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Mohammad Said Kalash, "Offering Reconciliation" exhibit (photo: Ilan Amihai)

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Avi Katz

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from documentary, Promises

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Abbas to Head Fatah-Hamas Unity Government Till Planned Elections

February 7th, 2012
meshal abbas meeting

Khaled Meshal and Mahmoud Abbas meet in Qatar

Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Meshal have reached an agreement that would provide for Abbas to head a Palestinian unity caretaker government until elections, which would happen sometime in the coming months.  The deal comes on the heels of the abject failure of four rounds of Jordanian sponsored peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in which the Israeli side offered a deal for a Palestinian state that essentially followed the contours of the Separation Wall.

Israeli reaction was swift, negative and predictable:

…Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warn[ed] Mr. Abbas that he could have peace with Israel or unity with Hamas, but not both.

Actually, the truth is Abbas could have peace with Israel if he accepted a neutered Palestine and permanent divorce from Gaza, the other half of the Palestinian nation.  What sort of peace would that be?

This Israeli formulation too drives me crazy:

Mr. Netanyahu disagrees that Hamas is changing. He noted in his statement on Monday that until Hamas recognizes Israel, abandons violence and accepts previous agreements with Israel signed by the Palestinian Authority — the three conditions that the United States and the European Union demand of Hamas, which has rejected them — it remains a renegade that must be shunned.

I would suggest a corollary set of Palestinian demands: until Israel recognizes a Palestinian state, abandons violence against Palestinians, and accepts previous peace deals (Oslo, Road Map, etc.) that it signed with the PA–then it remains a renegade that must be shunned.

Congress has boxed the Obama administration into a corner by mandating that any Palestinian government including Hamas within it, must be defunded.  That would remove $450-million of the $1 billion Palestine receives in foreign funding.  But given the expanding role that Qatar is taking in bringing the Palestinians together and possibly becoming the  new home in exile of Hamas, U.S. aid may no longer even be necessary.  Idiots like Gary Ackerman and the rest of the Lobby boys in Congress who devised this brilliant piece of legislation, should think about what it will be like to have the U.S. entirely cut out of having any influence with the Palestinians.  That’s what will happen if we cut the Palestinians loose.

It won’t hurt the Palestinians since they may have alternate sources of Arab funding.  But it will hurt the Israelis because they will continue their own obdurate ways as international pressure mounts against them.  Pretty soon, the only ally Israel will have left is the U.S., which will veto all necessary Security Council resolutions criticizing Israel.  But in the long-term, Israel cannot sustain this status quo.  The future will be grim.

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Posted in Mideast Peace | 9 Comments »

Rabbi Joseph Lukinsky, May His Memory Be for a Blessing

February 6th, 2012
joseph lukinsky

Rabbi Joseph Lukinsky z"l

I’ve been rummaging through the attic of my life for a media project I’m involved with.  A cousin just found a picture of my father, smiling, handsome and so full of young promise, at age 23 in 1948.  When my partner in this project asked who she could speak with about me in Israel, I naturally thought of Rabbi Joe Lukinsky.  He’d been my teacher in 1969, when I attended the Camp Ramah program in Nyack, NY.  Later, he’d been my teacher when I studied in Israel on a junior year abroad program at the Hebrew University.

With deep sadness, I discovered that Rabbi Lukinsky died of cancer in 2009 at age 78.  In Jewish tradition, when such a man dies you say: zichron tzadik livracha (“may the memory of this righteous one be for a blessing”).  Joe truly was a tzadik, a saint.  Of course, that is a huge weight to place on anyone.  But you could place it lightly on his shoulders because he was such a modest self-effacing man.  He didn’t win you over by erudition or intellectual presence or spellbinding preacherly oratory.  He won you over with a smile, with his charm, with his love of humanity.

Joe went through the 60s, the era of long-hair, psychedelia and relevance as the straightest of  straight arrows.  He sported a crew cut and always informally dressed in short sleeves, which revealed those muscular arms that could hit home runs over rooftops.  He looked like a Marine Corps drill sergeant, albeit a very gentle one.   I remember a twinkle in his eyes and a ready smile that at times turned into a hearty laugh.

I was a troubled 17-year-old from a dysfunctional family when I met him at Nyack in 1969.  Back then, the world appeared to be coming to an end.  The Vietnam war raged, campuses burned, Martin Luther King had died a few months earlier.  I was a rebellious teenager who dared Judaism to be relevant to my world.  I didn’t see how it could be.

Camp Ramah was known for its rigorous Judaic curriculum including courses on Tanach, Midrash, Jewish philosophy, and liturgy.  Until this summer, frankly, I’d found these classes to be wanting.  So when they laid out the Jewish curriculum for that summer and asked us to choose our classes, nothing inspired me.  As I recall it, Joe was the educational director.  He met with me and asked what I was choosing.  I told him nothing appealed to me.  I’m certain I was probably quite morose in the way only teenagers can be.

But Joe did something both brilliant and devious at the same time.  He threw the question of what I would study back and me and said: “If you could study about any subject, what would it be?”  I must’ve thought it was a trick question.  How could I study any subject I wanted when I was seemingly bound by the courses offered which I’d already told him didn’t appeal to me?

Two years before, the 1967 War had happened.  It had a big impact on many American Jews of the time.  It must’ve disturbed me in some profound way because I told Joe that I’d study about Israel and the impact of the Six Day War on Zionism.  He said: “Great.  Why don’t you make your own course.  I’ll work with you to develop a reading list, we’ll meet to discuss what you’re reading and you’ll write a paper at the end of the summer.”  I probably thought the idea was a bit nuts at the time.  How could I create my own course?  But by God, that’s what we did.  That’s how I first learned about Martin Buber, Judah Magnes and Brit Shalom.  That’s when I first read Arthur Hertzberg‘s The Zionist Idea.  That’s when I first became a thinking Zionist.  By that I mean the critical Zionist I am today.

