Disapproving of Israeli Policy.......

.........is not the same thing as being antisemitic or anti-Jewish in any way.  Given the aid Americans give to Israel every year, we have a right to have an opinion and I'm afraid that my opinion of Israel has slid downward over the last 7 years or so. I'll write more at Pelican's Perch on this topic.

MIDDLE EAST

A Partner For Peace?

This week, Vice President Biden arrived in the Middle East to attempt to restart peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. On Tuesday, shortly after he assured Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, "Every time progress is made, it's been made when the rest of the world knows there's no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security," the Israeli Interior Ministry announced plans "to build 1,600 new housing units for Jews" in an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem. In response, Biden issued an unusually strong statement: "I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem. The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I've had here in Israel." Jerusalem is an especially sensitive area; Israel insists that it will remain its "undivided" capital, but the Palestinians claim Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. A European Union investigation last year found that the Israeli government was "working deliberately to alter the city's demographic balance and sever East Jerusalem from the West Bank." Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated his position on Wednesday that he would not move forward with proposed peace talks with Israel unless settlements were halted. In an emergency meeting Wednesday, the Arab League "demanded that Israel reverse the East Jerusalem housing decision," but did not revoke its endorsement of proximity talks.
 
APOLOGY FROM NETANYAHU: As former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk noted on MSNBC yesterday, it's unfortunately a common occurrence for the Israeli government to announce new settlements either just before or after a visit with U.S. officials, which damages American credibility in the region. This happened numerous times under the Bush administration. It also happened the day before Biden arrived in Israel, when the Israeli government announced approval for 112 new homes in Beitar Illit, an ultra-Orthodox settlement near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. It is uncommon, however, for Israel to announce new settlements during a visit from a high official like the vice president of the United States, especially when he had come to deliver a message of support. Interior Minister Eli Yishai apologized on Wednesday "for causing domestic and international distress" with the timing of the announcement, and Netanyahu reportedly told Biden, "No one was seeking to embarrass you or undermine your visit -- on the contrary, you are a true friend to Israel." According to the New York Times, aides say Netanyahu "was blindsided by the announcement from Israel's Interior Ministry, led by the leader of right-wing Shas Party. But he didn't disavow the plan." Meir Margalit, a member of Jerusalem's City Council told Israel's Ynet News that the Interior ministry "meant to sabotage the announcement that Netanyahu issued today regarding the renewal of indirect negotiations with the Palestinians. It is also a kind of slap in the face of the American administration."

A DEEPLY INGRAINED SETTLEMENT ENTERPRISE: A New York Times editorial suggested that President Obama "miscalculated... when he insisted that Israel impose a full stop on all new settlement building," noting that "one of the basic rules of diplomacy is that American presidents never publicly insist on something they aren't sure of getting -- at least not without a backup plan." Israel committed to freeze settlements under the "road map for peace" promulgated by the Bush administration in 2002, but has consistently failed to meet that commitment. While agreeing to a partial settlement moratorium last November (which specifically exempted Jerusalem), Netanyahu's own position in favor of settlement expansion is clear. The evening before Biden's arrival, "Netanyahu appeared onstage with Pastor John Hagee in Jerusalem." Hagee is a conservative American preacher who opposes the two-state solution and supports unlimited Israeli settlement expansion with millions of private American dollars. Hagee has said that "[i]f America puts pressure on Israel to divide Jerusalem we are following the blueprint of the Prince of Darkness." Israeli planning officials also told Haaretz that "some 50,000 new housing units in Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the Green Line are in various stages of planning and approval," and that "Jerusalem's construction plans for the next few years, even decades, are expected to focus on East Jerusalem." In a recent article examining how deeply ingrained the settlement enterprise is in the various institutions of the state of Israel, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer writes, "The challenge for the United States is how to pursue the issue in a persistent and intelligent manner. It should do so with the confidence that, ultimately, it will end up aligned not only on the right side of history generally, but even on the right side of the history of Zionism."

HOLDING ALL PARTIES ACCOUNTABLE: The Obama administration has made clear that resolving the conflict between Israel and its neighbors is one of its highest priorities, but the last year has been a frustrating one. None of the parties -- Israelis, Palestinians, or the Arab states -- seem willing to take the necessary bold steps to move the process forward. There is also the continuing humanitarian crisis in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, a major source of resentment among Palestinians and in the broader region. In a Center for American Progress report last July, authors Brian Katulis, Marc Lynch, and Robert Adler stated that "the window of opportunity for achieving a viable two-state solution is rapidly closing -- at a time when Israelis and Palestinians seem incapable and unwilling to achieve a sustainable peace agreement." The report called on the Obama administration "to reassure Israel that it will continue to support its security and work to maintain a close bilateral relationship while also pushing forcefully for a two-state solution which it sees as in the best interests of the region," which is precisely what Biden's trip to Israel was intended to do. Meeting with Abbas on Wednesday, Biden said, "Our administration is fully committed to the Palestinian people and to achieving a Palestinian state that is independent, viable, and contiguous. Everyone should know, everyone should know by now, that there is no viable alternative to a two-state solution, which must be an integral part of any comprehensive peace plan." In a speech earlier today in Tel Aviv, Biden promised that "the US will continue to hold both sides accountable for any statements or any actions that will inflame tension or prejudice the actions of these talks."


