Israel Matzav

Cross Jeb Bush off my list?

I may be able to cross Jeb Bush off the list of potential candidates for whom I would vote. The Wall Street Journal reports that Bush's foreign policy is more likely to be like his father's than his brother's. George W. Bush may not have been perfect (although between 2002-05 he was awfully close to it), but he was far better than his father, George H.W. Bush, whose hostility to Israel has only been exceeded by Barack Hussein Obama and Jimmy Carter since Israel gained its independence in 1948 (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

One early indication suggests he is leaning toward his father’s more pragmatic and restrained philosophy. The former Florida governor is considering naming Meghan O’Sullivan as his top foreign-policy aide; several people familiar with the deliberations describe her as the front-runner for the post.

In many ways, the 45-year-old Ms. O’Sullivan, who now teaches at Harvard, bridges the two Bush worlds. She served as deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan for much of George W. Bush ’s second term and was heavily involved in carrying out his Iraq policies. But she wasn’t among the neoconservative advisers who drove the initial decision to invade Iraq, and she is more closely aligned with—and is being promoted by—the kind of pragmatists who dominated George H.W. Bush ’s presidency.

Daniel Larison doesn't believe it.

If that is supposed to be a sign that Bush’s foreign policy won’t be like his brother’s, what would be evidence that it will? Choosing someone “heavily involved” in carrying out George W. Bush’s policy in Iraq to be a “top foreign policy aide” is practically an endorsement of that policy. It certainly doesn’t suggest that Bush thinks there was very much wrong with how his brother’s administration handled things. O’Sullivan served as an assistant to the staggeringly incompetent Paul Bremer at the CPA in the early days of the occupation. She was an early advocate of the “surge,” which should make it clear that she isn’t as much of a “pragmatist” as this article would lead us to believe. Short of choosing a leading Iraq war booster, Bush could hardly be making his agreement with his brother’s policies more obvious.

No one should be fooled when someone claims that Jeb Bush is following in his father’s footsteps on foreign policy. George W. Bush indulged in some rhetoric about “humility” and realism as a candidate, too, and he relied on his father’s reputation on foreign policy to make up for the fact that he knew nothing about it. It turned out that there was no substance to Bush’s rhetoric, and the country endured the effects of one of the most incompetent administrations on foreign policy in our modern history. We have the benefit of that experience, so there is no excuse for falling for the same con twice.

So Larison is arguing that Jeb Bush is 'as incompetent' on foreign policy as his brother? What could go wrong?

Labels: foreign policy, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Iraq, Jeb Bush, realism, realists' fantasy

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:08 PM 1 comments

'Anyone but Bibi'?

For the second time this week, former peace processor Aaron David Miller has gone on record urging President Obama not to try to influence the upcoming Israeli elections. This was written by Miller himself.

In Washington, whether it’s an R or D administration, in fact, we want Israeli leaders like Rabin, Peres, and Barak who see the world more or less the way we do when it comes to the two-state peace process. We have a much harder time with those Israeli leaders—Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu—whose views on what to do about the Palestinians don’t naturally accord with ours. (Sharon was a special case. He and George W. Bush got along reasonably well because neither really cared about the peace process and both were governing in an age of terror.)

But sometimes those initial judgments about who’s naughty or nice end up confounding.
Because U.S. administrations tend to divide the Israeli political spectrum into two parts—the good Israelis who share our views and the not so good ones who don’t—they’re not entirely sure what to do with the fact that Israeli prime ministers of all political stripes have continued Israeli settlement building on the West Bank and construction in parts of east Jerusalem that we’d like to see become the capital of a Palestinian state.

It’s an inconvenient but important reality to acknowledge that of the three U.S.-orchestrated breakthroughs in the Middle East peace process, two of them—the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the Madrid peace conference—came from hardline Likud prime ministers. The third—the three disengagement agreements following the 1973 war —came courtesy of a very tough Labor prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.

But secretly rooting for the good Israelis and wishing them success is one thing. What about actually doing things that help the good ones succeed or alternatively weakening the Israelis we don’t want to see in power?

I can recall at least three occasions when Republican and Democratic administrations willfully picked Israeli favorites and tried to shape election outcomes.

...

Now, as the clock ticks down on Israeli elections scheduled for March 2015, will the Obama administration play internal Israeli politics to try to tip the election against Netanyahu?

Obama’s relationship with Bibi is perhaps the most dysfunctional of any president-prime minister pair in the history of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Doubtless John Kerry, too, would like to see another Israeli leader with whom he could dance a real peace process.

Yet constraints against U.S. meddling abound. First, there’s the Republican-controlled Congress, which will be watching hawk-like for any such funny business. Second, there’s the absence of a clear and credible alternative to Bibi with whom the administration is close; and then there’s the matter of the lack of a big issue for such lobbying. The peace process is in a coma; and ISIS, Hamas, Assad, Hezbollah, and the Iranian mullahs make Israel look like the good guys. Finally, there’s Obama himself. He’s not Clinton. Does he really care? Do most Israelis trust him? Could he get away with a campaign that makes clear Bibi isn’t the right guy and candidate, but X is? I am betting on “no” to all three questions. Don’t even think about it, Mr. President.

The last constraint is the most important one. Many Israelis saw Bush I as neutral at best and hostile at worst. But that didn't compare with what Israelis think of Obama. While we may differ on why, most Israelis agree that Obama is viscerally hostile to Israel. There is little that can be done to convince us otherwise (and with good reason).

If Obama tries to interfere (and with his arrogance I would say that there's a fair chance of that happening). it would likely backfire. That's what Miller is trying to prevent.

Keep writing Aaron. But don't expect Obama to listen. 

Read the whole thing. 

Labels: Aaron David Miller, Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, George H. W. Bush, Israeli elections, John Kerry, Knesset elections 2015, Shimon Peres, Yitzchak Rabin, Yitzchak Shamir

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:19 PM 2 comments

Aaron David Miller: 'We always tried to influence the Israeli elections, but we never succeeded; Obama shouldn't even try'

Aaron David Miller, who was Dennis Ross' top assistant, has told YNet that the United States 'always' tried to interfere in Israeli elections, but never succeeded (Hat Tip: Red Tulips) (link in Hebrew).

