Hussein Ibish on the Fantasy World of One-Staters

Interview by Jeffrey Goldberg

The Atlantic
November 3, 2009

Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, which is the leading American group advocating for an independent Palestine alongside Israel, has a new book out, "What's Wrong With the One-State Agenda?" which does a comprehensive job of demolishing the arguments made by those who think that Israel should be eliminated and replaced by a single state of Jews and Palestinians. He has performed an important service with this book by noting one overwhelming truth about this debate: Virtually no one in Israel wants a single-state between the river and the sea. It's useful to remember this salient fact when listening to the ostensibly reality-based arguments of the one-staters.

I spoke to Ibish about his arguments last week, shortly after he spoke at the J Street conference. Here is an edited version of our conversation:

Jeffrey Goldberg: What were your impressions of the conference?

Hussein Ibish: It was impressive as a first step. My impression is that there's still quite a bit of message-cohesion and message-formulation to be done. It seemed to me to be an insufficiently coherent group of people. The range of people was so large.

JG: You mean on the Zionist spectrum?

HI: I mean people ranging from the sort of centrist-center left, all the way to post-Zionists, anti-Zionists, who were there, too. It's not ultimately a group that's going to form, I think, a functional coalition. Right now, they're finding their feet. This is normal, it's inevitable — but at a certain point, I think they have to clarify what they are, who their constituency is, what they stand for, who they are, who they're not. They've been more successful in creating a space for themselves as a new voice that is compelling, but at other moments it's looked like where they were simply positioning themselves as the alternative to AIPAC. And my sense of things is that, initially, that they would look too much to their rivals. But sooner rather than later, they're going to have to just move on and start to define themselves in a much more coherent and pro-active way, not just in contrast to the traditional Jewish organizations but also to distinguish themselves from people in the Jewish community whose criticism of Israel makes them anathema to the mainstream of the community. They can't go there and I think they've tried not to go there.

JG: You can't be Zionist and non-Zionist at the same time, in other words.

HI: Exactly. I think it's essential for them. For us, it's not important.

JG: Well, isn't it important to have a pro-Israel, pro-two-state organization in Washington that's credibly Jewish?

HI: It is. But I believe that all of the mainstream organizations are moving in that direction. I think begrudgingly, without enthusiasm, I think they're all getting there, because I think ultimately the only organization that I can think of that is absolutely opposed to a two-state agreement are on the far right, the Zionist Organization of America, which is in favor of the occupation without reservations and, on the left, Jewish Voices for Peace, which is a one-state group all the way and without reservation. It seems to me everybody else occupies some space in the middle without being one-staters and without being flag-waving pro-settlers.

Now, the question is, from our point of view, what's really important is that the Jewish community have a range of dynamic organizations that are effective in advocating for peace based on two states, number one. And number two, that we can work with everybody who is in favor of a two-state solution without any other preconditions. I mean, we don't want to get involved in intra-Jewish rivalries. We want to work with everyone who wants peace based on two states. It's as simple as that. We don't have a huge stake in where J Street ultimately positions itself, but I will say this: The more mainstream it can become, the more powerful and important it will be. I think they should be as mainstream as possible, they should avoid the impression they sometimes give that they're perhaps not being sensitive to fears about Israel's security. There's a real appetite for a more robust, more aggressively pro-peace organization in the Jewish community. But from our perspective, the only people we don't want to talk to are the one-staters and the pro-occupation groups.

JG: But the one-staters are a very marginal group. I think one of the interesting things you do in your book is show very coolly, calmly, the essential ridiculousness of one-state advocacy based on the simple fact that in order to have a successful one-state plan, you need Israeli Jews to want it, and today, not even one percent of Israeli Jews want it.

HI: You could put all of them in a small auditorium.

JG: I don't think you need an auditorium. Talk about these guys, the Tony Judts…

HI: I don't want to be too hard on Judt. Judt put out this argument and then he immediately admitted that it was utopian, that it wasn't serious and he was just doing a thought experiment. And since then, he basically has more or less withdrawn from the conversation Judt has not been a person who suggests that this is a realistic plan and a serious proposal for the future.

There are two fundamental flaws with pro-Palestinian strategic thinking that focuses on the idea of abandoning two states and going for a single state. The first is the question of feasibility, and it's hard to argue with that. Obviously anyone who is familiar with this sees the difficulty, and I would be the first to say that success is not assured by any means. Even a two-state agreement looks, at the moment, like something of a long shot. The difference between the two-state solution and everything else is that yes, it's a long shot, but it would work. And if we could conceivably get it, if we did get it, it would solve the conflict.

The fundamental argument that the one-staters seem to be making, which is that we can't possibly get Israel to end the occupation and relinquish their control of the 22 percent of Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza) but we will inevitably succeed in getting them to relinquish one hundred percent of the territory under their control. This is a problem of logic. The second thing is that once you've realized this, obviously what you've done is set yourself the task of convincing Jewish Israelis to voluntarily do this. The idea of coercing the Israelis into this through military force is absurd, and it could only really be done through voluntary persuasion. What the one-staters argue, actually, is that they don't have to do that. What they're going to do, they say, is bring the Israelis to their knees.

JG: South Africa style?

HI: Well, South Africa style, except we don't have a South Africa equation here.

JG: But they believe they do.

HI: They believe that through the application of what they call BDS - Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions - globally that they can crush the will of the Israelis and break the Zionist movement. To me, even if you believe that boycotts were plausible, which I don't, certainly I don't think the American government and institutions and corporations would participate.

JG: You have to move from the American consensus that supports supplying Israel with the best weaponry to not just a military cutoff but a complete cutoff and boycott. It's very hard to picture.

HI: Anyone who thinks that is plausible in the foreseeable future doesn't understand the nature of the American relationship with Israel. The commitment of the U.S., not just the government but American society, is to the survival and security of the Israeli state. And then there's another aspect, which is the extent to which Israeli institutions, organizations and corporations are interwoven at a very fundamental level with many of those in the U.S.

JG: Right, Intel and Google…

HI: I'm talking about corporate, governmental, intelligence, military, industrial, scientific ties. The point is that you can only take talk of boycott and sanctions seriously if you really don't understand any of this. And if you don't understand any of this, then you're living in a fantasy world. So here's the thing: Obviously the only real task for one-staters is to convince Jewish Israelis to agree to their solution. But instead of trying to do that, they engage in the most hyperbolic discourse about the badness of Zionism, the badness of Jewish Israelis, the rightness and primacy of not just a Palestinian narrative, but the most strident traditional Palestinian narrative, and the most tendentious Palestinian narrative, the one that places blame for the conflict entirely on the side of the Israelis, that casts Israel as the usurper and what they call in one-state circles now the "temporary racist usurping entity." These are the ones, by the way, who won't talk about my book. There's a refusal to acknowledge or read my book. I've nicknamed my book "the temporary racist usurping book."

These people are trapped in the language of the Fifties and Sixties. You're talking about a worldview is anachronistic in the most fundamental sense. It doesn't recognize any of the changes that have taken place since then. For example, the strategic situation that's emerged in the Middle East, where the Arab states and the Arabs generally have a lot of other things to worry about other than Israel. This is a world in which a lot of Gulf states are extremely concerned about Iraq, and where there are Arab states — Jordan and Egypt — that have treaties with Israel, where Syria has a motive to be civil with Israel that is unpleasant but completely stable, and where it's a very different environment than simply the Arabs and Israelis are enemies. The other thing that they've missed completely, and this is sort of the amazing thing, is the total transformation in American official policy toward the Palestinians over the past 20 years. Twenty-one years ago, there was no contact ever between the U.S. and the PLO. No contact, zero, and now Palestinian statehood is the consensus American foreign policy and it is a national security priority under Obama. People in the House, key positions like the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Howard Berman, chair of the Subcommittee on the Middle East, Gary Ackerman, Nita Lowey on Appropriations — all of them Jewish American members of Congress, stalwart supporters of Israel, and all of them committed to peace based on two states. And all of them, by the way, who were on the host committee of the American Task Force on Palestine gala last week.

JG: You've reached the Promised Land.

HI: Except that we haven't achieved the results.

JG: Yes, there's that. But you're on the road.

HI: Exactly. The transformation in American attitudes is almost mind-boggling, an official American attitude on ending the occupation, which has been the traditional goal of the Palestinians. And at this very moment, a group of Palestinians turns around and says, 'Sorry, not good enough, we want it all. Not only is a single Palestinian state not achievable, it's not desirable, it's not acceptable, it's not enough, we want it all.'

