Global Warming as White Man’s Burden

Posted on November 1, 2007 by Tony


Davos considers the options

Guest Column: Climate scientist V. Balaji reminds us that before Davos, there was Bandung. While the captains of the industrialized world claim a monopoly on policy ideas for responding to global warming, they are clearly unable to deal with the crisis. Perhaps they ought to recognize that there are voices outside the citadel with something to say about climate change.

From Bandung to Davos — and Back?

By V. Balaji

Readers of a certain age and inclination might remember a sometimes-incendiary, often-provocative, most-always-interesting television show on the UK’s Channel Four called Bandung File. Channel Four came to prominence in that brief hundred-flowers spring moment in the Britain of the 70s and early 80s, when Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, was still ‘Red’ Ken, and the Greater London Council had money to spend on any number of beautiful community-driven efforts, from the Southall Black Sisters to water resources planning for the next century. Bandung File, produced by Tariq Ali and Darcus Howe, labelled itself an African-Asian news and current affairs programme. What made it quite unique was that its stated purpose was to canvas opinion from the public and policy-makers in those continents: Its topics were not just what was being done to people of color in the UK, nor even the history of colonial injustice. Instead, it focused on the current concerns of Africans and Asians — its issues ranged from apartheid to street crime in Jamaica and corruption in a Kenyan hospital. With a muckraking exuberance and flair, Bandung File drove the blade in to the hilt. And what made it such refreshing television was it was never dominated by experts from the North; instead it gave free rein to the eloquence of its Southern subjects, whether corrupt politicians or enraged citizens or passionate radicals.

It’s an odd place to begin talking about the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, as Tony asked me to do for Rootless Cosmopolitan, but bear with me. Bandung File was named for a now rather obscure mountain town in Java: a favoured “hill station” to which British, and later brown, sahibs would retire to escape Indonesian summers. This little resort town once took centre stage in world history, in 1955, when it was the seat of an extraordinary conference, when representatives of one half of humanity met to proclaim an end to the colonial era. Some of the countries respresented were newly independent, others not yet quite so; but it was clear that the end of direct colonial rule was near, and this conference of African and Asian people met to ask, what sort of world would follow. We now call this, in an inaccurate Nothern-Hemisphere-centric worldview, the ‘Global South’… but here was born the ‘third world’ — “l’ensemble des peuples d’Asie et d’Afrique qui n’appart[ien]t ni a la « noblesse » europeenne ni au « clerge » americain” (all the peoples of Africa and Asia who belong neither to the European aristocracy nor to the American clergy) — beautiful! The term was thus a direct extrapolation from the ‘Third Estate’ of the French Revolution, and had not acquired its current distorted meaning of distended bellies, child soldiers, and retired dictators living in splendid majesty in the homes of their former paymasters in Hawaii or on the Riviera.

It is hard to recall, or imagine now, the intense interest worldwide provoked by the Bandung Conference. The Third World, it appeared, would align neither with anti-communist Washington, nor with “really existing socialist” Moscow; new ideas of equity and governance would emerge from Bandung, and reverberate beyond the South. Nehru was there, and Sukarno; independence movements from North Africa came, Algeria’s FLN and Tunisia’s Istiqlal; Pham Van Dong jostled shoulders with Nasser. A brilliant article in the <i>Monde Diplomatique</i> [April 2005: English version not online] evokes the Bandung moment on its 50th anniversary, and the reactions in the Northern press, labour, academic, and mainstream. A world exhausted by war and its aftermath, and living in nuclear dread as the bipolar world took shape, confronted its own intellectual fatigue and looked southward for a fresh start.


Chou en-Lai and Nehru chat at Bandung

Bandung now is nothing but a memory of a failed spring, and the very idea that we would ask the global south for ideas on how to tackle our most intractable problems seems quaint. Empires have given way to Empire, and it alone controls the means of production of meaning. A superclass decides what humanity’s most pressing challenges are, and how to meet them. “World opinion,” such as is transmitted in the information sphere owned by that same superclass, rarely emerges from beyond the ramparts. To the extent that they are to be heard, those outside must find a patron on the inside — as in the days when royalty would emerge from the castle gates and walk, heavily guarded, among the people for a day as perspiring masses would throw chits at their feet, and a passing queen would pick up this one or that, read a plea for justice, and with a wave of a gloved hand, make it so. Today’s equivalent is Davos, the high-class Swiss resort town that hosts the annual shindig of the self-styled World Economic Forum — the must-have invitation of the year for members of the global power elite. Proclamations of the rulers emerge from its tea-parties, and the world’s press dutifully pores over the tea-leaves for clues to the next year’s doings. If Sharon Stone pledges $10,000 to buy mosquito nets for Africa and challenges equally wealthy conference goers to do the same, it makes global headlines. If Bandung was the birthplace of the Third World, Davos was where the rock star Bono was anointed as its champion.

Global climate change is an issue that has hovered on the edges of the world’s consciousness for many years now. Island nations have been for a long time now warning of the risk they face from rising sea levels; stark pictures of receding glaciers remind us that large populations depend upon snowpack melt for their fresh water; large chunks of Antarctic and Greenland ice fall into the sea; the Northwest Passage is open for shipping, raising a fine point of international law: is formerly sovereign Canadian land which has now become sea international waters, or do the borders stay the same? These stories have been with us for at least a few decades now: the IPCC reports are issued every six years, and the 2007 report was the fourth. As the science became clearer over time, the press continued to frame it as a controversy. (There were some who stridently rejected the science: but the fact of the matter is that not everyone who opposes a majority scientific opinion is a Galileo. Most people who challenge widely accepted science are either wrong, cranks, or paid to hold a contrary opinion.) Climate scientists were publicly accused of many things, of being apparatchiks, hewers to a party line, stoners of witches, crooks. Channel Four of Bandung File fame showed how completely it had shed its Bandung skin to emerge in fresh Davos scales, by running a scurrilous “expose” called “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, complete with cleverly edited quotes-out-of-context to make some talking heads seem to be saying the opposite of what they really meant.

Taken aback by having science vetted in the mass media, and not by peer review, many scientists waded into the arena of public communication of a kind where they had little experience, and the tools of their trade had little traction. Science is inherently based on uncertainty, qualified assertions, frequent making and unmaking of claims: picture an edifice being built by dozens of masons with their own bricks and mortar, coming at it from all sides, uncoordinated, feverishly slapping on cement, removing bricks already in place to replace them with others with a slightly better fit, until slowly a structure reveals itself. That’s how it works, ‘consensus’ is something that may emerge, but is never explicitly sought. But it’s not how you make the world pay attention. So the IPCC process was born — an explicit attempt to come up with statements that scientists could stand by and policy-makers could live with. Many of my friends and colleagues who have participated in their marathon wordsmithing sessions confess to having lived through something quite unique and previously unknown to them, and have come away with an increased understanding and respect for nuances of language and tone.

What changed in 2007, that now even the NYT fashion pages carry stories on global warming? (Never mind floods, plagues, storms and droughts… what about them cashmere sweaters???) The Oslo Nobel committee says it all. It’s not just the IPCC, but the IPCC and Al Gore. (Very tellingly, most of the mainstream press changed the order from the award, to “Al Gore and the IPCC”.)

Al Gore is the very personification of the Davos man. From the palace a figure has emerged, able to hear the pleas coming from the Maldives barely rising above sea level and from the permafrost villages of the Inuit sinking in the mud. He masters the science and brings it to the multiplex. President-elect for some hours or days, Oscar winner, and now a Nobel laureate. No wonder the “debate is finally over” and global warming is now accepted. Except of course, that’s still not how science works: those subordinate clauses are still there on the results. The facts of human-caused global warming themselves are beyond reasonable (though not unreasonable) dispute, but there is residual uncertainty about local and regional effects and causes, and the consequences of any particular large-scale policy responses.

Not only is the science now deemed settled, but that set of technical and policy responses is also now fast gaining acceptance. A story about a scientific controversy has now changed into one where the white-coated scientist, against long odds, has finally isolated the serum that will save the remote village from the mysterious disease that has laid it low, and now our heroes are in a desperate race against time to save the dying villagers. That, at least, seems to be the message of this week’s CNN special (which I confess I haven’t seen, but for which I had glossy promotional material delivered in my mailbox). Many of the stories center on remote places dealing with environmental catastrophes of various kinds, which are explained by metropolitan scientists, along with proposed solutions. Sanjay Gupta, part of CNN’s team, makes it very explicit on his blog that noone, including the victims of climate change, are expecting anything less: the lead quote, from a Chadian fisherman on the shores of that disappearing lake, has it that “the white man will brings us water. Only, the white man has power.” Is global warming then the white man’s burden this century? Sure enough, many of the solutions currently being touted, involve exotic new technologies, advanced ‘green’ materials, planetary-scale geo-engineering, and the like, which only the advanced industrial nations could possibly provide.

