Israel Matzav

Indyk under fire for anti-Semitic tropes

It's been just five days since I reported that Martin Indyk attacked the Washington Free Beacon's Adam Kredo for using anonymous sources after having been one so often himself. Now, there's a much more serious and well-substantiated charge against Indyk: He's a Jewish anti-Semite.

Martin Indyk — who served as President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Israel and assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, followed by a stint as the Obama administration’s envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations — is being urged to clarify comments he made in a tape-recorded private conversation from 1989, in which he reportedly said Israelis are “paranoid,” “arrogant” and “think the rules of society do not apply [to them]” because “they are the goy’s rules.”

Indyk, who is Jewish himself, also reportedly applied this assessment to the character of Jews generally, saying that Jewish people “would do whatever they can to avoid paying taxes,” and believe it is justified to “find a way to ignore the law or get around it.” He added, “In my own family, my grandfather used to stay up nights to figure out how to avoid paying taxes.”

Professor Eunice G. Pollack, an historian of antisemitism and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of American Jewish History, told JNS.org that Indyk’s reported statements “echo three of the most infamous centuries-old tropes of antisemites.”

“You have an updated version of the classic ‘Jewish swindler,’ combined with the ‘disloyal Jew’ who evades his patriotic duty to pay taxes, and the millennia-old ‘arrogant Jew’ who, in a more religious era, was accused of deriving his arrogance from his partner, Satan,” said Pollack.

...

Indyk’s alleged comments were made while he was executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and were brought to light in 1995 by Amcha-the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, after Indyk was nominated as ambassador to Israel. At that time, neither the news media nor senators involved in his confirmation hearing gave the allegations any attention.

Indyk has not responded to multiple requests for comment by JNS.org.

This is not the first time Indyk’s remarks about Israel have drawn criticism.

Adam Kredo, a senior foreign policy writer for the Washington Free Beacon, told JNS.org that Indyk “is known among reporters for anonymously criticizing Israel in the press, for planting stories meant to pressure the Jewish state into making concessions [and for] leading the Obama administration’s efforts over the years to discredit Israel and blame it for the failure in peace talks.”

I'm sure that Indyk would say much worse about Israel and Jews today (I once watched him have a shouting match with several participants at the President's Conference in 2011). And I'm sure that $14 million donation from Qatar to the Brookings Institute, which Indyk heads, would have nothing to do with that. Of course not. It's why Qatar gave him the money in the first place.

Labels: Jewish anti-Semitism, Martin Indyk

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:03 PM 2 comments

This is rich: Frequently anonymous source blasts Beacon's Kredo for using anonymous sources

On Monday, Martin Indyk took to Twitter (which is not just a tool of the Trump campaign) to blast the Washington Free Beacon's Adam Kredo for using anonymous sources to attack Vice President Joe Biden for pressuring Ukraine to vote against Israel in last Friday's Security Council vote on 'settlements.'

Typical 'liberal' that he is, Indyk maintains a double standard: When he's the anonymous source, he wants to be protected, but when someone else uses an anonymous source, that's not okay.

Here are a couple of the instances in which it's come out over the last few years that Martin Indyk, now head of the Brookings Institution, which took $14 million from Qatar, and formerly US ambassador to Israel, has been caught being an anonymous source.

April 2014: Indyk orchestrates campaign to collapse peace talks

Meanwhile, the Washington Free Beacon's Adam Kredo blames it on the Americans, saying that the White House has had  a secret campaign to scapegoat Israel for the 'talks' failure.

Multiple sources told the Washington Free Beacon that top Obama administration officials have worked for the past several days to manufacture a crisis over the reissuing of housing permits in a Jerusalem neighborhood widely acknowledged as Israeli territory.

Senior State Department officials based in Israel have sought to lay the groundwork for Israel to take the blame for talks collapsing by peddling a narrative to the Israeli press claiming that the Palestinians were outraged over Israeli settlements, the Free Beacon has learned.

These administration officials have planted several stories in Israeli and U.S. newspapers blaming Israel for the collapse of peace talks and have additionally provided reporters with anonymous quotes slamming the Israeli government.

The primary source of these multiple reports has been identified as Middle East envoy Martin Indyk and his staff, according to these insiders, who said that the secret media campaign against Israel paved the way for Secretary of State John Kerry to go before Congress on Tuesday and publicly blame Israel for tanking the talks.

“The Palestinians didn’t even know they were supposed to be abandoning negotiations because of these housing permits, which are actually old, reissued permits for areas everyone assumes will end up on the Israelis’ side of the border anyway,” said one senior official at a U.S. based pro-Israel organization who asked to remain anonymous because the Obama administration has in the past retaliated against critics from inside the pro-Israel world.

“Then Martin Indyk started telling anyone who would listen that in fact the Palestinians were angry over the housing issue,” the source said. “Eventually, the Palestinians figured out it was in their interest to echo what the Americans were saying.”

We've known for a long time what a shmuck Indyk is, haven't we? He's also a member of the board of the New Israel Fund. Back to Kredo.

One former Israeli diplomat familiar with Indyk’s tactics said that he is a crass political player who has a history of planting negative stories about Israel in order to undermine the Netanyahu government and bolster his hand in the talks.

“I’ve seen this before and see his fingerprints,” said the source, who referenced a separate story two weeks ago in which U.S. government sources implied that newly installed Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer was not performing his job effectively.

“It’s certainly in Indyk’s interest now [to undermine the Israelis], but this was a game he also used to play when he was ambassador twice,” said the former diplomat. “This is part of Indyk’s playbook.”

“There was only one person who would do this kind of thing and it’s Martin Indyk and his staff,” the former diplomat added.

Another Washington-based source familiar with the talks said that Kerry’s peace team has a track record of trashing Israel anonymously.

“It’s one of the worst-kept secrets in Jerusalem that Kerry’s team leaks anti-Netanyahu quotes and claims to the Israeli press—not that is should be a mystery why Israeli reporters based in Israel keep producing anti-Bibi quotes from ‘American officials,’” the source said.

“But just imagine the outrage if the roles were reversed and Bibi had a team on the ground in D.C. trashing Obama to the Washington Post on background,” the source said.

