The State of the Jews

We’ve already noted that the Obama administration’s demands for a settlement freeze wreaked havoc on the peace process by undermining the moderate Palestinian leadership.

The demand was ridiculous – Obama wanted not just a geographic freeze to the size of settlements, which Bibi Netanyahu gave him, but a demographic freeze. Israel was not to build kindergartens for the 960 children born each year in settlements. And “settlements” included Jerusalem.

No Israeli leader, on Left or Right, could agree to this as a pre-negotiation concession. And once uttered by the Americans, no Palestinian leader could demand any less. By undermining the Palestinians, Obama has set back all of us.

Or so I believed.

But now I’m starting to wonder if my thinking on this may have been premature. Yes, the Obama administration goofed as only self-righteous fools can. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Dr. Alex Yakobson of Hebrew University, my teacher on these issues and a family friend, made some important points in Ha’aretz last week, suggesting that acceding to Obama’s demands now would leave Israel better off strategically even in the short term.

First, he notes, the American public’s support for Israel is strong and getting stronger:

…According to the poll, 64% of Americans continue to believe that Israel is serious about reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians. By a 3:1 ratio, the American people express more sympathy with Israel than with the Palestinians: 45% to 15%.

This support, however, is based on the perception that Israel genuinely sought and continues to seek peace. The settlement debate, says Yakobson, is getting in the way:

The support of a majority of Americans is still a much more important factor than all the attacks on Israel and the calls for a boycott. The American people would never have awarded such support to a country they viewed as not pursuing peace.

This is an asset of enormous importance, and it should not be wasted on a dispute with the Obama administration over the expansion of the settlements. The settlements are the main cause for questioning Israel’s desire for peace and its willingness for a two-state solution. Even among our best friends in the United States and elsewhere, the great majority disagrees with Israel over this issue.

…

There is no real gap between the Obama administration’s positions on the settlements and those of the Bush administration. The only difference is that Obama has decided to focus public and diplomatic attention on this issue. From the moment this happened it became clear – beyond any ideological or political dispute – that it is an essential Israeli interest to find a way to reach an agreement with the Americans on a formula for a settlement freeze.

He concludes:

Such a prolonged and public dispute with the United States over the settlements harms Israel. It is a battle where even victory would be a serious defeat. Netanyahu understands America well enough to know that. The question is whether such a critical national interest is a good enough reason in his eyes to confront the extremists within his coalition and party.

Devil’s advocate for a moment: What can Bibi give Obama on settlements without paying an exorbitant political price? And is it worth the trouble just to make the Palestinians willing to talk?

There’s a lot of talk lately about a few Iranian nuclear scientists who may have defected – or who had defection thrust upon them – to the US.

The Iranian regime-run website Tabnak quotes Asharq Alawsat (cleaned up translation):

Asharq Alawsat quoted Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying, “We will present our complaint regarding the kidnapping of our nuclear scientists to international organizations.”

The London-based Arab newspaper added: “Mottaki believes that the four Iranian nuclear experts have been kidnapped and that they are presently being held by the US in a country of the US’s choosing.” Based on the report, an individual by the name of Shahram Amiri is believed by Mottaki to have been kidnapped last month in Saudi Arabia and so far has not been heard from.

Mottaki also claims that Alireza Asgari, former deputy defense minister, was also kidnapped in Turkey. The third individual, known only as Ardebili, is said to have been kidnapped in Georgia. The fourth nuclear scientist allegedly kidnapped is Nasrollah Tajik, the former Iranian ambassador to the UK.

Asharq Alawsat also claims that these four were the source for the discovery by Western intelligence of the second uranium enrichment installation near Qom, and that the Islamic Republic is extremely upset by this development. Though the news of Shahram Amiri’s kidnapping has been previously discussed by a Mottaki spokesman, it is the first time anything has been publicized about Ardebili.

