A spokesman for Islamic Jihad’s military wing in the Gaza Strip told The Associated Press that although similar, there is no connection between Islamic Jihad’s salute and that of the Nazis. The raised arm pointing toward the sky symbolizes a desire to reach holy Jerusalem, currently under Israeli control, he said.

The decade-long partnership between the schools has included student and faculty exchanges that Brandeis says have advanced the cause of peace and understanding and provided educational opportunities.

Brandeis did not close the door entirely on the partnership, saying the university “will re-evaluate the relationship as future events may warrant.”

The previous dispatches on this issue can be read here:

* Scenes yesterday afternoon from a “moderate” Palestinian university

* Al-Quds: Fascist-style rally by our students last Tuesday was “totally unacceptable”

* Update: Al-Quds photos receive attention from Netanyahu through to Al Jazeera

* Brandeis suspends partnership with Al-Quds after Fascist-style rally

* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.

UPDATE: Please see also:

* Finally, the New York Times covers official Palestinian Authority praise for Hitler (and reproduces my Al-Quds Fascist rally photos) (Jan. 7, 2014)

Brandeis suspends partnership with Al-Quds after Fascist-style rally

November 19, 2013

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT OF BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

Brandeis University suspends its partnership with Al-Quds University effective immediately
Nov. 18, 2013

http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2013/November/al-quds-response.html

Brandeis University President Frederick Lawrence announced today that Brandeis has suspended its partnership with Al-Quds University effective immediately. Brandeis will re-evaluate the relationship as future events may warrant.

The decision stems from recent events at Al-Quds University, including a campus demonstration on Nov. 5 and a statement about the demonstration, which the president of Al-Quds University issued last night.

The Nov. 5 demonstration on the Al-Quds campus involved demonstrators wearing black military gear, armed with fake automatic weapons, and who marched while waving flags and raising the traditional Nazi salute. The demonstration took place in the main square of the Al-Quds campus, which was surrounded by banners depicting images of “martyred” suicide bombers.

Immediately after he received reports of the demonstration, President Lawrence contacted Al-Quds President Sari Nusseibeh and requested that he issue an unequivocal condemnation of the demonstrations. President Lawrence also requested that the condemnation be published in both Arabic and English.

Last night (Nov. 17), President Nusseibeh sent an email to President Lawrence with an English translation of a statement posted in Arabic on the Al-Quds web site.

Unfortunately, the Al-Quds statement is unacceptable and inflammatory. While Brandeis has an unwavering commitment to open dialogue on difficult issues, we are also obliged to recognize intolerance when we see it, and we cannot – and will not – turn a blind eye to intolerance. As a result, Brandeis is suspending its partnership with Al-Quds University effective immediately. We will reevaluate our relationship with Al-Quds based on future events.

The partnership with Al Quds University was initiated with the best of intentions for opening a dialogue and building a foundation for peace. Over the years, our partnership has been extremely productive in many respects, including student and faculty exchanges that have advanced the cause of peace and understanding.

Brandeis welcomes students of all faiths and nationalities and is home to students from more than 130 countries, including every country in the Middle East. We are proud of our deep roots in Middle Eastern studies as well as our internationally recognized programs in Peace, Conflict and Coexistence Studies.

While recent events make it necessary for us to suspend our current relationship with Al-Quds, we will continue to advance the cause of peace and understanding on our campus and around the world.

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT OF AL-QUDS UNIVERSITY

Letter to our dear students from the President of the University

“Call them to the path of your Lord with wisdom and words of good advice; and reason with them in the best way possible.”

-- Allah the Almighty is Truthful.

Quran, 16:125

My Dear Students of Al-Quds University,

The university is often subjected to vilification campaigns by Jewish extremists with the purpose of discrediting its reputation as a prestigious academic institution with a unique, humane calling: to strive to instill noble values in its students; to spread the spirit of democracy and openness toward other world cultures; and to present the genuine face of the Palestinian people, calling for peace against the extremism and violence to which we ourselves are subjected as a people denied our rights under occupation.

These extreme elements spare no effort to exploit some rare but nonetheless damaging events or scenes which occur on the campus of Al Quds University, such as fist-fighting between students, or some students making a mock military display. These occurrences allow some people to capitalize on events in ways that misrepresent the university as promoting inhumane, anti-Semitic, fascist, and Nazi ideologies. Without these ideologies, there would not have been the massacre of the Jewish people in Europe; without the massacre, there would not have been the enduring Palestinian catastrophe.

As occurred recently, these opportunists are quick to describe the Palestinians as a people undeserving of freedom and independence, and as a people who must be kept under coercive control and occupation. They cite these events as evidence justifying their efforts to muster broad Jewish and western opinion to support their position. This public opinion, in turn, sustains the occupation, the extension of settlements and the confiscation of land, and prevents Palestinians from achieving our freedom.

My Dear Students of Al-Quds University,

Your university has a proud place on the academic map of the Palestinian and the Arab worlds. And this pride is not only because we have made more progress than other universities in the fields of faculty research and publication. Nor is it only that your graduates are making great achievements for society and knowledge that exceed the achievements of others. This pride is also due to the honorable values that every student should carry, shape, and spread among society. This is a message of noble human values: freedom, democracy, and pluralism. This is a message of equality among people without consideration of status, class, race, gender, religion or any other quality. This is a message to build hope and a better human future. This is a message of justice and love and peace. This is a message of dialogue and forgiveness, of mutual respect, a message of high ethical standards. A message against hatred, against violence, against extremism, and also a message to make use of reason in every way and make reason dominant over passionate outbursts and to keep passion contained in the breast.

My Dear Students,

Your university makes the maximum effort to create an environment for you that allows you to act freely. Practicing this freedom is the basis on which to foster a better society.

But freedom is connected to the whole group of values that I mentioned above. It means respect when you are dealing with others. It means mutual respect among students, of students for their teachers and of teachers for their students. Any attack on teachers violates the principle of freedom. If you try to force your position on others without persuading them, that also is a violation of the concept of freedom. To express any position or opinion in a way that inspires hatred against others violates the concept of respect, which is one of the fundamental elements of freedom – for example, if anyone tries to impose a position on others by force, by verbal threat, or by violence.

And while the university strives to provide an atmosphere of freedom, it is at the same time committed to preventing breaches by those who do not respect its principles and also holding accountable those who violate them, be they students, faculty or staff. Whoever harms another individual or group is also harming the university, its image and its reputation; this is an abomination. The word for a university campus (haram) connotes a sacred space for free and open discussion, the exchange of ideas, and the expression of contradictory views. A university campus should provide peaceful coexistence, safe from reactions that occur in the surrounding community, alongside scientific investigation and knowledge incubated in the university.

So we call upon you, for the sake of your society, for the sake of your university, and for the sake of yourselves, to hold firmly these values, for a world with degraded principles is like a beast that may be skillful in its tasks but reaps nothing but havoc upon the earth.

www.brandeis.edu/now/2013/November/pdfs/al-quds-statement-11-18-13.pdf

* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.

The previous dispatches on this issue can be read here:

* Scenes yesterday afternoon from a “moderate” Palestinian university

* Al-Quds: Fascist-style rally by our students last Tuesday was “totally unacceptable”

* Update: Al-Quds photos receive attention from Netanyahu through to Al Jazeera

Update November 20:

I noted in previous dispatches on this subject, that the mainstream media have all-but-ignored this story. One can only presume political reasons play a part in their decision.

But the latest developments have been reported today and yesterday in many prominent blogs and websites, for example, here:

* Jonathan Tobin at Commentary (who is always worth reading)
* The Investigative Project
* Before it is news
* HonestReporting (if you scroll down)
* BBC Watch (if you scroll down)

And in Israeli newspapers, for example:

* Ha’aretz (with interesting readers comments)
* The Jerusalem Post
* Ma’ariv
* Israel National News

* In the education press, for example in the Chronicle of Higher Education

* Or in the Jewish press, for example in The Forward

* Or in Spanish
* Or in French (which notes that “Aucun média classique français n'en a parlé...”)
* Or in Hungarian

* While mainstream media are still ignoring this story, readers continue to highlight it in the readers’ comment sections – for example, here in the leading German paper Die Zeit

Baby born in IDF field hospital in Philippines named ‘Israel’ (& UN interpreter slips up, tells truth)

November 17, 2013

[Notes below by Tom Gross]

This dispatch primarily concerns anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism. I attach two articles below with various notes by myself before.

***

FIRST BABY BORN IN IDF FIELD HOSPITAL IN THE PHILIPPINES IS NAMED ‘ISRAEL’

Whereas, according to news reports, countries such as the U.S. and Britain first and foremost sent warships to help in the Philippines, Israel immediately sent people, including over 150 specialist doctors and nurses to set up field hospitals and treat the injured in stricken areas. They were flown there by the Israeli army and by the charity IsraAid.

On Friday the first baby born in an Israeli army field hospital in the Philippines was named “Israel” by his parents in honor of the doctors and nurses who helped deliver him.

As well as setting up what is described as a “multi-department medical facility” with senior doctors, the Israeli army has search-and-rescue units now working to find survivors of the devastating typhoon, which hit the Philippines a week ago.

OPENLY PRO-ISRAEL STORY ON NBC NIGHTLY NEWS

On Friday’s NBC Nightly News, for once, Israel was portrayed in a positive light.

NBC correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman said she was “in awe” of the Israeli medics in the Philippines. She said the work of the Israelis was “remarkable, triaging and treating patients in the midst of the devastation” in the hardest hit towns “off the beaten path.”

“As I left, I walked away in awe of this group of doctors: physician humanitarians, and medicine at its very best,” she said at the end of her report.

You can watch a video of it here.

***

By contrast, the BBC omitted Israel from its online list of countries helping in the Philippines, even though Israeli army and civilian doctors have done considerably more than many of the countries they listed.

***

Israel has frequently been at the forefront of aid efforts in the wake of disasters, such as the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010 and the earthquake in Turkey in 2011.

(For more on Haiti, with striking videos, please see here: And his name will be ‘Israel’: Mother of Haitian baby honors IDF rescuers.)

SAUDI ARABIA JOINS CHINA, RUSSIA AS UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL MEMBERS

China, Russia and Saudi Arabia were elected last week on to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, the body that does so little for human rights worldwide and spends almost its entire time demonizing Israel.

Russia is listed 176th out of 196 countries surveyed in Freedom House’s 2013 global press freedom rankings. China is ranked 179th and Saudi Arabia is 182nd.

Cuba, Vietnam and Namibia were also elected.

Admission to the council means members can seek to block probes into human rights violations in their own countries.

***

For two articles of mine on the UN Human Rights Council, please see:

* If the UN had integrity.

* The speakers were never meant to live and tell their stories.

UN INTERPRETER CAUGHT ON MIC: WHY ARE ALL TEN RESOLUTIONS AGAINST ISRAEL?

In a rare moment of honesty at the UN in New York on Thursday a United Nations interpreter, unaware that her microphone was on, said in reaction to the General Assembly’s adoption of nine different resolutions all condemning Israel, and no resolutions about the rest of the world:

“I think when you have… like a total of ten resolutions on Israel and Palestine, there’s gotta be something, c’est un peu trop, non? [It’s a bit much, no?] I mean I know… There’s other really bad sh*t happening, but no one says anything about the other stuff.”

Her comments can be seen in this UN video at 2 minutes, 10 seconds:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7W5tsnd0BE&sns=fb

Laughter erupted among the delegates. “The interpreter apologizes,” said the unfortunate interpreter, moments later.

Hillel Neuer of UN Watch points out that by the end of its annual legislative session next month, the General Assembly will have adopted a total of 22 resolutions condemning Israel and only four on the rest of the world combined – with none condemning, for example, Syrian dictator Assad for using chemical weapons.

The General Assembly is comprised of all 193 UN member states.

TOM JONES CONDEMNS BOYCOTTS OF ISRAEL BY MUSICIANS AFTER PLAYING TEL AVIV

British superstar Sir Tom Jones says that the campaign by anti Israel-activists to try and make him cancel his concerts in Tel Aviv last month made him more determined to play there.

“I was in Israel two weeks ago where a lot of singers won’t go because of the boycott campaign… They should go... I did two shows in Tel Aviv and it was fantastic. The people and atmosphere are wonderful. I was so glad I went and I’d definitely like to perform there again,” the Welsh singer told a British newspaper.

Among other artists who withstood intense campaigns not to sing in Israel (and only in Israel) recently, and performed to sold out audiences there, were Alicia Keys and Rhianna.

Miley Cyrus is among pop stars due to perform in Israel in coming months.

ANTI-SEMITIC SERIAL KILLER TO BE EXECUTED

The American Neo-Nazi who shot at bar mitzvah guests at a St. Louis synagogue in 1977 is to be the first prisoner executed in Missouri in 3 years, state authorities announced.

Joseph Paul Franklin, now 63, admits to killing at least 12 people in the 1970s. He said his killing spree was motivated by a hatred of “Jews and blacks”.

He is scheduled to be put to death on Wednesday, with an injection of the drug, pentobarbital.

His attorney, Jennifer Herndon, says her client had been misled when he was influenced by a copy of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” he read as a teenager.

Franklin had a particular dislike for interracial couples, according to the Associated Press. In addition to the killings in 1977, he was convicted of shooting a black man and a white woman in 1978. The man died, and the woman was paralyzed. He killed a couple in Oklahoma City in 1979, and another couple in Pennsylvania in 1980. He confessed to killing a 15-year-old prostitute because the girl had black customers.

***

A fourth man has been charged in relation to the violent anti-Semitic assault of four Jews in Sydney, Australia last month. The Jews were severely beaten after they left synagogue services by a group of men hurling anti-Semitic abuse. One Jewish man was hospitalized with a brain injury.

***

Italian police on Thursday raided the homes of 35 suspected neo-Nazis accusing them of spreading anti-Semitic hatred online. Police said they found two loaded weapons, a hand-grenade and swastika flags in the apartment of one 51-year-old man, together with literature saying that the Jews and Israel were behind Italy’s economic crisis.

GERMAN PAPER ACCUSED OF ANTI-SEMITISM OVER NETANYAHU POISON CARTOON

A cartoon in a German newspaper showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu killing the Iran nuclear talks with poison has led to accusations of anti-Semitism. The cartoon appeared in the regional German newspaper of Badische Zeitung, in Freiburg, alongside stories about the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht last week.

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, told Jerusalem Post correspondent Benjamin Weinthal that, “In the 14th century in Germany and France, the Jews were accused of poisoning wells and became the victims of murders. This German cartoon is yet another mutation of the ancient anti-Semitic poisoning motif. It follows an earlier one this year in the Stuttgarter Zeitung. Both fit perfectly the evil mindset of half of the German population which believes that Israel exterminates the Palestinians or behaves like the Nazis.”

The Badische paper cartoon shows Netanyahu poisoning a peace dove and a snail on its way to the Geneva talks on Iran. Netanyahu talks on his cell phone, saying, “I need pigeon and snail poisons.”

Alex Feuerherdt, a German journalist who has written extensively on media anti-Semitism, told the Post that the cartoon shows “that modern anti-Semitism is dressed up as criticism of Israel.”

Gerstenfeld said, “Anti-Zionists and anti-Israelis frequently repeat the lie that they are not anti-Semites. Yet the classic anti-Semitic motifs appear in their circles again and again with new anti-Israeli mutations.”

