And Chas Freeman Is A Practical Man

By his own admission.

Martin Kramer quotes Chas Freeman--Obama'a pick to head the National Intelligence Council--from 2002:

I'm a very practical man, and my concern is simply this: that there are movements, like Hamas, like Hezbollah, that in recent decades have not done anything against the United States or Americans, even though the United States supports their enemy, Israel. By openly stating and taking action to make them—to declare that we are their enemy, we invite them to extend their operations in the United States or against Americans abroad. There's an old adage which says you should pick your friends carefully. I would add: you should be even more careful when designating your enemies, lest they act in that manner.

As Kramer points out--this has not been borne out by subsequent events.

In an update to his post, Kramer notes:

Terrorism expert Thomas Joscelyn points out that Hezbollah did attack Americans more recently than Freeman allowed in his 2002 quote—to wit, the Khobar bombings, done by the Saudi Hezbollah in 1996 (here is the 2001 indictment). He asks how Freeman—supposed authority on all things Saudi—managed not to know that.

Good question--and Powerline adds to the practical problem of Chas Freeman:

Kramer doesn't note this contribution by Freeman to the 2002 conference hosted by the Middle East Policy Council, but I think it is significant especially in light of the most recent Israeli election:

Q My name is -- (inaudible) --. And what I would like to ask is, because of the multiple turnovers in the government in Israel and the differences of their opinions of how things should be carried out, has this hindered their ability to bring about peace and agreement in a peaceful process?

MR. FREEMAN: You're asking whether Israeli politics are an obstacle to a decision on peace?

Q Right. ...

MR. FREEMAN: ... Many people suspect that if Mr. Sharon were to fall from power that he might be succeeded by Mr. Netanyahu, or some other yahoo on the right. (Laughter.)

Given that Mr. Netanyahu is about to become Israel's Prime Minister, Freeman's description of him as a "yahoo on the right" suggests that he may not be the best person to interpret Middle Eastern intelligence data for the President.

Unless, perhaps, Obama has already made up his mind--seeing as the two of them see eye-to-eye on fighting terrorism. Tom Maguire of JustOneMinute points out a summary of an interview Freeman gave in December 2003

Freeman proposes several changes:

First, the U.S. government should improve the visa system. More names to the forms should be added in order to distinguish among the many "Abdullah bin Mohammads."

Technical means should also be used to cut the wait.

Second, the United States should implement a national identity system, so we better know who is who .

Third, the war on terrorism should be seen primarily as a law enforcement and intelligence war, not as a military one. (U)

Point three - the war on terror is primarily a law enforcement and intelligence effort, not a military one - was also made by Mr. Freeman in this 2006 address to incoming members of Congress. This snippet has not stood up well:

Our recovery from our strategic debacle in the Middle East will not be as rapid or sure as our recovery from defeat in Vietnam.

According to Freeman, fighting terrorists

depends on sophisticated intelligence collection, analysis, and law enforcement, backed as needed by the military in ways that do not make more enemies than they eliminate. And it rests on the recognition that we cannot preserve or defend our values and freedoms effectively by setting them aside or curtailing them and becoming more like our enemies than our former selves. We must remain Athens, not Sparta.

I suppose Freeman was not a big fan of 300.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Chas Freeman.

Waiting For The Other Shoe To Be Thrown

Well, we didn't have to wait long:

A shoe was recently hurled at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while he was in the city of Urmia, an Iranian Web site has reported.

The incident in the Iranian city was an apparent imitation of a similar attack on former U.S. president George Bush in Iraq last year.

Urmia News, the Iranian site, reported that Ahmadinejad was in a car en route to an election rally when the shoe was thrown. Ahmadinejad was traveling to a local stadium where he was meant to deliver a speech ahead of upcoming presidential elections.

Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters wonders if the US media will care.

Technorati Tag: Ahmadinejad.