You have no idea what this did to the self-esteem of a troubled young boy.  It taught me that I had ideas of value.  It taught me how to take on a big topic, research it carefully, and come up with a coherent, articulate critique into which I could put all of my intellectual self.  This was huge.

Joe knew far more about this subject than I, and he suggested that I send my final paper to Prof. Ernst Simon, one of the few surviving member of the original Brit Shalom circle.  I was a 17-year-old pisher.  What did I know?  I thought it was an odd idea for me to be sending my work to an eminent 80-year-old retired professor who’d stood at the brink of the Zionist era.  But that was the power and brilliance of Joe.  He looked at you with that magnetic smile and chuckle of his and said: “Why not?”

I remember that my paper warned of the dangers that the Occupied Territories posed to Israel.  I discussed the likelihood of Israel turning into an apartheid state.  South Africa was in the air in those days and I compared Israel to that country’s systematic discrimination against its black majority.  It was probably also a bit of chutzpah for this teenager to tell someone like Ernst Simon that Israel was like one of the world’s pariah states.  I remember that Simon actually did me the favor of replying.  As I remember it, his reply was gracious, revealing none of the sense of chutzpah that he might’ve felt for the sharpness of my ideas and expression.

In 1972, I finally got to Israel and studied in the Hebrew University’s special program for Jewish educators.  It was my first academic year in Israel.  My first experience studying in Hebrew.  It was intense, it was challenging.  Joe Lukinsky was himself on a sabbatical year from his teaching at the Jewish Theological Seminary and was one of the faculty for the Hebrew University program.  I wrote another challenging paper for him that time as well.  It was the first time I addressed the conflict between Israel and Diaspora under the terms of classical Zionism.  I suggested that the standard approach of Zionist thought, which demeaned the galut and treated it as a phenomenon that would wither away as Israel assumed its rightful and primary place in Jewish life, was absolutely wrong.

Instead of Israel being primary and Diaspora being secondary, I suggest a co-equal relationship between the two: that the Diaspora would never die as long as Jews lived.  I said that the Diaspora enriched Jewish identity as much as Israel did, and that the two should have a complementary relationship.  This was the first time I grappled with the idea of Diasporism.  In my paper, I also rejected the secularist notion that the Diaspora was primary to Jewish life, and that Israel was alien.  I think it was all pretty radical for its day.  But it was the beauty of Joe Lukinsky that he didn’t care where your ideas took you as long as you arrived at them honestly and with real intellectual rigor.

Joe Lukinsky was one of my Jewish mentors.  He encouraged me to bring out of myself things I didn’t even know I had, things I didn’t even know I was capable of.  This is a gift, a gift beyond measure.  I wouldn’t be who or what I am today without him.  Thank you, Joe.

Now a few words about his life.  As a teenager, he was a powerful baseball player who could hit the ball a mile.  He was offered a tryout with the Chicago Cubs and could’ve played minor-league ball.  But he didn’t.  When he married Betty in the 1950s they were struck by tragedy.  Those were the days before genetic testing, when Tay Sachs was a dreaded word in Jewish families.  They had at least one child who died of this fatal condition.  I can remember someone telling me of the tragedy of having a healthy, beautiful newborn baby, who withered away before their very eyes after a few years.  Two of their other children died at an early age.  As an obituary I read, said about him: he led a Job-like life full of immense tragedy.

But you never felt that from Joe.  He was all heart, all warmth, all soul.  So my partner won’t get to meet one of the truly great American rabbis.  Won’t get to interview him and hear stories of what I was like as a sullen teenager.  What a loss.  To her, to me, to us all.  May his memory be for a blessing.

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Posted in Jews & Judaism, Mideast Peace | 17 Comments »

Widening Regional Escalation Anticipated After Israeli Attack on Iran

February 5th, 2012

Several interesting developments concerning the simmering war between Israel and Iran.  The website of the Iranian Majlis published a report (in Farsi) by the director of an official government think tank that advocates Iranian attacks against Israeli sites.  The author argues that Israel’s sustained attacks within Iran demand a response.  An Israeli TV news report says (in Hebrew) that the Iranian website calls for a “pre-emptive” attack on Israel, and not one that is purely in response to an Israeli first strike.  Though it is reflective of the Israel’s narrow thinking that they would call such an Iranian strike “pre-emptive,” when Israel has already attacked Iran.  One of the specific sites indicated for targeting was Sdot Micha, Israel’s secret missile base and home of its Jericho intercontinental missile arsenal.

You’ll recall that an Israeli source told me that a drone crashed into that base, which may’ve been tied to Iran and/or Hezbollah origins.  Whether or not this story was true, the new report from Iran indicates that the country’s leadership very much has this sort of strike in its mind and would be interested in responding to Israel’s numerous domestic attacks against Iranian bases and nuclear scientists.

A Western diplomat based in Pakistan has added a new wrinkle to the Israel war scenario.  He says a new player should be considered as a protagonist if Israel strikes:

A European diplomat based in Pakistan, permitted to speak only under condition of anonymity, said that if Israel attacks, Islamabad will have no choice but to support any Iranian retaliation. That raises the specter of putting a nuclear-armed Pakistan at odds with Israel, widely believed to have its own significant nuclear arsenal.

I personally think it’s unlikely Pakistan officially would join the fight on Iran’s side.  But it wouldn’t have to to weigh in on the subject.  Pakistanis already detest the U.S. for assassinating Osama bin Laden and our serial drone attacks which violate national sovereignty.  When Ayatollah Khomeini announced a fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989, the first nation which took up the call wasn’t Iran, but Pakistan.  It’s likely that Iran will activate its influence inside Afghanistan to make our lives miserable there should it be attacked by Israel.  With the Pakistani Taliban joining in the fight and attacking U.S. assets wherever they find them, it could make our presence in large portions of the region almost impossible to sustain.

