NOVANEWS
Biden: US Support for Israel Must Continue ‘Forever’
Address to Jewish Group Claims Policy Disagreements Can Never Break Ties
by Jason Ditz,
November 09, 2010
Speaking today at the Jewish Federations of North America meeting, US Vice President Joe Biden vowed eternal support for the Israeli government, insisting US support for the nation would continue no matter what Israel does “forever.”
“The ties between our two countries are literally unbreakable” insisted Biden, adding that policy disagreements with the far-right government will never be “fundamental” and will never have any affect on ties. Biden insists President Obama “feels exactly the same way.”
The comments were largely in keeping with a number of top US officials over the past few decades who have pledged eternal fealty to Israel regardless of the relative merits of that government’s position on any given issue. Biden’s position is therefore a politically safe one, but is it an obsolete one?
Perhaps. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech at the self-same gathering yesterday and was heckled off stage by attendees outraged by his government’s policies. Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren chided American Jews, insisting it was their duty to support Israel unquestioningly. This claim however whiffed of desperation, and there seems to be concern on the Israeli right that policy disagreements really are forging a growing rift with its traditional allies.
Given the excitement at the conference during Netanyahu’s speech, Biden’s loyalty pledge must seem extremely quaint, albeit not particularly topical. Claims that Israel can’t hurt US ties no matter what they do are going to be less and less credible as what their government does becomes increasingly publicized and increasingly embarrassing for US officials.
Harper will defend Israel ‘whatever the cost’
Prime Minister Stephen Harper pauses as he delivers a speech on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday Nov. 8, 2010. (Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
CTV.ca News Staff
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he is prepared to suffer any political backlash that comes his way for speaking out against anti-Israel rhetoric.
Harper told an audience Monday that while Israel is receptive to fair criticism, Canada is obligated to stand up for its ally when it comes under attack from others.
“Not just because it is the right thing to do, but because history shows us, and the ideology of the anti-Israel mob tell us all too well, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are in the longer term a threat to all of us.”
The prime minister acknowledged that his position is not popular with all governments and organizations, including members of the United Nations and the Francophonie.
“And I know, by the way, because I have the bruises to show for it, that whether it is at the United Nations or any other international forum, the easiest thing to do is simply to just get along and go along with this anti-Israel rhetoric, to pretend it is just about being even-handed, and to excuse oneself with the label of honest broker.
“There are, after all, a lot more votes — a lot more — in being anti-Israeli than in taking a stand. But as long as I am prime minister, whether it is at the United Nations, the Francophonie or anywhere else, Canada will take that stand, whatever the cost.”
The prime minister’s use of the phrase “honest broker” is an apparent reference to a recent speech made by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.
Ignatieff criticized the Harper government for using Israel as a wedge issue with his political opponents in Canada, at the expense of the country’s influence on peace in the Middle East. The Liberal leader called for a return to a time when Canada was perceived to be an honest broker in the global community.
Harper made his remarks at the start of a two-day conference on anti-Semitism that is being held on Parliament Hill during Holocaust Education Week.
After his caucus meeting on Monday, Ignatieff criticized Harper for suggesting that Canada’s recent failure to secure a seat on the UN Security Council can be blamed on the federal government’s support for Israel.
“They’re trying to claim it’s a moral victory,” Ignatieff told reporters.
“It’s a defeat, especially if you want to support the state of Israel. What is the institution that’s enforcing sanctions against Iran, which is a strategic threat to Israel? The Security Council. If you’re not on it, you’re not playing.”
Ignatieff also reiterated his party’s support of a two-state solution for peace in the Middle East.
“Why? Because we believe it’s essential for the security of Israel, and because we think it’s essential for the security of the Palestinian people,” Ignatieff said.
He also added that “we are not neutral and will never be neutral between terrorist organizations and democratic states. That’s been the position of Canada for a very long time, that’s the position of the Liberal Party.”
Meanwhile, the group Independent Jewish Voices, which is not taking part in the conference, accused the Harper government of trying to suppress debate about Israel.
On CTV’s Power Play, spokesperson Diana Ralph said the government is trying to “criminalize criticism of Israel.”
“What this conference is actually about isn’t anti-Semitism,” Ralph said. “What it’s about is attacking and limiting dissent and criticism on expressing criticisms of Israel. And the thing is that when Harper says today that Israel is a country under attack, Israel is being attacked for its violations of human rights.”
