Author: shergald

English language subtitles begin at 2 minutes, 15 seconds.
The words of Bibi Netanyahu in 2002 about a Palestinian state: ‘Not today, not tomorrow, not ever’ were spoken only a year after this recorded interview divulged Netanyahu’s disdain for Bill Clinton and the Oslo Peace Accords, which had as their alleged purpose the creation of a Palestinian state.

The Institute for Middle East Understanding provided another version of the highly publicized 2001 Netanyahu interview, an English translation of his controversial comments recently made public by Israel’s Channel 10. Apparently, unaware he was being recorded, Netanyahu’s candid remarks about America and the peace process leave many questioning how seriously his professed desire for peace with the Palestinians can be taken today.

Dismissing America as “a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction”, Netanyahu bragged about how he “stopped” the Oslo peace process and Palestinian statehood. Comments made before and after this 2001 interview betray a similar lack of interest in serious peacemaking:

In a 2002 speech before the Likud Central Committee, he said of a Palestinian state, “Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.”

In a September 2008 interview, he said that, if elected Prime Minister, he “will not volunteer concessions and the removal of Jewish communities.”

Yet, none of this right wing Likud rhetoric is new.

The Bible of Israel’s Likud party which is now in power, its political platform vis a vis the Palestinians, is precisely what has been happening for the past 43 years: the nullification of Palestinian statehood through military occupation and colonialism.

Here’s the The Likud Party Platform

PEACE AND SECURITY

1. Declaration of a Palestinian State: A unilateral Palestinian declaration of the establishment of a Palestinian state will constitute a fundamental and substantive violation of the agreements with the State of Israel and the scuttling of the Oslo and Wye accords. The government will adopt immediate stringent measures in the event of such a declaration.

2. Settlements: The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria [West Bank] and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.

3. The Permanent Status: The overall objectives for the final status with the Palestinians are: to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of a stable, sustainable agreement and replace confrontation with cooperation and good neighborliness, while safeguarding Israel’s vital interests as a secure and prosperous Zionist and Jewish state.

4. Self-Rule: The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River. The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel’s existence, security and national needs.

4. Jerusalem: Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel. The government will flatly reject Palestinian proposals to divide Jerusalem, including the plan to divide the city.

5. The Jordan River as a Permanent Border: The Jordan Valley and the territories that dominate it shall be under Israeli sovereignty. The Jordan River will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel. The Kingdom of Jordan is a desirable partner in the permanent status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians in matters that will be agreed upon.

6. Security Areas: The government succeeded in significantly reducing the extent of territory that the Palestinians expected to receive in the interim arrangement.

The Likud platform essentially leaves the Palestinian people in a kind of limbo, which some (like Jimmy Carter) propose is nothing less than an Apartheid existence, a collection of bantustans within an Israel that extends from the Jordan River to the sea. It is not unlike what existed for Black South Africans under the Afrikaaner government before the 1990s.

Likud’s intent to nullify Palestinian freedom and independence is also found in the document, A Clean Break, a plan developed by American Neocons for the first Netanyahu government in 1996, when Netanyahu claimed ‘no land for peace, peace for peace’. That perspective is what drives Netanyahu and Likud policy today.

There is nothing that Netanyahu has proposed today to suggest that his view of peace with the Palestinians has changed. It is better to give 2% than to give 100%, and that is precisely what Netanyahu has in mind even before direct negotiations with the Palestinians are underway. Since his election, Netanyahu has publicly declared that East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, the border area with Jordan, and the settlement lands are not negotiable.

Thanks to IMEU for distributing the translated video.

That’s Netanyahu speaking about the United States in 2001. Other titles used for this story that also seem appropriate include ”The Real (And Deceitful) Face of Benjamin Netanyahu” (Israel TV) or just, “Tricky Bibi” (Gideon Levy, Haaretz).

The above title is from a Washington Post article dated yesterday, but this report on it is from the Huffington Post. It reported that a newly released video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “could add some additional strain to the sometimes tense relationship between him and President Obama,” this mainly because it shows Netanyahu boasting about his ability to control American politics, and presidents presumably, in Israel’s favor, and toward the Likud position given Netanyahu’s lifetime perspective.

(The video is in Hebrew and may be accessed on this page.)
Concerning the video, Netanyahu, who apparently did not know his speech was being recorded, spoke frankly, if in Hebrew, about Israeli relations with the Clinton White House and the peace process. As noted in Gideon Levy, Netanyahu seems to boast of his knowledge of the US by saying, “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in their way.” He also reportedly boasted about manipulating the U.S. in the ongoing peace process, as the Washington Post article pointed out:

“They asked me before the election if I’d honor [the Oslo accords],” he said. “I said I would, but … I’m going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the ’67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I’m concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue.”

