Passenger: Let Her Go.

Passenger: Let Her Go. Video. passengermusic, July 25, 2012. YouTube.

Iran Is Playing Obama, Says Savvy Saudi Prince. By Jeffrey Goldberg.

Iran Is Playing Obama, Says Savvy Saudi Prince. By Jeffrey Goldberg. Bloomberg, November 22, 2013.

When the US let Iran off the hook. By David Horovitz. The Times of Israel, November 25, 2013.

A Dangerous, Wrongheaded Deal with Iran. By Ted Cruz. Foreign Policy, November 25, 2013. Also here.

Iran Deal Could Reconfigure the Middle East. By Rami G. Khouri.

Iran deal could reconfigure the Middle East. By Rami G. Khouri. The Daily Star (Lebanon), November 27, 2013.

Khouri:

The most striking implication of the agreement signed in Geneva last weekend to ensure that Iran’s nuclear industry does not develop nuclear weapons while gradually removing the sanctions on the country is more about Iran than it is about Iran’s nuclear industry. The important new dynamic that has been set in motion is likely to profoundly impact almost every significant political situation around the Middle East and the world, including both domestic conditions within countries and diplomatic relations among countries. This agreement breaks the long spell of estrangement and hostility between the U.S. and Iran, and signals important new diplomatic behavior by both countries, which augurs well for the entire region. It is also likely to trigger the resumption of the suspended domestic political and cultural evolution of Iran, which also will spur new developments across the Middle East.

 

Perhaps we can see the changes starting to occur in Iran as similar to the developments in Poland in the early 1980s, when the bold political thrust of the Solidarity movement that enjoyed popular support broke the Soviet Union’s hold on Polish political life, and a decade later led to the collapse of the entire Soviet Empire. The resumption of political evolution inside Iran will probably move rapidly in the years ahead, as renewed economic growth, more personal freedoms, and more satisfying interactions with the region and the world expand and strengthen the relatively “liberal” forces around Rouhani, Rafsanjani, Khatami and others; this should slowly temper, then redefine and reposition, the Islamic revolutionary autocrats who have controlled the power structure for decades but whose hard-line controls are increasingly alien to the sentiments of ordinary Iranians.

 

These domestic and regional reconfigurations will occur slowly, comprising the situations in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and the Gulf Cooperation Council states led by Saudi Arabia. The critical link remains a healthy, normal, nonhostile relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which I suspect will start to come about in the months ahead, as both grasp the exaggerated nature of their competition for influence in the region and learn to behave like normal countries. They will learn to compete on the basis of their soft power among a region of half a billion people who increasingly feel and behave like citizens who have the right to choose how they live, rather than to be dictated to and herded like cattle.

 

Should a more normal Iran-Saudi relationship occur, as I expect, this will trigger major adjustments across the entire region, starting in Syria and Lebanon where the proxies of both countries face off in cruel and senseless confrontations. The Geneva II conference in January to explore a peaceful transition in Syria will be the first place to look for signs of an emerging new order in the region that will be shaped by a healthier Iranian-Saudi relationship.

 

The reason that Iran will be able to impact conditions around the region so significantly stems from what I believe is the most significant underlying lesson of the Iran sanctions/nuclear agreement: It reflects the fact that Iran steadfastly resisted and boldly defied American-Israeli-led sanctions, assassinations, industrial sabotage and explicit military threats for over a decade, and finally caused the U.S. and allies to accept the two long-standing principal demands from Tehran – to accept the enrichment of uranium in Iran for peaceful purposes, and to drop the threats of changing the regime in Tehran through military force. In this dangerous game of diplomatic chicken that nearly brought the region to a deadly war, the Americans blinked first, and then they sensibly engaged Iran in serious negotiations that have achieved an initial success.

 

This is coupled with a parallel historic development inside the United States, which is the successful determination of the Obama administration to stare down Israel and its powerful lobby in Washington and complete the agreement with Iran. In fact, the Obama administration has now done this twice in a row – first by going against the Israeli government’s strong advocacy for an American military attack against Syria a few months ago, and now in completing the Iran agreement which Israel’s lobby institutes and proxies in Washington worked hard to stop. Obama showed that a policy that is in the best interest of the U.S. and has the support of the American public will always prevail against even the most intense lobbying efforts by Israel and its American surrogates. This has profound and positive implications for future U.S. policy-making in the Middle East, which will benefit all concerned, including Israel.

 

These breakthroughs reflect the fact that both the American and Iranian leaderships conducted policies that reflected the sensible, nonviolent preferences of their own people. They should both be congratulated, and let us hope that other leaders in the region follow suit.

Obama Needs to Take On the Israel Lobby Over Iran. By Gideon Rachman.

Obama needs to take on the Israel lobby over Iran. By Gideon Rachman. FT, November 25, 2013.

Rachman:

The outcome of a showdown between two leaders who loathe one another will be critical.

For Barack Obama, striking a nuclear deal with Iran may turn out to be the easy part. The president’s biggest struggle now is facing down Israel and its supporters in the US as they attempt to rally opposition to the deal. The administration knows this and it is quietly confident that it can take on the Israel lobby in Congress – and win.

 

Beneath all the arcane details about centrifuges and breakout times, the Israeli-American dispute over Iran is quite simple. The Israelis want the complete dismantlement of the Iranian nuclear programme. The Americans and their negotiating partners want to freeze it in the first instance – and also recognise that any final deal will have to leave Iran with some nuclear capacity.

 

The real alternative to the Geneva process, argue the Americans, is not the better deal of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s dreams. It is a breakdown in negotiations followed by an accelerated nuclear programme in Iran – leading either to an Iranian bomb or to war. The Obama administration believes that, by making this case, it can face down Israel’s formidable phalanx of supporters in Congress, traditionally marshalled by the American Israel Public Affairs committee.

