Tikkun Olam

Who Killed One of Russia’s Top Spies?

Russian top spy assassinated?

The Telegraph is reporting that Maj. Gen. Yuri Ivanov, deputy head of Russian intelligence service known as GRU, died in Syria recently.  Speculation is rampant that he was assassinated.  He had been staying in the northwestern Syrian resort of Tartous when he disappeared, with his body later hauled in by Turkish fishermen.

Here is some background on Ilanov:

Major-General Yuri Ivanov, 52, was the deputy head of Russia’s foreign military intelligence arm known as GRU which is thought to operate the biggest network of foreign spies out of all of Russia’s clandestine intelligence services.

…Reports have suggested he was on official business and the location where he is reported to have disappeared was only about fifty miles from a strategically vital Russian naval facility in the Syrian port of Tartus which is being expanded and upgraded to service and refuel ships from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The facility is Russia’s only foothold in the Mediterranean Sea, and Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, is known to be concerned that Moscow will use the upgraded facility as a base for spy ships and electronic espionage directed at the Middle East.

One wonders whether this is another variant of the U.S.S. Liberty episode in which Israel is warning the Russians not to stray too far into Israel’s business and its “sphere of influence.”  I have written here about the possibility of an Israeli attack on Syria.  Given this, the Mossad cannot have liked one of Russia’s top spies setting up a new base in Syria.  Israel undoubtedly feels it has its hands full anticipating attacks by Hezbollah or Syria on its northern front.  To add Russian mischief to the mix would be even more dangerous for Israeli interests.

The Guardian further adds that Ivanov was the architect of several spectacular assassinations of Chechen separatist leaders on foreign soil, one in Qatar.  It seems perfect justice for Ivanov himself to have died in similar circumstances.

Of course, this is speculation.  But given the dearth of facts, it seems credible speculation that awaits further confirmation or repudiation.

This incident recalls a not dissimilar one in 2008, in which a Syrian general and confidant of Pres. Assad was assassinated by a sniper while sunbathing at his southern Syrian coastal villa.  In that case too, if I recall correctly, the Syrians originally reported that Gen. Suleiman died in a “swimming accident.”  The general was Syria’s main liaison with Hezbollah and responsible for supplying it with sophisticated weaponry, and as such would’ve been a desirable Mossad target.

Furthermore, Israel, if it killed Ilanov, is sending Assad a message that it has penetrated his circle and those of his closest allies.  No one is safe.  It seems a sad recompense for Assad’s repeated offers to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel.  But there you go…if it’s inconveneint for Israeli political machinations to make peace with you, it would just as soon make war on you or kill you or your closest advisors and allies.

Both assassinations (if the Ilanov death was such) also happened in very close proximity to Tartous (Ivanov’s in Latakia and Suleiman’s in Tartous itself), which is not only a playground for the Syrian elite, but also, as the Telegraph story notes, a Russian naval facility.

• Mystery over Russian general found dead on Turkish beach (guardian.co.uk)

Related posts:

1. Russia Will Back Sanctions, Israel’s New ‘If Wishing Made it So’ Approach to Iran Policy You have to wonder what they’re smokin’ over there at...
2. Kamm-Blau Affair on Russia Today TV News I was interviewed for a segment on Russia Today TV...
3. Russia to Deflect Asteroid from Earthly Collision If I didn’t know better, I’d say this story had...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Israel’s ‘Curtis LeMay’: IDF Attack Iran Before U.S. Mid-Term Elections

Brig. Gen. Oded Tira: Israel's Curtis LeMay (Tvika Tishler)

Israeli Brig. Gen. (res.) Oded Tira, former IDF artillery chief, has the unmitigated gall and impudence to urge that Israel attack Iran just before the Congressional mid-term elections when Pres. Obama’s hands will be tied in terms of any punishment he can mete out for the country’s misbehavior.  Here’s a little taste of what the Israeli Curtis LeMay proposes:

The clear conclusion is that we must attack.  The best timing would be in October before the U.S. Congressional elections.  The punishment that can be meted out to Israel on the eve of elections will be limited, if at all.  After November, it appears we will get, or so I hope, a Republican majority which will repay us handsomely for the attack and its aftermath.

I only wonder whether Haaretz has the guts to translate this garbage for its English edition.   This is not just incitement for war, it is egregious interference in U.S. political affairs.  Apparently, Tira and his IDF buddies have been sucking on the U.S. teat for so long they think they’re Americans with a right to topple our government at will.

The folks at Aipac might want to tamp down this sort of lunacy lest it enter into U.S. electoral politics and serve as a backlash that could put Jewish Republicans on the defensive. Lest you say that Tira is a loose cannon, he is a loose cannon who was head of the Israeli Manufacturer’s Association and is an influential figure in business and military circles.

Besides this particular bit of nuttiness, last April Tira wrote in Haaretz that Israel should not only attack Syria due to the SCUD missiles it supposedly supplied to Hezbollah, but that Israel should topple the Assad regime.  In other words he advocated another 1982 Lebanon style invasion and usurpation of Syrian sovereignty.

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  To an artillery officer every nation that blocks Israel’s interests looks like a target to be bombed into submission.  Whether or not you argue that Tira is a warmonger, you can’t argue that his views aren’t common among the Israeli generalariat.  Even more than in the U.S. army, Israel’s current crop of generals welcomes war and the opportunity to redeem themselves for their past failures, and the ability to test out new weapons systems on the Muslim enemy.  To warriors like this, an Israeli holy war against Islam undoubtedly looks almost attractive.

What I don’t understand and never have understood is how an Israeli general can argue that Israel would effectively be able to fight on so many military fronts simultaneously when during the Gaza and Lebanon wars it didn’t fight effectively on a single front.  Has he given the least thought how Israel would assault Iran and invade Syria, all the while withstanding the tumultuous reception such news would receive among Palestinians, in Lebanon, etc.  These guys are generals.  They’re supposed to have brains and use them.  Where is the intelligence?

Reader Ariel Shatil draws our attention to other aspects of Tira’s hard-right oddness:

He retired from the military service as Chief of Artillery before I was drafted but lets just say that opinion of him voiced by reservists that I met wasn’t very positive. Two things worth mentioning – Early in the decade he was the Manufacturers Association President and as such was rabid anti-worker, which went well with his general right wing theories.

He faded away mid decade but resurfaced after operation “Cast Lead” when he appeared on national news claiming that the white phosphorus in the photos from Gaza were actually phosphorus tipped pieces of felt that were generally harmless. As someone who served in Artillery for over twenty years (regular and reserves) as a Master Sergeant and has fired thousands of shells, I can tell you that there he described a non-existent munition.

Related posts:

1. Clarion Fund Mystery Donor to Inject Millions in November Elections Throgh Iran Mushroom-Cloud Propaganda Film Those of you who read this blog during the last...
2. Military Attack on Iran Will Set Reform Back 50 Years Yesterday, I organized a series of media and public events...
3. Israel’s Intelligence Hocus-Pocus Regarding Iran Attack Someone is scammin’ me.  Or at least trying to.  They’re...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Hamas Terror Attack Unmasks Fatal Weakness of Peace Talks

Israeli police examine car attacked by Hamas gunmen (Tomer Applebaum)

There have been so many miscalculations going into the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks one hardly knows where to begin in portraying them.  First, let’s start with Hamas’ military wing, to whom we owe thanks for their gruesome point-blank killings of four Hebron Hills settlers including two women, one of whom was pregnant.

Thanks to the foolhardy campaign of isolation against Hamas engineered by Israel and the U.S., Hamas believes the only way to make its voice heard is through the barrel of a gun.  But if the gangsters who planned this killing had bothered to think about anything more than drawing Israeli blood, they would’ve realized the peace talks are destined to fail.  They don’t need killings in order to ensure this.  In fact, that the Hamas military wing butchers headquartered in Damascus felt the need to kill indicates how insecure and desperate they are.  If they had been smart, as in any political campaign, when your opponent is about to fall flat on his face you don’t do anything to make him more attractive to voters.  This is precisely what Hamas did.

Further, in Israel an intense debate was underway provoked by theater artists about boycotting Israeli settlements.  Their refusal to perform in the new Ariel cultural center was drawing sympathy from many Israelis.  Now, any sympathy engendered has been drowned by preservation instincts that kick in whenever there’s a terror attack.

One might suspect that the Hamas extremists who executed this attack don’t want peace at any price.  And that’s just what they’ll get if they continue on this road.  Endless war and a struggle to the death ending perhaps in mutually assured destruction of both Israel and Palestine.  Do they want the region to be a smoking rubble?  Will that satisfy?

But let’s not leave the Israelis and Americans off as passengers on this ship of fools.  Bibi Netanyahu is about to embark on peace talks when he has nothing whatsoever to offer the Palestinians.  He’s refusing to renew the settlement freeze.  Along with his U.S. partner in grime, Dennis Ross, he’s preparing a proposal that would be a freeze in name only and allow Israel to continue building in settlements it is “likely” to control after a peace agreement.  Of course, such a proposal would undermine any negotiation since it would de facto assign Israel control of territory on whose behalf it is supposed to be negotiating.

If I were Abbas I would demand in return for approving this sham freeze a parallel set of building permits for building in Israeli Palestinian towns, which almost never can get Israeli approval for new construction.