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Let The Sun Shine In......

A Crying Shame!

In my 61 years on this planet, I never imagined that I would come anywhere near agreeing with an article such as this. I doubt I would have finished the article before I discounted it as anti-Semitic drivel, until recently.

 I hate to say it. It makes me sick to my stomach to write these words, but the events of the last 8 years, on top of all the policies and behavior I have managed to ignore in the so-called holy land and surrounding areas as well as at home for the last 40 or so years, have caused me to question everything. I guess it took something like 9/11 to jar me out of habitual thinking drummed into me as a child.

I was raised under the cloud of the, then, recent horror of the Nazi crimes against humanity. My mother, in particular, was extremely impressed by the criminal cruelty to the Jewish people. By impressed, I mean it caused her to be very protective of the Jewish people. She would not countenance “Jew jokes” nor anything else she considered anti-Jewish. I grew up to be like her in that way. A friend of mine once said that she always thought of me when something “god-awful” happened in the place called Palestine by some and Israel by others. (”I know you’ll be looking for a Jew to protect.” LOL!)

I have, at times, been very outspoken in my defense of Jewish people everywhere.

Mother warned me often that I should never think that “it” can’t happen here. Of course, she was talking about the wholesale persecution, even unto death, of any hated minority. (I never knew if she had read C.S. Lewis or had merely come up with the warning on her own. ) It didn’t take much to convince me. I grew up in the deep south. I never doubted that “it” could happen.

Now, I must be equally outspoken in questioning my country’s knee jerk defense of Israel as if it is somehow exceptional in the same way that the Neocons see the U.S. as exceptional; entitled to do any damn thing they want to in the name of something I no longer understand as I once thought I did.

I have one Jewish friend where I live now. (Of course, I still I have others across the country in the many places where I have lived in the past.) Several years ago she said that she might move to Israel where she could feel safe. My jaw hit the floor. This woman is a highly educated professional. I stammered, asking her to listen to what she was saying. “You can’t possibly think that Israel is a safe place to be!”

Sometimes I cannot help but think that some of our fellow citizens are not always rational about the issue of Israel and Jewish Neocons are not alone in their crusade to defend Israel, no matter what it takes or who gets hurt in the process, even when Israeli policies are responsible for the misery, suffering and death of an untold number of Palestinians.

What’s worse, Neocons in both Israel and the U.S. have allied themselves with christian fundamentalist (end-timers, rapture Christians, Dominionists and others of the far-right religious fringe). In my mind, this is an unholy alliance if there ever was one. “Cynical” is the word that comes to mind and cynicism is a state of mind that should be avoided at all costs; it shows a pathological disintegration in the nation of Israel and in her supporters in the U.S..

The ghettos in which the Palestinians live are reminiscent of other ghettos filled with Europe’s Jewish population before and during the terror that was Nazi Germany.

Allow me to make clear that I am aghast at terrorist atrocities by Hamas or any other group or nation, no matter at whom it is directed. Nevertheless, the U.S. has lost all credibility as an honest broker of peace and, of course, social and economic justice that must accompany a lasting peace in a land made unholy by the blood of innocents and the theft of the land itself.

Who are the innocents? The people from all three Abrahamic traditions who can envision true peace, even in this historically war-torn area of the world; those yet too young to hate others simply because it is “tradition” to do so and those who refuse to live a hateful life.

The Allied powers of WWII made a mistake when they took land away from people who had lived in the land known as Palestine for as long as anyone can remember and by giving that land to Eastern and Western European Jews, among others.

What’s done is done in the modern land of Palestine/Israel. I doubt we can ever undo it, at least not in my lifetime. Nevertheless, it is time to find the best of the religious teachings of the three traditions to which this land is of such apparently great importance and apply those teachings to the conflict which has, in may ways, consumed the world for the last 60 some odd years, if not since the beginning of recorded history.

In doing so, we must not ignore the deeply corrupting effects of corporatism, sometimes quite obvious and at other times hidden just beneath the excuse of religion.

And by “we,” I mean the concerned people of the world; those who are sick and tired of the carnage over a city named peace.

