Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, breakout capacity, centrifuges, George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, John Kerry, Marie Harf, Matt Lee, P 5+1, uranium enrichment
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:57 PM
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Debate regarding technical details of the deal has thus far inhibited the soul-searching necessary regarding its deeper implications. For 20 years, three presidents of both major parties proclaimed that an Iranian nuclear weapon was contrary to American and global interests—and that they were prepared to use force to prevent it. Yet negotiations that began 12 years ago as an international effort to prevent an Iranian capability to develop a nuclear arsenal are ending with an agreement that concedes this very capability, albeit short of its full capacity in the first 10 years.
Mixing shrewd diplomacy with open defiance of U.N. resolutions, Iran has gradually turned the negotiation on its head. Iran’s centrifuges have multiplied from about 100 at the beginning of the negotiation to almost 20,000 today. The threat of war now constrains the West more than Iran. While Iran treated the mere fact of its willingness to negotiate as a concession, the West has felt compelled to break every deadlock with a new proposal. In the process, the Iranian program has reached a point officially described as being within two to three months of building a nuclear weapon. Under the proposed agreement, for 10 years Iran will never be further than one year from a nuclear weapon and, after a decade, will be significantly closer.
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Negotiating the final agreement will be extremely challenging. For one thing, no official text has yet been published. The so-called framework represents a unilateral American interpretation. Some of its clauses have been dismissed by the principal Iranian negotiator as “spin.” A joint EU-Iran statement differs in important respects, especially with regard to the lifting of sanctions and permitted research and development.
Comparable ambiguities apply to the one-year window for a presumed Iranian breakout. Emerging at a relatively late stage in the negotiation, this concept replaced the previous baseline—that Iran might be permitted a technical capacity compatible with a plausible civilian nuclear program. The new approach complicates verification and makes it more political because of the vagueness of the criteria.
Under the new approach, Iran permanently gives up none of its equipment, facilities or fissile product to achieve the proposed constraints. It only places them under temporary restriction and safeguard—amounting in many cases to a seal at the door of a depot or periodic visits by inspectors to declared sites. The physical magnitude of the effort is daunting. Is the International Atomic Energy Agency technically, and in terms of human resources, up to so complex and vast an assignment?
In a large country with multiple facilities and ample experience in nuclear concealment, violations will be inherently difficult to detect. Devising theoretical models of inspection is one thing. Enforcing compliance, week after week, despite competing international crises and domestic distractions, is another. Any report of a violation is likely to prompt debate over its significance—or even calls for new talks with Tehran to explore the issue. The experience of Iran’s work on a heavy-water reactor during the “interim agreement” period—when suspect activity was identified but played down in the interest of a positive negotiating atmosphere—is not encouraging.
Compounding the difficulty is the unlikelihood that breakout will be a clear-cut event. More likely it will occur, if it does, via the gradual accumulation of ambiguous evasions.
When inevitable disagreements arise over the scope and intrusiveness of inspections, on what criteria are we prepared to insist and up to what point? If evidence is imperfect, who bears the burden of proof? What process will be followed to resolve the matter swiftly?
The agreement’s primary enforcement mechanism, the threat of renewed sanctions, emphasizes a broad-based asymmetry, which provides Iran permanent relief from sanctions in exchange for temporary restraints on Iranian conduct. Undertaking the “snap-back” of sanctions is unlikely to be as clear or as automatic as the phrase implies. Iran is in a position to violate the agreement by executive decision. Restoring the most effective sanctions will require coordinated international action. In countries that had reluctantly joined in previous rounds, the demands of public and commercial opinion will militate against automatic or even prompt “snap-back.” If the follow-on process does not unambiguously define the term, an attempt to reimpose sanctions risks primarily isolating America, not Iran.
The gradual expiration of the framework agreement, beginning in a decade, will enable Iran to become a significant nuclear, industrial and military power after that time—in the scope and sophistication of its nuclear program and its latent capacity to weaponize at a time of its choosing. Limits on Iran’s research and development have not been publicly disclosed (or perhaps agreed). Therefore Iran will be in a position to bolster its advanced nuclear technology during the period of the agreement and rapidly deploy more advanced centrifuges—of at least five times the capacity of the current model—after the agreement expires or is broken.