What will Bibi offer the Palestinians?  A few less roadblocks and checkpoints, a few more towns under Palestinian control.  What will he not offer Abbas?  Dismantling of illegal settlements, Right of Return (in even a modified form), return to ’67 borders.  In short, he’s got nuttin’.  Another sham.

As for the U.S., what is Obama thinking?  How can he possibly want to invest political capital in such a shambles of a negotiation?  My impression of presidential power is that it should be wielded when there is a reasonable chance of success.  There isn’t in this case.  So Obama is wasting his time and energy.   Here is a perfect example of the Alice in Wonderland quality of the administration’s thinking going into the talks:

…The Obama administration, according to officials, is calculating that once the two leaders are in face-to-face negotiations, neither side will be willing to take actions that would capsize the talks in the first month. Mr. Netanyahu, this thinking goes, will offer a compromise that, while it may fall short of an extension of the moratorium, will satisfy the Palestinians that construction will be curbed.

Of course Bibi will be willing to capsize the talks.  What does he stand to lose from doing so?  His job?  His coalition?  His power?  Of course not. And what can Obama do to threaten him politically or otherwise?  Nothing.  Will Obama dare to cut aid in an election year?  Will he dare to anything that has teeth in the face of Israeli recalcitrance?  Of course not.  So who are we kidding here? Nothing good will come of this.

If you should doubt that proposition, just read Ethan Bronner’s “good time Mahmoud” account in today’s Times, Outlines Emerge of Future State in West Bank, you’ll see why the talks are bound to fail.  Bronner’s eternal sunshine of the Zionist mind reels off his typical tedious list of Israel-Fatah West Bank “successes”: the requisite man in the street interview with a satisfied Palestinian customer praising the new found economic boom.  The tantalizing prospects of the removal of a few checkpoints and a few new areas in which Palestinian police will be permitted to patrol (until Israel needs to pursue a terrorist or criminal, in which case it forgets it no longer has control and does whatever the hell it wishes anyway).  All of this of course equals that “emerging Palestinian state.”  That is if you’re in a drug-induced stupor that prevents you from seeing what is in front of one’s nose.

What is missing from Bronner’s account (except in a single-paragraph dismissive aside)?  One word: Hamas.  And that one word was reintroduced to the political landscape by today’s terror attack.  What the terror attack showed to anyone with a brain and eyes in their head is that Hamas will shatter any arrangement unless it includes them in some meaningful form.  Negotiating a peace agreement or proclaiming an emerging state as Bronner and his buddies Obama, Abbas and Bibi are trying to do, will founder on the rocks if it attempts to do so without a significant proportion of the Palestinian population, those who support Hamas.

This is not a promotion of that group.  I don’t agree with Hamas’ agenda.  But I do understand democracy and governing with the permission of the governed.  Obama should too since that is the basis of American democracy.  Hamas may not be what I’d prefer to govern Palestine and they may not do so if there is a future election in Palestine.  But it is clear as day that they are a force that must be reckoned with in some form.  Otherwise, all will be lost.  That’s why the current formulation of peace talks is destined to fail.

And before any readers hop on the “beat up Palestinians” band wagon, note this telling passage from the N.Y. Times article linked above:

…The attack took place in an area of the West Bank that is under full Israeli security control, and where the Palestinian security forces have no responsibility and are not allowed to operate.

Related posts:

1. Abbas and Arab League On Verge of Pulling Plug on Peace Talks Thanks to the Netanyahu government’s finger-in-the-eye announcement of 1,600 new...
2. Palestinians Out of Peace Talks, NYT’s Bronner Gets It Wrong Once Again No sooner does the NY Times Israel correspondent put finger...
3. Why U.S.-Brokered Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks Will Fail The ink isn’t even dry on the press release announcing...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

‘President Peres: Save Us from Ourselves’

Notice that the 'scenarios' make no provision for Iranian counter-attack. Do they think there will be none?

Noted Yediot Achronot columist, Yigal Sarna, writes a plaintive “letter to the President,” asking Shimon Peres to intercede to stop war with Iran.  It is a touching and deeply- felt piece:

A Letter to the President:

Save Us from Ourselves ["from our own hands"]

Mr. President:

I turn to you because you are the elected official I’ve known best since I was a boy, standing on Keren Kayemet Boulevard with my father, I was shaking hands with a very short, white-haired man who got out of a big car.  This was the great man of the nation who founded it all, your rabbi and teacher was David Ben Gurion.  You were a young man then, but involved in everything.  Architect of diplomatic relations with France, the first atomic reactor [Dimona], armaments and construction, relations with the Persian Shah.

A generation comes and a generation goes.  You remain with us.  Full of lofty plans, you made a mess and fixed it, supporting the Hilltop settlers and compromise.  You were an oracle and accomplished as much as the chief of staff.

In a country in which everything shone at the height of its glory and then disappeared as if it never was, you remained at the heart of things.  The world turned upside down.  Empires were lost.  The globe was completely different.  And you who were active in the days of Eisenhower are still with us.  As popular as ever.  Perhaps because a country that has no father embraces a grandfather.  In a country which ruined so many opportunities, they are drawn to the last of those with deep experience.

I turn to you as a citizen because more than once when things were rough and no one could save us from trouble, you appeared and did. you saved us…

You and Yitzhak [Rabin] tried to save us from ourselves, from our zealotry, from our weakness.  Like Yitzhak, you knew that our military power would wane in a country moving from ideology to material greed as its motivating idea; that if we did not solve the conflict–we would be sunk.

Now I turn to you with a desperate plea.  Not to pronounce a polished, multi-faceted plan at the age of 87; not to exhaust yourself with a thousand deliberations as in the days of Oslo, but instead to put on the brakes.  To prevent a folly, dangerous and pointless as no other; to stop the war with Iran.  Use all your influence with the security apparatus, its advisors, its senior officers and those so brilliant at reading maps, to stop the air assault which will rain down on us a catastrophe to last generations.

Stop this ruinous miliary idea, whose source is in the reflex of those who devise new weapons systems and generals to make us forget the wounds of the past.  You know better than all of us that no bombing of Iran will eliminate its nuclear capacity, if it even exists.  This [Iran] is a land as vast as a continent, hidden and closed, which can buy whatever it needs.  Anything that is blown up will bloom anew.  The damage will be erased in a heartbeat, but the war of vengeance will begin, which Iranian forbearance and its ability to absorb hundreds of thousands of casualties and great suffering–will be something we’ve never before known in the history of this conflict.

Even according to the most optimistic scenario, the air bombing will instill Iranian vengeance which will lead to the deaths of thousands of Israelis.  I turn to you because there is no one else to turn to.  Overseeing the security services, which are consumed [obsessed] by conflicts are two elected officials, a prime minister and [defense] minister each thrown out of their jobs by the electorate in the past because of their serious failures.

The military service has already inflicted on us a series of failed, impotent military operations against mere rockets.  This is an institution unsuited to return a lost soldier home, one imprisoned in Gaza.

I turn to you, Mr. President as a man sentenced to life in prison turns to his president, as a last resort: save us from our own hand ["what our own hand might do"].

What is especially touching and aggravating about this piece is that Sarna turns to Peres because he knows there is no other address in government for his entreaty.  He does so out of desperation, that of a man who knows his world is about to implode and that there is precious little he can do about it.  He reminds me of one of those desperate characters that Rod Serling portrayed so brilliantly in the Twilight Zone, men filled with terror and aware of their impending doom.

God [or Obama?] help us and Israel if Sarna’s nightmare comes to pass.

Related posts:

1. Dobbs for President…of White America When Lou Dobbs took $8-million and walked out the studio...
2. Dershowitz for President…of Israel Yes, I kid you not. President of Israel.  The guy...
3. Israel Humiliates U.S. University President Visiting to Oppose BDS This is the type of Alice in Wonderland universe in...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

New Israel Fund ‘Jewish Homeland’ Controversy

I posted here about the controversy concerning NIF’s new guidelines as reported by Nathan Guttman in The Forward.  He reported that the group would require grantees to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish homeland.  On that basis, I wrote a post harshly critical of what I perceived as a one-sided set of rules which would discriminate against Israeli Palestinian grantees.

Apparently, according to an authoritative source, Guttman portrayed the guidelines incompletely.  The sources he used for his report appeared interested, again I have this from a reliable source, in guidelines that would’ve forced grantees to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state.  That isn’t going to happen.

Leonard Fein, in fact, said in my last post when I noted that NIF was considering compelling grantees to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state, that I had lied.  And then he had the chutzpah to wish me a healthy New Year!  In fact, there were those within the NIF who proposed just that.  But their proposal was not successful.

My source tells me the proposed guidelines will include a provision acknowledging Israel as a Jewish homeland.  But the language will also affirm that Israel is:

…A democracy dedicated to the full equality of all its citizens and communities.

I want to make clear that while I’m not fully satisfied with this new wording, it’s less offensive than the incomplete language suggested by Guttman.  And I believe that those who negotiated this wording did so in good faith and attempted to conciliate both a Jewish and Palestinian perspective on the issue.

The reason I’m less than content with the above quoted language is that it does not offer Israeli Palestinians what it offers Israeli Jews.  If you are dedicated to the full equality of all citizens and you’ve conceded to Jews that their nation is their homeland, but refuse to concede this to Palestinian citizens, then they still aren’t equal to Jews.  You’ve come awfully close, but close isn’t equal.  There are some things you just can’t finesse and this is one of them.

