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M. J. Rosenberg of the ‘Israel Policy Forum’ is rightly unhappy that some Israelis treat Yigal Amir, Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, as a hero.

Unless one of the conspiracy theories is true, Amir shot and killed the Prime Minister. For this, he should remain in prison for life.

But Rosenberg uses our horror at the fact that a Jew killed the Prime Minister of the Jewish state to tar anyone who opposes the coming debacle at Annapolis with the brush of extremism.

He starts with harmless foolishness:

The killing of Rabin was the worst disaster in the history of the Jewish State. Its repercussions are felt every day. I believe that had Rabin lived, Oslo would have ended with an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty and a resolution of the conflict.

The killing of Rabin was certainly a disaster. But possibly the worst disaster in the history of the state was that handshake on the White House lawn which resulted in the return of Yasser Arafat to Ramallah, where, for the rest of his life he pursued his single-minded goal to destroy any possibility of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Counterfactual conditionals in history are notoriously hard to prove or refute, but the rhetorical job of this one is to introduce the red herring of Jewish extremism into the risk/reward analysis of the Annapolis conference.

Then the rhetoric gets out of control. Rosenberg writes,

Olmert linked the obnoxious [football fans who booed a moment of silence for Rabin] with the people who virulently oppose any agreement with the Palestinians. This is not to say that all peace opponents admire Rabin’s assassin but rather that the Amir admirers (and those who prayed publicly for the death of Sharon for giving up Gaza or attack random Palestinians) come from the extreme right. That is a fact. [my emphasis]

So much innuendo in such a short passage! So first of all, Olmert did criticize the booing fans as well as expressions from the extreme right wing such as pictures of President Peres in a kaffiyeh, etc. But Rosenberg proceeds to connect the booing fans, those who oppose any agreement, ‘peace opponents’, Amir admirers, those who prayed for the death of Sharon, and the extreme right.

Of course, not all ‘peace opponents’ admire Yigal Amir! Thank you Mr. Rosenberg. Actually, some of them are not even opponents of peace, but merely opponents of sham peace conferences which — by providing a venue in which Israel can be forced to make concessions that seriously damage her security in return for empty words — really make war more, rather than less, likely.

So if one can accept that there is a legitimate reason to oppose the Annapolis conference, based on such things as the precedent of Oslo, the precedent of the withdrawals from Gaza and southern Lebanon, the weakness of Abbas, the probability of a Hamas takeover, the US State Department’s perception of American interests, etc., etc. — even if one does not admire Yigal Amir and did not pray for the death of Ariel Sharon — then one may ask why Rosenberg has the ill grace to write,

Now the crazies on both sides are determined to see Annapolis fail. Israel’s security agencies are on alert, with Olmert under even more protection than usual. Hopefully, the same precautions are being taken by the Palestinian Authority which needs to guard against both attacks on the Fatah leadership and an increase in attacks on Israeli targets.

All this adds urgency to Annapolis. Without movement toward peace and an end to occupation, the lunatics on both sides are going to triumph in both Israel and Palestine.

Many opponents of Annapolis are not crazies and lunatics, and Rosenberg knows it. It is remarkable that the Left pretends to be entirely unable to see the real dangers of the ‘peace’ plan du jour, preferring to obsess over the horrors of occupation and the need to end it.

Annapolis is not urgent. If it ‘fails’, then nothing will have changed. But if it ‘succeeds’ — then the IDF will have to get out of the West Bank so that Hamas and its rocket scientists can march in. Can Rosenberg explain why this is not so?

I would venture to suggest that there is something worse than the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and that is the Palestinian occupation of Israel. It is not unthinkable. And any Jew that doesn’t see this can rightly be called a crazy or a lunatic.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Annapolis conference, Rosenberg, Yigal Amir

From the Jerusalem Post today:

Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on Monday rejected Israel’s demand that the Palestinians acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state…

“There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined,” Erekat told Radio Palestine.

A senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office said in response that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insists that the Palestinians recognize Israel’s Jewish identity, as a condition for Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state.

The astonishing chutzpah of the Palestinians should not astonish anyone. They think that they get to define what kind of state Israel should be, because they think it all belongs to them anyway.

With all due respect to my left-wing friends, there is not going to be peace with these creatures. It did not come from Oslo or Geneva, and it will not come from Annapolis. Not as a result of land or population swapping. Not by clever formulas that concede the right of return but ask that they do not ‘return’. Not from concerts and not by electronic voting. Not with Hamas and not with Fatah.

To the Ha’aretz editorial board, to Peace Now and Meretz in Israel and the US, to Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, to all the organizations with ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ in their names, to Rabbis Ascherman and Lerner: get over it. There is not going to be peace; decide if you want there to be a Jewish state of not.

The Arab world, especially including the Palestinians does not believe that a Jewish state belongs in the Middle East and they will do everything in their power to put an end to it. Erekat hasn’t said something new, they say it all the time, over and over. Why don’t we believe them?

