Jordanians really hate their Palestinian Arab citizens (Wikileaks)

Wikileaks has some interesting cables from Jordan that discuss the situation of Palestinian citizens of that country. Essentially, the Hashemite minority really hates the Palestinian majority, and can't wait for an excuse to kick them out.

Like, for example, a Palestinian Arab state.

Here are excerpts from a cable dated February 6, 2008:

East Bankers have an entirely different approach to thinking about the right of return. At their most benign, our East Banker contacts tend to count on the right of return as a solution to Jordan's social, political, and economic woes. But underlying many conversations with East Bankers is the theory that once the Palestinians leave, "real" Jordanians can have their country back. They hope for a solution that will validate their current control of Jordan's government and military, and allow for an expansion into the realm of business, which is currently dominated by Palestinians.

...In fact, many of our East Banker contacts do seem more excited about the return (read: departure) of Palestinian refugees than the Palestinians themselves. Mejhem Al-Khraish, an East Banker parliamentarian from the central bedouin district, says outright that the reason he strongly supports the right of return is so the Palestinians will quit Jordan. East Banker Mohammed Al-Ghazo, Secretary General at the Ministry of Justice, says that Palestinians have no investment in the Jordanian political system - "they aren't interested in jobs in the government or the military" - and are therefore signaling their intent to return to a Palestinian state.

When East Bankers talk about the possibility of Palestinians staying in Jordan permanently, they use the language of political threat and economic instability. Talal Al-Damen, a politician in Um Qais near the confluence of Jordan, the Golan Heights and Israel, worries that without the right of return, Jordan will have to face up to the political challenges of a state which is not united demographically. For his part, Damen is counting on a mass exodus of Palestinians to make room for East Bankers in the world of business, and to change Jordan's political landscape. This sentiment was echoed in a meeting with university students, when self-identified "pure Jordanians" in the group noted that "opportunities" are less available because there are so many Palestinians.

The right of return is certainly lower on the list of East Banker priorities in comparison with their Palestinian-origin brethren, but some have thought the issue through a little more. NGO activist Sa'eda Kilani predicts that even (or especially) after a final settlement is reached, Palestinians will choose to abandon a Palestinian state in favor of a more stable Jordan where the issue of political equality has been resolved. In other words, rather than seeing significant numbers return to a Palestinian homeland, Jordan will end up dealing with a net increase in its Palestinian population.

As with their Palestinian counterparts, conspiracy theories are an intrinsic part of East Banker mythology regarding the right of return. Fares Braizat, Deputy Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at Jordan University, told us two of the most commonly held examples (which he himself swears by). The first is that Jordanians of Palestinian origin choose not to vote because if they were to turn out en masse, Israel (and/or the United States) would assume that they had incorporated themselves fully into Jordanian society and declare the right of return to be null and void. The second conspiracy theory, which has a similar theme, is that after the 1994 peace agreement between Jordan and Israel, the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank issued a deliberate directive to "all Palestinians" residing in Jordan to avoid involvement in Jordanian politics so as not to be perceived as "going native." The main point of both theories is that Palestinians are planning to return to a future Palestinian state, and therefore have nothing substantive to contribute to the Jordanian political debate - a convenient reason for excluding them from that debate in the first place.

The right of return in Jordan is inextricably linked with the problem of semi-official discrimination toward the Palestinian-origin community. Braizat claims it is "the major reason that keeps the Jordanian political system the way it is." As long as the right of return is touted as a real solution, East Bankers will continue to see Palestinians as temporary residents in "their" country. This provides the justification to minimize the role of Palestinian-origin Jordanians in public life, since they are "foreigners" whose loyalty is suspect and who could in theory pack up and leave at any time. Note: The suspicion of disloyalty is deeply rooted in Black September, when Palestinian militants attempted to wrest political control from the Hashemite regime. Since then, Palestinians have been progressively excluded from the Jordanian security forces and civil service (Ref D). End Note. The suggestion that Palestinians should be granted full political representation in Jordan is often met with accusations that doing so would "cancel" or "prejudge" the right of return. For their part, many Palestinian-origin Jordanians are less concerned with "prejudging" the right of return, and more concerned with fulfilling their roles as Jordanian citizens who are eligible for the full range of political and social rights guaranteed by law.

While Jordanians of Palestinian origin are not shy about their origins, many stress just as strongly their strong connections and loyalty to Jordan. Jemal Refai says, "I consider myself Jordanian. Nobody can tell me otherwise." Mohammed Abu Baker, who represents the PLO in Amman, says, "if you tell me to go back to Jenin, I won't go. This is a fact - Palestinian refugees in Jordan have better living conditions." PNC member Isa Al-Shuaibi simply notes that "Palestinians in Jordan are not refugees. They are citizens."

What's the term for when a minority rules over, and discriminates against, the majority?

Remember - Jordan is the only Arab state that allowed large numbers of Palestinians to become citizens. If the Palestinians in Jordan are looked down upon this much, imagine how much the other Arab countries hate them.

Yet those same Arab countries will fall over themselves to hold conferences and sponsor UN resolutions and fund NGOs  that are supposedly "pro-Palestinian." Don't be fooled - they all hate them, and they want to dump them in Israel rather than help them integrate. This is the entire reason people still talk about the "right of return" today - because of the hate exhibited by Arab brethren of the Palestinians who want nothing to do with them.

(h/t Yoel)

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Jordan's Palestinian problem

A must-read piece in Hudson-NY by Mudar Zahran:

The King of Jordan, Abdullah II, delivered a speech on September 11, in which he mentioned the Jordanian civil war of 1970 for the first time ever: "There are not any issues we are too embarrassed to discuss, even if there is someone who wants to discuss the incidents of 1970, this is a part of history; let us think of the future and not the past."

Commenting on the fear of Jordan's Bedouin minority -- who make up the king's military and are the protected class -- that Jordan might become the Palestinian majority's homeland -- a plan dubbed "the alternative homeland" by the local media -- the king said: "I would like to assure everyone that Jordan will not be an alternative country to anyone. Is it even logical that Jordan will become an alternative to anyone while we sit there and do nothing? We have an army and we are willing to fight for our country and for the future of Jordan, and we must speak vigorously and not ever allow this idea to remain in the minds of some of us….We have fought Israel before many times."

"Jordan and the future of Palestine," he added, "are much stronger than Israel today; the Israeli is the one who is afraid….When I was in the United States, I spoke to an Israeli intellectual; he told me that what was happening in Arab countries today is in the interests of Israel. I told him, 'I think it is the opposite: your situation today is much harder than before.'"

King Abdullah also mentioned the need to address the issue of "national identity" in Jordan -- a phrase associated with isolating the Palestinians, who make up 80% of the population, in favor of the Beduin minority, for whom he would establish Jordan as a purely Bedouin state: "We must speak with a loud voice about the Jordanian identity," he said, "yet national unity is a red line." In other words, the king openly supports talk about imposing a Jordanian Bedouin identity on the country, while at the same time prohibiting any "unity" with the Palestinians -- a notion he had previously denounced.

The king, in his speech, was using a common Arab political trick of saying an undesired thing to the public -- reminding the Palestinians of the civil war in which they were slaughtered -- and then, in the same sentence, ostensibly defusing the threat of another slaughter by adding that he would spare the Palestinians so long as they accept the situation as is, where they are citizens, but still treated as refugees and outsiders in every way.

Although it is common for Arab regimes that are pro-Western to talk tough about the US and Israel every now and then -- to rally their people behind them by threatening these cost-free targets, and thereby divert anger away from their own repressive regimes onto other countries -- this time the context was different: The King's speech, aired on Jordanian national television, came two days after Wikileaks released several US Embassy, Amman, cables that described the testimonies of some Jordanian Palestinians officials who were complaining to Embassy officers about the discrimination against the Palestinians in Jordan. One cable, entitled, "The Grand Bargain," mentioned a Palestinian political leader's belief that the "right of return" was unfeasible - signifying the Palestinians' willingness to accept a permanent home in Jordan --rather than in hoping to return to Israel, as the refugees and five generations of descendants are continually being promised -- in exchange for finally attaining civil rights in Jordan.

The government-controlled Jordanian media expressed anger at the US Embassy -- to the point of issuing calls for a protest against both the American and Israeli embassies in Amman, which they called "the espionage beehive."

The King's talk sounded provocative and terrorizing to the Jordanian Palestinians, who are already discriminated against and disenfranchised politically by the Hashemite regime. The Bedouin-dominated town of Kerak in Southern Jordan, for example, has ten parliamentary seats for fewer than 150,000 voters, while the Palestinian-dominated Amman has barely twenty parliamentary seats for three million voters.

