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ISRANET DAILY BRIEFING ARCHIVE Volume IV, No. 1,024 • Friday, December 31, 2004 Cracked Icons: Why the Left has
Lost Credibility There is much talk of post-election reorganization and rethinking among demoralized liberals, especially in matters of foreign policy. They could start by accepting that the demise of many of their cherished beliefs and institutions was not the fault of others. More often, the problems are fundamental flaws in their own thinking—such as the ends of good intentions justifying the means of expediency and untruth, and forced equality being a higher moral good than individual liberty and freedom. Whether we call such notions "political correctness" or "progressivism," the practice of privileging race, class, and gender over basic ethical considerations has earned the moralists of the Left not merely hypocrisy, but virtual incoherence. Democratic leaders are never going to be trusted in matters of foreign policy unless they can convince Americans that they once more believe in American exceptionalism and are the proper co-custodians of values such as freedom and individual liberty. If in the 1950s rightists were criticized as cynical Cold Warriors who never met a right-wing thug they wouldn't support, as long as he mouthed a few anti-Soviet platitudes, then in the last two decades almost any thug from Latin America to the Middle East who professed concern for "the people"—from Castro and the Noriega Brothers to Yasser Arafat and the Iranian mullahs—was likely to earn a pass from the American and European cultural elite and media. To regain credibility, the Left must start to apply the same standard of moral outrage to a number of its favorite causes that it does to the United States government, the corporations, and the Christian Right. Here are a few places to start. 1. There really isn't a phenomenon like "Islamophobia"—at least no more than there was a "Germanophobia" in hating Hitler or "Russophobia" in detesting Stalinism. Any unfairness or rudeness that accrues from the "security profiling" of Middle Eastern young males is dwarfed by efforts of Islamic fascists themselves—here in the U.S., in the U.K., the Netherlands, France, Turkey, and Israel—to murder Westerners and blow up civilians. The real danger to thousands of innocents is not an occasional evangelical zealot or uncouth politician spouting off about Islam, but the deliberately orchestrated and very sick anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism that floods the airways worldwide, emanating from Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, to be sure, but also from our erstwhile "allies" in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. So both here and abroad, the Western public believes that there is a double standard in the moral judgment of our left-leaning media, universities, and politicians—that we are not to supposed to ask how Christians are treated in Muslim societies, only how free Islamists in Western mosques are to damn their hosts; or that we are to think beheading, suicide murdering, and car bombing moral equivalents to the sexual humiliation and roguery of Abu Ghraib—apparently because the former involves post-colonial victims and the latter privileged, exploitive Americans. Most sane people, however, privately disagree, and distinguish between a civilian's head rolling on the ground and a snap shot of an American guard pointing at the genitalia of her terrorist ward. Moreover, few of any note in the Arab Middle East speak out against the racial hatred of Jews. Almost no major Islamic religious figure castigates extreme Muslim clerics for their Dark-age misogyny, anti-Semitism, and venom against the West; and no Arab government admonishes its citizenry to look to itself for solutions rather than falling prey to conspiracy theories and ago-old superstitions… What is preached in the madrassas on the West Bank, in Pakistan, and throughout the Gulf is no different from the Nazi doctrine of racial hatred. What has changed, of course, is that unlike our grandfathers, we have lost the courage to speak out against it. In one of the strangest political transformations of our age, the fascist Islamic Right has grafted its cause onto that of the Left's boutique "multiculturalism,"… By any empirical standard, what various Palestinian cliques have done on the West Bank—suicide murdering, lynching without trial of their own people, teaching small children to hate and kill Jews—should have earned them all Hitlerian sobriquets rather than U.N. praise. 2. "Imperialism" and "hegemony" explain nothing about recent American intervention abroad—not when dictators such as Noriega, Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein were taken out by the U.S. military. There are no shahs and Your Excellencies in their places, but rather consensual governments whose only sin was that they came on the heels of American arms rather than U.N. collective snoozing. There really was no secret Afghan pipeline behind toppling the Taliban, nor a French-like oil concession to be had for the United States from the new Iraqi interim government. Many of Michael Moore's heroic "Minutemen" of the Sunni Triangle are hired killers—hooded fascists in the pay of ex-Baathists and Saddamites, along with Islamic terrorists and jihadists who hate the very idea of democracy in the heart of the Arab world. The collective cursus honorum of these Saddamite holdovers during the last two decades—gassing the Kurds, committing atrocities against the Iranians, looting and pillaging in Kuwait, launching missiles into Israel and Saudi Arabia, slaughtering Shiites and again Kurds, and assassinating Western and U.N. aid workers—rank right up there with the work of the SS and KGB. Reformers like Allawi and Yawar of Iraq are not "puppets" but far better advocates of democratic reform than anyone else in the Arab world… 3. It won't do any longer to attribute American outrage over the U.N. to a vast right-wing conspiracy led by red-state senators and Fox News. All the standing ovations for Kofi Annan cannot hide the truth that the Oil-for-Food scandal exceeds Enron… There can be no serious U.N. moral sense as long as illiberal regimes--a Syria, Iran, or Cuba--vote in the General Assembly and the Security Council stymies solutions out of concern for an autocratic China that swallowed Tibet. Millions were slaughtered in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur while New York bureaucrats either condemned Israel or damned anyone who censured their own inaction and corruption. Rather than faulting those who fault the U.N., leftists should lament the betrayal of the spirit of the liberal U.N. Charter by regimes that are neither democratic nor liberal but who seek legitimacy solely on their ability to win concessions and sympathy from guilt-ridden Westerners. 4. So it is also time to take a hard look at the heroes and villains of Hollywood, liberal Democrats, and the Euro elites. Many are as obsessed with damning the senile dictator of Chile as they are with excusing the unelected President for Life Fidel Castro. But let us be frank. A murderous Pinochet probably killed fewer of his own than did a mass-murdering Castro, and left Chile in better shape than contemporary Cuba is in. And the former is long gone, while the latter is still long in power. Similarly, Nobel Prizes increasingly go to either unsavory or unhinged characters. Yasser Arafat was a known killer and terrorist, not a global peacemaker. Wangari Maathai's public statements about AIDS are puerile and ipso facto would have eliminated any Westerner from consideration for anything. Rigoberta Menchu Tum herself was a half-truth, her story mostly a creation of a westernized academic publishing elite. Jimmy Carter's 2002 award was not predicated on his past work on housing for the poor, but his critically timed and calculated opposition to George W. Bush's effort to topple Saddam Hussein--as was confirmed by the receptive Nobel Committee itself. Recent winners Kofi Annan and Kim Dae-jung are now better known for having their own sons involved in influence-peddling and bribery while they oversaw bureaucrats who trafficked in millions with unsavory murderers like Kim Jong-Il and Saddam Hussein. In short, such an august prize has come a long way from Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr.—and precisely because it has privileged leftist rhetoric over real morality. If the moralizing Left wants to be taken seriously, it is going have to become serious about its own moral issues, since that is the professed currency of contemporary liberalism. Otherwise, the spiritual leaders who lecture us all on social justice, poverty, and truth will remain the money-speculator George Soros, the Reverend Jesse Jackson of dubious personal and professional ethics, and the mythographer Michael Moore. And we all know where that leads. (Victor Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University) YOU
GO TO WAR WITH THE PRESS YOU HAVE "You go to war with the press coverage you have. It's not the press coverage you might want or wish to have." Perhaps Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should have said that in response to Spec. Thomas "Jerry" Wilson's famous question about scavenging for scrap metal to armor his unit's Humvees. Actually, the episode's press coverage could have used armor plating. A careful examination suggests the media uproar was shot full of holes. First, it turns out the question did not originate with Spec. Wilson, of the Army's 278th Regimental Combat Team. He was prompted to ask Mr. Rumsfeld about armor plating by a reporter, Edward Lee Pitts of the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press. The reporter's role was rarely mentioned in subsequent coverage, although on a few occasions Mr. Pitts was praised for using a soldier to get information from Mr. Rumsfeld that he didn't think he could get directly. Second, press coverage--particularly on television--provided a misleadingly truncated version of Mr. Rumsfeld's full answer to the Pitts/Wilson… This is the only portion of Mr. Rumsfeld's answer that was--and is still being--quoted endlessly in newspapers and broadcast on television and radio: "As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." Mr. Rumsfeld's response has been repeatedly characterized as an insensitive, brusque, disrespectful, insulting putdown. And that description might be fitting if that was all the secretary said in response to the Pitts/Wilson question. Actually, here's Mr. Rumsfeld's full answer: "I talked to the general coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they're not needed, to a place where they are needed. I'm told that they are being… I think it's something like 400 a month are being done. And it's essentially a matter of physics. It isn't a matter of money. It isn't a matter, on the part of the Army, of desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it. As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate they believe…it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment. I can assure you that Gen. Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly Gen. Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip." The full quote gives quite a different impression of Mr. Rumsfeld's attitude than the oft-repeated mini-quote, "You go to war with the army you have," doesn't it? But the worst shortcoming of media coverage of this controversy was failure to report virtually all the unit's combat vehicles had already been up-armored by the Army and the rest were completed the day after Mr. Rumsfeld's Town Meeting comments… Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes was asked about the armoring controversy at an hourlong media briefing at the Pentagon on Dec. 15. He said: "When the question [to Rumsfeld] was asked, 20 vehicles remained to be up-armored at that point. We completed those 20 vehicles in the next day. And so over 800 vehicles from the 278th were up-armored, and they are part now of their total force that is operating up in Iraq." … Reporters then, and since, have ignored Mr. Rumsfeld's full quote. And the media generally suppressed the Pentagon's detailed explanation that the 278th's Humvees were virtually all up-armored at the time. Why? As the saying goes, you go to press with the story you have. And you don't want a good story ruined by the facts. (Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, is a former official at the State Department and the National Security Council. Ron Nessen, journalist in residence at Brookings, was press secretary to President Gerald Ford.) THE
END OF THE AFFAIR It is fitting that this was the year Yasser Arafat died. When the history of the war on terror is written, 2004 will be remembered as the moment when the romance of the terrorist finally faded away. Arafat was the romantic terrorist par excellence, the man who was given the podium of the U.N. General Assembly in 1974, just months after Palestinian gunmen had murdered 26 Israeli schoolchildren in Ma'alot. For the next three decades, an ever-broadening patch of the West came to see Arafat and his associates as militants, not terrorists, worthy of Nobel Prizes and White House overnights and states to call their own. Arafat's rejection of Israel's partition offer at the 2000 Camp David talks should have finished this romance, but it did not. Nor, really, did the attacks of September 11. For some people, terrorism directed against Israel or the U.S. will always have some justification, because Israel and the U.S. are ipso facto the world's original aggressors. But what justification can be offered the killer of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, whose sin was to have made a short movie about the mistreatment of women in Islamic societies? And where is the romance in slaughtering 500 children in Beslan, or 200 commuters in Madrid? Perhaps the latter atrocity could be explained as payback for Spain's support of the Bush Administration in Iraq. But then what about the kidnapping and execution of Margaret Hassan, the Irish-born Iraqi citizen who devoted her life to humanitarian relief and opposed the prewar sanctions as well as the invasion itself? Islamists, it turns out, issue no exemptions for the bien-pensant when drawing up their target lists. In 2004, then, the world finally awoke to the fact that the only line worth taking against terrorists is a hard one, and this was reflected in political trends. In the U.S. and Australia, George W. Bush and John Howard decisively won contests framed as referendums on their handling of the war on terror. In Britain, Tony Blair survived every effort by the antiwar lobby to bring him down and looks set to win a third term in 2005. In France, the most popular politician today is Nicolas Sarkozy, who is outspokenly pro-American and pro-Israel. Only Spain proved an exception, and that now looks like the result of clumsy post-attack news management by the former conservative government, which might otherwise have held on to power. All this has had knock-on effects, particularly in the Arab world. While al-Jazeera continues to propagandize on behalf of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, another line of Arab commentators began this year to ask some previously taboo questions. "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims," Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the manager of the Al-Arabiya news channel, wrote last summer. "Does all this tell us something about ourselves, our societies and our culture?" Last week, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas kicked off his presidential campaign by saying "the use of weapons is unacceptable because it has a negative impact on our image." It's an instructive choice of words: Mr. Abbas does not reject terrorism because it is immoral, but because it no longer sells the cause abroad. Still, even in Ramallah the message is getting through that terrorism is a self-defeating course of action. The romance, in other words, is gone. There is another way in which 2004 witnessed the fading of the romance, and this has to do with the myth of terrorist invincibility. In March, Israel killed Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin, a measure immediately condemned as certain to incite Palestinians to new heights of retributive fury. Instead, Israel experienced the first sustained lull in suicide attacks since the intifada began, demonstrating that countries that take tough action against terrorism get results… Now the lesson is being relearned by the Bush Administration as it fights battles from which it flinched in April for fear of provoking a wider Sunni uprising. In fact, the Administration's most provocative act in 2004 was in not taking action then, creating a perception of American irresolution that emboldened Sunni and Shia insurgents throughout the summer. Notably, when Fallujah was finally retaken in November, the only voice to be heard from the proverbial Arab street was that of Zarqawi himself. "You have let us down in the darkest circumstances," he berated Muslim clerics for their failure to raise an army to his cause. Both their failure and his remonstrance are a good indication that, in Iraq, things are gradually turning America's way. Elsewhere in the world, the year's news in the war on terror tended to be good. A.Q. Khan's nuclear-proliferation network was rolled up. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is disbanding itself as democracy takes root. There will be more genuinely democratic elections in the Arab world next month than there have been in the past 40 years. Even the U.N. managed to propose (if not yet adopt) a commonsense definition of terrorism… In "Armageddon," British historian Max Hastings reminds us that the closing months of World War II were by far its bloodiest. Surely in this war there will be more awful surprises, and possibly reverses. But in 2004, it became clear that the civilized world would not soon again succumb to the fatal attractions of terror. Happy New Year to our readers! Shabbat shalom! Volume IV, No. 1,023 • Thursday, December 30, 2004 THE MYTHICAL MARTYR The first thing that comes up
when you google Mohammed al-Durra's name is a poem written by Sheikh
Mohammed of the United Arab Emirates called "To the soul of the
child martyr." It gives an idea of the mythical proportions that
the young boy has assumed in the Middle East. The images of Mohammed
al-Durra hiding from Israeli fire behind his father's back in the early
days of the second intifada, only to be struck down by enemy bullets,
shocked the whole world. For many Arabs and Muslims, the boy became
the symbol of Palestinian suffering under Israeli occupation. On the
Palestinian Authority's TV channel, as well as in Palestinian school
books, his example is used to encourage other children to emulate his
spirit of sacrifice. Even in the West, the pictures that won so many
journalism prizes have become the most recognizable symbol of Israeli
aggression. When Ehud Barak, then Israel's prime minister, visited Paris
in the same year, French President Jacques Chirac wryly scolded him.
"Killing children is no policy." The French TV channel's
obstructionism and our own investigation led us to the conclusion that
the additional footage did not exist. We were so certain that we even
published several articles to this effect. However, it took until Oct.
22 of this year before France 2 finally caved in. Following massive
political pressure, the state-owned channel was forced to invite Luc
Rosenzweig, a former chief editor of Le Monde and one of our contributors,
to view the ominous rushes. On that Friday, Mr. Rosenzweig, together
with Denis Jeambar, editor-in-chief of L'Express, and Daniel Leconte,
a former France 2 reporter, was admitted into the office of Arlette
Chabot, the head of France 2's news department. Our friend delivered
the sentence we had rehearsed so many times: "I came to watch the
27 minutes of the incident mentioned in Mr. Abu Rahma's statement under
oath." (Stephane Juffa is editor in chief of the Israeli-based Metula News Agency) THE DISHONEST
REPORTING 'AWARDS' 2004 …This year, the western
press became more careful in its reporting of the Mideast conflict…
On the other hand, the bias that persists has become more subtle, implicit,
and downright libellous. For example, the media have allowed the following
terminology to gain broad legitimacy: The security fence as an 'Apartheid
wall', Israel practicing 'ethnic cleansing' of Palestinians, and a sinister
'Likud cabal' infesting Washington…despite having no basis in
reality. Now, without further ado, we present this year's Dishonest
Reporting 'Award' winners… ISRAEL’S
EFFORTS TO HELP ARE OVERLOOKED The world should be made aware of the quick humanitarian missions the tiny state of Israel has sent to South Asia following this week's disastrous tsunami. The Israeli organization Latet (to give) filled a jumbo jet with 18 tonnes of supplies. A medical team headed by four doctors from Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital arrived in Sri Lanka on Monday night, carrying medicine and baby food. The doctors specialize in rescue operations, trauma and paediatrics. An [IDF] rescue team is now on its way to Sri Lanka with 80 tons of material, including 10,000 blankets, tents, nylon sheeting and water containers, all contributed by the IDF. A ZAKA rescue-and-recovery team arrived in the disaster areas Monday night with specialized equipment for identifying bodies. A Health Ministry contingent left for Thailand on Monday night to aid in rescue efforts. The group includes doctors, nurses and four members of the IDF. Israel has also offered its assistance to India; a search-and-rescue team from the Home Front Command, as well as consignments of food and medicine. All this with barely a mention in the international press. Perhaps the time has come for the media to cease demonizing the tiny and only democracy in the Middle East. Volume IV, No. 1,022 • Wednesday, December 29, 2004 WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP WEEKLY QUOTES “We are choosing the path of peace and negotiation. If there is no peace here, there will be no peace in the Middle East or the rest of the world.”—Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, kicking off his presidential campaign. Abbas, the front-runner in the January 9th elections, pledged to deliver deceased PA Chairman Yasser Arafat’s promise of Palestinian statehood. “Israel must pull out of all Palestinian lands occupied in 1967,” he told supporters in Ramallah. “We cannot compromise on Jerusalem. A state that is cut up by settlements cannot be a state.” Abbas also vowed to respect the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Abbas hopes that his decades-long relationship with Arafat, rocky though it was, will propel him to victory. However, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas showed surprising electoral strength in Thursday’s municipal elections, spotlighting growing opposition to the ruling Fatah Party. Preliminary results from the 26 communities that voted gave Fatah 14 races and Hamas nine. Hamas is not fielding a candidate in the presidential race. (New York Post, Dec. 25; New York Times, Washington Times, Dec. 26) “We made it singularly clear to the Palestinians that if the situation continues, disengagement will stop and we will not progress to the road map peace plan.”—PM Ariel Sharon, warning that continued Palestinian mortar attacks on Israeli settlements threaten the viability of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti hailed Sharon’s Disengagement Plan as a victory for the Palestinian resistance. (Jer. Post, Dec. 27 and 28) “We assassinated Rabin, may his name be cursed. We will also assassinate Sharon, may his name be cursed.”—Graffiti discovered at the Gush Etzion junction near Jerusalem. Yesterday, Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court released five far-right activists suspected of writing anti-Sharon slogans in Jerusalem, stating that they are protected by free speech rights. (Jer. Post, Dec. 29) “I definitely agree with the idea that there was a need to establish a state-of-the-Jews in Israel for those Jews who want to live here. I also recognize the right of Jews who don't want to live here not to do so… I think that Zionism has exhausted itself. Precisely because it accomplished its aims. If the Zionism of today isn't a success story, it's the fault of the Zionists. It's because of the religio-zation and Likudization of Zionism and because what was supposed to be a state-of-the-Jews has become a Jewish state…"—Renowned Israeli journalist and author of The Israelis, Amos Elon, 79, who left Israel to live in Tuscany, Italy. (Ha’aretz, Dec. 29) “We all agree that it is ridiculous that we have 19 to 20 resolutions [condemning Israel] every year, it is a ritual and we should get rid of that.”—Dutch Ambassador to Israel Bob Heinsch, promoting the European Neighborhood Agreement signed by Israel and the EU. This program offers free access to goods, services, and capital to countries that implement economic and political reform. Heinsch, whose country holds the EU presidency, also affirmed the EU’s commitment to combating antisemitism. Similarly, Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini noted that Europe has gone to great lengths to understand Palestinian claims but has not made a similar effort regarding Israel. He is “convinced that Italy’s role in the EU is to persuade other states that Israel has just claims and motivations.” “Neither side has a monopoly on Justice,” he said. (Jer. Post, Dec. 22, Dec. 23) “A deafening silence was observed throughout the Arab world on the horrendous crime being committed by their fellow Arabs in Sudan… The Arab silence can only be explained once we understand the true nature of the twin Fascisms of Islamism and Pan-Arabism.”—Abu Khawla, former chair of the Tunisian branch of Amnesty International, criticizing Arab inaction to the crisis in Darfur. (Memri.org, Dec. 28) “We used to offer assistance to parties, institutions and states that stood by Iraq. We helped them via the United Nations because the oil-for-food program was a legitimate program supervised by the U.N. This cannot be considered bribery, because it was out right to sell oil to those who wanted it, and we could not affect the price at all, as it was set by the United Nations itself.”—Former Iraqi deputy PM Tariq Aziz, dismissing speculation that he might testify against his former regime colleagues on alleged U.N. corruption. (NYP, Dec. 25) “Iraq is not the new frontier in a holy war. The terrorists, hiding under an Islamic banner, are the real perpetrators of sectarianism in Iraq. They are seriously undermining everyone, particularly the Sunni community that they claim to represent. The ideological drive is distinctly Baathist. Saddam's regime excelled at sectarianism and ethnic discrimination, and that is what the insurgents desire today--to push Iraq into a sectarian civil war. They are the ones attacking mosques and churches and hospitals. They do not stand up for the rights of Sunni Iraqis, but merely for their own interests, of absolute totalitarian rule. Using a manipulative language of skewed religious metaphors and nationalist symbols, they lobby Iraq's Sunnis to join them in their violence. Co-existence and consensus-building are abhorrent to Baathists. Their logic is very simple, if they are not in power, then Iraq should not exist. Those still fighting for a return to Saddam's Iraq are incapable of practicing healthy competitive politics, of participating in a legitimate process of nation-building.”—President of the Iraqi National Congress Ahmed Chalabi. (Wall Street Journal, Dec. 22) “The great sweep of human history is for freedom and you are on the right side of that.”—U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking to Marines in Iraq. Rumsfeld has come under heavy criticism for failing to plan for the Iraqi insurgency and for his recent comments to troops in Iraq concerning shortage of armor for military vehicles. (Washington Times, Dec. 25) “The resistance should go and fight the Americans. It’s true that the Americans are Christians and we are Christians. But they should not associate us with them. All the Christians want the Americans to get out and the occupation to end. Nobody is with the Americans.”—Reverend Gabriel Shamami of St. George’s Church in Baghdad, asserting that Iraqi Christians oppose the U.S. presence in Iraq as much as their Muslim compatriots. (Globe and Mail, Dec. 24) “The brother mujahed [holy warrior] Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is the emir of the Al-Qaeda organization in the Land of the Two Rivers [Iraq]. The brothers in the group there must listen to him and obey him for what is good. The constitution imposed by the American occupier [Paul] Bremer is blasphemous…and anyone who takes part in this election consciously and willingly is an infidel. ”—Excerpt from an audiotape believed to be by Osama bin Laden. (Globe and Mail, Dec. 28) “We have chosen the path of non-violence and we will stick to it.”—Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), after a failed attempt on his life, stating that his group will not retaliate. “The only ideology these people know is terror. We laid down our arms in favour of pluralism. If we wanted violence we would have responded a long time ago.” Meanwhile, with violence on the rise in the Iraq in recent weeks, Iraqi interim PM Ayad Allawi vowed to stay the course, declaring “We know we will pay a heavy price until we win and we are going to win.” Yesterday, insurgents attacked an Iraqi police station, dragged out 12 men and shot them dead. Today, insurgents killed 28 people, including police officers, luring them into a house before setting off a bomb. (National Post, Dec.28, 29, NYT, Dec. 26) SHORT TAKES SRI LANKA REFUSES ISRAELI AID—(Jerusalem) The IDF cancelled plans to send a 150-member team to aid in recovery efforts in Sri Lanka because the Sri Lankan army protested the presence of Israeli troops in the medical relief team. Instead, a small team will escort generators, tents, blankets and mattresses in a convoy. About 500 Israelis vacationing in Southeast Asia have not yet made contact with their families. (Wall Street Journal, Dec. 29) NEW BILL PROHIBITS FUNDING TERRORISM—(Jerusalem) Earlier today, Israel’s Knesset approved a new law criminalizing the funding of terrorists and their families. Anyone charged as a “terror financier” faces a prison sentence of seven to ten years. The bill passed by a margin of 62 to 6; the six MKs who voted against the legislation belong to Arab Israeli political parties. (Ha’aretz, Dec. 29) IDF: TERROR DECLINED IN 2004—(Jerusalem) Israeli security forces foiled 116 suicide bombing attempts in 2004, reducing the number of terrorist attacks perpetrated against Israel by 44% from last year. The IDF, which also recorded a 60% decline in fatalities from 2003, pointed to the security fence, improved intelligence, and greater cooperation with the Shin Bet and Israeli police, as contributing to its success. (Jer. Post, Dec. 21, Dec. 29) LABOUR ALLIANCE HELPS SHARON—(Jerusalem) Israel’s Labor Party voted to fill 8 cabinet posts and the vice premiership, which went to Shimon Peres, forming an alliance with PM Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party. The minority government needed this alliance to carry out the Gaza pullout plan. (AP, Dec. 28) ISRAEL FREES 159 PALESTINIANS—(Jerusalem) Keeping its promise to Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who recently released an Israeli convicted of spying in Egypt, Israel released 159 Palestinian prisoners as a good will gesture toward Mahmoud Abbas, the front-runner in the upcoming Palestinian presidential elections. Abbas welcomed the move but insisted that in order to achieve a settlement, Israel must release all 8,000 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom are being held on security-related charges. “We want everyone to be a former prisoner, above all else [Fatah leader] Marwan Barghouti,” he declared. (NYT, Ha’aretz, Dec. 28) ISRAELI GIRLS UNDER HOUSE ARREST—(Jerusalem) A Jerusalem court placed 5 teenaged girls found guilty of attacking a Palestinian family under house arrest for a week. One of the girls was jailed last month for putting up illegal posters for an ultra right-wing faction. (Ha’aretz, Dec. 24) IMMIGRATION FROM NORTH AMERICA ON THE RISE—(Jerusalem) A record 2,800 North Americans will have made aliyah by the end of 2004, the highest number in more than 20 years. A group of 201 olim from Canada and the U.S. is expected to land at Ben-Gurion airport today. A second group of 50 immigrants of Russian origin will also arrive in Israel today. (Ha’aretz, NYP, Dec. 29) PA TO DEPLOY SPECIAL FORCES TO GAZA—(Jerusalem) Faced with an upsurge in lawlessness, the PA will deploy a new special forces unit to quash criminal gangs in the Gaza Strip. However, according to one senior PA security official, the Joint Central Force, composed of agents from different branches of the PA security establishment, will not target Palestinian terrorist groups. “The force’s main task is to enforce law and order and hunt down criminals and murderers,” he claimed. “It will fight against murderers and rapists, not Hamas and Islamic Jihad.” (Jer. Post, Dec. 28) US GIVES $20 MILLION TO INTERIM PA LEADERSHIP—(Jerusalem) Yesterday, the U.S. gave the interim Palestinian leadership $20 million in cash aid to help finance both economic reform and the upcoming presidential elections. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Mideast William J. Burns said the aid reflected “our confidence in the direction of the P.A.’s reform program, and our expectation that reform will continue to be implemented energetically.” The money, the first direct budgetary support from Washington to the PA since the summer of 2003, will be used for “priority projects,” i.e. electricity, water and sewage in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (NYT, Dec. 28) IRAQ REJECTS U.S. TALK OF BOOST FOR SUNNIS—(Baghdad) Iraq’s Electoral Commission dismissed suggestions from Washington that minority Sunni Arabs could get extra seats in parliament after next month’s election to avoid their marginalization. However, even some Shiite politicians fear that an exaggerated Shiite victory could fuel the Sunni-led insurgency. Shiites constitute about 60% of Iraq’s population; Sunnis, 20%. (Reuters, Dec. 26). AL QAEDA TERRORISTS CAUGHT IN IRAQ—(Baghdad) U.S. forces captured two senior members of al Qaeda’s Iraqi branch. Identified as Saleh Arugayan Kahil and Bassim Mohammad Hazeem, the two men led cells in Anbar province for Jordanian master terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Their cells kidnapped and executed 11 Iraqi National Guardsman, carried out car bombings and smuggled foreign terrorists into the country. (NYP, Dec. 26) NAVY SEALS SUE AP—(Washington) Six U.S. SEALs filed a lawsuit against the AP and reporter Seth Hettena because the news organization published photos of them capturing members of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s loyalist forces. AP obscured the insurgents’ faces but not those of the SEALs, who have since received threatening phone calls. (Washington Times, Dec. 29) Volume IV, No. 1,021 • Tuesday, December 28, 2004 THE REAL REASON
