Bush and Mumbai, a fitting exit for a failed presidency

Months before the attack on the World Trade Center it is now revealed that Bush had months of intelligence warnings that an attack by air on an unspecified US target was being planned, and failed to prepare or respond until thousands were dead, and the buildings were a smoldering heap. Seven years later, and three months before the act, Bush was informed by US intelligence of an intercepted satellite call indicating that a sea-borne attack against Mumbai was being planned. To his credit the informed the Indian Government was informed but apparently filed the warning, and months of follow-up warnings, away and never passed it along to their own security services, who were totally unprepared when the attack occurred. For three months the Bush Administration followed the intercepts, for three months they were aware of the danger but never thought to issue a warning to citizens traveling to, or living in Mumbai. When the threat turned fact the administration denied prior knowledge. Callousness, or sheer ineptitude?

The Illusion of Jewish Security

One hundred years ago German Jewry, more assimilated, secure and intermarried than American Jewry today, described their fatherland also as “exceptional.”

Introduction

The election of Barak Obama brought to surface doubt among some Israelis regarding American Jewry’s identification with, and commitment to the state of the Jews. Within Israel Bush is seen as friend and benefactor. How, the thinking goes, could the US community vote so overwhelmingly against Israel’s perceived interests? But what if it is Israel, rather than American Jewry, that was wrong about Bush? And what does this election result suggest about how our two communities see the world and the security of the Jewish people as we enter our third millennium of Diaspora? Israel is preoccupied with her “special relationship” with the US; worried too regarding its appeal to, and continuing support by the Diaspora. Where Israel appears increasingly uncomfortable, American Jewry appears confident and comfortable. Is Diaspora identity and support really the source of Israeli unease, or is the source closer to home? And is American Jewry justified in its security and confidence?

Antisemitism through the ages

For 1,900 years, since the end of the final war with Rome, the Jewish people have lived dispersed until Israeli independence in 1948. For the first millennium Jews were somewhat tolerated by the church, inheritor from Rome of the renamed Holy Roman Empire. But the First Crusade of 1096 marked a significant worsening of conditions for Jews. En route to wrest the Holy Land from the Moslems, the crusaders prepared for war by slaughtering what they called the enemy in their midst. Whole communities of Jews fell to crusader sword, were burned alive in synagogue and home, were thrown into rivers and drowned, a “baptism” according to their murderers.

The Dark Ages represents a significant step forward in demonizing the Jews. We were accused of poisoning Christian wells to spread the Black Plague; accused of kidnapping and crucifying Christian boys before Passover to provide “innocent blood” believed important in baking matzoth. Leading rabbis, it was believed, held a conclave once-yearly to choose the Jewish community to be honored with the crucifixion, an early version of the 19th century fabrication, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. A third myth held that Jews steal the “host,” ceremonial bread representing the body of Christ, in order to murder the Christian messiah again. Paintings of the time represent Jews stabbing the bleeding host.

The inquisition, created to uncover and eliminate heresy within the church, functioned from the late 14th to the early 20th century. With the expulsion of Islam from the Iberian Peninsula Spain turned its attention to cleansing the land of the Jews, who were given the choice of conversion or expulsion. Jews who elected conversion were labeled Marranos, or pigs, and were suspected of being insincere in their conversion. Accused of remaining Jewish at home, while appearing Christian in public, thousands were tortured until, confessing their heresy, they were burned at the stake. In dealing with its “Marranos heresy” the Spanish Inquisition also introduced the concept of “limpieza de sangre,” or purity of blood. Applicants for the clergy were required to prove they were free of Jewish blood. With slight change of emphasis 450 years later Germany would adapt purity of blood as its criterion for murder.

Life for Jews remained precarious following the Protestant Reformation. In his last work on the subject, The Jews and their Lies, 1543, Martin Luther described Jews as "poisonous envenomed worms" and recommended that their “synagogues and schools be set on fire,” their prayer books be destroyed, their homes burned. At their trials at Nuremberg, Nazi leaders referred to Luther as their guide, their justification for antisemitism and genocide. Five centuries before the event Luther set the agenda for Holocaust.

With the Age of Reason, beginning in the 17th century, Europe grew increasingly secular. Jews, freed from centuries of religious persecution, from ownership as serfs were, in the emergent nation-states, to be subjected to something far worse. With religion less important than nationality, Jews were now considered an alien nationality, a people apart, Other. Conversion, the religious ticket for social inclusion ceased to be an escape from identity, a path to assimilation. And for those who still sought conversion as path to acceptance and advancement, with the election of Adolph Hitler as chancellor of Germany Jews were defined neither by religion nor allegiance to state, but by limpieza de sangre, purity of blood. And the blood of a single Jewish grandparent was a sentence to death.

The kidnapping and forced conversion of the Jewish child Edgardo Mortara by the Church in Rome and the trumped up conviction of Dreyfus in France; the lynching of Leo Frank by an American mob made up of lawyers, judges, politicians and other professional elites; the bloody pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe; all these reinforced awareness amongst Jews that the secularization of society not only failed to end discrimination, but continued to subject them to physical danger from neighbor and country. For an assimilated journalist from Vienna observing mobs racing through the streets of Paris in antisemitic rage over the Dreyfus Affair, it was clear that Jews would never be safe in Diaspora. The answer, according to Herzl, was nothing short of a revolution in Jewish awareness, of self-emancipation, of Jewish national liberation: Political Zionism.

America the Exception?

We in the United States carry ourselves with confidence, comfortable in our “goldene medina.” But what in our history justifies our confidence? Antisemitism is as old in the New World as our first immigrants seeking sanctuary in colonial New Amsterdam. Greeted at the dock by Peter Stuyvesant, they were unceremoniously told that the colony is Christian and Jews are not welcome. Following the Civil War General and later president Ulysses Grant issued his infamous order informing Jews that, regarding entry into the newly defeated states of the Confederacy, they are again, not welcome. And, around the time Leo Frank was lynched by that genteel Georgia mob, Congress was busily drafting legislation aimed at limiting entry to immigrants of “Nordic” stock, that again, Jews are not welcome. And twenty years later these restrictive laws would provide legal cover and future deniability for the United States closing heart and border to Jews fleeing the Holocaust, for condemning, with full knowledge, Europe’s Jews to the ovens of Auschwitz. Even at the cost of life, Jews were not welcome.

Antisemitism was as widespread in the US before and during Shoah as it was in Europe. Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg, antisemites and isolationists, well represented this national mood. Both considered running for president, were the hoped-for choice of the Republican Party for president. Had either decided to run and, as was very possible, won, then it is very possible that such a government would either have remained true to its isolationist program, neutral in the war almost assuring a German victory. Or, also very possible, that government might have actively joined Hitler’s crusade against atheistic Communism, another popular notion of the time. In either case it is unlikely that local antisemitism, inspired by Nazi Europe, would have been long restrained in expanding the limits of American eugenics to Europe’s lethal conclusion. And taking into consideration that, like Germany, the US had concentration camps, if limited to Japanese-American, this precedent too provides a chilling warning for what nearly was, what is historically available as precedent for the future.

In 1976 General George Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, decided that Israel was a burden to the United States, informed the press that the only reason he could see for US support was pressure by those who “controlled the press, banking and the government,” a not subtle reference to Jews.

In November, 1986 the Reagan Administration, embarrassed by public disclosure of its illegal money-laundering and gun-running operations known as Irangate, attempted to shift blame for the affair to Israel and her “supporters” for getting the US into the project. In fact Reagan had asked Israel and the Arab oil producers (who were not accused alongside Israel) for assistance in order to insulate the administration. Fast-forward to the present Iraq war; at a time when the war seemed spiraling out of control Bush spokesmen, following the lead of their Reagan predecessors, blamed Israel for having “encouraged” the Bush decision to invade. In fact administration insiders, including then CIA chief George Tennant, insist that Bush had already decided to invade Iraq even before entering the White House in 2001 (see, for example, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil, below). It was also reported that Israeli leaders and intelligence services, along with their Saudi counterparts and the CIA, had advised Bush not to invade, that Iran and not Iraq was the main threat; and that an attack on either country would destabilize the region.

American Eugenics and European Genocide

For decades before Hitler much of America’s elite, from politicians to academics to Supreme Court justices believed in, popularized and legalized the “science” of race improvement known as Eugenics. Long before Germany voted Nazi, American eugenics had already defined the ideal racial stock for America as “Nordic.” American eugenics was the inspiration and legal precedent for German laws aimed at improving their racial stock by eliminating the “unfit.” American eugenics was the foundation for German genocide. Until the United States entered the war against Germany American eugenicists continued to collaborate closely with their German counterparts, helping put into practice that which, in the US, was but a shadow of eugenics’ full potential in race purification.

In the aftermath of war, genocide and Holocaust American eugenicists intervened to rehabilitate the reputations of their former Nazi colleagues. As a result many were returned to their former positions of professional and political standing in the “new” Germany. And the influence of eugenics in America also continued after the war, promoting forced sterilization to limit birth of the “unfit,” promoting state laws to prosecute persons engaged in “miscegenation,” marriage or sexual relations between whites and other “racial” stock.


Israeli Angst

Following Shoah and motivated by guilt, the United States reluctantly voted for partition, then stood by again in passive complicity as the apparently endangered Jews appeared to face yet another holocaust. England openly supported and armed Israel’s Arab enemies, Egypt and Jordan. Only with the withdrawal of England from the Middle East, the United States now protector of Arab oil, did Israel enter the strategic calculation. Israel, American policy-makers recognized, would be useful as balance to Soviet supported radical Arab regimes threatening the oil-rich conservative Arab regimes. Israel’s “special relationship” with the United States is, at least for her senior partner, a convenience, important only so long as oil is at risk. Such sympathies as “shared values” may exist in popular lore, provide a sense of security for those seeking such, but in the end pragmatic national interest is what motivates decision-making. If Israel feels dependent, is insecure about the future of her “special relationship,” she has reason.

