'Anyone but Bibi'?
For the
second time this week, former peace processor Aaron David Miller has gone on record urging President Obama
not to try to influence the upcoming Israeli elections. This was written by Miller himself.
In Washington, whether it’s an R or D administration, in fact, we
want Israeli leaders like Rabin, Peres, and Barak who see the world more
or less the way we do when it comes to the two-state peace process. We
have a much harder time with those Israeli leaders—Begin, Shamir,
Netanyahu—whose views on what to do about the Palestinians don’t
naturally accord with ours. (Sharon was a special case. He and George W.
Bush got along reasonably well because neither really cared about the
peace process and both were governing in an age of terror.)
But sometimes those initial judgments about who’s naughty or nice end up confounding.
Because U.S. administrations tend to divide the Israeli political
spectrum into two parts—the good Israelis who share our views and the
not so good ones who don’t—they’re not entirely sure what to do with the
fact that Israeli prime ministers of all political stripes have
continued Israeli settlement building on the West Bank and construction
in parts of east Jerusalem that we’d like to see become the capital of a
Palestinian state.
It’s an inconvenient but important reality to acknowledge that of the
three U.S.-orchestrated breakthroughs in the Middle East peace process,
two of them—the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the Madrid peace
conference—came from hardline Likud prime ministers. The third—the three
disengagement agreements following the 1973 war —came courtesy of a
very tough Labor prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.
But secretly rooting for the good Israelis and wishing them success
is one thing. What about actually doing things that help the good ones
succeed or alternatively weakening the Israelis we don’t want to see in
power?
I can recall at least three occasions when Republican and
Democratic administrations willfully picked Israeli favorites and tried
to shape election outcomes.
...
Now, as the clock ticks down on Israeli elections scheduled for March
2015, will the Obama administration play internal Israeli politics to
try to tip the election against Netanyahu?
Obama’s relationship with Bibi is perhaps the most dysfunctional of
any president-prime minister pair in the history of the U.S.-Israeli
relationship. Doubtless John Kerry, too, would like to see another
Israeli leader with whom he could dance a real peace process.
Yet constraints against U.S. meddling abound. First, there’s the
Republican-controlled Congress, which will be watching hawk-like for any
such funny business. Second, there’s the absence of a clear and
credible alternative to Bibi with whom the administration is close; and
then there’s the matter of the lack of a big issue for such lobbying.
The peace process is in a coma; and ISIS, Hamas, Assad, Hezbollah, and
the Iranian mullahs make Israel look like the good guys. Finally,
there’s Obama himself. He’s not Clinton. Does he really care? Do most
Israelis trust him? Could he get away with a campaign that makes clear
Bibi isn’t the right guy and candidate, but X is? I am betting on “no”
to all three questions. Don’t even think about it, Mr. President.
The last constraint is the most important one. Many Israelis saw Bush I as neutral at best and hostile at worst. But that didn't compare with what Israelis think of Obama. While we may differ on why, most Israelis agree that Obama is viscerally hostile to Israel. There is little that can be done to convince us otherwise (and with good reason).
If Obama tries to interfere (and with his arrogance I would say that there's a fair chance of that happening). it would likely backfire. That's what Miller is trying to prevent.
Keep writing Aaron. But don't expect Obama to listen.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Aaron David Miller, Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, George H. W. Bush, Israeli elections, John Kerry, Knesset elections 2015, Shimon Peres, Yitzchak Rabin, Yitzchak Shamir
Aaron David Miller: 'We always tried to influence the Israeli elections, but we never succeeded; Obama shouldn't even try'
Aaron David Miller, who was Dennis Ross' top assistant, has told YNet that the United States
'always' tried to interfere in Israeli elections, but never succeeded (Hat Tip:
Red Tulips) (link in Hebrew).
According to Miller, the US gathered a lot of information about Prime Minister Netanyahu - including his activities while a student in the United States - but no one would listen.
Miller admits that the George HW Bush administration influenced the outcome of the 1992 election to bring Yitzchak Rabin to power over Yitzchak Shamir, but he claims that's because the US set up the environment for that election through the Bush-Baker controversies with Shamir. He admits that the Clinton administration also tried - unsuccessfully - to ensure Shimon Peres' election as Prime Minister in 1996. But Peres lost to Netanyahu.
Miller says that the Clinton administration gathered information on Netanyahu and leaked it to the Israeli media. The information included Netanyahu's activities as a student in Boston and Philadelphia, his name change to Nitai, his forfeiting of his American passport, and the failure of Netanyahu's first marriage. Miller claims that it caused a scandal but had no influence.
Miller advises President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry not to even try to influence March's elections. Clinton was a President who was beloved in Israel, says Miller, while Obama is extremely unpopular (you don't say...) and any attempt to influence the March elections would backfire.
Obama and Kerry are declining to comment on the upcoming elections, although Kerry has said that he hopes that a new government will be able to conduct a 'peace process.'
Funny how he doesn't mention the Americans' greatest success - the 1999 replacement of Netanyahu with Ehud Barak courtesy of Clinton.
Labels: Aaron David Miller, Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, George H. W. Bush, Israeli elections, John Kerry, Knesset elections 2015, Shimon Peres, Yitzchak Rabin, Yitzchak Shamir
Despicable: Why the US spies on Israel
I don't recall seeing
this reported elsewhere. If it's true - and I have no reason to believe it's not - it places an entirely different light on President Obama's treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu between 2009 and 2011. Additionally, if the claim below is true, it makes a farce of the complaint that Netanyahu favored Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 elections. If this is why Obama is spying on Israel, why shouldn't Netanyahu - even openly - favor Romney. Heck, if I'd known about
this, I would have called on Netanyahu to endorse Romney publicly and damn the consequences (Hat Tip:
IMRA).