KOFI ANNAN MUST GO A debate currently rages about whether Kofi Annan enjoys the moral authority to lead the United Nations because the Oil for Food scandal happened under his command. That debate is 10 years too late and addresses the wrong subject. The salient indictment of Mr. Annan's leadership is lethal cowardice, not corruption; the evidence is genocide, not oil. As the controversy roiled over the past several weeks, I was on a research trip to the two ground-zeros of Mr. Annan's failed leadership while he was head of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations--Rwanda and Bosnia… [T]he last time I was in Rwanda was 10 years ago; I was counting skulls. A young U.N. human-rights officer, I was tasked with collecting evidence for the U.N.'s forthcoming war-crimes tribunal after the successful genocide of Rwanda's Tutsi minority by Hutu militias in 1994. We were looking for the mass graves… We found them… Some 800,000 bodies rotted in the African sun. But it isn't just the stench of death I remember so vividly; the odor of betrayal also hung heavily in the Rwandan air. [M]ost of the U.N.'s armed troops evacuated after the first two weeks of massacres… Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the U.N.'s force commander in Rwanda, sent Mr. Annan a series of desperate faxes including one warning that Hutu militias "could kill up to 1,000" Tutsis "in 20 minutes"… But at the crucial moment, Mr. Annan ordered his general to stand down and to vigorously protect, not genocide victims…but the U.N.'s image of "impartiality." The outline of this story is well known, but its most important detail is not: Tutsis often gathered in compounds (large church complexes, schools and even stadiums) where they had assumed they would be safe based on implicit, and sometimes explicit, promises of protection by Blue Helmeted peacekeepers. The U.N.'s withdrawal was, therefore, not a passive failure to protect but an active, and lethal, perfidy. Rwandans still seethe. Last month I went to a tiny, remote village, deep in the central Rwandan hills to meet Charles Kagenza, a famous Tutsi survivor who hid in the bell tower of a church full of Tutsis that was bulldozed to the ground, burying victims alive. When I told him I worked for the U.N. 10 years ago, just after the war, he looked me straight in the eye, with his one remaining good eye, and shot back, "What are you doing here? You had the capacity to save us but you abandoned us." Some 3,300 miles directly north from Kigali is the town of Srebrenica, a grim, shell-pocked village on the border of Republika Srpska and Serbia. A few kilometers down a decrepit road is a sprawling abandoned battery factory. Ten years ago, thousands of Muslim civilians concentrated here seeking shelter at a U.N. base. But Serb militias separated the men and boys from their women and put them on buses. Armed Blue Helmeted U.N. Peacekeepers…watched passively. The women of Srebrenica never saw their men again. Across the street lies a new cemetery and memorial for the 8,000 fallen men of Srebrenica… One of the women of Srebrenica whom these men left behind entered the graveyard while I was there… She told me her name was Magbula and she lost six of her men here, husband, sons and brothers. The whole family had gathered across the street at the battery factory, assuming the U.N. soldiers there would protect them, she said. Her men were put on a bus at the gate of the factory and she never saw them again. "Do you think the U.N. was at fault?" I asked. Not the soldiers, she said, but the leaders. "If they had done their job, and were responsible, this would not have happened.”… Liberal multilateralists on the left, like me, are often skittish about offering too pungent a critique of Mr. Annan, because it offers aid and comfort to the "enemy" on the conservative unilateralist right. But if anyone's values have been betrayed at the U.N. over the past decade it is those of us who believe most deeply in the organization's ideals. Just ask the men and women of Rwanda and Srebrenica. (Kenneth Cain served in U.N. peacekeeping operations in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti and Liberia.) ANNAN
IS A SYMPTOM OF UN'S SICKNESS... Kofi Annan has had better weeks. On Monday, the UN secretary general woke up to a Wall Street Journal column by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, publisher of the influential InstaPundit website, urging that he be replaced by Vaclav Havel, the much-admired former president of the Czech Republic. In The New York Times, op-ed eminence William Safire reviewed the revelations that link the massive oil-for-food scandal to Annan's own family: Until this year, his son Kojo was getting monthly payments from a firm that had a major oil-for-food contract with the UN--even though he'd left the company in 1998. The corruption enveloping the UN will not begin to dissipate, Safire wrote, until Annan resigns… Meanwhile, the latest National Review was out, with its cover photo of Annan and the headline, in large red letters: "You're Fired!" An editorial inside insisted that "Annan should either resign, if he is honorable, or be removed, if he is not."… On Wednesday came another call for Annan's ouster, this one from the chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has amassed evidence that Saddam Hussein used stolen oil-for-food dollars to underwrite terrorism and suborn at least one senior UN official. It is "abundantly clear" that Kofi Annan should resign, Senator Norm Coleman said. "As long as Mr. Annan remains in charge, the world will never be able to learn the full extent of the bribes, kickbacks, and under-the-table payments that took place under the UN's collective nose." But odds are the world won't much care about getting to the bottom of the latest UN scandal… There was no global uproar when the brutal regime in Libya was chosen to chair the UN's Human Rights Commission. Nothing happened to the UN after its troops allowed Serbs to slaughter 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the "safe haven" of Srebrenica... Annan himself became secretary general despite his failure, when he headed the UN's peacekeeping operations, to pay attention to warnings of genocide in Rwanda. Why should anything be different this time? Oil-for-food may be the greatest international rip-off of modern times…but if history is any guide, the scandal headlines will fade from view long before the secretary general does… Annan is merely a symptom of the UN's sickness… The UN is a corrupt institution, one that long ago squandered whatever moral legitimacy it had. The UN's founding documents venerate justice and human rights, but for the past 40 years, the organization has been dominated by a bloc of states--essentially the Afro-Asian Third World--most of whose governments routinely pervert justice and violate human rights. Inside the United Nations, there is no difference between a dictatorship or a democracy: Each gets exactly one vote in the General Assembly. The reason the UN indulges vicious regimes like those in North Korea, Syria, and Cuba is that they are members in good standing, and most other governments lack the courage to cross them. The UN cannot be fixed unless that changes--and that isn't going to change… The free peoples of the world, and those yearning to breathe free, deserve better… KOFI
ANNAN’S “ANNUS HORRIBILIS” As the year 2004 comes to a close, all discussion at the United Nations is overshadowed by two…events: a corruption scandal bearing possible connections to Kofi Annan, and the release of an international panel’s proposal for drastic reform of the world body. Whether or not U.S. conservatives such as Senator Norm Coleman have sufficient grounds to demand the Secretary-General’s resignation, the average person on any continent recognizes that, even if only 1% of the Oil-for-Food accusations are true, the UN is in dire need of reform. Yet the recommendations of the high level panel not only neglect to consider the plague of UN mismanagement, but they fail to resolve some the most significant problems they set out to fix. At the root of Annan’s self-described “annus horribilis” are allegations that Saddam Hussein, with the help of bribed foreign supporters, skimmed some $20 billion from Iraqi oil revenues that the UN was supposed to direct toward the country’s humanitarian needs. Closer to home, Benon V. Sevan, the man Annan appointed to head the Oil- for-Food program, stands accused of having received millions in oil allocations, while Kojo Annan, the Secretary-General’s son, is alleged to have used his filial connection to secure dubious payments from a Swiss company profiting from the program… And now with the resignation of Iqbal Riza, Annan’s chief of staff…many will wonder if this was in anticipation of damning findings from the Volcker report, and also whether more resignations will follow. Riza, to be sure, may have had other reasons for leaving. Harsh criticism from the UN staff union accused [him] of protecting abusers within the system and targeting the whistleblowers instead… Riza’s reputation will be forever marred by his role, together with Annan, in overseeing the UN’s spectacular failure to prevent the Rwandan genocide. As Dore Gold’s new book reminds us, when Canadian general Romeo Dallaire begged the peacekeeping department for permission to destroy weapons and avert the massacres, Riza ordered Dallaire not to intervene. In an interview with PBS, Riza dismissed the tragedy. “Look, since the 1960s, there have been cycles of violence--Tutsis against Hutus, Hutus against Tutsis. I’m sorry to put it so cynically.”… Which brings us to the new 95-page report of the high level panel… The report offers several surprisingly useful recommendations. Most notably, it urges the UN to finally adopt a definition of terrorism… To be sure, there is the predictable nod to “root causes” such as poverty--never mind that the world’s terror masterminds, from Osama bin Laden to…Yasser Arafat, were hardly dissuaded by their billions. On the whole, though, the section on terror is strong. It certainly puts the lie to the Arab League’s repeated justification…that violence against Israeli civilians can never constitute terrorism. “Nothing in the fact of occupation,” says the report, “justifies the targeting and killing of civilians.” But the report’s treatment of other major issues demonstrates a failure to confront the true problems of the UN. The report envisions an expanded, geographically representative Security Council that would grant the UN greater legitimacy… The true legitimacy deficit lies in the reality that the UN’s premier human right bodies this year were unable to condemn the world’s worst human rights crime--Sudan’s killings in Darfur; and, a corollary, that repressive regimes, never elected to represent anyone, continue to dominate UN proceedings. [U]niversalizing membership would rob the human rights lobby of one of its sole powers: embarrassing the worst violators. Every time a Sudan, Libya or Syria obscenely wins election to the Commission, the moral outcry from around the world sheds a vital spotlight on their shameful records… On the contrary, we should consider how membership might be further limited, to exclude states that fail to meet basic human rights commitments. Will Kofi Annan’s legacy be a disgraced exit prompted by evidence of corruption, or will he go down in history as the UN’s great reformer? The next year will decide. CONDEMNING
HATRED Occasionally it's educational to watch the United Nations embarrass itself. Since Jan. 27 marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps, Rep. Tom Lantos, himself a Holocaust survivor, thought it would be a good time for the world's foremost deliberative body, one which arose amid the ashes of World War II, to hold a special session of the U.N. General Assembly to commemorate the victims. But this is, after all, the United Nations, where not all 191 member nations see the Holocaust in such morally unambiguous terms. Upon hearing of objections by Arab member nations, Mr. Lantos rightly lashed out. "I am appalled by what I understand is the opposition of some countries to this session, which reflects a degree of historical and mindless venom which is difficult to justify in the international arena," Mr. Lantos said earlier this week. The California Democrat is being too diplomatic. Unfortunate as it is, the "international arena" is full of anti-Semitic despots, whose views on Hitler's "final solution" are anything but condemnatory… A few days after American troops liberated the major death camp at Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower spoke to those members of Congress and the press who had viewed the horrors. He told them: "You saw only one camp yesterday. There are many others. Your responsibilities, I believe, extend into a great field, and informing the people at home of things like these atrocities is one of them... I want you to see for yourself and be spokesmen for the United States." Sixty years after the furnaces of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Treblinka and Dachau were extinguished, anti-Semitism is back on the rise, and not just among Arabs. The world should be reminded just how far certain hatred can go if not stopped dead in its tracks. Volume IV, No. 1,020 • Friday, December 24, 2004 TO ZION There is something bilious, even meandering about the image of American Zionists; their counterparts elsewhere--in Europe before the Second World War, or in Palestine--are typically depicted as sinewy types who are argumentative, intriguingly obsessive and focused on concrete, intent tasks such as agrarian preparation or immigration. American Zionism enters into the larger saga of the movement's history in altogether different ways. Interestingly, the first novel written in the United States describing the lives of Jewish agrarian pioneers in Palestine is Meyer's Levin's 1931 Yehuda, which tells of a St. Louis insurance salesman who arrives at a kibbutz an obnoxious American and, once there, happily deflates. There he is recast into a commendable, sinewy pioneer. The story of American Zionism is an American story and, not surprisingly, above all one of fundraising, but also of communal identity and power bases, some urgent existential grappling and, inevitably, the practical, day-to-day, mostly inarticulate wages of universalism and particularism. It is a narrative informed by one of the most perplexing dilemmas in modern Jewish life: the interplay between the quintessence of liberal utopia and the intermittent, mostly distant, sometimes intent pull of Zion. Over the last century, Zionism offered a quite different prospect for American Jews with regard to immigration and acculturation, and a fundamentally different scenario regarding their relationship to their own nationality and that of others. Zionism, as a result, has served as a lightning rod for so many of the most critical chasms in American Jewish life--religious, communal, cultural and, of course, political. The relationship between American Zionism and Zion was, of course, reciprocal. The American Zionist movement provided Palestine, later Israel, with funds from what would soon be the world's wealthiest Jewish community and, from the outset, with diplomatic contacts in a centrally important, eventually pre-eminent political hub. Zionism would, in turn, recast the mind-set of much of American Jewry and just as the community gained new confidence in the 1960s, and later--in short, as it achieved a firm grounding in a society that Jews now knew no longer held them at arm's length. American Zionism started as a remote outpost of European Jewish politics, and was vitalized only in the wake of the First World War and the 1917 Balfour Declaration. It first captured public prominence in the United States when Louis Brandeis--appointed in 1916 to the Supreme Court--took over its leadership. America's role in lubricating a financially strained, post-Balfour movement wasn't lost on the indefatigable Chaim Weizmann, later Israel's first president, who traveled to America in the 1920s sometimes annually, crisscrossing from New York to San Francisco and garnering much cash for a struggling Palestine. Larger-than-life grandees like Brandeis and Weizmann loomed so big, in fact, in the 1920s, or so, that the history of American Zionism in these years is often told as one of competing, incompatible giants--a tale of Brandeis versus Weizmann or, somewhat later, Stephen S. Wise versus Abba Hillel Silver. Inadequate as such a scheme is, it is clear that the movement then was able to satisfy outsized palates. Nonetheless as an organizational presence, American Zionism skidded along precariously in the early 1930s under the direction of lively, but relatively obscure, intellectual leaders (Louis Lipsky, above all) after Brandeis's departure from the scene, and the onset of the Depression. Its constituency came, then, mostly from small businessmen, harmed but not, on the whole, devastated by the Depression with, perhaps, its most creative work before the Second World War in the hands of the splendid leadership of Hadassah. On the left, Zionism fought the class-based, internationalist politics of Jewish socialists and communists (although it blended a soft, agrarian socialism into its mainstream teachings); on the right, so to speak, it battled with the established, integrationist American Jewish leaders who, in truth, soon came to champion many of Zionism's rescue activities in an increasingly perilous Europe even if they didn't quite embrace at first the prospect of a sovereign Jewish state. The Revisionist followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky remained--until the victory of the Likud Party in 1977, and still later--relatively weak, and far beyond the mainstream. With American pre-eminence after World War II, the country's Zionist movement--and still more important, other Jewish communal organizations now under the ideology's sway, including the once-recalcitrant, integrationist American Jewish Committee--became a prime diplomatic as well as philanthropic asset. Zionism's youth movements and summer camps remained vibrant into the 1970s. After the 1967 war, American Jews' mostly nonideological Zionism surfaced and meshed with new, self-confident assumptions of belonging in an increasingly ethnic, culturally diverse America, where it soon would figure, more or less, as a credible part of the larger cultural geography. What had once been substantial Zionist organizations with leaders of influence, journals of quality (Jewish Frontier and Midstream were at the height, for example, of superb publications) and position papers of note became, in effect, a cast of mind shorn of institutional mooring, a shifting set of impressions and affections regarding the connection between Israel and the rhythm of one's Jewish communal, cultural and ritual life. And while until the 1967 war, Israel's greatest impact was experienced in Labor Zionist circles--in line with the hegemony of David Ben-Gurion and his successors in Israel--the keenest impact was now felt increasingly in religious circles where an enthusiasm for Israel, unencumbered by the political quandaries of liberals or others, has remained stalwart under the leadership of Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon. As communally pervasive as Zionism became in Jewish life in the United States, already by the late 1930s and early 1940s, its intellectual vitality never came close to matching its organizational and fund raising achievements. Zionism in America produced, to be sure, interesting, prolific intellectuals (Horace Kallen, Hayim Greenberg, Marie Syrkin, Maurice Samuel and Ben Halpern). But it attracted surprisingly sparse literary talent in the English language: When a once-leading literary figure, like Ludwig Lewisohn, embraced it he tended to shrink, not grow, in talent or creativity or stature. (The "New York Intellectuals" of Partisan Review and the liberal Commentary of the 1950s and early 1960s remained cool to it, at best.) It was never able to inspire, as it had hoped to do, the widespread study of Hebrew; it couldn't sustain its once splendid Yiddish-language newspapers. It would be difficult to name a single, truly distinguished writer (except for, say, Charles Reznikoff) whose fiction or poetry was intently, sympathetically engaged by it. The best-known novel, without doubt, written in the United States extolling its goals was Leon Uris's Exodus, published in 1958, whose author, according to the critic Irving Howe, wasn't a writer but a typist. Of course, the primary goal of Zionism--the creation of a Jewish State--had been achieved. The essential soundness of its vision was embraced across the spectrum of American Jewish life, except for the most radical, now-discredited voices at the political or religious periphery. "We are one," was soon the slogan--no doubt, bland, triumphant, but by no means entirely incorrect at the time--of an American Jewish community sharing what was widely proclaimed to be a post-ideological, overridingly pro-Israel stance. This masked real, ongoing differences regarding Israeli domestic and foreign policies, and it obscured how Zionism had long served at least some of American Jewry's best minds as an especially valuable prism through which to envision an edgier, fuller, more complex Jewry. Mordecai Kaplan had built a singular preoccupation with Israel into the heart of his Reconstructionist theology, where cosmology was displaced by a liberal, progressive Jewish nationalism and where an ongoing, bracing love of Zion was made into a central ritual of contemporary Jewish observance. In recent years, the quintessential maverick of American Judaism of the second half of the 20th century--the brilliant, iconoclastic Arthur Hertzberg--constructed much of his colorful, intellectually explosive life around an ongoing, often truly creative and sardonically loving debate with Israel. In his view, as restated recently in a new book, The Fate of Zionism, the fundamental dilemma of contemporary Jewish life is contained, above all, in the potentially debilitating prospect of immoderate, unwieldy Jewish power and its abuse in the State of Israel and, at the same time, the immeasurably more horrible prospect of Jewish powerlessness and its irreparable, disastrous consequences. The State of Israel has in American public and intellectual life enjoyed, on the whole, widespread support until very recently. (Recall the sincere, truly deep outpouring of grief in the wake of the Rabin assassination merely a decade ago.) Liberal opinion in the United States and Europe in the past had lauded Israel--sometimes rather ridiculously--as a beacon of economic, even feminist egalitarianism. This has shifted drastically and with a sudden breathlessness, an astonishing speed at least in some academic and literary circles. Now, in influential and otherwise astute spheres in American life, Israel is depicted increasingly as a spot comparable to South Africa in its bleakest days--a place of uncommon, unchecked oppression. Israel's history, we're now told, is one of overriding, singular deceit. As a state, it has been sustained in uncommon hubris and hypocrisy, and it has been propped up for far too long by the world's guilt over the Holocaust. Such arguments were, until a few years ago, at the margins of intellectual discourse in the United States and even in Europe. They're now increasingly influential and, if not normative, they've started to capture center-stage in the West in discussions of Israel and its future. Their mounting importance in American intellectual life should not be dismissed. A discernable and, arguably, significant shift has occurred only very recently. It now is argued that the present configuration of the West Bank, with its Jewish settlements carved into the Palestinian heartland, makes the creation of a Palestinian state inconceivable. Instead, there now must be a one single state that would learn to govern not with mere benevolence but with liberality, with a postmodernist commitment to diversity. Freed from corrupt leaders and narrow, nationalist passions, Arabs and Jews will govern themselves equitably and can replicate in the Middle East, as one distinguished intellectual recently has proposed in The New York Review of Books, the vivid ethnic patchworks like that of present-day London, places of verve, where postmodernism is not relegated to literary textbooks but played out on city streets--blessed places where Zadie Smith, not Duddy Kravitz, roams unchained and free. The current situation is, to be sure, dreadful. The prospect of solidifying two, credible states, Jewish and Palestinian, side by side--the scenario acknowledged in most Israeli polls (and, it seems, in most assessments of Palestinian attitudes, too) as the one accepted as optimum by the majority of the population--is increasingly elusive but by no means, according to most experts, impossible. The current situation does have the grimy, dreadful feel of near-intractability, it hurts both peoples immensely, it is born out of a mutually self-destructive stalemate with authority left in the hands of leaders grossly inadequate and almost certainly incapable of glimpsing beyond the next day's tactical crisis--except, that is, in their apparent fixation on the status quo. Little, it would seem, could be worse. Yet unspeakably worse would be the scenario sketched above and described by some as part and parcel of a "global consensus" with regard to Israel and Palestine. The plan calls for the dismantling of a sovereign state--of, at best, the population transfer of millions--and it is, in effect, one more in a long series of calls (perhaps the silliest yet) for Jewish self-immolation in the face of the once-uncertain, now flatly discredited boons of universalism. This moment in intellectual and political history resembles, it seems to me, the Marxist fixations of post-World War II France as depicted with such acuity and savage delight in Tony Judt's 1992 book, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956. The intellectuals analyzed by Judt (of whom the best known was Sartre) knew of the dreadful atrocities in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the East but, in their desire to espouse clear-cut political solutions and reject the dominance of the United States they rendered them less dreadful, less politically pertinent, less immoral than they were. Reality was diced and sliced, it was shorn of inconvenient data rendered partisan and biased, made simple by superb, even stellar minds eager for the comfort, the peace and unanimity of political solutions--for the prospect of clear political blueprints, for the sight of young men and women celebrating them, adoring them as emblems of new, progressive, self-avowedly hopeful solutions. Judt's hero in the book is Camus, with his keen appreciation of nuance and his horror, on the whole, in the face of rarefied, simplified political plans. Yet Tony Judt is the author of The New York Review of Books piece mentioned previously. (He has been, as it happens, a close friend of mine for some 25 years; the dispute I describe is a familial one, an intimately fierce Jewish affair.) Weizmann once related a telling anecdote about his unease with flattened assessments of the Land of Israel that he knew all too well as a place of confounding complexity. He describes his first meeting, in 1923, with the wealthy Felix Warburg, who was initially full of ferocious criticisms of Palestine; after hearing him out for an hour and a half without interruption, Weizmann proposed that Warburg visit the place before reaching conclusions. Warburg, as Weizmann relates, did just this: He toured the land and returned full of lavish, uncritical praise for Palestine's achievements. The conversion, recalls Weizmann, "left me cold." Neither version, he insisted to Warburg, was accurate. "We have our difficulties; sometimes the progress is very slow, sometimes it picks up a little speed; but ours is a living organism, afflicted with all the diseases and complications that commonly beset living organisms." Jewish history has been long, often brutish, and rarely ever simple. Zionism created a state for Jews, a place sometimes bad and sometimes good--a beleaguered place that is both now very strong and, in some respects, perilously weak; a place liberal and illiberal, a