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I’ve criticized Ami Isseroff for, in my opinion, having a too-optimistic estimation of the Palestinian desire for peace. However, in regard to the recent statements by Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and Prime Minister Salem Fayyad that they will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state, he is right on (”Don’t make us choose between Zionism and peace“).

First, he recognizes that the issue is about self-determination for the Jewish people, and not about religion:

Half a dozen “analysts” showed that they are as totally clueless about the meaning of Zionism as Erekat pretended to be. They took his argument, that there cannot be a state of a religion, at face value, and proceeded to point out carefully that the Muslims have religious states, Britain has an established church and so on.

But really, who cares what others do? What matters is what we do, and whether it is right or not. The Muslims can have as many Islamic states as they want, where wife beating is legal and you can get tips on how to do it, and where adulteresses are stoned to death and homosexuals are hanged. I do not want such a state and that was never the goal of Zionism. It was shocking to read these apologies for theocracy from otherwise enlightened people. Why would we want a Jewish Republic of Israel, run by Jewish Khomeinis?

And Isseroff, a ‘peacenik’, nevertheless understands (as others on the Left do not) exactly why this is the fundamental issue between Israel and the Palestinians:

The logic of [Meretz MK Yossi] Beilin and others is that if we bring up recognition of the Jewish State then we can’t have “peace.” Beilin forgot that the whole goal of the peace negotiations from our point of view, is the goal of Zionism - to have a recognized national home for the Jewish people. He forgot why we are here.

If Israel was not created to be the state of the Jewish people, then for what reason did we fight all those wars? …If we wanted an Arab state, we had only to sit on our hands in 1948 and 1967 and 1973. There would be “peace” without a state of the Jewish people. That is what it means.

If we give up on that issue, if Israel is not recognized as the state of the Jewish people, and our right to self-determination is not recognized, then we have given up on all the issues. The is not just a theoretical point of pride. It has the most profound implications. If we surrender the right of the Jews to self-determination, we have no basis for refusing the right of return to Palestinian Arab refugees. We have no reason to maintain the Law of Return either. The borders of the Arab Democratic Republic of Israel with the neighboring Palestinian state would not matter. PM Achmad Tibi of Israel could negotiate them with PM Hanniyeh or PM Fayyad. Or he could send Beilin to negotiate another Beilin Abu-Mazen agreement. [my emphasis]

Yes, I know it is hard to define ‘the Jewish People’. It’s not any easier to define “the Palestinian People” either, but as the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out, the lack of a simple, unambiguous criterion for the applicability of a concept does not make it meaningless. As Isseroff notes, both Saeb Erekat and Yossi Beilin would scream bloody murder if someone suggested that there was no ‘Palestinian People’ which has the right to a state.

As we come closer to the Annapolis conference — which may be a non-event, or which may encompass the imposition of the Saudi plan for the dismemberment of Israel — it’s critical to keep our eyes on that which is essential and distinguish it from the rest. It’s absolutely essential that there be no surrender of the fundamental principle of Zionism, which is that there is a Jewish People, and the State of Israel is the expression of its right to self-determination.

Technorati Tags: Erekat, Israel, Zionism, Palestinians, Jewish People, Ami Isseroff

MK Naomi Chazan of Meretz has written an article in which she tries to explain the reasons for the “disengagement from institutionalized Jewry” of young Jewish professionals in the US.

She makes three main arguments:

• Discourse about Israel in the US has focused on the conflict and not on such domestic issues as corrupt politicians, the Orthodox influence on everyday life, the ‘constitutional debate’, and the gaps between rich and poor, Jew and Arab. “Some of the very gripping challenges which make Israel real are simply not discussed”, she says.

• The Jewish establishment is more right-wing than the “young professionals”, making alliances with “neo-conservatives”, Christian fundamentalists, etc.

• And finally — the establishment does not permit dissent.

I’ll take them in reverse order. Let me quote her:

…the emergence of watchdog groups monitoring the press, campus life and even the voluntary sector leaves little room for any nuance.

A new type of Jewish political correctness precludes dissent on the official interpretation of everything from Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer’s study of the Jewish lobby or Jimmy Carter’s book on the conflict to tenure decisions in academe.

Did I read this correctly? Is it political correctness that has produced near-unanimity of Jewish opinion on Mearsheimer and Walt’s weaving of traditional antisemitic themes together with half-truths and false accusations into a pseudo-scholarly hit piece?

Did all fourteen Jewish members of the board of the Carter Center (and they were not an especially conservative bunch) resign because of political correctness?

Was it politically correct for Jews to oppose tenure for Norman Finkelstein, a man who often compares Israelis to Nazis, admits to “publically honoring the heroic resistance of Hezbollah to foreign occupation“, and wrote a book claiming that Holocaust remembrances, scholarship, museums, etc. are a Zionist plot to justify stealing Palestinian land?