Not to mention, while Iran doesn’t yet have a nuke, Pakistan does. While it likely would not use its nukes to defend Iran, just the fact that it has them automatically makes the calculations a lot more complex.

In the current climate, it’s hard to know what information is credible and what is based on exaggeration.  We need to weigh that in evaluating the value of the reports above.  But even if we downgrade some or all of it, in its entirety is signals an escalation in the thinking of Arab-Muslim elements in the region.  Many among them are already thinking about making Israel and the U.S. pay the price for attacking if they do.

Israeli strategic thinking on this subject remains mired in self-delusion:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak claimed during a high-profile security conference that there is a “wide global understanding” that military action may be needed.

“There is no argument about the intolerable danger a nuclear Iran (would pose) to the future of the Middle East, the security of Israel and to the economic and security stability of the entire world,” Barak said.

The opposite is the case.  There is a wide global understanding that military actions would be a very bad idea.  And there certainly is a strong argument against the idea that a nuclear Iran would pose a danger to world stability.  In fact, the only people who believe this are some of Israel’s top leaders, Islamophobes around the world, and neocons in the U.S. and Israel.  It’s interesting how Barak attempts to parlay that rather narrow body of opinion into an overwhelming world consensus.

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Posted in Mideast Peace | 11 Comments »

IDF Torturer Doron Zahavi Wants to Sodomize Arabs and Get Medal for It

February 5th, 2012
doron zahavi

Doron Zahavi, pixellated (Eli Attias)

Doron Zahavi, who still can be called only “Captain George” in the Israeli media, has gone public with his grievance against the IDF, which employed him to torture kidnapped Arabs who were thought to have intelligence about affairs in Lebanon or Syria, specifically Israeli prisoners of war. Among those he worked his wonders on was Mustafa Dirani, who was thought to have specific knowledge of the whereabouts of Ron Arad. Yossi Gurvitz reports ( in Hebrew) that Zahavi ordered one of his subordinates to undress and rape Dirani. Another Zahavi subordinate, who blew the whistle on the whole military torture complex he ran, says his commander sodomized Dirani with a nightstick.

The brave torturer has the effrontery to claim that the anal lacerations Dirani suffered were due to “constipation,” for which they gave him a laxative that caused him to soil himself.  The victim says he was forced to wear a diaper constantly even when it contained excrement.  And such treatment, as Gurvitz confirms and as I’ve reported here previously is SOP for the Israeli torture apparatus.

There are those who applaud the Israeli Supreme Court for outlawing torture in a landmark ruling.  But unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, the Israeli rulings appear to be only advisory and not declarative.  The security apparatus feels emboldened to act as it wishes, court ruling or no.  That’s why IDF Gen. Yair Naveh ordered Palestinian militants murdered in cold blood though they were unarmed, in direct violation of a Supreme Court ruling.  Note, that the brave justices, when offered an opportunity to review Naveh’s brazen violation of their ruling, refused to do so, in characteristically timid fashion.

mustafa dirani

Israeli prison guard offering Mustafa Dirani a hearty 'a votre sante' on his release from prison (Life)

Gurvitz notes that, like the CIA tapes of waterboarding of Al Qaeda suspects which were erased, the Dirani interrogation tapes mysteriously disappeared.  They must’ve thought where there’s no smoke there can be no fire.  If the tapes had survived the fire might have burned not just Zahavi and his boss, but a very senior IDF commander, Amos Gilad.  That’s pretty high up the food chain.  Zahavi claims Gilad was watching the interrogations in real-time.

Despite the destruction of key evidence, the IDF didn’t bargain for a disgruntled subordinate stricken by conscience for the horrible things he did there, would spill the beans and expose the whole sordid mess publicly.  That whistleblower himself has been threatened with state prosecution for perpetrating some of the alleged crimes of which he charges Zahavi.  The Israeli motto seems to be: let no good deed go unpunished.

On the strength of this claim and the notoriety that derived from it, Zahavi’s notorious Unit 504 was disbanded (only to re-emerge in recent months in all its former glory), Dirani was freed, and the IDF officer was cashiered. Though he resurfaced as the Israeli police’s chief anti-Arab enforcer for East Jerusalem. He has the title of “liaison” to the Palestinian community. But Jouad Siam knows first hand what that means. Zahavi threatened to destroy the home of the Silwan activist and to destroy the community organization he founded if he refused to inform on his fellow Palestinians.

Dirani is now suing the Israeli government for the abuse he suffered and the Israeli Supreme Court ruled the trial may go forward. Zahavi too is suing the government because it didn’t give him a medal for the dirty work he did on its behalf. He wants a tidy sum in return for keeping his mouth shut. He even says he’d take a job in Alaska (I didn’t know there were any IDF outposts there or any torture victims for him to work on) if they’d at least treated him with the respect he deserved. This reminds me of a Martin Scorsese mafia pic in which the disaffected made-guy goes to the don and whines about being cut out of the spoils and not getting what he has coming to him. Usually the guy is offed in the next reel, though I’m not sure the IDF has gotten to the point where it gets rid of its own rotten apples in that fashion.

Lest you doubt he is a rotten apple, take a peek at this:

“If this goes to court, what I told you today is just the teaser,” he threatens, “Trust me – no one really wants me to climb up to the stand. If I have to stand there and speak of Dirani, you’ll find out I have plenty more to say about how the apparatus acts when it needs to hide all sorts of things […] and everyone is a liar, which is why the country is where it is today, no deterrence, nothing. And in the end? I’m the apparatus’ scapegoat.”

