Later this month, one of the leading U.S. fundraising groups supporting the most extreme settlement groups, will host its annual fundraising gala at the New York Mets’ new Citi Field. David Ignatius wrote a few months ago in the Washington Post that the Fund and other pro-settler groups raised $33.5-million over a three-year period to support Israeli (Bernard Avishai calls them “Judean”) colonists who live on Palestinian land in violation of international law. Peace Now, the most formidable source for documentary evidence on the subject, estimates that the vast majority of settlements sit on privately-owned Palestinian land expropriated from their legal owners.

Adalah-NY and other anti-Occupation groups have raised their voices against this gruesome party and demanded that the Mets cancel the event. They did the same last year and the midtown hotel which was serving as host ignored the protest and the event went ahead as planned, raising millions more for settler racists. Adalah’s protest largely revolves around the fact that one of the settlers’ primary objectives is to make the land free for Jews and to rid it of Arabs. Given that Jackie Robinson is closely identified with N.Y. Mets history (the stadium rotunda under the club where the gala will be held is named in his honor), a protest aimed at the Hebron Fund’s racist mission is particularly apt.

But Adalah doesn’t mention other salient facts that cause the Hebron Fund and other pro settler fundraisers to violate both U.S. and international law and their tax-exempt status. Much of the funding supports settlement security. In other words, it may be used to buy guns, ammunition, communication gear, dogs, vehicles and other paraphanelia settlers use to terrorize their Palestinian neighbors. U.S. law specifically bars funds from U.S. citizens being used for acts of terror.

Clearly, Jack Teitel, accused settler mass-murderer (of Jews and Palestinians), and others have engaged in such acts of terror. Residents of other settlements have engaged in terror as well. It is high time that we American Jews stop this abuse by refusing to support it and by ostracizing those who do. I am waiting in vain for New York Jewish leaders to call for an end to support for the Hebron Fund and calling on the Mets to eject pro-settler donors from the luxury boxes at Citi Field. It is high time that the IRS review Hebron Fund’s 501c3 status and revoke it if it can be found that their funds were used to support terror.

Max Blumenthal has also written about the Moskowitz Foundation, another tax-exempt pro-settler vehicle for funding the Judaization of East Jerusalem, awarding $50,000 to Ronit Shuker, founder of Shvut Rachel. Shuker is documented on video calling for the expulsion of Arabs from the Land of Israel, which is nothing less than a call for ethnic cleansing. Once again, U.S. taxpayer subsidized funds should not be supporting calls for ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

Phil Weiss has also documented on audiotape another settler leader, Nadia Matar of Women in Green, calling for the assassination of Mahmoud Abbas during a talk she gave at a fundraiser held for her group, Women in Green, held at a Manhattan synagogue. Yet another example, of settlers supporting terror on our dime. When will we wise up?

Related posts:

1. Indian Muslims Condemn Terror; After Hebron Settler Pogrom, Jewish-Right’s Silence
2. Hebron Settlers Forcibly Evicted from House of Dispute
3. U.S. Government Subsidizes Settler Pogromists: Your Tax Dollars at Work

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“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

–Ronald Reagan, Berlin 1987

In a move that calls to mind Ronald Reagan’s famous speech that marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire, anti-Occupation activists toppled a section of the Separation Wall separating the Palestinian villages of Nilin and Bilin from their farmland to the west.  It was a bold and dramatic move that was met by the typical IDF response, hosing a foul spray smelling of feces and corpses upon the demonstrators.

The IDF would do well to remember this passage from Regan’s speech which could just as easily apply to Israel’s Wall:

As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner, ‘This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.’ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.”

The U.S. president perhaps did not realize how prescient his words would be and how soon realized. In a similar way, those Palestinians who toppled a section of the Separation Wall were doing so on faith that eventually the entire thing would topple in a frenzy of Palestinian jubilation.

Scores of East Germans gave their lives trying to flee to freedom. For the Palestinians, it is slightly different since the Wall separates them from what is rightly theirs, i.e. their own land. But they are no less willing to die for their own freedom and the IDF thugs have obliged with several cold blooded murders and maimings. Perhaps the IDF should remember what happened to those East German guards who shot their fleeing fellow citizens. They eventually faced justice just as I hope IDF officers will who gave the order to fire on unarmed Palestinian villagers and international peace activists.

Mr. Netanyahu, tear down this wall. Otherwise, just as in East Berlin in 1992, the Palestinians will begin by tearing it down for you.