 

The debate in Congress is likely to focus on whether the legislature will agree to a relaxation in sanctions – or whether, on the contrary, congressional leaders press for toughened sanctions that would undercut Mr Obama’s negotiating stance. While the president can relax some sanctions by executive order of the White House, sooner or later he is going to need Congress to go along with an Iran deal.

 

The administration’s confidence that it can win the argument over Iran is bolstered by an opinion poll, taken before the Geneva agreement was nailed down, which showed the American public was in favour of a nuclear deal with Iran by 56 per cent to 39 per cent. The administration’s calculation is that the strong public desire to avoid further wars in the Middle East will override the public’s traditional sympathy with Israel and antipathy towards Iran.

 

Aipac is a formidable lobbying organisation. But the recent fiasco over Mr Obama’s request to Congress to approve missile strikes on Syria following the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad’s regime showed that the Israel lobby cannot always deliver victory on Capitol Hill. Aipac lobbied hard in favour of strikes on Syria. But deep public opposition to military action weighed more heavily with Congress.

 

However, the analogies may not be as reassuring as the administration hopes. The route from a Syria vote to military action was clear and direct. By contrast, rejection of an Iran deal is not explicitly a vote for war. What is more, the fiasco over Mr Obama’s healthcare reforms has driven the president’s approval ratings to new lows and weakened him.

 

If the Obama administration’s domestic political strategy over Iran is to work, therefore, its arguments in favour of the nuclear deal will have to be able to withstand the fierce scrutiny that the Israelis and others will subject them to. So do the arguments stack up?

 

Broadly speaking, they do. Important weaknesses in the earlier draft of the agreement, a fortnight ago, have been addressed. In particular, development of Iran’s heavy water plant at Arak, southwest of Tehran, which potentially opened an alternative route to a plutonium bomb, is now to stop. Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 per cent, which is dangerously close to weapons-grade, will be diluted. Iran has agreed to an intrusive regime of inspections, which will make it much harder for it to violate a nuclear deal, as North Korea once did.

 

Iranian relief at this interim deal is palpable – and alarming to Israel and Saudi Arabia. But the reality is that Iranians have not yet got very much by way of sanctions relief. The biggest measures agreed are one-off releases of frozen assets. The main financial sanctions remain in place and continue to cost Iran dearly. The Obama administration has retained considerable leverage as the two sides move to negotiate a full deal over the next six months.

 

The Israelis point out that they are not the only US ally in the region that is deeply wary of this deal. Saudi Arabia is also clearly angry. But Saudi concern is only partly to do with the prospect of an Iranian bomb. More broadly, the Saudis are engaged in a struggle for regional and theological supremacy with Iran – which has led them to undermine peace efforts in Syria. While both Israel and Saudi Arabia are close American allies, their interests are not identical to those of the US.

 

As the Iran debate moves forward in America, so it will take on a personal aspect. Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu detest each other. Now they are about to stage a very public showdown. It would be a humiliation for the US president if his Iran policy is pulled apart in Congress at the behest of the Israelis. But the stakes are very high for Mr Netanyahu and Israel, too – and victory could be as dangerous as defeat. If a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear issue is blocked and war follows, Israel will be accused of dragging America into a conflict. But if Mr Netanyahu confronts the Obama administration through the US Congress – and loses – the fabled power of the Israel lobby may never be quite the same again.

The Dead’s Envy for the Living. By David P. Goldman.

The Dead’s Envy for the Living. By David P. Goldman. PJ Media, November 26, 2013. Also at the Middle East Forum.

Worse Than Munich. By Bret Stephens. Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2013.

Obama’s women reveal his secret. By David P. Goldman. Asia Times, February 26, 2008.

Zionism for Christians. By David P. Goldman (writing as David Shushon). First Things, June/July 2008. Also here.

Jimmy Carter’s heart of dorkiness. By David P. Goldman (writing as Spengler). Asia Times, January 17, 2007.


Goldman (PJ Media):

Why the Iranians, and why the Jews? Jew-hatred is rampant in the Muslim world, to be sure, but that did not prevent Egypt and Jordan from keeping the peace with Israel for 30 years. Nor does it prevent Saudi Arabia, where Arabic editions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion line bookstore shelves, from making a tactical alliance with Israel. Except for Iran no Muslim regime trumpets its intention to “annihilate the Zionist” regime in routine utterances.

 

Iran has no common border with Israel. No Iranian soldier has killed an Israeli soldier in combat since the founding of the Jewish State. Yet hatred and fear of the Jews is a palpable presence in the minds of Iran’s rulers. Some days the mullahs make the Nazis look rational by comparison. I cited a lecture given by an advisor to Iran’s culture minister insisting that the cartoon “Tom and Jerry” was part of a plot by Jewish studio executives in Hollywood to rehabilitate the image of Jews.

 

Iran’s theocrats hate and fear the Jews for the same reason that Hitler did. The “Master Race” delusion of the Nazis twisted the Chosenness of Israel into a doctrine of racial election; for the “Master Race” to be secure in its dominion, the original “paragon and exemplar of a nation” (Rosenzweig) had to be exterminated. Islam is by construction a supercessionist religion. It claims that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures perverted the original prophecy of Islam, and that Mohammed restored the true religion through the Koran. Mohammed is the “seal of the prophets,” the final and definitive exponent of God’s word, replacing the falsified version of Christians and Jews.

 

Muslims may believe this and peaceably await the day when its competitor religions will crumble and the whole world will acknowledge its prophet, just as Jews pray thrice daily for the Messianic era when all the world will acknowledge one God by one name. But it is difficult for Iran to be patient when its self-conceived guardians of God’s message are staring into an inescapable abyss at the horizon of a single generation.  This is a culture inherently incapable of reflection on its own deficiencies, one that has nourished itself for 1,200 years on morbid rancor against the Sunni Muslim majority and more recently against the West. Patience in this case is a poison.

