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By Barry Rubin
What could one sentence spoken by a high-ranking U.S. official prompt a brilliant pro-Western Arab intellectual to go ballistic and say the following:
“How could America be governed and represented by such blazing idiocy? How is that possible? It's a parallel universe, I'm convinced. The biggest threat, I maintain, to global security is not terrorism. It's stupidity.”
Well, this one. At his confirmation hearing, Robert Ford, ambassador-designate to Syria said:
"I do not see how instability in the region serves Syrian interests."
So here is Syria, a radical, anti-American regime allied with Iran, a major sponsor of terrorism, and Ford says that this government has no interest in stirring up instability and cannot receive any benefit from doing so? Of course, Ford rightfully does not want to criticize Syria before arriving there as U.S. ambassador. OK, understood.
But does he have to indicate such an appalling view in advance? Doesn't this throw away all U.S. leverage over Syria in advance? I can tell you that this is precisely the way Syrian leaders are portraying American policy nowadays. Of course, Ford is saying this because it reflects the thinking of this administration and the president.
Incidentally, I recently saw a non-published communication from an international affairs' expert that criticized someone else for having the old-fashioned view that the point of foreign policy is to reward friends and punish enemies. As I have said before even the most basic principles of diplomacy have been forgotten nowadays in large sections of academia, the media, and--much more dangerous--policymaking circles.
Back to Ford and Syria. Yet even if Syria is not building apartments in east Jerusalem, it might still be a threat to U.S. interests and regional stability. (Note: The previous sentence was sarcastic.)
If Syria was not sponsoring the Iraqi insurgents to overthrow the government in Baghdad so as to replace a regime linked with the United States with one servile to itself, it should have been sufficient to show how instability in the region serves Syrian interests.
If Syria was not sponsoring Hizballah and others to seize control over Lebanon it should have been sufficient.
If Syria was not sponsoring Hamas to sabotage any peace process and seize control over the Palestinians it should have been sufficient.
If Syria did not oppose peace with Israel so as to destroy that country and replace it with a pro-Syrian Palestinian state it should have been sufficient.
If Syria did not back Iran in order to destabilize the Middle East to destroy relatively moderate Arab regimes that oppose Syrian leadership over all the Arabs it should have been sufficient.
If Syria did not do everything possible to destroy U.S. influence and interests in the region it should have been sufficient.
To some extent, the State Department has been forced to acknowledge some of these problems in the face of congressional criticism about sending a U.S. ambassador back to Damascus. I'm not saying that the ambassador shouldn't be sent back--though we should remember that Syria has done zero about the reason which led to the withdrawal in the first place, its complicity in the murder of Lebanon's former prime minister--but if he's returned it should be to wage diplomatic battle, not appeasement.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Just Say “No”: I Get Personally Invited to Help the Obama Administration Engage—and Thus Strengthen--Terrorists
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We depend on your tax-free contributions. To make one, please send a check to: American Friends of IDC 116 East 16th Street 11th Floor New York, NY 10003. The check should be made out to IDC and on the lower left you write: For GLORIA Center.
By Barry Rubin
Friedrich Nietzsche famously said, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.” A good Middle East equivalent, at least among the anti-democratic forces, would be: That which does not scare me makes me bolder.
Can things get worse with the Obama Administration’s foreign—and especially Middle East--policy? Yes, it’s not inevitable but I have just seen personally a dangerous example of what could be happening next. In fact, I never expected that the administration would try to recruit me in this campaign, as you'll see starting with paragraph seven.
First, a little background. One of the main concerns with the Obama Administration is that it would go beyond just engaging Syria and Iran, turning a blind eye to radical anti-American activities throughout the region.
To cite some examples, it has not supported Iraq in its protests about Syrian-backed terror, even though the group involved is al-Qaida, with which the United States is supposedly at war. Nor has it launched serious efforts to counter Iran’s help to terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan or even Tehran’s direct cooperation with al-Qaida. We know about many of these points because of General David Petraeus’s remarks, buried in his congressional testimony but not trumpeted by the mass media.
Beyond this, though, there has been the possibility of the U.S. government engaging Hizballah. It is inadequate to describe Hizballah as only a terrorist movement. But it is accurate to describe it as: a Lebanese Shia revolutionary Islamist movement that seeks to gain control over Lebanon, is deeply anti-American, is a loyal client of Iran and Syria, uses large amounts of terrorism, and is committed to Israel’s destruction. Hizballah engages in Lebanese politics, including elections, as one tactic in trying to fulfill these goals.
We have seen steps by the current British government toward engaging Hizballah. And the rationale for doing so is based partly on the fact that Hizballah is now part of the Lebanese governing coalition. Of course, in playing a role in that coalition, Hizballah tries to ensure Syria-Iranian hegemony, threatens the lives of American personnel, and other activities designed to destroy any U.S. influence in the region.
And let’s remember that Hizballah may well have been involved in the murder of courageous politicians and journalists in Lebanon who opposed Syria-Iran-Hizballah control over their country. True, direct involvement hasn’t been proven but they are accessories since they have done everything possible to kill the international investigation into the matter. And the trail certainly leads back to their Syrian patrons.
Here’s where I come in. I have received a letter asking me personally to help with a research project. I have spoken to well-informed people who tell me that the statements I am about to quote are accurate. It is highly possible that the link with the Obama Administration is exaggerated, but this indeed does come from the White House’s favorite think tank.
While not mentioning the names of those involved they are known for supporting the idea that Hizballah is really quite moderate. The letter says that this is a project for the Center for American Progress and that the results “will be presented to senior U.S. policymakers in the administration.”
I am asked to participate by giving my opinions on how the United States can deal with Hizballah “short of engagement” and “would Israeli leaders see benefit in the U.S. talking with Hizballah about issues which are of crucial importance to Israel?”
Answer to first question: Oppose it in every way possible.
Answer to second question: What the [insert obscene words I don’t use] do you think they would say!
The letter continues:
“As you've noted, some like John Brennan [advisor to the president on terrorism] is already thinking about a more flexible policy towards Hizballah and it would be extremely useful to get your views on this to ensure anything decided is done properly.”
I read this letter—and that impression is confirmed by those knowledgeable about this project and those involved—as saying that the Center for American Progress is going to issue a report calling for U.S. engagement with Hizballah, and that it has been encouraged to do so by important officials in the Obama Administration.
The phrase “to ensure anything decided is done properly,” I take as a give-away to the fact that they are going to push for direct dealing with Hizballah but want to be able to say that they had listened to alternative views.
They merely, I am told by those who know about this project, intend to talk to some who disagree for appearances’ sake and throw in a sentence or two to give the report the slightest tinge of balance.
The person heading this project has already endangered the lives of brave Lebanese. For example, he claimed without foundation that Christians were planning to launch a war on Hizballah, providing a splendid rationale for Hizballah to murder opponents on the excuse of doing so in self-defense. Accepting Hizballah rule is defined as the Christians recognizing they are a minority and trying to get along with their Muslim neighbors.
In other words, those opposing Hizballah are presented as aggressors while Hizballah is just the reasonable party that wants to get along. Moreover all this leaves out the community, about the same size as the Christians and Shia Muslims, that has been leading the resistance to Syria, Iran, and Hizballah: the Sunni Muslims.
In short, the person directing the project talks like a virtual agent of Hizballah and its allies, basically repeating what they tell him.
Aside from the fact that Hizballah is not and will not be moderate there are two other problems that these silly people don’t comprehend.
The first is the signal that such statements send to Arabs and especially Lebanese. Concluding that the United States is selling them out and jumping onto the side of the Islamist revolutionaries (an idea that sounds implausible in Washington but very easily accepted as true in Riyadh, Beirut, Amman, and Cairo), Arab moderates will be demoralized, rush to become appeasers, and seek to cut their own deals with what they perceive as the winning side.
The second is the signal that such statements send to the radicals themselves. Concluding that the United States fears them and acknowledges their moral superiority and strategic success, they will be more arrogant and aggressive.
Friedrich Nietzsche famously said, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.” A good Middle East equivalent would be: That which does not scare me makes me bolder.
The last time I was in this situation, it involved a government-funded report about Islamist movements. What I didn't know is that the word had been passed to the project director from the government agency that he was supposed to urge engagement with Islamists. The intention was to keep out anything critical of the idea. At first, then, I was told to my surprise that my paper would be responded to by another paper written by a supporter of engaging Islamists.
When my paper was submitted, however, it was apparently too strong, it was quickly rejected in an insulting way, and I wasn't paid for my work. The fix was in and those involved were richly rewarded for saying what was wanted, though the actual implementation of such a policy would be disastrous for U.S. interests, as well as for millions of Arabs as well as Israelis.
Friends of mine have had similar experiences recently regarding papers arguing, for example, that engaging Syria is a great idea and that Damascus can be made moderate and split away from Iran. This is all nonsense, but honors and money are to be gained by saying such things.
So I’m not going to help provide a fig leaf for something masquerading as a serious study but set up to advocate a dreadful policy. It would be the equivalent of participating in a mid-1930s’ project designed to show that Germany had no more ambitions in Europe, a mid-1940s’ project that the USSR wanted to be friends, or a late 1970s’ project that Ayatollah Khomeini was a moderate and that an Islamist Iran would pose no threats.
It’s bad enough to live through an era of dangerous and terrible policy decisions, it’s much worse to be complicit in them.
Optional note: I didn't put in links but you can find extensive materials on British moves toward engaging Hizballah; Brennan's views; Hizballah threats against U.S. officials; close connections with Iran and Syria, Iranian and Syrian involvement in anti-American terrorism; and other such matters in my previous articles.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
We depend on your tax-free contributions. To make one, please send a check to: American Friends of IDC 116 East 16th Street 11th Floor New York, NY 10003. The check should be made out to IDC and on the lower left you write: For GLORIA Center.
By Barry Rubin
Friedrich Nietzsche famously said, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.” A good Middle East equivalent, at least among the anti-democratic forces, would be: That which does not scare me makes me bolder.
Can things get worse with the Obama Administration’s foreign—and especially Middle East--policy? Yes, it’s not inevitable but I have just seen personally a dangerous example of what could be happening next. In fact, I never expected that the administration would try to recruit me in this campaign, as you'll see starting with paragraph seven.
First, a little background. One of the main concerns with the Obama Administration is that it would go beyond just engaging Syria and Iran, turning a blind eye to radical anti-American activities throughout the region.
To cite some examples, it has not supported Iraq in its protests about Syrian-backed terror, even though the group involved is al-Qaida, with which the United States is supposedly at war. Nor has it launched serious efforts to counter Iran’s help to terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan or even Tehran’s direct cooperation with al-Qaida. We know about many of these points because of General David Petraeus’s remarks, buried in his congressional testimony but not trumpeted by the mass media.
Beyond this, though, there has been the possibility of the U.S. government engaging Hizballah. It is inadequate to describe Hizballah as only a terrorist movement. But it is accurate to describe it as: a Lebanese Shia revolutionary Islamist movement that seeks to gain control over Lebanon, is deeply anti-American, is a loyal client of Iran and Syria, uses large amounts of terrorism, and is committed to Israel’s destruction. Hizballah engages in Lebanese politics, including elections, as one tactic in trying to fulfill these goals.
We have seen steps by the current British government toward engaging Hizballah. And the rationale for doing so is based partly on the fact that Hizballah is now part of the Lebanese governing coalition. Of course, in playing a role in that coalition, Hizballah tries to ensure Syria-Iranian hegemony, threatens the lives of American personnel, and other activities designed to destroy any U.S. influence in the region.
And let’s remember that Hizballah may well have been involved in the murder of courageous politicians and journalists in Lebanon who opposed Syria-Iran-Hizballah control over their country. True, direct involvement hasn’t been proven but they are accessories since they have done everything possible to kill the international investigation into the matter. And the trail certainly leads back to their Syrian patrons.
Here’s where I come in. I have received a letter asking me personally to help with a research project. I have spoken to well-informed people who tell me that the statements I am about to quote are accurate. It is highly possible that the link with the Obama Administration is exaggerated, but this indeed does come from the White House’s favorite think tank.
While not mentioning the names of those involved they are known for supporting the idea that Hizballah is really quite moderate. The letter says that this is a project for the Center for American Progress and that the results “will be presented to senior U.S. policymakers in the administration.”
I am asked to participate by giving my opinions on how the United States can deal with Hizballah “short of engagement” and “would Israeli leaders see benefit in the U.S. talking with Hizballah about issues which are of crucial importance to Israel?”
Answer to first question: Oppose it in every way possible.
Answer to second question: What the [insert obscene words I don’t use] do you think they would say!
The letter continues:
“As you've noted, some like John Brennan [advisor to the president on terrorism] is already thinking about a more flexible policy towards Hizballah and it would be extremely useful to get your views on this to ensure anything decided is done properly.”
I read this letter—and that impression is confirmed by those knowledgeable about this project and those involved—as saying that the Center for American Progress is going to issue a report calling for U.S. engagement with Hizballah, and that it has been encouraged to do so by important officials in the Obama Administration.
The phrase “to ensure anything decided is done properly,” I take as a give-away to the fact that they are going to push for direct dealing with Hizballah but want to be able to say that they had listened to alternative views.
They merely, I am told by those who know about this project, intend to talk to some who disagree for appearances’ sake and throw in a sentence or two to give the report the slightest tinge of balance.
The person heading this project has already endangered the lives of brave Lebanese. For example, he claimed without foundation that Christians were planning to launch a war on Hizballah, providing a splendid rationale for Hizballah to murder opponents on the excuse of doing so in self-defense. Accepting Hizballah rule is defined as the Christians recognizing they are a minority and trying to get along with their Muslim neighbors.
In other words, those opposing Hizballah are presented as aggressors while Hizballah is just the reasonable party that wants to get along. Moreover all this leaves out the community, about the same size as the Christians and Shia Muslims, that has been leading the resistance to Syria, Iran, and Hizballah: the Sunni Muslims.
In short, the person directing the project talks like a virtual agent of Hizballah and its allies, basically repeating what they tell him.
Aside from the fact that Hizballah is not and will not be moderate there are two other problems that these silly people don’t comprehend.
The first is the signal that such statements send to Arabs and especially Lebanese. Concluding that the United States is selling them out and jumping onto the side of the Islamist revolutionaries (an idea that sounds implausible in Washington but very easily accepted as true in Riyadh, Beirut, Amman, and Cairo), Arab moderates will be demoralized, rush to become appeasers, and seek to cut their own deals with what they perceive as the winning side.
The second is the signal that such statements send to the radicals themselves. Concluding that the United States fears them and acknowledges their moral superiority and strategic success, they will be more arrogant and aggressive.
Friedrich Nietzsche famously said, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.” A good Middle East equivalent would be: That which does not scare me makes me bolder.
The last time I was in this situation, it involved a government-funded report about Islamist movements. What I didn't know is that the word had been passed to the project director from the government agency that he was supposed to urge engagement with Islamists. The intention was to keep out anything critical of the idea. At first, then, I was told to my surprise that my paper would be responded to by another paper written by a supporter of engaging Islamists.
When my paper was submitted, however, it was apparently too strong, it was quickly rejected in an insulting way, and I wasn't paid for my work. The fix was in and those involved were richly rewarded for saying what was wanted, though the actual implementation of such a policy would be disastrous for U.S. interests, as well as for millions of Arabs as well as Israelis.
Friends of mine have had similar experiences recently regarding papers arguing, for example, that engaging Syria is a great idea and that Damascus can be made moderate and split away from Iran. This is all nonsense, but honors and money are to be gained by saying such things.
So I’m not going to help provide a fig leaf for something masquerading as a serious study but set up to advocate a dreadful policy. It would be the equivalent of participating in a mid-1930s’ project designed to show that Germany had no more ambitions in Europe, a mid-1940s’ project that the USSR wanted to be friends, or a late 1970s’ project that Ayatollah Khomeini was a moderate and that an Islamist Iran would pose no threats.
It’s bad enough to live through an era of dangerous and terrible policy decisions, it’s much worse to be complicit in them.
Optional note: I didn't put in links but you can find extensive materials on British moves toward engaging Hizballah; Brennan's views; Hizballah threats against U.S. officials; close connections with Iran and Syria, Iranian and Syrian involvement in anti-American terrorism; and other such matters in my previous articles.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Monday, March 29, 2010
The Significance of Passover for Contemporary Arab and Muslim History
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We depend on your tax-free contributions. To make one, please send a check to: American Friends of IDC 116 East 16th Street 11th Floor New York, NY 10003. The check should be made out to IDC and on the lower left you write: For GLORIA Center.
By Barry Rubin
One of the greatest little challenges of my life--at least in terms of needing to react instantly--came when I was sitting in a meeting with high-ranking Egyptian officials during Passover. One of them asked me if it was true that the Jews had a holiday about defeating the Egyptians. I realized I had about ten seconds maximum to come up with the best answer.
And it then came to me: "Ah, I replied, those were jahiliyya times."
In Islam, the time before the beginning of that religion is viewed as a time of not only paganism but barbarism. Pharoah is a villain in the Koran. So they instantly accepted my answer: celebrating a story which ends with the drowning of pharoah isn't an act against Egypt but against a hated tyrant.
