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.

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.