Bush as “friend” of Israel

According to then Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil, at the first meeting of the National Security Council just ten days after the 2001 inauguration, Bush tasked those present to come up with a plausible reason to invade Iraq. Remember, this was more than two years before 9/11. From his 2003 decision to invade until his infamous 2008 secret letter to Bashar Assad the Bush Administration pursued what observers generously describe as a confused and contradictory Middle East policy. At times Israeli interests converged with those of Bush, as with their shared “war on terror,” and this may partly explain Israel’s positive regard for the man. But from a wider perspective, did the eight years of this administration help or harm the state of the Jews?

Until his final year in office Bush almost entirely ignored Arab-Israeli peace-making. On the rare occasions he did show interest, as with the Palestinian election of 2006, his intervention proved not only misguided but a regional disaster. Prior to the election Abbas and Israeli leaders, anticipating the Hamas victory, were unable to convince Bush. The president insisted the elections proceed on schedule with the result that, not only did Hamas win the election, but won also new respect and credibility among Palestinians. Within days Bush had second thoughts about his support of Palestinian democracy and concluded that Hamas had to go. With US funding, training and planning Fateh attempted a coup in Gaza. And again, not only did Hamas route Bush’s insurgents, but Hamas prestige among Palestinians soared, this time as a military force.

Barely two years later, with Israel one year into negotiations with Assad over peace and the future of the Golan (in face of Bush criticism for talking to that Axis of Evil country), in October, 2008 Bush sent PA president Abbas to Damascus to hand-deliver a personal and secret letter, president-to-president, Bush-to-Assad. Its contents, leaked to Arab media, assured Syria that in exchange for breaking relations with Iran, Israel would withdraw from the Golan before the end of the Bush presidency. Of course none of this had been even discussed with Israel. So whatever his personal ambitions or motives, Israeli security was not among his concerns. Should these examples raise questions regarding Bush as “friend” and “benefactor”? Is another example needed? Then consider his use of the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), his transfer of responsibility for dealing with Iran from the US to Israel.

Bush and the “Iranian Bomb”

A fair and not raised question regarding an Iranian bomb is against whom might such a weapon pose the greatest threat? Israel, now apparently abandoned to her own resources by Bush and Europe, is convinced that she is the primary target. While this may or not be true in the future it is not likely today. The ability to build a small nuclear device is not the same as possessing the technology and human resources to create a warhead, to produce a missile capable of accurate warhead delivery. So the immediate threat of a Nuclear Iran is not a high-tech weapon for nation-to-nation combat, but a small “dirty bomb” of the suitcase variety, a weapon more suited to hand-delivery by a terrorist. And since Israel likely has the best anti-terror defenses in the world, a softer target, such as Madrid or Chicago, would offer the better chance for success. Yet Israeli policy makers appear convinced that Israel is the primary target that, abandoned by the US and Europe; that, as a matter of self-defense, it is up to Israel to eliminate the threat, unilaterally if necessary. Certainly Ahmadinejad’s bluster contributes to raise the temperature, to feed the perception. But Israel is by decades of same accustomed to enemy bluster.

I suggest that, while naïve and not gifted in diplomacy, when it comes to public relations, to political manipulation, Bush is a master. Bush perceived Israeli sensitivity and exploited it. He sold Israel a bill of goods, and Israelis swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker!

Conclusion

By the facts it should be clear that Israel’s trust in her “special relationship” is the result of justifiable insecurity, and that American Jewry’s opposite response shares the same source. But for Israel angst expresses a subconscious awareness of a danger which, for a people armed and independent, defense is a realistic possibility. But American Jewry and our entire Diaspora are no more capable of self-defense today than during Shoah, Inquisition or Crusade, so rather than serve as warning, we shroud ourselves in false security, deny the reality of the danger. For the Diaspora, our collective “confidence,” “ease” and “comfort” are a willful act of Denial.

One hundred years ago German Jewry, more assimilated and intermarried than are we today in the United States, described their fatherland as “exceptional.” American Jewry today apply the same description. The difference is that today we have the benefit of historical experience. Limpieza de sangre is, as were concentration camps in the US during WWII, a historical fact, a legal precedent.

History may not repeat itself, but it does serve as precedent. It is our responsibility to accept the facts of history, to recognize our Denial and accept the lessons of history. The lives of our children depend on it.

Israel’s “special relationship,” Reality or Myth?

“If Israel is insecure about the future of her “special relationship” (with the US) she has reason to be.”

The election of Barak Obama brought to surface doubt among some Israelis regarding American Jewry’s identification with, and commitment to the state of the Jews. Within Israel Bush is seen as friend and benefactor. How, the thinking goes, could the US community vote so overwhelmingly against Israel’s perceived interests? But what if the vote did consider Israel’s interests, what if it is Israel, rather than American Jewry, that was wrong about Bush? And what does this election result suggest about how our two communities see the world and the security of the Jewish people as we enter our third millennium of Diaspora? Israel is preoccupied with its “special relationship” with the US, worried about its appeal to, and continuing support by the Diaspora, while American Jewry appears confident and comfortable, secure in its chosen homeland. But is the US Diaspora really the source of Israeli unease, or is the source closer to home? And is American Jewry justified in its self-confidence and ease?

The history of Jewry in the Diaspora is of a nearly continuous disaster, from discrimination to persecution, from mass expulsion to mass murder. Beginning in the 5th century, when the church became de facto government of the Roman Empire, and continuing until the gradual secularization of Europe in the 18th century Jews were serfs, property of local rulers. With Enlightenment’s promise of “emancipation” came expectation of the end to discrimination and prejudice. But emancipation in practice meant assimilation, and even conversion did not end prejudice. The Dreyfus Affair put doubt of the promise to rest and Herzl, the assimilated journalist from Vienna, launched what became the revolution in Jewish identity, the movement of Jewish national liberation, Political Zionism.

The kidnapping and forced conversion of Edgardo Mortara by the Church in Rome and the trumped up conviction of Dreyfus in France; the lynching of Leo Frank by a mob made up of lawyers, judges and other professional elites in the United States; the bloody pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe all these reinforced awareness amongst Jews that the secularization of society not only failed to end discrimination, but continued to subject them to physical danger from their neighbors. And when Germany opted for a Nazi government the pace accelerated towards a final solution to Christendom’s 2000 year long Jewish Problem. How did this continuing and traumatic history of irrational abuse and aggression affect our individual and collective identity in Diaspora; what impact does it continue to impact the psyche and character of the state of the Jews?

Jewish Denial

We in the United States carry ourselves with confidence, comfortable in our “goldene medina.” But what in our experience justifies our confidence? Antisemitism is as old in the New World as our first immigrants seeking sanctuary in colonial New Amsterdam. Met at the dock by Peter Stuyvesant, the legendary governor, they were informed that the colony is Christian and Jews are not welcome. Following the Civil War General and later president Ulysses Grant issued his infamous order barring Jews from entering newly defeated states of the Confederacy. And, around the time Leo Frank was lynched by that genteel Georgia mob, Congress was busily drafting legislation aimed at halting the immigration of “inferior racial stock.” Twenty years later these restrictive laws would provide legal cover and future deniability for the United States closing heart and border to Jews fleeing the Holocaust; for condemning, with full knowledge, Europe’s Jews to the ovens of Auschwitz.

Is our confidence justified by our security as Americans in the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s and so on? It is a fact that antisemitism was as widespread in the US before and during Shoah as it was in Europe. Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg, antisemites and isolationists, represented this national mood, and both considered running, were the choice of the Republican Party for president. Had either decided to run for the office and, as was very possible, won, then it is very possible that such a government would either have remained neutral in the war, assuring a likely German victory; or the US might have actively joined Hitler’s crusade against atheistic Communism. In either case it is unlikely that local antisemitism, inspired by a Nazi Europe, would have been long restrained in expanding the reach of American eugenics to Hitler’s lethal conclusion. And taking into consideration that the US, like Germany, also had concentration camps, these for its Japanese-American citizens, the precedent provides a chilling warning for what nearly was, and is available as precedent for the future.

Israeli Angst

Following Shoah and motivated by guilt, anticipating that the survivors would be facing yet a second holocaust, the United States reluctantly voted for partition, then stood by in passive complicity. England openly supported and armed Israel’s Arab enemies, Egypt and Jordan. American interest in Israel only awakened when it served US interests, not the Jews. With the withdrawal of England from the Middle East it fell on the US to protect western oil interests. Israel’s “special relationship” arrived with the Soviet-radical Arab threat to the conservative monarchies producing oil. Israel’s “special relationship” with the United States is, for her senior partner, a convenience, important only so long as oil is at risk. Sympathies such as “shared values” may exist in the popular imagination but national interest, not “sympathies,” are what motivate countries to act, the glue that binds. If Israel is insecure about the future of her “special relationship” she has reason to be.

Bush as “friend” of Israel

According to then Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil, at the first meeting of the National Security Council just ten days after the 2001 inauguration Bush tasked those present to come up with a plausible reason to invade Iraq. Remember, this was more than two years before 9/11. From his 2003 decision to invade until his infamous 2008 secret letter to Bashar Assad his administration pursued what observers describe, most generously, as a confused and contradictory Middle East policy. At times Israeli interests converged with those of Bush, as with his “war on terror,” and this partly explains Israel’s positive regard for the man. But from a wider and objective perspective, did the eight years of this administration help or harm the state of the Jews?

Until his final year in office Bush almost entirely ignored Arab-Israeli peace. On the rare occasion when he did show interest, as with the Palestinian election of 2006, his intervention proved not only ineffective, but a disaster. Prior to the vote Abbas and Israel anticipated the Hamas victory but were unable to convince Bush, who insisted the elections proceed. Not only did Hamas win Bush’s election but won also new respect and credibility among Palestinians. Within days Bush had second thoughts about his adventure in Palestinian democracy and decided that Hamas had to go. With US funding, training and planning Fateh attempted a coup in Gaza. And again, not only did Hamas route the insurgents, but Hamas prestige among Palestinians soared, this time as a military force. Barely two years later, with Israel one year into negotiations with Assad over peace and the future of the Golan in face of Bush criticism for even talking to that Axis of Evil country, in October, 2008 Bush sent PA president Abbas to Damascus to hand-deliver a personal and secret letter to Assad. Its contents leaked to Arab media, the letter assured Syria that Israel would withdraw from the Golan in exchange for Syria breaking her alliance with Iran. Of course none of this had been discussed with Israel. So whatever his motives, Israeli security was not among his priorities. Should these examples raise questions regarding Bush as “friend” and “benefactor”? Is another example needed? Then consider his use of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to transfer responsibility for dealing with Iran from the US to Israel.