The world of the Bandung conference is quite remote now, and Bandung itself a victim of climate change. Yet it’s possible to imagine that Davos does not have a monopoly on ideas, and perhaps we should acknowledge that we don’t fully understand what’s happening to the planet, and perhaps there are people outside the fortress walls who might have something to say. After all there are places which have achieved literacy/fertility/longevity statistics comparable to the North on 1/70 the per capita energy consumption; places that have health indices comparable to the North on 1/100 the health spending, places that have a revolution and then offer the ousted oppressors truth and reconciliation, not revenge. Why not look outside the palace walls for answers on climate change?

At first glance, there is not much reason for hope. The leaders of the erstwhile Third World now jostle for seats at the Davos banquet. Stalwarts of the traditional left have delivered embarrassingly ignorant attacks on the science itself, rather than on how the facts and choices are being framed. Even more disturbing, a recent survey shows that climate change is not even on the public radar in much of the global south. In this climate, where is there cause to talk about a new Bandung?

Yet, there are signs, here and there. The Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi has had an admirable history of reasoned and literate public advocacy that has been transformative in India, forcing, or shaming, India’s judiciary into taking action on issues as diverse as pesticides in Pepsi and urban air pollution. (On the last, I can testify that between two visits, Delhi’s distinctive yellow-brown sky turned blue again!) Similar efforts are emerging in Brazil, such as the Social Movements Forum for Environment and Development. What distinguishes groups such as these is that they neither turn their backs on the science, nor do they frame their policy responses only as twiddling a few regulatory knobs, or as new business opportunities. Just browsing the titles of some of their policy documents — ‘Global Warming in an Unequal World’, ‘Global Environmental Governance’ — suggest that there is new thinking going on. Encouraging these voices — maybe even listening! — may be something to consider at a time that seems desperately short of new ideas.

Posted in Guest Columns, Situation Report | 48 Comments

Give Fareed Zakaria a Medal!

Posted on October 31, 2007 by Tony


Fareed Zakaria deserves a medal for breaking with the mainstream media pack to slap down, with the requisite rudeness, the hysteria over Iran being manufactured by the neocons, opportunist Israeli politicians and the Bush Administration. Perhaps stung by having participated in a secret Bush Administration policy discussion to help shape the Iraq war policy before the invasion, Zakaria is acting with honor now to prevent another disaster. This while much of the rest of the media is futzing around asking the wrong questions on Iran and getting the answers that only the wrong questions can produce. Exhibit A: The Washington Post editorial suggesting that the only “alternative” to harsh new sanctions that most of the international community opposes is war, and then scolding “those who say they oppose military action — including a couple of the second-tier Democratic presidential candidates — to portray the sanctions initiative as a buildup to war by Mr. Bush. We’ve seen no evidence that the president has decided on war, and it’s clear that many senior administration officials understand the package as the best way to avoid military action. It is not they but those who oppose tougher sanctions who make war with Iran more likely.”

If and when a war with Iran, with all its terrible consequences that leaves many thousands dead and the U.S. in an even weaker position than it is now, those looking for explanations will do well to remember how their media failed them — with some honorable exceptions. Of course, the hysteria is being fed by the fact that it’s an election season here, and a bunch of mediocre candidates is trying to outdo one another by talking tough on Iran, which, as CNN tells us, has become the new Iraq as far as the presidential campaign is concerned.

Of course the push for tougher sanctions shortens the distance to war, and make it more likely, for a simple reason: Those pushing for them see the sanctions as a “last hope” for something they curiously dub “diplomacy”, failing which force becomes the “only alternative.” But there won’t be tougher sanctions, and not because of the commercial interests of those like Russia and China that oppose them. The reason there won’t be tougher sanctions is that most of the international community recognizes two things: The balance of power in the region is such that Iran is unlikely to respond to pressure and ultimatums over its nuclear program (nor, for that matter, is it likely to be deterred by air strikes, for which it will surely retaliate and extract a heavy price from the U.S. and its allies). Second, and, even more important, most of the international community rejects the very premise that Iran’s nuclear program represents an imminent threat that can only be dealt with by tougher sanctions or military action.

It is, frankly, shocking, that the media allows to pass largely unchallenged remarks such as the one by Condoleezza Rice when announcing new sanctions on Iran, that “Unfortunately the Iranian government continues to spurn our offer of open negotiations, instead threatening peace and security by pursuing nuclear technologies that can lead to a nuclear weapon, building dangerous ballistic missiles, supporting Shia militants in Iraq and terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, and denying the existence of a fellow member of the United Nations, threatening to wipe Israeli off the map.” Offer of open negotiations? The Bush Administration has made no such offer; it is the Iranians who have offered unconditional negotiations with the U.S. (in 2003), only to be given the brush-off by a Bush Administration drunk on its misperception of success in Iraq. Today the Administration offers talks with Iran, but only if Iran first heeds the U.S. demand that it end its uranium enrichment activities.

That’s not diplomacy. In fact, listening to Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail, you get this bizarre definition of “diplomacy,” which she uses interchangeably with sanctions. If you pursue sanctions, you’re pursuing diplomacy, according to Hillary, not war. But sanctions are not diplomacy, they’re simply a non-violent form of punitive action. Diplomacy involves talking the other side about the most vexed and divisive issues. Any grownup can see that such a conversation — which has not happened, nor has the Administration shown any inclination to make it happen — would be the very foundation of a diplomatic solution. (But, of course, by “diplomatic solution” Bush simply means that the Iranians surrender without him having to fire a shot.)

Zakaria has distinguished himself by taking this fight into the mainstream media, with a passion and righteous indignation all too rare in its columns and broadcasts.

Whereas the mainstream media appears to have taken as read largely unsubstantiated claims about Iran’s nuclear program representing an existential threat to Israel and others, and similarly unsubstantiated claims about Iran’s role in Iraq (which has lately become the Bush Administration’s fallacy d’jour in explaining its failures there), more sober heads begin the discussion by asking whether Iran’s nuclear program actually represent a threat, and if so, is it a threat of sufficient magnitude to justify the risk of potentially catastrophic consequences that military action would carry. And if not, are there options besides war and sanctions for responding to Iran’s undoubted growth as a regional power in the wake of — and as a result of — the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, has acknowledged behind closed doors that even if Iran had nuclear weapons, they would not, repeat NOT, pose an existential threat to Israel. Other top Israeli security officials have said the same thing. Yet Bush and the neocons are left unchallenged when they spin this line.

In an outstanding column in Newsweek two weeks ago, Zakaria did what few mainstream media figures are prepared to do when the President glibly tells Americans that the sky will fall unless they do his bidding — eschewing the deference that so often characterizes the media corps’ approach to the Bush Administration, Zakaria leaves his readers in no doubt that he thinks the President of the United States is a bullshitter, and a dangerous one at that. To quote:

At a meeting with reporters last week, President Bush said that “if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” These were not the barbs of some neoconservative crank or sidelined politician looking for publicity. This was the president of the United States, invoking the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism.” For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

Amen to that. The “knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon” in this instance is the technology of uranium enrichment, which is also an integral part of a full-cycle civilian nuclear energy program. And that’s what Iran is accused of building, which of course, it claims is its right as a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty. Tehran insists it has no intention of building nuclear weapons, and the IAEA has repeatedly made clear that it has seen no evidence that Iran’s program is intended for weaponization. (The issue between the IAEA, and then the UN Security Council, and Iran is its failure to comply properly with transparency requirements over its past activities. Although the Security Council has demanded that Iran cease uranium enrichment until those concerns are resolved, it has not demanded that Iran abandon its right to enrich uranium, because that would contradict the NPT.) So the issue, really, is that the U.S. and its allies don’t trust Iran enough to allow it a full-cycle nuclear energy program, because this gives it the potential to build nuclear weapons if it opted out of the NPT. In its own negotiating efforts via the Europeans, Tehran has previously sought to find a formula under which it would abrogate its right to opt out of the NPT, although those negotiations are going nowhere right now.

Still, assume for a moment Iran did actually use its nuclear energy infrastructure to build a weapon — which it could potentially do, although it would probably take more than five years from now — even then, is Iran really a doomsday threat?

