Anna Muzychuk (above, with her medals from last year) forfeited her two World Speed Chess titles by refusing to attend this week’s tournament in Saudi Arabia. She said that she had decided “not to play by someone’s rules, not to wear an abaya, not to be accompanied [as a woman] going outside, and altogether not to feel myself a secondary creature”.
Saudi Arabia has also been criticized for refusing to admit Israeli chess players this week. Many of the world’s greatest chess players have been Jewish, among them several Israelis. (Editorial below from The Washington Post.)
* United Arab Emirates foreign minister tweets: We will never allow Turkey’s Erdogan and his Muslim Brotherhood friends to succeed in their quest to lead the Arab world. He accuses Turkish troops of looting the holy city of Medina a century ago.
Erdogan replies: “Some impertinent man sinks low and goes as far as accusing our ancestors of thievery ... What spoiled this man? He was spoiled by oil, by the money he has.”
* January 2018 issue of leading French-Belgian magazine for children aged 5-8, is recalled from news kiosks after it writes that Israel is “not a real country”. French Jewish leaders criticize magazine for telling a “flagrant lie”. Magazine apologizes.
* Haaretz: Pro-Palestinian Wikipedia editors are criticized for protecting American-Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour by helping her cover up sexual assault claims. (Other Wikipedia entries, for example for Edward Said, also criticized for editors having censored out criticism.)
* Daily Beast: Never before published KGB training manual reveals Soviet intelligence efforts in the Middle East were thwarted by Israel’s unexpected gains in the Six-Day War
SETTING THE HISTORICAL RECORD RIGHT ON CHEMICAL WEAPONS USE
[Note by Tom Gross]
I attach seven articles below on a variety of Middle East-related topics.
Regarding the first one: Over the past four years I have repeatedly criticized the New York Times for its failure to report properly on the continued use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime after the much-praised (by the New York Times) deal by President Obama that was supposed to bring an end to their use. As is the case with many other aspects of the Times’s foreign coverage, efforts to portray the Obama administration as having had a successful foreign policy in recent years (in Burma, Iraq, Cuba, Iran and elsewhere) has led to some highly distorted reporting on many foreign issues.
The New York Times article (below) by Edmond Mulet, the former head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism, is therefore welcome. It admits that there were dozens of uses of chemicals and poison gasses (almost all by the Syrian regime and its Iranian and Hizbullah backers) in the 3-4 years following Obama’s failure to act on his “red line” to stop them in 2013.
You may also wish to see my TV interview and article from April 2017 after President Trump hit Assad’s chemical weapons stockpiles: “Someone had to enforce Obama’s red line”
AN OUTSTANDING PHOTO ESSAY
I also criticized the New York Times, BBC and others several months ago for their failure to properly cover Yemen and the Rohingya crisis. Belatedly, both have now done so, and this photo essay by the New York Times last Sunday is outstanding.
The second article below, from Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, “In the Mideast, Trump Gives Reality a Chance” by Reuel Marc Gerecht (a former CIA operative in Iran, and a longtime subscriber to this Middle East email list) makes a variety of interesting points and covers some of the same ground as my December 6 interview here: Might Trump and Netanyahu oversee the creation of a Palestinian state?
CONTENTS
1. “How the Security Council failed the Syria Chemical Weapons Investigators and Victims” (New York Times, Dec. 29, 2017)
2. “In the Mideast, Trump gives reality a chance” (Wall Street Journal, Dec. 27, 2017)
3. “Turkey will not lead the Arab world, says top UAE diplomat” (Reuters, Dec. 28, 2017)
4. “Never before published KGB training manual reveals Soviet failings in the Mideast” (Haaretz, Dec. 28, 2017)
5. “Letting Saudi Arabia host a chess tournament was a big mistake” (Washington Post, Dec. 29, 2017)
6. “Sex, Lies and Wikipedia: Pro-Palestinian editors accused of protecting Linda Sarsour over harassment claims” (Haaretz, Dec. 27, 2017)
7. “French magazine for children recalls issue after calling Israel not a ‘real country’” (JTA, Dec. 27, 2017)
ARTICLES
HOW THE SECURITY COUNCIL FAILED THE SYRIA CHEMICAL WEAPONS INVESTIGATORS AND VICTIMS
How the Security Council Failed the Syria Chemical Weapons Investigators and Victims
By Edmond Mulet
New York Times
Op-Ed Contributor
Dec. 29, 2017
On Aug. 21, 2013, a Damascus suburb called Ghouta was attacked with sarin gas, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of civilians.
President Barack Obama had warned that the United States would take military action if President Bashar al-Assad of Syria used chemical weapons. The attack on Ghouta crossed Mr. Obama’s “red line,” but he chose coercive diplomacy instead of military action.
Syria acknowledged that it had chemical weapons. The United States and Russia reached a deal in mid-September 2013 under which Syria had to destroy its chemical weapons program.
The Syrian government hurriedly acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention and turned over what it said was its complete chemical weapon arsenal to a team of experts from the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which monitors adherence to the convention.
In mid-August 2014, the organization announced that the destruction of the chemical weapons declared by Syria was complete.
Yet the Syrian government has continued using chemical weapons in Syria. Between December 2015 and last November, the organization recorded 121 alleged incidents. In 2016, it confirmed 23 uses of chemicals as weapons between April 2014 and August 2015; its investigations continue.
The Security Council responded by creating in August 2015 a Joint Investigative Mechanism between the United Nations and the chemical weapons organization to identify perpetrators of these atrocious crimes.
From August 2015 to October 2016, a team of investigators looked into eight cases of the use of chlorine as a chemical weapon and one case involving the use of sulfur mustard. Three attacks were attributed to the Syrian government and one to the Islamic State. The Security Council failed to reach agreement on any consequences for these crimes.
A few weeks after an April 4 sarin gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, which killed approximately 100 and injured at least 200, I accepted the job to lead the investigative team.
Identifying perpetrators of mass atrocities in an active conflict, against a complex political backdrop, especially in cases involving banned chemical weapons, is incredibly difficult.
Sarin, a colorless, odorless liquid nerve agent with extreme potency, had been used in Khan Sheikhoun. Its production and use require advanced technical expertise. Exposure to sarin kills within minutes.
Forensics and chemistry were instrumental in the investigations. A Syrian government aircraft was flying over Khan Sheikhoun at the time of the attack, an aerial chemical bomb was launched over the town, and its residents began dying within minutes.
Investigators collected medical and environmental samples provided by the Syrian government and local groups. It was rigorous work in a laboratory that proved that a sarin precursor known as DF that was used in Khan Sheikhoun was identical to the sarin component produced and stored by the Syrian government. The Syrian government had not declared any stocks missing or stolen.
In another incident, in September 2016, Islamic State militants fired a mortar containing sulfur mustard blistering agent from one of their positions. Two women in the village of Umm Hawsh were seriously sickened when they tried to clean the chemical off their homes. The incident showed that the Islamic State retained the ability to produce and use sulfur mustard.
On Nov. 7, I reported to the Security Council that the investigators had found sufficient evidence to identify the Syrian government as responsible for the use of sarin in Khan Sheikhoun. I also reported that we found evidence that the Islamic State was responsible for the use of sulfur mustard in Umm Hawsh.
Most members of the Security Council voiced strong support for the investigations. Bolivia, China, Egypt, Kazakhstan and Russia questioned the team’s methodology and the outcome of the investigations. Russia and Syria accused me of making political judgments and criticized us as conducting remote investigations.
On Nov. 16, Russia and Bolivia voted against a United States proposal that supported our findings and would have extended the investigators’ mandate for a year. A Russian proposal that would have renewed the mandate for six months but required reopening the investigations did not receive sufficient support to be voted on formally.
The next day Japan proposed a compromise extension of 30 days to buy time to find a way to ensure continuity of our work. Japan’s proposal also asked the United Nations secretary general for ideas on the structure and methodology of my team.
Despite their differences, members of the Security Council agreed that what we were was doing was important and should be continued. Yet again, Russia and Bolivia rejected the Japanese proposal, effectively ending our work.
By Nov. 17, Russia had cast three veto votes to block the Security Council from extending our authorization.
Russia singled me out as “an instrument of the West” and demanded that my team visit the “crime scene,” which is under the control of Qaeda affiliates. Russia also wanted us to collect samples from the Shayrat air base in Syria. The United States hit the air base with missiles after American intelligence found out that the aircraft that dropped sarin gas over the Syrian town had taken off from there. As the air base, which is spread over about four square miles, had been a former storage site for chemical weapons, sampling would not have proved anything.
Despite our rigorous, technical and scientific work, the Joint Investigative Mechanism came to an end on Nov. 17 after the Security Council failed to extend our mandate. These investigations are critical to ensure that those responsible for the use of chemical weapons, a war crime, face their day in court.
Security Council action is equally important to deter any use of chemical weapons in the future. We owe this to the victims, who have yet to see justice and assistance as they cope with the consequences of these prohibited weapons. The international community has a moral responsibility to act and ensure that their use is stopped forever.
IN THE MIDEAST, TRUMP GIVES REALITY A CHANCE
In the Mideast, Trump Gives Reality a Chance
The first step toward peace is to stop indulging the Palestinians’ fantasies of destroying Israel.
By Reuel Marc Gerecht
Wall Street Journal
Dec. 27, 2017
A lot of people are in a funk over President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The liberal media, most former government officials who’ve dealt with the Israeli–Palestinian imbroglio, and just about everyone at the United Nations appear certain that the decision had a lot to do with Mr. Trump’s disruptive nature, the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Evangelical Christians and pro-Israel Republican donors.
It’s possible that his decision was based instead on an old-fashioned understanding of the way the world works, one that would be familiar to Middle Easterners: There are winners and losers in every conflict, and Palestinians have decisively lost in their struggle with the Jews of the Holy Land. Diplomacy based on denying reality isn’t helpful.
This view runs smack into the tenets of contemporary conflict resolution, in which diplomacy tries to make losers feels like winners, so that unpleasant compromises, at least in theory, will be easier to swallow. It alleviates the guilt of a Westernized people triumphing over Arabs that has made many in Europe and even the U.S. uncomfortable with Israeli superiority. It also runs counter to an assumption held widely among Western political elites – to wit, quoting the current French ambassador to the U.N.: “Israel is the key to peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.” Israelis, in this view, must make the big compromises.
The truth is surely the opposite. Recognizing the extent and irreversibility of Palestinian defeat is the first step in the long process of salvaging Palestinian society from its paralyzing morass. Far too many Palestinians still want to pretend they haven’t lost, that the “right of return” and Jerusalem’s unsettled status give hope that the gradual erosion of Israel is still possible. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas tapped a common theme among Palestinians in his recent oration before the Organization of Islamic Cooperation when he complained that Jews “are really excellent in faking and counterfeiting history and religion.”
The biggest problem the Palestinians have is that the Israelis don’t trust them, and the Israelis cannot be ignored, sidestepped, bullied, bombed or boycotted out of eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank. Fatah, the lead organization of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the muscle behind the Palestinian Authority, has often acted publicly as if the Israelis weren’t the foreigners who truly mattered, appealing to Europeans, Russians and Americans to intercede on its behalf. Americans and Europeans have consistently encouraged this reflex by stressing their own role in resolving the conflict, usually by suggesting that they would cajole or push Israelis toward Palestinian positions.
For the Israelis, this has seemed a surreal stage play. The Fatah leadership is well aware that only the Israeli security services have kept the West Bank from going the way of the Gaza Strip, where Fatah’s vastly better-armed forces were easily overwhelmed by Hamas in 2007. Fatah’s secular police state – and that is what the Palestinian Authority is – has proved, so far, no match for Hamas.
Western diplomacy has failed abysmally to recognize the profound split between Palestinian fundamentalists and secularists and played wistfully to the hope that a deeply corrupt Fatah oligarchy could conclude a permanent peace accord with Israel. This delusion’s concomitant bet: Such a deal would terminally weaken Hamas, since the secularists would have finally brought home the mutton.
The most important point, however, is always ignored. Competent, transparent, nonviolent Palestinian governance is the only chance Palestinian society has of escaping the fundamentalist critique that has undermined oligarchs across the Arab world. Fearful of playing the imperialists and keenly aware of the efficiency of having a police state as a partner, Americans, Europeans and Israelis have failed to use the leverage of financial aid to set standards for Palestinian governance on the West Bank and in Gaza.
Palestinian Muslims are no different than other Muslim Arabs. Religious militancy has grown astronomically over the past 40 years as the ruling secular elites have calcified into corrupt, hypocritical, heavy-handed autocracies. Westerners have not dealt with this well, since it defies the top-down approach inherit in diplomacy – and also because fundamentalists terrify them. Yet the past ought to tell Americans and Europeans that a two-state solution to the Israel–Palestinian clash isn’t going to happen before Palestinians reconcile in a functioning democracy that doesn’t scare their Jewish neighbors. The overwhelming burden here is upon the Palestinians.
The most valuable American contribution to the peace process, so far only episodically delivered, is to remind the Palestinians that they first have to get their own house in order and the Israelis that they have to care about how Palestinians treat their own. Too often, the Israelis have viewed the Palestinians – and Arab Muslims in general – as the ineducable “other,” who is best left to his own rules so long as Israelis aren’t killed. Any Israeli effort to control Palestinian-on-Palestinian abuse will surely be met with a hail-storm of censure from the West. But the Israelis ought to take a longer view. Barrier or no barrier, they are going to live with the Palestinians forever. Israel should certainly want to correct its enormous mistake of allowing Yasser Arafat, the father of Palestinian nationalism, to import his thugocracy into the West Bank and Gaza.
Most Arabs have adjusted, however reluctantly, to the permanence of Zion. They did so four decades ago when Egypt, slowly collapsing under its own military dictatorship, checked out of the war. Americans, Europeans and Israelis – not “the Arabs” – are primarily responsible for elongating the big Palestinian delusions about the “right of return” and a sovereign East Jerusalem. It’s way past time they stopped. Mr. Trump’s decision, whatever the motivation, is a step forward.
TURKEY WILL NOT LEAD THE ARAB WORLD, SAYS TOP UAE DIPLOMAT
Turkey Will Not Lead the Arab World, Says Top UAE Diplomat
By Reuters
December 28, 2017
A senior UAE diplomat said on Wednesday the Arab world would not be led by Turkey, the Gulf State’s first comment on Ankara since a quarrel broke out last week over a retweet by the Emirati foreign minister that President Tayyip Erdogan called an insult.
Anwar Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates, said there was a need for Arab countries to rally around the “Arab axis” of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
“The sectarian and partisan view is not an acceptable alternative, and the Arab world will not be led by Tehran or Ankara,” he wrote on his official Twitter page.
Last week, Turkey summoned the charge d’affaires at the UAE embassy in Ankara, after UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan shared a tweet that accused Turkish troops of looting the holy city of Medina a century ago.
Erdogan himself lashed out: “Some impertinent man sinks low and goes as far as accusing our ancestors of thievery ... What spoiled this man? He was spoiled by oil, by the money he has,” the Turkish leader said at an awards ceremony.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu newspaper reported on Saturday that Turkey planned to rename the street where the UAE embassy is located in Ankara after Fakhreddin Pasha, the commander of the Ottoman Turkish troops at Medina in 1916. Medina, the holiest site in Islam after Mecca, is now in Saudi Arabia.
The UAE sees itself as a bulwark against political forms of Islam, and views Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted ruling AK party as a supporter of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which it opposes.
NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED: KGB TRAINING MANUAL REVEALS SOVIET FAILINGS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Never before published KGB training manual reveals Soviet Failings in the Middle East
Soviet intelligence efforts in the late 20th century for influence in the region were thwarted by Israel’s unexpected gains in the Six-Day War, document acquired by The Daily Beast shows
Haaretz
December 28, 2017
A trove of never-before-published documents belonging to the KGB, the Soviet Union’s main security agency, reveals the organization’s self-assessed failings of its intelligence efforts in the late 20th century Middle East, including during Israel’s wars in 1967 and 1973.