According to Miller, the US gathered a lot of information about Prime Minister Netanyahu - including his activities while a student in the United States - but no one would listen.

Miller admits that the George HW Bush administration influenced the outcome of the 1992 election to bring Yitzchak Rabin to power over Yitzchak Shamir, but he claims that's because the US set up the environment for that election through the Bush-Baker controversies with Shamir. He admits that the Clinton administration also tried - unsuccessfully - to ensure Shimon Peres' election as Prime Minister in 1996. But Peres lost to Netanyahu.

Miller says that the Clinton administration gathered information on Netanyahu and leaked it to the Israeli media. The information included Netanyahu's activities as a student in Boston and Philadelphia, his name change to Nitai, his forfeiting of his American passport, and the failure of Netanyahu's first marriage. Miller claims that it caused a scandal but had no influence.

Miller advises President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry not to even try to influence March's elections. Clinton was a President who was beloved in Israel, says Miller, while Obama is extremely unpopular (you don't say...) and any attempt to influence the March elections would backfire.

Obama and Kerry are declining to comment on the upcoming elections, although Kerry has said that he hopes that a new government will be able to conduct a 'peace process.'

Funny how he doesn't mention the Americans' greatest success - the 1999 replacement of Netanyahu with Ehud Barak courtesy of Clinton. 

Labels: Aaron David Miller, Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, George H. W. Bush, Israeli elections, John Kerry, Knesset elections 2015, Shimon Peres, Yitzchak Rabin, Yitzchak Shamir

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:51 PM 1 comments

Despicable: Why the US spies on Israel

I don't recall seeing this reported elsewhere. If it's true - and I have no reason to believe it's not - it places an entirely different light on President Obama's treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu between 2009 and 2011. Additionally, if the claim below is true, it makes a farce of the complaint that Netanyahu favored Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 elections. If this is why Obama is spying on Israel, why shouldn't Netanyahu - even openly - favor Romney. Heck, if I'd known about this, I would have called on Netanyahu to endorse Romney publicly and damn the consequences (Hat Tip: IMRA).

Second, there is a matter of American interference in Israel’s internal affairs. The eavesdropping wasn’t just about trying to ascertain what Israeli leaders really think about the peace process and how much they’re willing to give up to advance it. It wasn’t just about getting an inside track on how Israel’s relations with China or Russia are advancing, or about arms deals that involve U.S. technology.

It was, according to reports, an attempt to gather information on politicians whose views aren’t in sync with those of the U.S. administration. This information was to be leaked to the local media in order to embarrass these figures and ruin their political careers.

It isn’t too hard to guess which politicians were being targeted. It stands to reason that it was those pesky “radical” right-wingers who oppose territorial compromise.

It's well known here that George H.W. Bush did all he could to help Yitzchak Rabin defeat Yitzchak Shamir in 1992, and that Bill Clinton did all he could to help Ehud Barak defeat Binyamin Netanyahu in 1999.  But at least those actions were out in the open. Only Obama has hidden behind wiretaps and spying and intercepted phone calls and emails.

America ought to be ashamed. Your government has no integrity - and even releasing Jonathan Pollard (as the editorial above joins so many others in advocating) won't restore it.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, George H. W. Bush, spying, Yitzchak Rabin, Yitzchak Shamir

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:49 PM 1 comments

What Hussein Obama really thinks of Binyamin Netanyahu

In case you had any doubt what President Hussein Obama really thinks about Prime Minister Netanyahu.

In a new book that was released Tuesday, Obama is quoted as expressing what he really thinks about Netanyahu during his 2012 presidential campaign.

According to the book, “Double Down,” Obama said that "We all know Bibi Netanyahu is a pain in the a**" when discussing the conflict between the Israelis and the Arabs.

"Double Down" was written by MSNBC correspondents Mark Halperin and John Heilemann and it reveals behind-the-scenes political stories from the American presidential race in 2012.

The quote about Netanyahu by Obama, which was reportedly made during a meeting between the President and his aides a year before the elections, is the only time Israel is mentioned in the book.

Still waiting to hear what Netanyahu really thinks of Obama (we can guess). I doubt we will hear it unless and until there is a Republican in office in the US and/or Netanyahu is no longer Prime Minister (think Yitzchak Shamir celebrating George H.W. Bush's defeat in 1992). 

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, George H. W. Bush, Yitzchak Shamir

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:27 AM 2 comments

Shades of Yitzchak Shamir: Housing units in 'east' Jerusalem approved day before Kerry arrival

Back in the late '80's and early '90's, we had a feisty Prime Minister named Yitzchak Shamir.

A former Lehi commander, Shamir wasn't going to be kept down. Every time then-President George H.W. Bush sent an emissary to see Shamir, on the day of or the day before the emissary's arrival, a new 'settlement' went up.

Are we seeing it happening again, albeit with the comparatively gutless Netanyahu hiding behind some low level functionaries?

On Wednesday, the day before US Secretary of State John FN Kerry is due to arrive, the Jerusalem Municipality quietly announced that 69 more Jewish homes in 'east' Jerusalem's Har Homa neighborhood have been green-lighted.

The Jerusalem Municipality on Wednesday approved construction permits for 69 new homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa, just one day before US Secretary of State John Kerry is due to arrive in hopes of rekindling direct Israeli Palestinian talks.

The homes are the tail end of large project of more than 1,000 units in Har Homa that was approved in August 2011 and for which tenders were issued in April 2012, according to the non-governmental group Peace Now and Jerusalem city councilman Meir Margalit (Meretz).

The contractor who won the bid on these last remaining 69 homes, had submitted the paper work regarding their construction to the Jerusalem Municipality's Local Planning Committee.
On Wednesday it issued construction permits for the project. The contractor is now authorized to start building.

The Jerusalem Municipality said said that the construction permit was given to a private contractor for a project that had already been approved for Har Homa. It added that city has not right to deprive property owners of their rights.

Somewhere Yitzchak Shamir is jumping for joy at this clever ploy. And we should be too. After all, Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, East Jerusalem, George H. W. Bush, Har Homa, Israel is my home, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, John Kerry, Yitzchak Shamir

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:26 PM 3 comments

Rice slams Security Council inaction on Syria

Outgoing US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice slammed the UN Security Council for inaction on Syria during her farewell speech on Tuesday.

