Thanks Canada, But Israel Needs America

Though Netanyahu Convinced The Canadian Prime Minister To Support His Stand, Obama Didn't Change His Position and Neither Did The Leaders Of The European Union.

Haaretz Editorial
Published 02:45 30.05.11
Latest update 02:45 30.05.11
Courtesy Of "Haaretz Newspaper"

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proud of his diplomatic achievement over the weekend: He managed to influence the concluding statement of the G8 summit in France. Netanyahu lobbied Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and convinced him to oppose a reference to the formula proposed by U.S. President Barack Obama in which the border between Israel and a Palestinian state would be based on the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed corrections.

Harper agreed with Netanyahu that there is no reason to stress the border issue and not other aspects of the Obama plan, including recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. The G8 makes it statements by consensus, and the Canadian leader's opposition was enough for the U.S. and European leaders to change the wording.

It's nice that Netanyahu found a leader of an important Western country ready to support his pronouncements, after other leaders turned him down. But Netanyahu's lobbying only brought Israel the illusion of success. Obama didn't change his position and neither did the leaders of the European Union. Even after supposedly yielding to Netanyahu's demand, they still believe that Israel should retreat from the West Bank, evacuate the settlements and allow the Palestinians to set up an independent state, with its capital in East Jerusalem.

Instead of engaging in verbal gymnastics and fiery speeches, Netanyahu should work to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians and partition the land, as he promised once again in Congress last week. The unnecessary censuring of the international community's position distracts us from the heart of the matter: changing the situation on the ground to end the occupation and provide Israel with a permanent border with an independent Palestine.


Netanyahu finds it easier and more pleasant to hold talks with Western leaders in diplomatic parlors, to indulge forever in public relations and smear the Palestinian leadership than to make vital decisions on Israel's future. Netanyahu forgot, probably, that Israel doesn't need peace with the G8, but with its Palestinian neighbors, and that it must reach out to them instead of digging in behind the claim that there is no partner.

Inside Area 51

Exclusive: The Secret Birthplace Of The U2 Spy Plane

Published May 17, 2011
Courtesy Of "FOX News"

In her new book "AREA 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base," which goes on sale May 17, Annie Jacobsen offers for the first time an inside look at the history of America's top secret military base. It is the first book based on interviews with the scientist, pilots, and engineers -- 74 in total -- who for the first time reveal what really went on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear reactions to building super-secret supersonic jets to pursuing the war on terror.

Jacobsen, a contributing editor and investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times Magazine, interviewed the former Area 51 employees in 2008 and 2009, shortly after the CIA declassified much of the work they had done, including countless pages of redacted memos and declassified reports. Area 51 is still officially a military secret, unmentioned by name, Jacobsen notes. 

In this exclusive excerpt, Jacobsen reveals some of the wild research that went on in the 1970s at Area 51 -- where the military built the U-2 spy plane, rather than harboring crashed UFOs.

Chapter 20: From Camera Bays To Weapons Bays

By 1974, the Central Intelligence Agency had ceded control of Area 51. Some insiders say the transition occurred in 1979, but since Area 51 does not officially exist, the Air Force won’t officially say when this handover occurred.

Certainly this had to have happened by the time the stealth bomber program was up and running; the F-117 program was the holy grail of Pentagon black projects — and, during that time period, the Air Force dominated Area 51.

Having no business in bombs, the CIA maintained a much smaller presence there than historically it had before. During the 1970s, the Agency’s work concentrated largely on pilotless aircraft, or drones. Hank Meierdierck, the man who wrote the manual for the U‑2 at Area 51, was in charge of one such CIA drone project, which began in late 1969.

Code-named Aquiline, the six-foot-long pilotless aircraft was disguised to look like an eagle or buzzard in flight. It carried a small television camera in its nose and photo equipment and air-sampling sensors under its wings. Some insiders say it had been designed to test for radiation in the air as well as to gather electronic intelligence, or ELINT. But Gene Poteat, the first CIA officer ever assigned to the National Reconnaissance Office, offers a different version of events. 

“Spy satellites flying over the Caspian Sea delivered us images of an oddly shaped, giant, multi-engine watercraft moving around down there on the surface. No one had any idea what this thing was for, but you can be sure the Agency wanted to find out."

"That is what the original purpose of Aquiline was for,” Poteat reveals. “To take close‑up pictures of the vehicle so we could discern what it was and what the Soviets might be thinking of using it for. Since we had no idea what it was, we made up a name for it."

"We called it the Caspian Sea Monster,” Poteat explains. Project Aquiline remains a classified project, but in September of 2008, BBC News magazine produced a story about a Cold War Soviet hydrofoil named Ekranopian, which is exactly what the CIA’s Aquiline drone was designed to spy on.

At Area 51, Hank Meierdierck selected his former hunting partner Jim Freedman to assist him on the Aquiline drone program. “It flew low and was meant to follow along communication lines in foreign countries and intercept messages,” Freedman says. “I believe the plan was to launch it from a submarine while it was waiting in port.” The Aquiline team consisted of three pilots trained to remotely control the bird, with Freedman offering operational support.

“Hank got the thing to fly,” Freedman recalls. Progress was slow and “it crash-landed a lot.” The program ended when the defense contractor, McDonnell Douglas, gave a bid for the job that Meierdierck felt was ninety-nine million dollars over budget. McDonnell Douglas would not budge on its bid, so Hank recommended that the CIA cancel Project Aquiline, which he said they did.