“YOU HAD TO CHOOSE BETWEEN WAR AND DISHONOR, YOU CHOSE DISHONOR, YOU WILL HAVE WAR”

Regarding the Iran dispatch on this list/website last Thursday (Diplomacy is better than war but bad diplomacy can cause bad wars), here are some tweets by the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, who is a subscriber to this list:

* Over Iran’s nuclear program: Obama and the West (less France for the time being) seem intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

* Minimalist Kerry. After threatening Syria with “unbelievably small” military strike he now offers to ease a “tiny portion” of Iran sanctions.

* The only disarmament on the table at Geneva appears to be the moral disarmament of the West.

***

And reader Paul Lewis reminds me of Churchill’s comment:

This Obama/Iran fiasco (which you predicted long ago) recalls Churchill’s magnificent speech against Chamberlain:

“You had to choose between war and dishonor, you chose dishonor, you will have war.”

***

And to repeat two paragraphs from my dispatch of September 3, 2013:

“Trust us,” the world – led by the U.S. – has urged Israel for years on Iran. “We will deal with Iran, we will not allow them to get nuclear weapons. Even if they do, there is little chance they will use them. Nobody is that crazy.”

Really? Syrian President Bashar Assad is that crazy, using chemical weapons in broad daylight against his own people, even though he knew he would be held culpable?

***

I attach two articles below. The writers of these articles, as well as those quoted in these articles or notes -- German author Henryk Broder, former Italian MP Fiamma Nirenstein, the journalist Benjamin Weinthal and the scholar Manfred Gerstenfeld -- are subscribers to this list.

-- Tom Gross

This graffiti in Rome reads: “Shoah must go on”

ARTICLES

The New Face of European Anti-Semitism
The ‘Elders of Zion’ are out, but demonizing Israel is mainstream.
By Daniel Schwammenthal
Wall Street Journal Europe
Nov. 14, 2013

This past weekend was the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 Nazi pogrom against German Jews, and European commentary focused predictably on the traditional anti-Semitic threats from the far right. The recent rise of openly anti-Jewish parties in Greece and Hungary shows that this remains a problem that authorities and civil society must confront without equivocation.

But in many parts of the Continent, things are more complex. As German author Henryk Broder quipped, if after 1945 Europe experienced anti-Semitism without Jews, we are now experiencing anti-Semitism without anti-Semites. As a 2011 study in eight European countries by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation concluded: “Data show anti-Semitism often appearing in the guise of criticism of Israel.” Unlike classic anti-Semitism, which is now largely taboo in polite company, demonizing Israel is mainstream.

“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” that Russian forgery purporting to reveal a Jewish cabal bent on world domination, may not be acceptable dinner conversation any more. But repackage the sentiment as criticism of Israel, and say that the Jewish lobby controls U.S. foreign policy against “true” American interests, and voila, you are no longer dabbling in nasty old tropes about sinister Jewish power, but in bold political analysis.

Thus, when former British foreign minister Jack Straw, during a conference last month in the House of Commons, listed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its allegedly “unlimited” funds among the greatest obstacles to peace between Israelis and Palestinians, he thought nothing controversial about it. For many Europeans, U.S. support for Israel – the only democratic ally in a sea of dictatorships, terrorism and civil war – remains so unfathomable that they can only explain it as the product of nefarious Jewish money for equally nefarious purposes.

If a Labour MP can speak publicly like this without triggering any rebuke from his or other parties or from the mainstream media, one can only imagine what is said privately in daily European life.

We know what people are telling the pollsters, at least. According to the Friedrich Ebert study, 63% of surveyed Poles and 48% of Germans agreed with the statement that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.” Forty-one percent of Britons and 42% of Hungarians agreed. In the other surveyed countries, agreement was in the high 30s; the lowest level was 38%, among Italians.

Additionally, 55% percent of Poles and 36% of Germans agreed with the statement that “considering Israeli policy I can understand why people don’t like Jews.” For the other surveyed countries, the level of agreement with this statement ranged from the mid 30s to the high 40s.

Realizing the depth of the problem already in 2005, the European Union Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) drafted a working definition of anti-Semitism that specifically included the targeting of Israel, “conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” The EUMC listed such examples as questioning the Jewish right to self-determination by calling Israel a racist endeavor, applying double standards against Israel, comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, or holding Jews responsible for Israel’s actions. The draft definition, despite being praised by the U.S. State Department and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, has yet to be adopted.

Now, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, the EUMC’s successor, documents in a new study that an alarmingly high proportion of Jewish citizens have experienced harassment, threats, vandalism and physical attacks. This first survey to collect comparable data across EU states on Jewish experiences of anti-Semitism shows how European Jews suffer from Israel’s vilification.

According to the survey, released last Friday, 21% of respondents have experienced at least one incident of anti-Semitic “verbal insult or harassment and/or a physical attack” in the past 12 months. Forty-eight percent of respondents have “frequently” or “all the time” seen or heard the accusation, in the last 12 months, that “Israelis behave to the Palestinians like the Nazis to the Jews.” In Belgium, Italy and France, around 60% reported this. In the U.K., Germany and Sweden, 40%-50% did.

Twenty-three percent of respondents in all eight surveyed countries said that at least occasionally they avoided Jewish events or sites. Another 29% have considered emigrating in the past five years. In Hungary, France and Belgium, 40%-48% have considered emigrating.

EU leaders can no longer ignore the grotesque misconceptions about the Jewish state. By adopting the EUMC’s working definition of anti-Semitism, the EU would have an excellent tool to differentiate between legitimate criticism of Israel on the one hand and bigotry on the other, while sending a strong signal that it won’t tolerate the latter.

This is not just a question of the image of an entire nation or the future of bilateral relations between European countries and Israel. At stake is the future of European Jewry – or, given the high number of Jews who have contemplated emigration, whether there will be such a future at all.

“ONE SECURITY PROFESSIONAL TOLD ME THAT RAZOR WIRE AND BOMB PROOF DOORS HAVE BECOME SO NORMAL MOST OF THE CHILDREN DON’T EVEN NOTICE IT ANY MORE”

Groundbreaking Survey Reveals Scale of Europe’s Anti-Semitism Crisis
By Jonathan Sacerdoti
MIDA
November 8, 2011

A new survey published by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reveals the worrying extent of anti-Jewish abuse in Europe and failure of states to tackle this growing problem. There is now little room for doubt; Europe’s Jews feel increasingly threatened and abused, fearing antisemitic abuse from Muslim extremists, the extreme right-wing, and left-wing radicals. With few European member states taking any serious action, and the failure of the authorities to tackle this growing problem, the human rights of Jewish Europeans are under threat. 75 years after Kristallnacht, has Europe failed to learn from history?

This week marks the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Germany and parts of Austria which was the ominous prelude to the mass murder of much of European Jewry. The savage attacks of 9th November 1938 saw Jewish businesses attacked, hundreds of synagogues torched and around 30,000 Jewish men rounded up for deportation to concentration camps. German Chancellor Angela Merkel this week described Kristallnacht as “one of the darkest moments in German history,” urging “all the people in this country to show their civil courage and ensure that no form of anti-Semitism is tolerated.” But 75 years on, where do German Jews stand? Merkel herself went on to observe that today it is “almost inexplicable but also the reality that no Jewish institution can be left without police protection.”

This is true elsewhere in Europe, too. In Britain, I am used to attending synagogues protected by concrete crash barriers, watched over by teams of security guards. Our Jewish schools are surrounded with razor wire, and bomb proof doors. One security professional told me that this has become so normal most of the children don’t even notice it any more. Yet I grew up in a country that gave me, and generations of Jews before me, a safe place to live, study and pray. As a Rabbi friend of mine often publicly remarks at events of national importance, Britain has been good to its Jews, and the Jews have been good for Britain.

Yet over recent years, things have changed for the worse in Europe. Anti-Semitism has appeared in the lives of a generation who never thought they would experience it first hand. From stories about verbal abuse shouted at kippah-wearers and physical attacks on Jews, to an arson attack on a London synagogue and a shooting at a French Jewish school, it is clear that something has changed.

Jews across Europe are learning that anti-Semitism respects neither national nor ideological boundaries. Islamic anti-Semitism is proudly displayed on the streets of London and in Germany during the Iranian sponsored ‘Al Quds day’, with Hezbollah flags and Bashar al Assad banners held aloft. Chants of “Judenschweine” (Jewish pigs) rung out for all to hear at a German football match in Offenbach, only two months ago. The far right, the far left, the middle class intelligentsia and European Muslim communities all have within their ranks groups who not only hate Jews, but never seem to tire of finding new ways to express their hatred.

Despite the increasingly distressing amount of anecdotal evidence appearing in the news, it has been hard to gauge the extent of Europe’s anti-Semitism problem. Stories of individuals suffering antisemitic discrimination and even violence are, of course, unacceptable. But they cannot alone provide a clear picture of a trend. Some argue that ‘legitimate’ criticism of Israel is erroneously labeled as anti-Semitism (it rarely is). Academics and commentators are unable to agree what it all means. Manfred Gerstenfeld writes in his recent book, Demonizing Israel and the Jews, that

“polls show that well over 100 million Europeans embrace a satanic view of the State of Israel… [this] view is obviously a new mutation of the diabolical beliefs about Jews which many held in the Middle Ages, and those more recently promoted by the Nazis and their allies.”

But others warn that comparisons with German National Socialism of the early 20th century are alarmist and overblown. It is true that the cracks on German shop windows this week will be nothing more than stickers, applied as a part of a peculiar campaign of remembrance and solidarity with the murdered Jews of Kristallnacht. One British Jewish community leader once challenged me, asking, “surely you don’t think it’s as bad here as it was in Nazi Germany?”, as if Europe’s Jews ought to wait for a full-scale repeat of such extreme levels of Jew-hatred before we allow ourselves to say “enough.”

ANTI-SEMITISM IS STILL SHOCKINGLY WIDESPREAD

It is against this backdrop of reports of antisemitic attacks occurring across Europe, aggressive campaigns launched against Israel, and general academic disagreement over the true levels of European anti-Semitism, that the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has just published the results of its survey of European anti-Semitism. Today, the FRA proudly released “the first comparable figures on Jewish people’s experiences of antisemitic harassment, discrimination and hate crime in the EU.” Published on the eve of the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, we finally have statistical data which shows what many have long known: that anti-Semitism is still shockingly widespread, and that Europe has failed to take action to prevent another alarming escalation in levels of hate crimes aimed at Jews.

The report covers responses from 5,847 Jewish people in the eight countries in which some 90% of the estimated Jewish population in the EU live, and should be a vital tool for EU decision makers and community groups who need urgently to address this unacceptable problem.

Until now, European policy makers have failed to act effectively enough to prevent or stop anti-Semitism from getting worse. This could either be because of a lack of firm evidence of the problem in the first place, or because of a lack of political motivation to do so. Today, only 13 EU member states even bother to collect official data on antisemitic incidents reported to the police or processed through the criminal justice system. The FRA’s survey now provides robust and comparable data on the situation, putting pressure on individual states and the EU as a whole to take action – they can no longer plausibly claim ignorance of the problem. There can be no doubt that inaction now would be through choice.

The results of the survey leave little room for doubt; Europe’s Jews feel increasingly threatened and abused. 66% of respondents consider anti-Semitism to be a major problem in their countries, and a staggering 76% said the situation had become more acute over the last five years. In the 12 months preceding the survey, 21% of all respondents personally experienced at least one antisemitic incident involving verbal insults, harassment or a physical attack. Worryingly, however, 76% of those victims did not report the most serious incident to the police or any other organization. These Jews not only suffered attacks, but also seem to have lacked faith in any organization’s ability to help or protect them. The decision makers and police forces of Europe must drastically increase their efforts to redress this damning indictment of their abilities to reassure and protect Jewish victims of hate crime.

Modern European Jews, like everyone else, face a variety of day to day challenges in their lives. Yet anti-Semitism is considered the fourth most-pressing social or political issue across the countries surveyed – even in 2013. As with other forms of bullying and abuse, the Internet has provided a new platform for racists: an overwhelming three-quarters of respondents consider online anti-Semitism to be a problem, indicating that there is an urgent need for more effective reporting and investigation of online racism against Jews. Recent cases, however, show sites such as Facebook refusing to act when Holocaust denial groups and other hate pages aimed at Jews are reported. European member state governments and the EU itself should become far more proactive in policing these outlets for racist abuse.

The results of the survey also call into question some of the rigidly held positions of the ever increasing number of organizations and pseudo-academic bodies studying anti-Semitism. Most notably, the idea that antisemitic attacks are mostly carried out by right-wing extremists, does not correlate with the responses of the victims of those attacks. Of those exposed to incidents of antisemitic violence, threats and harassment over the past five years, 27% of respondents reported that the most serious incident was perpetrated by someone with Muslim extremist views, 22% attributed it to someone with a left-wing political view, and 19% to someone with right-wing views.

It is not clear why so many organisations professing to deal with anti-Semitism have been working so hard to deny the main sources of this hate crime. The director of the Berlin International Centre for the Study of Anti-Semitism, Dr. Clemens Heni, seems to blame a politically correct “post-colonial and post-Orientalist ideology,” lamenting in a recent paper that “almost all scholars in the social sciences and humanities … reject or ignore research on Islamism and Muslim anti-Semitism.” Heni suggests that “the strange increase in research centers, consortiums, and events regarding anti-Semitism [indicates] a hijacking of serious scholarship by newcomers who have no interest in analyzing anti-Semitism.” The FRA’s data, however, clearly suggests at least as much attention needs to be paid to tackling Muslim anti-Semitism and left-wing anti-Semitism, as to the very real threat posed by far right anti-Semitism.

There is some level of regional variation, with different European cultures resulting in different manifestations of anitsemitism in different countries. For example, in the UK, 9% of respondents said they had often heard the statement “Jews are responsible for the current economic crisis,” while this figure rose to 59% in Hungary. The survey found that while in Latvia only 8% of respondents said the Israeli-Arab conflict had a large impact on how safe they felt, the figure rose to 28% for Germany, and was as high as 73% in France. Thus it is important that European nations act according to the actual needs and demands of their own populations, as well as joining in a wider continental effort to eradicate this pervasive hatred.

A COMPLEX SYNDROME

Anti-Semitism is no less complex a hatred today than it was 75 years ago. The Italian writer Fiamma Nirenstein warns in a recent article that

“Not a single person admits to being anti-Semitic … Even the little girl who asked me if I had a tail back in elementary school didn’t actually know she was antisemitic; she asked out of curiosity … the true anti-Semitism that still exists in Europe is not recognised or understood.”

Last week, the German public television station ARD broadcast a documentary about modern anti-Semitism in German society. The documentary focused in part on the anti-Israel actions and ideologies common to the otherwise apparently unrelated groups carrying out antisemitic acts in Germany. It effectively demonstrated that in Germany, as in much of Europe, anti-Israel discrimination is all too often the glue that binds together the antisemitsm of Islamists, the educated middle-class, those on the left, and extremist right-wingers. The FRA’s research backs this up with robust statistical evidence.

Furthermore, in the German film, Professor Monika Schwarz-Friesel, who has studied many examples of antisemitic letters and emails sent to Germans, points out that the vast majority of letters are not written by those belonging to extremist groups of the left or right, but by those in the “center of society.”

Professor Andreas Zick of Bielefeld University, a specialist in prejudice research, warns that “anti-Semitism, even if it is only latent, remains a pioneer from words to deeds.” And startlingly, Jörg Ziercke, the President of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, reported that “2 or 3 violent antisemitic attacks take place in Germany each day.”

