What's wrong with BDS

BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement calls for boycotting Israel in order to bring “an end to Israel's occupation and colonization of all Arab lands … “ (1)  Omar Barghouti, one of BDS’ founders makes it clear that “all Arab lands” includes the land that is today known as the State of Israel. He said "I clearly do not buy into the two-state solution... you would not have a two-state solution, you would have a Palestine next to Palestine, rather than a Palestine next to Israel."  BDS activist Ahmed Koor declares that  "Ending the occupation doesn't mean anything if it doesn't mean upending the Jewish state itself… BDS does mean the end of the Jewish state." (2)

So what is the problem with advocating an end to the Jewish state?  The problem is that it causes most Jews to prepare to defend the Jewish nation and  the Jewish state by force if need be. In other words, it is tantamount to calling for yet more war and violence.

For 2000 years the Jewish nation lacked a state of its own. It therefore lacked the military capability to defend itself against the aggression to which it was repeatedly subjected.  Even more tragic, the Jewish nation lacked a state to which it’s members could flee the oppression, massacres, forced conversions and expulsions that they repeatedly suffered living as an often despised minority in both Christian and Muslim societies.  That long history produced a nation convinced that, above anything else, it needed to re-establish itself in its own nation-state, a state with the will and capability to defend the Jewish nation against aggression and to provide a place to which Jews living as minorities in Diaspora countries could flee if they were again attacked or oppressed.  As things turned out, that 2 millennia history of defenselessness culminated in an attempted genocide in which six million innocent non-combatant members of the Jewish nation were murdered in cold blood.  Most of the victims had no way to escape because, with only insignificant exceptions, no state would accept them.   That only reinforced the already perceived need for the existence of a Jewish state and hardened that perception into an absolutely indelible first order existential and moral principle in the psyche of the Jewish nation.

To the extent that the BDS and one state movements  challenge the continued existence or question the legitimacy of the  Jewish state, they become enemies of the Jewish nation --  not only in the thinking of a right wing Jewish fringe,  but also in the minds of mainstream Jews both in  Israel and the Disapora.  The reaction among most Jews to the BDS and to the one state movements is to halt risk taking, halt consideration of compromises, prepare for confrontation, and advocate the use of force if need be to guarantee the continued existence of a Jewish state.   Self-declared peace groups can only hope to achieve their professed goal if their advocacy unequivocally includes the continued existence of the only Jewish state in the world.  Those that challenge the legitimacy and continued existence of a Jewish state only discredit the whole peace movement. They convince Jews, both in Israel and the Diaspora, that the peace camp harbors an unspoken agenda that includes the annihilation of the only Jewish state in the world and the return of the Jewish nation to its tragic historic state of national defenselessness.

(1) http://www.bds-palestine.net/

(2) http://mondoweiss.net/2010/04/bds-is-a-long-term-project-with-radically-transformative-potential.html

The Time is Now

On January 31 I wrote that only an Israeli – Palestinian peace agreement could resolve Israel´s existential concerns and that time was running out. Given the threat that the upheaval in Egypt presented to the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement, I thought that my perception of the situation would likely be shared only by committed "peaceniks."  It now seems that the idea is more widely held than I had imagined.

On Feb 1 Thomas Friedman wrote: "Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel is in danger of becoming the Mubarak of the peace process. Israel has never had more leverage vis-à-vis the Palestinians and never had more responsible Palestinian partners. But Netanyahu has found every excuse for not putting a peace plan on the table... ...Israel has an overwhelming interest in going the extra mile to test them... ... it is virtually certain that the next Egyptian government will not have the patience or room that Mubarak did to maneuver with Israel. Same with the new Jordanian cabinet... ... If Israel does not make a concerted effort to strike a deal with the Palestinians ... ... if Israelis tell themselves that Egypt’s unrest proves why Israel cannot make peace with the Palestinian Authority, then they will be talking themselves into becoming an apartheid state — they will be talking themselves into permanently absorbing the West Bank and thereby laying the seeds for an Arab majority ruled by a Jewish minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. any preconditions

In next Sunday´s N.Y Times Magazine, Bernard Avishai will divulge what ex-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wrote him in an email. “There is a danger that the events in Egypt will mislead some to lose hope in peace. I think the opposite, that there can be another way to challenge the events near us. This is the time to move forward, fast, take my peace initiative with the Palestinians and make a deal. This will be my advice to Prime Minister Netanyahu. Don’t wait. Move, lead and make history. This is the time. There will not be a better one.”

As I wrote on Jan 31, Itºs now or never."

Iconoclastically yours,
Ira
Lisbon, Portugal

It's Now or Never

It is preferable to negotiate during the moments when one is strong.  Israel is no exception to that truism.  While it is still in a relatively strong position, Israel has more leverage to obtain concessions it feels it needs to assure its long term survival as a Jewish state.   While it is still relatively strong, it is more able to offer concessions demanded by Palestinians without facing existential risks.