May 2014: Indyk forced to resign after being pegged as anonymous source blaming Israel for collapse of peace talks 

Martin Indyk is going to resign from the leadership of the Obama-Kerry State Department's 'negotiating team' for the 'peace process' after being exposed as the source for Nachum Barnea's YNet story blaming Israel for the failure of the 'peace talks.'

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Indyk is considering resigning in light of President Barack Obama’s intention to suspend US involvement in seeking a negotiated end to the conflict, citing unnamed Israeli officials “who are close to the matter.” Indyk has informed the Brookings Institute that he will soon return to his vice president post, from which he took a leave of absence during the negotiations, Haaretz reported.

It also said Indyk is being identified in Jerusalem as the anonymous source in a report by Yedioth Aharonoth columnist Nahum Barnea on Friday in which unnamed American officials primarily blamed Israel for the failure of the peace talks.

“There are a lot of reasons for the peace effort’s failure, but people in Israel shouldn’t ignore the bitter truth – the primary sabotage came from the settlements,” the official told Barnea.

He's a bitter old man, isn't he?

In May 2014, Indyk went on a drunken tirade blaming Israel for the talks' collapse.

US chief Middle East negotiator bottle washer Martin Indyk went on a 30-minute anti-Israel rant at a Washington bar on Thursday night just before meeting with former Defense Minister and Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Indyk—who has been identified by the Washington Free Beacon as the source of a recent series of anonymous quotes in the press condemning Israel—was caught openly lashing out at Israel over drinks with several members of his staff and wife, Gahl Burt.

The conversation took place in the hotel bar at the Ritz-Carlton on Thursday night, shortly after Indyk finished delivering remarks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s (WINEP) annual gala.

While Indyk was critical of Israel in his public remarks, he and his staff are said to have let loose on the Jewish state over drinks before Indyk was scheduled to meet with former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

“The tone was nasty,” according to the source who overheard the conversation.

Indyk and his staff “openly blamed” conservative Israeli politician Naftali Bennett and others for “sabotaging the [peace] negotiations” by issuing permits for new Israeli housing blocks in Jerusalem.

“In the 30 minute conversation, no one at the table mentioned a single wrong thing the Palestinians had done,” according to the source who overheard the conversation. “There was no self-criticism whatsoever.”

Indyk’s staff also weighed in on the peace process, saying that while the press may believe that peace negotiations broke down over Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ unilateral bid for statehood at the United Nations, “they knew the truth and that [talks had broken down] way before that due to settlements,” according to the source.

“The staff relished how critical Indyk was of Israel in public speech,” the source said. “They laughed about it.”

Indyk also took aim at WINEP executive director Rob Satloff, who had moderated a question-and-answer session with Indyk earlier in the evening.

Indyk “was incredulous” that Satloff had offered an alternate explanation of the settlement issue, one that applied less blame to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Indyk told his crew that Satloff’s explanation “was just false” and that no one he knows believes it.

The conversation then turned to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, according to the source, who additionally provided a hand-drawn map of the bar area pinpointing Indyk’s location.

Indyk did not respond to emails requesting comments, and the State Department is denying that the conversation took place. But there are far too many details in this story.

Oh, by the way, in his younger days, Indyk was known as Arafat's yes-man, and the 'Palestinians' continually sought his participation in the last round of talks against Israeli opposition.

Thankfully, he is unlikely to play any role in a Trump administration. Good riddance.

Labels: Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process, two-state solution

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:08 PM 1 comments

Martin Indyk, Barak Ravid and Haaretz (and NPR) campaign to pin Rabin assassination on Netanyahu continues

Israel's Left, together with certain career 'diplomats' in the US State Department, have never relented in their efforts to pin the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin on Prime Minister (and then opposition leader) Binyamin Netanyahu. The latest assault comes from the publication by Barak Ravid and Haaretz of a 'secret' cable (published by uber-Leftist NPR) ostensibly sent by then-US Ambassador Martin Indyk to the State Department on the morning after the assassination more than 20 years ago. But before we even look at the cable, look at the inflammatory Haaretz English edition (the only edition that's read and it's read mostly outside Israel) headline: Indyk: At Funeral, Netanyahu Lamented That Assassination Made Rabin a Hero.

Indyk made the remarks in a Frontline documentary broadcast on PBS on Tuesday. Netanyahu was opposition leader at the time. 

"Netanyahu sat next to me when I was ambassador in Israel at the time of Rabin’s funeral," Indyk says in the film. " … I remember Netanyahu saying to me: 'Look, look at this. He’s a hero now, but if he had not been assassinated, I would have beaten him in the elections, and then he would have gone into history as a failed politician.”

Indyk said that he had the impression that "even at that moment of tremendous support, a tragic moment of support for Rabin, Netanyahu was thinking, well, politically he was on the ropes before he was assassinated."

Indyk's comments are reinforced by a telegram sent from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv on the morning after Rabin's assassination, a message that was exposed by Wikileaks a few years back. In the classified telegram that Indyk sent on November 5, 1995 at 10:15 A.M. to the White House and the State Department, he reported on a conversation that had taken place a few hours earlier between the State Department adviser at the embassy and Netanyahu. The Rabin assassination, Netanyahu is quoted as saying, is "a disaster for the Jewish people, a disaster for Israel and a disaster for the right, which will be decimated if elections are called soon."

Netanyahu's office denies that the conversation ever took place and says that Indyk fabricated it.

The Prime Minister's Office issued a “blanket denial,” saying that what Indyk said “never happened.”

The Likud issued a response to Indyk's statement saying that “this is another blatant lie by Indyk, who never stops discrediting and defaming” Netanyahu.

True that.

But what's also true is that the comments attributed to Netanyahu do reflect what the conventional wisdom here in Israel was shortly after the assassination: That it would turn Rabin into an icon (indeed, it has made criticizing the very premises of the Oslo Accords into heresy) and would decimate the Right the next time there were elections.

But instead of calling elections immediately as many in the Left urged Shimon Peres to do (link in Hebrew and discussed below),  Peres waited three and a half months to call elections, by which time the 'Palestinians' had committed two massive terror attacks here in Jerusalem against the number 18 bus on consecutive Sunday mornings followed by a massive terror attack on the eve of Purim at Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv.

The elections took place in late May, and shortly after Uzi Baram of the Labor party publicly thanked Arab voters for putting his party and the Left over the top, around 6:00 am on the morning after the elections, Netanyahu and the Likud suddenly and inexplicably pulled ahead and went on to victory.

