Harvard-educated, Oscar-winning Natalie Portman, born Neta-Lee Hershlag in Jerusalem, stars in the adaptation of Amos Oz’s memoir about a boy coming of age in the tumultuous period just before and after Israel’s independence from the British mandate.
* David D. Laitin and Marc Jahr: “Detroit, a once great city, has become an urban vacuum. Its population has fallen to around 700,000 from nearly 1.9 million. The city is estimated to have more than 70,000 abandoned buildings and 90,000 vacant lots. Meanwhile, desperate Syrians, victims of an unfathomable civil war, are fleeing to neighboring countries, with some 1.8 million in Turkey and 600,000 in Jordan… Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan, a Republican, has already called for an infusion of 50,000 immigrants as part of a program to revitalize Detroit, and signed an executive order creating the Michigan Office for New Americans. Syrian refugees would be an ideal community to realize this goal, as Arab-Americans are already a vibrant and successful presence in the Detroit metropolitan area…”
* Mehdi Hasan: “In recent months, cliched calls for reform of Islam, a 1,400-year-old faith, have intensified. ‘We need a Muslim reformation,’ announced Newsweek. ‘Islam needs reformation from within,’ said the Huffington Post… Apparently anyone who wants to win the war against violent extremism and save the soul of Islam, not to mention transform a stagnant Middle East, should be in favour of this process. After all, Christianity had the Reformation, so goes the argument, which was followed by the Enlightenment; by secularism, liberalism and modern European democracy. So why can’t Islam do the same? Yet the reality is that talk of a Christian-style reformation for Islam is so much cant... The Protestant Reformation opened the door to blood-letting on an unprecedented, continent-wide scale. Tens of millions of innocents died in Europe; up to 40% of Germany’s population is believed to have been killed. Is this what we want a Muslim-majority world already plagued by sectarian conflicts, foreign occupations and the bitter legacy of colonialism to now endure, all in the name of reform, progress and even liberalism?”
* Please “like” these dispatches on Facebook here www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia, where you can also find other items that are not in these dispatches.
CONTENTS
1. Update: Popes and angels and PLO leaders
2. Let Syrians Settle Detroit (By David Laitin & Marc Jahr, NY Times, May 15, 2015)
3. Why Islam doesn’t need a reformation (By Mehdi Hasan, Guardian, May 17, 2015)
4. Natalie Portman’s Zionist Manifesto (By Dana Kennedy, Daily Beast, May 19, 2015)
[Note by Tom Gross]
UPDATE: POPES AND ANGELS AND PLO LEADERS
Following my piece and various blog posts by others on Sunday about the Pope and Palestinian President and PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas, in which I criticized AP and AFP for their portrayals of what the Pope said, both news agencies issued corrections, although each agency is now running with a different version of what was said. The Vatican and the Italian media report that AFP’s account – which mirrors my own – is now accurate:
AFP: Pope ‘angel of peace’ Abbas comment was encouragement: Vatican
Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis’s reference to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas as “an angel of peace” was meant as encouragement for him to pursue peace with Israel, the Vatican said Monday, after the words whipped up controversy on social media….
As the head of Rome’s Jewish community questioned why the pontiff would entrust the “angel of death” with bringing peace, some Twitter users pointed the finger at the media, with one wondering whether “it is the media and not the pope who called Abbas an angel of peace.”
***
In my piece on Sunday, I also criticized the New York Times. On Monday the Times ran a piece about the controversy in which they link back to my piece.
It is unusual for the Times to link to a piece which is critical of their own Mideast coverage; they clearly consider this issue important enough to have made this new piece, for a time, the lead story on the NY Times website.
(Unnoted by the New York Times and others, the Washington Post was one of those American papers which got it right first time round, reporting on Sunday that the Pope “encouraged him [Abbas] to commit to peace”.)
***
I have also been interviewed about the controversy by various news outlets, for example, here in the Washington Examiner.
And papers such as the Catholic Herald have weighed in: The Pope’s message to Mahmoud Abbas got lost in translation.
On Monday the Italian media were also critical of those English-language news outlets who misrepresented the Pope’s comments.
See for example: Pope Francis didn’t call Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ‘angel of peace,’ Italian newspaper says.
***
I attach three articles below.
ARTICLES
HELPING SYRIAN REFUGEES
(Tom Gross adds: I think this is an interesting idea that should be seriously considered. At the same time, one must not forget the disgraceful way in which the wealthy Gulf Arab States have done so little to welcome fellow Sunni Arab refugees. The abandonment of millions of innocent Syrian refugees by the international community is one of the greatest crimes of our era. I hope this article -- and there are too few like it -- would stimulate a wider debate throughout the world about the situation of Syrian refugees , even if Detroit would not be the place...)
Let Syrians Settle Detroit
By David D. Laitin and Marc Jahr
New York Times
May 15, 2015
Detroit, a once great city, has become an urban vacuum. Its population has fallen to around 700,000 from nearly 1.9 million in 1950. The city is estimated to have more than 70,000 abandoned buildings and 90,000 vacant lots. Meanwhile, desperate Syrians, victims of an unfathomable civil war, are fleeing to neighboring countries, with some 1.8 million in Turkey and 600,000 in Jordan.
Suppose these two social and humanitarian disasters were conjoined to produce something positive.
Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan, a Republican, has already laid the groundwork. In January 2014 he called for an infusion of 50,000 immigrants as part of a program to revitalize Detroit, and signed an executive order creating the Michigan Office for New Americans.
Syrian refugees would be an ideal community to realize this goal, as Arab-Americans are already a vibrant and successful presence in the Detroit metropolitan area. A 2003 survey by the University of Michigan of 1,016 members of this community (58 percent of whom were Christian, and 42 percent Muslim) found that 19 percent were entrepreneurs and that the median household income was $50,000 to $75,000 per year.
What confidence can we have that traumatized war refugees can be transformed into budding American entrepreneurs? We cannot know for sure. But recent evidence of recaptured children from the clutches of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and victims of violent crime across five continents reveals that they become more active citizens than similar compatriots who have not suffered from these traumatic events. In the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, Syrians, despite psychological scars and limited resources, have set up 3,500 shops, stores and other businesses.
Refugees resettled from a single war zone have helped revitalize several American communities, notably Hmong in previously neglected neighborhoods in Minneapolis, Bosnians in Utica, N.Y., and Somalis in Lewiston, Me.
Resettling Syrians in Detroit would require commitment and cooperation across different branches and levels of our government, but it is eminently feasible. President Obama and Congress would have to agree to lift this year’s refugee ceiling by 50,000. The State Department, which handles overseas processing of refugees, would need to open offices at the camps in Jordan and Turkey, determine eligibility and administer a lottery for resettlement. Homeland Security, which controls the borders, would have to carry out accelerated security checks, as has been done in the past for Vietnamese and for Iranian religious minorities. Health and Human Services would need an expansion in the $1.5 billion it budgets for refugee resettlement.
The Treasury Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development could also help. The Home Affordable Modification Program, part of the 2008 federal bailout of financial institutions, was meant to help places hardest hit by home-price declines. But the program has not been fully utilized, in part because of stringent oversight requirements. Cities like Detroit have gotten permission to use funds from the program to demolish abandoned properties and create parks and green spaces. But it would be better to spend the money on helping refugees renovate once-abandoned homes.
Finally, grants from the federal government and from philanthropic foundations would be needed to help the local Arab-American community supply social services for the newcomers.
Of course, local buy-in is a sine qua non. Refugees are by no means the only source for the regeneration of Detroit. Its more settled populations, including African-Americans and Latinos, are bringing great energy and resources to the city’s renewal. But Syrians would bring new vigor and catalyze its nascent recovery.
Some skeptics will point to the difficulties of assimilation, noting past concerns in the Detroit area about the integration of Iraqi refugees. But there is no evidence to suggest that the Detroit area is a powder keg of anti-immigrant sentiment. Quite the contrary: From its original Native Americans to the Great Migration of Southern blacks to the infusion of Hispanic and Arab immigrants, Detroit has been a melting pot of religions, ethnicities and cultures.
In 2013, the city, which has a higher proportion of black residents than any large city in America, elected its first white mayor in more than 40 years. The following year, the city showed remarkable resilience and unity in emerging from municipal bankruptcy, with a reorganization plan that, among other things, preserved the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts and gave the city space to invest in long-neglected public services.
Other skeptics will say that the plan would fail because the most ambitious Syrians would leave the city once they achieved economic security. There would be no legal way to prohibit this, of course. But the Syrians would be in the region with one of the most established Arab populations in America, surely an incentive to put down roots. Moreover, if small business and home-ownership loans were extended, the refugees would have a financial incentive to remain.
Finally, some will call this plan politically dead on arrival, given skepticism toward immigration, particularly in the Republican Party. But it’s worth noting that the 2003 study of the community found that two-thirds of respondents said they had voted for George W. Bush in 2000; refugee populations with traditional social views and a knack for entrepreneurship are not going to make Michigan less of a campaign battleground.
More important, both parties can agree that resettling destitute, innocent refugees is consistent with America’s moral and ethical commitments; it would send a powerful message to President Bashar al-Assad, the Islamic State and the world about American compassion and ingenuity.
Are the benefits to Detroit, to a devastated Syrian population, and to American ideals worth overcoming the expenses and administrative complexity of this proposal? We think so.
(David D. Laitin is a professor of political science and co-director of the Immigration and Integration Policy Lab at Stanford University. Marc Jahr is a former president of the New York City Housing Development Corporation.)
“ISLAM ISN’T CHRISTIANITY. THEY ARE NOT ANALOGOUS, AND IT IS DEEPLY IGNORANT TO PRETEND OTHERWISE”
(To remind readers: I don’t necessarily agree with all the points in the articles I attach -- Tom Gross)
Why Islam doesn’t need a reformation
By Mehdi Hasan
The Guardian
May 17, 2015
In recent months, cliched calls for reform of Islam, a 1,400-year-old faith, have intensified. “We need a Muslim reformation,” announced Newsweek. “Islam needs reformation from within,” said the Huffington Post. Following January’s massacre in Paris, the Financial Times nodded to those in the west who believe the secular Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, “could emerge as the Martin Luther of the Muslim world”. (That might be difficult, given Sisi, in the words of Human Rights Watch, approved “premeditated lethal attacks” on largely unarmed protesters which could amount to “crimes against humanity”.)
Then there is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The Somali-born author, atheist and ex-Muslim has a new book called Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now. She’s been popping up in TV studios and on op-ed pages to urge Muslims, both liberal and conservative, to abandon some of their core religious beliefs while uniting behind a Muslim Luther. Whether or not mainstream Muslims will respond positively to a call for reform from a woman who has described their faith as a “destructive, nihilistic cult of death” that should be “crushed”, and suggested Benjamin Netanyahu be given the Nobel peace prize, is another matter.
This narrative isn’t new. The New York Times’s celebrity columnist Thomas Friedman called for an Islamic reformation back in 2002; US academics Charles Kurzer and Michaelle Browers traced the origins of this “Reformation analogy” to the early 20th century, noting that “conservative journalists have been as eager as liberal academics to search for Muslim Luthers”.
Apparently anyone who wants to win the war against violent extremism and save the soul of Islam, not to mention transform a stagnant Middle East, should be in favour of this process. After all, Christianity had the Reformation, so goes the argument, which was followed by the Enlightenment; by secularism, liberalism and modern European democracy. So why can’t Islam do the same? And shouldn’t the west be offering to help?
Yet the reality is that talk of a Christian-style reformation for Islam is so much cant. Let’s consider this idea of a “Muslim Luther”. Luther did not merely nail 95 theses to the door of the Castle church in Wittenberg in 1517, denouncing clerical abuses within the Catholic church. He also demanded that German peasants revolting against their feudal overlords be “struck dead”, comparing them to “mad dogs”, and authored On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543, in which he referred to Jews as “the devil’s people” and called for the destruction of Jewish homes and synagogues. As the US sociologist and Holocaust scholar Ronald Berger has observed, Luther helped establish antisemitism as “a key element of German culture and national identity”. Hardly a poster boy for reform and modernity for Muslims in 2015.
The Protestant Reformation also opened the door to blood-letting on an unprecedented, continent-wide scale. Have we forgotten the French wars of religion? Or the English civil war? Tens of millions of innocents died in Europe; up to 40% of Germany’s population is believed to have been killed in the thirty years’ war. Is this what we want a Muslim-majority world already plagued by sectarian conflicts, foreign occupations and the bitter legacy of colonialism to now endure, all in the name of reform, progress and even liberalism?
Islam isn’t Christianity. The two faiths aren’t analogous, and it is deeply ignorant, not to mention patronising, to pretend otherwise – or to try and impose a neatly linear, Eurocentric view of history on diverse Muslim-majority countries in Asia or Africa. Each religion has its own traditions and texts; each religion’s followers have been affected by geopolitics and socio-economic processes in a myriad of ways. The theologies of Islam and Christianity, in particular, are worlds apart: the former, for instance, has never had a Catholic-style clerical class answering to a divinely appointed pope. So against whom will the “Islamic reformation” be targeted? To whose door will the 95 fatwas be nailed?