75 years after Kristallnacht, Europe must wake up to the real and immediate problem of rising anti-Semitism which it has misunderstood and ignored for too long. The FRA’s important work in surveying European Jewry to uncover its first hand experiences of abuse and hate crime provides a clear signal of how much work needs to be done in this area. With the FRA’s robust statistics and suggested actions clearly and explicitly stated, there can no longer be any room for doubt that decisive action is needed. Those concerned with human rights and the protection of minorities should accept nothing less than a thorough and effective overhaul of how anti-Semitism is tackled. Europe has failed its Jews before in the most tragic of circumstances. It must not allow political correctness, modern technology and bogus anti-Israel action to facilitate renewed attacks on one of history’s most persecuted minorities. “Never again” must be more than a utopian wish: now is the time to for Europe to make it a promise.

Diplomacy is better than war but bad diplomacy can cause bad wars

November 13, 2013

ARTICLES

DO YOU BELIEVE IN DEATHBED CONVERSIONS?

Let’s Remember What Iran Has Said About Israel
By Stanley A. Weiss
The Huffington Post
November 11, 2013

WASHINGTON – It is one of the great ironies of history that the nation of Israel – and likely, the religion of Judaism as we know it – would not exist if it weren’t for an ancient king from the land that is now Iran. More than 25 centuries ago, it was Cyrus the Great, the founder and first ruler of the Persian Empire, who rose from his roots in present-day southwestern Iran to overthrow the Babylonian Empire, free 40,000 Jews held in captivity and facilitate their return to Judea, the site of present-day Israel.

Of course, this is not a history that you will read in any Iranian textbook. Since Iran’s Islamic Revolution was launched 34 years ago last week by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, two generations of his disciples, in the words of Islamic scholar Andrew Bostom, “have embraced jihad as a central pillar of faith and action” featuring “an unending campaign of vilification and proxy violence against the ‘Zionist entity,’ Israel.” But with Western and Iranian diplomats coming close to an agreement that would provide Iran with limited relief from crippling economic sanctions in exchange for a temporary freeze on some of its nuclear activities, Israel has been cast as the skunk at the garden party.

While last-minute disagreements between France and negotiators from the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany, and China temporarily scuffled the deal – they reportedly pledged to return to the bargaining table next week – Westerners have hailed a possible agreement as an “historic warming of relations” and “a potential American rapprochement with Iran.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has called the negotiations a “grievous historic error.” While he continues to lobby the U.S. to intensify sanctions instead of relaxing them, a backlash over Israel’s hardline stance has already begun.

At the heart of the disagreement is uranium. In its original form, it is a harmless mineral. But it is turned into a powerful “fissile” material capable of setting off a nuclear reaction by rapidly-spinning metal tubes, called centrifuges. These centrifuges work by creating a force thousands of times more powerful than gravity, which separate the dangerous parts of uranium from the not – dangerous parts. This process is known as “enrichment.”

Iran is believed to have at least 19,000 of these centrifuges. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty does not expressly forbid Iran’s right to use centrifuges to enrich uranium to create power. While Iran insists that it only wishes to use its nuclear facilities to create electricity, uranium only needs to be enriched to 6 percent to create electricity – and not the 20 percent that Iran’s uranium has reportedly reached, making it near bomb-ready.

Iran’s position is complicated by the fact that it is also building a heavy-water nuclear reactor to produce plutonium, which can be swapped for uranium to create a nuclear weapon. As the New York Times has pointed out, Iran’s many explanations for why it is building the reactor “have left most Western nations and nuclear experts skeptical” since “the country has no need for the fuel for civilian uses right now and the reactor’s design renders it highly efficient for producing the makings of a nuclear weapon.”

It’s clear to me that for any deal to be worth suspending sanctions, Iran must do three things. First, it must immediately stop construction of the heavy – water reactor. Second, it must dispose of the uranium it has already enriched to 20 percent. And third, it must do away with many of its centrifuges, leaving only enough to enable enrichment to 6% for electricity.

But Israel goes one step further and insists that sanctions remain in place until Iran fully dismantles all of its centrifuges – arguing that if you leave any centrifuges in place, you leave in place Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and build a nuclear weapon. Given global politics, it is much easier for Iran to return to enrichment than for Western nations to reapply sanctions. Which means that any deal short of dismantling centrifuges is an act of trust in the goodwill and peaceful desires of the Iranian regime – and, Israel argues, we’d be credulous waifs to trust a regime with Iran’s record.

While much of the world seems convinced that recently inaugurated Iranian President Hassan Rohani is a moderate and take him at his word – as he declared to the United Nations in September – that Iran is ready “to discard any extreme approach in the conduct of our relations with other states,” Israel believes otherwise. And as much as many people, including me, would like to see an agreement, it’s easy to understand Israel’s strong opposition.

Maybe if Rohani hadn’t taken part in a military parade in Tehran just a few days before that UN speech that again called for the destruction of Israel, including a truck carrying Shihab missiles capable of reaching Israel sporting a banner in Persian that read, “Israel must stop existing” – it would be easier for Israel to trust Rohani.

Maybe if Rohani hadn’t called Israel “an occupier” and “a usurper government,” with “war – mongering policies” in an op-ed in September; or called Israel “a wound” in August – it would be easier for Israel to believe Rohani was different.

Maybe if Rohani hadn’t bragged on Iranian state IRIB TV in May that he, as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator from 2003-5, worked with the regime to utterly ignore a 2003 agreement he had negotiated with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which required Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities – it would be easier for Israel to believe that Rohani is a man who lives up to agreements now.

Maybe if the world hadn’t witnessed millions take to the streets in cities across Iran last week in one the largest protests in its history – with demonstrators chanting “death to Israel,” burning the Israeli flag and hanging Netanyahu in effigy – it would be easier for Israel to believe that Iran was ready to “discard any extreme approach in the conduct of its relations.”

Maybe if Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni, universally understood to be “the dominant figure in Iranian politics,” hadn’t called Israel an “illegitimate and bastard regime” last weekend; or said that “the opportunity must not be lost . . . to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel” in 2012; or said that “the foundation of the Islamic regime is opposition to Israel and the perpetual subject of Iran is the elimination of Israel from the region” in 2001 – it would be easier for Israel to believe that Iran has had a change of heart.

Maybe if the entirety of Iran’s government and military hadn’t applauded when former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned just three months ago of “an impending regional storm that would uproot Israel;” or said Israel was “on its way to annihilation” in 2008; or said that the Holocaust was “made up” in 2006; or said that Israel “must be wiped off the map” in 2005 – it would be easier for Israel to believe that Rohani speaks for a changed Iran.

Maybe if former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani hadn’t warned that “the application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel” in 2001; or former President Mohammad Khatami hadn’t called on the Islamic world to “mobilize to kill” Israel in 2000; – it would be easier for Israel to believe Iran didn’t plan to build a nuclear bomb.

Maybe if the commander of Iran’s Navy hadn’t threatened to “dispatch destroyers and submarines until we kill (Israel)” in 2011; or the commander of Iran’s Aerospace Force hadn’t said, “our missiles are aimed at U.S. forces and Israel” in 2011; or the co-founder of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard hadn’t said “the time has come for the Zionist regime’s death sentence” in 2008 – it would be easier for Israel to believe that Iran’s nuclear program would be safe in the hands of its military.

And maybe if Iran hadn’t spent the past decade providing financial support and arms to every organization that has called for Israel’s destruction, from Hezbollah to Hamas to Syria – it would be easier for Israel to believe that Iran had only peaceful purposes at heart.

But with such an unbroken string of death threats the past 34 years, in a region where Tehran is as close to Jerusalem as St. Louis is to New York, why shouldn’t Israel hold out for the complete dismantling of Iran’s capacity to build nuclear weapons?

Are sanctions crippling Iran’s economy? Yes. Are negotiations with the West an act of desperation on the part of Rohani? Yes. But does that mean that Iran renounces the destruction of Israel? Well, that would take a deathbed conversion – and as we all know, Muslims don’t believe in deathbed conversions. If you were an Israeli, would you?

HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING FROM NORTH KOREA AND NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN?

Oppose the deal on Iran
By Alan M. Dershowitz
Ha’aretz
Nov. 12, 2013

All reasonable, thinking people - liberals, conservatives, Americans and their allies, the pro-Israel community (ignoring J Street) - must unite against a ‘Chamberlain moment’ bad deal on Iran with no Iranian quid pro quo.

***

Diplomacy is better than war but bad diplomacy can cause bad wars. The U.S. is leading the noble efforts, stalled for the moment, to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough in our determination to prevent Iran from developing, or having the capacity to develop, nuclear weapons. There is little dispute about this essential goal: Virtually everyone agrees that a nuclear armed Iran would pose unacceptably grave dangers to the United States and its allies.

Nor is there much controversy over the preference for “jaw jaw” over “war war” as Winston Churchill once put it. But the understandable concern, expressed by Israeli, French, Saudi and some other leaders, is that the Iranian leadership is playing for time – that they want to make insignificant concessions in exchange for significant reductions in the sanctions that are crippling their economy. Their goal is to have their yellow cake and eat good food at the same time. These leaders, and many experienced nuclear and diplomatic experts, fear that a bad deal, such as the one that Secretary Kerry seemed ready to accept, would allow the Iranians to inch closer to nuclear weapons capacity while strengthening their faltering economy. The net result would be a more powerful Iran with the ability to deploy a nuclear arsenal quickly and surreptitiously.

Were this to occur, we would be witnessing a recurrence of the failed efforts to prevent a nuclear North Korea but in a far more volatile and dangerous neighborhood of the globe. Were Iran to use the current diplomatic efforts as a cover to buy time to make a preventive military attack unrealistic, this would indeed be our “Chamberlain moment”, a replication of the time three-quarters of a century ago, when the idealistic but naive British prime minister made a bad deal with the Nazis in a desperate but futile effort to avoid deploying the military option against Hitler’s growing power.

Winston Churchill, despite his preference for jaw, railed against Chamberlain’s concession, describing it as a defeat without a war. The war, of course, soon came and the allies were in a weaker position, having ceded the industrially and militarily critical Sudetenland to Germany while at the same time giving it more time to enhance its military power. The result was tens of millions of deaths that might have been avoided if the British and French had engaged in a preventive war instead of giving dangerous concessions to the Nazis when they were still weak.

The immediate choice for the world today is not between diplomacy and preventive war, as it may have been in 1938. We have a third option: To maintain or even increase the sanctions while keeping the military option on the table. It was this powerful combination that brought a weakened and frightened Iran to the bargaining table in the first place. It is this combination that will pressure them to abandon their unnecessary quest for nuclear weapons, if anything will. To weaken the sanction regime now, in exchange for a promise to maintain the status quo, would be bad diplomacy, poor negotiation and a show of weakness precisely when a show of strength is called for.

The leadership of the pro-Israel community, both in the United States and Israel, have shown rare unity around the issue of not weakening the sanctions merely in exchange for the promise of a nuclear standstill from the Iranians. Liberals and conservatives, doves and hawks, all seem to realize that the best way to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of a nuclear Iran or a military attack is to maintain the tough sanctions while diplomacy continues.

As usual, the only outlier seems to be J Street, whose claim to be “pro-Israel” grows less credible by the day. Previously, J Street claimed to support tough sanctions as an alternative to the military option and drumbeating. But now that Israel and its supporters insist that sanctions be maintained, J Street seems to be supporting the Neville Chamberlain approach to diplomacy: Make substantial concessions in exchange for hollow promises, thereby weakening our negotiating position and increasing the chances that the United States will be forced to take military action as the only means of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

This is the time when the entire pro-Israel community must stand together in opposition to the deal being offered the Iranians – a deal which is bad for the United States, for the West, and for Israel. The Israeli people seem united in opposition to this bad deal. The American Congress is doubtful about the deal. This is not a liberal/conservative issue. Liberals who view military action as a last resort should oppose this deal, and conservatives who fear a nuclear Iran above all else should oppose this deal.

Indeed all reasonable, thinking people should understand that weakening the sanctions against Iran without demanding that they dismantle their nuclear weapons program is a prescription for disaster. Have we learned nothing from North Korea and Neville Chamberlain?

“AT LEAST FOR THE TIME BEING, FRANÇOIS HOLLANDE’S SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT HAS SAVED THE WEST”

Vive La France on Iran
The French save the West from a very bad nuclear deal with Iran.
Wall Street Journal (Lead editorial)
Nov. 11, 2013

We never thought we’d say this, but thank heaven for French foreign-policy exceptionalism. At least for the time being, François Hollande’s Socialist government has saved the West from a deal that would all but guarantee that Iran becomes a nuclear power.

While the negotiating details still aren’t fully known, the French made clear Saturday that they objected to a nuclear agreement that British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama were all too eager to sign. These two leaders remind no one, least of all the Iranians, of Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. That left the French to protect against a historic security blunder, with Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declaring in an interview with French radio that while France still hopes for an agreement with Tehran, it won’t accept a “sucker’s deal.”

And that’s exactly what seems to have been on the table as part of a “first-step agreement” good for six months as the parties negotiated a final deal. Tehran would be allowed to continue enriching uranium, continue manufacturing centrifuges, and continue building a plutonium reactor near the city of Arak. Iran would also get immediate sanctions relief and the unfreezing of as much as $50 billion in oil revenues – no small deliverance for a regime whose annual oil revenues barely topped $95 billion in 2011.

In return the West would get Iranian promises. There is a promise not to activate the Arak reactor, a promise not to use its most advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium or to install new ones, a promise to stop enriching uranium to 20%, which is near-weapons’ grade, and to convert its existing stockpile into uranium oxide (a process that is reversible).

What Iran has not promised to do is abide by the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which imposes additional reporting requirements on Iran and allows U.N. inspectors to conduct short-notice inspections of nuclear facilities. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has complained for years that Iran has refused to answer its questions fully or provide inspectors with access to all of its facilities. IAEA inspectors have been barred from visiting Arak since August 2011.

In other words, the deal gives Iran immediate, if incomplete, sanctions relief and allows it to keep its nuclear infrastructure intact and keep expanding it at a slightly slower pace. And the deal contains no meaningful mechanisms for verifying compliance. “What we have to do is to make sure that there is a good deal in place from the perspective of us verifying what they’re doing,” President Obama told NBC’s Chuck Todd in an interview Wednesday. What we have is the opposite.

The President also told Mr. Todd that if Iran fails to honor the deal the U.S. can re-apply existing sanctions: “We can crank that dial back up.”

That’s also misleading. Once sanctions are eased, the argument will always be made (no doubt by Mr. Obama) that dialing them back up will give Iran the excuse to restart enrichment. Any “interim” agreement gives more negotiating leverage to Iran. If Iran really intends to cease its nuclear program, it should be willing to do so immediately and unconditionally.

All of this echoes the strategy Iran pursued after its illicit nuclear facilities were discovered in 2002. Current Iranian President Hasan Rouhani was his country’s nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005, when Iran briefly suspended its civilian and military nuclear work in the teeth of intense international pressure (and American armies on its borders with Iraq and Afghanistan). That previous suspension is treated by U.S. negotiators as a model of what they might achieve now.

It’s really a model of what they should beware. “Tehran showed that it was possible to exploit the gap between Europe and the United States to achieve Iranian objectives,” Hossein Mousavian, Mr. Rouhani’s deputy at the time, acknowledged in his memoir. “The world’s understanding of ‘suspension’ was changed from a legally binding obligation” to “a voluntary and short-term undertaking aimed at confidence building.”

Now the U.S. seems to be falling for the same ruse again. This time, however, Iran is much closer to achieving its nuclear objectives. No wonder Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu felt compelled to warn the Administration and Europe that they risked signing “a very, very bad deal,” a blunt public rebuke from a Prime Minister who has been notably cautious about criticizing the White House. The Saudis, who gave up on this Administration long ago, are no doubt thinking along similar lines. The BBC reported last week that the Kingdom has nuclear weapons “on order” from Pakistan.