JG: Who are the leaders of the movement?

HI: People like Ali Abunimah, Joseph Massad, Ghada Karmi, Omar Barghouti.

JG: And you think they're succumbing to fantastic dreams. This is the traditional criticism of Palestinian politics over the past sixty years, that it's very hard to separate out the dreams from…

HI: It goes back further than sixty years. It's an article of Palestinian nationalist faith that is almost one hundred years old, which is that demography is destiny, demography is power. This notion that if we just sit here, on the land, have children, are steadfast and don't agree to anything, then political power ultimately will flow to us. In the twenties, they believed if we do that, then, just by virtue of our presence in the land, our numbers, our demography, Israel will never be established. After Israel was established, it was just, "Well if we're steadfast and we don't agree, then Israel will be reversed." Then it was, "Well if we just do this, then independence will come in the occupied territories." Now the latest version is if we're just steadfast, we can create a South Africa-like model and we will reverse the war of 1948 at the ballot.

JG: But I have to tell you that for people like me, this is a real worry. This goes with the argument that the settlements are the vanguard of one-statism.

HI: Now there is some truth to this. I think it's useful for people like (Ehud) Olmert or people like yourself to point out that with the occupation going the way it is, there won't be a Palestinian state, and then Israel will be in a situation where it is neither meaningfully Jewish nor meaningfully democratic. I think you could claim that already, if you talk about the de facto Israeli state rather than Israel in its normally perceived borders, that is already the case and it will be increasingly so. Now here's the thing: The alternative, though, is not going to be a single state in the foreseeable future. It's possible we could get there, but it won't be a solution, it will be an outcome. There's a big difference. An outcome of a horrible, brutal, bloody civil conflict that drags on for generations, because even though this demographic issue and the legitimacy issues are crises for Israel, I don't think they result in the dissolution of the Israeli state.

JG: In other words, most Israeli Jews would rather have a Jewish state than a democratic state.

HI: Yes, it's obvious. And I think that what you would get is a protracted civil war that is essentially an intensification of the civil war we've had. So I do say the single state is a potential eventuality, but it would be the outcome of a horrible scenario. Look, the idea that if the current round of talks breaks down and Obama gives up and the U.S. gives up and we all give up, then the alternative is a Gandhian non-violent struggle of sanctions and boycotts that will somehow bring Israel to its knees, that is not the way it's going to go. We know the way it's going to go.

JG: Each intifada is more violent than the last.

HI: And more religious. You'll end up with two sets of bearded fanatics on both sides fighting over holy places and God. It will be a complete disaster. And I think the Israelis will end up ultimately dealing with forces not only beyond its borders, but beyond its comprehension in the long run. This has the possibility of turning into not an ethno-national war but a religious war between the Muslims and the Jews over the holy places with the whole concept of Palestine gone and the Jewish population of Israel in a very unenviable situation, protected in the end only by its nuclear weapons. It's a nightmare.

JG: So you have three scenarios. One, the one-state solution: Somehow the Jews and the Arabs decide, even though their narratives completely contradict each other, that we'll be like Belgium, where we don't have to really like each other but we'll be fine. The second alternative is the one you described of basically endless war. The third is the two-state solution. But, sorry to say it, we don't seem that close right now. You have an Israeli government who seems extremely hesitant to pull down any settlements, you have a Hamas government in Gaza, just for starters.

HI: What you do with Hamas, in my view, is you make the situation such that Hamas has to choose, and you do this by creating progress and by creating momentum — and there are two ways of creating momentum. One is diplomatically, which right now, seems difficult. The other is through the Fayyad plan, which is state building in the occupied territories. That would have a very powerful effect. It is extremely important that we use that idea as a means of gaining momentum, that the Israelis do not block it, that the U.S. protect it politically, and that the Arabs, Europeans and the Israelis support it technically and financially. This is a way of really moving forward in a manner that is complimentary and not contradictory to the diplomatic process, and I think people who suggest that this is some kind of capitulation or some kind of collaboration are dead wrong. This is a very powerful way of effectively resisting the occupation without doing anything violent. Israelis may fool themselves into thinking that this is just economic peace, but it's not; it's Palestinians preparing for independence.

Now with regard to Hamas, I definitely don't think it would be wise for the West to open up dialogue with Hamas under the present circumstances. I think that would simply reward them and it would benefit them in their competition with the PLO and there's a stark choice that Palestinians are facing between two strategies: an Islamist violent strategy and a secular nationalist negotiation strategy. I think it's very important to bolster the second and to make the first appear what it actually is: Non-functional.

Egypt Ponders Failed Drive for Unesco

By Michael Slackman

The New York Times
September 29, 2009

CAIRO — For days after Egypt’s culture minister, Farouk Hosny, failed in his bid to lead the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Egyptian newspapers and government officials presented the defeat as a sign of Western prejudice against Islam and the Arab world, the product of an international Jewish conspiracy.

“America, Europe and the Jewish lobby brought down Farouk Hosni,” read a headline in an independent daily newspaper, Al Masry Al Yom. The foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, criticized “international Judaism and Western powers” in a television interview. Mr. Hosny himself helped stoke those sentiments, saying, “There was a group of the world’s Jews who had a major influence in the elections who were a serious threat to Egypt taking this position.”

All of Egypt, indeed all of the Arab world, was talking with one voice of outrage and insult. Or so it seemed.

While no one here would argue that Israel and its supporters played no role in Mr. Hosny’s defeat to a Bulgarian diplomat, many people said that his failure was at least as much a sign of Egypt’s long, slow slide as the center of Arab culture, thought and influence. They said the defeat might represent a rejection of Muslims and Arabs, but perhaps more importantly a rejection of their authoritarian leaders.

Mr. Hosny, a favorite of President Hosni Mubarak, was roundly despised by many members of the nation’s cultural elite, who say he did little or nothing in his 22 years as culture minister to encourage cultural development and did much, particularly through the enforcement of strict government censorship, to stunt it.

In the independent newspaper Shorouk, Fahmy Howeidy wrote: “I am not exaggerating when I say that the failure of Mr. Farouk Hosny is not due to his hostility against Israel, as it was said, but the important reason that contributed to his failure is he represents a country that ranks among the politically failed states, where a monopoly of power and governing the state under emergency rule for more than a quarter of a century, where it suppresses public freedom, affects the image of its candidate.”

The defeat provoked a degree of quiet soul-searching here. The state’s retreat to anti-Zionism and to some extent, anti-Semitism, underscored for many here the region’s collective political impotence, a failure of Arab leaders to form a powerful regional bloc capable of winning support from power brokers in Washington, London or Paris that has lasted decades.

The pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi wrote that Mr. Hosny’s loss “comes as yet another confirmation of the Arab world’s — and Egypt’s in particular — backslide on the international arena, and the general lack of respect towards it in all areas, not exclusively culture.”

Mr. Hosny, 71, is a well-known figure in Egypt. He has been the minister for more than two decades. Oddly enough, considering the charges of anti-Semitism that derailed his candidacy, he has never been known as a strong opponent of normalizing ties with Israel.

True, he has resisted a warm peace, refused to visit Tel Aviv and was quoted as saying that he would burn Israeli books if he found them in a library. But proponents say he took these actions as the bare minimum to defend himself from a population that views Israel as the enemy.

Throughout his candidacy, Mr. Hosny struggled to mute the charges of anti-Semitism, efforts that caused many people in Egypt to wince as they watched a stalwart of the state apologize, to Israel no less. And they winced again, when he blamed a Jewish-Zionist conspiracy for his loss.

“He did not take an anti-normalization stand until the end,” said Hossam el-Hamalawy, an independent Egyptian blogger and journalist. “The moment he lost he came back and started saying some of the most foul anti-Semitic statements against the Jews, confirming what the West had said about him.”

Mr. Hosny lost his bid for Unesco, but tried to turn that into a victory at home, returning as a victim, and for the state-run media a hero. The charges of a Western, Jewish-Zionist conspiracy may have been amplified by a government eager to limit its embarrassment after having staked its credibility on Mr. Hosny.

But they are not new, said Hala Mustafa, editor in chief of the weekly magazine Democracy and a member of Mr. Mubarak’s governing party. When it comes to domestic politics, she said, Egyptian officials often try to present themselves as anti-Israeli, even while serving as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

Ms. Mustafa has been squeezed by that dual identity.

