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News item:

Opening up hope for some sudden progress on the Syrian front, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent a verbal message to Syria on Wednesday, when he told French President Nicolas Sarkozy he would be happy to resume peace talks with Syria anytime, anywhere and without preconditions, a government source said…

On Tuesday in Brazil, President Shimon Peres said, “I call from here to President Assad: come, enter direct negotiations with us immediately. With no mediations, with no preconditions, with no levels, and with no delay…”

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in Tel Aviv on Wednesday night, “It is possible and important to negotiate with Syria. In any situation we have to preserve our security interests, but we must not treat lightly the peace signals that have come from Damascus of late.”

Peace signals? How about this one:

On Wednesday, according to AFP, Assad gave a nod in Israel’s direction when he said, “We do not put forward conditions on making peace.” But in the same breath, he added that, “The essence of peace is not just negotiations but rather, resistance as well.” Assad said armed conflict and peace talks were parts of the same “axis” to recover legitimate Palestinian rights.

Just like Hamas, Assad can always be counted on to tell us what he’s really thinking!

He has, in a few words, presented the Arab strategy to dismember Israel: flip back and forth between military (and terrorist) pressure and diplomacy. Wars, even if Israel ‘wins ‘ them, provide opportunities to get the West to force Israel to make concessions.

Look at how Hamas, objectively beaten (although unfortunately not crushed) in Operation Cast Lead, has Goldstoned Israel into a corner. One wonders what it will have to do to get a US veto of a Goldstone-report-inspired resolution in the Security Council.

The prospect of yet another round of negotiations with Syria now has appeared on the horizon. Barry Rubin has argued in detail in his book “The Truth about Syria” that although Syria would like to get the Golan Heights back, Assad is not prepared to make peace in return. This is because his regime depends on the continued conflict with Israel to stay in power, to hold back demands for political reform and economic improvement, and to satisfy his patrons in Iran — from which he gets far more benefits than he could from Israel and the US.

But if this is the case, then Israel is wasting her time and energy, as well as taking risks. Would it be better to fight another war with Hezbollah or even Syria with or without the Golan? Is there any doubt? So why bother negotiating when all you can do is weaken yourself?

One reason — and I’m not a diplomat so I don’t really understand this — is that a country claiming to want peace gets diplomatic points, even if they really don’t want peace (like Syria) or if  (like Israel) they know that it’s not possible today. Have to get those points.

Another may be something that I hinted at above: the price for a US veto of an anti-Israel resolution in the Security Council. Or maybe even (I’d like to believe this, but I doubt it) real US action against Iran’s nuclear program.

Maybe that’s what the mysterious meeting between Netanyahu and Obama Monday night was all about.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Syria

What was the motivation of Nidal Hasan, the Ft. Hood shooter? Is it that hard to determine?

We know that Hasan attended a mosque in Virginia in 2001 where the imam was Anwar al-Awlaki:

Mr. Awlaki is a leading light among militant Sunni preachers seeking to reach out to English-speaking Muslims and encourage them to engage in jihad in the West. He’s at the forefront of the effort to create more “homegrown” jihadis, whose language skills and passports help them operate in the US and Europe. — Dan Murphy, Christian Science Monitor

We know that Hasan has since been in contact with al-Awlaki. We know that Hasan was opposed to Muslim soldiers fighting for the US “against Muslims”. We know that Hasan expressed radical Islamic ideas, and uttered the phrase “Allahu akbar” when he opened fire:

Relatives and friends said in interviews that Major Hasan had become unhappy with his seven-year commitment to the Army, which had provided him with his medical training. They said he had grown more openly vocal in his opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and had also become more religiously observant, often praying five time a day at a local mosque. He began his rampages, according to witnesses, by bowing his head as if praying and saying, “Allahu akbar” — “God is Great.”

Former classmates in a master’s program at a military college said that Major Hasan had expressed anti-American views, justified suicide bombings and contended that Islamic law took precedence over the Constitution, but that their complaints to faculty about his views did not result in any action against Major Hasan. — NY Times

It seems correct, even obvious, that this was an act of jihad. Was it a terrorist attack? Well, all but one of the victims were soldiers, so it could be considered an act of war. But since it took place far from a battlefield, and since the victims — his fellow American soldiers — were unarmed, it’s not a stretch to call it ‘terrorism’.

