Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: foreign policy

Showing posts with label foreign policy. Show all posts

Sunday, August 14, 2022

Book review: The Arc of a Covenant by Walter Russell Mead

The Arc of a Covenant is a well-researched book about the history of the US-Israel relationship. And it destroys many myths in the process.

Most books about the US and Israel are written by one of two kinds of people: Zionists and anti-Zionists. Both of those suffer from a skewed vision where the American Zionists and Israeli politicians are considered critical players in the drama.

Walter Russell Mead calls the anti-Zionists who believe in a nefarious and outsized role of Jews in steering the US towards a disaster in foreign policy "Vulcanists." In the late 1800s, astronomers noticed irregularities in the orbit of the planet Mercury, and postulated that there was a hidden planet they called Vulcan that could explain them. Some claimed to have observed the planet. In the end, the irregularities were found to be because of the sun's gravity bending the fabric of space under Einstein's theories, but they didn't have a clue - they convinced themselves that there was a fictional planet. They couldn't even imagine that there was an alternate theory that could explain things better.

The field of research into the US-Israel relationship is likewise skewed, according to Mead, by writers who are convinced that Jews have been at the center of the decision-making. The entire book zooms out from this tunnel vision and looks more fully at history and sees that US (and other countries) made their decisions about Palestine and Israel based on their specific political circumstances at the time, and the Jews (or Zionist lobby, or Christian Zionists) were only a small component of what went into national decisions.

The centerpiece is an analysis of Harry Truman and what went into his policies towards Palestine. Mead notes that Truman was very unpopular in his own party after FDR's death - he was reluctantly chosen as a vice presidential candidate to help Roosevelt get elected in 1944 - and that Truman had a great deal on his plate: political pressure from the Left, including from the very popular former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a State Department that disagreed with Truman's ideas, a war-depleted Great Britain that wanted to hold onto some Middle East oil fields to help regain money and power, a devastated Europe that needed to be helped without the danger of a new menace arising, and a Soviet Union that had been an ally and looked to be becoming an enemy again, but which many American Leftists preferred to Britain. Truman needed to balance these with many domestic concerns and his own weakness as President.

The Jewish lobby, and keeping Jews happy, was very far down on his priority list.

Mead busts myths right and left - for example, he notes that the State Department's opposition to a Jewish state was more out of concern that the Jews would certainly lose any war and there would be a new Jewish humanitarian and refugee crisis than any pro-Arab tilt. And he also destroys the myth the Harry Truman's meeting with Chaim Weizmann arranged by his old business partner, Eddie Jacobson, was critical in changing Truman's mind about the Jewish state - it notes that the US announced it opposition to the partition plan a day after that meeting in March 1948. Mead notes that Weizmann may have convinced Truman that the Jewish forces were better armed and prepared than the State Department thought, so the meeting may have had an effect, but this was not the Queen Esther moment that Zionist sources like to portray it as.

The entire book is this way - looking at all the factors that went into decisions, some of which were far afield from the Middle East itself.

Mead is scrupulously unbiased and hardly a right wing Zionist (he supports a two state solution and is very sympathetic to Palestinian Arabs). The overriding theme of the book is that Jews have not been as critical in important decisions as the many books written by Zionists and Vulcanists have implied. Sometimes the context that Mead adds to an episode goes on for tens of pages; in this sense this is almost a general history of American foreign relations and the different streams of thought behind it.

Even though the role of Jews in this history is far more limited than had been previously assumed, to me the story is no less remarkable. On the contrary.

Four years ago, I gave a lecture at a Queens synagogue for Yom Haatzmaut. Given the venue, instead of concentrating on the facts as I do in this site, I spoke about the miracles behind Israel's rebirth - the improbable coincidences that set the stage for the English speaking Christian world to be interested in Jewish return to Israel, the improbable set of circumstances that led to the Balfour Declaration, and the almost unexplainable turn of the Soviet Union toward Zionism in exactly the time period of 1947 and 1948 when it mattered most (a topic Mead goes into here.) To me, seeing the intricate sets of circumstances that all happened to converge to US and Soviet support of Israel when it was most needed is more incredible than any story about Jewish genius that could have helped bring it about.

