Israel Is Trapped

Israel Is Trapped, and The Chance Of Peace Is Ever More Remote

A Crass Failure Of Moral Sensitivity Has Led To Equally Crass Strategic MisJudgment

By Bruce Anderson
Monday, 16 February, 2009
Courtesy Of The Independent

While the West is preoccupied with a crisis, a tragedy is unfolding. The world's financial system will recover. On the Israel/Palestine peace process, there can be no comparable optimism, for it is not clear whether such a process still exists. No process, no peace; a settlement is further away now than at any time since 1967. Israel seems bent on a course which will lead to its eventual destruction.

There is a hideous irony. The way that events are unfolding is a posthumous triumph for Adolf Hitler. With the winding-up of the Soviet Union, the last of the poisons created by the Second World War could be eliminated from the European bloodstream. Not the Middle Eastern one. It is easy to understand why the Israelis reacted as they did. Once you have suffered a Holocaust at the hands of the race which produced Beethoven, Goethe and Mozart, you lose trust in mankind's benevolence: lose faith in everything except your own soldiers and weaponry.

It is equally easy to understand why the Palestinians reacted as they did. Those who are driven into exile and refugeedom do not feel well-disposed towards their oppressors. The Palestinians felt no linguistic inhibitions, and why should they? They bore no guilt for the Holocaust. In the grip of – understandable – rage, some Palestinian rhetoric developed Nazi resonances. That was a mistake. It aroused every Israeli trauma. We have been here before, many Israelis concluded. This time, no one is going to herd us to our death like cattle. This time, we will get our retaliation in first.

Because of the circumstances in which their Jewish state was created, most Israelis believe that they have two existential necessities, and entitlements. They want to enjoy security and they insist that their neighbours recognise their rights to do so. That does not seem unreasonable. But it is. It fails the highest test of political rationality. It is not realistic.

This does not mean that Israelis should have to live in bomb shelters under constant risk of attack. But they have chosen to live in a dangerous neighbourhood, so there must be compromises. Instead of the delusion of absolute security by imposing a humiliating peace on crushed opponents, Israel should understand the need for a modus vivendi.

Israelis are proud of their achievements over the past 60 years, and rightly so. But most of them are guilty of a crass failure of moral sensitivity leading to an equally crass strategic misjudgment. They fail to understand that their security will always be under threat from their neighbours' misery. Above all, their leaders lack the political wisdom and the moral courage to tell Israelis something which most probably know in their hearts: that to make peace, they will have to take risks.

The first act of the current tragedy began in 1967, after the Six-Day War. Plucky little Israel was master of the battlefield. She had overrun a vast acreage of Arab territory. Almost immediately, even by those who had never been enthusiastic about the State of Israel, distinctions began to be drawn between the pre-'67 boundaries and the 1967 conquests. Israel had a tremendous hand of cards, strategic and moral. There was never a better moment for "in victory, magnanimity".

Israel should have announced that unlike almost every previous military victor, she did not seek territorial gains; her sole war aims were peace and justice. To secure them, she was prepared to trade her conquests, with the obvious exception of the Holy Places in old Jerusalem. On such a basis, and with huge international support, a deal would have been possible. But there were problems. At its narrowest point, pre-'67 Israel was only 12 miles wide. A tank thrust from the West Bank could have cut the country in two. Although the generals cannot be blamed for failing to predict the era of asymmetric warfare in which tank thrusts would only occur in war movies, their insistence on a demilitarised West Bank complicated matters. Then a temptation emerged, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Israel was short of land. Much of the West Bank seemed to be inhabited by raggedy goatherds, primevally picturesque, poor and unproductive. Israeli agriculture would soon have the place flowing with milk and honey, while Israeli architects built new homes for a growing population. So the settlements began. The temptation to colonise the occupied territories was abetted by theology. Under the Jehovah declaration, somewhat preceding the Balfour one and also somewhat more extensive, historic Israel was said to include the West Bank. Israel ate the apple.

In order for Israel's pre-'67 Promised Land to be secure, most of the settlements would have to be evacuated, so that a viable Palestinian state could come into existence. It would always have been virtually impossible to generate the political will for this in Israel. Last week's election results eliminated the "virtually".

Even if it wished to do so, which seems unlikely, the new Israeli government could make no progress towards a Palestinian state. Because of its rigidly proportional electoral system, Israel will be condemned to weak governments blackmailed by extremist parties. The imperative to reach a just peace with Palestine will have no leverage on Israeli domestic politics.

A prosperous Palestinian state would not guarantee Israel's safety. Some young men would still be enticed by fanaticism and violence. But the problem would be much more manageable. If most Palestinians had a stake in a decent future, there would be many fewer suicide bombers – and the '67 vintage Israeli generals were right on one point. Theirs is a tiny country. The first WMD suicide bomber would do terrible damage.

Over the years, Israel has proved that it can deal with conventional threats. Like the rest of us, it is now working out how to cope with terrorism and asymmetric warfare. Israeli opinion would angrily reject any answers that smacked of appeasement. But a Palestinian state is justice, not appeasement. There are alternatives. Israel could abandon the pretence of a two-state solution and offer the Palestinians Israeli citizenship: the end of the Jewish state. Or she could try ethnic cleansing: drive the Palestinians into Jordan. That would be the end of the Jewish state as a moral entity.

Assuming the alternatives to be unacceptable, there is only justice, or continued muddle, with a sullen, resentful Palestinian population awaiting inflammation. That, alas, is almost a certainty, and who knows how far the flames will spread? Israel is a wonderful place, with landscape, culture, increasingly good wine and as much political argument as you can hold. The country emerged out of tragedy. It would be heart-rending if its heroic journey ended in tragedy. Yet that is the likeliest outcome, and it would be Israel's fault.

