Tag Archives: Benjamin Netanyahu

It’s not Iran crossing the red line. It’s Israel.

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Yesterday, Robert Wright wrote a piece called “AIPAC’s Push Toward War” for The Atlantic. In it, he notes:

Late last week, amid little fanfare, Senators Joseph Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, and Robert Casey introduced a resolution that would move America further down the path toward war with Iran.

The good news is that the resolution hasn’t been universally embraced in the Senate. As Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports, the resolution has “provoked jitters among Democrats anxious over the specter of war.” The bad news is that, as Kampeas also reports, “AIPAC is expected to make the resolution an ‘ask’ in three weeks when up to 10,000 activists culminate its annual conference with a day of Capitol Hill lobbying.”

In standard media accounts, the resolution is being described as an attempt to move the “red line”–the line that, if crossed by Iran, could trigger a US military strike. The Obama administration has said that what’s unacceptable is for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. This resolution speaks instead of a “nuclear weaponscapability.” In other words, Iran shouldn’t be allowed to get to a point where, should it decide to produce a nuclear weapon, it would have the wherewithal to do so.

At what point are we, as Americans, allowed to stand up and say what needs to be said: It is Israel, not Iran, that presents the greatest danger to the Middle East right now. Their government is unpredictable; it is a coalition government aligned with some truly despicable, racist warmongers (hello, Avigdor Lieberman and Danny Ayalon); and its perpetual saber-rattling, deceptions, lies, and misdirection has played a large role in making the Middle East a constantly volatile region.

There are other provocations, to be sure — most notably the Arab Spring, despotic dictators clinging to power, and so forth. Then, perhaps most obviously, there is Iran itself, whose leader’s anti-Semitic rants and Holocaust denials are certainly cause for concern. But another preemptive strike on a Middle Eastern country based on flimsy evidence? Not only does this sound familiar, but the advocacy for it is led by the same neocons who started us off on our glorious path in Iraq. That these people are still afforded even the tiniest sliver of credibility is testament to our woeful media’s inability to stand up for facts, as well a searing condemnation of the American public’s ever-dwindling attention spans.

Let’s please, please, not make another mistake. Constant war is not the answer.

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These thoughts don’t fit together

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The following two snippets aren’t necessarily related, but they’ve been percolating in my mind for a few days now, so I thought I’d include a little of each.

1) Buy Andrew Bacevich’s book Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War. Bacevich is currently a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and was formerly a colonel in the U.S. Army. Washington Rules is a deeply insightful critique of what Dwight Eisenhower so presciently labeled the “military-industrial complex.”

“The Washington rules” of the title, Bacevich explains in his introduction, “were forged at a moment when American influence and power were approaching their acme. That moment has now passed.” What follows is a brilliant historical overview of the American drift from moderate isolationism to strident interventionism. Bacevich, like many on the disaffected left, fears perpetual war. Entrenched interests in both the public and private sectors never cease to make use of fear-mongering tactics to frighten a restive population into acquiescence. This is how the CIA and Strategic Air Command, two institutions whose central role in establishing American militarism is thoroughly dissected in Washington Rules, managed to upend decades upon decades of American reluctance to flex its muscles in the global arena.

It is also how the United States finds itself enmeshed in three simultaneous wars right now. The legacy of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden (and yes, their legacies are forever linked) is not simply the overreaction, the blind rage that led the United States into endless wars against unseen enemies with unclear objectives, all accompanied by the impossibility of victory. More enduring still is the zombie-like, unquestioning deference with which American citizens approach their warrior-leaders. Bush accomplished in eight years what the decades-long Cold War never could: permanent war, it seems, has become the new norm. Civil liberties are but a noble casualty along the way.

All one needs to do to confirm this sudden, collective disavowal of the pursuit of peace is to witness the nearly inaudible protest to President Barack Obama’s decision to intervene in the Libyan revolution. Where the war in Iraq invited some (albeit relatively muted, especially in light of the still-heightened emotions following September 11) immediate condemnation, our Libyan incursion barely raised eyebrows. Osama bin Laden may be dead, but the terror attacks he masterminded laid bare an uncomfortable truth: it takes very little to galvanize the American public in support of a perceived cause, however dubious the rationale and however vague the endgame.

Washington Rules was published in 2010, before the Jasmine Revolution and before today, when the key provisions of the Patriot Act that authorize controversial surveillance techniques were renewed for four years by Congress, despite the warnings of two U.S. senators that the bill is being interpreted in very dangerous ways. One can only imagine the blistering new foreword Bacevich could pen now.

2) Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress this week was chock-full of half-truths, prevarications, and outright lies. In fact, his entire visit to the States was an exercise in exaggeration and hyperbole, as the reaction he provoked following Obama’s speech on the Middle East was completely unwarranted. Obama stated that Israeli-Palestinian borders must be based on the 1967 lines, something every American and Israeli leader has known for years. (This includes Netanyahu himself as recently as six months ago.)

