Someone Should Tell Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: WikiLeaks Docs Show Israel’s Happiness with Palestinian Authority

There isn’t anything earth shattering (yet) that was revealed by the latest batch of WikiLeaks documents regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but that doesn’t mean they are meaningless.

Numerous leaked cables have given insight into how Israel views its negotiating partner, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which controls the West Bank. Some members of Congress should especially read the cables, like incoming House Foreign Relations Committee chair Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, whose hysteria over the United States’ funding of the PA doesn’t bear much relation to the reality of how the PA operates.

According to the newly released documents from WikiLeaks, before assuming the prime minister’s office in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly said that he wanted to “strengthen” the PA during his term. Amos Gilad, an Israeli defense ministry official, “noted that Israeli-PA security and economic cooperation in the West Bank continues to improve as Jenin and Nablus flourish, and described Palestinian security forces as the ‘good guys,’” and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak attempted to coordinate the 2008-09 Israeli assault on Gaza with the PA.

All of these add up to one assessment: the PA exists to serve the Israeli occupation, and Israel is quite happy with how it’s doing. Instead of Israel’s footprint being all over the West Bank, they now have a subcontractor to do the dirty work of cracking down on dissent, making sure Hamas is weak and building an economy an “entire Palestinian economy…based on graft and patronage,” as Netanyahu candidly put it in a leaked cable from 2007.

Ros-Lehtinen doesn’t seem to understand this fact. Recently, in response to the Obama administration announcing $150 million more in aid to the PA, she said, “It is deeply disturbing that the Administration is continuing to bail out the Palestinian leadership when they continue to fail to meet their commitments…including dismantling the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure, combating corruption, stopping anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement, and recognizing Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.”

It’s probably just red meat for a large Jewish constituency in her Florida district. But that doesn’t change the fact that the statement is just smoke and mirrors that obscures the fact that the PA is a junior partner in the occupation.

No Surprise Here: Palin’s PAC Tied to Islamophobic Dutch Writer

Mother Jones magazine reports on an “incendiary Dutch journalist” named Joshua Livestro who is apparently working on Sarah Palin’s political action committee (emphasis mine):

Not surprisingly, Livestro’s views skew to the right. He helped to found the Edmund Burke Foundation, a right-wing Dutch think tank created to push back against progressive politics in the Netherlands. In one manifesto, citing the number of Muslims in the Netherlands, the foundation warned of ethnic conflict and said the country’s borders should be closed. In the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland, Livestro once wrote that the gruesome photos depicting detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib resembled little more than an out-of-control frat party; he complained that Abu Ghraib critics were “cry-babies” exaggerating the episode’s signficiance. On his blog, Livestro similarly quipped that the CIA’s torture techniques—with the exception of waterboarding—were milder than the hazing methods of fraternities.

Livestro founded the Edmund Burke Foundation along with a fellow Dutch journalist named Bart Jan Spruyt, who went on to advise the virulently Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders.  Spruyt accompanied Wilders on a trip to the United States in 2005, the purpose being for Wilders to publicize here “what is happening to his country because of the rise of radical Islam and why he is promoting a moratorium on non-western immigration.”  (Spruyt has now distanced himself from Wilders.)

It’s no surprise that Palin would be tied to an anti-Muslim Dutch writer.  Palin has stoked bigotry against Muslims herself, from referring to the president as Barack Hussein Obama to calling on “peaceful Muslims” to “refudiate” the “Ground Zero mosque” to defending Franklin Graham, who once called Islam a “very evil and wicked religion.”  She’s also the hero of the Tea Party, a right-wing movement that’s no stranger to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment.

Race and religion-baiting of President Obama and Muslims will be par for the course if/when Palin runs for president in 2012.

 

 

No Coincidence New Settlements were Announced While Netanyahu Visits US

Back in March of this year, when plans were announced for the construction of 1,600 new housing units for the illegal settlement of Ramat Shlomo in occupied Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reportedly “embarrassed” by the announcement because Joe Biden was in town.

New plans for settlements over the Green Line in Jerusalem were announced yesterday, and corporate media, like the New York Times, is reporting that “it was not immediately clear whether Mr. Netanyahu knew in advance” about them.  But that misses the mark.  Any new settlement plans announced by the Israeli government are completely on purpose and calculated.