There is absolutely no reason that Israel cannot be a single state in which two separate ethnic groups see it as their respective homelands.  For any who would claim that this formulation indicates a bi-national state, that is not the case since Israel will still be a unitary state containing two major ethnic groups.  It will not be two states and will not divide into two separate ethnic enclaves.  While there are some especially on the Jewish side who would prefer to see Israel as a state rid of Palestinians, most Israeli Jews want a state in which the two groups co-exist within a single state of Israel.  Palestinian citizens, of course, want a unitary, and not bi-national state.

Related posts:

1. New Israel Fund Caving to Im Tirzu Pressure? New Jewish Israel Fund or Not Arab Israel Fund The...
2. Houston Jewish Federation, Jewish Agency Fund Im Tirzu’s Assault on Israeli Universities What do the Houston Jewish federation, the Jewish Agency, John...
3. Israeli Rightist Ad Assaulting New Israel Fund, Too Much Even for Hagee I feel a bit like I’m Alice in Wonderland and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Israeli Intelligence Leaks Syrian-Hezbollah War Defense Plans to Arab Media

The Kuwaiti newspaper, al Rai, reports that Syria and Hezbollah have agreed to a wide ranging intelligence sharing operation which also includes a joint operations center staffed by Hezbollah and Syrian military officers in the event of a war with Israel:

Hizbullah concluded “field understandings” with the Syrian army, [in] which both sides will cooperate at the military level, including “combat cooperation” in the event of an outbreak of a war with Israel. The understandings include intelligence cooperation. Both sides agreed to exchange data on the “bank of Israeli targets” and dividing responsibility to bomb these targets between Hizbullah and Syria.

The two sides agreed to establish a joint “operation room” which will be occupied by Hizbullah and Syria officers.  This room is intended to fill all the intelligence gaps that can emerge in the battlefield, the report said.

The newspaper added that via this cooperation, the Syrian army makes available all the intelligence its units gather regarding the Israeli air force and its flights. The idea is that Hizbullah will be bombing…the Israeli airports before the flights. According to the report, the most important thing in this cooperation…is to damage the Israeli Air Force and reduce its capabilities.

There is very little that is unexpected in this news since Hezbollah is essentially a Syrian proxy on the Lebanese battlefield.  But what is interesting is that a confidential source has revealed that this little news nugget was supplied by none other than Israeli intelligence.  It wanted both the Syrians and Hezbollah to know that it knew about their war plans.

It seems part of an elaborate game of psychological warfare and intimidation that the Israelis are playing with Iran and the other potential war parties.  Israel’s spooks want the enemy to know that Israel knows of their plans the moment the enemy decides upon them.  There is nothing they can do Israel won’t know about, etc.

All this strikes me as a little like boys pretending to be spies and soldiers and playing mock battles, with each child hissing and pawing at the ground to frighten his opponent.  With the difference that neither Israel nor its enemies are children, but rather nations playing games that will end with death and mayhem potentially for thousands, if not tens of thousands.  Can we afford to let these boys play their games at the expense of the peoples of the Middle East who will suffer if the game goes awry and becomes real?

I have written before about the unstoppable momentum for war that happened in the run-up to the 1967 war in which Nasser and Israel’s leaders exchanged ever more bellicose threats which eventually convinced Golda Meir that she had to pre-empt an Egyptian strike by hitting first.  Thus political rhetoric and grandstanding led to fateful military decisions leading inexorably to war.  The question for today is: are we in the run-up to the next major Israeli-Arab war?  Is that where we want to go?  Where we want to let Israel go?  Because from my vantage point Israel is hellbent to get there.

Who can stop it?  Obama?  Will he?  Can he?  American liberals have to put the president on notice that if there is a war, we will blame him as the figure who could have stopped it and didn’t.  In other words to paraphrase Harry Truman, the rap stops here.

Related posts:

1. Israeli Preparations for War With Iran, Hezbollah AND Syria? I cringe when I have to write blog posts like...
2. Dan Schueftan: Senior Israeli Arab Analyst, Confidant of Generals and Prime Ministers, and Arab Hater Shraga Elam has just sent me an eye-opening profile of...
3. Israeli MK Demands Publication of Blau Story on Cast Lead Battle Plans One of the most contentious aspects of the Kamm-Blau case,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

New Israel Fund Caving to Im Tirzu Pressure?

New Jewish Israel Fund or Not Arab Israel Fund

The Forward brings distressing news that the New Israel Fund has prepared draft funding guidelines that would bar any Israeli NGO which did not endorse Israel as a Jewish state:

The New Israel Fund, the target of attacks by right-wing organizations accusing it of supporting anti-Zionist groups, is discussing the possibility of specifying in its guidelines that grants will be given only to groups that accept the idea of Israel as a Jewish homeland.

…According to three sources who have either seen the new proposed guidelines or were briefed on their content, the debate has also touched on the issue of defining the not-for-profit organizations that are eligible for receiving NIF grants. Board members and major donors are grappling with whether to require that grantees accept the idea of a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, thus agreeing to the principle of Israel as a Jewish state.

I have had my share of disagreements with New Israel Fund, most significantly when it expelled Shammai Leibowitz from one of its fellowship programs after he spoke publicly on behalf of BDS and the story was picked up by Maariv’s resident red-baiter, Ben Caspit.  But I have, throughout the Im Tirzu attacks, stood by NIF and championed its cause.  But if it follows through on such guidelines it will have succumbed to the venom spewed by Im Tirzu.  It will have caved to pressure from the Israeli right to conform its mission to a pro-Zionist one, rather than one that embraces the notion of Israel as a state that empowers all its citizens, including those who are not Jewish.

There can be no doubt that there is any Israeli Palestinian group which NIF currently funds that can support the notion of Israel as a Jewish state.  Besides, this very notion is a condition demanded in the past by Bibi Netanyahu before he would negotiate with the Palestinians.  So in effect, if the NIF “goes there,” it will have adopted Bibi Netanyahu’s political agenda.  Can this be possible?  Is this what things have come to?  That the NIF, under enormous pressure from the Israeli right, determines that it must compromise with its values in order to appease its enemies?  Does NIF really believe this will protect it from the worst of the hatred coming its way?  Does it believe such policy changes will inoculate it from attack?

If this is what NIF’s leaders are thinking they are sadly mistaken.  If they cave, the right will see this as a sign of weakness and it will crowd in for what it hopes to be the kill.  And such compromise will destroy the organization’s credibility among its Arab donees.  Who in the Palestinian community will want to accept money from it under such conditions?

Thus, under attack from its right flank and its left, NIF will be buffeted by the political winds and have no clear course.  It will be a sad day if it happens.

The Forward mentions that there is compromise wording under consideration:

According to individuals who are involved in the process, one formulation being discussed is recognizing Israel as the “homeland” of the Jewish people — a description that falls short of the definition of Israel as a “Jewish state” but would avoid alienating Israeli-Arab not-for-profits that are on NIF’s grant list.

I should mention that this indeed is wording that I sometimes use in explaining my own Zionist philosophy with the addendum that I see Israel as the homeland of its Palestinian citizens as well.  Unless this proviso is included then even the compromise wording is offensive.  Besides, why should the NIF determine within its funding guidelines the nature of the Israeli state.  This, it seems to me, takes NIF far afield from its core mission which is to build Israeli democracy and social justice.

This quotation from a former president of the group indicates a leadership that has become unnerved and unmoored in response to the onslaught against it:

Peter Edelman, a former president of the NIF board, said in a brief interview with the Forward that revising the guidelines was “not necessarily in response” to criticism. Edelman added, however, that “when there is unjust criticism, then you want to be as clear as possible about the issues.”

This is a clarity that is unnecessary and which will not diminish the attacks.  It is a clarity that will drive away the Palestinian NGO community and render NIF less effective and less relevant in an Israeli context.  It is the NIF playing by the enemy’s rules–and losing.

Finally, the headline of the Forward article is: New Israel Fund Considering Red Lines, which should have much more appropriately been, New Israel Fund Considering Blue and White Lines. If it adopts these guidelines I’d suggest it change its name to the New Jewish Israel Fund or the Not-Arab Israel Fund, unwieldy perhaps, but very descriptive.

Related posts:

1. New Israel Fund ‘Jewish Homeland’ Controversy I posted here about the controversy concerning NIF’s new guidelines...
2. Israeli Rightist Cyber-Vandals Take Down New Israel Fund Site in DoS Attack It appears that DoS attacks are a new weapon of...
3. Jewish Agency PR Flack Defends Hagee Gift to Im Tirzu A few days ago the Israeli financial blog Calcalist published...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Israeli Preparations for War With Iran, Hezbollah AND Syria?

I cringe when I have to write blog posts like this because with every fiber of my body, I do not want a war between Iran and Israel and the concomitant regional hostilities likely to break out thereafter.  I realize that any reporting that encourages such speculation only fuels the interests of Israel as I’ve noticed in the Psy-Ops activities discussed here along those same lines.  But then again, as Trita Parsi mentioned to me the last time we spoke, it is possible that Israel DOES intend to attack Iran and that the games its intelligence operatives are playing are part of this weird scenario.  So I put this out there with foreboding and a warning that posts like this may be just what Israeli intelligence wishes to be posted to scare the shit out of the Iranians, Syrians and Lebanese (specifically Hezbollah).