 

Israel thus faces a new Hitler and the threat of a new Holocaust. There is no way to portray the situation in a less alarming light. That is one parallel to 1938; another is the response of the world’s powers to the emergence of this monster.

 

To the declining nations of Western Europe, Israel’s national self-assertion is a moral outrage. Since St. Isidore of Seville persuaded the Visigoth kings of Spain to adopt Christianity with the promise that they would become the leaders of a chosen nation in emulation of King David, the national consciousness of the European nations has taken the form of national election. I argued in a 2008 essay for the religious monthly First Things:

As Franz Rosenzweig observed, once the Gentile nations embraced Christianity, they abandoned their ancient fatalism regarding the inevitable extinction of their tribe. It is the God of Israel who first offers ­eternal life to humankind, and Christianity extended Israel’s promise to all. But the nations that adhered to Christendom as tribes rather than as individuals never forswore their love for their own ethnicity. On the ­contrary, they longed for eternal life in their own ­Gentile skin rather than in the Kingdom of God promised by Jesus Christ. After Christianity taught them the election of Israel, the Gentiles coveted election for themselves and desired their own people to be the chosen people. That set ethnocentric nationalism in conflict both with the Jews—the descendents of Abraham in the flesh—and with the Church, which holds itself to be the new People of God.

 

As Rosenzweig put it, “Precisely through Christianity the idea of Election has gone out amongst the individual nations, and along with it a concomitant claim upon eternity. It is not that the case that such a claim upon eternity conditioned the entire life of these peoples; one hardly can speak of this. The idea of Election, upon which such a claim [upon eternity] uniquely can be based, becomes conscious for the peoples only in certain exalted moments, and in any case is more of a festive costume than their workaday dress. . . . Still, there sleeps upon the foundation of one’s love for one’s own people the presentiment that someday in the distant future it no longer will be, and this gives this love a sweetly painful gravity.”

The European elite cannot distinguish its own past parody of Israel’s election from the self-understanding of the Jewish people as a blessing to all nations by virtue of its unique national life. Israeli nationalism only brings to mind Europe’s failed nationalisms and their horrendous denouement in the world wars of the past century. Europe is enervated, exhausted by past wars, aging, hedonistic and cynical. It is not surprising that the nations of Europe once again would avert their eyes to the threat of another Holocaust.

 

What explains, though, the Obama administration’s obsession with a compromise at any cost with the Tehran regime? I have not changed my view of what an Asian leader privately called “America’s NGO president” since I profiled Barack Obama in February 2008:

America is not the embodiment of hope, but the abandonment of one kind of hope in return for another. America is the spirit of creative destruction, selecting immigrants willing to turn their back on the tragedy of their own failing culture in return for a new start. Its creative success is so enormous that its global influence hastens the decline of other cultures. For those on the destruction side of the trade, America is a monster. Between half and nine-tenths of the world’s 6,700 spoken languages will become extinct in the next century, and the anguish of dying peoples rises up in a global cry of despair. Some of those who listen to this cry become anthropologists, the curators of soon-to-be extinct cultures; anthropologists who really identify with their subjects marry them. Obama’s mother, the University of Hawaii anthropologist Ann Dunham, did so twice.

Obama’s most revealing disclosure, perhaps, came in his autobiography Dreams from My Father as he recounts his thoughts while visiting Chicago’s public housing as a young community organizer:

And yet for all that poverty [in the Indonesian marketplace], there remained in their lives a discernible order, a tapestry of trading routes and middlemen, bribes to pay and customs to observe, the habits of a generation played out every day beneath the bargaining and the noise and the swirling dust. It was the absence of such coherence that made a place like [the Chicago housing projects] so desperate.

He deeply identifies with the fragile, unraveling cultures of the Third World against the depredations of the globalizing Metropole. So, I suspect, does his mentor and chief advisor, the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett, and most of his inner circle. This goes beyond the famous declaration of Jimmy Carter’s advisor Hamilton Jordan—“the Palestinians are the n****ers of the Middle East”—and Carter’s own mainline-Protestant reverence for the “holy men” of Iran’s 1979 Iranian revolution. It goes beyond the post-colonial theory of liberal academia. For Obama, it is a matter of personal experience. His father and stepfather were Third World Muslims, his mother was an anthropologist who dedicated her life to protecting the traditional culture of Indonesia against the scourge of globalization, and four years of his childhood were spent at an Indonesian school. The same point has been made by Dinesh d’Souza, among others.

 

Obama’s commitment to rapprochement with Iran arises from deep personal identification with the supposed victims of imperialism. That is incongruous, to be sure. Persia spent most of its history as one of the nastier imperial powers, and its present rulers are no less ambitious in their pursuit of a pocket empire in the Shi’ite world. The roots of his policy transcend rationality. Israel can present all the evidence in the world of Iran’s plans to build nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and the Iranians can cut the Geneva accord into confetti. Obama will remain unmoved. His heart, like his late mother’s, beats for the putatively oppressed peoples of the so-called Third World.

 

No factor of this sort was present in 1938: Neville Chamberlain did not sympathize with Hitler. He simply feared him and needed time to rearm, as the Wall Street Journal’s Mr. Stephens observes. If Lord Halifax rather than Chamberlain had been prime minister then, the parallel to Obama would be stronger.

 

I do not know how Israel will respond. There are too many unknowns in the shifting political equation of the Middle East to solve that equation. But the facts on the ground support the Israeli view that the Geneva accord puts the Jewish State at existential risk.