Related posts:

1. Settlers Bemoan Naalin Tear Gas
2. Separation Wall: Ctrl-Alt-Del
3. Bibi Netanyahu: Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

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The program will be rebroadcast on Thursday, November 12th at 12:30PM.  Even if you’re not in Seattle you can watch the show (live only) on ScanTV’s website.  When I get a DVD I will try to upload it and make it available.

Related posts:

1. Israeli Military Exercise Prepares Iran Attack?
2. Biden Gives Israel Green Light for Iran Attack
3. Why is N.Y. Times Reporting Now Bush Stopped Israeli Attack on Iran?

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Dan Schueftan: Israel's John Bolton, but cruder (Maariv)

Shraga Elam has just sent me an eye-opening profile of Dan Schueftan, a senior Israeli Arab affairs specialist who directs an academic center at Haifa University and consults with the political, military and intelligence echelons.  I’d call him Israel’s John Bolton.  He even has the moustache.  The article is translated from Maariv.  When you read it you may be stunned.  Or you may say: “So what?  Didn’t we know this already?”  I fall more into the former category than the latter, though I’m not exactly stunned to know that such vileness thrives in the halls of Israel’s most august institutions.

Whatever you want to say about America, we usually confine loonies like this guy to far-right cable news and talk radio.  We don’t usually reward them with sinecures in our finest universities, board rooms and military headquarters.

If you want to understand why Israeli policies toward its Arab neighbors and specifically the Palestinians are so bizarre, ineffective and counter-productive, you have but to read this story to see why.

A note about formatting–the sub-headings below can be confusing and include interview Q&A with Schueftan and also interviews about him with others in which they comment on him:

Our Arab Affairs Expert

Sarah Leibovitz-Dar
Maariv weekend supplement
23 October 2009
(Hebrew original)

* “While Israel sends a satellite into space, the Arabs come up with a new kind of hummus”
* The best thing that has happened to the Arabs is that they agreed to be occupied”
* “There is no such thing as Iraq. The only thing they have in common is their pajamas”
* “The Arab world is a profound failure, and those who do not say that have eschewed the sharing of well-grounded understanding with their students and submitted to disgusting political correctness.”

Those are only a few pearls from the lectures of Dr. Dan Schueftan, a Middle East expert whose courses are attended by many senior members of the military establishment, and who is consulted by more than a few decision-makers.

Dr. Schueftan [replies]: “The quotes you have given were jokes.”

It was a perplexing scene. In the last class in the Master’s program in Diplomacy and Security for senior managers at Tel Aviv University one of the students read out selected utterances of the lecturer, Dr. Dan Schueftan. “The Arabs are the biggest failure in the history of the human race,” quoted the student. “While Israel sends while sends a sophisticated satellite into space, the Arabs come up with a new kind of hummus.” “There is nothing more fucked up under the sun than the Palestinians.” And in conclusion: “If you want to be a hero in the Arab world you have to get fucked. I am prepared to make a personal contribution.” Some of the students burst out laughing and applauded. Schueftan joined in the fun, laughed out loud with his students and announced that he was prepared to proofread the quotes.

Dr. Schueftan, the head of the center for National Security Studies Centre at the University of Haifa, lectures there on subjects in his field of expertise: Israel and the Middle East, Jewish-Arab relations, radicalism and the Palestinian people. Schueftan also gives the course as a guest lecturer at Tel Aviv University. Many high-level members of the military and political establishments have taken his course. Schueftan is one of the most influential academics in their circles.

“A senior official told me that he does not call me for consultation because I sit in his head and every time, before he makes a decision, he hears me telling him: ‘You idiot, what are you doing?’ And then he answers me and decides,” relates Schueftan. “Many people in the military and political establishments have taken my courses. My level of contact with that group is very high. A large proportion of Israel’s decision makers were students of mine or have listened to my lectures. I gave a lecture to all the division and brigade commanders of the ground forces and some of them invited me afterwards to talk to their units. Sometimes they contact me afterwards to consult with me. Nearly all the political-military establishment has some kind of relationship with me. I would not want them to be alienated from the important people who are outside the establishment. Access to decision-makers here is among the easiest in the world. It is easy to talk with senior officials and they exhibit a great deal of curiosity about what you have to say.”

Dr. Schueftan often says what he has to say in crude and aggressive terms. Some students have diligently recorded the energetic lecturer unusual statements. “The Palestinians are a repulsive part of the Middle East, let’s leave those ratbags,” he said in one class. “All over the Arab world they fire shots at weddings in order to prove that they have at least one thing that is hard and functional and can shoot.”