A week ago or so I reported a major IDF training exercise in the north involving major movements of armor from home bases farther south to staging areas in the north.  I speculated that if the armor remained in the staging areas after the operation concluded this might mean that Israel was preparing for actual military operations either in Lebanon or Syria.  I have not heard about movements of the equipment after conclusion of the operation.  But I have received further reports that, depending on how they’re interpreted, could be cause for alarm.

An Australian aeronautical engineer notes that the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency, as required by law, three weeks ago publicly announced that Israel completed a massive purchase of military fuels (official order) including jet fuel worth $2 billion.  He notes that Israel would require an enormous quantity of jet fuel to mount an Iran attack and that this purchase gets Israel most of the way there.  But he also notes other types of fuels in the order which are not for aircraft:

If Israel were planning to strike Iran then that would explain the requirement for the large amounts of JP-8 fuel. However, it does not explain Israel’s need for such large amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel since an Israeli strike against Iran is unlikely to include any type of ground incursion into Iran for which these fuels would be used. The only conclusion one can draw, if Israel is not planning to actually invade Iran, which, clearly, it could not, is that Israel is planning to use the gasoline and the diesel fuel for some other ground incursion – and that can only mean an invasion of Lebanon and possibly the Gaza and West Bank when an attack against Iran is launched.

This massive order begs the question; is the final confrontation imminent? And, if not, then what is all this fuel for?

Time will tell. Jet fuel, if it’s going to be used in peak condition, doesn’t have a very long shelf life.

So, as I mentioned in my earlier post about the training exercise, it could be that Israel IS planning to attack Iran and is preparing for the accompanying border unrest with Hezbollah in Lebanon and possibly Syria (one strange purpose of the exercise according to the press was to prepare for massive unrest amongst the Israeli Palestinian population which has never, to my knowledge, engaged in unrest during any previous Israeli military operations).  I have to say that I find all of this highly difficult to credit considering the enormous amount of personnel on multiple military fronts that the IDF would be required to coordinate.  Not since the 1973 War has Israel fought on such multiple battlefields and I can’t imagine it would relish the prospect of doing so now considering it hasn’t shown itself terribly competent recently fighting on even one front (cf. Lebanon and Gaza).  While militants in Gaza could not mount any more than a symbolic resistance with rocket attacks on southern Israel, Hezbollah could, as it did in 2006 throw the fear of God into the entire region of northern Israel and send 1 million Israelis once again into shelters for weeks on end.

Haaretz reports, based on a Kuwaiti story, that Israel is preparing to attack Hezbollah military targets inside Syria which, if true, fits into the narrative I’ve outlined above:

Israel is planning to attack Hezbollah arms depots and weapons manufacturing plants in Syria, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai reported on Saturday.  The report is based on Western sources who asserted that Israel has increased its military force level along the northern border in the Golan Heights and Mount Dov areas.  The report cited European sources who claimed that recent Israeli unmanned aerial drone flights over Lebanon and Syria signal Israel’s intentions to carry out operations in the area…According to the report, Israel plans to attack Hezbollah weapons depots, including ones deep inside Syria that store long-range rockets.

The Al Rai report said that the situation on the Israel-Syria border is tense and that Syria could respond immediately to any Israeli attack and not demonstrate the restraint that it did after the Israeli Air Force bombed a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria in the fall of 2007.

According to the report, Syria’s military is on high alert and is strengthening its anti-aircraft defenses along the border with Israel and at strategic sites within Syria.

The original Al Rai story includes this telling piece of information:

“Western military reports reveal that Israel massed in the last days an armed division, in addition to a similar division that was already in place in the Golan Heights and around Shebaa farms.”

If Israel does attack Iran, it goes without saying that Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts are dead probably for the remaining duration of Obama’s term.  That’s one reason I can’t imagine that the U.S. would begin to consider allowing such an Israeli attack.  Which is why I scratch my head at the U.S. facilitating the fuel purchase.  How can we provide Israel with the necessary tools for an attack when it would undermine our stated policy supporting peace talks?

A further caveat: all of the information presented here except the fuel sale is speculative and prone to various interpretations.  So I hesitate to shout from the rooftops about a coming Israeli Middle East military adventure.  But we must be prepared for the eventuality should such a disaster occur.

Related posts:

1. Major IDF Manuevers in Northern Israel Threaten Lebanon, Syria, Iran Israel has decided to rattle sabers after losing one of...
2. Two Dubai Killers Entered U.S.; Mossad Used Australian Passports for Spying in Syria, Iran, Lebanon I tell ‘ya, this story just gets weirder and weirder. ...
3. Israeli Intelligence Leaks Syrian-Hezbollah War Defense Plans to Arab Media The Kuwaiti newspaper, al Rai, reports that Syria and Hezbollah...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Israeli Actors Refuse to Perform in Settlements

Cameri's production of Caucasian Chalk Circle: Brecht for the Occupation (photo: יח'צ)

After Israel’s leading theater companies announced they would appear for the first time in an Israeli settlement, 40 Israeli actors, directors and producers signed a statement refusing to perform.  They were to grace the boards of a new center for the arts, performing some of the treasures of the world canon (among them Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle) for the good burghers of Ariel, known to its boosters as the “capital of Samaria.”

The artists’ statement said:

“We express contempt regarding the intent of the managements of theater companies to appear at Ariel’s new hall.  We will refuse to appear in Ariel and in any other settlement.  We call upon the management to restrict their theatrical activity to the sovereign borders of the State of Israel.”

The response from the Yesha Council has been furious:

“Our response to the letter signed by a group of military refusers, and left-wing anti-Zionist activists will be most sharp.  This hate-filled letter which showers contempt on the best of the children of the nation, those who protect them while they act on stage, demands a direct, sharp and clear response from the management of the companies and we expect this.  We will announce further steps in the coming days.”

The battle is joined.  One claim in the settler response is worth challenging: that the settlers protect the lives of Israelis within the Green Line.  Of course, just the opposite is the case.  It is the IDF which sends thousands of troops and spends hundreds of millions of dollars protecting the settlers, and not the other way around.  These settlers are the most provocative thorn in the side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  They cause unending grief to Israel and prevent it from reaching a resolution of the conflict.  And these are the people who claim that it is THEY who are doing favors for Israel.  The nerve, the sheer nerve.

This is one boycott I’m in favor of 110%.  And it shouldn’t be a controversial one since Israeli theater companies till now had never performed in the settlements.  So the actors are merely asking to return to status quo ante.  Kol ha-kavod to Israel’s acting community for taking a moral stand.  Now let’s hear from the company management that they’ve heard their public and will accede to the wishes of their performers and home audiences.

Related posts:

1. Israeli Affinity Credit Cards Support Settlements, IDF I just added a Google Adsense adblock to the blog...
2. Makhoul’s Attorneys Refuse to Appear in Court, Protest Lack of Due Process Lawyers for Ameer Makhoul, director of the Israeli Palestinian NGO...
3. Settlements: The ‘Pause’ That Doesn’t Refresh The pause that refreshes. –Coca-Cola advertising slogan (1929) ranked 3rd...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Video Chronicles Israeli Effort to ‘Disappear’ Bedouin Village

This N.Y. Times video of the Bedouin inhabitants of Al Araqeeb, chronicles the violent extinction of their village and their struggle to revive it. I’ve posted here on the deeply moving story filled with the barbarity of 1,500 Israeli soldiers with helicopters and other advanced weaponry being deployed to roust 400 poor Israeli Bedouins from the ancestral land. But the dogged determination of the victims not to accede to the thief attempting to steal their inheritance from them, is riveting.

The most disgusting aspect of this video is the interview with the Israel Lands Administration flack who looks into the camera and with a straight face claims that these Bedouin, who possess a 1929 deed to the land, and tombstones in the local cemetery dating back decades or more, came to Al Araqeeb in 1999! As the song says: “Who do–who do ya think you’re foolin’?”

In 1948, Israel disappeared anywhere from 700,000 to 1-million Palestinian residents in the Nakba. Afterward, they systematically erased their villages and any sign of their former existence. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the Bedouin actually have always been loyal citizens, never viewed by the State as a threat. Those who enlist in the army are known as some of its best trackers, protecting Israel from terrorist infiltrators. And this is how a grateful state repays their loyalty. It steals their land, sending them to live in official Bedouin “reservations,” in which they are divorced from everything they hold dear.

What clearer use of the term ethnic cleansing can there be but in this stem and branch uprooting of this indigenous population from its lands by the Israeli government? A shande fahr di Yidn (“a shame in front of the Jews”).

Related posts:

1. Israel Eradicates Bedouin Village in Negev How desolate sits the city that was full of people,...
2. Israel Continues Effort to Turn MK Zoabi into Terrorist Readers of this blog will recall a post I wrote...
3. Settlers, the Video Game Needs no commentary…...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

IRS Finally Getting ‘Religion’ on American Jewish Settler Support Groups

Z Street: 'fearless' defender of Jewish settler hate

A number of progressive Jewish bloggers have been shreying for years (it feels like) about both the violent extremism of American Jewish groups favoring Israel’s settler movement AND about the fact that these groups like the Hebron Fund, Central Fund of Israel, and Z Street, also harshly oppose U.S. policy regarding the settlements.  We’ve been shouting about the abuse of the 501c3 tax code which compels U.S. citizens to subsidize tax deductions for these groups.

Now, apparently, the IRS has quietly taken notice.  The execrable Z Street, founded as a rip-off parody of J Street, applied for non-profit status last December and, according to Z Street, was told by the IRS that its application was being reviewed by a special office establishing to review the status of such extremist groups.  Ben Smith reports that an Arab-American activist informed him that there is a similar office for Arab-American groups.  So finally, the American Jewish haters are getting the same treatment as the Arabs.