We are in a similar situation today. Change for the better will only come when the ideas and individuals who dominate the Middle East today--and oppose modernization, women's equality, democracy, peace with Israel, and real friendship with the West--are seen not as heroic leaders embodying Arabism and Islam but as unrepresentative tyrants.
That is not going to happen any time soon. It will take decades. Coincidentally, I just read the following written by George Orwell in 1946:
"Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible….This habit of the mind leads also to the belief that things will happen more quickly, completely, and catastrophically than they ever do in practice. The rise and fall of empires...are expected to happen with earthquake suddenness, and processes which have barely started are talked about as though they were already at an end.”
Yes, this process has only "barely started" and there is a long way to go. Indeed, it is arguably true that more in the West have accepted the "Middle East" interpretation of reality in the last decade than the other way around, viewing Islamists as heroic revolutionaries and tyrannical regimes as fighters for the underdog.
A brave Syrian oppositionist once asked me whether I thought democracy would come soon to his country. I choked up, having too much respect for him to tell him a pleasing lie. He understood my silence: "Oh, well," he sighed, "maybe in my children's time."
And so let me give greetings today especially--though not exclusively--for the democratic forces in Turkey, the democratic opposition in Iran, and in Syria, and those who dream of a free Lebanon. Your liberation will come also. Not when those tyrants' and the revolutionary extremists triumph. On the contrary, it will come when the waters close over them for the last time.
But only when the masses see what so very many of them are so proud to extol today as greatness as instead the political and social equivalent of the jahiliyya times they despise--the time of slavery to men who acted as pharoahs and to ideologies that extolled the equivalent of barbarism--will it be anywhere near an end.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
We depend on your tax-free contributions. To make one, please send a check to: American Friends of IDC 116 East 16th Street 11th Floor New York, NY 10003. The check should be made out to IDC and on the lower left you write: For GLORIA Center.
By Barry Rubin
One of the greatest little challenges of my life--at least in terms of needing to react instantly--came when I was sitting in a meeting with high-ranking Egyptian officials during Passover. One of them asked me if it was true that the Jews had a holiday about defeating the Egyptians. I realized I had about ten seconds maximum to come up with the best answer.
And it then came to me: "Ah, I replied, those were jahiliyya times."
In Islam, the time before the beginning of that religion is viewed as a time of not only paganism but barbarism. Pharoah is a villain in the Koran. So they instantly accepted my answer: celebrating a story which ends with the drowning of pharoah isn't an act against Egypt but against a hated tyrant.
We are in a similar situation today. Change for the better will only come when the ideas and individuals who dominate the Middle East today--and oppose modernization, women's equality, democracy, peace with Israel, and real friendship with the West--are seen not as heroic leaders embodying Arabism and Islam but as unrepresentative tyrants.
That is not going to happen any time soon. It will take decades. Coincidentally, I just read the following written by George Orwell in 1946:
"Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible….This habit of the mind leads also to the belief that things will happen more quickly, completely, and catastrophically than they ever do in practice. The rise and fall of empires...are expected to happen with earthquake suddenness, and processes which have barely started are talked about as though they were already at an end.”
Yes, this process has only "barely started" and there is a long way to go. Indeed, it is arguably true that more in the West have accepted the "Middle East" interpretation of reality in the last decade than the other way around, viewing Islamists as heroic revolutionaries and tyrannical regimes as fighters for the underdog.
A brave Syrian oppositionist once asked me whether I thought democracy would come soon to his country. I choked up, having too much respect for him to tell him a pleasing lie. He understood my silence: "Oh, well," he sighed, "maybe in my children's time."
And so let me give greetings today especially--though not exclusively--for the democratic forces in Turkey, the democratic opposition in Iran, and in Syria, and those who dream of a free Lebanon. Your liberation will come also. Not when those tyrants' and the revolutionary extremists triumph. On the contrary, it will come when the waters close over them for the last time.
But only when the masses see what so very many of them are so proud to extol today as greatness as instead the political and social equivalent of the jahiliyya times they despise--the time of slavery to men who acted as pharoahs and to ideologies that extolled the equivalent of barbarism--will it be anywhere near an end.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Leaving Behind All Logic and Rational Policy in an Effort to Bash Israel
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We depend on your tax-free contributions. To make one, please send a check to: American Friends of IDC 116 East 16th Street 11th Floor New York, NY 10003. The check should be made out to IDC and on the lower left you write: For GLORIA Center.
By Barry Rubin
When you barely scratch the surface of what's being said by the Obama Administration and supporters about its current one-way feud with Israel it is easy to see how ludicrous are the claims being made.
For example, here's Thomas Friedman producing a much-quoted statement where no one seems to see the glaring omission:
“This tiff actually reflects a tectonic shift that has taken place beneath the surface of Israel-U.S. relations. I'd summarize it like this: In the last decade, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process — for Israel — has gone from being a necessity to a hobby. And in the last decade, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process — for America — has gone from being a hobby to a necessity. Therein lies the problem.”
Typically, of course, he leaves out the second main party: the Palestinians. Imagine, in a conflict between two sides, the attitude of one of them has been completely left out of this formula. So I would add: for the Palestinians (or, if you wish, Palestinian Authority) the peace process has gone from a necessity to a nuisance.
And by the way: can anyone make a serious argument that obtaining a quick peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is either possible or a necessity for the United States? No. And the only way that this claim can be asserted is by systematically censoring out a dozen counter-arguments.
Moreover, as the United States fights for an instant peace process—only a few weeks after President Barack Obama admitted in January that it wouldn’t go anywhere—the Palestinians have been the main factor blocking it. The PA has refused to negotiate for 14 months while daily Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed the willingness to talk immediately.
The nonsensical view of the situation being pushed by the White House and its supporters can only be maintained by massive censorship of the facts.
Now we have the first fruits of U.S. engagement with Syria, as the Syrian government urges the PA to abandon negotiations altogether and return to violence. There has been no reflection on the fact that the concessions to Damascus have produced more extremism there.
Also censored out of history was the U.S.-Israel agreement last October to let Israel continue building in Jerusalem.
And how about speaking as if the only thing blocking a comprehensive peace was Israeli construction of apartments in Jerusalem without mentioning the fact that a radical Islamist group called Hamas, backed by Iran and Syria, which seeks to overthrow the PA and wipe Israel off the map, is ruling almost half of the Palestinian-claimed territory. No mention whatsoever as to how this might be a problem.
And no credit whatsoever is being given Israel for its last big concession: freezing all construction on the West Bank at the U.S. request, as painful as this was. If this is erased amidst demands that Israel prove itself supportive of peace (as if this has never happened before), isn't it completely predictable that the next big concession--say, stopping construction in Jerusalem--will be treated the same way?
The administration can twist the facts as it wishes but why should the mass media go along with these distortions?
It is starting to seem conceivable that the Obama Administration will back sanctions on Israel before it does so effectively on Iran. That says more about its foreign policy foolishness than just about anything else could.
I know that people have come up with many reasons for this confrontation--ranging from visceral and ideological hatred of Israel, to a cover for failure over sanctions on Iran, to a way to justify sanctions on Iran, to a way (rather misguided!) to protect American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But here's the bottom line analysis:
From a rational national interests standpoint, from a political standpoint to win support for the administration, from a standpoint of getting the administration's first foreign policy victory, from the standpoint of trying to strengthen support for U.S. policies in the Muslim-majority and Arabic-speaking world, this tactic makes no sense.
And for a U.S. government to behave that way is the scariest thing of all.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
We depend on your tax-free contributions. To make one, please send a check to: American Friends of IDC 116 East 16th Street 11th Floor New York, NY 10003. The check should be made out to IDC and on the lower left you write: For GLORIA Center.
By Barry Rubin
When you barely scratch the surface of what's being said by the Obama Administration and supporters about its current one-way feud with Israel it is easy to see how ludicrous are the claims being made.
For example, here's Thomas Friedman producing a much-quoted statement where no one seems to see the glaring omission:
“This tiff actually reflects a tectonic shift that has taken place beneath the surface of Israel-U.S. relations. I'd summarize it like this: In the last decade, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process — for Israel — has gone from being a necessity to a hobby. And in the last decade, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process — for America — has gone from being a hobby to a necessity. Therein lies the problem.”
Typically, of course, he leaves out the second main party: the Palestinians. Imagine, in a conflict between two sides, the attitude of one of them has been completely left out of this formula. So I would add: for the Palestinians (or, if you wish, Palestinian Authority) the peace process has gone from a necessity to a nuisance.
And by the way: can anyone make a serious argument that obtaining a quick peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is either possible or a necessity for the United States? No. And the only way that this claim can be asserted is by systematically censoring out a dozen counter-arguments.
Moreover, as the United States fights for an instant peace process—only a few weeks after President Barack Obama admitted in January that it wouldn’t go anywhere—the Palestinians have been the main factor blocking it. The PA has refused to negotiate for 14 months while daily Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed the willingness to talk immediately.
The nonsensical view of the situation being pushed by the White House and its supporters can only be maintained by massive censorship of the facts.
Now we have the first fruits of U.S. engagement with Syria, as the Syrian government urges the PA to abandon negotiations altogether and return to violence. There has been no reflection on the fact that the concessions to Damascus have produced more extremism there.
Also censored out of history was the U.S.-Israel agreement last October to let Israel continue building in Jerusalem.
And how about speaking as if the only thing blocking a comprehensive peace was Israeli construction of apartments in Jerusalem without mentioning the fact that a radical Islamist group called Hamas, backed by Iran and Syria, which seeks to overthrow the PA and wipe Israel off the map, is ruling almost half of the Palestinian-claimed territory. No mention whatsoever as to how this might be a problem.
And no credit whatsoever is being given Israel for its last big concession: freezing all construction on the West Bank at the U.S. request, as painful as this was. If this is erased amidst demands that Israel prove itself supportive of peace (as if this has never happened before), isn't it completely predictable that the next big concession--say, stopping construction in Jerusalem--will be treated the same way?
The administration can twist the facts as it wishes but why should the mass media go along with these distortions?
It is starting to seem conceivable that the Obama Administration will back sanctions on Israel before it does so effectively on Iran. That says more about its foreign policy foolishness than just about anything else could.
I know that people have come up with many reasons for this confrontation--ranging from visceral and ideological hatred of Israel, to a cover for failure over sanctions on Iran, to a way to justify sanctions on Iran, to a way (rather misguided!) to protect American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But here's the bottom line analysis:
From a rational national interests standpoint, from a political standpoint to win support for the administration, from a standpoint of getting the administration's first foreign policy victory, from the standpoint of trying to strengthen support for U.S. policies in the Muslim-majority and Arabic-speaking world, this tactic makes no sense.
And for a U.S. government to behave that way is the scariest thing of all.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
President Obama Follows Up on His Middle East Victory, A Satire
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By Barry Rubin
“President Obama! President Obama,” said the aide in a cheery voice as he entered the Oval Office, “we just heard that Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to stop all construction in Jerusalem and give in to all your demands!”
“That is wonderful news,” chortled the chief executive. ‘’And as you know I never waste a moment. Quick! Get me my friend Mahmoud Abbas on the phone.”
With the magical swiftness of the White House communications equipment, within moments the leader of the Palestinian Authority was on the line. Quickly, Obama explained to him what had happened, adding, “and now we can move quickly to a comprehensive peace.”
“Not so fast,” answered Abbas. “Since you got the Israelis to back down on that issue—and a great job you did, Mr. President-- surely you can now get them to agree to a return to the 1967 borders, accept all the Palestinian refugees who want to go live in Israel, and drop all the demands they have on us to do anything. Oh, and they have to agree that if we sign a peace treaty that doesn’t mean the conflict is over so we can then launch another round to get everything.”
“But you said that’s all you needed to make a peace treaty!”
“Oh, yes, Mr. President, it’s all I need. But then there are all those Fatah leaders who have the real power and they have their heart set on a Palestinian state from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean. Then there are those Hamas leaders, and you know how unreasonable they can be! Why if I settled for anything less they’d have my head! Oh, yes, that reminds me, unless Hamas agrees do keep in mind that anything I accept doesn’t apply to the Gaza Strip and Hamas. They can just go on fighting. Hope you don’t mind.”
After a bit more discussion, Abbas said, “Sorry, Mr. president but I must go now as my favorite show, `Do You Want to Marry a Suicide Bomber,` is coming on Palestinian television right now.”
The president hung up, fuming. But then he brightened up, realizing that since it wasn’t the Israelis he couldn’t possibly have been insulted. Still, he needed something to cheer him up so he telephoned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran.
Obama explained what had happened, and added, “So now that the Israelis aren’t building in Jerusalem will you reconsider your nuclear weapons’ program?”
“Oh yes, Mr. President,” said Ahmadinejad in a soft voice, “of course we’re going to reconsider it.” Then he screamed at the top of his lungs—if you know the comedians Gilbert Gottfried or Sam Kinison you can imagine them doing it—“We’re going to double our speed, you dummy! Since we see you’re so weak and the Zionist entity is about to fall apart!” Ahmadinejad hung up.
Once again, Obama was a bit miffed. But since it was an enemy he couldn’t stay angry for long. Instead, he dialed up Syrian President Bashar al-Asad, asking if this news would make Syria stop paying, arming, and training terrorists to kill Americans in Iraq. Asad sounded like Ahmadinejad but just a little more polite.
“Ha,” thought Obama, my concessions really are moderating him and splitting him away from Tehran. But the president was still a bit down. “I know,” he decided, “I’ll call my good buddy King Abdallah. That should cheer me up.”
“This is wonderful news, Mr. president,” said the king respectfully. “Of course we will need a bit more. If I ask the Arab League to support talks the Syrians will try to veto it but you have done a very good job. Please feel assured that the Muslim and Arab people really love you and appreciate you.”
By the time Obama was finished with that call he was in a much better mood. “I did it,” he thought, “I’m a great statesman.”
But as soon as the king hung up the phone he called his finance minister. “Quick,” shouted the king excitedly in a panicky voice. “Sell as many dollars as you can and buy Iranian war bonds!”
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
We need your support to compete with the mass media. Please reprint, send to friends, and consider being a tax-free contributor. Inquire on becoming a donor please.
By Barry Rubin
“President Obama! President Obama,” said the aide in a cheery voice as he entered the Oval Office, “we just heard that Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to stop all construction in Jerusalem and give in to all your demands!”
“That is wonderful news,” chortled the chief executive. ‘’And as you know I never waste a moment. Quick! Get me my friend Mahmoud Abbas on the phone.”
With the magical swiftness of the White House communications equipment, within moments the leader of the Palestinian Authority was on the line. Quickly, Obama explained to him what had happened, adding, “and now we can move quickly to a comprehensive peace.”
“Not so fast,” answered Abbas. “Since you got the Israelis to back down on that issue—and a great job you did, Mr. President-- surely you can now get them to agree to a return to the 1967 borders, accept all the Palestinian refugees who want to go live in Israel, and drop all the demands they have on us to do anything. Oh, and they have to agree that if we sign a peace treaty that doesn’t mean the conflict is over so we can then launch another round to get everything.”
“But you said that’s all you needed to make a peace treaty!”
“Oh, yes, Mr. President, it’s all I need. But then there are all those Fatah leaders who have the real power and they have their heart set on a Palestinian state from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean. Then there are those Hamas leaders, and you know how unreasonable they can be! Why if I settled for anything less they’d have my head! Oh, yes, that reminds me, unless Hamas agrees do keep in mind that anything I accept doesn’t apply to the Gaza Strip and Hamas. They can just go on fighting. Hope you don’t mind.”
After a bit more discussion, Abbas said, “Sorry, Mr. president but I must go now as my favorite show, `Do You Want to Marry a Suicide Bomber,` is coming on Palestinian television right now.”
The president hung up, fuming. But then he brightened up, realizing that since it wasn’t the Israelis he couldn’t possibly have been insulted. Still, he needed something to cheer him up so he telephoned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran.
Obama explained what had happened, and added, “So now that the Israelis aren’t building in Jerusalem will you reconsider your nuclear weapons’ program?”
“Oh yes, Mr. President,” said Ahmadinejad in a soft voice, “of course we’re going to reconsider it.” Then he screamed at the top of his lungs—if you know the comedians Gilbert Gottfried or Sam Kinison you can imagine them doing it—“We’re going to double our speed, you dummy! Since we see you’re so weak and the Zionist entity is about to fall apart!” Ahmadinejad hung up.
Once again, Obama was a bit miffed. But since it was an enemy he couldn’t stay angry for long. Instead, he dialed up Syrian President Bashar al-Asad, asking if this news would make Syria stop paying, arming, and training terrorists to kill Americans in Iraq. Asad sounded like Ahmadinejad but just a little more polite.
“Ha,” thought Obama, my concessions really are moderating him and splitting him away from Tehran. But the president was still a bit down. “I know,” he decided, “I’ll call my good buddy King Abdallah. That should cheer me up.”
“This is wonderful news, Mr. president,” said the king respectfully. “Of course we will need a bit more. If I ask the Arab League to support talks the Syrians will try to veto it but you have done a very good job. Please feel assured that the Muslim and Arab people really love you and appreciate you.”
By the time Obama was finished with that call he was in a much better mood. “I did it,” he thought, “I’m a great statesman.”