Ultimately, Netanyahu is a coward, and his intransigence will only harm Israel in the long run. What I found far more disturbing was the appalling sycophancy displayed by the United States Congress, which was roused to twenty-nine standing ovations, including once — inexplicably — that immediately followed Netanyahu’s statement that Israel was not occupying Palestinian land.

As Glenn Greenwald of Salon has demonstrated on many occasions, American politicians’ obsequiousness to the Israeli right-wing knows no bounds. This absurd rubber-stamping (not to mention heavy financing) of what is in many ways a racist regime owes in large part to the enormous influence of the Israel lobby (yes, the one so strongly debated following the eponymous book by Walt and Mearsheimer).

But a word of caution may be in order. As any sane person who follows Middle Eastern politics with even a passing interest knows, yes, the Israel lobby is indeed a powerful force, perhaps the most influential outside group (especially in proportion to its immediate constituency, American Jews) affecting American politics today. One of the hallmarks of this lobby is to stifle any critique of Israel, no matter how thoughtful or well-reasoned, by using the threat of being branded an anti-Semite as a deterrent.

Of course, anti-Semitism does exist, and whether it’s John Galliano or Lars von Trier spouting racist ideas in public, it’s wrong, always. But wielding the “anti-Semite” label as a baton in order to smother dissent is not just wrong, it’s undemocratic. The dilemma, then, lies in criticizing the lobby itself. Care must be taken to avoid being perceived as an adherent of the age-old, harebrained conspiracy theories that “Jews control the media,” “Jews control the government,” and so on. They do not. But they do, unlike many underrepresented minority groups in the U.S., exert enormous influence on American policy. To acknowledge this fact is not to exhibit anti-Semitism; it simply proves one has eyes and ears.

A crucial distinction is in order, then. The Israel lobby exists, and it is powerful. But it is not synonymous with Judaism, nor even American Judaism. AIPAC, while purporting to act on behalf of both American Jews and the state of Israel, in reality is little more than a well-connected conduit between the most radically right-wing voices in both camps and the United States government. So while many are understandably reluctant to give voice to their misgivings about the Israel lobby for fear of conflation with actual anti-Semites, it is vital to differentiate between criticism of Israeli policies and hatred of a race. It is also important to remember that AIPAC, in portraying itself as the public mouthpiece of Jews in both the U.S. and Israel, is actually doing both nations a huge disservice in its unquestioning support of continually failing policies. It is only when reasoned criticism becomes the norm that the United States and Israel will both be able to enact sensible policies with regard to the Holy Land.

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A rant, following the good news from Palestine

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The below was taken from an email I sent earlier today and has been slightly edited for this blog:

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Today, The New York Times is reporting that Fatah, the Palestinian government in the West Bank, and Hamas, the government in Gaza, have announced a plan for a reunified government and are planning elections within a year.

This is huge news. For one, the West Bank is looking more and more like a stable economy and quasi-nation and is, in fact, planning to declare itself a sovereign state in September in the UN. By joining with Hamas, they can lend legitimacy to the idea that the Palestinian people finally speak with one voice, as opposed to being divided between two mutually hostile governments. This is especially important in peace negotiations with Israel, since one of the principal complaints by pro-Israel supporters is that they don’t have anyone to negotiate with that represents all Palestinians.

So you’d think Israel would welcome this news of reunification. But no. Here’s the NYT quote:

While the deal, reached after secret Egyptian-brokered talks, promised a potentially historic reconciliation for the Palestinians, Israel warned that a formal agreement would spell the end of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

In a televised address on Wednesday, even before the Fatah-Hamas press conference, the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, sent a stern warning to the Palestinian Authority president and Fatah chief, Mahmoud Abbas.

“The Palestinian Authority has to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding, “Peace with both of them is impossible, because Hamas aspires to destroy the state of Israel and says so openly.”

The choice, he said, was in the authority’s hands.

So now, after years of claiming it didn’t want to negotiate because Palestine was divided, Israel now threatens to cut off peace negotiations as soon as they announce reunification. The irony is unreal. Every single time Palestinian leadership concedes something in negotiations that Israel claims was necessary, it brings up something new to hold against them. They’re in the process of a perpetual “peace process” so they can continue siphoning off land through “settlements” until there’s nothing left. (Imagine negotiating with someone else over how much cake to eat, but as you’re negotiating they’re eating it piece by piece. Israel’s been doing this for 43 years.)

One last point: “Asked why the deadlocked talks had come back to life, Mr. Nounou said, “The will was there for everyone.” He also credited the new mediators from Egypt, put in place after that country’s revolution, with “an exemplary performance,” including weeks of courtship at private meetings with each side before they met face to face with each other for the first time today” (bold font mine).