In her capacity as an editor and academic in the state-financed Ahram Center, she recently met with Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, Shalom Cohen. She has since been tarred in the press as a “normalizer,” and the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate has tried to blacklist her. Ms. Mustafa said she saw the state’s rush to blame Israel for Mr. Hosny’s loss as stemming from the same forces busy attacking her.

“We have been under this propaganda for 30 years,” she said. “Like Egypt doesn’t have a peace treaty with Israel? Like Egypt does not play a peace role between Israel and the Palestinians? If that is Egypt’s role, why are we not allowed to play the same role?”

There is another view, too, one that was published in English, allowing, perhaps for a degree of candor not found in the Arabic news media. Writing in the English-language Daily News, the chief editor, Rania al-Malky, suggested that Mr. Hosny might have done as well as he did because he was Arab and Muslim, not because he was qualified. His defeat, she wrote, should not surprise anyone.

“I will say this at the risk of being branded unpatriotic, but no matter where you stand on the political spectrum,” she wrote, “you must admit that the Egyptian administration did not deserve to win this bid. How can a 22-year minister of a country where culture, education, health and science have regressed to the Dark Ages become the head of Unesco?”

Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting.

Hosni and the Zionist Plot

By Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed

Asharq Al-Awsat (London)
October 10, 2009

Following the Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni’s failed bid to head UNESCO, many people stated that this loss was a catastrophe and blamed it on an international Zionist plot, even though it was nothing more than competition for an international position.

The following week, US President Barack Obama received a real blow when the city of Chicago lost the competition to host the 2016 Olympic Games to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Barack Obama made a personal visit to Copenhagen, Denmark, together with some influential personalities and media figures to support the Chicago bid for the Olympics. However, he returned home in his giant jet disappointed. “You can play a great game and still not win…” Obama said. He did not call it a conspiracy and place the blame on others even though he is the most powerful president in the world in terms of influence, and his country’s chances of hosting the international Olympic Games were higher by virtue of Chicago’s sports facilities and its huge financial resources in comparison to the other three competing cities. Obama lost simply because this time the majority voted for another country and this is the kind of thing that happens in any competition.

What I mean is that after years of experiencing the same thing over and over, we still insist on giving Israel a title it does not deserve and that title is the “force majeure” of all Arabs. Anybody who knows public work, including political work, must be aware that Israel’s assumed capability is a false notion including the defeat of Minister Hosni, which was nothing more than a competition that could have been lost by the best candidate.

The belief that the Egyptian Minister of Culture’s failure to win the UNESCO position is a catastrophe belittles Egypt as well, as it is too big a state to value itself on a temporary post. In the same way, this also exaggerates the value of the UNESCO post, as it is merely a cultural organization that cannot be compared to the UN or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is headed by an Egyptian.

I read some of what was written about Minister Hosni and the false accusations cast against him of hatred and book burning and this is nothing more than the opinions of some people that every minister, or anyone in a public position, should be used to. As for voting for the UNESCO position, this was political action being practiced and in most cases it is subject to each country’s considerations. But to accuse Israel of being behind it means we would be awarding Israel a championship medal it does not deserve.

We should be used to defeats as long as we aspire to win; this is part of life, unless we choose to stay at home and refrain from entering competitions, in which case there would be no winners or losers.

Egypt is the most populated Arab country, and one of the developing countries with the most figures assuming international posts even though the country is not the biggest in terms of size or population, or richest in natural resources. This in itself is enough to make one feel satisfied rather than bitter or angry. As for Israel — which is great in our eyes only — its figures have not assumed a single international post at any organization in its entire history.

Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed is general manager of Al-Arabiya television and former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat.

Enflamed language

By Tim Franks

BBC News
September 7, 2009

Jerusalem - It was, said one angry onlooker, "a holocaust".

Time to back up. The onlooker was, according to the Ha'aretz newspaper, a supporter of the "pale, agitated and tearful" former welfare minister, Shlomo Benizri. Mr Benizri had just arrived at Masiyahu Prison in central Israel to begin a four-year sentence for taking bribes.

A crowd of big-wigs and supporters was on hand to display their loyalty to the former minister. The newspaper reported that some blew shofars — ceremonial ram's horns. Some handed out stickers showing Mr Benizri's face and the word "innocent".

And some proclaimed their disgust at his imprisonment. "A disgrace," said one. "A holocaust," said another.

This is no aberration. In Mea She'arim, the haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jerusalem neighbourhood, you can see posters calling the Israeli police — with whom some haredi men are regularly battling at demonstrations over a number of complaints — "Zionist Gestapo".

Earlier in the summer, when a haredi woman was accused of starving her child, the Jerusalem hospital doctors who had raised the alarm were described, by outraged haredim, as "Doctor Mengeles" — after the incomparably sadistic doctor at Auschwitz.

And when, from time to time, the Israeli border police move on to a hill-top in the West Bank to dismantle the shacks marking out a new Jewish outpost, what do the settler youth chant?

"Kapo! Kapo!" A kapo was a class of inmate at the Nazi concentration camps and death camps, whom the guards used to do some of their dirty work on the ordinary prisoners.

It is odd. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the etymology of "holocaust" back to 1250.

It meant a sacrifice completely consumed by fire. From the 17th Century it carried wider connotations of utter destruction. But since the Nazi genocide, the Holocaust has acquired a capital letter and become inseparable from the deaths of six million Jews.

Almost all Jews believe that the Holocaust was an episode of unique evil.

They shudder when non-Jews refer to Gaza as a "concentration camp", or when Hamas deplores draft UN plans for Gazan children at UN schools to be taught about the Holocaust because — in the words of a Hamas spokesman — it is "a big lie".

And yet Matan Vilnai remains deputy defence minister, 18 months after he warned the Palestinians in Gaza that they might bring a "shoah" (the Hebrew for holocaust) on themselves, if militants were to carry on firing rockets into southern Israel.

He meant, we were told, a "catastrophe", rather than a "holocaust". But it was, at the least, a rather maladroit use of the word.

Some Israeli Jews have explained to me that their compatriots use the word "shoah" in the way that black Americans use racist terminology that would be unacceptable coming from the mouths of white people. Indeed, it can be empowering to throw around a term once used as a badge of your victimhood.

But in this case, it could quite easily be a symptom of how fractured and febrile this place has become. One liberal rabbi, whose parents are both Holocaust survivors, managed to smile in wonder, as he told dinner guests from America about how some haredim were comparing Jerusalem's main hospital to Auschwitz.

"It's amazing how they jump straight in with the most extreme language they can," he said. "And then they just turn it up a notch or two."

Chasing buffaloes (and my comments)

Recent wrangling over normalisation, writes Abdel-Moneim Said, once again betrays the confusion of means with ends

Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt)
8-14 October 2009

I am an American history buff and in the course of my readings I have been particularly drawn to attempts to explain why the Native Americans were defeated and confined to "reservations" by settlers hailing from Europe. One of the most commonly cited explanations holds that the American Indian tribes were divided, technologically backward, poor and superstitious by the standards of Western civilisation which had begun to bourgeon in the period following its discovery of the New World. However, I was particularly struck by another explanation which focussed on the military conduct of the tribes. According to this perspective, European settlers followed the military customs in practice in Europe, which entailed building forts and fortified camps from which they observed the hostile environment outside. The tribes, accustomed to open warfare, laid siege to these camps in the hope of forcing those inside to surrender out of fear or hunger. However, in those dull intervals of waiting, the besiegers would often catch sight of a passing herd of wild buffalo and break off the siege in order to chase after the precious quarry. These moments of relief, naturally, afforded those inside the camp the opportunity to bring in food and ammunition and to send out messages for help to other camps.

The moral here is crystal clear: departing from the original purpose, however tempting the lures, puts original goals at risk. I have frequently related this explanation of the defeat of Native Americans to my students and to those with whom I was working towards a common goal. Most recently I found myself repeating it to my colleagues in Al-Ahram who have been desperate to respond to certain political attacks which have often defied the rules of propriety and been gratuitously crude.