Israel's Elections and U.S. Policy

By Glenn Greenwald
Monday Feb. 9, 2009 08:35 EST
Courtesy Of The Salon Media Group

(updated below)

Israel is holding its national elections tomorrow. Not only is it virtually certain that the right-wing militarist Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party will become the new Prime Minister, but it is highly likely that the ultra-right, anti-Arab nationalist and West Bank settler Avigdor Lieberman of the racist Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) Party will perform scandalously well. Polls show Lieberman’s party winning between 15 to 20 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, perhaps even surpassing Israel’s Labour Party for third place and even an outside change for second place. Lieberman’s party will form a vital component of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition and will secure a key Cabinet post for Lieberman himself.

So extreme and repugnant is Lieberman that even Marty Peretz’s New Republic this week called his party "an extremist right-wing party" and said that Lieberman "has focused much of his campaign inciting public anger against Israel's Arab minority." In that article -- headlined: "The alarming rise of radical nationalism in Israel" -- former IDF soldier Arik Ben-Zvi described just some of the disgraceful lowlights:

Under the catchy slogan "No citizenship without loyalty" (it rhymes in Hebrew), Yisrael Beiteinu is pushing for a new law requiring all citizens to swear an "oath of loyalty" to the state. Israeli-Arab citizens or others who refuse could have their citizenship stripped from them. . . .

He accuses Israeli-Arab lawmakers of harboring Hamas sympathies, and has called for the parties to be banned from running in the election. His campaign ads show Israeli-Arab students demonstrating against the Gaza war as a narrator ominously intones, "We won't forget that, during the Gaza conflict, there were those among us who stood with Hamas." As for the Gaza operation itself, Lieberman has denounced the cease-fire as a sell-out of the military. His preferred strategy is total war against the Gazan population: "We must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II." The message is clearly finding its audience. Of particular concern is evidence suggesting Lieberman's appeal is growing among young voters.

In February, 2000, Austria held a national election in which the far-right, anti-immigrant party of Joerg Haider stunned the world by attracting 26% of the vote and becoming a part of the ruling parliamentary coalition headed by the Austrian People's Party (though Haider himself had no position in the government). This is how the United States reacted to those results:

The United States is temporarily recalling its ambassador from Vienna following the swearing in of a new coalition government that includes the far-right Freedom Party. . . .

Speaking at a news conference in Washington, Mrs Albright said: "We have decided to limit our contacts with the new government and we will see whether further actions are necessary to advance our support for democratic values."

The U.S. wasn’t the only country to punish Austria for this outcome:

Israel has recalled its ambassador and has announced that Joerg Haider, the party's figurehead, will not be allowed into the country.

"Israel cannot remain silent in the face of the rise of extremist right-wing parties, in particular in those countries which played a role in the events which brought about the eradication of a third of the Jewish people in the Holocaust," a foreign ministry statement said.

The Haider/Lieberman comparison isn’t perfect. Haider had made a handful of stray reprehensible comments which were anti-Semitic or even sympathetic to former Nazi Party members, but the platform on which he actually ran had nothing to do with that. It was the standard nativist, anti-immigrant cant sweeping much of the European Right at the time. Arguably, though, Lieberman’s Arab-hating bile is even worse. Whereas Haider, an Austrian citizen, was demonizing foreign immigrants seeking to enter the country, Lieberman himself is an immigrant to Israel and is demonizing citizens who have been Israelis far longer than he has.

The U.S. already pays a very substantial price for its decades-long, blind and one-sided support for Israeli actions. The New York Times yesterday published an Op-Ed from Alaa Al Aswany -- an obviously pro-Obama, pro-American Egyptian describing the pervasive anger in Egypt that has already arisen towards Obama as a result of his deafening silence on the Israeli attack on Gaza.

A new BBC poll of worldwide opinion (.pdf), conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), surveyed 21 countries from six continents and asked whether the influence exerted by various nations in the world was positive or negative. The three countries most viewed as having a negative influence in the world -- essentially tied with one another -- were Iran, Pakistan and Israel, all of whom finished just behind North Korea -- and this poll was conducted before Israel’s attack on Gaza. Even before the war on Gaza, Israel was viewed overwhelmingly negatively in every country except two -- the U.S., where citizens view Israel favorably by a not very large 13-point margin (47-34%), and Russia, where public opinion is split. In every other country, the view of Israel's influence on the world is significantly negative -- in most cases, overwhelmingly so.

U.S. support for Israel has been particularly costly over the last several years, as Israel bombed Lebanon and demolished chunks of Gaza (using American weapons to do so), and continued its policy of settlement expansion in the West Bank – all with various means of American support playing a critical role. Yet now Israel appears poised to install as Prime Minister someone whose criticisms have been that Israel hasn’t gone far enough and who vows even more severe aggression. Worse still, the Israeli Government is likely to have as a prominent component a political party that is blatantly racist, anti-democratic and bloodthirsty.

If, as it appears, the face Israel is now choosing for itself is that of Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, then the cost to the United States of ongoing, one-sided support for Israel is going to skyrocket, and the need for serious change in U.S. policy towards Israel will be even more acute. It's worth recalling that Barack Obama, when still seeking the Democratic nomination in February, 2008, said:

I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel.

It will be vital to ensure that Obama actually meant that. Netanyahu’s pledge to allow the still-further expansion of West Bank settlements makes an already-distant two-state solution less viable still, and his explicit vow to keep the Golan Heights "forever" makes negotiations with Syria doomed from the start. He actually just objected that Israel's destruction of huge parts of Gaza "did not go far enough." As The Washington Post's Jackson Diehl put it this morning:

The past four Israeli elections have been won by a candidate who promised to end Israel's conflict with the Palestinians. Tomorrow, for the first time in decades, Israelis may choose a prime minister who is promising to wage war. . . .

[Netanyahu] advocates putting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on hold indefinitely and says he will not stop the expansion of Jewish settlements. He has never endorsed the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state . . . .

In short, just at the moment that a new U.S. administration launches a policy aimed at addressing the multiple conflicts of the Middle East with intensive diplomacy, it may find itself with an Israeli partner that rejects negotiations with its neighbors and does its best to push the United States toward military confrontation with Iran and its proxies.