In Israel, the video was broadcast on a TV program called “This Week With Miki Rosenthal” (and given the title, “The Real (And Deceitful) Face of Benjamin Netanyahu”). In the Haaretz article (given the title, “Tricky Bibi”), Gideon Levy said: “Israel has had many rightist leaders since Menachem Begin promised “many Elon Morehs,” but there has never been one like Netanyahu, who wants to do it by deceit.”

These remarks are profoundly depressing. They bear out all of our fears and suspicions: that the government of Israel is led by a man who doesn’t believe the Palestinians and doesn’t believe in the chance of an agreement with them, who thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes. There’s no point in talking about Netanyahu’s impossible rightist coalition as an obstacle to progress. From now on, just say that Netanyahu doesn’t want it.

In successive announcements recently, Netanyahu has informed the Palestinians that East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, the border with Jordan, and the settlements are not negotiable. So let’s get down to direct talks about what’s left: an obvious Apartheid conclusion.

In almost ten years since Netanyahu’s words were recorded in the video, he has not changed one iota. And there is no question, given the last Netanyahu-Obama meeting, that what he stated about American politics ten years ago, he believes today. And who can contradict him?

UPDATE: Just prior to posting, a translation of the Netanyahu interview became available HERE, on Phil Weiss’s site, Mondoweiss.

….Democratic candidate for the Senate from Pennsylvania (Specter’s seat).

Whether you call it the Israel Lobby or AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) or the Neocons, there’s no question that as a result of Sestak’s past criticisms of Israel, they are now an albatross around his neck. Check out this political ad paid for by a new (old) group of Washington pro-Israel Neocons just resurrected as the The Emergency Committee for Israel. If you ask whether Sestak is in the process of being AIPAC’ed just as Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) was several years ago, this time with the Neocons leading the way, it turns out to be a silly question. Of course. Watch the attack video just released by this Neocon group:

Chicken Hawk Neocons Target Vice Admiral Joe Sestak was MJ Rosenberg’s title for this story, but substitute AIPAC or the Israel Lobby and the result would be the same, and it would go on below the radar. The story, for example, was featured in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, but not at all by the mainstream American press. Thank heaven for the alternative press that comes to us by way of computer screens.

Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania, is a former three-star Vice Admiral and the highest-ranking former military officer currently serving in Congress. But that does not make him a good enough patriot for the chicken hawk neocons. Nope. A new organization called The Emergency Committee has been established by Bill Kristol, Michael Goldfarb, Rachel (Mrs. Elliot) Abrams and other famous war heroes who think that Sestak is insufficiently loyal to…Bibi Netanyahu. (The Emergency Committee no doubt lists Rachel and not Elliot Abrams because he was convicted of lying to Congress on a national security issue. Even the neocons don’t like invoking that guy’s name!)

Bill Kristol says the new “organization” is the “pro-Israel wing of the pro-Israel community.” In other words, we aren’t just Israel-firsters. We are Israel firsters on steroids, not like those mealy mouths at AIPAC who actually cite US security needs (even if they get them wrong). The Emergency Committee For Israel could be headquartered in Romania or the Phillipines. Although its heart is in a West Bank settlement.

Anyway, check out the anti-Sestak ad (above) and spend a minute wondering how these neocons — whose only experience with war is lobbying to get other Americans to fight them — have the audacity to imply that a career spent in the US military is less American that careers successfully dedicated to getting US policy to conform to the concept of Great Israel. Unbelievable.

As noted, the ad also criticizes Sestak for signing a letter against Israel’s siege of Gaza while at the same time refusing to add his name to a defense of Israel letter circulated by powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. The group also attacked Sestak for appearing at a fund raiser for the Council on American Islamic Relations, which it said was an “anti-Israel organization the FBI called a `front group for Hamas”. (What anti-Israel organization hasn’t the FBI, CIA, or the US State Department not listed as a ‘terrorist’ group?)

Wasn’t it Stephen Walt (The Israel Lobby co-author) who recently identified the Neocons as Israel-centric, with all of its past saber rattling against Iraq, and now Iran, as primarily focused on carrying out right wing Zionist goals?

The dead can still speak through their writings. And no one’s writings are more relevant to what is going on today in Netanyahu’s Israel and the Palestinian territories than those of the late Tanya Reinhart.

Tanya Reinhart, a former Professor at Tel Aviv University, Utrecht University, and New York University, is now dead. But before her death, she established herself as one of the most insightful analyst/writers about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Her capacity to take apart historical agendas, to relate past to the present, and to deconstruct realities and get behind Israel’s hasbara (propaganda) effort were widely appreciated by the public, as in her last book, The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003.

