Friday, April 03, 2009
Avigdor Lieberman Hits The Big Time
Israel's new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisra'el Beiteinu party ("Israel is our home"), gave his first speech yesterday -- and it seems to have attracted quite a bit of attention.
Daniel Pipes calls it "Avigdor Lieberman's Brilliant Debut". The BBC cheerfully chooses to emphasize the negative, remembering him as the "hard-liner" who told Hosni Mubarak to "go to hell"... and then paraphrases his speech to their liking without quoting it. (Actually, Lieberman had been rebuking Mubarak for never visiting Israel, in spite of a 30-year-old peace treaty, and said: "If he wants to talks to us, he should come here, and if he doesn't want to come, he can go to hell." Context can be helpful.)
Israel's Ha'aretz asks "How Absurd Can Netanyahu's Government Get", citing Lieberman's status as Foreign Minister as a self-evident absurdity, not requiring further explanation. Others go further: al-Jazeera calls him an "ultra-nationalist"; Yasser Abed Rabbo, an aide to Fatah chief Mahmud Abbas, said "We are not obligated to hold talks with a racist hostile to peace like Lieberman".
I don't know; it sounds to me as though he's making all the right enemies.
Mind you, he's also antagonizing his friends: his predecessor, Tzippi Livni, said that he had wiped out years of diplomatic efforts in 20 seconds (and interrupted him during his speech!). I suspect he would respond that yes, that's exactly what he did, and it was intentional; see below.
So what did he say, actually? My initial response is to say that, yes, he's an amateur on the diplomatic world stage, with something of the bull-in-the-china-shop about him. On the other hand, he had some strong things to say, and he said them bluntly and forcefully at his first opportunity. Let's have a look.
Good afternoon, honorable outgoing Foreign Minister, honorable outgoing Deputy Foreign Minister, incoming Deputy Foreign Minister, Director-General Ministry employees, honored guests,
When my fellow students and I studied international relations, and learned what an international system is, we learned that there is a State and there are international organizations and all kinds of global economic corporations. Things have changed since then and, unfortunately, in the modern system, there are countries that are semi-states. It is hard to call a country like Somalia a state in the full sense of the word and the same holds true for the various autonomies in Eastern Europe, in the Balkans and here as well. It is even hard to call a country like Iraq a state in the full sense of the word. And even worse, there are now international players that are irrational, like the Al Qaeda organization. And we can certainly also ask if the leader of a strong and important country like Iran is a rational player.
Hmm... not a strong beginning. He depicts himself as a student, underlying his status as an amateur in his new job. He insults several countries, including the emerging democracy in Iraq, by calling them "semi-states", with no indication as to why, nor what this implies in terms of Israel's future dealings with them.
(Granted, Israel has no diplomatic relations with Somalia or with Iraq that I know of. Israel has a long history of trying to make friends and getting rebuffed; perhaps Lieberman is simply declaring that he's not that sort of foreign minister. Israelis have a reputation for bluntness, do we not?)In my view, we must explain to the world that the priorities of the international community must change, and that all the previous benchmarks - the Warsaw Pact, the NATO Alliance, socialist countries, capitalist countries - have changed. There is a world order that the countries of the free world are trying to preserve, and there are forces, or countries or extremist entities that are trying to violate it.
That's a reasonable message -- we have been viewing foreign relations using outdated paradigms, and it's time we saw things as they are and treated them accordingly. Again, though, I think he's making some strong statements without backing them up, which does not do much to persuade anyone. (Is he trying to be persuasive? One could argue that, as Israel's top diplomat, that's his job.)
The claim that what is threatening the world today is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a way of evading reality. The reality is that the problems are coming from the direction of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq.
Well, I like that first sentence. In my opinion, he should have explained that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the distraction Arab totalitarian regimes use to distract their subjects from problems at home. Instead, he names Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq as world threats... which, to me, is heavy-handed at best. (Iraq is not currently an exporter of terror, the way it used to be under Saddam and the way Iran still is; mentioning them together is hardly fair.)
What is important is to maintain global and regional stability. Egypt is definitely an important country in the Arab world, a stabilizing factor in the regional system and perhaps even beyond that, and I certainly view it as an important partner. I would be happy to visit Egypt and to host Egyptian leaders here, including the Egyptian Foreign Minister - all based on mutual respect.
By contrast, this looks as though he's sucking up to Egypt now. (If so, it's not working.) Is he trying to compensate for his "go to hell" comment? (On the other hand, it's notable that he's inviting the Egyptian Foreign Minister, not President Mubarak.)
"What's important is to maintain global and regional stability" -- this sounds like the return of realpolitik, not what I'd expect from him. Let's continue.
I think that we have been disparaging many concepts, and we have shown the greatest disdain of all for the word “peace.” The fact that we say the word “peace” twenty times a day will not bring peace any closer.
Amen! He is now indirectly accusing previous Israeli governments -- and his direct predecessor -- of talking too much. Moreover, he says that merely talking about peace, while not taking the necessary steps to bring peace closer, shows disdain for peace -- a profound thought indeed.
There have been two governments here that took far-reaching measures: the Sharon government and the Olmert government. They took dramatic steps and made far-reaching proposals. We saw the Disengagement and the Annapolis Conference.
