JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Anti-Semitism—still

By Lisa Hostein · September 18, 2008

The latest Pew Research Center survey of global attitudes on religion is out and the news is not good for Jews – or Muslims.

Anti-Jewish attitudes are up in most major European countries, with the highest numbers in Spain, Poland and Russia. Only British attitudes have remained constant in recent years. But the same is true about attitudes toward Muslims. And according to Pew, “there is a clear relationship between anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim attitudes: publics that view Jews unfavorably also tend to see Muslims in a negative light.”

But none of this comes as a big surprise. Similar studies in recent years have come up with similar numbers, give or take a few percentage points. A major report last year by Human Rights First went beyond the numbers to chide European countries for not doing more to halt the trend. See JTA’s analysis of that report.

But while anti-Jewish sentiments appear a constant (so what else is new in Jewish history?), some other troubling – though not necessarily surprising – findings have garnered less attention:

• The deepest anti-Jewish sentiments exist outside of Europe, especially in predominantly Muslim nations. The percentage of Turks, Egyptians, Jordanians, Lebanese and Pakistanis with favorable (my emphasis) opinions of Jews is in the single digits.
  
• A majority in people in Jordan express a positive view of Hamas. But views of Hamas tend to be negative in Lebanon, Turkey, and Egypt.
• Views of the militant Lebanese Shi’ite organization Hezbollah are overwhelmingly negative in Turkey, while slim majorities in Egypt and Jordan express positive views of Hezbollah. In Lebanon itself, Hezbollah is almost unanimously popular among the country’s Shia community, but is overwhelmingly unpopular among Sunnis and Christians.
• Most Muslims continue to worry about the rise of Islamic extremism, both at home and abroad. Majorities in Indonesia, Pakistan, Tanzania, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Nigeria say they are concerned about extremism in their own country and in other countries around the world.
  



Perhaps, in these troubled times, we should take comfort in this, though it’s hard to believe given the daily headlines:

* Since 2002, the percentage saying that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilians are justified to defend Islam from its enemies has declined in most predominantly Muslim countries surveyed.

1 Comment | Share This | anti-Semitism, Arab world, International

Sharanksy on Solzhenitsyn

By Ben Harris · August 6, 2008

Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky shares his recollections of the Russian literary giant Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who died Sunday in Moscow at age 89.

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To subscribe to JTA’s Behind the News podcast, click here.

0 Comments | Share This | International, Podcast

Peace of Paris

By Uriel Heilman · July 21, 2008

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:

The images of President Sarkozy, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Mr Olmert smiling and enjoying a three way bear hug would have encouraged President Sarkozy into believing that he would be able to achieve the diplomatic breakthrough that had eluded the Quartet for the last 5 years…

Little did [French Foreign Minister Bernard] Kouchner - or President Sarkozy - imagine that the fundamental disagreements between Israel and the PA would be used by the PA to undermine the grand design of President Sarkozy to bring the nations of the Mediterranean and the European Union together in a new spirit of co-operation and joint venture.

The unfriendly wind Mr Kouchner had felt was shortly to blow away any hopes of an agreed summit position when the PA objected to the wording of the summit declaration.

3 Comments | Share This | France, International, Israel

The anti-Bush world view

By Ami Eden · July 14, 2008

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.

0 Comments | Share This | International, Iran, Iraq, Israel, syria

Preparing the battlefield in Iran, or exploring alternatives?

By Uriel Heilman · June 30, 2008

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?

Here’s where Hersh makes a couple of leaps of logic. He assumes the executive order is about mounting lethal operations against Iranian security forces, and he assumes U.S. forces are undertaking just that. Since he hasn’t been able to turn up any concrete evidence to support that claim, he writes his piece in such a way as to insinuate that U.S. agents in Iran are involved in deadly attacks against Iranian authorities. Watch carefully for how he does this:

• In recent months, according to the Iranian media, there has been a surge in violence in Iran; it is impossible at this early stage, however, to credit [Joint Special Operations Command] or C.I.A. activities, or to assess their impact on the Iranian leadership.

(emphasis added)

It could not be learned whether there has been American involvement in any specific incident in Iran, but, according to Gardiner, the Iranians have begun publicly blaming the U.S., Great Britain, and, more recently, the C.I.A. for some incidents.

(Well, if Iran publicly blames the U.S., then it must be true...)

Hersh is forced to acknowledge that U.S. forces may not be attacking Iranian authorities directly, but supporting anti-government insurgent groups much the way U.S. forces aided surrogates in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Many of the activities may be being carried out by dissidents in Iran, and not by Americans in the field.

("May be being carried out?” Where’s Hersh’s evidence to the contrary?)

Then Hersh mounts the argument against the strategy of supporting anti-Iranian military activity, using academics and other quotables as proxies (and omitting contrasting voices):

Relying heavily on a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, Sam Gardiner, “who has taught strategy at the National War College and now conducts war games centered on Iran for the federal government, think tanks, and universities,” Hersh promotes the idea that “the violence, rather than weakening Iran’s religious government, may generate support for it.”

Hersh goes on:

A strategy of using ethnic minorities to undermine Iran is flawed, according to Vali Nasr, who teaches international politics at Tufts University and is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The White House’s reliance on questionable operatives, and on plans involving possible lethal action inside Iran, has created anger as well as anxiety within the Special Operations and intelligence communities.