Second, there is a matter of American interference in Israel’s
internal affairs. The eavesdropping wasn’t just about trying to
ascertain what Israeli leaders really think about the peace process and
how much they’re willing to give up to advance it. It wasn’t just about
getting an inside track on how Israel’s relations with China or Russia
are advancing, or about arms deals that involve U.S. technology.
It was, according to reports, an attempt to gather information on
politicians whose views aren’t in sync with those of the U.S.
administration. This information was to be leaked to the local media in
order to embarrass these figures and ruin their political careers.
It isn’t too hard to guess which politicians were being targeted. It
stands to reason that it was those pesky “radical” right-wingers who
oppose territorial compromise.
It's well known here that George H.W. Bush did all he could to help Yitzchak Rabin defeat Yitzchak Shamir in 1992, and that Bill Clinton did all he could to help Ehud Barak defeat Binyamin Netanyahu in 1999. But at least those actions were out in the open. Only Obama has hidden behind wiretaps and spying and intercepted phone calls and emails.
America ought to be ashamed. Your government has no integrity - and even releasing Jonathan Pollard (as the editorial above joins so many others in advocating) won't restore it.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, George H. W. Bush, spying, Yitzchak Rabin, Yitzchak Shamir
What Hussein Obama really thinks of Binyamin Netanyahu
In case you had any doubt what
President Hussein Obama really thinks about Prime Minister Netanyahu.
In a new book that was released Tuesday, Obama is quoted as
expressing what he really thinks about Netanyahu during his 2012
presidential campaign.
According to the book, “Double Down,” Obama said that "We all
know Bibi Netanyahu is a pain in the a**" when discussing the conflict
between the Israelis and the Arabs.
"Double Down" was written by MSNBC correspondents Mark
Halperin and John Heilemann and it reveals behind-the-scenes political
stories from the American presidential race in 2012.
The quote about Netanyahu by Obama, which was reportedly made
during a meeting between the President and his aides a year before the
elections, is the only time Israel is mentioned in the book.
Still waiting to hear what Netanyahu really thinks of Obama (we can guess). I doubt we will hear it unless and until there is a Republican in office in the US and/or Netanyahu is no longer Prime Minister (think Yitzchak Shamir celebrating George H.W. Bush's defeat in 1992).
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, George H. W. Bush, Yitzchak Shamir
Shades of Yitzchak Shamir: Housing units in 'east' Jerusalem approved day before Kerry arrival
Back in the late '80's and early '90's, we had a feisty Prime Minister named Yitzchak Shamir.
A former Lehi commander, Shamir wasn't going to be kept down. Every time then-President George H.W. Bush sent an emissary to see Shamir, on the day of or the day before the emissary's arrival, a new 'settlement' went up.
Are we seeing it happening again, albeit with the comparatively gutless Netanyahu hiding behind some low level functionaries?
On Wednesday, the day before US Secretary of State John FN Kerry is due to arrive, the Jerusalem Municipality quietly announced that
69 more Jewish homes in 'east' Jerusalem's Har Homa neighborhood have been green-lighted.
The Jerusalem Municipality on Wednesday approved construction permits
for 69 new homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa, just
one day before US Secretary of State John Kerry is due to arrive in hopes of rekindling direct Israeli Palestinian talks.
The homes are the tail end of large project of more than 1,000 units in Har Homa
that was approved in August 2011 and for which tenders were issued in
April 2012, according to the non-governmental group Peace Now and
Jerusalem city councilman Meir Margalit (Meretz).
The contractor who won the bid on these last remaining 69 homes, had
submitted the paper work regarding their construction to the Jerusalem
Municipality's Local Planning Committee.
On Wednesday it issued construction permits for the project. The contractor is now authorized to start building.
The
Jerusalem Municipality said said that the construction permit was given
to a private contractor for a project that had already been approved
for Har Homa. It added that city has not right to deprive property
owners of their rights.
Somewhere Yitzchak Shamir is jumping for joy at this clever ploy. And we should be too. After all, Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, East Jerusalem, George H. W. Bush, Har Homa, Israel is my home, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, John Kerry, Yitzchak Shamir
Yitzchak Shamir - not just a product of his times
Caroline Glick has a wonderful tribute to
Yitzchak Shamir, our former Prime Minister, who passed away last Sabbath.
First, it was not inevitable that Shamir became a strong, dedicated, successful leader.
Many in his generation were not.
Shamir faced enormous challenges. And his most serious challenges came from his fellow Jews. People like Chaim Weizmann - whom the late Benzion Netanyahu referred to as "a disaster for the Jewish people," due to his chronic preference for British approval over Jewish national and legal rights - were more than willing to compromise away the national rights of the Jews to a state of our own in our historic homeland.
Indeed, in the years preceding Israel's declaration of independence, national sovereignty was only perceived as a viable option and reasonable goal by a minority. As Shamir said in a 1993 interview published this week by The Times of Israel, in 1945 David Ben-Gurion called for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth, rather than a sovereign Jewish state. As Shamir put it, "It was curious that the Zionist movement officially didn't accept the slogan of a Jewish state as the aim of the Zionist movement!... Weizmann was against it....He want[ed] Jewish unity here... not a state."
LATER, DURING Shamir's tenure as prime minister in the unity government with then-foreign minister Shimon Peres and the Labor Party from 1986 to 1988, Peres sought to undermine his leadership and bring about his defeat in the 1988 elections by collaborating with foreign governments against him.
According to top secret documents from 1988 first disclosed by Yediot Aharonot's Shimon Schiffer in June 2011, Peres collaborated with then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to destabilize Shamir's government. Peres also sought US assistance in subverting Shamir and fomenting his electoral defeat. Aside from that, in breach of both Israeli law and the expressed wishes of Shamir, Peres dispatched his emissary, then-Foreign Ministry director general Avraham Tamir, to Mozambique for secret meetings with Yasser Arafat.