place of freedom and repression, a place whose nationalism sought serious, intent liberation, and where it also wreaked havoc on the lives of non-Jews. It is a place of imperfection and also much beauty, a place with dreams splendid and hideous, a place created by a people declared placeless by much of the world, and also wholly disposable just a few short years before its creation. It seems self-evident that whatever the solution might be to the conflict between Jews and Arabs, the question as to whether this place--now half-a-century old--is indeed a Jewish place must finally be set aside. It must be discarded like the empty plaint of someone who refuses to let you live your life. (Steven J. Zipperstein is Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History and co-director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Stanford University. He is the author of several award-winning books, including Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha'am and the Origins of Zionism.) Due to Monday’s statutory holiday, you will receive the next briefing on Tuesday, December 28. Shabbat Shalom to all our readers! Volume IV, No. 1,019 • Thursday, December 23, 2004 MAKE NO MISTAKE It was a series of unfortunate events. How did we get to this sudden moment of cautious optimism in the Middle East? How did we get to this moment when Egypt is signing free trade agreements with Israel, when Hosni Mubarak is touring Arab nations and urging them to open relations with the Jewish state? How did we get to this moment of democratic opportunity in the Palestinian territories, with three major elections taking place in the next several months, and with the leading candidate in the presidential election declaring that violence is counterproductive? How did we get to this moment of odd unity in Israel, with Labor joining Likud to push a withdrawal from Gaza and some northern territories? How did we get to this moment when Ariel Sharon has record approval ratings, when it is common to run across Israelis who once reviled Sharon as a bully but who now find themselves supporting him as an agent of peace? It was a series of unfortunate events. It was unfortunate that Ariel Sharon, whom tout le monde demonized as a warmonger, was elected prime minister of Israel. After all, as Henry Siegman of the Council on Foreign Relations reasoned in The New York Review of Books, "The war Sharon is waging is not aimed at the defeat of Palestinian terrorism but at the defeat of the Palestinian people and their aspirations for national self-determination." It was unfortunate that George W. Bush was elected and then re-elected as president of the United States. After all, here is a man who staffed his administration with what Juan Cole of the University of Michigan called "pro-Likud intellectuals" who went off "fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv." Under Bush, the diplomats agreed, the U.S. had inflamed the Arab world and had forfeited its role as an honest broker. It was unfortunate that Bush gave that speech on June 24, 2002, dismissing Yasir Arafat as a man who would never make peace. After all, the Europeans protested, while Arafat might be flawed, he was the embodiment of the Palestinian cause. It was a mistake to build the security fence, which the International Court of Justice called a violation of international law. Never mind that the fence cut terror attacks by 90 percent. It was the moral equivalent of apartheid, the U.N. orators declared. It was a mistake to assassinate the leaders of Hamas, which took credit for the murders of hundreds of Israelis. France, among many other nations, condemned these attacks and foretold catastrophic consequences. It was unfortunate that President Bush never sent a special envoy to open talks, discuss modalities and fine-tune the road map. As Milton Viorst wrote in The Washington Quarterly, this left "slim prospects" for any progress toward peace. It was unfortunate that Bush sided openly with Sharon during their April meetings in Washington, causing the European Union to condemn U.S. policy. It was unfortunate that Bush kept pushing his democracy agenda. After all, as some Israelis said, it is naïve to export democracy to Arab soil. Yes, these were a series of unfortunate events. And yet here we are in this hopeful moment. It almost makes you think that all those bemoaners and condemners don't know what they are talking about. Nothing they have said over the past three years accounts for what is happening now. It almost makes you think that Bush understands the situation better than the lot of them. His judgments now look correct. Bush deduced that Sharon could grasp the demographic reality and lead Israel toward a two-state solution; that Arafat would never make peace, but was a retardant to peace; that Israel has a right to fight terrorism; and that Sharon would never feel safe enough to take risks unless the U.S. supported him when he fought back. Bush concluded that peace would never come as long as Palestine was an undemocratic tyranny, and that the Palestinians needed to see their intifada would never bring triumph. We are a long way from peace. But as Robert Satloff observes in The Weekly Standard, Israel's coming disengagements "will constitute a huge leap--both in psychology and in strategy--rivaling the original Oslo accords in historic importance." And the U.S. is already raising millions to help build a decent Palestinian polity. We owe this cautiously hopeful moment to a series of unfortunate events--and to a president who disregarded the received wisdom. WAVE
OF THE FUTURE I now admit to having expected the war in Iraq to be won in a matter of months, not years. Saddam's plan to disperse his forces and conduct a murderous insurgency, abetted by his terrorist allies, was a surprise. This by no means suggests that President Bush's decision to overthrow a dangerous despotism was a mistake. On the contrary, it was and is the right war (against a genocidal maniac who was gaining strength) in the right place (the Middle East cradle of terror) for the right purpose (to get the Arab street out of the rut of hatred and onto a path to freedom). In return for today's grudging concession of tactical misjudgment, however, I claim this expectation: When and if we discover hidden supplies of germ weapons in Iraq or Syria, and as future confessions reveal the extent of connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam, the legion of war critics will forthrightly admit their certitude was misplaced. But more to today's point is our difference of opinion about strategy: I stand with those who believe this war was right and that its sacrifices will be justified by lives saved and tyranny diminished. I disagree with those who opposed the pre-emptive fight from the start or who have lost heart when it dragged on too long and are casting about for scapegoats. Here are criteria to measure success or failure in the battle for democracy in the region and the struggles for freedom around the world: First, will Iraq stay whole and its people free? The present answer is: We'll see. The only debate in the U.S. now seems to be about whether to raise the number of our troops there to help finish the job; only a small minority is calling for a pullout. We are committed, as we should be, to success; so are the Iraqi Kurds; we'll see how eager the Shiite majority is to end its long Sunni Baathist subjugation. Next, has America's huge military engagement in the Middle East helped produce progress toward democracy in Muslim countries where monarchs and dictators now rule? Signs are that the answer is yes. At a conference last week in Dubai, Gulf states spoke openly of economic reform and a campaign against corruption, which must have worried oppressive theocrats in Iran. Egypt, Jordan and Morocco are beginning to see glimmers of liberty's light, which embarrasses reactionary Saudis and terrorist Syrians. The groundswell is felt in Asia, where populous Indonesia and Malaysia are showing how Islamic nations can prosper by combating medieval fundamentalism. On top of that, America's decision to stay the course after its overthrow of Saddam--a financial backer of suicide bombers and hero of Palestinian jihadists--has helped revivify the prospect of peace in the Holy Land after the death of Arafat. Our military activism emboldened Israel to risk withdrawal from Gaza, and should encourage Palestinians to elect a rational state maker next month. A final criterion: Is our confidence in the desire of 20 million literate Iraqis to live in relative liberty being reflected in the recent run of elections in the world? Australians voted to remain our stalwart ally in Iraq. Afghanistan's voters took their lives in their hands to blaze their trail to a democratic government. Americans voted decisively to endorse our hopes rather than our fears in Iraq. Ukrainian voters refused to let a corrupt regime backed by the power of Russia's Putin deny them their democratic rights; they will most likely assert their independence this weekend. That will mark four straight victories for those we Wilsonian idealists consider the good guys, with two to go next month in Palestine and in Iraq. One election may be sensibly peaceful and the other bloodily courageous, but our Iraqi commitment has strengthened the trend. In 1940, Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote a provocative apologia for fascism titled "The Wave of the Future." President Franklin Roosevelt answered those who believed "that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future--and that freedom is an ebbing tide. But we Americans know that this is not true." Less true now than ever. Once again, America and its allies ensure that freedom is the wave of the future. Volume IV, No. 1,018 • Wednesday, December 22, 2004 WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP WEEKLY QUOTES “We are discouraged. Abu Mazen’s…first declaration was divided into two parts. The first part was that he will preserve Arafat’s legacy. For us that legacy is terrorism… The second part was that they would never give up on the right of return. That is unacceptable. These types of pronouncements are not encouraging, because they create illusions.”—Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, commenting on recent statements made by current Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas. (Jerusalem Post, Dec. 21) “No words of homage are sufficient to commemorate his memory. We will continue the struggle to make your dream and our dream come true and to have a Palestinian child raise the Palestinian flag on the walls of Jerusalem, the capital of our independent Palestinian state.”-- Mahmoud Abbas, who is expected to win the January 9 Palestinian presidential election, praising Yasser Arafat’s legacy at the end of Arafat's 40-day mourning period. (New York Times, Dec. 22) “Calls by some Palestinian persons to stop the armed uprising are totally rejected… These statements are not binding on us. The blessed intifada will continue both on its military and popular lines. No one, however senior, or at whatever level—Palestinian, Arab or international—will be able to stop it.”—Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in a joint video-statement, rejecting Palestinian leader Abu Mazen’s earlier calls to cease violence against Israel. (National Post, Dec. 17) “The plan to wear orange stars perverts the historical facts and damages the memory of the Shoah.”--Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, horrified by the plan by some Jewish residents in Gaza to wear orange stars on their shirts in order to compare Israel’s Disengagement Plan with Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, Attorney General Menahem Mazuz will determine whether statements made by Binyamin Regional Council head Pinchas Wallerstein, calling for civil disobedience against the Gaza pullout, violates Israeli law. (Jer. Post, Dec. 19) “Since Prime Minister Sharon has submitted this [Disengagement] proposal, he has completely abused the rule of law of this country… In an attempt to satisfy the demands of Shimon Peres to become a second Deputy Prime Minister, the Prime Minister agreed to amend the Basic Law of the State of Israel, so that this new position could be established. Need I remind you that the originator of one of the greatest tragedies to befall the State of Israel since its inception—the Oslo Accords—is the very same Shimon Peres! He should be held personally responsible for the death of thousands of innocent Israeli men women and children, and the injury of tens of thousands of other Israelis.”—Alfred Noodelman, resident of Rehovot, Israel, in a letter to the Likud members of the Knesset. (Dec. 21) “Here is the answer to your assassinations. Here is where the terrorist Ariel Sharon is leading you. If your crimes continue in the Middle East, our attacks will continue. We are not targeting Quebec; we are targeting you: Israelis and Zionists. Next time we will strike harder.”—Excerpts from the letter left at scene of last April’s firebombing of Montreal’s United Talmud Torahs Elementary school library. Sleiman Elmerhebi, 19, has pled guilty to the crime. Jeffrey Boro, Quebec president of the Canadian Jewish Congress asserted that “the contents of the note are very telling. It denotes hatred toward the community. He chose a very vulnerable place, and he chose an act that would bring shock to the community.” (National Post, Dec. 17) “No doubt that this has been a particularly difficult year, and I am relieved that this annus horribilis is coming to an end.”—UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, on the effects of allegations of fraud regarding the UN oil-for-food program. “These are serious allegations, we take them seriously, and this is why we are doing everything we can in getting to the bottom of this.” (NYT, Dec. 22) “These events ought to put to rest the canard that what we are facing in Iraq is some kind of ‘nationalist’ uprising opposed to U.S. occupation. The genuine Iraqi patriots are those risking their lives to rebuild their country and prepare for elections. They are being threatened, and murdered, by members and allies of the old regime who want to restore Sunni Baathist political domination. Or to put it more bluntly, we haven't yet defeated Saddam Hussein's regime… Most Iraqis really do want to build a free country. But they are opposed by an entrenched, ruthless Baathist network that is akin to the Mafia. These elements can't be bargained with, or lured into elections. They have to be killed. Imagine if the Nazi SS still had sanctuaries in Germany in 1947; no one would be thinking it had to be given a place in a future Adenauer government.”—Editorial, Wall Street Journal (WSJ, Dec. 21) “The alleged ‘Holocaust’ is the sword and the shield of the Jewish tyranny all over the world. Destroy it.”—Robert Faurisson, former lecturer at Lyon University in France, in an interview with Iran’s Mehr News Agency about France’s decision to ban Al-Manar, the Hezbollah-run television network. (MEMRI, Dec. 20)
“Helping democratization processes and building national justice systems that have their own peace dividends at the end of the road could be Canada’s modest contribution to Middle East peacemaking.”—Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, on a week-long tour of the Middle East, pushing for an “International Justice System.” (Globe and Mail, Jer. Post Dec. 22) “An Orthodox Jewish friend attended this year's Hanukah party at the White House. My friend appreciated President Bush's gesture to his community and was surprised and pleased when the military band struck up the old Hanukah song ‘Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.’ You wonder if the talk-show hosts and conservative direct-mail guys will now attack the president for being ‘politically correct.’”—E.J. Dionne (Washington Post, Dec. 21) SHORT TAKES DEADLY ATTACKS CONTINUE IN IRAQ—(Baghdad) On the heels of the second deadliest day in the last six months, insurgents in Mosul launched a rocket attack on a U.S. military base, killing 24 and wounding 57 civilians and soldiers. On Sunday, car bombers struck crowds in Najaf and Karbala, killing at least 61 people and wounding 120 others. Haidar al-Ubadi, an official in the Dawa party, blamed Sunni insurgents of the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect. Iraqi election officials were also singled out in the attacks, raising fears about security for the upcoming election. (NYT, Nat’l Post, Dec. 20, 22; CNN, Dec. 21) FRENCH HOSTAGES IN IRAQ RELEASED—(Paris) French journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot were freed after a 4-month hostage ordeal in Iraq. Malbrunot said that he and his colleague played the “French journalist card,” hoping that their anti-American “credentials” would appease their captors. However, as the Liberation reported, France’s “traditional Arab policy and non-alignment in the Bush crusade in Iraq did not protect it against the worst or impose (France's view) on the international scene.” (NYT, Dec. 22) NEW POLL: 56% SAY IRAQ WAR WAS A MISTAKE—(Washington) According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, a majority of Americans now believe that the U.S.-led war in Iraq was a mistake. While a slight majority believe the Iraq war contributed to the long-term security of the US, 70% of Americans think these gains have come at an “unacceptable” cost in military casualties. However, 58% of those surveyed, support keeping military forces in Iraq until “civil order is restored,” even in the face of continued U.S. causalities. (Washington Post, Dec. 21) MISSILES FIRED AT SYNAGOGUE, KINDERGARTEN—(Jerusalem) Palestinian terrorists fired mortar shells at Jewish settlements in Gush Katif, hitting a synagogue and narrowly missing a kindergarten. There were no casualties in the attack, but some buildings suffered extensive damage. (Jer. Post, Dec. 21) ISRAEL TO RELEASE PALESTINIAN PRISONERS—(Jerusalem) Israel will release 170 Palestinian prisoners as a show of good will in lead up to the January 9th Palestinian elections. The prisoners are to be released in the next week, including about 120 members of Al Fatah. This could help the standing of Mahmoud Abbas even though Palestinian officials dismissed the move as a hollow gesture. (NYT, Dec. 20) ISRAEL AND JORDAN TO SIGN TRADE AGREEMENT—(Jerusalem) Tomorrow, Israel and Jordan will sign an upgraded trade agreement aimed at reducing customs duties on bilateral Israeli-Jordanian trade. Customs duties on Israeli exports to Jordan will be cut by a third, while duties on Jordanian exports to Israel will be reduced by 50%. Both countries will continue to lower customs duties until they are eliminated in 2010. (Jer. Post, Dec. 21) ISRAEL SENDS AID TO SUDAN—(Jerusalem) Israel has joined with several U.S. Jewish groups in sending $20,000 of $100,000 to Sudan to help alleviate the humanitarian crisis. Sudanese refugees and human rights groups say government sponsored Arab militias have killed tens of thousands of black Muslims in Darfur in a campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Jewish groups collectively have sent more than $1 million in aid to Sudan since the violence in Darfur escalated and a native of Darfur, Muhammad Yahya, stated Israelis are no longer enemies. (Jer. Post, Dec. 16) IRAN CONTINUES URANIUM ENRICHMENT PLANS—(London) Despite renewed assurances that Iran has suspended all declared enrichment activity, Iranian atomic energy chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh authorized construction of a plant to make a gas (AHF) which could be used for exactly that. The building of a such a plant would not violate Iran’s agreement because the gas is not listed as a controlled nuclear technology, but one Western diplomat warned that Iran is pushing the envelope in every way it can because the gas can be used for producing atom bombs. (Telegraph-UK, Dec. 19) ANTISEMITIC TV SERIES TO BE AIRED—(Jerusalem) Iranian TV will air The Diaspora, a Syrian produced TV series which covers the period of the Zionist movement. It is primarily a depiction of the classic antisemitic libel that attributes to Jews the desire for world domination. The series revolves around the alleged “Secret Jewish World Government” and claims they control world leaders to direct all of history. (Palestinian Media Watch., Dec. 14) TEN ISLAMISTS CONVICTED—(Paris) Ten Islamic terrorists received one to ten years in prison for plotting to bomb a popular Christmas market in Strasbourg on New Year’s Eve 2000. The ringleaders, Slimane Khalfaoui and Mohamed Bensakhria, received the maximum sentence. The conspirators had undergone training in Afghanistan and been in contact with Abou Zoubeida, a right-hand man of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Police seized chemicals, detonators and a surveillance video of the proposed site for the attack. (Reuters, Dec. 16; NYT, Dec. 17) HUNGARIAN HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS SETTLE LAWSUIT—(Miami) The U.S. government has agreed to settle a lawsuit with Hungarian Holocaust survivors over the $200-million worth of art and household goods stolen by the Nazis and then confiscated by the US. Government documents cite that the property was used by U.S. military officers and sold. The settlement still has to be worked out in detail. (Globe and Mail, Dec. 21) WIESEL HANDS BACK STAR OF ROMANIA—(Jerusalem) Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel returned the award he received in 2002 after learning that Romania’s president, Ion Iliescu, awarded the same honor to Corneliu Vadim Tudor and Gheorghe Buzatu, known antisemites and Holocaust deniers. (Jer. Post, Dec. 16) CANADA TO LEAD MISSION FOR IRAQ ELECTIONS—(Ottawa) Canada hosted an international conference to discuss preparations for the January elections in Iraq. The six-nation team, headed by Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley, will ensure that the elections are conducted fairly, freely and safely. The team will also evaluate the future referendum on Iraq’s yet-to-be written constitution. Canada will contribute another $20 million for the elections and the team will link up with the 5,000 to 10,000 Iraqis acting as observers for the election. (Gazette, Dec. 19; Globe and Mail, Dec. 21) Volume IV, No. 1,017 • Tuesday, December 21, 2004 WARNING: DON’T
COUNT ON SAUDI ARABIA Earlier this month, al-Qaeda carried out a deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Jeddah. Such attacks warrant the serious attention of governments and citizens in every industrialized nation. The preoccupation with record-high gasoline prices pales in comparison to the ominous possibility of instability within the Saudi kingdom. The Saudi relationship with the West is predicated on the stability of the Saudis' regime and the output of their oil fields, both of which are now questionable. As a result, Western policy-makers must consider their options, including military intervention, should a worst-case scenario unfold. Consuming nations assume that the oil supply will be sufficient to meet their requirements at acceptable price levels. Saudi Arabia, with the largest output and the greatest flexibility, plays the role of swing producer. Therefore, any adverse development involving Saudi Arabia affects the international oil market and all countries that participate in the world economy. Three major considerations fuel concern about the regime's stability. King Fahd is ailing and is not running the country. The nominal ruler, Crown Prince Abdallah, like the senior members of the country's gerontocracy, is over 80. Key leaders, including Interior Minister Prince Nayef, are over 70. There are rivalries and divisions among the royals about the future of a kingdom that is based on Wahhabism, a puritanical interpretation of Islam. The outcome of a struggle over succession will determine the country's direction, and succession will be neither smooth nor democratic. Internal terrorism is a highly destabilizing force. Osama bin Laden's stated objective is to topple the current regime, which he despises. Should the actions of Islamic radicals challenging the authority of the ruling family gain popular support, the regime would be in peril… Assumptions about the kingdom's oil reserves have recently been questioned. The Saudis are renowned for their reserves, generally estimated to be from 260 billion barrels to as much as 400 billion. The perception of vast proven reserves fosters belief in the country's ability to ramp up production to substantially higher levels than today's nine million barrels a day to meet increased world demand. But Houston-based oil analyst Matthew Simmons recently concluded that the reserves are only 108 billion barrels and that production could decline substantially and dramatically in the future. When questions of productive capacity are coupled with the succession issue, there is a pressing need to plan for contingencies… Policy-makers have to be prepared for reduced or even interrupted Saudi oil production. Rationally, any group controlling Saudi Arabia would want to sell its oil on the market; but internal fighting could damage the oil-field infrastructure or a radical group could gain power and withhold oil to punish industrialized nations… Military action to prevent world economic decline or a strategic threat has to be considered. After the Iraq experience, the U.S. would not likely favour unilateral military intervention in another Arab country. But a sufficiently grave situation might leave little choice. Also, before the Iraq war, there were sharp policy divergences between the U.S. and the continental Europeans, who perceived that it was not in their interests to go to war. But if faced with the prospect of the economic calamity threatened by a suspension of Saudi oil production, Europe's interests would converge with those of the United States, paving the way for multilateral action… There may be non-military options. Ali Alyami, founder of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, believes there is a middle and professional class capable of operating the oil industry and providing democratic rule to a country that has known only the autocracy of the dysfunctional House of Saud, protected by the U.S., for seven decades. Transition to democracy would require considerable external pressure and would generate intense resistance from a few thousand princes who have prospered from the country's enormous oil wealth. And while there are many policy options available to consuming nations to reduce their petroleum dependency, they are neither popular nor amenable to the quick fix. The failure to reduce that dependency despite ample lip service of an intention to do so following the Arab oil boycott of the 1970s may soon revisit oil-consuming nations with a vengeance. Saudi Arabia is no longer a bastion of stability and dependability in the Middle East or the world oil market. The warning signs are out, and we ignore them at our peril. (Harold Waller, a professor of political science at McGill University, is a member of CIJR’s Academic Council. Howard Gerson practises law in Toronto.) REFORMING
RIYADH As President Bush prepares to begin his second term, he has an opportunity to turn a page in U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia. In crafting his policy, the president should draw on American experience with another ideologically expansionist dictatorship, one successfully countered and transformed thanks in part to U.S. policy--the Soviet Union. The president may be aided in this by his former Sovietologist Secretary of State-designate, Condoleezza Rice. There are many telling parallels between the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia. First, the Soviet Union led, and Saudi Arabia now leads, an ideological movement with global reach. Saudi Arabia similarly asserts leadership over all of Sunni Islam, the majority form of the religion. Second, both are weakened by hypocrisy. Both Soviet and Saudi ideological claims amount to pretense at odds with social reality. While Soviet communism pledged that the revolution would achieve prosperity, freedom, global prestige and even the human colonization of space, it delivered none of these. Shortages and deprivation characterized Russian daily life until the end of the Soviet system… Saudi Arabia faces the same dilemma. It claims to uphold and exemplify the harsh, purified, stripped down form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, which is the state religion. Wahhabis are forbidden to mix with other Muslims, and are indoctrinated to hate Shia Muslims as apostates, to angrily despise Christians, Jews, and Hindus, to eschew the pleasures of normal life… In the phrase so often heard among Wahhabi terrorists from Gaza to Fallujah, they “love death by martyrdom more than life.” Yet the House of Saud, the rulers of the kingdom, do not live by stern Wahhabi strictures. If anything, they flout them, with porno videos for entertainment inside their compounds, sex orgies in hotel suites when they go on vacation and chilled vodka handed out by Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan in Washington and Aspen. Above all, the Saudi Wahhabis who preach the destruction of the Judeo-Christian West and who incite Islamic youths to die in jihad in Iraq and elsewhere depend on the United States for their military and economic security. Hypocrisy sapped the intellectual strength of the Soviet Union, just as it is undermining the Saudi way of life. Third, and perhaps most important, totalitarian systems are weakened by the discontent of those forced to live under them. After 70 years of socialism, Soviet citizens got tired of the whole mess. They wanted out. The same is true in Saudi Arabia. The religious appeal of the old Wahhabism is greatly diminished, and many prosperous and responsible Saudi subjects are no longer willing to accept the constant abuses inflicted on them… The fourth parallel is the two powers’ support for international troublemaking, which is an inevitable outcome of the first three sets of contradictions. The Saudis, in order to justify their claim of Islamic authority--and to counter the ideological impact of the Iranian revolution of 1979--have sought to Wahhabize Sunni Muslims wherever they are found. In the end, of course, change came to the Soviet Union. By the late 1980s, Moscow could no longer govern in the old way--and neither can Saudi Arabia’s rulers today. The question is: What lessons drawn from the Soviet experience are applicable to Saudi Arabia today? One point is worth clearing up at the outset; Despite conventional wisdom to the contrary, oil is not an obstacle to transforming Saudi Arabia, any more than Soviet possession of nuclear weapons was a barrier to change in Moscow. Whoever rules Arabia will continue to seek revenue from oil. At the same time, some contrasts between Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union must be kept in mind. The Soviets did not allow their subjects to massacre American citizens on U.S. soil, as the Saudis did, indirectly, by promoting extremism and permitting the buildup of al Qaeda. By the mid-1980s, Soviet communism was moribund, while today, Wahhabism remains virulent. Therefore, we probably cannot hope for the complete dissolution of the Saudi state. Rather, the aim must be to assist the Saudi royal family to break the link between the state and the extremist ideology that has underpinned it for so long… Another difference, this time propitious: Saudi Arabia has a precious asset that was missing from the Soviet Union in its growing business class. The largest middle class in the Arab world may be capable of leading the Saudi transformation peacefully, and avoiding the hard social bumps suffered when the Soviet Union fell. That said, several lessons of the Soviet transformation remain urgently relevant to U.S.-Saudi relations: *At the beginning of the Gorbachev era, the Soviet authorities demonstrated their desire for transparency in dealing with the United States. As early as 1986, Gorbachev himself admitted the truth about their long history of disinformation and “active measures” against the U.S. Soviet diplomats came to Washington and accepted blame for circulating lying propaganda in the Third World, such as the claim that AIDS had been invented at Fort Detrick. They promised to stop producing such garbage, and they kept their word. A similar shift toward transparency is necessary in relations between Riyadh and Washington. President Bush and Secretary Rice should call on the Saudis to produce a “9/11 Commission Report” of their own, detailing every aspect of the involvement of Saudi subjects in the al Qaeda conspiracy, no matter how high they rank in Saudi society. *The Saudi financiers of al Qaeda--including property developer Yasin al-Qadi and charity head Adil Abdaljalil Batterjee, both designated global terrorist financiers by the U.S. Treasury--walk the streets of the kingdom unmolested. The president and the secretary of state should initiate legal steps so that all of them are arrested and tried. *President Reagan correctly called on the Soviet Union to cease financing international extremism. Bush has the right to ask that the Saudis cease not only supporting al Qaeda but also fomenting Wahhabism internationally in any guise. Above all, Riyadh must immediately silence Saudi clerics’ incitement to the Iraq jihad, and cut off the flow of jihadists from Saudi Arabia into Iraq, if necessary by closing and patrolling the kingdom’s northern border… *Finally, President Bush and Secretary Rice must remember Soviet history as they resist the blandishments of the détentists--those who insist that all Saudi subjects idolize Osama bin Laden, or that the only alternatives to the present regime is chaos, or that the Saudis will change only through slow evolution and discreet pressure behind the scenes… Secretary Rice will recall that all these arguments were offered in the Soviet case--and all proved wrong. It was not détente that brought down the Soviet Union… President Bush can choose to deal piecemeal with Islamist terrorism. Or, like Ronald Reagan confronting the Soviet Union, he can take on the problem itself, directly, carefully, calmly, but firmly, by dealing with its Saudi source. With Condoleezza Rice at his side, the president can apply the lessons of experience to the core challenge of his new term. (Stephen Schwartz is the author of The two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and its Role in Terrorism. Adapted from the Dec. 13 issue of The Weekly Standard.) Volume IV, No. 1,016 • Monday, December 20, 2004 MEETING