Bush and the “Iranian Bomb”

A fair and not raised question regarding an Iranian bomb is, against which country(ies) might such a weapon pose the greatest threat? Israel, apparently abandoned to her own resources by Bush and Europe, is convinced that she is the primary target. While this may or not be true in a decade, it is not likely today. The ability to build a small nuclear device is not the same as having the technology and resources to create a warhead, to produce a missile capable of accurate warhead delivery. So the immediate threat of a Nuclear Iran is not to produce a high-tech weapon useful in nation-to-nation combat, but a small “dirty bomb” of the suitcase variety, a weapon more suited to hand-delivery by a terrorist. And since Israel likely is most experienced in counter-terror, has the best anti-terror defenses in the world, a softer target, such as Madrid or Chicago would offer the best chance for success. Yet Israeli policy makers appear convinced that the state of the Jews is the primary target, that it is Israel’s responsibility to eliminate the threat, unilaterally if necessary. Certainly Ahmadinejad’s bluster contributes to this perception. But Israel is accustomed to enemy bluster. I suggest that, while naïve and not gifted in diplomacy, when it comes to public relations, to political manipulation, Bush is a master. And Israel was sold hook, line and sinker.

By the facts it should be clear that Israel’s trust in her “special relationship” is a need driven by emotion. It should also be clear that American Jewry’s opposite response, our comfort and trust in our Diaspora home shares the same emotional source. But there identity ends. Because if Israeli angst expresses a subconscious awareness of a danger which an armed and independent state has the ability to confront and defend against when illusion turns real, American Jewry and our entire Diaspora are no more capable of self-defense today than during Shoah, Inquisition or Crusade. Aware as we are at some level of the danger, by ignoring the long-standing and well-documented threat, we in Diaspora are risking the lives of our children in service of our need for the illusion of security in what, for us, are familiar surroundings. Our “confidence,” “ease” and “comfort” are a willful act of Denial. One hundred years ago German Jewry, more assimilated and intermarried than are we today in the United States, described their fatherland as “exceptional,” as do we today.

History may not repeat itself, but it does serve as precedent. It is our responsibility to accept the facts, to recognize our own Denial: to accept the lessons of history. Our children’s lives depend on it.

Bush offers Golan to Assad?

Monday Nov 03, 2008

From the moment he succeeded Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority it was clear that Mahmoud Abbas, one of the Palestinian architects of the Oslo Accords, lacked both the political power and charisma necessary to unite his own Fatah party. His efforts at avoiding civil war by integrating Hamas into the political system proved too successful, casting doubt also on his political judgment. Today, with the Palestinians in a state of political anarchy just short of open civil war, with two Palestinian enclaves, it is clear to even the most optimistic among us that unless and until the Palestinians mature to the point of peace among themselves, expecting them to come to peace with Israel is unrealistic.

It appears that this judgment was also reached by the experts advising both contenders for the US presidency, now recommending to their candidates that Palestine, roadmap or no, should be shelved indefinitely in favor of the Syrian track. And now, according to reports appearing in Israeli media, even President Bush, for whom Syria is a member of his Axis of Evil, understands this and sent President Abbas to Damascus to deliver a personal and secret letter directly to Bashar al-Assad.

The existence and contents of that letter, kept secret not only from Israel but from his ambassador to Syria, reportedly contains nothing less than a pledge to the Syrian president to pressure Israel off the Golan during the few remaining months of his presidency. In return Bush would have Assad break ties with Iran. Israeli leaders expressed concern, and several reasons for that concern will be mentioned below. But dangerous as the impact on Israel's relations with Syria and much of the Arab world are, the letter's implications for the state of the Jews and its "special relationship" with the United States may be even graver.

By its very existence the Bush letter portrays Israel as an expendable ally. In the eyes of Syria and the rest of the Middle East, a forced Israeli withdrawal from the Golan would cast it as puppet of an unreliable protector. Nor is this the first situation in which the present US administration has placed Israel in harm's way according to US interests. Bush encouraged Israel in the run up to the Lebanon war and, when victory was too slow in coming, had Rice order Israel not to cross the Litani River. The effect was to assure that Israel could not defeat Hizbullah, whose leadership and arsenal were well north of the river. A military setback for Israel, to the Arab street not only the first ever victory, but achieved by a mere militia! For Bush the Lebanon loss was a minor failure in the president's cold war with Iran. But Israel is not a safe seven thousand miles distant, and in the Middle East an Israel even appearing to be in decline is an invitation to challenge, and war.

Negotiations between countries represent a period of testing of motives and policy baselines. It provides a period of gradual narrowing of distance between opposing positions, an opportunity to gradually build understanding and trust. An imposed "agreement" such as the one Bush is proposing would be nothing less than another Czechoslovakia, another Munich sellout.

This letter, this Bush initiative, clearly demonstrates the limits of US commitment and reliability to Israel, a red flag to Israel to revisit its emotional and cultural dependence, its so-called "special relationship" with the United States.

Israel today enjoys significant respect and admiration by a majority of Americans and their politicians. But support and commitment are always conditional on present needs and interests, and commitment is never forever. The Bush letter casts a long shadow, a clear warning that Israel must appreciate and respond to.

Should US interests in the Middle East change, which they eventually will, resulting in lessening support for Israel, then the political culture of support will keep pace. At that time popular sympathy and support among the general public for the state of the Jews will also fade.

The Bush letter is a clear warning and harbinger of things to come. Afterword
What I wrote above may be mistaken as a warning of an imminent threat. I do believe the threat real, but not imminent. The Bush presidency is deviant in many ways, the Bush Letter merely the most obvious and recent evidence of how, not when, US interest will move that country to take actions contrary to Israel's interests. Under Bush this has already occurred several times; the invasion of Iraq removed the only significant enemy of Iran, Sadam Hussein, and propelled the Islamic Republic along the path of its hegemonic ambitions; the Palestinian elections, forced by Bush over the advice of Israel and Abbas, propelled Hamas to political and military prominence; Bush encouraged the invasion of Lebanon then ordered Israel to halt when it failed to win decisively within some imaginary Bush time frame.

While the Bush presidency certainly followed its own erratic course, relying on the president's much vaunted intuition and "guidance from above," most American presidents are more open to advice of specialists, more logical and sophisticated in exercising home governance and world affairs, to choose diplomacy over military action.

Bush will soon be replaced by, most likely, a more typical and logical president, so his danger to the "special relationship" will likely recede. And Israel will return to the quiet comfort of its mostly one sided "special relationship." And this is precisely the problem. Israel depends on its relationship with the United States; its partner needs Israel far less. And in time, when the oil runs dry or cheap alternative energy comes of age, its American patron may well need Israel not at all. It is towards that day for which Israel must prepare.


Responses:

1 Scott USA, Tuesday Nov 04, 2008
As indicated in the Bible, During the time of Jacob's Trouble, Israel will be betrayed and it will be the USA that betrays Israel because we are Israel's only current supporter. If Obama is elected, he is Pro-Arab. Israel must look out for their own interests - no one else will.
2 CiFMmsrm, Tuesday Nov 04, 2008

Perhaps an Obama victory will have a silver lining: Israel will stop being afraid of the US president and start ignoring his orders.

3 Michael Groves Texas United States, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
There are some of us that support Israel period. Oil in the ground or not some of us believe that Israel right to exsist is worth dieing or killing for. The "letter" sent to Assad sounds more like political propaganda. Not all Americans are oil starved cowboys.

4 Ron - Oshawa - Ontario - Canada, Thursday Nov 06, 2008
Christians in US & Canada have always supported and prayed for Israel. What I don't understand is why the majority of Jewish voters in US voted for Obama and generally vote Democrat. Don't they understand that Chrsitians are conservatives and not liberal or Democrat ? Don't they understand that Consevatives/Christians believe in biblical prohecy ? Don't they realize the future role of Israel and Jerusalem is to be the capital of the world ? The word will go forth from Jerusalem and he shall rule with a rod of iron. WHY THE DISCONNECT ???? PLEASE EXPLAIN !!!!

5 David Turner, Thursday Nov 06, 2008
With understanding and appreciation that many Christians living in the US today are supporters of a Jewish state, to appreciate why Jews tend to vote the way we do it is necessary to take a longer view of Christian-Jewish relations. For nearly two thousand years Jews living in Diaspora have been subjected to discrimination, persecution and mass murder by our neighbors in the west. Antisemitism was rife throughout the west, not just Germany, etc, but also the US. In the years of the Holocaust Jews fleeing death were turned away by our country also.

Our history has helped shape us culturally and politically. Perhaps we are, as a result of long experience, more sensitive than others to unjust suffering of individuals and minorities. It is not that we vote as a bloc; rather we tend towards empathy, and vote conscience. This also goes a way in explaining why Jews are over-represented in the so-called “helping professions,” such as medicine, psychotherapy and social work.

Was Bush wrong about everything? A response.

Mr. Tobin,

As an unapologetic critic of Bush Administration policy in the Middle East, and particularly as it impacts Israel, I thank you for your effort to present the facts as even-handed as possible. Having lived in Israel for several years, beginning in 1960, and with a daughter and many friends living there, I know that my opinion is, among Israelis, the minority view. And doubly so in the eyes of Americans living in Israel.

I agree with your analysis in general, and with many details. I long considered the decision to invade Iraq irrational because ideological or emotion-based, strategically naïve. Were the administration aware, how could they fail to take into account that Iraq served as counter to Iranian ambitions. It is my understanding that not just the CIA (see the Tennant memoir), but Israeli and Saudi intelligence all warned that Iran rather than Iraq was the greater regional threat. You write that Iran would have pursued nuclear arms with or without the Iraqi enemy, and you may be correct. But even were that the case, an Iran distracted by what she perceived a significant enemy to the west would still be distracted, less of a threat to the wider region, to the oil producers, to the oil shipping lanes. Syria, for instance, with her own long border with Iraq, might well have been more cautious in her adventures since 2003, more restrained in her enthusiasm to serve her Iranian sponsor's hegemonic ambitions.

