Concern over Anti-Semitism?

Lithuania Issues Warrant for Arrest of Former Yad V’shem Director. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Received with Honor by Current Director at the Yad V’Shem Memorial Museum.

The criticism of Israeli policy, however well deserved, is vilified by “friends of Israel” as a pernicious form of anti Semitism. This kind of attack is a major element in the desperate strategy of the pro-Israel forces to delegitimize any criticism of Israel. The threat of being accused of anti-Semitism by powerful forces in the Jewish community is a highly effective weapon. One could conclude, under the impression of this state of affairs, that Israel really cares about anti-Semitism. It is certainly the declared goal of Israel to spearhead the fight against anti-Semitism whenever it rears it ugly head.

WANTED: Dr. Yitshak Arad by the Government of Lithuania

Yitshak Arad (aged 81) is about as close as you can get to being an Israeli legend. Trapped behind German lines in Lithuania as a teen- ager, he became a decorated fighter in the partisans. After the war, he made his way to Israel, had an impressive military career in the IDF, retiring as a brigadier-general and then went on to a highly distinguished academic career. He was appointed director of Yad V’shem, and served for more than twenty years (1972-1993).

The State Prosecutor in Lithuanian wants to interrogate Yitshak Arad, under suspicion of murder. The reason is that Arad, has written openly and proudly of his contribution as a partisan to the liquidation of several ranking Lithuanian Nazi collaborators. Lithuania was unique in that most of the Jews murdered in that country were victims of Lithuanian authorities. The Lithuanian government brazenly dared to use diplomatic channels to approach Israel some five months ago in an effort to get their hands on Arad.

A Most Dignified Welcome for a Most Dignified Guest

The Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Petras Vaitiekunas was in Israel last week and met with the President, Shimon Peres and the Foreign Minister, Tsipi Livneh. Relations between Lithuania, a member of the EU, and Israel seem just fine, though the very same relations served a few months back as the official conduit for the certified, still outstanding request by the Chief Prosecutor in Lithuania to the Israel Ministry of Justice. The Lithuanian authorities just want to ask Mr. Arad some questions about the deceased Lithuanian fascist collaborators. It would not be wise for Mr. Arad to contemplate a visit to Vilnius.
Viatiekunas (of course) visited Yad V’Shem, where the current Director, Avner Shalev, received him with honor and respect. Shalev did deliver into the Ambassador’s hands a rather strange note complaining that the Lithuanian government has not ended the investigation against Arad. The note also suggests that the Lithuanians are guilty of rewriting history. The hypocritical Israeli government coddles an anti-Semitic regime in Vilnius and pawns its official representative on to the Yad V’shem bureaucracy. The government sidesteps the issue and lets the Holocaust Memorial beg for the cancellation of the outrageous threat to Arad. But the diplomatic niceties will not help. The ongoing proceedings against Arad are based on Holocaust denial and smack of Holocaust renewal. And official Israel falls silent.

This friendship between the anti-Semitic Lithuanian government and Israel which pretends concern for Jewish honor is food for thought. The name of the Israeli game is, sadly enough, to smear your critics as anti-Semites while you embrace dangerous anti-Semites from Vilnius.

(See IHT, February 27, 2008 and Anshel Feffer, Ha’aretz, February 27, 2008. Ha’aretz devoted eight lines on page six to the meeting in Yad V’shem.)

All Is Not Quiet on the Eastern Front

From the desk of Reuven Kaminer

All Is Not Quiet on the Eastern Front

On the face of it, there is no immediate danger of a clash with Iran over its nuclear development project. The US military seems to have convinced the political echelon that the United States is simply unable to handle a third war, at this stage. This tactical input created the political basis for the shift in US policy in the Geneva talks. Still, there are very powerful forces in the US administration who do not like the idea of waiting around until it might be even more difficult to get an attack off the ground. These forces will try to exploit the to-be-expected difficulties in the Geneva talks as evidence to the effect that Teheran is not getting the message. When the attempt to ratchet up economic sanctions will prove ineffective, as it must in the given conditions, the hawks will be able to argue that it is time to proceed, quickly but surely, to the final option on the table. Even with the Geneva gambit, the basic line of the US administration (with Obama in tow) is that armed intervention would be legally and morally justified, because Iran – even without actually building the bomb - is a new “ticking bomb” in the region. The more aggressive the forces pushing for war in Washington, the deeper their coordination with Israel.

Israel Has Plenty of Room to Maneuver and to Manipulate

Nicholas Kristof (NYT, July 24, 2008) got it exactly right when he suggested that Obama was not doing Israel any favor by swallowing his host’s line on the Iranian crisis. Kristof criticized Obama for missing the critical issue: Israel is contemplating doing “something crazy”, which would include using all its resources and connections to drag the US into a full scale confrontation with Iran.

