The Baroness Ashton is a very unhappy woman. You can see it on her face, poor lady.
And even the fact that she is now a “peer”--or should one still say “peeress”?--has not visibly altered her look. She is one of those ugly ducklings who has given her life to social causes, a type we all know. Alas, the outcome of such an existence is very rarely happiness. Take her work as treasurer of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), seen as a front by the Soviets, who secretly supplied as much as 38% of its budget. What satisfaction could it possibly have given her, what with the collapse of Communist Russia and each and every one of its brutal satraps?
So she no longer leads the cheering at pathetic Trafalgar Square protests. In fact, she is now a certified VIP, the “European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy”--the more cumbersome the title, the less substantial the job. But she does travel in limos. And perhaps in private jets, too. After all, she is the EUHRFFAASP. Quite a mouthful.
As it happens, there is great discontent among the Europeans about her incumbency. Some of this is related to dismay with the Union itself. But she has had absolutely no experience of any sort in foreign affairs. As late as nine years ago, in fact, she was the chairlady of the Hertfordshire Health Authority and of the board of her children’s school. Very, very wholesome. Still, if Sarah Palin was unsuited for the American vice presidency, as she certainly was, Lady Ashton is at least as unsuited for the job of Europe’s ersatz foreign minister. On the other hand, she comes equipped with a big bag of demands, virtually all of them addressed to Israel: “do this” and “don’t do that.” She doesn’t ask questions, she instructs (as the Quaker dowager on my civil rights “Boycott Woolworth” picket line instructed). These liberal minded folk turn out to be quite doctrinaire. And earnest. With the sweetness of clenched teeth.
Now, in Moscow last week, the Quartet--made up of the United Nations, Russia, the United States, and the European Union--condemned Israel on account of the East Jerusalem housing crisis, which had been hyped up with grotesque cynicism by the Obama administration. And, with even more grotesque cynicism, the four horsemen (two of them actually women) of the apocalypse also condemned Israel for not allowing certain building materials into the Gaza Strip. Again, their faces said it all: They looked as if they were ushering in the Day of Judgment.
As it happens, not. Within hours of their smug condemnations of the Jewish state, five rockets hailing from Gaza had landed in the Negev. One hit a communal agricultural facility and killed a Thai worker. There is nothing like demanding of a beleaguered people that it supply its enemies with materiel facilitating their continuous offense against it.
There is something faintly comic about the Quartet purporting to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the haplessly divided and hopelessly violent Palestinians. After all, the members of the Quartet don’t agree on anything among themselves but the supposed calumnies of Israel. Moreover, the two collective bodies in the foursome are phantoms--one more than the other, I suppose. So take your pick. I’ll take mine.
The truth is that what keeps the U.N. alive is the General Assembly, which affords governments (imaginary and real) the opportunity to send thousands of pompous officials to New York every fall to dine and wine (and to whine on behalf of the wretched of the earth.) I will not repeat my previous anti-U.N. wraps. (You can read some of my thoughts here and here.) But think of me when the Security Council finally debates sanctions against Iran.
Still, the real comedy belongs to the European Union. Yes, there is an enormous bureaucracy that has saved Brussels, which otherwise has only a bronze boy pissing in the street ... and, of course, some lace dealers--finicky, finicky, finicky. (In Antwerp, there are also many Muslims who contribute mightily to the national well-being--not finicky at all.)
The bureaucracy aspires to replace the democratic ethos of the Union’s member states. Some of these aspirations have already been achieved without many people actually voting in E.U. elections because the Union and the nations themselves are so removed from each other. But, now that at least four member states are on their way to bankruptcy, the E.U. has lost is capacity to do what it was supposed to do best. The eurocurrency was a fiction imposed on governments at such different levels of economic development and such different levels of industrial discipline that it was bound to collapse. The fact is that Germany does not want to support Greece--the most desiccated, most deluded, and most corrupt of European societies--in its illusions. (Greeks retire at age 50 with full pensions.) Neither are Germany and the other productive economies of Europe willing to bolster poor Portugal or pathetic Ireland, for that matter. Let them go their own way. And let the different nations of the continent be what they are and want to be.
But, before Portugal and Ireland go on the dole or to the poorhouse, there is also Spain. Real estate has simply collapsed. There is nowhere in the world (save the “fabulous” emirates) where land and houses are so cheap and still go unbought. There is 20% unemployment (if you don’t count the Arabs, illegal and legal, who would raise the number to God only knows what and still sup off a generous social security system that is in the process of falling apart).
Spain is governed, insofar as it is governed at all, by a socialist regime. One of its obsessions happens also to be Israel, perhaps in deference to its many Muslim constituents. Perhaps in deference, as well, to its historic tick about Jews and pure Catholic blood. It’s ironic that Madrid whines for Palestine and does not grasp the urge and surge for Catalonia, to say nothing about the Basque land.
The European Union is on its last legs. It may survive as ghosts survive in books or in film. It may even survive in the Quartet, whatever survival power that has. But it has no power and no moral authority. So perhaps I understand the baroness’ portentousness. It is made of nothing. But it’s not just her, although members of the Labor Party have begun hammering her as “too dull and too dim.”
No, it is not—as, frankly, I expected--downplaying the phenomenon. But, rather, it has put four commentaries on the Times website on what’s “Behind the New U.S. Terror Cases.” No denial of the reality. No attack on American policy at home and abroad for provoking it. No accusation of excess in pursuing the problem. Just cool suggestions for what to do now that we know Muslim terrorism is here. Except for one catty little swipe at the Bushies regarding how wise the Obami were in ceasing to call any of this a “war on terror.”
Does the president know that Muslim terrorism is here? That’s another question.