But as soon as the king hung up the phone he called his finance minister. “Quick,” shouted the king excitedly in a panicky voice. “Sell as many dollars as you can and buy Iranian war bonds!”
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
NY Times Defends Obama, Not U.S. Interests; Blames Israel, Not White House or Palestinians For All Problems
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By Barry Rubin
The New York Times has now crossed the line from being a grossly slanted newspaper in its Middle East editorial coverage to being one so partisan, blinkered, and defensive as to lose its value altogether. I do not write this lightly and have no wish to exaggerate. But the newspaper’s editorial of March 26 is so mendacious, so made up to suit the political purposes of the Obama administration without any reference to the facts that it is a work of politically tailored fiction.
Basically, the themes or omissions are as follows:
--Israeli policy is the result of extreme right-wing politicians.
--Most Israelis support Obama rather than their own government.
--The U.S.-Israel agreement of last October never existed.
--The Palestinians don’t exist and one doesn’t need to mention their actions or the administration’s total catering to them.
--Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done something so awful that it proves he doesn't want peace. What did he do? Precisely what he told the U.S. government he was going to do five months ago and which it then called a major step toward peace!
The Administration's and Times' goal is to portray the issue as not being one of Obama versus Israel but rather Obama plus the Israeli majority against a relatively small number of right-wing extremists who have hijacked the country.
If only such tactics were used against America’s enemies.
Unfortunately, it is necessary to discuss this editorial in detail. It begins:
“After taking office last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel privately told many Americans and Europeans that he was committed to and capable of peacemaking, despite the hard-line positions that he had used to get elected for a second time. Trust me, he told them. We were skeptical when we first heard that, and we’re even more skeptical now.”
Netanyahu not only said this privately but also publicly, as is clear in the official Israeli government peace plan about which the Times has never even informed its readers. It offers a two-state solution and lists Israel's needs: end of conflict, resettlement of Palestinian refugees in a Palestinian state, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, demilitarization. So Netanyhu hasn't "grudgingly" accepted this solution, he's offered it himself.
Of course, Israel has things it wants in exchange but neither the U.S. government nor the Times discusses these matters. As a result, the apparent position of the U.S. government is that Israel will have to accept a Palestinian state without conditions. No wonder Israel's public is suspicious.
Moreover, this government is not merely one of Netanyahu but also of Labour Party leader Ehud Barak and former Labour leader Shimon Peres who was also in Kadima, and is now president, as a supporter of its program. It is not a "right-wing" government but a national unity coalition including the biggest party of the left and of the right.
The story being set up portrays the problem as being Netanyahu neither committed nor capable of making peace. The Times is clearly never skeptical about the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership. But what has Netanyahu done to demonstrate this claim? There was no problem before the recent crisis, set off by the announcement that a plan to build apartments in Jerusalem—still years off—had passed one more of seven stages toward approval.
It bears repeating over and over again that last October, Netanyahu reached a deal with the Obama Administration: No construction on the West Bank; construction to continue in Jerusalem. In addition, the White House agreed that this ban would be limited to nine months. The obvious concept was that the U.S. government was wagering that it could produce either enough progress on talks, benefits to Israel, or both that it could persuade Israel's government to extend that freeze. Netanyahu never broke that agreement, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed as a great step toward peace.
So has Netanyahu done something horrible or is this a largely fabricated crisis?
“All this week, the Obama administration had hoped Mr. Netanyahu would give it something to work with, a way to resolve the poisonous contretemps over Jerusalem and to finally restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. It would have been a relief if they had succeeded. Serious negotiations on a two-state solution are in all their interests. And the challenges the United States and Israel face — especially Iran’s nuclear program — are too great for the leaders not to have a close working relationship.”
The Times was not dismayed by the fact that the PA refused to negotiate between January 2009 and February 2010, and then only indirectly agreed to do so. Unless I missed it, there hasn’t been one word of editorial criticism of the PA at all. In fact, the newspaper said not a single word regarding the PA's sabotage of Obama's call for negotiations last September.
What the second paragraph disguises is that the Obama Administration made a major new demand on Israel’s government: all construction to stop permanently after it had already accepted a compromise on the issue. This is not just “something to work with,” but rather a maximalist demand for something no Israeli government has ever given.
“But after a cabinet meeting on Friday, Mr. Netanyahu and his right-wing government still insisted that they would not change their policy of building homes in the city, including East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope to make the capital of an independent state.”
Again, there is no mention of the PA giving anything on any subject; this issue doesn’t even exist according to the Times. As noted above this is not merely a “right-wing government,” but the story is being set up to suggest that Obama is the true leader of Israel.
“President Obama made pursuing a peace deal a priority and has been understandably furious at Israel’s response. He correctly sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a factor in wider regional instability.”
In January, Obama announced that he felt it unlikely he could make serious progress on peace. Presumably this was a result of PA behavior as well. From that moment, it was clear that a peace deal was no longer a priority; again a point the Times does not even suggested.
“Mr. Netanyahu’s government provoked the controversy two weeks ago when it disclosed plans for 1,600 new housing units in an ultra-orthodox neighborhood in East Jerusalem just as Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. was on a fence-mending visit and Israeli-Palestinian “proximity talks” were to begin.”
It is interesting to note that the reason there were proximity talks only was that while Netanyahu called for direct negotiations (as had Obama last September), the PA rejected them. Moreover, Israelis know that it was not “Netanyahu’s government” but a low-level commission that announced the plans without clearing it with the prime minister. Even Israeli journalists who are strongly opposed to Netanyahu have made this point, which the Times ignores.
“Last year, Mr. Netanyahu rejected Mr. Obama’s call for a freeze on all settlement building. On Tuesday — just before Mr. Obama hosted Mr. Netanyahu at the White House — Israeli officials revealed plans to build 20 units in the Shepherd Hotel compound of East Jerusalem.”
While it is technically true that Netanyahu did not accept the freeze on all building—“settlement building” makes it sound (and no doubt many Times’ readers falsely believe—that new settlements are being constructed—it is also true that the Obama Administration accepted a compromise.
Let me give an analogy. You demand that I give you $100,000 to buy a property. I counter-offer $75,000. You accept it and publicly brag about what a great deal it is. A few months later you angrily announce that I rejected your proposal and it is now proven that I didn't want to buy the house.
That is very close to the current situation.
“Palestinians are justifiably worried that these projects nibble away at the land available for their future state. The disputes with Israel have made Mr. Obama look weak and have given Palestinians and Arab leaders an excuse to walk away from the proximity talks (in which Mr. Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, would shuttle between Jerusalem and Ramallah) that Washington nurtured.”
Well, why should they worry if they can negotiate a deal? And if they are worried shouldn’t this make them more eager to reach a deal before more is “nibbled” away. Remember, by the way, we are talking about a piece of land approximately four city blocks over the pre-1967 border in an uninhabited place.
But the best point of the paragraph is that the Times is shocked! Shocked! That this makes Obama look weak! How many things has Obama done in the Middle East to look weak? (To save space and because I know you can give a list, I won’t spend a page outlining them.) Yet on what single occasion has the Times been upset about this?
“Mr. Obama was right to demand that Mr. Netanyahu repair the damage. Details of their deliberately low-key White House meeting (no photos, no press, not even a joint statement afterward) have not been revealed. We hope Israel is being pressed to at least temporarily halt building in East Jerusalem as a sign of good faith. Jerusalem’s future must be decided in negotiations.”
Yes on the last sentence. But the announcement that in a few years Israel might start building some apartment buildings doesn’t decide Jerusalem’s future. If the PA offers a good deal then why should the presence of plans to build apartments—or even existing apartments—stop it? But that’s what this is mostly about: Trying to reach a deal which does not require the PA to give up anything it doesn’t want to, which means giving up nothing at all
“The administration should also insist that proximity talks, once begun, grapple immediately with core issues like borders and security, not incidentals. And it must ensure that the talks evolve quickly to direct negotiations — the only realistic format for an enduring agreement.”
This, too, is profoundly dishonest. Direct talks have been going along for most of the last 18 years. They were derailed first by the PA walk-out (over a war in Gaza begun by Hamas) and then by the Obama Administration’s own demand—beyond the PA’s demands—for the construction freeze.
There is no hint that the lack of talks doesn’t rest on Israel, with the possible exception of the last week though even this could have been finessed. Suppose Obama had said to Netanyahu: Please announce that there are no imminent plans to build these apartments and denounce the announcement as unauthorized by you. Things could have been worked out and indirect talks restarted.
Now the Administration’s explosion has put them off for months at least. After all, why should the PA, smiling as the U.S. government bashes Israel, relieve the pressure on Israel’s government? Especially since they don’t want to negotiate any way and they know the U.S. government won’t make them do so?
“Many Israelis find Mr. Obama’s willingness to challenge Israel unsettling. We find it refreshing that he has forced public debate on issues that must be debated publicly for a peace deal to happen. He must also press Palestinians and Arab leaders just as forcefully.”
Notice how the one sentence comes in at the end about how Obama must press Palestinians and Arabs. But there is not a single specific, nor any discussion of how the lack of balance in itself is damaging. Yet even the premise is flatly wrong: must there be a public debate now on a permanent end for Israel construction as the main and sole condition for reaching a peace deal? I could name a dozen other issues, including the PA’s failure to comply with its commitments on a daily basis.
Finally:
“Questions from Israeli hard-liners and others about his commitment to Israel’s security are misplaced. The question is whether Mr. Netanyahu is able or willing to lead his country to a peace deal. He grudgingly endorsed the two-state solution. Does he intend to get there?”
Notice that the editorial does not speak of questions from Israelis but from “hard-liners and others,” implying—while still covering itself in language—that only some kind of extremist might question Obama’s commitment. Again, a long list of reasons for questioning that commitment could be made.
But again what has happened to make the question Netanyahu’s ability or willingness to make a peace deal. Here are the total charges against him: The announcement of building a set of apartments, for which he apologized, and another regarding 20 additional apartments.
It’s not as if he and his colleagues daily broadcast incitement to murder people on the other side through schools, sermons, and speeches. It’s not as if they refused to negotiate at all month after month. It’s not as if they released or did not incarcerate extremists who murdered civilians on the other side. (Actually they did release prisoners who murdered civilians but they were Palestinian prisoners who murdered Israelis.) It’s not as if they don’t even control half the territory for which they purport to bargain.
Those are all characteristics of the PA, things the Times does not even mention. And if the administration or the Times wanted to take offense at anti-peace actions they could mention that at the time of Biden's visit the PA dedicated a major square to a terrorist who murdered a score of Israeli civilians and Gail Rubin, a U.S. citizen and niece of then Senator Abraham Ribicoff. Not only did the Administration not protest this action but Clinton mistakenly attributed it to Hamas in her AIPAC speech.
Consequently, this editorial is not merely slanted; it is so profoundly dishonest, distorting both the Palestinian and the Obama Administration role, as to be suitable to that published in a state-controlled newspaper in a dictatorship.
Once--and perhaps again in the not-distant future--the U.S.-Israel link was called a "special relationship" because it was so close. Now it is still distinctive in a special way: Israel is the only country in the world--a list that includes none of those countries sponsoring anti-American terror or trying to destroy U.S. interests--that this administration, perhaps only temporarily, wants to intimidate and defeat.
But is this all about Israel or is it about the desperation to defend an administration which has failed so badly and acted so erratically in foreign policy?
By so misrepresenting the facts and situation, some media can go on defending Obama's policies and actions. But that's no way to defend America and its interests, quite the contrary
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
We need your support to compete with the mass media. Please reprint, send to friends, and consider being a tax-free contributor. Inquire on becoming a donor please.
By Barry Rubin
The New York Times has now crossed the line from being a grossly slanted newspaper in its Middle East editorial coverage to being one so partisan, blinkered, and defensive as to lose its value altogether. I do not write this lightly and have no wish to exaggerate. But the newspaper’s editorial of March 26 is so mendacious, so made up to suit the political purposes of the Obama administration without any reference to the facts that it is a work of politically tailored fiction.
Basically, the themes or omissions are as follows:
--Israeli policy is the result of extreme right-wing politicians.
--Most Israelis support Obama rather than their own government.
--The U.S.-Israel agreement of last October never existed.
--The Palestinians don’t exist and one doesn’t need to mention their actions or the administration’s total catering to them.
--Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done something so awful that it proves he doesn't want peace. What did he do? Precisely what he told the U.S. government he was going to do five months ago and which it then called a major step toward peace!
The Administration's and Times' goal is to portray the issue as not being one of Obama versus Israel but rather Obama plus the Israeli majority against a relatively small number of right-wing extremists who have hijacked the country.
If only such tactics were used against America’s enemies.
Unfortunately, it is necessary to discuss this editorial in detail. It begins:
“After taking office last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel privately told many Americans and Europeans that he was committed to and capable of peacemaking, despite the hard-line positions that he had used to get elected for a second time. Trust me, he told them. We were skeptical when we first heard that, and we’re even more skeptical now.”
Netanyahu not only said this privately but also publicly, as is clear in the official Israeli government peace plan about which the Times has never even informed its readers. It offers a two-state solution and lists Israel's needs: end of conflict, resettlement of Palestinian refugees in a Palestinian state, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, demilitarization. So Netanyhu hasn't "grudgingly" accepted this solution, he's offered it himself.
Of course, Israel has things it wants in exchange but neither the U.S. government nor the Times discusses these matters. As a result, the apparent position of the U.S. government is that Israel will have to accept a Palestinian state without conditions. No wonder Israel's public is suspicious.
Moreover, this government is not merely one of Netanyahu but also of Labour Party leader Ehud Barak and former Labour leader Shimon Peres who was also in Kadima, and is now president, as a supporter of its program. It is not a "right-wing" government but a national unity coalition including the biggest party of the left and of the right.
The story being set up portrays the problem as being Netanyahu neither committed nor capable of making peace. The Times is clearly never skeptical about the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership. But what has Netanyahu done to demonstrate this claim? There was no problem before the recent crisis, set off by the announcement that a plan to build apartments in Jerusalem—still years off—had passed one more of seven stages toward approval.
It bears repeating over and over again that last October, Netanyahu reached a deal with the Obama Administration: No construction on the West Bank; construction to continue in Jerusalem. In addition, the White House agreed that this ban would be limited to nine months. The obvious concept was that the U.S. government was wagering that it could produce either enough progress on talks, benefits to Israel, or both that it could persuade Israel's government to extend that freeze. Netanyahu never broke that agreement, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed as a great step toward peace.
So has Netanyahu done something horrible or is this a largely fabricated crisis?
“All this week, the Obama administration had hoped Mr. Netanyahu would give it something to work with, a way to resolve the poisonous contretemps over Jerusalem and to finally restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. It would have been a relief if they had succeeded. Serious negotiations on a two-state solution are in all their interests. And the challenges the United States and Israel face — especially Iran’s nuclear program — are too great for the leaders not to have a close working relationship.”
The Times was not dismayed by the fact that the PA refused to negotiate between January 2009 and February 2010, and then only indirectly agreed to do so. Unless I missed it, there hasn’t been one word of editorial criticism of the PA at all. In fact, the newspaper said not a single word regarding the PA's sabotage of Obama's call for negotiations last September.
What the second paragraph disguises is that the Obama Administration made a major new demand on Israel’s government: all construction to stop permanently after it had already accepted a compromise on the issue. This is not just “something to work with,” but rather a maximalist demand for something no Israeli government has ever given.
“But after a cabinet meeting on Friday, Mr. Netanyahu and his right-wing government still insisted that they would not change their policy of building homes in the city, including East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope to make the capital of an independent state.”
Again, there is no mention of the PA giving anything on any subject; this issue doesn’t even exist according to the Times. As noted above this is not merely a “right-wing government,” but the story is being set up to suggest that Obama is the true leader of Israel.
“President Obama made pursuing a peace deal a priority and has been understandably furious at Israel’s response. He correctly sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a factor in wider regional instability.”
In January, Obama announced that he felt it unlikely he could make serious progress on peace. Presumably this was a result of PA behavior as well. From that moment, it was clear that a peace deal was no longer a priority; again a point the Times does not even suggested.
“Mr. Netanyahu’s government provoked the controversy two weeks ago when it disclosed plans for 1,600 new housing units in an ultra-orthodox neighborhood in East Jerusalem just as Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. was on a fence-mending visit and Israeli-Palestinian “proximity talks” were to begin.”
It is interesting to note that the reason there were proximity talks only was that while Netanyahu called for direct negotiations (as had Obama last September), the PA rejected them. Moreover, Israelis know that it was not “Netanyahu’s government” but a low-level commission that announced the plans without clearing it with the prime minister. Even Israeli journalists who are strongly opposed to Netanyahu have made this point, which the Times ignores.
“Last year, Mr. Netanyahu rejected Mr. Obama’s call for a freeze on all settlement building. On Tuesday — just before Mr. Obama hosted Mr. Netanyahu at the White House — Israeli officials revealed plans to build 20 units in the Shepherd Hotel compound of East Jerusalem.”
While it is technically true that Netanyahu did not accept the freeze on all building—“settlement building” makes it sound (and no doubt many Times’ readers falsely believe—that new settlements are being constructed—it is also true that the Obama Administration accepted a compromise.