If he doesn’t get the Israel Prize for torture he’s going to sing all day on the stand and tell the world how dirty the IDF and security apparatus is.  Now, this could be the disgruntled ravings of an extortionist who’s bluffing; or this guy has the goods and he’s willing to tell the world just how vile and dirty the entire Israeli security system is.  I’d say the truth is somewhere in between.  My guess is that while he does have plenty of dirt, that he’s more interested in upping the price for his silence than telling all the dirty little secrets.  He’s too much a company man and probably too much a blowhard and coward to really tell it all.  But that’s just a guess.

Gurvitz’s closing paragraph is poignant and compelling:

The Dirani-George case, had it been treated properly, may have become the 300 Line affair of the 504 unit. This did not happen, simply because the public does not wish to know. In 2012 Israel (as in 1994 Israel, as in 1984 Israel) the idea that every person – even Dirani, even George – is a human being, which must not be deprived by reducing him to quivering piece of meat, lying in its own excrement, is still a radical one.

I would only add that the only reason the 300 Line affair was exposed was that a senior IDF commander was accused of a crime he didn’t commit and while the entire government apparatus closed ranks behind the lying scumbag of a Shin Bet chief who perpetrated the coverup, the military officer wouldn’t go quietly.  Also, there were a few brave media outlets which defied censorship and reported the scandal.  In the Zahavi case there are no IDF sacrificial lambs, nor is there a brave media ready to defy the censor and spill the beans.  But Gurvitz’s main claim is correct: the Israeli public doesn’t give a crap about the suffering of an Arab.  Let Dirani rot in hell would be the prevailing wisdom.

I noticed something very peculiar about Yossi’s post when it was republished at 972 Magazine.  The link to my own post which exposed the name of Doron Zahavi, which Yossi graciously included in his own blog post, was gone once it was republished at 972.  It’s fairly easy to figure out why.  The 972 editor who republished made a judgement that merely by linking to my post they might bring the wrath of the Israeli security services on them.

Now, to be clear, it is not illegal (yet) in Israel to link to a foreign source which exposes the identity of an Israeli security officer.  In fact, Zahavi is no longer in the IDF and so isn’t even protected by the traditional proffer of anonymity offered to military and intelligence officers in the media.  But 972 figured self-censorship was the better part of valor.  It’s what I call pre-emptive self-censorship.  Linking to my blog may not be illegal yet, but let’s err on the side of caution and not give the security goons an excuse to go after us.  I understand the dangers faced by the dissenting media inside Israel.  But still, if they don’t have courage, who will?  So I think it was essentially a cowardly act.

Yossi’s act of linking to me was brave such principled blogging is why he’s been interrogated by the police for his blog.  As for 972?  Not so much.

If anyone has a photo of the real Captain George, please let me know.  He deserves to have his name and image up in lights.

Let’s add to this an only tangentially related matter that another 972 writer, Dimi Reider took a nasty potshot at me that was riddled with inaccuracies in his own 972 column.  When I asked Noam Sheizaf for the right of reply in a 972 post he never answered.  So much for progressive solidarity and fairness.

UPDATE: Noam Sheizaf and Dimi Reider have replied to my criticisms above: Sheizaf says the link to my Doron Zahavi post was replaced when it was republished at 972 through an “innocent mistake” that will be corrected.  I made the assumptions I did above based on what I saw on the website.  In response to his question why I didn’t bother to contact him directly before speaking publicly about it, I reminded him of his lack of response to my last message.  We’re all human beings and base our judgments and responses on how others treat us.  Sheizaf apparently feels I’ve gored his and 972′s ox, but doesn’t seem to understand that others may feel their own ox has been gored as well.

There is another possible explanation for the disappearance of that link.  That is that Yossi republished the article with the link and someone else removed it.  Possibly someone motivated by pique at my strong response to Dimi Reider’s post.  If that’s the case, then the motives are even pettier than the reason I ascribed above.

Reider says one of my main criticisms of the innacuracy of his characterization of my claims about the drone strike resulted from a “typo” on his part.

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Posted in Mideast Peace | 15 Comments »

Is Israel’s Iranophobia Virus Contagious?

February 4th, 2012
iran revolutionary guard

Coming soon to a synagogue or embassy near you...the IRG bogeyman (AFP/Getty)

ABC News today publishes a leaked (from whom?) memo drafted by Israeli intelligence sources warning of terror threats against Israeli government sites in this country and American Jewish communal facilities from the dreaded “Iran menace.”  If you heard this story on the TV news it would sound persuasive, until you began to examine the assumptions behind it.  It begins by declaring the alleged assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador as a given.  This passage quotes a federal official mouthing the Israeli line:

“The thwarted assassination plot of a Saudi official in Washington, D.C., a couple of months ago was an important data point,” added the official, “in that it showed at least parts of the Iranian establishment were aware of the intended event and were not concerned about inevitable collateral damage to U.S. citizens had they carried out an assassination plot on American soil.”

“That was an eye opener, showing that they did not care about any collateral damage,” the federal official said.

Note the vagueness of “parts of the Iranian establishment were aware of the…event.”  This doesn’t even place direct blame for the alleged plot on Iranian leaders themselves.  It only says they were aware of it and didn’t object.  What’s also ironic about this is that I haven’t seen any U.S. expression of concern for those Iranians murdered as “collateral damage” from Mossad and MEK terror attacks inside Iran. Perhaps when we do then we can expect Iranians to care about collateral damage to citizens in this country from acts of terror no one has even been able to prove were planned.

So from a single alleged planned act of terror, Israel and U.S. intelligence operatives have spun a narrative of ongoing threat from the Iranians.  They could strike anywhere at any time.  They’re out there, out to get us: New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago.  Wherever there are Jews there is danger.  We have to be vigilant.  Because they hate us.  They all hate us.  We have to put the threat of terror in the front of our minds.  We have to become paranoid, as paranoid as the Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials are postulated this nightmare scenario:

Israeli facilities in North America — and around the world — are on high alert, according to an internal security document obtained by ABC News that predicted the threat from Iran against Jewish targets will increase.

