Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Just about everyone knows about Abe Foxman’s one track mind. Well, maybe two tracks. One track is anti-Semitism and the other is his conservative pro-Israel politics. In a JTA essay, Abe has tried to branch out into new territory with disastrous results. The result should embarrass Abe as well as JTA, though I doubt it will. I call it JTA enabling Foxman’s fictions and follies.

In his piece, Foxman attempts to cast aspersion on Switzerland’s recent energy deal with Iran. He claims that the former has broken with the international community in its effort to isolate the Persian supposed nuclear state-in-the-making.

The only problem with Foxman’s argument is that Israel too has energy dealings with Iran, albeit ones it tries to disguise as best it can. Writing in the Swiss newspaper Sonntag, Shraga Elam reveals (in German) that Israel purchases large amounts of Iranian oil through European third parties. With Shraga’s cooperation I reported his story at Comment is Free last week. In European ports like Rotterdam, the oil’s paperwork is changed so that it can be imported into Israel without any markings indicating its real origin.

This oil trade takes place through a joint Iranian-Israeli company established during the Shah’s reign and now controlled by Israel. Iran has demanded the return of the firm’s assets and claimed they were worth $5-billion as of 1998. You can imagine how much more the firm is worth ten years later. This sum is an indication of the size of Israel’s oil trade with Iran.

So come off it, Abe. What are you and Israel complaining about? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. And may I ask Abe to explain this statement by Israeli energy minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer defending the oil trade (followed by Elam’s summary of the foreign ministry’s attitude toward the dealings):

“Every attempt for contact with an enemy state that serves Israeli business and economic interests, strengthens the stability of the region.” And from the Israeli foreign ministry one could hear that it is not their business to inquire where the oil comes from.

Ben Eliezer has no problem buying Iranian oil. The foreign ministry casts a blind eye. But Abe Foxman is in high moral dudgeon over it. Where does Abe get off being holier than the Pope on this?

Such Iran-Israel trade is technically legal since Iran is not defined under Israel law as an enemy country. However, it smacks of the utmost hypocrisy for Israel and the Israel lobby to be complaining about the Swiss when Israel itself can’t get rid of its sweet tooth for high-quality Iranian crude. I should add that Iran itself displays equal hypocrisy because it has imposed its own boycott of Israeli trade which it is violating.

Next, Foxman really goes to town on the Swiss for their extraordinary temerity in advocating for Israeli-Palestinian peace. The Geneva Accords are the focus of Abe’s wrath:

[Swiss foreign minister] Calmy-Rey has also tried to undercut Israel’s diplomacy. Brazenly disregarding Israel’s sovereignty and democratically elected government, Switzerland sponsored negotiations between private Israeli and Palestinian individuals, known as the Geneva Accord.

Unlike the Oslo negotiations, which were backed by the Israeli government after the first couple of private meetings, the Swiss project was officially rejected by Israel and the Swiss ambassador summoned to receive a protest.

Regardless of the content of the resulting document, the Swiss action represented an inexcusable intrusion by a foreign government in the peace process and an end run around the “road map” that reflected the will of the international community and demanded an end to Palestinian terrorism as a condition of further Israeli steps.

Foxman is really off the deep end here. Instead of welcoming any nation’s sincere efforts at advancing the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace, Foxman sees Geneva and the Swiss involvement in it as intended to harm Israel’s interests. It doesn’t matter that former Israeli and Palestinian government ministers participated in the talks. They were still, to Foxman’s mind, hostile to Israel. This is beyond far-fetched.

You knew that Abe couldn’t leave this subject without his other bete-noire, anti-Semitism, rearing its ugly head. Because Switzerland trades with the Iran and hosted the Geneva Accords this means they are somehow continuing their tacit historic support for Nazism and anti-Semitism:

In the battles against the Nazi regime during World War II and communism during the Cold War, Switzerland pursued its narrow self-interest by professing neutrality.

Today the Swiss appear to be taking the same approach in the current global war against the radical Islamist threat, spearheaded by Iran, which menaces Israel’s existence and the security of the West.