"The Council's inaction on Syria is a moral and strategic disgrace that history will judge harshly," Rice chided the UN.

She also reasserted America's past and continued support for Israel. "We've forcefully opposed unbalanced and biased actions against Israel across the UN system, standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel on principle - regardless of whether such actions were popular in these halls."

...

"I particularly regret that the Security Council has failed to act decisively while more than 90,000 Syrians have been killed and millions more displaced," she said.

However while Rice was critical of the world's lack of action regarding the Syrian crisis, she deflected blame from the United States.

"The crucial issue of Syria, I think, is a stain on this body and something that I will forever regret, even thought I don't believe that outcome is a product of the action of the United States or its closest partners," Rice said.

Instead of slamming the Security Council - or seeking its approval - the Obama administration should have acted on Syria long before the opposition turned Islamist and it became harmful to do so.

There's a lot I don't like about Franklin Roosevelt that came out over the years with respect to his inaction on stopping the Holocaust, but I cannot imagine him - or any other American President before Obama - waiting for a Security Council approval before acting. What if Roosevelt had refused to act on the European front during World War II without the UN's approval (it would have been the League of Nations then) and Russia kept vetoing every attempt to approve any action. Would Roosevelt have stood by? (Churchill clearly would not have, but that's a separate issue).

The Security Council is what it is and it's unlikely to change. Obama is the President of the 'world's only superpower' and he doesn't need UN approval to do anything.

Admittedly, the blame for this goes back to George H.W. Bush ("Bush I" or "Bush the father"), who refused to act on Iraq's invasion of Kuwait until he got an 'international coalition' (the assembly of which became a holy grail) behind him.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Bashar al-Assad, First Gulf War, Free Syrian Army, George H. W. Bush, Nusra Front, Susan Rice, Syria, Syrian uprising, United Nations Security Council

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:23 AM 0 comments

AIPAC's incredibly foolish 'designated incumbents' policy: Is it designed to benefit Democrats?

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who was the Republican candidate for my old Congressional district in New Jersey, takes AIPAC to task for the manner in which they determine their 'designated incumbents' policy.

I am a huge AIPAC fan. There is no more important American Jewish organization. Well beyond the Jewish community AIPAC is a model of professionalism lobbying for an unqualified good. In 20 years I have barely missed an AIPAC policy conference, such is the ardor of my support. I publicly introduced my friend Mayor Cory Booker, now running for the United States senate, at an AIPAC summit in Chicago and we have jointly addressed AIPAC groups around the country.

But with 10,000 activists about to gather in DC next week for AIPAC’s annual policy conference, the organization’s definition of friendly incumbents being based solely on a lawmaker’s voting record on Israel must undergo serious review.

When I ran for Congress last year against Congressman Bill Pascrell [a Democrat. CiJ], AIPAC designated him a friendly incumbent based on his voting record for Israel aid and in favor of Iran sanctions. The problem was that Pascrell had also signed the infamous Gaza 54 letter which falsely condemned Israel for collective punishment against the Palestinians rather than soundly laying the blame at the Hamas terrorists who have turned Gaza into a launching pad to kill Israelis.

Now, I completely understand AIPAC’s policy of friendly incumbents. Why would any politician feel loyalty to AIPAC if someone who is considered more pro-Israel comes along and immediately gets their support? But my candidacy was an opportunity for AIPAC to approach Pascrell and pressure him to repudiate past statements. Israel’s battle today is not just one against bullets and bombs but against a ferocious attempt to delegitimize the Jewish state. It is a war of words and pictures and what political figures say matters.

Now, what a lone congressman opines is far less serious than the contemptible comments coming out of an incoming secretary of defense. Hagel’s broadsides against Israel are shameful and he must be called on it. American Jewry gave President Obama seventy percent of their vote. Is Hagel the reward?

In 1991 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir requested $10 billion in loan guarantees to help settle Russian Jewish immigrants. President George H. W. Bush said Israel could only have the guarantees if it froze all settlement building and guaranteed that no Russian Jews would be resettled in the West Bank. Shamir demurred and called on the American Jewish community to mobilize in support of the loan guarantees. AIPAC drafted a letter that was signed by more than 240 members of the House and 77 senators supporting the loan guarantees. On September 12, 1991, Jewish lobbyists from all over the country descended in huge numbers on Washington. President Bush famously responded with a televised press conference in which he complained that “1000 Jewish lobbyists are on Capitol Hill against little old me.”

Then, on the very next day in a speech I will never forget and at which I was present, Tom Dine, AIPAC’s Executive Director, declared that

September 12, 1991 is a day that will live in infamy” as an American President had had the chutzpah to criticize the constitutionally guaranteed right to lobby our government, found in the very first amendment.

It was high theater and I had chills down my spine as Dine directly challenged a sitting American president. We all know the rest of the story. Months later, the loan guarantees were approved. Bush would later receive only 12 percent of the Jewish vote and was trounced by Bill Clinton. President Bush’s son would eight years later become President of the United States and would take a completely different posture toward Israel, becoming its greatest ally ever to occupy the White House.

I also remember how, the following day, Ron Brown, Chairman of the National Democratic Committee, stood up and said that this November we had to send President Bush packing from the White House. The crowd erupted with huge applause. There was no attempt to disguise the hostility to a President whose policies were simply unfair to Israel.

Labels: AIPAC, American Jewish support for Israel, Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Pascrell, Chuck Hagel, George H. W. Bush, National Democratic Party, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, United States Senate

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:28 AM 0 comments

A return to the days of 'F**k the Jews'?

At the Daily Caller, Rafael Medoff writes that New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is longing for the days when James Baker - George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State - said 'F**k the Jews - they don't vote for us anyway' (Hat Tip: Lance K).

Friedman’s solution? A return to the days when America’s Mideast policy was guided by men like James Baker, secretary of state from 1989 to 1992, who ignored domestic pressures and was willing “to get in the face of both sides” and who “told blunt truths to every Israeli or Arab leader.”