Goldman (Asia Times):

Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother’s milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career. He shares the resentment of Muslims against the encroachment of American culture, although not their religion. He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States.

 

There is nothing mysterious about Obama’s methods. “A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is,” wrote Karl Krauss. Americans are the world’s biggest suckers, and laugh at this weakness in their popular culture. Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis’s cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power’s portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire Nightmare Alley. The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.

 

America has the great misfortune to have encountered Obama at the peak of his powers at its worst moment of vulnerability in a generation. With malice aforethought, he has sought out their sore point.

 

Since the Ronald Reagan boom began in 1984, the year the American stock market doubled, Americans have enjoyed a quarter-century of rising wealth. Even the collapse of the Internet bubble in 2000 did not interrupt the upward trajectory of household assets, as the housing price boom eclipsed the effect of equity market weakness. America's success made it a magnet for the world's savings, and Americans came to believe that they were riding a boom that would last forever, as I wrote recently.

 

Americans regard upward mobility as a God-given right. America had a double founding, as David Hackett Fischer showed in his 1989 study, Albion’s Seed . Two kinds of immigrants founded America: religious dissidents seeking a new Promised Land, and economic opportunists looking to get rich quick. Both elements still are present, but the course of the past quarter-century has made wealth-creation the sine qua non of American life. Now for the first time in a generation Americans have become poorer, and many of them have become much poorer due to the collapse of home prices. Unlike the Reagan years, when cutting the top tax rate from a punitive 70% to a more tolerable 40% was sufficient to start an economic boom, no lever of economic policy is available to fix the problem. Americans have no choice but to work harder, retire later, save more and retrench.

 

This reversal has provoked a national mood of existential crisis. In Europe, economic downturns do not inspire this kind of soul-searching, for richer and poorer, remain what they always have been. But Americans are what they make of themselves, and the slim makings of 2008 shake their sense of identity. Americans have no institutionalized culture to fall back on. Their national religion has consisted of waves of enthusiasm – “Great Awakenings” – every second generation or so, followed by an interim of apathy. In times of stress they have a baleful susceptibility to hucksters and conmen.

 

Be afraid – be very afraid. America is at a low point in its fortunes, and feeling sorry for itself. When Barack utters the word “hope,” they instead hear, “handout.” A cynic might translate the national motto, E pluribus unum, as “something for nothing.” Now that the stock market and the housing market have failed to give Americans something for nothing, they want something for nothing from the government. The trouble is that he who gets something for nothing will earn every penny of it, twice over.

 

The George W. Bush administration has squandered a great strategic advantage in a sorry lampoon of nation-building in the Muslim world, and has made enemies out of countries that might have been friendly rivals, notably Russia. Americans question the premise of America’s standing as a global superpower, and of the promise of upward mobility and wealth-creation. If elected, Barack Obama will do his utmost to destroy the dual premises of America’s standing. It might take the country another generation to recover.

 

“Evil will oft evil mars,” J R R Tolkien wrote. It is conceivable that Barack Obama, if elected, will destroy himself before he destroys the country. Hatred is a toxic diet even for someone with as strong a stomach as Obama. As he recalled in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, Obama idealized the Kenyan economist who had married and dumped his mother, and was saddened to learn that Barack Hussein Obama, Sr, was a sullen, drunken polygamist. The elder Obama became a senior official of the government of Kenya after earning a PhD at Harvard. He was an abusive drunk and philanderer whose temper soured his career.

 

The senior Obama died in a 1982 car crash. Kenyan government officials in those days normally spent their nights drinking themselves stupid at the Pan-Afrique Hotel. Two or three of them would be found with their Mercedes wrapped around a palm tree every morning. During the 1970s I came to know a number of them, mostly British-educated hollow men dying inside of their own hypocrisy and corruption.

 

Both Obama and the American public should be very careful of what they wish for. As the horrible example of Obama’s father shows, there is nothing worse for an embittered outsider manipulating the system from within than to achieve his goals – and nothing can be more terrible for the system. Even those who despise America for its blunders of the past few years should ask themselves whether the world will be a safer place if America retreats into a self-pitying shell.


Goldman (Carter):

Where the Palestinians are concerned, Carter keens the same trope. It is repulsive to think that a people of several millions, honeycombed with representatives of international organizations, the virtual stepchild of the United Nations, appears doomed to reduce its national fever by letting blood. The 700,000 refugees of 1948, hothoused by the UN relief agencies, prevented from emigrating by other Arab regimes, have turned into a people, but a test-tube nation incapable of independent national life: four destitute millions of third-generation refugees in the small and barren territories of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, which cannot support a fraction of that number.

 

The project of a Palestinian economy based on tourism and light manufacturing is a delusion in the globalized economy of Chinese-dominated trade in manufactures. The subsistence-farming fellahin should have left their land for economic reasons, like the Okies during the 1920s and 1930s, and dispersed into cities, like a hundred other rural populations of the so-called developing world. Kept hostage for political reasons, they cannot stay, and they cannot leave. They have chosen instead to fight, and if need be to die.

 

The Palestinians cannot hope to earn their keep in peacetime; their only hope is to keep the region in perpetual tension, the better to blackmail the West and the Arab Persian Gulf states for subsidies. . . .

 

The former president is hard to read without taking into account the southern US context. A partial explanation for his see-and-hear-no-evil view of the world can be found in southern guilt over the maltreatment of blacks. Carter’s chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, heard his first briefing on the Middle East in 1977 and offered, “I get it: the Palestinians are the niggers.”

 

Jimmy Carter knows better than that: the Palestinians are not in the position of southern American blacks, but rather of southern American whites, the exemplar of a self-exterminating people in the modern period. That is why Carter identifies with them. Apart from modern Palestine, there are very few cases in modern history in which a militant population showed its willingness to fight to the death. The US south sacrificed two-fifths of its military-age men during the Civil War of 1861-65, a casualty rate matched only by Serbia during World War I. Southern blacks, by contrast, were pacific, Christian, and long-suffering in their hopes for eventual deliverance.