The document “Acquisition and Preparation,” acquired by The Daily Beast, is part of a KGB training manual. It can be read, according to the report, as an “epitaph on KGB penetration of Arab nations published less than a year before the Wall came down and the Cold War receded.”
It’s these losses, the report finds, that Russian president Vladamir Putin has set out to rectify “with a vengeance” in his current foreign policy efforts in the region. Putin served as an operative in the KGB from 1975 to 1991.
More specifically, the document examines manpower and tradecraft necessary to recruit American officials as spies in a time when U.S. counterintelligence was undergoing a period of increased aptitude.
Soviet efforts vying for influence in the region were thwarted, the documents show, by the Six-Day War. As the dominant weapons-supplier to Egypt, the Soviets “failed badly” to anticipate Israel’s overwhelming gains in 1967. But thanks to improved intelligence, the Soviets proved far more prepared in 1973 when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur. “Washington was caught blind, deaf and dumb,” in that war, the report reads, but Moscow was not.
The report notes, however, that what was celebrated as a Soviet gain in 1973 became the rise of Henry Kissinger to the position of U.S. diplomatic power broker in the region, an unintended consequence of the war that sped up the decline of Soviet influence in Egypt and the Middle East.
The KGB document also went on to highlight, says the report, one successful recruit within the inner circle of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sami Sharaf. However, the CIA knew of Sharaf’s identity as a Moscow spy, then employing its own mole in Moscow. Not long after Sadat set out to arrest Sharaf and other pro-Soviet plotters, known collectively as the “crocodiles,” he pivoted toward Jimmy Carter’s favor and flew to Tel Aviv for his now-famous gesture of peace.
Clichés on the part of Soviet intelligence, such as stereotyping Arab actors as merely looking to snag a sweet deal, were just one of the errors that led to the Soviet Union’s decline not only in the Middle East and ultimately its collapse, reporter Michael Weiss claimed.
LETTING SAUDI ARABIA HOST A CHESS TOURNAMENT WAS A BIG MISTAKE
Letting Saudi Arabia host a chess tournament was a big mistake
Washington Post staff editorial
December 29, 2017
When a chess tournament opened in Saudi Arabia this week, the World Chess Federation said in a statement that it “has been working very hard and in a discreet manner to organise and safeguard the process of entry visas for all participants of the event.” The games are a “vehicle for promoting peace and development of friendship amongst all nations,” the statement said, adding that the federation and the Saudi organizers “are always ready to welcome any participant.” But as the games got underway Tuesday, those statements proved hollow. Saudi Arabia refused to give visas to seven Israelis to participate.
The reason for excluding them, a Saudi spokeswoman said, is that the kingdom and Israel do not have diplomatic relations. This is a flimsy pretext; the two countries do in fact have informal contacts and increasingly share a hostility toward Iran. The kingdom evidently would rather have secret contacts with Israel than welcome seven chess players to an open tournament. Rubbing salt into the wound, the federation and the kingdom issued an obsequious news release pledging to admit players from Qatar and Iran, both increasingly at odds with Saudi Arabia.
For seven decades, the Arab world has wished Israel would fall into the sea or be driven there. The Jewish state has not and will not. If Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is truly committed to rejuvenation of the kingdom, as he claims to be, then he might discard some of the calcified thinking of his forebears. His attempts to diversify Saudi Arabia away from dependence on oil, to permit women the right to drive, to allow public cinemas, to crack down on corruption and to pursue other initiatives all point toward a young leader capable of jettisoning an outdated mind-set at home.
The crown prince’s more open-minded instincts were reflected in a Nov. 14 statement about the planned tournament, which said of the dress code for female participants: “There will be no need to wear a hijab or abaya during the games, this will be a first for any sporting event in Saudi Arabia.” The sponsors proposed that men wear dark suits and white shirts, and women “dark blue or black formal trouser suits, with high necked white blouses.”
Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine, who holds world champion titles in two types of speed chess being played this week, nonetheless chose not to defend her titles in Saudi Arabia, because of the kingdom’s broader restrictions on women’s rights: “Not to play by someone’s rules, not to wear abaya, not to be accompanied getting outside, and altogether not to feel myself a secondary creature,” she declared.
She could have added: not to take part in a tournament from which legitimate contestants are excluded. If a nation cannot welcome everyone, it should not be given the honor of hosting a world tournament.
SEX, LIES AND WIKIPEDIA: PRO-PALESTINIAN EDITORS ACCUSED OF PROTECTING LINDA SARSOUR OVER HARASSMENT CLAIMS
Sex, Lies and Wikipedia: Pro-Palestinian Editors Accused of Protecting Linda Sarsour Over Harassment Claims
Allegations that the American-Palestinian activist enabled sexual assault have repeatedly been deleted from her Wikipedia page, raising claims that some editors are inserting the Israel-Palestine issue into an unrelated matter
By Omer Benjakob
Haaretz
Dec 27, 2017
The recent allegations that American-Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour rejected a female colleague’s accusations of sexual harassment in the workplace has led to suggestions that pro-Palestinian editors at Wikipedia are keeping the story off Sarsour’s page in order to defend her public image.
On December 17, a website called The Daily Caller first reported that Sarsour had been accused of “enabling the alleged sexual assault and harassment of a woman [Asmi Fathelbab] who worked for the feminist activist” at the Arab American Association of New York in 2009. Donald Trump Jr. retweeted the story the following day, presumably only-too-happy to shine a negative light on the woman Politico has described as the “face of the resistance to Donald Trump.” Sarsour herself rejected the accusations, telling Buzzfeed, “This is character assassination. This is where we have to draw the line.”
Though it is common for political disputes to play out on Wikipedia – for example, pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian editors fighting over contentious topics like Jerusalem’s status – Sarsour’s case highlights how the Israel-Palestine issue can sometimes trump other important ones.
After an Israeli editor called Icewhiz edited Sarsour’s Wikipedia page to include the allegations (Fathelbab related that Sarsour had dismissed her harassment accusation because the accused was a “good Muslim” who was “always at the Mosque”), a Turkish editor called Seraphim Systemdeleted Icewhiz’s edit, claiming it was “unsuitable” for the Sarsour article. When Icewhiz attempted to reintroduce his content, his entry was again deleted.
This is not the first time these two editors have crossed paths. A review of their respective contributions to Wikipedia reveals a long-standing political feud that has played out on articles for Israel, Turkey, Jerusalem and even “Israel and the apartheid analogy.” Their history set the tone for the debate that ensued.
When another pro-Israel editor again added a new paragraph about Sarsour and the allegations (including her denial to Buzzfeed), a full edit war broke out. More pro-Palestinian editors joined the fray, fighting the attempts to integrate what they described as defamatory content to the Sarsour article.
However, intersectionality and Sarsour’s dedication to feminist causes left those arguing her corner having to explain why the allegations were not deemed “Wikipedia-worthy.”
“These allegations are widely reported by several reliable sources. Our usual policy (exercised recently quite frequently with the #MeToo revelations) with public figures is to include such allegations when they are made publicly and reported, qualifying that said allegations are allegations – not fact,” one editor wrote on Sarsour’s “Talk page” – a forum page linked to every Wikipedia article where editors are expected to discuss changes in a civil manner.
Seraphim System pushed back, seeking to undermine both the sources reporting the claims against Sarsour and the allegations themselves: “The sourcing is not very good (Fox News, Buzzfeed and the Daily Caller). It is only one person [Fathelbab] who says Sarsour didn’t believe her. It is only gossip – just because reliable sources report something, that does not mean it is suitable for Wikipedia.”
“This is certainly relevant given her outspokenness on women’s issues,” the second pro-Israeli editor retorted. I “concur that this material belongs in article [sic] because of her self presentation as an outspoken feminist,” wrote a third pro-Israeli editor, called E.M. Gregory.
The debate soon escalated out of control, with both sides accusing the other of hypocrisy. “Whaw. Just whaw. I haven’t seen worse hypocrisy or double standards for years. Yes, I’m looking at you, Icewhiz, and you E.M. Gregory: Recall [the debate] over the Elie Wiesel molestation allegations?” wrote Huldra, a female editor who has contributed to articles related to the Palestinians.
“My opinion about including/not including this here is the same as in the Wiesel case: Unless there are several other instances, this stays out of the article,” she wrote.
“Why not? All the #MeToo allegations, even if denied, were added in Wiki,” the second pro-Israeli editor responded, attempting to see the content returned to the article.
Huldra then seemed to suggest a problematic compromise: If the allegations against Sarsour are to be published in Wikipedia, then the community of editors should also add the allegations against Wiesel. “Make your choice,” she wrote, deleting the allegations to the article again and demandingthat anyone wanting to add them should first file an arbitration request with Wikipedia calls a “Request for comment.”
The deft usage of Wikipedia guidelines and procedures are part and parcel of Wikipedia’s collective-editing process. However, in Sarsour’s case, there are a number of instances where seemingly pro-Sarsour editors are making use of Wikipedia’s rules to defend her personally rather than the actual content being debated. Moreover, one contributor tells Haaretz, it seems that at least two of these editors are using their Wikipedia status to defend the Sarsour article for non-encyclopedic purposes.
ABUSE OF POWER?
The main contributor to the Sarsour article is an editor called Sangdeboeuf, who also enjoys quite a senior status on Wikipedia, where they are frequently involved in policy debates. Judging by their past edits, Sangdeboeuf’s interest are mostly progressive issues that veer toward the left side of identity politics – most recently editing pages like male privilege.
Sangdeboeuf was extremely active in defending Sarsour from the allegations, writing: “I don’t think anyone’s disputing that the allegations were made. But saying that they have therefore been verified and corroborated is frankly laughable.”
However, as the debate escalated, some of Sangdeboeuf’s actions started raising eyebrows. For example, although deleting another person’s edits is customary on articles, it is not customary on the “Talk page.” Yet there are at least five instances where Sangdeboeuf edited the debate itself. For example, while the debate was labeled “Alleged enabling of sexual assault and harassment,” Sangdeboeuf renamed it “Asmi Fathelbab allegations,” shifting the onus from Sarsour to the accuser.
In the most problematic example, Sangdeboeuf and two other editors from the pro-Sarsour camp seemed to use their Wikipedia status to lock Sarsour’s page for editing, due to what one of them called “disruptive editing” – a move that ignores the content of the allegations and the claims made by other editors.
While all issues pertaining to Israel and the Palestinians are locked to public editing due to their contentious nature, this debate and the manner Wikipedia’s rules were used to block negative content from being added highlights how, for some editors, you can’t be both feminist and Zionist – at least when it comes to Linda Sarsour.
FRENCH MAGAZINE FOR CHILDREN RECALLS ISSUE AFTER CALLING ISRAEL NOT A ‘REAL COUNTRY’
French Magazine for Children Recalls Issue After Calling Israel Not a ‘Real Country’
JTA
December 27, 2017
The January [2018] issue of Youpi is being removed from Kiosks with an apology over what they said ‘clearly never intended to cast into doubt Israel’s existence’
A French children’s magazine has been withdrawn from newsstands after it admitted a “mistake” in writing that Israel wasn’t a “real country.”
The news editor for Youpi, a magazine for children from 5 to 8, told The Associated Press on Tuesday the January issue was being removed from kiosk sales in France and Belgium after writing that Israel was among a few states in the world that aren’t “real countries.”
The magazine for children features trivia game cards stating that Israel and North Korea are not real countries.
The cards that appeared in the January 2018 edition of the Youpi magazine, which belongs to the Groupe Bayard publishing house, read: “197: We call these 197 countries states, like France, Germany or Algeria. There are others, too, but not all the world’s countries agree that all of them are real countries (for example the State of Israel or North Korea).”
CRIF, the federation of Jewish communities and organizations of France, protested the publication of the cards. Francis Kalifat, the president of CRIF, called the cards, intended for children aged 5-10, a “factual lie and a flagrant one at that.”
Pascal Ruffenach, the president of the Bayard publishing house, which was founded in the 19th century, said in a statement that his establishment “clearly never intended to cast into doubt Israel’s existence,” saying the card in question was an “error.”
The publishing house said it will recall the magazines and pulp the cards in question.
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
The official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida depicts US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley as a vulture in this cartoon yesterday. The US is the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority in the world. Much of the Palestinian media is paid for with European government and NGO funds
AS MILLIONS OF YEMENIS ON BRINK OF DEATH, YEMEN REGIME LEADS THE WAY TO CONDEMN ISRAEL
[Notes below by Tom Gross]
This dispatch concerns yesterday’s UN vote against the US and Israel.
The vote was co-sponsored by the governments of Turkey (the world’s leading jailer of journalists, and a brutal oppressor of millions of Kurds and other minorities) and Yemen (where the world’s largest man-made humanitarian disaster is unfolding, with millions on the brink of death).
CNN GETS IT RIGHTS
It is worth watching this this short video broadcast earlier this evening by CNN’s Jake Tapper:
Tapper reiterates many of the points I, and others, have made about the UN over the years, for example, here:
* The speakers were never meant to live and tell their stories
“THE UNITED STATES WILL REMEMBER THIS DAY”
The US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said in a speech ahead of the UN vote yesterday:
“The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations. And we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.
America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. That is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that.”
(Full text further down this dispatch.)
BILLIONS OF AID MAY BE REPATRIATED TO HELP US CITIZENS
Nine of the top 10 governments receiving US aid (they collectively receive many billions of US taxpayers money every year) voted against the US yesterday:
Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia.
So far, the Trump administration has carried through with quite a number of its threats and pledges, so it seems possible, or even likely, that some of these governments’ aid packages may be reduced in future.
This is especially so since a number of these governments are themselves highly corrupt, and much US aid ends up being pocketed by government officials.
LESS OPPOSITION TO THE US ON ISRAEL THAN UNDER PAST PRESIDENTS
Despite the New York Times headlining in its “breaking news email” yesterday that the UN vote was a “stinging rebuke” to Trump, in fact less countries opposed the Israel/US position at the UN yesterday than has been the case under the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies.
To take one example: In the UN General Assembly resolution on Jerusalem on December 1, 2000, 145 members voted to condemn Israeli moves in its capital, with only Israel’s lonely vote against, and just five abstentions, including the United States (under the Clinton administration).
In yesterday’s vote “only” 128 denied that Jerusalem was Israel’s capital, 9 said it was, 35 abstained, and many more didn’t even turn up.
EU SPLIT, DISAPPOINTMENT ABOUT UK IN WASHINGTON
Breaking with past votes, several European Union countries defied the French-British foreign office led anti-Israel European stance and refused to vote to condemn Israel and the US at yesterday’s vote.
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Romania, Croatia and Poland did not join other EU countries in voting against Israel.
ARGENTINA, SEVERAL AFRICAN STATES, NO LONGER CONDEMN ISRAEL
Other countries that previously condemned Israel but refused to do so yesterday and instead abstained included Argentina, and a number of African and Caribbean countries (Israel still has rescue workers in Haiti). Togo voted with the US and Israel.
(For more on warming African ties with Israel, see:
African countries (including Muslim ones) significantly strengthen ties with Israel (& an amusing speech))
It has been noted by some commentators in Washington that Britain, which hopes to have particularly favorable ties with the US post-Brexit, voted against the US yesterday.
And some pro-Israel commentators in Britain said it probably would not have made a difference had Jeremy Corbyn been foreign secretary rather than Boris Johnson.
(It seems that British Prime Minister Theresa May may have been too weak/preoccupied to overrule the traditionally anti-Israel, and occasionally anti-Semitic -- item 13 here for example -- British Foreign Office.)
HAARETZ: THE UN WOULD HAVE CONDEMNED ISRAEL EVEN IF IT DECIDED TO MAKE TEL AVIV ITS CAPITAL
To my knowledge, the UN has never voted in the past about recognizing where a country’s capital should or should not be.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the UN a “house of lies” and added that “the State of Israel rejects this vote outright” and that “Jerusalem is our capital, we will continue to build there and additional embassies will move to Jerusalem.”
In any event, even the anti-Netanyahu, anti-Trump Israeli left-wing paper Haaretz noted that “the General Assembly would have voted in similar numbers for any anti-Israel resolution, even if it decided to make Tel Aviv or Crown Heights [in Brooklyn] its capital instead.”