But it is Israel’s apparent tolerance for a plainly racist, anti-democratic, warmongering ultra-nationalistic party -- parked smack in the middle of its ruling government -- that would have an even larger impact than Netanyahu’s election.

The strongest argument for the U.S.-Israel alliance has always been Israel’s largely democratic character – its robust free speech and press rights, its political debates that are typically more open and vibrant than those in the U.S., and most of all, its tolerance of religious diversity and the remarkable (though imperfect) assimilation of its Arab citizens into its political, economic and cultural life. Whatever legitimate objections in those areas critics of Israel have had, they paled when compared to the repressive and dissent-intolerant governments that ruled virtually every other country in that region.

Israel’s pluralism and democratic processes won’t come to a grinding halt because Avigdor Lieberman occupies a key cabinet post (just as Austria's didn't when Haider's Freedom Party joined the ruling coalition). But the statement Israel is making to the world about what it wants to be and how it perceives itself will be unmistakably clear. This is a country that has waged two brutal wars against largely defenseless neighbors in the past three years, that just banned certain Arab political parties from existing (a ban reversed by its Supreme Court), and that continues expansions on land that does not belong to it despite those expansions being universally condemned and declared illegal in numerous international tribunals. And now, it is turning to political leaders who believe that these measures have been insufficiently aggressive and who vow far more aggression and, in the case of Lieberman, even more internal repression of its own ethnic and religious minorities.

Israel, like all countries, has the right to choose what leaders it wants. But as is also always true, other countries have the right -- and, in the case of the U.S. as the enabler of virtually everything Israel does, the responsibility -- to react appropriately. It's bad enough that we have tied ourselves so blindly and inextricably to Israel as it has existed over the past several years. But an Israel led by Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman produces whole new responsibilities for the U.S. not to continue on this path of uncritical support for a government like that.

UPDATE: Today I interviewed 2005 Palestinian Authority presidential candidate Dr. Mustafa Barghouti about Israel's election and various other issues relating to Israel-Palestinian relations. That interview will be posted tomorrow.

Currently in Glenn Greenwald's Blog

Marc Ambinder grants anonymity to "officials" to defend the Obama DOJ

Bush-era reporting practices are used to justify the new president's embrace of the prior president's main secrecy weapon.

Wednesday, Feb 11, 2009 14:55 EST

Ari Fleischer on "the grid in front of" the President

Bush's former Press Secretary explains how he managed press conferences by ensuring that only favored reporters would ask questions.

Wednesday, Feb 11, 2009 13:52 EST

Salon Radio: Dr. Mustafa Barghouti on Israeli elections

The former presidential candidate for the Palestinian Authority speaks about Israel's elections, the aftermath of the attack on Gaza, and prospects for a peace agreement.

Tuesday, Feb 10, 2009 18:12 EST

The 180-degree reversal of Obama's State Secrets position

Democrats long objected to exactly the power that the Obama DOJ yesterday expressly advocated be vested in the new president.

Tuesday, Feb 10, 2009 15:16 EST

Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

The Holocaust Is Over

By David Gordon
February 9, 2009
Courtesy Of Lew Rockwell

The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes. By Avraham Burg. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Xvii + 253 pages.

The just-ended Israeli incursion into Gaza killed over one thousand civilians. Israel claimed that the rockets that Hamas directed against Israeli territory, even though they inflicted no fatalities, made its retaliatory strike, however severe, necessary and justifiable. How did the Israeli leadership arrive at this judgment? Did a biased mindset lead it to ignore chances for peaceful compromise? Avraham Burg’s remarkable book appeared before the Israeli strike and so of course does not directly address our questions. Nevertheless, it offers indispensable background information that enables those concerned to judge the issues for themselves.

Though Burg shows himself deeply committed to his native country, he decisively breaks with the dominant ideology that its ruling elite professes, a break all the more surprising when one considers the author’s family and career. His father, Josef Burg, headed the National Religious Party and held cabinet rank in every Israeli government from 1948 until he retired from active politics in 1986. The party that Burg represented stemmed from the Mizrachi movement of religious Zionists. Early twentieth-century Zionism had been largely secular, and most of Orthodox Judaism condemned it. The standard view of Orthodoxy, in that pre-State era, held that Jewish control of the Promised Land must await the coming of the Messiah. A minority of religious Jews, though, viewed Zionism with more favor. In the years since Israel established national independence in 1948, many of the religious Zionists adopted a much more militant stance than that favored by the senior Burg. They supported an aggressively expansionist policy, with even less attention to the rights of the indigenous Palestinians than the Likud party allows.

Avraham Burg makes a decisive break not only from these militants but from mainstream Zionism altogether. He has been a leading Israeli politician, both in the Labor Party and the One Israel Party; and he was for a time Speaker of the Israeli Knesset [Parliament]. He now, though, rejects the dominant themes of Israeli politics. In his view, constant stress on the Holocaust in Israeli society has led to a dangerous "us against them" mentality. "I [Burg] am increasingly convinced that the language of my land. . . is based on a false premise. Israel accentuates and perpetuates the confrontational philosophy that is summed up in the phrase, ‘The entire world is against us.’" (p.14)

In what way does stress on the Holocaust lead to this sort of mentality? Burg responds with two connected reasons. First, because the major European powers failed adequately to interdict Hitler, Israelis holds that at the present time only they themselves can stave off annihilation. "The Shoah [Holocaust] and the establishment of our state created a mechanism that necessitates force and obsessive defense at any cost for every Jew wherever he is." (p.88) Further, faced with what they conceive to be existential threats, they maintain that they must use force, to whatever extent they deem necessary, to preempt these dangers.