“Sometimes I listen to Ahmad for an hour in order to hear the filth that comes out of their mouths,” said he said in another lecture. “The best thing that happened to the Arabs is that they agreed to be occupied,” he explained to his students. “They are a waste of so many billions that the number has more zeros than members of the Knesset,” he added in another lecture. In a lecture on the Iran-Iraq war, Schueftan said to his students, “in the words of Hannah Senesh: ‘My God, My God, I pray that these things never end.’ Seven years of pure pleasure.” The Iraqis, in his words, are not nationally cohesive. “There is no such thing as Iraq. The only thing that is shared they have in common is 5.56 mm bullets and the pajamas they wear.”

Not all the students enjoyed Dr. Schueftan’s utterances. “Even if we appreciated the information we received in the course, we did not like the style,” says one. One student dropped the course after a few lessons. “I think it is dishonourable and even vulgar to talk that way in classes,” she says. “I did not like it, expressions of that kind are not acceptable to me, but I decided that instead of arguing with him, I would just not go, since I do not go to university to argue with lecturers and start world war; I prefer to leave the course.”

“I tend to speak in jest”

Dr. Schueftan does not understand why his statements arouse objections. “Nothing disgusts me more than political correctness. It is loathsome and dangerous to freedom of thought to refrain from asking what is true and appropriate for discussion and to transfer the question to the realm of what sounds good. If I offend political correctness, that is an aesthetical value judgment. If I say something that is not accurate, it should be corrected; but I do not care if it does not sound good, nor do I care who I am offending. I do not concern myself with the question of who will like or dislike a certain statement.”

We’re not talking here about whether is something is pleasant, but hurtfulness and offense.

“Those statements were made in jest, and above all I trust in the judgment of the students to distinguish between a systematic and comprehensive discussion and a good or bad joke. The source of the quotations that are attributed to me is a humoristic list that was made in preparation for the class party. Some of the things that are quoted look like they were said in the class or in conversations during the break, and were taken out of context. The presentation of a caricature like that is legitimate in a humoristic list, but distorted and misleading when it is represented as a teacher’s message to the class. The assumption that a student is so dim that he will be influenced by a joke and not a discussion is to show contempt for the student”.

Is it not you who exhibits contempt for your students when you say to them that “the Arabs are the biggest failure in the history of the human race, but they have one talent: violence?”

“That is a function of their record. There are peoples with a more impressive record and there are people with a less impressive record. Do you want that in order that the students feel better I tell them about great accomplishments in various domains that have no basis in truth? It is not as if I am influencing the students to see the Arabs as a failure. The claim that that is the message reflects a profound disrespect for the understanding of adult students who are already developed, and it assumes that the student will disregard a systematic, balanced and documented discussion over the course of many hours, and bases his understanding on a casual parenthetical comment.

“The students can see around them. They do not need me. You know someone who can represent matters otherwise? Explain to me what you expect? Do you want me to knowingly say something that is untrue just because it sounds good? No group of peoples has failed so dramatically to achieve the goals they set for themselves as the Arabs. Every time the Arabs have tried to achieve something great they have failed.

“Their scientific achievements are embarrassingly puny. We produce more scientific output than 300 million Arabs. They themselves say that among themselves. Since the 1970s the Arabs have received fantastical amounts of money from for oil, not for any achievement of theirs but because of a geological accident. Most of that money was wasted on corruption and wars and the result is GMG, gurnisht mit gurnisht [nothing with nothing – trans.]. All over the world there have been impressive achievements in the field of democratization, even in Muslim states like Indonesia and Turkey. In the Arab world, as a grouping of states, it does not exist. A study by the UNDP (the UN’s program for developing states) found that the Arabs occupy a low rung on the ladder of human development. The reason is the absence of political freedoms, a distorted education system and the low status of women. On the other hand, the Arabs are very creative in the field of violence. A lecturer who ignores that because of political correctness is not doing his job.”

There is a huge difference between pointing to failures in a certain society and making a statement like “the Arabs are the biggest failure in the history of the human race.”

“You are seizing on jokes and selected sentences in order to delegitimize like the delegitimization of Israel abroad when they only see a soldier shooting, without showing the context of the war. In the classes I also talked about impressive Arab personalities. This meeting is making me sick.”