If I may paraphrase a review, The Road Map to Nowhere is essential reading to understanding the state of the Israel/Palestine crisis since 2003 and the propaganda that infected its coverage. It argued that the Bush Road Map failed to bring real progress and that, under the cover of diplomacy, Israel was using the Road Map to strengthen its grip on the remaining occupied territories. Israel not only failed to give any attention to the required freeze on settlements, but settlement building, as in the 90s, accelerated. Reihart’s book was called “an urgent and searing exposé of the “peace process” by a prominent Israeli thinker.”
Today, this scenario is repeating itself under the Obama administration, more so given Obama’s waving of the white flag over the White House during Netanyahu’s recent visit. Yes, Obama said the magic words, two state solution, but so did Bush before him. Earlier, the Bush Road Map was supposed to be a road map to peace, but that is believable only if one lacks knowledge of the historical perspective.

It was earlier, in 2001, that Tanya Reinhart blew the lid off of Israel’s hidden (in plain sight) agenda for the Palestinian territories, the one that today still drives the grass under the Zionist project to expand Israel’s territory and eventually annex major portions if not all Palestinian lands in the territories to attain a Greater Israel. It is not difficult to see how Apartheid is inevitable if millions of Palestinians remained, once the last principle advocate of transfer ala 1948, Ariel Sharon, shifted course. Avigdor Lieberman’s latest reincarnation of the transfer principle can just be ignored.

Tanya Reinhart’s article was entitled, The second half of 48: The Sharon-Ya’alon Plan.. The implication of the title already tells us that getting rid of Palestinians is a central feature of this Plan. I encourage readers to follow the link.

Ever since the 1967 occupation, the military and political elites (which have been always closely intertwined in Israel) deliberated over the question of how to keep maximum land with minimum Palestinian population. The leaders of the ‘1948 generation’ – Alon, Sharon, Dayan, Rabin and Peres – were raised on the myth of redemption of land. But a simple solution of annexation of the occupied territories would have turned the occupied Palestinians into Israeli citizens, and this would have caused what has been labeled the “demographic problem” – the fear that the Jewish majority could not be preserved. Therefore, two basic conceptions were developed.

The Alon plan consisted of annexation of 35-40% of the territories to Israel, and self-rule or partnership in a confederation of the rest, the land on which the Palestinians actually live. In the eyes of its proponents, this plan represented a necessary compromise, because they believed it is impossible to repeat the 1948 ‘solution’ of mass expulsion, either for moral considerations, or because world public opinion would not allow this to happen again.

The second conception, whose primary spokesman was Ariel Sharon, assumed that it is possible to find more acceptable and sophisticated ways to achieve a 1948 style ‘solution’ – it is only necessary to find another state for the Palestinians. -“Jordan is Palestine” – was the phrase that Sharon coined. So future arrangements should guarantee that as many as possible of the Palestinians in the occupied territories will move there. For Sharon, this was part of a more global world view, by which Israel can establish “new orders” in the region – a view which he experimented with in the Lebanon war of 1982.

That Sharon continued to believe in “transfer” on a par with the ethnic cleansing of 1948 is evident in a quiet policy he instituted as Minister of Agriculture in the 1990s called the “dunam by dunam” policy (a dunam is a quarter acre of land), in which settler-IDF soldier teams would harass Palestinian families out of the territories through house demolition, destruction of farmlands and orchards, violence, and various forms of harassment. This “transfer” policy, however, was mainly directed at West Bank and East Jerusalem residents, as Gaza was too densely populated (half of its residents were actually refugees from their villages in original Palestine), a fact that would later convince Sharon as Prime Minister to abandon Israeli settlements in Gaza in order to concentrate on the other territories.

Reinhart provides further history on how these plans played out. She stated that in Oslo, “the Alon plan triumphed,” and that as part of the plan, Arafat would be brought to rule the Palestinian enclaves that could not be colonized, the planned “Palestinian state, “while Israel expanded settlements in the other “Arab free” areas like state lands, security zones, and land reserves for the settlements. Indeed, after Oslo, during the Clinton administration, the rate of settlement and the number of settlements in the West Bank actually doubled. Furthermore, Oslo divided the West Bank into areas, in which two, Areas A and B would be controlled by the Palestinian Authority, but Area C would remain in Israeli hands. Why? That area surrounded Jerusalem where there were plans to expand it and connect it to adjacent settlement cities, effectively cutting the West Bank in half.

Through Oslo, an apartheid configuration was formally made possible. In retrospect Oslo was pure deception. Still, as Reinhart informs, “the victory of the Alon plan wasn’t complete and dissatisfaction with Oslo was voiced. Even the little that the Palestinians did get seemed too much to some in the military circles…”

The details are available in Reinhart’s article.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that after 30 years of occupation, the two options competing in the Israeli power system are precisely the same as those set by the generation of 1948: Apartheid (the Alon- Oslo plan), or transfer – mass evacuation of the Palestinian residents, as happened in 1948 (the Sharon plan). Those pushing for the destruction of the Oslo infra-structure may still believe that under the appropriate conditions of regional escalation, the transfer plan would become feasible.

