Strategic Affairs expert: 'Optimistic, guilt-driven worldview driving US policy on Iran'
Brig. Gen. (Res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former chief of the research division in IDF Military Intelligence, and
until recently, director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, has blasted the Obama administration's approach to Iran in a paper published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, calling it 'optimistic' and 'guilt-driven.' Kuperwasser says that
Israel must monitor Iran more closely in the event that an agreement is reached over its nuclear capabilities.
"The main reason for the reluctance of the administration to consider
the strategy proposed by Israel, and by like-minded Arab states and
members of Congress, is its optimistic and guilt-driven worldview. As
long as the negotiations continue, Israel should keep doing everything
it can to prevent a bad deal with Iran," Kuperwasser said.
"But
if in spite of its efforts a bad deal is signed," Israel should boost
intelligence gathering, accelerate efforts to develop the military
capability to defend itself if necessary, and build a regional alliance
determined to block Iranian attempts to translate its achievements in
the nuclear realm into greater regional influence, even without
developing a weapon.
"Put succinctly," Kuperwasser said,
"Washington seeks to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, while
Jerusalem seeks to prevent it from having the capability to produce
nuclear weapons," he wrote, as the June 30 deadline for a final deal
approaches.
Israel continues to believe that with enough
pressure, Iran can be convinced that it has no chance of becoming a
nuclear weapon state, he argued.
"On the other hand, Israel
believes that the deal proposed now will justifiably be presented by
Iran as a victory of the Islamic Republic, one that can be translated
into further achievements in Iran’s quest for regional hegemony,"
Kuperwasser stated.
From an Israeli point of view, he continued,
the US administration "seems to have convinced itself that the deal it
is trying to reach is the best possible deal and is a reasonable one,
while it remains blind to the deal’s many shortcomings, and indulges in
wishful thinking and distortion of facts in order to justify it."
Elsewhere
in his paper, Kuperwasser wrote, "To be specific about the perceived
threat, Israel’s view is that Iran under the current regime seeks,
through a variety of ways, to bring about the destruction of the
national state of the Jewish people. This is a central component of
Iran’s broader efforts to form a new Middle East, controlled by
extremist forces aligned with it and under its influence, from which
basis it can advance toward changing the entire world order."
What could go wrong?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Iranian nuclear threat, nuclear weapons, P 5+1, Yossi Kuperwasser
@JeffreyGoldberg agrees with 'only 46%' of this mainstream Israeli viewpoint
@JeffreyGoldberg publishes a lengthy critique of his recent interview with, and
a speech by President Obama. The critique was written by Yossi Kuperwasser, who until recently was the director general of Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs and was formerly a special security consultant to the Prime Minister's office. Goldberg describes it - legitimately - as a mainstream Israeli viewpoint, which has to make me wonder with which 54% of what Kuperwasser writes, self-proclaimed Israel supporter Goldberg disagrees. A few
highlights.
During the recent Israeli elections, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s
statements regarding the possibility of a Palestinian state and Arab
Israeli voters triggered a global uproar, leading the prime minister to
quickly issue the necessary clarifications. Nevertheless, the president
accused the prime minister of betraying Israel’s core values, which he
attributed to the likes of the kibbutzim and Moshe Dayan. The
president’s statements betray a lack of understanding of both the past
and present. Moshe Dayan and Netanyahu, for one, were not that
different. Both were eager for peace, but at the same time realistic
about the need for security due to the Palestinian refusal to accept the
Jewish state. Dayan opposed a retreat to the 1967 borders, and in his
famous eulogy for Roi Rotberg, he warned against making dangerous
concessions. Obama also referenced Golda Meir, who famously denied the
existence of the Palestinian people.
President Obama’s anger toward Netanyahu is misplaced, especially
given his extraordinary lack of criticism of Palestinians for far more
egregious behavior. The Palestinians, after all, are the ones who
refused to accept the president’s formula for extending the peace
negotiations. It is Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) who
have called for “popular resistance,” which has led in recent years to
stabbings, stonings, and attacks with cars and Molotov cocktails against
Israelis. Since the PA ended the peace negotiations, there has been a
sharp increase in attacks and casualties in Israel. Hamas, for its part,
openly calls for the extermination of Israelis and sacrifices a
generation of children towards that goal.
In response to these threats, all the president had to say at Adas
Israel was that “the Palestinians are not the easiest of partners.”