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Even when these issues are resolved, another set of problems emerges because the negotiating process has created its own realities. The interim agreement accepted Iranian enrichment; the new agreement makes it an integral part of the architecture. For the U.S., a decade-long restriction on Iran’s nuclear capacity is a possibly hopeful interlude. For Iran’s neighbors—who perceive their imperatives in terms of millennial rivalries—it is a dangerous prelude to an even more dangerous permanent fact of life. Some of the chief actors in the Middle East are likely to view the U.S. as willing to concede a nuclear military capability to the country they consider their principal threat. Several will insist on at least an equivalent capability. Saudi Arabia has signaled that it will enter the lists; others are likely to follow. In that sense, the implications of the negotiation are irreversible.
If the Middle East is “proliferated” and becomes host to a plethora of nuclear-threshold states, several in mortal rivalry with each other, on what concept of nuclear deterrence or strategic stability will international security be based? Traditional theories of deterrence assumed a series of bilateral equations. Do we now envision an interlocking series of rivalries, with each new nuclear program counterbalancing others in the region?
Previous thinking on nuclear strategy also assumed the existence of stable state actors. Among the original nuclear powers, geographic distances and the relatively large size of programs combined with moral revulsion to make surprise attack all but inconceivable. How will these doctrines translate into a region where sponsorship of nonstate proxies is common, the state structure is under assault, and death on behalf of jihad is a kind of fulfillment?
Some have suggested the U.S. can dissuade Iran’s neighbors from developing individual deterrent capacities by extending an American nuclear umbrella to them. But how will these guarantees be defined? What factors will govern their implementation? Are the guarantees extended against the use of nuclear weapons—or against any military attack, conventional or nuclear? Is it the domination by Iran that we oppose or the method for achieving it? What if nuclear weapons are employed as psychological blackmail? And how will such guarantees be expressed, or reconciled with public opinion and constitutional practices?There are many reasons to oppose a nuclear Iran without limiting the argument to Israel and Israel's interests. The Obama administration has managed to turn the Iranian nuclear debate into a question that solely relates to whether the US should be supporting Israel - something that Obama opposes but most Americans favor. The issues involving Iran are much broader.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, breakout capacity, centrifuges, George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, John Kerry, P 5+1, uranium enrichment
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:02 PM
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But the West is wrong to think it has no good options. It has a superb and just option, one that will let history unfold as it should have long ago. That option — to break up Syria into coherent nations — was proposed earlier this summer by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in a gathering at the Ford School.
“First of all, Syria is not a historic state. It was created in its present shape in 1920, and it was given that shape in order to facilitate the control of the country by France,” he began, explaining the root of the present crisis.
“Secondly, it’s a country that is divided into many ethnic groups, a multiplicity of ethnic groups, and that means that an election doesn’t give you the same results as in the United States because every ethnic group votes for its own people … Moreover these ethnic groups are very antagonistic to each other. You have Kurds, Druzes, Alawites, Sunnis and 10 to 12 Christian ethnic groups.”
The notion that these groups could ever get together and form a coalition government, as proposed in the Western media, is not only unrealistic but “inconceivable,” says Kissinger. “On the whole it is an ethnic and sectarian country… it is now a civil war between sectarian groups.”
Kissinger believes Syria should and will break up in some fashion — indeed, the independent-minded Kurds have already created a de facto state with a potent military, the Druze have their own militias and Assad’s ruling Alawites, in preparation for a retreat to their traditional homelands should they lose the civil war, have heavily fortified Alawite territory. This break up, sooner rather than later, is Kissinger’s preferred outcome yet the West is misguidedly acting to thwart it.
Plan A for the West, President Obama explained this week, would be “a shot across the bow” — limited bombing to teach Assad a lesson while allowing him to remain in power. This plan, many believe, not only risks a larger war by a panicked Assad but also could backfire by enhancing Assad’s stature at home and in the Arab world, in that he could claim to have withstood an attack by the combined colonial powers.
So what would the effect be if the Western nations chose neither the do-nothing option nor a risky military attack but adopted instead a Kissinger-inspired Plan B — a principled declaration that they favour a division of Syria into its constituent nations, starting with an independent Kurdish state in what is now Syrian Kurdistan?