Some of the “blunt” words for which Baker is remembered actually were written by his friend and tennis partner, Thomas Friedman. A Baker remark comparing his role in Arab-Israeli diplomacy to that of an obstetrician was lifted almost word for word from Friedman’s 1982 book, From Beirut to Jerusalem. And Baker credited Friedman with conceiving his public message to Israel, “When you’re serious about peace, call us,” complete with a sarcastic recitation of the White House phone number.

But the bluntest of Baker’s “truths” was also the most vulgar. In The New York Post in March 1992, former Mayor Ed Koch reported Baker’s “F— the Jews” remark. Baker vehemently denied it. State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler called Koch’s report “garbage.” But in a 2008 book (coedited by this author), Koch finally revealed his source, and it was unimpeachable: then-Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp. That’s about as close to proof as we are likely to have in this lifetime.

Baker’s remark was not merely obscene, but also betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of American Jewish political behavior. Baker, in 1988, was talking as if it was still the 1960s — only 10%-15% of American Jews voted Republican in the presidential races of 1960, 1964, and 1968. But as the Democratic Party shifted to the left, Jewish voters began moving the other way. The Jewish vote total for the GOP doubled in the 1970s and 1980s, ranging from 30% to 32% in four of those five races.

The peak was in 1980, when about 60% of American Jews deserted President Jimmy Carter, with about 40% voting for Republican nominee Ronald Reagan and 20% for Republican-turned-independent John Anderson. Carter’s policies toward Israel deeply alienated many American Jewish voters, and they responded as citizens in a democracy do.

One could argue that Baker’s attitude toward Jews and Israel was not a response to Jews spurning the Republicans, but a cause of it.

...

This is not James Baker’s Republican Party any longer.

And the Jewish community has changed, too. Orthodox Jews, who are politically the most conservative element in the community, are approaching 15% of U.S. Jewry and rising, thanks to a high birth rate and few intermarriages. A recent study of the New York City area — the heart of American Jewry — found that 32% of Jews there are Orthodox. Russian Jewish immigrants and their children comprise about 12% of American Jewry, and former Israelis make up about 7% — two blocs that likewise tend to be politically conservative.

There’s one more group to factor in. In the 1980 race, Reagan did best among Jews aged 30 to 45. Unlike their parents, they had no track record of deep-seated loyalty to the Democrats, so when Carter turned against Israel, they turned against him. Today they are in their 60s and 70s, and pulling the lever for the GOP — if they again perceive the incumbent Democratic president as unsympathetic to Israel — will be even easier the second time around.

Which brings us to perhaps the greatest irony of all: Thomas Friedman, to judge by the positions he has articulated on various issues over the years, very much fits the profile of the previous generation’s typical American Jewish voter — in other words, exactly the kind of Jewish voter whom Baker had in mind when he uttered his famous obscenity.

But the changes that both the Republican Party and the American Jewish community have undergone and are continuing to experience suggest that the political assumptions and alignments of the Baker-Friedman era are becoming a thing of the past.

It sounds like the Democrats have a lot to lose by taking the Friedman-Baker approach. But after the elections, Obama may not care.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Campaign 2012, George H. W. Bush, James Baker, Jewish vote, Tom Friedman

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:47 AM 2 comments

Arens: Shamir warned Bush he was going to attack Iraq

Former Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir passed away during the course of the Sabbath. He was 96-years old. Shamir will be buried in the part of Mt. Herzl that is reserved for the country's leadership in a state funeral on Monday. I don't think Shamir would be pleased with much of what is said about him here.

Shamir was the state’s seventh prime minister from 1983 to 1984 and again from 1986 to 1992, the longest-serving premier after David Ben-Gurion. He was known for resisting international pressure to make concessions, yet initiated a peace process in Madrid that led to many diplomatic overtures by his successors.

“The truth is that, in the final analysis, the search for peace has always been a matter of who would tire of the struggle first, and blink,” he wrote in his autobiography.

Shamir also served as foreign minister, Knesset speaker and opposition head, and was an agent in the Mossad. He was among the leaders of the Stern Group (Lehi) in the Jewish underground in Mandatory Palestine.

President Shimon Peres, who fought bitterly with Shamir in the 1980s, issued a statement in which he described Shamir as a courageous fighter both before and after the establishment of the state. Peres said Shamir had left a lasting legacy of bravery.

“He remained true to his beliefs, was a great patriot of his people and a great lover of Israel who served the nation loyally and with great dedication for many years,” Peres said.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Shamir “belonged to the generation of giants that established the State of Israel and fought for the freedom of the Jewish people in its land.”

He said Shamir, whose family died in the Holocaust, fought in the Stern Group and as prime minister to build up the security of the state and ensure its future out of concern for its citizens.

“We lost a great man who was a great leader, who was fundamentally a man of the people,” Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said.

“To really understand him and his refusal to be enticed by diplomatic overtures that would have weakened Israel, you had to have heard him speak on Holocaust Remembrance Day,” he continued.

“Shamir was a symbol of Israel’s rising from the ashes of the Holocaust to strength and staying power. Out of this developed his personality as an enlightened realist and a stiff ideologue who withstood internal and external pressure and fought to prevent a situation in which the people of Israel will not have their own land and state.”

By contrast, Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, who served as a minister in Shamir’s cabinet, praised Shamir for negotiating with the Palestinians, initiating peace talks in Madrid and resisting pressure to attack Iraq after Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles at Israel during the First Gulf War.

...

Although known as a hardliner, Shamir nonetheless showed teeth-gritting restraint during the 1991 Gulf War. At the urging of the United States, he held Israel’s fire in the face of Scud missile salvoes by dictator Saddam Hussein rather than retaliate and endanger the US alliance with Arab powers battling to expel Iraq from Kuwait.

His forbearance on that occasion drove home Israel’s consideration for Washington’s Middle East interests.

“I can think of nothing that went more against my grain as a Jew and a Zionist, nothing more opposed to the ideology on which my life has been based, than the decision I took... to ask the people of Israel to accept the burden of restraint,” Shamir said later.

After the war, US president George H.W. Bush called on Israel to accept multi-party peace talks with the Arabs. His administration drove home the demand by postponing $10 billion in US loan guarantees that the Shamir government needed to absorb new immigrants.