Rather than recognizing how fundamentally different Palestinian
political culture is, the president offered slogans about how
Palestinian youth are just like any other in the world. This is a
classic example of the mirror-imaging—the projection of his own values
onto another culture—that has plagued most of his foreign policy.
...
So why does Obama pick on Netanyahu and not on Abbas? The most likely
reason is directly related to a conflict in the West between two
schools of thought, both dedicated to defending democratic and
Judeo-Christian values: Optimism and realism. Obama is a remarkable
proponent for the optimist approach—he fundamentally believes in human
decency, and therefore in dialogue and engagement as the best way to
overcome conflict. He is also motivated by guilt over the West’s
collective sins, which led, he believes, to the current impoverishment
of Muslims in general and Palestinians in particular. He believes that
humility and concessions can salve the wound, and Islamists can be
convinced to accept a global civil society. “If we’re nice to them,
they’ll be nice to us,” Obama thinks.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, is a realist. Due in part to Israel’s
tumultuous neighborhood, he has a much more skeptical attitude of
Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian President
Rouhani’s government. Netanyahu does not see these groups as potential
moderates, willing to play by the international community’s rules;
instead, he acknowledges their radicalism, and their intent to undermine
a world order they consider a humiliating insult to Islam. The major
difference between the Islamists and the extremists, according to
Netanyahu, is one of timing. The Islamists are willing to wait until the
time is ripe to overthrow the existing world order.
Western realists worry that optimists are actively aiding Islamists
in the naïve hope that they will block out the extremists. The realists
believe that a resolute stance, with the use of military force as an
option, is the best way to achieve agreed-upon Western goals. Obama both
prefers the optimist approach and believes that his hopeful dialogues
will achieve the best possible outcome. Netanyahu, on the other hand,
whose nation would feel the most immediate consequences from Western
concessions, does not have the luxury of optimism.
This helps explain why Obama targets Netanyahu for criticism. The
prime minister’s insistence on the dangers of the optimist approach
threatens to expose the inherent weakness of Obama’s worldview and
challenge the president’s assumption that his policy necessarily leads
to the best possible solutions. For Netanyahu and almost everybody in
Israel, as well as pragmatic Arabs, the president’s readiness to assume
responsibility for Iran’s future nuclear weapons, as he told Jeffrey
Goldberg, is no comfort. The realists are not playing a blame game; they
are trying to save their lives and their civilization. To those who
face an existential threat, Obama’s argument sounds appalling.
...
Should Israel at this moment aid in the creation of a Palestinian
state, half of which is already controlled by extremists who last summer
rained down thousands of rockets on Israel, while its leaders urge
their people to reject Israel as the sovereign nation-state of the
Jewish people? Should it aid a movement that follows these five pillars:
1) There is no such thing as the Jewish people; 2) The Jews have no
history of sovereignty in the land of Israel, so the Jewish state’s
demise is inevitable and justified; 3) The struggle against Israel by all
means is legitimate, and the means should be based simply on
cost-benefit analysis; 4) The Jews in general, and Zionists in
particular, are the worst creatures ever created; And 5) because the
Palestinians are victims, they should not be held responsible or
accountable for any obstacles they may throw up to peace?
In short, even though Israel, under Prime Minister Netanyahu, remains
committed to the formula of “two states for two peoples, with mutual
recognition,” the implementation of this idea at this point is
irrelevant. The PA’s poor governance and the general turmoil in the
Middle East render any establishment of a Palestinian state right now
unviable. President Obama admitted as much, reluctantly, but continued
to criticize Netanyahu instead of betraying his optimist paradigm.
Netanyahu’s realism would stray too far from the path Obama, and other
Western leaders, have set in front of them. But while Obama and the
optimists offer their critiques, Netanyahu and the realists will be on
the ground, living with the consequences the optimists have wrought.
Read the whole thing.
Kuperwasser's view is very definitely mainstream Israeli. While not all Israelis have reached the conclusion that I have - that there will never be peace with the 'Palestinians' - a poll before our recent elections showed that
two thirds of Israelis believe that there will be no peace with the 'Palestinians' now regardless of who heads the government. That doesn't comport with Obama's timetable, which comes to an end on January 20, 2017, but it's reality.