And, in case you’re interested, not one of the contributors listed Israel as a cause of jihad at home.
By the way, Michelle Cottle has an article in the print edition of TNR (soon to be online) about Janet Napolitano, secretary of homeland security, whose credentials are not insignificant. Except for one thing: She knew nothing about terrorism and, thus, nothing about homeland security. Maybe she’s learned something. But on-the-job training is not what the position requires.
Frankly, it’s a little bit embarrassing to be citing the Commentary crowd so often. But the fact is that the other powerful venues which seem to understand that the Palestinians do not really want peace--or act as if they don’t--are few and far between. Yes, there is the Washington Post, where Jackson Diehl, Charles Krauthammer, and Chuck Lane analyze what everyone can (but most refuse to) see or describe. Then, of course, there are the editorials, the collective voice of the Post, which strike an independent voice free of Arabisant cant and America bashing. This is in contrast to the New York Times, which hasn’t run an op-ed sympathetic to Israel in ages. (And the Times has a more-than-hundred-year record of downright hostility to Zionism specifically and indifference to the fate of Jews generally. Don’t argue this with me: Do you really want to know how cool the Times’ owning family kept its pages free from interest in the Nazi killing of Jews?)
And, of course, The Atlantic has Jeffrey Goldberg, a master journalist of the significant detail and a discerning historian of continuity and change in the sweep of time. Alas, in the Middle East, it’s mostly continuity and cruelty. This is a culture so unhinged by modernity that it clings to its crippled civilization. And who will tell me that the civilization of the Arabs, the civilization of Islam, is not crippled? You have several years of the United Nations Arab Human Development Report to prove it.
Aside from these and a few other bylines and voices, the Fourth Estate is as understanding of Israel as the First Estate in the French Estates-General was of the Jews.
Among the certified liberals, there is at best a certain nervousness around the subject. Even my TNR colleague and friend, Jonathan Chait, faced with President Obama’s obtuseness (at the least) and his rancorous feelings towards Israel (at not quite the worst) treated the matter quite gingerly. Chait asks: “What’s Obama Up To In Israel?” Basically, he answers “nothing.” And quotes a charming little speculation by Goldberg that Obama was actually trying to force a political crisis in Jerusalem so that Tzipi Livni and Kadima would replace the rightist parties in Netanyahu’s cabinet. The problem with this fantasy is that Kadima also is for extending Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. If Livni took Avigdor Lieberman’s place, Obama would find an opponent on the issue with greater finesse and charm.
As for Chait, his softness only comes up in the shadow of Obama. Yesterday, he had a devastating blog post that absolutely creamed Juan Cole.
Now back to the Commentary crowd.
I like Elliot Abrams, but his wife doesn’t like me. As a matter of fact, I’ve never liked her, and we had a private pissing match just a few weeks ago. The blessed upshot is that we won’t correspond ever again. The husband in this couple is the son-in-law of Podhoretz père and the brother-in-law of Podhoretz fils, who is producing a fine and fresh Commentary, difficult as it is for me to confess. Elliot has written a short piece for the Council on Foreign Relations explaining the differences over building in Jerusalem between the Obama administration and the Israeli government. Here it is…
Why are the United States and Israel divided over the settlements issue?
Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
The United States and Israel have long had different views of the settlements, but the issue has been managed without a crisis for decades. In the Bush administration, a deal was struck whereby the United States would not protest construction inside existing settlements so long as they did not expand outward. The current crisis, ostensibly about construction in Jerusalem, was manufactured by the Obama administration--and as it is about Jerusalem, isn’t even about activity in the settlements.
Every Israeli government since 1967, of left or right, has asserted that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and has allowed Israeli Jews to build there. The current crisis stems from the announcement of plans--not actual construction--in a part of the city five blocks from the 1967 lines and in a neighborhood that very clearly will remain part of Israel after any negotiated settlement. To escalate that announcement into a crisis in bilateral relations and “condemn” it--using a verb we apply to acts of murder and terror, not acts of housing construction--was a decision by the U.S. government, not a natural or inevitable occurrence.
Among the errors by the administration is the assertion that unless all construction freezes, there can be no negotiations. There were face-to-face peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians year after year while construction took place in settlements and in Jerusalem, so this is a new demand and a new obstacle to peace. Negotiations are not a favor the Palestinians bestow on us or on Israel; they are the path to the statehood the Palestinian Authority claims is its right and its goal. It appears the United States and Israel are divided over all this now because the Obama administration is imposing new demands on Israel, and building tensions in the bilateral relationship, in an effort to destabilize the governing coalition in Israel. It is a shameful way to treat an ally.
As Bibi Netanyahu pointed out, Ramat Shlomo is five minutes from his office. Elliot believes the Goldberg hypothesis. I don’t. I believe that Obama actually wants Jerusalem to be cut down the center--Arabs here, Jews there.
Then there is the vernacular crisis. It is a minor part of the dispute. But it is symptomatic of the legerdemain--let me be more candid and call it what it is, which is “treachery” and “deceit”--with which the Obami have treated the matter. Jennifer Rubin writes a blog several times a day for “Contentions” at Commentary. Sometimes she’s over the top. But some of you think I am almost always over the top. So that is not an insult in my book. In fact, what it means to me is that both Jennifer and I make our readers uncomfortable. To me, at least, that is a compliment.
I have never met Ms. Rubin, but we’ve corresponded from time to time. She is a wonderful stylist, with the polemical flair of Mary McCarthy and Dwight Macdonald, neither of whose politics she shares. As an analyst of words, however, she compares with our own John McWhorter.
She’s written a number of posts on the use of the word “condemn” by the Obami (a word which, by the way, she invented).