CRITICISM IN INDIA
India didn’t abstain, but voted against the US.
There has been criticism by Indians of their government for this. The Times of India reports, for example, that BJP party MP Subramanian Swamy said India made “a huge mistake” and had voted against its national interest yesterday, because “Palestine has never supported India on the Kashmir question” while Israel “has stood with India always.”
He added that West Jerusalem belongs to Israel, so he sees nothing wrong with the US or India now moving their embassies there.
BAHRAIN BREAKS RANKS
Bahrain appears to be unhappy with the hardline attitude of the Palestinians and some Arab states on the Jerusalem issue.
The Bahraini Foreign Minister Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa said that “it’s not helpful to pick a fight with the US over side issues while we together fight the clear and present danger of the Theo-Fascist Islamic Republic [of Iran].”
(For more on Bahrain, see past dispatches, including the most recent one about a Bahraini delegation visiting Israel this month. Second item here.)
FULL TEXT: NIKKI HALEY’S SPEECH AHEAD OF UN VOTE ON TRUMP’S RECOGNITION OF JERUSALEM
(December 21, 2017, at UN Headquarters in New York)
Thank you, Mr. President.
To its shame, the United Nations has long been a hostile place for the state of Israel. Both the current and the previous Secretary-Generals have objected to the UN’s disproportionate focus on Israel. It’s a wrong that undermines the credibility of this institution, and that in turn is harmful for the entire world.
I’ve often wondered why, in the face of such hostility, Israel has chosen to remain a member of this body. And then I remember that Israel has chosen to remain in this institution because it’s important to stand up for yourself. Israel must stand up for its own survival as a nation; but it also stands up for the ideals of freedom and human dignity that the United Nations is supposed to be about.
Standing here today, being forced to defend sovereignty and the integrity of my country – the United States of America – many of the same thoughts have come to mind. The United States is by far the single largest contributor to the United Nations and its agencies. We do this, in part, in order to advance our values and our interests. When that happens, our participation in the UN produces great good for the world. Together we feed, clothe, and educate desperate people. We nurture and sustain fragile peace in conflict areas throughout the world. And we hold outlaw regimes accountable. We do this because it represents who we are. It is our American way.
But we’ll be honest with you. When we make generous contributions to the UN, we also have a legitimate expectation that our good will is recognized and respected. When a nation is singled out for attack in this organization, that nation is disrespected. What’s more, that nation is asked to pay for the “privilege” of being disrespected.
In the case of the United States, we are asked to pay more than anyone else for that dubious privilege. Unlike in some UN member countries, the United States government is answerable to its people. As such, we have an obligation to acknowledge when our political and financial capital is being poorly spent.
We have an obligation to demand more for our investment. And if our investment fails, we have an obligation to spend our resources in more productive ways. Those are the thoughts that come to mind when we consider the resolution before us today.
The arguments about the President’s decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem have already been made. They are by now well known. The decision was in accordance to U.S. law dating back to 1995, and it’s position has been repeatedly endorsed by the American people ever since. The decision does not prejudge any final status issues, including Jerusalem’s boundaries. The decision does not preclude a two-state solution, if the parties agree to that. The decision does nothing to harm peace efforts. Rather, the President’s decision reflects the will of the American people and our right as a nation to choose the location of our embassy. There is no need to describe it further.
Instead, there is a larger point to make. The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations. And we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.
America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. That is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that.
But this vote will make a difference on how Americans look at the UN and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN. And this vote will be remembered.
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
The official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida depicts US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley as a vulture in this cartoon yesterday. The US is the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority in the world. Much of the Palestinian media is paid for with European government and NGO funds
AS MILLIONS OF YEMENIS ON BRINK OF DEATH, YEMEN REGIME LEADS THE WAY TO CONDEMN ISRAEL
[Notes below by Tom Gross]
This dispatch concerns yesterday’s UN vote against the US and Israel.
The vote was co-sponsored by the governments of Turkey (the world’s leading jailer of journalists, and a brutal oppressor of millions of Kurds and other minorities) and Yemen (where the world’s largest man-made humanitarian disaster is unfolding, with millions on the brink of death).
CNN GETS IT RIGHTS
It is worth watching this this short video broadcast earlier this evening by CNN’s Jake Tapper:
Tapper reiterates many of the points I, and others, have made about the UN over the years, for example, here:
* The speakers were never meant to live and tell their stories
“THE UNITED STATES WILL REMEMBER THIS DAY”
The US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said in a speech ahead of the UN vote yesterday:
“The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations. And we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.
America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. That is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that.”
(Full text further down this dispatch.)
BILLIONS OF AID MAY BE REPATRIATED TO HELP US CITIZENS
Nine of the top 10 governments receiving US aid (they collectively receive many billions of US taxpayers money every year) voted against the US yesterday:
Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia.
So far, the Trump administration has carried through with quite a number of its threats and pledges, so it seems possible, or even likely, that some of these governments’ aid packages may be reduced in future.
This is especially so since a number of these governments are themselves highly corrupt, and much US aid ends up being pocketed by government officials.
LESS OPPOSITION TO THE US ON ISRAEL THAN UNDER PAST PRESIDENTS
Despite the New York Times headlining in its “breaking news email” yesterday that the UN vote was a “stinging rebuke” to Trump, in fact less countries opposed the Israel/US position at the UN yesterday than has been the case under the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies.
To take one example: In the UN General Assembly resolution on Jerusalem on December 1, 2000, 145 members voted to condemn Israeli moves in its capital, with only Israel’s lonely vote against, and just five abstentions, including the United States (under the Clinton administration).
In yesterday’s vote “only” 128 denied that Jerusalem was Israel’s capital, 9 said it was, 35 abstained, and many more didn’t even turn up.
EU SPLIT, DISAPPOINTMENT ABOUT UK IN WASHINGTON
Breaking with past votes, several European Union countries defied the French-British foreign office led anti-Israel European stance and refused to vote to condemn Israel and the US at yesterday’s vote.
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Romania, Croatia and Poland did not join other EU countries in voting against Israel.
ARGENTINA, SEVERAL AFRICAN STATES, NO LONGER CONDEMN ISRAEL
Other countries that previously condemned Israel but refused to do so yesterday and instead abstained included Argentina, and a number of African and Caribbean countries (Israel still has rescue workers in Haiti). Togo voted with the US and Israel.
(For more on warming African ties with Israel, see:
African countries (including Muslim ones) significantly strengthen ties with Israel (& an amusing speech))
It has been noted by some commentators in Washington that Britain, which hopes to have particularly favorable ties with the US post-Brexit, voted against the US yesterday.
And some pro-Israel commentators in Britain said it probably would not have made a difference had Jeremy Corbyn been foreign secretary rather than Boris Johnson.
(It seems that British Prime Minister Theresa May may have been too weak/preoccupied to overrule the traditionally anti-Israel, and occasionally anti-Semitic -- item 13 here for example -- British Foreign Office.)
HAARETZ: THE UN WOULD HAVE CONDEMNED ISRAEL EVEN IF IT DECIDED TO MAKE TEL AVIV ITS CAPITAL
To my knowledge, the UN has never voted in the past about recognizing where a country’s capital should or should not be.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the UN a “house of lies” and added that “the State of Israel rejects this vote outright” and that “Jerusalem is our capital, we will continue to build there and additional embassies will move to Jerusalem.”
In any event, even the anti-Netanyahu, anti-Trump Israeli left-wing paper Haaretz noted that “the General Assembly would have voted in similar numbers for any anti-Israel resolution, even if it decided to make Tel Aviv or Crown Heights [in Brooklyn] its capital instead.”
CRITICISM IN INDIA
India didn’t abstain, but voted against the US.
There has been criticism by Indians of their government for this. The Times of India reports, for example, that BJP party MP Subramanian Swamy said India made “a huge mistake” and had voted against its national interest yesterday, because “Palestine has never supported India on the Kashmir question” while Israel “has stood with India always.”
He added that West Jerusalem belongs to Israel, so he sees nothing wrong with the US or India now moving their embassies there.
BAHRAIN BREAKS RANKS
Bahrain appears to be unhappy with the hardline attitude of the Palestinians and some Arab states on the Jerusalem issue.
The Bahraini Foreign Minister Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa said that “it’s not helpful to pick a fight with the US over side issues while we together fight the clear and present danger of the Theo-Fascist Islamic Republic [of Iran].”
(For more on Bahrain, see past dispatches, including the most recent one about a Bahraini delegation visiting Israel this month. Second item here.)
FULL TEXT: NIKKI HALEY’S SPEECH AHEAD OF UN VOTE ON TRUMP’S RECOGNITION OF JERUSALEM
(December 21, 2017, at UN Headquarters in New York)
Thank you, Mr. President.
To its shame, the United Nations has long been a hostile place for the state of Israel. Both the current and the previous Secretary-Generals have objected to the UN’s disproportionate focus on Israel. It’s a wrong that undermines the credibility of this institution, and that in turn is harmful for the entire world.
I’ve often wondered why, in the face of such hostility, Israel has chosen to remain a member of this body. And then I remember that Israel has chosen to remain in this institution because it’s important to stand up for yourself. Israel must stand up for its own survival as a nation; but it also stands up for the ideals of freedom and human dignity that the United Nations is supposed to be about.
Standing here today, being forced to defend sovereignty and the integrity of my country – the United States of America – many of the same thoughts have come to mind. The United States is by far the single largest contributor to the United Nations and its agencies. We do this, in part, in order to advance our values and our interests. When that happens, our participation in the UN produces great good for the world. Together we feed, clothe, and educate desperate people. We nurture and sustain fragile peace in conflict areas throughout the world. And we hold outlaw regimes accountable. We do this because it represents who we are. It is our American way.
But we’ll be honest with you. When we make generous contributions to the UN, we also have a legitimate expectation that our good will is recognized and respected. When a nation is singled out for attack in this organization, that nation is disrespected. What’s more, that nation is asked to pay for the “privilege” of being disrespected.
In the case of the United States, we are asked to pay more than anyone else for that dubious privilege. Unlike in some UN member countries, the United States government is answerable to its people. As such, we have an obligation to acknowledge when our political and financial capital is being poorly spent.
We have an obligation to demand more for our investment. And if our investment fails, we have an obligation to spend our resources in more productive ways. Those are the thoughts that come to mind when we consider the resolution before us today.
The arguments about the President’s decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem have already been made. They are by now well known. The decision was in accordance to U.S. law dating back to 1995, and it’s position has been repeatedly endorsed by the American people ever since. The decision does not prejudge any final status issues, including Jerusalem’s boundaries. The decision does not preclude a two-state solution, if the parties agree to that. The decision does nothing to harm peace efforts. Rather, the President’s decision reflects the will of the American people and our right as a nation to choose the location of our embassy. There is no need to describe it further.
Instead, there is a larger point to make. The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations. And we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.
America will put our embassy in Jerusalem. That is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on that.
But this vote will make a difference on how Americans look at the UN and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN. And this vote will be remembered.
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
While hardly a day goes by without more anti-Semitism coming to light among Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters in the British Labour party, the Conservative prime minister Theresa May lit the 10 Downing Street Chanukiah (Menorah) to celebrate the first night of Chanukah on Tuesday, in solidarity with Britain’s Jewish community. (Photo from the Downing street’s Facebook page here.
She was one of a number of presidents and prime ministers throughout Europe who made similar gestures this week at a time of rising anti-Semitism on the continent.
Photo below: part of a trail of anti-Semitic graffiti stretching 400 meters along a canal towpath popular with joggers in London, England, between Paddington and Scrubs Lane.
BAHRAINIS IN ISRAEL, THIS WEEK
Despite the impression that some western media have sought to give that there have been widespread protests against President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the protests have for the most part been smaller than demonstrations that usually take place every week on all kinds of issues in the Arab world. (Indeed some journalists have privately admitted that there have been more western journalists and photographers present at some of the demonstrations about Jerusalem than there were actual demonstrators.)
Meanwhile, international media have hardly covered the thawing relations between some Arab countries and Israel since Trump’s announcement.
Photo above: a Bahraini delegation sent by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa to visit Israel this week. “We the members of the ‘This is Bahrain’ group were sent by the king with a message of peace to the whole world,” a Shiite cleric on the trip told an Israeli TV station.
Officially Bahrain has no diplomatic relations with Israel but ties, which have existed for some years, have begun to be made more public recently.
As I have previously reported, WikiLeaks revealed, among other things, that the then foreign ministers of Israel and Bahrain held talks in New York arranged by the Bush administration in 2007.
***
(My most recent interview on the current prospects for Arab-Israeli peace is here.)
AFTER THE LATEST MOLOTOV COCKTAIL ATTACK ON A HANUKKAH PARTY IN SWEDEN, THE NY TIMES FINALLY TAKES NOTE
[Note by Tom Gross]
For years, this dispatch list has highlighted anti-Semitic attacks in Sweden, and also criticized international media, including the New York Times, for providing a false impression that Sweden was a tolerant place and attacks there were merely part of a critique of Israel.
Several Swedish journalist friends of mine who subscribe to this list, including Paulina Neuding, a columnist for the dailies Svenska Dagbladet and Goteborgs-Posten, have helped supply me with information for those dispatches.
Today, the New York Times has finally run a powerful piece on contemporary Swedish anti-Semitism by Neuding, which I attach below.
After that I attach another article, from the London Daily Telegraph last year, about the actor who plays Danish detective Martin Rohde, who in real life is Jewish, leaving fans devastated after he quit the third season of the cult Danish-Swedish drama “The Bridge”. He cited anti-Semitism in the Swedish city of Malmo, where the series is filmed, telling Israeli media he feared for his safety and couldn’t take it anymore.
***
Among many previous dispatches on Sweden on this list:
* In one of three dispatches on Sweden in January 2004, I noted Sweden’s Museum of National Antiquities had put up posters in 26 Stockholm subway stations glorifying Islamic Jihad suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat who murdered 21 people (including children and Israeli Arabs as well as Jews) in a 2003 bombing at a restaurant in Haifa.
* In the 2009 dispatch “Riots as Israel plays tennis match in Sweden” I pointed out at that these attacks were being stoked by politicians and media. Sweden’s Left Party leader Lars Ohly told the rioting crowd that “Europe and the whole world should boycott the racist regime in Israel.”
* A few weeks ago this dispatch highlighted the march in the Swedish city of Gothenburg by over 600 black-clad neo-Nazis, who aimed to attack the city’s main synagogue, as the city’s tiny Jewish community prayed inside during Yom Kippur.
DUTCH JEWS DENOUNCE FORMER PRIME MINISTER’S ANTI-SEMITISM
The official body of Dutch Jewish groups has issued a statement that for the first time explicitly called former prime minister Dries van Agt, anti-Semitic.
The statement was made after “The Rights Forum,” the pro-Palestinian group founded by Van Agt, who served as prime minister from 1977 to 1982, made blatantly anti-Semitic statements at a recent meeting of the Dutch Young Socialists.
They also highlight examples made last month on its Facebook page, including that Jews are “Khazar criminals” and “I’m slowly getting sick of the whole Jewish people”.
Van Agt has long been accused of anti-Semitism, but never before by the entire spectrum of Dutch Jewish organizations.
Van Agt has compared Israel to Nazi Germany and in 2008 spoke at a rally in Rotterdam that featured a televised address by a leader of Hamas.
When he served as justice minister in the 1970s, he cited his “Aryan” roots in explaining his decision to pardon four Nazi war criminals due to health reasons.
(Contrary to the beliefs of some, the Netherlands had one of the worst records against Jews during the Holocaust. The Germans enjoyed widespread help from Dutch Nazi sympathizers in their murder of Dutch Jews.)
ARTICLES
THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH ABOUT SWEDISH ANTI-SEMITISM
The Uncomfortable Truth About Swedish Anti-Semitism
By Paulina Neuding
New York Times
Dec. 15, 2017
STOCKHOLM — This past Saturday, a Hanukkah party at a synagogue in Goteborg, Sweden, was abruptly interrupted by Molotov cocktails. They were hurled by a gang of men in masks at the Jews, mostly teenagers, who had gathered to celebrate the holiday.