GADDAFI IS FOUL Paul Martin yesterday defended his decision to meet with Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, when he visits Tripoli next week: "They've expressed the desire for a fundamental shift in position. It's up to all of us to encourage that kind of shift. Yes, we understand what's happened in the past, but looking ahead, if we simply turn our backs on people who say, 'Look, we're prepared to shift positions,' then obviously we're not going to make progress." Prime Minister, I don't think you have any idea whatsoever what this man has done in the past--if you did, even the proximity of Tripoli to your Christmas vacation spot in Morocco wouldn't be enticing enough to make you want to break bread with him. I grew up in the small Scottish town of Dumfries and was home for Christmas from McMaster University in Hamilton in 1988. Around suppertime on December 21, my father, who was at that time director of the local water utility, received a call from one of his colleagues. Bill Parr was walking his dog in the hills above Lockerbie, 10 miles away, and said he'd seen a plane crash into the town, a big plane. It turned out to be PanAm Flight 103, just 38 minutes out of Heathrow on its way to JFK in New York. In the worst act of mass murder in British history, 270 people died that night, including 11 on the ground. Two of the passengers were Canadians--Paul Freeman, a 25-year-old aspiring actor, and Maria Maijala, a 26-year-old financial consultant. My father remembers driving through the still-smouldering town of Lockerbie the next morning and watching fresh-faced soldiers and young policemen pick up body parts off the streets. Parr, whom I interviewed on the 10th anniversary of the atrocity, recalled finding three seats in which two young girls and a man were wrapped around one another. The girls had their eyes open wide and their fingers tightly crossed. "It was unpleasant, basically. The dog tried to climb a tree at one point, and I shone my torch up the tree and a head looked down at me. Just a head," he said. Many of those involved in the cleanup mission admitted to suffering vivid nightmares for years afterwards. Last year, Libya accepted responsibility for blasting the plane out of the skies and offered to pay compensation, opening the way for Gaddafi's rehabilitation. One of his agents is currently serving life in prison in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. According to a CSIS report, Gaddafi's decision to desist from supporting "freedom fighters" around the world is partly driven by fears that he is himself a terrorist target. Radical groups in Libya apparently consider him too moderate and anti-Islamic, which is the only mildly amusing thing to have emerged from this whole disaster. He is now seeking rapprochement with the West and even membership in the World Trade Organization. A host of world leaders have already embraced him for having shrugged off pariah status, including Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac. But can we simply treat the past as "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago?" This man facilitated the bombing of other airplanes and sold weapons to the Irish Republican Army for decades. Yet he was able to pitch his Bedouin tent in Brussels, unmolested, on a recent trip to address the European Commission. He should have been frog-marched to The Hague and put on trial for crimes against humanity. Jim Swire, the father of one of the victims of Lockerbie, has said graciously that a country's foreign policy cannot be determined by the grief and anger of victims' relatives. But Gaddafi stands accused of murdering our citizens and has never answered for his actions. Now our Prime Minister is going to sit down with him to discuss the sordid business of coin. Edmund Burke said that justice is the great standing policy of civil society. But this view is at odds with that of the Prime Minister, who appears to be generally in favour of law and order but not dogmatic about it. QUESTIONS
FOR MUAMMAR GADDAFI Sometime after midnight on April 14, 1987, the body of a young Canadian man slammed into the pavement outside the entrance to the Zanzour Tourist Village in Tripoli, Libya. When found by a member of the hotel's night staff around 6 a.m., the man was clearly dead. The death, Canadians would later agree, was an outrage. Many believe it was murder. The bright young man was a reporter--an employee of Southam News, the news organization that preceded CanWest. And the reporter had been asking a lot of questions about Libyan support for terrorism. His name was Christoph Halens. He was only 32 years old. The circumstances of Halens' demise remain unresolved despite the passage of more than 17 years. Also unresolved are questions surrounding the enthusiastic support of the dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi for a plethora of terrorist and extremist organizations in the years before and after Halens's death. Despite all this, Prime Minister Paul Martin plans to travel to Libya this week, following the trail of a number of other world leaders, to cozy up with Gaddafi. Why? Halens was sent to Libya in 1987 to report on a "peace conference" sponsored by Gaddafi's rogue regime. The Southam reporter discovered that invitees included representatives from the Irish Republican Army; the PLO; Canadian, British and American neo-Nazis, such as the Nationalist Party and the National Front; virulent anti-Semitic black nationalist organizations, such as the Nation of Islam; the American Indian Movement; and, oddly, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. Prior to the conference, the Libyan regime had more or less openly provided millions of dollars in support to an equally diverse cast of murderers, among them the Basque separatist movement, Germany's Red Army Faction, the Abu Nidal organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Japanese Red Army and Black September… According to the RCMP, Canada's Foreign Affairs Department and Southam News, which conducted a rigorous investigation into the death of their employee, Halens raised the ire of the Libyan secret police when he started asking questions about Gaddafi's involvement with neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and terrorists… He was murdered for doing his job as a journalist, in other words. That, certainly, is the view of his family, friends and colleagues. Following an autopsy in Libya, Tripoli's deputy district attorney responded to Canadian pressure by declaring that Halens had been "suffering from a psychological illness," and therefore threw himself off the roof of the Zanzour Tourist Village. To its initial credit, the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney did not accept that absurd conclusion. The former secretary of state for external affairs, Joe Clark, told the House of Commons that the government was prepared to conduct a second autopsy. But eventually, Halens' death slipped from the headlines and the government priority list. The mystery remains unsolved. This would be a perfect time for Mr. Martin to demand the facts surrounding Halens' death. But as far as any of us know, the issue does not form any part of the Prime Minister's agenda. When asked about the purpose of the trip, one of Mr. Martin's chief spokesmen stated: "Given that he's in the region, he wanted to meet with Gaddafi, as have so many other world leaders recently." Is that all it takes? We happen to be in the neighbourhood and decided to pop by? That's not good enough. If Canada is to enhance its stature in the international community as a defender of human rights, it should start by standing up for its own citizens. Mr. Martin must demand a full and frank accounting not only of Halens' death, but also of the issue that brought him to Libya: the country's support for terrorism and extremism. Christoph Halens and his fellow Canadian citizens deserve at least that much. CANADA
RULES OUT MAKING AN APOLOGY TO LIBYA Canadian officials flatly refused to apologize yesterday for imposing sanctions in the 1980s and 1990s against the terrorist-sponsoring government of Libya, and instead called for improved human rights in the oil-rich African country. Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan and other officials quickly rejected the call from Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the powerful son of Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, who said there is still anger over Canada's reaction to the Libyan-sponsored bombings of a discotheque and a jetliner in the 1980s. Ms. McLellan said yesterday that although Libya has made serious efforts at reform, more must be done. Libya has recently renounced terrorism, abandoned its nuclear program and has made peace with Western countries, but Col. Gadhafi retains a strong hold in the non-democratic regime. "There have been many important changes in Libya over these past few years, and that is good to see… And hopefully we will continue to see further changes, especially in the areas of human rights," Ms. McLellan said. Asked whether Canada will apologize for its sanctions against Libya, Ms. McLellan dismissed the request with a wave of her hands. Prime Minister Paul Martin will travel to Libya on Dec. 19 to increase the economic ties between the two countries, but the statements by Col. Gadhafi's son are destined to cause friction during the visit. Four Canadians were killed in the attack on the Pan Am flight that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, but Mr. Gadhafi told The Globe and Mail that Canada should have nonetheless resisted the worldwide push for sanctions… A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew said that Canada stands behind its past actions, which were undertaken in conjunction with the United Nations and other countries. "There is no apology for operating under UN sanctions," spokesman Jamie Christoff said… Conservative MP Jason Kenney said that Mr. Gadhafi's comments suggest that recent Libyan reforms were not sincere. "It suggests [the Gadhafis] had a tactical change of policy, but not a real change of heart," Mr. Kenney said. A former federal minister who travelled on an official visit to Libya last year, Denis Paradis, rejected Mr. Gadhafi's claim that there is a generalized grudge against Canada in that country. "I was treated like a king, it was extraordinary. It couldn't have gone any better," the Liberal MP said. Libya is about two months away from awarding potentially lucrative contracts to explore for oil and natural gas in the country, with at least three Canadian companies--Petro-Canada, Talisman Energy Inc. and Nexen Inc.--in the running… SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. said it has had an easier time doing business in Libya recently than for much of its 20 years in the country. "We've stuck it out through thick and thin," said Gillian MacCormack, an SNC official. Mr. Gadhafi, Col. Gadhafi's second son and presumed successor, said the visit by Mr. Martin will be affected by the tension over the sanctions. "The people in Canada, and even the Canadian government--they should be aware that we are not happy with Canada," Mr. Gadhafi said. "And for quite a long time we have regarded Canada as an enemy to Libya, and as just a follower for the Americans." Canada's mistake, he said, was to join the United States and many other countries in adhering to imposed sanctions against Libya, even though Libya recently accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie attack and agreed to pay $2.7-billion (U.S.) in compensation to families of those killed. Volume IV, No. 1,015 • Friday, December 17, 2004 The Islamization
of Europe? Only a few years ago, mass-murder attacks on the West in the name of Islam, like those of September 11, would have seemed like a thriller writer’s fantasy. Nor would anyone have imagined that a bombing by Islamists could swing a general election in a European country, that a Dutch movie-maker might be shot dead on the street for a film about the abuse of women in Islam, or that one might find oneself watching, on television, the beheading of Western hostages by men crying out Allahu Akhbar! over their savage deeds. Pakistan now has a nuclear bomb, and this weapon is widely described as an Islamic bomb. To judge by their pronouncements, the Islamist leaders of Iran can hardly wait to perfect and use their derivative of it. At present, it is not clear whether the religious/ideological rage that is the motive force behind these developments has any limits, whether it may yet succeed in mobilizing truly huge numbers of Muslim masses, or whether it can be deflected or crushed… Does this crisis amount to a “clash of civilizations”? Many people reject that notion as too sweeping or downright misleading. Yet whether or not it applies to, say, the situation in Iraq, or to the war on terror, the phrase has much to recommend it as a description of what is going on inside Europe today… In the opinion of Bassam Tibi, an academic of Syrian origins who lives in Germany, Europeans are facing a stark alternative: “Either Islam gets Europeanized, or Europe gets Islamized.” Going still farther, the eminent historian Bernard Lewis has speculated that the clash may well be over by the end of this century, at which time, if present demographic trends continue, Europe itself will be Muslim… Contemporary Islamism might be summed up as the effort to redress and reverse the long-ago defeat of Muslim power by European (i.e., Christian) civilization. Toward that end, it has followed two separate courses of action: adopting the forms of nationalism that have appeared to many Muslims to contain the secret of Western supremacy, or promoting Islam itself as the one force capable of uniting Muslims everywhere and hence ensuring their renewed power and dominance. In the hands of today’s Islamists, and with the complicity of Europe itself, these two approaches have proved mutually reinforcing… A number of ideological movements have spread and fortified the modern projection of transnational Islam. Perhaps the most successful has been the Muslim Brotherhood, founded by Hasan al-Banna in Egypt in 1928, with branches today in some 40 to 50 countries. Yasir Arafat and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy, are among those formed by the Brotherhood. Its more recent inspiration derives from the Egyptian-born Sayyid Qutb, whose three-year stay in the United States in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s convinced him that the West and everything it stood for had to be rejected, while Islam already provided every Muslim with state, nation, religion, and identity all in one. Saudi Arabia has spent billions of its petro-dollars financing groups, including terrorist groups, that promote this idea. The 1979 revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran was an opening test of the new balance of forces between a rising transnational Islam and the declining Western nation-state. European countries, which in the postwar period seemed largely to have lost the will to respond to aggressive challenges from without, presented no opposition to the totalitarian Khomeini regime and no barrier to its aggrandizement. That left the United States, still a nation-state very much committed to defending its sovereignty. Indeed, to the ayatollahs and their allies, the U.S. represented a final embodiment of the Great Satan, fit to be confronted in holy war. This remains the case today. In the meantime, though, a battle of a different but no less decisive kind has been taking place within Europe, where some 20 million Muslims have settled. Thanks on the one hand to their high birthrate, and on the other hand to the sub-replacement birthrate that has become the norm among other Europeans, the demographic facts alone suggest a continent ripe for a determined effort to advance the Islamist agenda. In its global reach and in its aggressive intentions, Islamist ideology bears some resemblance to another transnational belief system: namely, Communism. Like today’s Islamists, Communists of an earlier age saw themselves as engaged in an apocalyptic struggle in which every member of a Communist party anywhere was expected to comport himself as a frontline soldier, and in which terror was seen as a wholly permissible means toward victory in a war to the finish. Compare Stalin’s “If the enemy does not surrender he must be exterminated” with the refusal of the leader of Hizballah in Lebanon to negotiate with or ask concessions from the West because “We seek to exterminate you.”… It is true that most Muslim immigrants to Europe come simply with hopes for a better life, and that these hopes are more important to them than any apprehensions they might entertain about living in a society ruled by non-Muslims--something historically prohibited in Islam. Indeed, large numbers have assimilated with greater or lesser strain, and, in the manner of other minorities, have become “hyphenated” as British-Muslim, French-Muslim, Italian-Muslim, and the like. Religious life flourishes: if, a half-century ago, there were but a handful of mosques throughout Europe, today every leading country has over a thousand, and France and Germany each have somewhere between five and six thousand… Among these various organizations, however, a number function as Islamist fronts. Inspired by Saudi Arabia or Khomeinist Iran, by the Muslim Brotherhood or al Qaeda, they work to undermine democracy in whatever ways they can, just as Soviet front organizations once did. They push immigrants to repudiate both the process and the very idea of integration, challenging them as a matter of religious belief and identity to take up an oppositional stance to the societies in which they live… The notorious 1989 fatwa condemning the novelist Salman Rushdie to death for exercising his right to free speech as a British citizen was an early example of this tactic of disruption and agitation. Another has been the attempt in Britain to set up a Muslim “parliament” that will recognize only Islamic law (shari’a) as binding, and not the law of the land. Still another has been the insistence, in France, on the wearing of the hijab by girls in public schools, a practice that clearly contradicts the ideals of French republicanism and is in any case not an Islamic requirement… Still another phenomenon familiar from the Soviet era has lately made a repeat appearance in the West, and that is voluntary accommodation, or fellow-traveling, among non-Muslims. Leftist fellow-travelers once helped to create a climate of opinion favorable to Communism. Many knew exactly what they were doing. Others merely meant well; they were what Lenin called “useful idiots.” In like manner, Islamist fellow-travelers and useful idiots are weaving a climate of opinion today that advances the purposes of radical Islam and is deeply damaging to the prospects of reconciliation… One form of Islamist fellow-traveling masquerades as a call for “tolerance,” or “diversity,” and has penetrated right through the world of European opinion and European institutions. The British Communist historian Christopher Hill once concluded a book on Lenin with a reverent recital of the epithets the party had devised to glorify him. Pious Muslims follow the mention of the Prophet Muhammad with the invocation, “Peace be upon him.” This practice has now crept into a biography of the Prophet written by a British writer not ostensibly a Muslim. To encourage such acts of deference, there has been a complementary effort to stifle contrary or less than fully respectful opinions. When the outspoken French novelist Michel Houellebecq pronounced Islam to be hateful, stupid, and dangerous, Muslim organizations and the League for the Rights of Man took him to court, just as the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci was sued for her book tying the 9/11 attacks to the teachings of Islam. Although both writers won their cases, the chilling effect was unmistakable… The lengths to which apologists for Islamism are prepared to go is nicely illustrated by the case of Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and a popular writer and speaker. As is well known, the American university Notre Dame recently offered Ramadan a professorship, but U.S. immigration authorities have so far rejected his application for a visa. This has elicited some classic examples of fellow-traveling obfuscation from both Americans and Europeans outraged on his behalf. A letter to the Washington Post protesting Ramadan’s treatment undertook to explicate his supposed message to Western Muslims: they “must find common values and build with fellow citizens a society based on diversity and equality.” Not quite. What Tariq Ramadan has really proposed in his writings and teachings is that Muslims in the West should conduct themselves not as hyphenated citizens seeking to live by “common values” but as though they were already in a Muslim-majority society and exempt on that account from having to make concessions to the faith of others… Ramadan happens to be a grandson of Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he is also a guarded writer. In fact, his is a relatively “moderate” and qualified expression of Islamic reverse imperialism. More overtly, and with an implicit threat of violence, Dyab Abu Jahjah, a Lebanese who has settled in Antwerp, has denounced the Western ideal of assimilation as “cultural rape,”… He, too, needless to say, has his defenders and apologists among European liberals. Or consider the European reception of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, heir to Sayyid Qutb as the religious authority of the Muslim Brotherhood. Wanted on charges of terrorism in his native Egypt, al-Qaradawi now lives in Qatar. Like Tariq Ramadan in Switzerland, he emphasizes that Muslims must keep apart from liberal democracy as it is practiced in the West while also availing themselves of its benefits and advantages. But he goes much further. Unlike Ramadan, he approves of wife-beating in the forms sanctioned by the Qur’an; as for homosexuals, he is agnostic on whether they should be thrown off a high cliff or flogged to death. Yet this year, in an official ceremony at London’s City Hall, al-Qaradawi was welcomed as “an Islamic scholar held in great respect” by the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. “You are truly, truly welcome,” gushed Livingstone, an otherwise enthusiastic supporter of gay pride. Also appearing this year in London was Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Sudayyis, a senior imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca; among his many distinctions, al-Sudayyis has vituperated Jews as “the scum of the human race…the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.” Standing beside this apostle of “diversity and equality” was a junior minister in the Blair government… In the realm of classical Islam, Christians and Jews once lived as dhimmis--that is to say, minorities with second-class rights… Many contemporary Muslims appear to idealize this long-lost supremacy over others, and aspire to reconstruct it. One way to work for this end is through violence and terror. Another way, the way of Tariq Ramadan and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is through words. One way and another, the project is advancing. Summing up the collective achievement so far, Bat Ye’or, the historian of “dhimmitude,” has written that “Europe has evolved from a Judeo-Christian civilization with important post-Enlightenment/secular elements to…a secular Muslim transitional society with its traditional Judeo-Christian mores rapidly disappearing.” She calls this evolving entity “Eurabia.” If that is the case, or is becoming the case, is it any wonder that some Europeans are switching sides, so as to be on the winning one? The sheer élan and cultural confidence displayed by Islamist spokesmen may have something to do with the fact that every year, thousands of people all over Europe convert to Islam. Some of these converts, from Britain, France, and Germany, taking the direct route from words to action, have gone on to play a disproportionate role in terrorism and Islamist militancy… There are certainly Muslims in Europe who look with horror upon what is being done in their name... For wholly understandable reasons, few of them have the courage to speak out. One of the exceptional few recently wrote a letter to the London Times, giving his name and address, and saying that he defines his community as the people with whom he chooses to interact. He went on: “We do not all subscribe to the same way of being a Muslim, neither do we push our beliefs into the civic and political sphere.” But, he continued, “Sadly the public does not always get our point of view, because the only Muslims who are consulted are those who choose to drag Islam into the political sphere.” One could not ask for a clearer repudiation not only of all Muslim Brotherhood-style proselytizers but, even more bitingly, of the patronizing and indulgent attitude adopted toward them by the European establishment. Those in Europe who have striven in ways great and small to extend special privileges to Muslims while subtly deprecating their own national identity and culture have indeed helped open the way to Islamic separatism and Islamist agitation. They have thereby hastened the very clash of civilizations that they (or some of them) foolishly claim they are avoiding. If Bassam Tibi is correct in stating that “either Islam gets Europeanized or Europe gets Islamized,” powerful forces are at work to foreclose the question. (David Pryce-Jones is a senior editor of National Review and the author of The Closed Circle and The Strange Death of the Soviet Empire.) For more up-to-date op eds and analyses, please visit our “Picks of the Week” page. Shabbat Shalom to all our readers! Volume IV, No. 1,014 • Thursday, December 16, 2004 WILL IRAN WIN
THE IRAQ WAR? Today in Washington there are many within the foreign-policy establishment expressing their fear--and hope--that America's entanglement in Iraq may well compromise the Bush administration's ability to confront the Islamic Republic's quest for nuclear weapons. If it chose to, Tehran--so the theory goes--could make life enormously difficult for the U.S. in Iraq through its clandestine networks and Shiite allies. The U.S. simply cannot entertain the possibility of pre-emptively striking clerical Iran's nuclear-weapons facilities for fear of producing a two-front, hopeless mess in Iraq… But does this reasoning make sense? Are Iraq and Iran so intertwined that America is essentially handcuffed in its dealings with Tehran's mullahs? In all probability, not at all. Indeed, the current interplay between the peoples of Iraq and its eastern neighbor actually ought to encourage the Bush administration to be more hawkish toward the clerical regime's growing interference in Iraq and pursuit of nuclear weapons. The strongest trump playing in favor of America and against Iran is Iraqi nationalism… Iraq's Shiites are the progenitors of modern Iraqi nationalism. They, much more than their Sunni Arab compatriots, who were the driving force behind pan-Arabism in Mesopotamia, have shaped an Iraqi Arab identity which is distinct from the Sunni Arabs to the west and Shiite Iranians to the east. Iraqi Shiites, especially their clergy, do have a long relationship with Iran. Traditionally, the most promising Iranian religious students and clerics have studied at the seminaries of Najaf and Karbala to perfect their knowledge of Arabic and their exegesis of religious texts… Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's pre-eminent divine, is of Persian birth and early education. Many of his closest, oldest advisers are also of Iranian ancestry and education. Iraq's once-great Shiite merchant families inevitably have Iranian members… But association among the Shia should never be viewed as ideological sympathy. The Iraqi Shia retain enormous bitterness toward the U.S. for the failure of President George H.W. Bush to aid them during the great rebellion of '91, when the Shiites and Kurds rose up against Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War. Tens of thousands of Shiites were slaughtered. But this bitterness also extends to Iran's clerical regime, which did virtually nothing to help their Iraqi "brethren." There has been a sentiment among many Iraqi Shiites…that Iran is supposed to look after the Iraqi Shia, to help them in times of trouble as would an uncle. The Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988 frayed, if not ended, this sentiment. Rare are the instances of Iraqi Shiite protests at Saddam's war with Iran… Iranians usually don't waste much time expressing their disappointment in the Iraqi Shia, given the damage the war did to Iran, that Iraq's army was majority Shiite, and that Saddam's elite Sunni Republican Guards were on several occasions near the cracking point. When the Iraqi Shia felt Saddam's wrath in '91, there was more than a little schadenfreude on the Persian side… Which brings us to the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq. Clerical Iran's primary objective is to ensure that Iraq remains destabilized, incapable of coalescing around a democratically elected government. Such a government supported by Iraq's Shiite establishment is a dagger aimed at Tehran's clerical dictatorship… The clerical regime is currently handcuffed to Iraq's democratic process and timetable. All of the principal groups through which Iran hopes to exercise influence in Iraq--the Iranian-created Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Dawa (or "Islamic Call") party, and the Sadriyyin, followers of Muqtada al Sadr…are committed now to the election process. Iran has probably been pouring money into Iraq, to all three of these Shiite groups, which don't share much affection for each other, and in the case of the Dawa and the Sadriyyin, have had distinctly mixed, often hostile, emotions about things Iranian… Iranian support for these groups increases the odds for implanting in Iraq sectarian politics and conflict. What clerical Iran ideally wants to see next door is strife that can produce an Iraqi Hezbollah. The Sadriyyin are philosophically closest to the Lebanese Hezbollah, but they aren't in ideology, organization, or loyalty to Tehran, nearly as "evolved."… Tehran is trying to align itself with a variety of often contradictory parties because it cannot overtly oppose the democratic process in Iraq, in which an increasing number of Iraqi Shiites are passionately invested. Like Washington, Tehran really doesn't know what is going to happen on Jan. 30 and after, though it no doubt hopes that Sunni Arabs abstain from voting en masse, thereby supercharging sectarianism. If a civil war could be provoked, Iraq's democratic experiment and moderate Shiite religious establishment would probably both collapse… In Iraq, the U.S. ought to have two obvious goals. To crush the Sunni insurgency before it can provoke the birth of an exclusive, angry Shiite political identity willing to do to the Arab Sunnis what the Baath once did to the Shia. If such an identity is born, it is most unlikely democracy can prevail. Washington must thus ensure that the democratic process in Iraq, regardless of the violence, keeps on rolling… Persians stick out in Iraq like sore thumbs (very few Iranians can speak Arabic with any facility). They must have Iraqi surrogates to advance their interests, which are in opposition to those of most Iraqis. The U.S. could bomb uranium-enrichment facilities in Iran and it's much more likely Washington will see protests in the anti-Shiite Sunni Arab world than among Iraq's Shiites. This is a paradox that Washington should understand. If we don't, a nuclear-armed Iranian theocracy is likely to win in Iraq, and beyond. (Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.) IRAQ:
