Israel’s remaining friends rally around flag outside of UN

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss.

PHOTO: ALEX KANE

 

Israel may be increasingly isolated globally, but you wouldn’t know it from the scene in New York today.  A right-wing crowd of thousands rallied earlier today at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza against the ongoing Durban III conference and the Palestinian Authority bid for United Nations recognition of statehood.

The demonstration was organized by a group called the Jerusalem Institute of Justice.  But by far the largest contingent of participants came from the evangelical Christian community.  The Eagles’ Wings, an evangelical Christian group, brought droves of Christian Zionists out to wave the Israeli flag, hold signs to insist that Israel will “stay on the map” and cheer against the division of Jerusalem.

“It’s important for the Christian community to stand up for Israel,” twenty-year old Rutgers University student Hannah Johnson told me.  “We’re from the same roots, we both hold a lot of the same ideals and beliefs, and their God’s chosen people, so we choose to stand with them.”

The rally took aim at the Durban III conference, which marks ten years since the first UN conference against racism in Durban, South Africa.  Many hard-line supporters of Israel have advocated against the Durban conferences because of what they see as an unfair focus on Israel.

“The whole Durban conference…is appalling to us, and we don’t want our children to be taught [anti-Zionism] and we don’t want it spread in the United States via the UN,” said Sheree Krause, a Christian Zionist from Virginia, as her and her son passed out free Israeli flags.

It wasn’t only Christian evangelicals that came out to the rally, though.  Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI), a pro-settler organization whose executive director spoke at a memorial event for the far-right extremist Meir Kahane last year, was also present.  One member of Americans for a Safe Israel carried a sign that read “Jews Want Peace, Arabs Want Pieces.”

“The whole land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people,” said Helen Freedman, the executive director of AFSI.

“The unilateral declaration of independence is very, very dangerous, because what it does is signal to the Arabs that they now have a state…There’s no legitimacy to their claim for a state, but the population will get the message that they do have entitlement and the whole situation will really spiral out of control.”

And of course, the Israeli government’s point man on outreach to Christian Zionists–Likud Party member Danny Danon–was there.  Danon recently appeared with Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry at a press conference where Perry blasted President Obama’s record on Israel.

At the rally, Danon told Obama to loud cheers to “wake up” and focus on the threat of Iran.

The rally came just after President Obama finished up his remarks at the UN General Assembly for which he was praised by Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman. 

Despite that praise, though, the rally served as a reminder that Obama will spend a good portion of his re-election campaign defending his record on Israel, especially against the likes of Perry.  But no matter how deferential Obama is to Israeli wishes, winning over the crowd at a rally like this isn’t going to happen.

Warped politics: Robert Gates says Israel is “ungrateful,” but Obama will still veto Palestine UN bid

Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest column in Bloomberg shows exactly how the Israel lobby has warped the U.S. political system.  The lobby has such a stranglehold on U.S. policy towards Israel that a Secretary of Defense’s distaste for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu means nothing to the Obama administration’s polices on Israel.

Goldberg reports:

It was Robert M. Gates, the now-retired secretary of defense, who seemed most upset with Netanyahu. In a meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee held not long before his retirement this summer, Gates coldly laid out the many steps the administration has taken to guarantee Israel’s security — access to top- quality weapons, assistance developing missile-defense systems, high-level intelligence sharing — and then stated bluntly that the U.S. has received nothing in return, particularly with regard to the peace process.

Senior administration officials told me that Gates argued to the president directly that Netanyahu is not only ungrateful, but also endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank. According to these sources, Gates’s analysis met with no resistance from other members of the committee.

Gates has expressed his frustration with Netanyahu’s government before. Last year, when Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel was marred by an announcement of plans to build new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem, Gates told several people that if he had been Biden, he would have returned to Washington immediately and told the prime minister to call Obama when he was serious about negotiations.

Gates’s frustration also stems from squabbling with Netanyahu over U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies. In an encounter in Israel in March, according to U.S. and Israeli sources, Netanyahu lectured Gates at length on the possible dangers posed to Israel by such sales, as well as by Turkey and other regional U.S. allies. Gates, a veteran intelligence officer, resented Netanyahu’s tone, and reminded him that the sales were organized in consultation with Israel and pro-Israel members of Congress.