 

The Palestinians are not an oppressed people, but rather the irreconcilable remnants of a once-victorious but now defeated empire, living in an irredentist dream world in which a new Salahuddin will drive the new Crusaders into the sea. Pour a few bourbons into the average white citizen of the US state of Georgia, and the same irredentist fantasy will bubble up: “The south shall rise again!”

Israelis, Saudis, and the Iranian Agreement. By George Friedman.

Israelis, Saudis, and the Iranian Agreement. By George Friedman. Real Clear World, November 26, 2013.

Right of Return: The True Obstacle to Peace Between Israelis and Palestinians. By Asaf Romirowsky and Alexander Joffe.

The True Obstacle to Peace Between Israelis and Palestinians. By Asaf Romirowsky and Alexander Joffe. Forbes, March 26, 2013.

Romirowsky and Joffe:

With the completion of Barack Obama‘s first Presidential visit to Israel, as expected there was a great deal of symbolism reinforcing the bond between the two allies. Yet still, doves on both sides acknowledge that peace is hardly around the corner.

 

Understanding the true barriers to a comprehensive agreement is key to knowing where the pressure to compromise will be coming from. Contrary to popular belief, the core of the conflict is not borders, Israeli settlements, or the status of Jerusalem.

 

An honest look at the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians  requires Obama to understand two major things before he attempts to jump-start any peace process. One is that the two state model today is only applicable to Israel and the West Bank; there can be no contiguous Palestine state between the West Bank and Gaza with Hamas in power. This would represent a threat to both Israel and to Palestine.

 

Second, the crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rooted in the Palestinian “Right of Return,” the collective belief in a legal and moral right for Palestinian refugees, and more importantly their descendants from around the world, to return to ancestral homes in Israel that were once part of Mandatory Palestine. The “right of return” is central to Palestinian national identity and is a high barrier to any peace agreement.

 

This is underscored in a recent telling statement made by Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar on the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigade’s website.  He said that that Israel’s attempts to end the UN classification of the Palestinian refugees is doomed to fail because of how Palestinian identity is linked to the Right of Return for eternity. “The Palestinian refugee is a citizen forcibly displaced from his land and his return is one of the constants that cannot be controlled by the occupation; it is sacred like our faith… Our grandfathers were once in their land and their grandchildren will return to it no matter how long it takes.”

 

This is a quasi-religious belief that crosses all sectors of Palestinian society, and which is endlessly reproduced in Palestinian media, education and culture, and which is endorsed by UNRWA, the UN organ charged with maintaining health, welfare and education services for those it has deemed Palestinian refugees.

 

But Al-Zahar is also misinformed regarding the Israeli position. Recent Israeli governments have been forthright in stating that there is no “right of return” and increasingly they point to it as one of the most formidable obstacles to making peace between the Israeli and Palestinian states, as well as peoples. But there have been no official Israeli efforts to end or even curtail UNRWA. Only recently has former Member of Knesset Einat Wilf called attention to UNRWA’s administrative decisions to extend refugee status to additional generations of Palestinians, creating more “refugees” and extending its own mandate. Wilf notes correctly that UNRWA’s endorsement of the “right of return” lies at the root of the Arab-Israeli conflict and not co-incidentally UNRWA’s continued existence. Important legislation to reform UNRWA has also come from U.S. Senator Mark Kirk but has not yet succeeded in passing through the Congress.

 

But Al-Zahar understands the problem in the most fundamental way, that the “right of return” – and until then, “refugee” status guaranteed and funded by the international community – are the cornerstones of Palestinian national identity. From his perspective, of course, it is therefore necessary to put the onus entirely on Israel for the “Nakba,” the “catastrophe” of 1948 and Israel’s creation, as opposed to seeing any Palestinian and Arab responsibility or agency in the matter. If this is the core of Palestinian identity, that can be satisfied only by exercising the Palestinian “right of return” and the destruction of Israel, then there is no room for compromise.

 

To understand the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Obama administration would be wise to listen to Al-Zahar, as well as Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas who stated “I have never and will never give up the right of return.” Abbas’s statement is as important as Al-Zahar’s since he was forced by Palestinian and Arab outrage to clarify an earlier comment where he had appeared to waver on the “right of return.”

 

In the meantime, UNRWA will continue to support continuing generations of “refugees,” the majority of whom were born outside of Palestine, a large proportion of whom are national citizens of other states. In fact, UNRWA’s former general counsel James Lindsay has observed that “In truth, the vast majority of UNRWA’s registered refugees have already been “resettled” (or, to use the UN euphemism, “reintegrated”)” and that “only thing preventing all of these citizens from ceasing to be “refugees” is UNRWA’s singular definition of what constitutes a refugee.”

 

Understanding how a UN agency is an integral ingredient of a long-term Arab strategy to perpetuate the misery of the Palestinians, and to keep this humanitarian burden at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict is another key for President Obama to keep in mind as he visits Israel, and perhaps the West Bank. This has been the Arab world’s biggest success against Israel, only at the expense of the Palestinians. If Obama truly wants to move the peace process forward it would behoove him to look at what our taxpayer dollars are buying in UNRWA, and at those who are truly being served. Until he understands that the “right of return” is the essence of the conflict, and that we need  to start changing this core Palestinian belief, President Obama should not expect any change in the near future.

Egypt’s Army Flails About As Middle East Implodes. By Walter Russell Mead.

Egypt’s Army Flails About As Middle East Implodes. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, November 26, 2013.