As Palestinian-Canadian human rights lawyer Diana Buttu told me in an interview last March, the practice of Israel announcing new settlements plans and land confiscations while their leaders are meeting with the U.S. is not new:

The fascinating thing—again, if you look at history—all the way as far back as Baker, when he was purportedly interested in doing something with the Palestinians, Baker himself acknowledges that every visit he made to Jerusalem was marked by an announcement of settlement expansion, or settlement construction, or land confiscation or home demolition.  So, this is not new.  When Hillary Clinton came there was an announcement, when Secretary of State Rice came there were similar announcements, when Powell came there were similar announcements, with Albright.  Every single administration since Bush the father has been met with the same sort of announcements and proclamations.

In this most recent case, it is Netanyahu visiting the United States, rather than Biden visiting Israel.  But the principle remains the same:  Israel can give the middle finger to the United States, and absolutely nothing will happen, because of an lobby that backs Israel no matter what it does.  Announcing new settlements while professing to be interested in “peace talks” with the Palestinians are likely to continue to happen at an even more furious pace because the Republican Party now controls the House of Representatives.

Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now does a great job at showing how off-mark any analysis that implies Netanyahu did not approve of the latest plans or was not aware of them is:

1. Neither the issuing of the tenders last week (for construction in Pisgat Zeev and Ramot) nor the subsequent deposit of the plans (for construction in Har Homa and Ramot) could have taken place without the personal authorization and blessing of the Prime Minister.

2. The timing and context of these moves were chosen by the Prime Minister.

3. The scope of these events go beyond simple tactical maneuvering.  It appears that Netanyahu has opened up the East Jerusalem settlement floodgates.

4. It appears that the Prime Minister has a special weakness for Vice President Biden – or at least for embarrassing the man.  Their last very public interaction in March 2009 was marked by the government of Israel’s promotion of a new settlement plan for Ramat Shlomo, leading to a diplomatic debacle.  This weekend, Prime Minister Netanyahu met Vice President Biden in New Orleans on the margins of the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly — after which Biden delivered a speech pledging America’s unconditional support for Israel and saying that there should be “no daylight” between the US and Israel when it comes to security.  It was a speech that – given Israel’s failure to play ball with the Obama Administration over settlements and the peace process – Netanyahu could rightfully cast as a huge diplomatic victory.  And he has rewarded this victory – and Vice President Biden for his staunch support of Israel – by publicly humiliating the Vice President once again and sticking a finger in they eye of the Obama Administration.

Meet Eric Cantor: On Israel/Palestine, Contempt for International Law and Justice

With the Republican Party set to take the House of Representatives tomorrow, it’s worth taking a look at the new potential majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia and the only Jewish Republican in the House, and his positions on Israel/Palestine, an area that he is “particularly active on.” As Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy writes, “GOP lawmakers stand to play a huge role” in a variety of foreign policy areas, and their impact will be even greater if they are the majority party in the House.

Cantor’s positions on Israel are no different than most Democratic and Republican officials, but his actions and words could play a large role if he becomes the next majority leader.

I’ve done some research–by no means exhaustive–over the past day or so on Cantor’s positions and statements on Israel.  Here’s some of what I found:

-Cantor “supported Israel’s handling of the eviction of two Arab families from a house in east Jerusalem.”  The area in question here is the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which has become a flash point in East Jerusalem and the site of weekly protests by Israeli leftists and Palestinians against the evictions.  The evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah is but one manifestation of the ongoing attempts to kick Palestinians out of their homes to make way for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem.  Read more about the situation in Sheikh Jarrah here and here.