Much of that is in - or is alluded to - in the Hebrew version of Ravid's article, which has far more than the English version. The Hebrew version reports that on the morning of Rabin's funeral, the Left was behaving every bit as politically expediently as the Right, urging Peres to call elections. And the Hebrew version reports that Yasser Arafat was decimated by Rabin's assassination (no other event shook him as much except for the 1988 assassination of his top aide - Abu Jihad - allegedly by Israeli commandos led by Ehud Barak in Tunis), believing correctly that Peres would not be strong enough or have close enough connections to the IDF to give the 'Palestinians' their reichlet.

The Hebrew version of Haaretz also reports that Arafat gave orders to the 'Palestinians' to 'minimize' celebrations of Rabin's assassination and shooting in the air (an order that Arafat did not give on 9/11 by the way).

Not the first time that Haaretz has told a lot more in Hebrew than it did in English.  For those who read Hebrew, read the whole thing. I don't have time to translate it.

Labels: 9/11, Binyamin Netanyahu, Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process, Palestinian terrorism, Shimon Peres, Wikileaks, Yitzchak Rabin

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:54 PM 2 comments

Surprise: Top Clinton advisers contemptuous of Netanyahu

A review of Hillary Clinton's emails shows that three of her top advisers - Martin Indyk, Sandy Berger and Sidney Blumenthal - have contempt bordering on the pathological for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The "self-defeating" Netanyahu, according to Indyk, believes "that he is a great negotiator, and that he is operating in the Middle East bazaar, he inflates his requirements well beyond anything reasonable in the belief that this is the best way to secure the highest price." As a result, Indyk wrote, the Israel-Palestine peace process ends up getting dominated by Netanyahu's ego and insecurity issues:

The process of bringing him down to a reasonable price uses up a lot of energy, uses up a lot of goodwill, humiliates his Palestinian negotiating partner, and raises doubts about his seriousness. In the end, under great pressure from all quarters, he will make the final concession, but only after wasting a lot of time, making everybody furious with him, and thereby securing no credit either with his supporters or negotiating partners. At heart, he seems to lack a generosity of spirit. This combines with his legendary fear of being seen as a "freier" (sucker) in front of his people to create a real problem in the negotiations, especially because he holds most of the cards.

One does not get the sense that Indyk thinks very highly of the Israeli leader.
But I thought the most interesting section was his assessment of Netanyahu's and Israel's future if they failed to take the necessary steps toward peace:

The reason for dwelling on Bibi's psychology rather than his politics is that the latter all point in the direction of making a deal: the Israeli public is ready to get on with it; if Israel doesn't make a serious move, it will further delegitimize its standing internationally (something Bibi [Netanyahu] is deeply concerned about); Bibi needs President Obama in his corner to deal with the threat from Iran and to avoid punishment by the voters for mishandling relations with the U.S.; and if he doesn't make the deal with [Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas] now, he will have helped to advance the future he is most concerned about — a Hamas takeover of the Palestinian leadership.

Obama is doing a great job of 'helping' us deal with Iran, isn't he? /sarc

And then there's Sandy "Socks" Berger....

Like Indyk, Berger seems to see Netanyahu — not Israel, but Netanyahu specifically — as the primary challenge for peace, and spends most of his memo discussing ways to bring him around.

"I am persuaded the most important factor is and is likely to remain what Netanyahu is prepared to do," Berger writes.

He acknowledges that the Palestinians can be difficult as well, but says that at least they "have a relatively clear sense of their positions on the core issues." Netanyahu, though, is someone who "either does not know himself or is not prepared to share [his positions on core issues] and who, until now, has neither felt the urgency to reach a deal nor the discomfort of the status quo."

And yet Berger concludes that Clinton should solve this problem by assuring Netanyahu that the US will help him meet Israeli security needs as well as his own personal political needs. The picture he paints is one in which Netanyahu is in charge and the US role is to provide him with concessions, personal assurances, and political support until the Israeli leader feels like making peace:

Rather, [a peace deal] will happen only if [Netanyahu] feels that (1) it is under the leadership of a U.S. administration he genuinely trusts; (2) he is convinced that the combination of the agreement and U.S. assurances meets his core needs in terms of Israeli security and international recognition of its Jewish character; and (3) he feels that, again with U.S. help, he can sell it to his people and survive -- or even thrive -- politically.

(1) and (2) sure explain this administration's total failure in the 'peace process,' don't they?

And then there's this one from Clinton loyalist Sidney Blumenthal.

A number of the latest emails from 2010 center on the Gaza flotilla raid. Israeli commandos boarded the “Freedom Flotilla” to force the ships to port for inspection. A few dozen of the hundreds on board fought the commandos; 10 activists were killed and 10 of the Israeli commandos were wounded.

In an email to Clinton that day — May 31, 2010 — Blumenthal called the incident “Bibi’s Entebbe in reverse.”

“The father, Benzion Netanyahu; 100 years old, secretary to Jabotinsky, and denounced as too radical by Begin, adored his son Yoni, heroically killed at Entebbe. Benyamin has never measured up,” Blumenthal wrote. “Benzion has constantly criticized him in public for his deviations from the doctrine of Greater Israel. Bibi desperately seeks his father’s approbation and can never equal his dead brother. See Benzion’s most recent scathing undermining of his son Bibi and Bibi’s tearful tribute to his brother just last month.”

“The raid on the ship to Gaza resembles the raid on Entebbe, except that there are no hostages, no guns, it’s not in Africa, and it’s a fiasco; otherwise, it’s Entebbe. (Then, there’s Ehud Barak reliving his youth as a raider killing Palestinians in Lebanon, a feat memorialized in Spielberg’s film, Munich. Ultimately, it didn’t work out well that time either. The film captures the moral quandaries, which appear to have escaped the participants.)”

Blumenthal goes on to write, “The international press will inquire whether the Obama administration gave a wink or nod as the Bush administration did for the Lebanon and Gaza incursions. Be prepared.”

“Further: Of course, the consequences for US foreign policy and national security are negative across the board: from the analogy of the North Korean ship sinking and the Chinese posture to support for Iranian sanctions, etc., etc. Did the Israelis not hear Petraeus’s testimony?”