Zakaria has systematically demolished the claims by the war lobby that Iran is beyond negotiation and deterrence, because it is somehow driven by nutty apocalyptic religious zeal, and pointed out that it is the U.S. that has actually refused to negotiate when the Iranians have made decent offers. He writes:

The one time we seriously negotiated with Tehran was in the closing days of the war in Afghanistan, in order to create a new political order in the country. Bush’s representative to the Bonn conference, James Dobbins, says that “the Iranians were very professional, straightforward, reliable and helpful. They were also critical to our success. They persuaded the Northern Alliance to make the final concessions that we asked for.” Dobbins says the Iranians made overtures to have better relations with the United States through him and others in 2001 and later, but got no reply. Even after the Axis of Evil speech, he recalls, they offered to cooperate in Afghanistan. Dobbins took the proposal to a principals meeting in Washington only to have it met with dead silence. The then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he says, “looked down and rustled his papers.” No reply was ever sent back to the Iranians. Why bother? They’re mad.

Last year, the Princeton scholar, Bernard Lewis, a close adviser to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal predicting that on Aug. 22, 2006, President Ahmadinejad was going to end the world. The date, he explained, “is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the Prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to ‘the farthest mosque,’ usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back. This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world” (my emphasis). This would all be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.

Actually, it did get pretty funny when the PBS Newshour put Zakaria on in a live debate with the ideologically incontinent Norman Podhoretz, dean of neoconservatism and a soothsayer that still gets invited to brief Bush and candidate Giuliani despite having been wrong, by Chicken Little proportions, about every “threat” on which he’s ever sounded his battered alarm bell. No need to quote more — you can read a transcript of the exchange here.

Any scientist will tell you that the answers you get in any inquiry are first and foremost shaped by the questions you ask — and in any process of peer review, it is as important to interrogate those questions, and the assumptions on which they rest, as to examine how the answers were derived. If the question is “how can we force Iran to stop enriching uranium,” the choice will inevitably be between harsher sanctions, and war. Neither is likely to succeed, of course, but those who pose the question in this way paint themselves into a corner where not taking military action is equivalent to tolerating the intolerable — a message driven home by the Podhoretzes and Gingriches and Netanyahus (now there’s a Halloween gallery for you!) braying about Hitler and Chamberlain and 1938 all over again…

What Zakaria is arguing, imminently reasonably, is that the Bush Administration managed to climb down off its hysterical perch on North Korea and cut a deal that has substantially diluted any danger represented by Pyongyang, by compromising on its (the Administration’s) own ideological aversion to recognizing the odious regime of Kim Jong-il. And the world — even Israel — would be a lot safer if the Administration would grow up and recognize that it has no alterantive but to seek a grand bargain with Iran.

And it’s the absence of real diplomacy by the Administration, not some false choice between sanctions or air strikes, that should be the focus of the media’s — and the Democratic presidential candidates’ — discussion of Iran.

Posted in Situation Report, Unholy War | 60 Comments

Jewish Glasnost Update: Zionist Panic!

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Tony


Is Israel’s top liberal daily a fifth column?

Apropos my earlier piece arguing that the ferocious backlash by the Zionist right against Jewish critics of Israel — also targeting as ‘anti-semitic’ those like Archbishop Desomand Tutu who seek to judge Israel by universal moral standards — is a sign of panic over losing their claim to a monopoly on representing Jews, evidence is growing that they are increasingly aware of their own predicament. One reader (thanks, Sasha!) pointed out this glum editorial by arch-Zionist and neocon Daniel Pipes, warning that even if it overcomes all the mortal threats that neocons like to see all around Israel, that won’t help it cope with what he calls Israel’s ultimate challenge — “a Jewish population increasingly disenchanted with, even embarrassed by, the country’s founding ideology, Zionism, the Jewish national movement.” (Actually, Daniel, I’d call it the Jewish nationalist movement, but let’s not quibble here.)

It’s worth quoting at lenght from Pipes’ piece:

“Worse for Israel, Jewish nationalism has lost the near-automatic support it once had among secular Jews, many of whom find this nineteenth-century ideology out of date. Some accept arguments that a Jewish state represents racism or ethnic supremacism, others find universalist and multi-cultural alternatives compelling. Consider some signs of the changes underway:

  • Young Israelis are avoiding the military in record numbers, with 26 percent of enlistment-age Jewish males and 43 percent of females not drafted in 2006. An alarmed Israel Defense Forces has requested legislation to deny state-provided benefits to Jewish Israelis who do not serve.
  • Israel’s Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has up-ended the work of the Jewish National Fund, one of the pioneer Zionist institutions (founded in 1901) by determining that its role of acquiring land specifically for Jews cannot continue in the future with state assistance.
  • Prominent Israeli historians focus on showing how Israel was conceived in sin and has been a force for evil. Israel’s ministry of education has approved school books for third-grade Arab students that present the creation of Israel in 1948 as a ‘catastrophe’ (Arabic: nakba).
  • Avraham Burg, scion of a leading Zionist household and himself a prominent Labor Party figure, has published a book comparing Israel with 1930s Germany.
  • A 2004 poll found only 17 percent of American Jews call themselves ‘Zionist.’

    • Noting that these trends simply put young Israelis and American Jews in line with international trends, the only consolation he offers is that things will hopefully get better for the Zionists a quarter century from now.

    Add to this the observations of Phil Weiss, whose blog is must-read for those seeking a smart and sober chronicling of the battle of ideas in today’s America, much of it focused on Jewish identity politics (although far from exclusively so).

    When he heard that the rightwing Zionist media watchdog organization CAMERA was organizing a summit on “Jewish Defamers of Israel,” he did what any good journalist should: He paid his $40 and attended the event. And what he found was a bunch of alte kakkers (he didn’t call them that, of course, simply noted that the average age appeared to be over 60) kvetching in communion with stalwarts of the Zionist right. He writes:

    The CAMERA people are losing and they know it. Near the end Cynthia Ozick was asked how we should go about delegitimizing the delegitimizers of the Jewish state and she sighed and said, “It’s hopeless.” Alvin Rosenfeld, the author of the disgraceful report on Jewish anti-Semitism put out by the American Jewish Committee, was mildly more optimistic. He said exactly what I say: “We are in a furious intellectual struggle. There is a war of ideas going on… it won’t end quickly…. It is steady work.” And it is “serious and worrisome” inasmuch as these ideas may now “enter the mainstream.” Amen.

    …The reason It’s hopeless for the other side is that there was, in the basement of the synagogue, little to zero acknowledgement of the three great realities that are feeding Jewish post-Zionism.

    1. the end of anti-Semitism. My old friend and I talked about a Jewish Daily News columnist who refused to hire Jews. That was 50 years ago. The injury is fresh. As the memories of anti-Semitism are for my parents. And they are virtually meaningless to young Americans. A panelist very briefly acknowledged this at the end, saying that Jews are so comfortable in America, how do we stir them?

    2. the Israeli occupation of Arab lands and Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians were at no time acknowledged, but endlessly rationalized. The separate roadway system for settlers and Palestinian Arabs–rationalized. The incursion into Jenin–whitewashed. And so on. This sort of denial went on in South Africa during the campaign against apartheid. Young people don’t feel quite so defiant.

    3. Not a word about Iraq. I have this feeling often in conservative Jewish gatherings. Iraq doesn’t touch them. It’s not a big deal to them, they are removed from it, they are for a hawkish policy in the Mideast and so they talk about Darfur/Sudan more than Baghdad.

    And then, to cap it all, in the continuing tradition of Nixonesque paranoia that has everyone from Jimmy Carter to Bishop Tutu being closet Jew-haters, the CAMERA people identify a new target requiring urgent pressure: No, not Iran, Haaretz! Turns out the Israeli liberal daily (which, BTW, still pursues what it calls a Zionist editorial line, albeit from the left) is the latest “threat” to Israel, because it tends to report the truth about Israeli actions. And what they’re most worried about is Haaretz’s excellent English-language web site. As Weiss reports:

    The heart of Levin’s concern was the American discourse. When Haaretz was just published in Israel, CAMERA didn’t care about its statements about the occupation and the destruction of Palestinian hopes and dreams and olive trees. “This all happened in Hebrew… causing little outward impact..”

    Outward impact. She means: now Haaretz is affecting U.S. opinion and foreign policy. The most important statement Levin made was that she gets the brushoff from Amos Schocken, the Haaretz publisher, but with the American media, “there is an unwritten contract between them and us.” (Verbatim transcript to come later, when I have a little time…) An unwritten contract: to be fair to Israel, to print CAMERA members’ letters, to pick up the phone.

    Isn’t that amazing and scandalous? Levin is explaining why there is a free debate in Israel and not here. Because of the lobby and its “unwritten contract.” Because U.S. support is crucial to Israel’s existence. And so Americans, who supposedly so love the Middle East democracy that they support it out of the goodness of their hearts, must not read the news from Israel.

