The claim that Israeli “settlements” constitute “an obstacle to peace” has become a self-evident European dogma. The truth, of course, is that there was no peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors when none of those “settlements” existed (between 1949 and 1967); that the Palestinian leadership rejected twice Israel’s offer to dismantle most of its settlements (by Ehud Barak in July 2000 and by Ehud Olmert in September 2008); and that when Israel unilaterally dismantled all its settlements in Gaza in 2005, it was “rewarded” by thousands of rockets.
Rather than settlements, one of the major obstacles to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is the so-called “right of return.” By this euphemism, the Palestinians want to flood Israel with about 7 million immigrants who are the descendants, or alleged descendants, of the 600,000 Arabs who left their homes during Israel’s War of Independence. This would turn Israel into a bi-national state with an Arab majority. Except for a minority of post and anti-Zionist Israelis, even the most dovish members of the Israeli Left consider the “right of return” a non-starter.
While the Zionist Left generally pooh-poohs the “right of return” as a mere rhetorical tool in which the Palestinians themselves don’t actually believe, the fact is that the Palestinian refusal to give in on that issue is what caused the rejection of Barak and Olmert’s peace proposals. Moreover, neither Arafat nor Abbas ever tried to educate their people into admitting that the “right of return” is unrealistic; on the contrary: both leaders have made the “right of return” a central tenet of Palestinian nationalism and an issue whose abandonment is an act of high treason.
The fantasy of the “right of return” is kept alive and indeed nurtured by UNRWA, the United Nations Agency created in 1949 to handle the issue of Palestinian refugees. There are two main reasons why UNRWA is perpetuates and even aggravates the “Palestinian refugee problem.” First, the mandate of UNRWA (as opposed to the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR) is not to integrate refugees into their host countries but to support them and to subsidize their lives as second-class citizens in camps. Second, UNRWA applies the definition of “refugees” to the descendants of the refugees, while UNHCR limits this definition to the refugees themselves. Hence has the world’s number of refugees decreased from 60 million in 1947 to 17 million today, while the number of “Palestinian refugees” has increased from 600,000 in 1948 to 7 million today.
UNWRA is thus a major obstacle to peace. Had UNHCR been in charge of Palestinian refugees (UNHCR handles all the world refugees except Palestinian refugees), the issue would have been solved a while ago. First, were Palestinian refugees defined as such according to UNHCR criteria, about 100,000 Palestinian refugees would still be around today, most of them elderly. Second, UNRWA collaborates with the discriminatory policies of countries such as Lebanon and Jordan by subsidizing the confinement of Palestinian refugees in camps instead of integrating them into countries with which they have no language, ethnic, and religious differences.
Dismantling UNRWA and transferring the fate of the remaining actual Palestinian refugees to UNHCR would thus remove a major obstacle to peace.
The EU has just decided to do the very opposite by granting UNRWA a €72 million donation. This decision is not only an affront to the Palestinian refugees themselves, since it contributes to the perpetuation of their status of segregated and pauperized minorities among their Arab brothers. It is also an affront to the cause of peace. The EU, in effect, has just signed a big check that will fund a major obstacle to peace.
While the EU did somewhat realize the Kantian vision of democratic peace within its borders (although with a little help from the United States, whose army protected Europe from the Soviet Union during the Cold War), Europe’s contribution to peace outside of the Old Continent’s borders has been dismal. From Rwanda to the former Yugoslavia, the EU has been powerless at best and part of the problem at worst. The EU (formerly EEC) promoted the PLO in the 1970s and did not welcome the Camp David Agreements of 1979. Although the Oslo Agreements were technically not made in the EU (Norway is not a EU member), the European recipe for peace in the Middle East has failed miserably and tragically.
The EU’s recent decision to fund UNRWA belongs to a long history of counter-productive efforts. But, mostly, it confirms the fact that the EU is an obstacle to peace in the Middle-East.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
The West Bank Robber
The day after Israel’s iconic journalist Yair Lapid announced he was quitting his lucrative job at Channel 2 to run for Knesset, former soccer star Eric Cantona declared he was throwing his hat into the ring for France’s upcoming presidential election. While Cantona is only running for PR purposes and will probably gather 1% of the votes, Lapid is expected to conquer 15 of the Knesset’s 120 seats and thus to be the next government’s kingmaker.
Besides his anticlerical views (which he inherited from his late father Tommy, himself a journalist turned politician), Yair Lapid has no platform. The fact that in Israel a prospective politician does not need a clear platform in order to become major player in the Knesset goes to show what is wrong with Israel’s voting system. Israel has no district elections for the Knesset. The entire country itself constitutes a single district. Voters don’t select district representatives but political parties whose number of seats in the Knesset is proportional to the amount of votes received by the parties at the polls (which is why this voting system is known as “proportional representation”). Because Israel has no district elections, providing viable solutions to constituents’ daily lives is not a criterion for gathering support. Rather, the most critical ingredient for getting voters’ attention is simply fame (hence did Noam Shalit, the father of Israel’s most famous kidnapped soldier, also announce this week that he would run for Knesset).
Yair Lapid’s meteoric rise in the polls is yet another confirmation that Israel should replace proportional representation with majority representation based on district elections. Rather than cowardly trying to prevent Lapid from running for Knesset with a tailored-made law that would impose a one-year cooling-off period to journalists who decide to go into politics, our lawmakers should better reform a voting system that encourages populism and eschews accountability.
But the “Lapid Effect” also confirms the parochialism of the Israeli electorate and the hypocrisy of the Israeli Left.
Why, after all, vote for a “Lapid Party” that would merely be the repetition of past failures? Israel has had many “centrist” parties that attempted to challenge both Likud and Labor: “Dash” in 1977, the Center Party in 1999, “Shinui” in 2003, and even Kadima in 2006. None of those parties lasted, because they did not provide an ideological and practical alternative to the authentic divide between Right and Left –a divide that stems from two opposite readings of human nature, as well as of man’s ability to change reality.
As for the Left’s warm welcome of Lapid’s decision, it goes to show what the Left in Israel really cares about. After all, Lapid is no peacenik and no socialist. He is even an avowed Zionist. A Tel-Aviv bourgeois, Lapid is economically conservative. Though he favors withdrawing from the West Bank, he no longer believes that doing so will bring peace. In a column he wrote for Yediot Aharonot on June 13, 2006, Lapid admitted that the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza had nothing to do with peace or with demography. Rather, its purpose was “to teach the settlers a lesson.”
So if Lapid does not believe in peace, in socialism, and in multiculturalism, why is the Left so excited about the power he would likely wield in the Knesset? Because what the Israeli Left really cares about is not peace, nor socialism or multiculturalism. What it really cares about is getting out of the West Bank. And Yair Lapid may help attain that goal. This is why Yediot Aharonot columnist Sima Kadmon wrote on January 9 that “Lapid must be the man who will manage to put an end to the prominence that the Right has enjoyed for too long.” The same way that Tommy Lapid’s 15 MKs enabled Sharon to “teach a lesson” to the Jews of Gaza, the Israeli Left hopes that Yair Lapid’s expected 15 MKs will force (or enable) Israel’s next Prime Minister to “teach a lesson” to the Jews of Judea and Samaria.