The prevailing, consensual anti-Iranian discourse creates political space for Israeli maneuvering. This discourse suggests that Israel, even if it ostensibly acts alone, can claim justifiably that it is implementing the principles and the logic of US policy. Israel is an expert in the limitless ways to increase tension in the region and many of these include threats to the Iranian interests. If the US really wants to discourage Israeli military initiatives against Iran, it is clearly insufficient for Washington to express mere unease and hesitation regarding an Israeli air strike. The dark threat of a potential Israeli strike will hover over the region until the US clearly announces that if it is not attacked, it would not intervene by military threat or action, even if Israel pushes the region to the boiling point. Given the level of ambivalence in Washington, Israel has sufficient grounds to assume that, even if the US is displeased (or apparently displeased), it would be forced to come to the aid of its faithful ally. The present posture in Washington is such that the US would not stand on the sideline.

Israel’s Agenda

There is no end of signs that the idea of an Israeli strike is being carefully weighed. General Mullen felt it necessary to repeat, just last week, an earlier warning on the danger of such a strike, for the second time this month. Olmert explained to Obama that time is running out since the Russians are going to upgrade the Iranian air defense system by the end of the year Defense Minister Barak and MK Mofaz, who holds a portfolio named Strategic Coordination with the US, held talks in Washington this week. Mofaz is the darling of the oil speculators for his constant flow of declarations that war is inevitable. This Saturday, MK Hanegbi, chair of the powerful Foreign Affairs and Security Knesset Committee, called for the establishment of a national unity government to deal with the Iranian crisis.

In this respect, it is practically a civic duty to carefully read the wild ranting and raving of Israeli historian, Professor Benny Morris. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/opinion/18morris.html?th&emc=th For Morris, it is the old story of good versus evil, and since a showdown is inevitable, better to bomb now and prepare the nukes, right away, for a necessary second strike. The really sad thing is that these Strangelovish illusions, which are based on the insatiable Israeli demand for absolute Israeli military superiority at all costs, are an integral element in Israel’s current security considerations.

Against Demonization of the Other Side

Many of my readers share with me a decided lack of enthusiasm for the policies and the rhetoric of Ahmadinajad and his circle. Without in any way ignoring the harm and the danger of some of the declarations coming out of Teheran, we must also admit that the Israeli propaganda is very adept at converting whosoever is its current adversary into a “new Hitler”. It should be recalled that both Abdul Nasser and Yassir Arafat were cast in the Hitler role, though their real core positions did not justify such a designation. In truth, their basic political platform created ample room for rational political responses which could have defused “inevitable” clashes. Nasrallah figures, with Ahmadinajad, as the current, not to be appeased, enemy. But there are abundant signs that Nasrallah knows how to do business responsibly and there is good reason to believe that the current leadership in Iran could be influenced by serious and thoughtful politics. It would certainly be helpful if the “rational” West offered total regional disarmament of all weapons of mass destruction (including Israel’s stockpile) to the “irrational and inscrutable” Iranian leadership. Perhaps, the Iranian leadership has cause to ask its critics as to why they consider it is perfectly acceptable that Israel and Pakistan are legitimate members of the nuclear club and why Iran must accept an inferior status. Even if the US and its allies are not ready for anything as fair and logical as regional disarmament, other sets of realistic and patient policies based on mutual respect could go a long way to prevent tensions from getting dangerously out of hand.

Barak In Washington

The month started with Mike Mullen’s warnings about the danger from an irresponsible Israeli air strike. But Barak was not in DC yesterday to relieve this anxiety. He made it clear that Israel continued to demand a sense of urgency and opposed any relaxation of tensions. Barack Obama had told friends that his impression from talks in Israel was that it had no faith in the sanctions track. The LA Times (July 30, 2008) summed it up adequately:

“Bush administration officials reassured Israel’s defense minister this week that the United States has not abandoned all possibility of a military attack on Iran, despite widespread Israeli concern that Washington has begun softening its position toward Tehran.”

Washington is clearly apologetic regarding its own policies and refusing to reign in its Israeli ally. An Israeli strike at Iran is very much on the table.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Subsumed

The meeting in Annapolis last month marks the transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a component of the battle for hegemony in the Middle East between the United States and Iran. Of course, the dynamics attending the 100 year struggle between Israel and the Palestinians are still very much in evidence. But the main direction of development is shaped, more and more by the larger conflict.

As in the Iraq crisis, the United States prepares to use military force to prevent further political-economic deterioration in its regional and international status. However, many well informed observers stress the low probability of armed United States intervention against Iran. There is indeed no shortage of clearly recognizable, serious considerations against the military option against Iran. These should indeed, by all logic force the Bush government to give up on the idea of another military expedition in the Gulf.