The truth is that Islam has already had its own reformation of sorts, in the sense of a stripping of cultural accretions and a process of supposed “purification”. And it didn’t produce a tolerant, pluralistic, multifaith utopia, a Scandinavia-on-the-Euphrates. Instead, it produced … the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Wasn’t reform exactly what was offered to the masses of the Hijaz by Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab, the mid-18th century itinerant preacher who allied with the House of Saud? He offered an austere Islam cleansed of what he believed to be innovations, which eschewed centuries of mainstream scholarship and commentary, and rejected the authority of the traditional ulema, or religious authorities.
Some might argue that if anyone deserves the title of a Muslim Luther, it is Ibn Abdul Wahhab who, in the eyes of his critics, combined Luther’s puritanism with the German monk’s antipathy towards the Jews. Ibn Abdul Wahhab’s controversial stance on Muslim theology, writes his biographer Michael Crawford, “made him condemn much of the Islam of his own time” and led to him being dismissed as a heretic by his own family.
Don’t get me wrong. Reforms are of course needed across the crisis-ridden Muslim-majority world: political, socio-economic and, yes, religious too. Muslims need to rediscover their own heritage of pluralism, tolerance and mutual respect – embodied in, say, the Prophet’s letter to the monks of St Catherine’s monastery, or the “convivencia” (or co-existence) of medieval Muslim Spain.
What they don’t need are lazy calls for an Islamic reformation from non-Muslims and ex-Muslims, the repetition of which merely illustrates how shallow and simplistic, how ahistorical and even anti-historical, some of the west’s leading commentators are on this issue. It is much easier for them, it seems, to reduce the complex debate over violent extremism to a series of cliches, slogans and soundbites, rather than examining root causes or historical trends; easier still to champion the most extreme and bigoted critics of Islam while ignoring the voices of mainstream Muslim scholars, academics and activists.
Hirsi Ali, for instance, was treated to a series of encomiums and softball questions in her blizzard of US media interviews, from the New York Times to Fox News. (“A hero of our time,” read one gushing headline on Politico.) Frustratingly, only comedian Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, was willing to point out to Hirsi Ali that her reformist hero wanted a “purer form of Christianity” and helped create “a hundred years of violence and mayhem”.
With apologies to Luther, if anyone wants to do the same to the religion of Islam today, it is Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who claims to rape and pillage in the name of a “purer form” of Islam – and who isn’t, incidentally, a fan of the Jews either. Those who cry so simplistically, and not a little inanely, for an Islamic reformation, should be careful what they wish for.
(Mehdi Hasan is a presenter on Al-Jazeera English.)
A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS
(Incidentally Natalie Portman’s film of Amos Oz’s, A Tale of Love and Darkness, received a scathing review in Haaretz -- Tom Gross)
Natalie Portman’s Zionist Manifesto: A Tale of Love and Darkness adds to the ongoing shift in how Israel is being perceived in Hollywood.
By Dana Kennedy
The Daily Beast
May 19, 2015
The Oscar-winning Israeli-born actress premiered her directorial debut about the birth of the State of Israel, A Tale of Love and Darkness, at Cannes.
“You have to be Jewish to understand it,” said my seatmate, in tears, at the end of the premiere of Natalie Portman’s quietly devastating new film, A Tale of Love and Darkness.
It helps, too, to be Israeli-American and speak Hebrew, like Portman, to bring Amos Oz’s international bestseller to the screen in her feature directorial debut – in Hebrew no less. The Harvard-educated, Oscar-winning Portman, born Neta-Lee Hershlag in Jerusalem, stars in the adaptation of Oz’s memoir about a boy coming of age in the tumultuous period just before and after Israel’s independence from the British mandate.
Portman also wrote the screenplay, which borrows from another of Oz’s books, How to Cure a Fanatic, in suggesting the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is rooted in irony because both groups had the same oppressor. Europe exploited, humiliated, colonized and controlled the Arab world and it murdered the Jews, Oz wrote.
“(But) two children of the same cruel parent do not love one another,” the narrator, meant to be 76-year-old Oz, says in the film. “Very often they see in each other the exact image of the cruel parent.”
A Tale of Love and Darkness is not the first Israel-themed movie made by an avowed Zionist to show sympathy for the plight of Palestinian Arabs and the complexity of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But because of Portman’s star power, it’s the perfect film for the postmodern American Jew (see also: Jon Stewart and Tony Kushner, among others) who, in part due to the controversial policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has spoken out against the Israeli government in recent years in ways that would have been unthinkable before.
“I’m very much against Netanyahu,” Portman, who moved to the U.S. when she was three, told The Hollywood Reporter last week. “I am very, very upset and disappointed that he was elected. I find his racist comments horrific.”
Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List first brought the horrors of the Holocaust home to American audiences in 1993. When he released Munich in 2005, it was controversial for portraying Israelis as avenging warriors – not tragic victims – in the story of the Israeli government’s secret retaliation against the Palestine Liberation Operation after the massacre at the 1972 Olympics.
A Tale of Love and Darkness adds to the ongoing shift in how Israel is being perceived in Hollywood. It could be the first film to make the complex and bittersweet story of its creation real to American audiences, although it is probably too dreary to ever be a hit.
Portman plays Oz’s melancholy mother Fania, a refugee from the Ukrainian village of Rovno, which has also been considered part of Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Union over the years.
Sturdy and vivacious at the start of the film, which begins just after the end of World War II, Fania slowly falls apart after the Jews in Israel get what they want: the 1947 U.N. resolution that leads to Israeli statehood.
The reason for Fania’s depression, which manifests first as severe migraines, is confusing and mysterious as seen through the eyes of her young son (the excellent Amir Tessler), but there’s another possibility evident to the audience: For some cultured, intellectual Eastern European Jews like Amos’s mother, uprooted from their homes and set down in dusty, dreary lower middle class Jerusalem, the desert was never going to bloom. The long dreamed-of homeland would never be enough because of what they’d lost – and for the “abyss” Fania intuits is awaiting the new state of Israel and the Jews.
Many scenes follow in which the once-regal, now morose Fania is seen sitting in a chair staring blankly into space, curled up on her side in bed, popping white pills, and roaming aimlessly around in the rain. She’s so checked out that she lets her nebbishy, earnest husband (Gilad Kahana), a librarian and writer, know that he can see other women. She commits suicide when Amos is 12.
What saves the film from becoming the Jewish Bell Jar are the nuanced glimpses into the almost-civilized relationships between Arabs and Jews under British rule, and how the establishment of Israel set in motion what would be decades of misery for Palestinian Arabs.
Portman made it clear in her recent interview that she doesn’t want to be seen as anti-Israel just because she opposes Netanyahu.
“I feel like there’s some people who become prominent, and then it’s out in the foreign press. You know, shit on Israel,” Portman said. “I do not. I don’t want to do that.”
She doesn’t “do that” in the film. Even though Arabs are portrayed as the clear aggressors later in the movie, it’s balanced enough to show both points of view.
In one of the movie’s most chillingly prescient scenes, little Amos is taken for tea at the home of a well-to-do Arab family and is admonished to be on his very best behavior. But after being told to go play in the yard, he becomes enamored of a little Arab girl close to him in age named Aicha. To impress her, he climbs a tree and accidentally dislodges a hanging swing, hitting and injuring her little brother down below and horrifying both families. But the damage is done.
The sense of haunting loss, on both sides, is what makes A Tale of Love and Darkness hard to watch and difficult to forget.
“Still moved by Natalie’s film,” my friend texted me the following day. “So depressing. The devastation of the Jewish family 75 years ago is as vivid and agonizing as if it happened yesterday.”
I attach a piece of mine published earlier today by the American magazine The Weekly Standard.
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NOT YET AN ANGEL
Media Gets Pope’s Abbas Comments Wrong
By Tom Gross
The Weekly Standard (online)
May 17, 2015
If anyone needs further evidence of why the news agencies often can’t be trusted to report accurately on Israel and the Palestinians, and why major news outlets such as the New York Times and the BBC should stop repeating agency copy without verifying it, here is an important example from this weekend.
According to Italian and Spanish news outlets and according to the Vatican’s own website, Pope Francis told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he could be an angel of peace. “May you be an angel of peace,” he urged Abbas, effectively saying that if Abbas would take the decision to accept one of the peace offers that various Israeli prime ministers have made to him, or at least make a serious counter-offer, he could be an angel of peace. The pope did not say that Abbas – infamous for ordering the Munich Olympic massacre, among many other atrocities – was “an angel of peace.”
And yet the BBC and New York Times were among dozens of prominent news outlets that claimed he did.
The New York Times reports today (Page A11 of the New York print edition, May 17, 2015, under the headline: “At Vatican, Abbas Is Praised as ‘Angel of Peace’”):
“Mr. Abbas’s meeting with the pope ended with an exchange of gifts. Presenting Mr. Abbas with a medallion, the pope said it depicted an angel of peace ‘destroying the bad spirit of war.’ It was an appropriate gift, the pope added, since ‘you are an angel of peace’.”
And here is NBC, Fox, USA Today and the BBC saying the same thing.
***
Contrast the headlines in the New York Times with those in the Italian press. For example, the headline in the “Vatican Insider” section of Le Stampa is:
Pope embraces Abu Mazen and bids him to be an angel of peace
The original Italian is here.
Or as Il Giornale reports, the pope met Abbas, “asking him to be ‘an angel of peace.’”
Read almost any Italian news outlet and they say the same thing: “you could be an angel of peace” – “Lei possa essere un angelo della pace.”
Even the website of the Russian government broadcaster RT (Russia Today) – criticized by many for its bias – gets it right in its headline, but the New York Times and BBC didn’t: ‘May you be an angel of peace’: Pope Francis welcomes Mahmoud Abbas in Vatican. (This paragraph was not in the Weekly Standard version of this piece.).
As an astute Italian-speaking observer of the Middle East points out, all these English-speaking news media seem to have initially relied on the mistranslations of the world’s three biggest news agencies.
* AP: Pope Francis praised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as an “angel of peace” during a meeting Saturday at the Vatican that underscored the Holy See’s warm relations with the Palestinians. Francis made the compliment during the traditional exchange of gifts at the end of an official audience in the Apostolic Palace. He presented Abbas with a medallion and explained that it represented the “angel of peace destroying the bad spirit of war.” Francis said he thought the gift was appropriate since “you are an angel of peace.”
* AFP: “I thought of you because you are an angel of peace,” [Pope Francis] told Abbas.
* Reuters: Pope Francis gave Abbas a medallion representing an angel of peace, telling the Palestinian leader he thought of him “as an angel of peace.”
***
Meanwhile the website of the official Radio Vatican doesn’t even report on the Pope’s angels comment at all, apparently judging it unimportant.
Former Middle East reporters such as myself (“The Case of Reuters”) and Matti Friedman (who used to work at AP’s Jerusalem bureau) have long warned about the impartiality of the major news agencies coverage of the Middle East.
But then too often do reporters and editors at the New York Times, BBC, and elsewhere seem to be happy reporting on what they want to hear, rather than on what was actually said or done, when it comes to the Palestinians and Israel.
UPDATE: May 20, 2015
Following my piece and various blog posts by others on Sunday about the Pope and Palestinian President and PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas, in which I criticized AP and AFP for their portrayals of what the Pope said, both news agencies issued corrections, although each agency is now running with a different version of what was said. The Vatican and the Italian media report that AFP’s account – which mirrors my own – is now accurate:
AFP: Pope ‘angel of peace’ Abbas comment was encouragement: Vatican
Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis’s reference to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas as “an angel of peace” was meant as encouragement for him to pursue peace with Israel, the Vatican said Monday, after the words whipped up controversy on social media….
As the head of Rome’s Jewish community questioned why the pontiff would entrust the “angel of death” with bringing peace, some Twitter users pointed the finger at the media, with one wondering whether “it is the media and not the pope who called Abbas an angel of peace.”
***
In my piece on Sunday, I also criticized the New York Times. On Monday the Times ran a piece about the controversy in which they link back to my piece.
It is unusual for the Times to link to a piece which is critical of their own Mideast coverage; they clearly consider this issue important enough to have made this new piece, for a time, the lead story on the NY Times website.
(Unnoted by the New York Times and others, the Washington Post was one of those American papers which got it right first time round, reporting on Sunday that the Pope “encouraged him [Abbas] to commit to peace”.)
***
I have also been interviewed about the controversy by various news outlets, for example, here in the Washington Examiner.
And papers such as the Catholic Herald have weighed in: The Pope’s message to Mahmoud Abbas got lost in translation.
On Monday the Italian media were also critical of those English-language news outlets who misrepresented the Pope’s comments.
See for example: Pope Francis didn’t call Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ‘angel of peace,’ Italian newspaper says.
* LA Times: “Amos Oz (above) is a committed left-leaning Zionist, criticizing anyone who questions Israel’s right to exist. ‘Nobody presented this question in Germany during the days of Hitler or in Russia under Stalin,’ said Oz. ‘But the question is being presented more and more often about Israel, and I don’t like it.’ He added there is ‘something dark, looming underneath’ the antipathy toward Israel that is ‘based on the assumption that Jews are not like everybody else.’”