Suppose that Israelis do in fact have both of these beliefs. Why is this a ground for complaint against them? Perhaps these beliefs accurately reflect reality and permit Israelis to confront their problems better than they otherwise might. This Burg vehemently denies. The events of the Second World War, he holds, have decisively shifted world opinion toward Jews. The image of universal hostility that permeates Israeli thought misconceives reality. As Burg stated in a speech to the Knesset in January 27, 2004: "I don’t feel that the threat of a second Shoah is real in any way. . . The Western World. . .has many more protections for the hated, and especially for the hated Jew, than ever before. . . . Had we had the same friendships we have today sixty years ago, with the greatest superpower, with the three major European powers – Germany, France, and Britain – not to mention other states, the Jewish world would have looked different. We have this friendship unconditionally. . . No danger of genocide exists today." (p.167)

But precisely in this image of existential struggle lies a danger. Because Israelis wrongly see themselves as facing a continual battle to the death, they adopt policies that evoke condemnation. They thus help to bring about the hostility that they wrongly think makes these very policies necessary. Even more important, these policies violate the demands of morality.

As an example, during the 1948 War of Independence, many Arabs were forced to flee their homes. Israel has since that time refused any compensation for the property seized from them. "Israeli leaders have never admitted to our responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem. From a tactical point of view, no one wanted to open the Pandora’s box of refugee recognition and compensation too soon, so as to avoid giving the Arabs anything tangible in return for nothing. . . The Shoah sensitized governments and organizations to anti-Semitism and other hate crimes. . . In contrast, we have never done anything similar to the Palestinian refugees and their descendants. We did not fulfill what we demanded of others." (pp.81, 83)

Matters were only exacerbated after the 1967 War, which brought great masses of Arabs under Israeli control. Burg quotes here the distinguished Orthodox Jewish philosopher and scientist Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who at the time warned against both the impropriety and the folly of this policy: "The inclusion of one and a half million Arabs within Jewish jurisdiction means undermining the human and Jewish essence of the state and the destruction of the social-economic order we established. . . The Arabs will be the working people, and we will become a nation of managers, supervisors, officials, and policeman, especially undercover policemen. The state will necessarily be a police state, and its central institution will be the General Security Services. . . This will surely influence the entire spiritual and moral atmosphere in the state and in society; it will poison education." (p.68. The book has been at times carelessly edited, and Leibowitz’s name appears in two different spellings. For his political and religious views, see his Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State [Harvard University Press, 1992])

Leibowitz’s wise words had no effect on policy, owing to the Holocaust mentality that crowds out rational consideration of alternatives to force. This mentality by no means was confined to the Israeli Right. "Speaking shortly after the Six Day [1967] War, one of Israel’s most remarkable doves, the foreign minister Abba Eban, brilliantly argued that Israel must never return to its prewar borders. He coined a term that is still used today, defining Israel’s boundaries, the 1949 Armistice Line, as ‘Auschwitz borders,’ – tight boundaries that compelled Israel to act." (p.22)

Again, in the incursion into Lebanon in 1982, images of the Holocaust controlled Israeli policy: "When we [Israelis] attacked Lebanon in 1982, launching a war of deceit, folly, and futility, Prime Minister Menahem Begin sent us out to fight Yasser Arafat, the ‘two-legged beast.’ It was the same expression he had used thirty years earlier to describe Hitler. He also liked to compare the Palestinian National Charter to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. ‘Never before in human history was such a despicable, wicked, armed organization formed – except for the Nazis,’ Begin once said, referring to the Palestinian Liberation Organization." (p.57)

Constant stress on the Holocaust, Burg argues, has led Israel to replace ideals with militarism. He draws a disturbing parallel with Bismarckian Germany. "The few who shared his [Nietzsche’s] views understood that German national revival at gunpoint was a poor substitute for true national revival, such as was needed to repair a decadent regime and society. . . In such a situation the military state would sanctify flawed values, such as nationalism, belligerence, and the idolization of a national security doctrine, above all others. Militarists know no other way of functioning but to manipulate people’s prejudices against those perceived ‘others’ through social and political toughness." (p.53)

Given the presence of this militaristic mentality, does it make sense for American policy to support unconditionally all of Israel’s drives against the Arabs? Rather, we would do best to heed the wise counsel of Ron Paul, one of only five Congressmen to vote against a resolution of support for the Gaza invasion: America should stay out of the politics of the Middle East altogether.

David Gordon [send him mail] is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and editor of its Mises Review. He is also the author of The Essential Rothbard. See also his Books on Liberty.

Copyright © 2009 Taki's Magazine

Hezbollah Fought Israel Better Than Any Arab Army

By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent
Last update - 09:36 19/12/2008
Courtesy Of Haaretz NewsPaper

A new report from the U.S. Army War College warns that the American military must learn the lessons of the Second Lebanon War, in which Hezbollah operated more like a conventional army than a guerrilla organization.

The report, "The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy," warns against placing too heavy an emphasis on classic guerrilla warfare, and raises the possibility of further non-state actors following the Lebanese militant group's example.

"Hezbollah's 2006 campaign in southern Lebanon has been receiving increasing attention as a prominent recent example of a non-state actor fighting a Westernized state," the authors of the report state. "In particular, critics of irregular-warfare transformation often cite the 2006 case as evidence that non-state actors can nevertheless wage conventional warfare in state-like ways."

The authors of the report, Dr. Stephen D. Biddle and Jeffrey A. Friedman, state that changes made by the U.S. Army in conducting urban warfare against guerrilla fighters in Iraq could compromise the military's ability to deal with other enemies in the future.

The authors give a high grade to Hezbollah's performance in the 2006 war, describing it as more effective than that of any Arab army that confronted Israel in the Jewish state's history, and that Hezbollah militants wounded more Israelis per fighter than any previous Arab effort.

Unlike a traditional guerrilla force, however, Hezbollah emphasized holding territory and digging in to bunkers, instead of the usual tactic of hiding among civilian populations. Likewise, the militant organization's discipline and coordination highly resembled those of conventional armies.

This combination of conventional and guerrilla tactics, the report claims, places new challenges before the U.S. Army. It calls for preparing the military for asymmetrical urban warfare, while at the same time working closely with civilian populations. It also calls for reducing military activity likely to harm the image of the U.S.

