Israel Matzav

Usual suspects blast Israel

If you want to get an idea of the kind of visceral hatred for Israel that exists in the American national security establishment, have a look at this piece in Politico from Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank Carlucci, Lee Hamilton, Carla A. Hills, Thomas Pickering and Henry Siegman (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News). With the exception of Siegman, who is just another self-hating Jew, and Hamilton, who is a former Congressman, the rest are all former Secretaries of State and/or National Security Advisers.  

The word 'terror' doesn't appear in this piece. To give you a flavor, this is how they dismiss Israel's security concerns:

The United States has allowed the impression that it supports a version of Israel’s security that entails Israeli control of all of Palestine’s borders and part of its territory, including the Jordan Valley. Many former heads of Israel’s top intelligence agencies, surely among the best informed in the country about the country’s security needs, have rejected this version of Israel’s security. Meir Dagan, a former head of the Mossad, dismissed it as “nothing more than manipulation.”

Israel’s confiscation of what international law has clearly established as others’ territory diminishes its security. Illegal West Bank land grabs only add to the Palestinian and the larger Arab sense of injustice that Israel’s half-century-long occupation has already generated, and fuels a revanchismthat sooner or later will trigger renewed violence. No Palestinian leader could or would ever agree to a peace accord that entails turning over the Jordan Valley to Israeli control, either permanently or for an extended period of time, thus precluding a peace accord that would end Israel’s occupation. The marginal improvement in Israel’s security provided by these expansive Israeli demands can hardly justify the permanent subjugation and disenfranchisement of a people to which Israel refuses to grant citizenship in the Jewish state.

Here's a very different perspective on Israel's national security.

Let's go to the videotape.



More here.

One more point. Get a load of this:

Although Palestinians have conceded fully half of the territory assigned to them in the U.N.’s Partition Plan of 1947, a move Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, has hailed as unprecedented, they are not demanding a single square foot of Israeli territory beyond the June 6, 1967, line.

Labels: 1947 partition plan, Israel's critical security needs, Jordan Valley, Lee Hamilton, self-hating Jews, Zbigniew Brzezinski

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:39 PM 1 comments

The usual suspects urge Obama to 'rethink' sanctions against Iran

A panel of former State Department officials, including several who recently left the Obama administration, is urging President Obama to 'rethink' sanctions against Iran, arguing that they are only hurting the Iranian people and turning them against the United States. No kidding.

In a report issued by the Iran Project, the former diplomats and experts suggested that the sanctions policy, rather than bolstering diplomacy, may be backfiring. As the pressure has increased, the group concluded, sanctions have “contributed to an increase in repression and corruption within Iran” and “may be sowing the seeds of long-term alienation between the Iranian people and the United States.”

The critique comes as both Israel and Congress are urging the administration to go in the opposite direction, to put a sharp time limit on negotiations and, if necessary, to go beyond the financial and oil sanctions that have caused a tremendous drop in the value of the Iranian currency and sent inflation soaring.

“I fundamentally believe that the balance between sanctions and diplomacy has been misaligned,” said Thomas R. Pickering, who was one of the State Department’s highest-ranking career diplomats and whom the department has called on to head up important investigations, including one into the death last fall of the American ambassador to Libya.

In an interview, Mr. Pickering also contended that Mr. Obama should review the covert program against Iran — which has included computer sabotage of its nuclear facilities — to “stop anything that is peripheral, that is not buying us much time” in slowing Iran’s progress. The report itself, however, says nothing about the sabotage effort, which has been a major element of the American strategy.

Mr. Pickering, who is such a towering figure in the State Department that a major program to train young diplomats is named for him, is not the only prominent signatory of the report. Others include Lee H. Hamilton, who was a leader of the commission on the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and serves on Mr. Obama’s intelligence advisory board; Anne-Marie Slaughter, the director of policy planning during Mr. Obama’s first term; and Ryan C. Crocker, who served in many prominent ambassadorial positions. Former Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, an early mentor to Mr. Obama in the Senate, was among the Republican signatories.

The sanctions aren't working. They're being violated right and left, and there are more (meaningful) countries with exemptions than there are countries abiding by them. As severe as they can be made, they will never stop Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and his team made a mistake going along too zealously with the Obama administration to give the sanctions a chance. It's now time to correct that mistake. It's now time for Israel to tell the truth: That the only way to stop Iran is militarily.