Yisrael Beiteinu was not then part of the coalition, Avigdor Liberman was not the foreign minister and, even if we had wanted to, we would have been unable to prevent peace. But none of these far-reaching measures have brought peace. To the contrary. We have seen that, after all the gestures that we made, after all the dramatic steps we took and all the far-reaching proposals we presented, in the past few years this country has gone through the Second War in Lebanon and Operation Cast Lead - and not because we chose to.
(emphasis mine)
His self-serving comments (and third-person self-reference) aside, he is now getting to the important point of his speech. Israeli concessions have not brought peace; from an historical perspective, it would be hard to deny this.
I have not seen peace here. It is precisely when we made all the concessions that I saw the Durban Conference, I saw two countries in the Arab world suddenly sever relations, recalling their ambassadors - Mauritania and Qatar. Qatar suddenly became extremist.
We are also losing ground every day in public opinion. Does anyone think that concessions and constantly saying “I am prepared to concede,” and using the word “peace” will lead to anything? No, that will just invite pressure, and more and more wars. "Si vis pacem, para bellum" - if you want peace, prepare for war; be strong.
An interesting response to Israel's critics. Lieberman here reminds us that "peace through strength" is not a typical Israeli position, at least not today... but that it certainly did not originate with Israel, and in fact has history to support it.
We definitely want peace, but the other side also bears responsibility. We have proven our desire for peace more than any other country in the world. No country has made concessions the way Israel has. Since 1977, we have given up areas of land three times the size of the State of Israel. So we have proven the point.
Awkwardly worded, perhaps, but he's absolutely right. Pre-1967 Israel was 20700 square kilometers in size; in 1967 Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula (61,100 square kilometers), and gave it all to Egypt in 1979 in return for a peace treaty.
Even if you include the West Bank etc. in your calculations, post-1967 Israel was roughly 89,277 square kilometers in size; giving up the Sinai and the Gaza Strip reduced Israel's size by nearly 70%. Is there another country on Earth that has done such a thing voluntarily?The Oslo process began in 1993. Sixteen years have passed since then, and I do not see that we are any closer to a permanent settlement. There is one document that binds us and it is not the Annapolis Conference. That has no validity. When we drafted the basic government policy guidelines, we certainly stated that we would honor all the agreements and all the undertakings of previous governments. The continuity of government is respected in Israel. I voted against the Road Map, but that was the only document approved by the Cabinet and by the Security Council - I believe it was Resolution 1505. It is a binding resolution and it binds this government as well.
The Israeli government never approved Annapolis, neither the Cabinet nor the Knesset, so anyone who wants to amuse himself can continue to do so. I have seen all the proposals made so generously by Ehud Olmert, but I have not seen any results.
This seems to be the part that has Israel's critics apoplectic -- Israel is repudiating the Annapolis agreements!
As others have pointed out, Lieberman is wrong here -- Israel's cabinet did approve the Annapolis agreement. (He was there, as Minister for Strategic Affairs, so he should know better.)Nonetheless, he has an important point to make here regarding the lack of validity of the Annapolis agreement in 2009, and he has logic on his side. Read the text: those parts of it that are not pleasant-sounding platitudes ("we agree to launch bilateral talks"; "we express our determination to bring an end to bloodshed") have largely been superseded by events. Negotiations with Mahmud Abbas do not apply to Palestinian areas controlled by Hamas, as Hamas has repeatedly avowed.
In other words, Annapolis is dead... and Lieberman is simply the first world diplomat to say so publicly.He is careful, however, to make it clear than an alternative still exists:
So we will therefore act exactly according to the Road Map, including the Tenet document and the Zinni document. I will never agree to our waiving all the clauses - I believe there are 48 of them - and going directly to the last clause, negotiations on a permanent settlement. No. These concessions do not achieve anything. We will adhere to it to the letter, exactly as written. Clauses one, two, three, four - dismantling terrorist organizations, establishing an effective government, making a profound constitutional change in the Palestinian Authority. We will proceed exactly according to the clauses.(link and emphasis mine)Kudos to him for referring back to the Road Map -- an agreement he repudiated at the time -- and making it clear that he will take no liberties with it. (We'll have to watch and see if he keeps that promise, of course.)
We also see an interesting political development here. An American Secretary of State would not say "I will never agree", as he does, because American cabinet secretaries serve at the pleasure of the President, who can hire and fire them. In Israeli politics, however, Lieberman is not just the new Foreign Minister; he's the head of Yisra'el Beiteinu, which won 15 seats in the recent elections. Prime Minister Netanyahu cannot simply tell Lieberman "I set foreign policy here, not you", as an American President would; if Netanyahu pushes Lieberman too hard, Lieberman will walk away from the Cabinet, taking his 15 seats with him, leaving Netanyahu's government ripe for a no-confidence vote.
We are also obligated to implement what is required of us in each clause, but so is the other side. They must implement the document in full, including - as I said - the Zinni document and the Tenet document. I am not so sure that the Palestinian Authority or even we - in those circles that espouse peace so much - are aware of the existence of the Tenet and Zinni documents.
His insistence on the Tenet and Zinni agreements is interesting. What do they contain that the Roadmap does not? Mostly they contain specific details -- a commitment by Israel to redeploy and to explore non-lethal methods of crowd control, a commitment by the Palestinians to clamp down on incitement and to stop weapons smuggling and terrorism, and so on.