As the Hebrew saying goes: “We’ve seen that movie before.” And there is a reason why the Israeli Left wants to watch the movie again. Rather than becoming a politician, Yair Lapid would in fact turn into a film actor –just like Eric Cantona after he left Manchester United.
Besides his anticlerical views (which he inherited from his late father Tommy, himself a journalist turned politician), Yair Lapid has no platform. The fact that in Israel a prospective politician does not need a clear platform in order to become major player in the Knesset goes to show what is wrong with Israel’s voting system. Israel has no district elections for the Knesset. The entire country itself constitutes a single district. Voters don’t select district representatives but political parties whose number of seats in the Knesset is proportional to the amount of votes received by the parties at the polls (which is why this voting system is known as “proportional representation”). Because Israel has no district elections, providing viable solutions to constituents’ daily lives is not a criterion for gathering support. Rather, the most critical ingredient for getting voters’ attention is simply fame (hence did Noam Shalit, the father of Israel’s most famous kidnapped soldier, also announce this week that he would run for Knesset).
Yair Lapid’s meteoric rise in the polls is yet another confirmation that Israel should replace proportional representation with majority representation based on district elections. Rather than cowardly trying to prevent Lapid from running for Knesset with a tailored-made law that would impose a one-year cooling-off period to journalists who decide to go into politics, our lawmakers should better reform a voting system that encourages populism and eschews accountability.
But the “Lapid Effect” also confirms the parochialism of the Israeli electorate and the hypocrisy of the Israeli Left.
Why, after all, vote for a “Lapid Party” that would merely be the repetition of past failures? Israel has had many “centrist” parties that attempted to challenge both Likud and Labor: “Dash” in 1977, the Center Party in 1999, “Shinui” in 2003, and even Kadima in 2006. None of those parties lasted, because they did not provide an ideological and practical alternative to the authentic divide between Right and Left –a divide that stems from two opposite readings of human nature, as well as of man’s ability to change reality.
As for the Left’s warm welcome of Lapid’s decision, it goes to show what the Left in Israel really cares about. After all, Lapid is no peacenik and no socialist. He is even an avowed Zionist. A Tel-Aviv bourgeois, Lapid is economically conservative. Though he favors withdrawing from the West Bank, he no longer believes that doing so will bring peace. In a column he wrote for Yediot Aharonot on June 13, 2006, Lapid admitted that the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza had nothing to do with peace or with demography. Rather, its purpose was “to teach the settlers a lesson.”
So if Lapid does not believe in peace, in socialism, and in multiculturalism, why is the Left so excited about the power he would likely wield in the Knesset? Because what the Israeli Left really cares about is not peace, nor socialism or multiculturalism. What it really cares about is getting out of the West Bank. And Yair Lapid may help attain that goal. This is why Yediot Aharonot columnist Sima Kadmon wrote on January 9 that “Lapid must be the man who will manage to put an end to the prominence that the Right has enjoyed for too long.” The same way that Tommy Lapid’s 15 MKs enabled Sharon to “teach a lesson” to the Jews of Gaza, the Israeli Left hopes that Yair Lapid’s expected 15 MKs will force (or enable) Israel’s next Prime Minister to “teach a lesson” to the Jews of Judea and Samaria.
As the Hebrew saying goes: “We’ve seen that movie before.” And there is a reason why the Israeli Left wants to watch the movie again. Rather than becoming a politician, Yair Lapid would in fact turn into a film actor –just like Eric Cantona after he left Manchester United.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Tom, Gideon, Yossi and Amira
Tom Friedman’s recent column “Newt, Mitt, Bibi and Vladimir” (New York Times, 13 December) makes two points: a. Alleged friends of Israel such as Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are blind to the fact that Israel is sinking into the Dark Ages because of the mad-cap policies of Netanyahu and Lieberman; b. The critical voices of Tom Friedman and Gideon Levy are unfairly rebuked as “anti-Israel” when, in truth, those voices are the only ones today that are trying to save Israel from itself, out of foresight and true love. There is also a subliminal message in the title of Friedman’s article: The world’s Axis of Evil is composed of the two Republican frontrunners, of Israel’s Prime Minister, and of Russia’s President-for-Life.
What ignited Friedman’s op-ed was Newt Gingrich’s claim that the Palestinians are an “invented” people. Friedman calls Gingrich’s claim “a new low.” So for Friedman stating the truth constitutes a “low” (for Hillary Clinton it’s simply “unhelpful”). What, exactly, did Gingrich say? That there never was a sovereign country called “Palestine,” and that the Arabs who lived in the South-East of the Ottoman Empire were known as Arabs and not as “Palestinians.” These two facts are undisputable. Now, were the Palestinians “invented”? Yes, they were.
During the Ottoman rule in the Middle East (from 1516 to 1918), there was no “Palestine” but “sanjaks” (i.e. administrative divisions): The Sanjak of Acre, the Sanjak of Nablus, and the Sanjak of Jerusalem. Arabs who lived in those “sanjaks” were a disconnected bunch of tribes who had little in common. There was not “Palestinian” culture, language, religion or national identity separate from that of the wider Arab nation.
The name “Palestine” appeared in the 20th century when Britain established its rule on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire (the British revived the Latin word “Palestina” coined by the Romans to replace the name “Judea” with one remindful of the Philistines –the Jews’ historical foes). All people living in the British Mandate were “Palestinians,” including the Jews. The Jerusalem Post used to be called The Palestine Post, and it is only after Israel’s independence that the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
In February 1919, the first Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met to consider the future of the territories formerly ruled by the Ottoman Empire. The Congress declared: “We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria as it has never been separated from it at any time.” Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi told the British Peel Commission in 1937: “There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it.” The respected Arab scholar Philip Hitti testified before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946 that there never was such thing as “Palestine” in history.
The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) wrote in its September 1947 report that that Palestinian nationalism was a new phenomenon. Indeed, UNSCOP recommended the partition of the British Mandate between a Jewish state and an Arab state (not a “Palestinian state”). PLO Spokesman Ahmad Shuqeiri told the UN Security Council in 1956 that Palestine was nothing more than southern Syria. The head of the Military Operations Department of the PLO, Zuheir Muhsein, declared on March 31, 1977: “There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity... Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.”
Palestinism is a reaction to Zionism. If the Zionist movement had not existed, no one would ever have heard of a Palestinian people. In 1925, for example, the new British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Plumer, attended a sport contest at the end of which both God Save the Queen and Hatikvah were played. Arab representatives protested to Plumer about the playing of the Jewish national anthem. Since Plumer was in favor of a strict status quo between Jews and Arabs, he apologized for his faux pas and promised that next time the Arab anthem would be played as well. At that point, the Arab leaders had to admit it: they didn’t have a “Palestinian Arab anthem.” Well, you’d better start working on one, Plumer said.
So Gingrich is right. The fact that stating the truth about the Middle East has become an act of pyromania goes to show that intellectual terrorism does indeed work. But it also goes to show that the “Guardians of Middle East Truth” (such as Tom Friedman, Gideon Levy, Yossi Beilin, and Amira Hass) have double standards.