“We predict that the threat on our sites around the world will increase … on both our guarded sites and ‘soft’ sites,” stated a letter circulated by the head of security for the Consul General for the Mid-Atlantic States. Guarded sites refers to government facilities like embassies and consulates, while ‘soft sites’ means Jewish synagogues, and schools, as well as community centers like the one hit by a terrorist bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed 85 people.

The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, told an audience at a closed forum in Tel Aviv recently that Iran is trying to hit Israeli targets…

Local and regional law enforcement and intelligence officials in U.S. and Canadian cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Toronto have been monitoring the situation closely for several weeks, and have stepped up patrols at Israeli government locations and Jewish cultural and religious institutions. They have issued awareness bulletins reminding officers to stay vigilant.

Federal officials in those cities told ABC News that they have also increased their efforts to watch for any threat stream pointing to an imminent attack on either Israeli facilities, Jewish cultural or religious institutions or other “soft targets.”

So because some mid-level Israeli security operative spins a tale of dread, every American Jew must start looking under his bed for hidden Iranian agents out to get him (or her). If you parse this carefully, there is absolutely no proven threat mentioned, no chatter in the terror networks, no identifiable enemy operatives. Just a load of paranoia from a bunch of spooks telling us the Iranian bogeymen are out there, somewhere, waiting, just waiting. For what?

So you want proof that there’s a threat? Here it is:

“In the past few weeks, there has been an escalation in threats against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world,” one regional document noted. “Open source has reported many demonstrations against Israel are expected to be concentrated on Israeli embassies and consulates. Such demonstrations have occurred internationally as well as domestically. These demonstrations could potentially turn violent at local synagogues, restaurants, the Israeli Embassy and other Israeli sites. … Law enforcement should be vigilant when making periodic checks at all Jewish facilities.

So get this: the “threat” is from protesters at Israeli embassies and consulates.  Why?  How?  Doesn’t say.  Are there Iranian agents who’ve infiltrated these protests?  And what protests?  I haven’t heard of any to speak of.  Are Iranians demonstrating at Israeli embassies over threats against Iran?  Hadn’t heard of that.  But the end result here is Israel is setting the stage for its own attack on Iran leading to such protests by Iranians and others who oppose violence, and these protesters will be seen as potential terrorist saboteurs out to get Israelis or any American Jew they can find.

What the hell will the Israelis do with all the American Jews who will be out there on the picket lines?  Perhaps we’ll be double agents betraying our people and nation by siding with the enemy.  It would suit the absurdist ultranationalist narrative represented by Netanyahu and the Israeli war party.  I’ve got news for them.  They can attempt to insinuate their own fears into American society and use us for their own interests in ginning up hate against Iran.  But I’m not buying it.  I’m not going to be party to the epidemic of war fever they’re trying to inject into the body politic.  I’m going to stay calm and rational.  If they want to cry wolf, let them.  The rest of us will be here to point out the hysteria and unfounded claims of Bibi’s hawkmeisters.

There’s another delightful (in a twisted sort of way) irony in the following:

…The Israeli bulletin warned that Israel’s own passports might be used by terrorists intent on carrying out a plot.

Now isn’t that cute.  Israeli caused a massive international scandal by cloning passports of its own citizens for use by the Dubai assassins who murdered Mahmoud al-Mabouh.  The Mossad violated the sovereignty of its own allies in the process.  Now they have the chutzpah to tell us that they accuse Iran of planning to do the same thing.  As if there’s no justice in that, and the whole world should be shocked, I say shocked that Iran might do to Israelis what Israel itself did to them by putting them in harm’s way.

Here’s the final coup de grâce of this charade:

…We operate according to the information that Iran and Hezbollah are working hard and with great intensity to release a ‘quality’ attack against Israeli/Jewish sites around the world.

Don’t you just love the use of that word “quality?”  It made me want to throw up.  Of course Iran may be “working hard” to attack Israel and its interests.  If enemy leaders and generals threatened your country virtually every day with violent attack, you’d plan the same thing as a response to an attack.  Aside from the purported Saudi assassination plot, Iran has shown no willingness to engage in any act of terror against Israeli or Jewish interests.  And I predict they likely will not do so until and unless Israel attacks.  But I invite Israeli intelligence officials to offer real evidence, instead of rumor-and fear-mongering.

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Turkey’s Erdogan, Paul Auster Debate Relative Press Freedom in Israel, Turkey

February 3rd, 2012

Over the past day or so, a fierce fight has erupted between Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan and New York Jewish author, Paul Auster.  The controversy began when Auster, whose new book was recently published in Turkey, announced to an opposition newspaperthat he refused to visit that country to promote it.  In the process, he blasted Turkey’s Islamist government for jailing authors and journalists:

paul auster shimon peres

Paul Auster paying respects to Israeli president Shimon Peres

“I refuse to come to Turkey because of imprisoned journalists and writers. How many are jailed now? Over 100?” Auster said, adding that Turkey was the country he was most worried about.

“Us democrats got rid of the Bushes. We got rid of  Cheney who should have been put on trial for war crimes,” the author said. “What is going on in Turkey?”

Erdogan, who suffers neither fools nor political opponents gladly, lashed out at Auster during a party conference, telling the author that Turkey didn’t need him to lecture it on how to be a democracy:

“Author Paul Auster…said he will not come to Turkey as he finds it anti-democratic because of arrested journalists.  Oh!  We were much in need of you!  [So] What if you come or not?” Erdoğan said during a party meeting yesterday.

Criticizing Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), and the newspapers for giving credit to Auster’s statements, Erdoğan asked, “Will Turkey lose altitude if you don’t come?”

Recalling that Auster joined a book fair in 2010 in Israel where he described Israel as a “secular, democratic country,” Erdoğan slammed the American writer for being unaware of the fact Israel was a non-secular state and had killed thousands of innocent people in the Gaza Strip. “I am sure Kılıçdaroğlu and Auster will join together for this year’s book fair in Israel,” he added.