Apparently the Palestinians also make you sick. What place is there in a university for an expression like “the Palestinians are a repulsive part of the Middle East, let’s leave those ratbags?”

“Could be that I said that. Do you think that I am not polite enough? OK then.”

It going far beyond mere impoliteness to say in a class: “If you want to be a hero in the Arab world you have to get fucked. There is no other way. I am prepared to convert Arabs into heroes, to give of myself personally if necessary.”

“I don’t know in what context I said that. If it was a reality in the Arab world in the 1960s that Syria wanted Israel to attack it, then there is justification in those words.”

And what justification is there to say that there is nothing more fucked up under the sun than the Palestinians?

“If someone were to say that there is nothing more fucked up than the Israelis who act only when there is a crisis like the water crisis, not only would I not be offended by it but I would see it as a lecturer’s responsibility. The Palestinians have indeed brought disaster on themselves again and again and again. In the late 1940s they knew that King Abdullah and Israel were going to make an agreement at their expense and they adopted a policy that facilitated the trend brought them disaster in the end.”

What did you mean when you said that “while Israel sends a sophisticated satellite into space, the Arabs come up with a new kind of hummus?”

“Israel is in fact on the international cutting edge in technology and the Arab world is immersed in scientific and technological backwardness. For sure there are good Arab scientists but they cannot thrive in the Arab world because there is no academic freedom and for that reason they really are immersed in backwardness. I develop that claim with references.”

What references do you have for the statement that “the only thing that is that Iraqis share is 5.56 mm bullets and the pajamas they wear?”

“Indeed Iraq does not have the coherent basis of states like Turkey, Iran, Israel and Egypt. There is no such thing as an ‘Iraqi entity’ and what unites them is the caliber of the 5.56 mm gun. That is no basis for the existence of an Iraqi entity.”

And how did you come to pajamas?

“I have a tendency to speak in jest. Some things are obviously jokes.”

Was the description of the Iraq-Iran as seven years of pleasure also a joke of that kind?

“Two enemies of Israel warred against each other. The alternative was that they would make war on Israel. Imagine that in the Second World War Japan and Germany were fighting each other. If there is a war, and because of its being waged, people do not come to slaughter us, I should mourn about that?”

What did you mean when you said that “they shoot at weddings all over the Arab world in order to prove that they have at least one thing that is hard and functional and can shoot”?

“In this country there are weapons that are used for shooting at weddings. So you don’t like the joke and you write an article about a joke.”

And then there’s your statement that ” ‘doves of peace’ is inane, I am willing to say ‘you promised a dove’ only to a waiter in a grill shop”.[1] Is that a joke?

” ‘You promised a dove’ is a problematic song [2] of spoiled people who complain that they weren’t given peace. It ignores the complexity of the conflict, it ignores what is on the other side, the fact that the Palestinians are not willing to accept the Jewish state, so it’s childish self-pitying snivelling that Daddy didn’t bring them a toy. I see it in as part of the trend towards superficiality, self-pity and chutzpah to a certain extent. The pre-1973 generation owed nothing to the post-1973 generation apart from an attempt to come to a settlement. They don’t owe the settlement itself.”

The neoconservatives

Schueftan came to Haifa University after having done research on Israel-Arab relations at the Shiloh Institute at Tel Aviv University, and also worked at the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University and at Yad Tabenkin. In his lectures he repeatedly claims that peace is not possible in our region, there is no Palestinian party at all with which it is possible to reach an agreement. The Palestinians do not want to accept responsibility for anything, he told [right-wing Israeli media website] Arutz 7 about a year ago. At the Herzliya Conference he explained that “as far as the Arabs are concerned, nothing except the destruction of the Jewish national enterprise will be accepted as sufficient.”

Among his colleagues at Haifa University he is known mainly for his advocacy for absolute unilateral separation between Israel and the Palestinians. “I sometimes take the initiative in order to bring about a certain perception,” he says. “I was a proponent of unilateral separation between us and the Palestinians. I came to the conclusion that there was no chance of coming to a final-status resolution [of the conflict] with them, there is no society that is a partner to us on the Palestinian side. They have a political culture that does not make compromise possible. Integration will thwart the Zionist venture. I talked about that with nearly all the decision makers, I talked about it with several prime ministers and with two very very senior officials whom I take credit for changing their positions. I went from decision-maker to decision-maker, I gave them my book Korah Ha-hafrada (The Necessity of Separation). A large part of them was ripe for that idea. There is nothing as strong as an idea whose time has come. When I start to hear indications that a person is becoming doubtful about his current perception I propose to him a different perception because he understands that he needs a perception.”