In modern times, wars aren’t openly started over land and water. In order to attack, you first need to prove that the enemy isn’t willing to live in peace and is threatening our mere existence. Barak managed to do that. Now conditions are ripe for executing Sharon’s plan, or as Ya’alon put it in November 2000, for “the second half of 1948”.

But we know what actually happened just after the Camp David/Taba negotiations predictably failed in 2000 (Barak later admitted that he could not dismantle any settlements): Sharon instigated the second Intifada, the Palestinians revolted, Israel reoccupied the West Bank, over 300 Palestinian civilians were killed including 86 children, Palestinians retaliated with suicide bombing, Sharon announced Oslo dead, killings upon killings occurred, Israel erected the Wall, and then the assassination of Arafat (Uri Avnery). It halted the Oslo peace process in principle. but not in its Apartheid intent.

In the meantime, a bulb apparently went off in Sharon mind: the ethnic cleansing of 1948 will not happen again. He instead chose to create a new political party, Kadima, and proposed his Disengagement plan: Israel’s would withdrawal from Gaza and selected settlements outside of the Jerusalem corridor. He essentially adopted the Alon plan. Although the Gaza pullout was achieved, Sharon’s stroke intervened, but his replacement, Ehud Olmert, merely offered another version of disengagement called “Convergence.”

All of it, the Alon Plan, Oslo, Sharon’s Disengagement and Olmert’s Convergence never added up to anything more than Apartheid.

As the last word in her article, Tanya Reinhart offered one bit of advise: “Before we reach that dark line, there is one option which was never tried before. Get out of the occupied territories immediately.” That was 2001. It never happened.

Israel’s trajectory toward Apartheid remains today the inevitable consequence of Israel’s colonialism as conceived by the Sharon-Alon Plan. That is why two states today remains a figment of the imagination, as the Israel’s colonialism remains on track, while the Obama administration sulks about its ineffectiveness to change this course.

Tanya Reinhart, if she were alive today would merely say, I told you so, years ago.

Just one day before Bibi Netanyahu took off for his meeting with Obama in Washington, DC, reports came out of the West Bank about the further ethnic cleansing of Palestinian families from the Jordan Valley. For years, Israeli armed forces deprived those families of water resources and the ability to subsist off their own lands, but now, the lands themselves are in question.

In successive announcements earlier this year, Netanyahu claimed that the Jordan Valley, along with East Jerusalem, the Jordan border region, and the settlement blocs, were not up for negotiation.

After his meeting with Obama, in front of the press, Netayahu refused to follow Obama by mentioning the two states solution as the road to peace. Instead, he voiced some ambiguous notions about what the Palestinians must do, since of course they are the impediment to peace, not the occupation and colonialism that has characterized the past 42 years of Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Adam Keller of Crazy Country just filed this report, entitled Ghost at the table. These Palestinian families did apparently not have a seat at Obama’s table during the Netanyahu visit. And Obama of course failed to mention the continuing clearing out of the West Bank of Palestinian families.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Update: as yet, the army’s bulldozers have bypassed the little village Al-Farsieyah, mentioned in my previous posting Get out – no matter where to!  The army handed its residents deportation orders, effective within 24 hours, but the immediate blow fell on their neighbors at Ras al Ahmar.

Daphne Banai, MachsomWatch activist who devotes much time and energy to residents of the Jordan Valley sent the following account:

Sarah, a goodlooking 68 years old woman, is tired. She looks into the distance and wipes a tear from her eye. The army came this morning, the bulldozer destroyed her home. Also the neighbors’ homes. In total 15 families, comprising about 100-150 persons, were left homeless under the brutal summer sun. Children, the elderly, and the livestock. No one was spared.

Sarah can’t stand it anymore. Also last year at the same time her home was destroyed. A home which is nothing but a tent and a few shacks can be rebuilt. The most difficult to recreate is the tabun oven which is dear to her, which is made of stone and on which the family’s bread is baked. Every time the bulldozers tear up her home they just destroy everything indiscriminately.

Years ago, she remembers, jeeps would come along with aircraft, shooting and killing the sheep. Or sheep would be taken to the Ouja Quarantine and had to be redeemed from the army at two Jordanian Dinars a piece.

But over the past twenty years, every year the army comes and destroys everything Tents, sheepfolds, warehouses, and the tabun. Lives are torn up anew every year. Young people are used to it, but she is old, tired… She would have been ready to leave – but where? Where could you go with your flocks? Into the city?

And it is a privately owned land. It belongs to land-owners from the town of Tubas. Their ownership is duly registered in the land registry books, and Sarah and her family and neighbors live there as officially recognized tenants. Like with thousands of other plots of land. But almost every place where people live had been declared the army declared to be “A Fire Zone” so as to justify expelling the people from it. An ethnic cleansing.

