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Reaction to my Compatriot Commentators at the Jerusalem Post Comment Forum

It always dismays me the extent to which ostensibly (strongly) pro-Israelicommentators feel the need to express themselves in such a negative and vitriolicfashion, e.g. "the Israelis are fools..." etc. in the Jerusalem Post commentssection. Clearly Israel does indeed need to continue to improve their PReffort. The day they create something (intimated by an earlier commentator)akin to Bill Clinton's famous rapid-response "war room" during his initialrun for the presidency, is a day I will be happy indeed.

Nevertheless,what we have now is what we have to work with (trivially true). And thoughI often share the frustration regarding what appears to be "rookie" mistakesby Israel in terms of her international PR efforts (to the extent that theyexist at all), I still would prefer to see this "forum of Israphiles" so-to-speak,throw out more constructive suggestions (which seems to almost never occur)or point out important problems with the worlds' media's reaction (this isdone more frequently - and I applaud the gentleman who relayed the "breakingnews" from Debka alleging that Hamas planted those mines in the sand). I also think it's helpful (as I know since I didn't think of this beforehand)to point out actions taken (or not) by the Palestinians that would seem tocontradict their often-absurd claims of total Israel culpability (the removalof evidence comes to mind as opposed to, say, video showing Hebrew lettering,or the Israeli flag on shards of munitions leftover -- whereby bolsteringtheir claim that it was an errant Israeli shell). Indeed, let me add onemore question: just who was the photographer? By that I mean to say, howdid he "happen" to be at the scene while the victims were still strewn about(not covered up or being treated by the Red Crescent for example). And didanyone else find that bit of "modern dance" performed by the Palestiniangirl a little "staged"? Perhaps I'm guilty here of allowing my own cynicism to take over, but this is what flashed through my mind when I first saw thevideo clips.

I guess my final message is yes, I am also sickened bythe Left of the Left immediately imitating the Shia in their seeming desireto self-flagellate (thank you earlier poster for that excellent phrase),but, as bad as it is that G-d seems to have allowed this streak of self-hatredto fester in the Jews, I still think it better to play up whatever we mightstill have in common than take all the easy pot-shots (which I am guilty of here as well) at
(a) self-hating Jews
(b) Judaism-hating Jews
(c) Israel-hatingJews and finally
(d) ineffectual Israeli government PR handling.

Israel vs Iran Parallel to UK-France vs USSR

Among that large international audience that either despises Israel or is unconcerned for its security, the argument that Israel's weapons are a barrier either to preventing an Iranian nuclear bomb or realizing a "nuclear-free Middle East" would fall on receptive ears.

by Jeffry Herf
Published in The New Republic on February 14, 2006
Originally entitled:
THE HYPOCRISY OF BRITAIN AND FRANCE.
Memory Loss

Two weeks ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted to refer the matter of Iran's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council. There is plenty to like about the IAEA resolution, starting with the large majority it commanded among the organization's member states--even the usually recalcitrant Russians and Chinese signed on. Moreover, the strong text refers to Iran's "many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply" with Nuclear Proliferation Treaty agreements; asserts an "absence of confidence that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes"; and notes Tehran's "history of concealment" regarding its nuclear activities. In other words, the resolution states publicly and unambiguously what everyone has long known: that Iran has been lying about its nuclear program.

Yet the resolution also contains a key flaw: At the insistence of Egypt, and with the backing of the European Union, the text contains a clause calling for the creation of "a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, including their means of delivery"--a pointed jab at the region's only nuclear power, Israel. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the American delegation tried unsuccessfully to block the clause, rightly fearing that it could be used as anti-Israel propaganda and would provide an excuse for Iran to sidestep its obligations in the future. "The Americans are worried that once it is there, it will stay there forever and allow the Iranians to hide behind it," one ambassador told The New York Times. Indeed, in the court of world opinion, easily inflamed by anti-Israel rhetoric and no less easily swayed by fuzzy talk about a nuclear-free Middle East, the clause gives Iran a powerful rhetorical weapon. If it remains committed to proceeding with a nuclear program, Tehran can claim the need to deter Israel's nuclear weapons. It could make a reasonable and "generous" offer to refrain from developing nuclear weapons if only Israel would unilaterally eliminate its weapons. And when Israel refuses, Iran can claim that it is Israel standing in the way of a nuclear-free regional utopia. Moreover, as fear of a nuclear Iran intensifies, this language will open the door for Israel's critics in the BBC and like-minded organs in Europe to blame the Jewish state for any threat that Iran may pose to the continent. It could shift the focus of attention at the United Nations from Iran's weapons to those of the one stable democracy in the Middle East--and thereby fragment the coalition of countries seeking to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear arms.