Iran has grown immeasurably in stature as a result of the invasion, and not just regarding her nuclear program. Thanks to the presence of the US invader Iran, like al-Quaida, has had an enemy against whom to hone her skills and confidence. Iran became sponsor, supplier and trainer of the Iraqi insurgents fighting the US military. Her enhanced stature in confronting US forces serves to embolden and encourage her confrontation with “western imperialism” region-wide, including her support for Hezbollah and Hamas. And what message does her success in challenging the US and Israel send to the Sunni oil producers across the Gulf?

Where once there existed a Sunni Iraq threatening Shiite Iran today, thanks to Bush, Iran shares he long border with the new Iraqi “democracy” led by a far weaker co-religionist Shiite-ruled regime.

And the threat to the Sunni oil producers, oil production and transport continues. Earlier this week Iran’s naval commander announced in a news conference the presence of a new base at the very mouth of the Straits of Hormuz, that relatively narrow shipping passage out of the Persian Gulf. And then, as if in concert, shortly after the news conference President Bush announced that the United States is opening an interest section in Teheran! Is the administration asleep at the wheel, or is Bush repaying the Islamic Republic for some undisclosed quid pro quo; perhaps pay-back for reigning in the Sadrist insurgency which allowed Bush to claim the Surge a “success”?

And a final note on this disaster of a presidency: a recent international opinion poll surveyed, among other countries, the Sunni oil producers and Israel as to how they viewed Bush. The Saudis and all other Arab states rated him in the single digits; Israel rated him very positively. At the very least, in Arab eyes this was a clear vote of no-confidence not only for Bush, but of their confidence in the credibility of the US to protect them against the Iranian threat. Ironically this may turn our to be the exception to the harm Bush has done Israel over the past eight years, for who but Israel can the Gulf states turn to should the situation with Iran deteriorate?

Regarding early and continuing Bush support for Abbas, I couldn't agree with you more. The architect of compromise with Israel at Oslo, having succeeded Arafat, was in a position to close the deal with Israel but chose instead compromise with Hamas. Clearly hoping to avoid open civil war, seeking to engage the Islamists in the electoral process, Abbas set the stage instead for Fateh’s Bush-sponsored electoral loss, the division of the Territories between the Islamists and the "secularists," and the continuing threat of civil war!

And a final word on what you describe as the "apocalyptic" Iranian nuclear threat. Quite true that Israel has received and can expect little backing from Europe or the US in confronting Iran. But ironically the main threat is likely not so much to Israel as to those who would hang Israel out to dry. To date and for the foreseeable future the "nuclear threat" likely involves a relatively primitive device and a delivery system to match. Should Iran actually achieve nuclear capability, the device would likely be most useful for suitcase rather than missile delivery. In other words Iran’s near-time nuclear device would be more suited as a weapon for terrorists than for state military use. And since Israel is as far ahead of the west in the area of counter-terrorism as it is ahead of Iran in weapons and delivery systems, the real threat of an Iranian bomb is precisely those countries preferring trade over sanctions, denial over confrontation, the United States and the European Union!

But is he (McCain) good for Israel?

Over the years Israel has tended to favor Republican over Democrat presidents. This is not the place to analyze this phenomenon and I raise it only as backdrop to the present question: which, if either of the two candidates for US president, is more likely to benefit Israel over the next four to eight years? Each was clearly addressing Jewish voters in proclaiming, when addressing the nuclear Iran issue, that he would never allow another Holocaust. But rhetoric aside how assess, not sincerity, since Israel serves an important function in American policy in the Middle East, but how each might be expected to exercise the levers of power available to the president should a crisis, such as dealing with a more critical Iranian threat, arise?

McCain makes issue of the relative newness of Obama to national politics, and certainly this means also that the Democrat has a relatively smaller record by which to be judged (as did John F. Kennedy in 1960). One factor worth noting is that if President Clinton, judged by his eight years effort to broker an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, and having focused almost exclusively on that effort during his final months in office; if this qualifies Clinton as a “friend” of Israel then Obama’s choice of almost the entire Clinton team of Middle East advisors suggests that Obama also may be intending a more active administration policy in the Levant than has Bush over the past eight years.

As McCain himself points out, his own record goes back two decades and more, a record generally considered favorable to Israel. But his decisions in support of eight years of Bush Middle East policy opens questions of his judgment, and this issue will occupy the remainder of this article.

George W. Bush’s overall performance as president has left him highly unpopular to the general voting public, so much so that McCain is forced to frequently make a point of distancing himself from the Republican president. Except on the issue of Iraq. McCain proudly points to his support of the war, first by promoting the decision in the run-up to the invasion, and today as defender of that decision. As events stand five years into the war Iraq’s social, political and military infrastructures are in far worse condition than under the dictatorship, have never recovered from the effects of the invasion. Countless Iraqis and more than 4,000 US military personnel have so far paid for the war with their lives. The monetary cost to the American taxpayer is estimated at more than $10b per month, more than $600b since the invasion. And five years into the war, despite the positive rhetoric of politician supporters, five years after a jubilant war-time President Bush stood on the deck of that carrier in the Persian Gulf and declared victory, America’s generals responsible for the war's conduct are far more gloomy in their assessments.

The original rationale for war, weapons of mass destruction (wmd), Iraqi complicity in the World Trade Center outrage, have both long since been discredited. The only remaining justification was to remove and bring to justice the tyrant of Baghdad. But whatever the rationale, by decapitating the Iraqi regime Bush-Cheney-McCain introduced a power vacuum into the already unstable Gulf region, an event they should have been able to anticipate; a power vacuum into which Iran, previously constrained by the threat of her only credible enemy, Sadam Hussein’s Iraq, nimbly stepped. Taking advantage of a US military distracted by fighting two wars, Iran seized the opportunity to clandestinely providing the Shiite insurgents with IED’S (improvised explosive devices) and other weapons and training, then openly supporting the Iraqi insurgency being waged against US troops in Iraq. Ahmadinejad, the Iranian mouse that roared, brazenly called Bush’s bluff of preemptive military action should Iran not end its nuclear program. In the end, as Ahmadinejad expected, Bush demurred, the strike never took place, and Iran’s nuclear program continues today unchecked.

What was and should have been anticipated by Bush and those supporting the decision to invade, was the impact of even the implicit threat posed by an aggressive and radical Islamist regime across the gulf from the Arab oil producers. What should have been anticipated before deciding to go to war was the risk an unbound Iran would pose both to the production and the transport of oil to an energy dependent world. What should have been obvious to Bush and his policy supporters planning that war was how freeing Iran from the threat of its only credible regional enemy would impact the overall security of the region, the security of oil and resulting price inflation, and the impact of skyrocketing oil prices on the world economy. Was the invasion of Iraq and the resulting consequences the reason for the current crisis engulfing the world today? Probably not by itself. But it certainly set the economic and psychological stage for the disaster following the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.

At the very least the failure to anticipate these outcomes points to a dangerous lack of foresight, an absence of strategic awareness on the part of the Bush Administration and its supporters. If Bush is known to place dogma over data, to pride himself in following instinct over the advice of policy experts (including the CIA), how judge John McCain in his rush to support the Iraq invasion; how does his participation in this tragic policy-making debacle reflect on his much vaunted strategic military and diplomatic judgment?

I believe the above a fair representation of administration decision making, of the impact of agenda-driven elected decision makers on the United States and the world. Republicans, and particularly the current president have, and continue to enjoy, widespread popularity in Israel. But how warranted is that approval, that popularity? Can anyone say that Israel is better off today than she was eight years ago; is she likely to be better off eight years hence should another Republican administration under a President McCain succeed Bush in the White House?
Hanging the dictator of Baghdad may have served justice as a human rights issue, but from a national and world interest, as an example of "strategic" planning it can only be judged an unmitigated disaster. Israel (and the Gulf oil dependencies previously protected by a credible US defense umbrella) now has a new and serious military threat to deal with from a radical, missionary and hegemonic Iran, an Iran possibly going nuclear. The much-vaunted US defense shield of the oil fields and the region which Bush inherited from previous administrations back to Eisenhower is today, thanks to an overextended US military fighting two failing wars, in tatters. Which leaves to Israel the burden not only of immediate self-defense against Iran and her proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, but inheritor also of responsibility for what had before Bush been an American defense shield covering Israel and the oil producers. It is now on Israel’s shoulders to take protect those previous US dependencies, the Saudis and other Gulf states now facing the Iranian threat under the loud of an uncertain US protector.

But why does it fall to Israel to assume the role of protector of her formal enemies to the south? Because the Saudi coast of the Persian Gulf is Israel’s front line in any future war with Iran. It is a strategic imperative for Israel to deny that beachhead to Ahmadinejad. Nor does the risk to Israel bequeathed by the confused and misdirected Bush policy end here. Should Israel find it necessary in defense of her national interests, should the United States continue to distance itself from the threat posed by a nuclear Iran on her strategic interests, should it fall to Israel to deal with the Iranian threat unilaterally then blame for the tragic consequences resulting from that action, the economic fallout from the increased threat to the world's oil supplies will not fall on the country and president that created the problem, but on the state of the Jews and, since the reflexive reaction of the west to social stress is to blame the Jews, "world Jewry" can anticipate yet another cycle of traditional antisemitism.

Whatever their similarities or differences in social philosophy and international politics may in the end turn out to be, at the very least a President Obama offers a change of political party. And after eight disastrous Republican years in the White House, any change is better than four more years!

George Bush and the Diplomacy of Inadvertence

4 March, 2008

The recent Jerusalem Post article, Vanity Fair: Bush approved plot to oust Hamas, gives an insider’s look into decision-making in the Bush White House. While the article deals only with the Palestinian elections and the resulting Hamas victory, it throws light on how this administration arrives at other decisions such as the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, its encouragement of an Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

But let’s start with the article’s focus, the Palestinian elections and their aftermath. In pursuit of what can only be called his Dogma of Democracy Bush not only disregarded input from Abbas and Olmert, both of whom clearly foresaw the Hamas victory and warned the president, but he also chose to ignore the advice of Cheney's chief Middle East adviser David Wurmser who, according to the article, “resigned a month after the Hamas takeover.” Even Muhammad Dahlan, Abbas security chief and designee by Bush to carry out the military coup against Hamas is quoted in the article as saying, “Everyone was against the elections, everyone (that is) except Bush. He (Bush) decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’”

Immediately after Hamas’ election victory, “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams were entrusted with provoking a Palestinian civil war…” Following his resignation Wurmser said, "it looks to me that what happened wasn't so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was preempted before it could happen.” The article concludes, “Instead of driving its enemies out of power the US-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.” Woops, and here we were led to believe that Hamas was the aggressor!