* Yossi Alpher: “The Trident alliance, through which, between 1956 and 1979, Israel shared intelligence with Iran and Turkey on a scale not seen since, was one of Israel’s most far-reaching and comprehensive foreign policy accomplishments…
Iran and Turkey voted against the creation of Israel by the United Nations in 1947, and neither supported Israel’s request for UN membership in 1949. Nevertheless, both proceeded to recognize Israel on a de facto basis, establishing low-level or thinly concealed relations through trade missions. Iran and Turkey had a number of motives to enter into relations with Israel and maintain them at low and often deniable levels. For one, those countries’ relations with their Arab neighbors were often tense, and warming or cooling to Israel was useful leverage…
Trident also wrought regional geostrategic incentives. Israel’s achievements in the 1956 Sinai campaign, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s erratic regime in Egypt, the Iraqi coup in 1958, and growing fears of Soviet incursion all brought Iran, Israel, and Turkey into an intelligence relationship that took form in a series of separate meetings in Europe, Ankara, and Tehran from 1956 to 1958. At the first triangular meeting, heads of each national intelligence organization established an impressive array of cooperative intelligence ventures, some leading to subversion projects directed against Nasserist and Soviet regional influence…
From Israel’s standpoint, Trident was a lopsided intelligence alliance under a gloss of pompous protocol: Israel provided far better information and more intelligence know-how than it received in return. Despite its lack of real substance at the trilateral level, Trident sent an important message to the Americans, the Soviets, and the Arabs: Israel was not alone; it had important regional allies. From the point of departure of Israel’s acute isolation in the 1950s, this was of huge importance. It projected deterrence, permanence, and stability in a period where Israel found itself lost in a broader landscape of enemies.”
* Tom Gross: contrast this with the situation since Islamist leaders took over Iran and Turkey. “The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has divine permission to destroy Israel,” Mojtaba Zolnour, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s deputy representative to the Revolutionary Guards, told Iranian media three days ago. “The Noble Koran permits the Islamic Republic of Iran to destroy Israel,” said the government whose nuclear weapons program is moving ahead.
Today Israel has a developing intelligence relationship with some of the Sunni Arab powers.
* Robert Farley: “Since 1948, the state of Israel has fielded a frighteningly effective military machine. Built on a foundation of pre-independence militias, supplied with cast-off World War II weapons, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have enjoyed remarkable success in the field. In the 1960s and 1970s, both because of its unique needs and because of international boycotts, Israel began developing its own military technologies, as well as augmenting the best foreign tech. Today, Israel boasts one of the most technologically advanced military stockpiles in the world, and one of the world’s most effective workforces. Here are five of the most deadly systems that the Israeli Defense Forces currently employ…”
“When considering the effectiveness of Israeli weapons, and the expertise of the men and women who wield them, it’s worth noting that for all the tactical and operational success the IDF has enjoyed, Israel remains in a strategically perilous position.”
Below, I attach 3 articles concerning Middle East background developments, each of a different nature. There are short extracts of the articles above, for those who don’t have time to read them in full.
* Please “like” these dispatches on Facebook here www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia, where you can also find other items that are not in these dispatches.
CONTENTS
1. Trident’s Forgotten Legacy: When Iran, Israel, and Turkey Worked Together (By Yossi Alpher, Foreign Affairs, May 7, 2015)
2. Israel’s 5 Most Deadly Weapons of War (By Robert Farley, The National Interest, May 12, 2015)
3. Amos Oz makes his words count in Israel (By Jeffrey Fleishman, LA Times, May 9, 2015)
WHEN IRAN, ISRAEL, AND TURKEY WORKED TOGETHER
(Tom Gross: Yossi Alpher is a retired Israeli intelligence officer.)
Trident’s Forgotten Legacy: When Iran, Israel, and Turkey Worked Together
Yossi Alpher
Foreign Affairs
May 7, 2015
The Trident alliance, through which, between 1956 and 1979, Israel shared intelligence with Iran and Turkey on a scale not seen since, was one of Israel’s most far-reaching and comprehensive foreign policy accomplishments. The program represented the vanguard of Israel’s doctrine for dealing with its neighbors and provided the nation with a grand strategy for the first time since its creation. Jerusalem’s relationship with Tehran lasted more than 20 years, until the fall of Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979. Israel’s strategic relationship with Turkey continued on and off for several decades, ending with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s acerbic comments at the Davos summit in 2009. Although ambitious, Trident was just one in a series of Israeli attempts to find common ground with non-Arab allies – most of which yielded only fleeting success.
Iran and Turkey voted against the creation of Israel by the United Nations in 1947, and neither supported Israel’s request for UN membership in 1949. Nevertheless, both proceeded to recognize Israel on a de facto basis, establishing low-level or thinly concealed relations through trade missions. Iran and Turkey had a number of motives to enter into relations with Israel and maintain them at low and often deniable levels. For one, those countries’ relations with their Arab neighbors were often tense, and warming or cooling to Israel was useful leverage. Additionally, there was the U.S. dimension: Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion marketed Trident to Washington as an asset to the West against Soviet inroads into the Middle East and as a force to fight Arab radicalism. Both Iran and Turkey understood Jewish influence in the United States and perceived that a close relationship with Israel would mean that the U.S. Jewish lobby would convey their needs to Washington.
Although ambitious, Trident was just one in a series of Israeli attempts to find common ground with non-Arab allies – most of which yielded only fleeting success.
Trident also wrought regional geostrategic incentives. Israel’s achievements in the 1956 Sinai campaign, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s erratic regime in Egypt, the Iraqi coup in 1958, and growing fears of Soviet incursion all brought Iran, Israel, and Turkey into an intelligence relationship that took form in a series of separate meetings in Europe, Ankara, and Tehran from 1956 to 1958. At the first triangular meeting, heads of each national intelligence organization established an impressive array of cooperative intelligence ventures, some leading to subversion projects directed against Nasserist and Soviet regional influence.
In those days, the Israeli-Iranian aspect of the trilateral relationship was generally more active than the Israeli-Turkish dimension; Iraqi Jews who fled the Baghdad regime to Iraqi Kurdistan were then able to migrate to Israel and elsewhere via Iran. Israeli officers trained Iranian forces, and Israel sold arms to the shah. Israel’s relationship with Turkey was based on historical cooperation: Turkey sheltered Jews during the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazi occupation of Europe. Ankara’s decision to enter the agreement, however, was rooted in Cold War fears of regional communism and anger over Arab support for Greece in Cyprus.
To be sure, however, from the earliest days of Trident, Ankara and Tehran would temporarily downgrade their ties with Israel whenever Arab pressure became problematic. Both Turkey and Iran allowed themselves to offend Israeli sensibilities; they believed that Israel needed secret ties with them much more than they needed Israel. While Trident flourished quietly, Turkey raised and lowered the profile of its overt relationship with Israel in accordance with sensitivities to Arab pressure over the Palestinian issue. During both the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, Turkey refused to allow U.S. military resupply efforts to use Turkish bases or airspace in order to aid Israel. In 1975, Ankara even voted for the “Zionism is Racism” resolution in the UN General Assembly; in 1991, when the resolution was revoked, Turkey abstained. Even when Turkey finally raised relations with Israel to ambassadorial level in 1991 – long after Trident – it balanced this by recognizing the Palestine Liberation Organization as a state.
By 1979, attitudes shifted in Tehran, and Trident was all but dead. During the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, the shah joined the OPEC oil embargo, punishing countries linked with Israel and cutting off oil shipments to Israel. In 1975, Pahlavi gave a revealing interview openly acknowledging Iran’s military and intelligence ties with Israel, rationalizing them in terms of Arab hostility during Nasser’s time. “But now the situation has changed,” he added. “Israeli media are attacking us energetically…We advised Israel that it cannot conquer the entire Arab world. For that you need a population of at least 20–30 million… Israel commands the attention of all the Arab nations. I’m not certain there is a final solution for the problem of this confrontation.”
After the fall of the shah and the collapse of Trident, Israeli-Turkish relations maintained their early roller coaster of high and low points, corresponding with Turkey’s crises and successes with the Arab world. After a low point in the late 1980s, senior Israeli officials invested heavily in rebuilding the relationship, including helping Turkey counter the Armenian lobby in Washington. A major strategic upgrade in Israeli-Turkish relations took place during the 1990s, spearheaded by the all-powerful Turkish armed forces. Ankara concluded arms sales with Jerusalem, and Turkish leaders visited Israel. Eventually, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party’s ascent to power in 2002 under Erdogan heralded yet another downward swing for relations with Israel. The relationship’s nadir culminated in the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010, in which Israeli naval commandos, in self-defense, killed nine Turkish Islamists in international waters in the course of an ill-conceived interception of a Turkish aid ship headed for the Gaza Strip.
From Israel’s standpoint, Trident was a lopsided intelligence alliance under a gloss of pompous protocol: Israel provided far better information and more intelligence know-how than it received in return. Despite its lack of real substance at the trilateral level, Trident sent an important message to the Americans, the Soviets, and the Arabs: Israel was not alone; it had important regional allies. From the point of departure of Israel’s acute isolation in the 1950s, this was of huge importance. It projected deterrence, permanence, and stability in a period where Israel found itself lost in a broader landscape of enemies.
ISRAEL’S 5 MOST DEADLY WEAPONS OF WAR
Israel’s 5 Most Deadly Weapons of War
By Robert Farley
The National Interest
May 12, 2015
Since 1948, the state of Israel has fielded a frighteningly effective military machine. Built on a foundation of pre-independence militias, supplied with cast-off World War II weapons, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have enjoyed remarkable success in the field. In the 1960s and 1970s, both because of its unique needs and because of international boycotts, Israel began developing its own military technologies, as well as augmenting the best foreign tech. Today, Israel boasts one of the most technologically advanced military stockpiles in the world, and one of the world’s most effective workforces. Here are five of the most deadly systems that the Israeli Defense Forces currently employ.
MERKAVA
The Merkava tank joined the IDF in 1979, replacing the modified foreign tanks (most recently of British and American vintage) that the Israelis had used since 1948. Domestic design and construction avoided problems of unsteady foreign supply, while also allowing the Israelis to focus on designs optimized for their environment, rather than for Central Europe. Around 1,600 Merkavas of various types have entered service, with several hundred more still on the way.
The Merkava entered service after the great tank battles of the Middle East had ended (at least for Israel). Consequently, the Merkavas have often seen combat in different contexts that their designers expected. The United States took major steps forward with the employment of armor in Iraq and Afghanistan (particularly in the former) in a counter-insurgency context, but the Israelis have gone even farther. After mixed results during the Hezbollah war, the IDF, using updated Merkava IVs, has worked hard to integrate the tanks into urban fighting. In both of the recent Gaza wars, the IDF has used Merkavas to penetrate Palestinian positions while active defense systems keep crews safe. Israel has also developed modifications that enhance the Merkavas’ capabilities in urban and low-intensity combat.
Indeed, the Merkavas have proved so useful in this regard that Israel has cancelled plans to stop line production, despite a lack of significant foreign orders.
F-15I THUNDER
The Israeli Air Force has flown variants of the F-15 since the 1970s, and has become the world’s most versatile and effective user of the Eagle. As Tyler Rogoway’s recent story on the IAF fleet makes clear, the Israelis have perfected the F-15 both for air supremacy and for strike purposes. Flown by elite pilots, the F-15Is (nicknamed “thunder”) of the IAF remain the most lethal squadron of aircraft in the Middle East.
The F-15I provides Israel with several core capabilities. It remains an effective air-to-air combat platform, superior to the aircraft available to Israel’s most plausible foes (although the Eurofighter Typhoons and Dassault Rafales entering service in the Gulf, not to mention Saudi Arabia’s own force of F-15SAs, undoubtedly would provide some competition. But as Rogoway suggests, the Israelis have worked long and hard at turning the F-15 into an extraordinarily effective strike platform, one capable of hitting targets with precision at long range. Most analysts expect that the F-15I would play a key role in any Israeli strike against Iran, along with some of its older brethren.
JERICHO III
The earliest Israeli nuclear deterrent came in the form of the F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers that the IAF used to such great effect in conventional missions in the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War. Soon, however, Israel determined that it required a more effective and secure deterrent, and began to invest heavily in ballistic missiles. The Jericho I ballistic missile entered service in the early 1970s, to eventually be replaced by the Jericho II and Jericho III.
The Jericho III is the most advanced ballistic missile in the region, presumably (Israel does not offer much data on its operation) capable of striking targets not only in the Middle East, but also across Europe, Asia, and potentially North America. The Jericho III ensures that any nuclear attack against Israel would be met with devastating retaliation, especially as it is unlikely that Israel could be disarmed by a first strike. Of course, given that no potential Israeli foe has nuclear weapons (or will have them in the next decade, at least), the missiles give Jerusalem presumptive nuclear superiority across the region.
DOLPHIN
Israel acquired its first submarine, a former British “S” class, in 1958. That submarine and others acquired in the 1960s played several important military roles, including defense of the Israeli coastline, offensive operations against Egyptian and Syrian shipping, and the delivery of commando teams in war and peace. These early boats were superseded by the Gal class, and finally by the German Dolphin class (really two separate classes related to the Type 212) boats, which are state-of-the-art diesel-electric subs.