It’s about time that these extremist groups receive such scrutiny.  If the government can sue Arab groups like the Holyland Foundation, why not deny tax-deductible status to groups raising funds to buy guns for settlers?  Group which advocate assassinating Palestinian leaders and hanging Israeli prime ministers?  Groups which support settlers who kill Palestinian civilians with impunity?  Groups funding the theft of Palestinian buildings and land?  Groups funding the Judaization of  East Jerusalem?

Now Z Street is suing the government to force it to grant the status and return the process to status quo ante.  If they fail, and God I hope they do, the government I expect will deny the application.  But that is small potatoes, since the ability of Z Street either to raise money or effect the policy debate is minimal.  The real target are the big guys at Hebron Fund and CFI, who’ve raised scores of millions for settlements.  I’d predict that in a year we may face the real battle, which will be to revoke the 501c3 status of these groups.  When you start going after Irving Moskowitz, then you’re really making a serious dent in the settler funding apparatus.

In this context, it’s also important to note the recent decision by the Houston federation and John Hagee to defund Im Tirzu.  Hagee’s gift received a U.S. tax deduction by virtue of it being passed through the federation and Jewish Agency.  Such new IRS scutiny puts Jewish federations and potential funders of settler groups on notice that gifts that contravene U.S. policy will receive special scrutiny.  Given Im Tirzu’s outrageous assault on Israeli democracy and academic freedom, it can’t be hard to argue convincingly that the group opposes U.S. policy toward Israel.  If such donors are prepared to face this scrutiny (thankfully the Houston federation wasn’t), they will perhaps consider putting their money into more mainstream projects.  And if they’re prepared to withstand the glare of the public, then let us have a debate about the goals of their philanthropy and its impact on both U.S. policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Those who haven’t been reading our blogs will think mistakenly that the Forward and N.Y.  Times first brought these issues to the government’s attention.  In truth, it was bloggers and peace activists who took up this cause long before the MSM got to it.  Certainly, the government didn’t take action because of us.  The Times gets the IRS’ attention.  But without those who took up the issue first there would’ve been no Times story.

It’s also worth noting that former IRS officials are quoted by the Forward doubting there is such an office reviewing the Z Street application.  Which means Z Street may just be using the courts to toot their own horn and gain publicity by fightin’ the Man.  No American rightist, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, has ever lost favor by taking on the mean old federal government.  And given the Obama administration’s purported anti-Israel slant it may be part of Z Street’s strategy to file suit in order to publicize its differences with the administration.

Related posts:

1. Rescind Tax-Exempt Status of American Jewish Groups Funding Settlements Josh Nathan-Kazis has a story in The Forward which I...
2. NY Times ‘Discovers’ $200-Million American Jewish Settler Funding Network It only took them three years since bloggers like Phil...
3. Ephraim Khantsis: Portrait of KahanaWannabe American-Jewish Settler Terrorist Haaretz is reporting that an American born-again Orthodox Jew, Ephraim...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Dennis Ross Defines Israel’s ‘Center-Left’

I’m always tickled by the little howlers that the N.Y. Times Israel correspondents introduce into their copy which reveal their cluelessness at the subtleties of Israeli politics.  Ethan Bronner is notorious for ‘em.  Isabel Kershner has her share.  In today’s Times, Kershner quotes Dennis Ross reeling off of those mini-whoppers.  Here he’s characterizing the politics of Bibi Netanyahu’s chief negotiator in the upcoming Palestinian peace talks:

Mr. Ross added that Mr. Molcho was not a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s right-leaning Likud Party and tended in his personal politics to the center-left…

Oh yeah.  Bibi definitely pals around with someone on the center-left of Israeli politics.  By center-left Ross probably means someone who generally supports Kadima’s views, if that.  He certainly doesn’t mean someone supporting Labor, and God forbid not Meretz.  But I’ve got news for Ross, there is no left in Israeli politics anymore unless you’re talking about Hadash.  And no mainstream Israeli Jewish political leader would be caught dead supporting Hadash.

So what Ross really means is that Bibi is the hard right and Molcho the soft right.  To even use terms like “center” or “left” to describe Molcho’s politics is a fraud.  Don’t fall for it.

I’m also tickled by Bibi’s insistence even before the doomed peace negotiations begin for regular bi-monthly meetings with Mahmoud Abbas.  Bibi wants to use such tetes a tete as a fig leaf so he can go to the Americans and moderate Israelis and show them what a good, peace-lovin’ guy he is.  Of course, the talks, if Abbas is foolish enough to agree to them, will produce nothing and waste everyone’s time just as similar talks between Olmert and Abbas produced nothing.

Related posts:

1. Former NSC and CIA Analyst, Saban Center Fellow Warns of Folly of Israel Attacking Iran, Urges Accepting Iranian Bomb Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and current fellow at...
2. If J Street Wants the Political Center, Why Not Join Aipac? The first time I heard Alan Dershowitz lecture Hadar Susskind...
3. ADL Says ‘No’ to Park51 Ground Zero Muslim Cultural Center, Claims ‘Survivors’ Entitled to Be Racist Abe Foxman, one of American Jewry’s leading Islamophobes, announced the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Recruiting Brecht to Whitewash Occupation

Ron Nachman fawns over the Hagees after announcing their Ariel gift

Poor Bertolt Brecht.  He’s rolling over in his grave after learning that Israel’s cultural commissars are exploiting him to whitewash the Occupation.  Haaretz reports that four maor Israeli theater companies will grace the boards of the new cultural center in Ariel, satirically referred to in one blog post on the subject as “the capital of Samaria.”  It will be the first time any major Israeli company has performed in the Conquered Territories.  Ironically, one of the plays to be performed is The Caucasian Chalk-Circle by Brecht.

The plot of the play ironically mirrors the Israeli Occupation in some respects: it portrays two Soviet-era agricultural communes fighting over farm land in their village, from which Nazi troops will soon be retreating.  Neither group can agree which one should take over the land once it is liberated.  In the end, a singer who dramatizes the conflict determines that the group that makes best use of the land should be awarded it, rather than the group which controlled the land before the Nazis occupied it.

But as is only fitting, this portion of the prologue has been excised from the current Israeli production so there’s no danger the good citizens of Ariel will have to grapple with such moral questions.

The Israeli Amorite blog has written eloquently about the scandal:

Ariel's new center for performing arts: Brecht colonizes Ariel

Just how perverted have the Israeli bourgeoisie become?  Can the architects of Israeli culture sink to a much lower level of degradation?  For years the term “culture” has served to whitewash the brutality and violence of the Israeli elite.  We have become used to killers who speak about spirituality, to arms dealers playing the piano.  To the military radio station playing protest music.  This is indeed the trick: if we are so fine, so liberal then no one will ever call us simply a military camp ruled by war criminals.  But to draft Brecht in order to make kosher the theft of lands and the colonial project of Ron Nachman [Ariel's mayor]?

Is it possible that there can be an Israeli actor, producer or director who cannot blanch at the irony of performing Brecht in a theater built on land stolen from its indigenous inhabitants?  Can there be anyone who does not know of Brecht’s radical politics and the fact that he would be storming the theater to protest this abomination were he alive to do so?

Ariel’s mayor disingenously professes not to have a clue why there should be any controversy:

Nachman says he does not see the opening of the cultural center as a political statement. “Ahead of the opening of the peace talks, I invite the Palestinian Theater to perform here. Achinoam Nini (“Noa” ) is not the only one who can sing with Arabs. My vision was to bring culture, music and theater for all residents of Samaria, from Petah Tikva to Amman.”

Perhaps he should invite Jordan’s King Abdullah to the inaugural concert since the center’s purported geographical reach goes all the way to Amman.  Why wouldn’t he want to grace Ariel’s new hall?  He believes in peace after all, doesn’t he?

Two of the main actors of one of the main companies have refused to perform in the Ariel productions.  One of them released this statement:

“I would be glad to perform in settlements in several shows that have messages I’d like to deliver in many communities. But settlers and settlements are not something that entertains me, and I don’t want to entertain them.”

This caused Nachman to schrey about a cultural boycott.  And isn’t that just the point?  Until now, the Israeli theater community has in effect boycotted the settlements.  Now, with the new cultural center perhaps the government pressured the companies to break the boycott or risk their government subsidies.  Faced with such financial pressure, many producers might buckle.  One of the actors interviewed for the original story acknowledged such considerations and said that despite his opposition to settlements he would not rebel against this decision in light of government control of the theater’s pocketbook.

But this seems short-sighted to me.  Aren’t they thinking about their subscribers and supporters back home in Tel Aviv, Jeruslaem or Haifa?  What will these liberal Israelis think of their beloved actors treading the stage at Ariel?  In fact, many would see this as a sell out of their political and artistic values.  One cannot separate the two although undoubtedly the theater personnel justifying their participation would claim they can.  But the idea that this series of performances is NOT political is a fraud and a charade.

Nachman wants Israeli liberal culture to buttress his settler enterprise.  And the Israeli arts community appears only too willing to go along for the ride.