Israel has seen many such moments only to waste them.  Now is another such moment, and it may well be the last for a very long time.  Thanks to the Gulf War and the current American operations in Iraq, for the time being Iraq lacks the military strength to endanger Israel.  While Iran certainly relishes the thought of attacking Israel, it does not yet have the military capability to do so. For the moment Jordan and Egypt still are abiding by their peace agreements with Israel, and the Arab League peace proposal is still on the table.  All that is likely to change in the future, and the current revolution in Egypt may shorten that future to a matter of months.  

The Obama administration asked the Israeli government to completely freeze all settlement construction in all occupied territories in order to facilitate negotiations to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With the Arab League peace proposal still on the table, that was tantamount to offering Israel the ticket to recognition and normalization of relations with all of its Arab neighbors, a destination Israel has dreamed of for all six decades of its existence.  Israel responded by publicly announcing additional construction in East Jerusalem, and did so while the American vice president was in Israel - a slap in the face of the American efforts. Then it compounded that insult by refusing Obama’s request for a total settlement freeze and offered only a partial construction slowdown instead.  Then it refused to extend even that slowdown.   It is hard to imagine another Israeli response that would have been more counterproductive to Israel’s long term interests than that was.

Iraq will not be crippled forever.  Sooner or later Iran will obtain weapons capable of reaching Israel.  Egypt will soon no longer be so cooperative in helping to keep major weapons our of Gaza.  When Tunisia’s  Jasmine revolution spreads beyond Egypt, the Arab League peace offer is likely to be withdrawn.  There is no military solution to Israel's legitimate security concerns.  The only long term solution is a diplomatic one that also addresses the legitimate concerns of Palestinians.  Only that has any chance to reduce the animosity of the Arab street towards the State of Israel.   And, the first step is an Israeli – Palestinian peace agreement.   But, time is running out,.  Israel can no longer afford never to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

It Doesn't Bode Well For Obama

The only institutions in Egypt capable of preventing the revolution from galloping towards anarchy are the Army and the Muslim Brotherhood.   Whether the revolution ends with democracy for Egyptians or just a different police state depends on whether the Army or the Brotherhood is able to grab the reins of the revolution, and in which direction it decides to guide it.  But either way, the outcome does not bode well for Obama.

On January 25, as thousands of Egyptians poured into the streets to demand the end of the Mubarak regime, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the government of President Hosni Mubarak was stable and trying to respond to the needs of protesters.   Today she said  “We want to see free and fair elections and we expect that will be one of the outcomes of what is going on right now."

If the Army and/or Muslim Brotherhood succeed in preventing anarchy and institute significant democratic reforms in Egypt,  Clinton’s former remark will set the tone for the media.  The Obama administration will be portrayed as having backed the loser, and blamed for backing an unpopular dictatorial regime rather than the Egyptian people.    

If the revolution ends with a hostile police state in Egypt,  the latter Clinton remark will set the tone for the media.   The Obama administration will be portrayed as a reincarnation of  the Carter administration, led by a naïve President whose administration aided and abetted the replacement of a friendly government with one hostile to the strategic  interests of the United States.

Facebook Revolutions

I was never among those who believed that the United States went to war in Iraq in order to steal its oil. Iraq was not going to keep its oil underground and off  the market, whether  its government was headed by Sadaam Hussein,  Muqtada al-Sadr, Nouri al-Maliki,  or David Petreus.  And, oil being a fungible commodity, once it is taken from the ground and put on the market it goes to whoever is prepared to pay for it.

There were several reasons that the United States chose to go to war with Iraq, and although stealing its oil was not one of them, some were far from noble.  However, there was one reason to use military power that I thought at the time was a valid one -- the responsibility that the world had to free the Iraqi people from Sadaam Hussein who controlled their lives and seemed about to establish a permanent dynasty that would continue that control even after he died.  This was, after all, a regime that tortured members of its national soccer team for losing a match, and used its citizens as cannon fodder in unjustified aggression first against Iran and then Kuwait.   Might not the United States replace the dictatorial regime in Iraq with a democratic government the way it did by occupying Germany and Japan after World War II?  And, might not such a democratic success eventually serve as a model for the rest of the Arab world?

The crowds on the streets of Tunisia and Egypt appear to be proving me wrong.  The democracies that were established by the United States and its allies in Japan and Germany after World War II were perhaps a function of a world order than no longer exists.  Tanks and bombers no longer seem to be effective tools to overthrow dictatorships.   It seems that in the 21^st century satellite television, cell phones and the world wide web are far more effective weapons in the fight to overthrow dictatorial or autocratic regimes.    We will have to wait to learn if democracies replace the overthrown police states as happened in Poland and the Czech Republic or if the revolution merely replaces one police state with another as it did in Iran and Russia.