Netanyahu's Quandry (Make That Quandries)

Shmuel Rosner notes the various problems Bibi is going to have with his coalition:

If Bibi is forced into giving Avigdor Lieberman the Foreign Ministry it’s not because he believes that Lieberman is the perfect candidate for the job. Lieberman will get the job, because he holds the cards for the future government. If Bibi can’t lure him in, there will be either a Kadima-led government or a possible call for a new election (which some of Bibi’s friends think isn’t a bad idea).

Read the whole thing.

I imagine there are some here in the US who wouldn't mind a new election either.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Netanyahu.

Anti-Israel Prejudice Puts Israel Into Davis Cup Quarter-Finals

Read Jonathan Tobin's post on how Sweden's caving in to Anti-Israel prejudice enabled the Israeli team to advance to the quarter-finals for only the second time since 1987.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Tennis and Davis Cup.

Amnesty International's Plan For Ending The Israel-Palestinian Conflict

In a report on May 2007, NGO-Monitor noted a report:

by Andres Ballesteros, Jorge Restrepo, Michael Spagat and Juan Vargas of the University of London and the (CERAC), a Bogota-based conflict think tank. In their report, “The Work of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch: Evidence from Colombia”, they state that Amnesty International follows a “non-systematic approach that includes opaque sourcing and frequent changes in the objects they measure.” Moreover, they list “failure to specify sources, unclear definitions, an erratic reporting template and a distorted portrayal of conflict dynamics” among the methodological problems with Amnesty International’s publications. Furthermore, the report accuses Amnesty International of “bias against the government relative to the guerrillas”. In the case of the Middle East, this tendency is manifested in Amnesty International’s favoring of Hezbollah and the Palestinian Authority over Israel. The CRC study also found that Amnesty, under the leadership of Irene Khan, has adopted “double standards on human rights, a leftist political agenda, an unrealistic view on armed conflict, and propaganda against America and Israel."

In another report from that year, NGO-Monitor pointed out Amnesty International's failure to differentiate between terrorists--both Palestinian and in Hezbollah--and civilians.

The impression one gets from Amnesty International's haphazard and arbitrary criteria is that the group is not so much interested merely in upholding human rights per se but in hampering armed conflict as whole--by whatever means necessary.

That impression is reinforced by Dan Kosky of NGO-Monitor in an article in Haaretz about Amnesty International's report on Operation Cast Lead:

The report itself accuses Israel of having committed "war crimes" in Gaza, and subsequently calls for an international arms embargo. Amnesty also demands the same restrictions be placed on Hamas, yet this is entirely irrelevant for a terrorist organization with no official trade links. The real problem is that "Fueling Conflict" constitutes nothing more than an inventory of weapons used. There is no doubt that there were civilian casualties in Gaza, but Amnesty mistakenly treats this fact as proof of Israel's criminality, when it really is nothing of the sort. International law accepts civilian deaths as a tragic reality of war, particularly when fighting an enemy that has intentionally embedded itself in densely populated areas. The question of legality, however, rests upon whether an operation's expected casualties outweigh its perceived military advantage.

...Despite the inconvenient lack of evidence, Amnesty rules that Israel is guilty as charged and calls for an immediate "UN Security Council arms embargo on Israel." Almost half the report is devoted to detailing Israel's arms imports. Were Amnesty to focus solely on Israel's alleged use of controversial weapons, such as white phosphorus, the report might contribute to a valuable debate. Yet amazingly, it details Israel's procurement of aircraft, tanks, light weapons, ammunition and electronic equipment, all of which would presumably also be subject to Amnesty's suggested boycott. What emerges is an unspoken but shocking conclusion that in Amnesty's view, Israel is unfit to possess weapons and thus should be stripped of the right to self-defense.

Amnesty appears to subscribe to a fairy-tale worldview in which all non-combatant deaths and the use of all weapons under any circumstances are by definition immoral, wrong and illegal. Were the organization's stringent standards to be enforced, there would be no such thing as a just war and all democratic leaders who seek to defend their citizens against aggression and terrorism, as is their responsibility, would be deemed "war criminals."

