Israel Matzav: Kerry to choose diplomat caught negotiating with Hamas for key Middle East position

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Kerry to choose diplomat caught negotiating with Hamas for key Middle East position

The Washington Free Beacon's Adam Kredo reports that US Secretary of State John FN Kerry is about to appoint Robert Malley to be deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, where he would be in charge of the Middle East 'peace process.' Malley, who was a member of the Clinton administration and an adviser to the Obama campaign, was fired from the campaign in 2008 after he was caught negotiating with Hamas.

A State Department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Malley’s most prominent misstep came in 2008 when he was fired from his post as an adviser to then-Sen. Obama after he entered into direct negotiations with Hamas.

“He was one of literally hundreds of informal, outside advisors,” Obama’s then-spokesman Bill Burton told ABC News at the time after controversy erupted over Malley’s diplomatic visit.

One source close to the issue told the Free Beacon that the likely appointment “certainly raises eyebrows—not about Malley, but about Kerry.”

“It is surprising that Kerry would pick such a high profile choice who has been involved in so many controversies,” said the source. “He’s been surprisingly slow to identify who his [Middle East peace] team is going to be. It’s a surprising decision from Kerry.”

Malley has long said that any Middle East peace deal would have to receive the terror group Hamas’ endorsement despite the terror group’s commitment to destroying the Jewish state.

“Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will need to negotiate a political deal with Abbas, who will have to receive a mandate to do so from Hamas,” Malley wrote in 2008 in the Washington Post.

“Otherwise, no matter how many times President [George W.] Bush travels to the region, there is no reason to believe that 2008 will offer anything other than the macabre pattern of years past,” he said.

When Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2006, Malley said an opportunity had arrived finally to achieve peace.

“Even on the diplomatic front, Hamas’ victory is not necessarily a fatal setback,” Malley told the Common Ground News Service in 2006. “The Islamists’ approach is more in tune with current Israeli thinking than the [Palestinian Authority’s] loftier goal of a negotiated permanent peace ever was.”

The Hamas victory was a direct result of “Israeli settlement expansion,” Malley claimed at the time.

“The vote expressed anger at years of humiliation and loss of self-respect because of Israeli settlement expansion, Yasser Arafat’s imprisonment, Israel’s incursions, Western lecturing and, most recently and tellingly, the threat of an aid cut off in the event of an Islamist success,” he said.

Hamas later severed Palestinian Authority influence in Gaza through a violent coup and in the area under its control has implemented extremist policies such as gender segregation,as well as continuing acts of violence against Israelis.

I wrote extensively about Malley in January 2008 in one of my first votes about then-candidate Hussein Obama. Among other things, Malley has a long family history of anti-Semitism.

Then there's Malley who advocates US engagement with Hamas and Israel's national suicide:

In today's WaPo, Malley and Miller have co-authored an op-ed, in which they claim that it is in both Hamas' and Israel's interests to work together to calm the environment so that Hamas can 'govern' and Israel can carry out its ~~convergence~~ surrender plan. But for calm to prevail, Malley and Miller argue that Israel and the United States must recognize three 'realities':
First, Hamas will not accept the three conditions put forward by the international community (recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence, acceptance of past agreements), certainly not now and certainly not under threat. Instead, these should be redefined in terms that are both meaningful and realistic: Is the government solidifying the cease-fire and restoring law and order? Is it dealing pragmatically with Israel on issues of mutual concern? Has it endorsed the Arab League's Beirut resolution, which, by calling for normalization of relations with Israel once a peace agreement has been reached, implicitly entails recognition? These are benchmarks that most Palestinians would accept -- and that most Palestinians would blame Hamas for rejecting.
This is nonsense on several counts. First, so long as Hamas does not renounce violence and actively work to oppose it, violence will continue, whether perpetrated by Hamas or by Islamic Jihad and others with Hamas' blessing. Without a renunciation of violence 'solidifying the cease fire' and 'restoring law and order' are meaningless. It would allow violence to resume at any time. Second, so long as Hamas does not recognize Israel, it will not deal with Israel - pragmatically or otherwise. In Hamas' view, dealing with Israel means making demands on it, which Israel has no reason to fulfill. Third, the endorsement of the Beirut resolution is meaningless because it is contingent upon Israel accepting the 'right' of 'Palestinian refugees' to return to their 'homes' in Israel - which Israel can never accept without forfeiting its character as a Jewish state. Sure 'Palestinians' would accept these 'benchmarks.' They'd be happy to see Israel agree to commit national suicide.
At The American Thinker, Ed Lasky provided some insight into the sources of Malley's thinking:
A little family history may be in order to understand the genesis of Robert Malley's views. Normally, one should be reluctant in exploring a person's family background -- after all, who would want to be held responsible for the sins of one's father? However, when close relatives share a strong current of ideological affinity, and when a father has a commanding persona, it behooves a researcher to inquire a bit into the role of family in forming views. That said, Robert Malley has a very interesting father.

His father Simon Malley was born to a Syrian family in Cairo and at an early age found his métier in political journalism. He participated in the wave of anti-imperialist and nationalist ideology that was sweeping the Third World.

He wrote thousands of words in support of struggle against Western nations. In Paris, he founded the journal Afrique Asie; he and his magazine became advocates for "liberation" struggles throughout the world, particularly for the Palestinians.

Simon Malley loathed Israel and anti-Israel activism became a crusade for him-as an internet search would easily show. He spent countless hours with Yasser Arafat and became a close friend of Arafat.

He was, according to Daniel Pipes, a sympathizer of the Palestinian Liberation Organization --- and this was when it was at the height of its terrorism wave against the West. His efforts were so damaging to France that President Valerie d'Estaing expelled him from the country.

Malley has seemingly followed in his father's footsteps: he represents the next generation of anti-Israel activism. Through his writings he has served as a willing propagandist, bending the truth (and more) to serve an agenda that is marked by anti-Israel bias; he heads a group of Middle East policy advisers for a think-tank funded (in part) by anti-Israel billionaire activist George Soros; and now is on the foreign policy staff of a leading Presidential contender. Each step up the ladder seems to be a step closer towards his goal of empowering radicals and weakening the ties between American and our ally Israel.

Robert Malley's writings strike me as being akin to propaganda. One notable example is an op-ed that was published in the New York Times (Fictions About the Failure at Camp David). The column indicted Israel for not being generous enough at Camp David and blamed the failure of the talks on the Israelis.

Malley has repeated this line of attack in numerous op-eds over the years, often co-writing with Hussein Agha, a former adviser to Yasser Arafat (see, for example, Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors ). He was also believed to be the chief source for an article by Deborah Sontag that whitewashed Arafat's role in the collapse of the peace process, an article that has been widely criticized as riddled with errors and bias.

Malley is a revisionist and his views are sharply at odds with the views of others who participated at Camp David, including Ambassador Dennis Ross and President Bill Clinton. Malley's myth-making has been peddled in the notably anti-Israel magazine, Counterpunch and by Norman Finkelstein, the failed academic recently denied tenure at DePaul University . Malley's Camp David propaganda has also become fodder for Palestinians, Arab rejectionists, and anti-Israel activists across the world.

His story of the talks is also plain wrong.