Nuclear Iran - 3 Voices

Several days ago, on May 14, I heard a really fascinating roundtable interview on (French) Radio Canada's Dimanche magazine, a weekly current events show. They had a show on the Iranian nuclear program and organized a roundtable with three Iranians, two professors and one student and interviewed them.

It is often said that Iran has a vibrant civil society and that is certainly the impression I've had since the beginning of the Khatami era. All three of the people who spoke indeed had very diverse opinions. For me, what was most remarkable, was hearing the student, who spoke excellent French, declare that most students believe that, in his words, "le gouvernment iranien doit regagner la confiance internationale [et] doit arrêter de menacer Israel" [the Iranian government must regain international confident and must stop threatening Israel]. The interview was actually held in Teheran, in a hotel cafeteria! The reporter also mentioned that a group of students had called on President Ahmadinajad to stop the uranium enrichment program.

The program again illustrated to me that Iran is one of the few places in the Muslim world where large segments of the population don't buy their regime's anti-Israel rhetoric. In fact, the years of living under Khomeini and the disillusionment of the people with the government of the Ayatollahs seems to have fed, especially among the students, a complete cynicism about the regime's rhetoric and propaganda. Unlike in parts of the Arab world, many Iranians don't seem to take their regime's conspiracy theories about Israel and America seriously. Constrast that with places like Egypt where the "intellectuals" and students thrive on anti-American rhetoric and anti-Semitism (here I'm not just repeating what I heard in the news: I didn't even have to look hard to find the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Cairo - they were being sold right on the street on book carts). My impression is that in certain circumstances, when crazy Islamists take power, as happened in Iran, they actually do the West a service, because they begin to really alienate people. In Egypt, people still see the Muslim Brotherhood as a solution - in my opinion, they only reason why they did not win the last parliamentary elections was because of widescale repression. In certain areas, the Egyptian regime let loose thugs who beat up anyone going to the polls. In Iran, a lot of the young people are way past being excited about Islam - that's way '79 for them.

The two professors represented different views. One was quite defensive about the nuclear program and also downplayed the significance of Ahmadinajad's remarks. To her credit, the reporter (Delphine Minou of Le Figaro) really pressed him on that issue and cited Ahmadinajad's declarations about "wiping Israel off the map." The other academic talked quite a lot about Iran's civil society and its desire for change.

The whole interview can be heard at:
http://www.radio-canada.ca/Medianet/2006/CBF/DimancheMagazine200605141108_3.asx

The Brandeis Controversy

"Samah al-Azza, 13, created this painting for an exhibit at Brandeis that was later removed."

I haven't really followed the Brandeis affair and I haven't seen all of the paintings, but this one doesn't look so innocent. As a Jew, I find that snake curled up in the form of a star of David offensive. I wouldn't object to these types of paintings being shown, but I would certainly want it to be in some kind of framework, with a variety of critical perspectives offered. Otherwise, there is the risk that these paintings will be seen as innocent, "natural" responses of Palestinian children to Jewish/Israeli "oppression". In fact, they are anything but innocent expressions of "victimhood". These kids are part of a political struggle, and they know it very well. In this picture, the teenager who drew it used an graphic vocabulary/esthetic that she knew would get social approval.

Editorial on the upholding of the Citizenship Law amendment

Good editorial in Ha'aretz today on yesterday's ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court (6-5) to uphold the May, 2002 amendment to the Citizenship Law preventing family unification of Israeli Arabs who wish to live in Israel with their Palestinian spouses.

After Walt and Mearsheimer

It's great to see Benny Morris take such a public stance. I thought he would stay on the sidelines and not get involved. I met him recently, on May 7, but we didn't talk politics. Seems like the sabbatical at the U of Maryland, College Park gave him the time, energy and motivation to step into the debate.

My question now is where we go from here. W&M's response to the polemic in which they are now engaged was not ludicrous and they seemed to come out stronger, not weaker. In their eyes, their main claim, that one cannot engage in sincere, honest debate about Israel-America relations without coming under scurillious attack from the "Israel Lobby", has been vindicated by the responses they received. I think it's important that, as Noah pointed out, someone from the military/policy establishment provide an alternative view on the strategic relationship between America and Israel.