After the program was over, Hank Meierdierck managed to take a mock‑up of the Aquiline drone home with him from the area. “He had it sitting on his bar at his house down in Las Vegas,” Freedman recalls.

Project Aquiline was not the CIA’s first attempt to gather intelligence using cover from the animal kingdom. Project Ornithopter involved a birdlike drone designed to blend in with nature by flapping its wings. And a third, even smaller drone was designed to look like a crow and land on windowsills in order to photograph what was going on inside CIA-targeted rooms.

The tiniest drone program, orchestrated in the early 1970s, was Project Insectothopter, an insect-size aerial vehicle that looked like a dragonfly in flight. Insectothopter had an emerald green minifuselage and, like Ornithopter, flapped its wings, which were powered by a miniature engine that ran on a tiny amount of gas. Through its Office of Research and Development, or ORD, the CIA had also tried turning live birds and cats into spies.

In one such program, CIA-trained pigeons flew around Washington, DC, with bird-size cameras strapped to their necks. The project failed after the extra weight tired out the pigeons and they hobbled back to headquarters on foot instead of in flight. Another CIA endeavor, Acoustic Kitty, involved putting electronic listening devices in house cats.

But that project also backfired after too many cats strayed from their missions in search of food. One acoustic kitty got run over by a car. The Agency’s pilotless-vehicle projects were forever growing in ambition and in size. One robotic drone from the early 1970s, a project financed with DARPA, was disguised to look like an elephant —ready to do battle in the jungles of Vietnam.

Reprinted from the book AREA 51 by Annie Jacobsen. Copyright © 2011 by Annie Jacobsen. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ANNIE JACOBSEN is a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine and an investigative reporter whose work has also appeared in the National Review and the Dallas Morning News. Her two-part series “The Road to Area 51” in the Los Angeles Times Magazine broke online reader records and remained the “most popular/most emailed” story for ten consecutive days. 

Learn more at the Area 51 website.

Israel Should Thank Egypt For Opening Gaza Crossing

Even Though At First Glance It Might Not Look That Way, Egypt's Decision To Open The Rafah Crossing Point Is Also Good For Israel.

By Shlomo Avineri
Published 02:45 30.05.11
Latest update 02:45 30.05.11
Courtesy Of "Haretz Newspaper"

Without a doubt, Egypt's decision to open the Rafah crossing point is good for the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip and for the Hamas government. The question of whether it is good for Egypt remains open. As for Israel, even though at first glance it might not look that way, it is also good.

The fact that Gaza will now be directly connected to the Arab world might make it easier for Israel to untangle itself from a number of knots and a thoughtful and wise response to the new reality could make it easier to deal with the next flotilla.

	A Palestinian crossing into Egypt from gaza via the newly-opened Rafah crossing on Saturday.
	Photo by: AP

Though Israel evacuated the Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip and withdrew the Israel Defense Forces from the territory, it kept its hold on the supervision of entry and departure there by land, sea and air. After the Hamas takeover of Gaza, this external control became a blockade - which hadn't initially been included in the idea of the disengagement.

The aims of the of the blockade emerged gradually: Legitimate intentions like preventing provision of armaments to Hamas mingled here with more complex aims like a desire to topple the Hamas regime and bring about the release of Gilad Shalit.

None of these aims have been achieved and the blockade's diplomatic repercussions on Israel's international standing have never been publicly discussed. Instead of reaping the diplomatic rewards of the disengagement, Israel has been perceived as oppressing a million and a half civilians.

An absurdity has developed: Even though Israel is no longer controlling the Gaza Strip, it is viewed as responsible for the distress prevailing there. We have also reached an embarrassing situation in which a special unit has formulated a list of allowed foods for the inhabitants of Gaza - as though it were a collective prison under our control.

Thus we fell into the trap set by the organizers of the flotilla from Turkey and came across as violent occupiers, who are not only oppressing a civilian population but also killing people who try to bring them humanitarian aid.

However - and it is hard to admit this - what brought about the near-total cessation of Qassam-fire out of the Gaza Strip was Hamas' fear of another brutal Israeli military operation.

The fact that the Gaza Strip has another border - with Egypt - was forgotten and that country's cooperation with Israel in also closing its own border with the the Gaza Strip did not attract attention. Israel alone was perceived as responsible for their distress.

Now, upon the opening of the Egyptian border, the time has come to complete the disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Israel must lift the naval and air blockades and at the same time shut down entirely the land crossing points from Israel to Gaza. The Gaza Strip is enemy territory and from the moment it is open to the wider world through the Rafah crossing, all the remnants of the Israeli occupation as manifested in the naval and air blockade should be eliminated, thereby removing from us the responsibility for provisioning the Gaza Strip.

The border between Israel and Gaza should be like the border between Israel and Lebanon, and just as Israel is not imposing a naval blockade on Lebanon it should not be imposing one on Gaza.

If this policy is implemented, transferring provisions and humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip will be done through Egypt - or directly to Gaza. If the organizers of the flotilla to Gaza want to reach Gaza - you are welcome: This is none of our business. There is no Israeli blockade, and so-called human rights activists - whose only aim is to embarrass Israel - aren't bringing weapons there anyway.

Anyone who wants to bring weapons has been doing it for years via the tunnels and we haven't been able to stop that. A total disengagement could also decrease the motivation of some of the flotilla participants.

Gaza is a foreign country. It is hard to digest this, but this is the logic of the disengagement, which must now be completed. Thanks are due to Egypt for having made this possible.