News accounts note that completion of the project was delayed for 20 years for lack of funding. Without providing details, they say that Nachman recently secured funding to complete the center. Dare we guess who might’ve been the Sugar Daddy? John Hagee’s Israel-settler philanthropy notes a $500,000 gift in return for naming the main building of Ariel’s Milken Sports Complex for Hagee. Since so much of the settlement’s infrastructure and amenities are funded by Hagee and other Christian Zionists, it’s quite possible that Israeli theatergoers have Christian Zionist philanthropy to thank for ruining their theater seasons with potential subscriber boycotts and the like.

Ironically, construction of the center is proceeding furiously, even at night in order to meeting the November 8th opening night.  Night-time work is necessary because the Palestinian construction workers are currently observing Ramadan and will not work during the day while they are fasting.

H/t Assaf Oron.

• Brecht in the West Bank: Israel’s major theaters to have regular shows in settlements (promisedlandblog.com)
• Israeli Actors Boycott Theater in Settlement (thelede.blogs.nytimes.com)

Related posts:

1. Settlers: ‘Finish the Occupation’ by Any Means Necessary If the political slogan”by any means necessary” hadn’t already been...
2. Israeli Actors Refuse to Perform in Settlements After Israel’s leading theater companies announced they would appear for...
3. B’Tselem: One-Fifth of West Bank Settlement Buildings on Privately-Owned Palestinian Land B’Tselem will be releasing a study on Tuesday (perhaps timing...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Israeli Military Censor Forces Youpost to Delete Name of Incoming Shabak Chief, Yitzhak Ilan

YouPost displaying the 'forbidden' name, Yitzhak Ilan

Israeli censorship strikes again.  Despite several instances in which Rechavia Berman has successfully violated Israeli gag orders and reported on security matters mentioned here as well, this time the censor didn’t take too kindly to the naming of Yitzhak Ilan as director-designate of the Shabak.  After he published the name, he was forced to remove it.  He added the statement:

The editor decided to accede to a request from the military censor, after it acknowledged our site and turned to it with a request to remove the explicit name [in Hebrew shem ham'forash, a satiric reference to God's name] of the next Shabak director until the official announcement of his appointment, which will be made in the coming months.  Whoever read it, read it.  Whoever could not, let his mouse do the walking [an illusion to a link to my blog in the following sentence].

Hey, maybe we should publish the information so widely in Israel and outside that we will make the thought police shudder and give up on their efforts to shield from the public information that is rightly theirs, since the appointment is being made in their name.

Screenshot h/t Uri Breitman.

Related posts:

1. IDF Military Censor: Kam Gag Gives Censorship a Bad Name Israeli media are beginning to place blame for the farce...
2. Yossi Melman on Y., Shabak Secrecy and Tikun Olam Today may mark a milestone in this blog’s history–or at...
3. Story IDF Censor Couldn’t Stop on Top Secret Israeli Nuclear Base I recently wrote a post about a secret Israeli nuclear...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Yossi Melman on Y., Shabak Secrecy and Tikun Olam

Melman's passage on Yitzhak Ilan and Israeli secrecy

Today may mark a milestone in this blog’s history–or at least a mini-milestone.  Before I identified Yitzhak Ilan as the director-designee of the Shabak recently, I wrote to two Israeli reporters seeking more background information on Ilan.  No one replied possibly for the reason that Ilan’s name was verboten for public consumption in Israel.  But one of my correspondents did reply in a different form.

Yossi Melman, Haaretz’s security correspondent, wrote this passage today about my work in uncovering some of the secrets locked up tight in the impregnable Fortress Shabak-Mossad:

Land of Secrets

The American blogger Richard Silverstein has transformed himself into a veritable international message board of information which military censorship and Israeli courts forbid publishing.  In the past, he reported on the Anat Kamm case while Israeli authorities gagged the mouths of Israel’s media.

Currently Silverstein, who calls his blog, Tikun Olam, claims he knows the identity of Y., deputy director of the Shabak, and even published it.  According to him, the prime minister decided that Y. would replace Yuval Diskin when the latter’s term as director ends in May 2011.  Silverstein is fed by information that comes to him from Israelis.  In his reports, there is usually a grain of truth, if a few speculations as well.

There is great doubt whether the prime minister has already decided who will be the next Shin Bet chief and whether that person will come from within the service.  Nevertheless, Silverstein’s blog is important because he exposes the security services and the courts in all their nakedness.  They use the instruments of the 20th century to protect secrets which aren’t really secrets in the age of 21st century technology.  In the past, it was permitted to publish the names of senior Shabak officials once they were identified abroad, but in this nation of miracles called Israel, a stranger place than the imaginary world of Alice, you can’t do that according to the laws that apply to Shabak, which forbid publishing the names of its officers even if they’ve already been published [abroad].

In this, I can hear the frustration of an Israeli journalist who wants to do his job, but who is prevented from doing so by the iron hand of both military censorship and the Shabak itself.  One has to keep that in mind when one is tempted to tear into Israeli journalism itself for its timidity in the face of such restrictions.  It’s a complicated issue.

There are literally scores of pro-Israelist naysayers and doubters lined up in the comment threads to pooh-pooh the post I wrote about Ilan’s imminent appointment.  Yossi Melman has other ideas.  And we shall see who’s right.

At any rate, it is very sweet to be validated by a veteran Israeli reporter like Melman.

Related posts:

1. Israel’s Ha-Ir Profiles Tikun Olam Israeli journalist Haggai Matar helped arrange for Ha-Ir to publish...
2. Tikun Olam Suffers DOS Attack After Exposing Former IDF Torturer The gremlins were very unhappy with Yossi Gurvitz, Itamar Sheltiel...
3. Israeli Military Censor Forces Youpost to Delete Name of Incoming Shabak Chief, Yitzhak Ilan Israeli censorship strikes again.  Despite several instances in which Rechavia...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Former NSC and CIA Analyst, Saban Center Fellow Warns of Folly of Israel Attacking Iran, Urges Accepting Iranian Bomb

Iran in Israel's crosshairs

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and current fellow at the Saban Center, a strongly pro-Israel DC think-tank, has published a detailed analysis of the folly that would be an Israeli attack on Iran:

Perhaps never before has the government in Jerusalem felt under greater threat than with the Iranian atomic program. The temptation is to attack. It is an exercise in futility with likely disastrous results.

Riedel also branches out into Israeli nuclear policy and notes that it is becoming increasingly impossible for Israel to sustain the historic policy of opacity and refusal to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty:

…The Arabs, led by Egypt, are demanding that Israel do so or they will sabotage the future of the NPT regime. They rightly argue that Washington has a double standard when it comes to Israel’s bomb: the NPT applies to all but Israel. Indeed, every Israeli prime minister since David Ben-Gurion has deliberately taken an evasive posture on the issue because they do not want to admit what everyone knows. Now that era may be coming to an end, raising fundamental questions about Israel’s strategic situation in the region.

The wonder is that a figure at a think tank named for, and heavily funded by Israeli media entrepreneur, Haim Saban, one of Aipac’s most powerful donors, has published such a sobering and realistic portrait of the pitfalls facing Israel as it walks the minefield that is its approach to the alleged Iranian nuclear threat.

I would quarrel with Riedel’s approving quotation of this passage from a U.S. report on Israel’s nuclear program:

IN A secret special national intelligence estimate (SNIE) in 1960, the American intelligence community concluded that “possession of a nuclear weapon capability . . . would clearly give Israel a greater sense of security, self-confidence, and assertiveness.”

What this analysis omits is the increasing Arab sense of insecurity, alarm and downright desperation concerning Israel’s nuclear capacity.  With each new Israeli attack, each new war, each new overseas assassination, the fear factor among the frontline states rises exponentially.  One can also argue whether Israel’s nuclear capability has had as felicitous an effect as claimed on Israeli policies in the region.  Might not its nuclear arsenal have increased its willingness to engage in military adventurism?  What is the Israeli policy of “the landlord’s gone crazy” but an expression of Israel’s willingness to go for broke–to Samson-like threaten to tear down the walls of the temple, that is, the entire region.  After all, one man’s self-confidence is another’s megalomania.

Riedel’s warning below follows similarly sobering warnings by military analyst, Anthony Cordesmann.  But it bears repeating.  Here is the money quote that should be noted for its clarity and realism:

AN ISRAELI attack on Iran is a disaster in the making. And it will directly impact key strategic American interests. Iran will see an attack as American supported if not American orchestrated. The aircraft in any strike will be American-produced, -supplied and -funded F-15s and F-16s, and most of the ordnance will be from American stocks.

…Iran will almost certainly retaliate against both U.S. and Israeli targets. To demonstrate its retaliatory prowess, Iran has already fired salvos of test missiles (some of which are capable of striking Israel), and Iranian leaders have warned they would respond to an attack by either Israel or the United States with attacks against Tel Aviv, U.S. ships and facilities in the Persian Gulf, and other targets. Even if Iran chooses to retaliate in less risky ways, it could respond indirectly by encouraging Hezbollah attacks against Israel and Shia militia attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq, as well as terrorist attacks against American and Israeli targets in the Middle East and beyond.

America’s greatest vulnerability would be in Afghanistan. Iran could easily increase its assistance to the Taliban and make the already-difficult Afghan mission much more complicated. Western Afghanistan is especially vulnerable to Iranian mischief, and NATO has few troops there to cover a vast area. President Obama would have to send more, not fewer, troops to fight that war.