Throughout his career, Peres, who is also a member of Shamir's generation, has distinguished himself as a politician who prefers his personal gain over that of his nation. In keeping with this consistent preference, last month Peres traveled to Washington to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Barack Obama, at the same time that Obama rejected Israel's request to commute the life sentence of Jonathan Pollard. It is safe to say that Shamir would probably not have been offered such an award from a US president.
But it is also safe to say that had he been offered the award, Shamir would have used the occasion to publicly press for Pollard's release.
The other reason it is wrong to view Shamir as a mere product of his times is because by doing so, we effectively say that there is no point in emulating him. If he only became the person he became because he lived through the times he lived through, then his story has nothing to teach us about what it means to lead, or to live a meaningful, good life in the service of a goal greater than ourselves. And this cannot be true.
In a poetic coincidence of timing, as Netanyahu eulogized Shamir on Sunday morning, Netanyahu's immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, entered a courtroom in Tel Aviv for the start of his criminal trial related to the so-called Holyland Affair. Olmert is accused of taking bribes from the developers of the capital's architectural monstrosity cynically named "Holyland," during his tenure as mayor of Jerusalem. He allegedly received money and other benefits in exchange for his willingness to allow the developers to expand the size of the project to more than 10 times the size initially allocated for it.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Ehud K. Olmert, Shimon Peres, Yitzchak Shamir
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Tuesday, July 3.
1) More on Shamir
Seth Lipsky at the New York Sun concludes:
One of our favorite facts is that history doesn’t disclose her alternatives. The world will never know what would have happened had America and the other parties been held to the standards Shamir insisted on at Madrid. No doubt there are many who will scorn the very thought. But here we are a generation after Oslo, and the Iranians are building an a-bomb, the Arafat who was embraced at Oslo is gone without achievement, the Eyptians have just elected a president who will make it a priority to seek the release of the sheik who masterminded the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the Syrians are engulfed in a civil war, the Lebanese are victims of Iranian-based terror and tyranny, and the Europeans are more hostile to Israel than ever. So the world will miss this practical idealist who knew where he stood and wouldn’t budge.
Daniel Gordis offers similar thoughts at Tablet (h/t Yair Rosenberg):
For all the misgivings many now have about Shamir’s intransigence or his specific policies, part of his legacy is that Jews ought not to pretend not to know what, deep down, they know. Yitzhak Shamir knew what he had seen, both in Europe and then in the Arab world, and he knew what it meant. He was no less ambivalent about the Arabs than he was about the Poles and refused to vote for Begin’s peace treaty with Egypt. Presumably in deference to Begin, he abstained, but he made it clear that he thought Israel was paying far too high a price. Today, three and a half decades later, with the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in Cairo and with Israel now missing the Sinai as a buffer, who was wiser? Was it the Nobel Prize-winning Begin who’d turned peacemaker, or Shamir, who had not? Will the sword devour forever? Yes, Shamir sadly believed, it will. Is it possible that he was right?
Emanuele Ottolenghi gives a unique perspective on Shamir:
Shamir did. He withdrew, like his predecessor Menachem Begin, and did not dispense wisdom or settle scores from the column of a magazine or the chairmanship of a foundation for the years he was out of office. And heaven knows he might still have had much to say. But he understood that a defeated statesman must acknowledge his loss and graciously withdraw from sight. His silence, for 20 years, is a testimony to the respect he had for the democratic process and his profoundly humbling recognition that his time as leader had passed.
2) A secular democratic Palestinian state
This is the sort of story that The Lede at the New York Times would never pick up on. Its counterpart at the Washington Post, BlogPost did. Ramallah protesters attacked by Palestinian Authority police (photos):
Palestinian Authority police employed brute force to break up a second day of protesting in Ramallah on Sunday, with activists and eyewitnesses claiming police assaulted both male and female protesters with batons and chains, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The protests were against President Abbas meeting with Israeli vice-premier Shaul Mofaz. This indicates that peace with Israel isn't all that popular among the Palestinians. By cracking down harshly on the protesters, the PA only serves to hurt the cause of peace.
Taken together with the recent reports of Palestinian Authority censorship, this doesn't speak well for the future of freedom of expression in Palestine.
The New York Times also reported, Hamas Suspends Voter Registration Process in Gaza.(When I saw the headline, I figured that the Times had confused Hamas with Republicans.)
The Hamas-run government in Gaza suspended the work of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission on Monday, a day before it was to start registering new voters, abruptly halting one of the few tangible steps toward reconciliation with the rival Fatah party, based in the West Bank.
The move pushed off the prospect of presidential and parliamentary elections. Though considered long overdue, no date had been set for them.
The latest delay added a new complication in a reconciliation process that began more than a year ago with an accord brokered by Egypt that was described as historic but has mainly resulted in new rounds of talks, more documents and broken deadlines.
The first paragraph casts reconciliation as neutral if not a positive development, but what's interesting is in the second paragraph. The phrase "considered long overdue," is misleading. How do we know that the elections are overdue? Abbas and the legislature had defined terms in office that are long over. "Considered" is unnecessary.
Elections are important only if accountability is. Whether it is Fatah or Hamas, the priority of each is staying in power. That is why there have been no elections. That is why there will be no reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. That is why Abbas stifles dissent.
3) Energy and the Middle East
Daniel Pipes disputes an argument made by Paul Miller. Miller, in an article for the National Interest, argued that due to the declining importance of oil, the Middle East will fade from significance. Pipes, while calling Miller's article "provocative and well executed," still disagrees:
This argument is belied by several facts. First, the very cover of the July/August issue of the National Interest, with a tattered flag and a lead essay titled "Requiem for the Two-State Promise: Israel Tightens Its Grip on the Occupied Lands," negates Miller's point. Passions about the Arab-Israeli conflict have only remotely to do with oil. The anti-Zionist forces that rallied in Durban in 2001 and the pro-Israel forces that rally each spring at the AIPAC policy conference devote roughly zero percent of their thoughts to oil, gas, or any other hydrocarbons.