-In regards to Jerusalem as a whole, Cantor expressed anger when the White House condemned the announcement of the building of 1,600 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem last March.  He wrote, “Could the White House truly be this offended by an Israeli decision to build 1,600 homes years from now in a part of its capital city that everyone understands will remain a part of Israel in any future peace agreement with the Palestinians?”  Further underscoring his contempt for international law, Cantor said, in July 2009, that the “insistence that Israel return lands it has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day war and accept a ‘right of return’ of Palestinians who fled their homes in what is now Israel ‘is just like saying you don’t accept the historical right of Israel to exist.’”  International law is clear on the status of East Jerusalem, the occupied territories as a whole and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

-After the flotilla massacre on May 31, 2010, in which Israeli naval commandos rappelled onto the Turkish Mavi Marmara ship that was part of an effort to break the blockade of Gaza and killed nine people (including an American citizen), Cantor “pressured President Barack Obama to veto any ‘biased’ U.N. resolutions in response to an Israeli military attack on a flotilla.”  The naval raid was characterized by a U.N. fact-finding mission as resulting in a  “series of violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law.”  Out of the 9 victims, 6 were found to be killed in what “can be characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions.”

-Cantor regularly paints Palestinian “culture” as being defined solely by violence.  In conservative publications like the National Review, Cantor opines that “Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, last year best summed up the prevailing Palestinian culture by quoting from Hitler’s Mein Kampf: ‘If you want adults to be killers, teach the youth hate.’”

-Cantor and his House colleague Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) took to the pages of the Washington Times in January 2009 to defend the Israeli assault on Gaza, an attack that Amnesty International called “22 days of death and destruction.” The definitive United Nations report on the 2008-09 Gaza war, authored by respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone, found the assault to be “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.”

 

Koch Brothers Also Funding Islamophobia

The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer made waves with her piece on the Koch brothers, which described how Charles and David Koch, the owners of the multi-billion dollar Koch Industries, were “giving money to ‘educate,’ fund, and organize Tea Party protesters” in an effort to “turn their private agenda into a mass movement.”

Now, more has emerged about the Koch brothers’ agenda, and it’s not just limited to advocating for “drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation.”  An investigation by CounterPunch‘s Pam Martens has revealed that “a secretive libertarian nonprofit with ties to Charles Koch bankrolled what was widely perceived to be a fear mongering effort to throw the Presidential election to Senator John McCain in 2008.”

The “fear mongering effort” in question was the documentary “Obsession:  Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” which was distributed to millions of people in “swing states” around the country in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election through corporate newspapers.  The documentary has been condemned as anti-Muslim, and features interviews with notorious Islamophobes such as Steven Emerson, Daniel Pipes and Caroline Glick.

The CounterPunch investigation adds a whole new layer to the overlap between anti-Muslim activists and the Tea Party, which I wrote about yesterday.

Martens writes:

CounterPunch can now report what this race-baiting, fear-mongering campaign cost and where the money, at least nominally, came from.  The 28 million DVDs were produced at a cost of $15,676,181 by Artist Direct Media which does mass manufacturing of CDs and DVDs with volume discounts.  The big media buy for Sunday newspaper insertions ran up the tidy tab of $719,436 and was conducted by NSA Media, a unit of the global ad giant, Interpublic Group, parent of McCann-Erikson. That figure seems decidedly on the light side so there may be other funding sources involved that have not yet surfaced. (NSA Media is a powerful ad buyer, representing some of the biggest print buyers and consumer brands in the country, which might help explain why so few questions were asked by the largest newspapers about this unseemly project.) The full tab, and then some, was paid by the super secretive libertarian nonprofit, Donors Capital Fund.  In 2008, Clarion Fund became Donors Capital Fund’s largest grantee by a large margin, receiving $17,778,600.  That sum constituted 96 per cent of all funds received by Clarion in 2008 and 9 times its revenue in 2007.

Donor’s Capital Fund is a “supporting organization” to Donors Trust, a sister nonprofit.  Both promise the pursuit of taking over social welfare needs with private funds rather than government solutions; they want small government.  (With 43 million Americans now living below the poverty level, it’s fascinating to know that these folks earmarked $17 million not to hunger relief but to DVD packaging.  Let them eat plastic, perhaps.)