The negotiators plan to resume talks on November 20, and France will be under enormous pressure to go along with a deal. We hope Messrs. Hollande and Fabius hold firm, and the U.S. Congress could help by strengthening sanctions and passing a resolution insisting that any agreement with Iran must include no uranium enrichment, the dismantling of the Arak plutonium project and all centrifuges, and intrusive, on-demand inspections. Anything less means that Iran is merely looking to con the West into easing sanctions even as it can restart its program whenever it likes.

FRANCE, ISRAEL AND SAUDI ARABIA CONFRONT OBAMA’S MAKE-BELIEVE FOREIGN POLICY

Axis of Fantasy vs. Axis of Reality
France, Israel and Saudi Arabia confront an administration conducting a make-believe foreign policy.
By Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal
Updated Nov. 11, 2013

When the history of the Obama administration’s foreign policy is written 20 or so years from now, the career of Wendy Sherman, our chief nuclear negotiator with Iran, will be instructive.

In 1988, the former social worker ran the Washington office of the Dukakis campaign and worked at the Democratic National Committee. That was the year the Massachusetts governor carried 111 electoral votes to George H.W. Bush’s 426. In the mid-1990s, Ms. Sherman was briefly the CEO of something called the Fannie Mae Foundation, supposedly a charity that was shut down a decade later for what the Washington Post called “using tax-exempt contributions to advance corporate interests.”

From there it was on to the State Department, where she served as a point person in nuclear negotiations with North Korea and met with Kim Jong Il himself. The late dictator, she testified, was “witty and humorous,” “a conceptual thinker,” “a quick problem-solver,” “smart, engaged, knowledgeable, self-confident.” Also a movie buff who loved Michael Jordan highlight videos. A regular guy!

Later Ms. Sherman was to be found working for her former boss as the No. 2 at the Albright-Stonebridge Group before taking the No. 3 spot at the State Department. Ethics scolds might describe the arc of her career as a revolving door between misspending taxpayer dollars in government and mooching off them in the private sector. But it’s mainly an example of failing up – the Washingtonian phenomenon of promotion to ever-higher positions of authority and prestige irrespective of past performance.

This administration in particular is stuffed with fail-uppers – the president, the vice president, the secretary of state and the national security adviser, to name a few – and every now and then it shows. Like, for instance, when people for whom the test of real-world results has never meant very much meet people for whom that test means everything.

That’s my read on last weekend’s scuttled effort in Geneva to strike a nuclear bargain with Iran. The talks unexpectedly fell apart at the last minute when French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius publicly objected to what he called a “sucker’s deal,” meaning the U.S. was prepared to begin lifting sanctions on Iran in exchange for tentative Iranian promises that they would slow their multiple nuclear programs.

Not stop or suspend them, mind you, much less dismantle them, but merely reduce their pace from run to jog when they’re on Mile 23 of their nuclear marathon. It says something about the administration that they so wanted a deal that they would have been prepared to take this one. This is how people for whom consequences are abstractions operate. It’s what happens when the line between politics as a game of perception and policy as the pursuit of national objectives dissolves.

The French are not such people, believe it or not, at least when it comes to foreign policy. Speculation about why Mr. Fabius torpedoed the deal has focused on the pique French President François Hollande felt at getting stiffed by the U.S. on his Mali intervention and later in the aborted attack on Syria. (Foreign ministry officials in Paris are still infuriated by a Susan Rice tirade in December, when she called a French proposal to intervene in Mali “crap.”)

But the French also understand that the sole reason Iran has a nuclear program is to build a nuclear weapon. They are not nonchalant about it. The secular republic has always been realistic about the threat posed by theocratic Iran. And they have come to care about nonproliferation too, in part because they belong to what is still a small club of nuclear states. Membership has its privileges.

This now puts the French at the head of a de facto Axis of Reality, the other prominent members of which are Saudi Arabia and Israel. In this Axis, strategy is not a game of World of Warcraft conducted via avatars in a virtual reality. “We are not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid,” a defensive John Kerry said over the weekend on “Meet the Press,” sounding uncomfortably like Otto West (Kevin Kline) from “A Fish Called Wanda.” When you’ve reached the “don’t call me stupid” stage of diplomacy, it means the rest of the world has your number.

Now the question is whether the French were staking out a position at Geneva or simply demanding to be heard. If it’s the latter, the episode will be forgotten and Jerusalem and Riyadh will have to reach their own conclusions about how to operate in a post-American Middle East. If it’s the former, Paris has a chance to fulfill two cherished roles at once: as the de facto shaper of European policy on the global stage, and as an obstacle to Washington’s presumptions to speak for the West.

A decade ago, Robert Kagan argued that the U.S. operated in a Hobbesian world of power politics while Europe inhabited the Kantian (and somewhat make-believe) world of right. That was after 9/11, when fecklessness was not an option for the U.S.

Under Mr. Obama, there’s been a role reversal. The tragedy for France and its fellow members of its Axis is that they may lack the power to master a reality they perceive so much more clearly than the Wendy Shermans of the world, still failing up.

IT IS HARD TO RECALL A MORE SNEERING EDITORIAL…

Hysteria of the Times
Editorial
New York Sun
November 11, 2013

It is hard to recall a more sneering editorial in respect of Israel than that in the New York Times this morning accusing the Jewish state of “hysterical opposition” to the negotiations with Iran over its efforts to build an atomic bomb. It wants the Jews to shut up while Secretary of State Kerry, who betrayed his country during the Vietnam war, once again meets in secret negotiations an enemy, this time with a country that is building an atomic weapon while talking of its desire to wipe Israel off the face of the map.

The thing to remember is that there was a time when the New York Times was more newspapermanly. In 1938, it issued more than a dozen editorials in respect of Munich. They weren’t perfect; in hindsight one sees that Hitler made a fool of many great institutions. But the Times editorials on Munich were without the kind of condescension the Sulzberger family is taking today toward the intended target of the mullahs. And when the warnings were sounded, particularly in London, against the appeasement at Munich, it issued a famous editorial on democracy.

“When Mr. Chamberlain got home from Munich,” it began, “he was in a more embarrassing position than Signor Mussolini or Herr Hitler. The latter two did not have to answer questions. Mr. Chamberlain did. The two corporate potentates did not have to submit to criticism, inside their own countries. Mr. Chamberlain did. The difference is childishly simple. In Germany and Italy the people are responsible to their governments. In England the government is responsible to the people. In Germany and Italy the ruler can make no mistakes and do no wrong – it is treason to say that he can.”

The Times of 1938 made the point that in England, the ruler had to sit while his errors were pointed out. No allegations that Duff Cooper, the First Lord of the Admiralty who resigned in protest over Munich, was being “hysterical.” Yet the Times of 2013 hurls not a word, nor a pixel, at the Mullahs. Instead it belittles Israel and accuses it of hysteria. No paeans are heard from 8th Avenue to the only democracy among the front-line states. “What England does in the long run will be what the people will do.” The same can be said today about Israel.

EXPERTS SAY ISRAEL IS RIGHT TO BE WARY

Experts say Israel is right to be wary
By Karl Vick
Time magazine
Nov. 11, 2013

It’s an extremely technical business, negotiating a nuclear agreement. But in the case of the talks in Geneva last week over the Iranian program, a helpful level of understanding can be had simply by seeing who goes where. The easiest way to tell that Tehran and world powers were close to at least an interim accord over the weekend was seeing who showed up unexpectedly in Geneva: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry broke off a trip to northern Africa to swoop in, joining European diplomats of the rank appropriate for signing such a document, should one be agreed upon.

And when it became clear there was nothing to sign there was more rapid and unscheduled travel: Kerry’s chief negotiator, Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, went immediately from Geneva to Jerusalem, to brief not only government officials and but Israeli experts and columnists gathered at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Israel has no seat at the negotiations, but it played a huge role in bringing them about by threatening airstrikes – and it’s playing a pivotal role in how the talks are perceived elsewhere, including the U.S. Congress.

The message from the Obama administration after the talks was that Washington was not out-toughed by France in the negotiations, as initial reports from Geneva had it. “France and other countries came with new ideas, but on Saturday we were united on the wording of the agreement,” a senior American official was quoted as telling the Israeli press. “We placed a tough deal on the table and the Iranians were the ones who didn’t take it. I hope the Iranians don’t miss it. But in any event we are in no hurry.”

In Israel, skepticism toward an interim deal with Iran reaches beyond Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Polls show Israeli Jews overwhelmingly fear Iran’s leaders will do what they did in 2005, the last time they signed a pact with the West halting their nuclear program – use the time-out to advance their knowledge of the nuclear processes, then resume a project that critics fear will produce a nuclear weapon. But Netanyahu has been so strident on the point for so long that many commentators say he’s seen as the boy who cried wolf. “A prime minister who deserves credit for internationalizing the Iranian issue and turning it into a top priority on the global agenda, is now paying the price for the Israelization of the Iranian issue,” Alon Pinchas, a former Israeli consul to New York, writes in Monday’s Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s largest-selling newspaper. Pinchas chides Netanyahu for “constant threats that have lost credibility” and condemning a proposed interim agreement as “the deal of the century” for Iran before its terms had been negotiated.

But even if Netanyahu has worn out his welcome, some of the West’s leading experts on nuclear proliferation are making much the same case. And on Oct. 28, it found a friend in Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, now at Harvard.

Heinonen, who speaks with a Finnish accent and a bureaucrat’s caution, was blunt on the danger posed by the stockpiles of uranium Iran has enriched beyond the 3 percent “low enrichment” required to fuel a nuclear reactor to the 20 percent “medium” level ostensibly necessary for research. “Medium” has a half-way sound but because so much of the heavy lifting in the nuclear cycle precedes the spinning of centrifuges, 20percent actually is most of the way to the “heavily enriched” 90 percent level required to fuel a nuclear weapon. “If you already have 20 percent enriched uranium, actually you have done 90 percent of your work,” Heinonen said. He adds that the same formulations apply to uranium technically dubbed low-enriched, “which is why I understand the concerns of Prime Minister Netanyahu.” Iran has almost 7 metric tons of that material, and “you have done something like 60 percent of the effort you have to do to produce weapons grade uranium.”

Why all this matters was explained in another conference call to international reporters on Nov. 7. David Albright, an American former IAEA inspector, runs the Institute for Science and International Security, the Washington think tank that does the most-quoted independent research on Iran’s nuclear program. Recently, it estimated how long Iran would need to do what much of the world most fears – cast aside its consistent claims that its nuclear program is meant for peaceful means, and make a dash for a bomb. The amount of time it needs, Albright noted, depends on how much enriched uranium it has on hand, and how many centrifuges it has available to spin the uranium to higher, more dangerous levels. With current stores and no “cap” imposed by an interim agreement on the number of centrifuges it could use, Tehran might create a bomb in as little as a month, the ISIS study concluded. That month becomes the window for the outside world – including IAEA inspectors, if Iran hasn’t kicked them out by then – to detect what’s going on, and mount a response, such as the “military option” that President Obama continues to say is “on the table.”

Albright said Iran’s leadership team on the nuclear issue, President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, “is very good on making promises – enticements – but has not been so good about delivering,” Albright told the reporters on the Nov. 7 call. “And it happened in ‘05 the same way: Lots of promises, but in the end Iran wants a centrifuge program that is essentially uncapped. They’ll trade that for some transparency, but it’s never viewed as enough … and so you never get a settlement.”

Still, Tehran did manage to produce a bit of encouraging news on Monday. The two sides parted ways in Geneva with another key sticking point unresolved – the future of the heavy water reactor under construction at Arak, which presents Iran with a possible second route to a bomb. But Tehran did reach an agreement with the IAEA to give UN inspectors “managed access” to the plant, as well as to a uranium mine.

THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD

Exclusive: Reuters investigates the business empire of Iran’s supreme leader

Special Report: Khamenei controls vast financial empire built on property seizures
By Steve Stecklow, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Yeganeh Torbati
Reuters
Nov. 11, 2013

***

I was going to attach this important three-part Reuters series, “Assets of the Ayatollah,” but in retrospect they will make this dispatch too long. So you can read them here:

www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1

www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part2

www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part3

-- Tom Gross

Update: Al-Quds photos receive attention from Netanyahu through to Al Jazeera

November 11, 2013

In my dispatches last Wednesday and Sunday, I revealed that black-shirted and black-hooded students at Al-Quds University in east Jerusalem had held a Fascist-style rally on campus, apparently with the consent of the university authorities. Since there has been considerable interest in this topic, below are a few follow-up notes.

The previous dispatches can be read here:

* Scenes yesterday afternoon from a “moderate” Palestinian university

* Al-Quds: Fascist-style rally by our students last Tuesday was “totally unacceptable”

(This dispatch was written and posted on Nov. 11, but updated on Nov. 12.)

The university authorities said that students should not bring their guns on campus, hence the students used fake guns in the rally

CONTENTS

1. Al-Quds statement condemning rally will only be in English, not Arabic
2. Israeli PM Netanyahu cites Al-Quds photos in Israeli cabinet meeting
3. Netanyahu shares Al-Quds photos from this website on twitter
4. Al-Quds rally mentioned on Al Jazeera TV
5. Al-Quds rally and photos now reported on in Hebrew press
6. The sound of silence
7. Islamic Jihad post photos of their own
8. Al-Quds American partner university, Brandeis, continues its mysterious silence
9. “Brandeis University: School for Scandal” (By Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, Nov.11, 2013)
10. “Kerry denounces Israeli settlements while Pal. students call for genocide” (By Jordan Schachtel, Breitbart, Nov. 7, 2013)

[Notes by Tom Gross]

AL-QUDS STATEMENT CONDEMNING RALLY WILL ONLY BE IN ENGLISH, NOT ARABIC

The Al-Quds University spokesperson has now confirmed that the statement they issued (that I included in my last dispatch) was signed by Dr. Imad Abu Kishek, Executive Vice President of Al-Quds University.

However, the university spokesperson has also confirmed that the university’s statement is only in English and will not be released in Arabic – which is strange if they truly want to send a message to their students that this kind of Fascist-style display is “totally unacceptable,” as the vice-president of the university wrote in his English-language statement.

ISRAELI PM NETANYAHU CITES AL-QUDS PHOTOS IN ISRAELI CABINET MEETING

At the weekly Israeli cabinet meeting at the start of this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the Al-Quds photos when discussing the growing Palestinian incitement against Jews.

According to Israeli press reports:

“Noting that it was the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, in which the Nazis realized they could attack, rob and kill Jews without any meaningful reaction from the West, thus paving the way for the Holocaust, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: ‘It is very disturbing that precisely 75 years later we are witness to the phenomenon of swastikas and Nazi-style salutes,’ Netanyahu said, referring to an incident last month when a Nazi flag was hoisted near Beit Umar in the West Bank, and to a military-style parade at Al-Quds University last week organized by the Islamic Jihad faction where students gave Hitler-style salutes.

“‘This is a direct result of the continued wild incitement against the State of Israel,’ Netanyahu added. ‘This is not the way to achieve peace.’”

NETANYAHU SHARES AL-QUDS PHOTOS FROM THIS WEBSITE ON TWITTER

Netanyahu then shared the al-Quds University photos from the “Tom Gross Media” website on his official twitter account.

AL-QUDS RALLY MENTIONED ON AL JAZEERA TV

The Al-Quds rally and photos were mentioned during a discussion show both yesterday and today on Al Jazeera TV. For example, they are mentioned at 11 minutes 10 seconds, and then again at the end at 24 minutes 20 seconds in this clip .