Why They Will Hate Us

It was illegal to own a duplicating device.  Newspaper presses,  Xerox machines,  even school mimeographs were all government controlled.  It was impossible to make a telephone call to the outside.  A wall kept East Berliners from communicating with people in the west.   For the first 47 years of my life, I lived in a world where it was understood by pretty much everyone that the Soviet Empire would last forever behind that iron curtain.  But the curtain was transparent to radio frequencies.  By 1980, West German radio and TV signals were spilling into Poland and East Germany.   The shorter waves of the BBC and Voice of America were penetrating even deeper into the Soviet Empire.   By the end of the decade it was no longer possible for Eastern Europe’s dictators to control the information flowing to their citizens.  Their regimes collapsed like dominoes.

In 1996, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa of Qatar granted 140 million dollars to establish Al  Jazeera, an Arabic language cable news channel with an independent editorial policy.  In 2004, roommates Mark Zuckerberg,  Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes created Facebook to facilitate social networking among students at Harvard.  Seven years later it has 600 million users all over the world.  Al Jazeera, Facebook and Twitter have penetrated the Arab world.  Tunisians, Egyptians,  Algerians, and Yemenis have gone to the streets, and the regimes appear to be about to collapse like dominoes.  

All those countries are police states whose corrupt, autocratic regimes are supported by the United States despite their miserable human rights records.  So, when they are replaced by governments that reflect the sentiments of their populations, the new governments will almost certainly be hostile to the United States.  Under the Bush administration’s short-lived calls for democracy in the Arab world, the United States supported elections in the Palestinian territories.  When Fatah lost those elections and Hamas won, the United States and Israel chose not to open a political dialogue with elected Palestinian government. Instead, they continued to deal only with Fatah, and conspired to use economic, political and military pressure to try to destroy Hamas.

Unfortunately, the concessions made by both sides in the negotiations that led to the Beilin Maazen document in 1995, the Clinton Parameters in 2000, and the Geneva Accords in 2003 were not made as widely known to the Palestinian public as they were to Israelis.  The Geneva Accords, for example, were delivered to every household in Israel, but the same did not happen in the West Bank and Gaza.  Instead, the Palestinian Authority maintained a public position that came across as if it had never backed away from old Palestinian red lines.  Now that Al Jazeera has published the Palestine Papers, many Palestinians are likely to perceive the Palestinian concessions as a revelation of a conspiracy that  the Abbas regime engaged in to try to subvert the will of the Palestinian electorate. Facebook and twitter will empower that electorate to effectively organize to demand new elections.   I am far from certain that Palestinians will end up better off under a different regime, but I am certain that any such regime will be hostile to the United States.  And, as in the case of Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and Yemen, much of the resulting loss of American credibility will have been self inflicted.  

Is Palestine Next?

Jan 27, 2010 

First Tunisia exploded and its corrupt autocratic government fell.   Judging from Al Jazeera coverage of the Egyptian street last night,  Egypt looks like it is next in line. And, this Palestinian call to action was in my email box this morning:

Hello Palestinians in  USA.
This is a National call on your efforts and Love for Palestine!!!

From: (redacted)

As a Palestinian refugee (third generation of 1948).  I am requesting my people (Palestinians all over USA) to move on now!!!

 We should move on, this is a call on all Palestinians  to get together at last ONE time in our History!!! To move on and react today and now.

 I would like to suggest, that we have to write a Comprehensive statement, where,  we all put together our : Demands, needs, political vision,   and protest in front of the Palestinian Embassy in Washington D.C.

Please if you do have any suggestions, I would love to communicate over email and achieve one positive thing.

I would suggest that one person will be responsible to draft the letter, and collect our frats as well, to put it together to have a one Statement.  All most writ their visions and demands, and  by 9 PM today, we should have it done, so, we can go out and protest and give it to the PA mission. We can do our protestation tomorrow at 6.00 PM to 8.00 PM in front of the Palestinian mission. We should not let the PA run our political affairs Anymore! We should call on New Presidential Election before the end of April 2011.

If you have other ideas, please call or email me, I am available at (redacted)

Did The Palestine Papers Kill The Peace Process?

Jan 26, 2010

Did the publication these past three days by Al Jazeera of more than 1600 heretofore secret documents blow  the peace process to smithereens?  In the eyes of a segment of the Palestinian community the revelations by Al Jazeera were tantamount to treason, but among what appears to be a much larger segment the revelations have damaged the credibility of both the United States and Fatah.  So far I have managed to read only a few of the more widely quoted papers and skimmed summaries of a few dozen others. That said, I have found no revelations of significant concessions on the part of the Palestinian authority that had not already been a matter of public record, mostly in the widely published details of the Clinton Parameters of Decemember 2000 and the Geneva Accords of October 2003. 

For a different perspective I went to the offices of the New America Foundation in Washington DC to hear Chas Freeman's opinions. Freeman articlulated his conclusion that the peace process was already dead long before these papers came to light.  Not only does he say that the peace process died over 10 years ago, but the United States disqualified itself as a mediator and Fatah fatally discredited itself as a negotiator for the Palestinians, long before the revelation of the Palestine Papers.



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I am sure that events will get even more "interesting" in the next few days.