The role of the Dolphin class in Israel’s nuclear deterrent has almost certainly been wildly overstated. The ability of a diesel electric submarine to carry out deterrent patrols is starkly limited, no matter what ordnance they carry. However, the Dolphin remains an effective platform for all sorts of other missions required by the IDF. Capable of maritime reconnaissance, of sinking or otherwise interdicting enemy ships, and also of delivering special forces to unfriendly coastlines, the Dolphins represent a major Israeli security investment, and one of the most potentially lethal undersea forces in the region.
THE ISRAELI SOLDIER
The technology that binds all of these other systems together is the Israeli soldier. Since 1948 (and even before) Israel has committed the best of its human capital to the armed forces. The creation of fantastic soldiers, sailors, and airmen doesn’t happen by accident, and doesn’t result simply from the enthusiasm and competence of the recruits. The IDF has developed systems of recruitment, training, and retention that allow it to field some of the most competent, capable soldiers in the world. None of the technologies above work unless they have smart, dedicated, well-trained operators to make them function at their fullest potential.
CONCLUSION
When considering the effectiveness of Israeli weapons, and the expertise of the men and women who wield them, it’s worth noting that for all the tactical and operational success the IDF has enjoyed, Israel remains in a strategically perilous position. The inability of Israel to develop long-term, stable, positive relationships with its immediate neighbors, regional powers, and the subject populations of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip means that Jerusalem continues to feel insecure, its dominance on land, air, and sea notwithstanding. Tactics and technologies, however effective and impressive, cannot solve these problems; only politics can.
(Robert Farley is an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs.)
THE NOVEL. THAT ENCHANTING BEAST.
Amos Oz makes his words count in Israel
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Los Angeles Times
May 9, 2015
The novel.
That enchanting beast.
“It’s not made of ideas or concepts or plots or intrigues. It’s made of words,” Amos Oz, one of Israel’s most acclaimed writers, said of how he makes a living. “This is never easy because words have no color. They make no sounds. They produce no smell. They are very abstract. If I use the word ‘sunshine’ in one of my books, I will have to rely on you, the reader, to recruit all the sunshines you have experienced for anything at all to happen.”
He paused. “Otherwise,” he said, “these words are just black ants on a white field of snow.”
Oz writes in longhand. He uses two pens, one black, one blue, which sit on a desk in a home in Tel Aviv. His best work is done before 9 a.m. His words unspool in eloquent threads. They can also be terse. Sharp. They can dance. They absorb and give off light, and even the omitted ones summon deep meaning. He has been writing since he was a boy, and now, at 76, Oz, one of most provocative voices against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, is a man energized by fitting words to the travails and joys of a scarred land.
His novels and essays have been translated into dozens of languages; he is often mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature. His fiction – a term he doesn’t like – includes “My Michael,” the tale of a disintegrating marriage, and “A Perfect Peace,” about passions and ideological struggles on a kibbutz before the 1967 Six Day War. The film version of his autobiography, “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” was directed by Natalie Portman and is expected to be released this year.
Oz was in Los Angeles this week to accept the UCLA Israel Studies Award for contributing to a “greater understanding of Israel.” In remarks during the ceremony, Portman praised the author for “putting words to our longings and for never losing to cynicism and your insistence on peace, even when it is not as popular as it should be.”
Born in Jerusalem, Oz has lived and written through the founding of a nation, wars, intifadas, the rise of Hamas, the nuclear ambitions of Iran and a Middle East landscape upset by Arab uprisings. He has been labeled a dove for his persistent calls for a two-state solution to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but is a committed left-leaning Zionist, criticizing anyone who questions Israel’s right to exist.
“Nobody presented this question in Germany during the days of Hitler or in Russia under Stalin,” said Oz. “But the question is being presented more and more often about Israel, and I don’t like it.” He added there is “something dark, looming underneath” the antipathy toward Israel that is “based on the assumption that Jews are not like everybody else.”
Oz, who spent many years on a kibbutz, is accustomed to enemies. He chafes at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line policies and opposes the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. He was vilified last year by right-wing groups and others for comparing militant Jewish settlers to neo-Nazis. Others have questioned his patriotism, which in Israel is set against intense political maneuvering and daily concerns about security.
“I regard the title traitor as an honorary declaration, and I wear it [as a] badge because I am in excellent company,” he said, noting that Abraham Lincoln, the prophet Jeremiah and many writers and intellectuals were branded traitors. “It may be a more respectable club than those who have never been called traitors by anyone.”
Oz is slight. He moves like an aging wrestler. His blue eyes glow behind glasses, his gray hair is a bit mussed, but the face – evolving in photos over time like carvings on stone – is rugged and handsome. It is a face of the elements, of the desert. His voice is accented and clear and, at times, a finger rises to emphasize sentences that flow with foreboding and mischievous delight.
“Oz and his contemporaries were influenced by American and European writers and believed in art for art’s sake,” said Avraham Balaban, an author and professor of modern Hebrew literature. “But writing in Israel of the late ‘50s and ‘60s, he could not detach himself from what was going on in society and politics. His work is structured so that the powerful personal psychological struggles correspond with the broader struggles characterizing Israeli society.”
The writer and his nation are entwined. Oz is as animated talking about politics as he is about the spin and whirl of words, their nuances and cadences. He is a realist; he believes many nations, including Iran, will eventually build nuclear weapons and that mutual deterrence will emerge based on a “balance of horror.” But he also senses possibilities – perhaps too wishful – in a region inured to strife.
“Israel stands at a unique opportunity to reach a comprehensive peace with neighboring Arab countries and with secular Palestine,” he said. “Not because the Arabs are suddenly turning Zionists and not because their eyes have been opened to see the light of the Jewish state but simply because every one of the Arab regimes has a more immediate and dangerous enemy right now. Israel is an ally in the battle of the Arab governments against fundamentalist Islam.”
At such a crucial time, Israel’s relationship with America is strained, highlighted by the rancor between Netanyahu and President Obama over Iran’s nuclear program.
“It’s a very bizarre relationship,” Oz said. “Israel has the sanction of the screaming baby, and it’s quite an effective sanction. America has the sanction of the angry parent, and this latter sanction is not fully exercised yet, but it might be one day.”
Animosity between friends, a possible peace between enemies. The stuff of great stories. But Oz said Israeli writers may be slipping away from the Judeo-Slavic tradition in which poet and author were regarded as prophets “to provide a sort of vision, to show the way.” It was easier to fill such a role decades ago, when Israel was in the throes and tremors of becoming a country.
“Israeli writers are normalized,” he said. “They write about everyday life: love, jealousy, solitude, ambition, longing, loss, the great and simple topics. Everyday existence in Israel is no longer ... the epic of the birth of a nation. The nation is born for better or worse. So you will find fewer and fewer Israeli writers dealing with the birth of a nation, dealing with the question of where do we go from here.”
He paused and took a breath. “Instead,” he said, “you will find more and more about the tragicomedy of everyday life in a beleaguered, besieged country.”
Miri Krimolovsky, a cousin of Ed Miliband’s in Tel Aviv, interviewed on Israel Channel 2 about the man who tried to become the UK’s first Jewish Prime minister
Apart from the first two items below (which concern Britain) the other items are reproduced from various Middle East media, hence the sometimes poor use of English. In some cases, for space reasons, I have included only extracts of the articles.
-- Tom Gross
* Please “like” these dispatches on Facebook here www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia, where you can also find other items that are not in these dispatches.
CONTENTS
1. Ed Miliband’s cousin in Tel Aviv: I probably wouldn’t have voted for him
2. Israeli PM Netanyahu speaks with British PM Cameron
3. Execution of (Shia) Sheikh Nimr means end of Saudi Regime (Fars News Agency, Iran, May 10, 2015)
4. Coalition forces implement 130 air strikes targeting sites of Houthi leaders (Saudi Government Press Agency SPA, May 9, 2015)
5. Abbas attends massive Russian WWII Victory Day Parades in Moscow (WAFA Palestinian news agency, May 9, 2015)
6. Egypt’s Sisi ‘keen’ for cooperation with Russia (Al-Ahram, Egypt, May 9, 2015)
7. Egypt FM: Arab League close to forming joint military force (Asharq Al-Awsat, Saudi Arabia, May 9, 2015)
8. Egyptian army says 725 ‘terrorists’ killed in North Sinai over last 6 months (Al-Ahram, Egypt, May 9, 2015)
9. Palestinian driver injured by Egyptian gunfire at Gaza crossing (Palestinian Maan news agency, May 11, 2015)
10. Kuwaiti paper: Dropped Israeli drone in Sudan targeted Hamas weapon store
11. Djibouti President: China negotiating Horn of Africa military base (Agence France-Presse, May 10, 2015)
12. Saudi Arabia considers nuclear weapons to contain Iran (UPI, May 8, 2015)
ED MILIBAND’S COUSIN IN TEL AVIV: I PROBABLY WOULDN’T HAVE VOTED FOR HIM
[Note by Tom Gross]
One of defeated British Labour party leader Ed Miliband’s more prominent cousins in Israel, art historian and curator Miri Krimolovsky, has told the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot that although she is “sure” that Miliband does care about the welfare of Israel, she would probably not have voted for him had she had a vote in last Thursdays’ British general elections.
Many in Britain have been critical of Miliband’s sometimes harsh criticism of Israel during his leadership of the Labour Party. He has done so in part to placate the Labour party’s activists, who are extremely hostile to Israel.
Krimolovsky, who lives in Tel Aviv and also works as Israel Radio’s cultural correspondent, is Miliband’s second cousin. She said she used to stay with Miliband’s parents on visits to England when she was younger and that Ed and David Miliband (Britain’s former foreign secretary) were “sweet, well-brought-up boys.”
Krimolovsky added in an interview on Israel’s Channel 2 that “I’m sure Ed’s proud of Israel and he loves Israel. And as the son and grandson of Holocaust survivors, he certainly understands the importance of this state”.
Miliband’s grandfather was murdered in the Holocaust. His grandmother and other relatives who survived moved from Poland to Israel at the end of the war. Miliband’s mother married his father, whose parents had fled Poland and who had been hidden as child by a farmer in Belgium during the Nazi occupation, and then settled in Britain.
Ed’s mother Marion was born Dobra Jenta Kozak in the Jewish quarter of Czestochowa in southern Poland in 1934. The Sitkowska family, who were Catholics, risked their lives hiding Ed’s six-year-old mother and her sister Hadassah, as other family members were deported.
Ed Miliband spoke about his grandfather, who was murdered in Buchenwald, in January.
Miliband, who lost the election and has now resigned as Labour party leader, would have been Britain’s first Jewish prime minister had he won, although he is a secular Jew. (Britain’s great nineteenth century prime minister Benjamin Disraeli was born Jewish but was converted to Christianity since Britain did not at that time allow Jews to enter parliament.)
ISRAELI PM NETANYAHU SPEAKS WITH BRITISH PM CAMERON
In spite of Miliband’s Israeli connections, the Labour party is perceived as being anti-Israel by many, and the overwhelming majority of British Jews voted Conservative in last week’s election.
On Saturday, the British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, who won re-election, spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who congratulated him on his victory.
***
I gave a number of interviews on the British elections. For those interested, among those placed on line:
* i24 Israeli News (conducted shortly before polls closed): interviewed by Lucy Aharish, the rising Muslim-Arab-Israeli star of Israeli TV news, and with Paul Gross – no relation. (My own comments start and continue from about 4.40 minutes into the video.)
* Russia Today (conducted shortly before the final results were known).
***
Defeated Conservative MP Lee Scott has spoken out about the anti-Semitic abuse which he says cost him his seat in Parliament last week.
He said the campaign of death threats and anti-Jewish hatred against him and his family by Islamists in his Ilford North constituency in London had reduced him to tears. He said there was “no question in my mind” that the attacks on him had contributed to his defeat. After Scott defended Israel in Parliament he was repeatedly threatened, making it dangerous for him to appear at many public events during the campaign, despite the fact that he was provided with police protection. While the Conservatives polled strongly in other constituencies, Scott’s 5,404 majority in Ilford was overturned.
EXECUTION OF (SHIA) SHEIKH NIMR MEANS END OF SAUDI REGIME
Senior Cleric: Execution of Sheikh Nimr Means End of Saudi Regime
Fars News Agency (Iran)
Sunday, May 10, 2015
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940220001048
TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts warned the Riyadh government that the execution of the prominent Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, would put an end to Al Saud dynasty.
“Some Saudi media have announced that the Riyadh government plans to execute Sheikh Nimr by May 14; the Saudi government should know that taking such a move will put an end to its shameful rule,” Ayatollah Seyed Ahmad Khatami told FNA on Sunday.
Khatami, who is a presiding board member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, warned the Saudi government that bloodshed in Yemen and killing a religious scholar is tantamount to following the path of pharaohs and blasphemers.
Ayatollah Khatami called on religious seminaries and intellectuals of the Muslim world to prevent continued crimes by the Saudi regime.
On Saturday, several Saudi rights activists warned Al Saud that Sheikh Nimr’s execution would set fire to Saudi Arabia.
