Newsweek has a piece about how French President Nicolas Sarkozy has “very publicly embraced the Jewish state,” enabling him to do some things Israeli leaders haven’t loved without appearing to be hostile to Israel. Among them: telling Israeli leaders that Jerusalem should also be the capital of a Palestinian state, giving Libyan dictator Muamar Gadhafi the red carpet treatment and welcoming Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, to Paris. Reporter Eic Pape writes:

It may be a canny approach, but it’s also a risky one. “Sarkozy in Israel acted as an intermediary who could be heard by both sides, and he is more listened to in Israel than his predecessors,” says Gilles Kepel, a Middle East scholar at Sciences Po in Paris and the author of “The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West.” “But the great difficulty is to not lose his capital in Arab countries. It is a balancing act that is very complex. It is a gamble.”

Meanwhile, David Singer of the Canada Free Press points out that making solid progress on the Israeli-Palestinian peace front is a lot harder than bringing together the two countries’ leaders for a photo op, as Sarkozy did at his Union for the Mediterranean conference last week:
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The New York Times has three opinions pieces today calling for a reversal in various elements of the Bush administration’s Middle East policy.

1) Barack Obama reaffirms his commitment to pulling out U.S troops from Iraq:

The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

2) James Rubin argues that the United States should open a diplomatic post in Iran:

America has not sent diplomats to Iran since the 1979 hostage crisis. Washington’s interests are managed by the Swiss government in Tehran. But as in other hostile countries, like Cuba, Washington could set up an interests section in Tehran even while formal diplomatic relations are suspended. Housed in the Swiss Embassy, this post would process visa requests and handle other consular matters.

Such an outpost should not be seen as or used for an intelligence operation. Rather, it would give American diplomats an opportunity to observe the country’s complex politics firsthand. There are no current American foreign service officers who have ever been posted there. Setting up an interests section should help ensure that American policy is not born of ignorance.

3) Roger Cohen explores (online) the Scandinavian view that the Unite States and the West have made a big mistake by shunning engagement with enemies and failing to keep channels open to Hamas and Syria:

Norway’s message to the United States is blunt: the next administration, whether headed by Barack Obama or John McCain, should pronounce the war on terror over. Because it has tended to isolate the United States, polarize the world, inflate the enemy, conflate diverse movements and limit scope for dialogue, its time has passed.

It’s difficult to decide if the efforts Syrian President Bashar Assad made to avoid a face-to-face meeting with the Israeli prime minister on Sunday are more reminiscent of the third grade, or of a guy steering clear of his ex at a party. In any case, at the Union for the Mediterranean summit in Paris the dictator from Damascus managed to spend a whole day near, but not with, Ehud Olmert.

Assad slipped out of the room when Olmert got up to speak. When Olmert made the rounds shaking hands, Assad turned around to talk to his interpreter. And at the Bastille Day parade, Olmert managed to get within a few feet of Assad, but there was no eye contact.

“We are not seeking symbols,” Assad told French TV.

I guess flowers and chocolate wouldn’t have been enough.

Ha’aretz shows in pictures how it all went down.

The Los Angeles Times reports on the death of Jake Yelner, a member of the U.S. Air Force with Jewish roots:

“He loved wearing the uniform. He loved serving his country,” his mother said. “I’m sure as a 24-year-old he had no idea he was going to die. He went to help the people of Afghanistan, to help build their homes. He’d say ‘Mom, I’m making a difference.’ ”

Yelner, who was Jewish and Puerto Rican, attended Catholic schools throughout his childhood and graduated in 2002 from De La Salle High School in Walnut Creek. He also embraced his Jewish heritage and completed the bar mitzvah coming-of-age ceremony at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, his mother said.

In his latest piece of “national security” reportage The New Yorker’s Sy Hersh uses insinuations and several leaps of logic to raise questions about the wisdom of the Bush administration’s apparent funding of covert activities designed to destabilize Iran’s religious leadership.

The headline and Hersh’s juxtapositions suggest that Hersh believes these activities are problematic and a sign that the Bush administration is “preparing the battlefield” for a U.S. attack against Iran.

But the activities also could be interpreted as just the opposite: The White House may be taking this action as an alternative to launching a full-out assault against the Islamic Republic and its suspected nuclear weapons program, and it may well prove more successful than an attack, sanctions or doing nothing.

Hersh makes several leaps of logic in his piece.

The first focuses on whether or not the White House’s initiative — $400 million worth of activities authorized by an executive order called a Presidential Finding — is for military activity to overthrow the regime in Tehran, and whether killing is an intrinsic or merely incidental part of the operations.

The anonymous administration sources cited in the story (they’re almost all anonymous in Hersh’s reporting) say the operations are not about killing:

As far as the C.I.A. was concerned, [a] former senior intelligence official said, “the over-all authorization includes killing, but it’s not as though that’s what they’re setting out to do. It’s about gathering information, enlisting support.”