But let’s get to Foxman’s fictions. Anyone who follows the Israeli press accounts of the incident in question will immediately smell a rat:

In one egregious example, Israel’s raid on a Jericho prison in 2006 was denounced for “violat[ing] the principle of proportionality.” In that incident, Israeli soldiers had surrounded the prison, which five armed terrorists, including the assassins of an Israeli government minister, had taken over.

One prisoner and one prison guard were killed in an exchange of fire…

Here’s what really happened: several Palestinian militants associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were imprisoned for their involvement in the assassination of Israeli minister Rehevam Zeevi. They were guarded by British and U.S. personnel. When those nations decided their security guards were not receiving the protection they expected they withdrew them. The PA (then controlled by Hamas) made noises about releasing the prisoners, though it did not do so. Ehud Olmert, then in the thick of an election campaign, decided to take advantage of the situation by orchestrating what I called a “jailbreak in reverse.” He sent massive amounts of firepower to Jericho, bulldozed the jail, arrested (”kidnapped” might be a better word for it) the PFLP prisoners, spirited them back to Israel. The Palestinian prisoners were paraded in their skivvies before a world audience to their utter humiliation. Israelis loved the spectable and Olmert promptly watched as his poll numbers skyrocketed.

Contrary to Foxman, Haaretz reports that three PA security guards were killed. By the way, these guards were supervising the prisoners. At no time were the latter either armed or in control of the prison as Foxman claims. No prisoners were reported killed as Foxman claims.

You can see that Foxman’s description is nothing like what actually happened. But he relies on his readers’ implict trust that what he purveys is truth when it is at best slanted and at worst lies. Which leads one to question his credibility in general. I’ve written extensively here about JTA errors involved in its Israel reporting. The last time I wrote about one, JTA even issued a correction (but only after another journalist picked up on my post). In this case, the error is only secondarily that of JTA since it merely enabled Foxman’s falsehoods by publishing them without properly vetting them. But it’s still a shoddy piece of journalism whatever way you look at it.

Thanks to Sol Salbe for his usual eagle eye in spotting this story.

Leila Abu-Saba is the extraordinary Lebanese-American blogger at Dove’s Eye View. I know her only through her blog and our various e-mail exchanges. But I feel we are brother and sister at heart.

Tonight, she has outdone herself with her anti-eulogy for George Habash. From my slight acquaintance with ancient Greek via the UC Berkeley summer language program, I can tell you a eulogy is a “good word” for the dead. Leila has no good word to say about Habash (which is why I call hers an anti-eulogy) except when she speaks about the beginning of his PFLP movement. But her words about Habash’s impact on the Lebanese civil war and subsequent Palestinian terror are profound, true, and only won through immense personal family suffering.

Leila’s Christian grandmother was murdered by Palestinian and Lebanese leftist militia during the 1985 sacking of her village in the civil war. Largely (though not wholly) as a result of this personal trauma, Leila has turned away from force and violence as solutions to the conflict besetting the Middle East. To paraphrase Paul Simon: Here’s to you, Leila Abu-Saba.

Ehud Olmert has had several of his cherished balloons pricked today. First, Haaretz reports that U.S. officials say that they will not recognize his proposed West Bank pullout as the final say in determining Israel-Palestine borders:

The United States will not recognize a border created after a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank as Israel’s permanent frontier, senior U.S. administration members said in unofficial conversations.

Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is due to arrive in the U.S. capital during the third week of May, has not presented the administration with a detailed plan for the second withdrawal he promised voters, and sources in the administration say discussion of this is at a very preliminary stage.

However, a number of sources said unofficially that they believed the administration would probably support such a withdrawal, but would not recognize it as one “after which there would be no more need for negotiation,” according to one source…

If the Israeli withdrawal receives the blessing of the international community, “it will be assuming that any reduction of the occupation is good for both sides, but it certainly won’t be support for a new border,” a source in Washington said.

Any reasonable interpretation of international law, a legal expert said Tuesday, “cannot allow recognition of a border that was determined unilaterally.”

Poor Ehud, there goes his plan to shut the Palestinians out of determining there own future. There goes unilateralism as the panacea for solving the Palestine ‘problem.’ Appears the old man is going to have to, at some point, sit in the same room with the ‘hated ones’ (perhaps even Hamas, God forbid!) before a final settlement can be reached. How distasteful!