“The Saudi people will ask for a halt in the execution of the death sentence (for Sheikh Nimr) by staging peaceful rallies and protests,” Sheikh Abbas al-Qatifi told FNA.
Stressing the strong opposition of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province to the execution of the Shiite cleric, he said, “The case of Sheikh Nimr is a Saudi show played by the Saudi princes at the order of the US and the Zionist regime as part of a plot in the country and even other Islamic countries.”
Also in relevant remarks on Saturday, Abdolhadi al-Sattari, another Saudi rights activist, told FNA that the Saudi officials have resorted to terrorists to suppress the Shiites inside and outside Saudi Arabia.
… There have been numerous demonstrations in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province since 2011, with the protestors calling for political reform and an end to widespread discrimination. Several people have been killed and many others have been injured or arrested during the demonstrations.
… Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that does not allow any election.
COALITION FORCES IMPLEMENT 130 AIR STRIKES TARGETING SITES OF HOUTHI LEADERS
Coalition Forces Implement 130 Air Strikes Targeting Sites of Houthi Leaders
Saudi Government Press Agency SPA
May 9, 2015
http://www.spa.gov.sa/English/print.php?id=1359436
Riyadh, Rajab 20, 1436, May 9, 2015, SPA -- Brig. Gen. Ahmed Hasan Asiri, Coalition Forces’ Spokesman and Advisor at the Office of the Minister of Defense, stressed that the Coalition forces carried out, during the 24 past hours, 130 air strikes targeting 100 sites in Sadaa, Maran, Albiqaa and the borders between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, “the air operations focused on targeting headquarters of the Houthi leaders and command and control in addition to offices of the Houthi leadership, including 17 Houthi
leaders,” he added.
In a press conference held here at Riyadh Airbase, Asiri stressed the three main objectives of Operation Renewal of Hope, including prevention of the Houthi movements in Yemen, protection of the Yemeni citizens and facilitation of the relief and humanitarian works in Yemen, “the latest developments over the past two days through targeting the Saudi cities added a new factor to the operations carried out during the 24 past hours. Therefore, we have two parallel operations, including the military support of the Operation Renewal of Hope and, at the same time, response done by the Saudi Armed Forces and Coalition Forces against those who carried out attacks on the cities of Najran and Jizan,” he added…
***
* Tom Gross adds: The Saudi-led airstrikes, carried out with the support of the airforces of the UAE and other Arab regimes (including Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain), have killed and maimed thousands of people in Yemen in recent weeks. They are reported to have used American-supplied cluster bombs, a weapon outlawed in 116 countries.
As I have reported in previous dispatches, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled Yemen. And yet there have been virtually no protests in western capitals, hardly any angry comment pieces or letters or cartoons or editorials in papers such as the New York Times, which lambasts Israel for taking virtually any action to defend itself. There is also near silence in the western media about the ongoing American-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria which have also killed and maimed thousands of people in recent months.
ABBAS ATTENDS MASSIVE RUSSIAN WWII VICTORY DAY PARADES IN MOSCOW
Abbas Attends Massive Russian WWII Victory Day Parades in Moscow
WAFA – Palestinian news agency
May 9, 2015
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=28455
MOSCOW, May 9, 2015 (WAFA - PLO news agency) – President Mahmoud Abbas together with 30 world leaders attended Saturday massive military parade and festival events in Moscow marking the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union and its allies over Nazi Germany in World War II.
Russia held a massive military parade showcasing the most advanced military technology and hardware and featuring over 16,000 soldiers together with over 200 aircrafts and 1,880 military equipment units. The parades were broadcasted live on Russia Today (RT) channel.
A number of high-profile leaders joined Abbas in attending the festivals. They included Chinese leader Xi Jinping, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, India’s President Pranab Mukherjee, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Cuba’s President Raul Castro, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma.
Upon his arrival to the Russian capital, Abbas said: “It is a pleasure for me to take part in the victory celebrations after an invitation from the Russian leadership.”
Abbas was accompanied by member of Fatah Central Committee Nabil Sha’ath, Palestinian Ambassador to Russia Faed Mustafa, and the head of the Palestinian-Russian Friendship Association.
EGYPT’S SISI ‘KEEN’ FOR COOPERATION WITH RUSSIA
Egypt’s Sisi ‘keen’ for cooperation with Russia
Egyptian president is in Moscow to attend VE Day festivities
Ahram Online
May 9, 2015
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/129814/Egypt/Politics-/Egypts-Sisi-keen-for-cooperation-with-Russia-.aspx
Egypt and Russia could cooperate on a lot of common projects for the prosperity and the benefit of both countries, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi told his Russian counterpart on Saturday in Moscow.
El-Sisi arrived in Moscow on Friday to take part in celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945.
During the celebrations, El-Sisi told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Egypt understands the role that Russia has played to combat fascism, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported.
The Egyptian president told Putin that he is keen on ties and all sorts of cooperation that will benefit both countries, during a meeting at the Kremlin on Saturday.
… Russia was the first foreign country El-Sisi visited after his election as president last year.
Cairo has sought to strengthen its ties with Moscow against the backdrop of strained ties with long-time ally Washington since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.
Egypt had strong ties with Russia in the 1950s and 1960s, and the Soviet Union was the main supplier of arms to Egypt until the early 1970s. Relations soured after Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty bringing in some $1.3 billion in annual US military aid to Cairo in 1979.
Forty percent of European tourists visiting Egypt are Russian.
EGYPT FM: ARAB LEAGUE CLOSE TO FORMING JOINT MILITARY FORCE
Egypt FM: Arab League close to forming joint military force
Sameh Shokri says Egypt remains committed to Saudi-led intervention in Yemen
By Sawsan Abu-Husain
Asharq Al-Awsat (Saudi Arabia)
May 9, 2015
http://www.aawsat.net/2015/05/article55343360/egypt-fm-arab-league-close-to-forming-joint-military-force
Asmara, Eritrea, Asharq Al-Awsat—The Arab League is moving closer to forming a joint Arab military force to deal with the conflicts raging in the region, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shokri has said.
Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat on the sidelines of a state visit to Eritrea, he acknowledged that the region is facing an unprecedented level of conflict, most recently with the ongoing crisis in Yemen.
“There can be no doubt that the situation in Yemen requires serious effort in order to find a solution to the deteriorating humanitarian situation and the suffering of the Yemeni people. We need to find a way to return legitimacy and restore stability to Yemen,” Shokri said.
Egypt is part of the Saudi-led alliance that has intervened militarily in Yemen to back legitimate President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi against the Shi’ite Houthi militia and supporters of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. At present, Cairo’s involvement has not gone beyond naval deployments in the Gulf of Aden.
… Speaking in late March, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi announced that Arab leaders had agreed to form a united military force to combat the “challenges” facing the Middle East, including the ongoing unrest in Yemen.
The joint military force, which would fall under the purview of the Arab League, would be able to carry out rapid intervention to deal with unfolding crises…
EGYPTIAN ARMY SAYS 725 ‘TERRORISTS’ KILLED IN NORTH SINAI OVER LAST 6 MONTHS
Egyptian army says 725 ‘terrorists’ killed in North Sinai over last 6 months
Military releases a report detailing their campaign against militants in North Sinai
Al-Ahram (Egypt)
May 9, 2015
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/129811/Egypt/Politics-/Egyptian-army-says--terrorists-killed-in-North-Sin.aspx
The Egyptian army released on Saturday a semi-annual report detailing the security forces’ campaign against Islamist militants in North Sinai in which they said they had killed 725 militants in the governorate.
The report, which spans the period from 25 October last year to 30 April of this year, was published on the army spokesman’s official Facebook page.
The highest number of “terrorists” killed took place in February, with 173 killed. In January, the lowest numbers of killings was reported, at 44 dead.
… The report also stated that 1,823 terrorist hideouts were destroyed, including underground bunkers, trenches, shacks, tents, and abandoned houses.
… Egypt’s army is currently fighting a campaign against a decade-long militant insurgency in North Sinai.
Militants have killed hundreds of police and army personnel in the past year and a half in North Sinai, while the authorities have announced that hundreds of militants have been killed in military campaigns in the governorate.
The Islamist group Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis has claimed responsibility for most attacks against the security forces in Sinai.
PALESTINIAN DRIVER INJURED BY EGYPTIAN GUNFIRE AT GAZA CROSSING
Palestinian driver injured by Egyptian gunfire at Gaza crossing
Palestinian Maan news agency
May 11, 2015
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=765346
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- A Palestinian driver was shot by gunfire from Egypt as he was driving a truck into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing on Monday, Gaza officials said.
Eyad al-Bazm, spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior, said that the driver had been wounded, and called for an immediate investigation into the incident.
… There have been past incidents of Egyptian border soldiers opening fire on Palestinians.
In January, Egyptian soldiers shot and killed a 17-year-old Palestinian from the border.
The Egyptian army is pitched in a bloody battle with anti-regime militants in the northern Sinai, and Egypt accuses Hamas of supporting the militants, although Hamas strenuously denies the allegations.
KUWAITI PAPER: DROPPED ISRAELI DRONE IN SUDAN TARGETED HAMAS WEAPON STORE
Kuwaiti paper: Dropped Israeli drone in Sudan targeted Hamas weapon store
May 8, 2015
Al-Masry Al-Youm
http://www.egyptindependent.com//news/kuwaiti-paper-dropped-israeli-drone-sudan-targeted-hamas-weapon-store
The Israeli reconnaissance drone, which Sudan announced it had downed Wednesday over its territory, was targeting a store for weapons to the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, an unidentified source told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Garida Friday.
The plane launched one missile out of six on the warehouse of weapons in the city of Omdurman, before it was detected and downed, the source added.
The Sudanese found out after tracking the plane’s course the presence of an airport for such aircrafts in an African region, may be on the Sudanese territory, according to the source.
Sudanese armed forces spokesman Khaled al-Sawarmy had announced on Wednesday that the drone was downed in the state of Al-Bahr Al-Ahmar.
***
(* Tom Gross adds: In line with a long-standing policy concerning similar types of allegations, Israeli government spokespeople declined to comment on this report.)
DJIBOUTI PRESIDENT: CHINA NEGOTIATING HORN OF AFRICA MILITARY BASE
Djibouti President: China Negotiating Horn of Africa Military Base
Agence France-Presse
May 10, 2015
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/mideast-africa/2015/05/10/djibouti-president-china-negotiating-horn-africa-military-base/27082879/
DJIBOUTI — China is negotiating a military base in the strategic port of Djibouti, the president told AFP, raising the prospect of US and Chinese bases side-by-side in the tiny Horn of Africa nation.
“Discussions are ongoing,” President Ismail Omar Guelleh told AFP in an interview in Djibouti, saying Beijing’s presence would be “welcome.”
Djibouti is already home to Camp Lemonnier, the U.S. military headquarters on the continent, used for covert, anti-terror and other operations in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere across Africa.
France and Japan also have bases in the port, a former French colony that guards the entrance to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal…
… Djibouti overseas the narrow Bab al-Mandeb straits, the channel separating Africa from Arabia and one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, leading into the Red Sea and northwards to the Mediterranean.
Djibouti and Beijing signed a military agreement allowing the Chinese navy to use Djibouti port in February 2014, a move that angered Washington.
China aims to install a permanent military base in Obock, Djibouti’s northern port city.
In recent years, Guelleh has increasingly turned to China as a key economic partner. Last year he switched the port operating contract to a Chinese company, after the previous Dubai-based operator was accused of corruption.
SAUDI ARABIA CONSIDERS NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO CONTAIN IRAN
Saudi Arabia considers nuclear weapons to contain Iran
Concerned with Iran’s growing influence, the Saudis are feeling vulnerable.
By Ed Adamczyk
UPI
May 8, 2015
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2015/05/08/Saudi-Arabia-considers-nuclear-weapons-to-contain-Iran/5461431092418/
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, May 8 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabia, considering Iran’s potential 10-year limitation on nuclear weapons development, is looking into a nuclear weapons program of its own, officials say.
Although a nuclear-free Middle East has long been a part of Saudi policy, its leaders are convinced Iran will eventually become a nuclear power, and there are calls within Saudi Arabia to start a development program to match Iran’s potential nuclear capability. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, after a summit meeting this week of Gulf nations, warned that the proposed deal between Iran and the United States, which limits Iranian nuclear development but assigns ban expiry date of ten years, risks “plunging the region into an
arms race.”
Saudi Arabia, with its Sunni Muslim majority, is already battling largely Shiite Iran in proxy wars across the region, including in Syria and Yemen.
Saudi fears of an increase in Iranian influence is worsened by the potential of lifting economic sanctions against Iran by the West, freeing over $100 billion in frozen overseas assets.
“Our allies aren’t listening to us, and this is what is making us extremely nervous,” said Prince Faisal bin Saud bin Abdulmohsen of Riyadh’s King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. “If I am basing my judgment on the track record and our experience with Iran, I will say they will do anything in their power to get a nuclear weapon. A delay of 10 years is not going to satiate anything.”
While Iran has ties to Russia, Saudi Arabia, which has already begun a civilian nuclear program, can gain nuclear knowledge from France, which has become a close ally.