Yet the U.S. relationship with the country that so displeases sectors of the U.S. establishment will not change one bit.  Instead, the Obama administration will defend Israel full tilt later this month when the Palestinian Authority goes to the United Nations to ask for recognition of a Palestinian state.

Why is this?  It’s simple:  President Obama needs to be re-elected in 2012, and needs pro-Israel money and support.  And while Gates is part of the military establishment, the larger military industry that profits from the Israeli occupation will certainly not be pushing back against Obama’s full-throated support for Israel.  The only way to describe a political system like this is warped.

Obama administration using anti-terror laws to intimidate and harass American Palestine solidarity activists

This article originally appeared in AlterNet.

For the past year, as activists prepared for the participation of an American boat in the flotilla seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, organizers tried to come up with a way to circumvent a major obstacle: the prohibition against “material support” for State Department-designated terrorist groups.

But now, as pressure intensifies on the countries from where boats will launch, the prohibition on material support remains a potent weapon the Obama administration wields to pressure American activists who plan to set sail to break Israel’s blockade.  

American officials continue to repeatedly threaten to prosecute the U.S. activists involved with the flotilla. And, perhaps most importantly, it represents the latest action in the Obama administration’s crackdown on Palestine solidarity activists across the U.S—a crackdown that is a continuation of similar efforts made by the Bush administration in cases like the Holy Land 5.

Read the whole article here.

Bucking Obama and Netanyahu, Palestinian refugees assert their centrality

When President Barack Obama delivered his much awaited speech on the “Arab Spring” last Thursday, outlining his administration’s policy on the Arab revolts and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he proposed a negotiations process that would delay discussions on Palestinian refugees.

“These principles provide a foundation for negotiations.  Palestinians should know the territorial outlines of their state; Israelis should know that their basic security concerns will be met,” he said at the State Department.  “I’m aware that these steps alone will not resolve the conflict, because two wrenching and emotional issues will remain:  the future of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees.  But moving forward now on the basis of territory and security provides a foundation to resolve those two issues in a way that is just and fair.”

Obama didn’t even mention refugees once during his May 22 speech to the annual conference of the powerful pro-Israel lobby, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.

But Palestinian refugees themselves are not having any of that, despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow that Palestinians’ insistence on returning is “not going to happen,” as he told President Obama at the White House May 20.  As the Nakba day protests that erupted on May 15 show, the fate of Palestinian refugees, and their demands to return to their homeland in what is now Israel, remain a core issue in the conflict.

Obama is “now attempting to parse away the negotiations by turning it into a very piecemeal negotiation, where first you focus on borders and security, and then leave all of the other issues to a later date,” Diana Buttu, a former spokesperson of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiations Support Unit, told the Institute for Palestine Studies.  “This is the policy the Israelis have been pushing for a very long period of time.”

But Palestinian refugees are not waiting on a U.S. president to show them the way forward.  Through the kinds of unarmed, popular resistance that have overthrown the regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali–and that Palestinian themselves first used during their intifadas–they are reinserting themselves into the discourse on Israel/Palestine.

The next big event for refugees and their supporters will be June 5, a date that marks the start of the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel captured and occupied the Golan Heights in Syria, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt–all of which remain in Israel’s hands, save for the Sinai.

The Ma’an News Agency reported May 21 that “masses of Palestinian refugees will march to Israel’s borders and ceasefire lines again on June 5, organizers of the May 15 ‘return rally’ said…The committee organizing the ‘return rallies’ said Saturday that the May 15 protests were ‘just the beginning.’  In a statement, the group called on all Palestinian refugees living in exile to march peacefully to the borders of historic Palestine on June 5.”

The “right to return” rallies represent the clearest sign yet that Palestinian refugees are done waiting for a peace process that has done nothing for their rights.  The rallies could be looked at as a wholesale rejection of a negotiations process that has systematically shut refugees and the whole Palestinian diaspora out.  And it represents a rejection of the Obama/Netanyahu line on refugees.

