JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Ahmadinejad in the big city

By Uriel Heilman · September 23, 2008

With Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, more than a few media outlets are taking the opportunity to weigh in on the regime in Tehran, and some have sat down with the president of the Islamic Republic.

• National Public Radio‘s Steve Inskeep asks Ahmadinejad if he accepts the label as the man who would “wipe Israel off the map.” Here’s the response:
  



Please pay attention to the fact that there are two issues that go side by side in this discussion. The first part is the proposal we have given to resolve the problem of Palestine. For 60 years, wars and killings have been going on over there.

Every peace proposal that has been put on the table so far has failed to give results. Why? Because it neglects the rights of the Palestinian people. Our proposal has been to offer the Palestinian people a free referendum. Everyone who lives in Palestine [should be able] to participate in a referendum to decide the future and the nature of its government.

Let me create an analogy here — where exactly is the Soviet Union today? It did disappear — but exactly how? It was through the vote of its own people. So therefore in Palestine too we must allow the people, the Palestinians, to determine their own future.

And then the second side of this same issue, and I’d really like to invite you to pay attention to it. Especially you — you must, because you are always being subjected to [the] unilateral sort of information that is coming from the administration here.

Let’s ask ourselves, where exactly did the Zionist regime come from? Palestine has existed historically with people who live there for thousands of years. Then at gunpoint several million of the indigenous people there were forced out of their homes and became displaced. And it didn’t stop there; others were brought from elsewhere in the world to replace them. How can you accept this regime?

• The L.A. Times asked Ahmadinejad a similar question: “You have said repeatedly that the state of Israel should disappear from the map. What action does Iran plan to take to bring about the result of Israel’s disappearance? Or is this just nothing more than talk?” Here’s the response:
  



Iran has made its proposal loud and clear: We’re calling for free referendums for the Palestinian nation to determine their own government. This will be reflected in a proposal which we will soon submit to the U.N. secretary-general. Palestine constitutes a nation that has lived there for hundreds if not actually thousands of years. Now, with the pre-planned thinking, [Israel has] actually displaced over 5 million people from their own lands and collected other people elsewhere from the world and has put them in their place. How is it possible to recognize a state that has come about as such?

If we agree and accept that certain events had occurred during World War II, well, where did they indeed happen? In Germany, in Poland and in Great Britain. Now, what does this exactly have to do with Palestine? Why is it that the Palestinian people should pay for it?

• And another question from the L.A. Times: “Does Iran feel or have any reservations about the possibility of a deal between Syria and Israel, in which Syria would get back the Golan Heights but in return would expel Hezbollah from its territory?” The response:
  



We welcome any part of the occupied lands that are freed. We believe that the freedom of the Golan Heights is exactly what the Zionist regime does not want. And we think it is very unlikely that it will happen as a result of the negotiations.

The regime resembles an airplane that has lost its engine and is kind of going down. And no one can help it. This will benefit everyone – more than anyone, the American people. Because in the name of the American people, this regime is carrying out crimes, crimes that fill the pockets of capitalists, for which the American people pay.


• In the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens finds Ahmadinejad has done more for the Islamic Republic in four years than all his predecessors combined managed in their 25.



Above all, you have given the world time to digest the notion that Iran will inevitably become a nuclear power, and that nothing can be done to stop it – at least at any kind of acceptable price. Will Americans agree to open a third military front in the Middle East? Does Israel, which couldn’t so much as defeat Hezbollah, want to roll the dice on a bombing run that will spark another bloody regional war but retard Iran’s nuclear programs by at most a few years? How will the U.S. afford its epic Wall Street bailouts if you shut down the Straits of Hormuz?

• In an editorial, the New York Times says what’s needed is a game-changing diplomatic initiative to deal with Iran’s constant evasions on its nuclear program.
  



Europe and the United States must agree quickly on a more persuasive set of punishments and incentives… We don’t know if any mix of sanctions and rewards can persuade Iran’s leaders to abandon their nuclear program. But without such an effort, we are certain that Tehran will keep pressing ahead, while the voices in the United States and Israel arguing for military action will only get louder.

2 Comments | Share This | Iran, Israel

What’s missing at the U.N.

By Lisa Hostein · September 22, 2008

Remarkably little has been written in the media leading up to today’s opening of the U.N. General Assembly, where leaders from nations around the globe gather in New York for official speeches and sideline meetings.