Do organizations like Honest Reporting, CAMERA, and Campus Watch, which exist to draw attention to and refute anti-Israel bias in the media and on campuses have any actual power to limit “nuance”? How, exactly, is it coercive to stand up for a position in the face of massive propaganda to the contrary?

Chazan says that the “Jewish establishment” is more right-wing than the disengaged young professionals that is concerned about. She writes,

Progressive voices have few organized outlets (notably the Reform Movement, the New Israel Fund, the Israel Policy Forum, Americans for Peace Now, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom). These have been mostly excluded from the formal Jewish establishment.

But the Reform Movement is the single largest Jewish organization in the US! If it is not part of the ‘establishment’, I can only assume that Chazan means ‘right-wing establishment’, which renders her argument trivial. There are plenty of left-wing Jewish voices being heard in America; if there are right-wing voices in such organizations as AIPAC, perhaps it is because the conservatives are more firmly in support of the interests of the state of Israel than many of the liberals, who are much more ambivalent about the conflict.

As far as Americans being interested in Israeli domestic issues — or, should I say, Chazan’s left-wing version of what the burning domestic issues in Israel today are — does she think that more understanding of corrupt Israeli politicians (not all of whom are right-wing, by the way) will inspire young Jews to pro-Israel activity?

I doubt it. Her rhetorical purpose in mentioning these ‘issues’ is to suggest that they are in some sense more important than the conflict. This is the same impulse that leads M. J. Rosenberg to imply that “ending the occupation” is more important for Israel’s security than preventing Hamas from placing rocket launchers in the West Bank.

But of course survival has to be the primary value, more urgent even than the question of whether it is insulting to Israeli Arabs that Israel’s national anthem is Hatikvah.

So what is causing the ‘disengagement’ of many liberal Jews from, for example, AIPAC or the Jewish Federations?

Simple. They are absorbing and internalizing the anti-Israel bias that permeates the academic and political milieus that they inhabit. A pro-Israel professor on an American campus is probably even rarer than one that voted for George Bush, and today anti-Zionism and even antisemitism are more pervasive in left-wing political circles than ever before. The last thing one wants to do is give the impression that one is pro-Israel, or, God forbid, a Zionist.

The way to turn this around is not to try to make the Jewish establishment turn Left, as Chazan apparently wishes. This would only go even further in promoting anti-Zionism, just as the extreme Left in Israel has become, absurdly, anti-Zionist — and in fact, anti-Israel.

Rather, more effort needs to be expended in trying to counteract the lies and distortions about Israel and the Arabs that are being promulgated so widely by the Left today.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Chazan, Jews, Jewish establishment

Reality inversion alerts will be issued by FresnoZionism.org whenever Israel’s enemies or their lackeys are caught using their favorite propaganda technique, which is to turn the truth upside down by falsely accusing Israel of doing exactly what they themselves do or try to do.

So, for example, when lackey of apartheid Saudi Arabia Jimmy Carter accuses Israel of being an “apartheid state”, or when the genocidal Hamas movement accuses Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians, reality inversion is taking place.

Here’s today’s inversion:

The Turkish delegation that visited Jerusalem in March to inspect the excavations at the Mughrabi Gate near the Temple Mount has concluded that the work is destroying artifacts from different historic Islamic periods, and called on Israel to coordinate their activities with the Palestinians and the international community, the Turkish newspaper A-Zamaan reported on Saturday.

“The work being conducted by Israel does not abide by the appropriate [excavation standards], and the dig testifies to the fact that Israel is interested in destroying artifacts from the Islamic periods,” the report quoted the envoy as saying. — Jerusalem Post

Of course this is not the case. In fact, the digging around the Mughrabi Gate (outside the walls of the Temple Mount) has been done under extremely close archaeological supervision. On the other hand the Muslim Waqf is now — and has in the past — conducted extensive construction activity on the Temple Mount itself with no supervision, and archaeologists were scandalized when artifacts were found in discarded rubble.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Mughrabi Gate, Turkey

The ‘logic’ of Annapolis:

Channel 2 reported [that] an Israeli team that returned from the US on Friday said that both the US and Saudi Arabia were pressing Israel to free far more than the 400 Palestinian security prisoners Olmert has announced he plans to release ahead of Annapolis.

Meanwhile, a senior official told The Jerusalem Post that the defense establishment was examining the ramifications of a proposal being drafted to release several hundred prisoners per month after Annapolis.

The idea behind the plan, which has yet to be presented to Olmert, is that quiet on the “Palestinian street” - required for fruitful negotiations - can be achieved by releasing a significant number of prisoners every month.