When was Israel at its strongest in terms of public opinion around the world? After the victory of the Six Day War, not after all the concessions in Oslo Accords I, II, III and IV. Anyone who wants to maintain his status in public opinion must understand that if he wants respect, he must first respect himself. I think that, at least from our standpoint, will be our policy.A weak ending to a problematic speech... but nonetheless, he's trying to demonstrate, to Israelis, that it has been Israel's victories, not her concessions, that have won her support.
It will be interesting to see the long-term reactions to this speech, and to Israel's actions going forward. No doubt Lieberman, and Netanyahu, and Israel, will be vilified all over the world; no doubt people will condemn Israelis for electing such people into office. (I'm willing to bet that such sentiments will come from the same people who insisted that Hamas had been elected, and thus must be honored and respected.)
But will Israel pursue a policy of peace through strength, showing respect to others only insofar as she is herself respected? And if so, will this produce results? I'm optimistic, but time will tell. Time will also tell if Avigdor Lieberman can learn to soften his hard edges a bit. (Perhaps he won't; Israel already has a top diplomat, with plenty of diplomatic experience on the world stage, named Benjamin Netanyahu. It will be interesting to see how they work together.)
But speaking for myself, as an Israeli who has bemoaned a weak Israeli government at just the time when strength is needed -- well, it looks as though that has changed. In the words of Daniel Pipes, Israel's back.
UPDATE: Jeff Jacoby also liked the speech. (Frankly, I thought Mr. Jacoby uses Lieberman's points to make a better case than Lieberman did. Have a look and see for yourself.)
Hat tip: Solomonia
Labels: Israel
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Netanyahu: "Stop Iran - Or I Will"
So says an exclusive interview in The Atlantic. I must say, it sounds good to me.
On the other hand, the headline is a bit misleading; nowhere in the article is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu actually quoted as saying that. It's not even a paraphrase; Mr. Netanyahu never talks about Israel attacking Iran at all. He simply describes the dangers of a nuclear Iran, in great detail, and explains why it is not just a problem for Israel.
So perhaps this is another case of a journalist putting words into a politician's mouth -- not words the politician said, but words that the journalist thinks the politician could have said.
I'm reminded of an alarmist headline on a non-alarmist article about global warming, a few years back. In that case, though, it's possible that an editor added a headline that the article's writer never intended. Here the sentiment is clearly part of the article itself, as can be seen in the first paragraph:
In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.Go look for yourself; does he ever quote Netanyahu as actually saying that?
Of course, as has been pointed out elsewhere, there is a "public narrative" about Netanyahu -- which is why it's virtually impossible to read a newspaper article about him that doesn't call him a "hard-liner" (instead of "conservative"), or that he does not favor a "two-state solution" (untrue, although he does expect the Palestinians to earn their state first). But it's not a journalist's job to tell us what he thinks a politician thinks; we need to know what the politician actually said.
Whether Israel will attack Iran remains to be seen. We know many of the pieces of the puzzle -- that Israel has stopped an enemy country from going nuclear before; that Iranian nuclear sites are not as well protected as they previously thought; that Israelis in positions of authority have spoken about this before. We can even surmise that this is more likely to happen now than under Mr. Netanyahu's predecessor, the hapless (and hopeless) Ehud Olmert. Nonetheless, we'll know about this when -- and if -- it happens.
Labels: Iran, Israel, journalism
Friday, June 22, 2007
Gaza: The Return of Realpolitik
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NOTE: This post originally combined two topics -- recent events in Gaza, and gun control in Massachusetts. I've decided to split the two subjects into two separate posts. Sorry if this causes any confusion. --DiB
Apologies to both my regular readers; I've been busy with other things lately, without much time to blog.
Frankly, I've also been demoralized by some of what I've been reading. The Gaza Strip has fallen completely to Hamas, which consolidated its victory by threatening Christians and Muslims alike -- while Fatah, busy retaliating against Hamas in the West Bank, has Western politicians falling all over themselves to help!
Have we forgotten that Fatah is a terrorist organization, whose name means "conquest" and whose emblem features two crossed weapons, a stylized map of the entire state of Israel, and the slogan "revolution until victory"? These are the people President Bush and Prime Minister Olmert want to support? What on Earth are they thinking?
(I've duplicated the emblems of Fatah and Hamas at the top of this post, by the way. It might amuse you to figure out which is which.)
Mind you, there are reports that Fatah gave up Gaza without a struggle. Here's one report of that; IRIS seems to agree. Personally, I think it makes sense: I can easily see Abu Mazen throwing up his hands at the ungovernable mess that the Gaza Strip has become, thanks to his own apathy and Arafat's reign of terror.
UPDATE: One of the links above discusses Olmert's incipient transfer, to Fatah, of $400 million in withheld Palestinian taxes. (Does that sound wildly incomprehensible to you? Me too. But as I understand it, the deal is this: Israel has been providing Palestinians with essential services for many years, e.g. electricity, water, and so forth. Taxes are built into the charges for this; but taxes collected from Palestinians should, in theory, go to the Palestinian Authority, not to Israel. Israel has withheld these funds from the Palestinian Authority since last January, when Hamas won control of the PA.)