Without dropping a single bomb, this declaration would create a win for the Kurds, a pro-Western people who are also one of the largest ethnic groups in the world without a state of their own. It would create a win for the West, who would now have a pro-Western state in what has long been hostile territory. It would create a humiliating loss for Assad, who would be seen to have presided over the dismemberment of his country. And most importantly in meeting the West’s immediate security needs, it would send a chill through Iran’s mullahs, who have to date been impervious to Western boycotts and other attempts to end Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons. Iran, which has Kurds of its own along with other restive minorities, would now contemplate the prospect of the dismemberment of its own state – Iran’s dominant Persians represent only about 60% of the country’s population. A Western declaration of support for Iran’s Kurdish minority would deter the mullahs as nothing else has.Well, yeah. But for the United States' word to mean something, wouldn't they have to be seen as willing to back it up?
Labels: Bashar al-Assad, France, Hafez al-Assad, Henry Kissinger, Iran, Kurdistan, Ottoman Empire, Syria, tribalism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:23 PM
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1) Bursting the balloon
When I saw the following headline at the Baltimore Jewish Times I was worried, " J Street Carved Out A Place In The U.S.-Israel Advocacy." The article, written by managing editor, Maayan Jaffe starts by faithfully recounting all of J-Streets claims. But, there's more to the title, that suggests that this isn't going to be another J-Street whitewash: "Israelis say Policies Don’t Jibe."
Jaffe first looks at J-Street's math and observes:
Purely looking at the numbers, for all the hype, J Street really isn’t much but a stitch in the side of most larger pro-Israel organizations. This reporter, for example, obtained the 990 c3 financial statements of both the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and J Street from the last several years. Between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009, J Street’s total revenue reached $1,641,153. In a similar tax period (Oct. 1, 2008 and Sept. 30, 2009), AIPAC’s total revenue was $60,749,036. In a similar tax year (circa 2010): $2,189,038 for J Street and $66,176,210 for AIPAC. In circa 2011: $2,972,591 for J Street, $66,862,011 for AIPAC. Of course, by percentage (10 percent for AIPAC and 81 percent for J Street over a three-year period), J Street’s growth is markedly higher, but the numbers are so distinct that one recognizes one is not comparing apples to apples, but rather apples to grapes.The smaller the number the easier it is to boast of a high rate of growth. While Jaffe interviews many J-Street members and officials she also quotes critics and outside observers. But the most devastating two paragraphs in the article are these: “The No. 1 reason Americans support Israel is shared values,” said Lerner of J Street. “I have a fear that if Israel is not a democracy, then American support for Israel will wane. That will put Israel in a difficult situation.” But yet they are calling on America to help form a Palestinian state in which Abbas has repeatedly declared not a single Jew would be allowed to live.J-Street claims to be fighting for Israeli democracy but its belief in democracy is severely limited. For more on the founding of J-Street read A Kinder, Gentler Alternative To AIPAC? by Daled Amos from 2006. Daled Amos describes one of the legislative victories that spurred the formation of J-Street.
Apparently, part of the impetus for the project is the result of the success of three of the above groups--IPF, APN and Brit Tzedek--in killing the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which would have cut off US aid to the Palestinian Authority until it renounced terrorism and recognizes Israel.Note that those who were inspired to form J-Street were inspired by an effort to reduce pressure on the Palestinian Authority to abide by its commitments. Jaffe's article points J-Street's latest "pro-Israel" fighting for the confirmation of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of State. Clearly, just was when it started, J-Street has a very warped view of the term "pro-Israel."
2) That 70's diplomatic show
WikiLeaks has now published millions of pieces of diplomatic correspondence from the 1970's. Some of these cables relate to Israel. The Jerusalem Post reports (h/t Israel Matzav):
The Jerusalem Post has uncovered a cable sent from the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia on January 9, 1975, which analyzed the Israeli-Arab conflict. It was concluded that it was Israel's stubborn position that was holding back peace.At one point the cable stated, "Nevertheless, viewed from here, the Israeli pessimism seems largely if not entirely unwarranted. It seems based on an extraordinary lack of understanding of what happened in the Arab world in the last year and a half. Rather than girding their loins for the fifth, sixth, seventh Israeli-Arab wars. The Israelis might examine more carefully than they seem to have done so far the alternative of a peaceful accommodation with the Arabs."For those who are nostalgic for the pre-Likud years, when Israel was ruled by the much more reasonable Labor Party, this might come as something of a surprise. Then again such people are simply repeating prejudices rather than applying any sort of rational analysis to the politics of the Middle East.
