Mideast Media Sampler 07/19/2011

From DG:

1) Take that Roger

A letter writer Fiona Grady takes issue with Roger Cohen's "A year of Waste," specifically his phony charge that Israel's demand to be recognized as a Jewish state is an "obsession:"

However, a brief look at Israel’s neighboring states reveals that most of them have the word “Arab” in their official names, as in Arab Republic of Egypt and Syrian Arab Republic. Jordan’s official name indicates the ethnicity of the ruling minority: Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The Palestinian charter makes a repeated usage of “Arab Palestinian people.” Meanwhile, some Palestinian factions do not even recognize Israel’s right to exist, let alone its existence as a Jewish state. Even “moderate” Palestinian factions continue to insist that the millions of descendents of Palestinian refugees have a right of return into Israel.

2) In vitro, in Israel

There was a really nice article in the New York Times, Where Families Are Prized, Help Is Free. A Twitter friend asked me how it got past their editors.

Jewish and Arab, straight and gay, secular and religious, the patients who come to Assuta Hospital in Tel Aviv every day are united by a single hope: that medical science will bring them a baby.
Israel is the world capital of in vitro fertilization and the hospital, which performs about 7,000 of the procedures each year, is one of the busiest fertilization clinics in the world.
Unlike countries where couples can go broke trying to conceive with the assistance of costly medical technology, Israel provides free, unlimited IVF procedures for up to two “take-home babies” until a woman is 45. The policy has made Israelis the highest per capita users of the procedure in the world.

3) The Washington Post's praise of Clinton

The editors at the Washington Post have praise for the Secretary of State:

Ms. Clinton’s comments, which drew grateful applause from her audience, were particularly significant because the Obama administration is engaged with Turkey on a host of sensitive issues. The two governments are trying to cooperate on Libya, Syria, Iran, Israeli-Palestinian relations and U.S. plans for European missile defense. In almost every instance, the United States needs Turkey’s help. Given Mr. Erdogan’s prickliness, it would be easy to conclude that the issue of media freedom should be set aside or discussed only in private.

Instead Ms. Clinton demonstrated that it is possible for a secretary of state to speak frankly and publicly about human rights while still doing business with an important government. To be sure, gratuitous scoldings of allies can be counterproductive, but public statements on matters such as press freedom are critical, because they send a message to the broader society about U.S. values and often encourage citizens to speak up.

4) The AMIA bombing

Iran has "pledged" to cooperate with Argentina over the bombing of the AMIA building in 1994, that left 85 dead and 300 wounded. Hezbollah is thought to be behind the terror attack and a number of Iranian officials have been named in arrest warrants.

Tehran, suspected by Argentina of being behind the attack, is "ready for a constructive dialogue and to cooperate with the Argentine government to shed all possible light within the framework of the law and to help in preventing the investigation from continuing on an erroneous course," a statement said. 

Iran "condemns all terrorist actions, especially the one against the Argentine Jewish centre in 1994, and declares its solidarity with the families of the victims," the statement added. 

Israel has pointed the finger at the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah for carrying out the attacks, which the Jewish state believes were masterminded by Tehran.

Given that a number of Iranian officials have been named, unless they are surrendered this pledge would be meaningless.

Argentina's Jewish community isn't pleased with the way Argentina has handled the probe:\

Burstein pointed to Carlos Menem, Argentina’s president at the time of the 1994 attack. Menem is charged with interfering in the probe by steering investigators away from a businessman friend who was implicated in the attack and, like Menem, has deep family ties to Syria.

Menem has been a senator since leaving the presidency, so is immune from pretrial detention. “If this were a respectable country, this man would have a seat, but in prison,” Burstein said.

AMIA President Guillermo Borger was among other Jewish leaders who questioned why the investigation hasn’t led to Argentines who might have been involved, other than one man who provided a van allegedly used in the attack.

Former OAS Ambassador Roger Noriega recently testified about the presence of terror networks run by Hezbollah and Iran in South America (via Daily Alert):

We have identified at least two parallel terrorist networks growing at an alarming rate in Latin America.
One is operated by Hizbullah, aided by its collaborators, and another is managed by a cadre of operatives of the notorious Qods Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
These networks cooperate to carry out fundraising, money-laundering schemes, narcotics smuggling, proselytization, recruitment, and training.
We can identify more than 80 operatives in at least 12 countries.
Of particular interest are several published reports, citing U.S. law enforcement and intelligence sources, that Hizbullah operatives have provided weapons and explosives training to drug trafficking organizations that operate along the U.S. border with Mexico and have sought to radicalize Muslim populations in several Mexican cities.

5) Hezbollah lost in 2006

According to the Australian Syria has increased its supply of missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon. (via Daily Alert)

The Times reported last year that Hizbullah had taken delivery of two advanced Scud D surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 700 km. Since then, the Syrians have handed over eight more of the ballistic weapons, which have been assembled with the help of North Korean experts. The projectiles, which carry one-ton warheads, are accurate to within tens of meters and bring all of Israel, Jordan and large parts of Turkey within Hizbullah’s range. Hizbullah also has M600 missiles based on the Iranian Fateh-110 – with a range of 250 km and 500 kg warheads.
Sources close to Hizbullah said the flow of weapons entering the Bekaa Valley from Syria had accelerated in March when protests erupted against the Assad regime. One Hizbullah fighter joked that the scale of the arms shipments into Lebanon was so great that “we don’t know where to put it all.” An Israeli military intelligence source said, “Now that they see Syria as possibly unstable, we are seeing the movement of a lot of weapons into Lebanon.”  

However Israeli General Maj.-Gen. Gadi Eizenkot testifies that Israel is deterring Hezbollah, for now: (FromYedioth Ahronot translated by Daily Alert)

Maj.-Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, who just completed five years as commander of the IDF’s Northern Command, said in an interview that since the Second Lebanon War in 2006: “Hizbullah has doubled its rocket capacity, but I think the improvements we’ve made – in terms of range of targets, firepower, and maneuverability – are greater in the long run. Today we are in a much better position opposite them. Our intelligence picture of the organization has greatly improved. Our target bank has also improved and Hizbullah understands this.”

“The reason they have not acted against us in the past five years is not out of concern for the welfare of the residents of the State of Israel. This organization feels, in my opinion, that the ground is dropping from beneath its feet. Now the group is charged with the murder of Hariri, and Nasrallah fears for his life. The person who used to travel around Lebanon so grandly lives today in a bunker as the last of the wanted men and speaks to his people via plasma screens.”  

I am not impressed when Hezbollah announces that it has caught Israeli spies. I suspect that they are often charging people falsely. This testimony, though, shows that they have reason to be paranoid.

Also Thanassis Cambanis writes that Syria's sponsorship may be weakening Hezbollah politically (via Daily Alert)

The Arab Spring changed the rules of the game that Hizbullah so masterfully played for the last two decades. The more short-term challenge comes from Syria, where a tottering Assad regime could severely curtail Hizbullah’s military room for maneuver. If Hizbullah continues to ally itself with Assad, rather than Syria’s popular will, it begins to look like a movement that prefers Arab tyrants to the Arab Spring.

 The more enduring issue is the Arab political renaissance underway, which could produce movements well positioned to steal Hizbullah’s anti-Israel thunder with a resistance program free from the party’s sectarian, militant baggage. 

Technorati Tag: Israel and Middle East.