From that same article:
The withheld tax funds will be transferred to the Palestinians in installments, through a mechanism that will ensure none of the funds reach terror organizations, or any groups associated with terror, including Hamas.I'm reminded of President Lincoln's despair, upon hearing from Gen. Meade, during the American Civil War, that "we have driven the invader from our soil". Lincoln reportedly cried: "Will our generals never get that idea out of their heads? The whole country is our soil!"
Unbelievable. Olmert's government really has forgotten that Fatah is a terrorist organization, haven't they?
As if to underscore the point:
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni also remarked on the issue of the withheld tax funds during a visit to Luxembourg earlier in the week. Livni said that Israel would release the funds to the Palestinian Authority, if the emergency government acknowledged Israel's right to exist.Good grief, is that all? $400,000,000, if Abu Mazen's "emergency government" acknowledges Israel's right to exist? Does she not realize, based on endless bitter past experience, that Fatah will say anything, anything at all, if it is to their temporary advantage? Does she not realize that she is conditioning her support on words, which need not be backed up by anything?
If you still think Fatah are the "good guys" among Palestinians, you might want to read about the Fatah torture chambers, in which Fatah operatives tortured and murdered their political opponents. This is how they treat their own people, in other words.
And Hamas is just as bad:
The near-perfect public order that reigned in Gaza this week can be(emphasis mine)
attributed, at least in part, to the fear Hamas struck into residents'
hearts last week, during the Strip's civil war. Testimony collected from the
days of fighting indicates that Hamas imposed a methodical system of terror
and scare tactics intended to deter, shock and frighten Fatah operatives and
Gaza residents in general.
It began on a Monday 11 days ago, when a Fatah man was tossed off a
multi-story building in the Strip; it subsequently came to light that Hamas
operatives managed to shoot him in the legs before throwing him to his
death. Although this method was used on only one other Fatah operative, it
had the desired effect and became the talk of the town. A number of Fatah
leaders, who knew that their names appeared on Hamas hit lists, decided to
make their exit, with some heading to Ramallah and others crossing into
Egypt.
"It's very easy to criticize the senior officials who disappeared," says a
Gazan journalist. "But you have to remember that they wanted to stay alive.
People had already tried to assassinate them in the past and they knew that
Hamas wanted their heads. Someone like that wants to survive."
Hamas was not using a random hit list. Every Hamas patrol carried with it a
laptop containing a list of Fatah operatives in Gaza, and an identity number
and a star appeared next to each name. A red star meant the operative was to
be executed and a blue one meant he was to be shot in the legs - a special,
cruel tactic developed by Hamas, in which the shot is fired from the back of
the knee so that the kneecap is shattered when the bullet exits the other
side. A black star signaled arrest, and no star meant that the Fatah member
was to be beaten and released. Hamas patrols took the list with them to
hospitals, where they searched for wounded Fatah officials, some of whom
they beat up and some of whom they abducted.
Aside from assassinating Fatah officials, Hamas also killed innocent
Palestinians, with the intention of deterring the large clans from
confronting the organization. Thus it was that 10 days ago, after an
hours-long gun battle that ended with Hamas overpowering the Bakr clan from
the Shati refugee camp - known as a large, well-armed and dangerous family
that supports Fatah - the Hamas military wing removed all the family members
from their compound and lined them up against a wall. Militants selected a
14-year-old girl, two women aged 19 and 75, and two elderly men, and shot
them to death in cold blood to send a message to all the armed clans of
Gaza.
And now the West is dealing with the Palestinian civil war... by deciding which of two terrorist organizations to support? What kind of realpolitik nonsense is this?
As I said, it's been a demoralizing week.
UPDATE II: It's starting to look as though Muslims and Arabs have finally lost patience with the Palestinians. According to a New York Sun editorial by Youssef Ibrahim:
"Palestinians today need to be left without a shred of a doubt" as to what other Arabs think of them, a widely read opinion commentator for the Saudi daily Asharq Al Awsat, Mamoun Fandy, thundered on Monday. "We need to tell them the only thing they have proven over 50 years is that they are adolescents who cannot and should not be trusted to run institutions of state or any other important matters."(emphasis mine)
While it could be argued that the overwhelming public outrage in Saudi Arabia reflects resentment over the collapse of the much-vaunted reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah -- which was personally brokered by King Abdullah earlier this year in Mecca -- the anger expressed across the Muslim Arab world reflects deep embarrassment at the discredit Hamas has brought, in the name of Islam, through its savagery against Fatah.
For its part, the Egyptian press has become unhinged, spewing vile denunciations of what is universally known as "the cause" -- support for the Palestinian Arabs -- and describing it as dead. Egypt's government pulled its embassy out of Gaza on Tuesday.
Kuwaitis, who have harbored contempt for Palestinian Arabs ever since they allied themselves with Saddam Hussein's occupation in 1990-91, also dropped all restraint. "Palestinians are neither a modernized nor a civilized people," Ahmad Al Bughdadi wrote Monday in Al Siyassah, an influential Kuwaiti daily. "They are not statesmen. If what happened in Gaza is what they do without a state, what then shall they do when they get one?"
If there could be an editorial coup de grace, it surely was delivered by no less than Abdelbari Atwan, undoubtedly the Palestinian Arabs most influential and respected journalist and a familiar face on both Western and Arab television.