Let me give an analogy. You demand that I give you $100,000 to buy a property. I counter-offer $75,000. You accept it and publicly brag about what a great deal it is. A few months later you angrily announce that I rejected your proposal and it is now proven that I didn't want to buy the house.
That is very close to the current situation.
“Palestinians are justifiably worried that these projects nibble away at the land available for their future state. The disputes with Israel have made Mr. Obama look weak and have given Palestinians and Arab leaders an excuse to walk away from the proximity talks (in which Mr. Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, would shuttle between Jerusalem and Ramallah) that Washington nurtured.”
Well, why should they worry if they can negotiate a deal? And if they are worried shouldn’t this make them more eager to reach a deal before more is “nibbled” away. Remember, by the way, we are talking about a piece of land approximately four city blocks over the pre-1967 border in an uninhabited place.
But the best point of the paragraph is that the Times is shocked! Shocked! That this makes Obama look weak! How many things has Obama done in the Middle East to look weak? (To save space and because I know you can give a list, I won’t spend a page outlining them.) Yet on what single occasion has the Times been upset about this?
“Mr. Obama was right to demand that Mr. Netanyahu repair the damage. Details of their deliberately low-key White House meeting (no photos, no press, not even a joint statement afterward) have not been revealed. We hope Israel is being pressed to at least temporarily halt building in East Jerusalem as a sign of good faith. Jerusalem’s future must be decided in negotiations.”
Yes on the last sentence. But the announcement that in a few years Israel might start building some apartment buildings doesn’t decide Jerusalem’s future. If the PA offers a good deal then why should the presence of plans to build apartments—or even existing apartments—stop it? But that’s what this is mostly about: Trying to reach a deal which does not require the PA to give up anything it doesn’t want to, which means giving up nothing at all
“The administration should also insist that proximity talks, once begun, grapple immediately with core issues like borders and security, not incidentals. And it must ensure that the talks evolve quickly to direct negotiations — the only realistic format for an enduring agreement.”
This, too, is profoundly dishonest. Direct talks have been going along for most of the last 18 years. They were derailed first by the PA walk-out (over a war in Gaza begun by Hamas) and then by the Obama Administration’s own demand—beyond the PA’s demands—for the construction freeze.
There is no hint that the lack of talks doesn’t rest on Israel, with the possible exception of the last week though even this could have been finessed. Suppose Obama had said to Netanyahu: Please announce that there are no imminent plans to build these apartments and denounce the announcement as unauthorized by you. Things could have been worked out and indirect talks restarted.
Now the Administration’s explosion has put them off for months at least. After all, why should the PA, smiling as the U.S. government bashes Israel, relieve the pressure on Israel’s government? Especially since they don’t want to negotiate any way and they know the U.S. government won’t make them do so?
“Many Israelis find Mr. Obama’s willingness to challenge Israel unsettling. We find it refreshing that he has forced public debate on issues that must be debated publicly for a peace deal to happen. He must also press Palestinians and Arab leaders just as forcefully.”
Notice how the one sentence comes in at the end about how Obama must press Palestinians and Arabs. But there is not a single specific, nor any discussion of how the lack of balance in itself is damaging. Yet even the premise is flatly wrong: must there be a public debate now on a permanent end for Israel construction as the main and sole condition for reaching a peace deal? I could name a dozen other issues, including the PA’s failure to comply with its commitments on a daily basis.
Finally:
“Questions from Israeli hard-liners and others about his commitment to Israel’s security are misplaced. The question is whether Mr. Netanyahu is able or willing to lead his country to a peace deal. He grudgingly endorsed the two-state solution. Does he intend to get there?”
Notice that the editorial does not speak of questions from Israelis but from “hard-liners and others,” implying—while still covering itself in language—that only some kind of extremist might question Obama’s commitment. Again, a long list of reasons for questioning that commitment could be made.
But again what has happened to make the question Netanyahu’s ability or willingness to make a peace deal. Here are the total charges against him: The announcement of building a set of apartments, for which he apologized, and another regarding 20 additional apartments.
It’s not as if he and his colleagues daily broadcast incitement to murder people on the other side through schools, sermons, and speeches. It’s not as if they refused to negotiate at all month after month. It’s not as if they released or did not incarcerate extremists who murdered civilians on the other side. (Actually they did release prisoners who murdered civilians but they were Palestinian prisoners who murdered Israelis.) It’s not as if they don’t even control half the territory for which they purport to bargain.
Those are all characteristics of the PA, things the Times does not even mention. And if the administration or the Times wanted to take offense at anti-peace actions they could mention that at the time of Biden's visit the PA dedicated a major square to a terrorist who murdered a score of Israeli civilians and Gail Rubin, a U.S. citizen and niece of then Senator Abraham Ribicoff. Not only did the Administration not protest this action but Clinton mistakenly attributed it to Hamas in her AIPAC speech.
Consequently, this editorial is not merely slanted; it is so profoundly dishonest, distorting both the Palestinian and the Obama Administration role, as to be suitable to that published in a state-controlled newspaper in a dictatorship.
Once--and perhaps again in the not-distant future--the U.S.-Israel link was called a "special relationship" because it was so close. Now it is still distinctive in a special way: Israel is the only country in the world--a list that includes none of those countries sponsoring anti-American terror or trying to destroy U.S. interests--that this administration, perhaps only temporarily, wants to intimidate and defeat.
But is this all about Israel or is it about the desperation to defend an administration which has failed so badly and acted so erratically in foreign policy?
By so misrepresenting the facts and situation, some media can go on defending Obama's policies and actions. But that's no way to defend America and its interests, quite the contrary
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Turkish Islamist Regime Writes New Constitution To Guarantee Its Future Rule
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We depend on your tax-deductible contributions. To make one, please send a check to: American Friends of IDC 116 East 16th Street 11th Floor New York, NY 10003. The check should be made out to IDC and on the lower left you write: For GLORIA Center.
By Barry Rubin
Given the whitewash generally and generously applied to Turkey's Islamist-oriented regime internationally, there is little awareness of one of that government's (now closer to Iran and Syria than to the United States) most dangerous projects: the rewriting of Turkey's constitution.
The drafting of that document is in the hands of party loyalists. Nor does it deal with Turkey's real political problems: the fact that leaders of political parties are virtual dictators; the 10 percent minimum which allowed the regime when it first "won" the elections to get almost two-thirds of the seats with only around 31 percent of the votes.
Instead, there are cute pseudo-democratic gimmicks that sound good but are designed to entrench the current government in power forever.
For example, the president can appoint two people who merely have a BA degree to the Constitutional Court. One can imagine how they would vote. It also takes the right to ban political parties away from the high court and gives it to parliament, meaning the government could ban opposing parties whenever it felt like it.
According to former president Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the prime minister now controls parliament and is adding the judiciary to that, thus having total control over the branches of government. With the army intimidated by threats, arrests, and slander, there is nothing left to limit the regime's power.
Perhaps public criticism--in those parts of the media the government does not yet control or intimidate--could make the regime back down but it could jam through a constitution designed to end Turkey's status as a democratic state.
By taming the army, subordinating the courts, taking over or intimidating the media, packing the bureaucracy with its own supporters, and using leverage over the universities, the regime intends to stay in power forever.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
We depend on your tax-deductible contributions. To make one, please send a check to: American Friends of IDC 116 East 16th Street 11th Floor New York, NY 10003. The check should be made out to IDC and on the lower left you write: For GLORIA Center.
By Barry Rubin
Given the whitewash generally and generously applied to Turkey's Islamist-oriented regime internationally, there is little awareness of one of that government's (now closer to Iran and Syria than to the United States) most dangerous projects: the rewriting of Turkey's constitution.
The drafting of that document is in the hands of party loyalists. Nor does it deal with Turkey's real political problems: the fact that leaders of political parties are virtual dictators; the 10 percent minimum which allowed the regime when it first "won" the elections to get almost two-thirds of the seats with only around 31 percent of the votes.
Instead, there are cute pseudo-democratic gimmicks that sound good but are designed to entrench the current government in power forever.
For example, the president can appoint two people who merely have a BA degree to the Constitutional Court. One can imagine how they would vote. It also takes the right to ban political parties away from the high court and gives it to parliament, meaning the government could ban opposing parties whenever it felt like it.
According to former president Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the prime minister now controls parliament and is adding the judiciary to that, thus having total control over the branches of government. With the army intimidated by threats, arrests, and slander, there is nothing left to limit the regime's power.
Perhaps public criticism--in those parts of the media the government does not yet control or intimidate--could make the regime back down but it could jam through a constitution designed to end Turkey's status as a democratic state.
By taming the army, subordinating the courts, taking over or intimidating the media, packing the bureaucracy with its own supporters, and using leverage over the universities, the regime intends to stay in power forever.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Some Truths About America’s Anti-Racist History: Portraying the Japanese in World War Two Films
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And remember the GLORIA Center and this blog exists on your tax-deductible contributions. Please inquire as to how to become a donor
By Barry Rubin
This year, my son—who is attending the fourth grade at an American public school—has been subjected to an unending barrage of anti-Americanism, especially around the issue of racism. For some reason the main focus is alleged American racism toward the Japanese in World War Two. In addition, literally not a single positive word has been spoken about America during the entire school year.
At the same time, I have been watching a number of American films about the Pacific theatre during World War Two, not seeking them out but merely because they have been shown on television. The controversy over Tom Hanks’ statement and his new series on that war has added to the interest.
One thing very clear to me is that American films about the Pacific theatre are remarkably free from vicious or “racialist” incitement. On the contrary, it is remarkable how restrained they are. In many films that focus on combat—say, “Wake Island” or “They Were Expendable,” among them--there little talk about the Japanese at all, much less any demonizing of them. They are an enemy being fought and, if possible, killed, but there is no racialist message.
Another film, “Bataan,” (1943) shows Americans and Filipinos fighting together in the early days of the war. The two allies are seen interacting on a basis of equality. Remember that Japanese are not a race and World War Two American stereotypes of other Asians—especially Filipinos and Chinese—are quite sympathetic. About the only characterization of the Japanese in this film is that while hated as foes the American soldiers describe them as very brave and skilled soldiers.
In “Thirty Seconds over Tokyo,” about the first American air raid on Japan, led by Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, there is one remarkable exchange in which a flier says that Americans should not be prejudiced against the Japanese people as a whole. He says that his family employed a Japanese gardener who was a pretty nice guy. While today this might be portrayed as patronizing, the context was that Japanese were human beings like everyone else.
Incidentally, when the plane crews crash-land in China, their lives are saved by heroic Chinese peasants shown as defending themselves against Japanese aggression. They risk their own lives and give of their few possessions to help save Americans. Asians are thus portrayed very favorably.
If you want to see a film that expresses the American self-conception at the time, try "The Human Comedy" (1943), written by the Armenian-American Californian William Saroyan. Many now consider the film embarrassingly sentimental and corny. But it is actually quite noble. I'd love to see this film being shown as representative of how Americans thought--or at least the standard they set for themselves--during those days.
Mickey Rooney plays a boy working at the telegraph office in a California town who watches his brother go off to war. But he has to deliver telegrams telling families that their sons are killed, wounded, or missing. There is a moving scene when he has to do so to a Mexican-American family (treated very sympathetically) and a truly remarkable one when his boss is driving through the park past all the different ethnic versions of July 4 celebrations, pointing them out as examples of American pluralism. I believe that in a scene of American soldiers heading east on a troop train, there are a couple of Asian-Americans in uniform, though no one remarks on the fact. This film should be mandatory viewing for public school students today to know that their ancestors weren’t neo-Nazi skinheads.
Especially interesting is the 1944 film, “Destination Tokyo.” It’s about an American submarine crew given a mission to sneak into Tokyo Bay with a Japanese-speaking American officer to gather intelligence for the raid mentioned above. So how did this wartime movie, chosen pretty much at random, deal with the Japanese? Is it an example of American racism and chauvinism, like schoolkids are taught nowadays?
There are two scenes in which the Japanese come up and they are both pretty remarkable. Remember the war was at its height when this film was made. In the first scene, the submarine is passing through the Aleutian islands when it is attacked by two Japanese planes. It shoots both of them down—perhaps an unreasonable amount of heroics but necessary to the plot since the mission would have to be cancelled if they are spotted.
One of the Japanese pilots parachutes and the captain orders him to be taken aboard for questioning. I think this is most unrealistic since they couldn’t go on a long mission with a Japanese officer on board. If it had happened in real life, they probably would have done nothing and he would have been dead of hypothermia in those icy waters within a few minutes.
But following orders, Mike, one of the most popular crew members, tries to pull him aboard. The pilot stabs him to death and is immediately machinegunned by Mike's comrades. This is not unrealistic since Japanese soldiers—especially officers—rarely surrendered and did use such tactics on many occasions.
At any rate, this could have been the basis for a real hate-Japanese diatribe. Instead, though, the speeches made by a crew member and by the captain (played by Cary Grant) to the crew are remarkable.
One crewman, who has earlier made clear his ethnic pride in being a Greek, to which he then proudly adds, "Greek American," (in the kind of American pluralist statement so common in those wartime films), doesn’t attend Mike's funeral. The other crew members are angry at him but he explains that he doesn’t think he’s earned the right to do so because he hasn’t made any contribution to avenging those already dead. Back in Greece, he recounts, his uncle, a professor, was killed by the Nazis:
“Because he had brains. Because everybody’s got to be their slave and those who won’t, like my uncle, they kill….So I don’t forget my uncle. I read where an American flier gets killed and I think of my uncle. I see pictures of little Chinese kids getting bombed and I think of my uncle. I hear about a Russian guerrilla getting hanged and I think about my uncle. And I see Mike lying in there dead from a Jap killer and I think of my uncle.”
Again, many would see this as contrived and mawkish but it is hardly a chauvinistic American rant. His inclusion of the Chinese, who like the Japanese are Asians, makes it pretty PC by any standards. It also points out once again the very strong pro-Chinese feeling in the United States at the time. Overall, it wasn't a bad way to explain the war in both terms of freedom and human connections.
A short time later, the captain says:
“Mike was with me on my first patrol. I was his friend. I know his family….I remember Mike’s pride when he bought his first roller skates for his little five-year-old boy….Well that Jap got a present, too, when he was five, a dagger….The Japs have a ceremony that goes with it….At thirteen he can put a machine-gun together blindfolded . So as I see it, that Jap was started on the road twenty years ago to putting a knife in Mike’s back. There are lots of Mikes dying now, and lots more will die. Until we put a stop to a system that puts knives in the hands of five-year-old children. You know, if Mike were here to put it into words right now that’s just about what he died for: more roller-skates in this world, including some for the next generation of Japanese kids because that’s the kind of a man Mike was.”
This isn’t a sophisticated lecture on the samurai class. The machine-gun part is silly, of course. But what does the speech say? That a terrible system in Japan has created people who inevitably act in a certain way and that this system must be democratized, not only for America’s sake but for that of the Japanese as well so that they can enjoy a better life.
This is a remarkable prophecy of the post-war American occupation policy and successful transformation of Japan. Such sentiments are the opposite of a racist interpretation, which sees such behavior as innate and certainly doesn’t care about the lives of the enemy. One can’t help thinking of parallels in a system which teaches children to become suicide bombers today, programming them to hate and to want to commit genocide.
Yet there is even more here. While racism--mainly against those of African descent--was long a terrible feature of American life, there are powerful counter-ideas also in American history. Americans believed that people were not merely the outcome of innate, genetic determinism. What better description of the American world view is there to say that a peasant, the descendant of generations of peasants, could get off the boat and become a prosperous and respected citizen? And there would be little or no prejudice against the children of those immigrants because of their background.
True, each new wave of immigrants was hazed, and those from Africa faced by far the longest and greatest mistreatment. Yet ultimately it was because racism was contrary to the American system and world view that it could not survive.
Returning to the film, in a later scene, the captain asks the intelligence officer about Japanese society. While the conversation may not be accurate, it is also explicitly anti-racialist. The officer explains that there was a democratic movement in Japan but the leaders were assassinated. The people have no power and are downtrodden, “No unions, no free press, nothing.” Most of them “believe what they’re told. They’ve been sold a swindle and they accept it.” He explains that Japanese people live in appalling poverty in a way that stirs sympathy for them and that “females are useful there only to work and have children.”
Again, it is not that the Japanese are innately evil or inferior but merely that the people have been deprived of rights. They, too, are victims. There were heroic Japanese who wanted democracy but they were repressed. Note also that the oppression of women is an important issue, like today, in the mix which is said to make for an authoritarian society.
Of course, this is the Hollywood version of events, not what was going on in the field. But that’s precisely the point. This was the kind of thing Americans in their millions were being told: hate the Japanese as an enemy but not as a people or as a “race.” And, again, a very clear differentiation was being made among Asians based on nationality.
I’m not saying that these films are great art or accurate about how the war was fought. But inasmuch as there is an ideological statement in them, it is something Americans today can be proud of and it is also evidence that the rewriting of American history into a series of hate crimes is a lie.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
And remember the GLORIA Center and this blog exists on your tax-deductible contributions. Please inquire as to how to become a donor
By Barry Rubin
This year, my son—who is attending the fourth grade at an American public school—has been subjected to an unending barrage of anti-Americanism, especially around the issue of racism. For some reason the main focus is alleged American racism toward the Japanese in World War Two. In addition, literally not a single positive word has been spoken about America during the entire school year.