Two days later, two fire bombs were discovered outside the Jewish burial chapel in the southern Swedish city of Malmo.
Who knows what tomorrow may bring?
For Sweden’s 18,000 Jews, sadly, none of this comes as a surprise. They are by now used to anti-Semitic threats and attacks — especially during periods of unrest in the Middle East, which provide cover to those whose actual goal has little to do with Israel and much to do with harming Jews.
Both of these recent attacks followed days of incitement against Jews. Last Friday, 200 people protested in Malmo against President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The protesters called for an intifada and promised “we will shoot the Jews.” A day later, during a demonstration in Stockholm, a speaker called Jews “apes and pigs.” There were promises of martyrdom.
Malmo’s sole Hasidic rabbi has reported being the victim of more than 100 incidents of hostility ranging from hate speech to physical assault. In response to such attacks, the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a travel warning in 2010 advising “extreme caution when visiting southern Sweden” because of officials’ failure to act against the “serial harassment” of Jews in Malmo.
Today, entering a synagogue anywhere in Sweden usually requires going through security checks, including airport-like questioning. At times of high alert, police officers with machine guns guard Jewish schools. Children at the Jewish kindergarten in Malmo play behind bulletproof glass. Not even funerals are safe from harassment.
Jewish schoolteachers have reported hiding their identity. A teacher who wouldn’t even share the city where she teaches for fear of her safety told a Swedish news outlet: “I hear students shouting in the hallway about killing Jews.” Henryk Grynfeld, a teacher at a high school in a mostly immigrant neighborhood in Malmo, was told by a student: “We’re going to kill all Jews.” He said other students yell “yahoud,” the Arabic word for Jew, at him.
A spokesman for Malmo’s Jewish community put the situation starkly. You “don’t want to display the Star of David around your neck,” he said. Or as spokesman for the Goteborg synagogue put it, “It’s a constant battle to live a normal life, and not to give in to the threats, but still be able to feel safe.”
The question that has dogged Jews throughout the centuries is now an urgent one for Sweden’s Jewish community. Is it time to leave?
Some are answering yes. One reason is the nature of the current threat.
Historically, anti-Semitism in Sweden could mainly be attributed to right-wing extremists. While this problem persists, a study from 2013 showed that 51 percent of anti-Semitic incidents in Sweden were attributed to Muslim extremists. Only 5 percent were carried out by right-wing extremists; 25 percent were perpetrated by left-wing extremists.
Swedish politicians have no problem condemning anti-Semitism carried out by right-wingers. When neo-Nazis planned a march that would go past the Goteborg synagogue on Yom Kippur this September, for example, it stirred up outrage across the political spectrum. A court ruled that the demonstrators had to change their route.
There is, however, tremendous hesitation to speak out against hate crimes committed by members of another minority group in a country that prides itself on welcoming minorities and immigrants. In 2015, Sweden was second only to Germany in the number of Syrian refugees it welcomed. Yet the three men arrested in the Molotov cocktail attack were newly arrived immigrants, two Syrians and a Palestinian.
The fear of being accused of intolerance has paralyzed Sweden’s leaders from properly addressing deep-seated intolerance.
Some of the country’s leaders have even used Israel as a convenient boogeyman to explain violence. After the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, explained radicalism among European Muslims with reference to Israel: “Here, once again, we are brought back to situations like the one in the Middle East, where not least, the Palestinians see that there isn’t a future. We must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence.”
In an interview in June, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven was asked whether Sweden had been naïve about the link between immigration and anti-Semitism. His response was typical of the way in which leading politicians have avoided giving straight answers about the threat against the country’s Jews: “We have a problem in Sweden with anti-Semitism, and it doesn’t matter who expresses it, it’s still as darn wrong.”
But the problem has grown so dire that it finally forced Mr. Lofven to admit in an interview this month: “We will not ignore the fact that many people have come here from the Middle East, where anti-Semitism is a widespread idea, almost part of the ideology. We must become even clearer, dare to talk more about it.”
He’s right. Unfortunately, the country’s news media is often unable to speak plainly about the issue.
Two years ago, Sweden’s biggest newspaper, Aftonbladet, published a column that ridiculed the notion that Jews were talking of leaving the country because of anti-Semitism, dismissing it as “lying” and “hysteria,” and scoffing at the “especially cool” machine guns that police officers use when protecting Jewish schools. The same newspaper accused Israel of harvesting Palestinian organs in 2009 — the modern equivalent of the blood libel.
On Dec. 6, Sweden’s state TV attributed President Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem to the supposed extreme strength of the so-called Jewish lobby in the United States. The channel later apologized. TT, Sweden’s leading news agency, cited “influential Jewish donors” in its analysis of the move. “Attack against synagogue linked to Trump,” was the headline chosen by Swedish Metro to explain the fire bomb attack in Goteborg.
There are many areas in which Israel deserves criticism, but the Swedish press often crosses the line into vilification of the Jewish state and regularly insinuates that events in the Middle East are directed by powerful Jews in the West. This risks stoking already dangerously high anti-Jewish sentiment.
For starters, there are growing demands from Sweden’s Jewish organizations for the state to do more to protect them. These days, Jewish institutions rely heavily on member fees and their own security organizations for protection. But keeping citizens safe is a basic job of the government.
It is also vital for Sweden to adopt a coherent strategy to combat radical Islamism. The country has become one of Europe’s richest recruiting grounds for Islamic State fighters. Five people were killed in an Islamist attack in downtown Stockholm in April, and Swedish Islamists have been involved in other deadly attacks in Europe, including in Paris and Brussels.
One aspect of this strategy must be for the authorities to regain control over immigrant neighborhoods, where organized crime is rampant. In addition, Sweden has had a laissez-faire attitude toward religious schools, tax-funded through a voucher system. This has allowed extremists to exert influence over the minds of young people. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund radicalization.
The government should also do more to counter attempts by foreign clerics to radicalize its Muslim community with a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, including the insidious idea that the Holocaust is a lie. In Sweden, as in other European countries, radicalization of Muslims is often funded and organized by foreign entities.
None of these efforts can be successful, however, without openly acknowledging the nature of modern anti-Semitism in Sweden.
During his state visit to Sweden in 2013, President Barack Obama didn’t hesitate to call out the country’s anti-Semitism problem. Speaking at Stockholm’s main synagogue, he included a subtle but unmistakable criticism of the attitude among Swedish politicians: “We will stand against anti-Semitism and hatred, in all its forms.” Swedish leaders should heed his words.
“DANISH DETECTIVE MARTIN ROHDE LEFT FANS OF THE BRIDGE DEVASTATED WHEN HE DROPPED OUT OF THE THIRD SERIES DUE TO ANTI-SEMITISM”
‘Anti-semitism in Malmo made me quit’ says The Bridge actor
By Richard Orange, Malmo
Daily Telegraph
Feb 16, 2016
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/12160003/Anti-semitism-in-Malmo-made-me-quit-says-The-Bridge-actor.html
Anti-semitism has become so bad in Malmo, the Swedish city where the hit television drama The Bridge is set, that it contributed to actor Kim Bodnia’s decision to quit the show.
Bodnia, who plays Danish detective Martin Rohde, left fans of the Danish-Swedish drama devastated when he dropped out of the third series, leaving Saga Norén, his character’s eccentric, neurodivergent Swedish counterpart, to find a new Danish sidekick.
The easy-going, charismatic Rohde had been hugely popular with fans of the gritty Nordic Noir drama.
At the time Bodnia, who is Jewish, put the decision down to a difference of opinion with scriptwriters, but in an interview with Israel’s Walla! website last week, he cited worsening anti-Jewish sentiment across the Oresund Bridge in Sweden.
“It’s growing, and especially in Malmo, where we shot The Bridge in Sweden, it’s not very nice and comfortable to be there as a Jewish person,” he told the Walla! portal.
“When they didn’t have the script right I could say, ‘no, I don’t feel so safe there’. It’s not funny. It’s growing. We have to deal with it every day and we have to fight against it.”
Jewish people in Malmo have long complained of growing harassment in the city, where 43 per cent of the population have a non-Swedish background, with Iraqis, Lebanese and stateless Palestinians some of the largest groups.
The Jewish community centre in the city is heavily fortified, with security doors and bollards on the outside pavement to prevent car bombs.
But Jehoshua Kaufman, a prominent member of the community, said he was surprised that Bodnia felt more uncomfortable in Sweden than in Copenhagen, given the terror attack on the Danish capital’s synagogue a year ago.
“They killed two people in Copenhagen, not in Malmo,” he said. “I find it very peculiar. I find it funny.”
Bodnia made an appearance at Copenhagen’s synagogue in the days after the attack last year to pay his respects to Dan Uzan, the security guard who was killed.
He told Walla! that he was so worried by the issue of anti-semitism that he had lobbied the scriptwriters to bring the issue into the plot of the third series, pushing them to have his character Rhode encounter inmates with fanatical anti-Jewish beliefs while in prison.
“The situation is if people go to jail, they have this possibility to grow their hate of Jewish people,” he said. “It’s growing in the prison. So I suggested that when Martin is undercover in the prison, why didn’t we do something about that?”.
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
Below is an audio clip, followed by a transcript, of an interview from earlier today.
(The URL for this interview is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCSPdR6vDVQ)
Interview extract:
Tom Gross: There are many other peoples in the world that would like independent states. Can you imagine (to name but three of them) the Tibetans, or Kurds, or Chechens saying “no” if they were offered independence on 98 percent of the land that they said they wanted. And yet the Palestinians have said “no” and walked away from negotiations when they have been made similar offers by Israel. I think it is certain diplomats in western governments who have encouraged them to do so and they have not actually helped the Palestinian path to independence by doing this.
Once the Palestinians negotiate realistically -- and the Saudis and other states may now finally be pressuring them to do so -- there is a distinct chance that Trump and Netanyahu will preside over the creation of a Palestinian state, and that state will encompass some parts of the present municipal boundaries of Jerusalem.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
TV journalist Jonathan Sacerdoti interviews Mideast expert Tom Gross on Donald Trump’s dramatic recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Jonathan Sacerdoti: Tom, this is an interesting moment. President Trump has recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. What has been the reaction in the media internationally?
Tom Gross: The media has reacted with near predictable unanimity.
For example, the subject line of The New Yorker’s newsletter, which was emailed to thousands of subscribers, reads “Trump Sabotages the Mideast Peace Process”.
Or to quote a Financial Times headline today:
“Trump’s dangerous decision on Jerusalem:
Recognising the holy city as Israel’s capital is a senseless provocation.”
The BBC have highlighted the remarks -- some would call them hysterical -- of people like Turkish President Erdogan who announced -- as a result of Trump’s intention effectively just to move an office building from Tel Aviv to west Jerusalem -- that “the entire world is now a less safe place”.
That’s all pretty negative. What about other politicians around the world?
Well, I saw a tweet by British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. He wrote:
“Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is a dangerous threat to peace” -- as if hanging out with Hamas, as Corbyn and his allies have done, is not a threat to peace.
And many other politicians have simply declared, “The peace process is over”.
And do you think it is?
No, I don’t think so. On the contrary, Trump’s move, far from ending peace talks -- which in any case have hardly been going anywhere for years -- will more likely revive them.
If you read the subtext of some of what Trump, his Middle East advisor Jarred Kushner and some of the advisors close to Netanyahu and to the Saudi leadership are saying, I have a feeling it may well ultimately be Israeli hardliners who will be as disappointed by their policies, as much as Palestinian hardliners.
There is every indication that Israel and the Arab world, together with the U.S., are drawing up plans for a two state solution -- not perhaps the exact one that the Palestinian leadership wants or demands, but enough to potentially end the conflict.
The Arab governments in particular have had enough of Palestinian intransigence. They are much more concerned now about the Iranian threat and their own domestic problems, and many want to be rid of the Palestinian issue which is no longer as politically useful for them as it used to be. Speak to them in private as I do, and you will hear this time and again.
We know why Israel is worried about Iran, but why are the Arab states worried?
Well they are very worried. Iran has virtually taken over Syria, large parts of Iraq and Lebanon, and is attempting to exert control in Yemen and Bahrain, and the Sunni Arab states want and need cooperation with Israel and are tired of the Palestinians’ refusal to even negotiate with Israel. Even Hamas’ main Arab backer Qatar has been holding behind the scenes talks with Israel.
And of course the Arab States are also worried about the Iranian nuclear threat, as is Israel. Neither party feel Obama’s nuclear deal has properly thwarted this threat.
One of the biggest criticisms of Trump’s speech has been that people think it ignores any Palestinian ambitions over Jerusalem. Do you agree? /
If you read them closely, Trump’s carefully chosen words on recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital have not closed this possibility. Indeed I think that one day other parts of Jerusalem may indeed serve as capital of Palestine. It won’t be easy, but arrangements can be made.
But what we need first is for the Palestinian leadership to start to negotiate in a realistic way, in good faith, to recognize Israel once and for all, and to end their encouragement of terrorism.
Nowhere in world history, to my knowledge, has the party that lost militarily (and this case it would be the Palestinians) been allowed to dictate the terms of the peace. It certainly wasn’t the case after, for example, the first and second world wars.
Conflicts end when the party that wins dictates the terms of peace. Now of course Israel should be generous to the Palestinians so the peace will hold, but I believe it is the international community, or some among them, that have done a disservice to the Palestinians by encouraging them to believe that they can dictate the terms of peace and therefore not to compromise.
But the Palestinians have got their own complaints. They will say that the negotiations haven’t offered them an end to the occupation.
Well successive Israeli prime ministers have offered them an end to the occupation, or to almost all of it.
I think Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered them 98 percent of what they wanted with land swaps to make up the rest, which was a little bit more than Ehud Barak who had already made the Palestinians a generous offer [for an independent state, and instead of continuing the negotiations, as Bill Clinton and Barak pleaded with them to do so, they resorted instead to suicide bombings and rocket attacks].
There are many other peoples in the world that would like independent states. Can you imagine (to name but three of them) the Tibetans, or Kurds, or Chechens saying “no” if they were offered independence on 98 percent of the land that they said they wanted. And yet the Palestinians have said “no” and walked away from negotiations when they have been made similar offers by Israel. I think it is certain diplomats in western governments who have encouraged them to do so and they have not actually helped the Palestinian path to independence by doing this.
But the Palestinians say they are eager to negotiate, that they just aren’t getting what they need from those negotiations.
I think that’s a bit disingenuous of them. Barack Obama, who was generally well disposed to the Palestinian cause, through both his terms in office, through eight years, he pleaded with them to negotiate, as did his secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and then John Kerry.
And yet in those entire eight years, President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority agreed to sit down for only about four hours with the Israelis
And yet there was no price to pay. The Palestinian Authority continued to be very generously funded by America and many other countries. Abbas was treated not just like he was the leader of a sovereign state, but even as though he was the leader of a very important one. He was wined and dined at the White House, at the Élysée Palace, at 10 Downing Street, as if he was a major world leader.
Meanwhile the money flowed in, and many of the cronies around Abbas lined their pockets with it.
So the only way to break this impasse is to do something along the lines of what Trump has done which is to slightly move the goal posts, and to make them realize that by doing nothing [by refusing to negotiate] things may change and America will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
But the problem with all of that is that so many people are deeply suspicious of both Trump and Netanyahu, and they just don’t believe that they want a Palestinian state at all. Do you really think they’re going to help create one?
Yes, I think potentially they will. Once the Palestinians negotiate realistically -- and the Saudis and other states may now finally be pressuring them to do so -- there is a distinct chance that Trump and Netanyahu will preside over the creation of a Palestinian state, and that state will encompass some parts of the present municipal boundaries of Jerusalem.
And I don’t think that the relocation of the U.S. embassy to west Jerusalem makes any difference. All it does is place it near the Israeli Knesset and other seats of government. It doesn’t preclude parts of east Jerusalem eventually becoming a Palestinian capital.
That’s quite true, it doesn’t, I noticed that too in Trump’s choice of words. And so much of the [media] coverage totally ignored the room left in his speech for the Palestinians.
