The appointments of Rice and Power not only represent the ascension of
women to top roles on Obama’s national security team, but the rise of
two officials who have made human rights a priority — at a time when the
U.S. faces an agonizing decisions over Syria where President Bashar
Assad has killed tens of thousands of civlilans.
...
People close to Obama expect Republicans on the Hill to continue
their anti-Rice drumbeat, but they have no authority to stop her
selection — the position is one of the few at the senior level that
requires no Senate confirmation. Power, however, will face confirmation
hearings for her nomination.
Obama is eager for that fight, and was embittered by the attacks
against Rice to an extent unmatched by nearly any other episode in his
fight-filled presidency.
Conservatives responded quickly — and negatively — to the Rice pick.
Power was forced to resign from Obama's campaign in March 2008 after
calling former Secretary of State and then Obama rival Hillary Clinton a
'monster.'
But in the Jewish community, Power is better known for another
undiplomatic 'slip of the tongue.' For those who have forgotten or for
whom the name doesn't ring a bell, let's go to the videotape.
Rice may be drawing the attention, but Congress can do nothing to stop Rice's nomination and it's a lot less worrisome to Israel's supporters than Power's nomination.
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Monday, February 18.
1) The Obama administration vs. Hezbollah
Today's New York Times features an op-ed, Hezbollah unmasked
by President Obama's national security adviser, Thomas Donilon. After
providing the details of Hezbollah's blood drenched history, (similar to
a case made recently by Ambassador Michael Oren) Donilon concludes:
Now that Bulgarian authorities have exposed Hezbollah’s global
terrorist agenda, European governments must respond swiftly. They must
disrupt its operational networks, stop flows of financial assistance to
the group, crack down on Hezbollah-linked criminal enterprises and
condemn the organization’s leaders for their continued pursuit of
terrorism.
The United States applauds those countries that have long recognized
Hezbollah’s nefarious nature and that have already condemned the group
for the attack in Burgas. Europe must now act collectively and respond
resolutely to this attack within its borders by adding Hezbollah to the
European Union’s terrorist list. That is the next step toward ensuring
that Burgas is the last successful Hezbollah operation on European soil.
I'm not a big fan of the administration, but this is a welcome development.
2) Bob Simon vs. Iron Dome
Two thirds of Bob Simon's segment Will Israel's Iron Dome help bring peace?
isn't bad. While his emphasis on American funding is a bit
disconcerting (especially because of what it's setting up later)
overall, the first part of his report is straightforward. But then he starts twisting the report to make his point:
Barak argues that if Iron Dome makes Israelis feel more secure, less
threatened, they'll be more willing to make peace with the Palestinians.
You wont find many Palestinians who agree.
Husam Zomlot: Before the Iron Dome, they felt no pressure to make any
concessions. After the Iron Dome, they will feel the pressure to make
concessions? Of course not.
Husam Zomlot is a PLO diplomat and a professor at Bir Zeit University.
Zomlot, of course, is a disinterested observer. (Not!) Why is this even relevant? It recalls Thomas Friedman who argued in Iron Empires, Iron Fists, Iron Domes:
Meanwhile, with a few exceptions, the dome and wall have so insulated
the Israeli left and center from the effects of the Israeli occupation
that their main candidates for the Jan. 22 elections — including those
from Yitzhak Rabin’s old Labor Party — are not even offering peace ideas
but simply conceding the right’s dominance on that issue and focusing
on bringing down housing prices and school class sizes. One settler
leader told me the biggest problem in the West Bank today is “traffic
jams.”
The problem isn't that Israel somehow "insulated" from the peace
process, but that no one wishes to negotiate with them. Abbas hasn't
budged on insisting on a full settlement freeze before he would
negotiate.
Though Zomlot here seems to be implying that terror helps bring needed
pressure on Israel, when Simon asks him specifically about that, Zomlot
denies that he meant that.
Later Simon badgers Barak:
Bob Simon: But how does it work? I mean, right now, Israel has just
announced the building of a gigantic settlement project. This is at the
same time that the Americans are providing the money for Israel's most
important defense system.