Here’s the first…
Other than That, Mr. Biden, How’d You Like Your Trip?
Jennifer Rubin - 03.10.2010 - 10:08 AM
Joe Biden’s Israel trip has turned into a semi-fiasco, as David has noted. He was a poor substitute, the Israelis thought, for Obama. Then he condemned the Israelis’ decision to build 1,600 homes in their nation’s capital:
“I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem,” Biden, currently in Israel, said in a statement. “The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel.”
“We must build an atmosphere to support negotiations, not complicate them,” Biden continued. “This announcement underscores the need to get negotiations under way that can resolve all the outstanding issues of the conflict.”
Biden showed up an hour and a half late for dinner tonight at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence, the pool reporter Janine Zacharia reported, suggesting the reason was U.S. consultations over the Interior Ministry’s housing announcement today. Biden and Netanyahu “took no questions,” Zacharia wrote. “In fact nobody took any questions all day.”
Well, that’s pretty much par for the course. Obama wanted to focus on settlements? Well, that’s what the U.S. and Israel are now discussing at high decibels in a very public way – during what was supposed to be a fence-mending visit.
And notice the language Biden employed: “condemn.” A Capitol Hill Republican leadership adviser sends this keen observation:
What kind of language is this? Isn’t “condemn” reserved for things like beating dissidents, or even terror attacks? Whatever you think of the decision, the Obama administration couldn’t have said they felt it undermined the peace process, were “very disappointed,” saw it as “a step backward” or something like that?
A quick search of the White House website shows that in June, Gibbs said Obama “condemned the violence” in Iran.
In May, Obama released a statement on Aung San Suu Kyi, saying, “I strongly condemn her house arrest and detention, which have also been condemned around the world.”
The same month, Obama “strongly condemn[ed]” a North Korean nuclear test and missile launch.
In July, Obama said, “I strongly condemn the attacks that occurred this morning in Jakarta.”
The October bombings in Baghdad prompted Obama to say, “I strongly condemn these outrageous attacks on the Iraqi people…”
Last month, we had this: “The United States and the European Union condemn the continuing human rights violations in Iran since the June 12 election.”
The adviser wonders whether Obama and company really think a housing complex is ”on the same plane as all these things that rightly deserved condemnation.” In Obama’s skewed vision, it seems so. For this crowd, allies are fair game for vitriol, but diplomatic niceties take priority over criticism of despots.
Bashing Israel, frequently and publicly, is what passes for smart diplomacy by the Obami – as is sending the VP in the president’s place (in contrast to Obama’s visits to the “Muslim World” to deliver his fractured version of Middle East history) and converting a housing issue into a nasty public spat.
In this, Biden and the rest of the Obama team have made clear, in case there were any doubt, that there is little reason why Israelis should rely on, or have confidence in, the American negotiating team. And if “proximity talks” require the presence of a trusted interlocutor to visit with both sides and probe for common agreement, we can imagine those talks will be perfectly useless, and indeed, another counterproductive exercise in raising expectations and deflecting attention from the real issue. That, by the way, is not housing complexes. It is the refusal of the Palestinians and Israel’s Arab neighbors to recognize the Jewish state. Until that happens, and until the Palestinians definitively repudiate terrorism and establish a state with functioning institutions, the smart diplomats are spinning their wheels. When they aren’t inflaming the situation, that is.
And here’s another…
Palestinians Take the Measure Of Obama
Jennifer Rubin - 03.16.2010 - 8:57 AM
Jeffrey Goldberg writes:
The Hurva Synagogue, which is in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, has been rebuilt and has been rededicated, and in response, Hamas has called for a “day of rage.” Why? I don’t know why. The Hurva Synagogue does not sit atop the Temple Mount; it’s not near the Temple Mount. Rumors that the rebuilding has affected the Temple Mount are being spread by people who want to create violence and death in the holy city.
But alas, Goldberg knows full well why Hamas is calling for violence and death: “The Hurva holds special meaning for Jews because it was destroyed in 1948 by the Arab Legion, which went on to expel the Jews from the Old City. The fact that Hamas — and even some in Fatah — are protesting this rededication means that we might still be at square one, which is to say, where Arafat was in 2000, when he denied the historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem.” He warns that “this is about denying the right of Judaism to exist in its holiest city.”
Hmm, now where could the Palestinians have gotten the notion that they could engage in such behavior with impunity? Why do we suppose they haven’t a fear in the world that they might lose the adoring glances of the Obami and the security of “proximity talks,” whereby they avoid, as the Netanyahu government has offered, direct negotiations? Well it might have something to do with the perception that ”Israel’s last line of defense against false claims and promises — the United States — has made itself indistinguishable from the United Nations and Amnesty International and all the other NGOs and religious denominations that have declared a virtual war against the Jewish state.”
Oh, but as Goldberg would explain, Hurva is completely different from an apartment complex! Oh really? Well, the housing complex at the center of the storm is not one that even Yasir Arafat would have made a claim for (before he revealed negotiations to be a sham and returned to the business of killing Jews). Who can say that the Palestinians have misread the situation? On the contrary, they can spot daylight when they see it. The State Department’s spokesman offered some tepid criticism of the Palestinians’ call to violence:
I would say that we also have some concerns today about the tensions regarding the rededication of a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. And we are urging all parties to act responsibly and do whatever is necessary to remain calm. We’re deeply disturbed by statements made by several Palestinian officials mischaracterizing the event in question, which can only serve to heighten the tensions that we see. And we call upon Palestinian officials to put an end to such incitement.