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Nobody believes Hamas is merely the innocent victim of US-Fateh-Israeli wrath. Following decades of terrorism, of obstructing and derailing Israeli-Palestinian talks, few would sympathize with the Islamist party as victim. But this is not about Hamas. It is all about Bush and the administration’s pursuit of a diplomacy fed by a questionable world-view. Clearly in the instance of the elections Bush policy was a failure as predictable as it was disastrous. Was this a single instance of misjudgment, or does it represent a fundamental failure of Bush policy?

A quick look at today’s Middle East leaves little doubt that things are far worse in 2008 than before Bush was elected president. Following regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq both countries remain in a state of anarchy and civil war. In Afghanistan NATO commitment to the war is faltering in face of a resurgent and apparently undefeatable Taliban. In Iraq the United States is faring no better, facing defections by its few allies in what appears increasingly another Vietnam. And on Israel’s war fronts, Gaza and Lebanon, as he achieved with Iran Bush policy has inadvertently promoted more powerful and popular enemies in Hamas and Hezbollah.

Nor is the Bush failure from his diplomacy of inadvertence limited to the military sphere. Before and after his promotion of the disastrous Palestinian elections Bush opted out of an Israel-Palestine peace process, which atrophied as a result. Where Bush did choose to get involved he vetoed Israeli contact with Syria in face of that country’s public invitation to return to the negotiation table. But most dangerous from a regional standpoint is the fallout from Bush diplo-military decision-making regarding Iran.

Did Bush-Cheney-Rice set out to promote Iranian hegemony, probably not. Were they aware of the potential impact of regime change in Iraq on promoting resurgent Iran? Evidently not. But consider what was a matter of public record. Iraq and Iran were regional adversaries, each fearful and respectful of the other. That they had, within the decade, fought a long and bloody war in which the United States had armed and supported its ally, Sadam Hussein. Iraq and Afghanistan served to restrain Iranian ambitions. That restraint ended with regime change in those countries. Should that have been obvious before the fact?

Whose advice did Bush seek in the run-up to the decision to invade? Not the Saudis or Israelis, arguably the two best informed on the topic; nor, according to retired CIA head George Tennant, did the administration turn to, in fact chose to ignore, the CIA whose analyses, according to Tennant, did not accord with what the Administration wanted to hear. Israelis at all levels of decision-making, intelligence, military and political strongly advised against invading Iraq. Iran, they explained and not Iraq posed the greater danger. And even in the case of Iran Israel advocated diplomacy over war.

As regards the impact of the two-term Bush presidency on Israel, it is interesting to speculate on how the Middle East might have looked today had a less ideological administration won the presidency in 2000. Would a more pragmatic successor administration to Clinton have actively followed up on the near success of Camp David, 2000; might they have been able to bring post-Arafat Palestinians and Israelis further down the road to peace? Would a president unburdened by the blinders of a worldview reduced to an Axis of Evil have encouraged rather than obstructed Israel engaging Syria as follow up to that other nearly successful negotiation during the Clinton years? Would a less emotion-driven administration have encouraged Israel’s ill-fated Lebanon adventure as part of a strategy to contain Iran? Would there even have been the Iraqi debacle to free up Iran, to allow that country the strategic opportunity to flex muscle and assert its hegemonic and nuclear ambitions? Would a less dogmatic, more rational administration have even considered overthrowing Sadam in light of his obvious strategic value as counterweight to Iran?

The problem of a misguided and mismanaged superpower is in its collateral as well as intentional damage. It may be argued that the United States deserves the fallout from the Bush legacy since we twice elected him. Yet it is the entire world which is condemned to live with the Bush legacy, and for many years to come. For Israel collateral damage created by Bush is having an impact on peace and war. On the peace side the debacle of the Palestinian elections had a direct and negative impact on a possible accommodation with the Palestinians (although I, for one, doubt Abbas would have or could have pulled it off anyway), and a possible re-engagement with Syria to conclude the nearly completed agreement over Golan. On the war side, continuing terrorism from the West Bank leading to the costly construction of a wall separating the two peoples; rockets from Gaza; and the Lebanon II debacle which resulted in a Hezbollah more popular and politically influential than before the war.

Possibly any Israeli prime minister is obliged to identify with the incumbent US president, but Olmert’s association with THIS president does not enhance his or Israel’s credibility and standing in the world. And the decisions Olmert appears to have made in identification with, or in order to appease Bush will be around to haunt Israel long after George W leaves the world stage.

Israel’s strategic partner is Syria, Assad and the Golan, not Palestine, Bush and Annapolis

14 November, 2007

Why are Abbas and Olmert playing the Bush/Condi Annapolis charade? For Abbas it’s about the courage: the courage to finally assert control, if he is able, first over Fateh and the machinery of governance he inherited from Arafat. Should he achieve that he must then abandon his obviously failed two year-long effort to appease Hamas and the other extremist groups in the Territories and beyond, to absorb them under the umbrella of Palestinian political unity. A leader capable of leading is the precondition for any possibility of negotiating statehood with Israel.

For Olmert it is also about courage. Outside of Bush Administration pressure there is no logical reason for Israel to expend time and emotion on a pre-acknowledged fantasy. Years of “negotiating” with the Palestinians have produced naught but a weak, if apparently dovish successor to Arafat’s hawk. Olmert must know that, even if a Palestine track offered a possibility of success, still the Syrians are far more important to Israel’s security and strategic needs. Olmert must demonstrate the courage to respond to the public overtures of Baathist Syria, to test President Assad’s seriousness and ability to deliver across the negotiating table. As prime minister an guardian of the state he must take the politically unpopular but necessary step of finally accepting the cost of peace with Syria already agreed to by Israel in 2,000, the return of the Golan. Or would he be alone in exploring the Syrian option. Defense Minister Barak, Military Intelligence and the IDF all agree in assessing Syria sincere in its desire to negotiate peace.

As to Bush and Rice, they have spent the past seven years destabilizing the Middle East, devoting the past four years concentrating their efforts on destabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan. Had they the capacity for diplomatic foresight and strategic thinking they might have understood that neutralizing those two traditional enemies of the Islamic Republic would unleash the Sh’ia Iranian tiger to threaten the Sunni oil producers across the Gulf; to support anti-Lebanon and anti-Israel terror through their allies, Hezbollah and Hamas; and, in fact, to openly challenge the US in the Iraqi civil war that followed President Bush’s declaration of victory. By their actions Bush/Rice encouraged by incompetence Iranian nuclear ambitions, providing that country yet another and credible weapon with which to threaten her neighbors and the Gulf shipping lanes supplying a world economy dependent on oil. And then there was the single significant Bush contribution to the Israel-Palestine quagmire, his insistence against the advice of Abbas and Olmert, that the Palestinian elections take place with Hamas. Of course Hamas won as Olmert and Abbas had tried to warn the president. And eventually Gaza was separated from Palestine. Enter the Annapolis peace conference.

The list of Bush-bungling is endless. The obvious conclusion for Olmert should be that Israeli priorities must take precedence over pandering to this failed American president. And while Palestine may be important to Bush/Rice as a final effort to achieve some appearance of success, no matter how small and temporary, as they slink out of office, for Israel the strategic future is with Syria.

What makes Syria strategically important? In the first place, in regards to a Palestinian peace, Syria houses and protects Palestinian anti-peace terror precisely to assure that Syria will not be left in the cold to face Israel alone. Syrian policy has long been, Syria First, then Palestine. But beyond the obvious if, as MI and the IDF suggest, a Syrian peace is possible then negotiations would certainly include removing Iran from Syria and the Levant and expelling anti-peace Palestinians from Damascus (both of which Asad has signaled would serve him as well). A Syrian peace would also open the door to a dialogue with the Saudis and the extended Arab world; it would reduce the constant distraction of possible war on Israel’s northern frontier.

Should a Syrian peace be achieved then trade with Syria and the Arab world would open new and untapped markets for Israeli goods and services, unleashing the full potential of Israel’s economy. The reduced threat of war would mean fewer reservist call-ups and, as a result, lower taxes and increased manpower hours available to grow the economy.

The cost for peace with Syria was formally accepted by Israel seven years ago, recognized as pre-condition years earlier. Negotiating with Palestine is, in the foreseeable future, a waste of time, energy and emotion. Peace with Syria is Israel’s next diplomatic challenge. It’s time to accept the challenge.

Bush, Condi and the Decline of US Diplomacy: Annapolis, 2007

13 October, 2007

Upon taking office seven years ago President Bush insisted he would avoid the mistakes of his predecessor and stay out of the quagmire of Israel-Palestine peacemaking. The only exception to his commitment was to overrule Abbas and Olmert and insist on democratic elections for Palestine just over a year ago. Now, with just over one more year to the end of his presidency, Condoleezza Rice travels to Middle East capitals apparently intent on achieving in months what her predecessors failed to achieve in years. What are the chances of her succeeding, and what the cost of failure?


The headlines in Israel’s press in the run-up to the November summit provide interesting commentary on the anticipated outcome. Take, for example, “Annapolis, here we come - or, at least, here we go again,” or; “(Public Security Minister Avi) Dichter is ‘pessimistic’ ahead of parley.” Then there are the misgivings about the Secretary of State and her mission: “Can Condi 2007 trump Baker 1991” (not likely, according to the commentator) and, as if in response; “(former chief US Middle East negotiator Dennis) Ross to Rice: Let's hope you know when to back off” (why would Ross even ask such a question?).

How do America’s long-time allies in the Arab world view the peace “initiative?” Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are all sitting on their hands, unwilling to lend support to what they see as a likely diplomatic failure. And insult to injury, they appear unconcerned at possible repercussions for their defiance of Bush.

