Israel Matzav

Israeli 'diplomat' can't get his facts straight

Back in December 2006, some Israelis thought we had reached a sort of equilibrium with our Arab population when Ishmael Khaldi became our first Muslim diplomat. Khaldi seemed a good choice at the time.

But Khaldi, while conceding that the situation of Arabs in Israel "is not perfect," is an unrepentant Israeli who says he is not betraying his Arab "brothers" by becoming the new Israeli consul to San Francisco.

...

Khaldi, 35, is no newcomer to the United States or the Bay Area. He arrived in the United States after the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000 and was soon in demand as a speaker at college campuses.

"I'm a Bedouin and we are nomads, so I felt at home traveling coast to coast on a Greyhound bus. Twice," he said.

During his stay in the United States, Khaldi said he was shocked to discover that American students were unaware of Israel's large Arab minority and the fact they have the right to vote, elect members to parliament, and become judges, professors and senior army officers.

Until now, Khaldi didn't cause the Israeli government any embarrassment like Reda Mansour in Atlanta or Nadav Tamir (the former being a Druze and the latter being Jewish) in Boston, or Tsuriel Raphael in El Salvador. He's no longer in San Francisco. He's now a senior policy adviser at the Foreign Ministry and has been since July 2009 (which means his posting at the Foreign Ministry was done under the current Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman).

But on Tuesday night, Khaldi spoke to a gathering of a group called Dor Chadash in New York, and he said something that is so totally ignorant of Israel's history that I can only wonder what kind of training the Foreign Ministry gives their diplomats. Either that or Khaldi is a fifth columnist, in which case he should not be representing us.

This is from an email I received this morning from reader Yehuda A in New York City.

I am a regular reader of your blog and an oleh chadash temporarily back in New York in order to complete my PhD. Tonight I went to this event, a talk by Ishmael Khaldi, a Bedouin Israeli diplomat. The talk was rambling and the hosts had to ask him several times to wrap it up so that we could get to the Q-&-A period; more substantively, though: Khaldi said that at a previous talk, he was asked how he feels about Israel being a Jewish State but then (in tonight's talk) he did not answer this question. He also said that the vast majority of Israelis, including himself, favor the creation of a Palestinian state / the two-state solution. In the Q-&-A period, I pressed him on the interrelated issues of his thoughts on the Jewish State question and the question of whether Jordan is in fact the second state. He said that the Jewish State "is a fact." He did not endorse or reject that fact, and before moving on to another question he said "There is a problem with the national anthem." (I assume from that comment that he also has a problem with the flag, etc.) On the second point, he explicitly and repeatedly denied that the British Mandate for Palestine had resulted in the creation of two states, Israel and Jordan. He said that Jordan ("like Saudi Arabia") was separate, part of a separate territory and process, having nothing whatsoever to do with the British Mandate. His line of argument seemed to be that the Mandate territory = present-day Israel and that therefore, the second state has not yet been created.

On the one hand, he said some good things about Israel and I can see how his speaking engagements to students, etc. can earn Israel some good publicity. On the other hand, his comments (coming from an official representative of the State) on Jordan, the Mandate, and the two (or more…) states, as well as, in the context of these comments, his frequent return to the theme of "Israel's not perfect, it has problems, etc." were deeply troubling, and I am hoping to get your thoughts on this, as I left the event confused and, as I say, not a little troubled.

Khaldi is way off. Jordan was originally part of the Mandate. In fact, it was 79% of the Mandate. Jordan is governed by the Hashemite royal family and its Bedouin elite. Here's how it happened.

The Emirate of Transjordan was an autonomous political division of the British Mandate of Palestine, created as an administrative entity in April 1921 before the Mandate came into effect. It was geographically equivalent to today's Kingdom of Jordan, and remained under the nominal auspices of the League of Nations, until its independence in 1946.

Initially, both the territory to the East and the West of the Jordan river were the British Mandate of Palestine. "Transjordan" was a word coined as a reference to the part of Palestine "across the Jordan", i.e. on the far (eastern) side of the Jordan River. On the western side of the Jordan River was the remaining 21% of the Palestine Mandate, Palestine which contained many places of historical and religious significance to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

In other words, 'Jordan' is 79% of the Palestine Mandate. Not only is it 'Palestine' - it is the vast majority of the area covered by the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

The Mandate for Palestine, while specifying actions in support of Jewish immigration and political status, stated that in the territory to the east of the Jordan River, Britain could 'postpone or withhold' those articles of the Mandate concerning a 'Jewish National Home'.... In September 1922, the British government presented a memorandum to the League of Nations stating that Transjordan would be excluded from all the provisions dealing with Jewish settlement, and this memorandum was approved by the League on 11 September. From that point onwards, Britain administered the part west of the Jordan as Palestine, and the part east of the Jordan as Transjordan....

...

The Hashemite Emir Abdullah, [Abdullah's great-grandfather, who was assasinated by 'Palestinians' in 1951 at the Dome of the Rock. Incredibly, Wikipedia omits this. CiJ] elder son of Britain's wartime Arab ally Sharif Hussein of Mecca [the Saudi royal family. CiJ], was placed on the throne of Transjordan [by the British. CiJ].... In March 1946, under the Treaty of London, Transjordan became a kingdom and on May 25, 1946, the parliament of Transjordan proclaimed the emir king, and formally changed the name of the country from the Emirate of Transjordan to the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. In December 1948, Abdullah took the title King of Jordan, and he officially changed the country's name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in April 1949.

Two thirds of Jordan's population is described as 'descendants of 'Palestinian refugees.''

So how could Khaldi say that Jordan was not part of the Mandate? Is there a lacking in the Foreign Ministry's training (or was there such a lacking in 2006 - a far more likely scenario) or is Khaldi a fifth columnist trying to justify the creation of a 'Palestinian state'? And what is with all the deprecation about Israel's faults?

I'm going to send this to a contact I have in the Foreign Ministry and see what they have to say about it. Check back later for more.

Labels: Avigdor Lieberman, Dor Chadash, Ishmael Khaldi, Israel's Foreign Ministry, Palestine mandate

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:13 AM