While others see the path to peace in the Middle East as requiring extensive talks with all parties concerned, Amnesty International appears to believe all that is needed is to prevent access to the arms used in the conflict--indifferent to the fact that such an approach will affect only one side.

According to their website:

Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all.

A pity they do not work for the human right of self defense when it counts the most.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Amnesty International.

Iran Is Dying

Spengler writes:

Until very recently, an oil-price windfall gave the Iranian state ample resources to pursue its agenda at home and abroad. How, then, should we explain an eruption of social pathologies in Iran such as drug addiction and prostitution, on a scale much worse than anything observed in the West? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it appears that Islamic theocracy promotes rather than represses social decay.

Iran is dying.

One indication of Iran's decay is moral: Iranian prostitution:

"A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women," I wrote in a 2006 study of Iranian prostitution, Jihads and whores.

Prostitution as a response to poverty and abuse is one thing, but the results of this new study reflect something quite different. The educated women of Tehran choose prostitution in pursuit of upward mobility, as a way of sharing in the oil-based potlatch that made Tehran the world's hottest real estate market during 2006 and 2007.

A country is beaten when it sells its women, but it is damned when its women sell themselves. [emphasis added]

Then there is the second indication of decay in Iranian society:

according to a recent report from the US Council on Foreign Relations, "Iran serves as the major transport hub for opiates produced by [Afghanistan], and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime estimates that Iran has as many as 1.7 million opiate addicts." That is, 5% of Iran's adult, non-elderly population of 35 million is addicted to opiates. That is an astonishing number, unseen since the peak of Chinese addiction during the 19th century. The closest American equivalent (from the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health) found that 119,000 Americans reported using heroin within the prior month, or less than one-tenth of 1% of the non-elderly adult population.

...Iran's startling rates of opium addiction and prostitution reflect popular demoralization, the implosion of an ancient culture in its encounter with the modern world. These pathologies arose not from poverty but wealth, or rather a sudden concentration of wealth in the hands of the political class. No other country in modern history has evinced this kind of demoralization.

The consequences are predictable:

For the majority of young Iranians, there is no way up, only a way out; 36% of Iran's youth aged 15 to 29 years want to emigrate, according to yet another unpublicized Iranian study, this time by the country's Education Ministry, Der Standard adds. Only 32% find the existing social norms acceptable, while 63% complain about unemployment, the social order or lack of money.

But there are consequences not only for Iran alone, but for the Muslim world in general and for the West as well:

With oil at barely one-fifth of its 2008 peak price, they will run out of money some time in late 2009 or early 2010. Game theory would predict that Iran's leaders will gamble on a strategic long shot. That is not a comforting thought for Iran's neighbors.

As in the decline of communism, what follows on the breakdown of a state ideology is likely to be nihilism. Iran is a dying country, and it is very difficult to have a rational dialogue with a nation all of whose available choices terminate in oblivion.

Read the whole thing.

What are the prospects for the country of Iran turning into a suicide bomber with a nuclear bomb strapped to its chest?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Iran.

Fatah: Peace Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry

Especially if by peace, Fatah means surrender--Israel's surrender.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Israel and Fatah.

Do All Roads Lead To Recognition Of Hamas?

I was reading with interest Yossi Alpher of Bitter Lemons, who was explaining at length why a unity government of Hamas and Fatah was a bad idea in that it would strengthen Hamas.

Alpher goes on to counter the arguments of those who claim that as a result of such a coalition, the extremism of Hamas would be tempered:

Some argue that Hamas would have to accept the Quartet's three preconditions of renouncing terrorism, accepting past agreements and recognizing Israel. It would have to agree that Fateh, meaning the PA as currently configured, administer the Gaza crossings and the extensive reconstruction aid being discussed by the international community at Sharm al-Sheikh and elsewhere.

There are three problems with these calculations: big, bigger and biggest. The big problem is that Fateh is relatively weak and Hamas strong politically. It's clear who will be negotiating from a position of strength and how this will influence the outcome.