Israel’s written and electronic media have not published any word of this story. The misfortunes of Jordan Valley villagers is not high on their list of priorities, and this is not the kind of news which an ordinary Israeli likes to hear. But deep inside the pages of Ben Kaspit’s commentary in Ma’ariv newspaper last Friday, a hint could be found as to why the strongest army in the Middle East insists upon fighting the poor village families of Ras al Ahmar. As recounted there, in an intimate dinner with President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Netanyahu declared: “There is no way I would give up the Jordan Valley”.

The Jordan Valley is a fairly substantial area, estimated at at least 33% percent of the West Bank (40% or more by some calculations). An Israeli annexation of the Jordan Valley, in accordance with the old “Allon Plan”, would sever the Palestinian state from all contact with the outside world. It would not be really be an independent state, more of an isolated enclave within Israeli territory. In order to implement such an annexation in a smooth and elegant way, it would be better if the area was made “free of Arabs”. Arab Palestinians living in the Jordan Valley are a nuisance. They should be bombarded with eviction orders and demolition orders, until they give up and go away.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is due to meet with President Obama, tomorrow evening at the White House – where he might be asked to state at last inside which borders he intends to place the Palestinian state to whose creation he says he agrees.

Sarah of the village of Ras al Ahmar in the Jordan Valley, and her family and neighbors, will be an invisible presence at that table.

Reprinted by permission. Click the title above for the link to Crazy County.

The Jerusalem Post, among other news sources, published this story back in February, 2010: “NYT editor defends reporter’s Israel posting.” Then Tovah Lazaroff wrote,

Questions raised following report that Ethan Bronner’s son is in the IDF: Can a foreign correspondent cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if his son is an IDF soldier? The New York Times, in an opinion column on Saturday, answered “Yes” to that question when its executive editor Bill Keller defended the paper’s Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner, whose son is in the Israeli army.

Ethan Bronner not only has a son in the IDF, but he is married to an Israeli.

Is this Ethan Bronner’s son?

Who knows, but there is certainly the possibility that he is serving somewhere in the Palestinian territories in a similar role.
A few days ago, David Morris from US Media And Israel (.com) accused the New York Times of a cover-up that undoubtedly implicated Ethan Bronner, and put the Times on notice that its claim to unbiased reporting is bullshit beyond redemption.

Flotilla Cover-up: The New York Times Accused

June 28, 2010

For the past month, the alternative media have sought concrete evidence that the mainstream U.S. media, including the New York Times, willfully aided Israel’s cover-up of information about their Gaza flotilla attack. Prima facie evidence of their complicity is abundant.

The Times’ role in the cover-up ranged from suppression of facts and failure to follow leads that might (and did) contradict Israel’s version of the massacre, to serving as a shameless conduit for Israeli propaganda. The Times persisted in publishing and republishing the official line of Israel and became a virtual bulletin board for crackpot opinions and commentary. A prime example is Michael Oren’s “An Assault on Israel, Cloaked in Peace,” arguing delusionally that this humanitarian effort was an “act of aggression” that threatened the very nation of Israel.

The news we Americans received on the massacre seemed written by an Israeli propaganda minister — in fact, some of it was. The Israeli army generously provided our media with a carefully edited video of their attack, which major news outlets dutifully broadcast. Long-distance images of civilians defending themselves against commando killers (including a woman brandishing a deck chair) were presented as evidence of armed resistance.  The imprisonment in Gaza of an Israeli soldier four years ago was cited as justification for executing nine peace activists, two shot in the back of the head at point-blank range.

Morris goes on to note alternative media journalists like Philip Weiss (Mondoweiss) and Glenn Greenwald (Salon) who have provided examples of the Times’ stonewalling and disinformation, like its failure to interview a single flotilla member. The May 31 Times repeated the Israeli line, that “Israeli officials said that international law allows for the capture of naval vessels in international waters,” giving Israel the apparent legal high ground, yet failed to consult experts in international law (one even wonders if it quoted Allen Dershowitz). At no point in its reporting did the Times lament the murder of nine peace activists or remark on the immense suffering caused by the illegal siege of Gaza. It rather featured a front page story on the public relations catastrophe the attack caused Israel.

The Times went even further in covering Israel’s ass. Isabel Kershner (quoting Morris again) wrote, “Israel says it allows enough basic supplies through crossings to prevent an acute humanitarian crisis.” Again, the paper reported this “cruel lie” citing only Israeli propaganda as their source (“Israel says…”), not the UN or human rights orgs like B’Tselem or Human Rights Watch, people observing on the ground.

No editor of the New York Times would allow such biased journalism unless directed to do so by top management. Who within the New York Times organization would order the dumping of journalistic integrity in order to conform itself to Israeli propaganda? The publisher/owner? When America’s most prestigious newspaper allows itself to spread Israeli propaganda and spin, it has broken ranks with responsible journalism.