The Patriot Act: When Truth Becomes Treason

By Susan Lindauer
05/24/11
01:08:21 pm
Courtesy Of "The People's Voice"

Many Americans think they understand the dangers of the Patriot Act, which Congress has vowed to extend 4 more years in a vote later this week. Trust me when I say, Americans are not nearly frightened enough.

Ever wonder why the truth about 9/11 never got exposed? Why Americans don't have a clue about leadership fraud surrounding the War on Terror? Why Americans don't know if the 9/11 investigation was really successful? Why the Iraqi Peace Option draws a blank? Somebody has known the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden--- or his grave—for the past 10 years. But nobody's talking to the people.

In significant part, that's because of the Patriot Act--- a law that equates free speech with sedition. It's got a big agenda, with 7,000 pages of Machiavellian code designed to interrupt individual questioning of government policy. In this brave new world, free speech under the Bill of Rights effectively has been declared a threat to government controls for maintaining stability. And the Patriot Act has become the premiere weapon to attack whistle blowers and dissidents who challenge the comfort of political leaders hiding inconvenient truths from the public. It's all the rage on Capitol Hill, as leaders strive to score TV ratings, while demogauging their "outstanding leadership performance" on everything from national security to environmental policy.

Truth has Become Treason

But wait---Congress assures us the Patriot Act only targets foreigners, who come to our shores seeking to destroy our way of life through violent, criminal acts. Good, law abiding Americans have nothing to fear. The Patriot Act restricts its powers of "roving wiretaps" and warrantless searches to international communications among "bad guys." Congress has sworn, with hand on heart, it's only purpose is breaking down terrorist cells and hunting out "lone wolf" mad men.

That's what they told you, right? And you believed them? You trust the government. Well, that was your first mistake. With regards to the Patriot Act, it's a fatal one. Would the government lie to you? You betcha! And they have.

The Patriot Act reaches far beyond terrorism prevention. In my home state of Maryland, State Police invoked the Patriot Act to run surveillance on the Chesapeake Climate Action Network dedicated to wind power, recycling and protection of the Chesapeake Bay. They infiltrated the DC Anti War Network, suggesting the group might be a front for "white supremacists," and Amnesty International, claiming to investigate "civil rights abuses." Opponents of the death penalty also got targeted (in case they got violent).

Bottom line: truth tellers who give Americans too much insight on any number of issues are vulnerable to a vast arsenal of judicial weapons typically associated with China or Mynamar. In the Patriot Act, the government has created a powerful tool to hunt out free thinking on the left or right. It doesn't discriminate. Anyone who opposes government policy is at risk

How do I know all this? Because I was the second non-Arab American ever indicted on the Patriot Act. My arrest defied all expectations about the law. I was no terrorist plotting to explode the Washington Monument. Quite the opposite, I had worked in anti-terrorism for almost a decade, covering Iraq and Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Malaysia at the United Nations. At the instruction of my CIA handler, I had delivered advance warnings about the 9/11 attack to the private staff of Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Office of Counter-Terrorism in August, 2001. FBI wire taps prove that I carried details of a comprehensive peace framework with Iraq up and down the hallowed corridors of Capitol Hill for months before the invasion, arguing that War was totally unnecessary.

I delivered those papers to Democrats and Republicans alike; to my own second cousin, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card; and to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who lived next door to my CIA handler. Gratis of the Patriot Act, we had the manila envelope and my hand written notes to Secretary Powell, dated a week before his infamous speech at the United Nations. My papers argued that no WMDs would be found inside Iraq, and that the peace framework could achieve all U.S. objectives without firing a shot.

In short, I was an Asset who loudly opposed War with Iraq, and made every effort to correct the mistakes in assumptions on Capitol Hill.

Then I did the unthinkable. I phoned the offices of Senator Trent Lott and Senator John McCain, requesting to testify before a brand new, blue ribbon Commission investigating Pre-War Intelligence. Proud and confident of my efforts, I had no idea Congress was planning to blame "bad intelligence" for the unpopular War.

Over night I became Public Enemy Number One on Capitol Hill.

Thirty days later I awoke to hear FBI agents pounding on my door. My nightmare on the Patriot Act lasted 5 years--- Four years after my arrest, the Court granted me one morning of evidentiary testimony by two supremely credible witnesses. Parke Godfrey verified my 9/11 warnings under oath. Otherwise, I never got my day in Court.

The Patriot Act's Arsenal to Stop Free Speech

If you care about America and the traditions of freedom, whether you're progressive or conservative, you should be angry about this law.

First come the warrantless searches and FBI tracking surveillance. My work in anti-terrorism gave me no protection. I got my first warrantless search after meeting an undercover FBI agent to discuss my support for free elections in Iraq and my opposition to torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi detainees. (Sorry guys, body wires don't lie.)

If truth tellers don't get the message to shut their mouths, the Justice Department ratchets up the pressure. Defendants face secret charges, secret evidence and secret grand jury testimony. Throughout five years of indictment, my attorneys and I never got to read a single FBI interview or grand jury statement. Under the Patriot Act, the whistleblower/defendant has no right to know who has accused him or her of what criminal activities, or the dates of the alleged offenses, or what laws got broken.

Of course, I was able to piece together my activities. I knew that "sometime in October, 2001" an Iraqi diplomat gave me the English translation of a book on depleted uranium, which showed how cancer rates and birth defects had spiked in Iraqi children.

And I was quite certain that on October 14, 1999, an Iraqi diplomat asked me how to channel major financial contributions to the Presidential Campaign of George Bush and Dick Cheney. The Justice Department got the date from me, since I reported my conversation immediately to my Defense Intelligence handler, Paul Hoven.