Second, Islamism, as the only dynamic utopian and totalitarian ideology extant in the world today, and which largely originates in the Middle East, presents a civilizational danger only somewhat connected to oil (the appeal of Islamism will probably decline along with revenues).
Third, the region, located at the center of the inhabited world, bristles with dangers, including tyranny, violence, WMD, and war. These affect everything from sea lane security to refugee immigrants to domestic security arrangements (take a walk around the White House for a vivid demonstration of the latter). Only in the Middle East are whole countries in danger of extinction. Several countries have descended into anarchy, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, and Libya.
Walter Russell Mead writes about Israel’s Emergence As Energy Superpower ...:
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir famously lamented that Moses led the children of Israel for forty years of wandering in the desert until he found the only place in the Middle East where there wasn’t any oil.
But could Moses have been smarter than believed? Apparently the Canadians and the Russians think so, as both countries are moving to step up energy relations with a tiny nation whose total energy reserves some experts now think could rival or even surpass the fabled oil wealth of Saudi Arabia.
Actual production is still miniscule, but evidence is accumulating that the Promised Land, from a natural resource point of view, could be an El Dorado: inch for inch the most valuable and energy rich country anywhere in the world. If this turns out to be true, a lot of things are going to change, and some of those changes are already underway.
Maybe Miller has a point. It isn't necessarily that the Middle East will fade from significance but that oil's influence in international politics will decline.
Labels: Middle East Media Sampler, oil and gas exploration, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian democracy, Soccer Dad, Yitzchak Shamir
Time's offensive obituary
If former Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir z"l, who was buried today, is looking down from Heaven now on what is going on in the world, he is likely offended by a petty obituary written about him by
Time's Karl Vick. It starts by being under the header 'Palestine' as if the State of Israel doesn't exist or weren't a worthy folder for organizing news. It continues by calling Shamir the 'shortest giant.' And then it makes
one offensive cut after another in a bid to cut down a man who no longer has any means of defending himself.
Shamir inspired no such legends. “They will not write or say in the eulogies of Yitzhak Shamir that he was a fierce, charismatic leader who knew how to inspire his people,” one of his successors and protégés, Ehud Olmert, wrote in Yedioth Ahronot on Sunday. The headline in Haaretz: “A modest man, an uninspiring leader – and a genuine zealot.” Yet the sweep of his life describes the arc of modern Israel — from its birth in the ashes of the Holocaust, which claimed every member of the family Shamir left in Poland when he emigrated to what was then Palestine – to the new mainstream he thrived amid as inheritor of the Likud, the party that evolved from another Jewish militia regarded as outlaws by the Labor Party mainstream Ben-Gurion led.
...
Stolid and diminutive at barely five feet tall, Shamir nonetheless loomed so large — and served so long — that the official announcement of his death could not avoid the question of stature: Shamir “belonged to the generation of giants who founded the State of Israel,” said the statement issued by the office of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister who, in elections expected next year, is positioned to surpass Shamir’s tenure in office. He might not have enjoyed living to see it, according to Chemi Shalev, who covered Shamir for Haaretz. Shamir “disliked ‘professional politicians’ and was no great fan of Shimon Peres… nor… Netanyahu, the Likud superstar who would eventually take Shamir’s place after his 1992 electoral loss to Yitzhak Rabin,” Shalev wrote. “Netanyahu’s slick, American-style politicking was alien to Shamir, and his willingness to grudgingly adopt the Oslo Accords in order to win over centrist voters in the 1996 elections was viewed by Shamir both as betrayal and as a vindication of his earlier mistrust.”
But they make him sound like he loved Olmert, the greasiest of Israeli politicians?
Read the whole thing.
Labels: liberal media bias, Yitzchak Shamir
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Sunday, July 1.
1) Dueling headlines
The Washington Post: Egypt’s president is U.S. critic, but he could be an ally
The New York Times: Egypt’s New Leader Takes Oath, Promising to Work for Release of Jailed Terrorist
Because nothing says "ally" better than advocating for the release of a terrorist.
The New York Times article reported by David Kirkpatrick is disturbing for the way it downplays Morsi's brazenness. First there's:
Mr. Morsi referred briefly to Mr. Abdel Rahman in an almost offhand aside in the context of a vow to free Egyptian civilians imprisoned here after military trials under the rule of the generals. “I see signs for Omar Abdel Rahman and detainees’ pictures,” he said. “It is my duty and I will make all efforts to have them free, including Omar Abdel Rahman.”
A Brotherhood spokesman said later that Mr. Morsi intended to ask federal officials in the United States to have Mr. Abdel Rahman extradited to Egypt on humanitarian grounds. He was not seeking to have Mr. Abdel Rahman’s convictions overturned or calling him a political prisoner.
An Obama administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, shrugged it all off as empty talk, saying, “There is zero chance this happens.”
That wasn't an "offhand" remark. In comparing the "Blind Sheikh" to the detainees, Morsi was making an equivalence, one that should be offensive to the United States. The spokesman must have realized how awful Morsi's comment must have sounded to most Americans (at least those who aren't newspaper reporters) and tried to walk it back. The spin, accepted uncritically by Kirkpatrick, is not convincing.
Later Kirkpatrick reports:
In an interview with Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center, Mr. Morsi once said he harbored suspicions that unknown hands might have played a role in the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
“When you come and tell me that the plane hit the tower like a knife in butter, then you are insulting us,” Mr. Morsi said, according to an article Mr. Hamid wrote in Foreign Policy magazine. “How did the plane cut through the steel like this? Something must have happened from the inside.”