At Tablet, Lee Smith emphasizes another disturbing trend in American diplomacy during this time:
During the Kissinger years, Arafat was important to the United States for a number of reasons. As the cables show, Washington thought he could help stabilize Lebanon. Another cable, in which Salameh describes a rival Palestinian group’s attempt on the life of Jordan’s King Hussein, shows that Arafat’s cadre could offer a window onto the world of international terrorism largely financed and supported by their Cold War rival the Soviet Union. But most importantly, the United States wanted to put an end to the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict that they feared was damaging their regional prestige, as well as that of their allies who might eventually be forced to flip sides and sign on with Moscow. Kissinger and his State Department believed that solving this conflict would win the good will of the Arabs and hurt the Soviets—and they saw Arafat as their ace in the hole.This is despite the fact that among these cables is one that shows that the State Department knew that there was no difference between Fatah and Black September and that it thus also knew that Arafat was responsible for the murder of American diplomats, Ambassador Cleo Noel and U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission George Curtis Moore.
The most extensive article documenting Arafat's involvement in this crime was How Arafat Got Away with Murder, by Scott W. Johnson.
The Black September operatives issued several demands: the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy; the release of a Black September leader held in Jordan; and the release of several members of the terrorist Baader-Meinhof gang held in Germany. On March 2, President Nixon and representatives of the other two governments announced that they would not negotiate with terrorists for the release of the diplomats.If nothing else these cables explain the misguided reasoning that led to this great Arafat whitewash.
Using coded instructions, Arafat's closest Fatah associate in Beirut, Salah Khalaf, directed the murder of Noel, Moore, and Eid. Arafat himself separately confirmed the instructions. At 9:00 P.M. that very night, the Black September operatives marched Noel, Moore, and Eid to the embassy basement and murdered them with forty rounds from Kalashnikov weapons fired from the feet to the head in order to inflict maximum suffering on the victims.
Arafat ordered his operatives to surrender to Sudanese authorities. "Your mission has ended," he told them, in an intercepted communication. "Explain your just cause to [the] great Sudanese masses and international opinion. We are with you on the same road."
3) The value of Thomas Friedman's predictions
Barry Rubin recently took aim at Thomas Friedman's prognostication ability:
In June 2010–almost three years ago–Tom Friedman wrote a column called “The Real Palestinian Revolution in which he said: “It is a revolution based on building Palestinian capacity and institutions not just resisting Israeli occupation, on the theory that if the Palestinians can build a real economy, a professional security force and an effective, transparent government bureaucracy it will eventually become impossible for Israel to deny the Palestinians a state in the West Bank and Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem….It is the only hope left, though, for a two-state solution, so it needs to be quietly supported.”There's a point here that could be added. In late 2010, Israel announced that it had rounded up most of the terror suspects it had known about in Judea and Samaria. Last week it was reported Attempts to abduct Israeli soldiers in West Bank on the rise:
Well, almost three years later, there is no real Palestinian economy but only one still dependent on foreign aid. There has been no progress toward a professional security force or an effective government bureaucracy. The only thing that’s happened is that without doing any of these things and without making any deals or compromises with Israel, and without reducing the incitement to terrorism and hatred toward Israel, and without recapturing the Gaza Strip or even making a deal with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority received what is called non-member state status from the UN General Assembly.
Senior officials in the Israel Defense Forces told Yediot Ahronoth that Hamas operatives been encouraged by the Gilad Shalit exchange in 2011 and are increasing their efforts to kidnap Israeli soldiers and use them as bargaining chips for the release of Palestinians in Israeli jails. According to one IDF officer, while Israeli authorities "have been able to thwart the kidnapping attempts ... the scope is extraordinary, and it is clear we will not be able to foil these attempts forever."It's true that the release of terrorists for Gilad Shalit led to an increase in the terror threats from the West Bank. However, part of the narrative of Israel's critics is that the Palestinian security forces have proven themselves and therefore Israel should be able to trust them in control of even more territory. The recent increase in terror suggests otherwise.
The IDF has recently taken a number of steps, such as dissuading soldiers from hitchhiking, in order to decrease the chances of a successful abduction.
In recent months, Israeli authorities have exposed a number of Hamas terror cells in the West Bank. On March 13, the Shin Bet revealed that Hamas' Interior Minister Fathi Hammad has been at the forefront of the terror group's efforts to carry out terror attacks in the West Bank, including kidnappings, suicide bombings, and rocket attacks.
In short, there's a small mammal in Pennsylvania who is a better forecaster than Thomas Friedman.