The report indicates that no army can be ideally prepared to deal with both kinds of enemy, conventional and guerrilla, simultaneously, and that in light of the discrepancies between the lessons of the Second Lebanon War and the current U.S. experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, serious challenges confront military planners.

While fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan demands the ability to defeat guerrilla forces, the example of Lebanon may inspire enemies of the U.S. to adopt more conventional methods.

Related Articles:

Hezbollah: Second Lebanon War was biggest Israeli defeat ever

ANALYSIS: IDF has already learned lessons of Second Lebanon War

Winograd: Final ground op 'did not achieve military goals', but approving it was essential step

Israel Can't Defeat Iran

Former National Security Council Chairman Giora Eiland warns against Israeli strike in Iran; Israel does not possess military capabilities that would enable Jewish State to completely destroy Tehran's nuclear program, he says

By Dudi Cohen
Published: 12.18.08, 17:49
Courtesy Of Y Net News

Israeli officials have been repeatedly warning that Israel may end up attacking Iran, yet former National Security Council Chairman Giora Eiland says such strike would not eliminate Tehran's nuclear program.

Speaking at a conference of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, Eiland says Israel cannot defeat Iran's regime via a military operation.

"To our regret, there is no Israeli military capability that would enable us to reach a situation whereby Iran's nuclear capabilities are destroyed without the possibility of recovery," he said. "The maximal achievement that Israel can accomplish is to disrupt and suspend Iran's nuclear program."

"The million dollar question" is the extent of a sufficient suspension period, Eiland said.

The former general said that Israel "cannot defeat Iran," adding that an Israeli military operation or aerial strike cannot force Iran to capitulate or end its nuclear development efforts.

Price Of Failure

Eiland added that any operation against Iran would require Israeli coordination with the United States, mostly in strategic terms.

"It is completely clear that if an Israeli operation in Gaza requires certain level of coordination with the US, this is certainly the case with an operation in Iran, where the implications beyond Israel are of course far reaching," he said.

The former general emphasized that the primary risk in undertaking a military operation against Iran is its potential failure. "If you undertake a failed military operation, you pay three-fold: firstly, you didn't succeed in hitting what you wanted, secondly, you've hurt your deterrence capabilities, and thirdly, you're perceived as the aggressor," he said.

"Iran is not Iraq of 1981 and not even Syria of 2007. It is likely that an attack on Iran would garner a widespread response not merely by Iran, but also other nations in the region," he said. An additional danger, added Eiland, is that Iran would attack not only Israeli targets but also American targets in the region.

The window of opportunity for an attack on Iran, as perceived by Eiland, is "short-lived." He predicted such a possibility would be feasible between the summer of 2009 until the summer of 2011. This timetable will necessarily influence the next government's decision on which actions to take, he said.

Israel's 'Get Out Of Jail Free' Card

By Philip Giraldi
December 16, 2008
Courtesy Of Anti-War

The powerful Israel Lobby, with its support of the Iraq war and its insistence that Iran be denuclearized, by force if necessary, is a major constituent of the War Party in the United States. Some Americans who wish to remake the Middle East also believe that supporting Israel includes providing its government with U.S. defense secrets to augment its military superiority over its Arab neighbors. They might be encouraged in so doing because, in truth, it is difficult to see how spying against the United States on behalf of Israel entails any risk at all. The FBI suspected that leading neocons Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and Stephen Bryen were guilty of providing classified information to Israel, but they all avoided prosecution and were later rewarded with senior positions in the Pentagon.

Israel's best-known spy, Jonathan Pollard, was certainly an exception to the rule when he was tried, convicted, and imprisoned expeditiously in 1986. It just might be that the scale of Pollard's activity, in which he stole more than 360 cubic feet of documents, including some of the most sensitive information available to the United States, might have angered enough people in enough places to force the Justice Department to proceed with unaccustomed vigor. Since Pollard's richly deserved incarceration, there has been an energetic movement to free him so he can be rewarded after emigrating to Israel, which has never admitted unambiguously that Pollard was their man. American supporters of Pollard have been joined by the Israeli government itself in an effort that nearly successfully importuned President Bill Clinton to grant a presidential pardon in 2000, when Clinton also pardoned fugitive felon and Israeli government protégé Marc Rich. The Washington rumor mill is now suggesting that Pollard could well be one of the recipients of George W. Bush's impending exercise in mercy, together with a host of faceless government officials who kidnapped, tortured, and wiretapped.

If you have been wondering what has happened to the other Israeli spies who are currently in court or facing trial at some future point, you are not alone. The trial of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman has been dragging on for more than three years. The two men were arrested together with Pentagon official Col. Lawrence Franklin under the Espionage Act of 1917, which defines espionage in legal terms as "injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign country." Franklin had taken classified Pentagon documents dealing with Iran policy and had shared them with the two AIPAC officials, who in turn provided them to the Israeli embassy in Washington and to the media to support the case for going to war with Tehran.

Predictably, many in the media and the neocon establishment criticized the arrests, commenting that such exchanges of "information" are routine in Washington and that Israel is a good friend that needs the classified intelligence for its own security. Israel and its lobby do, in fact, enjoy a unique status among foreign lobbies operating in the United States. President John F. Kennedy tried to force the lobby to register in the early 1960s under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, but his efforts foundered with his death. Since that time, attempts to make AIPAC and other Israeli lobbies register have been repeatedly stymied due to unwillingness to proceed on the part of the Justice Department.

Larry Franklin pleaded guilty to unauthorized disclosure of classified information in January 2006, was sentenced to 151 months in prison, and paid a $10,000 fine. He is now doing time in a federal prison. Rosen and Weissman, whose legal fees are being paid by AIPAC, are free on bail. Their case winds on, seemingly interminably, confirming the old adage that justice delayed is justice denied. The media is no longer reporting on the trial, and many believe that it will be allowed to drag on and eventually will be dismissed on procedural grounds to avoid embarrassing either AIPAC or the Israeli government. The court in Alexandria presided over by Judge Thomas Ellis has frequently ruled in favor of the accused and seems content to let the process drag on indefinitely. Ellis is currently seeking to determine what classified information will be allowed as evidence, a key judgment that will affect both the defense and the prosecution.