(Unlike Al-Jazeera the rally has not, to my knowledge, been mentioned on the BBC or any of the major American networks.)

AL-QUDS RALLY AND PHOTOS NOW REPORTED ON IN HEBREW PRESS

The rally has now been covered in Hebrew, for example, here by Ma’ariv, with quotes from me:

(I want to disassociate myself from some of the readers’ comments on Ma’ariv’s website which I think are unpleasant and unhelpful for the cause of peace.)

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

It continues to be a matter of disappointment that while many right-leaning media have covered this (as well as foreign-language online media in Spanish, French, German, Polish (if you scroll down) and other languages) not a single centrist or left-wing journalist based in Jerusalem (and many subscribe to this email list) has covered this topic. It is surely not for lack of space since they regularly report on whatever negative stories they can find about Israelis.

Instead it has been left to ordinary readers to put a link to the Al-Quds photos in the comment sections under various other articles on the Middle East on the websites of liberal and centrist media.

Continuing to ignore the widespread and growing Palestinian incitement to kill Jews, as the more liberal international media do, does not bode well for peace.

Some might say that keeping silent in the face of such extremism makes as loud a statement as those who actually staged the event in the first place.

Islamic Jihad were open about what they were doing in a public rally. But what are we to think of those American universities, media and diplomats who let down their liberal credentials by turning a blind eye to these events? Shrugging it off as though this kind of thing doesn’t happen should not be an option for them.

***

UPDATE, JUST POSTED BY BRANDEIS:

http://blogs.brandeis.edu/president/2013/11/11/recent-demonstrations-at-al-quds-university/

Tom Gross comments:

Palestinian students at Al-Quds University tell me that the rally was organized and attended by Al-Quds university students belonging to the Islamic Jihad faction of students at Al-Quds University, and held on campus with the full knowledge of the Al-Quds University administration, and the Brandeis statement is incorrect.

In addition, the photos show a very clearly organized event, with a huge printed backdrop with pictures of suicide bombers, a “red carpet” style Israeli flag walkway for all to trample on, seats carefully laid out for the audience, and a sun cover mounted over the seats to shield the audience from the sun.

Regardless of the reassurances given to the Brandeis president by Al-Quds University, just from looking at the photos, one can see that it is logistically highly unlikely that the event could have been organized without their authorization. Given this, one wonders if they will be satisfied by the promised Al-Quds investigation if it exonerates the university.

The statement by the Brandeis president also ignores the previous two similar demonstrations held on campus so far this academic year by the Hamas student faction at Al-Quds. Will the Brandeis president call for the dismantling of the Islamic Jihad faction of students at Al-Quds University? Islamic Jihad, by their own admission, have killed civilians including children and babies and are listed by both the U.S. and EU as a terrorist group.

***

Update (November 12):

I am told further, having spoken to students at the university, that there is no such thing as an unauthorized demonstration at Al-Quds University, or indeed almost anywhere under Palestinian Authority control. The university has security guards at the gates that monitor everyone that comes into the university. You have to show student ID to get on to the campus. Last Tuesday's student-organized Islamic Jihad rally lasted between two and three hours and up to 1000 students attended or watched the rally for at least part of this time, according to students who were there.

And in the Al-Quds demonstration by the Hamas student faction a few weeks ago, vile literature was handed out, including leaflets comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Hiroshima nuclear bomb, and photos of suicide bombers were displayed.

Another organization designated by the West as a terrorist group, the PFLP, which also has a student faction at the university, also held a student rally a few weeks ago on the campus of Al-Quds.

Update (November 19):

There is a new dispatch here:

* Brandeis suspends partnership with Al-Quds after (they appear to defend) Fascist-style rally

ISLAMIC JIHAD POST PHOTOS OF THEIR OWN

Islamic Jihad’s official website as well as “Palestine Today” have now put up their own pictures of the rally:

http://saraya.ps/index.php?act=Show&id=32211

http://paltoday.ps/ar/gallery/2732

(They have, under advisement I am told, not put up the worst of Fascist-salute photos from the rally which were placed on my website, but some are nonetheless shocking – especially since both Al-Quds and Brandeis proclaim Al-Quds to be a liberal institution.)

***

The Islamic Jihad organization in the Palestinian territories has been labeled a terrorist organization by both the United States and European Union. It has carried out many terrorist attacks killing and maiming hundreds of civilians.

Islamic Jihad also runs social services in the Palestinian territories in which children are indoctrinated. Last year, according to press reports, at an Islamic Jihad sponsored kindergarten graduation ceremony, a young boy exclaimed, “When I grow up I’ll join Islamic Jihad and die as a suicide martyr.” The boy continued, “I love the resistance and the martyrs and Palestine, and I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing.”

AL-QUDS AMERICAN PARTNER UNIVERSITY, BRANDEIS, CONTINUES ITS MYSTERIOUS SILENCE

Brandeis University – America’s best known liberal Jewish university – is facing criticism after refusing to distance itself from the rally held on the campus of its Palestinian partner university.

The Brandeis-Al-Quds partnership is funded in part by the Ford Foundation, which has come under intense criticism in the past for funding organizations that have been accused of being anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic.

Brandeis spokesman Bill Schaller, despite being repeatedly asked by American journalists for a comment about the pictures and press reports on the Al-Quds rally, has (as of yesterday) still refused to give one. While other students at Brandeis condemned the rally, the branch of the J Street organization at Brandeis has also refused to comment on the demonstration.

I am told that the Brandeis student newspaper will soon be running a story on Brandeis’s failure to condemn the rally.

I attach an article on Brandeis below, from The Washington Free Beacon, and another article after that on Islamic Jihad.

-- Tom Gross

***

* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.

ARTICLES

BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY: SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL

Brandeis University: School for Scandal
‘Nazi-Style’ rally held on campus of Palestinian partner school
By Adam Kredo
Washington Free Beacon
November 11, 2013

http://freebeacon.com/brandeis-university-school-for-scandal/

Brandeis University is facing criticism from students and faculty members after refusing to distance itself from an event recently held on the campus of its Palestinian partner school that critics decried as a “Nazi-style” rally.

Brandeis, the nation’s most well known Jewish university, partners with the Palestinian Al Quds University, where students held a military rally on Tuesday of last week.

Groups of Al Quds students dressed in black military gear and armed with fake automatic weapons marched on the school’s campus while waving flags and raising the traditional Nazi salute, according to pictures first posted by Middle East analyst Tom Gross.

The rally was organized by the Islamic Jihad’s student faction, which is known to be active on the Al Quds campus.

Brandeis, which began partnering with Al Quds in 2003, declined multiple requests for comment on the rally. The rally prompted some students and faculty members to express outrage.

“It bothers me very much that the school I am attending has a partnership with a school that inherently promotes death to Jews,” said student Eve Herman, who serves as the president of the Brandeis Zionist Alliance.

“It is indeed incredibly unfortunate that a demonstration, such as this Nazi-style one, can take place on a campus,” Herman told the Washington Free Beacon via email. “The fact that students were encouraged to give Hitler style salutes is a complete and utter form of anti-Semitism.”

One Brandeis faculty member who agreed to speak anonymously said he found it “appalling” that that such inflammatory activities take place at Al Quds.

Brandeis officials should be communicating their outrage at such a demonstration, the faculty member said.

However, Brandeis spokesman Bill Schaller repeatedly declined comment after the Free Beacon presented him with pictures and articles about the rally.

“We have no comment,” Schaller told the Free Beacon on multiple occasions.

The Brandeis-Al Quds partnership is funded in part by the Ford Foundation, which has come under fire in the past for funding organizations that some accuse of being anti-Israel.

Brandeis and Al Quds exchange students, administrators, and faculty members under the program.

Islamic Jihad’s official website also reported on the rally and included multiple pictures of armed men trampling over a banner that had been painted with Jewish stars.

Several actors portraying dead Israeli soldiers also could be seen sprawled across the banner.

Al Quds students reportedly called for “jihad” during the event, as well as for the death of Israeli soldiers and their families, according to Islamic Jihad.

An Al Quds spokesman condemned the event and told the Free Beacon that the event was “led by people from outside the university.”

“The threat of violence implied by the military dress, the fake weaponry, and the fascist salutes are not acceptable on our campus,” the spokesman said. “The university administration will be conducting an investigation immediately to determine who was responsible and to ensure that this kind of thing does not happen again.”

Imad Abu Kishek, the executive vice president of Al Quds University, also denounced the rally in a statement.

The demonstration “horrified the whole student body who is not used to such acts on campus,” Kishek said.

Al Quds promotes “openness and toleration” despite daily provocations by “Israeli soldiers,” Kishek said.

“This has been the case in spite of all kinds of difficulties that Al Quds University students, in specific, are facing on daily basis from Israeli soldiers, whom provokingly keep attacking them along side university staff with hundreds of tear gas bombs,” he said.

“These events have always been met by restraint of any retaliation, imposed by the university administration on its student body, following its policy of non-violence and pacifism.”

Kishek’s statement was provided in English only to members of the press who inquired about the demonstration, according to Middle East expert Gross.

“I have been told by students that the university has not yet translated it into Arabic nor posted it on any official university website,” Gross told the Free Beacon.

Several members of J Street U Brandeis, a campus group affiliated with the liberal Middle East lobbying group J Street, did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment on the demonstration.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited on Sunday the Al Quds rally as a recent example of the “wild incitement against the State of Israel.”

This is not the first time that Al Quds has hosted militant rallies, Gross said.

“I am informed by students at Al Quds University that the Hamas student faction there had already conducted at least two similar military-style demonstrations praising suicide bombers at the university so far this academic year, and no discipline was taken against them afterwards because no photos of them were exposed to a Western audience, like last Tuesday’s demonstration was,” Gross said.

“Perhaps even more disturbingly,” Gross added, “Brandeis University, the traditionally Jewish liberal university in America (which partners with Al Quds), has still to issue a statement condemning the rally, despite being asked to do so for over four consecutive days by American journalists such as yourself from the Free Beacon.”

ANOTHER $75 MILLION FROM THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER TOWARDS PALESTINIAN INSTITUTIONS

Kerry Denounces Israeli Settlements While Palestinian Students Call For Genocide
By Jordan Schachtel
Breitbart News
November 7, 2013

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/11/07/While-Kerry-Lectures-Netanyahu-Palestinian-Students-Call-For-Genocide

On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry was in Israel’s sovereign capital of Jerusalem (which the Obama administration does not recognize as such), lecturing the people of Israel and its government that he and the Obama administration deem new Israeli homes in the disputed West Bank area to be “illegitimate” settlements.

Meanwhile, in the same neighborhood at the Palestinian Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, students were seen proudly displaying Nazi-like salutes, calling for the genocide of Israel’s Jewish population, and honoring terrorists as martyrs for their cause.

Tom Gross, a Middle East commentator and former Jerusalem correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph, uncovered the demonstration, an event held by the Islamic Jihad student campus group. Gross wrote:

“Al-Quds is a Palestinian university in east Jerusalem. It is often hailed as a “liberal” or “moderate” university by western diplomats and journalists. It was established with the help of Israel in 1984, along with other universities Israel helped set up for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with the aim of increasing the educational level of Palestinians. Academics and students (including, quite possibly, some in these photos) have received and continue to receive grants from European governments, charities and foundations. Al-Quds University is also currently in partnership with liberal (and largely Jewish) institutions in the U.S., including Brandeis University and Bard College.”

The student group was representing the greater Islamic Jihad organization in the Palestinian territories that has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and EU. While it is predominantly a Sunni organization, Islamic Jihad maintains strong ties along with financial backing from Israel’s primary geopolitical enemy and known state sponsor of terrorist activities throughout the globe: Iran.

Islamic Jihad is responsible for many of the social services in the Palestinian territories, including educational programs. Last year at an Islamic Jihad sponsored kindergarten graduation ceremony, a student exclaimed, “When I grow up I’ll join Islamic Jihad and the al-Quds Brigades. I’ll fight the Zionist enemy and fire missiles at it until I die as a shahid (martyr) and join my father in heaven.” The kindergartner continued, “I love the resistance and the martyrs and Palestine, and I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing.”

Following the latest round of negotiations, the Obama administration would confirm an additional $75 million in American taxpayer dollars towards foreign aid, disbursed into the Palestinian territories for various projects.

Secretary Kerry’s denouncement of Israel’s settlement building activities received international attention, praised by the New York Times as Kerry’s first step towards playing a more “muscular” role towards Israel’s “right-wing” and “volatile element.” By contrast, the Al-Quds University demonstration of openly fascist, genocidal overtures remained largely unreported outside of the Pro-Israel blogosphere.

While the Secretary of State was finishing up berating Israeli PM Netanyahu for letting his citizens build homes, Kerry remarked in a news interview prior to departing for Jordan, “I mean, does Israel want a third intifada?”

Al-Quds: Fascist-style rally by our students last Tuesday was “totally unacceptable”

November 10, 2013

[Note by Tom Gross]

This is a follow-up to my dispatch last Wednesday in which I revealed that the day before, students at Al-Quds University in east Jerusalem had held a Fascist-style rally, and I posted absolutely shocking photos of it here.

I attach three items below.

The first is an “official statement by Al-Quds university public relations office” in response to my dispatch. While this statement of tolerance is very welcome, I have been told by students that the university has not yet translated it into Arabic, nor posted it on any official university website.

Instead the university sent the statement to myself and asked me to post it on my website, and it has also been sent to news outlets who reported on my dispatch. It was sent by Rula Jadallah, Public Relations & Cultural Affairs Manager at Al-Quds University.

I have written yesterday and on Friday and this morning to the university PR office to ask if the Al-Quds university president had approved the statement but they have yet to reply.

(Update, evening of Nov. 10: The university has now confirmed to me that this was an official Statement signed by Dr. Imad Abu Kishek, Executive Vice President of Al-Quds University.)

(Update, Nov. 11: The university spokesperson has now confirmed to me that the university’s statement is only in English not in Arabic, which is strange if they truly want to send a message to their students that this kind of Fascist-style display is “totally unacceptable” as the vice-president of the university wrote in his English-language statement.)

Perhaps even more disturbingly, Brandeis University, the traditionally Jewish liberal university in America (which partners with Al-Quds), has still to issue a statement condemning the rally, despite being asked to do so for over four consecutive days by American journalists I know that read my dispatch last Wednesday.

The second and third items below are notes that I attached to my original dispatch on Wednesday afternoon and on Friday morning.

Campus scenes last Tuesday at Al-Quds University. The Western-funded university authorities have on at least three occasions so far this academic year tolerated these kind of displays by students.

OFFICIAL STATEMENT BY AL-QUDS UNIVERSITY PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICE

Issued on the afternoon of Friday November 8, 2013:

Al-Quds University and as part of its liberal policy which always called for openness and toleration, puts great efforts to get its students to learn how to live in a democratic environment, get to know the “other” and respect their viewpoints. This has been the case in spite of all kinds of difficulties that Al-Quds University students, in specific, are facing on daily basis from Israeli soldiers, whom provokingly keep attacking them along side university staff with hundreds of tear gas bombs. These events have always been meet by restraint of any retaliation, imposed by the university administration on its student body, following its policy of non-violence and pacifism.

What happened on Tuesday during the student event that Al-Jihad faction’s student-arm led, and in particular, the scenes of the threat of violence implied by the military dress and the fake weaponry is totally unacceptable, as it stands against the University policy and vision to provide the Palestinian society with students with peaceful minds and spirits, and in-fact horrified the whole student body who is not used to such acts on campus. Accordingly, the University administration called upon the heads of student factions, and will be conducting an investigation immediately to ensure that such kind of unacceptable actions during festivals do not happen again.