(I'd add that his record on the Arab spring is abysmal too. First he assured us that the revolution was being led by democrats with the Muslim Brotherhood in the background proving to be no threat. A year later he insisted that the Muslim Brotherhood was providing Egyptians with what they wanted. Now he's lamenting that the Muslim Brotherhood doesn't know how to govern by his principles. If he expected a Western style democracy he was fooling himself, but he doesn't possess the intellectual honesty to admit it.)
Labels: AIPAC, Henry Kissinger, J Street, Judea and Samaria, Middle East Media Sampler, Palestinian terrorism, Soccer Dad, Tom Friedman, Yasser Arafat
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:33 PM
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During the Kissinger years, what mattered most in the Middle East to the United States was the Persian Gulf, because of its vast energy resources. The eastern Mediterranean was important only insofar as it was another venue to contend with the Soviets. Accordingly, Kissinger saw the Israelis as a strategic ally capable of vanquishing Soviet assets—including Egypt, which after the 1973 war jumped from the Soviet camp to the American one. But just because Israel was a valued American ally didn’t mean that Washington would turn its back on Arab figures capable of serving larger American interests by thwarting Moscow’s regional ambitions. The cables show that the Americans were keen to have Arafat on their side.
It’s not clear if the Israelis entirely understood how close the Americans were to Arafat and his outfit. For instance, Israel long believed that Arafat’s intelligence chief Ali Hassan Salameh, one of the masterminds of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic games, was a CIA asset. The truth is that the so-called Red Prince meant much more to the U.S.-Arafat relationship, serving as one of their key intermediaries and a symbol of the nature of their relationship.
The cables show that two years after Munich, the American ambassador to Beirut, George McMurtrie Godley, met with Salameh—described in the cables as Arafat’s “security adviser”—to negotiate the size of the entourage that Arafat would take to the U.N. General Assembly meeting and how many of them would be allowed to carry guns.
When the embassy explained that none of them would be allowed to take arms into the United States, the cable reports that “Salameh purported to be horrified, reporting that ‘Arafat has already developed notion that USG [United States Government] is trying force him into changing his mind by appearing at UNGA by delaying issuance of visas to his party and by ‘demeaning’ his pride and self-image.” Fidel Castro, Salameh noted to the ambassador, “had appeared armed in New York.” In the end, Arafat got his way and brought his weapon to the General Assembly, where he famously offered his audience a choice between an olive branch and his sidearm.
The Americans weren’t stupid or naive. When Arafat sent Salameh to meet with them, he was telling them who he was, his methods, and his goals. When the Americans agreed to meet with Salameh, they essentially signed off on Arafat. Terrorism, from their perspective, wasn’t in itself an insurmountable obstacle. After all, Washington was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with another nuclear superpower. Compared to a nuclear exchange wiping out large American, Soviet, and European population centers, Arab terrorism was small potatoes.
As Ambassador Godley cabled after the May 1974 Maalot massacre, in which members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestinian killed 25 Israeli hostages, 22 of them children: “long-term implications of Maalot tragedy on Fedayeen movement and Israeli-Arab relations are even more upsetting than loss of young lives and anguish of Israeli nation.” The American diplomat might have added that the implications for American interests vis-à-vis the Soviets, who controlled much of the Fedayeen movement, were also dire.Read the whole thing.
Labels: Henry Kissinger, Russia, Yasser Arafat
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:24 PM
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The Jerusalem Post has uncovered a cable sent from the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia on January 9, 1975, which analyzed the Israeli-Arab conflict. It was concluded that it was Israel's stubborn position that was holding back peace.
At one point the cable stated, "Nevertheless, viewed from here, the Israeli pessimism seems largely if not entirely unwarranted. It seems based on an extraordinary lack of understanding of what happened in the Arab world in the last year and a half. Rather than girding their loins for the fifth, sixth, seventh Israeli-Arab wars. The Israelis might examine more carefully than they seem to have done so far the alternative of a peaceful accommodation with the Arabs."
The US report also went into the Israel public's pessimistic attitude toward peace following the Yom Kippur War, "We have been struck by the growing pessimism in Israel and in American Jewish circles. It seems to be based on the axiom that Israel cannot be expected to relinquish any more of the Arab lands it conquered in 1967 without Arab guarantees of security for Israel, the collorary [sic] that the Arabs will never give such guarantees and the conclusion that another war is therefore inevitable." The report seemed to be blaming Israel for not making peace with the Arabs and even shows its disappointment with the Arab offer in Algiers for going too far in making concessions to Israel.