To me the goals have always been as clear as daylight. They are to restore Al-Ahram to its "natural" place in our country's intellectual, cultural and political sphere; to preserve the fiscal equilibrium which has been regained through many hard sacrifices; and to raise the performance of its employees to a standard commensurate with an eminent international institution. I was determined not to allow myself, or Al-Ahram, to be drawn into a media fray meant to give us a "break" from the "succession" issue by dredging up another no less familiar one — "normalisation" — with the purpose of settling old scores, obstructing the aspirations of Al-Ahram or racking up electoral campaign points. In all events, I have addressed the subject of "normalisation" innumerable times over the past three decades, in newspaper articles, on television programmes and in many public debates. Fortunately, the vast majority of my fellow "Ahramists" did not fall into the trap. They did not rush off to hunt buffaloes. In all my meetings with my colleagues we could focus on what was needed in order to achieve the goals enumerated above.

Nevertheless, during the recent clamour over normalisation I could not help but remark the sweeping nature in which some of my fellow journalists treated it. According to one commentator, the steps that have already been taken towards normalisation reflected a "backslide" in "Egyptian patriotism". Another lashed out against what he regarded as a flagrant contradiction between the current trend towards religiosity in Egyptian society and Egyptians' tendency to ignore a matter no less serious than normalisation, which is the relentless Judaisation of Jerusalem. What such statements have in common is that they take us to the brink of an insight without going further. They fail to continue along the path of philosophical and intellectual enquiry. They do not ask how and why this or that occurred, let alone probe grey areas in order to untangle the jumble of threads. In short, the clamour concealed the failure of our intellectual community to delve beneath the surface and investigate the roots of crucial questions, foremost among them the relation of war, conflict and armed violence to politics and the peaceful use of power.

This matter should have been given priority from the outset. For, as is the case with the question of the relationship between religion and the state, failure to solve it perpetuates society's anxieties and tensions, rendering it more vulnerable, making the public easy prey for the politicians' arts of toying with feelings for campaign purposes or personal fame or even to sabotage the wheels of progress and change. No one expressed the relationship between war and politics more succinctly than the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz who, in his famous military treatise On War, wrote that war was a continuation of politics by other means. He held that a tactical military victory is per force a temporary victory if it is not crowned by a more comprehensive political aim to make it a strategic victory, and that the achievement of a political end is the chief aim of war, which is only a means towards that end, for means cannot be isolated from their ends.

It follows that the purpose of war is to bend the will of the adversary, by military or political means, to the will of the other party. The notion is certainly not alien to Egyptian and Arab thought. But as familiar as Clausewitz may be in intellectual and military circles here, rarely has his concept of the relationship between war and politics been put into practice in treating such "core" Arab questions as the Arab-Israeli conflict. When it has it proved not only an attempt on the part of the intellectuals to evade probing the roots of the problem itself but also an evasion of the task of applying one's mind to translating theoretical principles into strategy. After all, war and violence or politics and diplomacy are not necessarily things to be glorified for their own sake; rather, they should be regarded as alternative ways to "engage" with the enemy in order to achieve strategic aims. But perhaps it is better to look at the matter another way. It is no longer possible to resolve international disputes solely through the use of military force. While some political or strategic aims can only be achieved through war, the display of might and exacting revenge are not aims that legitimise recourse to war. Hence, it is impossible to separate war from peace; they are two sides of the same coin, mutually complementary states.We can only explain the "decline in Egyptian patriotism" and the "negligence of the pious with respect to Jerusalem" in terms of the disgraceful negligence on the part of intellectuals with regard to such crucial issues as war and diplomacy, violence and peace, development and conflict. The Egyptian public should not be corralled into journalistic battles or media wars. They should not be tempted to chase "buffaloes" that have no bearing on what it takes to liberate occupied Arab territory. The history of the past half century testifies to how successful or not the Arabs have been in dealing — both peacefully and violently — with an Israeli adversary that is undeniably hostile and that has worked relentlessly against Egyptian and Arab strategic interests.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the premise was that the Arab-Israeli conflict was not about borders but an existential conflict. On the basis of this premise, the military instrument reigned as the critical factor between the two sides until the 1967 war, which ended in the defeat of the Arab armies and the Israeli occupation of Arab territories for years to come. The tables began to turn in 1970 with the arrival to power of Anwar El-Sadat, who set into motion a new phase of military preparations. However, preparing for an offensive war took considerable time and effort, especially since Egypt did not produce its own arms but relied almost exclusively on outside powers (the USSR, to be precise). Under such conditions, the procuring of arms was inevitably subordinated to political considerations between Egypt and its suppliers at a time when international and regional balances of power favoured Israel and when the Egyptian economy was in severe straits.

Egypt's aim in the 1973 War was not to eliminate Israel. Rather, it was to break the Israeli will to make war and propel them to the negotiating table. On another level, it aimed to destroy the myth of Israeli invincibility and persuade the Israelis that they would never be able to live in peace by relying on military force. President Sadat's stroke of genius to achieve this end was a "limited offensive war" that would entail crossing the Suez Canal, breaking through the Bar Lev line and occupying the eastern bank of the canal to a depth of 15 to 18 kilometres, and causing as much attrition and damage as possible to Israeli land and air forces. The scheme brought into play another well-conceived tactic, which was to keep Israeli forces mobilised for as long as possible. Israel's demographic structure meant that Israel had to keep 20 per cent of its population (about three million at the time) mobilised during wartime. Such a ratio is unsustainable for any long period of time because of the enormous economic attrition it wreaks. The longer the war lasted, the more Israel would feel compelled to ask for a ceasefire or call for the intervention of international forces.

This war thus proved the engine to liberate our land. It is useful to take a look at the goals of the October War as outlined in Sadat's letter of 5 October to the General Commander of Egyptian Forces, Ahmed Ismail. These aims were, first, to break the stagnation in the peace process; second, to cause the greatest amount of moral and material damage to the armed forces of the enemy; and, three, to liberate the Sinai in phases, as the capacities of Egyptian forces permit. We see the political dimension of the 6 October 1973 War again in Sadat's letter to US secretary of state Henry Kissinger on 7 October 1973 (conveyed via a secret channel arranged between Sadat's national security adviser, Hafez Ismail, and president Nixon in February 1973), which clarifies the Egyptian position on war and peace as follows:

• Egypt's chief aim is not to conclude partial settlements but to achieve peace in the Middle East.
• Egypt does not intend to deepen the engagement or expand the scope of confrontation. (This point came under heavy criticism when taken out of context from Sadat's original strategy!)
• Israel must withdraw from all occupied territories. When it does, Egypt will be willing to participate in a UN peace conference of any acceptable form, whether under the auspices of the secretary- general, the permanent members of the Security Council, or any other representative body.
• Egypt agrees to the freedom of navigation in the Straits of Tiran and it accepts, as a guarantee, the presence of an international force for a limited period.
  

Sadat's purpose was to turn the Egyptian military achievement into the best possible political advantages that Egypt could gain under a military situation characterised by parity. After the war, there followed the talks at the 101st kilometre line, the first disengagement treaty of January 1974, and the second disengagement treaty of September 1975. In retrospect Sadat's decision to travel to Jerusalem should surprise only as a daring application of Clausewitz's principle regarding the complementariness of military and political means of engagement. On 9 November 1977 Sadat declared before the People's Assembly, "I am ready to go to the ends of the earth in quest of a just peace... Indeed, I am even prepared to go to the Israeli Knesset, because we do not fear peace, nor do we fear confrontation with Israel."

As a consequence of this decision Egypt was plunged into another battle no less ferocious than the October war, even if it differed in quality. This was the battle for peace. Sadat's visit to Jerusalem put paid, before the eyes of the entire world, to the notion that Israel is surrounded by people bent on its annihilation. In the course of a few hours Sadat brought down the powerful propaganda wall that Israel had erected over three decades. Then he followed through with intensive efforts that, over the following years, brought the peace treaty with Israel on 26 March 1979, the liberation of the whole of the Sinai in 1982 and the return of Taba through international arbitration in 1989.

Many Arabs and Egyptians have never read Clausewitz. Among those who have, few understood him, and among those who understood him, even fewer put his ideas into practice. Perhaps this is because this takes moral, mental and physical energy, when it is so much easier to point the finger of accusation at others. As a result the situation remains pending in the Golan, and in Palestine the sense of disappointment is greater than ever. It is not just an appreciation of the relationship between war and politics that has been lacking in recent days. The roots of other problems have been overlooked or skilfully concealed.