But the clause is not merely bad geopolitical strategy; it is also the height of hypocrisy. Two of the governments that backed the language were Britain and France; and it was only a quarter of a century ago, during the battle over missile deployments in Europe, that those countries found themselves in a situation almost exactly analogous to Israel's role in the Iran debate. The stance taken by London and Paris then was the correct one--and the exact opposite of the position they have forced on Israel now.

Between 1981 and 1983, the United States and the Soviet Union conducted Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force negotiations in Geneva. Throughout this time, Moscow insisted that the nuclear arsenals of Britain and France be included in the balance of forces to be discussed--a proposal that London and Paris adamantly opposed. Including British and French weapons in their calculus allowed the Soviets to claim that a balance of forces existed in Europe even after they had deployed several hundred SS-20s pointed at the western half of the continent. Had British and French weapons been counted in the intermediate range nuclear balance, the Soviets could have proposed to dismantle their SS-20 arsenal if only Britain and France would eliminate their own nuclear deterrents. Aware that the slogan of a "nuclear-free Europe" might lead to demands for their unilateral nuclear disarmament, the British and French governments persistently rejected this Soviet negotiating ploy.

The Soviet strategy was to turn non-nuclear West Germany against Britain and France. And it almost worked. Massive demonstrations in Western Europe opposed the deployment of American medium-range missiles, as did West Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD). But Britain and France held firm, arguing that their own nuclear arsenals were weapons of last resort intended only to deter attacks on their homelands. Besides, they pointed out, their weapons had been deployed long before the SS-20s appeared. While such arguments surprised no one coming from Margaret Thatcher, the French socialist president François Mitterand was even more emphatic: On January 20, 1983, in the midst of a heated West German election fought in large part over the missile question, he stunned the SPD by making these arguments in a memorable speech to the West German parliament--in effect endorsing the conservatives led by Helmut Kohl. Britain and France understood very well that the Soviets might offer to eliminate their SS-20s if Britain and France would give up their nuclear weapons. But they also understood that a nuclear-free Europe of this sort was simply another name for unilateral disarmament; and Thatcher and Mitterand would have none of it. Six weeks after Mitterand spoke in Bonn, Kohl won the West German elections. He pledged to proceed with the Cruise and Pershing 2 deployments if the Soviet Union maintained its SS-20s or refused to conduct negotiations that did not include British and French weapons in Europe's medium-range balance of forces. The Soviet effort to split the Atlantic alliance had failed.

So NATO installed the missiles in West Germany; and, instead of leading to nuclear confrontation, the deployments led to the fall of the hardliners in Moscow, the rise of reformers, and, in 1987, the acceptance by Mikhail Gorbachev of the "zero-zero" option offered by President Reagan. In 1981, when Reagan had first presented that option--a promise not to deploy any American Cruise and Pershing 2 missiles if the Soviets would dismantle their SS-20s--liberals, with the exception of this magazine, greeted his proposal with scorn. Surely, they argued, Reagan's offer was merely a ploy to place American missiles in Europe, for the Soviets would never agree to dismantle their SS-20s. And yet, in 1987, that is exactly what happened. Meanwhile, because America had refused to bargain away the right to self-defense of its allies in London and Paris, the British and French arsenals remained intact.

Fast forward to the present. A country sworn to Israel's destruction is moving towards acquiring nuclear weapons; the anti-Semitism of radical Islam is ascendant in the Muslim world; and Hamas has just won an election in the Palestinian territories. Now, more than ever, Israel needs a strong deterrent against its enemies. At such a moment, the Jewish state's nuclear weapons should be just as much a non-issue as Britain and France wanted their own nuclear arsenals to be during the early 1980s.