    When the Zionist right in America “defends Israel” by going after one of Israel’s most respected newspapers which happens to tell the truth about the occupation and related matters, it’s not hard to see why Pipes & co. have little cause for optimism. The Zionist moment is over, because most Jews around the world (and even many in Israel) are not inclined to a nationalist view of their Jewishness. And remember, Zionism is not much more than 100 years old, arising along with the nationalist currents of late 19th century Europe that accompanied the breakup of the Hapsburg empire. It’s hardly surprising that in a 21st century where we have had a free choice, almost two thirds of us have chosen to live not in a “Jewish State” but wherever in the world we choose to. Many Israelis today are excercising the same choice. And Jews who are not prone to nationalism have no need to rationalize Israel’s abuses against others.

    Posted in Situation Report, Unholy War | 116 Comments

    Dual Power in Tehran?

    Posted on October 23, 2007 by Tony


    The resignation of Ali Larijani as Iran’s top nuclear negotiator — and his replacement as such by Ahmadinejad acolyate Saeed Jalili, who was 14 years old when the Shah fell in 1979, has limited experience and is reportedly prone to communicate via turgid lectures rather than discussion — has been widely interpreted as a victory for the president and a setback for more pragmatic elements. My previous post was guided by these assessments. But I couldn’t help thinking that reports of the escalating factional battle in Tehran over the past year or so, and the fact that a new president is to be elected there in 2009, might signal that something more complex underway. As Ali Ansari, who tracks developments closely, told the Christian Science Monitor, “Larijani was most obviously Khamenei’s man,” says Ansari. “There is something not right here, otherwise [Khamenei] would be in there to protect his man.”

    And by all accounts Larijani’s move has shocked Tehran’s political class, drawing a flurry of protest from the legislature (directed against Ahmadinejad) and of speculation as to his motives. As ever, the Tehran political scientist Kaveh L. Afrasiabi offered an intriguing explanation in Asia Times — one that reads the political significance of the change quite differently. He suggests that the move obviously reveals a state of open political warfare between the president and Larijani, but that Larijani continues to enjoy the confidence of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In fact, when nuclear talks with EU chief Javier Solana resume on Tuesday with Jalili in Larijani’s old role, Larijani will still be present, according to Iranian officials, “as the representative of the Supreme Leader of the Revolution.”

    If so, then far from throwing his weight behind Ahmadinejad, the Supreme Leader may instead be empowering the opponents of the president who are making clear that they can’t work under him. Ahmadinejad was reportedly enraged that President Vladimir Putin presented Russia’s new offer not only to the president, but also went over his head and presented it directly to Supreme Leader Khamenei. (Ahmadinejad has since denied that an offer was made, which seems a little ridiculous since not only Larijani, but the Supreme Leader himself had acknowledged that Russia had indeed made a proposal which Iran would study and respond to.)

    Afrasiabi sees the developments as signaling a widening split over handling the nuclear issue: “Various commentators, especially in Europe and the United States, have been quick in interpreting Larijani’s resignation as a ‘bad omen’ reflecting a triumph for hardliners led by Ahmadinejad,” he writes. “But that is simplistic and ignores a more complex reality in the Iran’s state affairs. The quest for greater centralization of nuclear decision-making has met a contradictory response in, on the one hand, the move for more direct input by Khamenei, and, on the other hand, a parallel effort by Ahmadinejad to gain greater control of decision-making.”

    The problem, of course, as Afrasiabi notes, is that even if Larijani enjoys the confidence of the Supreme Leaders and the legislature, that fact that he’s no longer the sole voice negotiating with the West creates an untenable situation. If Iran is sending mixed messages across the negotiating table, the likelihood of paralysis grows. And with it, the danger of war. Curiously enough, after meeting Putin, Khamenei reportedly convened the country’s top leadership and warned them that an attack by the U.S. was a possiblity that should be taken very seriously. Acknowledgement of this danger is exceedingly important, of course, but to the extent that Iran’s factional power struggle is fought out over the handling of the nuclear issue, it plays into the hands of the most hard-element in Washington that is desperately pushing for war.

    If, indeed, the picture painted by Afrasiabi of the Supreme Leader continuing to prefer a pragmatic line is correct, it may not be enough to send his own representative (Larijani) to negotiate with the West alongside the representative of President Ahmadinejad; he would need to send his representative to negotiate instead of Ahmadinejad’s man.

    Posted in Situation Report, Unholy War | 10 Comments

    Bob Dylan and Ayatollah Khamenei

    Posted on October 21, 2007 by Tony

    In Bob Dylan’s 1963 song “Talking World War III Blues,” he dreams of being the last person alive after a nuclear apocalypse, then discovers that his shrink has been having the same dream, and so has most everyone else. Dylan concludes with a solution: “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.” If we are to avoid a catastrophe in the Middle East and beyond, it may be of supreme importance that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, be introduced to the dreams of his adversaries. For it is in the fevers of President Bush — and much of the leadership on both sides of the aisle in Washington — as well as those of most of the Israeli political spectrum that the danger of war is most vivid.

    Of course, I’d be the first to insist that the converse is true, too — that if Bush and company were to properly understand the anxieties and ambitions of the Iranian leadership, the world would be a lot less dangerous than it is right now. But the track record alone should be sufficient evidence of the fact that if we’re depending on the ability of the current U.S. leadership to reason, empathize and understand the world as it appears from the perspective of his adversaries, we are in deep, deep trouble. As the ever-excellent Israeli analyst Daniel Levy suggests, it is vital for Israel, more than anyone else, to urge the U.S. leadership to engage in comprehensive talks with Iran aimed at finding a modus vivendi to avoid war. But none of us is holding our breath for an Israeli (or American) epiphany. After all, as Aluf Benn points out, in Israel it simply isn’t kosher to suggest that Iran is anything less than an immediate threat to Israel’s very existence. “Anyone who thinks otherwise does not dare speak out openly, at least not until it emerges that either there is a way to stop the Iranians, or that it is already too late.” (That’s not strictly true, of course: Former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami recently argued that instead of a confrontational path, Israel should seek a grand bargain of coexistence with Iran. And just last week, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy said bluntly that Iran is a substantive but not an existential threat to Israel, also urging direct diplomacy. Still, following Benn, it is safe to say that these grownup views are hardly the political consensus.)

    In short, if we are reliant on the ability of the current U.S. and Israeli leadership to reason not with the empathy of the Dalai Lama, but even, say, according to the ruthless Machiavellian pragmatics of the Kissinger school, then many thousands of Iranians, Americans and Israelis face the prospect of a violent death in the not too distant future.

    And the truly scary thing is that the Iranians appear to be banking on Washington making rational calculations. I’m not yet sure what to make of the resignation of Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, on the eve of new talks with Europe, but most of the reporting I’m seeing suggests it is a sign that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is leaning more towards the confrontational positions of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than toward the more pragmatic positions of others like Larijani, who question the cost of pursuing confrontation in order to maintain uranium enrichment. There have certainly been many reports in recent weeks of rising tension within the regime in Tehran over how to handle the nuclear standoff. I’ll reserve judgement on the meaning of Larijani’s move until I can gather some expert opinion.

    But I did find particularly disturbing the sense of the thinking in Tehran conveyed by the L.A. Times piece on Larijani’s resignation. Iranian analyst Saeed Leylaz told the paper that “Iran’s leadership, watching oil hover near $90 a barrel, thought it had little to lose by taking a tough stance, convinced that the U.S. wouldn’t dare launch a military attack against Iran and risk sending the world economy into a recession. ‘Whether that is right or wrong it does not matter,’ Leylaz said. ‘That is how the Islamic Republic of Iran perceives the situation.’ ”

    Oy. If these guys are thinking that the U.S. decisions are going to be made on the basis of what’s best for the world economy or avoiding a recession, we’re in serious trouble. I can understand exactly why the leadership in Tehran might find it difficult to believe that its counterparts in the world’s hyper-power, or, for that matter, in Israel, with its 200 or so nuclear warheads and its second-strike submarine launched cruise missile capability, and probably the world’s fourth or fifth best-equipped conventional military, would see Iran as a threat. Bush last week, with that trademark idiot-bully grin of his, was tossing around bon mots about World War III, claiming that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons in order to eliminate Israel. The fact that more sober heads in Washington and Israel pooh-pooh such hysteria may not matter when the decisions are taken: In Israel and the U.S., the political echelon is talking itself into a lather of hysteria which may, in itself, narrow their options for avoiding confrontation.

    Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the situation as it perceives them, under the circumstances responsible leadership in Tehran has an obligation to understand the thinking of those who might launch military strikes on their territory. And to understand, also, that in President Bush’s fevered imagination, causing a recession (that may already be in the works regardless of the state of conflict with Iran) may be an acceptable price to pay for stopping what he perceives as an epoch-defining power-shift as a result of Iran attaining the ability to enrich uranium. Deranged as that reasoning may be, it may yet drive the U.S. to war. More rational voices may nonetheless prevail, of course, particularly those of the U.S. military all the way up to the Joint Chiefs (with the exception of General David Petraeus in Iraq, who appears to have been entirely conscripted by the neocon party of war), who correctly see war as more dangerous than even a nuclear-armed Iran. But the voices of rationality and restraint on the U.S. side will not be helped by Iran appearing to harden its position.