It's unlikely the grand jury knew that, since the Justice Department has the prerogative to keep a grand jury in the dark. In this brave new world, a grand jury can be compelled to consider indictments carrying 10 years or more in prison, without the right to review evidence, or otherwise determine whether an individual's actions rise to the level of criminal activity at all.

That's just the beginning. Once Congress scores an indictment against a political opponent, the Justice Department can force Defense attorneys to undergo protracted security clearances, while the whistle blower cum defendant waits in prison--- usually in solitary confinement or the SHU. After the security clearance, prosecutors have an ironclad right to bar attorneys from communicating communications from the prosecution to the defendant, on threat of disbarment, stiff fines or prison sentence.

Scared yet? Once you get to trial, the situation gets much worse. The Patriot Act declares that a prosecutor has no obligation to show evidence of criminal activity to a jury at all. And the Defense can be denied the right to argue a rebuttal to those secret charges, because it requires speculation that might mislead the jury—or might expose issues that the government considers, well, secret. After all that a Judge can instruct a jury that the prosecution regards the secret evidence as sufficient to merit conviction on the secret charges. The Jury can be barred from considering the lack of evidence in weighing whether to convict.

Think I'm exaggerating? You would be wrong. That's what happened to me. All of it—with one major glitch. All of this presumes the whistle blower's lucky enough to get a trial. I was denied mine, though I fought vigorously for my rights. Instead, citing the Patriot Act, I got thrown in prison on a Texas military base without so much as a hearing—and threatened with indefinite detention and forcible drugging, to boot.

Americans are not nearly afraid enough.

Neither is Congress. As of this week, members of Congress should be very afraid. Anyone who votes to extend the Patriot Act should expect to pack their bags in 2012. They will be targeted for defeat. Above all, the words "freedom" and "Constitution" will never appear in their campaigns without suffering extreme public scorn—never, ever again.

Susan Lindauer is the author of "Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq," which describes her work as an Asset covering Iraq and Libya, and her arrest on the Patriot Act shortly after requesting to testify before Congress about the CIA's advance warnings about 9/11 and a peace option in Iraq. | Audio interview | Book review

Arab Nations: New Governments, Same Story

While initially silent during Egypt's revolution, the US is now looking to find a means of transitioning the new government into the US-led international order [GALLO/GETTY]


While Slow To React To The Arab Spring, US Diplomats Are Working To Make Sure The Region Remains Under Their Hegemony.

By Soumaya Ghannoushi
Last Modified: 29 May 2011 16:17
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

The first wave of Arab revolutions is entering its second phase. Along with dismantling the structures of political despotism, they have embarked on the arduous journey toward genuine change and democratisation.

On the opposite side, the US is seeking to recover from the initial state of disarray and confusion generated by its loss of key allies, and to define a roadmap for the new age of Arab revolutions. It had been thrust aside by a roaring Arab street that struck a deadly blow to its doctrine of stability. After watching the pitch helplessly, it is now determined to force its way back in to dictate its course and outcome. Finally, Washington has come to swallow the bitter fact that the world has changed, and that its old friends and partners are no more. What had been a challenge to its power and authority is now "an historic opportunity", as Obama put it in his speech last week.

Yet this is not an opportunity for the people who have risen up, but for the force that has aided and abetted their jailers, and ensured they were kept in shackles for decades in the name of political realism. It is its "opportunity", the chance for its decision makers and bureaucrats sitting in their Washington boardrooms to fashion the region's present and future, just as they did its past. In Obama's words, "to pursue the world as it should be" - not according to the yearnings and aspirations of its people -  but to America's cold calculations. 

US Interests

And how is this new world to be built? The guiding model is to be found in Eastern Europe and the colour revolutions. In short, by using American soft power and public diplomacy to reshape the socio-political scene in the region, the aim is to transform the people's revolutions into America's revolutions.

The centre of gravity has shifted from the streets - with its uncontrollable, unpredictable, and dangerous rhythm - to the hands of the powerful elites. So, back we are to the old game of engineered elites: docile, domesticated, at the service of US strategies (consciously and sub-consciously).

But, this is being stretched to new fronts: the strategy is to not only confined to the classical friends left over from the old era, but to also contain new forces produced by the revolution, which had long been marginalised and rejected by the US.

"We must... broaden our engagement... so that we reach the people who will shape the future - particularly young people... [and] provide assistance to civil society, including those that may not be officially sanctioned," said President Obama. To this end the US has doubled its fund aimed at "protecting civil society groups", raising its budget from $1.5m, to 3.4m. 

The targets are not only the usual neoliberal elements, but include the activists who spearheaded the protest movements, and mainstream Islamists. For example, the last few months have seen an escalation of American public diplomacy efforts in Egypt and Tunisia by the US government and institutions close to it. This has included programmes aimed at Arab youth leaders such as the Leaders for Arab Democracy programme sponsored by the Middle East Partnership Initiative, as well as many conferences and seminars such as the one hosted by the Project on Middle East Democracy at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington last month.

A number of Arab activists were invited to the Project, including prominent Egyptian democracy and human rights activist Esraa Abdel Fattah. Meetings have also been held between high ranking US officials and the Muslim Brotherhood last month in Cairo, while Ennahda's deputy chairman has recently returned from a visit to Washington to "discuss democratic transition in Tunisia".

Washington hopes that these rising forces may be stripped of their ideological opposition to American hegemony and turned into pragmatists fully integrated into the existing US-led international order. Dogma is not a problem, as long as they agree to operate within parameters delineated for them, if they play the game without questioning its rules.  