How could the British and French ignore the similarities between Israel's plight today and their plight during the 1980s? The most generous reading is that the countries' diplomats suffer from a lack of institutional memory. But it strains credulity that diplomatic corps as professional and competent as those in Europe simply forgot the arguments they made with such intelligence and passion just 25 years ago. The more plausible explanation is less flattering: Britain and France are willing to do to Israel what they would not accept being done to themselves because they are now so terrified of an Iranian bomb that they are willing to pressure Israel to unilaterally disarm in the hopes that this will convince Tehran's mullahs not to go nuclear. This shortsighted strategy only makes sense if the survival of Israel is a matter of indifference and if one believes that sacrificing Israel's national interest will moderate Iran's policies. The driving force behind such a policy is no longer the now-shattered hopes about the goodwill or peaceful intentions of the Iranian regime. The driving force is fear.

Fear fosters illusions and false hopes; and the more terrified Europe becomes at the prospect that religious fundamentalists in Tehran will possess nuclear weapons, the more the logic of the nuclear-free Middle East clause in the IAEA resolution could lead the EU to pressure Israel to eliminate its nuclear weapons. Iran could, with the world watching at the Security Council, condition an end to its nuclear program on an elimination of Israel's nuclear arsenal. In the Arab and Islamic world and in much of Europe such an offer might appear generous, while the Israeli refusal to even discuss it, as France and Britain refused to discuss an analogous offer in the 1980s, could be made to appear stubborn. Among that large international audience that either despises Israel or is unconcerned for its security, the argument that Israel's weapons are a barrier either to preventing an Iranian nuclear bomb or realizing a "nuclear-free Middle East" would fall on receptive ears.

At a moment when the unity of the civilized world in the face of radical Islam and its variant of totalitarian politics is essential, the British and French governments would do well to recall that the Western Alliance defeated the Soviet strategy in 1983 in part because the United States refused to sacrifice British and French interests for the sake of a bad arms control deal with the USSR. Likewise, the West will not win today's struggle with radical Islam by agreeing to undermine the sovereignty and security of Israel. Indeed, for radical Islamists, the inclusion of demands for a nuclear-free Middle East in the IAEA resolution may suggest that the prospect of Iran going nuclear is already paying political dividends.

If, as the European governments say is the case, Israel's right to exist is not a subject for negotiation, then neither are the means that Israelis decide to use to insure their existence. Israel must not have its sovereignty and right to self-defense negotiated away by other powers in the illusory hope that appeasing a fanatical dictatorship will bring peace or security. In the weeks and months to come, American diplomats should try to get that mischievous clause deleted from the IAEA resolution and to focus the attention of the Security Council where it belongs: solely on Iran. Britain and France should understand the logic of all this. After all, it is the same logic they used themselves, and not so long ago.

Jeffrey Herf is professor of modern European history at the University of Maryland in College Park. His book The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust is forthcoming this spring from Harvard University Press.

A Great Misunderstanding About the Hamas Victory

I went to the West Bank to report on and interview Palestinian Arabs before,during, and after the elections. In the market of Hebron, a pretty woman,Raeda, 22, with a veil down to her eyebrows, told me she prefers Hamas becauseit's a religious party that will reestablish Islamic rule on all the landoccupied by the Jews. With a lovely smile she also told me that she wouldn'tmind if her son becomes a martyr. A group of children told me, almost singing,that: "Religion says that there is no peace with the infidels." Where didthey learn that? At school. What do they think about martyrs? All of themwant to be one.
It's a pathetic joke to try to launder the Hamas victoryas if the Palestinian Arabs simply wanted to vote against PA corruption.From what I saw and heard, it was an Islamist and violent vote, with deepcultural roots in the Palestinian education system and in the messages ofthe Palestinian Arab leadership during the intifada. The reality is thatsecularism has declined since the 1970s. No statement renouncing violenceor terror or acknowledging Israel's right to exist can cancel out the religiousand violence-oriented education of the past decade that culminated in theelection.

originally by Fiamma Nirenstein (New York Sun)

above exerpt taken from the
Daily Alert
Prepared for the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

Bravo Charles Tannock

Bravo Charles Tannock for stepping forward in an attempt to ward off future EU backsliding in their sometimes lustful desire to court the new Palestinian rulers. But the simple fact that they were democratically elected should not immediately imply that they be courted or ostracized. That decision should be based on their policies. So let’s review what Hamas’ stated and future policies are — lest France in their latest display as EU’s enfant-terribles, outreaches and out-russia’s Russia.