Shamir hinted darkly that Bush, the leader of the country’s most important ally, was an anti-Semite but relented on attending the Madrid peace conference, where he became the first Israeli leader to sit opposite Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian and Lebanese delegates.

One has to wonder whether deep down Shamir understood that Madrid was a mistake. The 'Palestinian' delegates were supposed to be a part of the Jordanian delegation, which became a joke when it was discovered that they were reporting to Arafat.

We no longer have to wonder whether Shamir regarded the restraint during the Gulf War as a mistake. Moshe Arens, who was Israel's ambassador to Washington at the time, told Israel Radio on Sunday morning that Shamir sent him to warn George H.W. Bush, who was President at the time, that Israel had it with restraint and was going to attack Iraq. Before Israel could attack, a cease fire was declared. Bush repaid Shamir by withholding loan guaranties, as noted above, and by working for his defeat in 1992 elections. I doubt that restraint during Gulf War I is something Shamir would want as his legacy.

Labels: First Gulf War, George H. W. Bush, Moshe Arens, Yitzchak Shamir

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:48 AM 0 comments

Aim of GHW Bush's post Gulf War I Madrid conference was to dismember Israel

A soon-to-be-published book based upon stolen archives from the Kremlin argues that it was the Soviet Empire - and not the British Empire - that was responsible for the instability in our region that persists to this day. That includes being behind some of the most heinous acts of 'Palestinian' terrorism in the 1970's. But most fascinating to me - especially in light of the way that the Israeli Left lambasted then-Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir for resisting attending it - is that the 1991 Madrid Conference was convened as a result of an agreement between George HW Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev to dismember Israel.

From the close of World War I, the great prize of the Middle East has been the Persian Gulf. During the Cold War, America and its allies in Europe and Asia depended upon its oil for 90 percent of their energy needs; developing countries would be instantly crippled by a sharp hike in oil prices. But for the Soviets, attaining control of the Gulf could be achieved only by direct military aggression. Following the return of British forces to Kuwait in 1961 to defend the Emirate from Iraq’s Abd al-Karim Qasim—whose ambitions for Kuwait were subsequently, if temporarily, realized by Saddam Hussein—it became clear to the Soviets that the West would go to any length to defend the oil. “And so the comrades postponed the conquest of the Gulf,” writes Stroilov, “although some of them were sorely disappointed with that decision.”

What, then, was Plan B? It was “the subversion and eventual destruction of Israel.”

Though not as good as the Gulf oil fields, Israel would also be a big prize. It was the only democracy in the region, the strongest military power in the pro-Western camp and, indeed, the bridgehead of the Western world. Even more importantly, the very process of crusading (or jihadding) against Israel offered fantastic political opportunities. A besieged Israel effectively meant millions of Jewish hostages in the hands of the comrades, and the threat of genocide could intimidate the West into making great concessions in the Gulf or elsewhere. On the other hand, by making the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the central problem of the Middle East, the Soviets could exploit Arab nationalism, anti-Semitism, and even Islamic religious feelings to mobilize support for their policies. Indeed, under the banner of Arab solidarity, the socialist influence in the region grew far beyond the socialist regimes and parties.

The code-name for this operation against Israel, according to Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking defector from the Soviet Bloc, was “SIG”—Sionistskiye Gosudarstva, or “Zionist Governments.” In a National Review article, Pacepa recalls a conversation he had with KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, who envisioned fomenting “a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world. … We had only to keep repeating our themes—that the United States and Israel were ‘fascist, imperial-Zionist countries’ bankrolled by rich Jews.”

In the mid-1970s, Pacepa recalls, the KGB ordered its Eastern European sister agencies to scour the Middle East for trusted agents, train them in disinformation and terrorism, and export a “rabid, demented hatred for American Zionism.” They showered the region with an Arabic translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and KGB-fabricated documents alleging that Israel and the United States were dedicated to converting the Islamic world into a Jewish colony.

Following the defeat of the Egyptians in the Six Day War, the Soviets came to a second realization: A conventional military confrontation with Israel, and by extension the West, carried too great a risk of escalating into nuclear war. A change of tactics was required. Gen. Alexander Sakharovsky, then head of the KGB’s intelligence arm, explained this to his East European colleagues: “[T]errorism should become our main weapon.” Sakharovsky boasted that airplane hijackings were his own invention; he decorated his office with a world map, covered in flags, each marking a successful hijacking. Though the PLO managed to unite various terrorist organizations, “the supreme headquarters of the whole network was, of course, the Kremlin,” Stroilov writes, and “the evidence accumulated at this point leaves no doubt that the whole system was invented by Moscow as a weapon against the West, and the PLO was a jewel in their crown.”

Pacepa lists examples of KGB-sponsored acts of terrorism:

November 1969, armed attack on the El Al office in Athens, leaving 1 dead and 14 wounded; May 30, 1972, Ben Gurion Airport attack, leaving 22 dead and 76 wounded; December 1974, Tel Aviv movie theater bomb, leaving 2 dead and 66 wounded; March 1975, attack on a Tel Aviv hotel, leaving 25 dead and 6 wounded; May 1975, Jerusalem bomb, leaving 1 dead and 3 wounded; July 4, 1975, bomb in Zion Square, Jerusalem, leaving 15 dead and 62 wounded; April 1978, Brussels airport attack, leaving 12 wounded; May 1978, attack on an El Al plane in Paris, leaving 12 wounded.

Stroilov’s documents indicate that the Soviets and Syrians also took credit for blowing up the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1984.

Pacepa, as some of you may recall, was the first to report explicitly that Yasser Arafat was gay.

Then there's the Madrid Conference:

Stroilov’s archives closely detail the Soviet mediation of secret negotiations between Washington and Baghdad during the fall of 1990. The superpowers apparently came near to agreement on rather extraordinary terms: Saddam would withdraw from Kuwait in exchange for a scheme, proposed by the Soviets, to hold a U.N.-sponsored international conference designed to result in the disarmament and dismemberment of Israel.

The documents show that George H.W. Bush agreed to that deal in principle—so long as the linkage was kept secret.

G. BUSH. I agree with everything you’ve said. We do not seek laurels of individual or collective victors in the fight against Saddam Hussein. But both you and I want the new order to prevail in the future world. For this, we need to find such a response which provides guarantees against an aggression in the future. As far as I see, that is exactly what many provisions of your plan are designed for.