    It’s high time the leaders on both sides got more acquainted with one another’s thinking, even followed Bob Dylan’s advice of dreaming more inclusive dreams.

    Posted in Situation Report, Unholy War | 43 Comments

    Rice-Olmert-Abbas: End of the Affair

    Posted on October 16, 2007 by Tony

    A few months ago I noted that the Bush Administration’s claims to be pursuing a Middle East peace process was equivalent to The Emperor’s New Clothes fairy tale except for one important detail: “In the fairy tale, the emperor’s courtiers are careful never to let on that they can see their monarch’s nakedness; in the case of U.S. Middle East policy, there is what playwright Bertolt Brecht might have called
    an epic gap between some of the actors and their lines. Plainly, very few of them believe the things that the script requires them to say. In this absurdist take on the old fairytale, whenever anyone points out that the emperor has no clothes, they are simply told ‘duh!’ before the players get back acting as if it’s fashion week in the
    palace.”

    None of that has changed, of course, but now Bush has gone and spoiled it by declaring his intention to host a Grand Ball in Annapolis this coming November, at which he’s expecting Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his pet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, as well as the Arab regimes most dependent on Washington not only to show up and dance under ministrations of his naked eminence, but also to strip down to their own birthday suits. And it is in prospect of this grotesque spectacle that the illusion begins to break down: Pretending that Bush is fully clothed and serious about Middle East peace as he scoots naked around the White House is one thing; the pretense of sartorial substance cannot be sustained at the naked grand ball that Condi Rice is currently organizing — Condi’s apparently bottomless capacity for self-delusion notwithstanding. (In Russia last week she was shocked and offended at the suggestion by a liberal anti-Putin dissident that the U.S. had lost the moral high ground — no we haven’t, she insisted…)

    Earlier this year, motivated more by its designs on aggression against Iran than anything else, the Administration appeared to convince itself — and no one but itself — that Hamas’s ejection of Fatah security forces from Gaza earlier this year created an “opportunity” for a process that would achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians at the same time as isolating the likes of Hamas, Hizballah, Syria and Iran.

    So Rice began forcing a Palestinian leader representative of only a minority of Palestinians to begin holding weekly meetings with an Israeli prime minister who enjoys the approval of no more than one in five Israelis, to build “confidence” in each other’s ability to make peace. Olmert and Abbas, each politically dependent on his relationship with the U.S., had no choice but to go through the motions. At the same time, the U.S. worked to convince Arab regimes that their support was needed for these parties to make a deal, at a peace conference originally intended to be held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in September, then moved back to November in Annapolis, and now, we are told, likely to be delayed still further until the Israelis and Palestinians can agree on a joint statement. That may not happen, of course, and so, too, any meaningful peace conference.

    The expectation that President Bush’s planned November Middle East peace conference will fail is so widespread on all sides of the divide that it might be deemed conventional wisdom. Neither the Israelis, nor the Palestinians and other Arabs, nor most longtime Middle East hands in Washington and other capitals are expecting the Annapolis event, as conceived by the Bush Administration, to produce much of value; instead, their shared concern is largely to head off the very real possibility that its failure actually makes the situation in the Middle East a lot worse, by cutting the already slender ground out from under Palestinian and Arab moderates. Right now, the likes of Abbas represent a minority view even in Fatah when they continue to assume that a U.S.-led diplomatic process can bring a fair and credible solution to this most toxic of conflicts.

    The reasons why failure is expected is not hard to see: Seven years after the collapse of Camp David, the Palestinian leadership, now considerably weakened, to whom the U.S. is talking has not substantially altered its negotiating position; its bottom-lines remain broadly similar. But the Israeli political consensus has moved way to the right. Olmert is weak and dependent on allies to the right of him, some of whom openly advocate ethnic cleansing of the remaining Arab population of Israel. (Avigdor Lieberman warned that no peace will be possible without the “transfer” of 1 million Arabs out of Israel. And such casually racist extremism is not from some fringe element; Lieberman is Olmert’s minister of Strategic Affairs). Even Olmert’s dovish credentials are questionable; he was the sidekick of Ariel Sharon in the latter’s ferocious resistance to the Oslo peace process; like Sharon he comes from the party of the settlements, and he has continued Israel’s systematic expansion of its colonization of the West Bank.

    Not surprising, then, that Abbas and Olmert want different things from Annapolis: Abbas needs his persistence with diplomacy to be vindicated by rapid movement towards a two-state solution based on Israel’s 1967 borders, with Jerusalem the shared capital and some form of recognition of the rights of Palestinian refugees. Anything less would mark him as nothing more than a Palestinian Petain, a Palestinian face on the occupation. But Olmert wants the traditional Sharon recipe of a process without end, a general statement of feel-good principles of coexistence, perhaps a campfire singing of the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t it be Nice” over cocoa and smores, and a pledge to return next year for more of the same. No specifics, no maps, no timetables. Nothing, in other words, that would allow Abbas and the Arab regimes to justify their participation.

    So, even before they get to such fundamental questions as whether a regionally-backed peace process is possible without participation by Hamas, Syria and even Iran, the basic problem is that the Annapolis invitation makes clear the massive gulf even between Bush’s anointed peacemakers, Abbas and Olmert, over what would define an acceptable outcome of a peace process, and the steps required to get there.

    But the deeper problem may not be Olmert or Abbas, but the Bush Administration itself, which, ever since taking office, has not only consciously avoided its diplomatic responsibility to press the parties towards a peace agreement, but has consistently embraced the positions of the Israeli right, to the absurd extent that Bush provided Sharon with a formal letter upholding Israel’s right to maintain its major settlement blocs in the West Bank, contradicting not only international law in the form of UN Security Council Resolution 242, but also four decades of U.S. foreign policy that (correctly) deemed those settlements illegal, and an obstacle to peace.

    Indeed, by routinely eschewing the very principle of putting any pressure on Israel to do anything Israel doesn’t want to do, the Bush Administration has essentially made itself an agent of the status quo rather than an agent of peace. Instead, Rice offers the fatuous insistence that the peace process is ultimately a bilateral issue between Israel and the Palestinians, and it must be defined by this “bilateral track.”

    That, in itself, is a recipe for failure, for a number of reasons::

  • The Palestinians have very little leverage over Israel, whose military power ranks it among the world’s top five armies, and whose advanced economy and way of life is not substantially impeded by the conflict with the Palestinians. Palestinian suicide bombers managed to disrupt Israeli life for a brief period, and the Kassam rockets fired wildly into Israel from Gaza have made life hell for the residents of a marginal Israeli town in the Negev desert. But even then, by and large, on the current terms of conflict, the Palestinians are unable to muster a strategic threat to Israel. The corollary, of course, is that despite its increasingly vicious collective punishments and its ongoing repression, Israel has not managed to bend the Palestinians to their will. But…
  • … Israel can live [EM] quite prosperously, actually [EM] with the status quo, even if the Palestinians can’t and won’t. If the talks fail, Israeli politics will continue as usual. Palestinian politics, however, will see an acceleration of the collapse of the “moderates” represented by President Mahmoud Abbas, who will once again have been shown to have achieved nothing concrete for the Palestinians in more than 15 years of formal negotiations under Washington’s aegis.
  • Both Olmert and Abbas are weak, but for each, the talks have a different meaning. If the talks fail to produce anything substantial, Olmert’s position is not weakened. His major challenge, besides holding his coalition together, is from the Likud opposition of Benjamin Netanyahu. For Abbas, failure of the talks will be politically devastating; yet the basis of success resides in steps the Israelis are unwilling to take.

    Quite simply, left to their own devices, the two sides won’t agree on peace terms. Unless Washington is willing to dictate terms, in line with international law, telling the Israelis and Palestinians where the borders between them are to be drawn based on UN Resolutions (and crafting a consensus behind new ones to give the peace terms the force of international law), it is doing more damage than good through its peace masquerade.

    The Bush Administration has no intention of doing that, of course. Essentially, it has nothing to offer the very “moderates” it ostensibly backs. Annapolis, if it goes ahead, may simply turn out to be a wake, marking the closure of the era of Pax Americana as the basis of resolving Middle Eastern conflicts.

    • Posted in Situation Report, Unholy War | 36 Comments

    Can Al Gore’s Vision Avert a Climate-Change Catastrophe?