Ehud Barak: You know, we are highly grateful to the administration, to
American people as a whole for this support. I don't think that it's
relevant to the issue of Iron Dome.
Israelis argue that America's commitment to their security must be kept
separate from political disagreements between the U.S. and Israel.
Simon, of course, is exaggerating what the announcement of E-1 was. He's also misleading in that E-1 had always been assumed to remain part of Israel. But he's making a point, "how can Israel disrespect the United States?"
Strangely he doesn't ask a similar question of Zomlot: "The United
States has been giving millions of dollars of aid to the Palestinians,
why did they refuse to heed the administration and head to the UN in
order to gain statehood status?"
Bob Simon is stuck on believing that only Israel is responsible for
making peace. Somehow it escaped him that even though Israel withdrew
fully from Gaza in 2005, it did not achieve peace in its south. If
concrete Israeli concessions really brought peace, Israel would not have
had to build Iron Dome. This irony is somehow lost on Bob Simon.
As more and more US officials publicly call on Israel not to attack Iran at this time, Defense Minister Ehud Barak emerged from a two hour meeting Monday with visiting US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon saying sovereign nations act based on their own perception of their interests.
The US-Israel relationship, Barak said at a meting of his Independence faction shortly after hosting Donilon, is a relationship between "two sovereign countries, each one responsible in the final analysis for the decisions it takes for itself and about its future."
...
The White House put out a statement after the meeting saying that Donilon concluded three days of talks in Israel that "addressed the full range of security issues of mutual concern."
"The visit is part of the continuous and intensive dialogue between the United States and Israel and reflects our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security," the statement said, adding that Donilon confirmed a meeting between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama for March 5.
Anyone want to count how many times a member of the Obama administration says "unshakeable commitment to Israel's security" between now and November? Too bad it's not actually true. Heh.
Donilon comes to Israel to threaten, cajole, plead; Dempsey warns Israel
President Obama's National Security Adviser, Tom Donilon, arrives in Israel on Sunday in a bid to persuade the Jewish state to place its trust in Obama. Donilon joins a parade of American officials who have been here over the last few weeks.
The White House issued a statement saying Donilon will be in Israel from Saturday to Monday for consultations with senior officials about a range of issues, including “Iran, Syria and other regional security issues.” The statement said Donilon’s visit was the “latest in a series of regular, high-level consultations between the United States and Israel, consistent with our strong bilateral partnership and part of our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.”
Israeli government officials did not provide any more details regarding the visit by the national security adviser, which, while not rare, is also not routine.
Donilon is the latest in a parade of high-level visitors to both country’s capitals in recent weeks, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Mossad head Tamir Pardo in Washington, and a visit here last month by the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey.
In an interview to be broadcast in its entirety by CNN later on Sunday, Dempsey warned that an Israeli attack now 'would not accomplish its objectives.'
Let's go to the videotape.
Here's another one. Let's go to the videotape.
I'll try to post at least the Iranian part of the interview later Sunday. But here's some more from YNet.
The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey said Saturday that an Israeli strike on Iran "wouldn’t achieve its long-term objectives" and would be "destabilizing."
In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Dempsey said that taking military action against the Islamic Republic would not be not "prudent."
The US general claimed that the economic sanctions imposed on Iran together with international pressure are beginning to have an effect. “We are of the opinion that Iran is a rational actor. We also know, or we believe we know, that the Iranian regime has not decided to make a nuclear weapon."
In Israel, we don't view Iran as a rational actor. For the last five years, I've been explaining on this blog why Mutually Assured Destruction - a concept that was used to keep Russia at bay until Communism fell that I learned about in college - will not work with Iran. And the reaction of Iran's rulers thus far to sanctions shows that the Israeli view is right and the Obama administration's view is wrong. Obama and his minions don't understand ethnic conflict, they don't understand (or want to understand) irrational hatred of Jews, and they don't understand the difference between a competition between systems of government and the striving of an apocalyptic regime to impose its belief system on the world.