But there was no “condemnation.” That kind of language and bully-boy tactics are reserved, of course, for Israel. The Palestinians may not be interested in peace, but they aren’t fools. They’ve figured out what’s fair game in the Obama era.
They are not unconnected. They are not unconnected at all.
Now, presumably the president didn't want to provoke the rage of the Palestinians. (Although, then again, he might just have anticipated it.) But Palestinian rage is very easy to provoke. Snap your fingers and, there, you have it. You don't even have to rent a mob. It comes free will, so to speak.
The fact is that Obama did more than snap his fingers. He sent out very top members of his administration to beat up on Israel and they did. First, Joe Biden who had the sense to protect himself and his soul by speaking his inner feelings about Israel. Then, Hillary Clinton, who may or may not have a soul, launched her shrill assault on both Bibi Netanyahu and Israel's ingratitude for her favors. Last but not least (and actually a true instance of effrontery) was the dispatching of David Axelrod, (who in 2004 was behind John Edwards, "Bill Clinton without the sex") who knows nothing about foreign policy, but maybe being a Jewboy thinks he is more than credentialed to chastise the Jewish state. The fact is that he is an ignoramus on these matters. An "insult," indeed.
What exactly did the Obami think? Maybe that the president would beat up on Israel and the Palestinians would fall into line and modify their demands. My guess, to be entirely frank, is that Obama does not think they have any significant demands to modify, let along give up. And, if I'm right which admittedly I may not be, my counsel to the Israelis would be to stall until the next president comes along. James Baker said, "Fuck the Jews...they don't vote for us anyway." Well, Jews do vote Democrats and did vote for Obama, more than any other voters but black voters (who may not come out to vote so massively this time.) Israel is not all that matters to voting Jews. But it does matter. (Someone at breakfast this morning suggested to me that Obama is like Col. Lindbergh. See Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. But, unlike Lindbergh, whose presidential ambitions collapsed, Obama's succeded.)
If I'm wrong about Obama's deeper instincts around Israel/Palestine it would sure be nice to know. We know what he wants from Jerusalem. What does he want from Ramallah? Has he told Abu Mazen who, if you don't know the alias, is Mahmoud Abbas, president of the P.A, the authority of which, by the way, is not recognized by Hamas?
According to a dispatch by Jay Solomon and Joshua Mitnick in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, the president had confided already in July to more than a dozen American Jewish leaders that he planned to create some "space" between Israel and his administration. "We have to change the way the Arabs see us," Obama told the assembled Jews. And, apparently according to General Petraeus, to change how the Pakistanis and the Afghanis see us too, as if Taliban fighters even know what Jerusalem is. The notion that what happens between Israel and the Palestinians will affect the lives of American fighting men and women in Kabul is nearly a blood libel.
Let's imagine that Israel has ceded everything to the Palestinians that they wanted: Jerusalem, return of refugees in their most bloated numbers (which, by the way, are the "official" numbers,) borders, restitution, ending the status of Hatikvah as the national anthem, heart rending apologies, all of it, nothing excepted. What exactly will be the effect on Yemen and Somalia and Sudan, which are even closer to the Arab-Jewish seat of conflict than Pakistan and Afghanistan? Forgive me, but these fantasies of Israel redeeming American policy are simply nonsense.
It is increasingly clear that Obama belongs, as I have written several times here and elsewhere, to the Arabisant school of history. He is so vain or at least vain enough not to see that his coddling of the Palestinians encourages them in their maximalist tactics and strategies. As soon as Obama's real rage against Israel (not just his impatience with it or different view of its history) became known the Palestinians felt they could escalate and exacerbate their actions. They called for a "day of rage" and contingently further "days of rage" in conscious imitation of the days of rage called by the Weather Underground in America during 1969, a symbol which may or may not especially affront the president.
Riot as politics is an old business in Arab societies. And the latest riots are not against Jewish housing in northeast Jerusalem but against the restoration of the Hurva Synagogue is Jewish Quarter of the Old City. (When I was chairman of the Jerusalem Foundation we had planned a restoration with an altogether new construction designed by the great American [Jewish] architect Louis Kahn. The plans never went further than plans because of typical Jewish infighting, although I am told that there is a short documentary film depicting the structure as it might have been.)
An article by Isabel Kershner about the rebuilt synagogue appears in yesterday's Times. It had "remained in ruins after the Jordan destroyed it and expelled the Jewish community from the Old City in 1948." But why should the Palestinians care a fig about what the Jews do with an historic synagogue situated in what is indisputably and essentially a center of Jewish life?
Ms. Kershner has one explanation:
The synagogue’s new white dome blends in with the city’s ancient monuments holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews. Because of the topography, seen from certain points around the city, it rises above the Islamic shrines of the compound revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, and by Jews as the Temple Mount, including Al Aksa Mosque.
In Damascus, Khaled Meshal, the exiled leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas, said the synagogue’s dedication signified “the destruction of the Al Aksa Mosque and the building of the temple,” according to Agence France-Presse.
The State Department wagged its little finger by having P.J. Crowley, its mouthpiece announce that the United States was "deeply disturbed by statements made by several Palestinian officials mischaracterizing the event in question," which could heighten tensions." He continued, "We call upon Palestinian officials to put an end to this incitement."
I call upon President Obama to cease his incitement, as well. Alas, neither Crowley nor I will succeed in our wishes.
And, by the way, the dazzling political essayist Bret Stephens published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal an historically thick column which fleshes out some of the points I address above.
It's existential. Israelis are now broadly prepared to live with a Palestinian state along their borders. Palestinians are not yet willing to live with a Jewish state along theirs.