Let’s see what President Obama thinks. Here is a snippet from an interview broadcast on Good Morning America today:

Jake Tapper: What separates an act of violence from an act of terrorism?

Barack Obama: In a country of 300 million people, there are going to be acts of violence that are inexplicable. Even within the extraordinary military that we have.  There are going to be instances in which an individual ‘cracks’. I think the questions that we’re asking now — and we don’t yet have complete answers to — is, is this an individual who’s acting in this way, or is it some larger set of actors. You know, what are the motivations?

So according to the President, a) Hasan’s actions are ‘inexplicable’, and b) ‘terrorism’ is only terrorism when the perpetrator is a card-carrying member of an organization such as al-Qaeda. Possibly even evidence of a phone call from Bin Laden is needed.

This afternoon, in his address at the memorial service in Ft. Hood, Obama said,

It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy… [b]ut this much we do know: No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts. No just and loving God looks upon them with favor.

The NY Times writer continued,

As he rejected the logic of Islamic extremists like the one who had been in contact with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of the killings, Mr. Obama offered no judgment on whether the incident should be viewed as linked to terrorism…

The president also dealt only obliquely with the sensitive question of Muslims serving in the American military. Senior Army officers have expressed concern about a backlash, but Mr. Obama did not use the opportunity to address that directly and never used the word “Muslim” in his address.

Hard to comprehend?

Actually, it’s simple. Most Muslims believe that they are obligated to fight if Muslims or Islam are threatened in a Muslim land; this is called “defensive jihad“. Fighting Americans in Afghanistan would fall into this category. In the view of al-Qaeda and other militant groups, defensive jihad can include fighting an aggressor in his own land, and ‘aggression’ doesn’t even need to mean invasion; Bin Laden managed to see US policy in 2001 as ‘invasive’ enough to justify the 9/11 attacks.

Hasan’s mentor, al-Awlaki, holds this view. Indeed, he called Hasan a hero:

Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. This is a contradiction that many Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a US soldier. The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam. Its army is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest through its stooges. [this text was also found in the Google cache of the now-defunct blog “anwar-alawlaki.com”, along with laudatory comments by readers — ed]

What I find “hard to comprehend”, even “inexplicable”, is the pusillanimous response of our president, after the most serious terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. What could he possibly be thinking?

The President walks past a memorial to murdered soldiers; he cannot or will not say what killed them (NY Times photo).

Technorati Tags: Nidal Hasan, Ft. Hood, Anwar al-Alawki, Barack Obama, jihad

Recently Israel has been warned of the ‘threat’ of a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state if it doesn’t move to make ‘peace’ with the PA soon. Ha’aretz threatened,

Concerns are growing in Israel’s government over the possibility of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence within the 1967 borders, a move which could potentially be recognized by the United Nations Security Council.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently asked the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama to veto any such proposal, after reports reached Jerusalem of support for such a declaration from major European Union countries, and apparently also certain U.S. officials.

The reports indicated that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has reached a secret understanding with the Obama administration over U.S. recognition of an independent Palestinian state. Such recognition would likely transform any Israeli presence across the Green Line, even in Jerusalem, into an illegal incursion to which the Palestinians would be entitled to engage in measures of self-defense.

There is no doubt that some ‘major EU countries’ and “certain U.S. officials” would love to see the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria declared illegal, not to mention East Jerusalem (in fact, these same countries and officials would probably say that Israel should be replaced by a Palestinian Arab state if they spoke honestly).

But a secret agreement? There’s still enough support for Israel in the US Congress and the public to make this a very dumb idea. At least today.

Here’s another threat, of a different kind, this one from Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas:

“I don’t know what the Israelis want,” he said. “They must start thinking about what needs to be done if they really want peace.”

Meanwhile, Hassan Khraisheh, deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, called on Abbas to seriously consider dissolving the PA because of the failure of the peace process. “This authority was created so that it could prepare for the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Khraisheh said. “But after more than 15 years of thorough negotiations with Israel, this state still hasn’t been established.”

On Sunday, The Jerusalem Post, quoting senior PA officials, revealed that Abbas was already considering dismantling the PA, to protest Washington’s failure to force Israel to freeze settlement construction.

Leaving aside the fact that the dissolution of the PA would end the hundreds of millions of dollars that flow to Abbas and Co. from the US, as well as the arms and training for the PA’s new army, the implied danger here is that Hamas — or Israel — would take over control of PA territory and population.