However, the political fall out of the Iraq fiasco has not prevented Bush from escalating new threats against Iran, including two major statements on the danger of a third world war, even an atomic one, to save Israel. Of course, the recent “intelligence” to the effect that Iran had scuttled its nuclear weapon program as far back as 2003 has further complicated matters for those pursuing a military option. But given the will to go to war with Iran, the obstacles are in no way decisive.
The Bush administrations wants a show down with Iran, but knows that such a war would be, to say the least, highly unpopular in the United States. But if it is a bit crude to attack Iran directly, variations and combinations that could lead to the same result must be examined. Even the Bush people can figure out that by including Israel’s fate in the equation, this would weaken considerably the reservations in the US public and in congress regarding a clash with Iran. If Bush wants to break out of relative isolation on the Iran issue, his best bet is to create a situation wherein the confrontation with Iran begins as, or is perceived as, an Israeli-Iranian confrontation.

In the past, the Democratic party leadership had no choice but to reflect rank and file pressure against US policy in Iraq. There exists, of course, a great deal of suspicion regarding Bush’s motives and plans in Iran. But Bush might finesse that opposition by involving Israel and “its security” in the coming hostilities. It will be very hard for the current Democratic leadership to oppose aggressive actions against Iran if they are sugarcoated as necessary to Israel’s security or even its very existence.

The manipulations required to structure a military confrontation with Iran as one between Israel and Iran are a relatively simple matter. There is no need to resort to work on a complicated conspiracy because all the makings of a new war are all out in the open. Israel will not fail to cooperate in getting an anti-Iranian operation off the ground for the simple reason that it has been campaigning energetically for such an operation since the debacle last summer in Lebanon. Every minister and general is on record supporting an attack on Teheran; the only disagreements are tactical. There are no questions as to “if” but there are natural shades of opinion on how and when. One of the central questions being examined is whether Israel can work out a joint activity with the US administration that involves the US coming to the aid of its faithful ally, embattled as it were against the combined forces of terrorism engulfing the region. Of course, there are too many factors involved to suggest that we can predetermine the path of events. The comment regarding the possibility of US-Israeli collusion is offered against unwarranted certainty that Bush has run out of means to further his aggressive goals.

Any of the numerous potential flash points for conflagration between pro-Iranian forces and the Israeli army provide ample opportunities to get things moving. Burgeoning hostilities between the proxies, Israel on one hand and Hamas, Hezbollah or Syria on the other hand would place Israel in the line of “indirect” Iranian fire. , The resulting tensions would enable Bush – even Bush – to sell war with the Iranians as an absolute necessity for Israeli survival. The Israelis face “pro-Iranian” formations in three fronts: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Syrians, in three areas, on the Golan, in Lebanon and along the Syrian-Lebanese border. There is no shortage of opportunities for large scale provocation, there is no shortage of room for major maneuvers that can create real threats to Iranian allies. Normal, stable circumstances in the region are the exception, the situation looks like a war waiting to happen. And Israel, will not have to stand alone.

Do Not Take This Pledge Card to the Store
Bertold Brecht once remarked that rulers unappreciated by their constituencies may on occasion have no alternative but to disperse the people. The Annapolis network has a new kind of problem. The Abu Mazen group has, via U.S. sponsorship, earned the right to receive a considerable flow of arms and funds. It has a problem, though. Abu Mazen does not have the political constituency or the territorial integrity necessary to absorb the gifts that he has earned by joining the Annapolis network.

The international community, on some sort of guilt trip, after the empty antics at Annapolis, is lining up in Paris at a donors conference. An impressive pile of pledge cards accumulates on the table. The investment sums being promised are impressive. But each card has some small print on it which says that the commitment is subject to on the ground conditions permitting its effective implementation. But Palestine, under the Hamas regime in Gaza and under the non-regime of Abu Mazen, has in the given political conditions close to zero capacity to absorb and enjoy serious growth oriented economic investments. The “international community” under U.S. hegemony does not want to invest in Gaza and cannot invest in the West Bank which is totally controlled by Israeli military, economic, logistic and geographic domination. In addition to the IDF, the relatively small region is criss-crossed by some 300 Israeli settlements, all of which fervently oppose any serious constructive activity on behalf of the Palestinians.

Thus, the donors who refuse to invest in Gaza because that would be aid to “terrorists” are unable to invest in the West Bank because of the political vacuum and the suffocating Israeli presence.
But do not despair. Condeleeza Rice has informed us that George Bush is coming to the region next month to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. She explained, somewhat mysteriously, that Bush has special ways of solving problem.