Economic Containment

But containment and integration are not only political but economic, too. They are to be pursued through free markets and trade partnerships in the name of economic reform. Plans "to stabilise and modernise" the Tunisian and Egyptian economies were announced at this week's G8 summit. These include a $40bn dollar aid package that would drown these economies deeper in debt, a two million dollar facility to support private investment "modeled on funds that supported the transitions in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall", the "Deauville Partnership" to expand political and economic ties with North Africa and the Middle East, and an extension of the mandate of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to cover the nations of the southern Mediterranean. As usual, investment and aid are conditional on adoption of the American neoliberal economic model in the name of reform and modernisation, and on further binding economies to US and European markets under the banner of "trade integration". 

One wonders what would be left of the Arab revolutions amidst infiltrated civil societies, domesticated political parties, and dependent economies. That is precisely the post-revolution Middle East being concocted by the White House today, carved up with the chisel of the economy, money, and public diplomacy - not to mention its firepower and military bases scattered across the region and at its borders.  

The Obama administration may succeed in infiltrating Arab organisations, but its bid to reproduce the Eastern European scenario in the region is little more than wishful thinking. While Prague and Warsaw looked to the US for inspiration in its liberation struggle, Cairo, Tunis, and Sana'a see the US as the problem and chief impediment to their emancipation and progress. To Arabs, the US is a force of occupation draped in a thin cloak of democracy and human rights. 

No one could have offered stronger evidence of such a view than Obama himself. He began his Middle East speech with eulogies to freedom and the equality of all men, and ended it with talk of the "Jewishness of Israel". 

Effectively, Israel has been denying the citizenship rights of 20 per cent of its Arab inhabitants and right of return of six million Palestinian refugees.

In vain, the US tries to reconcile the irreconcilable and preach democracy, while occupying and aiding in occupation. But in a region that forms one interconnected geographic, cultural, and political sphere, you cannot liberate Egyptians, Syrians, or Tunisians, without liberating Palestinians.

Soumaya Ghannoushi is a freelance writer specialising in the history of European Perceptions of Islam. Her work has appeared in a number of leading British papers including the Guardian and the Independent.

Manifest Destiny and The 'Wild West Bank'

Israeli settlers are often the most zealous and violent Israeli citizens - and cause many problems for their Palestinian neighbours [GALLO/GETTY]


US-Israeli Ties May Be Based On The Identification Of Israel's Settler Movement As A Relection Of Frontier Past Of US.

By Tarak Barkawi
Last Modified: 29 May 2011 16:32
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Judging by reactions to recent speeches by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, many in the US would prefer to have the Israeli leader directing US foreign policy on the key security questions of the day. It is astonishing that the leader of a foreign country can so publicly and effectively oppose a sitting president in his own capital. Only in the US, and only for Israel.

Why is this so? Why is there such resonance between the people of these two countries?

Just before the first anniversary of 9/11, President Bush told some members of the US House of Representatives that the reason Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction were the biggest threat was because "he can blow up Israel". One way to justify a US invasion of Iraq was to make it for the sake of Israel.

Senator J William Fulbright famously remarked that on anything they care about, the Israelis have 75 to 80 votes in the Senate. In the United States Senate, that is.

As early as 1969, future President Gerald Ford declared that "the fate of Israel is linked to the national security interests of the United States". More apocalyptically, Eugene Rostow warned that it would mean the end of "liberal civilisation" if Israel were not defended.

These are simply extraordinary statements, and many more could be quoted. It is all the more extraordinary that they seem unremarkable, a normal and expected part of the US political scene. Why should the US be so willing to expend blood and, especially, treasure on behalf of a far away country?

A usual explanation is the "Israel Lobby", the "loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction" as Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt define it. Prominent "realists" who believe states act according to their national interests, they are concerned to explain such a glaring anomaly as the case of US policy towards Israel.

Undoubtedly, special interest lobbies of all kinds shape political debate and outcomes in the US and elsewhere. But to identify the Israel lobby and its activities is not an explanation. Why does the US have a lobby for Israel of such scale in the first place? Why should it be so effective? Why is its message so warmly received?

The idea behind the Israel lobby is that US support for Israel has something to do with American Jews, that they have convinced by fair means or foul the rest of the country to act in Israel's interests. This is why criticism of the Israel lobby is so easily tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism.

But a special relationship of this kind has much deeper roots in the American psyche, in the core myths that make up the identity of the US.

Americans see in Israel their own preferred reflection of themselves. They see a lone, devout and free people on the edge of a vast continent full of dusky, hostile natives. Like the European colonists who settled North America, the destiny of this free people is to build a "city on a hill" on virgin land, a beacon of freedom and civilisation in a tragic world.

The natives already in possession of that land are an essential part of the story. Their savagery is an appropriate backdrop against which to illuminate the godliness and purity of the settlers. It also calls forth the need for God's warriors, the brave, resourceful, but pious band of white men who will circle the wagons and hold off the natives.

When American Jews leave behind their safe, comfortable suburban lives for the frontier towns of the West Bank, they are enacting the American story. With Glock automatics instead of Colt revolvers, M16s instead of Winchester rifles, they are off to the last frontier to manifest their destiny.

Other Americans, who have to settle for carrying their guns into the local Starbucks, wish they could be so lucky, that they too could go to a frontier town to play "Cowboys and Indians" for real.

9/11 helped seal this bond between two free peoples. The US too had been attacked by suicidal terrorists. As Paul Wolfowitz told a rally of Israel's supporters, "at that moment every American understood what it is like to live in Jerusalem or Netanya or Haifa".