"The Arab decision in Algiers to give de facto recognition to Israel in its 1967 borders was perhaps a mistake. To announce, before negotiations start, what is your final position is usually not a good bargaining tactic," the report stated.
The mention of Algiers, the capital of Algeria, most likely refers to the Arab League summit that was held there in 1973, whose resolution called for an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories and Jerusalem. It also called for supporting the Palestinian resistance by all possible means.
A "just peace" based on Arab demands was offered conditionally if Israel agreed to their demands.
The report goes on to make stinging criticism against the Israeli position.
"Before talking about extermination, and before allowing either the Masada or the Samson complex to progress to obsession, the Israelis might usefully examine their own position and that of the Arabs," the report stated, adding that Cairo and Damascus strongly yearn for peace.
"All reports we have heard and read from Egypt and Syria lead us to believe that those two countries strongly yearn for peace and that they would like to devote their energies to reconstruction of their countries." Then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, the cables continued, was not helping the Arab leaders who sought peace.
"The advocates of this approach, however, have not been helped by statements of Rabin and others in Israel that the next withdrawal will be the last for several years." The report concluded with a policy prediction reminiscent of contemporary arguments.
"The Palestinians might consider a demilitarized state as humiliating or detracting from their sovereignty, but it is unlikely they would get much sympathy or help from the Saudis if they tried to spoil a settlement. If they agreed they could expect massive Saudi financial support to make their tiny new state viable. Jordan and Israel would benefit vicariously."If only Israel would roll over and play dead, we might really be dead (God forbid) and then there would be 'peace.' The more things change....
Labels: anti-Israel obsession, Henry Kissinger, Wikileaks
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:26 PM
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Nearly 40 years ago, an Israeli military attache in Washington was gunned down outside his Bethesda, Maryland home. The family was flown back to Israel with the body in Air Force 2. Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger asked for daily updates into the investigation of the murder. But the murderer(s) was never found. The investigation was closed three years later and the FBI destroyed all the evidence. Why?“This was a political assassination, the kind of case that I would have extensive files about. But we later discovered that the FBI destroyed all the evidence in the case,” later closing it – for lack of evidence, says [Fred] Burton. “How does evidence of a political assassination get destroyed three years after the event – after all, the FBI keeps evidence back from the days of Al Capone.”In April, Burton released a book about the murder. In an interview by email at the time, he told Haaretz:
That, in and of itself, he feels, is a clear indication that “something” was amiss.
That “something”, Burton claims, was the likelihood that Alon was about to “spill the beans” about what Burton believes to be one of the biggest secrets in Israeli history – a possible “deal” between Israel and the U.S. to allow the Arabs to attack first in an upcoming war, in order, Burton says, to test the efficacy of American weapons versus what the Soviets had supplied Arab countries.
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Burton, however, bases this belief on information supplied to him by Alon's wife Devora, who told Burton of experiences that he believes are part of a classical counterintelligence operation.
“She received strange phone calls, what are called 'ruse calls,' to see if they were home,” as well as “wrong numbers” from people speaking Hebrew - a very unlikely scenario in Maryland, long before the internet made it easy to find people, says Burton. “There was a strange visitor from the phone company' who wanted to get into the basement to do work that could easily have been done from the street.”
The FBI opened an investigation into the murder, but a rather halfhearted one, says Burton. Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger – who, he believes, worked out the deal whereby Israel would let the Arabs attack first with then Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan – took what Burton said was an unusually active interest in the investigation. “
"Kissinger requested daily upates on the investigation. I can't recall another example of such a high level official being so involved in a murder investigation like this,” said Burton, adding that the fact that Alon's body was sent home for burial in the Vice-President's plane. “I couldn't find another example of that plane for such a purpose. This set off some bells in my head,” he said.
In the end, the FBI theorized that Alon was killed by a Black September agent, although the case officially remains unsolved. In the end, it appears that it really was a Black September agent who pulled the trigger (Burton believes that the Mossad eliminated Alon's murderer earlier this year).
But, he asks in his book, just what was a Black September operative doing in Maryland? That is another mystery that remains unsolved, since it was the one and only time that the terror group carried out an operation like that in the U.S.
Was the terrorist recruited by one of the interested parties to “shut Alon up?” It's not clear, but Devora and her daughter received generous “hints” of their own on why Joe was killed from some of the elites of Israel's political and military establishment, according to Rachel Alon-Margalit in the documentary film “Who Killed My Father?”
