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The left-wing Jewish group Brit Tzedek v’Shalom is asking the US to establish communication with Hamas:

“In the name of ensuring humanitarian treatment of the Palestinian people, please consider a pragmatic policy of contact with those Palestinians in control of the Gaza side of these border crossings who may be affiliated with Hamas,” Marcia Freedman, the Brit Tzedek v’Shalom president, said in a letter sent last Friday to the U.S. Secretary of State. — JTA

The idea is apparently that the suffering of the residents of Gaza, caused by the international boycott of Hamas, transcends politics. It’s a humanitarian issue.

In reality, Hamas has the resources to help Gaza residents on its own. Large quantities of military supplies, weapons, and ammunition pass into the Gaza Strip every day through the multiple tunnels into Egypt. Hamas receives funds from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Islamic ‘charities’ throughout the world, including the US.

Indeed last week, Hamas received a huge amount of money from the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank (in other words, from the US and EU), when 3,500 members of Hamas’ “Special Security Forces” were paid a full year’s salary — supposedly a result of a “computer glitch”.

Meanwhile Hamas continues ‘military’ activities against Israel, provoking responses like the recent incursion into southern Gaza, where the IDF clashed with Hamas troops armed with ‘advanced’ weapons.

It’s clear that Hamas has chosen guns over butter, as the saying goes.

But relief supplies are being sent to Gaza. The problem is that Hamas and other Gaza terrorist factions have made the crossings dangerous:

[On July 26, UN Mideast Envoy Michael] Williams said Palestinian militants fired 192 rockets and mortar shells at Gaza’s crossings and into Israel in the last month. He said Hamas’ military wing was responsible for most of the attacks on the crossings, while Islamic Jihad fired most of the rockets and mortars into Israel. — Justin Bergman, Forbes [my emphasis]

Two weeks ago, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh led reporters on a tour of Gaza to show them the “humanitarian crisis”:

‘Gaza today is better,’ Ismail Haniyeh, still calling himself Palestinian prime minister, told dozens of foreign reporters who joined a bus tour of the coastal enclave that took in a prison, a church, border posts and security installations.

‘But the strangling siege … has affected Gaza very much,’ he added, two days before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice embarks on a new round of peace diplomacy in Israel and the West Bank. ‘I hope on your visit you have seen the suffering and will convey to the world the reality of the suffering.’ — Reuters

So Hamas wants the ‘siege’ lifted because Palestinians are suffering, yet they continue their military buildup, their terrorist attacks against Israel, and even attack the very crossing points through which aid must pass!

It’s hard to see how Brit Tzedek v’Shalom can promote tzedek (righteousness) and shalom (peace) by helping to legitimize the evil and warlike Hamas.

Technorati Tags: Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, Hamas, Israel, Gaza

Almost everyone agrees that the US is a strong supporter of Israel.

• Apologists for anti-US terrorism claim that such attacks are caused by our relationship with Israel.

• Antisemites claim that the US strongly supports Israel and that it is because our government and media are controlled by Zionist Jews.

• Every presidential candidate talks about our traditional strong support for Israel and the need to continue it. Congress periodically passes resolutions by huge majorities which express support for Israel.

• And the Jewish establishment in the US preens itself in the most fulsome way on the closeness between the US and Israel, which it believes is a result of its efforts.

But the fact is that US policy is not especially pro-Israel. Let’s look at the facts.

First, what about the huge amount of aid? In 2006, Israel received about $240 million in civilian economic aid (down from $477 M in 2004), and $2.4 billion in military aid. The administration plans to increase military aid to $3 billion next year. Both the civilian and military aid must be spent primarily in the US, and much of the ‘civilian’ aid is for military purposes.

The effect of this aid is to make Israel’s military policy a captive of the US. As you recall, the big questions during last summer’s war were “how long will the US let this go on?”, “did Condoleeza Rice authorize a ground attack?”, and similar.

The US has never flinched from using its leverage, as when it forced Israel to absorb Scud strikes on Tel Aviv in 1991 so as not to upset the charade that the US had Arab ‘allies’ with it in the Gulf war; nor when President George W. Bush placed an embargo on helicopter parts at the beginning of the second intifada in response to targeted killings of terrorists (the embargo was lifted after 9/11).

Benefits to the US include a market for military products, real-world testing of these products, and a proxy military force in the Middle East.

While Israel certainly needs to be able to counter weapons provided to Syria and Iran by Russia, the US is responsible for arming two of the major potentially hostile powers in the region, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Note that the proposed large increase in military aid to Israel is in part to ‘balance’ a huge ($20 billion) arms deal with the Saudis.

Historically, US foreign policy has not been nearly as pro-Israel as either AIPAC or Al-Qaeda would have us believe. For example, Eisenhower and Dulles threatened to get Israel sanctioned and expelled from the UN 1956, and forced ben Gurion to withdraw from Sinai while refusing to guarantee her freedom of passage in the straits of Tiran — the same issue that became the casus belli for the 1967 war, when LBJ refused to force Nasser to back down.