So while Israel will give sanctions as long as it possibly can to let them work, it won't give them forever. 70 years after the world and its Jews decided that one tyrant could not possibly mean that he wanted to murder World Jewry, the State of Israel will not make the same mistake.
On the morning after he was slammed for this Iran policy by every candidate at the Republican Presidential debate, President Obama sent his national security adviser, Tom Donilon, out to tell everyone how effective his Iran policy really is.
National security adviser Tom Donilon defended Obama’s Iran policy in a wide-ranging speech following criticism by Republican presidential contenders that the administration had not done enough to thwart Tehran's nuclear advances.
His remarks may also serve as an appeal to Israel for more time to let Washington’s strategy work. There has been growing speculation about an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites since a U.N. nuclear watchdog accused Tehran this month of covert atomic weapons work.
“Iran today is fundamentally weaker, more isolated, more vulnerable and badly discredited than ever,” Donilon said at the Brookings Institution think tank a day after the United States, Britain and Canada slapped new sanctions on Iran's energy and financial sectors, according to Reuters.
He said that after Iran rejected the Obama’s early diplomatic outreach and continued defying the international community, the United States had worked to ratchet up sanctions, strengthen military ties with Tehran's neighbors and increase it isolation.
“The effect of these sanctions has been clear,” Donilon said. “Coupled with mistakes and difficulties in Iran, they have slowed Iran's nuclear efforts ... Not only is it harder for Iran to proceed, it is more expensive.”
Despite those claims, Obama - like predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton - has been unable to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear program or come clean on its developments.
Analysts said they did not believe the latest punitive steps would be any more effective in dissuading Iran from pursuing its nuclear plans, which Washington and its allies say is a cover for seeking nuclear arms.
Though Iran has acknowledged some economic damage, it dismissed the new sanctions, saying they would only boost popular support for a nuclear program it insists is solely for peaceful purposes.
The range of unilateral steps planned by Western powers reflects the difficulty of persuading Russia and China not to veto further sanctions at the U.N. Security Council.
While the West has been reluctant to deal too harshly with one of the world’s biggest oil producers because of the risk to world markets, Donilon said: “We are certainly not ruling out additional steps against Iran’s banking sector, including the central bank.”
He said Washington remained resolute. “Put simply, the Iranian regime has not yet fundamentally altered its behavior, but we have succeeded in slowing its nuclear program,” he said.
“The international community has the time, space and means to affect the calculus of Iran's leaders, who must know that they cannot evade or avoid the choice we have laid before them,” Donilon said.
Donilon said that Iran has failed to shape Iraq into a “client state” in its own image and will lose one of its few remaining allies as “inevitable” change comes to Syria.
A few comments. First, it's amusing to see Obama trying to take credit for whatever modicum of effectiveness the sanctions against Iran have had when he opposed them and has refused to enforce them.
Second, doesn't have a whole lot of time to give sanctions to work. Within a year, Iran's entire enrichment process will be in reinforced underground bunkers. That's a game changer. If Obama really wants to see if sanctions can be effective in stopping Iran, he has to go all out NOW. That means moving NOW against Iran's central bank and against its oil exports no matter what that does to the price of oil. Unless Obama is willing to do that, the only hope for stopping Iran is military action, and given Obama's propensity for 'leading from behind' that military mission will probably fall on Israel.
Third, the game isn't over in Iraq or Syria. A successor Syrian regime could well befriend Iran, and it seems likely that the Iraqi government - for whom thousands of American lives and billions of American dollars were lost - will also end up in Iran's court.
In an earlier post, I reported on materials published by YNet (Yedioth Aharonoth's online site) that claim to have a draft of President Obama's major address on the Middle East, which is to be delivered on Thursday night. The White House is now denying that any such draft was leaked.
"We have not shared a draft of the speech with anyone outside of the administration," White House spokesman Jay Carney said during a press briefing. Carney would not specify if Obama would talk about the 1967 lines at all in the speech, nor would he give any other specifics of the address.
Amidror unequivocally denied the report in an Army Radio interview on Tuesday, saying Obama’s speech “did not come up in meetings between me and the national security adviser of the US, and not with his aides. Not in one manner, or another,” he said.