Making matters worse, considering the likely violent ramifications, even a successful Israeli raid would only delay Iran’s nuclear program, not eliminate it entirely. In fact, some Israeli intelligence officials suspect that delay would only be a year or so. Thus the United States would still need a strategy to deal with the basic problem of Iran’s capabilities after an attack, but in a much more complicated diplomatic context since Tehran would be able to argue it was the victim of aggression and probably would renounce its NPT commitments. Support for the existing sanctions on Iran after a strike would likely evaporate.

And to put things even more baldly:

The United States needs to send a clear red light to Israel. There is no option but to actively discourage an Israeli attack…America does have influence and it should be wielded.

Perhaps the most radical statement in Riedel’s article is this (and I never would’ve expected to read this from anyone affiliated with the Saban Center):

PERSUADING ISRAEL not to attack Iran really means convincing Israel that now is the time to give up its regional nuclear monopoly.

In other words, Riedel is arguing that persuading Israel to give up on its attack means tacitly accepting an Iranian nuclear weapon AND giving up on decades of firm Israeli policy upholding its monopoly by military attack if necessary.  That would truly be a revolutionary about-face in Israeli strategic thinking.  If he or Obama or anyone else could persuade Israel to adopt this approach–more power to him.  But given the absolute hysteria emanating from Israeli leadership circles on this subject, I don’t see how such it can work.

Riedel’s piece argues convincingly that while Iran is a troublesome nation, that all of its strategic calculations and actions are based on carefully calibrated and pragmatic (not revolutionary or bellicose) considerations.  Here’s another money quote:

Contrary to Netanyahu’s cries, Iran is not a crazy state. A nuclear security guarantee to Israel, if backed by a credible arsenal, will deter Tehran.

Once again, it’s almost breathtaking to see this coming out of the Saban Center.  One wonders whether there may be a policy division among some in the Israel lobby developing about the wisdom of such an attack.

One thing’s for certain, either Riedel or Saban will shortly be facing stern lectures from the Israeli embassy and other lobby elites for having left the “pro-Israel” reservation.

Related posts:

1. Israeli National Security Analyst Warns of Hezbollah-Al Qaeda Nukes, Advocates Attacking Population Centers, Holy Sites Some political wonks and academic analysts have a tendency to...
2. U.S. Official Warns Syria Israel Will Bomb I just love unsourced stories like this in the Israeli...
3. Cordesman on Folly of Israeli Attack on Iran Back in May, Reuven Pedatzur, a lecturer in political science...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Bibi to Name New Shin Bet Director

Bibi Netanyahu has decided who his new Shin Bet director will be.  The name is a closely guarded secret and has not yet been reported in Israel or anywhere.  He is Yitzhak Ilan, the deputy under the current director Yuval Diskin.  He will assume his new role in May 2011, when Diskin steps down.  There is very little available online about Ilan, which is to be expected.

During the recent controversy surrounding the naming of a new IDF chief of staff, the losing candidate, Benny Gantz, was touted as a potential candidate to replace Diskin.  Apparently, both Diskin and Netanyahu wished to elevate the new director from within the ranks.

But Haaretz has reported in the past on Ilan’s organizational background in the Shin Bet.  Ilan was elevated to the number 2 position in the middle of a juicy sex scandal last year, which implicated the then deputy to Diskin, D., in a cover up.  The agency’s number 3, code named “Claude,” had bedded one of his female subordinates and disciplined the woman’s husband, also a Shin Bet agent.  D. was sent on an extended vacation to contemplate the errors of his ways.  Diskin wanted to fire Claude, but the latter was too wily and threatened to wash all his dirty linen in public.  So instead of being out of a job, Claude was demoted to the job of head of the Jewish terror unit.  The cuckholded husband had the last word though, because he filed a civil service complaint against “Claude” and Diskin, which forced the latter ultimately to fire the former.

The job at the Jewish terror section was open for Claude because Diskin appointed the then-director of the unit, Ilan, to be his new deputy, replacing the disgraced D.  Are you keeping track of all this on your scorecards at home?

Ilan, as then-director of the Jewish terror unit, was responsible for the [miserable failure of the] Jack Teitel investigation.  Teitel is the American Jewish terrorist implicated in multiple anti-Palestinian acts of violence and murders who engaged in his crime spree over a decade or more.  The final straw was the bomb Teitel exploded at the home of Hebrew University Prof. Zeev Sternhell, which wounded him.  The Shabak finally caught him tacking up flyers on a Jerusalem street which bragged about the bombing.  Teitel is also considered a suspect or organizer of the shootings at the Tel Aviv gay community center which killed two, in the murders of two Israeli policemen in the Beit Shean valley, and in the bombing of the home of a Messianic Jewish missionary, which wounded his teenage son.

Ilan is a veteran of the Shabak who has filled many senior roles including chief of investigations and was thought, until the sex scandal, to be likely to retire form the service.

The question really is will anything be different?  Will Ilan merely pursue the same objectives with the same brutality as his predecessor?  The answer is likely to be Yes.  The only way the Shabak will transform itself is when the State it serves demands that it do so.  The State of Israel gets the secret police it demands.  And the Shabak and operatives like Ilan are only too happy to accommodate it.

So unfortunately, Yonatan Shapira can still expect to be summoned to friendly chats with Shin Bet agents warning him about the errors of his ways in supporting BDS, and Israeli Palestinians like Azmi Bishara and Ameer Makhoul can still expect arrests in the dead of night followed by weeks-long interrogations under abusive conditions, followed by announcements trumpeting their crimes of betrayal against the State, backed up with no evidence whatsoever.  Diskin will go, long live the new Diskin.

If any readers have a photo of Ilan, please let me know.

Related posts:

1. Shin Bet’s Cult of Secrecy Continues, Arab NGO Director Arrested Under Gag Order in Dead of Night The Israeli Shin Bet continue riding roughshod over the rights...
2. Shin Bet: Sleeping Your Way to the Top and Other Scandals It appears there are two ways to rise to the...
3. Former Aipac Director Incites U.S. Government Against Goldstone Neal Sher, a former Justice Department lawyer and Aipac director,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Houston Jewish Federation and Hagee End Funding for Im Tirzu

Im Tirzu's ad attacking Naomi Hazan

I would like to reach out my arms to dance a intercontinental hora with Didi Remez, the Calcalist, Yossi Gurvitz, and all those others who helped expose John Hagee’s $120,000 gift to Im Tirzu.  It seems that both the Houston federation and Hagee have gotten the message that Im Tirzu is not an educational organization providing Zionist training to Israel’s college students, but an outright ideological and highly partisan rightist political group.

One of my Facebook friends and a reader of my blog, Simcha Burstyn, brings this message from Houston federation CEO, Lee Wunsch:

We helped John Hagee Ministries fund Im Tirtzu as part of Pastor Hagee’s annual gifts to Israel. He funded Im Tirtzu because of its original mission of educating young Israelis on Israel’s college campuses about the history of Israel and Zionism. That funding continued for two years. In light of recent events and in my discussions with Pastor Hagee, he will not continue that funding as we both believe that Im Tirtzu has morphed into a quasi-political organization and neither Pastor Hagee nor the Houston Jewish Federation will fund such groups. If any of your friends want to communicate with me about their concerns, you are welcome to forward along this message and/or give them my contact information.

Lee Wunsch

Tamir Kafri, Im Tirzu's Ben Gurion University campus coordinator (Max Blumenthal)

We have won a victory in the fight for decency, human rights and derech eretz in the Israeli political debate.  Even as extreme a figure as John Hagee has red lines on such issues.  In truth, I doubt Hagee cared enough to make this decision.  In all likelihood it was the Houston federation that got cold feet.  But whoever it was they are to be commended for seeing reason.

This is perhaps not a big victory and shouldn’t be blown out of proportion.  After all, just look at the list of far-right settler groups which Hagee still supports:

Gush Katif, $200,000
Young Israel, $150,000
Shurat Ha-Din, $100,000
Nefesh B’Nefesh, $1,000,000 (settles new immigrants in settlements)
Ariel (settlement), $500,000
Gush Etzion, $150,000

But it’s a victory nonetheless.  And in this dark day and age even the small ones count.

Now, I challenge Haviv Gur, the Jewish agency communications director to renounce Im Tirzu as well.  If he won’t, will he tell us what redeeming value he finds in the group that the Houston federation missed in declaring it treif?  Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall in the phone conversations that will go back and forth between Jerusalem and Houston on this one?

• Revenge Of The Nerds: Partying With The Boys Of Im Tirtzu (josephdana.com)

Related posts:

1. Houston Jewish Federation, Jewish Agency Fund Im Tirzu’s Assault on Israeli Universities What do the Houston Jewish federation, the Jewish Agency, John...
2. Jewish Agency PR Flack Defends Hagee Gift to Im Tirzu A few days ago the Israeli financial blog Calcalist published...
3. Seattle Jewish Federation Plans Anti-Iran Conference Through a well-informed source, I have become aware that the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Jewish Agency PR Flack Defends Hagee Gift to Im Tirzu

A few days ago the Israeli financial blog Calcalist published an expose (English translation) on a $3-million gift by John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, which was passed through the Jewish Agency via the Houston Jewish federation where it originated.  I’ve reported in the past on the beneficiaries of tens of millions of dollars of Hagee/CUFI largess which are often settler projects and major settlements.  The gift Calcalist was most interested in was $120,000 transmitted to the far-right Israeli group, Im Tirzu.