Hersh’s source? An anonymous “Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror,” who says:

“We’ve had wonderful results in the Horn of Africa with the use of surrogates and false flags—basic counterintelligence and counter-insurgency tactics. And we’re beginning to tie them in knots in Afghanistan. But the White House is going to kill the program if they use it to go after Iran. It’s one thing to engage in selective strikes and assassinations in Waziristan and another in Iran. The White House believes that one size fits all, but the legal issues surrounding extrajudicial killings in Waziristan are less of a problem because Al Qaeda and the Taliban cross the border into Afghanistan and back again, often with U.S. and NATO forces in hot pursuit. The situation is not nearly as clear in the Iranian case. All the considerations—judicial, strategic, and political—are different in Iran.”

Finally, Hersh uses U.S. opinion polls to argue against the anti-government activities he believes are taking place in Iran. He cites a Gallup poll from November 2007 that showed that only 18 percent of those polled favored U.S. military action against Iran, as opposed to 73 percent who favored economic action and diplomacy.

It’s a bit disingenuous to cite this poll, however, when the question – “What do you think the United States should do to get Iran to shut down its nuclear program: Take military action against Iran or rely mainly on economic and diplomatic efforts?” – likely prompted respondents to assume Gallup was asking about a major U.S. strike against Iran, not the type of covert operations Hersh describes in his article.

Ominously, Hersh warns that U.S. public opinion could shift in favor of a war against Iran, if the administration manipulates them the right way. Concluding, he notes that both John McCain and Barack Obama have said they’d keep the threat of military action against Iran on the table.

––-

My problem with this piece isn’t the implicit criticism of the strategy of using covert operatives to weaken the Iranian regime’s stranglehold on its people, though that strategy seems prudent and timely, especially given the alternatives (full-out war or doing nothing). Nor is it impossible that the administration is doing the things Hersh attributes to it.

My problem is that Hersh’s piece isn’t supported by the facts he presents, the reporting is one-sided, the piece is selective in its reliance on questionable anonymous sources, and it’s an opinion essay parading as journalism. Hersh’s story leaves the reader with a sense of great alarm about a strategy – whose manifestation is unclear, and which may or may not be in use – to challenge Iranian power.

If this really were what was going to bring the U.S. to war against Iran (the conclusion that Hersh wants you to be afraid of), why is the administration only spending a lousy 400 million bucks on it?

What do you think? Read the piece and let me know.

6 Comments | Share This | Bush, International, Iran, Politics

Hamas’ gain, Fatah’s loss

By Uriel Heilman · June 20, 2008

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. 

2 Comments | Share This | Arab-Israeli Conflict, International, Israel

Al-Dura conspiracy theories

By Uriel Heilman · June 20, 2008

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.

3 Comments | Share This | Anti-Zionism, Arab-Israeli Conflict, France, International, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Uncategorized

Iran on the brain

By Uriel Heilman · June 5, 2008

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.

8 Comments | Share This | International, Iran, Israel

Human rights low in Geneva?

By Uriel Heilman · May 19, 2008

One of the top candidates to be the new U.N. high commissioner for human rights may bring the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to new lows, warns one pro-Israel watchdog organization.

Mexican Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba – who is the front-runner for the post, according to Human Rights Tribune, rarely missed an opportunity to single out Israel for special opprobrium during his year as president of the Council, according to Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch. Neuer clashed with de Alba in this session of the Human Rights Council.

This week, Neuer had this to say to JTA about de Alba, who was president of the Human Rights Council from mid-2006 to mid-2007:

“His record was one of weakness, at best, in the face of the takeover by the Islamic group of the Human Rights Council. He oversaw the massive erosion of what was already a problematic institution. Under his watch, the supposedly reformed U.N. Council ended its scrutiny of Belarus, ended its scrutiny of Cuba, and he refused to let Canada vote on its package of reforms. He also oversaw the singling out of Israel as a permanent agenda item at the Human Rights Council.”

The current high commissioner, Louise Arbour, has held the post for four years. She, too, has endured her fair share of criticism from the pro-Israel camp – residents of Sderot stoned her when she visited the town in November 2006, just a few months after she warned during the Israel-Hezbollah war that “those in positions of command and control” could be subject to “personal criminal responsibility” for their actions in the 2006 war. But if Arbour is succeeded by de Alba, the Council will only get worse, Neuer warns.

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, who can be seen here smiling with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a meeting in Tehran in March, reportedly is another leading candidate for Arbour’s position.

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights is an appointee of the U.N. secretary-general. Spokesman Brenden Varma told JTA on Monday that Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon hopes to make his appointment by the end of June.

1 Comment | Share This | Anti-Zionism, Arab-Israeli Conflict, International, Israel, U.N.

The man behind the spy charges

By Uriel Heilman · April 24, 2008

The day after reporters flocked to a courtroom in downtown Manhattan to catch a glimpse of the 84-year-old New Jersey retiree arrested this week for spying for Israel, reporters converged on the man’s hometown of Monroe, N.J. to talk to friends, neighbors and anyone else willing to spill what they knew of the alleged spy, Ben-Ami Kadish.

“You can know people for years and just not know them,” a woman named Anita told The New York Times.  “Nobody ever said anything bad about them,” a “shocked” neighbor told the New York Jewish Week. The spy story has been a boon to the New Jersey Jewish News, which scooped them all with a 2006 profile of Kadish and his wife, Doris. That story showed the couple hosting a charity event in their sukkah, portraying them as pillars of their Jewish community. Who knew?

7 Comments | Share This | International, Israel, Israel-Diaspora, Politics