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ISRANET DAILY BRIEFING Volume VII, No. 1,678 • Friday, August 31, 2007 DURBAN II: FOLLOW UP CHALLENGING THE UN’S DARKER
SIDE United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, now eight months in office, is proving that his courteous manner should not be mistaken for lack of resolve. The Korean diplomat’s administration has spoken out for the victims of Darfur, confronted Sri Lanka over the killings of aid workers, and acted to establish the international tribunal on the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon. Quietly but firmly, Ban is helping to confirm the UN’s indispensable role in the world. Yet Ban has made little progress in restraining the UN’s own dark side. Getting underway in Europe alone, in the space of a few days next week, will be two UN-backed initiatives that run counter to the secretary general’s efforts to improve the world body’s effectiveness and credibility. First, the UN on Monday will launch a series of international meetings on racism, leading up to a major world conference in 2009. The so-called “Durban Review” process is the follow-up to the 2001 conference in South Africa that turned into a diplomatic fiasco. All indications suggest next week’s session, and the events that follow from it, will mimic both the format and script of the original. The lead-up to Durban in 2001 was hijacked by the 57-strong Organization of the Islamic Conference. A February 2001 preparatory meeting for Asian nations was held in Tehran. (Israelis were a priori excluded.) The preparatory committee adopted a text singling out Israel for “ethnic cleansing” and [for] a “new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity.” Durban’s final declaration, after international interventions, toned down the language, but went on to single out Israel. The US delegation walked out. Far worse, though, were the parallel proceedings held by the nongovernmental organizations. One widely distributed flyer showed a photograph of Hitler and the question, “What if I had won?” The answer: “There would be NO Israel.” Goebbels-like caricatures of Jews circulated freely. In his eyewitness account published in the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Democratic Representative Tom Lantos of California, a US delegate, remarked that “having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust firsthand, this was the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I had seen since the Nazi period.” The final nongovernmental organization statement declared Israel a “racist apartheid state” guilty of “genocide.” The ghosts of 2001 are almost certain to be conjured up by the shamans of Durban II. In addition, Islamic states are expected to introduce new accusations against the West for “religious defamation.” The subtext of this refrain—which has made its way into UN resolutions over the past six years—is that the greatest victim of Sept. 11 was actually Islam. The party chosen to chair the entire process through 2009 indicates its seriousness of purpose: Moammar Khadafy’s Libya. The same regime that, in 2002, gave its highest award to convicted French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, that routinely brutalizes black African migrants, and that torture[d] Bulgarian and Palestinian medics for the crime of being foreigners. This is the country that will now teach the world about racism—all under the UN’s imprimatur. Second, on Thursday, while the Geneva session is underway, the European Parliament in Brussels will host a UN “International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace.” Contrary to the noble-sounding title, the rapprochement is disingenuous at best. Consider its idea of balance: On one side will be selected Palestinian presenters like Raji Sourani, who justifies Hamas attacks as “resistance,” and Jamal Juma, who says Israel is a “colonial racist apartheid state.” On the other side are selected Israeli presenters who couldn’t agree more. These include Michel Warschawski, self-described as a “well-known anti-Zionist activist,” and Nurit Peled-Elhanan, who recently pronounced that “the Jewish head has unceasingly been bowed in worship of racism, while the Jewish mind is devising the most creative ways to devastate and demolish and destroy this country.” By citizenship, they are Israeli, but only a scoundrel or a fool would imagine either as representatives of Israel’s point of view. The UN’s 16-member Palestinian division is part of a sprawling infrastructure of anti-Israel committees and programs launched by the General Assembly in 1975 alongside its resolution declaring that “Zionism is racism.” In the past six months alone, the division devoted vast sums for gatherings in Doha, Rome, Pretoria, and New York. Wouldn’t its $5 million budget go to better use—and actually help Palestinians—by building clinics in Gaza or schools in Ramallah? Tragically, the Arab regimes responsible for its annual renewal seem more interested in preserving grievances than solving them. Faced with such intransigence, is there anything the secretary general can do? There is. The greatest enabler of the Durban debacle, as Lantos recounts, was Mary Robinson, the UN’s human rights commissioner, whose diplomacy of appeasement encouraged the spoilers. This time around, the secretary general should instruct his Geneva officials to stand firm. As to Brussels, the secretary general’s representative, billed as opening the event, should send a clear message that anti-Israel propaganda and posturing are relics of the past—and hurt the cause of peace rather than help the Palestinians. A UN secretary general cannot be judged by country-driven bodies that go astray. But as Ban did recently in protesting the hypocrisies of the Human Rights Council, he can choose to speak truth to power now. (Hillel C. Neuer is executive director of UN Watch in Geneva.) EUROPE
TO HOST NGO ATTACK ON ISRAEL For years, the United Nations and the European Union have provided major funding and assistance for radical Palestinian NGOs and their supporters, allowing them to exploit the rhetoric of human rights, “civil society,” international law and peace to promote the opposite. An illustration of the damage that results from this combination is provided by the meeting, scheduled for the European Parliament in Brussels on August 30-31, to be run by the UN’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. This committee is “the main UN forum where all NGOs interested in the Palestine issue can meet.” The title is certainly high-sounding—International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace. But, as noted by UN Watch, “the UN’s Palestinian Division runs a tightly-controlled operation that accredits only anti-Israel NGOs and speakers. Without altering the virulently anti-Israel nature of their meetings, the organizers instead seek to mask their activities.” Moreover, to add credence to their cover, they invite specially approved Israelis—a select group of radicals who openly espouse hatred of Israel, claiming the license to do so because of their citizenship. This year, for the first time, the exercise is gaining the legitimacy of sponsorship by the European Parliament. Topics include “The situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and civil society response”; “Action by civil society organizations working in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem”; workshops on “Fortieth anniversary of occupation: Building on action taken by civil society”; and “Strengthening campaigns to end occupation, including grassroots campaigns against the wall, rallying around Bil’in” (the site of violent attacks organized by NGOs to provoke Israeli responses). The speakers list is secret, but in previous years it included Jeff Halper from the EU-funded Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD), allied with Sabeel, a center for Palestinian liberation theology; Raji Sourani from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights; Michael Warschawski of the Alternative Information Center; and Jamal Juma Ja’afreh from the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. To their credit, the Polish members of the European Parliament from different parties have announced that they will not participate…. The Israeli government, led by the Foreign Ministry, has urged the EU and the UN to cancel sponsorship of such anti-peace activities. And Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik signed a protest letter to European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering, who is from Germany and is expected to be more sensitive to legitimizing propaganda and anti-Israel demonization…. But Europe’s support for such radical propaganda goes far beyond holding this fringe conference in the Parliament building. The EU funds numerous NGOs under programs for development assistance to the Palestinians, labeled “Partnership for Peace” or promoting human rights, that are at the forefront of the political war against Israel. The head of the EU-supported ICAHD, for example, speaks in favor of boycotts against Israel and demonizes Israel as an “apartheid state.”… The central role of [anti-Israel NGOs]—along with the superpowers such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International—in the political war against Israel was highlighted in the NGO Forum of the 2001 Durban conference on racism. This was so “successful” that the UN is planning another conference in 2009, and is holding a preparatory committee meeting in Geneva a few days before the session planned for the European Parliament. Both activities highlight the destructive activities of radical NGOs, and both conferences and the committees that promote them should be cancelled before they do more damage. (Gerald M. Steinberg chairs the Political Studies Department at Bar-Ilan University and is executive director of NGO Monitor.) NOTORIOUS
UN COMMITTEE HOSTING ANTI-ISRAEL EVENT The Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People — The CEIRPP was established in 1975 at the same time that the General Assembly adopted a resolution equating Zionism – the self-determination of the Jewish people — with racism. The Committee has been going strong ever since. Members of the Committee include such human rights paragons as Belarus, Cuba, Guinea, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Pakistan, and Tunisia. Likewise, Committee observers include Algeria, China, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Qatar, Syrian Arab Republic, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Viet Nam, and Yemen…. Under fire for the unprecedented exposure it is now getting as a consequence of the forthcoming Brussels meeting, the Committee has put out a public statement lying about the Committee’s association with the Zionism is racism agenda by dating its creation a year earlier than the infamous resolution. The statement reads:
This feeble attempt to disassociate itself with the Zionism is racism resolution, despite the fact that it was created on the very same day [in 1975] as the implementing wing of that UN message, is made even more stark by the Committee’s obvious effort to promote Hamas – the “elected representatives” dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Committee Activities — The Committee holds an annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People every year on November 29, the day in 1947 that the UN voted to create a Jewish and an Arab state in the region of Palestine. According to participants, this day marks the Al Naqba – the catastrophe of the creation of Israel. In keeping with this underlying theme, for decades the Committee prominently displayed at UN headquarters an Arabic map of the Mideast region without the state of Israel. They discontinued the practice only in 2006 after EYEontheUN took a photograph of the map and widely disseminated it.… In 2006 the Committee sponsored an exhibit in the UN’s public entrance and marked its opening with a speech by Farouk Kaddoumi, Head of the Political Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He encouraged “resistance”, claimed anti-semitism was about Arabs, and Jewish self-determination or Zionism was unjustified mythology. During the November 29, 2006 CEIRPP meeting in New York participants lauded Hamas, complained of the evils of “Judaization”, pressed the message of a racist Jewish state, and called for Israel’s economic strangulation. For example:
All year round, across the globe,
the Committee organizes meetings, publishes papers and multiplies its
flow of hatred and intolerance through a UN website and links to like-minded
NGOs. It provides a constant platform for statements objecting to a two-state
solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, likening Israel to apartheid South
Africa, and encouraging violence….
