Obama’s Middle-East Policy In A Holding Pattern

10 Comments

1. 

   Oui on April 27, 2014 at 5:33 am

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   Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talk Charade

   (Tikun Olam) July 21, 2013 –  Regarding Israel, it seems clear that Netanyahu will be unable to carry his far-right coalition into any peace agreement that is remotely based on 1967 borders.  In fact, Naftali Bennett has already threatened to bolt under such conditions.  Avigdor Lieberman said today the idea of a peace agreement is currently impossible and will not happen “for years.”  Which is, of course, what Bibi believes as well-but which he cannot say publicly.

   If this negotiation ever gets serious (which is doubtful), his only options will be to stall or abandon it (or better yet to hope his Palestinian interlocutors do so first), or to ditch his far-right bedmates and form a new centrist coalition.  Netanyahu has never remotely been a centrist nor cohabited willingly with any.  The idea of a centrist Israeli coalition under him is a pipe dream for liberal Zionists who harbor such illusions.

   But today’s worst outrage, which sent me into a paroxysm of righteous indignation, was the report by Laura Rozen that John Kerry may plan to appoint Martin Indyk his “peace envoy.”  You’ll recall that the estimable George Mitchell had that role towards the beginning of Obama’s first term.  But Mitchell failed because Obama wasn’t willing to use the power of his office to pressure the Israelis to deal.  Despite such a failure, at least one might say that Mitchell was truly an honest broker.  He had no strong affiliation with either side nor any hostility against either side.

   Indyk is an entirely different story: there seems to be a notion among U.S. presidents that to secure Israeli-Palestinian peace they need a former Aipac analyst on their team.  That’s how they got Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk and a number of other similar figures.  They both are or were affiliated with WINEP, Aipac’s foreign policy think tank.  Neither Ross nor Indyk has any special affinity or interest in the Palestinians, except as a means to an end (a peace deal that responds to and guarantees Israeli interests).  The latter was also U.S. ambassador to Israel under Pres. Clinton.  The NY Times calls the Brookings think-tanker “a seasoned hand,” which as usual for the Times is beside the point and misses the key reasons for his appointment and his political affiliations.

   Bibi: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

   ○ Obama Foreign Policy Converted to Clinton Real Politics  Feb. 28, 2010
   ○ Dennis Ross Moves to NSC ¶ A Hawk Within?  July 12, 2009
   Dennis Ross got his start in high-level policymaking working under Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon during the Jimmy Carter administration.

   ○ WikiLeaks Reveal Sham ‘Peace Process,’ Israeli Stonewalling plus addendum  Jan 24th, 2011
   Days later the Arab uprising would embroil Mubarak’s Egypt and Assad’s Syria, the rest is history.

2. 

   Marie2 on April 27, 2014 at 10:35 pm

   So it goes.

   POTUS in second term announces new I/P Peace Process (roadmap, etc.) to much applause and hope.  Reports negotiations are coming along, then hit a sticky patch, later agreements getting close, etc.  Very quietly, preferably with no public announcement, the “peace process” temporarily suspended to allow all parties to reconsider.

   Rinse, repeat.

   Jimmy Carter’s mistake was to engage Israel and Egypt in his first term.  Clinton’s mistake was to believe his own “big dog” hype and that would be sufficient to bully Arafat.

    

3. 

   kafkananda on April 28, 2014 at 12:44 am

   Well, this is good, imo. We’ve peeled back multiple layers of insincere talk. We can speak of the ‘peace process’ in the past tense for a while. There are plenty of avenues open for the Palestinians:  BDS, UN engagement, legal actions and beefed up diplomacy. Now it’s the Europeans turn to tighten the screws a little. The tide has turned, in that, the Israelis are now increasingly being portrayed as the ‘problem’. The hasbara is more clearly being seen as ‘a kilometer wide but a centimeter deep’.  

4. 

   Oui on April 28, 2014 at 1:54 am

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   Knesset Deputy Speaker Fundraises for Israeli Terror Group

   (Tikun Olam) – Maariv reports that Knesset deputy speaker Moshe Feiglin plans to travel to Toronto in ten days, where he will fundraise for the Canadian offshoot of the Israeli terror group, Kahane Chai.  He will address a gala dinner for JDL Canada and then also speak at a Chabad synagogue in the city.

   The Jewish Defense League is on the Treasury Department list of terror organizations. Canada’s far-right Harper government hasn’t seen fit to give such a designation there.

   In addition to his Kahanist ideology, Feiglin is one of the Likud’s most popular politicians.  He is one of the chief inciters of tension with Muslims, making regular pilgrimages for prayer to the Temple Mount, which is controlled by a Muslim religious committee.  The Likud MK believes, along with his extremist settler brethren, in destroying the Haram al-Sharif and rebuilding the Holy Temple in its place.  Such a prospect threatens violence that would be far worse than that which resulted from Ariel Sharon’s walk on the Temple Mount, which started the second Intifada.