The bigger problem is that advocates of the two-state solution look at the map and argue that a unity government is the only way to save it. Otherwise, the West Bank and Fateh will remain under separate governments and evolve into separate political entities. To this contention the reply is simple: under current circumstances, better to maintain the components of a three-state solution, with Israel and the PLO negotiating over the West Bank and Hamas contained inside Gaza, than to install effective Hamas rule in the West Bank as well as Gaza--which would preclude any solution at all.

Finally, the biggest problem is that none of the principals--Israel, the Quartet, the PLO and Egypt--has a workable strategy for dealing with Hamas in Gaza. Military force has failed to weaken Hamas; so has economic warfare (closing the Israel-Gaza crossings). Indirect contacts via Egypt and others, where issues like linking a ceasefire to a prisoner exchange are discussed, have failed. Indeed, tying the future of Israel's relationship with the Gaza Strip to the fate of a single IDF soldier reflects a bankruptcy of new strategic ideas in Jerusalem. And the notion of linking direct contacts with concessions on the part of Hamas has also failed. Under these circumstances, wherein no one really understands what has to be done regarding Hamas, encouraging the formation of a unity government appears near suicidal, if only because the outcome is so fraught with danger and uncertainty.

So far, so good--but with that last objection, Alpher has been leading up to what he considers a better alternative:

Israel and the Quartet would be better off abandoning their preconditions, opening the passages--thereby virtually assuring a ceasefire--and offering to talk to Hamas about long-term coexistence, even as Israel and the PLO talk in parallel about a political solution. Hamas would still be considered a terrorist organization as long as it directs violence at civilians. But because it successfully controls finite Palestinian territory, it-unlike other terrorist organizations--cannot be ignored politically.

So instead of a coaltion that will merely be dominated by Hamas--it is better to deal with Hamas individually, thereby giving it more recognition and validation for everything that it has done up to this point?

And then comes the rest of the argument: Israel can strenghten the PA (through "Israel-PLO talks") which can then enter into a coaltion with Hamas! What is left unclear is why, once a political a political entity strong enough to enter with Hamas was created, Hamas would want to enter into such a relationship.

And if strengthening the PA does not work after having given Hamas recognition?

at least Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the West will know where they stand vis-a-vis the Islamists and can calculate what has to be done to secure the strategically-located West Bank.

Will they know any more then than they do now, or will they merely have further proof for what they already not suspect--only with an even stronger proxy of Iran next door?

Talking to Hamas--in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead--is apparently no less seductive, if not more so.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Israel and Hamas.

Roger Cohen On The Middle East: Check Please!

In his op-ed Middle East Reality Check, it may appear that Roger Cohen is offering, but by the end of his piece, it appears that a reality check is precisely what Mr. Cohen needs.

Cohen keeps saying things that just don't jive with the reality of the Middle East.

There is nothing new in Cohen's claim that terrorist groups Hamas and Hizbollah need to be recognized:

Like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah has long been treated by the United States as a proscribed terrorist group. This narrow view has ignored the fact that both organizations are now entrenched political and social movements without whose involvement regional peace is impossible.

Britain aligned itself with the U.S. position on Hezbollah, but has now seen its error. Bill Marston, a Foreign Office spokesman, told Al Jazeera: “Hezbollah is a political phenomenon and part and parcel of the national fabric in Lebanon. We have to admit this.”

According to Cohen the difference between the 2 terrorist groups is in the way they have achieved their right to be recognized:

Hezbollah is in the Lebanese national unity government, whereas Hamas won the free and fair January 2006 elections to the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority, only to discover Middle Eastern democracy is only democracy if it produces the right result.

Some unity government. In May of last year, writing about the Doha agreement, Totten pointed out about the Doha agreement what Cohen apparently has forgotten:

While diplomats from Washington to Riyadh are pretending, for form’s sake, that this is a terrific breakthrough for stability and national unity, Charles Malik put it more bluntly and honestly at the Lebanese Political Journal. “The Doha negotiations were never meant to solve everything,” he wrote. “They were meant to stall the violence until after the summer tourist season is over.”