The book is long, and the necessary context is at times lengthy. I was surprised that the biggest crisis in US-Israel relations, the 1956 Sinai war, is barely described. But Arc of a Covenant is an essential and important book that explains the history of the US-Israel relationship - through Donald Trump - much better than any other I've seen.

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!

Did Joe Biden Really Threaten Menachem Begin With Cutting Off Economic Aid To Israel? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

President Biden likes to recount his face-to-face confrontations with world leaders and how he gave them a piece of his mind.

Biden says that just this past week, he gave Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a tongue lashing that he will not soon forget:

President Biden said he confronted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) directly Friday about the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, telling him in a “straightforward and direct” way that the killing was unacceptable and “making clear what I thought of it at the time and what I think of it now.”
The crown prince, who is the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, “basically said that he was not personally responsible for it,” Biden recounted. “I indicated that I thought he was.”

That account is from The Washington Post, which then goes on to quote Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi ambassador to the US, who confirmed that Biden did in fact bring up Khashoggi's murder, though not in as confrontational a way as Biden claimed:

It was candid, it was honest, it was open. And what I found profoundly refreshing is the president said, "I just need to be clear and direct with you," and the crown prince said, "I welcome you being clear, candid and direct, because that’s the way that we move forward.”

But Fox News quotes the Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir that Biden did not bring up the topic of Khashoggi at all:

"I didn't hear that particular phrase," al-Jubeir said. "The President mentioned that the US is committed to human rights because since the founding fathers wrote the constitution and he also made the point that American presidents -- this is part of the agenda of every American president."

So -- did Biden directly confront MBS face-to-face on Khashoggi's murder or not?

Writing for The New York Times, Peter Baker writes about Biden's collection of stories about how he has confronted dictators

Mr. Biden is by nature a storyteller with a penchant for embellishment. He has often told the story of meeting President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in 2011 as vice president and telling him, “I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.” Others present at the time had no memory of that specific exchange.
Mr. Biden has similarly described an unvarnished confrontation in 1993 with Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian nationalist leader who unleashed an ethnic war in the Balkans. “I think you’re a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one,” Mr. Biden, then a senator, related having told Mr. Milosevic, according to a 2007 memoir, “Promises to Keep.” Some other people in the room later said they did not recall that line.
Mr. Biden likes presenting himself as standing up to dictators and crooked figures. Another favorite story stemmed from a meeting with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan in 2008, when the Afghan leader denied that his government was awash in corruption. Mr. Biden said he grew so irritated that he threw down his napkin, declared, “This dinner is over,” and stormed out.
Often, others in the room for such sessions say that some version of what Mr. Biden has described did take place, only not with quite as much camera-ready theatricality.

So when he claims he did not hear Biden berate MBS to the degree the president claims, al-Jubeir is in good company.

Actually, Baker may have forgotten an example.

Here is Biden speaking at the Foreign Affairs Issue Launch on January 23, 2018, talking about his time as vice president when he warned that he would cut off $1 billion in aid to Ukraine:

And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t.

So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a b***h. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time. [emphasis added]

Here too, all we have is Biden's account of events -- and Biden is actually being modest about the pressure he put on Ukraine. According to Tablet Magazine, a highly placed source confirmed that it was also Biden who pressured Ukraine into voting 'yes' on UN Resolution 2334 which declared that Jewish settlements in the West Bank (including the Old City of Jerusalem) were in violation of international law.

But in fact, we have an example on the record when Biden actually did angrily confront a world leader -- Menachem Begin, prime minister of Israel.

The Begin Center Diary blog has the full text of an article in The Jerusalem Post by Moshe Zak, written on March 13, 1992, describing how Biden, when he was a Senator, lost his temper with Israeli PM Menachem Begin during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing:

During that committee hearing, at the height of the Lebanon War, Sen. John Biden (Delaware) had attacked Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria and threatened that if Israel did not immediately cease this activity, the US would have to cut economic aid to Israel.

