Shimon Peres z"l
Greetings from Paris - Charles DeGaulle where once again Every Landing Always Late. They've admitted to two hours and fifteen minutes so far. And to think that I ran like crazy thinking I had only an hour and fifteen minutes to make a connection (American left more than two hours late from Charlotte last night, but made up much of that time on the way).
That's okay, because I will have some time to work after I finish this post (and maybe another one) and Paris may be one of the most appropriate places in the world to talk about Shimon Peres, who passed away this morning at the age of 93, because he was fluent in French and because in his later years he so emulated the French.
Israel owes a lot to Shimon Peres, especially our alleged nuclear capability, which was his doing in the early 1960's. I saw a Facebook post this morning that claimed that Peres 'saved' the country from hyperinflation in the 1980's, but the person who wrote it was a child at the time, and I was an adult. I don't believe that's accurate.
There was much that Peres did in his later years with which I disagreed. Oslo (which was done
behind Yitzchak Rabin's back). His treatment of
Jonathan Pollard. His playing
fast and easy with Jewish lives to achieve his goals. His
undercutting of Begin on the Osirak attack. In fact, his
undercutting of Israeli governments generally in his later years, including during his term as President (a position he turned from
an honorary position into
a political one). And he was
reviled by many in Israel.
But most distressingly, Peres never seriously protested the kind of
myths promoted by the New York Times in its obituary of Peres.
Honest Reporting proves conclusively that the assertion that
Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount set off the intifada - a longstanding myth never protested by Peres - is false.
Palestinian Communications Minister Imad Al-Faluji, Al-Safir, 3 March 2001. (Translated by MEMRI):
Whoever thinks that the Intifada broke out
because of the despised Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque is wrong..
. . This Intifada was planned in advance, ever since President
Arafat’s return from the Camp David negotiations, where he turned the
table upside down on President Clinton.
Yasser Arafat’s wife Suha (pictured above) said the following (from Palestinian Media Watch):
On the personal level, I miss him very, very
much. [Our daughter] Zahwa also misses him, you can’t imagine. She
didn’t know him. She knows that Arafat sent us away before the [Israeli]
invasion of Ramallah. He said: ‘You have to leave Palestine, because I
want to carry out an Intifada, and I’m not prepared to shield myself
behind my wife and little girl.’ Everyone said: ‘Suha abandoned him,’
but I didn’t abandon him. He ordered me to leave him because he had
already decided to carry out an Intifada after the Oslo Accords and
after the failure of Camp David [July 2000].
Imad Faluji, PA Minister of Communications:
Whoever thinks that the Intifada started because
of the hated Sharon’s visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque is mistaken. That was only
the straw breaking the Palestinian people’s patience. This Intifada was
already planned since [Arafat] the President returned from the recent
talks at Camp David [July 2000].” [Private filming of speech by Faluji, Dec. 5, 2000]
The Israel Project
notes that American diplomat Dennis Ross recounts in his book The
Missing Peace how the Israelis called Washington with proof that the
Palestinians were “planning massive, violent demonstrations
throughout the West Bank and the next morning, ostensibly a response to
the Sharon visit.” Washington pressured Arafat to dampen the violence, but the Palestinian leader – again per Ross – “did not lift a finger to stop the demonstrations, which produced the second Intifada.”
Who was Shimon Peres. Some interesting quotes are
here. He did some good for the State of Israel, but he took many actions, especially in his later years, that were based on delusions of grandeur that harmed many people.
Labels: Ariel Sharon, intifadeh, Jonathan Pollard, Menachem Begin, New York Times, Osirak, personal stuff, Shimon Peres, Suha Arafat, Yasser Arafat, Yitzchak Rabin
It came to this: Netanyahu had to ask Berlusconi for help with Obama
In case you missed it, Haaretz reported on Tuesday that the US National Security Administration intercepted a 2010 phone call between Prime Minister Netanyahu and then-Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in which Netanyahu asked Berlusconi for help in repairing his relations with the self-declared '
most pro-Israel administration evah.'
During their conversation, Netanyahu claimed he needed Berlusconi's help due to an "absence of direct contact" between himself and President Barack Obama.
The document leaked to the WikiLeaks website is a brief summary of Netanyahu and Berlusconi's communications that was published by the NSA for internal usage by the American intelligence community and the White House. According to the document, the call was intercepted as part of U.S. monitoring of Berlusconi's office, and not through a wiretap on Israeli lines.
The conversation between Netanyahu and Berlusconi took place four days after a crisis erupted during Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel on March 9 due to Israel's decision to green light 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem's Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, which is beyond the 1967 Green Line.
The NSA report said "Israel has reached out to Europe, including Italy, for help in smoothing out the current rift in its relations with the United States."
The call took place on an open international line, so it is likely Netanyahu knew the conversation would be intercepted by U.S. intelligence services. It is even possible Netanyahu used the conversation with Berlusconi to try to reach out to America.
I don't know which is more troubling here - the fact that Netanyahu even had to reach out to Berlusconi in the first place or the fact that the United States, which continues to hold Jonathan Pollard after he spent 30 years in jail for 'spying' on Israel's behalf, was spying on Israel in the first place.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden, Jonathan Pollard, Ramat Shlomo, Silvio Berlusconi, spying, Wikileaks
Breaking: Pollard to be released in November
Whether he'll be allowed to
leave the US remains to be seen.
Labels: Jonathan Pollard
How generous: Obama wants to release Pollard 3 months before parole date but tie him to US
Having served nearly 30 years in an American jail for far less serious crimes than others who served
far less time, Jonathan Pollard is up for parole in November. Now, the Obama administration wants to
release Pollard (who has been
held for ransom for years) three months early in the hope of mollifying Israel in the face of its sellout to a nuclear Iran. There's just one small catch: Fearful of Pollard receiving a hero's welcome in Israel, the Obama administration wants to
confine him to the United States.
A senior Israeli diplomatic source revealed on Monday that if
Jonathan Pollard is released in November as has been reported, he won't
be allowed to come to Israel for fear he will receive a hero's welcome.
"The Americans are very worried of a situation in which Pollard will
be received as a hero in Israel, and therefore they likely will prevent
Pollard from leaving American territory," the source told Yedioth Aharonoth.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Saturday that she won't
interfere in the possible release of Pollard, and denied that the move
was timed to assuage Israeli concerns over the Iran nuclear deal.
I don't know what makes them think Pollard will be any more interested in being released in exchange for Israel accepting a nuclear Iran than he was in being released
in exchange for terrorists. And some of the people who generally oppose Pollard's release point out that there's
no connection between Pollard and Iran.
"Releasing Pollard was a bad idea in 1998 and 2001. It is not a better
idea today," [Former US Secertary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld posted on Twitter, along with a copy of letters
stating his opposition to the move, which he sent to former US
presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush while serving as secretary of
defense.