The Brussels Meeting — Undoubtedly, the Brussels Committee meeting will be more of the same. For example, the agenda of the meeting includes participation by Christopher Doyle, the Director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding and a Committee favorite. Invited as the only NGO to speak at UN headquarters during their annual November 29th session in 2005 — along with the Presidents of the Security Council and General Assembly — he pontificated that terrorism – aka “resistance” – was inevitable and boycotts and sanctions of Israel a positive step. Joining Doyle will be the coordinator of BADIL, a UN-accredited NGO, best known for directly advocating that Zionism is racism, the end of a Jewish state and the glorification of terrorism. BADIL approves, for example, of “special reverence...to the martyrs of the intifada, whose sacrifice is paving the way to the ultimate victories of freedom and return...” The UN festivities will also include many boycott advocates, such as, the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees [which approved the recent] proposal of the largest British Association of University Teachers (AUT) to boycott two Israeli universities.… Other speakers include the “coordinator of the Anti-apartheid Wall Campaign.” The Brussels August 30-31, 2007 meeting is one more in a long line sponsored by a unique UN Committee, the only one dedicated to promoting the claims of a single people. It represents yet a further attempt by the [UN]—this time through a choice of venue intended to enlist the support of the European Union—to spread a dangerous historical revisionism and the violence such a message is certain to spawn. Shabbat Shalom to all our readers. Due to Labour Day (Canada) the next Daily Isranet Briefing will be issued on Tuesday, Sept 4, 2007 Volume VII, No. 1,677 • Thursday, August 30, 2007 DURBAN II REVISITING THE TRAUMA OF THE
DURBAN CONFERENCE When I first heard about the Durban Conference, I knew it as the World Conference against Racism (WCAR). As someone who cares deeply about human rights and who, at the time, had just been elected chairman of the World Union of Jewish Students, and as someone who believes that Jews should be at the forefront of the fight for human rights, I obviously thought it would be a good opportunity for Jews to speak out. We were prepared for there to be debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it seemed to us that the Jewish world was not so prepared for what the event became. We [WUJS] had a small delegation of about eight people, Europeans, Israelis and local South African Jewish students. When we arrived at the Youth Conference (the first of the three conferences being held), we saw people in the hall leading to the meeting room wearing keffiyahs and holding posters of a map of Israel overlaid with a Palestinian flag. They were wearing T-shirts with the iconic image of Mohammed al-Durra and his father on the front and the words “IsReal Apartheid” on the back above the official logo of the conference. There it was, a perfect connection between Israel, apartheid and Mohammed al-Durra, and they were handing it out. We were quite amazed because we thought there would be other groups campaigning and protesting in that same area, but it was just that gimmick being handed out. The people handing out the shirts were not only Palestinians either, they were from Europe, America and elsewhere. The whole debate at that first conference for the students became focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We realized that we had no place there and we walked out. … Then the NGO conference began. There were over 50,000 people there. We needed to decide what to do. We could either walk out and not participate, or we could speak out and make our stand as the Jewish students of the world. In the end, considering the fact that we had come from all over the world to represent Jewish students, we decided to attend. The NGO conference was held in a network of tents emblazoned with images of Palestinian women crying. Books were on display showing anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli cartoons. The emphasis was on the Palestinians and no other issue or disenfranchised group mattered. We decided to set up a small stall near the media tent where we displayed some pamphlets, materials about Jews and the State of Israel and an Israeli flag. In less than five minutes, there was a mass of people charging at us and threatening violence, and the police had to interfere by standing between our little display and all those people. We were very intimidated and concerned for our safety as we encountered attempts at physical violence, as well as outright verbal violence. Then someone from our group started singing “All We are Saying is Give Peace a Chance” by The Beatles. We just sang it and sang it and sang it, and the opposition kept charging at us. The next day we bought some yellow flowers from the markets and began to hand them out as we sang. The media picked up on this effort, which helped begin to balance the message being sent out from the conference. The pro-Palestinian lobby was well-organized, well-financed and very well prepared for this event. The Jewish and Israeli establishments were not. The Durban Conference was a wake-up call for the Jewish and Israeli establishments. Today, any event — especially the 2009 follow-up to the Durban Conference — will be taken much more seriously. But we [the World Jewish Congress and other Jewish organizations] are evaluating the situation at all times and if the follow-up conference is biased and not being led by objective parties, and if it becomes once again about Israel-bashing, we may decide to boycott it. The World Jewish Congress has been invited by the United Nations to take part in the Durban follow-up and is very seriously planning and preparing for its participation in the event. The important role of young people and new strategies for advocacy are being seriously considered. The Durban Conference was traumatic for the Jewish establishment. I think the Jewish people were traumatized and did wake up. As a result of that experience, we can now better understand the potential impact of such events, and the Jewish establishment has learned the importance of preparing and coordinating our efforts involving these events. (Peleg Reshef is director
of future generation activities for the World Jewish Congress UN
COMMITTEE SET TO ALLOW RACIST NGOs TO PARTICIPATE IN EYEontheUN announced today the release of a list of NGOs lined up to participate in the planning of a 2009 UN anti-racism conference.… EYEontheUN editor Anne Bayefsky “sees no prospect of excluding NGOs who intend to transform this forum into one more UN venue for advocating racism. This is not harmless UN-sponsored verbiage. Anti-semitism and other forms of racism encourage terrorism.” Among the list of future UN partners with objectives clearly at odds with an anti-racism agenda are:
“Governments have
only 14 days to object to any NGO name on the list. It is imperative that
they do so immediately,” Bayefsky urged. Rather than call for new
applications for Durban II, the UN has decided to approve the same list
of NGO participants that took part in Durban I—unless the planning
committee receives objections and decides otherwise.