With files from The Canadian Press
Muslim Americans Foil Terror Threats
by William Fisher
November 10, 2010
A new report on violent extremists in the United States finds that terrorism plots by non-Muslims greatly outnumber those attempted by Muslims, and that Muslim-American communities helped foil close to a third of al-Qaeda-related terror plots threatening the country since Sept. 11, 2001.
The report comes from the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a not-for-profit organization advocating for the civil rights of American Muslims. It consists largely of MPAC’s “Post-9/11 Terrorism Incident Database.”
Reportedly the first of its kind by a Muslim-American organization, the database tracks plots by Muslim and non-Muslim violent extremists against the United States.
The author of the report, Alejandro J. Beutel, MPAC researcher and government liaison, told IPS, “This report demonstrates the validity of two of our guiding principles.”
“The first of these is that the choice between our rights and liberties and national security is a false choice; we can have both,” he said. “The second is that law enforcement will be much more successful if it treats the American Muslim community as partners, not as adversaries.”
He added, “Because of the baseless spying by the FBI on our mosques, we are very cautious about our engagement with the Bureau.”
The report found “little evidence of a rise in ideological extremism.” It concluded that those Muslims involved in 13 out of the 15 plots since Barack Obama’s election as president were engaged in ideological extremism before the vote. Of the 15, 10 were engaged in ideological extremism since 2007.
It declares that al-Qaeda does not appear to be making new ideological gains into the American Muslim community. Instead, the data is pointing toward greater numbers of longstanding ideological extremists turning to violence.
The report asserts that Muslim communities have helped foil almost one out of every three al-Qaeda-related terror plots threatening the U.S. since 9/11/01. It says this highlights the importance of law enforcement partnering with citizens through community-oriented policing.
The report recommended that the government expand community-oriented policing initiatives; increase support for research on combating biased policing; expand investments in better human capital acquisitions; highlight citizen contributions to national security; and reform the fusion center process to increase coordination among law enforcement communities.
The report examined the challenges posed by violent extremists in two ways. The first was by examining the quantitative and qualitative nature of terrorism trials. Second, it looked at the number of actual and attempted attacks within the United States, including a comparative analysis of incidents involving Muslim and non-Muslim perpetrators.
The report appears amidst a resurgence of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. Some of this has been triggered by the proposed building of an Islamic community center two blocks from “Ground Zero,” the site where the World Trade Center once stood.
A number of individual and community groups, including some families of 9/11 victims, have blasted the project as “a celebration of Islam.” Supporters see it as a vehicle for bringing diverse faiths closer together.
In communities throughout the U.S., there have been “copycat” campaigns to thwart mosque planning or construction.
The recent midterm elections here have also provided some candidates with platforms from which to verbally attack Muslims, including Muslim-Americans. These candidates have largely been Republicans and members of the tea party, on the extreme right-wing of the political spectrum. While a few Democrats attempted to debunk the “all Muslims are terrorists” mantra, most remained silent.
Several recent unsuccessful terrorist plots have also contributed to heightened public anxiety – and the search for scapegoats. The so-called Times Square bomber was a home-grown terrorist who admitted attending training school in Pakistan; the “underwear bomber” who attempted to bring a passenger plane down over Detriot last Christmas day was a Nigerian believed to have been trained in Yemen. Both men are Muslims.
And the successful interception of two parcel bombs shipped as cargo from Yemen further raised the public’s level of apprehension that another terrorist attack was in the making.
The backlash takes a number of forms. For example, ordinary Muslims are experiencing renewed discrimination in the workplace. The New York Times reports that Muslim workers filed a record 803 such claims in the year ended Sept. 30, 2009. That was up 20 percent from the previous year and up nearly 60 percent from 2005, according to federal data.
The Times says the number of complaints filed since then will not be announced until January, “but Islamic groups say they have received a surge in complaints recently, suggesting that 2010′s figure will set another record.”
The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed several lawsuits connected with anti-Muslim discrimination. It sued JBS Swift, a meatpacking company, on behalf of 160 Somali immigrants; it filed a case against Abercrombie & Fitch, the clothing retailer, for refusing to hire a Muslim who wore a head scarf; and it sued a Four Points by Sheraton hotel in Phoenix, charging that an Iraqi immigrant was called a “camel jockey.”
Finally, MPAC and similar groups are angry and disappointed at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which has acknowledged placing “agent provocateurs” inside mosques in attempts to root out terrorists, terrorist plots, and terrorist cells.
“We feel betrayed,” says Alejandro Beutel.
Key Findings
There were 72 total plots by domestic non-Muslim perpetrators against the United States since 9/11/01. In comparison, there have been 37 total plots by domestic and international Muslim perpetrators since that date.