Most Israelis don't trust the 'Palestinians' and haven't since Yasser Arafat orchestrated his 'second intifada' in September 2000 (you'd be amazed how trusting Israelis were in the '90's). We don't trust Iran either. We've heard too many people say that they want to kill us, and we know that we have to take such threats seriously. Some Arab commentators refer to that as a '
bunker mentality.' But they've never lived with random suicide bombers and rocket attacks as we have. They've never sent their kids off to school in the morning wondering how, when and if they would return home. They've never had 15 or 30 or 60 seconds to reach a bomb shelter.
And neither has Obama. At least, that's the charitable view of Obama. The harsher view - and one which is apparently still outside the Israeli mainstream but is within the realm of things I find to be at least possible if not likely - is that Obama is determined to destroy '
post-colonialism,' and sees Israel as its most obvious manifestation.
Still wondering which 54% of 'mainstream Israeli' views Goldberg rejects....
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Iranian nuclear threat, Jeffrey Goldberg, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome, realism, two-state solution, Yossi Kuperwasser
13 years too late Defense Ministry concludes Mohammed al-Dura's 'death' was a hoax
In 2007, I reported on
Mohammed al-Dura's wedding and made the then-speculative claim that Mohammed al-Dura had not been killed - by the IDF or by anyone else. Now, a secret commission (secret because even our own Leftists would have been outraged by the thought) in the Defense Ministry has concluded that
Mohammed al-Dura did not die. In fact, he wasn't even hurt.
A few days ago, MK Nachman Shai met with Ya’alon to give him a copy
of his new book, Media War Reaching for Hearts and Minds , which deals
with the role of media in cur- rent military conflicts, including the
Dura affair. Ya’alon then surprised Shai by saying that an investigation
carried out by Israel shows that Dura was never hurt.
This theory
has been circulating on the Internet for a few years already, but this
was the first time that an Israeli defense minister was stating so
publicly.
Today, Dura should be about 25-years-old, alive and kicking somewhere (unless he was killed later in a separate incident).
Kuperwasser
confirmed the committee’s conclusion that that Dura had not been hurt
at all and that the video clip, which was filmed by France 2 TV and
aired around the world, had indeed been staged. This means that the
France 2 TV channel report was erroneous, perhaps even knowingly.
Kuperwasser
added that the full results of the investigation would be ready in the
near future, and that most of the work had already been completed.
The
committee was comprised of numerous specialists from the
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, as well as other academic
institutions. The committee also collected information from physicist
Nahum Shahaf, who used angles and rate of fire to prove that the scene
had been staged. Kuperwasser met with Shahaf a number of times.
Hopefully the lesson has been learned: The IDF doesn't race to take responsibility so quickly for these incidents.
Labels: France 2, Mohamed al-Dura, Palestinian lies, Pallywood, Phillippe Karsenty, Richard Landes, Yossi Kuperwasser
Israel giving Iran sanctions until summer of 2011
While Israel believes that the sanctions against Iran are crippling the Iranian economy, but not stopping its nuclear plan, in light of the revelations of the
Stuxnet worm's effectiveness in shutting down Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel has reportedly decided to give the sanctions until the
summer of 2011.
“The Iranians are moving more slowly than they want to – but they are still moving,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, deputy director general of Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry. “Everybody understands that you have to give some time for the sanctions to bear their full fruit.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak – the two key decision makers in the possibility that Israel would strike Iran – have both stressed the seriousness of the threat in recent weeks, and the importance of a credible American military threat.
“We have yet to see any signs that the tyrants of Tehran are reconsidering their pursuit of nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said during a speech in New Orleans earlier this month, offering tepid praise for sanctions and calling for “a credible threat of military action.”
“If the international community, led by the United States, hopes to stop Iran’s nuclear program without resorting to military action, it will have to convince Iran that it is prepared to take such action,” he said.
...
But while Israeli leaders continue to publicly stress the immediacy, and urgency, of the Iranian threat, other Israeli officials said more specifically that they are waiting, if without a great deal of optimism, until the summer to see whether sanctions and diplomacy move the Iranian program.
“We think that people are underestimating the effect of the sanctions,” said an aide to a hawkish Israeli minister. “There are indications that the regime is quite beside itself about them and on the defensive more and more.”
“In mid-2011, you will see a debate about whether the sanctions are working,” said one former senior Israeli military official, who noted with some satisfaction that the Iranians had suffered “technical disappointments.”
Hmmm.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Barack Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear program, Yossi Kuperwasser