At the same time, I have been watching a number of American films about the Pacific theatre during World War Two, not seeking them out but merely because they have been shown on television. The controversy over Tom Hanks’ statement and his new series on that war has added to the interest.
One thing very clear to me is that American films about the Pacific theatre are remarkably free from vicious or “racialist” incitement. On the contrary, it is remarkable how restrained they are. In many films that focus on combat—say, “Wake Island” or “They Were Expendable,” among them--there little talk about the Japanese at all, much less any demonizing of them. They are an enemy being fought and, if possible, killed, but there is no racialist message.
Another film, “Bataan,” (1943) shows Americans and Filipinos fighting together in the early days of the war. The two allies are seen interacting on a basis of equality. Remember that Japanese are not a race and World War Two American stereotypes of other Asians—especially Filipinos and Chinese—are quite sympathetic. About the only characterization of the Japanese in this film is that while hated as foes the American soldiers describe them as very brave and skilled soldiers.
In “Thirty Seconds over Tokyo,” about the first American air raid on Japan, led by Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, there is one remarkable exchange in which a flier says that Americans should not be prejudiced against the Japanese people as a whole. He says that his family employed a Japanese gardener who was a pretty nice guy. While today this might be portrayed as patronizing, the context was that Japanese were human beings like everyone else.
Incidentally, when the plane crews crash-land in China, their lives are saved by heroic Chinese peasants shown as defending themselves against Japanese aggression. They risk their own lives and give of their few possessions to help save Americans. Asians are thus portrayed very favorably.
If you want to see a film that expresses the American self-conception at the time, try "The Human Comedy" (1943), written by the Armenian-American Californian William Saroyan. Many now consider the film embarrassingly sentimental and corny. But it is actually quite noble. I'd love to see this film being shown as representative of how Americans thought--or at least the standard they set for themselves--during those days.
Mickey Rooney plays a boy working at the telegraph office in a California town who watches his brother go off to war. But he has to deliver telegrams telling families that their sons are killed, wounded, or missing. There is a moving scene when he has to do so to a Mexican-American family (treated very sympathetically) and a truly remarkable one when his boss is driving through the park past all the different ethnic versions of July 4 celebrations, pointing them out as examples of American pluralism. I believe that in a scene of American soldiers heading east on a troop train, there are a couple of Asian-Americans in uniform, though no one remarks on the fact. This film should be mandatory viewing for public school students today to know that their ancestors weren’t neo-Nazi skinheads.
Especially interesting is the 1944 film, “Destination Tokyo.” It’s about an American submarine crew given a mission to sneak into Tokyo Bay with a Japanese-speaking American officer to gather intelligence for the raid mentioned above. So how did this wartime movie, chosen pretty much at random, deal with the Japanese? Is it an example of American racism and chauvinism, like schoolkids are taught nowadays?
There are two scenes in which the Japanese come up and they are both pretty remarkable. Remember the war was at its height when this film was made. In the first scene, the submarine is passing through the Aleutian islands when it is attacked by two Japanese planes. It shoots both of them down—perhaps an unreasonable amount of heroics but necessary to the plot since the mission would have to be cancelled if they are spotted.
One of the Japanese pilots parachutes and the captain orders him to be taken aboard for questioning. I think this is most unrealistic since they couldn’t go on a long mission with a Japanese officer on board. If it had happened in real life, they probably would have done nothing and he would have been dead of hypothermia in those icy waters within a few minutes.
But following orders, Mike, one of the most popular crew members, tries to pull him aboard. The pilot stabs him to death and is immediately machinegunned by Mike's comrades. This is not unrealistic since Japanese soldiers—especially officers—rarely surrendered and did use such tactics on many occasions.
At any rate, this could have been the basis for a real hate-Japanese diatribe. Instead, though, the speeches made by a crew member and by the captain (played by Cary Grant) to the crew are remarkable.
One crewman, who has earlier made clear his ethnic pride in being a Greek, to which he then proudly adds, "Greek American," (in the kind of American pluralist statement so common in those wartime films), doesn’t attend Mike's funeral. The other crew members are angry at him but he explains that he doesn’t think he’s earned the right to do so because he hasn’t made any contribution to avenging those already dead. Back in Greece, he recounts, his uncle, a professor, was killed by the Nazis:
“Because he had brains. Because everybody’s got to be their slave and those who won’t, like my uncle, they kill….So I don’t forget my uncle. I read where an American flier gets killed and I think of my uncle. I see pictures of little Chinese kids getting bombed and I think of my uncle. I hear about a Russian guerrilla getting hanged and I think about my uncle. And I see Mike lying in there dead from a Jap killer and I think of my uncle.”
Again, many would see this as contrived and mawkish but it is hardly a chauvinistic American rant. His inclusion of the Chinese, who like the Japanese are Asians, makes it pretty PC by any standards. It also points out once again the very strong pro-Chinese feeling in the United States at the time. Overall, it wasn't a bad way to explain the war in both terms of freedom and human connections.
A short time later, the captain says:
“Mike was with me on my first patrol. I was his friend. I know his family….I remember Mike’s pride when he bought his first roller skates for his little five-year-old boy….Well that Jap got a present, too, when he was five, a dagger….The Japs have a ceremony that goes with it….At thirteen he can put a machine-gun together blindfolded . So as I see it, that Jap was started on the road twenty years ago to putting a knife in Mike’s back. There are lots of Mikes dying now, and lots more will die. Until we put a stop to a system that puts knives in the hands of five-year-old children. You know, if Mike were here to put it into words right now that’s just about what he died for: more roller-skates in this world, including some for the next generation of Japanese kids because that’s the kind of a man Mike was.”
This isn’t a sophisticated lecture on the samurai class. The machine-gun part is silly, of course. But what does the speech say? That a terrible system in Japan has created people who inevitably act in a certain way and that this system must be democratized, not only for America’s sake but for that of the Japanese as well so that they can enjoy a better life.
This is a remarkable prophecy of the post-war American occupation policy and successful transformation of Japan. Such sentiments are the opposite of a racist interpretation, which sees such behavior as innate and certainly doesn’t care about the lives of the enemy. One can’t help thinking of parallels in a system which teaches children to become suicide bombers today, programming them to hate and to want to commit genocide.
Yet there is even more here. While racism--mainly against those of African descent--was long a terrible feature of American life, there are powerful counter-ideas also in American history. Americans believed that people were not merely the outcome of innate, genetic determinism. What better description of the American world view is there to say that a peasant, the descendant of generations of peasants, could get off the boat and become a prosperous and respected citizen? And there would be little or no prejudice against the children of those immigrants because of their background.
True, each new wave of immigrants was hazed, and those from Africa faced by far the longest and greatest mistreatment. Yet ultimately it was because racism was contrary to the American system and world view that it could not survive.
Returning to the film, in a later scene, the captain asks the intelligence officer about Japanese society. While the conversation may not be accurate, it is also explicitly anti-racialist. The officer explains that there was a democratic movement in Japan but the leaders were assassinated. The people have no power and are downtrodden, “No unions, no free press, nothing.” Most of them “believe what they’re told. They’ve been sold a swindle and they accept it.” He explains that Japanese people live in appalling poverty in a way that stirs sympathy for them and that “females are useful there only to work and have children.”
Again, it is not that the Japanese are innately evil or inferior but merely that the people have been deprived of rights. They, too, are victims. There were heroic Japanese who wanted democracy but they were repressed. Note also that the oppression of women is an important issue, like today, in the mix which is said to make for an authoritarian society.
Of course, this is the Hollywood version of events, not what was going on in the field. But that’s precisely the point. This was the kind of thing Americans in their millions were being told: hate the Japanese as an enemy but not as a people or as a “race.” And, again, a very clear differentiation was being made among Asians based on nationality.
I’m not saying that these films are great art or accurate about how the war was fought. But inasmuch as there is an ideological statement in them, it is something Americans today can be proud of and it is also evidence that the rewriting of American history into a series of hate crimes is a lie.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Has the Obama Administration, against U.S. interests, declared diplomatic war on Israel?
As things heat up in the Middle East, with major developments daily, please be subscriber 9,740
By Barry Rubin
Has the Obama Administration, against U.S. interests, declared diplomatic war on Israel?
Up to now my view has been that the U.S. government didn’t want a crisis but merely sought to get indirect negotiations going between Israel and Palestinians in order to look good.
Even assuming this limited goal, the technique was to keep getting concessions from Israel without asking the PA to do or give anything has been foolish, but at least it was a generally rational strategy.
But now it has become reasonable to ask whether the Obama White House is running amuck on Israel, whether it is pushing friction so far out of proportion that it is starting to seem a vendetta based on hostility and ideology. And if that's true, there is little Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or any Israeli leader can do to fix the problem.
A partial explanation of such behavior can be called, to borrow a phrase from the health law debate, a "single-payer option" as its Middle East strategy. That is, the administration seems to envision Israel paying for everything: supposedly to get the Palestinian Authority (PA) to talks, do away with any Islamist desire to carry out terrorism or revolution, keep Iraq quiet, make Afghanistan stable, and solve just about any other global problem.
What makes this U.S. tactic even more absurd is doing so at the very moment when it is coddling Syria and losing the battle for anything but the most minimal sanctions on Iran.
During his visit to Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to defuse the tension. His partners in government, we should never forget, are Defense Minister Ehud Barak, leader of the Labour Party, and President Shimon Peres, who has done more to promote Middle East peace than any other living Israeli leader.
But according to reliable sources, Obama went out of his way to be personally hostile, treating Netanyahu like some colonial minion who could be ordered around.
It is not entirely clear what demands the White House has made on Israel. Those most often mentioned are the release of more Palestinian prisoners, the permanent end of construction in the West Bank, and the permanent end to construction in parts of Jerusalem over the pre-1967 border.
Palestinian prisoners: It is ironic, given U.S. statements that Israel must "prove" its commitment to peace, that there have been so many prisoner releases in the past. Thus, Washington is not giving Israel credit for these. Moreover, many of those arrested have committed terrorism against Israeli civilians in the past and may well do so in future. Finally, releasing prisoners will not bring any gratitude from the PA or increased willingness to negotiate. If such a release is forced, the PA will merely assume that it doesn't matter if Palestinians attrack or kill Israelis because Washington will secure the release of those captured in future without the PA having to do anything.
West Bank and Jerusalem Construction: Only five months ago, the U.S. government agreed to a temporary halt to construction and Israel's government agreed. If this did not prove Israel's commitment to peace--and the White House broke the deal--why should Israel assume that it will get any credit for this step either? What is its incentive for such a big concession? Such construction should give the PA an incentive to make a deal faster. But, again, if this goal is achieved by U.S. pressure, why shouldn't the PA presume that all settlements will be removed in future by a similar mechanism without its having to make full peace and any concessions?
I won't take space here to restate all the arguments regarding Israel's claims to areas of Jerusalem under Jordanian rule before 1967. Note that President Clinton, in the Camp David and Clinton plan proposals in 2000, supported Israeli rule over much--though definitely not all--of east Jerusalem.
Why should the administration believe that it can press Israel to make big concessions, a: with no PA concessions; b. with its U.S. ally showing itself so unreliable that it is unlikely to credit Israel with concessions it does make or to keep agreements based on Israeli concessions; and c. at a time when the U.S. government is not workin very hard to stop Iran's nuclear weapons campaign?
The one answer the administration gives is so factually inaccurate as to call into question--if I may coin a phrase--its analytical sanity.
Judging from the evidence, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s AIPAC speech, the administration thinks it can force Israel's government to give in because it knows better what Israelis want than do Netanyahu, Barak, and Peres.
Actually, a poll by the highly respected Smith Research company for the Jerusalem Post, found that only 9 percent of Israeli Jews considered the administration pro-Israel, while 48 percent said it was more pro-Palestinian. To understand these figures, you have to know that most Israelis are very reluctant to say anything critical of the United States, out of genuine respect, concern not to damage relations, and speaking on the basis of their hopes.
So does the administration want to resolve this issue or to break Israel's willpower? Is it going to keep piling on demands in hope of giving the PA so much that it will agree to talk about getting itself even more unilateral Israeli concessions? Is the goal to overthrow Netanyahu—which isn’t going to happen—or turn him into a servant who will follow orders in future—which also isn’t going to happen?
Doesn’t this U.S. government understand that if it proves itself hostile that will destroy any incentive Israel has to enter negotiations with Obama as the mediator? If he's this much acting solely based on PA interests now, does any Israeli government want to make him the arbitor of the country's future, deciding on its borders, security guarantees, and other existential issues? Of course not.
By the same token, can't he comprehend that he is giving the PA every incentive to keep raising the price, especially since it doesn't want to talk any way?
Is there no real sense--probably not--that if this administration undermines Israel's trust in Washington it will push the whole country further to the right. If the U.S. government politely asks to stop building in east Jerusalem in exchange for some tangible benefit and for a limited time, lots of Israelis would be willing to agree. But if this happens in a framework of enmity and threat, with the "reward" being no benefit and even more concessions to follow, even doves will grow sharp beaks.
It seems as if the Obama Administration has chosen just one country in the world to try to pressure and intimidate. And it has picked the worst possible target in this respect, both because of how Israelis think and also given very strong domestic U.S. support for Israel (especially strong in Congress).
Won’t it see that if it bashes Israel while ignoring the PA’s commemoration of a major square in honor of a terrorist who murdered a score of Israeli civilians, with Clinton even claiming this was done by Hamas and not the PA? And as the administration betrays Israel’s main priority—failing to put serious pressure on Iran to stop building nuclear weapons—why should Israel want to do big favors and take big risks for this president?
Finally, since this administration has already unilaterally abrogated two major U.S. promises—the previous president’s recognition that settlement blocs could be absorbed by Israel as part of a peace agreement, and the Obama administration’s own pledge to let Israel build in east Jerusalem if it stopped on the West Bank—why should it put its faith in some new set of promises?
So the Obama Administration will have to decide, and do so in the coming days.
Does it want to try to get some limited concessions from Israel to use as capital in trying to get talks started, using these to brag--futilely, of course--to Arabs and Muslims how they should be nicer to the administration in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Or does it want to live up to the negative stereotypes held by its worst enemies while simultaneously committing political suicide and destroying U.S. credibility in the Middle East. We will know the answer pretty soon.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
By Barry Rubin
Has the Obama Administration, against U.S. interests, declared diplomatic war on Israel?
Up to now my view has been that the U.S. government didn’t want a crisis but merely sought to get indirect negotiations going between Israel and Palestinians in order to look good.
Even assuming this limited goal, the technique was to keep getting concessions from Israel without asking the PA to do or give anything has been foolish, but at least it was a generally rational strategy.
But now it has become reasonable to ask whether the Obama White House is running amuck on Israel, whether it is pushing friction so far out of proportion that it is starting to seem a vendetta based on hostility and ideology. And if that's true, there is little Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or any Israeli leader can do to fix the problem.
A partial explanation of such behavior can be called, to borrow a phrase from the health law debate, a "single-payer option" as its Middle East strategy. That is, the administration seems to envision Israel paying for everything: supposedly to get the Palestinian Authority (PA) to talks, do away with any Islamist desire to carry out terrorism or revolution, keep Iraq quiet, make Afghanistan stable, and solve just about any other global problem.
What makes this U.S. tactic even more absurd is doing so at the very moment when it is coddling Syria and losing the battle for anything but the most minimal sanctions on Iran.
During his visit to Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to defuse the tension. His partners in government, we should never forget, are Defense Minister Ehud Barak, leader of the Labour Party, and President Shimon Peres, who has done more to promote Middle East peace than any other living Israeli leader.
But according to reliable sources, Obama went out of his way to be personally hostile, treating Netanyahu like some colonial minion who could be ordered around.
It is not entirely clear what demands the White House has made on Israel. Those most often mentioned are the release of more Palestinian prisoners, the permanent end of construction in the West Bank, and the permanent end to construction in parts of Jerusalem over the pre-1967 border.
Palestinian prisoners: It is ironic, given U.S. statements that Israel must "prove" its commitment to peace, that there have been so many prisoner releases in the past. Thus, Washington is not giving Israel credit for these. Moreover, many of those arrested have committed terrorism against Israeli civilians in the past and may well do so in future. Finally, releasing prisoners will not bring any gratitude from the PA or increased willingness to negotiate. If such a release is forced, the PA will merely assume that it doesn't matter if Palestinians attrack or kill Israelis because Washington will secure the release of those captured in future without the PA having to do anything.
West Bank and Jerusalem Construction: Only five months ago, the U.S. government agreed to a temporary halt to construction and Israel's government agreed. If this did not prove Israel's commitment to peace--and the White House broke the deal--why should Israel assume that it will get any credit for this step either? What is its incentive for such a big concession? Such construction should give the PA an incentive to make a deal faster. But, again, if this goal is achieved by U.S. pressure, why shouldn't the PA presume that all settlements will be removed in future by a similar mechanism without its having to make full peace and any concessions?
I won't take space here to restate all the arguments regarding Israel's claims to areas of Jerusalem under Jordanian rule before 1967. Note that President Clinton, in the Camp David and Clinton plan proposals in 2000, supported Israeli rule over much--though definitely not all--of east Jerusalem.