   Feiglin has been designated an undesirable by the UK and refused entry there for his propensity to incite religious hatred among the country’s Muslims.  But in Australia, he was feted at the Israeli ambassador’s home as part of an Israeli trade delegation.

   Fundraising for Jewish terror groups and personalities is nothing new for Feiglin.  I reported here a similar fundraising trip to Australia which was organized with the the Kahane family.

   …
   The JDL no longer needs to engage in terrorism as Meir Kahane did, since it essentially runs a shadow Israeli state.  It controls vital levers of power that promote the interests of Kahanists and Kahanism.  That power runs all the way from the Knesset to the army to the intelligence services.  No one in the Israeli state can brook the opposition of Kahanists.

   In other words, they don’t need to be terrorists anymore, since the State has become them.  The State’s actions aren’t often described as terror by the mainstream.  But it has adopted the goals, interests, and activities of the former terror underground.  It doesn’t have to plant bombs and kill Palestinians because the IDF will do the equivalent for them.

   But the ultimate truth here is that one of Israel’s most senior political leaders is consorting with Canadian Jewish extremists who are terrorists in all but name.  Welcome to today’s Israel.

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     kafkananda on April 28, 2014 at 11:14 am

     When, in 2006, I first ‘woke up’ from reading the blogs, one of the sites I started looking at was Watching America, a collection of translated foreign news articles. They had a story on Feiglin that blew my naive and innocent mind. That was the beginning of a deeper understanding of the Israeli political scene. There hasn’t been a lot of publicity about him over the last few years, but he’s definitely someone to watch.

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     Oui on April 28, 2014 at 3:47 pm

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     Moshe Feiglin’s ‘Where There Are No Men’: A Book to Recall

     Then comes the news of the Rabin assassination. Whatever the truth about this event, the assassination proved extremely useful to the Left. The entire Right could now be accused of having created a “climate of violence.” Where There Are No Men sometimes reads like a defense brief against this accusation, as Feiglin emphasizes the nonviolent character of the protests and makes clear that his models were Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

     Indeed, Zo Artzeinu’s activities could be regarded as a test of the Gandhi-King “civil disobedience” model in the Israeli context. From this test, Feiglin and his associates learn that civil disobedience works only against governments that are themselves civil and democratic. It has worked in America and Europe, but not in China. The experience of Zo Artzeinu suggests that Israel, under the domination of a Left whose “Bolshevist” history is briefly but chillingly reviewed, is in some respects more like a totalitarian state than an Western democracy.

     Moshe Feiglin banned from entering Britain , welcomed by Canada’s Harper

     ○ Kahanists don’t need to be terrorists anymore, since the State has become them

     JDL Canada’s Julius Suraski reports on PM Harper’s Knesset address

     … As a Canadian of the Jewish faith, one could not be more proud of Prime Minister Harper, and as we left the Knesset I heard person after person suggest that, indeed, he was the moral leader of the west. ….specifically in comparison to the charlatan south of the Canadian border.

     ○ Harper’s planeload

     Posted in BooMan’s fp story – Don’t Call It Apartheid.

5. 

   Oui on April 28, 2014 at 11:10 am

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   John Kerry admits Israeli Apartheid; and 5 Ways he is Understating It

   (Informed Comment) – In a closed-room meeting of the Trilateral Commission last Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry warned that Israel is on the verge of becoming an Apartheid state, according to a recording obtained by The Daily Beast.

   The remark will raise a firestorm of criticism from Palestine-deniers, who are if anything more blindered and fanatical than climate-change deniers. What is sad is that Kerry phrased it in the future tense. That cow was out of the barn a long time ago.

   As the Daily Beast noted, the Rome Statute defined Apartheid as “inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”

   Former South African deputy president Baleka Mbete and African National Congress leader has said that Israel-Palestine is actually “far worse than Apartheid South Africa.”

   Israeli society inside 1967 borders is not broadly characterized by Apartheid conditions, though Palestinian-Israelis do labor under legal forms of discrimination. For instance, unless their villagers are “recognized,” they cannot receive water and other municipal services and are threatened with dispersal. Since no Jewish villages are unrecognized, this separate status for (indigenous!) Palestinian-Israeli villages is Apartheid-like. Still, the most thorough comparison of the Apartheid system of racial segregation with Israeli practices can only be made of the West Bank and Gaza, where Palestinians are ruled by Israel but kept stateless and without rights.

    « click for info interview with Ilan Pappé
   Israeli-Imposed Apartheid Almost Complete in West Bank (OCHA)

   Continue reading Juan Cole’s 5 points …

   Crime of Apartheid

   Apartheid was declared to be a crime against humanity, with a scope that went far beyond South Africa. While the crime of apartheid is most often associated with the racist policies of South Africa after 1948, the term more generally refers to racially based policies in any state.”