In another tweet Rumsfeld wrote, "Releasing spy Jonathan Pollard doesn't
make the #IranDeal any less of a disaster for Israel and the free
world," suggesting that Pollard's possible release and the Iran deal are
directly related.
I disagree with Rumsfeld and think Pollard ought to be released. But I agree with him that Pollard's release ought not to be connected with Iran.
Seth Lipsky reminds us why.
It’s not that Pollard’s breach of our
Espionage Act wasn’t serious. It certainly was. But the charge to which
he pled guilty comprised a single count of passing classified secrets to
a friendly nation. In exchange for his plea, which saved the government
the risk of losing in court or being forced to drop its case rather
than disclose the secrets, the government made promises it failed to
keep.
This came to a head in the early 1990s.
Pollard was arrested in 1985. He pled guilty in 1986. He drew life in
1987. He sought to withdraw his plea in 1990. And the Appeals Court
judges who ride circuit in the District of Columbia disposed of his
claims in 1992. It was an incredibly distinguished panel, including
Laurence Silberman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Fain Williams.
Yet two of the three judges took what can
only be described as a powder, casting Pollard into prison for what the
law calls life (30 years) on the grounds that he didn’t appeal the life
sentence in a timely manner. The memorable opinion in the case was the
dissent of Judge Williams, who concluded that the government that put
Pollard away had broken the promises it had made in return for his plea.
The promises were that it would bring to
the court’s attention the value of Pollard’s cooperation, refrain from
seeking a life sentence, and limit its allocution — its statements —
regarding “the facts and circumstances” of Pollard’s crimes. Williams
concluded that the government “complied in spirit with none of its
promises” and, in respect of the third promise, “it complied in neither
letter nor spirit.”
One of the points Williams marked was the
government’s suggestion that Pollard had committed treason. That came
in a memo to the court from the defense secretary at the time, Caspar
Weinberger, who asked the Court to mete out a punishment reflecting the
“magnitude of the treason committed.” Yet Weinberg and the Court knew
that whatever Pollard did was not treason.
That’s because the Constitution prohibits
Congress from defining treason as anything other than levying war
against the U.S. or adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and
comfort. Treason, Williams noted, carries the death penalty. It can be
committed only with an enemy. The espionage statute to which Pollard
pled encompassed aid to friendly nations and carried a maximum of life.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Donald Rumsfeld, Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iranian nuclear threat, Jonathan Pollard, spying
US wiretapped last three French Presidents
Just a hunch, but I doubt that even if caught, any American will sit in a French jail for doing this for even a tenth of the time that Jonathan Pollard has been imprisoned in the United States.
Just sayin'....
Labels: France, Jonathan Pollard, spying
What a shock: Pollard imprisonment based on lies
I really feel like slamming some of the chickens**t American Jews who regularly comment - both on this blog and on Twitter and Facebook - that Jonathan Pollard should rot in jail because
what he did was so terrible they're afraid of being accused of having 'dual loyalties' if they actually question Pollard's life sentence. Much of the infamous Cap Weinberger memo (that Pollard's lawyers were never allowed to see) has been declassified, and it shows that much of the US government argument for keeping Pollard imprisoned is
based on lies and mischaracterizes what Weinberger (an anti-Semite in his own right) wrote (Hat Tip:
NY Nana).
Key portions of a critical classified document on which the US
government has cited as justification for keeping Jonathan Pollard in
jail have been declassified – and his lawyers say the government has
been "dishonest" in "hiding behind the mask of 'classified information'
to materially mischaracterize the nature and extent of the harm caused
by Mr. Pollard."
Lawyers Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, who have represented
Pollard for 15 years pro-bono, say the newly disclosed material shows
that any harm possibly caused by Pollard was only "in the form of
short-term disruption in foreign relations between the United States and
certain Arab countries."
"That is not at all the same thing as harm to U.S. national security," they write in a World Net Daily op-ed, "and it was dishonest for the government to pretend that it is."
The government position for 30 years has been that Pollard must
remain in prison because a secret note from then-Secretary of State
Caspar Weinberger stated that Pollard caused greater harm to U.S.
national security than had ever occurred previously.
"The government has been able to present this harsh characterization
of the Weinberger declaration without fear of contradiction," Semmelman
and Lauer write, because "no one representing Mr. Pollard [was ever]
allowed to see the Weinberger declaration since the day Mr. Pollard was
sentenced" – until now.
...
The lawyers state that the U.S. government's "deception had its most
blatant and prejudicial impact at Mr. Pollard's parole hearing held in
July 2014, during which the government invoked the Weinberger
declaration and - without showing it to the parole commission - urged
the commission to accept its representation that the document
substantiated more harm to the national security of the United States
than had ever occurred previously."
"In its decision denying parole, the commission took the government
at its word and essentially parroted the government's characterization
of the Weinberger declaration when it wrote that Mr. Pollard had caused
'the greatest compromise of U.S. security to that date,'" noted the
lawyers.
"That is an outright falsehood," the lawyers write, "and the recent
revelations prove it... [It] is now revealed that Mr. Pollard provided
Israel with information concerning the 'political-economic affairs of
Middle Eastern nations,' various 'Middle Eastern orders of battle,' and
the 'technology of Soviet weapons and radar systems' used by various
Arab governments."
"The potential consequence [thereof] is described by Mr. Weinberger
as 'a high probability of harm to the foreign relations of the U.S.
with friendly Arab nations'" – and nothing more than that.
The op-ed details the type of information Pollard gave Israel, and the modest and temporary damage it caused to U.S. relations with some countries – but not to U.S. security.
Hang your heads in shame chickens**t American Jews. Maybe you should worry more about why your government has been holding an American Jew imprisoned for 30 years for a crime that normally carries a 2-4-year sentence than you worry about accusations that you hold dual loyalties (as if any of you holds any loyalty to the Jewish state).
So why did then-CIA director George Tenet
threaten to resign if Bill Clinton released Pollard (as he promised to do) in exchange for Israel signing the Why Why Wye agreement? Probably because Tenet knew that if what was really in the Weinberger document was made public (and there would have been no more reason to keep it classified 17 years ago had Pollard been released), he and other government officials who had lied about its contents would have found their butts in a sling. Now, they're all dead or retired.
Read the whole thing.
It's long past time to release Jonathan Pollard NOW.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Binyamin Netanyahu, Caspar Weinberger, Central Intelligence Agency, Jonathan Pollard, spying
'I gave the order to turn Pollard away from the embassy' and Rabin and Peres knew
In an interview to be broadcast on Monday night on Israel's Channel 2, Rafi Eitan, who was Jonathan Pollard's 'handler' within the Israeli government admits that he gave the order to turn Jonathan Pollard and his then-wife Anne away from the Israeli embassy in Washington on November 21, 1985. Eitan also says that
Yitzchak Rabin and Shimon Peres knew all about Pollard.