What made matters especially threatening was the way Jordan's Bedouins seem to have understood the King's remarks. The King's statement, for instance, that he would "not feel embarrassed to address any issue including the civil war," seems to have been understood by the Bedouin military as permission to go out and target the Palestinians. Comments on Jordanian social websites, such as Facebook, appeared, with disturbing messages of incitement: Jordanian Bedouins began calling for violence against both Israel and the Palestinian majority. One of commentators said on Facebook: "We shall give the Palestinians another Black September," said one, "only this time we will make it red." Another said: "Those Palestinians are worse than Jews. I could never make out the difference. We will march to kick [the Palestinian] out [of Jordan] and we will knock down the Israeli embassy." Still another said, "You do the killing, guys, just leave the hot Palestinian chicks for me; I will rape their little girls." While this anti-Palestinian sentiment is not new in Jordan, after the King's speech it reached a new extreme.
It seemed as if the king was threatening Israel with a war, and the Palestinians in Jordan with a civil war. This perceived threat translated into protests: one against the American Embassy in Amman on September 15th, and one against the Israeli Embassy for Friday, September 16th. Both protests were called for and organized by Nahid Hattar, a Christian Bedouin writer, who has been calling for ousting the Palestinians from Jordan, and who has openly admitted his direct one-on-one connection to the former chief of the Jordanian Intelligence Department while the latter was in office.

That Wikileaks cable he refers to doesn't only mention a minority of Palestinian Arabs in Jordan who privately believe that "return" will never happen and who want compensation instead - it also mentions East Bankers who want to use the "right of return" to kick out the Palestinian Arab majority:

East Bankers have an entirely different approach to thinking about the right of return. At their most benign, our East Banker contacts tend to count on the right of return as a solution to Jordan's social, political, and economic woes. But underlying many conversations with East Bankers is the theory that once the Palestinians leave, "real" Jordanians can have their country back. They hope for a solution that will validate their current control of Jordan's government and military, and allow for an expansion into the realm of business, which is currently dominated by Palestinians.

¶12. (C) Palestinian-origin contacts certainly have their suspicions about East Banker intentions. "If the right of return happens, East Bankers assume that all of the Palestinians will leave," says parliamentarian Mohammed Al-Kouz. Other Palestinian-origin contacts offered similar observations, including Adel Irsheid and Raja'i Dajani, who was one of the founding members of the GID, and later served as Interior Minister at the time of Jordan's administrative separation from the West Bank in 1988. Dajani cited the rise of what he called "Likudnik" East Bankers, who hold out hope that the right of return will lead to an "exodus" of Palestinians.

¶13. (C) In fact, many of our East Banker contacts do seem more excited about the return (read: departure) of Palestinian refugees than the Palestinians themselves. Mejhem Al-Khraish, an East Banker parliamentarian from the central bedouin district, says outright that the reason he strongly supports the right of return is so the Palestinians will quit Jordan. East Banker Mohammed Al-Ghazo, Secretary General at the Ministry of Justice, says that Palestinians have no investment in the Jordanian political system - "they aren't interested in jobs in the government or the military" - and are therefore signaling their intent to return to a Palestinian state.

¶14. (C) When East Bankers talk about the possibility of Palestinians staying in Jordan permanently, they use the language of political threat and economic instability. Talal Al-Damen, a politician in Um Qais near the confluence of Jordan, the Golan Heights and Israel, worries that without the right of return, Jordan will have to face up to the political challenges of a state which is not united demographically. For his part, Damen is counting on a mass exodus of Palestinians to make room for East Bankers in the world of business, and to change Jordan's political landscape. This sentiment was echoed in a meeting with university students, when self-identified "pure Jordanians" in the group noted that "opportunities" are less available because there are so many Palestinians.

¶15. (C) The right of return is certainly lower on the list of East Banker priorities in comparison with their Palestinian-origin brethren, but some have thought the issue through a little more. NGO activist Sa'eda Kilani predicts that even (or especially) after a final settlement is reached, Palestinians will choose to abandon a Palestinian state in favor of a more stable Jordan where the issue of political equality has been resolved. In other words, rather than seeing significant numbers return to a Palestinian homeland, Jordan will end up dealing with a net increase in its Palestinian population.

¶16. (C) As with their Palestinian counterparts, conspiracy theories are an intrinsic part of East Banker mythology regarding the right of return. Fares Braizat, Deputy Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at Jordan University, told us two of the most commonly held examples (which he himself swears by). The first is that Jordanians of Palestinian origin choose not to vote because if they were to turn out en masse, Israel (and/or the United States) would assume that they had incorporated themselves fully into Jordanian society and declare the right of return to be null and void. The second conspiracy theory, which has a similar theme, is that after the 1994 peace agreement between Jordan and Israel, the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank issued a deliberate directive to "all Palestinians" residing in Jordan to avoid involvement in Jordanian politics so as not to be perceived as "going native." The main point of both theories is that Palestinians are planning to return to a future Palestinian state, and therefore have nothing substantive to contribute to the Jordanian political debate - a convenient reason for excluding them from that debate in the first place.

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The last Jews of Baghdad (Wikileaks)

From Wikileaks:

On October 10, Poloff met with one of the last remaining Jews in Iraq, XXXXXX (strictly protect), to discuss the current state of the Iraqi Jewish community. XXXXXX stated that there are now eight remaining members of the Iraqi Jewish community in Baghdad including herself (a complete biographical breakdown of the community is contained in reftel). She stated that the community had numbered 20 persons in 2003, but that the number has declined as a result of old age, immigration, and sectarian violence. XXXXXXX noted that her mother, XXXXXXXXX, had passed away in the past year and that her husband had been kidnapped by AQI in 2005 and had most likely been murdered. (Note: Since the kidnapping, the Embassy's Office of Hostage Affairs has attempted to assist XXXXXXX in locating her husband or his remains. End note.) For her own part, XXXXXXX expressed continued interest in immigrating to the Netherlands where two of her brothers are currently living. At present, XXXXXXX works as a dentist in an orphanage and conceals her religious identity to her co-workers by claiming to be Christian, although she attends weekly Jewish services held at the Embassy.

Asked about the community's religious sites, XXXXXXXX stated that there was a synagogue and a Jewish cemetery in Baghdad that had remained closed since 2004 with the keys entrusted to two separate Muslim families. She believed that the synagogue remained in good condition and noted that the Jewish community is able to pay the caretakers of the synagogue and cemetery a modest stipend from the rental income that they receive from their commercial properties. XXXXXXX was not as optimistic about the Jewish synagogue located in Basra, which has been turned into a local warehouse. She also noted that the community had a strong interest in the grave of Ezekiel, which has become a religious site for Muslims as well. Asked about the possibility for Iraqi Jews living abroad to visit the country or attempt to reestablish connections, XXXXXXXX was pessimistic saying that latent anti-Semitism within Iraqi society would prevent this from happening anytime soon.

There are Jewish services in the US embassy in Baghdad?

(h/t Bataween)

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Red-lines that would cause the US to walk out of a UNGA speech (Wikileaks)

After Ahmadinejad's embrace of Holocaust revisionism and other anti-semitic statements at the UN, the United States established a list of "red lines" that, when crossed, would prompt a walk-out. They encouraged European nations to respect these criteria as well.

Here are details from a September 2009 Wikileaks memo:

Our redlines for walking out of a speech, which should be conveyed to the host government, are: 


 -- Denying the historical reality of the Holocaust 


 -- Comparing U.S. or Israeli actions to those of Nazi Germany 


-- Using other clearly anti-Semitic rhetoric, including suggestions (similar to those in Ahmadinejad?s 2008 UNGA remarks) that Jews or Zionists control the media and the financial system or have formed a nefarious conspiracy 


 -- Threatening the destruction of Israel or any other UN member state 


 -- Denying Israel?s or another UN member state?s right to exist 


 -- Suggesting that the United States deserved 9/11 


 -- Embracing or justifying the Lockerbie bombing 


 -- If asked: The U.S. will, of course, reserve the right to respond to any other obnoxious or offensive statements.

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Wikileaks: Hezbollah's intimidation of a Lebanese journalist

From a 2009 Wikileaks cable:

On March 13, Embassy Public Diplomacy (PD) staff met with Beirut-based, Lebanese journalist Tha'ir Abbas of the Saudi-owned newspaper, Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat. Abbas, who is Shi'a, has been a PD contact for several years and is well-known for his objective reporting. While he does not write anti-Hizballah reports, he is known for not being a Hizballah supporter. His residence is located in Dahiyeh in Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hizballah stronghold.

Abbas went to the United States in November 2008 to cover the U.S. presidential elections. Following his return to Beirut, three members of Hizballah visited him at home, he reported. One member entered the house and the other two stayed on the stairs near his apartment: one on the stairs leading up and one on the stairs leading down. Abbas asked the one Hizballah member who entered his house to stay in the doorway. This person told him that he wanted to ask him some questions. Abbas told him that he would answer his questions only near the door.

This Hizballah member asked Abbas about every member of his family, including his wife, Linda Ayyach, who is a journalist for Hiya Magazine, and his two children. Allegedly, the questions were: what type of cars Abbas and his wife drive; which school do the children attend (Note: They attend an evangelical school. End Note.); what are their political affiliation/s, even the political affiliation of his eight-year old daughter; whether Abbas supports Hizballah; and, what was the reason for his visit to the United States. One of the questions that caught Abbas' attention was whether he has access to the Internet in his house and the reason he does. Abbas said he answered all of the questions because, as he explained to PD, since he lives "in Hizballah's stronghold," he always tries to avoid problems and keeps a low profile.