That should help explain why it is that in the past decade, two Israeli prime ministers—Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008—have put forward comprehensive peace offers to the Palestinians, and have twice been rebuffed. In both cases, the offers included the division of Jerusalem; in the latter case, it also included international jurisdiction over Jerusalem's holy places and concessions on the subject of Palestinian refugees. Current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also offered direct peace talks. The Palestinians have countered by withdrawing to "proximity talks" mediated by the U.S.
It also helps explain other aspects of Palestinian behavior. For Hamas, Tel Aviv is no less a "settlement" than the most makeshift Jewish outpost on the West Bank. The supposedly moderate Fatah party has joined that bandwagon, too: Last year, Mohammed Dahlan, one of Fatah's key leaders, said the party was "not bound" by the 1993 Oslo Accords through which the PLO recognized Israel.
Then there is the test case of Gaza. When Israel withdrew all of its settlements from the Strip in 2005, it was supposed to be an opportunity for Palestinians to demonstrate what they would do with a state if they got one. Instead, they quickly turned it into an Iranian-backed Hamas enclave that for nearly three years launched nonstop rocket and mortar barrages against Israeli civilians. Israel was ultimately able to contain that violence, but only at the price of a military campaign that was vehemently denounced by the very people who had urged Israel to withdraw in the first place.
Maureen Dowd spent a week in Saudi Arabia, presumably without having to wear the hijab or be smacked on her tush by themutaween to get her to pray. But now that she’s been to Riyadh, she is also an expert, an expert not so much on the huge peninsula but on Israel. Great place to learn!
You see, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, has actually instructed her on Israeli politics. “[Faisal] warned me,” she tells us, “that Israel’s ultra-conservative religious groups were ‘killing every option that comes out that has peace in its objective’.” Of course, it is true that the prince--don’t be too impressed by the title: there are more princes in Saudi Arabia than taxi drivers--knows a whole lot about “ultra-conservative religious groups.” For instance, and just as an instance, 15 out of the 19 pious 9/11 hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia.
I wonder, in fact, how many of Faisal’s royal cousins, if not actually his brothers (and perhaps he himself), have contributed to the ultramontane in Muslim politics and theology.
The Saudis have played their petro card very well, ever since Franklin Roosevelt went to visit Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud until Barack Obama bowed before Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the latter being one of the remaining five sons of the former, who was the country’s first king.
Dowd has not recorded whether she asked Faisal any tough questions about the kingdom’s attitude towards Israel.
What we know ourselves is that the monarchy would bless Netanyahu if he were to destroy the atomic arsenal of its great theological adversary.
Yes, many—likely most—Israelis want this or that part of the city to go ultimately to the Palestinian Authority, a larger portion more forthcoming than less… But none want any of it to go to Hamas. Who will be the legatee, however, is not something that Israel has the ability to decide.
Some Israelis want the whole of Jerusalem to remain under their sovereignty. That is neither feasible nor desirable.
The opportunities are very small, indeed. The Arabs are enraged, although they are easily enraged and have been enraged for decades. Since the mid-1800s, Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority. (This is an index of how important the Muslims’ “third holiest city” truly was to them.) In any case, it also has a (substantial) Jewish majority now, even though Palestinians have been surreptitiously moving into a Jerusalem controlled by Israel.
Why are they doing that? There is only one reason, and it is that these Palestinians do not want to live under Palestinian sovereignty. And who is to blame them? Do you think a single one of the Arab citizens of Israel will make aliyah to Palestine? Or are you crazy?
Frankly, the major difficulty is that the Jewish neighborhoods and the Arab neighborhoods are interlocked, like one hand folded into another. They are now more interlocked than ever. There is no clean way to separate between peoples, especially between angry peoples. And the bald truth is that Palestinians can be called out to riot at the drop of a hat. In fact, they are rioting right now.
Pity the cartographers who will have to draw the maps. At the end of 2000 and the beginning of 2001, the mapmakers drew lines that split Old City neighborhoods in half. The P.A. was assigned two sides of the Armenian Quarter, and Israel the dividing road between the two.
Here is a conflict between two demographies. The Palestinians have an empty vastness to the east of the city and adjoining it. Let them build there and attach whatever they build to their Jerusalem. Just as the Israelis built westward. The few areas of real estate in conflict are, indeed, really few.
Barack Obama has tried to enforce his hyperhysteria on the subject by, well, hyperhysteria. He even thinks he can force a change in the Israeli government. But, on Jerusalem, for all their differences, the major political parties are united. Labor, Bibi’s natural opposition, will not unconditionally cede the future of the city to Arab whims or Obama’s fantasies. Anyway, it’s in the government. More importantly, Kadima, which is Bibi’s natural ally, is out of the government and in opposition; it, too, supports building in Jerusalem--modestly, to be sure. Israel is united on this. It is a factor the Obami must contend with.
On the front page of the Sunday Boston Globe “Ideas” section, there’s a photograph of East Belfast—or, rather, of a concrete demarcation “that separates the Protestant community from the Catholic residents on the other side of the wall.” It is called the “Peace Line,” and maybe it’s what George Mitchell, who negotiated the settlement that ended “the Troubles,” thinks of as peace.
Mitchell was Bill Clinton’s “special envoy” to those troubles, and that is why Barack Obama made him his personal emissary to Israel and the Palestinians. And, although the president will celebrate the Good Friday Agreement with visiting Northern Ireland politicians on St. Patrick’s Day later this week in Washington, Kevin Cullen—who covered the conflict in the Globe for more than 20 years—today observes, in a long article for the same paper, that “[w]hile the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland have shown a willingness to not kill each other, they have been less enthusiastic about the prospect of actually living with each other.” Cullen provides many dispiriting details. Alas.