   Seventy-six other countries subsequently signed on, but a number of nations, including western democracies, have neither signed nor ratified the ICSPCA, including Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. In explanation of the US vote against the convention, Ambassador Clarence Clyde Ferguson Jr. said: “[W]e cannot…accept that apartheid can in this manner be made a crime against humanity. Crimes against humanity are so grave in nature that they must be meticulously elaborated and strictly construed under existing international law…”

   Critics have accused Israel of committing the crime of apartheid; In a 2007 report, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine John Dugard stated that “elements of the [state of Israel’s] occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law.” and suggested that the “legal consequences of a prolonged occupation with features of colonialism and apartheid” be put to the International Court of Justice.

   The UN Special Rapporteur concludes that this “general structure of apartheid that exists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories … makes the allegation increasingly credible despite the differences between the specific characteristics of South African apartheid and that of the Occupied Palestinian Territories regime”

   ○ FW de Klerk on why apartheid will fail in Israel/Palestine

6. 

   Oui on April 28, 2014 at 2:01 pm

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   Troubling Prejudice

   (LTE Jewish Pres) April 12, 2006 – I am deeply troubled by Moshe Feiglin‘s declaration that Arabs, to whom he ascribes Ishmaelite ancestry, are, like Ishmael, “wild men” who “live by their sword – by robbery” (column, “Terror Is Not the Enemy,” March 31).

   I am disturbed on several levels. First of these is the supposition that today’s Arabs descend from Ishmael. This blanket assessment fails to account for the commingling of peoples over the centuries. Some Arabs probably descend from Ishmael, but they descend as well from other ancestors. Even within one Arab country, such as Egypt, the sources of descent vary widely among the citizens. Taking into account the vastness of the Arab world, its ancestral sources are certainly many and varied. (Some Arabs may even descend from Jews!)

   Second, Feiglin assumes that because Ishmael had a particular trait, all his descendants share, and are primarily governed by, this trait. Even if we grant this assumption, should we likewise grant that a person cannot overcome his innate tendencies? If that is true, then the person cannot be faulted for his malevolent acts, whereas they stem from a trait over which he has no control.

   Moreover, the Talmud teaches us that Ishmael, toward the end of his life, repented and died a righteous man. If Ishmael, the “wild man” himself, was able to win his inner struggle, then certainly his descendants have the ability to do so.

   Most disturbing is Feiglin’s willingness to tar an entire group of people with a negative brush. Jews have suffered greatly from just this sort of prejudice. We must be equally wary about casting other groups in a broad, negative light.

   Avi Goldstein
   Far Rockaway, NY

   ○ Manhigut Yehudit: The Jewish Leadership Movement
   ○ Moshe Feiglin: The ‘This Is Their Land’ Mentality
   ○ The Price Tag of Terror
   ○ Victory is not a Dirty Word
7. 

   Oui on April 28, 2014 at 2:33 pm

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   At last I managed to find the fascist description of Arabs by Moshe Feiglin …

   Moshe Feiglin is banned from Britainbut is coming to Canada. Why?

   …
   Feiglin has long been a controversial figureand his views are oftendescribed as fascist.In the New Yorker in 2004 he was quoted as saying:

   Among the Settlers  by Jeffrey Goldberg

   Indeed, some of the leading ideologues of the settlements, far from supporting the idea of a Jewish democracy, hope to establish a Jewish theocracy in Israel, ruled by a Sanhedrin and governed by Jewish law. Moshe Feiglin, a Likud activist who lives in a West Bank settlement and heads the Jewish Leadership bloc within the Party–he controls nearly a hundred and fifty of the Likud central committee’s three thousand members–believes that the Bible, interpreted literally, should form the basis of Israel’s legal system.

   “Why should non-Jews have a say in the policy of a Jewish state?” Feiglin said to me. “For two thousand years, Jews dreamed of a Jewish state, not a democratic state. Democracy should serve the values of the state, not destroy them.” In any case, Feiglin said, “You can’t teach a monkey to speak and you can’t teach an Arab to be democratic. You’re dealing with a culture of thieves and robbers. Muhammad, their prophet, was a robber and a killer and a liar. The Arab destroys everything he touches.”

   “We’re Not in Lodz Ghetto Anymore” – Temple Mount Activists Fight for Jewish Rights in Knesset and Beyond

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     kafkananda on April 30, 2014 at 12:34 am

     I was just perusing the Old Testament Book of Joshua. I’m sure Moshe is far more familiar with it than I. My question would be “Who is this Yahweh?” From His exploits, one might say, nowadays, that He was the Hitler of the God realms. A genocidal mass murderer, ordering his ignorant charges to do what today seems so barbaric. Not much of a role model for the 21st Century, if you ask me.