There are shades of Charles Koch all over Donors Capital and Donors Trust.  Two grantees receiving repeat and sizeable grants from Donors Capital are favorites of the Koch foundations: George Mason University Foundation and Institute for Humane Studies.  Another tie is Claire Kittle.  A project of Donor’s Trust is Talent Market.org, a headhunter for staffing nonprofits with the “right” people.  Ms. Kittle serves as Talent Market’s Executive Director and was the former Program Officer for Leadership and Talent Development at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.  Then there is Whitney Ball, President of both Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust.  Ms. Ball was one of the elite guests at the invitation-only secret Aspen bash thrown by Charles Koch in June of this year, as reported by ThinkProgress.org.  Also on the guest list for the Koch bash was Stephen Moore, a member of the Editorial Board at the Wall Street Journal.  Mr. Moore is a Director at Donors Capital Fund.  Rounding out the ties that bind is Lauren Vander Heyden, who serves as Client Services Coordinator at Donors Trust.  Ms. Vander Heyden previously worked as grants coordinator and policy analyst at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.

Richard Silverstein has more over at his blog.

The Coming Republican Foreign Policy Team

Foreign Policy‘s Josh Rogin peers into the future, examining the ten Republican lawmakers who “are about to become the new foreign-policy brokers” if/when Republicans make expected gains in next week’s elections:

Congress may not be in charge of making foreign policy, but it sure can influence its implementation. Since taking office in January 2009, members of Congress — drawn primarily but not exclusively from the ranks of the GOP — have slowed the Obama administration’s efforts to advance its strategy when dealing with Russia, Syria, Israel, Cuba, and a host of other relationships. And the midterm elections won’t be making things any easier for President Barack Obama.

Rogin identifies two Republicans–Rep. Eric Cantor and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen–who will surely focus on Israel/Palestine:

1. Eric Cantor

The Virginia lawmaker, currently the House minority whip, could very well become majority leader in a GOP-controlled House of Representatives if current minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is elected speaker of the House. Cantor, who is particularly active on foreign-policy issues involving Iran and Israel, could see his role expand significantly if he is given the power to set the House floor agenda and therefore determine which bills are considered, in what form, and when.

That could spell trouble for the administration’s foreign operations budget, which funds the State Department and sets levels for U.S. non-military assistance around the world. Republicans are threatening to withhold aid to countries they see as not being wholly supportive of the United States and Cantor told the Jewish Telegraph Agency that the president’s proposed budget might have to be rejected outright if Republicans take power — after separating out U.S. aid for Israel, of course…

5. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

If Republicans take the House, Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) is poised to take over the House Foreign Affairs Committee and could drastically alter the committee’s agenda and priorities. For example, she is likely to scuttle the drive to ease sanctions and travel restrictions on Cuba, which current chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.) supports. Born in Havana, she is an active member of the Cuban-American lobby and even reportedly said once, “I welcome the opportunity of having anyone assassinate Fidel Castro and any leader who is oppressing the people.”

Her ascendancy could also spell doom for Berman’s bill on foreign-aid reform. She argues often for more vetting of foreign aid in the hope of finding cuts, and she has also introduced legislation to cut U.S. funding for the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority. She is also highly skeptical of the civilian nuclear agreements that the Obama administration is negotiating with Vietnam and Jordan. A vocal critic of what she sees as the Obama team’s cool approach to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ros-Lehtinen could use the committee as a sounding board for those who want changes in the Obama administration’s approach to Middle East peace. “She’s no Dick Lugar,” said one House aide, referring to her temperate Senate counterpart. “She and her staff often go for the jugular. You’ll probably see a lot of contentious hearings.”

I’ll be taking a closer look at both Cantor and Ros-Lehtinen’s positions and statements on Israel/Palestine in the coming days.

Cut, Cut, Cut the Budget…Just Don’t Touch Israel

If the GOP’s electoral wins next week are enough to take over Congress, one thing they’ve pledged to do is “stop out-of-control spending,” as their “Pledge to America” policy blueprint says.  But don’t even think about touching the over $3 billion in annual aid the United States gives to Israel.

Politico‘s Laura Rozen reports, via the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that  House Republican whip Eric Cantor “would propose separating U.S. aid to Israel from the foreign operations budget, which the GOP may vote to defund”:

Cantor, of Virginia, said he wants to protect funding for Israel should that situation arise.

“Part of the dilemma is that Israel has been put in the overall foreign aid looping,” he said when asked about the increasing tendency of Republicans in recent years to vote against foreign operations appropriations. “I’m hoping we can see some kind of separation in terms of tax dollars going to Israel.”