On September 8, the Kayhan news service quoted the government-controlled Press TV about one of the missing scientists:

Saudis Not Cooperative on Missing Pilgrim

TEHRAN (Press TV) – Iran said on Monday that it has not received any clear response from Saudi Arabia’s officials regarding a missing Iranian pilgrim.
“We have provided Saudi Arabia’s police, security officials and Hajj Organization with all information and documents regarding the pilgrim (Shahram Amiri) who went missing in the Saudi land,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hassan Qashqavi said.
“But, we have not received any clear response from Saudi Arabia’s officials regarding the case,” he went on to say.

And finally, Meir Javedanfar wondered yesterday about the significance of these media stories:

In the current war of intelligence between Iran and West, distinguishing between rumors and real genuine breakthroughs is sometimes difficult. The case of Mr. Amiri and Ardebili are a perfect example. The West could have scored major victories, if they are nuclear scientists. However at the same time, it may at the end be proved that both were innocent cases which received excessive media coverage.

Bear with me. I’m catching up after a busy work week and holiday. Here are a few posts of interesting things you may have missed in recent days.

First, Shmuley Boteach, publicist-rabbi extraordinaire, tackles the moral conundrum that is Jimmy Carter. Boteach has a habit of saying things in a succinct and clever way, so it’s a pleasure to read how he structures the argument.

The take-away: It’s one thing to worry about Palestine, quite another to blame Israel alone for the lack of peace. It’s one thing to seek dialogue, quite another to side with a string of failed dictators over four decades. So what’s Carter’s deal, anyway?

You’ve got to hand it to Jimmy Carter. No matter how wrong he is, no matter how many times he is refuted, no matter how inane his ramblings, he just keeps on coming back. Forget that he was eviscerated in a landslide election. And forget that historians and the public rate him as the worst president of all time. Carter doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. We’re stuck with him forever.

For example, on Carter’s accusation of racism in the opposition to Obama, Boteach notes:

Obama himself disagreed. More importantly, Obama’s biggest critics like him a lot more than the ex-president, even though Jimmy is a white man.

Is Carter criminally naive?

Carter, I have argued, is not so much an anti-Semite as he is what Lenin famously called, ‘a useful idiot,’ his mistake being to always side with the weaker party, notwithstanding their immorality. Let us never forget that the Carter administration tried to view the Khmer Rouge as the rightful government of Cambodia even though they slaughtered one out of three Cambodians. For Carter, weakness is itself a sign of righteousness.

Or is he an anti-Semite?

Therefore, when Carter said in 2006 that Israel’s policies in the West Bank were actually worse than apartheid South Africa, I began to question whether my readers were right. When he added in his 2009 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy that due to “powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the US, Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate our media,” I said to myself that anyone who rolls out the old Jews-control-the-world theory probably is an anti-Semite.

But no, Boteach concludes. He’s nothing so dramatic. He’s just a man who accepted “millions of dollars”

from leading Arab sources, including Saudi King Fahd, the now-defunct BCCI bank, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and Agha Hasan Abedi, among others. These millions, some of which even went to bail out the Carter peanut business in the late 1970s, finally vindicated my earlier theory.

Jimmy Carter is not an anti-Semite. He is simply a man with a price.

So claims a brand new American Jewish Committee survey:

The AJC survey revealed that 56% of American Jews would support, and 36% would oppose, United States military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. A year ago, the AJC survey found that 42% would support the U.S. taking military action against Iran, while 47% were opposed.

And, in another sign of heightening concern about Iran’s nuclear program, 66 percent would support, and 28 percent would oppose, Israel taking military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.

On the peace process:

In response to a new AJC survey question, 94% of American Jews agree that the Palestinians should be “required to recognize Israel as a Jewish state in a final peace agreement.”

Demonstrating American Jews’ skepticism of Arab intentions regarding Israel, 75% agree, and 19% disagree, with the statement, “The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel.” In the 2007 survey, 82% agreed and 12% disagreed.

Nonetheless, regarding the establishment of a Palestinian state, 49% favor that outcome, and 41% are opposed. In AJC’s 2007 survey, 46% were in favor and 43% opposed.