Auster replied to Erdogan’s attack with this statement:

Whatever the Prime Minister might think about the state of Israel, the fact is that free speech exists there and no writers or journalists are in jail…All countries are flawed and beset by myriad problems, Mr. Prime Minister, including my United States, including your Turkey, and it is my firm conviction that in order to improve conditions in our countries, in every country, the freedom to speak and publish without censorship or the threat of imprisonment is a sacred right for all men and women.

While I don’t know Auster’s views about Israel, I presume he’s the typical liberal Zionist.  The brief substantive exchange he included about it in his reply indicated a fairly standard lib Zionist approach to the issue of Israel’s so-called democratic values, including press freedom and free speech.  It’s a shame he didn’t do his homework, as if he had he could’ve both bolstered his criticism of Turkey and done justice to the issue of the grave threats facing Israeli democracy.

There is no question that while Turkey as a nation has made great economic and political strides under Erdogan’s Islamist party, that country remains deficient in many areas which are well-known to many.  Kurds are denied basic rights, acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide is a crime, and freedoms that many in the west take for granted are routinely threatened in Turkey.  All of this is undeniably true.  As a friend of mine married to a Turk and living there says: while there is more freedom of speech than there has been in many decades, it is still a crime to “insult Turkishness” or say something “un-Turkish.”  The media is largely bought and paid for by moguls with large business empires who are willing to use their platforms to advance their business interests.  They do this by ingratiating themselves with the powers that be.  In the few instances when a corporate titan has allowed his journalists too much free rein to attack the government, he has paid a very high price in the economic warfare officials wage against him.

On the positive side, the country has made enormous strides in reducing poverty and addressing economic disparities and building wealth.  It has also undertaken a foreign policy offensive which has made it a critical regional player attempting to bring stability to such conflicts as Syria-Israel and Iran.  It will undoubtedly play a key role in ensuring the future stability of Syria if/when the Assad government falls.

But to get into a competition between the so-called freedoms of Israel and the so-called injustices of Turkey is a losing game.  Israel needs to be examined in its own right and not in comparison to any other country.

israeli military censorship

The list of rules for military censorship; caption: 'Censorship: the freedom to express oneself responsibly' (Ynet)

So let’s return to Paul Auster’s claims about Israel.  He hasn’t even scratched the surface.  Israeli journalists and media are under the gravest of threats from the right-wing government and its thuggish non-governmental allies.  Uri Blau, one of Israel’s leading investigative reporters, who broke the story of IDF targeted assassinations in violation of Supreme Court rulings, faces six years in prison if the government decides to prosecute him.  His crime?  He published top secret documents leaked to him by whistleblower, Anat Kamm.  Jared Malsin, English language editor of the Palestinian independent news agency, Maan, was imprionsed by Israeli authorities for nearly a week, and then deported because they no longer wished to allow him to practice journalism in the West Bank.

Military censorship applies to wide swaths of Israeli journalism and can be invoked regarding stories great and small. Though Israelis have learned to read between the lines to discover when a story has been censored, they still don’t know what information they’ve been denied nor why.

The Israeli prime minister told the editor of the Jerusalem Post that the two greatest enemies Israel faces are the New York Times and Haaretz. That is, Israel’s leading liberal daily is a threat to the existence of the State of Israel. Does it remind you of Nixon’s enemies list? It should. Does that begin to scare you, Mr. Auster? It should.

Israeli journalists from around the country called an emergency meeting two months ago to rally against threats to press freedom. The organizer of this event, Uri Misgav, reporting for Yediot Achronot, recently lost his job. Another reporter who wrote for Maariv, Ruth Sinai, lost her job as well. Her editor, a former associate of Bibi Netanyahu’s told her:

“Post-Zionist journalists will not write for his paper”.

This is Israel’s second-largest circulation paper. Does that scare you? It should.

The director of the Prime Minister’s office, who is himself under investigation for sex harassment, blackmailed TV Channel 10 by demanding that it fire investigative journalist Raviv Drucker in return for the government not taking the station off the air.  Drucker had just aired a damaging story about Bibi Netanyahu’s flaunting of ethics rules while he was an MK.

The Israeli Knesset is considering a new law which would drastically reduce the level of proof needed to convict someone of libel.  It would massively increase awards against those found guilty of defamation.  Complainants wouldn’t even need to establish proof of any economic damage in order to be compensated.  Publishers could also be held liable for defamation for comments published in the Talkback section.

Journalists who report from Israel for Arab language outlets like Al Jazeera face routine embarrassment and harassment at the hands of Israeli security officials.  This has included the stripping of female journalists by security agents before meetings with the prime minister.

Israel’s press is dominated by a single newspaper, Yisrael HaYom, funded by a billionaire for the express purpose of bringing Bibi to power and keeping him there.  Does this sound like a country that enjoys a free press?

I urge Mr. Auster and anyone concered about freedom of the press in Israel to visit the site of Keshev, Israel’s leading NGO in this field. Israel’s leading website providing media criticism and advocacy is Seventh Eye. Though it is only in Hebrew, it is highly recommended.

Regarding free speech, the threats are enormous.  Peace activists are routinely dragged before the Shin Bet for interrogation for the crime of speaking their mind.  The women of New Profile were threatened with prison for advocating draft resistance in opposition to the Occupation.  Ilana Hammerman has similarly been questioned three times and threatened with prosecution for the crime of bringing Palestinian mothers and children into Israel to breathe fresh air at the beach and go to the zoo.  Solidarity activists at Sheikh Jarrah are routinely arrested and assaulted by Israeli police for opposing eviction of Palestinians from their homes.  Peace Now staff have faced bomb and death threats from settler extremists and the Israeli police don’t even prosecute when they know the identities of the perpetrators.