Blumenthal added that “of course, whatever the outcome of such a raid, one of the inevitable ones would be the death of the peace process, such as it is, on the very eve of Bibi’s scheduled visit to Obama, which would have been, under any circumstance, in light of the raid, profoundly humiliating for the president. Or are the Israelis bone stupid? I don’t think so.”

Hillary forwarded the email 35 minutes later to Jake Sullivan, her deputy chief of staff at the State Department and director of policy planning. He is believed to be Clinton’s pick for national security advisor.

“Fyi and itys,” Clinton tells Sullivan. The latter is Internet slang for “I told you so.”

Blumenthal sent other messages to Clinton after the flotilla raid, including a Max Blumenthal column on “deconstruction of propaganda” by Israel, a Center for Strategic and International Studies piece titled “Israel as a Strategic Liability?” and “leaked” Netanyahu poll numbers.

Note what Indyk, Berger and Blumenthal all have in common - other than their love for the Clinton's.... Hint: It's a certain religion. No one matches the Jews at undermining the Jews.

Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton, Martin Indyk, Sandy Berger

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:26 PM 4 comments

Barack Obama must be wondering what hit him

President Hussein Obama must be wondering what hit him. Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren continues to hammer away at the President, publishing two more op-ed pieces in the US media on Friday, one of which really gets into Obama's kishkes.

In Foreign Policy, Oren took Obama to task for not joining the solidarity march in France after the attack on Charlie Hebdo or the kosher supermarket earlier this year, nor for sending two senior officials who were in Paris at the time to the march. He also took the president to task for not admitting that the attack on the kosher market was directed a Jews, but rather an act perpetrated by “vicious zealots who... randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli.”

“Obama’s boycotting of the memorial in Paris, like his refusal to acknowledge the identity of the perpetrators, the victims, or even the location of the market massacre, provides a broad window into his thinking on Islam and the Middle East. Simply put: The president could not participate in a protest against Muslim radicals whose motivations he sees as a distortion, rather than a radical interpretation, of Islam,” he wrote. “And if there are no terrorists spurred by Islam, there can be no purposely selected Jewish shop or intended Jewish victims, only a deli and randomly present folks."

During his first year in office, Obama, Oren argued, offered in essence “a new deal in which the United States would respect popularly chosen Muslim leaders who were authentically rooted in their traditions and willing to engage with the West.”

...

Oren attributed this orientation to the intellectual milieu in which Obama grew up, as well as his personal history. “I could imagine how a child raised by a Christian mother might see himself as a natural bridge between her two Muslim husbands. I could also speculate how that child’s abandonment by those men could lead him, many years later, to seek acceptance by their co-religionists.”

The tragedy, he said, was that Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world was rejected.

“Historians will likely look back at Obama’s policy toward Islam with a combination of curiosity and incredulousness,” he wrote. “While some may credit the president for his good intentions, others might fault him for being naïve and detached from a complex and increasingly lethal reality.”

In the LA Times piece, headlined “Why Obama is wrong about Iran being 'rational' on nukes,” Oren quoted Obama’s comment in a recent interview that being anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn't preclude one from from being interested in survival, and that just because Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei is anti-Semitic “doesn't mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”

Oren wrote that the dispute whether Iran was a rational or irrational actor was “ever-present” in the discussions between the US and Israel when he was ambassador. While the American view the Iranians as logical actors, Israel could not rule out the idea that “the Iranians would be willing to sacrifice half of their people as martyrs in a war intended to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’”

“Obama would never say that anti-black racists are rational,” Oren argued. “And he would certainly not trust them with the means – however monitored – to reach their racist goals. That was the message Israeli officials and I conveyed in our discreet talks with the administration. The response was not, to our mind, reasonable."

Oren, while he served in Washington, was considered very cautious and diplomatic, and rarely caught flack for comments deemed “undiplomatic.”

Oren has been blasted by opposition MK's Tzipi Livni (goes without saying), Avigdor Liberman and Yair Lapid (the latter also goes without saying). But Lee Smith wrote some similar things in Tablet Magazine last week, but from a slightly different angle.

Whether Obama is an honorary Jew or not, the evidence suggests that he keenly understands certain peculiarities of the Jewish communal psyche—survival strategies that distinguish the Jews from other American minority groups. The president’s use of Jewish aides and organizations to advance his policies with the Jewish community shows that Obama is correct in believing that Jewish politics are often motivated by fear, which can range from the existential fear of mass extermination to the more prosaic fear of looking shabby in front of the goyim. And Obama isn’t using his energy and inspiring leadership skills to help these people rise above their fear; he is instead capitalizing on it—masterfully, ruthlessly—by manipulating American Jews in ways that other minority groups would find unbelievably insulting.

Consider recent statements from Jewish aides to the president. Netanyahu is the kind of politician, said David Axelrod, “who run[s] for public office because they want to be somebody.” Israel doesn’t know what’s best for it, Obama’s former envoy to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process Martin Indyk told Israeli media last week. “You are an emotional nation, not a rational nation,” he sniffed. “You work from your gut and not your mind.”

It’s very hard to imagine Catholic policymakers helping a U.S. president undermine and insult the Vatican and then defending the president when he says that he understands what the church stands for better than the pope does. During the darkest moments of the AIDS crisis, there were no gay organizations that encouraged U.S. policymakers to cut funding for a cure. There are no transgender activists who argue that the real threat to the community comes not from people who fear and hate transgendered people, but from within the transgender community itself. Eric Holder doesn’t scold people of color that they’re an emotional, not a rational, people, or imply that black officeholders get into politics because they “want to be somebody.”

The issue in America today is clearly not that pro-Obama people or organizations are leading the American Jewish community to destruction. Yet at the same time, it is also clear that two millennia of diasporic dependence and insecurity have left a deep and probably permanent imprint on the Jewish communal psyche. Even in America, a free country in which Jews have never been subject to European-style mass oppression or persecutions, the role performed by “court Jews’ still makes structural and emotional sense to people who like to think of themselves as independent thinkers. Otherwise, it would be hard to explain why Obama still has the support of the majority of the Jewish community for policies that from any rational perspective—the perspective of any other minority group—cannot be seen as anything other than detrimental to the Jewish state.

In other words, Oren is right about Obama's bad treatment of Jews as compared with any other ethnic group. Obama isn't playing any other ethnic group - only Jews. And according to Smith, Obama is playing the Jews like a master.