U.S. already affirmed ’67 borders–only to have Obama backtrack

President Barack Obama is set to deliver a hotly anticipated speech tomorrow to “argue that the political upheaval [in the Arab world] raises the prospect for progress on all fronts, and will offer ‘some specific new ideas about U.S. policy toward the region,’” the New York Times reports. And according to a report in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronoth, Obama will “call upon Israel to withdraw to the 1967 lines, with border alterations that will be agreed upon with the Palestinian Authority”–a move that would “disturb” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But perhaps Netanyahu has little to worry about. The Obama administration has already backtracked on the 1967 borders in private meetings with Palestinian officials, according to documents released by Al Jazeera as part of the “Palestine Papers.” The backtracking on the 1967 lines came despite an an affirmation in the Bush administration-backed “Road Map” on Middle East peace that the ’67 borders would be the border for Israel and a Palestinian state.

Analysis by Ali Abunimah for Al Jazeera indicates how little a commitment to the 1967 borders by Obama in his speech Thursday could mean:

In apparently contentious meetings between Mitchell and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and their respective teams in September and October 2009 — whose detailed contents have been revealed for the first time — Mitchell claimed the Bush administration position was nonbinding. He pressed the Palestinians to accept terms of reference that acquiesced to Israel’s refusal to recognize the 1967 line which separates Israel as it was established in 1948 from the West Bank and Gaza Strip where Palestinians hoped to have their state…

At a critical 21 October 2009 meeting, [George] Mitchell read out proposed language for terms of reference:

“The US believes that through good faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome that achieves both the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state encompassing all the territory occupied in 1967 or its equivalent in value, and the Israeli goal of secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meets Israeli security requirements.”

Erekat’s response was blunt: “So no Road Map?” The implication of the words “or equivalent in value” is that the US would only commit to Palestinians receiving a specific amount of territory — 6258 square kilometers, or the equivalent area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip — but not to any specific borders.

Bipartisanship at last: U.S. politicians line up to castigate Palestinian unity deal

In stark contrast to partisan wrangling over the budget and women’s rights, Democrats and Republicans are lining up to demand the cut-off of U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority as a response to the reported unity deal between Hamas and Fatah.  Expect the Obama administration to take heed and agree with Congress–especially with the 2012 elections approaching.

The rhetoric from both sides of the aisle is uniform.  It’s the Israel lobby’s line.  It’s telling, for example, that a staunch Republican and neoconservative pro-Israel hawk like Jennifer Rubin would approvingly quote an otherwise reliable liberal like Representative Gary Ackerman, a Democrat from New York:

The purported deal, which does not require Hamas to accept Israel’s right to exist, or the binding nature of prior Palestinian commitments, or even to require Hamas to temporarily forgo violence against Israel (as if it were some kind barbaric of addiction, or compulsion), is a recipe for failure, mixed with violence, leading to disaster. It is a ghastly mistake that I fear will be paid for in the lives of innocent Israelis.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, similarly said:

The reported agreement between Fatah and Hamas means that a Foreign Terrorist Organization which has called for the destruction of Israel will be part of the Palestinian Authority government. U.S. taxpayer funds should not and must not be used to support those who threaten U.S. security, our interests, and our vital ally, Israel.

Interestingly, though, there are some, if not many, analysts and activists in solidarity with the Palestinian cause that will be happy with a cut off of U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority (for different reasons than Congress).  U.S. aid, which has gone to train the Palestinian Authority’s security forces, has contributed deeply to the split between Hamas and Fatah.

As Ali Abunimah noted for the Electronic Intifada, “in The Palestine Papers, the main concern of Ramallah officials was always to maintain Western financial aid to the PA, and not to make any agreement with Hamas that would jeopardize American and European financing for the PA.”  The Western financial aid has been used to crack down on Hamas.  But if U.S. and European aid is cut off, perhaps the Palestinian Authority would no longer imprison Hamas members and quash dissent.  That would go a long away towards true Palestinian unity.