Quite simply, Hamas seeks to kill as many Jewish boys, women, and babies as possible per use of armament. In addition to their charter, this "strategy" is laid bare when babies are shot within the range of a few feet making it obvious the "freedom fighter" took specific aim at them. And afterwards, Palestinian elder women — women who some might expect to be the conscience of the Palestinian people, celebrate, smile, laugh, and distribute candies to children and passer-bys (images the PA has fought hard — mainly through direct physical threats — to never let see the light of day).

And so the first "honest" election by the Palestinians has not produced a surprise (Mr. Tannock concurred) but rather an appropriate reflection of the priorities of the Palestinians. Indeed, those priorities have by dint of decisive democratic elections, aptly been transformed into a political "mandate." We should all fully respect that mandate — killing Jews — as the honestly voiced "will of the Palestinian people".

Now whether that mandate ranks the new policy of street cleaning as somewhat more or less important as the already existing (and arguably more bankable) policy of Jew-killing, seems to me not the most interesting query. Also in that vein, whether Hamas revives its own tradition of murdering mothers or whether it continues to "out-source" that municipal contract to Islamic Jihad. Ether way as Mr. Tannock indicates, the EU needs to respect this new Palestinian mandate and in doing so, not touch the new government with a ten-foot pole.

Stompin' on the Sadr'y (or how Benny Goodman's initials reverse to George Bush)

Editor's Note: This post is from April 11, 2004

Two pieces, a Jerusalem Post Editorial and a Caroline Glick Op-Ed contain
very similar "advice" to the US and both interestingly cite similar Israeli
mistakes during comparably critical junctures in recent Israeli history.
These junctures are compared to a similar powder keg that is brewingin Iraq due to the recent "start-up" known as Sadr & Sons Inc.
The fact however that these two somewhat disparate sources - Glick a
firebrand of sorts, The Jerusalem-Post a calmer thinker - provides added
weight to their essential message: that the US needs to hit back hard and
not mess around too much with "pinpoint-this and pinpoint-that". I tend to
agree as at least the local Iraqis will then give us a grudging respect that
is afforded powerful forces in the Arab world. But more than agree on a
prescription for action, these two pieces come together to paint a picture
which frankly scares me a bit.

I've felt pretty good about both Iraq, Israel, and Sharon/Gaza for a while
now. But this latest flare up in Iraq points to some worst-case scenarios
which have the US basically backing off Iraq - largely due to domestic
pressure and the Bush team freaking out over reelection (in part due to Ted
Kennedy et all who must have a world map similar to the famous New Yorker
map distorting New York City - except his has Vietnam, maybe a little
Cambodia, some Chechnya for good measure and that's about it). Part and
parcel with that scenario - whereby the US says "look, we'll keep the peace
'till June 30 and then it's their mess" - may in tandem contain an
anti-Israel backlash. This becomes more apparent after reading the attached
pieces since Hezbollah and Nasrallah are shown as trying hard to "unite" the
two battles: US vs. Iraq and Palestinians vs. Israel - apparently with some
success.

Finally, the fact that one of these pieces termed Iran's (and Syria's!)
apparently heavy involvement in all of this an "existential battle"
definitely worries me. Iran is a powerhouse - and this whole thing is coming
down to a battle between any kind of self rule in Iraq (and Afghanistan) and
Iran's strong influence in the region (let alone its own survival as a
"Mullahcracy"). So I guess I'm really hoping that now, in this time
of decision, that Bush stays the course and stays it strong. If Bush does
get through this by not whimping out - that is, if in fact he does hit back
hard and keep us in Iraq and give Sharon the backing he's looking for, I
will not only vote for Bush, I'll publicly decry my Leftist former self!