Mark says:

In comparing the Native Americans who encountered the European settlers to the Arabs of today in their encounters with Israel, Abdel-Moneim Said uses an old and, in many cases, largely discredited theory about some of the reasons for the success of the settlers over Native Americans. The tribes were not necessarily "divided, technologically backward, poor and superstitious by the standards of Western civilisation." One must start with the fact that as many as 90 percent of the inhabitants of the North, Central, and South Americas died from diseases brought by Europeans — primarily smallpox and influenza. For more on the extent and levels of civilization of the Native Americans prior to and after the European invasions, I would highly recommend starting with 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann, and Guns Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared M. Diamond. Both books are, by the way, pleasures to read and mostly free of academese.

Be that as it may, Abdel-Moneim Said is trying to make a point about strategy versus tactics and what I would call the "attention deficit disorder" (ADD) that plagues much of the Arab world today in general, and Said's Egypt in particular. In view of his past publications, I'm sure he would have come up with another equally apt analogy as "chasing buffalos" to illustrate his points about many Arab and Egyptian intellectuals and normalization with Israel.

Said alludes to the fact that 30 years after Egypt and Israel signed their peace treaty there are still many Egyptians who have not come to terms with its reality. This goes beyond ADD and should be described by whatever psychological term you may choose for someone who cannot cope with reality.

At the same time — again, 30 years later — there are still some Israelis and some supporters of Israel who believe that Sadat's strategy of negotiations with Israel and signing the peace treaty was nothing more than just the first stage in the "strategy of stages" to get Israel to withdraw to the pre-Six Day War boundaries in preparation for the final and fatal assault on Israel. I'm sure that some or many, if not most of the Egyptians that Said analyzes in his article would wish that this were so — even as they have disparaged and condemned and cursed Sadat for signing the peace treaty with Israel.

The degrees and extent of these respective inabilities to come to terms with reality may differ between and among Egyptians and Israelis but the term fits for both.

Israeli Government: Iran Not A Threat (and my comments)

By M.J. Rosenberg

Huffington Post
September 17, 2009

The AIPAC crowd is going to have a hard time with this. Israel's uber-hawk Defense Minister (and the most highly decorated soldier in its history), Ehud Barak, says that an Iranian nuclear weapon would not pose an existential threat to Israel.

Today's New York Times reports that Barak told Israel's largest paper Yedioth Ahronoth that "Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel." Asked specifically about a nuclear armed Iran, Barak said, "I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel."

Barak concluded: "Israel is strong, I don't see anyone who could pose an existential threat."

The threat, of course, is not to Israel's existence but to Israel's status as the region's only superpower, able to do whatever it wants whenever it wants to.

But don't expect this to mean that the "Bomb Iran" crowd here — which is the lobby and its cutouts — is going to shut up.

Contrary to what many believe, the lobby does not always follow the Israel line.

That is why Prime Minister Rabin tried so hard (unsuccessfully) to curb AIPAC. Upon his election as prime minister in 1992, he met with its leadership to tell AIPAC to butt the hell out. He intended to come to terms with the Palestinians and did not want AIPAC to get in his way. He also insisted on dealing with the US government directly and not through a surly intermediary. (His top aides specifically told AIPAC to fire Steve Rosen who, he knew, would use his dark powers to kill any Israeli-Palestinian agreement).

AIPAC ignored Rabin and continued its sabotage efforts.

In fact, a few years ago the Israeli government worked with the Palestinian Authority to devise an aid package for the Palestinian Authority that would help it withstand the threat from Hamas. This was before Hamas took over Gaza and the package was designed to gird the PA against the threat.

The Bush administration supported the package and thought it was urgent to keep Gaza under PA (not Hamas) control.

AIPAC, on the other hand, did not like the idea and its lobbyists went directly to the House Appropriations Commitee and demanded it be cut in half. The Israelis also went to the Hill to tell the same appropriators that Israel's own security needs dictated that the full package be delivered quickly to check Hamas. Of course AIPAC prevailed. And AIPAC celebrated that it could beat the White House, the Palestinian Authority and even the Israeli government. Kings of the Hill!

Only to a degree does the lobby operate in support of Israel. Mostly it is about preserving and extending its own power.

The Iran issue is its latest ticket. It will use it to raise money — it just built an eight story building in Washington complete with a gym and catering facilities — and, best of all, to make the United States government do what it wants.

As someone who worked at AIPAC for four years (before I came to my senses), I can personally attest to the fact that the organization is most decidely not about Israel. It is about AIPAC.
I wonder if Barak will back down after AIPAC calls to chew him out. Regardless, Barak's statement is now on the record.

Iran is not an existential threat to Israel. But the lobby might be.

M.J. Rosenberg is Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network. Previously, he worked on Capitol Hill for various Democratic members of the House and Senate for 15 years. He was also a Clinton political appointee at USAID. In the early 1980s, he was editor of AIPAC's weekly newsletter Near East Report. From 1998-2009, he was director of policy at Israel Policy Forum.

Mark says:

Well, I get the point that Rosenberg has an ax to grind about AIPAC, which may account for the over-the-top language that AIPAC might be an "existential threat" to Israel. I don't think that's going to win him friends and influence people among most of the people he's ostensibly trying to convince. Even if true, most people do not like to admit that they've been wrong about something about which they feel deeply and to which they've contributed blood, sweat, tears, and money. In any case, saying that AIPAC "is most decidedly not about Israel. It is about AIPAC" could be said about many other lobbying organizations in Washington if you just change the name and the cause. Pardon my cynicism, but that's business as usual in Washington, regardless of political affiliation or passion.

The more interesting issue, in my humble view, is the discussion about Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak's statement that Iran didn't pose an existential threat to Israel, even if it possessed a nuclear weapons. This raises some "interesting" questions: If, according to the Israel defense minister and the Israel prime minister (who later backed up Barak's statement), a nuclear-armed Iran does not pose an existential threat to Israel, then does that mean that a conventionally-armed Iran does not pose an existential threat to Israel? And if Iran, with a population of 66 million people and a large conventional military does not pose an existential threat to Israel then how would an effectively demilitarized tiny Palestinian state with a population of five or even six million pose an existential threat to Israel?

Now, I realize that just because the Israeli defense minister and prime minister say something does not make it correct. See, for example, the hubristic statements made by Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan and Israeli prime minister Golda Meir about the political situation in the Middle East just a week before the October 1973 Yom Kippur War broke out. But if they are correct, what does that say about the current and future situation, particularly when discussing the possibility of Israel attacking Iran's nuclear facilities?

I am not saying that a nuclear-armed Iran is a good thing or that the United States shouldn't be very concerned about Iran getting the bomb. And if there's anyone reading this who thinks that Iranian president Ahmedinajad is being truthful when he says that Iran's nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes then I have some prime swampland in Florida I'd like to sell you.

The real issue about Iran is that, as someone suggested recently, the Iranian leadership has not decided yet whether they want Iran to be a nation or a cause. So far they appear to lean towards wanting to be a cause (when the leaders aren't busy with their nepotistic money-skimming and money-laundering business activities). Add to that notion the fact that Iran — or at least the Iranian leadership — has at least one and probably two big chips on its shoulder and we have a less than promising horizon to contemplate.

What are those chips? Well, aside from the usual conspiracy theories, they're wounded pride and humiliation because the land now known as Iran, formerly Persia, already contained great and gifted civilizations when Europeans went around in animal skins and Mecca and Medina in Arabia were backwater oasis towns. How did mighty and civilized Persia come to be conquered by the uncivilized Arabs and fall behind the West?

In addition, given its existing record of supporting the adventures of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip for Iranian purposes and not out of altruistic concern for the Lebanese or the Palestinians, the thought of the Iranian leadership having nuclear weapons does not give me warm and fuzzy feelings.

Palestine's Jewish minority

By Bill Glucroft

Common Ground News Service
September 17, 2009

COPENHAGEN - If we are to believe the pundits and partisans, relations between Israel and the United States have never been worse. The Barack Obama administration appears to be taking the toughest tone of any in recent memory. The Cairo speech didn’t help, leaving an already vulnerable-feeling Israel with the sense that it's getting thrown under the bus.

A major division is settlements. President Obama wants an immediate halt, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will agree at most to a partial pause. Even left-leaning Israelis feel the American demand is too much too soon; a 35-year problem shouldn’t be hurried.

There are now more than 285,000 settlers in the West Bank beyond East Jerusalem. Though many might be coaxed back to Israel proper following an agreement with the Palestinians, a menacing minority has made clear its intention of preventing peace at any price, while simultaneously claiming to be a non-issue. However this minority can become a non-issue if Israeli, Palestinian and international negotiators re-think the path to peace.