Mead:

The army is having difficulty finding a firm footing in the post-Muslim Brotherhood Egypt. Having lifted a nation-wide state of emergency more than a week ago, a rising tide of political assassinations, bombings, and general discontent has Egypt’s rulers flailing about and resorting to some of the same tactics that earned President Hosni Mubarak the enmity of the people. The New York Times:

“They have kept alive the idea of ‘enemies of the nation’ and the war on terror — the only glue keeping the bits and pieces together,” said Rabab el-Mahdi, a political science professor at the American University of Cairo, speaking of the interim government. “For any ruling alliance to be stable, it cannot depend on force or coercion. They lack any kind of ideological shield, except being against the Brotherhood.”

 

“They are not delivering,” Ms. Mahdi added, “and they will keep facing the dissent.”

The military regime in Egypt faces three enemies. There are the Islamists—a mix of angry supporters of the overthrown Muslim Brotherhood government and more radical types. There is the storm of economic problems that confront the country that fuel public anger against any government. And there is the endemic corruption and inefficiency of both the Egyptian state and the private sector that for decades has prospered more through political cronyism and payoffs than through real capitalism.

 

The combination is deadly. The political violence and instability keeps foreign investment and tourism at bay. The absence of investment and tourist income worsens the economic problem and increases public dissatisfaction with the government, helping the rebels. And the poor health of both the state and the private sector leadership just makes everything worse.

 

The military has faced rebellions and terrorists before and managed to restore some stability and growth, but this time the challenges are harder. With the Obama Administration washing its hands of the region as much as it can, with Europe strung out by recession and divisions at home, and with the Saudis increasingly preoccupied with the Iranian threat, Egypt isn’t getting the attention or help it would have had in earlier decades.

 

The old Arab order continues to melt down and so far, nothing viable has emerged to replace it. The whole world should be watching what happens in Egypt. The military regime does not have clean hands and it has only ugly solutions to offer, but if the military fails, then Egypt’s downward spiral is likely to continue. That will further destabilize an arab world that increasingly seems less threatened by radicalism than by a general breakdown of social order and coherence.

The Deal With Iran: A Turning Point Toward What? By Walter Russell Mead.

The Deal With Iran: A Turning Point, Yes, But Toward What? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, November 25, 2013.

Averted: The War Between Iran and America. By Juan Cole.

Averted: The War Between Iran and America. By Juan Cole. History News Network, November 25, 2013. Also at Informed Comment.

The Middle East warmly welcomes Iran deal, sees it as Step toward Denuclearizing Israel. By Juan Cole. Informed Comment, November 26, 2013.

Does the Road to Mideast Peace Run through Tehran? By Juan Cole. Informed Comment, November 25, 2013.

The Sadism of the Israeli Occupation. By Juan Cole. Informed Comment, October 21, 2007.

Israeli Atrocity on Gaza Civilians. By Juan Cole. Informed Comment, January 20, 2008.

Dear Diary: Juan Cole’s Bad Blog. By Efraim Karsh. The New Republic, April 25, 2005. Also at Campus Watch.

Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle East Studies. By Alexander H. Joffe. Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2006.

Juan Cole Peddles Hamas Propaganda. By Cinnamon Stillwell. Middle East Forum, January 24, 2008.

Juan Cole’s Jihad Against Israel. By Cinnamon Stillwell. Middle East Forum, July 9, 2008.

Juan Cole’s Curious Lexicon. By Noah Pollak. Commentary, October 22, 2007.

Juan Cole: Palestinians are Israel’s Slaves. By Noah Pollak. Commentary, January 21, 2008.

Miley Cyrus: Wrecking Ball.

Miley Cyrus: Wrecking Ball. Video. MileyCyrusVEVO, September 9, 2013. YouTube. Director’s Cut. American Music Awards.

Miley Cyrus and the State of American Culture. NJBR, August 27, 2013. With related articles and video of VMA performance.

Miley Cyrus to Wreak Havoc in the Holy Land. By Lauren Izso. NJBR, November 12, 2013. With We Can’t Stop video.

Robin Thicke: Blurred Lines.

Robin Thicke: Blurred Lines. Video. RobinThickeVEVO, March 20, 2013. YouTube. Unrated Version at VEVO and YouTube.

Obamacare’s Threat to Liberalism. By Franklin Foer.

Obamacare’s Threat to Liberalism. By Franklin Foer. The New Republic, November 24, 2013. From the December 9, 2013 issue. Also here.

Don’t Dare Call the Health Law “Redistribution.” By John Harwood. New York Times, November 23, 2013.

Ralph Peters: Obama Regards Israel as a Strategic Liability and a Political Albatross.

Why did President Obama complete the nuclear deal with Iran? Video interview with Ralph Peters by Stuart Varney. Varney and Company. Fox Business, November 25, 2013.

Was the nuclear deal with Iran a historic mistake? Video interview with Ralph Peters. Lou Dobbs Tonight. Fox Business, November 25, 2013.

Peters:

I have said for a long time that President Obama will not, would not, come to the defense of Israel, and Israel is for me, on a moral and strategic basis, this is the crux of the problem. The Obama Administration, including Secretary Kerry, clearly regards Israel as a strategic liability, as a political albatross, and as a personal nuisance. And I’m sorry, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who can certainly be abrasive, is nonetheless 100% in the right on this. The Obama Administration, my God, Obama makes Neville Chamberlain look like a cage fighter.

In Iran, Obama Achieves 50 Percent of His Goals. By Jeffrey Goldberg.

In Iran, Obama Achieves 50 Percent of His Goals. By Jeffrey Goldberg. Bloomberg, November 24, 2013.

Munich II. By James Jay Carafano. National Review Online, November 24, 2013.

Let’s Not Celebrate This Iran Deal . . . Yet. By Aaron David Miller. Politico, November 23, 2013.