An unrepentant Steve Rosen has recently resurfaced as a blogger on Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum. Many have questioned the ethics of providing space for someone who has been charged with espionage, but Pipes appears to be unimpressed by the controversy. Rosen's blog, "Obama Mideast Monitor," assesses Obama political appointments based on how good they are for Israel. He has sharply criticized the naming of Gen. James Jones as national security adviser because the general is "harshly critical of Israel." Rosen has also hit the speaker circuit for Middle East Forum with his "Wishful Thinking and Iran," a skeptical view of the possibility of negotiating with the Islamic Republic. Rosen is also active on The American Thinker Web site offering his refutation of the numerous credible accounts that the U.S. turned down an Iranian offer to come to an understanding on all outstanding differences in 2003.

The case of Ben-Ami Kadish is in some ways even more intriguing than that of the two AIPAC staffers. Kadish was arrested in New Jersey on April 22, 2008. A Department of Justice press release described how he was charged with "conspiracy to disclose to the government of Israel documents related to the national defense of the United States and … that he participated in a conspiracy to act as an agent of the government of Israel." Kadish allegedly provided to the same Israeli intelligence officer who ran Jonathan Pollard numerous classified documents obtained while working at the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center at Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, N.J. Some of the documents were related to nuclear weapons research, while others described classified aspects of the Patriot anti-missile defense system. Israel subsequently developed its own Arrow antimissile system, possibly using proprietary information relating to the Patriot, thereby reducing its own development costs and enabling it to market the Arrow internationally at a lower price than its American competitors.

Kadish appeared in court before Judge Douglas F. Eaton in Manhattan. He was released on the same day after putting up a $300,000 bail bond. Kadish also had to turn in his passport, because there was considerable risk that he would flee to Israel, but he was allowed to return home. He was supposed to reappear at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan on May 22, which is where the tale more or less ends. Kadish did not go to court on that day, and his whereabouts and prospects are unknown. The U.S. District Court has a Web site with a search feature that enables one to look for active or past court cases. Typing in "Kadish" produces no results, as if the case were erased. Calling the court to attempt to find out the status of the Kadish trial is also a dead end. Direct telephone inquiries resulted in a complete stonewall. Promises to call back with information on the case were made by court officials, but no one ever did so. Calls to the Department of Justice about Kadish were likewise not returned. It is as if Kadish has vanished.

Predictably, no one in the mainstream media wants to report on Rosen and Weissman or follow up on the story of Ben-Ami Kadish. Nor has the Department of Justice made any public statements, though federal prosecutors claim to have a continuing interest in convicting the two AIPAC ex-officials. In the U.S. media, stories that are critical of Israel, particularly if they challenge the fundamentals and reciprocity of the "special relationship" between Washington and Tel Aviv, tend to die immediately and, in some cases, are even expunged from Web sites and archives. The tales of Rosen, Weissman, and Kadish are all too typical, reflective of a judicial system that is selective in its application of law combined with a political and media oligarchy that is willing to compromise every operating principle if Israel is involved. Perhaps Obama will do better, but one would be right to be skeptical, as he has already bowed to the power of AIPAC. If Rosen and Weissman are convicted, as they should be, and if Kadish suddenly appears for trial and sentencing it would be a remarkable indication that change has indeed finally come to Washington.

U.S. Spies On Israel's Nukes

By Dan Williams
Source:Reuters North American News Service
Dec 10, 2008 11:44 EST
Courtesy Of Anti-War NewsWire

JERUSALEM, Dec 10 (Reuters) - The United States routinely spies on Israel to try to gather information on its assumed atomic arsenal and secret government deliberations, a new official history of Israel's intelligence services says.

While espionage by allies on their friends is not uncommon, it is rare that state-sponsored publications acknowledge it. Israeli-U.S. ties have been especially touchy in this regard since a U.S. Navy analyst, Jonathan Pollard, was jailed for life for treason in 1987 for passing classified documents to Israel.

According to "Masterpiece: An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Israeli Intelligence", American spy agencies use technologies like electronic eavesdropping, and trained staff from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, for "methodical intelligence gathering".

"The United States has been after Israel's non-conventional capabilities and what goes on at the decision-making echelons," says the book in a chapter on counter-espionage written by Barak Ben-Zur, a retired Shin Bet internal security service officer.

Asked about the assertions, the U.S. embassy spokesman said only: "We don't comment on intelligence matters." Israel is widely believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arms. Israeli officials refuse any comment on this under a longstanding "strategic ambiguity" policy.

While successive U.S. administrations have accepted this reticence, Israel's so-called "bomb in the basement" has been a worry for Washington -- especially during the Middle East wars of 1967 and 1973, when fighting inflamed the wider Cold War.

Declassified Pentagon documents published in a 2004 book about then U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld estimated that Israel had 80 nuclear warheads. Last May, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put the number of Israeli bombs at around 150.

The issue has taken on new relevance recently given Western fears that Iran's nuclear programme could have military designs -- despite denials by Tehran. Israel has vowed to prevent its arch-foe from getting the bomb, but some analysts believe Israel could instead build up an overt nuclear deterrence against Iran. Contacted by Reuters, Ben-Zur declined to give operational details on how the United States might be spying on Israel. But he described such efforts as largely benign given the closeness of defence ties between Israel and the Bush administration.

"At the end of the day, the United States does not want to be surprised," he said. "Even by us."

Due out later this month, "Masterpiece" is published by the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Centre and includes prefaces by chiefs of Israel's military intelligence, the domestic Shin Bet and the Mossad spy service active abroad. (Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

Arabs Rely On UK and Israel For Their History

Arabs Have To Rely On Britain and Israel For Their History

There Is No Public Record Office In The Arab World, No National Archive

By Robert Fisk
Saturday, 1 November 2008
Courtesy Of The Independent

In Damascus, a massive statue of the late President Hafez al-Assad sits on a mighty iron chair outside the 22,000sq m Assad Library, a giant book open in his right hand.