But what about the Jews who speak for the administration? None of several former high-ranking Jewish officials was willing to speak on the record on this subject, but every single one of them agreed that this moment was an extraordinary one. “No administration will always do what the Jewish community wants or what Jews think best for Israel, just as none will ever always do what Catholics want or Greek Americans or farmers,” said a former Jewish American policymaker who served in high-level positions in several administrations. “When you are in an administration you know this is coming. If the variance is in the particular area you cover, it can be painful. If it gets repeated, you need to change jobs or leave the government. That’s normal.”

But: “The Obama situation is not normal,” he continued, “due to the length and depth of the confrontation with Israel and the harm that’s being done. It should give rise to soul searching by Jewish appointees. In my view they’ve become enablers, in the worst sense of that word. That not one single Jew has left in protest is remarkable considering that relations have not been worse in a long, long time.”

By not resigning in protest, Obama’s Jewish aides have arguably not only harmed their community; they weakened their own position—which was, in a sense, ultimately far more detrimental. In a town where the appearance of power is power, Obama’s Jewish defenders had no idea which way the president was actually going. They got played, and now everyone knows it. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew wasn’t in the room when Obama was making Iran policy with Ben Rhodes and Valerie Jarrett. Martin Indyk didn’t know that a central part of Obama’s Middle East policy—without which the Iran deal would be impossible—was to weaken AIPAC, the cornerstone of the pro-Israel community. AIPAC, in turn, didn’t see itself as a target of the Obama Administration. Instead, it kept telling itself that bipartisan support for Israel was the very premise of its power. Had these actors actually participated in helping the president pull a fast one on the Jewish community, at least they’d have showed they had connections to power. The biggest problem with the Jews around Obama is not that they spoke up on behalf of policies that may very well turn out to be harmful to the Jewish state; it’s that they were so clearly out of the loop—a status quo they will now bequeath to future administrations.

In this regard, even AIPAC’s ostensible rival J Street got played. As one senior official in the pro-Israel community told me, he believes that “their standing has diminished a lot. The administration used J Street and included them, and went to their conferences, because they believed they would be a useful tool.” But J Street is weakened not, as the pro-Israel official believes, because it plowed its own field recklessly. If you describe yourself as a pro-Israel organization then your power is directly proportional to how important a role Israel plays in American foreign policy. If your actions, like J Street’s, contribute to making Israel about as important to American foreign policy as Malaysia is, then you aren’t very important either.

Read the whole thing.

What Smith is describing is what I have called the Poritz Syndrome.

Oren is an historian and he has an historian's perspective. I'm sure he sees everything that Smith sees and has many more facts and data points to prove what Smith is saying. Unfortunately, Oren is getting no support here in Israel, other than Netanyahu's refusal to disown him.... Yet Oren disowned Netanyahu by running for the Knesset with Kahlon's party. Perhaps there's a lesson there for the historian too.

In the meantime, my copy of Oren's book is on order. Can't wait to read this one.

Labels: Avigdor Lieberman, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, court Jew, Jack Lew, Martin Indyk, Michael Oren, Moshe Kahlon, poritz syndrome, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:24 PM 2 comments

Obama: 'I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office'

I'm sure you'll all be shocked that the headlines have gone to his head. Yes, he really said that (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

Obama’s close advisor David Axelrod was more critical of Netanyahu.

“The world of politics everywhere is divided into two categories: the first and more common is the people who run for public office because they want to be somebody,” he explained. “A smaller group is made of respectable people who run for public office because they want to do something – something positive. Shape the future in a positive way. I think Benjamin Netanyahu completely falls in the first category. He is a great politician. He knows what he needs to do to get through the next election. But it seems to me that Israel has to think about what they need to do to get through the next generation.”

He also recalled Obama venting in a moment of contemplation, telling him, ‘You know, I think I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office. For people to say that I am anti-Israel, or, even worse,  anti-Semitic, it hurts.’

Boo. Hoo. If you don't expect any appreciation, you'll never be disappointed. Obama seems to be disappointed all the time.

But he's far from being a Jew. And what he thinks being a Jew means comes from all the wrong places.

Bret Stephens reports that Obama supporter Peter Beinart says that we have it all wrong. Obama's views on Israel came from a group of far Left Chicago Jews, who “bred in Obama a specific, and subversive, vision of American Jewish identity and of the Jewish state” (Hat Tip: Herb G). (For those who - like me - do not have online access to the Wall Street Journal, you can find the full article here).

At the center of this coterie, Mr. Beinart explains, was a Chicago rabbi named Arnold Jacob Wolf. In 1969, Wolf staged a synagogue protest in favor of Black Panther Bobby Seale. In the early 1970s, he founded an organization that met with Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization—this being some 20 years before Arafat officially renounced terrorism. In the early 1990s, Wolf denounced the construction of the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

And, in 1996, the rabbi “was one of [Mr. Obama's] earliest and most prominent supporters” when he ran for the Illinois state Senate. Wolf later described Mr. Obama’s views on Israel as “on the line of Peace Now”—an organization with a long history of blaming Israel for the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Mr. Obama had other Jewish mentors, too, according to Mr. Beinart. One was Bettylu Saltzman, whose father, developer Philip Klutznick, had joined Wolf in “his break with the Israeli government in the 1970s.” Ms. Saltzman, writes Mr. Beinart, “still seethes with hostility toward the mainstream Jewish groups” and later became active in left-wing Jewish political groups like J Street. Among other things, it was she who “organized the rally against the Iraq War where Obama proclaimed his opposition to an American invasion.”

Ms. Saltzman also introduced Mr. Obama to David Axelrod, himself a longtime donor to a group called the New Israel Fund. For a flavor of the NIF’s world view, a WikiLeaks cable from 2010 noted that an NIF associate director told U.S. embassy officials in Tel Aviv that “the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.”

What I have to wonder about is the source for the David Axelrod quote and the others (Martin Indyk, Dan Shapiro). This is Eliyahu Berkowitz's opener to the article:

In advance of an exclusive interview with President Barack Obama, Channel 2’s Ilana Dayan interviewed the people who were most close to the president in the past years, finding out what happened to the US-Israel relationship and what was really said behind closed doors.