But in truth any American who had ever watched a John Wayne movie already had a template by which to support Israel. All the Israel lobby had to do was tell its story according to the appropriate myths.

Tarak Barkawi is Senior Lecturer, Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge. He specialises in the study of war, armed forces and society with a focus on conflict between the West and the global South in historical and contemporary perspective. Most recently, he is author of Globalisation and War.

Israel Is Not A "Partner For Peace"

Negotiations have been stalled due, in part, to Israel's refusal to halt illegal settlement construction [GALLO/GETTY]


Israel's Refusal To Compromise In Stalled Negotiations Shows Who The "Partner For Peace" Is Not.

By Shlomo Ben Ami
Last Modified: 30 May 2011 08:38
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Binyamin Netanyahu's furious rejection of US President Barack Obama's proposal to use the 1967 borders as the basis for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute - frontiers that he called "utterly indefensible" - reflects not only the Israeli prime minister's poor statesmanship, but also his antiquated military philosophy.

In an era of ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction, and in which the planned Palestinian state is supposed to be demilitarised, why is it so vital for Israel to see its army "sit along the Jordan River"? If such a tripwire is really necessary, why shouldn't a reliable international force carry out that task? And how can hundreds of isolated settlements spread amidst a hostile Palestinian population ever be considered a strategic asset?

Netanyahu should, perhaps, have studied the lessons of the 1973 Yom Kippur war on the Golan Heights before denouncing Obama's idea. When the war started, the first thing the Israeli army command sought was the evacuation of the area's settlements, which Israel's generals knew would quickly become an impossible burden, and an obstacle to manoeuvre, for their troops.

Indeed, the last war that Israel won "elegantly" - in the way that Netanyahu imagines that wars should be won - began from the supposedly "indefensible" 1967 lines.

That is no accident. Israel's occupation of Arab lands in that war, and its subsequent deployment of military forces amidst the Arab population of the West Bank and close to the powerful military machines of Egypt in the south and Syria in the north, exposed it to Palestinian terrorism from the east.

At the same time, occupation denied Israel's army the advantage of a buffer - the demilitarised zones that were the key to the 1967 victory against both Egypt and Syria.

For borders to be defensible, they need first to be legitimate and internationally recognised. But Netanyahu does not really trust "the gentiles" to supply that type of international recognition of Israel's borders, not even when the US is behind him, and not even when Israel today has the most powerful military capabilities in the Middle East.

The son of a renowned historian who served as the personal secretary of Zeev Jabotinski, the founder of the Zionist right, Netanyahu absorbed from childhood his father's interpretation of Jewish history as a series of tragedies.

The lesson was simple: the gentiles cannot be relied upon, for Jewish history is one of betrayal and extermination at their hands. The only remedy to our fragile existence in the diaspora lies in the return to the Biblical "Land of Israel". Our Arab neighbours should never be trusted; hence, as Jabotinski preached, the new Israeli nation must erect an "Iron Wall of Jewish power" to deter its enemies forever.

To be fair, such an existential philosophy was not the right's monopoly. The legendary General Moshe Dayan, who was born in a socialist Kibbutz on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, was no less a sceptic about the chances of coexisting with the Arabs. A gifted orator, this is how he put it in a eulogy to a fallen soldier in 1956:

"Let us not be deterred from seeing the loathing that is inflaming and filling the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who live around us. Let us not avert our eyes lest our arms weaken…This is the fate of our generation, this is our life choice, to be prepared and armed, strong and determined, lest the sword be stricken from our fist and our lives cut down…We are a generation of settlers, and, without the steel helmet and the cannon's fire, we will not be able to plant a tree and build a home."

Yet the same Dayan, who in 1970 said that "the only peace negotiations are those where we settle the land and we build, and we settle, and from time to time we go to war," was forced by cruel reality to admit that the best security to which Israel can aspire is that based on peace with its neighbors.

Eventually, he became the architect of a historic peace with Egypt. His book Are We Truly Condemned to Live by the Sword to Eternity? marked the transformation of the soldier into a statesman.

If Netanyahu is ever to lead a historic reconciliation with the Palestinian people, he should start by endorsing a courageous, almost post-Zionist insight reflected in Dayan's 1956 eulogy. Fully aware of the bitter legacy of Palestinian disinheritance following the 1948 war, Dayan refused to blame the murderers. On the contrary, he understood their "burning hatred".

Unfortunately, Israel today has a prime minister with the mentality of a platoon commander, who nonetheless likes to cast himself as a latter day Churchill - fighting the forces of evil bent on destroying the Third Jewish Temple.

Of course, a great leader must always have a sense of history. But, as the French philosopher Paul Valery put it, history, "the science of things which are not repeated", is also "the most dangerous product which the chemistry of the intellect has ever evolved", especially when manipulated by politicians.

Menachem Begin, a hawkish predecessor of Netanyahu as prime minister, once had the insolence to say to the great historian Yaakov Talmon that, "when it comes to the twentieth century, I am more an expert than you are".

Talmon responded with "The Fatherland is Imperiled" - a pivotal article whose conclusions are as relevant today as they were in 1981. Not until occupation ends, Israel lives within internationally recognised borders, and the Palestinians recover their dignity as a nation will the Jewish state's existence be finally secured.

Shlomo Ben Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister who serves as vice-president of the Toledo International Centre for Peace, is the author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: the Israeli-Arab Tragedy.

A version of this article was previously published on the Project Syndicate.