“The Times must be truly embarrassed, even shamed of their employer’s willful deception of American readers (Morris).”

The journalist in question is Max Boot. Who is Max Boot and just how does he get access to high brass military personnel like David Petraeus?

Wikipedia describes Boot as…..”a Senior Fellow at the ,Council on Foreign Relations a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and a regular contributor to other publications such as The Washington Post and The New York Times. He blogs for Commentary Magazine on its page Contentions. He serves as a consultant to the U.S. military and as a regular lecturer at U.S. military institutions such as the Army War College and the Command and General Staff College.”

Right Web, a website which “tracks militarists’ efforts to influence US foreign policy,” however, writes this about Boot: “Max Boot is an award-winning writer who promotes militant U.S. security policies similar to those backed by Neoconservative writers like Charles Krauthammer and Michael Ledeen. Boot holds privileged perches in the U.S. news media and foreign policy communities…. An example of Boot’s inflammatory writing style was his review of the “Goldstone Report,” the UN investigation led by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone whose report was released n late 2009.”

In short, Max Boot is a pro-Israel Neoconservative, and in this story, we have General Petreus answering to him on matters related to his recent comments concerning the fact that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is endangering the lives of American soldiers in the field in Iraq and Afganistan.
Philip Weiss got inside this story:

Last March General David Petraeus, then head of Central Command, sought to undercut his own testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee that was critical of Israel by intriguing with a neoconservative writer, Max Boot of Commentary, to put out a different story, in emails obtained by Mondoweiss.

The emails show Petraeus encouraging Boot to write a story– and offering the neocon details about his views on the Holocaust:

Does it help if folks know that I hosted Elie Wiesel and his wife at our quarters last Sun night?!  And that I will be the speaker at the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps in mid-April at the Capitol Dome…

I obtained the emails because Petraeus passed them along himself in a careless manner last March. He pasted a Boot column from Commentary’s blog into in an “FYI” email he sent to an activist who is highly critical of the U.S.’s special relationship with Israel. Some of the general’s emails to Boot were attached to the bottom of the story. The activist, James Morris, shared the emails with me.

The tale:

Back on March 13, Mark Perry broke the explosive story that Gen. David Petraeus was echoing Joe Biden’s view that the special relationship with Israel is endangering Americans. Perry said that Petraeus had sent aides to the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the White House to tell him that the U.S.’s inability to stand up to Israel was hurting Americans across the Middle East. Perry reported that Petraeus was asking that Israel and Palestine be included under his Central Command (rather than under Europe, as they are now).

On March 16, neocon Max Boot, who is on the Council of Foreign Relations and holds militarist pro-Israel views (he’s an American Jew born in Russia), sought to refute Perry’s post at the Commentary blog:

“I asked a military officer who is familiar with the briefing in question and with Petraeus’s thinking on the issue to clarify matters. He told me that Perry’s item was ‘incorrect.'”

Boot quoted the unnamed officer at some length apologizing for Israel:

….he did not suggest that Petraeus was mainly blaming Israel and its settlements for the lack of progress. They are, he said, “one of many issues, among which also is the unwillingness to recognize Israel and the unwillingness to confront the extremists who threaten Israelis.” That’s about what I expected: Petraeus holds a much more realistic and nuanced view than the one attributed to him by terrorist groupie Mark Perry.

I suspect this unnamed officer was Petraeus himself– based on the emails. But we’ll get to them in a minute.

That same day, Tuesday, March 16, Petraeus testified before Congress, and on Thursday the 18th, MJ Rosenberg at Media Matters wrote a piece celebrating Petraeus’s realist views on Israel/Palestine. He  noted that Petraeus is spoken of as a Republican candidate for President and contrasted Petraeus’s views to Sarah Palin’s .

Speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian issue before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Petraeus said:

“The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests… Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the [region] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas….”

So Petraeus is telling us that American interests — and Americans in uniform — are threatened by the Israeli-Palestinian status quo and that Iran, Hizballah, and Hamas benefit from it.

That’s pretty straightforward.

Now we get to the emails. At 2:18 pm. the day Rosenberg’s story ran, Michael Gfoeller, a State Department Policy Advisor who serves the Central Command, forwarded the story to David Petraeus, “Subject: FW: On the Middle East: It’s Palin vs Petraeus.”

Gfoeller’s message was short: “Sir: FYI. Mike.”

Nineteen minutes later, at 2:37, Petraeus sent the story along to Max Boot (I’ve eliminated addresses):

From: Petraeus, David H GEN MIL USA USCENTCOM CCCC/CCCC
To: Max Boot
Subject: FW: On the Middle East: It’s Palin vs Petraeus

As you know, I didn’t say that.  It’s in a written submission for the record…

Petraeus meant that the comments weren’t in his testimony. But they were in a 56-page document, titled “Statement of General David H. Petraeus, U.S. Army Commander, US Central Command before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the posture of US Central Command, 16 Mar 2010.”  