Thomas Friedman did not express any outrage when Shlomo Sand published his book The Invention of the Jewish People (nor did Hillary Clinton protest that it is “unhelpful” to claim that the Jewish people was invented). Claiming that the Palestinian people was invented is a “low” and is “unhelpful” but claiming the same about the Jews is an act of academic courage.
Friedman wrote that the standing ovations Netanyahu got at the US Congress in May 2011 “were bought and paid for by the Israel lobby” (an accusation for which New Jersey Representative Steve Rothman demanded an apology). Why, then, didn’t Freidman write that the likely boycott Netanyahu would face at the University of Wisconsin is bought by the Saudi lobby? Why does this logics only apply to Israel? If the Jewish lobby is so strong and so wealthy, how come it has not bought yet the support of University campuses in America? Like Walt and Mersheimer, Friedman cannot think of a reason for the pro-Israel stance of the US Congress other than “Jewish money.” But, like them, he would not venture to say that the pro-Arab discourse on American campuses has anything to do with the millions of dollars donated by Saudi Arabia. Only Jewish money is capable of perverting the American mind.
Finally, Friedman’s description of Israel’s alleged descent into fascism is either hypocritical or ignorant (or both). In his article, Friedman only quotes the New Israel Fund, Haaretz, and the Financial Times as his sources of information. With such pluralistic sources, Friedman surely knows what’s happening in Israel: Gideon Levy quotes Thomas Friedman, and Thomas Friedman quotes Gideon Levy. It’s the vicious circle of circular logics.
Friedman quotes the Financial Times to grant credit to his claims, but the Times’ article is full of inaccurate facts and of slanderous accusations. First, there is no law in Israel that allows Israeli communities to exclude Arab families. Second, the “boycott law” does not impose penalties on Israelis advocating a boycott of products from West Bank Jewish settlements. The law merely enables victims of boycotts to fill a civil suit for their economic loss. The law has nothing to do with settlements: a non-kosher butcher from Tel-Aviv, for example, is now able to sue a rabbi calling for the boycott of his store. Third, the purpose of recent proposals to reform the nomination process of Justices is to put an end to the Supreme Court’s cooptation system, which generates ideological uniformity and bars non-liberal Judges from the Court. In Israel, Supreme Court Judges are nominated by a committee in which the Judiciary has a veto. One of the proposals is to let the Knesset approve the nomination of Judges at the Supreme Court (“Political oversight!” cries Friedman). In America, Supreme Court Justices are appointed by the President and approved by Congress –but that’s not “political oversight.”
Friedman ends his article by claiming that more than a few Israelis are asking “who are we?” (he knows, because Gideon, Yossi and Amira told him). I wonder if Tom Friedman ever asks himself who he is. But I have the answer for him: a hypocrite.
What ignited Friedman’s op-ed was Newt Gingrich’s claim that the Palestinians are an “invented” people. Friedman calls Gingrich’s claim “a new low.” So for Friedman stating the truth constitutes a “low” (for Hillary Clinton it’s simply “unhelpful”). What, exactly, did Gingrich say? That there never was a sovereign country called “Palestine,” and that the Arabs who lived in the South-East of the Ottoman Empire were known as Arabs and not as “Palestinians.” These two facts are undisputable. Now, were the Palestinians “invented”? Yes, they were.
During the Ottoman rule in the Middle East (from 1516 to 1918), there was no “Palestine” but “sanjaks” (i.e. administrative divisions): The Sanjak of Acre, the Sanjak of Nablus, and the Sanjak of Jerusalem. Arabs who lived in those “sanjaks” were a disconnected bunch of tribes who had little in common. There was not “Palestinian” culture, language, religion or national identity separate from that of the wider Arab nation.
The name “Palestine” appeared in the 20th century when Britain established its rule on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire (the British revived the Latin word “Palestina” coined by the Romans to replace the name “Judea” with one remindful of the Philistines –the Jews’ historical foes). All people living in the British Mandate were “Palestinians,” including the Jews. The Jerusalem Post used to be called The Palestine Post, and it is only after Israel’s independence that the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
In February 1919, the first Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met to consider the future of the territories formerly ruled by the Ottoman Empire. The Congress declared: “We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria as it has never been separated from it at any time.” Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi told the British Peel Commission in 1937: “There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it.” The respected Arab scholar Philip Hitti testified before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946 that there never was such thing as “Palestine” in history.
The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) wrote in its September 1947 report that that Palestinian nationalism was a new phenomenon. Indeed, UNSCOP recommended the partition of the British Mandate between a Jewish state and an Arab state (not a “Palestinian state”). PLO Spokesman Ahmad Shuqeiri told the UN Security Council in 1956 that Palestine was nothing more than southern Syria. The head of the Military Operations Department of the PLO, Zuheir Muhsein, declared on March 31, 1977: “There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity... Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.”
Palestinism is a reaction to Zionism. If the Zionist movement had not existed, no one would ever have heard of a Palestinian people. In 1925, for example, the new British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Plumer, attended a sport contest at the end of which both God Save the Queen and Hatikvah were played. Arab representatives protested to Plumer about the playing of the Jewish national anthem. Since Plumer was in favor of a strict status quo between Jews and Arabs, he apologized for his faux pas and promised that next time the Arab anthem would be played as well. At that point, the Arab leaders had to admit it: they didn’t have a “Palestinian Arab anthem.” Well, you’d better start working on one, Plumer said.
So Gingrich is right. The fact that stating the truth about the Middle East has become an act of pyromania goes to show that intellectual terrorism does indeed work. But it also goes to show that the “Guardians of Middle East Truth” (such as Tom Friedman, Gideon Levy, Yossi Beilin, and Amira Hass) have double standards.
Thomas Friedman did not express any outrage when Shlomo Sand published his book The Invention of the Jewish People (nor did Hillary Clinton protest that it is “unhelpful” to claim that the Jewish people was invented). Claiming that the Palestinian people was invented is a “low” and is “unhelpful” but claiming the same about the Jews is an act of academic courage.
Friedman wrote that the standing ovations Netanyahu got at the US Congress in May 2011 “were bought and paid for by the Israel lobby” (an accusation for which New Jersey Representative Steve Rothman demanded an apology). Why, then, didn’t Freidman write that the likely boycott Netanyahu would face at the University of Wisconsin is bought by the Saudi lobby? Why does this logics only apply to Israel? If the Jewish lobby is so strong and so wealthy, how come it has not bought yet the support of University campuses in America? Like Walt and Mersheimer, Friedman cannot think of a reason for the pro-Israel stance of the US Congress other than “Jewish money.” But, like them, he would not venture to say that the pro-Arab discourse on American campuses has anything to do with the millions of dollars donated by Saudi Arabia. Only Jewish money is capable of perverting the American mind.
Finally, Friedman’s description of Israel’s alleged descent into fascism is either hypocritical or ignorant (or both). In his article, Friedman only quotes the New Israel Fund, Haaretz, and the Financial Times as his sources of information. With such pluralistic sources, Friedman surely knows what’s happening in Israel: Gideon Levy quotes Thomas Friedman, and Thomas Friedman quotes Gideon Levy. It’s the vicious circle of circular logics.