For once, Israel is not expected to be a major target of vilification; but neither is Iran, which poses the biggest threat not only to Israel but the world, as Dennis Ross and other top former diplomatic and security officials write in the Wall Street Journal.

Jewish groups appear to be leading the charge, starting with a rally today across from the United Nations protesting Iranian President Mahmoud Achmadinejad. The Jewish effort illustrates the tensions between not wanting to make it seem like the nuclear threat from Iran is a “Jewish/Israeli” issue and not wanting to idly stand by as the threat escalates.

In a meeting of foreign ministers on Friday, Russia and China reiterated their position that the United Nations should take no further action on sanctions.

Beyond Iran, it’s sadly ironic that the intended theme of this year’s General Assembly – global poverty – is being overshadowed by the financial crisis that is roiling the United States and the world.

As for President Bush, his address on Tuesday will mark his farewell speech to the world body.

By the way, if you want a primer on what the United Nations was originally intended to do, see this.

2 Comments | Share This | International, Iran, U.N.

Mideast roundup

By Uriel Heilman · September 11, 2008

• Ha’aretz has some details on some of the weapons it says the U.S. government denied Israel out of fear they’d be used to attack Iran. They include bunker-buster bombs, permission to use an air corridor over Iraq to fly to Iran, an advanced technological system and refueling planes, the report said.
• Gabriela Shalev, who this week officially began her job as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, came out swinging in her first public statement on the job. Responding to an Iranian protest of remarks by Israeli ministers that Israel could kidnap Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Shalev said: “It is absurd that Iran preaches morality to Israel,” and more.
• Following a boat trip to Gaza that thwarted Israel’s blockade of the strip and resulted in his arrest by Israeli authorities, the director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Jeff Halper, faces a major funding crisis. The European Union, which provided much of the funding for the controversial organization (which blames Israeli Jews for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), is not renewing its grant to the group, NGO Monitor reports.
• Former Israeli national security adviser Giora Eiland is troubled about Israeli-Syrian negotiations. In a piece in Ynet, he writes: “The three most bothersome issues are as follows: The order of our actions, the absence of a genuine security assessment, and the disregard shown to the United States.”

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Candidate Ahmadinejad

By Uriel Heilman · September 2, 2008

The success of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election bid is not a foregone conclusion, writes Benedetta Berti in The Jerusalem Post.

The Iranian president has been under fire at home for economic mismanagement, with Iran’s economy faltering and inflation at 23 percent. Backing by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei helps, but it may not be enough. Berti writes:

The ongoing economic crisis endangers Ahmadinejad’s credibility and popularity within his constituency, and increases the number of critics. Only in the past week, former president and current head of the Assembly of Experts Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani blamed Ahmadinejad’s administration for the ongoing economic and energy crises, saying the country was ready for change.

Given this decline in popularity, it seems that Ahmadinejad’s reelection now depends even more on the support of the conservative coalition, as well as on the backing of the supreme leader. However, neither of these factors can be taken for granted.

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Rosenberg on Goldberg

By Uriel Heilman · August 25, 2008

In his latest column, M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum mischaracterizes The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on the threat posed to Diaspora Jews by a potential Israeli strike on Iran.

In an Aug. 11 blogpost, Goldberg writes of the retaliatory terrorist attacks American Jews should expect – “blowback” – if Israel strikes Iran:

The leaders of American Jewish organizations are generally hesitant to bring up the subject of Diaspora blowback when they talk to Israeli officials, and not without justifiable reason: Israel is a sovereign state, and makes decisions based on the needs of its national security. And Israeli officials bridle at the thought of Diaspora Jews telling them what to do. They also bridle at the idea that the existence of Israel actually endangers Jews in the Diaspora, rather than strengthens them. I would never argue that Israel hasn’t strengthened, in particular, the American Jewish community, giving it both backbone and meaning. And I wouldn’t argue that Israel should refrain from acting as a rescuer of persecuted Jews worldwide simply because it blurs the line between the interests of the Diaspora and the interests of the Jewish state.

Here’s how Rosenberg interprets Goldberg:

Goldberg writes that the reason we don’t hear much about this issue of “blowback” is that just raising it challenges the fundamental premise underlying Zionism. The existence of the state of Israel supposedly makes Jews in the Diaspora safer. If, on the other hand, actions taken by Israel jeopardize Jews outside of Israel then the Zionist concept looks flawed.