Writing in the London-based Al Quds International, his painfully felt commentary, "Yes, We Have Lost the World's Respect," argued that "the cause" may have lost its legitimacy: "Many, myself among them, find it difficult to speak of Israeli crimes against our people in view of what we have now done," Mr. Atwan wrote. "I never thought the day would come when we would see Palestinians throwing other Palestinians from the tops of buildings to their death, Palestinians attacking other Palestinians to tear their bodies with knives, Palestinians stripping others naked to drag them through the streets."
My feeling is that, much as I'd like to believe otherwise, I think the Palestinians will succeed in restoring their reputation, both in the West and in the Arab world, and the demonization of Israel will continue as planned. Give it a few weeks, and it'll be back to business as usual.
I'd love to be proven wrong, of course.
Oh, and if you're still wondering about the two emblems at the top of this post, Hamas is on the left; Fatah is on the right.
Monday, May 07, 2007
New Presidents, Potential Prime Ministers
The Wall Street Journal featured an interview on Saturday with Tzipora ("Tzipi") Livni, the Foreign Minister of Israel, amid speculations that she might become the next Prime Minister:
On Wednesday, Tzipi Livni gave a press conference calling for Ehud Olmert's resignation in the wake of the Winograd Commission's sharp critique of his performance during the Lebanon war. She also announced she would be challenging him in the Kadima Party primary elections. Mr. Olmert fumed, but stopped short of firing the minister of foreign affairs, aware of her popularity within the party and striving to keep his government above water.Frankly, I've lost any confidence I used to have in Prime Minister Olmert. The man is a cheap political hack, a shady lawyer who had greatness thrust upon him when Ariel Sharon fell into a coma. He had an opportunity to rise to the occasion last year, when Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hamas and Hizbullah, and Hizbullah started raining rockets down on the northern Galilee -- and he muffed it completely. The fact that Olmert demanded the invasion of Lebanon doesn't bother me; that he agreed to a withdrawal, without getting the prisoners back, bothers me a great deal. But what thoroughly disgusts me is that he publicly insisted that it had never been his ultimate goal to get the prisoners back, and that if Israeli citizens believed him when he said otherwise, that they were foolish to do so.
As far as I'm concerned, the man has been in ofice at least a year too long, and I'll be happy to see him go; I'm glad that the Winograd Commission's report has implicated him, along with Defense Minister Amir Peretz and former Chief of Staff Dan Halutz. But would Ms. Livni be a reasonable replacement?
It's a difficult question. As OpinionJournal.com points out, it's by no means certain that Olmert's government will fall -- or that, if he's forced out, that Ms. Livni would be the one to take over. (She likely would not, for example, if new elections are called, or if a vote of no-confidence against the government succeeds; Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party is currently ahead in the polls. For Ms. Livni to take over, Olmert would have to step down -- which he currently seems grimly determined to avoid for as long as possible.)
I'll admit that Ms. Livni's foreign-policy views are a bit too soft for me. (This is consistent with her current role as Foreign Minister; she must be the country's primary diplomat, and she clearly takes that role seriously. I would expect her, therefore, to focus on diplomacy, and to let other ministers deal with other matters, leaving the Prime Minister to decide, for example, if a diplomatic or a military solution is called for. She does this quite well as Foreign Minister; would she be able to let go of that diplomatic single-mindedness as a Prime Minister? There's no way to know for sure, unless she actually gets the job.)
Her background is impressive enough -- a lieutenant in the IDF, a four-year stint with the Mossad, a practicing lawyer, a mother of two, and almost ten years of duty in Israeli parliament and government. (Not bad for a woman who, as of this writing, is not yet 49.) But that doesn't mean much -- Ehud Barak, the most decorated soldier in Israel's history, was a lackluster Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001; he will be remembered chiefly for offering the Palestinians just about everything they asked for, only to watch them reject it.
Israel has had a series of lackluster Prime Ministers, most of whom could do no more than maintain the status quo in Israel's never-ending war with her neighbors. Moving forward requires a true statesman, something that has been lacking in most of Israel's history. Would Ms. Livni rise to that challenge? Again, we won't know unless she gets the chance.
In other news, France has a new President, it seems -- Nicolas Sarkozy has won the election runoff with 53% of the vote. In response, French "youths" are rioting:
Isn't it nice to see the democratic process in action?
Or, as the Ace of Spades snarkily puts it:
The official tally:Ouch!730 cars torched.
592 "people" (youths of magically indeterminate ethnic origin perhaps?) arrested.
28 Police Officers injured.But at least Sarkozy hasn't surrendered.
Which, for France, is saying something.
(In all seriousness, let's hope for some renewed sanity in France -- or some new hope for Parisian can-owners, at least.)
UPDATE: Michael Totten, and his friend and guest-blogger Noah Pollak, have a lot to say in re the Winograd Commission report; and, having traveled extensively in Lebanon at the time, their voices should be heard.
Please note Mr. Pollak's photos also of the recent 100,000-thousand-strong demonstration in Tel Aviv, calling on Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Peretz to step down. (For perspective, that's almost 2% of Israel's entire population, the equivalent of five million American demonstrators.) And don't miss the unforgettable picket-sign, in three words of combined Hebrew, English, and French, at the beginning of this post.