The planning committee meets for the first time from August 27 through August 31, 2007. Durban II is scheduled to take place in 2009 and is designed to encourage implementation of the outcome of the 2001 UN conference against racism held in Durban, South Africa. The infamous Durban I conference is best remembered for having provided a global platform for anti-semitism—intolerance and inequality against the Jewish people and its state—courtesy of the United Nations. NGOs already having formal UN accreditation are not subject to the review and can automatically participate. One such UN-accredited NGO, the International Islamic Relief Organization, recently had its Indonesia and Philippines Branches put on the U.S. Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals List for “facilitating fundraising for al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups.” STOP
DURBAN II Let’s say you wanted to hold a conference to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Wouldn't it be a good idea to fairly represent the Israeli point of view? Might it be counterproductive if the conference were to degenerate into an anti-Israel hate fest? What if this did not happen by accident, but by design? You might conclude that the purpose of a conference like that would not be to promote peace at all, but to build the case and groundwork for Israel’s destruction. And you might therefore be surprised were you to discover that such a conference were being sponsored not by a virulently anti-Israel organization, but by such august bodies as the United Nations and the European Parliament. Yet there is no other conclusion that can be drawn simply by glancing at the agenda of the “United Nations International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace,” which is to be held next Thursday at the European Parliament in Brussels. The thrust is obvious right from the opening plenary, which will feature five speakers representing: the UN Secretary General, the European Parliament, the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, “Palestine,” and the International Coordinating Network for Palestine. If anti-Israel groups want to hold a conference completely excluding an Israeli point of view, there is nothing stopping them. But what are the UN Secretary General’s office and the European Parliament doing there? How does such a conference “promote peace”? Actually, there will be Israelis there. As Hillel Neuer of UN Watch puts it: “The conference will showcase Arab presenters who justify suicide bombings and accuse Israel of being vile, racist and illegitimate, and for balance it will also feature Israeli presenters who justify suicide bombings and accuse Israel of being vile, racist and illegitimate.” We know what this looks like because it has happened before. The infamous 2001 Durban conference “against racism” restored the “Zionism is racism” canard a decade after that resolution was repealed by the UN General Assembly, and openly excluded anti-Semitism from the hatreds it was ostensibly meant to combat.… The Polish members of the European Parliament deserve credit for showing the way by announcing their refusal to participate in the Brussels conference. As Bronislaw Geremek, a Polish MEP, was quoted as saying by the web site Europa21: “Although there is no official statement that Israel must be pushed down to the sea there, the choice of subjects...shows that it will be a biased, conflict generating conference. Actually we can call it anti-Israeli.” MEP Konrad Szymanski stated, “I am astonished that the European Parliament allowed such activity in its building.” This is a time when UN and European claims to be honest brokers and even friends of Israel will be put to the test. It is not possible to press for peace and to sponsor and participate in the fomenting of hate. It is not enough to retroactively express “regret” at outcomes that were foregone conclusions. The time to stop Durban II is now. J'LEM,
US KEEP LOW PROFILE ON 'DURBAN II' PARLEY Israel and the US plan to maintain a low profile this week in Geneva at the UN pre-planning meeting for a 2009 anti-racism conference that is seen as a follow-up to the one held in Durban in 2001, which turned into an Israel-bashing fest.… Both Israel and the United States walked out of the Durban conference claiming that its agenda of combating racism worldwide had been hijacked by those who used it as a platform for anti-Semitic attacks against Israel that included equating Zionism with racism. This time around, Israel and the US will send low level personnel to observe but do not plan high level involvement. “We have adopted a wait and see attitude,” one Israeli official told the Jerusalem Post Sunday. If the planning for the 2009 conference moves in a positive direction, then Israel could increase its participation in future meetings, the official said. A US government official said that at this time, “We still have the same problem with the Durban Declaration and the Program of Action as we did in 2001. Those problems do not extend to the whole document, parts of which we have been known to welcome.” The official added, “Our concerns are limited to the anti-Semitic statements contained in the document and the way the transatlantic slave trade is dealt with.” An Israeli official said there was hope this time around that, with Libya as the chair, the focus would be on issues that related more to African nations. The official added that Israel planned to boycott all parts of the planning meetings that dealt with the Durban conference.… But watchdog and Jewish groups have already warned that with the participation of countries such as Libya and Iran in the pre-planning, the 2009 conference is likely to become a “Durban II.” Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch in Geneva, said the seeds of 2001 were sown in the pre-planning conferences such as the one that took place in Teheran. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights told the Post lessons had been learned from the Durban Conference and that the utmost was being done to ensure the conference’s success. But the office added that while it had helped facilitate the conference, “ultimately the responsibility for the success of the conference lies with the member-states.” The other countries that comprise the bureau for the pre-planning conference are: Cameroon, South Africa, Senegal, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Estonia, Croatia, Armenia, Russia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Belgium, Norway, Greece and Turkey. The final venue for the 2009 conference has yet to be set. Volume VII, No. 1,676 • Wednesday, August 29, 2007 WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP WEEKLY QUOTES “I want our citizens to consider what would happen if [the] forces of radicalism are allowed to drive us out of the Middle East… The region would be dramatically transformed in a way that would imperil the civilized world.”—U.S. President George W. Bush, citing Iran’s belligerence and nuclear development program as reasons to fear retreat from Iraq. Bush added that Teheran’s nuclear programs threatened to put “a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.” During this past week, coalition forces confiscated unauthorized weapons from a group of Iranians at a checkpoint and arrested five “diplomats” suspected to have ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Iran continues to deny claims that it is funding terrorism and insurgency in Iraq. (New York Times, Aug. 29) “As I have made clear, decisions on U.K. force levels and posture in Iraq are dictated by positions on the ground…. Our aim is that Iraqi security forces will be capable of delivering security across the south and that we will be able to draw down our forces.”—British Prime Minister Gordon Brown rejecting calls for a predetermined exit timetable. Brown promised Britain will “fulfill [all] obligations to the government and people of Iraq and the United Nations.” Last week Iraqi Shiite terrorist leader Muqtada al-Sadr was cited in The Independent newspaper as saying that British forces had been defeated and would return home sooner than planned. (New York Sun, Aug. 29) “Dive into a conversation about America in the Arab world today, or even in Europe and Africa, and it won't take 30 seconds before the words ‘Abu Ghraib’ and ‘Guantánamo Bay’ are thrown at you. Yes, both are shameful, but Abu Ghraib was a day at the beach compared with what Al Qaeda and its Sunni jihadist supporters have been doing in Iraq, yet none of their acts have become one-punch global insults like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. Consider what happened Aug. 14. Four jihadist suicide-bombers blew themselves up in two Iraqi villages, killing more than 500 Kurdish civilians…who belonged to a tiny pre-Islamic sect known as the Yazidis. And what was the Bush team's response to this outrage? Virtual silence…. Even if we don't know the exact perpetrators, we know who is inspiring this sort of genocide—Al Qaeda and bin Laden—and we need to say that every day [b]ecause bin Laden and his sidekick Ayman al-Zawahri care…about their image. They do not want to be labeled as ‘genocide perpetrators.’ They want to be known as the ‘resistance,’ because it affects their street appeal and therefore their ability to recruit and operate.... As The Economist magazine just noted…‘Under all established norms and laws of war (and by most accounts under Islamic law, too), the deliberate targeting of civilians for no direct military purposes is just a crime.’ So why don't we say that?”—Columnist Thomas Friedman in Iraq. (New York Times, Aug. 26) “If Hizbullah has 50 percent more rockets than before the war, it proves that UN Resolution 1701, which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni were so proud of, is not being implemented and is a total failure.”—Likud MK Yuval Steinitz, following Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s first address to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense committee since becoming defense minister in June, in which Barak explained that Hizbullah, which receives its rockets via Syria, had increased its supply from an estimated 10,000-15,000 before the Second Lebanon War to some 20,000 rockets today. Barak also said Hezbollah had also acquired anti-tank missiles and was trying to re-establish its infrastructure in southern Lebanon. (Jerusalem Post, Aug. 27) "[A]ny right thinking person who witnesses the Egyptians' failure to act against arms smuggling can all but infer that strengthening Hamas is their interest. Egypt is capable of acting decisively against Hamas, but hasn't done that for more than seven years. Their intelligence is as good as ours.”—Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, concluding that Egypt's failure to prevent arms smuggling implies that the country wants Hamas to prosper, Army Radio reported Monday. Dichter, deputy head of the Shin Bet security service, told the cabinet at its weekly meeting on Sunday that 40 tons of explosives have been smuggled into the Strip since Hamas took over the coastal area in mid-June. “I am not convinced that we, here in Israel, are able to fully understand the Egyptians’ motives, as they see things,” Dichter said. “We are analyzing their motives through Israeli eyes, and I fear that we are a little wrong. I think Egypt wants Hamas to be strong. Maybe not too strong, but the Egyptians don't have a full grip on the spigot.” (Ha’aretz, Aug. 27) “Interestingly, we’ve found that the vast majority are not inspired by jihad or hate for the coalition or Iraqi government—the vast majority are inspired by money…. The primary motivator is economic…. The detainee population is overwhelmingly illiterate and unemployed. Extremists have been very successful at spreading their ideology to economically strapped Iraqis with little to no formal education.”—Capt. John Fleming of the Navy, a spokesman for the multinational forces’ detainee operations, insisting that new statistics indicate that a main inspiration of the hard-core Sunni insurgency is no longer a desire to restore the old order but rather that money is a significant reason they planted roadside bombs or shot at Iraqi and American-led forces. (New York Times, Aug. 25) “There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages—for example Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin.... This is severe interference in our domestic affairs [and] I ask them to come back to their senses and talk in a respectful way about Iraq.”—Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, responding to demands by U.S. Senator that Bush replace Maliki. Early this week Iraqi PM Maliki, responding to U.S. Congressional pressure, discussed the possibility of former members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein returning to government posts: “The doors are open for all politicians who don’t call for violence and the use of weapons against the government.” (New York Post, Aug. 26; NYT Aug. 27). “This initiative is the only one that can enable us to escape an alternative that I say is catastrophic: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran.”—French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in his first foreign-policy speech, imparting that Iran’s bid to obtain nuclear weapons is the worst crisis currently facing the world. Sarkozy said that would be unacceptable and that major powers should continue their policy of incrementally increasing sanctions against Teheran while being open to talks if Iran suspended nuclear activities. Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner apologized, in a speech in Paris, to Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki for previously calling on Maliki to resign. He added that he only attempted to pass along what he understood to be the wishes of the Iraqi people. (New York Post, New York Sun, Aug. 28) “We are ready to be torn apart, spliced into tiny pieces, so that Iran will remain exalted…. I am a lowly soldier of the Imam Khamenei. Hezbollah youths acted on behalf of the Imam Khomeini.”—Hezbollah terrorist leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, during an in an interview with Iranian state television, which later censored Nasrallah’s remarks. (New York Sun, Aug. 20) SHORT TAKES SHIITE MILITIAS CLASH IN IRAQ, KILLING 50 (Karbala)—Police killed three Shiite civilians and wounded thirteen in clashes with pilgrims in Karbala in an attempt to quell rising tension among the worshippers gathering to mark the anniversary of the birth of Mohammed al-Madhi, the revered 12th imam of Shiite Islam. Shiite militias attacked each other in Karbala on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people in gunfights, setting fire to three hotels and forcing authorities to scuttle a religious festival by ordering a million celebrants to leave the holy city where they had gathered. More than 200 people were injured in the panic that ensued when Mahdi Army members loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr battled the Badr Organization, the armed-wing of the rival Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. The two Shiite militias have been waging an increasingly deadly battle for control of southern Iraq's most important cities and its abundant oil reserves. The southern city of Basra, the wealthiest oil venue in Iraq, is to be handed over to Iraqi forces by British troops and the impending move has accelerated clashes between the Mahdi and Badr militias as they fight for power in the Iraq. (Reuters, Aug. 28; Los Angeles Times, Aug. 29) SKEPTICS TALK ANYWAY—(Jerusalem) With a Washington-prompted Israeli-Palestinian peace conference intended for November, closed-door talks began this week between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas. Their goal is to arrive at a set of resolutions to table when all the parties are present. However, many people remain sceptical of the effectiveness of such talks, including President Abbas. A poll in mid-June showed that while sixty per cent of Palestinians support the recognition of Israel in a two-state solution, sixty-five per cent believe Olmert and Abbas cannot strike an agreement and seventy per cent doubt they will have a state in five years. Sixty one per cent of Israelis predict a status-quo, with only twenty-six per cent confident that the talks can prevent conflict. (Reuters, August 28; Globe and Mail, August 29) ISRAELI SOLDIER SAVED BY PALESTINIAN FORCES—(Jenin) An IDF officer, who got lost in the West Bank Monday, was rescued by Palestinian Authority security forces after his vehicle was surrounded and pelted with stones by a lynch mob. The Islamic Jihad group criticised the security forces for protecting the “soldiers of the Occupation”, revealing that they had surrounded the major and were preparing to kidnap him before their plot was thwarted and the Israeli was escorted to police headquarters. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni praised PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad for the PA’s demonstration of resistance to terrorism. (Jerusalem Post, Aug. 27; Globe and Mail, Aug. 28) HAMAS “SUGGESTS” LOPSIDED EXCHANGE—(Gaza) As the family and friends of MIA Cpl. Gilad Schalit prepare to commemorate his twenty-first birthday (and second in captivity), Ahmed Youssef, an aide to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, insisted, Monday, that Hamas expected Israel to release women and children being held in Israeli jails as a good-faith exchange for the audiotape of Schalit that aired in June. “If Israel would have done this we would have published a videotape of Schalit…. Unfortunately, this never happened.” (Ha’aretz, Jerusalem Post, August 27) HAMAS/FATAH TARGET JOURNALISTS—(PA) Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are claiming that Hamas and Fatah militia have been targeting them, “caught in the cross-fire between Hamas and Fatah,” as one journalist called it. Another claimed he had received death threats from both factions and that he had begun publishing under an assumed name out of fear. Friday, four journalists in Gaza City were beaten and arrested by Hamas militants during a Fatah demonstration. Fatah has already banned distribution of Hamas-controlled newspapers in the West-Bank and Hamas has followed suit in the Gaza Strip. The same goes for radio stations loyal to opposing factions. (Jerusalem Post, August 26) HAMAS CUTS TEETH ABROAD—(Jerusalem) Hundreds of Hamas militants are training in Iran and other places outside the Palestinian territories, stated the Israeli Army’s deputy chief of staff, Moshe Kaplinsky. Israeli intelligence is monitoring the Palestinian terrorists as they assemble an army and construct fortifications and smuggling-tunnels. “I feel we have time to make the most of other possibilities. But if it continues in this way, I believe personally that one day we’ll have to [send troops into Gaza],” explained Kaplinsky, “but we also understand the price…and we don’t want to do it.” Meanwhile, tension is mounting in Syria, where Shin Bet claims Hamas is planning ways to disrupt the rapprochement between President Abbas and Prime Minster Olmert as they begin the first stage of peace talks. (Jerusalem Post, August 26; Ha’aretz, August 27; New York Times, August 28) TALIBAN, PAKISTAN CONCESSIONS—(Islamabad) U.S.-led Afghan troops attacked six Taliban posts Sunday, three in Pakistan, leaving at least thirty militants dead. Pakistani officials denied having allowed the cross-border strike. This occurred just days before Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, revealed that he would step down as commander-in-chief of the military as part of a power-sharing agreement with exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Finally today, twelve of the nineteen (mostly female) South Koreans being held hostage for six weeks by Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan, were released. They had agreed to release all nineteen after South Korea announced its withdrawal of two hundred troops by the end of the year. (Agence France-Presse, Aug. 27; National Post, International Herald Tribune, Aug. 29) TERRORISM IN INDIA—(Hyderabad) Two bombs exploded in Hyderabad, India on Saturday, killing forty people and injuring eighty. The bombs detonated in an amusement park and a popular restaurant and police later found additional bombs that did not go off. Andhra Pradesh’s top politician, Y.S. Rajasekara Reddy, blamed Islamic extremists from Pakistan or Bangladesh, but would not give any further details. (National Post, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 27) IRAQ HITS HOME IN DENMARK—(Copenhagen) Danish military intelligence is investigating claims that family members of Danish soldiers deployed to Iraq have received threats from Iraqi insurgents apparently monitored phone records of private conversations between soldiers and relatives. The military is revising its policies on mobile phone and email communications. (New York Sun, Aug. 17) PADILLA IS GUILTY—(Miami) Jose Padilla, AKA Abdullah al-Muhajir, and two others were sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim people overseas. The three-month trial required less than two days of jury deliberation. Padilla had been held since 2002 as an enemy combatant for his believed involvement in a plot to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” on U.S. soil, but could not be prosecuted due to procedural errors. Now convicted, critics of the Bush administration’s tactics to prevent terrorism are deflecting the results to claim that local counter-terrorism is sufficient to bring overseas military back home. (Wall Street Journal, August 17) Volume VII, No. 1,675 • Tuesday, August 28, 2007 PEACE CONFERENCE