    Posted on October 13, 2007 by Tony


    The Nobel Peace Prize award to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change left me a little uncomfortable. I have no problem with the IPCC, obviously, but singling out Gore seemed a little too Hollywood to me. I may well be naive, but I have a hard time buying the idea of Al Gore as the harbinger or champion of an alternative way of organizing our society so as to minimize its toxic impact on the environment. So I approached an environmentalist I know has little time for Gore’s vision for comment. My friend Joel Kovel, most recently author of Overcoming Zionism, is a SUNY professor of psychiatry and a Green Party activist who ran against Hillary Clinton for the Senate. He has set out a more systematic critique of Gore’s vision in a documentary titled A Really Inconvenient Truth. Essentially, he’s arguing that Gore represents the same corporate-driven politics that created the problem in the first place — despite having Gore as its environmental point man, the Clinton Administration’s tenure saw a massive spike in U.S. carbon gas outputs. So read and discuss among yourselves. Next week, on the same topic, we’ll hear from another frequent Rootless Cosmopolitan correspondent, the scientist V. Balaji, on how the perspectives of the developing world are overlooked and ignored in much of the discussion over climate change remedies, and what the global south has to say about how to fix the problem

    Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize: A Comment

    By Joel Kovel

    While the Nobel Peace Prize given to Al Gore (and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) does not sink to the same depths of moral squalor as, for example, that awarded to Henry Kissinger, it nonetheless belongs in the same category, as a prize given by the establishment to itself in proof that The System Works. In truth, Gore’s achievement has been no more then a
    first step, and its sole virtue is to raise the level of awareness about an impending disaster. The problem, however, is that the step he proposes is taken in the wrong direction. If we do not appreciate this–and people are less likely to do so to the degree that the former Vice President is elevated to heroic status–then whatever good Gore has done will be nullified.

    The wrong direction is this: that Gore proposes moral uplift and technological fixes to bring down the carbon load on the atmosphere, and in so doing, deliberately ignores the real causes of climate change in the workings of our capitalist industrial system and the society it serves. There is of course no mystery as to why he would do so: Al Gore is and has
    been a proven and well-rewarded servant of that system; indeed, as Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001 he presided over the greatest increase of carbon emissions in the history of the world and did absolutely nothing effective to check them. Nor has he shown any awareness since of learning from the experience. Gore is simply an untrustworthy guide to getting beyond the crisis he has played so substantial a role in causing; and the best award he could be given would be rejection of the path he now proposes. At least then we would have a chance of still having a civilization to commemorate his worthy warning.

    Posted in Guest Columns, Situation Report | 40 Comments

    Iran, the Inflatable Bogey

    Posted on October 9, 2007 by Tony

    I’m delighted and honored to welcome Dr. Trita Parsi as a guest columnist at Rootless Cosmopolitan. Following the escalating tension between Iran and the West over the past two years, I’ve found Trita to be a singular voice of sanity in the proverbial world gone mad. As both a scholar and as president of the National Iranian-American Council, he has dedicated himself to promoting dialogue and peace, and he had a particularly important role in bringing to light the 2003 proposal sent from the leadership in Tehran to the Bush Administration, offering a grand bargain in which Iran would address all U.S. concerns — a proposal that was sharply rebuffed by the Bush Administration, under the sway of neocons determined to prevent any rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran.

    Trita’s new book Treacherous Alliance – the Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States, (Yale University Press, 2007) is an absolute must-read, precisely because it cuts so decisively through the rhetoric and obfuscation that fills media coverage of the issue, and makes clear that the relationship is managed on an unsentimental, national-interests basis by all sides.

    The tributes alone tell you this is an important book, welcomed by such diverse players as former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami, John Mearshimer (as in Mearsheimer and Walt, whose Israel lobby book quotes extensively from Trita’s work), Francis Fukuyama and Zbigniew Brezinski. In other words, it could just as easily have been subtitled “A grownup guide to the Iran-Israel-U.S. relationship.” Trita interviewed 130 key players in the strategic decision-making echelon in Iran, Israel and the U.S. — a unique achievement in itself — to produce a fascinating account of the sober national-interest considerations that have driven, and continue to drive both the alliances and the tensions between those three.

    To anyone following the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, it ought to have been very clear that Israel was not unduly worried about Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary Iran being a “new Nazi Germany,” as today’s rhetoric would have it — after all, Israel was actually delivering weapons to Iran on behalf of the Reagan Administration. The fact that today, these two countries that share a strategic rivalry with the Arab world are, rhetorically at least, at one another’s throats is also based on each side’s reading of its strategic interest: Israel began talking up an Iran threat in the early ’90s in order to maintain its privileged position in U.S. national security policy in the wake of the Gulf War; Iran began championing the Palestinian cause, and Palestinian rejectionism, as a way of pressuring Arab governments to counter its potential isolation in the region during the post-Gulf War period.

    And as Trita explains here, Benjamin Netanyahu had a most unexpected take on the matter. Read on — it’s the first ever Rootless Cosmopolitan piece with footnotes! — and, more importantly, buy this book!

    Iran, the Inflatable Bogey

    By Dr. Trita Parsi

    Benjamin Netanyahu would like Americans and Israelis to believe that it’s 1938 all over again: Iran, he tells us, is Nazi Germany; President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Hitler. And, of course, that means that anyone who advocates diplomacy and engagement with Tehran is simply reprising the tragic appeasement politics of Neville Chamberlain, even as the clock ticks towards catastrophe.

    The 1938 analogy is entirely fallacious, but no less powerful because of it – by at once terrifying people and negating the alternatives to confrontation, it paints war as a necessary evil forced on the West by a foe as deranged and implacable as Hitler was.

    If Iran is, as Netanyahu and his allies in the U.S. suggest, irrationally aggressive, prone to a suicidal desire for apocalyptic confrontation, then both diplomacy and deterrence and containment are ruled out as policy options for Washington. The “Mad Mullahs,” as the neocons call them, are not capable of traditional balance of power realism. In the arguments of Netanyahu and such fellow travelers as Norman Podhortez and Newt Gingrich, to imagine that war against the regime in Tehran is avoidable is to be as naïve as Chamberlain was in 1938.

    However, as I discovered in the course of researching my book Treacherous Alliance – the Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States, not only does Netanyahu’s characterization of Iran have little relationship to reality; Netanyahu himself knows this better than most. Outside of the realm of cynical posturing by politicians, most Israeli strategists recognize that Iran represents a strategic challenge to the favorable balance of power enjoyed by Israel and the U.S. in the Middle East over the past 15 years, but it is no existential threat to the Israel, the U.S. or the Arab regimes.

    And that was the view embraced by the Likud leader himself during his last term as prime minister of Israel. In the course of dozens of interviews with key players in the Israeli strategic establishment, a fascinating picture emerged of Netanyahu strongly pushing back against the orthodoxy of his Labor Party predecessors, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, which treated Iran as one of Israel’s primary enemies. Not only that, he initiated an extensive discreet program of reaching out to the Islamic Republic.

    When he took office in June of 1996, the U.S.-educated Likud leader sought not only to undo the peace process with the PLO and the land-for-peace formula; he also sought a return to Israel’s longstanding strategic doctrine of the periphery – the idea that the Jewish State’s security was best achieved by forming secret or not-so-secret alliances with the non-Arab states in the periphery of the Middle East – primarily Turkey and Iran – in order to balance the Arabs in Israel’s vicinity.

    Such a shift required efforts to undo Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin’s rhetoric on Iran – deemed “exaggerated and self-defeating” by many in Israel at the time – as well as attempts to quietly reach out to Tehran. [1] Unlike his Labor predecessors, Netanyahu chose to follow the recommendations of an internal Israeli government report on how to address the Iranian challenge, which had concluded that Labor’s inflammatory rhetoric had only attracted Iran’s attention and strengthened Iran’s perception of an Israeli threat, which in turn had made Israel less rather than more secure. [2] (Even though Israeli intelligence discovered the existence of an Iranian missile program in late 1994, there was widespread recognition in Israel that Iran’s rearming, its missile program and even its potential nuclear program were not aimed at Israel.[3] )

    One of Netanyahu’s first orders of business as Prime Minister was to request an intelligence assessment of Israel’s security environment from both the Mossad and the military intelligence. The debate between these agencies was the same as in the 1980s – did Iran or Iraq constitute the greatest threat to Israel? And could Iran be relied upon to balance Iraq?

    The assessments were presented at a full cabinet meeting. Major General Amos Gilad represented the military and Uzi Arad, the Director of Intelligence of the Mossad, argued on behalf of the intelligence services. While the debate was heated and passionate – as all cabinet discussions were in the Netanyahu government – the outcome was unprecedented.