Kristol Clear: The Source of America’s Wars

by Maidhc Ó Cathail / December 18th, 2009

One reason neocons have been able to sow so much mischief is that they feed into deeply embedded American beliefs about democratism and ‘chosenness.’
– Paul Gottfried¹

Americans feeling let down by Barack Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan should take careful note of those who welcomed yet another “surge.”² It might help them to identify the source of their seemingly endless wars.


For instance, in a recent Washington Post opinion piece, William Kristol described Obama’s West Point speech as “encouraging.” It was “a good thing,” he said, that Obama was finally speaking as “a war president.”³

 
But if the comments on the Post website are anything to go by, few ordinary Americans take Kristol’s
armchair warmongering seriously anymore. After all, as one poster quizzically asked, “A column by William Kristol the neocon that was wrong about everything from 2000-2008?”



Although Kristol, like the rest of the neocons, “erred” about Iraq’s WMDs and Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda and 9/11, it would be a fatal error indeed to dismiss him as a fool.

In order to understand what motivates Bill Kristol’s professed hyper-patriotism, with its consistently disastrous prescriptions, it’s worth recalling how his father, Irving Kristol, reacted to Vietnam War critic Senator George McGovern. The presidential contender’s proposed cut in U.S. military expenditure would, according to the “godfather” of neoconservatism, “drive a knife in the heart of Israel.”

“Jews don’t like big military budgets,” the elder Kristol explained in a Jewish publication in 1973. “But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States … American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”⁴

American Greatness

Following his father’s advice, William Kristol has been a fervent supporter of massive U.S. military spending. In 1996, he co-authored with Robert Kagan an influential neocon manifesto titled “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy.” It recommended that “America should pursue a vision of benevolent hegemony as bold as Reagan’s in the 1980s and wield its authority unabashedly.


“The defense budget should be increased dramatically, citizens should be educated to appreciate the military’s vital work abroad, and moral clarity should direct a foreign policy that puts the heat on dictators and
 authoritarian regimes.”


In response, another influential opinion-maker, Charles Krauthammer, hailed Kristol and Kagan as “the main proponents of what you might call the American greatness school.” It is hardly a coincidence, however, that all three advocates of “American greatness” care passionately about what Irving Kristol euphemistically referred to as “the survival of the state of Israel.” Or that many of those “dictators and authoritarian regimes” just happened to stand in the way of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.


The following year, Kristol and Kagan co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a pressure group which sought to advance their “neo-Reaganite” vision. In the late 1990s, they did this mainly by writing letters to Bill Clinton, urging him to oust Saddam Hussein.


In September 2000, PNAC published “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” in which they famously acknowledged that “the process of transformation … is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”


One year later, they got their wished for “new Pearl Harbor” on September 11. The mass murder of almost 3,000 Americans was, as Benjamin Netanyahu indelicately put it, “very good” for Israel.⁵


Kristol’s War


Immediately, Kristol’s Weekly Standard began linking Iraq to the attacks. Writing in The American Conservative, Scott McConnell explained the strategy: “Their rhetoric – which laid down a line from which the magazine would not waver over the next 18 months – was to link Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in virtually every paragraph, to join them at the hip in the minds of readers.”⁶


The “Saddam must go” campaign, begun in a Kristol and Kagan editorial as far back as 1997, became so relentless that Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen dubbed it “Kristol’s War.”⁷
The Iraq War has, of course, also been called “Wolfowitz’s War.” But it could just as aptly have been named after Perle, Feith, Libby, Zelikow, Lieberman, or any of the other pro-Israeli insiders who took America to war by way of deception.⁸


In “Irving Kristol, RIP,” Antiwar.com editor Justin Raimondo described Kristol’s legacy as “war, war, and yet more war, as far as the eye can see.”⁹


Unless Americans soon realize that they’ve been deceived by those for whom “American greatness” is merely a means to advance “the survival of the state of Israel,” that legacy promises to be an enduring one.

1.  Paul Gottfried, “The Transparent Cabal,” Taki’s Magazine, September 17, 2008. [↩]
2. Frederick W. Kagan, “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq,” AEI Online, January 5, 2007. [↩]
3. William Kristol, “A War President,” Washington Post, December 1, 2009. [↩]
4. Philip Weiss, “30 Years Ago, Neocons Were More Candid About Their Israel-Centered Views,” Mondoweiss, May 23, 2007. [↩]
5. James Bennet, “Spilled Blood Is Seen as Bond That Draws 2 Nations Closer,” New York Times, September 12, 2001. [↩]
6. Scott McConnell, “The Weekly Standard’s War,” American Conservative, November 21, 2005. [↩]
7. Richard H. Curtiss, “Rupert Murdoch and William Kristol: Using the Press to Advance Israel’s Interests,” Washington Report, June 2003. [↩]
8. Jeff Gates, Guilt By Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War, 2008. [↩]
9. Justin Raimondo, “Irving Kristol, RIP,” Antiwar.com, September 21, 2009. [↩]

Maidhc Ó Cathail is a freelance writer. His work has been published by Al Jazeera Magazine, Antiwar.com, Dissident Voice, Khaleej Times, Palestine Chronicle and many other publications. Read other articles by Maidhc.