Behind him lie the archives of his dictatorship. But not a single state paper is open to the people of Syria. There are no archives from the foreign ministry or the interior ministry or the defence ministry. There is no 30-year rule – for none is necessary. The rule is for ever. There is no Public Record Office in the Arab world, no scholars waiting outside the National Archives.

It is the same in Cairo, in Riyadh, in Beirut and in Tripoli. Dictatorships and caliphates do not give away their secrets. The only country in the Middle East where you can burrow through the files is called Israel – and good for the Israelis. But the result is obvious. While Israeli scholars have been able to deconstruct the traditional story of little Israel – proving that there were no Arab radio stations calling for the Palestinians to leave their land, that the Arabs were indeed ethnically cleansed from their towns and villages by Irgun and the Hagana – there is no Arab scholar who can balance the books by drawing on the archives of his own history. They must go to the National Archives in London to read General Cunningham's dispatches from 1948 Palestine, or quote from Israeli books. The record stops there. Aside from the self-serving biographies of Arab dictators and generals, that's it. Even Walid Khalidi's huge tome on the destroyed villages of Palestine relies heavily on the work of Israeli historian Benny Morris.

Slowly, though, a little bag of history is being filled across the region. If we can't read the private papers of the leaders of the lamentable Arab Liberation Army of 1948, we can still hear the personal testimony of the Palestinian survivors. Rosemarie Esber, for example, has put her degrees from London and Johns Hopkins universities to good use by interviewing – in Jordan and Lebanon -- 126 Palestinian men and women who lost their homes and lands in 1948 and 1949. Her soon to be published work (Under the Cover of War) helps to balance documentation and diaries by one side with verbal recollection on the other. The book does not spare the Arabs – least of all the Arab atrocities or the Iraqi volunteers who turned up to fight for Palestine but didn't even know their geography – yet the suffering of those who fled is all too evident.

Here, for example, is Abu Mohamed from the village of Saqiya, east of Tel Aviv, describing what happened on 25 April, 1948: "Jews entered the village and started shooting women, men, and old people. They arrested girls, and we still don't know what happened to them. They came from the settlement that was near the village... They used Bren guns. Then armoured vehicles entered the centre of the village. Fourteen were killed that day... Two women could not run so they were killed in the village... The villagers ran together in the direction of al-Lid (Lod, the site of Ben Gurion airport in modern-today Israel). After that families started to leave separately... We left everything in the village... We thought it would be a short trip and we would come back."

In Lebanon, too, there is a flourishing market in books based on diaries and personal archives. Among the most intriguing is A Face in the Crowd: The Secret Papers of Emir Farid Chehab, 1942-1972, the private documents of Lebanon's post-Second World War intelligence boss. Apart from proving that Lebanese-Syrian relations could be as awful in the 1940s as they could be in the 1990s, he was an assiduous spy, nurturing his agents in Jordan in 1956 to find out why the young King Hussein had fired the British commander of the Arab Legion, Glubb Pasha. "Glubb was a spendthrift, tightly controlled the army's finances and secret expenses, and refused to share relevant information with Arab commanders and officers," a still unknown informant writes to Chehab on 11 March, 1956. "His interference (extended to) ... control over various ministries' telephone lines... A telephone employee in Amman admitted to me that even the Palace's and Prime Ministry's communication networks were under the army's surveillance. A secret communiqué addressed by Glubb to all British heads of army units was recently discovered; it said that in case of an Israeli attack they should retreat and not resist. The free officers took this communiqué up to the King."

So goodbye Glubb Pasha. But did this also, perhaps, have something to do with the equally secret Operation Cordage, first highlighted by Keith Kyle in his excellent book on Suez and even more rigorously investigated by Eric Grove of Salford University. "Cordage" was Britain's plan for defending its Jordanian ally from Israeli attack if Israel assaulted Egypt. The plan, according to Grove, included "an air campaign carried out by (RAF) Venoms based at Amman and Mafraq in Jordan to knock out the Israeli Air Force in 72 hours... A fighter wing of swept-wing aircraft (Sabres or Hunters) would be provided from Germany to operate from Cyprus..." A parachute brigade group would be flown to Jordan to defend British air bases and then – along with Glubb's Arab Legion – to defend Amman against the Israelis. It was at the end of February 1956 that Hussein dismissed Glubb; which, as Grove diplomatically puts it, "created problems". So how much did Glubb know about Operation Musketeer?

What really created "problems", of course, was Britain's own secret plan to attack Egypt, along with France and Israel after which Operation Musketeer – the Suez aggression – took over from Operation Cordage, and Britain's potential Israeli enemies suddenly became their secret allies. But of course, all this comes from British files. Alas, it will be many years before we know what is in the book that the iron Assad is reading outside his library in Damascus.

UN Should Suspend Israel Membership

Nobel Laureate Maguire: UN Should Suspend Israel Membership

By Associated Press
Last update - 17:17 20/11/2008
Courtesy Of Haaretz Newspaper Online

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire said Thursday the United Nations should suspend or revoke Israel's membership.

Maguire said Israel should be punished for ignoring a series of United Nations resolutions over the years.

Maguire won the 1976 peace prize for her work with Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. She is visiting the Palestinian territories to protest Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. In October this year she arrived on a boat that sailed into the Gaza Strip carrying international protesters who wanted to bring attention to Israel's blockade of the Hamas-controlled territory.
Advertisement
Israel virtually sealed off the territories after the Islamic militant Hamas took over there in 2007. The closure tightened two weeks ago in
response to Hamas rocket fire on Israeli border communities.

Maguire told a news conference Thursday that it's time for the international community to take action against Israel.

Related Articles:

Protest boat arrives in Gaza, despite Israel's vow to block it

How we busted the naval siege on Gaza

Powerless in Gaza, residents rely on the tunnels

Politicians In The Service Of Israel Shame Us All

Who could have believed that by Christmas 2008 the international community would still turn a blind eye to Israel’s persecution of Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land?