The defensive-lethal language led some Democrats, according to congressional sources familiar with their views, to call in the director of the C.I.A., Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, for a special briefing. Hayden reassured the legislators that the language did nothing more than provide authority for Special Forces operatives on the ground in Iran to shoot their way out if they faced capture or harm.

The legislators were far from convinced. One congressman subsequently wrote a personal letter to President Bush insisting that “no lethal action, period” had been authorized within Iran’s borders. As of June, he had received no answer.

Members of Congress have expressed skepticism in the past about the information provided by the White House.

So has Hersh.

But isn’t this what the doves have been pushing for all along? They’d prefer the White House provide support for regime change in Iran from the inside, rather than seeing the U.S. adapt the hawks’ call to attack Iran head-on.

The survival of the current regime in Iran isn’t a partisan issue. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want to see the perpetuation of a government that supports and sponsors terrorist groups, threatens U.N. member states (Israel and some Persian Gulf countries, including Bahrain), has nuclear ambitions, and on a daily basis persecutes and represses its own citizens.

So what’s the problem with the White House spending $400 million a year to try and change that in a less destructive and costly way than a frontal attack?
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Time magazine columnist Joe Klein has triggered a firestorm with a recent blog post asserting that the neocons and Joe Lieberman’s support for the Iraq war and tough action against Iran raises questions about dual loyalty:

The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives — people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary — plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

He also seemed to endorse the theory that the president and vice president are sending American troops to die in order to boost oil company profits:

And then there is the question — made manifest by the no-bid contracts offered U.S. oil companies by the Iraqis — of two oil executives, Bush and Cheney, securing a new source of business for their Texas buddies.

The column drew swift criticism from members of the Commentary crowd, including Peter Wehner and Jennifer Rubin.

Klein fired back:

Then, what can one say about Jennifer Rubin, who accuses me of antisemitism? I must say that’s rather thrilling coming from the Commentary crowd. You want evidence of divided loyalties? How about the “benign domino theory” that so many Jewish neoconservatives talked to me about–off the record, of course–in the runup to the Iraq war, the idea that Israel’s security could be won by taking out Saddam, which would set off a cascade of disaster for Israel’s enemies in the region? As my grandmother would say, feh! Do you actually deny that the casus belli that dare not speak its name wasn’t, as I wrote in February 2003, a desire to make the world safe for Israel? Why the rush now to bomb Iran, a country that poses some threat to Israel but none–for the moment–to the United States…unless we go ahead, attack it, and the mullahs unleash Hezbollah terrorists against us? Do you really believe the mullahs would stage a nuclear attack on Israel, destroying the third most holy site in Islam and killing untold numbers of Muslims? I am not ruling out the use of force against Iran–it may come to that–but you folks seem to embrace it gleefully.

Furthermore, as a Jew, I find it offensive that the American Jewish Committee would support such an ideologically unbalanced publication as Commentary, one that spouts a Likudnik bellicosity that is out of sync with the beliefs of the vast majority of American Jews. A question to all concerned: When was the last time you opposed a policy, any policy, of the Israeli government–other than one that attempted to move toward peace?

Before I could tweak him, Klein was able to post this correction: “The American Jewish Committee is no longer associated with Commentary, thank God.”

As for when the last time a prominent neocon opposed a “policy, any policy, of the Israeli government — other than one that attempted to move toward peace”… How about Doug Feith playing a main, if not lead, role in cracking down on Israeli arms deals with China? It’s hard to think of any other issue that caused a bigger problem in U.S.-Israeli relations during the Bush administration — and Feith reportedly was the one delivering the hammer on Jerusalem.

This isn’t just a case of overlooking an example. There is a larger point here: Feith and his ideological brethren may have what Klein thinks is a crazy world view, but it is just that — a world view, as in China and Taiwan, Contras and Sandinistas, etc.

As for the question of fighting a war to make Israel safe, it may or may not be a bad idea — but plenty of non-Jews support the concept and it wouldn’t be the only time the United States determined that it was in America’s interest to take up arms to aid an ally. So why the talk about “dual loyalty”? At least Tim Russert was polite — and responsible — enough to raise the issue in a form of a question, and allow for a response.

Bonus: The O.U.’s D.C. blog has audio of McCain ripping Klein.

Israel’s new cease-fire agreement with Hamas may be good news in Sderot and Gaza City, but it’s bad news for the Palestinian Authority leadership in Ramallah.

As if Fatah’s routing by Hamas in elections in January 2006 and in a violent coup in June 2007 weren’t enough, now Israel is signing agreements with Hamas while the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority is, once again, sidelined. And it doesn’t help that P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas is virtually ignored while Bashar Assad’s Syria gets all the attention in Israeli-Arab peace talks (this week, the possibility of Lebanon-Israel talks even made headlines).