He wanted Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait as if unconditionally; the United States would then pressure Israel to join an ostensibly unrelated “peace process.” Bush asked Gorbachev to see what Saddam thought about this. Saddam demurred: He would only agree if the deal was made openly. It is fascinating to compare Stroilov’s transcripts with the memoirs written by Bush, Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker. The latter memoirs suggest that Gorbachev wanted to mention Israel and the Palestinians in a joint public statement but then conceded the point. In fact, the argument was about a secret deal, not a public statement.

That UN-sponsored international conference was, of course, Madrid, but it was eventually sponsored by the US and the USSR.

One more little bonus. Here's a little background on current EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton:

A final note: While not discussed at length in this book, the Bukovsky archives show clearly that nuclear disarmament campaigns across Europe were largely funded by the Soviet bloc. The money was channeled through communist parties or other pro-Soviet organizations.

Baroness Catherine Ashton was the treasurer for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from 1980 to 1982. The CND was notoriously secretive about its sources of funding and refused to submit its accounts to independent audit; when it was finally forced to do so under immense pressure, the auditors discovered that 38 percent of their annual income could not be traced back to the original donors. Will Howard, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, was responsible for this part of the fund-raising.

Baroness Ashton is now the E.U. foreign policy chief, leading negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran.

Read the whole thing. There's much more here that I didn't post.

Labels: First Gulf War, George H. W. Bush, Madrid Conference, Mikhail Gorbachev, Palestinian terrorism, USSR

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:43 PM 5 comments

What Netanyahu left out at AIPAC

Lenny Ben David says that Prime Minister Netanyahu should have reminded President Obama of how poorly the US 'had our back' during the 1991 Gulf War.

According to Moshe Arens, Israel’s defense minister at the time, his American counterparts “expected that within 48 hours the U.S. Air Force would eliminate the missile launch capability of the Iraqis. If it turned out that they were not going to be able to do it within 48 hours, Israel would be free to take whatever action it considered appropriate.”

Not a single Scud missile or launcher was knocked out by American planes, not just in the first 48 hours, but during the whole war. Yet President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker insisted that Israel continue its restraint and not “spoil” their coalition. They assured Israel that the most modern Patriot anti-aircraft missiles would be dispatched to Israel and would be able to shoot down the Scuds. Post-war analysis showed that not a single Scud was intercepted by the Patriots.

Meanwhile, the commander of the American coalition, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, objected to the number of American planes hunting Scuds in western Iraq, wanting to redirect U.S. aircraft to the Kuwait front.

At the height of the war Arens was sent to Washington to meet with President Bush. In a 21-year-old news account that could actually describe Prime Minister Netanyahu’s meetings in Washington last week, The New York Times wrote, “An administration official said Arens seemed to be ‘laying the groundwork if the Israelis decide to retaliate.’ The administration official said that in the talks with Bush, Arens ‘didn’t say absolutely that the Israelis were going to retaliate. But he didn’t say they were not, either. He made a very emotional presentation, though.”

Unlike the politicians and pundits cited by Ben David, I think that Netanyahu's Holocaust analogy was apt.

But there are also some comparisons that can or cannot be made between Gulf War I and the Iranian threat. First, Gulf War I was characterized by a misplaced emphasis on the need for a multilateral coalition. I cannot recall any US President before George H.W. Bush who insisted on a UN mandate to do what needed to be done.

Second, while I disagreed at the time with the Israeli decision to stand down (we were still living in the US then - we made aliya later that year), once the first SCUD's did not have chemical content, they were reduced from a real threat to a nuisance, and standing down was not unreasonable. I doubt that the old war horses - Shamir and Arens - would have sat still if those had been chemical missiles.

Third, the fact that the US didn't do what it said it would do on Israel's behalf in Gulf War I ought to be waved in Obama's face. There is no basis in Obama's behavior on which to trust the US again to do our dirty work and no reason for us to entrust our security to the US. Obama certainly has no warmer feelings for Israel than Bush I had. Let's face it: It was only by God's grace that there was not much more serious damage in Israel. And the Iranian threat is much stronger.

Finally, for the Israelis, what good did standing down do us in 1991? Immediately after that war, the Bush administration dragged Shamir to Madrid, cut off his loan guarantees, and did more than any Republican President not named Eisenhower to destroy Israel's special relationship with the US. I cannot tell you how happy I was when George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992. Does anyone really believe Obama will be any better?

Labels: First Gulf War, George H. W. Bush, Moshe Arens, Yitzchak Shamir

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:40 PM 0 comments

The arrogance of Obama

Here's yet another stunning example of the arrogance of Barack Hussein Obama (Hat Tip: Jack W via Hot Air Pundit). Obama walked out on Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the brother and son of two former Presidents.

Another illustration of presidential hubris involved the Bush family. The White House put out a picture of a private meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 27 that included former President George H.W. Bush and his son, Jeb, the former governor of Florida.

The Bushes were in town for the annual black tie dinner the next night at the Alfalfa Club, a gathering of business and political elites. The two featured speakers, both intended to be brief and humorous, were Obama and Jeb Bush. The president spoke to good reviews. He left before Bush spoke.

Obama hates such dinners. Some of his aides, in particular his political adviser David Plouffe, urged him not to spend an evening mingling with the 1 percent. Yet he chose to go, and attendees said it was the first time they could recall a speaker leaving before the other side had its fun. In addition, Obama’s 87-year-old predecessor was present.

Imagine the criticism five years ago if President George W. Bush had walked out on a dinner before Hillary Clinton spoke, with Bill Clinton in the audience.

There's a lot more. Read the whole thing.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, George H. W. Bush

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:20 PM 0 comments

When we're defiant, they respect us

Yoram Ettinger writes that saying 'no' - even to the United States - need not be the end of the World for Israel. In fact, Ettinger claims that saying no has worked out quite well.