You received a phone call in real time that Pollard and his wife are here at the gate, what to do?
Rafi Eitan: Yes. I got the news that he was standing at the embassy.
What do you say to yourself?
I immediately say, 'Throw him out'. I have no regrets.
When I'm in a battle, and it’s life or death, I have to decide yes or
no. I decide according to what is required at that moment. I make a
decision based on the interests of the State of Israel, you cannot let
any other thought interfere with the decision the moment you make it,
had I not done it the situation would have been much worse.
In the interview, Eitan says that he knew about Pollard’s
impending arrest three days before the arrest. That very night he goes,
according to his testimony, to Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Defense
Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and tells them that the arrest is about to
happen. He says the prime minister and defense minister were aware even
before this incident that Israel operates agents in the United States
military.
You know that part of their action plan would be to also sacrifice you?
I suggest ahead of time that they sacrifice me, I say at the outset, I
take all the responsibility, I gave the order, only I gave the order,
no one authorized me to do so. Just me. No one gave me an order, I
initiated it all alone. I am responsible, I tell them in advance.
But there was an incident here, it still exists, is affects the relations between Israel and the United States.
True, but nobody asked who is responsible. Everyone knew who was in charge, who initiated, who did what - only I am responsible.
Now you can tell us, Rabin is no longer with us, Shimon
Peres, he has already finished his last public position, do the prime
minister and defense minister know that Israel has American agents
inside the U.S. Army?
I do not want to answer that, because as soon as I answer this, there will be headlines in the newspapers.
From your answer I can understand.
You can understand.
They knew?
Obviously...I never lied to my government.
I don't just think he's wrong morally - I think he's wrong politically. If Israel had 'owned' Pollard when it happened, we wouldn't still have this scandal 29 years later, and Pollard wouldn't still be rotting away in jail.
Labels: Jonathan Pollard, Rafi Eitan, Shimon Peres, Yitzchak Rabin
Why the 'peace talks' failed
From an epic piece by Ben Birnbaum and Amir Tibon in
The New Republic, here are
just a few of the reasons why the 'peace talks' failed.
In his rush to announce the resumption
of talks before flying home, though, Kerry left the conversation with
two serious misunderstandings that would sow the seeds for later
surprises. Netanyahu’s 2,000-plus figure covered only homes that were
open for bidding. (In his mind, long-term building plans were a
different story.) Nor did it include East Jerusalem, a part of the West
Bank that Israel considered sovereign territory. Focused on the big
picture, Kerry hadn’t asked for such clarifications.
The
more consequential miscommunication concerned the prisoners. Netanyahu
told Kerry that he was prepared to release approximately 80 of them
(excluding those with Israeli identity cards). Kerry asked for—and thought he heard Netanyahu agree to—all
104. “Both of them like to talk for long periods of time,” said someone
who has dealt with both leaders. “And I’m not sure that when one of
them is lecturing the other at length, the other guy is really listening
very carefully.”
...
Two weeks later, the Israeli and
Palestinian negotiators met at a hotel west of Jerusalem. Both sides
showed up angry. Erekat and Shtayyeh were steaming at new Israeli
settlement plans that had been announced immediately after the second
prisoner release days earlier, and at Netanyahu’s (false) claim in an
interview that Abbas had accepted the new building in return for the
prisoners. Meanwhile, Livni and Molho, who had adhered rigorously to
Kerry’s gag order on the talks, were incensed by a slew of Palestinian
news stories that they believed their counterparts had leaked. Both
sides, excepting Molho, were frustrated at the lack of progress they’d
made over three months. And the claustrophobic setting—a small bedroom that had been converted into a conference room—didn’t help to calm nerves.
Erekat
stormed into the room and slammed his briefcase on the table. In recent
weeks, with the talks faltering, he had begun drafting a Palestinian
Plan B that would include ending Fatah's six-year-old rift with Hamas
and resuming the U.N. campaign—steps that would
doom the process. Pointing at the briefcase, he declared: “This case
contains our requests to join fifteen U.N. treaties and conventions, and
my president will get my suggestion that he should sign them
immediately if you say it was prisoners for settlements. And if he
doesn’t approve it, I will resign tonight.”
“You can’t do this,” Livni said, raising her voice. “This is not what we agreed on.”
“What we agreed on was prisoners for no-U.N., not prisoners for settlements,” he barked.
“Stop
shouting,” Livni said. “You’re being unfair.” But Erekat kept yelling
that the settlements were making him a pariah among his people.
As Livni listened to Erekat complain about his political problems, something inside her snapped.
“Do you think this is easy for me?”
she shouted. She recited a litany of some of the worst Palestinian
prisoners that Israel was releasing for the sake of the talks: one who
had murdered an elderly Holocaust survivor, another who had stabbed two
teenagers, yet another who had hurled a firebomb at a bus, killing a
mother and her children. “These are your heroes,” she said,
disdainfully. “I don’t know why they are your heroes, but I pushed to
release them to get these talks started so we could get a peace deal, so
if I can do it, you can accept a few houses. Houses can be demolished.
We can’t put those murderers back in jail, and I can’t get back three
lives that were just taken.”
Erekat shot back: “What should I tell all the Palestinians who were killed?”
Finally,
Indyk intervened, waving his arms like a baseball umpire making the
safe sign. “Time out!” he screamed. The Palestinian negotiators went out
to a nearby veranda, and minutes later, Indyk—whom Kerry had dubbed “the Saeb whisperer”—joined
them. “I can’t take it anymore,” Erekat told Indyk. “It’s time for me
to move on. Netanyahu is cheating us. He is not a man of peace.”
It
was a refrain Indyk had grown accustomed to hearing. “I can tell you
that he’s changing,” he said. “He’s moving.” After a few minutes, Indyk
and the Palestinians returned to the room, and the meeting resumed,
awkwardly. When they parted after three hours, the negotiators shook
hands, as they had always done. But it was clear something had changed.
That night, Erekat and Shtayyeh presented a joint letter of resignation
to Abbas, while Livni called her top aides to vent. “I was one hundred
percent sure it was over,” said one.
...
In early December, Kerry presented
Allen’s proposals to the Israelis. While they sidestepped the question
of when Israeli forces would leave the Jordan Valley, they sketched out
what the area—and the rest of the West Bank—might
look like after they did. The future Palestinian-Jordanian border would
include new early warning infrastructure, an invisible Israeli presence
(via cameras) at border crossings, and top-shelf American gadgetry.