Following that incident, Abbas learned through his contacts that the security wing of Hizballah has contacts with all the concierges in the area buildings who "spy" on residents and report back to Hizballah. After the visit, Abbas has noticed that he is often followed by another car. He told PD staff that his phone is tapped, that he has another phone which he uses for personal business, and he changes his personal telephone number constantly.

Abbas said he told his story to a person close to Sunni majority leader Saad Hariri, who in turn told Hariri. According to Abbas, Hariri, who sees Abbas on a routine basis and knows him well, allegedly called Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, but was referred to Nasrallah's political assistant, Hassan Khalil. Hariri told Khalil what happened, noting that Hizballah has no right to act in this manner, particularly with journalists "who work for Saudi-owned newspapers." Hariri warned that, by acting this way, Hizballah was damaging its relations with him.

After Hariri's phone call, Abbas claimed he received a phone call from Hizballah's media advisor at the time, Hussein Rahhal, who blamed Abbas for letting the story reach Hariri, and tried to belittle the incident. Since that phone call, Abbas has been harassed publicly several times by members of Hizballah. Once, he said, there was a hot exchange between him and a person who blocked his way while he was trying to leave the garage in his building. This person closed the garage for about two hours, making it impossible for Abbas to leave. On another occasion, Abbas was harassed by a Hizballah member who was about to hit him. Another time he received a phone call from a member of Hizballah when he published an interview with Ahmad Al-Asaad, an independent Shi'a figure who is critical of Hizballah.

Abbas said he lives in constant anxiety over the possibility of being harassed by Hizballah. He explained that he looked into the possibility of selling his house and moving away, but he ruled out the idea because of the high prices elsewhere. He characterized the atmosphere in the Dahiyeh as "extremely intimidating" following the July 2006 war between Israel and Hizballah, noting that Hizballah has its own police force now on every street in Beirut's southern suburb. He also said, "Hizballah members were extremely kind and open before July 2006, but now they are completely different." For them, he noted "everyone is an Israeli or an American agent until the contrary is proven."

This fits in well with what Michael Totten described in his book "The Road to Fatima Gate."

 (h/t Yoel)

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Wikileaks: Fearful Jews emigrating from Iran

From a Wikileaks cable from August 2009:

Morris Motamed, a former two-term MP for Iran's Jewish community, told IRPO that four Jewish youths were arrested by Basij militiamen while participating in the June 20 street demonstrations in Tehran. The four teenagers spent one night herded into a parking lot with dozens of other detained demonstrators. According to their families, the whole group was badly beaten with batons and stun guns throughout the night before being moved to a police station, where the physical abuse continued. Two of the young men were released after "two or three days" but the other two were transferred to Evin Prison and held 18 days. According to Motamed, who said he maintains ties with many former and current IRIG officials from his days as an MP, the two young men were released after he spoke with Hossein Ali Amiri, who is the deputy to Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Shahroudi. The two were re-arrested in their homes on July 18 by "IRGC security."...Motamed said that at least one of the young men picked up July 18, Yeghoutiel Shaoolian, was among the detainees prosecuted in the August 1 show trial. He said that Shaoolian's mother told him that at some point during his incarceration her son made a taped statement in which he confessed to spying for Israel. Motamed believes that Shaoolian's confession may be linked to the testimony of the "unnamed spy" referenced in the six-part indictment released by the government in advance of the trial. Motamed, who was an MP during the trial of the 13 Jewish Iranians arrested in 1999 in Shiraz and Esfahan on espionage charges, fears a repeat of that ordeal, which he says had far-reaching repercussions for Iran's Jewish community.

Motamed said that the consensus of the community is that only about 20,000 Jews now remain in Iran and noted that emigration has increased over the past two years following President Ahmadinejad's increasingly strident rhetoric against Israel and his public questioning of the Holocaust. Though Jewish Iranians "continue to love Iran" they are being compelled to leave, mostly out of fear that they will become targets of a government backlash should Israel confront Iran militarily. Motamed said he lives in fear of an Israeli strike because the Jewish community has no ability to protect itself from what he believes would be a wide-scale attack on Jews and Jewish interests. He said that while economic opportunity and the chance to live somewhere as a "first-class citizen" do factor into decisions to leave, the uptick in departures is driven mostly by fear of the future. Motamed noted that as a community leader, he has been asked for many years his opinion by Jews weighing their options. Until two years ago, he told people they had to make the decision themselves. Now, he said, he recommends moving out of Iran to every Jew who asks his opinion. He estimated that 80 percent of Jews emigrate to the United States, while the rest relocate to Israel or Europe. (Note: Motamed's wife is emigrating to the U.S. and he is considering his options.)

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Some official Jordanian anti-semitism on Wikileaks

From a July 2009 Wikileaks cable:

Another intensely debated amendment concerned Article Twenty-Nine, which outlines restrictions on non-Muslim religious NGOs in Jordan. The amended article as submitted by the government to parliament allows non-Muslim religious organizations to provide "social and charitable services" as long as those services are not part of a proselytizing campaign. During the debate, MP Mamdouh Abbadi warned that the article as written would allow "Jews, Buddhists, and Baha'is" to establish religious charities in Jordan. He proposed an amendment that would only permit Christian organizations to form non-Muslim religious charities. IAF deputy Suleiman Sa'ad, warning deputies of the potentially nefarious influence of foreign religious charities, proposed a further amendment which would only allow non-Muslim religious organizations to operate in Jordan if their members were Jordanian. Abbadi countered that non-Jordanian religious organizations have set up hospitals and other service-oriented programs which provide valuable services to the Jordanian public at no cost to the government. In the end, Abbadi's amendment carried the day and Sa'ad's amendment was defeated -- only Christians will be allowed to establish non-Muslim religious organizations, but there will be no requirement that they be of Jordanian nationality.

Allowing Jews, Buddhists and Baha'is to open up charities in Jordan? How obscene!

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Wikileaks: Anti-semitism in Japan

From a newly released Wikileaks cable from April 2009:

Summary: Japanese anti-Semitism may be the ultimate oxymoron since Japan is a Shintoist/Buddhist society with virtually no Jewish minority and no history of discrimination against Jews as an ethnic or religious group. However, anti-Semitic attitudes and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are accepted by surprisingly many Japanese. The idea of Jewish economic, political and intellectual "omnipotence" has gained an audience among Japanese who are not otherwise anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism in Japan is manifested through books, magazines, public appearances by anti-Semitic writers, and several internet sites. The Israeli Embassy in Tokyo notes that what is found in Japan isn't "classical anti-Semitism," but a "combination of unfamiliarity, a tendency amongst a few to give credence to conspiracy theories about Jewish power, and some issues that are politically sensitive."

The first incident occurred on a national television talk show, TV-Asahi's Sunday Project, hosted by veteran journalist and interviewer Soichiro Tahara. Tahara's remark, which prompted a statement of criticism from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, took place during an interview with former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka. Tahara had raised the arrest of Tanaka's late father, former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, in connection with the Lockheed scandal in the mid-1970s and the recent arrest of an aide to Democratic President Ichiro Ozawa for illegally receiving political donations. Tahara, who has written a book alleging that the Lockheed scandal was a CIA plot against former PM Tanaka, remarked, "Mr. Tanaka was done in by the Jews, and Ozawa was done in by them too."

The second recent anti-Semitic incident was much more surprising since it came from Atsuyuki Sassa, a former policeman and one-time national-security aide (1986-89) to then-Prime Minister Nakasone who is now well known as a commentator on crisis management and defense issues. Appearing on a Saturday morning NTV infotainment program on March 21, the former chief of Japan's National Security Council, in referring to the issue of massive bonus payments by AIG to its executives, as well as the use of private jets by the heads of the "Big Three" companies, said: "There were terrible capitalists around the 18th century. I know it is bad to say this, but most of them were Jews. It is the Jews who are doing awful things today." When the program host immediately told Sassa that his remarks were out of line, Sassa insisted, "But that is my view."

Anti-Semitic books and articles occasionally appear in Japan even if these views are not widely shared. There are also several rabidly anti-Semitic websites in Japanese spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (e.g., that Jews masterminded 9/11). While most such literature tends to favor conspiracy theories of international Jewish control, even citing such fabrications as the early 20th century Protocols of the Elders of Zion, writings that deny the Holocaust or defend Nazi pogroms can also be found. One internationally notorious incident occurred in 1995 with the publication of an article by then 38-year old physician Masanori Nishioka titled. "There Were No Nazi 'Gas Cambers'," in the February issue of Marco Polo, a slick, 250,000-circulation monthly aimed at a young audience, published by Bungei Shunju, one of Japan's most influential publishing house.

One of most infamous peddlers of Jewish conspiracy theories has been Masami Uno, who has written such books as "The Invisible Empire - Jewish Zionists Control the World." Uno needless to say denies the Holocaust and even claims that the diary of Anne Frank was a hoax. With conspiracy theorists like Uno, just about everything that goes wrong in the world, including the current financial crisis, can be blames on the Jews.