Rosenberg then goes to explain why an Israeli strike on Iran would be a terrible idea.

That may be the case, but Rosenberg misconstrues Goldberg, who speaks not at all about Zionism or flaws in the Zionist concept.

If this whole exercise in parsing blogposts with Talmudic scrutiny seems a bit pedantic to you, well then you’re right on target.

5 Comments | Share This | Iran, Israel, Jewish organizations

Ahmadinejad’s machateinister

By Uriel Heilman · August 14, 2008

What happens when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s machateinister (the in-law of his child), Iranian vice president for tourism Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, says Iran is a friend of the Israeli people?

Two hundred of 290 members of Parliament sign a statement calling on Iran’s president to dismiss Mashai for saying, “We are a friend of all people in the world, even Israelis and Americans.” If Parliament’s condemnation for this gesture of friendship seems depressing, here’s the bright side: 90 members of Parliament didn’t sign the statement.

No word yet on how Ahmadinejad will respond.

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Basketball’s Blatt

By Alison Klayman · August 14, 2008

During the first week of the Beijing Games, the media focused on the Iranian swimmer who skipped a race with an Israeli in the next lane, but not enough attention was paid to the historic handshakes that the entire men’s basketball team of Iran gave to a dual citizen American-Israeli Jew.

That Jew was David Blatt, the head coach of the Russian national men’s basketball team.

(And I bet you didn’t know the head coach of the Russian team was Jewish, either.)

The Boston-born Blatt played basketball at Princeton University from 1977-1981, and participated in the Maccabiah Games as part of the 1981 gold medal USA national team.

After his Maccabiah victory, Blatt began his Israeli hoops career, playing for teams including Maccabi Haifa and Hapoel Jerusalem.  Blatt made his coaching mark with Maccabi Tel Aviv.  Blatt was at times this team’s assistant and head coach, and took Maccabi to win European championships in 2003–04 and 2004–05.

In 2004 he moved to Russia and signed as head coach with Dynamo St. Petersburg. During this year he won the FIBA EuroCup with Dynamo and also the title of “Coach of the Year in Russia.” In the summer of 2006 he was also appointed head coach of the Russian National team, who he led to a European championship win in the 2007 Eurobasket.

“Can you imagine — an American Jewish Israeli?” Blatt said in an interview with a Princeton publication about being offered the national team coaching job

“I was amazed. The Russian team had had an unsuccessful European campaign. They were looking for somebody who could bring some new ideas, and I had had a really good season coaching in St. Petersburg. But I’m sure it was shocking for so many people on both sides of the old Iron Curtain…Forget about the basketball aspect — all I could think about was [Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev] ... saying, ‘We will bury you!’”

Blatt was the head coach of the Istanbul-based Turkish team Efes Pilsen, but parted ways with the team this April. Recently Blatt agreed to become the head coach of Dynamo Moscow, though ESPN talks about him eventually moving up to the NBA.

With dual-citizenship it is hard to tell if Blatt is American or Israeli, and some articles even refer to him as a European with all the coaching he has done in Italy, Turkey and Russia. For the 2008 Games, I found him listed in the Olympic News Service as Israeli.

0 Comments | Share This | Beijing Olympics, Iran, Sports

Joe Klein: Why I write what I write about Jewish neocons

By Ami Eden · July 30, 2008

Joe Klein talks with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg about his running feud with the “Commentary crowd” over his assertions that Jewish neocons are pushing a pro-Israel agenda at the expense of U.S. interests (recap: Round I, Round II, Round III).

His bottom line:

Listen, people can vote whichever way they want, for whatever reason they want.  I just don’t want to see policy makers who make decisions on the basis of whether American policy will benefit Israel or not.  In some cases, you want to provide protection for Israel certainly, but you don’t want to go to war with Iran.  When Jennifer Rubin or Abe Foxman calls me antisemitic, they’re wrong.  I am anti-neoconservative.  I think these people are following very perversely extremist policies and I really did believe that it was time for mainstream Jews to stand up and say, “They don’t represent us, they don’t represent Israel.”

As the interview progresses, Klein, the author of “Primary Colors” and a columnist for Time, makes clear he doesn’t actually think that Jewish neocons are purposely trying to hurt the U.S. – it’s just that in their zeal for protecting Israel they are making dangerous miscalculations:

I’m not saying that they don’t think it’s also in America’s best interest. But Israel’s best interests are in their mind and they’re doing things, they’re encouraging policies that are violent and potentially disastrous for the American people.  There’s this great book coming out called “In a Time of War,” about the West Point class of 2002, and you know, you read something like this and you want throttle Doug Feith, you just want to whoop him upside the head.