There are at least five incidents of non-Muslim domestic extremists possessing or attempting to possess biological, chemical, or radiological weapons. One of those occurred since Obama’s election.
No such cases involving Muslim violent extremists have been reported since 9/11/01. Evidence clearly indicates a general rise in violent extremism across ideologies.
The report says that, using Obama’s election as a base measurement, since Nov. 4, 2008, there have been 39 terror plots by non-Muslim domestic extremists.
By comparison, there have been 15 plots by Muslim domestic and international extremists. Each of these cases constitutes close to half of all violent extremism cases since 9/11/01.
(Inter Press Service)
Iran slams Israeli war threats
Iran has lashed out at Israeli prime minister’s comments that encourage the US to take military action against Tehran.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told Press TV that Tehran has taken legal action in the United Nations against the Israeli threat.
“Our mission in New York will send a note to the secretary general of the United Nations and register this kind of threats of the [Israeli] regime in the region,” the Iranian top diplomat said.
“The existence of this illegal regime is mixed with violation, terror, threats and aggression,” Mottaki stated.
Mottaki’s remarks come a day after Benjamin Netanyahu demanded Washington launch a military attack against Iran’s nuclear program.
Netanyahu, paying a visit to the US, said a credible military threat by the United States is the only way to deter Iran. His call was rejected by US Defense Secretary, Robert Gates.
Israel, which is the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East region, has repeatedly voiced its determination to stop Iran’s nuclear program, even through military means.
Unlike Israel, Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has repeatedly declared that its nuclear program is peaceful.
The US and some Western powers accuse Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, in its reports on Iran’s nuclear program, has said that its inspectors have found no shred of evidence to indicate that Tehran plans to develop a military nuclear program.
Bush rejects claims that Israel was behind Iraq war
By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
11/10/2010 01:07
In new memoir, former US president says “those theories were false. I was sending our troops into combat to protect the American people.”
WASHINGTON – In his new memoir out Tuesday, former US president George W. Bush flatly rejects the notion that Israel was behind his decision to invade Iraq.
Referring to critics who cast aspersions on his motives, Bush dismisses those who “alleged that America’s real intent was to control Iraq’s oil or satisfy Israel.”
He stresses, “Those theories were false. I was sending our troops into combat to protect the American people.”
In the 30 pages he spends in Decision Points detailing the frantic diplomacy, military planning and consultations with international figures in the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush never once mentions a conversation with an Israeli official or member of a pro-Israel organization.
Bush does mention the threat of Israel being bombarded with missiles among his many concerns about fallout from an invasion – including the well-being of Iraqi civilians and the possibility of chemical weapons being used against US soldiers.
But when it comes to Middle Eastern pressure to declare war, he only describes Arab input: from Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar, who urged him to make a decision on whether to attack, and from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who said Iraq had biological weapons and would certainly use them against the US, an assessment Mubarak wouldn’t make public “for fear of inciting the Arab street.”
The picture Bush paints stands in stark contrast to the assertions of critics who charged that the “Israel lobby” was a major factor in the decision to go to war. Among the most vocal were scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who said of the Israel lobby that “the war would almost certainly not have occurred had it been absent.”
The only reference Bush makes to a pro-Israel figure having a role in his Iraq deliberations is the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, a supporter of military intervention whose opinion the president solicited as he weighed his options.
“Elie is a sober and gentle man. But there was passion in his seventy-four-year-old eyes when he compared Saddam Hussein’s brutality to the Nazi genocide,” Bush writes.
The other major pro-Israel figure whose influence Bush notes in his work comes during his discussion of the “Freedom Agenda.” Bush cites a passage from Natan Sharansky’s book The Case for Democracy in making the argument that America needed to “put pressure on the arms of the world’s tyrants.”
Bush sees his Freedom Agenda as being most needed in the Middle East to help diminish the appeal of terrorism, and speaks sympathetically of the terror that visited Israel during the second intifada.
“I was appalled by the violence and loss of life on both sides. But I refused to accept the moral equivalence between Palestinian suicide attacks on innocent civilians and Israeli military actions intended to protect their people,” Bush writes, saying his views on the right of countries to defend themselves were magnified by September 11.
And he points out, “The Israeli people responded to the violent onslaught the way any democracy would. They elected a leader who promised to protect them, Ariel Sharon.”
Though he scores Sharon for making a “provocative” visit to the Temple Mount after the collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000, Bush says the blame for the violence that followed fell squarely on Yasser Arafat, whom he describes as someone who “didn’t seem very interested in peace.”