Livni liked the package. So did most of Israel’s security brass. Even
hard-line Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was making conciliatory
noises. “Israel will not get more than it is getting from Kerry,” he
said publicly. Netanyahu saw it as a basis for discussion.
Netanyahu’s hawkish defense minister—Likud’s Moshe Ya’alon—thought
it was worthless. “The Americans think we are natives who will be
impressed with their technology,” he told one confidant. “Don’t they
know that we are the masters of technology?” Unfortunately for everyone
involved, it was impossible to imagine the Israeli government approving
any deal without Ya'alon's support.
For months, the Americans had courted the crusty defense minister and concluded that he was—in the words of one senior official—“beyond
repair.” Ya’alon, meanwhile, railed about American naïveté in
off-the-record briefings with journalists. On January 14, an Israeli
newspaper published some of his remarks, including his diagnosis of
Kerry as “obsessive” and “messianic.” “The only thing that can save us,”
Ya’alon said, “is for John Kerry to win his Nobel Prize and leave us
alone.”
...
Abbas had always been more wary. From
the beginning, he felt as if Kerry was privileging Netanyahu’s needs
over his. And the numbers seemed to bear the Palestinian leader out:
Kerry had met with Netanyahu nearly twice as often as he had with him.
It was not lost on the Palestinians, either, that the secretary’s team—Indyk, Lowenstein, Makovsky, Schwartz, Yaffe, Goldenberg, Blumenthal—sounded
like a Bar Mitzvah guest list. To Abbas, the asymmetry of the
diplomatic triangle was best illustrated by a December meeting between
him and Kerry at the muqata. The meeting, devoted to security issues,
was supposed to have been attended also by General Allen. Kerry showed
up without him. When Abbas asked where he was, Kerry apologized and
explained that Allen needed to stay in Jerusalem and work more with
Netanyahu.
The depth of Palestinian
alienation became clear to Kerry and his team only on February 19, when
the two sides met for dinner at Le Maurice Hotel in Paris—the kickoff to a three-day parley. As the Palestinians walked in the door, each American was struck with the same thought: These guys do not look like they’re in a good mood.
Following dinner, Kerry met alone with Abbas while Erekat and Indyk
spoke in a separate room. Afterward, Kerry and Indyk got in the car that
would take them to their rooms at the Grande Hotel. The secretary
turned to his envoy: “That was really negative.” At around the same
time, Abbas, who was nursing a terrible cold, saw Erekat in the hall and
told him that he was going straight to sleep. “It was a difficult
meeting,” he said. “I’ll brief you tomorrow.”
The
next morning, at around 7:30, Indyk called Erekat. “The secretary wants
to see you,” he said. Erekat was surprised at the early time of the
summons. This must be important. He put on a
suit and took a cab to the Grande. When he and Indyk got to Kerry’s
Louis XIII-style suite, the secretary answered the door. He was dressed
casually: hotel slippers, no jacket or tie. He looked concerned. After a
moment of silence, the first words came out of Kerry’s mouth. “Why is
Abu Mazen so angry with me?”
Erekat responded that he hadn’t yet
been briefed on the meeting, so Kerry offered to get his notes. “I
barely said a word, and he started saying, ‘I cannot accept this,’”
Kerry grumbled, going through some of Abbas’s red lines.
“What do you want?” Erekat said. “These are his positions. We are sick and tired of Bibi the Great. He’s taking you for a ride.”
“No one takes me for a ride!”
“He is refusing to negotiate on a map or even say 1967.”
“I’ve moved him,” Kerry said, “I’ve moved him.”
“Where?” Erekat said, raising his voice. “Show me! This is just the impression he’s giving you.”
The next month, Abbas led a Palestinian
delegation to Washington. At a March 16 lunch at Kerry’s Georgetown
home, the secretary asked Abbas if he’d accept delaying the fourth
prisoner release by a few days. Kerry was worried that the Israelis were
wavering. “No,” Abbas said. “I cannot do this.” Abbas would later
describe that moment as a turning point. If the Americans can’t convince Israel to give me 26 prisoners, he thought then, how will they ever get them to give me East Jerusalem? At
the meal, Erekat noticed Abbas displaying some of his telltale signs of
discomfort. He was crossing his legs, looking over at him every two
minutes. The index cards on which he normally took notes had been placed
back in his suit pocket. Abbas was no longer interested in what was
being said.
The next day at the
White House, Obama tried his luck with the Palestinian leader. He
reviewed the latest American proposals, some of which had been tilted in
Abbas’s direction. (The document would now state categorically that
there would be a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem.) “Don’t quibble with
this detail or that detail,” Obama said. “The occupation will end. You
will get a Palestinian state. You will never have an administration as
committed to that as this one.” Abbas and Erekat were not impressed.
After the meeting, the Palestinian negotiator saw Susan Rice—Abbas’s favorite member of the Obama administration—in
the hall. “Susan,” he said, “I see we’ve yet to succeed in making it
clear to you that we Palestinians aren’t stupid.” Rice couldn’t believe
it. “You Palestinians,” she told him, “can never see the fucking big
picture.”
...
Like Kerry, Abbas felt that his
credibility was at stake. He had promised the Palestinian people that
the prisoners would be released on schedule, on March 29. But as the
date approached, that was looking less and less likely. So Abbas
continued working with Erekat on what he was calling “the Palestinian
nuclear option.” He even put a timer on it: If Israel didn’t vote to
release the fourth tranche by seven o’clock on the evening of April 1,
Abbas would formally resume the U.N. bid in a grand ceremony at the
muqata.
The night before that
deadline, Kerry was supposed to meet Abbas at nine o’clock in Ramallah,
but as of eleven, there was no sign of him. Erekat called the U.S.
consul-general, who told him that Kerry was meeting with Netanyahu, and
that it was running long. Abbas wanted to sleep, so he dispatched Erekat
and Faraj to meet Kerry after midnight in Jerusalem. In his suite at
the David Citadel, Kerry promised Erekat that the Israeli government
would vote on the fourth prisoner release the following day.
“When?” Erekat pressed.
Kerry was peeved that Erekat was insisting on a specific hour. “Before noon,” he said.
Noon
passed without a vote. Then one o’clock, then two, then three. Making
matters worse, Israel’s Housing Ministry approved 708 new homes for a
disputed neighborhood in East Jerusalem that afternoon. Abbas was
nearing the end of his patience.
Around seven o'clock, he sat in his office with Erekat and Faraj. “Have you heard any word from the Israelis?” he asked Erekat.
“No,” Erekat replied. “Not a word.”
“How about you?” he asked Faraj, who gave the same answer.
The U.N.-ceremony attendees were taking their seats down the hall. “Let’s give them another half-hour,” he said.