Although anti-Semitic propaganda seems found mainly among right-wing nationalists, the same conspiracy-minded prejudices can be found in leftist publications, as well. Shukan Kinyobi (Weekly Friday) had a special collection of articles in its January 16 issue on "The danger of Obama" that excoriated the President and his policies. One of the features was a two-page spread with photos, names, and comments of the "Jewish lobby" that allegedly controls the Obama administration. The magazine characterized out Jews who were appointed or slated for appointments in the Obama administration as a cabal that would now run the U.S. government. The collection subsequently came out as a book available from Amazon Japan.

Blatant anti-Semitism can be found in the works of the political cartoonist Yoshinori Kobayashi, an ultranationalist whose books of polemical cartoons sell well among young readers. He has long been a frequent guest on a TV-Asahi all-night debate show on television and other talk shows, where his outrageous political views no doubt are expected to raise the ratings of the programs. He is a regular contributor to Sapio, a nationalist biweekly magazine that targets young readers.

Kobayashi's book contains a strong passage that reveals his hatred of the Jews. Singling out Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who directed the Manhattan Project that led to the development of the first atomic bomb, Kobayashi used him as a scapegoat for all Jews, who he accused of masterminding the atomic bombing of Japan. The following chilling passage comes from the book: "The director of the Manhattan Project was Dr. Oppenheimer, a Jew. He did the Devil's work. Japan saved up to 20,000 Jews during the war, but Jews built the atom bomb and lent their hands to Japan's Holocaust."

There are no reports of violence or discrimination against Jews in Japan. According to Arie Grosman, Coordinator for the Jewish Community Center in Tokyo, although protests at the Israeli Embassy itself tend to peak around periods of Middle East disturbance, "at a personal level there are no acts of anti-Semitism toward individuals. We do of course from time to time get threatening letters and post cards, but this is mostly when fighting is going on back home."

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Palestinian Authority lies to US diplomats about incitement (Wikileaks)

A new Wikileaks cable talks about how the PA was supposedly fighting incitement against Israel in its mosques in 2009:

On October 1, PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud al Habash outlined his ministry's efforts to eliminate incitement from 1,500 West Bank mosques, 80-90 percent of which are currently controlled by the PA. Al Habash told Post: "we monitor and control the Friday sermons with unified talking points of approved themes, and (imams) are not allowed to stray to other topics." If an imam deviates significantly from approved themes, he said, "we bring him in, counsel him and see if we can fix the problem. If we can't, he'll be relieved from his duties and given an administrative job -- or we may separate him from service altogether." Al Habash noted the PA has partial cooperation from, but no control over, Gaza mosques.

When asked to cite specific instances in which the PA had acted against incitement in mosques, al-Habash noted that an imam from the Tulkarm village of Qaffin was recently fired for inciting worshippers against the PA. Pressed on actions taken against imams inciting against Israel, al-Habash asserted that "There is no more incitement against Israel in (our) mosques, because compliance with our guidelines keeps such views out of the mosques (that the PA controls)." He admitted, however, that Area C mosques are a problem. "In Bethlehem's Husan (village) there are four mosques not under our control; we've been asking the IDF for two and a half months to let PASF enter Husan for this purpose and we've had no response." NOTE: Husan is an Area B/C "seam-zone" village west of the separation barrier, bordering on the Beitar Illit settlement. END NOTE.

Al Habash noted that his ministry is currently reviewing the curriculum of eight religious schools in the West Bank and Gaza. In addition, he said, "President Abbas has approved giving (our ministry) jurisdiction over the religious programming in the Palestinian Broadcasting Company's radio and TV programs; no publications by official Palestinian media violates the rules." Referring to recent incidents in Jerusalem (reftel), Al-Habash said, "there was no violent reaction in any Palestinian city or village; this is indicative of success in our efforts to reduce the culture of violence." NOTE: Al Habash was a member of Hamas until 1996; after that he worked with PA security services in Gaza against Hamas and joined Salam Fayyad's 2007 government as Minister of Social Affairs, changing to Religious Affairs last May. END NOTE.

The PA eliminated incitement from mosques by October 2009?

Then how could the following televised sermons have been possible?


Palestinian TV preaching genocide: Jews are enemies of humanity from Palestinian Media Watch on Vimeo.

"Oh Muslims! The Jews are the Jews. The Jews are the Jews. Even if donkeys would cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl and snakes to bite, the Jews would not cease to harbor hatred towards Muslims. The Prophet said that if two Jews would be alone with a Muslim, they would think only of killing him. Oh Muslims! This land will be liberated, these holy places and these mosques will be liberated, only by means of a return to the Quran and when all Muslims will be willing to be Jihad Fighters for the sake of Allah and for the sake of supporting Palestine, the Palestinian people, the Palestinian land, and the holy places in Palestine. The Prophet says: 'You shall fight the Jews and kill them, until the tree and the stone will speak and say: 'Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah' - the tree and the stone will not say, 'Oh Arab,' they will say, 'Oh Muslim'. And they will not say, 'Where are the millions?' and will not say, 'Where is the Arab nation?' Rather, they will say, 'Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah - there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' Except for the Gharqad tree [tree mentioned in the Quran - Ed.], which is the tree of the Jews. Thus, this land will be liberated only by means of Jihad..."
[PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 29, 2010]

Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine:

"The Al-Aqsa Mosque is threatened by the plans of the enemies of Allah [the Jews], who have violated all faith and religious laws, and even deviated from their humanity."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (Fatah), June 26 2010 & al-msjd-alaqsa.com (Al-Aqsa Mosque Forum), June 25, 2010]

PA TV broadcasts Friday sermon with preacher Dr. Subhi Ubeid. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Secretary General of the Chairman’s Office, Al-Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim, are in the audience.
“Saladin [Muslim military leader who conquered Jerusalem] was embarrassed to smile while Jerusalem was occupied. And now Palestine is occupied by the colonialist invaders. Where is Saladin to restore to this nation its glory and its greatness?”

Habash himself directly incites against Israel!

Speaker: Mahmoud Al-Habbash, PA Minister of Religious Affairs
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is in the audience.
"Jerusalem is not just a city. Al-Aqsa is not just a mosque. Jerusalem is the key to peace, and Jerusalem can ignite a thousand and one wars. Unless the issue of Jerusalem is solved, so that it returns to its owners; unless Jerusalem will be Palestinian, as it was throughout history, the capital of the Palestinian state and the capital of the Palestinian people, the place which is the object of heartfelt longing and which all Muslims aspire to reach; unless Jerusalem is like that way, there is no peace. There is no peace without Jerusalem. There is no stability without Jerusalem. If Jerusalem is dishonored, if Jerusalem is disgraced, if [Jerusalem] is lost, it may leave the door open to all possibilities of struggle, all possibilities of war. The term 'war' cannot be erased from the lexicon of this region as long as Jerusalem is occupied, as long as Jerusalem is disgraced, as long as the residents of Jerusalem are being targeted. It's not possible; Jerusalem has to return to its owners. And we are its owners."
[PA TV (Fatah), Aug. 20, 2010]

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Wikileaks: Anti-semitism in Tunisia is well hidden

From a newly released Wikileaks cable from January 2007:

In separate meetings on December 12 with the Minister of Religious Affairs, the MFA, and members of Parliament, including Jewish community leader Roger Bismuth, the GOT presented a united front on Tunisia's record of religious tolerance. All interlocutors described the Tunisian model as a shining example of how a minority religious community was supported and protected by government policies. The Minister of Religious Affairs, El Akhzouri, stating a talking point heard throughout the day, said "Tunisian Jews are Tunisians first, Jewish second." Another oft-repeated soundbite heard from GOT officials was: "We shouldn't speak of tolerance, we should speak of acceptance." While recognizing some isolated incidents (Ref B), Tunisian officials denied that anti-Semitism was a significant problem in Tunisia.

...In Djerba, members of the community, including the community president and the Grand Rabbi of Tunisia, picked up where the GOT interlocutors left off the previous day, extolling the virtuous religious policies of President Ben Ali, and repeating throughout the day that "there are no problems." The President of the Djerba Jewish community, Youssef Uzan, nervously intimated to PolFSN that things were not as perfect as everyone said, but would say nothing more. "You may come and go, but we have to stay here and deal with (the GOT) when you are gone," he said, explaining why he did not want to complain about community problems to a foreign visitor. Throughout the day, Uzan had to constantly report on the delegation's whereabouts to GOT authorities (who were tailing the group everywhere in any case), and had to set an extra place when a local GOT official entered uninvited to a lunch prepared by the Jewish community for the visiting delegation.