A NEW DIPLOMACY FOR A NEW DEMOCRACY The gradual reconstruction and rehabilitation of Iraq took another step forward yesterday when I had the honour of presenting my credentials to Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson as the ambassador of the new Iraq. Building links with Canada, a country with an exceptional record of contributing to international peace, is a vital part of the foreign policy of the new Iraq… The renewal of Iraq as a state is more often than not seen in economic and political terms, but it is also diplomatic. For decades…Iraq was an international pariah, regarded as a lucrative market and an occasionally useful tool in the realpolitik games of cynical powers… A new Iraq, therefore, requires a new diplomacy, one based on the same principles of international law, peace and simple human decency that have always been the hallmark of Canadian foreign policy. As our foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, has repeatedly said, Iraq will no longer be a haven for, and a sponsor of, terrorism. Iraq will not resort to force to settle international disputes, and its embassies will no longer hunt down Iraqi dissidents. For us, Canada provides an excellent model of how to manage a diverse, federal state and how that state can be active overseas in promoting peace and development… Canada is also known for its generosity. The Canadian government has made generous donations to the rebuilding of Iraq, as well as agreeing to forgive 80 per cent of Iraq's debts. Given Canada's extensive experience in peacekeeping and peace promotion, we would welcome any assistance that Canada could give based on that experience. We also believe that Canada could play a useful role in helping Iraq to prepare for its first free election, scheduled for Jan. 30. Nobody in Iraq doubts the depth of the challenge ahead of us… The remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, accompanied by foreign terrorists, are fighting hard to prevent the emergence of a new Iraq… They shall not win, however, because most Iraqis, in all our diversity, want to see Iraq become a federal democracy. We are fighting back, and we will defend our nascent democracy with the same fervour that we fought against the villainous dictatorship that our friends in the United States and Britain took the lead in overthrowing last year. It may sound fanciful to say that Iraq wants to be the Canada of the Middle East, but those are the values that we are fighting for, of democracy, pluralism, tolerance and federalism. We are determined to win and to transform Iraq. With Canada's assistance and wise counsel, we can certainly do so. (Howar Ziad, the Kurdish representative to the United Nations from 1999 to 2004, is Iraq's new ambassador to Canada.) TAPPING
THE HORNET’S NEST During the U.S. presidential campaign, debate over Iran policy received unprecedented attention… With Iran on the verge of developing both nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile capability, Washington policymakers can no longer ignore the Iranian threat, especially when confidants of Supreme Leader Ali Khomenei lead televised chants of "American will be annihilated," as Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati did last June… An anti-Western ideology remains at the core of the Islamic republic, even as the majority of Iranian citizens long to join the West. The Islamic Republic founded Palestinian Islamic Jihad, bankrolls Hezbollah and supplies other Palestinian factions with weapons. According to the Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat, Iran shelters several hundred Al-Qaida members at Revolutionary Guard facilities near the Caspian town of Chalus and Lavizan, on the outskirts of Tehran. Iranian diplomats know that Washington would consider it a casus belli if Al-Qaida were to plan a terrorist attack from Iranian soil. But if Tehran felt a nuclear deterrent would prevent American or Israeli retaliation, it would have less incentive to rein in its proxy groups… Despite the growing challenge, U.S. policy remains confused. The Bush administration has yet to reach a consensus on a national security presidential directive for Iran. Bureaucrats continue to stumble over arcane questions about whether Jimmy Carter's non-interference pledges…prohibit funding of Iranian opposition radio and television broadcasts. Also unresolved is whether the dichotomy within Iran is between hard-liners and reformers, as the State Department maintains, or between the government and democrats... While Bush included the Islamic Republic of Iran in the "axis of evil," outgoing Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage labeled Iran a "democracy." Before assuming her post, a senior director at the National Security Council criticized U.S. sanctions on Iran and the "rogue regime" label. She suggested Washington engage Tehran, and dismissed opponents as the "Israel Amen" crowd. Her predecessor, upon leaving government service, met with former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezai, an encounter the Iranian press suggested had White House sanction… When faced with a hornet's nest, the choice to destroy it or leave it alone is better than the compromise of lightly tapping it with a stick. …The insincerity of Iranian pledges regarding its nuclear program and its activities in Afghanistan and Iraq undercut proponents of engagement. The Bush administration no longer has the luxury of indecision. The fundamental question facing Bush now is not whether Washington can live with a nuclear Iran, but whether it can live with a nuclear Islamic republic. Some policymakers argue that the White House may have no choice. On November 26, 2004, the State Department, without administration sanction, posted a statement on its Web site labeling as "unwise, the possible use of military force by the United States or Israel to eliminate Iran's nuclear installations." The statement went on to argue that a strike on Iran's dispersed nuclear facilities would not only fail to eliminate the program, but might spark a nationalist reaction and cause the Iranian leadership to unleash terrorist proxies against U.S. interests in the Middle East and Israel. Such concerns are valid, but terrorist blackmail should never determine foreign policy. The Islamic republic does not seek nuclear weapons for security. On September 22, 2003, Iran paraded a Shihab-3 missile bearing the slogan, "Israel must be uprooted and erased from history."… Should engagement and diplomacy fail, Bush may have no choice but to order a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Should he do so, then he should also target Iran's apparatus of repression, be it Revolutionary Guard facilities or the guard towers at Evin Prison, where the Islamic republic imprisons its dissidents. Regardless, the second Bush administration cannot afford to replicate the indecision of the first. The challenge is too serious and the stakes too high. Diplomacy can only work when both sides are sincere. Let us hope that the Islamic Republic of Iran is, because time is running out. Volume IV, No. 1,013 • Wednesday, December 15, 2004 WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP WEEKLY QUOTES “I send greetings to all those celebrating Hanukkah, the festival of lights… Jewish tradition teaches that the Maccabees found only one small bottle of oil to be used for temple rituals, but that oil lasted eight days and nights… The bravery of the Maccabees has provided inspiration through the ages. We must remain steadfast and courageous as we seek to spread peace and freedom throughout the world.”—President George W. Bush. The menorah lit at the White House this year was built by a Florida synagogue in memory of Noam Apter, a 23-year-old yeshiva student in Israel killed by Islamic Jihad terrorists when he locked himself in the yeshiva kitchen with them to prevent an attack on the students in the dining room. (White House press release December 7, The Jewish Week, December 10). “We are standing before great opportunities and events that could be historic, and I won’t let anything or anyone harm the opportunity of the state of Israel to take advantage of these opportunities. The government of Israel approved the disengagement plan, and the time has come to draw a line under this subject.”—PM Ariel Sharon, warning Likud Party members that they had a choice between pulling out of Gaza or facing a general election. Sharon is expected to form a new coalition government with Labor by the end of the year. According to an Israel Radio poll, more than 70% of Israelis favor a Likud-Labor unity government. (Globe and Mail, Dec. 10) “I say to Assad, 'Assad, work to close the terror headquarters in Damascus and you will find us a real partner in peace.”—Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, at today’s Herzliya Conference. “Every peace overture from Arab leaders is positive. So we should welcome Assad's call for peace. It is forbidden to turn away the hand of peace… The moment Syria ends its support for terror we must go immediately to the negotiating table.” (Ha’aretz, Dec. 15.) “IDF soldiers are fighting a very difficult war, day and night, against the basest, vilest murderers. You should admire what the IDF has done and understand the difficulties.”—PM Ariel Sharon, noting that the IDF should and will investigate problematic incidents. “IDF soldiers are more moral in their operations than any other army in the world with which I am familiar.” (Ha’aretz, Dec. 9) “Using the weapons was harmful and has got to stop.” -- PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas, suggesting that the four-year-long intifada against Israel was a mistake and noting that the “Palestinian [security] apparatus needs discipline. There is security chaos.” Meanwhile, PA officials refused to condemn Sunday’s tunnel attack near Rafah that killed five Israeli soldiers. (Ha’aretz, Dec. 14, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 13.) “The President believes we have a real opportunity before us to move forward on helping the Palestinian people realize a viable democratic state…”—White House press secretary Scott McClellan, commenting on US monetary aid for the upcoming Palestinian election. “They are in a serious financial situation right now, and that’s why we’re sending a message with this financial assistance that we want to help as they move forward on elections…” (National Post, Dec. 9.) “The elections should not be postponed. It’s time for the Iraqi citizens to go to the polls.”—President George W. Bush, declaring that the Iraqi election will mark “one of the moments in history where a lot of people will be amazed that a society has been transformed so quickly from one of tyranny and torture and mass graves to one in which people are actually allowed to express themselves at the ballot.” (Nat’l Post, Dec. 3) “[A] year ago I appointed a panel of 16 people from all parts of the world and from different fields of expertise, asking them to assess the threats facing humanity today and to recommend how we need to change, in both policies and institutions, in order to meet those threats. On Thursday, they delivered their report… The report reaffirms the right of states to defend themselves, including pre-emptively when an attack is imminent, and says that in the case of ‘nightmare scenarios,’ for instance those involving terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, the UN Security Council may have to act earlier and more decisively than in the past. And it offers guidelines to help the council decide when to authorize the use of force… But the panel members (including several very eminent Muslim representatives) point out that international law as it stands is much clearer in condemning large-scale use of force against civilians by states than by private groups; and they agree that ‘there is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians.’ If governments follow their lead--as I hope they will--it will be much easier for the UN to develop a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy, and for me to take the lead in promoting it, as the report asks me to do.”—UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, on proposals for changes to global security initiatives. (International Herald Tribune, Dec. 3) “There was a time when there were more Islamic Jihadists than us, but now we are more than them, but nonetheless they have managed to take over the media and to get ahead of us, and are now intensively competing with us,”—Hamas religious council member Fathi Hamad. “Wherever Jihad fighters fought, Muslims, meaning Sunni Muslims like Hamas, showed up, and then the hypocritical Sh'iites came and sat down on the chairs that became available. This is an American, Zionist, Arab Shiite plot.” (Ha’aretz, Dec. 15.) “There is no church in the secular Christian world in which a priest stands and curses anyone who disagrees with his religion or prays for trouble and disaster to befall them, as do the preachers in our Friday sermons. [Moreover,] our religious thought has no parallel to the message recently pronounced by the present Pope regarding the importance of peace for all…There is no non-Muslim religious institute that teaches its students to hate the Other, claiming that he is considered an infidel, doomed to hell, regardless of whether he was of any use to mankind. This hatred is present in the curricula of the Islamic religion… In the secular world the author, the intellectual, and the journalist are not sent to jail for their opinions… Do you know why Allah helps the secular country? Because it is just. Why doesn't He help countries that build mosques every day? Because these countries are oppressive…”—Kuwaiti religious scholar Ahmad Al-Baghdadi, praising secularism in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa. (Memri.org, Dec. 3.) “Even though the opposition turned out in great numbers, the Somerville Board of Alderman's Committee on Legislative Matters refused to bow to those who have tried to delegitimize Israel among the nations.”—Nancy Kaufman, Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston, commenting on the effort to defeat Somerville’s proposed divestment from Israel. “Defeating divestment in Somerville sends a strong message to anyone who thinks that blaming one side only for the conflict in the Middle East is a way to achieve peace.” (Press Release, Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston, Dec. 7) SHORT TAKES FIVE SOLDIERS KILLED IN GAZA—(Jerusalem) Last Sunday, five IDF soldiers from the Bedouin Desert Reconnaissance Battalion died and six more were wounded when a tunnel laden with explosives blew up under a guard-post in the southern Gaza Strip. Hours earlier, the Israeli Cabinet approved the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners as a show of goodwill in the lead up to the January 9th PA elections. Political and security sources insisted that the government would not renege on its pledge despite this and other recent terrorist attacks. (Ha’aretz, Dec. 10) ISRAELIS RECEIVE NOBEL, TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AWARDS—(Stockholm) Last Friday, Israeli chemists Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko and American Irwin Rose received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discovery of regulated protein degradation, a process that lets cells destroy unwanted proteins. Their research could lead to the development of drugs to treat diseases such as cervical cancer and cystic fibrosis, which arise when the degradation process fails. The Wall Street Journal also recently awarded the silver medal in its 2004 Technology Innovation Awards competition to the Israeli company Given Imaging Ltd. for its “PillCam,” a tiny camera that patients swallow so that doctors can see their digestive tract. A second Israeli company, InSightec Image Guided Treatment Ltd. of Tirat Carmel, won the bronze medal for “ExAblate 2000,” a non-surgical means of destroying tumors by focusing ultrasound waves on them. (Ha’aretz, Dec. 10; Dowjones.com) ISRAEL MAY JOIN EUROPEAN NEIGHBORHOOD—(Jerusalem) The European Union announced that Israel is one of seven nations constituting its new European Neighborhood, a program offering free access to goods, services, and capital to countries that implement economic and political reform. The EU hopes that this policy will increase its security by bringing stability and prosperity to volatile surrounding regions. Israel’s Foreign Ministry has not yet approved the EU’s “action plan” for entry into the European Neighborhood. (Jer. Post, Dec. 9) IDF UNCOVERS 7-KILO BOMB AT NABLUS CROSSING—(Jerusalem) Paratroopers and soldiers of the Haruv Battalion uncovered a seven-kilogram bomb hidden in a school bag inside a truck passing through the Hawara checkpoint outside the West Bank town of Nablus. Sappers safely defused the bomb. (Jer. Post, Dec. 12) MAJORITY OF PALESTINIANS OPPOSE TERROR—(Jerusalem) According to the results of a poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center, a majority of Palestinians (52%) now oppose violence against Israel. This marked a significant shift in Palestinian popular opinion; in June, only 27% of Palestinians opposed “military operations” against the Jewish State, while 65% sanctioned such violence. (Ha’aretz, Dec. 9) NOBEL JUDGES STAND BY ARAFAT—(Jerusalem) Ten years after Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, his FM Shimon Peres and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize, members of the awards committee still insist that they made the right choice in honoring Arafat, maintaining that Rabin’s assassination—and not Palestinian terrorism—constituted the prime factor in the collapse of the Oslo Peace Process. (Jer. Post, Dec. 10) HAMAS CLAIMS TO BE IN CONTACT WITH EU AND U.S.—(London) According to Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal, the EU is still conducting secret meetings with this terrorist organization and the U.S. recently contacted it. Both the EU and the U.S. denied these claims. “We don’t conduct business with designated terrorist organizations,” insisted U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. “Hamas is a designated terrorist organization.” (National Post, Dec. 14; Ha’aretz, Dec. 15) “CHEMICAL ALI” TO STAND TRIAL FIRST—(Baghdad) Deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s deputy Ali Hasan al-Majid will be the first member of the former regime to stand trial for war crimes. Among other charges, he is accused of gassing 5,000 Kurds in northern Iraq in the late 1980s. Yesterday, a new mass grave—key evidence in the trials against Saddam and his cohorts—was discovered in the northern city of Sulaimaniya. It contained 500 bodies. (NYT, Dec. 15) FRENCH BAN HEZBOLLAH TV—(Paris) The Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, banned the Hezbollah-run television station Al Manar, ruling that it had repeatedly violated French hate laws and failed to carry out its pledge to refrain from propagating antisemitism. The court ordered the operators of the French satellite Eutelsat to stop beaming the popular Arab-language channel within 48 hours or face fines of more than $6,500 a day. Two other satellites broadcast Al Manar throughout Europe. (NYT, Dec. 14) $156 MILLION AWARD IN TERRORIST KILLING—(Chicago) In a precedent-setting decision, the U.S. District Court in Chicago ordered several Islamic fundraisers linked to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas to pay $156 million in damages to Joyce and Stanley Boim, whose 17-year-old son David was killed in a 1996 terrorist attack in Israel. Following the verdict, Amer Haleem, secretary of the Quranic Literacy Institute, denounced the trial as “pure and simple religious persecution.” Lawyers for the defendants said they would appeal the ruling. (Chicago Tribune, Dec. 9) BARRED ISLAMIC SCHOLAR GIVES UP U.S. POST—(Geneva) Unable to obtain a visa to enter the U.S., the Swiss-born professor of philosophy and scholar of Islam Tariq Ramadan resigned his teaching post at the University of Notre Dame. The grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Ramadan has avoided the incendiary language of many European Imams, but is nevertheless widely seen as an antisemitic demagogue. The Department of Homeland Security revoked his visa in August, citing unspecified security concerns. (NYT, Dec. 15) Volume IV, No. 1,012 • Tuesday, December 14, 2004
GETTING SERIOUS
ABOUT SYRIA "We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." George W. Bush, Address to Congress, September 20, 2001 The story was in the December 2, 2004, London Daily Telegraph, on page 14, by Jack Fairweather, datelined Damascus. Its headline: "All aboard the terrorists' bus to Iraq. Mujahideen mosques are springing up all over Syria to arm militants and send them across the border to do battle with the hated Americans."
Here are the highlights: “When not in Iraq, Abdullah cuts meat for a living. He is a Syrian cook at the Kingdom of God restaurant in Damascus, in a bustling suburb dominated by Iraqi exiles. For the past year, Abdullah has also been on the payroll of Iraqi resistance forces fighting American troops… In April, the 23-year-old boarded a convoy of American GMCs in Aleppo, northern Syria, with 10 other fighters from the area. He had been recruited at a mosque 30 miles south of Aleppo, built last year by a local sheikh with business interests in Iraq and strong sympathies with the resistance. It is brazenly entitled the Mujahideen Mosque. Abdullah, originally from the Aleppo area, and the other fighters, were provided with Iraqi passports and weapons. Abdullah was given a bazooka to carry. They were told they would be relieving Syrian mujahideen already in Iraq, part of a regular ‘troop’ rotation, and would be expected to fight until they in turn were either killed or replaced. In return Abdullah's family would be paid $3,000 a month by the mosque--more than most American soldiers in Iraq and a fortune in Syria where average salaries are less than 10 pounds a week. To enter Iraq from Syria there are three border crossings. Abdullah's convoy took the most northerly, through Rabia, a dusty collection of concrete houses straddling the border, and with pictures of the former Syrian president Hafez Assad festooning the checkpoint. Al-Jabouri tribesmen man the border. Like the al-Dulaimy tribe that guards the southern entry points into Iraq, they are deeply hostile to the US presence and Abdullah's convoy was waved through without checks. The men were driven to a mosque in Mosul where, according to Abdullah, dozens of their fellow countrymen were staying. He would not disclose the name of the mosque, but one such building in Mosul is the Mahmud mosque, infamous for supporting the insurgency… For the next 80 days, Abdullah and his unit went almost every day to attack American bases with mortars, or to man mujahideen checkpoints. He took part in ambushes on US convoys. As a mine hit a patrolling Humvee, Abdullah fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the second vehicle. He was transferred to Fallujah for three months, conducting raids with his unit in the neighboring Sunni towns of Samara and Ramadi… US and Iraqi officials believe the Syrian government has turned a blind eye to those supporting terrorists in Iraq, seeing the insurgency as an outlet for religious extremists to let off steam… Iraqi exiles in Damascus say there may be as many as 80 ‘mujahideen mosques’ either in name or spirit supporting the resistance. Several prominent mosques in Damascus, including the large Bilal al-Hashemi mosque, have reputations as staging posts for Syrian fighters, suggesting a logistical and financial operation beyond the ability of any one tribal leader… It is likely that many recent arrivals have sufficient funds to finance Syrian mosques. As members of Saddam's regime some have been able to buy swaths of Damascene property which they rent out. Others live off their plundered Iraqi money...” By Bush Doctrine standards, Syria is a hostile regime. It is permitting and encouraging activities that are killing not just our Iraqi friends but also, and quite directly, American troops. So we have a real Syria problem. Of course we also have--the world also has--an Iran problem, and a Saudi problem, and lots of other problems. The Iran and Saudi problems may ultimately be more serious than the Syria problem. But the Syria problem is urgent: It is Bashar Assad's regime that seems to be doing more than any other, right now, to help Baathists and terrorists kill Americans in the central front of the war on terror. The deputy prime minister of Iraq, Barham Saleh, wants to address the problem. He said last week, clearly referring to Syria as well as Iran, that "there is evidence indicating that some groups in some neighboring countries are playing a direct role in the killing of the Iraqi people, and such a thing is not acceptable to us." U.S. military intelligence officials agree: They have recently concluded, according to the Washington Post, "that the Iraqi insurgency is being directed to a greater degree than previously recognized from Syria, where they said former Saddam Hussein loyalists have found sanctuary and are channeling money and other support to those fighting the established government." What to do? We have tried sweet talk (on Secretary Powell's trip to Damascus in May 2003) and tough talk (on the visit three months ago by Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman and Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt). Talk has failed. Syria is a weak country with a weak regime. We now need to take action to punish and deter Assad's regime. It would be good, of course, if Secretary Rumsfeld had increased the size and strength of our army so that we now had more options. He didn't, and we must use the assets we have. Still, real options exist. We could bomb Syrian military facilities; we could go across the border in force to stop infiltration; we could occupy the town of Abu Kamal in eastern Syria, a few miles from the border, which seems to be the planning and organizing center for Syrian activities in Iraq; we could covertly help or overtly support the Syrian opposition… This hardly exhausts all the possible forms of pressure and coercion. But it's time to get serious about dealing with Syria as part of winning in Iraq, and in the broader Middle East. SYRIA’S
MURDEROUS ROLE A factor complicating the coalition mission of bringing stability to Iraq is the covert role played by Syria in financing and supporting the present insurgency, and the ineffectual attempts by the United States to counter it or even publicly acknowledge it. A number of current and former U.S. intelligence officers experienced in counter-terrorism who were interviewed by the authors believe that Syria should have been long ago included on Washington's "axis of evil" list although it is still not. But the State Department, acknowledging recent publicly cooperative gestures from Syrian President Bashar Assad (a British-trained eye doctor who "inherited" the presidency and the leadership of the Ba'ath Party from his bloodthirsty deceased father, President Hafez Assad) considers Syria a "partner" in the war on terror. This, in spite of a documented list of Syrian perfidy against the United States that begins with the bombings of the American Embassy and the Marine compound in Beirut in 1983 that killed more than 240 young Marines and sailors. There was no punishment for those murders then or since, even though the bomb-making materials passed through Damascus on their way to Beirut, and Syrian intelligence assisted in the fabrication of the device and in the attacks' operational planning. The Syrians went on to shoot down two U.S. Navy jets in 1983, again without the slightest response on the part of the United States. By 1985, as Hezbollah began to morph from various radical elements in Lebanon into a full-fledged terrorist organization, Syria provided access for the movement of men, supplies and materials to move freely through Damascus on their way to and from terrorist centers and camps in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and Tehran. When Pan Am 103 was downed over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, the world soon focused on Libyan intelligence as the culprit. And it was. But the planning for the operation had been conducted in Damascus under the watchful eye of Syrian intelligence. When the Khobar Towers were bombed in Saudi Arabia in 1996, at a cost of 19 U.S. servicemen's lives, it was Syria which had been nurturing Hezbollah with cash and secret bases. Yet last year, after a meeting in Damascus with Mr. Assad, Secretary of State Colin Powell held a news conference in Washington to tell the American public he had received assurances that Syria would crack down on terrorists and evict the many terrorist organizations headquartered in Damascus. To date, no terrorist groups have left, and there are no visible signs that Syria has cracked down on anyone. In the earliest stages of the ground war in Iraq, U.S. forces engaged uniformed Syrians near Baghdad, killing more than 100 of them. Current intelligence reports on battlefield kills, captures and interrogations, show that hundreds of Syrians are fighting alongside insurgents in the Sunni Triangle. In October of this year, U.S. intelligence sources identified three relatives of Saddam Hussein, who had fled to Syria and were funneling millions of dollars to the Iraqi insurgents through middlemen and front companies. U.S. intelligence sources have told the authors that Syrian intelligence officials have identified targets for the insurgency, provided its members with logistical support and helped plan operations against coalition forces. Syrian intelligence officials have allegedly shown visitors a video of the beheading of two American soldiers who were captured in Iraq, possibly in fighting near the airport in the early days of the invasion. They were allegedly beheaded by Syrian fighters working with the Iraqi insurgents. The U.S. government disclaims any knowledge of this, but two sources who say they have seen the video described it in detail to one of the authors. In a meeting with Syrian intelligence officers in which the tape was supposedly shown, said the source, a Syrian official mocked the executions by saying “this is what we do to Americans.” President Bush's insistence on not compromising with terrorists has been endorsed by a majority of the citizens of the United States and by the leaders of our global allies. The president's goals in Iraq, and elsewhere in the region, will not be achieved until the Syrians are forced to halt all assistance to our enemies. To win the ground war in Iraq and the larger war on terrorism, we must stop more than two decades of Syrian complicity with terrorists. Failure at this point is not an option. (William Cowan is a retired U.S. Marine colonel and counterinsurgency and terrorism expert. Barbara Newman is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Richard Carlson ran the Voice of Americaduring the last years of the Cold War and is vice chairman of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.) Volume IV, No. 1,011 • Monday, December 13, 2004