Livni
had no idea what was happening inside the muqata. She was sitting in
the hall outside Netanyahu’s office, along with many other people,
waiting for her turn to speak to the prime minister. But shortly before
eight, she got a bad feeling: Everyone around her started receiving text
messages, all at once. An aide turned on the television. There, beneath
the Jerusalem panorama at the same table from which he had first
lobbied his peers to resume talks nine months earlier, Abbas declared to
a roomful of officials and VIPs that “the Palestinian leadership has
unanimously approved a decision to seek membership of fifteen U.N.
conventions and international treaties.”
“This is our right,” he continued.“All
we get from the Israeli government is talk.” As Abbas took out his pen
to sign the U.N. conventions, with Erekat at his side, the room gave him
a standing ovation.
Earlier
that afternoon, while Abbas and Erekat were watching the clock at the
muqata, Netanyahu sat in his office, taking meeting after meeting.
First, he would invite in Livni and Kerry’s team to discuss the
coalescing Pollard-for-prisoners-for-talks deal. Then, he would bring in
a group of pro-settler politicians led by Housing Minister Uri Ariel to
calm their nerves about the impending settlement freeze. Wow, Ariel thought each time he passed Livni in the doorway, it’s like we’re doing shifts.
Livni
was pressing Netanyahu for an immediate vote on the deal. “Everything
is ready,” she said, “just get the ministers here.” Netanyahu, however,
was working with Kerry on an exchange of letters that would make
everything official. Kerry, meanwhile, was waiting on White House
approval of a single paragraph—the Pollard
paragraph. But Rice’s staff was still engaged in frantic negotiations
with Israeli officials over the particulars: when Pollard would go free,
where he could travel, what he could say. Though Netanyahu had promised
Kerry the night before that he would hold the vote today, he had told
Kerry and Indyk earlier that morning that he wanted to wait one more to
prepare Israeli public opinion. Indyk was incredulous. “Mr. Prime
Minister,” he said, “you are playing with fire.”
The
Israeli right was also in rebellion mode, with Likud officials vowing
to resign and Bennett again threatening to leave the government if the
fourth tranche was released. As Netanyahu pressed the merits of the
extension deal to Ariel and his hard-right allies during one of their
shifts, one of his aides entered the room: “Mr. Prime Minister, Abu
Mazen has just signed fifteen U.N. conventions.” Netanyahu froze. For
years, he had feared that the Palestinians might join the International
Criminal Court and lodge war-crimes charges against Israeli officials.
“Which conventions?” he asked. After several minutes of confusion, one
of the people in the room managed to locate a list. Chuckling, he told
the others that the Palestinians—the Palestinians—had signed the anti-corruption charter. The room burst into laughter.
Erekat,
who for months had been urging Abbas to blow up the talks, was as giddy
as the settlers. That night, Indyk summoned Erekat to the U.S.
Consul-General’s home in Jerusalem. The moment the Palestinian
negotiator walked in the door, Indyk began yelling. “Don’t act
surprised, Martin,” Erekat said, grinning. “You told me nine times in
four days that the prisoners were about to be released.” (The Americans
dispute Erekat’s number, claiming that they had told the Palestinians
the prisoner-release vote was imminent only three or four times.) Indyk
asked Erekat when the U.N. letters of accession would be submitted. He
replied that the local U.N. representative would receive them the
following morning at nine. “Please delay it,” Indyk said. “Just for
twenty-four hours, hold it back.”
While
Erekat and Indyk were going back and forth, Erekat’s phone rang. It was
Livni. “OK,” she said, “so you had your little show. Now hold back the
documents. We have a deal to extend the talks. The prisoners can go out
in forty-eight hours, and then we can get to substance. Don’t destroy
this.” Erekat told her that he was with the Americans and would have to
call back. The following morning, he sent her a text message. “It’s a
done deal,” he wrote. “We just handed in the documents.”
Over
the next three weeks, with April 29 approaching, Indyk would meet nine
times with Livni, Molho, Erekat, and Faraj in a bid to salvage the peace
talks. He was determined to get everything in writing this time. No
more misunderstandings. And by April 23, the sides seemed close to an
extension agreement. Indyk drove to Ben Gurion Airport that day to pick
up his wife, and while at the baggage claim, he got a call from Livni.
She’d heard that the Palestinians had just done something to ruin all
the progress they had made. Indyk immediately phoned Erekat, who said he
wasn’t aware of the development, but would investigate. Back at the
U.S. consulate, the Kerry team was combing over the details of the
emerging deal, with the secretary calling periodically to check in.
Soon, the news penetrated their office, too. Weeks earlier, they had
been surprised by the timing of Abu Mazen’s U.N. ceremony, but not by
the act. The Palestinians had put them on notice. But as the American
officials huddled around a desktop computer, hungry for actual details
about this rumor they were hearing, they couldn’t believe the headline
that now flashed across the screen: FATAH, HAMAS END YEARS OF DIVISON,
AGREE TO UNITY GOVERNMENT.The next day, the Israeli Cabinet had voted to suspend the talks. John Kerry’s peace process was over.
The only surprising things about this were (a) that the Americans apparently were willing to release Jonathan Pollard just for an extension of the talks (okay, yes that would have been sensible, but there hasn't been a lot of common sense in Pollard's case, only vindictiveness) and (b) how amateurish some of Kerry's behavior was.
But it's a good story....
Labels: Abu Mazen, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, John Kerry, Jonathan Pollard, Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process, Saeb Erekat, Tzipi Livni, Yitzchak Molho
What a shock: Newsweek reporter who accused Israel of 'unprecedented spying' 'has a history'
What a surprise. Jeff Stein, the Newsweek reporter who accused Israel of 'unprecedented spying' on the US - including a claim that an Israeli agent was
caught in an air conditioning duct at Jerusalem's King David Hotel (pictured) - '
has a history' of anti-Israel activity.
Last year, in his blog SpyTalk, Stein commented on the potential nomination
of then-Congresswoman Jane Harman to head the CIA: “Congress is already
Israeli-occupied territory. The last thing Washington needs is to cede
another settlement in Langley.” The idea that Israel or Jews control or
occupy the American government is common trope of anti-Semites.
The problem with Stein’s reporting isn’t limited to his own
judgments, but also his choice of sources. One source he used is Philip
Giraldi. Giraldi is a writer for the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based anti-Israel organization. In one of his recent analyses,
Giraldi referred to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as an
“Israel-firster,” adopting the language of those who consider supporters
of Israel to be suspect of disloyalty to the U.S.
Another source for Stein is a website, the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep). The website describes
one of sections the “Israel Lobby Archive” as documenting “one of the
most harmful forces driving policy formulation in the U.S. political
process.”
Stein, in his own words and his choice of sources, shows himself to
be not merely a critic of Israel but someone who believes that support
for Israel is inimical to the interests of the United States.