Look, Mitchell seems disposed, by dint of character, to favor one side in a dispute rather than be fair, as arbitrators are supposed to be. This certainly was demonstrated in the baseball steroid investigation. His competence is also in question. One of the public men who went from the political trough to sup at the corporate board food line, he was designated chairman of Disney in 2004. He served barely two years, after which Disney breathed a sigh of relief.
George Mitchell will do anything to get out of a tight spot, including downgrading the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority to “proximity talks,” where he’d be running from Jerusalem to Ramallah and back, with the parties not even facing each other as they consider borders, refugees, Jerusalem, security, settlements, water, etc. For Mitchell, anything goes, just as long as he’s in the spotlight.
In fact, Israel explicitly told them that it would, and Washington--with some regret, to be sure--accepted the fact.
So why are the Obami having such conniptions? Because they’ll do anything and everything to pacify the Palestinians, and that’s because the president has a special place in his heart for these zealots who aspire neither to democracy nor to social justice but to revenge on historical progress which they bitterly repelled. Like the rest of the Arab peoples for whom Obama seems also to have undeserved and unrequited affection.
As for the Jerusalem expectations of the administration, here’s a short and irreproachable primer from Barry Rubin.
The fact is that the Obama folk are orchestrating this sturm und drang between allies, and one of the (predictable) results is that the Palestinians will become increasingly demanding and recalcitrant. Just wait and see.
An article in Ha’aretz reports on the inflammatory remarks made this morning by David Axelrod, who has absolutely no intellectual authority on the Israel-Palestine question. But he can be counted on to be inflammatory on the subject. After all, that’s his job.
I am a little embarrassed to be so self-referential this morning, but I am going back to my Spine from yesterday, “The Relentless Facts of Palestine.”
Vice President Biden knew he had to calm the waters in Israel a bit. And he did. So, to an audience at Tel Aviv University--said by some to be comparable to Cairo University, where President Obama delivered his June 4 speech, and which saying tells you how little most people understand the real differences among universities--Biden delivered the reassurances that probably nobody expected: “U.S. president Barack Obama and myself know that the U.S. has no better friend in the community of nations than Israel.” That is certainly the case, across the board politically and philosophically. And aesthetically, too, by the way. These two countries are the epitome of humanistic modernity.
Sill, in the back of everyone’s mind in the audience was Biden’s use of the word “condemn” when speaking about the release of a newly approved Israeli plan for building 1,600 new apartments in what he called East Jerusalem. Just a minor point here: The designated units would be in North Jerusalem, not in the eastern part of the city that carries the yolk and passion of holiness--a troublesome yoke and a troublesome passion.
In any case, Biden knew that his condemnation raised questions and objections, and not just from Israelis or Zionists or Jews. So he explained that he thought that the announcement of the construction “undermined the trust required to conduct the negotiations.” And, therefore, “I--at the request of President Obama--condemned it immediately.” This is all reported in a Jerusalem Post article, “US has no better friend than Israel,” published today.
I was correct in my intuition that it was really Obama doing the condemning. You may draw your own conclusions.
This is apropos my last Spine.
The editorial habits of the New York Times are to utter hortatory dicta about how this should happen and that.
In this morning’s lead editorial (“Diplomacy 102”), it heuristically explains what happened to the president’s ambitions to restart direct negotiations on a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians:
President Obama seriously miscalculated last year when he insisted that Israel impose a full stop on all new settlement building ... [O]ne of the basic rules of diplomacy is that American presidents never publicly insist on something they aren’t sure of getting — at least not without a backup plan.
I don’t quite understand the last clause in my citation. But the editorial is certainly the truth and, worse yet, a truism. Still, it’s no surprise that Obama didn’t seem to understand this first principle of diplomacy or, as the Times coyly concedes, maybe the second. The Palestinians reasoned that, if the president insists that Israel make a major concession even before talks begin, they can ask for more ... and more.
After some hemming and hawing, Israel agreed to a freeze (which I believe should not have been demanded of it), though it should not have conceded because settlements are central issues in the diplomacy itself. It exempted Jerusalem from the freeze, however. Still, as the Times put it, the president and his emissary “failed to persuade Arab leaders to agree to make any gestures to Israel in return for a settlement freeze.” Then the U.S. pulled out from way back in the history of the conflict--to the '20s, '30s, '40s--another tricky concession to the Arabs, that they need not parley directly with opponents but can engage in what Washington calls “indirect” negotiations. In this formula, the antagonists will not sit in one room, but the mediator, George Mitchell, poor man, will shuttle from Jerusalem to Ramallah and back.
The Times points out near the editorial’s end that “if Israel is to make real concessions, it will need more than gestures from the Arab states.” More importantly, I would say, it will need much more than gestures from the Palestinians. And everybody will have to grasp that Israel is now not negotiating with a united Palestinian polity, what with Gaza and the Gazans ruled by Hamas.
Alas, at the end of the editorial, the Times reverts to the habits from which it seemed to have broken at the start: “We also hope that if progress lags, the administration will be ready to put forward its own proposals on the central issues of borders, refugees, security and the future of Jerusalem.” Which would bring us back to what we have just been through.
Everything is narrative. And the present “responsible” narrative, we are told, comes from President Obama. It’s too bad he knows very little about the intrinsic history of the dispute or about its present contours, which, after all, he--in his arrogance, vanity, and suave--has done much to make both sides more rigid rather than more amenable to compromise. (Actually it’s at least three sides if you count Hamas-controlled Gaza, which the president blithely ignores ... and more if you count the so-called “Palestinians-in-exile” and the Arab interlopers, like the Saudis, worthy of an executive genuflection, who agitate but don’t really much care. OK, this may be harsh. They do care, maybe a fig or two.)