But most people simply don’t buy this idea that Trump and Netanyahu will deliver.
You’ve been closely observing the conflict for a long time, and I know you’ve got discrete contacts on both sides at a very high level. Do you really think these two much maligned leaders are the ones who can pull this off?
Yes, I do. I know that many regard them more as war mongerers than potential peacemakers. But time and again we have seen hardliners who are the ones who actually do deals with their enemies. So for example, Nixon reached an understanding with the Chinese communists. Reagan and Thatcher did a deal with the Soviets.
I also say this with some confidence because as an independent observer, who speaks to all sides, without having to represent anyone other than myself, I hear things. It allows me to think outside the box.
I remember some years ago when I had lunch in Jerusalem with Alan Rusbridger (who was then the editor of The Guardian) and his deputy Ian Katz (who later became director of the BBC’s flagship Newsnight program) and I told them that Ariel Sharon would likely withdraw from territory, including Gaza, and this was three years before Sharon announced it.
And Rusbridger and Katz said I was “mad” and didn’t know what I was talking about. They said “everyone knew” Sharon was a war criminal who would never make bold risks for peace. But as we see, my prediction did in fact turn out to be correct.
Now it is true that Benjamin Netanyahu has been less courageous in making bold moves than Sharon has, but nevertheless I don’t think that Netanyahu wants to end his long stay in power being compared to, for example, Yitzhak Shamir, who was a previous Likud prime minister who did nothing [regarding peace moves]. I think that Netanyahu, if he can get a deal, would like to go out as a statesman, as indeed I think Trump would.
But with the Middle East in such turmoil at the moment and Trump -- Mr. America first -- in charge in the United States, is this really the opportune moment?
I think Netanyahu knows that it is in Israel’s long-term interests to disentangle itself from the Palestinians and to allow them independence, so long as any independent state will genuinely accept the right of Israel to exist and won’t threaten Israel.
Netanyahu knows that Israel may never have a better opportunity to take such risks for peace – with Donald Trump in power in the White House, with Vladimir Putin in power in Moscow who has certainly been less hostile to Israel than previous Russian leaders, as well as the Saudi, Indian and Chinese leaderships relatively favorable to Israel, this is the time to re-offer the Palestinians the kind of agreement which they turned down when Barak and Olmert offered them a state.
And I think that this time the Saudis, Americans and others may pressure the Palestinian leadership to accept it. They will say you’re not going to get 100 percent of what you want. You’re going to get (for example) 97 percent, and that will be that. And we are not going to go on funding you and treating you like a sovereign state and supporting your cause if you don’t accept.
I don’t think that there is any reason this conflict can’t be solved. Some people think it can’t be. But I think we need a new approach and it can be solved.
Interesting times indeed. Thanks very much for your insights.
Thank you.
Contrary to the impression given by some journalists, there are quite a number of very wealthy Palestinians. Above, one of the magnificent new Palestinian villas villas dotted around the West Bank, many owned by the corrupt allies of President Abbas, who have used western aid money to further their wealth. Below, one of several public swimming pools for West Bank Palestinians.
Update, Dec. 7, 2017
While politicians and journalists continue to assail Israel, most are completely ignoring the 400,000 Syrians who are currently trapped and starving a few miles away in Damascus.
Instead, Sky News reports that “One of the world’s most celebrated peace makers, the former archbishop Sir Desmond Tutu, said that ‘God is weeping’ over Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital”
Meanwhile the British tabloid The Sun reveals that the Shadow Brexit Secretary “Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer invited a controversial anti-Israel charity who praised suicide bombers for killing Jewish kids to the House of Commons.”
“WAR CRIMES ON AN EPIC SCALE”
Above photo by Agence France-Presse (AFP) taken on Nov. 29, 2017: One of thousands of malnourished children and babies in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta.
There has in general been very little reporting in the international media on the siege in Eastern Ghouta, which has been continuing for over six years.
As was the case with Barack Obama, the Trump administration has also declined to air drop food and medical supplies in to starving Syrian civilians there, although it would have been much easier for Obama to have done so in the years before Russia become involved in the air, and while the citizens were only being besieged by Iranian-orchestrated ground troops.
UN envoy Jan Egeland has again called the Syrian government to cease the “starvation and aerial bombardment of Syrian civilians” in Eastern Ghouta, as Iranian-controlled militia propping up the Assad regime refused to allow in aid workers or food to help the 400,000 residents trapped there.
“There has been massive loss of life – hundreds and hundreds,” said Egeland, describing Eastern Ghouta as an unfolding “catastrophe.”
Hundreds of Syrians, mainly civilians, have also been killed by the military actions of Syria, Iran and Russia during recent days.
Amnesty International reported Thursday that Syrian aircraft had attacked Eastern Ghouta with cluster bombs and accused the Assad government of committing “war crimes on an epic scale.”
“Malnutrition amongst kids, children and the elderly is a common sight, and anyone with chronic disease is just counting the days, dying slowly,” the New York Times quoted an aid worker inside the besieged suburb.
-- Tom Gross
ISRAEL BOMBS NEW IRANIAN BASE IN SYRIA, IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS REPORTED KILLED
[Notes by Tom Gross]
There has been relatively muted reaction in the western media to the reported Israeli missile strike over the weekend on an Iranian military base being built near Damascus.
The Iranian facility near the Syrian city of al-Qiswa, located only 31 miles from the Israeli border, is viewed as a grave threat to the Jewish state.
Its existence was publicly revealed in October after the BBC reported, citing “a Western intelligence source,” that Iran is building a permanent military base in Syria. The BBC broadcast a series of satellite pictures that showed widespread construction at the site.
Israel fired five missiles at the base very early Saturday morning, reportedly destroying a massive arms depot. Some Arab media reports say up to 12 members of Iran’s feared revolutionary guards corp. were killed in the strike. This has not been verified.
A Sky News Arabic report also said that the Israeli missiles were fired from within Lebanese airspace.
My sources tell me that the strike likely had the complicit backing of some Sunni government and military officials in a number of Arab countries.
There has been no official Israeli comment.
“At half past midnight [on Friday-Saturday night], the Israeli enemy fired several surface-to-surface missiles at a military position in Damascus province,” Syria’s state SANA news agency reported. “The air defenses of the Syrian army were able to deal with the attack… destroying two of the missiles,” it said, adding that the attack did cause “material damage.”
REPEATED WARNINGS FROM ISRAEL
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly warned that Israel will not allow the Iran Islamic regime to establish a permanent presence in Syria threatening Israel, from which it could in the future potentially station nuclear weapons.
Among the warnings, in his speech to the UN in September, Netanyahu said: “We will act to prevent Iran from establishing permanent military bases in Syria for its air, sea and ground forces. We will act to prevent Iran from producing deadly weapons in Syria... And we will act to prevent Iran from opening new terror fronts against Israel along our northern border.”
In addition to inland military bases, Iran is reported to be looking to set up a Mediterranean naval base in Syria, and uranium mining concessions
AL MAYADEEN CLAIMS RUSSIAN PANTZER SYSTEMS SHOT DOWN ISRAELI MISSILE
Russian sources told the Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen that Russian air defense systems downed one of the rockets fired by Israel.
“The Bantseer-S-1 air defense systems, supervised by Russian military experts in Syria, downed one of the two rockets launched by Israel after midnight on targets in the Al-Kaswa area of Damascus countryside,” a field correspondent quoted reliable sources in Russia as saying.
In Arabic here:
https://www.almayadeen.net/news/politics/841348
Iran’s Fars news agency also admits some of “the missiles hit their intended target” while not mentioning the targets were Iranian.
In English here: http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13960911000211
IRAN MOVES TO CONTROL SYRIA, IRAQ AND LEBANON
In September, another large armaments factory in Syria, with connections to Iran, was bombed from the air. The bombing was attributed to Israel, which did not comment.
There are currently several hundred Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Syria, some in combat or political roles, others serving as commanders guiding the many thousands of Shi’ite militia fighters (mainly from Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Pakistan) who have been recruited and are paid by Tehran, partly with money released to Iran under Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal.
Iran’s Shia militias (including Hizbullah) have been responsible for a large part of the killing of hundreds of thousands of Sunni civilians in Syria these past 6 years.
It may even be the case that the Assad regime itself is not entirely opposed to Israel having hit the Iranian base in Syria since some in the regime are wary of the extent to which the Iranian regime is now trying to control Syria.
I attach nine articles below from recent days.
In the first, John Kerry admits that not only Israeli PM Netanyahu but “a number of kings and foreign presidents told [Obama] that bombing was the only language Iran would understand [to stop it nuclear weapons program].”
-- Tom Gross adds
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
CONTENTS
1. “Israel, Egypt pushed U.S. to bomb Iran before nuclear deal, John Kerry says” (Associated Press, Nov. 30, 2017)
2. “With victory assured, why is Assad suddenly wary of Iran’s embrace?” (By Avi Issacharoff, Times of Israel, Nov. 28, 2017)
3. “Putin’s Syria illusion: healing historical wounds, resetting the course of history” (By Yigal Carmon, MEMRI, Nov. 29, 2017)
4. Russia: Unrealistic to demand that Iranian militia units leave Syria (Tass, Russian news agency, Nov. 28, 2017)
5. Iranian Navy to deploy in Atlantic Ocean (Fars news agency (Iran) Nov. 28, 2017)
6. “Russia: Egypt will allow us to deploy military planes on its soil” (Reuters, Nov. 30, 2017)
7. “Russia and Egypt move toward deal on air bases” (By David D. Kirkpatrick
NY Times, Nov. 30, 2017)
8. “For Westerners Imprisoned in Iran, New Signs of a Deal” (NY Times, Nov. 30, 2017
9. “High-level contacts between North Korea and Iran hint at deeper military cooperation” (By Jay Solomon, Washington Institute, Nov. 27, 2017)
ARTICLES
MANY COUNTRIES PUSHED U.S. TO BOMB IRAN BEFORE NUCLEAR DEAL
Israel, Egypt Pushed U.S. to Bomb Iran Before Nuclear Deal, John Kerry Says
The Associated Press
November 30, 2017
Speaking at a Washington forum, the former secretary of state John Kerry said both Israel and Egypt pushed the United States to “bomb Iran” before the 2015 nuclear deal was struck.
Kerry defended the deal during a forum in Washington, where he said that a number of kings and foreign presidents told the U.S. that bombing was the only language Iran would understand.
Kerry said that in his opinion it was “a trap” because the same countries would have publicly criticized the U.S. if it did carry out a bombing of Iran as they were secretly supporting.
Kerry said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “genuinely agitating toward action.”
Kerry said he didn’t know whether Iran would resume pursuing a nuclear weapon in 10 to 15 years after restrictions in the deal sunset, but he said it was the best deal the U.S. could get.
In October, lawmakers in the United States approved four different pieces of legislation targeting Iran and its proxy terror group in Lebanon, Hezbollah, after U.S. President Donald Trump refused to re-certify the nuclear deal, leaving its fate to Congress.
At the time, Netanyahu congratulated Trump for what he called his “courageous decision” not to recertify the nuclear deal with Iran.
“He boldly confronted Iran’s terrorist regime,” Netanyahu said. “If the Iran deal is left unchanged, one thing is absolutely certain. In a few years’ time, the world’s foremost terrorist regime will have an arsenal of nuclear weapons. And that’s a tremendous danger for our collective future.”
Netanyahu said Trump has created an “opportunity to fix this bad deal, to roll back Iran’s aggression and to confront its criminal support of terrorism.”
“That’s why Israel embraces this opportunity,” Netanyahu said.
ANALYSIS -- A COMPLEX FACE-OFF BETWEEN SYRIA, RUSSIA, IRAN... AND ISRAEL
With victory assured, why is Assad suddenly wary of Iran’s embrace?
Having fought and bled for the regime’s survival, Tehran looks to cash in its support for a Mediterranean naval base, air bases and even uranium mining concessions
By Avi Issacharoff
Times of Israel
November 28, 2017
www.timesofisrael.com/with-victory-assured-why-is-assad-suddenly-wary-of-irans-embrace/
A little over a month ago, the Iranian chief of staff, Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, paid an unusual visit to Damascus. It was intended as a display of Syrian-Iranian amity, an expression of the excellent cooperation between the two partners in the drawn-out fight against opposition fighters and the Islamic State group.
Bagheri took the trouble to announce that the objective of his visit was to strengthen coordination in the war against “the enemies… be they Zionists or terrorists.” He added that he and his Syrian counterpart, Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayoub, had sketched out the “basic principles of this cooperation.”
Yet, from Iran’s perspective, Bagheri’s visit to the Syrian capital was not a success. Damascus was less than eager to accede to the list of demands reiterated yet again by Iran: a 50-year lease on a Mediterranean naval base, the establishment of air bases on Syrian soil, phosphate mining concessions including for uranium, and so on.
Syria did not reject the Iranian requests outright, but, in a surprise move for Israeli observers, it did make clear that it prefers to advance slowly and cautiously when it comes to submitting to Iran’s embrace.
There are a number of reasons for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s wariness in the face of Tehran’s demands. Love of Israel is not among them.
That isn’t to say the Syrian president has suddenly developed a backbone vis-a-vis his Iranian benefactors. But Assad does seem to understand that a tight embrace from Tehran could come at a great cost – both in terms of his enemy, Israel, and his most powerful ally, Russia.
Tehran had good reason to hope Assad would green-light the long list of demands it has presented in recent weeks to Damascus. In many ways, Assad owes his survival to the Iranians and their proxy, the Hezbollah terror group. Dozens if not hundreds of Iranian soldiers have been killed over the past six years of fighting in the Syrian civil war, as well as some 2,000 members of Hezbollah, which is mostly funded by Tehran. This was in addition to the efforts of thousands more Shiite fighters sent to Syria by Iran and mercenaries hailing from Iraq, such as the members of the al-Nujba militia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Although the Iranian demands may sound preposterous to Israeli ears, they can seem eminently reasonable when one considers what the Russians got out of Assad, including a naval base on the Mediterranean, an air base and more.
Given all these factors, officials in Tehran might reasonably view their demands for cellular phone tenders, phosphate concessions or a Mediterranean naval base as entirely sensible.
But the Iranians apparently did not take into account the fact that Assad owes just as much, and perhaps more, to Moscow. And while Russia and Iran share an interest in Assad’s survival, their interests diverge when it comes to the degree of clout Tehran can be allowed to wield over Syria. Iranian influence is seen in many capitals around the world as a destabilizing factor in the region – and thus is an indirect threat to Assad’s survival.
The heavy price Iran has paid in blood and treasure drove a complex debate in Tehran over the Syrian question. The Iranians believe their entry into the civil war was meant, first of all, to ensure the survival of an ally. But as time went on and the death toll and expense of the venture rose, an appetite developed in Tehran to find ways by which Assad’s survival could be made to serve additional Iranian interests – not just Russian or Alawite ones.
For their part, the heads of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard see in the conclusion of the Syrian war a one-off opportunity to create an Iranian land bridge from Tehran to the Mediterranean.
On the other hand, the camp of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has urged a much more careful approach. His allies argue that Iranian over-involvement in the Syrian crisis could bring the international community to zero in anew on Iran’s negative influence in the region, and could even harm the Iranian economy by triggering new economic sanctions.
For now, it seems the Revolutionary Guard is winning the argument. Tehran’s efforts to completely absorb Syria into the Iranian sphere of influence are continuing apace, and even accelerating. One of the last bastions not under Iran’s direct influence lies on Syria’s eastern flank, where battles still rage between Islamic State, the Syrian Democratic Forces (mostly Kurds supported by the United States), Shiite militias and the Syrian army. If the Americans scale back their presence there, the Iranians may finally achieve their long-sought land bridge.
Yet, even if that happens, Assad, like his allies in Moscow, understands from messages passed directly and indirectly by Israel that acquiescing fully to Iranian pressure could lead to escalation and even war with the Jewish state.
Israel has already characterized the establishment of rocket manufacturing facilities in Syria as an unacceptable development. If Moscow’s overriding interest in Syria is to ensure Assad’s survival, it understands that it may be necessary to limit Iran’s influence to the extent required to prevent Israel from stepping in with its own designs.