“If the summit is successful and negotiations ensue, then it might be necessary to keep the Palestinians happy and quiet,” an official said. “One way to do that is to release prisoners.” — Jerusalem Post [my emphasis]

The way to keep things quiet is to release prisoners? Let us remember that they are prisoners for a reason; they were arrested for taking part in terrorist activities. Release “several hundred a month” and you are guaranteeing to increase, not decrease terrorism.

But of course it doesn’t matter. The US State Department has decided, in response to its puppet-masters in the Christian and Jew-hating apartheid Kingdom, that Palestinian prisoners will be released and armed, and that Israel will withdraw from the West Bank and (especially) East Jerusalem.

This will happen regardless of what Israel has to say about it. Although Israeli representatives will be present at the conference, they will have as much influence on the outcome as the Czechs, who were not invited to Munich in 1938, had on the decisions reached there. Israel does not say no to the US (can she?) and the State Department is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the House of Saud.

Israel would like the ’summit’ to just produce general understandings, which will serve as the basis for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Unfortunately, the US and the Kingdom have other ideas. We can expect an explicit timetable to be set for significant Israeli concessions.

Everything possible will be extracted from Israel in advance in order to make the meeting a ’success’ that will enable the ultimate transfer of territory and the establishment of ‘Palestine’. Anything that weakens Israel and makes the terror weapon of the Arabs more effective will be considered ‘progress’, because it will enable more pressure to be exerted on Israel.

Olmert, Livni, and Barak are pretending that they have some control over the process, but I suspect that they feel like ants under a magnifying glass on a sunny day.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Annapolis conference, Saudi Arabia

The BBC reports:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has called for Gaza’s Hamas rulers to be “brought down”, his strongest call yet for their removal.

Previously he has only demanded Hamas apologise for taking over Gaza and return it to Fatah security control.

His comments came after Hamas security forces killed eight Fatah members at a rally [honoring Yasser Arafat] in Gaza on Monday. [my emphasis]

One imagines that Abbas sent an angry message to Haniyeh in Gaza:

“OK, that’s it, Ismail. You killed dozens of our people, some shot in the knees and thrown from rooftops, wrecked our nice offices and watched our sex tapes. I asked you to say that you were sorry! Oh no, you wouldn’t apologize. And now you go and spoil the dedication of the memorial to the great, kind, honest, father of the Palestinian nation! Well, you’ve gone too far, Ismail. Now we, er, somebody or other, will bring you down!

Hamasniks Ismail Haniya (l.) and Khaled Meshaal with Abbas (r.) in better days.

Technorati Tags: Abbas, Hamas

It’s been suggested that Israel swap some land within Israel proper — possibly in the form of a route joining the West Bank and Gaza — for some ‘Palestinian’ land near the Green Line on which Israeli settlements stand. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has not explicitly rejected such a land swap.

I have a better idea.

About 850,000 Jews fled Arab countries after Israel’s founding in 1948, leaving behind assets valued today at more than $300 billion, said Heskel M. Haddad [president of the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries].

He added that the New York-based organization has decades-old property deeds of Jews from Arab countries on a total area of 100,000 sq.km. - which is five times the size of the State of Israel.

Most of the properties are located in Iraq, Egypt and Morocco, Haddad said. — Jerusalem Post

Not only this, but what about the oil underneath this property? We own that, too!

I propose to offer the Arab world the 100,000 sq. km. of Jewish property they are squatting on — they can even keep the oil — in return for Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. What a deal!

Call it square, Nakba for Nakba.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jews, Arabs, Nakba

Richard Landes invented the word ‘Pallywood‘ to describe fake ‘news’ created by Palestinians as supposed evidence of Israeli atrocities. And he has been in the forefront of the effort to expose the truly murderous deception perpetrated on the world in the Mohammed al-Dura hoax.

The 55 seconds of video allegedly showing 10-year old al-Dura shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in September 2000, and provided to world media by France2 Television, provided a focus for outrage and hatred of Israel. It appeared in the tape of Daniel Pearl’s beheading, and was cited as the reason two Israeli reservists were torn to pieces by Palestinians after they lost their way in Ramallah. Probably no single image is so emblematic of Israeli ‘inhumanity’ to Palestinians than that of the terrified boy in the arms of his father.

Today in a French courtroom, unedited film shot on behalf of France2 by Palestinian cameraman Talal abu Rahmah was supposed to shown as evidence in a libel suit filed by France2’s Jerusalem bureau head Charles Enderlin against French media critic Philippe Karsenty, who had accused Enderlin of complicity in faking the incident and called for his resignation.