This event which was hand picked, does not in anyway represent the dominant educational and intellectual environment at Al-Quds University, which has always been at the forefront of calls for tolerance and acceptance of people from all corners of the world, to the point that it was criticised by different Palestinian voices.

***

Tom Gross adds:

The above statement makes it sound as though last Tuesday’s Fascist-style demonstration which was organized by the Islamic Jihad student faction, and in which other students at the university joined in, was a one-time occurrence.

In fact I am informed by students at Al-Quds University that the Hamas student faction there had already conducted at least two similar military-style demonstrations praising suicide bombers at the university so far this academic year, and no discipline was taken against them afterwards because no photos of them were exposed to a Western audience, like last Tuesday’s demonstration was.

UPDATE TO MY ORIGINAL DISPATCH: WILL SAEB EREKAT CONDEMN THIS?

(Posted on my website on the afternoon of Wednesday November 6, 2013)

Tom Gross writes:

I am sure that the president of Al-Quds University, Sari Nusseibeh, who is a relative moderate, as well as one of the university’s founding trustees Saeb Erekat – who is the chief Palestinian negotiator with the Israelis in the current peace talks – don’t exactly approve of these demonstrations by students. But the fact that they are helpless to stop them doesn’t bode well for the future of Israeli-Palestinian co-existence.

Nor does it make it easy on campus for those moderate Palestinian students that actually want to foster peace with Israel.

UPDATE TO MY ORIGINAL DISPATCH: WHERE ARE THE LIBERAL MEDIA?

(Posted on my website on the morning of Friday November 8, 2013)

This dispatch has been viewed many thousands of times during the last two days, and linked to in at least 200 news-sites and blogs.

I am glad that European diplomats have been in touch with me about it.

It is disappointing, however, that left-wing and centrist media are still refusing to cover this story, and only right-wing media seem interested.

Continuing to ignore the widespread and growing Palestinian incitement to kill Jews, as the more liberal international media do, does not bode well for peace.

I have consistently supported the creation of an independent Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel. But to be viable and successful it is not only a question of what Israel will give the Palestinians, but of the Palestinians themselves engaging in good governance. There is no point in creating a new Palestinian state if it will primarily be used as a launching ground for armed attacks on Israel, which would be likely to in turn lead to a much bloodier war between Israelis and Palestinians than anything we have witnessed in the past. The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 resulted in much more violence between Palestinians and Israelis, not less, and we surely don’t want a repeat of that if Israel leaves the West Bank.

It is also disappointing that the Brandeis University administration that partners with Al-Quds are refusing to respond to journalists, who tell me they have emailed and phoned Brandeis for a comment about the rally but Brandeis have refused to speak to them.

Surely the aim of Brandeis partnering with Al-Quds is to produce a more liberal atmosphere on campus, not one where extremists dominate and threaten violence and moderate Palestinian students feel intimidated. One hopes that the president of Brandeis might have a quiet word with the president of Al-Quds.

I would also like to make it clear that while it is good these sites are covering this issue, I disassociate myself with the use of language in some of the reports linking to this page that use the term “Nazi salute” or “Nazi style” or “Hitler-style” or “genocide”.

I believe that such terms should only be used in the context of World War Two, and I avoided using them myself on this webpage, as I have elsewhere.

A more apt term would be “Fascist-style”.

The dispatch has been reproduced in other languages around the world, for example, here in Spanish.

Or here in German.

Or French.

Or in Polish if you scroll down here.

***

Update, Nov. 11: The rally has now been covered in Hebrew by Ma’ariv, with quotes from me.

(Again I disassociate myself from some of the readers’ comments on Ma’ariv’s website which I think are unpleasant and unhelpful for the cause of peace.)

***

Update (November 12):

There is a further update including a reaction from Brandeis here.

***

Update (November 19): There is a further dispatch here:

* Brandeis suspends partnership with Al-Quds after (they appear to defend) Fascist-style rally

-- Tom Gross

* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.

Scenes yesterday afternoon from a “moderate” Palestinian university

November 06, 2013

(Exclusive photos.)

Campus scenes yesterday at Al-Quds University. The Western-funded university authorities have on at least three occasions so far this academic year tolerated such Fascist-style displays by students. Scroll down below for more photos.

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES FOR PEACE SO LONG AS THE PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT ENCOURAGES THIS AND WESTERN GOVERNMENTS CONTINUE TO FUND HIM WITHOUT CRITICISM?

[Note by Tom Gross]

During his press conference in Jerusalem today on the “peace process,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry criticized Israel again, but did not place any emphasis at all on the fact that the Palestinian Authority tolerates (and in many cases actively encourages) incitement to kill Jews.

One hopes that U.S. diplomats who subscribe to this list will draw his attention to the shocking photos below.

They were taken yesterday afternoon by a subscriber to this list that I know well and whom was at Al-Quds University yesterday. They were taken on the university campus and it has been confirmed to me that the persons in them are current university students.

(The student demonstration yesterday was organized by the Islamic Jihad student faction, but other students at the university joined in. There have also been at least two similar military-style demonstrations praising suicide bombers by the Hamas student faction at Al-Quds so far this academic year.)

On the other side of Jerusalem, Kerry met Israeli PM Netanyahu today

Al-Quds is a Palestinian university in east Jerusalem. It is often hailed as a “liberal” or “moderate” university by western diplomats and journalists.

It was established with the help of Israel in 1984, along with other universities Israel helped set up for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with the aim of increasing the educational level of Palestinians.

Academics and students (including, quite possibly, some in these photos) have received and continue to receive grants from European governments, charities and foundations. Al-Quds University is also currently in partnership with liberal (and largely Jewish) institutions in the U.S., including Brandeis University and Bard College.

I would urge you to take a quick look at these photos. These kinds of scenes can be seen regularly at Palestinian universities and elsewhere in the West Bank but Western news organizations strenuously avoid reporting on them.

As long as the Palestinian Authority encourages such demonstrations and the university authorities tolerate them, it is doubtful there can ever be peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Peace which presumably we all want.

-- Tom Gross

(There is an update note at the foot of this webpage.)

(There is a follow-up dispatch with a reply from Al-Quds University here. There is a further update including a reaction from Brandeis here.)

A student parade yesterday at the prestigious Al-Quds University. Students were encouraged to give what other students at Al-Quds described as Hitler-style salutes

Students are not allowed to bring guns on campus, hence the students used fake guns in the rally

Palestinian student heroes

Note the map in the photo above shows not the West Bank and Gaza, but all of Israel

UPDATE (November 8, 2013):

This dispatch has been viewed many thousands of times during the last two days, and linked to in at least 200 news-sites and blogs.

I am glad that European diplomats have been in touch with me about it.

It is disappointing, however, that left-wing and centrist media are still refusing to cover this story, and only right-wing media seem interested.

Continuing to ignore the widespread and growing Palestinian incitement to kill Jews, as the more liberal international media do, does not bode well for peace.

I believe that such terms should only be used in the context of World War Two, and I avoided using them myself on this webpage, as I have elsewhere.

A more apt term would be “Fascist-style”.

***

The dispatch has been reproduced in other languages around the world, for example, here in Spanish.

Or here in German.

Or French.

Or in Polish if you scroll down here.

***

-- Tom Gross

UPDATE: There are further dispatches on developments in this story here:

* Al-Quds: Fascist-style rally by our students last Tuesday was “totally unacceptable”

* Update: Al-Quds photos receive attention from Netanyahu through to Al Jazeera

* Brandeis suspends partnership with Al-Quds after (they appear to defend) Fascist-style rally

* Finally, the New York Times covers official Palestinian Authority praise for Hitler

* Postscript: Murder

* You can comment on this dispatch here: www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia. Please also press “Like” on that page.

First ever Syrian woman gives birth in Israeli hospital (& A giant new Jesus statue is erected in Syria!)

November 03, 2013

A SYRIAN IS BORN IN ISRAEL

In first, Syrian woman gives birth in Israeli hospital
‘I don’t feel like I’m in an enemy country,’ says 20-year-old who came across border alone
By Lazar Berman
Times of Israel
November 3, 2013

www.timesofisrael.com/in-first-syrian-refugee-gives-birth-in-israeli-hospital/

For the first time, a Syrian refugee gave birth in an Israeli hospital on Sunday. The woman, a 20-year-old nurse, came across the border alone, and gave birth to a healthy 3.2-kilogram (7 pound) boy.

When the woman felt the baby coming, she was stuck in her home near Quneitra, with no access to a Syrian hospital and no medical care in the town. So she decided to take a huge risk for the sake of her unborn child, and made her way to the border.

“I feared for the baby’s welfare if the birth went through complications at home,” she said. “To my joy, the Israeli army saw I was suffering from terrible pains, and picked me up and transferred me to the hospital.”

When the IDF found her on the border Saturday night, she was already in labor. They brought her to Ziv Medical Center in Safed, where many of the dozens of Syrian medical cases brought into Israel are treated.

Since she came across the border with no family, midwives at the hospital took their place, holding her hands and coaching her through the birth. “At the end of the birth she thanked everyone and hugged everyone with joy,” one of the nurses said.

“The team of Israeli midwives and doctors treated me with sensitivity and respect,” noted the mother.

“She received warm and embracing care from the entire birthing staff,” said Mira Eli, a nurse in the birthing room at Ziv, “just like every mother needs – and even more.”

After surviving on a rice diet for the past two months, the mother received meat and vegetables at the hospital.

“I really don’t feel like I’m in an enemy country; everyone is helping me and caring for me,” she told Channel 2. (Syria and Israel are formally at war, and have fought three major conflicts – in 1948, 1967 and 1973.)

Since February, over 250 Syrian civilians have been admitted to Israeli hospitals for treatment. Many less serious cases have been treated by Israeli medical teams at an IDF field hospital in the Golan Heights.

Israel has said it offers the care as an act of humanitarian assistance, while endeavoring to stay out of the Syrian war, in which an estimated 100,000 people have been killed since March 2011.

IN MIDST OF SYRIAN WAR, A GIANT JESUS STATUE ARISES

In midst of Syrian war, giant Jesus statue arises
By Diaa Hadid
The Associated Press
November 2, 2013

BEIRUT (AP) – In the midst of a conflict rife with sectarianism, a giant bronze statue of Jesus has gone up on a Syrian mountain, apparently under cover of a truce among three factions in the country’s civil war.

Jesus stands, arms outstretched, on the Cherubim mountain, overlooking a route pilgrims took from Constantinople to Jerusalem in ancient times. The statue is 12.3 meters (40 feet) tall and stands on a base that brings its height to 32 meters (105 feet), organizers of the project estimate.

That the statue made it to Syria and went up without incident on Oct. 14 is remarkable. The project took eight years and was set back by the civil war that followed the March 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad.

Christians and other minorities are all targets in the conflict, and the statue’s safety is by no means guaranteed. It stands among villages where some fighters, linked to al-Qaeda, have little sympathy for Christians.

So why put up a giant statue of Jesus in the midst of such setbacks and so much danger?

Because “Jesus would have done it,” organizer Samir al-Ghadban quoted a Christian church leader as telling him.

The backers’ success in overcoming the obstacles shows the complexity of civil war, where sometimes despite the atrocities the warring parties can reach short-term truces.

Al-Ghadban said that the main armed groups in the area – Syrian government forces, rebels and the local militias of Sednaya, the Christian town near the statue site – halted fire while organizers set up the statue, without providing further details.

Rebels and government forces occasionally agree to cease-fires to allow the movement of goods. They typically do not admit to having truces because that would tacitly acknowledge their enemies.

It took three days to raise the statue. Photos provided by organizers show it being hauled in two pieces by farm tractors, then lifted into place by a crane. Smaller statues of Adam and Eve stand nearby.

The project, called “I Have Come to Save the World,” is run by the London-based St. Paul and St. George Foundation, which Al-Ghadban directs. It was previously named the Gavrilov Foundation, after a Russian businessman, Yuri Gavrilov.

Documents filed with Britain’s Charity Commission describe it as supporting “deserving projects in the field of science and animal welfare” in England and Russia, but the commission’s accounts show it spent less than 250 pounds ($400) in the last four years.

Al-Ghadban said most of the financing came from private donors, but did not supply further details.

Russians have been a driving force behind the project – not surprising given that the Kremlin is embattled Assad’s chief ally, and the Orthodox churches in Russia and Syria have close ties. Al-Ghadban, who spoke to The Associated Press from Moscow, is Syrian-Russian and lives in both countries.

Al-Ghadban said he began the project in 2005, hoping the statue would be an inspiration for Syria’s Christians. He said he was inspired by Rio de Janeiro’s towering Christ the Redeemer statue.

He commissioned an Armenian sculptor, but progress was slow.

By 2012, the statue was ready, but Syria was aflame, causing the project’s biggest delay, al-Ghadban said.

Majority Sunni Muslims dominate the revolt, and jihadists make up some of the strongest fighting groups. Other Muslim groups along with the 10-percent Christian minority have stood largely with Assad’s government, or remained neutral, sometimes arming themselves to keep hard-line rebels out of their communities.

Churches have been vandalized, priests abducted. Last month the extremists overran Maaloula, a Christian-majority town so old that some of its people still speak a language from Jesus’ time.

On Tuesday a militant Muslim cleric, Sheik Omar al-Gharba, posted a YouTube video of himself smashing a blue-and-white statue of the Virgin Mary.

Al-Ghadban and the project’s most important backer, Gavrilov, weighed canceling it.

They consulted Syria’s Greek Orthodox Patriarch John Yaziji. It was he who told them “Jesus would have done it.”

They began shipping the statue from Armenia to Lebanon. In August, while it was en route, Gavrilov, 49, suffered a fatal heart attack, al-Ghadban said.

Eventually the statue reached Syria.

“It was a miracle,” al-Ghadban said. “Nobody who participated in this expected this to succeed.”

SYRIA’S POLIO OUTBREAK DEMANDS AN IMMEDIATE RESPONSE

Syria’s polio outbreak demands an immediate response
Washington Post Editorial
November 2, 2013

ON TOP of all the human misery inflicted upon the people of Syria by civil war, now comes the polio virus. The disease, which can lead to irreversible paralysis and death and strikes mostly children 5 and younger, can be spread in situations with poor hygiene and sanitation. The World Health Organization has confirmed 10 cases of wild polio virus in samples taken from Deir al-Zour province in northeastern Syria.

This is the scourge of war. Most of the polio cases are children 2 or younger, born and infected in the years in which Syria has been ravaged by violent conflict. The estimated polio immunization rate in Syria was 91 percent in 2010, but it fell to only 68 percent in 2012. The outbreak is a sign of what happens when health-care systems collapse. Most ominous, about half a million Syrian children have not been immunized. Vaccination is the most critical tool in the battle against polio, and a large-scale effort is being mounted to reach the unvaccinated children. Still, the World Health Organization has warned that the risk of further spread in the region is high, given the war, tides of refugees fleeing battle zones and big gaps in immunity. Efforts are being intensified to immunize children in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Israel and Egypt.

Elsewhere, impressive progress has been made in fighting polio. At the start of this year, the disease was endemic in only Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan. Cases in these three countries are down 40 percent compared to last year, and southern Afghanistan has been free of it for a year. A major concern is North Waziristan, where vaccinators have been unable to reach children for more than a year, and where cases are on the rise. A severe outbreak in Somalia and one in Kenya have been tied to Nigeria. But polio has been stopped before in regions of conflict, and there is still hope that the disease can eventually be eradicated. Earlier this year, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, an umbrella group, unveiled a promising strategy to reach zero cases in five years. Last year, the world saw only 223 polio cases, the lowest level in history. This year, the total is 322 and rising.