There is some confusion in the Obama administration about its attitude toward Israel. Joe Biden’s visit to Jerusalem over the last few days actually must have focused all participants and observers on the ambiguities of the relationship. Herb Keinon, the very astute observer of U.S.-Israel relations at the Jerusalem Post, published an article today titled “Veep shows Israel some love.” And in a subhead: “In Jerusalem, Biden reiterates Washington’s ‘absolute, total unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.’” And this was not all. Biden has his own longtime and almost maternally breastfed affections for Israel. Before meeting with the gaga president of Israel, he observed that the Jewish state “captured my heart. I make no bones about it. That does not mean I do not understand and have a great empathy for the circumstances of the Palestinians, but Israel captured heart and my imagination.”
Then the prime minister gave the vice president a certificate attesting to the fact that a ring of trees had been planted by the Jewish National Fund--for those of you who remember the blue collection box (or, as it was called, the pushke)--in memory of Biden’s mother, Catherine Eugenia Jean Finnegan Biden, who passed on at 92 in January. Biden took the certificate and said, “My love for your country was watered by this Irish lady, who was proudest of me when I was with and for the security of Israel.” This Irish lady, believe me, did not attend the Reverend John Hagee’s church.
Netanyahu’s colleagues did not reciprocate Biden’s gesture at all. The fact is that Bibi is continually undermined by several members of his cabinet and by the members of parliament who belong to their political parties. (Alas, the Israeli parliamentary system is not disciplined parliamentarianism at all.) My guess is that Netanyahu was as surprised as Biden when the interior ministry announced that it had approved construction for 1,600 apartments in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, which already houses 18,000 (mostly) ultra-orthodox Jews. But I do not believe that Interior Minister Eli Yishai--leader of Shas, the benighted ultra-orthodox party of many Sephardic Jews--was at all surprised as he claimed in a craftily wrought “apology.”
That said, I believe that the great rabbi in the skies has not instructed Israel to force history to stand still. So let me be direct: The Palestinians have only themselves to blame on Jerusalem, as on other disputed matters. In 2000 and 2001, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to a peace that included handing over the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem for the Palestinian capital. (Ehud Olmert made the same offer in 2008). The Arabs always believed that time was on their side, that their reluctance to negotiate and then their reluctance to sign would somehow improve their position. But time does not stand still, and it certainly no longer stands still for the Jews. Having waited in exile for 2,000 years, having struggled over nearly a century for a Jewish commonwealth, have tried to engage its neighbors in parley for more than half a century, the Jewish polity will no longer tarry, and it is justified in not tarrying.
Indeed, the American quick fix of “indirect” negotiations (with poor self-deluded George Mitchell shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah) plays into the Palestinian historic habit of eluding reality. But, if they will not sit with the Israelis, how can they possibly make peace with the Israelis? So what Obama’s affinity for the Palestinian sensibility has forced is a dangerous historic retreat that puts American sanction and blessings on fantasy. I actually believe that Netanyahu should have rejected this foolish formula. It is, however, an earnest representation of his commitment to move on with whatever “peace process” there is ... and there will be a peace process. It will end in nothing.
Now, back to Biden. Given that he surely understands this Israeli narrative and doubtless sympathizes with it as well, why did he use the word “condemn” about the announcement of the far-into-the future East Jerusalem housing? After all, if a peace agreement is struck beforehand, the 1,600 units can easily be cancelled. In fact, as Jennifer Rubin aptly points out today at Commentary, “condemn” is a rather shrill word in the affairs of state and is not used casually by the Obami. Mrs. Clinton, no longer a supplicant for Jewish votes and money, has also rushed to the strident in speaking about and to Israel. I conclude that this is actually administration policy. There is curious confirmation illuminating this in a column by Roger Cohen which has nothing to do with Israel. His piece fixes on Obama’s affinities for cultures and polities that had not been central in the minds of previous American presidents. So this president has actually played rough with our traditional allies and ideological companions. He is, as I have said a few times, a third worlder. We will see how America will do with our true friends sidelined. Perhaps the Brits will console themselves that Obama returned the bust of Winston Churchill that they lent to the White House after 9/11.
Anyway, it is increasingly clear that the president feels more connection to the Palestinians specifically and the Arabs generally than he does to the Israelis (and just possibly more connection to Muslims than to Jews, to Islam than to Judaism and Jewishness.)
So he is stuck with the allies he has chosen. In the long run, it will not matter. The Palestinians will not play even the minimal accommodating role in peace-seeking that Obama has assigned them. There are relentless facts about Palestine that even the president’s disregard for Jewish sensibility and for Israel’s security will not be able to alter.
Max Boot is among the conservative columnists I esteem the most. One reason is that he has to be more than a bit brave because the right is not ordinarily cordial to those who dissent on its keystone issues. Of course, he is not the only conservative to be sensible on gay matters. Still...
In his latest blog post on ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Boot points us to a previous entry that provoked considerable consternation among those who usually claim to want the government out of our private lives. His cogent and truth-telling rebuttals underscore the indisputable fact that the demos does not want to exclude anyone from the military who wants honorably to serve.
(By the way, here are a couple of TNR links to our treatment of the issue of gays in the military.)
More on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Posted by Max Boot on March 7, 2010 @ 12:13 PM
My article taking retired Gen. Merrill McPeak to task for the weakness of his arguments against lifting the ban on gays serving openly in the military has generated some heated responses on the Web (e.g., this post on David Horowitz’s website and this post by a retired Air Force NCO). A few points of rebuttal and clarification are in order.
