The Great Debate UK
from The Great Debate:
The U.S. war in Iraq is over. Who won?
The end of America's combat mission, after seven and a half costly years, has raised questions that will provide fodder for argument for a long time to come: Was it worth it? And who, if anyone, won?
It's too early to answer the first question, according to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a man of sober judgment. "It really requires a historian's perspective in terms of what happens here in the long run ... How it all weighs in the balance over time remains to be seen."
For a sizeable group of Middle East experts, the second question is easier to answer than the first. "So, who won the war in Iraq? Iran," says the headline over an analysis by scholar Mohammed Bazzi for the Council on Foreign relations, a New York-based think-tank. His argument: "The U.S. ousted Tehran's sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein, from power. Then Washington helped install a Shi'ite government for the first time in Iraq's modern history.
"As U.S. troops became mired in fighting an insurgency and containing a civil war, Iran extended its influence over all of Iraq's Shi'ite factions." As a consequence, U.S. influence has been waning, Iran's has been rising, and there are predictions that Iran will fill the vacuum created by the drawdown of U.S. troops to 50,000 who will "advise and assist" the Iraqis.
When President Barack Obama announced the completion of the drawdown in a somber speech on August 31, he made no reference to Iran - a curious omission - but said that "in an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners." In the case of Iraq, only optimists find it easy to see shining success.
Six months after national elections, there is still no Iraqi government, with Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds unable to agree on how to share power and, as importantly, the country's enormous oil wealth. A squabbling, deadlocked parliament is not much to show for more than 4,000 American, up to 100,000 Iraqi deaths and $1 trillion in war spending.
Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, and the neoconservative war hawks who agitated for an attack on Iraq, predicted that the country would become a model of democracy that would inspire the rest of the Arab world, largely run by autocratic regimes, to follow suit. That proved a pipedream. Instead, in the words of Wathiq al-Hashemi, a political analyst in Baghdad, Iraq has become a theatre for settling foreign disputes.
from The Great Debate:
Why the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks will go nowhere
The following are excerpts from STRATFOR's geopolitical weekly column by George Friedman, chief executive officer of STRATFOR, a global intelligence company. He is the author of numerous books and articles on international affairs, warfare and intelligence. His most recent book is "The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century." The opinions expressed are the author's own.
The Israeli government and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) have agreed to engage in direct peace talks September 2 in Washington. Neither side has expressed any enthusiasm about the talks. In part, this comes from the fact that entering any negotiations with enthusiasm weakens your bargaining position. But the deeper reason is simply that there have been so many peace talks between the two sides and so many failures that it is difficult for a rational person to see much hope in them. Moreover, the failures have not occurred for trivial reasons. They have occurred because of profound divergences in the interests and outlooks of each side.
These particular talks are further flawed because of their origin. Neither side was eager for the talks. They are taking place because the United States wanted them. Indeed, in a certain sense, both sides are talking because they do not want to alienate the United States and because it is easier to talk and fail than it is to refuse to talk.
It should be understood that many Muslim governments would be appalled if the United States broke with Israel and Israel fell. For example, Egypt and Jordan, facing demographic and security issues of their own, are deeply hostile to at least some Palestinian factions. The vast majority of Jordan’s population is actually Palestinian. Egypt struggles with an Islamist movement called the Muslim Brotherhood, which has collaborated with like-minded Islamists among the Palestinians for decades. The countries of the Arabian Peninsula are infinitely more interested in the threat from Iran than in the existence of Israel and, indeed, see Israel as one of the buttresses against Iran. Even Iran is less interested in the destruction of Israel than it is in using the issue as a tool in building its own credibility and influence in the region.
In the Islamic world, public opinion, government rhetoric and government policy have long had a distant kinship. If the United States were actually to do what these countries publicly demand, the private response would be deep concern both about the reliability of the United States and about the consequences of a Palestinian state. A wave of euphoric radicalism could threaten all of these regimes. They quite like the status quo, including the part where they get to condemn the United States for maintaining it.