Four minutes later, at 2:31, Boot responded to Petraeus. No need to say Sir:

Oh brother. Luckily it’s only media matters which has no credibility but think I will do another short item pointing people to what you actually said as opposed to what’s in the posture statement.

Six minutes pass.

From: Petraeus, David H GEN MIL USA USCENTCOM CCCC/CCCC
2:37

Thx, Max.  (Does it help if folks know that I hosted Elie Wiesel and his wife at our quarters last Sun night?!  And that I will be the speaker at the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps in mid-Apr at the Capitol Dome…)

2:45, Boot:

No don’t think that’s relevant because you’re not being accused of being anti-Semitic.

2:57, Petraeus:

Roger! 🙂

That’s military talk. The emotion means, I’m running for President.

Max Boot is as quick as a duck on a junebug. By 3:11 he had filed a story on the Commentary blog, titled, “A Lie: David Petraeus, Anti-Israel.” It attacked “misleading commentary that continues to emerge, attributing anti-Israeli sentiment to Gen. David Petraeus.” It dismissed the Posture Statement as a filing from “Petraeus’s staff,” even though as Rosenberg emphasized to me, “That is his official statement, to be attributed to the record, and it was cleared.”

Instead, Boot offered Petraeus’s (mealymouthed) oral testimony at the hearing to a John McCain question, saying the transfer of Israel and Palestine to Central Command was just something staffers had discussed, downplaying Israel/Palestine as a source of tension, though allowing that he was encouraging the peace process because of the “effect that it has on particularly what I think you would term the moderate governments in our area.”

Boot, who seems to want Israel to hold the occupied territories forever, concluded,

“General Petraeus obviously doesn’t see the Israeli-Arab ‘peace process’ as a top issue for his command, because he didn’t even raise it in his opening statement. When he was pressed on it, he made a fairly anodyne statement about the need to encourage negotiations to help moderate Arab regimes. That’s it. He didn’t say that all settlements had to be stopped or that Israel is to blame for the lack of progress in negotiations. And he definitely didn’t say that the administration should engineer a crisis in Israeli-U.S. relations in order to end the construction of new housing for Jews in East Jerusalem.”

Enter activist James Morris.

Morris has long been a tiger on the question of whether Israel’s security motivated the disastrous decision to invade Iraq. I met him in 2005 or so when he got thrown out of an American Enterprise Institute function for asking Richard Perle and Dore Gold about the Israel agenda in the U.S. government. Morris runs the website “Neocon Zionist Threat to America” and is a regular call-in questioner on CSPAN and at public events. He sends long emails all the time to people in authority– network correspondents and policymakers. He is always polite, but his emails are pages and pages long. Sometimes people respond to him.

On March 19, Morris sent Petraeus an email congratulating him on his views on Israel/Palestine. And the same day, Petraeus responded to Morris with one word, “FYI”, and the Commentary piece by Boot.

The commanding general obviously didn’t realize it, but his copy of the Commentary piece was pasted in above his email correspondence with the author, Max Boot, and Gfoeller.

On March 20, James Morris wrote back to Petraeus to try and engage some more. This time Petraeus sent him this note:

“Thanks, James. Frankly, I’d like to let all this die down at this point, if that’s possible! All best -“

Morris wrote back, “I understand, but please keep in mind (which I am sure you do anyway) the consequences if the Israel lobby is successful in getting US into another war for Israel with Iran. Also please keep in mind that your staff was spot on with what was conveyed in that posture report….”

James Morris first shared the exchange with me in May. My bad; I didn’t read it. Then after the McChrystal blow-up last week, he bugged me in his subject line, Did you read my exchange with Petraeus, and this time I had a look.

Thanks to Phillip Weiss for giving us all a bit more insight: Neoconservatives have the ear of top American generals, Israel’s expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem will continue without military criticism, Patraeus will run for president as a Republican candidate in 2012, and nothing in Washington has changed re. US-Israeli relations.

Ambition and orthodoxy (Kagan’s hero is also Dershowitz’s) was just posted by Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss:

Elena Kagan, the nominee to the Supreme Court, was dean of Harvard Law School in 2006 when she introduced Aharon Barak, chief judge of Israel’s High Court of Justice, during an award ceremony as “my judicial hero.” She explained (per the New York Times):

He is the judge or justice in my lifetime whom, I think, best represents and has best advanced the values of democracy and human rights, of the rule of law and of justice.

Turns out that Kagan (who testified today that “Israel means a lot to me”) is not alone. In The Case for Israel (2003), Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz writes:

This book is respectfully dedicated to my dear friend of nearly forty years, Professor Aharon Barak, the president of Israel’s Supreme Court, whose judicial decisions make a better case for Israel and for the rule of law than any book could possibly do.