I would also like to hear a little about W&M's exact prescriptions for American policy in the Middle East. What exactly do they want? The dismantlement of Israel as a Jewish state? The imposition of what they consider to be a "just" settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Israel? Cuts in military aid to Israel? If they'd come out and say what they're after, perhaps it would be easier to nail them.

One thing that really bugs me in W&M's message is their accusation that "the lobby" is constantly working to silence honest debate about the Israel-US relationship. Here's a sample from their follow-up in the London Review of Books:

But we believe this popularity is substantially due to the lobby’s success at portraying Israel in a favourable light and effectively limiting public awareness and discussion of Israel’s less savoury actions. Diplomats and military officers are also affected by this distorted public discourse, but many of them can see through the rhetoric. They keep silent, however, because they fear that groups like AIPAC will damage their careers if they speak out. The fact is that if there were no AIPAC, Americans would have a more critical view of Israel and US policy in the Middle East would look different.

The problem with these kinds of allegations is that they're quite hard to counter. It's so easy to say that people are being muzzled without offering any proof. My first instinct would be to say: let those who feel they are being silenced step up and speak up. But that could be pretty disastrous: I mean, it would open the floor to any nut who thinks they were somehow stymied by Jewish power.

In any case, W&M reveal a tendency to portray pro-Israel advocates as bullies in the foreign policy debate, rather than as other voices. For some reason, W&M are convinced that "the lobby" is concealing some dark truth about Israel from the public. It's as if they're saying that the Jews are keeping Americans from seeing the "real" Israel and that that is the reason why no one is questioning US-Israel ties. Does the American public not read newspapers (hmm, I guess most actually don't and many certainly skip the international section)? Among those people who follow international affairs, how many people really get their news from AIPAC's website?

The "bully accusation" is also evident from the way they talk about CampusWatch in their reply to Daniel Pipes's lampooning of their original piece. First, they say that Pipes misrepresented their view of "the lobby" by asserting that he falsely accuses them of depicting it as some secret cabal. Then, however, they add this little bit:

Readers will also note that Pipes does not deny that his organisation, Campus Watch, was created in order to monitor what academics say, write and teach, so as to discourage them from engaging in open discourse about the Middle East.

That is a really objectionable claim, but I see it made way too often. All the maligning of CampusWatch is such rubbish. Since when is it forbidden to critique what academics say? I've read some really good pieces on CampusWatch by Martin Kramer and they were entirely legitimate critiques about scholarship on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I can't think of any other outlet for this kind of critical writing. If demonstrators are allowed to randomly harass Israeli academics just for their being Israeli, if people are allowed to picket Daniel Pipes lectures, if activists can trash Bernard Lewis, why can't those on the other side of the academic "divide" respond by writing a few articles?

Mearsheimer and Walt Respond

Mearsheimer and Walt have responded in the London Review of Books. So, after you've seen Benny Morris wipe the floor with their work, it might be amusing to look at their pathetic "rebuttal." I am only going to excerpt a small part, because I think it is quite representative of their response as a whole. This is what Mearsheimer and Walt write in their defense:

Finally, a few critics claim that some of our facts, references or quotations are mistaken. For example, Dershowitz challenges our claim that Israel was ‘explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship’. Israel was founded as a Jewish state (a fact Dershowitz does not challenge), and our reference to citizenship was obviously to Israel’s Jewish citizens, whose identity is ordinarily based on ancestry. We stated that Israel has a sizeable number of non-Jewish citizens (primarily Arabs), and our main point was that many of them are relegated to a second-class status in a predominantly Jewish society.

It's pretty interesting first of all that the fact alone that Israel was founded "as a Jewish state" is a problem for them. But what exactly is their excuse? Doesn't the fact that their claim applies only to Israel's Jewish citizens (in fact, not even that!) completely negate their claim? Maybe I am missing something, but if you acknowledge that Arabs (Muslims, Christians, Druze) are Israeli citizens, doesn't that mean that citizenship is in fact NOT based on "blood kinship"?