CAN THE NEW PEACE PUSH WORK? The powers-that-be in Washington, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Cairo, Amman and maybe Riyadh are now embarked on a major diplomatic and strategic endeavor the like of which has never been attempted in living history. It is an effort to craft the principles of a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with the full knowledge that these principles, if agreed, cannot be translated into action-orientated implementation in the immediate future. The political logic behind this initiative is that the clear political horizon that each and every Palestinian will be able to read and absorb will be so encouraging and attractive as to convince him/her to disavow any future use of force — terror — as an instrument in the struggle for statehood. Extremist Muslim groups will be marginalized and defeated by centralist-moderate forces that will assume effective control of Palestinian destiny. Thus the agreement is not primarily designed as a plan for immediate implementation, but rather as a vital tool in the ongoing effort to change the political landscape inside the Palestinian body politic. This new experiment in international relations has its distinct advantages for all parties concerned. In Israel, it will provide the current government not only with a political agenda but will also be billed as a major diplomatic achievement. The agreement will be consecrated at an international gathering in Washington attended by key leaders and players both inside the Middle East and outside its confines. Since it will be devoid of a timeline, there will not be any necessity to confront the settlers in Judea and Samaria here and now and to contend with the ugly scenes that will ensue. Israel and its current leadership will enjoy an indeterminable period of respite that will tide us over the next general election. The West Bank leadership tandem of Abbas-Fayyad have every reason to embrace this strategy; in the years to come they will receive formidable financial and economic support and will concentrate on building the security forces and institutions of government in the hope that one day they will be ready and capable of confronting and subduing the extremists, Hamas, the Jihadists and the odd motley of local warlords. It will not be necessary to solve the problem of Hamas-controlled Gaza too soon, and the principles agreed will give the leadership the possibility of revealing a glorious political vision of Palestinian statehood that will galvanize the majority to embrace peace and moderation. The Arab state sponsors will be able to tell their constituencies and the entire Muslim world that they have got Israel to sign off on Palestinian statehood and that, when the time comes, their policy of gradually bringing Israel to realism will have borne fruit. And, of course, the United States and the outgoing president will be able to declare success in consecrating the principles of a historic Palestinian-Israel reconciliation the likes of which have never been seen before. The ceremony will go down in history as marking the legacy of an administration that succeeded where all others failed. The game plan just described is predicated on a few assumptions:
I seriously doubt if all these assumptions will materialize. I particularly question the possibility of Hamas being marginalized by the current West Bank leadership. Moreover, I sincerely wonder whether the policy-makers who have crafted this new series of steps genuinely believe that they have a fair chance of producing the desired results — a viable, stable and credible Palestinian state. But why should we depend only on the assessment of persons like myself, who are no longer in office? How does a Palestinian expert, a most bitter critic of Israel, view the current situation on his side of the divide? Under the title “Shared Irresponsibility,” Professor Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia, writes in the August 16 London Review of Books: “Fatah and Hamas have been fighting for control of a Palestinian Authority that has no real authority. The behavior of both has been disgraceful... Neither movement was able to see that such deep divisions would mean that they had even less chance of achieving their national objectives. In this they have been equally irresponsible.” During recent years the intelligence leaders of Israel have given the public the benefit of their assessments on major issues in the defense and security field. For instance, the head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) has periodically spoken either at cabinet sessions or at quasi-open sessions of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset. He has been authoritatively quoted at length. There is a deafening silence from these quarters as of late. One would hope that the prime minister will advise that the public be treated to such a periodic assessment before he puts his signature to the 2007 peace plan. He has every right to accept the assessment, or to reject it and act even contrary to it. After all, is this not what statesmanship is all about? But does he not owe the public some expert opinion, the like of which he gladly sanctioned in the not too distant past? THE
UNHOLY TRINITY AND OSLO REDUX Only a few weeks ago our erratic prime minister was still assuring the nation that for the time being no further unilateral withdrawals were under consideration. Yet a recent report in Ha’aretz outlined a comprehensive new "peace" formula virtually indistinguishable from the 2002 Saudi plan, incorporating wide ranging concessions to the Palestinians which President Shimon Peres had submitted to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert immediately upon assuming office. Of course, in line with standard procedures related to such trial balloons, the Prime Minister's office ritualistically denied that any such plan had ever been considered. However Beit Hanassi reportedly confirmed the existence of the plan and even expressed confidence that it would be endorsed by the Americans and Europeans. Peres was the principal architect of the disastrous Oslo Accords, but his new proposal extends far beyond his original failed plan. It recommends that Israel forego the Israeli interpretation of UN Resolution 242 and accept the bitterly contested Arab-Soviet-French interpretation which demanded Israel's total withdrawal from all the territories beyond the Green Line, effectively ceding to the Palestinians 100 percent of the territories captured in 1967. The major settlement blocs amounting up to 5% of the area would be retained in "exchange" for equivalent territory agreed to by the Palestinians. Jerusalem would be divided with its holy sites being administered by all three faiths. The Peres plan also proposed that the Palestinian flag should fly over the Temple Mount. The formula includes the standard mantras relating to security requirements and a need to formulate a "creative" declaration relating to the Arab refugee "right of return." By basically accepting a return to the 1967 lines, supposedly described by the late Abba Eban as the "Auschwitz borders," the Peres plan forfeits the April 2004 assurances provided by President George W. Bush to former premier Ariel Sharon and conclusively jettisons any meaningful concept of "defensible borders." The repercussions of previous unilateral territorial concessions were obviously ignored. They include the outbreak of the first wave of suicide bombings in the wake of Oslo; the failed Clinton-Barak negotiations with Arafat which led to the second intifada; the catastrophic Gaza unilateral disengagement which transformed Israeli citizens in Gush Katif into refugees in their own land and facilitated the subsequent Hamas takeover in Gaza, and the ongoing bombardment of Sderot. In a nutshell, the evidence clearly demonstrates that, without exception, every Israeli retreat under fire has emboldened jihadists into intensifying the violence. It is simply mind boggling that at a time when utter chaos prevails among the Palestinians, such a bizarre proposal could even be contemplated. But it is even more disconcerting that a newly elected president, whose prime obligation is to remove himself from the political arena and act as a unifying rod for the nation, reportedly considers it appropriate to launch such a controversial and highly divisive proposal as his first initiative in office. It surely augers ill for the future of the already battered image of the Presidency if it is now to be crassly exploited as a launching pad for promoting an incumbent's personal political agenda. Olmert's Jericho meeting with Abbas indicates that contrary to statements from his spokesmen, he is indeed proceeding in the direction of the Peres recommendations, and clearly determined come what may to move speedily toward awarding Palestinian statehood to the corrupt Fatah leaders. To expedite this, Olmert capitulated on the one crucial Road Map clause which even the Quartet had hitherto refused to concede to the duplicitous Palestinian leaders. He dispensed with the requirement that the PA uproot the terrorist infrastructure as a prerequisite to further Israeli concessions. Instead he facilitated transfers of arms to Fatah which will invariably ultimately be employed against Israelis and undertook to release more terrorists. He also took pride in having granted amnesties to the