Labels: France, Israel, Livni, Olmert
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
"Welcome to Palestine"
Caroline Glick, an editor of the Jerusalem Post, has written a disturbing new editorial there:
In the world of international diplomacy few issues receive more wall-to-wall support than the notion that it is essential to establish a Palestinian state. Leaders worldwide are so busy speaking of how essential it is for a State of Palestine to be founded that none of them seems to have noticed that it already exists.(emphasis added)
This state was officially founded in the summer of 2005, when Israel removed its military forces and civilian population from the Gaza Strip and so established the first wholly independent Palestinian state in history. Israel's destruction of four Israeli communities in Northern Samaria and curtailment of its military operations in the area set the conditions for statehood in that area as well.
And so it is that as statesmen and activists worldwide loudly proclaim their commitment to establishing the sovereign State of Palestine, they miss the fact that Palestine exists. And it is a nightmare.
She does not provide references, so fact-checking her assertions is difficult. But the assertions themselves -- on what conditions are like among Palestinians today -- are alarming.
Of course, neither [Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi] Livni nor [Israeli Defense Minister Amir] Peretz, who insist that Israel's most urgent priority is to establish Palestine, is willing to recognize that Palestine exists already. They refuse to acknowledge what we already know: Palestine is a terror state and an economic basket case fully funded by the international community. Indeed, over the past year since Hamas won the Palestinian elections, international assistance to the Palestinians has increased dramatically.Read the whole thing. And remember where those Palestinian funds come from.
As Ibrahim Gambari, the UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, noted last Thursday, official Western aid to the Palestinians, not including Arab and Iranian support for Hamas and Fatah, increased by 10 percent in 2006 over 2005, and stood at $1.2 billion.
The Palestinians, who receive more aid per capita than any people on earth, are needy not because they lack funds. They are poor because they prefer poverty, violence and war to prosperity, peace and moderation. So it is that 57 percent of Palestinians support terror attacks against Israel.
(Hat tip: Israpundit.)
Labels: Israel, Palestinians
Sunday, January 28, 2007
On Self-Parody
Greetings to both of my regular readers! (Or to the one regular reader I have left, as the case may be.)
My apologies for the long hiatus; I've been busy with various non-blogging activities ("life", in other words). But perhaps it's time to get back in the saddle again... and where better to start than some ripe low-hanging fruit.
Or perhaps low-hanging fruit is a bit too close for comfort. It seems that an Israeli promotional event is causing widespread panic in southern Lebanon. Specifically, an Israeli local paper, called Ha'Ir, chose to use green helium balloons with their logo on them... and, after they were released, some of them blew across the border into Lebanon.
So now there are Lebanese who are being rushed to the hospital for suspicious symptoms, after inhaling the contents of these helium balloons. Lebanon's government-controlled news agency, al-Manar, is calling them "poisoned balloons" and claiming that they were dispersed by Israeli military aircraft. Some of the balloons have been exploded by the Lebanese army; others have been passed over to Italian UN troops for "examination".
(Thanks to Ha'aretz for the explanation; I don't read Arabic, I'm afraid. There is an English-language version of al-Manar, but it doesn't have the Green Balloon story yet; I'll have to check back again tomorrow.)
There's just so much wrong with this story, it's hard to know where to begin. Israel now stands accused of trying to poison innocent Lebanese... using helium balloons? (Only this past summer, remember, Israel was bombing Hizb'allah strongholds throughout southern Lebanon, and was criticized mercilessly for it. Are we to assume that the Israeli generals have started a "balloons, not bombs" campaign?)
And innocent Lebanese are now supposed to be stupid enough to pick up strange balloons, with Hebrew writing on them, and breathe them? (As my lovely wife points out, Israeli children are cautioned, practically as soon as they learn to walk, not to approach "suspicious objects". But in Lebanon we seem to have adults opening up strange balloons and inhaling the contents, just to see what would happen... and then blaming Israel for the results.)
It almost seems superfluous to point out that, if Israel ever did want to use, uh, helium balloons as an offensive weapon -- well, why on Earth would they be "dispersed" from Israeli military aircraft?
Please, just take a moment and picture this with me. We imagine a two-seater F-16, painted in Israeli colors and armed to the teeth, flying at several hundred miles per hour over the northern Galilee. The warcraft crosses the border into Lebanese airspace. Both pilot and navigator are remaining cool, prepared to react with split-second timing, ready for anything. And then, at a predetermined instant, a target is reached and the pilot says, "bombs away, Shmuel"... at which point the navigator, feeling like an idiot, releases several dozen green helium balloons. The balloons float serenely above the Lebanese landscape while the F-16 makes its getaway. Perhaps a half-hour later, a Lebanese couple, out for a stroll, look up; the woman says, "Look, Mahmoud, what do you suppose that is?" Mahmoud replies, "I don't know, it looks like some sort of strange green balloon with Hebrew writing on it. Let's pop it and take a sniff."
Unbelievable. Does the need to blame Israel know any bounds at all?
I do hope that Israelis exhibit their usual sense of humor about this. I could easily imagine an Israeli in a clown outfit, with a package of green balloons and a tank of helium and nothing better to do on his day off, driving up to the Lebanese border and having fun. ("You want helium balloons? I'll show you some helium balloons!")