First, I suggested that studies of other armed services that have lifted the gay ban have found no deleterious impact on unit cohesion or performance. This has supporters of the ban fulminating that one of the key studies was conducted by the Palm Center, a research center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which is openly committed to gay rights. That’s true, but the motives behind the study shouldn’t matter; what counts is whether the study is accurate, and I haven’t seen anyone suggest any actual distortion of the results. Besides, the Palm Center is not alone in its finding; see this article written by an Air Force colonel and published in Joint Forces Quarterly, an official publication of the National Defense University:
In a survey of over 100 experts from Australia, Canada, Israel, and the United Kingdom, it was found that all agreed the decision to lift the ban on homosexuals had no impact on military performance, readiness, cohesion, or ability to recruit or retain, nor did it increase the HIV rate among troops.
Critics can also argue that “other countries’ militaries aren’t comparable to the U.S. military. No other military on the planet, after all, can or will do what our military does.” That’s true, but while the Israeli, Australian, or British militaries don’t have the global power projection capabilities of the U.S., the general consensus is that on a unit-for-unit basis, they are just as effective as our own military. If having gays serve openly in their ranks hasn’t hurt their combat performance — and I have seen no indication that it has — I find it hard to believe it would have a major impact on our own forces.
Second, I suggested that allowing openly gay service members would have even less impact on unit cohesion than having women serve in the ranks. This has brought forth arguments that women have in fact contributed to a degradation of combat effectiveness, which has been covered up for “politically correct reasons.” I don’t doubt that pregnancy, sexual harassment, and fraternization have been real problems, but these would have existed even if women had been barred from service altogether, because of the presence of female contractors on all major American bases, even in combat zones. But there are also benefits to having women serve — see this article about how valuable female Marines are in interacting with Afghanistan’s women, something their male counterparts cannot do for reasons of cultural sensitivity.
The larger issue is that tapping into the female half of the population has allowed the military to draw on some great talent, which it would otherwise be denied. The same argument applies to gays (who are admittedly a much smaller percentage of the population). Women still aren’t allowed into some ground-combat jobs, and it may make sense, as I have previously argued, to extend that ban at least for some time to gays. But women are allowed to fill most jobs, and they bring intelligence, dedication, and hard work that the military — which has a hard time filling its all-volunteer ranks in wartime — badly needs. Same with homosexuals. The Joint Forces article notes: “Since 1994, the Services have discharged nearly 12,500 Service members under the law.” That’s a small number in the overall scheme of things, but a number of those had skills, such as Arab-language knowledge, that are very hard to replace. In recent years, the Army in particular has been forced to lower its standards to attract enough recruits. That suggests that we can hardly afford to discharge soldiers for their sexual preference — unless they act in undisciplined ways (e.g., committing sexual harassment), but those prohibitions should be enforced evenhandedly against both heterosexuals and homosexuals.
Despite the criticisms against my article, my sense is that most active-duty personnel are in fact comfortable with lifting the gay ban. That’s confirmed by this study, cited in an article by Owen West (himself a combat vet of Iraq): “A 2006 poll of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans showed that 72 percent were personally comfortable interacting with gays.” Given that 80 percent of the overall public favors lifting the ban, those like Gen. McPeak favor keeping it in place are fighting a losing — and needless — battle.
*****
Merrill McPeak on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
Posted by Max Boot on March 5, 2010 @ 2:06 PM
Retired General Merrill McPeak, a former Air Force chief of staff and a prominent Obama backer in the 2008 campaign, has weighed in with a New York Times op-ed against ending the current “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. I can’t say I find his arguments terribly persuasive.
For one thing, he implicitly threatens that the current military leadership would simply ignore or undermine a presidential order to allow gays to serve openly — “allowing an openly gay presence in ranks will be very difficult until we have committed leadership for it,” he writes, adding, ”I certainly had trouble figuring out how to provide such leadership in 1993.” It’s harder to imagine a more blatant threat to subvert the civil-military relationship and, specifically, the oath that all service members swear to ”obey the orders of the President of the United States.”
McPeak also makes the argument that unit cohesion will be undermined by allowing openly gay personnel to serve. His evidence? “We have already seen the fault lines form in the current debate: the individual service chiefs have expressed reservations about Admiral Mullen’s views. This lack of cohesion will likely make the Joint Chiefs less effective in the latest round of this debate.” Uh, right. So perhaps if the chiefs are called upon to undertake hand-to-hand combat against, say, Chinese generals, they may not fight very effectively. Is the implication here that the president should not pursue any policy that the Joint Chiefs do not unanimously support? Again, that’s contrary to all of our civil-military traditions and gives the chiefs authority they are not granted under law — and should not be granted, given the lack of strategic acumen often displayed by service chiefs.
I found two conspicuous absences in McPeak’s article. First, he doesn’t address the studies showing that openly gay personnel have not undermined unit cohesion in allied militaries, including those of Australia, Britain, and Israel. Perhaps the U.S. military is different, but he doesn’t say how.
Second, he makes no mention of the integration of women into the armed services in the 1970s, which occasioned arguments by the likes of Jim Webb (now a U.S. Senator) that were remarkably similar to those advanced by McPeak today. He writes: “We know, or ought to, that warriors are inspired by male bonding, by comradeship, by the knowledge that they survive only through relying on each other. To undermine cohesion is to endanger everyone.” One would think that the presence of women would do even more than the presence of gays to undermine “male bonding.” Yet women have been granted admittance into almost all military occupations, in roles including flying fighter jets as McPeak once did. They are present on all major and most minor bases even in war zones. They frequently and regularly circulate on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan. What evidence is there that their presence has undermined combat effectiveness? And if it hasn’t, why would the presence of un-closeted gays be more corrosive than that of women?