    Gilad argued that Iran had replaced Iraq as an existential threat to Israel. First, the Iranian regime was hostile to Israel and determined to destroy the Jewish State. Gilad dismissed the notion that moderates would get the upper hand in Iran and argued for the opposite scenario. “I presented a tough line that claimed that Iran would be dominated by the conservatives.… This was at the level of strategic intentions,” the Major General explained to me.

    Second, the Iranian capabilities had grown, particularly through Tehran’s missile program. Gilad asserted that the Iranians would have Israel within reach of their missiles by 1999. The third component was Iran’s nuclear development program. “Even one primitive device is enough to destroy Israel,” Gilad maintained. “Altogether, it seemed that ideologically and strategically, Iran [was] determined to destroy Israel,” Gilad concluded. [4]

    Arad presented a radically different perspective. He argued that Iran’s rearmament was defensive and primarily aimed at deterring Saddam Hussein. Iran needed to rearm due to the natural continuation of its enmity with the Arab states; after all, Iran and Iraq had yet to sign a conclusive peace treaty.

    Furthermore, Iran was in debt, the internal political situation was unstable, and oil prices were low. All of this reduced Iran’s ability to pose a threat, Arad argued, whereas Iraq – with its existing Scud missiles, of which 39 had been fired at Israel during the Persian Gulf War – was a proven danger. [5]
    In fact, the Arabs’ perception of Iran as a threat could give life to the periphery doctrine again, leading to an Israeli-Iranian re-alignment to counter the common Arab threat.

    The heart of Arad’s argument was that Israel had a choice: it could either make itself Iran’s prime enemy by continuing Peres and Rabin’s belligerent rhetoric, or it could ease off the pressure and allow the Iranians to feel a greater threat from other regional actors. (At the time, Iran had the hated Saddam regime to the West and a mortal enemy in the Taliban to the East, the latter together with Pakistan both being clients of the Saudi regime that had backed Saddam in his war against Iran.)

    “There are enough bad guys around them; we don’t have to single out ourselves as the enemy,” went Arad’s argument.[6] Israel should remain cautious and pursue a policy of wait and see whether Iran’s ambitions went beyond its legitimate defense needs. [7]
    Most importantly, Israel should avoid continuing the pattern of rhetorical escalation with Iran that had characterized the stance of the previous two Labor governments. “We needed to tone down,” said Shlomo Brom, who was a member of the original Iran committee. [8]

    Netanyahu listened carefully as the two sides fought it out. Gilad spoke with great confidence, knowing very well that no Prime Minister had ever dismissed the findings of the military’s National Intelligence Assessment. And with the Israeli tendency to embrace doomsday scenarios and treat nuanced and slightly optimistic assessments with great suspicion, the odds were on his side.

    But Netanyahu’s response left Gilad baffled. In an unprecedented move, the Prime Minister rejected the National Intelligence Assessment and instead adopted Arad’s recommendation of reducing tensions with Iran. [9] Much to Gilad’s frustration, Netanyahu focused on Arafat and the Palestinian threat instead of Iran and put a complete end to Israel’s confrontational rhetoric against Tehran. It was a major policy shift that affected all levels of Israel’s planning vis-à-vis Iran. “Until the Netanyahu government, there was a proliferation of Israeli statements trying to deter Iran, warning Iran, the long arm of the Israeli air force etc. That was stopped, to his credit, by Netanyahu,” Ehud Yaari of Israel’s Channel 2 explains. [10]

    Israeli media sympathetic to the Likud government’s shift on Iran argued that the previous Labor government was to blame for the escalation with Iran, citing the efforts of Uri Lubrani, Israel’s former head of mission to Iran during the 1970s, to convince the Clinton Administration to finance a coup d’état in Iran in the early 1990s. The publication of the Labor initiative had “caused huge damage to Israel,” unnamed Israeli intelligence officials told Israel’s Channel 2.

    The Netanyahu government viewed these statements as counterproductive and sought to avoid such entanglement with the Iranians. “He [Netanyahu] didn’t want to use rhetoric that would just antagonize them [the Iranians] for no reason,” Dore Gold, foreign policy advisor to Netanyahu and Israel’s UN Ambassador explains. [11]

    But Netanyahu went beyond just lowering the rhetoric. He tried to reach an understanding with Iran though the help of prominent Iranian Jews[12], he stopped Israeli attacks on Iran within international organizations[13]
    , he arranged for meetings between Iranian and Israeli representatives at European think tanks[14]
    , and he encouraged Israeli parliamentarians to reach out to their Iranian counterparts at meetings of the Inter-Parliamentarian Union. At one point, he even sought Kazakh and Russian mediation between Iran and Israel. In December 1996, Kazakhstan’soil minister, Nurlen Balgimbaev, who enjoyed excellent ties with Tehran, visited Israel for medical treatment and was approached about arranging a dialogue with Iran to discuss ways to reduce tensions between the two countries. [15]

    None of his efforts bore any fruit, though. Iran’s dismissal of Israel’s conciliatory signals convinced the Netanyahu government that just like in the Iran Contra affair, Tehran only wanted to mend fences with the U.S. and had no real interest in rebuilding its ties with Israel.

    Therein, of course, lay the real threat from Iran.

    The Israelis saw danger in a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington, believing this would inevitably see the U.S. sacrifice some of its support for Israel in order to find a larger accommodation with Iran, in pursuit of U.S. strategic interests in the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Iran would become emboldened and the U.S. would no longer seek to contain its growth. The balance of power would shift from Israel towards Iran and the Jewish State would no longer be able rely on Washington to control Tehran. “The Great Satan will make up with Iran and forget about Israel,” Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University in Israel noted. [16]
    Israel’s relative regional importance to the U.S. would decline with a warming of ties between Washington and Tehran.

    So, after nine months of courting Tehran, Netanyahu gave up and reverted back to the Peres-Rabin policy of vilifying Iran and seeking its international isolation.

    Today, Israel is facing a similar situation, but with one big difference. Iran is far more powerful than it was in 1996, while the power of the U.S. to impose its will in the Middle East has diminished considerably. The difficulties confronting the U.S. in Iraq and technological progress in Iran’s nuclear program may compel Washington to recognize that its best interests lie in a grand bargain with Tehran. But the general view in Israel today is the notion that such negotiations must be prevented, because all potential outcomes of a U.S.-Iran negotiation are perceived to be less optimal for Israel than the status quo of intense U.S.-Iran enmity that threatens to boil over into a military clash.

    It’s precisely to prevent such engagement between Washington and Tehran that Netanyahu and company are pressing the 1938 analogy.

    (In Treacherous Alliance, I explain how Israel’s fear of a U.S.-Iran dialogue is misplaced and that it actually is through a U.S.-Iran rapprochement that the Jewish state best can secure its interest and change Iran’s aggressive behavior towards Israel.)

    [1]
    Interview with Ehud Yaari, Jerusalem, October 24, 2004.

    [2]
    Interview with Ehud Yaari, Jerusalem, October 24, 2004.

    [3]
    Interview with Shmuel Limone, Ministry of Defense, Secretary of Israel’s Iran committee, Tel Aviv, October 18, 2004.

    [4]
    Interview with General Amos Gilad, Tel Aviv, October 31, 2004.

    [5]
    Interview with Dr. Shmuel Bar, Tel Aviv, October 18, 2004.

    [6]
    Interview with Dr. Efraim Inbar, the Begin-Sadat Center, Jerusalem, October 19, 2004.

    [7]
    Uzi Arad, “Russia and Iran’s Nuclear Program,” Jerusalem Issue Brief, Vol. 2, No. 26, April 28, 2003.

    [7]
    Interview with Dr. Shlomo Brom, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv, October 26, 2004.

    [9]
    Interview with Zeev Schiff, military correspondent, Haaretz, Tel Aviv, October 17, 2004.

    [10]
    Interview with Ehud Yaari, Jerusalem, October 24, 2004.

    [11]
    Interview with Dore Gold, Jerusalem, October 28, 2004.

    [12]
    Likud said to seek understanding with Iran, IRNA, July 24, 1996.

    [13]
    IDF Radio, November 10, 1996.

    [14]
    Xinhua, September 13, 1996.

    [15]
    Jerusalem Post, September 9, 1997.

    [16]
    Interview with Prof. Gerald Steinberg, Jerusalem, October 28, 2004

    Posted in Guest Columns, Shameless Cronyism, Situation Report | 87 Comments

    My Favorite ‘Anti-Semite’

    Posted on October 3, 2007 by Tony


    The utterly charming thing about the Zionist Thought Police is their apparent inability to restrain themselves, even from the very excesses that will prove to be their own undoing. Having asked sane and rational people to believe that Jimmy Carter is a Holocaust denier simply for pointing out the obvious about the apartheid regime Israel maintains in the occupied territories, the same crew now want us to believe that Archbishop Desmond Tutu is an anti-Semite. No jokes! That was the reason cited for Tutu being banned from speaking at St. Thomas University in Minneapolis. “We had heard some things he said that some people judged to be anti-Semitic and against Israeli policy,” explained university official Doug Hennes.