And then she went around discussing it? This wasn't on background or off the record? You don't think that  the White House planted some things it wanted to get out there with the generally sympathetic Yonit Levy and asked her to make sure they made the news in Israel, do you?

Here's Levy's 2010 interview with King Hussein. And here's a summary of her 2013 interview with him. Hmmm. It sounds like she's a little beholden to The One.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Channel 2, Dan Shapiro, Martin Indyk, Yonit Levy

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:12 PM 2 comments

Most land tenders announced during 'peace talks' were approved by Abu Mazen

David Makovsky, a member of Martin Indyk's 'negotiating' team, told an audience at the Begin-Sadat Center two weeks ago that most of the contentious land tenders announced during the 'peace talks' were actually approved in advance by 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen . This is from the first link.

During the nine months of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that ended in failure in 2014, 62 percent of Israel’s publicly announced tenders for housing beyond the Green Line were earmarked for the 1.9% of West Bank land that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had once consented would remain in Israel’s hands.

David Makovsky, who was a member of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s negotiating team during this period, pointed out this little-known fact during a speech Tuesday at a conference on US-Israel relations that took place at Bar- Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

Makovsky, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that Israel was more “geographically cautious” with settlement announcements during the negotiating period than many realize.

“It would have been helpful if that could have been made public,” Makovsky said, explaining that for political reasons that was not a possibility.

This geographic caution was not stated publicly but was the policy.

Announcements of settlement plans during this period were a huge bone of contention, with former US Mideast envoy Martin Indyk, who headed the team Makovsky was a member of, placing much of the blame for the breakdown of the talks on Israel’s settlement policies. He said during a speech last year that “rampant settlement activity – especially in the midst of negotiations – doesn’t just undermine Palestinian trust in the purpose of the negotiations, it can undermine Israel’s Jewish future.”

In 2008 Abbas reportedly turned down an offer by thenprime minister Ehud Olmert for Israel to annex 6.3% of the West Bank to incorporate the major settlement blocs into Israel in exchange for 5.8% of land within Israel and the corridor from the West Bank to Gaza. Abbas reportedly countered with a proposal for a 1.9% land swap, apparently the area where most of the housing tenders were announced during the 2013- 2014 negotiations.

Isn't it amazing that the Israeli government chose not to deflect John Kerry's pressure by pointing this out at the time?

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, David Makovsky, John Kerry, Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:07 AM 0 comments

Martin Indyk, are you listening?

A couple of years ago, 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen told an Israeli interviewer that he had no intention of returning to Tzfat (Safed), a town that is located within the Israeli side of the 1949 armistice lines. Of course, he immediately walked back that statement.

His spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, tried to explain that the interview with Channel 2 was mainly intended to “affect Israeli public opinion.”

In other words, the spokesman is telling Palestinians and Arabs that Abbas is telling Israelis what they like to hear – namely that Palestinian refugees would not return to their former homes inside Israel.

Which statement is the truth? Obviously, the second one.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview with Egyptian newspaper Akhbar el-Yom over the weekend that there are 6 million Palestinian refugees waiting to return to their homes and that he was one of them.

The Middle East Media Research Institute reviewed the statements made by Abbas in the Arabic daily, and found that Abbas said he would not recognize Israel as a Jewish state because he believes it would undermine the national interests of Israeli Arabs, and prevent millions of Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes. "We cannot recognize a Jewish state," he said, adding, "We cannot close the door to those who wish to return." 

He further said that if the U.N. Security Council rejects the Palestinian proposal for a two-year deadline for an Israeli withdrawal to 1967 lines, he may end Palestinian security cooperation with Israel and even step down and transfer responsibility for the Palestinian Authority to Israel. 

He said that if Israel continues to prevent the Palestinians from forming an independent state, then it should "take responsibility for the occupation," including the health and education sectors as well as all internal affairs.

Martin Indyk, are you listening?

Labels: Abu Mazen, Martin Indyk, right of return, Tzfat

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:26 PM 0 comments

Saturday night at the movies: Naftali Bennett kicks Martin Indyk's a**

This video is a bit long. It's a lengthy conversation that took place at the Saban Forum of the Brookings Institute on Saturday night between Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett and former 'mediator' Martin Indyk. Indyk opens by saying that Bennett promised to 'kick his a**." Bennett delivers.

Let's go to the videotape.



For those who don't have time to sit through the entire video, there's a summary here.

Labels: Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process, Naftali Bennett, two-state solution

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:38 AM 1 comments

'Secret back channel' doomed 'peace talks'?

The New Republic reports that the failure of last summer's 'peace talks' was brought about by the use of a secret back channel between Prime Minister Netanyahu's personal attorney, Yitzchak Molho, and an unnamed and apparently unauthorized confidante of 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen. This is from the first link.

The secret channel—reported here for the first time—created substantial progress toward an agreement. But it also had one fundamental flaw, which contributed to the collapse of Kerry's entire process. Abbas’s supposed representative was in fact holding these talks without a real mandate from the Palestinian President; the concessions he discussed with Molho didn't represent the President's views. Parts of this story remain unsolved—most importantly, why this lack of a mandate was missed or ignored in real time. But what can be told is enough to raise some hard questions about Kerry's effort, and offer important lessons for future attempts at reaching an agreement. 

...

The extent of Abbas's detachment from the secret-channel's product became clear in early 2014, when Kerry decided to merge the two negotiation tracks. The understanding that had developed through the secret channel was spilled into the discussions that Indyk's team was holding with both sides over a "framework document.” Netanyahu was willing to work with the fruits of the secret channel (although he insisted on airing his reservations, and the negotiations his advisers held with Indyk over the exact wording were endless). But Abbas completely rejected what had already, supposedly, been accepted by his own negotiator. He wasn't willing to show any flexibility on the Jewish state issue, and the idea of excluding any clear reference to a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem seemed like political suicide.

The anger Abbas expressed at the American framework caught Kerry by surprise: After all, these were all ideas his supposed negotiator was discussing with Molho. Realizing he had a problem with Abbas, Kerry tried to convince Netanyahu to tilt some of the provisions in Abbas's direction. But the Israeli Prime Minister was not having it. "We already agreed on these issues in the secret channel," he told the Secretary, according to a former senior U.S. official.