THE FALSE DAWN
OF PEACE With Arafat's death, there has been an unprecedented amount of optimism in the West regarding the establishment of a Palestinian state and the possibility of peace. Yet amongst Palestinian officials there is little talk of such a peace, the continuation of Yasser Arafat's "jihad" against the Jewish state instead being endorsed. (To watch examples of these statements, visit www.memritv.org.) Some members of the Palestinian establishment close to Arafat are now stating in public that he never really wanted peace, and instead considered the Oslo Accords a strategy to destroy Israel in phases. It was reported on November 21 that Abd Al-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, discussed a meeting he held with Arafat shortly before the latter's return to Gaza from Tunis. When Atwan criticized the Oslo Accords, Arafat reassured him: "The day will come when you will see thousands of Jews fleeing Palestine. I will not live to see this, but you will definitely see it in your lifetime. The Oslo Accords will help bring this about." The Palestinian ambassador in Iran, Salah Al-Zawawi, explained in an interview on Iranian Al-Alam TV on November 12: "[Arafat] knew that this path is the path of martyrdom and Jihad. He knew that this great cause requires martyrs, not leaders.... He fought the Jihad and we saw him in many battles...if you ask me what will surely be the end of this Zionist entity, I will say to you that this entity will disappear one of these days...It's a matter of time.... Our phased plan, which I already mentioned, is to establish an independent sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital...."… Countless Palestinian officials have also spoken about continuing the violent campaign against Israel. Fatah leader Hussein Al-Sheikh told Al-Arabiyya TV on November 11: "The gun Yasser Arafat raised...will be raised by...the Palestinian people, so they continue to believe that the gun is the way to get rid of this occupation..." Also on November 11, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades leader Raid Al-Aidi said on Al-Arabiyya TV, "We call from here to all the heroes...[to] strike this occupier anywhere, with no holds barred. We...will direct our painful blows against this monstrous entity. The Palestinian state will be achieved only by strengthening the resistance.... This occupier understands only the language of gunfire and gunpowder and we will teach this occupier, Allah willing, a lesson as we have taught it in the past, in Tel Aviv, Hadera, and everywhere. We will escalate our blows against this occupier...."… Quoting former Egyptian president Abd-Al Nasser--"what was taken by force will be restored only by force"--is how the new leader of Fatah, Faruq Al-Qaddumi, described the Palestinian strategy against Israel on Al-Arabiyya TV on November 14. Al-Qaddumi has considerable popularity among the Palestinian street for never accepting Oslo. With his naming as leader of Fatah, Al-Qaddumi is openly challenging Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmad Qureia to be Arafat's successor… He explained Fatah's position about Hamas: "The Hamas movement is our friend. It is a...movement of heroes…" Al-Qaddumi is also close to Hezbollah, and during a meeting with Sheikh Nasrallah on September 4, 2003, they discussed "cohesion between the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance." At a memorial for Arafat on November 23, Al-Qaddumi explained, "We can not achieve these goals except through continued resistance by all methods and means." He has also called for attacking U.S. interests throughout the world… American officials intimately involved in the Oslo Accords now publicly state that more attention should have been paid to the issue of Palestinian incitement, and what the Arabs were saying amongst themselves about peace in Arabic. With Yasser Arafat gone, the U.S. should be paying close attention to his heirs to understand their true intentions. (Steven Stalinsky is executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute [MEMRI].) THE
WISDOM OF THE FATHERS This week saw Arafat's heirs, PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei and PA Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, on a junket to Syria and Lebanon where they labored to shore up their base of political support. In Syria, the Palestinian "moderates" met with dictator Bashar Assad and his underlings and agreed to coordinate their positions in future negotiations with Israel with him. That base covered, they went to meetings with the senior terror chieftains who make their homes in Damascus: Ahmed Jibril, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command; Nayef Hawatmeh, head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas; and Ramadan Shalah, head of the Islamic Jihad. Reinforced from their meetings--where, according to Shaath, they discovered that between the "moderate" leaders and the arch terrorists, "There are no differences over the objectives"--the three went for visits in UN-run internment camps falsely referred to as Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon. There they promised that they will never give up the demand for the unlimited immigration of these foreign-born Arabs to Israel in the framework of a peace treaty. At the same time as they were running around in the terrorist capitals of the Levant, the US announced that it would for the first time be providing the PA with $23.5 million in…aid to make it easier for the Palestinians to conduct elections... Unfortunately, no one of any consequence seems to think it at all necessary to call attention to the fact that in order for Abbas and his colleagues to shore up their legitimacy in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, they have moved to build alliances with the most overtly extreme and violent forces in the region. Even as the US is now openly admitting Syria's major role in leading and financing the terror war being perpetrated in Iraq, no one has cast aspersions at Western supported Palestinian leaders who just declared their fealty to Assad and his terrorist vassals. At the same time, Israel has been awash this week with excitement and enthusiasm over Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak's newfound adoration for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Pharaoh Hosni's decision to release Azzam Azzam from his dungeon, like his announced intention to begin to abide by his obligation to the Camp David peace treaty by returning his ambassador to Israel sometime next year, have been taken as indications that Mubarak is now an ally of Israel… No one in Israel this week saw fit to mention that the very day Azzam was finally allowed to come home after eight years of politically motivated persecution, it was announced that Iran had transferred Mustafa Hamza, leader of al-Gamaa al-Islamiya, to Egyptian custody. Hamza had been tried and sentenced to death in absentia by Egyptian courts three times since 1992 and is believed to have masterminded the attempted assassination of Mubarak in Ethiopia in 1995. Reports of the transfer noted that ever since Egypt hosted the Sharm e-Sheikh conference aimed at preventing Iraqi elections last month, Egyptian-Iranian relations have improved considerably… Next week we will have the fifth annual Herzliya Conference. The conference has become a centerpiece in Israel's national politics because the prime minister has used his address there for the past two years to mark dramatic shifts in his policies. Two years ago he shocked everyone by saying that he supports the establishment of a Palestinian state. Last year he outlined his plan to withdraw from Gaza and northern Samaria. Each time, it took several months for Sharon to ram his new strategic outlook down the throats of his party members. But with the assistance of the press, this year, he is going into the conference with his withdrawal plan firmly entrenched in the received wisdom of our times. Sharon's adoption of the Labor Party's cut-and-run strategy has had catastrophic consequences for Israel's international standing. Because the plan is being advanced by Sharon, who has been demonized by the international Left as a war criminal, Israel's friends abroad have abandoned the strategic wisdom of never rewarding terror… Pro-Israel writers and policymakers in the US like Charles Krauthammer, William Safire and Abraham Sofaer have publicly lauded Sharon for his "strategic wisdom" and have castigated as extremists those who insist that the planned withdrawal will be devastating to Israel's national security… In an opinion column in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, Sofaer… argued that Sharon's withdrawal plan is the only option. Sofaer allows that "the Palestinians are far from ready to negotiate." The advantage of Sharon's plan therefore, is that it gets Israel out of an "untenable" position in Gaza. Sofaer compares the withdrawal from Gaza to Israel's May 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon, arguing, "Today, the Lebanese-Israeli border is more secure than during occupation." This is the sort of sophistry that friends of Israel like Sofaer would almost certainly never have entertained before Sharon adopted the plan. The fact of the matter is that today, Hizbullah forces in south Lebanon constitute a strategic threat to Israel. Just this week the army reported that Hizbullah is developing unconventional weapons. Last week the IDF deployed a battery of Patriot missiles to Haifa to prevent Hizbullah drones, which can be armed with chemical and biological weapons, from infiltrating Israel--again… The fact of the matter is that by fighting Palestinian terrorists on the ground in Gaza and along the Egyptian border and by controlling the air, land and sea entry points to Gaza, Israel is not in an untenable position. It is in a difficult position. But there can be no doubt that the threat won't go away if we turn our backs to it and call it untenable. As in Lebanon, it will grow all the more dangerous. It is hard to dispute the strategic wisdom of a man with Sharon's military credentials. But can we not at least entertain the notion that Sharon at 76, embroiled in criminal investigations, may be past his prime? This is not the time for debating Sharon's place of honor in Israel's history, which he more than earned long ago. But we owe it to ourselves to coldly analyze the strategic options with which we are faced, rather than simply saying that, since Sharon has said his piece, all that is left for us to do is quietly follow along. WHERE'S
THE NEW PERES? Barring an unexpected upset, the Likud central committee Wednesday will remove its objection to Labor joining the governing coalition. A government that includes both major parties presents great opportunities and potential pitfalls… The striking aspect of the expected new government is that Shimon Peres will become something of a co-prime minister with Ariel Sharon. The partnership between these two longtime rivals will likely, and ironically, be reminiscent of the warm bond between Peres and Yitzhak Rabin after they buried the hatchet… There is, however, a fundamental difference between the two leaders, beyond their disputes on specific issues. The difference is that Sharon, by proposing disengagement, embracing the goal of Palestinian statehood and calling the status quo "occupation," has dramatically changed course. The new Sharon has, if not repudiated, largely superseded--and even plans to partly reverse--the life work of the old Sharon. By contrast, there is no new Peres… Peres has been defeated at the polls more times than perhaps any leader in our history. Yet he has never shown any doubt as to the rightness of his path. Why is Peres's stunning refusal to admit changes in thinking, let alone a mistake, more than a political curiosity? Why does it matter if there is no "new Peres," particularly when the "new Sharon" has come so close to Peres's old positions? There are two reasons it matters. The first is the need for societal healing. The Left bears a huge grudge toward the Right over the assassination of Rabin, blaming not just the assassin himself, but an entire climate of incitement fanned by the extreme Right and not sufficiently dampened by the mainstream Right. The rabbis who have endorsed refusal to carry out disengagement orders have opened this old wound… But the current struggle, unlike that over Oslo, is not between the Right and a prime minister of the Left, but within the Right itself. At the same time, the Right bears a huge grudge against the Left for leading the nation down Oslo's path, a path that has produced more civilian casualties from terrorism in the last four years than in the previous 52 years combined. Shimon Peres was and is the architect and primary advocate of the Oslo project. Is it too much to ask that he show evidence of having learned something from this experience?… Some say the mistake of Oslo was the idea behind it, others blame only the bet on Yasser Arafat as a partner. Without resolving this debate, there should be no obstacle to agreeing that it was a mistake, once it became clear that Arafat was not complying, to make excuses for him and accuse anyone who blew the whistle of "weakening Arafat" and threatening peace. We would like to hear--not just from Sharon, but from Peres--that that mistake will not be made again, that he will not say that demanding an end to terror and incitement "weakens Abu Mazen." We would like to hear Peres argue the opposite: that the way to help the Palestinian leadership confront violence is to hold them to high standards, and that low standards actually fan the flames of radicalism. We have a new Sharon. Will we have a new Peres? Volume IV, No. 1,010 • Friday, December 10, 2004 IRAQ: PROPHETS
OF DEFEAT A “catastrophic success” is what the New York Times has called it. The American military conquered Baghdad within an astonishing 21 days, defeating the largest Arab army at the price of only 117 American lives. But then our forces became bogged down in what, according to innumerable accounts, soon devolved into a bloody quagmire. The Bush administration, it is by now widely accepted, has conducted the second, occupation phase of the war disastrously, and the disaster has shown no sign of letting up. In the run-up to the November election, as the chorus of critics grew ever more incessant, something like a conventional wisdom began to emerge. Its main lines went like this. The military forces deployed by the Pentagon, sufficient though they may have been to shatter the Iraqi army and capture Baghdad, have been grossly insufficient in dealing with the aftermath. The widespread pillaging following the fall of Saddam’s regime was the first clear indicator of trouble lying ahead. Soon, right under the noses of American soldiers, the looting accelerated into general disorder, and general disorder then coalesced into organized insurgency. That is hardly the end of it. The initial error of deploying too few troops was compounded by the administration’s absurdly mistaken belief that the invasion would be welcomed by the Iraqi populace--a hope based, according to the Harvard political scientist Stanley Hoffmann in the New York Review of Books, “on a mixture of ignorance, hubris, and misinformation.”… Next, dissolving the Iraqi army and banning Baathists from power provided a generous stream of recruits to the insurgency. As too few American soldiers struggled to pacify a chaotic, war-torn land, morale among the troops began to plummet… Finally, there was Abu Ghraib… The genesis of that notorious incident, explains the journalist Seymour Hersh in his new book, Chain of Command, lay “not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists” but in decisions made in high reaches of the Pentagon and the White House. In short, the occupation has both largely discredited itself and brought disgrace upon America… Or so the critics have contended. Not all of these critics, it is necessary to add, are on the political Left (though most are). In addition to figures like Hoffmann, Hersh, the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and many others, one can point to a number of skeptical or disaffected conservatives like Andrew Sullivan and George F. Will; in October, Richard Lowry, the editor of National Review, took to the pages of his magazine with a qualified but still dismal tale of “gross intelligence failures, debilitating intramural battles, miscommunications, unintended consequences, and counterproductive half measures.” That the picture drawn by the critics is a partial one should go without saying. They neither dwell on nor, usually, even mention the many things that have gone spectacularly well in Iraq, let alone the large number of things that could have gone very badly--and that were predicted to go very badly--but did not. Filling out the picture, not only by supplying the missing pieces but also by refuting specific arguments advanced by critics of the administration, would leave a very different picture of our progress in that country. But here I want to pursue a somewhat different line of inquiry, asking in effect how the critics could possibly be so certain in their conclusion of overall failure. To put it another way: when they pronounce this verdict, what is their standard of judgment? Failure as compared to what? In order to address that question fairly, we need to look not at some idealized model of a perfectly successful military campaign, a campaign that one might wage in one’s head, but at other military campaigns at similar points in their unfolding. How have other wars gone, especially wars that have ended well? American participation in World War II is Exhibit A in most people’s conception of a military campaign waged with maximum concentration of forces and maximum coherence of purpose. In some respects, to be sure, juxtaposing the two conflicts might appear to be a stretch: in Iraq we are now engaged in a clean-up operation against terrorists and insurgents, not attempting to subdue a major power like Nazi Germany. But the parallel should not be lightly dismissed. Indeed, the very differences between the two situations accentuate the value of the exercise. This is particularly so if one concentrates on the last stages of World War II. For in late 1944 and until Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, the U.S. was in its military prime, battle-hardened, united at home as never before, and fighting a war that might justly be called a supreme national emergency. If things nevertheless went badly awry in the endgame of the “good war” fought by the “greatest generation,” might that not suggest the folly of entering summary judgments concerning the more ambiguous conflict in which we are now engaged?… But when the Germans launched their mass offensive in the Ardennes on December 16, the Americans and the British were taken completely by surprise. As a result of this intelligence lapse, what came to be called the Battle of the Bulge claimed more than 10,000 American dead, another 47,000 maimed, and some 23,000 captured. How had the Allies missed the obvious? Their “most conspicuous error,” [the historian Max] Hastings explains, “was to expect rational strategic behavior from their enemy.” He attributes this error to, in a resonant term, “over-confidence.”… A fuller account of the conflict over its duration would regale us with statistics of needless combat deaths in far higher numbers, grisly tales of American soldiers ill-fed and unequipped or underequipped for battle, strategic and tactical errors of surpassing obtuseness, and much more. Surely, one might think, the scale of such transgressions should have been enough to discredit the officers in the field, the military brass at the War Department, the civilian leadership in the White House indeed, the entire effort. Of course it did not. Many of the misdeeds of World War II were not widely known at the time, and even if they had been, it would likely have had no bearing whatsoever on the perceived righteousness of the war. This, indeed, is the real difference between then and now, when much less egregious transgressions are considered more than sufficient to proclaim the utter wrongness of the war against Saddam Hussein. The reasons for this difference are themselves no mystery. One of them has to do with the advent of televised combat, which, in depicting war in something like its true gruesomeness, has tended to heighten the American aversion to casualties and by extension to war in general. Another is the adversarial culture that infects much of the media, along with the by now reflexive habit among many liberals and leftists of reaching for the lowest possible explanation of American motives and intentions. And then, in the case of specific critics of the war, there is also the more or less explicitly political agenda that lies at the heart of their analysis. Richard Lowry is a conspicuous exception in this regard. He, at least, makes a point of noting that some of the administration’s missteps were “the result of the inevitable uncertainties and surprises of warfare.” His well-reported analysis also has the virtue of explaining how the errors he documents were the almost inevitable outcome of “a series of choices that could never be entirely right.” But such fair-minded judgments are rare. Stanley Hoffmann, for example, was someone opposed from the outset to the decision to remove Saddam Hussein. The “central U.S. aim,” he argued then, was to build an American empire in which Iraq would be turned “into a U.S.-dominated satellite, with American bases, American companies in charge of its oil, and a compliant regime.”… Seymour Hersh also has an agenda; its ends are similar to Hoffmann’s, but its means are less savory. In the first phase of the Iraq war, Hersh, reporting for the New Yorker, distinguished himself by his unbridled pessimism concerning the course of battle. Even as American forces were successfully carrying out one of the most breathtakingly rapid and successful thrusts in the history of warfare, his first dispatch began: “As the ground campaign against Saddam Hussein faltered last week, with attenuated supply lines and a lack of immediate reinforcements, there was anger in the Pentagon.” When Baghdad fell within days of this piece’s appearance, Hersh immediately began to shift ground: “The Bush administration, it turned out, had won a major battle, but still had a war to fight.” That war is the continuing occupation, and Hersh has long since pronounced its certain doom and the terrible consequences that will follow from it. Chain of Command is advertised by its publisher as nothing less than a “devastating portrait of an administration blinded by ideology and of a President who has made the world a more dangerous place for America.” It would be more accurate to say that Hersh is an author blinded by ideology, and that his objective is to present an America as dangerous as he is capable of making it appear. Indeed, where his book itself is insufficient for that purpose, Hersh has seemed quite prepared to go beyond it. On the lecture circuit…he has offered up gory details of alleged U.S. atrocities in Iraq… Thus, quoting one of his anonymous “sources,” a soldier in the field, Hersh informed one audience that
Without a doubt, a massacre so reminiscent of My Lai is a sensational allegation. Without a doubt, it is almost certainly false, a fabrication cavalierly pawned off by Hersh as fact. An army of foreign journalists in Iraq, not exactly diffident when it comes to exposing American abuses, has thus far failed to unearth a single corroborating bit of evidence for this “atrocity”… Information about how our fight in Iraq is proceeding is necessarily difficult to assess. It comes to us filtered through a variety of cloudy if not, as in the case of Hersh, altogether occluded lenses. But this is nothing new; radical uncertainty is the essence of warfare, and the ability to navigate through that uncertainty is the art of generalship. Even though the Battle of the Bulge ended in a resounding defeat for Nazi Germany and spelled the certain end of Hitler’s regime, the American and British victors had little immediate appreciation of that fact. To the contrary, Hastings reports, the German capacity to have mounted so fierce an offensive provoked “despondency” and a “resurgence of caution” in the Allied high command. In the beginning of 1945, just as the Third Reich was crumbling, the Western powers began…to move their own forces into “strong defensive positions” lest the Germans counterattack again. Four months later, against their expectations, Germany surrendered unconditionally. In Iraq, success may not come four months from now (though it might), but the contention that we have already failed is blazingly ignorant where it is not outright malicious. In listening to today’s prophets of defeat, it helps to keep in mind that some are suffering from a severe case of self-induced amnesia about what war is and what fighting a war entails. Others, who know better, are opposed not only to the war in Iraq but to American purposes more generally, and to American success most of all. HOW
FAR WE’VE COME The harrowing World War II movie Twelve O'Clock High begins with a postwar bald and bespectacled Dean Jagger (Colonel Harvey Stovall) riding his bicycle out to an old airfield in Archbury, England, that years earlier had been home to the 918th B-17 Bombing Group of the 8th Air force. As the nondescript Jagger walks along the weed-infested airbase and rusting bombers, the movie unfolds as one long dreamlike flashback of the horrors of what daylight bombing over Germany in 1942 entailed and the courageous men who used to take off from the now eerie, abandoned runways. Talk about intelligence failure, tactical obtuseness, and strategic naiveté--sending B-17s in broad daylight over Germany in 1942-3 was all that and more. Without fighter escort, operational experience, or much knowledge of precision raids, thousands of Americans were blown apart trying to take out the industrial heart of Hitler's Europe, which spanned from the Atlantic Ocean to the gates of Moscow… There really were once things far worse than Fallujah. In juxtaposing the dreadfulness of what the airmen went through…with the calm of the post-bellum English countryside, director Henry King reminds us how easily we forget horrors of the immediate past… I fear the same may be said of Afghanistan and even Iraq in a year or two. Indeed, we already see how few talk of what it was like in the very dark days of September 2001… Do we now remember the impassable peaks, the snowy haunts of the Taliban that were too high for us, or Kabul, the dreaded graveyard of all imperial expeditions?… And it was worse still than all that: the cries on the hard left of millions of refugees to come; the European warning about thousands of dead from indiscriminate American bombing; the need to adjudicate 9/11 by jurisprudence rather than arms; and the crazy conspiracy theories of pipelines, neo-cons, 'Jews,' Likuds, and CIA plots… Do we remember all this and more when we talk nonchalantly now of elections in Afghanistan or the decency of the Karzai government?… Do we ponder if but for a second how improbable--indeed, how absolutely preposterous--it was at the time to even suggest that the Afghan people would soon stand in line hours to vote, freed from those who had so sorely oppressed them?… So, I think, it will be too even in Iraq, improbable as that may now seem to some. Already we have forgotten the long ride to Baghdad--when our ex-generals warned of thousands of dead to come in a deadly siege, and were trumped by relief workers who assured us of millions more refugees… The disappointments with the looting, the museum desecration, the shoot-out with the Hussein progeny, the flight of the U.N., the insolence of Saddam in the docket, the Halliburton pipeline, and more was hyped--and forgotten as the 24-hour news cycle sought out new prey. And it found it aplenty: …the lack of respect shown Saddam during his televised dental exam; the worldwide horror of Abu Ghraib juxtaposed to the worldwide silence over the thousands in mass graves and the televised beheadings… Does anyone at all remember any of that? And where now are Joe Wilson, Richard Clarke, Hans Blix, and all the other wizards of the moment, come and gone off the media shows and best-seller lists, who assured us that we were either liars, fools, or naifs?… Yet…here we are now on the eve of elections--the most unlikely of all events in the last half-century of civilization. Just think of it: In place of the past Hussein mass murdering and the present ogres of Fallujah, we are to witness an effort to jump-start democracy in the heart of the caliphate of old, right between the world's worst two governments in Syria and Iran, amid treacherous folk like the Saudis, Jordanians, and al Jazeera cheering the insurgents on. How did we come this far…when the unprincipled such as Jacques Chirac shunned the…democrat Allawi and sent his plane instead to fetch the murderer Arafat… There may well be even more terrible things to come in Iraq than what we have seen already, but there will also be far better things than were there before. And there will come a time, when all those who slandered the efforts--the Germans, the French, the American radical Left, the vicious Michael "Minutemen" Moore, the pampered and coddled Hollywood elite, the Arab League, and the U.N. will assume that Iraq is a "good thing" like Afghanistan, and that democracy there really was preferable--after they had so bravely weighed in with their requisite "ifs" and "buts"--to the mass murders of Saddam Hussein. Yes, they will say all this, but it will be for the rest of us to remember how it all came about and what those forgotten soldiers and people of Iraq went through to get it--lest we forget, lest we forget....