UPDATE: A day later, the Green Balloons story still does not appear on the English-language al-Manar site. The original story, datelined January 27 2007, still appears on the Arabic-language site. A quick search on Google News finds 22 articles on the subject, including this Jerusalem Post article:
Balloons drifting from Israel into southern Lebanon sparked a panic among villagers over the weekend amid rumors they were filled with poison gas. The balloons were apparently part of an advertising campaign by a newspaper in northern Israel.I'd suggest "paranoia" as a likely diagnosis, Doctor.
Results of tests conducted by UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon showed the balloons did not contain any dangerous gases, a Lebanese security official said Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give statements to the media.
. . .
After the balloons were first discovered Saturday in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh, the Lebanese army issued a statement warning residents not to touch them, pending an investigation. Pictures of the green, orange and black balloons were splashed across newspapers over the weekend and on Monday.
The state-run National News Agency and the Al-Manar TV channel of the Hizbullah guerrilla group claimed the balloons contained toxic gas and had been dropped by Israeli military aircraft, further stoking public fears.
At least five people were hospitalized in southern Lebanon complaining of nausea, dizziness and low blood pressure following contact with the balloons, Lebanese newspaper reports and hospital officials said.
Khalil Malli, a resident of Nabatiyeh, was the first to discover the balloons, finding a bunch tied together with ribbon in his backyard. He told Lebanese media that a "suspicious smell" emanated from them and when he spotted the Hebrew writing he alerted police and journalists in the area.
Not long after, Malli and other members of his family began feeling lightheaded and nauseous and were taken to a hospital for treatment.
Rana Jouni, a journalist in southern Lebanon, reported feeling the same symptoms after a visit to the Malli home during which she took pictures of the balloons. She reported the same suspicious smell.
"About a half an hour after taking the pictures I began feeling dizzy and out of breath. Soon I couldn't breathe and then I felt my arms become numb," she told The Associated Press Monday from her bed at the Najda al-Shaabiya hospital in Nabatiyeh where she was admitted Saturday.
Dr. Samer Suleiman, an intensive care doctor at the hospital, said that although Jouni and the other patients complained of symptoms that are consistent with exposure to toxic gases, blood and urine tests did not reveal exposure to such gases.
"We have no explanation for it," Suleiman said of the contradiction between the patients' symptoms and test results.
By way of contrast, this much shorter article appeared at India e-news:
Similar reports can be found at al-Jazeera and the UAE's Gulf News. The latter is an editorial, and it recommends that the UN deal "firmly" with Israel for having "dropped" balloons that were "filled with poisonous gas". (I have to wonder -- can the Lebanese take any of this seriously? They had firm evidence, not six months ago, of just how deadly the Israeli military can be when it wants to be, against the targets it considers important. And now we're supposed to believe that the IDF is playing games with balloons?)Israel planes dump 'suspicious green balloons' on Lebanon
Israeli planes violated Lebanese airspace and dumped green balloons over the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanese security sources said. Lebanese troops cordoned off the area around the coast of Tyre Saturday and prevented people from touching the 'suspicious balloons' after reports indicated that some people were poisoned when they did.
According to sources, similar green balloons were dropped over the market town of Nabatiyeh, 54 km south of here.
Five people suffering from nausea and dizziness were brought into hospital after they touched the 'suspicious green balloons', said a hospital source.
Google News gave the al-Jazeera article top billing, by the way. (Thanks, guys.)
Labels: humor, Israel, Lebanon
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Ahmadinejad's Feelings Get Hurt
Poor baby... he has a lot of fun openly advocating that Israel be wiped off the map, but he can't stand it when Israel answers him:
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Iran, whose president has vowed to wipe Israel off the map, complained to the United Nations on Wednesday that the Jewish state was repeatedly threatening to bomb it.Israel's "threats" have, in fact, been quite mild, and mostly have been calls for the international community to take Iran seriously. (Iran is reading between the lines here, interpreting statements by Israeli officials as a direct threat. There's nothing wrong with that, actually; Iran has not explicitly said it would be the one to wipe Israel off the map, although it's certainly been strongly implied... so we've all been reading between the lines too.)
The threats were "matters of extreme gravity" and the U.N. Security Council should condemn them and demand that Israel "cease and desist immediately from the threat of the use of force against members of the United Nations," Iranian U.N. Ambassador Javad Zarif said.
His comments came in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan dated Nov. 10 and circulated at the United Nations on Wednesday.
Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter, has been aggressively pursuing a nuclear program that it says is meant only to produce electric power.
But Western powers and Israel, which is itself widely believed to be a nuclear power, insist the activities are a cover for making nuclear bombs.
Iran's activities have prompted speculation that Israel might launch preemptive strikes to destroy its nuclear facilities, as it did in Iraq in 1981 when it bombed a reactor at Osiraq.
The speculation increased after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year threatened to "wipe Israel off the map," a statement Iranian officials have argued was not a threat.
Israel has fueled the speculation with a series of "unlawful and dangerous threats," Zarif said.
His letter cited several examples. Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh said just last Friday that a preemptive strike on Iran was possible as "a last resort," Zarif's letter said. "But even the last resort is sometimes the only resort," he quoted Sneh as saying.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Oct. 19 that Iran would have "a price to pay" for continuing its nuclear programs and Iranians "have to be afraid" of what Israel might do, according to Zarif's letter.