In every attempt, those involved in cutting deals between Israel and the Palestinians have always tried going through the settlers, a self-defeating tactic because doing so only gives them more power. A new approach is to outmanoeuvre them — set a border that’s defensible for Israel and functional for Palestine, and urge the settlers to either get behind that border, with government assistance, or become a Jewish minority in the Palestinian state.

That may seem unthinkable. Settlement expansion has been de facto Israeli policy for nearly as long as Israel has controlled the territory. To now hand them over to a Palestinian state would be to punish people for doing what their leaders encouraged them to do.

Except, while politicking postponed any clear decision-making on what should be done with land captured in 1967, the settlers were gaining numbers, and with numbers, strength which they use to promote interests detrimental to the whole. They demanded services at a huge expense to the treasury, they exposed soldiers to unnecessary danger and they defied court orders to cease and desist. The more extreme settlers use violence, leading a soldier-friend of mine to remark, “Hebron is the only place in the West Bank where a soldier feels safer around Palestinians than around Jews.” This is not behaviour a democracy should tolerate, nor tacitly condone.

An ultimatum to settlers would force them to choose between the modern state of Israel and its biblical promise, possibly encouraging many to acquiesce without major incident. Those who remain could retain their Israeli citizenship, with an open invitation to return, but would become Palestinian citizens. Living no differently from other Diaspora Jews, they would be subject to the laws and values of their state.

At first blush, a Palestinian Jew may sound like an oxymoron, but no more than Israeli Arabs — Palestinians living as Israeli citizens, who comprise more than 20 percent of the Jewish state's population. Since Palestine would have to resemble a democracy, as Israel does, there is no reason minorities could not live there. In fact, it could help Palestine feel like a normal country.

The idea of withdrawing Israel but leaving Israelis has yet to go mainstream, but there have been hints. Palestinian National Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said as much at the Aspen Ideas Festival in July, when he declared that Jews would be welcomed in a future Palestinian state. Gershon Baskin, co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, suggested in a recent Jerusalem Post column to “link the rights, privileges and obligations of Palestinians in Israel to those of Jews in Palestine ... to close the gaps of discrimination against Palestinians in Israel and prevent the discrimination against Jews in Palestine.”

That’s a good idea, and should go further to require that Jewish holy sites that fall outside Israel be protected and accessible to non-Palestinians. This would ensure spiritual sovereignty over the land regardless of political jurisdiction.

The hard part would be getting the current Israeli government, which includes settler allies, to agree. The good news is that Prime Minister Netanyahu, though hawkish, is a pragmatist, whose relationship to ideologues remains one of convenience. He already believes in building the Palestinian economy, something hard to do with Israel’s security apparatus stifling the flow of goods, services and labour.

Netanyahu will pursue the most politically and financially expedient course and will only go so far in alienating Israel from the American administration. The influential foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, may have little compassion for Palestinians, but he cares deeply that Israel remains a Jewish state — more so than the particulars of the boundaries that come to define it.

Though a settler himself, Lieberman could be counted among those who might return to Israel under the right conditions, as evidenced by his decision to distance himself from the settlement issue when it became clear that it posed a conflict of interest.

Given their savvy, Netanyahu and Lieberman can find a way to circumvent the most ardent elements of the settler community, thereby minimising their political weight. If Israelis can see a Palestinian state as beneficial to them as it is for Palestinians, the settlers would become exactly what they say they are: a non-issue.

Bill Glucroft is a writer who has worked in Israel for both Zionist and Israeli-Arab organisations. He blogs at mediabard.org. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

Israel's Gaza Vindication

By Jackson Diehl

The Washington Post
September 21, 2009

When it was launched last December, Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip looked to most people in Washington to be risky, counterproductive and doomed to futility. Not only pundits like me but senior officials of the Bush administration predicted that the Israeli army would not succeed either in toppling Gaza's Hamas government or in eliminating its capacity to launch missiles at Israeli cities. Instead it would subject the Jewish state to another tidal wave of international opprobrium and risk its relations with West Bank Palestinians and Egypt.

Mostly, we were right. But today, Operation Cast Lead, as the three-week operation is known in Israel, is generally regarded by the country's military and political elite as a success. The reasons for that are worth examining now that a new and even more hawkish Israeli government is weighing whether to flout Washington's prevailing opposition to a military attack on Iran.

Israel's satisfaction starts with a simple set of facts. Between April 2001 and the end of 2008, 4,246 rockets and 4,180 mortar shells were fired into Israel from Gaza, killing 14 Israelis, wounding more than 400 and making life in southern Israel intolerable. During what was supposed to be a cease-fire during the last half of 2008, 362 rockets and shells landed. Meanwhile, between late 2000 and the end of 2008, Israeli forces killed some 3,000 Gazans.

Since April there have been just over two dozen rocket and mortar strikes — or less than on many single days before the war. No one has been seriously injured, and life in the Israeli town of Sderot and the area around it has returned almost to normal. Israeli attacks in Gaza have almost ceased, too: Since the end of the mini-war, 29 Palestinians, two of whom were civilians, have been killed by Israeli action.

Hamas, of course, remains in power and unmoved in its refusal to recognize Israel. It is still holding an Israeli soldier who was abducted in 2006. It is still smuggling material for weapons through tunnels under the Egyptian border and, if it chose to, could resume rocket attacks on Israel at any time.

The point, however, is that Israel has bought itself a stretch of relative peace with Hamas, just as its costly 2006 invasion of Lebanon has produced three years of quiet on that front. From the Israeli perspective, a respite from conflict is the most that can be expected from either group — or from their mutual sponsor, Iran.

"They will never change their ideology of destroying Israel," a senior government official told me last week. "But you can deter them if they are convinced you are not afraid of fighting a war."

But what of the grievous Palestinian suffering in the invasion — Israel itself counted 1,166 dead Gazans, including more than 450 civilians — and the international backlash that has caused? Just last week a U.N. commission headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone condemned what it called "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population," and suggested that responsible Israelis be hauled before the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.

Israel's leaders worried a lot about losing the war that way. But as they see it, they suffered only scratches. Egypt, which quietly collaborates with Israel's blockade of Gaza, came under pressure to change its policy but held firm. No Arab country toughened its stance toward Israel: According to the Obama administration, as many as five may be willing to offer diplomatic and economic concessions if Israel freezes its West Bank settlement construction.

Perhaps most significant, Hamas's rival for Palestinian leadership, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, is considerably stronger than it was before the war. Probably it will renew peace talks with Israel within weeks. As for the Goldstone report, the heat it briefly produced last week will quickly dissipate; the panel was discredited from the outset because of its appointment by the grotesquely politicized U.N. Human Rights Council.

The Gaza invasion was the second military operation Israel embarked on in less than 18 months despite disapproval from Washington. The other was its bombing of a nuclear reactor under construction in Syria in September 2007. Then, too, officials in Washington feared a dire diplomatic backlash or even a war between Israel and Syria. Nothing happened.

As they quietly debate the pros and cons of launching a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel's political and military leaders no doubt will be thinking about that history. That doesn't mean they will discount American objections — Iran would be a far harder and more complex target, with direct repercussions for U.S. troops and critical interests in the region. But, as with Gaza, even a partial and short-term reversal of the Iranian nuclear program may look to Israelis like a reasonable benefit — and the potential blowback overblown.

The Gaza Report’s Wasted Opportunity

By David Landau

The New York Times
September 20, 2009

Jerusalem - Israel intentionally went after civilians in Gaza — and wrapped its intention in lies.

That chilling — and misguided — accusation is the key conclusion of the United Nations investigation, led by Richard Goldstone, into the three-week war last winter. “While the Israeli government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercises of its right to self-defense,” the report said, “the mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.”

The report has produced a storm of outraged rejection in Israel. Politicians fulminate about double standards and anti-Semitism. Judge Goldstone, an eminent South African jurist and a Jew, is widely excoriated as an enemy of his people.

The report stunned even seasoned Israeli diplomats who expected no quarter from an inquiry set up by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which they believe to be deeply biased against Israel. They expected the military operation to be condemned as grossly disproportionate. They expected Israel to be lambasted for not taking sufficient care to avoid civilian casualties. But they never imagined that the report would accuse the Jewish state of intentionally aiming at civilians.

Israelis believe that their army did not deliberately kill the hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including children, who died during “Operation Cast Lead.” They believe, therefore, that Israel is not culpable, morally or criminally, for these civilian deaths, which were collateral to the true aim of the operation — killing Hamas gunmen.

It is, some would argue, a form of self-deception.