From the point of view of any Israeli foreign minister, the danger of peace talks is that the United States might actually engineer a solution. Any such solution would by definition involve Israeli concessions that would be opposed by a substantial Israeli bloc — and nearly any Israeli faction could derail any agreement. Israeli prime ministers go to the peace talks terrified that the Palestinians might actually get their house in order and be reasonable — leaving it to Israel to stand against an American solution. Had Ariel Sharon not had his stroke, there might have been a strong leader who could wrestle the Israeli political system to the ground and impose a settlement. But at this point, there has not been an Israeli leader since Menachem Begin who could negotiate with confidence in his position. Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself caught between the United States and his severely fractured Cabinet by peace talks.
Could you do everyone an enormous favour and post this article to the UK’s Foreign Office, cc’d to the entire Coalition Cabinet?
A rare treat, this: a balanced and extremely lucid run through the Realpolitik and cynicism that is Middle Eastern politics.
Iran is, as Mr Friedmann points up, everybody’s Public Enemy No 1 – but only the Israelis can fess up to this, and thus they take the heat. Further, analysis of the cultural and religious schisms between the various Arab nationalities involved shows fairly quickly that little has changed since the days of El Orance himself.
Above all, Saudi Arabia has to be the most cynical, corrupt, unfair, cruel and hypocritical Government on the planet.
Great piece, thanks for the read.
http://nbyslog.blogspot.com/2010/08/anal ysis-as-obvious-begins-to-happen-in.html
from The Great Debate:
U.S. aid, Israel and wishful thinking
In June 1980, when an American president, Jimmy Carter, objected to Jewish settlements in Israeli-occupied territories, the Israeli government responded by announcing plans for new settlements. At the time, settlers numbered fewer than 50,000.
In 2010, another American president, Barack Obama, is calling for an end to settlements he considers obstacles to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli authorities responded by announcing new ones, illegal under international law. Settlers now number close to half a million.
In the three decades between 1980 and 2010, there have been multiple U.S.-Israeli spats over the issue and they often fell into something of a pattern, spelt out in 1991 by James Baker, President George H W Bush's secretary of state: "Every time I have gone to Israel in connection with the peace process ... I have been met with an announcement of new settlement activities. It substantially weakens our hand in trying to bring about a peace process." That is as true now as it was then.
Also part of the routine: suggestions from critics of Israeli policy that the United States uses its vast aid program to Israel as a lever to change its behavior. "Cut off the Cash and Israel Might Behave" said a headline at the height of the latest U.S.-Israeli spat over settlements. The headline ran over an essay in a British newspaper, The Independent, by Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford who served in the Israeli army. The folder in which to file that idea might be labeled Wishful Thinking.
Since the end of the Second World War, Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid, according to the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress. Since 1985, aid to Israel has run at around $3 billion a year, a sizable sum for a country with a population roughly equal to that of New York City.
Attempts to use aid as a lever have been few and far between. In 1991, the elder Bush asked Congress to delay $10 billion in loan guarantees to get Israel to stop building new settlements. This sparked a determined lobbying effort by the American Israeli Political Action Committee, the biggest pro-Israel advocacy group, and prompted Bush to describe himself as "one lonely guy" facing powerful political forces in the shape of "a thousand lobbyists on the Hill."
The quip illustrated both the limits of presidential power and solid congressional support for Israel. It runs across partisan divides and was highlighted once again during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington in March, when President Barack Obama made known his displeasure over yet more settlements by dispensing with standard protocol. No joint declaration, no dinner, no photo opportunity, exit through the back door.
Israel will have peace when it admits that Palestinians are as much human beings as Jews.
Anyone wanting to know what really happened in 1948 should read Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. He explains that the Zionists used mass terror to expel the Palestinians from their ancestral homeland. Until this original sin is rectified by Israel, it has no right to complain about Palestinian terror.