He met Ariel Sharon when the latter was the Foreign Minister in Netanyahu’s government. “I called him ‘the biological’ because he was neither humane nor realistic. I told him: ‘I have come to tell your future.’ He said to me that I did not look like a Gypsy. I told him that I had left my crystal ball in my car because it was too heavy, but I knew that if he became prime minister he would erect a fence, recognize a Palestinian state and uproot settlements, and he would undergo the metamorphosis within three to five years. When the supreme responsibility is put on you, I told him, you will think like a Labourite from Kfar Malal [3] and then you will put the national objectives in a different place from in the past. We parted as friends, we met four years later at the Herzliya Conference at which he unveiled the disengagement plan. He said to me, ‘you bastard,’ which was sort of a compliment coming from him.”

Schueftan receives fewer compliments in the Academy. A lecturer at Haifa University whose field of specialization touches on that of Schueftan, says that Schueftan’s statements are a little racist regarding Arab matters. He tends to relate to them disparagingly, to him they are not cultured. It has more than a few implications regarding the way in which he studies the conflict. “Sometimes students come to my class after they have been in his class and they tell me what he said and they say that the racism there is excessive. I endeavour to explain to them that there is also another side in addition to the side that he presents to them. I would not say that he is a friend of mine, but he is not malicious, but I am speaking as a Jew. If I were an Arab, I would undoubtedly speak differently.”

Prof. Yoram Meital, head of the Herzog Centre for Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University, knows Schueftan’s positions. “They are positions that have no scientific basis,” he says, “there is no academic literature in which those positions have backing in research. One of the big perils is generalization that says that the ethnic origin of people creates backwardness. It is a baseless, populist and orientalist claim. There is not even a single study that says that. There are a great many explanations for the question why the rate of illiteracy is high, not only among the Arabs but also in south and east Asia and in Africa, but to hang it on culture and the Arab mind, there are no grounds for that. The explanations are local and not do not belong to the Arabs in particular. Not so long ago, part of the world’s science was developed in the Arab capitals. His approach is not science but populism and rhetoric that basically reflect on the one who is presenting it.”

He also claims that Iraq is not a solidified state.

“Before he rushes to throw around vacuous declarations like those he should read the work of Prof. Amatzia Baram of Haifa University, the university at which he teaches, which deals with Iraqi nationalism. The role of academics is to contribute from their knowledge to society. Statements like those throw sand into the public’s eyes, they mislead and dazzle instead of shedding light.”

Dr. Menachem Klein of the political science department at Bar-Ilan University, also knows of Schueftan’s statements. “He says that kind of thing at conferences, so I’m not surprised. What is surprising is that he says it in classes, because there you have to be more careful. Schueftan belongs to the Israeli neoconservative school, those that were in the Labour movement and saw the light. That school says what he says, though much less forcefully. The tendency towards extremism is making Schueftan popular.”

Could it be that if we disregard the populist side, it turns out that he is right, for example in what he says about the Iraq-Iran war?

“There has been such thought in Israel, but it is unpleasant to hear about ‘pure pleasure.’ There is something distasteful about taking pleasure in a war.”

And what about the scientific achievements of the Arabs?

“That triumphalist attitude is very characteristic of the neoconservatives. Such generalizations are not appropriate. Cairo has a subway; Tel Aviv does not. Damascus has become a centre for the translation of Israeli works into Arabic. It is illegal to import those translations into this country. So who here is the enlightened one here and who is the backward one? Who here is the suspicious one and who is more open? Arab culture goes back to the seventh century. It interpreted philosophy and took poetry to new heights. Not everything is measured on the basis of technological sophistication. Scientific achievements entail elements of anonymity and lack of compassion. There is a lot less alienation in Arab society than there is in technological societies. His words reveal more about him than about them. But the problem is not Dan Schueftan the person but rather Dan Schueftan the phenomenon. There is a public atmosphere that expects and wants to hear such things. There is a certain degree of obliviousness towards Arabs and the sufferings of others in Israeli society. Against that background, statements like those become possible. I would not be surprised if statements like that are also heard in other universities from the lips of others who belong to that school.”

Sueid Wahel, a communications and statistics student at Haifa University and a member of the secretariat of a Hadash cell, says that “it is a shame and disgrace that there is a lecturer like that in a university that claims to that it respects human rights. In the past we have succeeded in getting rid of a tutor who said similar things. Those statements reflect what much of Israeli society thinks and they hurt me as an Israeli citizen.”