One community member, a jeweler named XXXXXX, however, quietly told poloff "of course we have problems." While emphasizing that the GOT should be commended for its protection of the community, he said it was "ridiculous to claim that everything was perfect." He spoke at length, and with as much caution as if he were disclosing a state secret, of a long-standing dispute, dating back ten years, with the former community president. The president had received, in the name of the community, a significant donation from the widow of a Tunisian Jew. This former president had misappropriated the funds, and when the community tried to install a new president, the matter went to court. According to the Haddad, the court only recognized the former president since only his name was listed on papers establishing the Jewish association. Haddad told poloff that to officially replace him and gain control of the widow's donation, the community would have to create a new association, but that Tunisia's restrictive law on associations prevented this. Haddad said the former president left Djerba, and was currently living in "a million-dollar" apartment in Tunis, where he enjoyed high-level connections in the GOT.

XXXX also mentioned several periods of tension between the Djerban Jews and their Muslim counterparts. He said that in the early eighties, during a time of increased tension in the Levant, members of the Jewish community were the targets of physical and verbal assault, causing many members of the community to emigrate. He said that this had stopped with Ben Ali's accession to power in 1987, and the protective policies the GOT employed towards the Jewish community. XXXXXX said that the Muslim community now knew that the GOT had made it clear that any assault on the Jewish community would meet severe retribution, as the GOT benefited greatly from "showing the world" Tunisia's Jewish community. XXXXXX quickly noted that, absent this tacit threat, as well as the tangible measures of protection, he feared he and his fellow Jews would "again be stoned in the street."

The former regime was clearly protecting the Jewish community for political purposes and used them as a showcase for their tolerance. The question is, in the new Tunisia, whether the Muslims continue to treat Jews with respect or if things will go downhill for Jews without government protection.

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Wikileaks: Child marriage in Israel (updated)

Last night, Wikileaks released some 35,000 new cables.

Most of them are incredibly boring, very few are classified or secret.

Here's an unclassified 2005 cable that is interesting, though:

The Executive Director of the NCC described early marriage as "not a significant problem in the general Israeli population," but "significant" among minority groups such as Muslims, certain ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects, and new immigrants from Ethiopia and the Islamic states in the FSU.

According to the Government's Central Bureau of statistics, 47 boys 17 years of age or younger married in 2002, 30 from the Jewish sector and 17 from the Muslim sector. ... During the same year, there was a total of 196 "child brides" under the age of 17, with 29 from the Jewish sector, 165 from the Muslim sector, and one from the Christian sector. The Central Bureau of Statistics highlighted that the ratio of girls in the Muslim sector who married under the age of 17 increased from 1.3 girls per 1,000 in 1995, to 6 girls per 1,000 in 2001. The ratio for girls in the Jewish sector who married under the age of 17 remained stable at 0.3 girls per 1,000. In the view of the NCC, child marriage has an adverse effect in that it influences the child's ability to continue his or her education and impedes the child's proper development. Ivri was not aware of any specific government office that is working on this issue.

No U.S.-funded initiatives exist in Israel to reduce the incidence or address the negative affects of child marriage. The NCC endorses implementation of new educational programs that target the specific at-risk populations cited above.

The highlighted statistic is incredible - a fourfold increase in Muslim child brides in only six years?

Could it be that after Oslo there was a rush to marry girls between those living in Israel and the territories so the latter could gain Israeli citizenship? I cannot imagine that this huge jump was not related to political issues as (at the time) a Palestinian Arab state seemed increasingly likely.

UPDATE: Commenter akibigman notes that during Oslo, some 130,000 Palestinian Arabs received Israeli citizenship by marrying Israeli Arabs, so my supposition makes sense.

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Wikileaks: Hezbollah recruiting young Saudi Shi'ites

Wikileaks released a couple of interesting cables about Shi'ites in the Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia.

The first cable, from 2006, was optimistic. Here's the summary:

(S) Some Sunni Arab leaders, including Egypt's President Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah, have recently publicly questioned the loyalties of Arab Shi'a populations in the Middle East. Privately, senior Saudi officials raise similar concerns. Given the ongoing sectarian conflict in Iraq, increasing regional tensions vis-a-vis Shi'a Iran, and the tenuous status of Saudi Shi'a within their own country, the question of whether Saudi Shi'a loyalties belong primarily with Saudi Arabia - or, alternatively, to their coreligionists elsewhere in the Gulf - is a timely one. It is also of central concern to U.S. strategic interests in the region, given the concentration of Saudi Arabia's Shi'a population in its oil producing areas.

Our conclusion, based on discussions with a broad spectrum of Saudi Shi'a contacts over the past eight months, is that most Saudi Shi'a remain committed to the agreement reached between the Saudi Shi'a leadership and King Fahd in 1993-4, whereby Shi'a leaders agreed to pursue their goals within the Kingdom's political system in return for the King's promise to improve their situation. Saudi Shi'a have deep religious ties to Iraq and Iran and are inspired by the newfound religious freedom and political power of the Iraqi Shi'a; they also have a lengthy history of persecution by the Al-Saud and face continuing discrimination (ref B). Nonetheless, their leaders still appear committed to working for reform from within, a strategy that, thanks to King Abdullah, is slowly bearing fruit. In our view, it would require a major internal or external stimulus to move the Saudi Shi'a toward confrontation with Riyadh. Such stimuli could include a major shift in SAG policy or leadership, the spread of uncontained sectarian violence to the Kingdom, or a major change in regional security arrangements, especially escalating regional conflict involving Shi'a (ref C). Absent these circumstances, the vast majority of Saudi Shi'a are not likely to demonstrate significant external political loyalties, either to Iran or to any inchoate notion of a "Shi'a crescent."

But in 2009, it was starting to look like a new threat was looming:

Our recent meetings with Saudi Arabia's Shi'a groups in the Eastern Province (EP) revealed divergent attitudes toward their country.

-- (U) Mainstream Shi'a, including municipal council members, identify themselves as Saudis first and Shi'a second.

-- (U) Elsewhere, Hizballah's messages find fertile ground among younger Shi'a, frustrated by religious and economic discrimination. They openly criticize the government and identify themselves as Shi'a first. The same group acknowledge that today they have more employment opportunities at Aramco than they had ten years ago.

-- (C) Signs of sympathy toward Hizballah among some EP Shi'a include recent street demonstrations and the open display of Hizballah flags and posters.

...SMELLS LIKE SOUTH LEBANON. Further north along the coastal oasis, in the majority-Shi'a community of Safwa, Emboffs paid a nighttime visit to a group of five younger Shi'a at the home of XXXXXXXXXXXX (protect). Safwa, like Qatif, lacks the smartly developed infrastructure of Riyadh or even Dhahran, with narrower streets and modest homes. Al-Ahmed's spartan sitting area boasted two photos of Nasrallah hung in one corner and three rifles propped in another. Upon Emboffs arrival, XXXXXXXXXXXX called together a group of colleagues who more openly shared the frustrations of EP Shi'a.

RELIGIOUS MINORITY. In a free-ranging discussion, this younger group attributed their economic marginalization to religious discrimination. In one of several examples, a medical student in the group described his ejection from a shopping center mosque, where he was called "kafir" (unbeliever) and told to leave. "Why should I support the government when I am treated like this?" he asked. Nevertheless, they characterized EP Shi'a as able to distinguish between religion and politics. Though they may look to Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran, Ali al-Sistani in Iraq or Mohammed Fadlallah in Lebanon for their religious guidance, many of the youth in particular look to Hezbollah as their political voice.

This may shine more light on the earlier Wikileaks cable that said that Saudi Arabia proposed a multinational force to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon.

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Wikileaks: US confirms Syrian nuclear weapons site

From a new Wikileaks cable, dated April 25, 2008:

- You will recall reports that the Israeli air force conducted a mission over Syria on September 6, 2007.

- I want to inform you that the purpose of that Israeli mission was to destroy a clandestine nuclear reactor that Syria was constructing in its eastern desert near a place we call al-Kibar.

- The Israeli mission was successful - the reactor was damaged beyond repair. Syria has completed efforts to clean up the site and destroy evidence of what was really there, constructing a new building on the old site.

- We have delayed sharing this information with you, because our first concern was to prevent conflict.

- We believe - based on strong evidence - that North Korea assisted Syria with the reactor at al-Kibar.
...
- Our intelligence experts are confident that the facility the Israelis targeted was in fact a nuclear reactor of the same type North Korea built indigenously at its Yongbyon nuclear facility. The U.S. intelligence community conducted an intensive, months- long effort to confirm and corroborate the information Israel provided us on the reactor and to gather more
details from our own sources and methods.

- We have good reason to believe this reactor was not intended for peaceful purposes. 

- First, we assess this reactor was configured to produce plutonium: it was not configured for power production, was isolated from any civilian population, and was ill-suited for research.

- Second, Syria went to great pains to keep this secret by taking very careful steps to conceal the true nature of the site.

- Third, by maintaining secrecy and not declaring the site to the IAEA and providing design information, as Syria's NPT-mandated IAEA safeguards agreement requires, Syria undermined the very purpose of IAEA safeguards - to provide the international community with the necessary assurance/verification that the reactor was part of a peaceful program.