It turns out Klein even agrees with the notion that Israel’s survival is a legitimate consideration for U.S. policymakers – he just doesn’t share the doomsday view of Iran:

JG: If you believed that Iran posed an existential threat to Israel, would you consider that an American national security problem?

JK: Yes.

JG: Because of the lessons of the Holocaust, as McCain says?

JK: Not just because of the Holocaust, but because of the possibility that you’re going to have a Holocaust.  I mean, I don’t want to see religious extremists launching on a democracy anywhere.  I don’t want to see hundreds of thousands of Jews and Palestinians killed because of some nutcase.

JG: But you don’t believe that that’s going to happen.

JK: No!  No!  I think that that is a really distorted and kind of crazily extremist position.

And, whatever you do, don’t lump Klein in with Mearsheimer and Walt: “I am not a Walt-Mearsheimer guy. I think Jews have a perfect right to have a lobby. I do believe that there is a group of people who got involved and had a disproportionate influence on U.S. foreign policy.”

Klein accuses his critics of wanting to “stifle opinions that are different from theirs.” In this case, he adds, they’re picking on the wrong pundit: “I’m certainly not going to back down.”

John Podhoretz, a neocon prince and the editor of Commentary, responds on his publication’s blog:

He says he’s not anti-Semitic but rather, anti-neoconservative. To say it is a badge of honor to stand in opposition to a person as manifestly intellectually unstable as Joe Klein has become is to understate the case. As for his use of classic anti-Semitic canards, I am happy to report that the Jewish people will long survive Joe Klein.

The question is, will Time Magazine?

UPDATE: Klein also weighed in yesterday on his own blog:

I don’t think a war with Iran is coming, thank God, but this time I am not going to pull any punches. My voice isn’t very important in the grand scheme of things, but I’m going to do my job–and that means letting you know exactly where I stand and what I believe. I believe there are a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who are pushing for war with Iran because they believe it is in America’s long-term interests and because they believe Israel’s existence is at stake. They are wrong and recent history tells us they are dangerous. They are also bullies and I’m not going to be intimidated by them.

Klein may not be intimidated, but he seems to be taking a bit more care in making his point - (i.e. “they believe it is in America’s long-term interests"). But what’s still unclear (at least to me) is why he insists on using “Jewish” to modify the term neoconservative. Is John Bolton more or less of a threat than other neocons because he’s not Jewish? What about Pastor John Hagee? Would he be more deserving of attention if he were a rabbi?

UPDATED UPDATE: Peter Wehner (National Review crowd) jumps in with a lengthy critique of Klein’s interview with Goldberg.

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Iran’s president, railing again

By Uriel Heilman · July 29, 2008

Just a day after NBC’s Brian Williams pronounced Iran’s president as having a “new stance ready for further engagement,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the world’s “big powers” for the global AIDS problem.

Speaking in Tehran to ministers from the Non-Aligned Movement, which represents about two-thirds of U.N. member states, Iran’s president said of the spread of diseases like AIDS: “If we are serious about finding the root causes of such scourges, we must first of all admit that they are the result of the economic framework devised by the big powers and the inefficiency of the political and economic systems currently dominating the world.”

Ahmadinejad also criticized the indictment of Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir on charges of genocide in Darfur, called for the lifting of sanctions against Iran and predicted that the “big powers” are going down.

Yesterday, Brian Williams said of Ahmadinejad: “It was clear to all of us watching and listening he brought with him a new approach.” What will Williams say today?

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New stance, or new spin? Ahmadinejad speaks to NBC

By Uriel Heilman · July 28, 2008

After interviewing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today, NBC News anchor Brian Williams pronounced Tehran as having a “new stance ready for further engagement.”

“It was clear to all of us watching and listening he brought with him a new approach,” Williams said of Ahmadinejad. Williams said the Iranian president told him, “We are not working to manufacture a bomb,” said, “Nuclear weapons are so 20th century,” and that, “if the American approach changes, Iranians will have a positive response.’”

Apparently, Williams is convinced. But is this a new stance, or just a new ploy by a regime doing all it can to stall action against a suspected nuclear weapons program just months away from being able to produce a bomb?

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