Ambassador to the US Michael Oren told Army Radio on Wednesday that he had also been present at the meetings in question and the content of Obama's speech had not been discussed.
Washington sources, meanwhile, are anticipating that Obama will strike a nonconfrontational tone with Israel in the Middle East speech on Thursday, as well as in his meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
There was little expectation that Obama would venture into great detail of the Israeli- Palestinian peace process, much less address the controversial final-status issues.
Instead, one Washington hand suggested that the furthest the White House was likely to go was into a reframing of the formula US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has long used as the basis for resolving the conflict.
“We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements,” Clinton said in 2009 after Netanyahu announced a partial settlement freeze.
I have seen discussions of a summary of President Obama's speech for Thursday night. The speech (apparently there is also a complete copy floating around) has not been authenticated. I know where it came from and I know who has been tasked with authenticating it, but I cannot tell you that it's authentic. But it's authentic enough that someone at Yediot apparently got a hold of it and this is the result.
Obama is expected to urge Israel to return to the 1967 lines while negating the Palestinian Authority's planned unilateral bid for statehood in September.
According to the draft – which may change again by Thursday – Obama will call on Jerusalem and Ramallah to reignite the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, saying it is the only way to achieve viable peace.
Obama stands to demand the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as the Jewish state, and that the Palestinians unequivocally abandon terror.
He is also likely to stress Israel must cease any settlement expansion in the West Bank and further avoid any act which could be construed as changing the status quo on the ground.
The subject of Jerusalem also stands to be included in the American president's speech: Washington sees the city as the capital of both Israel and the Palestinian state, with its east Jerusalem neighborhoods – which are largely populated by Palestinians – under the PA's sovereignty, and its Jewish neighborhoods under Israeli sovereignty.
Following Netanyahu's vehement speech before the Knesset plenum Sunday, it seems Washington has decided to lower its expectations of Netanyahu.
There's another version of the same article that was posted on ScribD, which was written by Shimon Shiffer and which I managed to get before it was apparently removed by the person who originally posted it. Here's the key passage:
According to one source exposed to talks among Netanyahu’s advisors ahead of the premier’s Friday meeting with the US president, Obama will define as illegal the settlements built in the territories after 1967. It is as yet unknown what will be Obama’s policy on the settlement blocs; in his speech on Monday Netanyahu noted he would demand that they remain under Israeli sovereignty.
Amidror and Arad tried to convince their interlocutors, headed by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, to change some of the planned formulations in the speech. The Israeli side claimed that Obama’s outline will not enable true negotiations, and is in essence an endorsement of the Arab approach. A senior US administration official told the Israelis that they have no reason to act like a “surprised virgin.
There are at least four major changes in US policy here: First, the 'settlements' are defined as 'illegal.' Only Jimmy Carter has done that. Second, the 'Palestinians' are assumed to have the right to all areas that were beyond the 1949 armistice lines. That was never US policy. Third, that the areas outside the 1949 armistice lines for which Israel will now be expected to 'compensate' the 'Palestinians' will include areas in 'east' Jerusalem. Fourth, the US has never called on Israel to return to the 1967 borders1949 armistice lines.
For the record, National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror, who is mentioned in the passage above, denied that he attempted to get Obama to change the speech.
Amidror told Army Radio that he never "tried to convince anyone of anything" and that "only thing right about the report was mine and Uzi Arad's name. The issue of Obama's speech did not come up in the meeting with Danilone, and there was not even a hint about what the president [Obama] and the prime minister [Netanyahu] will say."
Recent reports in the media have claimed that Amidror's latest trip to Washington was designed to prepare officials for Netanyahu's speech to Congress, but Amidror said "This is a big mistake of the newspapers. The speeches are not a big issues for us. There are many issues which are important for the future of Israel and on these issues we focused."
The Yediot Ahronoth report claimed that from conversations between Amidror and his predecessor Uzi Arad, US President Barack Obama intends to call on Israel to return to 1967 borders in a speech he is expected to give Thursday.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