Cantor’s statement was a sign that the Republican leadership was ready to defer to the party’s right wing on this matter. Some on the GOP right have suggested including Israel aid in the defense budget, and a number of Tea Party-backed candidates have said they would vote against what is known in Congress as “foreign ops.”

The Republican Party (as well as some Democrats) wants to decrease Social Security benefits, among other austerity measures, in their effort to reduce government spending.  But government funding of an illegal and racist occupation?  Keep the cash flowing.

The Democratic-Likud Party

Ynetnews.com today publishes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “list of millionaires,” a group of people Netanyahu identified as potential donors to him ahead of the 2007 primary elections in Israel.

What’s important about the list of donors that Netanyahu identified is what it says about the Israel lobby and the Democratic Party in the United States.  It goes a long way in explaining why hard-right Zionist views can be found among Democratic politicians. 

There is little to no difference between how Democrats and Republicans in the United States act towards Israel; criticizing Israel is a “third rail” in American politics, and some of the donors included on this list show why.

It makes sense why this is the case with the Republican Party, as the ideology of neoconservatism and military interventionism is a core part of the party, and matches up nicely with Likud’s way of looking at the world and, in particular, the Palestinians.  But with the slightly more rational and liberal Democratic Party, which captured the House and Senate in 2006 in part because of growing opposition to the Iraq War, it makes less sense.

That is, until you look at some of the donors who Netanyahu reasonably thought may give him money and notice that at least a couple are heavy contributors to the Democratic Party.

Among the potential donors listed are Haim Saban and Mortimer Zuckerman.

Saban is a wealthy ”entertainment mogul” whose “greatest concern is to protect Israel” and who is “one of the largest individual donors to the Democratic Party,” according to a May 2010 profile of him in the New Yorker.  The profile notes that “in 2002, he contributed seven million dollars toward the cost of a new building for the Democratic National Committee—one of the largest known donations ever made to an American political party.”  But his political views match up with the Israeli right-wing, a decidedly illiberal set of viewpoints. 

From Marwan Bishara’s blog on Al Jazeera, here’s Saban in his own words, taken from a 2006 interview with Ha’aretz:

On his worries for Israel:

“… Israel does not worry me. Israel’s neighbours worry me … History proved that Sharon was right and I was wrong. In matters relating to security, that moved me to the right. Very far to the right.”

On Iran:

“The Iranians are serious. They mean business. Ahmadinejad is not a madman.

“When I see Ahmadinejad, I see Hitler. They speak the same language. His motivation is also clear: the return of the Mahdi is a supreme goal. And for a religious person of deep self-persuasion, that supreme goal is worth the liquidation of five-and-a-half million Jews. We cannot allow ourselves that.

“Nuclear weapons in the hands of a religious leadership that is convinced that the annihilation of Israel will bring about the emergence of a new Muslim caliphate? Israel cannot allow that. This is no game. It’s truly an existential danger.”

On the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran:

“Is there a higher price than two nuclear bombs on Israel? So they will fire missiles, all right then. Iran is not Lebanon, where you pinpoint specific targets: this bridge here, that building, half of that courtyard over there. In Iran you go in and wipe out their infrastructure completely. Plunge them into darkness. Cut off their water.”

“Would I prefer a defence minister who is capable of looking at a map and saying, ‘Half a division here, two divisions there, send the commandos from the north and let the navy hit from the south’? Yes, I would prefer that. Because to negotiate with management on behalf of the unions is a skill, but it’s a different skill from planning a war. In our situation, for all time, at least in our lifetime, we need a defence minister who has a thorough understanding of these subjects.”

Zuckerman is a media mogul who owns the New York Daily News and is the editor-in-chief of U.S. News and World Report, and is a major contributor to the Democratic Party, according to the Center for Reponsive Politics’ Open Secrets website.  He is a former head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and espouses hawkish views when it comes to the Palestinians.  For instance, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Zuckerman calls Jerusalem ”its capital” and refers to the illegal settlement of Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem as a “Jewish suburb.”     

The Democratic Party is beholden to people like Zuckerman and Saban, who were listed as potential donors to a right-wing Israeli political party whose official platform states that Likud “rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.” 

No wonder Likudnik views get play within the supposedly liberal party in American politics.