Then there is Condi’s decision not to invite Syria, the most likely spoiler in the unlikely event of a diplomatic “breakthrough.” The American rebuff is intended to signal the administration’s displeasure with the actions of the Assad Government. But, then, what is the purpose of summitry if not to bring adversaries to the negotiating table? Or is this “summit” meant merely as a public relations event, a farewell photo-op for President Bush and friends?

In fact President Bush has nothing by way of success, and much failure, to show for past Middle East “diplomacy.” For example, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. These achieved only social chaos and political instability for the countries overrun. But among the unanticipated consequences, Bush removed two natural enemies of Iran, thereby freeing up and paving the way for the Islamic Republic to pursue its hegemonic ambitions in the region. As a result Iran today threatens the US-protected oil producers across the Gulf as well as the shipping lanes which carry their product to an oil-dependent world economy. And again, due to Bush strategic inadvertence, Iran now challenges the US in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza; Ahmadinejad shrugs off Bush threats regarding his country’s nuclear ambitions.

A second example of failure of diplomatic foresight is the Bush-inspired Palestinian elections. Just over one year ago Bush insisted that Abbas and Olmert carry through with “full and free” elections in the West Bank and Gaza. Ignoring the warnings of the two leaders that elections would only achieve a Hamas victory, Bush overruled them. Apparently surprised at the Hamas victory, Bush belatedly remembered that Hamas is on his list of “terrorist organizations” and cut off communication and aid to his creation, the democratically elected government of Palestine. Just one year later Hamas was confident enough to challenge and evict the Fateh, numerically twice as strong, from Gaza.

With this as background, the hesitancy of all parties regarding Bush Administration intentions and capabilities is reasonable and justified. That Dennis Ross, veteran American Middle East diplomat and negotiator felt it necessary to publicly question Condoleezza Rice’s ability to even be aware of when to “back off” goes a long way in validating the pessimism, the fears of disaster this latest adventure in diplomacy by the Bush Administration inspires.

But Bush-Rice competence and motives aside, what chance what remains of Palestine and its present leadership could deliver should the summit confound the experts and achieve a breakthrough?


Since the death of Arafat and his accession to the presidency Mahmud Abbas has repeatedly promised to reign in terrorism, reform Fateh and end corruption in the PA as pre-condition to peace with Israel and statehood for the Palestinians. Unable to deliver on any of the above even when Palestine was more unified geographically and politically, while Hamas but one among several armed rejectionist groups, what possibility today, with Abbas a virtual powerless prisoner in Ramallah, that he can credibly negotiate, to say nothing of deliver on peace “on behalf of the Palestinian people?”

As the headlines above suggest, as the fence-sitters and nay-sayers Jewish and Arab clearly recognize, negotiations between Abbas and Olmert are destined for still-birth. Even were Bush and Rice strong leaders with a successful diplomatic record and clear agenda the conditions and timing for this summit are just plain wrong. But given that they are neither strong nor successful and lack an agenda convincing to any but themselves, the more likely outcome of their “summit” will be yet another festering wound in the body of the Middle East, chaos and rage in the wake of yet another Bush misadventure. And as for the victims, the peoples of Israel and Palestine, they will quickly forget that the failure was the result of Bush overreaching; that Bush was responsible for creating the expectations leading to disappointment and despair; that Bush created the conditions which may leave in its wake yet another round of self-bloodletting, another “Intifada.” And then, along with the rest of the world, Israelis and Palestinians will return to blaming themselves and each other for the crime of their unfulfilled dreams.

And Palestinians will continue in their familiar identity as victim; Jews in their post-1967 persona as oppressor. And the US and the world will tut-tut at a conflict conveniently projected on the victims, self-generated, self-perpetuated and self-deserved.

And Bush will disappear into a well-deserved historical oblivion, self-righteous, innocent and blameless to the end.

The US, Israel and the phony road to peace

19 August, 2007

One may forgive the Bush Administration for failing to recognize that there is zero possibility of Israel and the Palestinians entering serious negotiations any time soon. But how explain the Israel government’s participation towards this goal?

Long before Hamas did its land grab in Gaza and seceded from the PA, infighting within the governing Fateh party made even the control of territories under their control shaky at best. Responding to the primary condition of the Bush Roadmap, Abbas long insisted he had neither the political nor popular support to reign in Hamas terror. What possibility then that he could deliver the political unity and support needed to engage in talks leading to peace with Israel and statehood for Palestine? But that was yesterday. Today, now that there are two competing Palestinian governments each claiming to represent roughly half the total population; with whom should Israel negotiate, the more unified and stable Hamas, or the chronically fragmented and unpopular Fateh?

Even before Bush insisted a year ago that Israel and Abbas overcome their fears that popular and democratic elections in the Territories would result in a Hamas win; peace talks were already at a standstill with little hope for the future. Palestinian politicians were unable to even agree to terms of peace among themselves; how expect them to agree to terms of peace with the outside enemy, Israel? Palestine today is generations away from achieving the internal stability necessary to even think of a unifying policy towards Israel. And until that minimal governmental threshold is achieved there is no point in expecting them to be “credible partners in peace.”

So how explain the familiar, but always new-sounding slogans of commitment to the Road Map, to Palestinian Independence, to Peace? The motives of the Bush Administration are fairly transparent. This presidency has demonstrated total incompetence and amateurism in the area of war and diplomacy. It hungers for at least one “victory” to point to as it leaves office. It clings to that last straw of hope. But whatever this presidency touches turns out opposite to the anticipated. The Bush “faith-based” push for “democracy” and “justice” in the Middle East has left in its wake nothing but political and social chaos, Muslim extremism at every turn.

By invading Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush removed the distraction of two long-time enemies of Iran, thereby allowing the Islamic Republic to concentrate on other matters, other ambitions. Thanks to Bush Iran was now in a position to pursue its hegemonic ambitions in the region, emboldened to pursue a nuclear potential giving credibility to those claims. It could now threaten its regional neighbors Israel and the Arabian Peninsula, openly challenge America’s presence in Iraq, support indigenous and foreign elements at war with the invaders and each other inside Iraq, and elsewhere.

With this long and consistent trail of failure it is no wonder that Bush would be willing to take one last throw of the dice in the forlorn hope of at least a single diplomatic success. But Palestine-Israel, Mr. President, is just another presidential pipedream.

And Israel. Surely after six decades Israeli politicians have enough experience to know the illusion for what it is. So what purpose Palestine as “peace partner?” Can it be that dealing with the fleeting chimera of negotiations on this front frees her politicians of the responsibility of defying the pie-in-the-sky American administration and taking on the responsibility of possibly substantive negotiations with its far more important and likely peace partner in Syria? Certainly the costs of that peace, the return of Golan, have already been agreed to by successive Israeli governments.

As rumors of war increase along Israel’s northern frontier, would anything act as effectively to calm those fears than for the two states to sit down at the negotiating table to iron out what are described as relatively few and minor details to agreements already achieved between the adversaries over the years? Not only might this result in removing a perennial threat to Israel’s northern border but the agreements would also address other, and more regional issues such as Iran. All Israeli intelligence seems to agree that Syria is threatened by its dependency on that aggressive, but only ally, that it would welcome a way to extricate itself from the Iranian grip. Peace between Syria and Israel holds the potential of pushing Iranian influence back to the international boundary, distant both from Israel, and as a threat to the Arabian Peninsula from the north.

Peace with Syria holds the promise also of breakthrough to what has been called the Saudi Initiative, the opening to peace and integration into the Middle East which has been the elusive strategic goal of Israel since 1949.

Nuclear Iran and the US-Israel “special relationship”

27 July, 2008

Since the November, 2007 Annapolis summit conflicting, sometimes contradictory statements from Washington throw into doubt President Bush’s commitment towards Israel and his intentions regarding Iran. On 26 July Israel’s prime minister made explicit reference to the problem in a report in DEBKAfile, In secret note, Olmert says Bush has deserted Israel against Iran. As reported, the prime minister openly accuses Bush of taking “strategic steps toward rapprochement with Iran…violating agreements between the two countries (Israel and the United States).” The prime minister went on to characterize Washington’s actions as posing a “threat to Israel’s security and indeed survival…” While the November summit saw public disclosure of US contacts with Iran, they had been ongoing for months. I believe that, while the past seven years have seen a significant change in how the US views the “special relationship” with Israel, Israelis have always read more into the American commitment than was warranted, or wise.

We need go no further back than July to understand the background to the Olmert note. A 10 July Jerusalem Post article, Rice: US will stand by Israel on Iranian threat, although far more subtle than Olmert’s note to Bush, illustrates the developing problem. The headline refers to Rice apparently warning Ahmadinejad that, "we will defend American interests and the interests of our allies." Who precisely those “allies” are is not specified, but the Post assumes she means Israel, and perhaps that is so. But Rice’s language is diplospeak, kept intentionally vague to allow deniability should conditions or convenience necessitate. But is Rice’s vague reassurance sufficient to justify the assumption that, should Israel decide to go it alone against the Iranian bomb, that “America is behind you, Israel” as the Post headline suggests? The very next paragraph has Rice limiting even her vague offer of assistance to providing a “missile defense as a key means of complicating (my italics) Iran's ability to threaten the Region (again my italics)." And what about Bush’s previous threatened use of military force to encourage Iran to abandon her nuclear ambitions? Surely Bush meant US and not Israeli force to back up that threat? After all, the Region means first of all those Arab oil fields, then the US troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Certainly Israel has an interest in the Iranian bomb; but the main thrust of the Iranian threat is not Israel but America’s strategic interest, the Arab oil producing states. In his rush to find a face-saving exit from Iraq, to help fellow Republican McCain get elected, is Bush willing to compromise those oil fields and the war in Afghanistan? Is anything not expendable under the expediency-driven Bush Doctrine?

So now, regarding the defense of Arab oil and American troops, it appears that Bush has thrust the IDF as front-line defender against the Iranian threat. But not even this sacrifice gains Israel administration support and thanks. Following his recent visit to Israel Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff went on record as saying, “Washington has not given Israel a "green light" to do anything.” That statement closely accords with Robert Gates, Bush’s Defense Secretary's public position that “widening the conflict in Iraq by attacking Iran does not fit the current strategic thinking.” According to the US Defense establishment, Israel appears a “loose canon,” a threat to American interests.