Friedman quotes the Financial Times to grant credit to his claims, but the Times’ article is full of inaccurate facts and of slanderous accusations. First, there is no law in Israel that allows Israeli communities to exclude Arab families. Second, the “boycott law” does not impose penalties on Israelis advocating a boycott of products from West Bank Jewish settlements. The law merely enables victims of boycotts to fill a civil suit for their economic loss. The law has nothing to do with settlements: a non-kosher butcher from Tel-Aviv, for example, is now able to sue a rabbi calling for the boycott of his store. Third, the purpose of recent proposals to reform the nomination process of Justices is to put an end to the Supreme Court’s cooptation system, which generates ideological uniformity and bars non-liberal Judges from the Court. In Israel, Supreme Court Judges are nominated by a committee in which the Judiciary has a veto. One of the proposals is to let the Knesset approve the nomination of Judges at the Supreme Court (“Political oversight!” cries Friedman). In America, Supreme Court Justices are appointed by the President and approved by Congress –but that’s not “political oversight.”
Friedman ends his article by claiming that more than a few Israelis are asking “who are we?” (he knows, because Gideon, Yossi and Amira told him). I wonder if Tom Friedman ever asks himself who he is. But I have the answer for him: a hypocrite.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Hilarious Hillary
Hillary Clinton recently expressed concern about the future of Israeli democracy because the Knesset is considering curtailing foreign governments’ funding for Israeli NGOs, and because some rabbis in Israel say they want men and women to seat separately on buses. Does Hillary realize how hypocritical she is? In the United States, NGOs that receive money from foreign governments are considered foreign agents. And why is separate sitting between men and women on “haredi” buses a threat to democracy in Israel but not in New York (a common practice in Clinton’s home state)?
Less than six months ago (in July 2011), the FBI arrested Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, a US citizen accused by the US Department of Justice of not informing the US government that he was in the pay of Pakistan while lobbying for the Kashmir cause and donating funds to Congressmen. Fai, who is director of the Washington-based NGO Kashmiri American Council (KAC), allegedly received millions of dollars for the KAC over the last two decades. Fai is accused of a decades-long scheme with one purpose – to hide Pakistan’s involvement behind his efforts to influence the US government’s position on Kashmir. His handlers in Pakistan allegedly funneled millions through the Kashmir Center to contribute to US elected officials, fund high-profile conferences, and pay for other efforts that promoted the Kashmiri cause to decision-makers in Washington. If found guilty, Fai could face up to five years in prison.
US law states that any American citizen or organization that receives money from foreign governments must register as a foreign agent. The foreign agent must report all its income and spending, and the Attorney General can demand, at any time, the list of the agent’s donors. Many Israeli NGOs receive money from foreign governments in order to influence the policy of Israel’s government. In the United States, such NGOs would have to register as foreign agents, and their books would be scrutinized by the Government. Why is the United States, a super-power no longer threatened by communism, entitled to take self-protecting measures from political NGOs funded by foreign governments, but not Israel, a tiny country that faces existential threats?
Clinton is making a fool of herself because she is buying into the propaganda of the English version of Ha’aretz. This radical newspaper read by 1% of the Israeli population (it prints 70,000 copies a day for a population of 7 million) is the Bible of foreign journalists and diplomats –the very people who write about Israel and who report to their capitals. Clinton is not the only victim of the “Ha’aretz effect.” A few months ago, President Sarkozy said that a state cannot be Jewish just like a table cannot be Catholic. He was repeating almost word by word what Amos Oz regularly writes in Ha’aretz.
Ha’aretz has been writing that it is undemocratic to curtail foreign governments’ funding for Israeli NGOs bent on influencing the policies of Israel’s government; that only in autocracies and in third world countries do the executive and legislative branches have a say on the appointment of Supreme Court Justices; and that fining journalists for lying intentionally is contrary to the freedom of speech. Ha’aretz knows that it is writing nonsense, but its ideological agenda comes before the truth. Hillary Clinton obviously knows that in her country Supreme Court Judges are appointed by the President and that organizations that receive funding from foreign governments have to register as foreign agents. Is Clinton simply being hypocritical, or is she orchestrating a campaign against the Netanyahu Government, just like her husband did when he was President?
The second possibility does make sense, since Tzipi Livni was quick to come to Hillary Clinton’s defense. Livni justified Clinton’s statements despite the fact that Clinton went as far as to compare Israel to Iran –or maybe because of it: after all, Livni is about to lose her job as Kadima’s Chair to the Iranian-born Shaul Mofaz. The problem with reciting the content of Ha’aretz and of The New York Times is that it makes you look smart in front Ha’aretz and New York Times readers (the kind of people who attend the Saban Forum), but it also makes you look like a fool in front of the rest of the world.
The fact that Livni expressed support for Clinton’s obnoxious and cretinous comments goes to show that Clinton and Livni deserve each other. But it also goes to show that both Israel and America deserve better.
Less than six months ago (in July 2011), the FBI arrested Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, a US citizen accused by the US Department of Justice of not informing the US government that he was in the pay of Pakistan while lobbying for the Kashmir cause and donating funds to Congressmen. Fai, who is director of the Washington-based NGO Kashmiri American Council (KAC), allegedly received millions of dollars for the KAC over the last two decades. Fai is accused of a decades-long scheme with one purpose – to hide Pakistan’s involvement behind his efforts to influence the US government’s position on Kashmir. His handlers in Pakistan allegedly funneled millions through the Kashmir Center to contribute to US elected officials, fund high-profile conferences, and pay for other efforts that promoted the Kashmiri cause to decision-makers in Washington. If found guilty, Fai could face up to five years in prison.
US law states that any American citizen or organization that receives money from foreign governments must register as a foreign agent. The foreign agent must report all its income and spending, and the Attorney General can demand, at any time, the list of the agent’s donors. Many Israeli NGOs receive money from foreign governments in order to influence the policy of Israel’s government. In the United States, such NGOs would have to register as foreign agents, and their books would be scrutinized by the Government. Why is the United States, a super-power no longer threatened by communism, entitled to take self-protecting measures from political NGOs funded by foreign governments, but not Israel, a tiny country that faces existential threats?
Clinton is making a fool of herself because she is buying into the propaganda of the English version of Ha’aretz. This radical newspaper read by 1% of the Israeli population (it prints 70,000 copies a day for a population of 7 million) is the Bible of foreign journalists and diplomats –the very people who write about Israel and who report to their capitals. Clinton is not the only victim of the “Ha’aretz effect.” A few months ago, President Sarkozy said that a state cannot be Jewish just like a table cannot be Catholic. He was repeating almost word by word what Amos Oz regularly writes in Ha’aretz.