Rachel tells of a conversation her mother had with former President Ezer Weizmann, who, when Devora asked for his help after years of stonewalling by Israeli officials whenever she asked for information about the investigation, said “Devora, I can't tell you anything. If I open my mouth there will be an earthquake. Go home and take care of your daughters.”
Other officials left Devora with a similar feeling - that Joe had stumbled onto a great truth that he was somehow not supposed to know, and that this information may well have gotten him killed, according to the documentary.
Who do you think was negligent in conducting the investigation, and why?Well, maybe. At this link (in Hebrew), a senior IAF officer (unnamed) claims that Israel agreed to Alon's murder.
"In my opinion the FBI and the local police did their best under the circumstances of 1973. None of them was equipped back then with tools for solving an international terror operation. There were plenty of extremist organizations at the time in the U.S. - the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, and Palestinian radicals - that drew the FBI's full attention. The counterterrorism division I headed did not exist at the time. The information gaps and the lack of ability in terms of recruiting sources and agents were substantial and undermined every effort to solve the murder."
And what about Israel?
"Israel relied too heavily on the FBI to solve the case. It seems that in Israel, too, they were too busy hunting Palestinian terrorists. Let me remind you that the same month that Joe was murdered there was the Mossad fiasco in Norway [the killing of Ahmed Bouchiki, a waiter who was mistaken for the terrorist Hassan Salameh ]. The investigation into Alon's murder was neglected, and unfortunately the case simply petered out over the years. Solving the murder of a single person just wasn't top priority."
Labels: Henry Kissinger, Joe Alon, Moshe Dayan, Yom Kippur War
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:10 AM
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Remember Henry Kissinger's comments about US ambivalence about Russian Jews being thrown in the gas chambers (God forbid)? Well, look how the Washington Post reported the story.But the newspaper did not report that the tapes also featured Secretary of State Henry Kissinger telling Nixon, after a March 1, 1973 meeting with Meir, that “the emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy.” Meir had pleaded for Washington to pressure Moscow to let Jews emigrate. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union,” Kissinger continued, “it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”Payback for being the Washington Post's source about Nixon and Kissinger praying together during the final days of Nixon's Presidency? Perhaps.
“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.” Earlier, The New York Times (“In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks ”, December 10) had found Kissinger’s comment newsworthy.
Kissinger is Jewish and he escaped as a child with his family from Germany in the 1930s. The Post, like The Times, reported Nixon’s derogatory comments about Irish, Italians and blacks as well as Jews. But not the startling Kissinger-Nixon exchange about hypothetical Jewish genocide in the Soviet Union.
Labels: anti-Semitism, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Soviet Jewry, Yom Kippur War
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:58 PM
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“The quotations ascribed to me in the transcript of the conversation with President Nixon must be viewed in the context of the time,” Kissinger wrote to JTA.With the benefit of nearly 40 years of hindsight, was Kissinger right?
He and Nixon pursued the issue of Soviet Jewish emigration as a humanitarian matter separate from foreign policy issues in order to avoid questions of sovereignty and because normal diplomatic channels were closed, Kissinger wrote.
“By this method and the persistent private representation at the highest level we managed to raise emigration from 700 per year to close to 40,000 in 1972,” Kissinger wrote. “We disagreed with the Jackson Amendment, which made Jewish emigration a foreign policy issue. We feared that the Amendment would reduce emigration, which is exactly what happened. Jewish emigration never reached the level of 40,000 again until the Soviet Union collapsed. The conversation between Nixon and me must be seen in the context of that dispute and of our distinction between a foreign policy and a humanitarian approach.”
In fact, emigration from the Soviet Union was about 32,000 in 1972, when what became known as the Jackson-Vanik Amendment -- named for Jackson and Rep. Charlie Vanik (D-Ohio) -- was introduced, and rose to 35,000 in 1973 and then dropped to 20,000 in 1974. Those were all years that the amendment was being debated in Congress, and a sign, veterans of Soviet Jewry activism say, that the mere threat of the amendment helped spur emigration.Read the whole thing. I'm not persuaded by the defenses of Kissinger. What he said is beyond the pale.
It is true that the amendment's passage in 1974 at first inhibited emigration, but it spiked again in 1979 to 51,000 as the Soviets sought to bargain for its repeal. In the dying years of the Soviet Union, from 1989 to 1991, the Gorbachev government released upward of 450,000 Jews.