In two earlier posts, I reported that within 3-4 months, the United States will be unable to take meaningful military action against Iran, and that Iran is actually speeding up its nuclear program. It is indeed time to 'rethink' the sanctions and to move on to stronger measures.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran, Lee Hamilton

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:47 AM 1 comments

January 20, 2013?

Elliott Abrams reports on an open letter to President Obama issued by a number of former American policymakers (Hat Tip: Gershon D). The letter's signers include Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lee Hamilton, Frank Carlucci, Thomas Pickering, Sandra Day O’Connor, and James Wolfensohn, among others, and was apparently initiated by former Republican Congressman Lee Hamilton (Indiana), who is signed on the cover letter that accompanied it.

The letter blames Israel entirely for the current impasse in 'negotiations,' and calls for imposing a 'settlement' on Israel. It sets out the following six points (I have left Elliott's commentary in):

(1) “The United States will oppose any effort to challenge or undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel within internationally recognized borders,” which suggests that we will not oppose undermining Israel today or tomorrow, when it has no such borders.

(2) “The United States will work for the establishment of a sovereign and viable Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, subject only to agreed, minor and equal land swaps to take into account areas adjoining the former Green Line heavily populated by Israelis .  .  .” President Obama’s suggestion of using the 1967 lines as a base was not enough, and the United States should further undermine Israel’s negotiating position by demanding that any swaps be “minor” and that any settlement not right on the Green Line, such as Ariel (population 18,000), be abandoned.

(3) Any solution to the refugee problem cannot flood Israel with Arabs and destroy its character as a Jewish state, so that “proposals for unlimited entry of Palestinian refugees into the State of Israel will be opposed by the United States.” But this formulation of course suggests that proposals for “limited entry” would not be opposed, meaning that an Israeli policy of refusing any such entry is likely to be viewed as obstructionist—yet another Israeli obstacle to peace.

(4) As part of a peace agreement, “the United States will support the presence of a U.S.-led multinational force to oversee security provisions and border crossings.” It is a surprise to see this proposal for yet another overseas military commitment at a time when there is so much pressure for withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan and Iraq and cuts in the defense budget. And given the nature of the terrorist threat to Israel, how an effective multinational force could be organized is mysterious. In an analogous situation, the international force in Lebanon has failed completely to restrain or disarm Hezbollah.

(5) Jerusalem will be divided between Israel and Palestine and “each side” will control its own holy places. Among many other problems, what this means for the Christian holy places and the entire Armenian Quarter is not specified.

(6) “The United States will encourage the reconciliation of Fatah and Hamas on terms compatible with these principles and UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338.” So there is no precise call for Hamas to adhere to the Quartet Principles, requiring it to abandon terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and adhere to previous agreements. Instead, the United States will move from treating Hamas as a terrorist group, which it is a crime to support, to “encouraging” Fatah to reconcile with it.

Read the whole thing.

Here's where I break with Elliott. Elliott is dismissive of the possibility that President Obama could ever adopt this letter as policy.

These proposals would cause the president political damage, not political risk. Further damage would be caused were he ever to adopt not only these positions but in addition the threatening attitude that is proposed. In his cover letter, Lee Hamilton explains:

Prospects for the implementation of these principles depend entirely on an understanding by both parties that there are consequences for their rejection. .  .  . In his speech, President Obama omitted reference to consequences. We believe the cost-benefit calculations of neither party will be changed without that understanding.

So these are not to be American proposals, but an American ultimatum to Israel. It is striking that the toughest language, about “consequences” and changing Israel’s “cost-benefit calculations,” is found not in the letter to the president but only in the introductory description from Lee Hamilton. Whether all of the signers agree with this approach cannot be certain, but it must be assumed that all of this was hashed out in advance.

The analysis and the proposals made in this letter reveal that many of America’s most experienced former senior officials now blame Israel alone for the freeze in Middle East peace negotiations. And they believe that Israel should be forced into compromises and sacrifices under enormous American pressure, even if the vast majority of Israelis oppose them and view them as dangerous. This is, to use State Department terminology, “deeply disturbing,” even if the likelihood that any president would accept this advice is small.

But is the likelihood that the President might accept this advice really small? If God forbid Obama is re-elected, come January 20, 2013, he would have four years in office during which no real political damage could be done to him. He would never have to stand for re-election again. Sure, the Democrats could be punished at the polls in a 2014 midterm election, but we've already seen that in 2010, and it didn't seem to bother Obama too much.

Could Obama adopt this strategy of imposing a settlement in 2013? You bet he could - and I'd bet he would.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Elliott Abrams, imposed solution, Lee Hamilton

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:56 AM 7 comments