The US has never accepted the Israeli annexation of Jerusalem, and has resisted moving its embassy to West Jerusalem — where the Knesset is and which has been in Israeli hands since 1948 — for years.

In general, US policy toward Israel has been designed to gain influence with the Arabs rather than to help Israel — hence the seemingly irrational push today for an impossible ‘peace process’.

On the other hand, US policy toward Saudi Arabia — including going to war to protect her oil reserves in 1991, and selling her military hardware that, from an Israeli point of view, upsets the regional balance of power — has always been positive, despite Saudi actions against US interests.

Mearsheimer and Walt to the contrary, the Jewish lobby has not been nearly as successful as both its enemies and friends believe, and US policy toward Israel has generally followed the various administration’s views — and sometimes those of the pro-Arab State Department — regarding US interests.

Technorati Tags: Israel

I’ve written that the ADL’s position on the Armenian Genocide is objectionable and should be changed. The Armenian Genocide is a historical fact (as an off and on resident of Fresno for a period spanning 35 years, I’ve heard plenty of first-hand accounts). To say that it’s an open question whether genocide occurred is not different from Holocaust denial, and it simply cannot be justified.

However, there are those who wish to use this issue — and the stubbornness of ADL head Abraham Foxman — to destroy the institution. And despite statements like this one,

Ultimately, it is the seductive appeal of the ADL’s dark visions that most threaten us. American Jewry enjoys privileges undreamed of in Jewish history: we are a more accepted, more integral part of our country than any Jewish community ever has been. We have entered unprecedented territory in Jewish history, and the enticements and possibilities of this new era should be setting our souls alight.

Foxman’s ADL justifies its existence by beckoning us backward, encouraging us to hide from the ever-present Cossacks in a psychological shtetl. It’s a dark vision that serves the ADL’s interests, but not ours. — Joey Kurtzman, ‘Fire Foxman’

the reality is that antisemitism in the US is not going away, fueled by Arab and Iranian oil money. Mearsheimer and Walt and Jimmy Carter are more sophisticated than David Duke-style Jew-bashing (although there’s plenty of that still around), but the very improvement in the situation of the Jews in America — and Kurtzman is correct that it is historically unprecedented — has made them a target.

Keep in mind that anti-Israel forces believe that US policy is strongly pro-Israel and that this is a result of the ‘Jewish lobby’ (they are incorrect on both counts, but this is the topic of another article). They believe that anything that weakens US Jewry is to their advantage, and that includes antisemitism in America.

The ADL is the one organization which carefully documents and tracks antisemitic activitities in the US. When a holocaust denier, a neo-Nazi, or Muslim extremist gives a lecture, the ADL is there. Kurtzman and others who find the ADL embarrassing and old-fashioned would throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In the case of the Armenian Genocide the ADL seems to have felt that they were doing the Turkish Jewish community a favor by appeasing the Turkish government — and not, as Kurtzman suggests, ‘exploiting’ the Turkish Jews. Nevertheless, the policy was tactically wrong (as appeasement usually is) and morally unsupportable.

What needs to happen is that the ADL needs to retract its statements about the Armenian Genocide, not its “dark vision” of antisemitism, which is unfortunately pretty well justified.

Technorati Tags: ADL, Armenian Genocide, Foxman, Kurtzman

I’ve found it very to difficult to understand the utility of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks being pushed by the US today. Whatever their goal, it cannot be Israeli-Palestinian peace. In this article, commentator Barry Rubin discusses the relationship between appearance and reality.

Window Dressing

By Barry Rubin

Is there a window of opportunity for Israel-Palestinian peace right now? Let me put it this way: in diplomatic terms, looking through the window is worthwhile but, in analytical terms, I don’t think anyone is going to be able to climb through it.

The problem of the current situation poses two typical issues which often bedevil — but could be used to clarify — Middle East issues. The first is the logical versus the real; the second is the diplomatic versus the analytical.

Let us begin by what to outsiders seems a logical evaluation of the current situation. It goes something like this: Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA) it controls in the West Bank are in serious shape. Hamas has seized the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian infrastructure has been devastated. There seems to be no progress toward peace or an independent state.

Given this crisis it is logical that the Fatah leadership, headed by “President” Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who seem to be moderate men, pursue a new course. They can enforce stability on the West Bank and discipline on their own forces. They can use the aid money they are getting from international donors to improve their people’s situation, build schools and hospitals, and create a viable economy. And they can make peace with Israel to obtain a Palestinian state. They can say to the Palestinians: Hah! See how we deliver and Hamas does not! We have brought you all these benefits and so naturally you must support us.

Happy ending. Curtain falls. Standing ovation from the audience. Good reviews in the media. Nobel prizes to follow.

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