Update [12 Nov 1956 PST]: Still not getting it, Ami Isseroff wrote

There can be no peace between the Palestinian people and the Jewish people, until the Palestinian people recognize and admit that there is a Jewish people, and that we have at least as much right to a state of our own as they do. It is simply incredible, that in all his years of contact with representatives of the Israel government, Saeeb Erekat never learned that there is such a thing as the Jewish people, never understood the basis of Zionism, and that Palestinians would never be able to make peace with Israel, and never get their own state, if they were unwilling to accept the right of the Jewish people to a state. [my emphasis]

Boker tov Ami, they do not want to make peace and they do not want their own state. They want ours.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Erekat

It’s been suggested that because Iran will probably not have usable nuclear weapons in the near future, and because a preemptive attack on Iran by the US or Israel is unlikely, the whole issue of the Iranian nuclear program is not important.

Wrong. Very wrong.

The Middle East’s Nuclear Dark Age

by Barry Rubin

The Iranian nuclear issue is too important and dangerous to be miscomprehended. So here are some life-and-death factors to keep in mind about it:

First, Iran is not about to obtain nuclear weapons, certainly not ones that it could use. That dreadful outcome is still several years away. Despite all the bragging going on by Iranian leaders in Persian-language statements about how they are getting closer to atomic bombs—coupled with denials of any such intention in English-language ones—it just isn’t that easy to do.

Second, neither Israel nor the United States is about to attack Iran. There are lots of reasons why this is so but they can be boiled down to the following: it is hard militarily to carry out such an attack, it is politically dangerous, and can lead to very serious consequences. An attack is something better to avoid, if possible. And it is certainly too early for such a high-risk, potentially high-cost venture.

Third, why then are Israel, the United States and others making such a big fuss about Iran right now, since it is neither the last moment nor a prelude to an attack soon? The answer is that it is the last moment for three other things:

• If international terms, if diplomatic and economic pressure is going to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons it has to be intensified right now or it will be too late to generate the needed non-military threat to Tehran.
• In technological terms, Iran is right on the verge of being able to build nuclear weapons all by itself without any more foreign help or equipment.
• In political terms, if Iranian leaders and people aren’t worried about the country’s isolation and the nuclear program’s high costs, they will more likely keep in power the regime’s most extreme faction—and the ones most likely to use nuclear weapons in the future.

So in several real ways it is truly a moment of now or never, not because of an imminent attack but due to the fact that this era gives the last chance to avoid one.

But there is a fourth set of factors extremely important yet hardly ever mentioned. True, the most horrifying outcome would be if Iran used these weapons against Israel, possibly triggering a region-wide nuclear and conventional war which will make previous conflicts look like a picnic.

Yet while this risk alone justifies decisive action to stop Iran’s nuclear success, this may not happen, you could argue. Or perhaps you don’t mind seeing Israel incinerated or think it can take care of itself. Why, then, should Iran having nuclear weapons bother you?

The reason is that even more likely to take place than an Iranian attack on Israel are a number of other dire circumstances that would be devastating for everyone in the region and the world in general. Briefly, these include the following disasters:

• Appeasement: Frightened by Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons and uncertain of Western protection, Arabic-speaking states will rush to meet Iran’s demands. This means they will be afraid to cooperate with U.S. policy or provide facilities for Western efforts to contain Iran. And that development will make them even less able to protect themselves against Tehran, further reinforcing the effect.
• Given Iran’s rejectionist stance, no Arab state or the Palestinian Authority would dare move toward peace with Israel. Even if you believe such a thing is possible now, forget about it for 20 or 30 years.
• Since Iran always favors higher oil prices (with Saudi Arabia, which already has lots of money, holding them down), the combination of Iranian pressure and heightened regional insecurity will send the cost of petroleum sky-high, far above anything hitherto dreamed.
• Intoxicated with a belief that Islamism is on the march to victory, tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands will join radical Islamist groups, either clients of Iran or independent ones.
• It is quite conceivable that even if the Iranian government makes no decision to give nuclear weapons to terrorists super-extremist elements in the regime will do it on their own.
• With the regime having nuclear weapons, any opposition will be too intimidated to try to change it, no matter how much support dissidents have.
• Nobody in the region will be willing to oppose greater Iranian influence in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere. And even if you believe this is possible now—though I don’t—it is certainly obvious that Syria, nestled under Iran’s nuclear protection, will never move away from its alliance with Tehran
• In fact, new members may join the current radical HISH alliance (Hamas-Iran-Syria-Hizballah), thus further building the extremist forces. The result could be a turning point with Islamists toppling one Arab nationalist regime after another.
• Of course, all of the above would escalate regional instability.

Does the above sound exaggerated? I don’t think so, but even if you want to reduce such dire predictions to a lower level the prospects are still quite harrowing. Remember that even if Iran never uses nuclear weapons to make mushroom clouds it will quite effectively use them for strategic and economic leverage.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). His latest books are The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan) and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).

Technorati Tags: Iran