Although it is nearly impossible to find an Egyptian who supports terrorist attacks like those on Sept. 11 or the 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center garage, many are very skeptical of official American accounts about who was responsible.
Again, this is reported uncritically. So what if "many" Egyptians are skeptical of American claims? How does that excuse Morsi, a political leader, for feeding that paranoia.
Mr. Morsi’s pledge to seek Mr. Abdel Rahman’s extradition may also play well with Egyptians who perceived Mr. Mubarak as a lackey to Washington. But it runs sharply counter to assiduous efforts over many years by Brotherhood leaders to convince the West that their group advocates only peaceful reform and does not condone violence.
The premise of this paragraph is that those "assiduous efforts" were sincere. Kirkpatrick doesn't allow that Morsi's statements were, indeed, representative of the Brotherhood true intentions. Kirkpatrick and his ilk have been doing their best to help the Brotherhood convince the West of its peaceful intentions. He doesn't give himself enough credit.
2) Correction
Last week, I criticized an article that appeared ten years ago in the New York Times for failing to acknowledge that Israel lost thirteen soldiers in one battle as it attempted to defeat the terrorist infrastructure in Jenin. I was wrong. The reporter, James Bennett, wrote:
Israeli soldiers and Palestinians said Palestinian fighters had salted the camp with booby traps.
From the second floor of one home, Palestinians pointed to an area, by a blackened building and a palm tree, where they said 13 soldiers died in an ambush. The area is now leveled. In all, 23 soldiers died in the fighting.
I still believe my criticism of the article is valid. My point was that those soldiers died in an attempt to limit the collateral damage. In no way does Bennett suggest that Israel limited the damage they caused by risking troops instead of bombing from planes. In fact the gist of the article is to suggest that Israel used disproportionate force. No claim of excessive force is ignored and no effort was made to verify the claims. In fact at the beginning, Bennett tips the scales subtly:
Israel says Jenin was a center of terrorism, which it is determined to weed out. Israeli officials have spoken of 100 to 200 dead here, and Palestinians have estimated two, three, or four times that number. No one yet knows how many were killed in fighting that has lasted 11 days, and is now all but over, but already the battle here seems certain to be argued over in the contest between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Israeli officials "have spoken" and Palestinians "have estimated." Which verb is more definitive? We know now that even the Israeli estimate was high and that the Palestinian number was wildly exaggerated. What did Bennett think at the time? My guess is that he was more convinced of the Palestinian narrative and numbers; he wasn't willing to consider any evidence that Israel's response was measured or justified.
3) Yitzchak Shamir
Barry Rubin shares a personal recollection of a meeting with Yitzchak Shamir on the eve of the Gulf War, along with a number of American diplomats. ("Mr. Bird" is one of the diplomats.)
Shamir sought to break the ice with a friendly question. “So,” he said to the delegation’s leader, “how long are you planning to be here? A week?”
I don’t know if he was joking about the impending deadline but a look of pure fear and panic leaped onto Mr. Bird’s face. “Are you kidding!” His voice shook with dismay. “We’re getting out of here tomorrow!” (Those were his precise words.)
Almost immediately, however, he realized that he was making himself look like a fool. He tried to calm down and recover. So he added, albeit with equal ham-handedness, “But I guess you have to stay here.” (Honest, that’s what he said.)
Rubinstein answered with a big smile on his face: “Oh, no. We don’t have to stay here. We just happen to like it here.” I will never forget the even bigger smile on Shamir’s face. Mr. Bird and all the little birds who fancied themselves great statesmen and Middle East experts had no idea what had just happened.
Prof Rubin recalls, also that the United States didn't keep its pledge to protect Israel from Scuds and reward it for its cooperation (in not joining the fight against Saddam.) In fact Shamir got the back of President Bush's hand and King Hussein of Jordan who helped arm Saddam was invited to the White House.
He also noted that Shamir was not charismatic, a fact that hurt him in numerous instances. It allowed opponents to define him.
For example in 1988, Prime Minister Shamir referred to Israel's enemies (or critics) as grasshoppers. Charles Krauthammer debunked the charge, showing it to be a textbook example of media distortions of Middle East coverage:
Now, it turns out that Shamir did not say that Palestinians will be crushed like grasshoppers. The word "crushed" serves to make the grasshopper reference look sadistic and bloodcurdling, but it is pure invention. What Shamir did say is that "those who would destroy what we are building . . . they are in our sight like grasshoppers."
Here is where the ignorance comes in. Anyone who is familiar with Hebrew culture would know that the grasshopper reference, which to begin with is an odd political metaphor, is a quotation from perhaps the most famous story of national panic and dissension in the Old Testament. When wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites sent spies to scout the Promised Land. Upon returning, they delivered a report of abject defeatism: "And there we saw giants . . . and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight" (Numbers 13:33). (The news so alarmed the Israelites that they demanded to return to the safety - and slavery - of Egypt. They were punished for their faithlessness by being made to wander 40 years in the wilderness.)
Anyone in Shamir's audience would have recognized the reference. The meaning of the metaphor is clear: It refers to size and strength only, not to the presence or absence of human characteristics. The Biblical spies were saying: In comparison to our enemies we felt small and weak. They were not saying (they were, after all, speaking of themselves): We felt subhuman, insect-like.
The fact that Krauthammer debunked Shamir's critics in 1988, didn't stop Andrew Sullivan from dredging up the charge last year. Ron Kampeas rebutted Sullivan.
Also, after he was defeated for re-election Shamir was quoted as saying he would stall peace talks with the Palestinians. As a New York Times headline said, Shamir Is Said to Admit Plan To Stall Talks 'for 10 Years'.