Just as a reminder, here is what they said in their original piece (p. 9, in a section titled "Aiding a Fellow Democracy?"):

By contrast, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this conception of citizenship, it is not surprising that Israel's 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class cititzens ...

They told an OBVIOUS lie. Their attempt to cover their tracks is pure equivocation and cowardice.

This is what Benny Morris told them:

On page 9, Mearsheimer and Walt write that "citizenship [of Israel] is based on the principle of blood kinship." This is an outrageous assertion, with the worst possible echoes. The truth is that since the state's inception, 15 to 20 percent of Israel's citizens have been Muslim and Christian Arabs. In 1948-1949, citizenship was granted to all persons living in the country, regardless of race or religion, and it is granted by law after five years of residency and the satisfaction of various qualifications (as in all western democracies) to applicants today regardless of race or religion--though it is true that Jewish immigrants can and do receive citizenship upon arrival in Israel, and it is also true that Israel is a Jewish state, as France is (and, I hope, will remain) a French state and Britain is a British state.

Benny Morris on Mearsheimer and Walt

Benny Morris definitively demolishes Mearsheimer and Walt in The New Republic.

Some Military History

Everyone knows about the Czech rifles that saved Israel. But I was not aware of the extent of the cooperation, which actually came at the behest of the Soviet Union. Ha'aretz reports on an exhibit documenting the short-lived alliance:

As part of the deal signed in January [1948], Czechoslovakia supplied some 50,000 rifles (that remained in use in the IDF for around 30 years), some 6,000 machine guns and around 90 million bullets. But the most important contracts were signed in late April and early May. They promised to supply 25 Messerschmitt fighter planes and arranged for the training - on Czech soil and in Czech military facilities - of Israeli pilots and technicians who would fly and maintain them. The planes, which were disassembled and flown to Israel on large transport planes, after their reassembly played a very important role in halting the Egypt Army's advance south of Ashdod, at a place now called the Ad Halom Junction.

Euroleague Championship

A little late but...

Maccabi Tel Aviv broke their winning streak and didn't earn the Euroleague Championship title this year (though they lost by only four points).

Part of the game I watched on an Arabic channel, the first channel I came across which was broadcasting the game. At the end of the game, one of the Tel Aviv basketball players was interviewed by Israeli television. So, the American player tells the Israeli audience, in English of course, "I still believe that we are the best team in Europe."

There was something surreal about that.

The Jewish Think Tanks

Here is the latest apology for Mearsheimer & Walt, this time published in The Nation by Philip Weiss. Weiss faults the American "liberal intelligentsia" for overemphasizing the oil lobby (!), ignoring the neoconservative obsession with Zionism, stifling debate over Israel, and failing to understand the importance of political culture in Washington, by which he means Washington's reliance on think tanks. These policy-making machines USED to be dominated by the WASPs, Weiss says, but now that's changed. So the think tanks are where the Jews are REALLY asserting their influence over U.S. foreign policy!

Who knew that The Nation would ever publish an article that calls for left-wingers and liberals to ally with the likes of Francis Fukuyama! But that is precisely what Weiss does here, supporting the "realists" against the neocon "idealists." Both camps are unattractive to me politically -- the former abandoning the idea of human rights in favor of unabashed promotion of national interests, the latter cynically using the language of human rights to achieve those same interests. What worries me in general however is that we've heard very little from "realists" defending a position that the U.S. DOES have a strategic interest in supporting Israel in a post-Cold War era. It seems necessary at this point for someone other than Alan Dershowitz to come out and explain in clear and forceful terms why the U.S. has a stake in Israel's strength in the region. Its self-evidence is clearly no longer self-evident to everybody. The ideas of M&W have taken hold despite the acknowledged poverty of their article's scholarship.

יום העצמאות - Israel turns 58 - Iyar 5, 5766

A few hours ago, many people in Israel began their celebrations of Independence Day. To mark the occasion, Ha'aretz has published a number of reflections on the country's achievements and failures. Here are just a few of them.