When the senator raised his voice and banged twice on the table with his fist, Begin commented to him: "This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don't threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do?

We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us." [emphasis added]

But ironically, in this case, where there is a clear example of Biden giving an ultimatum to a world leader, Biden himself is eager to deny that it ever happened. Sarah Honig of the Jerusalem Post writes:

Back 1982, Senator Biden (D-Delaware) threatened to cut off aid to Israel. In subsequent years he hotly denied this but Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s late right-hand man Yechiel Kadisha’i unequivocally confirmed Biden’s bullying in many conversations we held. [emphasis added]

News reports at the time seem to confirm the ultimatum. On June 23, 1982, The New York Times reported Mood Is 'Angry' As Begin Meets Panel Of Senate

The bitterest exchange was said to have been between Mr. Begin and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, who told the Israeli leader that he was not critical of the Lebanon operation but felt that Israel had to halt the policy of establishing new Jewish settlements in the West Bank. He said Israel was losing support in this country because of the settlements policy. [emphasis added]

There is no mention of threats from Biden about the settlements, just anger. According to this account in The New York Times, instead of threatening to take action, Biden was warning Begin about the prospect that Israel would lose support in the US.

But on the very next day, on June 24, The New York Times reported further details:

Reporting on his meetings with the members of Congress, Mr. Begin said one of the senators had threatened to cut off aid if Israel continued creating settlements in the West Bank. The senator is reported to have been Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware. [emphasis added]

So which was it: did Biden warn that Israel was facing the prospect of losing support or was Biden threatening that he, himself, would see to it that aid would be cut off?

Time Magazine also recounts the confrontation between Biden and Begin:

Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, jabbing his finger at Begin, warned that U.S. support for Israel was eroding. Begin shouted back: "Don't threaten us with cutting off aid to give up our principles! [emphasis added]

The Time Magazine account allows for the possibility that Biden was not actually warning that he would cut aid. He was pointing out that US opposition to the settlements could lead to the loss of US support. Begin saw Biden's comments, made in anger, as an ultimatum to cut aid.

Begin's own account of what happened also seems to indicate that Biden's "threat" was less than explicit. Yisrael Medad quotes on his blog My Right Word the now-deleted page from the website of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which gives Begin's own account of the incident in his own words:

He [Biden] hinted - more than hinted - that if we continue with this policy, it is possible that he will propose cutting our financial aid. And to this I gave him a clear answer: Sir, do not threaten us with cutting aid.

There is no record of what Biden actually said, but even according to Begin there was no explicit threat. But whatever Biden said, it apparently hinted that more than just an erosion of support was at stake. And that Biden himself could have a role in it.

So to recap:

o Moshe Zak article: Biden "threatened that if Israel did not immediately cease this activity, the US would have to cut economic aid to Israel."
o The New York Times (June 23, 1982): Biden "said Israel was losing support in this country because of the settlements policy."
o The New York Times: (June 24, 1982): "Mr. Begin said one of the senators had threatened to cut off aid if Israel continued creating settlements in the West Bank."
o Time Magazine: Biden "warned that U.S. support for Israel was eroding. Begin shouted back: "Don't threaten us with cutting off aid to give up our principles!"
o Menachem Begin: "He [Biden] hinted - more than hinted - that if we continue with this policy, it is possible that he will propose cutting our financial aid. And to this I gave him a clear answer: Sir, do not threaten us with cutting aid."

Even according to the Moshe Zak article, which seems to be the main source usually cited, the warning was that the US would cut off aid -- not that Biden would personally see to it.

Even according to Begin's personal account, whatever it was that Biden specifically said, it only hinted at the loss of aid -- it was not an explicit threat.

According to Time Magazine, whatever Biden said about the erosion of US support led Begin to understand it as a threat and call it that on the spot in front of everyone.

Based on The New York Times article from June 24, it seems that reports of the "threat" are based on Begin's account to the media.

Whatever actually happened, Biden could have responded immediately when it was clear that Begin understood what he said as an ultimatum. He could have assured Begin in from of everyone that he was not making any threat. Biden did not do that. Nor did he seem to respond immediately in the press to Begin's account of what happened.