In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor. In 1982, he launched a comprehensive war on the Palestinian Liberation Organization's terrorist headquarters in Lebanon. Both operations were executed irrespective of bullying and pressure from the U.S. and notwithstanding the fragile 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty. Begin realized that failing to eradicate these threats would imperil Israel's survival, erode its power of deterrence and thus undermine Israel's deterrence-driven peace with Egypt and its strategic cooperation with the U.S.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Israel-Egypt peace treaty did not collapse. Once again, Arab leaders did not rush to rescue the PLO, demonstrating that the Palestinian issue was not a crown jewel of Arab policymaking. Moreover, Egypt – just like all other Arab countries – would not sacrifice its own national interests on the altar of the Palestinian issue.

While the U.S. Administration condemned Israel for the large scale military operations, and imposed a brief military embargo, these operations resulted in the 1981 and 1983 strategic Memoranda of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel, which enhanced joint national security projects, upgrading Israel's long-term strategic posture.

From 1983 to 1992, during his two terms as prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir was severely criticized by U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush for crushing Palestinian terrorism during the First Intifada and expanding Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. At the same time, however, U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation was bolstered at an unprecedented level while he was in power. Washington recognized that U.S.-Israel cooperation never revolved around the Arab-Israeli conflict. Mutually-beneficial U.S.-Israel ties were based upon shared values, common threats such as Islamic terrorism, ballistic missiles and rogue regimes, and joint interests such as research and development and job creation in the high-tech market and in the defense industries.

In August 1948, U.S. Ambassador to Israel James McDonald recorded Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's response to the American demand (accompanied by a regional military embargo) to end the "occupation" of Arab land or agree to a land swap, to accept the internationalization of Jerusalem and to allow the return of the Arab refugees: "Speaking with solemn emphasis, [Ben Gurion] added that as much as Israel desired friendship with the U.S. and full cooperation with it and the U.N., there were limits beyond which it could go. Israel cannot yield to anything which, in its judgment, would threaten its independence or its security. The very fact that Israel is a small state makes more necessary the scrupulous defense of its own interests; otherwise it would be lost … Ben Gurion warned President [Harry S.] Truman and the State Department that they would be gravely mistaken if they assumed that the threat or even the use of U.N. sanctions would force Israel to yield on issues considered vital to its independence and security. [He] left no doubt that he was determined to resist, at whatever cost, 'unjust and impossible demands.' On these he could not compromise ["My Mission," 1951, pp. 49-50]."

Ben Gurion's defiance transformed Washington's image of the Jewish state from a strategic liability to a potential strategic asset.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: David Ben Gurion, George H. W. Bush, Harry S. Truman, Menachem Begin, Ronald Reagan, Yitzchak Shamir

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:59 AM 2 comments

Cutting Obama (too much) slack

Jeffrey Goldberg reports on the results of a Pew poll on Israel supporters and Obama.

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, far more Americans continue to say they sympathize with Israel rather than the Palestinians (by 48% to 11%). These opinions are little changed from recent years.

A plurality (50%) says Barack Obama is striking the right balance in the Middle East situation, while 21% say he favors the Palestinians too much. There has also been no change in these views over the past year; in April 2010, 47% said Obama struck the right balance and 21% said he favored the Palestinians too much.

... On the more specific, Obama-related point, it seems as the Republican campaign to paint the president as anti-Israel isn't working so well, especially when you consider that "that a plurality of those who are more sympathetic with Israel also say Obama has the balance right." Sargent goes on to write, "Of those who are more sympathetic to Israel, 49 percent say he strikes the right balance, versus only 38 percent who say he favors the Palestinians too much."

I wonder if those American Jewish supporters of Israel would be cutting Obama so much slack if he were - say - George H.W. Bush (and NO I did not like or support Bush - I voted for Clinton in 1992 and Gore in 2000 because of how much I disliked George H.W. Bush. George W. Bush's support for Israel turned out to be a pleasant surprise). American Jews are doing some wishful thinking because they can't bring themselves to support a Republican for President.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, George H. W. Bush

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:40 AM 2 comments

Gadhafi gave orders to sabotage oil reserves?

Time Magazine is reporting that Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi has ordered his security forces to sabotage the country's oil installations.

There's been virtually no reliable information coming out of Tripoli, but a source close to the Gaddafi regime I did manage to get hold of told me the already terrible situation in Libya will get much worse. Among other things, Gaddafi has ordered security services to start sabotaging oil facilities. They will start by blowing up several oil pipelines, cutting off flow to Mediterranean ports. The sabotage, according to the insider, is meant to serve as a message to Libya's rebellious tribes: It's either me or chaos.

Two weeks ago this same man had told me the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt would never touch Libya. Gaddafi, he said, had a tight lock on all of the major tribes, the same ones that have kept him in power for the past 41 years. The man of course turned out to be wrong, and everything he now has to say about Gaddafi's intentions needs to be taken in that context.

The source went on and told me that Gaddafi's desperation has a lot to with the fact that he now can only count on the loyalty of his tribe, the Qadhadhfa. And as for the army, as of Monday he only has the loyalty of approximately 5,000 troops. They are his elite forces, the officers all handpicked. Among them is the unit commanded by his second youngest son Khamis, the 32nd Brigade. (The total strength of the regular Libyan army is 45,000.)

My Libyan source said that Gaddafi has told people around him that he knows he cannot retake Libya with the forces he has. But what he can do is make the rebellious tribes and army officers regret their disloyalty, turning Libya into another Somalia. "I have the money and arms to fight for a long time," Gaddafi reportedly said.

As part of the same plan to turn the tables, Gaddafi ordered the release from prison of the country's Islamic militant prisoners, hoping they will act on their own to sow chaos across Libya. Gaddafi envisages them attacking foreigners and rebellious tribes. Couple that with a shortage of food supplies, and any chance for the rebels to replace Gaddafi will be remote.

This highlights one of the key points that most Westerners don't understand about the Middle East. With the exceptions of Egypt and Israel, there's no true nationalism and no sense of belonging to a country. There's only a sense of belonging to a tribe and the only loyalty - for generations - is to a tribe. Libya, like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria and other countries, is a creation of Western mapmakers. It commands no nationalist loyalty. There's no 'melting pot,' and little true integration.

Add to that the fact that many of these people are uneducated and are fierce believers in militant Islam, and you have a real recipe for disaster.