- Finally, Syria's concealment and lies about what happened for months now after the Israeli air strike is compelling proof that it has something to hide. In fact, after the attack on the site, Syria went to great lengths to clean up the site and destroy evidence of what was really there. If there were nothing to hide, Syria presumably would have invited IAEA inspectors, other experts, and the news media to the site to prove that.

...- The existence of this reactor was dangerous and destabilizing for the region, and we judged that it could have been only weeks away from becoming operational at the time it was destroyed by the Israeli air force.

- Specifically, we assessed that once the pumphouse and pipe system were complete in early August, the reactor could begin operation at any time. Once operations began, certainly a military option would have been much more problematic with radioactive material present.

...
- We discussed policy options with the Israelis, but in the end Israel made its own decision to destroy the reactor. This decision was made by Israel alone - they did not seek our consent. Nonetheless, we understand Israel's decision.

- <> saw this reactor, and what Syria may have intended to do with it, as an existential threat that required it to act to defend itself.

- Syria's secret construction of this nuclear reactor is the latest in a series of unacceptable actions by the Asad regime.

- Syria is a state that supports terrorism, destabilizes Lebanon, and is the largest conduit for foreign fighters and suicide bombers entering Iraq to kill Iraqis, Americans, and Coalition forces.

- The Syrian Government supports terrorist groups such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hizballah, and others, including by playing host to leaders of some of these groups.

- Syria is a proliferator in every sense - of terrorism, of instability to its neighbors, including Lebanon, and now as a recipient and developer of dangerous nuclear technology.

- The Syrian regime, in going down this path, has shown a disregard for the security of the region and of its own people.

- We call upon the Syrian regime to reveal the full extent of its nuclear activities, as it is required to do under the NPT and its safeguards agreement, and verify that its covert nuclear-related activities have stopped.

- For better relations with the international community, in addition to full disclosure and
cooperation regarding its covert nuclear program, Syria needs to end support for insurgents and foreign fighters in Iraq, support for Palestinian terrorists, and interference in Lebanon. If willing to do so, Syria can expect to be welcomed by the international community.

I wonder what happened between 2008 and 2009 that prompted the US to ignore all this known information about the country and reward it with a new ambassador.

Or, as David Shenker notes in TNR,

Support for the regime goes beyond the standard “devil you know” rationale. To wit, one commentator in The National Interest recently opined that “Washington knows [Syrian President] Bashar well and it knows how rational and predictable he is in foreign affairs.” No doubt, Assad hasn’t killed millions like Stalin. But he has spent his first decade in power recklessly dedicated to undermining stability—and U.S. interests—in the Middle East.

Here’s the devil we know: Since 2006 alone, Assad’s Syria has exponentially increased the capabilities of the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah, providing the organization with advanced anti-ship and highly accurate M-600 missiles, top of the line anti-tank weapons, and has allowed the organization to establish a SCUD base on Syrian soil. At the same time, Assad continues to meddle (and murder) in Lebanon, harbor and support Hamas, and subvert Iraq. Damascus remains a strategic ally of otherwise isolated Tehran. And in 2007, it was revealed that Assad’s Syria was progressing toward building a nuclear weapon. Given the pernicious effect of Assad’s policies on U.S. interests and the region, it’s difficult to imagine that a successor or replacement regime could be worse.

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"If the price is right"

Ha'aretz thinks it has a scoop:

Danny Dayan, the chairman of the Yesha Council of West Bank settlements, told U.S. officials that some settlers would be willing to move to Israel proper in exchange for financial compensation, according to confidential State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

His statements, which were made in closed-door meetings with U.S. diplomats in Israel in recent years, came in response to questions about a potential evacuation-compensation bill in the Knesset. When asked about the issue, Dayan replied: "I'm an economist, and I know that some people will take it if the price is right."

Guess what?

Some people who write for Ha'aretz would move to "occupied" Ariel if the price was right as well!

In both cases, the price would have to be steep to get people to move out of their homes and move elsewhere. This is not a big revelation, if you are being honest with yourself - which is something that Dayan is doing with his statement.

The difference is that a very significant percentage of Jews in Judea and Samaria do live there for ideological reasons, and they aren't going anywhere for any price. Look at how few Jews from Gaza took the money initially - and Gaza does not have nearly the importance to Judaism that the heart of the Land of Israel does.

Ha'aretz does not link to the actual cable, showing its lack of journalistic standards again, as other newspapers who received the cables generally had no problem showing the full text in context so people can make up their own minds. The cable is not at any of the Wikileaks sites I can find - I cannot find any new releases since March 25. The article claims that Dayan was inconsistent with his messages between American leaders and Jews in Judea and Samaria concerning illegal outposts, and that settler leaders are against vigilantes attacking Arabs at random.

More at Israel Matzav

UPDATE: Dayan tells Arutz-7:

"The main thing I said [at the meeting with American officials cited by Wikileaks] and on many other occasions," Dayan said today, "is that even if they offer bribes up to the sky, the number of people who will agree to accept it will be negligible – but that, Haaretz didn't say."

So maybe that's why Ha'aretz isn't releasing the actual memos! Al Jazeera and the Guardian assumed that no one would read them and show they were lying in their Wikileaks articles, but Ha'aretz evidently doesn't want to open up that possibility.

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Wikileaks: How the Muslims took over the UNHRC

A series of memos released by WikiLeaks exposes how the Organization of the Islamic Conference took over the then-new UN Human Rights Council in 2008. For those who are fans of the arcane world of negotiations, here is how the OIC managed to outmaneuver Western states on one resolution:

AN OIC TRIUMPH
--------------

OIC efforts to amend -- and in effect subvert -- the Freedom of Expression resolution had been a dominant subtext throughout the Council's seventh regular session. With support from the U.S., the EU and others, Canada, as chief sponsor, had sought to fend off an OIC amendment that would instruct the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression to report on "instances in which the abuse of the right of freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination." The OIC, taking advantage of its internal discipline, had held firm throughout. China, apparently angered by criticism during the Council's March 25 meeting of its behavior in Tibet, floated its own killer amendments two days before the vote. Canada rejected these as having been raised too late in the game.

The decisive action on the freedom of expression resolution and its amendments came on the session's last day. We had joined Canada and others in efforts to sway moderate OIC members, but these had fallen short. Meanwhile, Canada had sought to find compromise language that would avoid the OIC amendment. When those efforts failed, and with the session having been extended beyond its scheduled 6pm closing time, the OIC called for a vote on its amendment, which passed (27-17-3). The U.S., Canada, the EU and others dropped their co-sponsorship. With the momentum clearly favoring the OIC and its allies, Cuba then pulled an unexpected move, proposing an oral amendment underscoring "the importance for all forms of media to report and to deliver information in a fair and impartial manner." That amendment passed (29-15-3). Canada and the EU failed in last minute procedural efforts to head off the fully amended resolution, which then passed (32-0-15).

The Ambassador's April 2 meeting with like-minded ambassadors to take stock of the session provided additional insights into the dynamics behind the last-minute maneuvering. Canada's ambassador expressed frustration at the African Group's solidarity with the OIC. Madagascar and Angola, for instance, had expressed discomfort with the amendment in conversations with the Canadians but had eventually been pressured into voting for it. The OIC had also exerted immense pressure on others during the end game, he reported; Bosnia and Herzegovina, for instance, had been pressed hard, although it had ended up voting against the amendment. Both the Canadian and Danish ambassadors expressed particular resentment toward China: though the Chinese had ostensibly kept their promise, made on the session's last day, not to put forth an oral amendment, they had clearly struck a deal for Cuba to do so.

In an April 1 extension of the seventh session to allow for closing statements, several OIC members defended the newly amended resolution. Pakistan argued that the OIC amendment had done nothing beyond providing an "add-on" that made the resolution more "comprehensive and holistic," in order to protect the stability of multicultural societies. Sri Lanka echoed that theme and expressed hope that the decisions on the freedom of expression mandate would not leave the Council as a "house divided." The U.S. was among several delegations that sharply criticized the amendments.

The OIC had scored an earlier victory with adoption of a resolution on defamation of religions (21-10-14). It also succeeded in rescheduling the Item 7 discussion of the Occupied Palestinian Territories to early in the Council session in order more quickly to condemn Israel's response to rocket attacks from Gaza. In addition to the resolution passed on that occasion, the Council also passed three other anti-Israel resolutions. One of these, on Israeli settlements, passed 46-1-0, with only Canada voting against it.

Another memo ends off with the observation that the EU has given up and decided to support the OIC:

The prevailing political and negotiating dynamics at the Human Rights Council must be broken if that body, which is still taking shape, is to address human rights problems in a serious and substantive way. Instead of seeking the support of the U.S. and other sympathetic delegations in its efforts to hold violators to their international human rights obligations, the instinct of the EU appears to be to bend over backwards to accommodate the concerns of the violators and their supporters. The result is not pretty. South Africa, which serves as the driving force behind the Durban process and has a tunnel-vision interest on issues of racial equality, appears to have made common cause with the OIC and its parallel tunnel-vision interest in ensuring the alleged rights of the collective in Muslim societies. This vision is fundamentally incompatible with the interests of Western democracies. Until the EU can be made to see that its paramount goal of ensuring its internal unity, with its predictable lowest-common-denominator results, will rarely hold anyone accountable for anything, our efforts to see the HRC evolve into an effective and respectable human rights mechanism are likely to go unrewarded. The U.S. made a greater effort in this short session to influence events, but this level and manner of engagement simply were not enough to have a significant impact.

