Showing posts with label Ehud Barak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ehud Barak. Show all posts

Sunday, September 03, 2023

Diplomacy and peacemaking is not a smooth process. It requires a huge amount of preparation, planning and flexibility. 

It is always illuminating to look behind the scenes of the Oslo process. Gidi Grinstein, the youngest person at Camp David in 2000, is releasing his account of the events that he witnessed as well as his opinions of what to do moving forward to mark the 30th anniversary of Oslo.

His book, "(In)sights: Thirty Years of Peacemaking in the Oslo Process"  is his attempt to set the record straight after so many others gave their own versions of what happened at Camp David. 

Grinstein writes from the perspective of someone who truly wants to see peace. No one can doubt his love of Israel and Zionism - he was part of the team that founded Birthright Israel - but his perspective is decidedly on the Israeli Left.

I found his account fascinating, but perhaps not for the reasons he intended.

Obviously Grinstein tries to spin the events towards his own politics. Instead of giving a straight chronological account of what happened, he spends a great deal of time on the "sausage" behind each negotiating point and then an overview of what has happened since then, along with his own opinions as to where things failed and what Israel should have done instead, in retrospect.

While Grinstein was the junior member at Camp David, he is perhaps the one person with the most knowledge of the big picture. He served as the Secretary and Coordinator of the Israeli Delegation for the Negotiations with the PLO from 1999-2001 under Ehud Barak.

Grinstein admires Barak a great deal, but his description of Barak is of someone who is cold and calculating, who is more than willing to throw his own people under the bus for his own ends. He keeps his own cards close to his vest, so no one working for him has a clear idea of what their goals are. Grinstein extols Barak as "the smartest man in the room" who keeps his people working in a "matrix" of smaller tasks, while only Barak knows his real plan. This means that Barak creates his own backchannels to undermine the people officially working for him when he deems it necessary, he bypasses the chain of command, and he ensures plausible deniability.

Which, when you think about it, is a lot like Yasir Arafat. 

Before he worked for the Prime Minister's office, Grinstein worked for the Economic Cooperation Foundation. The ECF, founded in 1990, was itself one of those backchannels for creating relationships with, and building a peace plan with, the PLO. It was a power that helped bring about the Oslo Accords. 

To me, one of the most jarring parts of the book was where Grinstein describes how the ECF helped end Bibi Netanyahu's first term as prime minister. The ECF, which worked hand in glove with Yitzchak Rabin, opposed Netanyahu - and this Israeli think-tank colluded with the PLO to bring him down. Netanyahu demanded more concessions from the PLO in order to keep the Oslo process going, and the ECF convinced their friends in the PLO to pretend to agree to Netanyahu's demands, prompting him to sign the Hebron Agreement and the Wye River Memorandum based on lies. This caused the right wing of his coalition to revolt and new elections were called that brought Barak into office, just as the ECF intended.

Grinstein seemingly has no compunction about Israelis collaborating with the US and PLO to bring down an Israeli prime minister. The cause of peace justifies all.

Even Grinstein admits that the peace negotiators never really seriously thought about the possibility that Arafat had no intention to really sign a permanent agreement that would end the conflict and what would follow. They became friends with the PLO negotiators, and he lovingly describes how well his team would be treated when they visited Bethlehem or Ramallah and the personal friendships they struck up with the Palestinian team. He mentions and is fully aware of the wave of terror attacks during the 1990s, Arafat's incendiary speeches in Arabic, his actions being fully consistent with his "phased plan" to destroy Israel, but all of that is brushed aside in the pursuit of peace, just as using underhanded methods to bring down an Israeli prime minister is framed as a positive thing.

The only person who predicted the failure of the Oslo process, and that it would lead into war, was US Ambassador to Egypt Daniel Kurtzer, who hosted the negotiators for a Shabbat dinner. He had better insight than the entire Israeli peace delegation, who didn't even consider this.

Barak bet everything on the idea that Arafat could be pressured into signing an agreement. He was wrong. But there is very little hand-wringing on that mistake that brought about the second intifada. In fact, Grinstein emphasizes that Arafat was not the direct instigator of the intifada - even as he admits that Arafat had planned for such an event months ahead of time, and that his own security forces, trained and armed by the US, turned their weapons against Israeli forces in the first days of the fighting. He emphasizes that Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount that supposedly triggered the war was fully coordinated with the PA but still doesn't blame the PA for its role - instead noting that the Jerusalem police response to the violence helped escalate it. 

Again, Grinstein isn't blind. But he seems to purposely keep one eye closed. 

