Israel, Iran and Obama
Conflict is inevitable unless the West moves quickly to stop a nuclear Tehran.

Editorial, Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2009

The International Atomic Energy Agency has produced another alarming report on Iran's nuclear programs, though it hasn't released it publicly, only to governments that would also rather not disclose more details of Iran's progress toward becoming a nuclear theocracy. Meanwhile, Iran intends to introduce a resolution, backed by more than 100 members of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement, that would ban military attacks on nuclear facilities. No actual mention of Israel, of course.

The mullahs understand that the only real challenge to their nuclear ambitions is likely to come from Israel. They've long concluded that the U.N. is no threat, as IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has in practice become an apologist for Iran's program. They can also see that the West lacks the will to do anything, as the Obama Administration continues to plead for Tehran to negotiate even as Iran holds show trials of opposition leaders and journalists for saying the recent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was fraudulent. The irony is that the weaker the West and U.N. appear, the more probable an Israeli attack becomes.
***

The reality that Western leaders don't want to admit is that preventing Iran from getting the bomb is an Israeli national imperative, not a mere policy choice. That's a view shared across Israel's political spectrum, from traditional hawks like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to current Defense Minister and former Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Israelis can see the relentless progress Iran is making toward enriching uranium, building a plutonium-breeding facility and improving on its ballistic missiles—all the while violating U.N. sanctions without consequence. Iran's march to the bomb also alarms its Arab neighbors, but it represents an existential threat to an Israeli nation that Iran has promised to destroy and has waged decades of proxy war against.

This threat has only increased in the wake of Iran's stolen election and crackdown. The nature of the regime seems to be changing from a revolutionary theocracy to a military-theocratic state that is becoming fascist in operation. The Revolutionary Guard Corps is gaining power at the expense of the traditional military and a divided clerical establishment.

On the weekend, Ahmadinejad called for the arrest and punishment of opposition leaders, and last week he nominated Ahmad Vahidi, a commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, to become defense minister. Vahidi is wanted on an Interpol arrest warrant for his role in masterminding the 1994 attack on a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires. That attack killed 85 people and wounded 200 others. Vahidi's nomination shows that when Ahmadinejad talks of wiping Israel off the map, no Israel leader can afford to dismiss it as a religious allegory.

Israel also looks warily on the Obama Administration's policy of diplomatic pleading with Iran, which comes after six years of failed diplomatic overtures by the European Union and Bush Administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's suggestion in July that the U.S. would extend a "defense umbrella" over its allies in the Middle East "once [Iranians] have a nuclear weapon" may have been a slip of the lip. But Israelis can be forgiven for wondering if the U.S. would sooner accept a nuclear Iran as a fait accompli than do whatever is necessary to stop it.

It's no wonder, then, that the Israeli military has been intensively—and very publicly—war-gaming attack scenarios on Iran's nuclear installations. This has included sending warships through the Suez Canal (with Egypt's blessing), testing its Arrow antiballistic missile systems and conducting nation-wide emergency drills. U.S. and Israeli military officials we've spoken to are confident an Israeli strike could deal a significant blow to Iran's programs, even if some elements would survive. The longer Israel waits, however, the more steps Iran can take to protect its installations.

The consequences of an Israeli attack are impossible to predict, but there is no doubt they would implicate U.S. interests throughout the Middle East. Iran would accuse the U.S. of complicity, whether or not the U.S. gave its assent to an attack. Iran could also attack U.S. targets, drawing America into a larger Mideast war.

Short of an Islamist revolution in Pakistan, an Israeli strike on Iran would be the most dangerous foreign policy issue President Obama could face, throwing all his diplomatic ambitions into a cocked hat. Yet in its first seven months, the Administration has spent more diplomatic effort warning Israel not to strike than it has rallying the world to stop Iran.
***

In recent days, the Administration has begun taking a harder line against Tehran, with talk of "crippling" sanctions on Iran's imports of gasoline if the mullahs don't negotiate by the end of September. Rhetorically, that's a step in the right direction. But unless Mr. Obama gets serious, and soon, about stopping Iran from getting a bomb, he'll be forced to deal with the consequences of Israel acting in its own defense.