"Bibi is angry at Kerry for opening up understandings that everybody considered a done deal, just because Abbas had changed his mind,” an Israeli Minister told me in February. But a Palestinian official rebuffed this criticism, saying that Abbas never changed his mind on anything: "He was presented with positions that no Palestinian leader could ever accept, and that he personally had spoken out against many times."

For some, it was always clear that the positions presented by the supposed "Palestinian negotiator" in this secret channel were totally unacceptable for Abbas. Officials involved in the process admit in retrospect that there was too much wishful thinking regarding the backchannel.

A major reason for the skepticism of some people involved in the negotiations toward this backchannel, had to do with Abbas's ostensible confidante. A number of Israeli, American, and Palestinian officials claimed that it was a miscalculation to assume this person would have authority to make concessions on delicate issues. One senior Palestinian official told me that those in the American and Israeli camps who thought otherwise were "fools."

 A possibility that's not really considered here is that this was all an effort by the 'Palestinians' to see if Israel was bluffing. They never intended to make any concessions but they wanted to see if Israel would. Now, they will pocket the concessions made in the 'back channel' and insist that the 'negotiations' start from there the next time.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Labels: Abu Mazen, Binyamin Netanyahu, Dennis Ross, John Kerry, Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process, Yitzchak Molho

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:54 PM 0 comments

Too bad Netanyahu's too chickensh*t to do this

Mark Levin got it right three and a half years ago, and he has it right today (Hat Tip: Sunlight).

As I said 3 1/2 years ago, Bibi needs to tell Obama to go to hell http://t.co/j7Mqnt4Gq4
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) October 28, 2014

The problem is that there is something to labeling Netanyahu 'chickensh*t.' But it's not, as Obama, Kerry and Indyk would claim, because he's afraid to make 'peace.'

It's because he's afraid to tell Obama and Co. where to get off.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, John Kerry, Mark Levin, Martin Indyk

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:50 AM 0 comments

It's come to this: Obama-Kerry 'peace talks' envoy paid by Qatar (and Norway)

The New York Times reported at length on Sunday on the financing of US think tanks by foreign governments (see also Memeorandum). Among the US think tanks who receive significant financing from foreign governments is the Brookings Institute.

The arrangements involve Washington’s most influential think tanks, including the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Atlantic Council. Each is a major recipient of overseas funds, producing policy papers, hosting forums and organizing private briefings for senior United States government officials that typically align with the foreign governments’ agendas.

Most of the money comes from countries in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia, particularly the oil-producing nations of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Norway, and takes many forms. The United Arab Emirates, a major supporter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, quietly provided a donation of more than $1 million to help build the center’s gleaming new glass and steel headquarters not far from the White House. Qatar, the small but wealthy Middle East nation, agreed last year to make a $14.8 million, four-year donation to Brookings, which has helped fund a Brookings affiliate in Qatar and a project on United States relations with the Islamic world.

Some scholars say the donations have led to implicit agreements that the research groups would refrain from criticizing the donor governments.

“If a member of Congress is using the Brookings reports, they should be aware — they are not getting the full story,” said Saleem Ali, who served as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar and who said he had been told during his job interview that he could not take positions critical of the Qatari government in papers. “They may not be getting a false story, but they are not getting the full story.”

The directors of the institutions claim that all that money doesn't blind them and doesn't make them execute the donors' wishes.

In interviews, top executives at the think tanks strongly defended the arrangements, saying the money never compromised the integrity of their organizations’ research. Where their scholars’ views overlapped with those of donors, they said, was coincidence.

Here's the reaction of one director whose name should be familiar to those who follow the goings on in Israel. 

“Our business is to influence policy with scholarly, independent research, based on objective criteria, and to be policy-relevant, we need to engage policy makers,” said Martin S. Indyk, vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings, one of the oldest and most prestigious think tanks in Washington.

Do any of you think Indyk is telling the truth? If yes, consider this:

In their contracts and internal documents, however, foreign governments are often explicit about what they expect from the research groups they finance.

“In Washington, it is difficult for a small country to gain access to powerful politicians, bureaucrats and experts,” states an internal report commissioned by the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry assessing its grant making. “Funding powerful think tanks is one way to gain such access, and some think tanks in Washington are openly conveying that they can service only those foreign governments that provide funding.”

...

The Brookings Institution, which also accepted grants from Norway, has sought to help the country gain access to American officials, documents show. One Brookings senior fellow, Bruce Jones, offered in 2010 to reach out to State Department officials to help arrange a meeting with a senior Norway official, according to a government email. The Norway official wished to discuss his country’s role as a “middle power” and vital partner of the United States.

Brookings organized another event in April 2013, in which one of Norway’s top officials on Arctic issues was seated next to the State Department’s senior official on the topic and reiterated the country’s priorities for expanding oil exploration in the Arctic.

William J. Antholis, the managing director at Brookings, said that if his scholars help Norway pursue its foreign policy agenda in Washington, it is only because their rigorous, independent research led them to this position. “The scholars are their own agents,” he said. “They are not agents of these foreign governments.”

But three lawyers who specialize in the law governing Americans’ activities on behalf of foreign governments said that the Center for Global Development and Brookings, in particular, appeared to have taken actions that merited registration as foreign agents of Norway. The activities by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Atlantic Council, they added, at least raised questions.

“The Department of Justice needs to be looking at this,” said Joshua Rosenstein, a lawyer at Sandler Reiff.

Ona Dosunmu, Brookings’s general counsel, examining the same documents, said she remained convinced that was a misreading of the law.

Norway, at least, is grateful for the work Brookings has done. During a speech at Brookings in June, Norway’s foreign minister, Borge Brende, noted that his country’s relationship with the think tank “has been mutually beneficial for moving a lot of important topics.” Just before the speech, in fact, Norway signed an agreement to contribute an additional $4 million to the group.

Norway's ruling party is not exactly a friend of Israel either.... 

Read the whole thing.

Here in Israel, the government now believes it knows why the latest 'peace talks' were so biased against Israel. His name is Martin Indyk and he's the director of Brookings and, as noted above, on the payroll (indirectly) of Qatar and Norway (and other countries).

“Qatar has been a major bankroller for Hamas and other terrorist organizations,” one government official said. “The fact that the same Qatari government is also a major provider of funds for a respectable Washington think tank raises a whole series of questions about that think tank’s relationships and impartiality.”