Similarly, he emphasizes that, in retrospect, Barak should not have pushed for an all or nothing deal, and worked towards a provisional Palestinian state that could be further refined with later negotiations. This, of course, would have been a huge concession by Israel to recognize a Palestinian state up front. But while he praises the Quartet for employing that idea in their Road Map for Peace, he glosses over that the Palestinian leaders rejected the Road Map out of hand, and have consistently said that they do not want a provisional state. 

Also jarring is that, as far as I can tell, the Israeli peace negotiating teams -- both Track I and Track II - apparently were exclusively made up of non-religious males, overwhelmingly if not exclusively Ashkenazic. He notes that the only Israeli woman at Camp David was a secretary. He never mentions that any of the participants in the many meals hosted in the West Bank or Europe had to make accommodations for kosher food. Most of Israeli society is not represented by these peacemakers, who all seem to believe that they are smarter than anyone else in how to look at the big picture, and not really self-critical when it comes to their miscalculations and false assumptions that led to the failure of the peace process. Diversity was not a priority for these liberals. 

There is a lot of good information in this book, and it is illuminating - sometimes in ways that it is not meant to be. It is not edited well, unfortunately - for example,  it talks extensively about the ECF without explaining what it is, and there are still numerous typos and misspellings (French Premier "Shirak"), it repeats the same anecdotes a couple of times. Hopefully these will be fixed by the time it goes to press. 

The book is planned to be released in Israel in two weeks and in the US in December.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, August 31, 2023


Akiva Bigman in Mida writes that Ehud Barak had been planning to bring Benjamin Netanyahu down via mass protests long before the judicial reform issue was brought up.
Ehud Barak is a central figure in the protest movement against judicial reform. If you have been following the media, you may get the impression that although he is adamantly against Netanyahu and judicial reform, he is merely providing commentary and interpreting events. The reality is the opposite. Do not be deceived by his age or because he is a former prime minister and supposed elder statesman. At 81 years old, Barak is one of the main architects behind the current mass demonstrations. Yet, his involvement goes deeper. Barak is not only orchestrating today’s mass demonstrations, he has been integral in forming the anti-Bibi movement over the past seven years.

Recently, a chilling video of a Zoom conversation was circulated in which Barak describes a scenario of how he will return to power. He mentions that he has a friend, a historian, who told to him that he will become Prime Minister again when there are “bodies floating in the Yarkon river” of Jews murdered in a civil war. Barak immediately said that this should never happen. Yet, that he would mention such a grotesque idea, a truly horrifying scenario is disturbing. Moreover, this comment was made to a forum whose whole raison d’être is to get rid of Netanyahu and explore ideas on how to implement such a plan. Perhaps this was a slip of the tongue, or maybe it was said by someone whose purpose in orchestrating these protests is about his own return to power.

Nonetheless, the Zoom conversation video containing the “bodies in the Yarkon river” comment actually occurred in 2020 during the Corona pandemic, years before judicial reform became a legislative issue. Meaning, the notion that it is specifically judicial reform that is bothering Barak, or the people he is guiding, is bogus. And the fact that Barak was having conversations with those who raised the idea of mass civil disobedience only serves to reinforce Barak’s role in guiding these protests.  

Barak's words in the 2020 video sure sounds like a blueprint for the protests happening today, especially using the word "democracy" as a slogan. 

But he had been saying the same thing since 2016:

These are Barak’s words at the Herzliya conference, pay attention to the recurring motifs that he still talks about today:

“We have been led for more than a year by a prime minister and a government that is weak, limp and all talk, even according to senior members of its coalition, deceitful and extremist, that fails repeatedly, in guaranteeing security, undermining the fabric of democracy in Israel, failing in managing diplomatic relations with the United States and in stabilizing Israel’s position in the world… Here, I call on the government to come to its senses and immediately get back on track. If you don’t do that, we will all have to get up from our comfortable and less comfortable seats – and overthrow it, through a popular protest and through the voter’s ballot – before it’s too late.”

These are the components of Ehud Barak’s second political comeback: de-legitimization of the government, a deep animus towards Bibi and therefore the slogan ‘anything-but-Bibi’, and mass demonstrations.

Bigman's article goes on to bring  other evidence to bolster this thesis.

Could this be true?

I am reading a pre-release edition of "(In)sighrs: Thirty Year of Peacemaking in the Oslo Process" by Gidi Grinstein. Grinstein was the secretary and youngest member of the Israeli delegation at Camp David in 2000 and his book is an account of the negotiations at the time. He worked for the Barak government during his premiership and famously used the Heimlich maneuver when Barak was choking at Camp David. 

 Grinstein loves Ehud Barak. He was "blown away" by Barak's speeches. He describes him as "the smartest man in the room" who manages to break down complex problems into a "matrix" of small tasks. He describes Barak's political brilliance in building a coalition as well as in his ambitious attempts to accomplish three things in a short time period - a peace deal with Syria, withdrawal from Lebanon whether negotiated or unilateral, and then peace with the PLO, all before Clinton would leave office. 