His wariness about Arafat only increased in early 2002 after Israel intercepted the Karine A, an Iranian ship it believed was smuggling deadly weapons to Palestinians. Arafat pleaded his innocence in a letter to Bush, who notes that both the US and Israel had evidence refuting his claim.
“Arafat had lied to me. I never trusted him again,” Bush relates. “In fact, I never spoke to him again. By the spring of 2002, I had concluded that peace would not be possible with Arafat in power.”
Bush also details differences with Sharon, particularly his feeling that Sharon’s sweeping West Bank offensive against Palestinian terrorists following the Pessah bombing of the Park Hotel in Netanya had gone too far and become “counterproductive.”
“‘Enough is enough,’ I said.
Still Sharon wouldn’t budge,” he writes.
During the offensive, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia arrived at Bush’s ranch in Texas for a visit. Bush recounts that the Saudis expected the US to have put a stop to the operation by then, and threatened to leave soon after arriving should it continue.
“They were insisting that I call the Israeli prime minister on the spot. I wasn’t going to conduct diplomacy that way,” Bush writes.
He was, however, able to convince a miffed Abdullah, who happened to be a farming enthusiast, to take a tour of the ranch. While driving along, a hen turkey stood in the middle of the road, blocking their progress.
Bush recalls that he then felt Abdullah grab his arm and tell him, “It is a sign from Allah. This is a good omen.”
The visit continued without a hitch, with Bush concluding, “I had never seen a hen turkey on that part of the property, and I haven’t seen one since.”
Zahar: Jews will soon be expelled from Palestine
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
11/06/2010 20:30
Hamas leader says Jews were kicked out by France, Britain, Russia and Germany “because they betrayed, stole and corrupted these countries.”
The Jews will soon be expelled from Palestine that same way they were kicked out by France, Britain, Belgium, Russia and Germany, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said over the weekend.
“The only nation that received the Jews after they were expelled was the Islamic nation, which protected them and looked after them,” Zahar said in a speech in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip over the weekend.
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“But they have no place here amongst us because of their crimes. They will soon be expelled from here and we will pray at the Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem].”
Zahar claimed that Jews were expelled in the past “because they betrayed, stole and corrupted these countries.”
Zahar called for unity with Fatah as representatives of the two parties prepare to hold another round of reconciliation talks in the Syrian capital of Damascus this week.
“Let’s join ranks and speak in one voice,” Zahar said in his appeal to Fatah. “Together, with blood, we could liberate our lands and holy sites. You have tasted the bitterness of arbitrary negotiations.” He said that Hamas was making “big efforts” to ensure the success of reconciliation talks with Fatah.
Meanwhile, Ramadan Shallah, leader of Islamic Jihad, called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to step down for abandoning the armed struggle against Israel. Shallah was speaking in Damascus on the 23rd anniversary of the establishment of his group.
“The negotiations [with Israel] have ended and there’s no alternative to jihad and resistance,” Shallah said. “The present leadership of the Palestinian Authority is not authorized to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians. If Mahmoud Abbas can’t adopt the option of Yasser Arafat, resistance, we recommend another option which is more honorable: to quit and sit at home.”
The Islamic Jihad leader said that “Palestine is all ours and we won’t give up one inch of it. We won’t participate in or accept any settlement that limits our rights only to the 1967 borders.”
In response, Abbas’s Fatah faction accused Shallah of serving the agenda of Iran. “We urge Shallah to adopt a constructive approach and not a destructive one,” said Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf. “Many Arabs and foreigners have tried to hijack the Palestinians’ independent decision-making process, but Fatah has preserved all Palestinian achievements despite internal and external conspiracies.”
Iran hawks step up pressure on Obama — some see echoes of Iraq
Emboldened by President Obama’s political struggles, foreign-policy hard-liners are stepping up efforts to press the administration to take a tougher stance — and perhaps even launch an attack — on Iran.
Some observers see parallels with the successful multiyear campaign for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. “The theoreticians who called for war in Iraq as a way to stop Saddam acquiring weapons of mass destruction are at it again, with the same playbook,” Joel Rubin of the liberal National Security Network told The Upshot.
Of course, advocates of an aggressive foreign policy have long talked up the notion of an attack on Iran as a means of preventing the Islamic republic from acquiring a nuclear weapon — remember Sen. John McCain’s “Bomb Iran” performance from the 2008 presidential campaign? But with a weakened president, the effort to promote a military strike is “definitely going into a higher gear” of late, Matthew Duss of the liberal Center for American Progress told The Upshot.