In fact, Israel proved terror works. The Palestinians are just following the Zionist model.
Shlomo Sand on “The Invention of the Jewish People”
In his controversial book, “The Invention of the Jewish People,” author Shlomo Sand challenges historical notions of the link between Judaism and Israel, and argues that there is no record of exile of the Jewish people.
Israel has deliberately forgotten its history and replaced it with a myth, writes Sand, a Jewish scholar and historian based at the University of Tel Aviv. Without exile, there is no right to return, he says.
“The disparity between what my research suggested about the history of the Jewish people and the way that history is commonly understood – not only within Israel but in the larger world – shocked me as much as it shocked my readers.”
Early Rabbis and 19th century Zionist Scholars were responsible for the construction of a continuous genealogy for the Jewish people, Sand argues. He attributes the Jewish diaspora to early Judaist evangelism across North Africa, Southern Europe and the Middle East, not a biological lineage.
Sand spoke with Reuters about his thesis at Verso Books headquarters in London. Watch the video here:
from FaithWorld:
Israel rejects Jordanian bid to claim Dead Sea Scrolls
Section of Dead Sea scrolls at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, 14 May 2008/Baz Ratner
Israel has rejected a Jordanian claim that the historic Dead Sea Scrolls belong to them. Jordan has asked Canada to seize sections of the 2,000-year-old scrolls that were recently exhibited in Toronto and hand them over to Amman. It said Israel took the scrolls illegally when it won control over the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war .
Here's a Reuters video report by Basmah Fahim interviewing Israeli and Jordanian officials on the issue:
A Visit to Hebron
-Robin Yassin-Kassab is the author of The Road from Damascus, a novel published by Penguin, and co-editor of PULSE, one of Le Monde Diplomatique’s five favourite websites. The opinions expressed are his own.-
There’s no pretty way to describe what I saw in Hebron, no tidy conceit to wrap it in.
I visited as a participant in the Palestine Festival of Literature, the brain child of the great British-Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif. I was in the company of many wonderful writers and publishers, among them Python and traveller Michael Palin, best-selling crime novelist Henning Mankel, Pride and Prejudice screenplay writer Deborah Moggach, and prize-winning novelists Claire Messud and MG Vassanji.
Our first stop was Hebron University, where I ran a workshop on “the role of writing in changing political realities.” The students were bright and eager; the only discomforting note was struck by a memorial stone to three killed while walking on campus, by rampaging settlers, in 1986.
After lunch we visited Hebron’s historic centre. The usual way on the West Bank is for Israeli checkpoints, towers and settlements to encircle Palestinian population concentrations. But here 400 gun-wielding settlers, guarded by 1500 soldiers, also occupy the centre of the Old City.
The delight of any Arab old city is the sensation of freedom it offers; you can disappear under arches, around corners, through dark passageways. But Hebron’s freedom has been robbed by iron gates and concrete blocks. There are military positions and “Jews-only” roads. Such slogans as “Gas the Arabs” are daubed on the green-shuttered shops. Some 77 percent of Old City shops are closed by military order. Settlers squatting the upper storeys throw excrement, kitchen rubbish and stones at pedestrians in the souq.
Hebron’s Arabic name is al-Khalil, meaning “the friend”, referring specifically to God’s friend Abraham, buried here with his wife Sarah and son Isaac. The tombs are sacred to both Jews and Muslims, and in quieter times were shared, but the struggle between Zionism and the Palestinian natives has changed that. In 1994 Brooklyn-born settler Baruch Goldstein shot dead 29 Palestinians at prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque, injuring 150 more. Rather than compensate the community for the massacre, Israel imposed a two-week perpetual curfew while it confiscated 65 percent of the mosque for use as a synagogue. Which means a physical wall now divides this historic building, to add to the other walls shadowing the towns and refugee camps of Palestine.