But, whether Grinstein realizes it or not, Barak comes off as a jerk in this book. His "matrix" of things to be done were all in his head and he wouldn't share his strategy or plans with anyone. On the contrary, Barak would instruct his PLO negotiating team to continue their work even as he sabotaged their progress because he wanted to work on the other tracks first. Grinstein admits this: chief negotiator Dr. Oded Eran was a serious expert who led the team, but he was a "pawn in Barak's masterplan" whose hands were politically tied by Barak, and Barak then built his own secret negotiating team, completely leaving Eran out of the loop.

This was hardly the only example where Barak would throw people under the bus because he thought he was the only one brilliant enough to see the big picture - and to maintain his power. There was no chain of command in Barak's government, and the only possible result in such a system is chaos. Grinstein himself admits that one day Barak asked him to leak information to the New York Times, bypassing his boss, and leaving him in an uncomfortable position. Official positions were circumvented by Barak's personal backchannels. No one knew their real roles.  Everyone working for Barak was a chess piece for his ambition, not a human being. Barak comes off as a paranoid, power-mad Machiavellian far more than the wise peacemaker Grinstein tries to position him as. 

The theory that Ehud Barak is the force behind the protests today in a bid to regain power, when he cannot hope to do so by democratic means, is entirely consistent with the Ehud Barak described in a book that adores him. 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Saturday, December 31, 2022

From Ian:

Dore Gold: Where is the Middle East heading now?
Dr. Ebtisam Al-Ketbi, who heads the leading research center in Abu Dhabi, the Emirates Policy Center, pointed out that the overlapping crises afflicting the Middle East have made strictly bilateral solutions completely ineffective, which drew the major players in the region to try the Baghdad II mechanism. Perhaps they were thinking about a Middle Eastern version of the Helsinki Process that drew in members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact in 1975 at the height of the Cold War.

But Iran was glued to a policy of exploiting its Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) units as its chosen instrument for spreading its regional influence – not multilateral mechanisms that the strongest party in the room was prepared to ignore. Over the last few years, Iran effectively employed its Houthi allies in Yemen to successfully strike the heart of Riyadh, shutting down for a period of time a significant percentage of Saudi Arabia’s oil production.

Indeed, a Houthi drone attack knocked out half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production in 2019. Iran did not pay a price for this bold action. Clearly, it had little incentive to restrict its behavior, given the tepid regional reaction. In fact, Jordan’s King Abdullah disclosed on CNN in July 2021 that Iranian drones had attacked Jordanian territory in increasing numbers.

For years, Tehran had built up a military presence in Lebanon and Syria. Now, Iran had been showing its interest in spreading its influence into Jordan as well. Jordan was known to be the locale of a number of Islamic holy sites that were significant to both Sunni and Shi’ite Islam. Iran sought to expand its tourism in Jordan to these areas. Some had been battlefields for early Islamic armies when they had their first military engagements with the Byzantine Empire. They were located near what is today the Saudi-Jordanian border.

Some Middle Eastern leaders hoped that today the Iranians could be placated. That might have been another reason to invite the Iranian president to the shores of the Dead Sea in Jordan. Israel will have to monitor very carefully what is happening with its eastern neighbors – both Iraq and Jordan. Israel has intercepted convoys of weaponry crossing from the Iranian border, by land, to Syria and Lebanon.

It is logical that Tehran redirects its efforts to create an alternative route via Jordan. If Middle Eastern states can block this axis as well, they can assure the security of the region. But it is not clear at this stage that they will be able to achieve this goal.
To combat antisemitism, collaboration is needed - opinion
With growing displays of hatred for Jews evident among extremists across the ideological spectrum, the space and passive support for antisemitism seem to be growing. Jews are feeling this on the streets of their communities around the world, with record-high levels of antisemitic incidents recorded in 2022.

What has the US done as a result?
In the US, this has prompted Jewish institutions to adopt a European model of stricter security, including armed guards, higher walls and increased surveillance.

These measures, while necessary from a safety perspective, serve as a demoralizing daily reminder to Jews about the concrete threats they face. To identify publicly as a Jew means putting themselves on the frontlines of a battle they did not seek.

Nevertheless, amid this darkening reality, there is also light. While hate against Jews increases, many allies are stepping up to the plate and being counted.

As CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), a global coalition engaging more than 650 organizations and nearly two million people from different religious, political and cultural backgrounds in the common mission of fighting the world’s oldest hatred, I have witnessed the power of partnership over the past year.