When does negligence become recklessness, and when does recklessness slip into wanton callousness, and then into deliberate disregard for innocent human life?

But that is the point — and it should have been the focus of the investigation. Judge Goldstone’s real mandate was, or should have been, to bring Israel to confront this fundamental question, a question inherent in the waging of war by all civilized societies against irregular armed groups. Are widespread civilian casualties inevitable when a modern army pounds terrorist targets in a heavily populated area with purportedly smart ordnance? Are they acceptable? Does the enemy’s deployment in the heart of the civilian area shift the line between right and wrong, in morality and in law?

These were precisely the questions that Israeli politicians and generals wrestled with in Gaza, as others do today in Afghanistan.

It is possible, and certainly arguable, that the Israeli policymakers, or individual Israeli field commanders in isolated instances, pushed the line out too far.

But Judge Goldstone has thwarted any such honest debate — within Israel or concerning Israel. His fundamental premise, that the Israelis went after civilians, shut down the argument before it began.

This is regrettable, for the report could have stirred the conscience of the nation. Many Israelis were dismayed at the war’s casualty figures, at the disparity between the dozen deaths on the Israeli side and the thousand-plus deaths, many of them of noncombatants, in Gaza.

Many Israelis were profoundly troubled by this arithmetic even though they supported Israel’s resort to arms in the face of incessant violation of their sovereign border by Hamas’s rain of rockets.

Judge Goldstone could have contended that just as Israeli leaders themselves have frequently called off pinpoint assassinations of terrorists because civilians were in the line of fire, so too they should have refrained from bombing and shelling Hamas targets in Gaza when that bombing and shelling was bound to exact a large civilian toll.

By approaching the Gaza war, and his report, from this perspective, Judge Goldstone could have opened debate and prompted reflection in Israel. Instead, by accusing Israel — its government, its army, its ethos — of deliberately seeking out civilians, he has achieved the opposite effect.

David Landau was the editor in chief of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz from 2004 to 2008.

Finding my roots in Tel Aviv

Raised in England by Iraqi Jewish parents, Rachel Shabi 'blanded out' her family heritage to fit in with her peers. Years later, she has finally learned to embrace her parents' values and her own rich cultural mix.

By Rachel Shabi

The Guardian (UK)
16 May 2009

On television news, Arabs and Jews look as though they've been at each other's throats for ever. Fortunately, there are people around us with longer memories — people who, by the arc of their own lives, prove that this wasn't always the case.

People such as my parents: Iraqi Jews who migrated to Israel in the early 1950s and to England during the 1970s. My family, just like thousands of other Jewish families, had been at home in Middle Eastern countries for centuries; Jews neighbouring Arabs, co-nationalists living for the most part cordially and in peace. It seemed easy, instinctive and eternal — until it all fell apart.

Recently, I went back to Israel, where I was born, to research the stories of these Jews from Arab countries and find out what happened to them in the Jewish state. I wanted to bring their experiences back into the frame. In the process, I brought my parents, and my own family history, into much sharper focus, too.

If there was a defining moment, it came in a scruffy trade union building in Tel Aviv. A group of Israeli musicians gathers here in a boxy room each week — classically trained performers of a vintage that was adored in their country of birth, Iraq, but whose musical style did not quite fit the tastes of the Jewish state. It's sort of an all Iraqi-Jewish jam session, although they play a lot of Egyptian classics and the percussionists tap out oriental rhythms on darbukas, tambourines or tabletops. As I sat among them, it dawned on me that my mother — forever clapping an alien-sounding, misfit beat over western music while I was growing up in England - was simply marking out a rhythm that I couldn't hear. Her clapping retroactively became normal.

By the time my family moved to England, my father had lived in Turkey and France as a student, as well as Iraq and Israel — and had a fair idea of the social values he rated in a country. England ticked the right boxes. My mother had some reservations: wouldn't it be tough to raise children so far from a sprawling, close-knit family in Israel, whose love and support were surely more important than abstract ideals?

Those reservations about being far from "home" (I was never sure which one — Iraq or Israel) were sometimes nudged by the sort of migrant experiences that were typical of British life in the 1970s. Back then, Britain wasn't especially interested in my parents being Iraqi, or Israeli, or whatever. Perhaps they were just "foreign" — at any rate, that was how I tended to perceive them as a child. There were long trips in search of pitta bread and long waits for visiting relatives to bring us bottles of amba, the radioactively bright mango pickle that Iraqis seem addicted to. My mum admits that she would go to a pet-food shop for the unhusked sunflower seeds that she'd roast for us to crack open between our teeth as a snack. ("Yes, that's right, for the budgie," she'd tell the shopkeeper.)

I didn't realise then that the seed-cracking was a hallmark oriental habit — or that, in early Israel, public transport operators were so confounded by the carpets of seed husks that lined the buses, courtesy of passengers, that they erected signs to discourage the practice. When I was young, I didn't know the pet-shop story, either. Had my mum told me then, I'd have been embarrassed, as I was by all things that made me appear "foreign". A migrant kid, I assumed that blanding out my background would somehow make me more British, whereas all it could possibly achieve was to make me more bland.

I grew up with Arabic (or Judaeo-Arabic) cuisine: Iraqi breakfasts on Saturdays of overnight-boiled eggs, fried eggplants, mango pickle and salad stuffed into pitta pockets; ba'ba beh tamur, homemade date pastries that would surface around the Jewish festival of Purim; slow-cooked marrows that had been carefully emptied and restuffed with fragrant rice, meat and pine nuts; falafels and hummus in my lunchbox. The Arabic language was ever present — because my parents were always speaking it, or quoting parables or bits of poetry in it, or reading Jewish religious texts in Arabic over the Passover table. Arabic music was always in the background at home, either via treasured, battered cassettes or on crackly long-wave. There was never any doubt that Arab culture was an integral part of our Jewish home: respected, enjoyed and admired. But growing up, I wasn't really into it.

As it turns out, scores of Israeli children were experiencing something similar at that time. Approximately half the population of Israel is from Arab or Muslim countries: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen. Known as Mizrahi ("Eastern") or Sephardi Jews, they arrived in Israel during various periods following its creation in 1948. Jews of Mizrahi origin were for many years the majority in Israel — until the arrival of just under a million migrants from the former Soviet bloc during the early 1990s reshuffled the ethnic pack. Mizrahis grew up in a Jewish society that was desperate to yoke to Europe and belittled the Arab world as an uncivilised cultural desert. The majority Mizrahis were assumed by the ruling European minority to be bearers of an inferior culture that should not come to represent or define the Jewish state. And, inevitably, many of those Mizrahi children internalised this story.

Interviewing for my book, it was easy to understand the Mizrahis who described how they had spent childhoods faking their own identities — in a country that encouraged its Mizrahi population to ditch those "backward" oriental habits. One professor told me he'd badgered his father into changing the family surname to something that wasn't a telltale mark of Mizrahi origin, and now feels shame each time he visits his father's grave and sees the bogus name on the headstone. Another, of Moroccan origin, described how she invented a French persona for herself, forbidding her parents from speaking Arabic or playing oriental music. Others described how they erased their guttural oriental accent: vocals that are integral to Hebrew — a Semitic language, the sister of Arabic, but which Israel decided would be tonally "wrong" for the Jewish state. (I remember how I used to practise my English vowels until they lost the slightest foreign twang.) And these stories repeat so many times over in Israel — recollections of masked origins, buried roots, trashed biographies; blanded-out backgrounds.

This wasn't uniformly the case. Countless Mizrahis retained their home culture in Israel, often in defiance and against the odds. When their Europeanised co-nationalists pronounced Mizrahi culture to be inferior, some just said: "And who are you, exactly, to decide on that?" Meanwhile, many of those Mizrahis who did sever roots are now trying to reconnect with those forsaken origins — reclaiming their real family names, reinstating the oriental vocals, rediscovering their home culture. Yair Dalal, a world-acclaimed Israeli musician of Iraqi origin, describes a realignment process that occurs when he sends his Mizrahi students home to practise a piece of oriental music. "They come back a week later and say: 'My dad started to sing the song I was playing.' And that's the connection. That person is back on track."

Getting back on track means that — to my good fortune — I now appreciate more fully my parents' Iraqi dimension. I'm aware of the irony: that researching a book on how Israel patronised its Mizrahi citizens made me realise how I'd patronised my Mizrahi parents. But, as my good-natured parents might say in Iraqi Arabic: "Ahsan min maku." (Better than nothing.)