For those wondering about the air conditioning duct story, the hotel manager assures us that
a cat could not fit in there.
Labels: Al Gore, Amos Yadlin, anti-Israel media bias, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Edward Snowden, Jonathan Pollard, spying
Steinitz blasts Newsweek accusations
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz has blasted reports in Newsweek accusing Israel of spying on the United States, and has asked
who is seeking to harm relations between the two countries.
Media reports surfaced last week that Israel’s intelligence operations
in the US are “unrivaled and unseemly,” extending to surveillance of
senior White House officials.
...
Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz, who holds the
intelligence portfolio in the Netanyahu government, accused “someone of
trying to maliciously and intentionally harm relations between Israel
and the United States.”
Steinitz “unequivocally” denied the report, featured in Newsweek magazine, as having “no basis” in fact.
But
the initial report was followed by one that detailed alleged US
efforts to “cover up” Israel’s spying on then vice president Al Gore in
1998. It claimed that the US Secret Service caught an Israeli “agent”
in an air duct in the process of bugging the vice president’s hotel
room.
Since National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden
leaked classified documents on American intelligence tactics, President
Barack Obama has suggested that the US spies on its allies – with the
tacit understanding being that the practice is mutual.
Publicly,
Obama has drawn the line at spying on foreign leaders, after
revelations that the US had tapped the cellphone of German Chancellor
Angela Merkel. But the US president has said that foreign allies would
conduct greater surveillance if they had the capability to do so.
...
Former Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin also dismissed the allegations.
“Israel
is certainly not spying in the United States,” Yadlin said. “This is a
former Military Intelligence head telling you this. If you bring all
of the past Military Intelligence chiefs from the past 29 years, since
the of [the arrest of Jonathan] Pollard, or the past heads of the
Mossad, they will tell you the same .”
Yadlin said he expects the
leaders of the US intelligence community to address the American
public in response to the report, and to “either say that this is
baseless, or present facts.”
You don't think the Obama administration would cook up something like this to cover for the fact that they have spied on every country in the world, do you?
Labels: Al Gore, Amos Yadlin, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Edward Snowden, Jonathan Pollard, spying, Yuval Steinitz
'No, no, no, I will not let him go'
Dry Bones hits it on the head again. Sad, but true. King Hussein will not let him go.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Dry Bones, Jonathan Pollard
No majority in cabinet for Pollard for terrorists exchange
'
Moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen's
refusal to condemn Monday's
terror attack near Hebron (no, the attack itself was not enough) has resulted in Prime Minister Netanyahu 'losing' a cabinet majority for the exchange of more than 400 'Palestinian' terrorists, including 'Israeli Arabs,' and a 'settlement freeze,' for
American hostage Jonathan Pollard and an extension of the 'talks.'
The deal had a majority among the 23 members of the cabinet, thanks to
support from Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Strategic
Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz, all of the Likud, five ministers from
Yesh Atid, two from Hatnua and two from Yisrael Beytenu.
But Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch of Yisrael Beytenu
surprised Netanyahu’s associates when he told Army Radio that he opposes
extending the negotiations if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas does not publicly condemn Monday’s terrorist attack that killed
senior police officer Baruch Mizrachi.
...
“If Abu Mazen [Abbas] does not condemn the attack fiercely in Arabic,
there is no point in continuing the talks,” said Aharonovitch, whose
vote would be crucial to pass the deal.
Multiple Likud ministers are said to be wavering over whether to support
the deal. A group of Likud mayors in Judea and Samaria wrote the
party’s ministers on Thursday urging them to oppose the agreement.
“We call upon you to declare that more murderers and terrorists will not
be freed and there will be no more talks with the Palestinian
Authority, which has proven that it supports, organizes and funds
terrorism,” the mayors wrote the ministers in a letter.
Bayit Yehudi chairman Naftali Bennett has threatened to remove his party
from Netanyahu’s coalition if Israeli- Arab prisoners are released in
the deal.
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman said he would vote against it
but he would give Aharonovitch and Immigration and Absorption Minister
Sofa Landver the right to vote in favor.
Hmmm.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Avigdor Lieberman, Binyamin Netanyahu, Jonathan Pollard, Middle East peace process, Naftali Bennett, Palestinian terrorism, Palestinian terrorists
No hostage release without 'Israeli Arab' terrorists
American hostage
Jonathan Pollard will not be released, and the 'peace talks' will not be resumed, unless Israel releases 'Israeli Arab' terrorists. Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett has threatened to withdraw his party from the government if it votes to release 'Israeli Arab' terrorists.
A senior Israeli government official told Channel 2 Saturday
that, despite the ultimatum of Jewish Home (Bayit Yehudi) Chairman
Naftali Bennett to leave the government over the issue, "there will be
no deal [for peace talks to resume or free Jonathan Pollard] if
Israeli-Arab terrorists are not released."
Official progress on peace talks from Israel remains somewhat murky,
with no unilateral declaration that a deal has or has not been made.
But several top officials from left-wing or center-left parties -
including HaTnua, Labor, and Yesh Atid - have threatened to leave the
government entirely and go to elections in the event that a deal is not
struck between Israel, the US, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) to
continue the peace process.
If there was any prospect of the 'talks' leading anywhere, there might at least be something to discuss. But given that nearly everyone admits that the 'peace process' is going nowhere, why bother?
Labels: Israeli Arab, Jonathan Pollard, Middle East peace process, Naftali Bennett, Palestinian terrorists
Jewish Home to quit government?
Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett is
threatening to quit the government (and take his party with him) in the event that it approves the release of hundreds of terrorists - including 'Israeli Arabs' - and a 'settlement freeze' in exchange for continuing 'talks' and the release of Jonathan Pollard.
"Israel has been facing a new situation in recent days with the
Palestinian appeal to the UN which flagrantly violated all the
agreements with them since the Oslo Accords until today,” said Bennett.
“The emerging deal, if it includes the release of murderers with
Israeli citizenship, harms Israeli sovereignty, and not only that - it
is done being when the Palestinians have not cancelled their requests to
join international organizations,” he added.
"Therefore, if a proposal for release of Israeli murderers comes
before the Cabinet, the Jewish Home will oppose it,” Bennett declared.
“If the proposal will pass - the Jewish Home will resign from the
government, which frees murderers with Israeli citizenship. Enough is
enough.
“On this evening of Passover, it is important to remember that we
went from slavery to freedom so we that we can have an Israeli legal
system which will protect the citizens of Israel - not a system that is
being blackmailed by a gang of terrorists and which releases murderers,”
said Bennett. “This is an act of extortion and surrender to terrorism
which we cannot accept.