Until genetic analysis is complete, it won’t be possible to pinpoint the origin of the Syrian polio virus, but there are fears it spread from Pakistan. The challenge for Syria now is to carry out vaccinations amid the shooting. It is absolutely essential for frontline health workers to have access to the endangered populations. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent must be able to work without hindrance. The United Nations and Syria’s neighbors ought to demand that all sides – government forces and the opposition – guarantee that volunteers immunizing children do not become targets or victims. Roadblocks can stop fighters, but they will not stop polio virus, which threatens all in its path, the children of rebel fighters and army generals alike.

STARVING SYRIANS HOPE TO LIVE THROUGH WINTER

Cut Off: Starving Syrians hope to live through winter
By Christoph Reuter
Der Spiegel (Germany)
November 1, 2013

www.spiegel.de/international/world/starvation-threatens-isolated-towns-in-wartorn-syria-a-930757.html

As the world focuses on Syria’s chemical disarmament, thousands of people in the country face a more pressing concern: starvation. Cut off by ongoing violence, they are dying because they have no access to supplies. Many will not survive the winter.

Three-year-old Ibrahim Khalil survived the chemical weapons attacks on Aug. 21. But then, 10 days later, he died of hunger -- just as the next child died hours after him and a third died four days later in the Damascus suburb of Muadhamiya.

When the world learned of the sarin gas attacks that took place in the suburbs of Damascus this past summer, it reacted with outrage, leading to Syria’s dismantling of its chemical arsenal, which was declared complete by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on Thursday. Yet hardly anyone seems to be taking notice of these new deaths. After being under siege for months, cut off from food supplies, electricity, water and any form of aid, people are beginning to die of malnutrition.

Children are also starving to death in Yarmouk in the southern part of Damascus and other places sealed off by government troops. But nowhere is the situation as fatal as it is in Muadhamiya, where six children had died by mid-October “and dozens are already so weak that an ordinary cold would kill them,” says Dr. Amin Abu Ammar, one of the last doctors in the suburb.

The fact that President Bashar Assad agreed to destroy his stockpiles of chemical weapons is a piece of good news from a war that is not producing any other positive reports. In fact, it’s too good, so good that the chemical weapons inspectors were promptly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and it seemed as if the rest of the war had ceased. And while European governments are mainly concerned about foreign jihadists infiltrating Syria, there are about 1,000 armed local fighters in Muadhamiya who don’t even have any contact with neighboring towns.

PROTESTING NEAR SYRIA’S NERVE CENTERS

The location of the city, once home to more than 60,000 people, has become its undoing. As in hundreds of other towns and cities across Syria, the residents of Muadhamiya demonstrated against Assad in the spring of 2011. But of all the places where protests were held, Muadhamiya was the closest to the regime’s nerve centers: the headquarters of the Syrian army’s 4th Armored Division in the north, the quarters of the Republican Guard in the west and the “president’s airport” in Mezzeh in the northeast.

Muadhamiya was already surrounded before a single soldier was deployed. The fact that the population wasn’t poor but consisted of the well-educated middle class made the situation even worse.

Muadhamiya was to be subjugated. When the government failed to achieve this goal, despite mass arrests and shots being fired at demonstrators, they decided to take it by force. And when that plan could not be implemented, despite mortar fire and air strikes, rockets armed with sarin gas rained down on the city, killing 85 people, according to doctors there.

But what the chemical weapons failed to achieve is now being gradually accomplished by hunger: the annihilation of a city. And it is happening without any of Washington’s red lines being crossed or any public outcry in other countries -- and even without propaganda efforts from Damascus to conceal the problem. “Let them starve for a bit, surrender and then be put on trial,” a member of the newly-formed paramilitary “Defense Committee” from Assad’s Alawite faith told a reporter with the Wall Street Journal in early October.

MOSQUES TARGETED WITH MORTAR FIRE

The suburb of Muadhamiya has been cut off from the outside world since Nov. 18, 2012. Soldiers at checkpoints are not allowing anyone in or out. Snipers shoot anyone who tries to cross the lines. The physicians’ committee has counted 1,700 deaths since the beginning of the uprising, including 738 since the blockade alone. Almost all of the city’s 22 schools are in ruins. Classes were held in a few mosques at first, but that stopped when the mosques were targeted with mortar fire from the hills by the 4th Division.

The last shops closed in March because there was nothing left to sell. Electricity, water lines and the telephone network have been cut off. Bread is only available when someone manages to smuggle in some flour. Assad has turned Muadhamiya into a ghost town.

“At first, we survived on our supplies and what we found in the houses of those who had fled,” says Ahmed Muadamani, a former businessman and current member of the revolutionary town council, who is now in charge of outside contacts through one of the last Internet connections, via satellite phone.

“Then many people tried to grow tomatoes and potatoes in all open areas, but there were several deaths when the snipers kept shooting at people in the fields and gardens.” Women were shot in the chest and men in the head, says the doctor, adding that there is now nothing left to eat for the winter.

For a while, friends and relatives of the trapped residents were able to drive by along the road between Damascus and the Golan Heights, near Muadhamiya, and toss bags of food out of their cars. Residents would then perform the life-threatening task of collecting the bags. But the road has been closed for half a year now, and snipers have also taken positions there.

‘THERE ARE NO LAMBS ANYMORE’

Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, which is based on the Biblical tale of Abraham who, at God’s behest, went out to sacrifice his son Isaac, only to be stopped by an angel at the last minute, was held in mid-October. In Islam, the story mirrors the Biblical account, except that Abraham is known as Ibrahim and Isaac is Ismail. In addition, the salvation of the son is traditionally celebrated with the slaughtering of an animal, usually a lamb, and the meat is distributed among the poor.

Syrian friends in Germany wanted to give the starving residents of Muadhamiya a lamb, or more than one, if possible, to celebrate the festival. Using Skype, they asked how they should go about doing this and to whom they should send the money. They received their answer after three days: “There are no lambs anymore. Not a single lamb in the entire city. We have already eaten anything that crawls, runs and flies. And you can’t eat money.”

Up to 40,000 people have become trapped in Yarmouk, which has only been under siege for three months. For the Feast of the Sacrifice, an imam there issued a fatwa, or religious opinion. “We have permitted the consumption of dogs, cats, donkeys and cadavers,” declared Sheikh Salah al-Khatib. “Otherwise, there is nothing left. How much longer do you intend to look on?” he asked Muslims celebrating the holiday around the world. “Until we eat each other?”

The last animals that have not been slaughtered in Muadhamiya are three cows, although again, gathering grass for the animals has become dangerous because open meadows are within the target range of the snipers. But without the cows there would be no milk left for the children.

All attempts to organize subsistence are failing one after another. The undernourished are getting sick more quickly; medicine is in short supply. The two underground hospitals have almost no electricity, because there is no diesel fuel left to run the generators. The same soldiers who are shooting at them sometimes sell them sugar for the equivalent of €20 ($27) a kilo, “but never rice or milk,” says the doctor.

APPEALS FOR HUMANITARIAN AID

In recent months, the Red Crescent has tried to bring food into the city seven times, but to no avail. The United States State Department and the United Nations have appealed to Damascus in recent weeks to allow humanitarian aid for the besieged civilians, but there was no reaction from the Syrian government. The official position is that those surrounded by government troops are all terrorists or their supporters.

Suburbs in the northeast of Damascus have also been sealed off for months. But they cover larger areas, there are smuggling routes and, most of all, there are no snipers to shoot children as they gather firewood or grass for livestock. The tool of besiegement has become an omnipresent weapon, which is also employed by the rebels, who have surrounded the western part of Aleppo. The difference is that civilians there are not prevented from leaving, and food supplies are allowed in.

In mid-October, after weeks of negotiations, two groups totaling about 1,600 civilians were permitted to leave Muadhamiya. They included women and children, but no men between the ages of 14 and 60. When a third group arrived at the western checkpoint on Oct. 16 to be evacuated, as arranged, the artillery units on the 4th division’s hill opened fire without warning. Four people died and several were severely injured. The rest fled back into the city, where 10,000 people remain.

Abdul Rassak al-Hamshari, 65, was in the last group that was allowed to leave. He has made it to Lebanon, to a small village in the Bekaa Valley near the border. He is now living in an unfinished concrete basement shared by 10 people, which is luxurious compared to life in Muadhamiya. “At least there isn’t any shelling anymore!” says Hamshari.

His son is dead, but he holds out hope that his daughter-in-law will manage to escape. He has no illusions about the men who are still in Muadhamiya. “They are our sons, cousins and grandsons, and they will not give up, even if they all die. But what could I have done there? I’m old and useless.”

When told about the “cat fatwa” in Yarmouk, he laughs briefly and intensely. “It’s a good idea. But when we left, I hadn’t seen a cat on the streets in weeks. They’ve all been eaten already.”

(Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan)

PUTIN STEPS UP ARMS SHIPMENTS TO SYRIA

Russia stepping up arms shipments to Syria, US official says
By Paul McLeary
Defense News
November 1, 2013

www.defensenews.com/article/20131031/DEFREG01/310310012/Russia-Stepping-up-Arms-Shipments-Syria-US-Official-Says

WASHINGTON – The fighting between the government and rebels in Syria continues to be “a grinding war of attrition” with no military or political end in sight, a top American diplomat said today.

“Neither the regime nor the opposition can throw a knockout punch,” Robert Ford, US ambassador to Syria, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The ruling regime of Bashir al Assad is increasingly relying on foreign forces, such as Hezbollah from Lebanon, Iranian Qods troops and Iraqi Shia militias to fight on behalf of the government since regime forces have melted away and new recruits are increasingly difficult to find.

“More and more, the regime is dependent on foreign manpower” as it struggles to hold its armed forces together and keep them supplied, he added.

The Assad regime is also being supplied by Russia, which has recently increased the amount of conventional arms it is providing to the regime.

“The Russian deliveries have become more significant, more significant than from Iran,” which had been Assad’s biggest sponsor up to now, Ford warned.

Earlier in the day, the Joint Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – United Nations Mission confirmed that Syria had completed the destruction of equipment used for chemical weapons production, and that OPCW teams have inspected 21 of the 23 sites declared by Syria, and 39 of the 41 facilities located at those sites. The last two sites are still unreachable due to security concerns.

Still, Thomas Countryman, the US State Department’s assistant secretary for international security and nonproliferation, told the panel that Syria only just delivered a 700-page report to Washington on Monday outlining its chemical weapons and production facilities, and that the Obama administration is working though it.

The opposition forces continue to be a hodgepodge of loosely aligned secular and Islamist forces, some of which have been fighting one another for influence and power. US intelligence has found that the two main al-Qaida groups – the mostly indigenous Jabhat al-Nusra and the newer, mostly Iraqi and foreign Islamic State for Iraq and the Levant – have been fighting one another in northern Syria, Ford said.

In some cases, secular opposition groups have formed temporary, ad hoc alliances with elements of al Nusra to battle the foreign fighters as well.

The United States has delivered about $250 million worth of non-lethal aid to secular groups so far, including several trucks on Oct. 31st that can be used for logistics and to move fighters around.

But several senators scoffed at the Obama administration’s efforts in Syria.

Sen. Bob Coker, R-Tenn., said the Obama administration has “no real strategy relative to the opposition ... let’s face it guys, what really happened when the Russian offer came forward was it was less about seizing an opportunity and more about our country not having to stomach” developing a strategy for Syria.

“We don’t see a way for this to be solved militarily,” Ford shot back. “We have to build a political set of agreements between [Syrian] communities” or else the fighting will grind on with no end.

“Our help has been an embarrassment,” Coker told the witnesses. “I could not be more embarrassed by the way we have let down [the secular opposition.] I hope at some point this administration will sit down and develop a strategy not only for Syria but for the region”

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., piled on, calling the White House’s insistence that the fighting in Syria is a civil war “a gross distortion of the facts, which makes many of us question your fundamental strategy,” both in the country and in the region in general.

Ford explained that supplying the secular resistance with aid has been complicated by the fact that al-Qaida groups had captured key border points, making resupply almost impossible until secular fighters recaptured the border crossings.

He also said that the Islamist groups have increasingly become self-sufficient, having captured oil wells in the north, as well as by running extortion and smuggling schemes in order to finance their operations.

MORE THAN 200,000 SYRIAN KURDS FLEE INTO IRAQI KURDISTAN

The Kurds get a second chance in Syria
By Fouad Ajami
Oct 30, 2013
Bloomberg News

www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-30/the-kurds-get-a-second-chance-in-syria.html

More than 200,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees have moved into Iraqi Kurdistan. They have crossed an international border to be sure, yet it is, in the Kurdish world view, a passage from one part of their homeland to another. The Kurds disregard these frontiers, imposed on the Fertile Crescent almost a century ago by Anglo-French power.

No Kurd is lamenting the erosion of the borders in this tangled geography. The partition of the successor states of the Ottoman Empire brought the Kurds grief and dispossession. The Persians, Turks and Arabs secured their own states. Indeed, the Arabs were bequeathed several states in the geography of “Turkish Arabia” that runs from the Iraqi border with Iran to the Mediterranean.

Kurdistan was singularly betrayed, its people divided among Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Kurdish history became a chronicle of thwarted rebellions. According to a deeply felt expression, the Kurds had no friends but the mountains.

Yet a new life is stirring in Kurdistan. Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, once a forgotten fortress town, is a booming city of shopping malls, high-rises and swank hotels. Oil and natural gas have remade the city, as has its political stability, remarkable when set against the mayhem of the rest of Iraq.

The Kurds are shrewd. They aren’t about to claim Erbil as the capital of a restored greater Kurdistan, but it has pride of place in their world. It is the home of Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish regional government, and of almost 5 million people, who are officially part of Iraq but in reality belong to an independent nation.

PERIL REMAINS

The realists among the Kurds know the power and ruthlessness of the nations that have divided and ruled their world, yet they are determined to make the best of this moment when borders and attachments are suddenly in flux.

It is the fate of Western Kurdistan -- Rojava in Kurdish -- that has given rise to this new sense of urgency. The war between the Damascus regime and the principally Sunni rebels presents peril and possibility for the 2 million to 3 million Kurds within Syria.

The Kurds inhabit fragments of Syria by the Turkish and Iraqi borders, in the northeast; their lands contain the bulk of Syria’s oil. Arab nationalism, the creed of the authoritarian Syrian state, was avowedly racist in its treatment of them, denying them the most basic and cherished right: use of their own language. The regime of the Assads, father and son, has been cunning and devastating in the way it pitted the Kurds against one another.

Yet in the civil war that erupted in 2011, the Syrian opposition has troubled the Kurds, too. The leaders of the Sunni Arab rebellion were committed to creation of their own centralized state. Turkey’s sponsorship of the rebels created suspicions as well. The foreign jihadists who made their way to Syria were yet another source of anxiety.

The Kurds had a small volunteer force of their own, but it was no match for Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, whose Islamist warriors had weapons aplenty, money and unchecked zeal. The group was determined to impose its rule in areas the regime had left. In mid-July, clashes broke out in Kurdish towns and have erupted intermittently since. Thousands of Syrian Kurds have made their way to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they receive help, even as the authorities in Erbil don’t want to encourage an exodus from Syria.

Turkey casts a large shadow. The line that separates the Syrian and Turkish Kurds is artificial. As the prominent Turkish columnist Cengiz Candar observes, the Kurds don’t speak of Turkish and Syrian communities. For them the line of separation was a simple railroad track that allowed them to move to and fro, with ease and freedom.