Why should the administration believe that it can press Israel to make big concessions, a: with no PA concessions; b. with its U.S. ally showing itself so unreliable that it is unlikely to credit Israel with concessions it does make or to keep agreements based on Israeli concessions; and c. at a time when the U.S. government is not workin very hard to stop Iran's nuclear weapons campaign?
The one answer the administration gives is so factually inaccurate as to call into question--if I may coin a phrase--its analytical sanity.
Judging from the evidence, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s AIPAC speech, the administration thinks it can force Israel's government to give in because it knows better what Israelis want than do Netanyahu, Barak, and Peres.
Actually, a poll by the highly respected Smith Research company for the Jerusalem Post, found that only 9 percent of Israeli Jews considered the administration pro-Israel, while 48 percent said it was more pro-Palestinian. To understand these figures, you have to know that most Israelis are very reluctant to say anything critical of the United States, out of genuine respect, concern not to damage relations, and speaking on the basis of their hopes.
So does the administration want to resolve this issue or to break Israel's willpower? Is it going to keep piling on demands in hope of giving the PA so much that it will agree to talk about getting itself even more unilateral Israeli concessions? Is the goal to overthrow Netanyahu—which isn’t going to happen—or turn him into a servant who will follow orders in future—which also isn’t going to happen?
Doesn’t this U.S. government understand that if it proves itself hostile that will destroy any incentive Israel has to enter negotiations with Obama as the mediator? If he's this much acting solely based on PA interests now, does any Israeli government want to make him the arbitor of the country's future, deciding on its borders, security guarantees, and other existential issues? Of course not.
By the same token, can't he comprehend that he is giving the PA every incentive to keep raising the price, especially since it doesn't want to talk any way?
Is there no real sense--probably not--that if this administration undermines Israel's trust in Washington it will push the whole country further to the right. If the U.S. government politely asks to stop building in east Jerusalem in exchange for some tangible benefit and for a limited time, lots of Israelis would be willing to agree. But if this happens in a framework of enmity and threat, with the "reward" being no benefit and even more concessions to follow, even doves will grow sharp beaks.
It seems as if the Obama Administration has chosen just one country in the world to try to pressure and intimidate. And it has picked the worst possible target in this respect, both because of how Israelis think and also given very strong domestic U.S. support for Israel (especially strong in Congress).
Won’t it see that if it bashes Israel while ignoring the PA’s commemoration of a major square in honor of a terrorist who murdered a score of Israeli civilians, with Clinton even claiming this was done by Hamas and not the PA? And as the administration betrays Israel’s main priority—failing to put serious pressure on Iran to stop building nuclear weapons—why should Israel want to do big favors and take big risks for this president?
Finally, since this administration has already unilaterally abrogated two major U.S. promises—the previous president’s recognition that settlement blocs could be absorbed by Israel as part of a peace agreement, and the Obama administration’s own pledge to let Israel build in east Jerusalem if it stopped on the West Bank—why should it put its faith in some new set of promises?
So the Obama Administration will have to decide, and do so in the coming days.
Does it want to try to get some limited concessions from Israel to use as capital in trying to get talks started, using these to brag--futilely, of course--to Arabs and Muslims how they should be nicer to the administration in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Or does it want to live up to the negative stereotypes held by its worst enemies while simultaneously committing political suicide and destroying U.S. credibility in the Middle East. We will know the answer pretty soon.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Obama Foreign Policy: One-Third of Its Term Done; Not A Hundreth of the Lesson Learned
Become subscriber 9,740
And remember we are able to continue based on tax-deductible contributions. Please inquire on how to be a donor.
By Barry Rubin
Thinking about the Obama administration’s foreign policy makes me keep coming back to the following joke:
Three men are on a small plane, the pilot, a very important person (various names are used when people tell this joke), and a young hiker. The plane’s motor goes out and it is going to crash. The pilot tells the two passengers: Sorry but we only have one extra parachute.
The celebrity sneers, “I should get it because I’m the smartest person in the world.” He grabs a pack and jumps out of the plane.
“Sorry, son,” says the pilot. “We don’t have any more parachutes.”
“Oh, yes we do,” answers the teenager, “the smartest man in the world just jumped out of the plane with my backpack.”
If I were a cartoonist illustrating the joke in this case, I’d show a smug Obama jumping out of the plane with the backpack labeled, “U.S. national interests.”
This reflection is prompted today by a very predictable story—predicted by me repeatedly—that the administration is now further, and futilely, watering down projected sanctions on Iran in hope of getting Russian and Chinese support. Spring 2010 has arrived and after fifteen months higher sanctions, or indeed any credible U.S. deterrent, on Iran hasn’t. Even now it isn't clear if the Obama administration can get the nine votes needed in the UN Security Council to do anything.
Note that this is probably the last material effort the West will make to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Even if it takes Tehran a couple of years to do so, it's unlikely--given how long and hard it is to get even some symbollic sanctions adopted--that low administration will-power and international support will lead to anything else being done.
Incidentally, the administration was supposed to be ready for this step, according to its own statements in September and then December 2009. That it still hasn't worked out a broadly based plan is a sign of its incompetence. And remember this was a presidency which supposedly enjoyed strong international support.
Some are saying that sanctions wouldn't deter Iran any way, therefore implying it doesn't matter if nothing much is done at this point. There is some truth in the first part of that statement but not in the second portion. By implementing strong sanctions, an effective president would be forging an international coalition to get tougher down the road, reduce the assets available to Iran in order to slow down their project, scare large elements of the Iranian elite so they would be more cautious even when they get nuclear arms, make the Gulf Arabs more likely to resist Iranian demands and influence, along with other benefits.
That the administration seems to understand none of these points is part of the problem. Here’s a statistic that might shock you: the Obama administration is almost precisely one-third of the way through its term. If it hasn’t learned how to understand the world by now, prospects aren’t good for the remainder of its term. The best hope of improvement--that the administration itself wakes up to the problem--is just about gone.
Let’s put it bluntly: The foreign policy of the Obama Administration, especially in the Middle East, is a disaster and a future of very dangerous problems is completely foreseeable. Indeed, all of this was pretty obvious before the last Election Day.
About the only point the administration and its supporters can claim--even the Guantanamo prison is still open!--is that this administration has made the United States more popular in the world. Actually, the polls don’t reflect that assertion to an impressive degree. Even when the numbers went up, they are Obama’s personal popularity, not that of the United States. And in key countries—Turkey and Pakistan come to mind but there are many others—the changes have not been big ones.
And even then, there is the point that popularity doesn’t get you anything material, as the lack of a consensus on Iran shows. In addition, the country which stands up for its interests is always going to be less popular in many places than the one which asks for nothing and gives away too much.
In the Middle East, U.S. policy is bad for Iranians who want to be free of their oppressive regime; for Turks who don’t want to live under an increasingly Islamist government; for Arabs who don’t want to face Islamist rule, growing internal instability because of a revolutionary challenge, or to bow down to Iranian power.
It is also bad for Israel, but that is scarcely an isolated case. Even if U.S.-Israel relations were perfect every other problem would still be there.
By systematically showing weakness, by favoring enemies over friends, the administration is destroying U.S. credibility in the region. By unintentionally encouraging enemies, the government is inspiring them to strike harder and faster. By unintentionally discouraging friends, the government is signalling them to shut up, back down, and even appease the radicals.
In Iran, the lack of White House support--despite formal statements about repression there--encourages the opposition to give up. In Turkey, the rivals of the regime believe that U.S. policy is on the side of their own government. In the Arabic-speaking world, the process of avoiding trouble with Tehran and its ally Damascus because the United States is not seen as a reliable protector is well under way.
Israel will make the small, relatively costless concessions necessary to maintain normal relations in the hope that this will satisfy an administration that just wants to look good. If the White House proves vindictive beyond rational considerations, Israel will ride that out. Of course, the more the U.S. government bashes Israel, the more it convinces the other side that it doesn’t need to make any concessions for peace. Indeed, it gives them an incentive to be more intransigent, since they know that U.S. frustration at the failure to make any progress in a peace process will be taken out on Israel.
If one were to continue this survey elsewhere in the world, the situation would be parallel if less dire. Central Europeans fear Russia; Latin Americans are annoyed at perceived U.S. favoritism toward Venezuela. China is angry about various U.S. actions and worried about holding so much of the American debt. Russia is almost openly contemptuous.
Yet the pretense continues in all too many places that things are going fine.
A hope that should not be ignored is that the action of radical forces themselves will force the administration to take notice and revise its behavior. No matter what the White House thinks, it doesn’t want to look like a failure having made a big mess, suffered losses, and been defeated.
The next best hope is that a wave of public criticism and congressional complaints—which many think will be intensified by the results of next November’s election—will force the administration to be more restrained. Obama has other items on his agenda, especially domestically, that he does not want to compromise by getting Congress angry with him. The most likely beneficiary of this process would be U.S.-Israel relations but it is unlikely to help a great deal on other issues.
The problem is that such factors can stop the White House from doing mistaken things but cannot force it to take productive steps. Perhaps the best one can hope for is the lack of any big and open crisis in the world, allowing the administration to muddle through and claim that it has kept the United States out of trouble. But some very big trouble is building up, have no doubt about that.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
And remember we are able to continue based on tax-deductible contributions. Please inquire on how to be a donor.
By Barry Rubin
Thinking about the Obama administration’s foreign policy makes me keep coming back to the following joke:
Three men are on a small plane, the pilot, a very important person (various names are used when people tell this joke), and a young hiker. The plane’s motor goes out and it is going to crash. The pilot tells the two passengers: Sorry but we only have one extra parachute.
The celebrity sneers, “I should get it because I’m the smartest person in the world.” He grabs a pack and jumps out of the plane.
“Sorry, son,” says the pilot. “We don’t have any more parachutes.”
“Oh, yes we do,” answers the teenager, “the smartest man in the world just jumped out of the plane with my backpack.”
If I were a cartoonist illustrating the joke in this case, I’d show a smug Obama jumping out of the plane with the backpack labeled, “U.S. national interests.”
This reflection is prompted today by a very predictable story—predicted by me repeatedly—that the administration is now further, and futilely, watering down projected sanctions on Iran in hope of getting Russian and Chinese support. Spring 2010 has arrived and after fifteen months higher sanctions, or indeed any credible U.S. deterrent, on Iran hasn’t. Even now it isn't clear if the Obama administration can get the nine votes needed in the UN Security Council to do anything.
Note that this is probably the last material effort the West will make to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Even if it takes Tehran a couple of years to do so, it's unlikely--given how long and hard it is to get even some symbollic sanctions adopted--that low administration will-power and international support will lead to anything else being done.
Incidentally, the administration was supposed to be ready for this step, according to its own statements in September and then December 2009. That it still hasn't worked out a broadly based plan is a sign of its incompetence. And remember this was a presidency which supposedly enjoyed strong international support.
Some are saying that sanctions wouldn't deter Iran any way, therefore implying it doesn't matter if nothing much is done at this point. There is some truth in the first part of that statement but not in the second portion. By implementing strong sanctions, an effective president would be forging an international coalition to get tougher down the road, reduce the assets available to Iran in order to slow down their project, scare large elements of the Iranian elite so they would be more cautious even when they get nuclear arms, make the Gulf Arabs more likely to resist Iranian demands and influence, along with other benefits.
That the administration seems to understand none of these points is part of the problem. Here’s a statistic that might shock you: the Obama administration is almost precisely one-third of the way through its term. If it hasn’t learned how to understand the world by now, prospects aren’t good for the remainder of its term. The best hope of improvement--that the administration itself wakes up to the problem--is just about gone.
Let’s put it bluntly: The foreign policy of the Obama Administration, especially in the Middle East, is a disaster and a future of very dangerous problems is completely foreseeable. Indeed, all of this was pretty obvious before the last Election Day.
About the only point the administration and its supporters can claim--even the Guantanamo prison is still open!--is that this administration has made the United States more popular in the world. Actually, the polls don’t reflect that assertion to an impressive degree. Even when the numbers went up, they are Obama’s personal popularity, not that of the United States. And in key countries—Turkey and Pakistan come to mind but there are many others—the changes have not been big ones.
And even then, there is the point that popularity doesn’t get you anything material, as the lack of a consensus on Iran shows. In addition, the country which stands up for its interests is always going to be less popular in many places than the one which asks for nothing and gives away too much.
In the Middle East, U.S. policy is bad for Iranians who want to be free of their oppressive regime; for Turks who don’t want to live under an increasingly Islamist government; for Arabs who don’t want to face Islamist rule, growing internal instability because of a revolutionary challenge, or to bow down to Iranian power.
It is also bad for Israel, but that is scarcely an isolated case. Even if U.S.-Israel relations were perfect every other problem would still be there.
By systematically showing weakness, by favoring enemies over friends, the administration is destroying U.S. credibility in the region. By unintentionally encouraging enemies, the government is inspiring them to strike harder and faster. By unintentionally discouraging friends, the government is signalling them to shut up, back down, and even appease the radicals.
In Iran, the lack of White House support--despite formal statements about repression there--encourages the opposition to give up. In Turkey, the rivals of the regime believe that U.S. policy is on the side of their own government. In the Arabic-speaking world, the process of avoiding trouble with Tehran and its ally Damascus because the United States is not seen as a reliable protector is well under way.
Israel will make the small, relatively costless concessions necessary to maintain normal relations in the hope that this will satisfy an administration that just wants to look good. If the White House proves vindictive beyond rational considerations, Israel will ride that out. Of course, the more the U.S. government bashes Israel, the more it convinces the other side that it doesn’t need to make any concessions for peace. Indeed, it gives them an incentive to be more intransigent, since they know that U.S. frustration at the failure to make any progress in a peace process will be taken out on Israel.
If one were to continue this survey elsewhere in the world, the situation would be parallel if less dire. Central Europeans fear Russia; Latin Americans are annoyed at perceived U.S. favoritism toward Venezuela. China is angry about various U.S. actions and worried about holding so much of the American debt. Russia is almost openly contemptuous.
Yet the pretense continues in all too many places that things are going fine.
A hope that should not be ignored is that the action of radical forces themselves will force the administration to take notice and revise its behavior. No matter what the White House thinks, it doesn’t want to look like a failure having made a big mess, suffered losses, and been defeated.
The next best hope is that a wave of public criticism and congressional complaints—which many think will be intensified by the results of next November’s election—will force the administration to be more restrained. Obama has other items on his agenda, especially domestically, that he does not want to compromise by getting Congress angry with him. The most likely beneficiary of this process would be U.S.-Israel relations but it is unlikely to help a great deal on other issues.
The problem is that such factors can stop the White House from doing mistaken things but cannot force it to take productive steps. Perhaps the best one can hope for is the lack of any big and open crisis in the world, allowing the administration to muddle through and claim that it has kept the United States out of trouble. But some very big trouble is building up, have no doubt about that.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
A Further Note on U.S.-Israel Relations
By Barry Rubin
A lot of nonsense has been written about the Obama Administration seeking or deliberately creating a crisis in U.S.-Israel relations. This has little or nothing to do with the actual events:
1. The crisis began with the announcement by a low-level Israeli committee about the future construction of apartments in east Jerusalem (yes, we know it wasn't deliberate, etc.) at the very moment when Vice-President Joe Biden was in the city and indirect Israel-Palestinian Authority talks were about to begin.
2. The U.S. government didn't seek a crisis, it neither planned nor wanted this problem.
3. The crisis gave the PA the excuse to walk out of negotiations the U.S. government had spent months in organizing. Without these indirect talks the administration looks like a fool.
4. The White House should want to keep the Israel-Palestinian issue relatively quiet and be willing to accept the appearance of progress without its reality. The U.S. government should want to keep its emphasis on Iraq, Afghanistan, and sanctions on Iran (which are about to be its next big failure).
In short, what should the Administration prefer:
A. A big mess with Israel that makes it look stupid and incompetent, ticks off a lot of Congress against the White House, kills the indirect negotiations which would be the only thing it has to show after fifteen months in office, and gives the PA a chance to wriggle out once again of doing anything.
Or
B. A nice start to (meaningless but only we know that) indirect Israel-Palestinian talks with Obama looking like a great statesman, presiding over a lot of back and forth; the U.S. government says to the Arabs, see we are making great progress on peace; and telling the American people, You see! W are having lots of foreign policy successes.
BUT that is a rational analysis of the situation from the standpoint of a mainstream American presidency. Does the Obama administration want to be in that category or to pursue an ideological vendetta against Israel, bucking Congress, public opinion and U.S. interests?
On this choice will rest the future of the Obama administration much more than that of Israel or the Middle East.
A lot of nonsense has been written about the Obama Administration seeking or deliberately creating a crisis in U.S.-Israel relations. This has little or nothing to do with the actual events:
1. The crisis began with the announcement by a low-level Israeli committee about the future construction of apartments in east Jerusalem (yes, we know it wasn't deliberate, etc.) at the very moment when Vice-President Joe Biden was in the city and indirect Israel-Palestinian Authority talks were about to begin.
2. The U.S. government didn't seek a crisis, it neither planned nor wanted this problem.
3. The crisis gave the PA the excuse to walk out of negotiations the U.S. government had spent months in organizing. Without these indirect talks the administration looks like a fool.