A 13 July Post article, 'Bush gave Israel amber light to attack,' clarifies the White House position regarding an Israeli attack on Iran. A Bush spokesman defined “amber light” as, "get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you're ready." Shades of the old warrior Bush; at least until his spokesman informs Israel that she should “not count on the US to lend it military (my italics again) support." And probably not diplomatic backing either.

So, according to Defense and reinforced by Bush, attacking Iran is an extension of Iraq and not another, and perhaps most important front line in Bush’s wavering War on Terror.

Which is not to say that Bush negotiating with Iran has not been productive, even successful; in fact its success underscores the failure of his preferred policy of military over diplomatic engagement: Sh’ia Iran did take the Mehdi Army of Sh’ia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr off the battlefield. And quid pro quo, Rice recently offered diplomatic relations to Teheran. It is even reported that the US and Iran are cooperating in war game exercises in Pakistan.

Not that alternative ways of viewing the diplomatic dance between the principles do no exist. The most popular of these describes the US and Israel as playing “good cop, bad cop,” (with tiny Israel cast as “bad cop”) in an effort to encourage Iran to abandon the bomb. But if true, the ruse is unlikely to succeed, and such a high stakes gamble is so risky in provoking the war it is intended to avoid that the idea is beyond reckless. During the Cold War the US and the USSR also threatened each other with ballistic missiles. But those adversaries were separated by thousands of miles and had many minutes to evaluate intentions, and possibly stand down. In the Middle East the adversaries are separated by mere hundreds of miles and seconds from lift-off to impact: a powder keg with a hair trigger.

As the Olmert protest confirms, the Bush Administration seems to be changing the rules also regarding the “special relationship” between the two states. From the dawn of the partnership in the 1960’s, Israel served the US as background deterrent, a mostly implied counter to threats by radical nationalist regimes towards the conservative oil producing monarchies. Since the Bush presidency, and especially since the overthrow of the Iraqi regime, Israel appears to have been assigned a more active role in American policy. For example, Lebanon II: Bush saw an opportunity to confront Iran through Hezbollah, so encouraged Israel in the run-up to the war. But he overestimated the speed with which Israel could overcome the Iranian proxy. So, as the war dragged on, Rice ordered Israel to halt ground forces south of the Litani River, all but assuring an inconclusive end to the war (the long range missile batteries and Hezbollah leadership were based far to the north of the river). For Bush “inconclusive” was but a minor setback in his confrontation with Iran. But for Israel it meant a loss of military credibility, a sign of weakness and vulnerability.

Since the end of the Second World War and the exit of Imperial England the United States became protector and defense shield for the Arabian oil producers. Oil, not the survival of the Jewish state, was and continues America’s strategic priority. But Israel, small, isolated and vulnerable understandably craves security in alliance with a super power. This goes a long way in explaining why generations of Israelis have clung to and exaggerated the "special relationship” with the United States. The tone of Olmert’s note to Bush sounds as much the reaction of a deceived sibling as a defrauded partner. For Israel the relationship is family, a mutual commitment; for the United States it is more a matter of business, of convenience. Certainly US domestic politics had, over the years, played a part in encouraging a "special relationship." But with the weakening of Jewish identity in the United States, and particularly of younger Jews towards Israel, with American Jews less likely to vote as a bloc, even political considerations are a lesser factor in American politics.

Assuming Israel is without military or diplomatic cover in her war of nerves with Ahmadinejad, can and should she act alone? According to some Israeli intelligence analysts an Iranian missile counterstrike would be effectively countered by Israel's missile defenses. Those same sources contend that Iran’s main local allies, Hezbollah and Syria, are unlikely to join in the war. Assuming this to be the case, what might Israel achieve by attacking Iran? At best, those sources suggest, Iranian production of the bomb would be delayed for a year or two.

And what of the costs? Should Israel go it alone she can expect fallout resulting from the following: the attack would pose a heightened threat to Gulf oil and transport which would immediately and dramatically increase the cost of oil; American and EU troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have been threatened, and are targets for Iranian missiles; anti-west agitation on the Arab and Muslim street would provide volunteers and feed terrorism world-wide; oil price rises would likely increase the global economic recession and, just possibly, result in economic depression. And while Israel would be blamed for it all, Bush and the US, the bottom-line responsible party for protecting the region and its oil from the Iranian threat, would get a free pass.

Or Israel could stand down as front line cats paw for a questionable US military and diplomatic ally in the conflict with Iran, which likely would force her super power partner to accept responsibility for a problem the offshoot of a disastrous Bush Middle East policy. The primary threat of a Sh’ia Iranian bomb is not, after all, the Little Satan Israel but the Sunni oil producers across the Gulf, and their Great Satan defender.

In the event the next US administration fails to recognize and accept responsibility for its own strategic interests then Israel can always reevaluate her options. After all, Israel is assumed to have a nuclear deterrent and delivery system generations ahead of any likely adversary, while the Iranians are still in the early stages of development and production.

Israel need not be in a hurry to strike. In this instance time is on Israel’s side.

Haredi anti-Zionism, where draw the line?

Anti-Zionism Israeli Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss and company greeting Ahmadinejad
at Iranian anti-Holocaust conference.

"You go ahead and enjoy your state for a few years longer!"

an anti-Zionist haredi on Yom Ha'atsmaut

31 May, 2008

Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, begins with an identification with, and concern for the survival of the Jewish people. Beyond this overriding concern the movement is ideologically inclusive, tolerant of political platforms serving the political right and left, religious and secular. Israel is the fruit of Zionism and agent of its mission. But over the years Israel’s status as a democratic and modern state, its identity as home and refuge to all Jews is increasingly threatened by a tiny and intolerant ultra-orthodox minority supported and encouraged by a political culture of expedience and self-interest. In recent months several incidents occurred which, if not redressed, threaten to change the character of Israel from Zionist to non-Zionist, or worse. Most recently a haredi anti-Zionist judge on the High Rabbinical Conversion Court, Rabbi Avraham Sherman, embarrassed, disrespected and all but excommunicated the court’s head, pro-Zionist Rabbi Haim Drukman. Sherman, backed by two other haredi judges, ruled that according to their understanding of Halacha all conversions conducted by Rabbi Drukman, or performed under his jurisdiction for the past ten or more years, are invalid.

Several days after that controversial ruling Rabbi Sherman and supporters returned with yet another challenge to the conversion process, this time ruling that persons hearing- or speech-impaired are unacceptable as candidates for conversion! Who will Sherman next determine unqualified by birth or infirmity to be acceptable to the Jewish nation? Might he conclude that "Halacha" demands that each and every Jew not of his narrow belief community prove our “purity of blood” by providing evidence that our mothers and theirs’ back three generations are truly Jewish according to his understanding of Jewish Law?

Rabbi Sherman and the Conversion Court controversy is only the most recent of a long string of haredi anti-Israel incidents to appear in the press. Take, for example, that visit by a delegation of Natorei Karta to Iran in support of Ahmadinejad’s anti-Holocaust conference. They were not only greeted by Ahmadinejad himself upon arrival, but were photographed with their grey beards and black coats smiling and embracing the sworn enemy of the Jewish state. More recently a gang of haredim physically assaulted a young man for attempting to raise the flag of Israel on the eve of Independence Day. And one day later, on Yom Ha'atsmaut, a reporter asked a haredi apparently enjoying the celebratory fireworks in Jerusalem how he felt and was told, "What can I tell you? You go ahead and enjoy your state for a few years longer!"

Individually such provocations as Rabbi Sherman and the Conversion Court controversy, the treasonous actions by Natorei Karta in Teheran are disturbing; together they represent a pattern and point to a serious disjuncture between the Zionist state and extremist detractors among its ultra-orthodox minority. Where is the boundary between the State of Israel and this anti-Zionist minority today; where should it be?

A headline from the 22 May on-line edition of Jerusalem Post reads PMO dismisses Rabbi Haim Drukman. The reason given was that the pro-Zionist rabbi, appointed by PM Sharon and reappointed by his successor to head and reform the Conversion Authority had passed the age of retirement. In fact Rabbi Drukman had passed that age before being asked by Olmert to reaccept the thankless position! So what really motivated Olmert to act now, to “retire” the rabbi within weeks of the mutiny by Sherman and his two supporters in the conversion controversy? Certainly it would have a thing to do with Olmert’s precarious political situation, his need to reinforce his position as head of the governing coalition by appeasing the haredim for support?

Two other examples of boundary confusion between state and religion are the perennial reappearance of “Who is a Jew” in the Knesset, and the move by the chairman of the Knesset Constitution and Law Committee to amend the Law of Return.

“Who is a Jew” is the effort by ultra-orthodox members of the Knesset to make their particular understanding of Halacha shape civil law for the state in matters of Jewish identity. Lest we forget, Halacha is not writ in stone but is reinterpreted by succeeding generations according to the realities of the day. Nor is there a single understanding of Halacha universally accepted by all rabbinic scholars of a given generation. So unless the Government of Israel is willing to adopt one group’s interpretation of Jewish identity and conduct above all others, thereby creating a state religion (the Rabbinate and the High Rabbinical Conversion Court already go a long way in this direction), “Who is a Jew” can never be adopted by the state, should not even be accorded legitimacy by being raised within the halls of the Knesset. It is no accident that whenever this issue is raised the Diaspora despairs and cries “foul.” Merely raising the issue, to say nothing of enacting it, is a slap at Diaspora Jewry, the vast majority of who, as in Israel, are not orthodox.

And finally, the Law of Return. Several months ago the chairman of the Knesset Constitution and Law Committee proposed eliminating the Grandparent Clause from the Law. The Law of Return is Israel’s commitment, its Zionist heart, as home to all Jews, as refuge to our Diaspora. The Clause was enacted by the founding fathers in response to Germany’s Nazi-era law defining as “Jew” a person with even a single Jewish grandparent. While history does not repeat itself it does serve as precedent, and the founding fathers understood that the German law would one day come to serve as precedent for a future Holocaust. To eliminate the Clause is to weaken the Law. A weakened Law combined with a narrow definition of “Who is a Jew” would disqualify all but those few orthodox who fit the narrowed Halachic definition. It would leave nearly all Diaspora Jewry to face a new Shoah as did our grandparents sixty years ago, alone and defenseless.