David and Neighbour
You are quite right about the massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929. The fact that the massacre happened in the context of the struggle against Zionist plans to turn Palestine into a Jewish state does not change the fact that the massacre was a terrible crime. I should have mentioned it, but didn’t because I was given only 600 words. I stuck to what I saw, to what is happening today. I speak as as somebody who is very aware of Arab sectarianism and its negative effect on Jews, Shia Muslims and other minorities. Sectarianism is one of the things that make Arabs weak, and I and many Arabs revile it. (It so happens that I have a Syrian Jewish aunt). However, the anti-Jewish feeling amongst most Palestinians and other Arabs today is directed not at Jews in general but in the faces of the Jewsish state that has dispossessed the Palestinians.
Neighbour says the child settlers are not gun-wielding. True, but I have been shown many films (they’re on Youtube) of settler children hitting, kicking and throwing stones at Palestinian men, women and children. When they do this, they are protected by gun-wielding adult settlers and by soldiers. Again, I should have mentioned this, but was stopped by my 600 word limit.
As for Jews only having access to 3% of Hebron – Israeli Jews are forbidden access to the rest of the city (unless they are soldiers, who move in at will) as a result of Israeli laws. However, I met French and American Jews (pro-Palestinian activists and academics) who live and work in Hebron, Ramallah and other West Bank cities. The apartheid system was brought in by Israel.
Then there’s the small matter that according to international law, there should be NO Israeli civilians living in occupied territory. The Palestinian leadership (which I’m not a fan of) has in any case said that in the event of a two-state solution, any Jewish settlers who will accept to live under Palestinian sovereignty can stay on the West Bank.
And, yes, I am biased. I was also biased against apartheid South Africa.; If this was the 1930s, I’d be biased against Nazi Germany, and also aginst the pro-Zionist but anti-Semitic immigration policies of the US and British governments. (which blocked access to fleeing European Jews, forcing them to go to Palestine instead).
from The Great Debate:
Iran sanctions and wishful thinking
-- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --
So what's so difficult in getting Iran to drop its nuclear program? All it needs is a great American leader who uses sanctions to break the Iranian economy so badly that popular discontent sweeps away the leadership. It is replaced without a shot being fired.
That simplistic solution to one of the most complex problems of the Middle East was part of a keynote speech greeted with thunderous applause by 6,000 delegates to the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The speaker: Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and a likely Republican presidential candidate in 2012.
In the fourth month of the administration of President Barack Obama, who favors talking to America's adversaries rather than ousting them, the Gingrich prescription sounded like a throwback to the days when neo-conservatives predicted that the U.S. troops invading Iraq would be pelted with flowers and sweets. Wishful thinking at its finest.
But in panel discussions and forums at AIPAC, one of the most powerful lobby groups in the United States, the idea of sharply tightened sanctions had plenty of proponents. The preferred lever: cutting off gasoline supplies to Iran, which relies on imports for around 40% of its domestic consumption.
On the final day of the conference this week, several thousand AIPAC activists converged on Congress to press their representatives for passage of pending legislation to sanction companies that sell, ship, finance or insure gasoline exports to Iran. Firms that continued dealing with Iran would be banned from doing business with the U.S.
Would an additional layer to a stack of sanctions imposed since 1995 get the Iranians to drop what the West insists is work toward a nuclear bomb? There is no reason to believe it would. There is every reason to believe more sanctions would inflict hardship on the Iranian people.
State control of media and indoctrination since birth? Wow, they sound exactly like the USA!
How about leaving Iran alone? Why shouldn’t Iran have a nuclear program, since Israel is nuclear-armed? Why not tell Israel that a price for persuading Iran to give up its nuclear program is for Israel to give up all its nuclear arms and stop making more?
from The Great Debate:
Setback for America’s pro-Israel hawks
-- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. --
"The brutal oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation shows no sign of ending ... Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians, it strives to pacify them ... American identification with Israel has become total."
These are excerpts from a 2007 speech by Charles (Chas) Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, whose appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council was announced on February 26 and is turning into a test case for the strength of Washington's right-wing pro-Israel lobby.