4. The White House should want to keep the Israel-Palestinian issue relatively quiet and be willing to accept the appearance of progress without its reality. The U.S. government should want to keep its emphasis on Iraq, Afghanistan, and sanctions on Iran (which are about to be its next big failure).
In short, what should the Administration prefer:
A. A big mess with Israel that makes it look stupid and incompetent, ticks off a lot of Congress against the White House, kills the indirect negotiations which would be the only thing it has to show after fifteen months in office, and gives the PA a chance to wriggle out once again of doing anything.
Or
B. A nice start to (meaningless but only we know that) indirect Israel-Palestinian talks with Obama looking like a great statesman, presiding over a lot of back and forth; the U.S. government says to the Arabs, see we are making great progress on peace; and telling the American people, You see! W are having lots of foreign policy successes.
BUT that is a rational analysis of the situation from the standpoint of a mainstream American presidency. Does the Obama administration want to be in that category or to pursue an ideological vendetta against Israel, bucking Congress, public opinion and U.S. interests?
On this choice will rest the future of the Obama administration much more than that of Israel or the Middle East.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Ashton’s Ashes: How Europe’s Foreign Minister Repeats the Middle East’s Biggest Cliche and Why She’s Wrong
By Barry Rubin
Catherine Ashton is high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and vice president of the European Commission. The fact that she holds such a position—in effect, she's the European Union's first foreign minister—shows Europe is in serious trouble. For Ashton’s main previous claim to fame was as a leader in the Soviet-oriented movement for nuclear disarmament of the West.
To describe Ashton’s op-ed in the New York Times as calling for peace at any price is no exaggeration. Of course she only means ending the Israel-Palestinian conflict, seemingly unaware that there is any other type of conflict (non-peace) in the region.
Her reasoning goes something like this: Conflict breeds poverty and radicalism; make peace and there won’t be any radicalism or poverty. And she’s referring explicitly to shoring up the rule of the radical genocidal-intending Islamist group Hamas.
But what if it is radicalism that fuels conflict and makes peace impossible? What if the radical forces will take advantage of your activities to become even stronger, creating even more instability and hence—in Ashton’s framework—far more poverty, anger, and radicalism in an endless cycle? Because that’s precisely what has happened and what is happening.
Having built her career in large part by discounting the Soviet threat, she now prospers further by dismissing the Islamist and Iranian one. Ashton argued years ago that the Cold War was just a misunderstanding and that unilateral Western concessions would solve it. That didn’t work. But having learned nothing she applies the same model to the Middle East, substituting Israeli and Western concessions as the solution.
After a recent tour of the region, she uttered the ultimate paragraph whose sentiments direct the views of Western leaders toward the Middle East. Here it is:
“Throughout the region, from Egypt to Syria, from Lebanon to Jordan, I heard the same message from presidents, prime ministers and a king, and from ordinary people, too — they want their economies to grow, their people to prosper, their children to be educated. To achieve that, we need peace in the Middle East.”
Let’s analyze this extremely important paragraph. First, there is an assumption that many people will make on reading it, that an end to the Israel-Palestinian or Arab-Israeli conflict is the key for happiness, prosperity, and friendship toward the West.
But note that peace in the Middle East doesn’t just mean the Arab-Israeli conflict.” After all, if that is the criterion, the conflict on a region-wide level is over. The last general Arab-Israeli war took place in 1973, almost four decades ago. The last war between Israel and an Arab state took place in 1982, almost three decades ago. That conflict between Israel and Syria was limited. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel.
Thus, the kind of conflict that preoccupied the region between 1948 and 1973 is over.
I don’t want to shade the truth in the slightest way. Obviously, Israel fought a war with Hizballah in 2006 which also involved Lebanon. But that is not the same thing. Neither Israel nor any Arab state (other than Syria) wanted the battle), which was provoked by Hizballah, and to some extent its Iranian and Syrian sponsors. The Arab states stayed out of the war, though they did urge that it end quickly.
Even a full peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, resulting in a Palestinian state, would not solve the problem of Hizballah, or Iran, Syria, or Hamas. And for reasons I’ve addressed at length many times elsewhere, Syria doesn’t want peace with Israel.
Of course, one could still argue that concern over the plight of the Palestinians is a big factor in the Middle East. But even if one wants to argue that it affects the politics and policies of Arab states—and it really doesn’t do that very much in 2010—is this the factor preventing Arab economies from prospering and Arab children from being educated? Isn’t this a giant scam, an excuse for the shortcomings of dictatorial regimes and outdated social structures?
Sorry, people, goes the endless refrain, we can’t have democracy or better living standards or enough jobs and housing or whatever else you can name because of the poor suffering Palestinians! This is no more an accurate explanation than that of Latin American dictatorships in regard to Communism or those of the Soviet bloc in the past blaming their depredations on capitalism.
But what about the word “peace?” Of course any societies would be better off in material terms if they had peace. But peace means peace. So as long as there is ethnic and political strife in Afghanistan; civil war in Iraq; the battle between Islamists and nationalists throughout the region; sectarian conflict in Lebanon; civil war in Egypt; and a dozen other such conflicts there won’t be “peace in the Middle East.” Throw in the aggressive designs of Iran and Syria; the revolutionary efforts of Hamas, Hizballah and al-Qaida; and the ambitions of individuals, clans, tribes, ethnic groups; and more, the prospects for “peace” in the region doesn’t look good.
And that "peace" requires a defeat of the revolutionary Islamist forces, something you aren't going to help them do. Moreover, the "peace" defined by the people you spoke with includes the preservation of the incumbent dictatorships in virtually every Arabic-speaking country.
So, representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and vice president of the European Commission Ashton, what they are really telling you is not to solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict as fast as possible to make everyone happy (they won’t help you if you try and they will continue their conflicts even if you do) but the rather obvious point that if there was a general state of peace and harmony things would be better in the region.
True enough but not the way you interpret it.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Catherine Ashton is high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and vice president of the European Commission. The fact that she holds such a position—in effect, she's the European Union's first foreign minister—shows Europe is in serious trouble. For Ashton’s main previous claim to fame was as a leader in the Soviet-oriented movement for nuclear disarmament of the West.
To describe Ashton’s op-ed in the New York Times as calling for peace at any price is no exaggeration. Of course she only means ending the Israel-Palestinian conflict, seemingly unaware that there is any other type of conflict (non-peace) in the region.
Her reasoning goes something like this: Conflict breeds poverty and radicalism; make peace and there won’t be any radicalism or poverty. And she’s referring explicitly to shoring up the rule of the radical genocidal-intending Islamist group Hamas.
But what if it is radicalism that fuels conflict and makes peace impossible? What if the radical forces will take advantage of your activities to become even stronger, creating even more instability and hence—in Ashton’s framework—far more poverty, anger, and radicalism in an endless cycle? Because that’s precisely what has happened and what is happening.
Having built her career in large part by discounting the Soviet threat, she now prospers further by dismissing the Islamist and Iranian one. Ashton argued years ago that the Cold War was just a misunderstanding and that unilateral Western concessions would solve it. That didn’t work. But having learned nothing she applies the same model to the Middle East, substituting Israeli and Western concessions as the solution.
After a recent tour of the region, she uttered the ultimate paragraph whose sentiments direct the views of Western leaders toward the Middle East. Here it is:
“Throughout the region, from Egypt to Syria, from Lebanon to Jordan, I heard the same message from presidents, prime ministers and a king, and from ordinary people, too — they want their economies to grow, their people to prosper, their children to be educated. To achieve that, we need peace in the Middle East.”
Let’s analyze this extremely important paragraph. First, there is an assumption that many people will make on reading it, that an end to the Israel-Palestinian or Arab-Israeli conflict is the key for happiness, prosperity, and friendship toward the West.
But note that peace in the Middle East doesn’t just mean the Arab-Israeli conflict.” After all, if that is the criterion, the conflict on a region-wide level is over. The last general Arab-Israeli war took place in 1973, almost four decades ago. The last war between Israel and an Arab state took place in 1982, almost three decades ago. That conflict between Israel and Syria was limited. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel.
Thus, the kind of conflict that preoccupied the region between 1948 and 1973 is over.
I don’t want to shade the truth in the slightest way. Obviously, Israel fought a war with Hizballah in 2006 which also involved Lebanon. But that is not the same thing. Neither Israel nor any Arab state (other than Syria) wanted the battle), which was provoked by Hizballah, and to some extent its Iranian and Syrian sponsors. The Arab states stayed out of the war, though they did urge that it end quickly.
Even a full peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, resulting in a Palestinian state, would not solve the problem of Hizballah, or Iran, Syria, or Hamas. And for reasons I’ve addressed at length many times elsewhere, Syria doesn’t want peace with Israel.
Of course, one could still argue that concern over the plight of the Palestinians is a big factor in the Middle East. But even if one wants to argue that it affects the politics and policies of Arab states—and it really doesn’t do that very much in 2010—is this the factor preventing Arab economies from prospering and Arab children from being educated? Isn’t this a giant scam, an excuse for the shortcomings of dictatorial regimes and outdated social structures?
Sorry, people, goes the endless refrain, we can’t have democracy or better living standards or enough jobs and housing or whatever else you can name because of the poor suffering Palestinians! This is no more an accurate explanation than that of Latin American dictatorships in regard to Communism or those of the Soviet bloc in the past blaming their depredations on capitalism.
But what about the word “peace?” Of course any societies would be better off in material terms if they had peace. But peace means peace. So as long as there is ethnic and political strife in Afghanistan; civil war in Iraq; the battle between Islamists and nationalists throughout the region; sectarian conflict in Lebanon; civil war in Egypt; and a dozen other such conflicts there won’t be “peace in the Middle East.” Throw in the aggressive designs of Iran and Syria; the revolutionary efforts of Hamas, Hizballah and al-Qaida; and the ambitions of individuals, clans, tribes, ethnic groups; and more, the prospects for “peace” in the region doesn’t look good.
And that "peace" requires a defeat of the revolutionary Islamist forces, something you aren't going to help them do. Moreover, the "peace" defined by the people you spoke with includes the preservation of the incumbent dictatorships in virtually every Arabic-speaking country.
So, representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and vice president of the European Commission Ashton, what they are really telling you is not to solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict as fast as possible to make everyone happy (they won’t help you if you try and they will continue their conflicts even if you do) but the rather obvious point that if there was a general state of peace and harmony things would be better in the region.
True enough but not the way you interpret it.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
The EU’s Think Tank: Engage Hamas and Islamist Movements; Iranian Nuclear Weapons Not a Threat
Please subscribe and be number 9,609
Also note that while the EU's think tank, whose work is discussed below, is supported by millions of dollars in taxpayer money to tell people that Hamas and a nuclear Iran are not threats. Our work is based on your tax-free contributions. Please inquire on how to be a donor.
By Barry Rubin
“Stephen Spender [the great British poet] said to me recently, `Don’t you feel that any time during the past ten years you have been able to foretell events better than, say, the [government]? I had to agree to this….Where I feel that people like us understand the situation better than so-called experts is not in any power to foretell specific events, but in the power to grasp what kind of world we are living in.”
--George Orwell, War Diary, June 8, 1940
Does the flow of reports from the EU's official research center advocating engagement with Hamas, Hizballah, and Muslim Brotherhoods as well as negated any threat from Iranian nuclear weapons show the direction of European policy? In the face of the greatest challenge to freedom and stability at present, many institutions are on the other side.
The most recent paper, entitled, “Engaging Hamas: Rethinking the Quartet Principles,” is written by Carolin Goerzig, a fellow at the Institute. Other than having visited the Gaza Strip, it isn't clear what her qualifications are.
Here's how the paper is explained on the think tank's site: "Progress can only be made towards peace in the Middle East by engaging--not isolating--Hamas, without whom there can be no viable Palestinian state. Hamas’ acceptance of the Quartet Principles is a precondition for negotiations, but as Carolin Goerzig argues, it is time for a paradigm shift."
But actually she argues that acceptance should not be a precondition to pro-Hamas activities by the EU. And did anyone consider that with Hamas there can be no viable Palestinian state--it's already staged one violent coup against the Palestinian Authority--or Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The paper points out that the EU has three conditions for recognizing Hamas: renunciation of violence, recognition of Israel’s right to exist, and a commitment to all agreements signed by the PLO and Israel. Doesn’t sound all that demanding does it? But she thinks it’s too much to ask. Indeed she suggests that:
“A softening of these requirements could directly contribute to a transformation of Hamas, and in turn strengthen the prospects for peace in the Middle East.”
So in other words they should be engaged while still trying to destroy with violence Israel and previous agreements. And this is supposed to teach them they are making a mistake to maintain current policy? And this is supposed to make peace more possible?
The author argues that the EU has been moving toward recognizing Hamas and is pleased. She argues:
“Considering that the isolation of Hamas has proven to be a setback for peace efforts, waiting for the right time to engage might turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy and reinforce the belatedness of the EU’s response capacity.”
I’m not sure what belatedness of response capacity means, but nowadays EU rhetoric is inclined to the empty academic-sounding phrase. But at any rate it is not the isolation of Hamas that has set back peace efforts but the fact that Hamas still rules the Gaza Strip.
Here’s my favorite argument of hers for silliness: “The emphasis on supporting Fatah may have indirectly contributed to the inability of Hamas to renounce violence.” Why? Because EU forces are training the Palestinian Authority’s police and not those of Hamas! So Hamas would be more likely to renounce violence if the EU trained its forces, using that training, of course, to commit acts of terrorism and try to destroy Israel.
OK, one more. She explains why the Quartet should not demand that Hamas renounces violence by saying: “Renouncing violence can–paradoxically – make peace less rational.”
Yes, quite a paradox, isn’t it?
But why listen to me? Here’s a typical piece of Hamas rhetoric from a high-ranking leader, deputy minister of religious affairs Abdallah Jarbu, who expresses its mainstream view:
"[The Jews] suffer from a mental disorder, because they are thieves and aggressors....They want to present themselves to the world as if they have rights, but, in fact, they are foreign bacteria–a microbe unparalleled in the world. It's not me who says this. The Koran itself says that they have no parallel: 'You shall find the strongest men in enmity to the believers to be the Jews.'
"May He annihilate this filthy people who have neither religion nor conscience. I condemn whoever believes in normalizing relations with them, whoever supports sitting down with them, and whoever believes that they are human beings. They are not human beings. They are not people. They have no religion, no conscience, and no moral values." (Memri translation)
Obviously, he's not saying this kind of thing because the EU hasn't persuaded him otherwise, though he might like Europeans to train Hamas's soldiers to wipe out that "foreign bacteria." Is it asking too much for those who write about such topic to look at what the radicals say and do? Is it asking too much for “respected” institutions to exercise some quality control over what they publish?
PS: To show the EU line, consider also Amr Elshobaki and Gema MartÃn Muñoz, "Why Europe must engage with political Islam," Papers for Barcelona Number 10, also just published, whose title tells you what it advocates, and it isn't talking about--or just about--the most moderate forces.. The site explains:
"It is time to engage with the Islamists in the Middle East and North Africa. As Amr Elshobaki and Gema MartÃn Muñoz argue, there is no prospect of a credible democratic transformation of the Arab world without the full integration of one powerful player that forms part of the reality of Southern Mediterranean countries: political Islam."
But again the question could be asked if there is a prospect for creating stable democracies with the full integration of Islamism as it actually exists today, as opposed to a moderate Islam-oriented movement which barely exists in most countries (perhaps Iraq is the main exception) and would have to overcome and defeat the radicals.
If you have time you can also read another paper published by the institute and described on its site as follows:
"The Iranian nuclear issue: a never-ending story," by Rouzbeh Parsi. "Iran is seeking nuclear technology that could be used to create weapons. But is the West justified in assuming that Iran’s nuclear aspirations extend to the acquisition of nuclear weapons, and to aggressive belligerence?" The author explains that maybe Iran is just seeking peaceful nuclear energy, or maybe wants to have the ability to build a nuclear weapon without ever actully doing so. So what's all the fuss about?
These are the three papers published by the EU's think tank on the Middle East in the last year: engage Hamas, engage Islamists, Iran's nuclear program isn't a threat. Naturally, there are no papers arguing the opposite propositions.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Also note that while the EU's think tank, whose work is discussed below, is supported by millions of dollars in taxpayer money to tell people that Hamas and a nuclear Iran are not threats. Our work is based on your tax-free contributions. Please inquire on how to be a donor.
By Barry Rubin
“Stephen Spender [the great British poet] said to me recently, `Don’t you feel that any time during the past ten years you have been able to foretell events better than, say, the [government]? I had to agree to this….Where I feel that people like us understand the situation better than so-called experts is not in any power to foretell specific events, but in the power to grasp what kind of world we are living in.”
--George Orwell, War Diary, June 8, 1940
Does the flow of reports from the EU's official research center advocating engagement with Hamas, Hizballah, and Muslim Brotherhoods as well as negated any threat from Iranian nuclear weapons show the direction of European policy? In the face of the greatest challenge to freedom and stability at present, many institutions are on the other side.
The most recent paper, entitled, “Engaging Hamas: Rethinking the Quartet Principles,” is written by Carolin Goerzig, a fellow at the Institute. Other than having visited the Gaza Strip, it isn't clear what her qualifications are.