By Stuart Littlewood.
First Published 2008-11-29
Courtesy Of Middle - East - Online

Who could have believed that by Christmas 2008 the West would still be unable to summon up courage to discipline Israel for crimes against the Palestinians?

The cruel siege of Gaza has been going on for at least 30 months. “It started March 2006 – I was there,” says a friend. In other words, as soon as Hamas was inconveniently elected to power. In early April the EU turned off financial aid and the economic blockade had begun.

Gaza was already suffering severe hardship when I visited a year ago. I wrote afterwards:

I noted the deserted beaches and disused fishing boats... Israel has banned fishing off the Gaza coast, ruined the livelihood of 3000 fishermen and deprived local people of a proper diet. Boats defying the ban are fired on.

The Gaza Strip is sealed off from the outside world with an Israeli fence guarded by watchtowers, snipers, tanks, armoured bulldozers and drones. Israel pretended to withdraw two years ago but still controls Gaza’s airspace, coastal waters and airwaves. It has the place bottled up like a prison and makes frequent incursions...

Right now the strangulated economy is in free-fall and for 1.5 million ordinary folk life is hell. Unemployment stands at 65 per cent, and 80 per cent live below the poverty line.

Fuel is running out, so are basics like washing powder. Shattered infrastructure and food shortages mean serious public and personal health problems. Power cuts disrupt hospitals and vital drugs cannot be kept refrigerated. Thousands look death in the face as medicare collapses.

A friend emailed: “Today in Gaza we have no cement to build graves for those who die.”

Gaza's Ministry of Health reported then that cancer and cardiac patients were without their necessary medication. There was no radiotherapy. Hundreds of renal failure patients were not receiving dialysis as frequently as they should because a third of the machines were out of action. Lack of spares had also disabled other diagnostic and therapy equipment.

Hospitals had run out of many essential drugs and were dangerously low on dressings and cleaning materials. A shortage of anaesthetics threatened to close the operating theatres. Fuel stocks were down to 15 days and there was no patient food. 450 cancer patients (35 per cent of them children) were denied permission to cross the border for proper treatment. Physicians for Human Rights had been trying to bring the critically ill out of Gaza but were often refused by the Israeli authorities. So they died in agony.

In Britain Channel 4 News screened a shocking report about how the sick were blackmailed. If they agreed to inform on relatives the Israelis would allow them to leave. If not, they were condemned to “stay in Gaza and die”.

The Ministry of Health’s crisis management unit sent out a list of urgently needed spares: "No words could express the miserable situation of medical equipment of the hospitals in Gaza better than the attached file,” wrote the director.

The list was forwarded to several British parliamentarians, including my own MP, with a request that it reach the appropriate minister. Who could have believed that a British government, in this day and age, would ignore such a cry for help from a former British protectorate?

The European Parliament had earlier passed a resolution calling on Israel to lift the blockade and guarantee humanitarian aid and essential supplies. Israel responded by declaring Gaza a “hostile entity” and increasing the ferocity of the collective punishment. There have been countless calls since then by the UN and other agencies for an end to the siege.

But the treacherous EU was only too happy to see it continue and actually rewarded Israel by upgrading EU-Israel association and trade agreements instead of suspending them as required under the rules.

Villains abound in the corridors of power, but where were the men of stature and integrity to step in and end this outrage – in the name of God, in the name of Allah, or simply in the name of common decency?

Now, a year later, Gaza's health minister warns that many more will die if Israel’s frequent power cuts and fuel restrictions succeed in shutting down whatever life-support systems are still working. Lack of spares has put half the ambulances out of action and 95 types of medicines, as well as cancer drugs, are no longer available in the Strip. Two hundred and twenty machines used for dialysis and other serious conditions, including CT scanning, are unserviceable.

Israel won’t allow medics or journalists into Gaza to witness and report. We can only guess at the horrific conditions the siege has created.

As for Gaza’s fishermen, the harassment never stops. A few days ago Israeli gunboats seized three fishing boats and kidnapped 15 Palestinian fishermen and three international peace activists – one of them British – in Palestinian waters. But the British government and its Royal Navy are far more concerned about pirates hijacking supertankers off the coast of Somalia than protecting British and Palestinian citizens, lawfully and peacefully going about their business, from piracy off the coast of Gaza.

As I write, a Libyan vessel is on its way to Gaza with food, the first Arab boat to try to break the siege. Where are the others? There should be an armada.

We had gone to Gaza in 2007 to show, in our small way, solidarity with the Muslim and Christian communities in their suffering under the Israeli cosh. And we wanted to meet Fr Manuel Musallam, the heroic priest who for nine years had been trapped in Gaza, unable to visit his family living not far away in the West Bank because the Israelis wouldn't grant him a travel permit. When his parents died he was prevented from attending their funerals.

When he heard we were coming, said a colleague, this brave man burst into tears.

Now, at 70 and with failing health, he has suddenly been allowed to reunite with his family. This leaves the parish and its excellent school without a priest, and a replacement will have to be found – someone who is willing to be a prisoner.

Freedom to worship in the Holy Land is routinely denied to Muslims and Christians. And to underline this fact the Israelis blocked the Pope's representative, archbishop Antonio Franco, and his colleagues from entering the Gaza Strip last Sunday [23 November] to hold a service despite arrangements having been agreed days earlier. They were made to wait three hours at the crossing to no avail.

Who could have believed that by Christmas 2008 the international community would still turn a blind eye to Israel’s persecution of Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land?

And who could have believed that the great churches of Western Christendom would sit back and watch the Holy Land being stolen, and not even prod their politicians into action?

While citizens here in England prepare for their jolly festivities in safety and warmth, what are the chances of a merry Christmas in tormented Gaza? Zero. Families will be cold, hungry, and probably huddled in darkness much of the time, dreading the next Israeli blitz and in constant fear of re-invasion.

Their Christmas misery comes courtesy of the morally bankrupt Western leaders who connive with Israel to destroy Gaza and bring its people to their knees, or their graves.

Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.