ADL: Path to peace begins with the recognition of Israel

The Problem Isn't Settlements,
It's Arab Rejection of Israel

The ADL's letter can be signed online.

Dear Mr. President,

We all support peace in the Middle East. But pressuring Israel is not the right approach.

The obstacle to peace is not Israel. The settlements are not the impediment. The issue is simple: the Arab and Palestinian rejection of Israel's right to exist, including through violence and terrorism, for over 60 years. Israel's right to exist is undeniable and is based on its right to self-determination in its historic homeland.

The path to peace is clear. With recognition, Israel has said again and again that everything is on the table without preconditions.

Mr. President, it's time to stop pressuring our vital friend and ally. It's now time to direct your attention to the rejectionists who refuse to recognize Israel and negotiate an end to the conflict.

With your leadership, yes, we can have peace.

But the path begins with the recognition of Israel.

Sincerely,
The Anti-Defamation League

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about (7)

Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state

Aug 27th, 2009 by MESH From Robert O. Freedman

In his June 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asserted that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” was one of Israel’s requirements for agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Both Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat,immediately rejected the requirement. However, if there is to be a long-lasting peace between Israel and a Palestinian state, Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is a necessity.

.... Palestinians have [four] objections to Israel being recognized as a Jewish state, [the fourth] objection about which they do not speak openly... lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict....

... [It] is that many Palestinians simply do not accept the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism (Zionism). For the Palestinians, and for many other Arabs as well, a Jew is defined by religion, not nationality or ethnicity, and given the position of Jews as dhimmis, or second-class religious subjects in Muslim history, the Palestinians feel that Jews have no right to be rulers, let alone rule over what they consider Muslim territory.


Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH) is a project of the National Security Studies Program at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

How Israel should fight the Swedish blood libel

Incitement to Murder

How Israel should fight the Swedish blood libel.

Yossi Klein Halevi, The New Republic Published: August 27, 2009

Courtesy of Middle-east-info.org
Courtesy of Middle-east-info.org

Israelis are furious about an article printed in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet last week accusing the Israeli army of killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. The article linked accusations supposedly made by several Palestinians in the early 1990s with the arrest of a Brooklyn Jew several weeks ago on charges of illegal trafficking in organs.

Never mind that the author of the Aftonbladet article readily admits that he has no proof connecting the Brooklyn arrest with his charges--or that the Palestinians he quoted in his article have since denied making those accusations in the first place. In the current discourse in Europe on the Middle East conflict, the most outrageous lies about Israel become credible. No real proof is required to accuse the Jewish state of crimes that seem to be dredged from Europe's oldest and darkest fantasies about the Jews. It is Israel's responsibility to prove it is innocent.

The scandal would not have been possible without decades of one-sided reporting about the Middle East conflict, along with increasing demonization in recent years. When Israel is repeatedly cited in the Swedish media as the main obstacle to peace, when Swedish churches single out Israel as a target for boycott, the inevitable result is a resurrection of anti-Semitic motifs. In critiquing Israel, there are no longer standards or shame.

Aftonbladet's editor, Jan Helin, wrote that he was not a Nazi or an anti-Semite. The first claim is no doubt true, the second debatable. Contrary to widespread assumptions among Europeans, one does not need to be a Nazi to be an anti-Semite. Contemporary European anti-Semitism has two spiritual roots: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The big lie of Zionism as Nazism and of the Jewish state as successor to Nazi Germany originated in Moscow, and became an essential part of Soviet ideology following the 1967 Six-Day War. Of the two versions of modern European anti-Semitism as they exist today, the far more pervasive--and dangerous--is the Soviet version. The rise of Western European anti-Zionism, then, is a posthumous victory for the Soviet Union.

Aftonbladet's blood libel has offered Israel an opportunity to place the wider problem of anti-Zionism on the European agenda. And so the Israeli government was right in responding with outrage. Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman compared the Swedish government's refusal to condemn the article to its "position during World War II, when it also did not become involved," while finance minister Yuval Steinitz declared relations between the two countries to be in "a crisis until the government of Sweden understands otherwise." Previous opportunities to confront the thin line between European anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism--for example, cartoons in European newspapers equating the Palestinian situation with Jesus on the cross--were squandered. This time, the Israeli government seems genuinely determined to take the offensive.