“Those who call me a racist have no grounds at all,” says Schueftan. “It could be that he is using it in a demagogic way. I would not point to another lecturer and say that he is a “Hamas agent” or a “terrorist”, but I would try to argue with positions I disagree with.”

Translator’s notes

1. The Hebrew word for ‘dove’ also means ‘pigeon.’

2. “You promised a dove” is a line from the song Winter of Seventy-Three, expressing the longing for peace among the generation born to Israelis who had fought in the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

3. The moshav where Ariel Sharon was born.

Translated from Hebrew by George Malent

If you speak Hebrew, this article ignited a firestorm in the Israeli media especially on a Voice of Israel radio program, Distant Relatives (which covers Palestinian affairs).  Shraga offers the interview in three parts:

part 1
part 2
part 3

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The most obvious is Marwan Barghouti, the most universally acclaimed Fatah leader not only in the West Bank, but in Gaza as well.  The only problem is that he sits in an Israeli prison.  There has been some talk that a negotiated deal to release Gilad Shalit might include Barghouti.  But unless he is released, running for office would mean Palestinians would be electing someone who couldn’t serve.  This too would embarrass Israel, which might be reason enough for the Palestinians to do precisely that.

The other option is a member of the Fatah’s powerful, but discredited Old Guard like Mohammed Dahlan.  This choice would be universally condemned everywhere but in Fatah circles.  Dahlan is widely hated by Hamas for engaging in torture, corruption and other serious abuses.

There is always the possibility that Abbas is posturing or maneuvering for a more favorable stance on the part of the Obama administration regarding the settlement freeze and final status talks.  Abbas resigned when he was prime minister under Arafat (and then returned after Arafat’s death).  I don’t know which way this one’s going to go.  But it seems to me that the drubbing the U.S. indirectly engineered for him when it persuaded him to scuttle the Goldstone Report, plus the intransigence of the Netanyahu government would be more than sufficient to persuade any politician that he’d gone about as far as he could given the circumstances.

The Times article outlines the sense of despondency among Fatah leadership and their sense of betrayal by the U.S.:

It was…clear that Israeli-Palestinian talks would not resume any time soon despite intensive American diplomacy. A top aide to Mr. Abbas said a large part of the “despondency and frustration” felt by Mr. Abbas and the entire Palestinian leadership was due to President Obama’s unrealized promises to the region. He said he feared that without a stop to settlements, Islamist rivals in Hamas could triumph and violence could break out.

“There was high expectation when he arrived on the scene,” the aide, Nabil Shaath, who heads the Fatah party’s foreign affairs department, said of Mr. Obama at a briefing. “He said he would work to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that it would play a major role in improving the American and Western relationship with the Muslim world. Now there is a total retreat, which has destroyed trust instead of building trust.”

…“I think he’s reached the conclusion that he’s reached a dead-end,” said Qaddoura Fares, another Fatah leader, on Israel Radio, speaking of Mr. Abbas.

There is also the added factor of Hamas.  Fatah has failed to negotiate a reconciliation with the Islamic movement, and without this there can be no elections in Gaza.  PA voting in the West Bank alone would be quite embarrassing to Fatah I would think, and would cause them to delay the elections.

I worry that Abbas’ resignation and the flux of Palestinian leadership that results will provide a major setback for the Obama administration.  I can see no way it can seriously attempt to advance the peace process given how little Israel is giving him to work with.

Let’s be clear about where fault lies should these things come to pass.  Look no farther than the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem.  And this impasse suits Israel just fine.  Stasis and stalemate are Israel’s preferred modes when it comes to the conflict.  The only thing that seems to move Israel off the dime is a massive terror attack.  It’s hard to tell which of Israel’s will oblige this scenario: Hezbollah or Hamas, who knows?  And if Israel truly wants to divert the world’s attention from its obstinacy there’s always a new military adventure in Iran that is possible.  That nation is the smoke that conceals Israel’s real interest, which is continuing the Occupation and stiffing the Palestinians.

Israel and its supporters seem to believe they can maintain the status quo ad infinitum.  But things change.  Instead of the consensus being a two state solution, that could change.  People who previously never spoke favorably of a one-state solution are despairingly turning to it:

Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator, said Wednesday at a news conference that perhaps Palestinians should abandon the two-state approach and work toward one shared state with the Jews, something a vast majority of Israelis oppose.