In the meantime, Israel doesn’t seem to believe that Assad’s goodwill is sufficient to ensure that this doesn’t happen. Assad needs the Iranians, and even if he is loath to grant them their every desire, he is nevertheless certain to concede a great deal.
He already permits the use of Syrian soil for explicitly anti-Israel activities, granting Hezbollah and other Shiite militias the right to operate in his territory, giving them free access to war materiel, and so on. The Shiite militias, meanwhile, are openly taking advantage of this largess to build up capabilities against Israel on Syrian soil, with a focus on developing military assets on the Syrian Golan that could threaten Israel – an act that carries the very real threat of escalation.
Recently, representatives of various Shiite militias (the Fetamiyun, Haidariyun and Zaynabiyun) visited Lebanon. Why would commanders from far-flung Iraq or other Middle Eastern countries be visiting the country? The most likely answer is also the most obvious: They seem eager to establish a presence on the Golan Heights.
Last week, Hashem Musawi, a spokesman for the al-Nujba movement (another name for Iran’s Iraqi Shiite militias), announced that his movement planned to establish a “Syrian Golan Liberation” brigade, and that the move was in coordination with the Syrian government. If Israel were to launch a war with Lebanon, he pledged, the brigade’s men would join the fight against Israel at Hezbollah’s side. For all his caution, Assad may already be on the path to an Israeli intervention.
PUTIN’S SYRIA ILLUSION: HEALING HISTORICAL WOUNDS, RESETTING THE COURSE OF HISTORY
Putin’s Syria Illusion: Healing Historical Wounds, Resetting The Course Of History
By Yigal Carmon
The Middle East Media Research Institute
November 29, 2017
https://www.memri.org/reports/ putins-syria-illusion-healing- historical-wounds-resetting-course-history
The November 2017 summit of the Russian, Iranian and Turkish presidents in Sochi is a contemporary Yalta Conference, but one in which Washington was relegated to the role of an extra while Moscow enjoyed top billing. That is how the Russian pro-Kremlin researchers and commentators summed up the Sochi summit, in which Putin presided over talks to decide Syria’s future.
Indeed, Russia’s leadership is having a corrective emotional experience, imagining that the defeat of ISIS (which, by the way, has not yet been accomplished) is equivalent to the defeat of the Axis powers, and that the future settlement in Syria will be a replay of the partition of Europe at the 1945 Yalta Conference. This leadership feels that the insult and shame inflicted upon the Soviet body politic – namely the dismemberment of Yugoslavia by American/NATO power and the bombing of Belgrade, a kindred Slavic capital, while Russia looked on helplessly – is now avenged.
The victory over ISIS celebrated by Iran, Syria and Russia is a sham in itself. Russia and its allies in Damascus and Tehran did not bear the brunt of the fight against ISIS. It was American warplanes in the air, and the US-equipped and US-advised Iraqi Security Forces and Syrian Democratic Forces on the ground, that defeated ISIS in Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul, Kobani and Raqqa. In the meanwhile, Russia, Syria, Iran and Hizbullah spent much of their time fighting everyone but ISIS.
However, Russia is now claiming victory in Syria in order to flaunt its role as a global power on the world stage. It is even celebrating the eventual humiliating ouster of the Americans from Syria. It matters little that Trump, whether in collusion or not, is more or less volunteering to give Putin the concessions he wants.
Such happy days for Russia! Trump is effectively ensuring Putin’s reelection by making him look like a national hero. The current Russian leadership, which swore it would allow no more Kosovos and color revolutions and calls itself “the axis of order”, can now claim to be implementing this policy in Syria. This is sweet vengeance for a country that suffers from extreme weakness and military and technological inferiority and which, by mental gymnastics (thank god for Trump), can now visualize itself as a massive global power.
Unfortunately for Russia it is nothing of the sort. To cite retired Russian General Staff Colonel Mikhail Khodarenok: “we have 200 warplanes while NATO has 3,800; we have 1, 600 armored vehicles and APCs while NATO has more than 20,000, and the situation is similar in all other domains.”
In the naval arena the picture is indeed similar: the US has 19 aircraft carriers, 10 of which are Nimitz-class nuclear powered supercarriers, while Russia has one smoke-belching old carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov.
Once the Russians emerge from their make-believe world, they will be forced to acknowledge the bitter reality: that Russia lacks the staying power to impose any solution in Syria, and that Turkey and Iran are not allies but rivals when it comes to Syria’s future.
Moreover, Saudi Arabia has established a new alliance of Sunni states that supports the anti-Assad opposition, and Israel threatens to puncture the entire balloon if Iranian forces approach its borders. The ultimate irony is that Putin, the supreme constitutionalist, is trying to push Assad – he too a fastidious constitutionalist – into accepting a constitutional solution and free elections in Syria, and expects Iran, which paid a steep price in order to export its revolution to Syria, to acquiesce to this. This grotesque parody could morph into a tragedy even greater than what Syria has experienced until now, as states and regular armies take up the roles heretofore played by rag-tag terrorist groups.
Putin’s political theater is always good for surprises. At the peak of his apparent victory – and after the statement issued by the “victors” at Sochi emphasized only the Astana process, brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran, while making no mention of the UN-sponsored Geneva process – the helmsman Putin has made an about-face and now wants to return to the Geneva process. What does Russia have to gain at Geneva? Why not let Assad remain in power with the explicit acquiescence of the Europeans? Why not allow Syria to be partitioned into Turkish and Iranian influence zones? That way, Russia will have its Mediterranean bases, and that will be the end of the story. Israel and the Saudis will have to accept the new political reality, unless they want to unleash total war for the sake of themselves and the West (a move that a diffident and distracted West will never forgive them for).
That may still occur by default, but Putin is nevertheless trying another approach that he hopes will maximize Russia’s gains. What Russia hopes to gain is a chance to cash in its Syrian chips in exchange for winnings in Europe. Russia seeks to revive its century-long aspiration of redrawing the map of Europe according to the vision of “Eurasia from Lisbon to Vladivostok”, as Putin and his former foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, called it. It is in Europe and Europe only – not in the Middle East swamp – that Russia can and wishes to restore its bygone glory. The Geneva process may serve to restore Russia’s global status, and as a side benefit, may also unlock European reconstruction money for Syria that Russia cannot hope to supply on her own.
The Russian gambit goes even further. In early 2017, in various articles, pro-Kremlin Russian thinkers and analysts gave broad hints that Russia was eager for a grand bargain: giving up its alliance with Iran in return for the removal of what truly pains it: the sanctions and NATO’s eastward expansion.
Back then the bargain failed to go through. Nevertheless, in late 2017, from its new perch as the victor in Syria, Russia is again nursing this idea, in the hopes that its empowered status will yield a different result. For example, Kirill Semyonov, head of the Center for Islamic Studies at the Institute for Innovative Development and analyst at the Russian Council for International Affairs, commented that the convergence of Russia’s and Iran’s interests is only “temporary” and “apparent,” and connected to the crisis with the U.S. He stressed that Russia’s rapprochement with Iran is not “irreversible,” since it is merely tactical, and that Moscow’s policy may therefore change.
But sadly for Russia, the grand bargain is not likely to go through in 2018 either. Trump simply cannot deliver the goods Russia needs, however much he hankers for a successful deal with Russia. In fact, Putin will be unable to make this deal even with the Europeans, no matter how sorely they are tempted to accept this Faustian bargain.
A disappointed Russia will be forced back to the Middle Eastern swamp, and will be cut down to its true size as a rogue regime aligned with other rogue regimes whose hands are dripping with the blood of their own peoples.
RUSSIA: UNREALISTIC TO DEMAND THAT IRANIAN MILITIA UNITS LEAVE SYRIA
Russian envoy comments on opposition’s demand for Assad’s exit
Tass (Russian news agency)
November 28, 2017
http://tass.com/politics/977778
GENEVA, November 28. /TASS/. Russia has called on partners in Geneva to bring the Syrian opposition down to earth as its demand that President Bashar Assad must go does not contribute to a constructive dialogue, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Geneva office and other Geneva-based International Organizations Alexei Borodavkin said.
“All this is very alarming and will hardly contribute to a constructive dialogue in Geneva,” Borodavkin said. “During the meeting (of representatives of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council) Russia turned to its partners at the UN and Western delegations, which have influence on the opposition, so that they try to bring the opposition down to earth as their position is not in line with the real situation,” he said.
Kremlin reiterates Assad’s future role will be decided by Syrian people
The document adopted by the Syrian opposition at its Riyadh meeting, which contains a demand for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s resignation, is contradictory, he went on.
“The document that opposition adopted in Riyadh, cited by the opposition delegation which has arrived in Geneva, is very contradictory,” Borodavkin said. “On the one hand, the document says that the opposition is not setting any preconditions, but on the other hand, there is a demand for Bashar al-Assad’s resignation in the very beginning of the transition period. What is that if not a precondition?” the Russian envoy said.
“They also demand that Iranian militia units lave Syria, which is also unrealistic,” Borodavkin pointed out. “It is unclear how the opposition members plan to hold talks with representatives of the Syrian government if the delegation coming from Riyadh views them almost as criminals with whom it is impossible to talk,” he added.
Moscow believes the decision by the Syrian government delegation to travel to Geneva for the eighth round of the intra-Syrian consultations was the right move. “That’s the right decision. It’s very good that the Syrian government delegation will come to Geneva, because this will make it possible for Damascus representatives to express their point of view and come up with the relevant assessments,” the diplomat stressed.
Earlier reports said that, because of the opposition’s demands seeking the resignation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the beginning of the transition period, the official Damascus delegation put off its visit to the November 28 negotiations. UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, confirmed on Tuesday that the Syrian government representatives would arrive in Geneva on November 29.
IRANIAN NAVY TO DEPLOY IN ATLANTIC OCEAN
Supreme Leader Stresses Iranian Navy’s Continued Deployment in Int’l Waters
Fars news agency (Iran)
Nov 28, 2017
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13960907001186
TEHRAN (FNA)- Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei ordered senior Iranian Navy commanders to continue military advances and presence in the high seas.
“The Navy is in the frontline of defending the country with important regions, such as Makran, the Sea of Oman and the international waters, in front of it; presence in free waters should continue similar to the past,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a meeting with a number of high-ranking Navy commanders in Tehran on Tuesday on the occasion of Navy Day in Iran.
He underscored the need for increasing the Navy’s capabilities to produce equipment and combat power and use different bodies in Iran to obviate the shortages, and said, “A good growth and move has started in the Navy and today, the Navy is more advanced and capable compared with 20 years ago but this level of advance is not convincing and a high-speed move should be pursued with determination, high morale, lots of efforts, innovation and action.”
In relevant remarks last Saturday, new Commander of the Iranian Navy Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi had announced that his country is serious about sending its fleet of warships to Latin America and the Gulf of Mexico despite the US opposition.
“We are not faced with any restriction for deploying in the seas, and anywhere we feel that we have interests to develop ties… we will certainly deploy there and we enjoy this power too,” Rear Admiral Khanzadi was quoted as saying by the Iranian media.
“We will berth in the friendly states in Latin America and the Gulf of Mexico in the near future by deployment in the Atlantic Ocean,” he added.
“The Americans had somewhere said that the Iranians cannot sail 9,000 miles from Bandar Abbas to the Gulf of Mexico, given their capabilities, but we will certainly prove them this capability and will contact our friends (in Latin America),” Rear Admiral Khanzadi underlined.
EGYPT ALLOWS RUSSIA TO DEPLOY MILITARY PLANES ON ITS SOIL
Russia: Egypt Will Allow Us to Deploy Military Planes on Its Soil
Reuters
November 30, 2017
Russia’s government published a draft agreement between Russia and Egypt on Thursday allowing both countries to use each other’s air space and air bases for their military planes.
The government decree, signed on November 28, orders the Russian Defense Ministry to hold negotiations with Egyptian officials and to sign the document once both sides reach an agreement.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Cairo for talks with Egypt’s political and military leadership on Wednesday and the decree said the draft had been “preliminary worked through with the Egyptian side” and approved by Medvedev.
Russia launched a military operation to support Syrian President Bashar Assad in September 2015 and there are signs it is keen to further expand its military presence in the region.
U.S. officials said in March that Russia had deployed special forces in Egypt near the border with Libya, an allegation Moscow denied.
Russia has cultivated close ties with powerful Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar, who held talks with Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, via video link from a Russian aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean this year and visited Moscow.
Russian and Egyptian war planes would be able to use each other’s air space and airfields by giving five days advance notice, according to the draft agreement, which is expected to be valid for five years and could be extended.
RUSSIA AND EGYPT MOVE TOWARD DEAL ON AIR BASES
Russia and Egypt Move Toward Deal on Air Bases
By David D. Kirkpatrick
New York Times
Nov. 30, 2017
LONDON – In an apparent snub to the Trump administration, Russia said on Thursday that it had reached a preliminary agreement with Cairo that would allow its military jets to use Egyptian air bases and airspace.
The draft agreement, released by Moscow and confirmed by an Egyptian military official, would mark the latest extension of Russian power in the Middle East, in this case through cooperation with one of Washington’s closest Arab allies. The United States has provided Egypt more than $70 billion in military aid over the years, and supporters of the aid program often argue that one of its main benefits to Washington is allowing the American military to use Egyptian airspace and air bases.
Egypt has been receiving about $1.3 billion a year in United States military aid since the late 1980s. Earlier this year, the Trump administration cut or withheld $291 million in aid because of concerns over President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s human rights record and his ties to North Korea. Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign minister, called the move a “misjudgment.”
Under the terms of the preliminary agreement with Russia, Egypt would gain only the reciprocal right to use Russian bases. It was unclear early Thursday how the United States would respond to the agreement.
Russia has been pushing to expand its influence in the Middle East, which had diminished with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and the expansion of America’s military presence. Many of Russia’s moves have dovetailed with the priorities of Mr. Sisi’s government.
Most prominently, Russia has carried out an aggressive air campaign in Syria that has fortified the rule of President Bashar al-Assad against the militant Islamists and American-backed rebels challenging him, cementing his position as a client of Moscow.
Egypt under Mr. Sisi, a former general who took power in the military ouster of an Islamist president in 2013, has also sometimes shown sympathy for Mr. Assad as a fellow strongman defending the status quo and fighting political Islam. Cairo’s position toward Syria has even put it in rare disagreement with its Persian Gulf patrons, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which view the fight against the Assad government as a proxy war against their biggest regional ally, Iran.
In Libya, meanwhile, both Cairo and Moscow have backed the forces of Gen. Khalifa Hifter in his ongoing battle for control of the country. That has put Egypt at odds with the United States and other Western powers, which have backed a unity government in an attempt to end the fighting.
General Hifter has sometimes appeared to model himself after Mr. Sisi, battling militant Islamists for control of the city of Benghazi and portraying his conflicts with the unity government as part of his fight against political Islam.
Mr. Sisi has also sought to cultivate closer direct ties to Russia and the Russian military as a partial hedge against the dependence of Egypt’s military on American aid, equipment and maintenance.
Former President Barack Obama temporarily suspended United States military aid to Egypt after Mr. Sisi’s government killed more than a thousand opponents in a series of mass shootings in the summer of 2013. Mr. Sisi responded by upgrading cooperation with Moscow. In the process, he has revived ties that ended when President Anwar Sadat shifted Egypt’s allegiance to Washington almost 40 years ago.
FOR WESTERNERS IMPRISONED IN IRAN, NEW SIGNS OF A DEAL
For Westerners Imprisoned in Iran, New Signs of a Deal
New York Times
Nov. 30, 2017
One American prisoner has lost six teeth from malnutrition. Another tried to kill himself. A third, a Briton, is traumatized by the possibility her sentence could be doubled.
They are among the foreign nationals incarcerated in Iran on spying or sedition charges, a continuing source of tension in that country’s relations with Western nations, particularly the United States and Britain. Many are Iranians with dual citizenship.
Now, the prisoner issue is heating up as President Trump threatens to derail the nuclear agreement with Iran and possibly revive onerous American sanctions.