Signs are that its influence might be waning under the administration of President Barack Obama. Does that mean the days of unquestioning American support for Israel are coming to en end? Probably not.
But the furious reaction to Freeman's appointment from some of the most fervent neo-conservative champions of Israel points to considerable concern over the possible loss of clout.
In his new job, Freeman will be responsible for compiling intelligence from the the United States' 16 intelligence agencies into National Intelligence Estimates, detailed and lengthy analyses that play a key role in shaping U.S. foreign policy.
The initial drumbeat of criticism came from conservative pro-Israel bloggers, including Steve Rosen, former policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosen has been indicted for giving "national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it," legalese for spying.
The Israel-right-or-wrong crowd may be losing a bit of influence but Israel’s interests are still being looked after in high places. Look at Dennis Ross in his new post in charge of a region that includes Iran. Will he engage in even-handedness? You bet he won’t. So one could say its an even trade, Freeman on one hand, Ross on the other.
And Clinton’s visit to Ramallah did not indicate one millimetre of change on the tried-and-true course.
from The Great Debate:
First 100 Days: The next steps in the Middle East
President Barack Obama inherits a distinctly gloomy outlook for progress in settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Is change really possible?
Reuters asked Oliver McTernan, the director a UK charity called Forward Thinking and two experts from the Brookings Institution in Washington -- former Ambassador to Israel Martin S. Indyk and Kenneth Pollack -- what steps the Obama administration should take next in the Middle East.
The policy of the United States has urgently striven for a two state solution between the Israeli and the Palestinians since the early nineties. It has caused unmeasurable havoc for the peoples of the area with absolutely no results. If President Obama will follow this well trodden road then he is assured of much ado with absolutely no success where the pressures of the area will mount and eventually become unbearable. What is desperately needed in the Middle East is a change of policy not the pursual of policies which have proved
unsuccessful. This is indeed possible, but only when one admits that the two state solution has not only been a catastrophe but holds the possibility of becoming an even greater menace in the future.
from UK News:
BBC – taking a stand on Gaza
The BBC has been roundly condemned at home for its refusal to broadcast an emergency appeal for Gaza on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of 13 aid agencies.
It says it does not want to be seen to be taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and that broadcasting the appeal could jeopardise its carefully cultivated position of impartiality. Sky News has followed suit.
But criticism has been fierce, including from the government and the Church of England.
The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has accused the BBC of "taking sides". He said on Friday: "This is not a row about impartiality but rather about humanity.
Former BBC foreign correspondent Martin Bell said the BBC should admit it had made a mistake. He claimed "a culture of timidity had crept" into the corporation. "I am completely appalled," he said. "It is a grave humanitarian crisis and the people who are suffering are children. They have been caught out on this question of balance."
BBC Director-General Mark Thompson said: "Inevitably an appeal would use pictures which are the same or similar to those we would be using in our news programmes but would do so with the objective of encouraging public donations. The danger for the BBC is that this could be interpreted as taking a political stance on an ongoing story."
What do you think? Are Sky and the BBC being too cautious or do they have a point?
I think that the behind-the-scenes reason for this decision by the BBC, which is so contrary to its usual tear-jerking brand of broadcasting, is probably that it has drawn a lot of private but high-powered criticism about its one-sided coverage of the recent action and its editorial bias against Israel.
Having decided to withdraw to the bunker of “impartiality” it has, in true big corporation style, gone into headless chicken mode and chosen the wrong issue on which to make a stand.
For Thompson to pretend that the BBC does not have a political stance on the Palestinian issue and many others is complete farce. As for Sentamu and the rest of the predictable gang who are complaining about the BBC’s new-found “impartiality”, their complaint is not about the high-minded “humanitarian issue”. It is simply that they are afraid of losing their traditional mouthpiece.
Israel won the war. Iran came in second. The USA elite won trillions and the American people lost badly.