Why the U.S. cares little about the jailed hikers in Iran (hint: it’s about Palestine)

For well over a year, two American citizens who are Palestine solidarity activists have languished in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison (the third citizen was released in September).  The citizens–Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal–were arrested by Iranian authorities on the Iran-Iraq border and are now being tried on charges of “espionage.”

Why aren’t they out yet?  Jesse Rosenfeld, an independent journalist, offers this explanation in Foreign Policy’s Mideast Channel:

Looking at Bauer’s and Fattal’s political track records, it becomes clear that Washington is unlikely to trade much to retrieve outspoken critics of US policy in the Middle East…

Shourd, Fattal and Bauer, according to [Shon Meckfessel, who was traveling with the jailed Americans,] had made close connections with people in the West Bank popular struggles against Israel’s wall in the town of Bi’lin and the family of Bassem and Jahwar Abu Rahmah. Bassem was killed in April 2009 after being shot in the stomach by a tear gas canister during a demonstration, while Jahwar died on January 1, 2011 resulting from heavy teargas exposure during a demonstration the previous day.

Meckfessel highlighted that at the time of their arrest, Bauer — a critical journalist in the Middle East — was finishing an article on the effect of Israel’s use of the American made high-velocity teargas canisters on the Palestinian anti-wall struggles. The story was never published due to Bauer’s detainment.

It is likely for this reason  that the US seems to be putting little effort into securing the release of Fattal and Bauer, and would be unlikely to engage in a high profile trade for them. This is reenforced by the assessment in an US Embassy cable — part of the Wikileaks releases  — which seeks to construe events in a manner that allows the US to blame the hikers while distancing the government from any responsibility for their protection.

There’s no concrete proof that the Obama administration hasn’t pushed harder for the hikers’ release because of their solidarity work and outspokenness about U.S. policy in the Middle East.

But it’s not a crazy claim to make.  Whenever Palestine solidarity activists who are American citizens are in trouble, the U.S. does little to help. Whether it’s Emily Henochowicz or Furkan Dogan, there’s a clear pattern of the U.S. shirking its responsibility to protect its citizens–making Rosenfeld’s explanations for why Fattal and Bauer remain in jail plausible.

J Street sticks to the script at its annual conference, despite coming to a two-state dead-end

The following excerpt is from an article by me and my partner Zoe Zenowich that was originally published on Alternet.  You can read the full article here.

When the liberal “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby J Street launched in 2008, it was big news. Coupled with a new presidential administration pledging sustained engagement on Israel/Palestine, the thought many had was that this was the moment a lasting peace deal could be forged between the Israelis and Palestinians.

J Street’s “No. 1 agenda item,” as founder and president Jeremy Ben-Ami told the New York Times in September 2009, was to “do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s blocking back.” J Street’s strategy of advocating “for urgent American diplomatic leadership to achieve a two-state solution” seemed on mark, given that President Barack Obama told the world in Cairo in June 2009 that he intended to “personally pursue” the two-state solution.

The goal of a two-state solution, in which Israel and a Palestinian state exist side-by-side, remains J Street’s message as around 2,400 activists gathered in Washington, D.C. last weekend for the group’s second annual conference. “It could not be more urgent for the administration to seize the initiative right now on peace and a two-state solution,” said J Street spokesman Isaac Luria.

But what happens when that goal, and the strategy of strong American leadership on the issue, seems out of reach? For some on the left, the current political situation means that J Street needs to adjust to the reality of fading prospects for a two-state solution.

While it’s clear, as blogger M.J. Rosenberg put it, that J Street has “opened up room” in the debate over Israel, progressive critics have called for new strategies to pressure Israel, such as the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Indeed, even some of J Street’s own constituents are frustrated with the Obama administration and are exploring more forceful ways to change Israeli behavior.

Read the full article here.

Will Mideast revolts force U.S. to talk to Islamists?