Pakistan, a fellow Sunni-majority Muslim country, already has nuclear weapons capability, and another ally, Jordan, has available uranium, the Wall Street Journal noted Friday.
The U.S. deal with Iran, if it slows Iran’s quest for the nuclear weapons it denied seeking, could prove to be the highlight of U.S. President Barack Obama’s nuclear non-proliferation legacy. It could also set off an arms race in the Middle East.
Clearing the rubble after Hamas destroyed a mosque this week east of Gaza city. Hamas didn’t like the sermons of the imam there.
* Below: Reports from the Arab media (that you won’t find in most Western media).
* Pro-ISIS group in Gaza complains Hamas “worse than Israel”.
* 5 more foreigners beheaded in Saudi Arabia, bringing the total number of beheadings to 78 so far this year, compared with 87 for all of last year. (A figure for the number of executions that still pales in comparison to the numbers executed by the “moderate” Iranian regime.)
* Western-funded Palestinian Authority names children’s ping pong, chess and fencing competitions, as well as the Palestinian marathon, after terrorists who murdered hundreds of Israelis and injured thousands, and urges Palestinian youth “to follow their heroic examples”.
* Please “like” these dispatches on Facebook here www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia, where you can also find other items that are not in these dispatches.
CONTENTS
1. Egypt’s Sisi says he will attend Russian V-Day celebrations
2. Salafists bomb Hamas Security Headquarters in Gaza
3. Pro-ISIS group in Gaza complains Hamas “worse than Israel”
4. 700 truckloads of goods enter Gaza from Israel in a single day
5. 200 Gazans pray at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque
6. Palestinian Authority exploits sports to present murderers as role models for children
7. 10,000 troops from around the world in Eager Lion military drill in Jordan
8. Twelve suspected militants killed by Egypt in North Sinai
9. Egyptian army raids in Sinai kill 29 alleged militants
10. 71 receive life sentences for torching Egyptian church
11. Iran: No inspection of non-nuclear sites
12. Five more foreigners beheaded in Saudi Arabia
[Notes below by Tom Gross]
I include the news items below because most western media ignores these kind of stories. Items like this appear almost daily in the Arab and Iranian media but when the stories don’t present an opportunity to criticize or demonize the Jewish state, the western media don’t seem very interested.
For example, in The Guardian’s roundup of recommended news this week, emailed to millions of subscribers including myself, placed a cancellation of a small concert in the relatively unimportant Israeli town of Rishon Lezion by a somewhat faded minor musician, Lauryn Hill, as its third most important international and domestic news story, while ignoring all kinds of dramatic news from around the world, involving the deaths and kidnappings of thousands of people. (And, of course, there has been a very closely fought general election campaign in Britain this week too.)
The international edition of the New York Times also ignored most (if not all) of the stories below, as well as many other stories, while reporting on the Lauryn Hill story.
Neither The Guardian nor New York Times stories on Lauryn Hill mentioned that Robbie Williams played to 40,000 fans in Tel Aviv on May 2, or that Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys, Madonna, Lady Gaga, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and others all played in Israel recently. Or that Dionne Warwick said this week that it was “100 percent sure” that she would perform in Tel Aviv on May 19, and she would not succumb to any harassment from the anti-Israel crowd. She added that she has visited Israel several times before and that it one of her “favorite countries”.
EGYPT’S SISI SAYS HE WILL ATTEND RUSSIAN V-DAY CELEBRATIONS
The Egyptian paper Al-Ahram reports that Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is to travel to Moscow to attend Russia’s Victory Day celebrations on Saturday May 9, the Egyptian president’s office has announced.
Russia is to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany at the end of World War II.
It will be El-Sisi’s second official visit to Moscow since becoming Egypt’s head of state in June 2014, after a previous visit to the Russian capital in August 2014.
El-Sisi had already visited Russia as defense minister in February of the same year.
U.S. President Barack Obama gave his first, and some would say most grand foreign policy speech in Cairo, but since then Egypt has moved further and further away from America, and is increasingly close to Russia, despite the massive aid the U.S. gives the country.
Most western leaders are boycotting Russia’s V-Day celebrations.
SALAFISTS BOMB HAMAS SECURITY HEADQUARTERS IN GAZA
Salafists bombed Hamas Security Headquarters in Gaza on Monday after Hamas missed a deadline for the release of Salafist prisoners, some of whom were arrested for allegedly “making contact with ISIS.’
The Salafist groups Salafist Trend and Jamaat Ansar al-Dawla al-Islamiya Fi Bayt al-Maqdis (The Supporters Of Islamic State In Jerusalem), on Saturday accused Hamas of torturing the jailed Salafists, and of monitoring and cracking down on other members of the group.
“Once again we ask the wise people of Gaza to stop the ongoing Hamas criminality and abusive detention of our brothers before it’s too late,” read the Salafist statement. “We give Hamas 72 hours to release all the prisoners,” reported the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency and other Palestinian media.
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=765226
One of the individuals whose release they demanded is Sheikh Adnan Khader Mayyat, a radical Salafist whom Hamas says has ties to ISIS, according to the Beirut Daily Star.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2015/Apr-06/293471-hamas-arrests-salafist-sheikh-in-gaza-over-isis-ties.ashx
***
Tom Gross adds: The accusation by other Palestinians against Hamas’s widespread use of torture in its prison system is somewhat ironic considering how Hamas spokespeople are regularly given a platform by the BBC and other western media to complain that its terrorists are “mistreated” in Israeli jails.
This despite the fact that although they proudly boast of having murdered or attempted to murder Jewish civilians, they actually receive some of the best conditions of any prison system in the world. (See for example, this dispatch: Hamas terrorists given Israeli university degrees, Cable TV, IPods and dental treatment as Gilad Shalit rots (but the international human rights groups criticize Israel).)
The Salafist movement in Gaza has reportedly received support from the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is trying to undermine Hamas’ power in Gaza.
PRO-ISIS GROUP IN GAZA COMPLAINS HAMAS “WORSE THAN ISRAEL”
Monday’s clash was sparked on May 3 when Hamas destroyed a mosque belonging to the Salafists in Gaza’s Deir al-Balah district.
Salafists responded to the demolition of the mosque by issuing a statement threatening to carry out actions against Hamas targets if the Palestinian group did not release several Salafist militants who were detained in Gaza last month.
According to Egyptian daily Al-Masry al-Youm, three Hamas bulldozers had demolished the mosque, “in a manner that even the Jewish and American Occupation has not done”.
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/723631
***
Tom Gross adds: Israeli intelligence believes that ISIS has no organized presence in Gaza as such, but its popularity across the world has radicalized some Palestinian individuals who admire ISIS, as it has done with Muslims in many other countries from New Zealand to Canada. ISIS leader Baghdadi has not accepted the allegiance of any Salafist individuals or groups in the Gaza Strip since he is aiming for a global Islamic state not a specifically nationalistic (i.e. Palestinian) one.
Following Monday’s blowing up of Hamas security HQ, Hamas arrested dozens more suspected Salafists, took them away to be tortured, and set up military checkpoints throughout the Gaza strip, according to reports in the Jordan Times and elsewhere.
700 TRUCKLOADS OF GOODS ENTER GAZA FROM ISRAEL IN A SINGLE DAY
Tom Gross writes: While western media continue to mislead es about Israel not allowing goods into Gaza (at least one paper, the Times of London, apologized to readers last month for running such incorrect reports, but other major western media have yet to do so), Palestinian media do report on the goods being delivered across the Israeli-Gaza border (none are delivered across the sealed Egyptian-Gaza border).
These are the kind of stories one regularly finds in Palestinian media outlets. This one is from the Palestinian Maan news agency.
700 truckloads of goods allowed into Gaza Strip
April 30, 2015
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=765161
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- Israeli authorities opened the Kerem Shalom crossing into the Gaza Strip Thursday, allowing 700 truckloads of goods to enter the besieged enclave.
Head of the Commission for the Coordination of Goods into Gaza Strip Raed Fattouh said that among the goods entering the strip were construction materials for internationally-funded projects, fuel, and materials to improve the Strip’s infrastructure, particularly roads…
200 GAZANS PRAY AT JERUSALEM’S AL-AQSA MOSQUE
Tom Gross writes: Western media also give the impression that no one from Gaza is allowed to enter Israel. In addition to some businessman, and hundreds of Gazans being treated for cancer and other ailments at Israeli hospitals (see for example, this dispatch), every week hundreds of Gazans drive through Israel to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque to attend Friday prayers. (That is not to say that there are not still widespread security-imposed restrictions on freedom of travel into Israel, but it is simply wrong to give the impression that no Gazans can enter Israel.)
This is the kind of stories I read almost every Friday in Palestinian media outlets:
200 Gazans pray in the Al-Aqsa mosque
May 1, 2015
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=765169
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- Palestinians from the Gaza Strip headed to Jerusalem Friday to perform prayers in the Al-Aqsa mosque.
Sources at the Palestinian liaison told Ma’an that 200 Gazans above the age of 60 headed to Jerusalem via the Erez crossing in the northern Gaza Strip.
Sources added that after performing prayers the 200 head back to the Gaza Strip Friday afternoon.
Weekly access to the Al-Aqsa mosque by Gazans has become routine since October 2014 when some 500 Palestinians in Gaza prayed at the mosque…
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY EXPLOITS SPORTS TO PRESENT MURDERERS AS ROLE MODELS FOR CHILDREN
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s (western-funded) Fatah party (previously responsible for staging a terror attack at the Olympic Games) continues to name sports competitions after terrorists in order to influence impressionable Palestinian youths.
Among them:
MARATHON
The Fatah marathon is honoring one of the most violent Palestinian killers, Abu Jihad, who was behind the murder of 125 Israelis
The Fatah Secretary of the organization’s Salfit branch, Abd Al-Sattar Awwad, told Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (April 22, 2015): “Abu Jihad will continue to serve as an example for the revolution from which the Palestinian youth will learn”
Among the crimes of Abu Jihad, who served as deputy to PLO leader Yasser Arafat, was the organization of the hijacking of a bus and the killing of 37 Israeli and diaspora Jewish civilians, 12 of them children.
PING PONG
A table tennis tournament has been named in honor of terrorists Hamza Omar Shamarkha and Amjad Takatka, sentenced to life imprisonment in Israel for carrying out attacks in which six Israelis were murdered and 80 injured in April 2002. Spokesmen for the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and Fatah, Fatah official Abd Al-Hamid Al-Dik conveyed greetings from PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, at the tournament, reported the official PA daily. Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, on April 6, 2015.
CHESS
Fatah was a patron of a chess tournament in Hebron that was named after terrorist Marwan Zalum. Zalum is responsible for numerous terror attacks that killed civilians, including an attack in 2001 in which an infant in her stroller was murdered, and a 2002 suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed six, according to a report in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (May 3, 2015).
FENCING
The Palestinian Fencing Association announced that it was holding a fencing championship named after “Martyr Abu Jihad” “under the auspices of [Deputy Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee and] Head of the Palestine Olympic Committee Jibril Rajoub” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 20, 2015).
***
And there are many more such examples, here from Palestinian Media Watch.
10,000 TROOPS FROM AROUND THE WORLD IN EAGER LION MILITARY DRILL IN JORDAN
http://www.petra.gov.jo/Public_News/Nws_NewsDetails.aspx?lang=2&site_id=1&NewID=194551&CatID=1310,00
The Jordanian government Petra news agency reports that 10,000 troops from 18 countries have arrived in Jordan to participate in military exercises.
Among militaries participating are those of Britain, France, Italy, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Poland, Australia, Pakistan, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Lebanon, and Iraq, as well as from NATO, Brig. Gen. Fahad al-Damen of the Jordan Armed Forces said in a press conference.
12 SUSPECTED MILITANTS KILLED BY EGYPT IN NORTH SINAI
The Egyptian paper Al-Masry Al-Youm reports (May 4, 2015) that “twelve suspected members of the Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis organization were killed in a targeted military operation in North Sinai on Monday May 4.”
According to a security source, Apache helicopters were dispatched to the area, bombing the four-wheel drive vehicle used by the suspects.
Egypt’s armed forces have killed at least 115 suspected militants in North Sinai in April alone.
http://www.egyptindependent.com//news/security-source-12-suspected-militants-killed-north-sinai
EGYPTIAN ARMY RAIDS IN SINAI KILL 29 ALLEGED MILITANTS
Al Ahram reports (May 2, 2015) that Egypt’s armed forces said on Saturday that the army has killed 29 alleged militants and arrested 133 others in raids on North Sinai cities from 20 to 30 April.
In a statement on the military’s official Facebook page, spokesman Mohamed Samir said that military campaigns in the cities of Arish, Rafah and Sheikh Zuweid targeted alleged militant hideouts.
71 RECEIVE LIFE SENTENCES FOR TORCHING EGYPTIAN CHURCH
Al Ahram reports that “an Egyptian court has sentenced 71 people to life in prison over the torching of a church in Giza, shortly after the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. A life sentence means 25 years in jail, according to the penal code.
“Two more received ten-year jail terms in highly secured facilities in the latest in a series of mass sentences passed over the past year and a half.”