Of course, in those nasty ways diplomats sometimes have of saying something and then saying something contradictory a moment later, the unnamed sources threw a sop to Olmert saying they might accept future borders which would reflect minor territorial adjustments (which means what, precisely??):

One official said he believed the U.S. would agree to see the post-withdrawal line as a temporary border, “which would become permanent, obviously with slight changes, following future negotiations between Israel and the PA.”

Ariga.com notes that Spain’s new ambassador to Israel has just told the Jerusalem Post essentially the same thing:

Borders between Israel and the future Palestinian state will have to be discussed and agreed upon between Israelis and Palestinians. It is an inescapable fact: The EU cannot be a negotiating partner for Israel…

Olmert and Abbas have both made commitments as to their readiness to resume negotiations. The priority of the EU is to facilitate the endeavors of the two leaders to reach a negotiated settlement.

We believe the objectives that both the parties and the international community want to achieve - that is, two states living side-by-side in peace and security - can better be served through a bilaterally negotiated process coupled with the external assistance the parties themselves see fit to request, and which the international community can provide.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has just given Olmert a black-eye by inviting him and Abbas to a three-way summit to discuss the conflict. Guess who declined the invitation at least for now? Give you a hint: it wasn’t Abbas. This also gives the lie to Olmert and his ministerial flacks who travel the world complaining that they can’t possibly negotiate with a murder regime (Hamas). But they can’t get away with tarring Abbas with that moniker. So they just call him irrelevant and assume they can ignore an opportunity to talk with him. Of course, Olmert’s refusal to sit with Mubarak and Abbas will not lose him any points in Israel (though it should). But it won’t sit well with the international community, especially the Europeans and, to a lesser degree the Americans. One has to ask the question, if Olmert truly wants peace then what’s he afraid of? Is Abbas going to bite him?

Olmert’s black eye: Israeli AG will not prosecute Ahmed Saadat (photo: Baubau/Eyal Vershavski)

And the final blow of the day for Olmert is the complete deflation of his swashbuckling kidnapping operation which spirited the supposed murderer of Rehavam Ze’evi (the Israeli minister) and several “colleagues” out of Jericho prison and into an Israeli one. Olmert claimed he was nabbing Ahmed Sa’adat before the PA let him go scot free. The only problem is that the Israeli attorney general today refused to cooperate with Olmert’s plan. AG Mazuz says he cannot prosecute Saadat because there isn’t enough evidence to prove his guilt. Gee, this is beginning to look like a Bush Administration fiasco special.

So what do you do with an alleged terrorist who was sitting in prison for his crime, now that he’s sitting in an Israeli prison where the chief law enforcement officer won’t prosecute him? In a normal democratic society that would mean the guy goes scot free. Though given this is Israel where alleged security concerns trump all else including civil rights and the rule of law, there’s little danger Saadat will go free anytime soon if ever. In fact, the IDF has announced they’re hauling Saadat and his brethren off to a military court where, no doubt, the standards of evidence and proof are considerably lower and it will be much easier to achieve a conviction.

The attorney general’s decision brings up another interesting point. The Israeli government has been telling the world for years that Saadat and his PFLP were guilty of the Ze’evi assassination. Now that Mazuz says he can’t prove the former’s guilt I wonder what that does to the credibility of the original claim. Let me make clear, I’m not claiming Saadat or PFLP’s innocence. In fact, Mazuz is proceeding with the prosecution of other PFLP leaders regarding the murder. I’m just wondering–on what evidence, if any, the Israelis based their original claim of Saadat’s guilt.

A NY Times editorial, As if That Fire Needed Fuel today took all the major parties to task for their irresponsible behavior involving the PFLP killers of Rehavam Ze’evi and the reverse jail break which snatched them from a Jericho prison and brought them to their eternal resting place in an Israeli prison:

Palestinian prison guards forced by IDF troops to strip to their underwear before evacuating the jail (photo: Baz Ratner/AP)

Wouldn’t it be nice if, just once, the players in the disaster movie that is Middle East politics didn’t perform true to type? Unfortunately, the events in the Palestinian city of Jericho this week show that’s a pretty far-fetched thought, so the conflict continues its never-ending run, fueled, this time, by Britain and America.