Since at least the Clinton administration, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has propped up dictatorial regimes that were favorable to U.S. and Israeli interests while refusing to engage with the forces of political Islam.  Could the current wave of uprisings shaking the Middle East and North Africa force the U.S. to deal with Islamist movements that are integral parts of these societies?  That’s what journalist and author Mark Perry argued in a recent Palestine Center panel discussion–a development that would have far-reaching implications for Palestine, among other countries.

Upcoming elections in Egypt could be the first major test for the Obama administration on whether the U.S. will respect the democratic will of Egyptians, regardless of whether the Muslim Brotherhood makes electoral gains.

The Muslim Brotherhood, while promising to not field any presidential candidates for elections scheduled for later this year, is certainly angling to be a part of a new Egyptian government.

The Obama administration has sent mixed signals on their stance on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ominously warned against Egyptians allowing their revolution to be “hijacked,” a veiled reference to the Muslim Brotherhood.  But President Obama, in a speech given after Hosni Mubarak stepped down, said that “all” Egyptian voices must be brought “to the table.”  In an interview with Fox News‘ Bill O’Reilly, Obama said that he thinks “that the Muslim Brotherhood is one faction in Egypt. They don’t have majority support in Egypt but they are well organized and there are strains of their ideology that are anti U.S., there is no doubt about it.”

This is what Perry, the author of Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage with its Enemies, said on the subject:

We’re going to have to deal with the governments that emerge from what I think is an unstoppable revolution across the region, and that means talking to political Islam.  We’re not going to be able to not talk to Hamas after we talk to the Muslim Brotherhood and we’re going to have to talk to them.  So, once we start down that road, of recognizing the political currents and movements that matter in the region, everything else will follow.

Still, it’s clear the pro-Israel lobby, and the American right, will continue to line up against talking to any Islamist movement.

‘Israeli filter’ colors U.S. response to Egyptian revolution

Hosni Mubarak’s former regime got many things wrong, but Egyptian officials sure knew how to accurately read at least some parts of U.S. foreign policy.  A State Department cable written in December 2007 recently released by WikiLeaks describes how the Egyptian government believed that “their discussions with the United States” passed “through a perceived ‘Israeli filter.’”  It’s fair to assume that Egypt was referring to how, as Helena Cobban writes in Salon, “pro-Israeli groups and individuals in Congress and the rest of the American political elite” have enormous influence on how Washington conducts foreign policy.

The pro-Israel apparatus’ influence, which has created a powerful “Israeli filter” that affects the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, was fully on display during the Obama administration’s noticeably confused and flat-footed response to the anti-Mubarak popular uprising.

Immediately after the beginning of the uprising, President “Obama began placing calls to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel,” according to the New York Times. Netanyahu “feared regional instability” and “urged the United States to stick with Mr. Mubarak.”

The administration itself was split over what do to about Mubarak.  The faction of the administration that favored having Omar Suleiman–the former Egyptian VP who was also Israel’s favorite– lead a “transition” included Dennis Ross, a core pillar of the Israel lobby inside the administration.  The Los Angeles Times explained:

The other camp includes Dennis Ross, a former Middle East peace negotiator for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Ross, who has strong ties to Israel, is the author of a 2007 book that advised against treating the Muslim Brotherhood as a potential partner in Egypt’s political future, noting the group’s refusal to renounce violence “as a tool of other Islamists.”

Apart from managing the crisis, the White House is consulting with outside interest groups and foreign governments to ensure that its message is getting through.

National Security Council member Daniel Shapiro has sought to reassure pro-Israel groups that the inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s political negotiations would not undermine the country’s peace treaty with Israel, according to people who have talked with him. Shapiro, who led outreach to Jewish voters in Obama’s presidential campaign, has tended to the president’s relations with Israel and other regional partners, as well as with Jewish leaders in the U.S.

While the Egyptian protesters forced Mubarak out, as well as ending any possibility that Suleiman would be the new dictator, the U.S. remains deeply concerned with how the revolution will affect Israel and its peace treaty with Egypt.  Following Mubarak’s resignation, the White House insisted that “it’s important that the next government of Egypt recognize the accords that have been signed with Israel.”