What Shamir said (and I was told that the interviewer agreed) was that he expected negotiations to take ten years, not that he intended to stall negotiations. Furthermore note that even Yitzchak Rabin didn't intend to cede as much territory as is now considered "what everyone knows" is necessary to bring peace. (The obituary is incorrect in explaining Shamir's succession of Begin as Prime Minister. It was a subsequent election when Shamir and Peres agreed to a rotating premiership as part of
In an otherwise hostile obituary to Shamir (written by the one time Israel correspondent, Joel Brinkley) in the New York Times:
In 1988, at a meeting of the political party Herut, he sat slumped on a sofa, gazing at the floor as party stalwarts heaped praises on him. Shortly thereafter, he said: “I like all those people, they’re nice people. But this is not my style, not my language. This kind of meeting is the modern picture, but I don’t belong to it.”
Shamir was not much concerned with the polish that is so important to politicians nowadays. This incident shows the degree to which he was aware that he was not playing the game the way he was expected to. Was Shamir's obituary less ambiguous than Arafat's?
In Simcha Raz's biography of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, he told the story of how Shamir met his wife and married while underground. One of Shamir's contacts noticed that the female courier who reported to Shamir cared very much for him and suggested that Shamir marry her. Shamir demurred claiming that he couldn't very well register with the authorities to marry. So his contact brought the matter to Rabbi Levine who arranged a number of prominent Rabbis officiate at the unofficial wedding.
The Shamir's son Yair, a former CEO of Israel Aircraft Industries was an early investor in Mirabalis that created the ICQ network, which was later bought by AOL for its instant messaging service. The younger Shamir, was one of the pioneers of Israel as a "start-up nation."
Labels: Jenin, Middle East Media Sampler, Mohammed Morsy, Operation Defensive Shield, Soccer Dad, Yitzchak Shamir
A heart-warming Yitzchak Shamir story
There's a heart-warming story about Yitzchak Shamir from Barry Rubin
here.
Labels: First Gulf War, Yitzchak Shamir
'A practical idealist who knew where he stood and wouldn't budge'
The New York Sun pays tribute to former Prime Minister
Yitzchak Shamir.
He was the second longest-serving premier, after Ben Gurion. It was under his leadership that Israel attended the Madrid peace conference. The parley was established without crossing Shamir’s redlines; the Palestine Liberation Organization did not have a seat, nor did the Madrid talks include Arabs from Jerusalem. It was a more hard-headed, more principled process than the one for which it was abandoned, namely Oslo.
One of our favorite facts is that history doesn’t disclose her alternatives. The world will never know what would have happened had America and the other parties been held to the standards Shamir insisted on at Madrid. No doubt there are many who will scorn the very thought. But here we are a generation after Oslo, and the Iranians are building an a-bomb, the Arafat who was embraced at Oslo is gone without achievement, the Eyptians have just elected a president who will make it a priority to seek the release of the sheik who masterminded the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the Syrians are engulfed in a civil war, the Lebanese are victims of Iranian-based terror and tyranny, and the Europeans are more hostile to Israel than ever. So the world will miss this practical idealist who knew where he stood and wouldn’t budge.
My guess is that had the world been held to Shamir's standards, we would be exactly where we are today in terms of the 'peace process' (i.e. nowhere) with 1,500 fewer dead Israelis.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Madrid Conference, Yitzchak Shamir
'The Arabs are still the same Arabs, the sea is still the same sea,' but does Bibi get it?
At Sunday's cabinet session, Prime Minister Netanyahu
eulogized former Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir.
Shamir's statement that "The Arabs are the same Arabs and the sea is the same sea" was a magnet for criticism at the time, Netanyahu told the cabinet, but "today there are certainly more people who understand that the man saw and understood fundamental truths."
The late prime minister, Netanyahu continued, never compromised himself or the truth according to popular sentiment, "and therefore I think it is fitting that we pay our respects (to him)."
Respect, but not emulate. Would Shamir have done the terrorists for Gilad deal? Would have had expelled the Jews of the Ulpana rather than seeking to have the Knesset legislate the Supreme Court's decision out of existence? Would he have allowed himself to be abandoned by Obama and shown the service entrance of the White House?
YNet adds:
Netanyahu also shared a story which spoke of Shamir the man. "One day as he sat here at the prime minister's chambers, a delegation of Likud members arrived at around noon. They were seeking to advance the nomination of one of their friends for a certain post. Having seen a large group of people in the middle of the day, Shamir said. 'What are you doing? Go back to work!' That says everything about the man. Humble, honest, simple and possessing great inner strength."
Would Shamir have made Ehud Barak defense minister and granted him the power to decide whether and when housing is built in Judea and Samaria? Shamir was the guy who greeted every emissary from Papa Bush with a new Jewish town - not just a promise to build a few apartments, not just one of seven necessary approvals, but an actual new Jewish town.
As much as people on the right think that Shamir was wrong to go to Madrid (he was literally forced), Bibi is a tiny shadow of Shamir. He's what we might today term Shamir Lite - if that.
Chaval al d'avdeen v'lo mishtakchin (it's a pity about those who are lost for whom no one similar is found).
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Yitzchak Shamir
Arens: Shamir warned Bush he was going to attack Iraq
Former Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir passed away during the course of the Sabbath. He was 96-years old. Shamir will be buried in the part of Mt. Herzl that is reserved for the country's leadership in a state funeral on Monday. I don't think Shamir would be pleased with much of what is said about him
here.
Shamir was the state’s seventh prime minister from 1983 to 1984 and again from 1986 to 1992, the longest-serving premier after David Ben-Gurion. He was known for resisting international pressure to make concessions, yet initiated a peace process in Madrid that led to many diplomatic overtures by his successors.
“The truth is that, in the final analysis, the search for peace has always been a matter of who would tire of the struggle first, and blink,” he wrote in his autobiography.