They remain dedicated followers of Iraqi and other Arabic culture in the UK. They shop for favourite foods at Iraqi grocers, chronicling the storekeeper's arrival in England, lamenting the tragedy of Iraq and raising colourful Arabic curses to the foolish western interference in that country. They remain forlorn at the closure of London's Kufa gallery, an Iraqi cultural centre that shut down a few years after the second Gulf war. They loved the British Museum's recent Babylon exhibition and attended many of the related events.

My parents remain absorbed in the small print of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the wider region. They're connected to and care about Israel — it was home — but still it bugs them, politically and culturally: "Why don't they pronounce this word properly, as it is written in Hebrew?"; "Why can't they spell Arabic street signs correctly?"; "Why, in the name of God, do they care so little about the Middle East?"

Happy Englanders, they are equally invested in and committed to British politics and culture — they won't miss Question Time; they are friends of the Opera House; they are as likely to bemoan politically spineless New Labour policy as they are morally bankrupt Israeli policy. They span these worlds effortlessly, showing how easy it can be to bridge binaries, how seemingly polar opposites — Arab or Jew, east or west — can reside together comfortably in the same space, the same skin.

• Not the Enemy: Israel's Jews from Arab Lands by Rachel Shabi (Yale University Press, £18.99).

The West Bank's Deceptive Growth

By Zahi Khouri

The New York Times
September 9, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long tried to substitute the slogan of “economic peace” for genuine progress with the Palestinians on the political front.

Yet the International Monetary Fund’s projected growth of 7 percent in the West Bank for 2009 is largely the result of Palestinian reforms undertaken in spite of the obstacles Israel continues to place in the way of Palestinian development.

Too many in the West remain unaware of the impediments to economic development — not to mention political freedom — we Palestinians continue to face.

Some Israeli checkpoints have been dismantled, but any Palestinian businessman will tell you that with over 600 checkpoints and roadblocks still scattered across the West Bank, we remain in a tenuous economic position.

Few domestic or foreign investors are willing to invest in the Palestinian economy, and many Palestinian businessmen holding passports of friendly countries, even the United States, are being denied passage through Israel.

The economy of the West Bank has deteriorated over the past decade as a result of Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement, which severely hamper trade and labor mobility.

These restrictions, combined with Israel’s fragmentation of the West Bank, remain the greatest impediment to economic development in Palestine. This includes Israel’s forced isolation of occupied East Jerusalem, long the economic heart of Palestine, from the rest of the West Bank.

According to a June 2009 World Bank report, real G.D.P. in the occupied Palestinian territory has declined by a “cumulative 34 percent in real per capita terms” since September 2000. Given this, even the most minimal Israeli gestures cannot help but bring improvement.

The I.M.F.’s projected growth, however, will be a one-off (as was growth in 2006) if Israel fails to improve the prospects for Palestinian trade and development.

As Oussama Kanaan, the I.M.F. chief of mission in the West Bank and Gaza, stated, “If the relaxation of Israeli restrictions does not continue in the remainder of the year, real G.D.P. per capita would decline further in 2009, along the same trend started in 2006.”

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad made a similar point when he asserted, “The Israeli restrictions still pose obstacles to the improvement of the economy.” In other words, 7 percent growth is no sure thing.

In any case, Palestinian economic growth is not a substitute for serious and meaningful negotiations aimed at ending Israel’s occupation and establishing an independent, viable and sovereign Palestinian state.

I am all for economic improvement, but not as a substitute for peace — nor its manipulation by Mr. Netanyahu to manage and normalize the occupation while trying to sell Israel’s benevolence to the rest of the globe. Self-determination and statehood alone hold the keys to unlocking Palestine’s economic potential.

I monitor Mr. Netanyahu’s economic and political intentions closely because in 1995 I left a comfortable life on Park Avenue in Manhattan to become the founder and chief executive of the Palestinian National Beverage Co.

Initially, the undertaking thrived. We continue to employ over 300 Palestinians, but we have struggled in recent years as a consequence of Israeli restrictions. Mr. Netanyahu’s economic and political dictums determine whether we grow or contract. He wields this immense power over us, although Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had no role in his election.

The foundation upon which our economy rests is dangerously rotten. Israeli spreading settlements, checkpoints and roadblocks that fragment the occupied Palestinian territory; Israel’s illegal Wall and its permit system that severely restrict where Palestinians can live and work; and Israel’s continuing siege of Gaza all not only threaten our nascent economic recovery, but threaten the very possibility of a two-state solution.

The alternatives to a two-state solution are either an apartheid state, which is unacceptable to Palestinians, or one binational state, which Israeli Jews reject.

Mr. Netanyahu is selling us a bill of goods with the claim he can manage the situation with economic improvement. He is wrong. Without a political outcome that secures Palestinian territorial rights, including East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, and a just outcome for refugees, more conflict lies ahead.

President Obama recognizes this. President Mahmoud Abbas recognizes this. Yet Mr. Netanyahu somehow thinks he can charm Palestinians, who are daily reminded of the occupation under which they suffer, with a 7-percent growth bubble.

If President Obama wants to be a real friend to Israelis and Palestinians, he must insist that Israel stop settling Palestinian land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and abide by international law.

A settlement freeze is a crucial first step to salvaging the two-state solution, as well as Israel’s credentials as a genuine partner for peace. Seven-percent growth and an illusionary calm are no substitute for this.

Zahi Khouri is the chief executive of the Palestinian National Beverage Co.

How come we don't have more colorful leaders?

By Ray Hanania

The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
September 7, 2009

In spite of all the news Palestinians and Israelis produce each day, we really are pretty boring people. I mean, we have nothing on the Japanese.

The big news in Japan last week is that Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of incoming Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, says she traveled to Venus in the 1970s in a UFO. She's talking about the planet, not a 'happy place' or the local beauty spa.

Mrs. Hatoyama detailed the unusual trip in her book called Most Bizarre Things I've Encountered.

I have racked my brain to think of anything that even comes close to that in the many stories about Palestinians and Israelis.

There was a rumor once that during the peace process (remember that?), Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin wagered at the roulette table at the Jericho casino. Arafat offered Rabin double or nothing on "returning" the West Bank.

IN TRUTH, most of the stories about Palestinians and Israelis are about tragedies, missed opportunities, name-calling, the blame game and, sadly, continued violence.

I did read an Israeli press release reporting that a Palestinian prisoner in one of the country's many prisons had been killed by a "nonlethal weapon." I could only imagine what might have happened had the weapon been lethal.

On another occasion, Hamas leaders tried to explain that Martyr Mouse was merely an orphaned cartoon character whose family had been blown up by Israeli cartoon characters during a siege at a cartoon checkpoint near a cartoon settlement. And the mouse suffered from a slight lisp that distorted everything it said.

When Martyr Mouse urged kiddies to "do their best to kill the Jews," all it was trying to tell young Palestinians who watch Hamas television was to "do their best to fill the news." It must work, because Hamas does "fill the news."

Still, it would be kind of cool if we could get Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to set aside all the heavy problems and talk about some of his own unusual experiences.

I can see Netanyahu, cold and calculating as only a prime minister could be, playing a wildly romantic character in a Hollywood movie. For all his hard-lining, some Palestinian women have compared him to the late Paul Newman.

The same Palestinian women have told me they think Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reminds then of Mahatma Gandhi, the fearless and nonviolent leader of India. Of course, there isn't any salt to fight over in Palestine like there is in India. And while Gandhi used to gum his own leather into soft shirts and wraps, Abbas leaves all the cooking to the women.

Still, neither has ever taken a trip to another planet. Nor have they been kidnapped by aliens.

Although come to think of it, I wonder how Palestinians and Israelis might react if a UFO landed atop the wall (fence, barricade, whatever) and declared that the Holy Land belonged to them and they wanted it back.

DO YOU think that might be enough to push Palestinians and Israelis to join together against someone besides each other? Everyone says that if Palestinians and Israelis could just resolve their conflict, they could become the most powerful combined force in the Middle East.

Sadly, Palestinians and Israelis are not as lucky. All we have is run-of-the-mill conflict. Anger. Hatred. Violence.

Nothing unusual, strange or hard to believe, like visiting Venus in a spaceship.

We can only hope, though.

The writer is a columnist, stand-up comedian and Chicago radio talk show host. You can hear his program every afternoon at 16:00pm Israel time on-line at www.RadioChicagoland.com.