Both of these threats, one from the Left and one from the PA, imply that Israel must make a deal — and that means a deal according to Palestinian parameters — before it is too late. There is also a subtext, which is that what prevents a deal is Israeli ‘intransigence’, which is, in fact, the opposite of the real reason.

The main putative ‘obstacle to peace’ is that Israel refuses to stop all construction activities in East Jerusalem and within existing settlements in Judea and Samaria. This is a problem for the Palestinians because they have sold their version of the ‘two-state solution’ as a total Israeli withdrawal. Israeli ideas that include keeping some of the large settlement blocs close to the Green Line in return for swaps of territory elsewhere are non-starters for them.

In particular, possibly because it is trying to keep ahead of the agitation of the Hamas-influenced Islamic Movement of Raed Salah, the PA’s position on Jerusalem has become harder than ever.

Israel has actually been observing a ‘settlement freeze’ by not constructing new settlements or expanding the boundaries of old ones for years. The only thing that changed was Barack Obama’s unfortunate early insistence on a more restrictive freeze than what the Bush administration agreed to. Now suddenly, it’s impossible to talk at all without it.

From Israel’s point of view, accepting a freeze in East Jerusalem means that it is not sovereign there. It means that outsiders can tell Israel what it can or cannot do in its capital (unlike Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem was officially annexed to Israel in 1980, although this is not recognized internationally). While Israel is prepared to cede parts of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians — and perhaps even some Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem — it will not give up the principle of sovereignty over Jerusalem.

Another problem for Abbas is that his version of a ‘two-state solution’  includes a right of return to Israel for descendants of Arab refugees. This has always been unacceptable to Israel and always will be, since it means that the Jewish state will cease to exist. I can’t imagine that Abbas didn’t realize this all through the Oslo and Annapolis periods, but he seems to be pretending that this is a new demand suddenly thrown up by Israel’s (not really so) right-wing government.

And of course Abbas, Fayyad and others will not agree that Israel is the state of the Jewish people. In their ‘two-state solution’, Israel is the state where Jews are permitted to live. That’s their big compromise — they’ll let us live, for a while, in part of their land, at least until the 5 million ‘refugees’ can ‘return to their homes’.

The PA and Ha’aretz (speaking for the international Left) are telling us that Israel needs to hurry up and surrender — give up its insistence on sovereignty in East Jerusalem, in keeping the settlement blocs, and who knows what else — because there are certain to be more demands — before the window closes. What is not said is that the window isn’t open now, not even a crack. It has been closed for almost two decades.

Although the Obama administration made an error in initially calling for a settlement freeze, other issues will certainly prevent a real peace between the PA and Israel. The fundamental mistake that led to the present deadlock was made in the early 1990’s, when there really was a window of opportunity. The mischief-making Soviet Union had collapsed, Saddam Hussein had been humbled and Iran was exhausted from its long war with Iraq. Perhaps, free from outside interference, Israelis and Palestinian Arabs could actualize their common interest of peace.

And then, the Oslo agreement, which called for the return of the exiled PLO terrorists, led by Yasser Arafat (and including his second-in-command, Mahmoud Abbas) was signed. The PLO, whose name was used in Israel as a curse, the organization that has killed more Israelis than any other including Hamas, was designated the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

Arafat went immediately to work, establishing an educational and media system to teach hate, funding terrorism against Israel, talking peace to the Americans in English while calling for jihad in Arabic, etc. His efforts culminated in the second intifada, in which thousands of Israelis and Palestinians were killed, and which multiplied the mistrust and hatred that Arafat had created and nurtured many more times.

Although Abbas is less outspoken in favor of violent terrorism than Arafat, his fundamental positions are no different. He is not prepared to compromise on borders, not on right of  return, not on Jerusalem, and — importantly — not on recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people.

Unfortunately, everyone is in for a long pull. Maybe the PA will collapse and Hamas will take over, maybe a Palestinian state will be declared. Israel will simply have to meet the security challenges as they come up. Some day there may be another possibility to make peace, but now it is farther off than ever.