Here's how the paper is explained on the think tank's site: "Progress can only be made towards peace in the Middle East by engaging--not isolating--Hamas, without whom there can be no viable Palestinian state. Hamas’ acceptance of the Quartet Principles is a precondition for negotiations, but as Carolin Goerzig argues, it is time for a paradigm shift."
But actually she argues that acceptance should not be a precondition to pro-Hamas activities by the EU. And did anyone consider that with Hamas there can be no viable Palestinian state--it's already staged one violent coup against the Palestinian Authority--or Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The paper points out that the EU has three conditions for recognizing Hamas: renunciation of violence, recognition of Israel’s right to exist, and a commitment to all agreements signed by the PLO and Israel. Doesn’t sound all that demanding does it? But she thinks it’s too much to ask. Indeed she suggests that:
“A softening of these requirements could directly contribute to a transformation of Hamas, and in turn strengthen the prospects for peace in the Middle East.”
So in other words they should be engaged while still trying to destroy with violence Israel and previous agreements. And this is supposed to teach them they are making a mistake to maintain current policy? And this is supposed to make peace more possible?
The author argues that the EU has been moving toward recognizing Hamas and is pleased. She argues:
“Considering that the isolation of Hamas has proven to be a setback for peace efforts, waiting for the right time to engage might turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy and reinforce the belatedness of the EU’s response capacity.”
I’m not sure what belatedness of response capacity means, but nowadays EU rhetoric is inclined to the empty academic-sounding phrase. But at any rate it is not the isolation of Hamas that has set back peace efforts but the fact that Hamas still rules the Gaza Strip.
Here’s my favorite argument of hers for silliness: “The emphasis on supporting Fatah may have indirectly contributed to the inability of Hamas to renounce violence.” Why? Because EU forces are training the Palestinian Authority’s police and not those of Hamas! So Hamas would be more likely to renounce violence if the EU trained its forces, using that training, of course, to commit acts of terrorism and try to destroy Israel.
OK, one more. She explains why the Quartet should not demand that Hamas renounces violence by saying: “Renouncing violence can–paradoxically – make peace less rational.”
Yes, quite a paradox, isn’t it?
But why listen to me? Here’s a typical piece of Hamas rhetoric from a high-ranking leader, deputy minister of religious affairs Abdallah Jarbu, who expresses its mainstream view:
"[The Jews] suffer from a mental disorder, because they are thieves and aggressors....They want to present themselves to the world as if they have rights, but, in fact, they are foreign bacteria–a microbe unparalleled in the world. It's not me who says this. The Koran itself says that they have no parallel: 'You shall find the strongest men in enmity to the believers to be the Jews.'
"May He annihilate this filthy people who have neither religion nor conscience. I condemn whoever believes in normalizing relations with them, whoever supports sitting down with them, and whoever believes that they are human beings. They are not human beings. They are not people. They have no religion, no conscience, and no moral values." (Memri translation)
Obviously, he's not saying this kind of thing because the EU hasn't persuaded him otherwise, though he might like Europeans to train Hamas's soldiers to wipe out that "foreign bacteria." Is it asking too much for those who write about such topic to look at what the radicals say and do? Is it asking too much for “respected” institutions to exercise some quality control over what they publish?
PS: To show the EU line, consider also Amr Elshobaki and Gema MartÃn Muñoz, "Why Europe must engage with political Islam," Papers for Barcelona Number 10, also just published, whose title tells you what it advocates, and it isn't talking about--or just about--the most moderate forces.. The site explains:
"It is time to engage with the Islamists in the Middle East and North Africa. As Amr Elshobaki and Gema MartÃn Muñoz argue, there is no prospect of a credible democratic transformation of the Arab world without the full integration of one powerful player that forms part of the reality of Southern Mediterranean countries: political Islam."
But again the question could be asked if there is a prospect for creating stable democracies with the full integration of Islamism as it actually exists today, as opposed to a moderate Islam-oriented movement which barely exists in most countries (perhaps Iraq is the main exception) and would have to overcome and defeat the radicals.
If you have time you can also read another paper published by the institute and described on its site as follows:
"The Iranian nuclear issue: a never-ending story," by Rouzbeh Parsi. "Iran is seeking nuclear technology that could be used to create weapons. But is the West justified in assuming that Iran’s nuclear aspirations extend to the acquisition of nuclear weapons, and to aggressive belligerence?" The author explains that maybe Iran is just seeking peaceful nuclear energy, or maybe wants to have the ability to build a nuclear weapon without ever actully doing so. So what's all the fuss about?
These are the three papers published by the EU's think tank on the Middle East in the last year: engage Hamas, engage Islamists, Iran's nuclear program isn't a threat. Naturally, there are no papers arguing the opposite propositions.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Obama Administration's Coolness to Israel is No Mirage but it is a Manageable Problem
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Please remember that this blog and our work is based on your tax-free contributions. Please inquire on how to be a donor.
By Barry Rubin
As my readers know, I have often defended the Obama Administration against excessive criticism, conspiracy theory charges, and claims that it wants to destroy or at least damage Israel as some ideological goal. And I've also been willing to criticize it for its foreign policy mistakes when, unfortunately, all too often that's been necessary.
But when David Remnick writes in the New Yorker that Israelis inexplicably have this strange mistaken, paranoid perception that President Barack Obama doesn't really love them, that crosses the line. The president, he explains, has Jewish friends and they think he is quite warm toward Israel.
Not only is it inaccurate and insulting to claim Israelis are just imagining that a real problem exists here but it misunderstands a very simple point that we daily observe: Israel's elite, academics, and journlaists understand the United States far better than current U.S. leaders, academics, journalists, and members of the policy elite understand Israel. Of course, Remnick's approach is also just one more way that opinionmakers and journalists have been avoiding the need to deal with the very real problems and shortcomings that do exist.
Here's the bottom line: It is hard to argue (honestly, at least) that Obama isn't the least-warm president to Israel while in office since the country was established in 1948. The "while in office" phrase is meant to include Jimmy Carter whose great hostility came mostly after he left the White House.
This doesn't mean the Obama Administration cannot be worked with. From about April 2009 to early March 2010, U.S.-Israel relations were going pretty well. Two groups in particular deserve credit for this:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, President Shimon Peres and their team handled a difficult, potentially dangerous problem quite well.
Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues systematically destroyed their opportunity to take advantage of Obama's Third World, pro-Palestinian, eager-to-please-Muslims-and- Arabs orientation.
If not for the badly timed announcement over apartments in Jerusalem, bilateral relations would be quite good now, as they largely were since last summer. It is wrong, I believe, to think that the Administration leaped on this mishap as a chance to bash Israel. It was genuinely angry that what comes close to being its only foreign policy achievement--and a minor one at that--getting indirect Israel-Palestinian negotiations going had suddenly crashed. This is not to say that the Administration handled the crisis in a smart manner, but this was a spontaneous problem and one it wishes to fix as fast as possible.
There are lots of reasons why, despite the lack of warmth toward Israel, the Obama Administration can be dissuaded from hostility in practice. These include different opinions in the administration regarding Israel and the Middle East, with many officials not at all unfriendly. In addition, there is the force of events--including Palestinian intransigence--and the administration's ability to learn which were displayed in the president's January interview saying he learned not much progress was possible in the peace process.
Then, too, there are counter-forces like American public opinion, the role of Congress, and electoral considerations that temper the administration's behavior. Indeed, the degree of concern and criticism on this issue has in itself been an important factor in subverting any Administration ardor for punishing or distancing itself from Israel.
Finally, Obama and his colleagues have seen that they can walk over with relative ease many forces always thought powerful--banks, insurance companies, the energy industry, and individual states, for example. Only in the case of Israel has there been public and even Democratic party push-back. Savvy politicians notice that kind of thing.
The White House's main goal at this point is not to bash Israel but rather to claim victory at getting indirect negotiations going and to avoid upheavals which officials think would interfere with U.S. policies elsewhere in the region.
And as I've said often, the real problem is not with U.S.-Israel relations but with the failures of U.S. policy to recognize and deal with the region-wide expansion of radical forces and especially of the Iran-Syria axis. By the same token, the real threat is not to Israel's interests--nothing is going to change on the ground and there won't be any major diplomatic shift--but to U.S. interests.
Ironically, Israel is not so different in its perceptions of the Administration from its Arab neighbors. In their case, though, the problem for most Arab states is that while they see a president who wants to be friendly to Arabs and Muslims, the specific Arabs and Muslims it is trying to be most friendly with are their own eneies, mainly Iran, Syria, and--to a far lesser extent so far--Islamist revolutionaries. They see this as a sign of weakness that might jeopardize their survival.
Ironically, their common discomfort with what's coming out of Washington may actually push Israel and moderate Arabs together far more than any U.S. attempt at peacemaking.
At any rate, it is true that the views of some right-wingers that demonize Obama and his government are quite excessive. But to claim that the existence of certain ideological viewpoints, policies, and attitudes in this president and his administration are imaginary figments, misunderstandings, and paranoid fantasies goes too far.
The most interesting thing about recent Obama Administration rhetoric toward Israel--especially clear in Clinton's AIPAC speech--is that it thinks it is positioning itself like a moderate left Israeli. The problem is that what they are trying to copy is the position of Labor Party people, and arguably the majority in Israel, during the second half of the 1990s, when there was hope that big concessions to the Palestinian Authority might produce a stable peace based on compromise. Today, such a belief is held by perhaps 20 percent or so of Israeli voters, and that includes Arab voters.
And how seriously are Israelis going to take the idea that the Obama Administration knows better how to preserve their lives and national security when Clinton, beneficiary of supposedly the world's best intelligence agencies and so many "experts"--mistakenly condemned Hamas in her AIPAC speech for renaming "a square after a terrorist who murdered innocent Israelis" when it was in fact the Palestinian Authority that did so? This is no sophisticated analysis of the radicalism and intransigence in the PA but merely a mantra: Hams Bad; PA Good!
If through its behavior and official statements, this administration wants to assure Israelis and its own public that it understands the threats to Israel, the country's security requirements, and its legitimate goals that is a good thing. But this U.S. government must first demonstrate some comprehension that the PA is a major--or even better but too unlikely, the major--factor blocking peace. It has to show some readiness to pressure and criticize the PA, not just Israel.
In addition, such words must come from the president and his chief lieutenants, not from non-government sources whose goal is to boast the administration by denying that anything whatsoever is going on here.
Don't get me wrong. It is indeed quite proper for American Jewish organizations, individual politicians in the United States and Israel, and certainly for Israel's government to deny that there is any deep problem. This stance makes them far more able to resolve tensions. But the job of scholars, journalists, and academics is to speak the truth, which is--or should be--our distinctive contribution to solving as well as avoiding problems.
Once again, I think issues of U.S.-Israel relations are a distraction from what's really important. Nothing is going to happen on the peace process front or on U.S.-Israel relations during the next two or three years. What will happen is the erosion of the U.S. strategic position in the region as radical forces--and Iran gets nuclear weapons--grow stronger and moderate ones are frightened into silence or appeasement. This is the real danger and the front toward which American energy and determination should be directed.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
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By Barry Rubin
As my readers know, I have often defended the Obama Administration against excessive criticism, conspiracy theory charges, and claims that it wants to destroy or at least damage Israel as some ideological goal. And I've also been willing to criticize it for its foreign policy mistakes when, unfortunately, all too often that's been necessary.
But when David Remnick writes in the New Yorker that Israelis inexplicably have this strange mistaken, paranoid perception that President Barack Obama doesn't really love them, that crosses the line. The president, he explains, has Jewish friends and they think he is quite warm toward Israel.
Not only is it inaccurate and insulting to claim Israelis are just imagining that a real problem exists here but it misunderstands a very simple point that we daily observe: Israel's elite, academics, and journlaists understand the United States far better than current U.S. leaders, academics, journalists, and members of the policy elite understand Israel. Of course, Remnick's approach is also just one more way that opinionmakers and journalists have been avoiding the need to deal with the very real problems and shortcomings that do exist.
Here's the bottom line: It is hard to argue (honestly, at least) that Obama isn't the least-warm president to Israel while in office since the country was established in 1948. The "while in office" phrase is meant to include Jimmy Carter whose great hostility came mostly after he left the White House.
This doesn't mean the Obama Administration cannot be worked with. From about April 2009 to early March 2010, U.S.-Israel relations were going pretty well. Two groups in particular deserve credit for this:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, President Shimon Peres and their team handled a difficult, potentially dangerous problem quite well.
Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues systematically destroyed their opportunity to take advantage of Obama's Third World, pro-Palestinian, eager-to-please-Muslims-and- Arabs orientation.
If not for the badly timed announcement over apartments in Jerusalem, bilateral relations would be quite good now, as they largely were since last summer. It is wrong, I believe, to think that the Administration leaped on this mishap as a chance to bash Israel. It was genuinely angry that what comes close to being its only foreign policy achievement--and a minor one at that--getting indirect Israel-Palestinian negotiations going had suddenly crashed. This is not to say that the Administration handled the crisis in a smart manner, but this was a spontaneous problem and one it wishes to fix as fast as possible.
There are lots of reasons why, despite the lack of warmth toward Israel, the Obama Administration can be dissuaded from hostility in practice. These include different opinions in the administration regarding Israel and the Middle East, with many officials not at all unfriendly. In addition, there is the force of events--including Palestinian intransigence--and the administration's ability to learn which were displayed in the president's January interview saying he learned not much progress was possible in the peace process.
Then, too, there are counter-forces like American public opinion, the role of Congress, and electoral considerations that temper the administration's behavior. Indeed, the degree of concern and criticism on this issue has in itself been an important factor in subverting any Administration ardor for punishing or distancing itself from Israel.
Finally, Obama and his colleagues have seen that they can walk over with relative ease many forces always thought powerful--banks, insurance companies, the energy industry, and individual states, for example. Only in the case of Israel has there been public and even Democratic party push-back. Savvy politicians notice that kind of thing.
The White House's main goal at this point is not to bash Israel but rather to claim victory at getting indirect negotiations going and to avoid upheavals which officials think would interfere with U.S. policies elsewhere in the region.
And as I've said often, the real problem is not with U.S.-Israel relations but with the failures of U.S. policy to recognize and deal with the region-wide expansion of radical forces and especially of the Iran-Syria axis. By the same token, the real threat is not to Israel's interests--nothing is going to change on the ground and there won't be any major diplomatic shift--but to U.S. interests.
Ironically, Israel is not so different in its perceptions of the Administration from its Arab neighbors. In their case, though, the problem for most Arab states is that while they see a president who wants to be friendly to Arabs and Muslims, the specific Arabs and Muslims it is trying to be most friendly with are their own eneies, mainly Iran, Syria, and--to a far lesser extent so far--Islamist revolutionaries. They see this as a sign of weakness that might jeopardize their survival.
Ironically, their common discomfort with what's coming out of Washington may actually push Israel and moderate Arabs together far more than any U.S. attempt at peacemaking.
At any rate, it is true that the views of some right-wingers that demonize Obama and his government are quite excessive. But to claim that the existence of certain ideological viewpoints, policies, and attitudes in this president and his administration are imaginary figments, misunderstandings, and paranoid fantasies goes too far.
The most interesting thing about recent Obama Administration rhetoric toward Israel--especially clear in Clinton's AIPAC speech--is that it thinks it is positioning itself like a moderate left Israeli. The problem is that what they are trying to copy is the position of Labor Party people, and arguably the majority in Israel, during the second half of the 1990s, when there was hope that big concessions to the Palestinian Authority might produce a stable peace based on compromise. Today, such a belief is held by perhaps 20 percent or so of Israeli voters, and that includes Arab voters.
And how seriously are Israelis going to take the idea that the Obama Administration knows better how to preserve their lives and national security when Clinton, beneficiary of supposedly the world's best intelligence agencies and so many "experts"--mistakenly condemned Hamas in her AIPAC speech for renaming "a square after a terrorist who murdered innocent Israelis" when it was in fact the Palestinian Authority that did so? This is no sophisticated analysis of the radicalism and intransigence in the PA but merely a mantra: Hams Bad; PA Good!
If through its behavior and official statements, this administration wants to assure Israelis and its own public that it understands the threats to Israel, the country's security requirements, and its legitimate goals that is a good thing. But this U.S. government must first demonstrate some comprehension that the PA is a major--or even better but too unlikely, the major--factor blocking peace. It has to show some readiness to pressure and criticize the PA, not just Israel.
In addition, such words must come from the president and his chief lieutenants, not from non-government sources whose goal is to boast the administration by denying that anything whatsoever is going on here.
Don't get me wrong. It is indeed quite proper for American Jewish organizations, individual politicians in the United States and Israel, and certainly for Israel's government to deny that there is any deep problem. This stance makes them far more able to resolve tensions. But the job of scholars, journalists, and academics is to speak the truth, which is--or should be--our distinctive contribution to solving as well as avoiding problems.
Once again, I think issues of U.S.-Israel relations are a distraction from what's really important. Nothing is going to happen on the peace process front or on U.S.-Israel relations during the next two or three years. What will happen is the erosion of the U.S. strategic position in the region as radical forces--and Iran gets nuclear weapons--grow stronger and moderate ones are frightened into silence or appeasement. This is the real danger and the front toward which American energy and determination should be directed.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.
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