    The “anti-Semitic” views Tutu had expressed were in his April 2002 speech “Occupation is Oppression” in which he likened the occupation regime in the West Bank, based on his personal experience of it, to what he had experienced as a black person in South Africa. He recalled the role of Jews in South Africa in the struggle to end apartheid, and expressed his solidarity with us through our centuries of suffering. But then turning to the suffering inflicted on the Palestinians, he issued an important challenge, one that might just as well have been uttered by a Jewish biblical prophet:

    “My heart aches. I say, why are our memories so short? Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?

    “Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won’t let ambulances reach the injured.

    “The military action of recent days, I predict with certainty, will not provide the security and peace Israelis want; it will only intensify the hatred.

    “Israel has three options: revert to the previous stalemated situation; exterminate all Palestinians; or – and I hope this will be the road taken – to strive for peace based on justice, based on withdrawal from all the occupied territories, and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state on those territories side by side with Israel, both with secure borders.

    “We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world. South Africa is a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land.”

    Tutu is absolutely right, of course, nor would those Israelis who embody the same tradition of indivisible human rights that Tutu personifies disagree with him.

    Frankly, this case I think this case underlines precisely how absurd the policing of discussion about Israel in the U.S. has become. As a South African veteran of the liberation struggle, I can testify that there are few, if any, more decent, humane, courageous and morally unimpeachable individuals in the world than Bishop Tutu. Speaking truth to power is what he’s always done, both to the old regime in South Africa as much as to the new, when the latter has failed to live up to the standards it professes on AIDS, crime and other issues.
    He has spoken forcefully on human rights struggles around the world, and his statements about the West Bank are based on what he has seen there. The diminutive Bish is a moral giant of our times, and the fact that he is condemning Israel for maintaining an apartheid system on the West Bank should serve as a wake-up call to liberal Americans who prefer not to think about these things. Yes, of course Bishop Tutu makes people uncomfortable; that’s what he’s always done, like a good cleric, challenging his flock to consider their own actions and omissions against the morality they profess to embrace. Instead, thanks to the atmosphere created by the right-wing nationalists of AIPAC and the ADL etc., many mainstream institutions would now prefer to shoot the messenger, if only to avoid incurring the wrath of those who have stripped the very term “anti-Semitic” of its meaning (by using it as a bludgeon in defense of behavior utterly abhorrent in the Jewish tradition as much as anything else), and as such, commit a great crime against Jews and Judaism.

    Not that Tutu would have been surprised by this clumsy attack on him. As he said in that Boston speech,

    “But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the U.S.], and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic, as if the Palestinians were not Semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the apartheid government on security measures?

    “People are scared in this country [the U.S.] to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what? This is God’s world. For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosovic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.

    “Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: What is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.

    “We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to achieve this peace, because it is God’s dream, and you will be able to live amicably together as sisters and brothers.”

    Tutu is challenging American institutions to put morality above the power of a lobby. (Yes, I know he called it “the Jewish lobby” and I don’t think of it as that; I think of it as a rightwing Likudnik lobby open to right-wing jingoists of every religious and ethnic stripe who share the Likudnik vision, but then again, I can understand Tutu’s confusion here, because it’s not as if any mainstream Jewish institutions have stepped forward and said no, these people who would suppress honest discussion of Israel speak only for themselves, not for the Jews…)

    More power to him.

    Postscript: Seems that even the likes of the ADL realize that when they’re seen to be trying to gag someone like Bishop Tutu, they’re destroying their own credibility in the eyes of many Jews. Not least in response to the efforts of the good people of Muzzlewatch, it seems that the university has reversed itself and restored Tutu’s invitation, with the support of even the ADL.

    Posted in Situation Report, Unholy War | 95 Comments

    Israelis Fighting Israeli Apartheid

    Posted on October 2, 2007 by Tony

    I’ve never imagined a simple equation between the non-racial democracy for which we fought (and which we won) in South Africa and achieving a unitary state democratic solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, I’ll admit to being anything but dogmatic on just how that conflict is to be solved. While in principle, I’d certainly prefer a unitary democratic state with full democratic equality for all its citizens, I can see the considerable differences between our situation and the one in Israel/Palestine that render a single state solution exceedingly difficult. At the same time, I can also see that Israel’s systematic territorial expansion may already have rendered a Palestinian state unviable. (For more on this issue, listen to Ali Abunimah and Akiva Eldar debate the unitary vs. two-state solution on Canadian radio.)

    But what’s clear enough is that for the past 40 years, there has been only one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and that state has been Israel. And Israel has been an apartheid state: Like South Africa, it’s a democracy ruled by law for one group of people, and a military-colonial regime for another. Those who complain about it the use of “apartheid” to describe Israeli policies are either in deep denial, or else argue, as many liberals do, that the term is not helpful because it is provocative or “demonizes” the Israelis. This, too, though, is an evasion: The purpose of using the term is precisely to draw attention to the fact that Israel is routinely engaged in practices long deemed abhorrent by the international community, but because of Israel’s claim to represent the Jewish people and because of our history of suffering, this reality is simply overlooked, excused, or ignored. So, yes, using the word “apartheid” to describe what Israel is doing in the West Bank is meant to make people feel uncomfortable over what Israel is doing, and to recognize that condoning it is the moral equivalent of condoning apartheid. Clearly, that’s why Israeli human rights advocates routinely use the term.

    Israeli apartheid is eloquently explained in today’s Haaretz by Amira Hass, the exceptionally courageous moral beacon of Israeli journalism, as a daughter of Holocaust survivors living in Ramallah. In a blistering moral challenge to her fellow Israelis, she writes:

    Those who say they support a two-state solution are ignoring the other facet of the democracy-for-Jews – the military regime that it imposes on the Palestinians. This regime creates faits accomplis all the time, foiling the last chance for a solution (i.e. full withdrawal with slight changes to the June 4, 1967 lines and establishing a Palestinian state).

    The Jewish citizens who enjoy their democracy are not personally harmed by its other facet. On the contrary, they gain from it – cheap land and quality housing, additional water sources, a cadre of security professionals in demand worldwide, and thriving defense industries. This is the “calm” that even self-defined peace supporters refrain from disrupting.

    In the Soviet empire and racist South Africa – like in today’s Burma (Myanmar) – objecting to oppression involved a high personal price. Therefore, one could understand the objectors who chose not to act. In Israel, because it is a democracy for Jews, all those who sit idle, ignoring what is being done in their name, bear a heavy responsibility.

    Chiefs of staff, prime ministers, ministers and generals are not the only ones responsible. Anyone who theoretically objects to oppression, discrimination and expulsion, but does not actively take part in the struggle and in creating a constant popular resistance to topple the apartheid regime we have created here, is responsible.

    Amira Hass is hardly alone among Israelis in answering the moral challenge she outlines. There are dozens of Israelis, week in and week out, working to challenge the occupation, in pretty much the same way that we, a handful of whiteys, were doing alongside our black comrades in South Africa in the 80s.

    Elsewhere, Hass has written of the efforts of these groups, and how they remind Palestinians of the existence of “other” Israelis, and knit together the sort of humane, decent civil society that transcends the boundaries between the two peoples:

    Since the 1990s, Israel has endeavored to separate the two peoples. It has restricted opportunities to meet and get to know one another outside the master-serf framework, VIP meetings or luxurious overseas peace showcases from which the term “occupation” is completely absent.

    Because of this separation, the Palestinians know only settlers and soldiers – in other words, only those whose conduct and roles in the system justify the Palestinians’ conclusion that it is impossible to reach a just agreement and peace with Israel. This separation also reinforces Israelis’ racist – or at best, patronizing – attitudes toward the Palestinians.

    The anarchists, Machsom Watch, Yesh Din, Rabbis for Human Rights, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Physicians for Human Rights and other activist groups – few as their members may be – disrupt the separation policy and its ills. They remind the Palestinians that there are other Israelis, so perhaps there is still hope. And in their immediate environment, they expose Israelis to facts and experiences that make it difficult for them to keep wallowing in their voluntary ignorance and disregarding the dangers that our oppressive regime poses over the Palestinians.

    Those in America upset by the use of the term “apartheid” in reference to Israel might find it illuminating to encounter some of those Israelis who, like the white activists of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa during the 80s, regularly cross “the line” to stand where the metal of the occupation meets the flesh of its victims, to bear witness and also to remind Israelis and Palestinians that a different future is possible based on recognition of a common humanity.

    Posted in Unholy War | 40 Comments