IDF's most wanted murderers who brazenly announced in advance, that far from retiring, they were being promoted to leadership positions in the so-called Palestinian security structure. To top it off, Olmert undertook to consider endorsing the return to the West Bank of the bloody terrorists expelled from the region after the 2002 siege of the Church of the Nativity. No concern was expressed that Hamas would almost certainly take control of Judea and Samaria once the IDF withdraws from the area. And in what sounded like black humor, Olmert's spokesman stated that Abbas "promised" that despite ongoing pressure from the Arab League, the PA would not contemplate joining forces again with Hamas. Yet within 24 hours, Fatah and Hamas functionaries were reportedly conducting secret talks designed to overcome their differences. It was also disclosed that of the NIS 400 million recently provided by Israel to Fatah "due to a computer error" a substantial proportion was transferred to Hamas to pay the salaries of their "security forces" and provide cars for their legislators. Clearly, the Americans are desperate to create a united Sunni bloc to neutralize the growing Iranian led Shi'ite threat and believe this can be facilitated by displaying progress on the Israel- Palestinian front. But one could surely have expected responsible Israeli leaders to resist implementing such concessions without considering the implications on their own security. Moreover, how can a nation possibly contemplate such dramatic policy changes with potential existential implications, without undergoing a thorough internal debate to ascertain the views and obtain approval of the people? Why are such crucial initiatives leaked via favored media outlets instead of being formally initiated and debated in the Cabinet and the Knesset? This is surely not how a genuine democracy functions. To make matters worse, since the Second Lebanon War, the Knesset no longer represents the views of the nation. The current government is an amalgam of the shattered Kadima ruling party with no coherent political stance, a discredited Labor Party, Shas, an opportunistic hawkish inclined religious party, and a purportedly extreme right wing Yisrael Beiteinu party. But worst of all, who would be leading such a grotesque replay of the Oslo Accords? None other than an unholy trinity of the greatest failures in Israeli political life! Shimon Peres the architect of Oslo; Labor leader Ehud Barak, whose unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon paved the way for the disastrous Lebanese war and whose impulsive overnight concessions to Arafat led to the intifada; and finally, our failed former right-wing Prime Minister Olmert, zig zagging and lurching in different directions in a desperate effort to retain power and become the darling of Peace Now. Are the people of Israel going to stand idly by and allow this failed trio to lead them into yet another, probably more devastating unilateral withdrawal? It is surely time for Kadima, Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu Knesset members still retaining any semblance of decency and integrity to stand up and revolt. They are fully aware that the majority of their constituents are strongly opposed to any further destructive unilateral initiatives. Before the die is cast, they must declare to Olmert enough is enough, withdraw support from this government, and demand immediate elections. (Isi Leibler chairs the Diaspora-Israel Relations Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and is a veteran international Jewish leader.) For an analysis of the Peace Conference by Barak Ravid in Ha’aretz, please visit CIJR’s Picks of the Week page. Volume VII, No. 1,674 • Monday, August 27, 2007 EUROPE ‘LIONS LED
BY DONKEYS’ [I]f the counterinsurgency strategy [Gen. David Petraeus] has successfully pioneered in Anbar province can be replicated in Baghdad, then victory in Iraq can still be [achieved]. The gravest danger to the survival of Western civilization, and Europe in particular, would be a concatenation of Islamist triumphalism and American isolationism. The primary goal of European statesmanship now should be to prevent the predominance of either of these pathologies. This requires Europeans to offer support to General Petraeus in Iraq, to shoulder more of the growing burden of the NATO campaign in Afghanistan, and to strengthen those who are resisting the tide of Islamism…. Are these, though, the priorities of all or indeed any of the European democracies? On the contrary: most of Europe is doing none of these things. While America has been building up its forces in Iraq, Britain — the only European country with a significant presence there — has scaled back its troops to the point where they are so beleaguered that they can barely protect themselves against the Shia militias. … On Monday the New York Times criticized Gordon Brown’s government for “taking the wrong way out of Iraq” by “reaping domestic political credit for withdrawal without acknowledging that the mission has failed.” Well, no government ever likes to admit defeat, but Mr. Brown has certainly not given the Bush-Petraeus strategy the slightest support…. Meanwhile, the rest of the European Union is not only doing nothing to bolster the Iraqi government, but is turning a blind eye to Al Qaeda’s clear policy of exterminating religious minorities in Iraq…. As for Afghanistan: there, too, the Europeans are not pulling their weight — with the exception of the British, who are taking heavy casualties in intense fighting to prevent the Taliban from seizing control of the southern province of Helmand. The death last Saturday of Captain David Hicks, who continued to lead his company in battle even after he was mortally wounded by rocket and mortar fire, is typical of the heroism of the young officers in action there. Many of them by now have more combat experience than the generals who lead them. Like the “lions led by donkeys” of World War I, they are angry with their superiors at home who expect them to work miracles with inadequate numbers and equipment. They respect their American comrades, but feel nothing but pity and contempt for their European counterparts, who are not allowed to go near the action. My deepest concern, however, is about the likely consequences of Europe’s defeatist attitude toward the Islamist flood that is threatening both Israel and the moderate Muslim states. There are various pieces of evidence that, taken together, suggest that the policy of refusing to deal with Hamas will soon be quietly dropped, that Israel will be pressured to repudiate its strategy of punitive retaliation as used against Hezbollah a year ago, and that Europe is already replacing the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war with a new doctrine: the pre-emptive cringe. This week, for example…parliamentarians…demand[ed] that the Brown government should open negotiations with “moderate elements” in Hamas—and that [Tony] Blair, in his new role as Middle East peace envoy, should do the same. What lies behind such demands from the European foreign policy establishment? The truth is that semi-official talks with Hamas are already happening…. One of the most powerful recruits to the cause of making Hamas respectable is the BBC, which has been promoting the “moderate Hamas” line even more assiduously since Hamas claimed to have negotiated the release of its kidnapped Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston. … Just as America’s pre-emptive strike against Iraq set off a benign, though short-lived, domino effect across the Middle East, so Europe’s pre-emptive cringe could precipitate a malign domino effect, with pro-Western states such as Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan falling into Islamist hands.… Faced with a jihad that may last for generations, the nations of the West can choose whether to hang together, or hang separately. FRANCE’S
PRO-U.S. TURN ON IRAQ One key promise that Nicolas Sarkozy had made during his presidential election campaign last spring was to “correct foreign-policy mistakes” made by his predecessor Jacques Chirac. Chief among these was Chirac’s desperate efforts to prevent Iraq’s liberation from Saddam Hussein’s regime of terror. Chirac failed to save his friend’s regime but managed to sour relations with the United States, Great Britain and more than 40 other democracies that joined the Coalition of the Willing to liberate Iraq in 2003. Sarkozy’s moves to correct the mistake started before his election, when he met President Bush at the White House in 2006 and described Chirac’s policy as “arrogant.” The surprise visit paid to Iraq by France’s new foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, this week is another move by Sarkozy to shed Chirac’s legacy. No better man than Kouchner could have been chosen to signal France’s change of policy. For Kouchner is one of a handful of people in the West who recognized the murderous nature of Saddam’s regime and called for its overthrow as early as the 1980s. In fact, Kouchner, a medical doctor by training, partly made his public image by helping the hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees who fled from Saddam’s tyranny in the 1970s and the 1990s.… As a result, when he arrived in Baghdad the other day, Kouchner was among friends. He also had an opportunity to lay a wreath at a monument to one of his oldest friends, Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations’ first emissary to Iraq, who was murdered by al Qaeda almost exactly four years ago. Kouchner’s visit, full of symbolism, shatters one of the key points in al Qaeda’s analysis: that the Western democracies will never unite to develop a common strategy against terror.… [B]oth [German] Chancellor Angela Merkel and [Russia] President Sarkozy understand that the perception of Western disunity may be one of the factors that prolongs the conflict in Iraq.… As long as al Qaeda and the Ba’athist bitter-enders believe that Western divisions might destroy the U.S.-led coalition, they will have an incentive to continue the fight. Once they lose that incentive, they might well decide that, with Iraq unlikely to fall, they had better look for alternative strategies in their global jihad. Beyond its obvious symbolic and psychological value, France’s change of position on Iraq could have a number of practical positive effects.