Bradley Burston, left-of-center advocate for Israeli Anglophones, invites us all to "begin the next Israel" in a piece titled "Leftists who love Israel" He admonishes both those on the right and the left to come to terms with that entity. Burston also gave a little shout out to the Bay area:

Let the left be resigned. It won't be the Jew-free West Bank that Jews in Berkeley might like to see.

Tony Judt writes about "The country that wouldn't grow up" - a critique that we should all take seriously, though I still think he lacks a certain kind of sympathy and perspective. Furthermore, the charge that

the State of Israel remains curiously (and among Western-style democracies, uniquely) immature.

to me typifies the view of the European and American (Jewish or non-Jewish) liberal who is terribly out of touch with what is going on either in Israeli society or in the larger Middle Eastern context. Israel is simply not a European country!

I recently read some reflections by Tom Segev about remarks made by the conductor Daniel Barenboim on BBC, which I think are pertinent:

To illustrate the European nature of Israeli society, [Barenboim] told this anecdote: When the violinist Jascha Heifetz came to play in Israel, the taxi driver asked him which cadenza he would include in a certain Beethoven concerto.

But that was in the 1950s. Today a man like Heifetz wouldn't take a taxi and the driver wouldn't be able to talk to him about cadenzas. Because in the years after Barenboim's childhood in Haifa and Tel Aviv, Israel has taken on a clearly Middle Eastern character: Mizrahiyut has become a part of its identity. Evidently, citizen of the world Barenboim isn't aware of this. He rightly calls for more teaching of the Arabic language, but very many Israelis are currently fluent in Arabic. Many of them learned the language during their army service in the territories, and their knowledge of the language didn't do much to give them more of an affinity for the Palestinians. Similarly, the Hebrew that Palestinians learn as prisoners in Israeli jails doesn't endear Israel to them that much, either.

Yoel Marcus also has some nice things to say in "A doozy of a country."

Anyway, I hope you have a happy Independence Day!

יום הזיכרון - Remembrance Day - Iyar 4, 5766

Earlier today at 8 PM, Yom HaZikaron, the memorial day for fallen soldiers began in Israel.

We await reports from our Israeli contributors. In the meantime, here are President Moshe Katsav's words reported in Ha'aretz:

Speaking directly to the mothers of the fallen, Katsav continued, "Tonight will certainly be another sleepless night for you, another night of pain and suffering. We bow our heads to the families of Israel Defense Forces' martyrs, martyrs of the Jewish security forces, Druze, Bedouin, Muslim and Christian, who gave their souls and their lives for our independence."

May God comfort them among all the mourners of Zion, Jerusalem, and the world.

Dennis Ross Presents Strategy on Iran

A New Strategy on Iran. Ross argues that the proposal of a meaningful package of sanctions and benefits might entice the Iranians to change course. He envisions a multi-polar nuclearized Middle East where the potential for miscalculation far exceeds the Cold War era's.

May 1 - Nationwide Immigrant Rallies in the US

As many of you know, people across the United States are rallying today to draw attention to the importance of immigrant workers to the American economy and to American society. Hundreds of thousands are marching in the country's major cities. Many people are boycotting stores, walking off the job, and staying out of school, the New York Times reports. Here in Berkeley, many university employees are staying off the job.

Being an "alien" in this country myself (albeit a "legal" one), I view these efforts with great sympathy. My friend and flatmate, a Korean pursuing a doctorate in law here, suggested that legal alien academics stage a day-long boycott too. I doubt this university could function even a day without us foreigners.

However, not everyone is happy about these protests. I just saw a plane fly by with a huge banner declaring that "America is Full!"

In the meantime, workers and wanna-be revolutionaries across the world are celebrating May 1 according to local custom, which may or may not include marching peacefully, playing the guitar, singing corny songs, throwing bricks at policemen, burning flags, and getting arrested (not necessarily in that order).

American Jewish Committee 100th Annual Meeting

The American Jewish Committee will be holding its 100th Annual Meeting from May 2-5. The program looks fascinating. It is above all a great testament to the AJC's high regard for ideas, and its ability to bring its humanistic visions of the world and Judaism to the most pressing issues in international and domestic affairs.

We are fortunate to have one of our contributors attending (and presenting at) the meeting. Hopefully, we will be receiving a few impressions of the event.