IRAN: NO INSPECTION OF NON-NUCLEAR SITES
Iran’s Fars news agency reports (May 6, 2015):
Spokeswoman: Iran Not to Accept Exceptional Inspection for Striking N. Deal
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940216001147
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham stressed that her country would never accept to undergo an exceptional system of nuclear inspections to strike a deal with the world powers…
***
See also:
No Inspection of Iran’s Military Sites Permissible: Top Officer
May 04, 2015
http://www.tasnimnews.com/english/Home/Single/729764
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces reminded the country’s negotiators that a final deal with world powers over the country’s nuclear energy program could by no means allow foreign access to Iran’s military sites under the pretext of inspection.
The Iranian military authorities will never allow the aliens to get access to the country’s security-defense sphere, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi wrote in an Sunday letter to the Iranian team of nuclear negotiators, engaged in talks with the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany).
The senior officer also made it clear that Iran’s defense progress would never come to a halt under the pretext of monitoring and inspection…
5 MORE FOREIGNERS BEHEADED IN SAUDI ARABIA
Two Yemenis, a Chadian, an Eritrean and a Sudanese were put to death in the Red Sea city of Jeddah on May 4, the Saudi interior ministry said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.
In recent weeks there has been “an unusually high number” of beheadings in Saudi Arabia according to Amnesty International.
Their beheadings bring to 78 the number of locals and foreigners executed in Saudi Arabia this year, compared with 87 for all of last year, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP) tallies.
Saudi Arabia is now the world’s third worst executioner, behind Iran and China.
One of the few western news outlets to sometimes report on this is Newsweek, the foreign editor of which subscribes to this email list. For example, here: http://www.newsweek.com/beheadings-saudi-arabia-quickens-pace-321587
The “moderate” (according to the BBC) Iranian regime has executed 1,000 people by hanging over the last 18 months.
***
The leading human rights defender still free in Iran, was arrested by the regime on Wednesday. Narges Mohammadi, the deputy head of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, co-founded by Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, was taken from her home in Tehran by regime agents and has not been heard from since.
Here is the speech she dared to give last year on the second anniversary of the killing of blogger Sattar Beheshti, who was tortured to death in custody.
***
For those interested, I will be on i24 Israeli TV at 9 pm (Israel time) this evening interviewed about today’s general elections in the UK (my own comments start and continue from about 4.40 minutes into the video), and am scheduled to appear on RT (Russia Today) and other channels tomorrow morning to discuss how the election results might affect Britain’s foreign policy in the Middle East.
[Notes above by Tom Gross]
Qanta Ahmed: “While the Shoah may seem remote, within Islamism, lethal anti-Semitism thrives anew”
* Pakistani-British physician Qanta Ahmed (who has previously written a book about her experiences as a female doctor working in Saudi Arabia): “I first met Wilhelm Lerner at the Jewish Holocaust Center in Melbourne. Two months later, I retraced his steps at Auschwitz. There, Shoah survivors I had treated on both sides of the Atlantic returned to my physician’s memory: a bronchitic British woman betrayed by tattoos; in New York, an octogenarian ‘hidden child;’ and an insomniac nonagenarian, each vivid landmarks in my life of medicine. But it was as I studied the half-demolished crematoria that my motives for traveling to Auschwitz became clear.
“As an observant Muslim deeply opposed to Islamism, I must confront not only crematoria old, but crematoria new… While the Shoah may seem remote, within Islamism, lethal anti-Semitism thrives anew… In lending anti-Semitism false religious legitimacy, faith-illiterate Muslims are beguiled into to accepting anti-Semitism as Islamic creed, a grave distortion of Islam which, in the Koran, documents Jews as Peoples of the Book; their Prophets, Moses and Aaron, as Holy both to Jews and Muslims; and their Torah as divine and as much a legitimate path to God as the Koran…
“Every Muslim must experience [learn] the history of the Shoah in order to demolish these falsehoods... It is as essential for a Muslim child to learn of the Shoah as it is for a Jewish child. Our survival, whether as Muslims or as Jews, depends on examining and sharing the historical truth of the Holocaust. Only when a Muslim is allowed to learn the history of the Holocaust can he or she expose Islamist Holocaust deniers as fraudulent imposters, and differentiate manmade Islamism from Islam as it was revealed in the Koran.”
* UK taxpayers fund ‘pro-terrorist’ play: £15,000 of public money from the Arts Council England is to be given to show based on the words of Hamas killers in a ten-city UK tour starting in Manchester on May 13.
* Haaretz: “The indirect talks between Israel and Hamas on a long-term cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, which have been reported primarily in the Arab media, are ultimately likely to produce an agreement. Such a deal, if achieved, would significantly affect the balance of power among Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and could also affect the close ties between Israel and Egypt…
“Such a deal could appeal to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, because it would enable him to portray last summer’s war in Gaza as a long-term achievement instead of a highly controversial, unfinished job. Just as former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert retroactively defended a much worse war, the Second Lebanon War of 2006, by boasting of the quiet on the northern border since then, Netanyahu could retroactively justify the Gaza war on similar grounds and say Hamas’ agreement to a long-term cease-fire proved that Israel won…”
“An indirect deal wouldn’t require Netanyahu to make any major concessions like recognizing Hamas or ceding territory. Moreover, it would enable him to outflank PA President Mahmoud Abbas and rebut some of the international criticism of his lack of movement on the Palestinian front.”
* Ayaan Hirsi Ali: “Radical Islam is the issue that dare not speak its name in this [British] election [on Thursday]. Voters say they regard the NHS, immigration and the economy as the three most important issues facing Britain. Islamic extremism does not even make the top ten. To anyone watching from abroad, this seems bizarre.
“The problem in the UK is personified by Mohammed Emwazi [“Jihadi John”], the murderous Islamic State executioner who grew up in London and has a degree from the University of Westminster. Fusilier Lee Rigby and the aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning are only the best known British victims of the jihadists… Only David Cameron can tackle the scourge of Islamic extremism in Britain.”
* Tom Gross writes: I attach five articles below (and summaries above) from the British, American and Israeli press, three of them published today. Two are follow-ups to items 1 and 7 in this dispatch last month: Israel’s secret cooperation with Hamas revealed (& Khamenei: Obama “oppresses” blacks)
You can see additional items not in these dispatches if you “like” this Facebook page www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia.
CONTENTS
1. “Islamist anti-Semitism: Confronting Holocausts past and potential” (By Qanta Ahmed, Haaretz, May 5, 2015)
2. “UK taxpayers fund ‘pro-terrorist’ play: £15,000 of public money given to show based on the words of Hamas killers” (By Nick Craven, The Mail on Sunday, May 3, 2015)
3. “Analysis / Secret talks hold hope for lengthy Hamas-Israel truce” (By Amos Harel, Haaretz, May 1, 2015
4. “Sorry, Charlie Hebdo: Western writers abandon their support for free speech” (Wall St Journal editorial, May 5, 2015)
5. “Only one party will tackle the Islamist threat: David Cameron recognises that Britain faces a battle of ideas, not just of preventing terror” (By Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Times of London, May 5, 2015)
“IT IS AS ESSENTIAL FOR A MUSLIM CHILD TO LEARN OF THE SHOAH. ONLY THEN CAN HE OR SHE EXPOSE ISLAMIST HOLOCAUST DENIERS AS FRAUDULENT IMPOSTERS.”
Islamist anti-Semitism: Confronting Holocausts past and potential
By Qanta Ahmed
Haaretz
May 5, 2015
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.655066
“From time to time, the officers’ dogs would get sick. One day, the SS officer told us, ‘Bury the dog where the dogs are buried,’ signaling to the body of his German shepherd. We buried the dog, and returned to the hut. Later that night, a prisoner came to find me. He whispered, ‘If you help me dig up the dog, I will give you a piece.’
“That night, we returned to the place where the dogs were buried. The ground was frozen. Somehow, we dug up the dog. Dividing the body between us, I took a piece of the dog back with me to my hut.
“I had a pot which was tied here to my waist.” Willie pointed to his left hip. “I got some snow from the ground and put it in the pot. Inside, I made a fire to melt the ice. I put the piece of dog into the pot. I had saved some salt from the ground.” He smiled, remembering his ingenuity of 70 years earlier. “The Nazis used salt to stop the ground cracking in the winter, a pink salt. Scraping it up from the ground I had saved some. I added it to the pot. Then, I waited.
“It was so cold, and the piece of dog was so frozen, that it took hours. I sat over the fire, fighting sleep as the pot was cooking, but, believe me, the hunger was so great, I stayed awake. Finally, I could drink the soup. I had been so hungry, I finished it all.”
We both fell silent. Ninety-year old Willie stretched to his full six-foot two. Assessing my frame, he made his final remark:
“At the end of the Holocaust I weighed 38 kilograms. That’s less than you weigh now.”
I first met Wilhelm Lerner at the Jewish Holocaust Center in Melbourne. Two months later, I retraced his steps at Auschwitz. There, Shoah survivors I had treated on both sides of the Atlantic returned to my physician’s memory: a bronchitic British woman betrayed by tattoos; in New York, an octogenarian “hidden child;” and an insomniac nonagenarian, each vivid landmarks in my life of medicine. But it was as I studied the half-demolished crematoria that my motives for traveling to Auschwitz became clear.
As an observant Muslim deeply opposed to Islamism, I must confront not only crematoria old, but crematoria new. Days before my travel to Auschwitz, Jordanian pilot Lt Muath al-Kaseasbeh had been cremated alive in a cage to an audience of Islamists. While the Shoah may seem remote, within Islamism, lethal anti-Semitism thrives anew.
The kingpin of Islamist ideology is cosmic anti-Semitism – that which is pursued as a divine mission to combat a cosmic, not mortal, enemy. In contrast to the Nazis, Islamists render the hatred of Jews a religious creed, adding to its ferocity and their own fanaticism. In lending anti-Semitism false religious legitimacy, faith-illiterate Muslims are beguiled into to accepting anti-Semitism as Islamic creed, a grave distortion of Islam which, in the Koran, documents Jews as Peoples of the Book; their Prophets, Moses and Aaron, as Holy both to Jews and Muslims; and their Torah as divine and as much a legitimate path to God as the Koran.
In contrast, Islamism, a political totalitarian ideology masquerading as Islam, reminds us that what was once past, as Shoah, becomes newly possible in the present. Islamists, whether violent or nonviolent, rely on Holocaust denial to augment their lethal anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli fanaticism. Holocaust denial is used to recruit Hamas foot-soldiers: because the Holocaust “wasn’t real,” Islamists argue, Israel was created on “false pretenses.” In that context, it becomes increasingly legitimate to seek the destruction of Israel.
Every Muslim must experience the history of the Shoah in order to demolish these falsehoods – both those that are constructed of my Islamic faith and that of my sibling faith, Judaism. It is as essential for a Muslim child to learn of the Shoah as it is for a Jewish child. Our survival, whether as Muslims or as Jews, depends on examining and sharing the historical truth of the Holocaust. Only when a Muslim is allowed to learn the history of the Holocaust can he or she expose Islamist Holocaust deniers as fraudulent imposters, and differentiate manmade Islamism from Islam as it was revealed in the Koran.
Even as we mark 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, around the world countless Muslims are intellectually straitjacketed by Islamist ideology. They are indoctrinated with a false, manmade supremacist outlook that breeds enmity with not only non-Muslims but all Muslims who do not conform to Islamism. Because of Islamism, too many Muslims are caged in the cultivated, un-Islamic hatred of Jewry and Judaism. Today’s purveyors of anti-Semitism, today’s indoctrinators and propagandists fueling anti-Semitism, are Muslim Islamists, not European Nazis. Only by freeing Muslims from the ideological shackles of manmade Islamism can we return to divine, pluralistic Islam. And in our return to pluralistic Islam, bring Islamist ideologies to rubble ensuring the crematoria of old may never be raised anew.
BRITISH TAXPAYERS MONEY (YET AGAIN) TO BE USED TO PROMOTE PRO-HAMAS PROPAGANDA
UK taxpayers fund ‘pro-terrorist’ play: £15,000 of public money given to show based on the words of Hamas killers
* Arts Council England is funding a UK tour of their play, called ‘The Siege’
* Tells of 2002 stand-off when Israeli troops cornered gunmen in Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem
* Play is based on accounts of Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade militants
* Jewish leaders fear taxpayers might be funding play promoting ‘terrorism as legitimate’
By Nick Craven
The Mail On Sunday (UK)
May 3, 2015
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3065771/UK-taxpayers-fund-pro-terrorist-play-15-000-public-money-given-based-words-Hamas-killers.html
British taxpayers are to fund a play sympathising with Palestinian terrorist groups who have murdered civilians and carried out suicide bombings on crowded commuter buses.
Arts Council England is handing over £15,000 to producers of a unashamedly one-sided drama based on accounts from the gunmen and bombers of Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade.
The money will fund a UK tour of their play The Siege, telling of a 2002 stand-off when Israeli troops cornered militants in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, worshipped as Christ’s birthplace.
The production has already received cash from the British Council and the EU for performances in the Palestinian territories, and the new handout will fund a ten-city UK tour starting in Manchester on May 13.