“I wish the citizens of Israel a Happy Passover, and I hope that our
brother Jonathan Pollard will be released soon, but not in the immoral
way that is this currently being suggested,” he concluded.
The Jerusalem Post reported last week that
Bennett had issued similar threats to Netanyahu then but had purposely confined them to private conversations with the prime minister. When
talks became more serious on Thursday, Bennett upgraded his threat to a public warning.
Anonymous 'Likud officials' are telling Bennett to
go right ahead and leave.
"We are not keeping anybody in the government by force," the officials declared.
"This is a well-known method used by Bennett: to make threats when it
is clear to him that they are false threats that will not come to
fruition," they added.
But other Likud officials, who were speaking on the record, had
a very different take.
Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin warned Netanyahu on Thursday not
to return to a diplomatic deal that would involve the mass release of
terrorist murderers and restraining construction in Judea and Samaria,
if the Palestinians did not withdraw their petitions to join UN bodies.
Signing
such a deal under the current conditions could cause political shock
waves and lead to elections, the deputy minister said.
Elkin thus
became the first high-ranking Likud politician to warn of early
elections, four days after Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman
spoke at Sunday’s Jerusalem Post Conference in New York about the possibility of Israel going to the polls.
“Returning
to the deal would project weakness and give the Palestinians a reward
for their stubbornness,” Elkin said. “It would result in them attacking
Israel internationally even more. We cannot turn the other cheek when
they spit at us in the face. Surrendering to Palestinian hostility has
only brought upon us disasters.”
Deputy Defense Minister Danny
Danon (Likud) said he intends to resign from his post if a diplomatic
arrangement to extend the talks with the Palestinians is reached. But
other politicians are not expected to follow suit, because the deal
would be softened by the inclusion of Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard.
According to a new poll, the Likud would gain in new elections... but so would
Jewish Home.
The Dialogue Institute survey, published in Friday morning's Haaretz,
shows that Jewish Home would tie with Labor as the second-biggest party
in the Israeli government, in the event that elections were held
today.
Likud-Beytenu would receive 37 seats - compared to 32 in a previous
poll, the survey reveals. Meanwhile Jewish Home would receive 15, as
opposed to 12 in the last poll. Likewise Labor would receive 15 seats,
down from 16 in the last poll.
Yesh Atid would remain stable from the last poll at 14 seats, and
both Shas and Meretz would drop a seat from the previous poll, from 10
to 9. United Torah Judaism would gain an extra seat, for a total of 7,
Hatnua would lose two seats and have only 3, instead of 5 in the last
poll, and Kadima would not pass the threshold.
All of the Arab parties would retain their previous projected number of seats: Raam-Taal - 5, Hadash - 4, and Balad - 3.
Yes, but if these were the results, Likud, Labor and Yesh Atid could make a coalition without anyone else (assuming that Likud's MK's were willing to stay on board)....
As for American hostage Jonathan Pollard, yes, he could be released over the weekend.
Well-placed sources involved in efforts to bring about Pollard’s
release said they were cautiously optimistic about the diplomatic
developments and were hoping to welcome him home to Jerusalem. His
medical condition required him to leave prison and seek urgent medical
care in Israel, they said.
Should Pollard be allowed to fly to
Israel in time for the Passover Seder, the last El Al flight that would
arrive in time departs from New York at 7 p.m. local time on Sunday.
Using a private plane or the government of Israel sending an airplane
are also possibilities.
Hmmm....
I sure hope Bennett doesn't leave the government before the seder. He'd ruin a lot of really good Torah for the seder if he did.... והמבין יבין.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli elections, Jewish Home party, Jonathan Pollard, Likud party, Middle East peace process, Naftali Bennett, Palestinian terrorists, settlement freeze, Yesh Atid party
Ouch! Time to wake up John!
CBS's Ben Stein PWN's US Secretary of State John FN Kerry for his handling of the 'peace process.'
Let's go to the videotape.
Transcript
here.
Excellent.
Labels: gestures, Israel's right to exist, John Kerry, Jonathan Pollard, Middle East peace process, unilateral concessions
'I was against Pollard's release before I was for it'
In 1999, 60 US Senators sent a letter to then-President Bill Clinton urging him not to free hostage Jonathan Pollard. One of those Senators was the current Secretary of State,
John FN Kerry.
In January 1999, a bipartisan group of senators sent a strongly worded
letter to President Bill Clinton urging him not to commute the prison
sentence of Jonathan Pollard, who was then in the 12th year of a life
sentence for spying for Israel. Freeing Pollard, the lawmakers said,
would "imply a condonation of spying against the United States by an
ally," would overlook the "enormity" of Pollard's offenses and the
damage he had caused to national security, and would undermine the
United States' ability to share secrets with foreign governments. Among
the 60 signatories of the letter was John Kerry, then a senator from
Massachusetts. Fifteen years later, Kerry is singing a very different
tune.
...
Kerry wasn't alone in opposing Pollard's release in 1999, when the issue
was similarly under consideration as a possible sweetener for Israel
during its on-again, off-again talks with the Palestinians. Kerry's
allies at the time included then-Sen. Chuck Hagel, now the secretary of
defense, as well as Dianne Feinstein, the current chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee; Mitch McConnell, the current Senate minority
leader; John McCain, a former Republican nominee for president; and
Patrick Leahy, now the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Kerry and Hagel in particular now find themselves in the awkward
position of serving in an administration that is considering letting
Pollard go, exactly the outcome they once railed against. A spokesperson
for Hagel said, "The secretary will keep private his counsel for the
president." A spokesperson for Kerry wouldn't discuss details of any
negotiations. Neither Hagel's nor Kerry's spokesperson addressed the
positions they'd taken in 1999. White House spokesperson Jay Carney said
Tuesday that Obama, who has the sole authority to commute Pollard's
sentence or grant him a pardon, "has not made a decision" on the
question.
The signatories largely had strong pro-Israel voting records, but their
contempt for Pollard crossed party lines and was striking in its
ferocity. "Any grant of clemency would now be viewed as an acquiescence
to external political pressures and a vindication of Pollard's specious
claims of unfairness and victimization.... This would send the wrong
signal to employees within the Intelligence Community. It is an
inviolable principle that those entrusted with America's secrets must
protect them, without exception, irrespective of their own personal
views or sympathies."
Hmmm.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Chuck Hagel, Dianne Feinstein, John Kerry, John McCain, Jonathan Pollard
Kerry's fool's errand over?
The New York Times White House officials are divided over whether the 'Palestinian' applications to join fifteen United Nations agencies spell the end of US Secretary of State John FN Kerry's
fool's errand.
Still,
a senior American official said Mr. Kerry’s decision not to return to
the region immediately reflected a growing impatience in the White
House, which believes that his mediating efforts have reached their
limit and that the two sides need to work their way out of the current
impasse.