TURKISH DILEMMA

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a dilemma. He is invested in a peace process at home with the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, and its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan. And Turkey has a flourishing relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan, whose oil and natural gas it needs desperately. Yet the permissive attitude of the Turkish state toward the jihadists battling the Syrian Kurds has been a source of trouble for Erdogan. He has gone a long way toward keeping the jihadists at arm’s length.

The dream of greater Kurdistan is just that. History has given the Kurds a second chance in Iraq and Syria, while Turkish democracy gives them a voice in the country’s direction. Matters are stagnant in Iran, where the oppression of the Kurds is of a piece with the tyranny of a theocracy.

The Kurds can’t erase all the hurts of their modern history and those who choose to stay in Syria remain embattled, yet the isolation that had been their lot is now in the past. At the foot of those once sheltering mountains, a new and a safer life has sprung forth.

KFC quits Damascus as Syria crisis becomes too much for the colonel (& Pizza Hat in Iran)

ARTICLES

A LOOK AT IRAN’S FAKE AMERICAN FOOD FRANCHISES

From Pizza Hat to Mash Donald’s, bootleg American franchises have been popping up in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Photos and text here.

COLONEL SANDERS IS UNLIKELY TO RETURN TO SYRIA ANY TIME SOON

What KFC’s exit from Syria says about the country’s horrifying food crisis
By Adam Heffez
The Atlantic (magazine)
October 31 2013

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/what-kfc-s-exit-from-syria-says-about-the-countrys-horrifying-food-crisis/281025/

In 2006, Kentucky Fried Chicken opened Syria’s first American restaurant in Damascus. The franchise weathered more than two and a half years of war, but this month, it became one of the last foreign businesses in the country to close its doors.

The picture of a quintessential American brand thriving in an “Axis of Evil” country currently targeted by U.S. sanctions may seem contradictory at first blush. Yet, in the Middle East, people have spent up to seven times their daily income on a bucket of fried chicken. Even in the Gaza Strip, where the average income hovers around $2 (U.S.) per day, KFC remains popular. The KFC branch in Al-Arish, Egypt has smuggled in deliveries through Hamas’s tunnels for $30 a meal.

The United Arab Emirates, a country that has roughly the same population as New Jersey, opened its 100th KFC branch this May. Libya and Iraq crave KFC no less: Knockoffs of the restaurant – “Uncle Kentucky” in Tripoli and Fallujah – thrive in places where American ideas may not be winning hearts and minds, but they are winning stomachs.

The only time Americana, the Kuwait-based company that owns KFC’s franchises in Syria and the broader region, faced politically motivated boycotts was during the Second Intifada, half a decade before KFC’s first Syrian branch opened. All of Americana’s brands – KFC, Hardee’s, TGI Friday’s, and others – were hurt during that time, with one exception: Pizza Hut. The reason? According to Americana’s vice president of finance, Ahmed Hassan, “people thought it was Italian.” Americana soon added to its regional logo the words “Arabiya Miyah fil Miyah,” meaning “one hundred percent Arab,” which effectively solved the problem.

Americana’s franchises have proved to be surprisingly resilient in a region that has seen its share of turmoil in the past couple of years. Almost all of the 1,400 restaurants region-wide have been able to effectively ride out the Arab Spring. Even in Egypt, no stranger to widespread chaos, the effects of revolutions and counterrevolutions have been limited to a handful of its franchises. In 2011, the violence that led to Mubarak’s ouster only affected the company’s four outlets in Tahrir Square and its three “floating” franchises on the Nile, which were located near the Israeli embassy.

But for the past few years, the odds have been stacked against KFC in Syria. Poultry production has decreased by half since the conflict began in 2011. The Syrian Ministry of Agriculture estimates that as of May 2013, less than 35 percent of the country’s poultry units were still operating, and more than 50 percent of jobs in the sector have been lost.

As a result, Americana could no longer source chicken from local farms. To keep its franchises open for business, the company imported chicken from a Lebanese company called Hawa. “With the right connections, we were able to bring in [everything] to Damascus,” Hassan said.

But importing eventually became unsustainable. Violence made road transportation unsafe and severely crippled the supply chain of food. Making matters worse, transportation was prohibitively expensive. The price of diesel has increased anywhere from 20 percent in Damascus to 600 percent in Aleppo. Orient News, a network aligned with the opposition, attributes the price hike to the Assad regime’s use of additional diesel revenues to raise the salaries of state employees and bribe them for their continued loyalty. The regime blames scarcity and terrorist attacks on production facilities.

Transportation is one of the two main factors in food importation. The other is the availability of hard currency. “The biggest problem with food is less its availability and more people’s ability to afford it,” said Donatella Rovera, a senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty International, who visited rebel-controlled areas throughout northern Syria earlier this year. In the first quarter of 2013, unemployment in the country reached 49 percent.

The CATO Institute estimates that monthly inflation averages 34 percent, making cash increasingly scarce and worthless. This has led to “dollarization” in all economic sectors. The Assad regime responded in July 2013 with a decree that would imprison traders caught dealing in anything other than Syrian pounds for three years. The sentence is even longer if the amount involved exceeds $500. However, the Syrian pound, which is both scarce and diminished in value, can neither buy people enough food nor give farmers enough incentive to continue producing. They already face higher input costs and lower returns on yields, with 300 percent year-on-year increases in fertilizer prices and reduced availability of labor after more than 100,000 people have been killed and nearly 5 million displaced.

This hard economic reality means that the little food that Syria continues to produce often doesn’t even reach the country’s suqs (markets). The World Food Program reports that since the crisis, more Syrian livestock has been sold in places where it gets higher returns: Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey. Samir al-Taqi, a physician who heads the Orient Research Center, the country’s leading think tank, calls this trend “de-facto economic annexation.”

The country’s battered markets have left approximately 4 million people facing food insecurity. Americana’s decision to close up shop in Damascus is just the latest example of the dissolution of normalcy in even Syria’s most protected areas. As long as the operational obstacles facing KFC mirror the ones that Syria faces in feeding its people, Colonel Sanders is unlikely to return.

HANKERING FOR THE COLONEL’S SECRET RECIPE IN GAZA

KFC smugglers bring buckets of chicken through Gaza tunnels
By Ahmed Aldabba
Christian Science Monitor
May 15, 2013

www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2013/0515/KFC-smugglers-bring-buckets-of-chicken-through-Gaza-tunnels

For six years, Rafat Shororo longed for the taste of a KFC sandwich he had eaten in Egypt. This week, he got his finger lickin’ fix at home in the Gaza Strip after a local delivery company managed to smuggle it from Egypt through underground tunnels.

“It has been a dream, and this company has made my dream come true,” says Mr. Shororo, an accountant, as he receives his order from the delivery guy.

The al-Yamama company advertises its unorthodox new fast-food smuggling service on Facebook. It gets tens of orders a week for KFC meals despite having to triple the price to 100 shekels ($30) to cover transportation and smuggling fees. The deliveries go from the fryers at the Al-Arish KFC joint 35 miles away to customers’ doorsteps in about three hours.

The fact that the tunnels operate quickly and cheaply enough for the Colonel’s secret recipe to be enjoyed in the tightly controlled Gaza Strip shows just how much of a sieve the Egypt-Gaza border has become.

“All you need to have any KFC product is a short phone call and a few hours, then you can enjoy the great taste of fried chickens,” says Shororo, checking over his chicken pieces, salads, and apple pies. Like other customers who are acquainted with KFC from their travels abroad, he says he doesn’t care how much it costs. “I just want it.”

KFC may be one of the stranger products to come through the hundreds of smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza that have sprung up in the past six years in response to Israeli restrictions on imports to the Hamas-run territory, which allow cars, sailboats, motorcycles, weapons, fish, and now even drumsticks into the tiny coastal territory. While Egypt has a border crossing at Rafah, it is limited to foot traffic, and Cairo has so far refrained from opening a commercial crossing and thus risking Israel’s ire.

Ironically, one of the reasons smugglers agreed to start dealing in KFC is because Israel’s easing of restrictions on trade since the November cease-fire with Hamas has dealt a serious blow to the tunnel business.

HUNGRY BUSINESSMEN

The KFC delivery service in Gaza started with a hankering rather than a business plan.

Mohammed al-Madani, financial manager of al-Yamama company, says the employees of the company decided to order some meals for themselves from the KFC restaurant in the neighboring Egyptian city of al-Arish.

Someone from the company contacted a friend in al-Arish, asking him to make the order and then bring it through the tunnels; the whole process just took three hours.

“Then we asked ourselves, ‘Why don’t we provide this service for Gazans?’” says Mr. al-Madani.

The company got more than 20 orders a few hours after a short advertisement was posted on their Facebook fan page. Those who order are well-to-do people and don’t care much about the price of the food compared to the original price at the restaurant.

“Most of those who order are people who are accustomed to travel and eat KFC food around the world,” says Madani.

Al-Madani says the process of smuggling the food into Gaza is not difficult at all.

“After getting the orders, we call our partner in al-Arish and ask him to make the orders, after getting the meals, he goes to a specific tunnel and asks smugglers to transfer them into the other side of the tunnel; this may take a few minutes,” says al-Madani.

SPECIAL DELIVERY

For the tunnel owner who smuggles the KFC food, moving the meals is a bit strange. Smuggler Abu Iyad says the tunnels are meant to bring in basic food stuffs, construction materials, and sometimes people. “This is the first time to smuggle such goods,” he says.

He adds that the tunnel business has gone down recently mainly after Israel relaxed the embargo it imposed on the territory after Hamas seized it in 2007.

“This is why I accept to smuggle anything except weapons and drugs,” Abu Iyad says as he carried the buckets of KFC with the famous face of Col. Harland Sanders.

“The tunnel business is not like before, things are going worse and barely work, especially after the Egyptian army started to tear down the tunnels,” he says, referring to attempts to shut down illegal smuggling after 16 Egyptian soldiers were killed at Rafah in August 2012. Both Egypt and Israel are concerned that the tunnels are facilitating jihadist attacks in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.

With Israel relaxing the embargo and allowing more goods to reach Gaza cheaply, the premium that smugglers could once charge for some goods has gone down, according to Abu Iyad.

“Bringing some meals like these would cost $200 or more three years ago, but now they don’t even cost $20. The Egyptian and Hamas police are not giving us the chance to work freely and the business may shut down if things continue to be this bad.”

At the Gaza side of the tunnel opening, a Hamas policeman was waiting to check if the buckets contain any forbidden materials. Apparently greasy chicken is not on his list. Abu Iyad is given a green light to deliver the food to the Al-Yamama delivery guy who will take the meals to customers.

“I wonder why people pay a lot of money to buy a small meal of chicken,” asks Abu Iyad wryly. “I can buy four chickens for the price of one meal.”

“LADIES” CAFE OPENS IN RAMALLAH

Women-only cafes offer new visions of Palestinian public space
By Alexa Stevens
Palestinian Ma’an news agency
November 2, 2013

www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=643647

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) -- Discreetly located at the foot of a staircase, the cafe offers a familiar scene: shisha pipes are stacked neatly on the counter, ashtrays dot each table, Lebanese satellite television plays in the background and steaming Turkish coffee is served to a table of regulars.

Like many other cafes lining the busy avenues branching off of Ramallah’s bustling Manara Square, this is a gendered space. Male employees stand guard outside, surveying the entrance of the cafe with stern eyes.

Unlike most public establishments in Ramallah, Ladies is a cafe for women only.

When the cafe opened in early 2012, it was the first women-only cafe in Ramallah. As in most cities in Palestine, cafes in Ramallah are primarily a men-only affair. Many cafes and restaurants have mixed clientele and some even have delineated “family” sections, but for the most part women rarely frequent cafes on their own.

Ladies promised to provide a different experience, one that barred male clientele and instead offered a public space intended exclusively for women. The hope was that in a society where cafes are traditionally geared towards men, the creation of a women-only cafe would offer women equal access to the public sphere, but on their own terms.

Cafe owner Jamil Ali explains that in a woman-only space, women can feel comfortable and take off their scarves, smoke cigarettes and sit with their legs crossed, unlike in male-dominated cafes where these behaviors might draw attention.

“She doesn’t want anybody to look at her,” he says. “A thousand eyes will go to her, a thousand eyes.” But in a public space frequented exclusively by women, she is free to unwind in a comfortable setting.

In addition to creating a space accessible to women, Ali also sought to ensure that the cafe be economically accessible to a female-only clientele. As he explained, many mixed cafes charge prices out of reach for most Palestinian women. Although the entire menu was originally priced at 10 shekels ($3), after realizing that the prices were still too high for some patrons, the price of drinks were lowered to seven shekels ($2).

“WOMEN DON’T HAVE TO BE ON THEIR GUARD”

Unlike Jamil Ali, Susie Atilla didn’t set out to create a women-only space three years ago when she co-founded Diva, a cafe patronized predominantly by women inconspicuously located off of a main street in Bethlehem.

Atilla was originally encouraged by the male owner of the commercial center where Diva is located to open the cafe there because a number of other female-oriented businesses had locations nearby. Among Diva’s neighbors are a gym, hairdresser and a Turkish bath.

She explains that even though the cafe was open to a mixed clientele, “the reputation spread that it’s only for women.”

“Some men get really embarrassed to come with their wives but we always tell them men and families are welcome!” she adds with a chuckle.

Susie and her sister, Nancy, started Diva as a project meant to provide them with an income for after their retirement from their day jobs. They hoped in the process to create a place where they and their friends could come and socialize.

When asked about Ladies cafe in Ramallah, Atilla smiles.

“It’s great for girls to be able to feel comfortable,” in a cafe like Ladies. “Women don’t have to be on their guard.”

She emphasizes that even though its location is somewhat isolated, Diva offers “privacy,” and a place where women feel comfortable.

The sentiment was shared by many patrons at Ladies interviewed by Ma’an.

A patron from the US uses the cafe as a space for lessons with teenage Palestinian girls she tutors. The parents of the girls, she says, feel comfortable knowing that the cafe only serves women and thus offers a secure public meeting spot for young girls.

Many of the students’ parents usually only allow their daughters to go to school and come home, the tutor says, but when they heard about the cafe they welcomed the idea.

She concedes, however, that gender-segregated cafes “enforce the idea that girls have to do things in secret.”

A Palestinian woman at the cafe adds, “It’s sick, the separation thing. Ramallah is better (than other cities in Palestine, but) you still find people who won’t let their daughters or wives go places.”

This customer tells Ma’an that she sees a women-only cafe as another example of the kinds of separation between genders that persists in Palestinian public space.

She adds that the cafe’s decision to serve an exclusively female clientele furthers the gender divide between men and women in public spaces.

“The society and the mentality of the people is not going to change soon,” she says with a shake of her head.

CREATING PUBLIC SPACES FOR WOMEN

Both cafes, though quite different in mission, have become spaces for women located in a larger urban context that offer comfort and privacy for their patrons. Neither cafe set out to change the fabric of Palestinian society, or the fact that most public establishments primarily cater exclusively to men.

Rather, each cafe acknowledges the realities of a male-dominated public sphere by offering a place where women can feel comfortable.

Even though all-women cafes like Ladies “(enforce) the separation,” a Palestinian patron says, they can also be seen as “a solution that make things easier for some part of society.”

And for the many women who frequent Ladies and Diva, but feel uncomfortable or unable to patronize male-dominated establishments, these cafes offer a unique and inviting alternative that offers comfort, privacy, and access.

Atilla, the owner of Diva suggests that “some women in society feel like they need to have a place that is private and that’s where they feel comfortable.”

(Alex Shams in Bethlehem contributed reporting.)