The list of misdeeds is, as usual, lengthy and widespread. The militant group Hamas should not have provoked Israel with chatter about freeing Ahmed Saadat, the head of the PFLP, who is being held in the killing of Rehavam Zeevi, the Israeli tourism minister, in 2001.

…Mahmoud Abbas, should have thought hard before offering his support for such a boneheaded idea.

…Ehud Olmert should not have allowed the desire to do some election-season muscle-flexing to push him into storming the prison in Jericho with tanks, bulldozers and helicopters. Israeli Army officials ordered inmates to strip to their underwear, which many did, marching out with clothing on their heads, an embarrassing and completely unnecessary provocation that trampled the dignity of any Palestinian watching that spectacle…

Most to blame, however, are Britain and the United States, for withdrawing their prison monitors. They cited security concerns that British and American officials maintain have existed ever since a 2002 agreement established the conditions under which Mr. Saadat and five other Palestinian prisoners would be held. “Regrettably, the Palestinian Authority has never in the past four years met all its obligations under the Ramallah agreement, despite our repeated demands that they do so,” the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said Tuesday.

That raises the question of why the United States and Britain waited until now to withdraw the monitors. This is an extremely tense time in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, with Hamas working to form a cabinet after its election triumph and Israel heading for elections on March 28. There’s no way the British and Americans could not have known that their withdrawal would be tantamount to throwing a match into dry kindling.

Here at this blog, I’ve already covered the issues of Israeli and Palestinian culpability for the mini-disaster. The Times editorial correctly assesses blame on the American and Brits for their callow stupidity in getting the ball rolling on this. There’s no doubt that the two powers were correct in their criticism of conditions at the prison. No doubt they did try to rectify it and met with disappointing results from the Palestinians. But is the result they’ve achieved here better or worse than the preceding situation? I would argue far worse.

And the idea that Condi Rice has asked for both sides to observe restraint in this matter is laughable considering that the actions of her own personnel (who as Secretary of State presumably she controlled) in leaving the prison precipitated the incident:

“We have, in the face of the recent actions and difficulties in Jericho, been in touch with all the parties to urge calm and restraint,” Rice told reporters during a trip to Australia.

It’s even more laughable that she’s urging restraint AFTER the Israelis brought in helicopters, tanks, bulldozers and general massive firepower to subdue and essentially kidnap six Palestinian prisoners. Talk about the cat being out of the bag!

The Times also rightfully points out the utter indignity of Israeli troops forcing Palestinian prison guards to strip naked before they could exit their prison calling it “an embarrassing and completely unnecessary provocation that trampled the dignity of any Palestinian watching that spectacle.” And as the writer says, this is typical of the everyday indignities and worse that Palestinians must endure thanks to the Occupation.

Ahmed Saadat, PFLP leader (photo: Ynet)

Before we say anything else, let’s begin by declaring that the six Palestinian murderers of Rehavam Ze’evi deserve the punishment meted out to them when they were convicted of his assassination. They should have rotted there for their mortal lives. While Gush Shalom may have a point in noting that Israel’s prior targeted assassination of the PFLP leader spurred Saadat’s targeted assassination of Ze’evi (”…The [Palestinians] which the army was sent to Jericho to capture or kill are marked…because, when taking revenge for the targeted killing of their own leader…they selected Rehav’am Ze’evi, a general turned politician who was the foremost of Israeli racists and who built a political career upon crude hate propaganda); and that Ze’evi’s far-right, racist political views somehow marked him as not being an “innocent civilian,” I still cannot stomach what Sa’adat did. If it is wrong for Olmert to threaten to assassinate Arafat and Ismail Haniye, then it is equally wrong for the the PFLP to have murdered Ze’evi.

That being said, the IDF’s massive military incursion to arrest the wanted Palestinians was another boneheaded move by Israel in its ongoing war against Palestinians and moderation.