...Eighteen months ago thousands of Hezbollah supporters built a tent city downtown and forced the semi-permanent closure of much of the city center. They demanded enough seats in the cabinet to wield veto power over any decision the government makes, despite the fact that they couldn’t win enough seats in the last election to earn it. Well, they finally got their long-demanded blocking minority status in Doha, so they happily took down their tent city.

...And it’s a dangerous precedent. A year and a half of mostly non-violent resistance yielded Hezbollah bupkis. After one week of murder and mayhem, the Lebanese government caved. The lesson for Hezbollah is clear: when things don’t go your way, take the rifles out of the garage, hit the streets, and start shooting people and burning down buildings.

As far as the Hamas model of Middle East democracy goes, while Cohen talks about the need to bring Hamas and Fatah together, Cohen makes no mention of the bloody coup by Hamas that drove them apart.

Bottom line, if Hezbollah and Hamas are part of the political fabric--a delousing is in order.

But Cohen is not done legitimizing Hamas, not by a long shot:

The 1988 Hamas Charter is vile, but I think it’s wrong to get hung up on the prior recognition of Israel issue. Perhaps Hamas is sincere in its calls for Israel’s disappearance — although it has offered a decades-long truce — but then it’s also possible that Israel in reality has no desire to see a Palestinian state.

'Disappearance' is a polite way of putting it--'destroy' captures the idea a bit better. Then again, if Cohen is going to gloss over the Hamas coup, we can't expect him to accurately describe Hamas intentions for Israel--just as Cohen makes no mention of what Hamas does during those 'truces', or the how they don't seem to include the cessation of rockets. Still, Cohen does do a nice turn of phrase: comparing the Hamas desire to wipe out Israel against Israel's wariness about a sovereign terrorist state on its border. It's not as if Israel has said they want to wipe out Gaza.

The question of what could be achieved if Palestinian terrorists stopped killing Jews is never addressed by Cohen. Perhaps that is the realist in him.

But Cohen is nothing if not the faithful propagandist:

Speaking of violence, it’s worth recalling what Israel did in Gaza in response to sporadic Hamas rockets. It killed upward of 1,300 people, many of them women and children; caused damage estimated at $1.9 billion; and destroyed thousands of Gaza homes. It continues a radicalizing blockade on 1.5 million people squeezed into a narrow strip of land.

Cohen after all is expressing a point of few--but again, some key facts have somehow escaped his attention in that one paragraph. Let's review:

1. "sporadic Hamas rockets"

Sporadic might give the impression that there were only a few rockets.
Strategy puts these 'sporadic' rockets into some perspective:

By the end of 2005, over 400 Kassams had been fired at Israeli targets. In the next six months, another 600 rockets were fired. About a third of them were the short range Kassam Is, fired at Israeli settlements in Gaza. The rest were larger Kassams fired into southern Israel.

About a thousand Kassams were fired into Israel during 2006. This doubled, to two thousand in 2007, and during the first four months of 2008, another 2,000 were fired. To date, over 7,000 Kassams have been fired, plus a few dozen factory made rockets and nearly a thousand mortar shells. For every 30-40 Kassams fired, an Israeli is killed or wounded. [emphasis added]

2. "It killed upward of 1,300 people, many of them women and children"

But according to UPI

A total of 300 Palestinian civilians have been identified as among the dead from Israel's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, documents show.

The Israeli military's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration said its accounting of the conflict has found that 300 of a total of 1,200 Palestinians killed during the assault were "non-combatants," The Jerusalem Post reported Monday.

The report said 580 of those killed have been identified as fighters of the Hamas Palestinian militant group. Another 320 victims have yet to be classified but they have been described as all men, two-thirds of whom were deemed likely by Israel to be terror operatives.

The figure of 300 civilian deaths clashes wildly with Hamas estimates of 895 such deaths.