More broadly, Jackson-Vanik formed the basis for the late-20th century politics of making human rights a sine qua non of statecraft. That resulted not only in the mass emigration of Soviet Jews 15 years after its passage, but also in contemporary efforts to end internal massacres in countries such as Sudan.
Kissinger, however, was dedicated to realpolitik -- the art of securing the grand deal, even at the expense of the moral and ethical considerations of the moment -- and his disdain for human rights activists knew few bounds.
Gal Beckerman, a historian of the Soviet Jewry movement, told Tablet on Tuesday that this even led Kissinger to suppress a letter that might have helped salvage a deal with the Soviets to release Jews under the Jackson-Vanik stipulations.
Similar considerations led Kissinger to press Nixon during the 1973 Yom Kippur War to delay delivering arms to Israel by a few weeks. Their conversations at the time show Kissinger arguing that Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s president, needed an unadulterated victory to make peace concessions. Nixon argued -- correctly, as it turned out -- that Sadat was already able to claim a victory, and that it was more important to stanch an ally’s casualties in a war that would claim 3,000 Israeli lives.
Labels: Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Soviet Jewry
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:46 PM
2 comments
As a teenager, I can recall vividly how hurt I was by the way Richard Nixon talked about Jews in the transcripts from his White House taping system. I had argued with my parents in the summer of 1972 that a vote for George McGovern was a vote to sell Israel down the creek, and therefore I argued that they (I couldn't vote yet) should vote for Nixon. My parents - both lifelong Democrats - hated "Tricky Dicky" and could not bring themselves to vote for him no matter who ran against him. In fact, when the Watergate scandal broke, my parents put a bumper sticker on our car saying "I'm from Massachusetts, don't blame me." (The only states Nixon did not carry in the 1972 elections were Massachusetts and the District of Columbia).While previous recordings have detailed Nixon’s animosity toward Jews, including those who served in his administration like Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser, these tapes suggest an added layer of complexity to Nixon’s feeling. He and his aides seem to make a distinction between Israeli Jews, whom Nixon admired, and American Jews.I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm more shocked by Kissinger's words than by Nixon's. During the period that Kissinger was Secretary of State, I frequently stayed with an Aunt and Uncle of his for the Sabbath (I read the Torah in their community for the synagogue - it was too far to walk from home), and they always spoke of him as being a committed Jew. Committed to what?
In a conversation Feb. 13, 1973, with Charles W. Colson, a senior adviser who had just told Nixon that he had always had “a little prejudice,” Nixon said he was not prejudiced but continued: “I’ve just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits.”
“The Jews have certain traits,” he said.
...
A moment later, Nixon returned to Jews: “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.”
...
These tapes, made in February and March 1973, reflect a critical period in Nixon’s presidency — the final months before it was “devoured by Watergate,” said Timothy Naftali, the executive director of the Nixon Library.
Mr. Naftali said that there were now only 400 hours of tapes left to released, and that those would cover the final months before the tape system was shut down in July 1973 after Alexander Butterfield, who was a deputy assistant to Nixon, confirmed its existence to the Watergate committee.
Mr. Naftali said he intended to have those tapes — actually, given changing technologies since Nixon’s time, CDs, and available for listening online at the library’s Web site — released by 2012.
An indication of Nixon’s complex relationship with Jews came the afternoon Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, came to visit on March 1, 1973. The tapes capture Meir offering warm and effusive thanks to Nixon for the way he had treated her and Israel.
But moments after she left, Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were brutally dismissive in response to requests that the United States press the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate and escape persecution there.
“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”
Six months later, during the Yom Kippur War, Nixon rejected Kissinger's advice to delay an arms airlift to Israel as a means of setting the stage for an Egypt confident enough to pursue peace; Nixon, among other reasons, cited Israel's urgent need.Kissinger would have jeopardized Israel's existence too. If he weren't German, I could speculate that he was a forebear to George Soros.
The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants called for an apology from Kissinger, who is still consulted by Democratic and Republican administrations and by Congress on matters of state.Actually, he owes an even bigger apology to Soviet Jews. But I wouldn't allow him to make it, nor would I accept it. Let him rot in hell with the punishment he deserves.
"Henry Kissinger's comments are morally grotesque and represent a disgraceful perversion of American values," said a statement. "He owes an apology to all victims of the Nazi Holocaust."
Labels: anti-Semitism, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Soviet Jewry, Yom Kippur War
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:48 PM
3 comments
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
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