On Saturday, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a prominent Republican voice for an aggressive foreign policy, floated the idea of an all-out offensive against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime — “not to just neutralize their nuclear program, but to sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard. In other words, neuter that regime. Destroy their ability to fight back.”
Speaking at an international conference in Halifax, Canada, Graham held out the prospect of Republican support if President Obama goes beyond the administration’s current policy of tough economic sanctions.
Graham is not alone. At the same event, his close ally McCain (R-Ariz.) urged Obama to “do something dramatically different” on Iran, by publicly “advocating regime change.”
In late September, more than 50 House Republicans, including Minority Leader John Boehner, signed a letter to the president: “We urge you to take whatever action is necessary to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. All options should be on the table in curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”
Just days before last week’s midterms, Washington Post columnist David Broder raised eyebrows by arguing that Obama should ramp up arms production and create “a showdown with the mullahs” in order to kick-start the U.S. economy and boost his political standing. Versions of Broder’s argument had already been made this year two separate times, by neoconservative foreign policy thinkers Elliott Abrams and Daniel Pipes. Abrams was a staffer on President George W. Bush’s National Security Council, where he had strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq. And Pipes, as the founder and director of the conservative Middle East Forum think tank, was also a staunch supporter of the Iraq war.
Obama has consistently advocated a diplomatic approach to dealing with Iran, and he’s unlikely to do an about-face. But advocates of a military strike may be playing a longer game. Here again, critics point to the precedent of the Iraq invasion. During the 1990s, a well-connected group of neoconservative foreign policy thinkers, including Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and Richard Perle, who would later chair the Defense Policy Advisory Board in the George W. Bush administration, worked with Republicans in Congress to pass the Iraq Liberation Act, making regime change in Iraq the official policy of the U.S. government. The legislation wasn’t aimed at spurring then-President Clinton to launch an invasion — there was little chance of that. Instead, the idea was to give the goal of regime change long-term momentum and a bipartisan veneer, since the law was signed by a Democratic president. That helped pave the way once the country had a Republican president more likely to sign off on an invasion.
Supporters of the Obama administration’s diplomatic approach say that advocates of an Iran invasion are pursuing the same long-term strategy now.:By putting the issue on the table right now, Iran hawks are hoping to limit the president’s room to maneuver, and make it easier for a future president to launch a military strike. “Iraq didn’t happen in two months,” Rubin told The Upshot, noting that it took five years from the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 until the 2003 invasion. “So this is the playbook.”
Indeed, Marc Lynch of Foreign Policy magazine wrote recently that he’s anticipating “some kind of Iran Liberation Act on the horizon” from the GOP Congress.
Duss agreed. “You see them running a very similar game as they ran in the ’90s,” he said. During that period, Republicans and their allies frustrated many of Clinton’s political goals, “then offered [the Iraq Liberation Act] as a way to be bipartisan.”
And last week’s election results give the hawks more leverage. “After the election, they feel the broader Obama agenda has been rejected,” Rubin said. “There’s a feeling they may have Obama a bit more on the ropes.” And that, in turn, may make the president more willing to move toward the GOP on Iran policy, observers say. “Graham is saying: If [Obama] wants Republican support and bipartisanship, being tougher on Iran would work,” according to Rubin.
Starting in January, advocates of a tougher line on Iran will have powerful allies in Congress who could help advance that plan. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), a veteran Iran hawk who has downplayed the effectiveness of sanctions, will take over as chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Rubin, Duss and others who oppose the hawks’ escalating rhetoric say there’s no doubt that Iran is a genuine threat to world security. But they argue that publicly raising the threat of a military strike is likely to be counterproductive. “Launching a third war in the Middle East against a Muslim country,” Rubin wrote in the Jewish Chronicle on Monday, “will increase our vulnerability to terrorist attack, will increase the likelihood that Iran will accelerate its nuclear program, will expose Israel to powerful military attack with unpredictable consequences, will place our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan at risk, will severely harm the Iranian people and will trigger a new oil crisis.”
Still, the call for a more aggressive stance is winning support from America’s top ally in the Middle East. On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told Vice President Joe Biden that Iran must be made to fear a military strike — a departure from Netanyahu’s previous focus on diplomacy as the best counter to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
(2007 photo of Graham flanked by McCain, left, and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut: AP/Lauren Victoria Burke)
Let’s Attack Iran!
Oh good. I see that Senator Lindsey Graham wants to attack Iran. The US, he says, should “sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard.”Visit his blog.