Similarly, Zarif said that Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz said on Jan. 21, "We are preparing for military action to stop Iran's nuclear program."
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, baby.
I can only imagine how Iran would react if Israel escalated -- by doing exactly what Iran has been doing, in reverse. For example, what if Israel held a worldwide conference, widely attended, on the subject of "Imagine A World Without Iran". What if Israel started denying that the Iranian religious revolution, and the corruption of the Shah's regime that preceded it, had ever happened. (That's actually quite mild too, compared with the Holocaust-denying fetish that Ahmadinejad proudly displays whenever he gets the chance.)
And just in case anyone's in doubt here, Iran has been fighting low-level proxy battles with Israel for years, using the Hizbullah terrorist organization to do its dirty work. A good many Israelis have died as a direct result of Iranian actions. By contrast, Israel has done nothing to Iran -- nothing whatsoever -- apart from a few speeches of protest in the UN.
This would be pretty funny, if not for the danger that people will actually take Iran's UN complaints seriously. (Ironically, Israel -- which has more cause to distrust the UN than practically anybody -- has fallen into that trap frequently, and taken the UN far too seriously. Let's hope for better this time.)
By the way, my hat's off to Reuters, who have displayed unusual candor (for them). Not only do they point out that Iran's complaints are ridiculous in the face of Ahmadinejad's repeated Holocaust-denying and Israel-wiping comments; they also note that Iran, being the world's fourth-largest oil exporter, can hardly claim to be developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes.
Friday, November 10, 2006
The Media on Gaza
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Thursday, September 07, 2006
A Tale Of Two Planes
Iran's sabre-rattling continues, with the recent announcement of its first locally-produced fighter-bomber, the Saegheh:
Iran deployed its first locally-manufactured fighter bomber plane on Wednesday during large-scale military exercises, state-run television reported.Sounds pretty scary, if you believe it. (Apologies for the photo of the scale model; it's all I could find.)
"The bomber Saegheh or lightening is similar to (the American) F-18 but more powerful. It was designed, optimised and improved by Iranian experts," the report said.
. . .
During manoeuvres dubbed "The Blow of Zolfaghar," which began in August 19, Iran test fired short range surface-to-surface, sub-to-surface missiles, new air defence system and laser bombs.
Iran's military test-fired a series of missiles during large-scale war games in the Persian Gulf in March and April, including a missile it claimed was not detectable by radar that can use multiple warheads to hit several targets simultaneously.
Thanks to VodkaPundit for pointing to this news flash. It's worth mentioning that VP's readers seem more than knowledgeable about such matters, and they're not impressed. Joe Katzman, for example, comments:
The new jet is a basically modified F-5, which was a 1960s design. Iran had and still has quite a few of them. Key systems like its radar and avionics are undiscussed, but are very unlikely to even reach the levels of the older F/A-18Cs flown by the Marines, let alone the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets. I'd also bet strongly that its engines leave it underpowered. Not to mention the question of its armament, which is very unlikely to include modern-caliber missiles. Color me deeply unimpressed.Indeed. Other commenters note that Iran seemingly has resources to burn for designing and building all their latest weapons systems, but they can't build a 1960s-era oil refinery -- which is why they still export crude oil and import gasoline. Still other commenters speculate on how this untested aircraft would fare against the F-22 Raptor, for example.
Myself, I wonder how this super-duper Saegheh fighter will fare against planes like this, and the expertise of the men flying it:
Labels: Iran, Israel, military matters, photos
The Blockade Ended... And For What?
This makes no sense to me:
JERUSALEM -- Israel's government said Wednesday that it would end its air and maritime blockade of Lebanon on Thursday to make way for an international force that is to deploy as part of a cease-fire that ended the 34-day conflict.What, exactly, has changed, to assure Israel that the UN will do anything to prevent arms from reaching Hizballah? These are the "international forces" that are not allowed to use force except to defend themselves, right?
Israel's decision came after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan notified its leaders that the international forces were ready to take positions at Lebanon's airports and along the coast, according to a statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Israeli officials said those assurances convinced them that Israel could ease its restrictions on the arrival and departure of ships and airplanes, an embargo it has said was aimed at preventing arms from reaching fighters of the Islamic militant Hezbollah movement.
Even less comprehensible:
Since the cease-fire took effect Aug. 14, Israel has approved a few ships and flights despite the blockade, its officials said. But the embargo still cost the economy more than $20 million a day, the Lebanese government said.Well, that's gratitude for you.
Meanwhile, Lebanon toughened its stance on the two Israeli soldiers whose capture by Hezbollah helped trigger the war. The cease-fire agreement called for the unconditional release of the Israeli soldiers. But on Wednesday, the Lebanese foreign minister said the Israelis would be freed only if the two sides negotiated a prisoner swap.
(It's also a prime example of the reverse of "Sharonism" -- that Israel must never be permitted to enjoy a victory in the field, or the fruits thereof, regardless of who she is fighting... and all this in the name of peace. Call it Olmertism.)
Frankly, I do not understand why the Lebanese government is now willing to speak on behalf of the Hizballah kidnappers. But if they are, then they should be treated as such.
Clearly, Prime Minister Olmert's government does not have the intestinal fortitude to see this thing through. I begin to wonder if Israel will ever get her kidnapped soldiers back.
Labels: Hizbullah, Israel, Lebanon