Netanyahu’s Win Is Israel’s Loss

Once The Dust Of The Media Storm Settles Down, The Citizens Of Israel Will Be Faced With The Stark Truth: The Specter Of Israel’s Ever-Growing Isolation and Of Increasing International Pressure Looms Large.

By Carlo Strenger
Published 17:37 25.05.11
Latest update 17:37 25.05.11
Courtesy Of "Haaretz Newspaper"

The only winner of the weeklong showdown at AIPAC and Congress is the media: there was a lot to write about; pundits could abound with feverish speculations about who would win, who would lose; who was leading in points against whom. But if you look at the dry facts, it is quite clear that everything was played out according to the predetermined script.

Netanyahu came to the U.S. with only one agenda: to make a good impression and to score points at AIPAC and Congress. Netanyahu knows that no Palestinian leadership can accept a deal without compromise on Jerusalem. Netanyahu is neither willing nor able to do this, so there is no use in even starting negotiations. So Netanyahu got his accolades for well crafted speeches that rehashed his old, known positions, and he has done what he does best: gain some more time.

	Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hugs Sen. Joseph Lieberman on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, May 24, 2011.
	Photo by: AP

The problem is that he gained very little time indeed – at most until September. The European media was in no way impressed with Netanyahu’s performance and saw it for what it was: sowing dust in the eyes of well-meaning American friends. Netanyahu made clear, once again, that the Palestinians have only one option, namely to continue their drive toward a bid for UN recognition for their state along the 1967 borders, a bid almost certain to succeed. And with Netanyahu in power this means that Israel will pay a heavy price in isolation, pressure and mounting criticism.

The Palestinians received further evidence that there is no use in negotiating with Netanyahu’s right-wing government. Their current strategic goal is broad international recognition, and they will soon have embassies in most of the world. This will create a much stronger position for them in negotiations with a future Israeli government more amenable to compromise.

The only interesting thing about last week was how Obama played his cards: he wants to be reelected in 2012, and any move seen as enforcing a non-negotiated solution on Israel would have brought him into collision course with a strong Christian Zionist constituency in the U.S. that supports Netanyahu. It would also have invited AIPAC’s ire, even though AIPAC no longer represents the majority of Jewish voters in the U.S.

But Obama also needs and wants to be seen as supporting change in the Arab world and the creation of a Palestinian state. Ergo: he expressed support for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. But he also stated that he will not accept unilateral moves by the Palestinians such as seeking recognition for a Palestinian state at the UN. Officially he therefore rejects imposing a non-negotiated solution to the conflict on Israel.

So far there are constraints on what he could say publicly. His actual position seems to be somewhat different: he knows that, given Netanyahu’s political constraints and his worldview, chances for productive negotiations with the Palestinians are practically zero. He also knows that the Palestinians’ bid for recognition by the UN General Assembly, where the U.S. does not have veto power, is likely to receive more than two-thirds of the vote, probably including Britain and France.

Hence Obama’s strategy is really quite interesting: he will let the international community do the work of establishing the 1967 borders as a fact of international law without paying a heavy political price at home. He can step into the ring after his reelection, when he will have a much freer hand, and will be able to argue legitimately that he is representing the international community in moving toward the only solution of the Israel-Palestine conflict - two viable states for two peoples.

The clear losers in Netanyahu’s short-sightedness wrapped into grandiose verbal pyrotechnics are the citizens of Israel. Once the dust of the media storm settles down, we will be faced with the stark truth: The specter of Israel’s ever-growing isolation and of increasing international pressure looms large. Once the Palestinians succeed in their bid for statehood, the Netanyahu government will be facing international criticism of its settlement policies unprecedented in force and intensity.

The tragedy is that Israel’s growing isolation and the Palestinians’ unilateral move could be avoided. Instead of fighting the Palestinians' bid for recognition, Israel should support it. Israelis have an overriding and legitimate concern: they fear that the Palestinians really see the two-state solution as a two-stage solution; that they will continue to press for the right of millions of Palestinians to return to Israel after they have a state of their own, thus effectively turning Israel into a bi-national state. This fear is not unfounded, particularly since Hamas has so far refused to accept Israel’s existence and promises to use any means to wipe it off the face of the earth.

Israel’s best strategy to defuse this concern would be to cooperate with the Palestinian bid for UN recognition – with a caveat. Israel could demand that recognition of Palestine within the 1967 borders be conditional on the Palestinians renouncing any further claim west of this border, a demand likely to be met by the international community, and supported by the Arab League Peace Initiative.

UN recognition of Palestine along the 1967 borders is really in Israel’s interest, because it preempts the creation of a bi-national state; it would finally provide Israel with internationally recognized borders for the first time since its foundation; and it would leave Hamas with no choice but to recognize Israel’s legitimacy.

But Netanyahu is incapable of looking that far ahead, and incapable of bold moves. That much was clear when, after the 2009 elections, he preferred a narrow right-wing government to a coalition with Kadima, and when he put Avigdor Lieberman into the Foreign Ministry. Netanyahu’s rigid worldview and his petty struggle for political survival prevent him from taking a creative approach in resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict, and we Israelis will have to pay the price.

For Palestinians, Every Day Is Nakba Day

We Owe Palestinians What We Demand Of Them: Recognition Of Our Right To An Independent State, and Compromise For The Sake Of A Shared Future.

By Bradley Burston
Published 17:52 17.05.11
Latest update 17:52 17.05.11
Courtesy Of "Haaretz Newspaper"

As this month began, Israel marked Yom Hashoa, the annual day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust. At the sounding of air-raid sirens, the nation shut down and stood in honor.