On Thursday night, Fatah’s Kadura Fares talked to Israel’s Channel 2 TV about it, and on Friday Ha’aretz carried a column by Akiva Eldar on the subject. If Israel wants to strengthen the hands of the moderate Palestinian leaders, awarding a victory to Hamas extremists and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (the deposed P.A. prime minister) is not the way to go, the argument goes. Eldar writes:

Palestinian pollster Dr. Khalil Shikaki said this week at a conference in Jerusalem that if elections had been held on the day the cease-fire agreement was finalized, Hamas would have won majority support in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Shikaki saw the cease-fire agreement as the reason for this…

For many months, Fatah mocked Hamas by arguing that the Qassam rockets, which Abu Mazen called “toys,” had no effect on Israel and were causing the people of Gaza unnecessary suffering. And here we discover that the “toys” are a strategic weapon. Instead of conducting the negotiations through Abu Mazen and letting him reap the accomplishment, or at least control the border crossings, Israel has turned Haniyeh into the hero of the hour. And that is not the end. Now that Hamas has shown that you can get recognition from Israel without recognizing it yourself, Haniyeh will free the prisoners that Fatah was unable to free; perhaps even their leader, Marwan Barghouti.

After ridiculing claims by Jewish right-wingers that the iconic shooting of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura was a hoax, the Jerusalem Post’s Larry Derfner responds to a rebuttal by Richard Landes and Philippe Karsenty with a detailed analysis of what is, and isn’t, known about the shooting.

Karsenty is the French Jewish media watchdog who was sued in a French court for claiming the al-Dura incident, which helped fuel the flames of the second intifada, was staged. Karsenty initially was found guilty of defaming the journalist who filed the report, France 2 TV’s Charles Enderlin, but last month a French appeals court overturned the verdict, supporting Karsenty’s right to charge that the incident was a hoax.

The upshot? Derfner agrees with Karsenty, the IDF and Jewish observers who say that al-Dura likely was killed by Palestinian fire, not by Israeli troops, but Derfner says there’s no evidence to show the boy’s shooting was staged:

In short, the French appeals court upheld Karsenty’s legal right to cry hoax. It by no means upheld the substance of his claim. There are light years of difference between the two.

Yet while it’s pure Jewish paranoia to claim that Enderlin and his co-conspirators knew all along that the Palestinians killed al-Dura, and it’s way beyond paranoia to think the Palestinians killed the boy deliberately or that he never died at all.

The Associated Press reports that the Jewish Quarter in Paris is losing its je(wish) ne sais quoi:

The kosher pizzeria on the rue des Rosiers smelled like hot cheese, and Jewish teens leaned skullcap-covered heads into the doorway, hoping to order one of Moshe Benjamin Engelberg’s thin-crusted pizzas.

But Engelberg shook his head. After 27 years, he has lost faith in his neighborhood, home to French Jews since the Middle Ages, and is shutting down, depriving the rue des Rosiers district of one of its remaining Old World-style kosher restaurants.

The disappearance of a dingy pizzeria, its faded portraits of rabbis hanging crooked on brown-stained walls, where men recently swayed back and forth under prayer shawls between pizza courses, was a blow to those fearing the area has become a lifeless, polished museum.

The district has been losing a vital chunk of its Jewish character to high-end designer labels in a slow transformation that residents say is reaching a turning point. Local officials estimate that as many as 20 Jewish shops in the compact quarter have given way to clothing stores in the past four years.

After three days of tough talk on Iran at the annual AIPAC conference and a meeting on the subject Wednesday between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Bush, Israelis are again envisioning scenarios of U.S. attack against the Islamic Republic and its assumed nuclear weapons program.

On Tuesday, Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief David Horovitz told me he thinks such a scenario is possible in the sunset of Bush’s presidency, partly due to an impression he got when he and a few of other Israeli journalists interviewed Bush in the Oval Office a few weeks ago. On Thursday, Ari Shavit imagined such a scenario is his column in Ha’aretz:

Contemplate, if you will, this wild scenario: In November, after Senator Barack Obama becomes president-elect of the United States, outgoing president George W. Bush inflicts a severe blow on Iran. That could take the form of a naval siege, the flexing of American military muscle, or even an all-out air strike targeting Iran’s nuclear program.

Under ordinary circumstances, people would reject out of hand such a wild scenario. The American public does not support the idea of opening a second front in the Middle East, and America’s political, military and intelligence establishments are fearful. A military move, even a semi-military one, carried out by an outgoing president would be unprecedented and illegitimate; it would be perceived as the final insane trumpet call of a thoroughly off-the-wall administration with a committed religious outlook.

But these are not ordinary times, and the protagonists involved are not ordinary people.

Is this wishful thinking?

Maybe the Israelis are encouraged by the hawkish talk at AIPAC about Iran by the presumptive major-party presidential nominees. But sounding the right applause lines for a pro-Israel confab in the lead-up to a U.S. presidential election isn’t the same as dispatching fighter planes over the skies of Iran in an attack that likely would spark a regional conflagration and a massive retaliatory attack on Israel by Iran’s allies in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.

An attack on Iran by a lame-duck president is just not a realistic scenario. The United States lacks the political will, military resources and international consensus for such an act. The sooner Iran’s primary target accepts this, the better off Israel will be to figure how to proceed.