By Fred Reed
Senator Graham has the brains of a tapeworm, making him eminently qualified for the senate. Tapeworms, I note, do not have brains. It is characteristic of warlike innocents, to include the Pentagon, to believe that if you destroy navies and air forces, you win wars. This worked well in Vietnam, you will recall, and as soon as we destroy the Taliban’s navy, Afghanistan will be a cakewalk.
Now, I understand that practicality and realism are alien concepts in American politics, to be approached with trepidation, but maybe, just once, we should think before sticking our private parts into a wood-chipper. Just once. I do not propose consistent rationality, forethought, or intelligent behavior. I profoundly respect my country’s traditions.
However, folk wisdom from West Virginia: Before you say, “I can whip any man in the bar!” it is well to scout the bar.
Note that the United States cannot defeat Iran militarily, short of using nuclear weapons. It is easy to start a war. Finishing one is harder. I could punch out Mike Tyson. Things thereafter might not go as well as hoped.
Some will find the thought of American martial incapacity outrageous. Can’t beat Iran? Buncha towel monkeys? Among grrr-bowwow-woof patriots, there exists a heady delusion of American potency, that the US has “the greatest military power the world has ever seen.” Ah. And when did it last win a war? In Afghanistan, for ten years the gloriousest military ever known, the expensivist, and whoosh-bangiest, hasn’t managed to defeat a bunch of pissed-off illiterates with AKs and RPGs.
At this point Lindsey of Persia will doubtless allude to the wonders of air power, of “precision-guided weapons,” of smart bombs that presumably read Kant on the way down. Those pitiable Iranians would have no hope of stopping our mighty bombers. True.
Implicit in this Thomistic fantasy (Clancy, I mean, not Aquinas) is that Iran wouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t dare fight back without a navy, etc. Lindsey had better be very sure that Iran couldn’t block the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation. Enough of the world’s petroleum comes from the Gulf that the price would rise drastically if the Straits were blocked. Some economies would simply stop.
How many supertankers going up in flames would be tolerated before operators of tankers refused to risk it?
Iran recently began serial production of the Nasr 1, an anti-ship cruise missile. Tankers are thin-skinned and highly flammable. The Nasr 1 can be fired from the back of a truck. Trucks by their nature are mobile. They are easy to hide.
The Air Force, to include Naval Air, may be confident that it can destroy all of Iran’s missiles. The Air Force always believes that air power can do anything and everything – make coffee, win at marbles, everything. After all, don’t its airplanes say “Vrooom!” and “Swoosh!”? Don’t cockpits have lots of portentous buttons and spiffy little screens? Unfortunately the Air Force is regularly wrong.
In fact the entire military is regularly wrong about the ease and duration of its adventures. For example, it had no idea that Viet Nam would turn into an endless war ending in defeat (if that makes sense). Iraq notoriously was going to be a walk in the park. That the war on Afghanistan would last ten years with a distinct possibility of defeat…this never occurred to the soldiers.
It is barely conceivable that the Five-Sided Wind Box could do what Field Marshal Graham thinks it could do. The unexpected is always a possibility. But, the stakes being what they would be in Hormuz, hoo-boy….
Another possibility is that Israel will attack Iran, as it has threatened. I would like to think that even Bibi Nut-and-Yahoo has better sense but, it the US can produce gibbering wingnuts, why not Israel? The practical effects of an Israeli attack would be indistinguishable from those of an American attack: America would have to solve the problem. Which it probably couldn’t. Israel can bomb Iran’s nuclear codpieces, but it can’t defeat Iran. And if the Strait were blocked after an Israeli attack, the entire globe would holler, “Israel did it!” which would be true.
The distance from “Israel did it” to “The Jews did it,” though logically great, is emotionally short. People think in collective terms. Remember that after some Saudis dropped the Towers, the alleged war on terror morphed almost instantly into intense hostility for Moslems. It doesn’t make sense, but what has that got to do with anything?
I know a lot of Jews, who are all over the place politically and intellectually. They have in common a complete lack of resemblance to the scheming, hand-rubbing, heh-heh-heh Jews of Neo-nazi imagination. Few sacrifice Christian children (a temptation strongest, I can attest, among Christian parents). But…people think collectively.
Congress doesn’t support Israel because it likes Israel, but from political expediency. If the wind blows the other way, so will Congress. Gasoline at twelve dollars is a lot of wind in a commuting country.
Things worsen for America, yet we really don’t know where the country is going or how it will react. The last domestic catastrophe was the Great Depression, when America was a very different place. How bad can things get, economically, politically, internationally? How does a pampered population incapable of planting a garden respond to genuinely hard times? “It can’t happen here,” one hears. What can’t? I suspect that all sorts of things could happen, given sufficiently hard times.