He said Mr. Abbas should maybe “tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities the two-state solution is no longer an option.”

Israel should understand that this is not a trick, not a maneuver.  Most of all, at some point in the future there will be no return to the two state solution.  The international consensus will move from two to one-state.  At that time, telling the world you’ve had a change of heart and a two state solution would be just fine thank you–that’s not going to work.

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…Though Obama campaigned as somewhat of a hardliner on issues like Iran and Jerusalem to ensure support from the Jewish community, I do not believe he will govern or implement policy as a hawk. Nor will he be the anti-Israel pushover imagined by McCain and Jewish Republicans. He will not govern from ideology or even primarily from a sense of altruism. He will be a hard-headed realist trying to hold fast to a set of overarching principles.

…If Netanyahu, the leader of the Likud opposition and until recently the frontrunner in the polls, wins, then it will be a cold day in hell before peace agreements are signed with either the Syrians or Palestinians. In addition, we can expect continuing bellicosity toward Iran (and vice-versa). Certainly an Israeli attack against Iran is in the cards, along with escalating violence toward the Palestinians. One should expect Hamas to forgo its six-month-long truce and return to Qassam and terror attacks.

No matter how deft Obama’s policy is, I don’t see any way he can make progress with the rejectionist Likud in power. No one should make any mistake that Netanyahu is capable to doing a Sharon and becoming a pragmatic moderate when faced with governing (as opposed to campaigning, which always brings out the worst in Israeli politicians). Netanyahu is no Sharon. He is an opportunist and ideologue at the same time, but he is not pragmatic in the way that Sharon was.

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Obama Israeli-Arab Scorecard: A for Vision, C for Execution

Barack Obama earns a grade of A for vision and C for execution on his performance in his first year in office regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict.  He earns top marks for vision based largely on his magnificent Cairo speech, which was easily the most remarkable public statement any U.S. president has ever made on the subject.  But he earns a C for execution because hardly anything voiced in that speech has been translated into concrete accomplishment.

The major element of Obama administration efforts over the past few months has been a settlement freeze, which Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has successfully resisted.  The U.S. also made the foolhardy decision to lean on PA leader Mahmoud Abbas to scuttle the Goldstone Report on the Gaza war, for which Abbas took a drubbing in the Palestinian street.

It is beginning to dawn on U.S. policymakers that they may have to jettison the settlement freeze and move directly to final status negotiations.  But neither side seems willing to do so.

Israeli leaders are expert in the art of obfuscation and delay—which has been a hallmark of Israeli policy since 1967 (not that the Palestinians don’t deserve their share of blame as well).  The current Israeli government is both unwilling and unable to provide any positive leadership toward that end.  It seems interested in maintaining the status quo at all costs.

Reluctantly, tough love seems the only answer.  The path to an agreement will be massive, coordinated pressure on both sides by the U.S. and its European allies (including Russia).  This could involve withholding U.S. economic and military aid to Israel and other forms of temporary sanctions.  It could involve a peace agreement imposed on both sides and enforced by international peacekeepers.  The reason why such a solution could work is that both sides essentially know the outlines of a final agreement, which has been formulated both in the Clinton talks and the Geneva Accord.  Despite knowing, neither side seems able to get to Yes, which may be why the international community has to intercede.

Such an eventuality will make Israel’s supporters howl in protest and, as a supporter of Israel, I don’t relish the prospect either.  But nothing has worked thus far, neither moral suasion nor step-by-step negotiation.  If I believed Israel had a possible political alternative in the form of a more liberal governing coalition that could come to power and move the process forward, I might say hold off.  But given that Ehud Olmert’s last government was a centrist coalition that made no progress on these matters, I can’t say that waiting for Tzipi Livni to take the reins at some future date will lead to better results.

That is why if Barack Obama really wants a peace agreement he will have to be much tougher than he has till now.  Instead of the visionary Obama, we need Obama the doer.  Results are far more critical than glowing words.

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Sassoon: looking for anti-Semites in all the wrong places

Some very bad scholarship.  If only Vidal Sassoon had stuck to hair styling and not attempted to burnish his reputation by creating an academic program in his name…Then we would not have to suffer the utter narischkeit of passages like this, penned by Robert Wistrich, director of The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University:

Today, shocking to relate, the specter of such apocalyptic anti-Semitism has returned to haunt Europe and other continents, while often assuming radically new forms.