The question, though, is how. So far, the government's response has been diffuse and at times counter-productive. Pressure on the Swedish government to condemn the article has not only failed but allowed the Swedes to turn the issue into a spurious dispute over freedom of the press. Prime Minister Netanyahu did note that, when Christians were offended by an Israeli television satire on Jesus, then-Prime Minister Olmert condemned the program without compromising freedom of the press. But Israel needs to more aggressively expose the Swedish argument as a sham--particularly in light of the country's far-reaching "hate speech" regulations, which have been used repeatedly in recent years to prosecute critics of Islam.

At the same time, the Aftonbladet needs to be challenged, in court if possible. Delaying issuing credentials to Aftonbladet reporters--as the Israeli government press office has done--is an emotionally satisfying but hardly adequate response.

Most of all, Israel needs to use this affair to challenge the general climate of Israeli demonization in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe, and expose the conceptual links between classical anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

As much as possible, this should be done in coordination with local Jewish communities. When Lena Posner, president of the Official council of Jewish Communities in Sweden, described Israel's response to the Aftonbladet affair as disproportionate, and even appeared to defend the Swedish government's silence, the Israeli effort was substantially undermined. Consulting with Diaspora leaders will not necessarily produce agreement, and there are times when Israeli and Diaspora interests will diverge. But at the very least, Diaspora leaders need to be consulted on Israeli decisions that directly affect their communities' well-being, especially when those communities are small and vulnerable, like Swedish Jewry.

Accusations like the Swedish blood libel aren't just a threat to Israel's good name, but could become a physical threat to Jews everywhere. The Israeli "crimes" raised by Aftonbladet are precisely the kind of rationale used by terrorists to incite violence against Jews. In the current atmosphere, where the most inconceivable conspiracy theories involving Jews are readily believed by millions in the Muslim world, Aftonbladet's recklessness is, potentially, an incitement to murder. The Israeli government should treat it as such.

Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor of The New Republic and a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. This article first appeared on the Adelson Institute's website.

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about (6)

There is one - and only one - cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, even if that single cause is buried beneath an avalanche of media mud designed to obfuscate and confuse. That single cause is the refusal of the Arab world to come to terms with Israel's existence within any set of borders whatsoever.

The Middle East conflict is not about the right of self-determination of Palestinian Arabs, but rather about the total Arab rejection of self-determination for Israeli Jews....

The Palestinians tell each other, in their newspapers, their mosques and their internal political debates, that any two-state solution is but a stage in a "plan of stages," after which will come additional steps ultimately aimed at ending Israel's existence as a Jewish state.

Why shouldn't we believe them?

--Steven Plaut, Two-state solution -- or Potemkin peace? August 26, 2009

Steven Plaut is a professor at the University of Haifa

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about (5)

Neither the state of Israel nor any other nation is above criticism, and there are numerous mistakes Israel's government has made in dealing with Palestinians. However the fallacy that settlement of the West Bank issue is at the core of the dispute should be laid to rest. United Nations resolution 181 in 1947 partitioned the disputed area between the two peoples, just as colonial India had been divided a few months earlier. Israelis accepted the agreement and Arabs rejected it, which led to a series of wars against Israel, in each of which the Jewish state prevailed.

At any time through 1967, the Arabs then in complete control of the West Bank and Gaza could have declared a state, as not one Jewish settlement existed on their land, but refused to do so.

[The core of the conflict, then, is that most] Arab [countries have still] refused to accept the legitimacy of any Jewish state, the position Hamas maintains to this day.

-- Barry Kay: Palestinians pay high price for follies of their advocates August 24, 2009

Barry Kay is a political science professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.

The Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact was signed August 24, 1939 (backed dated to August 23.) The Nazis and the Soviets kept the terms of the pact and the protocol until Germany's surprise attack and invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.