Without a transcript of what transpired, there is no way to be sure what exactly Biden said, whether it was said as an ultimatum, and what exactly he was warning would happen. But it does seem possible that under the pressure of the moment, Begin responded to something that was not an explicit threat.

Which is not surprising.

As Moshe Zak himself pointed out:

And not only with Carter, but at all his meetings with heads of state and government, Begin customarily replied with direct, frank words against anything he perceived as harming Israel's interests or honor. [emphasis added]

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!

What do the Nazi-collaborating Grand Mufti and terrorist Ahlam Tamimi have in common?

Malki Roth, z"l

Later today, there will be an extensive interview with Arnold Roth on this site by columnist Varda Epstein. Roth is the father of Malki Roth, a 15 year old girl with American citizenship who was one of 15 civilians killed, including six other children and a pregnant American woman, at the Sbarro Restaurant massacre of August 9, 2001.

One of the terrorists who engineered the attack is Ahlam Tamimi, who was released from Israeli prison in 2011 in a prisoner swap and now lives as a celebrity in Jordan.

Even though Jordan has an extradition treaty with the United States it has refused to honor that treaty to have Tamimi tried in the US and brought to justice.

Arnold Roth, along with his wife Frimet, have been very frustrated these last few days. Last week, Jordan's King abdullah visited the US for the third time since Joe Biden became president. Yet not only was the topic of Ahlam Tamimi not brought up by any US government official, but not one mainstream media outlet even mentioned this ongoing travesty - no questions in any White House or State Department briefings about what the US is doing.

I was reminded of this seeming conspiracy of silence as I read this book review of Jeffrey Herf's Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949 by Sol Stern in Quilette.

Herf notes that the notorious Nazi collaborator and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was under house arrest in Paris after World War II. Yugoslavia requested extradition of the Mufti to try him for war crimes he committed in the Balkans for the Nazis.

French Foreign Ministry documents unearthed by Herf explain why this was never going to happen. A diplomatic memo put the matter quite directly: If the French government complied with the extradition request from Yugoslavia, or indeed from any other allied government, “we would unleash a new wave of hostility against us in all the Arab countries, and would also deprive ourselves of the interesting and fruitful contacts that the Mufti maintains with important figures from the Arab world.”

In June 1946, French security forces guarding the house where Husseini was detained conveniently left the door open and he “escaped” to Egypt. The Mufti was granted asylum by King Farouk and received a rapturous reception upon his return. In Cairo, he was greeted as a conquering hero by the founder of the islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna. The Mufti, al-Banna declared, was a great leader who “challenged an empire and fought Zionism with the help of Hitler and Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin al-Husseini will continue the struggle.”

Doing the right thing takes a back seat to pretending that monsters can be useful, directly or indirectly.

Like the Mufti, Ahlam Tamimi is popular in the Arab world. The US wants to maintain friendly relations with Jordan. Instead of acting like a superpower, giving a message to the world that the US will pursue justice, the Biden administration is continuing the policy of sending hundreds of millions of dollars annually to Jordan to prop up its "moderate" king.

Like post WWII France, the US has decided that a murderous war criminal is an ally in achieving its foreign policy aims.

There is one significant difference between the Mufti and Ahlam Tamimi, though.

American progressives and leftists who later pushed for Israel’s independence first came together to launch a public campaign to bring the Mufti to justice for his collaboration with the Nazis and for possible war crimes. But Husseini was shielded from prosecution by high-level government officials in the US and France who were determined to protect Western influence in the Arab world. In Washington, the sudden concern for the Mufti’s safety came from the same anti-Zionist faction within the Truman administration that later tried to block the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

The people fighting for justice in the 1940s were progressives and liberals. The people who are fighting against justice today are progressives and liberals.

The media in 1946 were aghast at how the allies allowed the Mufti to escape to freedom.

But the media today has erected a wall of silence to protect the murderer of Jews and Americans.