Among the questions this has raised in Jerusalem is the degree to which the institute can impartially draw up papers relating to Qatar, such as its role in the Middle East and the financing of terror organizations.

Qatar is Hamas’s main financial backer.

...

Indyk, who took leave from Brookings to serve as the US special Middle East envoy during the nine months of unsuccessful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that ended in April, returned to the think tank after the negotiations failed and is currently its vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program.

...

In a recent interview with Foreign Policy magazine about the Gaza conflict, Indyk said US President Barack Obama became “enraged” with Israeli criticism of US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Indyk said Gaza has had a “very negative” impact on the US-Israel relationship.

“There’s a lot of strain in the relationship now. The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister has been fraught for some time and it’s become more complicated by recent events.”

The Qatar connection might also explain why US Secretary of State John FN Kerry was so anxious to do Qatar's (and Turkey's) bidding during Operation Protective Edge. 

Arutz Sheva adds:

Indyk, who served as US negotiator in the failed peace talks, has had his impartiality put into question before due to his position on the executive board of the radical-left New Israel Fund, which funds numerous anti-Israel NGOs. In May, Indyk was accused of engaging in a "nasty" anti-Israel tirade at a bar following an address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Qatar has not only funded Hamas, but according to reports pushed the group to reject a ceasefire in the recent Operation Protective Edge and return to its terror war on Israeli citizens, threatening to expel Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal if it didn't do so.

The position of Qatar led Israel's Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor in August to label the oil-state "a Club Med for terrorists," adding that the "hundreds of millions of dollars" Qatar gave Hamas meant "every one of Hamas's tunnels and rockets might as well have had a sign that said 'Made possible through a kind donation of the emir of Qatar.'"

A few more take-aways from this story:

1. Maybe you all now understand why Israel has tried to control or stop foreign government funding of NGO's.

2. The Obama administration touted itself as the 'most transparent administration evah.' Is this what they had in mind? 

3. With all the bellyaching by the likes of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer about a supposed 'Israel lobby,' Israel does not appear on the list of countries that have donated money to US think tanks. But nine Arab countries do appear on the list. I'm sure you're all shocked.

Kudos to the New York Times (for a change) for actually letting this story come out.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Brookings Institution, Hamas, John Kerry, Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process, NGO funding, Norway, Qatar, Think Tanks

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:29 AM 0 comments

'In a neighborhood featuring Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, just to name a few of the actors, President Obama was “enraged” at … Israel'

Peter Wehner picks up on this quote from the Foreign Policy interview with Martin Indyk that I blogged on Wednesday. First the quote, then Wehner.

Well, it started with Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon attacking [Kerry] publicly during the peace process, which I attribute to two things. One, the defense minister had a very clear sense of what Israel's security needs are and they do not include withdrawing the Israeli army from the Jordan River, which would have to be addressed in the peace negotiations if there was to be a deal. So I think there was a substantive disagreement, but the lack of respect was truly disturbing, specifically given the importance of American security assistance for the well-being of Israel's defense, for which the defense minister is responsible.

But it got completely out of control during the Gaza crisis, where the secretary was assailed for supposedly betraying Israel because he was trying to work with the prime minister on a cease-fire, and he engaged with Qatar and Turkey to test whether they could influence Hamas to stop firing the rockets. And that criticism came not just from the right but from pundits on the left as well -- Haaretz published three articles by their journalists attacking Kerry. I think that's a product of a particular circumstance in which Israelis felt very much isolated, on their own -- that the world didn't understand them. In that defensive crouch, I think they were waiting for a betrayal by the United States even though the secretary and the president repeatedly supported their right to defend themselves. So they interpreted the secretary's actions as being designed to undermine Israel in favor of Hamas and undermine its burgeoning alignment with Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth but that was the perception and, unfortunately, it was a line fed by some unnamed Israeli officials, one of whom described Kerry as launching "a strategic terror attack." That was just outrageous and it enraged the president.

Wehner:

Think about this for a moment. In a neighborhood featuring Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, just to name a few of the actors, President Obama was “enraged” at … Israel. That’s right, Israel–our stalwart ally, a lighthouse of liberty, lawfulness, and human rights in a region characterized by despotism, and a nation filled with people who long for peace and have done so much for so long to sacrifice for it (including repeatedly returning and offering to return its land in exchange for peace).

Yet Mr. Obama–a man renowned for his lack of strong feelings, his emotional equanimity, his disengagement and distance from events, who New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd refers to as “Spock” for his Vulcan-like detachment–is not just upset but “enraged” at Israel.

Add to this the fact that the conflict with Hamas in Gaza–a conflict started and escalated by Hamas, and in which Hamas used innocent Palestinians as human shields–had a very negative impact on America’s relationship with Israel. To show you just how absurd this has become, other Arab nations were siding with Israel in its conflict with Hamas. But not America under Obama. He was constantly applying pressure on Israel. Apparently if you’re a nation defending yourself and, in doing so, you wage a war with exquisite care in order to prevent civilian death, it is reason to earn the fury of Mr. Obama.

It’s clear to me, and by now it should be to others, that there is something sinister in Barack Obama’s constant anger aimed at Israel.

 Most pro-Israel President evah? Don't believe it for a minute. 

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Gaza, Hamas, IDF, John Kerry, Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process, Obama's obsession with Israel, Obama's obsession with Palestinians, Operation Protective Edge

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:23 AM 1 comments

Indyk's obsession

Here's a lengthy interview with Martin Indyk about the US-Israel relationship in the aftermath of Operation Protective Edge.

There is much with which to disagree.... Suffice it to say that he is still obsessed with the 'two-state solution.'

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, John Kerry, Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process, Moshe Yaalon, Operation Protective Edge, two-state solution, US-Israel relationship

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:48 PM 0 comments

Martin Indyk, wrong again

.@Martin_Indyk to the @nytimes: "This one (Gaza ceasefire) should hold" http://t.co/QshobmEeOH
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) August 1, 2014

When are people going to stop taking Indyk seriously?

Labels: cease fire, Gaza, Hamas, IDF, Martin Indyk, Operation Protective Edge

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:10 PM 1 comments

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.”

...

Labels: Abu Mazen, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, John Kerry, Jonathan Pollard, Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process, Saeb Erekat, Tzipi Livni, Yitzchak Molho

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:22 PM 0 comments