Soviet-Nazi pact revisited 70 years later
By LYNN BERRY, Associated Press Writer Lynn Berry, Associated Press Writer Fri Aug 21, 11:58 am ET

MOSCOW – Seventy years ago Sunday, the Soviet Union signed a pact with Nazi Germany that gave dictator Josef Stalin a free hand to take over part of Poland and the Baltic states on the eve of World War II.

Most of the world now condemns the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but Russia has mounted a new defense of the 1939 treaty as it seeks to restore some of its now-lost sphere of influence.

"This is all being rehabilitated because this is now a very lively issue for Russia," said military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. "This is not about history at all."

The pact, formally a treaty of nonaggression, was signed Aug. 23, 1939, in Moscow by Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the foreign ministers of the two countries.

In addition to the pledge of nonaggression, the treaty included secret protocols that divided eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.

On Sept. 1, Germany invaded Poland — thus igniting World War II — and within weeks the Red Army had marched in from the east. After claiming its part of Poland, the Soviet Union then annexed part of Finland, the Baltic states and the Romanian region that is now Moldova.

Molotov's grandson and namesake, Vyacheslav Nikonov, said his grandfather saw a deal with Nazi Germany as the only alternative after a failure to reach a military agreement with Britain and France.

The Soviet government was convinced that a Nazi attack on Poland was imminent and "we needed to know where the Germans were going to stop," Nikonov said. The pact also bought needed time for the country to prepare for war, he said.

He said his grandfather later criticized aspects of Stalin's leadership, including the purges, but he stood by the pact for the rest of his life.

"He said there were many, many mistakes done by the Soviet leadership, he regrets many lives," said Nikonov, who was 30 when his grandfather died in 1986 and knew him well. "Molotov never considered Molotov-Ribbentrop as something he would regret."

The Soviet Union officially denied the existence of the secret protocols for decades. They were only formally acknowledged and denounced in 1989.

But as the 70th anniversary of the treaty has approached, some Russian historians have stepped up to vociferously defend the Soviet Union's decision to expand its territory at the expense of its neighbors.

The Foreign Intelligence Service, once part of the KGB, published a book of declassified intelligence reports in an effort to make the case that the nonaggression treaty and its secret protocols were justified and essential to the victory over the Nazis.

Retired Maj. Gen. Lev Sotskov, who compiled the book, said the pact allowed the Soviet Union to "move its borders with Germany" to the West. This prevented the Baltic states of Lithuanian, Latvia and Estonia of becoming a staging ground for an attack, he told journalists.

Even so, when Nazi Germany did attack in June 1941, all the territory the Soviet Union had gained was lost in a matter of weeks.

At the end of the war, however, U.S. and British leaders accepted the borders of the Soviet Union as defined by the treaty with Germany. This in effect restored the borders of the Russian Empire.

The Allied leaders also allowed Stalin to extend the Soviet Union's sphere of influence throughout much of eastern and central Europe.

The current attempt to justify the carving up of Europe during World War II comes as Russia once again is trying to establish its sphere of influence.

After last year's conflict with Georgia, a U.S. ally, President Dmitry Medvedev asserted Russia's right to intervene militarily in what it regards as its zone of "privileged interests" along its borders.

The war stripped Georgia of pieces of its territory, which are now under the control of Russian-backed separatists.

"In his understanding of Realpolitik, Vladimir Putin does not diverge from the line set by Josef Stalin," military analyst Alexander Golts wrote in the online Yezhednevny Zhurnal. "Military force decides everything and if there is an opportunity to grab a piece of someone else's territory then it should be taken."

Moscow has insisted it should have a dominating influence over countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. But Washington has continued to encourage the NATO ambitions of Georgia and Ukraine, and has made clear that it will accept no claims of a Russian sphere of influence over former Soviet republics that are now sovereign states.

Russians' defense of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact also is being used to bolster the Kremlin's push for the creation of a new collective security system to replace NATO, embracing all of Europe, the United States and Canada.

Sotskov said the Soviet Union had to sign the 1939 treaty with Germany because efforts to create "a system of collective security" with Britain, France, Poland and the Baltic states had failed. The Soviet leadership believed the West was hoping to turn Adolf Hitler's armies east against Russia.