A cleansing battle over settlements
J Street and The Israel Project are firing shots at each other after the disclosure that The Israel Project was advising its activists to say that the removal of Jewish settlements would be a version of "ethnic cleansing."
Syndicated columnist Doug Bloomfield got his hands on an internal TIP document on how to talk to journalists and opinion leaders about the Arab-Israeli conflict. First, Bloomfield said, TIP suggests changing the subject instead of trying to defend settlements. But if that doesn't work, the group says the "best" argument is to"try accusing those who advocate removing Jewish settlements of promoting 'a kind of ethnic cleansing to move all Jews' from the West Bank":
“The single toughest issue” to defend among Americans generally and American Jews in particular is settlements, says the manual, and “hostility towards them and towards Israeli policy that appears to encourage settlement activity.” ...
Instead of defending settlements, go on the attack, advises TIP, a Washington-based group that seeks to enhance Israel’s image among journalists and policy makers. ...
TIP says the “best argument” for settlements is this: Since Arabs citizens of Israel “enjoy equal rights,” telling Jews they can’t live in the Palestinian state “is a racist idea.” (Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said this week that Jews would be welcome to live in the Palestinian state and enjoy the same rights Israeli Arabs enjoy in Israel.)
Until Israeli policy changes, TIP suggests deflecting critics by mentioning Israel’s “willingness to negotiate” and stressing how “Israel has already sacrificed in the name of peace” and got terrorists’ missiles in return.
The TIP talking points raised the ire of J Street, which sent out an e-mail Thursday urging its supporters to demand that "The Israel Project's Executive Director Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi remove any pro-settlement, fear-mongering talking points from herorganization's materials":
Unbelievable. As someone who cares about Israel's future, I know that stopping settlements - as well as Palestinian incitement and violence - are first steps towards a secure, Jewish, and democratic Israel through a two-state solution. Using terms like "ethnic cleansing" to undermine that agenda is incendiary and dangerous - and, I believe, not pro-Israel.
Mizrahi defended her use of the term "ethnic cleansing" in an interview with JTA Thursday afternoon, saying that the document that Bloomfield saw is simply telling the truth about what happened when settlements were dismantled in Gaza, something she and her organization supported and which she was in Gaza herself to see.
"What happened in Gaza was ethnic cleansing," said Mizrahi. "Every Jew left Gaza, including the dead Jews," whose graves had to be moved, she noted.
"Israel did that with the hopes of trying to jump start a two-state solution," but instead it just led to Hamas rocket attacks and more Israelis and Palestinians dying.
Thus she believes that anyone who thinks "unilateral" Israeli concessions on settlements will move the peace process forward is mistaken, and she says that any future Palestinian state should allow Jews to remain living inside it. Mizrahi adds that she was very happy with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's recent comments that Jews would be free to live under Palestinian rule in such a state -- although she doubted Hamas would accept it.
And she criticized J Street, which she feels focuses lots of attention on settlements -- and what others in the Jewish community are doing -- but rarely speaks out about the obligations that the Palestinians have and doesn't back tougher sanctions on Iran.
"I get up in the morning and say 'How can I attack the Iranian nuclear threat," said MIzrahi. J Street "gets up in the morning and says 'How can I attack other Jewish organizations?'"
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Self-hating leaks
Leaks are a perennial problem in Israel, but here’s one that Bibi Netanyahu could especially do without (courtesy of Ha’aretz):
He is convinced that the media are after him, that his aides are leaking information against him and that the American administration wants him out of office. Two months after his visit to Washington, he is still finding it difficult to communication normally with the White House. To appreciate the depth of his paranoia, it is enough to hear how he refers to Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, Obama's senior aides: as "self-hating Jews."
"He thought that his speech at Bar-Ilan would become mandatory reading at schools in the United States, and when he realized that Obama gave no such order, he went back to being frustrated," one of his associates said.
And the prime minister’s father isn’t helping either:
Channel 2 reported Wednesday night that the prime minister had told his father, 100-year-old historian Benzion Netanyahu, that he purposely set the conditions knowing that the Palestinians would never agree to them.
"He doesn't support [a Palestinian state]," the father said in a phone interview. "He set conditions that they won't ever accept. That's what he told me. He set the conditions and they won't accept even one of them."
So we know that Netanyahu and Emanuel have at least one thing in common: a quotable father.
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Dermer: Bibi has been misunderstood
A top adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu says people have misunderstood the Israeli prime minister's major policy speech last month.