Shamir also served as foreign minister, Knesset speaker and opposition head, and was an agent in the Mossad. He was among the leaders of the Stern Group (Lehi) in the Jewish underground in Mandatory Palestine.
President Shimon Peres, who fought bitterly with Shamir in the 1980s, issued a statement in which he described Shamir as a courageous fighter both before and after the establishment of the state. Peres said Shamir had left a lasting legacy of bravery.
“He remained true to his beliefs, was a great patriot of his people and a great lover of Israel who served the nation loyally and with great dedication for many years,” Peres said.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Shamir “belonged to the generation of giants that established the State of Israel and fought for the freedom of the Jewish people in its land.”
He said Shamir, whose family died in the Holocaust, fought in the Stern Group and as prime minister to build up the security of the state and ensure its future out of concern for its citizens.
“We lost a great man who was a great leader, who was fundamentally a man of the people,” Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said.
“To really understand him and his refusal to be enticed by diplomatic overtures that would have weakened Israel, you had to have heard him speak on Holocaust Remembrance Day,” he continued.
“Shamir was a symbol of Israel’s rising from the ashes of the Holocaust to strength and staying power. Out of this developed his personality as an enlightened realist and a stiff ideologue who withstood internal and external pressure and fought to prevent a situation in which the people of Israel will not have their own land and state.”
By contrast, Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, who served as a minister in Shamir’s cabinet, praised Shamir for negotiating with the Palestinians, initiating peace talks in Madrid and resisting pressure to attack Iraq after Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles at Israel during the First Gulf War.
...
Although known as a hardliner, Shamir nonetheless showed teeth-gritting restraint during the 1991 Gulf War. At the urging of the United States, he held Israel’s fire in the face of Scud missile salvoes by dictator Saddam Hussein rather than retaliate and endanger the US alliance with Arab powers battling to expel Iraq from Kuwait.
His forbearance on that occasion drove home Israel’s consideration for Washington’s Middle East interests.
“I can think of nothing that went more against my grain as a Jew and a Zionist, nothing more opposed to the ideology on which my life has been based, than the decision I took... to ask the people of Israel to accept the burden of restraint,” Shamir said later.
After the war, US president George H.W. Bush called on Israel to accept multi-party peace talks with the Arabs. His administration drove home the demand by postponing $10 billion in US loan guarantees that the Shamir government needed to absorb new immigrants.
Shamir hinted darkly that Bush, the leader of the country’s most important ally, was an anti-Semite but relented on attending the Madrid peace conference, where he became the first Israeli leader to sit opposite Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian and Lebanese delegates.
One has to wonder whether deep down Shamir understood that Madrid was a mistake. The 'Palestinian' delegates were supposed to be a part of the Jordanian delegation, which became a joke when it was discovered that they were reporting to Arafat.
We no longer have to wonder whether Shamir regarded the restraint during the Gulf War as a mistake. Moshe Arens, who was Israel's ambassador to Washington at the time, told Israel Radio on Sunday morning that Shamir sent him to warn George H.W. Bush, who was President at the time, that Israel had it with restraint and was going to attack Iraq. Before Israel could attack, a cease fire was declared. Bush repaid Shamir by withholding loan guaranties, as noted above, and by working for his defeat in 1992 elections. I doubt that restraint during Gulf War I is something Shamir would want as his legacy.
Labels: First Gulf War, George H. W. Bush, Moshe Arens, Yitzchak Shamir
His moral obligation to try to free Pollard
Jonathan Tobin correctly points out
Shimon Peres' unique moral obligation to work for the freedom of Jonathan Pollard. Peres is to receive a medal of freedom at the White House on Wednesday, and is expected to use the opportunity to push for Pollard's freedom.
It should be remembered that Pollard’s spying took place during the period in 1984 and 1985 when Israel’s government was run by a grand coalition in which the Likud Party led by Yitzhak Shamir and Labor, led by the late Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, shared power. Though in the aftermath of this fiasco, Israel claimed the intelligence operatives running Pollard were acting as part of a rogue operation, this was always absurd. Rafi Eitan, the head of the Defense Ministry Office of Scientific Liaison, was in charge of Pollard’s spying. But his close ties to both Rabin and Shamir, as well as the specific involvement of the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, made it clear that responsibility for this action as well as knowledge of the U.S. data procured from Pollard went all the way to the top. That means Peres was almost certainly in the loop on what was going on.
Pollard’s behavior was illegal and indefensible, but even worse can be said about the cynical way an obviously unstable individual was exploited by his handlers. The same holds true for those leaders who enabled this catastrophic error in judgment. Given the nearly sacrosanct way the intelligence apparatus is viewed by most Israelis, none of those involved in the Pollard affair were ever really held accountable for what must be termed as among the worst mistakes made in the country’s history. That is especially true of the Shamir-Rabin-Peres troika that continued to run the country for the next seven years, with Rabin and Peres governing on their own for three years after that. Indeed, Israel made no real effort to appeal for Pollard’s release until Benjamin Netanyahu came to office for the first time in 1996.
Thus, it is only fitting the octogenarian Peres should use the opportunity afforded by his receipt of the Medal of Freedom to speak of Pollard.
As to the merits of the case for clemency, they have been rehashed endlessly. Suffice to say that though Pollard does not deserve to be treated as any kind of hero, after this much passage of time, there is no rational argument to be made that the damage he did is still vital to U.S. intelligence or defense. Nor can it be claimed that after spending more time in prison than many murderers and far more than any spy for a friendly nation has ever served that his release would send the wrong message about the severity of his crime.
If anything, Jonathan has understated Peres' role in Pollard's predicament. In fact, he only gave the tip of the iceberg. There's much, much more
here.
Labels: Jonathan Pollard, Shimon Peres, Yitzchak Rabin, Yitzchak Shamir
What Netanyahu left out at AIPAC
Lenny Ben David says that Prime Minister Netanyahu should have reminded President Obama of
how poorly the US 'had our back' during the 1991 Gulf War.