Today’s threats are not the alternative to opportunities. They are just threats.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Mohammad ElBaradei, the outgoing head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is shockingly biased, and should never have held that position.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency downplayed Israel’s concern over an Iranian nuclear threat on Wednesday, telling a New York audience, “Truth is in the eyes of the beholder…”

“If you look from the Arab point of view, the Arabs are as concerned or more about the Israeli nuclear weapons program as the Israelis are about the Iranian’s,” he said.

The only solution, he said, “is to rid the whole Middle East from weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons,” he said. “You cannot have a security system that is perceived to be imbalanced.” — Jerusalem Post

ElBaradei’s philosophical musings are out of place for someone responsible for answering objective questions like ‘is Iran developing a nuclear weapon?’ We presume that he was speaking about his private beliefs, not his approach as head of the IAEA. We hope.

Some background:

The IAEA is not exactly a UN agency, although it presents reports to the UN. Its authority comes from a document signed by all but about 40 UN member states called the IAEA Statute.  The main function of the agency is to facilitate the peaceful use of atomic energy by providing technical assistance for members wishing to develop such peaceful uses, with appropriate safeguards.

The Statute also provides that the IAEA may also be used as part of an enforcement mechanism for international treaties regarding nuclear energy:

5. To establish and administer safeguards designed to ensure that special fissionable and other materials, services, equipment, facilities, and information made available by the Agency or at its request or under its supervision or control are not used in such a way as to further any military purpose; and to apply safeguards, at the request of the parties, to any bilateral or multilateral arrangement, or at the request of a State, to any of that State’s activities in the field of atomic energy;

The treaty that’s relevant, of course, is the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, or NPT, whose Article III calls for signatories to accept the ‘safeguards’ of the IAEA Statute.

The NPT says that only five nations may develop nuclear weapons: the US, Russia, the UK, China and France. India, Israel and Pakistan have not signed the treaty (North Korea did, but withdrew). Iran is a signatory, and therefore is in violation of it.

When the treaty was originally signed in 1968, only the US, the Soviet Union and the UK officially had nuclear weapons (France and China were added in 1992). Interestingly, Israel may well have had a weapon in 1968, and certainly did by 1970 when the treaty came into force. Maybe it should have signed the treaty as a nuclear power!

In any event, Israel’s nuclear arsenal does not violate the treaty since Israel never signed it. Despite the way the phrase ‘international law’ is often used to mean ‘my belief system’, it really refers to adherence to treaties and agreements. Thus Iran is violating international law, and Israel is not.

Back to ElBaradei:

His statement that “the Arabs are as concerned or more about the Israeli nuclear weapons program as the Israelis are about the Iranian’s” is outrageous.

Israel has had nuclear capabilities since at least 1970, perhaps even in 1967.  Historian Avner Cohen has described its policy:

The original Ben-Gurion rationale for acquiring nuclear weapons was conceptualized and defined…in terms of having an option of “last resort.” They also produced the early articulation of “red lines” whose crossing could trigger the use of nuclear weapons. There were four specific scenarios that could lead to nuclear use: (a) a successful Arab military penetration into populated areas within Israel’s post-1949 borders; (b) the destruction of the Israeli Air Force; (c) the exposure of Israeli cities to massive and devastating air attacks or to possible chemical or biological attacks; (d) the use of nuclear weapons against Israeli territory. Each of these scenarios was defined, in qualitative terms, as an existential threat to the State of Israel against which the nation could defend itself by no other means than the use of atomic weapons, which would be politically and morally justified. — Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, (1999) p. 237

It can be argued that this doctrine has influenced the behavior of Israel’s friends — the US in 1973, when Nixon and Kissinger decided to resupply Israel at a critical moment — and enemies (Saddam’s scuds had conventional warheads) so as to enable Israel’s continued existence, or at least to prevent massive loss of life.

Insofar as the Arabs are ‘concerned’ by this, they are concerned that it prevents them from eliminating Israel!

ElBaradei complains that the system is “unbalanced.” It seems to me that it is very well balanced indeed, a system in which Israel’s nuclear capability has balanced Arab chemical-biological weapons, as well as providing some essential diplomatic ‘balance’.

To compare this to Israel’s concern about Iran — when various Iranian leaders, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Ayatollah Khamane’i and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani have threatened to destroy Israel or facilitate its destruction — is an example of the moral blindness unfortunately too common among those with “the arab point of view.”