Sarkozy has made it clear that he wants France on the side of the United States and other democracies in the global war against terrorism [and] has already repaired part of the damage done by Chirac and his entourage. CUCKOO CLOCKS AND JIHADISTS
WHAT SWITZERLAND IS NOW PRODUCING As jihadist plots continue to be uncovered from Glasgow to New Jersey, it is plain that no place can be considered entirely safe. That includes placid, would-be neutral Switzerland, where a series of incidents and controversies in recent months points to a small but untiring Saudi-sponsored Islamist presence—and to a growing determination to resist its excesses on the part of some Swiss citizens and the Swiss authorities. Switzerland has more than 300,000 Muslims—some 4.3 percent of the population—few of whom are of Arab descent. Most came as migrants or refugees from the former Yugoslavia (57 percent) or Turkey (20 percent). Yet the small minority who are Arabs (5 percent) have made their mark. The influential Geneva Islamic Center was founded as long ago as 1961, with roots in the international Islamist movement. Its leader, Said Ramadan, had been expelled from Nasser’s Egypt for ties to the Muslim Brotherhood…. Ramadan also helped create the World Muslim League, funded by the Saudi establishment for the purpose of spreading Wahhabism around the world. Today, Ramadan’s sons Tariq, intellectual superstar of European Islamism, and Hani, head of the Geneva Islamic Center, continue to serve the cause. But the Islamic Center is not the only Islamist institution in the Swiss capital. There is also the Grand Mosque of Geneva, which has undergone sweeping leadership changes in recent months. It has a new director, fresh from Jeddah, who suddenly fired four executives at the end of March. The Swiss daily Le Temps reported that the firings were initiated by the Saudi consul general in Geneva. The fired executives have sued, claiming they lost their jobs for being too moderate. The new imam at the mosque is Youssef Ibram, a Moroccan who studied Islamic law for six years in Saudi Arabia. … In 2004, in an interview with the Swiss French magazine Coopération, he said, “Regarding stoning [adulterers], I cannot be against it since it is included in the Islamic law.”… Ibram is also a member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research…headed by Al Jazeera star Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi. This body takes upon itself to assess the conformity of European laws to Islam. … [T]here are indications that Swiss authorities are taking a stronger stand against Islamist extremists. In May, they denied entry to Switzerland to Salman al Odeh, threatening him with up to six months’ imprisonment and a fine of up to 10,000 Swiss Francs (about $8,200). The Federal Police explained their decision this way: “Al Odeh is one of the most influential men on the Radical Islamist scene, a Wahhabi and a fanatic close to Osama Bin Laden. He was jailed in Arabia between 1994 and 1999 because of his extremist views, and from his cell continued the call for an armed Jihad against the infidel Western nations.” In fact, bin Laden cited Odeh as a favorite religious authority in his early communiqués and defended him after he was jailed.… [I]n 1999…Odeh was allowed to go free and resume preaching…developing the website Islam Today to spread extremism worldwide, organizing political statements, and encouraging jihad against America in Iraq. In an interview with the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat, al Odeh called the accusations “a big lie impossible to believe,” and attributed them to “extremist Zionist forces”…saying, “I met Bin Laden only once 20 years ago while I was visiting the Sharia faculty.” Al Odeh added that he is suing the Swiss authorities. Similarly, courts are being used in new, if hardly draconian, ways. On June 22, for the first time ever, two people were convicted in a Swiss court of support for a criminal organization in a case linked to Islamist terrorism. The two ran radical websites, complete with images of executions of hostages, massacres of civilians, disfigured people, and detailed instructions for bomb-making, as well as a chat room that promoted jihad. One of the defendants, Malika el-Aroud, is the widow of Abdessater Dahmane, who helped assassinate Massoud, the Afghan Northern Alliance leader killed by al Qaeda on September 9, 2001; she was given a six-month suspended sentence. … In its May 31, 2006, Swiss Domestic Security Report, the Federal Police stated plainly that violent Islamists are using Swiss soil as a strategic location from which to spread propaganda and provide financial and logistical support to people abroad. The report also underlined Geneva’s growing importance as a transit point for volunteers from French-speaking Switzerland and France going to join the jihad in Iraq. Further, wrote Jean-Luc Vez, director of the Federal Police, in the foreword: “European-born jihadists could come back from Iraq and other war zones as experienced fighters, linked to a network with the same ideology…. These isolated individuals, but also al Qaeda, remain capable of organizing terrorist attacks.” Coincidentally, the largest synagogue in Geneva was gutted by fire on May 24, in what has been ruled a case of criminal arson. As of now, no arrests have been made. But any illusion that Switzerland was somehow immune to the fires of intolerance is long since gone. For an opinion on European Islamism by Amotz Asa-El, please visit CIJR’s Picks of the Week page. Volume VII, No. 1,673 • Friday, August 24, 2007 NEW-LOOK BONAPARTE TESTIMONY: France in the Twenty-First
Century. It’s truly a French specialty. I do not know a ranking French politician who has not considered at one time or another writing and publishing a book, one with ideological and often even literary ambitions, as an essential rite of passage in his or her career. Is it the prestige, more acute in France than elsewhere, accompanying the creation of a book, a real book, and not merely a political platform? Is it the link between the pen and the sword, between politics and literature, which has been particularly close ever since the Encyclopedists and the French Revolution? Could it be because of writers who, like Chateaubriand, dreamed of being in the cabinet? Or those who, like Malraux, wanted to be renowned for their use of arms as much as for the books they wrote? Or could it be the opposite, Stendhal’s syndrome of lamenting the battle of Waterloo, since because of it he missed by a few days being named prefect of Le Mans? From Richelieu, who wanted to be a playwright; to de Gaulle, who was fascinated by Malraux; from Clemenceau, our prime minister during the First World War, who wrote an opera (“The Dream Veil”); to François Mitterrand, whom I personally heard say several times that nothing was more enviable in this world than being the author of “The Charterhouse of Parma,” France is this bizarre country where if the writers are often failed men of action, the men of action are always failed writers. French presidents do not wait to recount and justify their deeds in office; they write their memoirs before they come into power. And so Nicolas Sarkozy, though seemingly the least literary of them all, has, like the others before him, published his. I imagine that the original intention of this book — rather, of these two books combined into one for publication in English — was to lay out his vision of France and its future before he stepped into the battle. But now that Sarko, our new-look Bonaparte, has won the election and acceded to the Elysée Palace, the book has quite a different sense than originally intended and may be read as a precise and priceless live self-portrait. In “Testimony” we discover the first president of the Republic who dares to write of love, true love, when discussing the tumultuous relationship he has had with Cécilia Sarkozy, the woman who left him, whom he reconquered, who ended up coming back to him and is now our first lady in the Jackie Kennedy mold. Yes, a president who tells us about the storm and joys of love, about the woman of his life, about desire and suffering. Is it possible that this passion was more important to him in the end than his passion for power? We discover a young man, apparently happy, whose evident good humor seems to be a part of his political agenda. Much has been said about his postelection escapade in Malta on the ostentatious yacht of the French billionaire Vincent Bolloré, which some have called Sarkozy’s first political mistake. What if it was the other way around? What if the gesture was really in keeping with the part of his project that calls for unguilting us when it comes to luxury, success and money, even at the risk of going whole hog into bad taste and kitsch? What if this young president wanted to reconcile France, if not with actual happiness, then with the signs of happiness that our puritanism, our depression and fear of glitter and success, have long discredited and suppressed? We discover a character willing to talk about anything, without stonewalling or taboos, without censoring himself or being self-conscious. Sarkozy writes about his public and private lives, about subjects noble and less noble, expresses doubts as well as certainties, launches insults and retorts, pronounces cut-and-dried judgments about adversaries and partners alike. We are spared nothing that crosses his mind. I have personally observed in him this odd character trait — namely, that not an idea goes through his head that he doesn’t feel the need to shout out to the cheap seats. Sarkozy is the only person I know who is a perfect Sartrean subject — the prototype of that subjectivity described in “Being and Nothingness” that draws its strength, and even its freedom, from the fact that it has no inner core, nothing in reserve; as if it were an empty place, a mere transit zone in which impressions, information and emotions spin around without stopping or