According to Moshe Arens, Israel’s defense minister at the time, his American counterparts “expected that within 48 hours the U.S. Air Force would eliminate the missile launch capability of the Iraqis. If it turned out that they were not going to be able to do it within 48 hours, Israel would be free to take whatever action it considered appropriate.”
Not a single Scud missile or launcher was knocked out by American planes, not just in the first 48 hours, but during the whole war. Yet President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker insisted that Israel continue its restraint and not “spoil” their coalition. They assured Israel that the most modern Patriot anti-aircraft missiles would be dispatched to Israel and would be able to shoot down the Scuds. Post-war analysis showed that not a single Scud was intercepted by the Patriots.
Meanwhile, the commander of the American coalition, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, objected to the number of American planes hunting Scuds in western Iraq, wanting to redirect U.S. aircraft to the Kuwait front.
At the height of the war Arens was sent to Washington to meet with President Bush. In a 21-year-old news account that could actually describe Prime Minister Netanyahu’s meetings in Washington last week, The New York Times wrote, “An administration official said Arens seemed to be ‘laying the groundwork if the Israelis decide to retaliate.’ The administration official said that in the talks with Bush, Arens ‘didn’t say absolutely that the Israelis were going to retaliate. But he didn’t say they were not, either. He made a very emotional presentation, though.”
Unlike the politicians and pundits cited by Ben David, I think that Netanyahu's Holocaust analogy was apt.
But there are also some comparisons that can or cannot be made between Gulf War I and the Iranian threat. First, Gulf War I was characterized by a misplaced emphasis on the need for a multilateral coalition. I cannot recall any US President before George H.W. Bush who insisted on a UN mandate to do what needed to be done.
Second, while I disagreed at the time with the Israeli decision to stand down (we were still living in the US then - we made aliya later that year), once the first SCUD's did not have chemical content, they were reduced from a real threat to a nuisance, and standing down was not unreasonable. I doubt that the old war horses - Shamir and Arens - would have sat still if those had been chemical missiles.
Third, the fact that the US didn't do what it said it would do on Israel's behalf in Gulf War I ought to be waved in Obama's face. There is no basis in Obama's behavior on which to trust the US again to do our dirty work and no reason for us to entrust our security to the US. Obama certainly has no warmer feelings for Israel than Bush I had. Let's face it: It was only by God's grace that there was not much more serious damage in Israel. And the Iranian threat is much stronger.
Finally, for the Israelis, what good did standing down do us in 1991? Immediately after that war, the Bush administration dragged Shamir to Madrid, cut off his loan guarantees, and did more than any Republican President not named Eisenhower to destroy Israel's special relationship with the US. I cannot tell you how happy I was when George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992. Does anyone really believe Obama will be any better?
Labels: First Gulf War, George H. W. Bush, Moshe Arens, Yitzchak Shamir
When we're defiant, they respect us
Yoram Ettinger writes that saying 'no' - even to the United States - need not be the end of the World for Israel. In fact, Ettinger claims that
saying no has worked out quite well.
In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor. In 1982, he launched a comprehensive war on the Palestinian Liberation Organization's terrorist headquarters in Lebanon. Both operations were executed irrespective of bullying and pressure from the U.S. and notwithstanding the fragile 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty. Begin realized that failing to eradicate these threats would imperil Israel's survival, erode its power of deterrence and thus undermine Israel's deterrence-driven peace with Egypt and its strategic cooperation with the U.S.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Israel-Egypt peace treaty did not collapse. Once again, Arab leaders did not rush to rescue the PLO, demonstrating that the Palestinian issue was not a crown jewel of Arab policymaking. Moreover, Egypt – just like all other Arab countries – would not sacrifice its own national interests on the altar of the Palestinian issue.
While the U.S. Administration condemned Israel for the large scale military operations, and imposed a brief military embargo, these operations resulted in the 1981 and 1983 strategic Memoranda of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel, which enhanced joint national security projects, upgrading Israel's long-term strategic posture.
From 1983 to 1992, during his two terms as prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir was severely criticized by U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush for crushing Palestinian terrorism during the First Intifada and expanding Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. At the same time, however, U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation was bolstered at an unprecedented level while he was in power. Washington recognized that U.S.-Israel cooperation never revolved around the Arab-Israeli conflict. Mutually-beneficial U.S.-Israel ties were based upon shared values, common threats such as Islamic terrorism, ballistic missiles and rogue regimes, and joint interests such as research and development and job creation in the high-tech market and in the defense industries.
In August 1948, U.S. Ambassador to Israel James McDonald recorded Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's response to the American demand (accompanied by a regional military embargo) to end the "occupation" of Arab land or agree to a land swap, to accept the internationalization of Jerusalem and to allow the return of the Arab refugees: "Speaking with solemn emphasis, [Ben Gurion] added that as much as Israel desired friendship with the U.S. and full cooperation with it and the U.N., there were limits beyond which it could go. Israel cannot yield to anything which, in its judgment, would threaten its independence or its security. The very fact that Israel is a small state makes more necessary the scrupulous defense of its own interests; otherwise it would be lost … Ben Gurion warned President [Harry S.] Truman and the State Department that they would be gravely mistaken if they assumed that the threat or even the use of U.N. sanctions would force Israel to yield on issues considered vital to its independence and security. [He] left no doubt that he was determined to resist, at whatever cost, 'unjust and impossible demands.' On these he could not compromise ["My Mission," 1951, pp. 49-50]."
Ben Gurion's defiance transformed Washington's image of the Jewish state from a strategic liability to a potential strategic asset.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: David Ben Gurion, George H. W. Bush, Harry S. Truman, Menachem Begin, Ronald Reagan, Yitzchak Shamir