Nearly two years after a group of American captives in Iran was freed when the nuclear accord took effect – in return for the release of a group of Iranians held in the United States – there is speculation that another prisoner exchange may be sought.
The Iranians have been dropping hints recently that they are prepared to make a deal, even as the Trump administration increasingly shows its antipathy to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his subordinates. Like the last deal, this one might involve clearing of old debts owed to Iran from the period before its 1979 revolution.
Each side, in effect, has prisoners to use as a bargaining chip.
The Iranians say at least 14 Iranians have been unfairly imprisoned or prosecuted by the United States or its allies, mostly on what they call specious accusations of sanctions violations. The list includes a friend of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and a pregnant woman held in Australia who could be extradited to the United States.
Last week, in what has been widely seen as a way of telegraphing a possible prisoner exchange, Iranian state television broadcast reports on two Western prisoners held in Iran: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, a Briton of Iranian descent employed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, who was sentenced to five years, and Xiyue Wang, 37, an American of Chinese descent working on his Ph.D. in history at Princeton University, who was sentenced to 10 years.
On Tuesday, a State Department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, condemned the videos and reiterated the American demand for Iran to release all prisoners who are “unjustly detained, in particular American citizens.” She did not answer when asked about the possibility of a dialogue with Iran on the prisoner issue.
Hua Qu, Mr. Wang’s wife, said in a telephone interview that she thought the television broadcast was “a step forward,” although she implored the Trump administration to do more to help free her husband and other incarcerated Americans.
“They have promised many times it’s their first priority, to bring back our hostages,” Mr. Wang’s wife said. “My husband has been behind bars for 16 months; he has arthritis in both knees, back pain, headaches.”
Earlier, in an interview with NBC News, she said her husband was “extremely stressed, he has depression and he attempted to commit suicide.”
At least four American citizens and two permanent residents of the United States are known to be held in Iranian prisons. A fifth American, Robert A. Levinson, has been missing in Iran for more than a decade.
Besides Mr. Wang, speculation about a possible exchange also has centered on Baquer and Siamak Namazi, a father and son who are each serving 10-year terms.
Considerable diplomatic pressure has been exerted on Iran concerning the older Mr. Namazi, a former Unicef diplomat who is about to turn 82 and suffers from a number of maladies, including heart disease.
Jared Genser, a lawyer in Washington for the Namazi family, said Tuesday that their conditions of confinement had improved compared with a year ago. That being said, he added, the Iranian government had recently “taken a tougher line,” possibly in connection with the Trump administration’s hostility.
“Baquer has lost six teeth from malnutrition,” Mr. Genser said, adding that while his client had been fitted for implants, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls the wing of Evin Prison where he is confined, “have refused to allow the implants.”
Still, Mr. Genser said, the prison authorities have permitted cardiologists to install a pacemaker in the father – a possibly telling indicator of his worth to them as a bargaining chip.
“I hope the government of Iran appreciates that the value that Baquer Namazi might serve is dependent on his being alive – particularly if there was a prisoner swap,” Mr. Genser said. “If he were to die, the consequences would be severe, and no government in the world would defend Iran.”
Mr. Wang was arrested last year while researching public records in Iran for his doctoral thesis on an Iranian dynasty that ended last century. He was accused of passing documents to the State Department.
Iranian state television’s broadcast about Mr. Wang, on Sunday, showed him wearing a white prisoner uniform while under interrogation. He explains that he visited several archives. “That’s it,” he is heard saying.
The authorities have alleged that he illicitly scanned 4,500 pages of digital documents, paid thousands of dollars to access archives he needed and sought access to confidential areas of Tehran’s libraries.
Princeton repeatedly has asserted his innocence and said that he had received government permission for his research. In an emailed statement on Monday, Daniel Day, a Princeton spokesman, said the Iranian broadcast had been “filled with false and misleading statements about Mr. Wang and about Princeton.”
The television broadcast on Mrs. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, last Thursday, included close-ups of an April 2010 pay stub from her previous employer, the BBC World Service Trust. Iran is suspicious of the BBC because it broadcasts a Persian-language satellite television channel that competes with state television.
The Iranian broadcast included a June 2010 email, found in her inbox by interrogators from the Revolutionary Guards, in which she wrote about the “ZigZag Academy,” a BBC World Service Trust project, which trained “young aspiring journalists from Iran and Afghanistan through a secure online platform.”
Both her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, and Thomson Reuters repeatedly have emphasized that she was not training journalists or involved in any work regarding Iran while there. But their assertions were undermined a few weeks ago when Boris Johnson, Britain’s foreign secretary, told Parliament in an apparent gaffe that Mrs. Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been “teaching people journalism.”
Mr. Johnson, who is scheduled to travel to Iran in the coming month, retracted the remark, but Iranian state television described it as proof of her “crimes.”
Mr. Ratcliffe has said his wife is now worried that because of Mr. Johnson’s remarks, her five-year sentence could be increased to 10 years. She has a second trial scheduled on Dec. 10.
Iranian and British officials in the past months have hinted there could be a compensation of about $500 million for a decades-old dispute over roughly 1,500 British Chieftain tanks, paid for by Iran but never delivered after the 1979 revolution.
Officials from both countries insist Mrs. Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case is not related to the debt repayment. But on Tuesday, Iran’s Judiciary spokesman, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, seemed to draw a connection.
Mrs. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been held in Iran since April 2016, could be granted “conditional release” if she qualifies for it, he was quoted as saying by ISNA, the semiofficial student news agency.
Asked whether Britain’s payment of its debt to Iran could play a part in the case, Mr. Ejei was quoted as saying that any country would try to secure the release of its citizens imprisoned in another country and that “we would do the same if we have any imprisoned abroad.”
HIGH-LEVEL CONTACTS BETWEEN NORTH KOREA AND IRAN HINT AT DEEPER MILITARY COOPERATION
High-Level Contacts Between North Korea and Iran Hint at Deeper Military Cooperation
By Jay Solomon
Washington Institute
November 27, 2017
Pyongyang has emerged as a critical partner in Tehran’s ‘Axis of Resistance,’ and officials warn that their joint efforts may extend to weapons of mass destruction.
High-level meetings between North Korean and Iranian officials in recent months are stoking concerns inside the U.S. government about the depth of military ties between the two American adversaries. In September, President Trump ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct a fresh review of any potential bilateral nuclear collaboration. Yet officials in Washington, Asia, and the Middle East who track the relationship indicate that Pyongyang and Tehran have already signaled a commitment to jointly develop their ballistic missile systems and other military/scientific programs.
North Korea has vastly expanded its nuclear and long-range missile capabilities over the past year, developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that could potentially target the western United States with nuclear warheads. Over the same period, U.S. intelligence agencies have spotted Iranian defense officials in Pyongyang, raising the specter that they might share dangerous technological advances with each other. “All of these contacts need to be better understood,” said one senior U.S. official working on the Middle East. “This will be one of our top priorities.”
SUSPICIOUS MEETINGS
In early August, Kim Yong-nam, North Korea’s number two political leader and head of its legislature, departed Pyongyang amid great fanfare for an extended visit to Iran. The official reason was to attend the inauguration of President Hassan Rouhani, but the length of the visit raised alarm bells in Washington and allied capitals. North Korean state media said the trip lasted four days, but Iranian state media said it was ten, and that Kim was accompanied by a large delegation of other top officials.
Kim had last visited Tehran in 2012 to attend a gathering of the Non-Aligned Movement, the Cold War-era body composed of developing nations that strived to be independent of Washington and the Kremlin. Yet he skipped most of the events associated with that conference, instead focusing on signing a bilateral scientific cooperation agreement with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. According to U.S. intelligence officials, that pact looked very similar to the one Pyongyang inked with Syria in 2002; five years later, Israeli jets destroyed a building in eastern Syria that the United States and UN believe was a nearly operational North Korean-built nuclear reactor. Notably, one of the Iranian officials who attended the 2012 gathering with Kim was Atomic Energy Organization chief Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, who was sanctioned by Washington and the UN for his alleged role in nuclear weapons development.
Similarly, Kim’s latest trip focused on more than just lending support to Rouhani, according to North Korean and Iranian state media. Kim and Vice Foreign Minister Choe Hui-chol inaugurated their country’s new embassy in Tehran, a symbol of deepening ties between the two governments. They also held a string of bilateral meetings with foreign leaders, many from countries that have been significant buyers of North Korean weapons in recent decades (e.g., Zimbabwe, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Namibia). The Trump administration has been intensifying diplomatic pressure on all these countries to cut their economic and military ties with Pyongyang in response to the regime’s barrage of nuclear and missile tests this year.
Regarding missile development, Iran and North Korea presented a united front against Washington during Kim’s stay. Like Pyongyang, Tehran has moved forward with a string of ballistic missile tests in recent months, despite facing UN Security Council resolutions and condemnation by the Trump administration. After meeting with Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani on August 4, Kim declared, “Iran and North Korea share a mutual enemy [the United States]. We firmly support Iran on its stance that missile development does not need to be authorized by any nation.”
COVERT CONTACTS
The meetings that have gone unreported in state media are even more worrisome for allied governments. In recent years, U.S. and South Korean intelligence services have tracked a steady stream of Iranian and North Korean officials visiting each other in a bid to jointly develop their defense systems. Many of the North Koreans are from defense industries or secretive financial bodies that report directly to dictator Kim Jong-un, including Offices 39 and 99 of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.
Last year, U.S. authorities reported that missile technicians from one of Iran’s most important defense companies, the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, had traveled to North Korea to help develop an eighty-ton rocket booster for ballistic missiles. One of the company’s top officials, Sayyed Javad Musavi, has allegedly worked in tandem with the Korea Mining Development Trading Corp. (KOMID), which the United States and UN have sanctioned for being a central player in procuring equipment for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. For example, Shahid Hemmat has illegally shipped valves, electronics, and measuring equipment to KOMID for use in ground testing of space-launch vehicles and liquid-propellant ballistic missiles.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
North Korea has emerged as a critical partner in the alliance of states, militias, and political movements known as the “Axis of Resistance,” which Tehran developed to challenge U.S. power in the Middle East. Pyongyang has served as an important supplier of arms and equipment to Iran’s most important Arab ally, Syria’s Assad regime, during the country’s ongoing war. And Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have procured weapons from North Korea in their efforts to topple the internationally recognized government in Yemen, according to current and former U.S. officials.
Moreover, Kim Yong-nam’s August trip appeared to have official support from Russia and China. On his way to Iran, he first flew to Vladivostok on Air Koryo, the North Korean airline that the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned in December 2016 for financially aiding the Kim regime and its ballistic missile program. He then flew on to Tehran via Russia’s state carrier, Aeroflot, passing through Chinese airspace.
Going forward, the most pressing question is whether a smoking gun will emerge proving direct nuclear cooperation between Iran and North Korea. The U.S. government and the International Atomic Energy Agency say they have yet to see such conclusive evidence. But Iranian opposition groups allege that senior regime officials have visited North Korea to observe some of its six nuclear weapons tests. Chief among these officials, they add, is Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian general whom the UN has accused of working closely with Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani on secret nuclear weapons research. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials say these accusations cannot be ruled out, so all known contacts between the two regimes need to be scrutinized closely.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher greets Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at 10 Downing Street on March 14, 1985 where (it was revealed yesterday under the Britain’s Freedom of Information Act) they held secret talks to try and solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
POMPEO TO STATE?
[Notes below by Tom Gross]
This dispatch concerns international diplomatic efforts regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I attach four articles below.
The first is about Mike Pompeo and was published in Haaretz last January.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that Pompeo would likely replace Rex Tillerson as U.S. secretary of state at some point in the next two weeks.
If Pompeo replaces Tillerson, he will become the first properly pro-Israel U.S. secretary of state in decades.
Pompeo has also taken a hard line on the Iranian and Russian regimes.
Pompeo, presently head of the CIA, has repeatedly called the Iran nuclear deal, forged by Barack Obama and John Kerry, “disastrous,” and says it needs to be rolled back to prevent Iran “getting a nuclear bomb” and to stop the Iranian regime making further advances in its quest to control territory in the Middle East and beyond.
THREE TOUGH LEADERS
The second article below concerns British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s secret Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Yesterday documents obtained by the BBC via the U.K.’s Freedom of Information Act revealed Mubarak entered secret talks with Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan to try and solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
According to the documents, Thatcher’s reaction to Mubarak’s suggestion that an independent Palestinian state be created was initially negative. The British premier expressed concern that Palestinian statehood would dangerously jeopardize Israel’s security, allowing the Palestinians to set up a military front on Israel’s border from which to launch further attacks on the Jewish state.
***
Among past dispatches on Margaret Thatcher see:
Margaret Thatcher, one of the greats (& Hamas fires rocket at Holocaust memorial service)
REDRAWING JERUSALEM’S CURRENT BORDERS
In the third article below, Peter Berkowitz, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says comprehensive solutions to the Israel-Palestinians conflict are probably out of reach, but incremental improvements aren’t. He outlines the proposals by Likud legislator Anat Berko for Israel to shift substantial control over a cluster of Arab villages covering approximately 8.5 square miles in municipal Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority.
“These East Jerusalem neighborhoods are now home to some 300,000 Palestinians – and no Jews. Israel incorporated them into municipal Jerusalem after the 1967 Six Day War, but they were never part of historic Jerusalem.”
“Palestinians would benefit, too. The plan gives East Jerusalem Palestinians the opportunity to join the greater Ramallah and Bethlehem communities. It enlarges the amount of land under Palestinian Authority administration and improves its territorial contiguity.”
(Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Anat Berko, a member of the Knesset for the Likud and a leading counterterrorist expert on female and child suicide bombers, are both long-time subscribers to this email list.)
NOTORIOUS AIRLINE HIJACKER LEILA KHALED (WHO THE GUARDIAN COMPARED TO AUDREY HEPBURN) TURNED BACK AT ROME AIRPORT
In the fourth article below, Haaretz’s Rome correspondent reports that convicted Palestinian airline hijacker Leila Khaled has been turned back by security at Rome’s Fiumicino airport and sent back to Amman.
Finally it seems that there is some push back against welcoming Palestinian terrorists in Europe.
Khaled has never expressed remorse for her key role in the infamous hijackings of a TWA flight from Rome-to-Tel Aviv and another flight from Amsterdam to New York in which a crew member was killed. After the second hijacking, Khaled was taken into custody by British police but released by British authorities three weeks later in a controversial swap for dozens of Western hostages.
“Why should we welcome a militant who became famous hijacking planes to destroy the State of Israel, in other words a terrorist who is still proud for what she did,” wrote a columnist in “Corriere Della Sera,” Italy’s largest daily two days ago.
Khaled has regularly made appearances and been lionized by some in Europe. In September, she took part in an event at the European Parliament in Brussels titled “The Role of Women in the Palestinian Popular Resistance,” at the invitation of far-left Spanish MEPs, in which she again endorsed the “resistance” i.e. killing of [Jewish] civilians.
In an article in 2011, I criticized Katharine Viner (then the Guardian’s deputy editor and now the Guardian’s editor) for comparing Khaled to Audrey Hepburn.
In a glowing portrait, Viner wrote: “The gun held in fragile hands, the shiny hair wrapped in a keffiah, the delicate Audrey Hepburn face refusing to meet your eye.”
I wrote: “I don’t think the families of Khaled’s many victims would have compared her to Audrey Hepburn.”
I added: “Film star Audrey Hepburn said that witnessing the Jewish children in her class being deported, when she was a child in Nazi-occupied Holland, was a defining moment of her life. I doubt if she would appreciate the comparison of a Palestinian terrorist to her by The Guardian.”