Even though the Roths and others have tirelessly contacted media outlets and fought for coverage of the Tamimi case, the people who pretend to care so much about "justice" in other contexts have decided to bury this story.

And the people who are shielding the criminals then and now happen to also be the people who are the most critical of Israel in the name of the same "justice" they trample.

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!

With drone attack on US troops, Iran adopts a time tested Palestinian technique against Israel

The New York Times reports:

An armed drone strike last month on an American military base in southern Syria was Iranian retaliation for Israeli airstrikes in Syria, according to eight American and Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The drone attack, which caused no casualties, would be the first time Iran has directed a military strike against the United States in response to an attack by Israel, an escalation of Iran’s shadow war with Israel that poses new dangers to U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Five so-called suicide drones were launched at the American base at Al Tanf on Oct. 20 in what the U.S. Central Command called a “deliberate and coordinated” attack. Only two detonated on impact, but they were loaded with ball bearings and shrapnel with a “clear intent to kill,” a senior U.S. military official said.

Most of the 200 American troops stationed at the base, whose main role is training Syrian militias to fight the Islamic State, had been evacuated hours earlier after being tipped off by Israeli intelligence, the officials said.

Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials said they had intelligence indicating that Iran was behind the operation. Because three of the drones did not explode, American officials were able to study them and determine that they employed the same technology as drones used by Iran-backed militias in Iraq.

Israel attacks Iranian targets in Syria, and Iran retaliates against - the United States.

Why?

Perhaps it is because Iran considers the US and Israel to be essentially the same. But they are far more sophisticated than that.

This is an attempt to drive a wedge between Israel and the US.

Iran sees the public debate in the US over support for Israel. While the media exaggerates it a great deal, that isn't important; the perception is. If Iran starts to harass US troops and American targets, while making it clear that this is about Israel, there will be some Americans who say that supporting Israel isn't worth the risk to American lives.

Of course, Iran cannot do this directly, so it has to do it without taking credit but in such a way that it is unmistakable.

This was the wildly successful Palestinian strategy in the 1970s. They directed their terror attacks primarily against Western targets, particularly airplane hijackings and attacks in airports. The terrorists made it clear that if the West would give up its support for Israel, the attacks would stop. George Habash, the PFLP head, said, "To kill a Jew far from the battlefield has more effect than killing a 100 of them in battle; it attracts more attention. And when we set fire to a store in London those few flames are worth the burning down of two kibbutzim. Because we force people to ask what is going on."

PFLP mastermind of airplane hijackings, Wadi Haddad, said, "We must be a constant irritation, a bug under the skin of the developed world. We must make them lose patience with Israel and Palestine that hard way.”

Yasser Arafat responded to the PFLP by creating Black September to be able to reap the benefits of attacking Western targets while maintaining deniability as to being directly responsible, so he could pretend to want peace.

After only a couple of years of these attacks, the world rewarded Arafat with a speech at the UN. This happened in 1974, in the midst of the Palestinian international terror spree - two years after the Munich Olympics massacre, two years before the Entebbe hijacking, with many other major attacks both within and outside Israel never stopping.

The West rewarded Arafat's terror by legitimizing him and turning away from Israel while pretending to do this for moral reasons. This culminated in the infamous UN "Zionism is Racism" resolution, a complete capitulation to Palestinian terror by the international community.

Iran is now mimicking the PLO's strategy - be a thorn on the side of the Americans and make it seem as if this will end when the US abandons Israel. Do it in such a way that the US does not have enough clear cut evidence and Congressional backing to directly retaliate against Iran.

Meanwhile this is an appeal to American opinion that supporting Israel is not worth the cost. And, just as it happened in the 1970s, the people who are most likely to buckle under to this blackmail are the ones who will loudly proclaim that they are doing it not because they are cowards but because they truly believe in the justice of the anti-Israel cause.

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An excellent account of the Palestinian hijacking attacks from the 1960s to early 80s can be found in an appendix of Terrorist Innovations in Weapons of Mass Effect Preconditions, Causes, and Predictive Indicators, page 86-98. A much shorter article, The 1967 War and the birth of international terrorism summarizes this as well.