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Wikileaks: Russian anti-semitism way down (updated)

Here are sections from a very interesting Wikileaks cable from December 2009:

As the country that a century ago produced "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," saw state-sponsored pogroms that prompted the emigration of millions of Jews under the Tsars, and saw the development of anti-Semitism as a policy under Stalin and his predecessors, Russia for many years was synonymous with anti-Semitism. After the notoriety of both Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union in this area, the collapse of the Soviet Union unleashed yet a new threat to Jews in the form of violent neo-nationalist groups. However, in recent years both societal and official attitudes towards Jews have showed a marked improvement, and contacts of ours in the Jewish community, whose current population is approximately one million, tell us that they have never before felt this comfortable living in Russia. Although occasional incidents of vandalism and attacks still occur, racist groups have shifted their focus from Jews to Central Asian and other dark-skinned immigrants and migrant workers.

Not surprisingly, the most prominent Jewish leaders have scrupulously maintained friendly relations with the GOR. Rabbi Berel Lazar of the Chabad community, one of Russia's two Chief Rabbis, has for years maintained the line that life is good for Russian Jews.

...Other Jewish leaders have confirmed this rosy assessment of official relations. Shayevich told us that "there is no doubt of any kind" that life has significantly improved for Russian Jewry, and that relations with the GOR are "completely different" from those of the Soviet period. He noted that he had just received Hannukah greetings from members of the State Duma, as well as from Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov, who attended Hannukah services at the Synagogue. ...both Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev make a point of publicly sending holiday greetings to Russia's Jewish population, although thus far they have stopped short of donning yarmulkes and attending services themselves. Lazar told us that the overall message is that Jews "are a part of the Russian community."

More substantively, Lazar told us that two years ago, GOR officials brought him a list of anti-Semitic books and publications that they promised to eliminate, and that they had since made good on this promise, based on his people's examination of stores and book expos. In a November 6 conversation, Svetlana Yakimenko, who runs the Jewish women's rights NGO Project Kesher, agreed that "at the official level, the attitude towards Jews is the best ever." She said that the GOR has announced that it will do anything necessary to fight anti-Semitism, and that police have standing orders to close down any known anti-Semitic groups.

Many other Jewish leaders in the NGO world have also striven mightily to establish good relations with the GOR, and the effort has paid dividends. Natalya Rykova, whose Moscow Bureau of Human Rights (MBHR) has such a close relationship with the GOR that she and fellow MBHR denizen Aleksandr Brod inspire disdain among most of the human rights community, has shared with us her chilling memory of emerging from her apartment in the early 90s to see threatening graffiti from the anti-Semitic group Pamyat. MBHR's habit of toadying up to the GOR on matters such as the Georgia conflict and North Caucasus policy is designed to provide its members with iron-clad "cover" against anti-Semites, a point that Rykova readily acknowledges.

Alexander Axelrod of the Jewish Anti-defamation League explained to us on October 23 his belief that, while in the past official anti-Semitism was more of a problem than social anti-Semitism, now it was the other way around. However, he added that he did not see social anti-Semitism as a significant problem at this point. Other contacts agreed that anti-Semitism has become increasingly marginalized in the social sphere. Shayevich said that, although there is still some "street" anti-Semitism, the number of attacks had decreased in the past several years. Lazar asserted that Judaism is now "on a par with other religions" in most people's minds, and said that "if the trend continues, we will be wholly integrated." (Note: Thanks to the 1997 Law on Religions which defined Judaism as one of Russia's four "traditional" religions, Judaism enjoys special status relative to less established religions. End Note.) He described an experiment that he carried out for several days during the Jewish High Holidays in September, in which his employees, clearly dressed as Chabad followers, conducted man-on-the-street interviews regarding people's views of Judaism. According to Lazar, the response was overwhelmingly positive, with very few exceptions. Lazar added that this activity received uniformly friendly media coverage as well, including on state-run television.

Anti-Semitism has been a part of Russian culture for such a long time that it would be unrealistic to expect it to disappear overnight. Russians, including those with entirely friendly attitudes towards Jews, routinely distinguish between a person who is "Russian" and one who is "Jewish," something that would be inappropriate in the United States.

Shayevich noted that economic factors may exacerbate suspicion towards Jews, as the crisis has inflamed xenophobia generally, and public perception of Jews as crafty money-grubbers persists. This perception was not helped by the significant portion of 1990s oligarchs who were Jewish (even though, as Shayevich noted, in the past Jews were often forced to find new, "unofficial" ways to acquire wealth because of official restrictions against them, and the oligarch phenomenon should be viewed in that context). Even some of the apparently positive attitudes towards Jews may at times tie in with this perception, as with the woman who told Lazar's researchers that she "wished she were Jewish, too."

Kesher also alluded to examples of ingrained suspicion towards Jews in society; for example, at a Project Kesher roundtable on tolerance in Orel five years ago, FSB representatives appeared and advised participants not to use the word "Jewish" too loudly. ...

Another factor tipping the GOR and Russians towards a more favorable attitude towards Jews is the palpable warming trend in Russian-Israeli relations. In an April news poll, 52 percent of Russians viewed Israel favorably, a figure slightly less than that in the U.S. (56 percent). As a result of many decades of Russian immigration to Israel, Israel's Russian population, one million, now equals Russia's Jewish population. Israel's current Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, visited Russia in June to great fanfare, with widespread favorable media coverage. Lieberman announced that he felt as if we were "coming home" to Russia (he was born in Moldova), and news reports focused on his use of fluent Russian in his meetings with GOR officials. Back in Russia on December 6, Lieberman praised the visa-free system established last year between Russia and Israel -- which is expected to double the number of Russian tourists traveling to Israel to 400,000 this year -- while Putin said that Israel's Russian community "unites us with you like no other country." Axelrod dismisses the idea that rising anti-Muslim sentiment in Russian society is changing attitudes towards Jews or Israelis, but agrees that Russia is hedging its bets in the region and moving away from Arab or Muslim client states, and that this official attitude is likely percolating down to the societal level....

Tsevi Mirkin of the Israeli Embassy in Russia told us December 17 that the positive trend in Russian-Israeli relations began in the 1990s, but has especially improved in the past five years. He attributed this to many factors, including the disappearance of "the official Soviet hatred towards Israel." He added that there is a high level of interest in Israel in Russian society, with many Russians having friends, relatives, or classmates there, and that the two countries trade 2 billion USD in products each year. Sadly, Mirkin noted, one other reason for improved views of Israel is racism among Russians; "they see Israel as a 'white' state in a non-white region." He related an encounter he had, as he was entering the Israeli Embassy, with a Russian man who told him, "The Americans don't deserve you guys," and explained that his positive feelings about Israel related to its status as a bulwark against "blacks."

Who would have imagined, even twenty years ago, that Russia could ever be a comfortable place for Jews to practice their religion?

UPDATE: Commenter Vandoren, from Moscow, takes exception to this:

Comparing with pogroms in Czarist Russia and Stalin times it looks good, but we are living in the 21st century! There were always anti-Jewish feelings in Russian public. Ben Lazar whose Russian even worse then my Rnglish is living in another world. Russian Jews don't respect him cuz he's a Putin puppet. And never trust any poll in Russia.

And about Israel. Yes,comparing with UK and other Europe people are mostly pro-israel. It happens because the media in Russia does not demonize Israel; you can hear anti-israel bias only from Euronews and BBC Russian. Only a tiny part of Russian anti-semitism is about Israel and Arabs. Most popular slogans are about that Jews control Russia. Also that all liberals (not British style left-wing) are Jews and they want to destroy the country.

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Wikileaks: Egypt opposition's frustration with US

A quite timely Wikileaks cable from January 2010:

Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights Executive Director Hossam Bahgat urged the U.S. to "practice what it preaches" on human rights by closing the Guantanamo Bay prison. ... Bahgat asserted that many Egyptians believe the GOE has interpreted the current administration's relative "silence" on human rights and political issues as a signal of support.

Director-General of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies Bahey Al-Din Hassan said he was unsure of what current U.S. human rights policy is. He expressed concern over lack of U.S.
public criticism of Syria for human rights violations, and U.S. support for Yemeni President Saleh while he represses his people. Hassan expected increasing GOE repression leading up to the 2010 parliamentary and 2011 presidential elections. Hassan said he was initially optimistic when the Forum for the Future was launched that it would strengthen partnerships between Arab governments and civil society. Instead, Hassan asserted, government-controlled NGOs have dominated the Forum. Hassan noted that because of this phenomenon, he has not participated in the Forum since 2005.