-- Tom Gross
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
CONTENTS
1. “Mike Pompeo Has Hawkish History on Israel and Iran” (By Amir Tibon, Haaretz, Jan 24, 2017)
2. “Revealed Mubarak, Thatcher and Reagan secretly negotiated a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict” (Haaretz, Dec 1, 2017)
3. “A plan to start disentangling Israel and the Palestinians” (By Peter Berkowitz
Wall St Journal, Nov. 30, 2017)
4. “Palestinian hijacker Leila Khaled barred entry to Italy from Amman” (By Davide Lerner, Haaretz, Nov 30, 2017
ARTICLES
MIKE POMPEO HAS HAWKISH HISTORY ON ISRAEL AND IRAN
Mike Pompeo Has Hawkish History on Israel and Iran
By Amir Tibon
Haaretz
January 24, 2017
Mike Pompeo, who was confirmed on Monday evening by the Senate to run the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, has a record as a strong supporter of the Israeli government and a fierce critic of the Iran nuclear deal. Pompeo’s nomination was approved by a vote of 66-32 on the Senate floor, with the support of all Republican Senators except Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and an additional 15 Democrats, among them Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA.)
Pompeo spent the last five years representing Kansas’ 4th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, and was among the most outspoken Republican critics of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy in the Middle East.
As recently as last November, mere days after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 elections, Pompeo declared on Twitter, with regards to the Iran nuclear deal, “I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.”
The tweet was published before Trump announced Pompeo was his candidate for CIA Director. On Monday night, Pompeo's Twitter account was taken off the social network, in line with CIA policy.
During his confirmation period, Pompeo assured worried Democrats – among them Senator Feinstein – that as CIA Director, he would "objectively monitor" the nuclear deal's implementation by Iran, despite his opposition to the deal while he was a member of Congress. This was one of the reasons that Feinstein eventually decided to vote for him, despite having reservations at the beginning of the confirmation process.
In the summer of 2015, at the height of the debate over the Iran deal, Pompeo said that the deal "won't stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb and places Israel at more risk." He also said that the "theory that post-sanctions Iran will moderate is a joke – they want to annihilate Israel, now buying Russian missiles."
Pompeo also criticized the Obama administration for not demanding that Iran cease calling for Israel’s destruction as part of the deal – a demand proposed and promoted by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
“Ceasing to call for the destruction of Israel should have been a condition of the Iran Deal – along with release of innocent American hostages,” Pompeo said in a statement.
In November 2015, Pompeo visited Israel and met with Netanyahu, a meeting which he said left a strong impression on him. “Prime Minister Netanyahu is a true partner of the American people,” Pompeo said after their discussion at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.
“Our conversation was incredibly enlightening as to the true threats facing both Israel and the United States. Netanyahu’s efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons are incredibly admirable and deeply appreciated.”
During the same visit, Pompeo also met senior officers in the Israeli police and was briefed by them on the “lone wolves Intifada” that included dozens of stabbing and car-ramming attacks by Palestinians across the country. A statement by his office described the Israeli police officers he met as “a group of officers who not only bravely defend the people each day, but have also been targeted themselves by terrorists.”
Pompeo said that “by putting on their uniform, the men and women of the Israeli National Police put a target on their back for terrorists who want to murder law enforcement. In the fight against terrorism, cooperation between Israel and the United States has never been more important.”
Two weeks after his visit, Pompeo released a statement condemning “the ongoing violence in the State of Israel,” explaining that “I can tell you that the Israeli people and the Israeli National Police are demonstrating admirable restraint in the face of unspeakably cruel attacks.”
He added that “We cannot let these acts of terror go on any longer. Those who carry out, encourage, or defend this violence should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. We must stand with our ally Israel and put a stop to terrorism. Ongoing attacks by the Palestinians serve only to distance the prospect of peace.”
During his confirmation hearing, Pompeo didn’t speak at length about Israel, but he did take a tough line against Russia, more than the one promoted by the President who appointed him. Pompeo called Russia a major threat to the United States, and said that Vladimir Putin’s country “has reasserted itself aggressively, invading and occupying Ukraine, threatening Europe, and doing nearly nothing to aid in the destruction and defeat of ISIS.”
His strong stance on this issue was among the reasons that 15 Democratic Senators voted for him, in addition to a number of Republicans who have been skeptical of Trump’s foreign policy priorities.
MUBARAK, THATCHER AND REAGAN DISCUSSED A PALESTINIAN STATE
Revealed Mubarak, Thatcher and Reagan Secretly Negotiated a Solution to the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Haaretz
December 1, 2017
Declassified documents show Egypt’s ex-president and Britain’s Thatcher discussed a resettlement plan for Palestinians fleeing conflict in Lebanon, on the condition of Palestinian statehood
Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak held a discreet meeting with Britain’s then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1982 in which he said his country could take in displaced Palestinians fleeing [Sunni Muslim and Christian militias during] the civil war in Lebanon, on the condition that a solution would be found to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Rare documents dating back to the high-profile and secret meeting held thirty five years were obtained by the BBC via the U.K.’s Freedom of Information Act and revealed on Thursday.
According to the declassified records, Mubarak had also met with ally and then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan to discuss an American push to relocate Palestinians trying to escape war-torn southern Lebanon to Egypt.
Following that parley, Mubarak flew to the U.K. to meet Thatcher, who he then told he would only accept such an endeavor “as part of a comprehensive framework for a solution” to the Palestinian problem; in other words, Mubarak stipulated the move on a deal that would end the Arab-Israeli conflict and work to establish an independent Palestinian state.
Mubarak also told the U.S. ambassador to Egypt at the time, Philip Habib, that “by making the Palestinians leave Lebanon” without striking a deal to resolve the conflict, “the United States risked a dozen difficult problems in various countries.”
Thatcher’s reaction was initially negative. The British premier expressed concern that Palestinian statehood would actively jeopardize Israel’s security. She was also worried that Palestinians would be encouraged to put military personnel along the borders of a theoretical Palestinian state close to Israel.
Thatcher also told the Egyptian president that “even the establishment of a Palestinian state could not lead to the absorption of the whole of the Palestinian diaspora.” But, Egypt countered Thatcher’s reservations, with the country’s then-Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Boutros Ghali telling the British prime minister that “the Palestinians will have their own passports, however, and they will take different positions.
“We should not only have an Israeli state and a Jewish diaspora, but a small Palestinian state and Palestinian diaspora,” Ghali added.
The Egyptians also tried to reassure Thatcher that a Palestinian state would be small in size and would not pose a political, regional threat.
Another hurdle Thatcher foresaw was that Russia, an avid supporter of the Palestinian cause even prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, would try to intervene in the emerging political process.
Mubarak’s political adviser, Osama al-Baz, told Thatcher that the Palestinians were not likely to seek support from Moscow. Thatcher’s fear, he told her, “was a misconception.” He insisted that a “Palestinian state would never be dominated by the Soviet Union. It would be economically dependent on the oil-rich Arabs who were vehemently opposed to a pro-Soviet state.”
“Saudi Arabia for one will never allow it,” al-Baz predicted.
Trying to ease Thatcher’s concerns, the documents show that Mubarak told Thatcher that “a Palestinian state will never be a threat to Israel. The Palestinians in Kuwait and the rest of the Gulf will never return to a Palestinian state.”
The Palestinian state discussed between Britain and Egypt was slated to operate in a confederation with Jordan, and according to that plan the Palestinians would remain connected to Jordan and “evolve within 10 to 15 years into a demilitarized Palestinian state,” Egyptian adviser al-Baz suggested.
But while the Palestinians did join a confederation with Jordan, conflicts with Israel did not abate in the following decades. The proposed plans did not bear fruit, mostly due to the tense reality on the ground and because of reluctance on the British side.
The issue of a Palestinian statehood remains a point of contention between the Israeli government and Palestinian factions in the West Bank and in Gaza, which are now forming an accord to end their decade-long dispute and forge a united leadership for the Palestinian people.
“COMPREHENSIVE SOLUTIONS TO THE CONFLICT ARE PROBABLY OUT OF REACH. INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS AREN’T”
A Plan to Start Disentangling Israel and the Palestinians
Comprehensive solutions to the conflict are probably out of reach. Incremental improvements aren’t.
By Peter Berkowitz
Wall Street Journal
Nov. 30, 2017
For two decades and stretching across the past three presidencies, the U.S. has sought a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All attempts failed. All made matters worse. Yet the Trump administration is reportedly readying new ideas for what Jason D. Greenblatt, the president’s chief negotiator, called a “lasting peace agreement.”
It would be wiser to focus on proposals for partial measures that stand a reasonable chance of improving conditions for both sides. The detailed plan on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desk for the division of the Jerusalem municipal area, presented by a team led by Likud legislator Anat Berko, is a good place to begin.
Bitter experience counsels incrementalism. Bill Clinton’s quest for a conflict-ending deal culminated in 2000 with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s launching the second intifada. The breakdown in 2008 of George W. Bush’s push for enduring peace was followed by escalating rocket and missile fire from Gaza on Israeli civilians, which compelled Israel to undertake three military incursions in six years into the Hamas-governed territory. The repeated diplomatic initiatives of Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry raised expectations, dashed hopes, and likely contributed to 2015’s so-called knife intifada, which flared in Jerusalem after the collapse of the Obama administration’s vain pursuit of a final settlement.
In the wake of these setbacks, Ms. Berko’s plan reflects a pragmatic assessment of diplomacy’s limits and the urgency of action. She proposes to shift substantial control over a cluster of Arab villages covering approximately 8.5 square miles in municipal Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority. These East Jerusalem neighborhoods are now home to some 300,000 Palestinians – and no Jews. Israel incorporated them into municipal Jerusalem after the 1967 Six Day War, but they were never part of historic Jerusalem.
Ms. Berko, whom I met in Israel more than a decade ago, believes Israel can’t wait for an all-embracing deal. Separation now from the East Jerusalem neighborhoods would significantly reduce the number of West Bank Palestinians – between two million and three million live beyond the Green Line, Israel’s pre-1967 eastern boundary – subject to direct Israeli rule.
In moving Israel’s security barrier rather than relocating people, the partial withdrawal Ms. Berko contemplates would benefit both sides. Israel would see a sizable increase in Jerusalem’s Jewish majority, whose total population today is about 865,000. Withdrawal would reduce Israel’s economic burden – on the order of $570 million to $850 million a year – to provide welfare and educational entitlements to Palestinian “permanent residents.” These Palestinians for the most part have chosen not to vote in municipal elections or become Israeli citizens, though they are eligible. On the whole they pay vastly less in taxes than they receive in benefits. Relocating the fence would also improve Israel’s security by separating it from an often-hostile population that fosters terrorism.
Palestinians would benefit, too. The plan gives East Jerusalem Palestinians the opportunity to join the greater Ramallah and Bethlehem communities. It enlarges the amount of land under Palestinian Authority administration and improves its territorial contiguity.
Ms. Berko’s proposal is not the first time someone has suggested separating East Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods from Israel, but it is the first proposal to come from the Israeli right. She is a retired Israel Defense Forces lieutenant colonel, holds a doctorate in criminology, and is the author of a 2012 book on female and child suicide bombers. Mr. Netanyahu handpicked her in 2015 to join Likud’s parliamentary list, and she serves on the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. She has credibility on national security and an ability to see the big picture thanks to her military background, her professional expertise in counterterrorism and Palestinian culture and politics, and her relative independence from intraparty power struggles.
Ms. Berko told me that her team of senior national-security figures, lawyers and cartographers worked on the plan for nine months. “Security,” she emphasized, “is our first consideration.”
Under the plan, Jerusalem would remain Israel’s capital. Israel would exercise sovereignty over the Old City, Temple Mount and other holy sites while scrupulously guaranteeing freedom of worship. It would annex the large settlement blocs around Jerusalem. And, mindful of the heightened exposure to rockets and missiles after completely withdrawing from southern Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005, Israel would retain ultimate security responsibility for the East Jerusalem villages.
The plan faces formidable obstacles. A significant segment of Mr. Netanyahu’s party and a good portion of his broader right-wing coalition government are likely to oppose it – at least initially. They are committed to a unified greater Jerusalem on nationalist grounds and competing security calculations.
Dividing greater Jerusalem also gives rise to a vexing legal issue: By what authority does Israel strip East Jerusalem Palestinians of entitlements and voting rights they have possessed for decades?
And West Bank Palestinians will be skeptical. They won’t object to the return of a small section of land they believe is theirs. But as former Palestinian diplomat Hasan Abdel Rahman told me recently, younger Palestinians increasingly despair of a two-state solution and instead set their sights on full citizenship in a single, binational state: “If all the land Israel now controls is not divided in the short run, it will not be divided in the long run.”
Still, all parties would be wise to examine seriously Ms. Berko’s proposal, and others in the same spirit, that would gradually reduce the entanglement of Israeli and Palestinian political destinies. It may be the Trump administration’s best prospect for simultaneously advancing Israel’s long-term interests as a liberal, democratic and Jewish state and the Palestinians’ interest in greater self-rule in preparation for a state of their own.
PALESTINIAN HIJACKER LEILA KHALED BARRED ENTRY TO ITALY
Palestinian Hijacker Leila Khaled Barred Entry to Italy from Amman
Italian press reports that security at Rome airport send her back to Amman; says decision was ‘not political’
By Davide Lerner
Haaretz
November 30, 2017
ROME – Renowned Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine militant Leila Khaled was stopped by Italian border police in Rome after she disembarked a flight from Amman, according to Italian press reports. She was expected in the Italian capital as well as in the southern city of Naples to give talks on the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the PFLP, but was sent back to Amman.
Italy’s Department of Public Security issued a statement insisting that the stopping of Khaled was a purely administrative act, not a political decision. “The Jordanian citizen arrived to Rome from Amman without a valid Schengen visa [allowing passage through European borders], and was sent back in compliance with national and international Schengen regulations,” the statement read.
‘WHY WELCOME HER?’
Khaled’s arrival had already sparked controversy in Italy, as she took part in the hijacking of airlines in 1969 and 1970. “Why should we welcome a militant who became famous hijacking planes to destroy the State of Israel, in other words a terrorist who is still proud for what she did,” wrote prominent pro-Israeli columnist Pierluigi Battista in “Corriere Della Sera,” Italy’s largest daily. He endorsed the Italian Jewish communities’ vocal protest against the arrival of the Palestinian militant, who has become an icon of Palestinian armed resistance against Israel.
Now that Khaled’s entry to Italy has been blocked by Fiumicino Airport border security, pro-Palestinian organizations are voicing their outrage. Napoli Direzione Opposta (Naples Opposite Direction), the association that was due to host Khaled at the event in Naples, wrote on its Facebook page that “this episode shows how Italian institutions are submissive to the Zionist lobby and the Mossad.”
According to Riccardo Pacifici, former president of the Jewish community in Rome, “Italian authorities acted rightfully against a member of a terrorist organization which is also on the blacklist of the EU; it would be naïve to think that the decision was non-political,” Pacifici said.
“We should welcome in Italy all Palestinians who are willing to discuss the creation of a state next to Israel, not those who advocate the creation of a state instead of Israel, like the terrorist Khaled.”
Khaled largely owes her fame to a series of photographs depicting her as an attractive young female hijacker, smiling with a kaffiyeh over her head and a rifle in her hands. The most famous photo was taken in the aftermath of a plane hijacking of 1969, when a Rome-to-Tel Aviv TWA flight was forced to divert to Damascus by a PFLP commando squad, of which Khaled was part. There were no casualties in the attack.
The following year Khaled and hijacking partner Patrick Arguello attempted to hijack an Amsterdam-to-New York El Al flight, but did not succeed. During a struggle onboard, Arguello shot a crew member and was shot to death by security. Khaled was taken into custody by British police but released three weeks later in a swap for dozens of Western hostages.
Khaled, 73, has maintained an uncompromising attitude towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In recent statements published on the PFLP website, she denounced all initiatives that might lead to a “normalization” of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
OUTRAGE AT EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
She set off controversy in September when she took part in an event at the European Parliament in Brussels titled “The Role of Women in the Palestinian Popular Resistance.” The event was organized by far-left Spanish MEPs.
“The European Parliament GUE group [European United Left] used the democratic institution they were elected to, and which represents all of Europe’s citizens, to spread their whitewashing and hate-filled agenda,” the Brussels pro-Israel lobby Europe Israel Public Affairs told Haaretz at the time.
Following Khaled’s participation in the conference, Antonio Tajani, the conservative Italian president of the European Parliament, proposed banning from the European Parliament anyone who had been involved in terrorism, which the Parliament endorsed.