The United States is today an edgy, unhappy country, sliding toward poverty, increasingly dictatorial, inchoately angry, hostile to blacks, the French, Mexicans, Moslems and, creepingly, the Chinese. (Jews, perhaps to their surprise, don’t make the enemies list.) Americans don’t do cosmopolitan. The federal pressure for diversity exists because otherwise no one would associate with anyone else. The Persian Gulf is one of few places that plausibly might wreck the industrial world. There would have to be someone to blame. And Israel can’t survive without American support.
Maybe I’m crazy. But if I were an Israeli, I’d find a nice café on Diesengoff and enjoy a double cappuccino, watch the girls, and keep my bombs in my pocket. Let somebody else take the fall.
Fred Reed is author of Nekkid in Austin: Drop Your Inner Child Down a Well and A Brass Pole in Bangkok: A Thing I Aspire to Be. His latest book is Curmudgeing Through Paradise: Reports from a Fractal Dung Beetle.
Copyright © 2010 Fred Reed
17 arrested for stealing $42.5 million meant for Holocaust survivors
Individuals participated in fraud against the Claims Conference, which issues payments to Jewish Holocaust victims, by falsifying documents attesting to eligibility for Holocaust-related compensation.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested 17 individuals in New York on Tuesday, for participating in a $42.5 million organized fraud against the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which issues payments to Jewish Holocaust victims.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is charging the 17 individuals, which include six current and former staff members of the Claims Conference, for their involvement in creating and submitting fraudulent documents attesting to eligibility for Holocaust-related compensation payments.
“We are outraged that individuals would steal money intended for survivors of history’s worst crime to enrich themselves,” said Julius Berman, Chairman of the Claims Conference. “It is an affront to human decency.”
The scheme was discovered late last year when Claims Conference officials noticed that several claimants had falsified information to receive pensions from the Hardship Fund, an account established by the German government which makes one-time payments of $3,600 for Jewish victims of Nazism who emigrated from Soviet bloc countries.
In July 2010, the Claims Conference announced that 202 pensions had been suspended with a total value of $7 million. Since then, an additional 456 pensions are thought to be fraudulent with a total value of $24.5 million. In addition, 4,957 one-time payments under the Hardship Fund are thought to be fraudulent with a total value of $18 million, adding up to $42.5 million in total.
The Claims Conference said that no Holocaust victims were deprived of any funds because of the crime, and pledged its full cooperation to help federal authorities bring to justice those who have perpetrated the fraud.
Palestinians demand immediate statehood to counter Israeli ‘unilateralism’
Israel’s plan to build new homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank should be countered by international recognition of a Palestinian state, the chief Palestinian negotiator said on Tuesday.
Raising the stakes in the deadlock over stalled peace talks, Saeb Erekat said it was clear from the latest announcement of building plans that Israel wants settlements, not peace.
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Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in a file photo. |
Photo by: Dan Keinan |
“Israeli unilateralism is a call for immediate international recognition of the Palestinian state,” he said in a statement.
The world paid little attention when the late Yasser Arafat declared a Palestinian state in 1988. But political winds have shifted and Israel today is seriously concerned that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas might win recognition.
Abbas has floated the idea of “going to the United Nations” to declare statehood as one option if peace talks collapse, but only after first seeking support from Washington.
Israel on Monday announced plans to build 1,300 new housing units on occupied land near Jerusalem, and on Tuesday, Haaretz reported that a further 800 units were planned in the big settlement of Ariel in the northern West Bank.
The building plans were made public as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the United States to discuss ways to revive Middle East peace talks that have stalled over the issue of settlement building.
The United States said it was “deeply disappointed” by Monday’s news of the housing project which is “counterproductive to our efforts to resume direct negotiations between the parties”, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was expected to raise the issue in a meeting with Netanyahu in New York on Thursday.
Direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in September almost as soon as they had begun, after Netanyahu rebuffed Palestinian demands to extend a partial freeze on West Bank settlement building.
Noting that the controversial housing announcement was made while Netanyahu was in the United States, Crowley said: “It could very well be that somebody in Israel has made this known in order to embarrass the prime minister and to undermine the process”.
Washington was outraged in March when settlement housing plans were announced with what looked like defiant timing as U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Jerusalem.
Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman Efrat Orbach said Monday’s announcement was simply another procedural stage. “It can take months or years from this point until building can actually begin,” she said.
The Palestinians dismissed this explanation.