Among other violations of Jewish Agency procedure concerning this gift and noted by the Israeli blog was that its funding is supposed to support educational projects, which it does in many cases.  But the notion that there is any educational component to Im Tirzu’s agenda is laughable.  It is a purely partisan entity characterized by bare-knuckle, brawling-style political activism as evidenced by its scuzzy attacks on the New Israel Fund‘s Naomi Hazan and its nascent campaign to sack the leadership of Ben Gurion University’s political science department for alleged “anti-Zionist” tendencies.

Israel has (or once had, before major cuts in the national education budget) a fine higher education system developed over decades and nurtured in the principles of academic inquiry and the freedom to pursue knowledge in diverse ways.  Im Tirzu, if it had its way, would turn the Israeli educational system into cheerleaders for an ideologically correct pro-Zionist agenda.  They would destroy the notion of academic freedom which is the pillar of any good university.  And the Jewish Agency is willing to financially pimp on behalf of this garbage.

Just after I published my post on this, I noticed that Haviv Rettig Gur asked to friend me on Facebook.  I remembered he was at one time a Jerusalem Post reporter, one of the interchangeable set which vent their noxiousness under the tutelage of queen bee neocon ranter-editor, Caroline Glick.  I wondered why he wanted to friend me.  After I confirmed him as a friend I received a message from him on my Wall sternly admonishing Calcalist and, by inference, me for “profound and irresponsible ignorance” in our reporting on Hagee’s gift.

In his initial message he wanted to make the point that the Jewish Agency wasn’t endorsing Hagee’s gift or Im Tirzu, but was merely providing “philanthropic oversight,” which in a later message he described as follows:

In order to enable contributions to charities and Israeli civil society from abroad, the Federations, the UIA and the Agency provide a special program of financial oversight. This program is trusted by the American authorities, so that when we say the money arrived at its destination and is used for its intended purpose, they believe us and the donor back home can receive the tax benefits of his or her donation.

Translation: the Jewish Agency passes money from Hagee along to Im Tirzu.  Further, the Houston federation sends the check to the JA, which in turn transfers it to Im Tirzu.  Which means the Agency, in doing so, gives Hagee and his dirty anti-Semitic money an Israeli-Zionist heksher in addition to a 501c3 designation making it tax-deductible.

Here Rettig Gur argues that Israel should be proud of Hagee’s beneficence:

Hagee, for his part, uses the [JA pass-through] service for gifts for which Israel should be deeply grateful. Hagee’s own Israel portfolio…included last year a $750,000 gift to Barzilai Hospital, among others. Ironically, Im Tirzu’s latest target, Ben Gurion University, also received money from Hagee.

Again, this is self-serving pap.  If you read the post I wrote on Hagee’s Israel giving, anyone can see that the preponderance of his charity is to the settlement enterprise.  Yes, he does give to glatt kosher non-profits like hospitals and he does give major gifts for aliya absorption, but it doesn’t cancel out his massive giving to support the “don’t give an inch” brigade.  As for Ben Gurion University, I think it’s safe to say next year BGU won’t be receiving a red cent (or agora) from the likes of Hagee since he’ll certainly want to honor Im Tirzu’s version of pro-Zionist BDS.

Rettig Gur argues additionally that Hagee’s gift to Im Tirzu is no different from gifts it designates for “leftist” Israeli groups as well such as Bustan and Shatil.  The mere fact that Im Tirzu is a Zionist group gives it immediate approval.  No mention, in this line of argument, of the Agency’s requirement that funds only be given for educational purposes.  Further, the so-called leftist groups he mentions are not engaged in intimidation or incitement against anyone.  They don’t pay for full-page ads in all the major Israeli papers picturing Naomi Hazan with a rhino-horn on her nose in a Shturmer-like pose.  Nor do they extort Zionist-correctness from Israeli universities.  In fact, Bustan and Shatil are engaged in the important work of building Israeli democracy through empowering Bedouin communities (on the one hand) and promoting social justice for underprivileged sectors of Israeli society (on the other).  These are positive and constructive goals in which no one is smeared, no one is sacked from their job.  You can’t say the same for Im Tirzu.

The Jewish Agency PR flack argued that the story of Hagee’s gift was “old news” because Didi Remez had reported it on his blog in February.  What this conveniently ignores is that Didi did not know at the time that the gift was funneled to Israel via the Jewish Agency and Houston federation.  That is BIG news.  News that it is Rettig Gur’s job to minimize as insignificant.  Additionally, Calcalist reported that the Central Fund of Israel, an American Jewish pro-settler group sent $35,000 to Im Tirzu.  None of this was reported by Didi.  So the term “scoop” used by Calcalist, and which so annoys Rettig Gur, is a precise and correct term.

My trusty correspondent also takes humbrage that I’ve implicated his boss, Natan Sharansky, in the matter by mentioning him in my first post.  I merely noted that Hagee would surely feel right at home trusting his money to be channeled through an agency directed by the Israeli neocon, Sharansky.

Rettig Gur closed his last message (undoubtedly there will be more as he seems to have an inveterate need to explain and defend himself and his employer) with a strange set of near-non sequiturs intended to buff his Israeli liberal street cred:

I’ll accept your apology for sullying my good name, and happily respond to any further concerns. Funny, I have some good friends in places like B’tselem, Van Leer and ACRI. My father was a parliamentary aide to Yossi Sarid as far back as the 1970s and was a board member of RHR for a while. In all my life, no one from that world has ever been as rude and crude to me as you, and you’ve never even met me.

Why does someone like this feel he is owed any special treatment?  Why should I treat him with kid gloves when he aids and abets the likes of John Hagee and Im Tirzu?  So I replied:

You can accept my apology if you wish to be a fantasist. But you won’t be getting an actual apology from me any time soon. There is always time to repent from your embrace of scum like Im Tirzu. But I doubt you’ll ever do so. When you do, then let me know and I’ll concede teshuva is a concept that works in your case. Till then, you’ll have my consistent criticism of you and JA.

Oh, and isn’t that nice ‘some of your best friends are Negroes.’ How sweet and condescending. You’re really a good guy aren’t you? Liberal & all.

Your father was an aide to Yossi Sarid 40 years ago & you want a pass because of that? What have you done lately? Not your father, you.

Related posts:

1. Houston Jewish Federation and Hagee End Funding for Im Tirzu I would like to reach out my arms to dance...
2. Houston Jewish Federation, Jewish Agency Fund Im Tirzu’s Assault on Israeli Universities What do the Houston Jewish federation, the Jewish Agency, John...
3. Shin Bet Seeks Expulsion of American-Jewish Journalist Working for Palestinian News Agency The Only Democracy in the Middle East™ has struck again:...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Why U.S.-Brokered Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks Will Fail

The ink isn’t even dry on the press release announcing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks beginning under U.S. auspices on September 2nd, before just about everyone except Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is sighing with abject resignation and conviction that they will be a failure.  Why?  First, because the U.S. president has not publicly told the sides what the consequences of failure will be.  There must be a downside for the parties that will keep them in line when the going gets tough (as it assuredly will).  With no downside, Bibi will play Obama like a tin fiddle.  Second, Bibi doesn’t want the talks to succeed and will do absolutely nothing to make them work.  Why should he?  Where’s the benefit to him?  His coalition is filled with far-right yahoos who will scream bloody murder at the first sign of weakness from their leader.  Does he need such headaches?  Does he relish the idea of retiring to a plush office at the Shalem Center so he can gaze fondly at a portrait of his sugar daddy, Shelly Adelson, on the wall?  Not likely.

Frankly, I can’t see anything in this for Mahmoud Abbas either, and have no clue why he agreed to participate.  Did he enjoy having endless coffees with Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem and Ramallah so much that he wants to resume the pleasure, except his time in Washington?  What will he get from this?  Another upgrade of his D.C. digs from third world backwater semi-official would-be embassy to almost embassy of a soon to be nation in waiting?

If this is all the Obama administration has up its sleeve it has a losing hand.  But if it has a backup plan in the certain event of failure, then it might still wrest victory from the jaws of defeat.  If it is prepared and possibly even expects failure and has a Plan B which would call for an internationally imposed settlement on both sides, then he might be onto something.  In the end, the only thing that can save the parties from mutually assured destruction is external intervention.

The eventual solution is there for all to see and clear as day.  But getting there with these two parties is nigh unto impossible.  So in order to prevent them from doing even more mischief than they have already to regional stability and world order, there must be outside powers who tell them what they will do for peace.  Let them scream bloody murder, swear up and down it will not, indeed cannot happen.  Have no doubt, it will happen.

I more and more see Israel playing the role Serbia did in the Kosovo and Bosnian conflicts.  It too saw itself as victim of NATO and U.S. perfidy.  It swore on the graves of its forefathers that it would never capitulate.  Its national honor was on the line, etc.  And guess what happened?  It blinked when faced with indomitable international pressure.  The same may and could happen with Israel.

As usual, Ethan Bronner’s reporting linked above is full of his typical blithely partisan blather, though the basic reporting of facts is useful.

Related posts:

1. Palestinians Out of Peace Talks, NYT’s Bronner Gets It Wrong Once Again No sooner does the NY Times Israel correspondent put finger...
2. Abbas and Arab League On Verge of Pulling Plug on Peace Talks Thanks to the Netanyahu government’s finger-in-the-eye announcement of 1,600 new...
3. Rabbis for Peace Urge ‘Going Biblical’ to Solve Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Thanks to reader Gene Schulman for this unintentionally hilarious story...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.