Yet another reason US support of dictators in the Middle East serves no one’s best interests, and in fact inhibits real progress. Fatah and Hamas have been at odds for years; and yet two months after the Egyptian revolution, they’re announcing a deal. This is how democracy works, and it’s why Israel, far from being our “only democratic ally in the Middle East,” is in fact inhibiting democracy all across the region, by handcuffing US foreign policy in incredibly damaging ways.

Rant over.
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Updated (11:30 PM 4/27): In the above portion of this post, I stated: “So now, after years of claiming it didn’t want to negotiate because Palestine was divided, Israel now threatens to cut off peace negotiations as soon as they announce reunification.” Documentation is provided below:
The dozens of Israelis we interviewed, whether they were members of the Knesset, academics, or local entrepreneurs, all communicated a depressing lack of hope about the prospects for a peace settlement. Their main explanation for this failure was that the Palestinian leadership was divided between Fatah in the West Bank and the “terrorist group” Hamas in Gaza. As one Knesset member put it, “We simply do not have a viable political partner in peace.”
Israelis and Palestinians each placed the onus for fruitful peace negotiations on the other side Sunday, with Benjamin Netanyahu saying Israel needed a “real partner” for peace, and Saeb Erekat warning that the upcoming talks were a test for the Jewish state, dpa reported.Commenting on the proposed negotiations, announced Friday by the US and the EU, Netanyahu told his cabinet Sunday morning that the talks required both sides to take the necessary steps, “and not just the Israelis side and not just the Palestinian side.”

“If we find that we have a genuine partner on the Palestinian side, an honest and serious negotiating partner … if we find such a partner, we can soon reach a historic peace agreement between the two peoples,” he said at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.

Surely the place for setting out stalls is precisely at the negotiating table away from the glare of the media? Israel has been sitting at that table for 21 months, waiting for a negotiating partner to arrive at the other side.

#35: Start-Up Nation

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In Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, authors Dan Senor and Saul Singer attempt to unravel “where [Israel’s] entrepreneurial energy comes from, where it’s going, how to sustain it, and how other countries can learn from the quintessential start-up nation.” Their goal is a noble one, and bolstered by impressive stats, such as this one: “In 2008, per capita venture capital investments in Israel were 2.5 times greater than in the United States, more than 30 times greater than in Europe, 80 times greater than in China, and 350 times greater than in India.”

The authors, in searching for the values and impulses most influential in producing Israel’s creative instincts, found an unlikely source: the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). “In the Israeli military,” they write, “there is a tendency to treat all performance — both successful and unsuccessful — in training and simulations, and sometimes even in battle, as value-neutral. So long as the risk was taken intelligently, and not recklessly, there is something to be learned.” Throughout their research, Senor and Singer return time and again to this same explanation, or some variant, to elaborate on the unique brand of innovation endemic in Israeli society.

What to internationals smacks of brazen effrontery is, at least according to the authors, merely chutzpah, that term so ubiquitous in descriptions of the Jewish people and so often bewildering to those unfamiliar with its meaning. “An outsider would see chutzpah everywhere in Israel: in the way university students speak with their professors, employees challenge their bosses, sergeants question their generals, and clerks second-guess government ministers.” As an American, this disregard for hierarchy has a certain populist appeal, especially as the much-maligned “24-hour news cycle” has helped the government metastasize into an especially cantankerous form of reality television in which competence plays second fiddle to inflammatory rhetoric.

On the other hand, at times the reasons given for Israel’s high growth look suspiciously more nationalistic than realistic. In one passage, an IDF major boasts, “If a terrorist infiltrates [an] area, there’s a company commander whose name is on it. Tell me how many twenty-three-year-olds elsewhere in the world live with that kind of pressure.” Indeed, he has a point. And yet one cannot help but notice that “the most moral army in the world” (as proclaimed by defense minister, and former prime minister, Ehud Barak) has had numerous recent run-ins leading to international condemnation (and possible criminal prosecution). Is this related to the unusually emphatic devolution of autonomy in the military? Perhaps this cannot be answered; and yet this question is left wholly unaddressed, even as the authors continually cite this very same individuality as a boon to the Israeli economy.

Start-Up Nation is a book worth reading, if for no other reason than the generous access afforded the authors by the likes of Israeli president Shimon Peres, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and even American general David Petraeus. The authors’ perspective is one of nearly-unbridled enthusiasm, owing to the vibrant nature of Israel’s start-up scene and the continuing promulgation of its inventive spirit. In this latter endeavor, Dan Senor and Saul Singer join the chaotic Israeli chorus that so deftly mixes fierce national pride with a heaping helping of chutzpah. If theirs is an accurate prognostication, the best has yet to emerge from Israel.