In
announcing the moves on Tuesday, Mr. Abbas said, “This is our right.”
He has been under pressure from other Palestinian leaders and the public
to leverage the nonmember observer-state status they won at the United
Nations in 2012 to join a total of 63 international bodies.
“We
do not want to use this right against anybody or to confront anybody,”
he said, as he signed the membership applications live on Palestinian
television. “We don’t want to collide with the U.S. administration. We
want a good relationship with Washington because it helped us and
exerted huge efforts. But because we did not find ways for a solution,
this becomes our right.”
...
While
the Palestinians’ pursuit of the international route is widely viewed
as a poison pill for the peace talks, Mr. Abbas and Mr. Kerry held out
hope on Tuesday night that they could still be salvaged. The agencies
Mr. Abbas moved to join include the Geneva and Vienna Conventions and
those dealing with women’s and children’s rights.
“It
is completely premature tonight to draw any kind of judgment, certainly
any kind of final judgment, about today’s events and where things are,”
Mr. Kerry told reporters in Brussels, where he was meeting with NATO foreign ministers on the Ukrainian crisis.
“I’m
not going to get into the who, why, what, when, where, how of why we’re
where we are today,” he added. “The important thing is to keep the
process moving and find a way to see whether the parties are prepared to
move forward.”
...
While
Middle East analysts widely praised Mr. Kerry’s determination, many
thought he was on a fool’s errand. He long ago abandoned his original
goal of achieving a final-status agreement within nine months, and in
recent weeks he even de-emphasized his proposed framework of core
principles for a deal, focusing instead simply on extending the
timetable.
“It’s
a process leading nowhere,” Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster and
political scientist, said on Tuesday morning. “The basic compromises
that this Israeli government is willing to endorse are unacceptable to
the majority of the Palestinians.” He added, “There is no chance.”
Daniel
C. Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel, said: “All of the
indications are that this is moribund. We’re now into Plan B, which has
two parts: the blame game, which is well underway, and a last-ditch
effort by the United States not to have the collapse lead to violence.”
Israeli officials remained silent about Mr. Abbas’s move Tuesday night. A
spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to discuss it,
or how it might affect the deal that had emerged earlier in the day to
continue the talks for at least another nine months.
There's a list of the agencies (mostly agreements actually) that the 'Palestinians' have applied to join
here. Earlier, Israel Radio reported that the 'Palestinians' had not yet filed the applications. That one wasn't true either. What could go wrong?
Labels: Abu Mazen, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, John Kerry, Jonathan Pollard, Middle East peace process, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome, United Nations
Report: Pollard willing to be released but Congress opposed
Contrary to a
report I cited on Tuesday, the head of a campaign to free Jonathan Pollard says that Pollard would be
willing to go free in exchange for 'Palestinian' terrorists.
Aaron Troodler, a spokesman for the campaign to free Pollard, told
The Daily Beast Tuesday, "Jonathan Pollard would not reject the
commutation of his sentence. The deal that is currently being discussed
is by no means a quid pro quo, rather it’s a gesture being made by the
United States to Israel. The fact is this is not a tit for tat. It’s
part of a larger agreement."
But that is not how other prominent Jewish groups that have supported
freeing Pollard, a former civilian intelligence analyst who was
sentenced to life in prison for spying on the United States on behalf of
Israel, see it.
But some members of Congress are opposed to giving up
American's hostage.
Pollard’s potential release faces stiff opposition on Capitol Hill, where both Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein
and ranking Republican Saxby Chambliss told The Daily Beast Tuesday
that releasing Pollard at this stage was a bad idea and they would
oppose it.
Feinstein said releasing Pollard simply in exchange for a
continuation of negotiations was not appropriate, given his crimes and
the lack of a real deal between the two parties.
“This was a major betrayal and I’ve followed it over the years. It’s
one thing if there’s an agreement. It’s another thing totally if there
isn’t,” she said.
In other words, Feinstein admits that Pollard is being held hostage, but the price being offered for him isn't high enough.
And Chambliss?
Chambliss is opposed to releasing Pollard altogether. “I think he’s done
a lot of harm to America and I just don’t think he should be released,”
the two-term Georgia Republican told The Daily Beast.
At least he's consistent.... Apparently someone forgot to tell Chambliss that Pollard is now a hostage.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what the Senate or the House think of releasing Pollard - now or ever. The President has the exclusive power to pardon anyone - including Pollard. And Pollard's sentence is scheduled to end late in 2015 either way.
Two other Senators came out in favor of releasing Pollard on the merits of the case: Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and John McCain (R-Az). Note especially what McCain says.
Sen. Chuck Schumer told The Daily Beast Tuesday that he supported Pollard's release, based simply on the merits of the case.
“I think he did a very bad thing. He deserved to serve some time in
jail. The amount of time he served in jail is disproportionate,” the New
York Democrat said.
As for whether Pollard’s release should be linked to the peace
process or Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners, Schumer said,
“That I’m not going to get into.”
Sen. John McCain said Tuesday that he supports releaing Pollard on
the merits of the case but the administration must not link the release
to the ongoing peace process.
"It's disgusting," he said. "I favor his release, I think he's served
long enough, but to be used in this fashion, it's disgraceful."
Yes, it is.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Charles Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, John Kerry, John McCain, Jonathan Pollard, Palestinian terrorists
ADL slams Obama for tying Pollard release to 'peace talks'
It was not the
first time that Anti-Defamation League national director Abe Foxman has spoken out against the injustice being perpetrated on Jonathan Pollard. And while I wish that
today's statement would be the final time that Foxman has to speak on the issue, it likely won't be.
Jonathan Pollard has served out his
punishment for his crime, and given the 28 years that have passed, the
decline of his health, and his potential eligibility for parole in
another year, now is the time for the United States to release him, both
on humanitarian grounds and in light of the important bilateral
relationship between Israel and the United States.
While the time has come for clemency,
Pollard’s release should not be intertwined with any potential
resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. There are enormous
complications to the current negotiations now taking place between the
Israelis, the Palestinians and the United States, without introducing
this factor as another issue on the table.
We hope that the Obama Administration
will take the step of releasing Pollard on humanitarian grounds without
seeing him as a potential “bargaining chip” to pressure Israel to
continue to negotiate in the absence of a true commitment on behalf of
the Palestinians to make the difficult choices and decisions that would
facilitate a lasting peace with the State of Israel.
Well, yeah. But the odds of Obama listening are somewhere between slim and none. They're willing to do ANYTHING to save these meaningless talks. They're even willing to give up their hostage.
Labels: Abe Foxman, Barack Hussein Obama, Jonathan Pollard, Middle East peace process, Palestinian terrorists