“Israel’s settlement enterprise … is nothing but a premeditated process to kill the possibility of an independent Palestinian state,” Erekat said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad embarked on a two-year plan in 2009 to construct the complete institutional framework of a state by mid-2011. It has won European Union backing and warnings from Israeli analysts that Fayyad should be taken seriously.
“I firmly believe this can happen, that it will happen. We need to build up a sense of inevitability about this. I think it will happen next year,” Fayyad told Reuters in an interview earlier this month.
“The more it is seen to be inevitable, the more likely it will get to a resolution,” he added.
The prospect of the United States recognising an independent Palestine without the agreement of Israel seems very remote. But Israeli analysts speculate that President Barack Obama could threaten to abstain rather than veto a UN resolution if he believes Israel is obstructing the path to a peace treaty.
A World Bank report last month said that if the Palestinian Authority keeps up its “performance in institution-building and delivery of public services, it is well-positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future”.
Israel captured East Jerusalem, along with the West Bank, in the 1967 Six-Day War and regards all of Jerusalem as its capital, including the two neighborhoods where new housing has been approved.
Obama sees ‘enormous obstacles’ for Middle East peace
The Middle East peace process faces “enormous obstacles” but the United States will do all it can to achieve a “just” outcome in talks between Israelis and Palestinians, U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday.
Speaking during a trip to Indonesia a day after criticizing Israelis and Palestinians for not doing enough to reach a breakthrough, Obama said the pursuit of peace in the region was persistent despite setbacks.
“Israelis and Palestinians restarted direct talks, but enormous obstacles remain,” he said.
“But let there be no doubt: we will spare no effort in working for the outcome that is just, and that is in the interest of all the parties involved: two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.”
The President’s words of determination follow several contentious exchanges between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. officials which began after new building plans for Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem were revealed.
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U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, Indonesia on Nov. 10, 2010. |
Photo by: AP |
On Tuesday, the U.S. rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement that construction in East Jerusalem doesn’t affect the peace process.
U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said the statement from Netanyahu’s office was unhelpful, and rejected its suggestion there was no link between Israeli construction in East Jerusalem and the peace process.
“There clearly is a link in the sense that it is incumbent on both parties, as we’ve insisted all along, that they are responsible for creating conditions for a successful negotiation,” Crowley said. “To suggest that this kind of announcement would not have an impact on the Palestinian side I think is incorrect.”
The statement issued from the Prime Minister’s Office emphasized that “Jerusalem isn’t a settlement” and that it doesn’t “see any connection between the peace process and the building and planning policy in Jerusalem.”
The statement came as a reply to President Obama, who said on Tuesday that Israel’s plan to build 1,300 new homes in East Jerusalem was “unhelpful” to peace negotiations.
Earlier Tuesday, Obama was asked to comment on news that the Interior Ministry in Israel had announced plans to build in East Jerusalem. Saying that he had not been fully briefed on the matter, the U.S. president explained that activities of this type were not helpful for the peace talks and expressed concern that neither side was making the necessary effort to find a breakthrough that would create the conditions of a secure Israel living in peace with an independent Palestinian state.
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Construction in Har Homa. |
Photo by: AP |
Vowing to continue working toward peace, Obama described the peace process as being in the interest of the international community, of Israel and the Palestinians.
Netanyahu began his visit to the U.S. with a feeling that the Americans consider the Palestinians responsible for the impasse in the talks. However, the announcement of plans for more construction in East Jerusalem reverted the attention in his direction, ahead of interviews scheduled in New York with the U.S. media, and a meeting Wednesday with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, where it is expected he will hear further criticism of the decision.
European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton said in response to the news of planned construction that she was “extremely concerned by the announcement that Israel plans to go ahead with the construction of 1,300 new housing units in East Jerusalem.”
“This plan contradicts the efforts by the international community to resume direct negotiations and the decision should be reversed,” she said in a statement.
The announcement of planned construction also impacted a meeting between the prime minister and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who expressed his concern about the construction in East Jerusalem.
source–haaretz
Netanyahu to Obama: Jerusalem is not a settlement
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement Tuesday responding to criticism by the United States over Israel’s plan to build 1,300 new homes in East Jerusalem, emphasizing that Israel is doing nothing to harm the peace process.
“Jerusalem isn’t a settlement – Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” the statement by the Prime Minister’s Office read. “Israel has never put any sort of limits on construction in Jerusalem, where some 800,000 people reside, and didn’t do so during the 10-month settlement freeze in the West Bank either.”
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the GA conference in New Orleans, November 9, 2010. |
Photo by: AP |