Why the Iranian Nuclear Deal Is Dangerous. By Eli Lake. The Daily Beast, November 24, 2013.

Pushing Peace on the Palestinians. By Jodi Rudoren.

Pushing Peace on the Palestinians. By Jodi Rudoren. New York Times, November 19, 2013.

Obama and the Crisis of Elite Education. By Walter Russell Mead.

Obama and the Crisis of Elite Education. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, November 24, 2013.

Obama’s Slow Learning Curve. By Peter Berkowitz. Real Clear Politics, November 20, 2013.

How Israel Can Minimize Existential Threats Against It. By Yehezkel Dror.

How Israel can minimize existential threats against it. By Yehezkel Dror. Haaretz, November 21, 2013. Also here.

Dror:

Israel, like many other countries, often uses the term “vital interests.” Yet this phrase is vague and is often a source of contention. This is precisely why the term is suitable for diplomacy and public relations, but when it is used in the context of government or state affairs, “vital interests” must be clearly defined, with a focus on critical interests.

 

Israel’s top priority, though not its only one, is to prevent existential threats to the country. Israel is among the few states in the world facing existential danger. Due to the fierce opposition to its existence among many in the Arab and Islamic worlds, the possibility exists of a lethal attack against Israel – in the event that a fanatical enemy gets its hands on nuclear or more innovative biological weapons. Therefore, minimizing this risk to the greatest extent possible is Israel’s top priority.

 

Achieving this requires four grand strategies: Preventing hostile groups from acquiring means that could endanger our existence; maintaining total deterrence – including sending an unequivocal message that anyone threatening Israel’s existence will be annihilated; preserving and strengthening Israel’s special relationship with the United States; and reducing the reasons for such threats against Israel, mainly by advancing real peace with our neighbors.

 

Israel is doing a good job with regard to the first three strategies listed above. It is making an impressive effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons (even if it may have been preferable to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities a year ago while pursuing a comprehensive peace deal). At the same time, Pakistan also has nuclear weapons, and without appropriate global enforcement, there is no long-term guarantee that fanatic states or terrorist groups can be prevented from obtaining weapons that pose an existential threat to Israel.

 

Hence the cardinal importance of deterrence. Israel’s ambiguity with regard to its alleged nuclear program is the correct policy and establishes a credible image of deterrence. However, the effectiveness of deterrence isn’t fool-proof, especially when facing enemies who will do their utmost – including sacrificing themselves – simply to kill Jews.

 

The special relationship Israel has with the U.S. remains strong, however it’s impossible to guarantee it will continue in the same vein under any and all circumstances. American interests are not always identical to Israeli ones – just look at the disagreements on the Iranian issue for example. U.S. support for Israel may decrease due to changes in the former’s global standing, changes in its domestic politics and opposition to Israeli policies. Therefore, we must acknowledge our dependence on the U.S. and work to strengthen ties with it – even if that entails steps that Israel may not like, so long as they don’t endanger Israel’s existence or core values. Overall, unless Israel makes any major missteps, it can rely on U.S. backing.

 

As far as the fourth strategy goes – seeking a comprehensive peace – Israel fares poorer. While the agreements with Egypt and Jordan have proven themselves in terms of security matters, Israel still does not adequately recognize the importance of a comprehensive regional peace as a critical component of its national security – even if its stability is not fully ensured in this volatile region.

 

It is doubtful whether Israel is willing to pay the price required for an agreement with the Palestinians, even if they back down from unreasonable demands. At the same time, the Palestinian issue, as important as it is, is not critical to Israel’s existential security. What is more critical is the absence of an overall Israeli strategy for achieving regional peace and improving its relations with Islamic nations and groups. Some efforts are being made, but they are far from the critical mass required for reducing the long-term existential dangers posed by the deep-rooted rejection of our existence in the “Dar al-Islam” (“Home of Islam”).

 

This serious failure stems from sharp disagreements about values perceived as critical for Israel’s future. Many regard the settlements in Judea and Samaria and exclusive Israeli control over all of Jerusalem as an existential interest, while many others regard the advancement of peace as a more important concern.

 

Israel’s Achilles’ heel is its inability to decide – socially, politically and among its leaders – on these difficult dilemmas, and this could pose its greatest existential threat. It leads to procrastination in terms of statecraft, instead of initiatives to seek a comprehensive regional peace that is essential to Israel’s long-term security. Eliminating this dangerous “black hole” in Israeli statecraft depends mainly on the leadership of the prime minister.

General Yossi Kuperwasser Analyses Palestinian Incitement.

Yossi Kuperwasser analyses Palestinian incitement. BICOM, November 17, 2013. Edited audio podcast.

Time to End Palestinian Incitement. By David Pollock. Fathom, September 13, 2013.

Brig.-Gen. [res.] Yossi Kuperwasser: The Culture of Peace and Incitement Index. Video. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, November 8, 2011. YouTube.




Yossi Kuperwasser: Prevention of Incitement in the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process. Video. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, March 12, 2013. YouTube.




Kuperwasser (BICOM):

Increasing Israeli concerns over incitement

 

In the last few weeks, Prime Minister Netanyahu, when speaking about the peace talks with the Palestinians, has given much more emphasis to this issue of incitement. You cannot remain silent when you see what is happening.

 

In spite of having peace talks with us, Palestinian incitement goes on without interruption, and whenever we brief the Prime Minister, he goes ballistic, saying, “How can that happen? We are trying to speak with these people. How can they do that?” In the last few days, he spoke about the swastika in Beit Omar. There were two cases in the refugee camp of Beit Omar, between Bethlehem and Hebron, when a swastika was flown on the electricity wires. And all the Palestinian press is in favour of the “courageous” youngsters of Beit Omar who “dared” to put a swastika on the wire, causing Israelis a lot of work in trying to get it down.