Jewish leaders last night raised ‘extreme concern’ that the British taxpayer might be funding a play promoting ‘terrorism as legitimate’.
In publicity for the play, Hamas and Al Aqsa Brigade terrorists are merely referred to as ‘fighters’ with no acknowledgement of their cold-blooded murder of civilians.
The siege lasted 39 days and only ended when 13 of the ring-leaders were allowed safe passage and deported to various European countries. It is from these men’s accounts that the play’s script has been woven together.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry insists that all the men have blood on their hands, but two in particular have admitted as much.
Their leader, Ibrahim Abayat, exiled to Zaragoza in Spain, told the New York Times that he and his men shot and killed a female Israeli settler near Jerusalem in 2002. The Israelis say he was also involved in countless other atrocities.
Another of the exiles, Jihad Jaara – who went to Ireland – also told journalists that he kidnapped and murdered 71-year-old Avi Boaz, a Jewish US citizen living in Israel.
Among the other atrocities linked to some of the 13 is a suicide bombing in a Jerusalem suburb in March 2002 which killed 11 Israelis.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said: ‘We would be extremely concerned if British taxpayers were funding a play that promoted terrorism as positive and legitimate.’
The play’s British co-director, Zoe Lafferty, left no doubt where her sympathies lay, saying Palestinians pick up arms ‘not because they’re crazy religious fanatics [but] to defend their families’.
She said last night: ‘This production is pro-human rights, pro-justice and pro-equality. Our work is trying to talk about the truth of what’s happening on the ground and counter the propaganda that’s constantly being directed at the Palestinians.’
Asked if the play was pro-terrorists, she said: ‘That’s just insulting and comes from a very biased misunderstanding of what we’re doing. To have to engage in whether Hamas and the Al Aqsa Brigade are terrorists is the wrong question to ask.’
Arts Council England confirmed the grant but said it was ‘not our role to censor the artists’ message.’
The British Council confirmed they had given £14,000 for the West Bank tour, adding: ‘We also support projects in Israel.’ The EU did not reply to a request for comment.
WILL ALL BE QUIET ON THE GAZA FRONT?
* Tom Gross: This is a follow up to my dispatch of April 27:
Israel’s secret cooperation with Hamas revealed (& Khamenei: Obama “oppresses” blacks)
***
Analysis / Secret talks hold hope for lengthy Hamas-Israel truce
Indirect negotiations going on for months; Hamas political wing in favor, Mohammed Deif and military wing opposed.
By Amos Harel
Haaretz
May 1, 2015
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.654429
Far from the public’s eye, negotiations are happening that could, under certain conditions, effect an important change on the Palestinian front. The indirect talks between Israel and Hamas on a long-term cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, which have been reported primarily in the Arab media, are ultimately likely to produce an agreement. Such a deal, if achieved, would significantly affect the balance of power among Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and could also affect the close ties between Israel and Egypt.
The talks have been conducted intermittently for months. Media reports say numerous intermediaries are involved, including officials from the United Nations, Europe and Qatar. Thus the talks are happening via several different channels, with only partial coordination among them.
The goal is to extract a commitment to a humanitarian cease-fire from Hamas, perhaps accompanied by third-party guarantees. Hamas would promise to refrain from any hostilities against Israel for a given period, possibly three to five years. In exchange, Israel would significantly ease its partial blockade on Gaza and take other steps to help Gaza’s economy. Later – though this seems unlikely – Israel might even reconsider ideas it has rejected in the past, like letting a seaport be built in Gaza under external supervision.
Such a deal could appeal to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, because it would enable him to portray last summer’s war in Gaza as a long-term achievement instead of a highly controversial, unfinished job. Just as former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert retroactively defended a much worse war, the Second Lebanon War of 2006, by boasting of the quiet on the northern border since then, Netanyahu could retroactively justify the Gaza war on similar grounds and say Hamas’ agreement to a long-term cease-fire proved that Israel won.
An indirect deal wouldn’t require Netanyahu to make any major concessions like recognizing Hamas or ceding territory. Moreover, it would enable him to outflank PA President Mahmoud Abbas and rebut some of the international criticism of his lack of movement on the Palestinian front. And if Netanyahu thinks tensions with Hezbollah might lead to war in the coming years, a long-term cease-fire in Gaza would temporarily relieve the army of a headache and let it focus on the far more dangerous enemy to the north.
Hamas’ political leadership in Gaza apparently favors a deal. After three military conflicts against Israel in less than six years, each of which wreaked devastation in Gaza, it seems unlikely that Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and his colleagues would want another round anytime soon. Khaled Meshal, the Qatar-based head of Hamas’ political wing, also seems to have moderated the hardline positions he took during the war a bit; this might be connected to the rapprochement between Hamas’ political wing and Saudi Arabia.
At the moment, Hamas seems readier to accept a deal than Israel is. Some Israeli defense officials think it’s better to continue the status quo, with minor changes, than to tie Israel’s hands with rigid obligations.
But in any case, numerous obstacles remain. The PA objects vehemently, fearing a deal would bolster Hamas at its expense and perpetuate the freeze in its own talks with Israel; this has been reflected in the West Bank’s negative press coverage of the emerging deal. Ramallah accuses Hamas of abandoning the demand for a solution to the Palestinian problem and of acquiescing in the separation of Gaza from the West Bank.
Egypt, which recently deferred legal proceedings for declaring Hamas an illegal terrorist organization, also remains skeptical of Hamas’ intentions.
But the principle obstacle is Hamas’ military wing. On Wednesday, the Israeli media reported that military wing leader Mohammed Deif, who survived an Israeli assassination attempt during last summer’s war, had resumed full-time activity. Deif dragged Israel and Hamas into the last conflict by planning a tunnel attack near Kerem Shalom in early July, then escalating after the army thwarted the attack.
Since the military wing is currently at loggerheads with the political leadership and has also renewed its ties to Iran, one can confidently assume it isn’t enthusiastic about the idea of a long-term truce. Thus, as the negotiations progress, the chances of the military wing launching attacks on Israel in an effort to thwart it increase.
The military wing is working hard to restore its operational capabilities, which suffered substantial damage during the war and have also been harmed by Egypt’s clampdown on arms smuggling to Gaza. Though Hamas is now churning out its own rockets in Gaza, they don’t match the capabilities of the arms it used to smuggle from Iran. But rebuilding its network of attack tunnels has proved easier, and it’s reasonable to assume Hamas will try to use them if another war breaks out.
NOT EVERYONE IS CHARLIE
Sorry, Charlie Hebdo
Western writers abandon their support for free speech
Wall Street Journal editorial
May 5, 2015
http://www.wsj.com/articles/sorry-charlie-hebdo-1430783250
Je suis Charlie. French for “I am Charlie,” the phrase became a global expression of solidarity and resolve after Islamist gunmen murdered 12 people at the Paris offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.
In a terrifying copycat attack Sunday in Garland, Texas, two men with assault rifles attempted to gun down people attending an event satirizing Muhammad with cartoons. A single police officer managed to shoot and kill both gunmen before they got inside the event. With some 200 people in the building, the potential for another politicized mass murder was great.
On Monday authorities said one of the gunman, Elton Simpson of Phoenix, had been under surveillance for years because of interest he’d shown in joining jihadist groups overseas. He was found guilty of making false statements to the FBI, but a federal judge ruled there wasn’t enough evidence that Mr. Simpson’s activities were “sufficiently ‘related’ to international terrorism.”
Against this backdrop we have the extraordinary – almost comical – irony of some of America’s bien pensant intellectuals boycotting a ceremony Tuesday by the PEN American Center to confer its annual courage award for freedom of expression on Charlie Hebdo. PEN is an association of writers, and six prominent novelists – Peter Carey,Michael Ondaatje,Francine Prose,Teju Cole,Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi – have been trying to repeal the award for Charlie Hebdo.
Ms. Kusher said she was uncomfortable with the “forced secular view” and “cultural intolerance” represented by Charlie Hebdo, whose signature attacks were on organized religion. Before the boycott, Mr. Cole wrote in the New Yorker magazine questioning the praise for Charlie Hebdo in the wake of the massacre. He lamented that the concern for Charlie Hebdo’s murdered cartoonists won’t be matched by concern for the young men of military age “who will have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere.”
A separate petition signed by more than 200 PEN members complains that their organization is “not simply conveying support for freedom of expression, but also valorizing selectively offensive material: material that intensifies the anti-Islamic, anti-Maghreb, anti-Arab sentiments already prevalent in the Western world.”
Trumpeting the list of petition signers was no less than Glenn Greenwald, last seen lionizing Edward Snowden’s right to go public with information stolen from the National Security Agency’s efforts to track the people who committed the Paris murders and tried to do it again in Texas this week.
Much of what Charlie Hebdo published was insulting and not infrequently obscene. No doubt that was true at the event in Texas. We would not routinely publish it in this newspaper. But insults are protected under the First Amendment. The terrorists who attacked cartoonists in Paris and in Texas hoped that murder would intimidate them – and others – into silence. As such theirs was not merely an attack on a publication; it was an attack on the foundations of liberal democracy.
All this PEN award does is underscore that in a civilized – indeed “tolerant” – society, you don’t get to murder people who insult or offend you. It is a principle that should be easy for everyone – especially acclaimed writers – to understand.
***
* Tom Gross adds:
Among related dispatches, please scroll down to January 2015, and read these:
* “Je suis Raif Badawi” (& Lebanese writer: “We are all ISIS”)
* Paris terror mentor’s wife lives for free on UK govt benefits (& Muslim saved Jews during supermarket siege)
* The future of free speech?
AYAAN HIRSI ALI SAYS “VOTE CONSERVATIVE”
Only one party will tackle the Islamist threat
David Cameron recognises that Britain faces a battle of ideas, not just of preventing terror
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The Times of London
May 5th, 2015
With the general election two days away, as many as four in ten voters are still undecided. I believe the choice is an easy one. They should vote to keep David Cameron in No 10 because of his determination to tackle the scourge of Islamic extremism in Britain.
Radical Islam is the issue that dare not speak its name in this election. Voters say they regard the NHS, immigration and the economy as the three most important issues facing Britain. Islamic extremism does not even make the top ten. To anyone watching from abroad, this seems bizarre.
For the past 13 years I have been following closely the rise and spread of Islamic extremism in the West. During that time, I have seen the problem grow in the UK. It is a problem personified by Mohammed Emwazi, the murderous Islamic State executioner who grew up in London and has a degree from the University of Westminster. Fusilier Lee Rigby and the aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning are only the best known British victims of the jihadists.
Most western leaders have been thrown into moral confusion by the rise of radical Islam within their own societies. Mr Cameron is an exception. He has been vocal in his call for the acceptance of Muslims as fellow Britons. He has gone out of his way to include Muslims in his cabinet and in other positions of leadership. He has been meticulous in his choice of language, always stressing the point that British Muslims are a part of the fabric of Britain.
But he has also been one of the first western leaders to admit that multiculturalism has failed as a philosophy. Britain is a place of many ethnicities and religions, he has argued, but there is one dominant culture and that is British.
Mr Cameron empowered Michael Gove, then education secretary, to address the so-called Trojan Horse penetration of the Birmingham schools system by Islamic extremists. Mr Cameron also encouraged Theresa May, the home secretary, to make British anti-terror legislation the toughest in Europe. The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act creates a new public duty to prevent people being drawn into terrorism.
On Mr Cameron’s watch, websites promoting Islamic extremism have been targeted and hate preachers kept out or kicked out of the country. The charity commission has also been given new powers to investigate charities with extremist links.
The prime minister has called Islamic extremism “a poisonous ideology” that justifies “the most sickening barbarism and brutality”. If re-elected, he has pledged to come down even harder on those organisations that “stay just within the law but still spread poisonous hatred”.
It takes courage, commitment and leadership to make these hard choices. Contrast this with Ed Miliband, who last month criticised the government’s approach and promised Muslim Newsthat he would make “Islamophobia” an “aggravated crime”. In my experience, the term “Islamophobia” is a ruse to prevent frank discussion of the true nature of Islamic extremism. The disgraced former mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman – who last month was found to have used corrupt and illegal practices – made a habit of accusing his political opponents of Islamophobia.
Voters may not want to face up to it, but Britain has a major fight on its hands to limit the spread of Islamic extremism. Hundreds if not thousands of British citizens have already joined Isis. These young people are not the victims of poverty or social exclusion – they are often from prosperous backgrounds. Their behaviour tells us we are losing the battle for hearts and minds in parts of the British Muslim community.
David Cameron is the first western leader to commit himself to tackling the phenomenon of “non-violent extremism” – the process of proselytisation or dawa whereby Islamists recruit their followers. In other words, the prime minister sees that this is a battle of ideas, and not just a matter of preventing terrorism.
Mr Miliband, by contrast, shows every sign of wanting to turn Britain into France – not only economically, by cranking up welfare spending in the old Labour way, but also socially, by encouraging British Muslims to see themselves as victims of Islamophobia.
For me, the choice is a simple one. On Thursday, Britons can vote for one of the few western leaders who understands that Islamic extremism is to their generation what Nazism was to their grandparents’ generation: a mortal threat to freedom. David Cameron gets it. Ed Miliband doesn’t.