This would not be the first time that anyone outside of France2 has seen the unedited footage. Landes saw it in Enderlin’s office in Jerusalem in 2003; he reported that it showed Dura apparently raising his hand to his forehead to look out after he was supposedly dead, and contained other incidents, quite obviously staged, in which Palestinians pretended to be wounded and were loaded into ambulances (in one case, when nobody came to pick up a ‘wounded’ Palestinian, he was seen to get up and walk away, obviously uninjured).

Landes was in the Paris courtroom today (read his account here) when the film was shown — that is, when only 18 of the 27 minutes of the film were shown! Several of the obviously faked sequences had been cut. There is both testimony and documentary evidence to prove this, as Landes explains.

The judge will render her decision of February 27. But whether justice will be done and Enderlin will lose his case, or not — Enderlin is very well-connected, an acquaintance of Jacques Chirac — the case illustrates the power of the media and the importance of the information war.

It also illustrates the cynicism of many in the media, who understand the Palestinian fake news industry, but exploit it anyway because it provides sensational footage. And it illustrates a remarkable lack of initiative by the Israeli government, which simply closed its eyes while the IDF and the state itself were dragged through the mud.

Update [15 Nov 2027 PST]: Richard Landes and Nidra Poller provide the best account of what transpired in the courtroom on Wednesday here.

Technorati Tags: Israel, al-Dura, Enderlin, Karsenty, Landes

An illustration of just how far the distortion of reality has gone, even in the US:

Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza will be among the subjects up for examination by a new anti-genocide task force, according to one of the former US officials on the panel.

Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who also served as an ambassador to the UN, and former secretary of defense William Cohen announced on Tuesday the creation of a bipartisan task force that would develop new strategies and guidelines for the next US administration to use in preventing genocide…

[A] member of the audience then challenged them for supporting friendly countries such as Israel despite allegations of genocide against the Palestinians.

“The issue of whether genocide has taken place in the West Bank or Gaza certainly will be part of [what] the task force [is] looking into,” Cohen responded. — Jerusalem Post

‘Genocide’ means “the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, religious or national group”. Examples usually given are the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, the liquidation of the Native Americans, etc.

Although there hasn’t been an effective genocide against Jews since the Holocaust, Nasser’s statements prior to the 1967 war, many of Arafat’s speeches, and the Hamas covenant constitute declarations of intent to commit genocide or incitement to do so.

In their small way, the rocket scientists of Hamas are doing their best to fulfill their covenant by trying to kill Jewish Israelis at random, just because they are Jewish Israelis.

As always, the Palestinians and their friends (including, apparently, William Cohen) enjoy accusing Israelis of exactly what they themselves are guilty of.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Albright, Cohen, Palestinians, genocide

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

We Westerners have so internalized the idea that journalists should at least strive for objectivity, that we forget that other cultures may have entirely different ideas. Richard Landes, in “Al-Dura and the public secret of Middle East journalism” describes the Muslim tradition:

According to the Islamic Mass Media Charter (Jakarta, 1980), the sacred task of Muslim media men [sic], is on the one hand to protect the Umma from “imminent dangers,” indeed to “censor all materials,” towards that end, and on the other, “To combat Zionism and its colonialist policy of creating settlements as well as its ruthless suppression of the Palestinian people.”

So when asked why he had inserted unconnected footage of an Israeli soldier firing a rifle into the Al Dura sequence in order to make it look like the Israelis had killed the boy in cold blood, an official of PA TV responded:

These are forms of artistic expression, but all of this serves to convey the truth… We never forget our higher journalistic principles to which we are committed of relating the truth and nothing but the truth.

When Talal abu Rahmah received an award for his footage of Muhammad al Dura in Morocco in 2001, he told a reporter, “I went into journalism to carry on the fight for my people.”

On November 14, the full, 27 minute footage that abu Rahmah gave to France2 television will be shown at trial in the defamation suit filed by France2’s Charles Enderlin against French media watchdog Philippe Karsenty.

These tapes were filmed by Talal abu Rahmah on September 30, 2000, and for seven years, Enderlin has claimed that the tapes prove him right and show the boy in such unbearable death throes that he cut them out of his report. But several experts who have seen the tapes ([Richard Landes] included) claim that the only scene of al Dura that Enderlin cut was the final scene where he seems alive and well; and still more disturbingly the rest of the rushes are filled with staged scenes.

Of course, regardless of the outcome, the damage has long since been done. Israelis and others have died in the name of vengeance for al-Dura. Israel has had to get used to asymmetric warfare in battlefield struggle with Hamas and Hezbollah; apparently she must also expect it in the opinion war.

Update [12 Nov 1701 PST]: Karsenty says that France2 will only show 18 minutes of footage in court (video of Karsenty here).

Technorati Tags: al-Dura