 

And this drove Netanyahu crazy, but it was just once case, where again and again we see the same message. He wrote a letter to Secretary Kerry two months ago, and told him, “This cannot go on”. The letter was based on the Barcelona affair. When Barcelona Football Club came to Israel [on a trip organised by Israel’s Peres Center for Peace], instead of praising peace, the Palestinians turned this event into a show of hatred towards Israel, with incitement to get rid of Israel.

 

Then Prime Minister Netanyahu met Kerry for seven hours in Rome two weeks ago, and again, he came to him with examples, and said to him, “Something has to be done about it.” We notice that there is some lip service paid to the issue, but nobody in the international community, including the British, really take this seriously enough or understand that, for Israel, this is the core of the problem. I’m talking here as an intelligence officer, not only as somebody who follows incitement. I was for many years the head of the IDF Intelligence Research and Analysis division. The messages that are delivered here are the core of the problem, not anything else. That is why it is so important to understand the messages delivered through incitement.

 

Indirect as opposed to direct incitement

 

In analysing incitement we make a differentiation between several kinds. Regarding incitement for violence and terror we distinguish between two kinds. If somebody tells you “go kill this guy”, this is direct incitement. Indirect incitement is someone saying, “This guy really should be killed. I am not telling you to do it, but he should be killed, and killing him is a really noble deed.” The Palestinians are very cautious, and when it comes to direct incitement they try not to go too far. But in indirect incitement, what we call “building the atmosphere” that promotes violence and terror, they are very strong. Speaking about terrorist as role models, and things like that, is very strong in the Palestinian press and official presentations.

 

As well as promoting violence we see promotion of hatred, because hatred is the basis that gives legitimacy for carrying out violence and terrorist activities. Goebbels did the same thing. Before killing the Jews there was a massive effort to explain that the Jews are inhuman, and even if they are human, they are the worst of creatures. This provides the legitimacy for doing what has to be done about the Jews. If you go back to the famous Nazi propaganda movies, “Jew Süss” and “The Eternal Jew,” you see the kinds of efforts that Goebbels made to prepare the public for the final solution. Here too, there is enormous effort given to justifying hatred of the Jews.

 

A further issue is the denial of the rights of the Jews. The logic is that the Jews do not have a right to a state, and because of that, everything you do to deny them this right is justifiable. When Abu Mazen was speaking at the General Assembly he said, “We keep reaching out to the Israeli side saying, let us work to make a culture of peace reign.” It sounds so good because this is what he says in English. You cannot find anything wrong with what he says in English.

 

However, if you know how to read his words, you see that in English he does not say anything that contradicts what is said in Arabic. In English, for example, he never says “the Jewish people.” In this speech, he was talking about a culture of peace between the Israeli people, and the Palestinian people. For him, there is no Jewish people; there is only an Israeli people. All of Israel’s citizens are the Israeli people. By that, he avoids saying that there is something called “the Jewish people,” because in his mind there is no such thing.

 

The core messages

 

What are the core messages? First, Israel has no right to exist, certainly not as the nation state of the Jewish people, because there is no such thing as the Jewish people, and therefore they cannot claim any historic connection the Holy Land. Yes, Bani Israel, the Children of Israel, who practiced Judaism as a religion, were present here. About a third of the Quran tells stories of the Bani Israel, the Children of Israel. But according to the Palestinians, they are not the Jewish people that live today. It is a different group of people, and all that unites Jews is religion, nothing more. That is why they do not have any right to a state in this place.

 

Second, because of that, Israel’s disappearance is inevitable. On top of what is today Israel, a Palestinian state will be established.

 

Third, the Jews and Zionists are sub-human creatures. And they are some sort of environmental hazard that should be exterminated.

 

Fourth, because of all those three, all forms of struggle, including terror, are legitimate means to achieve the final goal. Even though, at times it might be more efficient to use other means. At times you would rather use political activity, such as what they call “popular, peaceful resistance.” I recommend looking at recent papers published by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center on popular resistance, including a recent piece about the involvement of British and European diplomats in promoting the so-called “peaceful resistance.” This resistance is not peaceful at all, of course. It is stone-throwing, Molotov cocktails, stabbing people, driving over people. All of these are considered to be “peaceful resistance”, as long as they do not use fire-arms.

 

The Palestinian National Charter

 

In 1998, the Palestinian National Council was forced to vote through changes to Palestinian National Charter, but they never actually changed it. If you look at the several websites of PLO bodies, you will find the charter as it was written in 1968. According to the charter the Jews are not a people, and should not have a state. That is article 20 of the charter, and it is still written there.

 

In their maps there is also no Israel, and even if there is a line, it does not say Israel on the other side of it, it is all Palestine. But mostly the maps show the country to be 100 per cent Arab. Israel is seen as some deviation from the way things should be, so it is not worthwhile to put it on a map because it is going to disappear anyhow.

 

Incitement as a barrier to peace

 

We say this is the main obstacle on the way to peace. If you want to make peace, first of all you have to take this obstacle away. There is no way to make peace when you sit in the evening with the Palestinians and tell them, “Let’s withdraw to here; let’s put security arrangements there,” and at the same time they are teaching the children to hate you and to want to kill you, telling them, “The Zionist must die.”

 

We are not trying to create another hurdle on the way to peace; we are trying to remove the hurdle. After all these letters and meetings, the Americans finally understand it. But the Europeans are in a much more important position than the Americans, because the Americans at best are considered by the Palestinians as honest brokers, but basically they look at them as Israel’s supporters. Europeans have here a golden position, as the friends of the Palestinians. If they tell the Palestinians this is totally unacceptable, this should worry the Palestinians, and maybe they will do something.