connecting. And finally we discover — as will Americans — the first of our presidents for whom our relationship with the rest of the world is so clearly inspired by the best result of the antitotalitarian movements of the ’70s and ’80s, namely a fidelity to Israel that will no longer waver in the face of “ups and downs in our interests in Arab societies”; a sensitivity to genocide and in particular to the Holocaust, that “stain on the 20th century and all of human history”; a refusal of that “cultural relativism” that would allow us to look at the Chechen drama or the fate of Chinese political prisoners differently from events happening in Europe; a true concern that human rights be respected in relationships between states, between democracies and dictatorships; and last but not least, his view of America, for which, beginning in his preface, he declares an outright and unfeigned admiration if not love, contrasting sharply with the stubborn antiAmericanism that for decades has been part of the platform of much of the French political class. So in light of all that, why did I not vote for him? And why for the entire campaign, unlike most of my comrades in the ideological battles of the last 30 years, unlike most of my friends from the leftist anticommunist movement born during the 1970s, did I fight against this man who seems so likable? I will explain elsewhere, in another way, when it is time. I will say, for example, how such and such a remark on national identity and how it must be preserved pushed me far away from him. Perhaps I will say, more precisely, that to be a Frenchman in the 21st century means to make a choice about certain major and seminal events, like Vichy, colonialism or May 1968. And I will look at the positions he took on these three questions and conclude that when he said that the Vichy government was not an integral participant in genocide, when he thundered that France should not be embarrassed by its “civilizing” work in Algeria, and when he vowed that if elected he would “liquidate the heritage of May 1968,” which for 40 years has been a secret wound, a torment, sometimes the nightmare of the most radical reactionary right wing of this country, Nicolas Sarkozy cut himself off from men like me. The essential components were nevertheless already laid out in Sarkozy’s books, which I admit not having carefully read when they first came out in France. I discover now that the software was already, shall we say, preinstalled. There are the pages on repentance, for example. Or more exactly the pages about his love for France, which should be “proud of its past” and which we must love completely, without nuance, far from the “denigration” that the possible future president saw as a kind of illness. I personally have nothing against a little denigration. Frankly, I am not against the idea of political leaders and citizens speaking about the sadness, the pity, even the horror they feel when examining some of the blackest pages of their national history. In other words, I think that shame is quite useful in politics, and the idea of not feeling, as Emmanuel Levinas said, “accountable for” or even “hostage to” the crimes we did not commit, and even worse, not feeling accountable and responsible for those in which we or ours have had some part — I think this is exactly what Sartre (him again!) called a politics of “bastards.” Where would the United States be if it were not ashamed of its past of slavery, then of racism? Where would France be if — under the pretext that, as Sarkozy says, we have not “produced” a Hitler (true) or Stalin (unclear, given how much the French intelligentsia participated in the creation of the Stalinist vulgate) or Pol Pot (rather doubtful, given that Pol Pot and his men all trained in Paris, in the very cradle of human rights) — we were simply to sing together the sinister “proud to be French” refrain the new president keeps humming, which amounts to finessing, for example, the enormous anti-Semitism of the Dreyfus era, or the huge collaborationist enthusiasm of the cultural and administrative elite in the darkest Vichy years, or the practice of state-sanctioned torture in the last years of the war in Algeria? There are also several pages dealing with the full-blown crisis in the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005, when Sarkozy, then the minister of the interior, nearly set the country ablaze and came close to torching his own political future as well. He reminds us (with reason) of the exact circumstances surrounding his uttering the infamous remark (in theory, only about the young rioters in Argenteuil) — “Yes, madame, that’s what I’m here for. I’m going to get rid of this scum for you” — that was in large part responsible for his demonization in certain sectors of public opinion. He also explains, and here he is convincing, how the ideas of “racism” and “xenophobia” are intolerable for him, the son of immigrants, and that he also believes in a France that has become many-sided and rich in “diversity.” But then he slips up, betraying the definitive conservative that he really is, when he sees in the mini-riots of 2005 only foolish, nihilist outbursts of violence, deserving the strict intervention of the police, where only the hopelessly idiotic intellectual conformism of what he calls “uniform thinking” still glimpses the shadow of a “‘social’ protest.” I am not a “Sarkozist” because I did in fact see the beginnings of a social movement, no doubt a terrible one, brutal and savage. A movement that, for the first time in the history of this kind of movement, seemed mute, aphasic, burning schools and clinics, like true barbarians or idiots (although it is unclear if the rage of the Communards who set fire to the library of the Tuileries was more articulate than that of the unemployed youth setting fire to their children’s nursery schools or their fathers’ cars). But it was a social movement nonetheless. A movement to which we should have applied, to which we must always apply, a form of treatment that is not only penal but social. And finally there is Sarkozy’s pragmatism, although perhaps we should say opportunism and cynicism, which we observed in the days after his victory, when he was like a voracious child placed in the middle of Hammacher Schlemmer or Toys ‘R’ Us and told: “Everything here is yours; it’s all free. Take what you want!” Which he did, on every floor of the store, snapping up the “best” merchandise, the iconic Bernard Kouchner, the sage Hubert Védrine, the great knights of the Mitterandian Holy Grail he mentions in the book, saying how much he admired them when he was a young minister. The totems of the left to whom he throws pieces of meat for the sheer pleasure of watching them fight over it. The legends of literature and the arts whose truth, or myth, he would gladly gobble up. Who’s the patron saint of the Socialists? Léon Blum? “O.K., get me Blum!” The “Christ” of the Communists? Guy Môquet? “Fine, bring me ... certainly not Guy Môquet” — a 17-year-old resistance fighter executed by the Nazis — “but his last letter to his parents, so beautiful, so moving.” And today’s queen of victims? Who gets the martyr’s crown of contemporary suffering? Ingrid Betancourt, you say? “Well, let’s hustle, let’s get the Betancourt family back together at the Elysée!” I do not deny that this may indeed have a good outcome. Nor that, because of that same appetite, Nicolas Sarkozy may have some good surprises in store for us, such as ordering — as he did in his inaugural address — that at the beginning of each academic year Guy Môquet’s letter be read in all the schools of France. I do not rule out that with his will and determination he might actually obtain the liberation of Ingrid Betancourt, held hostage in Colombia by the FARC for more than five years. I am even ready to admit that he is capable of making the Chinese give in on the terrible situation in Darfur where, as everyone knows, they hold the reins of Khartoum’s regime of assassins. I am only saying that there is in Sarkozy a relationship to memory that troubles and worries me. Men usually have a memory. It can be complex, contradictory, paradoxical, confused. But it is their own. It has a great deal to do with the basis of who they are and the identities they choose for themselves. Sarkozy is an identity pirate, a mercenary of others’ memories. He claims all memories, meaning that in the end he just might not have any. He is our first president without a memory. He is the first of our presidents willing to listen to all ideas, because for him they are literally indistinguishable. If there is a man in France today who embodies (or claims to embody) the famous end of all ideologies, which I cannot quite bring myself to believe in, it is indeed Mr. Sarkozy, the sixth president of the Fifth Republic. There is an odd feeling in having a president about whom so much (his foreign policy, his generosity, his style) draws you together and so much else (his vision of France, his memory-greed, his cynicism) profoundly separates you. Such will be my lot for the next five or 10 years. Then again, why not? It’s fine. (Bernard-Henri Lévy is the author of American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville.) WHAT
COULD MAKE A DEDICATED HOLOCAUST SCHOLAR, CRY? If you’re not overwhelmed by human catastrophe, can you be truly human? But if you are overwhelmed by human catastrophe, can you truly study it? One of the triumphs of Raul Hilberg, the great Holocaust historian who died last week, was that he solved that conundrum. He taught us how, by being clinically rigorous, he could be true to his scholarship — and true, as well, to the victims of the human catastrophe to whose story he dedicated his work and his life. In 1993, Hilberg, whose “The Destruction of the European Jews” was the foundational history of the Holocaust, sent me the manuscript of his memoir, “The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian.” He asked for comments. Hilb |