Ha’aretz has been writing that it is undemocratic to curtail foreign governments’ funding for Israeli NGOs bent on influencing the policies of Israel’s government; that only in autocracies and in third world countries do the executive and legislative branches have a say on the appointment of Supreme Court Justices; and that fining journalists for lying intentionally is contrary to the freedom of speech. Ha’aretz knows that it is writing nonsense, but its ideological agenda comes before the truth. Hillary Clinton obviously knows that in her country Supreme Court Judges are appointed by the President and that organizations that receive funding from foreign governments have to register as foreign agents. Is Clinton simply being hypocritical, or is she orchestrating a campaign against the Netanyahu Government, just like her husband did when he was President?
The second possibility does make sense, since Tzipi Livni was quick to come to Hillary Clinton’s defense. Livni justified Clinton’s statements despite the fact that Clinton went as far as to compare Israel to Iran –or maybe because of it: after all, Livni is about to lose her job as Kadima’s Chair to the Iranian-born Shaul Mofaz. The problem with reciting the content of Ha’aretz and of The New York Times is that it makes you look smart in front Ha’aretz and New York Times readers (the kind of people who attend the Saban Forum), but it also makes you look like a fool in front of the rest of the world.
The fact that Livni expressed support for Clinton’s obnoxious and cretinous comments goes to show that Clinton and Livni deserve each other. But it also goes to show that both Israel and America deserve better.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Israel’s Purloined Letter
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Purloined Letter” provides the perfect allegory to understand why so many people get so fooled for so long. A letter said to contain compromising information has been stolen by a brilliant thief. The police meticulously search the thief’s home, using even microscopes, but to no avail. How did the thief fool the police? By displaying the letter instead of hiding it. It is precisely because the police expected the letter to be hidden that it couldn’t see it.
For decades, many people in Israel have been wondering why right-wing governments are generally unable to implement their policies and often end-up adopting the rhetoric of the Left. Witness the fact, for example, that Netanyahu has officially endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state against his own party’s platform, that his government might be toppled in a few months if it complies with the High Court of Justice’s injunction to dismantle outposts, and that some Likud ministers and MKs are speaking in unison with the Left on the need to preserve the cooptation system that guaranties the Supreme Court’s ideological uniformity.
The answer to this riddle was provided by Tel-Aviv Law Professor Menachem Mautner in his book “Law and Culture in Israel at the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century” (Tel-Aviv University Press, 2008): The Israeli Left lost its monopoly on power with the electoral victory of the Right in 1977, and it has successfully tried to keep its influence via the judicial system, academia and the media. At the Supreme Court, Judges are selected and appointed by Judges, and they have granted to themselves the right to repeal laws deemed “unconstitutional” (regardless of the fact that Israel has no constitution). Hence the “judicial activism” epitomized by Justice Aharon Barak: if the majority does not legislate according to the will and worldview of the “enlightened ones” (to use Barak’s own words), then laws must be repealed by self-appointed judges who know better.
In academia, it is virtually impossible for conservative-minded academics to get tenure in the social sciences and in the humanities outside of Bar-Ilan University. As for “dissident” journalists, there is hardly a payroll to be found outside of Makor Rishon and, more recently, of Israel Hayom. The recent legislation advanced by the Right and condemned by the Left (e.g. on boycott, on the funding of NGOs, on the appointment of Supreme Court Justices, or on defamation) suggests that the Israeli Right has finally noticed where the “purloined letter” was displayed, and is taking action to rule according to the will of its voters. But this is only half-true.
For a start, some of the legislation recently initiated by the Right is counter-productive. The fact that boycotters can now be sued for financial damage was meant to deter the Left from taking part in the BDS campaign and from boycotting settlements. But according to the same law, Ben-Gurion University (BGU) can now sue the student movement Im Tirtzu for asking BGU’s donors to keep their money away from this university until its Political Science Department respects pluralism. Likewise, the new legislation meant to increase six fold fines for defamation is more of a threat to a small and conservative newspaper like Makor Rishon than to a powerful and liberal newspaper like Yediot Aharonot. As for the law limiting foreign government funding for Israeli NGOs, it will certainly hurt the likes of Shalom Archav and Adalah in their pockets, but it will hardly make fundraising easier for Im Tirtzu or for My Israel.
Besides shooting itself in the foot with counterproductive legislation, the Israeli Right is hopelessly absent from the intellectual arena. The Shalem Center was supposed to produce conservative thinkers but it has virtually withdrawn from Israel’s intellectual scene because of its focus on starting a new liberal arts college. Shalem is even ending the publication of Azure, Israel’s only high-quality conservative journal. The Shalem College might be successful in producing another type of intellectual leaders, but it will take a couple of decades to tell. Another Israeli conservative journal, Nativ, closed two years ago. The only conservative journal around is Hauma. Published by the Jabotinsky Institute (itself located at the Likud headquarter), Hauma has a small circulation and preaches to the convert. As for the Institute for Zionist Strategies, its research and papers are mostly kept away from the public by the media.
The Israeli Left is up in arms, but in truth it has little to worry about. Aside from doing a pretty good job at holding on in the judicial system, in academia and in the media, the Israeli Left has one asset that is both as obvious and as unnoticeable as the “purloined letter”: it intimidates the Right. Likud’s former “princes” have grown-up with an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the Left. They are petrified by Haaretz and by the accusation of not respecting “the rule of law.” They are imbued with the idea that people who read Haaretz and who live in Tel-Aviv are smarter, and that you need their seal of approval in order for your IQ to be declared above average. Haaretz has recently canonized Menachem Begin as Israel’s most impeccable democrat, but three decades ago it decried him as a warmonger, as a bigot and as a fascist. Why? To make sure that his son gets the message: continue to be a good boy and to keep your hands off the Supreme Court.
Tzipi Livni is the ultimate example of an intellectual lightweight easily intimidated by the Left. She has become to spokesperson of Haaretz not because she suddenly discovered that there are Arabs in the West Bank, but because she lacked the intellectual backbone to stand for her beliefs.
What the Israeli Right needs to do is to produce intellectuals. This is what institutions and movements such as the Jewish Statesmanship Center, Im Tirtzu, the Tikva Fund and the future Shalem College are trying to achieve. But those important initiatives are emerging nearly forty years after the electoral victory of the Right. For all its kicking and screaming, the Israeli Left can relax: surely if it took forty years for the Right to find the purloined letter, there is no reason to be hypochondriac.
For decades, many people in Israel have been wondering why right-wing governments are generally unable to implement their policies and often end-up adopting the rhetoric of the Left. Witness the fact, for example, that Netanyahu has officially endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state against his own party’s platform, that his government might be toppled in a few months if it complies with the High Court of Justice’s injunction to dismantle outposts, and that some Likud ministers and MKs are speaking in unison with the Left on the need to preserve the cooptation system that guaranties the Supreme Court’s ideological uniformity.
The answer to this riddle was provided by Tel-Aviv Law Professor Menachem Mautner in his book “Law and Culture in Israel at the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century” (Tel-Aviv University Press, 2008): The Israeli Left lost its monopoly on power with the electoral victory of the Right in 1977, and it has successfully tried to keep its influence via the judicial system, academia and the media. At the Supreme Court, Judges are selected and appointed by Judges, and they have granted to themselves the right to repeal laws deemed “unconstitutional” (regardless of the fact that Israel has no constitution). Hence the “judicial activism” epitomized by Justice Aharon Barak: if the majority does not legislate according to the will and worldview of the “enlightened ones” (to use Barak’s own words), then laws must be repealed by self-appointed judges who know better.