Who was it for, this day of remembrance? If you ask those Israelis who lost parents, sisters and brothers, grandparents to the Nazi genocide, if you ask people whose parents survived Auschwitz to somehow raise families and resurrect something of a life, they will likely tell you that Yom Hashoa is not for them.

	A boy marking Nakba Day in Ramallah with a symbolic “key” to his home.
	Photo by: AP

The survivors and their families don't need a day like this. For them, every single day is Yom Hashoa.

The commemoration is for the rest of us, those of us fortunate to be able to go about our lives most of the time without thinking about the unfathomable tragedy embodied in the concept of the Shoa and the loss, the grief, the sacrifice that it conferred on its survivors and their descendants.

Exactly a week after Yom Hashoa, the country stunned itself once more, as Yom Hazikaron marked the fallen of the nation's wars and the victims of terror murders. And once again, the bereaved families invited to official memorial services will tell you that this is not for them. They have no need of a day like this. Their wounds, no matter how old, are still too fresh. For them, every single day is Yom Hazikaron.

This year, a third day of remembrance fell exactly a week later. It was Nakba Day, commemorating the displacement and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from their homes in the 1948 war that established the state of Israel, and the ensuing loss of hundreds of their villages effectively erased by the Jewish state.

It may be fair to assume that Nakba Day is not for the millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendents in Gaza, in West Bank camps, in Lebanon and Syria and Chile and San Francisco. For them, every single day is Nakba Day.

No, Nakba Day is for the rest of us, who go through our lives thinking that we can afford not to give it a second thought. And so it is that Israel's government - in its zeal to blot out the very concept of the Nakba, in its paralysis in the face of an unprecedented Palestinian drive for statehood, in its inability to anticipate a Facebook-organized mass march past minefields and razor wire and assault-rifle bullets on a northern border – has inadvertently but irrevocably established 2011 as the Year of the Nakba.

And so it was that this month, large numbers of Israelis - many of them for the first time, many of them against their will – found themselves marking Nakba Day.

It's about time. Just as many Palestinians are now beginning to study the Holocaust and the broader realities of the Mideast conflict, and are studying the challenges of a two state Holy Land based on 1967 lines.

What we stand to learn from the three memorial days, each of them singular but all three intertwined, is that we remain, both Arab and Jew, prisoners of our own narratives. In an understandable drive to forge their national and cultural identities, Israelis and Palestinians have ethnically cleansed their own narratives, expelling and erasing that which is messy, morally indefensible, tactically self-defeating. If there is ever to be a solution to the conflict, we must free ourselves from the narratives that rest in part on the lies we like and the truths we don't.

There will be those in Israel who will immediately dismiss the Nakba Day march as a stunt, a diversion. Just as there is a new chorus of voices on the right citing the resurgence of interest in the Nakba as proof that Arabs will never make peace with Israel.

But a recent poll of Palestinian public opinion coinciding with Nakba Day, indicates a willingness for compromise and a rejection of violence as a means for ending the conflict. The survey, by pollster Nabil Kukali, shows that more than 60 percent said that to a certain degree they expected a peace agreement with Israel in the coming year, and that nearly 70 percent oppose launching Qassam rockets against Israel.

There will be those who argue that Jews owe Palestinians nothing in connection with the Nakba. Not true. At the very least, on Nakba Day and every other, Jews owe Palestinians what Jews demand of Palestinians:

Acknowledgment and compassion for the depth of their grief, the magnitude of their loss. Respect.

We owe Palestinians an honest recognition of their history. We owe Palestinians an apology. We owe Palestinians admission of wrongful acts committed at a time of terrible events.

We owe Palestinians what we demand of them: recognition of our right to an independent state, and compromise for the sake of a shared future. A just and mutually agreed peace. We owe Palestinians, in short, what we owe ourselves.

Prominent Israeli Figures Urge Europe To Recognize Palestinian State

Leftist group Solidarity sends letter to EU leaders signed by former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, Nobel Laureate Professor Daniel Kahneman and more, saying 'peace process has reached its end.'

Published 04:55 27.05.11
Latest update 04:55 27.05.11
Courtesy Of "Haaretz Service"

More than a dozen Israeli intellectuals and public figures have signed a letter urging European leaders to officially recognize a Palestinian State, as "the peace process has reached its end."

The letter, which will be sent to the leaders on Friday, was initiated by the leftist Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, the group which also organizes the weekly demonstrations in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

	Palestinian refugees in Amman gesture during an anti-Israel demonstration, May 13, 2011.
	Photo by: Reuters

"Peace has fallen hostage to the peace process," the letter said. "As Israeli citizens, we announce that if and when the Palestinian people declare independence of a sovereign state that will exist next to Israel in peace and security, we will support such the announcement of the Palestinian State with borders based on the 1967 lines, with needed land swaps on a 1:1 basis."

"We urge the countries of the world to declare their willingness to recognize a sovereign Palestinian State according to these principles," the letter added.

In a statement on the Solidarity website, the group wrote that "the Palestinian appeal to the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian State does not harm the Israeli interest and is not at odds with the peace process."

"Netanyahu's speech in Washington and the sweeping support he received from the U.S. Congress shows that the peace process has reached its end," the statement added, stressing that Israel now has a choice between recognizing a Palestinian State or a renewed wave of violence.

The letter was signed by former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, former Foreign Ministry Director General Alon Liel, and former Ambassador to South Africa Ilan Baruch.
Among the intellectual signatories are Nobel laureate Professor Daniel Kahneman, and Israel Prize Winner Professor Avishai Margalit.