In the Middle East, it has taken on a particularly dangerous, toxic and potentially genocidal aura of hatred, closely linked to the “mission” of holy war or jihad against the West and the Jews.

Islamist anti-Semitism is thoroughly soaked in many of the most inflammatory themes that initially made possible the atrocities of Crystal Night and its horrific aftermath during the Holocaust.

For example, the pervasive use of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with its perennial theme of the “Jewish conspiracy for world domination;” or the medieval blood-libel imported to the Muslim world from Christian Europe; or the vile stereotypical image of the Jews as a treacherous, rapacious, and bloodthirsty people engaged in a ceaseless plotting to undermine the world of Islam.

To these grotesque inventions one must add the…slanderous identification of Israel with Nazism or the “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinians. This modernized version of inverted anti-Semitism which sails under the mask of “anti-Zionism” and anti-Americanism, is today a global phenomenon, but it has special resonance in the Middle East as a result of the unresolved “Palestinian question.”

The scale and extremism of the literature and commentary available in Arab or Muslim newspapers, journals, magazines, caricatures, on Islamist websites, on the Middle Eastern radio and TV news, in documentaries, films, and educational materials, is comparable only to that of Nazi Germany at its worst.

Yet the Western world largely turns a blind eye to the likely genocidal consequences of such a culture of hatred, much as it did 70 years ago. My own extensive research into this phenomenon has, unfortunately, convinced me that the Holocaust did not truly succeed in neutralizing the scourge of anti-Semitism.

In a sinister and sometimes devious manner, the widespread defamation and demonization of Israel has in effect revived fantasies of completing the murderous work of the Third Reich. This is especially palpable in the case of Iran. Hence, the anniversary of Crystal Night raises two fundamental moral questions for the future of human civilization. Are we at all capable of learning from history, and will the Jewish people once again have to stand alone in the face of concrete threats to annihilate it? On the answer to these questions much may depend.

Ah, the sky is falling, Chicken Wistrich calls to all his Jewish brethren.  One gets the impression that Iran specifically, and radical Islam in general, provides excellent fodder for the Abe Foxmans and Robert Wistriches of the world, who use it to stoke the fears and open the purses of the world’s guilty and wealthy Jews.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Vidal Sassoon was better at his chosen profession than Prof. Wistrich is at his.

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Who or what is Honenu?

It is an Israeli legal group which campaigns for the release of Jewish murderers from Israeli jails when Arab murderers are released. They are headed up by Shmuel Meidad, known in right-wing circles as ‘Zangi.’ Meidad has previously spent time in prison, as has Ariel Groner, responsible for handling prisoner affairs in Honenu, who was arrested in 2006 and spent three months under house arrest. Groner was recently arrested after he was noticed handing out leaflets inciting violence against homosexuals, as was Teitel.

A Haaretz reporter quotes this justification for the mindset of Jewish terrorists:

As far as Hanenu is concerned, it [Jewish terror] derives from “mistaken judgment against a background of compromised security, or personal factors related to judgment and the sense that one needs to exact revenge.”

Honenu had the chutzpah to attempt to piggyback onto the Gilad Shalit negotiation, demanding that if Palestinian militants were freed by Israel that Jewish terrorists should be as well.  I kid you not.  There should be a special place in hell reserved for chutzpaniks like this.  For someone not involved in the day to day politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and even for the average Israeli such outrageousness appears to be little more than that: strange behavior from a ragtag group of far-right extremists.  People don’t understand the real implications of these views and the danger they pose for the greater society.

The Teitel family was also defended by Nadia Matar of Women in Green.  Interestingly, Phil Weiss offered a recording of Matar speaking at a New York synagogue during a fundraising event, during which she advocated assassinating Mahmoud Abbas.

These are not harmless, slightly aberrant individuals playing out their delusions on a small stage.  These are individuals planting the seeds of destruction of the secular Israel state.  They can’t achieve their aims alone.  But taken together with the internal divisions and contradictions within Israeli society itself, these people pose a real and present danger to the State.  They have never been confronted with the full force of state authority.  Hell, the State often aids, abets and encourages them.  That’s the reason why Teitel could run rampant for 12 years without detection.

For more on the nexus between Judean settlers extremists and American Jewish tax-exempt groups like the Moskowitz Foundation, read Max Blumenthal’s eye-opening post.  The U.S. tax-exempt Central Fund for Israel has made contributions to Honenu (page 18), meaning that your tax dollars and mine are indirectly subsidizing a group that defends Jewish terror.

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