Ron Dermer told a Zionist Organization of America conference call on Wednesday that Netanyahu's demands that the Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state and that any Palestinian state be demilitarized are "endgame" positions, according to a person on the call.
Dermer said, according to the source, that "the most important thing" right now is for Palestinians to "end promotion of hatred and violence in every aspect of society." He emphasized that Israel wants to see not just "100 percent effort" but "100 percent results."
Asked about Iran after this week's back and forth over whether Vice President Joe Biden had given Israel a "green light" to attack Iran, Dermer responded that "Israel will not relinquish the right to defend our people to any other country."
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Does Obama understand Israeli politics?
In an article criticizing the Israeli left for not putting public pressure on the Israeli government to agree to a settlement freeze, Aluf Benn in Haaretz writes that President Obama and his administration made mistakes, too:
First, Obama did not try to communicate with the Israeli public and convince them that freezing settlements will be an important and positive step to contribute to peace and a better future. Obama addressed the Arabs and Muslims, but not the Israelis. His neglect increased concerns among Israelis that they do not have a friend in the White House.
When the president is "Hussein," he is perceived as being pro-Arab and picking on Netanyahu. The administration's pathetic attempt to deny the existence of understandings with Israel on construction in the settlements only bolstered this impression. It was possible to blame Israel for violating its promises, or to say that the policy had changed and to explain why, but not to lie. ...Third, Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Israel strategist, adjusted the administration's policy to the situation in Congress in an effort to twist the Jewish lobby's arm. He knew there are no major supporters on the hill for "natural growth" in the settlements, and that it would be easy to pressure Netanyahu with the demand for a freeze, which would leave the prime minister without allies in Washington. But Emanuel ignored the Israeli political scene, and it appears that the administration lacks "eyes and ears" in Jerusalem. The recent appointment of Dennis Ross at the White House will put an expert on Israeli politics near Obama. Will he listen to his advice?
The Jerusalem Post's Shmuel Rosner notes the Benn article and suggests that "we have to assume one of two things":
1. The Obama administration doesn't understand Israeli politics, and doesn't recognize that its public policies - while possibly helpful with the Arab world - can hardly make Israelis feel secure and ready to cooperate with the President, no matter how often he says that his commitment to Israel's security is unshakable.
2. The Obama administration doesn't care about Israeli politics and Israeli public opinion, and is ready to sacrifice the good will of Israelis in exchange for (presumed) better relations with the Arab world.
In either case - as I've demonstrated a couple of days ago - the administration should take into account that it doesn't have any track record with which to calm Israelis. It's true that the Israeli public wasn't happy with PM Netanyahu's tendency to quarrel with the Clinton administration in the mid 1990's. But this was a different situation: by the time Netanyahu was elected, Clinton was already a "great friend", and most Israeli recognized that his intentions (even when they didn't like some of his actions) were good. Another difference: In the Nineties a significant number of Israelis still believed that peace with Palestinians was possible. They could see why some American pressure might be helpful in the long run.
For Obama, life with Israelis is more complicated. He started pushing immediately, without gaining the confidence of Israelis first. And he is pushing even though it is clear to the vast majority of Israelis that freezing the settlements will not bring about peace or security.
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Next step: international conference?
The State Department yesterday denied that a deal on settlements allowing the completion of 2,500 units in the West Bank had been reached, but the Jerusalem Post reports today that a compromise that would allow both sides to claim "victory" is in the works, in which Israel would agree to a freeze of a few months while also being allowed to complete an unspecified number of units already under construction. The story by Herb Keinon and Gil Hoffman goes on to talk about what's next after such a deal is reached:
Once agreement is reached on the settlement issue, and the US gets some gestures from the Arab world, the next step would possibly be an event - likely an international conference - where a "to do" list would be presented regarding what needed to be done to move the diplomatic process forward.
This "to do" list, according to one well-placed source, was shaping up as a revamped edition of the road map, with sequential phases and a stronger regional component, meaning that the Arab states would be asked to become involved in the normalization of ties in the early stages, rather than at the end, of the process.
In addition, any new road map would have take into consideration - and deal with in detail - something that did not exist when the original road map was launched in 2003: Hamas control of the Gaza Strip.
Diplomatic sources said that the US, interested in shoring up its relations with Russia, is now much more amenable than in the past to the idea of an international conference in Moscow to launch the new initiative.
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