On settlements:

The AJC survey found that a majority, 51% of U.S. Jews, disagree with the Obama Administration’s call for a stop to all new Israeli settlement construction, while 41% agree with that tactic.

Among the denominations, 74% of Orthodox, 62% of Conservative, and 46% of Reform Jews disapprove of the call for a full settlement freeze.

Still, there is wide recognition among American Jews that the question of settlements is a topic to be resolved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. When put in that context, most American Jews say Israel should be willing to dismantle all (8%) or some (52%) of the settlements as part of a permanent peace settlement with the Palestinians. 37% oppose dismantling any.

I’m actually a bit comforted by the news of the existence of a second nuclear enrichment facility near Qom, made public today by Britain, France, Germany and the US. (Technically, Iran came clean to the IAEA, but only after concluding that Western intelligence had already discovered the site.)

That Iran has secret nuclear facilities beyond its acknowledged ones is knuckle-draggingly obvious to all but the Jimmy Carter crowd. The revelation today that Western countries know about them is a minor relief. But that’s not the really good news.

Here’s the really good news (collated from the CNN and the New York Times) stories:

Obama: The new facility “is inconsistent with a peaceful (nuclear) program,” Obama said. “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow.” The newly revealed site “represents a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime.”

Brown: “The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community. The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.”

Sarkozy: Iran “is taking the international community on a dangerous path,” and has two months to comply before crippling sanctions are imposed.

There are all sorts of ways to respond to this news: shrugging, promising a reinvigorated “engagement,” outright anger. It’s profoundly important that Obama, and some of his closest allies, have finally chosen anger.

It barely needs to be noted that an Iranian nuclear weapon is not just an Israeli problem. A nuke-backed Hizbullah will be the end of Lebanon. It will trigger an Arab scramble for parity that will bring nukes to Egypt and Saudi Arabia in short order. It will make the current Pakistani proliferation problem seem like child’s play.

If Obama wants to “engage” before resorting to paralyzing sanctions or even force, fine. But he has to do it in Middle Eastern fashion, with a clear sense of when he’s being cheated and a clearer willingness to up the ante in a game that, for the sake of all mankind, he really can’t lose.

Ha’aretz’s Amir Oren contemplates the strange assumptions underlying the Goldstone report. In an analysis – really a comment – he asks: Will the US now let Goldstone into Afghanistan?

The New York Times, which vociferously opposes the murder of noncombatants, was indirectly involved in the deaths of women, children and other civilians just a week ago. It happened near Kunduz, Afghanistan, when British and Afghani commandos liberated kidnapped Times journalist Stephen Farrell: Civilians were caught in the cross-fire and killed, as was Farrell’s Afghani interpreter.

Had the Times, a bastion of opposition to harming to civilians in war zones, known that civilians would be killed in the rescue, would it have preferred that the operation be called off, and that Farrell remain in the hands of his captors? What will it write if a similar operation is undertaken to release Gilad Schalit?

Unlike journalists, governments and field commanders deal with this dilemma every day. It is easy to decide when the target is a battalion of tanks in the desert. But it is more complex when the threat to a military unit comes from within a civilian environment – the very civilians the unit has been sent to protect. Ignoring the nature of military action is the height of hypocrisy.

Forget about investigating China, Somalia, etc. – which Israeli spokespeople are rightly noting is not on the agenda of the Human Rights Council – but where is the international investigation of American actions in Afghanistan? Oren notes:

In that same Afghan strip of land known as Kunduz, dozens of civilians were killed this month in an air strike carried out by American warplanes looking to provide cover fire for German forces on the ground. The incident is still being investigated, yet it is believed that the civilians did not die as a result of the actual bombing of fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban and which could later be used as mobile bombs against the Germans. Rather, the deaths are believed to have occurred as a result of explosions which took place after the air strikes, when civilians are believed to have tried to extract fuel from the tankers.

What other conclusion is there except this one?

In the end, it is not about the law, but about power, military and political. Goldstone is now free to go to Kunduz, but American might means there is no chance that he will.