The Israeli justice system allows extensive use of gag orders to protect the interests of the state, the military, and the wealthy.  Gag orders are routinely granted without having to prove any specific jeopardy to the protected party.  Rape victims often may not discuss the crimes committed against them if they’re accusing a powerful man of harming them and he has a good attorney who can secure a gag order (cf. Yoav Even).

Though I know of few threats to writers of the sort that Auster complains about in Turkey, Israeli performers who don’t toe the political line pay the price as major roles dry up on stage and screen.  Haaretz, this week, featured a profile of Mohammed Bakri, perhaps Israel’s most famous Palestinian actor.  After directing the documentary, Jenin Jenin, he was blackballed from many work opportunities in Israel.  The Israeli Film Board banned the film until the Supreme Court lifted it.  He has not acted on an Israeli stage since 2003, a year after the film came out:

The last time Bakri…was seen on an Israeli stage was in 2003, in Shlomi Moskovitz’s “Seven Days,” directed by Dedi Baron at the Habima Theater…More recently Bakri was supposed to have replaced an Arab actor in one play and another theater director did not employ him, fearing reactions like those of Im Tirtzu. That is, Bakri’s prospects for employment in Israel have already been affected without Im Tirtzu’s campaign against him.

A decade ago or so, Chava Alberstein recorded a powerful anti-Occupation work which adapted the traditional Pesach song, Chad Gadya.  Many radio stations boycotted the song, the singer received death threats and she didn’t perform in Israel for many years.  The only places she could perform were abroad, where the controversy was less well-known.

So is Israel is haven for free speech and free press?  Hardly.  In fact, Paul Auster owes it to himself and his readers to study this issue in much greater depth.  He could speak out about these matters the next time he’s in Israel.  In fact, after what he’s said in the midst of this controversy, he has a responsibility to do so.  I’ve suggested to progressive bloggers in New York that they seek a dialogue with Auster and perhaps a public event sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace or PEN to address the freedom deficit facing Israel.  I think it would be bracing and informative.  What better person to invite to speak on a panel with Auster than Jared Malsin, who spent a week in an Israeli jail cell for the crime of being a good reporter?

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Obama Administration: U.S. Would ‘Come to Israel’s Defense’ If Iran Attacked It

February 2nd, 2012

David Ignatius published an alarming story in today’s Washington Post, in which he quotes Leon Panetta predicting an Israeli attack on Iran in “April, May or June.”  Buried deeper within the article is an even more chilling passage:

Administration officials caution that Tehran shouldn’t misunderstand: The United States has a 60-year commitment to Israeli security, and if Israel’s population centers were hit, the United States could feel obligated to come to Israel’s defense.

In the context of the article, which portrays an Israeli first strike against Iran, we can only explain this statement as announcing to Iran that if it counter-strikes against Israel that the U.S. will join in the war against it.  That would help explain why the U.S. is amassing a massive amount of firepower in the Gulf including perhaps a record three carrier task forces preparing for God knows what mischief.

I can’t say clearly enough that what the U.S. has signaled in Ignatius’ report is that if Iran is attacked, it may not strike back against its attacker.  If it does, the U.S. will rain down hellfire and damnation on it.  This is frightening beyond measure.  I’ve never known the U.S. to lay down such a principle which virtually assures our joining in a war against Iran.  Israeli policymakers will be delighted to read these words.  Hawks like Bibi, Barak and Bogie Yaalon (from whom, more later) will be sharpening their spears and pruning hooks, not to mention their Jericho IIs and U.S.-supplied bunker busters.

Of course, there’s always a chance that Panetta is bluffing, using psy ops to spook the Iranians into believing they will face two implacable foes in war if they don’t abandon their nuclear ambitions.  If we are bluffing, I’m afraid it won’t work.  Iran’s leaders are hardened, seasoned veterans of a 1979 Revolution and eight year war with Iraq in which they lost 1-million citizens.  They are inured to suffering of the sort we can inflict on them.

All of this means that Iran’s leaders are liable to shrug all this off as the price of doing business in a nuclear-weaponized world.  So what happens when Iran stands tall against such threats and says: “Is that all you’ve got?”  At that point, we’ve got nothing left but war.  And we’ve talked ourselves halfway into war through the belligerency of our rhetoric and threats.

Ignatius regurgitates more Israeli propaganda already disseminated in the New York Times that predicts Iran will mount at best a faint reply to an Israeli “surgical attack” on its nuclear facilities.  At most a few Hezbollah missiles and 500 Israeli deaths (to quote an infamous Barak prediction).  All the while ignoring the hundreds of Iranian missiles that could attack Israel and likely would if Israel attacked.  The idea that Israelis believe they have the right to launch a first strike against Iran, while Iran has either no right or no will to reply is so far-fetched as to be almost delusional given the nature of Iran, its leaders, and its military.

Here’s some more Israeli delusion:

“You stay to the side, and let us do it,” one Israeli official is said to have advised the United States. A “short-war” scenario assumes five days or so of limited Israeli strikes, followed by a U.N.-brokered cease-fire.

I can’t tell if this is certifiably delusional or merely a typically Israeli macho bluff.  But whatever it is it’s incredibly dangerous if any policymakers takes this remotely seriously.

Bronner quotes another typically narcissistic Israeli interpretation of the security threats it faces:

General Kochavi [IDF Aman intelligence chief] also estimated that Israel faced 200,000 missiles and rockets aimed at it from its enemies.