Who is Barak? In Beyond Chutzpah, Norman Finkelstein says that Aharon Barak was “a leading proponent” of guidelines allowing torture– making Israel the “only country in the world where torture was legally sanctioned,” according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. He also gave a green light to administrative detentions, even as the judge conceded, “there is probably no State in the Western world that permits an administrative detention of someone who does not himself pose any danger to State security.”

And he approved the barrier wall that crosses through occupied territory, of which Finkelstein says:

If all branches of Israeli government and society bear responsibility for this impending catastrophe [the end of the two-state solution], the share of the HCJ and especially its liberal chief justice, Aharon Barak, is relatively larger. Due to its moral authority the HCJ was in a unique position to sensitize the Israeli public. Beyond helping fend off external criticism of Israel’s annexationist policies, the HCJ chose to mute the collective Israeli conscience.

Of course Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul not long after he published that book.

Finding Elena Kagan paired up philosophically with Alan Dershowitz may be too much for most liberals to bear. Is she just another exceptionalist that regards lawlessness in Israel a necessary fact of life, while portraying herself as an honest to god liberal American judge.

There’s not a goddamned liberal bone in Dershowtiz’s body. So who is it that we are about to confirm as a Supreme Court justice?

June 25, 2010

Richard Silverstein (Tikun Olam), in conjunction with other peace activist organizations, has organized a conference in Seattle about the recent Gaza Freedom Flotilla,

….that will focus on all the issues surrounding the Gaza flotilla attack and siege, as they relate to U.S. policy and its magnificent failure (so far).  I’ve joined together with SABEEL of Puget Sound to produce the event.  We’ll have Prof. Steve Nivas of Evergreen College, who will speak to U.S. policy towards Gaza and Hamas.  I will address the current meltdown within Israel of its democratic values and how this impacts the possibility for progress on the peace front.  Dave Schermerhorn was a passenger on and survivor of the Mavi Marmara attack and he will speak about his experience.  Finally, Hazim Shafi, who lives and works here in the Seattle area will speak about current reality in Gaza on the ground.  His father and brother have lived there for some time and Hazim’s larger family hails from there, though many have left since conditions worsened substantially over the past few years.  Hazim’s uncle, Haider Abdul Shafi was a senior PLO negotiator at the Madrid conference.

LINK

Just letting you know.

Special thanks to the Brass Liberation Orchestra for their performances today.
In Oakland, California an Israeli ship was blocked by protesters from being unloaded, in protest of the Gaza siege, the recent massacre aboard the Mavi Marmara, and Palestinian rights to freedom and a country of their own. Reportedly 700-1000 protesters (probably around 500) blocked three different gates in the early morning Sunday, keeping dockworkers from unloading the Israeli cargo.

ILWU members refused to cross picket line citing safety provisions in their contract. When management demanded instant arbitration, the arbitrator surveyed the picket lines at each gate and ruled that ILWU members were justified in refusing to cross.

The dockworkers were sent home with FULL PAY.

Today’s victory repeated a historic milestone back in 1984, when ILWU workers in San Francisco refused to unload a ship called the Nedlloyd Kimberley, because its cargo came from Apartheid South Africa. The similarity of these situations make the present protest especially meaningful.

The SFGATE (San Francisco) newspaper put it this way: Hundreds in Oakland protest Gaza blockade. The protest was also covered by Ynet, IMEMC, Al Manar, and Haaretz, thus far. We have to wait and see if the US mainstreat media respond to the protest or remain silent (censored).

At Mondoweiss, Henry Norr reported:

If anyone had any doubts that the movement for justice in Palestine is growing by leaps and bounds, in numbers, breadth, and determination, check out what happened this morning in Oakland, CA.

(snip)

Waving Palestinian and Turkish flags and chanting “Free, free Palestine – don’t cross the picket line” and “An injury to one is an injury to all – the Israeli apartheid wall will fall,” the demonstrators blocked three gates to the berth for more than four hours. The turnout was all the more impressive because the BART, the Bay Area subway system, doesn’t even start running until around 8 a.m. on Sunday, and even after people got to the assembly point in West Oakland, we had to walk more than a mile to get to the berth.

The event was organized by an ad hoc coalition of dozens of community and labor organizations. The main leadership came from Palestinian-Americans and other Arab Americans, with the Bay Area branch of ANSWER also playing a key role. The idea arose in response to a call issued in the wake of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla by the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, which asked workers around the world to stop unloading ships carrying Israeli goods.

Union dockworkers from countries like Australia, Ireland, and Norway have already voted to refuse to unload Israeli cargo ships. The boycotts are spreading, and perhaps the ILWU will eventually follow suit.