Recently, in Athens, we had more than 60 mayors and other top municipal officials from all over the world convene with the singular purpose of sharing and learning best practices about how to fight antisemitism. One key speaker, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, lamented the fact that antisemitism had become “normalized” and “popular,” and he called out its perpetrators.

Also last month, at the height of the Kanye and Kyrie furor, CAM helped organize the second annual awards ceremony of the Omni-American Future Project, a collaborative partnership strengthening ties between the black and Jewish communities in the US. These are just two recent examples of how prejudice can be countered with the fostering of cross-communal understanding and harmony.

However, this may have been best exemplified by CAM’s final event of 2022, when on the first night of Hanukkah, in the heart of Manhattan, a non-Jewish street artist painted a massive mural of Tibor Baranski, a courageous Hungarian-American who brought light to the world at the darkest moment in human history by rescuing more than 3,000 Jews during the Holocaust.

Of course, the Jews are not facing a Holocaust today, but we are under attack from an expanding number of hostile sources. To beat this network of hate, we must build, joined by our friends and all good people of conscience, an unbreakable web of togetherness, fraternity and comradeship.

Our enemies are gaining in strength, but so are our allies, and we must remember this. To turn the tide of rising hatred, we must reach more people who will stand by our side and say, “Enough!”

This is how we combat antisemitism.
Happy 50th anniversary of the Dry Bones cartoons
Yaakov Kirschen drew his first Dry Bones cartoon for The Jerusalem Post’s January 1, 1973, edition, and he never stopped. For 50 years, Dry Bones cartoons have been a beloved part of the Anglo Jewish world. Many children of English-speaking olim (immigrants to Israel) grew up in homes with faded Dry Bones cartoons that their parents had taped to the wall. Dry Bones cartoons have been mailed, shared, quoted, and forwarded between English-speaking Israelis, Christian Zionists, and our far-flung and embattled Jewish communities in the Diaspora.

Kirschen has made the lives of Anglo olim easier and more meaningful, and to his fans all over the world he has spread a deeper and stronger feeling for Israel and Zionism.

The Dry Bones cartoonist, who has been called a “national treasure of the Jewish people,” has received many awards, such as the Nefesh B’Nefesh Bonei Zion Award and The Golden Pencil Award.

Friday, June 03, 2022



Earlier this week, Haaretz published an op-ed by B. Michael which I still cannot tell if it is parody or not. Excerpts:

I’m a proud exilic Jew. I’m an internationalist and a cosmopolitan. I’m also devoid of any relationship to my geographic birthplace, and “land” to me is just the dirt in which food grows and people are buried. It doesn’t have a single milligram of sanctity, and it isn’t worth even a single drop of blood.
...
In our own day, we’ve learned that we owe our survival to being geographically dispersed rather than geographically concentrated. To diversity rather than unity. To communities rather than a state.

We’re really terrible at being a “nation.” We very quickly become as stupid, violent and greedy as most of the other nations of the world, and within a short time we brought destruction and exile on ourselves. Only there, in exile, do we regain the sense we lost and resume being a people that survives.

Apparently, being a majority doesn’t suit us – ruling, running an army and a state. We’re good at being a minority. Even a little persecution suits us. It brings out the best in us.

And now, we’re once again playing at being a “nation.” Ostensibly, that’s our eternal answer to the Holocaust that befell us. But in reality, it’s the continuation of the Holocaust. Not, heaven forbid, the burning of our bodies, only the crushing of our souls.

It’s the growth of another shoot from the Jewish tree that does harm to everyone around it. A rotten, poisonous brother of the Zealots, the Sicarii, Rabbi Akiva’s blind students and Simon bar Kochba’s foolish disciples. They ought to be called Jew-oids. They’re like Jews who took the trivial and wicked parts of Judaism and turned it into the essence.

... Consequently, there’s no choice but to admit that Zionism was a naïve mistake and to go into exile again to regain our strength and refresh our values.
B. Michael is the pen name of Michael Bryzon, a screenwriter and satirist. At first glance this seems like satire, but there is no punchline - and people with no sense of humor like Judith Butler also believe that the Diaspora is where Jews properly belong.

But satire or not, Arab media is reporting heavily about this article without the slightest doubt it is meant seriously. Many Haaretz articles excite Palestinians, but this one is being reproduced all over. 

It reminds me of the interview last month where Ehud Barak expressed his worries about Israel making it successfully past its eighth decade. Arabic articles are still being published about the "curse of the eighth decade." 

There is nothing wrong with self criticism, but the Arab world always misinterprets anyone asserting Israel has made mistakes as an indication of the demise of the Jewish state, rather than an indication of a thriving, open society.

The anti-Israel Arab world, humiliated at their inability to destroy Israel in 1948., pathetically grab onto any Jews who says that Jews will destroy the state themselves. 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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