...Human rights lawyer Tarek Khattar asserted that U.S. support for the GOE encourages it to repress the Egyptian people. He contended that President's Obama June 4 Cairo speech has not
produced "any positive results" in Egypt. Women's rights activist Mozn Hassan criticized the President's speech for "equating women throughout the region with each other," instead of recognizing their differences. Human rights lawyer Atef Hafez complained that the U.S. denied him entry to the Guantanamo Bay prison to visit a prisoner he was trying to represent. Hafez also complained that the Guantanamo prison is still open despite President Obama's commitment to close it. Activist Mohammed Zarea called for the U.S. to urge the GOE to make significant changes to open up political life.

Noting widespread dissatisfaction with political leaders on all sides, "April 6" leader Ahmed Salah said the 2010 and 2011 elections represented the only opportunity for change, and pressed for more immediate action. He called for greater internal and external pressure on the GOE to increase freedom of assembly and expression, lift the State of Emergency, improve election procedures with electronic voting, and allow registration with national identification cards.

Regarding U.S. democracy promotion, the group called for continued support to civil society and "principled" pressure on the GOE. However, Sadat noted sensitivities over "outside interference" in both the regime and opposition camps. Al-Ghad Party Vice-President Wael Nawara suggested that external criticism should be matched with primarily economic "incentives" to encourage the government to commit to concrete democratic reforms.

In a separate meeting, Al-Ghad party founder Ayman Nour said Egyptians were ready for change and seeking leadership. "I'm banned from participating in the coming elections, but I will be part of the political fight," Nour asserted. Nour opined that the GOE's prevention of a liberal alternative to Gamal Mubarak strengthened the Muslim Brotherhood. He underlined the impact of the security services' interference with opposition political activity, and advocated increased U.S. pressure to highlight GOE restrictions. Nour urged A/S Posner to press the GOE to restore his own personal rights by allowing him to resume his work as an attorney or journalist, travel abroad and sell his assets. Nour thanked A/S Posner for the Department's November 6, 2009 public statement expressing disappointment at the GOE's decision to prevent him from travelling to the U.S.

The US had plenty of time to read the signals and work to reform Egypt in a safe way.

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Egypt detains human rights activists; Wikileaks explains

From Amnesty USA (h/t Zach N via Facebook)

Two Amnesty International representatives have been detained by police in Cairo after the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre was taken over by military police this morning.

Amnesty International USA called on President Obama to immediately demand the release of the Amnesty International staff members. In addition, we have asked for a meeting in Washington with the Egyptian ambassador to the United States.

The Amnesty International representatives were taken, along with Ahmed Seif Al Islam Khaled Ali, a delegate from Human Rights Watch, and others, to an unknown location in Cairo. Amnesty International does not know their current whereabouts.

There happened to be a couple of Wikileaks cables released today that talks about how Egypt treats NGOs.

From December 2007, about a meeting of HRW's Joe Stork with Egypt's state security service SSIS:

Stork told us that Abdel Rahman opened the ninety minute meeting by asking that the discussion be "informal" and "off the record." Substantively, Stork characterized Abdel Rahman's position as "we (SSIS) don't do bad things." Abdel Rahman said that he commands over 40,000 police officers and told Stork he could count on one hand the number who had committed abuses. Abdel Rahman objected to Stork's use of the word torture, saying it implied something "systemic" and said Egypt's security services were "badly maligned." Stork asked about the monitoring and harassment of NGOs, which Abdel Rahman said was necessary because such organizations are run by "anarchists" and people with prior arrests who need "monitoring."

And from May 2009:

The quasi-governmental organization, the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), released its 2008 human rights report on May 6, criticizing the GOE for specific violations and offering 25 recommendations.

The report criticizes the GOE for human rights violations such as restricting NGOs, continuing the emergency law and reacting violently to the April 2008 Mahalla strike. It also expresses concern over tensions between Christians and Muslims.

The most prominent of the 25 recommendations focus on ending the emergency law, combating torture, abolishing prison sentences as penalties for journalists, and easing restrictions on NGOs and political parties.

...Under the existing NGO law, the GOE is able to shut down NGOs, limit their activities and refuse to register them, and often utilizes these prerogatives.

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Wikileaks: Evidence of Syria's chemical weapons program

From Wikileaks, a cable dated December 30, 2008:

The U.S. has obtained information indicating that a Syrian institution with connections to the country’s chemical and biological weapons programs is attempting to acquire Australia Group-controlled glass-lined reactors, heat exchangers and pumps from the Indian firms XXXXXXXXXXXX and XXXXXXXXXXXX . Both firms are believed to have received visits from the Syria institution in the past 3 months and may be close to concluding their respective deals.

We would like to alert the GOI to this information. The GOI has a general obligation as a Chemical Weapons Convention State Party to never, under any circumstances, assist anyone in the development of chemical weapons. The U.S. also has publicly stated its belief that India is a strong partner on nonproliferation issues. We therefore seek the GOI’s assistance in investigating this activity and taking all steps necessary to prevent Indian entities from providing CBW equipment to Syria. We also want to remind the GOI that the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act requires us to report to Congress transfers of goods, services and technology on multilateral control lists, such as the Australia Group, to Syria. Sanctions may be imposed against individuals and entities identified in such reports.

What lovely, peaceful neighbors Israel has!

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Wikileaks: US had contact with Egyptian democratic activists

An interesting and somewhat timely Wikileaks cable released today, written in December 2008:

On December 23, April 6 activist XXXXXXXXXXXX expressed satisfaction with his participation in the December 3-5 "Alliance of Youth Movements Summit," and with his subsequent meetings with USG officials, on Capitol Hill, and with think tanks. He described how State Security (SSIS) detained him at the Cairo airport upon his return and confiscated his notes for his summit presentation calling for democratic change in Egypt, and his schedule for his Congressional meetings. XXXXXXXXXXXX contended that the GOE will never undertake significant reform, and therefore, Egyptians need to replace the current regime with a parliamentary democracy. He alleged that several opposition parties and movements have accepted an unwritten plan for democratic transition by 2011; we are doubtful of this claim. XXXXXXXXXXXX said that although SSIS recently released two April 6 activists, it also arrested three additional group members. We have pressed the MFA for the release of these April 6 activists. April 6's stated goal of replacing the current regime with a parliamentary democracy prior to the 2011 presidential elections is highly unrealistic, and is not supported by the mainstream opposition.

XXXXXXXXXXXX expressed satisfaction with the December 3-5 "Alliance of Youth Movements Summit" in New York, noting that he was able to meet activists from other countries and outline his movement's goals for democratic change in Egypt. He told us that the other activists at the summit were very supportive, and that some even offered to hold public demonstrations in support of Egyptian democracy in their countries, with XXXXXXXXXXXX as an invited guest. XXXXXXXXXXXX said he discussed with the other activists how April 6 members could more effectively evade harassment and surveillance from SSIS with technical upgrades, such as consistently alternating computer "simcards." However, XXXXXXXXXXXX lamented to us that because most April 6 members do not own computers, this tactic would be impossible to implement. XXXXXXXXXXXX was appreciative of the successful efforts by the Department and the summit organizers to protect his identity at the summit, and told us that his name was never mentioned publicly.

XXXXXXXXXXXX told us that SSIS detained and searched him at the Cairo Airport on December 18 upon his return from the U.S. According to XXXXXXXXXXXX, SSIS found and confiscated two documents in his luggage: notes for his presentation at the summit that described April 6's demands for democratic transition in Egypt, and a schedule of his Capitol Hill meetings. XXXXXXXXXXXX described how the SSIS officer told him that State Security is compiling a file on him, and that the officer's superiors instructed him to file a report on XXXXXXXXXXXX's most recent activities.

XXXXXXXXXXXX described his Washington appointments as positive, saying that on the Hill he met with Rep. Edward Royce, a variety of House staff members, including from the offices of Rep. Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Rep. Wolf (R-VA), and with two Senate staffers. XXXXXXXXXXXX also noted that he met with several think tank members. XXXXXXXXXXXX said that Rep. Wolf's office invited him to speak at a late January Congressional hearing on House Resolution 1303 regarding religious and political freedom in Egypt. XXXXXXXXXXXX told us he is interested in attending, but conceded he is unsure whether he will have the funds to make the trip. He indicated to us that he has not been focusing on his work as a "fixer" for journalists, due to his preoccupation with his U.S. trip.

(C) XXXXXXXXXXXX described how he tried to convince his Washington interlocutors that the USG should pressure the GOE to implement significant reforms by threatening to reveal
information about GOE officials' alleged "illegal" off-shore bank accounts. He hoped that the U.S. and the international community would freeze these bank accounts, like the accounts of Zimbabwean President Mugabe's confidantes. XXXXXXXXXXXX said he wants to convince the USG that Mubarak is worse than Mugabe and that the GOE will never accept democratic reform. XXXXXXXXXXXX asserted that Mubarak derives his legitimacy from U.S. support, and therefore charged the U.S. with "being responsible" for Mubarak's "crimes." He accused NGOs working on political and economic reform of living in a "fantasy world," and not recognizing that Mubarak -- "the head of the snake" -- must step aside to enable democracy to take root.

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