While the proposal by the committee chairman may merely have been an over-reaction to a short-lived domestic issue (young Russian expat hooligans desecrating synagogues), such cannot be said of Rabbi Sherman and the Conversion Court scandal, or of those promoting “Who is a Jew.” Both clearly are exclusionary in intent and strike at the heart of Jewish identity. Both are intended to serve the limited and selfish needs of a minority community regardless of cost to state and Diaspora. Both would widen the rift between orthodoxy and all others within Israel, would further erode trust by the Diaspora which Israel was created to protect.

And so the unavoidable question: how do anti-Zionists, a community intent on undermining, even destroying modern Israel and its Zionist underpinnings come to be appointed to positions of authority regarding questions of personal and social identity? How is it that openly-professed opponents of the State of the Jews come to represent Israel in any official capacity? Are Israeli policy-makers so insensitive to their responsibilities to Israel and the Diaspora beyond immediate political need and expediency, of coalition politics, to appoint so divisive a minority to sit in judgment, so divisive an issue as “Who is a Jew” to even enter the legislative process?

All Jews concerned for the Jewish People and Zionism, living in Israel and the Diaspora, should be concerned about the corrupting influence of the anti-Zionists as a political force within the state. As Jews they deserve the same rights under the Law of Return, the same obligations under the laws of the state as exist for Jews of all persuasions. But as opponents of the State of the Jews and its Zionist commitment; as, for all practical purposes, a fifth column within the state, they have no place within the government or bureaucracy, cannot be allowed political influence beyond the right of any other Israeli to peaceful public protest, and the ballot.
Jews today are no less threatened than when Herzl sounded the alarm sixty years before the Holocaust.

Zionism’s mission is as relevant today as it was in 1898 (see my webpage, http://jewishdenial.blogspace.com/). For Israel to forget our history, her mission, is to reduce the State of the Jews to the state of the Israelis, but one more tiny and isolated Jewish island within an ocean of real and potential enemies.

Is Israel’s trust in Bush warranted?

24 May, 2008
President Bush visited Israel as part of her 60th anniversary celebrations and found an enthusiastic and receptive audience, something absent almost everywhere else in the world. His follow-up trips to Saudi Arabia and Egypt only confirmed his lack of credibility in the region. And while some may find this comforting, a regional rather than local view should give pause even to those most optimistic among us.

When in memory have the Saudis defied a presidential request? During his visit to Riyadh Bush was told “no” for the second time this year for his simple request that the Saudis increase oil production to bring down the price of gas at American pumps in an election year. And he apparently fared no better at Sharm; in fact the only public statement to even make a headline, beyond the Saudi “no” was that Mahmud Abbas had for the umpteenth time threatened to resign if Bush failed to deliver Israel on Palestinian terms.

In the weeks before the Bush visit three issues hit the press: Talansky, Kadish and Congress. What all three share is that they all originated in the United States, and all pose potential harm to Israel and her interests. I suggest that all three are connected, part of an administration-orchestrated pay-back to Olmert for turning his back on the impossible Palestinian peace track in favor of the more mature and promising Syrians.

Were it not for the fact that all three incidents involved Israel rather than a contender for office in the United States, the last few weeks might have been mistaken for “dirty tricks” in the heat of an American political campaign. Morris Talansky, an orthodox rabbi from New York and past fund-raiser for both Bush and Olmert, mysteriously appears with “strong evidence of new and grave corruption charges” against the prime minister. Then there was that highly publicized arrest of octogenarian Ben-Ami Kadish on charges of spying for Israel, twenty-five and more years ago. And finally, Bush decides it is a good time to make public to Congress secret and sensitive Israeli intelligence related to the September, 2007 destruction of the Syrian reactor. Three incidents in as many weeks, all with one thing in common: each could potentially harm Israel diplomatically and even, in the case of the Syrian reactor, militarily. Coincidental, unrelated?

How harm Israel? In the case of the reactor the public disclosure risked provoking a retaliatory strike by Syria which might easily have spiraled out of control (see below). Public disclosure by Bush compromised Israeli intelligence methods and agents in Syria, reducing the quality of the former while risking the lives of the latter. In fact Olmert was taken to task by his intelligence community for passing raw intelligence to Bush for precisely this reason. Why did Bush decide to go public with the details now? Was the risk to the lives of those Israeli sources in Syria, the possibility of war between the enemies no longer important?

Then, within days of the Congressional disclosures, the FBI raided that New Jersey nursing home to arrest Kadish from his bed. If his arrest twenty-five years after the events charged was intended to embarrass American Jewry and Israel, as occurred in the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Jay Pollard, then the result was a failure. Images of FBI agents hauling a confused old man, a zayde, from his nursing home bed more than neutralized any damage to, or distancing between Israel and the American Jewish community.

Three major incidents, each originating in the US, each targeting Israel; some might say the entire chain of events mere coincident, conjecture, the stringing together of otherwise unrelated incidents. I suggest not, that when seen against the backdrop of Bush political campaigning and administration decision-making these “unrelated” incidents fit an all-too-familiar pattern.

In his recent memoir, retired CIA Director George Tennant describes President Bush as someone he respects and likes, but also as a person of little toleration for opposition, loyal or not. In this regard recall that before the invasion of Iraq the CIA sent Ambassador Wilson to Niger to confirm that Sadam was purchasing yellow cake as part of his nuclear weapons program. Since the yellow cake purchase was a key justification used by the administration to invade, confirming the purchase was essential. When Wilson found no evidence for the asserted purchase the White House rejected his findings. With war and peace in the balance Wilson decided to go public with the information. The White House retaliated by going public with the identity of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, a CIA agent working under-cover on an assignment of risk. Disclosing the identity of a CIA agent is not only dangerous to the agent but is also a serious federal crime.

This incident throws a cold light on the character of Bush the man and his administration. And this is the key to understanding those “three incidents:” Prime Minister Olmert deviated from the role Bush scripted for Israel. And the administration responded.

Several weeks before the Bush visit Olmert informed the Palestinians that Israel was prepared to return 64% of the West Bank and would allow free Palestinian access to their holy places in Jerusalem, united under Israeli sovereignty in exchange for peace. But at Camp David eight years earlier Israel had agreed to return 96% of the West Bank plus parts of the Old City and East Jerusalem suburbs for the Palestinian capital, al Quds. Olmert’s proposal was obviously a non-starter for end-game negotiations, an end to Bush’s impossible dream of success for his Road Map in the waning hours of his presidency. And salt on the wound, soon after Olmert’s deal breaker to Abbas Syrian president Assad disclosed that he and Olmert have been secretly talking for years through Turkish mediation, that Olmert had, like former prime ministers Rabin, Netanyahu, Peres and Barak agreed to return the Golan in exchange for peace! In other words Olmert was turning away from the impossibility of progress towards agreement with a socially and politically fracture Palestine in favor of Syria as peace partner. But according to the Bush world-view Syria is a member of his “Axis of Evil.” And in Bush’s world the rule is you don’t negotiate with the “enemy,” unless you are President Bush and want to talk with arch-villain Iran about Iraq.

Is there a plausible connection between Bush going public with the reactor raid and Israel switching from Palestine to Syria? The Wilson-Plame affair describes and reinforces the image of Bush as vindictive when crossed. Is the resulting instability of the Israel government in the US interest? What was served by leaking Valerie Plame to the press? Obviously neither action serves a US interest. But we are not talking about a US national interest, but of a visceral reaction by an insecure if powerful person/administration intent on taking revenge.

Consider the possibilities: publicly embarrassing Assad again might stop those peace talks so onerous to Bush, but it might also increase pressure on Assad by his military to retaliate. A Syrian defeat could topple Assad in a coup, most likely at the hands of mid-level, pro-Iranian officers. That would draw Syria even tighter into the Iranian orbit. Alternatively, by weakening the central authority a sectarian civil war would likely bring a radical Islamic state to power, again bringing Iran more firmly into the Levant. Leaving implications for Israel, Lebanon and Jordan aside, were Syria to fall deeper into the Iranian orbit the US would find itself facing a much bolder Iranian threat resulting in a more unstable Middle East. Oil production would be under greater threat which would increase speculation in oil futures which, in turn, will result in ever higher oil prices, greater world-wide inflation, and much worse.

In the end the real question is not whether Bush likes Israel or is intent on harming the Jewish state, but whether or not the Bush presidency benefited or harmed Israel during his term in office. Whether a friend duped by Arabists in his administration or from further down in the US bureaucracy; or whether he is the petty and vengeful weakling described above needing to “get even,” the “three incidents,” and particularly the public disclosure of the September, 2007 raid, could have had but one outcome, to harm Israel. And Bush could not have failed to recognize this.

So, how explain the strong popularity of George W. Bush among Israelis, leaders and public? During his visit his words were supportive, expressed solidarity and comfort: Bush was reassuring. But leaders, like the rest of us, are judged not by word but by deed. And this president has obviously by his lack of strategic vision destabilized the Middle East and, since Israel resides in the neighborhood, undermined also the security of Israel. How destabilize the region? Bush made possible and promoted Iranian ambitions and regional threat by neutralizing that county’s only credible enemy, Iraq. Bush insisted on the Palestinian elections, overriding Abbas and Israeli concerns, which brought Hamas to power. Then, realizing his error, forgot his “democratizing ideals” and plotted the failed coup by Fateh which resulted in the Gaza secession under an even stronger Hamas. Bush encouraged the invasion of Lebanon, then forced Israel to withdraw when the war went to slowly (much the result of limitations placed on Israel by Bush).

So how explain the president’s popularity among Israelis? Perhaps Israel is just star-struck, beguiled by his friendly smile. Bush rhetoric makes Israelis feel, even in face of the above contradictory evidence, that he is a friend, that he has Israel’s back. We are a people emerging from two thousand years of persecution at the hands of our neighbors in the western Diaspora, a people alone and accustomed to rejection and threat. Perhaps even a false smile is reassuring, encourages hope.