Volume IV, No. 1,009 • Thursday, December 9, 2004 WHO'LL SAVE OUR
CAMPUSES FROM MOB RULE? It happened again. For the third time in three months, hooligans in Quebec silenced a speaker they deemed controversial--and cowed the academic community. Quebec campuses are becoming laboratories for lawlessness, terrifying proof of the dangers of succumbing to mob rule and the violence veto. You don't need a PhD in history to connect the dots. On Nov. 17, threats of violence forced officials at the Université du Québec à Montréal to cancel a speech by U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci. According to the Montreal Gazette, Mary Foster, a member of Bloquez l'empire, said: "If it is Mr. Cellucci speaking his ideas, that's one thing. If it is Mr. Cellucci representing that criminal regime, that's another issue." This novel, immoral doctrine relativizes tolerances and makes rights contingent. Living in a democracy, Ms. Foster is entitled to libel a sister democracy. But has anyone bothered teaching Ms. Foster that the fascist mind would apply her argument so broadly as to eliminate her false distinction, considering any speaker to "represent" a position deemed unacceptable. In October, it was the Université de Montréal's turn to demonstrate how to cower, when student hooligans rushed the Quebec Premier Jean Charest at the podium, and he timidly cancelled his speech… "We don't want Charest on campus," Pierre Alain Benoit of the student council told the CBC. "We're angry because of cuts made to student financial aid." Have any of Mr. Benoit's professors explained that expressing anger constructively distinguishes civilized democracies from mobocracies? In September, Concordia University launched this semester of snivelling by refusing to play host to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, fearing the hooliganism that Concordia suffered two years earlier when a riot silenced former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In fairness, the Concordia administration at least offered to sponsor the Barak speech off campus--even though anti-Israel and anti-American demagogues speak in central locations on campus regularly… Cowardice is contagious… Our leaders and our teachers have failed us and our students. Quebec's Premier and leading university administrators have given hooligans a violence veto… And professors across the country…have validated the violence with their silence. Where is the outrage?… Shouldn't my colleagues be up in arms, teaching our students how to dissent peacefully?… Of course, we should not overstate the danger. Every day in every Quebec university, students engage in wide-ranging, respectful debate. But the many daily successes should not obscure the fact that these incidents of communal university failure are the tips of an iceberg of intolerance that is growing throughout North America, albeit faster in Quebec. Stories abound about professors intimidating students who dare to be pro-American or pro-Israel, about students not feeling comfortable to support George W. Bush or other politically incorrect leaders publicly, about scholars shunned for espousing unpopular views… The time has come for provincial and federal commissions to develop protocols that help administrators protect on-campus guests and empower police to arrest the criminals. The time has come for a letter from the leaders of every Canadian university reaffirming faith in campuses as bastions of free speech, broad inquiry, critical thought and civil exchange… Reporters and administrators falsely describe the Cellucci, Charest and Barak controversies as pitting "security versus constitutional rights." This is a false choice. With adequate policing and moral leadership, we can have security and constitutional rights. Moreover, I do not feel secure in a university where the threat of violence lurks, where politically correct orthodoxies smother thought, where our students...lash out like unruly children when unpopular speakers dare challenge their preconceptions. All Quebeckers, led by Mr. Charest, should apologize to Mr. Cellucci and Mr. Barak. Mr. Charest should return to the Université de Montréal and champion free speech and civility… And we all need to start asking ourselves about this cancer of intolerance that is metastasizing. Refusing to succumb is merely the first step; fighting for freedom demands vigilance and tolerance for all, on a consistent, non-partisan basis. (Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University.) BULLIES
CAN’T BE ALLOWED TO RULE Last month, B'nai Brith Canada launched a complaint to the Quebec Human Rights Commission against Concordia University, citing years of anti-Jewish discrimination and intimidation on its campuses. Some have attacked this move with comments that betray a lack of understanding of the issues involved. Clarified below are some of the reasons why B'nai Brith deems its recourse to the commission entirely appropriate. Racist bullies cannot be allowed to dictate a university's agenda. When a university denies a platform to a speaker for security reasons, kowtowing to threats from bullies and reflecting their racism, that is wrong. Yet that is what Concordia has done. The Jewish student organization Hillel invited former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak to speak at Concordia, but the university said no. Its vice-president, Michael Di Grappa, wrote in September that there is no building at the university that could be adequately secured. Concordia lamely offered to co-sponsor Barak's talk at an off-campus site. Concordia was spooked by an anti-Zionist disturbance two years earlier, when former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been scheduled to speak. Erik Yingling of the group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights said that the university was right to fear a confrontation if Barak spoke. The Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides that a complaint may be filed ''by any organization dedicated to the defence of human rights and freedoms or to the welfare of a group of persons.'' The complaint was filed by B'nai Brith and not by individual students because Jewish students at Concordia have been subject to harassment and intimidation for standing up for Jewish rights. As well, the behaviour of Concordia is not just a violation of student rights. Denial of a platform to leaders of the Jewish state is a discriminatory denial of the right to assert the right to self-determination of the Jewish people…
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights called Barak a war criminal. This charge is striking in light of who Barak is. The peace offers made by the Israeli government under Barak showed unprecedented generosity; before negotiations were suspended in January, 2001, because of the Israeli election, Barak at Taba offered the Palestinians all of Gaza and, with land swaps, about 97 per cent of the West Bank… Whether one agrees with the offers Barak made at Taba or not, any person serious about peace between the Palestinians and Israel would welcome him to Concordia with open arms. Those who oppose his presence at Concordia are likely to oppose any agreement that would frustrate the anti-Zionist dream of destroying the state of Israel… B'nai Brith decided to go directly to the Quebec Human Rights Commission and not invoke Concordia's internal complaints procedure because the procedure can consider only complaints about conduct of members of the university; the Code of Rights and Responsibilities does not allow for complaints about university policy. Moreover, only members of the university can complain. That is to say, the code requires victimized students to come forward and expose themselves to potential harassment. Furthermore, the code states that "it does not detract from the right of members of the University to seek recourse at law.''… Much confusion also arose in early November when the Montreal-based Federation Combined Jewish Appeal announced that Concordia had changed its policy and had decided to invite Barak to speak on its campus during the academic year. The reality, however, was quite different, and the university had to clarify the CJA statement with a press release: "Media coverage of a statement issued by Federation CJA yesterday has caused misunderstanding about Concordia's position regarding inviting Ehud Barak to speak at Concordia. The university's position has not changed." The Concordia policy of allowing security considerations to determine whether, when and where Barak would speak still, therefore, remains in place. So does the value of the B'nai Brith complaint to the Quebec Human Rights Commission. (David Matas, a Winnipeg lawyer, is senior counsel to B'nai Brith Canada.) CONCORDIA
PRESIDENT FREDERICK LOWY RESPONDS Concordia University is a community of learning. Throughout its history, our university has proudly brought together faculty and students of notably diverse backgrounds and opinions. The Concordia community numbers some 40,000 people. We come from more than 130 countries and learn together in both of Canada’s official languages. Over the past decade, Concordia has enjoyed tremendous growth in student numbers and in program offerings, in part because of our tradition of openness to new people and new ideas. Our commitment to diversity is one of our deepest values and one of our greatest strengths. Recently, our university has been in the headlines because of decisions made by our administration concerning a potential visit by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Because of security concerns, Concordia University had proposed (with the support of police authorities) that a university-sponsored speech by Mr. Barak be held at a site off-campus where the safety of the speaker and the audience could be assured and where normal academic activities would not be disrupted by demonstrations or protests. Our proposal was guided by our commitment to the fundamental responsibility of all community leaders to provide safety and security for its members and for its guests. It was equally respectful of our responsibility to provide opportunities for diverse points of view to be heard by our students and by the community at large. Our proposal was rejected. We regret that our community was thus deprived of a chance to be informed and challenged by Mr. Barak’s perspective on Middle East issues last fall. It is an unfortunate fact of modern university life, however, that there are individuals and groups (often from outside campus) who would exploit the openness of our community for their own political and ideological ends. They care more for their cause than for the ideal of the university or for the security of our campus and students. Unfortunately, this is the new reality for university leaders. It shapes our decisions about how to provide frameworks for a respectful exchange of ideas in full security and safety for those who participate in any discussion, especially on divisive issues. Our campus facilities were constructed for a different era. Like airports built in the 1960s and 70s, we are rushing to put in place security procedures and resources that were simply not imagined when our buildings were designed. The world has changed--most Canadian airports were not built to intentionally foil terrorists, just as Canadian universities and their lecture halls weren't designed with the need for crowd control and the possibility of violent demonstrations in mind. Concordia University is working diligently with experts through a comprehensive review of enhanced security requirements, including modifications to certain public lecture spaces. We will be receiving the expert’s evaluation in the coming weeks, and, as we have stated publicly, our intention is to host Mr. Barak on campus before the summer. At the same time, the ongoing challenge for the university and for the wider community is to work diligently to foster a climate in which the appearance of speakers on campus whose views some consider objectionable is nevertheless celebrated as an expression of what we are as a free and democratic society. In 2004, however, that requires a clear-eyed recognition that public and individual security can no longer be taken for granted. Concordia is in the process of making the necessary adjustments. No doubt other Canadian universities will have to do the same. (Frederick Lowy is president and vice-chancellor of Concordia University) Volume IV, No. 1,008 • Wednesday, December 8, 2004 WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP WEEKLY QUOTES “Unfortunately, Israel continues with its assassinations. It is therefore sending a clear message that it does not want to give a chance for things to quiet down and bring the (peace) process back on track. At a time when we are moving towards democracy, unfortunately…Israel continues with its assassinations.”—PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, calling on the international community to pressure Israel to end the raids. Israeli officials rejected Qureia’s comments, saying that while Israel has promised not to initiate any new military offensives, it would continue to go after Palestinians it believes are planning attacks. "These raids were carried out based on specific intelligence that these men were planning on carrying out suicide bombings," a senior Israeli official said. (AP, Dec. 5) “In light of the circumstances, we have no choice but to officially start attempts to broaden the coalition with Labor and the religious parties. There is no choice: either the Labour party and the religious parties join the government or we must have elections.”—PM Ariel Sharon, calling on the Likud party to approve his plan to bring the opposition Labour party and religious parties in to the government on the Dec. 9 vote. Likud activists in voted in August to halt Sharon’s dealings with Labour in hopes of scuttling his plan to withdraw Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. Sharon has lacked a majority for six months after traditional allies quit or were fired over their opposition to the Gaza Disengagement Plan. Outgoing Justice Minister Tommy Lapid indicated that his party, Shinnui, would continue to support the government on hills related to disengagement. (National Post, Dec. 3) “I am running in this democratic battle…to achieve peace on the basis of justice, freedom, the return of Palestinian refugees, and freedom for our prisoners.”—Marwan Barghouti, announcing his decision to join the race for president in a statement read by his wife. Meanwhile, Fatah's central committee called the move an "act of political irresponsibility" and said Barghouti was abandoning his Fatah affiliation by running against its candidate. “[Barghouti’s] position harms his reputation as one of the heroes of the Palestinian cause and also harms Fatah. As the presidential election draws closer, any Fatah member who goes against decisions of the movement’s central committee should resign and his membership would be cancelled,” said Farouq Kaddoumi, the new Fatah head, indicating that the movement might expel Barghouti. Meanwhile, a survey of the Arab world organized by the Al-Arabia network discovered that 73% want Hamas to replace Arafat. (National Post, Dec. 2; Ha’artez, Dec. 6; Jerusalem Post, Nov. 25) “I think if they [Palestinians] can't achieve progress in the time of the current [Israeli] prime minister, it will be very difficult to make any progress in peace. [Sharon] is capable of pursuing peace, and he is capable of reaching solutions, if he wants to. Israel's prime minister said he was ready to do what the Palestinians want, to facilitate the elections, and help in removing the checkpoints. He only asks for one thing: the end of the explosions, so they can work together on a solid basis.”–Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, marking a departure from past comments that blame Sharon for the escalation of violence in the territories. Egypt, Israel and the United States will sign a trilateral free trade pact next week that could lead to increased trade among neighbors in the Middle East. The free trade agreement, similar to the deal between Israel, Jordan and the United States, will be signed on Dec. 14 in Cairo. According to recent news reports, under the deal, U.S. import duties will be waived if 35 percent of the goods are produced by Egyptian and Israeli companies working together, and if Israel's input accounts for at least 7 percent. (Jer. Post, Dec. 8) “I love you very much. I told my brothers that if I don't get out when Arik Sharon is prime minister, I never will. I am lucky to have been born in Israel and I'm proud of it.”—Azzam Azzam, an Israeli Druse businessman arrested and jailed in Egypt eight years ago on charges of espionage, in a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Sharon minutes after arriving in Israel. Sharon told him that he had promised his family to do everything he could to release him. Sharon told Ha’aretz yesterday: “Egypt believes Israel is heading for peace, that the disengagement plan is on its way and I think they want to be involved and contribute. The steps I've taken despite all the difficulties here made it clear to them that Israel's intentions are serious and they want to cooperate with us in the political process. My ties with Egypt have become closer in recent months.” Following Azzam’s release, Israel freed six Egyptian students who were captured in August this year on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks in the south of the country. Reacting to news of Azzam’s release, the Committee to Bring Jonathan Pollard Home complained that Israel is not doing anything to get Jonathan Pollard, now entering his 20th year of a lifetime prison sentence, released from a U.S. maximum-security facility for passing on classified U.S. to Israel. (Jer. Post, Dec. 5,8) “[The United Nations] has evolved into an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic group of petty, sniping bigots who are pursuing an anti-freedom, anti-democratic, anti-American agenda. To authorize an expansion of their headquarters would be a slap in the face of American citizens.”—New York State Senator Serphin Maltese, a conservative Republican from Queens, dealing a severe blow to a UN plan to build a 35-story building on nearby parkland, by tabling a bill that would have started the process. (NYP, Dec. 2) “It is with great sadness, I see that Prof. Julian Bauer has taken the low road by making astonishingly inaccurate accusations against me and my film The Other Zionists… Contrary to Bauer’s presumptions, there are no dramatic re-enactments whatsoever in my film… The most insidious aspect of Bauer’s rant is his accusation that both the film and I are “anti-Israel.” I state for the record that I am a proud Jew and Zionist and that I am thrilled with Israel’s many accomplishments, which include the resurrection of the Hebrew language and the ingathering of exiles, not to mention magnificent creative achievements in the arts, sciences and industry...”—Eric Scott, filmmaker, responding to Prof. Julian Bauer’s critique of Scott’s documentary in the Canadian Jewish News, Nov. 18. Prof. Bauer replied: “In his very long letter…accusing me of smearing him, Eric Scott presents himself as a “proud Zionist.” For him, the movie which culminates in a last image with the inscription “From Warsaw Ghetto to Abu-Dis Ghetto,” is a proof of Zionism. For me, it is obscenity.” [To read Julian Bauer’s article on The Other Zionists click here]. “In reviewing the long history of the resolutions adopted every year at the General Assembly, I have concluded that some, including some that Canada supported, have contributed neither to strengthening dialogue nor enhancing trust between the parties. The scrutiny of the practices and responsibilities of only one of the parties undermines the likelihood of any implementation effort. The responsibilities of both parties should be emphasized, consistent with their Roadmap obligations, and fair criticism should be applied on both sides when appropriate… I want to stress that these votes do not mean that Canada is somehow opposed to Palestinian rights. Rather, they reflect our growing dissatisfaction with the work of the two UN Committees and the contents of the resolutions dealing with them.”—Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew.(National Post, Dec. 4) SHORT TAKES KARZAI SWORN IN AS NEW AFGHAN PRESIDENT—(Kabul) Yesterday, Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan’s first popularly elected president, vowing to battle terrorism and the booming narcotics trade. “We have now left a hard and dark past behind us, and today we are opening a new chapter in our history, in a spirit of friendship with the international community,” he said, promising to use his new mandate to select an efficient, reform-minded cabinet unrestrained by powerful factional and ethnic interests. (NYT, Dec. 8) GAZA SETTLEMENT ATTACKED—(Jerusalem) Earlier today, Palestinian terrorists fired two anti-tank rockets at a daycare center in the northern Gaza settlement of Nissanit. Two children suffered shock. Yesterday, 20-year-old St.-Sgt. Nadav Kudinsky was killed and four other IDF soldiers wounded while searching for illegal weapons and terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip. Claiming responsibility for the ambush, Hamas admitted that members of this terrorist organization spent four months digging a tunnel near the Karni border crossing with Israel and planted explosives inside the chicken coop that hid the entrance to the tunnel. (Ha’aretz, Jer. Post, Dec. 8) $10 MILLION REWARD FOR MIA INFORMATION—(Jerusalem) The Born to Freedom Foundation, dedicated to securing the return of Israeli MIA Ron Arad, offered a $10 million US reward to anyone with accurate information on the missing navigator. Arad disappeared 18 years ago when he bailed out of his jet over Lebanon. Israel believes that he is still alive and is being kept prison in Lebanon or Iran. (JTA, Dec. 8; Jer. Post, Dec. 7) ISRAELI ARAB SUSPECTED OF SPYING FOR IRAN—(Jerusalem) On November 9, Israeli authorities arrested Arab Israeli Mohammed Ghanem on charges of aiding an enemy state in wartime. The Shin Bet believes that Ghanen recruited terrorists and distributed he received from Iran to the families of suicide bombers in the West Bank. (Ha’aretz, Dec. 7) HAMAS REJECTS CEASEFIRE—(Gaza City) Rejecting the more conciliatory stance of West Bank Hamas leader Sheik Hasan Yousef, Hamas announced that it would not stop its terrorist attacks against Israel during the lead up to the January 9th Palestinian presidential elections. “Not a single word was said about a truce,” insisted Gazan Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar. “We are defending ourselves and our people, pushing the Israelis out of our land.” PA leaders urged Hamas and other terrorist groups to refrain from carrying out attacks during the presidential campaign to convince Israel to open roadblocks and ease its restrictions on Palestinian cities. (Washington Times, Dec. 8; Globe and Mail, Dec. 6) PALESTINIANS SEEK $4 BILLION AID—(Jerusalem) In an effort to curtail a growing economic crisis, the Palestinian Authority will ask donor countries gathered in Oslo for approximately $4 billion in aid over next three years. According to Palestinian officials, the PA would use this money to finance infrastructure projects such as the construction of airports and seaports, to create jobs, and to help with the 2005 budget. The PA also plans to use $400 million to restructure its security apparatus, and wants $200 million of that total in 2005. (Ha’aretz, Dec. 7) PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS KILL SUSPECTED COLLABORATOR—(Jerusalem) Members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade killed a 19-year-old suspected of helping Israel capture wanted Palestinian terrorists. An Al-Aqsa spokesman maintained that the teenager, Jad al-Hindi, tracked three of its members killed by the IDF in Ramallah on November 21st. Palestinian terrorists have murdered dozens of suspected collaborators during the four years of the Second Intifada. (Ha’aretz, Dec. 6) NEW IRAQI PARTY SANCTIONS RELATIONS WITH ISRAEL—(Jerusalem) Mithal al-Alusi’s Nation Democrat Party, which calls for the establishment of diplomatic relations with the State of Israel, will compete in the upcoming Iraqi elections. “The style of rule of Saddam Hussein must change in the direction of closeness with Israel,” insisted Alusi, who faced great criticism and was removed from the leadership of another political party because of his recent visit to the Jewish State. (Ha’aretz, Nov. 26) BRITISH ACADEMICS LAUNCH NEW BOYCOTT—(London) “Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Strategies and Principles,” an academic conference hosted by the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies called for a new academic boycott of Israel. Conference organizers encouraged members of the academic community to bar Israeli scholars and research institutes from participating in international conferences unless they support the Palestinian cause. The university of London issued a statement distancing itself from the conference. (Ha’aretz, Dec. 4; JTA, Jer. Post, Dec. 8) CANADIAN JUSTICE MINISTER HONORED BY JTS—(Jerusalem) The Jewish Theological Seminary in Jerusalem awarded Canada’s Justice Minister Irwin Cotler an honorary doctorate “for his tireless efforts to advance human rights and human rights legislation around the world, his international advocacy against racism and discrimination of any kind, his contribution to both civil society and the Jewish community in Canada and his lifetime public defense of oppressed Jewry.” Cotler was a leading figure in the campaign to free Natan Sharansky and Nelson Mandela. (Jer. Post, Dec. 5) UNITED TALMUD TORAH LIBRARY REOPENS—(Montreal) Montreal’s United Talmud Torah elementary school reopened its library yesterday, eight months after a firebomb destroyed it. The Azrieli Library, named for its largest donor, David Azrieli, houses the more than ten thousand books donated from around the world after the devastating attack. Sleiman Elmerhebi, 19, faces charges of conspiracy and arson for carrying out the firebombing, and his mother, Rouba, stand accused as an accessory after the fact. The pair will appear in court on December 16. In October, prosecutors dropped the charges against a second teenager. (Gazette, Dec. 7) Volume IV, No. 1,007 • Tuesday, December 7, 2004 THE FESTIVAL OF
LIGHTS: HANUKKAH 5765 In loving memory of Malca, z”l In the year 167 BC Judea was a scene of total destruction. A Syrian garrison was encamped in Acra, in the desecrated temple, the worship of Yahweh had been supplanted by the cult of Zeus. King Antiochus’ officials roamed the land ordering the Jews to observe the reprehensible royal edicts calling for national apostasy. And in the deserts and mountain gorges, Judean patriots, outraged by the atrocities of the despotic king, prepared to raise the banner of revolt against the oppressors of their homeland. During this time of turmoil there lived, in the town of Modiin, among the Judean hills between Jerusalem and Jaffa, a priest, Mattathias ben Johanan of the Hasmonean family. He and his five sons, Johanan, Simon, Judah, Jonathan and Elatar, were among the active patriots who strove to prepare the people for armed uprising against the oppressors. The heroic twenty-five-year struggle for independence would ultimately be crowned with success. The nation acquired not only religious, but also, political freedom. Hanukkah, which literally means “dedication”, tells the story of the Maccabees, who fought for Jewish beliefs, traditions and values. It is a story of Jewish commitment, vitality and dynamism. Bravery and unflinching adherence to the values of Torah law characterized the Jewish heroes and heroines of the Hanukkah story. Judah Maccabee and his men celebrated the first Hanukkah; “they built high walls and strong towers around Mount Zion, so that the gentiles never again come and destroy them, as they had done before.” (1 MACC: 4: 60-61) The message and lesson of Hanukkah are clear to anyone who reads the Biblical books of the Maccabees. Only by following the lessons of our history can we rekindle the Hanukkah spirit of our tradition, and give the Jewish people the strength to be a light unto the nations. Nothing is more miraculous than the survival, both physically and spiritually, of the Jewish people. (This year, two Israeli scientists received the Nobel Prize.) While celebrating Hanukkah 5765, let us remember the heroes and heroines of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, who never put down their weapons, nor gave up their faith. Let us remember the innocent and beloved people who were killed by the hands of murderous terrorists, and our brave new Maccabees, our Israeli soldiers who have fallen in the ongoing struggle for the freedom, independence, and security of the Land of Israel, the Jewish State. The waves of hatred that we are witnessing today are not only focussed on Israel, but also on the Jewish people wherever they are. “Old Europe” is leading, again, the storm of hatred against the Jewish people. We have a long history of surviving--and so we defy the current thugs, murderers and haters, as we defied all our enemies before them. We go on today, one generation following the other, we remember, and our roots in our ancient Israel, our old-new homeland, grow stronger and stronger. DAVKA! We must never, ever, let history repeat itself. We must--and we will--remember! Hod Avinu Chai, Am Israel Chai! Chag Urim Sameach! (Baruch Cohen is Research Chairman of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research) A
FIGHT FOR SHIITES In 1864, 11 of the 36 states did not participate in the presidential election. Was Lincoln's election therefore illegitimate? In 1868, three years after the security situation had, shall we say, stabilized, three states (not insignificant ones: Texas, Virginia and Mississippi) did not participate in the election. Was Grant's election illegitimate? There has been much talk that if the Iraqi election is held and some Sunni Arab provinces (perhaps three of the 18) do not participate, the election will be illegitimate. Nonsense. The election should be held. It should be open to everyone. If Iraq's Sunni Arabs--barely 20 percent of the population--decide they cannot abide giving up their 80 years of minority rule, ending with 30 years of Saddam Hussein's atrocious tyranny, then tough luck. They forfeit their chance to shape and participate in the new Iraq. Americans are dying right now to give them that very chance. The United States is making a costly last-ditch effort to midwife a new, unitary Iraq. The Fallujah and related offensives are designed to reduce the brutal intimidation of the Sunni population by the dead-end Baathists and others seeking to retake the power they enjoyed under Hussein. But when those offensives are over, the Sunnis themselves--ordinary people who, out of either fear or sympathy, have been giving refuge and support to the terrorist insurgents--will have to make a choice. Either they join the new Iraq by participating in the coming election or they institutionalize the civil war their side has already begun. People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war. It is raging before our eyes. Problem is, only one side is fighting it. The other side, the Shiites and the Kurds, are largely watching as their part of the fight is borne primarily by the United States. Both have an interest in the outcome. The Shiites constitute a majority of Iraqis and will inevitably inherit power in any democratic arrangement. The Kurds want to retain their successful autonomous zone without worrying about new depredations at the hands of the Sunni Arabs. This is the Shiites' and Kurds' fight. Yet when police stations are ravaged by Sunni Arab insurgents in Mosul, U.S. soldiers are rushed in to fight them. The obvious question is: Why don't we unleash the fierce and well-trained Kurdish pesh merga militias on them? (Mosul is heavily Kurdish and suffered a terrible Kurdish expulsion under Hussein.) Yes, some of the Iraqi police/National Guard units fighting with our troops are largely Kurdish. But they, like the Shiites, fight in an avowedly nonsectarian Iraqi force. Why? Because we want to maintain this idea of a unified, non-ethnic Iraq. At some point, however, we must decide whether that is possible, and how many American lives should be sacrificed in its name. Seven months ago I wrote in this space that while our "goal has been to build a united, pluralistic, democratic Iraq in which the factions negotiate their differences the way we do in the West" that "may be, in the short run, a bridge too far… [W]e should lower our ambitions and see Iraqi factionalization as a useful tool." For example, we (and the British) are spearheading a new counteroffensive against Sunni guerrillas south of Baghdad. Where are the Shiites? I understand Shiite wariness about fighting with us. It is not, as conventional wisdom has it, because of some deep-seated Iraqi nationalism. In 1991 the Shiites were begging the United States to intervene during their uprising against Hussein. They were dying, literally, for the U.S. Army to help them. Unfortunately, and the misfortune haunts us to this day, they were betrayed. Having encouraged them to rebel, we did not lift a finger as Hussein slaughtered them by the thousands. Given that history, they are today understandably wary about American steadfastness and intentions. If they do go out on a limb and pick up the fight against the insurgent Sunnis, will we leave them hanging again? Our taking on the Sunnis is a way of demonstrating good faith. As is our intention to hold the election no matter what. Everyone knows the outcome will be a historic transfer of power to the Shiites (and, to some extent, the Kurds). We must make it clear that we will be there to support that new government. But we also have to make it clear that we are not there to lead the fight indefinitely. It is their civil war. IRAQ’S
LOST LESSONS Something remarkable is happening in Iraq. There is a civil war going on and the terrorists are losing… Iraq is currently undergoing a post-Saddam revolution. Last April, when the Marines first attempted to take over Fallujah from the Sunni terrorists, they were joined by an Iraqi army brigade led by a general from the former regime. His troops quickly went AWOL and joined the ranks of the terrorists in fighting American forces. Under pressure from the UN, the Coalition Provisional Authority… lost its nerve to continue fighting… This month's combined US-Iraqi offensive into Fallujah was different. It was marked by tight cooperation between the Iraqi and American forces on the ground, and ordered by Iraq's Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who didn't back down even when three of his relatives were kidnapped by the terrorists. The new Iraqi army that is now being trained is the first instance of an Arab army to be developed to fight Arab and Islamic terrorists… In addition to the new Iraqi government's determination to fight on the side of the US on the battlefields, it is also fighting the intellectual war against terror. This week, in an interview with the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Aswat, Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan branded Al-Jazeera television station a "channel of terrorism."… As PLO chieftains…defend their regime-controlled media's dissemination of constant calls for jihad against Israel and the US as an exercise of free speech, Iraq's leaders are admitting openly that these media operations are part and parcel of the terror arsenal… Ahead of the January 30 elections scheduled to be held in Iraq, some 126 political parties have registered to run…[M]any of them are regular political parties that want to earn power and a piece of the pie through the democratic process… Unfortunately, even as US President George W. Bush gives full-throated support for the establishment of a terror-fighting Palestinian democracy, the lessons of the Iraqi experience seem lost on one and all… For the past four years, every time Israel or the US has demanded that the PLO leadership take action against terrorists, the Palestinians…have refused, claiming that they will not fight against their brothers and that there will not be a Palestinian civil war. Now, with Arafat dead, we see Israel's elites…buying into the notion that the only "legitimate" Palestinian leaders are those who have been active in terrorism and who support the view that Israel must be destroyed by hook or by crook.. Arafat confidant Abdel Bari Atwan…admitted this week to The Jerusalem Post that after signing the Oslo Accords in 1993, Arafat told him, "The day will come when you will see thousands of Jews fleeing Palestine. I will not live to see this, but you will definitely see it in your lifetime. The Oslo Accords will help bring this about."… While Israelis, like the Americans and Europeans, apparently think they have no power to force a regime change among the Palestinians, the fact of the matter is that their pining after Palestinian terror chiefs has given the Palestinian leadership license to become more extreme. Ahmed Qurei told the US consul in Jerusalem last week that he wants to bring the Fatah's Aksa Martyrs' Brigades terror group into the "reformed" Palestinian official militias. The State Department reacted by declaring that, for the first time, they would be giving $20 million in direct aid to the PA. It should be noted that the Martyrs' Brigades have carried out more terrorist attacks than either Hamas or Islamic Jihad… Since 2002, their main supporter, as is the case with Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah, has been Iran… And so, those who would wish for a true and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians gaze longingly at Iraq. If the experience there has shown anything, it has shown that it is possible to topple terrorist regimes and it is possible to build the organs of a democracy in the Arab world. Why are Iraq's lessons lost on the Palestinians? Volume IV, No. 1,006 • Monday, December 6, 2004 BOSTON SUBURB