Ahmed Sa’adat kicks off election campaign at Jericho jail in better days” (photo: Indybay.org)

Some Hamas representatives had talked of releasing the six killers from their Jericho jail. But they had made no moves to do so. So the removal by Britain and the U.S. of the security guards (because the two nations claimed that the PA was not upholding its agreement to protect their personnel) who insured the killers would not be freed, became a pretext for typical Israel muscular overreaction. Commentators are noting that the Israeli military operation to break into the prison and arrest the PFLP operatives bore all the mark of a pre-election stunt. This is rather self-congratulatory puffery from Haaretz which proves the point:

…As soon as it [the incursion] was forced upon him by the desertion of the foreign monitors, he had to act. If Ze’evi’s murderers had escaped and given ludicrous interviews to the Israeli television channels, Olmert and his Kadima party would have been badly hurt. He would have been seen as weak, as someone who can only give back territory. Both the left and the right would have had a field day with him. On Tuesday Labor and Likud were forced to praise the “security forces.” Had the operation gone wrong, or if the prisoners had escaped, the criticism from both sides of the political spectrum would have focused on Olmert, not the army.

Kadima’s strategists could not have wished for a more successful operation only a day before the pollsters began their work for the weekend papers. This week’s polls are critical: If Kadima’s slide can be halted at 37 or 38 Knesset seats less than two weeks before the election, then there will be a general sense that the battle has been won.

And whadaya know? A Tuesday poll announces that Kadima has shot back to 42 seats and Labor has sunk to 16 with Likud at 15. You see, cynicism pays dividends in Israeli politics. Though the poll was taken before the Israeli attack on Jericho, I have no doubt that it will add even more seats to Kadima when the next poll is completed.

Speaking of cynicism, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has the temerity to declare there were no political motivations in the attack:

…Mofaz Wednesday dismissed criticism of the Jericho siege as politically motivated.

The timing of the siege was tied entirely to decisions by the Palestinians, and had nothing to do with the fact that elections are two weeks away.

Asked if there was such a link, Mofaz told Army Radio:

“Certainly not.

In some ways this jailbreak in reverse reminds me of the post 9/11 terror arrests here in this country for which John Ashcroft used to call press conferences in order to showcase his terror-fighting credentials–till many of those detained turned out to be innocent of whatever charges alleged against them. Unlike so many Justice Department terror prosecutions, there’s no doubt that Sa’adat and his henchmen were guilty. But like the ill-fated post 9/11 prosecutions, the Jericho attack will come back to haunt Israel in ways we can contemplate and in ways we cannot yet foresee.

Israeli tank topples cars at Jericho prison (photo: Ammar Awad/Reuters

We should note that while Kadima still retains great support according to election polls, that support has been steadily eroding. And most, though not all, of that vote is shifting rightward toward Likud and farther right parties. So the Jericho shuffle was a grand opportunity for Olmert and his security hawks, Avi Dichter and Shaul Mofaz to flex those military muscles in the service of political ends. And given Israelis’ heightened sensitivity to anything that smacks of national security (shades of our own country!), Olmert will score well for this.

Clearly, he didn’t give a crap how this would go over among Palestinians. He didn’t give a crap that it might provoke terror groups like Hamas and Fateh, who’ve been honoring the hudna into blowing off this truce. He didn’t give a crap that Islamic Jihad, which has not honored the truce, will redouble efforts to hurt Israel. And he didn’t give a crap that there might be rampant anarchy and chaos in the midst of the Palestinian protests over this provocation. In fact, one might say (somewhat callously perhaps) that such counter-reaction from the Palestinians would further burnish Olmert’s security credentials since he’d be able to say: “You can’t trust those damn Palestinians to honor their security agreements, so we had to go in and take care of the job; and now look how we’re repaid?” It may play well to such a “running scared” terror-obsessed electorate. In addition, the Palestinian violence will, at least in Olmert’s mind, play well to the international community which Israel is attempting to rally against a Hamas government.

I’m sorry to say that Israeli policy seems to either unintentionally or deliberately sow chaos. Somehow Israeli leaders believe that such chaos is good for them. They seem to prefer it to the tranquility and permanent security that would derive from an actual peace agreement with the Palestinians. To me, this shows the utter cynicism of Israeli policy. They don’t care that this action will probably cost more Israeli lives. They certainly don’t care that it has cost and will cost further Palestinian lives.

The U.S. further tarnished its “honest broker” status between the conflicting parties when it quashed an attempt by Qatar to introduce a UN Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli attack.

All I can say is some days you wonder why you should continue caring about this conflict. It seems so utterly devoid of sanity or reason. How can you try to be reasonable about it in the face of this lunacy? That’s how I feel on a really bad day. Luckily, there are other, better days.