Technorati Tags: IAEA, NPT, Israel, Iran, nuclear weapons, ElBaradei

I few weeks ago I wrote about ‘postcolonialism‘, whose adherents seem to believe that ‘the colonized’ can do no wrong. I said:

Once it is established that one party is a ‘colonizer’ and the other ‘colonized’, the game is over. For the postcolonialist, nothing that the colonizer does to defend himself is permissible, and anything that the colonized does in the name of resistance is justified.

Today I have a wonderful example of this kind of thinking. Here’s a quote from the Palestinian Ma’an News agency:

Islamic Hamas movement on Thursday slammed the Palestinian UN observer, citing that he did not deny accusations of war crimes against Palestinians in an international report.

The Gaza war report, submitted by a UN fact-finding mission headed by South African judge Richard Goldstone, accused Israel of committing war crimes during a 22-day military offensive that ended on Jan. 18. The UN report, which was debated Wednesday by the UN General Assembly, also criticized Hamas for committed war crimes by firing rockets at Israeli civilians.

The Hamas government, holding sway in Gaza, said Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)’s UN observer, “admitted the possibility that some Palestinian sides have carried out violations against Israel in the wartime.”

“This is the first time that a representative of a people under occupation agreed that his people had committed the so-called violations against the occupying power,” Taher al-Nounou, spokesman for the Hamas administration, said in a statement. Al-Nounou called on the PNA, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, to prosecute Mansour for his comments.

You see, it is impossible by definition for “people under occupation” to commit war crimes!

***

Here’s some more fun with ridiculous statements from the radical bloc: the arms ship seized by Israel on Tuesday containing hundreds of tons of rockets, guns, mortar shells, etc. was bound for Syria or even Lebanon. Analysts agree that the weapons on it were almost certainly intended for Hezbollah. But both Syria and Lebanon claim that the arms have nothing to do with them:

[Hizbullah] issued a statement saying that it “categorically denies” any connection to the weapons “that the Zionist enemy claims to have confiscated from the ship.” Hizbullah also condemned “Israeli pirates operating in international waters.”

Hizbullah’s statement echoed a statement made by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, who denied late Wednesday that the cargo ship was carrying weapons from Iran, and implicitly called the Israeli naval forces “pirates.”

“Unfortunately there are official pirates disrupting the movement of goods between Iran and Syria,” he told reporters on a visit to Teheran. “I stress, the ship was not carrying Iranian arms bound for Syria, nor was it carrying material for manufacturing weapons in Syria. It was carrying [commercial] goods from Syria to Iran [sic].”

If they don’t know anything about the arms, why are they upset? Incidentally, here’s a Sa’ar-5 class corvette like the one that was reportedly used to intercept the ship:

Sa'ar-5 class corvette: 1227-ton, 33 knot Israeli 'pirate ship'

***

The radical bloc will say anything and expect people to believe them — and they’re right, especially if it makes Israel, the US or even conservative Arab states look bad. This next item illustrates one way of responding:

Egyptian and Saudi satellite broadcasters stopped broadcasting Iran’s Arabic-language television channel, Al-Alam – “The World” – this week.

A report on Al-Alam’s Web site accused the broadcasters of ceasing the transmission for “political reasons,” while MENA, Egypt’s state news agency, attributed the move to an unspecified contractual breach…

[Former Israeli ambassador to Egypt Zvi] Mazel, however, says that Al-Alam broadcasts “Iranian propaganda – that Egypt is betraying Arabs in general, that they work with Israel, all that kind of stuff.”

Dr. Moti Keidar, an Arabic-language specialist at Bar-Ilan University, said that the move marks an escalation in the conflict between Sunni and Shi’ite Islam, and was a necessary step for Egypt and Saudi Arabia to take.

“Al-Alam broadcasts incitement against the Arab regimes, the Sunni ones,” he told the Post Thursday. “They are promoting Hizbullah and Hamas, and promoting jihad against Arab regimes.” Keidar said that by cutting off Al-Alam, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are fighting against “media jihad…”

“This is what Israel has not yet realized – that some Arab channels like Al Jazeera, which broadcast from within Israel, are no more than a device of jihad against Israel. Egypt and Saudi Arabia realized [the threat from Al-Alam], and they stopped jihad from within. Only Israel lets this continue,” said Keidar.

Israel needs to learn from its neighbors, not only to defend against media jihad but to wage it.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, war crimes, arms ship, Iran, Hezbollah, media jihad