Anyone who watched Gadhafi's hour-long rant on Tuesday night knows that this story is entirely plausible. (And please recall that Saddam Hussein tried to do the same thing during Gulf War I until he realized that Bush I wasn't going to throw him out).

What could go wrong?

Labels: George H. W. Bush, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, tribalism

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:09 AM 3 comments

How different is Obama from his predecessors?

How different is Barack Obama from his predecessors (he's pictured here with Bush 41, although I think it's a photoshop)? Caroline Glick says, "not much."

In the midst of all these crises, Obama has maintained faith with his two central foreign policy goals: forcing Israel to withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines and scaling back the US nuclear arsenal with an eye towards unilateral disarmament. That is, as the forces of mayhem and war escalate their threats and aggression, Obama's central goals remain weakening the US's most powerful regional ally in the Middle East and rendering the US incompetent to deter or defeat rapidly proliferating rogue states that are at war with the US and its allies.

HAVING SAID THAT, the truth is that in advancing these goals, Obama is not out of step with his predecessors. George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton both enacted drastic cuts in the US conventional and nonconventional arsenals. Clinton and George W. Bush adopted appeasement policies towards North Korea. Indeed, Pyongyang owes its nuclear arsenal to both presidents' desire to be deceived and do nothing.

Moreover, North Korea's ability to proliferate nuclear weapons to the likes of Iran, Syria and Venezuela owes in large part to then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's insistence that Israel say nothing about North Korea's nuclear ties to Iran and Syria in the wake of Israel's destruction of the North Korean-built and Iranian-financed nuclear reactor in Syria in September 2007.

As for Iran, Obama's attempt to appease the regime is little different from his predecessors' policies. The Bush administration refused to confront the fact that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are to a large degree Iranian proxy wars.

The Bush administration refused to acknowledge that Syria and Hizbullah are run by Teheran and that the 2006 war against Israel was nothing more than an expansion of the proxy wars Iran is running in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama's failed "reset" policy towards Russia is also little different from his predecessors' policies.

Bush did nothing but squawk after Russia invaded US ally Georgia. The Clinton administration set the stage for Vladimir Putin's KGB state by squandering the US's massive influence over post-Soviet Russia and allowing Boris Yeltsin and his cronies to transform the country into an impoverished kleptocracy.

Finally, Obama's obsession with Israeli land giveaways to the PLO was shared by Clinton and by the younger Bush, particularly after 2006. Rice - who compared Israel to the Jim Crow South - was arguably as hostile towards Israel as Obama.

SO IS OBAMA really worse than everyone else or is he just the latest in a line of US presidents who have no idea how to run an effective foreign policy? The short answer is that he is far worse than his predecessors.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Caroline Glick, Condoleeza Rice, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:31 AM 0 comments

2010 Medal of Freedom recipients

Here's a list of the 2010 Medal of Freedom recipients. Unlike last year, there don't seem to be any really controversial figures (last year, we had Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu).

President George H. W. Bush

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany

Congressman John Lewis – civil rights activist

John H. Adams – environmentalist

Maya Angelou¬¬ - poet

Warren Buffett – billionair & philanthropist

Gerda Weissmann Klein – Holocaust survivor

Dr. Tom Little (Posthumous) – optometrist murdered by Taliban

Yo-Yo Ma – world renowned cellist

Sylvia Mendez – civil rights activist

Stan Musial – Hall of Fame 1st baseman

Bill Russell – former Boston Celtics capt

Jean Kennedy Smith – sister of JFK; founder of VSA

John J. Sweeney – former AFL-CIO Pres.

For those who didn't know already, yes, I'm a Celtics fan. I saw Russell play in the 1960's. He was a great player (and he was player-coach for his last couple years - you'd never see that today).

But he left the team on terms that were not great. He announced his retirement during the off-season without any warning, leaving the team without a center. He wouldn't allow the team to make a Bill Russell day to retire his number as they had done for his teammates Sam and KC Jones (I was at both of those days), so the team retired his number on a day when he was at the Gahden as a broadcaster and raised the banner at halftime. He wouldn't even acknowledge the crowd. I have a good friend who is the world's expert at getting his picture taken with celebrities and he managed to walk right up to Russell and stand next to him while I snapped his picture (that would never happen today either), but Russell just pretended he wasn't there. I don't know why he was so angry at anyone connected with the Celtics.

In recent years, he has re-established a connection with the team, which I think is wonderful. Russell was probably the best defensive center who ever played the game (you can't even discuss that with me intelligently if you're under 50). He was an awesome shot blocker and a dominating force on the court.

I know far more about him than I do about any of the other recipients (obviously). So please forgive me for waxing nostalgic.

Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Russell, Boston Celtics, George H. W. Bush, Medal of Freedom

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:54 PM 0 comments

The real Arab lobby: Europe

Former AIPAC director Steve Rosen argues that the real Arab lobby in the United States is not Arab Americans or even the Saudis: It's the Europeans.

The Europeans are particularly formidable in their influence over U.S. Middle East policy because of four advantages.

First, although there exist subtle differences, many European leaders share a broad set of common beliefs about Israel, the Palestinians, the Arab world, and the Middle East conflict that are considerably closer to the Arab perspective than to Jerusalem's point of view, and closer to the Arab end of the spectrum than the prevailing views of U.S. policymakers.

Second, they—especially representatives of Britain, Germany, and France—have easier and closer access to U.S. officials up to and including the president than do either the Arabs or the Israelis.

Third, the Europeans couch their presentations within a wider framework of shared values and interests and mutual trust with the United States, so the message is taken more seriously than if it came from an unelected leader of an Arab society vastly different from the United States.

Fourth, U.S. officials believe that it is in the national interest to keep the European allies happy, lest they change to an independent European policy toward the Middle East, falling under the sway of such Europeanists as former European Union commissioner for external affairs Christopher Patten. Thus, for example, Patten said in July 2010, "The default European position should not be … if the Americans don't do anything, to wring our hands. We should … be more explicit in setting out Europe's objectives and … try to implement them."

This is kind of long, but read the whole thing. He tells a fascinating story about how British Prime Minister John Major was the cause of the biggest blowup (at least until last March) in US - Israel relations.

Labels: Arab lobby, European Union, George H. W. Bush, John Major, US - Israel relationship

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:24 AM 0 comments