In academia, it is virtually impossible for conservative-minded academics to get tenure in the social sciences and in the humanities outside of Bar-Ilan University. As for “dissident” journalists, there is hardly a payroll to be found outside of Makor Rishon and, more recently, of Israel Hayom. The recent legislation advanced by the Right and condemned by the Left (e.g. on boycott, on the funding of NGOs, on the appointment of Supreme Court Justices, or on defamation) suggests that the Israeli Right has finally noticed where the “purloined letter” was displayed, and is taking action to rule according to the will of its voters. But this is only half-true.
For a start, some of the legislation recently initiated by the Right is counter-productive. The fact that boycotters can now be sued for financial damage was meant to deter the Left from taking part in the BDS campaign and from boycotting settlements. But according to the same law, Ben-Gurion University (BGU) can now sue the student movement Im Tirtzu for asking BGU’s donors to keep their money away from this university until its Political Science Department respects pluralism. Likewise, the new legislation meant to increase six fold fines for defamation is more of a threat to a small and conservative newspaper like Makor Rishon than to a powerful and liberal newspaper like Yediot Aharonot. As for the law limiting foreign government funding for Israeli NGOs, it will certainly hurt the likes of Shalom Archav and Adalah in their pockets, but it will hardly make fundraising easier for Im Tirtzu or for My Israel.
Besides shooting itself in the foot with counterproductive legislation, the Israeli Right is hopelessly absent from the intellectual arena. The Shalem Center was supposed to produce conservative thinkers but it has virtually withdrawn from Israel’s intellectual scene because of its focus on starting a new liberal arts college. Shalem is even ending the publication of Azure, Israel’s only high-quality conservative journal. The Shalem College might be successful in producing another type of intellectual leaders, but it will take a couple of decades to tell. Another Israeli conservative journal, Nativ, closed two years ago. The only conservative journal around is Hauma. Published by the Jabotinsky Institute (itself located at the Likud headquarter), Hauma has a small circulation and preaches to the convert. As for the Institute for Zionist Strategies, its research and papers are mostly kept away from the public by the media.
The Israeli Left is up in arms, but in truth it has little to worry about. Aside from doing a pretty good job at holding on in the judicial system, in academia and in the media, the Israeli Left has one asset that is both as obvious and as unnoticeable as the “purloined letter”: it intimidates the Right. Likud’s former “princes” have grown-up with an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the Left. They are petrified by Haaretz and by the accusation of not respecting “the rule of law.” They are imbued with the idea that people who read Haaretz and who live in Tel-Aviv are smarter, and that you need their seal of approval in order for your IQ to be declared above average. Haaretz has recently canonized Menachem Begin as Israel’s most impeccable democrat, but three decades ago it decried him as a warmonger, as a bigot and as a fascist. Why? To make sure that his son gets the message: continue to be a good boy and to keep your hands off the Supreme Court.
Tzipi Livni is the ultimate example of an intellectual lightweight easily intimidated by the Left. She has become to spokesperson of Haaretz not because she suddenly discovered that there are Arabs in the West Bank, but because she lacked the intellectual backbone to stand for her beliefs.
What the Israeli Right needs to do is to produce intellectuals. This is what institutions and movements such as the Jewish Statesmanship Center, Im Tirtzu, the Tikva Fund and the future Shalem College are trying to achieve. But those important initiatives are emerging nearly forty years after the electoral victory of the Right. For all its kicking and screaming, the Israeli Left can relax: surely if it took forty years for the Right to find the purloined letter, there is no reason to be hypochondriac.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Sarkozy, c’est fini
French songwriter Hervé Vilard became famous overnight in 1965 with his love song “Capri, c’est fini” (Capri, it’s over). The song literally sounds like a broken record, but Vilard made a fortune out of it (he sold 2.5 million records). Could it be that disappointment is so universal a feeling that it speaks to our hearts even with the dullest melody? And would I get 2.5 million downloads on I-tunes if I were to write a song on “Sarkozy, c’est fini?” After all, there are more than 2.5 million people who are disappointed in Sarkozy. I’m no musician, though, so I shall settle for the following words.
Since “making aliyah” (immigrating, ascendency-wise) to Israel eighteen years ago, I forwent my right to vote in French elections. I no longer share the destiny of France, a country I voluntarily left. In 2007, however, I made an exception. Nicolas Sarkozy impressed me, and I made a special trip (twice) to the French consulate to give the guy my vote. Sarkozy was an outsider. The son of a Hungarian immigrant, he was raised by a Jewish grandfather and grew-up as the ugly duckling in Paris’ posh Neuilly suburb. As opposed to the rest of France’s political leadership, he was not intellectually cloned by ENA, the French elite school for government. But, mostly, he sounded sincere when he said that he intended to replace French economic dirigisme with pro-market policies, and when he spoke fondly of Israel and of America. Indeed, it seemed too good to be true –and it was.
Sarkozy turned out to be a temperamental control-freak whose economic reforms are meager and whose foreign policy record is disastrous. His “Mediterranean Union” project was a flop. Besides angering his European partners (especially Germany) for not consulting with them on his half-cooked ideas (yet expecting them to share the cost of their implementation), Sarkozy made a fool of himself. In July 2008, he threw a grand party in Paris to launch his now defunct “Mediterranean Union” with embarrassing guests such as Hosni Mubarak and Bashar Assad. Sarkozy thought that his “Mediterranean Union” would convince Turkey to give-up its EU bid, while Erdogan had already made the choice of a pan-Islamic foreign policy.
Worse, Sarkozy went out of his way to rehabilitate Muammar Kaddafi in order to sell French nuclear plants and military aircrafts to Libya. Shortly after his election, Sarkozy hosted Kaddafi in Paris and then went to Tripoli to celebrate “a strategic partnership” between France and Libya. While candidate Sarkozy gave fine speeches on France’s international role to promote human rights, President Sarkozy did business with Kaddafi (“I’m about to sign multi-billion contracts with Libya,” Sarkozy proudly declared to the French media). Except that Sarkozy underestimated the risks of doing business with an airplane blower. Kaddafi pocketed Sarkozy’s “rehabilitation certificate” but failed to deliver. Aside from being furious at Kaddafi, Sarkozy was embarrassed by the Arab revolts which revealed his government’s cozy relations with Arab dictators. He subsequently and opportunistically decided to rebrand himself as Zorro, now bombarding Kaddafi with the planes he wanted to sell him.
Sarkozy unsuccessfully tried to play the tough peace-maker vis-à-vis Russian President Medvedev when the latter bombarded South Ossetia in the summer of 2008. It is not done to try and preserve your bygone empire by using military force against independence-minded leaders, Sarkozy explained to Medvedev. Yet Sarkozy himself did just that in the former French colony of Côte d’Ivoire, where the French army toppled Laurent Gbagbo, the outvoted President who had been instrumental in undoing France’s neo-colonialism in his country.