This article was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 9:00am and is filed under General, Israel/Palestine.



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Let The Sun Shine In......

Iran in the Crosshairs

Please, no more knee-jerk support for Israel, no matter how illegal their actions.

By Gareth Porter and Ray McGovern
March 4, 2009

Last year, the Middle East dodged the danger of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and the inevitable spread of hostilities.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen was sent to tell the Israelis that the United States would not support such an attack, and after the fiasco in Georgia, the Russians too sent stern warnings to Tel Aviv.

But now the specter of an Israeli strike has reappeared. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s incoming prime minister, is far more committed to an attack on Iran than his predecessors.

Remember when Joe Biden told supporters of Barack Obama last October that Obama would be tested in his first six months in office?

There is good reason to believe he was referring to the likelihood that Netanyahu would become prime minister after the February 2009 Israeli election, and that he would waste little time finding a pretext to attack Iran.

Netanyahu has been laying the groundwork for such an attack for years, constantly repeating that Tehran is “preparing another Holocaust” a la Germany in the Thirties.

He keeps hammering home the “existential” threat that would be posed to Israel (with its 200-300 nuclear weapons) if Iran had just one.

Netanyahu has made no bones about the fact that his preferred solution to the problem is a massive air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and other military targets, and that he would not wait for any evidence that Iran had actually manufactured a weapon before doing so.

It would be, you see, a Bush-type "preventive" war. Netanyahu would fully expect Iranian retaliation of some kind and knee-jerk U.S. intervention on Israel's side.

(Netanyahu would be ill-advised to expect the kind of knee-jerk U.S.(meaning the people of the U.S.) support he might have gotten before and during the appalling Bush administration and their followers, the crusading crackpots of the christian-right. It is the unanimous view of the Pelican Independent Group that if Israel, who has more nukes than any other nation on earth, besides the U.S. and Russia, attacks Iran in a Bush-style pre-emptive strike, they should be on their own and that the U.S. should stay out of it, as should every other Western nation, including Russia. Netanyahu has been in cahoots with the crusading crackpots for years, which makes him either an idiot or a man who is using idiots. What the Bush administration did in Iraq was a war crime)

If such adventurism were to prevail, it would be a tragedy not only for Iran and the United States but for Israel as well. And it would bring to Israel more serious risk than at any time since its implantation in Palestine.

It is also completely unnecessary. There has never been a shred of evidence that Iran has any intention of committing suicide by attacking Israel.Nor is it clear that Iran has irrevocably decided to seek nuclear weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community determined unanimously in its most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, completed in November 2007, that Iran had abandoned the nuclear weaponization part of its nuclear development program in 2003 and had not resumed such work.

Largely forgotten is the fact that this estimate also concluded that Iran would extend the halt to its nuclear weapons program if the United States were to offer "credible" opportunities for Iran to achieve its "security, prestige and goals for regional influence."

In other words, the way to avoid an Iranian nuclear weapon is not the threat of an attack – which is very likely to have the opposite effect – but to give Iran additional reason to continue the halt in weaponization.

Unfortunately, it is far from clear that President Obama understands that he must draw a hard line against an Israeli attack. Some of his old-think advisers believe the threat of an attack should be part of his overall strategy.

The President's adviser on proliferation, Gary Samore, declared last September, “We…want the Iranians to believe that if they actually try to make nuclear weapons, or if they build secret facilities that we detect, they run the risk of being attacked.”

What needs to happen: President Obama needs to order an update of the 2007 intelligence estimate on Iran.

Then he should ask for a briefing by intelligence analysts able to think outside the box, including the ones who concluded in 2007 that Iran needs positive incentives to continue to forego work on nuclear weapons.

Obama should encourage his diplomats to pursue talks at a senior level with their Iranian counterparts, with the objective of reaching agreements that will give Iran just the kind of incentives the intelligence analysts had in mind.

And he must tell Netanyahu that the U.S. will not support an Israeli attack on Iran. Indeed, the U.S. will not tolerate it.

Amen To That, Brother

Gareth Porter is an investigative journalist and historian and the author of Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam. Ray McGovern was an Army Intelligence Officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 years and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Let The Sun Shine In......