Of course, Cohen can give preference to the reports coming out of Hamas--the question is: why would he?

3. "1.5 million people squeezed into a narrow strip of land"

Cohen paints a pathetic picture--but Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Moscow, Tokyo and Warsaw are all more crowded than Gaza:

Tel Aviv
7,445 people/sq km
(385,000 people, 51.8 sq km)

Hong Kong
6,352 people/sq km
http://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/factsheets/docs/population.pdf

Singapore
6,252 people/sq km
http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/keyind.html

London
5,100 people/sq km

Tel Aviv metro area including suburbs
5,050 people/sq km
(2.3 million people, 453 sq km)

Moscow
4,900 people/sq km

Tokyo/Yokahama
4,750 people/sq km

Warsaw
4,300 people/sq km

Gaza Strip per CIA projection
4,270 people/sq km
(1,537,269 population July 2008, 360 sq km)

No wonder Hamas and Hezbollah are seen throughout the Arab world as legitimate resistance movements.

Yet Michael Totten points out that the opposite is the case, for very cogent reasons:

The governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen came out strongly against Hamas and in favor of their Fatah rivals at a meeting in Abu Dhabi this week.

“Egypt is cooperating to a great extent with Israel,” Susser continued, “as are Abu Mazen and the Jordanians. There were more anti-Israel demonstrations in Dublin than there were in Ramallah.”

Most Arab governments, aside from Syria’s and possibly Qatar’s, are far more worried about Iranian regional dominance than they are about anything coming out of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. They know perfectly well that the State of Israel is not going to undermine or overthrow them, while radical Iranian-sponsored Islamists just might.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia are threatening Iran with a nuclear arms race. Surely they weren’t happy when Israel developed nuclear weapons, but they never retaliated with programs of their own. Bombastic anti-Zionist rhetoric to the contrary, they know Israel isn’t really a threat. Nor are they a serious threat to Israel anymore.

Roger Cohen is of course entitled to his opinion, but if expressing such an opinion requires ignoring so many facts about the Middle East, there is no reason to pay attention to it.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Hamas and Roger Cohen.

One Jerusalem: End of Week Review: March 8, 2009

From a One Jerusalem email:

End of Week Review: March 8, 2009

Dear Friend of Jerusalem,

Here are the latest headlines from the One Jerusalem Blog:

● Jerusalem Mayor Lectures Hillary Clinton: Jerusalem's recently elected Mayor, Nir Barkat, told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that she is mistaken in her criticism of the decision to demolish illegally constructed houses in Jerusalem.Speaking just hours after a Palestinian tractor driver tried to mow down... (read more)

● Israel's Doctors are Saving Iraqi Children: This just in from CBN: One of the happy consequences of deposing Saddam Hussein is that Iraqi children with potentially fatal heart conditions are now able to receive life-saving medical care in Israel. On Friday CBN News will air a report... (read more)

● Clinton Defends Illegal Palestinian Building In Jerusalem: For decades, Arabs have gotten a free pass when it comes to Israel's real estate laws. While everyone else is required to get permits before building in Jerusalem and elsewhere, Arabs build illegally in Jerusalem and throughout the State of Israel.... (read more)

● Geert Wilders on O'Reilly: watch the video

● Miracle: A Hamas Terrorist Comes Back to Life: Click here to watch the short video... watch the video

● Why Did Obama Appoint Him?: Why did President Obama appoint as chairman of the National Intelligence Council a man who is a highly paid shill for Saudi Arabia and the communist Chinese? A man who justified China's brutal and violent reaction to the peaceful protesters... (read more)

● Obama Foreign Policy Team Seems Afloat: Dateline Jerusalem:I have just been updated about the state of play between the Obama Administration and the incoming Netanyahu Administration. At the end of last week, Obama's Middle East Envoy, George Mitchell, met with Netanyahu and his team and one... (read more)

Sincerely, The One Jerusalem Team

Technorati Tag: Israel.