Sarkozy’s hot-headedness and duplicity are by now music to Israel’s ears. Sarkozy has Jewish origins, and he started his political career as Mayor of Neuilly –an affluent Paris suburb with a powerful Jewish community. As Interior Minister under President Chirac, he acted firmly against anti-Semitism. His speeches were full of praise for Israel. He became friendly with Benjamin Netanyahu. His address to the Knesset in June 2007 was as good as it could get (except, that is, for the line on dividing Jerusalem).
Today, Sarkozy’s attitude toward Israel is undistinguishable from that of his predecessors: he is obnoxious and confrontational, and France’s “Arab policy” is back in full gear. In 2009, Sarkozy granted the Légion d’Honneur (France’s equivalent of the Presidential Medal of Freedom) to Charles Enderlin, the French journalist who falsely accused Israel of killing Muhamad Al-Dura, thus igniting the second Intifada as well as “revengeful” acts such as the beheading of Daniel Pearl. Sarkozy blames Netanyahu and absolves Abbas for the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, despite Netanyahu’s gestures and despite Abbas’ refusal to negotiate. He encouraged Abbas’ statehood bid at the UN and recently voted in favor of UNESCO’s admission of “Palestine” as a full member state. He has reportedly declared that Israel’s demand to be recognized as a Jewish state by the Palestinians is “ridiculous.” In a private conversation with President Obama a couple of days ago, Sarkozy badmouthed Israel’s Prime Minister calling him a “liar” and saying he couldn’t stand him.
Sarkozy’s speech at the UN General Assembly in September 2011 was no less than idiotic. He blamed the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate on a “method problem” and yet he suggested to try again that very method in order to solve the conflict: negotiate the final status of Jerusalem, borders and settlement within a pre-set timetable. This is precisely what the Oslo process, the Road Map and the Annapolis conference unsuccessfully tried to achieve.
Most French Jews and most dual French-Israeli citizens voted for Sarkozy in 2007. Sarkozy mistakenly calculates that he can still count on their votes despite his antics, because the alternative is allegedly worse. He is mistaken. In the Socialist Party’s primaries, the rabid anti-Israel Martine Aubry was defeated by the moderate and conciliatory François Hollande. On the far-right, Marine Le Pen is at pains to prove her pro-Israel credentials and to distance herself from her anti-everything (including anti-Semitic) father.
Sarkozy has lost the Jewish vote and his likely defeat in the upcoming French elections will be well deserved. Sarkozy, c’est fini.
Since “making aliyah” (immigrating, ascendency-wise) to Israel eighteen years ago, I forwent my right to vote in French elections. I no longer share the destiny of France, a country I voluntarily left. In 2007, however, I made an exception. Nicolas Sarkozy impressed me, and I made a special trip (twice) to the French consulate to give the guy my vote. Sarkozy was an outsider. The son of a Hungarian immigrant, he was raised by a Jewish grandfather and grew-up as the ugly duckling in Paris’ posh Neuilly suburb. As opposed to the rest of France’s political leadership, he was not intellectually cloned by ENA, the French elite school for government. But, mostly, he sounded sincere when he said that he intended to replace French economic dirigisme with pro-market policies, and when he spoke fondly of Israel and of America. Indeed, it seemed too good to be true –and it was.
Sarkozy turned out to be a temperamental control-freak whose economic reforms are meager and whose foreign policy record is disastrous. His “Mediterranean Union” project was a flop. Besides angering his European partners (especially Germany) for not consulting with them on his half-cooked ideas (yet expecting them to share the cost of their implementation), Sarkozy made a fool of himself. In July 2008, he threw a grand party in Paris to launch his now defunct “Mediterranean Union” with embarrassing guests such as Hosni Mubarak and Bashar Assad. Sarkozy thought that his “Mediterranean Union” would convince Turkey to give-up its EU bid, while Erdogan had already made the choice of a pan-Islamic foreign policy.
Worse, Sarkozy went out of his way to rehabilitate Muammar Kaddafi in order to sell French nuclear plants and military aircrafts to Libya. Shortly after his election, Sarkozy hosted Kaddafi in Paris and then went to Tripoli to celebrate “a strategic partnership” between France and Libya. While candidate Sarkozy gave fine speeches on France’s international role to promote human rights, President Sarkozy did business with Kaddafi (“I’m about to sign multi-billion contracts with Libya,” Sarkozy proudly declared to the French media). Except that Sarkozy underestimated the risks of doing business with an airplane blower. Kaddafi pocketed Sarkozy’s “rehabilitation certificate” but failed to deliver. Aside from being furious at Kaddafi, Sarkozy was embarrassed by the Arab revolts which revealed his government’s cozy relations with Arab dictators. He subsequently and opportunistically decided to rebrand himself as Zorro, now bombarding Kaddafi with the planes he wanted to sell him.
Sarkozy unsuccessfully tried to play the tough peace-maker vis-à-vis Russian President Medvedev when the latter bombarded South Ossetia in the summer of 2008. It is not done to try and preserve your bygone empire by using military force against independence-minded leaders, Sarkozy explained to Medvedev. Yet Sarkozy himself did just that in the former French colony of Côte d’Ivoire, where the French army toppled Laurent Gbagbo, the outvoted President who had been instrumental in undoing France’s neo-colonialism in his country.
Sarkozy’s hot-headedness and duplicity are by now music to Israel’s ears. Sarkozy has Jewish origins, and he started his political career as Mayor of Neuilly –an affluent Paris suburb with a powerful Jewish community. As Interior Minister under President Chirac, he acted firmly against anti-Semitism. His speeches were full of praise for Israel. He became friendly with Benjamin Netanyahu. His address to the Knesset in June 2007 was as good as it could get (except, that is, for the line on dividing Jerusalem).
Today, Sarkozy’s attitude toward Israel is undistinguishable from that of his predecessors: he is obnoxious and confrontational, and France’s “Arab policy” is back in full gear. In 2009, Sarkozy granted the Légion d’Honneur (France’s equivalent of the Presidential Medal of Freedom) to Charles Enderlin, the French journalist who falsely accused Israel of killing Muhamad Al-Dura, thus igniting the second Intifada as well as “revengeful” acts such as the beheading of Daniel Pearl. Sarkozy blames Netanyahu and absolves Abbas for the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, despite Netanyahu’s gestures and despite Abbas’ refusal to negotiate. He encouraged Abbas’ statehood bid at the UN and recently voted in favor of UNESCO’s admission of “Palestine” as a full member state. He has reportedly declared that Israel’s demand to be recognized as a Jewish state by the Palestinians is “ridiculous.” In a private conversation with President Obama a couple of days ago, Sarkozy badmouthed Israel’s Prime Minister calling him a “liar” and saying he couldn’t stand him.
Sarkozy’s speech at the UN General Assembly in September 2011 was no less than idiotic. He blamed the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate on a “method problem” and yet he suggested to try again that very method in order to solve the conflict: negotiate the final status of Jerusalem, borders and settlement within a pre-set timetable. This is precisely what the Oslo process, the Road Map and the Annapolis conference unsuccessfully tried to achieve.