MAY BECOME FIRST US CITY Somerville, a community abutting both Boston and Cambridge, could become the first US city to divest from Israel… The measure stems from alleged Israeli human rights abuses and calls on Somerville's retirement board to rid the city's pension fund of $250,000 of Israel Bonds and other investments in American companies that "manufacture military equipment used in Israel's illegal military occupation," such as Caterpillar and Boeing… The proposal came close to passing without debate when it was introduced on October 28, but the Board of Aldermen, Somerville's 11-member legislative body, decided to host a public hearing on November 8 to let the other side have its say. They will consider whether or not to modify the measure and hold a final vote at a legislative committee meeting on December 7. The resolution is non-binding, since the retirement board is independent of the board of aldermen. The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston (JCRC) is optimistic that the flood of e-mails, phone calls and public testimony its constituency has unleashed in the past month will stymie the measure. The resolution was drafted by the grassroots Somerville Divestment Project, which presented a petition with 1,200 signatures and lobbied aldermen to back the proposal. Eight signed on as sponsors, but several of them have since backtracked, and some have suggested the December 7 meeting will result in a watered-down general resolution on the Middle East peace process--or in the measure being buried in committee. "It was a mistake to get involved in the first place," Alderman Bruce Desmond, a cosponsor of the resolution who has since decided to vote against it, told The Jerusalem Post. "My intentions were just to make a statement about human rights, and unfortunately I hadn't taken into consideration what kind of division it would cause in the city, and the arguments in the rest of the community that were quite strong."… "A lot of the board has become enlightened by the discussion in the community," said Alderman Tom Taylor after the hearing in which scores of divestment foes showed up. "I didn't expect such a strong reaction at all."… To the Somerville Divestment Project, however, it's the city that has unfairly singled out one country. According to Annique Caplan, a member of the project's board of directors, Israel is the only country in which the retirement board holds bonds. If Burma or even an independent Palestine were similarly invested in, Caplan maintained, her group would call for divestment there, too. In any case, Mayor Joe Curtatone, who spoke against the resolution at the contentious November 8 hearing, promised to veto the measure… While Caplan said her organization is still "hopeful" that its motion will prevail, she added, "We're realistic that when anyone…is confronted with a certain level of feeling intimidated and doesn't know what the ramifications…of taking a position might be, it remains hard to take a position." She also charged that, "The retribution is so intense for anyone who takes a position that is supportive of the protection of Palestinians..." Aldermen such as Taylor vociferously challenged the claim that they had been intimidated by anti-divestment forces, asserting, "It hasn't intimidated me. It's just caused me to look at it a little closer." JCRC deputy director Alan Ronkin termed the charge "libelous" and said that there aren't enough Jews in the city to politically threaten the elected officials… Though the Somerville Divestment Project might be the most far along in pushing municipalities to divest, it's not the only such attempt. The Palestine Solidarity Committee has for years been prodding Seattle to divest from American companies selling military equipment that Israel uses in the West Bank and Gaza. So far, their efforts haven't been met with much success, as the City Council hasn't even been willing to meet with them. But PSC volunteer Edward Mast said the group is carefully following the "inspiring" project in Somerville… "They've won in some senses," the JCRC's Ronkin acknowledged. "Their goal is to delegitimize Israel [and] they've put Israel on the defensive." MEASURE
PALESTINIAN FREEDOM, NOT SUMMITS The death of Yasser Arafat has once again placed the search for peace at a crossroads. Ten years ago, policymakers took the wrong road, believing that peace could be made with a dictatorship. Today, we must instead embrace a peace process that is anchored in the expansion of freedom within Palestinian society. The temptation to return to the Oslo formula will be very great. Today, many hope to identify a Palestinian strongman as quickly as possible who can prevent chaos, rein in the extremists, and reach a deal with Israel. Similarly, many view the upcoming Palestinian elections as an opportunity to legitimize a Palestinian leadership that could quickly be "strengthened" by Western and Israeli largesse. This was exactly the misguided approach to peace that failed so miserably over the last decade. According to the logic of Oslo, a "moderate" like Arafat should be embraced and empowered by the free world so that he would be strong enough to fight terror and reach an agreement with Israel. Unfortunately, little attention was paid to how Arafat ruled. In fact, far from being considered an obstacle to peace, Arafat's repressive rule was seen as facilitating peace. As prime minister Yitzhak Rabin put it only days after Oslo was signed, Arafat would fight Hamas "without a Supreme Court, without human rights organizations, and without all sorts of bleeding-heart liberals." What was not understood then, or often even now, is that a non-democratic Palestinian regime will, by its nature, always threaten Israel. Non-democratic regimes always need to mobilize their people against external enemies to maintain internal stability. This is why the regime in Egypt, having lost Israel as a political enemy by signing a peace treaty, sponsors what is perhaps the most rabid anti-Semitic incitement on earth. That is also why the Saudi regime funds a Wahhabi fanaticism at home and abroad that is terrorizing our entire world. And that is why the Palestinian Authority used all the resources, not to improve the lives of Palestinians but rather to strengthen hatred toward Israel… We…should seek to find concrete means to determine whether Palestinians are making progress on democratic reforms, so we can link our policies directly to such reforms. In addition to the obvious need to preserve the Palestinians' right of dissent… there are other reliable measures of the new leadership's commitment to reform. First, that leadership can finally seek to end the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who live in refugee camps. Four generations of Palestinian refugees have been used as pawns in the Arab world's struggle against the Jewish state. These refugee camps should be dismantled as soon as possible and the refugees resettled in decent housing. A leadership that is willing to end the fantasy of destroying Israel and begin to actually improve the conditions in which Palestinians live should be embraced by the free world with a new international Marshall Plan that can put an end to a shameful humanitarian disaster. Second, the new leadership can stop poisoning Palestinians to hate Jews and the Jewish state. Textbooks where Israel does not appear on the map and PA-controlled television programs where kindergarten children beckon their classmates to follow the path of suicide martyrdom should be replaced with an educational system that promotes peace... Finally, a new Palestinian leadership that is committed to reform will be our partners in fighting terror, for as long as terror continues no reform will be possible. We should be under no illusions about the upcoming Palestinian elections. The winner of these elections…will not have anything to do with democracy. The winner will be chosen well before Palestinians go to the polls… Still, whoever emerges from the elections in January should be given an opportunity to win the trust of the free world, including Israel. How can a new Palestinian leadership win our trust? Simple. By trusting its own people. If the new Palestinian leadership seeks to build a democratic society, then [it] should be provided with international legitimacy, money and, yes, territory. But if the new leadership is not interested in building a democracy, then it should be given no legitimacy, no money, and no concessions… In the weeks, months, and years ahead, those who want to know the state of the peace process might want to tune out all the chatter and ask themselves one question: Is there more freedom today within Palestinian society than there was last week, last month, or last year? If the answer is yes, then we will truly be moving down the road to peace. (Natan Sharansky is Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Jerusalem, and co-author, with Ron Dermer, of The Case for Democracy.) A
NEW KIND OF ANTI-ISRAEL PROPAGANDA Earlier this Fall, I received a phone message from filmmaker Eric Scott inviting me to the launch of the movie The Other Zionists, about Machsom Watch, an Israeli organization that is against occupation and checkpoints… The movie is a remarkable propaganda weapon against Israel. It has not too much to offer about the “other Zionists,” but a lot for all people who condemn, attack, and delegitimize Israel… The movie is a tribute to Ronnee Jaeger, founder of Machsom Watch. She does not explain that checkpoints, as inconvenient as they are, offer a way to limit terrorist attacks in Israel. She does not utter a word about the origins of the “occupied territories,” nothing about the Six Day War, nothing about Jewish rights, but she repeats, again and again, that she loves Israel and because of this, she wants to get rid of the occupation. For this purpose, she does not hesitate to condemn Israel. She suggests that instead of victims, we have become victimizers… Another star in the movie is Gideon Levy, a writer for the daily Ha’aretz, who repeats, again and again, that Israel is very strong, that it is not facing any serious threat. Scott is aware that to be effective, you have to appear neutral. Woven into the many interviews with Palestinian victims of harassment at checkpoints, and comments by not-too-smart Israeli soldiers, another viewpoint is presented from time to time. A soldier states that his previous opposition to the fence changed when he noticed its effectiveness--the number of terrorist attacks drop when there is a fence. A woman says that after being in a terrorist attack, she does not trust the Arabs any more. We even see a scene of a terrorist bombing. But all these fragments are immediately drowned in a sea of anti-Israel rhetoric. A Palestinian Arab recalls how he was nearly beaten to death. Apparently he recovered quickly. When a corpse is shown on the screen, it is clearly not a picture taken during that beating, and therefore, it is a reconstruction of the scene without acknowledging that fact. The best part of the movie, if you hate Israel and the Jewish People, and the worst part, if you love them, is the subtle message that Israel is the new Nazi entity. This is not said in so many words but recurs regularly in the movie: a professor ridicules the idea that Israel is in danger. Levy, by his incantation that “not to know is not an excuse,” implicitly refers to the excuse given by Nazis after the war… Readers will be happy to learn that this propaganda movie received funds from both the Canadian and Quebec governments and that a few Canadian Jews are listed as contributors. (Julien Bauer, a political science professor at the Université du Quebec à Montreal, is a member of CIJR’s academic council.) Volume IV, No. 1,005 • Friday, December 3, 2004 TWO GREAT DISSIDENTS When Natan Sharansky stepped into Condoleezza Rice's West Wing office at 11:15 last Thursday morning, he had no idea the national security advisor would soon be named the next secretary of state. He was just glad to see her holding a copy of his newly published book, The Case for Democracy. "I'm already half-way through your book," Rice said. "Do you know why I'm reading it?" Sharansky, a self-effacing man who spent nine years in KGB prisons (often in solitary confinement) before becoming the first political prisoner released by Mikhail Gorbachev, hoped it had to do with his brilliant analysis and polished prose. Rice smiled. "I'm reading it because the president is reading it, and it's my job to know what the president is thinking." A close friend of the president had sent over a copy several weeks earlier with a note urging him to take a close look. The president nearly polished it off during a weekend at Camp David, then suggested to Rice that she read it as well. For nearly 40 minutes, Rice engaged Sharansky—now an Israeli cabinet member—and co-author Ron Dermer, a former columnist with the Jerusalem Post, in a discussion over how best to help democracy take root in such hard soils as Iraq, Iran, and the West Bank and Gaza. At precisely 2 P.M., Sharansky and Dermer were ushered into the Oval Office for a private meeting with the president. They were scheduled for 45 minutes. They stayed for more than an hour. What the president told Sharansky was off the record. What Sharansky told the president was not. "I told the president, 'There is a great difference between politicians and dissidents. Politicians are focused on polls and the press. They are constantly making compromises. But dissidents focus on ideas. They have a message burning inside of them. They would stand up for their convictions no matter what the consequences.' "I told the president, 'In spite of all the polls warning you that talking about spreading democracy in the Middle East might be a losing issue—despite all the critics and the resistance you faced—you kept talking about the importance of free societies and free elections. You kept explaining that democracy is for everybody. You kept saying that only democracy will truly pave the way to peace and security. You, Mr. President, are a dissident among the leaders of the free world.'" From one of the most famous dissidents of era of the Evil Empire, such is not faint praise. Early in The Case for Democracy, Sharansky, 56, recalls another Soviet-era dissident named Andrei Amalrik, who in 1969 wrote, Will The Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? Predicting the Communist empire's inevitable collapse, Amalrik, who was imprisoned by the KGB for his observations (and whom Sharansky later had the privilege of teaching English), explained that "any state forced to devote so much of its energies to physically and psychologically controlling millions of its own subjects could not survive indefinitely." Sharansky writes: "The unforgettable image he left the reader with was that of a soldier who must always point a gun at his enemy. His arms begin to tire until their weight becomes unbearable. Exhausted, he lowers his weapon and the prisoner escapes." At the time, many so-called "democrats" in the West dismissed Amalrik as downright delusional. But his prediction proved to be off by only a few years. "How was one Soviet dissident able to see what legions of analysts and policymakers in the West were blind to?" asks Sharansky. "Did Amalrik have access to more information than they did? Was he smarter than all the Sovietologists put together? Of course not.... But unlike them, he understood the awesome power of freedom." For Sharansky, this is the critical line of demarcation in the war on terror, dividing the naysayers from those who both believe in and are willing to fight for the notion that freedom is a universal human right. He is convinced that democratic institutions can take hold throughout the Middle East. He concedes it will not be easy, but argues the key is bold moral leadership from the West of the kind that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher demonstrated in the 1980s. "Everybody knows that weapons of mass destruction are very dangerous in the hands of terrorists," says Sharansky, his passion as strong as his accent. "But very few people understand how powerful weapons of mass construction can be in the hands the free world. There are so many skeptics, so many people who doubt whether Iraqis and Palestinians really want to live in freedom, or whether democracy in the Middle East is really such a good idea. But I lived under a totalitarian regime. I know the horrors of these regimes from the inside. I know they can be transformed. They won't be perfect, and they won't agree with us on every issue. But it is better to have a democracy that hates you than a dictatorship that loves you." Sharansky cites the example of post-World War II Germany. Many doubted a true democracy could ever take root amidst the ashes of the Third Reich. But it has. True, most Germans opposed the recent war in Iraq and increasingly side against the U.S. in international policy debates. But so what? Sharansky asks. At least they are not carpet-bombing the whole of Europe. Toward the end of the book, Sharansky quotes current Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as having once told him, "I understand that in the Soviet Union your ideas were important, but unfortunately they have no place in the Middle East." Sharansky respectfully disagrees. With the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, and the passing of Yasser Arafat, Sharansky calls himself "an optimist." Never before in human history has the moment been more ripe for Iraqis and Palestinians to hear and embrace the case for democracy. The transitions for both will be difficult. But Sharansky is not daunted. "When given a real opportunity to choose between living in a free society or a fear society, the vast majority of people will choose a free society. And a free society—a society where people feel safe to argue and dissent—will always be a stable society." This is what Sharansky is working for, and he has just earned the ear of the president of the United States and the new secretary of state. (Joel C. Rosenberg, briefly served as a senior advisor to Natan Sharansky in the year 2000.) THE
CLASSIC EXCUSE OF ANTI-SEMITES Lower Canada College likes to think that it's training Canada's future elites. That is why it has recently engaged in an intensive effort to shore up its image in the wake of a scandal in which students were discovered counterfeiting $10-bills. Now it has acknowledged that some of its students had placed in the LCC yearbook two encrypted messages calling for ''death to all Jews.'' The school rightly recalled the volumes and called in the students involved together with their parents. What is missing, however, is a sense that LCC's headmaster and administration have any idea of the true significance of the students' action. That action was dismissed by the headmaster as a ''weird prank'' by kids "who have a lot of Jewish friends.'' Parents and students seem to agree that ''goofiness rather than hatred'' is behind it all. The organized Jewish community is satisfied that the incident is, in the words of B'nai Brith Canada's Allen Adel, "more indicative of immaturity and ignorance than hatred." And since the students had already graduated, there are, of course, no further consequences to them for their act. There are, however, consequences for society outside the confines of Lower Canada College, whose motto, Non Nobis Solum (Not for Ourselves Alone), takes on an entirely new significance. Those students who thought calling for the extermination of the Jews was a harmless, goofy prank are a symptom of a society which sends them the message that calling for the death of Jews is not anti-Semitism because they do not "mean it." When challenged, they can always say, "but some of my best friends are Jewish." This is the classic excuse of anti-Semites. One of the greatest anti-Semites in history, Heinrich Himmler, understood this phenomenon. In a speech on the "final solution" delivered to SS officers in Poznan on October 4, 1943, he said: ''I am talking about the 'Jewish evacuation': the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. 'The Jewish people is being exterminated'; every Party member will tell you, 'perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a small matter.' And then along they all come, all the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say: all the others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew.'' Every anti-Semite has his ''first-class Jew." Those who would destroy the state of Israel point to anti-Zionist Jews who support their cause and appear at every demonstration against Israel. Those who don't like to be reminded of the Holocaust and its consequences rather appreciate those Jews, like Noam Chomsky, who see the Holocaust as an Israeli weapon and thus seek its minimization or denial. It must be understood, and become part of our mind set that anti-Semites are not merely those who actively seek to eradicate the Jews from the face of the Earth. They also include those who would not willingly harm a hair on a Jewish head, but are eminently comfortable in a society in which those who call for the death of the Jews can do so with no tangible consequences. Holocausts are not made by bestial murderers alone. They are also enabled by perfectly nice people who tolerate a society in which calling for the death of the Jews, or desecrating a Jewish cemetery, is no more than a teenage prank. The LCC students' act might not have had consequences to them, but they have for us. Events like the firebombing of the United Talmud Torahs School, or of the denial of a forum for Israeli politicians at Concordia University and for the American ambassador at l'Université du Quebec a Montreal for fear of mob violence, do not arise in a vacuum. This is something that we as Canadians need to consider, and that Lower Canada College needs to ponder as it educates a new generation of Canada's leading citizens. Shabbat Shalom to all our readers! (Ira Robinson, a professor of Judaic studies at Concordia University, is member of CIJR’s Academic Council.)
Volume IV, No. 1,004 Thursday, December 2, 2004
KOFI ANNAN MUST
GO …Over the past seven months, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, has conducted an exhaustive, bipartisan investigation into the scandal surrounding the U.N. Oil-for-Food program… Our Investigative Subcommittee has gathered overwhelming evidence that Saddam turned this program on its head. Rather than erode his grip on power, the program was manipulated by Saddam to line his own pockets and actually strengthen his position… At our hearing on Nov. 15, we presented evidence that Saddam accumulated more than $21 billion through abuses of the Oil-for-Food program and U.N. sanctions. We continue to amass evidence that he used the overt support of prominent members of the U.N., such as France and Russia, along with numerous foreign officials, companies and possibly even senior U.N. officials, to exploit the program to his advantage. We have obtained evidence that indicates that Saddam doled out lucrative oil allotments to foreign officials, sympathetic journalists and even one senior U.N. official, in order to undermine international support for sanctions. In addition, we are gathering evidence that Saddam gave hundreds of thousands--maybe even millions--of Oil-for-Food dollars to terrorists and terrorist organizations. All of this occurred under the supposedly vigilant eye of the U.N. While many questions concerning Oil-for-Food remain unanswered, one conclusion has become abundantly clear: Kofi Annan should resign… I have arrived at this conclusion because the most extensive fraud in the history of the U.N. occurred on his watch. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, as long as Mr. Annan remains in charge, the world will never be able to learn the full extent of the bribes, kickbacks and under-the-table payments that took place under the U.N.'s collective nose… The consequences of the U.N.'s ineptitude cannot be overstated: Saddam was empowered to withstand the sanctions regime, remain in power, and even rebuild his military. Needless to say, he made the Iraqi people suffer even more by importing substandard food and medicine under the Oil-for-Food program… Since it was never likely that the U.N. Security Council, some of whose permanent members were awash in Saddam's favors, would ever call for Saddam's removal, the U.S. and its coalition partners were forced to put troops in harm's way to oust him by force. Today, money swindled from Oil-for-Food may be funding the insurgency against coalition troops in Iraq and other terrorist activities against U.S. interests. Simply put, the troops would probably not have been placed in such danger if the U.N. had done its job in administering sanctions and Oil-for-Food. This systemic failure of the U.N. and Oil-for-Food is exacerbated by evidence that at least one senior U.N. official--Benon Sevan, Mr. Annan's hand-picked director of the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food oversight agency--reportedly received bribes from Saddam. According to documents from the Iraqi oil ministry that were obtained by us, Mr. Sevan received several allotments of oil under Oil-for-Food, each of which was worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. To make matters worse, the actions of Mr. Annan's own son have been called into question. Specifically, the U.N. recently admitted that Kojo Annan received more money than previously disclosed from a Swiss company named Cotecna, which was hired by the U.N. to monitor Iraq's imports under Oil-for-Food… Mr. Annan has named the esteemed Paul Volcker to investigate Oil-for-Food-related allegations, but the latter's team is severely hamstrung in its efforts. His panel has no authority to compel the production of documents or testimony from anyone outside the U.N. Nor does it possess the power to punish those who fabricate information, alter evidence or omit material facts. It must rely entirely on the goodwill of the very people and entities it is investigating. We must also recognize that Mr. Volcker's effort is wholly funded by the U.N., at Mr. Annan's control. Moreover, Mr. Volcker must issue his final report directly to the secretary general, who will then decide what, if anything, is released to the public. Therefore, while I have faith in Mr. Volcker's integrity and abilities, it is clear the U.N. simply cannot root out its own corruption while Mr. Annan is in charge… [A] scandal of this magnitude requires a truly independent examination to ensure complete transparency, and to restore the credibility of the U.N. To that end, I reiterate our request for access to internal U.N. documents, and for access to U.N. personnel who were involved in the Oil-for-Food program. All of this adds up to one conclusion: It's time for Kofi Annan to step down. The massive scope of this debacle demands nothing less. If this widespread corruption had occurred in any legitimate organization around the world, its CEO would have been ousted long ago, in disgrace. Why is the U.N. different? (Senator Coleman is chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.) FATAL
FAILURE Last June, the United Nations held its first-ever conference on anti-Semitism. Though the organization's very raison d'etre rises from the ruins of Auschwitz and Belsen, it has never produced a single resolution dedicated to combating anti-Semitism or a report devoted to this devastating global phenomenon. For those who saw light at the end of the tunnel, this week the prospect of enlightenment at the General Assembly came to an inglorious conclusion. One mention of "anti-Semitism" made it into one paragraph of a general resolution on religious intolerance. Fifty-four U.N. states—of the 153 members that cast votes—refused to support even that. What's going on? Let's connect the dots. Immediately before voting against concern for anti-Semitism, the same countries refused to support a call for governments "to ensure effective protection of the right to life...and to investigate...all killings committed for any discriminatory reason, including sexual orientation." Anti-Semitism and killing people because of their sexual orientation are acceptable to almost every one of the 56 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The resolution involving killing homosexuals is only one of many U.N. human-rights resolutions in which the OIC stands with the violator, not the victim. The real question is: How do they get away with it, let alone pass themselves off as seriously interested in human rights, including those of Palestinians?… The willing vehicle for such a heist is the United Nations. The U.N.'s June anti-Semitism conference served to invigorate their well-versed two-track approach: Put the Jews on one side, Israel on the other, and divide and conquer... Track One works this way. Over the last three months the possibility of a U.N. resolution dedicated to anti-Semitism has been under discussion. A full-fledged resolution offers the potential of serious examination of the phenomenon, including new forms of anti-Semitism with the Jewish state as its victim. The battle associated with presenting a new and substantive stand-alone anti-Semitism resolution, however, scared off every democratic U.N. member state. The next idea was to have the European Union (EU) sponsor a resolution on anti-Semitism modeled on the Berlin Declaration, which was adopted in April by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE had eked out: "...international developments or political issues, including those in Israel or elsewhere in the Middle East, never justify anti-Semitism." Europeans could not quite bring themselves to say that terrorism aimed at ethnically cleansing Israel of Jews was also a form of anti-Semitism. But the Berlin Declaration's mention of the word "Israel" in the context of "anti-Semitism" put Arab and Islamic states at the U.N. on the warpath (yet another one). Some hoped the Germans would take a leadership role in campaigning for a specific anti-Semitism resolution at the General Assembly. In true gangland style, Germany was soon given to understand that such a role would jeopardize its hoped-for permanent seat on the Security Council, and any sense of historical responsibility vanished… More sympathetic EU-wannabe states were afraid to annoy the EU gatekeepers. The U.S. State Department was content to leave the matter to European initiative (or lack thereof). And given that an Israeli-sponsored resolution has virtually no chance of being passed at the General Assembly, Israel chose not to go it alone… Now for Track Two and the demonization of Israel. In the intervening five months since the one-day U.N. conference on anti-Semitism ended, the U.N. anti-Israel campaign was ramped up. The U.N.'s judicial organ, the International Court of Justice, decided in July that Israel's security fence violated its version of international law. The contortions necessary to arrive at this conclusion resulted in a decision that there is no right of self-defense under the U.N. Charter when terrorists are not state actors… Judge Tanaka spoke of "the so-called terrorist attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers against the Israeli civilian population"…and Judge Elaraby (Egyptian ambassador to the U.N. until 1999) affirmed a "right of resistance" on the grounds, judicially speaking of course, that "violence breeds violence." The U.N. General Assembly held another emergency session in July to condemn Israel for building a wall to prevent terrorism, but not to name and condemn Palestinian terrorists, their Palestinian Authority patrons, or their state sponsors. This fall, another 20 anti-Israel resolutions are in the process of adoption at the regular session of the General Assembly. Another of the annual U.N.-sponsored NGO conferences "in support of the Palestinian people" was held at U.N. Headquarters in September. Participants studied "such sterile paradigms as ‘Israel's self-defence,'" how to "promote a sporting, cultural and economic boycott" of Israel, and "to challenge Christian Zionism in moderate Christian communities." A damage register was created for alleged victims of Israel's security fence, but nothing for victims of Palestinian terrorism. The chief of UNWRA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency), Peter Hansen, gave a spirited defense of employing Hamas members. Three more reports of U.N. "experts" were produced for the General Assembly taking direct aim at Israel. One expert has a mandate only to address human-rights violations by Israel in the territories and not Palestinian human-rights violations in Israel. He started this year's report by analogizing Israel to apartheid South Africa, despite the fact that Arab states have virtually purged themselves of Jews, while in Israel the 20 percent Arab population enjoys more democratic rights than anywhere in the Arab world. The U.N. expert on the right to food focused on a concocted Israeli-driven humanitarian food crisis in the territories, but refused to say a single word about the millions going hungry in Zimbabwe because of discrimination and manipulation of the country's food shortages to punish political opponents. And then there was the expert report on racism and xenophobia that blamed Israel for the rise of anti-Semitism, but that was still studying whether "alleged" ethnic motivations had anything to do with the genocide and displacement of more than a million people in the Darfur region of Sudan… The inequality and injustice of the treatment of Israel becomes most obvious in comparison with the U.N.'s treatment of human-rights violations elsewhere in the world. A U.N. General Assembly resolution on Iran could only be adopted last week after any notion of creating a single investigator into human-rights abuse in that country was eliminated. No resolution was even attempted on countries like China, where 1.3 billion people are without basic civil and political rights, or Saudi Arabia, where gross discrimination against women is endemic and more than a million female migrant workers are essentially slaves. Resolutions put forward on Sudan and Zimbabwe were prevented this week from even coming to a vote. The grand total of the GA's 2004 country-specific criticism of human-rights violations around the globe in the 190 U.N. members, excluding Israel: One resolution for each of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Myanmar, and Turkmenistan. It was on November 24 that the U.N. General Assembly defeated action on Sudan and Zimbabwe. Simultaneously, U.N. delegates in the adjoining room adopted nine resolutions condemning Israel… And still the self-appointed human-rights professionals claim they don't get it. In the latest effort to rend Jews from the state of Israel a new formula has emerged. Taking objection to anti-Semitism in the form of egregious discrimination against the Jewish state is said to be motivated by a desire to eliminate any criticism of Israel. As Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told the Jerusalem Post on November 4, "There is a cottage industry of people out there who try to accuse of bias those who criticize Israel's human-rights record not because the criticisms are unwarranted but as a way of simply defending Israel from any criticism." Reading from the same script, Mary Robinson, the former U.N. high commissioner for human rights, in a lecture at Brown University on November 7, worried about "blur[ing] the line between anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of Israel...[S]ome...regard any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic." But "Israel's supporters" should not, said Robinson, "use the charge of anti-Semitism to stifle legitimate discussion." Similarly, Esther Benbassa, an invitee to a November 11-13 U.N. meeting in Barcelona that was convened to advise the U.N.'s expert on racism and xenophobia, has complained of "the dangerous phase of intimidation" that "eagerly sees behind each word, each gesture, and each criticism of Israeli policy, an anti-Semite." What an incredible outrage. A cursory glance at the newspapers in the democratic state of Israel, or the decisions of its vibrant judiciary, or the myriad discussions, conferences, and writings of Jews across the globe reveal a cacophony of public and self-driven criticism. The failure to acknowledge the deep connection between discrimination and demonization of individual Jews and discrimination and demonization of the Jewish state is not just ignorant—it is lethal… In a 1968 appearance at Harvard, Martin Luther King said, "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism." But Martin Luther King would not find a home at the United Nations or its allied nongovernmental human-rights organizations. (Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a visiting professor at Touro and Metropolitan Colleges in New York, is a member of CIJR’s Academic Council.)
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