For the life of me, I don’t know where he gets such figures.  Hezbollah may have somewhere in the range of 10,000-20,000.  Gaza militants may have several thousand.  Iran has perhaps in the hundreds of missiles capable of reaching Israel.  That’s it.  Is he including Turkey’s missile capabilities in that number?  Even if so, would Turkey have 150,000 missiles in its inventory?  I doubt it.  In addition, including Turkey in that count means the IDF has now declared the former as a formal military enemy, when I hadn’t heard of any outright hostilities between the two that would justify such an evaluation.

moshe yaalon

Former IDF chief of staff Moshe Yaalon marches to war against Iran ( Ariel Jerozolimski)

Even more strange is Kochavi’s neglecting to mention the 200-400 Israeli nukes pointing at those same enemies along with a massive missile inventory of Jericho and other missile types capable of sending them anywhere in the Middle East.  Isn’t it convenient whenever Israel wishes the world to shed tears on its behalf, it omits the offensive threat that it poses to its neighbors.

Annually, the Herzliya conference features the creme de la creme of Israel’s political-military-intelligence echelons boasting about Israel’s achievements on the world stage.  It’s Israel’s version of Davos minus any discussion of issues having even a faintly progressive aspect.  That means leaving out social and economic justice, peace, environment, civil rights, etc.

Israeli minister Bogie Yaalon, one of Israel’s leading hawks on the question of Iran war, dropped a bombshell into the political debate by claiming, during his conference presentation, that the Iranian missile base destroyed by a massive explosion several weeks ago was testing a new intercontinental missile prototype with a 6,000 mile range.  For those who are geographically-challenged, that’s long enough to hit the U.S.

Yaalon and his faithful scribe, Ethan “Eytan” Bronner, made sure American readers understood the “threat” this personified:

The Israeli, Moshe Yaalon, a deputy prime minister and minister for strategic affairs, said the blast at a missile base of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps hit a system “getting ready to produce a missile with a range of 10,000 kilometers.”

“That’s the Great Satan,” he said, invoking a name Iran has used for the United States. “It was aimed at America, not at us.”

Mr. Yaalon was trying to make the point that the Iranian nuclear program is a threat not only to Israel but to other nations, creating “a nightmare for the free world.” He said that it was a concern to Arab states as well as to the United States and Israel.

You can say something on Bronner’s behalf: at least he includes this passage, which in effect reveals that some U.S. officials believe Yaalon is a liar (though they use language far more diplomatic than that):

American officials said they believed that Mr. Yaalon’s assertions were at best premature, and at worst badly exaggerated.

Though one Iranian-American expert on Iran’s military programs does deride Yaalon’s claims.  It should be pointed out that this source, USC engineering professor Muhammad Sahimi (Wikipedia article), is by no means a friend of the Iranian regime:

This is total nonsense. Iran has said many, many times that it is not developing, and has no interest in developing an intercontinental missile. This is another bit of lies and propaganda by Yaalon to present Iran as a worldwide threat…

My high-level Israeli source also called Yaalon’s claims “exaggerated” and said they were “probably meant to frighten the American public.”

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If You Want to Be Shin Bet Chief, Get on Sara’s Good Side

February 2nd, 2012
sara netanyahu

Sara Netanyahu (Flash 90)

Of all the qualities that are necessary for a good Israeli intelligence chief, there’s one essential one you’d never think of in a million years: don’t cross Sara Netanyahu.  You won’t find that one listed on any job description or set of requirements for the position, but in some sense it may be more important than all the other qualifications a successful candidate must have.

For a number of months, I reported that the next Shin Bet director to replace Yuval Diskin would be Yitzhak Ilan.  Yet somehow he lost out to Yoram Cohen.  I scratched my head and asked, what happened.  Israeli media was full of rumors that the top candidate lost out in the end to a dark horse through some sort of taint or blemish that sunk his candidacy.  The truth is that, in fact, until two hours before the announcement, Ilan was still the favored choice.

Ben Caspit hinted (Hebrew) that the settler movement hated Ilan (his previous intelligence jobs had involved investigating their acts of violence and extremism).  Now, it appears likely that Sara and Eshel pointed out to Bibi that he had two good candidates, but that one angered one of his core constituencies (the settlers).  So why not appoint the other and so retain their support?  From this we can also expect that Cohen will go lightly on settler acts of terror and violence.  Indeed, the fact that no one has been charged, prosecuted or imprisoned for a host of price tag attacks going back months may be ascribed to Cohen knowing on which side his bread is buttered.

In a recent conversation, a knowledgeable Israeli insider told me that Ilan ran afoul of Mrs. Netanyahu, though I never found out why.  The benefit of the Eshel sexual harassment scandal is that it’s blowing the lid off other stories.

Today’s Haaretz provides examples of the ways in which Eshel abused Rivka Kidron on the job.  One of them was to threaten her with surveillance by the Shin Bet:

One employee of the bureau [prime minister's office] who testified in the Civil Service Commission probe said that Eshel told R. he was following her every move on orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara. According to this worker’s testimony, Eshel also told R. that she only had her job because of him, and that he was the one who had convinced Sara Netanyahu to okay her employment in the bureau.

Another person who testified to the commission said Eshel had let it drop to R. that he had a role in the appointment of Shin Bet security service head Yoram Cohen, and could therefore get help from the Shin Bet to monitor her activities.

We already know of the extraordinarily close relationship between Sara and Eshel.  In fact, he was her eyes and ears in the PMO.  He did her bidding.  It now becomes obvious that one of the ways in which he did this was to promote the fortunes of the successful finalist, Cohen (who is, like Eshel, an Orthodox Jew).  What does it say about a nation’s intelligence services that to be a successful candidate you have to cultivate the favor of the prime minister’s wife as much as or more than touting your actual professional qualifications?

Returning to the Eshel-Kidron case, it’s known that Sara disapproved of the former.  This gave Eshel yet another point of leverage against the victim.  He could go to her and say that Sara hates you, I’m the only one who stands between you and a pink slip.  This is the mark of a canny sexual predator seeking pressure points to exploit for his own advantage.  It reminds me of a previously exposed high level convicted rapist, Moshe Katsav.  The only difference was that Katsav had numerous victims.  Eshel appears not to have succeeded in his blandishments toward Kidron.

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