Most French Jews and most dual French-Israeli citizens voted for Sarkozy in 2007. Sarkozy mistakenly calculates that he can still count on their votes despite his antics, because the alternative is allegedly worse. He is mistaken. In the Socialist Party’s primaries, the rabid anti-Israel Martine Aubry was defeated by the moderate and conciliatory François Hollande. On the far-right, Marine Le Pen is at pains to prove her pro-Israel credentials and to distance herself from her anti-everything (including anti-Semitic) father.
Sarkozy has lost the Jewish vote and his likely defeat in the upcoming French elections will be well deserved. Sarkozy, c’est fini.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Protecting Israeli Democracy from the NIF
Israel’s social protest died out with the opening of the school year. Earlier this month, the Israeli Government approved the recommendations of the Trachtenberg Committee, which include far-reaching measures aimed at easing the burden of the middle class and at making life in Israel more affordable. Yet it would be misleading to believe that the social unrest is behind us. In fact, the self-appointed leaders of last summer’s tent protest announced that they will renew their struggle after the High Holidays.
For a start, they rejected in toto the recommendations of the Trachtenberg Committee. Daphni Leef, who emerged as one of the movement’s iconic leaders, has declared that there would be a popular general strike on November 1st to shut down Israel’s economic activity and to topple the government. Two days before the strike, a huge demonstration is supposed to take place throughout the country as a “last warning” to the Prime Minister that he must meet the protesters’ demands. Eldad Yaniv, from the “National Left” movement, warned in Ha’aretz’s October 11 edition that the struggle will continue “until the 120 loafers [i.e. MKs] go home.”
The leaders of Israel’s social protest talk and behave as if Israel was not a democracy, and as if Israel’s government had not been elected by a large majority. They claim that most Israelis support their demand. Let them prove that in the next elections. For better or worse, democracy grants power to the people. In representative democracy, the majority runs the government for a set period of time. By trying to impose their demands on an elected government, the unelected representatives of the social protest are breaking the rules of democracy.
Israelis rightly complain about the cost of life, but in the previous elections they did not choose a government whose platform was to overspend and to turn Israel into Greece. Yet this is precisely what the unelected leaders of the social protest want to impose on our elected government. They have plenty of time (about a year-and-a-half) to convince Israelis to vote for them and their economic platform in the next elections. In the meantime, the choice of Israeli voters, as it was expressed in the previous elections, must be respected.
Not only are the leaders of the social protest breaking one of the basic rules of representative democracy, but many of them are funded by organizations (such as the New Israel Fund) whose agenda is to promote policies and values that are rejected by a majority of Israeli society. The New Israel Fund (NIF) deceives its donors by presenting itself an organization bent on promoting the rights of minorities and on helping the poor, but its true agenda is to turn Israel into a multi-ethnic (rather than Jewish) country. The NIF supports the Israeli organizations that constantly petition the High Court of Justice to repeal laws that define and preserve Israel as a Jewish state. In Court, the Government is represented by the State Attorney’s Office which has been staffed over the years by former NIF fellows who defend the petitioners rather than the Government.
The NIF’s subversive tactics consist in progressively imposing upon Israelis what they reject at the polls. It should come as no surprise that George Soros is a major NIF donor. Or that Stanley Greenberg, whose firm has done work for George Soros’ “Open Society Institute,” consulted to Ehud Barak in 1999 on how unseat Netanyahu and is now advising Eldad Yaniv with the same purpose. It should come as no surprise that Daniel Abraham, who helped George Soros set-up “J-Street,” gave money to Israel’s “tent protest” this past summer. And it should come as no surprise that Daphni Leef works for the New Israel Fund.
Promoting ideas and policies that provide an alternative to the Government is a fundamental right (and even a duty) in democracy, and this fundamental right obviously applies to Daphni Leef and to the NIF. But there is a difference between promoting a political agenda in an open society, and trying to impose such an agenda against the will of the majority via foreign funding, orchestrated strikes, and legal antics. For the sake of Israeli democracy, everything must be done so that Daphni Leef can express and promote her ideas freely, but everything must also be done to prevent her financial backers from trying to impose upon Israeli society policies and ideas that are rejected by the majority.
For a start, they rejected in toto the recommendations of the Trachtenberg Committee. Daphni Leef, who emerged as one of the movement’s iconic leaders, has declared that there would be a popular general strike on November 1st to shut down Israel’s economic activity and to topple the government. Two days before the strike, a huge demonstration is supposed to take place throughout the country as a “last warning” to the Prime Minister that he must meet the protesters’ demands. Eldad Yaniv, from the “National Left” movement, warned in Ha’aretz’s October 11 edition that the struggle will continue “until the 120 loafers [i.e. MKs] go home.”
The leaders of Israel’s social protest talk and behave as if Israel was not a democracy, and as if Israel’s government had not been elected by a large majority. They claim that most Israelis support their demand. Let them prove that in the next elections. For better or worse, democracy grants power to the people. In representative democracy, the majority runs the government for a set period of time. By trying to impose their demands on an elected government, the unelected representatives of the social protest are breaking the rules of democracy.
Israelis rightly complain about the cost of life, but in the previous elections they did not choose a government whose platform was to overspend and to turn Israel into Greece. Yet this is precisely what the unelected leaders of the social protest want to impose on our elected government. They have plenty of time (about a year-and-a-half) to convince Israelis to vote for them and their economic platform in the next elections. In the meantime, the choice of Israeli voters, as it was expressed in the previous elections, must be respected.
Not only are the leaders of the social protest breaking one of the basic rules of representative democracy, but many of them are funded by organizations (such as the New Israel Fund) whose agenda is to promote policies and values that are rejected by a majority of Israeli society. The New Israel Fund (NIF) deceives its donors by presenting itself an organization bent on promoting the rights of minorities and on helping the poor, but its true agenda is to turn Israel into a multi-ethnic (rather than Jewish) country. The NIF supports the Israeli organizations that constantly petition the High Court of Justice to repeal laws that define and preserve Israel as a Jewish state. In Court, the Government is represented by the State Attorney’s Office which has been staffed over the years by former NIF fellows who defend the petitioners rather than the Government.
The NIF’s subversive tactics consist in progressively imposing upon Israelis what they reject at the polls. It should come as no surprise that George Soros is a major NIF donor. Or that Stanley Greenberg, whose firm has done work for George Soros’ “Open Society Institute,” consulted to Ehud Barak in 1999 on how unseat Netanyahu and is now advising Eldad Yaniv with the same purpose. It should come as no surprise that Daniel Abraham, who helped George Soros set-up “J-Street,” gave money to Israel’s “tent protest” this past summer. And it should come as no surprise that Daphni Leef works for the New Israel Fund.
Promoting ideas and policies that provide an alternative to the Government is a fundamental right (and even a duty) in democracy, and this fundamental right obviously applies to Daphni Leef and to the NIF. But there is a difference between promoting a political agenda in an open society, and trying to impose such an agenda against the will of the majority via foreign funding, orchestrated strikes, and legal antics. For the sake of Israeli democracy, everything must be done so that Daphni Leef can express and promote her ideas freely, but everything must also be done to prevent her financial backers from trying to impose upon Israeli society policies and ideas that are rejected by the majority.
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